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Image caption A truly magical and musical Bangkok wedding
And for such big music fans, it was a dream come true.
"It's wonderful that John came to know about our wedding," Ms Nong said.
"We didn't expect that only one night after the wedding, our dream to have John's blessings would come true. It was way beyond our expectations. We were just so excited."
Other John Mayer fans shared in the excitement, tweeting their congratulations.
"This is the best! Mazel tov to the newlyweds," said fellow fan Mimi Hodgkins from Stamford, Connecticut.Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s* commencement speech at historically black Bethune-Cookman University stirred up a great deal of controversy, with graduating students turning their backs on DeVos during her speech—and one college professor claiming that DeVos represents “white power.”
At the Hill, Jason Nichols, a professor of African American Studies at the University of Maryland College Park, writes that the university’s selection of DeVos as commencement speaker evinced “a major disconnect with students.” The university, according to Nichols, “[forgot] what commencement is about and whom it serves.”
Graduation, writes Nichols, “is not a time to stoke controversy or debate.” In his eyes, having DeVos speak showed that Bethune-Cookman “is centered around money not people,” and that the school’s choice “says that the wants and desires of black people, especially students, don’t matter in the face of green dollars and white power.”
From the story:
The saddest part is that this situation could have been avoided had the administration at BCU had the proper foresight. Those families, some of whom showed up to watch the first of their relatives to graduate college, instead had to watch a political protest. That event was not one that motivated the young, grade school aged, primarily black children in attendance to desire that day for themselves. Most of all, It soured a momentous occasion in these young people’s lives. The customary smiles and excitement were replaced by frowns disappointment and betrayal. Many people choose HBCUs because of the nurturing family-like environment that students of color often do not find at a predominately white institution. Many of the people I know who attended HBCUs describe it as home. The administration of Bethune-Cookman gave a stranger the keys to the student’s home, if only for a day.
Read the whole piece here.
*Disclosure
MORE: University offers class on “The Problem of Whiteness.”
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College senior Kyla Berry was looking forward to voting in her first presidential election, even carrying her voter registration card in her wallet. But about two weeks ago, Berry got disturbing news from local election officials. “This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote,” a letter from the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections said. But Berry is a U.S. citizen, born in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a passport and a birth certificate to prove it. Berry is one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been “flagged” because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information. At least 4,500 of those people are having their citizenship questioned and the burden is on them to prove eligibility to vote. Experts say lists of people with mismatches are often systematically cut, or “purged,” from voter rolls.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
I’d be curious to know what percentage of these ‘purged’ voters are minorities, are Democrats, and what percentage are Republicans. There are over 660,000 new registered voters in Ohio, with attempts at purging over 200,000 of those new voters. Again, I would wonder about the same breakdown..
We are not even talking about voter caging and voting machines with no paper trails that “accidently” flip votes..
This is happening all over the US right now in an attempt to prevent Americans from casting their votes. That does not represent a “democracy’.
Watch this series of videos interviewing Stephen Spoonamore. Seriously.
Then read “Block The Vote” and watch the videos by Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast.
Read: A Mighty Hoax From ACORN Grows by Michael Winship (Truthout).
The truth on all of these dirty tricks must come out, something must be done, so we can restore the American peoples’ right to vote in this country, and restore the trust in – and integrity of – our elections.
: : : : : : : : : :Chance the Rapper's new mixtape Coloring Book will debut this week at No. 8 on Billboard's 200 chart, making it the first ever streaming-only album to land there. The mixtape was released without the help of a label, but was only available in its first week as an Apple Music exclusive. During that time, the mixtape earned 38,000 equivalent album units, or a total of 57.3 million streams, according to Billboard.
Summer charts
When it came out on May 13th, Coloring Book was available for the first 10 hours or so as a free download on DatPiff. It was later taken down after Chance's team said the download was unauthorized (despite the fact that his previous two mixtapes were available there). While Coloring Book is the first album ever to land on the chart entirely from streams, Billboard does note that Kanye West's The Life of Pablo saw 99.93 percent of its units generated by streams.
Coloring Book will remain an Apple Music exclusive until May 27th.''We recognize that science had gone beyond crude fiber,'' he said, ''and through our proposal, correspondence with some of these companies, they know we support dietary fiber as a method of measurement. But to say that our policy is less than clear is no understatement.'' Mr. Shank said that the regulation has not become final because it does not have a high priority at F.D.A.
In 1979 the Federal Trade Commission charged ITT-Continental Baking Company with false and misleading advertising because it had not disclosed that the alpha cellulose in its bread Fresh Horizons came from wood pulp. The F.T.C. also said that high fiber claims for Fresh Horizons, similar to those being made for the breads available today, were inaccurate. ITT signed a consent agreement with the F.T.C. that required the company to include the following statement in all of its advertising for Fresh Horizons or other bread products containing wood: ''The source of (this/the) fiber is wood.''
The F.T.C. said the failure to identify the fiber source was misleading because ''consumers would not expect to find fiber derived from wood as an ingredient in a bread.''
In addition, the ruling prohibited the company ''from making claims about comparative amounts of fiber in food products unless the comparisons are based on a scientific method of measurement.'' The F.T.C. said such claims must be based on a measurement of dietary fiber.
The makers of two of the high-fiber breads now on the market, Sunbeam Lite and Roman Lite, say they plan to list dietary fiber on their packaging.
Sanford Miller, director of the F.D.A.'s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said that he would like to see the source of alpha cellulose listed on the label. ''I think our position is simple fairness,'' he said. ''If one company was required to list the source of the fiber on the label, other companies should be required to do it too.''What Romney's Run Means For Mormonism
Win or lose on Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has already made history as the first Mormon to win a major party presidential nomination.
But has his race for the White House changed Americans' perceptions and stereotypes of the small, insular but fast-growing religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
And, by extension, has Romney affected how Mormons view their place in the nation?
Enlarge this image toggle caption George Frey/Getty Images George Frey/Getty Images
Two noted Mormon experts we turned to as the 2012 presidential campaign draws to a close said that they see national perceptions of the religion emerging largely unchanged by Romney's run, but that perhaps it has helped Mormonism shed a bit of its mystery.
"I think the general reader has become more educated about Mormonism, and some of its reputation for strangeness has worn off, though it retains its deserved reputation for difference," says Kathleen Flake, author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle.
"Certainly, more people will have heard of it," says Flake, a Vanderbilt Divinity School American religion professor. "But with few exceptions, what they have heard pro and con seems remarkably similar to what was being said in the 1970s."
Matthew Bowman, author of The Mormon People: The Making of An American Faith and an assistant religion professor at Hampden-Sydney College, says he has come to a similar conclusion.
"The main obstacle to integration for any religion in the U.S. is, simply, size," Bowman says. "Fear and antagonism toward Catholics in America declined in tandem with the growth of the Catholic population in the U.S."
"Mormons," he said, "still make up only 2 percent of the American population; they likely still have hills to climb."
A Pew Research Center survey of American Mormons released in January, well before Romney captured the GOP nomination, explored the church members' vision of themselves, and how they believe they are perceived by non-Mormons. We also asked Flake and Bowman to help us discern how the past 10 months may have affected attitudes reflected in the study.
Romney isn't the first Mormon to seek the presidency. In fact, nine others sought the nation's highest office before Romney. They include Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1844, and Romney's father, George, in 1968. Additionally, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman made a brief run for the GOP nomination this year.
Here's what we wanted to know, and what Bowman and Flake had to tell us:
NPR: The church, along with its attributes of community and giving and focus on family, has also been consistently portrayed as inward looking, and with a complicated history that includes polygamy, discrimination and accumulation of wealth. Has Romney's run done anything to change that, and, if so, what and how?
Bowman: Romney, unfortunately, tends to embody some of the more benign stereotypes: wealthy, awkward and so on. What his run has done, however, is bring attention to the diversity of Mormons in the United States. The variety of Mormons who have become prominent in the media, and Romney's occasional head-butting with his co-religionist [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid [the Nevada Democrat], have done a fair amount to refute the great myth of Mormonism: that it's a monolith.
Flake: Probably not. More than sound bites, drive-by photo ops and editorials are needed on these complex issues and common canards. This is not to fault the press. Electioneering is not given to much more than this and most Americans have never had any patience for theology.
NPR: The question of whether Mormonism is a Christian religion still divides the general public and has made Romney's path to the Republican nomination even more historic. Mormons say they feel hostility from evangelical Christians, an important part of the GOP base, and they should, given Pew's findings. We're now seeing numbers that suggest [a] party highly motivated to support Romney. Politically, what have you seen happen over the past 10 months that brought this part of the Republican electorate around?
Bowman: I don't know that the electorate has, actually, changed much. Evangelicals are rather bitterly divided over Romney, but that's been true from the beginning, and I suspect most of that faction of evangelicals who make up the religious right are in the religious right because of their politics, and will swallow hard and vote for the candidate who best matches those politics. That said, there is probably some small faction who are just going to stay home.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Getty Images Getty Images
Flake: Romney's nomination necessitated the silencing of evangelical anti-Mormonism. Other explanations, it seems to me, underestimate their antipathy — racial and religious — of the present administration and their fear of a second term.
NPR: There are still people uncomfortable with the notion of a Mormon president; some cite the Mormon belief that the Constitution, and, with it, democracy, were "divinely inspired," as Richard and Joan Ostling wrote in "Mormon in America." If Mitt Romney wins the White House, how do you see his faith informing his decisions? How is this different from John F. Kennedy becoming the first Catholic president?
Bowman: Romney is far different from Kennedy. Kennedy's election marked the culmination of a long process of Catholic integration in the U.S. Romney's run is still early in Mormonism's integration. Of course Romney's faith might inform his decisions as president, just as the faith of any believer informs the ways they live their lives and do their job. Mormon faith in American exceptionalism, though it differs in origin from that of, say, conservative Protestants in America, is not so different than that held by, for instance, Ronald Reagan or George Bush, which means it's well within the spectrum of American politics. Some might be worried, as some were worried about Kennedy, that the leader of their faith would dictate the decisions of the president. Kennedy specifically repudiated this possibility; Romney has not. But in practice it's extraordinarily unlikely that the LDS leadership would do something like it; they are well aware of these suspicions, have been since the early 20th century.
Flake: Our times and his party, not Romney's faith, would mark the difference. Whereas Kennedy could satisfy his electorate by pledging separation from religion, Romney will have to offer special status to religion, as promised in his 2007 speech on the subject. As for the extent to which Mormonism will inform his decisions, the campaign seems the best measure of that. If you can find Mormonism in his current policy decisions, you will see it in future ones.
NPR: Nearly half of the Mormons surveyed by Pew said that there is "a lot of discrimination" against Mormons. In what context do you think Mormons experience discrimination, and how might Romney's run, and potential presidency, alleviate the perception and/or the condition?
Bowman: There's a lot of residual sense of persecution within Mormonism, deriving, of course, from the church's historic experience in America, but also from the rather unending barrage of evangelical countercult organizations that target Mormonism. Regardless, I think a lot of Mormons were rather distressed at much of what came out in the past couple of years: [Former Arkansas Gov.] Mike Huckabee's comments in Romney's first run, the Book of Mormon musical, and so on. What's interesting is that while traditionally anti-Mormonism presented Mormons as a dangerous threat to America, more recently, Mormons have been presented as naive, uptight, and unbearably nice. Caricatures of Romney himself certainly fall into the latter category, and thus will probably reinforce rather than eliminate stereotype.
Flake: "Discrimination" is an inapt term for the treatment of Latter-day Saints. In America, they are simply too white and middle class to deserve its use. More accurately, they are ridiculed and stereotyped from the right and left as wrongly religious or too religious, respectively. This estimation of them as presumptively threatening or foolish will, I expect, continue to diminish as they become better known. If Romney is elected, press coverage of him may lead to greater familiarity with his religion. At least, this will be the case if the press continues to try to explain his politics in terms of his religion.
NPR: Another interesting Pew finding was that only 30 percent of Mormons said that others see Mormonism as mainstream, yet 63 percent said acceptance of Mormonism "is rising." Where do you think that Mormons find this rising acceptance, and has Romney specifically done anything the 10 months since the survey was released to make Mormonism "mainstream"?
Bowman: To many Americans the problem is that Mormons are "too" mainstream, with their white shirts, conservative haircuts, and so on. They're a poor fit in an America that increasingly prizes diversity and informality. I don't know that Romney has specifically tried to persuade Americans that Mormons are mainstream because, in fact, many Mormons "feel" mainstream, even if other Americans don't think so. Romney has almost certainly had about zero angst over whether or not his religion's particular theology might prevent him from running for president, just as Stephenie Meyer (author of the Twilight series) probably sees no conflict between writing about vampires and going to a Mormon chapel on Sundays. That, I think, may account for the discrepancy in this poll: Mormons are talking about how they perceive others perceiving them, not about themselves.
Flake: Latter-day Saints probably see improvement in the mere fact of the general public's attempt to understand them as they see themselves, not simplistically as their sectarian antagonists have caricatured them. Romney's refusal to be drawn into theological discussions has probably helped to direct the conversation away from historically internecine debates and toward understanding his church as a contemporary social phenomenon.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
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A full transcript of the telephone interview is available below. The questions are lightly edited for clarity.
The Economist: What are Trump supporters looking for? What are they hearing from him that they don’t hear from others in GOP?
Donald Trump: Well, I think that, more than anything else, they want to see us become great again. It’s my theme, my whole theme is, “Make America Great Again.” It’s a concept of greatness for this country. They are tired of being ripped off by every single country that does business with us. Whether it’s China, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam—which is in there big and heavy right now—Japan with the cars. And you know, the one-way street. They’re tired of looking at what happens, they are tired of us having our… let’s say finest and brightest not being involved in the most important decisions, and being someplace else. They want to see great trade deals, they want to see a strong military. They want to see reduced debt, because we are at a point where we are going to be soon at $19 trillion and they just, you know, they can’t stand seeing it. They want to see our veterans taken care of, because they are not, they are being absolutely mistreated. There are many things they want to see. There are many points of anger in this country.
The Economist: People say they are sick of today’s corrupt politicians. Are politicians really worse than before, or are voters nostalgic for post-war growth and prosperity?
DT: Well, they’re looking at the politicians as being all talk, no action. They talk the big game, then they go to Washington, they look at the magnificent hallowed halls as you would say, or the beautiful vaulted ceilings and they say, “darling, I’ve arrived,” to their loved one or their wife. They say “darling, I’ve arrived” and all of a sudden they become nothing. They become nothingness and they don’t do the job that they got elected to do. And it happens time and time again. And people are tired of seeing politicians as all talk and no action. They just don’t get it done. They are tired of being out-negotiated on every front. Whether it is militarily, with ISIS where we can’t stop ISIS, where we have 2,300 Humvees, the latest and the greatest, armour-plated, stolen because one bullet is shot in the air and the allies run and the enemy takes over our weapons. Including 2,300 Humvees, which is incredible when you think of the number of them. I thought, there must be a mistake, it is 2,300.
The Economist: To take trade, first of all, the pessimistic view is that America simply faces much more global competition, so America doesn’t have as much leverage as it used to.
DT: We have the cards, and I’ll go into that in a second. We have politicians that are grossly incompetent. We have leaders that are incompetent and we have negotiators that are incompetent. You notice that I have Carl Icahn ready to go out and do battle. And I have many others that are great negotiators, ready to go out and do battle on our behalf. And by the way, we’ll get along better with these countries in the end than we get along with them now. We have, as in the case of China and so many others, they don’t even like us and yet they are eating our lunch in trade. So, with China, their primary weapon in China is what they’ve done with the devaluation of their currency. And in the trade pact you know that was recently agreed to, I said you have to talk about devaluation. Because that’s been their single greatest asset in terms of what they are doing to us. And even just a week ago, they devalued it, the biggest devaluation they’ve had in two decades, two decades, that’s a long time. And nobody thought they were going to devalue again because of the fact that you know just nobody thought… because they have been playing the devaluation game for a long time. Without us, they would... We rebuilt China, we rebuilt other places but we rebuilt China. The money they took out of the United States is the greatest theft in the history of our country. The money they’ve taken out, the jobs they’ve taken out, the base. You know, the whole thing. They have taken so much out of our country. And they have rebuilt China. Now, China has other problems, but the devaluation has allowed them to make it impossible for us to compete.
The Economist: On China. The counter-argument from big CEOs, friends of yours, would be, look at last week when Apple stock was being hammered, how did the CEO stop that slide? He emailed CNBC to say our Chinese sales are strong, and that was enough to regain $66bn in value. What does that say about leverage?
DT: Well, sure, sure, I’d like to see Apples built in the United States, not built in China. I’d like to see them have factories in the United States. At least, partially. They make nothing in the United States, virtually. I would like to see with Japan… two weeks ago I was in Los Angeles. I saw the biggest ships you have ever seen with cars pouring off from Japan, into Los Angeles. Just pouring off these ships, and I am saying to myself, we send them beef, it’s a tiny fraction, and, by the way, they don’t even want it, they have to fight in order to take it in because they don’t even want it, and it’s very perishable, they’ll send it back, they’ll find reasons not to take it. And yet the ships, the boats, the ships are loaded up with cars, thousands of cars and they are just pouring off. And I say, isn’t that a shame, it’s so one-sided. Now you look at Mexico. Many, many factories, many plants. Nabisco’s now moving to Mexico, their big Chicago plant. You look at Ford is building one of their biggest factories in Mexico, one of their biggest assembly plants in Mexico. They are doing a two and a half billion dollar plant, that by the way is a major plant, two and a half billion dollars. They’re doing a two and a half billion dollar plant. A plant, an auto, another foreign company was going to build a plant in Tennessee and they’re now as you know going to Mexico, it was a big shock right at the end it was all set to be signed and they said right at the last moment oh we’re going to Mexico. So Mexico is not only beating us at the border, they are also beating us at trade.
The Economist: What would you say to the boss of Apple to make him move production, what if he says China is his best market?
DT: So I have a friend who is a great manufacturer, and he deals with China. He deals with many countries, but he deals with China all the time. He said it is impossible, it is so hard to do business in there, it’s so hard to get my goods into China. And he makes a great product, OK? It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to embarrass him, but he makes a great product. And he said it’s so hard to get our goods into China. And when we do get in they charge us a huge surtax. They call it a surtax or a tariff. I call it a tax, OK? But when we do get in, and the number he gave was so high that it almost seemed ridiculous, it was over 40%, four-oh, and he said, these people are absolutely killing us because they send their stuff tax-free no problem, don’t worry about it. But if we want to do business over there... And look at Boeing where they took all of their copyrights, and all of their patents in order to buy planes, they said but we want - because they’re going to make their own factories now, they’re building them now, they are going to build their own planes - but they took... and even if Boeing didn’t give it they’d have copied it, because they’ve been very lax.
The Economist: So you would put tariffs on Chinese imports?
DT: No, unless... Here’s what I would do. I would tell them, you have devalued your currency yet again; it is not going to happen. The value of that is the equivalent of a 7% tax or a 12% tax. Because of the fact that you have done that we are going to charge you 12% coming in. And you know what? They’re going to stop playing games with us. Look, they have taken our jobs, they have taken our money, and on top of that they have loaned the money to us and we actually pay them interest now on money. We owe China and Japan each $1.4 trillion.
The Economist: You’d make that threat to China?
DT: It wouldn’t be a threat. It would be a beyond a threat. And if they continue to do… because they’re killing us. If you look at Caterpillar now [in Japan] with what’s going on. Abe is a great leader. Who is our chief negotiator? Essentially it is Caroline Kennedy. I mean give me a break. She doesn’t even know she’s alive. It’s Caroline Kennedy. So Caterpillar is having a hard time selling because Komatsu is under-cutting them. Japan is doing a big number on the yen, devaluing it, and it’s very… I don’t know if you have heard me say this story, but a friend of mine he’s an excavator, he owns a big excavation company. And he buys a lot of excavators, earth-moving equipment. And for the first time in his life he bought Komatsu. He said Caterpillar can’t compete because they have so killed the yen. And he feels very unhappy about it. It’s a nice machine, but it is not probably as good but it’s pretty close. And he said, I bought Komatsu tractors because nobody could compete with the price because of the fact… because of the dollar. It has nothing to do with the machinery, it is just that they have devalued the yen to such an extent that he said, he can’t compete. So he ended up buying Komatsu and he is very unhappy about it. That’s happening, by the way, that’s happening more and more.
The Economist: If the terms of trade can be changed, as you say, why haven’t today’s politicians of either party done it?
DT: Because they’re grossly incompetent. And they are not negotiators. And they are grossly incompetent. And I have friends from China - by the way I love China. I love Japan. I have people that buy my apartments, I have people that work for me from China. I love Mexico. I mean, Mexico, I have thousands of people from Mexico that work for me. Thousands. Hispanics. In fact a poll just came out, Public Policy Polling, where I am leading with Hispanics, can you believe that, after what you have been hearing? I’m leading, I’m number one with Hispanics.
The Economist: Do you like the label economic nationalist? Some people use that about you.
DT: No, I don’t think so, because it sounds too harsh. I just want to be fair. I want to be a fair trader. I want to be a firm and fair trader. We’re being taken advantage of because we have leaders who are incompetent. They don’t even know. When I went out and told them three months ago, you know in their trade deal they didn’t even discuss the devaluation, they didn’t even discuss it. At least they started discussing it, only because of me. They didn’t even have it as part of their deal, I don’t think they still do. But at least it got discussed. And a group came to me, a very important group, and they said could we do a commercial; they actually did a commercial where they actually paid for it, talking about what I was saying about trade. Because, you know what I’m talking about? You know, I did a commercial four months ago for them? I was the voice of the commercial. They asked me would I do it, and I said I’d gladly do it. They didn’t even want my money, they had all the money… I talked about the devaluation that was the primary point of the commercial, that the trade deal was no good, number one. No good for us, good for them. So what happens is; we have tremendous strength, because they want to take our money. We have the money, we have the market. They want to take this from us. And because of that we have tremendous power. The problem is, we have leaders and negotiators that don’t realise we have the power. And they’re essentially incompetent. And we would be able to straighten out that thing. China only did the biggest devaluation in 20 years, only for one reason. Because they could get away with it.
The Economist: Are you pointing to a bigger problem for Republicans, that they are very good at populist attacks on Barack Obama and firing people up about Washington not looking out for the middle class, but their policies are the same old Chamber of Commerce priorities?
DT: Well, I can tell you, some of the people I’m running against don’t have a clue as to—we’re talking now Republicans—as to what to do about what we are talking about, devaluations. And I do. That’s what I do, and I am really good at this stuff. I will make great deals with China and they will like us more than they do now. You know they don’t even like us. You know in Businessweek magazine, they did a story a while ago about one of the ten things that the Chinese most want. One of the ten things was “Anything Trump”. And I thought about that. And they respect me. They have to respect you. China does not respect us and they don’t respect our leaders. I have done great in China.
The Economist: What would President Trump do about China building reefs and air bases in the South China Sea?
DT: Well, I don’t like it, it’s very far away. I do not like it. It’s very hostile. It’s a hostile move. And I would be talking to them very seriously about it. However, it is very far away, and we have a lot of problems, OK? And they’re already built. And to be honest with you I think Japan and other people are going to have to start talking about things like that. I’ll give you another example, the Ukraine. Russia’s fighting in the Ukraine and we are right out front. We are right out front and we are sending brand-new F-22 fighters, the latest and the greatest, and everything else. And here’s Germany that’s making a fortune, and all of these European countries, who truly have a much bigger impact and effect than we do and are affected far greater than we are. And they just sit back and watch us go out there and put our heads on the line. And another thing is South Korea. I just ordered 4000 television sets from South Korea, you know. They are only made in South Korea, other than Sony. You know, Samsung, LG, Sharp. They’re all South Korean. So I’m a negotiator, I made a deal, I made a good deal, it’s fine, you know. I ordered 4,000. There’s no televisions made in the United States. So I’m ordering 4,000 television sets from South Korea, and yet they are making a fortune as a country - you look at the balance, you look at the deficits we have with all of these countries. We have deficits with everybody. Who do we have a positive with? We have deficits with everybody. So I ordered all of these sets and I’m thinking to myself, this is ridiculous. We don’t even make televisions here. Now, when North Korea rears its head, we send our ships, we send our planes, we get ready, we got our 28,000 soldiers on the border, that’s a seriously dangerous border by the way, they’ve got their million and a half man army and we have 28,000 soldiers. But here we are, doing this, protecting, and I am saying to myself, we don’t even get money; we don’t get anything for doing this.
The Economist: You’re surely right that lots of American presidents are frustrated by wimpy, free-loading allies. But what if they don’t step up?
DT: By the way, I don’t mind being at their side, with respect to the Ukraine. But why should we always be out front? How many times can we be out in front on these issues? We just mentioned four of them in a minute and a half. You mention the South China Sea, we mention North Korea, South Korea, we mention Ukraine. We could mention five others. Yemen, and this, and that. How many places can we do this? We have a country that is a debtor nation, we have an infrastructure that is crumbling all over the place, 60% of the bridges we have in this country are in trouble.
The Economist: Lots of Americans share your frustration. But what if the allies don’t step up, and China and Russia start bullying their neighbours?
DT: If we step back they will protect themselves very well. Remember when China… Japan used to beat China routinely in wars. You know that, right? Japan used to beat China, they routinely beat China. Why are we defending? You know the pact we have with Japan is interesting. Because if somebody attacks us, Japan does not have to help. If somebody attacks Japan, we have to help Japan. That’s the kind of deals we make. And that’s why I am at 40%. The new Gravis poll just came out at 40% by the way.
The Economist: Would you consider revisiting the treaty with Japan?
DT: Why is it, I ask you this, why is it that if somebody hits us they do not have to come to our aid in any way, shape or form? But if they get hit we are mandatory, we have to come to their aid.
The Economist: Now, lots of your GOP rivals would look at the rise of ISIS and say they are not frightened of America, and that’s Obama’s fault
DT: True.
The Economist: And the next thing they would say is, regrettably America is going to have to play cop again and sort out the Middle East. Do you think America has any business sorting out the Middle East?
DT: I think we should keep the oil.
The Economist: How do you keep that oil?
DT: You take the oil. It’s simple. You take the oil. There are certain areas which ISIS has the oil and you take the oil, you keep it. You just go in and take it.
The Economist: And would you have American troops guarding that?
DT: Yes, we could do that very easily. And yet I get criticised by some people, and some people love it. We cannot continue to be a policeman for the rest of the world. We are a debtor nation, and we owe now $19 trillion and it’s going to go up very fast by the way from this point. We’re up to almost $19 trillion. We can’t be the policeman for the rest of the world.
The Economist: Just to be clear, would you have American forces guarding that oil?
DT: Yes, I would have American forces guarding the oil, absolutely. Nobody is going to take it back. Without our very strong approval. Nobody else is taking it back.
The Economist: Do Americans look at the Middle East and a decade of war and think it is beyond fixing?
DT: No, I think ISIS has overplayed its hand. You have to understand, I was totally against the war in Iraq, you can check Reuters, July of oh-four, I was against it, I said you are going to destabilise... So I am the most militaristic person but you have to know when to use the military. Or have it so strong that nobody is going to mess with you, which is my ultimate goal, to be honest with you. Because our military has been greatly weakened by a lot of bad decisions and other things. But anyway, but I was against the war with Iraq. First of all, they didn’t knock down the World Trade Centre. It wasn’t Iraq that knocked down the World Trade Centre. If you look at where the people sent their families, you know where it was, it wasn’t Iraq, ok? So it wasn’t Iraq. They didn’t send their families home to Iraq. In fact out of the 18 or so I think none went to Iraq. So it was not Iraq that knocked down the World Trade Centre. I said in 2004 - I brought that up as a point by the way - but I said, in fact a group was sent to me from the White House to try talk to me, because I was getting a lot of publicity. I seem to get a lot of publicity for whatever reason. But I said you shouldn’t do it, it was actually in 2003 I said it, which was early enough. But I said it in 2004, you’re going to destabilise the Middle East, Iran is going to take over Iraq… and somebody else is going to help and that turned out to be ISIS. It’s an exact…I wish you could read, I’d send you the article if you want it, but it’s in, it’s Reuters of July |
" organizations, who think their civil rights include getting into these elite schools, whether they qualify or not.
Finally, there are the intelligentsia, who all too often equate achievement with privilege. In times past, such people called Stuyvesant "a free prep school for Jews" and "a privileged little ivory tower."
That was clever, but cleverness is not wisdom. Back in those days, Jewish youngsters were over-represented among the students at all three elite public high schools. Today it is Asian students who are a majority at those same schools -- more than twice as many Asians as whites in all three schools.
Black and Hispanic students are rare at all three elite public high schools, and becoming rarer.
Many among the intelligentsia and politicians express astonishment that the ethnic makeup of these schools is so different from the demographic makeup of the city.
But such differences between groups are common in countries around the world. But in each country there are people who say that it is strange -- and demand a "solution" to this "problem."
In Malaysia, for example, before group quotas were established at the country's universities, students from the Chinese minority earned more than 400 engineering degrees in the 1960s, while students from the Malay majority earned just 4.
When a university was established in 19th century Romania, there were more German students than Romanian students, and most of the professors were German. The same was true for most of the 19th century when a university was established in Estonia.
In none of these cases did the group that was over-represented have any power to discriminate against groups that were under-represented.
If racism is the reason why there are so few blacks in Stuyvesant High School, why were blacks a far higher proportion in Stuyvesant in earlier times, as far back as 1938? Was there less racism in 1938? Was there less poverty among blacks in 1938?
We know that there were far fewer black children raised in single-parent homes back then and there was far less social degeneracy represented by things like gangsta rap. If Mayor de Blasio wants to solve real problems, let him take these on.In the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris last week, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon remarked on the tension between security and liberty. “In the United States until the events of September 11, the balance between security and human rights favored human rights on the issue, for example of eavesdropping on potential terrorists,” he said. “In France and other countries in Europe, [a shift toward security] hasn’t yet happened. Countries fighting terrorism have no alternative in this other than shifting in the direction of security. I assume that we will see a large number of steps [to carry out] inspections: passport inspections, inspections at the entrance to public places.”
As in the U.S. this dichotomy between security and human rights is at the very heart of the debate in Israel. ”We believe not only are these not contradictory, but that human rights provides security,” said Hagai El-Ad, the Executive Director of B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights groups monitoring its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, on a recent press call. “Indeed, we think that human rights are the reasons for which we have security, they are why people have a society that must be protected. So one has to wonder what kind of society do we end up with (in Ya’alon’s framework) and would that society be worth defending if you take Ya’alon’s idea to extremes. I hope that idea will work differently in France. Time will tell.”
The last several months have seen an increase in attacks on civilians in Israel and the West Bank, and it is natural that such attacks test the resolve of any society to maintain its commitment to human rights. Terrorist groups count on the idea that their attacks will erode that resolve, as it did in the United States after September 11, and as it has in Israel over many years, and especially in the past six years under a right wing government.
The diminished regard for human rights is particularly evident in the Israeli practice of punitive house demolitions, in which the homes of accused terrorists’ families are destroyed, often leaving dozens of people homeless for a crime in which they played no part. El-Ad points out that, “In 2004, a military commission reviewed the procedure, found the practice is not effective, and recommended abandoning it.”
In 2005, Israel’s Defense Ministry did indeed order a halt to the procedure, based on evidence that, rather than deterring attacks, punitive house demolitions inflamed Palestinian anger.
“We should not call them punitive, but vindictive,” El-Ad said. “They are carried out against families who are not charged with anything. This is [a violation of] the Geneva Conventions, which forbids collective punishment, and against basic morality.”
El-Ad says that reviving the practice had been discussed for some time, and that last year, after the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli youths that sparked a summer of horrific violence and the war in Gaza, the practice was revived.
While Israeli leaders like Ya’alon argue that these demolitions deter terrorism, Israel’s own research has shown they do no such thing. This is a clear example where disregard for human rights has a distinctly negative impact on security.
But house demolitions are not the only example. In recent weeks, the upsurge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians has been centered in two areas: Jerusalem and Hebron. The tensions in Jerusalem have been well-documented, but the situation in Hebron garners less international attention. Yet those tensions have repeatedly resulted in attacks on both Israeli settlers and soldiers as well as against Palestinian civilians.
The situation in Hebron is extremely difficult. As Musa Abu Hashhash, B’Tselem’s Hebron District field researcher, points out, “Hebron has had half of the casualties in the last few weeks. It is the only Palestinian town where settlers live inside the town itself.
“The 1997 Hebron Agreement divides Hebron into H1 and H2. [H1 is the Palestinian portion of Hebron. H2, approximately 20% of the city, is controlled by Israel.] H2 has seventeen checkpoints and restricted movement, which leads to deserted streets. B’Tselem did a survey in 2007 and found that 1007 homes are empty and 1400 shops have been closed. These are the long term effects of the settlers’ presence.”
It remains to be seen how France and other European countries will respond in the long term to the horrors we all witnessed in Paris. One can only hope that they reject Moshe Ya’alon’s notion that security must mean de-emphasizing human rights. Instead, they can opt for the more nuanced view that El-Ad expressed, in which security is enhanced by preserving human rights, while the denial of those rights puts innocent civilians at greater risk.
“We at B’Tselem have an uncompromising position against violence against innocent civilians,” he said. “But the government in Israel imagines that the recent violence came out of nowhere, and if there is any context, it is only Palestinian incitement and anti-Semitism. We also reject that notion. The context of what we are witnessing is the occupation.”ROME -- The Vatican's own police force has arrested a monsignor and a laywoman in its latest probe into the leak of confidential documents.
The Vatican said both people were members of the commission established on Pope Francis' order to investigate the Church's finances. They were being held on suspicion of leaking confidential documents to the media.
A statement released by the Vatican identified the suspects as Spanish priest Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and Francesca Chaouqui. Chaouqui was released Monday, the statement said, and was "cooperating with the investigation. Balda remained in custody.
The arrests took place over the weekend but only became common public knowledge on Monday, two days before the slated release of a pair of new books touting new revelations of past misdeeds at the Vatican.
Two arrested in scandal over leaked Vatican documents
One of the two books is written by Gianluigi Nuzzi, whose 2012 book "His Holiness" contained private documents stolen from Pope Benedict's desk by his butler.
"Regarding the two books in the next days, we clearly state that this time, as in the past, they are the result of 'a grave betrayal of the Pope's trust,'" said the statement released Monday by the Vatican.
It said the books' authors had taken advantage "of a grave illegal act of the delivery of reserved documents" and the possibly criminal consequences would be "studied by the Vatican prosecutor as regards possible further measures."
Both Balda and Chaouqui were members of COSEA (Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See), the now-defunct commission established by Pope Francis with reviewing the Vatican's administrative procedures.
The leaked documents allegedly come from COSEA archives.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Vallejo Balda is being held in a jail cell in Vatican City. Chaouqui was allowed to go free because she cooperated in the probe, the Vatican said.
Chaouqui "has furnished the maximum cooperation and deposited documents in support of what she declared," her lawyer, Giulia Bongiorno was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA. Noting that her client was already back home, Bongiorno added "she is sure she will very rapidly clarify her position."
Bongiorno, who successfully won acquittal for Amanda Knox's co-defendant in an internationally watched murder trial, is one of Italy's top criminal lawyers. She didn't immediately answer phone calls seeking further comment.
Chaouqui, on her LinkedIn profile, describes herself as a communications expert who was the only woman, the only under-55-year-old and the only Italian woman on the pontifical commission.
Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic religious movement, expressed "surprise and pain" over Vallejo Balda's arrest. It described him in a statement as belonging to a priestly society linked to Opus Dei, and added it had no information on the case.
"If the allegation turns out to be proven, it will be particularly painful because of the damage done to the church," Opus Dei's statement said.
While Francis is intent on modernizing the Vatican and making its finances more transparent, the arrests were the latest confirmation that scandal and intrigue still swirl, as they have for centuries, through the largely closed world of the tiny city-state's administrative bureaucracy.
Current and past papacy efforts to clean house at the Vatican have sparked resentment and found resistance in the Holy See's entrenched bureaucracy, a perfect combination of factors to foster leaks.
CBS News' Anna Matranga reports the Vatican is taking the situation very seriously. Holy See officials have contacted Italian authorities to see if there might be punishments of the two authors of these books.
Nuzzi's book is expected to contain transcripts of private conversations between the pope and Vatican officials, designed to reveal the reasons Pope Emeritus Benedict resigned.
Unlike previous similar instances, the Vatican does not see the current leaks as something well-intentioned, Officials believe the leakers are not benefiting the church more broadly by opening up corrupt practices to the world, reports Candida Moss, a University of Notre Dame professor and CBS News contributor.
There is also a danger in prosecuting these two so harshly.
"It's going to look like they're silencing whistleblowers...rather than going after people who were themselves corrupt," Moss says. "It's gonna look like more of the same."President Trump raised a few eyebrows this week when he told a story about his adult daughter and White House advisor, Ivanka Trump, begging to go on a trip with him.
“Daddy, can I go with you?” Trump said, quoting his daughter.
At first, Trump said Ivanka called him “Dad.” But the president — rarely known to correct his own inaccuracies — felt the need to clarify. He paused the story to twice mention that Ivanka had referred to him specifically as “Daddy.” Trump “liked that,” he added.
While the exchange felt slightly untoward, it was far from the first time the president has gone out of his way to mention his daughter calls him “Daddy.”
Perhaps these moments would be less cringe-worthy without Trump’s history of comments about his daughter’s sexuality. In the past, he’s referred to his daughter as “voluptuous” and said she has “the best body.” In fact, Trump once declared, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”In interview with Channel 4 News, young woman says babies and young children are'sold to order' to US nationals
A young Mexican woman who escaped from human traffickers has told US special agents how she witnessed babies and children being "sold to order" to US citizens.
America's Department of Homeland Security in Washington says the girl, known only as Maria, had "significant ~information" and possessed a "remarkable memory" of her experiences inside the gang.
In an interview with Channel 4 News, to be broadcast tonight, the teenager tells of a cross-border trade in babies and young children, where Mexican and US gangs worked together to supply a demand in the United States.
As a result of the interview, US officials and Mexican authorities have begun an investigation into the alleged trafficking.
Maria says she was 16 when she was lured into the gang by a man on the streets of the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez.
Since the 1990s, thousands of women have disappeared from the town. Hundreds of bodies bearing signs of rape and sexual mutilation have been dumped on waste ground in the city; thousands more have never returned.
In 2009, 55 teenage girls vanished in the town, which has been gripped by violence as two drug cartels fight a lethal turf war over cocaine smuggling routes into the US.
Maria, who was in hiding when she talked to Channel 4 News, said she had been given presents and promised a job in an office by the gang member but was instead drugged and raped and sold to men.
In late December, US special agents flew the teenager to the US for a full interview.
Describing what the gang did to one girl who tried to escape, she said: "They took a gallon of gasoline and started pouring it over her. One of the men told me, 'If you don't do as I say, I will do the same to you.' I wanted to look away – but they didn't' let me.
"Even though the girl was on fire, they kept hitting her. They were laughing as if they were enjoying what they were doing. They burned her alive."
Maria, which is not her real name, said the gang had held young women in a house on the Mexican border until they were sold to the US as sex slaves. But she said they also dealt in children, and told of one occasion when the gang was contacted by a woman in New York. "She said she needed a seven-year-old girl and a nine-year-old boy – and she needed them in three days," Maria quoted the woman as saying.
Maria told special agents the gang would prowl the streets of poor areas looking for children.
"They stole the children," she said. "One of the gang members took a six-year-old kid. I had to look after him for three hours. He told me he wanted to see his mummy. Then I started crying. I said: 'I don't think you're ever going to see your mummy again.' All he kept saying was, 'I want to see my mummy.'"
Maria, who escaped after a gang member left her alone in a house, says children were often around. But not for long.
"I saw the Americans taking kids," she said: "a four-year-old and another boy. He barely walked. He was only about two years old. They took them to New York."
The US state department estimates that more than 20,000 young women and children are trafficked across the border from Mexico each year. But conviction rates remain low.
Mexico's attorney general, Arturo Chaves, has been accused of failing to do enough to bring human traffickers to justice, he has insisted the country is "definitely focusing" on the issue.
Maria has been told she may have to give evidence against the gang if they are caught. It is something she says she is determined to do.
"Women are sold. They are abducted, bought and even killed by these men. If these men are ever found, jail won't be enough to make them pay for the way they have made us feel."
Back from the Dead: Maria's Story will be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, from 7pm.Stark County Sheriff Deputies continue to search for Dustin Ray White in connection with the death of his estranged wife Friday.
OSNABURG TWP. Stark County Sheriff deputies continue to search for Dustin Ray White in connection with the murder of his estranged wife Friday.
As of 10 p.m. Friday, authorities had not yet located White, a 6-foot-2-inch tall, 190-pound man who was last seen wearing a gray T-shirt and blue jeans and driving a red or burnt orange 2016 Ford Escape with the license plate number of GUY4698.
Anyone with information about White's whereabouts is asked to call the Stark County Sheriff's Office at 330-430-3800. Police warn not to approach White as he could be armed.
Deputies Friday evening obtained an arrest warrant to charge White, 39, with aggravated murder for the death of 32-year-old Amber White. Earlier Friday, deputies described Dustin only as a person of interest.
Stark County Sheriff George T. Maier said deputies found Amber's body at 12:38 p.m. in the home she previously shared with Dustin at 7487 Hill Church St. SE. Maier said Amber was shot to death, but declined to provide further details.
He said it appears that Amber had gone to the Hill Church home to retrieve her personal items, believing that her estranged husband was not home. Dustin apparently returned to the home at some point while she was still there, Maier said.
The couple's 5-year-old son was at school at the time of the shooting, Maier said. Osnaburg Local Schools was put on lockdown for approximately two hours, according to children who live next door to the Hill Church home.
Neighbor Melissa House said Dustin and Amber kept to themselves and she did not know them well or that Amber no longer lived there. She said Dustin was a hunter and had erected multiple deer stands throughout his wooded backyard.
A man who described himself as Dustin's uncle arrived late Friday afternoon to try to learn more about the shooting and his nephew's whereabouts. He said he had not seen Dustin in years, but described him as "a great kid."
Stark County marriage records show that the former Amber Hicks married Dustin in the summer of 2010. County auditor records show that they purchased the nearly nine-acre property in May 2013 from Dustin's father. In March, Amber transferred the property to be in Dustin's name only.
Records show that Dustin sold the home to his sister on April 11.
Reach Kelli at 330-580-8339 or kelli.weir@cantonrep.com.
On Twitter: @kweirREPTexas football legend Jack Pardee dies at 76
Jack Pardee's life in football took him from Christoval's South Concho River to Junction's parched playing fields to the Los Angeles Coliseum to the nation's capital to the Astrodome and points beyond.
And at each stop, he left classmates, teammates and friends who remembered him Monday, on the occasion of his death at age 76 from cancer, as a teammate to be admired, a coach to be respected and a friend to be cherished.
"I met him when I was a freshman in college, and he was a prince of a guy," said Dennis Goehring, also a member of the exclusive fraternity that was Paul "Bear" Bryant's Junction Boys at Texas A&M in the 1950s. "And he never changed. He was always a prince of a guy."
Even among the long list of Texas football legends, Pardee's story ranks in rarefied air. He was a six-man football champion, a member of the A&M team Bryant held closest to his heart, an All-Pro linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams and Washington Redskins and a Coach of the Year at every level he plied his trade in college and the pros.
Family members disclosed his death Monday in Centennial, Colo., a Denver suburb, from gall bladder cancer. He was diagnosed in November and moved with his wife, Phyllis, to Colorado to spend his final days.
A hard-nose player on both sides of the football. Remains among school's top career rushers with 1,017 yards. A key member of Bear Bryant's Junction Boys. A hard-nose player on both sides of the football. Remains among school's top career rushers with 1,017 yards. A key member of Bear Bryant's Junction Boys. Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Texas football legend Jack Pardee dies at 76 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
"My dad was in a lot of pain near the end, and it was time for the Lord to take him," said his son, Ted Pardee. "He was committed to football, but he was always close to his family.
"He had a lot of love to give. He was a sweet guy who was never afraid to give us a hug and kiss. He fought a tough battle, and we're going to miss him."
Tributes: Warren Moon and others mourn Pardee
He will be best remembered in Houston for his years as head coach of the USFL's Gamblers, where his players included future Hall of Famer Jim Kelly; the University of Houston Cougars, where he coached Andre Ware to the 1989 Heisman Trophy; and the Oilers of the run-and-shoot era of the 1990s.
But his life in Texas started at the other extreme from the high-profile NFL.
Went to Aggieland
Pardee was born in Iowa but came to Texas in the 1940s when his father, Earl, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, sold the family farm and moved to Texas in search of a cure.
That search led to Christoval, 20 miles south of San Angelo, which was known for its mineral baths. At 6 feet 1 and 210 pounds, Pardee became a giant of six-man football, scoring 57 touchdowns for the school's 1952 regional championship team.
Recruited by coach Ray George to attend Texas A&M, Pardee elected to remain an Aggie when George left after the 1953 season. He was one of several dozen players that Bryant took with him to the 1954 training camp in drought-ravaged Junction, and he endured to become an All-America performer. He was selected in 1986 to the College Football Hall of Fame.
"If you think of all the players from Texas who went on to be great pros and All-Americas, Jack ranks among the best," said Mickey Herskowitz, the longtime sportswriter who covered the Junction Boys.
"He had such guts. He never lost a yard from scrimmage playing fullback, and he played one year with two dislocated shoulders. And he was a gentle, courteous gentleman."
'Over the Hill Gang'
Selected in the 1957 NFL Draft by the Rams, Pardee played through 1964 and was diagnosed with melanoma. He underwent, on his 28th birthday, an 11-hour surgical procedure that included chemotherapy, a complete blood transfusion and a procedure that lowered his body temperature to 86 degrees.
He recovered and returned to the NFL, completing a 15-year career in 1972 as one of George Allen's "Over the Hill Gang" with the Redskins.
"He was our leader," said Redskins teammate Diron Talbert. "George Allen counted on him, and we counted on him."
Pardee began his coaching career with the Florida Blazers in the World Football League, coached a Chicago Bears team that included the young Walter Payton from 1975 through 1977 and spent 1978 through 1980 as coach of the Redskins. He was named WFL coach of the year in 1974, NFC coach of the year with the Bears in 1976 and NFL coach of the year with the Redskins in 1979.
He spent a year as an assistant with the Chargers, then two years out of football in private business before coaching the USFL Gamblers.
"He asked (Gamblers owner) Jerry Argovitz why he picked the name Gamblers, and Jerry said, 'I'm a big Kenny Rogers fan, and 'The Gambler' is my favorite song,' " Herskowitz said. "Jack said, "I'm glad your favorite song wasn't 'Coward of the County.' "
'So much integrity'
He moved from the defunct USFL to UH, where Ware remembered him as a mentor and example.
"I'm eternally grateful to Jack Pardee for the rest of my life," Ware said in a recent interview. "I think so much of him. People know him as a coach, and I got to know him as Jack Pardee the person."
He left UH for the Oilers, where he led the team to the playoffs four years in a row through such events as the Kevin Gilbride-Buddy Ryan sideline fight and the often unpredictable ways of team owner Bud Adams.
"He had so much integrity. I had nothing but respect for him," said Bruce Matthews, the Hall of Fame lineman for the Oilers who now is an assistant coach with the Titans. "He had the perfect temperament to handle the off-the-field issues we had."
In retirement, Pardee and his wife moved to a ranch in Gause, and he kept in touch with his fellow Junction Boys and with members of the Gamblers, attending a team reunion in 2010.
"It seems to me that the good Lord takes the good guys first," said John David Crow, Pardee's teammate at A&M. "If there was a person you would want to emulate or copy, it would be Jack."
Created scholarship
Ted Pardee said his father chose in his final days to establish what he hoped will be a lasting legacy through the Jack Pardee Memorial Scholarship at UH.
"He truly loved the time spent at the University of Houston and wanted to find a way to help a deserving, hardworking, dedicated athlete who might not have the means to pay for their own college tuition," Ted Pardee said. "He could have offered his name to a lot of different charities or scholarship funds, but this was what my dad wanted to do."
Chronicle staff writer John McClain contributed.Websites can be closed even if they delete pirated content
© Fotolia/ Pavel Ignatov
11:46 20/05/2014
MOSCOW, May 20 (RAPSI) – A working group at the Communications Ministry is drafting a law to allow the courts to close websites that post pirated content even if they regularly delete it, Izvestia newspaper writes on Tuesday.
Currently, websites that post large amounts of user content, such as social networks, torrents and file hosting services, are not closed or held accountable if they promptly respond to rights holder complaints.
According to the newspaper, the draft law has a provision under which the courts would be able to close such websites if experts conclude that they post pirated content. “Unscrupulous illegal websites should be closed,” Deputy Communications Minister Alexei Volin told Izvestia.
Ministry representatives said their goal is “to develop criteria for declaring websites as web pirates.” The criteria under consideration are repeated violations of copyright and distribution of pirated content for profit.
“We plan to introduce a procedure that would enable rights holders to sue to block websites that violate their rights,” said Leonid Agronov, head of Russia’s National Federation of the Music Industry (NFMI). “Any copyright holder would be able to file a suit to block the website that violated their rights, just as the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) currently does with regard to extremist sites. Rights holders would also be able to file for damages.”Atheist feminism is a branch of feminism that also advocates atheism. Atheist feminists hold that religion is a prominent source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive towards women.[1]
History [ edit ]
Ernestine Rose [ edit ]
Ernestine Rose was a feminist and an atheist, well before the label "atheist feminist" existed
The first known feminist who was also an atheist was Ernestine Rose, born in Poland on January 13, 1810.[2] Her open confession of disbelief in Judaism when she was a teenager brought her into conflict with her father (who was a rabbi) and an unpleasant relationship developed.[2] In order to force her into the obligations of the Jewish faith, her father, without her consent, betrothed her to a friend and fellow Jew when she was sixteen.[2] Instead of arguing her case in a Jewish court (since her father was the local rabbi who ruled on such matters), she went to a secular court, pleaded her own case, and won.[2] In 1829 she went to England, and in 1835 she was one of the founders of the British atheist organization Association of All Classes of All Nations, which "called for human rights for all people, regardless of sex, class, color, or national origin".[2] She lectured in England and America (moving to America in May 1836) and was described by Samuel P. Putnam 3 as "one of the best lecturers of her time". He wrote that "no orthodox [meaning religious] man could meet her in debate".[2]
In the winter of 1836, Judge Thomas Hertell, a radical and freethinker, submitted a married women's property act in the legislature of the state of New York to investigate ways of improving the civil and property rights of married women, and to permit them to hold real estate in their own name, which they were not then permitted to do in New York. Upon hearing of the resolution, Ernestine Rose drew up a petition and began the soliciting of names to support the resolution in the state legislature, sending the petition to the legislature in 1838.[2] This was the first petition drive done by a woman in New York.[2] Ernestine continued to increase both the number of the petitions and the names until such rights were finally won in 1848, with the passing of the Married Women's Property Act.[citation needed] Others who participated in the work for the bill included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Frances Wright, who were all anti-religious.[2] Later when Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton analyzed the influences which led to the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights in 1848, they identified three causes, the first two being the radical ideas of Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose on religion and democracy, and the initial reforms in women's property law in the 1830s and 1840s.
Ernestine later joined a group of freethinkers who had organized a Society for Moral Philanthropists, at which she often lectured.[2] In 1837, she took part in a debate that continued for thirteen weeks, where her topics included the advocacy of abolition of slavery, women's rights, equal opportunities for education, and civil rights.[2] In 1845 she was in attendance at the first national convention of infidels [meaning atheists].[2] Ernestine Rose also introduced "the agitation on the subject of women's suffrage" in Michigan in 1846.[2] In a lecture in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1851, she opposed calling upon the Bible to underwrite the rights of women, claiming that human rights and freedom of women were predicated upon "the laws of humanity" and that women, therefore, did not require the written authority of either Paul or Moses, because "those laws and our claim are prior" to both.[2]
She attended the Women's Rights Convention in the Tabernacle, New York City, on September 10, 1853, and spoke at the Hartford Bible Convention in 1854.[2] It was in March of that year, also, that she took off with Susan B. Anthony on a speaking tour to Washington, D.C.[2] Susan B. Anthony arranged the meetings and Ernestine Rose did all of the speaking; after this successful tour, Susan B. Anthony embarked on her own first lecture tour.[2]
Later in October 1854, Ernestine Rose was elected president of the National Women's Rights Convention at Philadelphia, overcoming the objection that she was unsuitable because of her atheism.[2] Susan B. Anthony supported her in this fight, declaring that every religion—and none—should have an equal right on the platform.[2] In 1856 she spoke at the Seventh National Woman's [Rights] Convention saying in part, "And when your minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go to some useful employment."[citation needed]
She appeared again in Albany, New York, for the State Women's Rights Convention in early February 1861, the last one to be held until the end of the Civil War.[2] On May 14, 1863, she shared the podium with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Blackwell when the first Women's National Loyal League met to call for equal rights for women, and to support the government in the Civil War "in so far as it makes a war for freedom".[2]
She was in attendance at the American Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism and on May 15, 1869 joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone to form a new organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association, which fought for both male and female suffrage, taking a position on the executive committee.[2] She died at Brighton, England, on August 4, 1892, at age eighty-two.[2]
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage [ edit ]
The most prominent other people to publicly advocate for feminism and to challenge Christianity in the 1800s were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.[3][4] In 1885 Stanton wrote an essay entitled "Has Christianity Benefited Woman?" arguing that it had in fact hurt women's rights, and stating, "All religions thus far have taught the headship and superiority of man, [and] the inferiority and subordination of woman. Whatever new dignity, honor, and self-respect the changing theologies may have brought to man, they have all alike brought to woman but another form of humiliation".[5] In 1893 Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote the book for which she is best known, Woman, Church, and State, which was one of the first books to draw the conclusion that Christianity is a primary impediment to the progress of women, as well as civilization.[4] In 1895 Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Woman's Bible, revised and continued with another book of the same name in 1898, in which she criticized religion and stated "the Bible in its teachings degrades women from Genesis to Revelation."[6][7] She died in 1902.[8]
Today [ edit ]
Atheist feminist Anne Nicol Gaylor cofounded the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976 with her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor,[10] and was also editor of Freethought Today from 1984 to 2009, when she became executive editor.[10] Aside from promoting atheism in general, her atheist feminist activities include writing the book Woe To The Women: The Bible Tells Me So, first published in 1981, which is now in its 4th printing.[citation needed] This book exposes and discusses sexism in the Bible.[11] Furthermore, her 1997 book, Women Without Superstition: "No Gods, No Masters", was the first collection of the writings of historic and contemporary female freethinkers.[12] She has also written several articles on religion's harm to women.[13]
Other notable atheist feminists active today include Ayaan Hirsi Ali,[14] Ophelia Benson,[15][16] Amanda Marcotte,[17][18] and Taslima Nasrin.[19] and Sikivu Hutchinson author of Moral Combat, Black Atheists, Gender Politics and the Values Wars, the first book by an African American woman on atheism, racial politics, gender justice and feminism. African American feminist atheists like Hutchinson espouse an intersectional approach to feminist organizing, activism and scholarship that is rooted in the lived experiences and social history of communities of color with respect to racism, white supremacy, sexism/misogynoir, heterosexism and capitalist oppression. Black feminist atheist praxis differs from atheist feminist approaches that confine critique of religion to dogma and gender oppression rather than looking at how religious hierarchies are also informed by imperialism, capitalism and segregation. Feminist activist from FEMEN Inna Shevchenko speaks out against organised religions as one of the major historical obstacles for women's liberation and feminism. At the Secular Conference 2017 in London,speaking on compatibility of feminism and religion, she said "I am looking forward for a day, when imams, rabbis, priests, religious fanatics, sexistst and mysoginists fed by monotheist dogmas will go down on their knees but not to pray for support of their god, they will go on their knees in front of women of the world to pray for their forgiveness. It is only then they can be proud of their gods".[20]
In 2012, the first "Women in Secularism" conference was held, from May 18–20 at the Crystal City Marriott at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.[21]
In August 2012, Jennifer McCreight founded a movement known as Atheism Plus that "applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime."[22] Atheism Plus had a website that was active from 2012 to 2016.[23]
In July 2014, a joint statement by atheist activists Ophelia Benson and Richard Dawkins was issued stating, "It’s not news that allies can’t always agree on everything. People who rely on reason rather than dogma to think about the world are bound to disagree about some things. Disagreement is inevitable, but bullying and harassment are not. If we want secularism and atheism to gain respect, we have to be able to disagree with each other without trying to destroy each other. In other words we have |
. It is unconstitutional for our president to abridge their freedom of speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I love this country and, despite the events of the last year, I still believe it is one of the only countries on Earth with the potential for people to live up to their potential and achieve their dreams, but only if we insist that this country keep its promise. I feel called as a citizen to live honorably and a duty to serve my neighbor. I support these athletes’ (and others’) right to protest and I stand with these Americans. I stand against institutionalized discrimination and racism.
Finally, as a scientist, I also value my right to speak the truth freely and to protest things that I know to be contrary to fact and truth. Any attempt to stop peaceful statements of the truth is a challenge to values that are so very dear to me (and hopefully to you too).
So, on Tuesday I invite you to stand, or take a knee, with me in solidarity with the citizens of our country that are bravely exercising their right to challenge their government. I’ve been using the hashtag #ScientistsTakeAKnee on Twitter (h/t @sciencing_bi) to organize the conversation. Whether you’re alone, or with a group, I encourage you to stop for a while on Tuesday and to take a knee. You can take a picture and post it to Twitter or other social media.
Let’s show the world that scientists stand in solidarity with our fellow citizens against discrimination and in support of our right to protest mistreatment of American citizens by our government.
AdvertisementsPosted by Rick Phillips on Feb 14, 2016 in General, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type 1 Diabetes |
Valentine Day Love Letter
42 years ago, last August, I walked into a senior government class at Haworth high school in Kokomo Indiana. Setting close to the front was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. I resolved almost instantly to ask h er out on a date. It took two months of trying to get her attention before I felt comfortable asking her out. When I finally did she said no, and thus started a 42 year romance that continues to this day.
False Starts
I have to admit that the first part of the romance was all mine. I was smitten by her beauty and charm. Over the next two years I asked her out twice more. And twice more she said no. Each time clarifying that she would probably prefer that I not ask her out you anymore. I did not listen. As time went on her life changed and it turns out I was the second guy she called after she broke up with her boyfriend.
When she called I asked where she wanted to go on our first date. She said a movie (still our favorite entertainment) and afterward the local ice-cream place called the ‘Cone Palace’. What guy would not be taken in by the allure of a cheap date? One year and two months after she called me, we were married. I was 19 and she was 20 and we were off on a big adventure whose result seemed uncertain.
Life with Chronic Conditions
I don’t know that either of us understood what life would be like to be married. Neither of us had ever lived outside our parents’ home and neither of us knew enough about life with chronic disease. We discussed diabetes a lot after I proposed. Yet being married, having children, and living with a chronic condition seemed terribly scary. What I never counted on was how tough Sheryl is and what she will endure to stay married to a man she loves.
Even if we had been ready for the first chronic disease nothing could have braced us for adding RA. Now 16 years after RA entered our lives we keep going, keep living and keep loving. This June we will celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. Those words make it sound easy. It has never been easy. Marriage is hard work every day. I have found that lasting marriage is picking one up when the other one falls and staying focused on what we have in common which is more than what we have apart.
Is often said an attraction is based first on visual cues, but that true love is based on what is in a person’s heart. Some say that love is about finding commonality rather than seeking division. I suppose that is true to a degree. What I have found however is far more interesting and that is in a lasting marriage, two people must celebrate what is important to each other. The one thing that has kept us married is not our commonality rather it is how we deal with differences. Those of us who live with chronic conditions knows how difficult it is to manage our disease, let alone support our partners. I am so happy I have a partner who regards my conditions as ours, and yes sometimes she regards them as more hers. Sheryl is a person who loves me despite and sometimes because of what my body has dealt us.
42 Years and Still in Love
I could never have imagined the life we have led 43 years ago when I first saw that beautiful woman in government class. 43 years later I still see her as that beautiful woman sitting there. I still adore that she is thrilled with a cheap date, the bargain movie, diet root beer and each other.
42 years seems like a long time, in my mind however it has happened in a flash, and 42 years later I still love you Sheryl with all my heart.
Happy Valentine’s Day Sheryl
-30-
rickFriday night, to kick off the weekend of celebration, marking the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, a handful of us escaped from the strong winds and sleet falling in the roads around St John's Wood, for the warmth and history of Abbey Road Studios. We convened in the Floyd's favoured recording space, Studio 3, which Nick said was different to when they used to use it, as then, the control room was on the other side of the glass (where the studio space now is). A full playback of the album from the SACD (played through some apparently eye-wateringly expensive surround speakers) followed an absorbing Q&A with Nick Mason, hosted by Mark Jeeves (Planet Rock Radio)... - After this period of time since its release, do you listen to it differently? I've never deliberately put on anything we've ever done, I think, just to take a listen to it, because basically I find you always listen for things that you think, 'I'd not do it like that now'. It's interesting because sometimes you do hear elements of it that you think, that DOES work. That's well done. Sadly, never the drums! We were very proud of [The Dark Side of the Moon], and we were grateful that people were still interested in it [years after], but we were busy with the next thing, working on Wish You Were Here, or The Wall, or whatever, so it felt a bit like ancient history. - Although it's changed a lot physically, do you think Abbey Road contributed anything to the album? That's always the question I get - why do I think the record did so well? What I tend to firmly believe is that it's not for any one reason. It's a collection of elements that came together to make it work. One of those ingredients - well probably more than one - two or three - were Abbey Road, because the record is still seen as sonically really good and that was partly down to the maintenance staff here, and partly down to Alan Parsons. Without him I think it would have ended up not quite as good. There was an enormous amount of attention (and I'm sure there still is) applied to lining the tape machines up properly, and reducing the amount of hiss and noise. That's part of it, and Alan's engineering expertise absolutely had something to do with the success of the record. I also believe things like Hipgnosis... Storm and Po's record sleeve was absolutely right. People sometimes ask about that - they came into the studio to show us their ideas. We saw the prism and said 'We like that'. They said 'No, no, we've got others' but we said 'No, no, we don't want to see others, we like that'! I think Roger's lyrics are extraordinary, because I think they are as relevant, if not MORE relevant, to a fifty or sixty year old, than to a twenty-something year old. The other thing that has to be recognised was a man called Bhaskar Menon. He was made president of Capitol Records in America. Bands always blame the record company, but we always thought Capitol had never really got the story with us, and were a bit disappointed with records that would chart higher in England than the US, and Bhaskar set out making this record number one, and he did it. He motivated the company, he did whatever was necessary to make the record work. I think without Bhaskar, the record would have done better than the others, but certainly wouldn't have picked up the momentum it did. - You've mentioned others, but you haven't actually mentioned the band... I think the band were at the most creative [point]. Everyone contributed ideas, and there was just the sense of getting it done. It wasn't a complete process - we didn't spend a year in the studio - we did other things in between. We did tours, and the Pompeii film. - How much did the band's earlier work on soundtracks influence or colour what you did on The Dark Side of the Moon? I'm not sure. It probably paid some part, because we'd certainly got used to things like cross-fades as ways of moving from one piece of music to another. I don't remember anyone saying 'Let's do this like a movie' or anything like that, but we had learnt quite a lot about cross-fading and how to make it work, and how it sounds, and that is something I DO listen to and think we got right. Partly because it's one of those things that people assume that computers can do really well, and easily, now, and actually I think it's one of the few things that computers tend not to do very well. You set it up and it does it, but actually, it's all about what you're hearing, and maybe not fade completely, you hestitate a bit, then fade it a bit more... - Nick was asked about the Wizard of Oz synchronicity myth... It was a very odd occasion - we walked in [to the studio] and it wasn't Syd Barrett - there were three guys here, one of them a tin man, one of them...[laughs] - What was the mood of the sessions like? Was it a struggle to get things done? That's one of the things about Dark Side. The time in the studio was very productive. Funnily enough, the most difficult album ever was Wish You Were Here because we had unlimited time. With Dark Side we knew we'd only got a week to get some things done, then we were off on an American tour or whatever. My memory is of ideas being delivered and tried and developed very quickly. Compared to three or four years before, it was extraordinary how much time we spent on Dark Side. When we were doing Piper in 1967, EMI was still run on a pretty tight session schedule, recording from 9am - 12pm, then some lunch, then maybe you did an afternoon's session...you did that day by day. It got trickier towards the end, when we were mixing, and that's why Chris Thomas was brought in, for his opinion. It's really good that we were able to say 'Let's bring in someone else to arbitrate'. - Was there any music left over, unused? No, we very rarely had anything left over [chuckles]. No, that might have been really great, as it might have given us a kick start on whatever happened next. My view now is that we made a big mistake really. What we should have done, was we should have toured Dark Side for much longer, which almost certainly would have left us with a film of it, which would have been so great to have now. We have not got a record of what we did, such as the Earls Court shows where we fired the rockets up, all that sort of stuff, and it would have given us more breathing space before starting on Wish You Were Here. - What do you think about cover versions of Dark Side? I like Dub Side of the Moon, I like the Scissor Sisters, I like Luther Wright and the Wrongs, who covered the entirety of The Wall as a country and western album - and if you haven't checked it out, you should - my problem is with tribute bands. Herbie Hancock did one of our songs, Eric Prydz did too, I like it when people reinterpret something. That's great. What bothers me are tribute bands who practice every stick I've ever dropped. Everyone's entitled to perform the music; we should be flattered, and I am. I still feel that there's an element of rock music which is expressing yourself, and doing something different, and it loses that. And also, something like the rototom part in Dark Side, I've NEVER played the same way twice, I always listen to the records and think 'Oh god, I wish I'd done it differently', and continue to do so. In fact when I did a few Dark Side shows with Roger a few years ago, I always approached it each night and think 'How shall I do it', and 'Let's try to do it better tonight'. With the tribute band thing, they just lock into the way it was done. I wouldn't mind if they changed it a bit. I'd like to hear them doing what, hopefully on a good night, we would do, pushing it into something else. One thing I really like about the best known tribute band, the Australian Pink Floyd, is that they eventually split due to musical differences - you'd have thought that they'd have seen that coming! [laughs] - You touched upon Storm's prism design that everyone knows and loves. Do you remember any of the rejected designs? Storm certainly doesn't, and he'd love to know! He's asked me to find out if anyone remembers! [Laughs] Well, the good news is that none of us can remember, but without doubt they were used eventually. Storm is absolutely ruthless in having an idea and making sure someone uses it. Either it resurfaced on Wish You Were Here, or 10cc, or any one of the other bands he's worked for, he would have ended up using them elsewhere. Nothing was ever consigned to some sort of box that was never opened again... - You must look back over the 40 years, tinged with some sadness because it didn't get better than that moment. What happened with the group afterwards, the fall-outs, the frictions, the court cases... You must have mixed feelings about how things were then, and how they became subsequently? Not really because I feel as though in some ways lots of things were resolved, and lots of things got done. For me, I think Wish You Were Here is still a good album. I think the tours we did after Roger left were some of the best music ever, for me, because we did a year tour, which meant you REALLY got stuck into it, and I played more than I'd ever played before, which I felt was terrific. I eventually ended up making friends with Roger again, and we did Live 8. And, in some ways, it's a sort of fairytale really! The only thing I regret is we're not on tour now, but then there are some car dealers who feel the same way... [laughs] - To what extent did you develop the album as you played it live? I can't tell you how much we developed it, but we did develop it. I think we were all so paranoid about bootlegs later that we stopped doing that. It's a great shame, as the tendency after... post-bootlegging, was that everything got done in the studio, and you'd tend to stop when you've played the thing perfectly. Whereas, when we were on the road, playing it, you'd get a reaction. On The Run was a completely different piece originally, but that didn't seem to work particularly well in the context of it all. It would have been great to play the whole thing beginning to end live, a number of times, and then recorded it. I think we would have sequenced it differently now, looking back on it. It's not only what you play, but where you play it that could have changed. We certainly made Eclipse, at the very end, more powerful because we played it on the road. It went from Brain Damage, to a version of Eclipse, that didn't have enough of the grandeur to the ending, I remember, specifically... Our thanks to Nick for his time, and to all involved for arranging the event.Houston's school board removed its chief auditor after he reported potential violations of state law to police, shared information with the FBI and called out a board member for breaking competitive bidding rules, newly obtained documents and interviews show.
At one point last fall, after the auditor, Richard Patton, released an audit blaming cost overruns in the Houston Independent School District's $2 billion construction program on insufficient competitive bidding and inadequate monitoring, he was castigated by the school district administration for recklessness and "flawed methodology."
Patton fired back in an email, recently obtained by the Houston Chronicle: "I am going to say this only once - this district does not want the real dirt to be published.... What is the value in having a gunfight that you seem to desire?"
Three days before his March 10 suspension, Patton received an email from the district's treasurer, asking him whether HISD had been the subject of any significant civil or criminal investigations in the last two years. The treasurer was seeking information that may need to be disclosed to potential investors as HISD prepared for a $757 million bond offering as part of its ongoing 2012 construction program.
Patton replied to the treasurer the same day that his audit department had "received inquiries and certain data requests from a federal agency in the past 24 months," according to the email correspondence.
HISD, in a March 29 report to potential bond investors, did not disclose Patton's comments about receiving questions from the FBI. HISD, however, filed a supplemental statement to the bond report dated April 8, a month after suspending its auditor. It said the district was investigating its chief auditor for alleged misconduct but that the allegation did not relate to old or current HISD audits, including any pertaining to the bond offering.
HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said school district officials are confident they followed the rules regarding disclosing risks to bond investors.
Higher costs of program
Patton's attorney, David Feldman, formerly the city's top lawyer, said his client thinks the HISD board suspended him in retaliation for blowing the whistle to law enforcement about suspected illegal activity involving the school district.
HISD board President Manuel Rodriguez Jr. said there's no retribution involved. Feldman plans to file a grievance with HISD this month on the auditor's behalf.
The HISD board has refused to explain publicly the reasons for suspending its chief auditor, while continuing to pay him his $186,920 annual salary. The suspension has left the nation's seventh-largest school district without its top internal watchdog for two months and counting, raising questions about whether HISD can maintain taxpayers' trust.
An April 13 "incident memorandum" from the school board president to Patton provided details for the first time surrounding his suspension. The memo focused on how Patton handled an October 2015 audit to determine whether the district needed to add more money to its $1.9 billion construction bond program approved by voters in 2012.
The memo questioned the accuracy of his audit and said he did not follow "acceptable audit practices" by publicly discussing a draft of his report. It also said the auditor overstepped his authority by criticizing employees he did not supervise and communicated in a "disrespectful, accusatory and threatening" tone.
Patton,in an April 22 rebuttal letter, said "the supposed deficiencies mentioned in the memo seem quite subjective and not based on evidence."
The bond audit in question, signed by Patton and his construction audit manager, found that HISD's insufficient bidding and inadequate oversight - not solely inflation - had contributed to higher costs in the 2012 bond program.
Former Superintendent Terry Grier's administration responded at the time that the bond audit findings were "reckless," based on "flawed methodology" and "a profound lack of understanding of the Houston economicclimate."
Patton, expressing frustration with the administration's response, sent an email on Oct. 16, 2015, to Leo Bobadilla, the district official over the bond program. "No sir Mr. Bobadilla, the facts in the report are not changing because I sleep good every night," Patton wrote.
The board president's April memo to Patton said the auditor's email to Bobadilla was "intimidating" and called into question the accuracy of his audit.
The memo also said Patton should not have copied all of the HISD board members on the message. The memo did not clarify that Patton was replying to an email from Bobadilla, who had copied the board members first, according to a copy of the email chain.
Patton, in his rebuttal letter to Rodriguez, said the tone of his email to Bobadilla was not his "normal style." Patton also defended the accuracy of his October 2015 bond audit, saying he included all the relevant facts.
Rodriguez's memo said the chief auditor should not have released parts of the October 2015 audit about the district's construction bond program while still in draft form. The memo did not mention that Patton was prompted by the chairwoman of the board's audit committee.
Timing called suspect
Feldman called the timing of the board president's April memo to Patton about concerns with his job performance "suspect," because it was sent to him a month after his suspension. The attorney also downplayed an allegation the board made to Patton in March that he had personal documents scanned for him by an assistant at work. He said the scanning occurred over two years and involved fewer than 10 pages, tied to a closing on a property and a survey for a credit union. This scanning allegation was not included in either of the HISD memos sent to Patton and obtained by the Chronicle.
"It's subterfuge," Feldman said of the scanning allegation. "It's common in any workplace, given the speed with which you can utilize technology, that someone might have a scan made."
Patton, who has declined a reporter's request to discuss his suspension, met on May 13 with an attorney from a local law firm HISD hired to investigate the matter. Rodriguez said he expects the investigation to be finished this month but declined to elaborate.
On Nov. 3, Patton told the board in a memothat he had given the school district's police chief a copy of his September 2015 audit that found potential violations of state law regarding construction contracts with several companies that served as job-order contractors, on call to do repairs and minor construction.
The audit said HISD appeared to skirt the state's $500,000 contracting cap by issuing separate work orders tied to the same project. HISD's Spencer said the district's police chief Robert Mock had received a copy of the audit, but the HISD spokesman declined to comment on what actions may have followed.
External auditors with Deloitte & Touche found a similar problem with the district's job-order contracting process, and in a Nov. 12, 2015, memo to HISD noted a "significant deficiency" in its internal controls.
Concern raised about board
Patton's department also raised concerns last fall about the HISD board, to whom he reported.
According to an internal HISD memo dated Oct. 9, 2015, Patton's department concluded that board member Wanda Adams had violated the district's mandatory silent period during the bidding and contract award process.
The memo from Debra "Debi" Fincher, the ethics and compliance officer who reported to Patton, said Adams had shared an early copy of the September 2015 board meeting agenda with a subcontractor for the losing vendor vying to provide atwo-way radio system for the HISD transportation department.
Adams, in an email to district staff on Sept. 3, 2015, said she did not favor one vendor over another, but she asked why the district was changing vendors and said she heard no references were checked. Adams said in a recent interview after Patton's suspension that she did not know at the time that she was forwarding the preliminary meeting agenda to a subcontractor, whom she declined to name.
It's clear that Patton thought his working relationship with the HISD board had become strained late last year. In November, he wrote the board members a memo asking that his audit department have the "continued freedom to conduct audits" of district business "without fear or threat."
Told to improve department
Patton was hired in 2010 to ensure the state's largest public school district complied with a settlement agreement, after the federal government alleged improper gift-giving between technology vendors and former district employees.
The school board promoted him to chief auditor in September 2014, directing him to improve the audit department, which had received a poor review from the national trade group, the Institute of Internal Auditors. The institute gave Patton's department the highest rating in October 2015.
Five months later, the HISD board met privately with Patton on the day of his March suspension and gave him a letter saying he was being placed on paid leave based on "allegations of misconduct and other performance concerns." In early April, the board released a copy of the letter confirming the chief auditor's suspension in response to the Chronicle's public records request.
HISD trustee Anna Eastman, the longest-serving member of the board's audit committee, said last week that she hopes her colleagues appoint an interim chief auditor soon and that the Patton investigation is wrapped up quickly.
"We have a massive annual budget. We're also in the middle of implementing a $2 billion bond program," Eastman said. "It's critical to the trust of the public and the taxpayers that we have a fully transparent internal audit function that reports independently to the board."JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 4, 2014: You are in for quite a treat this week, audiobook listeners. From the surreal and claustrophobic Annihilation to the rapiers-afly adventure of The Kingmakers, to alternate history and on to an intriguing anthology of horror and dark fantasy. Meanwhile, the entire roster of METAtropolis stories have been released individually, and podcasting pioneer J.C. Hutchins released the first installment of a new serial project, “The 33”. Speaking of podcasting pioneers, Scott Sigler’s latest novel, Pandemic, gets a pro narrator treatment in the form of Phil Gigante, and Natania Barron is live reading and discussing her novel Pilgrim of the Sky a chapter at a time via Google Hangouts. There’s a long list of “also out” titles of interest as well, including B.J. Novak’s fiction collection One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories narrated by several of Novak’s The Office co-stars, C.S. Friedman’s Dreamwalkers, Julianna Baggott’s Burn, Clive Barker read by Simon Vance, Steven Erikson read by Michael Page, Frank Herbert read by Scott Brick, Daniel Price’s Flight of the Silvers, Greg Egan’s Incandescence, Marissa Meyer’s Cress, Colin Meloy’s Wildwood Imperium, Megan Miranda’s Vengeance, Bridgett Ladd’s The Lotus Effect, Sheila Turnage’s The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing, and the latest in Audible’s very welcome productions of the works of Octavia Butler, Adulthood Rites. Still, it’s Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation which has been my most-anticipated audiobook of 2014 since, oh, early 2012, and which is finally here, so let’s jump right in:
PICKS OF THE WEEK:
I was (and absolutely remain) a huge fan of Jeff VanderMeer’s 2009 novel Finch, a “fungal noir” set in his rich secondary world fantasy, Ambergris, which had served as a setting for his previous books. For his new series, The Southern Reach, VanderMeer sets his sights into the simultaneously more familiar — for all intents and purposes, our contemporary world — and yet even more strange for its twisted reflections of that familiarity, and delivers an intense and transformative journey into a surreal landscape. Though not explicitly set in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge from which so much of the setting of the novel is drawn, the rich, varied ecosystems of the Florida Panhandle’s Gulf Coast come to eerie life in the “Area X” wilderness of VanderMeer’s Annihilation, out this week from Blackstone Audio concurrent with the print/ebook release from FSG Originals. It is the author’s first novel since 2009, marking also the return of narrator Carolyn McCormick after concluding Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series with Mockingjay in 2010 and narrating James Patterson’s latest Women’s Murder Club novel in 2011.
When I started reading about this book, I spent far too many hours trying to come up with my dream narrator for it. (Far, far too many.) Somehow I never considered McCormick, but from the first line she is fantastic. Her laconic, detached mainline narration perfectly suited to the biologist’s clinical, scientific mind, and it is the biologist’s narrative voice, through the structure of the novel as her definitive account left in a journal, which, detail by detail, flashback by flashback, brings depth both to the mysteries of “Area X” and to her character. McCormick does not employ too much in the way of vocal gymnastics to differentiate the few characters; just enough to characterize them effectively and succinctly as, one presumes, the biologist herself might do. The principal exception to this is her work on the voice of the psychologist, the designated leader of the expedition, which is given a decidedly (almost British-schooled?) formal turn, a flavor which makes McCormick’s outstandingly dynamic work with her later in the novel stand out all the more strikingly. On the story: from the first pages, the narrative — of an all-female 12th expedition to a mysterious “Area X” after 11 previous and mostly catastrophic expeditions — is driven by a compulsion, a both scientific and inescapably personal curiosity to answer the question of: what lies at the tower’s base? This tower, which is not even supposed to be here, which does not appear on any map or in any record of “Area X”? This curiosity grows further into fear-yet-we-must-see territory as the first foray into the tower reveals strange words written, glowing, breathing, alive? on the walls of the tower, heading down. We find the mysteries of Area X and “The Southern Reach” growing deeper and broader both down into and in the surrounding, increasingly surreal landscape beyond the tower, setting up and leading naturally into further explorations in the successive books, but the biologist’s journal stands alone as a completed arc, a completed story of inquiry, discovery, and transformation. It is a fantastic book and audiobook, highly recommended. But don’t just take it from me. Dave’s already reviewed the audiobook as well, saying: “It’s as if The Company from Alien sent The Dharma Initiative into the Mountains of Madness.” Next, take a peek at some of the international covers:
And now get a load of what some pretty amazing people are saying about the book: “Original and beautiful, maddening and magnificent.” —Warren Ellis. “This swift surreal suspense novel reads as if Verne or Wellsian adventurers exploring a mysterious island had warped through into a Kafkaesque nightmare world. The reader will want to stay trapped with the Biologist to find the answers to Area X’s mysteries.” —Kim Stanley Robinson. “The great thing about Annihilation is the strange, elusive, and paranoid world that it creates... I can’t wait for the next one.” —Brian Evenson. “A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unraveling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot Lovecraft, the novel builds with an unbearable tension and a claustrophobic dread that linger long afterward. I loved it.”—Lauren Beukes. “In much of Jeff VanderMeer’s work, a kind of radiance lies beating beneath the surface of the words. Here in Annihilation, it shines through with warm blazing incandescence. This is one of a grand writer’s finest and most dazzling books.” —Peter Straub. More? How about some reviews from Angela Slatter, My Bookish Ways, Pornokitsch, Jason Sheehan for NPR, Robin Sloan (“a foil-wrapped booster pack for weird fiction”), and a 5-star review from SFX which calls the novel “Franz Kafka’s Roadside Picnic“. The trilogy is set for an aggressive release cycle, with book two, Authority, coming in May, and Acceptance concluding the series in September. It’s been optioned by Scott Rudin for Paramount Pictures. And it’s even available on the cheap, whether in print (you stone-age heathens! for $13 in bookstores and $8.50 at Amazon, though I do have to admit the physical edition is really quite well done…) or ebook. On that last, there’s even a $3.99 Whispersync for Voice upgrade from the $8.15 Kindle edition to the Audible edition. So, yeah. I think you can see where I stand on this one. Six hours very well spent.
Another audiobook I’ve been awaiting almost as long also arrived this week, The Kingmakers, concluding Clay and Susan Griffith’s Vampire Empire trilogy. The series is a fantastically and unabashedly fun mix of swashbuckling Steampunk airship adventure, alternate history worldbuilding, deadly, deadly, decidedly non-sparkly vampires, and “geomancy”, a mystical art which may be humanity’s best weapon in the ongoing war to reclaim Europe, with a diverse, memorable cast of well-rendered characters. Originally published between November 2010 and September 2012 by Pyr, the Buzzy Multimedia audiobooks have been coming out a couple years behind and each has been worth the wait.
James Marsters (“Spike” on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the voice of Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files) was a perfect casting to narrate the series, performing wide-ranging accents with aplomb, and shining on multiple performances from the Japanese samurai-priest Mamaru to British and French vampires to young “Equatorian” boys and girls to the cowboy-esque officers of the United States, to, of course, our heroes The Greyfriar and Princess (now Empress) Adele. I was very happy to have a release-day review of Book 2 (The Rift Walker) last year and to review book one the year before. In particular, I applauded some character decisions in book 2, as the authors demonstrated a light hand in dealing with well-developed characters — given a choice where on the one hand it is obvious what would be more convenient for the plot and on the other hand what would be more true to the character, the Griffiths choose character every time. Here, that continues, as does the nearly geometric expansion of Adele’s geomantic powers. We enter the story at the front of a grueling trench war, vampires attacking amidst new explosive “flak”, human technology ever attempting to compensate for the sheer strength and speed of the enemy. Here, Marster’s narration is more percussive, emphasizing the cadence of war. Later, he brings such emotion in an anguished cry that you feel it. He shouts, he barks, he pleads, he hurts, he groans. It’s one of the more emotive performances I can recall. Meanwhile, the book brings the promised climax of the series, a Zulu assassin, the Mamaru backstory I’d been longing for, confrontations, dangerous gambles and gambits, betrayals, double-betrayals, triple-betrayals, airships, fencing, fighting, chases, escapes, true love, miracles… Still, a few points left me wanting a bit more. A villain had been built up to be so dangerous, so deadly, and yet is dispatched all too easily by a weakened Greyfriar. Senator Clark’s character turns even more unredeemable and then turns a bit against character in a puzzling (to me) fashion. But what else can you expect after three books with characters you’ve grown to love or hate or grudgingly only half-despise? You form your own ideas of a character, but you haven’t seen everything. Sometimes your Qui-Gon Jinn is killed almost pointlessly and all-too-easily by Darth Maul, only to see Darth Maul cut in half, mouth agape, after scene after scene of badass displays of ruthlessness and action. Part Zorro, part Underworld, it’s been a fantastically series and I’m glad to see it completed and produced so well.
V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History by Allen Steele sees the author of the Coyote science fiction novels turn to alternate history, but not at all away from space. Narrated by Ray Chase for Audible, the premise starts in familiar territory, a slight tweak to the timeline in WW2 Germany. But then the action shifts spaceward. “Three-time Hugo Award-winning author Allen Steele now imagines an alternate history rooted in an actual historical possibility: what if the race to space had occurred in the early days of WWII? It’s 1941, and Wernher von Braun is ordered by his Fuehrer to abandon the V2 rocket and turn German resources in a daring new direction: construction of a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the U.S. Work on the rocket – called Silbervogel – begins at Peenemunde. Though it is top secret, British intelligence discovers the plan, and brings word to Franklin Roosevelt.”
I have to admit, I remain a sucker for high-production value anthologies. It gives me a chance to taste not only the fiction of a wide pool of authors, but sample the narrations of new narrators along with my favorites. This week brings an intriguing one first published in print just last month, Dark Duets: All-New Tales of Horror and Dark Fantasy edited by Christopher Golden, read by John Lee, Anne Flosnick, Hillary Huber, and Robertson Dean for Tantor Audio. Not only are most of those narrators among my favorites (Lee, Flosnick, and Dean) but Golden has put his authors into co-writing pairs, creating unique blends of authorial voices: “A captivating anthology of horror, thriller, and dark fantasy tales by seventeen pairs of celebrated writers |
what I call the “BS” code. If I can tell my wife with a straight face that a particular expense was used for business purposes, and my wife doesn’t think its BS, its usually good enough for me.
Officially though, anything you expense must obey the following rules.
The entertainment expense must be reasonable and accepted in your field of business – For example, if I’m selling vegetarian food over the internet, it most likely wouldn’t fly if I took the employees out for a steak dinner. In any case, you get the point. The purpose of the entertainment expense must be to bring in revenue – For example, if you are hosting an event to promote your company, this is perfectly acceptable. Even if you and your business partner go out to eat to discuss the business, your meal can be deducted as well. The expense can’t be extravagant – Basically, this means don’t abuse this deduction!
Anyways, entertainment is defined as any activity or recreation that is directly for customers, clients or employees. Only 50% of entertainment and meals is deductible but these expenses can add up over the course of the year.
For our store, my wife and I go out at least once every few weeks to discuss new ways to expand the business.
How To Deduct Travel Expenses
Ever heard your spouse complain that you never go on enough vacations? Using your business as a tax shelter is a great way to fund your next vacation without breaking the bank. With proper planning, you can get your business to pay for and write off most of your trip!
For starters, the trip’s primary purpose must be for business. As long as your destination is not completely random, chances are you can find a way to do business there.
Below are some general guidelines on what and how you can deduct during your travels. Keep in mind that you can only deduct expenses on those days in which you are actually conducting business.
Lodging is can be deducted in its entirety Food can be deducted 50% Transportation can be deducted 100% Laundry and Mobile Office related fees can be deducted 100%
There are 2 ways of deducting your business travel, the per diem method or the actual expense method.
Per Diem Method
The IRS allows for a set deduction per day when you travel. Every year, the IRS publishes a table which specifies a per diem value depending on your destination. You should check what the per diem rate is before you do your calculations.
In any case, even if you spend less than your per diem rate, you can still take the entire per diem deduction. One thing my wife and I do(when we’re not trying to make a vacation out of it), is to travel on the ultra cheap.
That way, we end up deducting more than we actually spend on our trip. Keep in mind though that sole proprietorships are not allowed to use the per diem method for their lodging deductions. All other expense are fair game as far as per diems go.
Actual Expense Method
This is pretty straightforward. Simply keep all of your receipts and add up the total amount of deductions based on what you have spent. The important thing is to make sure you keep the receipts for everything you spend your money on.
We always carry along a small box where we throw all of our receipts in at the end of the day.
As with all tax deductions, don’t go overboard. Make sure you document exactly which business partners or customers that you are visiting on a given day.
After your meetings, you are free to spend the rest of your day as leisure. My wife and I typically plan on hitting one vendor per day early in the mornings leaving the rest of the day for pleasure.
We also usually try and plan ahead to decide whether we’re going to use the per diem or actual expense method. On business vacations, we usually go all out and use the expense method. If the trip is purely for business, usually we’ll skimp and take the per diem.
What To Be Careful Of
Before you proclaim yourself a small business and start taking deductions all over the place, there are a few things to watch out for as far as the government is concerned. For one thing, you have to be able to prove to the IRS that your business is in fact a real business.
The definition of “business” is fairly broad. In general, you only need to prove to the IRS that you are actively trying to make money even though you may not necessarily be succeeding. Here are the criteria that the IRS uses to determine if your business is “real”.
If your business makes a taxable profit for 3 out of 5 consecutive years, you’re generally safe from your business being considered just a hobby.
, you’re generally safe from your business being considered just a hobby. If your business continues to declare a loss year after year, you will need to gather and keep evidence that you are making an active effort to turn a profit. This includes having a business website, business cards, a distinct and separate set of financial books, business licenses, permits and advertising expenses etc…
, you will need to gather and keep evidence that you are making an active effort to turn a profit. This includes having a business website, business cards, a distinct and separate set of financial books, business licenses, permits and advertising expenses etc… You have to stay up to date with all of the necessary business filings. For example, if you sell physical goods, you still have to declare your sales taxes even if you made no sales at all
Don’t Be Afraid Of The IRS!
Most people don’t take deductions that they are entitled to because they don’t want to get audited or even take the risk. But the tax rules for businesses are in place for a reason so you should take advantage of them!
Naturally, your chances of getting audited can go up depending on what you choose to deduct but if you are truly trying to a run a legit business, you have nothing to worry about.
For our wedding linens business, we make sure not to be too over aggressive when it comes to taking business expenses yet we still manage to save thousands of dollars in taxes every year.
Just make sure that you consult a tax accountant before taking any crazy deductions. In addition, if you have any specific questions regarding what we deduct with our wedding linens business, feel free to drop me a line.
Once you sit and down and think about it, the tax benefits alone make starting your own venture a safer bet.
Need Additional Help?
Recently, I’ve started using CorpNet.com for all of this type of work because they are super accessible.
For example, you can get a free 20 minute consult right off the bat where you can ask questions to a real lawyer WITHOUT GETTING CHARGED. As a result, I use them to file trademarks and answer both my legal and tax questions.
Click here to get your free 20 minute consult and then receive 10% off with coupon code:MWQHJ..
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If you are really considering starting your own online business, then you have to check out my free mini course on How To Create A Niche Online Store In 5 Easy Steps. In this 6 day mini course, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's free and you'll receive weekly ecommerce tips and strategies!
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Have you read these?Starting at 01:48 we discuss Jurgen Klinsmann's USMNT roster for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers. A few head-scratchers in there, so we scratch hard until the itch is gone.
30:15 — Today's show is sponsored by FUTCHI Rebounders. Get yours at https://americas.futchi.com/ and use coupon "totalsoccer" for 15% off.
See Daryl and Taylor in FUTCHI action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGyqH6EVUec
Got suggestions for how we should play FUTCHI? Tweet them @totalsoccershow with #TSSFUTCHI
33:16 — Sam Allardyce has named his inaugural England squad and we have things to say about it. We also discuss Joe Hart's move to Torino and ask if more English players should do the same.
47:15 — Updates on four more players in the Total Soccer Show Scouting Network, including Mallory Pugh, Patrick Bamford, Junior Flores and Munir.
Support TSS at http://totalsoccershow.com/subscribeThe camera is a superb liar. It only shows one moment, and has no obligation to explain the bigger picture behind it. The selective use of photographs can therefore replace truth with whatever visual detail we choose to fix on. Horror or schmaltz, the effect is the same, to simplify reality and turn a story into a deceptively straightforward image.
In the 1930s and 1940s the dishonest manipulation of photographs was a speciality of state propagandists. Backroom technicians in totalitarian darkrooms removed unwanted faces from pictures and turned emotive images into posters. Today, we don’t need propaganda machines to deceive us because we can make hypocritical and self-manipulating choices ourselves just by “liking” the pictures that show us what we want to see and ignoring those that are more awkward.
The protests in America against a grand jury’s decision not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson for shooting dead unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have thrown up a sickly sweet instance of this modern dishonesty.
Of all the disturbing images of streets on fire and crowds unappeased that have seethed since the grand jury decision in Ferguson set off protests across America, one of the most popular online turns out to be a touching moment of interracial togetherness. You heard me. Like a supermarket Christmas ad, this photograph taken at a Ferguson protest in Portland, Oregon, feasts on a moment of truce and peace amid the anger.
It shows 12-year-old protester Devonte Hart sobbing as he hugs a white police officer. The officer’s face too is tenderly emotional. The cop appears to be comforting the boy. After all the anger, all the divisions, here is a moment of human reconciliation.
What nonsense. It is one moment among many, and the choice to look at it and celebrate it is clearly a choice to be lulled by cotton candy. It has got more than 400,000 Facebook shares. Each one of those shares is a choice of what to see and what not to see. In the context of the completely unresolved and immensely troubling situation, not just in Ferguson but across the United States, where Ferguson has opened wounds that go back centuries, this picture is a blatant lie.
A picture does not have to be staged to be a lie. It just has to be massively unrepresentative of the wider facts and enthusiastically promoted to iconic status in a way that obscures those facts. This photograph, which first appeared in the Oregonian newspaper, was taken after Hart stood on the protest line with a banner that said “Free Hugs”. Portland police sergeant Bret Barnum got talking to the boy and asked if he could have a hug as well.
What a photo opportunity. In terms of straight news values, this tender moment offered a bit of variety from glum scenes of protest. Yet it instantly had a deep appeal to those looking for a soft focus view of race in America.
A woman in the background is taking her own picture of the warm scene. She can’t wait to share it. What a heart-stopping, iconic, totally emotional photograph. Add a weeping emoticon or whatever seems eloquent to you.
Sentimentality used to be the preserve of musicals and Hollywood: now it shapes the news. Photographs are no longer carefully chosen by newspaper picture editors to craft the story. Of course, the traditional media are no strangers to manipulating reality – consciously or unconsciously – with photographs. But when news images are given life and meaning by the number of times they are shared on Facebook, the only editorial control is sentiment. This picture is cute, therefore popular, therefore true.
Has truth itself become a popularity contest now? Countless photographic images are produced every day, recording multitudinous events. The process by which a few of those pictures become “iconic” is not rational and does not have any responsible superego in charge of it. It surely seems absurd – given the seriousness of what happened in Ferguson – that a nation’s new, yet old, encounter with its most destructive division can be summed up by this soppy picture of a tearful hug.
Liking this picture as a definitive image of America’s race crisis is the equivalent of locking yourself in and turning up the volume to weep at Frozen while the streets are burning outside. Which is exactly what white Americans apparently want to do. Truth is a flimsy thing. It can be destroyed by a hug.Scott McLaughlin has won yet another race from pole position for his Garry Rogers Motorsport squad in Race 7 of the Australian V8 Supercars Championship. McLaughlin won by over a second over Bottle-O Racing’s Mark Winterbottom. Scott Pye of Dick Johnson Racing Team Penske got his Pirtek Falcon home in third after early dramas.
McLaughlin converted easily off the start, pushing Red Bull Racing’s Jamie Whincup hard into the first corner, with the young Kiwi taking the lead after hard racing with the 6-time champ. The two held position for most of the race until a late race safety car on lap 35.
Cam Water’s Monster Energy Ford Falcon blew a right front tire on the front straight on lap 35, with the resulting debris forcing a safety car to clean up the track, the second Prodrive Falcon to suffer tire issues in the weekend. During the safety car period, Jason Bright’s #8 BOC Commodore stopped with power steering and alternator issues and needed to be towed off.
After the resulting restart on lap 39, the race exploded. Whincup fought to pass McLaughlin, but an excursion off-line in the final corner and a quick surf through the grass left him vulnerable to Winterbottom, who shot past from fourth to second, and Pye who took third.
The late race push and shove resulted with tire damage on James Moffat’s GRM Volvo, despite a strong showing early on in the race in the top five. Tim Slade also fell off the road despite running strongly in the top ten.
DJR Team Penske had a mixed day, with Fabian Coulthard’s car misfiring on the warmup lap, putting him out of contention, squandering a fourth place grid spot. Though Pye’s car seemed to have similar issues, the drama was limited to radio and communication issues.
Following Pye, Whincup settled for fourth ahead of his Triple Eight teammate Craig Lowndes. Michael Caruso fought tenaciously for sixth ahead of James Courtney, and Chaz Mostert fought for eighth after being spun by Garth Tander and Will Davison early in the race. Davison took ninth, ahead of Shane van Gisbergen who pitted during the late race safety car for fresh tires, scything through the field until the finish.
The Mostert incident is to be investigated post-race, with contact between Mostert and Moffat also to be looked at.
Whincup leaves the weekend in the lead of the championship, ahead of McLaughlin, Winterbottom, Lowndes and Davison. A 36 point difference spreads the top five championship contenders, with no clear dominating force over this year’s championship
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code Copy and paste this code on your eligible site thefootballforecast.comCHICAGO – A year after Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo declared his team would win the National League Central, young Kyle Schwarber has jumped into the prediction game as well -- though it’s hardly bulletin-board material.
“I feel like we’re going to win the division,” Schwarber said Wednesday night. “We showed what we can do when we’re all in it for the common goal.”
What the Cubs did in 2015 was win 97 games – not enough to win the division but enough to get to the postseason and eliminate Central foes Pittsburgh and St. Louis before falling to the New York Mets in the NLCS. The Cubs are preparing to finish the job as 2016 kicks off with the annual fan convention this week. Players are converging in frigid Chicago but will undoubtedly be warmed by the reception they receive. The opposition is a different story.
“There’s probably going to be more targets on our back, so we’re going to have to come with our ‘A’ game every game,” Schwarber said.
The word “target” was used often on Wednesday as Schwarber and his teammates joined Joe Maddon in serving the manager’s special spaghetti-and-meatballs recipe to the Chicago homeless on a bitterly cold evening. In between there was plenty of time to talk about the preseason favorite to win the World Series.
The Cubs have quickly turned from hunter to the hunted as offseason additions have bolstered an already-loaded team. Maddon indicated he’s fine-tuning his message as the team prepares for spring training next month. One key: Everyone has now been through a pennant race and postseason, including key newcomers.
“The guys that have never won learned how to win this year,” Maddon said. “That matters a lot. … We brought in guys that know what that’s like also.”
Maddon reeled off names like Jason Heyward (“one of the five best players in the National League”), Ben Zobrist (“one of the five best human beings”), John Lackey and Adam Warren. What does that group have in common? They all played in the postseason as recently as last year, with Zobrist and Lackey arriving with World Series titles on their resumes. All of a sudden the Cubs have a roster with all sorts of winning experience. They should know how to get it done from start to finish. Last year things kicked in only when the young players started to make strides. Now they’re young veterans.
“We have to be ready Day 1,” Rizzo said. “Every game is a must-win for us. That’s how we approach every game.”
And the key to doing that throughout a long season – targets on their back or not – is to have fun while grinding it out. It’s Maddon’s style.
“We have a chance to replicate what we did last year,” Maddon said. “Hopefully we’ll win eight more games.”
Last year Rizzo felt he needed to raise the bar, so he made bold declarations. This time around he can let his team’s play do the talking. They have a target on their back because they’re good. Maintaining what they have is the first goal, then it's to go further in the postseason.
“If we win 97 games again I think we’ll be alright,” Rizzo said.In 'Transparent', Transgender Issues Are A Family Affair
Enlarge this image toggle caption Beth Dubber/Amazon Studios Beth Dubber/Amazon Studios
This fall, one of the more interesting and bold TV shows you'll see isn't being released by a major network — instead, it's coming out of Amazon Studios.
Transparent is a comedy-drama that centers on a family and their lives following the discovery that their father, whom they'd known as Mort (played by Jeffrey Tambor of Arrested Development fame) is a transgender woman named Maura.
"Are you saying you're going to start dressing up like a lady all of the time?" asks daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker).
"No, honey. All my life, my whole life, I've been dressing up like a man," Maura replies. "This is me."
The show's creator, Jill Soloway, has a long history as a TV producer, including the shows Six Feet Under and The United States of Tara, as well as plenty of other side projects examining gender and gender issues.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Her own father came out as transgender several years ago, but Soloway tells NPR's Arun Rath that she started thinking and writing about these issues long before that revelation.
"For me to find out that after probably three decades, if not four decades, of struggling with questions about gender, it was actually kind of exciting and kind of freeing to know that I had this legacy of gender queerness in my family," Soloway says.
Doing a show that addresses transgender issues and people leads to a lot of scrutiny. Soloway says she is thankful for the very vocal trans activist presence on the Internet and the feedback they provided. The production team also hired transgender consultants and other trans people to work on the show.
"The world knows so little about being trans, and I know very little about being trans — I just know what it's like to be the child of a trans person. But there's so little trans representation [and] so few trans people who are creating content, so we really depend on the trans community to help us get it right," she says. "We're happy to be corrected."
Soloway says she always had Jeffrey Tambor in mind for the lead role because he reminded her of her own parent, but she received some pushback for not taking the opportunity to cast a transgender person in the role. She says the casting opened her eyes to the problem of lack of trans representation on television.
"There are just so few trans people playing trans people," she says. "It's really a shame that there wasn't that trans actress that I could have cast in the role in that moment."
Soloway notes that the show cast trans actors in over a dozen other speaking parts, but she says she understands why casting Tambor was criticized: "I really did become educated and become politicized to the problem of what it means to cast a cis male in a trans woman role."
"I'm learning every day," Soloway says.
You can watch the pilot episode of Transparent now on Amazon Prime, and all 10 episodes will be released on Sept. 26.A 68-year-old man who has spent two decades in the Minnesota sex offender treatment program is on the verge of provisional release after a special court panel granted his placement in a four-bed residential facility in rural Olmsted County.
The three-member panel’s order last month paved the way for Benjamin Gissendanner’s conditional release. It came to light Tuesday when the Olmsted County sheriff’s office announced a community notification meeting is set for Aug. 18 in the township southwest of Rochester where Gissendanner will live as soon as September.
Gissendanner, who previously served prison time for rape convictions, will be subject to electronic monitoring, outpatient treatment, regular chemical screening and several restrictions, including on Internet use. He’s only the fourth offender in the program to reach this stage, with one of the others returned to the secure treatment program due to violations of his release conditions.
“Ben’s really looking forward to it, but with good perspective,” said Gissendanner’s attorney, Lisbeth Nudell. “He knows what he has to do, and he’s ready to do it.”
Nudell said she’s confident his monitoring and ongoing treatment program will work.
“It’s a well-constructed, well-thought-out plan that should give him some years in the community of living a life without a lot of the rules he’s been living under, but within safe confines,” she said.
Minnesota’s treatment program has been ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts, in part because so few of the 720 current patients have re-entered the community after being civilly committed by a county judge. In the program’s 21-year history, no one has ever been fully discharged. A federal judge and state lawmakers met privately on Monday to discuss potential changes, but the elected officials indicated after that any retooling is a ways off.
Gissendanner was convicted in a 1970 rape in New York City and later in a 1981 Minnesota sexual assault. After being paroled from prison, he was admitted to the Minnesota Security Hospital in 1992. A year later, he was civilly committed as “a mentally ill and dangerous and a psychopathic personality.” He has been confined to secured facilities in St. Peter and Moose Lake since.
Aside from his sex offenses, Gissendanner struggled with alcoholism and drug use in the past. He has severe learning disabilities, with an IQ of 70 and an educational assessment putting him at a third-grade level, according to public records on his case.
Court papers say Gissendanner has been sober since 1989 and lacks a sex drive due to an array of medications he now takes. He has participated regularly in group counseling sessions. A court file said program doctors who have extensively analyzed Gissendanner concluded that he “has likely reached maximum treatment benefit in his current setting.”
Gissendanner applied for provisional release in 2014 and was granted it by a special review board. An appeal by the Department of Human Services put the discharge on hold, but the state and two county attorney offices later indicated to a judicial appeals panel they were not opposed to the step.
In reversing her initial opposition, Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson wrote in a February letter to the judicial panel that Gissendanner’s “sex offender treatment has addressed his dynamic risk factors and that he himself has shown significant engagement and progress in treatment despite his cognitive limitations.”“Alive, Alive! God is great,” the crowd erupts, while someone calls to bring Mr. Stevens to a car.
Mr. Stevens was taken to a hospital, where a doctor tried to revive him, but said he was all but dead on arrival.
The full identity and motivation of the attackers remains a matter of dispute. Considerable suspicion has fallen on a local Benghazi militia, Ansar al-Sharia, known for its intensely conservative and anti-democratic Islamist politics. Witnesses saw the group’s insignia on trucks at the scene, and attackers acknowledged they were members. Fighters and others present at the attack said the motive was anger at a video produced in the United States that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad.
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On Sunday, Mohamed Yussef Magariaf, president of Libya’s newly elected national congress, said in interviews with American news media that he believed people affiliated with or sympathetic to Al Qaeda played a role in the assault, although he did not seem to rule out that the attackers might have been ideological allies of Al Qaeda without specific collaboration. The regional Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is active near Libya but has focused primarily on attacking local governments.
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Magariaf said that Libya has arrested as many as 50 people over the assault. At least a few, he said, had come from outside Libya, possibly Algeria or Mali. And he also said that he believed the non-Libyans had been involved in planning the attack in the months since they entered the country, and that it was meant to coincide with the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Referring to “ugly deeds, criminal deeds,” Mr. Magariaf insisted that the attacks “do not resemble any way, in any sense, the aspirations, the feelings of Libyans towards the United States and its citizens,” emphasizing the role of “foreigners.”
Appearing on the same program, Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said the attacks began “spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo.”
“But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution,” Ms. Rice said. “And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.”
The United States did not believe the attack was preplanned or premeditated, Ms. Rice said, adding that whether the extremists “were Al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or Al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.”Now that you've sent your Really Deep message, you can request a FREE sample of Noxzema. Just fill in your mailing information below and we'll get a sample to you as soon as possible.
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For Clifford’s family, his death changed everything.
“They wrote that we were poor,” Darlene Armstead, a younger sister, said this week. As she and three other siblings, Kenneth, Pauline and Patricia Armstead, described the household this week, the family may not have had much money, but before Clifford’s killing, it was sound.
Darlene’s father, Add Armstead, who was Clifford’s stepfather, went to work every morning at a junkyard.
The family had dinner each night at the same time, around one table, Ms. Armstead said, then watched cowboy shows on television. On summer weekends, neighborhood children feasted in the backyard on watermelon laid out on a door, covered by a sheet, that rested on two clean garbage cans. Add Armstead and his brothers enjoyed cigars and burgers.
“My father taught us structure,” Darlene Armstead said.
She had to make beds. One brother had to clean the yard and bring out the garbage. Clifford, a fourth grader at Public School 40, went with his stepfather on weekends to the junkyard, carrying his own little wrench.
On the morning of April 28, 1973, a Saturday, Add Armstead woke Clifford before dawn so they could be at the yard to move cranes into place for a delivery. They walked a few blocks along New York Boulevard — known today as Guy R. Brewer Boulevard — when an unmarked car pulled alongside them. Mr. Armstead, carrying wages that he had been paid the day before, said he and Clifford ran, afraid that they were going to be robbed. Hearing shots, he flagged down a patrol car, not realizing that Clifford had been felled.
Mr. Shea testified that he did not realize that Clifford, who stood just five feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds, was a child. After the shooting, prosecutors said, Mr. Shea’s partner, Walter Scott, was recorded on a radio transmission saying, “Die, you little,” adding an expletive. Mr. Scott — who by coincidence has the same name as the man killed in North Charleston — denied it was his voice.Ah, love. It drives us to do the craziest things: climb the highest mountains, run through the fields, scale city walls or walk for miles. Love even drove one man in the western German city of Bielefeld to break into prison. And not only once, but night after night -- until he got caught.
The suspect, 33-year-old Daniele E., was arrested in November for scaling a steel fence to break into the prison where his girlfriend was serving time for drug-related offenses, according to the local daily Westfalen-Blatt. On Tuesday, the Bielefeld public prosecutor charged Daniele E. with trespassing and announced a trial date in March.
Lawyer Carsten Ernst, who is representing Daniele E., said he thought the charges were excessive. "Couldn't we have just laughed this one off and cancelled the trial?" he commented.
Snitches Torpedo Love
According to the indictment, things got pretty hot in Cell 13 of Detention House C 7 -- not to mention loud. As Friedhelm Sanker, the deputy head of the minimum-security prison, told the paper: "Some of the other women felt that their sleep was being disturbed, while others feared that the man might try to come and visit them, too." In response to the complaints, prison officials installed a video surveillance camera.
Nov. 8 proved to be the fateful night for Daniele E. When prison officials noticed a man climb over the fence and enter the building where the woman was being held, they called the police. Using dogs, the police sniffed the unlucky lover out -- in his girlfriend's cell.
"I love her -- we're engaged!" Daniele E. reportedly pleaded with the arresting officers.
Lonely at Night
The nightly prison break-ins surprised and confounded prison officials. "The two of them could have visited each other during the day, seeing as the woman was in a minumum-security prison," Sanker told the paper. "But they apparently felt very lonely at night."
Since his arrest, things have only gone from bad to worse for Daniele E. He is now being held in prison on suspicion of having robbed a number of gas stations. In addition, his requests to be granted conjugal visits with his lover have been turned down.
Prison policy states that such visits will only be permitted when they concern "relationships deserving of support." Unfortunately for Daniele E., his girlfriend gave the name of another man as her partner when she was first admitted to prison.The Coalition launched its internship program this week, despite widespread criticism and lack of Senate support from the ALP and Greens.
The program, which was announced in the government's 2016 budget, has the neat and tidy acronym, PaTH – Prepare, Trial and Hire. As the name suggests, the government's intention was to establish a program for young and unemployed Australians to gain valuable work experience in an internship, preparing them for full-time employment.
Bernadette Anvia has worked more than 500 hours unpaid as an intern.
For their trouble of undertaking 300 hours of unpaid work (25 hours a week for 12 weeks), the intern would receive an extra $200 per fortnight on top of their unemployment allowance to cover expenses like travel. That's $4 per hour for the intern – $13.70 less than the national minimum wage.
The PaTH program also includes incentives for businesses, with the 12-week internship spruiked as a trial period for possible future employees. The government would then reward the business with up to $10,000 for every intern hired.A 64-year-old man opened fire on a massive crowd in Las Vegas last Sunday killing nearly five dozen and injuring more than 500 others. Police believe the shooter was a "lone wolf," and committed the crime on his own. However, just miles from where the crime took place, a history professor is pinning the crime on someone else: President Donald Trump.
What did the professor say?
University of Nevada-Las Vegas assistant professor Tess Winkelmann was caught on camera telling her History 407 students that Trump is partially responsible for the crime because he has only "encouraged violence" while in office. Campus Reform published the video.
She said: "When he got elected, I told my classes three semesters ago, some of us won’t be affected by this presidency, but others are going to die. Other people will die because of this. And we've seen this happen, right? I don’t know whether these events would have inevitably happened whether or not he got elected, but he has the same rhetorical powers every president has, to encourage or discourage, right? So far, all he has done is to encourage violence."
Winkelmann also slammed Trump's threats against North Korea, while alleging Trump has threatened nuclear war with the country, saying "words, especially coming from someone who is the president, have consequences."
What did students think?
One UNLV student, who anonymously spoke to Campus Reform, told the publication of the professor's comments:
We just experienced one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. It’s a mile away, and we don’t know what happened, we don’t know why it happened, and we’re pushing political agendas, and that’s what this is about, taking advantage of the situation for political belief, when we should be uniting, healing as a community. At every chance the president got, he condemned this violence. The professor is taking away from the dialogue that should be happening to attack the president. Professors are in a position of trust, and they’re abusing it to promote their political ideology or agenda. I think it’s dangerous when you blame the president for a massacre, and basically shut down students who disagree.
A second student echoed that sentiment:
I think it is despicable that a professor at an institute of higher learning, one that is located in the same city in which this attack occurred, would use her platform to spew such hatred and divisive rhetoric.
However, the second student told Campus Reform that the "professor had previously made comments in opposition to Trump."
Watch the video:Sony Computer Entertainment will launch a PlayStation App for Android and iOS in North America Nov. 13 and Europe Nov. 22, the company announced today.
The app will also smartphones and tablets to serve as second screens for supported PlayStation 4 titles as well as access their profiles, friends lists, trophies and more. In the app's "What's New" section, users will be able to spectate as players stream their gameplay. The PlayStation App will also allow users to purchase items though the PlayStation Store and use the touchscreen or tablet to control a PS4.
Sony highlighted the PS4 game The Playroom, which allows players to draw objects in the app and fling them into the game, as an example of the dual screen functionality. For more on The Playroom's demos and mini-games, be sure to check out Polygon's impressions from E3 2013.LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Taxi drivers sowed traffic chaos in Europe’s top cities on Wednesday by |
was filming the bus fire when there was "a little explosion".
Mr Lewis said he had just come out of a supermarket when he saw the bus in flames, but decided "it's time to leave" after the explosion.
"Everybody seemed aghast, motionless. It's not something you see every day in London."
Isabelle Kiff who had planned to board the bus said: "Corner of Camomile Street and Bishopsgate near Liverpool Street station.
"I turned the corner and saw the bus I was planning to get on in flames.
"The police then arrived and told everyone to move away then the fire fighters arrived and started putting it out."October 16, 2014 20:53 IST
Narendra Modi and Amit Shah completely control the BJP and are taking it to the next level ruthlessly, without carrying forward any past baggage, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Much before he actually starts living in Lutyens' Delhi, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah has added more mystique to his public persona.
Shah is all set to add Maharashtra and Haryana -- two states which enjoy the highest real estate value, have seen massive urbanisation, have the largest concentration of middle class, are hyper manufacturing hubs and financial centres -- to his party's kitty.
A couple of weeks after the election results the Shah family will shift to Delhi. The man who wears his Hindu identity on his sleeve will move to Akbar Road, named after the Mughal emperor.
When newspaper columns and television debates discuss the exit polls from the two states which suggest that the BJP will emerge as the single largest party in both Haryana and Maharashtra and is likely to form the government as well, Amitbhai's focus has already shifted to West Bengal.
There are two reasons why Amitbhai is sitting pretty in his rented home in Jangpura in south Delhi.
The huge undercurrent against the Congress governments in both Haryana and Maharashtra and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity helped him gamble in a big way, the twin facts helping him take major decisions that are likely to change the premise of contemporary politics.
Instead of enjoying the sweet success from Uttar Pradesh, where his party posted a mind-blowing performance winning 71 out of 80 seats in the Lok Sabha election, Shah decided to risk it all to gamble for more.
What the Congress always wished but could not achieve, the Modi-Shah duo are giving a more convincing try. Steadily, the two most powerful politicians in the BJP want to move to a two party-dominated politics.
If the BJP forms a government in these two states without help from allies, then severe cramps will be felt on the regional political turf.
Amit Shah's success -- if it does materialise on Counting Day, October 19, will substantially diminish the clout of regional parties. A conclusive win for the BJP in these two states will also put tremendous pressure on the regional parties in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They will have to put up a defensive fight to survive against the ever-expanding BJP.
From November, the BJP will launch a massive, never-before-seen membership drive in states where regional parties call the shots. The BJP is highly confident that it will win a historic verdict in Uttar Pradesh if the assembly election is held anytime from now. Only Bihar remains a political challenge for the Modi-Shah duo in the near future.
If the BJP wins Maharashtra and Haryana, then many analysts will churn out reasons for the Modi-Shah duo's success. But the decision to break the decades-old alliance with the Shiv Sena and the three-year-old alliance with the Kuldeep Bishnoi-led Haryana Janhit Congress only speaks of the reality that Modi and Shah completely control the BJP and are taking it to the next level ruthlessly, without carrying forward any past baggage.
Many people forget how, when and under what terms and conditions Pramod Mahajan tied up with Balasaheb Thackeray in the late 1980s. The Shiv Sena always considered itself the 'big brother' in the alliance.
Modi and Shah have been watching the unequal Maharashtra alliance silently, from neighbouring Gujarat. At the time of each election, Mahajan, his brother-in-law Gopinath Munde and the then state BJP chief would visit Matoshree, the Thackeray home in suburban Bandra in Mumbai.
They would go with a certain number of seats. Balasaheb would hand over the list to his office assistant, a few jokes would be cracked over tea and snacks and the BJP leaders would leave Matoshree to announce to the waiting media their demand before Balasaheb.
The Sena chief would not even talk to them about seat-sharing, at the most he would say, 'Talk to the party unit.'
Unfortunately, Uddhav Thackeray, the Sena's current leader, did not read the writing on the New Delhi walls. He tried to enact the same arrogant drama before Modi's BJP and fell flat.
Amitbhai, after meeting Uddhav Thackeray on September 4, found that a logical and merit-based discussion and equal and mutual respect was missing in the relationship.
Shah, a tactful politician, guessed that the times required him to take a risk, act fast and go for broke.
He rushed back to New Delhi to meet Modi. Both made up their minds before the BJP Parliamentary Party could discuss the issue. Modi, an ever-conscious leader, did his calculations and Shah, the ever-ready risk-taker, found that 'upholding the party's honour' was a just cause. The Shah camp still claims that its decision was solely driven by'merit.'
In the first round of talks Uddhav was not even ready to debate seat-sharing on equal terms. Two, Modi would have retained the Sena-BJP alliance if the formula of seat-sharing -- 147 for the Shiv Sena, 127 for the BJP and 14 for other allies -- was accepted by Uddhav. But Balasaheb's youngest son is still living under the shadow of his legacy. He remained stuck at 119 seats for the BJP.
It is not just for eight seats that Modi and Shah broke the alliance, but, as the Shah camp puts it, it was all about the mentality of the Shiv Sena leaders. More importantly, it was high time Modi and Shah put a full stop to the Mahajan-Munde legacy. Amit Shah's team was shocked to know that in 160 out of Maharashtra's 288 assembly seats, the BJP had never fought an election. The party did not have even a taluka chief in these seats.
Amit Shah had to act and act fast. Once he convinced Modi about the ground situation, there was no looking back. Shah camped in the BJP's Mumbai office, conducting discussions till 4 am. He appointed caretakers in 36 Maharashtra districts. Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers Ananth Kumar, MPs like Bhupendra Yadav were given responsibilities to overlook everything in their areas.
Between September 23 and 29, many workshops were held away from the media glare. One elaborate workshop was for party chiefs in the districts. Under them, one special in-charge with a GPS-equipped car was nominated from all 288 seats; they were not from the area in their charge but came from all over the country. They were then sent to their respective areas and asked to stay there till the last vote was cast on October 15.
The 288 workers were asked to focus on anti-incumbency. One senior BJP leader told this 288-strong special team, 'We don't have time. We will have to fight elections out of thin air!'
Shah, fresh from his Uttar Pradesh election success, took no time to create an illusion of organisation from scratch.
If Amitbhai tastes success once again this Sunday, it would not be for his organisational skill, but for the political instinct with which he took his leader to the nooks and corners of Maharashtra.
Shah took the decision where, how and when Modi's public meetings should be organised. He took inputs from his team. A total of 26 clusters were created to arrange Modi's meetings, each cluster categorised into A, B or C based on the BJP's s winning prospects.
Modi addressed some 26 meetings in the state, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari more than 80 and Home Minister Rajnath Singh addressed some 22 public meetings. Amit Shah too addressed more than a dozen meetings, and in a few he had an audience of more than a lakh. He started his campaign from the Mahalakshmi temple in Kolhapur where he proudly claimed that he was a'son-in-law' of the ancient city as his wife Sonal's family belonged to it.
All BJP leaders were told to exploit the prevailing sentiment against the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party.
They also kept mum against the Shiv Sena with whom the BJP has an alliance going in the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation, considered the source of funds for the Sena in Mumbai. Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravishankar and people from the Patit Pavan Sanghatana and Gaytri Parivar also held separate meetings on the eve of the election.
The election campaign in Mumbai and neighbouring Thane was fascinating. The region has around 40 per cent Marathi voters, but some 33 per cent non-Marathis and minorities.
If the Sena talked about Marathi manoos and their asmita, they consolidated the non-Marathi votes in the BJP's kitty. The minority votes were divided between the Congress and NCP so the Shiv Sena could not add to its Marathi votes, claims a member of Shah's team.
Similarly, in Haryana, as the Jat vote got consolidated in favour of the Indian National Lok Dal and other small Jat-based parties, the anti-Jat votes shifted en masse to the BJP. Shah asked his team to work hard for the Dalit votes.
Amit Shah, although a conservative and traditional man, uses modern terminology when he talks and plans his political moves. He never accepted the Gujarati versus Marathi vote bank or Jat versus Dalit vote bank theories, leading his men to think his actions were nothing but a crazy gamble.
But Amitbhai is a moody man. He knew Modi's brand was too strong and he was in a mood to risk it more in the vote bazaar.
Many people thinks that Maharashtra, which is a much bigger state and a grander political battleground, was more complex than Haryana, but Amit Shah's team does not think so. For them Haryana was politically more complex and a bigger challenge because the Jats had an option in the form of INLD leader Omparkash Chautala, who has been convicted in a corruption case.
Chautala, though down, is not out. He has charisma among the Jats and is accepted as a political leader in spite of his conviction.
If the BJP forms the next government in Haryana and Maharashtra, there should remain no doubt whatsoever that India has got a full time politician as prime minister. Quite like Indira Gandhi.
Image: Amit Shah. Photograph: Anindito Mukherjee/ReutersEndnotes and citations are available in the PDF and Scribd versions.
Republicans in the House of Representatives released a report in February that relies on a misleading and incomplete review of social-science literature to paint the nation’s anti-poverty programs as largely ineffectual and counterproductive. The House Budget Committee report purports to be an evidence-based analysis of the effectiveness of the safety net programs that emerged as a result of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps; Medicare; Medicaid; Head Start; and expanded Social Security. Unfortunately, the review is so riddled with inaccuracies that many of the leading academics cited in it have publicly accused Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, of misrepresenting their work. In reality, there is little evidence to support the report’s conclusion that federal programs exacerbate poverty by creating disincentives for people to work.
The report argues that anti-poverty programs reduce labor-force participation by discouraging work, dooming program participants to a life of poverty. As Rep. Ryan has previously stated, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” The report attempts to back up this assertion with social-science research, but it is not the unbiased, evidenced-based review that it claims to be.
Rep. Ryan’s report relies on a combination of overstating the evidence, ignoring relevant studies, and simply misrepresenting the research to make the argument that the safety net creates a “poverty trap.” This issue brief reviews economic research on the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs; a significant body of research demonstrates that not only have anti-poverty programs successfully raised millions of families out of poverty, but they also increase the economic mobility of recipients and support broader economic growth. In particular:
The War on Poverty succeeded in reducing the poverty rate by one-third, from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012
Far from serving a static underclass of the perpetually poor, safety net programs benefit the majority of Americans—70 percent—at some point in their lives
Safety net programs boost economic mobility, making poor children more likely to graduate from high school, attend college, and enter the middle class
Poverty costs the U.S. economy more than $500 billion every year, the result of low productivity, poor health, and high levels of crime and incarceration
There is also little evidence that the safety net reduces labor participation by much, if at all. Some policies—such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC—have been shown to increase work among recipients—as Rep. Ryan acknowledges. Where policies do negatively affect labor participation, the result is small and has a very limited impact on poverty levels. A comprehensive review of the literature reveals that the safety net supports social mobility and strengthens our economy.
The safety net increases economic mobility
A significant body of evidence supports the view that, far from creating a so-called poverty trap, the safety net actually reduces poverty, increases economic mobility, and strengthens our national economy. Moreover, studies have shown that many antipoverty programs, especially those that target children, offer an excellent return on investment to taxpayers.
Lifts people out of poverty
Rep. Ryan’s report vastly understates the success of the War on Poverty. The report points out that the official poverty rate has declined just a small percentage—from 17.3 percent in 1965 to 15 percent in 2012—suggesting that the poverty rate has changed very little since the start of the War on Poverty. But the official poverty rate measures income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits such as public housing, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits. As a result, families who benefit from tax measures, such as the EITC, or income supports, such as SNAP, appear to be no better off than families who are not enrolled in these programs. In other words, the report makes a claim on the effectiveness of federal anti-poverty policies using a measure of poverty that explicitly ignores the impact of those same policies. An analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers shows that when safety net programs are taken into account, the poverty rate actually fell from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012—a reduction of more than one-third. This is important because it demonstrates that the safety net succeeds in raising people out of poverty, not trapping them in poverty.
The relationship between the poverty rate and the business cycle also suggests that anti-poverty programs successfully reduce poverty. If the safety net has no impact on poverty levels, one would expect that the poverty rate would closely track the business cycle—that it would rise or fall in proportion to changes in the unemployment rate. But the Council of Economic Advisers found that, despite record levels of unemployment during the Great Recession, the poverty level rose only 0.5 percentage points. And it concluded that the safety net “almost entirely eliminates cyclical swings in the presence of deep poverty.” This means that the safety net lifts people out of poverty during times of high unemployment and slow economic growth. Moreover, safety net programs serve as automatic fiscal stabilizers that boost spending during economic downturns, reducing the severity of recessions and benefiting everyone.
Finally, the fact that safety net programs serve a majority of Americans at some point in their lives indicates that, contrary to Rep. Ryan’s suggestion, receiving benefits does not doom a person to a life of poverty. If the safety net creates a poverty trap, as Rep. Ryan argues, anti-poverty programs would serve the same small subset of the population year in and year out, as the system traps families and prevents them from moving out of poverty. In reality, safety net programs serve most Americans, including many middle-class families who experience a temporary period of financial hardship. For example, more than 50 percent of tax filers with children benefit from the EITC at some point in their lives, according to research by Joint Committee on Taxation economist Tim Dowd and Ball State University economist John B. Horowitz. Another analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers finds that nearly 30 percent of Americans benefit from SNAP, and 34 percent receive support from SNAP; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, previously known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC; or Supplemental Security Income, or SSI. Seventy percent have received income from SNAP, AFDC/TANF, SSI, or unemployment insurance. Most Americans rely on the social safety net at some point in their lives to keep them afloat during difficult times.
Brings poor children into the middle class
There is also significant evidence that the safety net increases economic mobility, especially for poor children. For example, European Commission economist Eliana Garces, Duke University economist Duncan Thomas, and Princeton University economist Janet Currie found that participating in Head Start makes children more likely to complete high school and attend college. Harvard Graduate School of Education professor David Deming found that young adults who participated in Head Start as children also score higher on a summary index of young-adult outcomes including crime, teen parenthood, health status, and idleness—with Head Start responsible for closing one-third of the gap in the outcome index between children in families at the median and bottom quartiles of family income.
Beyond Head Start, the creation of Medicare led to a dramatic decline in the black-white infant health and mortality gap in the 1960s, a change that Brown University economist Kenneth Chay, Northwestern University economist Jonathan Guryan, and Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago economist Bhashkar Mazumder have attributed to the large student-achievement gains for black teenagers in the 1980s. According to an analysis by National Bureau of Economic Research economists Raj Chetty and John Friedman, also of Harvard University, and Jonah Rockoff, also of Columbia University, the additional income from refundable tax credits improves children’s test scores—possibly because parents are able to spend more on educational resources for their children or move into neighborhoods with better schools, though the precise mechanism is not yet known. And University of California, Berkeley, economist Hilary W. Hoynes; Northwestern University economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach; and Columbia University economist Douglas Almond have found that food stamps increase women’s economic self-sufficiency. Contrary to Rep. Ryan’s misleading claims, the evidence is clear: The safety net does not trap people in poverty. Instead, it propels them into the middle class.
Promotes economic growth
Finally, the safety net does not just benefit Americans who directly receive program assistance. Reducing poverty and increasing mobility through the safety net are smart investments in America’s economic growth. An analysis by Georgetown University economist Harry Holzer and his colleagues finds that poverty costs our economy 4 percent of gross domestic product per year, or more than $500 billion. This is the result of low productivity and earnings, poor health, and high levels of crime and incarceration among adults who grew up poor. Similarly, Brandeis University professor Donald Shepard and his colleagues have calculated that hunger costs our nation at least $167.5 billion per year in lost economic productivity, public education costs, avoidable health care costs, and food charity. Public investments in the safety net—specifically, programs that target poor children—have been shown to generate exceptionally high returns that benefit all Americans. For example, University of Virginia professor Chloe Gibbs; University of Chicago economist Jens Ludwig; and University of California, Davis, economist Douglas L. Miller estimate that Head Start produces a benefit-cost ratio of more than 7-to-1.
In short, a large body of research reveals that America’s anti-poverty programs have successfully lifted millions of families out of poverty and into the middle class. Rep. Ryan’s report omits this relevant evidence and inaccurately depicts the War on Poverty as largely ineffectual.
The safety net does not create a poverty trap
Rep. Ryan argues that anti-poverty programs are counterproductive because means-tested safety net programs create high marginal tax rates for recipients, “effectively discouraging them from making more money” and creating a “poverty trap.” The implication is that, absent the alleged negative work incentives created by the safety net, families would work more and not be poor. It is true that the benefits of many anti-poverty programs are reduced or eliminated when the recipient’s income exceeds the program’s limit—this is what it means for a program to be means tested. It is not true, however, that most recipients face high marginal tax rates as a result or that recipients generally respond to these benefit cliffs by reducing work. Moreover, to the extent that small work disincentives may exist in some programs, the disincentives do not keep recipients in poverty when they would otherwise work enough hours to stay out of poverty.
Work disincentives are small or nonexistent
The Congressional Budget Office analysis cited in Rep. Ryan’s report finds that very few families face high marginal tax rates as a result of reductions in federal benefits. Less than 5 percent of low- and moderate-income taxpayers faced a marginal tax rate of 50 percent or more in 2012, and the average rate for these workers was 30 percent—far from the top effective rate of “nearly 100 percent” quoted in the House Republicans’ report. And, although the report cites Urban Institute economist C. Eugene Steuerle to claim that federal programs create a poverty trap, Steurele has actually stated in congressional testimony that “the poverty trap has been largely removed.” Instead, it is workers who earn about twice the poverty level who experience the steepest drop in benefits resulting from increased income.
With that being said, there are a number of simple ways to eliminate these cliffs, such as extending the phase-out range for programs. In fact, the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, does exactly that to the Medicaid eligibility cliff. The law allows states to expand Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and also provides subsidies to help offset the cost of insurance for individuals earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line. In doing so, it removes the steep eligibility cliffs and any theoretical work disincentives they may create. However, Rep. Ryan has ardently opposed the ACA, and implementing reforms to smooth other benefit cliffs would involve spending more on anti-poverty programs, not less, as Ryan has repeatedly proposed to do.
Even if more workers faced these cliffs, there is no reason to conclude that they would necessarily respond by working less. When your marginal tax rate increases, you effectively obtain less money for each hour worked. Economic theory predicts that you might respond to this in one of two ways. On one hand, you may choose to work less because you are getting less reward from work, which is called the substitution effect. On the other hand, you might work more in order to recoup the lost income, known as the income effect. Rep. Ryan assumes that a worker facing a benefit cliff will always work less, but it is just as possible that the worker will respond by working more.
Work disincentives do not exacerbate poverty
In fact, research has largely shown that people do not respond to a benefit cliff by working substantially less. To be sure, some programs may have a small negative effect on work, as this section will discuss. To the extent that small work disincentives exist, however, they do not keep recipients impoverished. In an exhaustive program-by-program analysis of all federal antipoverty programs, Mathematica Policy Research economist Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Johns Hopkins University economist Robert A. Moffitt, and University of Wisconsin-Madison economist John Karl Scholz found that the work-disincentive effects have “basically zero” effect on the overall poverty rate. And additional research on individual safety net programs shows that federal anti-poverty efforts do not discourage work by much, if at all.
Studies have found, for example, the behavioral impact of Supplemental Security Income to be small, with little effect on how well the program reduces poverty. SSI provides modest cash assistance to very poor people who are disabled, blind, or elderly. University of California, Irvine, economist David Neumark and University of Illinois economist Elizabeth T. Powers, two authors cited in Rep. Ryan’s report, looked at employment among likely SSI participants ages 62 to 64 and found that a $100 increase in monthly SSI benefits was associated with a 5 percent reduction in employment. This suggests a small disincentive effect among near retirees. However, few have researched the effect of SSI on the general population of eligible low-income people. Ben-Shalom, Moffitt, and Scholz determined that there is a small behavioral response to SSI but that the work disincentive reduces the program’s anti-poverty effects by just one-eighth. In other words, while a small number of recipients may reduce their work in response to SSI, it cannot be said that doing so “traps” them in poverty.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program also has little effect on labor participation. Even Rep. Ryan’s report acknowledges that SNAP reduces the labor force only “somewhat,” and Hoynes and Schanzenbach, the economists cited in the report, find what they call just a “modest” reduction in employment and hours worked among SNAP recipients. Similarly, Currie, in a survey of the literature, concluded that most studies found only minimal work-disincentive effects of SNAP—a one-hour-per-week disincentive, at most. It is difficult to imagine that such a small disincentive effect could serve to trap families in poverty when they might otherwise prosper. And Hoynes, Schanzenbach, and Almond have found that SNAP increases economic self-sufficiency for women.
There is also little evidence to support the House Budget Committee report’s claim that Medicaid discourages recipients from working. University of Missouri-St. Louis economist Anne E. Winkler, the author cited in the report, found that Medicaid had a “generally significant but small negative impact on an average female head’s probability of being employed” and that it did not affect hours worked. Examining labor-supply behavior of individuals in the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, Harvard School of Public Health economist Katherine Baicker and her colleagues find that Medicaid recipients are not less likely to be employed nor do they earn less than they otherwise would have. The report also cites University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Barbara Wolfe as evidence of the work-disincentive effects of Medicaid, but the author has publicly criticized its representation of her research. Specifically, she points out that, although the report implies that today’s Medicaid recipients are more likely to receive welfare benefits, “this link has not been in effect since welfare reform [in 1996], when it was no longer a requirement to be on cash assistance (AFDC) to get Medicaid.” In other words, the report fails to take into account a reform that was made nearly 20 years ago.
The effect of housing assistance on labor-force participation is small, as the report acknowledges. University of Michigan economist Brian A. Jacob and Jens Ludwig find that Section 8 voucher use reduces quarterly labor-force participation by 4 percentage points and quarterly earnings by $285. University of Oklahoma political scientist Deven Carlson and his colleagues find similar employment effects among Wisconsin voucher recipients. Ben-Shalom, Moffitt, and Scholz find that, while the work disincentive associated with housing assistance reduces the total anti-poverty effects of the program by about half, it reduces the effect by only about one-fifth for households living in deep poverty.
Ryan mischaracterizes the results of welfare reform
Rep. Ryan misrepresents the research on the results of the 1996 welfare reform in his report. Arguing that the “work-first” approach boosted labor-force participation and reduced poverty, the House Budget Committee report cites University of Wisconsin-Madison economist Rebecca M. Blank, who documented a rise in labor-force participation for single mothers with children between 1994 and 1999. It also cites research by Columbia Population Research Center sociologist Christopher Wimer and his colleagues as evidence that welfare reform was responsible for the reduction in child poverty in the 1990s.
However, the report fails to note that increased labor-force participation during that time may largely be the result of the economic boom of the 1990s. Wimer has criticized the report’s interpretation of his research on the grounds that it ignores both the economic boom and the major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, telling The Fiscal Times, “While our data can’t disentangle those three things, attributing the decline in poverty after 1993 to the welfare reform of 1996 seems to go beyond what the data show.” In fact, a study by University of Chicago economist Jeffrey Grogger that examines the rise in employment among single mothers in the 1990s found that welfare reform policies accounted for just 13 percent of the total rise in employment, while the EITC expansion and the strong economy accounted for 34 percent and 21 percent of the increase, respectively.
In a review of the literature, the Council of Economic Advisers found no studies of the work-disincentive effects of the post-welfare reform Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which requires recipients to work. However, studies of the previous Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, which had no work requirements, found only small work-disincentive effects, suggesting that any work-disincentive effects of TANF are likely insignificant. Moreover, the House Budget Committee report touts the unmitigated success of the reforms while ignoring other research, such as Blank’s, that finds that welfare reform hurt the most disadvantaged.
Conclusion
House Republicans attacking the safety net is nothing new. For years, Rep. Ryan has proposed federal budgets that would severely cut programs that serve the poor in order to pay for billions of dollars in tax cuts for the rich. Two-thirds of the cuts in Rep. Ryan’s last budget plan would have come from programs that serve low- and moderate-income families, including a nearly 18 percent reduction in SNAP benefits. Some have lauded Rep. Ryan as “visionary,” but there is nothing new about his economic agenda. His budgets come straight from the supply-side playbook, the failed theory of economics that says we should focus on the so-called job creators, reduce taxes and regulations on the wealthiest 1 percent, and wait for prosperity to trickle down to the rest of us. Not only have decades of experience proven this theory wrong, but new evidence in economics also suggests that the best way to grow the economy is to strengthen the middle class and reduce inequality—exactly what our safety net does.
Sarah Ayres is a Policy Analyst in the Economic Policy department at the Center for American Progress.Matt Diaz is returning to the Braves, as the Pirates announced they've traded him to Atlanta for a player to be named later or cash considerations. Diaz fits the Braves' desire to add a right-handed hitting bench bat, and of course they had him in the organization from 2006-10 before non-tendering him last winter.
Diaz, 33, is hitting.259/.303/.324 in 231 plate appearances for the Pirates this year while playing mostly right field. He was signed to a two-year, $4.25MM deal in December, but hasn't shown the expected power production against left-handed pitchers. David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes on Twitter that the Pirates are sending some cash to the Braves to offset Diaz's $2MM salary for 2012. The Braves might not be done dealing, hears ESPN's Buster Olney (Twitter link).
GMs Neal Huntington and Frank Wren have matched up on three prior trades according to our Transaction Tracker, most notably the June '09 deal that sent Nate McLouth to Atlanta.
ESPN's Buster Olney first reported the trade. Photo courtesy of Icon SMI.By Adam K. Raymond
The most famous fight in the history of Philadelphia, a city with a proud boxing tradition, took place 3,000 miles away in a largely empty arena where two novice boxers failed to connect on nearly every punch they threw. The fight that ends Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 classic Rocky is one of Hollywood’s most enduring portrayals of a once-great sport. But creating the sequence was no easy task. Like Rocky’s success, the final scene proved a fantastic achievement in the face of long odds. On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, we look back at the terrific puzzle the director, the writers, the actors, the set designers, and the cinematographer solved to produce a set piece that lives on four decades later.
The work on the scene began weeks before filming when director John Avildsen had Stallone (as underdog Rocky Balboa) and Carl Weathers (as the reigning champ Apollo Creed) duck under the ropes to throw a few punches in a Santa Monica gym. “They got in the ring, and one guy said, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ and the other guy said, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ and I realized they weren’t going to get anywhere,” Avildsen says on an extra for the Blu-ray edition of the movie. (All details and quotes are from the 2014 Heavyweight Edition.) Avildsen suggested that Stallone map out the fight, punch by punch, so the actors could learn it like a ballet. The actor returned the next day with more than a dozen pages mapping out the ebbs and flows of the fight.
Related: ‘Rocky’ Turns 40: Philly’s Most Famous Italian Stallion Impersonator on Why Rocky Matters More Than Ever
As rehearsals progressed, Weathers proved a quick study. Despite a complete lack of boxing experience, the former NFL player began to look the part after two weeks of eight-hour days in the ring. Both he and Stallone were helped along the way by the 8mm film Avildsen shot of them dancing around the ring. The director recalls showing the actors footage each day so they could see “how terrible they were,” inspiring them to work even harder. It wasn’t just to improve their boxing: Avildsen said he used the footage to show Stallone the extra flab he was carrying around his midsection, which would need to be gone by the time the real cameras began rolling.
Watch the fight:
With principal production under way, fight rehearsals continued and the actors refined what Stallone called their “violent dance.” Meanwhile, other preparations were made for the final fight. Avildsen showed composer Bill Conti his 8mm footage and played him Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 to demonstrate the music he wanted for the fight. Makeup artist Michael Westmore built prosthetics and experimented with the colors necessary to make bruises show up on both Stallone’s and Weathers’s skin. Meanwhile, Avildsen struggled to figure out how to make an 8,000-seat arena in Los Angeles look full of fight fans despite a woeful lack of extras.
Art director James Spencer had some ideas for that, and it began with lighting. L.A.’s Grand Olympic Auditorium, which stood in for Philadelphia’s famous Spectrum, would be largely empty during filming. Spencer’s plan for masking that involved turning off all the arena’s lights except for those illuminating the ring. To give the illusion of depth, Christmas lights were strung halfway up the empty seats, and to make it seem as if people were moving around the concourse, Spencer backlit the open entrances and had extras walk back and forth as the cameras rolled.
When the big day arrived, Avildsen began by shooting the final round first. This allowed the gradual removal of the makeup and prosthetics Stallone and Weathers needed to make their faces look like they’d been through 15 rounds. The actors performed each round twice, once with cameras shooting through the ropes from outside the ring — a touch Avildsen said added to the realism — and another time with Steadicam operator Garrett Brown circling them in the ring.
“The idea is that if you’re faking a punch, there’s really only one good angle to see it: over the shoulder, where you have the wide angle effect of the boxer’s head snapping back, and you can’t see the point of contact,” Brown, who also invented the Steadicam, said on the Blu-ray extra.A FURORE has erupted in Dargo after reports emerged of children on a supervised camp who munched on cooked dog testicles.
A FURORE has erupted in Dargo after reports emerged of children on a supervised camp who munched on cooked dog testicles.
The 'boot camp', run by Dargo Neighbourhood House, was held at Crooked River from September 22 to 24, with children as young as six participating.
A report in the town's Dargo Bush Bulletin by one of the adult supervisors on the camp, Kate Treasure, from Stratford, outlined how she "jokingly" cooked the testicles over a fire "whilst humouring the kids about them being a bush delicacy (assured by the vet's opinion that they were safe to eat)".
"After they were cut up for a look inside I made it well known that in fact I thought eating them would be yuck!" Ms Treasure wrote "and I had no intention of partaking, however some of our Bear Grylls Adventurers decided to chance the taste test."
"Much like when children eat anything, the reactions were varied."
The testicles became available during an after lunch activity where a veterinarian castrated a dog.
"... most watched and some were even involved in the procedure of a dog castration," Ms Treasure reported.
Sources who contacted the Gippsland Times after the incident said children reportedly vomited afterwards, a claim denied by organisers.
The incident has outraged some local people who have labelled it as disgusting.
Three have contacted the Times, one describing it as "an act of downright stupidity".
"If this gets out into the wider community it trashes Dargo as a township," the angry resident, who asked not to be named, added.
However Dargo Neighbourhood House co-ordinator, Cathie Riley, said the incident had been blown out of proportion and was just a bit of fun.
"They weren't eaten," she said.
"They put them in their mouths and spat them out."
Ms Riley said she had been running the boot camp for seven years.
"Every year |
multipliers. From the author’s mod page:
What this mod does:
Smarter NPC combat behaviour; NPCs are now more likely to
Use power attacks more effectively (i.e. power attack when their enemy is blocking/staggered)
Attack more aggressively when in groups (including mages/archers)
Try to bash and block
Attack when their enemy is not blocking
Disengage from melee combat (if NPC is an archer/mage) when they gain distance from their enemy
Attempt to circle their enemy if they can't find an angle for attack
Archers/mages have increased desire to navigate away from enemies to avoid melee combat
Expand differences in combat styles to make combat more immersive
NPCs using the 'beserker' combat style will spend the majority of their time attacking, while NPCs using the 'tank' combat style will spend most of their time blocking or defending
A farmer will be much less effective in combat than a bandit ringleader
Draugr charge straight towards enemies and spend very little time blocking
Wolves will circle around an enemy and only attack for short periods before circling again. In larger packs, wolves will rotate in for the attack while the rest circle their enemy
Dragons now highly prefer hovering/strafing attacks over perched/ground attacks. To balance this for melee players, when dragons do decide to land, they stay landed for an increased amount of time. Also, dragons are now more prone to perform special ground moves (for example, tail bashing an enemy attacking from behind.)
Archery
15% chance to choose to dodge an arrow attack
Blocking
Per vanilla
Combat Mechanics
Changes to combat styles and combat multipliers
Enhancements to AI
Actors more likely to use tactics in combat
Power Attacks/Staggering
Per vanilla
Stamina
Per vanilla
Shield Bashing
Increases likelihood of occurring
Compatibility
Duel – Combat Realism, Amazing Follower Tweaks
NPCs from mods should take advantage of the changes made from this mod, unless they're given a unique combat style (which is rare)
Enemy AI Overhaul - Revenge of the Enemies - No Scripts Edition v1.95 by MyEvergreenHometown
Requirements: Skyrim, 1.9.32, Dawnguard, Dragonborn
Scripts: N
Perks: N
Modular: N
Synopsis
This mod increases the level of enemies in encounter zones and adds unique skills most actors (except Forsworn and bandits)
Most enemies now have new magic and will use a wider variety of spells; some have unique and powerful magic
Actors will use their daily racial abilities
Actors will block, dodge and power attack more often
Adds high level enemies
Bosses are far more powerful with unique AI
Does not adjust actor damage values
Special abilities added (spoilered):
Falmer – invisibility Vampire – bat form Dwemer Sphere – artillery Spoiler
Archery
Per vanilla
Blocking
Per vanilla
Combat Mechanics
Refer synopsis
Enhancements to Enemy AI
TBC
Power Attacks/Staggering
TBC
Stamina
Per vanilla
Shield Bashing
As above
Compatibility
SPERG, ACE, Ultimate Combat, Enhanced Enemy AI, Duel – Combat Realism, Deadly Dragons, Mighty Dragons, SkyTest, Dragon Combat Overhaul, Better Vampires, Deadly Combat, ASIS.
Refer mod page for compatibility with: SkyRe, Skyrim Monsters, Skyrim Immersive Creatures.
OBIS: make a custom patch with TES5Edit, copy OBIS info into it to overwrite ROTE in the needed places (Source warriorpoetex on nexus forum for mod)
Note: Brodual’s review used this mod in conjunction with UC, EEAI
Perk Based Combat Mods
ACE Combat Skills v 12a by Athyra – ACE Team
Requirements: TBC
Scripts: N
Perks: Y
Modular: Y
It’s not wholly accurate to put ACE in this category based on perks alone as it makes some clever and very sensible changes to combat mechanics.
ACE mods are a set of modular mods (10 in all not including compatibility patches) which each address an area of the game. ACE’s changes are broad and comprehensive and I will include the following modules separately:
ACE – Melee
ACE – Realistic Fighting
However, keep in mind that most if not all of ACE’s modules will affect combat to an extent and there is also a Synergy module which is worth checking out. Both ACE – Archery and ACE – Armor introduce further perks and other components that will affect combat.
ACE - Melee
Synopsis
ACE – Melee implements its changes by way of:
applying logical bonuses based on the actor’s stance (ie 1-Handed, 2-Handed, sword & shield, spellsword, staff and dual wield).
introducing new perks
applying logical buffs and bonuses based on the type of weapon wielded
Archery
Significant changes – refer to mod’s readme
Blocking
Per vanilla aside from minor changes from various modules
Combat Mechanics
Implements stances which provide various bonuses
Weapon types yield differing bonuses
1-Handed weapons receive added critical damage based on 1-Handed skill
Enhancements to Enemy AI
TBC
Power Attacks/Staggering
Half damage from 1-Handed PA’s
Stamina
Per vanilla but affected dynamically by specific perks across the various modules
Stamina use halved when using 1-Handed weapons
Shield Bashing
Per Vanilla
Compatibility
The Dance of Death – fully compatible with both perks and non-perks version
Duel – Combat Realism 99% compatible, load ACE after Duel (will lose Duel function where actor does less damage when stamina below 10%)
Not compatible with any mod that alters the 1Handed/2Handed skill trees or increases the weapon attack speeds as ACE fixes the vanilla base weapon speed bug. ( refer mod webpage for a fix).
Not compatible with Smithing Perks Overhaul (SPO) as is unnecessary as ACE affects all weapons & armor in the game.
ACE – Realistic Fighting
Synopsis
ACE – Realistic Fighting applies bonuses and penalties to combat based on many factors such as sleeping, prone, sure-/flat-footed, casting, power attacking, momentum, geometry, holding a torch, distance from target and many more and of course benefits from the perks introduced in the Melee (and other) module
Archery
Not moving improves bow damage by 7%
15% greater damage if crouching/sneaking or if point blank
Blocking
Damage adjusted based on direction of attack
Combat Mechanics
Refer above summary
Enhancements to Enemy AI
None – hence recommended mod be used with ASIS
Stamina
Per vanilla but affected dynamically by specific perks across the various modules
Shield Bashing
Not changed by this module
Power Attacks/Staggering
Not changed by this module
Compatibility
Designed to be compatible with Duel – Combat Realism, Deadly Combat and ASIS
Each ACE module benefits from having ASIS installed as all NPCs will get ACE’s perks and effects. If ASIS is installed, "_PC" (without quotation marks) should be added to the [PerkExclusionsContains] section of the ASIS AutomaticPerks.ini
Requiem – The Roleplaying Overhaul v1.8.1.1 by ogerboss
Requirements: Skyrim v1.9.32, Dawnguard, SkyUI v4.1+, SKSE v 1.6.16+
Scripts: Y
Perks: Y
Modular: N but customizable via MCM
Synopsis
Requiem has garnered the reputation of being an overhaul suited to the hardcore player. This is not wholly accurate. Requiem achieves its aims by eliminating Skyrim’s levelling system and altering levelled lists. As bg2408 would say, the overhaul is place-centric rather than player-centric.
I have restricted my analysis to the changes it makes to combat; however this doesn’t do justice to how well the mod hangs together in its entirety.
Requiem also makes major changes to the perks and skills systems in addition to other broad and comprehensive changes to almost all facets of the game. Armor skill increases gradually and passively by wearing the appropriate armor and adventuring forth...
Archery
Damage now depends on range and skill level
NPC archers carry a limited supply of arrows
Bows are far more deadly
Blocking
Per vanilla aside from increased stamina consumption
Combat Mechanics
Being hit in combat doesn’t just drain health; other consequences may be magicka and stamina drain or being disarmed
Greater distinction between light and heavy armor
Heavy armor offers greater ability to absorb damage and exceptional protection against arrows at the cost of mobility
Light armor offers limited protection whilst retaining mobility
Enemies use special attacks and poisons more often
Weapon damage increased slightly
Resistances maxed at 90% but some foes have armor piercing (or similar) capability
Critical injuries and exhaustion will severely impact your ability to fight effectively
Most essential NPC’s can now be killed by the player (can adjust in MCM menu)
Unique traits and abilities have been added to many creatures requiring the player to experiment with and develop new tactics
The difficulty slider under Skyrim gameplay options has been disabled; difficulty can be adjusted via to mod’s MCM menu
No changing armor (except shields) in combat (can adjust in MCM menu)
Many of the new perks will also impact upon combat, including the magic-related perks
NPC yield system more immersive
Enhancements to AI
Greater diversity of attacks
Power Attacks/Staggering
Actors now less prone to stagger and some are immune
Player can be staggered more often from any hit (not just PA’s)
Knockdown attacks can be performed by actors and are based on the actor’s mass; hence mounted knockdowns are far more effective
Stamina
Weapon skill has a major impact on stamina consumption
Blocking and normal attacks consume stamina
Shield Bashing
May disarm archers or break their weapon
Compatibility
A hardcore edition of Requiem exists entitled: Requiem – Hard Times
The mod’s guide lists a number of compatibility patches for other DLC/mods which include:
Dragonborn
Dawnguard
Wyrmstooth
Immersive Armours, Weapons, Creatures, Patrols
Falkskaar
SkyTEST
YASH – Yet Another Skyrim Hardcore mod v1.16a by dAB
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32, all DLCs (except HR textures), all unofficial patches (except HR textures patch), SKSE v1.6.13+, Wrye Bash v303+ (recommended), a new character
Scripts: Y
Perks: Y (improves vanilla perks only)
Modular: Y
Synopsis
YASH is a hardcore mod that does away with vanilla level scaling. The mod is best summed up by the words of the author:
YASH is my personal attempt to make the game mechanics more interesting, by adding subtle but substantial gameplay elements in a strictly lore-friendly way. It's primarily aimed at hardcore roleplayers but due to its nature it should please just about everyone.
The main goal is to start as a complete nobody, suffer greatly at first and feel a real sense of accomplishment when you level up and increase your skills. YASH is not necessarily harder than vanilla but its gameplay is way, way different.
YASH effects its changes universally, in a way designed to enhance the vanilla mechanics and in a manner intended to reward character skill. This means a well planned character whose strengths are exploited will flourish.
Worthy of note is that the author has intentionally made the mod non-configurable by the user. Intriguing choice...
I will restrict my analysis to combat related changes; however the author has made extensive major and minor changes to many facets of the game including:
changes to all the races to make them genuinely unique
enhancements to all vanilla perks meaning some are only available to certain races.
These changes will of course have a bearing on combat.
Personally I think the mod should be called: YES! Another Hardcore Skyrim mod....
Archery
Aside from changes to perks, per vanilla
Blocking
NPCs will block more often
Combat Mechanics
All changes affect all actors, not just the player
Skill requirements for all weapons, spells, armors and shields
Skill is now the major component in determining combat effectiveness
Enemies will search for longer after a sneak attack
Enhancements to AI
Enemies will dodge and block more often
Enemies will react more immersively to varying combat conditions
NPCs won’t try to re-engage after yielding
Power Attacks/Staggering
Per vanilla
Stamina
Per vanilla
Shield Bashing
Per vanilla
Compatibility
YASH is intended to be run alongside ASIS and it is highly recommended to do so
Compatible with Live Another Life
Incompatible with other overhauls
Due to the scope of its changes this mod will conflict with many mods
Stamina Based Combat Mods
Deadly Combat v 4.01 by Borgut1337
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32, SKSE 1.6.16+, SkyUI v3.0+
Scripts: Y
Perks: N
Modular: Y
Note: Per comments on mod nexus page this mod author is now working on other projects so may not be updating this mod.
Synopsis
Increases the pace of vanilla combat, stamina cost and stamina regeneration rate
Uniformly reduces the effectiveness of armor, therefore you will only get the best protection from a combination of the best armor, high skills and perks
Enhances the effectiveness and importance of blocking
Increases damage applied for all actors
Reduces weapon attack range
Increases importance of timing weapon swings and blocks
Archery
Nerfing of Ranger perk in archery tree means slower running with bow drawn
Blocking
More effective; costs stamina
Timed blocking and warding
Refer nexus page for comprehensive analysis and examples
Combat Mechanics
All armor ratings uniformly reduced
All damage increased
Shorter melee attack ranges
Armor weight affects movement speed
NPCs can perform forward roll in combat
Simultaneously moving sideways and backwards whilst attacking is slower than vanilla especially if using a 1-Handed weapon; 2-Handed weapon – no change
Locational damage (similar to Locational Damage mod by Kahmul78)
Recommended to use Dual Wield Parrying by same author
Enhancements to AI
Reactive: dynamic reactions to player actions based on a variety of factors
Proactive: may attack player’s mount
Power Attacks/Staggering
PA’s cost more stamina
Normal attacks may stagger enemy
NPCs may attempt to dodge PAs
Stamina
Blocking costs stamina & stamina cost for power attacks is increased
Stamina regeneration rate increased during combat and increased further still when idle
Shield Bashing
NPCs will bash more and is situational rather than based on chance
Compatibility
Dance of Death
Skyre’s combat module – load DC after. Set equal numbers for both player & NPCs and use SkyTweak to raise NPC’s levels so fights are balanced; also use SkyRe_EnemyAI.esp and turn off DC’s timed block in-game. (xPatosonx on nexus forum)
NPC Health Equaliser
Deadly Combat_ASIS_Patch.esp improves interaction between ASIS AI component and Deadly Combat AI if loaded after ASIS.esp.
Incompatible with Ultimate Combat, Duel – Combat Realism, Duke Patrick’s Heavy/Light Combat
Ultimate Combat v2.52 by tktk1
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32, SKSE 1.6.9+, SkyUI 3.1+
Scripts: Y
Perks: N
Modular: N but configurable via MCM
Brodual’s review
Synopsis
A combat overhaul which combines all the TK mechanic mods into one covering most humanoid NPC's
It focuses on precise and responsive combat via numerical game settings, new enemy action special attacks & spells, dodges, counters, blocks and bashes which depend upon player behaviour and situation
Player and enemy direction and speed also dynamically affect damage dealt/received
NPCs dodge and block more effectively, ie only when they need to
Timed blocking means successfully timed blocks won't decrease stamina or HP and the enemy will stagger
Headshots deal additional damage
Separate mechanics for Dragon Priests & Dwemer Centurions (spoilered below):
Dwemer Centurions have two new attacks and are subject to a new locational damage system. Dragon Priests are now augmented with new attacks that slow, stagger and deal damage, and a new dodge spell. Spoiler
For more refer to the mod's nexus page
Archery
Headshots cause additional damage
Blocking
Timed block if successful costs no stamina and staggers opponent
Combat Mechanics
NPCs have special attacks in addition to power attacks
Momentum affects damage dealt and received
Enhancements to AI
NPCs play medic role to injured allies and defend wounded allies
NPCs in groups exhibit different combat behaviours as opposed to single NPCs
NPCs dynamically respond to player actions
Power Attacks/Staggering
Timed block staggers opponent
Consecutive staggers will have less effect
Stamina
Stamina is an important component as each swing costs stamina and is also added to any power attack stamina cost
Low stamina degrades blocking efficiency and disables timed block
NPCs take advantage of player’s low stamina and press their attack
Can’t attack if no stamina
Shield Bashing
Per vanilla
Compatibility
Indication of some synergy with EEAI
Deadly Combat or Duel – Combat Realism
SkyRe but turn off Weapon Swing Cost in UC MCM
ASIS, ERSO, Enhanced Enemy AI, Locational Damage, ACE, High Level Enemies provided UC loaded after
Duel – Combat Realism (Hardcore) v 7.6.5 by LogRaam
Requirements: Unspecified
Scripts: Y (but limited)
Perks: Some tweaks
Modular: N
(There is also a non-hardcore version)
PC Gamer Review
Synopsis
Duel focuses on stamina management and taking and retaining the initiative
Blocking is more effective than vanilla but requires more stamina and overall damage has been increased slightly
NPCs will block more often, manage their stamina more effectively and have enhanced teamwork AI, using flanking, hide and cooperative tactics
Duel wield parry enabled
Stealth has been nerfed as enemies now search for much longer
Arrows deal far more damage
Use of scripts to control staggering based on perks and weapon
Specifics from the author’s nexus page (I have edited for spelling, grammar and readibility)
While it costs stamina, blocking with shield or weapon cover you from damage
Skyrim's base timed shield block optimized
If you keep your shield raised, opponent should stagger you
If you successfully block (timed) during an opponent's attack, you'll block his aggression and he'll stagger
If you shield bash a casting mage, he'll stagger and lose his spell
If you shield bash someone, he'll stagger
Chance to stagger your opponent on each landing hit based on your stamina (tested against your opponent's)
Shield effectiveness relative to your actual stamina score; less stamina means more damage transferred to health
Improved AI, now an opponent with a shield knows how to use it
When you hit your opponent, he loses health AND stamina based on weapon type you use
Different stagger effect magnitude relative to weapon type; maces should have more chance to stagger than sword
Stagger chances is better against lower levels, and get very hard to do against opponent that is higher level than you
Less powerful Shield Bash, faster recovery for intense combat
Fast recovery from knockdown too
Closer Shield Bash (range), closer fighting range. both intended for more realistic animation and better AI triggers
Weapons have better parrying capability
Damage done against someone that is knocked back is lower than vanilla. This avoids an exploit relative to staggers
Knockback happens only when opponent is near death
And many more...
The mod author has also summarized what Duel doesn't do:
New moves and combos
Localization damage
Changes to NPC AI Packages
Magic tweaks
NPCs healing themselves via spells or potions
Archery
Archery is far more deadly particularly at higher difficulty levels
Blocking
Can block while staggered
Successful block drains stamina
Combat Mechanics
Reduces armor rating and increases weapon damage
Stealth nerfed as alerted enemies will search for longer and have enhanced line of sight
Unblocked blows hurt more
Enhancements to Enemy AI
Enemies now block more effectively (via script)
Enhanced teamwork AI (author claims best in Skyrim)
NPCs may now flee
Power Attacks/Staggering
New stagger system controlled by scripts
Can still block/attack/bash will staggered but less effectively
Stamina
Opponents have more base stamina
Blocking requires more stamina than vanilla
Low stamina reduces effectiveness of Armsman, Barbarian and Shieldwall
Every successful hit includes a chance to stagger based on your stamina vs enemy’s stamina
Shield Bashing
Will cause stagger (refer nexus mod page for comprehensive description)
May cause enemy caster to lose spell
Compatibility
Combat system doesn’t rely on keywords so full support for custom armors and weapons
Support for armor rating up to 1000+ and level 100
Can use together with SkyRe – Enemy AI module
Note: mod requires cleaning in TESEdit – this has been acknowledged by LogRaam
Simple Melee Tweaks v2.7 by tiny lampe
Requirements: Skyrim v1.9.32, SKSE 1.06.16+, SkyUI (for MCM only)
Scripts: Y
Perks: N
Modular: N
Official Forum thread
Synopsis
This mod uses scripts to make enhancements to encounters only in which the player is involved.
Note: the mod author also has another mod on the nexus entitled : Miscellaneous Combat Tweaks which appears to be a simpler version of SMT and is compatible with Deadly Combat.
Archery
§ Per vanilla
Blocking
§ Timed blocks absorb twice as much damage as normal blocks and stacks with shield wall perk
Combat Mechanics
§ Player can dodge via a user-configurable button if using a weapon, moving backwards and not wearing a heavy cuirass
Enhancements to AI
§ NPCs will attempt to dodge incoming projectile attacks if they have LoS and are not wearing heavy armor; the chance to successfully dodge improves with distance
§ NPCs will be aware of player's actions and will dynamically vary their own actions in response
§ Depending on the armor worn, NPCs will attempt to counterattack or take evasive action if staggered and will use any respite to heal if damaged
§ Staggered NPCs with spell or staff equipped in their left hand will teleport away from the player in order to heal
Power Attacks/Staggering
§ Normal melee attacks may stagger opponents
§ In general, to cause stagger, player must have at least 25% stamina and be using a melee weapon larger than a dagger
§ Other stagger success conditions depend on opponent, weapon type, health level, protection spells, armor type, and others
§ Any failed blocking attempt by player will result in a stagger
§ Staggers can be either cosmetic only or result in a half second period of defenselessness
§ Refer to the readme for a comprehensive explanation
§ Player may ragdoll under certain conditions if fighting large monsters
Shield Bashing
§ Per vanilla
Stamina
§ Dodging consumes stamina
§ Normal attacks consume stamina depending on weight of weapon
§ Damage dealt dynamically adjusted depending on stamina level
§ Fully drained stamina forces player to kneel for 5 seconds to catch breath
§ Stamina regenerates at normal speed of player neither attacking nor blocking
Compatibility
§ Edits no vanilla records
§ May conflict with other combat overhauls in that gameplay may become unbalanced
§ Recommended be used with Enhanced Enemy AI or other combat mods that change only vanilla combat styles
§ Recommended use with Faster GetUp Animation vanilla
Hybrid: Stamina Based/Perk Based
Duke Patrick's Archery & Heavy/Light Weapons Combat rev 18 by Duke Patrick
Requirements: Registration at TESAlliance required to download
Scripts: Y
Perks: Y (Extensive changes – refer to documentation in mod’s archive)
Modular: N
Official Forum thread (highly recommended)
***WARNING: DO NOT CLEAN THIS MOD***
Synopsis
I cannot do this mod justice with just a summary but I will attempt to do so anyway. This mod contains components outside of the areas I wanted to concentrate on and they add a huge amount of depth and flavor to the mod.
This mod sets out to be the most realistic combat simulation possible, taking its inspiration from real life SCA combat in which the mod maker (Duke Patrick) is a regular participant & champion. All features in the mod (bar one) work the same for all actors. Defence and stamina management are the most important components to consider in battle; one decent unblocked attack may very well mean death. An actor with more stamina, or who makes better use of available stamina, is able to defeat a more skilled opponent if they make no mistakes in combat. Combat geometry is an important component of this mod (ie an actor's position and angle relative to the opponent) and the actual length of the 3-D weapon model is used to determine striking distance.
As alluded to above, the points I mention below are a limited summary of the changes; to get a true appreciation of the changes, the author has included an extensive readme in the mod archive.
Archery
Strength now the most important component of calculating raw arrow damage, not marksmanship; high strength will help draw bow faster
Actors can now run while shooting at the cost of accuracy; high marksmanship will ameliorate this penalty
Crouching doubles accuracy while low stamina reduces it
High marksmanship will reduce bow sway (1st person)
Locational hits up to 60’
Unhelmeted headshot may be instant kill; difficult at long ranges
Bow draw consumes stamina
Dynamic draw time based on bow base damage
Dynamic bow damage based on draw extent
100% recovery of arrows unless broken
Weapons and shields can now deflect arrows
Blocking
Block skill now more important when blocking
Static blocking with shield easier than with a weapon
Blocking more effective at reducing damage based on skill level and shield size also has an effect
Timed blocks reduce stamina consumption
When blocking, weapon/shield size compared to attackers weapon size will determine stamina consumption (ie small blocking shield/weapon blocking large weapon will consume more stamina)
Timed blocking with a weapon easier to perform than with a shield
Timed blocking is more difficult to perform but more effective than static blocking
Shields can block elemental and spit attacks under certain conditions
Dual weapon blocking
Combat Mechanics
All attacks consume stamina
Rotational and linear movement increase damage dealt
Damage from weapons and shields significantly increased
Dynamic weapon speed
Slower combat pacing
Swings with balanced weapons (eg blades) consume less stamina if no target hit (doesn’t apply to inanimate objects)
Swings with top heavy weapons that miss a target will consume more stamina (doesn’t apply to inanimate objects)
Attack force calculated using a variety of logical factors, the magnitude of which determines the stamina required to block
If attack force overwhelms defender a stagger or knockdown will result
Drinking any potions forces a drink animation on player
Comparative actor size, strength and weapon mass dynamically affect combat physics – if the difference is significant the smaller actor may be smashed around like a rag-doll
Increased speed running backwards but with a trip and fall risk
Logical health limits
NPCs can fumble
Left-handed attacks more difficult to defend against
Actors show pain
New hand-to-hand skill incorporating blocks, kicks, deflection, perks, grapples which also force weapon drops
Comprehensive light weapons mechanics with new perks such as being able to hit gaps in armor
Location armor protects better against arrows, beasts and H2H attacks
Dynamic feinting system that can be used to broach an enemy's physical defenses
Enhancements to AI
NPC AI is dynamically adjusted depending on various combat conditions, including:
Greater aggression in numbers
More effective blocking via scripting and adjustments to combat styles
Pressing the attack if actor is exhausted
Mini-retreat to rest and regenerate stamina
Back-off from exceptional opponents
Encirclement tactics
Actively dodge arrows if in combat with player
Power Attacks/Staggering
Attack force calculated using a variety of logical factors, the magnitude of which determines the stamina required to block - if attack force overwhelms defender a stagger or knockdown will result
Minimum 25% stamina to perform power attack
Stamina
All attacks consume stamina
Stamina affects damage dealt
Regeneration in combat now very low
Regeneration enhanced by remaining as idle as possible
Encourages footwork and timing to manage stamina
Minimum 10% stamina to perform normal attack
Timed blocks reduce stamina consumption
Shield Bashing
Minimum 25% stamina to perform bash attack
Actors can shield charge and damage is dynamically calculated based on a number of factors including a new perk
Compatibility
Skyrim.ini optional viewpoint adjustments recommended (refer archive)
Always load dead last
Recommended
Realistic Ragdoll & Force rev1.8
Punching Shield Bash Animation by blackrose86
The Bastard by InsanitySorrow (hand-and-a-half sword)
D13 Faster Get Up Stand Up vanilla friendly by DarkAngel13
A frame rate limiter
Conflicting Mods
In general due to the scope of changes enacted by this mod, it will conflict with most other combat mods and any mod which changes the following:
Race settings
Combat perks
Stamina regeneration rate
Combat styles
Projectiles data
Certain magic effects relating to block and stamina
Weapon stats
Combat game setting including armor and weapons
All combat animation conditions
Certain conditions on combat voice files
Not compatible with:
XP32 Skeleton
FNIS
HeartRate by Anzious
Dance of Death
Propert Aiming
Get Wet by Optic Shooter
Dual Sheath Redux by Neovalen
Skyrim Redone v1.3.01 by T3nd0
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32, SKSE, Skyrim Community Uncapper, Reproccer, a new game strongly recommended
Scripts: N
Perks: Y
Modular: Y
Synopsis
The heart of SkyRe is the changes it makes to the perk system but its changes go far beyond just that. Stamina management is important in combat. I will try to keep the focus on the Combat, Enemy AI modules and the complementary Enemy Scaling module. There is also an Encounter Zone module which assigns minimum levels to encounter zones (there’s hundreds of zone levels). If you prefer a randomized approach, the mod author recommends you use the WTF tool instead
Archery
An actor using a bow will stagger if hit by melee weapon
Blocking
Consumes stamina but absorbs most damage
[Enemy AI module] Enemies will block more
Combat Mechanics
For direct unblocked weapon hits, debuffs of varying magnitude and type are applied, based on the power of the hit
Debuffs consist of bleeding and armor penalties
Enhanced armor protection against arrows; heavy armor provides exceptional protections vs arrows, less so against bolts
Heavy armor slows movement based on number of pieces worn
Heavy armor provides exceptional protection vs small foes & enhances protection vs bladed weapons
[Enemy AI module] Combat styles enhanced
[Enemy scaling module] Mod increases scope of level scaling, particularly bosses and high level enemies
[Enemy scaling module] Enemies have more perks and spells (requires Skyrim Redone). Consider ASIS for a more comprehensive application of perks and spells to enemies.
[Enemy scaling module] All creatures have been comprehensively enhanced in various ways (refer mod guide for specifics)
Enhancements to AI
[Enemy AI module] Greater aggression in numbers
Power Attacks/Staggering
Damage from all power attacks (excepting with daggers) is increased if stamina at minimum level
Unblocked hits may cause stagger depending upon weapon type
Unblocked power attacks may send defender flying
[Enemy AI module] Enemies will attack more often especially when player is staggered
Stamina
All attacks consume stamina based on the weapon type
Default stamina regeneration boosted by 100%, an additional 100% while standing still and an additional 50% if not blocking
Buffs/debuffs applied based on stamina level and health level
Reduced stamina consumption from power attacking
Shield Bashing
Reach reduced
NPC’s better at bashing vs power sttacks
Compatibility
Recommended Mods (combat related extracted from author’s mod guide)
Locational damage
More dynamic Injuries
SkyTEST
Enhanced Mighty Dragons/Deadly Dragons/Dragon Combat Overhaul
Dual Wield Parrying
ASIS (refer mod guide for list of exclusions for compatibility purposes)
Combat Remastered v1.47d by WTFus
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32, SKSE 1.6.16+, recommended to start a new game or reset perks
Scripts: N
Perks: Y
Modular: Y
Synopsis
Combat Remastered takes its inspiration from mods like SkyRe, ACE and Deadly Combat (all included in this guide) but takes a sleeker, less complex approach
What it might lack in depth compared to the three mods from which it takes inspiration, it more than makes up for in unique and interesting changes implemented across the various modules
Stamina management is vitally important to defeating opponents
Weapon and armor perk trees feature greater depth, featuring stance perks and an armor protection rating similar to the method employed in Warcraft 3.
The optional modules cover archery, sneak, speechcraft and magic and an inventing skill which replaces lock picking
Archery
Increased arrow speed
Drawing time decreased
Blocking
Consumes stamina based on a number of factors including relative weapon/shield weights and weapon skill/block skill
Timed blocking negates normal attack damage and consumes less stamina
Can dual wield and block – the left-hand weapon’s weight is used for calculation
Refer readme for comprehensive explanation of mod’s blocking mechanics
Combat Mechanics
Weapon speed reduced to 90% of vanilla
Actors take additional damage if struck in mid-swing, while casting and while staggered
Melee attacks can be cancelled by pressing the sneak key
Reworked armor formula – each point of armor linearly increases the amount of damage that can be sustained
Reworked unarmed combat
Mastery of both 1-Handed and 2-Handed skills enables ability to craft 1-Handed versions of certain 2-Handed weapons, including unique artifacts from the DLCs.
Refer to the readme for a comprehensive breakdown of the perks trees from all the modules
Enhancements to AI
Enemies may use tactical retreat to recover before next attack
Power Attacks/Staggering
PA stamina cost halved
Stamina
Stamina level dynamically affects damage dealt and received, movement speed, weapon speed and more
Increased stamina regeneration rate
Stamina regeneration halts while attacking, staggered or within 2 seconds of blocking
Weapon weight determines stamina requirement to swing weapon
Stamina consumed if actor hit by melee weapon while attacking or casting
Shield Bashing
Stamina cost halved
Compatibility
Compatibility version for Staves of Skyrim is available under this mod’s optional files section on the nexus site
The main file is incompatible with mods that alter weapon speeds or the following perk trees: weapons, armor and block.
The readme lists known issues – none are serious; some are due to limitations in the game engine
The readme also lists incompatibilities on a modular basis
Miscellaneous & Complementary Mods
Automatic Spells, Increased Spawns (ASIS) v1.42.1 by Plutoman101
Requirements: Unspecified
Scripts: N
Perks: See below
Modular: N
Synopsis
Not strictly a combat mod in the spirit of the mods above, however inclusion of this mod will have a profound effect on your gameplay. This mod makes available to NPC’s all perks, potions, spells etc that are available to you, assuming they meet the correct requirements (eg perks).
The main features of this mod per the author’s readme:
Fully customizable spawn levels, including all added mods without any compatibility issues.
NPC's have spells they meet the skill requirements for - including missing vanilla spells and spells from other mods.
Customizable AI, soon to have an override feature to preserve full compatibility with other combat mods.
NPC's now have potions, in fully customizable rarity levels.
Additional customization of a range of game settings (optional, requires INI edits).
A randomized spawn system for causing chaos in your game (potentially unstable and disabled by default).
This thread contains very useful information regarding ASIS blocklists
Compatibility
The mod uses an.ini file in order to customize itself to be compatible with almost any other mod. All instructions are in the readme.
There are also available some supplementary/complementary mods/files for ASIS, all on the nexus:
ASIS Improved INI files
SkyRe ASIS.ini files so that both mods will play nice
ASIS Falmer Vampire fix which prevents Falmer vampires from spawning with regular Falmer when using ASIS.
Organized Bandits in Skyrim (OBIS) v 1.61h by Indigoblade
Not a combat mod per se but included here as some actors have unique attacks added by the mod author.
There is also OBIS Redone which is a visual overhaul to OBIS and requires OBIS to work.
Enhanced High-Level Gameplay v 0.8 by EricW0
Increases level caps for most enemies therefore most enemies will continue to auto-level based on the Skyrim auto-levelling system.
Compatible with all dragon mods.
Automatic Variants v1.42.1 by Plutoman101
Drag and drop alternative creature textures and have them dynamically applied in game
Compatible with all mods
Horsemen – Mounted Combat Enhancement v 1.1 by rongphale
Requirements: SKSE (2nd module only)
Scripts: N
Perks: N
Modular: Y
Synopsis
Enhances vanilla mounted combat for all actors and provides two combat modes: Swing and Stab
Enables mounted combat for up to 2 followers; 5 horsemen can battle simultaneously
If mount is running, actor can charge with a spear which can also be thrust at opponent
Spells can be cast from horseback
NPCs will immersively respond to varying combat situations
Compatibility
Thoroughly tested with Ultimate Follower Overhaul
Compatible with Convenient Horses if this mod loaded after CH
Any mod that alters an NPC/follower whilst riding and following player may not be compatible
Mixed Unit Tactics – Dawnguard Edition – Skyrim meets RTS v3.0 by flexcreator
Requirements: Skyrim 1.9.32
Synopsis
Designed as the ultimate commander experience, MUT is much more than a follower mod – in fact it isn’t even designed to be one. It creates a framework the player can use to form groups of autonomous units, each led by their own leader and capable of carrying out a variety of orders. The player can have up to 120 followers in a party. The player can also command units from the back of a dragon AND in vampire lord form.
The mod author has created two videos which are on the nexus mod page which show exactly what the mod does.
Compatibility
§ According to author, compatible with everything |
Public Safety Standards and Training wins national praise for holding police officers accountable for bad behavior. Academics, journalists and regulators in other states describe the department as a model.
But an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found that state regulators took no action to sideline dozens of officers fired for chronically inept police work. Or worse.
The department let fired officers remain eligible to work even after they accumulated records of brutality, recklessness, shoddy investigations and anger management problems.
Regulators quietly closed one case after an officer was fired for using excessive force on two handcuffed suspects and for driving 120 mph, at night, through a construction zone. They closed the case of another fired officer whose disciplinary records show he botched investigations, refused to finish police reports, failed to show up at court proceedings, abused sick time and earned a reputation for being volatile and rude.
Regulators have chosen to shy away from some of the public's greatest concerns about policing, interviews with agency officials show.
They don't think it's their job to punish officers for brutality.
They don't think it's their job to punish officers for incompetence.
They don't think it's their job to even contemplate punishing officers who haven't been convicted of a crime or who haven't lost their jobs.
They hardly ever perform their own investigations. The department employs only two investigators for the more than 10,000 police officers, corrections officers, dispatchers and parole and probation officers in the state. The investigators rely on documents that employers send them and almost never follow up once those documents arrive. Some police departments do a better job of investigating their own than others. As a result, officers are not held to the same standard across the state.
From left: the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training board chair, Marion County Sheriff Jason Myers; the department's director, Eriks Gabliks; Oregon State Police Superintendent Travis Hampton, who is a board member; and Jeffrey Hering of the Tigard Police Department, another board member. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Like doctors, lawyers and teachers, police officers must receive the state's blessing to work in Oregon. The department certifies officers who have completed minimum training, and it has the authority to take away their certifications for any misconduct afterward. An officer decertified in Oregon could get certified elsewhere, but police departments in other states can see the red flag if they look for it.
State certifying agencies could be the vanguard of police accountability in an era when many police departments, prosecutors and the U.S. Justice Department show little appetite for second-guessing cops.
The Oregonian/OregonLive wanted to know how the state's reputation as a national leader compared to reality.
Reporters analyzed three databases and more than 10,000 pages of documents from the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. The department didn't turn the records over easily. Reporters successfully appealed to the state Attorney General's Office 10 times to force access to documents and data.
Among the findings:
The department considers incompetence something for chiefs and sheriffs to deal with, not state regulators. The department's staff closed cases when officers were fired after sleeping on duty, repeatedly failing to seize or log evidence, or showing up to work drunk. They closed the books on a Portland crime scene investigator, even though the city's Police Bureau found he refused to go to a homicide scene to process evidence with other investigators and, separately, attended a birthday party outside the city while on the clock.
The department won't decertify officers for brutality unless they are criminally convicted. People filed hundreds of complaints alleging excessive force by Oregon officers from 2013 through 2016. But of the officers who came before regulators during the period, only one was convicted for it. Even a conviction won't bar an officer from service permanently. Regulators recently allowed a decertified Clackamas County sheriff's deputy to re-apply for police work eight years after he was convicted for choking a teenager while on duty.
Patterns of bad behavior can go unknown or unpunished, even when an officer's record is exceptionally lengthy. A Clatsop County deputy was allowed to keep his certification despite a history thousands of pages long that featured write-ups for extremely fast driving, unsettling comments and sloppy evidence practices. The deputy's troubles, according to the county's attorney, included at least seven on-duty crashes, nine formal reprimands and 62 memos criticizing his attitude and performance.
Training for law enforcement at the Oregon Public Safety Academy in Salem involves several hours in a mock village. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Oregon does well in national comparisons for stripping problem officers of their powers. In 2015, Oregon ranked 11th in the rate of officers who were decertified, a survey by Seattle University professor Matthew Hickman showed.
The bar is low. Oregon routinely decertifies officers when they've committed a crime and punishes many even without a criminal conviction. Some states act only on felonies. A few have no mechanism at all for ousting bad officers.
The national rankings say nothing about the cases that states choose to drop.
Records show that Oregon regulators took no action in about half of the 255 cases that they closed from 2013 through 2016 involving certified police officers. Most of those cases ended quietly.
More than 100 cases against officers slid back into the filing drawer. Each was labeled "administrative closure." Cases with this designation are all but invisible to outsiders, almost never reviewed in a public meeting.
Although state law requires department officials to issue a report after any investigation, the reports they write for administrative closures tend to offer few details. A handwritten explanation on one reads, in its entirety, "Performance issues only."
Because the department wanted thousands of dollars to provide case files underlying these cryptic conclusions, the newsroom focused its records requests on 40 officers who stayed certified after being fired. State law says the department must decertify anyone fired for cause. Yet the department interprets "for cause" so narrowly that 57 percent of fired officers stayed eligible to carry a gun and a badge elsewhere in Oregon.
Law enforcement officers in Oregon undergo hours of scenario-based training in a mock village at the Oregon Public Safety Academy. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
The agency's records showed serious concerns prompted many of the firings. For example, some fired officers who stayed certified were feared to be a risk of workplace violence. One officer's supervisor said he started wearing a ballistic vest because he feared the officer was unstable.
Oregon revokes the credentials of less than 1 percent of the state's 6,300 officers each year. The department's director, Eriks Gabliks, said he's comfortable with that number.
Eriks Gabliks (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
"Most of the men and women that put on a uniform and put on a badge do the right thing every day for the right reasons, serving their communities," he said. "But our process is in place to address those people that don't. And that's a very small number of people."
If the public wants the state to take a more active role, the Legislature needs to give the department more money, said Gabliks, who's led the department since 2009.
The office of Gov. Kate Brown, who has the power to appoint the agency's director, did not answer repeated requests to interview her about The Oregonian/OregonLive's findings.
But one powerful state senator is ready to publicly take on the issue.
"If they are not ensuring that an officer is still qualified and has not abused his or her power, how do we assure the general public that they're safe?" said Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was shocked that the department has just two investigators to cover law enforcement and dispatchers.
After Prozanski learned of the newsroom's findings, he said he plans to hold hearings about whether the department has adequate statutory authority to do its job and whether it's providing enough oversight.
Shaymond Michelson thinks it's clear the department is not.
When the officer who beat him in the jail was fired, it seemed like a victory. The officer could not do the same to anyone else, he and his fiancee thought.
"Unbeknownst to most of us, we didn't realize that letting him go didn't mean that he couldn't become an officer somewhere else," Michelson said.
Charles Caruso is now a sheriff's deputy in California. Neither he nor his new boss, the sheriff in Contra Costa County, answered requests for comment.
***
The headquarters of the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training is at the state's police academy, a 236-acre campus surrounded by two prisons and a jail on the rural edge of Salem.
A memorial to fallen officers sits at its entrance. Cadets in plain blue uniforms often file by. It feels like a police station. People have to be buzzed in to attend a public meeting.
The Oregon Fallen Law Enforcement Memorial is located at the entrance to the headquarters of the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Ensconced here, the department's leaders decide what sort of person should be a police officer and what should cost someone the right to a badge.
The oversight agency has always been heavily shaped by police.
The organizational chart on the agency's website shows 35,000 certified police, fire and other professionals at the very top, labeled "constituents."
By statute, 20 of the 23 voting members on the department's governing board come from the public safety professions that the state regulates. The board also includes one city administrator, one district attorney and one person who represents the public.
Police and prosecutors played an active role in persuading the Oregon Legislature to create the organization in the 1960s.
At the time, the American public, attorneys and the federal government were pressing for police to professionalize. Groundless arrests and police brutality sparked riots in African American neighborhoods across the country. Part of the concern, said DePauw University historian Max Felker-Kantor, was that African American residents had nowhere to go with their complaints except back to the officers they feared.
Lawmakers gave Oregon's Board on Police Standards and Training the power to grant certificates to officers in 1967. They called on the board to set "reasonable minimum standards of physical, emotional, intellectual and moral fitness."
Two years later, lawmakers gave the board the power to take certifications away, under two conditions: if an officer was fired for cause or lied on an application.
Legislators over the years added felonies and certain misdemeanors as grounds for stripping officers of their certifications. Lawmakers also added corrections officers, parole and probation officers, dispatchers, firefighters and private security officers to the professions the board regulates.
The result was one of the most expansive certification laws in the country.
But regulators interpret their role to be far more limited than the law allows.
Oregon law enforcement officers undergo training at the Oregon Public Safety Academy's mock village. Here, an officer enters a home and searches the rooms. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Except for when officers face criminal charges, Oregon regulators wait for an officer's employer to make the first move. Agency officials won't open a case unless an officer has been fired, left work as part of a settlement agreement, or quit in connection with a misconduct investigation. They'll wait until employment appeals are complete before they decide what to do.
The agency's staff are gatekeepers. They can conclude many cases on their own.
Other cases are sent to the Police Policy Committee, an advisory committee of sheriffs, police chiefs and union representatives. The committee makes a recommendation to the board, which has the last say.
Department officials focus their power to end careers on punishing failings of "moral fitness," which they describe as officers intentionally doing bad things.
It's a perspective that leaves out a wide array of behavior many people would find unacceptable for a police officer.
***
The final straw with Officer Evin Eustice was a high-speed chase one night in June 2012 on the Sunset Highway. He caught a BMW on radar going 20 mph over the speed limit and took off after it. The cars flashed through the highway's single open lane at 120 mph, stunning construction workers and rumbling their boom trucks.
Within the Beaverton Police Department, Eustice was known for writing a lot of tickets and making a lot of arrests. But he also got in trouble for going too far.
Officer Evin Eustice of the St. Helens Police Department readies his patrol car before beginning an early morning shift. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
A supervisor once called him out for using force more often than his fellow officers on the graveyard shift.
He was suspended one day without pay for using a Taser on a handcuffed man who'd already been shocked and was kneeling. He was suspended another day for punching a handcuffed man in the face. The two instances occurred within three days in 2011.
Supervisors were skeptical of his explanations: Eustice said he feared one handcuffed man would stand up and the other would spit blood on him. He also told investigators that punching came naturally because he'd trained for many years as a boxer.
"'Hey, if we need to fight, let's fight,'" Eustice said in a recent interview, describing his attitude at the time. "I'm the police. I'm here to fight if I have to. It definitely wasn't something that I shied away from."
Eustice said he had never been intentionally misleading with supervisors.
Officer Evin Eustice punched a handcuffed man, William Young, in April 2011, according to an internal investigation.
The chief, Geoff Spalding, decided the chase through the construction zone would be the end of Eustice's five-year career in Beaverton. Spalding fired him.
"Your displayed pattern of poor judgment has the potential to expose the City to substantial liability," Spalding wrote in his termination letter.
Eustice had reached 130 mph before he turned his lights and siren on, according to his police report. He hit a top speed of 144. Spalding found the chase unacceptably dangerous to everyone involved.
The department's policies had a word for Eustice's repeated rule-breaking, which Spalding invoked: "incompetent." A labor arbitrator backed the firing.
But when the case reached the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, officials arrived at a very different conclusion.
Investigator Kristen Hibberds found Eustice's high-speed pursuit to be "in the best interest of public safety." In a memo, she said the officer "excelled" at investigating drunken drivers and had "outstanding" arrest and citation stats. Her memo noted his use of force violations but took no position on them.
In the two years between his firing and the department closing his case, the department had certified Eustice to work as a security guard. Facing the possibility that regulators would make him ineligible for other policing jobs, he asked Spalding out to lunch. The man who fired Eustice agreed to write a letter to the state saying the 31-year-old had matured.
The department closed the case administratively. Eustice kept his state certification.
<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4328610-Eustice-Termination-Letter/annotations/393420.html">View note</a>
Hibberds didn't answer requests for comment. Spalding, in an interview, stood by his letter vouching for Eustice.
Eustice said in hindsight he thinks it would have been fair for the state to sideline him temporarily. But he's glad his prayers were answered instead. He considers policing his calling.
"I want to be out here, and I want to do exactly what I did before, as far as being a hard charger and putting people in handcuffs," Eustice said. "But I want to do it the right way."
After applying unsuccessfully for jobs at big police departments in the Portland suburbs, Eustice got hired in St. Helens, population 13,000. The chief, in an interview, said he knew about Eustice's history and decided to give him a chance. He said he needed an officer like Eustice -- someone seasoned and tested, who could teach other officers from personal experience.
Officer Evin Eustice of the St. Helens Police Department talks with a woman whose family member was suffering a crisis. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
***
The state's decision not to go after officers fired for poor job performance is the main reason fired officers like Eustice stay eligible to take other jobs, The Oregonian/OregonLive's analysis found. Among fired officers who stayed certified, more than two-thirds were terminated for performance problems.
Linsay Hale, the department's director of professional standards, said a state-level review of the chase that got Eustice fired wasn't necessary.
"That individual officer made a procedural decision in the heat of the moment," Hale said, "and that typically is not something that we should ever be looking at."
As for his prior discipline problems, she said her department only considers the action that immediately precipitated a firing.
Oregon law since 1969 has said officers discharged for cause must lose their certifications. Department officials get to interpret what "for cause" means.
Until very recently, being fired for incompetence qualified. The department's rules defined incompetence as "a demonstrated lack of ability to perform the essential tasks of a public safety professional that remedial measures have been unable to correct."
But agency officials said that in practice, they don't decertify for incompetence. Hale said the state Department of Justice recently concluded her agency has no statutory authority to revoke police certifications based on incompetence alone. She said the rule defining incompetence was a mistake, created before she joined the agency in 2010.
The Oregon Public Safety Academy has a mock village to provide officers with realistic, scenario-based training. (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Incompetence is out of bounds for decertification, she said, because it's not an issue of moral fitness, which she says comes down to intent.
"Moral fitness lends itself to someone who's misbehaving knowingly," Hale said. "If I'm incapable, unable to do my job, that's a competency issue."
But she acknowledged no court has ruled on the question. Four legal experts told The Oregonian/OregonLive they could find nothing in Oregon statute that prevents the state from deciding to decertify officers for incompetence.
Other states do look at incompetence as grounds for revocation. New York cites the word specifically. Arizona says not only malfeasance but also "misfeasance" and "nonfeasance" can cost officers their state endorsement.
The International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training makes incompetence grounds for decertification or suspension in its model rules.
Improving the level of competence among police officers, academic experts say, was the very justification for creating state certification boards over the decades.
***
Charles Caruso walked into the boardroom at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training in Salem. It was Aug. 21, 2014, and a committee of police chiefs, sheriffs and union officers would recommend to the department's board whether he should lose his policing career for the beating of Shaymond Michelson at the Lane County Jail.
Caruso's wife and a union representative from the Eugene Police Department also were there.
Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker, who was the committee chairman, started the meeting shortly after 10 a.m.
Committee members unanimously recommended barring a former Bend lieutenant from police work in Oregon for life. They found that he tried to deceive the officers investigating him for repeatedly having sex on duty.
Caruso's case came next.
The officer had arrested Michelson on accusations that he drove drunk, hit a concrete barrier with his car and inappropriately touched teenage girls at a party. He was also charged with attempted assault on a police officer. Michelson pleaded guilty, he says, because he couldn't remember what happened. The charges were later dismissed when a prosecutor learned Eugene police were investigating whether Caruso had used excessive force.
Committee members had read a report written by state investigator Leon Colas, who reviewed the criminal investigation into Caruso and the surveillance footage of him throwing down Michelson and punching him six times while he was handcuffed.
Colas agreed with Scott McKee, the criminal investigator: Caruso, in his police report, had described a struggle with Michelson that never happened.
Colas found Caruso's actions involved misconduct, gross misconduct, misuse of authority, disregard for the rights of others and dishonesty -- all but one of the six possible grounds that the committee considered for decertifying an officer.
"It appears to me that Caruso was misrepresenting the facts to try to justify his treatment of the prisoner," Colas wrote.
Michelson did not injure the deputy with his kick. But even if the handcuffed man had connected, Caruso's force was still "improper and excessive," Colas wrote. "Caruso was responsible for his prisoner's safety, and he failed in his fundamental duty to protect the man."
Read the documents
for three officers whose cases were described in this story.
Colas said the state academy didn't teach officers to do what Caruso did. His technique to gain control "violated the practices and standards generally followed in the Oregon public safety profession," wrote Colas, who did not respond to requests for comment.
Caruso said in a six-page letter to the committee that his academy training was exactly what he drew from during his interaction with Michelson. Both the academy and Eugene police, he said, taught him that "handcuffed people are dangerous."
"I reacted to the threat's actions," he wrote.
The committee unanimously rejected Colas' report.
In fights, committee members said, officers often have to use tactics that the state did not teach them. Malheur County Sheriff Brian Wolfe told Colas to take the training section out of his report and bring the case back for a second look.
But Caruso's case didn't come back.
Committee chairman Barker, the department's director and the director of professional standards decided to close the case, no action taken.
"The consensus was that we should be very cautious in taking use of force cases," Colas wrote in a memo closing the case.
***
A dozen of the state's largest police departments and sheriff's offices gave The Oregonian/OregonLive data on excessive force complaints from 2013 through last year. The law enforcement agencies investigated at least 340 allegations and sustained 26.
Outside authorities have found that police departments across the country have problems with excessive force. Portland police have twice come under federal oversight because of it. The U.S. Justice Department concluded in 2012 that the Portland Police Bureau had a pattern or practice of excessive force against people with mental illness.
Oregonians repeatedly have taken to the streets to say they don't trust the court system to hold officers accountable. The Justice Department's action against Portland followed a grand jury's decision not to indict Officer Ron Frashour, who fatally shot a distraught young African American man in the back in 2010. Frashour was fired but reinstated after challenging his termination.
Aaron Campbell 2010 shooting 11 Gallery: Aaron Campbell 2010 shooting
Despite these concerns, Oregon regulators don't consider police excessive force something they should review independently. It doesn't amount to a failing of moral fitness, they say.
"We're not the use of force regulatory agency," said Gabliks, the department's director.
Interviewed on the fourth day of protests in St. Louis over the acquittal of a white officer accused of murdering a black man, he said no one in the 50-year history of his organization has called on it to address police brutality.
Presented with the possibility that Oregonians believe excessive force should be the state oversight agency's business, Gabliks sighed.
"Does that mean the public doesn't trust the system that we currently have with the judicial system?" he asked.
After Caruso's case fizzled, regulators decided that the only time they should take action against an officer who has used excessive force is if he or she is convicted in court.
Prosecutions for police brutality are rare. District attorneys work with police every day and are reluctant to criticize them. Cities have a conflict in investigating allegations of police brutality because victims may use the results as evidence in a lawsuit.
Even when prosecutors want to bring criminal charges, the standard of proof is high. Winning a case requires not simply proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but also looking at the facts through the eyes of a reasonable officer at the scene. Oregon licensing and certification agencies, by contrast, need to prove misconduct only by a preponderance of the evidence, a much lower bar.
The only Oregon officer decertified for excessive force from 2014 through 2016 was Eugene Officer John Sharlow. Like Officer Caruso, Sharlow threw a handcuffed suspect to the ground at the Lane County Jail. The key difference for regulators: Sharlow was convicted of first-degree official misconduct and fourth-degree assault, whereas Caruso was charged with nothing.
Jason Myers (Photo by Beth Nakamura)
Kimberly McCullough, the legislative director of the ACLU of Oregon, said the state's belief that use of force is not an issue to take on was "odd and disconcerting and something I think the Oregon public would be shocked to find out."
Even the chairman of the state's board, Marion County Sheriff Jason Myers, said he thinks regulators should examine the case of any officer who is fired or quits because of an excessive force investigation.
That's something Georgia does.
If a police department tells state officials about an officer disciplined for excessive force, the state will review it, said Ken Vance, the head of Georgia's regulatory agency.
"We're going to look at things like that," Vance said. "Because they were taught better."
***
Officer Kurt Van Meter had two competing interests: police work and a budding singing career. He got two crossed revolvers inked on his forearm to display a "reverence to the Western lifestyle" and outlaw country music, he told his chief.
He refused to complete reports or take advice from his sergeant, blaming his defiance on the cowboy in him, the sergeant wrote in a memo.
An experienced SWAT officer and firearms instructor for the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, he had come to the Hillsboro Police Department from the Benton County Sheriff's Office in the spring of 2007.
He was reprimanded in December 2009 when a sergeant said he caught him speed-racing on Northeast Cornell Road.
But the real trouble started years later, as his country music career began to take off.
In February 2012, Van Meter missed two court appearances in a single day, according to a disciplinary memo. The memo said that because Van Meter didn't show up, a drug case was dismissed.
Van Meter called in sick the day after his album release concert at Duke's Country Bar and Grill that May. He insisted he was vomiting due to illness but later admitted to drinking too much after the concert, according to a written reprimand.
Kurt Van Meter performing at the Bi-Mart Willamette Country Music Festival in Brownsville in 2014. (Photo by Jesse Skoubo | Albany Democrat-Herald)
He wasn't following policies and wasn't turning in reports, performance reviews show. He let one report sit unfinished for 49 days. Van Meter told supervisors he was more productive than his stats suggested.
In 2013, things got worse. Van Meter's bosses wrote that he failed to clean his gun and failed to properly investigate hit and run and shoplifting cases. He suspended the cases without trying to find a suspect, even though witnesses gave him license plate numbers both times, according to a reprimand written by his supervisor. His sergeant scolded him for "failing to perform the duties and expectations of a police officer."
"In choosing not to investigate certain crimes, you are violating the public's trust," the sergeant wrote. He reprimanded Van Meter for dereliction of duty.
Van Meter was put on a work performance plan. Two days later he was in trouble again.
Fired, But Fit for Duty
Dozens of Oregon police officers stay eligible to carry a gun and a badge even after being fired for chronically inept police work or worse, an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.
In a forgery case, he arrived an hour late for a grand jury appearance and didn't bring the evidence, a disciplinary letter said. He had an angry outburst in front of the victim and the prosecutor and slammed the door, muttering on his way to fetch the evidence. A sergeant reported seeing him at a teriyaki restaurant when he should have been in court.
Van Meter argued with his sergeant about the wording of his performance plan, the sergeant wrote in a memo. Van Meter floated the possibility that he was suffering psychological trauma from a chase of a homicide suspect, years before, in which the suspect opened fire. The sergeant said that when he started to recommend counseling, Van Meter interrupted with an expletive.
Van Meter scored 1s and 2s out of 5 in some measures on a performance evaluation. Hillsboro placed him on a last-chance agreement in October 2013.
He didn't take a report on an alleged felony theft and issued a ticket in a crash without interviewing any drivers, his bosses wrote. His sergeant said Van Meter refused to complete police reports and responded defensively when told that his report on a sex abuse investigation was inadequate.
So on Nov. 12, 2013, Hillsboro police fired him. With the help of the union, he tried to negotiate a resignation. The deputy chief said no.
<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4329633-VanMeter-Termination/annotations/393502.html">View note</a>
But when state regulators looked at Van Meter's firing, they saw no reason Van Meter should lose his state certification. With no written explanation, they closed his case in June 2014.
<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4329633-VanMeter-Termination/annotations/393501.html">View note</a>
Van Meter poured more energy into his music. He took the stage ahead of Montgomery Gentry and Gary Allan at the 2014 Bi-Mart Willamette Country Music Festival, which an estimated 18,000 people attended.
Van Meter played his original, "Good at Bein' Bad." He wore a black cowboy hat.
It wasn't long before he found his way back to police work. Last year, he got a job in Dallas, Oregon.
Problems emerged before Van Meter finished his probationary period, Chief Tom Simpson wrote in an email to state regulators. Simpson wrote that Van Meter knew a performance review would likely end with his termination.
In November of this year, Van Meter opted to quit instead. He left with a month of severance pay. He declined to comment for this story.
A state investigator classified Van Meter's resignation as performance-related, nothing the state would review.
His certification remains in good standing.
-- Carli Brosseau and Rebecca Woolington
Find more coverage at "Fired, But Fit for Duty."Amphibious 1000 is a US $500 million semi-submerged resort project planned for a protected marine area on the coast of Qatar and designed by the Italian architectural firm GZDG (Giancarlo Zema Design Group). The resort will be divided into two sections of land and sea and will feature residential buildings as well, offices, a central marine park, floating waterways and underwater marine galleries that all form a semi circle around a central tower that will host a panoramic restaurant.
The resort would be like a large aquatic creature that stretches right into the sea with the sea section featuring semi emerged hotels resembling anchored superyachts. Each of these hotels will have 75 luxury suites positioned around the perimeter of the building with access to private terraces and underwater passageways with views of the central marine park that connect the hotel rooms.
The main lobby of the resort will be focused around an interactive sea life museum featuring water exhibitions galleries, large aquariums and a glass passageway leading to the underwater observatory. Guests could travel around the resort in electric vehicles or could jump on board of one of the 20 meter aluminum yachts with hydrogen engines and underwater viewing globes.
Amphibious 1000 will also feature 80 floating suites called “Jelly-fish” with underwater viewing decks looking upon an artificial reef bed. A relaxation room will sit at the very top of the suite at 5.6 meters above sea levels and at 3.5 meters above sea levels the sleeping quarters and bathrooms will be. At 1.4 meters the area is for daytime use with a kitchen and bathroom and heading below deck and semi submerged at 0.8 above sea level the guest rooms and bathrooms will be. At 3 meters below sea level guests could enjoy their own private aquarium lounge.
The Italian architecture company Giancarlo Zema Design Group is based in Rome and specializes in designing semi submerged structures, houseboats and yachts.
[Gizmag]Millions of Android devices are at risk yet again after researchers found a new way to exploit an older vulnerability that was previously patched by Google.
NorthBit, based in Herzliya, Israel, published a paper outlining Metaphor, a nickname for a new weakness they found in Stagefright, Android's mediaserver and multimedia library.
The attack is effective against devices running Android versions 2.2 through 4.0 and 5.0 and 5.1, NorthBit said.
The company said its attack works best on Google's Nexus 5 with stock ROM, and with some modifications for HTC's One, LG's G3 and Samsung's S5.
The attack is an extension of other ones developed for CVE-2015-3864, a remote code execution vulnerability which has been patched twice by Google.
The security company Zimperium found the original Stagefright flaws in early 2015, which affected millions of devices. Google has since had to repeatedly issue patches and fixes for problems in Stagefright that researchers continue to find.
Zuk Avraham, CTO and founder of Zimperium, said via email his company withheld publishing a second exploit it developed for Stagefright due to the risk it posed and the large number of devices that could still be affected.
But NorthBit's research paper "provides enough details for professional hacking groups to complete a fully working and reliable exploit," he said.
NorthBit published a video of a successful attack, which requires a bit of social engineering. The victim has to be tricked into clicking on a link and then staying on that Web page for some time while the exploit runs. It can take between a few seconds to up to two minutes for the exploit to finish its work.
In the video, the victim, who is using a Nexus 6, opens a link leading to cat photos, while NorthBit shows the exploit churning away.
On Android versions 5.0 and 5.1, the exploit will bypass ASLR (address space layout randomization), a defense intended to make exploitation more difficult.
NorthBit estimated about 235,000,000 Android devices run versions 5.0 and 5.1, and about 40,000,000 devices run some 2.x version of Android without ASLR.
"Looking at these numbers, it's hard to comprehend how many devices are potentially vulnerable," NorthBit wrote.
Partly in response to danger posed by Stagefright, Google said in August it would move to a monthly patching schedule and work closer with major Android vendors to ensure more prompt patching.
Google will likely quickly issue a patch, wrote Chris Eng, vice president of research with Veracode, in an email. But the distribution of Stagefright patches has been spotty.
"Patching |
Many victims are seriously undermined and afraid, fearing for their safety and sometimes even their lives. Without a bruise or a scar they can be afraid to speak out but this has to change.
“We’re well prepared here in Northumbria and take violence against women and girls extremely seriously. Our officers, of all ranks, have been the first in the country to be fully trained in this field. They will now be able to put their skills and knowledge to good use, recognising the signs, helping victims and seeking convictions for this appalling behaviour.”A FRIENDLY TO BE PLAYED IN AZERBAIJAN ON THE 30TH OF APRIL Baku will host Atletico Madrid The Atletico squad will face an Azeri All-Stars team next Tuesday April 30th at 20:00pm (local time) at the Tofig Bakhramov Republican Stadium in Baku.
Atletico Madrid will play a friendly next Tuesday April the 30th against a combined Azeris side in Baku. The meeting will be held at the Tofig Bakhramov Republican Stadium in the capital from 20:00 local time (17:00h. Spanish time).
The friendly match against the best players in the country is part of an agreement between Club Atlético de Madrid and Azerbaijan, who has been the club shirt sponsors for a few months now.
This trip also complements the expansion strategy of Atletico Madrid, the club is looking to introduce its brand in to new markets in order to identify opportunities for business growth for the international club.
In this area, Atletico Madrid has been strengthening ties with lots of people and countries. This trip to Baku serves the main objective of promoting the team through the image of Azerbaijan in the world and spreading the resources, benefits and the rich culture of the Land of Fire, as well as to promote bilateral relations between Spain and Azerbaijan.
Throughout the visit, the delegation will take part in different sporting activities, social and institutional, as s the norm when the club travels outside of Spain.Article Tools Font size – + Share This
JASON FARMER / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Angie Lee of Bloomsburg dances with her cousin, Keely Rose, 3, of Carbondale, to the music of Serene Green during the NEPA Cannabis Rally at Nay Aug Park in Scranton on Sunday.
Jeff Zick and hundreds of other cannabis activists who met at Scranton’s Nay Aug Park on Sunday are sick of the label that’s been slapped on them for decades.
On the day before April 20, which is widely known as “4/20” and a day to celebrate cannabis, proponents of marijuana legalization gathered for the NEPA Cannabis Rally to celebrate a plant they believe would revitalize the health care, manufacturing and agricultural industries — if only it were legal.
“It’s a natural approach to a lot of our problems,” said Mr. Zick, the event organizer.
He applauded the hundreds behind him who listened, some dancing, to a bluegrass string band playing fast tunes on the gazebo.
“For people to come out right now and show their faces out here in public is a big thing,” Mr. Zick said. “It’s a big deal for the First Amendment... that we’re coming out here and we’re not afraid. We’re sick of the oppression, and we’re ready for a new approach.”
A pitch for hemp
Carl Romanelli, chairman of the Luzerne County Green Party, told the crowd that the hemp plant, a cannabis variety, has dozens of uses as a food supplement and a raw material for textiles and paper that grows faster and produces more than traditional timber forests and cotton farms.
“Hemp grows completely naturally, even in marginal soil, without need for fertilizers or pesticides,” Mr. Romanelli told the cheering crowd. “Its only known enemy is prohibition.”
Legislative issues
Growing and using cannabis is illegal in Pennsylvania, though several bills in the state Senate could change that.
Senate Bill 3 would allow it to be used as a medicine, and Senate Bill 528 would regulate the use of marijuana similarly to alcohol.
Area reggae musician George Wesley said he has been a “victim” of the war on marijuana, which he perceives as misplaced aggression and a distraction from helping a population addicted to heroin and methamphetamine.
“We have a severe hard-drug problem in the area that’s causing a lot of crime and violence. People talk about marijuana being a gateway, but they forget that it’s a gateway out of things,” Mr. Wesley said. “They need a safe natural alternative.”
Contact the writer:
joconnell@timesshamrock.com, @jon_oc on TwitterWith Shaquille O’Neal set to get his jersey retired on Tuesday night at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, there’s a possibility things might get a bit awkward. Shaq is known for his larger than life attitude, but also for the various feuds and skirmishes he was involved in during his NBA career. During the ceremony on Tuesday, Dwight Howard and Kobe Bryant will both be in attendance, for obvious reasons.
——–Celebrate Shaq’s jersey retirement with this Shaquille O’Neal wallpaper!——–
But what about that feud between Kobe and Shaq? You know, the one that resulted in Shaq getting shipped to Miami for Lamar Odom and a bag of Skittles and nearly ostracized Kobe from the Laker community.
Here’s a look back at the timeline of some of the more notable moments in the Kobe/Shaq feud, as we have the chance to (finally) lay it to rest tonight at Staples.
1996: Kobe, Shaq both join Lakers.
1998: Shaq reportedly jealous of Kobe’s jersey sales, accuses Kobe of playing selfish basketball.
1999-2000: Shaq mocks Kobe’s crossover/turnovers during All-Star Game introductions; states it’s an inside joke between him and Kobe. Lakers still manage to win first of three consecutive NBA championships.
2000-01: Shaq, Kobe feud openly during season after Shaq comes into camp out of shape. Kobe states new roster for change in play; Shaq still wants the ball to run through him in the post. Phil Jackson calls them both “juvenile.” Team cruises through the playoffs, prompting Shaq to call Bryant his “idol” following win in Game 1 of Western Conference Finals.
2001-02: Shaq, Kobe play nice for most of the season. Ultimately ends in team’s third consecutive championship.
2002-03: Team starts slow (11-19), Shaq drops “company time” line as Phil Jackson urges Kobe to be more aggressive. Results in strong numbers for Kobe, but Shaq’s inability to get healthy results in poor playoff seeding and loss to Spurs, ending championship run.
2003-04: Kobe deals with rape accusations during the summer as team signs Karl Malone, Gary Payton. Kobe reportedly warns Phil Jackson that if Shaq starts press war again Kobe won’t hesitate to fire back. Shaq says “the full team is here” even though Bryant wasn’t at training camp, and says he wants to be healthy for his teammates, but doesn’t mention Bryant on that list.
Shaq says Malone, Payton came to L.A. for one player, not two, dismissing Kobe. Also states that Bryant should focus on distributing rather than shooting while recovering from his knee injury. Kobe responds that he knows how to play guard and that Shaq should focus on playing in the post. Shaq indicates that Bryant should opt-out of his contract because he doesn’t plan on leaving Los Angeles. Jackson tells them both to shut up.
Brian Shaw mediates argument between Shaq, Bryant, after O’Neal yells “pay me” to Dr. Buss after a preseason dunk. Bryant was upset at O’Neal for not attempting to reach out during his legal troubles, stating that Shaq was “supposed to be my friend.” Shaw asks Bryant why he doesn’t attend team dinners or events if that’s the case, even questioning Bryant not inviting teammates to his wedding. Phil Jackson fines Kobe for comments made to the press. Ultimately Kobe, Shaq and the Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons in five games in the NBA Finals.
Following the season, the feud reaches a boiling point. L.A. doesn’t bring back Phil Jackson, and Mitch Kupchak says he would consider trading O’Neal, prompting Shaq to demand a trade. The team ultimately moves Shaq to Miami, and after flirting with the Clippers, Bryant signs a long-term extension with the Lakers.
2004-05: Shaq’s Heat face Kobe’s Lakers on Christmas Day, registering highest rated regular season NBA game since 1998. Shaq asks what happens to a Corvette (Bryant) that runs into a brick wall (Shaq) when discussing the first time Kobe attacks the basket. Ultimately Miami beats L.A. twice during the regular season.
Next Page: Kobe Passes Shaq, Duo Eventually Buries HatchetBy Alex Kotch
Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz turned heads when he introduced a bill on Feb. 3 to "completely abolish" the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"Today, the American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats," Gaetz told fellow GOP lawmakers in an email reported by the Huffington Post "and the Environmental Protection Agency has become an extraordinary offender."
Rep. Gaetz's bill came the day after a Senate committee voted in favor of confirming Scott Pruitt, the fossil fuel-friendly attorney general of Oklahoma who has sued the EPA 14 times, to head the agency.
And like Pruitt, Rep. Gaetz and his three fellow sponsors of H.R. 861 have all benefited from campaign donations from oil, gas and coal companies and large electric utilities.
The four GOP representatives have raked in campaign cash from some of the biggest corporations peddling fossil fuels, including Koch Industries, Duke Energy, Chevron and ExxonMobil. What's more, an independent political spending group funded by an oil and gas company stepped in with ad buys to aid in Gaetz's recent U.S. House race.
Over their careers, these legislators appear to have responded in kind, pushing legislation favored by the industries reliant on fossil fuels. Here's who they are, how much they've received from the industry and what they've been up to in recent years.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
Since 2010, Gaetz's political campaigns have received $28,000 directly from fossil fuel companies and energy utilities, according to data compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. These donors include the corporate PACs of utilities including Duke Energy, Gulf Power, NextEra Energy, Progress Energy, Southern Company and Teco Energy; oil and gas companies Chevron, Exxon and Koch Industries; and individual donors including the CEO of Gulf Power and the CEO of Global Industries and Dore Energy.
In 2016, as Gaetz ran for his first term in Congress, a super PAC supporting him received a $100,000 donation from Harness Oil and Gas, a Texas-based company reportedly run by family friends. This super PAC, North Florida Neighbors, spent more than $460,000, the bulk of its total expenditures during that election cycle, supporting Gaetz.
As a Florida state legislator, Gaetz successfully fought the requirement that gas sold in the state contain a minimum percentage of ethanol, something he called "a feel-good attempt to use alternative energy."
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
Massie, a U.S. representative since 2012, was first elected with the backing of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, which heavily opposes environmental regulations and regularly questions whether humans are affecting the climate.
In his three congressional campaigns, Massie took in nearly $155,000 from companies working in various parts of the oil, gas and coal industries, including Alpha Natural Resources, Chevron, Duke Energy, Exxon, Halliburton and Koch Industries, as well as from CSX Corporation, a transportation company that operates trains carrying coal, oil, natural gas and frac sand, an essential material used in shale drilling.
From his position in Congress, Massie has attacked and attempted to weaken the EPA repeatedly. He co-sponsored a 2016 bill to shift how the EPA analyzes greenhouse gas emissions in favor of fossil fuel companies—a bill lobbied for by Marathon Petroleum (which has given him $20,000) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which raises doubt about human-caused climate change). Before that, he co-sponsored a 2015 resolution weakening an EPA rule under the Clean Air Act and a 2014 bill lowering EPA ambient air quality standards.
The Liberty for All Super PAC, funded mostly by the young, Texas-based millionaire investor John Ramsey, spent nearly $630,000 backing Massie for Congress in 2012. Unsurprisingly, Ramsey has "oil and gas ventures," according to his biography on the super PAC's website.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA)
Loudermilk's state and federal campaigns have received more than $60,000 from fossil fuel companies and trade associations, including Duke Energy, Exxon, Georgia Mining Association, Georgia Power, Koch Industries and Valero Energy.
In Congress, Loudermilk has co-sponsored several energy-related bills: a nuclear energy bill for which Duke Energy and Southern Company lobbied; a repeal of the U.S. crude oil export ban, which numerous fossil fuel companies, including BP, Chevron, Exxon, Marathon Oil and ConocoPhillips, lobbied in support of; and a bill challenging EPA greenhouse gas regulations, another piece of legislation oil and gas companies and utilities favored.
Both Loudermilk and Massie sit on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology—which has jurisdiction over the EPA, the Department of Energy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—and its subcommittee on oversight, key positions that would naturally attract the attention of fossil fuel companies.
Loudermilk's 2015 financial disclosure statement reveals that he received state funding to attend and speak at a "conservative policy summit" hosted by the climate change-denying Heritage Foundation, which has reportedly received $780,000 from ExxonMobil and nearly $6 million from Koch family foundations. Another speaker at the conference was Myron Ebell, the notorious climate change denier who led Trump's EPA transition team. Ebell crafted Trump's plan to hobble the EPA.
As a Georgia state senator, Loudermilk was on the communications and technology task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative bill mill that unites state legislators and big business representatives. ALEC has a history of producing templates for anti-environmental legislation involving climate change denial, promoting gas pipelines and attacking residential solar energy. In addition, ALEC is funded by many of the same fossil fuel corporations that donated to the campaigns of Loudermilk and his fellow legislators hoping to abolish the EPA: Chevron, CSX, Dominion, Duke Energy, Exxon and Koch Industries, to name a few.
Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS)
PACs and employees of companies in the energy and natural resources sector have given more than $265,000 to Palazzo's four federal election campaigns, which includes $168,000 from oil and gas companies. The fourth-largest donor is Mississippi Power, an electric utility owned by Southern Company that burns coal and natural gas and has given Palazzo's campaigns more than $34,000. Palazzo has also taken in $24,000 from Chevron, nearly $20,000 from Koch Industries and $19,000 from General Electric.
In 2015 Palazzo voted to oppose an EPA rule that increased emissions standards for coal-fired power plants and the year prior, he voted to halt defense spending on climate change initiatives and cut all funding for the Department of Energy's energy efficiency and renewable energy program. In previous years, Palazzo voted to speed up natural gas pipeline permits, allow state laws to supersede federal EPA laws regarding hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and cut funding to the EPA, among other measures.
While serving as Mississippi state representative, Palazzo was also a member of ALEC.
Rep. Gaetz's office declined to offer comment, while the other three representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
While their bill to kill the EPA has been receiving little support from either political party and is unlikely to pass, its mere existence marks the extent to which fossil fuel funding has the potential to influence elected officials. This bill joins an effort already underway among the GOP-controlled House, Senate and White House to roll back regulations to protect the environment and public health.
Congressional observers likely can expect to see more of the same from these four representatives in the future.
Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.The new history-making season of The Ultimate Fighter is only weeks away. But the 32 competitors of the first season to feature women as cast members and coaches have now been revealed in a FoxSports.com exclusive.
Article continues below...
Only sixteen of the male and female bantamweight (135lbs) fighters — from the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Sweden — will make it into the TUF House, where they will face-off in the toughest sports tournament on TV.
“This season of The Ultimate Fighter was monumental," said UFC president Dana White. "We had women as coaches and competitors — fighting and living together with the men — for the first time ever."
The series’ September 4 premiere will determine the eight men and eight women who will be divided into teams coached by UFC Women’s Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey and her arch-rival Miesha Tate.
The competitors are listed below in alphabetical order (Name, Professional MMA record, Age, Fighting Out Of):
Women’s Bantamweight Fighters
Shayna Baszler (15-8), 33, Sioux Fall, S.D.
A 10-year pro Baszler is one of the veteran fighters coming into this year’s The Ultimate Fighter. A good student who would earn a degree in religious studies and plays the cello to this day, Baszler says her wilder side is represented when she listens to heavy metal music and fights. Along with training twice-aday throughout the week, Shayna also coaches a women’s roller hockey team. Despite her decade in MMA, she says he’s going nowhere until she achieves her dream of having a career in the UFC.
Revelina Berto (3-1), 24, Winter Haven, Fla.
The sister of pound-for-pound champion boxer Andre and three other brothers who compete in MMA or wrestling, as well as the daughter of UFC 10 veteran Dieusel, it is safe to say Berto comes from a fighting family. The siblings call themselves “the Jackson Five of Fighting.” berto is now closer than ever to following in her father’s footsteps by reaching the UFC.
Jessamyn Duke (2-0, 1 NC), 27, Richmond, Ky.
Duke comes from an upper-class background, and parents hoped her upbringing would open doors to a career in modeling and acting. However, Duke wanted something more forher life. At first, she pursued a career in journalism — but after discovering MMA, she has trained and taught in gyms ever since. She’s in the gym for five plus hours daily. Duke hopes to achieve a UFC contract not only to compete at the pinnacle of the sport, but also to prove to her parents once and for all that modeling and acting were definitely not her calling.
Tonya Evinger (11-6), 32, Lake St. Louis, Mo.
Growing up with twin brothers, Evinger was a tomboy who wasn’t afraid to hang with the boys. A key player in female MMA since 2006, Evinger co-owns her own gym and also serves as a matchmaker for fights in St. Louis. She fought Gina Carano in 2007 — which was one of the first women’s fights to get major media attention. Evinger and Carano became good friends after the bout. An attack-minded fighter, Evinger enters TUF while on her best run of form in years.
Laura Howarth (4-0), 26, Hove, East Essex, ENG
Since the age of five, Laura Howarth has known she wanted to become a fighter. After being bullied in school, Howarth started taking karate and kickboxing lessons to learn to defend herself. The 26 year-old Brit now eats, sleeps and breathes the gym. Laura trains and coaches fulltime from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the ZT Fight School. She enjoys pushing her students to the limit. Her hero is her mother, who recently beat cancer.
Tara LaRosa (21-3), 35, Albuquerque, N.M.
A professional MMA fighter since 2002 and a medalist at ADCC Submission Wrestling World Championship, LaRosa is well-known to long-time fans. She describes herself as a “mean, tough, homegrown New Jersey farm girl.” LaRosa’s daily schedule includes a morning and afternoon training session, capped off each night with a Chuck Norris movie. Despite her longevity and wins over the likes of top 10 ranked Alexis Davis, LaRosa still struggles to make a living from the sport. The Ultimate Fighter and a contract with the UFC can change that and, at 35, this may be the last hurrah of a distinguished career. Once considered the top Women’s MMA fighter in the world, LaRosa is her to showcase her skills to a new generation of fans.
Valerie Letourneau (4-3), 30, La Prairie, CAN
Growing up the oldest of four children and raised by a single mother, Montreal native Letourneau had a rebellious streak that was hard to control. She was placed in group home at the age of 13. While there, she discovered sports, gravitating towards boxing and kickboxing. Letourneau found that she could channel her anger into compoetition. She is in a long-term relationship with IFBB Pro Bodybuilder Larry Vinette and is a mother to a 10 year-old daughter.
Bethany Marshall (4-1), 25, Newport News, Va.
When she’s not training, 25-year-old Marshall runs the marketing and PR departments of a book publishing company in Newport News, Virginia. Marshall has found relief through MMA in many different ways. She turned to the sport at the age of 16, which helped her with the social anxiety she developed from being home schooled. She took a brief absence from the sport when her boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer, but is glad to be back in the game. Marshall is currently writing a book on female MMA, and hopes to get her yoga certification so she can develop a yoga program specific for MMA fighters.
Sarah Moras (3-1), 25, Kelowna, CAN
Even in a sport known for the dedication of its athletes, Moras stand out as someone who has taken every road to get to the top of MMA. She used to drive 6 hours to train in the nearest proper MMA gym, even sacrificing time with her dying father to train. Because she grew up poor and never had a permanent home, she has said called MMA her "real home." Moras has always been willing to uproot her life to get better training… After discovered that British fighter and female MMA pioneer Rosi Sexton was in need of a training partner, Moras hopped on the next plane to the UK. Moras was supposed to inherit money from her father, but it was kept from her by family members. She hopes a UFC contract will make all her hardships worth the struggle.
Margaret “Peggy” Morgan (2-0), 33, Nashua, N.H.
Morgan is a single mother from Nashua, New Hampshire. She is an avid musician and reader, and currently works as an adjunct professor of composition and literature at Southern New Hampshire University. Morgan trains in MMA with UFC lightweight and TUF alumni Joe Lauzon. She is inspired by the success her gymmate has had and wants to win the contract to provide for her son.
Gina Mazany (3-0), 25, Seattle, Wash.
An Alaskan native, Mazany balances her training along with jobs at an online gaming company and bartending. A talented figure skater as a kid, she left the sport as soon as she discovered Brazilian jiu-jitsu. A daredevil, she loves the challenge of MMA almost as much as her 600-mile snowmobile trips in -60°F weather. She has fought on the same card as her brother, who also fights, six times.
Roxanne Modafferi (15-10), 30, Pittsfield, Mass.
A workaholic with a life-long passion for training and competing in MMA, Modafferi often says she is married to the sport. She admits she started training MMA to be "like the Power Rangers." A self-confessed geek, she collects pens and sock. Modafferi has been competing successfully in the sports for almost 10 years… she holds a degree in Japanese and linguistics, and teaches in Japan. Loved for her quirky personality, genuine love of the sport and technically sound style, she already has a large fanbase who are thrilled Modafferi has finally got a chance to fight on a big stage.
Julianna Pena (4-2), 24, Spokane, Wash.
Pena says she has always been the black sheep of her family. Although her family does not support her career choice, Pena wants to prove her loved ones wrong by winning TUF. A self-professed "big mouth," Pena refuses to let anything get in the way of her dream of being recognized as a world class fighter. "The Venezuelan Vixen" once fought shortly after being hit by a car. She trains with TUF alums Sam Sicilia, Mike Chiesa and Cody Mckenzie.
Raquel Pennington (3-3), 24, Colorado Springs, Colo.
Pennington is training to be a doctor as well as a fighter. She pushes herself to the limit in her training, which includes daily six-mile runs, personal training sessions and fighting technique sessions of nearly every different style. With a very supportive family behind her, Raquel hopes to make the last six years of training pay off and bring home the UFC contract she’s always dreamed about.
Jessica Rakoczy (1-3), 36, Las Vegas, Nev.
An outstanding boxing talent who has won every major championship in the Sweet Science, Rakoczy has been fighting her entire life. Her mother passed away when she was 16, forcing Rakoczy to fend for herself. Now a single mother herself, Rakoczy hopes to receive a UFC contract and become a two-sport champion.
Colleen Schneider (4-3), 31, Las Vegas, Nev.
A UC Berkeley graduate with a promising career, Schneider stunned family and friends by taking up MMA. She now juggles two to three training sessions a day, six times a week while working as a personal trainer and chef. She lives with her dog and roommates, and has devoted herself entirely to the sport.
Male Bantamweight Fighters
Christopher Beal (7-0), 28, Somis, Calif.
Chris Beal’s battle with life began at an early age. His mother struggled to provide for her three sons and, according to Beal, “Nothing was guaranteed — not food, not clothes, not shelter." With his oldest brother in and out of juvenile hall, Beal was left in charge of his younger brother and had to grow up fast. With no prospects in sight,Beal and his brothers became involved with local street gangs. Soon, a high school wrestling coach convinced Beal to try out, thus giving Beal a new direction in live. In 2009 Beal was diagnosed with a life-threatening tumor on his leg. The experience gave Beal a new drive. He says winning TUF will not only be the completion of an amazing comeback, but provide his 10-year-old son and fiancée with the kind of stability he never had.
Cody Bollinger (14-3), 22, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.
Cody Bollinger proved he was ready to begin his fighting career at age 13, when he successfully choked his father unconcious. Bollinger’s father signed a waiver to allow his son to fight MMA professionally at the age of 15. Now a seven-year veteran of the sport, Bollinger aims to win a UFC contract to show his young daughter that any dream is possible.
Louis Fisette (6-1), 23, Winnipeg, CAN
Louis "Little Breed" Fisette is a well-known figure in Canada’s small-hall circuit. A natural athlete, Fisette picked the sport up quickly, and his development was aided by regular training sessions with UFC fighters. Fisette, the self-proclaimed pretty boy, still lives with his parents in Winnipeg and hopes to attain a UFC contract so that he can support himself financially while doing the job he loves.
Rafael Freitas (6-0-1), 29, Albuquerque, N.M.
Raised on the streets of Brazil, Rafael De Freitas escaped from gang culture and travelled to the US to pursue his dream of becoming a UFC fighter. De Freitas works seven days a week to support himself and send money home to his family. He already has a reputation within the MMA community. A master of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, De Freitas helps train UFC fighters like Diego Sanchez and Brandao, both former TUF winners. the Brazilian jiu-jitsu shoulder lock move "Baratoplata" was named after Freitas used it in competition.
David Grant (8-1), 27, Bishop Auckland, ENG
David “Dangerous” Grant’s passion to entertain and compete has driven his efforts to launch his MMA career. After beating drug addiction in his youth, Grant fights to support his fiancé and two sons. Although a talented fighter who takes his job seriously, he also aims to become “filthy rich and famous” as a UFC champion. The latest in a long line of brash Brits to compete on TUF, Grant is a showman in and out of the Octagon.
Tim Gorman (9-2), 30, West Des Moines, Iowa
Tim Gorman hails from Des Moines, Iowa where, with the support and help from his parents, he has the luxury of training fulltime every day. He trains with the Alliance team of UFC fighters like Dominick Cruz, Ross Pearson and Alexander Gustafsson in San Diego. Gorman says there’s nothing more he wants from life than to fight UFC.
Anthony Gutierrez (4-0), 22, Lee’s Summit, Mo.
Frustrated by a lack of success on the high school football field, Gutierrez tried out for the wrestling team and discovered he had a talent for one-on-one competition. He expanded into MMA at age 15 and felt he had found his calling in life. Against his family’s best advice, he declined to go to college and instead turned professional.
Emil Hartsner (4-0), 23, Luberod, SWE
Hartsner has a reputation as an emerging talent in Europe. A talented hockey player in high school, he was forced to give the sport up and turned to MMA. He describes his life simply: “Wake Up, Train, Eat, Train, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.” Hartsner fights because he loves the competition, and says winning a UFC contract would enable him to support his mother.
Joshua Hill (9-0), 26, Binbrook, CAN
Raised by a firefighter and a nurse, 26 year-old Josh Hill comes from an athletic and thrill-seeking background. He was a North American Grappling Association (NAGA) grappling champion with a record of 36-1. An all-round athlete, Hill played hockey, rugby, football, basketball and baseball before settling on MMA. He also has worked as a model. Hill is very serious about becoming a UFC fighter. Although his mother cannot bear to watch any of his matches, she and his whole family are at every match to give their support.
Chris Holdsworth (4-0), 25, Woodland Hills, Calif.
With a father who was a martial artist and Vietnam vet, a mother who is a breast cancer survivor, and a grandfather who was a Golden Gloves boxer, it’s no surprise that fighting is in Holdsworth’s blood. When he was eight years-old, Holdsworth’s elder brother was shot and killed. At the funeral, Holdsworth’s brother was posthumously awarded his black belt in American kickboxing by his sensei. Holdsworth then told his mother he wanted to be a martial artist just like his brother. He was awarded his blue belt from the legendary Royce Gracie, his purple belt by Rener, Ryron and Rorion Gracie, and was awarded his brown and black belt by Marc Laimon. Holdsworth says he barely has time for family and friends, but a UFC contract will make his years of sacrifice worth it.
Patrick Holohan (9-0-1), 25, Dublin, IRL
A proud Irishman, Patrick Holohan is fighting for a lot more than just a UFC contract. Holohan was raised in public housing, and he saw MMA as chance to better his life. He says he never feels more alive than when in the thick of competition. Holohan says he will return to his family as the first TUF champion from the Republic of Ireland.
Sirwan Kakai (9-1), 23, Coconut Creek, Fla.
Born and raised in Sweden, Kakai tried out for TUF 14 — but UFC president Dana White told him to try out after gaining more experience. Taking the advice to heart, he left his life at home to move to Florida to train with the famed American Top Team. Kakai is a proud atheist. He currently lives in a house in Coconut Creek filled with other aspiring fighters also chasing their dreams of UFC stardom.
Daniel Martinez (18-4), 28, San Diego, Calif.
Martinez comes into TUF as one of the most accomplished participants in recent seasons. A standout talent in wrestling, he took advice of friend and UFC fighter Jamie Varner and switched to MMA. When not training for his own fights, he instructs over 100 local kids. He also uses his story of being bullied as a child to promote anti-bullying campaigns.
Matthew Munsey (4-1), 26, Hollywood, Fla.
A self-proclaimed "country boy," Munsey has trained in MMA for the last four years. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade and began climbing 40ft poles while working as a tree surgeon. Munsey believes his day job enabled him to developed "freaky" strength, and he claims no fighter trains as hard as he does.
Lee Sandmeier (9-0), 30, Knoxville, Iowa
Legally deaf, with only 20% hearing on one ear, Sandmeier was not deterred from following his dream of becoming a fighter. He became a competent boxer before transitioning to MMA. Raised and based in Knoxville, Iowa, Lee loves for MMA puts him on equal terms with his opponent. Inspired by his mother and late father, Sandmeier is one of the most determined athletes to walk into a TUF try-out.
Michael Wootten (6-0), 24, Liverpool, ENG
Wooten has put it all on the line to achieve his dream of making it to the UFC. After his fourth pro win, Wooten and his trainers decided he needed focus on training even more. He quit his secure full-time job to focus on becoming a full-time professional fighter. Since then, Wooten has spent every day at the MMA Academy training and coaching the sport he loves. He was voted the #1 MMA Prospect in the United Kingdom in 2012.New Delhi: The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday cleared a bill for establishing an Indian council of international arbitration.
"To strengthen arbitration in the country, we have decided to establish an Indian council of international arbitration centre as a centre of all Indian excellence... a separate bill has been brought for that," Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a briefing on the Cabinet decisions.
Last week, Chief Justice of India Justice Dipak Misra had called for shift towards institutional arbitration which should be both timely and cost effective for making India a sought-after arbitration centre.
Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution, is a way to resolve disputes outside the courts.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Autogynephile-deniers are the anti-vaxxer's of sexology. — James Cantor (@JamesCantorPhD) July 4, 2015
What the real "autogynephilia deniers" are denying (besides the scientific evidence)
*Note: I will not be publishing *any* comments for this piece. Not a single one. So please don't even bother. Thanks. -julia
A little over a week ago, James Cantor (a sexologist who works at CAMH ) published the following provocative tweet:Of course, the trope of "autogynephilia deniers" has existed for about as long as the theory itself has. Ray Blanchard first proposed the theory of autogynephilia in the late 1980's - it asserts that there are two fundamentally different types of trans women, and that only one of these groups (the so-called "autogynephiles") not only experience sexual arousal or fantasies involving the “thought or image of oneself as a woman" (what, for clarity's sake, I will call female/feminine embodiment fantasies or FEFs ), but that FEFs are the cause of any gender dysphoria & desire to transition that those individuals experience.But the problem is that in *every single one* of Blanchard's research studies on the matter, he found a significant number of subjects who defied his two-subtype model and his assumption of causality (i.e., that FEFs are the supposed cause of transsexuality in those who experience them). Rather than question his model, Blanchard dismissed these many exceptions by accusing those research subjects of "misreporting" their experiences; other proponents of autogynephilia theory have subsequently followed suit. As I explained in my article The Case Against Autogynephilia I don't doubt that *some* trans women who have experienced FEFs deny those experiences. Given the way that autogynephilia theory has been repeatedly used to slut-shame trans women, dismiss our identities, and/or to depict us as "sexually deviant men" (as described in detail at the end of this article), I completely understand why some trans women would be reluctant to discuss their relationship to this subject matter.But what people like Cantor and others who invoke this notion of "autogynephilia deniers" consistently refuse to address is the *countless* trans women who acknowledge the existence of FEFs (in their own lives and/or others), yet reject Blanchard's autogynephilia theory.And |
safety after five years of use.
Ron Scott, director of the Detroit Coalition against Police Brutality, said Tasers are a bad idea for Detroit police.
"It's not a less-than-lethal weapon," he said. "The best weapon for police officers to use for their safety is their mind and voice, not coming up with new toys. Officers' behavior and their relationship with the public is the best way to ensure officer safety."
Scott added: “The chief is using this incident as propaganda to get something he wants.”
Officer Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association union, disagreed Saturday.
“Those who oppose DPD officers carrying Tasers yet complain of excessive force are only fooling themselves,” Diaz said in a written statement. “Unfortunately in the real world, criminals don't want to go to jail and all too often do everything in their abilities to not go to jail, absent ceasing their criminal ways.
“In their self-serving disregard for the lives of those who serve only to protect our citizens, police officers throughout the nation are brutally attacked every day. It truly saddens me to see that so much as one person in a civilized society would condone violence against anyone, especially against the men and women who, in spite of the recent anti-police fad, continue to put their lives on the line to protect all citizens.
“Though we take our oath of office to protect the citizenry, we do not do so to be a punching bag, shooting target, nor cutting board. Where we do not believe our citizens should be treated in such a manner, neither should our police officers. If a person believes they are being wrongfully arrested, they will receive due process and likely bring civil litigation to compensate them for their inconvenience. The idea of resisting attest is incredibly dangerous and all too often end tragically. Knowing these facts, it stands to reason that those who actively support resisting arrest are showing their lack of care for a peaceful society, rather they are embracing an extremist perspective not suitable for a free nation.”
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/1A3WmVSIn a country where public schools are, more often than not, less than mediocre with unqualified teachers and little to no funding, education in Pakistan is in a sad state of affairs. Along with this and the rise of costly private schools for middle to elite class children, those who are underprivileged are often forced into working as street beggars, with education being left behind.
When 12-year old Shireen was approached by a young girl at a traffic light, who instead of asking for money requested Shireen to teach her, she realised something needed to change. Deeply affected by this encounter, Shireen decided that she would do something about the state of public education in Karachi, Pakistan. An idea rooted in hope for change, Shireen’s initial intention of a small session eventually turned into a full-scale school with multiple branches spread throughout the city, with the help of her elder brother, 15-year old Hasan.
Together, this sibling duo run their school six days a week from 4 – 6pm and teach the students multiple subjects, including English, math, and the local language- Urdu. They also hold exercise classes as well as fun activities and games on Saturdays.
The siblings are aided by teachers who help around the school and who are also paid for their contributions. Initially, The Street School was funded by a non-governmental organisation but is now run completely on the siblings’ own expenses. The inspiring brother and sister team also distribute snacks around the school which further encourages these children to continue coming and learning. The local community has also gotten involved by providing funds and donations, as well as cold refreshments and umbrellas to beat the heat. A pick and drop van service has also been set up by the siblings to alleviate travel expenses for students coming from far off places within Karachi.
Six-year old student, Sidratul Muntaha has been heard saying, “I want to study and become educated like all other people but my family cannot afford it”. She has been attending the school regularly and feels a sense of pride and joy when everyday she goes home and shares what she has learnt, especially English, to her family. There are thousands of children, like Sidratul, who just don’t have the means to attend a decent school, and this initiative has not only made their lives better, but in the long run, have also contributed to their future generations.
This enterprise truly goes to show just how far setting up some tables and chairs in an empty field, mixed with a passion for education, can go. It is absolutely inspiring and heartening to witness how just two members of the youth have taken to the streets and are stepping up where the state has failed. These acts of kindness and charity are what tie the community together and it is always important to give back to a society that has given you so much, and what better gift is there to give than education.
Share this articlePORTLAND, Ore. – With the Portland Timbers attack firing on all cylinders, there has been little reason to question the recent absence of a player head coach Caleb Porter said would be very important as the team balanced its busy schedule in the season’s final stretch.
But after being held out of the 18 for the second straight CONCACAF Champions League game, Porter was asked about the status of forward Steve Zakuani. The answer wasn’t a positive one for the former Seattle Sounders’ No. 1 overall 2009 SuperDraft pick who has been battling various injuries since fracturing his right tibia in 2011, with Porter saying he’s likely done for the season.
“He’s not healthy,” Porter said following Portland’s 6-0 CCL victory Tuesday night over Alpha United. “He continues to pick up little strains. He’s got a groin strain right now, so for him it’s been tough.”
Portland picked up Zakuani in the Re-Entry Draft over the offseason after he was let go by the Sounders.
He’s made 17 league appearances – with nine starts – his most in a season since the injury. But with no goals and three assists, his performance has been a far cry from the player who scored a career-high 10 goals and recorded six assists in 2010, his second year out of the University of Akron where he also played for Porter.
“We’re probably going to end up shutting him down for the season and figure out the next steps with him and his body, try to get him in to see a specialist,” Porter said.
His last appearance came in a 64-minute shift in which he scored a goal in Portland’s 4-1 CCL win over Alpha on Aug. 19 in Guyana. The last time he was included in the 18 was Aug. 24 against Seattle.
For complete coverage visit Timbers.com
In addition to his CCL start, he also made two US Open Cup appearances, recording an assist in a 3-1 loss to the Sounders on July 9.
“He continues to have problems,” Porter said. “I don’t know if it’s biomechanics or what, but he continues to have problems with muscle strains. I think it stems ultimately from that broken leg, most likely.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.Figured it's high time I updated this thing!
Name's Acesential, though most everyone just calls me ace. I started drawing more seriously when I was about 12 or 13, learning how to draw in the anime/manga style (a decision I regret nowadays, but what can you do?) I was never particularly skilled at it, and my arrogant and stubborn teenage brain kept me from improving substantially. For instance, I only seriously started drawing bodies when I was 15 (Yeesh...)
Around June of 2011, I came across the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Having been a great fan of classic cartoons of the 90s, I saw a lot to like in the show after the first two episodes. Soon afterwards, I became a fan, I became a brony.
And, I have to say, art-wise, MLP has helped me evolve greatly as an artist. I'm actually inking and coloring art and experimenting as well. Ironically, it's these ponies that made me eventually realize that I need to learn to draw realism, something I plan on doing once the summer rolls around. Odd how these things work, right?
I have aspirations of becoming an animator. As for what, I'm not sure. However, I've loved cartoons my whole life, and it would be a dream come true to work on them.
Beyond that, my interests also lie in video game creation. If you ever want to open up a dialogue about video game design, feel free to message me! I love that kind of discussion.
Well, that's it! An anime artist turned brony who wants to go into animation! Check out my gallery, and leave a comment/critique! More towards the latter, if possible!
Follow my Twitter here!Three weeks have elapsed since NHL free agency opened yet Cody Franson, one of the best free agent defencemen available, remains unsigned.
“There’s probably five or six teams we’re talking to. There are some very interested ones, but some teams are in cap situations and all the rest that comes with it,” Franson told TSN 1040 Tuesday. “Everything is just kind of slowly rolling.”
Franson is coming off three consecutive one-year contracts. In fact, the 27-year-old’s next contract will be his fifth since his entry-level deal and it’s beginning to wear thin on the 6-foot-5, right-handed blueliner.
“I’d rather not be in this situation,” he explained. “It seems to kind of always work out that way. The last three years, going through all those one-year deals and contracts and stuff like that, it’s getting a little old, but my agent’s very comfortable with where we’re at. I spoke with him [Monday] and it’s just a matter of being patient and hopefully figuring out a good spot for me.”
One spot Franson still has his eye on is Toronto. He spent the better part of four seasons with the Maple Leafs before being traded to the Nashville Predators in February.
“We haven’t had too many discussions with Toronto, but I always hope that door stays open,” Franson said. “I loved it there and loved the guys there. I think we left on good terms and I’m still hopeful that that’s a possibility.”
Franson also confirmed that the Boston Bruins are one of the teams he has been in contact with. He added that he reached out to former junior teammate Milan Lucic to ask him about the city. The two played three seasons together for the Vancouver Giants in the WHL and Lucic spent eight years with the Bruins before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings in June.
“I asked him a few questions about it,” Franson said. “With the trade they made with [Dougie] Hamilton and some of the other stuff they’ve done, they’re one of the teams that we’re in talks with. Boston would be an interesting spot.”
Franson put up a career high 36 points in 78 games during the 2014-15 season on a $3.3 million salary cap hit. The Sicamous, B.C. native added that he’s flexible when it comes to both salary and term, but there’s no doubt he’s seeking a multi-year deal.
“Obviously, I’d like to get something a little more than one year. I’m sick of doing one-year deals,” Franson explained. “But we’re open to all suggestions, really.
“We haven’t said a number and we’ll take nothing less, or a term and we’ll take nothing less than that. We haven’t said that at all. We’ve had a lot of teams call to see where we’re at. We just said in a certain ballpark. Nobody has laughed at us. Everybody has thought it was reasonable. It’s just one of those things that some teams we’re talking to are in cap crunches and some teams don’t want to go maybe as long. It’s a number of different circumstances. Hopefully something happens sooner than later.”“Well son, one truth we’ve learned is that no one expects Anthony Weiner’s penis… but it always appears.
This FBI-investigation-into-Hillary-plot just got a whole lot, um, thicker, so to speak:
Wait, what?
New emails tied to the FBI's Clinton inquiry were discovered during the investigation into Anthony Weiner's sexting https://t.co/FMHEkn03B0
Dude:
Federal law enforcement officials said Friday that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin, an aide to Mrs. Clinton, and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
…
In a letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”
Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant.I came across a wonderful story about a leaning tree in Bideford, Devon in the United Kingdom. The tree, a Horse chestnut, known locally as the Wonky Conker tree was almost a casualty of multiple tree removal for a car park, until it was saved by the community.
A few years later a staff member from Torridge District Council contacted artist John Butler to see if he could design something that could support the tree, which was leaning. Mr Butler designed what he called ‘The Helping Hand’ – a metal prop covered to look like a log wrist with oak used to carve the hand & fingers.
Things got even better when a local woman, Mrs Mayhew, who read about the Council initiative in the media, decided to pay all costs if it could be a memorial to her late husband Samuel. Of course all parties agreed & the initials S.T.M. & 1914-2000 were carved into the cuff.
The Helping Hand has been in place for 10-years & allows this old & very much loved tree to live on. Personally, I think there are many wonderful things about this initiative. Not only did the Torridge District Council take the time to save a perfectly healthy tree, but they also used the work of a local artist to do so, allowing his work to be seen in a public space. The role of being a memorial is a nice touch & will please a lot of people. The community benefitted by keeping the trees & not having to pay for the installation & a loved man had an impromptu memorial made to him. This was a win/win every way you look at it & shows just what can be done if the time is taken to look for an alternative to chopping the tree down.
The article has a great photo. See – http://bidefordbuzz.org.uk/2012/09/wonky-conker/
AdvertisementsRegistration is Now Open to Publish on PowerShell Gallery
PowerShell Team
We are excited to announce that, as of today, the PowerShell Gallery will accept registration from any users who wish to publish PowerShell modules and share their work with the world.
For the past year, the PowerShell Gallery has been slowly adding content from our closest community contributors, most of whom are Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and internal Microsoft contributors. While we were building the basic features of the PowerShell Gallery, we restricted the set of people who could publish new modules, and required an approval step before allowing users to register. This approach provided the PowerShell team with an agile feedback loop to help design and to learn what gallery experience will be optimal for the broader PowerShell community.
To contribute to the gallery you simply have to register your Microsoft Account, examples including accounts in domains like Outlook.com, Hotmail.com or Live.com. Once you have registered, you will be ready to publish your modules to the Gallery.
Note: Registration is not required to download or install modules from the PowerShell Gallery. Registration is only needed if you are publishing to the PowerShell Gallery, or submitting certain types of feedback. You may notice that the banner at
the page still says “Preview”. We are continuing to build out the PowerShell Gallery features at a rapid rate for the next few months, so we are keeping the “Preview” tag.
PowerShell Gallery is the place to share your PowerShell code with the world, but it is not designed to be a test bed, or the place to do development work in. To handle that, the PowerShell team uses GitHub (see https://github.com/powerShell) to
post new and ongoing development, and we publish the validated modules from there to the PowerShell Gallery. We recommend creating your own repo in GitHub to use for a project development site if you do not already have one.
It is important to also follow the guidance on how to publish modules to the PowerShell gallery – please take some time to read them before you start a new contribution. Best practices that we strongly recommend for things you publish the PowerShell Gallery are:
Only use the Publish-Module cmdlet to publish to the PowerShell Gallery, and not the general-purpose NuGet tools. This is important: these cmdlets will populate the gallery using metadata in your module, and the general-purpose NuGet tools will not.
cmdlet to publish to the PowerShell Gallery, and not the general-purpose NuGet tools. these cmdlets will populate the gallery using metadata in your module, and the general-purpose NuGet tools will not. Use New-ModuleManifest to create your module, and ensure that your manifest has the proper values, and Test-ModuleManifest to validate it.
In your module manifest, provide a LicenseURI, HelpInfoURI, & ProjectUri. These are the most valuable fields for people who are interested in your work.
Before posting your code Run an antivirus scanner against what you plan to publish. Any module that fails our anti-virus scan will be unlisted while we contact the owners, and the module will be deleted if we are unable to resolve the issue quickly. Scan your module using PSScriptAnalyzer. If there are errors, they must be corrected, as we will begin un-listing modules with errors (not warnings, but errors) until they can be resolved.
The list above are the most important things for working with the PowerShell Gallery. There are additional best practices that have been published that you should be familiar with, as a publisher of PowerShell code:
For PowerShell generally, you should review the PowerShell Cmdlet Development Guidelines on MSDN, or the community version on GitHub.
For DSC resources, we have the PowerShell DSC Resource Design and Testing Checklist.
These are designed to help you write high-quality PowerShell code. As always, we’d welcome feedback on the guidelines we have published.
For users downloading modules from the PowerShell Gallery, we want to remind you to review the things you acquire before installing them. To make that process easier, we released with the April WMF 5.0 the Save-Module cmdlet to PowerShellGet.
This cmdlet allows users to inspect the module code before installing it (using Install-Module). The “report abuse” link is available for your use if you find that the code is doing something significantly different from what it was advertised to do. The PowerShell Gallery team takes such reports very seriously, and we will respond quickly. Please see the Terms of Use for details.
We currently have over 200 modules in the PowerShell Gallery, which provide a broad range of functionality and value. With today’s announcement, we’re expecting this number to grow rapidly as you (the members of the PowerShell community) start publishing and sharing your PowerShell resources with each other….
Thank you –
The PowerShell TeamScottish Cup holders Celtic will face Hearts at Tynecastle in the fourth round of this season's competition.
Sir Alex Ferguson conducted the draw and picked out Partick Thistle as opponents for his former club Aberdeen.
Last season's beaten finalists Hibernian will travel to Dingwall to play Ross County.
Dundee United host their Scottish Premiership rivals Kilmarnock, St Mirren will travel to Queen of the South and Rangers visit Falkirk.
Ferguson, 71, played for both Rangers and Falkirk, and the Ibrox side knocked the Bairns out of the League Cup and Challenge Cup last season.
The former Manchester United manager also spent time at Ayr United and Dunfermline as a striker, and the League One rivals meet at Somerset Park.
St Johnstone, another of Ferguson's former teams, are at home to Livingston.
Motherwell face a short trip to Albion Rovers and there are other local derbies between Brechin and Forfar and Alloa and Stirling Albion.
Inverness CT take on Morton while Highland League outfit Fraserburgh will go to either Stenhousemuir or Annan Athletic.
Junior sides Culter and Auchinleck Talbot remain in the tournament but face replays against Berwick Rangers and Stranraer, respectively, to see if they reach the fourth round.
All ties will be played on the weekend of 30 November and 1 December.
"In my time I thought it was the best tournament to win in terms of cups," said former Dons manager Ferguson.
"If you are involved in the Scottish Cup, you cherish it, there is no question about that."
Scottish Cup fourth round draw:
Falkirk v Rangers
Albion Rovers v Motherwell
Culter or Berwick Rangers v Dumbarton
Clyde v Stranraer or Auchinleck Talbot
Dundee United v Kilmarnock
Queen of the South v St Mirren
Stenhousemuir or Annan Athletic v Fraserburgh
Brechin City v Forfar Athletic
Alloa Athletic v Stirling Albion
Ross County v Hibernian
Dundee v Raith Rovers
St Johnstone v Livingston
Partick Thistle v Aberdeen
Hearts v Celtic
Ayr United v Dunfermline
Inverness Caledonian Thistle v MortonIn economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could. — Rüdiger “Rudi” Dornbusch
Technology fundamentally changes the relationship between labor and capital. As machines get better producing the things that people need and want, humans may find it difficult to generate economic value from their work. In a future where this connection has been entirely severed, capitalism and economic self-interest cease to provide structure for society. New organizing principles are needed. Utilitarianism is well suited to fill this vacuum and Marxist thought offers a pragmatic framework for implementing utilitarian impulses in the political and economic domain.
In his seminal work, The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx popularized the notion of the proletariat as an impoverished class of industrial wage-laborers. By his definition, the class of people that compose the substrate of the proletariat has not existed in developed countries since the early 1900s. Furthermore, the potential for a worker’s revolution seems to be rendered inert if we posit that the end of labor itself is near.
However, the etymology of the word, rather than its Marxist usage, suggests something different. The origins of the word ‘proletariat’ can be traced back to the Latin, proles, a word used in the Roman census to describe the lowest class: those whose only contribution to society was having children. In a future where human labor has been entirely divorced from economic productivity, most individuals in society would have no utility beyond passing their genes on to the next generation. Severing the link between economic productivity and human labor threatens to create an idle class, a new proletariat, who are incapable of providing economic value to society. This post-work proletariat will not be defined by wage-labor, but by an idleness brought about through labor market inadequacies.
Will this idle class be destitute and penniless: abandoned by a system of resource allocation that made their labor an anachronism? It is not difficult to imagine, in a society such as this, an elite class, that controls the means of production, consolidating an unprecedented degree of power and wealth. This Luddite vision of the future conceives of automation as a profoundly destructive force, one that could transform inclusive democracy into a bourgeois oligarchy.
However, to others, automation is a panacea. These proponents of technological innovation envision a type of fully-automated “luxury communism” — the means of production owned collectively and operating autonomously — where every material desire can be made real (for free!) by an intelligent robot. For these people, the end of labor is not a harbinger of collapse, but rather a freedom so elusive that humanity had myopically believed it impossible. Should we dare to hope for such an outcome? What should be our aspirations for a society without work and what principles should guide us?
Outcomes are important. This is the lesson taught by utilitarian thinkers. Actions, individuals and societies should be judged upon their consequences, their outputs. Society should aspire to produce the best outcomes for the greatest number of its citizens. When viewed through this lens, success is merely a maximization problem. How should society allocate finite resources in a manner that maximizes the quality of life of individuals living in it?
Marx provides a utilitarian theory of allocation: communal ownership. Rather than following the capitalist model, in which certain individuals are entitled to the immense wealth spun off from their private enterprises, Marx contends that the profits of industry should be distributed “to each according to his need.” In The Utilitarianism of Marx and Engels, Derek Allen discusses the utilitarian underpinning to Marxist teleology:
Marx contends that, since wages and profits vary inversely, “the interests of capital and the interests of wage labour are diametrically opposed.” Whatever enriches the capitalist impoverishes the worker. … Whatever is in bourgeois interests is against the interests of the majority of society. To secure freedom for the majority wage labor must be abolished
The nature of the accumulation of capital results in an expanding underclass of laborers and a shrinking bourgeois minority. The end point of capitalism, as Marx understood it, is extreme wealth inequality. When a vast majority create no economic value and are therefore incapable of providing for themselves, the system is broken. Utilitarianism does not privilege the rights of the minority at the expense of the majority. Thus, the utilitarian response to this inequality is to strive for a more equitable distribution of wealth.
However, there is no use in pining for a utopian society that only can exist in theory. Progress is path dependent. Humanity’s future is a function of today’s conditions. Rather imagining the elements of an ideal society, pragmatism suggests looking for sources to guide the development of an attainable one. The work of Karl Marx not only provides a theoretical optimum — communal ownership of the means of production — but also a realistic pathway to its realization. While his original theory of an industrial working class rising up against its capitalist oppressors has proven false, an updated teleology predicated on the end of labor regains intellectual vitality.
Automation and Society After Labor
Automation ultimately renders human labor obsolete and magnifies the return on capital. While vast swaths of workers face declining wages, a small class of capitalists capture the growing profits that previously were spread more broadly. The end of labor centralizes wealth, while simultaneously seeing the emergence of an idle proletariat.
The age of automation became inevitable the day the first computer was created. The steady march of innovation has reduced the typical computer’s physical size, lowered its price, and simultaneously increased its computing power. For decades, this ongoing technological innovation complemented, rather than replaced, human labor. Computers could not perform the physical tasks done easily by humans. Basic intuitions about cause and effect were out of the reach of machines. In the words of Steven Pinker “hard problems [were] easy and the easy problems [were] hard.” This paradox seemed to be an inviolable law of artificial intelligence. However, in recent years skills that were once considered deep within the domain of human expertise, such as vision and the language processing, have been replicated by deep learning programs.
“The Great Decoupling” that Andre McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson describe in The Second Machine Age is the manifestation of the shift from technology that enhances human labor to that which supplants. While economic productivity continues to increase, wages stagnate. The wealth generated by artificial labor is captured by a tiny fraction of society, those who control capital, rather than the broad middle class that used to work for wages.
The dynamics that Marx witnessed during the industrial revolution now play out again with greater intensity. Marx, while wrong in many ways, was prescient in others. In Wage-Labor & Capital, he outlines the cyclical force of competition, the tension between the wage-laborer and the capitalist, and the teleology of capitalism. He describes the dynamics of automation: “Machinery produces the same effects [as competition between workers], but upon a much larger scale. … [W]here newly introduced, it throws workers upon the streets in great masses.” Automation is the process by which capital is substituted for labor. Automated machinery replaces human labor at a fraction of the cost, often with greater accuracy and speed. Human workers simply cannot compete. In discussing how machines reduce the wages of workers, Marx also explains how automation expands the size of the new proletariat:
In addition, the working class is also recruited from the higher strata of society; a mass of small business men and of people living upon the interest of their capitals is precipitated into the ranks of the working class, and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. Thus the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow every leaner.
Automation devalues labor and multiplies capital. Economies of scale and winner-take-all effects sharply bifurcate society. The winners, who control the automated machinery, win big. Yet the losers, far greater in number, are left with virtually nothing. This includes the middle and upper-middle class that succeeded in a society where labor retained its value. The lawyers, the doctors, the civil engineers that composed the professional class will also join “the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work” as their jobs are automated.
Eventually society reaches an inflection point. Without new rules, the end result is dystopia. With new rules, utopia is possible. The outcome depends on whether society adopts inclusive, redistributionist policies or chooses to continue traditional practices of laissez faire capitalism. If the political economy can adjust to the realities of automation by providing for the idle class, the future will tend towards “luxury communism” rather than Luddite dystopia. However, if no changes take place, the gap between the richest and the poorest will continue to grow.
Marx would predict that the new proletariat, by nature of its majority, should be able to enact socialist and redistributionist policies. Though he foresaw the need for violent revolution, it is possible that an inclusive democracy might make such extremism unnecessary. If these changes are enacted, society might look radically different than it does today, but the outcomes would be broadly beneficial. The immense wealth generated by automation could be shared with the workers whose labor has been replaced. The means of production do not need to be seized, but the profits generated would redistributed to those made idle.
From this perspective, the post-labor society should be judged by how effectively it implements utilitarian principles. To be sure, such redistribution infringes on deontological property rights and would be judged harshly by libertarians. However, a utilitarian would see that, while a minority is dissatisfied when their wealth is taxed, the benefits to society overall outweigh their concern.
Criticisms of Teleology & Marxism
Of course it is necessary to defend any teleology against events that change fundamental assumptions. Teleology is merely an extrapolation from present trends that seems to lead inexorably to a singular outcome. Marx’s original teleology suggested that industrial manufacturing would be the final iteration of the capitalist system — he did not foresee the shift among western nations to a service-oriented economy or the massive wealth that would be unlocked by the Internet revolution. In presenting a similar, albeit updated, teleology, it’s important to outline the most important assumption that are necessary for its realization: human labor must become, for all intents and purposes, obsolete. If there were still ways for a critical mass of individuals to engage in economically productive behavior, transitioning from capitalism would remain difficult.
It’s also important to address the criticisms of Marxism more generally. Marx’s revolutionary teleology has proven incorrect in many ways. The industrial collapse envisioned by Marx failed to occur. His imagined legions of revolutionary workers never materialized. His ideology of revolution coopted by professional revolutionaries, rather than the workers who it was meant for. Criticisms of Marxist thought tend to fixate on its inability to forecast the broad prosperity that would spring from capitalism.
This is a misunderstanding of Marx’s argument. The proletarian revolt is but a revolution deferred. Marx believed that the worker uprising would come at the peak of capitalism, as the system imploded — not that worker’s could never benefit under a capitalist system. Indeed, in Wage-Labor & Capital, he writes that “the rapid growth of capital is the most favorable condition for wage-labour” as the growth of capital implies increasing employment, other externalities of capitalism notwithstanding. By replacing labor entirely with capital, automation will bring about both the peak and the end of capitalism. This is the critical moment when the capitalist system could evolve or be replaced. Whether this development takes the form of abrupt revolution or incremental change depends on how the transition is managed.
Beyond Marx’s failure as a prognosticator, further criticisms of Marxism attack the expropriation and redistribution that is inherent in the theory. This is the libertarian critique. Property rights are at the core of libertarianism. To philosophers like John Locke and Robert Nozick, the defense of such rights is the sole legitimate purpose of government action. A strong defense of property seems to preclude redistribution. Yet a reexamination of Locke’s Labor Theory of Property, under the assumption that human labor is economically irrelevant, shows that Locke’s and Marx’s views are quite compatible. The Labor Theory of Property, which provides the intellectual underpinning for the libertarian conception of property rights, states that property is derived through mixing personal labor with a natural resource:
The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
Without labor, the libertarian understanding of property breaks down. In a future where robot automatons can produce any good, who owns their output? If no labor input was required, by what principle should the capitalist be the sole beneficiary? There is no obvious justification for property rights. Indeed, An elite bourgeois minority that captures all the economic output without mixing in their (or any) labor is an easy target for redistributionist efforts. Separating human labor from economic productivity debases the Lockean justification for property rights. In this context, the abolition of property rights is hard to criticize when the institution of private property itself has been rendered obsolete.
This paper is not intended as a broad defense of Marxism as it could exist in the world today, but rather an exploration of whether Marxist principles have anything to say about organizing society after the end of labor. Automation, by substituting human labor for capital, accelerates the centralized accumulation of wealth. Those who control capital stand to benefit disproportionately, while workers who are replaced lose their income. The structure of society must change if it is to withstand the economic shock of the end of labor. Marxist thought is relevant as it suggests a vision for society, undergirded by sound utilitarian logic, which would be capable of doing so.
While “luxury communism” seems somewhat fantastical, I am hopefully optimistic that, in the short term, redistributionist policies such as a negative income tax or a universal basic income will ease the transition from a labor to a post-labor economy. A socialist society, where the economic benefits of automation are distributed more broadly, will be better equipped to manage and mitigate wealth inequality than a capitalist society that refuses to address the problem.
Bibliography
Allen, Derek P. H. “The Utilitarianism of Marx and Engels.” American Philosophical Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1973): 189-99. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/stable/20009494.
Merchant, Brian. “Fully automated luxury communism.” The Guardian, March 18th, 2015.
Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. The second machine age: work, progress, and prosperity in the time of brilliant technologies. New York: W. W. Norton, 2016.
Marx, Karl. 1978. Wage labour and capital. Foreign Languange Press Peking.
Locke, John, 1632-1704. The Second Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Oxford :B. Blackwell, 1948.MOORESVILLE, N.C., Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The government of Kuwait has contracted Internet-based radiation emergency products suppler Nukepills.com for a citizen protection initiative.
U.S. company Nukepills.com was awarded the contract from the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health. Under the approximately $1.4 million deal, Nukepills.com will supply 5.4 million of its trademarked ThyroShield potassium iodide doses.
Kuwait awarded the contract for the ThyroShield doses as part of an effort to stockpile nuclear radiation emergency protections. Officials say the ThyroShield is a liquid medicine that has thyroid-blocking capabilities to prevent thyroid cancer during radiation emergencies.
"This sale is the first large-scale order of ThyroShield from a foreign government," Troy Jones, Nukepills.com president, said in a statement.
"We are currently working on additional potassium iodide orders from other countries in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. We hope the new U.S. administration follows Kuwait's lead and reinstitutes the potassium iodide distribution plan to protect its citizens."Famed investor Warren Buffett and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons have at least one thing in common: They both want the U.S. government to raise their taxes.
"All my employees -- every single one -- paid more taxes than I did," Simmons told MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday in a segment highlighted by Think Progress. "We need to make the rich pay their fair share."
Simmons also issued the request in a blog post on Wednesday.
“I believe in a nation where everyone gets a fair share of the fruits of our labor and where everyone pays a fair share for what they receive,” he wrote on his site. “I am asking the United States government to raise my taxes and not allow the Republicans to use this economic recession as an opportunity to strip the basic programs that protect our most vulnerable.”
Asked by MSNBC's Bashir whether raising taxes on the wealthy would threaten an already weak recovery, Simmons was unfazed. "I hired based on pre-tax profit, not post-tax," said Simmons, |
here to help you on your way.
Scroll down for more recent updates.Falling on the heels of the highly publicized and horrendous incident involving four black assailants abusing a mentally challenged young man, there is another possible hate crimes incident which has just recently occurred in Aurora, Colorado.
Police are currently investigating a possible racially-motivated sexual assault which allegedly took place outside of an Aurora shopping center. The alleged attack, which was perpetrated at the Mission Viejo Plaza Shopping Center against a 23-year old white woman, is said to have been carried out by two black men who hurled racial slurs at the woman before leaving the scene. The woman had not had previous contact with the attackers.
According to the local CBS affiliate, CBS4, Aurora police would not comment on whether they plan to pursue the case as a hate crime or a bias-related attack. Although the Aurora police department has been canvassing the area, no suspects have been apprehended.
[image via screengrab/CBS4]In recent months, Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has spent most of its time analyzing defeats and failures. Popularity hit rock bottom and remained at a record low of 20 percent. At the recent state elections in Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt, the party lost over 10 percent of voters compared to previous elections. This resulted in a tormented struggle between the different wings and a lethargy which left many members in a desperate state, vacillating between resignation and helplessness.
Schulz gives impression things can happen
This is all water under the bridge now. Thanks to Martin Schulz. Last weekend, Schulz was officially appointed new party chairman and SPD chancellor candidate for September's parliamentary elections. One day after his nomination, the former president of the EU Parliament showed his usual fighting spirit.
"I want to find practical solutions for the immediate concerns and needs of hard-working people," he said.
Comments like this drew standing ovations and minutes of frenetic applause from his party colleagues. Many insiders are already talking about the "Schulz Festival." The European politician has sparked a wave of confidence among his party colleagues through his striking choice of words and clear messages to political opponents.
This is also reflected in the polls. The SPD has gained a whopping three percentage points. "The mood is wonderful," proclaimed Schulz at his unveiling. And the cheerful faces of many SPD staff members at party headquarters the Willy-Brandt-Haus look like they are the embodiment of the message.
SPD staff and grassroots members alike are pinnnig their hopes on Martin Schulz
Profile of the left will be polished
Ulrich Eith, a political party researcher at the University of Freiburg, explains that the euphoric mood within the SPD can be attributed to the breakdown of encrusted structures that have developed in the grand coalition between the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the SPD. Chancellor Angela Merkel, of the CDU, and her SPD deputy Sigmar Gabriel know each other well and have struck up a good working relationship over the years. "Martin Schulz jumps in between as a new, fresh face with his own personality, his own style of language and unmistakable views," Eith told DW.
Many party members feel he can rejuvenate the entrenched party competition. Schulz also comes across as authentic, down-to-earth and in touch with the people, thus giving the inner-party euphoria more impetus, according to Eith. "Many in the SPD see that disappointed voters cannot be recovered with a catalogue of measures with rational arguments. Schulz embodies an empathetic approach, which fits well the SPD's situation," said the researcher.
Hilde Mattheis, an SPD politician in the government's health policy committee is convinced that support for the new chancellor candidate will continue after the initial jubilation. "He puts the subject of social justice back exactly where it belongs in the SPD, which is the heart of our activities," Mattheis told DW. "We are, however, well aware of the fact that a lot has to be done in terms of policy content."
Schulz sounds different when he talks like Gabriel
Journalists remark that there are still no clear statements on how Schulz can make society more just again. Many of his statements still seem vague. For example, the SPD wants to fight tax evasion and to require those with large assets to support social cohesion. He says old-age poverty must be combated and minimum wage regulations must be adhered to. To many SPD members, these statements sound suspiciously familiar, like the ones Sigmar Gabriel has made. But when Martin Schulz, former mayor of the small western German city of Würselen, talks about these issues, then the old party platform seems to have a completely different effect.
Martin Rivoir feels the same way. The SPD member of Baden-Wuerttemberg's state parliament believes that Schulz has the potential to unite his strife-ridden party. "He is also a politician whose Europe expertise brings us exactly what we need at the moment," Rivoir told DW.
Schulz succeeded deputy-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel as chairman of the SPD
Martin Schulz – the mayor for Germany?
Schulz has seven months and three weeks to mobilize his party members, and more importantly, the undecided voters. To do this, he has resigned his seat in European Parliament to travel across the Germany to promote his credentials for the chancellorship. Schulz stressed that it will be a "long-distance run."
Step by step, election victory by election victory, the plan is for the marathon to take him to the chancellery. At the party conference in March, members will vote to officially appoint him as the main challenger to Angela Merkel. His main policy plan will be developed by the end of May. After that, the critical stage of the election campaign will follow. And if, contrary to expectations, the campaign becomes difficult, then Martin Schulz already has message for the SPD. "Do not forget, we are the masters of final spurts."GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida defensive end Keivonnis Davis was in a serious scooter accident this week and has been hospitalized, GatorBait.net has confirmed.
The news was first reported by Trey Wallace of TheReadOptional.com.
Davis is currently indefinitely suspended from the team for his role in an alleged credit card fraud scheme involving eight other players. He is facing two complaints recommending third-degree felony charges.
Like the other players involved in the alleged fraud scheme, Davis remains enrolled in school and attending classes.
A junior, Davis has recorded 31 tackles, 3.0 tackles for a loss, 1.5 sacks, 5 quarterback hurries and one forced fumble in 17 games for the Gators.
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For more news on Florida sports and recruiting, follow GatorBait247 on Twitter or sign up for our FREE daily Gators newsletter!
Contact Thomas Goldkamp by 247Sports' personal messaging system or on Twitter at @ThomasGoldkamp.Google is preparing to seize control of Android with its own proprietary closed-source version of the mobile operating system, an analyst claims.
Technology analyst Richard Windsor says that a highly confidential internal project is underway to rewrite the ART runtime, removing any lingering dependencies from the freely downloadable open source AOSP (Android Open Source Project) code base.
This is a long-standing theme for Windsor, who most recently raised it here.
In contrast to Apple, which can rapidly update its installed base of iPhones with new features, it takes years to update the Android market to new features. Windsor said he believes Google could use a court decision in the "Googacle" case next year as its cue, and says that should that occur, OEMs would have little choice but to accept the All New Android.
For years, Google has been adding functionality not to the open source AOSP code base, but to its own proprietary binary libraries, specifically the ever-expanding GMS (Google Mobile Services). Phone makers must pass a compatibility test to receive the GMS.
The mobile industry’s failure to build an alternative stack to Google’s services means that today, a vanilla AOSP Android phone today lacks even the most basic location services, for example, which in Google-compliant Android devices are provided by GMS. So the clean break is merely the next natural step – albeit a big step – in Google's strategy. Vanilla AOSP phones are only really commercially viable in China, where many people buy a Google-free phone and download the Chinese services they need; in the rest of the world, a Google-free phone isn’t competitive.
Why risk annoying the fanbois?
Google’s problem is that for all the innovation it does with each annual release, updates only reach the users very slowly. For example, it took two years for its launch of the 2014 version of Android (L) to overtake the 2013 version (K).
“Google won’t admit this a problem. Internally they’re aware it’s a problem,” claims Windsor.
Windsor thinks that Oracle’s likely victory over Google in the “Googacle” Java case will provide Google just the excuse it needs. Last month Google surprised many by successfully arguing a “fair use” defence of its copying of Java without a licence, based on careful instructions from the judge. But next year, the case will return to the much more IP-friendly Federal appeals court, which has already slapped down Judge Alsup and rejected many of Google’s arguments.
This is the court that affirmed in 2014 affirmed the “copyrightability” of APIs – it's a rightsholder-friendly court. An Oracle win next year isn’t nailed down, but since Google now seems to be clean out of arguments, it’s a decent bet.
“The beautiful part of it is that in 2017 at Google I/O Google will be able to stand up and say 'We’re going to have to take it proprietary'. Their response to the inevitable accusations that they ‘closing down Android’ is the argument that the ‘we were forced to do it’," Windsor told us.
“Google has no choice because they have to take back control of the APIs,” Windsor thinks. “It’s much more important to Google to maintain control of Android than it is to lose two months' cash flow,” he says, referring to the $9bn in damages Oracle is seeking.
Samsung no longer has the market share to take the industry with it, Windsor says. “Samsung was working on an entire ecosystem that included not just maps but browser and search, but they took a huge step back and handed control of it to Google,” he explains. “If one day was their ‘Nokia moment’, that was it: the 26th January, 2014.”
That day Samsung and Google announced a 10-year patent agreement. Samsung agreed to scrap the UI it had teased a few days before at CES, along with much other work. "Android is becoming more like an uber-Google experience than an underlying operating system topped with a selection of apps," Re/Code reflected.
Windsor thinks Google’s hand has been forced by the glacial pace of updates and reluctance of OEMs to provide timely Google updates.
“Firstly, handset makers don’t want to update their phones; they worry people won’t buy a new one. Secondly, they can’t. Android is brutally competitive. A cent on the Bill of Materials makes a big difference. To go from Android 4 to Android 5, you need more memory, RAM and storage, which increases the BoM costs, so no one’s done it,” he explains.
“There is no updating going on at all, really. New phones are replacing old phones – that’s how new platform software is coming into the market.”
With an even greater control over Android, Google will be still vulnerable to penny-pinching OEMs, certifying the hardware as “upgradeable” for example.
Taking Android proprietary will send ripples beyond the mobile industry. Facebook is rewriting its apps to reduce its dependence on Google, notes Windsor. Anyone who can afford to (and many can’t) should be thinking of doing the same.
We have contacted Google and queried the assertions about closed-source Android, as well as Windsor's claims that it had a "highly confidential internal project" on the go to make it happen, but it had not responded at the time of publication. We'll update if we hear more. ®CLOSE IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello talks about Graham Rahal's dominating win, Scott Dixon's remarkable bounce back and more Jim Ayello / IndyStar
Oct 23, 2016; Austin, TX, USA; Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton (44) of Great Britain before the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas. (Photo: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports)
DETROIT – If Formula One star Lewis Hamilton ever decides to cross the Atlantic and try his hand at the Indianapolis 500, safe to say his reception in the Verizon IndyCar Series won't be as warm as the one F-1 comrade Fernando Alonso received.
While Alonso showed nothing but respect for the quality of racers he competed against in Indianapolis, the three-time world champion Hamilton saw Alonso’s success as a sign that IndyCar was lacking.
“I took a look at the qualifying results,” Hamilton said recently, according to L’Equipe. “Fernando, in his first qualifying, came fifth. Does that say something about (the level) of IndyCar? Great drivers, if they can’t succeed in Formula One, look for titles in other races, but to see him come fifth against drivers who do this all year round is…interesting.”
More: Bruised, battered Scott Dixon bounces back — as always — with podium finish
Graham Rahal backs up talk, wins IndyCar Dual I at Detroit Grand Prix
Coincidentally, IndyCar drivers found Hamilton’s comment … interesting.
“It's funny hearing comments about the depth of our field from someone that only has to race three other cars,” James Hinchcliffe said Saturday after the first of two races at Detroit.
Hinchcliffe, who finished third, was taking a jab at Formula One’s lack of competition. A little bit later, Detroit winner Graham Rahal did the same.
“When I saw Lewis Hamilton's comment, you guys know me, it took everything I had in my body not to say something. Legitimately, in Formula One, over his entire career, it's been a two-car race, four max, max..... IndyCar racing, this is the seventh race, seventh different winner. That doesn't happen in other motor sports. Period. So no matter what anybody wants to say, it's a great form of motor sports.
NEWSLETTERS Get the IndyStar Motor Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest news in IndyCar and the world of motor sports. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: Sun - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for IndyStar Motor Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
"I can't imagine the feeling of going to each and every race weekend and knowing that all I got to do is beat my teammate and I'm going to win. But that doesn't happen here. So it was rewarding to have a day like today.”
Then Rahal put the cherry on top of the sundae.
“Look, the truth? I put Scott Dixon in a Mercedes all day long, and Lewis is going to have more than he really wants to deal with. I can guarantee you that. Maybe not me, but Scott Dixon.”
Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayelloThis post covers Disney World wait times from January 1st and briefly discusses some of the changes to the crowd calendars for 2017.
Sunday January 1
Predicted 4-Park Crowd Level: 8.
Predicted 4-Park Average Wait Time: 150 minutes.
Actual 4 Park Crowd Level: 8.
Actual 4-Park Average Wait Time: 147 minutes.
Weather: High of 80 and low of 55. No precipitation. A nice day.
I think we’ll pick back up with the daily reviews of posted Walt Disney World wait times. Since I create the charts to see how things are progressing anyway, it should only take a few minutes to post the charts and offer some commentary on what actually happened. You’re in business if you’re wondering what crowds are looking like leading up to your trip or just wondering what the wait time was for Toy Story Mania at 9:45am on the day prior. As always, you can follow along with wait times in real time at www.easywdw.com/waits.
One of the key features of the new version of the crowd calendar is an estimated overall average wait time for each Park on each day.
Here is part of the entry for January 1st, for example:
So instead of just offering up that a Park is going to be a “6” or an “8,” we can get a better idea about how much wait times differ from day to day and potentially whether it makes sense to avoid a Park when it’s “Not Explicitly Recommended,” but the crowd level is also low. In some cases, Magic Kingdom’s wait time may be significantly higher on a non-recommended day even if the crowd level is “just” a “2” or “3.” Other times, the expected wait times may be similar.
Another change is that I offer advice to both on-site and off-site guests when a Park is hosting Extra Magic Hours. The fact is that the Extra Magic Hours schedule is no longer a substantial driver of crowds in the FastPass+ era. And if you are eligible for Extra Magic Hours, there are circumstances where you may want to take advantage of them if you are able. And there are other times where you probably do want to avoid them. The advice and the expected wait times should offer some clarity.
Otherwise, the crowd calendar image should look similar to past entries:
As usual, the Parks are listed from “Most Recommended” on the left to “Least Recommended” on the right. Read the top of the January 2017 crowd calendar here if you’re unfamiliar with what the various numbers and letters mean.
The recommendations are based on a balance between expected wait times and expected attendance. One of the reasons for the pause in crowd calendars was that lower attendance doesn’t necessarily translate to lower wait times anymore. As Disney decreases staffing, the number of operating ride vehicles, entertainment offerings, the number of shows per day, etc. on days that it expects to be less crowded, you can reasonably expect to wait longer in line even when there are fewer people in front of you on certain days. The crowd calendar attempts to take this into consideration, which is why you will occasionally see Parks recommended on days that it historically would not.
Magic Kingdom’s recommendation on Saturday January 28th is a good example:
With the long operating hours, waits from 8am-11am will be shorter than 9am-12pm on surrounding days and the waits after 10pm should end up being among the shortest of the week. If you can take advantage of either of those time frames, you’ll be better off than trying to take on what would historically be deemed “a better day.”
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/january_2016_disney_world_wait_times.jpg
Quite a bit of “data” goes into these predictions. Above is one of the more important spreadsheets I use. For each Park on each day throughout January 2016, we have the “MA” which is “Overall Average Wait.” That’s an average of the wait times at a specific set of attractions over the course of the day. That number is followed by the “OH,” which is the number of hours the Park operated that day. That is then followed by “EMH” where applicable, which identifies it as offering morning or evening Extra Magic Hours on that particular day. There’s also a column to list reasons why the wait times might be skewed on a particular day, which usually goes to key attraction downtime.
This chart otherwise offers a good look at what wait times looked like last year, in addition to uncovering some patterns in crowd flow from day to day, week to week, and month to month. So the numbers you see for “predicted wait times” aren’t exactly pulled out of a hat. They’re based on past years and forward looking expectations.
Moving on to January 1st, we were expecting:
Heavy holiday crowds continue into the New Year though with most schools resuming January 3rd, this should be most guests’ last or second to last day. With many out late the night before, any Park works today provided you arrive prior to Park opening and tour efficiently. Now that Holidays Around the World are over, Epcot makes the most sense with Hollywood Studios also seeing low morning crowds. Things will pick up with above average wait times after 11am. Those just arriving will only find lower crowds later in the week with a dramatic drop at Magic Kingdom beginning Tuesday.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/animal_kingdom_wait_times_010117.jpg
High wait times from 2pm onward here are surprising and push the overall wait time up considerably, perhaps due to reduced staffing. You might be familiar with the fact that waits at Animal Kingdom ordinarily drop after 5pm, but we certainly don’t see that here. Still, the morning is a great time to tour with Kilimanjaro Safaris posting a 10-minute wait through noon and Everest still posted at 15 minutes at 10am. But the 90-minute wait at Primeval Whirl at 6:30pm and the 90+ minute waits at DINOSAUR and Safaris near close are virtually unprecedented, as is the 120-minute wait at Everest at 3:30pm.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/epcot_wait_times_010117.jpg
Epcot did end up making the most sense with what are largely average wait times. Soarin’ posts a 10-minute wait through 10am and Test Track doesn’t reach anything above its default of 30 minutes until the same time. A very good day overall. As an aside, I don’t think I’ll be including Frozen in the wait time analysis because it’s so prone to go down and that downtime can cause serious increases in posted waits. In other words, wait times at Epcot’s newest ride are not really indicative of crowds or how many people are in line.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/epcot_wait_times_010117.jpg
The Studios’ 47-minute wait time is more in line with the 50 minutes that we were expecting. As with the other Parks, things start out auspiciously enough, but waits pick up considerably around 2pm. The high wait times at Tower of Terror are likely due to capacity being unexpectedly cut and high wait times posted to scare off standby visitors so Disney can move as many FP+ users as possible through just one set of elevators. You can really get a good idea about how much the third track at Toy Story Mania has helped as well as see how far wait times drop there during Fantasmic and the Star Wars fireworks. If you love the ride, plan to be in Pixar Place during the last hour of operation.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/epcot_wait_times_010117.jpg
Magic Kingdom came with a tentative recommendion, which might have been surprising. But the day saw significantly shorter waits than either of the two days preceding it and the actual overall wait came in five minutes lower than expected. The 35-minute average should be around a “7” compared to the rest of 2017.
With better accountability and what I think is now a superior method of conveying crowd levels and wait times, we’ll see how things progress over the coming months. Accuracy should only be improved…at least until everything changes again.Listen Hear reporter Alexandra Hall’s report on Wisconsin Public Radio. On Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kathleen Dunn Show, hear WCIJ Managing Editor Dee J. Hall and other guests discuss refugee families who have left everything behind to start new lives in Wisconsin. By the numbers: Wisconsin’s refugees President Donald Trump has placed a 120-day halt on all new refugees and an indefinite ban on those from Syria. Here is a snapshot of Wisconsin’s refugee population in 2016: New refugees: 1,877
Top 5 countries of origin:
Burma: 979
Democratic Republic of Congo: 262
Somalia: 216
Iraq: 144
Syria: 119 Estimated total refugees since mid-1970s: 75,000 Sources: Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System, U.S. Department of State; Wisconsin Department of Children and Families
Rula and Abdul plied the narrow aisles of Madison’s Istanbul Market on Tuesday, looking for spices and other staples, such as dried jute leaves, that are hard to find in their new country.
The Syrian couple arrived in Wisconsin’s capital city with their daughters, ages 5 and 8, on Jan. 20, the day President Donald Trump was sworn into office.
A week later, Trump issued an executive order indefinitely barring Syrian refugees such as Rula and Abdul and temporarily blocking citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, at least until new “extreme vetting” rules can be written.
The goal, the president said, is to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of America. The order is being challenged in several courts; critics charge it unfairly targets refugees.
Alex Nowrasteh of the libertarian Cato Institute found that between 1975 and the end of 2015, “20 refugees have been convicted of attempting or committing terrorism on U.S. soil, and only three Americans have been killed in attacks committed by refugees — all in the 1970s. Zero Americans have been killed by Syrian refugees in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.”
In Wisconsin, Trump’s immigration order and earlier executive actions calling for local police to help with immigration enforcement and threatening to strip federal funding from states and cities that harbor undocumented immigrants are creating fear, uncertainty — and pushback.
Michelle Stocker / The Cap Times
Madison Mayor Paul Soglin has declared that while city police will honor federal requests to detain serious criminals, “We will not use our local police department as a tool to enforce federal immigration laws.”
Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney made a similar vow. Addressing more than 2,000 people at an immigration forum in Madison on Sunday, Mahoney said he answered “Hell no” when asked by an agent from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement whether he would allow his officers to be deputized as federal immigration agents.
Refugees arrive from around the world
In 2016, Wisconsin received 1,877 refugees from nearly 20 countries, according to U.S. State Department figures, including four of the seven nations on the banned list: Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.
Among the new arrivals in 2016 were 119 Syrians, not including Rula and Abdul, who came in 2017. To qualify as a refugee, an immigrant must be persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution based on ethnicity, race, religion or other factor. Once they arrive, refugees are legal U.S. residents.
Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Gov. Scott Walker vowed in 2015 that Wisconsin would not accept Syrian refugees after terrorists who had traveled to and from Syria killed 120 people in Paris. The governor later acknowledged he has no legal authority to block their entrance, although Trump’s latest executive order calls for possibly giving states and local governments more control over immigration.
Joe Scialfa, spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, confirmed that states currently cannot control where refugees are placed. Wisconsin serves as a pass-through for federal money used for resettlement by designated nonprofit agencies. That amount totaled $5 million in 2016, Scialfa said.
“State refugee programs have no role in this process; it is entirely a federal process and is funded 100 percent with federal dollars,” he said.
The agency estimates Wisconsin has taken in 75,000 people from 50 countries since the 1970s when the first wave of refugees came — Hmong people from Laos, tens of thousands of whom died helping the United States in the Vietnam War and the “secret war” in Laos.
Madison welcomes new refugees
Rula and Abdul’s resettlement was the culmination of a four-year quest. Rula, an elementary teacher, and Abdul, a chef, left their homeland in 2012, joining millions of Syrians fleeing a brutal five-year civil war in which an estimated 400,000 people have been killed. They asked that their last names not be used for their own safety.
Through a translator, Rula said their home in Syria was burned, and the family fled to Jordan, initially living in a refugee camp. Her daughters grew ill, Rula said, and the family moved in with others in the city of Amman, and later moved to the suburbs. For two years, their oldest daughter was unable to attend school, Rula said.
Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Ten months ago the family was approved for refugee status, although Rula and Abdul still did not know where they would end up.
“She was just counting minute by minute to leave the country and come either to the USA, Norway or Canada,” said Rihab Taha, a caseworker for Jewish Social Services who translated for the Syrian couple during their recent shopping trip.
Once refugees arrive in Wisconsin, local agencies, including Jewish Social Services, Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and others help to line up services such as temporary cash assistance, housing, health care, enrollment in school and participation in Wisconsin’s welfare-to-work program, W-2.
Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Becca Schwartz, resettlement coordinator for Jewish Social Services, said she is helping three Syrian families in Madison, including Rula and Abdul’s family. Resettlement of two more Syrian families and a group from Eritrea are now on hold, she said. In Sheboygan, a family of nine scheduled for resettlement by a different agency has been blocked by Trump’s ban on Syrian refugees.
“It’s really frustrating because we are trying to do some important work. It makes me worry for the safety and security of the people we would’ve been settling here,” Schwartz said.
Schwartz said her agency in Madison has been “flooded” with offers of help for the new arrivals, including jobs, apartment furnishings and volunteer translators.
“There has been an incredible outpouring of support from the public,” she said.
Refugees split on Trump policy
Yashar Tairov is the owner of Istanbul Market, the Middle Eastern grocery tucked into a small strip shopping center on Madison’s west side where Rula and Abdul were shopping. Tairov said his relatives, who are of Turkish descent, emigrated from Russia to the United States in 2005.
Dee J. Hall / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
“They don’t want to give me no job, no school, nothing,” Tairov said, describing the discrimination his family faced as Turkish immigrants to the former Soviet Union.
Tairov said the United States should welcome refugees, whom he has found to be hard-working and “happy to be in America.” He pointed to Abdul, who eagerly pitched in, cutting a hefty beef roast into chunks that Tairov fed into a meat grinder. Rula said her husband has been unable to find steady work since the family left Syria.
“I don’t think refugees are something wrong or something bad,” Tairov said. “These are not bad people, refugees. They’re just hard-working people.”
Tairov’s friend, Emin Buzhunashvili, stopped by to check on business. Buzhunashvili came to the United States in 1996 as a refugee from Azerbaijan. Buzhunashvili owns Mr. Delivery, a Madison business that delivers food from groceries and restaurants. He said it is the president’s duty to keep America safe.
“I don’t see anything he (Trump) is doing wrong,” Buzhunashvili said. “He’s not doing anything religious. What I understand is he’s trying to clean the bad people from coming in.”
Asked about Trump’s indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, Rula said it is “very painful” because there are “many others eager to come here for a better future, for a better education for their kids.”
Michelle Stocker / The Cap Times
Taha, the caseworker, also was an immigrant. A native of Sudan, she came to the United States 17 years ago. Now a U.S. citizen, Taha has three American-born children. Because of all of the debate about immigration, Taha said her 10-year-old son has asked whether his family will be allowed to stay.
“ ‘Mom, is it true that Donald Trump’s gonna kick all the Muslims outside the United States?’ ” Taha recounted, fighting back tears. “I don’t want him to feel that he is not welcome here because he is Muslim or brown or African or based on any category. But I don’t know, I hope things will get better because I live here, I have my friends here, I have my work here, my job, my home, my car. Come on, I mean, this is a free land.”
Taha said Rula also worries how her family’s new life in America could be affected by shifting U.S. immigration policies.
“I said to her, ‘Do you think the new orders will affect your status or your benefits from being here?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to think about it.’ ”In the United States, 400 billion gallons of water are used per day.1 Taking a published estimate of 14 kilowatt hours of energy to desalinate 1,000 gallons of water leaves us with 5,600,000,000 kilowatt hours per day if we wanted to replace all 400 billion gallons of water with desalinated water. Current yearly electricity use in the United States is 3,741 billion kWh per year, or 10.2 billion kWh per day.2 This means that desalinating all water would leave us with an increase in electricity consumption of about 50%.
This isn’t to suggest that energy demands will make desalination unfeasible. Rather, it’s a demonstration of the Red queen effect, as the use of resources that take a long period to regenerate requires us to substitute with increasingly large amounts of other resources, often energy. These estimates depend on initial variables as well. Brackish water takes less energy to desalinate than seawater, but the problem with brackish water is that the effect of the desalination plant on the local ecosystem would likely be even larger.
More worrisome to look at are the effects that desalinated water has on human health. Desalination is a process that removes salt from the water, but it removes other benevolent minerals as well, while some harmful minerals prove difficult to remove from the water.
Israel’s government begrudgingly accepted adding Magnesium to the drinking water, as although necessary for healthy water, artificially adding magnesium back to the water is quite costly as well. It increases the cost of water by an estimated 20 dollar cents per cubic meter of water.3 This represents a significant increase over the 49 cent per cubic meter that water desalination costs in Singapore.4 This is important to remember when it comes to hyped up desalination projects. Does the low cost used to market the project as feasible come at the cost of quality of water?
To produce high quality water, calcium would have to be added back into the water as well, but as far as I’m aware, this is not done so far anywhere. Different proposals for this include mixing back a small amount of untreated salt water with desalinated water and treating the water with lime. The prior solution has a number of problems, including an increase in the water’s concentration of boron, the latter solution is believed to be carbon intensive.
For now, the effect that the lack of calcium added back to the Israeli water supply has is a significant increase in the number of people whose calcium intake falls below the desired intake for optimal health, with rates of deficient calcium intake seen at 62% in those who only have access to desalinated water.5
We can not expect the problem to be adequately addressed by dietary supplements, because water low in calcium has a variety of undesirable effects. Food begins to leach nutrients into water when cooked in water that’s low in calcium. It’s also believe that calcium in water has a protective effect against metals also present in the water. Furthermore, water low in calcium causes metals to leach from material in contact with the water.6 All these factors are believed to play a role in the observation of worse health outcomes in populations exposed to water low in calcium.
In agriculture, a variety of problematic effects are seen as a result of the use of desalinated water as well. High boron concentrations in water are believed to be damaging to the health of humans as well as plants. Current very energy intensive techniques allow us to reduce boron to 0.8 mg per liter.7 The ideal concentration of boron for human health would probably be less than 0.1 mg per liter of drinking water however.8 A median published estimate for boron in river water is 0.0063 mg per liter.9
In other words, if we do our best, desalinated water is going to expose plants and humans to two orders of magnitude more boron than river water would. The impact this interesting experiment has on agriculture remains to be seen. Studies have found that there is a relatively small range between levels of soil boron causing deficiency and toxicity symptoms in plants.10 Israel has so far found that desalinated water is proving to be harmful for its crops.11
1 – http://www.livescience.com/4510-desalination-work.html
2 – http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=81
3 – http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/health-ministry-failure-to-add-magnesium-to-tap-water-could-kill-up-to-250-israelis-a-year-1.420686
4 – http://www.edie.net/news/3/Black–Veatch-Designed-Desalination-Plant-Wins-Global-Water-Distinction/11402/
5 – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23781750
6 – http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap12.pdf
7 – http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.5004/dwt.2011.2334?journalCode=tdwt20#.VSPho_msWSo
8 – http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/warning-the-desalination-plant-may-be-bad-for-your-health-20111016-1lrg9.html
9 – http://ceqg-rcqe.ccme.ca/download/en/324
10 – http:// |
with what’s visible on the outside. Transitioning was my greatest act of self-love. Instead of existing in a body that distorted my truth, I decided to embrace who I was and make that self visible to myself and to others. Similarly, I’m not looking to get top surgery because I hate myself. It’s because my chest interferes with making my true self and my gender visible. What I see on the outside doesn’t align with what I feel on the inside, and it creates a lot of chaos and discomfort. Discomfort about my body doesn’t mean I hate myself, and that applies whether you’re transgender or cisgender. My dysphoria is caused by a body that erases who I know myself to be – and who I love being. Body dysphoria is not a “mind over matter” situation. Body dysphoria is not something that just takes a little willpower to “get over.” And it’s invalidating (and presumptuous!) to say that it’s somehow my fault that I’m experiencing it. Myth #5: Non-Binary and Genderqueer People Don’t Experience Body Dysphoria Right. So about that acquaintance… Um, hi there! Genderqueer person with body dysphoria, right here. There are plenty of folks who are non-binary or genderqueer that also experience body dysphoria. I’ve written about my really scary experiences with dysphoria before, and what folks can do to support someone who’s living through it. And far and away, the most common response was that people simply had no idea that a genderqueer person could experience this kind of body dysphoria! It’s true, though. There are plenty of folks who are non-binary or genderqueer that have experiences with body dysphoria. And those experiences are just as legitimate, overwhelming, and at times debilitating as any other binary trans person. Sometimes there’s this misconception that non-binary people aren’t completely trans, or that their experiences of being trans are somehow less serious, less valid, or less sincere. This myth extends over to our experiences with dysphoria, too, which are often assumed to not exist or not be as serious. You can nip that right in the bud, though: Non-binary people’s experiences of their gender and of dysphoria are just as important, serious, and valid as any binary person. Period. *** I could write a whole book full of myths about body dysphoria. There’s a lot of confusion and mystery surrounding it: Many people want to know what it’s like, but are afraid to ask because it can be such a painful experience. But the truth of the matter is that body dysphoria (and gender dysphoria more generally) is different for each and every trans person. It’s difficult to impose a single narrative on such a unique experience, and consequently, even transgender people themselves often wonder if what they’re experiencing is dysphoria! It’s okay to be curious and to want to know more about our experiences. However, it can be harmful to perpetuate stereotypes – which is why it’s better to keep an open mind and to allow trans folks to define their own experiences. Because really, there could be as many experiences of dysphoria as there are trans folks in this world. So before you assume, take a step back and remember: Every one of us is the expert on our own body and (a)gender, no matter how we identify! 5.1K Shares Share Sam Dylan Finch a Contributing Writer for Everyday Feminism. He is queer writer, activist, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to his work at Everyday Feminism, he is also the founder of Let’s Queer Things Up!, his hella queer and very awesome blog. You can learn more about him here and read his articles here. Follow him on Twitter @samdylanfinch. Found this article helpful?
Help us keep publishing more like it by Help us keep publishing more like it by becoming a member!A Greek government crackdown following the murder of a left-wing rapper last month led to court appearances by five members of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party on Wednesday. Two of them, including its leader, were later remanded in jail.
Three others were conditionally set free and stormed out of the building during Wednesday's marathon court session, threatening journalists as they went.
All three were banned from leaving the country. One, Ilias Kassidiaris, was ordered to pay 50,000 euros ($68,000) bail.
Case 'ongoing'
Interior Minister Yiannis Michelakis insisted that the case was on track against the party which has long been blamed for violent attacks, mostly against immigrants.
"Their charges stand, the investigation is ongoing and the evidence is being gathered, Michelakis told Skai television.
Golden Dawn leader Michaloliakos, who was remanded to be held in Greece's high security prison, Korydallos, had been escorted earlier into the courthouse by armed police.
Some 100 supporters of Golden Dawn - which came third in Greece's last election - chanted "blood, honor, Golden Dawn" as Michaloliakos was led in, wearing handcuffs.
Investigating magistrates also remanded in custody Yiannis Lagos.
Arrests prompted by rapper's murder
The party denies that it was behind the murder of the 34-year-old left-wing rapper Pavlos Fyssas in an outlying part of Athens on September 18..
A suspect arrested near the scene identified himself to police as being involved in Golden Dawn.
So far, Greek authorities have issued 32 arrest warrants in the case, including two for police officers suspected of having ties to criminal activities linked to Golden Dawn.
On Wednesday, police arrested a former police station chief in an Athen's immigrant district where systematic attacks on migrants began four years ago.
Anti-foreigner sentiment
Rights groups and medical charities had long warned of an increased frequency of attacks attributed to Golden Dawn members or supporters.
Golden Dawn entered the 300-seat Greek parliament with 18 members for the first time last year, partly on a wave of public discontent over recession and austerities required by international lenders.
The coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras recently vowed to clamp down on Golden Dawn.
ipj/jm (AP, Reuters, AFP)Manoj Tiwari was appointed the chief of the Delhi unit of the BJP last December.
Manoj Tiwari, a popular Bhojpuri actor-singer and the chief of the Delhi unit of the BJP, has possibly lost his iPhone to a pickpocket at a rally against Chinese-made goods in Ramleela Ground.He has reported to the Delhi Police that his mobile phone, an iPhone Seven Plus, has been missing since he went to the rally yesterday.Mr Tiwari realised that his phone was not there when he was returning from the Swadeshi Maha Rally, organised by the RSS' economic wing - the Swadeshi Jagran Manch - against Chinese- made goods, around 2.30pm. "I asked my companions but it was not found. I had kept it in my pocket. A complaint has been filed at the Kamla Market police station but it is yet to be found," he said.Police said the Delhi BJP chief might have fallen prey to pickpockets. "We are trying to tap our local sources to find the stolen phone," said a senior police officer.The price of an iPhone Seven Plus starts from nearly Rs 55,000 and goes up depending on the special features it may have.Mr Tiwari was appointed the chief of the Delhi unit of the BJP last December. The 46-year-old joined the party just before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. He is widely known for his association with Bhojpuri cinema and music.NEW DELHI: India on Friday successfully test-fired an indigenously-developed, lightweight ‘glide bomb’ at Chandipur in Odisha. The ‘smart anti-airfield weapon’ (SAAW), developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Research Centre Imarat (RCI), other labs and the Indian Air Force, was fired from an air force aircraft.“The guided bomb released from the aircraft and guided through precision navigation system, reached the targets at greater than 70 km range, with high accuracies,” the defence ministry said in a statement. Three tests of the SAAW with different release conditions and ranges were conducted and all were successful, it said. Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman congratulated the DRDO scientists and the IAF for the successful tests.S Christopher, chairman of DRDO, said SAAW will soon be inducted into the armed forces. The SAAW project was sanctioned in September 2013. In May last year, the DRDO conducted the weapon’s first test from an IAF Jaguar aircraft in Bengaluru. The second test was conducted from a Su-30MKI fighter in December last year.SAAW has been described as a 120 kg smart weapon, which is capable of engaging targets with high precision up to a range of 100 km. The long-range will allow the IAF to easily hit targets across the border without putting the pilot and aircraft at risk. It can be integrated into the varied types of fighter jets with the IAF. The weapon can be used to destroy bunkers, runways, aircraft hangers and other reinforced structures.Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is on his way out the door, and the New York Times Editorial Board has a lengthy farewell. Please read it in its entirety, because you will need to work through ten paragraphs before you arrive at this:
Under Mr. Holder, the Justice Department approved the targeted killing of civilians, including Americans, without judicial review, and the Obama administration fought for years to keep the justifications for such efforts secret. In the zeal to stop leaks of government information, Mr. Holder brought more prosecutions under the Espionage Act than during all previous presidencies combined. In tracking the sources of leaks, prosecutors seized phone and email records of journalists who were doing their jobs.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think this should have been the opening paragraph. Of course, after that paragraph little else would have–or should have–mattered.It's time to reveal more details about Character progression! Introducing: The lifetime of a character:
Character Progression FAQ
How does character progression work?
Character progression happens in a few different ways.
At character creation, the player selects an Archetype, and a series of Advantages and Disadvantages.
This is done on a point system; each character (or avatar) has a set number of points that can be spent to improve the character. Additional points can be gained by taking Disadvantages. There is a limit to the number of Advantage and Disadvantage runes that can be added to each character.
After creating the character and advancing your base skills to a level of competency through gameplay, each Archetype has the option to promote to another Class or occupation. We are planning for multiple promotion classes for each base Archetype.
The promotion classes enable the player to skew their character in a specific direction. Want to be a Knight who does more damage? Promote to Swordsman! Want to be a Knight who has even more defensive skills? Promote to Crusader! Want to be a Knight who has a ranged weapon and skills? Promote to Sentinel!
Can I change my Promotion Class later?
No. There are a few changes that are permanent, and this is one of them. Choose carefully.
What does a promotion class grant?
In almost all cases the promotion class increases your skill maximums on all relevant skills. This enables the player to train their skills deeper into a chosen path, becoming a master at what they do.
Most of the time promotion also grants new powers to use in combat and extends the awesomeness of existing powers.
Sometimes promotion will grant a new weapon that can be used along with skills and powers that accompany it. Such as a melee class gaining the ability to use a bow and the skills that accompany bow usage.
Promotion also offers the character a final chance to alter any of their advantages and disadvantages. At this point we think the player fully understands what would be useful to their character as a permanent choice.
What are the requirements to promote?
We are still working on the exact mechanics that will allow a character to promote to their promotion class but are pretty sure it will have something to do with skill points. Either earn a specific total amount of skill points or train some specific skills to a required amount. It might even be a combination of both.
After I select a Promotion Classes, am I done with customization?
No. In addition to promotion classes, characters can also take Disciplines, which are a type of “sub-class” to further customize your character.
Disciplines are applied by collecting Runestones in the game, and applying them to your character. Not every Discipline will be available to every Archetype – but every Archetype will have access to many, many Disciplines.
Disciplines allow you to further customize your characters skills and powers. Want to focus that Knight on more sword damage? Or increasing his Strength attribute? Or turning into a Werebear? These are the types of customization effects that can be added by using Disciplines.
Discipline runes can increase your skill max with certain skills, grant access to new skills and powers, grant you new crafting recipes, or give you the ability to master weapon types that are normally restricted.
The skills, powers and recipes granted by Disciplines are typically very thematic. For example, we wouldn’t have a generic “Weapon Master” discipline that gives you a bonus to swords, spears and shields – but we might have a “Gladiator” discipline that does exactly that, because it makes sense that a Gladiator might have that particular collection of skills.
Discipline Examples:
Alchemist Runestone
“Wine from Water, Lead from Gold”
Grants Potion Recipes
Grants Alchemy Skill
Grants Inventory Bag (Potions) - Potions placed in Potion bag will not explode when hit
Werewolf Runestone
“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”
Grants Limited Time Transformation Power - Grants Werewolf combat powers while in Werewolf form
Grants Bonus Damage Vampyre Stat
Increases Movement speed Stat
Grants equipment slot: Jorts
Can my Disciplines be changed?
Yes, you can overwrite existing Discipline Runestones with new ones. Doing so will remove or reduce the benefits granted by the previous Discipline, and destroy the old one in the process.
Do Disciplines have restrictions?
Some of them do, usually in any case where an animation set is required for that weapon which that archetype may not have. For example the Cavalier Discipline (which grants shield mastery and block powers) would not be usable by Duelist archetype, because they do have the necessary skill pre-requirements (shields) or animation sets.
Can you give me some examples of other Disciplines?
Sure. Here are a few examples.
Standard Bearer
Rune Caster
Collector
Lapidary
Beastmaster
Ratcatcher
Blood of the Ancients
Berserker
Swashbuckler
Stonecutter
Commander
Where do Disciplines Runestones come from?
Disciplines are found by participating in Campaigns.
The exact method varies: they can be scavenged (meaning they will spawn in ruins, or uncovered as buried treasure when tunneling in the ground), some can be crafted (using additives and resources found in the Campaign worlds) some can be granted as a special Campaign reward.
Can Discipline Runes be traded?
Yes, but since they can’t be removed (only destroyed), you can only use them if they have not yet been applied to a character.
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Falconry Wallpaper
If you like the Falconry Discipline Illustration above, you may like this wallpaper...
Enjoy the weekend! We'll see you on the forums.
Follow us on Twitter / Like us on Facebook / Subscribe to our YouTube channelWhen we think about Functional Programming, we must understand one key concept: Problems can be solved once, and then reuse that solution forever.
When you code FP, problems solved are usually generic ones. Those are not bounded to any semantics or implementation details. Just to give you some examples, we could be talking about global concepts like asynchrony, IO, threading, dependency injection, or the way to replace dependencies by mocks on different nested levels of your architecture.
So those problems can be key pieces on any system. Ideally you should just need to work on implementing a solution once. An already resolved DI approach can be used on any app you write, or even on different platforms like backend, in case they also use Kotlin.
So, to reflect this in a very transparent way, we will code our own app architecture, moving on step by step, to end up composing its complete stack.
Modeling Error & Success
Almost any system out there requires to access some external sources to fetch data, like databases, APIs, or any type of external caches. I’m not talking about just Android apps.
Those sources of data provide 2 different scenarios in their responses. The caller can get back a successful bunch of data, or an error, usually presented with an exception. So you have a result which has a clear duality, and you need to find a way to explicitly reflect that in code.
If we think about Clean Architecture, you’ll probably remain about those use cases running on recycled threads provided by a ThreadPoolExecutor, where exceptions thrown by external DataSources or Repositories are catched and then notified to the caller using callbacks.
This approach can be useful for simple apps, but has some inherent problems.
First of all, you are forced to switch from exceptions to callback propagation in terms of errors. That happens because exceptions are not able to surpass thread limits.
It also has referential transparency problems. Callbacks break it, since you are not able to reflect what the function is going to return just by looking at its return type.
But the main point is that we have 2 different ways to get a result from the method call. And in the end both are parts of a duality fact inside the same operation result, isn’t it? We should be able to reduce this duality to a single possible branch.
You could use RxJava to solve the problem by joining both paths in a single stream. That could be an interesting way to go here if you are using OOP, since the flow is always reduced to a single stream.
But how could these problems be solved if we want to go for Functional Programming using KΛTEGORY?
We can easily reflect the result duality using the Either<A, B> type. Either is a disjoint union. That means it’s always gonna be type A or B, but never both.
Behind the scenes, it’s a sealed class with 2 possible implementations: Left(a: A) or Right(b: B).
By convention on FP languages, when you present error and success cases using Either, the left side is used for the error type, and the right side for the successful one.
As you can see, Either is the perfect class to fulfill our needs. So let’s move to Kotlin now and look at how we could benefit from modeling the mentioned duality using Either<CharacterError, SuperHero>> :
First step: I want to model the domain expected errors using a sealed class. After all, you need to seal a hierarchy of errors supported in your domain so the rest of your app can react gracefully to anything happening on external sources. Any exceptions being thrown by any external DataSource or Repository need to be mapped to any of the domain ones.
Lets code now a network DataSource implementation to fetch a bunch of super heroes:
Here, heroes are fetched using a service and then mapped to domain models. Afterwards, those are being wrapped on a Right(heroes) and retuned. It’s the right side for the successful result.
But if anything goes wrong, exceptions are catched and mapped to domain, returning a Left(error) in that case.
So the data layer is returning a completely explicit result with the type: Either<CharacterError, List<SuperHero>>. Just by looking at the method declaration, the caller can simply know that it would be returning either a domain error, or a valid heroes collection. Simple, isn’t it?
The use case can also be very straightforward. Either has a fold operation to fold over its two possible values, so you provide two lambdas for the two different result types.
Depending on the returned value from the DataSource (which will be a Left or a Right ), the corresponding lambda will be run.
So we use the error one to log the error and return the successful value as it is, still wrapped on a Left. Otherwise, we keep the Right wrapping the valid collection but after filtering the non valid heroes out from it. (Like the ones which do not have a valid image url, for example).
So presentation code could look like the following. We can fold again over the already composed computation to apply different effects on the view, depending on the case:
As you see, we are passing dependencies manually all the way down as function parameters. That has an explanation.
On Functional Programming, you don’t use instances most of the time for intermediate operations about transforming / manipulating data. You have those operations + value types like the errors or successful heroes list.
You might have not noticed yet, but all the functions I have been showing on this Either example, are defined at a package level. They do not belong to any instance. That’s because on FP, you try to play with pure functions with no side effects, so those functions do not have any need to live under an enclosing class, since there is no shared state and they have not allowed to access external state. Pure functions get a bunch of parameters (dependencies) and provide a result using those. That’s all.
So, on FP, dependencies are passed as function parameters. And yes, a little bit ahead on this article we will find a way to get rid of them. (DI. Yay! 🎊)
If you want to know more about error handling strategies using KΛTEGORY, please take a look at this section on the official documentation.Fundamentally this is a much better game than unity was on ps4. Not as good as black flag or AC2 but still good. The story feels better put
Fundamentally this is a much better game than unity was on ps4. Not as good as black flag or AC2 but still good. The story feels better put together and more cohesive while the characters are actually kind of likable. Though jacob does grind on me a tad. The world is huge as as always and full of things to do, but doesnt feel as overwhelmind as Unity did. Music is also a huge win, some beautiful scores most notably when you are atop a vantage point. At one of them i sat purched for good fee minutes so i could listen to it all.
Graphically is is not bad, it lacks some of the vidual flare that unjty had bht overall I'd say it is good. Rain effects feel a bit phoned in, but the world is full of life and the day / night cycle is a welcome return.
On the negative side - glitches are still present, mostly in the form of clipping and textures not loading in quickly enough. I had a in engine cut scene play where a character clipped through horse whi,e she was talking and had no mouth movements, another time on another in engine cut scene both evie and jacob did not render but all of their equipment did. Another time most game breakingly of them all, an entire train didnt load in when at a train station - i wws promptly run over and killed. Other annoyances stem from terrible frame rates at times, mostly in the train and an odd and infuriating bug where i am unable to walk through the second carriage because npcs are in the way, making me drunkenyl stager out onto the roof and leap over to the last carriage. Anoying. Finally, the rooe launcher is great when it work, however a good 30-40% of the time it can never seem to find a point to lock onto despite me staring right at one like someone in lust over a ledge on a building. Frustrating.
Plaonly this is a better game, yet i can't help but feel AC really needs a year off to rejouvinate.
…Risks and challenges
We have worked hard to get to this point and we are prepared for success. During the two years of designing, prototyping and testing the various planters, we assembled a team of experienced industrial designers, prototypers, manufacturers, and, supply chain experts to develop thoughtfully designed and well-crafted products. We are confident this team can resolve whatever challenge or devise a solution to any issue that may arise in mass manufacturing. We maintain a commitment to quality and hand-crafting good products.
The products will be manufactured and assembled in Southern California – within a few miles of HQ. We sought to build a product in the United States to avoid the challenges and delays that arise in manufacturing a product overseas. With our manufacturers and supply chain close, we have the ability to respond quickly to issues that arise in production and fulfillment. It’s the reason we believe quick delivery of our backers rewards is possible. And, since we already have 90% of the tooling on hand to produce the products, we have the capability (if our vendors stay reasonably on schedule) to deliver rewards within a few months.
Our goal is a satisfied backer – that’s our commitment and ultimate reward. Our immediate effort is garnering backers to fund our project. But, our success grows with every backer we earn as a customer. We have ideas for other products and projects and are hopeful this launch is the start of a thriving enterprise. But, to start; first things first, we will work to deliver on this project. Thank you for considering our effort.
George Cardenas
Designer and FounderIn 2012, ZY Optics released their Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 lens, one of their first ultra fast lens. They have just released a new version of this lens, the Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 Mark II and I have been out shooting with a production sample for about two weeks now and here comes my full review.
Disclaimer: While ZY Optics has supplied me the sample lens pre-official announcement, and I helped them prepare some sample images for their press release, they did not ask me to write a glowing review of this lens.
BODY AND DESIGN
The Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II is designed for APS-C cameras and comes in either Fuji X, Sony E and Canon EOS-M mount. There is no micro four thirds mount this time I guess it’s because ZY Optics have recently released the more compact 25mm f/0.95 specifically for micro four thirds cameras. The lens gives you approximately 52mm f/1.4 full frame equivalent view angle and depth of field. This allows you to create photos with pretty shallow depth of field.
The exterior design of the new Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 Mark II is not too different from the original version. It’s very solid, metal, the typical Mitakon design. There is a de-clicked aperture ring at top and then a manual focus ring underneath it. It looks and feels a bit more polished and refined than the previous Mitakon lenses. While I still wouldn’t say it’s a Zeiss quality lens but the gap between it and the premium brand lenses like Zeiss is definitely getting closer every time a new Mitakon lens is released.
Compare to the original version, the Mk II version is noticeably smaller and also lighter (the new version is only 460g). 460g may still sounds a bit heavy, but remember the lens is pretty much all made of metal and the original version was almost 700g so this is a significant reduction in weight! With the smaller size and weight, the Mitakon 35mm f/0.95 II feels quite nice and balanced when mounted on a Sony A6000.
Feel very balanced with a Sony A6000
The manual focus ring is pretty smooth and well dampened. The travel is increased to about 140 degree which I find is quite a good balance between allowing you to focus precisely and quickly. The resistance of the focus ring is just about right, not too loose nor too tight. The focus at maximum distance setting is exactly at infinity, unlike some previous Mitakon lenses that could actually go pass infinity at maximum distance setting. While I still prefer the super buttery smooth focus ring on Vogitlander or Zeiss lenses, manual focusing with the Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II gives me a pretty satisfying feeling too.
Just like the Mitakon 25mm f/0.95, I still don’t like how the de-clicked aperture ring is placed very close to the focus ring and they also have very similar physical design. I found myself quite often grabbed the aperture ring instead of the focus ring when I was trying to focus. The problem is that you may not notice that as stopping down the aperture will (most of the time) also end up give you sharp image. And with no information sent to the camera, you can’t use the EVF/LCD to check the aperture size either. I really hope ZY Optics can make the aperture ring in a slightly different shape, maybe like the Voigtlander lenses which is a bit like a bolt? Or make the aperture ring a switchable click/de-clicked design to provides better tactile feedback to photographers who don’t really need the smooth de-clicked aperture ring?
But apart from that, I’m quite happy with the body design and build quality of the Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 Mark II, it’s solid and feels more refined than their previous lenses.
The lens doesn’t come with any lens hood or pouch, I wish it comes with a lens hood but at least it does comes in a pretty nice leather box.Inside the lens is the brand new optics design. The optics consist of 11 elements in 8 groups, with 1 extra-low dispersion element, 2 extra-high refractive index elements and 3 high refractive index elements. But then it doesn’t matter what elements or design it is, the most important thing is the final output image, which I’ll talk about next.
The Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II comes in a pretty nice leather box
IMAGE QUALITY
Sharp image at maximum aperture is quite a big challenge for any ultra fast lenses and this was one of the biggest issue with the original Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95. As I don’t have the original version to do a side by side comparison, I can’t really verify the claimed 30% increase in sharpness. But I can tell you at f/0.95, the sharpness (especially centre sharpness) is without a doubt much better than the original version.
Below are some 100% crops taken with a 24MP Sony a6000. Even with the pretty demanding 24MP Sony sensor, the centre crop at f/0.95 is reasonably sharp with only moderate amount of softness. Stop down to f/1.4 it’s really quite sharp already and by f/2 I doubt anyone could complaint. The edges are a bit softer, you need to stop down to f/2 to get reasonably sharp images and at f/2.8 then it becomes quite good. But overall, if you are taking portraits or most everyday photos, pictures taken at f/0.95 should be sharp enough. If I want to stop down, it would be most likely because I need more DOF rather than I want sharper photos.
100% Center Crop
100% Corner Crop
Chromatic Aberration is unavoidable for an ultra fast lens, having said that, the Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II’s CA control is reasonably good. There is a bit of colour fringing but at acceptable level, I haven’t see any really nasty colour fringing.
Flare is also reasonably well controlled. While I do still can get some lens flare when shooting directly into the sun or a bright light source, at least contrast remains quite good and I don’t see any serious colour cast or hot spot. This is definitely an improvement over the (pre-production) Mitakon Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 I reviewed recently.
The Sun was behind a very thin layer of cloud
One of the main reason why people would want to buy this lens is get that shallow depth of field look when shooting at wide open. It means the bokeh quality of this lens is pretty important. As you can see from my sample photos, the bokeh is really not bad. Bokeh isn’t nervous at all and the transition from foreground to background is nice and smooth. There is a bit of cat’s eye effect and you get those rugby ball shape bokeh near the edges in some of my sample photos.
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO5000 f/0.95 1/80s
As part of the downsizing, the filter thread size has been decrease from 58mm to 55mm which could have an adverse effect on vignetting. As I don’t have the original version to compare I can’t really say it’s any better or worse than the original version. Vignetting is noticeable from f/0.95 and become only marginal at f/2. For an ultra fast lens, I think the amount of vignetting is quite reasonable.
Vignetting at different aperture
So far I haven’t really mention anything that is really bad, but there are two issues I noticed with this lens, comatic aberration and blobs shape flare. Both happen when you have a sharp bright light source in a dark scene.
Comatic aberration (or coma) is pretty obvious when you take any night landscape photos. You will see street lights turn into various cone shape because of coma. Stop down to f/2.8 then most of the coma would disappear.
And also there is a bit of circle-ish shape flare around any point light source in a dark scene. I noticed the same issue with the Mitakon Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 lens as well. Again, stop down to around f/2.8 could remove most of these small circle-ish flare.
Coma
Point light source flare
As the lens is designed for APS-C sensor cameras, the image circle is not big enough to cover the full frame sensor. But just to how it perform, I mounted it onto my a7 and used it for a few days. And this is what the photo would look like when the lens is paired with a full frame camera:
Sony A7 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/0.95 1/320s
Just for fun #1
Sony A7 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/0.95 1/320s
Just for fun #2
Sony A7 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/0.95 1/80s
Just for fun #3
Sony A7 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO250 f/16 1/20s
Just for fun #4
Sony A7 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/0.95 1/4000s
Just for fun #5
As you can see, there is a big black circle surrounding the center area, which is pretty much expected. So you really wouldn’t buy this lens if you only have a full frame camera. But if you want to have a bit of fun and that toy camera/lomography feel, this actually works quite well. In fact I quite like some of the photos I took with my a7 + Mitakon 35mm.
And if you do a square crop, the image is almost usable with only a small amount of black at the corners, similar to uncropped photos from my Holga Digital (review coming soon)
CONCLUSIONS
The original Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95’s overall image performance was a bit disappointing in quite a few areas.
And now we have the new mark II version, a significant upgrade over the original version. While coma and the flare around point light source at wide open could both be improved, and I still don’t like how close the placement of the aperture and focus rings is, it’s a lot sharper, has pretty nice bokeh, better flare control and the lens just feel more polished. And with all these improvements, somehow ZY Optics still managed to reduce the size and weight of the lens quite significantly over the original version. This is very refreshing as most companies are creating bigger and bigger lenses these days.
Whilst not perfect, the Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II is a lot more refined and well balanced design than their previous products. Looking at how fast the Mitakon lenses are improving over the last few years, it won’t take long before they can completely match or maybe even exceed the quality of premium lenses from Germany and Japan.
If you are looking for an affordable ultra fast prime lens for your APS-C mirrorless camera, this is a lens you shouldn’t miss.
SAMPLE PHOTOS
All photos were shot in RAW converted to JPG using Adobe Lightroom, adjusted to taste with zero vignetting, CA and distortion correction.
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO3200 f/0.95 1/80s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/2 1/4000s
Have you watched Taylor Swift’s latest music video Out of the Woods? This is where it was filmed
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO800 f/0.95 1/60s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO800 f/0.95 1/60s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO3200 f/0.95 1/125s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO6400 f/0.95 1/80s
Imagine if this is a f/1,8 lens, I would have to push the ISO to 25600!
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO100 f/0.95 1/2000s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 II – ISO640 f/2 1/60s
Sony a6000 + Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm f/0. |
against the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2013 Western Conference Finals, circumstances changed.
Paying $2,600 a month to rent a house, Bronwell, his wife and his daughters were booted by the landlord, whose own house had been foreclosed.
"He said, 'I want to take over this house. I'm moving in in July, so you guys have to be out by June 28,'" Bronwell said. "I thought to myself, 'Forget this, I can't do this anymore.'"
With the cost of living in San Jose high, and without a roof over his family's head, Bronwell called DaCosta back and said he was ready to come to Minnesota.
He's been here ever since.
"He made the phone calls, I talked to [Wild general manager] Chuck [Fletcher]," Bronwell said. "The rest is history."
Roll with the punches
DaCosta, Bronwell and Benz together form one of the most experienced groups in the NHL. DaCosta will celebrate 2,000 professional games next season while Benz himself is approaching 1,000 games.
In a line of work with plenty of turnover and guys moving around, the group will celebrate its seventh anniversary together later this year.
"The work they do for you, they help you to prepare for the game," said Wild captain Mikko Koivu. "But even more important are the friendships you create over the years. I think that's something you realize more and more is what you appreciate."
Aside from the personal relationships -- indeed, they see more of each other than they do their wives and kids -- are the practical, professional chemistry that comes with time.
It's a consistency and a reliability they have with each other, a trust, that each will do his job to the best of his ability.
For Bronwell, he has become a sort of Mr. Fix-It of sorts, taking pride in repairing some of the most unusual situations.
Earlier this season, the man who once dreamt of being the guy charged with fixing the goalie's equipment was tasked with doing just that. During morning skate, goaltender Devan Dubnyk had a puck become lodged inside his leg pad.
With a few hours to work, Bronwell went about retrieving the puck and fixing the hole. Later that night, Dubnyk wore the pads without a hint of an issue.
"You have to be able to roll with whatever is thrown at you," Bronwell sald. "I like that. It feels good to be able to help people in that way."
But whether it's a tear in a jersey, a busted skate blade or something he hasn't even envisioned yet, DaCosta has a teammate in Bronwell that he can count on for just about anything.
"He's above and beyond for repairs," DaCosta said. "He can do anything, can fix anything and is willing to do anything. He's my right-hand man. He's the best."Young Americans have taken on the brunt of this Great Recession. Since the recession ended, young Americans continue to be saddled with tremendous amounts of student debt. With a weak blue collar sector, going to college may seem like the only viable road into the middle class. Yet one thing is certain and that is, the current younger generation in the United States is either unable or unwilling to form new households. I would go with the former rather than the latter since Americans are fiercely individualistic and staying with mom and dad late into your twenties and well into your thirties does not have a mass appeal. Yet through the fog of debt based euphoria, the economy appears to be recovering for a small segment of the population. Real estate is up largely on the backs of investors leveraging easy money from uncle Fed. The latest figures show that household formation is contracting at the fastest rate since the recession officially ended in 2009. What is going on? Isn’t the stock market recovery an accurate barometer of the health of the real economy? Real estate values going up only mean that you have fast money pushing out regular buyers and also, making rents more expensive for a generation that is already having a tough time moving out on their own.
Household formation contracts
Household formation started picking up when the recession ended in 2009 and spiked in 2011 and 2012. Yet that all changed in 2013. Sure, some will blame this on higher interest rates even though a 30 year fixed rate mortgage can still be had at historically low levels (rates are in the 4 percent range barely hovering above the rate of inflation). In reality what has occurred is that we have become a nation juiced to the gills on easy debt. Younger Americans are largely shouldering the brunt of the $1.2 trillion in outstanding student debt.
The figures are troubling but also signify some bigger changes in the housing market. First, Americans are not going out and forming households in droves even though the population is growing:
Source: US Census Bureau
In fact, household formation contracted in the latest figures from the Census Bureau. Higher prices are being driven by speculation, not real income growth or better job prospects. Rents going up are a reflection of investors pushing prices up and inventory being low thanks to banks hoarding properties and stunting their entire foreclosure pipelines for their own financial benefit. If Americans used the accounting chicanery of some banks they’d be called criminal. The Fed’s $4 trillion balance sheet is predominantly made up of mortgage backed securities, bad loans, and other odd financial instruments offloaded by banks during the crisis.
If the housing market were truly recovering on its own and younger Americans were out buying homes then housing starts would be up and up dramatically. That is not the case:
Housing starts are still down well over 50 percent from their peak reached in 2006. Why would you build if household formation is simply not coming to fruition? And why would you build more expensive housing units when many young Americans are having a tough time venturing out into a rental, let alone buying a newly built McMansion?
This is simply a reflection of the real economy and a system that is squeezing out more money out of a young generation already saddled with mega amounts of debt. Take a look at what is occurring in Sacramento for example:
You have more people living at home between the ages of 18 and 31 than you did during the Great Depression! Of course this is all part of the new economic recovery where low wage jobs are somehow the fuel that gets the stock market going up. So much for the ideals of looking out for future generations and so much for the American Dream.
If you enjoyed this post click here to subscribe to a complete feed and stay up to date with today’s challenging market!James Osborne Stevenson became the first refuge manager of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas under the Bureau of Biological Survey. There he spent much of his time observing, studying, and photographing whooping cranes. He took the first ever color films of their courtship dances, and published a number of scientific and public interest articles on these cranes. In 1943, he published an article called Will Bugles Blow No More? about their endangerment. Jim died of a stroke on October 14, 1991. ~ Pam Bates
Will Bugles Blow No More?
BACK IN 1937, the boys used to gather around the old coal burner in Cap Daniel’s store at Austwell, Texas, commenting from time to time on the fate of the farmer. A visitor could have heard them mulling over the latest news: “I hear the government is buying up ‘the Blackjacks’ for a pile of money just to protect a couple of them squawking cranes! They tell me they ain’t bad eating but there’s no open season on them.” To this came the inevitable reply: “If you can’t shoot them, what the good are they?”
FACTS ARE INVARIABLY garbled in any hot-stove league. The Blackjack Peninsula, lying on the Gulf Coast of south Texas, near Austwell, was purchased as a national wildlife refuge not only to protect a remnant of the endangered whooping crane but also waterfowl, upland game and big-game animals. The Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, also furnishes feeding grounds for such fine waders as reddish, snowy and American egrets, Louisiana herons and the rare roseate spoonbill. These birds nest on the nearby Second Chain of Islands in San Antonio Bay, a sanctuary guarded by the National Audubon Society.
HEART-SHAPED, THE peninsula is fringed with salt marshes which are dotted with brackish ponds and bayous. The gently-rolling interior of the refuge is prairie-like, much of it covered with oak and sweet bay brush. There are scattered mottes or groves of large, windswept, gnarled live oaks, wrapped with mustang grapevines, and an undestory of mustang French mulberry and palmetto.
WHILE THE PURCHASE of this land for wildlife purposes was not made until 1937, it had served as a sanctuary since 1921. Mr. Leroy Denman, former owner and active conservationist, had protected wildlife on the area, and through his efforts herds of white-tailed deer and flocks of Rio Grande turkeys had increased tremendously. These animals still range through the mottes, parks and brushlands, together with the oft-persecuted peccary or javelina, native wild pig of the South-west.
OF THE 235 SPECIES of birds now known to have visited this 47,000-acre sanctuary, it was the whooping crane, largest of them all, that most intrigued me. Even before going to Texas, I anticipated seeing these birds on the refuge, one of their ancestral wintering grounds.
ONE LATE OCTOBER afternoon, shortly after I assumed my duties as manager of the Aransas Refuge, I accompanied some visiting officials on a tour of the area. At that time the roads were mere sand ruts cut through pasture land, winding, where necessary, to skirt “the brush.” As we came around a thicket into open grassland, we heard the guttural croaking of sand-hill cranes, alarmed at our approach.
Looking ahead, we saw about forty of these birds gathered around an artesian well. Our binoculars picked out from this group two stately white birds, much taller than their companions. How magnificent they were! Their plumage gleamed in the bright sunlight. We could see a carmine crown, forehead and lores, and a patch of red along the lower part of each cheek giving a walrus mustache effect. To watch these wary giants teeter from one foot to the other while awkwardly scanning the vicinity for danger was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Here at last were those rare, beautiful, spectacular birds—the whooping cranes! All too soon they flew, revealing another distinctive marking, the black wing tips.
EACH AUTUMN WHOOPING cranes come to this avian winter resort for a five or six-months’ vacation. Old-timers, who once owned small cattle ranches in the Blackjacks, told me that back in the ’70s and ’80s, hundreds of the big white birds were present from October to April. Their occasional raids on sweet potato patches near ranch-houses made them none too popular with housewives. Generally, though, they preferred to feed on shellfish and mullet, which they picked up in the salt marshes and ponds near St. Charles, San Antonio, or Mullet bays. The sand-hill crane, a much commoner bird, usually stayed inland on the prairies or in brush-lands. Mexican cowhands recognized this habitat preference of the whooper and, with their penchant for picturesque names, called it Viejo del Agua—the old man of the water.
MOST LOCAL NAMES are based on the color of this species or on its call notes. Adults are known as white cranes or Grulla Blanco; immature, cinnamon-colored birds as red cranes. One accepted name in Texas is bugle crane—since the loud piercing notes sound like a trumpet. But if you have ever heard a child’s intake of breath while suffering from whooping cough, you’ll know why the crane is called a whooper. Imagine the volume multiplied many times—and then crouch within thirty feet of the birds, as I have—the result is ear-splitting and blood-curdling. No wonder this war whoop can be heard at a distance of more than two miles!
FOR THREE WINTERS we kept careful count of the cranes on the refuge. In 1938-39 there were 10 adults and 4 immatures; the next winter 15 adults and 7 young; in 1940-41, 21 adults and 5 young—the largest population noted in recent years. We were inclined to consider this growth in numbers as a hopeful sign that the species was increasing until we realized that possibly it was due to “foreign” birds from the Louisiana marshes supplementing the usual wintering flock. The number of young birds which have been coming down from Canada with their parents each fall has been pitifully small. Although whoopers ordinarily lay two eggs, the hazards of hatching and rearing young birds were such that most parent birds, that had had any success in nesting, were accompanied by an “only child.” Very few family groups ever contained rusty-colored twins. Confronted with such low nesting success and survival, how can this species persist, let alone increase?
PERHAPS WHOOPING cranes could not have survived this long were it not for their natural wariness. They prefer broad expanses of prairie or open salt marsh permitting an unbroken view of the surroundings for miles around. On the refuge, they favor tho salt flats, lagoons and brackish bays where crabs and mollusks abound. Sometimes, birds venture into the brush in search of blackjack or live oak acorns, but bay flats are more to their liking and there they find greater safely. They feed in small groups, a few adults or a pair with its young. Immature birds are almost invariably flanked by their parents whose ever-watchful eyes scan the countryside on the lookout for signs of danger.
CRANES HAVE A CRAVING for fresh water and will fly long distances for a drink. In the fall of 1939, fresh water was at a premium and cranes frequented an artesian well on the refuge twice a day. Here was a chance for some close-ups of the birds! One day John Lynch, biologist with Fish and Wildlife Service, and I hopefully set out with Leica and movie camera to photograph one of the most difficult subjects in the American bird world.
WE SNEAKED UP to the well on hands and knees, collecting stinging nettles and grass burs all the way. Then as luck would have it, a cowboy flushed the cranes and geese resting there. Hiding in the corner of an old corral about fifty feet from an overflow pool near the well, we made a makeshift blind of boards and dead weeds while we waited. Two hours later, in came two groups of cranes—a family of three and a group of three adults. We expected a fight for we had noticed that family groups on the feeding grounds resented the intrusion of other cranes. However, a truce was called until all thirsts were satisfied. The male of the family group was not enthusiastic about the strangers but tolerated them. Flocks of Canada geese, widgeons and pintails flew in and lined up for water, awaiting their turn, but did not drink until the cranes had finished. The male of the family group took pokes at geese when they got “out of line,” and once he jabbed at another crane that got in his way. This bird, caught off guard, tripped and fell over a much surprised Canada goose resting nearby. We got our pictures—although we were more nervous than the birds!
I WELL REMEMBER another memorable occasion. One April morning, patrolman Everett Beaty and I were on the east-shore flats trying to determine how many cranes remained of the winter’s population. The few birds we saw appeared nervous as though impatient to be off for their summer home in Canada. As we watched a feeding pair, the larger of the two suddenly approached its companion, jumped into the air with outstretched wings, then alighted and began to flutter his wings and bow. Could we believe our eyes? Yes, we were watching the first stages of the famous courtship dance of the whooper! This dance, if it can be dignified by such a term, never lasted more than a minute or so. It did, however, take place occasionally throughout the day between extended periods of feeding.
THIS STATELIEST OF birds loses all its dignity while courting. Picture, if you will, Ichabod Crane of Sleepy Hollow at a jitterbug contest. The male jumps into the air, beating his wings, then flutters about his mate. Sometimes he bows low, an ungainly curtsy, with head and body near the ground. While in a crouching position, his wings droop, he charges toward his mate, circling her and perhaps letting out a few whoops. At times both birds face each other, jumping up and down while their wings beat the air. Most of the dance is performed by the male, the hen playing the role of interested onlooker. She often acts coyly, blithely feeding while walking away from him. Then, if her mate’s ardor lags, she turns about and flies to him as though begging for more attention. This leads to more bowing and scraping on his part.
A LATE-STAYING FAMILY group, lingering on through May, in 1941, gave us the opportunity to observe how the young birds are treated during the season of courtship. It was comical to find that the young bird of this group, so jealously guarded during the previous winter by its parents, was an unwanted wallflower when the male asked his mate for a dance. At this season, the male had no use for his offspring and would threaten it every time it came near; the young bird then wandered off to feed alone. The pair couldn’t be blamed, of course, for wanting a little privacy for their wild hopping and ungainly antics which kept up until late June. After that, the courtship subsided, and the immature crane was allowed to rejoin the older couple. Although the birds remained on the refuge all that summer, it is doubtful whether they attempted to nest. We had hoped, of course, that the birds would nest on this southern refuge, a custom which, it is said, they practice in the Louisiana marshes. There, some cranes spend the year-round, and it is rumored by some persons, and sworn to by the Cajuns, that they have nested there for many years.
WHAT IS LEFT OF the flocks of thousands and thousands of whoopers that formerly crossed the Plains twice a year in passage between their nesting grounds of Canada and the Prairie states, and their winter home in Mexico and the Gulf region? A sorry remnant at best—probably not more than two hundred birds. They formerly wintered by the hundreds in the lagoon country of northeastern Mexico, but none has been reported from that region in recent years. As far as is known, the only important wintering grounds are now those in the White Lake region of southern Louisiana, and in the Aransas Refuge and vicinity on the south coast of Texas. It so happens that only 15 birds (13 adults and 2 immatures) spent the winter of 1941-42 on the refuge; and persons who searched the Texas bays and marshes for other groups were unsuccessful.
EVEN ON THESE coastal marshes, once a safe haven for wintering cranes, the birds were threatened. Bombing and machine-gun ranges for Army Air Corps use have been created on the barrier islands because “the areas are isolated and comparatively few people will be affected by their use.” Cranes, unfortunately, have not yet come to fear the target shooting boatmen on the Intra-coastal Waterway which invades the heart of their feeding grounds. Exploration for oil and the drilling of wells in the marshlands and bays also continue. Are the birds to be driven from their last stronghold?
IN THE PAST, some toll of cranes was taken by angry farmers of the Great Plains who resented the birds’ fondness for sprouting wheat. No doubt others were killed simply out of curiosity—the fate of many a large, spectacular species. On the prairies of central Texas, a favorite stopping point in migration, cranes were once held in favor as birds for the pot. According to John K. Strecker, the noted Texas ornithologist, the whooper was a favorite game fowl in McLennan County, Texas, in the middle of the last century. “It was only after the wild turkey, prairie chicken and whooping crane began to become scarce,” he wrote, “that the bobwhite came into repute as a game bird.” (Quail must have been considered small fry in those days!)
MARKET HUNTERS IN Texas did kill and sell some whoopers but favored the sand-hill, a vegetarian, as a better tasting bird. The bugle crane was considered inferior because “it ate sea food and tasted fishy.” However, ranchers in the Blackjacks did vary their diet of frijoles and sowbelly with crane meat. One man, knowing of my interest in the species, assured me that his family never shot more than one every week or so. He then., added as an after-thought: “I wonder where they all went to?”
PERSECUTION BY MAN and reduction in nesting areas due to drought and drainage, has brought the species to a low point from which it may never recover. Probably some of the adults we now find are old, sterile birds incapable of producing young. There are few of them left and the gauntlet they fly twice each year is a hazardous one. True, they are protected by international treaties and some help is given them on wintering grounds, but little pot-shooting here and there could easily wipe out this conspicuous bird.
IS THE OLD WHOOPER doomed? What can be done to help this bird? For one thing, we need a complete life history study that will point out the specific requirements to save this species from oblivion. This approach to the problem is fundamental; it has already been used by the National Audubon Society in the case of the roseate spoonbill and the ivory-billed woodpecker. We know there is need for additional patrol, for an educational campaign to be carried out in the vicinity of the birds’ wintering grounds. The Canadian breeding grounds are now mainly restricted to southern Mackenzie and northern Saskatchewan, and possibly sections of Alberta; however, the exact location of nesting areas is shrouded in mystery. The summer homes of these cranes must be found and a study made to determine factors limiting nesting success and rearing of young. The information will be basic to wise conservation and management. Possibilities for a refuge on the resting grounds in Nebraska where the birds stop in migration are now being explored. It will be necessary for conservationists to muster every available resource in the last faint hope of saving this crane.
MAY THE OLD WHOOPER continue to trumpet down through the years! Though the outlook for his survival is dark, may the day never come when the last bugler blows taps for his race. ~ James Osborne Stevenson, 1943It is often said that since the wage levels in China are low relative to industrial countries, products made in China have strong international competitiveness. Among Japanese corporations too, a gloomy mood persists that it is impossible for them to beat their Chinese counterparts in international markets, given the very large wage gap between the two countries. It is certainly true that low wages have been a major factor contributing to China's strong competitiveness in labor-intensive products, but looking at Chinese industry as a whole, they rather reveal its lack of competitiveness. Taking into consideration the fact that Japan's strength lies in technology-intensive products, it is clear that China poses no threat to Japan because the two countries complement, rather than compete with, one another.
It goes without saying that wages alone do not decide the competitiveness of a country's industries. If the simple logic that "low wages equals high competitiveness" were actually true, countries such as Bangladesh and Somalia, with wage levels even lower than those of China, should be competitive. It would also be expected that in China too, foreign investment would be focused on the inland regions of the country where development is lagging behind that of the coastal regions. In reality, however, these trends have not materialized. Accordingly, when making judgments concerning competitiveness it is vital to take labor productivity into consideration. In other words, in countries where wages are cheap relative to productivity, competitiveness should be strong, but in low-wage countries where productivity is even lower, competitiveness should actually be weak.
As an indicator of competitiveness, it would therefore be better to use unit labor cost, which takes into consideration both wages and labor productivity. For example, although the average wage rate in China is only 2.1% that of the United States, productivity is also at only 2.7% that of the U.S., so that its unit labor cost (2.1/2.7 = 76.9%) is not so much different from that of the U.S. ( table 1 ). If other factors such as China's high capital costs, poor infrastructure and weak legal system, are taken into consideration, its advantage in international competitiveness is further diluted.
Since international comparison needs to be measured in a common currency unit (e.g. the dollar), a country's unit labor cost is also affected by exchange rate fluctuations. For example, let us imagine a case in which China, in an attempt to expand exports, devalues the yuan. In dollar terms, the unit labor cost in China would fall and competitiveness would improve as a result. But this would be temporary, and with time domestic prices and wages would increase, thus offsetting any gains made in competitiveness. Reflecting this situation, over the long-term, wage levels basically move in conjunction with labor productivity, and the two do not diverge to a large extent.
In a cross-section comparison among countries at different levels of economic development, there is also a strong positive correlation between productivity and wages ( figure 1 ). Thus in developed countries, high productivity is reflected in both strong international competitiveness as well as high wage levels, while in developing countries, low productivity is reflected in low international competitiveness as well as low wage levels.
The large gap in productivity between China and the developed countries means that, when China participates in the global markets, it can do so only by specializing in labor-intensive products (or labor-intensive processes for technology intensive products) in accordance with its comparative advantage based on low wages. Since China has an enormous surplus of labor in its rural areas, further increase in the demand for labor in manufacturing areas would not result in upward pressure on wage levels. Thus, for the time being, China should have no problem sustaining its competitiveness in labor-intensive products. In these circumstances, however, since for Chinese corporations the optimal strategy is to expand labor input rather than improve productivity, low wages could actually be a factor retarding the advancement of industries.
So long as China depends on low wage levels to compete in international markets, it can at best be a "factory of the world," rather than an "industrial power" that would rule over such high value-added areas as product standards, brand names, and core technologies. Since low wages also imply a low standard of living, no doubt they should be understood as a sign of China's weakness rather than its strength.
Table 1 : Unit labor cost by country: Comparison with U.S.
(Reference) United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Trade and Development Report, 2002.Certain assumptions pervade the thinking of particular progressives. They assume because they use the term ‘racist’ a lot, pander to critical race theorists, and lament the malignancy of western culture, they can’t be racist. They assume that using the term “Uncle Tom” – and its variants, including “house nigger” and “native informants” – is perfectly consistent with their credentials as anti-racists. They’re very wrong.
Because inherent in those terms is a sinister implication: ‘if you disagree with how I think a brown person should think, you’re still a nigger’ – a slave subordinate to the interests of white people. ‘If you disagree with me, you can’t be thinking for yourself’ is the message.
Notice how clunkily it removes agency – depersonalising and dehumanising in turn. Notice how its implications are both racist and arrogant. Racist in supposing that your racial identity should dictate how you think and what you think, rather than being contingent on those two factors. And arrogant in supposing that ‘only blacks who agree with me are doing so out of their own volition’. The idea that a person of colour can disagree without being conditioned to do so is too objectionable to these anti-racists.
The zealotry of these anti-racists means that they cannot, ironically, countenance a plural society – because brown people, believe it or not, can be progressives, conservatives, liberals and fascists. The beliefs of black and brown people do not derive from their identity like a linear well. They are human, and as human should be free to believe whatever they want without accusations of treachery.
Liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims are tarred with this foul brush. In a Bath university conference, organised by academics who believe the greatest threats to the world are neocons and Zionists (interesting), a speaker called ex-Muslims native informants because they have the temerity to oppose Islamic extremism more stridently than they oppose the West – the same West which, as a matter of fact, has given them the freedom to criticise Islamic extremism without facing death or jail. If, as a Muslim or ex-Muslim, you don’t hate the west and Israel, and don’t despise Sam Harris with equal fervour, the value of your opinion is greatly diminished. Maajid Nawaz found this to his great surprise.
The white author of a book and a litany of recent articles on Islam, Nathan Lean, mocked the white Sam Harris for writing a book on Islam. This is idiotic enough. What makes it spectacularly idiotic – And Lean probably knows this – is that the book is written in conjunction with Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim. Lean – understandably not trying to make himself look even more idiotic, but willing to risk looking like a twat – ignored Nawaz in his condemnation of Harris. Then, after some prompting, referred to Nawaz as Harris’ “Muslim validator“.
Now is probably a good time to mention that Lean’s book on Islam was a critique of the “Islamophobia industry“, therefore it is reasonable to suppose he considers himself staunchly anti-racist. But how can an anti-racist use the term “validator”, blithely denying a person’s agency, depersonalising their thoughts and mind and critical faculties, decoupling that individual from their humanity? The righteousness conferred by simply stating you’re an anti-racist doesn’t preclude you from saying racist shit, and shouldn’t absolve you from the opprobrium this merits. You have to demonstrate you’re an anti-racist, and Nathan Lean has failed miserably to do so.
Hari Kondabolu, a comedian from New York, started a hashtag called#bobbyjindalissowhite, in response to a speech given by the Louisiana governor where he said:
I’m done with all this talk about hyphenated Americans. We are not Indian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, rich Americans, or poor Americans – we are all Americans.
Kondabolu, apparently distraught by this shocking statement, released a set of tweets about the whiteness of Jindal which were apparently funny.
Like this one.
And this one.
And this one.
This one is well worthy of a gravestone I’m sure you’ll agree.
These tweets demonstrate that this form of racism is grounded in portraying minority views held by black and brown people as inauthentic, and consequently views dissent as betrayal. This racism has been allowed to fester for too long and it is finally flowering, and it is foul and it is ugly. It carries with it the pernicious idea – which I thought was long buried – that individuals shouldn’t be individuals but effectively stereotypes: the west-hating Muslim, for example. Let’s bury it, consign it to where it belongs; the obscure conversations of a few obscure racists. First of all, let’s start by challenging it.
AdvertisementsAfter that, he said, “we have a third instrument, which we don’t want to use today, which is elections as a plebiscite” on independence, which would most likely leave the regional Parliament with a more hard-line majority of secessionist lawmakers.
Mr. Mas has previously said that “there is no Plan B” to the scheduled Nov. 9 vote on separation.
Calling a Catalan parliamentary election is only a last alternative, he said in the interview, kept “in a drawer that is closed at the moment, but not empty.” He added, “This drawer can only be opened if there is a consensus among the political formations that are pro-independence — and at this moment there isn’t.”
Mr. Mas said he did not envisage resigning even if Catalans could not vote on schedule. But a failure to hold the vote would be a major setback for Mr. Mas.
The Catalan leader has fanned expectations for independence among Catalans since a falling-out with Spanish leadership two years ago, after Mr. Rajoy rejected a Catalan request to reduce its fiscal contribution to a Spanish system that redistributes tax revenue from rich to poor regions.
That fiscal dispute coincided with hundreds of thousands filling downtown Barcelona to push for independence on Catalonia’s national day. Catalonia has 7.5 million people, or 16 percent of Spain’s population, and it is Spain’s most powerful economic region, accounting for 19 percent of the national output.
Catalonia’s bitterness over Spanish leadership remains. Mr. Mas said Catalans were entitled to feel without even “a minimum of confidence that the institutions of the state act fairly” toward the region.
“I’ve evolved just like the majority of the Catalan society,” Mr. Mas said Tuesday. "I don’t believe anymore in the Spanish state of the 19th and 20th century because that is as a state in which we tried to do everything possible to fit in well and we didn’t manage.”A study of hundreds of rapists in Paris shows the profile of an attacker is that of a jobless, foreign man who is 34 years old, but women’s rights groups have attacked the results.
According to the French National Supervisory Body on Crime and Punishment, there were 688 acts of rape recorded in Paris in the years 2013 and 2014. Analysis of the figures conducted by French newspaper Le Parisien has produced what it says are the typical characteristics of attackers, victims, and the likely areas where attacks will occur.
The attackers are 100 per cent likely to be a males who are on average 34 years old. 52 per cent of them are foreign and 48 per cent are likely to be known to police. More than 50 per cent of attackers will be unemployed.
The analysis shows that in 50 per cent of cases the attacker is known to the victim. Indeed, in 26 per cent of cases attackers are either a friend or an acquaintance of a victim, in 23 per cent they are married or used to be married, and for one per cent there is a family relationship.
93 per cent of victims are women, averaging 30 years old, 69 per cent of whom are French nationals. 50 percent of those attacked were “intoxicated” at the time, most commonly with alcohol.
The feminist group Osez le Féminisme, has attacked the statistical analysis is a statement given to The Local. It points out that with only 10 per cent of rapes being reported in France, statistics based on reported crime are unreliable, saying:
“Victims of rape are often reluctant to complain, and rapists go unpunished. There’s the fear of not being believed, the poor reception at the police station where officers are badly trained (or aren’t at all), the lengthy and tiresome legal proceedings, and lenient sentences for aggressors.”
While it is true to say that a large number of sexual assaults do go unreported for a wide range of reasons, the analysis conducted by Le Parisien is not without value.
Speaking to the French news magazine L’Express, the president of the Feminist Collective Against Rape, Emmanuelle Piet, says that it does not provide a picture of every sexual attacker, but does provide a “portrait of the perpetrator against whom a complaint has been filed”.The extent of Paul Pogba's growing influence in the Premier League can be revealed in statistics showing the Manchester United midfielder as the top flight's top passer in opponents' halves this season.
Data courtesy of EA SPORTS shows that Pogba, 23, is the first player to complete over 1,000 passes at the attacking end of the pitch in the current campaign.
The France midfielder returned to Old Trafford last summer in a £89million move from Juventus – and there have been some questions about him finding his feet back in England.
Manchester United midfielder Paul Pogba has completed 1029 in the halves of opponents
OPPOSITION HALF PASSING STATS - PREMIER LEAGUE 2016-17 Player Team Passes complete (opp half) Pass completion (opp half) Paul Pogba Manchester United 1029 83.05% Jordan Henderson Liverpool 987 81.17% Mesut Ozil Arsenal 954 85.41% David Silva Manchester City 930 86.27% Eden Hazard Chelsea 875 83.41% Ander Herrera Manchester United 871 84.73% N'Golo Kante Chelsea 809 86.99% Christian Eriksen Tottenham 795 77.49% James Milner Liverpool 772 79.18% Nathaniel Clyne Liverpool 747 82.36%
But it would appear that Pogba is certainly beginning to exert himself from midfield for United.
He outshines Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, Arsenal's Mesut Ozil and David Silva, of Manchester City, in the passing stats in the opposition half.
Pogba has managed a pass completion rate of 83.05 per cent in the territory of the teams he has faced, clocking up 1,029 successfully picked-out balls.
The 1,000-mark was passed in United's 1-0 win over Watford earlier this month – and comes in spite of Pogba's team having played a game less than their rivals.
Liverpool's Jordan Henderson is second in the stat of passes completed in opponents' halves
He also missed his side's first game of the season as the paperwork on his world-record transfer went through.
On occasions over his 37 appearances for United, Pogba has looked the midfield powerhouse that a man with a combination of his physique and talent should be.
And these latest stats give an indication of how influential he can |
.. 7-2
2001 …… Tom Brady, NE ……………… 6-3
2012 …… Andrew Luck, IND ………….. 6-3
2002 …… Drew Brees, SD …………….. 6-3
2006 …… Tony Romo, DAL …………… 6-3
2008 …… Matt Ryan, ATL ……………... 6-3
2011 …… Andy Dalton, CIN …………... 6-3
2008 …... Joe Flacco, BAL …………….. 6-3
2012 …... Russell Wilson, SEA ……….. 5-4
2008 ….. Aaron Rodgers, GB …………. 4-5
2004 ….. Carson Palmer, CIN …………. 4-5
2006-7... Jay Cutler, DEN ……………… 4-5
2012 …... Ryan Tannehill, MIA ………… 4-5
2011 …... Cam Newton, CAR ………….. 3-6
2005-6... Alex Smith, SF ……………….. 3-6
2009 …... Matthew Stafford, DET …….... 2-7
2014 …... Derek Carr, OAK …………..… 0-9
Siemian through nine NFL starts has thrown for more yards than did the likes of Brady, Brees, Cutler, Manning, Smith, Carr, Flacco, Wilson, Ryan, Tannehill and Dalton at a comparable start to their careers.
Did we mention Siemian has thrown for more yards through nine starts than Drew Brees? By 365 yards he has. And yet, there is chatter Siemian must do more with his passes. Throw it downfield more. Don’t be so conservative.
Flacco had one touchdown and seven interceptions through his first five starts. Siemian has 12 touchdown passes and seven picks through nine games. Siemian has thrown fewer picks through nine games than Osweiler, Brees, Luck, Newton, Stafford, Cutler, Romo, Wilson, Dalton, and Carr yet there are gripes he commits too many turnovers.
The problem Siemian is confronting as the Broncos’ quarterback is he getting compared to the likes of Oakland’s Carr and Kansas City’s Smith as they are playing now.
But a look at how some of the NFL’s best quarterbacks fared through their first nine career starts suggests anyone expecting more from Siemian is overexpecting.
Year … Quarterback........… A …… C …. PCT ….… Y.... TD … I... … RTG
2006 … Rivers ……........… 274 … 182 … 66.4 … 2085 … 13 … 3 … 100.4
2004 … Roethlisberger.… 192 … 129 … 67.2 … 1543 … 10 … 4 … 100.2
2001 … Brady ………….…. 264 … 173 … 65.5 …. 1823 … 16 … 7 … 94.6
2006 … Romo …………….. 278 … 181 … 65.1... 2320.… 14 … 9 … 94.4
2008 … Rodgers ………….. 288 … 182 … 63.2 … 2124 … 13 … 5 … 93.3
2015-6. Osweiler ……...….. 319 … 197 … 61.8 … 2320 … 12 … 8 … 85.9
2006-7. Cutler ………….…. 253 … 156 … 61.7 … 1927 … 13.. 10 … 85.9
2016 …. Siemian …………. 291 … 175 … 60.1 … 2028 … 12 …. 7 … 85.0
2014 … Carr ………………. 337 … 206 … 61.1 … 1903 … 13 …. 9 … 78.3
2009 … Stafford …………... 351 … 190 … 54.1 … 2124 … 12 … 18 … 62.4
2004-5. E. Manning …....… 235 … 115 … 48.9 … 1314..… 9 … 11 … 59.4
2005-6. Smith ………..……. 216 … 112 … 51.9 … 1362 ….. 3 … 11 … 55.0
This is not to suggest Siemian, a seventh-round draft pick out of Northwestern, is on his way to becoming the next Brady, a sixth-round pick out of Michigan. But Siemian is starting off much better than did such No. 1 overall draft picks as Stafford, Manning and Smith.
Comparing 9 starts to 9 starts, only Roethlisberger among NFL quarterbacks has definitively outperformed Siemian. Let’s see how Siemian fares in start 10 this Sunday night against Smith and the Kansas City Chiefs.
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More: Recent Great DealsWhat Happens When Title X Funds are Stripped from Planned Parenthood – A Memphis Case Study
Tennessee is one of those states where Republicans worked hard this year on a pet political peeve – stripping Title X family planning money from Planned Parenthood. None of this money goes to abortions – it covers birth control, STI screenings, and the like, important preventive care that can support women in avoiding unplanned pregnancies and other health problems.
In Memphis, TN, those funds were then awarded to Christ Community Health Service, a religious health provider which indicated it would not provide women with emergency contraception, and would refuse to talk to women about abortion. Others reported getting a “sermon” with their healthcare visits.
The mixing of religion and healthcare for vulnerable patients who may not be able to access other, non-Christian and non-religious options, was obviously a huge concern. While the county health department would also provide Title X care, they obviously could not take on the entire load themselves. Another major concern, though, was that in their proposal for the funds, Christ Community pretty clearly indicated that they would not provide as much care to as many people.
Almost a year later, big surprise, that is turning out to be the case – fewer people accessing care, with major delays in Christ Community “gearing up” to serve the patients Planned Parenthood would have already been ready for. And the money that should have been used will be lost.
All told, around $572,000 of Shelby County’s $1,345,000 Title X grant did not get used between July 2011 and June 2012.
—
The result was a drastically reduced number of Title X patient visits in Shelby County. Christ Community, which Madlock says was busy transitioning to its new role as the Title X service provider, did not sign the Title X contract until March, five months after the contract was awarded. In the meantime, the number of Title X patient visits to Christ Community dropped, while the health department maintained its usual number of Title X visits.
In another story, from Hannah Sayle at the Memphis Flyer:
By the time Christ Community’s contract with the health department was finalized and signed on March 14th, Christ Community was averaging a mere 51 Title X visits a month, which pales in comparison to Planned Parenthood’s 719 Title X visits in July 2011 and 841 visits in August of last year.
—
Nor does it appear that the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD), the only other local Title X service provider, picked up the slack. Title X visits to health department clinics from October to March hovered around the normal average of 500 to 600 per month.
So patients who would have received care – including birth control – at Planned Parenthood didn’t get that care when the money went instead to Christ Community. Maybe they went somewhere else, paying more for needed care and sacrificing elsewhere if possible. Maybe, due to costs, delays, or simply not wanting religion pushed on them when trying to get adequate healthcare, they didn’t go anywhere. Whatever happened, it’s clear that a safety net in providing preventive health services didn’t catch as many people, and political games played a role.
I hope the Memphis Flyer will continue to investigate, and we’ll hear more about what happened to the women, not just the money. What’s clear now is succinctly described by Betsy Phillips, who covers the issue for The Scene’s blog, and puts it succinctly:
That’s bad. The money they didn’t use means patients they didn’t see, tests they didn’t run, healthcare they didn’t provide.
AdvertisementsThere’s a lot to like about The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park.
For one example, see “Ian Fleming’s Beautiful Plan to Defeat the Nazis.” For another, consider a story from the book that involves Alan Turing and how he outsmarted Britain’s Home Guard during World War II.
As the author of the book, Sinclair McKay, puts it:
Alan Turing was initially rather taken with the idea of Home Guard duty, as it was an opportunity to learn how to shoot; and his shot, as it turned out, was much more accurate than a lot of people’s. However, Turing’s interest in this activity waned sharply once his shot had been perfected, and around 1942, when after several years of anxiety, the prospect of a Nazi invasion of Britain had receded, he began to absent himself from parades. The authorities were irritated by Turing’s apparently casual approach, insisting that since he signed up for Home Guard duties, he was under military law. Turing calmly pointed out that he was no such thing, and that he had stated as much on the form that he had signed. One of the questions on the form was: “Do you understand that by enrolling in the Home Guard, you place yourself under military law?” Turing had written his answer: “No.”
Naturally, McKay adds, no one had noticed.
And thankfully so.
As readers see in the book, England was much safer with Turing doing what he did best, rather than parading around with the Home Guard or preparing for defense against a full-scale invasion, which his higher-level work helped to ensure never happened.
For more on that and other fascinating stories, be sure to check out my review of McKay’s book in the forthcoming issue (Fall 2012) of The Objective Standard.
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Image: Wikimedia CommonsJosh Huff will be the first one to speak of his disappointing rookie season. He expected more of himself after a college career at Oregon that made him a third round pick of the Philadelphia Eagles. Guys selected after him like John Brown of the Arizona Cardinals and Martavis Bryant of the Pittsburgh played significant roles in2014, while Huff did little to impress.
Josh Huff returned two kickoffs for touchdowns, one in the preseason against the Bears and another during the regular season against the Tennessee Titans. Not much else to his stat line; and most recall the fumble in Arizona as the summary to his first year in the NFL.
Huff won’t use the injury sustained in the preseason as an excuse. He has acknowledged that the speed of the game wasn’t necessarily the most challenging obstacle, but it was the mental part of things. Huff knew what he wanted to do with the football once it was in his hands, but it was obvious that his mind and body were working at two different speeds.
There is certainly an element of top end speed that Huff can bring to the Eagles offense, the ability to take the ball, makes guys miss and outrun the defender. He is at his best with the ball getting to him quick, allowing for blocks to set up what he considers to be an obstacle course that he must decipher in a fraction of second.
Huff worked hard in the offseason to improve his physical stature in preparation for a big sophomore season. He also a new father; says that having a son has made him a better man and he feels will translate to a more mature player for the 2015 season.
The Eagles know what they have with Jordan Matthews, Riley Cooper, Miles Austin and even what Nelson Agholor brings to the receiving core. Chip is really the only guy who knows about Huff, a guy that he in all regards “reached” for in the 2014 NFL draft.
I’ve watched a lot of tape on Huff, and I do see the type of talent that translates to the NFL level. He is currently running with the 1’s in three receiver sets, and I expect this trend to continue. Huff is not a guy that is going to rack up a ton of receptions, guys like Matthews and Agholor are the guys that will out up big totals in that category.
Huff I expect to take on the role of a Percy Harvin during his time in Minnesota and even a bit of what Antonio Brown was asked to do during his early years in Pittsburgh.
Like Sproles, Huff can score on special teams, via reception and rushing the football. If Huff allows himself to be him and not try to do too much, I believe he will play a key role in 2015.Video: After repeated exposure to alcohol fumes, fruit flies lose their sexual inhibitions and form “courtship chains” of amorous males
Fruit flies that develop homosexual tendencies when drunk may help reveal how alcohol loosens human sexual inhibitions, claim researchers.
Kyung-An Han and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University in University Park used a voyeuristic chamber dubbed the “Flypub” to observe the influence of alcohol on the sexual behaviour of male Drosophila fruit flies.
The researchers got the flies drunk on the fumes of an ethanol-doused cotton pad placed at the base of the chamber, and filmed them using a camera held above the Flypub’s transparent ceiling.
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Male Drosophila will normally only court females, following them and vibrating their wings in a courtship “song”, before attempting to copulate.
The first time they were exposed to alcohol, groups of male flies became noticeably intoxicated but kept themselves to themselves. But with repeated doses of alcohol on successive days, homosexual courtship became common.
From the third day onwards, the flies were forming “courtship chains” of amorous males.
Blocked reward
Han argues that the drunken flies provide a good model to explore how alcohol affects human sexual behaviour. While the ability of alcohol to loosen human inhibitions is well known, it is difficult for scientists to study.
Han’s team used flies that were genetically modified so they cannot release dopamine in the brain unless the temperature exceeds 30 ºC, to test if the effects of alcohol were dependent on this brain chemical. Indeed they did show that the effect of alcohol on sexual behaviour depends on the presence of this neurotransmitter.
That makes sense, says Ulrike Heberlein, who studies the genetics of alcohol-induced behaviour at the University of California, San Francisco. She says dopamine is central to the neural reward circuits that evolved to motivate animals to seek food and sex, but which are also stimulated by drugs of abuse.
But do fruit flies really provide a good model for what happens in the inebriated human brain? Heberlein, who works on both flies and mice, believes they do. “What is cool is that there is such a similarity,” she says. “I am surprised by the parallels.”
Journal reference: PLoS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001391)
Drugs and Alcohol – Learn more in our comprehensive special report.Media playback is not supported on this device De Bruyne on another level - Guardiola
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola says he rates Kevin de Bruyne as highly as any player he has managed, with the exception of Barcelona's Lionel Messi.
The Belgian scored City's first goal in a 4-0 win over Bournemouth on Saturday.
He now has 18 goals and 16 assists in 48 games for the Blues, who have begun the season with a club-record eight successive wins in all competitions.
Guardiola said: "Messi is on a table on his own. No-one else is allowed. But the table beside, Kevin can sit there."
Throughout his stellar coaching career, 45-year-old Spaniard Guardiola has managed some of the world's finest players, including Xavi and Andres Iniesta at Barcelona and Arjen Robben and Thomas Muller at Bayern Munich.
De Bruyne has taken seven games to show his new manager how talented he is, and took just 15 minutes to score against Bournemouth, as he did in the Manchester derby at Old Trafford seven days earlier.
But it is the former Chelsea man's all-round contribution that has caught Guardiola's attention.
"Kevin is outstanding player," he said. "Without the ball he is the first fighter. With the ball he is clear. He sees absolutely everything.
"He makes the right decision in the right moment every single time."
De Bruyne is not one of the Premier League's off-field showmen. But, according to Guardiola, the 25-year-old is fiercely ambitious, and keen to win the major individual prizes that have been the preserve of Argentine forward Messi and Real Madrid's Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo since 2008.
"I don't know him too much but from what I can see he is a guy who likes to be at home with his wife and kids," said Guardiola. "Before the game he is relaxed and quiet.
"He is one of the best, there is no doubt about that. We are lucky to have him.
"But to be the best, you have to win titles. Maybe I am wrong but I think he would like to win these individual prizes."
De Bruyne was involved in all of Man City's goals against Bournemouth
'He's gone to another level'
Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer says De Bruyne's performances this season have reached "another level".
"He was good last season. He is very, very good this season," said the former England striker.
"I think he has gone to another level. His performances, not only today but this season, have been nothing short of spectacular.
"Without the ball he is very good; with the ball he is just superb. He starts a lot of moves off and is so clever. He is so comfortable, so in control. He started so many good things for them.
"It's absolutely superb from De Bruyne. He sees a picture before everyone else, he is a second or two ahead of everyone on that pitch."
Record breakers
Manchester City's eighth successive win - five in the Premier League, three in Europe - is the best start to a season, beating a record from 1897.
Guardiola rejects the theory his side are finding it easy, or that his players might start to take their form for granted.
"That is not going to happen when I am here," he said.
"I have heard for a long time the Premier League is the hardest league in the world. I am not going to accept now it is easy.
"We are in September. We have played absolutely nothing."
Subscribe to the BBC Sport newsletter to get our pick of news, features and video sent to your inbox.Rattner, who helped craft the federal rescues of General Motors and Chrysler, left the Obama administration abruptly last year. This morning, the private equity firm he co-founded, Quadrangle Partners, agreed to pay $7 million to settle allegations it made illegal payments to a New York state official and a political consultant in exchange for millions of dollars in pension investments.
But the settlement specifically excludes Rattner, who Cuomo says is no longer with the firm and remains under investigation. What's more, Quadrangle issued a scathing statement against its co-founder.
"We wholly disavow the conduct engaged in by Steve Rattner," the statmement says. "That conduct was inappropriate, wrong and unethical."
The statement says Rattner hired former new York political operative Hank Morris to arrange the investment deal. Rattner also allegedly arranged an $88 thousand payment to the brother of former New York State Chief Investment Officer David Loglisci, for the DVD distribution rights to a low-budget film called "Chooch."
Loglisci pleaded guilty last month to a single felony count. Morris has denied wrongdoing.
Rattner's counsel, Jamie S. Gorelick, said his client "does not agree with the characterization of events released today, including those contained in Quadrangle's statement."
"Mr. Rattner shares with the New York Attorney General the goal of eliminating public pension fund practices that are not in the public interest. He looks forward to the full resolution of this matter," Gorelick said.A GRAPHIC has revealed the average size of a man's erect penis from all over the world... but can YOU guess which country takes top spot?
Target Map created the colour-coded interactive graphic which shows the different sizes of men's manhood depending on where they're from.
Getty Images 4 Target Map have published a colour-coded interactive map which shows the biggest average penis sizes across the world
What are the largest erect penis sizes on average around the world?
Taking first place, the African countries highlighted in red have the largest manhoods while erect.
Western African countries like Ghana, the Congo and Gabon grab the top spot, with their averages in excess of 16 CENTIMETRES.
Or between 6.3-7 inches if you prefer....
The African countries in red have the largest manhoods while erect, while orange comes second, yellow is in middle, light green is the smallest and green is the smallest.
targetmap.com 4 The red shows that African men size up the best while Indian guys have the smallest penises
This means men from Australia, Italy, Norway, Mexico and South Africa are also on the well-endowed end of the size spectrum.
Lovers from these specifically countries go up to an average of 5.8-6.3 inches when feeling in the mood.
What are the smallest erect penis sizes on average around the world?
While the diagram shows that African men have the world's largest penises, Asian guys got the short end of the stick with the smallest size on average.
targetmap.com 4 The UK is coloured in yellow, which means they're in the middle of standings
Asian countries like India, Thailand and South Korea don't measure up as well and are situated at the bottom of the charts.
Averaged size penises in this part of the world vary between 3.6 to 4.1 inches.
What is the average penis size in the UK?
4 This is the average penis size in the UK in inches and in centimetres
According to Target Map, Britain's average erect schlong is from 3.5-5.8 inches.
But research from London clinic International Andrology clinic has slightly different results.
This may be because they asked 1,000 blokes to reveal their own size (which could have led to a few extra inches being added).
MOST READ IN FABULOUS DREAM SITUATION? I co-sleep with my three kids under six & it DOESN’T affect my sex life LIFE OR DEATH Man risked life having unsafe sex with HIV positive partner to have a baby EASTER ALERT Mum issues Cadbury's Mini Egg warning after her daughter choked to death BUMPY RIDE Mums-to-be are LOVING this razor extension that lets them shave their legs Exclusive DEFIANT DUCH Meg will give birth in US hospital NOT Lindo Wing like Kate, says Paul Burrell RAISING THE BAR Cadbury and Oreo are hiring people to taste chocolate for £10.75 an hour
They found the average penis length in the UK is 6.36 inches.
Men with the largest members live in Wales, according to the survey, with the average size in that region measuring 6.56 inches.
At the bottom of the table with the smallest penises in the UK was the East Midlands, which came in with an average of 6.11 inches.The Times' criminal justice team looks behind the scenes and behind the headlines.
October 4, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Posted by Erik Lacitis
(This is a live blog with the newest posts at the top)
Curt Knox, interviewed outside his West Seattle home:
When asked where his daughter would be tonight:
"I can pretty much guarantee you won't find her."
What will the future hold?
"It'll be nice when things calm down and we can figure out what normal life is."
What was it like to finally get to embrace his daughter after the verdict?
He said he didn't get that chance. She was whisked away from court. It wasn't until they were in Rome and she sneaked into their hotel room and they had five minutes before she had to leave again.
"It really was a nice moment."
How would he describe how she is feeling?
"She's been in prison for almost four years and to be able to get out and just try to get back home and get back here... is very overwhelming to her"
Amanda speaks:
Cheering started again when she stood up and walked to the microphone.
"They're reminding me to speak in English, because I'm having problems with that."
"I'm really overwhelmed right now. I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn't real."
"Thank you to everyone who believed in me, who defended me, who supported my family."
"My family is the most important thing to me right now and I just want to go and be with them."
Curt Knox:
"We couldn't have made it through it without all of you people out here who have supported us."
Edda Mellas:
"There's no way we could thank everybody individually so this is our only way to say thank you"
Theodore Simon, Philadelphia lawyer and adviser to the family:
Stopped to walk over and pat Knox on the back as she sobbed.
He said Knox's parents and family relied on their patience, courage, dignity and fortitude.
"But most of all they have relied on their faith that this unjust conviction would not stand"
Knox is seated at the news conference, in tears at times, waving at times. She will speak but will not take questions. Walked in wearing a sweater, hair in a ponytail, at 5:30 p.m. People started yelling and cheering.
Members of the media are in a semi-circle at the site of the news conference, more than 150 of them pressing forward, waiting for Knox to appear. At least one camera man had to make a trip to Home Depot to buy a stepladder.
The plane has arrived, Amanda will be going through customs shortly.
Two black vans are waiting outside the 747. More than 100 members of the media are huddled, waiting for her to appear. A special podium has been set up, in case she wants to talk.
Residents and a handful of media outlets are awaiting the return of Amanda Knox in West Seattle this evening.
Businesses, including Easy Street Records and the Admiral Theater, say they're sporting "Welcome home Amanda" messages on their marquees to show their support.
"We've all been invested in her story and her journey," said Dinah Brein, manager at the Admiral Theater.
Both of Knox's parents have "Welcome Home," banners outside their homes.
Well, the media might be counting the minutes until Amanda Knox lands, but the general public isn't exactly jumping with excitement.
Just inside the airport terminal, in a waiting area from where you could see the TV vans and all the reporters and photographers, Victoria Foe, of Friday Harbor, said she wasn't curious about the goings on.
"I think the media should leave her alone and let her pick up the pieces of her life," Foe said about Knox. "She doesn't need to come home to this."
Sitting nearby was Rob Dominguez, of Fountain Valley, Calif., a systems engineer who had flown to Seattle for a meeting. He had seen a CNN report on Knox's return on his flight.
He went out and took photos of all the TV trucks and was posting them on his Facebook page. He said he didn't see anybody from the general public hanging out at the parking area where Knox is to appear at a news conference.
He hadn't yet decided if he was going to stick around.
"It'd be cool to get a picture of her," he said.
Ron Moon, of Calgary, Alberta, was waiting for a flight after coming in from Korea.
Amanda Knox? Hadn't heard of her, Moon said. Then he returned to reading his book, "Golf Problems and Solutions."
In the waiting area, people watched with curiosity as about a dozen police officers from local municipalities huddled in a meeting nearby and then scattered.
The police said they were here for security for the Knox arrival, although at this point, it wasn't clear just what they were needed for.
Will Amanda Knox speak at the news conference set for late this afternoon in Seattle?
That will be a "last minute" decision, a family spokesman said.
"It depends on how she's feeling. If she makes a statement, she won't take any questions," said Dave Marriott, who's been the family's spokesman for the past four years.
At the news conference, the first person scheduled to address the throng of journalists will be Theodore Simon, the Philadelphia attorney who is the Knox family adviser, and then Knox's mother and father, Edda Mellas and Curt Knox will speak.
As you might expect, Marriott said he has been inundated with media requests for interviews with Amanda Knox, from the news divisions of all the major networks and such shows as David Letterman.
"I frankly haven't read any of them," Marriott said of the requests.
One way to measure the international interest in Knox is that the airport has instituted the same media preparations "as if this was actually an emergency, knock on wood, an aircraft incident," said Perry Cooper, spokesman for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where the news conference will be held.
That means basically cordoning off the south-end bus parking area. It's now occupied by more than a dozen TV trucks, with satellite antenna sticking high up in the air.
"I've fielded 50 to 60 calls since yesterday, all the national networks, everybody," Cooper said. He's held the job for four years, "and this is the largest media influx I've seen here."
Knox and her family will be taken off the flight separately and taken through customs on their own, Cooper said.
Among the national and international media scrambling to get to Seattle for the Amanda Knox arrival is Manuela Moreno, correspondent for Tg2 RAI in Italy.
She arrived from New York in the late morning and was on her cellphone, her carry-on bags by her side.
"It's a big surprise for us," she said about the acquittal. "Everything is changing in the last year. All the time, we're looking for guilty, but during the process, everything is changing."
Of course, she also was vying for that exclusive interview with Knox.
"I need and want for her to explain, now that she's far away from Italy, about what happened," Moreno said. "She's now in her own country and feels more protected, maybe, no?"
ERIK LACITIS / SEATTLE TIMES
By noon, more than a dozen TV trucks had pulled into the bus parking lot at the south end of the airport, waiting for the news conference with the Knox family scheduled for late Tuesday afternoon.
Mostly, they were hanging around, waiting for the Knox family's big appearance.
But among those already there was Christina McLarty, a New York correspondent for "Entertainment Tonight/ The Insider."
She was there with a crew of four others and was already filing a report, one of which was an inside "scoop" that sources had told her that all three major U.S. networks "have had reps in Italy angling to get that first interview."
McLarty had started her day at 4 this morning. "It's the pound of make-up," she saidMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Iranian President Rouhani: "This is the first step"
Iran's president has vowed it will abide by the terms of the preliminary nuclear agreement it signed with six world powers, so long as they do too.
"The world must know that we do not intend to cheat," Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address to the nation.
But Mr Rouhani warned that Iran would have other options if world powers "one day decide to follow a different path".
The framework deal signed on Thursday will see Iran curb nuclear activities in return for relief from sanctions.
Earlier Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that it posed a grave danger to the region, in particular his own country.
He said any compressive accord, due before 30 June, had to include a "clear and unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel's right to exist".
But the White House said the US would not sign an agreement over Iran's nuclear programme that would threaten Israel.
White House spokesman Eric Shultz also announced that President Barack Obama would on Friday discuss the framework agreement with Congressional leaders, some of whom have been very sceptical of a deal.
'Third way'
President Rouhani reiterated that Iran's nuclear programme was peaceful.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Rouhani said the deal showed Iran "can have co-operation with the world"
The country was "not two-faced", he said, and would honour any final deal provided the P5+1 - the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany - did the same.
"If the other side acts on its promises, Iran will abide by its promises. If, however, they one day decide to follow a different path, our nation too will be always free to make [another] choice."
Mr Rouhani also stressed that the world now accepted Iran had the right to enrich uranium on its own soil, and that enrichment was not a threat to anyone.
Analysis: Lyse Doucet, BBC News, Lausanne
There's been celebration through the night across Iran and a hero's welcome for Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. But the deal he's brought home has been dismissed by hardliners who say Iran surrendered too much in exchange for too little.
John Kerry also faces a mix of support and scepticism in the US Congress. The loudest condemnation has come from Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, who insists this deal doesn't block but helps Iran build a nuclear bomb.
As hard as it was to reach this preliminary agreement, it will be even harder to draft a final deal by the end of June. But, if negotiators do it, it will be a victory for diplomacy which, they believe will make the world a much safer place.
Jonathan Marcus: This is a deal that buys time
What do Iranians think about nuclear deal?
Iranians celebrate nuclear deal in Tehran and online
Mixed media reaction to nuclear deal
Can US Congress kill the deal?
"Enrichment and all our nuclear technology is merely for the progress of Iran. This enrichment and technology is not against any regional country or the world," he added.
Image copyright AP Image caption Before Friday prayers, nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi (3rd left) said the future was "very bright"
Since 2006, the UN Security Council has adopted six resolutions demanding Iran stop the activity because, while enriched uranium is used as fuel for nuclear reactors and for medical and agricultural purposes, it can also be used to make nuclear bombs.
"Today is a day that will remain in the historic memory of the Iranian nation," Mr Rouhani said.
"Some think that we must either fight the world or surrender to world powers. We say it is neither of those, there is a third way. We can have co-operation with the world."
'Safer world'
After the deal was announced on Thursday night, many Iranians took to the streets of Tehran to celebrate and posted messages of support on social media.
Image copyright AP Image caption People took to the streets of the Iranian capital after the deal emerged late on Thursday
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, has not yet reacted to Thursday's announcement. But hardliners close to him have criticised it.
"To sum up the deal framework in one sentence - we handed over a saddled horse and received a broken bridle in return," Hossein Shariatmadari, one of Ayatollah Khamenei's advisers and editor of the influential hardline newspaper Kayhan, told the Fars news agency.
President Obama said the framework agreement would make the world a safer place, as it would "cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Barack Obama on the deal reached with Iran: "We will be able to resolve one of the greatest threats to our security and to do so peacefully"
Under the agreement, Iran will cut by more than two-thirds to 5,060 the number of centrifuges it currently operates to enrich uranium. The Fordo underground nuclear facility will remain open for research but will not be used for enrichment.
Iran will also cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium from around 10 tonnes to 300kg for 15 years, and the design of the heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak will be modified so it produces no weapons-grade plutonium.
In return, UN sanctions and separate measures imposed unilaterally by the US and EU will be gradually suspended as the global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), confirms Iranian compliance.
Iran's key nuclear sitesCRISPR-Cas9 is a gene editing technique that is faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous methods. With CRISPR-Cas9, geneticists and medical researchers |
France remained the second-most important business partner with a combined trade volume of 167 billion euros. The United States came in third with 165 billion euros.
In 2015, the United States became the top trading partner for Germany, overtaking France for the first time since 1961 thanks to an upturn in the U.S. economy and a weaker euro.
Separately, Germany's Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations said on Friday it expected exports to Russia will probably rise at least 5 percent this year, their first increase in years given Western sanctions.
"Made in Germany"
Looking at exports alone, the United States remained the biggest client for products "Made in Germany" in 2016, importing goods from Europe's biggest economy worth some 107 billion euros.
France remained the second-most important single export destination for German goods with a sum of 101 billion euros, the data showed. Britain came in third, importing German goods worth 86 billion euros.
Britain accounted also for the biggest bi-lateral trade surplus: Exports surpassed imports from Britain by more than 50 billion euros, the figures showed.
The United States came in second with a bi-lateral trade deficit: German exports to the U.S. surpassed imports from there by 49 billion euros.
This means that Britain and the U.S. together accounted for roughly 40 percent of Germany's record trade surplus of 252.9 billion euros in 2016.
The figures are likely to fuel the debate about Germany's export performance, its trade surplus and global economic imbalances ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Baden-Baden mid-March.The House package included a new tax on intellectual property royalties multinational corporations pay to offshore affiliates in an effort, the writers say, to keep them from moving money to tax shelters. But, after an outcry from those multinationals, an amendment was added on Monday that weakens its impact such that it’s worth 95 percent less. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, haven’t included it in their version of the legislation.
The House package also calls for a one-time tax of 7 percent and 14 percent on offshore earnings that have been stockpiled abroad, and an effective 10 percent rate on “high returns” to a parent company headquartered in this country from foreign subsidiaries, both efforts to supposedly keep multinationals from avoiding taxes. The Senate version proposes even lower rates on offshore earnings. Those rates are far lower than the 20 percent rate Republicans want to levy on corporate profits — and a huge drop from the current rate of 35 percent — leaving an incentive to keep money elsewhere.
The House plan shifts the country to a territorial tax system, in which companies would owe taxes only on money they make here. Money generated abroad in foreign subsidiaries would be subject to the taxes of that country, so they’d have even more incentive to keep it in the low-tax places the Paradise Papers show they’ve already been using.
None of these provisions go after wealthy individuals who keep their money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. Instead, the House package hands these same people a variety of giveaways: an enormous loophole via a lower tax rate on pass-through businesses; the elimination of the alternative minimum tax that ensures they have to pay at least something; and the eradication of the tax on the wealthiest estates.
The groups that are already dodging taxes through offshore accounting are the ones that make out with the biggest benefits. According to an analysis by the conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, $1 trillion of the overall $1.5 trillion cost is from cuts for businesses. According to the Tax Policy Center, the highest-income families can expect the biggest reward. The richest 0.1 percent of Americans will get an average $278,370 reduction in their tax bill by 2027, while the poorest two-fifths of the country get around $25.
The Republican tax plan would shift more of the tax burden onto those who can least afford to shoulder it and relieve those who are already starving the government of tax revenue. The Paradise Papers shine yet another spotlight on how the rich and powerful game the system to avoid paying what they would otherwise owe. The rest of us suffer for it. Why hand them even more favors?After tiptoeing gently around Donald Trump for weeks, Republican leaders and conservative commentators are confronting him over his behavior in increasingly personal — and even moral — terms.
“When a candidate under the Republican banner would abandon the tradition of magnanimous leadership of the presidency, when he would seek to demonize millions of citizens, when he would stoop to attack POWs for being captured, I can only ask as [Joseph Welch] did of Senator McCarthy, ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?’” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a barn burner speech on Wednesday denouncing “Trumpism” as a “cancer” on the GOP. (A spokeswoman for Trump declined to respond.)
RELATED: Rick Perry: Trump’s candidacy a ‘cancer on conservatism’
“When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?” News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, one of the most influential figures in conservative media, tweeted on Saturday.
The answer: Not anytime soon. Trump has so far proven immune to public disapproval, responds to all criticism with overwhelming force – he gave out Senator Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number in a speech after Graham called him a “jackass” – and has a large personal fortune that means he doesn’t have to rely on anyone for fundraising.
When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country? — Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 19, 2015
The billionaire real estate mogul’s unmitigated boorishness is fascinating in just how much it upsets the political system we normally take for granted. So much of the current order is undergirded by an unspoken sense of shame — an environment where even the most megalomaniac politicians are expected to apologize for offensive behavior or even resign when they face enough criticism from their allies. In this setting, Trump’s total disregard for these barriers is something akin to a superpower.
This is, of course, the key to Trump’s appeal as well as his biggest liability. For a subset of conservative voters who view even the slightest concession of respect to your political opponents as capitulation, Trump’s unrestrained trolling is a breakthrough. He’s Neo bending The Matrix to his will.
Watching the unfolding mayhem, I’m reminded of a conversation I had in college in the early 2000s with a friend from Europe who had never visited the United States until then. We often talked politics and my attempts to explain the day’s biggest news story would regularly boil down to some variation of “If this is true, it will be embarrassing for the party,” or “This could really embarrass that candidate.” One day, she became exasperated. “Stop saying ‘It’s embarrassing,” she said. “Why does it matter?”
It was a provocative question. Sometimes there are concrete political consequences to public disapproval — lost elections, lost votes in Congress, lost donors or endorsements. Just as often, however, scandalized politicians or staffers abandon ship long before it reaches that point rather than suffer through more indignity.
RELATED: Making sense of Donald Trump’s bump in the polls
Public shaming from Democratic leaders is what compelled a politician as brazen as Anthony Weiner to leave Congress after posting a lewd photo on Twitter and lying about it — even though he could have won re-election if he went rogue and stayed. Shame is what compelled Herman Cain, another circus presidential candidate, to leave the 2012 race amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment despite still enjoying a significant base of support on the right.
Republicans can only go so far in ostracizing Trump as long as he can credibly threaten to run as an Independent — a nuclear option that would likely doom whoever wins the Republican nomination in the general election.
during
the last decade
Lara Brown, an associate professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, has spent years researching the role of scandals and campaign rhetoric and argues that party leaders have grown even quickerto apply public pressure to members whose behavior drags down the party. The electorate is more polarized and fewer voters split their tickets, meaning any damage to the national party’s brand — whether it’s from a presidential candidate or a backbencher whose inflammatory quotes spread on social media — threatens to hurt candidates up and down the ballot.
“All politics have become national, and national party brands are much more on the minds of party elites,” Brown told msnbc. “Party leaders engage in something of a public shaming in an effort to protect the national party’s reputation and that’s a somewhat recent development.”
A prime example is Todd Akin, the 2012 Missouri Senate candidate who national Republican leaders disowned and unsuccessfully tried to push out of the race over his comments on rape and pregnancy, for fear that he would tarnish candidates around the country. Their fears proved justified: He ended up losing his race by a wide margin while another GOP Senate candidate, Indiana’s Richard Mourdock, lost in an upset after stumbling through a similar question on rape exceptions for abortion raised by the Akin story.
RELATED: Donald Trump escalates war with Lindsey Graham
Trump now threatens to pull an Akin on a presidential level by wrecking the party’s image with immigrant communities its leaders have struggled to court or, more generally, projecting a lack of seriousness to swing voters. The party wasn’t able to convince Akin to fall in his sword in 2012 even though they had significant leverage over him in the form of advertising money and party backing. In Trump’s case, he doesn’t need the party’s money, he’s impervious to appeals from any Republican elders, and he benefits from bad press almost as much as good press, if not more. And, despite Perry’s best effort on Wednesday, Trump will definitely not be convinced he’s in the wrong morally.
Making matters worse, Republicans can only go so far in ostracizing Trump as long as he can credibly threaten to run as an Independent — a nuclear option that would likely doom whoever wins the Republican nomination in the general election.
What Republican leaders are left with is a candidate with no regard for the political rules of the road and a party with no authority to enforce them. It’s like watching Batman interrogate the Joker in The Dark Knight — he slams his head on the table, throws him against the wall, and threatens him with worse only to watch him respond with laughter: “You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with!” In the end, only Trump can stop Trump.1 Unearthed Arcana: The Wilder A small band of adventurers stops to camp in the woods. As they roast some game over their campfire, they hear a low, guttoral growl from the dark woods encircling their camp, and see a pair of glowing eyes. Fearing a wolf, they reach for their spears, but relax a bit when a halfling slowly steps out of the shadows, wearing ragged scraps of clothing. Suddenly, the halfling snarls and springs at the nearest adventurer, going for the soft flesh of the neck, sharp canines piercing the flesh, just as a wolf might do. Minutes later, all the adventurers lay dead, while the halfling sits by the campfire, eating food that they had been preparing. An elf walks into a tavern. Inside, there is a group of halflings playing a strange and complicated game involving dice and bouncing balls. The barkeep notices her interest, chuckles, and says, "Don't pay any mind to them, mistress. Rintin is a halfling game; none but the little folk have the fingers for it." Undiscouraged, she watches intently for a few minutes, and then asks to join the game. The ball bounces, the dice are rolled and quickly re-rolled, and a few seconds later, the halflings are stunned. They've never known any elf to be able to play the game as this one just did. The elf collects her winnings and walks away, a smirk on her face. A teenage dragonborn walks along a dirt road, headed back to his parents' farm from town. He hears some rustling in the bushes and trees alongside the road, and suddenly 3 bandits leap out of the undergrowth, demanding money. "Please! Stop! This is all I have!" The young dragonborn starts to panic, but one of the bandits waves his hands, and suddenly the young boy can't move. The bandits grab the boy's coinpurse and head off down the road, chuckling to themselves at the ease of it all. A minute later, they hear the scuff of boots on the dirt behind them. They try to turn around to see who's approaching, but suddenly, they can't move. They feel the rough scratching of dragonborn scales against their skin as their bags are emptied. 'No, it can't be the boy? He must have been bait for a bounty hunter!' They prepare themselves to be cuffed and taken in, but nothing happens. The patter of feet scurrying away is the only sound as the dragonborn looks around, sees no one else on the road, and scampers off towards home. Wilders don't have much in common with most people. Often, a wilder's past is filled with solitude and exile, voluntary or otherwise. No matter their surroundings, a wilder learns to adapt, but often in unusual ways. They adapt to each situation by learning the abilities used against them and using those abilities for themselves. No matter the form of their power, a wilder can be a useful ally to have on your side, or a formidable opponent standing in your way. Wilder Focus Wilders use something called 'Focus' for their abilities. Most can't describe much about where they get this energy from, just that they can tap into it and make use of its power. A wilder's Focus points are restored during a long rest. The maximum number of Focus points that a wilder can use at once is their Focus Limit. When in initiative order, this is the maximum number that can be used in a turn. Although extremely rare, occasionally a gifted individual will walk the paths of the Wilder as well as the paths of the Mystic. In doing so, they have found that the Focus that Wilders tap into is actually the same as the Psi that is used by Mystics. Scholars theorize that the mind of the Wilder must play a large role in their ability to adapt and rapidly learn from their surroundings. Multiclassing When multiclassing a Wilder with a Mystic, use your total Wilder level plus your total Mystic level for purposes of determining your Focus/Psi Points and Focus/Psi Limit. You only have one pool of Focus/Psi points, and you may use them for either class's abilities as you see fit.
2 The Wilder Level Proficiency Bonus Features Focus Points Focus Limit 1st +2 Wilder Expression Feature 4 2 2nd +2 Focused Defense, Memorize, Recall 6 2 3rd +2 Focus on the Moment, Anticipation 14 3 4th +2 Ability Score Improvement 17 3 5th +3 Wilder Expression Feature 27 3 6th +3 Vigilant, Quick Learner 32 5 7th +3 Long-Term Memory 38 5 8th +3 Ability Score Improvement 44 6 9th +4 Instant Recall 57 6 10th +4 Wilder Expression Feature 64 7 11th +4 Improved Long-Term Memory 64 7 12th +4 Ability Score Improvement 64 7 13th +5 Instant Recall Improvement 64 7 14th +5 Vigilant Improvement 64 7 15th +5 Wilder Expression Feature 64 7 16th +5 Ability Score Improvement 64 7 17th +6 Instant Mastery 64 7 18th +6 Critical Focus 71 7 19th +6 Ability Score Improvement 71 7 20th +6 Wilder Expression Feature 71 7 Creating a Wilder When creating a Wilder, consider the relationships they might have with others. The abilities of a wilder may make them outcast in some societies, but they do still need to live near other living things in order to make use of their abilities. This can create strain between people, and help to create interesting characters. Quick Build You can make a wilder quickly by following these suggestions. First, put your highest ability score in Intelligence, followed by Constitution or Dexterity. Second, choose the hermit or outlander backgrounds. Class Features As a wilder, you gain the following class features. Hit Points Hit Dice: 1d8 per wilder level
1d8 per wilder level Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier modifier
8 + your Constitution modifier modifier Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constitution modifier per wilder level after 1st Proficiencies Armor: Light armor
Light armor Weapons: Quarterstaves, Daggers, Whips, Darts, Slings
Quarterstaves, Daggers, Whips, Darts, Slings Tools: Cartographer's Tools
Cartographer's Tools Saving Throws: Constitution, Intelligence
Constitution, Intelligence Skills: Choose two from Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Persuasion, Survival Equipment You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background: (a) a quarterstaff or (b) a whip and a dagger
(a) a sling and 20 stones or (b) 20 darts
leather armor
(a) an explorer's pack or (b) a scholar's pack Wilder Expression At 1st level, choose your Wilder Expression: Beast Walker, Otherworldly Prodigy, or Channeler, all of which are detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice determines the situations and opponents you're best able to adapt to, and grants you features at 1st level and again at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level.
3 Focused Defense At 2nd level, you can focus your mind on the situation and prepare to better defend yourself against attacks. As a bonus action, you can use 1 Focus point to increase your AC by a value equal to your Intelligence Modifier until the end of your next turn. Memorize Also starting at 2nd level, you can use your reaction to memorize the attacks of others when you see another humanoid make a weapon or unarmed attack. When you do so, make an investigation check. The DC is 5 plus the level or Challenge Rating of your target. If you succeed, you Memorize that attack. You may have a number of Memorized abilities equal to your int mod (minimum 1). You lose all memorized abilities when you complete a long rest or fall unconscious. If you go to memorize a new ability while already at your maximum, you choose which to forget. Recall At 2nd level, you can replicate an attack you have Memorized from any Humanoid creature and use it as your own. If you are using a Memorized weapon attack, you need to have a weapon that does the same type of damage currently equipped (note that your fists do bludgeoning damage). Through your intellect and creativity, you can manipulate similar weapons to emulate the effects of attacks that you have Memorized. When using a Memorized attack, you spend 1 Focus point for each damage die you want to use, up to the normal damage for that attack. So if you Memorize an attack that normally does 4d8 + 6 damage, you may use between 1-4 Focus points on the attack, and you roll that many d8s for damage. You always roll 1d20 + your int mod + proficiency bonus to hit with a Memorized attack. Memorized Abilities For any memorized ability, record as much information as you feel comfortable with. Most of the time, you'll probably need to know the damage, type, and range of the attack or spell. For example, an attack might do 4d8 + 6 piercing damage at 5 foot range.
It's also a good idea to record the name of the creature. If you don't know the creature's name, include a brief description, for example: 'Female Halfling Gladiator with large axe', or 'Large, floating eyeball-creature'.
4 Focus on the Moment At 3rd level, you can focus your mind on the present, trading a bit of your mental strength for the ability to maintain focus for longer. As an action, you may temporarily reduce your Focus Limit by 1, and regain focus points equal to your Wilder level. This reduction lasts until your next long rest. Anticipation Also at 3rd level, when you are hit by an attack that you have memorized, you may use your reaction and 1 Focus point to dodge, reducing the damage by half. The attack needs to be made by the same type of creature as you have memorized, although your DM may rule that two creatures are close enough for your Anticipation ability to work. The bite of a wolf and the bite of a snake are very different things, but a wolf and a mastiff are quite similar. Most humanoids likely attack with the same kind of weapon in a very similar fashion. Ability Score Improvement When you reach 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature. Vigilant At level 6, you gain the ability to make a second reaction during each round of combat. Your reactions are replenished at the beginning of your turn, as normal. At level 14, this increases to a total of 3 reactions per round. Quick Learner Also at level 6, you've become so practiced at copying others, you only need to see something done once before you can repeat the process easily. As a reaction when you see another creature succeed in a saving throw or ability check, you can use 2 Focus points to gain proficiency in that saving throw or ability for 1 minute. Long-Term Memory At level 7, you gain the ability to maintain your focus on abilities. When you finish a long rest or fall unconscious, you may choose 1 Memorized ability to not forget. Spells of 4th lvl and higher are too complex to be remembered this way. At level 11 this increases to 2 Memorized abilities. Instant Recall At 9th level, your mind has grown so flexible and quick that when another creature provokes an attack of opportunity, you may use a Memorized ability in place of a normal attack. You may use a maximum of 1 Focus point to make this attack. At 13th level, this increases to 2 Focus points per attack. Instant Mastery At 17th level, you’ve spent so much time watching different creatures, that you can anticipate what they will do before they even do it. You may use your Memorize ability at any time you can see another creature, without having to wait for them to make an attack. If the creature has multiple attacks, the DM decides which one you learn. Critical Focus At 18th level, you learn to study your opponents’ movements to such an extent that you can duplicate their successes at will. When you or an ally you can see is critically hit by a spell or attack, you may use your reaction to make an Investigation check, DC 20. If you succeed, until the end of your next turn, you can spend 3 Focus points to replace one of your own attack rolls with a natural 20.
5 Wilder Expressions A Wilder's talents can express themselves in one of three different ways. They are often linked to your background - a Wilder who spends a lot of time around beasts may be more likely to take on the Beast Walker expression. Of course, that is not always the case. A Wilder's talents may also be hidden, practiced in secret, until they happen to get in a situation where they suddenly become useful. Beast Walkers are especially adept at duplicating the actions of beasts, developing unusual animalistic qualities while still remaining humainoid. Otherworldly Prodigies are extrordinarily talented at copying the actions of other humanoids. Finally, Channelers are adept at duplicating magical effects that they see others cast. Beast Walker The Beast Walker is often pictured as a feral orphan, left alone in the wild, who survives by living like the wild animals nearby. This is only sometimes true. Whether a small child or not, it takes a flexible mind and a great deal of intellect to be able to study the movements of beasts and train yourself to be like them. Hardy Lifestyle At 1st level, you gain proficiency in Nature, and your hit die for the Wilder class becomes a d10 (this applies to both your maximum HP calculation, as well as your hit dice for healing during a short rest). Feral Instincts Also at 1st level, you develop the instincts of an animal to respond to danger. As a bonus action, you may use 1 Focus point to activate this ability to raise your awareness and prepare to flee if necessary. Until the end of your next turn, if a hostile creature moves next to you, you may use a reaction to move up to half your movement speed without provoking opportunity attacks from that creature. Bestial Aggression At 5th level, you find that you can focus your feral instincts to emulate the attacks of wild animals. You can use your Recall ability to make attacks that you have Memorized from beasts as well as humanoids. Additionally, if you did not already have the ability to do so, you can use your teeth to make piercing attacks and your nails to make slashing attacks, as a part of the Recall ability. Immersive Memory At level 10, you learn to temporarily shift your form to that of the creatures you are imitating. Your attack mimics any secondary effects of the creature's original attack, such as knocking your target prone, or applying a poison. Also, when you use your Memorize ability, if the target made multiple attacks as a part of the same action, you may Memorize any or all of them, as long as you have enough room for that many Memorized actions. Keep track of which attacks can be used together. Then, when you use your Recall action on your turn, you may use multiple attacks as a part of the same action if the original attacks had that property. Unnatural Instincts At 15th level, you expand your capabilities to be able to replicate any creature. You may use your Recall to perform any Memorized weapon or unarmed attack, whether it came from a beast, humanoid, or any other type of creature. Spontaneous Evolution At 20th level, you've spent so much time adapting to all sorts of different creatures, your body is now capable of adapting instantly to recreate the most powerful abilities of those creatures. You can use your Memorize ability to attempt to learn any ability that you see being used, not just weapon attacks. You may use a non-weapon ability as an action on your turn by spending 7 Focus points. If the ability has any special restrictions, such as a dragon's breath weapon having a chance to recharge, those restrictions apply to you as well. This ability cannot be used to recreate spell effects, only innate abilities.
6 Otherworldly Prodigy A Prodigy is a student of people. They watch, listen, and learn. The most talented people in the world spend years developing their various talents, if not longer, but the Prodigy uses their hard work to her advantage. Spend your lifetime learning the greataxe, and you'll be a master of the greataxe. Spend your lifetime learning how to imitate people, and you're a master of everything. Insightful At 1st level, you gain proficiency in Insight. Tunnel Vision Also at 1st level, you gain the ability to focus on your current task at the expense of attentiveness. As a bonus action, you may spend 1 Focus point to activate this ability. Until the end of your next turn you have -2 to your Armor Class and passive Perception, but you gain advantage on your next Investigation check or attack roll. Comprehensive Absorbtion At 5th level, you can become proficient with a weapon just by remembering how it was used. As a bonus action, you may spend 2 Focus points to gain proficiency with one weapon used in an attack that you currently have Memorized. This proficiency lasts for 1 min. Strategic Fighting Also at 5th level, you learn to plan your strikes to take advantage of holes in your opponent's defenses with intelligence, rather than quickness or brute force. You may add your Intelligence modifier to attack and damage rolls with unarmed, ranged, finesse weapons, or a quarterstaff instead of Strength or Dexterity. Expansive Memory At 10th level, you learn to keep track of even more abilities. Your limit of Memorized actions is now equal to twice your Intelligence modifier. You also gain 1 more use of Long Term Memory, allowing you to retain more knowledge after long rests or falling unconscious. Skilled Mind Also at 10th level, when you see another person successfully use a gaming set, musical instrument, tool, or vehicle, you may use a reaction and spend 4 Focus points to Memorize that action. You have proficiency in all objects Memorized in this way. Practiced Combatant By 15th level, your knowledge of the movements of combat is so extensive that you can call on that experience to ensure that each strike draws as much blood as possible. When you hit with a weapon attack, you may use 3 Focus points to add an additional damage die of the same type for that weapon. Intonation Mimicry Also at 15th level, you gain the ability to reproduce speech and language by watching and listening to it. If you encounter someone speaking a language you don't know, at any point, you may use 2 Focus points to make an Investigation check. The DC is 20 minus the number of minutes you've spent listening to this language. If you succeed, you may Memorize this language. You can speak and understand any languages you've Memorized. If you fail the Investigation check, you may not try again until after your next long rest. Transference At 20th level you have found a way to go further than just Memorizing people's actions. With the right inputs, and willing minds, you have discovered precise speech patterns and intonations that can convey physical actions directly to your allies' minds. As an action, you can use 7 Focus points and select one of your Memorized attacks or abilities. Until the end of your next turn, any number of your allies within 60 feet of you can use that attack or have proficiency in that ability. They follow the same rules as you with regards to needing a weapon that does the same type of damage.Let's see if we have this straight: There could be a nuclear war between the United States and North Korea because the country's leaders got in a slanging match that never elevated itself above the rhetorical sophistication of a schoolyard tiff?
Hey little Rocket Man! I'm going to kill you and your whole family.
Just try it, dotard!
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Maybe I will!
Go ahead and see what happens. Just remember, you started it!
What a way for the world to end – as the consequence of a miscalculation by a posturing U.S. president who failed to understand his adversary, and consequently played into his hands.
Why does President Donald Trump not get it that North Korea's hereditary dictatorship is permanently at war with the U.S.?
Read also: North Korea's nuclear arsenal: What's happened so far, and what could happen next
Every single one of the country's 25-million oppressed inhabitants is taught from childhood that America wants to destroy them and their country, and that only the diplomatic and military genius of Dear Leader prevents that from happening.
It's perfectly acceptable for the President to play a firm hand with North Korea. Let's never make the mistake of thinking that the U.S. is the villain in this piece. North Korea is little more than a jail for its people, and a plaything for Kim Jong-un and his friends
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But by sinking to insults and threatening on Twitter to destroy North Korea, Mr. Trump's low-info, tough-guy bluster has given Mr. Kim the opening he wants.
On Monday, North Korea's foreign minister said that the President's threats mean that the U.S. has declared war on his country, and that North Korea has the right to shoot down U.S. bombers.
Escalation seems inevitable. Unless this dispute is turned over to adults, such as Mr. Trump's military advisers, or diplomats from other countries serving as intermediaries, a disaster could occur.
This crisis calls for the quiet resolve that comes from being stronger and smarter than your enemy, not for the antics of a schoolyard bully.Consider some facts about how American employers control their workers. Amazon prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this “time theft.” Apple inspects the personal belongings of its retail workers, some of whom lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves while their supervisors mock them.
About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates. Soon employers will be empowered to withhold contraception coverage from their employees’ health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums.
How should we understand these sweeping powers that employers have to regulate their employees’ lives, both on and off duty? Most people don’t use the term in this context, but wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in some domain of life, that authority is a government.
We usually assume that “government” refers to state authorities. Yet the state is only one kind of government. Every organization needs some way to govern itself — to designate who has authority to make decisions concerning its affairs, what their powers are, and what consequences they may mete out to those beneath them in the organizational chart who fail to do their part in carrying out the organization’s decisions.
Managers in private firms can impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. The top managers of firms are therefore the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work — and often even when they are off duty.
Every government has a constitution, which determines whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, or something else. In a democracy like the United States, the government is “public.” This means it is properly the business of the governed: transparent to them and servant to their interests. They have a voice and the power to hold rulers accountable.
Not every government is public in this way. When King Louis XIV of France said, “L'etat, c'est moi,” he meant that his government was his business alone, something he kept private from those he governed. They weren’t entitled to know how he operated it, had no standing to insist he take their interests into account in his decisions, and no right to hold him accountable for his actions.
Over time, national governments have become “public,” but in the US workplace governments remain resolutely “private”
Like Louis XIV’s government, the typical American workplace is kept private from those it governs. Managers often conceal decisions of vital interest to their workers. Often, they don’t even give advance notice of firm closures and layoffs. They are free to sacrifice workers’ dignity in dominating and humiliating their subordinates. Most employer harassment of workers is perfectly legal, as long as bosses mete it out on an equal-opportunity basis. (Walmart and Amazon managers are notorious for berating and belittling their workers.) And workers have virtually no power to hold their bosses accountable for such abuses: They can’t fire their bosses, and can’t sue them for mistreatment except in a very narrow range of cases, mostly having to do with discrimination.
Why are workers subject to private government? The state has set the default terms of the constitution of workplace government through its employment laws. The most important source of employers’ power is the default rule of employment at will. Unless the parties have otherwise agreed, employers are free to fire workers for almost any or no reason. This amounts to an effective grant of power to employers to rule the lives of their employees in almost any respect — not just on the job but off duty as well. And they have exercised that power.
Scotts, the lawn care company, fired an employee for smoking off duty. After Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) notified Lakeland Bank that an employee had complained he wasn’t holding town hall meetings, the bank intimidated her into resigning. San Diego Christian College fired a teacher for having premarital sex — and hired her fiancé to fill her post. Bosses are dictators, and workers are their subjects.
If efficiency means that workers are forced to pee in their pants, why shouldn’t they have a say in whether such “efficiency” is worthwhile?
American public discourse doesn’t give us helpful ways to talk about the dictatorial rule of employers. Instead, we talk as if workers aren’t ruled by their bosses. We are told that unregulated markets make us free, and that the only threat to our liberties is the state. We are told that in the market, all transactions are voluntary. We are told that since workers freely enter and exit the labor contract, they are perfectly free under it. We prize our skepticism about “government,” without extending our critique to workplace dictatorship.
The earliest champions of free markets envisioned a world of self-employment
Why do we talk like this? The answer takes us back to free market ideas developed before the Industrial Revolution. In 17th- and 18th-century Britain, big merchants got the state to grant them monopolies over trade in particular goods, forcing small craftsmen to submit to their regulations. A handful of aristocratic families enjoyed a monopoly on land, due to primogeniture and entail, which barred the breakup and sale of any part of large estates. Farmers could rent their land only on short-term leases, which forced them to bow and scrape before their landlords, in a condition of subordination not much different from servants, who lived in their masters’ households and had to obey their rules.
The problem was that the state had rigged the rules of the market in favor of the rich. Confronted with this economic situation, many people argued that free markets would promote equality and workers’ interests by enabling them to go into business for themselves and thereby escape subordination to the owners of capital.
No wonder some of the early advocates of free markets in 17th-century England were called “Le |
not feeling close to parents, low self-esteem and lots of TV — the more likely he is to be sexually active by age 15, suggests a study released over the weekend. "It isn't any one thing. It's cumulative, and the more risks there are, the greater the chances that they'll begin sex early," says Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She and co-author Myeshia Price reported on their two-year study of 273 children at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality meeting in Indianapolis. The students were in a larger database study, which gave many facts about their families. Using anonymous surveys, the researchers asked about sexual activity at age 13 and again two years later. By 15, one out of five boys had participated in oral sex and about one in 10 said they'd had intercourse; the numbers were somewhat lower for girls. (Because the teens were mostly middle class and white, they had lower rates of sexual experience than the U.S. average.) Each risky factor raised the odds of sexual activity by 44%. Boys with more advanced puberty development started sex early. Teens with low self-esteem may start sex to boost their self-images or gain popularity, Price speculates. Defiant kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, those whose parents had little education or those who regularly watched certain types of TV also tried sex sooner. The researchers asked about viewing six kinds of programming and channels: MTV, BET, music videos, wrestling, daytime soap operas and sports shows. The more TV watched, the greater the likelihood of beginning sex between 13 and 15, Price says. Children from 13 to 15 see about three hours of television a day, says Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. "And there's a lot of sex on TV," she adds. But it's unfair to blame just TV, Rideout says. Heavy viewers may be left unsupervised a lot by parents. Kids who start sex early have more partners than those who wait, and they're much more likely to get pregnant or catch a sexually transmitted disease, says Bill Albert of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Young teens also are more apt to feel coerced into sex, adds Michael Resnick, director of the Healthy Youth Development Prevention Research Center at the University of Minnesota. "Maybe he says, 'I'll break up with you if you don't,' or 'I'll say terrible things about you.' " But feeling close to parents may offset pressure for sex. "You have to remain close to your kids," Hyde says. "You can't just say, 'They're teenagers, they're obnoxious. I'm checking out, and I'll see them again at 20.' Warmth from parents and clear, firm guidelines can make a big difference to kids this age." Conversation guidelines: USA TODAY welcomes your thoughts, stories and information related to this article. Please stay on topic and be respectful of others. Keep the conversation appropriate for interested readers across the map.[HGC] BlizzCon 2017 Power Rankings Text by TeamLiquid ESPORTS Graphics by EsportsJohn Power Rankings 2017 BlizzCon Grand Finals
Once again, BlizzCon approaches and the excitement of competition is in the air again! After a long and rigorous year, 16 teams have emerged as victors of their region, ready to take the stage in a brawl to determine who is the best of the best.
The implementation of HGC in 2017 has had some difficulties here and there, but in the end, it's delivered Quick Jump #1 Fnatic
#2 MVP Black
#3 Ballistix
#4 Team Dignitas
#5 Tempest
#6-11 Team expert, Roll20, SPT,
CE, Team Freedom, Tempo Storm
#12-16 Soul Torturers, Dark Sided, BTG,
Deadly Kittens, RED Canids
But before we delve into the future, we have to focus on the present. Who are the best teams? Where do they stand relative to one another? What are their strengths and weaknesses? After some discussion and debate, we have put together our power rankings for the 2017 BlizzCon Grand Finals. Some teams had a wide spread of votes, but for the most part, our top 5 teams emerged pretty clearly.
Our "Titans", as we like to call them, are the teams that are most likely to win at BlizzCon and go home with a trophy and hefty sum of money. "Contenders" are just that: teams who could contend with those top 4 spots. And finally, we have the "Knockout" category, a grouping of teams we don't expect to make it out of groups.
Of course, Power Rankings can never be completely accurate. Determining the strength of a team relies on a synthesis of statistics, results, and gut feeling. We could be severely wrong about a few of these teams, but we look forward to being proven wrong.
Share with us where you think these teams should go!
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Titans
1. Fnatic
Quackniix
Breez
Smexystyle
scHwimpi
Wubby What can we say? Fnatic has dominated all year long. Their huge wins over Korean teams at the Mid-Season Brawl sent a message that Europe was ready to rock, and in their own region they look unbeatable.
The team has peeled back some of their unbridled aggression from earlier days, but they’re still one of the scariest teams to play against. Whether it’s a dive under towers or a sudden collapse onto a single member, Fnatic’s snap decision making and coordination is off the charts. Anything less than a top 4 finish from the Swedes would be surprising.
2. MVP Black
Sake
Rich
KyoCha
Ttsst
Reset MVP Black is the oldest and most dominant team in Heroes of the Storm history, but the team we know today is far different than its predecessors. The team was historically known for their macro-oriented play and aggressive shotcalling. Once Rich was thrown into the mix in early 2016, MVP Black earned a reputation as the most feared team on the planet.
However, Phase 1 of 2017 was a different story. With the absence of Rich, Black struggled to find an identity around former Snake Esports players Ttsst and Reset. Though they managed to recapture some of their former glory in Korea, the Mid-Season Brawl revealed some startling weaknesses in the region, and MVP Black plummeted down to earth to become mere mortals.
But they’re on the rise again. Rich is back in action, and looking more decisive than ever. KyoCha changed roles to support, but with the widest hero pool of any player on Earth, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him at all. The rest of the team has fallen in stride, and everyone seems to be in sync with each other. We’re expecting a vastly different performance from MVP Black this time around...but will it be enough to win a world championship?
3. Ballistix (L5)
sCsC
Jeongha
Swoy
Hooligan
SDE Also known as L5, Ballistix is the reigning BlizzCon champion after their victory over Fnatic last year. They’re back to defend their title, but two crucial pieces of their former team are missing: Noblesse and NaCHoJin. The sudden retirement of Noblesse, the backbone of L5 and perhaps the best overall player in Korea, came as a shock to L5 fans, but the team continued on without him. Picking up Hooligan and SDE, Ballistix has shown that they can take promising players and turn them into a force to be reckoned with.
Ballistix is the Yin to MVP Black’s Yang. Where MVP Black excels in extreme aggression and decisive teamfights, Ballistix is all about macro and map control. They focus incredible attention to controlling the objective, pristine rotations, and indirectly forcing their opponents into bad spots. When behind, they seemingly pull advantages out of thin air. Of course, they also have the mechanics to teamfight. Compared to the snaptrap style of MVP Black, Ballistix prefers a ballet of carefully crafted steps before finding the right target and engaging at the perfect time.
4. Team Dignitas
Bakery
Snitch
JayPL
Ménè
Zaelia Team Dignitas has had more ups and downs than any other top team in the world, but when it comes to live events, they tend to show up. JayPL’s performance on Stitches at the Mid-Season Brawl changed the global warrior meta and inspired imitators from every region, but a lackluster performance in the beginning of Phase 2 left fans wondering if Dignitas still had it in them to make it to BlizzCon. Despite a rocky start to the split, the team has adjusted well to the double support meta with Mene now backing up Bakery and are once again ready to compete on the world stage.
More than any other player in the league, Mene has been stretched beyond his comfort zone. Instead of relying on the spellcasters and hyper carries he’s used to playing, he’s had to switch over to playing the secondary support. In the first few weeks, things looked shaky as the rest of the team attempted to recreate Mene’s usual wake of destruction, but it seems like things have really started to gel in the last few weeks. With mages starting to show up more often in the metagame again, Mene is back on track to destroy everyone at BlizzCon—except now he’s got a few equally effective back pocket picks.
5. Tempest
Sign
H82
Hide
Lockdown
HongCoNo An unpredictable storm unto themselves, Tempest is the only team in the world that can convincingly win against L5 and still lose to the worst team in the league. On good days, they look extremely dominant; on bad days, they look like a Hero League team.
The brothers Hide and Lockdown are an aggressive combo, but the return of HongCoNo’s (quite frankly) insane shotcalling has made the team all the more volatile and dangerous. On the aggression scale, Tempest breaks the meter. Their focus is largely on teamfighting, securing kills, and sheer domination of their opponents. However, their style can suffer against more careful teams that are able absorb the impact without losing much.
Tempest was honestly one of the hardest teams to rank properly. In terms of overall results, they rank respectably but nowhere near as domineering as L5 or MVP Black. When compared to other “3rd place teams” in each region such as Team Liquid, Team expert, and Roll20, they have similar win rates, skill levels, and understanding of the game. However, it is their form that convinces us that Tempest deserves a higher rank. Despite the occasional bad day, Tempest’s top form is far superior to any of their rivals’.
Contenders
#6 Team expert
#7 Roll20
#8 SPT
#9 CE
#10 Team Freedom
#11 Tempo Storm
The mid-tier BlizzCon contenders have plenty of variety, from the offbeat compositions of Team expert to the ingenious positional play of Roll20 to the steady consistency of Tempo Storm. All of these teams are expected to do fairly well during the group stages and have the potential to make it deep in the bracket as well.
To some degree, Team expert stands above the others in this tier purely because of their status as an EU team. They have had to battle it out with some of the best teams in the world. Despite the difficulty of the region, they slowly cemented their status in Europe’s “Top 3” after edging out Team Liquid. With some bracket luck, the team has the potential for a Top 4 finish at BlizzCon.
On the other side of the pond are the North American teams: Roll20, Team Freedom, and Tempo Storm. Roll20 has had some trouble finding their identity over the course of 2017, but the core of Glaurung, Justing, and Buds has proven to be a solid combo. If they get a chance to draft their comfort heroes, even the best teams in the world will crumble (see: MVP Black vs Roll20 at the Mid-Season Brawl). Despite Roll20’s strength relative to the rest of NA, their group includes both Dignitas and Tempest, so they will have to pull out all the stops to survive until the bracket stage.
Team Freedom and Tempo Storm have both built themselves up from nothing, and as time has gone on, they’ve become more and more stable and consistent in their results. However, both teams tend to struggle on the international stage, due to nerves or because they can’t adapt to their opponents (or both). In any case, it’ll be up to these two teams to shore up their weaknesses and show a strong performance this time around.
In this group, we also have two of our three Chinese teams, SPT and CE. Once again, China will not be fully represented due to visa issues, which is a real shame. China as a region has such a rich metagame and tons of individually talented players, and it’s unfortunate that they have never been able to show off that skill to the rest of the world outside of the Gold Club World Championship. However, in terms of substitutions, SPT and CE are better off than other teams in the past have been. SPT has the heart and soul of the team, misaka, this time around. Although CE did lose a valuable player in Xuyu, they retain their flexible melee core through the rest of the team. We don’t expect either of these teams to make a deep run, but they’re certainly not to be underestimated.
Knockouts
#12 Soul Torturers
#13 Dark Sided
#14 BTG
#15 Deadly Kittens
#16 RED Canids
At the bottom of our rankings are five teams that are unlikely to make it out of the group stages, and unfortunately, almost all of them are from minor regions. As much as we love to cheer for our favorite players on these teams, it’s clear that the infrastructure of HGC has helped major regions pull even further ahead of their minor region competitors.
When we originally did our power rankings, BTG was right up there with the other Chinese teams, but disastrous luck with visas has created a mish-mash of random players from other teams instead of the full BTG. They went from contenders to last place finishers within a span of minutes. We hope the guys playing for BTG have a good time in Anaheim, but we’re not expecting anything big out of them.
Bracket and schedules on Liquipedia Once again, BlizzCon approaches and the excitement of competition is in the air again! After a long and rigorous year, 16 teams have emerged as victors of their region, ready to take the stage in a brawl to determine who is the best of the best.The implementation of HGC in 2017 has had some difficulties here and there, but in the end, it's deliveredall that it promised and more: players are finally getting paid as real professionals, tournament games and content are delivered weekly in bulk, and skill levels across the board have been turned up a notch. It's clear that HGC has had positive effects on Heroes esports, and we're excited to see where that leads us in 2018.But before we delve into the future, we have to focus on the present. Who are the best teams? Where do they stand relative to one another? What are their strengths and weaknesses? After some discussion and debate, we have put together our power rankings for the 2017 BlizzCon Grand Finals. Some teams had a wide spread of votes, but for the most part, our top 5 teams emerged pretty clearly.Our "Titans", as we like to call them, are the teams that are most likely to win at BlizzCon and go home with a trophy and hefty sum of money. "Contenders" are just that: teams who could contend with those top 4 spots. And finally, we have the "Knockout" category, a grouping of teams we don't expect to make it out of groups.Of course, Power Rankings can never be completely accurate. Determining the strength of a team relies on a synthesis of statistics, results, and gut feeling. We could be severely wrong about a few of these teams, but we look forward to being proven wrong.She could outplay Chuck. She could outsing Aretha. And she influenced everyone from Elvis to Rod. Richard Williams revisits the songs and sufferings of the guitar-toting legend for what would have been her 100th birthday
By the time Sister Rosetta Tharpe sang Take My Hand, Precious Lord to a Copenhagen audience in 1970, she was 55 years old and shortly to suffer the stroke that prefaced her death two years later. The funeral of a performer for whom audiences had once packed venues across the US attracted only enough mourners to half-fill a church, and she was buried in an unmarked grave. Yet if you wanted to identify a performer who incarnated the qualities of rock’n’roll before such music had a name, she would top the list of candidates.
Nobody – not Chuck Berry, not Scotty Moore, not James Burton, not Keith Richards – played wilder or more primal rock’n’roll guitar than this woman who gave her life to God and would have celebrated her 100th birthday on 20 March. With a Gibson SG in her hands, Sister Rosetta could raise the dead. And that was before she started to sing.
There were TV cameras present to capture this final recorded performance. At that stage of her life, she was broke and depressed, the admiration of her European fans providing compensation for neglect at home. In a bobbed blond wig, glistening earrings and a rhinestoned white gown, with a big double-cutaway electric guitar slung low on her hip, she sang with a magisterial intensity that Bessie Smith and Aretha Franklin would have found hard to match. “My body is sufferin’ in pain,” she sings. “I got no one to call on.” She prefaces the song with a mention of the recent death of her beloved mother. Turning from that brief lamentation to address the Lord, whose praises she has sung throughout her life, the hint of a proud and hopeful smile breaks through the mask of stoicism.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tharpe on her 1998 US commemorative stamp. Photograph: Alamy
The Copenhagen sequence forms the finale to The Godmother of Rock’n’Roll, Mick Csáky’s hour-long documentary about Sister Rosetta, to be shown on BBC4 this Friday. Narrated by Pauline Black, lead singer of the Selecter, it tells the story of a woman whose music runs like a thread through rock’n’roll history: her popular 1940s recording of Up Above My Head – a rousing duet with her friend and lover Marie Knight – provided the template for a 1964 interpretation by Long John Baldry and Rod Stewart (the latter making his recording debut) and for this year’s version on the widely praised first solo album by Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
The daughter of Arkansas cotton-pickers, Tharpe was raised by her mother, a travelling evangelist with the Church of God in Christ. She was six years old, and already playing the guitar and performing in church, when they moved to Chicago, where she soon absorbed the sounds of blues and jazz, and went on to attract a following. In 1938, after a short-lived first marriage, she moved to New York, where the great talent scout John Hammond included her – alongside Big Joe Turner, Big Bill Broonzy, Count Basie and others – in his celebrated From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall.
But she also shocked her original fans by appearing at the Cotton Club and singing secular material – some of it, such as Four or Five Times and I Want a Tall Skinny Papa, decidedly risqué. Nevertheless, a song called Strange Things Happening Every Day became the first gospel record to reach the R&B top 10 in 1945; and 25,000 fans paid to attend her wedding to her third husband in a Washington DC sports stadium in 1951. But she had returned to near obscurity when the English trombonist Chris Barber invited her to tour the UK with his band in 1957.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rosetta Tharpe, left, with Duke Ellington on guitar and Cab Calloway on piano in 1939. Photograph: Charles Peterson/Getty Images
Csáky, a documentary producer and director for more than 40 years, discovered his subject while lying in bed listening to the radio one night in 2009, when he heard Gayle Wald, the author of a biography of Sister Rosetta, introducing some of her music. “She played Up Above My Head, and I’d never heard anything like it. I jumped out of bed, at 1am, and spent the rest of the night searching the internet for anything I could find. When I heard Bob Dylan talking about her on his Theme Time Radio Hour, it gave me the confidence to sit down and write a one-page biography that I could show to the BBC.” After his film’s initial round of screenings, the director received “not hundreds but thousands” of responses. “Until then,” he says, “I had no idea how many devoted fans she had.”
Her following had once included the young Elvis Presley, who loved her ferocious guitar-playing. Dylan, on his radio show, said of a later British tour: “I’m sure there are a lot of young English guys who picked up an electric guitar after getting a look at her.” He was referring to a visit in 1964, when Granada TV set up a concert for the members of the American Folk, Blues and Gospel Caravan in a railway station at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, outside Manchester. The young audience sat on one platform, while the performers set up on the other side of the tracks, which the programme-makers had dressed up to resemble the porch of a sharecropper’s shack.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch Tharpe perform Didn’t It Rain in Manchester – video
Not even a Manchester drizzle could dampen Tharpe’s performance. As she descends from a horse-drawn carriage, straps a guitar over her voluminous coat and lays into the gospel classic Didn’t It Rain, her listeners start clapping on the backbeat – possibly the first recorded example of that phenomenon in a land where mass clapping on the first and third beats of the bar had hitherto been a deadening ritual. “I love you so, my English friends,” she tells them, “for ever and ever until I leave this world.”
For today’s listeners, just as remarkable as her guitar-playing is the great artistry of her singing: the strength of her tone and her command of expressive variation, the flexibility of her phrasing, the mastery of vibrato. The headstone erected on her grave decades after her death bears these words: “She would sing until you cried, and then she would sing until you danced for joy. She kept the church alive and the saints rejoicing.” And she helped shape the sound of rock’n’roll.
• The Godmother of Rock’n’Roll is on BBC4 at 12.30 on 20 March.NEW DELHI—Amazon.com Inc. wants to stock and sell groceries online directly to consumers in India, two senior government officials said, the latest move in its quest to boost sales in the South Asian nation.
The e-commerce company AMZN, +0.14% has sought approval from India’s Trade Ministry to invest about $500 million in the new venture. The new Amazon grocery service would take advantage of recently eased restrictions on foreign retailers and deliver mostly local food products such as fruits, vegetables and other staples, according to one of the officials.
“We are excited by the government’s continued efforts to encourage FDI in India for a stronger food supply chain,” an Amazon spokeswoman said, referring to foreign direct investment. “We have sought an approval to invest and partner with the government in achieving this vision.”
The spokeswoman declined to comment on the amount to be invested or other details of the initiative.
Amazon, which dominates online shopping in the U.S. but has gained little traction in developing countries, is investing $5 billion in its logistics network and splashy advertisements in the world’s second-most-populous country. It has made rapid progress here since launching in 2013, with some analysts figuring its sales are within striking distance of its dominant homegrown rival, Flipkart Internet Pvt.
An expanded version of this article appears at WSJ.com.
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Want news about Asia delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Asia Daily newsletter. Sign up here.Tonight's episode of Outlander marks a major shift in Season 3. After five episodes and 20 years spent in the 20th century, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) finally identified Jamie's whereabouts in 1760s Scotland and, at the behest of her daughter, stepped back through the stones to return to him for, well, forever. Outlander fans have waited exactly 14 months to watch this moment play out onscreen, and it was quite a tease: Jamie and Claire lock eyes for only a few moments before Jamie collapses in a faint and the screen cuts to black.
It was quite a journey for an episode which opened with Claire settling into a new normal back in Boston, having abandoned any hope of finding Jamie in the 18th century. But Brianna isn't adjusting to life after Claire's paternity bombshell, and the two are clashing more than ever—until Roger arrives with a document pointing to Jamie's location in 1766 Edinburgh. This revelation upends Claire's life once more, forcing her to make an impossible choice: stay in the present with Brianna, or make the dangerous, essentially irreversible trip to the past. Neither Claire nor Balfe took the dilemma lightly. "This is a woman who makes a decision to leave her daughter forever for the love of someone else," Balfe tells HarpersBAZAAR.com. "That's a really hard thing to understand."
But Brianna pushes Claire to go to Jamie, and she acquiesces. Balfe's transformation in this episode is astounding; the hardened, hopeless Claire going through the motions melts away as we start to recognize our heroine from seasons past: determined, resourceful, and perhaps just a tiny bit scared. Now that she has 20 years of growth and knowledge behind her, she can tackle the unique challenges of 18th-century life from a wholly new perspective. This will be fascinating to watch play out in forthcoming episodes.
Below, Balfe breaks down her character's complicated decision, Claire's long journey toward the print shop, and what to expect once the Frasers embark on life together again.
Kathryn Wirsing
Claire makes an unfathomable decision tonight. How did you come to terms with your character's choice?
That decision that Claire makes to leave her daughter is probably the hardest thing I had to get my head around this season. This is a woman who makes a decision to leave her daughter forever for the love of someone else. That's a really hard thing to understand. Brianna giving her permission and telling her she should go because she wants her to tell her father about her—that's sort of the permission that Claire gives herself.
If we think back to the ‘60s or back to the ‘40s or whatever, I grew up in a place where there's a lot of immigration. There's a lot of people who would leave Ireland, move to America, move to Australia, move somewhere for a better life, and a lot of my father's aunts did that, and they never got to come home again. They never got to see the rest of their family. I had to think of it in terms of that mindset—you're not really that far from that idea in the '60s. Nowadays, it's so hard for us to think about, because we're so used to having that constant connectivity. In that time, if somebody left, it wasn't that unusual that you would say goodbye forever, in many ways. Maybe you'd get a letter once a year or something like that. That's where I tried to come at it from.
But it's such an emotional episode. This idea of making a choice to try and find somebody after 20 years without even an inkling, you're going on your own gut. You're not like, "Oh, he accepted my friend request! It's on!” There's none of that kind of stuff. There's nothing for Claire to have a barometer on where he is in his life. Is he going to be married to somebody else? Is he going to even want anything to do with her again? The only thing she has is to trust how she felt and trust the bond they had back then: that if she still feels this way, then he's gonna feel that way too.
Claire (Balfe) returns to the 18th century and reunites with Jamie (Sam Heughan) in the final moments of tonight’s episode. Starz
You only had five episodes to capture a 20-year period in Claire's life. What challenges stem from packing as much as you can into those tiny snippets?
I had a good while to think about it, because we started with Claire later on in life at the end of Season 2. In Diana's book, you do get quite a lot more of the Claire story from the book. There were certain scenes that were very helpful to me that were pivotal in the book but didn't make it into the show. There was a scene in the book where Claire comes home and Brianna's been hurt. She's been at work and she wasn't able to get back home. It's this really great working-mom-in-the-early-‘60s dilemma. I tried to amass all of that.
Tobias and I talked a lot, because we didn't want to make this relationship, "It's Claire and Frank, they don't really love each other and so they're at each other's throats the whole time," because you can't believe that two people would spend 20 years together if there wasn't love there, if there wasn't some kind of harmony. So we talked a lot about, what do you think their daily life looks like and what do you think this routine is? How do you think they've managed to sustain this relationship this long? You see occasionally that it explodes—how do they move forward from that? We did a lot of talking about that. A lot of acting is just thinking. You just spend a lot of time daydreaming, imagining how that day-to-day goes. My favorite part about the job is I get to daydream and pretend I'm working. [Laughs]
I think for Claire, the biggest thing about her at the beginning of this season is she's compartmentalized certain aspects of her life. She's a woman of her word. She's made a promise to Frank that she's going to put aside everything to do with the research of Jamie, talking about Jamie, anything to do with him. She has to put it in a little corner in her mind and in her heart and close the door. And that comes at a huge price. She's a very compromised woman in a sense. Her depth of passion has definitely been minimized. She and Frank tried to resume their sex life, but after a little while that was gone. Here's a woman who has shelved that side of herself. That was such an important, integral part of her character, and that comes at a real price. There's a rigidity to her and a suppressed nature that's not our normal view of Claire. I always thought of her as being elemental, that she's got this earthiness to her. I tried to reign all of that in,especially in the first part of the season, so you get somebody who's much more rigid and buttoned-up.
Was there a scene or a bit of dialogue or a director's note, or even your own personal research, that helped you connect to Claire in these early episodes?
An early reference we had for Episode 3 and the viciousness of that fight was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. It's all those years of repression and bitterness and resentment and they all just explode. I think I've said this before, but for grief, I used both Joan Didion's books, Blue Nights and The Year of Magical Thinking. Last year it was the death of a daughter and even though it was very different, to me, [Didion] writes in such a way that I feel like I understand what she's talking about very well. I think you're always stealing. [Laughs] We have different directors, so Brendan Maher did [Episodes] 1 and 3. Two was Jennifer Getzinger. Four and five actually were Brendan again. Diana's books are always really important to go back to. We changed things, certainly, for the show, but it's always helpful to go back and get that internal dialogue again.
We had that great scene in Episode 1 where she's cooking over the fire. Were there any other instances where you tried to bring 18th-century Claire to the 20th century?
I think you are always a sum of all of your experiences. Even if you tried consciously to leave something behind, I don't think you ever fully do. That fire scene is only seven, eight months since she's come back. Those experiences are so much fresher in her mind. Her decision to do that is almost instinctual: the cooker's not working, what do I normally do? I cook on the open hearth. That's what she does. I think as time goes on, she's lived much longer in the 20th century than she has in the 18th, and those moments and those parts of her, they fade away a little bit.
Kathryn Wirsing
Did you approach Season 3 differently than the other two?
It's funny because the journey is so different. Season 1 I was just holding on for dear life. I had no experience in TV. I had no idea what was going to be expected of me. In many ways my experience was very similar to Claire's. I was thrown into this world and was just like, "Holy shit!" Season 2, you're not sure how you're going to feel about coming back after something. It was such a whirlwind in Season 1. Season 2 is very like, "Now we're settling into it." Season 3, I felt like I knew what was expected of me and how to manage my time and requests on my time better. You mature a little bit.
Is it easier to slide into the character now?
I think so. There's always the danger that you get comfortable. That's one of the things, every time we meet with a director. I'm like, "I don't want to get cozy. I want you to try and make me look at something from a point of view that I might not have thought of." When you're working that many hours and you're in [character] constantly, you're going off your first instincts because you don't have a huge amount of time to let things percolate or look at it from 20 different angles. The most challenging thing is [not] having time to be able to look at things. When you're tired and you're in it, to not just go for the most obvious choice. It's important when somebody comes in that you're like, "Okay, well, please just give me that other option and I'll see if I agree with it—or not." It's always good to have that other point of view.
How do you decompress after working those long days?
It's usually at the end of week. At the end of the day you run home, you learn your lines, and you go to bed. I started cooking last season. I used to always cook, and then Season 1 and Season 2, you just eat on set the whole time, and no offense to Scottish catering, but it was bloody horrible. Last year I made the decision, I was just going to make all my own meals. It was the best thing I could've done for myself, and it sort of helped in South Africa, at the weekend, just cooking. I like to read other stuff. What have I read that I really liked? A beautiful Irish book called the I Found My Tribe, which was really great. I read the Patti Smith, which was fantastic. Miranda July's book is hilarious, The First Bad Man, definitely worth reading. I thought it was really funny and really twisted. You're like, "What?!"
Balfe on set with co-star Sam Heughan while shooting in South Africa. Starz
What do we have to look forward to in the rest of the season? How was shooting in South Africa?
South Africa was such a breath of fresh air. There's a particular episode that we had, I just loved the people. We had a young kid in it and he and I had some great scenes. He was just such a sweetheart to work with. Our show's always like that. We're constantly on the move and it does keep it very fresh. That's always the biggest reward with the show, that you're never going to the same set five days a week, 10, 20 weeks in a row. Things are always kept new.
We were all very comfortable after day one. We had a skeleton crew that came with us. My hair and makeup artist Anita turned into this different person. We were all like, "What are you wearing? Who are you?" [Laughs] She was hyper, it was like the sun did something metabolic to her. It was hilarious. I was probably one of the luckiest of everybody because we were able to sort of de-layer my costume a lot. But there's a lot of protocol in that time and a lot of the poor sailors were in heavy, wool sailor's uniforms. They were not allowed to take a single layer off. There were a lot of sweaty boys.
Can you tease the sea journey that's coming?
Our first episode on the ships, we really see Claire in her element. It reminds me of bits of Prestonpans from Season 2 or the very first episode in Season 1. You see Claire in nurse-doctor mode. She is trying to do the best that she can with what resources she has. There's a young character called Elias Pound and you see that maternal instinct of Claire's. It made me think of her relationship with Brianna a lot. That choice she made to leave her daughter, that love she has, that maternal instinct—there has to be a surrogate for it. They form this really beautiful bond. Luke Schelhaas wrote that episode. It's really great. I just loved it. It was just |
then you can head to eBay where people are selling them for as little as a tenner. Although, if you're after one still in its packaging, expect to pay closer to £60. Totally worth it.
Credit: eBay
Incidentally, if you happen to have an Devilgotchi - a sort of demon-themed cyber-pet - then you can flog it online for big bucks. A quick look on eBay tells me that these particular toys are selling for around £150.
Featured Image Credit: PAIn the upcoming October 2014 issue of SPECIAL WEAPONS FOR MILITARY & POLICE, author Jack Satterfield discusses the HDT Storm Search and Rescue Tactical Vehicle (SRTV), which has the power to help save more of our warriors.
Satterfield writes, “According to Robin Stefanovich, HDT’s vice president of communications and director of business development for Special Operations Command (SOCOM) programs, several vehicle and engine design specialists helped create the Storm. Although the Storm resembles a stripped-down version of a Humvee, Stefanovich points out that the new vehicle, the product of collaboration with corporate partners, is not based at all on that vehicle.
“‘The HDT Storm began with the vehicle design and maximized performance through close collaboration with BC Customs of Clearfield, Utah, and EngineTec of Virginia Beach, Virginia.’ Stefanovich explained. ‘BC Customs has honed its craft in rugged all-terrain vehicle design for more than 20 years with acknowledged expertise in designing and manufacturing custom desert racing vehicles. Since 2005, BC Customs has worked with special operations forces to develop a vehicle concept that facilitates mission success in austere environments and that answers the previously unmet challenges these warfighters face.’
“‘EngineTec specializes in the design and development of advanced propulsion systems and small power systems,’ Stefanovich added. ‘EngineTec’s engines are developed for combatant craft, ground vehicles, power generators, multi-fuel requirements and other high- performance applications.’
“The vehicle design was perfected without government support. ‘The HDT Storm was completed through independent research and development funding,’ Stefanovich said. ‘Although the vehicle was purpose-built to support personnel rescue missions, it has also proven to be incredibly useful for scouting and reconnaissance missions. The vehicle’s modularity allows it to be quickly adapted to suit mission requirements in extreme environments and difficult terrain.’”
To learn more, check out the October 2014 issue of SPECIAL WEAPONS FOR MILITARY & POLICE, available on newsstands and digitally Aug. 19, 2014. To subscribe, go to Tactical-Life.com/subscribe.The Bitcoin Embassy and the McGill Cryptocurrency Club from Montreal, recognise a barrier to the adoption of Bitcoins and they are doing something about it. They have come up with a non-profit project called “The McGill University Bitcoin Airdrop.” The aim of the project is to promote the adoption of Bitcoin usage on campus and eventually beyond. But first, here is a question.
Question: What is the biggest barrier that exists in adoption of Bitcoin?
Answer: It is not just one factor. There are two factors at play. Getting a wallet [logistics barrier] Getting the first few mBTC in the wallet. [motivational barrier]
After this point, we all start using Bitcoins one way or another and become good at it. To become active members of the Bitcoin users community is what the McGill Cryptocurrency Club wants for its students.
Author Note: This is a visionary move. Considering the fact that by 2025, 75% of the World’s working population will be the Millennials, it sure seems to be a brilliant move to get the millennials to adopt cryptocurrencies early on. And what better place to catch them young than a University?
“many of the students who are interested in learning more about Bitcoin lack the resources and incentives necessary to further inform themselves on what Bitcoin is and how to use it. In an attempt to garner interest in the budding cryptocurrency and promote its use on campus, the McGill Cryptocurrency Club and the Bitcoin Embassy have joined forces to carry out an educational and promotional campaign in the form of a “Bitcoin Airdrop” on campus.” — Says the first few lines of the shared Google Document by McGill Cryptocurrency Club.
You can find the link to the Google Shared Document at the end of this article.
How is the McGill Cryptocurrency Club doing this Bitcoin Airdrop?
McGill Cryptocurrency Club is about to give 30 mBTC each to around 600 students. That is around 600 wallets. The Dollar equivalent of $10 in Bitcoin is loaded onto a paper wallet sealed in an envelope. The public key is printed on the outside. McGill comments that this way the recipients can feel the immediate gratification of owning a slice of a Bitcoin.
MIT had a similar Bitcoin Airdrop project months earlier where students that signed up received $100 worth of Bitcoin each; however, McGill is looking at $10 worth of Bitcoin, as the project is largely supported by smaller donors and crowdfunding. McGill has raised $3000-$6000 currently, the proceeds from which will be strictly put to the following uses.
Production costs for the wallets The content of the wallets (BTC)
Who are the Sponsors? Can the General Public Sponsor?
The McGill Cryptocurrency Club is raising funds and is keenly looking at the Bitcoin based companies as potential powerful sponsors for the community strengthening project. The companies sponsoring $750 and above get a logo space on the envelope as a part of the sponsorship perk. However, in the shared document it is made clear that this is a “from the community, for the community” approach. So the answer is YES, the general public can sponsor through Bitcoins.
For the wallet address and the contact details, you can refer to this shared Google Document from McGill Cryptocurrency club.
Further reading:
We had covered other initiatives aimed at adoption of Bitcoins by wider audience. It is worthwhile to take a look back at them, just in case you had missed.
Images from Bitcoin Embassy Website and Author’s Rendition of Bitcoin and AirDrop (CC).Great mouth harp work on this 1929 recording of the traditional folk tune "Sally Goodin" by Obed "Dad" Pickard, one of the first "Grand Old Opry" performers. From original 78rpm disk.
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comment Reviews
Reviewer: Wasthereus - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 22, 2007
Subject: It's wonderful. That's all. It is impossible for me to put my finger on why this is so awesome... which is just fine with me. It just is. - June 22, 2007It's wonderful. That's all.
Reviewer: Goatboy_no1 - favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 12, 2007
Subject: What a gem Splendid tune, thank you old78colector for making gems like this available. - March 12, 2007What a gem
Reviewer: Eldonteal - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 15, 2006
Subject: Eldon Teal from Texas evaluates real piece of work Exceptionally good mouth harp rendition of an old standard fiddle tune. So glad this one got recorded and preserved for all generations. Thanks all for the good work. - August 15, 2006Eldon Teal from Texas evaluates real piece of work
Reviewer: JohnnyBrickhouse - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 5, 2006
Subject: Nice! Ahh...things were so simple back then. No "From the window to the wall skeet skeet skeet."
Just good ol' fashioned times. - August 5, 2006Nice!
Reviewer: alikat - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - May 13, 2006
Subject: Wonderful I love this tune, rarely do you find something both so pleasing & unique as this.
Thank you, to the person who uploaded this. - May 13, 2006Wonderful
Reviewer: Forrest O. - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 16, 2006
Subject: folktunes.org lyrics and info: http://folktunes.org/recordings/21 - February 16, 2006folktunes.org
Reviewer: Spuzz - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 14, 2005
Subject: MOUTH HARP!! My goodness, when was the last time you heard a mouth harp song? On record? This is well worth the download, as the harpist sure makes this song great. The harp CAN sound ominous at times, and this is one meeeeaaaan Mouth harpist!! - June 14, 2005MOUTH HARP!!Tweet
Idei cheie:
Ucraina este un stat compromis pe termen lung; Din punct de vedere economic, militar, strategic, teritorial şi simbolic, Ucraina este în genunchi în faţa Rusiei; Posibilităţile (disponibilitatea) Occidentului de a ajuta concret Ucraina par, la ora actuală, minime. A trimite victima să negocieze cu călăul este în cel mai bun caz o glumă proastă, iar apelul la serviciile OSCE este calea cea mai sigură spre „îngheţarea” dosarului şi nesoluţionarea lui (vezi Transnistria 1992); Nicio ţară cu conflicte îngheţate şi trupe ruseşti staţionate pe propriul teritoriu nu va putea adera la NATO sau la Uniunea Europeană (aviz Ucrainei, Republicii Moldova şi Georgiei), adică obiectivul esenţial al doctrinei actuale a Kremlinului; Încrederea Rusiei de a proceda astfel („metoda conflictelor îngheţate cu trupe ruseşti staţionate”), pentru blocarea avansului structurilor euro-atlantice spre Est, se bazează pe o convingere simplă şi cinică a Moscovei: nimeni nu va îndrăzni să-i îndepărteze cu forţa pe soldaţii ruşi intraţi abuziv pe teritoriile statelor din noua Europă de Est. De la această îndrăzneală pleacă totul; În primul Război Rece, Statele Unite şi Occidentul au înţeles că numai opunând Uniunii Sovietice o forţă militară cel puţin egală pot limita potenţialul agresiv al acesteia („the doctrine of containment”, George Kennan, 1947); Al doilea Război Rece, declanşat de Rusia înaintea Summitului de la Vilnius şi acutizat după debarcarea lui Ianukovici în penultima zi a Olimpiadei de la Soci, pune Occidentul în faţa unei dileme: fie asumă costurile imense de a înfrunta din nou Rusia şi de-a-i anula pretenţia istorică la „sferă de influenţă”, fie cedează definitiv „vecinătatea estică” viitorului proiect al Uniunii Euroasiatice, pe care Moscova îl va anunţa oficial în 2015.
*
După deplasarea frontierelor Occidentului spre Răsărit, ceea ce se numea „Europa de Est” până în 1989 este acum „Europa Centrală”. De la republicile baltice şi Polonia, în Nord, până la România şi Bulgaria în Sud, extinderea spaţiului euro-atlantic a înglobat 12 state în cele trei lărgiri consecutive ale NATO (1999, 2004, 2008), respectiv 11 ţări în cele trei lărgiri ale Uniunii Europene (2004, 2007, 2013).
Astăzi, noua Europă de Est este cunoscută sub denumirea soft de „vecinătatea estică a Uniunii Europene” şi este formată din şase republici care au făcut parte din URSS: Belarus, Ucraina, Republica Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidjan.
Nu o dată, Vladimir Putin a afirmat că „cea mai mare catastrofă geopolitică a secolului XX a fost destrămarea Uniunii Sovietice”. Desigur, am putea răspunde că depinde de unghiul din care privim istoria, căci pentru naţiunile din fostul bloc socialist a fost cea mai mare bucurie a secolului XX, dar asta nu contează în discuţia de astăzi.
Ce trebuie deci să înţelegem de aici? Simplu: că, atâta timp cât se va afla la conducerea Rusiei, Putin va face tot posibilul pentru a apăra ceea ce crede că sunt „interesele strategice ale Rusiei la frontierele sale” şi, dacă tot nu mai poate da timpul înapoi, cel puţin să oprească avansul Occidentului în fostul spaţiu sovietic, adică în ţările din programul „Parteneriatul Estic” al Uniunii Europene. Sub nicio formă aceste state, în viziunea Moscovei, nu trebuie să ajungă în siajul Occidentului, indiferent de voinţa majorităţii cetăţenilor lor. Destinul lor, a decis Kremlinul, este fie să rămână o zonă tampon, fie să adere la Uniunea Euroasiatică. Acesta este, pe scurt, mesajul-cheie către Occident: opriţi înaintarea, aţi ajuns la linia roşie a spaţiului de interese al Rusiei!
Ucraina este cel mai elocvent şi mai fierbinte exemplu al acestei împotriviri tenace a Rusiei faţă o eventuală opţiune pro-occidentală a oricărei foste republici sovietice. Am mai spus-o, Rusia nu are neapărat nevoie să anexeze Ucraina în ansamblu, căci efortul de a hrăni un stat sărac, divizat şi vulnerabil este mult prea mare, dar esenţial este ca Ucraina să nu aparţină niciodată Occidentului. În oglindă, nici Uniunea Europeană nu pare prea dornică să înglobeze astfel de teritorii cu probleme structurale grave, astfel că soluţia „integrare fără aderare” (un fel de concubinaj fără obligaţii) se profilează tot mai limpede: desfiinţarea vizelor da, Acord de Asociere da, Spaţiu Comercial Liber da, piaţă comună şi influenţă politico-administrativă a Bruxellesului da, membership ba. E maximum ce pot spera, realist vorbind, ţările cărora le aparţin formal regiunile „marcate” militar de Rusia, precum Abhazia şi Osetia de Sud, Crimeea, Transnistria.
Până în prezent, reacţia Uniunii Europene a fost moale, şovăitoare, parcă temătoare, oricum neconvingătoare şi, dacă n-am bănui că e vorba doar de tactica de a cumpăra timp pentru a formula un alt tip de răspuns peste câteva săptămâni, de-a dreptul naivă. Cum să-i trimiţi pe Arseni Iaţeniuk şi artizanii „loviturii de stat fasciste” de la Kiev să negocieze cu Putin? Ce ar putea negocia? Evident, e timp pierdut (sau, depinde cum privim lucrurile, timp câştigat?) iar situaţia de pe teren nu se va modifica. Grupul de contact, OSCE, rundele de întâlniri care vor deveni cu timpul tot mai tehnicizate şi mai birocratizate etc., n-ar face decât să înmormânteze orice şansă de a-i face pe ruşi să plece din Crimeea. Dacă se va recurge până la urmă la această metodă a negocierilor politico-diplomatice nesfârşite, e semnul sigur că Uniunea Europeană nici nu mai speră la redarea Crimeei către Ucraina. Personal, chiar cred că Uniunea Europeană ştie de pe-acum că Rusia nu va mai pleca din peninsula care-i asigură deschiderea la Marea Neagră. Nimic nu e mai convenabil astăzi Rusiei decât un format de negociere sub egida OSCE, care se va dovedi cu certitudine un drum înfundat.
Pe de altă parte, Putin nu cu Ucraina, Republica Moldova sau Georgia vrea să stea la masa tratativelor. Anul trecut, Putin îi spunea chiar şi lui Cameron că Marea Britanie e o ţară prea mică pentru a intra în negocieri directe cu Rusia… Nu cu Iaţeniuk sau Leancă îşi propune Kremlinul să discute „balanţa de putere” a lumii. Ucraina e prea mică pentru o strategie atât de mare iar Republica Moldova nu există în această ecuaţie (din fericire pentru moldoveni!), decât după virgulă. De ei se va ocupa mai târziu (Transnistria, Găgăuzia), după ce pune pe butuci noul regim pro-occidental de la Kiev. Dumneavoastră v-aţi mai investi banii pe teritoriul Ucrainei, în aceste condiţii?
Moscova vizează fără îndoială statutul de super-putere pe care l-a avut până în 1991, recunoaşterea şi privilegiul de a fi tratată drept egala Statelor Unite şi a întregii comunităţi a democraţiilor occidentale, şi pe care speră că numai un nou Război Rece şi teama europenilor de tancurile sau rachetele ruseşti le mai pot restitui unei puteri de modă veche (definită ca „hard power” plus „diplomaţia gazului”), tot mai ignorată însă în ultimii douăzeci de ani pe scena politicii internaţionale. Acum înţelegem şi mai bine ce important ar fi fost gazoductul Nabucco West („trădat” finalmente de Uniunea Europeană şi Statele Unite, fiecare pentru propriile motive/interese economice): ar fi redus dependenţa cvasi-totală a Europei de Est şi pe cea parţială a Europei Centrale de gazul rusesc. Inclusiv Ucraina ar fi putut fi alimentată (probabil nu în totalitate), în viitor, printr-o derivaţie a gazoductului Nabucco din segmentul său românesc, ca resursă alternativă la conducta Gazprom.
În fine, întrebarea centrală este: ce poate face acum Occidentul? La obiect (adică îndepărtarea trupelor ruse din Crimeea), aş spune că nimic. Este chiar posibil ca cei aproximativ 60% etnici ruşi localnici să dorească sincer revenirea la Rusia-mamă, căreia i-au aparţinut de jure până în 1954, decât să trăiască într-o ţară divizată şi nesigură, aproape falită. Dar nu asta contează cel mai mult acum (nici măcar pentru Ucraina nu este decisivă Crimeea, cât perspectiva euro-atlantică, la rândul ei blocată), ci gravă ar fi „legitimarea” unui anumit tip de revizionism rusesc care priveşte spre spaţiul Uniunii Sovietice de până în 1991.
În faţa acestei tendinţe ameninţătoare pentru întreaga Europă de Est (în noua ei definiţie geopolitică), ar trebui pregătit un răspuns ferm şi complex, multidimensional, care să zdruncine convingerea Moscovei că Occidentul este prea laş sau prea comod ca să-i înfrunte pretenţiile de a avea o sferă de influenţă împotriva voinţei naţiunilor vecine, deci un răspuns de genul celui pe care NATO şi „lumea liberă” l-au dat Uniunii Sovietice de-a lungul primului Război Rece. În caz că aspiraţiile naţiunilor est-europene de a adera la sistemul euro-atlantic mai interesează cu adevărat, astăzi, pe cineva.
Ai informatii despre tema de mai sus? Poti contribui la o mai buna intelegere a subiectului? Scrie articolul tau si trimite-l la editor[at]contributors.ro
Citeste mai multe despre: ucrainaThe ability to write a tool on-demand in any given week to address an InfoSec data mangling problem, security configuration problems, or other such similar operational need. Scripting languages qualify fine.
The ability AND regular practice to read code across a wider range - citing the ideas espoused in the book Code Reading
Systems and networking experience. The BOFH phase. Coding/scripting.. the toolsmith phase. Economics - as a field of practice, not financials.
InfoSec HR, Lawyers, Recruiters
Audit and Policy
Configuration and Patch Management
Awareness Training, Social Engineering, OSINT
Physical Security
The CISO
On our lastthere was a short bit where I said that among my top advice for those getting into InfoSec is learning to code. That led to this tweet:The context of the conversation on the podcasts and tweets expanded but some took exception to the idea that coding is important to InfoSec at large. Most people cited jobs like forecasting, intel, lawyers, policy wonking, audit, etc. as areas that don't require coding skills and are integral practices. Some people were a little more direct in their disagreement:After a baker's dozen disparate timeline threads I just responded I would post on the topic based on the advice I actually give and have given.I've read all the rebuttals at this point and still disagree - there is no job in InfoSec or at the common peripheries that we should be "fine" without coding skills in. People took that to mean critical or required ~today~ but that was never the assessment - it was all about at this point, as an industry, it's no longer OK to say coding is not needed in InfoSec talent development. Getting into the field. We should be beyond that gap, perhaps even as a society, but especially in InfoSec.As by coding, per the discussion, we specified:We were never talking about development or software engineering practices as a broad requirement. Basically we were baselining w/ the ability to cobble together your own tools for automation and to grok new data sets - and the ability to navigate other people's code.While "coding" took the brunt of the disagreement - it was actually three broad references that were made:WTF economics? Sysadmin? Yeah - but I've covered that before and soon I'm going to post actual email content I've written in the past ~twelve years to aspiring InfoSec pros that'll explain more on all the topics.From a very simple level the issue being discussed was that we have entirely too many people without experience in at least two of these areas defining what we can and should be doing. That's simply not sustainable - anymore so than it would be in other fields like medicine.Onto the actual fields cited as not needing or benefiting from coding skills..I'm not sure why this context was inserted or why some people insisted on it - these are no more generally an InfoSec job than an InfoSec practitioner at Ford is an automotive engineer. Sure they play in our sandbox but these are exception positions and shouldn't be guidance used in InfoSec career development broadly. In other words - when someone tells you they want to get into InfoSec they're not casually including HR, Legal, and Recruiting in that context - if that's what they mean, they're going to be specific.This was the most cited disagreement with my sentiment - and this is actually the one I think we're most ill-advised to just except as non-technical. While people can certainly function in such positions without technical knowledge - much less coding - it's just not a good idea anymore.Audit and Policy folks should be technically versed enough to be able to test their theories and explore platforms and operations themselves. We're past the time where it's acceptable for tens of policy drafts to go all the way to the technical people before they are "corrected" with realities of DEVOPS.Your policy folks should be able to sit down and at least script and maintain their own tools for foot-printing an environment, extracting the realities themselves, and making sure what they're writing isn't begging for tons of exceptions. Or that they've identified the why, as technically as possible, that the exceptions are bogus and solutions need to be implemented and can be implemented. Now - some people said that they used to do this and the background was helpful but it's not longer necessary in their jobs. I'd argue that it's no longer necessary because we're still not actually working to improve the status quo. Keeping attuned enough to go through the coding and systems exercises on a semi-regular basis is just good mental hygiene to boot. As a bonus often unexplored - policy folks can fight their battles better if they know, really know, how to dig down and explore the problem and solution sets themselves.And the audit folks? Well - how can you even debate that you're not better off w/ audit folks that can write, test, and maintain their own enforcement checks and site assessment tools? Have you seen how many of them burn hours walking around large sites repeatedly and endlessly manually repeating the same `settings check` or other similar function? I have lost count how many times I've scripted an audit shoppe out of days of work by writing a simple script. You want that as part of their core function - and, again, it will help them prove their risk cases instead of just enforcing their risk cases.Are your systems folks seriously sitting on their laurels waiting for someone else to write or add features for all their configuration and patch management needs?Are you OK with that because the person does a good job and you like them? Or do you really believe there is no benefit to them being more agile and able to adapt to an environment where the tool hasn't already been written?Ever notice anything about new systems tools - they're always written because somebody was facing a systems problem they couldn't solve. Or a problem that was still persistent and not nailed down well enough for the efficiencies they needed.Think of it another way.. are you better off salivating over upcoming features in OSSIM or Puppet - or having the ability to contribute, accelerate development, and develop in-house solutions that provide competitive advantage? You don't have to do it every time - but you should to be able to do it when the obvious advantage presents itself.I thought Maltego and The Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET) put an end to this debate but apparently not. OSINT, end-user awareness training, and social engineering are connected at the hip.Just because you have a guy who can't code who socially engineers a password out of folks - hardly means you've got the right position or right guy. How can it be argued that coding doesn't help now with the size of the surfaces involved?You can extend your tools - writing interactive training tools, validate your training, gather statistics, gather better intelligence with better context in more languages.. you can script up something to feed into graphviz and create better actionable material from it.I guess if you're just responsible for NISPOM enforcement you're feeling great without code - I'd also say you're not in InfoSec though. However, the same basic rules apply here as other InfoSec jobs - the number of devices and platforms has expanded to ridiculous levels. Folks who review these devices should be able to load dev kits, debugger tools, know how to interface with the devices - snip output, use multimeters, etc.While it's all well and good to epoxy seal your USB ports and other physical system anti-tampering practices - it's even better if you're able to quickly test for side-channels, improperly configured wireless, bluetooth, etc. And buying all the tools isn't always an option.These arguments repeat themselves.. it's coming to a head shortly.OK, when you've hit the CISO role I guess coding is a choice - but all the prior arguments remain. You shouldn't be "fine" with a CISO who won't still participate in the tools they wrote before their promotion. Assumption laden statement intentional. ;-)Folks seem to think this is a `well, of course it would benefit but it's not necessary` argument - no no no, we're beyond that. The problem sets in InfoSec are too big not to have everyone on board as a toolsmith and a more self-sufficient actor in the whole of the space. You can call it icing - I called in "fine"..And that was the crux of the context that was repeatedly lost - this is a hyper competitive field with a problem set rapidly expanding well beyond our wildest hopes of having humans at keyboards. Efficiences must be increasingly extracted - water from stones. In this type of area the ability to handle code becomes a matter of basic literacy.So you can argue `no code` for your own position or great people on your staff - absolutely no doubt a lot of people who don't code contribute hugely to InfoSec right now. We, quite literally, said the "corner has been turned" on the podcast - that it is no longer going to be OK to be code illiterate in the future of InfoSec.Arguing otherwise is competitive folly..-AliDow Jones Newswires reports:
Global securities firms, facing slowing revenue growth, will cut about 80,000 jobs, or 10% of current head count, over the next 18 months, banking analyst Meredith Whitney asserted in a recent report, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday on its website.
“The key product drivers of Wall Street’s revenues and profits over the past decade have been in a structural decline over the past three years,” Whitney said in the report, dated Aug. 31. This year “marks the first year in many in which Wall Street-centric firms will go through structural changes,” she wrote.
A “deeper secular change” brought about by declining revenues is behind the shift, although regulatory reforms and requirements for higher capital levels are to play a role, Whitney said. The head count reductions are to come after compensation payments for 2010 have been made.Arsene Wenger insists he would want to win the Europa League (Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images)
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger insists the Gunners would target winning the Europa League should his side fail to progress to the Champions League knockout stages.
The Gunners must win both of their two remaining group stage matches to stand any chance of making the last 16 and face Dinamo Zagreb tonight at the Emirates.
A third-place finish would see the Gunners enter the Europa League for the first time since 2000 when they lost out on penalties to Turkish giants Galatasaray in the UEFA Cup final.
And, though many fans believe a Thursday-Sunday schedule would scupper the side’s chances of winning the Premier League, Wenger insists he would target winning the competition if the Gunners finish third.
The Gunners lost 5-1 to Bayern Munich in their last fixture (Picture:Getty Images)
‘We would take the competition seriously but we are not out [of the Champions League] yet,’ said Wenger.
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‘I believe that this problem is exaggerated a little bit in England because we play Wednesday and Saturday, so it is the same as Thursday and Sunday. I can’t see the difference.
‘There are plenty of examples in Portugal and Spain where teams have taken it seriously and won the Championship. Benfica are the example, Sevilla have done well.’
MORE: Wenger must buy in January to win the league, warns Arsenal legendBranded as “The Most Prestigious Beer Competition in the World,” the World Beer Cup is held every two years at the conclusion of the Craft Brewers Conference. The Brewers Association created the “Olympics of Beer Competitions” in 1996 as a means to celebrate the art and science of brewing, and promote consumer awareness of emerging and international beer styles.
Much like GABF 2015, the World Beer Cup saw a huge uptick in the number of beers entered this year, growing from 4,754 in 2014 to 6,596, with 1,907 breweries from around the globe participating. The average number of beers entered increased from 50 per category, up to 69 this year across 96 total categories. As you would imagine, the most congested were American-Style India Pale Ale and Imperial India Pale Ale, followed by American-Style Pale Ale.
San Diego craft breweries took home 12 awards, plus 2 more for Ballast Point who is technically no longer designated as a craft brewery. Here’s the complete list (alphabetical) of our local winners:
Medal Brewery Beer Name Style Silver AleSmith Brewing Co. Wee Heavy Scotch Ale Gold Amplified Ale Works Whammy Bar Wheat American-Style Wheat Beer Silver Ballast Point Brewing Piper Down Irish-Style Red Ale Bronze Ballast Point Brewing Pumpkin Down Pumpkin Beer Gold Breakwater Brewing Co. Rye Dawn Rye Beer Gold Fall Brewing Co. Bourbon Barrel Aged Jinx Remover Wood and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer Bronze Legacy Brewing Co. That Guava Beer Fruit Beer Gold Mike Hess Brewing Co. Claritas German Style Kolsch Gold Monkey Paw Brewing Ashes from the Grave Smoked Beer Silver Mother Earth Brew Co. End of Summer Beer Extra Special Bitter Bronze New English Brewing Co. Brewers Special Brown Ale English-Style Brown Ale Bronze Novo Brazil Brewing Co. Corvo Negro British-Style Imperial Stout Silver Thorn Street Brewery December Nights Imperial Red Imperial Red Ale Bronze Toolbox Brewing Co Bramble on Rose Wood and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer
You can also visit the official World Beer Cup website to view a sortable list of all winners: 2016 World Beer Cup Winners
Header image logo and photos © Brewers Association
Related Posts:The prime minister and health secretary have criticised the NHS on cancer, but new figures suggest the service is a world leader
David Cameron and Andrew Lansley's repeated criticisms of the NHS's record on cancer have been contradicted by new research that shows the health service to be an international leader in tackling the disease.
The findings challenge the government's claims that NHS failings on cancer contribute to 5,000-10,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year, which ministers have used as a key reason for pushing through their radical shakeup of the service.
In fact, the NHS in England and Wales has helped achieve the biggest drop in cancer deaths and displayed the most efficient use of resources among 10 leading countries worldwide, according to the study published in the British Journal of Cancer.
"These results challenge the feeble justification of the government's changes, which appear to be based upon overhyped media representation, rather than hard comparable evidence. This paper should be a real boost to cancer patients and their families because the NHS's performance on cancer is much better than the media presents. It challenges the government's assertion that the NHS is inefficient and ineffective at treating cancer – an argument for reforming the NHS," said Prof Colin Pritchard, a health academic at Bournemouth University.
He co-wrote the research with Dr Tamas Hickish, a consultant medical oncologist at Poole and Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch hospitals in Dorset.
The research shows that ministers have misrepresented the NHS's record on cancer in order to gain support for their unpopular shakeup, said Pritchard.
The prime minister and the health secretary have said that both survival and death rates from the disease in Britain are low by international standards. Cameron, for example, claimed during last year's general election campaign that Britain had a higher rate of cancer deaths than Bulgaria.
The authors studied cancer mortality and the amount of GDP spent on healthcare between 1979 and 2006 in England and Wales and nine other countries, including Germany, the US, Spain, Japan and France.
While cancer deaths fell everywhere, England and Wales saw the biggest drop in mortality among males aged 15-74 – down 31%. While six countries saw falls of at least 20%, England and Wales – which in 1979-81 had the third highest rate with 4,156 deaths per million men – improved the most, achieving the fifth lowest rate among the 10 countries by 2004-06 with 2,869 deaths per million. Among men aged 55-64 and 65-74, who are more likely to get cancer, mortality dropped by 35% and 28%.
While mortality among women the same age declined by less, at 19%, that was the third biggest improvement after Japan (23%) and Germany (20%).
And the NHS was the most |
renting out halls. As it grew, our talent got more diverse. For instance, we recently had a guy who went to wrestling school in California and then moved to Boston. He looked up different promotions and found Kaiju to be the most interesting. He was a good fit, very well trained, so he is great. Our announcer is the announcer for Chikara, so we have lots of those guys and they’re all awesome. We’re kind of like Chikara in the sense that we try to do absurd things every now and then. Some of our jokes totally bomb after we write it. For instance, we have a tree monster. In one match, he had stuffed squirrels crawling all over him. We wrote it as him throwing the squirrels at the crowd. Everything has to line up perfectly for a joke to work. The announcer has to be in key with the performer and the audience. For some reason, things didn’t work out even though it was funny when we wrote it.
Are you on the creative team for Kaiju then?
I don’t do much writing/creative work. When a script comes together, Randy knows what he wants to happen. Jack, our announcer, is his biggest ally in New York. Jack can say, “we have this plot, and we have these characters,” then they’ll call me and I’ll coordinate the costumes or performers. I make suggestions from time to time, and they sometimes make it into the script. I’m more logistical than creative; I’m a producer. I don’t produce everything. I’ve organized everything for certain shows, but for others, I may just organize audio. It really depends on the situation. When they first moved to New York from Boston in 2010, I didn’t consider moving and doing Kaiju full-time because I love teaching too much. I’ve done every job at Kaiju. When you know how to do every job, and you’re willing to do it for free, then you move up quickly. It’s like being in a band; it’s a labor or love.
What do you get from teaching that you don’t receive from working in Kaiju?
I’m good at teaching. I come to a place with lots of people that I like. This room we’re in right now, the art-room, this is my happy place. I can draw throughout the day if I need to. The process over product theory is very important. It’s all about making art, not keeping it afterwards. I was with Kaiju before becoming a teacher and it strengthened me as a teacher. It’s all about the attention of the audience. You can hold their attention for only so long, and then you have to redirect it. The feeling of losing a crowd’s attention is identical to losing a classroom. In teaching, I might show a video and then do another activity or switch it to, “watch me do this!” and create an activity. If I’m at a wrestling show, I get bored. That’s why with Kaiju we show you wrestling and then cut to a “commercial” where we show some live footage or stuff filmed in a studio.
We want to keep your attention throughout. We keep changing things up for people with an MTV-generation attention span. As a teacher, I can gauge what kids like and what they’re into. Sometimes people at Kaiju want to do certain things that are outdated. For instance, a song will go over the heads of 90% of people out there, so I’ll choose something else to connect to the audience. I know what’s good with the hipsters, the anime kids, etc.
How do you approach students who are artists that are having difficult locating a niche like yourself before you found Kaiju?
I see a lot of students that I wish I could take into Kaiju. Sometimes I see kids who are great with video and I’d love to get them involved. I see lots of kids who can’t find their niche. I send them off to art school and hope that it straightens them out. I don’t think much about students when I think about what I’m trying to do with my work. When I go home it’s Andy Time.
When you leave the classroom, you focus more so on using art to support yourself. How important is it for artists to understand the concept of doing artwork to pay the bills, regardless of their emotional investment in it?
Well, you have to do jobs. I take almost every job that somebody offers me, even if I don’t get paid a lot. I just did a logo for a band called Rotten Tongue. I take most jobs with the hope that I’ll get really good and people will notice and hire me for other jobs that pay for money. I pretty much do what I want, even at work…I do what I want all the time. Everybody takes a different path. If you have a paying job on the side, you can do whatever you want with art. Do I tell my students that it’s important to do work/do jobs to get by as an artist? I don’t think too far in my student’s future. I’ll see that they have certain skills and push them in that direction. However, I’m trying to prepare them for college. They’ll ask me what I’m working on and I show them. I try to instill the fact that you have to do work; you have to do smaller jobs. For them as artists, sometimes you have to do an English paper and that’s work to them. That’s their job that they have to do to get by.
Five years from now, where would you like to be in relation to Kaiju Big Battel?
I’d like to still be involved in some capacity. I would like to see “Kaiju version 2.0” with fresh blood. I don’t want to get rid of our old performers, but I’d love to see more independent wrestlers such as those from Chikara. I’d like to see a couple storylines that we’ve dropped to come back. We have a monster that’s a kid, and I’d love to see them grow up. We have a couple toys out, but I’d love to see more. I’d also like to wrestle. I’ve taken a few bumps here and there, but I’d like to do a full match.
How has teaching changed your life as an artist?
My teaching position is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a place I can go where people like what I do, my co-workers feel that I’m an expert in my craft, and I have a great time. There was no real art department when I got to this school. I built it up to what it is today. When I came to this school there was a supply closet piled high with junk. I went through it, found the good stuff, got more good stuff, and found books that were good. I began integrating technology into the classroom before it was popular. I taught kids PhotoShop, set up a TV in the classroom and let them see slideshows of their art. Integrating technology into the classroom is very popular now, but I was doing it six years ago.
I teach a lot of outcasts, and I mean that in a very positive way. I love working with these kids. I have kids who aren’t planning on going to art school, but it’s important to me as a teacher to understand what a student wants to get out of art class. Some art teachers feel that you need to know how to draw a perfect still life. Not every kid needs that. Some of my students need to blow off steam, they need to just draw, they need to make a mess, and they can learn to draw still life pictures in art school if they really want. I’ll let a kid relax and put his head down in my class if it means he’ll succeed elsewhere. I’ve created something amazing here, and the fear is that if I ever left, who would take it? This is my dream job.
Want to know more?
To learn more about Kaiju Big Battel and find out how you can see their unique performance live, check out http://www.kaiju.com.
Be sure to watch the following video to see Andy Bell referring a Kaiju match in 2011:
Related Posts Why the Royal Rumble is better than WrestleMania Most wrestling fans consider WrestleMania to be the best pay-per-view of the year, but the Royal Rumble will always be my favorite. Ever since I discovered a VHS tape of the 1992 Royal Rumble at my local video store as a child, I’ve been fascinated by the event. While the title matches on the card […]
TNA has a new UK TV deal Good news for wrestling fans – TNA will be back on UK TV from April 21. The wrestling promotion has signed a deal with Freeview channel Spike to broadcast IMPACT episodes and pay-per-views in the UK. The company’s former home, Challenge TV, which used to air the weekly IMPACT show on Sunday nights, dropped TNA in January. […]
Six reasons Donald Trump is better than Barack Obama It seemed impossible to many, but Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States. Some people are ever so sad about that and are saying he’ll never live up to the legacy of Barack Obama. But Donald Trump is already better than President Obama, and this is why: 1. WrestleMania IV Trump and the WWE (then […]TermLife.com has a 30-year track record of customer satisfaction. With our unique technology, we have earned their trust by giving them what they want –– the right choices and affordable prices.
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TermLife.com’s principal agent, Allan Gersten, is licensed in all 50 states.The theme park would obviously be a major tourism play which could potentially boost overall Gold Coast theme park attendance by 10 per cent in its first year, according to researchers.
“We need this to happen,” said Northern Chamber of Commerce president Gary Mays.
“It will create heaps of fulltime jobs which is a priority now and bring in more international tourists.”
“If we don’t keep reinventing ourselves, we will be left behind.”
Gary isn't the only one who wants the park to happen.
“We’re working with the local tourism industry to grow the number of visitors holidaying on the Gold Coast,” said Tourism Minister Kate Jones.
“We want to see more visitors through the gates of our theme parks because we know that means jobs for Queenslanders.”
Jianlin is currently after a majority share of the company which produced Jurassic World - Legendary Entertainment - and plans to enter Wanda into the film production and attraction park industry.
The company recently bought Hoyts cinema chain and AMC Entertainment Holdings.
SEE ALSO: AUSTRALIA GOES NUTS AS BOY EATS ENTIRE WATERMELON
SEE ALSO: THE BEST AUTOCORRECT FAILS OF 2015The Big Bang Theory may have taken the Bang a little too literally with an upcoming episode of the tenth season being edited to remove a scene considered too sexy for UK television.
According to the Mirror, advertisers have insisted that episode seven be stripped of a dream sequence in which Penny (Kaley Cuoco) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) are dressed in bondage-style outfits, which in Penny's case was considered too busty for a family comedy.
The scene came about because show favourite Sheldon (Jim Parsons) has a nightmare about the on-screen couple turning his bedroom into a sex dungeon.
It shows him entering the room to find the pair, who wed at the start of the season, dressed in very raunchy attire, with Penny holding an S&M toy.By Matt Becker
How will you improve your financial situation this year?
My guess is that you already have some ideas about what you’d like to improve. If not, you can use The New Family Financial Road Map to figure out what to prioritize first.
But either way, knowing what you want to do is just the first step. And many people never take the next step for one simple reason.
Figuring out HOW to do it is confusing.
There are so many banks, investment platforms, insurance companies, apps, websites, and everything else that it can be hard to make a decision and move forward. You get stuck in analysis paralysis, where the fear of making the wrong decision prevents you from doing anything at all.
This post is going to help you avoid that.
Below are 28 tools and resources that will help you make the most of your money in 2019. All of them are either things that I personally use and love, or that I’ve had enough experience with and heard enough good things about that I am happy to recommend them.
I’ve organized them by major category too, so you can skip to exactly the topics you want to focus on and get started right away.
No more analysis paralysis. Now you can focus on taking action and improving your financial situation.
Quick note: I don’t get paid to recommend ANY of these tools and resources. Not a single one. These are simply the things that I think will genuinely help you make better financial decisions.
Budgeting/Tracking your spending
You don’t have to make a budget in the normal sense of the word. You really don’t. In fact, I’ve long advocated for an non-traditional approach to budgeting.
But you do need to set up some kind of system that puts you in control of the money coming into your possession, allowing you to direct it towards the goals that matter most to you and your family.
A great first step is simply tracking your spending so that you can see how much money is coming in each month and where it’s going. That gives you the baseline information you need to understand where you are now, what you can do to improve, and track your progress as you move forward.
Here are a few tools you can use to do it.
1. You Need a Budget (YNAB) – I’ve been using YNAB myself for almost a year now and I love it so much that I buy it for all of my Financial Foundation clients. It’s hands-down the best system I’ve found for tracking your spending and proactively planning for both future expenses and savings goals. It costs $83.99 per year, but there’s a 34-day free trial and in any case the cost is well worth it. My personal finances are in much better shape because of YNAB.
2. Mint – This is the tool I used for years before switching to YNAB. It’s not as good at helping you proactively plan, but it’s free, relatively easy to use, and good at tracking your spending. This article details how I used to use it: How I Track My Spending.
3. Pre-Made Templates – If you prefer to do things by hand, my friend J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy has compiled a great list of free budgeting templates for you.
Banking
A good bank makes your life a whole lot easier. And by good, I mean a bank with minimal fees, a great online interface, a great mobile app, competitive interest rates, excellent customer service, and easy processes for depositing and withdrawing money.
Here are some of my favorites.
4. Ally Bank – This is the bank I use and I absolutely love them. Everything is easy, the customer service is great, and they have some of the best interest rates around. Hard to beat.
5. Capital One – I haven’t used them personally, but they have all the features I would look for in a great bank and I’ve heard a lot of good things about them from friends and clients.
6. Local Credit Unions – I’m a big fan of online banks, but if you need access to a physical branch I would generally look for a local credit union. Credit unions are owned by their customers and therefore often have fewer fees, better interest rates, better customer service, and offer better loans than bigger banks.
Investing
Investing doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming. You can get started right now creating an investment plan that helps you build towards financial independence, no matter how much money you have.
Here are some of my favorite investment companies and resources.
7. Vanguard – Vanguard is the cream of the crop when it comes to investment companies, offering top-notch investment options with rock-bottom fees. I use them for my personal investments and I typically end up recommending them to my clients as well.
8. Betterment – Automated investment platforms, or “robo-advisors” as they’re often called, have been growing in popularity. Although I would still generally prefer Vanguard in most situations, Betterment is my favorite of these automated platforms because of their investment philosophy and what seems like a strong commitment to doing right by their customers.
9. Investing Made Simple – If you’d like some help figuring out how to invest the right way, this guide is for you. It’s action-oriented, walking you through every major investment decision you have to make and showing you exactly how to make them. You’ll walk away knowing how much to save, which accounts to use, and how to choose the right investments.
Paying off debt
Along with investing, getting to debt-free is the biggest factor in reaching financial independence. Here are a couple of tools that will help you do it.
10. Vertex Debt Reduction Calculator – This is a free tool that’s easy to use and creates a powerful repayment plan. I wrote about my favorite features here: A Simple Tool for Creating a Killer Debt Repayment Plan.
11. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling – If you’re really struggling with your debt situation, I would check out the NFCC. It’s a non-profit organization dedicated to helping consumers improve their financial situation, without the scamminess or the ridiculous fees of most other credit counseling organizations.
Student loans
Student loans are really a special kind of debt with their own set of rules and best practices. These resources will help you get organized, understand your options, and pay them off as quickly as possibly.
12. StudentAid.ed.gov – I’ve used this site many times over the years when I’ve had questions about student loans. It’s a great resource with tons of helpful information.
13. National Student Loan Data System – This is the definitive source for up-to-date information on your federal student loans. This information is key if you want to pay your loans off as quickly as possible.
14. AnnualCreditReport.com – Your credit report is where you’ll find current information about your private student loans, as well as any other debt you might have. And this is the one site that really, truly, lets you get it for free.
15. Student Loan Organizer – Those last two resources give you a TON of information and you need a way to organize it all. So I created this simple spreadsheet to help you do it. If you’d like some guidance on how to use it, refer to this post: How to Organize Your Student Loans.
16. VIN Foundation Student Loan Repayment Simulator – This is the best tool I’ve found for comparing different repayment options and deciding which one is best for your specific situation.
Life insurance
As soon as you start a family, life insurance is a must. These tools will help you get the coverage you need at a cost you can afford.
17. Life Insurance Needs Calculator – I could never find a life insurance needs calculator I liked, so I created my own. This is the same one I use with my clients and it will tell you exactly how much life insurance to get.
18. Term4sale.com – This site provides accurate life insurance quotes without collecting any personal information. It’s a great way to do the research yourself rather than relying on an insurance agent who may or may not have your best interests at heart.
19. PolicyGenius – This is a newer company that I like a lot. They provide pretty much the same quotes as term4sale, but they have a little more guidance that may be helpful for some people.
Online communities
I’ve found online communities to be incredibly helpful in a number of areas, but particularly when it comes to financial questions. It’s so convenient to have a place you can ask your specific, personal questions and get real feedback from real people.
Here are two communities I’ve used over the years and have found to be really helpful.
20. Bogleheads – Their forum is amazing, both for asking questions and for looking back through previous threads. It’s a little more focused on investing than the other two communities here, but all financial questions are welcome. They also have a wiki with a ton of really useful information.
21. BabyCenter Family Finances – I love this community. Tons of really smart people, and it’s specifically focused on the financial issues you face as a parent.
Financial planners
If you’re looking for personalized advice and guidance, you may want to work with a fee-only financial planner. A good planner will take the time to understand your current financial situation and your biggest personal goals, and will help you create and implement a plan for reaching them.
Here are a few ways to find the right financial planner for you.
22. Me! – Hey, this is what I do! I specialize in working with new parents who want to take control of their money so they can take care of their families. You can learn more about the services I offer here.
23. XY Planning Network – This is an organization of fee-only financial planners who specialize in working with Gen X and Gen Y clients. A lot of these people are personal friends and just about every member I’ve met genuinely has their clients’ best interests at heart.
24. NAPFA – If you’re nearing retirement, NAPFA may be a better place to look for a financial planner. It’s another fee-only network and it’s full of great people.
25. Garrett Planning Network – Another great organization primarily targeting people nearing retirement. While most NAPFA members charge based on ongoing investment management, Garrett planners all offer hourly services that may be better for people looking for more limited engagements.
Miscellaneous
Here are three more resources I love that don’t really fit into any of the categories above.
26. NY Times Buy vs. Rent Calculator – If you’re trying to decide whether to rent or buy a house, this tool is a must. It helps you run all the numbers to figure out just how long it will take for buying a house to come out ahead.
27. Brunch and Budget Podcast – My favorite financial podcast by far. Pam and Dyalekt are funny and entertaining and I learn something new every time I tune in.
28. Republic Wireless – I’ve been using Republic Wireless for cell phone service for a few years now and I absolutely love them. My wife actually switched over recently as well and loves them too. We’ve saved a ton of money using them and the service has been great.
Get Started!
When it comes to improving your financial situation, you’re better off taking ANY step forward than worrying about whether you’re making the absolute best move possible.
The tools and resources above are all great and will all move you in the right direction. Pick the ones you need and get started now.
And if you’d like some personal guidance, please don’t hesitate to schedule a Jump Start Session with me. It’s pay-what-you-want and you’ll get a personalized action plan.My coat pockets are filled with scraps. I dredge up chewing gum wrappers and konbini receipts when I fish for change. There’s no garbage on the street, but there aren’t garbage cans, either; everyone just carries their trash with them.
Some say rubbish bins are rare because of recycling laws, or because people don’t walk and eat at the same time. But the real reason is something nobody wants to talk about.
You can’t find a rubbish bin in Japan because of a religious cult that killed 13 and injured 5,500 while trying to install a messianic yoga instructor as the new Emperor of Japan.
Jesus and Nostradamus
Shoko Asahara was 29 when he started a yoga and meditation class in downtown Tokyo, the Aum Club. Asahara had lost most of his vision to childhood glaucoma and had followed a Japanese tradition of blind acupuncturists.
He had opened an unlicensed Chinese Medicine shop in 1981 and began to tie various Chinese philosophies – as well as Christian doomsday prophecies and the writings of Nostradamus – together into a single practice, united by a penchant for science fiction stories.
After his business was fined for selling medicine without a license, Asahara quickly achieved enlightenment after a brief trip to India in 1984.
The Aum Club began to reach out to the public through pamphlets, books, anime and music cassettes. The club grew so quickly that Aum Shinrikyo was officially recognized by the Japanese government as a new religion, and promptly established a monastic order. But nasty rumors had already been circulating – stories of kidnapping and extortion.
Blood of Buddha Oil
Asahara began selling byproducts of his body to followers. They’d drink his bath water at outrageous prices, or brew tea with his beard trimmings. Some would consume small vials of his blood with vague promises of spiritual benefits.
An anti-cult lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, saw an opening. Test the blood for its so-called special properties and then charge the cult with fraud. He convinced Asahara to submit to a blood test.
When the results showed Asahara was human, Sakamoto taped an interview with Japanese television broadcaster TBS. TBS – for reasons no one can explain – showed the tape to the cult.
Shortly afterwards, Sakamoto, his wife and their 14-month-old child disappeared. 10 years later, investigators found that they were beaten and injected with potassium chloride, their bodies shoved into metal barrels and hidden by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.
Laser Swords
For Aum Shinrikyo, hastening the apocalypse was the first order of business. Asahara’s crew recruited scientists and invested millions (earned through donations, and the sale of Asahara’s books, blood and bath water) into laboratories designed to build weapons straight out of their beloved science fiction novels.
Recruiting top minds from universities and medicine, the cult had built a military-grade laser beam capable of cutting iron plates in half and had destroyed the body of an escaped cultist’s brother using a giant microwave incinerator.
One of Asahara’s apocalyptic ambitions was to create a laser so powerful that it would illuminate the sky – the white sword of the end times, as mentioned in the Bible – and use it to destroy the world.
Interestingly, despite its technological skill, the cult failed to produce its own machine gun factory, consistently failing to produce a home-grown AK-47.
Aum Shinrikyo had far greater success with biological weapons.
Rush Hour
The Tokyo Metro is the busiest subway in the world, with trains departing every 5 minutes to carry 6.3 million people a year through the heart of the largest city on Earth.
At rush hour on March 20, 1995, these trains became sarin gas chambers. Cult members pumped the liquid into plastic bags, wrapped the bags in newspapers and then poked them with umbrellas, releasing vapors into a tightly compressed space with limited air.
Five members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult participated, including a heart surgeon who had administered electric shocks to disloyal cult members; and three physicists, two of whom worked on the cult’s laser beam project. The fifth member had been suspected of disloyalty, and his role in the attack was a way to reassure the cult of his allegiance.
Each man entered a different train and punctured the bag before getting off the car. The liquid form of the gas would leak through the newspaper, slowly transforming into a gas. Sarin vapor penetrates the skin, causes difficulty breathing, and then leads to a loss of muscle control, causing seizures. The gas can also cause blindness, a grimly ironic result of a terrorist attack masterminded by a blind acupuncturist.
Interviews with victims from Haruki Murukami’s book, Underground, had witnesses describing what would be a surreal scene by American standards: People on a bus, coughing and falling to the ground, but no one asking each other what was going on or trying to help the most distressed victims.
Most people, perhaps traumatized or otherwise conditioned by a lifetime of minding one’s own damned business, simply left the train cars and went on to work.
By the time train station employees had cleared the trains, 5,510 people had been injured. Hospitals weren’t prepared for the onslaught, and many hospitals turned patients away. In another highly criticized response to the attacks, media trucks – despite having already been unloaded of camera crews – initially refused to drive the injured to hospitals.
Security Theater
None of this would yet explain the shortage of trash cans on the sidewalks of Japanese cities. To understand that, you need to know about the aftermath of the gas attacks and the hysteria that it sowed.
After Sept. 11, when anthrax arrived in envelopes addressed to media figures and politicians, friends would talk about seeing snow and panicking that it was a biological attack.
The Aum Shinrikyo attacks spawned similar fears. For a month after the attack, its leaders were still at large and compound raids revealed an almost incomprehensible range of potential weapons: Live Ebola cultures, Anthrax, a military helicopter.
Ten days after the attack, the chief of the National Police Agency had been shot and wounded, and Asahara – still at large – warned of a major attack on April 15. That day passed without incident, but on May 5, a bag of burning cyanide was found near one of the ventilation ducts in a Tokyo subway station. Undetected, it could have killed 20,000 people.
Japan was reasonably swept up into a hysteria, and people demanded action. Dumbfounded managers and politicians stamped approval on all sorts of security measures.
Just as Americans began fingerprinting foreigners, checking passports at the Canadian border, and routinely removing our shoes to check for bombs in the soles, Japan went ahead with its own acts of “security theater,” actions that make people feel safer but don’t do anything to actually prevent terrorist attacks.
One of these security performances was the removal of rubbish bins from public streets, parks and subway stations. Which is why you can’t find one in Japan.
“One small, but remarkable, lingering effect of the terrorist incident on the Tokyo population is the lack of garbage cans in public areas; even 10 years later, they are still associated with the sarin attack. This incident vividly illustrates the large-scale panic and disruption that chemical terrorism can produce in major urban areas.” – Margaret Kosal, Strategic Insights
Anyone tempted to dismiss this as excessive, or part of a “wacky Japan” reaction to terrorism, should look again at the irrational reactions to fear in our own culture.
It seems as if there is an innate human need to translate overwhelming trauma into something within our sphere of control, no matter how small. Americans throw water bottles away at the airport, the Japanese carry them home.
Not so different, really.
Further Reading:
The Skeptic Report: Heavenly Terror
If you’re a fan of garbage, you can follow This Japanese Life on Facebook.
AdvertisementsGOOD NEWS!:The Amazing World Of Gumball continue the Series, and Good bye Mr, Bocquet.......
CARTOON NETWORK CONFIRMED THE SERIES IS CONTINUE AFTER SEASON SIX :
a few month ago, Ben Bocquet tweeted that the series would end after season six ( 2018 ). He wants because his Decisions. More than 70 Millions Gumball Fans ( inculded All of Us ) feel sad, crying, angry, and bad feel after hear about what he say......
But one month ago, Cartoon Network Confirmed That the series will continue because :
The series won more than 20 Animation and Cartoon Awards, watched more than 170 millions fans, the best Cartoon network's series than ever, and one of the best animated series alongside Spongebob Squarepants and The Simpson, so Cartoon Network have a greenlight or huge chance to continue the series.
'AFTER BEN LEFT, WHO GONNA REPLACE HIM?' AND WHAT HAPPEN NEXT......
Remember when Stephen Hillenburg left the show after Spongebob the movie, he's replaced by Paul Tibbits and the viewer is exteremly downhill because many episode from season 4-9 its not funny or not suitable for child.( luckily he return ).
We're didn't know what happen with The next season after season 6, Ben left the show after season 6 and who gonna replace him? his friend, a new writer, or maybe us.... but we hope the next season will better than before.
CONCLUSION :
The Amazing world of Gumball didnt end at season six, but continue the series ( Confirmed By Cartoon Network ), and Ben Bocquet left the show after season six. So prepare yourself to make This Wikia become one of the best Wikia and continue to Gather the information abou A new episodes!
And from The Amazing World of Gumball Wikia to Ben Bocquet : " Thank you for your show and make us happy, your show is the best. we wish your friend will make the series is better,
Good bye Mr Bocquet"SSG claims the first seat in the semi finals by beating Longzhu 3:0. Samsung overcame Longzhu by performing exceptional teamwork and coordination.
Longzhu couldn’t believe what had happened even after the 3 games were concluded. The spark that lit off the success of SSG was the longest roster member, Ambition.
Playing Sejuani for all the games, Ambition was not greedy in his plays. Almost like statue, Ambition did not budge and defeated Longzhu. Still having his precise decision making from when he was a mid laner, Ambition played an aggressive style of jungling to uplift his team.
It was like a dream for him. Only barely reaching the quarterfinals, Samsung has now made it to the semi finals. After the game, Ambition was interviewed. Let’s see what he has to say!
¤ What made these improvements happen for the team? You were way better than what you were last week.
Well first of all, we continued to think that we had less ability than them especially vsing RNG. We thought that if we fought against RNG again we would lose. Therefore, we put a lot of effort into improving ourselves. I don’t think we made a perfect preparation against Longzhu gaming, but we just continued to practice and practice. It payed off.
¤ Everyone didn’t think you guys would win. The predictions were on the side of Longzhu. Do you think it helped you guys play better? To prove everyone else wrong?
I think there was a pressure disparity between us and Longzhu. We thought we had nothing to lose. We just went in and did whatever it took. Regarding Longzhu, they never lost to anyone in the group stage. Maybe there were a little bit hazy because of this. In contrast, we didn’t do that well in the group stage so maybe they didn’t know what we were capable of.What are angels? Evangelicals are so infatuated with angelic myths, that it's almost impossible to answer! From ancient times, to this very day, the movement of the stars, lightning strikes and earthquakes have been explained by angelic activity, but now all these events may be entirely explained by modern science. Nevertheless, today books on angels are still largely based on legends, personal experiences, and have run amok with all kinds of fictional traditions, that it's a temptation to completely disregard angelology entirely, and become agnostic to the existence of angels. So I was delighted to read Wolfhart Pannenberg's explanation of angels in his Systematic Theology Vol II., that presents a biblical angelology that is demythologized by modern science and free from the bondage of fictional angel traditions.
Angels are not Personal Spirits
Pannenberg builds his angelology upon Karl Barth's two hundred page analysis of angels in paragraph "§51 The Kingdom of Heaven, The Ambassadors of God and Their Opponents" of the Church Dogmatics Vol III.3 Pannenberg explains that (according to Barth), angels are not personal spirits, as popularly believed, and nothing positive may be said about the nature of angels according to the biblical data, and anything said about the nature of angels should be considered an "aberration." Angels are not personal creatures, like earthly creatures, and we only encounter angels when they are summoned to a specific event, and once this commissioned act is completed, their individuality disappears. Pannenberg (pace. Barth) compares the host of angels in heaven to a Spiritual "field", and individual angelic activity is best understood as forces or powers that are momentarily emitted from a field (and not as a personal spirit).
Pannenberg summarizes Barth's angelology as follows:
On this basis Barth advanced his thesis that angels, unlike earthly creatures, have no independent being (CD III/3, 480): "They do not exist and act independently or autonomously."... Barth viewed angels as "distinct creatures," yet not so clearly separate from one another as earthly individuals. They form the host of heaven. "Individual figures... exist only as they are specifically summoned and separated from the rest with a specific commission and in a specific relationship to the earthly history of salvation, disappearing again into the general body as soon as their work is accomplished."... If we understand the description of angels as spirits in analogy to what we have said about the Spirit as field, what is meant is not in the first instance a personal figure but a force. Thus the NT relates angels to such terms as "principalities" and "powers" (1 Pet 3:22; cf. 1 Cor 15:24; Eph 1:21; also Rom 8:28). All these powers are set under the dominion of the exalted Christ. [1]
and,
The greatest difficulty besetting the traditional doctrine of angels lies in the idea that angels are personal spirits or subjects that serve God or, in the case of demons, that have turned against him. Nevertheless, if we remember that the use of personal predicates originates in the experience of being under the influence of not-wholly-explicable forces—an influence that works in a certain direction and thus shows itself to involve will--then the idea should not present us with insoluble problems. It is at any rate secondary to the experience. [2]
Pannenberg confesses that "Karl Barth's doctrine of angels in CD III/3 §51 is the most important discussion of the theme in modern theology" [3] and said that this understanding of angels as forces in a field, has "[t]o the astonishment of many observers,... produced in the 20th century theology a revival of |
of Terraria.
Mobile 1.2.11212: Crafting recipe changed.A year ago, I picked up a book, “Chanson Douce,” that I’ve thought about pretty much every day since. I was initially drawn to it because I’d read that its author, Leïla Slimani, had been inspired by a news item about a New York nanny who killed the two children in her care. The murders happened in 2012, but I remembered them in all their excruciating particulars: that the mother had been at a swimming lesson with a third sibling; that they came home and found the boy and the girl bleeding in the bathtub; that the nanny, who tried to slit her own throat, said she was upset at having been asked to take on cleaning duties; that the couple has since had two more kids. Once in a while, someone else’s misery penetrates the carapace of self-absorption under which you scuttle around and gets deep into you. Feeling somehow protective of the story, I was both beguiled and a little shocked by Slimani’s audacity in laying claim to it. Slimani had just won the Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary prize, which counts among its laureates Proust and Malraux. “Usually, the Goncourt Academy rewards books of the past,” the president of the jury had declared. “This year, we elect a book that speaks of the present, of the everyday and of its problems, such as the question of delegating authority and love to a person outside the family. Many will recognize themselves in this book.” The Goncourt has, more often than not, gone to a middle-aged white man, and so the committee had also broken from history in consecrating Slimani as the face of French literature. At thirty-five, she was the second Moroccan and the twelfth woman to receive the award (and the first to do so four months pregnant). “Chanson Douce,” her second novel, sold six hundred thousand copies in its first year of publication, making Slimani, who lives in Paris, the most-read author in France in 2016. Elle put her on the cover, in red lipstick and a jumpsuit: “ LEÏLA SLIMANI SUPERSTAR.” Politicians of varying persuasions clambered to reheat themselves in her glow. Launching his bid for the Presidency, Manuel Valls paid tribute to the French language, “that of Rabelais, of Hugo, of Camus, of Césaire, of de Beauvoir, of Patrick Modiano, and Leïla Slimani.” Emmanuel Macron, now France’s President, reportedly invited her to be his minister of culture. “I love my freedom too much,” she told me when I asked about it. “Chanson Douce” has been translated into eighteen languages, with seventeen more to come. The title means “sweet song,” which was rendered “Lullaby” for the British edition. The American one, which comes out in January, will be called “The Perfect Nanny.” John Siciliano, Slimani’s editor at Penguin, told me, “I didn’t want to call it ‘Lullaby,’ because that sounds sleepily forgettable, and my goal is to reach a big commercial readership.” He name-checked “Gone Girl” and “The Girl on the Train” and said, “We’re getting this book into places like Walmart and Target.” The book, however, is subtler than a typical psychological thriller. The subject matter is, for some people, a nonstarter. One reader complained, on Goodreads, “We got off on the wrong foot—I was expecting to meet an overworked but conscientious couple who found ‘The Perfect Nanny’ who made their lives lovely before things went awry. Will she grow attracted to the husband? Will she become obsessed with the wife? Lose one of the kids? Maybe a kidnapping?” She gave the book a single star, recalling that she’d wondered if the pages had been bound out of order after reading the first line: “The baby is dead.” It is hard to think of a more primal sentence. It out-Hemingways Hemingway, shearing sentimentality from the dread. Absolutely everything feels like hubris when you’re working backward from that conclusion. “To begin with the death of the children, it’s very daring,” the French novelist David Foenkinos, a friend of Slimani’s, told me. “Generally, she’s a woman who dares, who fears nothing. There are probably childhood wounds that have made her extremely brave.” As a narrative technique, this front-loading is surprisingly propulsive. I read “Chanson Douce” as though I were running away from those four words, with the sense that they could cause me real harm, that the only way to master the fear was to outread it. The book felt less like an entertainment, or even a work of art, than like a compulsion. I found it extraordinary. There is not a lot of great contemporary literature about motherhood. It is as bad as sex. We have myths, we have Bible stories, we have fairy tales, we have Peppa Pig, but it is not often that you open a novel and encounter people buying socks, picking glitter out of floorboards, putting away toys in plastic bins. Like Jenny Offill, Slimani can write ravishingly of female bodies, even postpartum ones (“her belly of folds and waves, where they built their house, where so many worries and joys flowered”), but “Chanson Douce” is not so much about motherhood as it is about what the cultural theorist Angela McRobbie has called the “neoliberal intensification of mothering.” An activity, not a state, mothering—along with its gender-neutral version, parenting—is competitive and outsourceable. Slimani tries to put a price on the anxieties, hypocrisies, and inequalities that arise from the commodification of our most intimate relationships. “I wanted to take an interest in the home, which we always see as a space of softness, of protection, where we go to take shelter,” she told me. “It’s supposed to be a space where questions of power and domination are nonexistent. But that’s completely false!” The novelist Rachel Cusk has chronicled what motherhood did to her; Slimani examines what mothering is doing to society. Slimani’s son was six months old when she read about the New York murders, in Paris Match. At the time, she was trying to hire a nanny so that she could go back to work. Conducting interviews, she encountered women who were ten or fifteen years her senior, whose lives were more banged up than hers. At thirty, she felt like a baby herself. “Not too old, no veils, no smokers,” Paul Massé, a music producer, says to his wife, Myriam Charfa, a criminal-defense lawyer, as they begin their search, in “Chanson Douce.” “They have set aside their Saturday afternoon to find a nanny for their children,” Slimani writes, managing to be, in a stroke, both empathetic and acid about the absurd ratios that upper-middle-class couples create between their intentions and their time. Paul and Myriam live with their two young children, Mila and Adam, in the smallest apartment in a good building in Paris’s gentrifying Tenth Arrondissement. You get the sense that Myriam has come up harder than Paul, whose soixante-huitard parents occasionally volunteer to take care of the kids when they’re not travelling in Asia or doing work on their country house. She has been at home for several years, since Mila was born. At first, she was an enraptured and intense mother, convinced that she “alone was capable of meeting her daughter’s needs.” More recently, this “simple, silent, prison-like happiness” hasn’t felt like enough. So she and Paul decide that she’ll resume work, even if, after paying for the nanny, her salary will be a wash. They’ve heard from friends that, if the nanny has children of her own, “it’d be better if they’re back in the homeland.” Myriam is an immigrant herself, from somewhere in North Africa, but Slimani makes only glancing references to her origins. Myriam is a post-identitarian creature of her class, equally partial to Berber rugs and Japanese prints. When an appealing candidate, “a Moroccan woman of a certain age, who stresses her twenty years of experience and her love of children,” presents herself, Myriam rejects her. “She fears that a tacit complicity and familiarity would grow between her and the nanny,” Slimani writes. “That the woman would start speaking to her in Arabic... asking her all sorts of favors in the name of their shared language and religion.” For once making no attempt to square their impulses with their ideals, the couple settle on a white Frenchwoman named Louise—a “little doll” in a neat blue dress. Within weeks, she is mending their clothes, whipping up rustic meals, stuffing lavender sachets in their closets. “My nanny is a miracle-worker,” Myriam tells everyone. Her use of the personal possessive pronoun hints at the dynamic: the more she thinks she owns Louise, the more helpless she becomes. As the critic Estelle Lenartowicz noted, in L’Express, “Chanson Douce” is a portrait of “a couple until now unexplored in literature: the one, complex and ambiguous, that comprises a mother and her babysitter.” As much as I admire “Chanson Douce,” I’ve almost wished I could unread it. The subjects Slimani takes on—and not just infanticide—are so unmentionable that you worry you’re tempting the fates by mere proximity. One of the book’s nagging passages depicts parks on winter afternoons, where “those who do not work, who produce nothing” idle on benches. They constitute an invisible society: the bums, the elderly, the unemployed, the nannies “wearing boubous on this freezing winter day,” the restless babies and their sniffling, purple-fingered older siblings. Slimani writes: There are mothers too, mothers staring into space. Like the one who gave birth recently and now finds herself confined to the world’s edge; who, sitting on this bench, feels the weight of her still flabby belly. She carries her body of pain and secretions, her body that smells of sour milk and blood. This flesh that she drags around with her, which she gives no care or rest. There are smiling, radiant mothers, those extremely rare mothers, gazed at lovingly by all the children. The ones who did not say good-bye this morning, who didn’t leave them in the arms of another. The ones set free by a day off work, who have come here to enjoy it, bringing a strange enthusiasm to this ordinary winter’s day at the park. “Tell me you didn’t pull up in a limo.” If you are a mother, whatever kind of mother you aspire to be, you’ll know what kind of mother you are after reading Slimani. If you are not a mother, the insights that she administers can be no less jolting. “She thought about the efforts she had made to finish her degree, despite the lack of money and parental support, the joy she had felt when she was called to the Bar,” Slimani writes, of Myriam, using “joy” where so many other writers would have chosen “pride.” Under the cover of a sensational plot, Slimani is taking on another taboo subject: women’s desires.
Slimani was ten years old when she visited Paris for the first time. She and her mother and her sisters, one older and one younger, had come from the Moroccan capital of Rabat to see an aunt. The city stupefied Slimani. She was scared of the Métro. She gawped at the couples kissing in the street, and burst into tears upon hearing the religious singing at Notre-Dame. “It all made a very, very strong impression, of fear and also of fascination,” she recalled. “I wanted to know what this world was, but I didn’t understand it.” In Morocco, Slimani was educated at French schools, and her family spoke French at home. After high school, at age seventeen, she moved to Paris to attend classes préparatoires —cram school for France’s best universities. Having never cooked a meal or cleaned a bathroom, she boarded at a hostel for young women. “There was a super-racist staff member,” she said. “I was losing a lot of hair, stopping up the drain, and he’d come by with the hair in his hand, and say, ‘Well, we know whose hair this is, don’t we?’ ” Winter mornings, she sprinted through the still dark Luxembourg Gardens in a state of high alert. She marvelled at “the beautiful women walking alone at night,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘It must be wonderful to be them, I have to find a way to become them!’ ” It took her years to make friends. She enrolled at Sciences Po in 2002 to study literature. She blazed through the great Russian writers, developing a lasting attachment to Chekhov, and devoured Zweig and Kundera. She met her husband, Antoine, a Paris banker, at a bar in 2005. “He came up to me and asked for my number, and I said, ‘I’m not giving it to you,’ ” she told me. “ ‘But I’ll meet you three days from now at 8 P. M. in front of the Saint-Germain church.’ ” The barman told her that her future children would be cursed if she didn’t show up. She did, investing the affair with dramatic momentum and inverting the trajectory, familiar to many highly educated women of her generation, of finding professional fulfillment before love. For a while, Slimani thought she wanted to do something in cinema. After completing a well-known acting course, she appeared in two films, playing a model in one and a soccer player’s girlfriend in the other. Then she went to business school, earning a degree in media studies. In 2008, the year she married Antoine, she landed a job covering Morocco and Tunisia at the newsweekly Jeune Afrique. She was spending two weeks a month in North Africa. The travel was brutal, especially once she had a toddler at home. After getting arrested in western Tunisia while reporting on the fallout of the Arab Spring, she decided to go freelance, in order to work on a novel. She once recalled, “I knew that people were laughing behind my back, saying, ‘Her husband earns a decent living. This story about writing, it’s a polite way of saying that she’s kept.’ ” She devoted a year and a half to the novel. “It was just after the Arab Spring, so it was about a country that resembled Morocco but was never specified, where there had been a sort of revolution a bit like the one in Tunisia,” she said. “Frankly, it was really boring.” The dozens of publishers to whom she shopped the manuscript concurred, unanimously rejecting it. Later, she considered this a lucky break. When an interviewer asked why she hadn’t published an autobiographical first novel, she responded, “Because I’m North African, and I didn’t want to identify myself uniquely with that. I told myself: You’re going to weave a web in which you’re going to imprison yourself, when you have in front of you a much larger horizon.” In 2013, Slimani’s family enrolled her in a writing workshop as a Christmas gift. The class, run by Jean-Marie Laclavetine, an eminent editor at Gallimard and a novelist, was intended strictly for hobbyists. “No manuscript should be brought by participants with a view to publication,” the brochure warned. The idea of joining a roomful of wannabe de Beauvoirs was embarrassing for Slimani. “I was thinking, What if I don’t have any ideas, and what if I can’t come up with anything to write? And what if I suck and everyone’s looking at me, thinking I suck?” Slimani said. “But, at the same time, I thought it was a good thing to confront exactly that risk.” It was a claustrophobic time. She’d quit her job and had nothing to show for it. Antoine, who’d badly injured his leg in a kitesurfing accident, could barely leave the house. Laclavetine was immediately struck by Slimani’s pages. She was trying to develop something about a nymphomaniac—an idea she’d had a couple of years earlier while sitting on the couch, nursing her son and watching the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair unfold on the news. “She knew that she had something very particular to tell,” Laclavetine told me. He took on Slimani as a protégée and encouraged her to purify her style, ignoring her characters’ thoughts and focussing on their actions. She later characterized this advice as one of “several keys that made me understand why, without doubt, my first manuscript had been rejected.” Gallimard published Slimani’s first novel, “Dans le Jardin de l’Ogre” (“In the Ogre’s Garden”), to excellent reviews, in 2014. The main character, Adèle Robinson, has a gastroenterologist husband with a hurt leg, a young son, and a job at a newspaper. She tries to maintain her respectability, “to be good,” but, whenever lust sparks, an untamable part of her is ready to burn down everything in her life. Her desire is monstrous, even to her. “In the shower, she wants to scratch herself, to tear her body in two,” Slimani writes. “She bangs her forehand against the wall. She wants somebody to seize her, to break her skull against the window.” Instead of going to work, Adèle shows up at the apartment of a man she barely knows for a mechanical assignation that serves, at best, as a temporary release from her torment. She misses an appointment at the pediatrician “for a fuck that lasted too long” and can’t bring herself to schedule another. Her shame radiates from the page. Slimani told me, “There are people who give themselves over to their sexuality, there are people who lose themselves in it, but, for me, sex is something very painful, very melancholy, because one sees oneself.”
The first time Slimani and I met, it felt ridiculous: a working mother writing a story about a working mother who had written a book about a working mother. It was July, and when I arrived at the café we’d agreed upon she was waiting—a textbook Parisienne with her coffee and her cigarettes and some great outfit, perched on a rattan stool. I was hugely pregnant with my second child. Slimani, who had given birth to a daughter two months earlier, showed me a picture of her baby and asked after mine. She wasn’t breastfeeding this time around, she said, without apology. (I had recently heard her declare with equal ease, on a podcast, “I claim the fact that it’s sometimes boring to play with my son.”) She wanted to make the most of her Goncourt tenure. “A year isn’t much in the life of a family,” she told me. After “Dans le Jardin de l’Ogre” came out, one of Slimani’s former colleagues told a reporter that its racier passages had raised some eyebrows around the office but that “what surprised us the most was the darkness of the book. Nobody saw her as someone who was capable of expressing such a keen despair.” At the café, it was equally difficult to imagine her as someone who had spent lonely years in Paris, who had struggled to figure out what she was meant to do or bummed around her apartment feeling like a nonentity. When I asked her whether she’d hesitated in taking on sex addiction as the subject of her first novel, she said, “The thing wasn’t to dare to write about nymphomania—it was to dare to write.” Her characters, like her, want things. Adèle wants sex; Myriam wants work. Of another character in “Chanson Douce,” who once employed Louise as a caretaker for his elderly mother, Slimani writes, “What he wanted for his mother was a friend, a nanny, a tender-hearted woman who would listen to her ravings without rolling her eyes, without sighing.” In Slimani’s appraisal, the emotional marketplace has rendered basic human entitlements a luxury. “It’s the question of, Can we buy everything with money? Can we, in earning a good living, procure for ourselves comfort and freedom?” she said. “But does that also mean that those who don’t have the means will never be able to attain that comfort and that freedom?” Whenever we met, we were both able to be there because of a parasitic chain of caretaking that inevitably, discreetly, leaves someone alone at the bottom end. “Darling, you’re naïve,” Myriam’s father-in-law tells his wife, who believed that her generation would change the world. “Women are capitalists, just like men.” Louise’s unravelling manifests itself most clearly in her yearning for Paul and Myriam to have another baby and her belief, against all evidence, that they are going to. “Louise talks to Wafa”—another nanny—“about this child that will soon be born,” Slimani writes. “About the joy it will bring, and the extra work. ‘With three children, they won’t be able to do without me.’ Louise has moments of euphoria. She has the vague, fleeting sense of a life that will grow bigger, of wider open spaces, a purer love, voracious appetites.” Louise has fallen out of touch with her grown daughter. Her abusive husband died and left her in a financial mess. (Slimani told me that she originally conceived of Louise’s character as an African woman but decided to make her “a white woman doing an immigrant’s job, which is extremely demeaning,” in order to emphasize her marginality.) One weekend, in her suffocating apartment, Louise puts on her blue dress and waits by the phone. “Perhaps they will call her,” Slimani writes. As the day fades, Louise fantasizes about shopping: “She wants everything. The buckskin boots, the suede jackets, the snakeskin bags, the wrap dresses, the camisoles overstitched with lace.” Loneliness and poverty chase each other around in circles in Louise’s head. Her appetites blend together, until only hunger is left. Slimani’s books beg to be read in an unfashionable way. You engage with her characters as people, not as constructs. You really want to know what they are trying to tell you about how to live. In “Chanson Douce,” Slimani is pretty hard on Paul and Myriam. “When she goes shopping, for herself or for her children, she hides the new clothes in an old cloth bag and only opens them once Louise has gone,” she writes. “Paul congratulates her on being so tactful.” One day, I asked Slimani whether the couple, in the moral universe of the book, had committed a sin. Had they been too greedy? Too selfish? “No,” Slimani said, explaining that she’d named Louise for Louise Woodward, the British au pair who, in 1997, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of an eight-month-old baby. She went on, “As an angle of defense, Louise Woodward’s lawyer decided to attack the parents, and in particular to attack the mother, saying, ‘If you didn’t want something to happen to your kids, you should have taken care of them yourself.’ I find that terribly cruel. I think that to put the idea in people’s heads that to entrust your children to someone other than yourself is something bad—it’s a tool to alienate women, because it always ends with ‘O.K., then, it’s the woman who stays at home.’ ” When I asked what childcare would look like in an ideal world, her answer surprised me. “It’s difficult to imagine,” she said. “Whatever the case, I think that this relationship between the parents and the nanny is—like every human relationship, like the relationship between parents and their children—made of errors. There’s no user’s guide. You mess up all the time.” The scene in “Chanson Douce” that haunts me isn’t the obvious one. It occurs about halfway through the book, when Paul returns from work one afternoon. As a rainy-day amusement, Louise has brought out her “little white vanity case” and made up Mila, teasing her hair and painting “her chubby little feet with nail polish.” “Look, Papa,” Mila cries, thrilled, when Paul walks in the door. “Look what Louise did!” Paul stares at her. Slimani writes: He had been so pleased to get home early, so happy to see his children, but now he feels sick. He has the feeling that he has walked in on something sordid or abnormal. His daughter, his little girl, looks like a transvestite, like a ruined old drag queen. He can’t believe it. He is furious, out of control. He hates Louise for having done this. Mila, his angel, his little blue dragonfly, is as ugly as a circus freak, as ridiculous as a dog dressed up for a walk by its hysterical old lady owner. You feel Paul’s rage, as much as you feel how Louise must be dumbstruck by it. No one has done anything wrong, and everyone has. “That animal part of us, it’s the most interesting part,” Slimani told me. “It’s everything that has to do with drives, with things we can’t stop ourselves from doing, with all the spaces where we’re unable to reason with ourselves.” She continued, “It has its dark side, but there’s a luminous side, too, which is the fact that we’re just another species of animal.” The incident, defying analysis, is all instinct. The sublimated forces of sex, love, money, and class have converged upon a little girl’s flesh.
“I grew up in Morocco, I was born a Muslim, and, every year, I celebrated Christmas in a big white house in the country, halfway between Meknes and Fez,” Slimani wrote in 2016, in an essay. The hosts of the holiday festivities were her maternal grandparents, Lakhdar and Anne Dhobb. In 1944, Lakhdar—“a spahi in sirwal pants”—crossed the Mediterranean and landed in southern Alsace with the French Colonial Army. There he met Anne, née Ruetsch. “My great-grandfather was a typical bon-vivant Alsatian,” Slimani told the newspaper L’Alsace. “My grandfather, being Muslim, didn’t eat charcuterie, didn’t drink alcohol, but the two got along well. Despite their legitimate fears about seeing their daughter leave for North Africa, my grandmother’s parents accepted the marriage.” Every December, Lakhdar dressed up as Santa. Anne was the first writer in the family. She stayed in Meknes, where the couple returned to manage Lakhdar’s father’s land, all her adult life. According to Slimani, Anne was embraced by Moroccans but mostly shunned by Europeans, on the ground of her mixed marriage. “I kept roots in my country, but a tree has multiple branches, and a part of mine is now firmly anchored here,” declares the heroine of “On the Wings of Time,” an autobiographical novel that Anne published in 2003. Slimani’s mother, Béatrice-Najat Dhobb-Slimani, is an otolaryngologist. Slimani’s late father, Othman, was born in 1941, in Fez. He was part of a generation of Moroccans whose coming-of-age coincided with the radical transformation of their country, which achieved independence in 1956. A dazzling student from a modest family, Othman won entrance to French schools, at a time when they welcomed few Moroccans, and earned a scholarship to study economics in France. He returned to Morocco, where he served as minister of the economy from 1977 to 1979. Slimani was born in 1981, in Rabat. (She has dual nationality, as a function of her Alsatian heritage.) The family lived in an art-filled house that Béatrice-Najat and Othman built. “It was very modern, a little bit à la japonaise or à la californienne, with lots of angles,” Slimani said. Both parents were ambitious about their careers, even when it was exceptional simply for a woman to have one. Slimani said that her mother “left at eight o’clock in the morning and never came home until eight at night. She worked Saturdays, she was always on call.” I asked her if she missed her mother as a child. “No, because, at the same time, she was very, very present,” she replied. “She adored us.” The equilibrium of the household owed much to the presence of domestic workers. For the first twelve years of her life, Slimani, along with her sisters, was looked after by a live-in nanny whom she knew by the affectionate nickname Mouima. Béatrice-Najat and Mouima both came from Meknes, and Mouima’s parents had worked for Béatrice-Najat’s parents. “She was strict!” Slimani recalled, when I asked her about Mouima. “But very kind, very affectionate. She loved to do our hair, to make us all cute.” Slimani’s cousins lived nearby. She remembers a “world of women” populated by a rotating cast of staff and kin. As Slimani got older, she noticed that Mouima occupied a curious position in the family. She had fussed over the girls when they were babies, but as they got older they gravitated toward their mother. “We shared more intellectual things, school and all that,” Slimani said. “She maybe felt that she was less.” Béatrice-Najat and Othman nurtured their daughters’ independence and encouraged them to speak their minds. One afternoon, when Slimani was eight, her teacher told the tale of a spider that wove a web to protect Mohammed from his enemies. Slimani stood up and said, “But that’s impossible! A spider couldn’t do something like that in so little time.” The teacher walked over and slapped her. “You should be ashamed for insulting the Prophet,” she said. When Slimani got home, she reported what had happened to her parents. They told her that sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut; that she had the right to think whatever she wanted, but that it was better not to provoke. Slimani later wrote, “My parents loved Voltaire and the Enlightenment, but without doubt they loved their children more. They were afraid. They were wrong.” Othman became the C.E.O. of Crédit Immobilier et Hôtelier, a Moroccan bank. In 1993, he was fired in a financial scandal. His dismissal was a rupture, the B.C./A.D. of the Slimani family story. “It was the end of my childhood,” Slimani recalled. “All of a sudden, I realized that this whole wonderful little world, this well-oiled mechanism, was in the midst of falling apart.” Béatrice-Najat became responsible for supporting the family. “All the people who used to come see my father, who were at his feet, who came to ask him for things—everyone disappeared,” Slimani told me. In 2002, Othman was indicted, along with thirty-two former colleagues, for embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds. He was imprisoned for four months, before being released on bail. He died of lung cancer in 2004, but Slimani believes that he died of grief. In 2010, he was posthumously acquitted of all charges on appeal, with an official apology, putting an end to what one Moroccan newspaper called “this long judiciary soap opera.” Over its course, Slimani said, “I came to understand that Morocco was a peculiar country, where strange things happened.” “Would you say this is a must-win?”
One afternoon in November, Slimani was sitting at the head of a table on a hotel terrace in Rabat. It was a balmy day, and she was drinking a beer. Joining her for lunch were fellow-members of the jury for the Prix Grand Atlas, given by the French government to the best French-language nonfiction book published in Morocco each year. Slimani’s favored candidate was “Islam and Women,” by the doctor and theologian Asma Lamrabet, who argues that misogynistic interpretations of Islamic law undermine the principles of equality found in the Koran. It was deemed the winner before the main course arrived. That evening, Slimani presented the award at the National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco. She had chosen “Defending the Critical Spirit” as the subject of her keynote address. There were hundreds of people in an affluent, secular crowd—Lamrabet was the only woman I saw wearing a head scarf—including several government dignitaries. “This wonderful, liberating, thrilling work also has a dark side,” Slimani said. “It sometimes causes us to be misunderstood, insulted, given the finger. How many writers or artists today are still shocked to be the object of opprobrium, if not threats? How many are admonished for not having given a good image of their country, or the good image of their country?” Moroccan artists, she said, had to take on “burning themes”—their country’s history and institutions, the inequality between men and women, the question of individual liberties, the place of religion—rather than concern themselves with maintaining appearances, as though they were functionaries of the ministry of tourism. In her fiction, Slimani makes little mention of current events. “Since the terrorist attacks, Myriam has forbidden her to let the children watch television,” she writes, in typically oblique fashion, in “Chanson Douce.” The choice is partly a question of taste. Slimani believes that literature needs time to digest the news. But her reticence is also ideological, a pushback against the notion that the Moroccan or the Afghan writer must grapple with political issues while the American or the French one is left to explore the questions of an individual life. “When somebody invites me to go on TV to talk about the veil, I should go just because my name is Leïla Slimani?” she said. Laclavetine told me, “Leïla doesn’t want to let herself get pigeonholed in the image of the intelligent and lucky little Maghrébine.” When a subject stirs her conscience, however, Slimani is ferocious. “Let’s stop hiding behind a pseudo-respect of cultures, in a sickening relativism that’s only a mask for our cowardice, our cynicism, and our powerlessness. I, born Muslim, Moroccan, and French, I will say it to you: Sharia makes me vomit,” Slimani wrote, in an essay titled “Fundamentalists, I Hate You,” just after the Paris attacks of November, 2015. Paris was her country, she wrote. “Tonight, our theatres, our museums, our libraries, are closed. But tomorrow they will open again, and it is we, enfants de la patrie, unbelievers, infidels, simple loafers, adorers of idols, drinkers of beer, libertines, humanists, who will write history.” In September, Slimani published her first book of nonfiction, “Sexe et Mensonges” (“Sex and Lies”), an exploration of “sexual misery” in Morocco. She decided to write it after completing a publicity tour for “Dans le Jardin de l’Ogre.” Everywhere she went, people came up to her, emboldened by Adèle’s frustrations, to confess their own intimate woes. Slimani received e-mails and Facebook messages by the hundreds. “I wanted to give voice to these slices of life, often painful, in a society where many men and women prefer to avert their gaze,” she writes, in the introduction to the book, which is composed of first-person testimonies with her commentary. Adèle, Slimani acknowledges, is “a slightly extreme metaphor” for the sexual lives of many Moroccans, who struggle to reconcile the reality of their private lives with the public narrative of a society in which everyone is supposedly married or a virgin. (Article 489 of the Moroccan penal code forbids homosexuality, while Article 490 outlaws extramarital sex.) Slimani writes of babies abandoned in trash cans and of the ostracized children of extramarital relationships; of policemen who shake down teen-age lovers; of women who prostitute themselves to pay for secret abortions; of gay couples extorted by their neighbors; of a sixteen-year-old girl raped by and married off to a family friend; of a cleric who signs off on necrophilia, provided it’s practiced with one’s spouse; of brides who retrofit their vaginas with fake hymens that are supposed to bleed. “Our society is consumed by the poison of hypocrisy and by an institutionalized culture of lies,” she asserts, arguing that repression is as corrosive to the polity as it is to the psyche. The debate over Islamic fundamentalism deforms the political continuum. By some strange trick of physics, you can lean to the left (criticizing the sexual subjugation of women by the governmental and religious authorities of a Muslim country) and inadvertently graze the right (in France, the extreme-right National Front Party often demonizes Muslims this way). That Slimani is anathema to religious conservatives is unsurprising. But she has also attracted scorn from less obvious people, who interpret her insistence on Enlightenment values as a betrayal of her origins. Houria Bouteldja, the leader of the French anti-racist movement Party of the Indigenous of the Republic, recently attacked Slimani as a “native informant.” In Jeune Afrique, François Soudan accused her of choosing themes that were gratuitously offensive to ordinary Moroccans in an effort to ingratiate herself with a French élite: “To be bankable in the media right now on the Left Bank of the Seine, the good Arab is obliged to be secular, Islamophobic, preferably libertine, and, if possible, under threat (for the preceding) in his country of origin.” He quoted a Moroccan journalist as saying that, with every one of Slimani’s provocations, a fundamentalist’s beard grew five centimetres. “I was raised with values that weren’t necessarily those of the country where I was living,” Slimani told me. “I had to be aware. I couldn’t say, ‘You have to do this, you have to do that,’ as though I knew better than others. But, finally, I realized, after |
are not required to stand for the anthem. That's coming from the league, which means if there is a rule requiring players to stand for the anthem, even the league doesn't know about it. It's apparently only a rule that Trump is familiar with.
The weird thing is, even Trump himself acknowledged that there isn't a rule. He did that by saying the NFL should change its current policy, which implies that he believes that there currently is not a rule requiring players to stand during the anthem.
Sports fans should never condone players that do not stand proud for their National Anthem or their Country. NFL should change policy! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017...our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU'RE FIRED. Find something else to do! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017
Jeff Sessions, the U.S. Attorney General, also advocated for a rule change during an appearance on "Fox & Friends."
"I think it should be a formal rule of the league," he said. "They should be able to say to the players, 'If you're on our field, in our game, paid by us, you should respect the flag and the national anthem.'"
The protests against racial injustice began a year ago when then-49ers quarterback and current free agent Colin Kaepernick remained seated during the national anthem and pledged $1 million to charities that help communities in need. Several players around the league quickly joined Kaepernick's protest. His protest lived on this year through players like Michael Bennett. But the protest changed in recent weeks once Donald Trump made inflammatory comments about players who kneel during the anthem.
"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now," Trump said Sept. 22. "Out. He's fired. He's fired."
"You know, some owner is going to do that, he's going to say, 'That guy that disrespects our flag, he's fired,'" Trump also said. "And that owner, they don't know it -- they're friends of mine, many of them -- they don't know it, they'll be the most popular person for a week, they'll be the most popular person in this country, because that's a total disrespect of our heritage, that's a total disrespect of everything that we stand for."
In a show of unity against Trump, the majority of teams planned demonstrations during the national anthem. Some players refused to stand during the anthem, many linked arms, and a couple teams didn't even come out for the anthem. Those in the latter group weren't fined by the NFL, according to CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora.
The Cowboys, on the other hand, decided to kneel before the national anthem. They then stood up during the anthem. Now, we likely know why they did that. If they had all kneeled during the national anthem, they wouldn't have been able to field a team.Bitcoin Classic declares that bitcoin cash has achieved victory in the scaling wars following the cancellation of bitcoin’s SegWit2x hard fork, and it is celebrating that achievement by shutting its doors.
In a surprise announcement, Classic release manager Tom Zander stated that the software development project that began in 2016 with the goal of returning bitcoin to its philosophical roots as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system has completed its goal and is no longer necessary.
Classic’s original intention was to promote on-chain scaling within the original Bitcoin network, helping the network scale to accept increasing numbers of users without forcing them to pay excessive transaction fees. Those attempts foiled, Classic ultimately followed the Bitcoin Cash hard fork, leaving the “Legacy Bitcoin” chain behind.
The announcement comes just days after SegWit2x — hard fork that intended to increase the Bitcoin blocksize from 1 MB to 2 MB — was suspended indefinitely by its leading advocates due to a lack of community consensus. Classic cited this development as confirmation that Satoshi’s vision — as supposedly manifested through bitcoin cash — will endure, while those who follow the Legacy chain will “go down with their ship.”
“The fact that the Legacy chain is stuck at 1 MB, and likely always will be, confirms the Cash chain’s viability,” Zander wrote. “And that means that Classic has fulfilled its promise.”
This promise fulfilled, Zander writes that he feels confident shuttering Classic ahead of its upcoming hard fork, which will implement a new difficulty adjustment algorithm in an attempt to bring stability to the network’s wild hashrate and blocktime fluctuations.
Of course, one must wonder if part of Zander’s decision to conclude the project ahead of the hard fork stems from his objection to the specific details of the fork proposal, some of which he says were made for political purposes rather than technical ones. Due to its sudden closure, Classic will not be releasing software that is compatible with the fork.
In any case, Zander believes that the future is bright for bitcoin cash. In fact, he believes that it will soon eclipse Legacy Bitcoin to become the dominant cryptocurrency. “In at most 6 months I’m sure we’ll just drop the “Cash” and call it “Bitcoin,” he concludes.Home
Welcome to Battle Jump's home page. You'll find here Battle Jump's latest releases, and more.
Battle Jump is a free 3D Platform game using OpenGL in order to be available on Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
We hope that you will enjoy it.
Do not hesitate to share with us your comments, and join our facebook page.
Jérôme Baudoux
Battle Jump - v 0.12
After a few months without news, I'm proud to present you Battle Jump 0.12.0. This version is important because it will be available for Windows, Linux, and very soon for MacOS X!
This new version contains:
A new graphical theme for the menus
New options in the menus (invert selection, next level...)
An optimization in the gamepad controls
Your best time is now saved locally in "Single Map"
A ghost of your best play is saved in "Single Map"!
You can also see the apparition of "+1" buttons in the main page and in every level, feel free to use them and to join Battle Jump's facebook group if you like the game!
Have fun, and as usual feel free to contact me if you see a bug, or if you have questions.
Battle Jump - v 0.11
Hi everyone.
I know Christmas isn't in November; still I have a present for you. That's right, there is a new release of Battle Jump labeled 0.11.0.
This version brings new features, like the possibility to play with gamepads! Also the collisions between the Jumper and the blocks have been changed in order to simplify the game.
Another cool feature is the fact that for now on, each user of your computer will have his own configuration files and his own levels.
Finally thanks to Sebastian 'DaBASCHT' Riedel the game is now translated into German.
Have a fun game!
Battle Jump - v 0.10.3
After a month of testing Battle Jump v 0.10.x on Windows many little problem were solved.
As a result, the latest version of Battle Jump (0.10.3) is now available on Windows and Linux.
Don’t hesitate to contact me if you see any problem with the game.
Enjoy.
Battle Jump - v 0.10
What is better than a new version of Battle Jump to celebrate the summer?
This new version (0.10.0) brings tons of new features like new blocs, new levels, and new difficulties.
Bloc that makes all the other blocs invisible during a few seconds. A bloc that translate with various speed.
This is the most significant feature of this version in term of game play. I let you discover the effect of this one.
Another great feature is the translation of Battle Jump in several languages like Portuguese and Greek! (You can even make your own translation)
Don't wait and download Battle Jump 0.10.0 for your PC. (Linux and Mac OS version will follow)
Happy new year
Like everyone, I wish you an happy new year 2010.
I would like to thank all those who have already tried the game, and I hope that you enjoyed it.
Battle Jump will continue to evolve. New blocks and levels are planned for future releases, so keep an eye open.
Thank you.
Battle Jump - v 0.9
Hi. It's been a long time since the last version and there is a lot to tell about the new features.
First of all this new version is available on Mac OS X! There is however a little restriction because you'll need to have at least Leopard to run it.
But this is not the only new feature, indeed this is the list of additions:
Bugs correction
3D optimization
The Battle Jump cover is now available in the Docs Folder.
Many images are now in PNG format.
You can now see the preview of all levels directly into the game.
The two-player game has been modified in order to run several levels without returning to the menu.
A counter of victories has been added in the two-player mode.
You can download this new version right now.
One hundred levels!
Thanks to the community, Battle Jump has more than 100 levels. 75% of those levels were created by members, so I really should be grateful to them.
For this event, I will list every person who made a level for Battle Jump (persons are listed by the number of levels they made)
Thanks to them!
Website new features
It is now possible to download multiple levels at once, all you have to do is to select levels to download and click "Download Selection".
I would like to remind you that you can rate and comment all levels. You can also comment the news since today.
Sending scores
To send your scores you must have the latest version of Battle Jump (0.8.1). All previous versions cannot send scores due to an incompatibility.
Battle Jump - v 0.8
After few months without updates a new version of Battle Jump was released.
New features:
Bug fixes
1 new bloc.
New images for the menu
New 2 players mode.
Pages : 1 2 3Congress will hold a hearing next month into why Postmaster General John E. Potter has gotten a nearly 40 percent pay raise since 2006 and was awarded a six-figure incentive bonus last year, even as the U.S. Postal Service faces a multibillion-dollar shortfall that threatens a day of mail delivery.
“Last year, the Postal Service took a loss of nearly $3 billion and recommended that the public take austere cuts in service to allow it to operate, including cutting a day of mail delivery and raising the price of stamps,” Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Democrat, said Friday.
“All things considered, I think most postal customers feel that the huge increase in pay for Mr. Potter is incongruent with the post office’s recent performance. I assure you that our subcommittee will look into this matter at a hearing in March,” said Mr. Lynch, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service.
On Tuesday, The Washington Times reported that Mr. Potter had received nearly 40 percent in pay raises since 2006 and about $135,000 in incentive bonuses last year. For fiscal 2008, including increases to the value of his two pensions, Mr. Potter’s entire compensation package totaled more than $800,000, according to Postal Service financial records.
RELATED:
• Postmaster got $800,000 in pay, perks
The subcommittee on the federal work force, Postal Service and the District of Columbia will take up the issue at a hearing set for March 25. In addition to executive compensation, members will review the Postal Service’s economic troubles and competitiveness, officials said.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the subcommittee’s ranking Republican, said he, too, questions the timing of the big pay packages, given the Postal Service’s financial woes.
“On the surface it just doesn’t smell right,” Mr. Chaffetz said. “Rewarding people for performance is acceptable, but things kind of seem to be going in the wrong direction. I’m looking forward to that hearing.”
The Postal Service’s board of governors informed the Postal Regulatory Commission about Mr. Potter’s compensation in an annual financial filing in December. Six weeks later, Mr. Potter testified before Congress that the Postal Service’s worsening finances could prompt officials to cut a day of mail delivery. The Postal Service also recently announced a pending 2-cent increase in the price of stamps.
Mr. Potter said the Postal Service’s losses occurred despite cutting more than $2 billion and setting records for on-time delivery. He blamed the financial problems on a weakening economy, required health plan payments and increased use of electronic mail as a means of communication.
Among other top postal officials, Deputy Postmaster Patrick Donahoe got $600,026 in total compensation, more than half of which was an increase to the value of his retirement annuities. His base salary was $238,654.
Postal officials defend the pay packages, saying their counterparts in private industry earn far more money. The chief executive of FedEx, for example, earned more than $10 million last year, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Gerald J. McKiernan, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said Friday that postal officials briefed the subcommittee last year. He said additional briefings on the compensation of top postal officials took place last week.
“It’s an educational process,” he said of the briefings. “We’re prepared for the hearing.”
Postal officials also note that outside reviews have recommended increased compensation for postal executives.
Under federal rules, the postmaster’s pay is capped so he cannot earn more than 20 percent above the salary of the vice president of the United States. But the board of governors, which oversees the Postal Service, can pay additional money to Mr. Potter as long as it’s deferred until later years, according to the board.
For example, the board gave Mr. Potter a “pay for performance” award of $18,300 last year as well as a performance incentive award of $116,741. Both bonuses came on top of Mr. Potter’s $263,575 salary. Mr. Potter won’t be paid the incentive award money until after he leaves the Postal Service, records show.
In awarding the incentive awards, the board of governors noted that it “considered Mr. Potter’s effective leadership during the difficult economic challenges of 2008, his implementation of a number of process improvements that led to record service levels at a lower cost, the steps he took that strategically positioned the Postal Service to maintain its viability for the future, and his achievement of personal goals.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Game emulators are a great way of experiencing games from decades past on modern hardware. Without them, we wouldn’t have devices like the RetroN 5, or have Microsoft announce that the Xbox One will soon play Xbox 360 games. Now peripheral manufacturer Hyperkin is doing a similar thing for smartphone gaming with the Smart Boy.
The Smart Boy is a controller shaped like the original Game Boy, but without a display. Instead, you slide a smartphone inside to act as the screen. The combination unlocks the ability to play Game Boy games using an emulator running on the phone combined with a real cartridge inserted into the back of the case. So your smartphone becomes a Game Boy while side-stepping the whole issue of game ROMs and piracy.
Hyperkin wasn’t sure whether there would be a big enough market for the Smart Boy to make it feasible, so back in March they posted an image of the Alpha Build of the case on Twitter. Then they took the device to E3 after receiving a positive response. Here’s the Alpha Build of the peripheral:
The design of the final case looks much more like the original Game Boy design, a fact that could get them into trouble with Nintendo. But when it comes to actually playing Game Boy games, Hyperkin isn’t breaking any laws. Emulators are not illegal, and the case requires you own a copy of a game on a cartridge to play.
The Smart Boy is going into full production, but we don’t have a release window for it yet. We can expect it to work with both Android and iOS smartphones, although it’s unclear if that means there will be two versions of the Smart Boy on the market. I’d also like to know the price. It can’t be that much as ultimately it’s a plastic case, Game Boy cartridge reader, and an emulator running on the phone.Welcome Redditors, Ents, Etcetera;
This is the classroom for my University of Reddit Class,
Internet Advertising & Marketing – Everything you want to know about it and were afraid to ask
This class will cover concepts such as,
How to make your site advertiser-friendly
How to negotiate with Ad Network
Know your Analytics, your stats, your niche.
All the important terminology, and resources available to you that are free.
This class will also cover philosophies such as,
How Google and Adsense is screwing you over
How you’re being shafted by Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter.
How much advertising is too much advertising
Please see the pages up top to choose a topic and read it – They are ordered based on topic and appendix.
The purpose of this documentation is to make you think. Sure, you can make money doing this – and that’s fine, great even. It’s always great to add more forms of revenue into your life especially if you’re having fun while doing it. But the most important factor of this class and the information provided is to provide individual users, website owners, and content makers (whether it be visual, verbal, textual, or especially software) the information they deserve to know, and how they can truly maximize potential revenue on the personal websites they own if they so choose.
This class may include figures, apprendixes or other forms of documentation. Such documentation shall be considered copyleft material. Meaning you must share it to at least one other individual if you so choose to read the information contained here-in.
This information shall also be free from the requirement of purchase or additional cost to any reader. If you do however feel interest in offering a gratuity to the creator of this content, you may email him or her at adguy101.reddit[at]gmail.com and arrangements can be made.I am Zunera Ishaq. I am a mother. I am university educated. I believe that the environment needs saving and I try to do my part by joining campaigns to plant trees. Chasing my boys in the snow is one of the things I love most about winter. I believe we should strive to give back to others, and for me that means volunteering: at women’s shelters, for political candidates or at schools. I also wear a niqab. And according to my prime minister, that is all you need to know about me to know that I am oppressed.
Zunera Ishaq in her home. Ishaq launched the legal challenge to Ottawa's ban of niqabs at citizenship ceremonies. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star )
It’s precisely because I won’t listen to how other people want me to live my life that I wear a niqab. Some of my own family members have asked me to remove it. I have told them that I prefer to think for myself. My desire to live on my own terms is also why I have chosen to challenge the government’s decision to deny me citizenship unless I take off my niqab at my oath ceremony. I have taken my niqab off for security and identity reasons in every case where that’s been required of me, such as when I have taken a driver’s license photo or gone through airport security. I will take my niqab off again before the oath ceremony without protest so I can be properly identified. I will not take my niqab off at that same ceremony for the sole reason that someone else doesn’t like it, even if that person happens to be Stephen Harper. I am not looking for Mr. Harper to approve my life choices or dress. I am certainly not looking for him to speak on my behalf and “save” me from oppression, without even ever having bothered to reach out to me and speak with me.
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And by the way, if he had bothered to ask me why I wear a niqab instead of making assumptions, I would have told him that it was a decision I took very seriously after I had looked into the matter thoroughly. I would tell him that aside from the religious aspect, I like how it makes me feel: like people have to look beyond what I look like to get to know me. That I don’t have to worry about my physical appearance and can concentrate on my inner self. That it empowers me in this regard. While I recognize that it’s not for everyone, it is for me. To me, the most important Canadian value is the freedom to be the person of my own choosing. To me, that’s more indicative of what it means to be Canadian than what I wear. I am looking, however, for Mr. Harper to govern according to the law of Canada and not according his own personal preference. That is why I was very happy when the Federal Court ruled in my favour and found that the policy was not in line with the government’s own Citizenship Act. And now that Mr. Harper is so busy speaking about me in public, I am looking for him to include me in the discussion. Zunera Ishaq has been a permanent resident of Canada since 2008. She has put her citizenship ceremony on hold since last year, in order to ask the Federal Court to judge the legality of the 2012 Conservative policy requiring her to remove her niqab for that purpose. The Federal Court found that the policy was illegal and ordered that it be struck down.
Read more about:History Edit
In 1859, a large party of gold-seekers led by Ruben Spalding discovered gold near the headwaters of the Blue River,[1] which prompted a population surge in Summit County, Colorado. By October 1859, nearly 100 miners had camped along the river.[1] By 1880, the human population of Summit county had swelled to 5,459.[2] In 1881, Dillon Mining Company patented a 320-acre parcel and divided it into lots to establish the trade-post town of Dillon along the northeast bank of the Snake River, which is part of what was then called Blue River Valley.[3] The town of Dillon was incorporated in 1883,[3] but soon relocated to the west bank of the Blue River when Denver and Rio Grand Railroad came to Blue River Valley but had bypassed Dillon.[3] Dillon was moved a second time in 1892 when the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad arrived from the northeast. The town was located at the confluence of three rivers: the Blue, Tenmile Creek and the Snake to provide one station for the two railroad lines.[3] In 1890, Dillon's population was 133, less than 20% as large as Breckenridge at the time.[2] Prior to its third move to the present location in 1961, the town had grown to 814 residents, the largest town in Summit County, however, most of this population consisted of construction workers for the dam.[3] The idea to dam the Blue River and divert the water to Denver originated in the early 1900s. Denver Water Board acquired most of the land needed for the reservoir for the price of back taxes during the Great Depression when many Dillon residents were unable to pay property taxes. By then, Denver Water Board had already acquired most of the water rights in the valley. In 1956, Denver Water Board notified the remaining residents and business owners they must sell and leave by September 15, 1961.[3] Dam construction began in 1961 and was completed in 1963. The dam is earth-filled, 5,888 feet (1795m) long, and rises 231 feet (70m) above the Blue River stream bed. The dam was completed in 1963.[4] The dam diverts water from the Blue River Basin through the 23.3 mile (37.5 km) Harold D. Roberts Tunnel under the Continental Divide into the South Platte River Basin. Tunneling began in 1942 and the tunnel was holed-through in early 1960, with construction completed 1962. Curiously, alternative routes were still under consideration as late as the mid 1950s. Tunneling began from the east portal, just west of Grant on the North Fork South Platte River, but was eventually done from both ends as well as from a 916-foot (279m) deep access shaft 1.7 miles (2.7 km) northwest of Montezuma. At its deepest, the tunnel passes 4,465 feet (1361m) below the surface near Santa Fe Peak on the continental divide.[5][6][7][8] The tunnel is fully lined, with an inside diameter of 10.25 feet (3.1m), and it permits a flow of 1020 cubic feet per second (29m3/sec). In a typical year, about 60,000 acre-feet (74 million m3) of water pass through the tunnel.[9] The Denver Water Board set aside a 172-acre site for a new Town of Dillon. The Water Board had acquired a portion of the Fred Phillips Ranch at the northeast edge of what was to be Dillon Reservoir.[3] Residents and businesses were responsible for the expense of moving their structures. Many chose not to, but the Dillon Community Church, Town Hall, and Arapaho Café and Motel were moved to the new town, and they still exist today. The original church building is now a museum operated by the local Historical Society with many Dillon artifacts of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Also, 327 graves were moved to a new 39-acre cemetery northeast of the new town site.[3] Several buildings ended up in neighboring towns. Antler’s Café and Bar and the Kremmling Store were moved to Frisco. The Hamilton–Dillon Hotel was moved to Breckenridge. The Mint Bar, Old Dillon Inn, Wildwood Bar, the post office and a general store were moved to what later became Silverthorne. Most of the rest of Old Dillon’s homes and buildings were demolished. Once cleared, the valley was ready for the reservoir, which was completed in 1963.[3] After its third move, Dillon’s population shrank to 57 people, smaller than Breckenridge, Silverthorne, or Frisco.
Tourism Edit
During ski season, thousands of people flock to the Dillon Reservoir area. Dillon Reservoir is close to four ski-resorts. Arapahoe Basin is medium-sized resort that is approximately ten miles from the lake. Keystone Ski Resort is a large tourist destination that is located approximately five miles away. Breckenridge, which is one of the largest ski resorts in Colorado, is located approximately seven miles from Dillon Reservoir. Copper Mountain is located approximately eight miles from Dillon Reservoir. These resorts stay open all year round. The reservoir is also a center of attraction for the area. During the winter months, ice fishing and snowmobiling are common activities. For warmer months, the towns of Dillon and Frisco each have marinas on the reservoir. The Dillon Marina is open and hundreds of sailboats can be seen docked or sailing. Dillon Marina hosts many weekend racing regattas and also provides sailboats for rent. The Dillon Yacht Club is based out of the Dillon Marina and also hosts many sailing events. Dillon Reservoir is stocked every year with 50,000 rainbow trout by the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Due to Dillon Reservoir’s proximity to the towns of Dillon and Frisco, the lake has many lodging, camping, and RV sites.
fills Dillon Reservoir Spring snowmeltfills Dillon Reservoir Dillon Reservoir has a popular 18 mile paved bike path that winds around the entire reservoir. The path can be accessed at any point around the reservoir. Starting in Frisco and going clockwise, it goes behind the Summit Middle School, marshlands, and continues across the Dam road. It passes the towns of Silverthorne and Dillon. Once into Summit Cove subdivision, the path climbs over Swan Mountain and reaches its highest elevation of 9,500' above sea level at the top at Sapphire Point,[10] which is 1,100' above the lowest point of the bike path. This is a popular lookout over Dillon Reservoir and much of Summit County. The path dissolves into the road on the other side. Bikers and cars must share the road. At the bottom, the path resumes near Summit High School. The path goes behind the hospital and back into Frisco.[11]
Weather Edit
Dillon averages 127 inches of snow a year. It generally snows from late September to mid-May. There are nearly 300 days of sun during the year, and this keeps the area snow totals lower than the average amount of precipitation the area receives. Almost every day of the year, some sort of precipitation will fall from the sky, with July generally being the wettest month of the year. July is usually the warmest month of the year also with the average high around 73 °F (23 °C). January is the coldest month of the year with the average high being around 31 °F (−1 °C). The average low in July is 40 °F (4 °C), and the average low in January is 2 °F (−17 °C).
Geography Edit
Dillon Reservoir has a maximum elevation of 9,017 feet (2,748 m) above sea level and a capacity of 257,304 acre feet (317,380,000 m3). Its shore length is approximately 26.8 miles (43.1 km). Dillon Dam is 5,888 feet (1,795 m) long and 231 feet (70 m) wide. The average depth of the reservoir is 79 feet (24 m). It has a regulated water level and it has a catchment area of 330 square miles (850 km2).
Security Issues Edit
In 2008, residents of surrounding areas found Dillon Dam Road closed on numerous occasions for security reasons. In January 2008, the Summit County Sheriff Dept. found two men videotaping a music video on the dam road, already closed at the time for weather purposes. As is protocol for possible threats involving dams, the FBI were asked to investigate the situation as well. The men were cleared of any suspicious activity though the dam remained closed for a short time afterward.[12] On July 8 of the same year, Denver Water closed the dam road indefinitely to all vehicular traffic excluding emergency vehicles, pedestrians, and bicyclists, inciting a lawsuit against the utility company by Summit County representatives.[13] Despite having spent $10 million on increasing security measures for the dam since September 11,[14] the utility felt the dam was still at risk of possible threats, especially to the town of Silverthorne, which lies north of, and directly beneath the dam. The dam road was re-opened on July 25, but with strict stipulations imposed by Denver Water, including weight restrictions on vehicles, officers in security vehicles being placed on either end of the dam at any time during the day,[13] and closing the road from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Emergency vehicles requiring the use of the road during the closed hours must lower the steel barricades on both ends to get through.[15] In 2011, the Dillon Dam Road was closed completely for several weeks while security was revamped with new guard shacks on either end of the structure, improved lighting and roundabouts. With the completion of the project in October, the road was reopened 24 hours a day with guards stationed on either end around the clock.[16]
Water Use Edit
Dillon Reservoir is the largest water storage facility owned and operated by Denver Water. The reservoir has a capacity of 257,304 acre feet (317,380,000 m3) of water. Of that, 249,000 acre feet (307,000,000 m3) is “usable” water. “Usable” is defined as being free to use due to legal, operational, or physical constraints. Customers of Denver Water number upwards of 1.3 million people who annually consume 265,000 acre feet (327,000,000 m3) of water.[17] To reach that level, Denver water uses several sources of which Dillon Reservoir provides forty percent of the total amount, or 106,000 acre feet (131,000,000 m3). The reservoir has an annual median usable water level of ninety-two percent.[17] As a measure of volume, an acre-foot of water is equal to 325,851 gallons. One acre-foot of water will, on average, service 2.5 single-family households per year. As Dillon reservoir is on the west side of the continental divide, in 1962 the Harold D. Roberts Tunnel was completed to bring water to Denver across the Divide. Because of the large concentration of population of the eastern side of the state, and the concentration of water sources on the western slope, the State of Colorado, and Denver Water have determined it necessary to transfer water from west to east in order to support the population.[17]
Service Area Edit
The Denver Water service area extends from the borders of Highlands Ranch north to about 56th Avenue, with further coverage to Denver International Airport and Interstate 25 at 88th Avenue. The service area also extends from the west edge of Aurora to the east edge of Morrison. The exception in this region is that Denver Water does not cover the City of Englewood.[18][19] Legally, Denver Water is not obligated to, nor does it provide customers the information of which watershed their tap water originated.[17]
See also EditOver the past few days I have spoken with many friends and acquaintances about Proposition A – Let Voters Decide. The various conversations were interesting and enlightening. Most of those I spoke with are in favor of and helping to spread the word about Proposition A. Everyone I spoke with understands that an earnings tax is a terrible economic approach.
Some folks I respect very much didn’t oppose Proposition A because of the false allegations being made by those who don’t want to let voters decide. The opposition tactics to letting voters decide remind me of the opposition to the concealed carry issue.
Remember? We were going to have wild west gun battles in our streets. People were going to be lying dead everywhere if we unleashed people to carry guns!
Now the opponents are making similarly wild, really desperate assertions about the Let Voters Decide – Proposition A issue. Just this weekend, I read the assertion that crime will be rampant in St. Louis and that it will roll all the way down I-44 to Springfield! It’s an obvious desperation attack designed to scare people. And just like the wild west shoot-outs, it’s not going to occur.
But some people have concerns about local control issues. While I respect their views, I believe their concerns are misplaced.
The local control of the issue remains unchanged from today should Proposition A pass on November 2, 2010. Only the cities of Kansas City and St. Louis currently have the earnings tax. Proposition A will not eliminate those earnings taxes. It will, however, let the voters of those cities decide on a regular basis if the money is being spent well by the cities. It requires an accounting of the tax monies from those cities. Something that doesn’t occur now.
St. Joseph is the only other city authorized to implement an earnings tax. They have tried 0n a couple of occasions and the voters have rejected it. Even if the voters approved it, there would likely be a court challenge as the St. Joseph statute has all the appearances of being special legislation, something the courts have struck down in the past.
No other city has the ability under current statute to implement an earnings tax. The problem is, it could be authorized very easily.
Some would say, “Well that’s local control as it should be.” I say it’s a lot like going to a casino. The odds are in favor of the house, in this case the government. Even before the tax is authorized, local governments have a plan for how they want to sell it or they would not have the legislature authorize it.
I’ve seen it happen countless times where a “local” tax is authorized with little to no discussion. Before the locals know it, they are voting on a new tax. The most often repeated refrain in these types of elections is “somebody else will pay it.” Even if that were true, remember there are no free lunches; there are still negative impacts to tax policy. An earnings tax is the prime example of how to drive jobs and business away!
Proposition A would require the legislature to actually change statute, a statute put into place by the people, not just add to it. It’s a belt-and-suspenders approach. Everyone gets to have their say, which is why it’s called LET VOTERS DECIDE.
Local control is maintained under Proposition A. Voters all across the state will be voting “YES” to say they don’t want an earnings tax coming to a city near them. Or they will vote “NO” and maintain the option to have an earnings tax come to their town in the future.
I’ve been told a number of times that an earnings tax would never be come to “our” town. Ronald Reagan said, “Never say never” and he is right. Many of these same people would have told us 24 months ago that we would never have Obamacare either. Yet, here it is.
Local control is being asserted by your vote on Proposition A. Even if people are confident that an earnings tax proposal would fail in their city, they will still have to wage a battle against it. The time, effort and dollars that will be required to be expended fighting it can be avoided by voting “YES” on Proposition A – Let Voters Decide!The Spanish Colonial Casta System The Casta system of colonial Spain determined a persons social importance in old Mexico, and the church and government records of the times used over one-hundred diffrent terms to describe diffrent racial categories. The names Peninsular, Criollo, Indio and Negra describe persons of "pure" racial ancestry, whereas names such as Mestizo, Mulatto, and Zambo, in addition to many other terms, describe the "mixed-blood" children resulting from inter-racial marriages. Definitions of the main casta categories of colonial Spain follow. Españoles were persons of pure Spanish ancestry. Those born in Spain were Peninsular, and those born in the Americas were Criollo/Criolla. A one-eight rule existed wherein Criollo status could be attained by those of mixed blood who had an eighth or less indian ancestry. For example, the child of a Castizo parent (3/4 Spanish, and 1/4 Indian) and a Criollo parent would be Criollo. This one-eighth rule did not apply to those with some African ancestry |
to the Montreal Gazette. “McGill alerted private sector sponsors (mostly corporations that fund the research) when such documents were requested and some sponsors objected to disclosure, as is their right … We hope a future hearing in front of the Commission d’accès will resolve these issues.”
The university argues the emails may contain intellectual property or research strategies that the companies do not want to divulge. “It does not mean there is something untoward in the research,” the statement said.
O’Neal, now entering her graduating year, begs to differ.
“I believe these emails will reveal the depth of the collaboration (between CFD and the military),” she said in an interview. “I believe there’s good information in there and that’s why McGill is going to such lengths to block us.”
O’Neal, who will represent herself when she appears before the commission next month, objects to the fact McGill is sparing no expense on the case by hiring high-profile law firm Lavery, which is expected to hand the case to Raymond Doray, a top lawyer in the field of access to information.
And she believes McGill’s contention that it doesn’t legally “hold” the emails is yet another ruse to delay the release of the documents and to roadblock students such as herself, hoping they’ll lose interest as the cases keep dragging on.
Students and university officials have been at odds over the issue of access to information and research with military ties for several years. Currently, McGill has no real policy or guidelines governing research for the military, but Demilitarize McGill has outlined all sorts of research on campus which it claims involves military contracts.
The Students’ Society of McGill University adopted a motion in 2013 calling on McGill to “create and enforce a policy of allowing no future research on weapons, surveillance technologies with military applications … or any other project designed to facilitate the use of force.”
McGill’s Regulation on the Conduct of Research only says that research should be done “to increase knowledge in ways that do not harm but which benefit society.”
Far from being general research that unintentionally ends up in the hands of the military, O’Neal says there is “quite a lot” of military research being conducted on McGill’s campus and it is very “applied” research. In the case of CFD, O’Neal said the lab clearly is working on technology for “a specific model of attack drones” which is not applicable to commercial airlines. Lab director and McGill professor Wagdi Habashi did not reply to an email query from the Montreal Gazette about CFD’s research.
In 2013, McGill filed a motion with the Access to Information Commission to stop a barrage of information requests that officials said had become abusive and hindered university operations. The motion sought to disregard requests already made as well as future requests, saying the university had jumped to 170 requests in 2012 from 37 in 2011.
McGill reached a mediated settlement with the students on their previous requests but was prohibited from barring future requests. The students agreed to reduce the number of their requests, and to revise some of the requests that remained.
However, three students challenged the information they were provided in response to the reformulated requests, saying it was heavily redacted.
But the students don’t always get it right, according to McGill computer science professor Derek Ruths, who says he and his lab, Network Dynamics, have been unfairly targeted by Demilitarize McGill.
Demilitarize McGill has a whole treatise on his lab, saying he is “collaborating with military, police and intelligence agencies to develop tools for surveilling social media” and that his work can lead to “defeating insurgencies.”
O’Neal said his work has received grants from Public Safety Canada, which is affiliated with the RCMP and CSIS, for his surveillance technology. Ruths said in an interview that his social media data mining research is of interest to Public Safety Canada as a tool to help with disaster response.
“I’m absolutely not working with police or governments to address social movements,” he said. “I’m definitely not working to suppress social movements. I’m deeply opposed to that and I believe social media is an important tool to help social movements.
Related
“It’s unfortunate this campaign against me is based on a bit of a misunderstanding.”
O’Neal strongly disputed his version, saying “his research is clearly aimed at assisting police and governments and is negative for the public.”
kseidman@montrealgazette.com
twitter.com/KSeidmanSession judge approved bail of the convicts earlier in the day
KARACHI: A South district and sessions court ordered on Saturday the release of Shahzeb Khan’s murderer Shahrukh Jatoi and the other accused after Shahzeb’s father Aurangzeb Khan submitted an affidavit requesting the approval of Jatoi’s bail.
Other accused in the murder case include Sajjad Talpur, Siraj Talpur and Ghulam Murtaza Lashari.
In the affidavit, Aurangzeb agreed to pardon his son’s killer in the name of Allah and drop the case.
There have also been reports that the aggrieved family pardoned the suspects after reaching a monetary arrangement. However, both the families have denied such reports.
The judge, Imdad Hussain Khoso, ordered the release of the convicts against a surety of Rs500,000 each. The court was informed that both the sides had reconciled earlier and the testimony was submitted with mutual consent.
Hearing postponed as Shahrukh Jatoi fails to show up in court
“We forgave the murderers for the sake of Allah,” said Aurangzeb. Asking for the release of the suspects, he pleaded to the court to drop all the charges against the accused after which the court granted interim bail to the convicts.
The court also accepted bail plea of Jatoi in the case of arms possession against a surety of Rs100,000. Jatoi was released from Jinnah hospital later in the day, where he was being treated. The others were released from central jail.
Case history
Shahzeb was killed on December 25, 2012 when Lashari, Siraj’s servant, tried to flirt with Shahzeb’s sister within the limits of the Darakhshan police station. Shahzeb initially had verbal fight with Lashari who called Siraj and the others.
The issue was apparently resolved when Shahzeb’s father intervened and tried to pacify both his son and the other party. However after some time, Jatoi, Siraj and others chased Shahzeb’s car and shot him dead.
Guns and egos — the Karachi dilemma
When the incident was highlighted on the media, then chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took suo motu notice of the murder and referred the matter to an anti-terrorism court (ATC).
The ATC sentenced Jatoi and Siraj to death while life imprisonment was handed over to Lashari and Sajjad. The convicts later filed an appeal with the Sindh High Court which annulled anti-terrorism clauses in the case and referred it back to the sessions court.
‘My brother did wrong’
Talking to Daily Express, Jatoi’s brother professed that his brother and his friends committed a grave wrong by murdering Shahzeb. He also denied rumours being circulated on social media regarding any monetary deal between the two parties.
“Neither did we give any money, nor did the aggrieved family demand any amount,” the brother said.
Shahrukh Jatoi gets bail in fake travelling documents case
He added that his family had remorse over the murder of an innocent and Shahzeb’s family pardoned Jatoi and others because they realised how deeply the family regretted the incident.
Read full storyThe dynamics are different in each case. Though the nationalists lost Scotland’s 2014 independence referendum, a significant minority of 45 percent of Scots voted to leave the U.K.; meanwhile, Scots favored EU membership by a large margin in the Brexit referendum, with 62 percent voting in favor of staying. Would pro-EU sentiment be enough to push Scottish public opinion that last little bit in favor of independence? Would Scots be inclined to leap out of one union, the United Kingdom, for the sake of a different one, the EU? Polls taken prior to the referendum have suggested it’s not that simple—earlier this month, independence was not that much more appealing to Scots facing the prospect of Brexit than it was to Scots in 2014—and Scottish politicians have urged caution. Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, argued against a new referendum: “On the question of independence, many of the fundamental questions that were unresolved and unanswered in 2014, remain so,” she said. These include basic matters like what currency an independent Scotland would use (Scottish pounds? British pounds? Euros?). “What we don't need today is more turmoil, more upheaval and more economic chaos.”
On the other side of the Irish Sea, Northern Ireland will have the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union; it shares an island with the Republic of Ireland, an EU country, to the south. The implications of Brexit for this border, which has heretofore been open under EU freedom-of-movement rules, are not yet clear. But as Naomi O’Leary reported for The Atlantic earlier in the week, a stronger division of the Irish island is a potentially explosive issue—it’s one people in Northern Ireland fought over throughout the Troubles, the period of violence beginning in the late 1960s in which some 3,500 people were killed before the Good Friday Agreement, backed by the United States and Britain, stopped most of the fighting in 1998. As O’Leary noted: “The EU has pumped funding into projects to promote cohesion, and the region’s peace agreements are underpinned by EU law.”
But perhaps a more fundamental issue is that the open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland helped obviate an underlying cause of the conflict. Catholic nationalists had fought to unite Ireland’s north and south; Protestant unionists had fought to keep the north in the United Kingdom. Under EU arrangements, there was something for everybody; Ireland was “united” in certain ways, even while the U.K. exercised sovereignty over the north. But following the referendum—in which Northern Ireland voted to remain by a margin of 56 to 44 percent—the chairman of Sinn Fein declared that the British government had “forfeited any mandate to represent the interests of the people here in the north of Ireland in circumstances where the North is dragged out of Europe as a result of a vote to leave.” (The leader on the unionist side pronounced the outcome a “good result.”)A man from Bolton faked his own kidnap so he could stay out drinking and avoid going home to his girlfriend.
Last night, the 32-year-old arranged for someone to tell his partner that he had been kidnapped for ransom against a debt. The boyfriend then spoke directly to her, claiming he was being held against his will.
She called police, who launched a rescue operation - checking various addresses, trawling through CCTV camera footage, and tracing his phone signal.
Detectives arrested a man on suspicion of kidnap, before he revealed it was a "ruse" so the boyfriend could go to a party.
The supposed "victim" was eventually tracked to a party on the town's Shurmer Street in the early hours of this morning. He insisted it was a "wind-up". Officers arrested him, issuing an on-the-spot fine for wasting police time.Middleweight Gabriel Rosado has not won an official boxing match since 2012, going 0-4 with a no decision, although he is 1-0-1 in unofficial Big Knockout Boxing bouts.
But Rosado’s losses during the poor stretch have been to some of boxing’s top middleweights, Gennady Golovkin and Peter Quillin in title bouts as well as David Lemieux and Jermell Charlo (at junior middleweight).
Rosado-Clottey Where: Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York
When: Sunday
TV: HBO Latino, 12:15 a.m. ET/PT (tape-delayed)
To many, Rosado is the ultimate stepping-stone opponent. Beat him and you could be headed to bigger and better fights. Lose to him and you’ve been exposed. Rosado, in his first fight since a starring role in the new Rocky film “Creed,” is hoping to change that perception.
He faces the ultimate crossroads fight against former welterweight titlist Joshua Clottey when they meet at a catchweight of 158 pounds on Saturday night on the Luis Ortiz-Bryant Jennings undercard at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York.
While HBO will televise Ortiz-Jennings and the Nicholas Walters-Jason Sosa junior lightweight bout beginning at 10:15 p.m. ET/PT, Rosado-Clottey is one of three undercard bouts that will air on tape delay on HBO Latino immediately following the HBO telecast, at approximately 12:15 a.m. ET/PT.
Rosado, a fan favorite for his exciting fights, is looking to shake off his losing streak and make another run to a title shot.
"This fight means a new beginning,” he said. “It's the second chapter of my career, and I believe it's truly my time to shine. I know that Clottey is a defensive-minded fighter and will be looking to counter. But I believe that I have the advantage. I'm younger, faster, stronger, and I believe my ring IQ is better.”
Rosado (21-9, 13 KOs), 29, of Philadelphia comes into the fight with a new trainer in his corner, but one very familiar to boxing fans -- former two-time junior middleweight titlist Fernando Vargas.
"My primary focus is to do everything Fernando tells me to do,” Rosado said. “I believe in his information and I'm confident that it will make me a better fighter.
"I've learned not to rush things. Timing is everything. The focus and discipline has to be 100 percent. I believe that will show.”
Clottey (39-4, 22 KOs), 38, a Ghana native who fights out of New York, has been very inactive since back-to-back losses to Miguel Cotto (2009) and Manny Pacquiao (2010), but has won four in a row. He outpointed former world titleholder Anthony Mundine in Australia last year in an upset and looked sharp in a decision against Jorge Silva in May on the Canelo Alvarez-James Kirkland undercard.
His goal is to win another world title.
"I approach it like all my other fights: I train hard, eat correctly, get my rest properly and win,” Clottey said. “I know Gabe is very tough and always comes to fight so I expect a hard fight from him. I just will need to stay focused and I do what I need to in order to win.
"I want to be a world champion again, and I believe my experience will help me be one again and know I can do that by winning this fight."CLOSE If the hearing goes as expected, Simpson would be eligible to leave prison on Oct. 1. USA TODAY Sports
O.J. Simpson faces a parole hearing this week. (Photo: Julie Jacobson, AP)
O.J. Simpson is optimistic about his chances of getting paroled Thursday in Nevada, according to one of Simpson’s closest friends.
“He says, ‘Tell them we’ll be playing golf again soon,’ " Tom Scotto said Sunday in a phone interview with USA TODAY Sports.
If paroled, Simpson, 70, is eligible for release Oct. 1.
Simpson sounded “excited’’ when he and Scotto spoke by phone last week, according to Scotto, who added that he will be in the hearing room with the former football star Thursday at Lovelock Correctional Center, where Simpson has been imprisoned for almost nine years.
In 2008, Simpson was sentenced to a minimum of nine years and a maximum of 33 years in prison for his role in the armed robbery of two sports memorabilia agents at a Las Vegas hotel, and Scotto indicated Simpson is ready to reclaim his life outside of prison.
“He just says, ‘We’ll be together again, my life will go back to normal, ’ " Scotto said. “He’s very positive. He’s always been positive."
Simpson will appear by video conference Thursday before four members from the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners who will be at the board offices in Carson City, Nev.
Simpson’s plan if he is freed, according to Scotto, is to move back to Florida and live with Scotto, eventually buy his own house and, like old times, hit the golf course. Another option is for Simpson to live with his sister, Shirley Baker, in Sacramento, according to Scotto. Either way, the Nevada commissioners must approve an inmate’s parole plan before being released.
“We played every day in Miami, even if it was 100 degrees," Scotto said. “We’d travel to West Palm Beach to play. We’d play once a week with Lawrence Taylor and Michael Jordan.
“I’ll tell you something really funny. You know you wear a (golf) glove on the course. And all of his friends, anytime he drops the glove, they say, ‘Oops, you did it again.’ "
That’s a reference to the bloody glove recovered in 1994 at the scene of the crime where Simpson’s former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered.
While Simpson denied killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman and was found not guilty in the 1995 criminal trial, he has acknowledged his role in the 2008 robbery that led to $2 million to $3 million in legal fees, according to Scotto.
Tom Scotto reacts with O.J. Simpson's sister, Carmelita Durio, left, as Simpson was found guilty in 2008. (Photo: Daniel Gluskoter, AP)
When asked about Simpson’s financial situation, Scotto said Simpson still has money from a personal pension in which Simpson invested $5 million many years ago, a Screen Actors Guild pension from his acting and producing credits and his NFL pension that pays $1,700 a month.
A civil jury in 1997 ordered Simpson to pay $33.5 million to the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Goldman.
“He’ll be OK," Scotto said. "He's not going to be poor. He’ll survive. He’ll be able to get his own place.
“He just needs to adjust. Ten years is a long time to be away."
Scotto, 55, said he met Simpson 21 years ago when Scotto’s brother had a chance encounter with Simpson and invited him for dinner. He shared with USA TODAY Sports multiple photos of himself and Simpson and Simpson’s family.
"As soon as him and me sat down next to each other, we just automatically clicked," said Scotto, who said he owned 10 auto body shops and five Chicken Kitchen restaurants before retiring at 40. “We’ve been best friends ever since."
Simpson’s daughter, Arnelle, and sister will also be in the hearing room in Lovelock on Thursday, according to Scotto. He said Simpson’s brother Melvin and niece Tracy Baker will be elsewhere at Lovelock due to restrictions in the hearing room.
During the incarceration, Scotto said, Simpson has stayed in regular contact with Simpson’s four children — Arnelle, 48, who lives in Fresno, Calif.; Jason, 47, who lives in Atlanta; and Sydney, 31, and Justin, 28, who live in Florida about an hour from Scotto’s home in Naples.
“Everybody thinks it’s a great idea for him to come with me because he needs somebody to look after him like I always did,’’ Scotto said. “I left him one time and look what happened."
Simpson was in Las Vegas for Scotto’s wedding in September 2007 when Simpson was involved in the robbery, after which Simpson said he was trying to take back memorabilia items that belonged to him. Scotto said he was busy getting a wedding license, wedding cake and flowers and apart from Simpson when things went awry.
Bloated in 2013 during his first parole hearing, when he was granted parole for the lesser charges, Simpson has since lost around 70 pounds, according to Scotto.
“He’s in the best shape I’ve ever seen him,’’ Scotto said. “He lost a ton of weight. He looks like he’s 50. He just turned 70 and he doesn’t look anywhere near 70."
Although he has been unable to play golf, Simpson has enjoyed another passion: watching NFL games.
“He doesn’t want anybody visiting him on Sunday because that’s football day in season," Scotto said.
Parole in Nevada is based on a point system, and Scotto said Simpson has lost points only for admitting he had been drinking alcohol the day of the 2007 robbery. During his 2013 parole hearing, Simpson mentioned the possibility of getting involved in Alcoholics Anonymous or taking another course that would improve his chances of getting parole for the remaining counts of his conviction.
Simpson said in 2013 that he had no behavioral issues that resulted in writeups. Since then, Scotto said, there have been no incidents and, upon reflection, that he has seen Simpson angry only once in the two decades they’ve known each other.
“And it was to protect me,’’ Scotto said. “We were playing golf and these guys were on the golf course and they were getting off a par-3 green. They were walking off and I hit a good shot (onto the green the golfers were walking off).
“So they came running and screaming over and O.J. chased them down the fairway. (Simpson) was actually running. I’ve only seen him mad that one time.
"He’s a sweet, generous, good soul. Some people might laugh, but it’s the truth."
In 2013, Simpson told parole board members he was coaching softball at Lovelock, and Scotto said he’s still doing it. Scotto also said Simpson started what he called a Baptist church at the prison.
“He was always a little bit religious,’’ Scotto said, adding he did not know what inspired Simpson to start the church. “I mean, he’s not a fanatic.’’
Although Simpson’s sister, Shirley Baker, has granted interviews in the past, Scotto said he is serving as the family’s spokesman and, if parole is granted Thursday, he will relay words from Simpson. Scotto said he has visited Simpson in Lovelock every two months and the two speak by phone regularly.
“When he called me the other day,” Scotto said, “he gave me a few things he wants to get out there.’’
By Oct. 1, Simpson might be out there, too.Books about zombies are as tough and relentless as their shambling characters—just when you think every possible angle about the undead has been covered, a new author comes up with a fresh take and the whole genre is, if you’ll pardon the irony, revitalized!
From classic zombie tales to fresh interpretations, we’ve herded some of our favorite shambling corpses into the reinforced containment unit of a list post. Check out our picks below, and be sure to add your own in the comments!
All of these titles can be found in the Tor Store on iBooks!
Boneshaker—Cherie Priest
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born. But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.
Now, sixteen years later, a wall encloses the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history…
Rot & Ruin (Benny Imura series)—Jonathan Maberry
In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half.
Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash… but he isn’t expecting a dead-end job to become a vocation that teaches him what it means to be human.
The Girl With All the Gifts—M.R. Carey
In this novel’s dystopian future, most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection.
Ten-year-old Melanie is good-humored and a star student, but she lives in closely guarded lockdown. Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. Why don’t they like her? Why do they seem so angry?
She jokes that she won’t bite. Why don’t they laugh?
My Rotten Life—David Lubar
Ten-year-old Nathan Abercrombie is having a really bad day. First, Shawna Lanchester, the prettiest girl in his class, doesn’t invite him to her party. Then he gets picked last in gym class. Things couldn’t get any worse…until he gets doused with an experimental serum that turns him into a half-dead zombie!
Nathan soon discovers that being half dead isn’t all bad. He doesn’t need any sleep, so he can stay up all night and play games online. He doesn’t feel any pain, so there’s no need to worry about Rodney the bully anymore. Still, Nathan would rather be human. Will he find a cure? Or will Nathan be half-dead forever?
Three Parts Dead—Max Gladstone
A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart. Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis’s steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot. Tara’s job is hard enough. How can she resurrect Kos before chaos sets in? But making life even more difficult? The only one who can help is Abelard, a chain-smoking priest, who, until recently, was an acolyte of the dead god. He’s having an understandable crisis of faith.
When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb’s courts—and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb’s slim hope of survival.
World War Z—Max Brooks
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, recording the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the undead.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.
Six-Gun Tarot—R.S. Belcher
Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town that hides more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; some say he is a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. A banker’s wife belongs to a secret order of assassins. And a shady saloon owner, whose fingers are in everyone’s business, may know more about the town’s true origins than he’s letting on.
A haven for the blessed and the damned, Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient evil is spilling into the world, and unless the sheriff and his posse can saddle up in time, Golgotha will have seen its last dawn…and so will all of Creation.
Sabriel (Abhorsen series)—Garth Nix
Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Abhorson, is missing. Sabriel must cross into that world to find him… but how will she ever survive?
Two friends travel with her: Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful (malevolent?) spirit; and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage. Together, they head beyond the walls and deep into the Old Kingdom. There, Sabriel confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life and comes face-to-face with her own hidden destiny....
Feed—Mira Grant
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had defeated the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one inexorable command: FEED.
Now, twenty years after the Rising, news bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. Will they find the truth? Will they find a way to save humanity… or will their search kill them before they get a chance?
The First Days—Rhiannon Frater
The morning that the world ends, Katie is getting ready for court. Across town, Jenni is getting her family ready for a busy day. Little do they know, two hours later, they’ll be fleeing for their lives from a zombie horde.
Thrown together by circumstance, Jenni and Katie become a powerful zombie-killing partnership, mowing down the undead as they rescue Jenni’s stepson, Jason, from an infected campground. They find sanctuary in a tiny, roughly fortified Texas town. But will their partnership be torn apart by Travis, leader of the survivors?
Never Slow Dance with a Zombie—E. Van Lowe
On the night of her middle school graduation, Margot Jean Johnson wrote a high school manifesto detailing her goals for what she was sure would be a most excellent high school career. She and her best friend, Sybil, would be popular and, most important, have boyfriends. But it’s three years later, and they haven’t accomplished a thing!
Then Margot and Sybil arrive at school one day to find that most of the student body has been turned into flesh-eating zombies. When kooky Principal Taft asks the girls to coexist with the zombies until the end of the semester, they realize that this is the perfect opportunity to live out their high school dreams. All they have to do is stay alive….
Cell—Stephen King
Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, has just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He’s already picked up a small (but expensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he’ll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay’s feeling good about the future.
That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone’s cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization’s darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature… and then begins to evolve.
There’s really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points home to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction. A promise, perhaps. Or a threat…
Pariah—Bob Fingerman
A global plague has nearly vanquished mankind; the citizenry of New York City is no exception. Eight million zombies, shoulder to shoulder, walking the streets, looking for their next meal of human flesh.
The residents of an Upper East Side walkup have joined forces to keep themselves safe, the pageant of walking rot outside their windows a constant reminder of the their foreseeable fate. Trapped in the safety of their building, the tenants find themselves at each others’ throats. But when they spy a lone teenage girl who walks unharmed among the undead, impervious, their world opens up.
Aftertime—Sophie Littlefield
Awakening in a bleak landscape, Cass Dollar vaguely recalls enduring something terrible. Having no idea how many days—or weeks—have passed, she slowly realizes the horrifying truth: her daughter, Ruthie, has vanished. And with her, nearly all of civilization. Instead of winding through the once-lush hills, the roads today see only cannibalistic Beaters—people turned hungry for human flesh by a government experiment gone wrong.
In a broken, barren California, Cass will undergo a harrowing quest to get Ruthie back. Few people trust an outsider—much less one who bears the telltale scars of a Beater attack—but she finds safety with an enigmatic outlaw, Smoke. And she’ll need him more than ever when his ragged band of survivors learn that she and Ruthie have become the most feared, and desired, weapons in a brave new world….
Echopraxia—Peter Watts
It’s the eve of the twenty-second century: a world where the dearly departed send postcards back from Heaven and evangelicals make scientific breakthroughs by speaking in tongues; where genetically engineered vampires solve problems intractable to baseline humans and soldiers come with zombie switches that shut off self-awareness during combat. And it’s all under surveillance by an alien presence that refuses to show itself.
Daniel Bruks is a living fossil: a field biologist in a world where biology has turned computational, a cat’s-paw used by terrorists to kill thousands. Taking refuge in the Oregon desert, he’s turned his back on a humanity that shatters into strange new subspecies with every heartbeat. But he awakens one night to find himself at the center of a storm that will turn all of history inside-out.
Now he’s trapped on a ship bound for the center of the solar system. To his left is a grief-stricken soldier, obsessed by whispered messages from a dead son. To his right is a pilot who hasn’t yet found the man she’s sworn to kill on sight. A vampire and its entourage of zombie bodyguards lurk in the shadows behind. And dead ahead, a handful of rapture-stricken monks takes them all to a meeting with something they will only call “The Angels of the Asteroids.”
A Questionable Shape—Bennett Sims
Mazoch discovers an unreturned movie sleeve, a smashed window, and a pool of blood in his father’s house; the man has gone missing. So he creates a list of his father’s haunts and asks Vermaelen to help track him down. However, hurricane season looms over Baton Rouge, threatening to wipe out any undead not already contained, and eliminate all hope of ever finding Mazoch’s father.
Bennett Sims turns typical zombie fare on its head to deliver a wise and philosophical rumination on the nature of memory and loss.
Peeps—Scott Westerfeld
A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal’s life.
Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he’s infected the girlfriends he’s had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires. It’s Cal’s job to hunt them down before they can create more of their kind…
Necroscope—Brian Lumley
Harry Keogh is the man who can talk to the dead, the man for whom every grave willingly gives up its secrets, the one man who knows how to travel effortlessly through time and space to destroy the vampires that threaten all humanity.
While Britain and the Soviet Union both maintain super-secret, psychically-powered espionage organizations, Harry is the only person who knows about Thibor Ferenczy, a vampire long buried in the mountains of Romania—still horribly alive, in undeath—and Thibor’s insane “offspring,” Boris Dragosani, who rips information from the souls of the dead in a terrible, ever-lasting form of torture. Somehow, Harry must convince Britain’s E-Branch that only by working together can they locate and destroy Dragosani and his army of demonic warriors—before the half-vampire succeeds in taking over the world…
Raising Stony Mayhall—Daryl Gregory
In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda—and he begins to move.
The family hides the child—whom they name Stony—rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret—until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.
Gil’s All Fright Diner—A. Lee Martinez
Duke and Earl are just passing through Rockwood county in their pick-up truck when they stop at the Diner for a quick bite to eat. They aren’t planning to stick around—until Loretta, the eatery’s owner, offers them $100 to take care of her zombie problem. Given that Duke is a werewolf and Earl’s a vampire, this looks right up their alley.
But the shambling dead are just the tip of a particularly spiky iceberg. Seems someone’s out to drive Loretta from the Diner, and more than willing to raise a little |
sad to report that some in the media seemed to cheer Mitchell on. I keep wanting evidence that all of these media folks aren't communicant members evangelists apologists in the Church of Planned Parenthood, but it's hard to find.
Politico reporter MJ Lee continued with the Church of Planned Parenthood meme of pretending that the half of the country that's pro-life just doesn't exist. "MSNBC host personal about Komen," we learn. We're told that Mitchell's diagnosis of breast cancer enabled her to express "the anger of a lot of people" about ending grants to Planned Parenthood. We're never told how breast cancer equates to support of the country's largest abortion provider -- it's just assumed.
It wasn't enough. The next day, MJ Lee proselytized some more:
Susan G. Komen-Planned Parenthood showdown: Andrea Mitchell brought passion to story For Andrea Mitchell, reporting on the showdown between Susan G. Komen for the Cure and Planned Parenthood was a wrenching experience — “one of those stories you really don’t want to be covering,” she says — but the MSNBC correspondent drew strength from knowing she was providing a voice to fellow breast cancer survivors.
Isn't that amazing that pro-lifers don't get breast cancer? Or so I assume since this reporter seems to indicate that all people with breast cancer love Planned Parenthood. Which will be news to the dozen or so women I know who've had breast cancer and oppose Planned Parenthood. Politico doesn't mention any journalistic critiques of Mitchell's performance. Politico doesn't mention that any pro-lifers might have been less than pleased with her treatment of the topic. Time takes a similar approach in its treatment of the interview.
But remember, pro-lifers don't exist. We discussed that last week. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat -- the lone pro-lifer there -- noticed some of these same problems:
[I]n the first Gallup poll to show a slight pro-life majority, conducted in May 2009, half of American women described themselves as pro-life. But if you’ve followed the media frenzy surrounding the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision — which it backpedaled from, with an apology, after a wave of frankly brutal coverage — to discontinue about $700,000 in funding for Planned Parenthood, you would think all these millions of anti-abortion Americans simply do not exist. From the nightly news shows to print and online media, the coverage’s tone alternated between wonder and outrage — wonder that anyone could possibly find Planned Parenthood even remotely controversial and outrage that the Komen foundation had “politicized” the cause of women’s health.
You really should read the whole thing. He gives some examples -- he, too, noticed the ABC News report and Andrea Mitchell speech -- and writes:
Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose. But of course millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women — do oppose Planned Parenthood. They oppose the 300,000-plus abortions it performs every year (making it the largest abortion provider in the country), and they oppose its tireless opposition to even modest limits on abortion.
He gives quite a few facts and figures that don't make it into mainstream media reports, pointing out that Planned Parenthood referred women for adoption 841 times during the same year it performed 329,445 abortions. Journalists betray their calling when they ignore truths about a story, he notes. He mentions three -- that while the fight against breast cancer is non-controversial, provision of abortion is; that it's no more "political" to disassociate from the country's largest abortion provider than it is to associate; and that for the Americans who were enraged by Komen's decision, there were others who were elated. (For a dissenting view, try out this Religion Dispatches piece.)
It's fine for the Planned Parenthood PR team to claim that disassociating with the largest abortion provider is to engage in politics while associating with the largest abortion provider is not. That's what PR teams do. It's fine for the 26 Democratic Senators to issue a press release praising Komen for backtracking on the Planned Parenthood and for putting "politics aside" while also claiming credit for political pressure getting them to change that decision. That's what politicians do. They speak outside of both sides of their mouth. It's fine for pro-choice activists throughout the country to say that Komen should always associate with a $1 billion organization that performs 330,000 abortions a year... or else. Pro-abortion-rights activists can say whatever they want (although they shouldn't have hacked into Komen's web site and claimed that the breast cancer research giant kills women).
But what's not OK is for the media to join this abortion-industrial complex. You don't have to be pro-life to oppose what happened last week, and certainly there are pro-choice people who condemned it.
After Komen seemed to reverse course, press critic Jay Rosen said that he'd wanted to write up something about Mitchell's speech but that he wasn't sure if it was moot now. I encouraged him to write it up, saying that he couldn't ignore the Church of Planned Parenthood's "Here I Stand!" speech. He did write it up and one reporter noted that it seemed like he and I watched different speeches from Mitchell. I don't think so -- I think he just writes from within the Church of Planned Parenthood while I write from outside it. Also, his approach to media criticism includes evaluating the performances of interview subjects. I focus on journalists. He tweeted:
Two views of that trainwreck interview with CEO of Susan G. Komen. Mine: http://bit.ly/xSwI8l Catholic, pro-life writer http://bit.ly/ADfIl5
When you don't know much about people who oppose abortion, I guess we all look alike! Just kidding -- he's noted he was wrong about my religious affiliation. I have absolutely no idea why he felt it necessary to characterize my professional work and media criticism in terms of my religion, but I didn't go to journalism school.
Anyway, Rosen is known for criticizing "the view from nowhere." He is consistent, then, in praising Mitchell's view which comes from within the Church of Planned Parenthood. He also blames the victim:
Brinker seemed to approach Mitchell as “one of us,” a sympathetic ear who of course had a job to do but someone who also held the mission -- fighting breast cancer -- sacred. Herself a survivor! But Brinker never considered that this could cut two ways. Mitchell’s enormous stake in the work of the Foundation could incline her to sympathy for Brinker’s position. It’s plausible. But it could just as easily place her among the millions of women enraged that the Foundation had somehow stumbled into the politics of abortion without a clue as to what might happen if it cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. Equally plausible. A shrewd executive, well briefed, would understand that.
See, from within the Church of Planned Parenthood, you only stumble into the politics of abortion if you don't give hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to an abortion company. You do not stumble into the politics of abortion while funding abortion organizations. That is dogma.
Anyway, I am curious how Rosen would compare the video embedded above with Mitchell's performance that he praises. Either way, you should read his media criticism of the woman interviewed by Mitchell.
There's so much to write about what happened last week that we could go on for days. I should probably write something about how there's good indication that everyone in the media (including me) got the story wrong, both in falling for the Planned Parenthood PR campaign and in writing that Komen backtracked. Not wrong, maybe, but certainly not right.
There are some interesting facts and figures documenting how the mainstream media is ignoring the HHS scandal while hyping the Planned Parenthood PR campaign. There are more examples of awful stories. And there are stories that weren't bad and deserve to be highlighted.
No matter your views on abortion, Planned Parenthood or Komen's handling of this crisis, this has been a terribly interesting week in media coverage. Did last week affect your view of the media at all? If so, how? Did you enjoy their advocacy on behalf of Planned Parenthood? Or were you disappointed?Advertisement
Incredible aerial shots show mega-cities of the world illuminated like an electric grid by a British airline pilot who has travelled the equivalent of ten round trips to the moon.
Taken from the flight deck, the stunning photos show some of the most recognisable places in the world from an-above earthly perspective.
Dubai, Bangkok, Tokyo and New York are among the collection of images outlined in bright orange, blue, green and white lights.
West Bay in Qatar looks mesmerising from above in one of pilot Jon Bowles' spectacular photos from above
This photo shows Dubai at night, with the Burj Khalifa clearly visible along its skyline, populated by tall buildings
As well as the cities below, the flight deck of the Boeing 777 is lit up, but it doesn't detract from the views outside
Captain Jon Bowles, 55, from Bolton, UK, has amassed these jaw-dropping pictures over the past five years during night-flights that span the globe. A seasoned pilot, Jon Bowles has racked up an astounding five million air miles during his 36-year career as a pilot.
'I look for shapes in the cities, light areas, dark areas and patterns in the way the city is laid out,' said Jon. 'Older cities tend to radiate out of the centre, with ring roads and spokes running into the centre.
'These older cities sometimes look like huge fluorescent growths on the countryside, with tendrils spreading out from the nucleus.
'Newer cities tend to be arranged in grids, but these can have interesting patterns where the local topography has dictated the growth of urban areas.
'Largely, the cities I photograph are dictated by the routes flown, the weather and how the city looks from the air.'
This shows the Palm of Dubai from the skies, the circular development extending into the seas of the UAE country
Kuwait is heavily orange in this stunning photo shot at night as a Boeing 777 soars above the Middle Eastern country
The vibrancy of Bangkok is clear to see in this picture. It's proof that despite shooting from behind glass, beauty can still be captured
The size of New York is beautifully demonstrated from this shot taken above Queens as the Boeing roars on by
Jon pilots a Boeing 777, sometimes known as the Triple Seven, which is a group of long range wide body twin engine jet airliners. They are the largest twinjets and have a capacity of up to 451 passengers, with a range of up to 9,500 nautical miles.
'There is no danger involved in taking the shots, I only shoot at times of low workload, or occasionally from the jump-seat,' said Jon.
'Shooting through glass has some limitations, distortion can be a problem.
'Also the glass needs to be clean. I have been known to clean the windows myself before a flight.
Dubai at night: The Palm Jumeirah, home to the Aquaventure beach, is easy to spot to the right of the shot
Hamad International Airport, Doha, Qatar. A seasoned pilot, Jon Bowles has racked up an astounding five million air miles during his 36-year career as a pilot
An aerial view of Budapest, Hungary. The incredible aerial shots show mega-cities of the world illuminated like an electric grid
With a perfect contrast of lights and electricity, and mountains, this is a view of the city of Sandanaj, Iran
'Turbulence makes photography impractical, so I only shoot in still air.
'I love how different the world looks at night. I especially enjoy flying at night with no moon and a sky full of stars.
'I love seeing storms flickering in the distance, remote settlements sparkling in the desert, seeing the aurora when it's active. I also like the lights of cities from above. One of the things I love most about flying, whether by day or night, is how it puts things in perspective.
Captain Jon Bowles, 55, from Bolton, UK, has amassed these jaw-dropping pictures over the past five years during night-flights
A picture showing a view of Kuwait from the flight deck as the airliner descends into the city
This special shot shows Tokyo, Japan. The stunning photos show some of the most recognisable places in the world
An aerial view of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The British airline pilot has travelled the equivalent of ten round trips to the moon
'When you see the planet from above, you tend to appreciate the world we live on more. It's too easy to get stuck in your immediate environment, to forget that there is a whole planet out there, and that most of our day to day worries are trivial when seen in a planetary context.
'The footprint of the human race on planet Earth is also a message I like to show with my photography.
'At night over heavily populated areas the massive impact of urbanisation on the planet is even more obvious than during the day.'
Cairo, Egypt. The photographer says he aims to show 'the footprint of the human race on planet Earth'
Buenos Aires under cloud cover. Jon Bowles says that by flying in light, things around the world are 'put into perspective'
Nanning in southern China is under some cloud cover as the aeroplane approaches, but the lights of the city still shine throughJudy Shalom Nir-Mozes, an Israeli media personality and the wife of Israeli Vice Prime Minister and Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, tweeted a racial joke about President Obama on Sunday:
Though she quickly deleted and apologized for the tweet, this is not the first time she's gotten herself on trouble on Twitter. And this comes in a period of animus between the Israeli and US governments that can seem intensely personal, and from the Israeli side focused at times on Obama's background.
In March 2012, for example, Nir-Mozes tweeted in response to rocket fire coming from Gaza, "I hope that today they decide to destroy Gaza if they don't stop shooting. Let them suffer as well."
A few months later, when her husband's own Twitter feed was taken over by pro-Hamas hackers, she tweeted, "The murderers have taken over Silvan's Facebook, Twitter and email. Our son Nimrod is trying to salvage. I wish they would die!" The fallout ended with Nir-Mozes leaving her honorary position with the United Nations Children's Fund.
There is an odd tendency among some elements of the Israeli political right, which currently holds power there, to reference President Obama's race and heritage when explaining frays in US-Israeli ties.
Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the US who is now a member of Israel's legislature, wrote this week in Foreign Policy that Obama's Middle East policy stemmed from an upbringing that inculcated a special loyalty to Islam:
In addition to its academic and international affairs origins, Obama's attitudes toward Islam clearly stem from his personal interactions with Muslims. These were described in depth in his candid memoir, Dreams from My Father, published 13 years before his election as president. Obama wrote passionately of the Kenyan villages where, after many years of dislocation, he felt most at home and of his childhood experiences in Indonesia. I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child's abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.
Murtaza Hussain, a journalist with the Intercept, called it "the polished sophisticate's case that Obama is a crypto-Muslim."
Nir-Mozes was not calling Obama a secret Muslim, of course. But this willingness of a senior Israeli official's wife to publicly denigrate the American president based on his race speaks to how Obama is seen in the Israeli right-wing political class.When Columbus adopted its Bikeways Plan in 2008, many central Ohioans had never heard of "sharrow" pavement markings, let alone envisioned architecturally sleek bike shelters or bicycle-rentals stationed around town. Today, there are sharrows on nearly 27 miles of roadway, 18 covered shelters and about 300 CoGo bikes available to borrow for a spin.
When Columbus adopted its Bikeways Plan in 2008, many central Ohioans had never heard of "sharrow" pavement markings, let alone envisioned architecturally sleek bike shelters or bicycle-rentals stationed around town.
Today, there are sharrows on nearly 27 miles of roadway, 18 covered shelters and about 300 CoGo bikes available to borrow for a spin.
A little planning went a long way. And though Columbus has become much more bicycle-friendly, it's time to update and improve that earlier guide.
Columbus is surveying residents for ideas on how to make streets safer for everyone - bicyclists, drivers and pedestrians - as it considers the latest and best ways to design roadways, educate residents and promote peddling.
Responses will shape city priorities and spending. More than 950 people so far have taken the survey, including representatives of bicycling groups and civic associations.
To participate, go online to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CbusTransportation, or phone 614-221-2885, ext. 22, for a paper copy.
The survey ends on April 23.
This is an ambitious undertaking. The 2008 plan called for more trails and more respectful car-bicycle relationships.
The city got the trails, but people are still working on sharing the roadway and being courteous. Bicyclists are still suffering serious injuries and death because of impaired or inattentive drivers, and drivers are still seeing dangerous moves by bicyclists who flout traffic laws.
Some of these dangers and frustrations can be designed away; that's where the updated Bikeways Plan comes in.
"Input from bicyclists, motorists and others through the survey will help us make future bikeways projects safer for cyclists and motorists," Mayor Michael B. Coleman said.
The city this year plans to invest $5.6 million in bicycling facilities, including 50 additional bike racks, 3.1 miles of new pavement markings and nearly 8 miles of new bike lanes, trails and multiple-use paths.
This is a good investment in this community's health. Bicycling is a good way to get exercise, reduce pollution and ease traffic congestion. But it's also important to Columbus' economic health: Bike-friendly communities are better able to attract and retain young professionals, who want to live in vibrant neighborhoods that are easy to get around without having to search out scarce parking spots.
Accommodating bike riding also means that visitors can rent a bike to visit the city's sights, events and restaurants.
Since 2008, Columbus has added 13 miles of bike trails. But more important, the old Bikeways Plan helped this community build an affinity and respect for bicycling.
Coleman, an avid rider and Downtown resident, wants Columbus to become "Bike City USA." But there is a lot of work to do to become a bicyclist's utopia. Painting sharrows and building bike racks is the simple part.
Retrofitting crowded roads to give bicyclists a sense of safety isn't. Until more people feel comfortable biking in traffic, they'll drive.
And the roads will continue be clogged.
The new survey is a good way for the city to assess what amenities bikers and drivers want.A Black Ph.D. professor has been awarded a huge grant to improve techniques for investigating rape. Candice Bridge, an educator at the University of Central Florida, received $324,000 from the National Institute of Justice to review methods for catching suspects of sexual-assault crimes aside from DNA evidence.
The grant will give Bridge access to exclusive tools utilized by the FBI and a few government laboratories. Then, the chemistry instructor will research with 11 students to review lubricants exchanged during sexual assaults. Additionally, the group will study toxicology, drugs and gunshot debris.
In a press release, Bridge noted the importance of reviewing forensic science practices.
“This grant will enable us to conduct research into a unique new means of identifying perpetrators of sexual assault when traditional DNA evidence doesn’t exist,” she said. “It’s an important line of research that has become even more important as rapists attempt to elude capture by covering their DNA tracks after an assault.
“An award from the NIJ in forensic science is particularly significant as it’s the primary agency for advancing forensic science through research.”
But the hefty grant isn’t the only award Bridge received. Her In-House Award from UCF will allow her to research the ways the body breaks down lubricants before forensic investigations can occur. Additionally, Bridge will create a website through the Orlando Public Defender’s Office that will give defense lawyers and prosecution more resources about forensic science analysis.
Bridge’s achievements have been developing ever since her interest in chemistry began at 13 years old. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Howard University and later got her forensic science-focused Ph.D. from UCF, becoming one of the first in America to earn that particular degree. Bridge went on to be the first Black female to teach chemistry at UCF.K.W. Jeter and I, on a recent post, had a discussion that started with me misunderstanding something he was saying. And when we finished, I figured that the topic might be something that most new indie publishers just don’t have the perspective to understand.
So let me try to give a little perspective and maybe save your writing and publishing life.
History
In traditional publishing, in the past, writers that hang around for a few decades tended to get jaded about new writers coming in. We would try to help the ones that had the drive and a light in their eyes, but mostly we just watched the new writers come and go.
The old grind of submissions, rejections, a few sales, no real money, more rejections, and stupid agent and publishing business myths caused many, many writers to fail either early or after three to five novels. The writer would just vanish and then one day someone would ask “What ever happened to…” But mostly, sadly, we just didn’t notice that the writer had gone back to the real world.
Just this last week a writer of a few books made news for some vague reason by announcing she was going back to teaching instead of writing. Both Kris and I went, “Why is that news?”
It happens all the time and it has happened for as long as this business has existed. I couldn’t begin to list the hundreds and hundreds of well-published writers who have vanished just since I came into publishing. And those are the well-published ones. That doesn’t even take into account the ones that sold one or two stories and walked away.
Walking Away Can Be A Good Thing
I am not saying walking away is a bad thing. Not in the slightest.
I walked away from professional golf, architecture, and law, to name just three of my former possible careers. I have a degree in architecture and worked as an architect for all of ten months before walking away. I went to three years of law school and walked away before my last test my last semester. I was a golf professional for many years and now haven’t played much golf in years except for fun and dinner on the line.
Sometimes, when you realize something isn’t right for you, walking away is the best decision. Especially from bad jobs or bad relationships. Life is too short.
I’ve walked away from writing three times, but just kept coming back. Sometimes you have to walk away from something to reset, get perspective, and just recharge.
So nothing wrong with walking away for the right reasons.
That, in fact, is the secret to having a long career that people remember. You walk away and quit all you want. Or get pounded down by the business. But you stand back up. You just keep coming back.
So Now Comes Indie Publishing
With indie publishing, we have gained a freedom we didn’t have before.
When traditional publishing gave up their monopoly on distribution to readers and stores, writers gained the freedom to publish and get readers to maybe buy stories and books that might not have ever seen the light of day.
This is a good thing and a bad thing and a neutral thing.
(The stupidity of “poisoning the well” thinking just drives me nuts and I’m not going into it here. It shows (by the person uttering such garbage) a complete lack of understanding of the business and how readers pick books and of the size of the publishing industry worldwide. So please don’t bring it up again. They said the same thing about poisoning the internet a while back (as Camille pointed out) and the internet seems to work fine still.)
The Good Things
—Readers can find stories that they never would have found before. Readers can find niche stories that never would have been published because of lack of large enough audience.
—Readers can find new writers with unique voices that could not get through the traditional tightness of sales, sales, sales thinking.
—Writers can make money almost from moment one on a story or book. More writers will be making a living writing fiction. More writers will become very rich.
—Short stories are coming back strong.
—Writing fast will again be a good thing and not limited by publishing schedules.
—Quality storytelling will be important.
—Writers will understand all the aspects of publishing, from values of covers, to writing blurbs, to promotion that works and doesn’t work.
All good, and much more.
The Neutral
—The same courage will be needed to publish a book as it took to mail a book. Same learning curves and time and fear, just different knowledge.
—Time to success or failure is the same. It used to take a long time for a book to get bought and make any money for the writer. That is the same in most cases indie publishing. Sales early are always slow and discouraging, just as rejection slips were.
—First pages, great writing, and great promotion either in submission packages or in your published book do exactly the same thing. And bad ones also stop sales just as effectively.
The Bad
The bad is pretty much the same as it was in traditional publishing, the problems just show up differently.
—A writer thinks one or two novels will make them rich and famous. Old days rejection or a small sale stopped this thinking and sent the writer packing. New world the writer publishes the book electronically and makes only a few sales. Exactly the same.
—Writers have no one to blame. With editor rejections, writers could blame the stupid editors or the system. With indie publishing, there is no one to blame. And new writers hate and can’t seem to take responsibility for the fact that maybe their book just doesn’t attract readers. Now they blame it on the noise or their price or something else just as silly. Rejections by editors made it easy. Rejection by readers is another matter. And it hurts worse, actually.
—Sales and success take time to build. In traditional publishing, a new writer counted rejection slips over months or years, sometimes for many of us, into the hundreds and hundreds of rejections. Now writers who don’t know or understand the time publishing takes, watch Kindle sales every day and wonder why they are only making a few sales. Traditional publishing forced writers to be patient. Indie publishing writers haven’t learned that yet and many never will.
—The learning curve to publish a book seems harder than mailing a manuscript to the correct editor. It really isn’t, but it seems harder. And that perception stops many, many writers who don’t even know where to start.
There are more bad things, but let me just leave it at those major ones.
A Good and Bad Thing
—Writers have choices now. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. In the days of traditional publishing only, a writer pretty much had one path to follow to get in the door and get his writing bought and distributed to readers. The details varied, but the path was clear. We had to deal with the publishing system and have agents.
Now, even to sell to traditional publishing houses we don’t need agents, can use IP lawyers for contracts, and can even send editors already published books. We can now indie publish or go traditional or go both. All writers have many choices now, and that’s a good thing, but also a bad thing in knowing which choice to make. And there are no right answers. And that makes it harder.
How To Survive
Writers today need to learn a few things that were taught in the process of trying to break into traditional publishing.
— Sales take time.
— Learning how to write quality stories takes time.
— No one knows what will sell or not sell at any moment to readers.
— Everything takes time, but the writing must always come first.
— You must always strive to keep learning, both about business and about craft.
— You must become a business person and take responsibility for your own business decisions. And take control as well.
The Death of an Indie Writer’s Career
So let me illustrate by example how this will go these days.
— Indie writer gets all excited about writing, has written a novel or two or five and a few short stories. Hates the idea of going to traditional publishers. Too much work, not enough control even though they have no real idea what any of that really means.
—Indie writer becomes an indie publisher, reads blogs like this one and Konrath and others who say it can be done. So they go learn how to do it. (In reading my blogs or early Konrath blogs or others, the indie publisher in his or her excitement only pays attention to the success cases and not the math of slow growth.)
— Indie publisher gets up a book, watches the numbers, does lots of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and sells ten or twenty copies in the first month and is discouraged. (Indie Publisher does not do the math of how much money they would make at that pace over ten years, or even consider the book might grow in sales if there were more books up.)
— Indie publisher puts up another book or two, sales remain about the same. (Indie publisher only watches Kindle because they believe that’s the entire world instead of waiting and totaling numbers six or eight months later from the entire world of sales and then figuring that might increase or remain the same for ten years.)
— Indie publisher panics, lowers price of novels to 99 cents, gets a few more sales, does more blogging and Twitter and Facebook instead of writing more. Nothing helps.
— Indie publisher doesn’t think that maybe their stories are not up to levels yet that will sell, or that their blurb sucks, or their cover doesn’t work. They just keep trying to promote, which does nothing to help. (That’s like whipping a dead horse to get it to run faster. A dead book is a dead book. Leave it alone and move on. Let it sell its five copies per month.)
— Indie publisher runs out of time and patience and since they haven’t been writing, they see no hope. Their first check is $25.00.
— Indie publisher gives up and walks away, telling all their friends you can’t make any money in indie publishing unless you are lucky.
Not one word about not being a good enough writer, not one word about how their own stories just didn’t interest people because they had just two characters talking in a white room in their openings. Not one word of taking responsibility for their own slow start. Or that slow starts are normal in publishing.
This is already happening all the time. And honestly, that worries me a little. Normally a writer got discouraged after a couple dozen rejections that took a year or more. Now a writer can come in, try it, and quit in less than a few months. That time difference often allowed a writer in the old system to learn something new and keep going. Not any more.
So How To Avoid This Death?
— Think Long Term.
A novel selling twenty copies around the world for $4.99 will make you $35.00 per month, $420.00 per year, $4,200 in ten years. If you got a $5,000 advance from a traditional publisher with an agent, you would lose your book rights for at least that long and make $4,250 spread over three years.
— Keep Writing.
If you have ten novels selling ten copies, you make $350.00 per month, $4,200 per year, and $42,000 in ten years.
— Set Pricing.
Price your novel at a decent price like $3.99 or $4.99 or $5.99 and leave it alone.
— Stop Checking Numbers.
Check your sales numbers once a month. Let them alone, focus on producing more books and writing more books.
—Stop Comparing Yourself to Joe Konrath or John Locke.
They are on the fringes, just as you can’t compare your sales in traditional publishing to Nora Roberts or Stephen King. If you stay in long enough, you might become one with sales like them, but not early on.
—Keep Learning.
All your focus in the early years should be on learning. Writing and publishing and business. You can’t stop learning. And all your early stuff just consider good practice and if you make money on it, great, be happy.
— Celebrate Every Sale.
A reader thought your book was good enough to pay for. Trust me, that’s the highest compliment you can get. Period.
Summary
This new age of indie publishing gives all of us writers a wonderful opportunity. It lets us write what we want, when we want, and sell it how we want.
But this new world, just as the old one, also has a lot of land mines that can send you spinning away from your dream.
Those of us who have been around don’t even notice when a young writer vanishes. It is so common as to be sad.
Set your goal to not be one of them.
And keep having fun.
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Copyright © 2011 Dean Wesley Smith
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Because of the new world and technology, my magic bakery got a lot more valuable lately. This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.
If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately really kept me going on this. Thanks!
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.
Thanks, DeanYou may have noticed many of the new rifles available in the exotic 300AAC Blackout caliber, a mid-power round offered in a number of semi-automatic AR-15's. Now, Remington is offering this caliber, too, but in a bolt-action, the Model 700TM SPS Tactical 300 Blackout.
The new rifle is built around Remington's time-tested Model 700 action. Unique to this precision rifle is the 16 ½ -inch, heavy-contour barrel threaded to accept AAC and all 5/8 x 24 threaded flash hiders, muzzle breaks and suppressors. Shipped with a thread protector installed. The tactical-style shorter barrel is built for shooting in tight spots while delivering pinpoint accuracy.
The barreled action is bedded in a Hogue OverMolded synthetic stock with a semi-beavertail fore-end for added stability. The soft-touch stock is extremely comfortable, and made to assure a positive grip in both stressful situations and inclement weather.
The rifle also has Remington's X-Mark Pro externally adjustable trigger, set at 3 ½ pounds from the factory. The receiver is drilled and tapped for optics. It comes with a hinged floorplate magazine with 4-round capacity. Sling swivel studs round out the package.
MSRP: $817
Website: Remington.comThis year’s summer sale on PlayStation Store may have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still bargains to be had. This week’s round-up of discounted titles looks specifically at PlayStation VR, and we have two AAA titles available at a reduced price for a limited time.
DiRT Rally
The DiRT Rally + PlayStation VR Bundle includes the full DiRT Rally videogame, the DiRT Rally PlayStation VR downloadable content (DLC) add-on and the three Fully Loaded DLC packs: the Ford Pack, the MINI Pack and the Rallycross Pack. Currently reduced by a whopping 72%, down from £57.99 GBP to just £15.99, this discount will be available until 6th September 2017.
The Assembly
A first-person puzzle adventure, The Assembly is a videogame designed specifically for virtual reality (VR) but can also be played without the PlayStation VR head-mounted display (HMD). The Assembly is available at a 50% discount, now priced at £9.99, until 6th September 2017.
In The Assembly, the player takes on the role of two different characters as they operate within a morally challenging organisation. VRFocus delivered a review of The Assembly upon its Oculus Rift debut, stating: “There are a lot of design decisions that have been made purely to cultivate the immersive nature of VR and are hugely successful in that regard, while significantly less successful when played on a traditional monitor; a trait that will offer other developers lessons on how to capitalise on the strengths of VR.”
That wraps up this week’s look at the latest VR discounts. VRFocus will be back next weekend with the latest series of software bargains available for various VR HMDs.“Freedom lies in being bold.”– Robert Frost.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” – Marianne Williamson.
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi.
“Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.” – Ronnie Max Oldham.
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.” – Leo Tolstoy.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Ancient Chinese Proverb.
“The most dangerous risk of all—the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” – Randy Komisar
“It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” – Rumi.
“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Seth Godin.
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” – Albert |
qualifications should be the deciding factor. In the process of prepping a file I would make small notes after evidence or in a block listing reasons to prefer a particular piece of evidence that I could then reference in my speeches.
Determining how much evidence you need to read requires looking at a few factors: strength of the other teams evidence, importance of the argument in the round, and strength of your evidence. If the other team has fantastic evidence you generally need to read more evidence in response. There are two reasons for this: first, reading more evidence (and arguments in general) can be used to deter the other team from extending that argument. Second, more evidence allows you to introduce more arguments for your side and defeat their point. Sometimes students will read a lot of repetitive or terrible evidence, this strategy only captures the deterrent effect which has some value (quantity has a quality of its own) but does not get the full effect. If we take counterplan solvency as an example, judges will often decide that a counterplan solves some but not all of the case. If the affirmative has great card X and you read mediocre card A on why the counterplan solves judges will often reward the superior affirmative evidence by saying there is a solvency deficit. If, however, you read cards A-E on that issue, even though they all make only mediocre arguments judges will decide that added together they can be better than just excellent card X read by the affirmative (whether or not this is a good form of judging is beyond the scope of this article, suffice to say it is a prevalent form of judging). If an argument is not very important for some reason, then you can obviously get away with reading fewer cards. Some students chose to read a lot of evidence on a relatively unimportant issue just because they have a lot or because they think their cards are especially good but doing so accomplishes little.
For the affirmative the process is a little different. When picking your aff you need to first determine the relative quality of the options that are available. To do that you must spend a decent amount of time reading through the options beforehand. The process of what makes a good aff could easily be an entire article, but I will briefly go through what I think are the most important for debating an aff at camp. First I would rank diversity- in terms of the number of available advantages and add ons, but also what the negative has available to them. Many students pick the aff that gives the neg the least options which defeats the purpose of practice. Throughout the year you may debate a team who doesn’t have a neg and be rewarded with an easy win. More than likely, however, you will debate teams who are well prepared with a strategy so it is more important that you get practice for those situations. Debating an aff with no neg will not help you improve your skills or force you to work harder. Second is evidence quality. You want to debate a well put together aff so you get practice extending good evidence, explaining warrants, and drawing distinctions between your evidence and the negative’s so that you develop those skills. Third I would say is pushing your boundaries. If you have never run a critical aff its time to learn in an environment where there are no consequences for blunders.
Once you have picked the aff, you need to prepare the whole file. You don’t know what you will debate in any given round and so you need to be more ready than the average neg needs to be. Preparing an entire aff is also a skill set you will need throughout the year that you need to work on developing early. You need to think about what advantages/add ons work in which specific situations, not just what do I need to read vs this counterplan in this particular instance. Debates will be much more unpredictable when you are aff then when you are neg and this requires a more general prep strategy. For example, you may read a hegemony advantage and the neg doesn’t disclose heg bad but instead reads some defense. Then after the 2AC makes it clear that your main answer to their CP is to argue it doesn’t solve hegemony, the neg impact turns in the 2NC. So while the same basic structure of reading, highlighting, organizing applies to the aff you need to be a lot more broad in terms of the arguments that you prepare for. For the same reason you should try and write 2AC’s to all the off case arguments they could read, not just the ones you are debating in your first debate. In addition to the arguments outlined above, you want to get as much feedback from your lab leaders as possible. If you only write a few blocks because that is all you need (or if you divide up the blocks with someone else) you won’t get practice and you will miss out on valuable feedback.
Part 3: Speaking
The most important thing you can work on at camp to improve your speeches is to work on flowing. Try and be as meticulous as possible. You will debate people who are very fast and possibly quite unclear, but these are the same people you will debate during the year. Working as hard as you can to get better at flowing is probably the most important skill you can develop at camp. When I debated I went to the TOC three times and never once heard of a team losing a debate because the block dropped conditionality or because the 2AC dropped a T argument, but in recent years this has become a common occurrence even for teams who are in the top 20 performers at the tournament. It is simply a fact that students do not place the same emphasis on having a good flow as they once did for a variety of reasons. If you want to improve your points and improve your success rate, work on flowing. At camp flowing is of even greater importance for two reasons. First, if you don’t flow an argument and therefore can’t respond to it than your lab leader can’t comment on how you debated. This is particularly true for 2AC’s responding to case arguments, a key skill for any 2A. Having a detailed flow is a prerequisite to giving a good speech and getting feedback. Second, many students at camp either want to or are forced to give rebuttal redos (a topic I will address at great length later). If you don’t have an accurate flow of the entire debate than a rebuttal redo is a waste of time because you won’t have all the arguments you need to respond to, and more importantly you won’t be able to make intelligent decisions about how to allocate time and what arguments to go for. This is compounded in that redos often occur hours or days after the initial debate which means your memory of the issues will have faded significantly. FLOW!
Second, be prepared for your debate. If you don’t prepare your speeches will be awful and you won’t get any useful feedback from your lab leaders. Period. Failure to prepare is preparing for failure. You want to give your best speech so that you can get the best feedback.
Third, in the debate try and use as little prep time as possible, in fact if you are a lab leader I would encourage you to give the students less than ten minutes of prep going as low as five. The hardest part of debate is giving speeches on the fly where you have to think of the arguments in real time. To get better at this skill, you need to practice it. There is also no penalty for failure since there is no winner or loser, so there is no downside to it. Examples of good times to do this include: debating theory off the top of your head instead of using blocks, debating the case by only writing down the 1NC not your 2AC arguments, and giving the 1AR by not flowing the block but only writing down your responses. In discussing this with other lab leaders a response I often here is that this is not a good strategy to use for younger debaters just starting out, but I could not disagree more. When I was a young debater I debated in an area that gave very little prep and having to give stand up speeches was integral in my development for two reasons. The one stated above, that it forces you to get better at thinking on your feet is definitely the primary one. Second, and almost as important, is that it helps students to become more comfortable in the round. Once you have given a dozen terrible stand up speeches the prospect of giving one seems a lot less scary. If you can get those out of the way at camp, all the better. The majority of times I see students perform poorly when they are new to debate it is because they are nervous, so trying to root that out early should be an important focus.
Continuing with comfort, my fourth tip would be to practice going for arguments you don’t frequently go for or have no experience with. The more you go for something the better you will be at it, but also the better you will be at arguing against it. Many students every summer don’t understand why kritiks are successful arguments/make any sense but after reading them for a few weeks they quickly identify the deficiencies in a lot of 2AC’s to the K and then are better able to beat those arguments themselves. Becoming a well rounded debater should be one of your primary purposes at camp, so if there are obvious deficiencies in your repertoire now is the time to root them out. Being diverse and able to go for any argument in the 1NC makes it a nightmare for affs to debate you because they can’t over allocate time to any one issue. This may mean that you go for a different 2NR strategy then you would were you trying to win the debate. This is ok because there is no winner and loser. It also helps you develop the skills you need to be able to come from behind and win tough debates. Too many students in practice debates go for things the 1AR dropped which doesn’t force them to improve at all- anyone can win a debate where the 1AR dropped a disad. Putting yourself in a hard spot is the best way to force yourself to get better. The same applies to the aff in terms of what arguments to go for in a 1AR/2AR. Maybe they dropped a perm on consult NATO, but since that is a common strategy you will debate throughout the year it will serve you better to take the uphill battle and try and beat them on something else. If you aren’t used to straight impact turning politics or an advantage, camp is the time to do it. These kind of hyper aggressive strategies are difficult to execute if you have never practiced them before as they change the way you need to think about time allocation and prioritizing issues differently. If you don’t have experience going for conditionality bad you need to start practicing since we are in the era of double digit counterplans. If you go for conditionality all the time, stop.
Moving on past general tips, the last thing I would like to do is offer some specific tips on kinds of speeches to do. First let’s talk about speed drills. When doing a speed drill I think there are two things you can be simultaneously working on. If you read theory blocks when doing speed drills it will help you become a much better theory debater. You will learn (even memorize) the arguments and understand the warrants better. This means you can often debate theory without having to take the time to pull a block, and will help your rebuttals when you have to compare arguments off the top of your head. If every day during the camp you read through the 10-20 most important theory blocks by the end of camp your theory knowledge will be much higher. The other thing you can do is time blocks to help you allocate time during the debate. As you are reading just look at a timer and write short notes about how long particular blocks or cards take. There is a trade-off here, doing either of these will trade off with the time you can be “cold” reading new cards. Cold reading is an important skill to develop so that you can be able to read files you haven’t read before as quickly as evidence you are familiar with. I often tell students they should be able to read anything as fast as they read their 1AC, if they can’t they have work to do. How much speaking should you do at camp? I think at least 30 minutes a day. Speaking is one of the most important skills in debate so you need to dedicate that time. When I say 30 minutes I mean 30 minutes of your own speaking work not counting drills you do in lab or actual debates.
Next, speech redos. This is one area where I feel students waste a lot of time. Usually what they do is type out word for word what they want to say in their redo and then show up and read it. This is a huge waste of time. Never in a debate will you have the time to do this, so why practice it? The second thing students often do is fail to incorporate the criticism they were given earlier. If you are giving the same speech, what is the point? When doing a redo what you should do is get out some new paper and look at your flow of the speech you are responding to. Then assume you have 3-4 minutes of prep and prep out as much as you can during that time while thinking about the comments you were given after the last rebuttal (in terms of what to go for, how to change explanations for arguments etc). You should do this process 2 or 3 times by yourself, prepping and then giving the speech. When giving the speech to yourself you should look at how you allocated time, where you able to make the changes suggested to you by the lab leader, how smooth was your rate of delivery, where did you need to be more efficient, where did you properly extend and compare evidence etc. By the time you get to giving the speech in front of your lab leader you should have put in some work to make the speech better, not to make it a robotic reading of a script. A key part of doing it this way is that you practice the prepping in a useful way that will make you better in debates. If your ability to give a rebuttal stayed the same, but your ability to prep the rebuttal improved greatly you would still end up giving much better speeches so this approach helps you in two ways. You should also consider giving multiple rebuttals from the same debate where you go for different issues. Not only does this give you diversity practice but it also helps you see how well you execute different strategies. You should also try different rebuttal strategies in the redo. The simplest example of this is run and gun vs slow and steady. Give one 2NR where you go for T, a DA, a CP, and case turns. Then give another where you just go for T. Practice both strategies because in different debates you may need different skills.
Recommended Reading
http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2008/06/researching-large-file-part-1.html
http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2008/07/cutting-large-file-part-2.html
http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2009/03/working-on-speech-improvement-alone-pt.html
http://spdebate.blogspot.com/2009/04/working-on-speech-improvement-alone-pt.html
AdvertisementsBuild Your Own Breakfast
Violette’s Vegan
Breakfast is back with a vengeance at Violette’s Vegan. The menu has plenty of a la carte options for less than $10, but the crowd favorite is the Build Your Own Breakfast. Choose from three scrambled tofu selections (we like the Southwestern with local Virgin cheese), then mix and match two other options from plant proteins, grains, organic fruit and veggies, pancakes or breakfast potatoes. The bonus: Every breakfast comes with free coffee. $10 for three selections. 8560 W. Desert Inn Rd., 702-685-0466, ViolettesVegan.com.
Daily Soup Specials
The Beat
The food menu at The Beat Coffeehouse is a relic. Save for a few additions such as a breakfast burrito, the offerings are largely unchanged since the café/record store opened in 2010. Owner Jennifer Cornthwaite likes to keep the menu the same for the regulars, but for some of those regulars, lunch is a love/hate relationship. That’s where part-time rocker and full-time culinary badass Eric Scott comes in. His compelling daily soup and sandwich specials rescue the Beat’s regulars from menu malaise without us having to say goodbye to the stalwart items that have been loved (maybe to death). Chief among our requests are Chef Eric’s silky cheesy potato soup, his chicken noodle and his spiked tomato bisque, all served with slices of baguette. Please, sir, may we have some more? $5, 520 Fremont St., 702-385-2328, TheBeatLV.com.
Street Pad Thai
Chada Street
That stuff called pad thai at your neighborhood Thai restaurant might taste good, but it likely lacks the nuance of what is actually served from a stall in Bangkok. Chada Street does it right, with thin rice noodles quickly tossed with pickled radish, dehydrated shrimp, bean sprouts, egg and onion (we also like to add chicken for an extra $2). Forget that sweet, clumpy version; this hits the cardinal notes of sour, salty, spicy and sweet, plus a little funk. Don’t be discouraged by the portion size—for this dish, less is definitely more. $7, 3839 Spring Mountain Rd., 702-579-0207, ChadaStreet.com.
Rising Sun
Haute Doggery
Can a hot dog be sophisticated and maybe even somewhat light? The Rising Sun aims to prove it can be done with its standout Asian offering. The dish starts with a wagyu beef frank that’s brushed with teriyaki glaze, sprinkled with the Japanese spicy mixture nori furikake and topped with crispy yam, spicy mayo and a tempura-fried avocado. Arigato! $8, The Linq, 702-430-4435, HauteDoggeryLV.com.
Craft Your Own Entrée Salad
PizzaRev
As tempting as pizza may be, sometimes you rightly have to choose the healthier option. The irony here is that one of the best and freshest pile o’ greens in town can be found at PizzaRev, a make-your-own-pizza shop, now with two locations in the Valley. Similar to Subway or Chipotle in that diners are able to customize their order via an assembly line of ingredients, PizzaRev offers nearly 30 complimentary toppings to dress that salad up just as fancy as a pie, but with considerably fewer carbs. $8, 1381 W. Sunset Rd., 702-776-7171; 7090 S. Rainbow Blvd., 702-463-1960, PizzaRev.com.
Stacked Hot Pastrami and Swiss
Bruxie
There aren’t many things you can tuck between two slices of rye that are better than hot pastrami and cheese. Now try sandwiching the fatty, marbled smoked beef inside a savory waffle and—voila!—you may have just one-upped perfection. So is the style at Bruxie, which eschews bread of all kinds for a light, 250-calorie container made of flour, butter, milk and eggs. While the chicken and waffle is the classic, the Boar’s Head pastrami, Swiss and cider slaw with spicy brown mustard and a half-sour pickle version is unforgettable. $10, The Park, 702-728-2981, Bruxie.com.
Pan Con Lomo
El Pollo Inka Express
El Pollo Inka has been a cult favorite in L.A. County’s South Bay for nearly 30 years. The recently imported location at the corner of Sahara Boulevard and Maryland Parkway is exposing a whole new region to its delectable sandwich creation known as pan con lomo. Two puffy pieces of toasted bread cradle beef—stir-fried with red onion, tomatoes and french fries—are served with cilantro soup. There’s also an accompaniment you won’t want to miss: Every order comes with aji verde, or Peruvian green chili sauce, known by devotees as “green crack” because of its addictive qualities. It looks radioactive, but tastes incredible. $7, 2440 S. Maryland Pkwy., 702-522-7871, PolloInkaExpress.com.
Thai Shrimp Curry Bowl
The Rice Shop
Even the simple rice that serves as the base of this dish—a beautifully sticky California variety called Calrose mixed with basil, fried onions and cilantro—is amazing. But it can be easily overshadowed by the fusion of mildly spicy black bean gumbo and Thai-spiced shrimp with celery and pickled chilis. There are more flavors in this one simple dish than some tasting menus. $10, 3655 S. Durango Dr., 702-889-0468, RiceShopVegas.com.
Cold Brown
Goodwich
Now that Las Vegas’ top sandwich shop has finally found a traditional brick-and-mortar home on the ground floor of the SoHo Lofts, they’ve added a few new combos to the menu in celebration. This one—a combination of pulled turkey that’s been seasoned and brined overnight, house bacon, tomato, Gruyère fondue and paprika—was inspired by the open-face, baked hot brown sandwich that was invented in Louisville, Kentucky’s Brown Hotel in the roaring ’20s. Chef Josh Clark was a big fan of the American classic, but wanted something a bit lighter. Thus, his close face cold sandwich (with toasted bread) was born. Enjoy it indoors under a mural by Jerry Misko or al fresco on the sidewalk café. $9, 900 Las Vegas Blvd. South., 702-910-8681, TheGoodwich.com.
Smoked Salmon Toast
PublicUs
PublicUs is Downtown’s undisputed hangout for urban dwellers and a millennial workforce too antsy to stay in their cubicles. It also serves some of the best coffee in the city, but the food here is just as refined. Skip the drive-thru breakfast and opt for the smoked salmon toast, which sits atop sourdough bread with a dill spread, scallions, onions, olives and a sliced boiled egg. This configuration changes slightly, depending on what the chef has on hand, but it’ll power you through lunch—guaranteed. $7.50, 1126 Fremont St., 702-331-5500, PublicusLV.com.
Huntington
Jaburrito
Jaburrito, which wowed Las Vegas with sushi burritos at its original location near Palace Station, is now operating under that same flag on Rainbow Boulevard. There are plenty of good Japanese-meets-Mexican combos. But we love the Huntington: Cajun albacore, spicy tuna mix, jalapeños, cucumber, romaine lettuce, crunchy tortilla strips and sweet chili. Opt for the nori wrapper and it moves much closer to the Far East than south of the border, but the Mexican touches make it stand out from basic sushi fare. $7.75, 6090 S. Rainbow Blvd., 702-586-4433, Jaburrito.net.
Sloppy Joe Fries
Buddha Belly Deli
We suburbanites know how to find those hidden gems in nondescript strip malls. One such spot is Henderson’s Buddha Belly Deli, which boasts an eclectic Asian fusion menu full of surprising flavors. Take the sloppy Joe fries, for instance, which catapult the humble spud to new heights when topped with braised short rib, red curry coconut sauce and a blend of mozzarella, Parmesan, Romano and provolone cheeses. Top with a runny egg and what you have is a decadent meal, not just a side. $8 ($1.50 extra for the egg), 50 N. Valle Verde Dr., Suite 110, 702-545-0840, TheBuddhaBellyDeli.com.
Agnolotti
Ferraro’s
Ferraro’s has a strong local following thanks to more than 30 years in Las Vegas. And many of them like to congregate here for an after-work drink. To keep those bellies full, the family Ferraro has created a special Ora Sociale (happy hour) menu featuring a selection of appetizers, pizzas and small portions of some of its famed house-made pastas for less than $10 apiece. The agnolotti—two large square, ravioli-like pockets stuffed with three cheeses and topped with a light teardrop tomato sauce—is basic, but it hits the spot. $7 during Ora Sociale (4-7 p.m.), 4480 Paradise Rd., 702-364-5300, FerrarosLasVegas.com.
Burritos
Los Tacos
Sure, you can stop in any taco spot along Charleston Boulevard for a bargain meal, but the burritos at Los Tacos may give you the biggest bang for your buck. These hefty burritos come packed with your choice of carne asada, carnitas, chorizo, chicken, marinated pork, lengua, buche (pork stomach) or veggie with whole pinto beans, tomato, sour cream, cheese and pico de gallo all wrapped up in a soft tortilla with a side of red or green sauce. $4.25, 1710 E. Charleston Blvd., 702-471-7447, LosTacosLV.com.
Build Your Own Pizza
Stoned ’N’ Baked
With designer pizzas becoming more commonplace, a simple slice can cost more than what most are willing to spend on a whole pie. At Stoned ’N’ Baked in Container Park, diners can build their own 12-inch personal pizza with their choice of red, white, barbecue or pine-nut-free pesto sauce, topped with traditional meats and veggies, for $10 or less. $10 for unlimited toppings, 707 E. Fremont St. 702-480-0007, StonedNBaked.com.
Chashu Pork Bowl
Ramen Sora
You go to a ramen shop for the ramen, clearly, but you shouldn’t overlook the side menu. At Ramen Sora, the chashu pork bowl comes in two sizes: mini and regular. So you can still get your ramen fill while trying something new. But one taste of the braised pork belly in a tangy teriyaki sauce on a bed of white rice, and we bet the next time you go back, you’ll want to upgrade to the larger bowl. For the price, it’s one of the best bargains you’ll find. $6.50 regular, 4490 Spring Mountain Rd., 702-685-1011, RamenSoraLV.com.
Tartine Angelique
Rosallie
Few places are as chill as French café Rosallie, where the baskets of freshly made croissants and bread evoke a time before carbs became the bogeyman of food groups. But if you must have protein, you can’t go wrong with the Tartine Angelique: organic hard-boiled eggs and a bed of spring mix greens on toasted sourdough bread with house-made aioli spread and vinaigrette. It’s the perfect meal for breakfast or lunch, but go ahead and take that chocolate almond croissant to go—we won’t judge. $8.90, 6090 S. Rainbow Blvd., 702-998-4121, Rosallie.com.
Downtown Dog
Dog Haus
For a hot dog that’s simultaneously over the top and down ’n’ dirty, head for Dog Haus, across the street from the Hard Rock, which kicks things off by wrapping the wiener in bacon. From there, hefty doses of sweet roasted peppers and caramelized onions, and a condiment triumvirate of mayo, mustard and ketchup are piled on. Grab some extra napkins, because this will get messy. $7, 4480 Paradise Rd., 702-435-4287, DogHaus.com.
Banh Mi
Le Pho
It says Le Pho on the door of Downtown’s newest dining hot spot, but the banh mi sandwiches are where it’s at. Owner Khai Vu traveled to Vietnam to learn the ways of banh mi-making, all the way down to how to bake the perfect baguette. The classic version, which also happens to be the special of the house, comes loaded with layers of sliced cold cuts, pork pâté, mayo, pickled daikon and carrots, jalapeños and cilantro. But it all starts with that good, crusty baguette. $9, 353 E. Bonne-ville St., 702-382-0209, LePhoDTLV.com.
Yellow Duck Noodle Soup
Laos Market
Family-owned and operated since 1989, Laos Market provides Downtown with fresh produce, imported goods and—much to the surprise of many—delicious food. At first glance it looks like your standard market, but just around Aisle 3 you’ll find two tables and a small kitchen where you can order soups including pho and curry noodle soup. But our favorite by far is the yellow duck noodle soup: boneless chunks of roasted duck with toothsome egg noodles and fresh Thai basil in a rich broth. $6.50. 629 Las Vegas Blvd. North, 702-366-0881.
Braised Lamb Pita
Crazy Pita
Crazy Pita has been part of the Valley’s fast-casual landscape for a decade now. With its consistent quality, the pitas and skewer plates are our Mediterranean go-to comfort foods. The chain recently introduced a braised leg of lamb plate on the menu, as well as a pita-wrapped version that comes with fries, which has become a new favorite. Tender lamb, marinated tomatoes, cucumbers, romaine and feta cheese all fit snugly into a pocket that fits snugly into our bellies. Comfort food, indeed. $10, multiple locations, CrazyPita.com.
Butter Cake
Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar
Lazy Dog has become a Summerlin hot spot for locals, with or without a pooch in tow. The prodigious menu has many standouts, but believe us when we advise you to save room for dessert, because you’re going to want to stuff your face with butter cake, a warm shortbread cookie-like treat topped with minted strawberry compote and vanilla bean ice cream, garnished with sweet balsamic. It tastes like your best childhood memory that you’ll want to relive again and again. $5.50, in Downtown Summerlin, 1725 Festival Plaza Dr., 702-727-4784, LazyDogRestaurants.com.
Lamb Stir Fry Burrito
Desi Burrito
Drive-thru/walk-up Indian fast-food joint Desi Burrito combines the bold flavors of Indian cuisine with Mexican ingenuity and American expedition. It’s quick, convenient and unlike anything you’ve had wrapped in a tortilla. The standout here is the lamb stir-fry burrito. The meat is tender with a rich sauce and mild heat. The rice (your choice of lemon or masala flavor) is well-seasoned, with sautéed veggies, lettuce and kale providing a perfect complement. Skip the cheese, as that’s the only place the cultures clash. $7.50, 670 E. Flamingo Rd., 702-987-5310, DesiBurrito.com.
Cabernet Mushrooms Grilled Cheese
Bin 702
The charcuterie game has always been strong at Downtown wine bar Bin 702, but it has since evolved into a full-blown sandwich program that features seven varieties of grilled cheese, four of them for $10 or less. Of these, the must-try is the Cabernet Mushrooms ($10). Beneath a crispy outer layer of buttery griddled bread lies a layer of smoked Gouda that holds on tight to a generous portion of thinly sliced mushrooms sautéed in wine. Have commitment issues? Try a smaller version, served on a crusty mini baguette from the Montaditos menu—eight tiny gourmet sandwiches you can mix and match for just $2.50 each. $10, in Container Park, 707 Fremont St., Suite 1220, 702-826-2702, Bin702.com.
Steak Parsley Nachos
Parsley Mediterranean
Tortilla chips aren’t the only way to nacho. Crunchy toasted pita chips serve as a perfectly good vehicle for toppings that won’t make you miss carne asada. A mound of flavorful, tender steak shawarma is set on a bed of house-made chips, and is then dressed with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, tzatziki—a refreshing cucumber yogurt sauce—and feta cheese. It’s a creative combination hefty enough to make a good lunch but not so heavy that you’ll need a nap afterward. $8, 6420 S. Pecos Rd., 702-489-3189; 4985 W. Tropicana Ave., 702-871-1818, ParsleyMediterranean.com.
Ceviche
Cantina Laredo
If lunch is on the west side, and preferably on the lighter and wallet-friendly side, Cantina Laredo has you covered with all of the above. Lunch specials include chicken tinga tacos and nachos or quesadillas al carbone. But if this is just lunch and no cause for indulgence, go for the ceviche of Chilean sea bass. The sweet-fleshed white fish is “cooked” in lime juice with poblano and jalapeño peppers, tomatoes and cilantro, and served with house-made tortilla chips for the scooping. $10, in Tivoli Village, 702-202-4511, CantinaLaredo.com.
Daily Bruschetta
Otto
Mario Batali’s enoteca has always been a good place to stop for a snack, especially for its killer in-house charcuterie program. But if you don’t need a groaning board of cured meats, check out the daily bruschetta specials. They come two to an order, but are amply dressed with combinations such as prosciutto and whipped burrata cheese (Tuesday); beets, gorgonzola and fennel pollen (Wednesday); and radish, buffalo mozzarella and herbs (Thursday). Pair them with a couple of glasses of wine from an impressive list for a light meal before heading off to a show or the clubs. $9, in the Venetian, 702-677-3390, LasVegas.OttoPizzeria.com.
Shanxi Sliced Noodle Soup
Noodle Man
The best seat in the house at Noodle Man is at the bar, where you can watch cooks work their magic with noodles, whether it’s pulling them by hand, or, for this dish, quickly whittling them off a slab of wheat dough for each order. The soup itself—“B3” on the menu—starts with a rich, aromatic beef broth and is loaded up with tender beef brisket, wood-ear mushrooms, pickled cabbage, green onion and cilantro to make it pop. The rustic noodles have a great chew to them, standing up to the other bold ingredients in the bowl. $8, 6870 S. Rainbow Blvd., 702-823-3333.
Kanto Box
Tina’s Filipino Cuisine
Stop in for lunch for Tina’s version of the bento box, Pinoy-style. It can be tricky to choose between the salmon, the specialty “TFC Fried Chicken,” lechon kawali (fried pork belly with crispy skin) or the tender, garlicky beef salpicao. We’re partial to the lechon kawali with accompaniments of pickled cucumber and radish, fried eggplant, corn, a potsticker or sometimes an eggroll and plenty of rice. For a lunch special, it might seem a bit heavy, but you can’t beat the price. $9, 7720 S. Jones Blvd., Suite 105, 702-998-5880, TinasFilipinoCuisi.Wix.com/Tinas-Filipino.
Black Bean Chili Stuffed Sweet Potato
Vegenation
It sounds simple enough: a piping-hot baked sweet potato sliced across the top and overflowing with a heap of savory, slightly spicy black-bean chili. On the menu, it’s just a side dish at VegeNation, Downtown’s premier destination for the plant-based dining set. But this humble side, with its blast of Vitamin A, potassium and iron, and zesty play of sweet and heat, is all together satisfying enough to be a lunch unto itself. $7, 616 E. Carson Ave., Suite 120, 702-366-8515, VegeNationLV.com.
Pupusas Revueltas
Salvadoreño Restaurant
The mighty Salvadoran pupusa revuelta—a ball of masa stuffed with cheese, chicharron and beans, flattened out like a thick tortilla then grilled crispy, served with cold cabbage slaw and tomato sauce. After about two (three if you’re a savage), you are usually full, and for less than $2 each, that’s a real deal. Vegetarian? Try them with just beans and cheese or the traditional queso con loroco (cheese with Central American flowers). Two for $3.50, 720 N. Main St., 702-385-3600.
Chicken and Sausage Gumbo
Zydeco Po-Boys
For a deal that is both filling and thrifty, move right past the po’boys on Zydeco’s menu and go straight for the gumbo. The broth is thin-bodied but incredibly flavorful, with a medium-level spice that mounts incrementally as you make your way through the chunks of chicken and house-made sausage. Having scooped out and polished those off, you’ll want to move on to the firm white rice that sops up all the broth-y goodness. It’s available in two sizes, neither of which will break the bank, even if you opt to spring for the suggested side of house-made potato salad. $5.50 small, $8.50 large, $1.50 potato salad, 616 E. Carson Ave., Suite 140, 702-982-1889, ZydecoPo-Boys.com.
Soft-Serve Ice Cream Sundae
The Still
The Mirage’s sports bar The Still serves one of the cutest desserts on the Strip, and it comes with a free side of nostalgia. There is nothing that will take you back to childhood faster than soft-serve ice cream in a mini plastic baseball cap emblazoned with the logo of your favorite team. The serving vessel isn’t where the kitsch ends—it’s available in three variations that will take you back to childhood: Salted Caramel, with French toast sticks and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal; Churro de Leche Crunch, with mini churros and chocolate curls; and S’mores, with burnt marshmallow fluff and graham cracker dust. $8, 702- |
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Neely, Christopher. 2011. “The Large-Scale Asset Purchases Had Large International Effects.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Working Paper 2010-018C.
Piazzesi, Monika, and Martin Schneider. 2007. “Asset Prices and Asset Quantities.” Journal of the European Economic Association 5, pp. 380–389.
Poole, William. 1970. “Whither Money Demand?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1970-3, pp. 485–501.
Reifschneider, David, and John Roberts. 2006. “Expectations Formation and the Effectiveness of Strategies for Limiting the Consequences of the Zero Bound.” Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 20(3, September), pp. 314–337.
Reifschneider, David, and John Williams. 2000. “Three Lessons for Monetary Policy in a Low-Inflation Era.” Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 32(4, November), pp. 936–966.
Rudebusch, Glenn, and John Williams. 2008. “Revealing the Secrets of the Temple: The Value of Publishing Central Bank Interest Rate Projections.” In Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, ed. J.Y. Campbell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 247–284.
Svensson, Lars E.O. 2001. “The Zero Bound in an Open Economy: A Foolproof Way of Escaping from a Liquidity Trap.” Monetary and Economic Studies 19(S-1, February), pp. 277–312.
Swanson, Eric. 2011. “Let’s Twist Again: A High-Frequency Event-Study Analysis of Operation Twist and Its Implications for QE2.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring).
Vayanos, Dimitri, and Jean-Luc Vila. 2009. “A Preferred-Habitat Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates.” NBER Working paper 15487 (November).
Walsh, Carl. 2009. “Using Monetary Policy to Stabilize Economic Activity.” In Financial Stability and Macroeconomic Policy, proceedings from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Policy Symposium, pp. 245–296.
Williams, John C. 2006. “Monetary Policy in a Low Inflation Economy with Learning.” In Monetary Policy in an Environment of Low Inflation, proceedings of the Bank of Korea International Conference. Seoul: Bank of Korea.
Wright, Jonathan. 2011. “What Does Monetary Policy Do to Long-Term Interest Rates at the Zero Lower Bound?” NBER Working Paper 17154 (June).YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 20, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has never made the recognition of the Armenian Genocide a precondition for the normalization of the bilateral relations with Turkey, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said in his speech in the 72nd UN General Assembly in New York.
“It was upon the initiative of Armenia that a normalization process was launched, resulting in the conclusion of the Zürich protocols in October 2009.
Up to this day, those documents have not been ratified, instead, they have landed in some dark drawers of the official Ankara. The Government of Turkey came up with preposterous preconditions for their ratification that run counter to the letter and spirit of the Protocols. I expressed the clear-cut views of the Armenian people on this issue three years ago, when I spoke from this eminent podium. Now the time has come for additional explanations”, the President said.
He emphasized that the leadership of Turkey are mistaken if they think that those documents can be held hostage forever and ratified only at the most opportune occasion from their very point of view.
“The Protocols were negotiated in the existing circumstances in order to find solutions to the actually existing issues. Armenia will declare those two Protocols null and void since they continuously lacked any positive progress towards their implementation. We will enter the spring of 2018 without those, as our experience has demonstrated, futile Protocols.
Armenia, nevertheless, continues to believe that any two neighboring states need to establish and enjoy normal relations in order to address all possible disagreements between them and find solutions to such a discord”, the President said.Follow Tanzeel on twitter: @tanzeelio and via the "+ Follow" option on this page. Tanzeel Merchant relishes complexity. Based in Toronto, Merchant has proven expertise in long-range growth and infrastructure management, strategic planning and implementation, and stakeholder engagement in the private, public, and non-profit sector. Tanzeel is also an architect, urban designer, writer, financial advisor, and flâneur. He was the founding Executive Director of the Ryerson City Building Institute, a multi-disciplinary centre focused on urban issues relevant to city regions globally. Prior to that, he played a key role in working with governments and the energy Industry to plan for a better, more sustainable future in the Athabasca Oil Sands region in Alberta, Canada, home to the world’s third-largest oil reserve. Since 2003, he has also worked on the implementation of Ontario’s award-winning Places to Grow initiatives in Canada's largest province and one of North America's fastest-growing urban regions. Tanzeel has journeyed with his professional, academic and community-building interests through five cities on three continents. He likes that the days in his life have meaning, and no two days are the same.
Vast parts of the surface of most cities are paved concrete roads dedicated to the private automobile.Photo credit: Tanzeel Merchant
A recent trip to Los Angeles left me flummoxed at the vast amounts of the surface of that city that are paved roadway. The picture alongside is of an inner-city street. At rush hour, streets like this one are packed bumper-to-bumper with cars. The rest of the day however, they look like this-- vast, empty and underused, slowly cracking and bleeding the valuable resources that went into building them.
Roads and streets are and were always meant to be a shared resource. Through history, roads have played critical roles in enabling local and global trade, commerce, migration of people and military conquests. Streets and roads are also vital spaces for residents to interact and socialize. They are often spaces for festivities, prayer, sport, markets and even insurrections. These days however roads are dedicated primarily to the movement of cars. In his wonderful book, Walking Home, urban designer and architect Ken Greenberg traces a single road as it changes and widens from a walkable, vibrant environment in Toronto's historic core, to a wide, faceless and dangerous wasteland in the suburbs. He writes, about the wide, car-centric suburban road: "We are meant to drive here. The street is no longer recognizable as a shared public space; it is a single-purpose traffic artery."
Globally, larger and larger shares of public infrastructure spending are being dedicated to roads built solely to move cars.
Photo credit: Michael Harding
Globally, larger and larger shares of public infrastructure spending are being dedicated to roads built solely to move cars, and I would argue, inequitably and disproportionately so. As the emerging middle classes in developing countries grow wealthier and purchase cars as their preferred means of transportation, governments are pooling scarce resources into accommodating them in already congested cities. Instead of building transit to move people, cities like Mumbai keep building "flyovers" and widening roads, piling cars over cars and doing nothing to address the real problem. In the developed world, even scarcer public funds are being used to subsidize new roads in suburbs even while the cost of servicing older roads rises. Drivers pay barely half the cost of the construction and upkeep of highways in the US. Across the world, the culture of owning a car and being able to commute in it is seen as a right, rather than a luxury. Growing traffic, gridlock and pollution make one wonder why.
Source: Crumbling and packed railway stations such as this one handle 7 million daily commuters and are a lifeline for Mumbai's working class.Source: Shutterstock
An excellent article by Naresh Fernandes in The Guardian, titled Cities in motion: why Mumbai's new air terminal has gone off the rails, points to a concerning trend in how national and local governments are building infrastructure to service the rich at the expense of everyone else. He notes that governments can't find the money to upgrade Mumbai's crumbling CST rail terminus-- a lifeline for the working class that alone handles 3.75 of Mumbai's 7 million daily commuters, but they did find US$1 billion for a luxurious new airport that will service 100,000 passengers a day. He notes how roads have been privatized by cars; "To watch Mumbai traffic in motion is to see the ferocious sense of entitlement in which India's moneyed classes have wrapped themselves. Mumbai's vehicles refuse to give way to ambulances, and honk furiously at old people and schoolchildren trying to cross the street. They never stops at zebra crossings, frequently jump red lights, and routinely come down the wrong way on no-entry streets... And this sense of self-importance is pandered to by the government's budgetary allocations. Though the vast majority [ 88%] of Mumbai's residents use the overburdened public transport system to get around, a disproportionate amount of development money has been poured into road projects."
A car with one passenger occupies over 1,000% more space on a road as compared to a bus, or walking or cycling.
Source: @Urbandata
A recent post on @urbandata's twitter feed brought some fact to this argument. The image alongside, based on research by Bruun and Vuchic, clearly shows how a car with one passenger occupies over 1,000% more space on a road as compared to a bus, or walking or cycling. Taking transit, walking and cycling also have significant environmental and health benefits. If a government's true objective was to increase mobility, speed, and comfort at the least cost, its first priority and biggest bang for the buck would be to use public money to increase transit and walkability on roads, and its last priority should be to encourage the use of cars on those same roads. Yet, the reality, whether in the US or India, is very different.
While there is pride in having a world-class airport, there is only shame when one builds such infrastructure that benefits only a few on the backs of the poor. In his article Fernandes goes on to say "As incomes expand, traffic is growing at a rate of 9% a year, with an estimated 450 new vehicles being added to Mumbai's narrow streets every day. As a result, peak-hour traffic crawls ahead at an average of 10kmh – less than half the speed clocked by winners of the city's annual marathon. It merely proves the adage so beloved of planners around the world: "Building more roads to prevent traffic congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity."... The city's middle classes have become so enamoured of their privatised comforts, they are forgetting that great cities get their reputation not from the access-restricted pleasures they afford the few, but the public amenities that are available to all." 88% of Mumbai's residents who are heavily reliant on public transit would benefit greatly from an ambitious city-wide, 63km underground and elevated rapid transit plan launched in 2003. The Mumbai Metro was supposed to have been completed by 2018. Instead, a decade later, the city has built 60 flyovers to reduce journey times for cars, but barely 11km of the new Metro line has been constructed. The stub that is being built with a 4-year delay and 200% cost overrun has yet to carry a single passenger.
Whether it be the vast paved expanses of Los Angeles or the packed corridors of Mumbai, citizens should be demanding that their governments make better choices and use their money better. Refocussing scarce transportation resources away from enabling more private automobiles on bigger roads, and focussing instead on building affordable, efficient transit and walkability on existing roads, would deliver far more benefit in not just moving people better, but also in maximising infrastructure investments equitably and justly, and improving the quality of life for all.General Motors has filed two applications to register “Corvette E-Ray” and “E-Ray” as trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The automaker’s December 16th, 2015 applications specify that the marks will be used to name goods and services in the category of “motor land vehicles, namely, automobiles”.
General Motors Corvette E-Ray & E-Ray Trademark Summary Trademark Serial Number Filing Date Corvette E-Ray 86850510 December 16, 2015 E-Ray 86850500 December 16, 2015
The GM Authority Take
If nothing else, these applications appear to be indicators that the Corvette will get an electrified or hybrid variant. The possibility is interesting, but come off as disconcerting to those Corvette enthusiasts who consider it borderline treasonous to the Corvette brand, nameplate, and spirit for any kind of powertrain except for a monstrous V8 to be found under the hood of a Corvette.
Stay tuned to GM Authority as we follow this story, as well as for other GM news.IVETTE FELICIANO:
More than a decade after Belgium became the second country in the world to legalize euthanasia, it once again made headlines in early 2014 when it became the first country to lift any age restrictions associated with the procedure.
In the few American states with laws on the books allowing assisted suicide, only adults are permitted. In fact, just this month, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered a 17-year-old girl with cancer to continue chemotherapy treatments against her will.
Yet in Belgium, under the new law, terminally ill children can request euthanasia if they are near death, and suffering "constant and unbearable physical" pain with no available treatment. Parents would have to consent as would with three separate doctors. So far there have been no cases of children in Belgium requesting euthanasia.
The controversial move came after years of public debate and widespread opposition by religious groups throughout Europe.ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. - Oakland County sheriff's detectives say they will be questioning a 17-year-old teen from Royal Oak after he allegedly hosted an underage house party in Rochester Hills.
The party ended with another teen's overdose.
Detectives say a 16-year old girl was dropped off at Crittenton Hospital by a group of friends early Sunday morning.
The hospital staff says the teen, also from Royal Oak, likely overdosed on three different drugs. She is currently on a ventilator and in critical condition.
According to witnesses the victim took two hits of acid and possibly smoked some marijuana.
The party took place on the 1600 block of Bretton Drive.
Detectives say the suspect is a relative of the homeowner and is accused of breaking into the home to throw the party.
The investigation is ongoing.
Copyright 2013 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.On paper, at least, there is little to distinguish Lindauer from hundreds of other bright young people who come to Washington in the hope of making a difference. She graduated from Smith in 1985 and then went to the London School of Economics, where she earned a master's degree and developed an interest in the Arab world. In 1990, she went to Washington, where she briefly worked as a journalist and then as a press secretary for liberal Democrats in the House and Senate, including Ron Wyden and Carol Moseley Braun. None of her jobs lasted more than a year. Her most recent job on Capitol Hill, as a press secretary for Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ended in May 2002.
Writing press releases often seemed less important to Lindauer than her own one-woman campaign to advance the cause of nonviolence in the Muslim world. Lindauer's highly individual brand of politics combined passions that were commonly identified with opposite poles of the political spectrum during the 90's. While she opposed sanctions on Libya and Iraq, she was also eager to awaken the West to the gathering threat posed by Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. In pursuit of her ideals, she says, she began traveling to New York as often as twice a week, meeting with diplomats from Muslim countries, including Yemen and Malaysia, as well as representatives of Libya and Iraq. Her aim, as she explained it, was to function as a handholder and cheerleader, an unofficial go-between who could help break the cycle of isolation, paranoia and suffering created by sanctions.
''U.S. intelligence knew what I was doing,'' she said when I asked her about the precise nature of her contacts with the Libyans and the Iraqis. ''You see, the thing is, it's very hard to have these relationships, and so, when you have them, there are people who are very interested in the fact that you have them, who also want something from them, too.''
To demonstrate her commitment to nonviolence, Lindauer also shared with me portions of the evidentiary material contained on a stack of compact disks turned over to her by the government. The evidence against her, which includes wiretapped conversations with friends, neighbors, foreign diplomats and fellow activists, is currently in the hands of her new court-appointed attorney, who was not representing Lindauer at the time I spoke to her. Among the documents Lindauer showed me was a transcript of a telephone conversation with Muthanna al-Hanooti, the president of Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations, a nonprofit organization in Southfield, Mich., dated July 30, 2003, two days before the Arab-American activist made one of his frequent trips to Iraq. During the call, Lindauer praised al-Hanooti for being a ''man who believes in peace'' and exhorted him to ''stay with God -- just stay with God.'' As the conversation continued, al-Hanooti seemed to hover between impatience and boredom. ''Other people are doing bad things, and they may try to use you as cover for bad things,'' Lindauer said. ''So don't let them.''
''It's a very delicate balance, as you know,'' al-Hanooti replied. ''But, ah, we'll do our best, you know. We'll do our best.''
That transcript, and others she gave me, support Lindauer's contention that she is opposed to violence. There were also other conversations the F.B.I. recorded that seem to suggest that Lindauer had other motivations for pursuing the work she did. ''He does not know about my visions -- he will never know about my visions, O.K.?'' she said, speaking to an undercover F.B.I. agent about another acquaintance. ''You're probably the only person you're going to meet other than my closest friend at the Iraqi Embassy who knows these things, O.K.? So don't ever talk about it with anyone.''
Susan Lindauer said she started making visits to the Libyan Mission to the United Nations in 1995 and started meeting with Iraqis at the United Nations in 1996. The F.B.I. first began tapping Lindauer's phone and intercepting her e-mail in July 2002, she said. A year and a half earlier, Lindauer contacted Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, with letters containing what purported to be secret diplomatic communiqués from the government of Iraq to the incoming Bush administration. Lindauer reached out to Card, she explained, because he is a distant cousin on her father's side of the family. She said she believed that the fate of the world depended on the sensitive communications she dropped on the doorstep of his house in suburban Virginia.
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One of Lindauer's earliest notes was left at Card's home on Dec. 23, 2000, a decade after sanctions were imposed on Iraq and a month before George W. Bush took office. Along with some of the transcripts of her wiretapped conversations, Lindauer gave me this letter to support her contention that she was working as a ''back channel'' between the governments of Iraq and the United States. The letter was addressed to Vice President-elect Cheney, and in it Lindauer presented the fruits of what she described as a private Nov. 26, 2000, meeting with Saeed Hasan, then the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations.
''Ambassador Hasan has asked me to communicate to you that Iraq most vigorously wishes to restore healthy, peaceful relations with the United States, including economic and cultural ties,'' Lindauer wrote. ''At our meeting, Ambassador Hasan demonstrated a pragmatic understanding that the United States requires the reinstatement of weapons monitoring in order to lift the sanctions.'' Ambassador Hasan, she said, had ''also emphasized that Iraq is ready to guarantee critical advantages for U.S. corporations at all levels.''
It is possible that Lindauer's account is delusional. It is also possible that Lindauer's account is accurate. Iraq certainly tried to use other back channels to try to reach U.S. officials, including a Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage, who conveyed messages to Richard Perle in the run-up to the war. For her part, Lindauer says that she was unaware that her activities required her to register as a lobbyist -- a formality that, to her mind, seemed quite absurd. ''Everything that I did that was quote 'lobbying,''' she said, ''I was giving to the chief of staff of the White House.''
The winding path that led Lindauer to the door of the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations began in November 1993 at a diner in Virginia, where she met a friend of her father's, a woman who worked as the chief of staff for a Republican member of Congress. Worried that Lindauer was lonely, her father's friend brought another lonely guest, Paul Hoven, a gentle Army veteran who had piloted attack helicopters in combat in Vietnam. He was interested in spies and spying.
'''You guys say you're peace activists,''' Lindauer recalled Hoven telling her that night. '''You say you're liberal do-gooders. What exactly are you doing? You do nothing. You're not active. You're passive.' And that conversation was probably one of the most important dinner conversations of my life.''
It was Hoven who gave Lindauer the nickname Snowflake, which was quick to catch on among an informal circle of Capitol Hill staff members and intelligence-community enthusiasts who gathered every Thursday night at a Hunan restaurant across the street from the Heritage Foundation. ''I'm the one who named her Snowflake, because she's from Alaska and she's nuts,'' Hoven told me. In addition to feeling sorry for Lindauer, he was taken with her unusual mind. ''She seems to have the ability to take unrelated facts and string them together, to the point where you're left with, Gee, it probably happened that way.'' For her part, Lindauer says that she enjoyed leading a double life, working for liberals during the day and hanging out with conservatives interested in counterterrorism at night.
Not long after their first dinner, Hoven introduced Lindauer to his friend Dr. Richard Fuisz, a globe-trotting Virginia-based businessman whom Lindauer described to me as ''my contact in the C.I.A.''
Lindauer's first meeting with Fuisz plunged her into a thicket of conflicting theories about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The government blamed Libya for the bombing, and Libya later agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the families of the victims. There were others in the Washington intelligence community who said they believed that the real culprit was the terrorist Ahmed Jabril, who was based in Syria. Lindauer says that Fuisz told her at that first meeting that he knew who was responsible for the bombing. ''Dr. Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103,'' she later wrote in an account of their initial meeting. ''If the government would let me,'' she quoted Fuisz as saying, ''I could identify the men behind this attack today. I was investigating on the ground, and I know.''
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Several months after she first met with Fuisz, Lindauer met with Libyan diplomats in New York in order to share with them the story she claims she got from Fuisz. She says she hoped her story would clear Libya of responsibility for the attack.
Lindauer's decision to drive to New York and visit the Libyans, she says, was also motivated in part by her deep personal faith in God, ''the all-powerful, all-encompassing spirit'' that she had known since she was a child. After adolescent years of drug use and casual sex, she says, she found God again during the weekends she spent at the Victory Bible Camp in Alaska. The God she found there was not partial to any religious philosophy.
''God is not a man,'' Lindauer explained. ''God is this supreme, magnificent force, intelligent, gorgeous beyond any description. If you've seen Alaska, you've seen the face of God.''
Tucked away behind a mixed-use town house development, Kosmos Pharma, Richard Fuisz's place of business, is part of a Pynchonesque landscape in Northern Virginia where anonymous front offices and brass nameplates give few clues as to the actual nature of the businesses within. When I showed up at his office, Fuisz graciously invited me inside to talk.
A dark-haired, handsome man with a soigné charm, Fuisz, 64, who went to Georgetown Medical School and did postgraduate work in medicine at Harvard, was trained as a psychiatrist and has more than 200 patents listed under his name. According to its Web site, Kosmos Pharma specializes in making oral-drug-delivery systems. He has also run a modeling agency for Russian women and worked briefly in the White House under Lyndon Johnson. During the 70's and 80's, he says, he did business around the world -- in the Middle East, the Eastern bloc, the Soviet Union.
Citing unnamed sources, The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, reported in 2000 that Fuisz had been the C.I.A.'s most important agent in Damascus during the 80's. ''This is not an issue I can confirm or deny,'' Fuisz told The Herald. ''I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can't even explain why I can't speak about these issues.''
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Fuisz confirmed that he saw Lindauer about once a week on avearage between 1994 and 2001 and that she would drop by to talk to him about her personal life as well as about her contacts with the Libyans and the Iraqis. He agreed to talk to me about Lindauer after requesting that his son, Joe, a lawyer, be present for our conversation.
''Susan, to me, is one of those people who drift into your life,'' Fuisz said, after offering me a seat on his couch. ''She would drift into the office fairly often, or call. Usually those weren't just social calls. Those were calls about what she was doing, or trying to do,'' Fuisz explained. ''In the early years, her activism generally took an approach which was Arabist, but Arabist from the standpoint of trying to lift sanctions, so that children would do better, and trying to get medicines into countries -- principally I'm talking about Iraq and Libya.''
After Sept. 11, 2001, Lindauer was no longer a welcome visitor to his office. ''Susan, in her discussions, went from benign, in my opinion, to malignant,'' he said. ''These discussions changed and now involved a very strong seditious bent.''
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Fuisz did not comment on the specifics of the conversations that Lindauer claimed to have had with Middle Eastern diplomats or whether he passed on the specifics of those conversations to anyone else. But he, like others who have known Lindauer over the years, had clearly thought long and hard about the perplexing geometry of her mind.
''I'd put it this way,'' Fuisz explained, cupping his palms like a collector presenting a rare species for inspection. ''She's daft enough that we could be sitting here, like we are now, and she might see a parrot fly in the window, flap its wings and land right here on the table,'' he said. ''But she's also smart enough not to necessarily say anything about it.''
When I asked whether, in his opinion, Lindauer could have been recruited by an intelligence service, he paused for a long time before he responded. ''I would say that's a hard question to answer. If you're looking at it from the standpoint of an intelligent intelligence agency, absolutely not. She'd be the worst person you could ever recruit. If you're looking at it from the standpoint of my knowledge of Mideast intelligence services, are they dumb enough to recruit her, the answer is yes.''
To understand Lindauer's unlikely walk-on role in the history of the Iraq war, it is necessary to reverse your normal angle of vision and to imagine how she might have looked through the eyes of the diplomats and intelligence operatives who staffed the Iraqi Mission to the United Nations under Saddam Hussein. While Lindauer may have struck Ambassador Hasan and other Iraqi diplomats as strange, she had solid credentials to recommend her. An aide to congressmen and senators who held a graduate degree from the London School of Economics, she was also the cousin of the White House chief of staff.
Lindauer's letters on behalf of the Iraqis, which she sent to Bush financial backers, including Ken Lay, urging them to support the lifting of sanctions, were written in clear, confident prose. But there were also other letters whose odd details suggested that the Iraqis might have been more discerning in their choice of secret emissary.
''I am deeply proud of my expertise on international conflict resolution, and my regrettably extraordinary gift for counterterrorism,'' Lindauer wrote in a letter addressed to President-elect Bush on Dec. 22, 2000. ''I have identified a dozen bombings before they happened with a high degree of accuracy and a number of assassination attempts on world leaders.''
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Lindauer became a frequent visitor to the Iraqi Mission in New York. During a Sept. 18, 2001, trip to the mission, she had what she described in a letter to Card, the White House chief of staff, as a ''short, tense'' conversation with Hasan's successor, Ambassador Mohammad Al-Douri, in the embassy foyer. ''There's starting to be talk in Washington about Iraq's possible involvement in this attack,'' Lindauer told Card she said to Al-Douri.
''It is not possible,'' Al-Douri is said to have replied. ''It is the Mossad who says this.'' The ambassador, she wrote, sounded ''abrupt and confident and stern.'' When Lindauer warned him not to do anything that would jeopardize the lifting of sanctions, the ambassador seemed surprised.
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''Of course!'' she recalled him as saying. ''We are ready for talks at any time.''
In that same letter, she described coming back to New York to ''receive a communication from Baghdad addressed to me'' -- a message saying that the panic-stricken Iraqis were willing to ''meet any American official in a covert or incovert manner to discuss the common issues.''
In October 2001, according to the federal indictment, she met with officers of Iraqi intelligence in New York. On Dec. 2, Lindauer wrote to Card again, to convey further news: The Iraqis were willing to permit the return of weapons inspectors and offered other concessions. ''These are not intended to limit the universe of possibilities, Andy,'' she wrote.
The picture that emerges from Lindauer's letters is of Iraqi diplomats trying to feel their way through a fog. It is hard to judge what any of her messages from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry might mean, however, since they could be read only through the haze of Lindauer's naïve and self-aggrandizing personality. In February 2002, soon after President Bush delivered his State of the Union address naming Iraq part of an ''axis of evil,'' the Iraqis invited Lindauer to Baghdad.
''It was beautiful,'' she said of Al Rashid Hotel, where she stayed between her meetings with Iraqi officials. ''I had a suite, so it was very nice.''
She wouldn't tell me who she met with or why, but she did describe what it felt like to be inside the room in which the meetings took place. ''When I first got there, I had the sense that -- I don't know how to put this, this is a very weird thing, it's like your imagination-working-kind-of-thing,'' she explained. ''I was in a room, and there were these mirrors, and I had this sense of Saddam Hussein being on the opposite side of the mirror looking in at me. Now I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein actually was there, but I had this very strong sense of presence, which was unlike anything I'd ever felt before, that was scrutinizing me up and down, ripping me apart. It was palpable.''
After Lindauer's visit to Baghdad, there were no more secret messages from Iraq for Andrew Card.
John Lindauer, Susan's younger brother, is used to his sister's unlikely stories -- about dating Arab arms dealers and late-night attempts on her life and her contacts with the C.I.A. A Harvard graduate, and now a successful commercial and music-video director in Los Angeles, he says he thinks that a strain of playacting and deception runs in his family. One of his most powerful childhood memories, he told me, is of watching his father, then 38, grow a mustache and dye his hair gray before being interviewed for the job of chancellor of the University of Alaska at Anchorage. ''Weaving a story to make contact with you, and making you want to be interested in that person, is not a cry for help,'' he said. ''It's just a way of reaching out to say: Remember me. I'm with you. Be interested in me.''
One conversation John had with his sister in the summer of 2001 stuck in his mind for a different reason. ''So she goes, 'Listen |
including the Earth, were naturally inclined to move in circles. This view displaced another Aristotelian idea—that all objects gravitated towards their designated natural place-of-belonging.[7]
René Descartes
Descartes set out to replace the Aristotelian worldview with a theory about space and motion as determined by natural laws. In other words, he sought a metaphysical foundation or a mechanical explanation for his theories about matter and motion. Cartesian space was Euclidean in structure—infinite, uniform and flat.[8] It was defined as that which contained matter; conversely, matter by definition had a spatial extension so that there was no such thing as empty space.[5]
The Cartesian notion of space is closely linked to his theories about the nature of the body, mind and matter. He is famously known for his "cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I am), or the idea that we can only be certain of the fact that we can doubt, and therefore think and therefore exist. His theories belong to the rationalist tradition, which attributes knowledge about the world to our ability to think rather than to our experiences, as the empiricists believe.[9] He posited a clear distinction between the body and mind, which is referred to as the Cartesian dualism.
Leibniz and Newton
Following Galilei and Descartes, during the seventeenth century the philosophy of space and time revolved around the ideas of Gottfried Leibniz, a German philosopher–mathematician, and Isaac Newton, who set out two opposing theories of what space is. Rather than being an entity that independently exists over and above other matter, Leibniz held that space is no more than the collection of spatial relations between objects in the world: "space is that which results from places taken together".[10] Unoccupied regions are those that could have objects in them, and thus spatial relations with other places. For Leibniz, then, space was an idealised abstraction from the relations between individual entities or their possible locations and therefore could not be continuous but must be discrete.[11] Space could be thought of in a similar way to the relations between family members. Although people in the family are related to one another, the relations do not exist independently of the people.[12] Leibniz argued that space could not exist independently of objects in the world because that implies a difference between two universes exactly alike except for the location of the material world in each universe. But since there would be no observational way of telling these universes apart then, according to the identity of indiscernibles, there would be no real difference between them. According to the principle of sufficient reason, any theory of space that implied that there could be these two possible universes must therefore be wrong.[13]
Newton took space to be more than relations between material objects and based his position on observation and experimentation. For a relationist there can be no real difference between inertial motion, in which the object travels with constant velocity, and non-inertial motion, in which the velocity changes with time, since all spatial measurements are relative to other objects and their motions. But Newton argued that since non-inertial motion generates forces, it must be absolute.[14] He used the example of water in a spinning bucket to demonstrate his argument. Water in a bucket is hung from a rope and set to spin, starts with a flat surface. After a while, as the bucket continues to spin, the surface of the water becomes concave. If the bucket's spinning is stopped then the surface of the water remains concave as it continues to spin. The concave surface is therefore apparently not the result of relative motion between the bucket and the water.[15] Instead, Newton argued, it must be a result of non-inertial motion relative to space itself. For several centuries the bucket argument was considered decisive in showing that space must exist independently of matter.
Kant
In the eighteenth century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant developed a theory of knowledge in which knowledge about space can be both a priori and synthetic.[16] According to Kant, knowledge about space is synthetic, in that statements about space are not simply true by virtue of the meaning of the words in the statement. In his work, Kant rejected the view that space must be either a substance or relation. Instead he came to the conclusion that space and time are not discovered by humans to be objective features of the world, but imposed by us as part of a framework for organizing experience.[17]
Non-Euclidean geometry
Euclid's Elements contained five postulates that form the basis for Euclidean geometry. One of these, the parallel postulate, has been the subject of debate among mathematicians for many centuries. It states that on any plane on which there is a straight line L 1 and a point P not on L 1, there is exactly one straight line L 2 on the plane that passes through the point P and is parallel to the straight line L 1. Until the 19th century, few doubted the truth of the postulate; instead debate centered over whether it was necessary as an axiom, or whether it was a theory that could be derived from the other axioms.[18] Around 1830 though, the Hungarian János Bolyai and the Russian Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky separately published treatises on a type of geometry that does not include the parallel postulate, called hyperbolic geometry. In this geometry, an infinite number of parallel lines pass through the point P. Consequently, the sum of angles in a triangle is less than 180° and the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is greater than pi. In the 1850s, Bernhard Riemann developed an equivalent theory of elliptical geometry, in which no parallel lines pass through P. In this geometry, triangles have more than 180° and circles have a ratio of circumference-to-diameter that is less than pi.
Type of geometry Number of parallels Sum of angles in a triangle Ratio of circumference to diameter of circle Measure of curvature Hyperbolic Infinite < 180° > π < 0 Euclidean 1 180° π 0 Elliptical 0 > 180° < π > 0
Gauss and Poincaré
Although there was a prevailing Kantian consensus at the time, once non-Euclidean geometries had been formalised, some began to wonder whether or not physical space is curved. Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician, was the first to consider an empirical investigation of the geometrical structure of space. He thought of making a test of the sum of the angles of an enormous stellar triangle, and there are reports that he actually carried out a test, on a small scale, by triangulating mountain tops in Germany.[19]
Henri Poincaré, a French mathematician and physicist of the late 19th century, introduced an important insight in which he attempted to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to discover which geometry applies to space by experiment.[20] He considered the predicament that would face scientists if they were confined to the surface of an imaginary large sphere with particular properties, known as a sphere-world. In this world, the temperature is taken to vary in such a way that all objects expand and contract in similar proportions in different places on the sphere. With a suitable falloff in temperature, if the scientists try to use measuring rods to determine the sum of the angles in a triangle, they can be deceived into thinking that they inhabit a plane, rather than a spherical surface.[21] In fact, the scientists cannot in principle determine whether they inhabit a plane or sphere and, Poincaré argued, the same is true for the debate over whether real space is Euclidean or not. For him, which geometry was used to describe space was a matter of convention.[22] Since Euclidean geometry is simpler than non-Euclidean geometry, he assumed the former would always be used to describe the 'true' geometry of the world.[23]
Einstein
In 1905, Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity, which led to the concept that space and time can be viewed as a single construct known as spacetime. In this theory, the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers—which has the result that two events that appear simultaneous to one particular observer will not be simultaneous to another observer if the observers are moving with respect to one another. Moreover, an observer will measure a moving clock to tick more slowly than one that is stationary with respect to them; and objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer.
Subsequently, Einstein worked on a general theory of relativity, which is a theory of how gravity interacts with spacetime. Instead of viewing gravity as a force field acting in spacetime, Einstein suggested that it modifies the geometric structure of spacetime itself.[24] According to the general theory, time goes more slowly at places with lower gravitational potentials and rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field. Scientists have studied the behaviour of binary pulsars, confirming the predictions of Einstein's theories, and non-Euclidean geometry is usually used to describe spacetime.
Mathematics
Not to be confused with Space (mathematics)
In modern mathematics spaces are defined as sets with some added structure. They are frequently described as different types of manifolds, which are spaces that locally approximate to Euclidean space, and where the properties are defined largely on local connectedness of points that lie on the manifold. There are however, many diverse mathematical objects that are called spaces. For example, vector spaces such as function spaces may have infinite numbers of independent dimensions and a notion of distance very different from Euclidean space, and topological spaces replace the concept of distance with a more abstract idea of nearness.
Physics
Space is one of the few fundamental quantities in physics, meaning that it cannot be defined via other quantities because nothing more fundamental is known at the present. On the other hand, it can be related to other fundamental quantities. Thus, similar to other fundamental quantities (like time and mass), space can be explored via measurement and experiment.
Today, our three-dimensional space is viewed as embedded in a four-dimensional spacetime, called Minkowski space (see special relativity). The idea behind space-time is that time is hyperbolic-orthogonal to each of the three spatial dimensions.
Relativity
Before Einstein's work on relativistic physics, time and space were viewed as independent dimensions. Einstein's discoveries showed that due to relativity of motion our space and time can be mathematically combined into one object–spacetime. It turns out that distances in space or in time separately are not invariant with respect to Lorentz coordinate transformations, but distances in Minkowski space-time along space-time intervals are—which justifies the name.
In addition, time and space dimensions should not be viewed as exactly equivalent in Minkowski space-time. One can freely move in space but not in time. Thus, time and space coordinates are treated differently both in special relativity (where time is sometimes considered an imaginary coordinate) and in general relativity (where different signs are assigned to time and space components of spacetime metric).
Furthermore, in Einstein's general theory of relativity, it is postulated that space-time is geometrically distorted – curved – near to gravitationally significant masses.[25]
One consequence of this postulate, which follows from the equations of general relativity, is the prediction of moving ripples of space-time, called gravitational waves. While indirect evidence for these waves has been found (in the motions of the Hulse–Taylor binary system, for example) experiments attempting to directly measure these waves are ongoing at the LIGO and Virgo collaborations. LIGO scientists reported the first such direct observation of gravitational waves on 14 September 2015.[26][27]
Cosmology
Relativity theory leads to the cosmological question of what shape the universe is, and where space came from. It appears that space was created in the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago[28] and has been expanding ever since. The overall shape of space is not known, but space is known to be expanding very rapidly due to the cosmic inflation.
Spatial measurement
The measurement of physical space has long been important. Although earlier societies had developed measuring systems, the International System of Units, (SI), is now the most common system of units used in the measuring of space, and is almost universally used.
Currently, the standard space interval, called a standard meter or simply meter, is defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second. This definition coupled with present definition of the second is based on the special theory of relativity in which the speed of light plays the role of a fundamental constant of nature.
Geographical space
Geography is the branch of science concerned with identifying and describing places on Earth, utilizing spatial awareness to try to understand why things exist in specific locations. Cartography is the mapping of spaces to allow better navigation, for visualization purposes and to act as a locational device. Geostatistics apply statistical concepts to collected spatial data of Earth to create an estimate for unobserved phenomena.
Geographical space is often considered as land, and can have a relation to ownership usage (in which space is seen as property or territory). While some cultures assert the rights of the individual in terms of ownership, other cultures will identify with a communal approach to land ownership, while still other cultures such as Australian Aboriginals, rather than asserting ownership rights to land, invert the relationship and consider that they are in fact owned by the land. Spatial planning is a method of regulating the use of space at land-level, with decisions made at regional, national and international levels. Space can also impact on human and cultural behavior, being an important factor in architecture, where it will impact on the design of buildings and structures, and on farming.
Ownership of space is not restricted to land. Ownership of airspace and of waters is decided internationally. Other forms of ownership have been recently asserted to other spaces—for example to the radio bands of the electromagnetic spectrum or to cyberspace.
Public space is a term used to define areas of land as collectively owned by the community, and managed in their name by delegated bodies; such spaces are open to all, while private property is the land culturally owned by an individual or company, for their own use and pleasure.
Abstract space is a term used in geography to refer to a hypothetical space characterized by complete homogeneity. When modeling activity or behavior, it is a conceptual tool used to limit extraneous variables such as terrain.
In psychology
Psychologists first began to study the way space is perceived in the middle of the 19th century. Those now concerned with such studies regard it as a distinct branch of psychology. Psychologists analyzing the perception of space are concerned with how recognition of an object's physical appearance or its interactions are perceived, see, for example, visual space.
Other, more specialized topics studied include amodal perception and object permanence. The perception of surroundings is important due to its necessary relevance to survival, especially with regards to hunting and self preservation as well as simply one's idea of personal space.
Several space-related phobias have been identified, including agoraphobia (the fear of open spaces), astrophobia (the fear of celestial space) and claustrophobia (the fear of enclosed spaces).
The understanding of three-dimensional space in humans is thought to be learned during infancy using unconscious inference, and is closely related to hand-eye coordination. The visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions is called depth perception.
In the Social Sciences
Space has been studied in the social sciences from the perspectives of Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, urban theory and critical geography. These theories account for the effect of the history of colonialism, transatlantic slavery and globalization on our understanding and experience of space and place. The topic has garnered attention since the 1980s, after the publication of Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space. In this book, Lefebvre applies Marxist ideas about the production of commodities and accumulation of capital to discuss space as a social product. His focus is on the multiple and overlapping social processes that produce space.[29]
In his book The Condition of Postmodernity, David Harvey describes what he terms the "time-space compression." This is the effect of technological advances and capitalism on our perception of time, space and distance.[30] Changes in the modes of production and consumption of capital affect and are affected by developments in transportation and technology. These advances create relationships across time and space, new markets and groups of wealthy elites in urban centers, all of which annihilate distances and affect our perception of linearity and distance.[31]
In his book Thirdspace, Edward Soja describes space and spatiality as an integral and neglected aspect of what he calls the "trialectics of being," the three modes that determine how we inhabit, experience and understand the world. He argues that critical theories in the Humanities and Social Sciences study the historical and social dimensions of our lived experience, neglecting the spatial dimension.[32] He builds on Henri Lefebvre's work to address the dualistic way in which humans understand space—as either material/physical or as represented/imagined. Lefebvre's "lived space"[33] and Soja's "thridspace" are terms that account for the complex ways in which humans understand and navigate place, which "firstspace" and "Secondspace" (Soja's terms for material and imagined spaces respectively) do not fully encompass.
Postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha's concept of Third Space is different from Soja's Thirdspace, even though both terms offer a way to think outside the terms of a binary logic. Bhabha's Third Space is the space in which hybrid cultural forms and identities exist. In his theories, the term hybrid describes new cultural forms that emerge through the interaction between colonizer and colonized.[34]
See also
References(AP Photo/Yves Logghe) Finnish Finance Minister Jutta Urpilainen set the scene for the long European summer break when she declared that Finland was a dedicated member of the Eurozone, eager to solve the crisis, but "not at any price"; it wouldn't agree to take on "collective responsibility for debts and risks of other countries" via a banking union. And if push came to shove: "We are prepared for all scenarios, including abandoning the Euro."
A spokesperson had to do some furious backpedaling: Finland wasn't planning to abandon the euro; such assertions were "simply wrong," her words had been misinterpreted. Nevertheless, this was the first time ever that a government official of a triple-A rated Eurozone country publicly admitted that they were making contingency plans for ditching the euro—and worse, that there was a desire to do so under certain conditions.
The road to hell, I mean to the euro, was paved with good intentions—and signposted with lots of warnings that at the time were ignored, downplayed, or ridiculed. But one by one, they turned out to be correct. The warnings continue, along with efforts to sweep them under the rug which is more difficult now as the dimensions of the debacle have become apparent for all to see.
And so, in an open letter, 172 economists of "German-speaking countries," including Ifo President Hans-Werner Sinn, warned citizens and politicians about the decisions of last week's EU summit—though there's still no agreement as to what has actually been decided. They were worried about a Eurozone banking union that would collectivize bank debts, which are "almost three times as large as sovereign debts," and in the five bailed-out countries alone amounted "to several trillion euros." Taxpayers, retirees, and savers of "still solid countries" must not be held responsible for them. "There is only one group that should and can carry that burden: the creditors themselves." In other words: banks must be allowed to fail; bank creditors must take the losses; let the market economy do its job.
Politicians hope that they could limit exposure and abuse by instituting a common banking regulator, "but they will not succeed as long as debtor countries possess a structural majority in the Eurozone." Once solid countries agree to collectivize bank debts, they will again and again be pressured to enlarge the sums they're liable for. "Fights and disagreements with neighboring countries" would be preprogrammed. "Neither the euro nor the idea of Europe as such would be saved." Instead it would benefit "Wall Street, the City of London—even some investors in Germany—and a series of ramshackle domestic and foreign banks" that would continue doing business "at the expense of citizens in other countries who have little to do with this." And all "under the mantel of solidarity."
Instant brouhaha. Just as the German parliament was wrapping up its work, and as everyone was looking forward to heading out for their long vacations with illusions of calm appearing at the horizon. That top economists would directly, publicly, and en masse attack the government is unusual in Germany.
Chancellor Angela Merkel was furious. She had to explain once again what the agreement's "small print," that apparently no one has read yet, really contained. The EU Summit "changed nothing" in Germany, she said. "Everyone should take a good look at the decisions." The banking union agreement deals with better supervision, and "not at all with additional liabilities." And collectivizing bank debt continues to be "verboten," she said.
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was "outraged." Economists shot back at Sinn's group. "The letter damages the public respect for economics," said Peter Bofinger, one of the Economic Wise Men. If banks were allowed to fail, he said, contagion effects would hit "banks in France and Germany, and therefore German savers and German taxpayers." Some economist called the letter "irresponsible" and designed to stir up "emotions" and "fears."
But the letter accomplished one thing: it tangled up political lines. The idea of letting banks fail rather than grouping them together in a banking union—whether or not that was one of the decisions of the EU summit—resonated not only with Social Democrats, the Left, and Communists, but also with the conservative CSU, while the sharpest opposition to the letter came from Merkel's own CDU.
Germans bumped Merkel's approval rating by 8 points to 66%; and 58% believed that she "acted correctly and decisively" at the EU summit to deal with the debt crisis, which so far, has been something that happened somewhere else, despite its ever growing price tag.
Rather than resolving the debt crisis once and for all, the summit gummed up the bailout process with controversy in the very country that everyone is counting on to save the Eurozone, Germany—but also elsewhere—and nothing was resolved. Read.... "The European Monster State."
And to sprinkle some humor into that dogged Eurozone drama, here is "Merkel at Wimbledon 2012," a funny video by down-under comedians Clarke & Dawe.Fun Shui
Dynasty Warriors 8 takes place in the far future, where three rival cyberpunk gangs duke it out on the streets of Neo New York, armed to the teeth with laser fingers, eye-whips, and guns that shoot acidic screaming skull bullets.
That's a lie, actually. Once again, it's about Chinese kingdoms fighting for control of China.
There's only so many ways you can explain the unchanging premise of Dynasty Warriors before you start just making stuff up out of boredom. This is not to say that Dynasty Warriors 8, for all its familiar foundations, is boring in any way. On the contrary, to the seasoned fan who simply cannot get enough hack n' slash silliness, this may indeed be the best installment in the series. After a recent run of mostly disappointing games, this eighth main chapter is more than a return to form. It's the new gold standard.
Acid skull bullets be damned.
Dynasty Warriors 8 (PS3 [reviewed], Xbox 360)
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Tecmo Koei
Released: July 16, 2013 (NA), July 19, 2013 (EU)
MSRP: $59.99
Unlike most main numbered sequels, Dynasty Warriors 8 is not a complete overhaul of the roster. The voice actors of 7, as well as general character designs and many movesets, are the same. However, the system itself has been dramatically upgraded, with a slew of new features as well as elements cultivated from the very best of the series. The result is a game of new ideas, built on a foundation of classic ones, and it's a terrific thing to behold.
The most important thing to note is that Dynasty Warriors 7's biggest complaint, the abundance of recycled weapons and shared movesets among characters, is no more. Whereas in the past, up to three characters could play almost identically, there are absolutely zero clones among the cast of over seventy playable heroes. Each weapon -- and there are tons -- is distinctly different, and every character has his or her own unique "EX" weapon.
Weapon switching returns from the last game, allowing characters to take two weapons into battle. One weapon, the EX weapon, is that character's favored armament, granting them attack bonuses and special moves, and players are free to mix and match EX weapons with any other gear from any other character. Every warrior can be leveled up separately, gaining experience in battle, while killing enemy officers under unique conditions unlocks (and powers up) equippable skills that add extra stat bonuses.
New to the series, and absolutely welcome in its addition, is Weapon Affinity. Each weapon acquired in the game comes with one of three Affinities -- Heaven, Earth, or Man. In a style similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors, each Affinity is strong against one and weak against the other (Heaven beats Man, Man beats Earth, Earth beats Heaven). In battle, Affinities come into play by putting players at a disadvantage or advantage depending on the enemy's weapon type.
If an opposing officer has the winning Affinity, you'll do less damage and be unable to stagger them. However, you can time a weapon switch to perform a swanky counterattack and gain temporary stat boosts. If you have the superior weapon, enemies have a blue shield icon that can be dismantled with successive blows. Once drained, players will automatically perform a lightning combo of unstoppable attacks. Using both these Switch Combo and Storm Rush moves, as well as choosing dual weapons that compliment each other, lends a fresh flair of tactical depth to the game that, while simple in concept, significantly changes up the flow of combat for the better -- especially on higher difficulties, where enemies can attack in varied Affinity groups and aren't shy about using their own counters or combos.
Each officer now has three special Musou attacks, of which you can perform one invincible, gauge-fueled attack from the ground, one from the air, and one by holding down two buttons as opposed to one. Additionally, there's a new Rampage gauge which, when filled, allows the player to become faster, stronger, and nigh invulnerable for a moment, as well as unleash an ultimate Musou that chains together attacks in a fashion similar to old school Musou moves from early installments.
Story mode comprises four main campaigns for the kingdoms of Wei, Wu, Shu, and Jin, as well as one-shot stages for each of the unaligned characters. In a campaign, players can choose one of three characters per stage, playing through a timeline roughly based on the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. Secret objectives in certain story levels can open up "What If" scenarios, which will change the campaign, making certain officers playable in more levels, enemies appear in new stages, or even unlock new chapters entirely. Each of the four main stories will take a few hours to beat, and even then, it's likely you won't have unlocked everything.
One huge bit of good news is that Free Mode is finally back, allowing you to replay any stage for more loot drops and experience. You can also play on either side of a battle again, adding even more playability to the maps. There is also Ambition Mode, loosely based on the series' last Xtreme Legends expansion. In Ambition, you'll be fighting battles to earn resources and build up a city to impress the Emperor. The more successive battles one fights, the more rewards can be reaped, but healing is limited and fights get very tough very swiftly. Random encounters and unique surprises litter Ambition Mode for those who risk it, and it'll likely take a good long while to see absolutely everything.
Really, though, it's the little touches that make Dynasty Warriors 8 one of the most comprehensive and entertaining installments in the series. Calling a horse with a shoulder button and keeping the button held to instantly mount it sounds pointless to an outsider, but an experienced player sick of manually clambering onto animals will find it a revelation. Rare animal loot drops unlock cool beast companions, unique 5th level weapons can be obtained by performing specific tasks with designated characters, and all sorts of powerful items can be nabbed by playing stages on higher difficulties -- which do enough damage to even high level characters to truly be considered challenging again. And of course, there's local and online co-op, as well as online rankings for egotistical players.
As much as I'd love to have nothing but praise, it must be said that the more subtle character redesigns and retained voice cast takes away from the sense of overhaul that normally comes with a main numbered Dynasty Warriors release. While each character has new moves and unlockables, a good number of them are very familiar to a player of the last game, which is a bit of a shame. Characters themselves could also do with changing up their one-dimensional character traits as well, as hearing Liu Bei prattle on about benevolence, or other characters taking the one word they found in a dictionary and basing all their dialog on it, can grate a little. Oh, and the writers should be informed there are other words that can be used to describe a war than "Chaos." I've heard enough of that word.
Of course, there's a stable of fresh new officers joining familiar faces to keep things more interesting. The Wei faction gets Li Dian and Yue Jin, Wu gets Han Dang and Lu Su, Shu gets Zhang Bao, Guan Xing, and Guan Yingping, while Jin gets Jia Chong, Zhang Chunhua, and Wen Yang. Accompanying these characters are some of the more exotic and ludicrous weapons in the series, something which is also true of a number of de-cloned characters. Zhuge Dan's new nightstick weapon and accompanying "police brutality" moveset is a particularly delightful example, as is Cao Cao's fresh power to summon ghostly versions of himself that perform his classic attacks on distant foes.
The usual visual trade off between pretty graphics and dozens of on-screen enemies shows its usual faces, with simplistic environments making way for huge maps littered with cannon fodder and more dangerous officers. The series' old enemy -- slowdown in character-intensive areas -- is still here, but notably rare this time around, seen only when the screen is literally drowning in moving bodies. Otherwise, it can at least be said animations are beautiful, especially when it comes to Rampage Musous and Storm Rush attacks.
The graphics are complimented by the same deliciously camp hair metal soundtrack we've come to know and love/hate. Sadly, there aren't as many memorable tunes this time, though everything's consistently cheesy and nonsensical, and a couple of standout tracks can be enjoyed. As previously mentioned the voice cast is almost entirely retained from the previous game, and it's a decent selection of talent picked from among the more familiar actors in the industry. Basically, it's a cast of genuinely decent actors, which may subtract from or add to your enjoyment of the game, based on how much you loved the awful B-movie dialog of older titles.
Dynasty Warriors 8 feels, in several ways, like an answer to criticisms fans have had of the series all generation. It contains more involved combat as opposed to Dynasty Warriors 6, over seventy totally unique character moves as opposed to Dynasty Warriors 7, and an overall deeper, more varied, faster paced experience than the series has ever had. The dramatic new additions to combat and three gameplay modes are all complimentary, while the more subtle enhancements alter the game's flow in unsung ways. While there are still things that can be improved, Omega Force has reasserted itself as the best provider of hack n' slash nonsense you're likely to get, and provided what may indeed live up to its boast as the definitive Dynasty Warriors experience.
And Lu Bu is still a total dick.
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Dynasty Warriors 8 reviewed by Jim SterlingContinuing on from Part #2 of the Ground Up Series. Today we'll be looking at solutions for handling data with Entity Framework (EF) 7
The source code is available here.
Entity Framework V7 is a rewrite
The next version of EF will sport a version of number 7, but it's a complete rewrite. What does that mean for users, especially those of the previous versions?
When EF7 RTM's it will not be the suggested data platform for ASP.NET5, that will continue to be EF6.
Certain features won't make the cut for the initial RTM release such as lazy loading.
Post RTM and after adding in things like lazy loading, EF7 still won't support everything EF6 does. There's a lot of legacy cruft in the codebase (some reports indicate > 1.5 million lines of code dating back to the failed WinFS file system) and they are taking this opportunity to trim the fat in a serious way. There's a lot of obscure, rarely used features in EF and a lot of those will be getting cut.
"Code First" or "Code Only" is going to be the only supported mechanism, you can still generate these code files from an existing database, but there will be no massive XML generating UI system in Visual Studio.
In others news:
The surface API's you would typically use ( DbContext, DbSet<T> ) remain largely very familiar.
, ) remain largely very familiar. Supports the new.Net Core runtime, which means it will eventually be opened up to run on other platforms and devices.
Support for non-relational datastores such as document databases.
Much less bloated.
Much less magic!
Let's get cracking
As with the previous posts, we'll start by adding in our dependencies with KPM install
kpm install EntityFramework.SqlServer 7.0.0-beta2
We also want to bring in the EntityFramework.Commands which will give us some additional tools to work with EF.
kpm install EntityFramework.Commands 7.0.0-beta2
Now we can create a DbContext just like we would with previous versions of EF.
using Microsoft.Data.Entity; public class GroundUpDbContext : DbContext { public DbSet<TodoItem> Todos {get; set;} protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptions builder) { builder.UseSqlServer(@"Server=(localdb)\v11.0;Database=TodoItems;Trusted_Connection=True;"); } } public class TodoItem { public int Id {get; set;} public string Description {get; set;} }
There is one major change here. We need to override the OnConfiguring method and call the builder.UseSqlServer("connectionstring") method.
This UseSqlServer naming is significant. As I outlined in Part 1, the Use.. wording denotes adding the applicable services to the middleware pipeline. This wireup can also be done via convention or as part of our Startup.cs.
What was that about magic?
Prior versions of EF were designed to demo really well. You could write a quick class, scaffold up a MVC controller + view, fire up the project and then a whole bunch of magic would happen, your database would be created and you're off to the races. You could make changes to your database just by simply editing the class and EF would take care of dropping and recreating the neccesary parts.
This was great for getting up and running quickly but as you continued to build on your application you'd eventually want to start migrating the schema properly with EF Migrations. The issue you now have is that your initial database creation was never part of the migrations. So as soon as you hand your code off to someone else, that crucial step of actually creating the initial database schema was missing.
There are no more surprises with EF7.
(Re)Enter Commands
As we outlined in Part 1, commands are now the way we interact with our project. Add the following command to your project.json
"ef": "EntityFramework.Commands"
Our project.json now looks like:
{ "dependencies": { "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting": "1.0.0-beta2", "Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener": "1.0.0-beta2", "Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc": "6.0.0-beta2", "EntityFramework.SqlServer": "7.0.0-beta2", "EntityFramework.Commands": "7.0.0-beta2" }, "commands": { "web": "Microsoft.AspNet.Hosting --server Microsoft.AspNet.Server.WebListener --server.urls http://localhost:5000", "ef": "EntityFramework.Commands" } }
Now run the following from the command line
k ef
And the Magic Unicorn makes an appearance!
Exposed here are commands to manage the contexts and database migrations.
k ef migration add "initial"
This will scaffold out the appropriate files in /migrations/ directory of your project.
k ef migration apply
Will now execute the commands against the database and bring everything up to date.
Plumbing back into the DI system
We want to Add... EntityFramework, SqlServer and our DbContext into the dependency injection system. So as part of our ConfigureServices method in Startup.cs, add the following:
services.AddEntityFramework().AddSqlServer().AddDbContext<CompareLearningDbContext>();
Our Startup.cs now looks like:
using Microsoft.AspNet.Builder; using Microsoft.AspNet.Routing; using Microsoft.Framework.DependencyInjection; using Microsoft.Data.Entity; public class Startup { public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services) { services.AddEntityFramework().AddSqlServer().AddDbContext<GroundUpDbContext>(); services.AddMvc(); } public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app) { app.UseMvc(routes => { routes.MapRoute( name: "default", template: "{controller=Home}/{action=Index}/{id?}"); }); } }
EF and our DbContext are now good to go. We'll add a constructor to our HomeController to accept an instance of our context:
using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc; using System.Linq; public class HomeController : Controller { private readonly GroundUpDbContext _db; public HomeController(GroundUpDbContext db) { _db = db; } public IActionResult Index() { var listOfTodos = _db.Todos.ToList(); return View(listOfTodos); } }
(aside: if you don't like the idea of depending on a concrete type as opposed to an interface, you can follow along with the github issue.)
And modify our views/home/index.cshtml :
@model IEnumerable<TodoItem> Hello World from View <br /> Count: @Model.Count()
Executing k web again to boot the server up and accessing http://localhost:5000 will now display the count of 0.
Not terribly exciting but we're now interacting |
image directly on our mockup, snap a photo, and your all-over print product will be delivered to your door in days.
SnapShirt aims to enhance peoples’ lives by giving them the greatest creative tool for making high-quality custom clothing. It will change the way that keepsakes are both made and passed down in our modern age. SnapShirt will serve as a tool for designers looking to start their own clothing companies or help the people who simply want to share their creativity with the world. It has potential to become the go-to platform for artists, entrepreneurs, families, and more.
The possibilities are endless, and this is only the beginning.
Back in 2010, we started a clothing line called Let’s Rage. Despite impressive growth, there were some intense challenges.
Our main problem was the costly process of producing new designs. This nearly stopped us in our tracks, just as it stops most artists and entrepreneurs from doing what they love, which is creating.
We went on a worldwide hunt to find a manufacturer that believed in our idea. However, we were told NO over a 100 times and that our idea was impossible.
We were able to overcome this problem by teaming up with some amazing people, solidifying our own printing equipment, and mastering the art of dye-sublimation, also known as all-over printing.
We have committed our professional careers to working with some of the most amazing artists, photographers, and celebrities in giving them the ability to turn their dreams and visions into wearable merchandise.
Now, it’s your turn.
Once an order is placed, SnapShirt will use our sophisticated algorithm to change your photo into a print-ready file. This will be sent to our production line, then manufactured, and lastly, shipped to you! Over the years while printing for RageOn.com, we have perfected our proprietary process of dye sublimation to produce un-matched, photo-realistic quality.
Our apparel lasts forever or your money back! We work with some of the most skilled cut & sewers and manufacturers in the world. We use a precise combination of heat, pressure, and time to change each individual clothing fiber to make the most high quality, durable, and vibrant garments you will ever see! These incredibly soft garments wick away heat and moisture, for a cool, relaxed feel :)
Let’s get creative! We will be releasing 5 exclusive shirt designs as we hit milestones! Next, we have some incredible stretch goals for both custom & Rage On designs in even more options, like: zip-up hoodies, pillows, blankets, and more!
Your support means the world to us. Together, we’ll create a tool that will modernize the way in which custom clothing is made to order in the 21st Century.
We understand that nothing is more important than the voice of the user. Let’s build a relationship, ensure simplicity, and challenge the accepted idea of what is possible. Thank you. - The SnapShirt Team
Here's a massive selection of rewards to choose from! Be the first to create your own custom design or choose from thousands of Rage On products at tremendous discounts! Enjoy!
*Backers can receive custom designs or choose from thousands of products available from the following RageOn.com brands: Let's Rage, Classics, Kan D Shoppe, High Times, Cereal Killers, Costume Party, Psychedelia, Wild Life, 8bit.
Here is a more in depth look at SnapShirt and our vision. We created an “extended video” that includes: more modeling scenes, a heartfelt moment of my brother and sister, both of which have since passed and whom I dedicate this app to, a sneak peak at what our party with celebrity guest reward might look like (actual party footage from one of our events), some new music, and more!
SNAPSHIRT & MY INSPIRATION:
One quintessential detail of every large project I take on is that there is a greater purpose with what I’m doing. For some people, it’s money, for others it’s success, for me, it’s always been about something bigger.
The most substantial aspect of my motivation for creating SnapShirt is the ability to give something incredible for FREE to each and every person in this world, something that my brother, Jerry, and sister, Sarah who tragically passed would be proud of.
One might think that as the founder of Rage On, I would have the ability to make custom apparel. The truth is, I’ve always had this ability— however, the process of making custom merchandise was extremely inefficient. Despite having hundreds of Rage On fans ask us for this feature every day, we still had to find a way to automate this system.
I always figured there would come a time when I could make the process to create custom apparel easier for us and fans alike. Unfortunately, this time came too late and the passing of Jerry and Sarah showed me just how fragile life can be. This realization pushed me to finally build something I could give my family and friends so that they might capture the moments they spend together, while also creating a physical memento that will last a lifetime.
The tragic events of my personal life, the requests of Rage On fans around the world, and seeing the joy the ability to create something personalized brings to people are what continue to push me to build something revolutionary.
SnapShirt is an app that is dedicated to everyone— every kid who dreams of starting a clothing company, every artist who dreams of making their artwork a reality, everyone who dreams of reliving a moment. Most importantly, I am dedicating SnapShirt to my brother and sister.
My heart, mind, and soul are committed to changing the future with SnapShirt. Thanks to this app, any funny, artsy, or cherished moment can instantly be made into virtually anything. Once SnapShirt is complete, you and I will never again have to wait to commemorate our visions— we will only need to pioneer them.
I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the best people that I’ve met in my entire life and am thankful to have these people help complete this project with me. SnapShirt will be the easiest and most fun way for families, friends, and artists around the world to turn memories into wearable merchandise. Most importantly, YOU will be able to make your dreams, memories, and creations a reality that will last forever.
Please enjoy our gift to you!Mozilla has announced on its blog today that its default search engine will be changing to Yahoo for US customers.
The company stated on its blog that “Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options.”
After evaluating partnerships, Mozilla said that one stood out from the rest: Yahoo.
Yahoo will become the default search engine for the US beginning in December, featuring an “enhanced Yahoo search experience.” In Russia, the default search engine will become Yandex and in China it will remain as Baidu.
Mozilla also noted that Yahoo will support “Do Not Track” preferences in Firefox, something the company had dropped support for earlier in the year.
On the choice of Yahoo, Mozilla simply said that the change marks the “ending our practice of having a single global default search provider” and the beginning of a “local and flexible approach to increase choice and innovation on the Web.”
Marissa Mayer wrote on the Yahoo blog that the new partnership “helps to expand our reach in search and gives us an opportunity to work even more closely with Mozilla to find ways to innovate in search, communications, and digital content.” Mayer also indicated “future product integrations” could be in the pipeline.
Previously Google had been funding Mozilla in order to be the default search engine. Mozilla said that “while we have decided to not renew our agreement for global default placement, Google will continue to be a pre-installed search option.”
What’s not clear is if users with the default search engine selected will be automatically migrated to the new default of Yahoo, or prompted to make the choice.
The company also noted that Google will still power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation components of Firefox.
Mozilla said that the browser now features 61 search providers pre-installed with Firefox regardless of region.
➤ New Search Strategy for Firefox: Promoting Choice & Innovation [Mozilla blog]
Read next: You can now play Tetris on your RokuA group of public school families and a pro-charter advocacy group filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court this week alleging that the atmosphere at New York City public schools was depriving students of their right to receive an education free of violence, bullying and harassment.
The class-action suit, filed on Wednesday in New York’s Eastern District against the New York City Education Department and its chancellor, Carmen Fariña, claims that violence in schools is increasing, and that it is often underreported. The suit also says that school violence disproportionately affects certain groups of students, like those who are black, Hispanic, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The suit, which claims the Education Department has failed “to address and remediate in-school violence in New York City’s public schools,” was filed by 11 students and their families. They were joined by Families for Excellent Schools, a pro-charter advocacy group that has been a fierce and frequent critic of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s education policies.
The group’s chief executive, Jeremiah Kittredge, held a news conference on Thursday morning in front of the Education Department’s headquarters in Manhattan, to encourage other public school parents to join the suit.The D’Hondt tombola has been turned and the ministries have been pulled out and names assigned by the team captains. [Ed – and the two Junior Ministers have been nominated too.]
First Minister – Arlene Foster (DUP)
Deputy First Minister – Martin McGuinness (SF)
Justice – Claire Sugden (Independent)
Economy – Simon Hamilton (DUP)
Finance – Máirtín Ó Muilleoir (SF)
Education – Peter Weir (DUP)
Infrastructure – Chris Hazzard (SF)
Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs – Michelle McIlveen (DUP)
Communities – Paul Givan (DUP)
Health – Michelle O’Neill (SF)
Junior Minister – Alastair Ross (DUP)
Junior Minister – Megan Fearon (SF)
Some facts about the new Executive
7 new ministers at the table.
The average age of this Executive is just under 41 years of age.
Emma Pengelly, Jonathan Bell, Lord Morrow & Mervyn Storey are out from the DUP team.
Michelle O’Neill is the only Sinn Fein minister to be re-appointed from the last mandate.In the U.S., when you start tracking users’ whereabouts you face tons of scrutiny and a software update that will fix the problem. In South Korea, they just raid your office.
Google’s Seoul office got sacked today by South Korean authorities; police suspected that its mobile advertising unit, AdMob, was illegally collecting location data without users’ consent. Location tracking? Why does this sound eerily familiar…
Police released a statement saying, “We suspect AdMob collected personal location information without consent or approval from the Korean Communication Commission.” Be careful, Google! We’re not in Kansas anymore. I don’t know what they do in South Korea, but I know they do have a man called Kim Jong Il to the North, and if the South can deal with those guys…
Google confirmed that the South Korean police had stopped by, and that the company was cooperating in the privacy probe. They just bought AdMob last year for $750 million, and have been talking about the ability to target ads based on users’ location.
In South Korea, Google has almost a 20 percent market share in the mobile internet industry, thanks to Android. Reuters also reported that Seoul police also took a “visit” to Daum Communications, a local business, for the same exact reason. South Koreans sound like they value their privacy pretty seriously.
At this point, you’ve got to wonder what Google is doing to remedy their privacy gaffes, given how numerous they’ve become. Are they just giving up after the Street View fiasco?
More on TIME.com:
Google VP: Location Tracking Is ‘Extremely Valuable’ to Company
Verizon to Slap Phones With Location-Tracking Disclaimers
Apple: We’re Not Tracking Anyone, and We Never WillStop telling year 12 students their results don't matter
Updated
We shouldn't try to convince year 12 students that their results don't matter. Instead, we should encourage them to interrogate why society says they do, writes Courtney Robinson.
It's now commonplace for everyone else to tell year 12 students that their HSC and VCE results don't really matter, that there is "life after" high school.
Sometimes they do matter, though. A lot. Students are encouraged to feel ashamed if they did not achieve highly, while those who did are praised unreservedly.
This week, as thousands of students experience the heartbreak and devastation of receiving their results, articles imploring teenagers to eschew emotional investment in their ATAR score have flooded social media.
But are they right to dismiss such a culturally-loaded experience? Do these well-intentioned but occasionally patronising arguments even work?
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne teacher Ann Rennie encouraged young people to put their career on the backburner and not to fear mistakes.
At Mamamia, author Rebecca Sparrow told teenagers they will not be failures or successes based on their scores.
On Twitter, journalists, authors and academics revealed their stories of post-school successes.
The "it doesn't matter" missive is important and necessary, but it's also worth examining how it can be more constructive, given families, schools and the media aggressively assert the message that it actually does matter.
Earlier this week, a friend and I were remembering the day we received our marks back in the mid-2000s. She revealed her mother had cried uncontrollably upon learning her daughter's score was 97. It was the second-best result in the private Catholic school my friend attended, so she missed out on the Dux award. This was horrifying for her mother.
"When the person you've looked to as a moral and life compass your entire life tells you you've failed, you internalise that," my friend said. "I carried the idea that I was never good enough for a long time."
Anecdotes like these, which I hope are not the rule, but are still common enough, reveal how painful this experience can be for some.
We shouldn't try to convince teenagers that their results don't matter, but instead encourage them to interrogate why society says they do - and how we can take steps to change it. Courtney Robinson
In our attempt to share what everybody learns after school - that, post-graduation, you're likely to never be asked what your ATAR was again - we run the risk of disregarding the impact of the pressure on Year 12 students to perform.
Even in primary school, we're told to "shoot for the stars". It's hammered into us at an early age, but a grasp of the necessity and value of failure is not.
There is a "life after divorce" movement too, but it never seeks to tell a person their marriage did not "matter".
Young people should be encouraged to ferociously question why society values hyper-achievement so profoundly. And we should not wait until the damage is already done before telling them it's okay to fail.
The annual rollout of news headlines this week has, of course, focused on the high achievers.
Yesterday, Victoria brimmed with the news a record number of 35 students had scored the highest possible mark of 99.95. The Age ran a live coverage blog, with somewhat crude updates next to a list of schools, which stated the ATAR of the dux.
The Herald Sun carried the kicker, "Hearts are soaring and breaking today, as thousands of students receive their VCE results on their phones and the net".
More than ever, this focus highlights the need to offer a fresh perspective to school leavers. But even well-intentioned attempts to comfort low-performing students are suspicious. The advice not to worry about failure often comes from people who are absurdly successful.
Take, for example, The Daily Telegraph's story, "How 'terrible' result didn't stop businessman hitting heights". In it, we hear about multi-millionaire entrepreneur, Nick Bell. The article briefly acknowledges Bell's apparently terrible VCE mark of 57, before launching into his enterprising spirit, and how selling lunch boxes at school netted him $30,000 before he graduated.
Extreme success stories also dominate ReachOut's initiative, 'There's Life After Year 12 Exams'.
On the official website, short videos feature well-known Australians including Adam Spencer, Kelly O'Dwyer, Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull. They recall their year 12 exams, and how their lives unfolded after school.
The Prime Minister's recollection includes the line, "I wasn't as stressed out about my exams as perhaps I should have been". Rove MacManus says he remembers feeling like he should "get the best mark I can".
This approach runs the risk of suggesting you should try do well, but it's okay if you don't, because you will succeed later in life. Is this really consolation for any teens this week feeling, or being made to feel, disappointment and shame in their results?
We shouldn't try to convince teenagers that their results don't matter, but instead encourage them to interrogate why society says they do - and how we can take steps to change it.
Topics: education, secondary, university-and-further-education, australia
First posted(Brian Snyder/Reuters)
The GOP nominee proposes himself as the sole solution to the nation’s ills. That’s the opposite of conservative.
In the battle over the role of government in American life, it’s clear that the Left is winning decisively. The era of small government is over. As Donald Trump’s convention speech made clear, the election of 2016 is a race between an old-school Democrat and a new-school progressive — between a post-war Teamsters’ boss and a university professor. Actual conservatism is nowhere in sight.
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I can’t recall a Republican speech in my lifetime that put such an overwhelming emphasis on the ability of a national leader to transform American lives. I and I alone will protect Americans from ISIS, from domestic crime, and from the free market, Trump declared. Corporations won’t move their factories, wages will increase, and trade will suddenly become fair. How? Don’t ask. He’ll make it so.
Nor can I remember a modern Republican speech that put less emphasis on life, liberty, or the Constitution. He never mentioned abortion or Roe v. Wade. His discussion of religious liberty focused entirely around the Johnson Amendment — obscure legislation that has kept churches out of politics — and neglected the far more grave concerns about the independence and even existence of religious institutions in the face of increasingly militant secular progressives. In a speech that lasted 75 minutes and felt even longer, he used the word “freedom” once. “Liberty” was nowhere to be found.
Conservatives have long focused on the reality that private individuals and private associations are the best-equipped to encourage and foster human flourishing. Churches and civic associations take care of their members better than government social workers. Businesses large and small are best-equipped to respond to and spearhead economic innovation. Good families are better than even the best government at raising children and overseeing their education.
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RELATED: Trump Caps Divided Convention with Uncharacteristic Discipline
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Thus, much of the modern conservative enterprise has been focused around protecting individuals and private associations from government encroachment, and ending government monopolies on enterprises such as education in an attempt to spur competition and restore the primacy of the family in the lives of children. This philosophy depends on a world of mutual obligations, with individuals and families primarily responsible for their own well-being and governments responsible for protecting their liberty and security.
Trump understands what Democrats have long understood: The disconnected and vulnerable often feel that they have nowhere to turn but to government.
The breakdown of the family and the increasing alienation of the individual has changed this calculus. A person in an intact marriage who belongs to a thriving church looks at the world very differently from a single parent living on their own or an older divorcée who’s disconnected from the surrounding community. During the primary, the more a Republican was connected to a church or to civic associations, the less likely they were to vote for Trump. The more alienated the citizen, the more likely they were to hop on the Trump Train.
Trump understands what Democrats have long understood: The disconnected and vulnerable often feel that they have nowhere to turn but to government. They feel helpless and look for a champion. That’s why President Obama put out his much-derided “Julia” cartoon: to show single women that they have nothing to fear, because the government will meet all their most critical earthly needs.
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Trump could put out his own cartoon — let’s call his hero “Frank” — describing how, thanks to his chosen leader, Frank can keep his job, increase his wages, and prevent his nasty factory owner from closing up shop and heading to Mexico. Trump will keep Frank safe, limit Frank’s economic competition, and protect Frank from the world economy.
But Trump’s Frank relies not so much on his man’s policies as his man’s promises. Obama came to the table bearing proposed gifts, a potpourri of programs that purport to protect Americans from cradle to grave. Trump comes to the table bearing himself, pledging to be Frank’s champion and asking Frank to trust that Trump’s incredible talent and winning habits will carry the day.
Conservatives have to face a sobering reality: At present they simply do not have a message that reaches the Franks of the world like Trump’s does.
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#related#Intact, church-going, engaged families face each day with more hope and optimism — and with greater resilience — than their more alienated peers. The connected conservative largely experiences government as an impediment to prosperity, as a drag on their dreams. Yet — as I wrote in the aftermath of the 2012 GOP defeat — a conservative message of small government, self-reliance, and individual liberty turns out to be pretty terrifying to millions of struggling Americans. In 2016, we learned that many of those millions inhabit the GOP ranks. They weren’t ever going to embrace the multicultural progressivism of the New Left, but the protectionism and paternalism of the old liberal order had its appeals.
In other words: The southern Democrat is back. The old-school Midwest union boss is back. They have their champion, and he’s the GOP nominee. For now, the Left has won. The only real question is which version of big-government liberalism will prevail in November.
— David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review.A German news outlet aired video Monday showing some Ukrainian soldiers with helmets and gear displaying Nazi symbols, according to reports.
The footage on TV station ZDF showed volunteer soldiers with swastikas and the “SS runes” of Adolph Hitler’s elite corps, NBC News reported. Videojournalists for a Norwegian broadcaster captured the video in eastern Ukraine last week.
The soldiers are reportedly members of the Azov battalion, a volunteer military force in Ukraine with nationalist tendencies. Members of the battalion, however, deny that they believe in a fascist ideology, the International Business Times reported.
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Ukraine’s government signed a cease-fire agreement with Russian-backed separatists last Friday, which halted months of fighting.
Earlier this year, multiple reports said Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk received fliers ordering them to register with the government. The leaflets told Jewish residents that their citizenship could be revoked and that they could face deportation or their assets could be confiscated if they didn't register and pay a fee.
The incident sparked outrage among members of Congress and led critics to draw parallels with the lead-up to the Holocaust.
In an alert earlier this year, the State Department warned Americans about the increased presence of Russian neo-Nazi and nationalist extremist groups in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has previously accused the government in Kiev of engaging in anti-Semitic activities and sought to paint the government in Kiev as far right.
President Obama is scheduled to host Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the White House next Thursday.Image copyright AFP Image caption Women's rights activists want article 475 of Morocco's penal code to be repealed
Several hundred women's rights activists have demonstrated outside Morocco's parliament to demand the repeal of a law on sexual violence.
Morocco's penal code allows a rapist to marry his victim if she is a minor as a way of avoiding prosecution.
A 16-year-old girl, Amina Filali, killed herself a week ago after being severely beaten during a forced marriage to her rapist.
The protesters held signs saying, "The law has killed Amina".
The parents of Amina Filali were at the protest, says the BBC's Nora Fakim, in the Moroccan capital, Rabat.
They say their daughter was pressured by a local court into marrying her rapist, who then abused her.
She died after swallowing rat poison on 10 March.
'Special circumstances'
Her case has shocked many in Morocco. Women's rights groups have started an online campaign to have the law - article 475 - repealed. A Facebook page called "We are all Amina Filali" has been set up.
Analysis The protest is an attempt to change attitudes concerning sex before marriage, especially in cases of rape, where the woman can sometimes be regarded as the criminal rather than the victim in order to preserve the family's honour. Fouzia Assouli, the president of the Democratic League for Women's Rights, says the removal of article 475 would be a step forward in changing conservative attitudes. However, the protesters feel let down by the lack of response from the government and are furious at the justice minister, who has not been willing to open an inquiry into Ms Filali's suicide. The demonstrators want women's rights to be respected, not violated, and they want to help poor women such as Ms Filali to be able to stand up for themselves.
"What we have witnessed is scandalous. We have had enough. We must change this law, we must change the penal code," said Fouzia Assouli, the president of the Democratic League for Women's Rights.
Ms Filali came from the small northern town of Larache, near Tangiers.
In poor, conservative rural areas such as this, it is unacceptable for a woman to lose her virginity before marriage - and the dishonour is hers and her family's even if she is raped, our correspondent says.
The legal age of marriage in Morocco is 18, unless there are "special circumstances" - which is the reason why Ms Filali was married despite being under-age.
A judge can only recommend marriage if all parties involved agree - but activists say pressure is often applied to the victim's family to avoid a scandal.
Ms Filali's father said that when he reported the rape of his daughter, he was advised of the option to marry by court officials.
"The prosecutor advised my daughter to marry. He said, 'Go and make the marriage contract'," Lahcen Filali told an online newspaper, goud.ma.
Campaigners are also calling for the judge who allowed the marriage and the rapist to be jailed.Mayor Bill de Blasio laid out his administration's "Vision Zero," plan to reduce traffic fatalities and crack down on dangerous driving at a press conference Wednesday. View Full Caption DNAinfo/Colby Hamilton
WOODSIDE — Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed to make the city's streets safer for pedestrians on Wednesday, when he laid out his administration's "Vision Zero," plan to reduce traffic fatalities and crack down on dangerous driving in the wake of nearly 300 traffic deaths last year.
Some measures will be immediate. The mayor announced that the city's recently installed speed cameras will start issuing tickets beginning on Thursday. He also plans to increase the number of police officers assigned to the NYPD's Highway division, which enforces serious traffic violations.
The mayor made the announcement outside of P.S. 152, in Woodside, just blocks from where a third grader, Noshat Nahian, was struck and killed by a an unlicensed truck driver while crossing Northern Boulevard on his way to school Dec. 20.
De Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton said they have an officer stationed at the corner of Northern Boulevard and 61st Street where the 8-year-old was killed, and that the busy intersection will be getting a crossing guard.
"I see this through the eyes of a parent, I see this as a father," the mayor said at the announcement, where he was joined by families holding photos of loved ones lost to traffic fatalities. "This is an area in which we simply have to do better."
Starting Thursday, six speed cameras at undisclosed locations will begin issuing $50 tickets to speeding drivers, where they had previously only issued warnings. They're part of a 5-year program approved by a State law in August that will allow for the installation of up 20 speed cameras near schools.
De Blasio has said he will push for "home rule," on traffic cameras, which would allow the city to install them at its discretion instead of being dependent on state approval.
Bratton, meanwhile, said he's increased the NYPD's Highway division personnel by 10 percent since taking office at the start of the new year, and plans to add another 60 officers to the 210 currently assigned to the division.
"This is an effort that the mayor has prioritized and rightfully so," the commissioner said. "A life lost is a life lost, whether by murder or traffic accident."
There were 286 traffic fatalities in the city last year, the mayor said, and the level of deaths has sparked outrage among activists and calls for change. There have been 11 traffic deaths so far in 2014, seven of them pedestrians.
De Blasio also said he's launched a new multi-agency "working group," which will help him implement his "Vision Zero" plan, with the ultimate goal of reducing traffic fatalities to zero over the next decade.
The NYPD, Dept. of Transportation, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Taxi & Limousine Commission are set to deliver a report to the mayor by Feb. 15, in which they'll outline concrete plans on traffic safety issues like how to to deter dangerous driving, create more 20 MPH zones across the city and improve dangerous corridors and intersections.
"It will be a measure that will keep us accountable and it will be a road map for our efforts ahead," de Blasio said.HAMPSHIRE police have launched a crackdown on stolen bikes with a raid on a Southampton property involving 30 officers.
The warrant was carried out on Helvellyn Road in the Millbrook area of the city and involved officers from Southampton and Shirley neighbourhood policing teams.
The raid was organised as part of Operation D Lock, a Southampton based operation focussing on cycle security awareness and targeting those suspected of being involved in theft.
As a result of the action, two men aged 25 and 27 were arrested on suspicion of theft of pedal cycles and questioned by police.
Sergeant Martin Conlan from Southampton Central Police Station, said: “We take cycle theft very seriously; our aim is to protect property whilst making Southampton a hostile place for criminals to steal cycles. You will begin to see new cycle theft prevention initiatives over the coming months under Operation D-Lock.
“The support we receive from the local community is vital in helping us make our communities safer and every piece of information is greatly appreciated. Please continue to contact us with any information about suspicious activity that you may be aware of."
The two men both from Southampton were later released on police bail until November 25.
Officers are also encouraging the public to look at the Hampshire Constabulary Flickr site, where an album has been setup showing a number of the cycles recovered.Wet Hot American Summer is one of the most rewatchable movies out there. The 2001 comedy, directed by David Wain, is deliriously, enthusiastically dumb, chronicling the last day of lunacy at the idyllic Camp Firewood as the summer of 1981 comes to a close. No punchline is too silly, no cutaway too obvious, no cliché too clichéd. It’s endlessly quotable and relentlessly fun, and every time I watch it I come away with a new favorite joke.
But now that Netflix has turned the film into a TV franchise — starting with the 2015 prequel series First Day of Camp and continuing this week with a new sequel, the ’90s-set 10 Years Later — the jokes that were once so bonkers and buoyant have started to sag.
Rating vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
First Day of Camp had some fun with new characters, not to mention its winking refusal to explain why all of the returning “teen” characters — played by the film’s original cast — look 15 years older on the first day of camp than they do on the last. But it was also shaggy, scattered, and hampered by the obvious fact that barely any of its actors could be in the same place at the same time, because they’d all become a lot more famous, and therefore a lot busier, since making the original film. By the time I finished watching it, I was glad it existed but had a feeling I would rarely be tempted to revisit it.
Unfortunately, that sentiment holds doubly true for 10 Years Later, which takes place in 1991 and centers on the camp counselor reunion first teased in the original film. While the cast is solid enough that it can sell almost anything, taking a third trip to Camp Firewood makes for a reunion that would’ve been best left to our imaginations.
Here’s the good, bad, and weird of this latest — and hopefully final — return to the world of Wet Hot American Summer.
Good: the Wet Hot cast is still great
The reason Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later is here at all is the same reason the movie ever worked in the first place: its excellent cast.
The original film brought together an eclectic mix of known and unknown performers, from Paul Rudd and pre-SNL Amy Poehler to The State comedians Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter to then-future movie stars Bradley Cooper and Elizabeth Banks to bonus Janeane Garofalo and Christopher Meloni (and I still haven’t mentioned at least three of my favorites). First Day of Camp then capitalized on the original cast’s collective rise in fame to bring in even more big players — including Josh Charles and Kristen Wiig as Camp Firewood’s preppiest rivals. Both Charles and Wiig return for 10 Years Later, as do many more of the prequel’s cast additions. And they’re all joined by Adam Scott, who makes his Wet Hot debut in 10 Years Later to play Bradley Cooper’s character post-nose job (truly, a deviated septum can change an entire face.)
Everyone is exactly as enthusiastic and willing to make total idiots of themselves as the Wet Hot way of life requires. Rudd as Camp Firewood’s most dedicated dirtbag and John Early as Poehler’s camp theater rival are particular standouts, relishing every ounce of sneering material they get. Even 10 Years Later’s weakest moments are lifted a bit by the rock-solid cast performing them.
Weird: the unsung hero of Wet Hot American Summer is still the can of vegetables
It’s difficult to name the weirdest part of a series that is wall-to-wall weirdness, but I’ll go with H. Jon Benjamin returning as a sentient can of vegetables — the product of a man sliding into a pool of toxic sludge — and going on the lam to escape the wrath of Ronald Reagan. To say more would rob you of the particular joy of his madcap road trip adventures, so let’s leave it at that.
Bad: there’s just not a whole lot left that Wet Hot has to say
Where the Wet Hot American Summer movie parodied ’80s sex comedies and First Day of Camp doubled down on surrealism, 10 Years Later mostly rehashes old punchlines and makes fun of itself for doing so. There are long, long stretches — especially toward the beginning — where the humor alternates between ’90s references and the characters making meta jokes about themselves. Plus, with eight episodes to fill, 10 Years Later careens right through them, which gets old quickly.
About halfway through the season, watching 10 Years Later starts to feel like stumbling into a real live reunion that you weren’t invited to, but everyone there sure is having a great time, so you might as well have a drink and listen to them shoot the shit. It’s obvious when they find something hilarious, but less so why.
Still, it’s hard to blame the Wet Hot team for wanting to take another crack at Camp Firewood. Everyone involved in 10 Years Later probably had a hell of a good time getting together and throwing ridiculous jokes at each other like it’s a competitive sport on Netflix’s generous dime. So while the result can be frustrating to watch, it’d be understandable if they made it more for themselves than for anyone else.
Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, and Wet Hot American Summer (Original Movie Flavor) are all available to stream on Netflix.They might tear down the barricades at the Lincoln Memorial next — and pee on the trees — to protest Washington dysfunction. "People here need to be thinking about serving their country and not their own sorry butts."
WASHINGTON — Military veterans are declaring war on the government shutdown. After a group of veterans broke down the barricades at the national World War II Memorial Tuesday afternoon, organizers of one Hero Flight Network group told BuzzFeed it wasn't the last Washington would hear from them. Veterans are plotting another protest at the same place Wednesday, and expressed interest in staging similar events at sites across the nation's capital, including the Lincoln Memorial — an act of civil disobedience that would likely pour fuel on the already highly flammable politics of the government shutdown. "We have people here that are 80 and 90 years old and they closed down all the bathrooms?" said Tony Nussbaum, a 25-year veteran of the Air Force from Iowa and a leader of the state's Hero Flight group. "I'm about to just start pissing on the trees." The World War II Memorial on the National Mall became a political battlefield Tuesday, with conservatives excoriating Democrats for the monument's closure as they escorted busloads of war veterans past bewildered park rangers and into the shuttered monument. On Wednesday, the scene could repeat itself when groups from the Honor Flight Network — a national charity that brings aging World War II veterans to visit the national monument to the conflict they fought in — are scheduled to arrive at the massive outdoor memorial. Meanwhile, veterans have pondered staging a similar protest at the Lincoln memorial, said Jamie Miller, a five-year veteran of the Marine Corps and another organizer of the Iowa group that stormed the World War II memorial Tuesday. "We are thinking about jumping the Lincoln memorial too," he said. "If Lincoln was a war memorial I would do it in a heart beat." Wednesday's rally at the World War II is set to become a political sideshow to the larger shutdown debate, with Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus urging Republicans to show up at the event with American flags to support the veterans and attack Democrats and Barack Obama. Those RNC supporters that show up will find a lot of Republican lawmakers — |
better of you. Mars conjunct Chiron in Pisces reminds me of tai chi – a soft, meditative martial art that can be used defensively if necessary. Ultimately it’s more about channelling and understanding your own energy than ‘fighting’ your opponent. This is the way of the peaceful warrior. Those of you with planets or points around 15 degrees of the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) are likely to feel this the most.
The week ends on a sweet note with Venus conjunct Neptune in Pisces on the 1st February and we are back to soft lights, candles and music again! This is a romantic aspect, perfect if you want to spend a little time with your honey but also wonderful for indulging in some quiet time for yourself too. The only niggle here is that when these two get together there can be a tendency to see the world through rose-coloured spectacles. You see what you want to see under this aspect and therefore caution is required, especially in matters of the heart and financial agreements. Things that seem too good to be true under Venus conjunct Neptune, probably are.
This is a lovely influence however for practising healing, meditation, prayer, compassion. Watch the sunset, listen to some Chopin, Phillip Glass or David Darling for some soul soothing musical delight. Surrender to love.
Weekly Astrology Forecast Aspects
26th January Venus semi square Uranus
26th January Venus semi-square Pluto
27th January Venus enters Pisces
27th January First Quarter Moon in Taurus
28th January Mercury retrograde sextile Uranus
28th January Mars square Pallas
29th January Sun opposite Juno
30th January Venus square Saturn
30th January Mercury retrograde conjunct the Sun
30th January Mars sextile Pluto
31st January Mars conjunct Chiron
1st February Venus conjunct Neptune
Painting – ‘ Beauty At The Well’ by Guillaume Seignac
Book a consultation or reading with mefor punsWow is this week a hectic one new jobs and things popping up and lots of rescheduling and planning its nuts. I have not seen the new pony episode yet or continued with the title cards and my other personal projects because of the busyness. But I am setting aside a day this week just to concentrate on pony to catch up. Wait this is not a twitter or FB update lets move on.Just this afternoon while out for my daily walk I suddenly remembered a visual gag from one of my peanuts volumes that needed ponyifing so badly. I put down my important work to get this done to a good standard. I also WoonaHard core fans of peanuts may recognize the joke straight away because I did stylize it to look like Mr. M. Schulz. Lets just say Lucy gets what’s coming to her in the end.The bit with celestia I added at the last minute just for kicks and lollsThis was a lot of fun to draw peanuts just like Garifled when I read them makes me laugh or at least simile just like ponies.Until next devation LATERS ; )Until next deviation LATERS: peace:All drawn on Photoshop CS6 with my Wacom tablet 5Like ithate itIts up to you not marmiteAksys Games has announced that the action strategy game Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault is coming to PS Vita, PS3 and PS4 in North America in March 2016.
Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault is a frenetic and explosive new spin on action strategy gaming. Dig in, plan out and build up your defenses as hordes of hulking monstrosities bombard your heavily fortified city in an attempt to wipe you off the Earth for good.
Command the last bastion of humanity as you fight for the survival of the species utilizing fantastic tech, cunning tactics and massive weapons in an all-out action strategy extravaganza.
Defense is the Strongest Offense
Engage in dynamic city defense via revolutionary gameplay mechanics in which you rotate your entire city to aim weapons and take out monsters! Leave no quadrant untouched as you spin 360 degrees in search of would-be destroyers!
Engage in dynamic city defense via revolutionary gameplay mechanics in which you rotate your entire city to aim weapons and take out monsters! Leave no quadrant untouched as you spin 360 degrees in search of would-be destroyers! Immersive Commander Experience
Command and level up a huge variety of units and gargantuan weapons as you hone your tactical skills. Immersive gameplay puts you in the center of intense combat. Seize the initiative from your enemies and decimate their ranks as a robust cast of characters lend their support to the cause!
Command and level up a huge variety of units and gargantuan weapons as you hone your tactical skills. Immersive gameplay puts you in the center of intense combat. Seize the initiative from your enemies and decimate their ranks as a robust cast of characters lend their support to the cause! Massive Content Keeps You in the Fight!
An intense 20+ hour campaign ensures you’ll have your hands full as you battle through 23 epic missions! Fend off 15 species of relentless enemies that will not stop until your city is reduced to rubble!
A release date for Europe has not been announced yet but as usual we will keep you updated.
Check out the Aegis of Earth: Protonovus Assault Screenshots:It will probably take a while before we know how many deposits were moved from the big banks to the credit unions due to the Bank Transfer Day campaign. The official Bank Transfer Day was Saturday November 5th, but the momentum will likely continue. Reports last week noted that "650,000 new members transferred a total of $4.5 billion in funds into new credit union savings accounts in the month leading up to Bank Transfer Day."
I've seen some in the news media express concerned about how Bank Transfer Day could create a bank run. I was surprised to hear concerns. Not everyone may be aware of the massive size of the big banks. Banks still hold the vast majority of deposits. According to the Wall Street Journal "Credit unions held just 8% of federally insured deposits as of June 30, compared with 70% for banks that have assets of more than $10 billion." A WSJ chart shows that the total deposits of all credit unions are just over $800 billion. As a comparison, the deposits of banks are just under $10 trillion ($10,000 billion).
I thought it would be informative to review the sizes of the largest banks and credit unions. In the two tables below I've listed the largest 20 U.S. banks and credit unions. They are ranked by deposits.
To show how massive the megabanks are, I graphed the deposit size of the four largest banks and the total combined deposits of the largest 20 credit unions. The deposits of the 20 largest credit unions added together equal $149 billion. The largest bank by deposits is Chase which has $1.18 trillion. This is almost 8 times the size of the combined deposits of the largest 20 credit unions.
Unfortunately, these four megabanks have grown larger since the 2008 the financial crisis. They were too big to fail before the crisis, and now they're even bigger. The size increases were due to their acquisition of banks that had failed or were near failure. Chase acquired Washington Mutual when it failed. Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia when it was near failure in 2008. Bank of America acquired Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch.
The large sizes of these four megabanks can be seen in the other large banks. The fifth largest is currently US Bank which has total deposits of about $219 billion. That's about one-fourth the size of the smallest of the big four, Citibank. Note, I'm still keeping Capital One and ING Direct separate since their merger has not yet closed. Once this merger completes, Capital One will be near the size of US Bank.
Largest 20 Banks Based in U.S. by Deposits
Largest 20 Credit Unions by Deposits
The above deposits are based on June 2011 data from the FDIC and NCUA websites. Several of these large banks have multiple FDIC charters. The deposits listed in the table are the sum of the deposits from these multiple charters.
If you don't see your bank or credit union listed in the above tables, you can find your institution's size and other financial data using our Bank Health Ratings page. On this page you can find your institution using the search box or at the bottom of this page which has a sortable list of institutions and their Texas Ratios.At a bar at the University of North Carolina, a student named Liz Hawryluk complained to the DJ on a Saturday night in 2014 when he played Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines." The song was a major summer hit, played at nightclubs around the world, but Hawryluk demanded the DJ immediately stop playing it.
The song includes the line, "Good girl I know you want it." Allegedly words a rapist would speak.
When the DJ refused and the girl continued insisting, she was asked to leave the bar. She then wrote about her experience on Facebook, arguing that line in the song is a "trigger" for victims of sexual assault that can reawaken their trauma. After her post got shared a number of times, the bar publicly apologized and fired the DJ.
In 2015, feminist film researcher Laura Kipnis, a professor at Chicago's Northwestern University, became the subject of an investigation after she published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education about sexual paranoia in academia. The subject of the article had been a new ban on sex or relationships between students and professors at the university. Kipnis also criticized what she described as obsessive discussion among female students about traumas and sensitivity. She described it as a fallback to traditional behavioral patterns -- the vulnerable woman, the helpless victim and the man as the perpetrator.
But the supposedly defenseless female students struck back -- first on Facebook and later in the form of a protest. Two students then lodged a complaint against Kipnis for alleged sexual misconduct, arguing that Kipnis' essay had a "chilling effect" on female students who wanted to file sexual harassment complaints. Kipnis had to hire a lawyer and the charges were dropped after a 72-day investigation. In a later article, she described the proceedings as an absurd drama reminiscent of a Kafka novel.
Roger Copeland spent a long time contemplating where these vulnerabilities and sensitivities might have come from. "The relationship my students have with the world is constantly mediated. They only have access to it through their iPhone screens and through the social networks they have joined. What we would call the virtual is the real for them."
It's only when they are in the lecture halls, when someone like Copeland is speaking to them, that this filtered reality is suddenly suspended. This suspension can evoke a defensive reaction in those who are only used to receiving select news from a politically correct world in which everything has been furnished with warning labels and freed of any microaggressions. Internet activist Eli Pariser calls the serving of information to users using algorithms that predict what they think the reader will want to see the "filter bubble."
Socio-cultural advancement has become something of a fetish for many students -- and many have lost sight of everything else in the process.
Class Status
Professor Marc Blecher, who teaches political science at Oberlin and enjoys lecturing on Marxism, had warned at a meeting one month prior to the election, likewise at the Slow Train Café, that the millennial students of today's generation may talk a lot about social transformation, but they have lost sight of one truly decisive issue: class.
With their focus on skin color, gender and sexual orientation and the microaggressions associated with them, he argued, students were overlooking what Trump was able to recognize: Most people in the United States aren't unhappy or angry because of their gender, their personal pronoun or the lack of a trigger warning in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (due to misogyny). They're angry because they aren't able to pay their rents, and they have the feeling that nobody cares -- that the liberal-progressive public is more concerned about whether the bathrooms used by transsexuals should be those of their biological or perceived gender. Shouldn't the discussion be about the fight for wealth redistribution rather than definitions and identities?
Sidestepping such issues often underscores just how helpless many of these students have become, Blecher says. Still, he doesn't want create any misunderstandings. "They are not spoiled sons and daughters. Oberlin's brand is social progressivism. The school wants to admit students from financially weaker families, students from Hispanic or African-American families, some are kids from the streets. Some have spent the last five years trying to get in and then their guidance counselor at high school gets them into a place like Oberlin. They were the most promising students we could find. And you know what? They arrive here and it is hell for them!"
Academic expectations are high, which he says makes the students feel like they don't belong here -- and, in a way, they don't. "At its core, Oberlin is a highly exclusive place that wants to be inclusive. It's an unavoidable contradiction. So some lash out." And how do they do that? They look for a discourse, for a language. What they find is language like "microaggressions," "safe space" and "intersectionality," meaning the traits that some minorities have in common. "Their frustration keeps growing to the point that they start attacking the food in the cafeteria!"
The interesting thing, says Blecher, is that the students' feelings of outrage are correct -- they are just misplaced. "What's really keeping them down are class dynamics and racial segregation. But we don't talk about that."
The Limits of Freedom
In places where microaggressions lurk and trigger warnings become necessary, certain things can simply no longer be discussed. The children of the 1968 student protest generation took for granted the freedoms that their parents fought to obtain, holding them to be self-evident. The grandchildren of the 1968 generation now want to retract some of those freedoms. Free speech -- once the highest achievement the leftist student generation had fought for -- is now largely and paradoxically being invoked by populists and the right-wing.
When Donald Trump calls Mexicans who cross the borders rapists, when he cracks jokes about women, and when, at gatherings in his honor, people lift their arms in Hitler greetings and fans of his top adviser Steve Bannon tweet "Sieg Heil" -- that all falls under "freedom of speech."
The roles have been completely reversed. Whereas today's leftist student movement is willing to sacrifice the freedom of speech -- fought for by their political predecessors - on the altar of trigger warnings and "safe spaces," this right is now being defended by the very same right-wing whose political antecedents sought to prevent it back in the day.
This new right can be seen every day on Fox News. The cable network interprets freedom of speech to mean the right to insult. And that freedom of expression also provides a license to spread untruths. That's also a problem with Trump's new America: One part of the population is growing increasingly sensitive and no longer wants to read "Antigone," while the other is growing increasingly brazen, calling Mexicans rapists and seeing all Muslims as terrorists. In Donald Trump, they will soon have a president who emboldens them.
Their narrative holds that they would love to say what is actually on their minds, but the "social justice warriors," the guardians of political correctness, led by the "liberal media," won't let them. They too feel they are victims -- at least they act like it, complaining that you can't say anything in this country anymore. Indeed, they feel much as the leftist students did in the early 1960s. The only difference being that there really were things that you couldn't say back then.
'We Were Young and Inexperienced'
Bettina Aptheker was one of the leaders of the free speech movement back then, some 52 years ago. On the morning of Oct. 2, 1964, she climbed on top of a police car in front of UC Berkeley's Sproul Hall and gave a speech. Aptheker was 20 at the time. In her speech, she quoted former slave Frederick Douglass, who said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." It was one of the events that launched a movement -- initially in the West, and then worldwide -- for social transformation, for women's rights, civil rights, then for gay rights and later for transgender rights, a movement that is directly connected to today's students at Oberlin College. Ultimately, though, they created the opposite of what they had sought. Aptheker and her fellow campaigners ultimately created a monster, the PC Monster.
Bettina Aptheker calls herself an absolutist. But even she is no longer certain that the right to free speech can be absolute in these insult-filled times. She's still in academia today, working as a professor of feminist studies at UC Santa Cruz. One morning at the end of September, she was teaching a class called "Feminism and Social Justice." The vocabulary used by students today more or less has its origins in feminist terminology. "When Trump taps Clinton on the back during a television debate," Aptheker says, "it is a classic microaggression."
Her parents were among the most prominent and outspoken communists in the United States and became targets of persecution during the McCarthy era. Aptheker was also a member of the Communist Party, something, she says, that made her familiar with the straitjacket of political correctness. Today she is 72 years old and has lived together with another woman for 40 years, from a previous marriage she has two children. She points to photos standing on her bookshelf -- pictures of families comprised almost exclusively of women. Her daughter is also an outed lesbian and comes for Christmas with her children and her partner. It is all evidence of a social transformation that nobody would have thought possible half a century ago.
"We were young and inexperienced back then. We thought everyone should be able to say anything, cost what it may." But now Aptheker ponders the second half of that sentence. One example of the price paid back then, she says, was that a bunch of American neo-Nazis turned up on campus at Berkeley in full regalia -- with swastika armbands and signs reading, "Burn Aptheker." As a student, she didn't like it, but she thought it was tolerable, something covered by freedom of speech.
Today Aptheker says she even deliberates over Halloween costumes. Costumes triggered a national debate last year after the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale University sent out an email warning students to avoid wearing "culturally unaware and insensitive" costumes that might offend minority students: So please, no feathered headdresses, turbans or 'war paint' and no wearing of blackface or redface.
A Paradigm Shift
Perhaps such limitations on freedom make some sense. Aptheker says she's no longer certain today whether we should accept a situation where the weaker in society are insulted in the name of protecting free speech. She's learned a lot about microaggression through feminist teachings.
When she took to the barricades at Berkeley a half-century ago, the issues at hand were more pressing, like ensuring that African-Americans could vote. In the face of such a challenge, the "5,000 microaggressions blacks faced daily in the South" took a back seat.
But are the issues being raised by students today not equally important?
Ismail Muhammad is waiting at the corner of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, the very place at the university's southern entrance where Aptheker once stood on top of the police car. The handsome 27-year-old African-American wearing Nike basketball shoes is a Ph.D. student and an expert in modern American literature. Muhammad gained a certain amount of prominence when, in the middle of the outrage over trigger warnings and safe spaces, he made a quiet and determined case for why a rejection of such concerns was ignorant and myopic. He believes absolute free speech is no longer sustainable -- not in times of shitstorms on the social networks, character assassination on the Internet and bald-faced lies and parallel worlds on the television news stations. He argues that the movement for social transformation that has been ongoing from the 1960s to the present has actually been nothing more than the continuation and the further evolution of the thinking of the 1968 generation of student protesters.
Today's "social justice warriors" are now, for the first time, seriously calling into question the daily discrimination that has been a regular part of life for hundreds of years. That, Muhammad says, is the first paradigm shift to have happened since the 1960s, a new level.
Muhammad believes that the Baby Boomers, who were raised with the values of the 1968 movement, but also their successors, Generation X, are just as unable to comprehend these concerns as Bettina Aptheker's opponents were during the 1960s.
The fact that this phase is happening right during a time when the country has elected a president who stands for racism and sexism, could provide the movement with strength and legitimacy. It might also lead them to shed their self-image of victimhood. Perhaps, as Professor Blecher at Oberlin proposed, they will instead focus on class and poverty. If people had done that 20 years ago, we probably wouldn't be sitting here now facing a President Trump in just a couple of weeks.
On the day after the vote, Oberlin College held a symposium called, "Making Sense of the 2016 Election." A few days later, 2,400 students, staff and former employees called for Oberlin to be made a "Sanctuary Campus," a kind of "safe space" for the illegal immigrants that the incoming Trump administration has said it wants to deport.
A few days after that, news of the vote breakdown in Oberlin came in: 4,575 votes for Hillary Clinton against 412 for Donald Trump. They now want to find those Trump voters. And confront them.If you suddenly lost your income, how long would you be able to live on your savings? For 43.9 percent of American households, the answer is less than three months, even if they keep their spending to the most basic needs. That's not just true of families that know they're close to poverty, either—one in four households earning between $55,465 and $90,000 are in the same boat, according to the 2013 Assets & Opportunities Scorecard
Unsurprisingly, as bad as that overall figure of 43.9 percent of families not having enough liquid assets to get through three months is, the numbers are far worse for people of color (the scorecard categories are not broken down beyond that): 62.6 percent are liquid asset poor, and white households have a median net worth of $110,973, 10 times that of households of color at $10,824.
The scorecard, mapped out above, rates the states on how well they promote household financial security through jobs, education, health care, housing and financial assets. That means it looks not just at outcomes like how many people are three months from poverty or have health insurance, but what the states do on a policy level to make things better, like providing quality public education, having a minimum wage above the federal minimum of $7.25, prohibiting predatory payday lenders, supporting microenterprise, offering tax credits for working families. You know, things that are actually correlated with better outcomes for working people.
We know a lot about poverty, and about just how low the minimum wage is. But what's particularly scary about these numbers is the realization of how fragile the middle-class lives of so many middle-class people are, how many people could so quickly be thrown into poverty because of one medical crisis or job loss. And when you pair that with America's shredded safety net, it's terrifying.Advertisement
At ICRA last year, JPL presented a robotic control system called the BioSleeve, which is a sensor-packed bandage that wraps around your arm and lets you control robots with movements and gestures. It's essentially a gesture recognition system that works independently of any external sensors (like cameras or motion capture systems), meaning that you can use it in a variety of positions and in just about any location that you happen to be, like outside, or in space.
The problem with hardware like this is we all know that it's going to be a long long long long looong time before something that works in a lab at JPL finds its way onto our arms as consumers. But you know what? That's perfectly fine, because a Canadian startup called Thalmic Labs has its own wearable gesture sensing peripheral that's about to hit the consumer market, and we got to check it out last month at CES.
The Myo is built around eight EMG (electromyography) muscle activity sensors along with a nine-axis inertial measurement unit (that's three axes each for accelerometer, gyro, and magnetometer), meaning that you get forearm gesture sensing along with relative motion sensing (as opposed to absolute position). The EMG sensors pick up on the electrical potential generated by muscle cells, and with the Myo on your forearm, the sensors can read all of the muscles that control your fingers, letting them spy on finger position as well as grip strength.
Also somehow stuffed into the Myo armband (the final consumer version will be about half as thick as the developer version in the video) is a rechargeable lithium battery (good for "multi-day usage"), an ARM processor, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, a micro USB port for charging, and wireless compatibility with PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android. Open source APIs enable even more versatility.
For most users, getting the Myo to work will be as simple as slipping it on your arm and making gestures, a set of which will be preprogrammed into the device. To keep you from accidentally gesturing yourself into oblivion, there's a unique on/off gesture to enable or disable the armband. You'll be able to map gestures to commands on your computer just like a keyboard: in a video game context, for example, instead of using your mouse button to fire a gun, you can use your trigger finger. Or instead of hitting "R" to reload, you can raise your arm and make a physical gun reloading motion. For extra degrees of freedom, wear a second Myo on your other arm, too.
As for robotics, the big advantage of systems like Myo (or JPL's BioSleeve) is that it doesn't require external infrastructure or a controller that you have to hold onto, keep track of, and otherwise be careful with. With a wearable control system, you can keep it on all the time, and instantly activate it with a gesture. It's simple and intuitive and can be operated with a minimal amount of training, but at the same time, is versatile enough to control a wide variety of robots. But there's a trade-off: Neither the Myo or the BioSleeve might offer the extra-fine level of control that you can get with something more traditional (like a PS3 controller). As robotic autonomy increases, though, reliance on high-level commands will become the norm, and that's what things like the Myo are likely best at.
Thalmic is planning to ship consumer Myo units by the middle of this year, and you can pre-order them for $150.
[ Thalmic Labs ]Telcos 'Volunteered' To Hand Over Data To NSA... And Got Over $100 Million For It
from the the-industrial-intelligence-complex dept
After the attacks of September 11, 2001—but before President Bush authorized the program that would become STELLAR WIND on October 4—two major telecommunications companies approached the NSA to volunteer their assistance. Though they’re identified only as “COMPANY A” and “COMPANY B” in the reports, experts agree that they are almost certainly AT&T and Verizon. One of them, COMPANY B, had even done some of its own freelance intelligence work: it told the NSA that it had “noticed odd patterns in domestic calling records surrounding the events of 11 September and offered call records and analysis." Then again, perhaps “volunteer” isn’t quite the right word. The report tallies the costs of the program, which came to a bit more than $146 million over fiscal years 2002–2006. But only about $44 million of that went to the software and hardware infrastructure needed to sift through all that data. By far the biggest expense category—accounting for the other $102 million in outlays—was the “metadata and content” itself, an apparent reference to payments to the participating telecoms.
We've written a few times about the questionable nature of the "intelligence-industrial complex" in which various private companies are very tightly intertwined with the government's surveillance efforts, and are profiting handsomely from those efforts, giving everyone the incentive to play up bogus "threats" and to continually expand surveillance without oversight. Julian Sanchez has a great piece exploring some of the details on one of the more recent leaks from the Snowden files, involving the Inspector General's report looking into the original warrantless surveillance program called Stellar Wind (which was revealed years ago) by whistleblowers like Bill Binney, as well as the NY Times.As Sanchez notes, while Stellar Wind had been talked about extensively, there were still many important details that hadn't been know that were revealed in this report, including that the program was much broader than originally reported, that President Bush almost certainly lied in public about the extent of the program, that the decision to spy on Americans came from Cheney's office (without consulting the NSA) and theof people being spied on, both domestic and foreign (37,644 people, 3,018 of whom were Americans -- though that only counts the "targets" and not the many Americans they likely emailed with or called, whose communications were also intercepted).But perhaps the most interesting is the role of the telcos. As Sanchez notes, it would appear that AT&T and Verizon actively "volunteered" to hand over data to the government... and then proceeded to make over $100 million dollars as the government paid for this "voluntary" dismantling of the privacy of their customers.It remains telling that AT&T and Verizon have remained almost entirely silent about all of this, as various other companies mentioned in much more limited programs, have been pretty vocal about things.
Filed Under: data, intelligence industrial complex, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, telcos, volunteering
Companies: at&t, verizonEUGENE -- The start of college football's awards circuit is less than two weeks away, but Royce Freeman is a
who would never campaign on his behalf.
The Oregon Ducks, however, are not so modest about the running back's season. Given the opportunity Monday morning, teammates and coaches lauded the sophomore from Imperial, California, while the school's public relations wing published his gaudy stats to social media.
"Before each game I tell him he's the best running back in the nation," quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. said, before pausing ever so slightly to scan the crowd of a half-dozen reporters encircling him, making sure all were paying attention. "And he is the best running back in the nation."
Adams is, of course, heavily biased toward his teammate, and doesn't hold a vote for player-of-the-year honors such as the Maxwell Award and Heisman Trophy, nor Doak Walker Award, for the best running back.
Adams also has watched all of Freeman's games. Considering Oregon's string late-night kickoffs and struggles in a 3-3 start, offensive coordinator Scott Frost -- another member of the Freeman Fan Club -- acknowledged it would have been easy for those who decide the national award winners to tune out the Ducks.
"We're running the ball on everybody right now," Frost said.
Though the Ducks boast four backs who have gained at least 238 yards and 6.7 yards per carry, Freeman is called the indisputable motor that makes the engine go.
"He really puts this team on his back and he should be our offensive player of the year," Adams said. "He's the workhorse of the running backs and of the team."
Freeman's 1,539 rushing yards in 11 games are third-most in the Football Bowl Subdivision, behind Fournette's 1,582 through 10 games and McCaffrey's 1,546 through 11. Should Freeman continue his average of 139.9 yards per game, he will barely sneak by LaMichael James's 2011 single-season rushing record of 1,805 yards.
Though Freeman's numbers as a receiver (21 catches, 274 yards) pale in comparison to McCaffrey's -- the Cardinal sophomore is on pace to break Barry Sanders' 27-year-old NCAA record of 3,250 all-purpose yards -- they easily exceed his production as a receiver from 2014 and are evidence of Freeman's offseason work ethic, coach Mark Helfrich said earlier this season.
It is also proof, UO says, that Freeman deserves to be in the running for college football's individual hardware until the very end. It remains to be seen whether his special season registers with voters. The Doak Walker announces its three finalists Tuesday afternoon. Heisman finalists will be announced Dec. 7.
"He's been so great for us," Adams said. "He's probably the most underrated back in the country."
-- Andrew Greif
agreif@oregonian.com
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Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has led the tributes to legendary jockey AP McCoy on his retirement.
The 20-time Champion jockey is a lifelong Gunners fan, and winger Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also passed on his best wishes.
There was to be no fairytale ending for the northern Irishman, as he recorded two third-placed finishes at Sandown at his final ever meeting.
Wenger said: "I would like to congratulate you for your outstanding career. It is absolutely exceptional what you have done.
"At Arsenal, we are inspired by that kind of dedication, quality and consistency that you have achieved in your career. Well done."
Oxlade-Chamberlain added: "Congratulations on your retirement, AP. If anyone deserves it, it's definitely you.
"Hopefully, if you're not riding as much, you will be able to get to the Emirates and support the boys."Today, eight people have the same wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population. Stop and think about this. It is a mind-boggling concept.
Last year we said we would have needed a double-decker bus to transport the 62 people we thought owned the same as the poorest 3.6 billion on the planet. In 2017, thanks to more accurate data, we find that in fact this group would fit in a single golf buggy.
Today nearly 800 million people – one in nine – across the world will go to bed hungry or undernourished. The adults will wake up uncertain when they will next eat, whether they will have work, fearful for their health and the costs that illness in the family might bring. The eight men – yes, they’re all men – and their fellow billionaires will wake up having slept rather better, and their wealth, invested across the world, will have increased by countless millions even as they slept.
World's eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50% Read more
It would be easy to vilify the eight, to make each individual a poster boy of the growing chasm between the richest and the rest. But painting these individuals as the villains would be unfair. The eight include some of the world’s largest philanthropists and those, such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who have spoken out against the shocking scale of inequality in the world. These eight men are not themselves the cause of the poverty so many still live in. But they are the most powerful representatives and beneficiaries of an economic system in which wealth accrues more wealth; where wealth means power and influence, which in turn leads to laws and practices that help the rich get richer.
So this is not an exposé of eight people, but of a broken economics. Narrowing the gap between the richest and the rest requires us to take on a more challenging task than asking eight men to change their behaviour. It requires us to create a more human economy; one that does not result in 1% of the world’s population owning the same wealth as the other 99%. One that encourages and rewards enterprise and innovation, yes, but one that also offers everyone, regardless of background, a fair chance in life and ensures when individuals and businesses succeed, they do so for the benefit, rather than at the expense, of others.
Too often today, our economy rewards rather than discourages bad behaviour. Tax avoidance costs poor countries more than $100bn annually that could be used to provide clean water, lifesaving medicines or education. Rich countries, including the UK, lose countless billions more. Yet governments, anxious to defend their own corporate sectors and perceived national interests, have failed to adequately respond to companies’ use of tax loopholes, corporate power and new technology to avoid paying their fair share. Small, taxpaying businesses are forced to operate at a competitive disadvantage against multinationals, encouraging them to find their own dodges in a desperate effort to level the playing field.
Nowhere is the old proverb “money begets money” more apparent than in how companies seem determined to stuff the pay packets of their top executives, whatever the economic weather. Here in the UK, a FTSE 100 director can expect to pocket about £5.5m a year. A leading UK CEO now earns almost 130 times the wage of their average employee, up from just 10 or 20 times as recently as the 1980s.
Meanwhile, those without economic power feel the pain: the producer in a developing country, the low-paid UK worker, the woman juggling work and childcare, are squeezed until their pips squeak, all in the name of returning as much money as possible to predominantly wealthy shareholders. Last autumn, the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that their fellow Britons were in the midst of decade of lost wage growth, the worst for 70 years. Justifying such a growing divide in terms of merit will be hard. A recent study by CFA, the global association of investment professionals, found the link between the pay and performance of 350 top executives to be negligible.
In a survey of 700 experts, published ahead of its annual gathering in Davos this week, the World Economic Forum pinpointed inequality as the number one threat to the global economy during the year ahead. It also cited it as a key factor in continuing extreme poverty, political instability, violence and the polarisation of societies. Yet there appears little hope of substantive change being proposed by leaders at WEF. In the short |
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Last edited by -Matt-; 02-01-2013 at 11:49 AM.Frank Castle’s military experience is an essential part of his transition into his Punisher vigilante persona, and writer Garth Ennis is dedicated to exploring how Frank’s time in the Vietnam War shaped him into the criminal killer he would become. His 2003 Born miniseries looked at Frank’s final tour in Vietnam, recounting the massacre at Firebase Valley Forge that brought out his dark side and forever changed him, but that darkness was lingering beneath the surface before that traumatic incident. Punisher: The Platoon is a prequel to Born that jumps back to Frank’s first tour of Vietnam, when he’s a young soldier who has yet to make his first kill. The six-issue miniseries reunites Ennis with his Punisher MAX and Fury MAX collaborator Goran Parlov, and these creators have a deep understanding of Frank’s character that makes them the ideal team to delve into this major period of The Punisher’s life.
It’s been four years since Ennis and Parlov worked together on the Fury MAX miniseries detailing Nick Fury’s military career after World War II, and they both have a remarkable talent for wartime stories that tackle the subject matter with brutal authenticity. This exclusive preview of Punisher: The Platoon #1 begins with callbacks to Ennis’ earlier Punisher stories as Frank’s Marine buddies are interviewed by the brother of Stevie Goodwin, the point-of-view character of Born. Parlov’s skill for creating an immersive, lively environment is at the forefront of these pages, whether he’s depicting an upscale bar or a field in Vietnam littered with soldiers. Parlov is one of the great ink artists working in comics today, and colorist Jordie Bellaire makes sure that her rendering doesn’t overpower the linework. There’s a grainy texture to the coloring that gives these pages an aged look that is appropriate for a flashback tale, and one of the most exciting things about this series is seeing these two artist powerhouses working together for the first time.
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AdvertisementEver wonder how your brain creates your thoughts, based on everything that’s happening around you (and within you), and where these thoughts are actually located in the brain?
UMass Amherst computational neuroscientist Hava Siegelmann has, and she created a geometry-based method for doing just that. Her team did a massive data analysis of 20 years of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from tens of thousands of brain imaging experiments. The goal was to understand how abstract thought arises from brain structure, which could lead to better ways to identify and treat brain disease and even to new deep-learning artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Details appear in an open-access article in the current issue of Nature Scientific Reports.
How abstract thoughts are formed
KurzweilAI has covered more than 200 research projects involving fMRI. Basically, fMRI detects changes in neural blood flow, which relates to specific brain activities (such as imagining what an object looks like, or talking). More blood flow means higher levels of neural activity in that specific brain region. While fMRI-based research has done an impressive job of relating specific brain areas with activities, surprisingly, “no one had ever tied together the tens of thousands of experiments performed over decades to show how the physical brain could give rise to abstract thought,” Siegelmann notes.
For this study, the researchers took a data-science approach. First, they defined a physiological directed network (a form of a graph with nodes and links) of the whole brain, starting at input areas and labeling each brain area with the distance (or “depth”) from sensory inputs. For example, in the drawing below, the visual cortex (in green) is located far away from the eyes (on the left) while the auditory cortex (in yellow) is relatively close to the ears (although routing via the thalamus makes this more complex).
OK, so what does that mean in terms of thinking? To find out, they processed a massive repository of fMRI data from about 17,000 experiments, representing about one fourth of the fMRI literature).
“The idea was to project the active regions for a cognitive behavior onto the network depth and describe that cognitive behavior in terms of its depth distribution,” says Siegelmann. “We momentarily thought our research failed when we saw that each cognitive behavior showed activity through many network depths. Then we realized that cognition is far richer; it wasn’t the simple hierarchy that everyone was looking for. So, we developed our geometrical ‘slope’ algorithm.”
Ranking cognitive behaviors
The researchers summed all neural activity for a given behavior over all related fMRI experiments, then analyzed it using the slope algorithm. “With a slope identifier, behaviors could now be ordered by their relative depth activity, with no human intervention or bias,” she adds. They ranked slopes for all cognitive behaviors from the fMRI databases from negative to positive and found that they ordered from more tangible to highly abstract. An independent test of an additional 500 study participants supported the result.
She and colleagues found that cognitive function and abstract thought exist as a combination of many cortical sources ranging from those close to sensory cortices to far deeper from them along the brain connectome, or connection wiring diagram.
The authors say their work demonstrates that all cognitive behaviors exist on a hierarchy, starting with the most tangible behaviors (such as finger tapping or pain), then to consciousness, and extending to the most abstract thoughts and activities such as naming. This hierarchy of abstraction is related to the connectome structure of the whole human brain — the connections between different regions of the brain — they add.
Creating a massively recurrent deep learning network
Siegelmann says this work will have great impact in computer science, especially in deep learning. “Deep learning is a computational system employing a multi-layered neural net, and is at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) learning algorithms,” she explains. “It bears similarity to the human brain in that higher layers are agglomerations of previous layers, and so provides more information in a single neuron.
“But the brain’s processing dynamic is far richer and less constrained because it has recurrent interconnection, sometimes called feedback loops. In current human-made deep learning networks that lack recurrent interconnections, a particular input cannot be related to other recent inputs, so they can’t be used for time-series prediction, control operations, or memory.”
Her lab is now creating a “massively recurrent deep learning network,” she says, for a more brain-like and superior learning AI, along with a new geometric data-science tool, which may find widespread use in other fields where massive data is difficult to view coherently due to data overlap.
New hope for biomarkers of brain disorders
Siegelmann believes this work will also have far-reaching effects for brain disorders. “Many brain disorders are implicated by non-standard processing or abnormal combination of sensory information,” she says. “Currently, many brain disorders lack a clear biological identifier, and are diagnosed by symptoms, such as confusion, memory loss and depression.
Our research suggests an entirely new method for analyzing brain abnormalities and is a source of new hope for developing biomarkers for more accurate and earlier diagnoses of psychiatric and neurological diseases.”
Siegelmann is director of the Biologically Inspired Neural and Dynamical Systems Laboratory at UMass Amherst and one of 16 recipients in 2015 of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) program initiated by President Obama to advance understanding of the brain. The work is supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research.
Abstract of The global landscape of cognition: hierarchical aggregation as an organizational principle of human cortical networks and functions
Though widely hypothesized, limited evidence exists that human brain functions organize in global gradients of abstraction starting from sensory cortical inputs. Hierarchical representation is accepted in computational networks, and tentatively in visual neuroscience, yet no direct holistic demonstrations exist in vivo. Our methods developed network models enriched with tiered directionality, by including input locations, a critical feature for localizing representation in networks generally. Grouped primary sensory cortices defined network inputs, displaying global connectivity to fused inputs. Depth-oriented networks guided analyses of fMRI databases (~17,000 experiments;~1/4 of fMRI literature). Formally, we tested whether network depth predicted localization of abstract versus concrete behaviors over the whole set of studied brain regions. For our results, new cortical graph metrics, termednetwork-depth, ranked all databased cognitive function activations by network-depth. Thus, we objectively sorted stratified landscapes of cognition, starting from grouped sensory inputs in parallel, progressing deeper into cortex. This exposed escalating amalgamation of function or abstraction with increasing network-depth, globally. Nearly 500 new participants confirmed our results. In conclusion, data-driven analyses defined a hierarchically ordered connectome, revealing a related continuum of cognitive function. Progressive functional abstraction over network depth may be a fundamental feature of brains, and is observed in artificial networks.Wizard treat for Harry Potter fans at National Library
Harry Potter fans are in for a special treat when a rare first edition, filled with personal notes and drawings by the author J K Rowling, goes on display at the National Library of Scotland (NLS).
On the title page of this copy of 'Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone' — the debut novel in the series — the author wrote that this book 'changed my life forever'.
It will be on display at the Library for one week only from Thursday January 30 as part of the current winter exhibition 'Wha’s like us?', which celebrates ideas and inventions that originated in Scotland. Rowling famously wrote most of the book, along with the rest of the series, in cafes in Edinburgh.
The book is being loaned to the Library by its anonymous new owner who bought it last year at auction at Sotheby's. The sale of the book raised £150,000 for the English Pen writers' association and for Rowling's own charity, Lumos, which is working towards ending the institutionalisation of children globally and to ensure that all children grow up in a safe and caring environment.
Rowling's personal annotations cover more than 40 pages of the book and include references to the Harry Potter series as a whole and also the film adaptations. One note explains how she invented Quidditch, a sport played by characters in the books. They are accompanied by more than 20 of her drawings.
The book will be displayed in the exhibition showing the title page where Rowling has drawn a coat of arms and commented on the role the book has played in changing her life.
Andrew Martin, one of the NLS curators who put the exhibition together' said: 'Thanks to the generosity of the new owner, we are able to add this wonderful item to an exhibition which celebrates amazing achievements by Scots or from Scotland. The global phenomenon that is Harry Potter was already featured in the exhibition but this unique first edition makes it all the more special.'
'Wha’s like us?: A nation of dreams and ideas' is on at the National Library of Scotland, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. Entry is free.
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28 January 2014The balance sounds right, the vibe is feeling good and the mix seems to be coming together. Now you’re ready to start making some mixing decisions on the Drums. But before you start treating the Drum Group you feel like you need to tweak the hi hats. So without even thinking about it you put an EQ on each hi hat channel and Boost the high frequencies. Maybe you’ve made your life easy and saved a preset so you don’t even have to think about it. Does this sound familiar?
What’s The Deal?
Hi Hats are meant to live in the upper register so why is it such an issue? I mean all the great mixing books of the past have a frequency chart saying to boost the hi-hats and these guys know what they are doing.
It’s definitely hard to argue there because they do know a thing or two about mixing. The only real problem is that mixing – and music in general – has evolved quite dramatically since some of these books were published. Most of the mixing techniques on hi hats were written for recorded performances. Meaning that hi-hats were recorded in a studio and handed right to the mixing engineer without any major work done to them. So in these cases the hi hats need an extra bit of sizzle to shine through the mix.
Fast forward a few years and into the 21st century. We are now living in a world where a lot of productions implement the use of programmed drums and samples. Even when a song is produced with live drums, it’s not unusual for some (or all) of the drum parts to be replaced with samples.
So What!
The thing with samples is that it’s very common for them to have some form of processing, the hi hats especially. I can’t remember the last time I had to boost a hi hat because they were already given to me sounding bright. In fact I usually have to take some off the top so they don’t make the listeners ears bleed. Again it all goes back to listening; mind your levels and pay attention to the balance. Once you have your hi hats sitting at the right level, make an honest decision on whether or not they need to be boosted. 9 times out of 10 you will be amazed that they either need to be cut or left alone.
So I Should Never Boost my Hi Hats
That’s not exactly what I said; though I know by this point it probably seems like it. It’s not a matter of boosting or cutting but what works best for that situation. The only reason why I’m bringing this up is because I normally have to cut the hi hats when I’m mixing, all the while I’m seeing other producers and engineers boost them.
There are times when I do boost them like when they are recorded. For the most part they just need to be opened up so that your ear catches that sizzle. The other time I boost is when I feel like the Drum Bus needs a little high end EQ and the hats will come for the ride. That said, I’m probably doing some cutting or maybe nothing all, on the individual hat tracks themselves.
Okay, So What Should I Do Then?
Well if you find yourself in a situation where you think you may need to cut then try these techniques below.
Equalization This is probably the most obvious solution but not the only one. This is actually my second option most of the time. But I would set it up two different ways and then make the decision as to which one sounds the best. Peak Filter I would set up a peak filter and try to take out that annoying frequency in the hi hat that I felt was piercing my ears. I might take out a lot when finding the offending frequency and then start to back off once I’ve found it. Shelving Filter This probably the more common of the two because normally the problem is broad in the high frequencies and isn’t pegged to just one. But experiment and see what works in your situation.
DeEsser That’s right a Desser! Don’t think of this as only a vocal fixer type of plugin, think of it as a dynamic EQ or a one band Multiband Compressor because that’s exactly what it is. It can be used on just about anything that needs it and I find that it sounds great on hi hats. Most Desser’s nowadays can be set up in a few different configurations but I normally just use one. The great thing about the desser is it only reacts when the frequency crosses a threshold where a regular EQ would be constantly cutting Shelving Filter I honestly am not sure if that’s what it’s called but it acts like a shelving filter with a fairly smooth slope. This is normally my choice of configuration because I like how it bounces off the high frequencies in a musical kind of way. Much better than the EQ for sure.
Conclusion
Sometimes in mixing you really have to think counter intuitively to what seems logical. But once you can get outside the box (no pun intended) your mixes will not only start to sound better but you will also separate yourself sonically from everyone else. This is important because often times our job depends on the fact that we are able to problem solve sonic issues that very few people can.
YouTube Video Source: DeEssing Hi HatsThe filmography of visionary director Guillermo del Toro is a fascinating one, to say the least. From the Hellboy series to the cult classic Pan’s Labyrinth, no matter how you feel about him as a director, there’s no denying the man’s artistic integrity. Some may say that del Toro is more style over substance, and to a point, I completely agree in some aspects. Take 2014s Crimson Peak, for example, a decent gothic- romance with a fine cast, but it’s definitely more atmospheric than story-centric.
Ten features later, Guillermo del Toro has given the world his magnum opus with The Shape of Water. Already being helmed as an awards front-runner, this sci-fi romance is unconventional as ever, while still having the most humanity out of all of his work.
The Shape of Water is set in the Cold War era America circa 1962, in a secret government laboratory run by the no-nonsense, pill-popping Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). In the facility, a creature that is half fish, half human, (think Creature of The Black Lagoon, only cuter) is being experimented on and tortured by Strickland and a bevy of other scientists. Sally Hawkins stars as Elsa, a mute janitor at the research facility, who is plagued by ongoing loneliness, minus her best friends Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and Giles (a wonderful Richard Jenkins). When Elsa first comes into contact with the creature, the attraction is instantaneous and purely emotional. This doesn’t sit well with those close to her, but Elsa won’t let that stand in the way of true love.
Let’s get this out of the way, I was utterly blown away by The Shape of Water. From the onslaught of terrific performances to the brilliantly realized emotional core, this is without question Guilmero del Toro’s finest film to date. Sally Hawkins is mesmerizing as the mute Elsa, never once showboating for the sake of playing someone with a disability. Never once did I see the actress in question, that’s just how transformative and natural Hawkins is in the role, and most certainly deserves an Oscar nomination for her sublime work here.
As I previously stated, Richard Jenkins is wonderful as her gay best friend, who is equally as lonely, Giles. While Jenkins does provide a significant amount of comic relief to the story, his own arc is subtly effective in terms of the emotional overarching theme of the narrative. Of course, Michael Shannon being one of the best character actors working today is just magnetic. Though he is typecasted in The Shape of Water, making his character motivations clear from the start, it’s never a displeasure watching this man on screen.
As the Amazonian monster, Doug Jones, who is a frequent collaborator of del Toro’s, ads some unique empathy to what could’ve very well been a cliched character. The romance between him and Elsa is honest, real, and surprisingly charming. It takes a special type of performer to achieve what Jones continues to do throughout his career, and his turn as the misunderstood monster is one for the ages.
The film looks spectacular, with del Toro having a blast adding numerous shades of green to 98% of the shots during this 2-hour run-time. Scenes ooze with atmospheric charm, setting the tone of this modern day shot 50s fable, paying homage to films of the past without becoming a parody.
I will say that The Shape of Water does end on a rather conventional note, becoming increasingly predictable during its closing moments. This is but a minor nit-pick in an overall flawless production. Dare I say, but this very well could be in my top 3 films of 2017. As I sit here writing this, all I can think about is how badly I watch long to re-watch this film.
Grade: 9.5/10
@Nick_CasalettoToro Rosso driver Sainz and Red Bull driver Ricciardo will join Mercedes' Nico Rosberg and Force India's Nico Hulkenberg in running the Halo for an installation lap.
Sainz, who had previously called for a driver vote on the device, was pleased by the decision to have several number of drivers try out the device.
He said: "It feels like they've listened to us - after Germany, we said that we should all try it, give it a try and give our opinion. And it's good that we drivers are running it tomorrow."
The Spaniard also said Spa-Francorchamps was the perfect place to trial the concept.
"I think it's the ideal track to check it out, because, at the end, it's a visibility test. And here, through Eau Rouge, is where you really need to feel whether it's compromised or not."
Additional reporting by Oleg KarpovWith more than 500 million members, LinkedIn is by far the biggest professional social network. It became the number one platform for recruiters, head-hunters and jobseekers.
Jay Shah from JobsInGTA explains how LinkedIn is the underrated platform for many job seekers. He emphasizes that other social media networks have so many aspects related to the candidate social life, private life, partying, opinions and views. However, the way LinkedIn evolved focusing on the professional experience and career path of its members makes it the perfect ground to demonstrate your skills and get noticed as a professional.
1) CUSTOMIZE YOUR PROFILE
The start is customizing your public profile to make it an adequate representation of your professional life. Choose the right LinkedIn background photo and personal photo that represent you; show your smile and dress appropriately. Never use a picture that is embarrassing.
It is also recommended to utilize all the options provided by LinkedIn to add, remove, or rearrange sections of your profile in a way that will make it easy for recruiters to understand your expertise.
2) DEMONSTRATE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERTISE
It is imperative to use the platform to showcase your experience and your expertise. You can write blogs to express your opinions related to your industry, comment on news and developments in the market or share a personal story that shows your approach to solving problems. Also, you can add website links to prove your affiliations or the company you work for.
When possible, seek endorsements from your network for your skills. Ask the people you have worked with to add testimonials to your profile explaining how the experience of working with you was.
3) MAKE YOUR PROFILE SEARCHABLE
You can optimize your LinkedIn profile for search engines. Identify the keywords that highlight your professional expertise and use these keywords within your profile and in your blog. Be careful when you choose those keywords and make it industry-related as much as possible.
Share your LinkedIn status updates on Twitter and share your blogs on other platforms. By sharing on other platforms, you will build your links and increase your profile search-ability.
4) HUNT FOR YOUR DREAM JOB
Be active on the platform and search LinkedIn’s job postings. Save your search and get notifications whenever a similar position is posted. Also, follow the companies you would love to join and receive updates about their activities, new employees, etc.
5) BUILD YOUR NETWORK
You are on LinkedIn to build your network and get noticed, so, join industry groups on LinkedIn, add your new contacts, check updates from your contacts and engage with them. Also, share articles and follow discussions in your groups.
6) USE ANALYTICS
What’s get measured, gets managed. Check who viewed your profile and how many times your profile appeared in searches. Understand who follows your posts and the updates you publish and who reads your blogs. Those numbers will give you an understanding of how you can leverage your LinkedIn profile.CLOSE Peyton Manning unloaded some pretty good zingers at the 2017 ESPYs. But not everyone, including Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and probably all of the New England Patriots, were amused. Dwight Adams/IndyStar
Tennessee alum Peyton Manning walks the sidelines before the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. (Photo: BRIANNA PACIORKA/NEWS SENTINEL)
During an appearance on 104.5 The Zone’s 3HL in Nashville, there was zero hesitation from Peyton Manning while endorsing Tennessee coach Butch Jones.
“I’m all in,” Manning said. “I’m all in. I’m behind Butch Jones.”
Continue reading at GoVols247.
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GoVols247 Roundtable: Georgia (and more) on Vol minds
Lady Vols Reporter's Notebook
Peyton Manning on Butch Jones: 'I'm all in, all behind him'
The MSR: The SEC Least Edition
Scott: Vols' young TEs have to 'go play' when called upon
Jones updates injury status of Tuttle, Robertson
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Better Know a Foe: Georgia
Rick Barnes on tough schedule: 'We have to win those games'
The Matchups: No. 7 Georgia at TennesseeSome Facts about Ramen Noodles
Jasmin By
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Ya’ll, I don’t care how bad Ramen is for me, it is damn good. And so filling also. You can really get your bang for your buck with all that salty water and noodles floating around in your tummy. I haven’t had Ramen in years, but when I see or it smell, I’m like a drug addict who needs another fix. It’s really a win- win situation when it comes to Ramen; its a filling meal for less than a dollar! The perfect college student’s snack! However, I’m sure all that Ramen cant be good for you.
Today’s infographic lists some facts about Ramen, it even gives out some neat recipes to try also! You should defiantly give them a try tonight. Heck maybe I’ll try a recipe also! [via]
Jasmin
14.4kAt the annual gathering of Iranians outside of Paris, France on 9 July 2016, where some 100,000 showed up to express support for regime change in Tehran, one of the guest speakers dropped a bombshell announcement. Even before he took the podium, Prince Turki bin Faisal Al-Saud, appearing in the distinctive gold-edged dark cloak and white keffiyeh headdress of the Saudi royal family, of which he is a senior member, drew commentary and lots of second looks. The Prince is the founder of the King Faisal Foundation, and chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and served from 1977-2001 as director general of Al-Mukhabarat Al-A’amah, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency, resigning the position on 1 September 2001, some ten days before the attacks of 9/11.
He took the podium late in the afternoon program on 9 July and, after a discourse on the shared Islamic history of the Middle East, launched into an attack on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whose 1979 revolution changed the course of history not just in Iran, but throughout the world. His next statement sent a shock wave through the assembly: Bin Faisal pledged support to the Iranian NCRI opposition and to its President-elect Maryam Rajavi personally. Given bin Faisal’s senior position in the Saudi royal family and his long career in positions of key responsibility in the Kingdom, it can only be understood that he spoke for the Riyadh government. The hall erupted in cheers and thunderous applause.
Iranians and others who packed the convention center in Bourget, Paris came for a day-long program attended by representatives from around the world. Organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the event featured a day filled with speeches and musical performances. A senior-level U.S. delegation included Linda Chavez, Chairwoman of the U.S. Center for Equal Opportunity; former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; former Governor of Pennsylvania and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; Judge Michael Mukasey; former Governor of Vermont and Presidential candidate Howard Dean; and former national security advisor to President George W. Bush, Fran Townsend.
The NCRI and its key affiliate, the Mujahedeen-e Kahlq (MEK), were on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list until 2012, having been placed there at the express request of Iranian president Khatami. Iranian university students formed the MEK in the 1960s to oppose the Shah’s rule. The MEK participated in the Khomeini Revolution but then was forced into exile when Khomeini turned on his own allies and obliterated any hopes for democratic reform. Granted protection by the U.S. under the 4th Geneva Convention in 2004, remnants of the MEK opposition have been stranded in Iraq, first at Camp Ashraf and now in Camp Liberty near Baghdad since U.S. forces left Iraq. Completely disarmed and defenseless, the 2,000 or so remaining residents of Camp Liberty, who are desperately seeking resettlement, come under periodic deadly attack by Iraqi forces under Iranian Qods Force direction. The most recent rocket attack on July 4th, 2016 set much of the camp ablaze and devastated the Iranians’ unprotected mobile homes. The MEK/NCRI fought their terrorist designations in the courts in both Europe and the U.S., finally winning removal in 2012. The NCRI’s national headquarters are now located in downtown Washington, DC, from where they work intensively with Congress, the media, and U.S. society to urge regime change and a genuinely liberal democratic platform for Iran.
Given the Obama administration’s close alignment with the Tehran regime, it is perhaps not surprising that the NCRI and Riyadh (both feeling marginalized by the U.S.) should find common cause to oppose the mullahs’ unceasing quest for deliverable nuclear weapons, aggressively expansionist regional agenda, and destabilizing involvement in multiple area conflicts, especially its extensive support for the murderous rule of Bashar al-Assad. Nevertheless, the implications of official Riyadh government support for the largest, most dedicated, and best-organized Iranian opposition movement will reverberate through the Middle East.
Although not openly stated by bin Faisal, the new NCRI-Riyadh alliance may be expected to involve funding, intelligence sharing, and possible collaboration in operations aimed at the shared goal of overthrowing the current Tehran regime. The alignment doubtless will change the course of events in the Middle East, and while Saudi Arabia can hardly be counted among the liberal democracies of the world, the woman-led NCRI movement declares a 10-point plan for Iran that does embrace the ideals of Western Civilization. The impact of the Saudi initiative will not be limited to Iran or the surrounding region but at least as importantly, surely will be felt internally as well, among a young and restless Saudi population that looks hopefully to the rule of King Salman and his 30-something son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud.
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Clare M. Lopez is the Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security PolicyInconvenient: Equalities Minister Caroline Dinenage was drawn into the row over the toilet sign
It should have been the perfect row for David Cameron’s Equalities Minister to resolve: whether men have the right to use a unisex toilet.
But unfortunately for Caroline Dinenage, the argument was over the loo in her local Tory association – and it resulted in the indignant resignation of her party chairman.
Former Naval officer Peter Lockyer quit as a matter of ‘principle’ after his efforts to change the unisex lavatory into a women-only facility were undermined by one of Ms Dinenage’s aides.
Mr Lockyer felt he had no choice but to stand down after his personal intervention in a dispute engulfing staff at the association headquarters in Gosport, Hampshire, failed.
Following complaints that men were leaving the toilet in a ‘disgusting state’, he had pinned a note to the door saying ‘ladies’. But his diktat was ignored, and when he returned from a holiday in Antigua last month, he discovered the paper sign had been removed.
After an investigation, he found that Ms Dinenage’s assistant, Glenn Duggan, was the culprit.
When challenged, Mr Duggan said he had been designated an ‘honorary lady’ by another local official, and so entitled to use the loo.
In his resignation letter, Mr Lockyer explained: ‘I noticed that the sign had been removed from the door. I had personally fixed the sign to the door. I made enquiries and was told that Glenn Duggan had taken the sign down.
‘Duggan sent me an email that said the ladies had made him an honorary lady so that he could use it. His words, not mine! He also went on to dictate toilet law to me.
‘I do not intend to continue to work with… office bullies. It may seem a simple and childish reason to resign. However, to me it has become a principle. Principle is a path a man must have as a personal code of right conduct. It is therefore with heavy heart that I resign as chairman.’
It also emerged that another official, councillor Alan Scard, had also ignored the sign. Mr Lockyer, a grandfather, said he challenged Mr Scard, who ‘was most officious about the situation [and said] that nobody was going to stop him using the ladies’ toilet’.
The headquarters of Gosport Conservative Association has three toilets in total: a ladies’ and gents’ downstairs, plus the contested loo upstairs, which has traditionally been used by both men and women.
Clash: Glenn Duggan (left) sent the below email to Chairman Peter Lockyer (right) who quit over the loo row
Last night Mr Lockyer told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I worked well with Caroline Dinenage for two years, but it’s her staff [that’s the issue].
‘I mean, what’s the headline going to be on this? ToiletGate? I told them they had no right to take the Ladies’ sign down. This was the final straw. They wanted to get me out in the end. They don’t use the downstairs one because they are lazy.
‘I’ve been there two years and I’ve never used the upstairs toilet. It’s unbelievable that grown men will fight over a ladies’ toilet.’
But Mr Duggan, who has used the offices for eight years, defended his use of the upstairs toilet.
‘It is much more convenient. This signage was put up without warning. I cannot comment on why someone would be forced to resign.’
In his email to Mr Lockyer, Mr Duggan admitted using the toilet, despite feeling ‘awkward’ doing so, after association president Margaret Snaith-Tempia designated him an honorary woman. He also cited the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 in defence of his stance.
Ms Snaith-Tempia said: ‘I’ve been with the association since 1978 and we have never ever had anything like this before. I don’t mind who uses the toilet. I spend a good deal of my time in France where all of the toilets are for men and women, and it’s something that doesn’t faze me.’
The new chairman, Brian Taylor, said he was happy for the disputed toilet to be unisex, adding: ‘To be honest I am fed up with talking about the toilet. We have to move on.’Welcome to the Spoiler Room, a safe place for spoiler addicts to come on a weekly basis to learn what’s coming next on their favorite shows and, hopefully, get a few of their own questions answered. If you want scoop on a specific show, send your questions to spoilerroom@ew.com.
Did you get any Flash scoop on Killer Frost? — Kendra
When I asked how Cisco would try to help Caitlin quell her Killer Frost tendencies, Carlos Valdes dropped a truth bomb: “Caitlin has some secrets of her own that are going to come to light and are going to change not just the dynamic of the team, but also her own feelings about her dynamic within the team,” he says. “It all comes to a head.” Make of that what you will.
Can you reveal when Snow and Charming will both be awake on Once Upon a Time? — Miley
I cannot reveal when, but I can give you a tease about how. “The manner by which they are brought out of the sleeping curse is moving,” Ginnifer Goodwin tells me. “I became emotional every time I read the script and it has nothing really to do with David or me.”
I’m hoping for some Supercorp scoop for Supergirl! — Van
When Lillian Luthor breaks out of prison, all signs point to Lena assisting her. Only Kara stands by Lena, leading to some tension. “Kara is at odds with a lot of people — everyone basically,” Melissa Benoist says. “It’s a smart story point to constantly keep people guessing about Lena, what her motives are and what she really wants. She’s a Luthor, so can you ever really trust someone who was raised in that environment? I’ve always appreciated how Kara has given her the benefit of the doubt and trusts her because Lena has proven herself more than once that she wants to make the world a better place and she doesn’t want to subscribe to her family’s narrative.”
Anything Blacklist? — Anna
How about this for awkward: Aram’s former hacker girlfriend Elise, a.k.a Janet, returns in the Feb. 16 episode, falling back into Aram’s orbit. And I’ve got an exclusive first look at her return:
Anything on Gavin’s return to Supernatural? —Tim
Gavin’s return will happen very soon, and his arrival will have quite an effect on Rowena. According to Ruth Connell, she had a little bit of trouble rationalizing Rowena’s actions in that hour: “I was like, really? She really just did that?!” I’m not sure what exactly goes down, but Connell did say “it’s to do with Gavin coming back and her having a grandson, so there’s a lot more to be found out about Rowena.”
I only have one question for The 100: Can you tell us who will be on that list of 100 people Clarke can save inside Arkadia? — Turner
Not so fast — who says Clarke will definitely be making that list? When episode 3 begins, she’s looking for a way to ration their resources and as always, save as many people as possible. Making a list of 100 people is only one option; another may present itself in the hour as well. Then again, showrunner Jason Rothenberg warns that having more options won’t necessarily mean saving more people. “Ultimately, as with all things on this show, we try and set up situations where there is no good answer, where it’s sort of like, ‘What’s the least bad solution?'” Rothenberg says. “Otherwise, it’s too easy. In fact, I find myself all the time, if we set up a scenario, taking a side as a writer and then I’ll do a rewrite where I try to take the other side so that both arguments are well-represented |
kind of issues we’re dealing with in North Korea, where we have a very unstable leader there, when you send out tweets into the region to raise tensions, when you kneecap — which is what he’s done, publicly — when you kneecap your secretary of state, whose diplomacy, you have to depend on to bring China to the table, to do the things that need to be done, back-channeling in some cases to North Korea — when you kneecap that effort, you move our country into a binary choice that could lead us into a world war,” he said.
twitter-tweet”> WATCH: "Left to his own devices, do you think the president is a threat to national security?" @savannahguthrie asks @SenBobCorker pic.twitter.com/GxFFZvUTeU — TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2017
On Good Morning America, Corker said he has no second thoughts about responding to one of Trump’s reckless tweets earlier this month by tweeting, “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult care care center. Somebody obviously missed their shift this morning.”
twitter-tweet”> It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning. — Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 8, 2017
“I would just like for him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that’s constructive for our country, the region, and the world,” Corker said.
twitter-tweet”> Sen. Bob Corker doubles down on Trump critique; on North Korea "I would like him to leave it to the Professionals for a while" pic.twitter.com/ArgbRTxhnB — GeorgeStephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) October 24, 2017
And on CBS This Morning, Corker decried Trump’s efforts to divide the nation, citing his response to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in particular.
“Hopefully what presidents do is to try to bring the country together, to unify around common goals and not to debate our country if you will, and that has not happened, and I’m beginning to believe that it’s not going to happen, and I think that’s what President Bush, President Obama, many others have been concerned about,” Corker said. “It appears to be the governing model of this White House to purposely divide — that’s what happened after the Virginia incident. It’s to consolidate base, not to bring people together.”
twitter-tweet”> “It appears to be the governing model of this White House to divide,” @SenBobCorker says https://t.co/hLUPlCpqdZ pic.twitter.com/3gqd8WjOHa — CBS News (@CBSNews) October 24, 2017
Trump — who regularly live-tweets morning TV news shows — quickly responded to Corker’s latest criticisms by attacking him on Twitter, claiming the senator who won his reelection campaign by 35 points in 2010 “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”
twitter-tweet”> Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts…. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017
twitter-tweet”> …Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017
Corker shot back, calling Trump “utterly untruthful.”
twitter-tweet”> Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff — Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017
Trump — who also mocked Corker’s height on Twitter earlier this month — posted his latest attacks the day after First Lady Melania Trump launched a new anti-bullying effort. The First Lady’s communications director told reporters she doesn’t feel any need to reconcile her anti-bullying work with the fact her husband is one of the country’s most notorious bullies.
Trump’s latest tangle with Corker comes the day after he accused a Gold Star widow of lying about a condolence call in which she claimed Trump couldn’t remember her husband’s name and made inappropriate remarks, including telling her that her husband “knew what he was signing up for.”
UPDATE (10/24, 8:30 a.m.): Trump’s responded to Corker calling him “utterly untruthful” with yet another insult.
twitter-tweet”> Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017
UPDATE II (10/24, 8:45 a.m.): During an interview with CNN conducted shortly after Trump posted tweets insulting him, Corker said he doesn’t understand “why [Trump] lowers himself to such a low, low standard, and debased our country in the way he does.”
He added that he regrets supporting Trump during the 2016 election.
“I would not do that again,” Corker said of his previous support for Trump. “I think he’s proven himself unable to rise to the occasion, and I think many of us, me included, have to tried to, you know, intervene, and I have had a private dinner and have been with him on multiple occasions to try and create some kind of aspirational approach, if you will, to the way that he conducts himself. I don’t think that that’s possible. He’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.”
Source link“Is this your first time on a glacier?” our gentle-spoken guide asked, his slim, 6-feet build towering over us and Jostedalsbreen looming in the distance above us all.
“Yes” we nodded, glancing up from the camera’s viewfinder. It must be easy to hike to the top with his long legs, we thought.
We had driven over five hours to get to Jostedalsbreen, Europe’s largest glacier, situated north of the famous Sognefjord. More than ten thousand years ago, the ice age left Norway covered in a large sheet of ice. As the climate grew warmer, the glacier eventually began to melt away, leaving behind what is Jostedalsbreen today.
At over 480 square kilometers, the glacier covers the mountain plateau northwest of Jostedalen. For centuries, scientists have come here to study the post-glacial development of landscape and vegetation in the area. These scientists determined that Jostedalsbreen is at least 5,000 years old.
We stood at the lake in front of Nigardsbreen, one of the most popular outlets of the Jostedalsbreen, waiting patiently to be fitted for my crampons. These traction devices would not only improve my mobility on the ice, they could also save our lives.
From the parking lot at the base of Nigardsbreen, the tongue of the glacier is still a ten-minute boat trip and a 20-minute walk away. On the boat ride, we lost our thoughts in the glacier-blue water of the lake. When we looked up again we were already surrounded by steep snow-covered hills, with nowhere to go but up the large sheet of ice in front of us.
Although Jostedalsbreen is a beautiful blue sprinkled with spots of black minerals, it is a difficult three-hour hike to the top. We zigged and zagged, relying on the expertise of our guide to avoid dangerous thin ice. A few times we stopped to look at beautiful tunnels that had formed in the ice where the glacier had melted away. By the time winter arrives, some of these tunnels will have melted to a size big enough for people to walk through them. When we reached our halfway point, we noticed another group of fellow hikers. From across the glacier, they looked like black dots against the enormous backdrop of white and grey.
The last hour before we reached our final point was the hardest and steepest. The vertical incline was so great that we could no longer see the lake below us. When we finally reached the top, we were surrounded by snow-filled hilltops. As we gazed out at the pristine sight in front of me, we stood amazed at the beauty and power of nature. We had climbed Europe’s largest glacier – a piece of history that had been formed thousands of years before us, and will remain thousands of years after.
This article originally appeared on Just-In-Time Travels. Get in touch with the author @tracyzhangphoto
europe, Glacier, Nature, Norway, Urban GetawayAUGUSTA — Gov. Paul LePage has vetoed a bill that would ban smoking on all public university and college campuses in Maine, saying he’d rather see a bill to “outlaw tobacco altogether” than a patchwork approach.
The bill LePage vetoed, L.D. 468, sponsored by Rep. Benjamin Chipman, a Portland independent, would have prohibited smoking on all university and community college campuses, along with Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, by August 2014.
Additional Photos Gov. Paul LePage Gabe Souza / Staff Photographer In this file photo, USM freshman Joshua Thornberg smokes during a protest of a proposed smoking ban on USM campuses at the Gorham campus on Monday December 3, 2012. Gov. LePage has vetoed a bill to ban smoking at all public Maine college campuses. Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer
In a veto message Monday to the Legislature — his eighth of this legislative session — LePage said he thinks “universities, colleges, and Maine people can make their own decisions” concerning tobacco.
“However, for those who oppose its use, they should bring a bill forward to simply outlaw tobacco altogether,” the governor continued. “It would be simpler and more consistent than passing more and more legislation, creating a patchwork of laws and locations where tobacco can and cannot be used.”
The bill passed without roll call votes in the House of Representatives and Senate.
Chipman said Tuesday that current law allows a “patchwork” of smoking policies on campuses statewide and he thought LePage didn’t fully understand the bill.
“He said he doesn’t want a patchwork of policies and that’s what this is designed to fix,” Chipman said. “I’m quite frankly surprised and quite disappointed that the governor chose to veto a bill that is aimed at the health of our campuses.”
In testimony on the bill at a public hearing in February, Ryan Low, executive director of governmental and external affairs for the University of Maine System, said five of the system’s seven campuses are tobacco-free. Low said the system supported the bill.
The University of Maine in Orono was the first to adopt such a policy, in January 2012, while the University of Maine at Machias and the University of Maine at Presque Isle — the two campuses where tobacco is still permitted — are scheduled to implement tobacco-free policies in September 2013 and January 2014.
John Fitzsimmons, president of the Maine Community College System, said in February that at the system’s seven campuses, “one is currently tobacco-free, another is planning to be tobacco-free by the end of this calendar year, and the remaining colleges are on a path to become tobacco-free.”
The measure was supported by the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society and the Maine Medical Association.
Michael Shepherd can be contacted at 370-7652 or at:
[email protected]
Twitter: @mikeshepherdme
ShareVideo (00:59) : Jennifer Damerow-Cleven talks about Tuesday's acquittal of a woman who was charged in shooting that left Damerow-Cleven injured and her boyfriend dead.
Paula Zumberge walked out of the Ramsey County jail Tuesday a free woman after being acquitted of all charges in the killing of one New Brighton neighbor and the wounding of another in a long-running feud about feeding deer.
Ramsey County District Judge Lezlie Ott Marek said in her decision that inconsistencies in the surviving victim's testimony factored into her findings.
"Justice was done," said Zumberge's attorney, Gary Wolf.
Zumberge, who dodged reporters as she left the jail, was tried before Marek last week on four counts: aiding and abetting second-degree murder, aiding and abetting attempted second-degree murder and two counts of aiding and abetting second-degree assault.
Family members reached Tuesday at a suburban Twin Cities home where Zumberge is believed to be staying said that she didn't want to talk about the case. Relatives said they were happy she was home, and declined further comment.
Shooting victim Jennifer Damerow-Cleven, who survived the attack that left her longtime boyfriend, Todd G. Stevens, dead, was visibly upset by the acquittal.
An ongoing dispute between neighbors over feeding deer erupted in gunfire in New Brighton and one man was killed.
"I just don't feel like justice was served today," Damerow-Cleven said outside the New Brighton home where she and Stevens were gunned down. "I just know that what I said and what I saw is the truth."
Authorities had alleged that Zumberge conspired with her husband, Neal C. Zumberge, to lure their neighbors out of their home on May 5 so he could shoot them.
Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Anna Christie said at trial that Paula Zumberge shouted words of encouragement as her husband fired a semiautomatic shotgun four times at Stevens, 46, and Damerow-Cleven, 48.
Stevens was shot multiple times, including in the heart, brain and spinal column. Damerow-Cleven was wounded.
In a memorandum explaining her judgments, Marek said that Damerow-Cleven's testimony at trial was "inconsistent," and that her allegations that Paula Zumberge shouted words of encouragement were not corroborated by witnesses.
"…the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Defendant spoke any words of encouragement to Neal Zumberge either before or during the shootings," Marek wrote. "Ms. Damerow-Cleven's testimony at trial regarding the timing and details of the events immediately surrounding the shooting differed between her direct and cross examinations."
Christie said at trial that Paula Zumberge shouted, "Shoot, shoot, keep shooting."
Under cross-examination by Wolf, Damerow-Cleven admitted that Paula Zumberge never said those exact words. Instead, she testified, Paula Zumberge said, "Shoot 'em, shoot 'em."
Damerow-Cleven also said that it was her sister who wrote the phrase while helping her file a restraining order after the shooting.
Christie and Wolf acknowledged at trial that Paula Zumberge argued with Damerow-Cleven outside before Neal Zumberge fired shots.
Paula Zumberge's calm demeanor during the attack, Christie said, was evidence of her guilt and collusion. But Marek disagreed.
Poor quality surveillance video of the shooting taken from Stevens' home was shown at trial. It was soundless.
"While it is unusual that Defendant did not display a perceptible physical reaction with her body when the shooting began, due to limitations of the video evidence it is not possible to see whether shock registered on her face," Marek wrote. "The notion that she had an ulterior motive … is a possible theory — perhaps plausible — but is not supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
Court records allege that the shooting stemmed from the Zumberge family's frustration with Stevens feeding deer on his property. The dispute was fueled by the family's apparent belief that Neal Zumberge had contracted Lyme disease from a deer tick.
The feud came to a head the day of the shooting when Damerow-Cleven ran into the Zumberges' son, Jacob, earlier in the day at a restaurant. She called the police on him because he was wanted for allegedly threatening on a previous occasion to kill Damerow-Cleven and Stevens and burn down their house.
Several pellet holes remained visible Tuesday in the facade and door of the modest blue house Damerow-Cleven shared with Stevens. A tall PVC pipe feeder filled with cracked corn stood in the yard, a reminder of what one police officer dubbed "the deer drama."
Neal C. Zumberge.
The Zumberges' home sat across the street, having recently been sold to help pay for Neal Zumberge's legal costs. He is charged with second-degree murder with intent and attempted second-degree murder, and is scheduled to stand trial on Nov. 10.
Damerow-Cleven said she's worried she'll have to move out of the house she shared with Stevens because she can't afford to make the payments by herself. Sitting at a small picnic table out front Tuesday, she was adamant that she told the truth on the witness stand, and was just frazzled by the experience.
"When you get up there, you just go blank," she said of testifying. "I'm human, you know?"
Twitter: @ChaoStribThe Broncos are staying put with Brock Osweiler.
Coach Vance Joseph announced Monday that the veteran quarterback will start once again on Sunday night against the New England Patriots.
Joseph emphasized that Osweiler has "earned the opportunity" to prove he can lead Denver's sputtering offense down the stretch, per NFL Network's James Palmer.
He failed to make much of a case during Sunday's 51-23 loss to the Eagles, a swarming powerhouse that coaxed Osweiler into two bad interceptions and dangerously low production before garbage time kicked in.
Turnovers and bad decisions were enough to force Trevor Siemian to the bench, so it's no sure bet that Osweiler lasts beyond Week 10. The Broncos also have second-year arm Paxton Lynch rounding back into full health, but his timeline remains unclear.
Denver's offense has fallen off a cliff since their Week 2 route of the Cowboys, a show of strength that feels equally distant to John Elway helicoptering into the end zone during Super Bowl XXXII.
These Broncos lack punch on offense; they lack power and identity. It's not all about the quarterback play, but Osweiler isn't about to save the day. Not against the Patriots -- and not this season -- for a Denver operation spiraling toward the dim outer reaches of the AFC.Image copyright AFP Image caption The Google.com domain name was offered for sale on Google's own website buying service
A man who briefly bought and owned the Google.com web domain has been rewarded by the search giant.
An administration oversight allowed US student Sanmay Ved to buy the right to control the domain on 29 September.
The oversight left him in charge of Google.com for about a minute until Google caught on and cancelled the transaction.
Now Mr Ved has been given a cash reward for spotting the error, which he has decided to donate to charity.
Google declined to comment on the story.
Mr Ved detailed his experience in a post on the LinkedIn site saying that he had been keeping an eye on Google-related web domains for some time because he used to work at the search giant. Mr Ved is currently an MBA student at a US college.
In the early hours of 29 September he noticed a for sale sign next to the Google.com name while browsing sites on Google's own website-buying service.
He used a credit card to pay the $12 (£8) fee to grab google.com and got emails confirming he was the owner. Almost immediately he started getting messages intended for Google's own web administration team.
This was followed by a cancellation message sent by the website buying service which said he could not take over Google.com because someone else had already registered it and his $12 payment was refunded.
Now it has emerged that Mr Ved has been given a "bug bounty" by Google's security team for revealing the weakness in the domain buying system. The internal emails Mr Ved received while in charge of google.com have been passed to this team.
Mr Ved decided to give the cash to an Indian educational foundation and in response, Google doubled the reward.URBANA — The Illini Republicans student group hopes to start a "conversation" by holding what it's calling an affirmative-action bake sale next week.
But deciding who pays what for baked goods based on the color of one's skin is no way to do that, says a University of Illinois student leader.
"It's just making people upset and feel unwelcomed," said senior Ron Lewis, president of the UI Student Senate.
The March 14 bake sale, which has been promoted on the Illini Republicans' Facebook page, will set prices based on race and ethnicity — "in much the same manner as our school manipulates admission requirements," the group says.
In an email to The News-Gazette, Timothy Kilcullen, the group's vice president, said the Republicans are "working out details" on pricing. But "what we do know is that Asian Americans will be charged the most, followed by Caucasians, followed by Hispanic/Latinos, followed by African-Americans."
Kilcullen said he hopes the event — which the group plans to hold on the Quad, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. a week from today — gets people talking about affirmative action.
"We believe that when the students see this kind of prejudice at the micro level (in a bake sale), they will realize it should not be allowed at the macro level either," he wrote in an email.
Lewis fears it will instead have students talking about safety concerns, a frequent refrain on campus in recent months.
"I think there's a certain way to make an impact on campus and bring people together to focus on certain issues, but dividing by race and cookies isn't the right way to do it," he said. "This isn't starting a conversation."
In an email sent Friday night to UI student leaders, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Renee Romano encouraged them to use their right to free speech in ways that "build connections and shared understanding."
She did not address the bake sale directly, writing: "We ask you to commit to using your right to free speech in a way that clearly articulates a stronger and well-argued point of view, that represents the values you hold most dear and that builds connections and shared understanding. I also ask that you commit to using speech that does not violate the Student Code."
According to the UI student code, campus organizations "shall not discriminate against a member or prospective member on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation including gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, disability, unfavorable discharge from the military, or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam era, except as specifically exempted by law."
Asked how the Illini Republicans will verify race and ethnicity, Kilcullen said, "We will verify ethnicity the same way the school does: arbitrarily and ineffectively."
So-called affirmative action bake sales have been used by student Republican groups on other campuses, including at Cal-Berkeley, the University of Washington and, this past October, the University of Texas.
In 2004, a similar event was held at the UI, where the libertarian Students for Individual Liberty held an anti-reparations bake sale, in which white students paid more than black students for cookies, according to Daily Illini archives.
That prompted a white privilege popcorn giveaway by the Graduate and Professional Students of Color, in which white males received full bags of popcorn, while women and minorities received partially full bags.
Next week's bake sale has already spawned a protest event. Crescendo, a group that supports underrepresented students in the UI School of Music and Arts, will hold a concurrent "I am Not a Quota" bake sale, in which goods will be sold for 25 to 50 cents and whiteboard photos with the hashtag #IAmNotAQuota will be used to "promote our message of equity and inclusion," organizers wrote on Facebook.
That's more like it, Lewis says, pointing out that a lot of people on campus — himself included — don't fit a quota.
"I was really involved in high school. I was able to be president of my high school and captain of the volleyball and basketball teams. I took AP classes," he said.
"It's very easy to generalize these accusations... (that) they need this because they're not qualified. But there's a lot of people that don't fit that quota."They shall not pass. These words, which served as the rallying cry in the fight against Mosley’s Blackshirts, still grace the red plaque near the entry to Cable Street in London today.
In the rich history of the British labour movement, the battle that took place there on 4th October 1936 has acquired a near mythological status. It is rightly celebrated as a great victory and is viewed by many as the day the tide turned in the fight against fascism in Britain.
It’s an event that touched the lives of my own family. My Grandmother lived nearby, in the heart of the Jewish community of the old East End. She was a witness to the battle and its aftermath. And other members of my family were participants – fighting for one reason, to defend their community against the politics of hate and division.
But despite its status in the progressive history of our nation, the Battle of Cable Street might never have taken place, and was the result of necessity and desperation rather than design.
When Mosley’s plan to march through the East End was announced, a deputation of the five East London mayors visited the Home Secretary directly to ask that the march be banned. When this request was refused the community itself campaigned to put a halt to the march, gathering a petition of over 100,000 signatures calling for a halt to the event.
In spite of the obvious threat to local residents, and the fierce opposition of the local community, the authorities sided with Mosley’s fascists and refused to take steps to put an end to their aggression.
In the face of this indifference, it was left to the community to defend itself. It was the great bonds of working class solidarity which won the day at Cable Street in the face of insurmountable odds. One of the organisers that day, the Communist Party stalwart Phil Piratin, wrote of how “people whose lives were poles apart, though living within a few hundred yards or each other; bearded Orthodox Jews and rough-and-ready Irish Catholic Dockers” came together against a common foe.
And it was the leadership of the labour movement which held these disparate forces together. Rooted in the local community, committed politically in opposition to fascism, Cable Street was one of the British Left’s finest hours.
Today, that solidarity and community spirit continues to be the only reliable deterrent against the forces of racism and reaction. As neighbourhoods change and the fraternal bonds of old shift and fray, that is a lesson we must hold onto.
As director of HOPE not hate I fought to combat the politics of the far right. I learnt first hand what my grandmother’s generation learned 80 years previously, that hatred and division can only be overcome by sustaining strong communities and by shared values of tolerance and respect. The words of my friend Jo Cox, that “we have more in common with each other than the things that divide us”, hold the key to building a world free from the politics of hatred and fear.
If there are still lessons to learn from Cable Street it is not just that fascism must be confronted head on, but that only solidarity can provide a cure to the politics of hate.
Only by nurturing the bonds between communities and working together to alleviate the conditions of poverty and resentment that allow fascism to fester can we ensure that the events of that bloody day in October are not repeated.
Throughout our history, it has been the labour movement that has best represented those aspirations and succeeded in delivering dignity and prosperity for working people.
After the divisions of the referendum and the increase in racism and bigotry, our movements historic mission has never been more important.
Ruth Smeeth is Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove and a former director of HOPE not HateHome page of Sharing the PCT.
The 2,663 mile Pacific Crest Trail is a hiking paradise that stretches from Canada to Mexico and winds through Washington, Oregon, and California. Up until 1988, people were allowed to ride bicycles on the trail; but then the U.S. Forest Service decided to ban bikes completely. Now, a new campaign dubbed Sharing the PCT has formed to re-assess that decision and mountain bike advocates in Oregon will likely play a role.
Bike advocates say the 1988 ban was done too abruptly, without public comment or opportunity to appeal. The Oregon-based group, Disciples of Dirt, who fully supports the mission of Sharing the PCT, wrote on their website that the ban was “just fear and misunderstanding, mixed with a lot of well funded ignorance.”
In 2010, a group of citizen activists decided to probe further into the 1988 decision. They wrote a letter to the USFS on November 12, 2010 asking them to “put in place a process to examine the continuing usefulness of the 1988 closure order.” Here’s an excerpt from that letter:
“The closure order may have been intended to be only temporary. In 1988 mountain bicycles were newly popular and there was little understanding of how to manage them. Twenty-two years later the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service know how to manage multiuse trails. It is time to reassess the usefulness of the closure order.”
Sharing the PCT wants the USFS to use the Continental Divide Trail as a model for managing the PCT. That trail, which runs over 3,000 miles from Montana to New Mexico, is open to bicycles. “If the use is consistent with the applicable land and resource management plan and will not substantially interfere with the nature and purposes [of the trail],” reads the existing law.
The group also pointed out that the USFS’s own policy dictates an annual review of the closure order, yet such a review has never been done. “We wish to be part of a public process to reevaluate the closure order comprehensively,” they wrote in their 2010 request.
They followed up that request in May of 2011 and earlier this year they finally got a response. “We received word that the USFS could be initiating a formal review process as early as sometime in 2013.”
Portland resident Daniel Greenstadt is one of about a “dozen or so” citizens who are behind the Sharing the PCT initiative. He’s a former rep of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), but made it clear in a phone call with me this morning that he is not acting on behalf of IMBA. (IMBA, he says, has no position on the issue yet.)
Greenstadt says at this point, Sharing the PCT just wants to raise awareness that the issue is “coming down the pike.” The USFS has said they’ll look into it, but what exactly their review will entail remains to be seen. “The outcome could be a re-affirmation of the closure of the trail to bicycles; but our goal is to simply get some process and some daylight on the issue.”
It’s likely, Greenstadt says, that the USFS will open up the issue to a formal public process. When it does, groups like his and mountain bike and trail organizations from all over the West Coast will weigh in. Imagine a process like the grueling one we had for Forest Park singletrack access, but for a trail that crosses three states. And the debate is sure to be heated. When ORBike wrote about this last week, they got a record number of comments.
It’s important to note, that any consideration of bicycling on the PCT would only impact portions of the trail that are not designated as federal wilderness, since that designation is governed by a whole different set of rules.
Stay tuned, as this story is still developing. For now, you can learn more at SharingthePCT.org or on Facebook.
UPDATE 2/8/13: We have just heard from Daniel Greenstadt that the US Forest Service has denied their request.
This letter is in response to your October 22, 2012, email. I appreciate your interest in finding solutions that minimize conflict and the offer to work collaboratively on resolving and improving trail stewardship. My staff and I have a keen interest in improving mountain bicycle recreation experiences and increasing opportunities in appropriate places where shared use with bicycles already exists or is not prohibited. Both here and nationally, the Forest Service has partnered through a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) and other organizations to collaborate on the development and maintenance of shared use trails that meet agency goals for resource protection while providing and improving high quality mountain biking experiences. Nation-wide the Forest Service provides the largest trail system in the nation with over 157,000 miles within the system. Outside of designated wilderness there are 125,962 miles of trail, of which 123,739 miles are open to mountain bicycling (98%) and 12,389 miles of trail managed specifically for mountain bicycling. We agree that there is much to be gained by selecting focal areas to work with communities and non-profits to improve mountain bicycling opportunities. National Scenic and Historic Trails are to be managed for the activities and uses for which they were established by Congress as set forth by law. The primary uses for the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) were determined by the Comprehensive Management Plan and are also found in 36 C.F.R. § 212.21 as “primarily a footpath and horseback riding trail.” The Comprehensive Plan is explicit in its “Criteria for Location, Design, Signing and User Facilities” that the trail should “provide opportunities for hikers, horseman, and other non-mechanized travelers.” The bicycle closure for the PCT (1988) was developed with the unanimous support of the PCT Advisory Council after the Comprehensive Management Planning effort was completed. As you are likely aware, the Advisory Council, required by the National Trails System Act (NTSA) (Sec.5(d)), contained members from each state at the recommendation of the Governors, representatives from each federal or independent agency that the trail passes through, and members appointed to represent private organizations, including corporate and individual landowners and land users. Legislative direction for considering additional uses beyond the primary uses of foot and horse travel is found in NTSA Sec. 7(c): “Other uses along the trail, which will not substantially interfere with the nature and purposes of the trail, may be permitted by the Secretary charged with the administration of the trails.” The requirement to determine an identified carrying capacity of the trail and a plan for its implementation (Section 5(e)) would also need to be met. At this time, the Forest Service will not be pursuing a Comprehensive Management Plan Amendment and the rulemaking that would be required solely to consider adding “other uses” to the PCT. We will not be pursing “termination” of the bicycle closure order either for similar concerns. Our focus for management of the PCT continues to be ecological restoration and the backlog of maintenance resulting from wildfires, the Sierra Wind Event of 2011, and the flood events of 2006 and 2009 in Washington State. There are many places where shared use with bicycles already exists or is not prohibited, and we support working together to improve mountain bicycle access and opportunities to connect local communities to National Forest System lands. Our region is currently working with the IMBA to identify where these opportunities exist and we welcome your assistance to identify sites and work to leverage resources for planning and implementation.
More on reaction from activists at the Sharing the PCT Facebook page.
Front Page
Mountain BikingOur analysts and writers are constantly talking to NFL and college sources about draft prospects. Lance Zierlein share some of what NFL folks are discussing in draft rooms throughout the league.
Note: NFL Network will have live coverage of North Dakota State's pro day, where QB Carson Wentz will be the main attraction, beginning at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday, March 24.
The scoop: "Don't be surprised if a team like the Eagles makes a really strong move up the board to get (Carson) Wentz. I don't think he's worth it, but I think they do. Everyone thinks you have to move ahead of Cleveland, but (Browns Chief Strategy Officer Paul DePodesta) will want to get as many picks as possible out of this draft. It wouldn't surprise me if a team moved directly to Cleveland's spot for Wentz." -- NFC executive
The skinny: The Eagles clearly need a QB and their trade up from No. 13 to No. 8 gets them closer to being able to move up for that piece, if they choose to. If they only have eyes for Wentz, then it could become very prohibitive to move up the board; however, if Cal QB Jared Goff were to be in play for the Eagles as well, it isn't much of a stretch to believe they could move up the few slots they would need to pick Goff. I believe Wentz is the more highly valued of the two QBs.
* * *
The scoop: "I like (the safeties in this) draft, but I know that there are other guys for other teams who think this draft has very little (safety talent) in it. We all see things differently. Karl Joseph is my favorite safety in the draft, but I'm really warming up to T.J. Green lately." -- NFC scout
The skinny: It's pretty hard to find anyone who isn't a fan of West Virginia's Joseph in my conversations with scouts, coaches and executives. The two knocks on Joseph are that he's recovering from an ACL tear and that he's a little undersized for being as physical as he is. Joseph has the speed to make plays all over the field and the physicality to have an impact around the line of scrimmage. Clemson's Green doesn't have as many spectacular moments on tape, but his outstanding NFL Scouting Combine was very important for grabbing the attention of evaluators and forcing them to project his potential in their scheme based on his measurables and athletic traits.
* * *
The scoop: "This is a bad draft for tight ends. I know last year was bad, but this year is sneaky bad. After (Hunter) Henry and (Austin) Hooper, there is nobody." -- NFC personnel director
The skinny: While I'm not in complete agreement with this sentiment, I understand where this personnel director is coming from. Different teams are looking to utilize tight ends in different ways and I do believe that there are a couple of "matchup" tight ends who can help as receivers. If teams are looking for combination tight ends who can help in the running game and as a pass-catcher, then the number of qualified applicants is relatively low. However, with college football being as pass-heavy and spread-oriented as it is, don't look for many well-rounded tight ends to be coming out in the near future.
Follow Lance Zierlein on Twitter @LanceZierlein.Content note: misogyny, violence against women, misogyny denialism.
I’m working on my own post about Elliot Rodger, misogyny, and misogyny denialism. In the |
treatment. For a person in a position of power with inflated feelings of amour-propre, privilege, or infallibility, wrong treatment can be perceived as something as minor as failing to show proper obeisance or submission that is typical of people with a god complex. A person with a god complex regards themselves as superior, and their opinions unquestionable, to the extent they disregard rules and demand special consideration or privileges. There is nothing as particularly dangerous as a politician with a god complex.
The scandal surrounding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and revelations a case of political retribution drove the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge (GWB) would be damning enough if he was connected to just one instance of political retribution, but there is a mountain of evidence that retribution, bullying, and a sense of infallibility informs that Christie suffers from a god complex. Over the coming weeks, and likely months, investigations, subpoenas, and federal inquiries will reveal whether the GWB lane closures were a case of political retribution, an attempt to thwart a billion-dollar redevelopment project, or a warning to Democrats in New Jersey’s legislature not to cross dictator Chris Christie. The real issue is not just whether Christie had a hand in closing lanes on the GWB, but his character, or lack thereof, that drives his sense of entitlement, bullying, and willingness to use any means to impose his will; including pilfering federal funding for disaster relief to maintain his hold on power.
Bloated-ego Christie has “sent messages” (retribution) to people failing to acknowledge his deity beginning with former Governor Richard Codey. Cody said Christie denied him state trooper protection, fired Codey’s cousin from his position at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and removed a former Codey aide from the New Jersey Office of Consumer Affairs because Codey publicly disagreed with him. After a Republican State Senator, Sean Kean, told a reporter Christie erred in not calling for a state of emergency sooner during a 2010 blizzard, Christie banned Kean from attending the next Christie news conference held in Kean’s home district. One of Christie’s aides told a New Jersey newspaper that Kean “got what he deserved.” Alan Rosenthal, a Rutgers Professor, saw his state funding slashed after he supported a re-districting map favorable to Democrats, and a Republican State Senator, Christopher Bateman, saw confirmation of a judicial candidate he recommended suddenly stall after he voted against Christie’s reorganization of the state’s public medical education system.
After 36-year-old Iraq war veteran, Democrat Steven Fulop, won his election as mayor of Jersey City in May 2013, Christie made congenial promises to help him in any way he could. Christie’s office set up a full day of meetings and scheduled appointments with heads of six different agencies, including transportation, economic development, the state treasurer and the commissioner of community affairs as well as with the director of Hurricane Sandy recovery. A Christie aide wrote, “We’re looking forward to working closely with you and your administration. Some of the conversations may be simple and introductory, while others may focus on actual pending projects and issues.” However, after Fulop sent word he could not endorse Christie’s re-election, Christie’s office called off all meetings, refused to return Fulop’s calls, and declined to help with Hurricane Sandy recovery, transportation and other issues.
Christie’s sense of entitlement, and quest for power, also drove him to misuse about $2 million in Superstorm Sandy federal relief funds for an ad campaign that put him in the spotlight during his re-election campaign. Christie is being audited by the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for “misappropriating funds allocated by Congress from the Sandy aid package and taking advantage of this waiver for political purposes.” The inspector’s focus is on a federally-financed $25 million Jersey Shore marketing campaign that included a television commercial featuring Christie and his family which cost $2 million more than a competing bid without them. New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr. requested the investigation in an August 8, 2013 letter; “It is inappropriate for taxpayer-funded dollars that are critical to our state’s recovery from this natural disaster to fund commercials that could potentially benefit a political campaign.”
Republican Senator Rand Paul said Christie’s appearance in the ads gave the recovery effort a “black eye. People running for office put their mug all over these ads while they were in the middle of a political campaign. You think there might be a conflict of interest there? That’s why people who are trying to use taxpayers’ money wisely are offended to see our money spent on political ads. That’s just offensive.” Christie blamed President Obama for the ads and said, “The Stronger Than The Storm “ad campaign was just one part of the first action plan approved by the Obama Administration and developed with the goal of effectively communicating that the Jersey Shore was open for business during the first summer after Sandy.” However, although the Obama administration approved a waiver to allow the state to spend $25 million on ads, it was not involved in the bidding process under federal review, and certainly would not have authorized spending $2 million in taxpayer money for a Chris Christie campaign ad.
Chris Christie is drunk on his own sense of self-importance that is manifest in his four years of bullying, vindictive political retribution, and blatant disregard for the people of New Jersey who are as much victims as politicians who make the mistake of failing to do obeisance in the presence of Christie’s bloated-ego. It would be bad enough if Christie’s retribution was isolated to shutting down 2 lanes on the GWB to thwart a billion-dollar redevelopment project or send a message to Democrats in New Jersey’s legislature he is not to be crossed, but the cretin has racked up an impressive record of vengeance that are too numerous to ignore. Fortunately for New Jersey residents, the state legislature and federal government are not ignoring Christie’s malfeasance borne of his god complex that drives his sense of entitlement and infallibility.
If Christie were a law enforcement officer, he would be charged with abuse under color of authority. However, he is just a self-indulgent glory hog and power-hungry man with a god complex who regards himself as superior to the extent he disregards rules and demands special consideration that state and federal inquisitors are more than happy to give him.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:As if Moms Rising’s ploy to dress their children up in cow costumes and parade them around the Capitol wasn’t ludicrous enough, Moms Demand Action, another anti-gun group, is looking to out do them.
MDA is apparently going to try to use lemonade stands to push their anti-gun agenda.
According to press release on PR Newswire,
INDIANAPOLIS, July 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — As Congress prepares to leave for its summer recess on August 1, members of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America are holding lemonade stands across the country to pressure Congress to pass background check legislation when they return in the fall. The first lemonade stand will open on Aug. 1 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Upper Senate Park on the U.S. Capitol Grounds (Constitution Ave NE & Delaware Ave NE). Legislators will stop by for a glass of lemonade between 10 a.m. and noon.
Lemonade stands will be held in cities at or near legislators’ in-district offices across the country, including Washington, DC; Tucson and Phoenix, AZ; San Diego, CA; Atlanta and Savannah, GA; Indianapolis, IN; Fancy Farm, KY; Tampa, FL; Boston, MA; Charlotte, Clemmons, Winston-Salem, and Durham, NC; Monmouth County and Morristown, NJ; Brooklyn, Rockland County and Hudson Valley, NY; Cleveland and Columbus, OH; Portland, OR; Harrisburg, PA; Nashville, TN; Austin and Houston, TX; Falls Church, VA. Additional lemonade stand locations will be added throughout August. For more information on lemonade stand locations and times, go to: http://momsdemandaction.org/lemonade-stands-2013/.
“It is vitally important that we continue to beat the drum on common sense gun legislation, like background checks, that will help make our communities safer from gun violence. We have to continue to work to make our voices heard if we want to build the momentum we need to get Congress to act,” said Congresswoman Robin Kelly. “I support Moms Demand Action’s lemonade stand initiative, which is a novel way to refocus the nation’s attention on the need for common sense gun reform.”
“We are not going give up when it comes to passing common-sense legislation that will keep guns from criminals, terrorists and the dangerously mentally ill,” said House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Chairman Mike Thompson. “The only thing more shameful than the minority of the Senate voting down background check legislation is the House refusing to vote at all. The bipartisan background check bill I’ve introduced respects the Second Amendment and will save lives. It deserves a vote.”
About Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
Much like Mothers Against Drunk Driving was created to change laws regarding drunk driving, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (www.momsdemandaction.org) was created to build support for common-sense gun reforms. The nonpartisan grassroots movement of American mothers is demanding new and stronger solutions to lax gun laws and loopholes that jeopardize the safety of our children and families. In just seven months, the organization has more than 100,000 members with more than 90 local chapters in 40 states across the country.
SOURCE Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in AmericaInspired by the movie “Zombieland” featuring Woody Harrelson whose character at one point uses a banjo to fight off Zombies, Greg Deering created the latest 5-string Goodtime banjo - the Zombie Killer Goodtime banjo. Launched at the 2013 Anaheim NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers) Trade Show, the Zombie Killer banjo was a hit with general attendees and dealers alike. With a “blood splatter” resonator finish and a “saw blade-edged” brilliant red flange made with a cut-out zombie-themed pattern to match the fingerboard inlays, the Zombie Killer captures the attention of the audience without even strumming a note.
Be prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse and protect yourself with a Zombie Killer banjo!
The Zombie Killer is available now at authorized Deering dealers or factory direct.
Click here to learn more...The following is adapted from Gershom Gorenberg’s new book The Unmaking of Israel. Read yesterday’s excerpt about why, exactly, Israel ended up losing most of its Arab population in 1948.Tomorrow, Slate will publish a final excerpt about how Israel can resolve its tragic crisis with the Palestinians.
Today’s haredim, or ultra-Orthodox Jews, are known for marrying early and having many children. Photograph by Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.
I’m standing in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood of Jerusalem. Across the street is the stone-faced building where Israeli novelist Amos Oz grew up in a small ground-floor apartment. Back then, in the 1940s, Kerem Avraham was home to “petty clerks, small retailers, bank tellers or cinema ticket sellers, schoolteachers or dispensers of private lessons,” as Oz writes in his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. They observed the last vestiges of Judaism—lighting Sabbath candles on Friday night, attending services on Yom Kippur—and avidly argued fine points of secular Zionist ideology.
While I stand on the street, a flock of teenage girls walks by, dressed in blue blouses buttoned to the neck, pleated skirts, and high socks, so that no skin besides their faces and hands shows. A family passes, the husband in a circular, flat-topped black hat, his wife pushing a stroller, three more children younger than age 6 walking with them. The mother wears a wig, the common method for haredi (ultra-Orthodox) married women to hide their hair in modesty. On a cross street, I pass a kollel—a yeshiva where married men receive small salaries to study full-time.
Kerem Avraham today is one neighborhood in the haredi belt of northern Jerusalem, a land of wall posters denouncing television, Internet, and rival religious factions; of life-long Torah study for men and countless pregnancies for women; of schools that provide scant preparation for earning a living and no preparation at all for participating in a democratic society. The neighborhood began changing in the 1950s, after the rebellious young Oz moved to a kibbutz, which he left many years later.
Less than a mile from Amos Oz’s childhood home is an apartment development put up several years ago for better-off haredim. The nine-story buildings surround a courtyard with a playground that is crowded with children in late afternoon. Underneath the buildings is a three-level parking garage, with small storerooms along the sides of the half-lit concrete caverns. The storerooms, a standard feature of Israeli apartments, belong to the residents who live above. But some of the small rooms have doorbells, names on the doors, water meters, and high windows looking into the dark garage. I hear the voices of a couple inside one, and an infant crying. Outside another is a metal rack on which laundry is drying. They’ve been rented out as apartments to young haredi families who can afford nothing else.
The picture above ground is of a thriving community. Beneath the surface one can see one part of the price being paid by the haredim themselves, and by Israel as a whole, for the peculiar development of ultra-Orthodoxy in Israel.
Today’s haredim are known for marrying early and having many children, even as men spend much or all of their adult lives studying Talmud rather than working. When the state was established, haredi society “was entirely different,” says sociologist Menachem Friedman. “It was a normal working society,” similar to the rest of the Jewish population. The fertility rate was about the same. So was the average marriage age, though sometimes haredi men married relatively late if they wanted to extend their religious studies. To get married, a man had to leave Talmudic studies in a yeshiva and find work.
Rather than being a diorama of traditional Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, as many Israelis and visitors believe, Israel’s present-day version of ultra-Orthodoxy is a creation of the Jewish state. Policies with unexpected effects fostered this new form of Judaism, at once cloistered and militant. So did successful measures by haredi leaders to revive a community that was shrunken by modernity and then devastated by the Holocaust.
While a similar revival has taken place in haredi communities in the United States and other western countries since World War II, their dependence on government funding is necessarily more limited. In turn, the extent to which adult men can engage in full-time religious study rather than working is also more restricted.
In economic terms, the haredi revival in Israel has been disastrous. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is ever more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labor. Exploiting political patronage, ultra-Orthodox clerics have largely taken over the state’s religious bureaucracy, imposing extreme interpretations of Jewish law on other Jews. By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy. And to protect their own growing settlements, haredi parties are now essential partners in the pro-settlement coalitions of the right.
This is a story full of ironies. Here’s the first: The critical, unnoticed catalyst of the transformation of ultra-Orthodox society in Israel was the 1949 law instituting free, compulsory education. In the first stage, the state funded existing school systems, which were tied to political movements. In British-ruled Palestine, ultra-Orthodox schools had been few, scattered, and short on cash. After independence, most joined a school system under the roof of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. In Knesset Education Committee discussions of the compulsory education law, the fact that it would provide budgets to the ultra-Orthodox schools hardly merited mention. After all, ultra-Orthodoxy was vanishing.
Instead, the opposite happened. State funding made it possible to open new ultra-Orthodox schools and pay steady salaries. Young haredi women could finish teacher training at Agudat Yisrael’s seminaries by age 18 or 19 and get elementary-school jobs. Meanwhile, some of the Jews pouring into Israel from the Islamic world chose haredi schools for their children, creating more teaching positions.
In 1953, when the Knesset voted to eliminate party-run schools and create a national educational system, it left loopholes in the State Education Law that allowed the Agudat Yisrael schools to keep operating and receive funding from the state. As the Israeli economy modernized, high school education became the norm. The state helped fund ultra-Orthodox secondary schools along with others, but the high schools for haredi boys were devoted entirely to religious studies. Most were boarding schools, where students lived in a day-and-night realm of Torah study, with rabbis substituting for parents. From there, young men—not only the few brilliant scholars, as in European Europe before the Holocaust, but the mass—proceeded to advanced yeshivot.
The leading haredi religious figure in Israel, Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karlitz, used these changes to promote a transformation in the name of extreme conservatism: Haredi men and women would marry young. Men would keep studying Torah in kollel after marriage, supported by their teacher-wives. Their working parents would help out. Funds to help give kollel students small salaries came from Jews in Western countries. The donors were not necessarily Orthodox. Rather, they regarded their contributions as honoring the destroyed Jewish world of Eastern Europe, seen through the distorting lens of loss and nostalgia.
Ironically, the army’s centrality in Israeli life promoted the change, precisely because haredi society wanted young men to avoid what it saw as the IDF’s secular press-gang. Remaining a full-time Torah student allowed a man to stay out of uniform. The deferment helped lock young men into the kollel lifestyle. So did the education gap: Though ultra-Orthodox men spent years engaged in study, their schooling did nothing to prepare them for jobs in a modern economy. From their teens on, their curriculum was devoid of mathematics, sciences, foreign languages and other general studies.
Thus “the society of scholars”—as sociologist Friedman named it—took shape. Older haredi men, who’d come of age before the change, worked for a living. A growing number of young men stayed in kollel after marriage, often for a decade or more. The father was a carpenter, shopkeeper or tailor; the son was a full-time student. In a universe of arranged marriages, Torah scholars were the most sought-after grooms.
Between 1952 and 1981, the average marriage age of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel fell from 27.5 to 21.5. At the beginning of that period, the typical haredi groom was slightly older than the average for Israeli Jewish society. By 1981, he was four years younger than the Israeli Jewish average. Among haredi women, marriage before age 20 became the standard. Ultra-Orthodox couples started having children early and continued to have them often. This, too, made leaving haredi society much more difficult, for women as well as men.
In the 1940s, it had seemed to ultra-Orthodox educators and parents that nothing could stop young people from giving up religion. Now the exodus stopped. The gulf between the society of scholars and the secular world grew too wide to cross. Rabbis wrote with satisfaction that children were outdoing their parents at piety. Their words portray a revolution in a society that believed itself to be changeless.
Young haredi Israelis saw the previous generation as insufficiently religious—a paradox in a community for which religion and tradition were synonyms. To show they made no compromise with modernity, young haredim sought to follow Jewish law in the strictest fashion. They thereby created a new interpretation of Jewish practice, a strict constructionism that was itself a product of modernity.
In this, the closed community of the ultra-Orthodox was part of the global phenomenon of fundamentalist movements—they are creations of the present claiming to be old-time religion.
Tomorrow: How Israel can resolve its tragic crisis with the Palestinians.With Episode 2 of the episodic Hitman – Sapienza – now out in the wild, Square Enix have been busy trying to fix some of the issues associated with the PC port.
In a new update just released on Steam, there’s been some improvements to both the audio and graphics brought on by previous patches.
The patch is expected to weigh in at 4.5GB for Episode Two owners, whereas Intro pack owners should only have to contend with a 270MB file.
Here’s the full changelog.
• Audio issues caused by a previous update have been fixed.
• Graphics settings can now be changed again.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen after fighting many guards.
• Performance improvements
(when in combat, performing suspicious actions or otherwise gaining attention)
Have you downloaded the new patch? Noticed any improvements? What kind of issues have you been experiencing on PC? Let us know…A rare Martian meteorite recently found in Morocco contains minerals with 10 times more water than previously discovered Mars meteorites, a finding that raises new questions about when and how long the planet most like Earth in the solar system had conditions suitable for life.
The rock is believed to be similar to those studied by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on opposite sides of Mars in 2004 to look for signs of past water. Spirit is no longer operational, but in August Opportunity was joined by the new and more sophisticated Curiosity rover, which will be searching for chemistry and environmental conditions necessary to support microbial life.
SEE ALSO: Top 10 Places To Find Alien Life
The meteorite, known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, is the second-oldest of 110 named stones originating from Mars that have been retrieved on Earth. Purchased from a Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011, the black, baseball-sized stone, which weighs less than 1 pound, is 2.1 billon years old, meaning it formed during what is known as the early Amazonian era in Mars' geologic history.
"It's from a time on Mars that we actually don't know much about," geologist Carl Agee, with the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, told Discovery News.
The only older Mars meteorite found so far is the 4-billion-year-old Allan Hills 84001 Antarctica stone that was the source of speculation about microfossils in 1996.
Early Mars was believed to be warm and wet, but the planet lost most of its atmosphere and its surface water to become a cold, dry desert that appears today.
"The time from when our meteorite is from is maybe a transitional period in the climate, when Mars was losing its atmosphere, losing its water on the surface," Agee said.
The meteorite is relatively rich in water — about 6,000 parts per million — compared with typical Martian meteorites that contain about 200- to 300 parts per million. It is similar to basaltic rocks on Earth that form in volcanic eruptions.
"The fact that this meteorite formed in the presence of water suggests that maybe this water hung around for a while, maybe a bit longer than previously thought. It at least opens our minds to the idea that maybe Mars climate change was more transitional, rather than an abrupt loss of atmosphere and water," Agee said.
Like other Mars meteorites, NWA 7034, nicknamed "Black Beauty," also contains tiny bits of carbon, formed from geologic, not biological activity, said Andrew Steele, who studies Mars meteorites at the Carnegie Institution of Washington DC.
Steele, who also is a member of the Curiosity science team, would like to do more analysis on the meteorite with instruments that are similar to those on the rover.
Scientists don't know why more meteorites like Black Beauty haven't been found on Earth. The period of time from which they originated may be relatively short, or most may not survive the trip through Earth's atmosphere.
"(Mars meteorites) are tough, but by the time they get here they're quite friable and brittle," Steele told Discovery News.
"This one does look completely different," he added. "It's jet black. The others are slightly greenish cast."
After an initial battery of tests revealed the rock's unique nature, meteorite hunters returned to the area where it was found to search for other similar stones, Agee said.
"It took several months to get an idea of what it was," Agee said. "We eventually realized there was no other conclusion but that it was Martian and that it was different from all the other ones."
"If it were similar, we would have known within one day," he added.
Four more pieces, all smaller than the original, have now been found. The research appears in this week's journal Science.
Photos courtesy of NASA
This article originally published at Discovery News herePresident Trump is sticking with his argument that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 presidential election, amid calls for him to provide proof and questions about whether he’ll indeed have an official probe into the issue.
“Many people have come out and said I am right,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to be aired Sunday before the NFL Super Bowl.
Watch the O'Reilly Super Bowl LI interview with Trump at 4 pm ET Sunday on Fox Sports. Tune in for more of the interview on "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday and Tuesday at 8 pm ET on Fox News Channel.
Trump didn’t directly answer a question about whether he, in fact, has evidence -- but suggested that he has seen voter-registration records that suggest widespread voter fraud.
“We can be babies, but you take a look at the registration,” Trump said. “You have illegals, you have dead people, you have this. It’s really a bad situation.”
Trump became president by winning the Electoral College vote but did not win the popular vote. And losing that vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by an estimated 3 million ballots has been a continuing source of contention with him.
Last month, Trump suggested he would ask for a “major investigation” through the Justice Department. And he purportedly was considering signing an executive order to start the process. But the administration has not taken any public action on the issue in roughly the past 10 days.
Also on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he doesn’t want to spend federal money to investigate Trump’s allegation.
Trump also said in the Fox interview that he has "respect" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that respect does not mean they'll get along.
"I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not,” he said. “And if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world -- that’s a good thing. … Will I get along with him? I have no idea."
Pressed about Putin's history of violence, Trump said: "There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?Just thought I’d point out that McDonalds apple pies are not the best way to gauge a bail-out. $700 billion USD will buy you 3.5 TRILLION (3,500,000,000,000) packs of ramen at 20 cents per pack, although I imagine you could get a better discount at that bulk rate. Since ramen is about 1″ thick, we could stack this pile of ramen from the Earth to the Moon over 230 times (I hope I did the math right). At 6.725 billion people, we could also buy every single person on earth 520 packs of ramen! Or, we could give every investment bank employee a three year supply of noodles, either way, this is a bailout that I support!
Update: As I suspected, my math was wrong in the earlier posting. I forgot to convert from inches to meters when I did the calculations.Democrats need a debate about where their party goes next. Obamacare's passage marked the rough completion of the social safety net that liberals began constructing during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency. The end of the Iraq War drained Democrats of their foreign policy fervor. The rapid acceptance of gay marriage has robbed them of the next civil rights fight. There is work left to be done in all these arenas, but over time, the party will need to discover new dreams, much as Republicans have found the Ryan budget.
The closest thing Democrats have to an organizing concern is income inequality. But their solutions are neither sufficient to the scale of the problem nor quickening to the pulse. Raising the marginal tax rate on dividend income is not the clay from which political movements are crafted.
To many Democrats, the fight the party needs is clear: Hillary Clinton vs. Elizabeth Warren. But the differences between Warren and Clinton are less profound than they appear. Warren goes a bit further than Clinton does, both in rhetoric and policy, but her agenda is smaller and more traditional than she makes it sound: tightening financial regulation, redistributing a little more, tying up some loose ends in the social safety net. Given the near-certainty of a Republican House, there is little reason to believe there would be much difference between a Warren presidency and a Clinton one.
The most ambitious vision for the Democratic Party right now rests with a politician most have forgotten, and whom no one is mentioning for 2016: Al Gore.
Al Gore's vision of American politics
Gore offers a genuinely different view of what the Democratic Party — and, by extension, American politics — should be about.
Climate change is a real and growing threat to the world's future. In 2009, nearly every country in the world agreed that global warming must be held to less than 2 degrees Celsius. We're on pace to blow through that — warming the planet four degrees or more is horrifyingly plausible. No one really knows what that kind of temperature change — a swing that approaches the difference between most of human history and the Ice Age — would mean for humankind. The World Bank says there is "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible."
Income inequality is a serious problem. But climate change is an existential threat.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is throwing snowballs on the floor of the Capitol because he believes cold weather outside his office proves global warming a hoax. This was his rebuttal, by the way, to news that 2014 was the hottest year on record. Something has gone very wrong in American politics.
When it comes to climate change, there's no one in the Democratic Party — or any other political party — with Gore's combination of credibility and commitment. Bill McKibben, founder of the climate action group 350.org, calls Gore's work on the issue "the most successful second act of any political life in U.S. history." Perhaps that's hyperbole, but it speaks to the regard in which Gore is held by climate activists. Though he's been out of office for 15 years, he's never left the climate fight. Gore has proven himself the opposite of those politicians who love the game more than they care about the issues.
Moreover, in an era in which very little moves through Congress, climate change is an issue where the president has real unilateral authority. The Environmental Protection Agency has the power to aggressively regulate greenhouse gas emissions — a process the Obama administration has begun, but that the next president will need to continue. Much of the crucial work on climate change requires coming to agreements with India and China — and that, too, is an arena where the president can act even if Congress is paralyzed.
Single-issue candidacies rarely go far in American politics, but then, Gore need not be a single-issue candidate. Indeed, the rest of his positions are closer in line with Democratic Party activists than, say, Clinton's. He opposed the Iraq War and endorsed single-payer health care, for instance. His Reinventing Government initiatives, mixed with his Silicon Valley contacts and experience, look pretty good for a post-Healthcare.gov era.
And there's a lot more on Gore's mind. His most recent book, ambitiously titled The Future, runs through the six forces he believes are changing the world: a globalized network of governments and corporations he calls "Earth, Inc."; worldwide communication technologies that are leading to the emergence of a "global mind"; massive shifts in power from West to East and from government to corporations; an economic system that too often devastates natural resources; revolutions in genomics, biotechnology, and other life sciences; and, perhaps most optimistically, the beginnings of a revolution in energy and agriculture.
The book has been blurbed by everyone from conservative economist Arthur Laffer ("transcends ideology while turning our attention to big issues, big ideas, and big solutions") to internet hero Tim Berners-Lee ("If you are concerned about the massive changes the world is just heading into, then you should read this book. If you aren't, then you must read it!").
You can believe Gore a visionary or you can believe him a blowhard, but he's offering a very different, and much more radical, vision of what politics should be about than even Elizabeth Warren, to say nothing of Hillary Clinton.
Gore can actually fund a campaign
Hillary Clinton is crushing her rivals in the invisible primary. The result will be a lopsided race once the campaign turns visible: her likely challengers don't have the name recognition, party support, campaign organization, or funding necessary to force a real contest.
Gore does. He begins with a powerful asset in presidential politics: credibility. As a long-serving senator and a two-term vice president, Gore has more direct political experience and at least as much claim to the triumphs of the 1990s as Clinton. He's also won more elections than Clinton — including the popular vote in a presidential campaign. There are few Americans who don't at least know his name. There is no one in the Democratic Party who won't at least take his call.
But Gore's experience and contacts now reach beyond politics — and into venues that would be enormously helpful to him if he wanted to fund an expensive race. He serves on the board of Apple, as a senior adviser to Google, and at the mega-venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. He's also carved a path through finance and telecommunications, becoming fabulously wealthy — richer, even, than Mitt Romney — as an investor and mogul. And then there's his centrality in the environmental community, which is, itself, quite rich — it's easy to imagine, say, billionaire Tom Steyer gathering some friends and putting some massive Super PAC money behind Gore.
The problem with a Gore candidacy is Gore
The problem with a Gore candidacy, to be blunt, is Gore. He can be a wooden candidate. His relationship with the press is challenging, to say the least. He is an aging politician in a country that loves new faces. His finances are complicated, and he made an insane sum of money by selling his cable network to Al Jazeera. His divorce from Tipper Gore means his personal life isn't the storybook it once was. He is loathed by conservatives, who find his environmentalism to be rank hypocrisy from a jet-setting, Davos-attending mansion dweller — as politically polarized as concern over climate change already is, Gore could polarize it yet further.
But is that really so different from the list of drawbacks to a Clinton candidacy?
There's no sign that Gore has even a scintilla of interest in running for president (though he is making a May stop in Iowa...). And I don't think it particularly likely that even if he did run for president, he would win. Climate change is a threat, but I am far from convinced that doing anything about it makes for good politics.
But as bad as the odds are if a candidate does try to run for president with climate change at the center of his campaign, they're much worse if the major candidates from both parties largely ignore the issue. And Gore knows it. He's spent the last decade trying everything he can think of to force Americans to pay more attention to climate change. He's made movies, written books, given speeches, testified before Congress — he's even producing a Live Earth concert with Pharrell Williams.
All these venues are poor substitutes for the platform provided by a presidential campaign, and that goes double when one of the major two political parties is in intellectual flux. Gore cares enough about what comes next that he literally titled his last book The Future. But if he is really so obsessed with the future, then running in 2016 is his best chance to change it.Patrick Zamarripa (left), one of five officers killed in a shooting incident in Dallas, Texas. (Family photo)
It had been 12 hours since he’d lost his son to one of the It had been 12 hours since he’d lost his son to one of the country’s worst mass police shootings, and he still couldn’t understand why.
Dallas police officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32, had survived three tours in Iraq, one of the world’s most dangerous places, his father, Rick Zamarripa, said Friday. And then this.
“He comes to the United States to protect people here,” his dad said. “And they take his life.”
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Rick was watching television Thursday night when news broke that someone had opened fire in downtown Dallas around 9 p.m. at the end of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in the city. He knew that his son had recently begun working as a bike officer in the downtown area, an assignment he enjoyed.
“Hey Patrick,” his father texted. “Are you okay?”
Rick had asked his son that question before, because he knew Zamarripa’s job was perilous. The response usually came quickly: “Yes, dad. I’ll call you back.”
Not this time.
“I didn’t hear nothing,” Rick said.
He contacted Zamarripa’s wife, Kristy Villasenor, whom he believes was at a Texas Rangers game with their 2-year-old daughter, Lyncoln. She didn’t initially know anything either, he said, but soon was told they should get to the hospital.
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comes easily to Ben, it creates problems in his relationship with Rachel throughout the first season.
Rachel’s comfortable dual-income-no-kids lifestyle gets disrupted with Nate and Aiden’s arrival. Rachel might never want children and having a toddler around forces the question. Rachel believes being evolved means being able to operate outside the norms of heterosexual monogamy. Ben, on the other hand, has a more teleological idea of what it means to have an ‘evolved’ relationship. Feeling hemmed in, Rachel goes a little wild on her rumspringa. Her experimentation culminates in an Eyes Wide Shut-style S&M party. When the party goes awry, Rachel winds up back at the Reynolds house donning all leather just in time to meet Ben’s parents, Mr. & Mrs. Reynolds.
in season one, Nate and Ben will try to get ahead in their regressive milieu while also acting in accordance with their versions of what it means to be evolved. Using both slapstick and satire, Evolved will poke fun at every single character who variously reinforces and/ or tries to deconstruct the restrictive organizing principles of social life. In short, we’re all implicated. Hold onto your butts.
Hey Danielle, what made you want to write a show about 2 men?!
Fair question! I'm not asking 'can men be feminists?' It's 2016! Of course they can! And I frankly don't want to know you if you're not.
I wrote this show to capture how sometimes it's hard to be progressive (whoever you are!). It's even harder when you're dis-incentivized to change a system that (whether you like it or not) benefits you.
I know a lot of dudes who consider themselves allies (hi, guys!). This is a show about two good men who we as an audience love and route for in their quest to do better.
The truth is, we can all do better! It's not always easy. But occasionally it is funny.
What are we gonna do with all this ca$h?
Equipment: Shooting a pilot is great but not if you can’t see it or hear it. To make that happen, we need to rent cameras, lights and sound equipment. We are women and we want to be both SEEN and HEARD!
Locations, Props, Costumes: We want the people, places and things in the show to look and feel authentic. That means we’re going to some weird spots, dressing up in weird things, and (among other TOTALLY NORMAL things), procuring a statue of two gorillas copulating.
Post Production: Now that women have the right to be heard, we want to be heard WELL! That requires some sound mixing in post. Now that we’re being seen, we don’t want our skin to look all orange on screen. It’s not a vanity thing, it’s just common sense. Tada! Color correction!
Food: The people involved in this shoot are donating their time and skills. We want to be able to feed our incredible cast and crew each day of shooting. We’re planning to eat some serious deli sandwiches. And those meats add up! (see video for examples).Derrick Rose is playing his best basketball in five years and it isn’t enough. This is the cold reality of New York’s situation; even a best-case scenario from one of the Knicks’ riskier off-season additions has landed them at 17–21, good for 11th place in the Eastern Conference. Rose is exploding toward the rim in a way we haven’t seen in years. His finishing around the basket, once a sad reminder of all that his game had lost, has perked up in a meaningful way. The 17.3 points and 4.5 assists that Rose contributes nightly, while slightly misleading, are valuable to the Knicks. New York’s offense flounders in his absence—a state which recent events have made pertinent in the strangest way possible.
No team in modern NBA history has had a healthy player go truant in the fashion Rose did this week. The official reasoning, given both to the team and to the media only after the fact, was a family emergency. Much of the reporting has centered around Rose’s mother, whom he visited. Mention has been made of Rose missing his son, who still lives in Chicago. Unnamed sources have characterized Rose as an “emotional wreck” in the hours before his no-show. Rose himself said that he did not respond to the team’s attempts to reach him because he needed his “space.” Everything about this story paints it as an unusual, exceptional case, and yet the Knicks seem intent to move on as quickly as possible. Rose was fined without suspension and will be back in the starting lineup Wednesday night.
The profound weirdness of the event coupled with the basketball developments that proceeded it suggest the cloud around Rose won’t soon dissipate. In the fourth quarters of back-to-back games, Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek benched Rose in favor on the seldom-used Ron Baker. The most relevant case (given that one of the two games was somewhat of a blowout) paid off; Baker’s minutes against Milwaukee coincided with a 33-15 run that ultimately led to a five-point Knicks win. There was merit to benching Rose, then, on basketball grounds. There are also grounds to bench him now for his vanishing into the night, though New York decided against it.
In either event, the Knicks have more cause than ever to carefully weigh what it is that Rose gives them. New York’s offense has not functioned well without Rose in play, though reading causality into that fact seems ill-advised given how many of Rose’s minutes overlap with Kristaps Porzingis and Carmelo Anthony on an otherwise shallow team. Still, the structure of a Rose-Brandon Jennings-Baker point guard rotation seems altogether more stable than any alternative. If you reduce Rose’s minutes or try to bring him off the bench, you lose him. If you send him home altogether, you run perilously thin at the position when the team trails the No. 8 seed by just two games in the loss column.
Nathaniel S. Butler/Getty Images
Whether that ultimately matters requires a different sort of calculus. The Knicks without Rose are likely a worse team, no matter his faults. Rose shoots 36% outside the paint, barely gets to the free throw line (he ranks 41st out of 50 similar-usage players in free throw attempts per minute), and isn’t a long-range threat. Still his drives make a difference in the initiation and momentum of New York’s offense—something that Jennings and Baker cannot imitate. There are inevitably possessions where a singularly focused Rose drives into traffic with his head down. Such is the cost of doing business with a guard whose vision is not—and has never been—his strong suit. Rose went into this season intent to prove himself and has taken to attacking the rim as a means to do so. He’s succeeded, in a sense, but the asterisks in Rose’s game remain fairly significant. There is an imposing ceiling on the value of a player who does not score efficiently, does not play a significant role in making his teammates better, and offers little to nothing as a defender.
That last bit cannot be overlooked. Rose has two particularly destructive qualities as a defender: his tendency to hop around in an effort to contain opponents often throws him out of position; and his inability to work over screens (a necessity given the NBA’s current style) dooms possessions just as they start. In tandem, these qualities make Rose unreliable and unpredictable. Help defenders have trouble positioning themselves around Rose and preempting his blow-bys. Alternatively, the need for that help has created problems elsewhere when teammates have attempted to anticipate a Rose mistake. There isn’t enough collective speed and athleticism on the back line to make up for a defender whose positioning is so erratic. It is not a surprise that most every big-picture defensive metric available paints Rose as a trainwreck.
Given that, whatever Rose does give his team offensively has to be weighed against a substantial negative. This is a better-than-expected contract year for Rose and still the balance of his game is, at its most generous characterization, precarious. His play has been okay. Reputation and solid box-score performance has overstated what Rose brings to the Knicks, though the sharper elements of his game have also aligned with some of New York’s specific needs. The question lingering in light of Rose’s unplanned (and still largely unexplained) absence is how much that really matters. Marginalizing or parting ways with Rose would take a somewhat dynamic element off the board for New York. It might also clear up some of the nonsense surrounding a bothersome veteran point guard who really should not be a member of the Knicks next season.
Need, in this case, is a complicated premise. Rose fills a certain void at times, but for what? New York is not some sleeping giant poised to shake up the league upon its waking. It is a middling team that after ebbs and flows has ended up largely where it should. Rose is very much a part of that, for better or worse, but hardly above it. There is nothing in his game that should shield him from the fallout of his unprecedented disappearance.Supreme Court of India
K. N. Mehra vs The State Of Rajasthan on 11 February, 1957
Equivalent citations: 1957 AIR 369, 1957 SCR 623
Author: B Jagannadhadas
Bench: Jagannadhadas, B.
PETITIONER: K. N. MEHRA Vs. RESPONDENT: THE STATE OF RAJASTHAN DATE OF JUDGMENT: 11/02/1957 BENCH: JAGANNADHADAS, B. BENCH: JAGANNADHADAS, B. IMAM, SYED JAFFER MENON, P. GOVINDA CITATION: 1957 AIR 369 1957 SCR 623 ACT: Aircraft, Theft of-Used for training-Implied consent- Dishonest intention-Temporary retention-Theft and Larceny, Distinction -Indian Penal Code (Act XLV of 1860), SS. 23, 24, 378. HEADNOTE: By s. 378 of the Indian Penal Code: " Whoever, intending to take dishonestly any movable property out of the possession of any person without that person's consent, moves that property in order to such taking, is said to commit theft ". P and the appellant were cadets on training in the Indian Air Force Academy, jodhpur, but P had been discharged on the ground of misconduct, and on the day of the incident the appellant was due for a local flight in a Dakota as part of his training as a Navigator. With the help of P, who knew flying, he took off another type of aircraft, Harvard H.T. 822, without authorisation, and on the same day they force- landed at a place in Pakistan. Some days later they contacted the authorities in the Indian High Commission and on their way to India they were arrested at jodhpur and prosecuted for the theft of the aircraft. It was contended for the appellant that as a cadet under training he was entitled to take an aircraft on flight and therefore there was an implied consent to the "moving" of the aircraft within the meaning of s. 378 of the Indian Penal Code, and consequently there could be no dishonest intention, much less such an intention at the time when the flight was started, so as to constitute theft. It was found that the purpose for which the flight was undertaken was to go to Pakistan with a view to seeking employment there. Held, that as the flight was unauthorised there could be no consent, and as it was unlawful at the outset, in the circumstances of the case, and the appellant obtained a temporary use of the aircraft for his own purposes and deprived the Government of its use, there was a dishonest intention, and consequently the flight constituted a theft of the aircraft. A temporary retention of property by a person wrongfully gaining thereby or a temporary keeping out of property from the person legally entitled thereto, may amount to theft under S. 378 of the-Indian Penal Code, and in this respect the offence differs from "larceny" in English Law which contemplates permanent gain or less. Queen-Empress v. Nagappa, (1890) I.L.R. 15 Bom. 344 and Queen-Empress v. Sri Churn Chungo, (1895) I.L.R. 22 Cal. 1017, referred to. 624 JUDGMENT:
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION Criminal Appeal No. 51 of 1955.
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and order dated October 22, 1953, of the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur in Criminal Revision No. 88 of 1953 arising out of the judgment and order dated May 18, 1953, of the Court of Sessions Judge at Jodhpur in Criminal Appeal No. 31 of 1953. Jai Gopal Sethi and B. S. Narula, for the appellant. R. Ganpathy Iyer, Porus A. Mehta and B. H. Dhebar, for the respondent.
1957. February ll. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by JAGANNADHADAS J.-The appellant, K. N. Mehra, and one M. Z. Phillips were both convicted under s. 379 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced to simple imprisonment by the trial Magistrate for eighteen months and a fine of Rs. 750 with simple imprisonment in default of payment of fine for a further term of four months. The conviction and sentence against them have been confirmed on appeal by the Sessions Judge and on revision by the High Court. The appeal before us is by special leave obtained on behalf of the appellant Mehra alone.
Both Mehra and Phillips were cadets on training in the Indian Air Force Academy, Jodhpur. The prosecution is with reference to an incident which is rather extraordinary being for alleged theft of an aircraft, which, according to the evidence of the Commanding 'Officer, P.W. 1, has never so far occurred. The alleged theft was on May 14, 1952. Phillips was discharged from the Academy just the previous day, i.e., May 13, 1952, on grounds of misconduct. Mehra was a cadet receiving training as a Navigator. The duty of a Navigator is only to guide a pilot with the help of instruments and maps. It is not clear from the evidence whether Phillips also had been receiving training as a Navigator. It is in evidence, however, that he knew flying. On May 14, 1952, Phillips was due to leave Jodhpur by train in view of his discharge. Mehra was due for flight in a Dakota as part of his training along 625 with one Om Prakash, a flying cadet. It is in evidence that he had information about it. The authorised time to take off for the flight was between 6 a.m. to 6-30 a.m. The cadets under training have generally either local flights which mean flying area of about 20 miles from the aerodrome or they may have cross-country exercises and have flight in the country through the route for which they are specifically authorised. On that morning admittedly Mehra and Phillips took off, not a Dakota, but a Harvard H.T. 822. This was done before the prescribed time, i.e., at about 5 a.m. without authorisation and without observing any of the formalities, which are prerequisites for an aircraft-flight. It is also admitted that some time in the forenoon the same day they landed at a place in Pakistan about 100 miles away from the Indo-Pakistan border. It is in the evidence of one J. C. Kapoor who was the Military Adviser to the Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan at Karachi, that Mehra and Phillips contacted him in person on the morning of May 16,1952, at about 7 a.m. and informed him that they had lost their way and force-landed in a field, and that they left the plane there. They requested for his help to go back to Delhi. Thereupon Kapoor arranged for both of them being sent back to Delhi in an Indian National Airways plane and also arranged for the Harvard aircraft being sent away to Jodhpur. While they were thus on their return to Delhi on May 17, 1952, the plane was stopped at Jodhpur and they were both arrested.
The case for the prosecution, as appears from the questioning of the trial Magistrate under s. 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, was that Mehra along with his co- accused Phillips stole away the aircraft Harvard H.T. 822 and flew with it to Pakistan with a dishonest intention. The defence, as appears from the answers thereto, was as follows. Mehra went to the aerodrome on the morning of May 14, at the usual time and took off the aircraft along with Phillips and they flew for some time. After a short while the weather became bad and visibility became poor and hence they turned the aircraft back towards Jodhpur-side by guess. They continued what they thought to be the return journey 626 for sometime; but finding the petrol nearing exhaustion they force-landed in a field which, on enquiry, they came to know was in Pakistan territory. This defence has not been accepted and the Courts below have held the prosecution case to have been proved.
Learned counsel for the appellant, Shri Sethi, attempted, to minimise the gravity of the incident by characterising it as a thoughtless prank on the part of a young student aged about 22 years who was receiving training as a flying cadet and that there can be no question of any offence under the Penal Code having been committed, whatever may have been the breach of rules and regulations involved thereby. None of the three courts below who have dealt with this case were prepared to accept any such suggestion. Indeed in view of the fact that the appellant himself has not put forward any such defence it is impossible to accede to it. The next contention of the learned counsel for the appellant-and that appears also to be the defence of the appellant-is that as a cadet under training he was entitled to take an aircraft on flight, no doubt subject to certain rules and regulations and that what at beat happened was nothing more than an unauthorised flight by a trainee as part of his training which was due and in which he lost his way. He had to get force-landed in an unknown place and this turned out to be Pakistan territory. The prosecution case, however, is that the flight to Pakistan was intentional and that such flight in the circumstances constituted theft of the aircraft. The main question of, fact to be determined, therefore, is whether this was intentional flight into Pakistan territory. It has been strenuously pressed upon us that the trial court was not prepared to accept the story that the flight was an intentional one to Pakistan and hence there was no justification for the appellate court and the High Court to find the contrary. It is also pointed out that Kapoor, the Military Adviser to the Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan, gave evidence' that when the appellant and Phillips -met him at Karachi on the morning of May 16, 1952, they told him that they wanted to fly to Delhi with a, view to contact the higher authorities 627 there. It was also pointed out that neither the appellant nor Phillips took with them in the flight any of their belongings. Now it is clear from the judgments of the courts below that both the High Court on revision, as well as the Sessions Judge on appeal, came to a clear finding on this matter against the appellant. It is true that the
-trial court said that the suggestion that the appellant and Phillips wanted to go to Delhi was not beyond the realm of possibility. But it gave effect to this possibility only for determining the sentence. The trial Court also seems to have been of the view that the flight was intended for Pakistan as appears from the following passage in its judgment.
" Although the facts on the record point almost conclusively that they were heading towards Pakistan, it is impossible to dismiss the other theory beyond the realm of possibility that they were going to Delhi to contact the higher authorities there."
In contemplating this possibility the trial Court seems to have lost sight of the fact that the Delhi theory was not the defence of the appellant in his answers to the questioning under s. 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It was obviously an excuse given to Kapoor in order to impress him that their flight was innocent and to persuade him to send them back to Delhi instead of to Jodhpur. The significance of this plea, however, is that the suggestion that the flight was by way of a prank or as part of the flying lessons though unauthorised in the particular instance, is clearly untenable.
In view however of the somewhat halting finding of the trial Court on this matter, we have been taken through the evidence. It would be enough to mention broadly the facts from which, in our opinion, the conclusion arrived at by the Courts below that the flight was intended for Pakistan is not without sufficient reason and justification. As already stated, the aircraft in which the appellant was scheduled to fly on the morning of May 14, was a Dakota but he took off in a Harvard plane. It is in evidence that this was done between 5 a.m. and 5-30 a.m., i.e., before the prescribed time. The plane had just then been 628 brought out from the hangar in order to be utilised for some other flight in the regular course. Appellant started the engine himself by misrepresenting to P. W. 12, the mechanic on duty at the hangar, that he had the permission of the Section Officer in charge. He was scheduled to have the flight along with another person, a flight-cadet by name Om Prakash. But he did not fly, with Om Prakash, but managed to take with him a discharged cadet, Phillips, who knew flying. Before any aircraft can be taken off, the flight has to be authorised by the Flight Commander. A flight authorisation book and form No. 700 have to be signed by the person who is to take off the aircraft for the flight. Admittedly these have not been done in this case and no authorisation was given. The explanation of the appellant is that this is not uncommon. These, however, are not merely empty formalities but are required for the safety of the aircraft as well as of the persons flying in it. It is impossible to accept the suggestion of the appellant that it is usual to allow trainees to take off the aircraft without complying with these essential preliminaries. No such suggestion has been made in cross-examination to any of the officers, and witnesses, who have been examined for the prosecution. It is in evidence that as soon as the taking off of the aircraft was discovered, it inevitably attracted the attention of officers and other persons in the aerodrome and that radio signals were immediately sent out to the occupants in the aircraft to bring the same back at once to the aerodrome. But these signals were. not heeded. The explanation of the appellant is that the full apparatus of the radio-telephone was not with them in the aircraft and that he did not receive the message. The appellant goes so far as to say that there were also no maps or compass or watch in the aircraft. It is proved, however, on the evidence of the responsible officers connected with the aerodrome and by production of Ex. P-6, that this particular aircraft, before it was brought out from the hangar, had been tested and was airworthy. It is difficult to believe that the flight would have been undertaken without all the 629 equipment being in order. Even according to the evidence of Kapoor, the Military Adviser to the Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan, the appellant and Phillips had told him that the plane was airworthy. The suggestion of the appellant, therefore, in this behalf cannot obviously be accepted. It has been pointed out to us that there is some support in the evidence for the suggestion of force-landing on account of the weather being bad and the visibility being poor. This may be so, but would not explain why the air. craft got force-landed after going beyond the Indo-Pakistan border. There is evidence to show that the appellant Mehra was feeling some kind of dissatisfaction with his course and was contemplating a change. Seeking employment in Pakistan was, according to the evidence, one of the ideas in his mind, though in a very indefinite sort of way. Having regard to all these circumstances and the fact that -must be assumed against the appellant that an airworthy aircraft was taken off for flight and that a person like Phillips who knew flying sufficiently well and who was discharged the previous day, was deliberately taken into the aircraft, we are satisfied that the finding of the Courts below, viz., that the flight to Pakistan was intentional and not accidental, was justified. It is, therefore, not possible to treat the facts. of this case as being a mere prank or as an unauthorised cross-country flight in the course of which the border was accidentally crossed and force-landing became inevitable.
It has been strenuously urged that if the flight was intended to be to Pakistan the appellant and Phillips would not have contacted Kapoor and requested him to send them back to Delhi. But this does not necessarily negative their intention at the time of taking off. It may be that after reaching Pakistan the impracticability of their venture dawned upon them and they gave it up. It may be noticed that they were in fact in Pakistan territory for three days and we have nothing but their own word as to how they spent the time on the 14th and 15th. However this may be, if the circumstances are such from which a Court of fact is in a position to infer the purpose 630 and intention and the story of having lost the way cannot be accepted having regard to the aircraft being airworthy, with the necessary equipment, the finding that it was a deliberate flight to Pakistan cannot be said to be unreasonable. It may be true that they did not take with them any of their belongings but this was probably part of the plan in order to take off by surprise and does not exclude the idea of an exploratory flight to Pakistan. We must, therefore, accept the findings of the Courts below. In that view, the only point for consideration is whether the facts held to be proved constitute theft under s. 378 of the Indian Penal Code.
Theft is defined in a. 378 of the Indian Penal Code as follows:
" Whoever, intending to take dishonestly any movable property out of the possession of any' person without that person's consent, moves that property in order to such taking, is said to commit theft. "
Commission of theft, therefore, consists in (1) moving a movable property of a person out of his possession without his consent, (2) the moving being in order to the taking of the property with a dishonest intention. Thus, (1) the absence - of the person's consent at the time of moving, and (2) the presence of dishonest intention in so taking and at the time, are the essential ingredients of the offence of theft. In the Courts below a contention was raised, which has also been pressed here, that in the circumstances of this case there was implied consent to the moving of the aircraft inasmuch as the appellant was a cadet who, in the normal course, would be allowed to fly in an aircraft for purposes of training. It is quite clear, however, that the taking out of the aircraft in the present case had no relation to any such training. It was in an aircraft different from that which was intended for the appellant's training course for the day. It was taken out without the authority of the Flight Commander and, before the appointed time, in the company of a person like Phillips who, having been discharged, could not be allowed to fly in the aircraft. The flight was persisted in, in spite of signals to, return back 631 when the unauthorised nature of the flight was discovered. It is impossible to imply consent in such a situation. The main contention of the learned counsel for the appellant, however, is that there is no proof in this case of any dishonest intention, much less of such an intention at the time when the flight was started. It is rightly pointed out that since the definition of theft requires that the moving of the property is to be in order to such taking, " such " meaning " intending to take dishonestly ", the very moving out must be with the dishonest intention. It is accordingly necessary to consider what " dishonest " intention consists of under the Indian Penal Code. Section 24 of the Code says that " whoever does anything with the intention of causing wrongful gain to one person or wrongful loss to another person is said to do that thing dishonestly". Section 23 of the Code says as follows: "I Wrongful gain' is gain by unlawful means of property to which the person gaining is not legally entitled. 'Wrongful loss' is the loss by unlawful means of property to which the person losing it is legally entitled. A person is said to gain wrongfully when such person retains wrongfully, as well as when such person acquires wrongfully. A person is said to lose wrongfully when such person is wrongfully kept out of any property, as well as when such person is wrongfully deprived of property. " Taking these two definitions together, a person can be said to have dishonest intention if in taking the property it is his intention to cause gain, by unlawful means, of the property to which the person so gaining is not legally entitled or to cause loss, by wrongful means, of property to which the person so losing is legally entitled. It is further clear from the definition that the gain or loss contemplated need not be a total acquisition or a total deprivation but it is enough if it is a temporary retention of property by the person wrongfully gaining or a temporary " keeping out " of property from the person legally entitled. This is 632 clearly brought out in illustration (1) to s. 378 of the Indian Penal Code and is uniformly recognised by various decisions of the High Courts which point out that in this respect " theft " under the Indian Penal Code differs from " larceny " in English law which contemplated permanent gain or loss. (See QueenEmpress V. Sri Churn Chungo (1), and Queen-Empress v. Nagappa (2)). In the present case there can be no reasonable doubt that the taking out of the Harvard aircraft by the appellant for the unauthorised flight has in fact given the appellant the temporary use of the aircraft for his own purpose and has temporarily deprived the owner of the aircraft, viz., the Government, of its legitimate use for its purposes, i.e., the use of this Harvard aircraft for the Indian Air Force Squadron that day. Such use being unauthorised and against all the regulations of aircraft-flying was clearly a gain or loss by unlawful means. Further, the unlawful aspect is emphasised by the fact that it was for flight to a place in Pakistan. Learned counsel for the appellant has urged that the courts below have treated absence of consent as making out dishonesty and have not clearly appreciated that the two are distinct and essential constituents of the offence of theft. The true position, however, is that all the circumstances of the unauthorised flight justify the conclusion both as to the absence of consent and as to the unlawfulness of the means by which there has been a temporary gainor loss by the use of the aircraft. We are, therefore, satisfied that there has been both wrongful, gain to the appellant and wrongful loss to the Government.
The only further questions that remain for consideration, therefore, are whether the causing of such wrongful gain or loss, was intentional and if so whether such intention was entertained at the time when the aircraft was taken. If, as already found, the purpose for which the flight was undertaken was to go to Pakistan, and if in order to achieve that purpose, breach of various regulations relating to the initial taking out of such aircraft for flight was committed at the very out set, there is no difficulty in coming to the (1) [1895] I.L.R. 22 Cal. 1017.
PI (2) [1890] I.L.R. 15 Bom. 344.
633
conclusion, as the courts below have done, that the dishonest intention, if any, was at the very outset. This is not a case where a person -in the position of the appellant started on an authorised flight and exploited it for a dishonest purpose in the course thereof. In such a case, inference of initial dishonest intention may be difficult. The question, however, is whether the wrongful gain and the wrongful loss were intentional. It is urged that the well-known distinction which the Penal Code -makes, in various places, between intention to cause a particular result and the knowledge of likelihood of causing a particular result has not been appreciated. It is also suggested that the decided cases have pointed out that the maxim -that every person must be taken to intend the natural consequence of his acts, is a legal fiction which is not recognised for penal consequences in the Indian Penal Code. (See Vullappa v. Bheema Row (1)). Now whatever may be said about these distinctions in an appropriate case, there is no scope for any doubt in this case, that though the ultimate purpose of the flight was to go to Pakistan, the use of the aircraft for that purpose and the unauthorised and hence unlawful gain of that use to the appellant and the consequent loss to the Government of its legitimate use, can only be considered intentional. This is not by virtue of any presumption but as a legitimate inference from the facts and circumstances of the case. We are, therefore, satisfied that the facts proved constitute theft. The conviction of the appel. lant under s. 379 of the Indian Penal Code is, in our opinion, right and there is no reason to interfere with the same.
Learned counsel for the appellant has very strenuously urged that the circumstances of the case do not warrant the imposition of a substantial sentence of (simple) imprisonment for eighteen months. He also' urges that the appellant, who is now on bail, has undergone his sentence for nearly an year and presses upon us that the interests of the justice in the case, do not require that, after the lapse of over four years from the date of the commission of the offence, a young man (1) A.I.R. 1918 Mad. 136 (2) F.B.
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in the appellant's situation should be sent back to jail to serve out the rest of the sentence. We have ascertained from the Advocate appearing for the Government that the appellant has already. served a sentence of 11 months and 27 days. Learned counsel for the appellant has also informed us that the appellant was in judicial custody for about eleven months as an under-trial prisoner. In view of all the circumstances of the case, we agree that the interests of justice do not call for his being sent back to jail. While, therefore, maintaining the conviction of the appellant, K. N. Mehra, we reduce the sentence of imprisonment against him to the period already undergone. The sentence of fine and the sentence of imprisonment in default thereof shall stand. With this modification, in sentence, the appeal is dismissed.
Appeal dismissed, and sentence modified.Get the biggest Swansea 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 schoolboy has spent 18 months growing his hair - so he can donate it to be made into wigs for children suffering from cancer.
Josh Scott-Hill, 11, says he has been teased and called a “girl” as he has grown his hair to below his shoulders but that hasn’t stopped him and he has raised more than £1,000 for charity.
And when he has his hair cut this month, he will donate it to the Little Princess Trust which makes wigs for children with cancer.
Josh, of Llanelli, said: “During the time I have been growing my hair I have been teased and mistaken for a girl so many times I’ve lost count.
“There was only one time I got really upset, but luckily my friends are very supportive as are my family.”
Mum Sam Scott said she was very proud of her son - who will have his hair cut on July 15.
Sam, 35, said: “My friend has had cancer and she lost her hair and Josh asked: ‘Where have your eyebrows gone?’
“When we walked away he said: ‘Mammy I want to grow my hair for people less fortunate.’”
Sam, whose friend has now been given the all-clear, says Josh has learnt how to brush off mean comments.
The mum-of-one said: “He gets mistaken for a girl all the time, he does have quite a pretty face, and he has to tell people: ‘Yes, I am a boy.’
“He does get teased and the time when he was playing football he got really upset.
“After the game Josh came to me and said that they were making fun of him but I told him to remember what he is doing it for.
“He just brushes it off now and if anything it just made him more determined than ever.”
The £1,000 which Josh has raised will go to Maggie’s in Swansea which provides free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends.
Josh added: “I hope other children will realise they can do it too.”This video from Pop Culture Detective looks at how The Big Bang Theory reinforces misogyny with its joke construction, character arcs, and dialogue. The video’s creator and narrator, Jonathan McIntosh, argues that The Big Bang Theory‘s four male protagonists are the “perfect embodiment” of a trope he calls “the adorkable misogynist.”
“Adorkable misogynists are male characters whose geeky version of masculinity is framed as both comically pathetic and endearing,” McIntosh says, “And it’s their status as nerdy nice guys that then lets them off the hook for a wide range of creepy, entitled, and downright sexist behaviors…These types of characters are shown engaging in a variety of harassing, entitled, and sexist behavior where women are concerned. They consistently stalk, spy on, lie to, and try to manipulate the women in their lives. They’re overbearing, they refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer, and they often ignore the basic tenets of consent.”
McIntosh then traces the trope through films and shows like Revenge of the Nerds, Sixteen Candles, Saved By The Bell, and Weird Science before arriving at The Big Bang Theory. He then breaks the show’s four male protagonists into their respective variations on the archetype. Howard is the “creepy pervert with a heart of gold,” Raj is the “sensitive guy turned inappropriate drunk,” Leonard is the “nice guy enabler,” and Sheldon is the “innocent bigot.”
He then asks, “How does The Big Bang Theory keep us as the audience sympathetic to men who behave in such reprehensible ways?” He looks at how techniques like lampshading and irony are used to downplay the sexism behind the characters’ statements and make it humorous.
‘The target of the joke is not the misogynist behavior,” McIntosh explains. “Instead, it’s making fun of men who are |
igers from such abuse by sharing and liking this page.CHARLOTTETOWN — The government of Prince Edward Island is committing to new initiatives in an effort to get immigrants to stay in Canada’s smallest province and boost the population.
The commitment is included in today’s speech from the throne, opening the fall session of the Island legislature.
In the speech, read by Lt.-Gov. Antoinette Perry, the Liberal government says in the coming year it will take steps to encourage more immigrants to stay, and for more young Islanders to pursue opportunities on P.E.I.
The population of the Island topped 152,000 this year, and the government has set the goal of reaching 160,000 by 2022.
The speech, which provides a broad outline of the government’s intentions over the next year, includes promises of a new broadband Internet system from one end of the province to the other, a carbon mitigation strategy and a report on poverty reduction.
It says a recreational cannabis plan will come in the spring, and government will fund services such as light housekeeping or snow removal to help seniors stay in their own homes longer.After a week in which we felt like we could have used an actual super hero, one man was actually pretty close to being the hero that Gotham City deserves. In 2006, Chris Weir searched far and wide for the perfect home for his family, and while most people might have wanted a pool or plenty of toilets, Weir’s demands were pretty simple – a huge basement. But don’t worry, it’s not as creepy as it sounds. You see, the 38-year old husband and father of two just wanted a lot of space so he could build his very own Bat Cave.
Weir has been obsessed with Batman comics and movies since he was a child, so he decided that he wanted his own secret room of solitude to house and protect his massive collection of memorabilia, as well as his 120-inch movie screen and home theater seats. In all, Weir spent about $100,000 on fulfilling his man-nerd dream, which means that he obviously doesn’t have the coolest gadgets like his own Batmobile or an Anne Hathaway/Catwoman sex doll. Wait, no, I meant Batwing.
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The only question I have is how Weir and his wife determine which of their sons gets to dress up as Batman and which is Robin. I assume that it’s an age thing, but after a while I imagine that some contempt will grow within the younger sibling, leading him to start dressing like the Riddler or something. I’m not worried about that causing problems at home, as much as the cost of replacing the boy’s underwear on a weekly basis after the waistbands are torn off in nonstop wedgie attacks at school.Even Verizon Doesn't Think LTE's a Real Competitor For Comcast To get their acquisition of Time Warner Cable approved, Comcast has been claiming that pretty much every company in existence technically competes with Comcast, therefore all that competition will organically keep Comcast honest. Even though Google Fiber only impacts a tiny, tiny fraction of Comcast's overall userbase, Comcast claims that's enough competition to keep the company on its very best behavior. Comcast has even gone so far as to claim Comcast-owned Hulu will keep Comcast honest. The company has also tried to argue that because LTE wireless is improving, it too is another example of competitive pressure facing the company (even though Comcast sells Verizon Wireless services). Amusingly, speaking with reporters recently, even Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead argued that this wasn't really true: quote: "They're trying to get deals approved, right, and I understand that... their focus is different than my focus right now, because I don't have any deals pending," Mead said, a reference to the fact that Comcast is looking for ways to justify the TWC buy. "LTE certainly can compete with broadband, but if you look at the physics and the engineering of it, we don't see LTE being as efficient as fiber coming into the home." Before moving to Verizon's wireless unit, Mead held executive roles in the company's landline business, responsible for traditional telephone service and high-speed internet to the home. "We know both sides of that pretty well," he continued. "So that may be a little bit of a stretch, and the economics are much different." By pretending that everybody competes with Comcast, Comcast hopes everybody ignores the company's growing stranglehold on the last-mile broadband market, a position of power that's only growing as companies like AT&T and Verizon By pretending that everybody competes with Comcast, Comcast hopes everybody ignores the company's growing stranglehold on the last-mile broadband market, a position of power that's only growing as companies like AT&T and Verizon back away from DSL users in markets they don't want to upgrade (something that's happening whether or not the merger goes through). Capped, pricey LTE service certainly isn't a real competitor for Comcast -- especially since they're in a marketing agreement with Verizon to help sell it as an added complementary service -- not a replacement.
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Most recommended from 26 comments
Zenit
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA ·Comcast XFINITY
·Verizon DSL
6 recommendations Zenit Premium Member Ah, Verizons master plan Its been pretty well known that Verizon's master plan under McAdam has been the following:
Freeze FIOS expansion unless forced by franchise
Freeze DSL expansion unless your in PA, blasted BFFR law!
Allow the copper plant to deteriorate, even in areas without FIOS. Maintenance costs way too much money (I don't mind this in areas overbuilt with fiber. But letting non-overbuilt areas fall apart, NO!)
And then sell back to the abandoned copper-only areas without cable 4G LTE at high prices. Whats that, the DSLAM broke? Here, have LTE. We never built out broadband to your semi-rural CO? Have LTE!
FIOS is only about 30-35% of the VZ service area as admitted by the VZ CTO (he said anywhere from 20% to 50% but the lower is more likely...)
Its nice to see that Verizon has a 2-faced show going on here. LTE is great for home internet! No its not it cant compete with cable! Yes it is, the money! No it isn't!
I hope somebody in a position of power at VZ will finally wake up and see that the McAdam/Shamo policies are going to totally wreck the company in the long term. Bring Seidenberg out of retirement or something - at least he had vision and came up from the wireline side of the house, working his way up to CEO.
Its not too late yet to recover from the impending infrastructure disaster VZ is inflicting on itself. A lot of the copper plant could be quickly redeemed by plopping down some VDSL2 and patching up the plant as a stopgap before they build out FIOS.
buzz_4_20
join:2003-09-20
Biddeford, ME 4 recommendations buzz_4_20 Member Holy Crap For once they are right.
Wireless is inferior to wired for home internet.“Should I fake having sexual pleasure with my husband?” This is a question a lot of Christian wives ask. Some may frame the question in a way that seems to force an answer. They might say “Isn’t ‘faking it’ a form of lying and God never wants us to lie right?” This is kind of like asking a man “When did you stop beating your wife?” It presupposes something to be true.
Is lying always wrong for a Christian?
I remember reading a book many years ago by Josh McDowell and Norm Geisler called “Love is Always Right”. These two men were some of my favorite authors growing up, because they were not afraid to tackle the tough questions.
In that book they tackled the issue of “Is lying always wrong in God’s eyes” and the conclusion they came to based on the Scriptures is no. I don’t have the book anymore so I am going somewhat on memory here. The basic gist of their argument was, if an untruth is being told to cover sin (yours or someone else’s), or cause harm to someone (like a false witness) then it is sin in God’s eyes. However if the lie being told is to protect innocent life, or promote and protect righteous acts then it is not sin.
Lying is not always wrong in God’s eyes, in the same way that killing is not always wrong. If a person is killed because of just punishment by the state, or solider is killed in battle or someone is killed in an act of self-defense there is no sin it. But if we kill someone out of selfishness or hate or for other sinful reasons, then it becomes murder and therefore the killing in that instance is sin.
The Hebrew midwives lied to the King of Egypt out of fear for God
“And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.” – Exodus 1:15-21 (KJV)
The Bible says because the Hebrew midwives “feared God”, therefore they did not follow the Pharaohs evil and immoral command to slaughter the Hebrew boys. Some have said, “Yes God blessed their civil obedience, but not their lying to the King”.
The problem with that interpretation is – God says in his Word that “therefore”, in other words “because of” what they had done in the previous verses he “dealt well” with the midwives. Can we honestly look at this passage and say God wanted them to tell Pharaoh the truth? If they had he would have executed them on the spot and sent other Egyptian mid wives in who would have done as he asked and more boys would have been slaughtered. The lie was necessary to continue to halt or least slow down the execution of these baby Hebrew boys.
God blesses Rahab for hiding the Hebrew spies and lying about their whereabouts
Rahab, a prostitute in the city of Jericho was blessed for hiding two Hebrew spies that came to check out the defenses of Jericho before they would attack (Joshua chapter 2).
“And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were: And it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out: whither the men went I wot not: pursue after them quickly; for ye shall overtake them.” – Joshua 2:4-5 (KJV)
She not only lied having them there hidden in her roof, but she expanded the lie by sending the search parties in the opposite direction so that when the spies left her house they would not run into the search parties.
Because of Rahab’s great assistance to the people of Israel in hiding the spies, lying about the spies God granted her the honor of being one of the ancestors of Christ:
“Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse,” – Matthew 1:5 (NIV)
In these other New Testament passages Rahab’s deceit is held up as shining example of right and just behavior:
“By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.” – Hebrews 11:31 (KJV) “Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” – James 2:25 (KJV)
The Scriptures are quite clear, lying is not always wrong.
So if lying is not always wrong, should a woman “fake it” with her husband?
The answer is YES. But it really is yes – most of the time.
When NOT to “fake it” with your husband
When the pain is abnormal
What I mean by that is I have heard from many Christian women on this subject that deal with chronic pain, whether it is in the vaginal area or elsewhere. Sometimes you may have big flare-ups or some unusual pain that you have never felt before. In this case you need to let your husband know, and if he being loving he will understand. But if you experience regular and chronic pain, you may need to sacrifice some comfort for this short period when sex occurs to meet the needs of your husband and your marriage. Some women actually get a short reprieve from their chronic pain if they have an orgasm.
If he is being rough and mean
If your husband is being rough and mean to you during sex, there is no reason that you need to fake it. Now some women like a little playful roughness and that is different. But I think we all know what I am talking about here.
So those are the two times when you as a wife should NOT fake sexual pleasure with your husband.
When to “fake it”?
Every time you have sex and are not genuinely feeling sexual pleasure from your husband and it is not for the two reasons I mentioned above – you should fake it!
But shouldn’t wives enjoy sex too?
Absolutely! God wants women to enjoy sex too. This is why God gave women many erotic zones including but not limited to her clitoris. But let’s talk about the clitoris for a moment. Think about it – the clitoris only exists for one reason and that is pleasure! Unlike a man’s penis which serves other functions there is no other functional reason for a woman’s clitoris, it is God’s gift to women.
Your husband should certainly try to make sex pleasurable for you and for 99% of men (besides rapists and other nut jobs) want to do that for the woman they are with. A huge part of a man’s sexual pleasure is knowing (or least believing) that he is giving pleasure to the woman he is having sex with.
But ladies let me be perfectly frank with you (as if I was not already frank earlier with the “clitoris” remarks).
You are not going to ever truly enjoy sex with your husband until you understand how your body works. Yes this might mean going against traditional church teachings against masturbation but if you don’t understand how your body works, you can’t expect your husband to just figure it out for you. He may stumble upon things that work for you, but you can’t depend on that.
The key to you enjoying sex with your husband is literally and figuratively in your own hands.
So if you figure out how your body works, and gently find ways to guide your husband in a way that does not seem to be correcting him, but lovingly and softly showing him what you need you won’t have to fake it very often because you will actually be enjoying sex with him. In fact you may enjoy it so much you might start looking forward to it more and initiating sex with him more!
Ladies your mind can be your greatest asset or your greatest hindrance to enjoying sex with your husband. The choice is yours, break down those barriers and truly embrace the physical side of sexuality that God meant you to experience.
Remember the clitoris! God gave that part to you for one reason and one reason alone. Enjoy sex with your husband as God intended you too!
Know your body but also be comfortable with his
There are some women who do know their own bodies and know exactly how to truly get pleasure from having sex with their husbands, while other women struggle with their own bodies. But in many cases whether a woman knows her body or not, they often are not comfortable with their husband’s bodies. Christian wives let me again be very blunt here because it needs to be said.
You need to become very comfortable with your husband’s penis, and I don’t just mean allowing him to have intercourse with you.
Now after the redness has left your face from that last statement I want you to think about this.
You need to follow the example of the wife of Song of Solomon:
“As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” – Song of Solomon 2:3 (KJV)
You need to cultivate a love of the touch and taste of your husband’s penis. I realize that goes against a lot of conditioning women have been raised with. Your husband’s semen should not gross you out.
If you reject your husband’s penis or his semen as gross you are in essence rejecting your husband. You need to truly let that settle in your mind.
Updated: I added this new section below to the original article after being asked to clarify what I meant by a woman rejecting her husband’s penis and his semen.
This is what I am referring to when I said a woman should not reject her husband’s penis or his semen or think that either of them are gross.
1. A woman manually stroking her husband’s penis as a type of foreplay.
2. A woman manually stroking her husband’s penis to the point of him climaxing.
3. A woman giving her husband fellatio(oral sex) as type of foreplay.
4. A woman giving her husband fellatio(oral sex) for him to climax.
5. A woman allowing her husband to ejaculate on her body(as opposed to inside her vagina)
I realize that the Catholic ladies(Emily and others) have a “get out of jail free card” on this because the Catholic church forbids oral sex and any type of sex where the man’s semen does not end up in the woman’s vagina. The Bible however does not forbid oral sex, but rather gives positive examples of it in marriage. And yes I believe men should do this for their wives as well, and the Bible shows examples of fellatio and cunnilingus. It also does not constrain every sexual encounter to end with the man ejaculating in his wife’s vagina.
Example of fellatio in the Bible:
“As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” – Song of Solomon 2:3 (KJV)
The apple tree in ancient cultures was often used as a symbol of a man genitals and the implication is clearly seen of a wife longing to kneel in from her husband and perform oral sex on him. His penis and his semen are sweet to her taste.
The churches, both protestant and Catholic for many centuries have had a real hard time with the Song of Solomon. Because of the erotic nature of its language of the physical love between a man and a woman. I have seen quite humorous interpretations by some church leaders who wanted to explain away this passage and many other in the Song of Solomon as speaking to the relationship of Christ and his church, and not sex between a man and woman.
But the original recipients of the Song of Solomon understood exactly what this book was – a book demonstrating sexual love between a man and a woman. This is why the Jewish culture did not allow Jewish boys to read the Song of Solomon until they were 13(the age of the beginning of manhood).
The Song of Solomon also alludes to cunnilingus(a man performing oral sex on his wife):
“Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.” – Song of Solomon 4:6 (KJV)
The illusions here to “the mountain”(singular) and “the hill”(singular) refer to a woman’s pubic mound, as opposed to some other references where mountains(plural) can refer to a woman’s breasts.
This is what frankincense is:
“an aromatic gum resin obtained from an African tree and burned as incense.”
This is what myrhh is:
“a fragrant gum resin obtained from certain trees and used, especially in the Near East, in perfumery, medicines, and incense.”
So what the Song of Solomon is literally saying in this above passage(but in more flowery symbolisms) :
“I want to perform oral sex on my wife all night, the scent and taste of her vagina and the fluids it produces are intoxicating to me.”
I realize that is enough to make any person red faced, but it is literally what the husband is saying about what he wants to do with his wife.
Another illusion to cunnilingus(a man performing oral sex on his wife) is found here:
“14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.” -Song of Solomon 4:14-16 (KJV)
In this passage instead of the husband expressing his desiring to smell and taste his wife’s vagina, the wife is inviting her husband to come into her garden(representing her vagina) – again we see the references to myrrh and frankincense but now she adds things like cinnamon “Spikenard and saffron; calamus”. The streams and waters flowing in the garden are symbolic a woman’s vagina lubricating in anticipation of her husband coming to “eat his pleasant fruits”.
With all due respect to my Catholic Christian friends and even some fellow Protestant Christian friends – the Church fathers who came after the Apostles died truly did a disservice to sex.
Both the Church and the heathen world bare blame for making sex into something dirty.
Yes the heathen world perverts sex through things like pre-marital sex,orgies, homosexual sex and prostitution. But the Church made even sex within marriage dirty! They made the idea of a husband and wife performing oral sex on one another dirty! The Bible does not hold such a view of these things in marriage. Rather they are gifts to the marriage bed.
I am glad that the Catholic Church and Protestant churches finally left the false ideas that sex was ONLY for procreation and stopped having married couples take vows of celibacy after they had kids. Yes in the early church after the Apostles died some fathers taught false teachings about married couples taking vows of celibacy! That is how much they looked down on God’s gift of sex. They lost the healthy and positive view of the physical side of love in marriage that God designed.
While the Catholic Church and Protestant eventually left some ridiculous ideas about sex behind(like marital celibacy) they did not leave behind all the false teachings of the church(like prohibitions against oral sex and any sexual act that it not procreative in nature).
The reason these things are so hard for many women to understand is because many women are not comfortable with their own bodies, so how can they be comfortable with his? Well that tells you what you need to do. Get comfortable with your body, and then get comfortable with his.
Keep your expectations realistic
Am I saying that a Christian woman who has kept herself pure for marriage is going to have all this comfort with her own body and her husband’s body on day one of her marriage(her wedding night)?
Of course not.
But once you are married you need to get to work knowing your own body (through masturbation) and also cultivating a desire for sex with your husband and very specifically cultivating a desire for your husband’s penis and his semen. This should be the goal of every new Christian bride.
Also ladies you have to be realistic about orgasms. It is a fact verified by multiple sex studies over several decades. Most women rarely have orgasms through vaginal intercourse. Now if you are one of those rare ladies that has one every time – then God bless you! But for most women it is not that way.
Sometimes both husbands and wives, due to ignorance on their part, get frustrated because the woman does not climax very often through vaginal intercourse. If you want to have regular orgasms you are going to have to get comfortable with manual stimulation with your husband’s hand or your hand and be able to receive oral sex from your husband otherwise orgasms will be very rare for you.
But why should I have to fake it?
Many Christian wives ask “If I give him sex that should be good enough, I should not have to give him sex and also pretend to like it! That is ridiculous!”
Do we think it is ridiculous when a salesman gets to his job even if he does not feeling like selling cars that day and the minute a customer walks in they have to put a big smile on and act like the world is wonderful while they try and sell their products? Of course not.
There are many times in life that we just have to put on a smile, put our best effort forward even when we don’t feel like it, and sex with our spouse is no exception to that rule.
What about the husband who comes home from a tough day at work and his wife wants to go on about drama in her sisters or girlfriends life? He could care less about it. But he has to put on the smile and fake like he is interested in it.
For men when it comes to sex – you appearing to enjoying it (whether it is genuine or not) is huge part of what makes sex pleasurable for a man.
If a man feels like he has pleased his wife in bed, he gets up and it just makes his day. Its more than just the physical release, a man is on cloud nine after sex if he feels he has pleased his wife.
If a man feels like he can’t please his wife in the bedroom it will deeply affect his self-esteem and his confidence.
You might feel as a wife “But I gave him sex when he wanted it!”, but if he feels that you were displeased during sex you may have given him a physical release, but you just added a psychological load to his mind. You can literally ruin your husband’s day by giving him sex but making him feel like a horrible lover, or that you did not desire him in bed.
Conclusion
So ladies if you want to truly please your husband, the man that God made you for, you need to fake it till you make it! Fake it till you truly enjoy it by overcoming your own mental inhibitions, understanding what makes your body tick, and then gently and lovingly showing your husband how to please you.Enraged by the beheading of a second Canadian hostage by ransom-seeking Abu Sayyaf extremists, Philippine troops pressed a major offensive in the south Tuesday but there was no sign of an end to the small but brutal insurgency that a new president will inherit in about two weeks. With a black flag resembling Daesh's (ISIS) as a backdrop, Abu Sayyaf fighters beheaded Canadian hostage Robert Hall on southern Jolo Island Monday after a ransom deadline passed.
The fate of two other hostages from Norway and the Philippines who were abducted with Hall and Ridsdel from a small marina on southern Samal Island in September remains unknown, according to the military.
Early last year, a U.S. military force ended more than a decade of non-combat counter-terrorism support, including satellite and drone surveillance, for Filipino troops battling the Abu Sayyaf, as the militants' zeal waned.
...Solar Industry Defeats ALEC Net Metering Attacks In Utah & Washington
March 19th, 2014 by The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC)
In 2013, a national battle for energy choice commenced as utilities attacked solar net metering in California, Arizona, Louisiana, and Idaho. Net metering allows rooftop solar customers to use clean solar energy that they generate themselves, and then receive full retail credit for any excess electricity sent back to the grid. Utilities turn around and sell this energy to neighboring homes and businesses.
The solar industry – backed by overwhelming public support – claimed victory in all of the 2013 battles by preserving net metering. The Arizona battle was particularly heated, as Arizona Public Service (APS) funded a multimillion-dollar anti-solar campaign rooted in dirty and ineffective tactics. APS lied about funding phony grassroots organizations and ads attacking their own customers. Meanwhile, utility trade association Edison Electric Institute (EEI) aired its own TV and radio ads attacking rooftop solar customers. Despite spending millions and damaging their own brands, APS and EEI failed. What they did accomplish was dragging down APS’s net approval with its own customers by 13 points.
Arizona and last year’s 4-0 scoreboard for solar wins vs. utility losses demonstrate that the public – voters and ratepayers whose energy choice is under attack – wants rooftop solar. In 2014, public support for solar remains undeniable: the rooftop solar industry just defeated two additional attacks in Utah and the state of Washington.
The Utah and Washington battles mark the entrance of a new rooftop solar attacker: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC joined the fray last year with a template for model anti-net metering policies. Washington and Utah are the first decisions stemming from this template, and both are clear ALEC defeats.
Utilities, EEI, and ALEC want to undermine net metering to stifle rooftop solar growth and shut down energy choice. While net metering benefits everyone involved, many utilities are trying to end it to protect their monopolies.
“In state after state, overwhelming public support for rooftop solar continues to trump multi-million dollar attacks from utilities, EEI, and ALEC,” said Bryan Miller, President of TASC and VP of Public Policy for Sunrun.
In Washington, utilities lobbied for legislation that would have given them monopoly control over the existing rooftop solar market. The anti-competition proposal stated “if an electric utility offers a leased energy program, no other entity may offer leases to the utility’s customers.” This attempt to ban competition – the first of its kind – contradicts the very free market principles that groups like ALEC espouse.
The legislation died with the end of session last week – a blow to ALEC, as well as anti-solar utilities and EEI.
In Utah, bill language that would have changed net metering was removed from SB 208, instead asking for a study to look at the value of distributed solar. The bill will be signed by Governor Herbert now that it has passed through both the Senate and the House.
The solar victories in Washington and Utah are two more examples of state leaders and regulators continuing to recognize voter support and demand for rooftop solar and energy choice.
Keep an eye on all the hottest solar news here on CleanTechnica. Never miss a story by subscribing to our solar newsletter or overall cleantech newsletter.After being on the run for two years one of the four co-founders and spokesperson for the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay was arrested in a rural area near Malmö, Sweden. According to Carolina Ekeus of the Swedish National Police Board, Peter Sunde also known as Brokep, was facing an outstanding sentence of eight months in prison and a 46 million Swedish crowns ($6.9 million) fine for violating copyright laws brought upon by the Supreme Court in 2012.
Peter Sunde was one of the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay website and has been wanted by Interpol since being sentenced in 2012, along with the other 3 co-founds of the website.
“We have been looking for him since 2012,” Reuters quoted spokeswoman at the Swedish National Police Board Carolina Ekeus as saying. “He was given eight months in jail so he has to serve his sentence.”
The Supreme Court initially sentenced all four individuals connected to The Pirate Bay to 1 year in prison and a fine of 32 million crowns ($4.8 million); However, following an appeal in 2010 the sentences were reduced by different amounts and the fine was increased to 46 million Swedish crowns ($6.9 million).
There are reports that claim Sunde was living in Berlin, Germany for the past couple of years, but would trek to Sweden to visit family members.
On June 1st, 2014 Swedish police, local law enforcement, and the Polish police collaborated on a task to track down criminal fugitives carried out a raid at a farm in Skåne where Sunde was located and taken into custody.
Of the four Pirate Bay co-founders only Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström has completed their prison sentences. The fourth defendant, Fredrik Neij remains a fugitive and currently resides in Asia.TNF Cutaway drawing and its artists Index page 01 to page 139 - up to post #5555Automobiles / SUV / 4WD / Off-roadAbarthAbarth 500 Record 1958 by Giovanni Cavara - page 47Abarth 2000 Sport Spyder by Franco Rosso - page 50-104AJSAJS 1932 by John Ferguson - page 102Alec IssigonisAlec Issigonis Lightweight Special with Austin Seven engine by John Ferguson - page 85-111Alfa RomeoAlfa Romeo 159 Alfetta by Laurence Watts - page 31-38Alfa Romeo P3 by Bruno Betti - page 42Alfa Romeo Bimotore 1935 by Giulio Betti - page 42Alfa Romeo Bimotore 1935 by Brian Hatton - page 42 - "The non-Conformists" Nr? article by Cyril PosthumusAlfa Romeo 179 by Paolo D'Allesio - page 42Alfa Romeo P3 by Tony Matthews - page 42-63Alfa Romeo 512 1940 by Giulio Betti - page 43Alfa Romeo V8 2650 Turbo engine by Bruno Betti - page 43Alfa Romeo Montreal by Bruno Betti - page 45Alfa Romeo P3 by unknown artist - page 45Alfa Romeo 2900B by unknown artist - page 45Alfa Romeo Montreal engine by Bruno Betti(?) - page 45Alfa Romeo 6C 2500 SS Corsa 1939-1940 by Giovanni Cavara - page 46Alfa Romeo 8C by Rens Biesma - page 46Alfa Romeo 159 Alfetta side view by unknown artist - page 31-38Alfa Romeo 2000 Sportiva 1954 by Giovanni Cavara - page 46Alfa Romeo 6C 2900 by Giovanni Cavara - page 46Alfa Romeo 158 by Giovanni Cavara - page 52Alfa Romeo Flat 12 3000cc by Bruno Betti - page 54Alfa Romeo P2 1924 by Giulio Betti - page 54-105Alfa Romeo 179T by Bruno Betti - page 63Alfa Romeo AR51 "Matta" by Giulio Betti - page 66Alfa Romeo 159 Alfetta by Serge Bellu - page 66Alfa Romeo 2300 by unknown artist - page 67 (?) Walter Brito (?)Alfa Romeo Alfetta GT by Franco Rosso - page 67Alfa Romeo Canguro by Makoto Ouchi - page 68Alfa Romeo OSI Scarabeo 1966 by Sergio Baratto - page 77Alfa Romeo 33 1967 by unknown artist - page 78Alfa Romeo 33 1967 by Giovanni Cavara - page 78Alfa Romeo 33 1967 drawings (not a cutaway) by Betti (Giulio or Bruno?) - page 78Alfa Romeo 33-3 1970 by Betti (Giulio or Bruno?) - page 78Alfa Romeo 33TT3 1972 by Bruno Betti - page 78-119Alfa Romeo 33TT12 1973 by Bruno Betti - page 78-119Alfa Romeo 33SC12 1977 by unknown artist - page 78Alfa Romeo Disco Vollante by Clarence LaTourette - page 83-86Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ1 by Clarence LaTourette - page 86Alfa Romeo Sprint Veloce roadster by Clarence LaTourette - page 86Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint 1954 Bertone by Giovanni Cavara - page 104Alfa Romeo 8C by Robert Roux - page 109Alfa Romeo Alfetta 2000 1978 by unknown artist - page 114Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 1932 by Tony Townsend - page 118Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Coupe 1937 by unknown artist (National Motor Museum) - page 118Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV (2000 GTV?) 1969 by Paul Shakespeare - page 118Alfa Romeo Giulia by Bruno Nestola - page 119Alfa Romeo Giulia 1300 by Bruno Betti - page 120Alfa Romeo Giulia GTA by Bruno Betti - page 120Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza by Yoshihiro Inomoto - page 130Alfa Romeo 155 TI V6 DTM by Bruno Betti - page 134Alfa Romeo 155 TI V6 DTM by Milanesi - page 134Alfa Romeo 155 V6 TI ITC 1996 by Betti (Giulio or Bruno?) - page 135Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT Veloce by Jiro Yamada - page 135Alfa Romeo 90 1984 by unknown artist (Betti?) - page 135Alfa Romeo 6 V6 2500cc 1979 engine by Bruno Betti - page 135Alfa Romeo Alfasud 1972 by Dick Ellis - page 135Alfa Romeo V16 3-Litre 1939 by unknown artist - page 137 (cross section - Not a cutaway)Alfa Romeo Spider Duetto by Jiro Yamada - page 138Alfa Romeo 512 1939 by unknown artist - page 139 (plan view and longitudinal section - Not a cutaway)AlpineAlpine A110 by Bruno Betti - page 88Alpine A110 by Editechnic - page 105Alpine GTA V6 Turbo by E.T.A.I France - page 129 |
Now let's take a look at how Samuel's season compared to DRC's
Player Targets Receptions Catch % Yards TDs INTs PDs QB rating DRC 81 46 56.8 645 5 3 13 87.7 Samuel 77 41 53.2 596 2 5 7 60.3
Clearly Samuel's played better. The latter has missed more tackles (18) than Rodgers-Cromartie (11) but that obviously doesn't include the ones DRC hasn't even attempted!
2. Safety
Despite still playing at a high level, Brian Dawkins was allowed to leave after the 2008 season. The heart and soul of the defense apparently wasn't worth a two year contract so Denver happily snatched up the future hall of famer. The Eagles were dead wrong. In 2010 B-Dawk was still at the top of his game as a run defender, even if he'd regressed a little in coverage. The plan in 2009 to replace the legend was pathetic. They crossed their fingers hoping Quintin Demps would be good enough but he couldn't even hold onto the job in training camp. That meant a combination of rookie Macho Harris and journeyman veteran Sean Jones had to start. Here's how their numbers stack up:
Run defense
Player Tackles Assists Missed Tackles Stops Harris 28 2 1 7 Jones 34 6 7 12 Dawkins 97 10 12 30
Pass coverage
Player Targets Receptions Catch % Yards TDs INTs PDs QB rating Harris 13 10 76.9 151 1 0 0 140.2 Jones 17 13 76.5 179 2 2 2 109.3 Dawkins 48 29 60.4 303 4 2 5 89.1
The situation finally seemed like it was resolved in 2010 when the Eagles drafted Nate Allen in the second round. He made a good duo with the excellent Quintin Mikell and everyone expected for Allen to come back strong after hitting the rookie wall and then getting injured. The Eagles' weren't content with the steady consistency of Mikell however, instead ludicrously considering Kurt Coleman a viable NFL starter. Coleman's season was saved in large part by Rex Grossman throwing him the ball three times in a single game but aside from that he wasn't very good. 2011 was also the season the Eagles' brass thought Jarrad Page was capable...
Run defense - 2011
Player Tackles Assists Missed Tackles Stops Coleman 62 13 11 20 Page 29 4 7 9 Mikell 78 10 15 23
Mikell's missed tackles obviously weren't ideal but he was still active around the line of scrimmage, unlike the two Eagles in the table.
Pass coverage - 2011
Player Targets Receptions Catch % Yards TDs INTs PDs QB rating Coleman 31 19 61.3 396 5 4 1 105.2 Page 15 10 66.7 108 1 0 2 109.9 Mikell 35 18 51.4 260 1 2 2 61.6
Eagles fans also got a glimpse of the terrible Jaiquawn Jarrett. The second round pick remains probably the worst rookie I've ever seen in an Eagles uniform and that's saying something. There wasn't one play you could point to, whether in the preseason or regular season, that made him look like an NFL player. That never changed in his whole career with the birds, and he'll go down as one of the biggest draft busts in history.
Somehow the coaching staff also managed to break Nate Allen. Maybe having such a terrible safety partner made him that way but after two solid years he fell apart. The duo of Allen and Coleman was by far the worst in the NFL this season.
Run defense - 2012
Player Tackles Assists Missed Tackles Stops Coleman 72 12 15 19 Allen 62 9 13 18 Mikell 84 11 13 39
Mikell attempted more tackles, missed at worst the same number and made twice as many defensive stops.
Pass coverage - 2012
Player Targets Receptions Catch % Yards TDs INTs PDs QB rating Coleman 27 17 63.0 294 2 2 2 93.7 Allen 49 27 55.1 346 4 0 2 104.6 Mikell 47 36 76.6 474 0 0 1 107.9
Not a great year for Mikell in terms of coverage but he did his job and didn't give up the deep ball.
3. Right Guard
Unlike with the secondary, at least the Eagles haven't really had a good right guard in a while. It became obvious after the 2008 season that the team needed an upgrade at the position as Max Jean-Gilles and Nick Cole struggled. It's the end of the 2012 season and there's still a hole. In one of the biggest free agency busts of all time, the Eagles paid Stacy Andrews a boatload to start exactly two games for them. He wasn't a very good player in Cincinnati but the worst part was that he was coming off a major injury which he could easily fail to recover from. The bad Andrews brother managed to give up three sacks and seven hurries in just 174 pass blocks. In contrast Nick Cole allowed just two sacks, three hits and 11 hurries in 606 drop backs that year. The attempt to reconcile his brother also failed abysmally, as it was clear Stacy's presence had no impact. The Eagles had to again rely on the underwhelming Jean-Gilles who struggled with his run blocking throughout the year.
By 2010 both Andrews were out of the picture but the Eagles managed to find an even worse player in Reggie Wells. Wells had been one of the worst guards in the entire league for the Arizona Cardinals in 2009 but that didn't stop the team adding him as competition. For the second year in a row it was Cole and Jean-Gilles who got the majority of snaps at RG but this time Cole looked a shadow of his former decent self, giving up seven sacks, three hits and 17 pressures in just 327 pass blocks. Jean-Gilles did all he could, but he simply doesn't have the talent.
Finally the situation seemed resolved in 2011. The incredibly underrated Evan Mathis had been added and shown his quality in training camp. The Eagles were going to have a dominant offensive line with him, Herremans, Peters, first round pick Danny Watkins and the lone question mark Jason Kelce. Unfortunately things didn't work out as planned and Watkins wasn't even able to win the job. Instead Kyle Devan was brought in to start off the street, with predictably poor results. When Watkins finally did get his chance he was underwhelming, struggling both as a pass protector and run blocker. He gave up 23 hurries a year ago, 11th worst amongst guards, despite playing in just 502 pass snaps. Rookie struggles are to be expected but Watkins is no ordinary rookie working out kinks in his early 20s...
All that was in the past though and, with an offseason to prepare, everyone expected Watkins to be much improved in 2012. He was worse. The 29 year old second year player gave up a sack, six hits and nine pressures in 286 drop backs. Watkins hurt his foot and the Eagles coaches had the excuse they needed to bench him. In came another street free agent, Jake Scott, to stabilise the position and the Canadian fireman may never see another snap again.
The number of incorrect decisions made with the secondary is really astounding. Ineptitude is the only way to describe it. It was obvious at the time and it's even more obvious now. The only relief for Eagles fans is that whoever was responsible is gone and that the new coaching staff will hopefully bring some semblance of competency. Todd Bowles has to be heavily criticised. Not necessarily for his inability to be even a serviceable defensive coordinator but for the fact that Allen, Coleman, Asomugha and Rodgers-Cromartie all regressed under his coaching. It's not so easy to criticise the legend that is Howard Mudd but perhaps Juan Castillo's failures on the defensive side aren't so surprising when you notice the struggles he had with the right guard position. At the end of the day it's probably a combination of the coaches and the front office but whoever was responsible for Stacy Andrews and Danny Watkins needs to think long and hard about another profession. I've heard fans say Watkins isn't a lost cause but he'll be 30 mid-way through 2013, and I'm not sure a new coach is going to put up with the growing pains....Questionable assertions continue to claim that there will be no new "iPad Air 3" this fall, only a faster "iPad mini 4," due to Apple's alleged newfound conservativeness about tablets.
The updated iPad mini is effectively ready to go, and Apple's supply chain is already preparing components, industry sources told Taiwan's DigiTimes. Even that tablet is expected to be a modest upgrade over the iPad mini 3, however, which itself added only Touch ID and a gold color option to the second-generation iPad mini.Another Taiwanese publication, the Economic Daily News, made virtually identical claims in July, but further suggested that the "iPad mini 4" would be the last-ever version of the diminutive tablet. It argued that there would be no "iPad Air 3" this year in order to focus on the 12.9-inch "iPad Pro", and to alleviate pressure on Foxconn, Apple's main manufacturing partner.Both DigiTimes and the Economic Daily News have a mixed record with Apple hardware predictions. Other rumors have been contradictory, hinting that an "iPad Air 3" is still coming later this year.The tablet market has softened considerably in the past couple of years. The iPad still remains the most popular individual brand worldwide, but Apple has seen sales of the device decline consistently for several quarters.Much of this has been blamed on the growing popularity of smartphones over 5 inches, such as Apple's own iPhone 6 Plus, which is big enough to fulfill many of the same purposes as a tablet. Tablet upgrade cycles are also believed to be slower than those of smartphones, more akin to PCs that last 5 years or more.Mudskipper fish ( Periophthalmus barbarus ; pictured) use water bubbles as a 'tongue' to feed on land. The finding hints at how other animals might have evolved tongues as they made the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life.
Krijn Michel at the University of Antwerp in Belgium and his colleagues used high-speed video and X-ray imaging to study the feeding behaviour of various animals. They found that when the mudskipper eats on land, a bubble of water held in its mouth protrudes out and touches food before its jaws close. The fish sucks some of this water back into its mouth as it engulfs the food. The movement of a bone involved in mudskipper feeding resembles that of some animals that feed with tongues on land, the authors say.Google is apparently going to "fold" Chrome OS into Android, potentially killing the development of a secure, lightweight desktop OS in the process.
The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, claims engineers at the Mountain View giant have spent the past two years merging Chrome OS into Android.
The end result will be an all-encompassing OS for mobile devices and notebooks, we're told. The software will be demonstrated by the end of 2016, and released the next year, the WSJ claims.
Chrome OS was pitched as an operating system for low-powered netbooks, and is largely aimed at the education market. It is built from the open-source Chromium OS, a minimal Gentoo-derived GNU/Linux operating system that pretty much does everything through the Chrome (or Chromium) web browser.
Although it can run a handful of native apps offline, it's mostly a terminal to the web: word processing, games, social nattering, and so on, can all be done online through the browser.
The integration of Chrome OS into Android is not unexpected: a merging of the two operating systems has been on the cards since 2013, when Google Android exec Andy Rubin was replaced by Chrome OS veteran Sundar Pichai. A year later, Google showed off technology allowing Android apps to run on Chrome OS systems, and today Pichai is Google's chief exec.
The reported move is not without its critics, particularly in the security community. While Chrome OS is praised for its minimal attack surface and locked-down sandboxed browser environment, Android has been riddled with vulnerabilities. If development of Chrome OS stalls while Googlers focus on building a laptop-friendly Android, that's what you might call bad news.
Most experts I know have deep respect for the security in Google's Chrome OS. None have respect for Android. Sad that Android won vs Chrome. — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) October 29, 2015
Fuck fuck fuck fuck. RIP best current OS being merged into most shit current OS. Fucking Google fuckers. Fuck. https://t.co/IIeTX6taWl — Ryan Lackey (@octal) October 29, 2015
Today is the worst day in operating system security in my lifetime. — Ryan Lackey (@octal) October 29, 2015
Chrome OS is the most secure operating system you can buy. Lauded by experts everywhere for its design. Plz dont go away =( — SecuriTay (@SwiftOnSecurity) October 29, 2015
Judging by this paragraph in the WSJ's article, the open-source Chromium project will quietly soldier on while Google staff beaver away on a Chromedroid hybrid:
Chrome OS will remain as an open source operating system that other companies can use to make laptops, and Google engineers will continue maintaining it. However, Google’s focus will be on extending Android to run on laptops, according to one of the people.
Google did not respond to The Register's request for comment on the newspaper's report. Hiroshi Lockheimer – who oversees Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast at Google – reckons the web goliath is "very committed to Chrome OS." ®Leave Janelle Monae alone.
Twitter ignorance scraped new depths when a random tweeter offered this helpful "advice" to Janelle Monae: “girl stop being so soulful and be sexy... tired of those dumbass suits... you fine but u too damn soulful man."
Rarely has a Twitter response felt as good as Monae's retort:
Monae was, of course, right: her aesthetic exists irrespective of the whims of a male gaze. She dresses how she wants. She says this is to embrace her working-class background, and I believe that’s the truth. Whether it’s the whole truth—if she enjoys the contextual empowerment of masculinity—isn’t for you or I to know. Let the needle fall where it may, because it’s her business, and that business is doing well. Our business is to create a world where people have the right to dress themselves without fear of gendered and/or sexualized violence.
In for a penny, in for a pound: in respecting Janelle Monae’s rejection of male attention, we must also respect her rejection of queer attention. Some have taken Monae's response to the tweeter as an admission of queerness—not the first time she's been labeled as such, her own voice on the matter be damned. In 2013, "queer lyrics" on her album Electric Lady were also interpreted as "proof" she was a lesbian, speculation Monae herself brushed off.
Speculating on Janelle Monae’s sexuality because she rejects and defies male consumption isn’t just tacky, or belying a tremendous ignorance of “male attention” and why some people don’t want to entertain it—it invites a particular marginalization, and the systemic violence that follows, of someone who hasn’t spoken for themselves.
As a trans woman, I live this marginalization every day. When I was in college, a group of fellow students passed a petition to have me banned from using the womens’ restroom, after sending a police officer in the bathroom with me wasn’t enough. I’ve had employers insist I bind my tits and present as a man if I wanted a job. Every day, I have to read about my friends being kicked out of establishments and harassed on public transit—and I have to work at, no, I have to fight to not let my empathy and desire to support them be pierced by a grateful ignorance; well, it wasn’t me today.
This ride sucks. Or, to use an office metaphor: this company potluck that takes up my one free Saturday fucking blows. But I brought my hot dog casserole. I came out. I knew I would become intimate with hardship. I made a choice to participate. Some days, it is the only semblance of solace I am afforded. I’ll be lucky to live to 40, and I am luckier still that I was able to come out and own the narrative of my life, no matter how or who cuts it short.
When you out people based on what you think are context clues, you take that narrative, and control over their lives, away from them.
Being a highly visible queer woman of color would incur a wealth of thankless hassle, unwanted conversations with entitled LGBT organizations looking to harness Monae's star power for their social media project of the day, and the ever-present, effervescent threat of violence from homophobes. Queer people still get attacked, even in cities like San Francisco.
It is not Janelle Monae’s duty to us to willingly invite this into her life because she doesn’t want random men on Twitter telling her what to wear.
Every time we have this conversation about her—or any female celebrity who expresses any resistance to the male gaze—we thrust anti-queer violence onto them.
We are not going to achieve liberation (or equality, for you more assimilationist types) by rolling this ball around, forcefully integrating every person who might be queer into it, in the hopes that the ball will one day be so big that homophobia will be subject to our gravitational pull. That’s not how revolutions work, that’s not how gravity works, and frankly, if I’m being honest with myself, that's not an accurate retelling of the plot and gameplay mechanics of Katamari Damacy.
There is a sort of greed—you want Janelle Monae to come out, you want her to be queer. You want someone you idolize and appreciate to share something with you. You want to feel less outnumbered by the world, to have someone beautiful and successful with good thoughts and politics to stand by you and help you repel this prejudice of us as dirty, sick, and ugly. The demand comes from a good place, but the way it manifests itself—sharing social media posts of fake coming-outs and writing thinkpieces on the "queerness" of someone who isn't out as queer, is toxically intrusive of the person you supposedly admire.
Is the safety of a woman, one whose presence and visibility you want in our movement, worth the “hot take” and being the first to break a story that’s not a story at all? You won’t sell many rainbow flag bumper stickers, driving everyone indoors, fearing a fervent public teased by your excitations.
Not all of us come out at 16. Not all of us “always knew.” Not all of us struggled with having to carry on doomed relationships that didn’t reflect the truth of ourselves as we understood it.
It’ll only “get better” after we dismantle the singular narrative of queerness. For that, we must dispel with shame. And that means these tactics of yours. Trying to “out someone” implies they should be shamed for being queer or shamed for not being public about it. Tabloid newspaper or “Big Gay” blog—makes no difference. They share a father.
Leave Janelle Monae alone. And Queen Latifah. And Jillian Michaels.
If you have an itch in your trigger finger, I recommend Lush’s Lemony Flutter.An Garda Síochána ( Irish pronunciation: [ən ˈɡaːrd̪ə ˈʃiːxaːn̪ˠə] (); meaning "the Guardian of the Peace"), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí ( [ˈɡaːɾˠd̪ˠiː] "Guardians") or "the Guards", is the police service of the Republic of Ireland. The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner who is appointed by the Irish Government. Its headquarters are in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
Since the formation of the Garda Síochána in 1923, it has been a predominantly unarmed force, and more than three-quarters of the force do not routinely carry firearms.[7] As of 31 July 2018, the police service had 14,300 sworn members (including 549 Reserves) and 2,310 civilian staff.[2] Operationally, the Garda Síochána is organised into six geographical regions: the Eastern, Northern, Southern, South-Eastern, Western and Dublin Metropolitan Regions.[8]
In addition to its crime detection and prevention roles, road safety enforcement duties, and community policing remit, the police service has some diplomatic and witness protection responsibilities and border control functions.
Terminology [ edit ]
The service was originally named the Civic Guard in English,[9] but in 1923 it became An Garda Síochána in both English and Irish. This is usually translated as "the Guardian(s) of the Peace".[10] Garda Síochána na hÉireann ("of Ireland", Irish pronunciation: [ˈɡaːrd̪ə ˈʃiːxaːn̪ˠə n̪ˠə ˈheːɾʲən̪ˠ]) appears on its logo but is seldom used elsewhere.
The full official title of the police service is rarely used in speech. How it is referred to depends on the register being used. It is variously known as An Garda Síochána; the Garda Síochána; the Garda; the Gardaí (plural); and it is popularly called "the guards".[11] Although Garda is singular, in these terms it is used as a collective noun, like police.
An individual officer is called a garda (plural gardaí), or, informally, a "guard". A police station is called a Garda station. Garda is also the name of the lowest rank within the force (e.g. "Garda John Murphy", analogous to the British term "constable" or the American "officer", "deputy", "trooper", etc.). "Guard" is the most common form of address used by members of the public speaking to a garda on duty. A female officer was once officially referred to as a bangharda ([ˈbˠanˌɣaːɾˠd̪ˠə]; "female guard"; plural banghardaí). This term was abolished in 1990,[12] but is still used colloquially in place of the now gender-neutral garda.
Organisation [ edit ]
The service is headed by the Garda Commissioner, whose immediate subordinates are two Deputy Commissioners – in charge of "Policing and Security" and "Governance and Strategy", respectively – and a Chief Administrative Officer with responsibility for resource management (personnel, finance, Information and Communications Technology, and accommodation). There is an Assistant Commissioner for each of the six geographical Regions, along with a number dealing with other national support functions. The six geographical Garda Regions, each overseen by an Assistant Commissioner, are:[8]
Dublin Metropolitan Region Eastern Northern Southern South-Eastern Western
Rank Irish name Number of operatives 2014[13] 2015[14] 2016[15] Commissioner Coimisinéir 1 1 1 Deputy Commissioner Leas-Choimisinéir 0 2 2 Assistant Commissioner Cúntóir-Choimisinéir 8 5 8 Chief Superintendent Príomh-Cheannfort 41 42 39 Superintendent Ceannfort 140 160 163 Inspector Cigire 300 247 300 Sergeant Sáirsint 1,946 1,835 1,915 Gardaí Gardaí 10,459 10,524 10,696 Reserve Gardaí Gardaí Ionaid 1,112 - 627 Student Gardaí Mac Léinn Ghardaí 200 - -
At an equivalent or near-equivalent level to the Assistant Commissioners are the positions of Chief Medical Officer, Executive Director of Information and Communications Technology, and Executive Director of Finance.
A group of Gardaí
Directly subordinate to the Assistant Commissioners are approximately 40 Chief Superintendents, about half of whom supervise what are called Divisions. Each Division contains a number of Districts, each commanded by a Superintendent assisted by a team of Inspectors. Each District contains a number of Subdistricts, which are usually commanded by Sergeants.
Typically each Subdistrict contains only one Garda station. A different number of Gardaí are based at each station depending on its importance. Most of these stations employ the basic rank of Garda, which was referred to as the rank of Guard until 1972. The most junior members of the service are students, whose duties can vary depending on their training progress. They are often assigned clerical duties as part of their extracurricular studies.
The Garda organisation also has approximately 2,000 non-officer support staff[15] encompassing a range of areas such as human resources, occupational health services, finance and procurement, internal audit, IT and telecommunications, accommodation and fleet management, scenes-of-crime support, research and analysis, training and general administration. The figure also includes industrial staff such as traffic wardens, drivers and cleaners. It is ongoing government policy to bring the level of non-officer support in the organisation up to international standards, allowing more officers to undertake core operational duties.[citation needed]
Reserve Gardaí [ edit ]
The Garda Síochána Act 2005 provided for the establishment of a Garda Reserve to assist the force in performing its functions, and supplement the work of members of the Garda Síochána.
The intent of the Garda Reserve is "to be a source of local strength and knowledge". Reserve members are to carry out duties defined by the Garda Commissioner and sanctioned by the Minister for Justice and Equality. With reduced training of 128 hours, these duties and powers must be executed under the supervision of regular members of the Service; they are also limited with respect to those of regular members.
The first batch of 36 Reserve Gardaí graduated on 15 December 2006 at the Garda College, in Templemore.[16] As of October 2016, there were 789 Garda Reserve members with further training scheduled for 2017.[17]
Departments [ edit ]
Garda Traffic Corps car
Rank structure [ edit ]
Ranks of the Garda Síochána Rank Student Reserve Student Garda Reserve Garda Sergeant Inspector Superintendent Chief
Superintendent Surgeon Assistant
Commissioner Deputy
Commissioner Commissioner Max number[18] 12,500 2,460 390 191 53 1[note 1] 12 3 1 Insignia
Equipment [ edit ]
Most uniformed members of the Garda Síochána do not routinely carry firearms. Individual Gardaí have been issued ASP extendable batons and pepper spray as their standard issue weapons while handcuffs are provided as restraints.[20]
A member of the motorcycle unit of the Garda Síochána
The service, when originally created, was armed, but the Provisional Government reversed the decision and reconstituted the service as an unarmed police service. This was in contrast to the attitude of the British Dublin Castle administration, which refused appeals from the Royal Irish Constabulary that the service be disarmed.[21] In the words of first Commissioner, Michael Staines, TD, "the Garda Síochána will succeed not by force of arms or numbers, but on their moral authority as servants of the people." This reflected the approach in the Dublin Metropolitan Police, which had also been unarmed, but did not extend to the CID detective branch, who were armed from the outset.
According to Tom Garvin such a decision gave the new force a cultural ace: "the taboo on killing unarmed men and women who could not reasonably be seen as spies and informers."[21]
Armed Gardaí [ edit ]
Garda Síochána Emergency Response Unit armed with an UZI sub machinegun on duty in Dublin Emergency Response Unit armed with an UZI sub machinegun on duty in Dublin
The Gardaí is primarily an unarmed force; however, detectives and certain units such as the Regional Support Units (RSU) and the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) are commissioned to carry firearms and do so.
The armed officers serve as a support to regular Gardaí. Armed units were established in response to a rise in the number of armed incidents dealt with by regular members.[22] To be issued with a firearm, or to carry a firearm whilst on duty, a member must be in possession of a valid gun card, and cannot wear a regular uniform.
Armed Gardaí carry Sig Sauer P226 and Walther P99C semi-automatic pistols. Armed intervention units and specialist Detective units carry a variety of primary weapons, including the Heckler & Koch MP7 personal defence weapon as the standard issue weapon, alongside the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun.
In addition to issued pistols, less-lethal weapons such as tasers and large pepper spray canisters are carried also by the ERU.[23]
Diplomatic protection [ edit ]
The Garda Special Detective Unit (SDU) are primarily responsible for providing armed close protection to senior officials in Ireland.[24] They provide full-time armed protection and transport for the President, Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Minister for Justice and Equality, Attorney General, Chief Justice, Director of Public Prosecutions, Ambassadors and Diplomats deemed 'at risk' (such as the Ambassadors, Embassies and Diplomatic Residences of the United Kingdom, United States, Israel), as well as foreign dignitaries visiting Ireland and citizens deemed to require armed protection as designated so by the Garda Commissioner.[25] The Commissioner is also protected by the unit. All cabinet ministers are afforded armed protection at heightened levels of risk when deemed necessary by Garda Intelligence,[26] and their places of work and residences are monitored.[27] Former Presidents and Taoisigh are protected if their security is under threat, otherwise they only receive protection on formal state occasions.[28] The Emergency Response Unit (ERU), a section of the SDU, are deployed on more than 100 VIP protection duties per year.[29]
Vehicles [ edit ]
Garda Toyota Avensis
Garda patrol cars are white or silver in colour, with a fluorescent yellow and blue bordered horizontal strip, accompanied by the Garda crest as livery. Full or partial battenburg markings are used on traffic or roads policing vehicles. RSU/ASU vehicles also have battenburg markings - as well as a red stripe denoting the fact that it is an armed unit. Unmarked patrol cars are also used in the course of regular, traffic and other duties. Specialist units, such as the ERU, use armored vehicles for special operations.
History [ edit ]
The Civic Guard was formed by the Provisional Government in February 1922 to take over the responsibility of policing the fledgling Irish Free State. It replaced the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the Irish Republican Police of 1919–22. In August 1922 the force accompanied Michael Collins when he met the Lord Lieutenant in Dublin Castle.[30]
The Garda Síochána (Temporary Provisions) Act 1923 enacted after the creation of the Irish Free State on 8 August 1923,[31] provided for the creation of "a force of police to be called and known as 'The Garda Síochána'".[32] Under section 22, The Civic Guard were deemed to have been established under and to be governed by the Act. The law therefore effectively renamed the existing force.
The seven-week Civic Guard Mutiny began in May 1922, when Garda recruits took over the Kildare Depot. It resulted in Michael Staines' resignation in September.
During the Civil War of 1922–23, the new Free State set up the Criminal Investigation Department as an armed, plain-clothed counter-insurgency unit. It was disbanded after the end of the war in October 1923 and elements of it were absorbed into the Dublin Metropolitan Police.
In Dublin, policing remained the responsibility of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP, founded 1836) until it merged with the Garda Síochána in 1925. Since then the Garda has been the only civil police service in the state now known as Ireland. Other police forces with limited powers are the Military Police within the Irish Defence Forces, the Airport Police Service, and Dublin Harbour Police and Dún Laoghaire Harbour Police forces.
Garda directing traffic in Dublin during the 1960s
Scott Medal [ edit ]
First established in 1925, the Scott Medal for Bravery is the highest honour for bravery and valour awarded to a member of the Garda Síochána. The first medals were funded by Colonel Walter Scott, an honorary Commissioner of the New York Police Department.[33] The first recipient of the Scott Medal was Pat Malone of St. Luke's Cork City who – as an unarmed Garda – disarmed Tomás Óg Mac Curtain (the son of Tomás Mac Curtain).
To mark the United States link, the American English spelling of valor is used on the medal. The Garda Commissioner chooses the recipients of the medal, which is presented by the Minister for Justice and Equality.
In 2000, Anne McCabe – the widow of Jerry McCabe, a garda who was killed by armed Provisional IRA bank robbers – accepted the Scott Medal for Bravery that had been awarded posthumously to her husband.[34]
The Irish Republican Police had at least one member killed by the RIC 21 July 1920. The Civic Guard had one killed by accident 22 September 1922 and another was killed in March 1923 by Frank Teeling. Likewise 4 members of the Oriel House Criminal Investigation Department were killed or died of wounds during the Irish Civil War.[35] The Garda Roll of Honor lists over 80 Garda members killed between 1922 and the present.
Garda Commissioners [ edit ]
The first Commissioner, Michael Staines, who was a Pro-Treaty member of Dáil Éireann, held office for only eight months. It was his successors, Eoin O'Duffy and Éamon Broy, who played a central role in the development of the service. O'Duffy was Commissioner in the early years of the service when to many people's surprise the viability of an unarmed police service was established. O'Duffy later became a short-lived political leader of the quasi-fascist Blueshirts before heading to Spain to fight alongside Francisco Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. Broy had greatly assisted the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Anglo-Irish War, while serving with the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). Broy's fame grew in the 1990s when he featured in the film Michael Collins, in which it was misleadingly suggested that he had been murdered by the British during the War of Independence, when in reality he lived for decades and headed the Garda Síochána from 1933 to 1938. Broy was followed by Commissioners Michael Kinnane (1938–52) and Daniel Costigan (1952–65). The first Commissioner to rise from the rank of ordinary Garda was William P. Quinn, who was appointed in February 1965.
One later Commissioner, Edmund Garvey, was sacked by the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch in 1978 after it had lost confidence in him. Garvey won "unfair dismissal" legal proceedings against the government, which was upheld in the Irish Supreme Court[40] This outcome required the passing of the Garda Síochána Act 1979 to retrospectively validate the actions of Garvey's successor since he had become Commissioner.[41] Garvey's successor, Patrick McLaughlin, was forced to resign along with his deputy in 1983 over his peripheral involvement in a political scandal.
On 25 November 2014 Nóirín O'Sullivan was appointed as Garda Commissioner, after acting as interim Commissioner since March 2014, following the unexpected retirement of Martin Callinan. It was noted that as a result most top justice posts in Ireland at the time were held by women.[42] The first female to hold the top rank, Commissioner O'Sullivan joined the force in 1981, and was among the first members of a plain-clothes unit set up to tackle drug dealing in Dublin.
On 10 September 2017 Nóirín O'Sullivan announced her retirement from the force and, by extension, Garda Commissioner. Upon her retirement, Deputy Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin was appointed Acting Commissioner pending a permanent replacement.[43] In June 2018, Drew Harris was named as this replacement, and officially appointed in September 2018 following Ó Cualáin's retirement.[44][45][46]
Past reserve forces [ edit ]
During the Second World War (often referred to in Ireland as "the Emergency") there were two reserve forces to the Garda Síochána, An Taca Síochána and the Local Security Force.[47]
An Taca Síochána had the power of arrest and wore uniform, and were allowed to leave the reserve or sign-up as full members of the Garda Síochána at the end of the war before the reserve was disbanded. The reserve was established by the Emergency Powers (Temporary Special Police Force) Order, 1939.
The Local Security Force (LSF) did not have the power of arrest, and part of the reserve was soon incorporated into the Irish Army Reserve under the command of the Irish Army.[48]
Northern Ireland [ edit ]
The Patten Report recommended that a programme of long-term personnel exchanges should be established between the Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This recommendation was enacted in |
that you don't ever browse the internet about. Keep trying….#IPBill — Paul Bernal (@PaulbernalUK) November 4, 2015
The Investigatory Powers Bill was introduced to Parliament by Home Secretary Theresa May earlier today, who said the government hopes to have an amended bill introduced next spring, following a Parliamentary and committee scrutiny process — with the aim of getting a final bill onto the statue books before the end of 2016.
Speaking in Parliament ahead of May, Prime Minister David Cameron said the new powers are required to help the police and security services combat crime in an era of social media.
May went on to describe the aim of the bill as being to draft a new law “consolidating and updating our investigatory powers, strengthening the safeguards and establishing a world leading oversight regime”.
The government confirmed its intention to legislate to plug what it termed “capability gaps” in law enforcement and security agencies’ intelligence gathering abilities in the digital era back in May. It is tabling legislation now with a view to replacing DRIPA — aka the existing ’emergency’ surveillance legislation which was rushed through Parliament back in 2014, and which has a sunset clause meaning it will expire at the end of 2016.
DRIPA was criticized both for the draconian data capture powers it afforded, and also for the unseemly haste with which it was railroaded through Parliament — allowing no time for proper Parliamentary scrutiny. The Investigatory Powers bill will at least get the latter, with a special committee of MPs due to pore over its detail in the coming months.
Despite criticisms of the potential chilling effect on the U.K. tech sector of draconian state surveillance powers, at a time when European institutions have generally been seeking to roll back data retention capabilities and bolster privacy protections for individuals in the post-Snowden era, the U.K. government is nonetheless pushing ahead with a bid to cement and expand the powers of the surveillance state by enshrining mass surveillance as ‘due process’ for domestic intelligence agencies and proposing what critics have dubbed another ‘Snooper’s Charter’.
The government has of course been attempting to spin otherwise — by, for example, claiming mass surveillance (euphemistically referred to as “bulk collection”) is “proportionate and necessary” in today’s modern digital era, and explicitly stating it is not seeking to ban encryption. Albeit that any ban on encryption would likely be impossible to enforce — especially without international agreement, given how much technology is developed and distributed by non-U.K. companies.
On the encryption point, earlier this year Cameron had made comments widely interpreted as an intention by a future Conservative majority government to outlaw the technology. In the event today’s draft bill does not apparently seek to explicitly outlaw encryption but May said the requirement that is currently in secondary legislation — “that those companies that are issued with a warrant should take reasonable steps to be able to respond to that warrant in unencrypted form” — is being brought “onto the face of the legislation”.
So it remains to be seen whether a company that runs a service under end-to-end encryption and then, if served with a warrant, fails to deliver unencrypted data because they are unable to do so is considered to be breaking U.K. law or not.
On this front, clause 189(4)(c) also appears pertinent — as it sets out that specific obligations on “relevant operators” can include: “obligations relating to the removal of electronic protection applied by a relevant operator to any communications or data” — which appears to suggest a requirement that companies are able to remove encryption when asked. But of course encryption that can be removed is not end-to-end encryption (a technology the U.K. government recently described as “alarming”).
“But we are not banning encryption,” claimed May in Parliament. “We recognize that encryption plays an important part for people in keeping their details secure.”
(It also appears the government recognizes that encryption can play an important role in its new legislation being perceived as more moderate than it could otherwise have been… )
May went on to emphasize that other contentious measures — included in the earlier 2012 Communications Data bill (also dubbed a Snoopers’ Charter), which failed to pass Parliament — have been dropped.
“The draft bill we are publishing today is not a return to the draft Communications Data bill of 2012. It will not include powers to force U.K. companies to capture and retain third party Internet traffic from companies based overseas; it will not compel overseas communications service providers to meet our domestic retention obligations for communications data,” she said.
Despite this, the requirement that Internet and phone companies retain data on the websites users have visited for a full 12 months remains a huge and intrusive expansion of state surveillance powers. Civil rights organization Big Brother Watch sums up this data as “the what and how of the way we live our lives”.
May said it is not a full browsing history, in the sense of logging every click of and page visited by an Internet user, but rather will be a timestamped record of the primary website URL visited. Which still of course generates a hugely intrusive personal history of U.K. web users — or at least those who don’t actively seek to avoid this state-mandated dragnet by using a VPN/proxy, such as the Tor browser, to protect their privacy, or running other obfuscation technologies to muddy the waters of their Internet activity.
Some examples of the difference between Internet Connection Records (no warrant) and browsing history (warrant) pic.twitter.com/rDcjNqcTXa — Mikey Smith (@mikeysmith) November 4, 2015
The provision is described as an “Internet Connection Record” (ICRs) in the bill, and May likened it to “the modern equivalent of an itemized phone bill”. However it’s clear that far more activity now occurs digitally than does or ever did via voice calls — so the comparison is a stretch.
“Some have characterized this power as law enforcement having access to people’s full web browsing histories. Let me be clear: this is simply wrong,” said May. “[It] is a record of every communication service that a person has used, not a record of every webpage they have accessed.”
Requests for this data from law enforcement agencies would be “for the purpose of determining whether someone had accessed a communications website, an illegal website or to resolve an IP address where it is necessary and proportionate to do so in the course of a specific investigation”, she added. “Strict limits will apply to when and how that data can be accessed.”
Quite how the bulk collection of U.K. users’ Internet browsing activity will be squared with European data protection legislation, currently being drafted with a new data protection directive set to be introduced later this year — which may place competing requirements on ISPs when it comes to user data retention — remains to be seen. (Assuming, of course, the U.K. does not vote to leave the EU in its referendum next year.)
A new criminal offence of “wilfully or recklessly acquiring communications data”, carrying a maximum two-year prison sentence, is being created with the aim of discouraging access abuse of these ICRs. However, given how many data breaches are perpetrated by hackers already — such as the recent data breach of UK ISP TalkTalk, with police arresting several teenagers on suspicion of being behind that attack — it remains to be seen how much of a disincentive a two-year jail sentence is. Not to mention how securely ISPs will store this sensitive data.
Raising the latter point in Parliament, Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham noted that the Home Secretary’s introductory speech had referenced how some 90 per cent of commercial organizations have experienced a data breach, and went on to query whether there might not therefore be risks to storing U.K. citizens’ website access data — asking specifically whether it will not therefore be stored in “anonymized form” to safeguard the privacy of the public from hack attacks.
May sidestepped this question, reiterating only that more powers are needed by law enforcement to combat cybercrime. “I think it’s very simple, that as criminals are moving into more online crime that actually we need to make sure that our law enforcement agencies have the power to be able to deal with that cybercrime,” she said.
Police will require warrant authorization to access ICR data, while local councils will be explicitly banned from accessing it. But even with the check of a warrant, the U.K. government affording law enforcement access to web browsing data remains exceptional when compared to powers afforded to police in the U.S. and elsewhere in Europe.
Existing rules allowing U.K. police forces to access communications metadata without a warrant remain unchanged. Earlier this year Big Brother Watch published data obtained via FOI detailing the extent of police forces’ comms data requests in that regard — with some 733,000 requests made by domestic U.K. police forces over a three year period, between 2012 and 2014.
On judicial oversight for signing off surveillance warrants — a key recommendation of the independent terrorism legislation reviewer, David Anderson, in his report this summer — the Home Secretary is proposing a third way, with senior ministers and judges both involved in sign off. She referred to this as a “double lock”, claiming it offers “both the reassurance of democratic accountability and judicial accountability”.
“As now the Secretary of State will need to be satisfied that an activity is necessary and proportionate before a warrant can be issued but in future the warrant will not come into force until it has been formally approved by a judge,” she said. “This will place a double lock on the authorization of our most intrusive investigatory powers.”
Anderson’s recommendation that the power to sign off warrants be taken away from ministers and handed over to judicial oversight entirely has, however, been rejected — leaving the U.K. still somewhat at odds with other ‘Five Eyes’ allies and countries elsewhere in Europe where judges are solely responsible for authorizing surveillance.
Commenting on this aspect of the bill, Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, argued that the U.K. will remain out of step with international standards if judges are not fully empowered to sign off warrants.
“Prior authorisation by an independent and impartial judiciary is an essential safeguard. Empowering judges to weigh the balance between the competing interests at stake would bring the UK legislation into full compliance with the requirements of international law, and in particular Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Judicial review after the event is better than no judicial review at all, but it falls short of the requirement to place the power to issue a warrant into the hands of an independent judge, which is where it belongs,” he wrote.
A serious question about the bill. Arguably this is judicial supervision rather than authorisation. https://t.co/5qWz7oIR4g — Carl Gardner (@carlgardner) November 4, 2015
It is also noteworthy that it does also remain possible under the current draft bill for a senior minister to rubberstamp warrants on their own.
May clarified that it would be possible for the Home Secretary to authorize an “urgent warrant to come immediately into effect”, to avoid too much delay being caused by her double lock — with the warrant then subsequently reviewed by the panel of judges to determine whether the warrant should continue or not. However she added that in “most circumstances” there would be a double authorization for warrants.
Another portion of the draft bill involves clarifying oversight rules for surveillance powers. A senior judge will be appointed as the overseeing commissioner, said May.
“I am clear we need a significantly strengthened regime to govern how these powers are authorized and overseen. So we will replace the existing oversight with a powerful and independent Investigatory Powers Commissioner. This will be a senior judge, supported by a team of expert inspectors with the authority and resources to effectively and visibly hold the intelligence agencies and law enforcement to account,” she told Parliament.
More broadly, the bill seeks to enshrine mass surveillance as a lawful modus operandi for U.K. security and intelligence agencies that have already been using such digital dragnets for years, enabled by a lack of scrutiny and via arcane existing investigatory legislation (such as RIPA and section 94 of the Telecommunications Act 1984).
There's a dark irony to Theresa May's admission today that the UK has secretly engaged in domestic mass surveillance since 1984. #Orwell — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 4, 2015
The ability for police and security agencies to use hacking (aka “equipment interference”) as an investigatory tool is also being enshrined in law.
The bill refers to “bulk data” as “a vital tool in discovering new targets and identifying emerging threats”. And says a “clear statutory framework” will be provided for “all of the bulk powers available to the security and intelligence agencies”, in addition to introducing “robust, consistent safeguards across all of those powers”.
Responding to the draft bill in a blog post, the government’s independent terrorism legislation reviewer said the best thing about the bill is the light finally being shone onto the operations of the U.K.’s security apparatus.
“For the first time, we have a Bill that sets out, for public and political debate, the totality of the investigatory powers used or aspired to by police and intelligence agencies,” writes Anderson, going to list some examples.
“Not everyone will be happy about those powers. It will now be for Parliament to decide whether they are justified. That is the way things should be in a democracy — but rarely are at the moment, anywhere in the world. Whatever the content of the eventual UK law, it will no longer be possible to describe it as opaque, incomprehensible or misleading.”Democratic Convention: What can you expect from economic policy from a Hillary Clinton White House? You already know. Just look at the last 7-1/2 years under President Obama.
Those expecting a new direction for the economy under a future possible President Clinton will likely be deeply disappointed.
Speaking at a Politico conference on the election and the economy, Clinton advisor and CEO of the Center for American Progress, Neera Tanden, was clear on one thing: "All of our policies must raise median wages for American workers... (Hillary Clinton) is going to focus her presidency on rising inequality and stagnant wages."
While laudable, how would Clinton do that? The answer is: Infrastructure spending. Haven't we heard that before? President Obama sold his massive stimulus plan based on the idea that most of it would be spent on "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects.
Instead, much of it was wasted, leaving the American taxpayers with trillions of dollars more of debt, permanently higher spending, and little to show for it. The economy has been crawling along at a 2% rate since the recovery started, a third less than its previous rate, costing the economy nearly $2 trillion in lost GDP, by our calculations.
Tanden wasn't through. Clinton wants to expand Social Security, a program that's already bankrupt, and fund it by taxing high incomes and capital gains. This is one of the most stunningly foolish economic policy proposals in decades.
Social Security's unfunded liabilities for the future now total over $25 trillion. No, that's not a typo — it's trillion. The idea that rich people will just hand over their money to pay for a bankrupt program is beyond belief. And Hillary wants to add more, without really paying for it? Insanity.
And forget about free trade, especially the Trans Pacific Partnership. After Virginia's Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an old ally of Clinton's, said this week he expected Clinton to reverse her stance once again on the TPP deal, Tanden responded: "I want to be crystal, crystal, crystal clear that Hillary Clinton opposes TPP."
As to rising corporate profits, Democrats actually see this as a problem to be solved. Why? Because wages aren't going up. But wages are a function of investment. And Democrats have made it quite clear their policies will be investment unfriendly.
Tanden also vowed to focus on the "challenges of short-term-ism in the corporate culture." So corporations can expect Big Sister to be telling them what to do and how to do it real soon.
But as for economic growth, nothing.
This is the Democratic Party's No. 1 problem when it comes to the economy. As the party has turned dramatically to the left, it sees only redistribution — not growth — as the answer to every problem. But redistribution crosses a line and eventually becomes theft.
This has defined the Obama era, and it appears it will define the Clinton era, too. Instead of tax cuts, entitlement reform, and repeal of ObamaCare, Hillary promises tax hikes, less free trade and an attempt to bring back a 1932 law — Glass-Steagall — to regulate the banking system.
Hillarynomics doesn't look like change you can believe in. Just more of the same.
More on the Democratic National Convention"Tallahassee" redirects here. For the album, see Tallahassee (album)
Capital of Florida
State capital of Florida in the United States
Tallahassee () is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2017, the population was 191,049, making it the 7th-largest city in the U.S state of Florida, and the 126th-largest city in the United States.[6] The population of the Tallahassee metropolitan area was 382,627 as of 2017. Tallahassee is the largest city in the Florida Panhandle region, and the main center for trade and agriculture in the Florida Big Bend and Southwest Georgia regions.
Tallahassee is home to Florida State University, ranked the nation's twenty-sixth best public university by U.S. News & World Report.[7] It is also home to Florida A&M University, the fifth-largest historically black university by total enrollment.[8] Tallahassee Community College is a large state college that serves mainly as a feeder school to Florida State and Florida A&M. Tallahassee qualifies as a significant college town, with a student population exceeding 70,000.[citation needed]
As the capital, Tallahassee is the site of the Florida State Capitol, Supreme Court of Florida, Florida Governor's Mansion, and nearly 30 state agency headquarters. The city is also known for its large number of law firms, lobbying organizations, trade associations and professional associations, including the Florida Bar and the Florida Chamber of Commerce.[9] It is a recognized regional center for scientific research, and home to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. In 2015, Tallahassee was awarded the All-American City Award by the National Civic League for the second time.
History [ edit ]
Indigenous peoples occupied this area for thousands of years before European encounter. Around AD 1200, the large and complex Mississippian culture had built earthwork mounds near Lake Jackson which survive today; they are preserved in the Lake Jackson Archaeological State Park.[10]
The Spanish Empire established their first colonial settlement at St. Augustine. During the 17th century they established several missions in Apalachee territory in order to procure food and labor to support their settlement, as well as to convert the natives to Roman Catholicism. The largest, Mission San Luis de Apalachee in Tallahassee, has been partially reconstructed by the state of Florida.
The expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez encountered the Apalachee people, although it did not reach the site of Tallahassee. Hernando de Soto and his mid-16th century expedition occupied the Apalachee town of Anhaica (at what is now Tallahassee) in the winter of 1538–1539. Based on archaeological excavations, this Anhaica site is now known to have been located about 0.5 miles (800 m) east of the present Florida State Capitol. The De Soto encampment is believed to be the first place that Christmas was celebrated in the continental United States although there is no historical documentation to back this claim.[11]
The name "Tallahassee" is a Muskogean language word often translated as "old fields" or "old town".[12] It was likely an expression of the Creek people who migrated from areas of Georgia and Alabama to this region in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, under pressure from European-American encroachment on their territory. They found large areas of cleared land previously occupied by the Apalachee tribe. (The Creek and later refugees who joined them developed as the Seminole Indians of Florida.)
During the First Seminole War, General Andrew Jackson fought two separate skirmishes in and around Tallahassee, which was then Spanish territory. The first battle took place on November 12, 1817. Chief Neamathla, of the village of Fowltown just west of present-day Tallahassee, had refused Jackson's orders to relocate. Jackson responded by entering the village, burning it to the ground, and driving off its occupants. The Indians later retaliated, killing 50 soldiers and civilians. Jackson reentered Florida in March 1818. According to Jackson's adjutant, Colonel Robert Butler, they "advanced on the Indian village called Tallahasse (sic) [where] two of the enemy were made prisoner."[13]
State capital [ edit ]
Florida became an American territory in September 1821, in accordance with the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819.
The first session of the Legislative Council of the Territory of Florida met on July 22, 1822 at Pensacola, the former capital of West Florida. Members from St. Augustine, the former capital of East Florida, traveled fifty-nine days by water to attend. The second session was in St. Augustine, and western delegates needed 28 days to travel perilously around the peninsula to reach Pensacola. During this session, delegates decided to hold future meetings at a halfway point. Two appointed commissioners selected Tallahassee, at that point an Apalachee settlement (Anhaica) virtually abandoned after Andrew Jackson burned it in 1818, as a halfway point. In 1824 the third legislative session met there in a crude log building serving as the capitol.[14]
From 1821 through 1845, during Florida's territorial period, the rough-hewn frontier capital gradually developed as a town. The Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution, returned to the United States in 1824 for a tour. The U.S. Congress voted to give him $200,000 (the same amount he had given the colonies in 1778), US citizenship, and the Lafayette Land Grant, 36 square miles (93 km2) of land that today includes large portions of Tallahassee. In 1845 a Greek revival masonry structure was erected as the Capitol building in time for statehood. Now known as the "old Capitol", it stands in front of the high-rise Capitol building that was built in the 1970s.[15]
Tallahassee was in the heart of Florida's Cotton Belt—Leon County led the state in cotton production—and was the center of the slave trade in Florida.[16] During the American Civil War, Tallahassee was the only Confederate state capital east of the Mississippi River that was not captured by Union forces, and the only one not burned. A small engagement, the Battle of Natural Bridge, was fought south of the city on March 6, 1865, just a month before the war ended.
During the 19th century, the institutions that would eventually develop as what is now Florida State University were established in Tallahassee; it became a university town. These included the Tallahassee Female Academy (founded 1843) and the Florida Institute (founded 1854). In 1851, the Florida legislature decreed two seminaries to be built on either side of the Suwannee River, East Florida Seminary and West Florida Seminary. In 1855 West Florida Seminary was transferred to the Florida Institute building (which had been established as an inducement for the state to place the seminary in Tallahassee). In 1858, the seminary absorbed the Tallahassee Female Academy and became coeducational.[17] Its main building was located near the northwest corner of South Copeland and West Jefferson streets, approximately where FSU's Westcott Building is today.
Tallahassee in 1885
In 1887 the Normal College for Colored Students, ancestor of today's FAMU, opened its doors. The legislature decided that Tallahassee was the best location In Florida for a college serving negro students; the state had segregated schools. Four years later its name was changed to State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students, to teach teachers for elementary school children and students in industrial skills.
After the Civil War much of Florida's industry moved to the south and east, a trend that continues today. The end of slavery and the rise of free labor reduced the profitability of the cotton and tobacco trade, at a time when world markets were also changing. The state's major industries shifted to citrus, lumber, naval stores, cattle ranching, and tourism. The latter was increasingly important by the late 19th century. In the post-Civil War period, many former plantations in the Tallahassee area were purchased by wealthy northerners for use as winter hunting preserves. This included the hunting preserve of Henry L. Beadel, who bequeathed his land for the study of the effects of fire on wildlife habitat. Today the preserve is known as the Tall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy, nationally recognized for its research into fire ecology and the use of prescribed burning.
Until World War II, Tallahassee remained a small southern town with virtually the entire population living within one mile (1.6 km) of the Capitol.[citation needed] The main economic drivers were the colleges and state government, where politicians met to discuss spending money on grand public improvement projects to accommodate growth in places such as Miami and Tampa Bay, hundreds of miles away from the capital. By the 1960s there was a movement to transfer the capital to Orlando, closer to the growing population centers of the state. That movement was defeated; the 1970s saw a long-term commitment by the state to the capital city, with construction of the new capitol complex and preservation of the old Florida State Capitol building.
In 1970, the Census Bureau reported the city's population as 74.0% white and 25.4% black.[18]
In 1977 a 22-story high-rise Capitol building designed by architect Edward Durell Stone was completed, which is now the third-tallest state capitol building in the United States. In 1978 the old capitol, directly in front of the new capitol, was scheduled for demolition, but state officials decided to keep the Old Capitol as a museum.[19]
Tallahassee was the center of world attention for six weeks during the 2000 United States Presidential election recount, which involved numerous rulings by the Florida Secretary of State and the Florida Supreme Court.
In 2016, the city suffered a direct hit by Hurricane Hermine, causing about 80% of the city proper to lose power, including Florida State University, and knocking down many trees.[20].
Geography [ edit ]
A view of both the historic and the current Florida State Capitols
Call/Collins House at The Grove. The Grove is an antebellum plantation house located in Tallahassee and constructed circa 1840 by Territorial Governor Richard Keith Call. Historic Grove Plantation, known officially as theThe Grove is an antebellum plantation house located in Tallahassee and constructed circa 1840 by Territorial Governor Richard Keith Call.
[21] Tallahassee has an area of 98.2 square miles (254.3 km2), of which 95.7 square miles (247.9 km2) is land and 2.5 square miles (6.5 km2) (2.59%) is water.
Tallahassee's terrain is hilly by Florida standards, being located at the southern end of the Red Hills Region, just above the Cody Scarp. The elevation varies from near sea level to just over 200 feet (61 m), with the state capitol on one of the highest hills in the city. The city includes two large lake basins, Lake Jackson and Lake Lafayette, and borders the northern end of the Apalachicola National Forest.
The flora and fauna are similar to those found in the mid-south and low country regions of South Carolina and Georgia. The palm trees are the more cold-hardy varieties like the state tree, the Sabal palmetto. Pines, magnolias, hickories, and a variety of oaks are the dominant trees. The Southern Live Oak is perhaps the most emblematic of the city.
Nearby cities and suburbs [ edit ]
Cityscape [ edit ]
A panoramic view of Downtown Tallahassee
Neighborhoods [ edit ]
Tallahassee has many neighborhoods inside the city limits. Some of the most known and defined include All Saints, Apalachee Ridge, Betton Hills, Callen, Frenchtown (the oldest historically black neighborhood in the state), Killearn Estates, Killearn Lakes Plantation, Lafayette Park, Levy Park, Los Robles, Midtown, Holly Hills, Jake Gaither/University Park, Indian Head Acres, Myers Park, Smokey Hollow, SouthWood, Seminole Manor and Woodland Drives.
Tallahassee is also home to some gated communities, including Golden Eagle, Ox Bottom, Lafayette Oaks and The Preserve at San Luis; the Tallahassee Ranch Club is located to the southeast of the city.
Tallest buildings [ edit ]
Rank Name Street Address Height feet Height meters Floors Year 1 Florida State Capitol 400 South Monroe Street, 345 101 25 1977 2 Turlington Building 325 West Gaines Street, 318 97 19 1990 3 Plaza Tower 300 South Duval Street 276 84 24 2008 4 Highpoint Center 100 South Adams St 239 70 15 1990 5 Doubletree Hotel 101 South Adams St, 220 67 16 1972
Urban planning and expansion [ edit ]
Downtown Tallahassee at night
The first plan for the Capitol Center was the 1947 Taylor Plan, which consolidated several government buildings in one downtown area. In 1974, the Capitol Center Planning Commission for the City of Tallahassee, Florida responded to growth of its urban center with a conceptual plan for the expansion of its Capitol Center. Hisham Ashkouri, working for The Architects' Collaborative, led the urban planning and design effort. Estimating growth and related development for approximately the next 25 years, the program projected the need for 2.3 million square feet (214,000 m2) of new government facilities in the city core, with 3,500 dwelling units, 100 acres (40 ha) of new public open space, retail and private office space, and other ancillary spaces. Community participation was an integral part of the design review, welcoming Tallahassee residents to provide input as well as citizens' groups and government agencies, resulting in the creation of six separate design alternatives.[citation needed]
Sprawl and compact growth [ edit ]
The Tallahassee-Leon County Planning Department implements policies aimed at promoting compact growth and development, including the establishment and maintenance of an Urban Service Area. The intent of the Urban Service Area is to "have Tallahassee and Leon County grow in a responsible manner, with infrastructure provided economically and efficiently, and surrounding forest and agricultural lands protected from unwarranted and premature conversion to urban land use."[22] The result of compact growth policies has been a significant overall reduction in the Sprawl Index for Tallahassee between 2000-2010.[23] CityLab reported on this finding, stating that "Tallahassee laps the field, at least as far as the Sprawl Index is concerned."[24]
Climate [ edit ]
Tallahassee Climate chart (explanation) J F M A M J J A S O N D 4.3 64 39 4.8 68 42 5.9 74 47 3.1 80 52 3.5 87 62 7.7 91 70 7.3 92 72 7.3 92 72 4.7 88 68 3.2 81 57 3.5 73 48 3.9 65 41 Average max. and min. temperatures in °F Precipitation totals in inches Source: NOAA Metric conversion J F M A M J J A S O N D 110 18 4 123 20 6 150 23 8 78 27 11 88 31 16 196 33 21 185 33 22 186 33 22 119 31 20 82 27 14 89 23 9 99 19 5 Average max. and min. temperatures in °C Precipitation totals in mm
Unlike most of Florida, Tallahassee experiences four seasons. Shown are the autumn leaves along the sidewalks of Monroe Street in Downtown Tallahassee.
Tallahassee has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with long summers and short, mild winters, as well as drier springs and autumns. Summer maxima here are hotter than in the Florida peninsula and it is one of the few cities in the state to occasionally record temperatures above 100 °F or 37.8 °C, averaging 2.4 days annually.[25] The record high of 105 °F (41 °C) was set on June 15, 2011.[26]
Summer is characterized by brief intense showers and thunderstorms that form along the afternoon sea breeze from the Gulf of Mexico. The daily mean temperature in July, the hottest month, is 82.0 °F (27.8 °C). Conversely, the city is markedly cooler in the winter, with a January daily average temperature of 51.2 °F (10.7 °C).[25] The city averages 32 nights with a minimum at or below freezing, and on average, the window for freezing temperatures is from November 20 thru March 21, allowing a growing season of 243 days.[25] As Tallahassee is part of USDA Hardiness Zone 8b,[27] each winter's coldest temperature is typically slightly below 20 °F (−7 °C); readings below 15 °F (−9 °C) are very rare, having last occurred on January 11, 2010.[25] During the Great Blizzard of 1899 the city reached −2 °F (−19 °C) on February 13, which remains Florida's only recorded reading below 0 °F (−18 °C). At the time, Tallahassee's record low was colder than the record low in either Ketchikan, Alaska, or Tromso, Norway. The record cold daily maximum is 22 °F (−6 °C), set on the same day as the all-time record low, while conversely, the record warm daily minimum is 81 °F (27 °C) on July 15, 1980.[25]
Snow and ice are rare in Tallahassee. Historically, the city usually records at least flurries every three to four years, but snowfall of 1 inch (2.5 cm) or more occurs only once every 17 years on average. The closest location that receives regular yearly snowfalls is Macon, Georgia, 200 miles (320 km) north of Tallahassee. Nonetheless, Tallahassee has recorded some accumulating snowfalls over the last 100 years; the heaviest snowfall was 2.8 inches (7 cm) on February 13, 1958.[28] Tallahassee's other recorded measurable snowfalls were 1.0 inch (2.5 cm) on February 12–13, 1899, and December 22–23, 1989; 0.4 inches (1.0 cm) on March 28, 1955, and February 10, 1973; 0.2 inches (0.5 cm) on February 2, 1951; and 0.1 inches (0.3 cm) on January 3, 2018.[28][29][30]
Although several hurricanes have brushed Tallahassee with their outer rain and wind bands, in recent years only Hurricane Kate, in 1985, and Hurricane Hermine, in 2016, have struck Tallahassee directly. The Big Bend area of North Florida sees several tornadoes each year during the season, but they are generally weak, cause little structural damage, and rarely hit the city directly. The most recent tornado to hit Tallahassee occurred on April 19, 2015. The tornado was classified as an EF1, and created a path as wide as 350 yards (320 m) for almost 5 miles (8 km) near Maclay Gardens.[31] Damage included numerous downed tree limbs and a car crushed by a falling tree. During extremely heavy rains, some low-lying parts of Tallahassee may flood, notably the Franklin Boulevard area adjacent to the downtown and the Killearn Lakes subdivision, outside the Tallahassee city limits, on the north side.
Climate data for Tallahassee Regional Airport, Florida (1981–2010 normals,[32] extremes 1892–present) Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °F (°C) 83
(28) 89
(32) 91
(33) 95
(35) 102
(39) 105
(41) 104
(40) 103
(39) 102
(39) 95
(35) 89
(32) 84
(29) 105
(41) Mean maximum °F (°C) 77.7
(25.4) 80.0
(26.7) 85.2
(29.6) 89.8
(32.1) 94.7
(34.8) 97.6
(36.4) 98.7
(37.1) 97.6
(36.4) 95.1
(35.1) 90.3
(32.4) 84.0
(28.9) 79.0
(26.1) 98.7
(37.1) Average high °F (°C) 63.5
(17.5) 67.5
(19.7) 73.8
(23.2) 79.9
(26.6) 87.0
(30.6) 91.0
(32.8) 92.1
(33.4) 91.5
(33.1) 88.4
(31.3) 81.4
(27.4) |
wife called for an ambulance straight away.
"It all happened very quickly. They told me that she had a 5% chance of surviving."
Charlotte Heath, 28 and from Cheslyn Hay near Walsall, fights back the tears as she recalls the moment she was warned her five-day-old daughter may die.
Little Aimee had been infected with early onset Group B Streptococcus (or GBS) which, while harmless in most cases, can lead to a range of serious illnesses, including septicaemia, pneumonia and meningitis within the first week of a baby's life.
The bacteria - carried by an estimated one-in-four pregnant women - is passed from mother to baby.
In the majority of cases, babies can be protected if the mother is given intravenous antibiotics during labour.
But Charlotte did not know she was a carrier.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Aimee was left with a series of disabilities after contracting Group B Strep infection
Despite the bleak outlook, Aimee survived but has been left with quadriplegic spastic cerebral palsy which means that she cannot sit unaided, walk or talk.
Charlotte said: "I know people will probably look at me and say, 'you know, she's got all these problems, you're fantastic, I don't know how you cope', but you do, you just get on with it because you know it could've been different.
"We feel lucky to have her."
Public Health England, which collates data for England, Wales and Northern Ireland told 5 live Investigates that the number of babies being made ill by the infection has increased by 12% between 2011 and 2015.
According to the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit, 518 newborn babies in the UK and Ireland were made ill as a result of the bacteria, 27 died and dozens more like Aimee were left with disabilities in the year to April 2015.
He died 20 minutes later
Craig White and Lynsey Dalvarez's son Frankie did not survive. Like Charlotte, Lynsey, 29, was unaware she was a carrier of the bacteria and was not tested or given the antibiotics which may have saved her son.
"I'd never heard of it before," she said.
"We didn't understand how sick he was. Saturday and Sunday they tried their best.
"On Sunday night he had gone into multiple organ failure and he'd started having seizures. They said they'd try one more thing and if not we'd have to withdraw care.
"They did a brain scan and it showed damage, so they took us into a room and removed support and he died 20 minutes later in my arms on the Monday. It was very quick."
Image caption Craig White and Lynsey Dalvarez with their Frankie, who died after being born with the condition
Both Lynsey and Charlotte feel very strongly that every mother should be tested for the condition.
While this is done in some European countries and the US, routine screening is not done in the UK.
The decision on whether to introduce it in this country is down to the Department of Health, which takes expert advice from the National Screening Committee.
The screening committee is currently looking at this, but has said in the past that it does not think there is a case for routine screening here because it does not believe it is accurate enough.
Dr Anne Mackie, Director of Programmes for the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), said: "The UK independent expert screening committee's last review of screening for group B strep carriage found testing in late pregnancy unreliable.
"This is because the test cannot distinguish between women whose babies will be affected by early onset group B strep and those who would not. This could lead to a high number of mothers and babies being exposed to unnecessary antibiotic use."
'Trauma'
Campaigners disagree with the screening committee and say concerns about the overuse of antibiotics should not prevent mothers from being routinely screened.
Jane Plumb from the charity Group B Strep Support, said: "Screening will save babies' lives, stop families going through the trauma of seeing their baby suffer preventable infection and ease the burden on our overworked NHS."
They point to a clinical trial undertaken at London's Northwick Park Hospital in which more than 5,000 women were screened, with those testing positive offered antibiotics in labour.
Full trial results are expected to be detailed in the British Medical Journal soon but preliminary results given after the first 18 months showed an 80% reduction in the number of babies infected with the bacteria.
More than 250,000 people recently signed a petition calling on the Department of Health to introduce routine testing in the UK.
The Department of Health declined to comment until after the screening committee report, which is expected some time this month.
5 live Investigates is on BBC Radio 5 live, Sunday 5 March at 11:00 GMT - catch up on BBC iPlayer Radio.
Have you got something you want investigating? We want to hear from you. Email 5liveinvestigates@bbc.co.ukA Shifting Playing Field: Coming Out As A Gay Athlete
Enlarge this image toggle caption Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/AP Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo/AP
These days, we're more likely to see professional athletes on products than protest lines. But it wasn't always this way. In the 1960s, sports stars were often as famous for what they believed as for their home runs.
Back then, many athletes spoke out about civil rights. Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and threatened with imprisonment for refusing to fight in Vietnam, on the grounds of racial discrimination.
By the 1970s, the issue of the day was women's rights. Tennis player Billie Jean King used her fame on the court to fight for equal opportunities for female athletes.
Today, King is also an advocate for gay rights, but for most of her career, she stayed in the closet. Now, it's not uncommon for a female pro athlete to come out, but as of yet, no current male players of America's four major pro sports (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) has publicly said he's gay.
toggle caption Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Lacking A Role Model
Former Major League Baseball player Billy Bean spent nine years in silence about his sexual orientation in the '90s.
"For me, I was a baseball player, and I did not identify as a gay person who played baseball. I was a baseball player first and foremost," he tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Celeste Headlee. "You don't get to the major leagues — nobody does — without making that the absolute No. 1 priority and passion of your life."
He says no one knew he was gay.
"I had never told anybody. I'd never told my parents, I'd never told my best friend. The only person that knew was the person I'd left my wife for," he says.
He spent three years with his partner, who died in 1995.
"That was a very, very difficult experience for me to try to weather on my own," Bean says. "But I just think that because I had no precedent of anyone in the environment, there was no person for me to model myself after. And I think that I was afraid."
When Bean played, he says gay slurs were "thrown around like 'if,' 'and' or 'but.' " Bean, author of Going the Other Way: Lessons From a Life in and Out of Major League Baseball, never spoke up. "I didn't talk about gay rights, I didn't defend gay rights. I didn't bring up the topic. It was my dirty little secret," he says.
NFL Star On Offensive For Gay Marriage When Brendon Ayanbadejo recently spoke out in favor of gay marriage, a prominent critic told him to stop talking and focus on football. Ayanbadejo joined host Michel Martin in September to talk about why he's committed to defending same-sex marriage. Listen to Brendon Ayanbadejo on 'Tell Me More' Listen · 8:26 8:26
'A Powerful Statement'
Some people have been standing up lately, acting as role models for young athletes, and the response has been positive.
Cyd Zeigler, editor at Outsports.com, keeps track of important moments in LGBT sports history. He says this year, and really within the past few months, there have been a few standout moments for gay rights in the sports community. One of those happened the first week of October, when pro boxer Orlando Cruz came out.
"I think that was super important because we hear the risks of coming out as an athlete, and one of them is physical danger from other athletes," Zeigler says. "And here's an athlete whose opponents are paid to try to knock him unconscious. The fact that he willingly came out of the closet — I think it's a powerful statement."
Baseball player Yunel Escobar of the Toronto Blue Jays received a three-game suspension for a gay slur written in Spanish in the black grease under his eyes in September. As ESPN reported, his forfeited salary went to two organizations promoting equality and gay rights. On top of that response from the MLB, Zeigler says, fans also rejected Escobar's actions.
Players' Social Stances
Earlier this month, ESPN published a poll on athletes' political views, including whether the U.S. should legalize gay marriage. The study found overwhelming support in the NHL — 92.3 percent — as well as majority support in the NFL. MLB and NBA players were 45 percent and 46.2 percent, respectively, in favor of legalization.
Former Denver Broncos tight end Nate Jackson says he's not surprised that players are in favor of same-sex marriage.
"I think the players reflect Americans their age. Players are pretty progressive guys. They're generally liberal and they're accepting of their teammates," he says. "The thing about NFL teams is that you don't choose what team you go to. Guys come from all around the country, all different socioeconomic backgrounds, with different families, different races, and they form a team. And so you have to be accepting of the differences of your teammates."
He believes the results would not be the same if they polled the coaches, who generally want to avoid distractions.
"Coaches encourage players not to use their position as a professional athlete as a platform for any type of social issues," he says.
Jackson also says the draw of media attention — to the player and his team — could serve as a disincentive to coming out. So the first active player to come out may be from a team in a smaller town with less of a media spotlight. He also thinks it might have to be a superstar player.
"If you're more trouble than you're worth, essentially, in a coach's mind — regardless of what the distraction is — then they'll just cut you loose," he says.
Broadening The Base, Supporting Gay Rights
A number of teams have found advantages to reaching out to the LGBT community. Some teams have been making public service announcements and giving donations to community organizations. The Baltimore Orioles made a public service announcement encouraging LGBT youth, which Zeigler says came out of a request by a fan.
Baltimore Orioles' PSA Your browser does not support iframes.
"I think part of it is they want to build their fan base.... They have a lot of tickets to sell," he says. "But I also believe that sports has transformed, and it is no longer a place where homophobia thrives."
Wade Davis, a former NFL player, insisted for years that Zeigler didn't understand how homophobic the sports world was. Davis came out in June, as Zeigler reported for Outsports.com.
"He got a ton of incredibly positive reaction, not just from fans and other people, but from former teammates saying, 'Why didn't you trust me, man? I wish you'd come out,' " Ziegler says.
Davis says he now realizes he hadn't actually seen homophobia in the locker room.
"It was all in his head," Ziegler says, "and yes, there might be some slurs here or machismo going on in the locker room, but most of what's keeping athletes in the closet today is in their own heads."It's Year 5 for #NBArank!
Who will be the best ballers in the NBA this season? Here are players 31-35:
#NBArank: 31-35
Zach Randolph made 49.0 percent of his 2-point attempts after hovering around 47 percent the previous three years. Sam Forencich/NBAE/Getty Images
Memphis Grizzlies | PF
@MacBo50 | Score: 57.1
Last year's rank: 33
2015-16 RPM: 2.40
Insider profile: Observers keep waiting for Randolph to make some concession to age as he reaches his mid-30s, and Randolph keeps on defying it. In fact, 2014-15 was by almost any measure his best season since 2010-11, the last time he averaged 20 points per game. Read more »
Gordon Hayward made the Jazz look smart by matching the $62 million offer sheet he received from the Hornets last summer. Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images
Utah Jazz | SF
@gordonhayward | Score: 57.0
Last year's rank: 47
2015-16 RPM: 3.96
Insider profile: Hayward emerged last season as the Jazz's go-to player and one of the league's best all-around wings, all at age 25. The key to Hayward's development was shot creation. In addition to pushing his usage from 23.1 percent of Utah's plays to 26.2 percent, Hayward was assisted less frequently (43.8 percent of his field goals, down from 50 percent, per NBA.com/Stats). Read more »
Joakim Noah enters a contract year coming off a down season when he was plagued by knee issues. Nuccio DiNuzzo/Chicago Tribune/Getty Images
Chicago Bulls | C
@JoakimNoah | Score: 56.4
Last year's rank: 12
2015-16 RPM: 2.67
Insider profile: Last year, Noah looked like a player in decline. Now, entering a contract year, he finds himself in a precarious situation. The hope for Noah, and the Bulls, is that his drop-off in 2014-15 was entirely due to ongoing knee trouble. Read more »
After being voted into his first All-Star Game last season, Kyle Lowry battled a bad back after the break. AP Images/Nam Y. Huh
Toronto Raptors | PG
@Klow7 | Score: 56.1
Last year's rank: 29
2015-16 RPM: 4.47
Insider profile: Although he doesn't necessarily have a single great skill, Lowry is good enough across the board to be dangerous in the pick-and-roll. He is a threat to pull up when opponents go under the screen (he shot just 33.8 percent on 3s last year but was at 38 percent the year before), can get to the basket and take contact and is a willing passer. Read more »
Pau Gasol bounced back in a big way during his first season with the Bulls in 2014-15. Mike McGinnis/Getty Images
Chicago Bulls | PF
@paugasol | Score: 55.7
Last year's rank: 44
2015-16 RPM: 0.46
Insider profile: Gasol's ability to play a European face-up game in addition to a traditional low-post role should play well in the system of new coach Fred Hoiberg. Unfortunately, Gasol's declining defense will further muddle what is already a complicated frontcourt depth chart. Read more »
About #NBArank
ESPN is ranking (almost) every NBA player and counting them down on Twitter (@ESPNNBA), from No. 400 to No. 1.
Who will be the best player this season?
To get the final ranking, we asked the panel to vote on pairs of players.
LeBron James vs. Stephen Curry. James Harden vs. Kevin Durant. Kobe Bryant vs. Pau Gasol.
We asked, "Which player will be better in 2015-16?" To decide, voters had to consider both the quality and quantity of each player's contributions to his team's ability to win games. More than 100 voters weighed in on nearly 30,000 pairs of players.
We'll roll out the results during the next five weeks. If you want to get involved in the discussion or just follow along, #NBArank is the Twitter hashtag to use. You also can follow along @ESPNNBA and on Facebook.That headline could just as easily have been something like: "Police Arrest Boy for Stealing Mom's Pop-Tarts"—it just depends whose stupidity you want to highlight, and this is really a toss-up.
Few details are available, mainly because everybody involved was too embarrassed to talk to NBC's Charlotte affiliate about the matter. But according to WCNC's report, a woman in Charlotte did indeed call the police on Monday to report that her son had stolen her Pop-Tarts, and real police officers did indeed show up and arrest the boy for larceny. (They filed a police report and everything, one apparently meant for vehicles and on which they did not correctly spell either the make or model of the stolen item.)
Under North Carolina law, larceny is a felony if the value of the stolen goods is more than $1,000, but otherwise it's a Class 1 misdemeanor. N.C. Stat. § 14-72. Here, the value of the goods was not reported; however, a box of 16 Pop-Tarts can be had from Walmart for about $3.50, which works out to about 22 cents per tart. Assuming the boy took fewer than 4,545 Pop-Tarts, this would be misdemeanor larceny.
But larceny "from the person" is a felony without regard to the value of the property in question. N.C. Stat. § 14-72(b)(1). Larceny is considered "from the person" if the property is "in the immediate presence of and under the protection or control of the victim at the time the property is taken." State v. Barnes, 478 S.E.2d 188, 190 (N.C. 1996). Property held in the hand or carried in a pocket is certainly covered, but "property may be under the protection of the person although not actually 'attached' to him." State v. Hill, 723 S.E.2d 582 (N.C. App. 2012) (unpublished; affirming conviction for "larceny from the person" of a cashier where defendant took money out of her nearby cash register).
According to the report, the boy has been charged only with misdemeanor larceny. I would have assumed that the only reason someone would get worked up enough to call the police about Pop-Tart larceny would be if a fresh, possibly toasted tart was actually taken out of that person's hand, but under the above rules that would have been felony larceny from the person (value irrelevant). So either the theft did not occur in the victim's presence or, and this may be more likely, they realized how ridiculous it would be to charge someone with a felony for stealing some Pop-Tarts.
As the video demonstrates, the neighbors recognized how ridiculous it was to get the police involved at all, let alone for them to actually make an arrest:
"We very much wanted to talk to the woman," said the reporter, which is totally understandable, and they waited over two hours for her to come home yesterday. But she eluded them, mostly.
Apparently warned that a reporter was waiting at her front door, she parked her car a block away and slipped into her house through the back. She emerged only briefly to hurl an obscenity and then slammed the door.
That sounds about right.
Unsurprisingly, the police department also did not want to make a statement. The boy is apparently being charged as a juvenile, a word that really applies to the whole incident.Lucas Biglia and Rasmus Elm come together at midfield, a scene played out repeatedly in AZ Alkmaar’s 1-0 win over Anderlecht in Thursday’s Europa League clash.
Elm, as is his knack, wins the 50-50 ball, holds off Biglia and looks for all the world as if he’s going to play square and short to Maarten Martens. It is the right play, the low-risk play, the expected play.
But Elm, without even picking his head up, launches a 40-yard switch to a streaking Roy Beerens down the right wing, and AZ are off to the races. Beerens, a pacy, tricky winger, goes directly at Olivier Deschacht, turning the Belgian one way, then the other, then back again. They’re at the edge of the box now, and Charlison Benschop is diving toward the near post, dragging the Anderlecht central defense with him.
Klinsmann talks tactics on USsoccer.com
Deschacht, half on his backside now, makes a desperate lunge and – to the relief of the traveling fans – gets a toe to the ball, sending it out for a corner.
Threat over. For the moment.
Minutes later, though, the same situation plays out down the other flank. Again. And again. And again. It was 1-0, but it could have been 4-0 or 5-0 as easily.
Anderlecht spent Thursday afternoon chasing shadows, ending on the wrong side of a lesson from one of the world’s great practitioners of the 4-3-3.
Earlier that afternoon, on the other side of the world, the US Under-23 roster for the upcoming friendly against Mexico was announced, and it included four out-and-out wingers as well as several others who could, potentially, fill that role.
It did not, however, include Rasmus Elm. Nor did it include Roy Beerens. And that is an issue.
The 4-3-3 was a Brazilian invention of the early 1960s, designed mostly to give some defensive structure to a team built around Garrincha’s anarchic talent both on and off the ball. Pelé may be the greatest player in the history of the game, but in Brazil, it is the Little Bird who is the most beloved, who defined an era and to whom all great wingers must be compared.
What made Garrincha special (and Beerens, though magnitudes less so) was his ability, time after time, to beat the man in front of him with the ball on his foot and make a telling play. Or, should you decide to crowd him and deny him room to receive a pass, he’d simply turn into space and run past you, getting onto the end of one of those 40-yard passes, delivered, in his time, by Didi (the Xavi of his day) or Nito (the Busquets).
Caleb Porter’s US roster is meant to play the game the way AZ played it Thursday, and – in everyone’s wildest dreams – the way that Brazil played it 50 years ago.
But there is no Garrincha, no Beerens on this squad, wingers to beat the opposing fullbacks into submission. There is no Elm or Didi, central midfielders who excel at spreading the field and placing a first-time ball into space rather than at feet.
And while there is institutional desire in US soccer to adapt and become a 4-3-3 country in the Dutch mold, few of the players on the squad have been drilled in the finer points of the formation’s tactics either as youths or pros. Of the players on the roster, only Teal Bunbury plays in the 4-3-3 regularly for his club team.
Brek Shea is wonderful in the open field, but lacks the one-vs.-one ability so necessary for wingers in the system. He failed to beat his man with the ball on his foot a single time against Panama last month, and the scouting report was out on him in MLS by mid-August: Don’t let him receive the ball at pace, and he won’t hurt you.
Freddy Adu, meanwhile, lacks the pace and instincts to threaten teams off the ball on the flank. Joe Gyau could potentially be the answer, but he remains a head-down dribbler at this stage of his development.
In the midfield, I am a great fan of Dilly Duka, but switching the point of attack directly into a winger’s run is not one of his strong suits. Same for Mix Diskerud, who’s better at small combination play.
Michael Stephens and Jared Jeffrey, meanwhile, have both shown facility for connecting passes, but – again – not first time, and not into space.
The 4-3-3 is a thing of beauty when it works, which is why neutral fans tend to adore the teams that employ it well. But it takes time, discipline, repetition, instincts and distinct skill sets to make it happen.
Right now, I don’t see those skills on the US team, either Porter’s U-23s, or Klinsmann’s full national side. In switching to the 4-3-3 at this juncture, the US is trying to jump straight to calculus without first having mastered algebra.
Expect some real, severe growing pains along the way. Olympic qualifying starts next month, and that’ll be the first test of this new American orthodoxy. If they don’t get high marks, they'll be stuck watching how the 4-3-3 really functions every time they see the masters work it.
On television.
Follow@MLS_AnalystSeveral years ago, when Netflix was playing around with a redesign of its platform, Chris Jaffe, VP of user interface innovation, went to Barnes & Noble and bought every entertainment magazine on the rack. He took them all home and spread them out on his living room floor. Then he asked himself this question: How does Hollywood merchandise its shows?
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“And what you saw when you stood back and looked was that it was all about strong imagery with a small amount of contextual text,” Jaffe tells me during a recent interview, standing in a conference room at Netflix’s Los Gatos headquarters. “It was, ‘Here’s The Walking Dead‘ and there was a big, strong image of that. Or, ‘Here’s Mad Men,’ and a big image.” Chris Jaffe This revelation led Netflix—following the kind of exhaustive testing and research the company is famous for—to ditch its earlier UI design, which highlighted optionality, and put an emphasis on imagery instead. By now, most subscribers are familiar with the look, which debuted in 2013: A series of lush, rotating images dominates the screen, accompanied by a simple synopsis. Netflix found that the new design did a better job of connecting viewers to its approximately 7,000 movies and TV shows, but, Jaffe says, “We always thought it could be better… and the better way is video.” The future of browsing, according to Netflix. This hunch, confirmed by further rounds of tests and data gathering, has led to an even bigger UI upgrade, which is being rolled out to the company’s 86 million global subscribers starting today, as announced in a company blog post. Now, as you scroll through the rows of offerings, preview videos for each title will begin automatically playing whenever you linger on an image for more than a second or two. It’s a drastic change for a site that, when it debuted its internet TV service in 2009, looked like “an efficient vending machine,” Jaffe jokes. And it brings the Netflix experience far closer to old-fashioned channel surfing and further away from the act of staring at a computer screen and clicking static icons (which is, incidentally, what browsing Amazon still feels like). Ironic throwback, perhaps, but nonetheless exactly what Netflix was going for. Says Stephen Garcia, director of product innovation at Netflix: “Television has decades’ worth of expectation that when you turn it on, the video and audio play. So it’s actually quite strange to have a silent experience.” The move may cause some blowback in the same way that the autoplay feature on Facebook has drawn grumbling from people who don’t like videos instantaneously playing as they scroll. But Netflix remains steadfast in its belief that TV—as opposed to a social media site or blog—is meant to come to life when you turn it on. So for now at least, it isn’t offering a disable option. That will likely change, however, on the laptop and mobile UIs, which are still in the process of being tested and built.
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“Television has decades’ worth of expectation that when you turn it on, the video and audio play. So it’s actually quite strange to have a silent experience.” “You’re used to turning on TV and things being loud and happening,” Jaffe says. “It’s a different thing on your laptop and mobile. We’re evaluating those (experiences) right now, we’re going through the design exercises on mobile. We’ll probably have different considerations.” Another important detail: The experience won’t be available to all Netflix users at once. At launch, the Sony PlayStation, Xbox One and S, and Roku platforms will have the upgrade. Following in the next few months will be the Xbox 360, then smart TVs and other set-top boxes such as the Fire TV and Android TV. Other devices—including the Apple TV and Wii—will be upgraded as soon as possible, though Netflix is not sharing specific timelines. (The 2013 UI design has never been implemented on Apple TVs because Apple insists that its app developers all adhere to a grid design, as explained here.) Stephen Garcia The intuitive rationale behind the upgrade was that video is a far more compelling format when advertising, well, video, not to mention a feature that users have come to expect from their online experiences. (Netflix customers have been demanding the kinds of trailers that iTunes, Hulu, and HBO Go provide.) But more importantly, Netflix found that when users interact with videos rather than still images, it cuts down on browsing time. “What this video does is make it so that people actually have to browse less before they find something that they feel confident in watching,” Garcia says. “When I say ‘confident,’ I mean that you pick something and you watch a little bit or you watch a lot. So did you finish Beasts of No Nation or did you watch a little bit and say, ‘This isn’t for me, I’m out’? And when you pick something and don’t finish it, that’s a failure on our part. So what we really wanted to do was make sure we were helping you find something great.” Netflix found that when users interact with videos rather than still images, it cuts down on browsing time. Less browsing doesn’t completely answer the biggest existential problem that Netflix users grouse about—how to see all of the choices at once without scrolling your life away—but it does chip away at the challenge of discovery something that fits your taste. And a customer who spends less time searching and more time watching “something great” is a happy customer, which helps Netflix achieve its ultimate goal: retaining and growing subscribers. Netflix, after all, does not run ads with its content, which means that its health is entirely dependent on subscriber growth. And as Garcia notes, “It’s very easy to cancel your service. We want you to feel that your subscription is valuable and worth the money.” Screens like this one were a slight upgrade from the “efficient vending machine” look of Netflix’s earliest interfaces. This philosophy is the motive behind all of the company’s innovations and distinguishing perks, from its algorithms that recommend content based on users’ viewing habits to its slew of original shows like House of Cards and Stranger Things to its frequent service upgrades and offerings. Just last week Netflix announced—in a major turnaround—that subscribers will now be able to download content for later viewing, when they won’t have an internet connection—an option that both Amazon and iTunes allow.
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These improvements come as Netflix faces an onslaught of competition from the likes of Amazon, Hulu, and newer streaming platforms like DirecTV Now. With more and more cord-cutters weighing the benefits between services, Netflix is strategizing how to stay out ahead. Amazon in particular is a growing threat. Although Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos recently snubbed Amazon’s original content efforts, the online shopping behemoth, which has about 60 million subscribers, is catching up to Netflix’s global reach, and has pledged to increase its content budget from the $3 billion-plus it spent in 2016. Netflix, meanwhile, will plow $6 billion into content in 2017, with over 1,000 hours of original programming in the works. So why has it taken so long for Netflix to get around to video? In short, because it required a ton of work. Jaffe says that when the company began “poking” at video a few years ago, its technology wasn’t advanced enough. “For a long time, the internet technology wasn’t there for us to deliver this really, really quickly,” he says. “We had prototypes of this stuff, we knew that this was always the experience we all wanted. But we needed to make the investments [and optimize] things like adaptive streaming and our Open Connect global infrastructure for delivering content.” In other words, Netflix needed the horsepower to set up thousands of videos to play at a moment’s notice. “That video needs to start very, very quickly or you’re not in the game,” Jaffe says. Netflix also needed to prove its hypothesis: that video is more effective than images when it comes to engaging users. And to do that, the company ran hundreds of tests. To help me understand this process during my visit to HQ, I’m brought into a room where I’m seated in front of a screen and hooked up with sensors that measure my palm sweat and heart rate. A small camera on the screen tracks my eye movement, and another one reads my facial expressions to gauge my emotional responses. I’m then shown three preview videos. (The subjects in the actual tests, I’m told, were shown many more.) At the end of the trailers, I’m asked questions such as, “After seeing this video, how interested are you in watching X?” and “Can you remember the names of the trailers that you just watched?” With more and more cord-cutters weighing the benefits between services, Netflix is strategizing how to stay out ahead. The tests helped Netflix understand which types of videos work best in a streaming environment, where you’re able to watch content immediately. These previews serve a wholly different purpose than official trailers for movies or TV series available sometime in the future. Netflix made them internally and designed them to accurately convey the gist of a product that you can watch right now. “[Traditional] trailers can sometimes build anticipation for something without telling you much of a story,” Garcia says. “They’re teasers. Cloverfield did that really well. Blair Witch did that really well. So the purposes can be different.”
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Netflix’s previews are efficient, running between 30 seconds and a few minutes. Garcia says he initially thought they would have to be longer, but research showed that “people take 90 seconds in order to make a decision about what to watch. So we try to help them find something to watch in less than 90 seconds to make sure they can enjoy their experience.” With the exception of Netflix original movies and shows, most of the previews lack dialogue, and instead feature a music soundtrack. But Netflix says that will change as the company continues to discover what kind of audio format works best for each title. Netflix is very much maintaining a work-in-progress attitude throughout the rollout. The company wouldn’t confirm what sorts of features could start showing up down the line, but it’s conceivable that videos personalized to highlight users’ individual tastes might one day appear. As for when to expect the new UI on mobile devices, Garcia says, “We want to create something that members love. So if we test something and members love it, we will roll it out. Just like we’ve done with this.” Testing aside, Garcia admits that the biggest affirmation of the new UI came from his own experience. “I used it [at home] for the entire duration of the test and I missed it when it was gone. It feels fresh, it feels new. It feels like something that should have always been there.”Everyone has been asking for more opportunities to play Disc Jam, so today we’re happy to announce that you can play every week! Starting July 21st, Disc Jam will be online every Thursday for 12 hours! We’re doubling the length of our playtest window in the hope that it will be easier for players in all parts of the world to find time to play.
THURSDAY NIGHT JAM
Every Thursday – Starting July 21st
3pm to 3am EST (New York)
12pm to 12am PST (Los Angeles)
16:00 to 4:00 BRST (São Paulo)
19:00 to 7:00 GMT (London)
20:00 to 8:00 CET (Paris)
22:00 to 10:00 MSK (Moscow)
Why the wait? I want to play RIGHT NOW!
Well, we’re still investigating bug reports from our last test, but we’ve also got some really exciting changes to gameplay and scoring in the works and we need to get them finished up before we make another build. We’ll be putting up another blog post soon with more details on what’s new!
Why this day and time? I can’t play!
A few months ago, we sent out a survey asking players their ideal playtest times and the vast majority of respondents said that weeknights were best. We chose Thursday evenings so that we could respond to feedback on Fridays and iterate on that feedback at the start of the following week. We understand that some people may not be able to play on Thursdays, but we feel it is important to have a regular schedule that players can rely on. If enough people are participating, we will open up a second day of the week for testing.Author: Devendra
A traveler by heart, I seek joy in exploring some of the remotest places on Earth and sharing my experiences about those places. I am a great admirer of the rich history and natural beauty of India, and attempt to provide information about this land through my writing. I also have keen interest in science and technology. When not traveling or writing, I am either listening to music or reading an interesting book (sometimes playing cricket also).
“Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidoteand I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life”—Michael Palin said these words during one of his journeys around the world. I am 100 percent sure I was also born with a travel bug that kept itself hidden until I turned 20. The bug now keeps raising its head from time to time, asking me about my futuretravel plans. Truly speaking, I’ve failed to find any other way to pacify this bug than to pack my bags, call some of my friends, and figure out my next journey to some remote |
summer league overlap. Then, there are the ESPY’s in mid-July. It doesn’t really slow down until the last couple weeks of August.”
“Summer is the busiest time of the year because you have the draft and free agency, but also because your players are idle,” one agent added. “During the season, there’s a routine and players are busy. During the summer, players have a lot of free time on their hands and a lot can go wrong. You really have to keep tabs on your players during the offseason.”
While summer may be their most hectic time of year, a few agents were quick to point out that their schedule is pretty packed year-round.
“There shouldn’t be downtime if you’re doing this job well,” one agent said. “It consumes your life, and even intrudes on things like your family time, unfortunately. You’re constantly working. And if you aren’t with a big agency like CAA, you have to work even harder to get clients. I try to go to as many college games as possible and get in front of as many players as possible and just outwork everybody else. That’s my approach. I want to be around all the time, so the players know me well when it’s time to hire an agent.”
Even when an agent isn’t at an event or negotiating a deal, they’re doing something for their clients.
“One day I’ll be vetting financial advisers, the next day I’m getting a player a passport, the next day I’m helping a player buy a car, the next day I’m shopping for an engagement ring with a player, the next day I’m trying to help a player lower his cell phone bill, the next day I’m organizing a player’s basketball camp and so on,” one agent said. “You’re trying to help them and make their life easier.”
“If you’re a person who needs structure and needs to know exactly what time your work day ends and what you’ll be doing every hour of the day, this is the wrong career for you,” another agent added. “You have to be flexible.”
There are many misconceptions about the industry
Many of the agents who agreed to be interviewed for this story wanted to clarify some things about life as an agent.
“There are a lot of misconceptions,” one agent said. “Some people think every agent is soulless and greedy, but that’s not the case.”
“Not all of us break the rules,” another agent added. “A lot of people think all agents are ruthless and that we’re willing to do anything to get a client, even if it means breaking the rules, but that’s false. When one agent skirts the rules, we all get painted with the same brush and that’s unfortunate.”
One agent pointed out that most people think agents can’t talk to players when they’re still in college, but there’s no NCAA rule prohibiting them from interacting. A lot of coaches tell their players to avoid agents, which is likely where that misconception stems from. If an agent and college player do interact, the agent isn’t allowed to provide services to the player, secure a future commitment from the prospect or give the player anything of value. But just having a conversation is perfectly fine.
Also, many people assume that an agent must have a law degree, but that’s not true. Sure, some agents are lawyers, but it’s not a requirement.
“In college, I remember thinking that you had to be a lawyer to be an agent and that it was so hard to become one,” one agency staffer said. “But I’ve learned that you definitely don’t have to be a lawyer. Look at Worldwide Wes; he went to college for one year. He doesn’t have a college degree – much less a law degree – but he’s successful because he’s street smart, savvy and he knows how to talk to players. Relationships are paramount.”
Several agents stated that a lot of the common misconceptions can be traced to how the industry is portrayed in movies and television shows.
“Those movies and shows would have you believe that all we do is go to games and then party with our clients, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” one agent said with a laugh. “The show Ballers, for example, can sometimes give me a headache.”
“People romanticize the job and think it’s all excitement,” one agency staffer said. “And don’t get me wrong, it is exciting at times. But it can also be very tedious and exhausting. There are times when you’re in four cities in five days and you’re going on barely any sleep.”
“Many people assume that being an agent is this glamorous, sexy job,” another agent said. “What they don’t see is all of the stress and shit that we deal with behind the scenes.”
Like, say, booking the same private jet three times in one day.
Dealing with players’ family members can be difficult
Virtually every agent we spoke to said that managing their clients’ family members is one of the most frustrating parts of their job.
“Sometimes, the parents are more difficult to deal with than the kids,” one agent said. “And sometimes the parents are still involved when the player isn’t even a kid anymore. I’ve seen 25-year-olds and 26-year-olds whose parents are still really involved and I’m thinking, ‘It’s time for this kid to grow up!’ And then there are some parents who constantly cause problems for their kid rather than help them, which is so frustrating.”
“This year, I pursued a player who I really like and I was warned about his dad by the college coaches and by another person outside of the program,” another agent said. “And, by the way, I’m not talking about Lonzo Ball and LaVar Ball. Anyway, I really liked the kid as a player and I figured I could manage the dad. Well, I was flat-out wrong. The dad had all of these insane thoughts about his son. I like the kid, but he is a borderline NBA player at best. The fact that his dad is nuts and causes problems could legitimately keep this kid out of the NBA. The college coaches had so many problems with the dad that NBA teams who are calling to ask about the kid are getting bad feedback about the dad. Someone like Lonzo Ball is going to be fine because he’s so talented. Teams will put up with LaVar because Lonzo could be a star. But, if you’re a fringe NBA player like this kid and his dad is causing a bunch of problems? That’s not good. That can be the difference between playing in the NBA and playing overseas.”
Many family members want to help manage their son’s career, but this can be frustrating for an agent. Usually, the relatives aren’t familiar with the Collective Bargaining Agreement or how the business works, so their suggestions aren’t realistic or even possible.
“The hardest part of my job is dealing with the families,” one agency staffer said. “You have some family members who have way too much time on their hands and they have strong opinions. But, quite frankly, they don’t have any type of qualifications aside from being related to an NBA player.”
“Sometimes family members and friends are in the player’s ear saying things like, ‘You should have a bigger contract! You should have better endorsement deals! You should have your own signature shoe!'” one agent said. “As the agent, I try to manage expectations and set realistic goals. Misinformed family members can make that tougher.”
Players often want to take care of their family and friends financially. However, sometimes the people close to the player will cross the line and start taking advantage of him.
“Sometimes you have to keep relatives and friends at bay because they just want money,” one agent said. “Most people view their family members as the people they trust most. But in some cases with professional athletes, the family members are the people who are the most toxic to the player and who ultimately pose the biggest threat to the player’s career and financial future.”
An NBA player faces a multitude of threats to their career and financial security, and their agent does their best to protect them. That means helping them make important decisions, removing negative influences from their life and setting them up with a long-term plan for success.
And sometimes that means scrubbing a player’s Twitter and Instagram accounts of inappropriate pictures posted by a stripper who hacked into their phone. All in a day’s work for an agent.
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Please check your email for a confirmation.The Army has decided to abandon plans to issue waivers to recruits with a history of self-mutilation or other mental health problems.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said Wednesday to reporters that a September waiver memo, first reported on by USA Today, had been dropped after “terrible” messaging of the policy. However, Milley maintained the memo did not constitute a real change in policy, but rather delegated the ability to issue waivers to a lower authority — from Army headquarters to Army Recruiting Command.
“There wasn’t a change in policy,” Milley said, according to USA Today. “There cannot be a change in policy by someone who doesn’t have the authority to change policy. I know it sounds circular.”
However, Army officials previously told USA Today that the ban on issuing waivers, which was first imposed in 2009 after a spate of troop suicides, had been lifted.
The original story also attracted the attention of GOP Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, who bristled over the fact that he hadn’t been informed of the memo before reading about it in the news. He also questioned whether the Army was the right place for those with a history of self-harm.
“Self-mutilation is something that comes home to roost,” McCain said. “Someone who self mutilates, I don’t understand the eligibility there.”
Milley spoke with McCain on Tuesday and told him the memo would be rescinded.
Moreover, the memo was also condemned by the Center for Military Readiness, a military policy organization, that argued not only should the Army not make it easier to obtain waivers, but the Army shouldn’t be handing out any waivers for these conditions at all.
The Army is trying to meet a recruitment goal of 80,000 for September 2018.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.Are you a Telstra home broadband customer? If you opt in to share your home Wi-Fi with strangers, you'll get free access to the Telstra Air network of nationwide Wi-Fi. That network is live and switched on in thousands of locations as of today.
Telstra Air is the new name for what was a year ago called Wi-Fi Nation, but that existing mesh of thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots in old payphones and cafes is being supplemented by new deals with shopping centres, large sporting stadiums and public transport hubs to build out and expand the Air network to cover a larger area of Australia's metropolitan areas.
When they sign up for Telstra Air, a Telstra home broadband user's home Wi-Fi network will be split into two, with one frequency band re-broadcast as a Telstra Air hotspot and with bandwidth available to any other Air customer that might want to use it. So, to have the ability to use a Telstra Air hotspot when you're not at home, you'll have to be comfortable with sharing a "small portion" of your home Internet connection publicly. This usage, of course, will come from the Air user's quota and not the home broadband owner's allowance, and the separate Wi-Fi network should be completely isolated from the user's home Wi-Fi for extra security.
Four Telstra Gateway modems already support the Telstra Air network — they've had over-the-air software updates to enable the additional Wi-Fi networks in the background. Every Telstra modem sold in the future, too, will support the creation of Air networks through secondary Wi-Fi frequencies. If you're a home broadband user and want to opt in to the Telstra Air program, take a look here.
Of course, if you're not already a Telstra home broadband customer, then you'll be able to access an Air hotspot by paying the regular Fon prices — $6.60 for an hour, $10 for a day, $23 for five days:
[Telstra Air]Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys, including Quarterback Tony Romo, were names that ACORN workers attempted to register to vote during the 2008 presidential election.
The ensuing outrage sparked a voter registration fraud scandal that helped lead to the activist group's demise, and put new focus on the integrity of third-party voter registration efforts during Presidential elections.
Now, four years later, the name: John Adolf Hitler, was one of those turned in on a voter registration form collected by another group in Cincinnati, according to the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
"It's certainly not a joke. In Ohio, that kind of activity is a felony," says Alex Triantafilou, an Elections Board member who also serves as the Chairman of the county's Republican party.
"Any person who would engage in that kind of conduct with something as serious to our democracy as voting, is highly irresponsible and potentially criminal...We have someone doctoring registrations, and the next step would be a serious move toward fraudulent voting. We are worried about it.”
The listing, "Adolf Hitler, John...666 Heltz...la," puts his supposed residence in Los Angeles.
It was part of a batch of roughly 200 voter registrations that election officials say were flagged as possibly fraudulent, forged, or duplicated by the group that collected them, FieldWorks, a private Washington, D.C. based firm.
FieldWorks, says it works largely with Democratic candidates, causes and progressive organizations collecting signatures for voter registration or ballot initiatives across the country.
“We have a zero tolerance for fraud," FieldWorks co-owner Chris Gallaway told Fox News, defending his firm.
"Not only is the employee committing fraud, but he is stealing from us.”
The case echoes multiple voter registration fraud allegations against the now defunct community-organizing group ACORN, and FieldWorks says it has fired two workers in Cincinnati whom they suspect may have been forging cards.
Gallaway told Fox News that it was his firm that first brought the registration of " Hitler" to the attention of election authorities.
"I like to think that we do a lot of good work," Gallaway told us. "A lot of people have gotten a black eye. We've seen the stories out of Florida, on ACORN...we want to make these operations, which in the past have not been great, to focus on quality control."
He says the firm scrutinizes every voter registration form that it turned in to election boards, and even gives canvassers GPS cell phones to ensure that they "are not at their home forging applications."
ACORN workers had admitted they did just that.
Gathering signatures was too difficult, said one ACORN worker in Seattle, so he went home and filled out the forms while he "smoked marijuana."
There are also allegations of forged FieldWorks forms in Cleveland.
Elections officials in Cuyahoga County tell Fox News that they have referred three FieldWorks canvassers to the local prosecutor, after finding signatures that they believe are fraudulent on petitions to get an initiative on the ballot.
"We had problems with FieldWorks," charges Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Deputy Chairman Pat McDonald.
"We found multiple individuals where it looked like it was the same signature from the circulator who was circulating the petitions...we want to make sure there is no potential fraud in any entity of elections administration."
Last month, another former Ohio FieldWorks canvasser, 21 year old Timothy Zureick, plead not guilty by reason of insanity to 22 counts of felony false voter registration and one count of election falsification. He is accused of faking signatures on a ballot petition, including those of prominent local Democrats.
Gallaway says his company has protections in place to detect and guard against fraud. He described in detail to Fox News the measures the company takes.
"We feel that it is our job to do due diligence," he says. "We have an employee who has reviewed every single card. We categorize the cards into the ones that are possibly incomplete, (and) we will flag things that look like they could possibly contain some issues of fraud and be potentially fraudulent. We have a high standard here, if we are not 100% sure of the card, we will flag it to the Board of Elections.”
The attempted “Hitler” registration, highlights concerns that election officials have in several states with third party groups, like FieldWorks, and others, gathering voter registration forms.
One potential issue is that when workers’ income depends on gathering cards, there can be an incentive to falsify registrations to meet quotas or minimums.
In an interview with Fox News, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler says that “sometimes a worker will misrepresent who they work for, and sometimes they will tell voters they are no longer registered in order to get them to register and scare them.”
Authorities in Florida and Virginia are investigating suspected fraudulent forms submitted by Republican party contractors. One worker in Colorado was fired for falsely claiming that she was working for the county clerk.
“We have a lot of voter registration drives in Colorado and I want to encourage people to register to vote, but we still have to make sure we do it in the right way.”
One of the FieldWorks workers fired in Cincinnati, 33 year old Cheryl Toran, says she did not do anything wrong and blames the people solicited for providing false information.
"It wasn't me... it was the people that I stopped and asked on the street," Toran told Fox News, insisting that she did not know there were problems on the forms.
Hamillton County Board of Elections records show that a different worker turned in the "Hitler” card, but several of the registration forms Toran gathered were flagged by FieldWorks as potentially fraudulent.
"I was betrayed by some of the people that I ran into, because if you really didn't want to fill out the card, you could have just said no. Don't say yes and then just throw anything down on the card, because it falls back on me."
She feels it was unfair that she was fired and held responsible.
"I was hurt," she told us. "I'm real honest...and it made me feel like I wasn't, like they couldn't trust me. That's why they had to let me go."
Gallaway defends the company’s course of action though.
He says "if a canvasser did no wrong, and was really taken advantage of by a voter, I feel sorry for the canvasser. From our perspective, we can't distinguish that, and any issues of fraud causes us to terminate the employee."
Toran also says FieldWorks had a quota for its workers, that they must solicit 24 completed registration cards during a 7 and 1/2 hour shift. If a worker does not fulfill the quota, Toran says "they would let you go."
FieldWorks denies it imposes a quota, calling the number of signatures expected to be turned in, as a "minimum.”
Hamilton County elections officials say they have forwarded the "Hitler" card to the Los Angeles County Registrar for a final determination.
The names of the fired FieldWorks employees have been turned over to the local prosecutor’s office.
If you suspect voter fraud or election problems where you live, tell us: Voterfraud@Foxnews.com
Meredith Orban contributed to this report.Some clarity on the controversial kneel down play at the end of Sunday's New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers game was provided Monday by Giants' quarterback Eli Manning. The two-time Super Bowl Champion spoke to WFAN's Mike Francesa a day after New York's 41-34 victory over the Bucs', and said he told the Tampa Bay defense he was going to take a knee -- a practice that's common at the end of NFL games to prevent linemen from firing off the line after the ball is snapped -- but the Bucs' ignored the warning.
"I guess certain teams you might say ‘hey watch out for a cheap shot.’ That’s what we call it," said Manning to Francesa. "A lot of teams will ask in those situations ‘are you taking a knee’ and I will tell them ‘hey we’re taking a knee so we’re not firing off.’ We don’t tell our lineman to fire off and hit them on that last play."
When asked by Francesa if he was more upset that Tampa Bay fired off the ball or that they went low on the Giants offensive lineman, Manning responded:
"I think it’s one thing to come off a little bit and another thing to have everybody right there diving in at the offensive linemen’s legs. Just a possibility of getting someone hurt and on a play where we’re taking a knee to end the game and people are coming, firing in and trying to get a cheap shot and trying to possibly hurt somebody."
(H/T Sports Radio Interviews.)
For more on the Giants, visit the SB Nation blog Big Blue View.As all of you following our blog are aware, we have previously released several bitcoin-related packages (btcwire, btcjson, btcutil, btcdb, btcec, and btcscript) on our way towards the full release of btcd.
We are happy to announce our next package from btcd. The package is named btcchain and it implements the bitcoin block handling and chain selection rules. The code can be reviewed on github here:
https://github.com/conformal/btcchain
Overall Package Design
The bitcoin block handling and chain selection rules are an integral, and quite likely the most important, part of bitcoin. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, these rules are also largely undocumented and had to be ascertained from the bitcoind source code. At its core, bitcoin is a distributed consensus of which blocks are valid and which ones will comprise the main block chain (public ledger) that ultimately determines accepted transactions, so it is extremely important that fully validating nodes agree on all rules.
At a high level, this package provides support for inserting new blocks into the block chain according to this distributed consensus of rules. It includes functionality such as rejecting duplicate blocks, ensuring blocks and transactions follow all rules, orphan handling, and best chain selection along with reorganization.
Notifications
One of the design goals for the packages used to build btcd has been reusability. To that end, btcchain optionally provides notifications via an asynchronous channel when certain modifications to the block chain take place. For an example of how these notifications are actually used within btcd, when an orphan block is processed, the missing blocks need to be requested from the peer that sent the orphan. Rather than trying to make the chain code understand peers and network requests thus tightly coupling it to other sub-systems, btcd listens for a notification and requests the missing blocks. In this way, btcchain is completely agnostic to the rest of the sub-systems.
Another example of how notifications might be used by a caller is to update wallets with transactions paying coins to the addresses in the wallet. As in the previous example, this means btcchain does not need to know anything about wallets.
Test Coverage
The test coverage for chain is currently only around 60%, but it does include a full blown unit test for chain reorganization using test data provided on the bitcoin talk forums as outlined in this post. Credits for the following diagram go to etotheipi, the author of the linked post and image.
The reorganization test in btcchain uses a slight tweak in the order the blocks are loaded as compared to the order presented in the referenced post in order to ensure orphan handling and a reorganization caused by inserting the parent of an orphaned side chain works correctly as well. In particular, it loads the first 4 blocks from the main chain (1-4 in the diagram), then the second block from the side chain (4A), the third block from the side chain (5A), and finally the first block on the side chain (3A) which completes the side chain and forces it to become the new main chain due to higher difficulty.
We do plan to increase the test coverage further, though testing the error conditions will likely take a while as it will require quite an effort to mine a suite of blocks that are mostly valid except for the specific errors being tested.
What’s next?
This will be the final package released before btcd. That’s right folks, you read it here first. The next release will be btcd!Scotch County Stout? Quite possibly.
A Goose Island beer label approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau last month indicates that this year’s release of Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout could be aged in scotch barrels.
It would be the first time that Goose Island has aged a beer from its vaunted Bourbon County family of stouts (and one barleywine) in scotch barrels. Dating back to the 1990s, the Bourbon County beers are typically aged in bourbon barrels, though a handful has been aged in rye whiskey barrels.
RELATED: TRY CHICAGO'S 10 BEST BEERS OF SUMMER
Unlike the sweeter bourbon or spicier rye, scotch tends to feature a more polarizing and herbal-smoky flavor due to the use of smoked barley in the distilling process.
Despite the label approval, a Goose Island spokeswoman said this year’s version of Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout may be aged in scotch barrels — or it may not: “We still haven’t decided if that’s the route we’re going to go. Other labels have been submitted as well, so the scotch barrels are a potential variant for Prop but not confirmed.”
While imperial stouts aged in bourbon barrels have become commonplace in craft brewing, aging stout in scotch barrels is relatively rare. The one that I have tried, from Mikkeller back in 2010, got some poor reviews online, but I recall enjoying it quite a bit.
Its smoky peat character did make for a much more challenging beer to sip than a stout aged in bourbon barrels, which is typically imbued with chocolate-vanilla-butterscotch flavors. But then again, I love scotch. Just like this guy.
TTB website Goose Island is working on a wine-barrel-aged beer called Chateau Noir. Goose Island is working on a wine-barrel-aged beer called Chateau Noir. (TTB website) (TTB website)
While we’re on the subject of Goose Island and out-of-the-box barrel-aged stouts, the brewery also apparently is working on something called Chateau Noir, an imperial stout that’s a robust 12 percent alcohol and aged “in cabernet barrels for up to 14 months” according to its label. It will be released in 765 milliliter bottles. The brewery said it's a one-off and here is no projected release date yet.
jbnoel@tribpub.com
Twitter @joshbnoelThe unconfirmed planet Tau Ceti e might be habitable, but even if it’s not, it could be just as fascinating. Photo illustration courtesy PHL/UPR Arecibo via Wikimedia Commons
I recently broke the hearts of Star Trek fans.
In a paper for the Astrophysical Journal, my colleagues and I looked at several star systems to see which might be most likely to be compatible with life. One of those was the star Tau Ceti, which is the closest sunlike star to Earth, making it popular in science fiction, including the Star Trek universe. But we found that Tau Ceti has an unusual ratio with other important rock-forming elements, magnesium and silicon. It lies on the high end of the magnesium-to-silicon scale, with a ratio of 1.8 in favor of magnesium. It is 70 percent more magnesium-rich than our sun.
Because of the unusual composition of Tau Ceti, we put it low on our list of potentially habitable star systems. When they saw the results, Star Trek fans were disappointed: One of their favorite solar systems—home of the Traveler and the spacecraft Kobayashi Maru—had been demoted. Social media was teeming with comments like “This delivers an unfortunate swat to the dreams of many.”
But this isn’t bad news! Tau Ceti may not host alien life, but it would be amazing to observe a planet so vastly different than Earth, even if the differences are mostly scientific jargon at the moment. Science fiction gets one thing right: We live in a strange universe of constantly surprising discoveries.
Life on other planets is scientifically sexy—which is why the search for life has fascinated us over the history of humanity. From ancient Greece to modern scientists like Frank Drake and Enrico Fermi, people have debated the idea of our galaxy being inhabited. Extraterrestrial life litters our bookshelves and our movie screens. The poetry of life in the cosmos is partially what drove me to call myself a stellar astrobiologist (stellar as in star, of course) and not an astrophysicist. The same ideals that drive our quest to find life also drive us to explore the unknown. But when it comes to finding planets, maybe we’re a little too focused on life—our search for aliens means that we overlook incredibly amazing things about non-habitable worlds.
Planets aren’t very special: The Kepler spacecraft found its 1,000th planet earlier this year. Now, we are more interested in whether they are habitable. Traditionally, the word habitable isn’t about whether a planet currently supports life, but rather if it lies in an area adeptly called the “habitable zone.” The implication is that these Goldilocks planets could have a temperature conducive to liquid water. The temperature of the star and the distance from the planet to the star classically determine this zone. However, a few years ago, my Arizona State University colleague Patrick Young, a theoretical astrophysicist, looked at how chemical abundances of stars affect habitable zones, concluding that oxygen plays a big role in this calculation, and habitable zones are not as simple as we would hope. (Disclosure: Future Tense is a partnership of ASU, Slate, and New America.)
People often wonder whether dismissing “non-habitable” planets is shortsighted—what about life that is different than that we know of on Earth? However, no one will pay us to look for something we don’t understand or even know could exist. We have just one data point when it comes to life: Earth. We don’t even really know how it started here. When we look for planets to explore as possibly habitable, we look for planets about the size of Earth, having water, and of a similar temperature. This is a reasonable bet, but I’m deviating from it a little. In my work, my first instinct isn’t to look for stars that are most like our sun but toward the extreme chemical anomalies.
Carbon and oxygen are two of the most important rock-forming elements on Earth and are natural starting points for exoplanetary mineralogy. A few years ago, a group at Yale University, led by researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, looked at the super-Earth 55 Cancri e and determined the carbon-to-oxygen ratio was large enough that carbon would dominate the planetary system. It was coined a Diamond Planet, because a diamond layer could exist at high pressure inside the planet. Now scientists have to consider how a layer of diamond would affect mantle dynamics. New classes of planets entirely outside our observable solar system began appearing.
There was a time when the motto of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute was “follow the water.” We began looking for water in all the celestial bodies around us. Of course, just because a planet has liquid water does not mean that it will necessarily have life. We discovered that water was actually common and could be found on moons around gas planets, such as Jupiter’s Europa, all the way to the atmospheres of giant exoplanets. We realized that just finding water would not help us narrow our search for life. So we began looking for the elements we know life requires. This is one of the objectives of NASA’s new coalition, the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or NExSS. Another of my colleagues, Natalie Hinkel, has created something called the Hypatia Catalog, which records the elemental abundances of stars as found by many scientists. She is building an interactive website to let people explore the makeup of their favorite stars and to help scientists better understand the stars and planets they study. Now we can get an idea about the range of possibilities for stars and planets in our galaxy. Some stars, like Tau Ceti, will fall off our list of possibly habitable worlds, but this does not mean we should ignore them. The opposite is true. They are so strange, we must study them.
Judging by their dismayed reactions, I feel like most fans forgot the Star Trek intro narration, or at least two-thirds of it. Yes, we would love to seek out new life and civilizations, but we also need to explore these strange new worlds and boldly go where we have never been before. This doesn’t only mean flying a spaceship to parts unknown. We need to start thinking, studying, and being fascinated by worlds that a few decades ago we couldn’t fathom existed.
This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.Summary
W e go over an exciting weekend of hockey and talk about some recent surprises. As always, we give our week long pickup suggestions as well as some longer term options.
Show Notes
Grammar School - 2:30
Weekend Review - 3:25
Week Preview and Pickup Suggestions - 8:30
Picks of the Night - 25:25
Players Talked About
Grammar School
Nail Yakupov Alex Tuch Christian Djoos
Long Term Pickup Suggestions
Mikko Rantanen Derick Brassard Evgeny Dadonov Clayton Keller Michael Del Zotto David Backes Bo Horvat Brock Boeser
Potentially Returning From Injury
Ryan Getzlaf Leon Draisaitl Mark Borowiecki Hampus Lindholm Sami Vatanen Zach Parise Mikael Granlund
Players to Consider This Week
Josh Manson Alex Iafallo James Reimer Mikko Rantanen Brandon Montour Boone Jenner Jakob Silfverberg
Our Top Picks of the Night
Jonathan Quick Dustin Brown Mats Zuccarello Henrik Lundqvist Anze Kopitar Kevin Shattenkirk
Our Value Picks of the NightCould Zach Zenner follow in Danny Woodhead’s footsteps? After facing long odds to start his career, could Zach Zenner replicate the NFL success of Danny Woodhead?
Last week, Danny Woodhead tweeted out a post-workout picture of him and Detroit Lions running back, Zach Zenner. Woodhead is preparing for his 11th season in the NFL, but his first with the Baltimore Ravens. While Zenner is entering his third season with Detroit, hoping to see an increased role in their pass-heavy offense.
There’s a troubling tendency among NFL writers to, unconsciously or otherwise, compare athletes of similar races. Black quarterbacks tend to get lumped together, as do white receivers and white running backs. Three years back, Deadspin ran with an interesting article about NFL scouts’ tendency to use very specific adjectives when describing either black or white athletes. Call it lazy or ignorant, but people tend to fall back on easy heuristics when scouting players of the same race.
Obviously Danny Woodhead and Zach Zenner share the somewhat rare distinction of being white running backs, but their football careers have been remarkably similar thus far. I’m not saying their playing style is similar—it most certainly is not—but for those counting out Zenner’s potential to be a long-term legitimate contributor in the NFL, you may want to look deeper at the career of Woodhead.
Woodhead had an outstanding college career at the DII university, Chadron State. As a four-year starter, he racked up 7,962 rushing yards total, averaging 6.9 yards per carry and finishing with a total of 101 rushing touchdowns. By the time he left for the NFL, Woodhead was the all-time rushing leader in NCAA history.
Zenner’s football career had a similar start. He attended South Dakota State, the only DI school to offer him a scholarship. His production at the Missouri Valley Conference school was bananas. Zenner rushed for over 2,000 yards in three straight seasons (the first DI player to do that), finishing with a total of 6,548 yards. He even managed to be extremely productive against real college competition, running for 202 yards against Nebraska in 2013 and 183 yards against Kansas in 2012.
Despite outstanding college careers, both Zenner and Woodhead struggled to get noticed by the NFL. Woodhead didn’t even earn an invite to the NFL Combine, so he had to impress via Nebraska’s Pro Day. And impress he did:
But the big show came from 5-foot-7, 197-pound Danny Woodhead, pride of Chadron State. His 40 time registered between 4.33 and 4.38 seconds, depending on whose clock you were looking at. He had a 38 1/2-inch vertical. He also put up 225 pounds 20 times, which wasn't even as good as he wanted.
Zenner was lucky enough to earn a combine visit, and although he didn’t shine quite as brightly as Woodhead, he certainly graded out well athletically:
Despite good performances, both Woodhead and Zenner went undrafted. They were scooped up immediately by the Jets and Lions respectively, but would have to work to make their team’s final roster. Unfortunately for Woodhead, he was injured during training camp and spent the year on injured reserve. Zenner managed to make Detroit’s final cut, but he, too, suffered a season ending injury early in his rookie year. He managed just six games before suffering a brutal injury that resulted in a collapsed lung and broken ribs.
The second year in the NFL for both players was modest. Woodhead managed to make the Jets, but would only end up carrying the ball 15 times the entire season. Zenner’s sophomore season, on the other hand, was a bit more promising. He managed 334 rushing yards on 88 carries (3.8 YPC) and proved he was able to carry the bulk of the load in his four starts in 2017. In the Lions’ final three games, Zenner proved capable as the lead back against the Cowboys (92 total yards), Packers (110) and Seahawks (88).
But it was Woodhead’s third year where he broke out. A change of scenery to New England proved to be just the jump-start that Woodhead’s career needed. After Kevin Faulk was lost to injury, Woodhead became the No. 2 back behind BenJarvus Green-Ellis. He would finish the season with 547 rushing yards (5.6 YPC) and five touchdowns. From there, Woodhead’s career exploded. Though his rushing statistics remained modest, he became a huge threat as |
ight to $2.06 trillion. The ratio of total assets to Monetary Base remained constant at 1.08x, elevated from the historical ratio of 1.00x.
Float, liquidity swaps, Maiden Lane and other assets: $194 billion. The CPFF program was at $7.7 billion. FX liquidity swaps are now non-existent. Maiden Lane I and Maiden Lane II somehow increased and were $27.2 and $15.5 billion, while Maiden Lane III as always continues pretending it has value and came at $22.4 billion.
Custody foreign securities holdings increased by $2.8 billion to $2,959 billion.
The amount in excess reserves with FR Banks has once again reached a record high of $1.14 trillion. The ratio of currency in circulation ($922 billion) to MBS and Agency holdings has hit a new low, as ever more MBS securities back the full lack of faith and credit in the FRNs.
Some details about the least discussed pseudo budget obligation: the GSEs, from the Atlanta Fed.
The 30-year fixed rate averaged 4.97%, down from 5.01% a week ago; the 15-year fixed rate averaged 4.34%, down from 4.40% a week ago.
At this time last year, the 30-year fixed rate averaged 5.16%; the 15-year fixed rate averaged 4.81%.
In the chart below observe the rate on 30 and 15 Year fixed Freddie loans: the 30 year, which was between 6 and 6.5% just before the advent of QE, has since ground 150 bps tighter. We are certain that this number will blow out as much if not more once the Fed is out of the housing market yet again.
The mortgage application volume has also subsided, meaning that if anyone was going to refi due to the lower rates, they already have. At this pointkeep rates where they are is overkill from a new/refi application point of view.Vortex Viper Micro Red Dot Sight, 6 MOA Dot is rated 4.6 out of 5 by 31.
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Rated 5 out of 5 by gerritm from Excellent Small Red Dot I have 2 of these on an open gun and PCC. Holds zero and love the lifetime warranty. Ran 1 on an open shotgun for a long time and never lost zero.From peasant crusade to rebellion Edit
Growing rebellion Edit
Downfall and execution Edit
Dózsa's execution (contemporary woodcut) In the course of the summer, Dózsa seized the fortresses of Arad, Lippa (today Lipova) and Világos (now Şiria), and provided himself with cannons and trained gunners. One of his bands advanced to within 25 kilometres of the capital. But his ill-armed ploughmen were outmatched by the heavy cavalry of the nobles. Dózsa himself had apparently become demoralized by success: after Csanád, he issued proclamations which can be described as millenarian.[citation needed] As his suppression had become a political necessity, Dózsa was routed at Temesvár (today Timişoara, Romania) by an army of 20,000[5] led by John Zápolya and István Báthory. He was captured after the battle, and condemned to sit on a smouldering, heated iron throne, and forced to wear a heated iron crown and sceptre (mocking his ambition to be king). While he was suffering, a procession of nine fellow rebels who had been starved beforehand were led to this throne. In the lead was Dózsa's younger brother, Gergely, who was cut in three despite Dózsa asking for Gergely to be spared. Next, executioners removed some pliers from a fire and forced them into Dózsa's skin. After tearing his flesh, the remaining rebels were ordered to bite spots where the hot pliers had been inserted and to swallow the flesh. The three or four who refused were simply cut up, prompting the others to comply. In the end, Dózsa died from the ordeal, while the rebels who obeyed were released and left alone.[6] The revolt was repressed but some 70,000 peasants were tortured.[7] György's execution, and the brutal suppression of the peasants, greatly aided the 1526 Ottoman invasion as the Hungarians were no longer a politically united people. Another consequence was the creation of new laws, an effort in the Hungarian Diet led by István Werbőczy. The resulting Tripartitum elaborated the old rights of peasants, but also greatly enhanced the status of lesser nobility (gentry), erecting an iron curtain between Hungarians until 1848 when serfdom was abolished.[8]
Legacy Edit
Notes Edit
^ appears as "Georgius Zekel" in old texts
References EditPresident Trump has called National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster "a pain" and complained that he talks too much in meetings, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Some senior advisers worry about leaving Trump alone during meetings with foreign leaders, the report said.
McMaster has tried to subtly correct Trump in conversations when he thinks necessary and help keep him on topic — a habit that has annoyed Trump, the Times wrote.
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After reports surfaced Monday that Trump had revealed highly classified intelligence to Russian officials, McMaster said outside the White House that the "story that came out tonight, as reported, is false."
On Tuesday, McMaster said Trump did not jeopardize intelligence assets by revealing highly sensitive information to the Russians, adding that Trump did not know where the intel came from.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, McMaster disputed the “premise” of media reports that Trump put intelligence sources in jeopardy by disclosing the information, saying it was “wholly appropriate” for the president to discuss.
"The president in no way undermined sources or methods in the course of this conversation,” he said, adding that the information could be found in "open-source reporting."“Imagine you wake up, locked inside a box,” says Adrian Owen. “It’s only just big enough to hold your body but sufficiently small that you can’t move.
“It’s a perfect fit, down to every last one of your fingers and toes. It’s a strange box because you can listen to absolutely everything going on around you, yet your voice cannot be heard. In fact, the box fits so tightly around your face and lips that you can’t speak, or make a noise. Although you can see everything going on around the box, the world outside is oblivious to what’s going on inside.
“Inside, there’s plenty of time to think. At first, this feels like a game, even one that is strangely amusing. Then, reality sets in. You’re trapped. You see and hear your family lamenting your fate. Over the years, the carers forget to turn on the TV. You’re too cold. Then you’re too hot. You’re always thirsty. The visits of your friends and family dwindle. Your partner moves on. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Owen and I are talking on Skype. I’m sitting in London, UK, and he’s in another London three-and-a-half thousand miles away at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Owen’s reddish hair and close-cropped beard loom large on my screen as he becomes animated describing the torment of those with no voice: his patients.
People in a ‘vegetative state’ are awake yet unaware. Their eyes can open and sometimes wander. They can smile, grasp another’s hand, cry, groan or grunt. But they are indifferent to a hand clap, unable to see or to understand speech. Their motions are not purposeful but reflexive. They appear to have shed their memories, emotions and intentions, those qualities that make each one of us an individual. Their minds remain firmly shut. Still, when their eyelids flutter open, you are always left wondering if there’s a glimmer of consciousness.
A decade ago, the answer would have been a bleak and emphatic no. Not any longer. Using brain scanners, Owen has found that some may be trapped inside their bodies yet able to think and feel to varying extents. The number of patients with disorders of consciousness has soared in recent decades, ironically, because of the rise and success of intensive care and medical technologies. Doctors have steadily got better at saving patients with catastrophic injuries, though it remains much easier to restart a heart than restore a brain. Today, trapped, damaged and diminished minds inhabit clinics and nursing homes worldwide - in Europe alone the number of new coma cases is estimated to be around 230,000 annually, of which some 30,000 will languish in a persistent vegetative state. They are some of the most tragic and expensive artefacts of modern intensive care.
Owen knows this only too well. In 1997, a close friend set off on her usual cycle to work. Anne* had a weak spot on a blood vessel in her head, known as a brain aneurysm. Five minutes into her trip, the aneurysm burst and she crashed into a tree. She never regained consciousness.
The tragedy left Owen numb, yet Anne’s accident would shape the rest of his life. Owen began to wonder if there was a way to determine which of these patients were in an unconscious coma, which were conscious and which were somewhere in between?
That year, he had moved to the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, where researchers used various scanning techniques. One, positron emission tomography (PET), highlights different metabolic processes in the brain, such as oxygen and sugar use. Another, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), can reveal active centres in the brain by detecting the tiny surges in blood flow that take place as a mind whirrs. Owen wondered whether he could use these technologies to reach out to patients, like his friend, stuck between sensibility and oblivion. At the core was a deceptively simple question: how do we know that another person is conscious?
Half a century ago, if your heart stopped beating you could be pronounced dead even though you may have been entirely conscious as the doctor sent you to the morgue. This, in all likelihood, accounts for notorious accounts through history of those who ‘came back from the dead’. As a corollary, those who were fearful of being buried alive were spurred on to develop ‘safety coffins’ equipped with feeding tubes and bells. As recently as 2011, a council in the Malatya province of central Turkey announced it had built a morgue with a warning system and refrigerator doors that could be opened from the inside.
What do we mean by ‘dead’? And who should declare when an individual is dead? A priest? A lawyer? A doctor? A machine? Owen discussed these issues at a symposium in Brazil with the Dalai Lama and says he was surprised to find that they both agreed strongly on one point: we need to create an ethical framework for science that is based on secular, rather than religious, views; science alone should define what we mean by death.
The problem is that the scientific definition of ‘death’ remains as unresolved as the definition of ‘consciousness’. Much confusion is sowed by the term ‘clinical death’, the cessation of blood circulation and breathing. Even though this is reversible, the term is often used by mind-body dualists who cling to the belief that a soul (or self) can persist separately from the body. Today, however, being alive is no longer linked to having a beating heart, explains Owen. If I have an artificial heart, am I dead? If you are on a life-support machine, are you dead? Is a failure to sustain independent life a reasonable definition of death? No, otherwise we would all be ‘dead’ in the nine months before birth.
The issue becomes murkier when we consider those trapped in the twilight worlds between normal life and death - from those who slip in and out of awareness, who are trapped in a ‘minimally conscious state’, to those who are severely impaired in a vegetative state or a coma. These patients first appeared in the wake of the development of the artificial respirator during the 1950s in Denmark, an invention that redefined the end of life in terms of the idea of brain death and created the specialty of intensive care, in which unresponsive and comatose patients who seemed unable to wake up again were written off as ‘vegetables’ or ‘jellyfish’. As is always the case when treating patients, definitions are critical: understanding the chances of recovery, the benefits of treatments and so on all depend on a precise diagnosis.
Pioneering work to understand and categorise disorders of consciousness was carried out in the 1960s by neurologist Fred Plum in New York and neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett in Glasgow. They were the odd couple. Jennett - or ‘BJ’, as he was known to colleagues - was reserved and gentlemanly, with an unusually penetrating and analytical mind. Plum was larger than life, commanding and an inspiring teacher who was famous for his idiosyncratic ways of diagnosing neurological conditions. ‘Fred Plum stories’ abound: he would diagnose hemispatial neglect (where damage in one cerebral hemisphere makes a person behave as if their opposite side does not exist) by seeing if the patient could tell if his glasses were askew and one arm pulled out of a sleeve of his coat.
Plum coined the term ‘locked-in syndrome’, in which a patient is aware and awake but cannot move or talk. With Plum, Jennett devised the Glasgow Coma Scale to rate the depth of coma, from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 15, and Jennett followed up with the Glasgow Outcome Scale to weigh up the extent of recovery, from death to mild disability. Together they adopted the term ‘persistent vegetative state’ for patients who, they wrote, “have periods of wakefulness when their eyes are open and move; their responsiveness is limited to primitive postural and reflex movements of the limbs, and they never speak”. In 2002, Jennett was among a group of neurologists who chose the phrase ‘minimally conscious’ to describe those who are sometimes awake and partly aware, who show erratic signs of consciousness so that at one time they might be able to follow a simple instruction and another they might not. In this way, Plum’s yin and Jennett’s yang launched the field of coma science. Even today, however, we’re still arguing over who is conscious and who isn’t.
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Adrian Owen has a well-honed routine he uses at public events. A confident performer - helped no doubt by spending 14 years as the lead singer of a band called You Jump First - he asks the audience to raise their left arms. They obey. After a pause, he asks them to raise their right arms. Once again, they comply. “I know you’re conscious because you’ve all got your hands up,” he declares.
The same sort of test features in countless medical dramas, when the doctor clasps the hand of a seemingly unconscious patient and says, “Squeeze if you can hear me”. A tightening grip would represent an act of will. That basic interaction between two conscious minds is the only real signature of being both aware and awake, says Owen. But what if the patient does not squeeze? What is a doctor supposed to think then?
The public perception of coma (from the Greek koma, meaning ‘deep sleep’) is of a patient lying peacefully, eyes shut, without a glimmer of arousal or consciousness, eventually awakening to make a full recovery. The images of films such as Hable con Ella (Talk to Her) and While You Were Sleeping are a long way from the intubations, double incontinence and uncertainty of the reality: a person cannot be awakened, does not respond to pain, light or sound, and does not undergo a normal cycle of sleep and wakefulness.
Kate Bainbridge, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, lapsed into a coma three days after she came down with a flu-like illness. Her brain became inflamed, including the primitive region atop the spinal cord, the brain stem, which rules the sleep cycle. A few weeks after her infection had cleared, Kate awoke from the coma but was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. Luckily, the intensive care doctor responsible for her, David Menon, was also a Principal Investigator at the newly opened Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre in Cambridge, where one Adrian Owen then worked.
Menon wondered if elements of cognitive processing might be retained in patients in a vegetative state and discussed with Owen how to use a brain scanner to detect them. In 1997, four months after she had been diagnosed as vegetative, Kate became the first patient in a vegetative state to be studied by the Cambridge group. The results, published in 1998, were unexpected and extraordinary. Not only did Kate react to faces: her brain responses were indistinguishable from those of healthy volunteers. Her scans revealed a splash of red, marking brain activity at the back of her brain, in a part called the fusiform gyrus, which helps recognise faces. Kate became the first such patient in whom sophisticated brain imaging (in this case PET) revealed ‘covert cognition’. Of course, whether that response was a reflex or a signal of consciousness was, at the time, a matter of debate.
The results were of huge significance for science but also for Kate and her parents. “The existence of preserved cognitive processing removed the nihilism that pervaded the management of such patients in general, and supported a decision to continue to treat Kate aggressively,” recalls Menon.
Kate eventually surfaced from her ordeal, six months after the initial diagnosis. She described how she was indeed sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. Each day she woke up, she fell asleep, but like all such patients she could not respond to people’s questions. Worse, she had a raging thirst that was never slaked.
“They said I could not feel pain,” she says. “They were so wrong.” Sometimes she’d cry out, but the nurses thought it was just a reflex. She felt abandoned and helpless. Hospital staff had no idea how much she suffered in their care. Kate found physiotherapy scary: nurses never explained what they were doing to her. She was terrified when they removed mucus from her lungs. “I can’t tell you how frightening it was, especially suction through the mouth,” she has written. At one point, her pain and despair became so much that she tried to snuff out her life by holding her breath. “I could not stop my nose from breathing, so it did not work. My body did not seem to want to die.”
Kate says her recovery was not so much like turning a light on but a gradual awakening. It took her five months before she could smile. By then she had lost her job, her sense of smell and taste, and much of what might have been a normal future. Now back with her parents, Kate is still very disabled and needs a wheelchair. Twelve years after her illness, she started to talk again and, though still angry about the way she was treated when she was at her most vulnerable, she remains grateful to those who helped her mind to escape.
She sent Owen a note.
Dear Adrian,
Please use my case to show people how important the scans are. I want more people to know about them. I am a big fan of them now. I was unresponsive and looked hopeless, but the scan showed people I was in there.
It was like magic, it found me.
§
When you are awake, your brain has to make sense of a flood of information from your senses. To make the most of its limited data-processing resources, our ancestors evolved a brain that can focus on that approaching spear or lurking lion rather than a broad sweep of savannah landscape. One can think of it as a spotlight of attention that illuminates key sensory information in the brain, which then enters into conscious awareness. This is the mind’s spotlight on the outside world, with awareness at its focus and the degree of wakefulness tuning its intensity.
Steven Laureys, who leads the Coma Science Group at the University of Liège in Belgium, is one of those seeking the source of this illumination. He sits before me clutching a little plastic brain. There are islands of blue on the surface, one at the front and one at the back. He divides it in two, revealing a further blue dot deep inside. This is the thalamus, a two-sided structure that sits atop the brain stem and acts as a relay station for incoming sensory information. “There is no such thing as a ‘consciousness region’ in the brain,” he explains. But subtract the fMRI scans of vegetative patients who are awake and unaware from the scans of those who are awake and fully aware and you find the difference boils down to an ‘awareness network’, the areas marked in blue on his plastic brain.
Laureys describes a thought experiment. “If I use a scalpel to remove the blue regions you would still be awake, breathe and move but you would not be aware.” Similar networks exist in other mammals to varying extents, he explains, and the traditional idea that we alone are conscious while all other animals are automata is unlikely to be true. “Given our studies of vegetative patients, we have tended to underestimate consciousness in the past,” he says.
This idea of an awareness network chimes with various theories of consciousness, such as the ‘global workspace’ first proposed by Amsterdam-born neurobiologist Bernard Baars. In essence, it suggests that awareness emerges from neurons distributed throughout the cortex in a network that blends sensory information and filters out contradictory or unnecessary information to create a unified picture of reality.
This view complements the work of Nicholas Schiff at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. A neurologist, he started out as a disciple of Fred Plum’s school. Schiff’s working life is a balancing act between putting the interests of his patients and their families first and keeping true to the science as he wrestles with disorders of consciousness. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” he admits. “Frankly, I am wrong a lot of the time.”
Schiff started to piece together this neural circuitry, building on pioneering experiments conducted on cats in the 1940s. These showed how the animals could be revived from anaesthesia by stimulating the thalamus, which plays a crucial part in the brain’s complex orchestra. Studies suggest that a key population of nerve cells (intralaminar thalamic neurons), radiating from this hub to the outer rind (the cortex) and every corner of the brain, have a central role in arousal and waking up. By the same token, they have a central role in coma too: they are more vulnerable than other nerve cells to harm, such as oxygen starvation, which helps to explain why brain damage can lead to unconsciousness.
Schiff is interested in how the relay post that is the thalamus links with a surrounding structure called the striatum and with the frontal cortex. And among these deeper brain regions is an area dubbed the posterior medial complex, a network whose activity is impaired in vegetative brains.
Illustration: Bret Syfert/Wellcome Images (CC-BY)
The thalamus and frontal lobe are also more active in conscious and locked-in patients. Together, Schiff and Laureys have identified three broad brain circuits - those in the thalamus, the frontal lobe and the posterior medial complex - that are key to consciousness.
At scientific meetings, Schiff has outlined a more detailed version of this neural structure, called the ‘mesocircuit’, which actually consists of two circuits linking the thalamus to the cortex. Some of the connections involved in the mesocircuit stimulate nerve activity, others reduce or prevent it. Overall, higher-level consciousness emerges as a dynamic coalition of these two parallel interactive brain networks. This theory, which he and Laureys are putting to the test, also reveals a way in which one might jump-start a stalled brain. Over the years, a remarkable series of experiments have shown how a mind might be coaxed back into awareness.
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In 1995, Schiff studied an 81-year-old woman with a disordered consciousness. As a result of an acute stroke, she had suffered hemispatial neglect. She was unable to identify her right hand as her own. Ice-cold water was squirted into her ear, as a standard test to see the extent to which her responses were lopsided. To Schiff’s amazement, the water reversed almost all her symptoms: “That’s my hand!” she cried out. Schiff believed that the chill had stimulated her inner ear, which controls the sense of balance through the vestibular system, and, in turn, her thalamus, knitting together the networks that had been disrupted by the stroke. Four minutes later, when the water had warmed, she lost her hand once again.
The case helped him work up the basic neuroscience of how to increase awareness in a brain stalled in limbo by stimulating the thalamus. Armed with this understanding, Schiff has provided insight into the paradoxical discovery that some patients in vegetative states can be awoken with a sedative, zolpidem. One of the best-known cases is the South African Louis Viljoen, who had been left vegetative by a road accident. One day in 1999, Wally Nel, a GP working near Johannesburg, gave Louis the drug to ease the way that he clawed at his mattress. Instead of being relaxed, Viljoen sat bolt upright, smiled, and said: “Hello Mum. Am I in hospital?” Schiff believes that the drug dampens down so-called ‘medium spiny neurons’ in the part of the mesocircuit that links the striatum, the globus pallidus and the thalamus. Because these neurons inhibit the thalamus, quelling their activity can actually boost awareness. Just as a little alcohol can initially stimulate a buzz, so zolpidem can help “turn the brain on rather than off”, says Schiff.
A study by Schiff and Laureys shows how slow waves of nerve activity, of the kind seen in sleep or anaesthesia, wash over the brain before the drug is given, but afterwards sluggish synchronicity gives way to the crackle of high-frequency brain waves typically seen in conscious patients. PET images tell the same story, revealing how the drug ramps up brain metabolism. Similar effects are caused by another compound, the anti-Parkinson’s drug amantadine. Laureys’s team in Liège finds that about half of patients in a minimally conscious state show mild improvement in awareness as a result of receiving the drug.
The awareness network can be electrically roused. Laureys and his colleagues recently tested transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), in which scalp electrodes are used to pass a weak direct current through the skull to alter the excitability of underlying brain tissue. The Liège team applied tDCS for 20 minutes to part of the mesocircuits of 55 people who were in a minimally conscious or vegetative state. They found that 15 showed glimmers of consciousness as a result. Some showed responses to commands, even though it was several years after they had been declared minimally conscious. Most dramatic, for two patients who had been declared minimally conscious a few months earlier, tDCS enabled them to nod or move their eyes in response to six questions.
The method offers a powerful way to probe which circuits have to be manipulated to awaken a silent brain. “In theory, at least, tDCS offers another way to reactivate circuits to help a damaged brain to recover some functionality, even several years after suffering severe damage,” Laureys explains. However, the results are not as remarkable as those seen in a case where the thalamus was stimulated directly.
In 2005, Schiff applied his emerging understanding of the circuits of consciousness to Jim*, a 38-year-old man who had been beaten and robbed and was left minimally conscious. Jim’s eyes had mostly remained shut. He showed no sign of awareness that his family could detect. His plight seemed hopeless. Eventually, Jim’s mother gave a ‘do not resuscitate’ order to doctors. Schiff thought different.
Schiff had earlier scanned Jim with fMRI, in 2001. His team had played subjects, including Jim, an audiotape in which a relative or loved one reminisced. Jim showed near-normal patterns in the language-processing areas of his brain and this told Schiff that some of Jim’s neural networks were still working. In detailed fMRI scans, Jim had shown that, despite having a very underactive brain, he had strongly preserved large-scale language networks. When he heard a story that meant something to him, his brain lit up. This encouraged Schiff to revive the idea he had mulled over for a decade. What if they activated Jim’s thalamus by deep brain stimulation?
A brain pacemaker was implanted into Jim. Thanks to the regular pulses of electricity it delivered to his thalamus, he was able to use words and gestures, respond reliably to requests, eat normally, drink from a cup, and carry out simple tasks such as brushing his hair. Schiff believes that once a brain re-engages with the world, it accelerates processes of repair. For the next six years, before Jim died of unrelated causes, he kept his mind above the minimally conscious state. “He could converse in short sentences reliably and consistently and make his wishes known,” says Schiff. “He could chew and swallow and eat ice cream and hang out. His family told us that they had him back.” The case made the front page of the New York Times. “I prayed for a miracle,” his mother told me at the time he was brought back. “The most important part is that he can say ‘Mummy and Pop, I love you’. God bless those wonderful doctors. I still cry every time I see my son, but it is tears of joy.”
In a forested campus south of Liège, Steven Laureys studies vegetative patients in research that dates back decades. Working there as part of the Cyclotron Research Centre in the 1990s, he was surprised when PET brain scans revealed that the patients could respond to a mention of their own name: meaningful sounds produced a change in blood flow within the auditory primary cortices. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Nicholas Schiff was finding that within catastrophically injured brains lay partially working regions, clusters of remnant neural activity. What did it all mean?
At that time, doctors thought they already knew the answers: no patient in a persistent vegetative state was conscious. Never mind that staring at images made the brain light up, they carped: you can do that in a sedated monkey. Based on previous experience, a brain starved of oxygen as a result of a heart attack or a stroke was unlikely to recover if it didn’t in the first few months. These patients had suffered a fate that many people regarded as worse than death itself: they were functionally brainless. Undead. Doctors, with the best intentions, thought it was perfectly acceptable to end the life of a vegetative patient by starvation and the withdrawal of water. This was the age of what Laureys calls “therapeutic nihilism”.
What Owen, Laureys and Schiff were proposing was a rethink of some of the patients who were considered vegetative. A few of them could even be classed as being fully conscious and locked-in. The establishment was doggedly opposed. “You cannot imagine the environment in the late 1990s,” says Schiff. “The hostility we encountered went well beyond simple scepticism.” Looking back, Laureys pauses and smiles thinly: “Medical doctors do not like to be told they are wrong.” Schiff, Laureys and Owen cut lonely and isolated figures at academic conferences, desperately trying to explain their findings to their peers, who remained unconvinced, even antagonistic. The trio’s ideas were condemned as a waste of time.
Then came 2006. Owen and Laureys were trying to find a reliable way to communicate with patients in a vegetative state, including Gillian*. In July 2005, this 23-year-old had been crossing a road, chatting on her mobile phone. She was struck by two cars. Yet, though she had been diagnosed as vegetative, there was something about her that caught the attention of Martin Coleman of the University of Cambridge Impaired Consciousness Research Group, who submitted her for study by Owen.
Five months later, a strange stroke of serendipity allowed Gillian to unlock her box. The key arose from a systematic study Owen started with Laureys in 2005. They had asked healthy volunteers to imagine doing different things, such as singing songs or conjuring up the face of their mother. Then Owen had another idea. “I just had a hunch,” he says. “I asked a healthy control to imagine playing tennis. Then I asked her to imagine walking through the rooms of her house.” Imagining tennis activates part of the cortex, called the supplementary motor area, involved in the mental simulation of movements. But imagining walking around the house activates the parahippocampal gyrus in the core of the brain, the posterior parietal lobe, and the lateral premotor cortex. The two patterns of activity were as distinct as a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’. So, if people were asked to imagine tennis for ‘yes’ and walking around the house for ‘no’, they could answer questions via fMRI.
Gazing into Gillian’s ‘vegetative’ brain with the brain scanner, he asked her to imagine the same things - and saw strikingly similar activation patterns to the healthy volunteers. It was an electric moment. Owen could read her mind.
Gillian’s case, published in the journal Science in 2006, made front-page headlines around the world. The result provoked wonder and, of course, disbelief. “Broadly speaking, I received two types of email from my peers,” says Owen. “They either said ‘This is amazing - well done!’ or ‘How could you possibly say this woman is conscious?’”
As the old saw goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The sceptics countered that it was wrong to make these ‘radical inferences’ when there could be a more straightforward interpretation. Daniel Greenberg, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that “the brain activity was unconsciously triggered by the last word of the instructions, which always referred to the item to be imagined”.
Parashkev Nachev, a neurologist now at University College London, says he objected to Owen’s 2006 paper not on grounds of implausibility or a flawed statistical analysis but because of “errors of inference”. Although a conscious brain, when imagining tennis, triggers a certain pattern of activation, it does not necessarily mean that the same pattern of activation signifies consciousness. The same brain area can be activated in many circumstances, Nachev says, with or without any conscious correlate. Moreover, he argues that Gillian was not really offered a true choice to think about playing tennis. Just as a lack of response could be because of an inability to respond or a decision not to cooperate, a direct response to a simple instruction could be a conscious decision or a reflex. Nachev says that he is weary of stating, as he has time and again to the media, that profound conceptual issues with the techniques used to redefine this penumbra of consciousness remain unresolved.
What is needed is less philosophising and more data, says Owen. A follow-up study published in 2010 by Owen, Laureys and colleagues tested 54 patients with a clinical diagnosis of being in a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state; five responded in the same way as Gillian. Four of them were supposedly in a vegetative state at admission. Owen, Schiff and Laureys have explored alternative explanations of what they observed and, for example, acknowledge that the brain areas they study when they interrogate patients can be activated in other ways. But the 2010 paper ruled out such automatic behaviours as an explanation, they say: the activations persist too long to signify anything other than intent. Owen is grateful to his critics. They spurred him on, for instance to develop a method for asking patients questions that only they would know how to answer. “You cannot communicate unconsciously - it is just not possible,” he says. “We have won that argument.”
Since Owen’s 2006 Science paper, studies in Belgium, the UK, the USA and Canada suggest that a significant proportion of patients who were classified as vegetative in recent years have been misdiagnosed - Owen estimates perhaps as many as 20 per cent. Schiff, who weighs up the extent of misdiagnosis a different way, goes further. Based on recent studies, he says around 40 per cent of patients thought to be vegetative are, when examined more closely, partly aware. |
GTI, GLI, and Beetle Turbo.
Porsche’s new Sound Symposer, fitted to the new (991) 911 and forthcoming Panamera GTS, is another intake-noise amplifier. As the 911 has grown up, so have the needs of its drivers: One need in particular is quiet cruising. Wide, low-profile rubber howls at 80 mph, and damping that distraction also diminishes the primal sounds of the engine. Porsche calls its amplifier an “acoustic channel,” and it consists of a tube housing a diaphragm and a valve. When an occupant pushes the sport button on the center console, the valve opens and the diaphragm goes to work amplifying the mechanical sounds radiating from the intake plenum.
It’s kind of like a timpani at the symphony, except that you don’t have to sit through an actual symphony. Or, for that matter, Milli Vanilli.DULLES, Va. — The escape plan was carefully choreographed. On Friday, after a day of work, Representative Paul D. Ryan pretended to turn in for the night, walking through the front door of his home in Janesville, Wis.
He did not stay for long.
To elude reporters camped outside, he slipped out the back door with a suitcase and walked through the dense woods that surround his property. He exited on a nearby street, where an aide in a waiting car drove him to the airport.
His destination, the Republican ticket.
For the past 10 days, the Romney campaign took extraordinary measures to keep Mr. Ryan’s whereabouts and movements a mystery. In the process, the campaign pulled off a rare feat in the era of the Twitter news cycle: Mr. Romney unveiled his vice-presidential pick on his own schedule, keeping his running mate’s identity secret until a few hours before a rally in Norfolk, Va., on Saturday morning.
It required painstakingly planned skulduggery, which the campaign outlined in detail, late on Saturday afternoon.
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“We gave a lot of thought on how to make this work undetected,” said Beth Myers, the Romney aide who oversaw the vice-presidential search.Working from this sun-scorched desert base, U.S. and allied commanders are beginning perhaps the most perilous phase of their fight against Islamic State: an attempt to recapture Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, from the entrenched militant forces.
Military officers here say a barrage of airstrikes over the last two weeks helped sever two crucial routes that the extremist militants used to funnel fighters and supplies from the Syrian border to Mosul, their self-declared capital in Iraq and most significant battlefield prize.
U.S. commanders who help oversee the air war say the joint offensive with Iraqi Kurdish ground forces pushed back the Sunni Islamists' defensive line west of Mosul, recapturing territory and removing a key obstacle, at least for now, as military planners consider tactics for retaking the congested city as early as this summer.
American and allied advisors are training and equipping Iraqi security forces expected to lead any major ground assault. But options appear limited given the woeful state of Iraq's army, White House resistance to any plan likely to cause heavy civilian casualties, and at least some support in the Sunni-dominated city for the occupying force.
Although President Obama has repeatedly vowed not to reintroduce U.S. ground troops to Iraq, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in November that he would consider deploying a limited number of U.S. Special Forces to help direct airstrikes and assist the Iraqi army in any assault on Mosul.
Retaking the sprawling city, home to about 1.4 million people, almost certainly would require urban combat against a tenacious foe.
"Fighting inside a city like that will definitely not be easy, going street by street, house to house," said Ferhang Asandi, a Kurdish military officer. Islamic State militants are "trying to put all their effort and their fight in anticipation of the battle because they know that if Mosul is done it means the end" of a major source of prestige and recruitment.
The stakes are equally high for Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi's fragile government in Baghdad, which has struggled to rebuild its army since entire divisions collapsed before the insurgent onslaught last year. Another military defeat at Mosul would undermine government authority and shift the momentum back to Islamic State.
"There is no way to create any form of unified or stable Iraq as long as Mosul is in hostile hands," said Anthony Cordesman, a senior military analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Lesser victories are only a prelude to retaking Mosul."
Warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition have dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria since August. Combined with attacks by Iraqi government forces, Kurdish fighters and Sunni Arab tribesmen who oppose the Islamist group, the campaign has stopped the militants from seizing much new territory and pushed them back in several areas.
In the last week, Kurdish fighters backed by hundreds of coalition airstrikes broke a four-month Islamist State siege on Kobani, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey. In Iraq, pro-government Shiite militias claimed they had taken "complete control" of Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, after seven months of fighting the Sunni extremists.
But Islamic State has not been dislodged from any of the cities that it captured during its blitz last year.
Mosul fell quickly in June when convoys of heavily armed Islamic State fighters waving black flags stormed out of neighboring Syria and overran much of western and northern Iraq. Declaring an Islamic caliphate. the insurgents used the city to launch an offensive that pushed nearly 250 miles south to the edge of Baghdad before government forces and Shiite militias rallied to stop them.
Many residents of Mosul, who faced discrimination from the Shiite-dominated central government and military, initially welcomed the Sunni invaders. The militants seized vast arsenals of U.S.-supplied arms and munitions and hundreds of armored vehicles from fleeing government troops.
In the deadliest single battle after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.S. Marines fought for six weeks in late 2004 to oust entrenched Sunni insurgents from Fallouja, a city less than a third the size of Mosul. The battle saw the heaviest urban combat for the U.S. military since Vietnam. More than 90 Americans were killed and nearly 600 were wounded. Fallouja fell to Islamic State fighters early last year.
A battle in Mosul could be a tougher fight.
Kurdish officials say the militants already have reinforced their fighters, blocked roads and blown up a key bridge on the city's western edge to augment their defenses. They also have forged alliances with former Iraqi military officers and local Sunni officials who supported autocrat Saddam Hussein before he was toppled in the 2003 invasion.
"We've received information that they are creating fortifications, digging trenches around the city," said Jabar Yawar, spokesman for the Kurdish armed forces in Irbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. "Also in every area they control, it is their custom to put bombs and booby traps."
An attacking force would need supporters or informants in the city for intelligence on the insurgents' positions and defenses. Although many Mosul residents complain of harsh edicts enforced by the extremists and shortages of basic commodities, the discontent does not appear close to a popular revolt.
For now, Iraq's security forces are concentrated on protecting Baghdad and surrounding areas. In December, heavy clashes were reported west of the capital in Ramadi, capital of Sunni-dominated Anbar province. Photos posted by the militants showed their fighters using captured armored personnel carriers and firing rocket-propelled grenades in what appeared to be street-to-street fighting.
Iraqi Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga are far closer to Mosul. Starting on Jan. 21, they launched an offensive on both sides of the Tigris River north of the city and seized a strategic junction at Kiske on an east-west highway that links Mosul to the Islamist State-held towns of Tall Afar, Sinjar and the Syrian border.
The Kurds worked with the U.S. Air Force and other military strategists here at Al Udeid, the command post for the air war. After consulting on an attack plan, the peshmerga hit an array of insurgent positions near the Mosul dam, about 30 miles northwest of the city, forcing many fighters into the open.
"It was literally like kicking an anthill," said Air Force Col. Lynn "Woody" Peitz, deputy commander of the air operations center at Al Udeid. "A lot of dynamic targets developed out of that."
Coalition warplanes dropped precision-guided bombs on militant positions, weapons depots and armored vehicles. The Kurdish fighters ultimately took back about 300 square miles of territory, officials said, and cut the supply routes.
Pentagon officials say they are encouraged by the gains but are under no illusions about the difficulties in trying to retake Mosul.
"It's difficult terrain. It's a big city. And they are entrenched there," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Tuesday. "And oh, by the way, the enemy gets a vote" in what happens.
Special correspondent Nabih Bulos in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
©2015 the Los Angeles Times
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Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLCSunday's episode of Outlander showed us how much of a hold Jamie’s ghost still has on Claire—even when she’s with her first husband. Try as she might to bring physical intimacy back into her marriage with Frank, something holds her back, and Frank calls her out on it. “Claire, when I’m with you, I’m with you,” he tells her. “But you’re with him.”
When we caught up with actress Caitriona Balfe on the Outlander set in Cape Town, South Africa—where she was shooting a top-secret, spoiler-heavy scene that we’ll fill you in on as the season progresses—we convinced her to take a break, snack on an orange, and share her thoughts on the status of the Claire/Frank relationship.
For someone who is supposed to look 20 years older, you’ve aged well. Your hair doesn’t even look gray anymore…
[Laughs] It’s the weather here! It’s a really good town. But yeah, Claire does a few little beauty things, to try to make herself feel a little younger, as we all do. She dyes her hair!
Writer/producer Matt Roberts was just explaining how in the first few episodes, the scenes with Claire and Frank in Boston would be very Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe Kathryn Wirsing
I think when we all read the book, and figured out which scenes we’d do, we were talking about that play. Even Gary Steele, our production designer. I remember walking in to see Gary, and I was like, “I’ve been thinking it’s a bit like…” and he said, “… like this?” And he had pictures of the play! And I was like, “Yes!” So we were all on the same page. It was just something about that confined space, and the two people who are just suffocating in their own dysfunction. Edward Albee does such an amazing job in that play of describing a dysfunctional marriage: two people who have disappointed each other so much, and then it starts to fester.
And I think that’s an accurate description of Claire and Frank. They’re both good people, but circumstances have dictated that they fall into this pattern. They just keep missing each other. For Claire, Frank will never be able to give her what Jamie gave her. He’ll never be able to meet that expectation, ever. And for Frank, Claire has abandoned him in so many ways. I’m sure he feels a lot of resentment over that. We also wanted some moments in these first few episodes where there was still the possibility of them overcoming these obstacles, because you can’t just do one note, as if everything’s terrible, terrible, terrible. There’s no way they could have lived together for 20 years with something that’s only bad and miserable.
Which is why they try to reestablish their sex life. Which almost works, except for Frank being upset about Claire closing her eyes. Why do you think she does that?
I don’t believe that Claire would be so cruel as to try and conjure up Jamie just to get through an intimate moment with Frank. I think that’s very cruel, and I don’t think Claire is that cruel. I saw it more as trying to shut things out, trying to be in the moment, trying to quiet those demons in a way, and she can’t. She just can’t. It’s too painful. And Black Jack, that’s part of the thing she’s trying to shut out. I think it’s all interlinked. I mean, Frank was such a kind and strong presence before she ever even met Black Jack, and that image of Black Jack will never replace Frank—Frank was Claire’s first love, and she knows his goodness—but when she first came back, the time since she last saw Black Jack has been so short, and it was easier for those memories to linger. Probably over time, the image of Black Jack has been replaced by something else. I think she would have a hard time allowing her daughter to be around Frank so much if Jack was so present in her mind, you know? She wouldn’t be able to stay.
But I also think she’s so scared that if she did look in Frank’s eyes, Frank would see the truth. He would know. He’s a very perceptive person. It’s hard to lie to somebody, given that eyes are the windows of the soul, and she’s terrified of him knowing, because she’s really trying hard to move on. Jamie’s dead. There’s no reason for her to sit and wallow in it. She has a daughter. She has the potential for happiness again. I think any woman would try and reach out for that. That’s why she’s reaching over to Frank. But it’s just beyond her, beyond her capabilities. That’s the tragedy of it.
Frank (Tobias Menzies) and Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) STARZ
This leads to their new arrangement, the separate beds. No more sex for these two.
She does love Frank. She loves him on a certain level, but it’s just not the way he wants her to love him. She knows she can’t give Frank what he needs, but she also knows he won’t leave, because of Brianna. It’s a struggle sometimes…. The show got known for its sex scenes so much, but we’re telling a love story, and the sex is very integral to telling that story. It shows how they connect, or in this case, how they don’t. Yes, people want the steaminess, but it has to have a point. Otherwise, it’s just gratuitous, you know? I think we’re better than that. [Laughs]
In the books, Claire and Frank have a slightly different dynamic. They do experience intimacy in some areas.
There’s a scene in the book that is one of my favorites, and I was so devastated in the beginning that it was changed, although it worked so well the way we did it. I remember telling Diana Gabaldon that what I loved about how she constructed a particular scene was that Claire and Frank were in bed together, spooning, because it was cold. They were so comfortable around each other, they constructed this convenient half-intimacy. They could be physically close, and yet emotionally so many miles apart. I thought the way Diana did that was so beautiful. But I also love the way we did it. And that’s why we have two different mediums for people to appreciate the story!
At least in your version, there’s more of a reason to root for Frank! He’s not cheating on Claire here...
I mean, would anybody blame him if he did? [Laughs] There are certain aspects of book Frank—he’s definitely slightly racist in the book, and that’s not a quality that should be admired—but the whole cheating thing? I personally couldn’t blame him. If I were in that situation, if I were the unwilling party in an intimate relationship, I would say, “Go find your happiness wherever you can, because it won’t be here!”The Canadian Press
MONTREAL -- Canada's federal housing agency says the number of foreign buyers in the Montreal area surged by 37 per cent in the first four months of the year.
The 236 purchases by foreigners accounted for 1.8 per cent of all real estate transactions from January to April, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said in a report.
That's up from 172 deals representing 1.3 per cent of total sales a year earlier during the same time period.
By comparison, home purchases by foreign buyers in the Vancouver area have hovered around three to four per cent of all transactions since the introduction of a 15 per cent foreign buyers' tax last August. In the Toronto area, about five per cent of transactions were made by foreigners before a tax was added in April.
Buyers from China accounted for the strongest growth in Montreal, representing 17 per cent of all foreign buyers, up from less than 10 per cent in the first quarter of 2016.
The number of buyers from China more than tripled since the adoption of the Vancouver tax, while the number of French and American buyers increased by about 33 per cent.
Condominiums were the first choice of foreign buyers but 40 per cent of Chinese buyers selected single-family homes.
The median price they paid for these homes was about $720,000 while 25 per cent exceeded $1 million, far greater than prices paid by American and French buyers.As we get closer to May 1, the May Day General Strike, called by Occupy groups and allies around the country, is drawing more and more attention and speculation. Although an immense amount of work is going into march planning, convergences, food provision, school walkouts and ways to encourage people out of work and into the streets, I have no way (or desire) to predict the outcomes of these efforts on May 1 and the days and weeks that follow. As I've noted here before, this general strike will look very different from past ones in American history, as it enlists a largely un-unionized workforce, the under- and unemployed -- and students burdened by unpayable debts.
To get a sense of the diverse ideas that a general strike could represent, we need only look at the types of propaganda emerging to promote May Day. The strike posters -- wheat-pasted on billboards, brick walls and subway stations and shared through Twitter, Facebook and various websites -- suggest a vast array of strike activities. I've put together a slide show of May Day posters with the help of Jesse Goldstein, a New York artist and academic and part of the Occuprint collective (which collects, prints and distributes posters for Occupy by raising funds on Kickstarter). From illustrations evoking kite-flying holidays, to images of dinosaurs riding sharks urging high school students to join a walkout, these posters give some idea of the muftifaceted nature of Occupy's plan.Our government is in knots over ways to lower the federal budget deficit. Well, what if we told you we found a pot of money - over $60 billion a year - that could be used to help out?
That bundle is tax money not coming in to the IRS from American corporations. One major way they avoid paying the tax man is by parking their profits overseas. They'll tell you they're forced to do that because the corporate 35 percent tax rate is high in relation to other countries, and indeed it seems the tax code actually encourages companies to move their businesses out of the country.
Tax havens: Do companies pay their fair share?
"60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl talks tax havens and the new ways American companies are stashing their profits abroad.
Companies searching out tax havens is nothing new: in the 80s and 90s there was an exodus to Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, where there are no taxes at all.
When President Obama threatened to clamp down on tax dodging, many companies decided to leave the Caribbean. But instead of coming back home, they went to safer havens like Switzerland.
Several of these companies came to a small, quaint medieval town in Switzerland call Zug.
Hans Marti, who heads Zug's economic development office, showed off the nearby snow-covered mountains. But Zug's main selling point isn't a view of the Alps: he told Stahl the taxes are somewhere between 15 and 16 percent.
"And in the United States it's 35 percent," Stahl pointed out.
"I know. It's half price," Marti said.
Marti told Stahl that Zug most probably has the lowest tax rates in Switzerland.
"So you're kind of a tax haven within a tax haven?" she remarked.
"Maybe, yes," he acknowledged.
The population of the town of Zug is 26,000; the number of companies in the area is 30,000 and growing at an average rate of 800 a year. But many are no more than mailboxes.
Texas Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett questions whether the recent moves of several companies are legit. "A good example is one of my Texas companies that's been in the news lately, Transocean," Rep. Doggett told Stahl.
Transocean owned the drilling rig involved in the giant BP oil spill. They moved to Zug two years ago.
Extra: Benefits of bringing back cash
Extra: How to shift profits
"I'm not sure they even moved that much. They have about 1,300 employees still in the Houston area. They have 12 or 13 in Switzerland," Doggett told Stahl.
"And yet they claim that they're headquartered over there," Stahl remarked.
"They claim they're Swiss. And they claim they're Swiss for tax purposes. And by doing that, by renouncing their American citizenship, they've saved about $2 billion in taxes," Doggett explained.
Stahl and "60 Minutes" decided to visit their operations in Zug.
A woman at the door told Stahl, "At the moment my boss is not here."
She said her boss wasn't there and we should call someone halfway around the world, in Houston.
"But this is the headquarters," Stahl remarked.
"I know," the woman said.
When asked if the CEO was there or is normally at the Zug office, the woman said "No."
Produced by Shachar Bar-OnAccording to a hockey source, Don Sweeney and the Boston Bruins “are preparing an offer sheet” this week for Winnipeg Jets defenseman Jacob Trouba as an aggressive option to land a No. 1 defenseman after trades didn’t pan out at last weekend’s NHL Draft.
The Bruins have watched Trouba closely for some time, and clearly have an interest in the 22-year-old D-man with size, offensive abilities and a workhorse nature that’s seen him average more than 22 minutes of ice time per game since entering the league as a 19-year-old.
Trouba is coming off a six-goal, 21-point season while playing in 81 games for the Jets, and was a career-best plus-10 for Winnipeg. With Trouba, a restricted free agent, and the Jets locked into big money deals to fellow right shot D-men in Dustin Byfuglien and Tyler Myers, the writing has been on the wall for some time that the Jets would need to give one of them up.
Now it appears the Bruins may be willing to put their money, and their assets, where their interest is, and come up with an offer sheet that totals a minimum of $47 million for Trouba’s services.
Part of that high total is crafting an offer that the Winnipeg Jets aren’t going to match, and part of that is the Bruins’ own doing while casually tossing away their own draft picks. Because they sent their 2017 third round pick to the Flyers for Zac Rinaldo and their 2017 second round pick to New Jersey for Lee Stempniak, the Bruins must put together an offer sheet with an average annual value (AAV) of at least $9.3 million that will require Boston to give up four consecutive first round picks as compensation.
The good news for the Bruins: for offer sheet purposes, AAV is determined by dividing the total compensation offered by the lesser of the length of the contract, or by five. For contracts longer than five years in term, this will result in a higher AAV than simply dividing the contract total by the number of years.
Example: a 7 year offer sheet worth $49 million total, would be considered an AAV of $9.8 million ($49 million divided by 5) for offer sheet compensation purposes. That means the Bruins could make an offer sheet to Trouba in the $7-8 million per season neighborhood on a seven year deal, a reasonable contract if Trouba turns into the No. 1 defenseman that the B’s are envisioning.
The real price for the Black and Gold would be surrendering four first round picks, but the Bruins have made five first round picks in the last two years while stockpiling their prospect cupboard. The B’s have also been hit-or-miss with their first round picks, so sacrificing a few of them for a surefire, young defenseman would theoretically be worth the price.
Clearly the offer sheet route is the product of Bruins’ frustration at being unable to broker a deal for Kevin Shattenkirk or Cam Fowler last weekend in Buffalo, and at the realization that they need a stud No. 1 defenseman in order to again be competitive in the Eastern Conference. Perhaps even the threat of an offer sheet could spur the Jets into dealing Trouba, just as the threat of an offer sheet pushed forward the trades of Dougie Hamilton and Brandon Saad last season.
Dirty Water Media Bruins reporter James Murphy was also reporting the buzz that the B's are exploring their offer sheet option.Thursday was a busy day for the polls, with some bright spots for each candidate. But it made clear that Barack Obama maintains a narrow lead in the polling averages in states that would get him to 270 electoral votes. Mr. Obama also remains roughly tied in the polls in two other states, Colorado and Virginia, that could serve as second lines of defense for him if he were to lose a state like Ohio.
The day featured the release of 10 national polls, but there was little in the way of a consistent pattern in them. On average, the polls showed a tied race. Furthermore, among the nine polls that provided for a comparison to another poll conducted after the first presidential debate in Denver, the net result was unchanged, on average, with Mr. Obama gaining one percentage point or more in three polls, but Mr. Romney doing so in three others.
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Mr. Obama held the lead in nine polls of battleground states on Thursday, as compared to three leads for Mr. Romney and two polls showing a tied race.
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This tally exaggerates the lopsidedness of the polling a bit, since the state polls released on Thursday were something of a Democratic-leaning bunch, some of which had shown strong numbers for Mr. Obama previously.
Mr. Romney’s strongest number came in a Fox News poll of Virginia, which had him 2 points ahead there – a sharp reversal from a 7-point advantage there for Mr. Obama before the Denver debate. However, Mr. Romney’s worst poll of the day was probably also in Virginia, where Public Policy Polling showed Mr. Obama’s lead expanding to 5 points from 2.
Among the 10 polls that provided for a comparison to another poll conducted after the Denver debate, Mr. Obama gained 1 percentage point, on average. The past week of polling suggests that Mr. Romney is no longer improving his position in the race.
Whether Mr. Obama has any momentum of his own, such as because of this week’s debate in Florida, is less clear. To me, it looks more like a gradual reversion to the mean than anything all that assertive.
At the same time, Mr. Obama has led in the polling averages all year in states that would allow him to win the Electoral College, and that remains the case now.
In the chart below, I’ve summarized the current FiveThirtyEight forecasts in a rather comprehensive list of states in which each candidate has at least a 1 percent chance of winning, according to the forecast. The chart also lists the most likely range of popular vote outcomes in each state, enough to cover 90 percent of all possible outcomes.
There is more uncertainty about the outcome in some states – not just because some are closer than others, but also because of a number of other factors that the FiveThirtyEight forecast accounts for in formulating its probabilistic estimates of the potential range of outcomes in each state.
Our research suggests, as intuition might dictate, that the outcome in a state is more certain when there is a higher volume of recent polling there.
In addition, the outcome is more certain when the polls are more consistent with one another. If a candidate leads by almost exactly four points in every poll of a state, that is a more reliable advantage than in a case where some polls have the candidate up by eight points, but others show a tied race – even if these disparate polls show a 4-point lead for him on average.
Finally, some states are more “elastic” than others, meaning that they contain more swing voters. New Hampshire, for instance, is notorious for unreliable polling and for voters making up their mind at the last minute. This is probably not just a coincidence; New Hampshire has a disproportionate number of independent voters, and their preferences are more fickle than those of strong partisans. Thus, holding a small lead in the polling average in New Hampshire will not translate into victory as reliably as in another state like Pennsylvania, which has fewer swing voters and where elections are usually come down to a contest to turn out the respective party bases. The FiveThirtyEight forecast accounts for these properties.
These details aside, it is possible to place the states in to several broad groups.
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First come a set of blue-leaning states – Oregon, New Mexico, Minnesota and Michigan – which might theoretically have been competitive but where the campaigns have not spent very many resources. There is little reason, at this point, to expect them to play much of a role in the math on Election Night. If Mr. Romney wins them, or comes within a point or two of doing so, it will probably indicate that he is overperforming his polls across the board and is headed to a clear national victory.
Pennsylvania is somewhat more competitive, but Mr. Obama leads there by about 5 points in the forecast (that was also his margin in a Rasmussen Reports poll of the state on Thursday). With the exception of one strongly G.O.P.-leaning firm, Susquehanna Research, no other polling firm has shown Mr. Romney ahead in the state all year. A 5-point lead in the state with a week and a half to go should translate into a victory for Mr. Obama more than 90 percent of the time, especially in a low-elasticity state like Pennsylvania.
Wisconsin and Nevada come next. While both remain winnable for Mr. Romney, they have featured among the more consistent polling; Mr. Romney has led in just one poll of Nevada since the Denver debate, and none in Wisconsin.
If Mr. Obama wins Wisconsin and Nevada along with the states like Michigan where he seems to have a clearer advantage, he will have 253 electoral votes, putting him 17 votes shy of clinching an Electoral College majority.
Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes, is the state most likely to provide those votes to Mr. Obama. He leads in the FiveThirtyEight forecast by 2.3 percentage points in Ohio, and by a similar margin according to other Web sites that aggregate polls. The forecast gives Mr. Obama about a 75 percent chance of winning Ohio. This figure is, not coincidentally, close to Mr. Obama’s 73 percent overall chance of winning the Electoral College. (Ohio has about a 50-50 chance of providing the decisive Electoral College votes.)
New Hampshire and Iowa have featured less consistent polling than Wisconsin, Nevada or Ohio, and both are high-elasticity states that provide less overall predictability. Mr. Obama has about a two-in-three chance of winning each one, according to the forecast. However, these states alone would not suffice for Mr. Romney to win the Electoral College if he also lost Ohio, Nevada and Wisconsin.
Colorado and Virginia appear as though they might be the closest states in an election held today. Mr. Obama arguably has just the slightest edge in Colorado, where three of four polls released on Thursday showed him ahead, and where a fourth showed a tied race – but those polls were a Democratic-leaning group, so it is probably best to view the state as a tossup. The outcome in Virginia, where the polling has been inconsistent all year and was so again on Thursday, is anybody’s guess.
However, the fact that Colorado and Virginia have been the closest states in the polling recently, and that both are fairly essential to Mr. Romney’s path to victory while being more superfluous for Mr. Obama, is evidence that Mr. Obama has an overall advantage in the Electoral College.
The forecast model continues to give a slight edge to Mr. Romney in Florida. There, in contrast to several other swing states, it has been the more methodologically reliable polls that have tended to show a clearer advantage for Mr. Romney. Florida is by no means a sure thing for Mr. Romney — Mr. Obama’s chances of winning it (35 percent) are larger than Mr. Romney’s chances of carrying Ohio (25 percent), according to the forecast. But the polls in Florida have historically done a good job of predicting the result, and it is unlikely to leapfrog several other states and be the Electoral College tipping point on Election Day.
All of this holds doubly for North Carolina, where Mr. Romney leads by about 3 percentage points in the forecast and has about an 80 percent chance of winning.
Beyond North Carolina, there aren’t very many states that Mr. Obama has a realistic chance to win, even if he is having a strong night overall on Nov. 6. Arizona probably provides Mr. Obama his best hope, but the forecast still puts his chances there at only about 3 percent.
It’s important to keep in mind that the potential errors in the polls between different states are partly correlated with one another. That is, if Mr. Romney overperforms his polls on Election Day in a state like Ohio, he is also somewhat more likely to do so in other states like Iowa, especially if they are demographically similar.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast accounts for this property in its overall assessment of the Electoral College, and it is one reason why our forecast gives Mr. Romney slightly better Electoral College chances than other forecast models that might assume more independence in the state polling. However, we may be approaching the point where the state polls will have to be systematically biased toward Mr. Obama in order for Mr. Romney to have strong chances of prevailing on Election Day.With the passing of HB 1099 yesterday, which creates a soil remediation study using hemp as the filtering agent, Colorado could be the first state in the nation to grow industrial hemp since the late 1930s.
But passing the bill was just the first obstacle. Actually implementing the plan might be more tricky.
The bill becomes law on July 1 and would require the chairs of the agriculture, livestock and natural resources committees of both the state house and the senate to appoint a task force made up of a soil expert from a Colorado university or college, an expert in radioactive material detection and leeching, an expert in phytochemistry, a horticulturist and three Colorado residents "educated and interested in the specialized use of industrial hemp."
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The committee would chose a site or sites totaling no more than 500 acres. Ideally the site would be heavily contaminated, similar to the former Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant, though no site has been selected currently (note: we earlier incorrectly reported that the site would be at Rocky Flats). No word on exactly where the seeds for the hemp plants would come from, either.
The pilot study would last ten years, and the bill requires a final report within six months of the end of the program on the amount of contamination removed by the plants, the amount of contamination found in the actual plants and what things need additional treatments to be cleaned. The report would also help establish a baseline standard for cannabis phytoremediation levels.
But there are several hurdles to overcome. Among them is language in the bill that requires the money for the pilot program be kept in a bank or credit union that has insurance through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Because all forms of cannabis are illegal at the federal level, that could be a problem.
*Update 5/11/2012: As noted in the comments below, the final language of the bill allots all money used for the soil remediation program to the state general fund and then issued through the Colorado Department of Public health and Environment instead of using FDIC-insured banks. From the bill:
Marijuana Deals Near You
"The committee shall transmit all private and public moneys received through gifts, grants, or donation to the state treasurer, who shall credit the same to the hemp remediation pilot program cash fund... The Moneys in the fund are subject to annual appropriation by the general assembly to the department of public health and environment for appropriation to the committee for the direct and indirect costs associated with implementing this article."
Bill author Wes McKinley acknowledged the banking issues in an interview with Westword back in February. But he said that it was still worth moving the bill forward."Hemp was the basic agricultural crop of our country at one time," McKinley said at the time. "It provides food, fuel, fiber, oil. All of our ropes and sails were made of it at one time. But because of special interests, it was outlawed."
But there are other obstacles, including getting federal approval. Colorado isn't the first to pass hemp cultivation bills. California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, West Virginia and Vermont all have passed bills allowing for industrial hemp cultivation. However the cultivation would require a DEA license, and so far there are no states that have received approval.
More from our marijuana archive: "Marijuana: House Bill 1358 fails in Senate, THC DUI not dead yet?"; "Marijuana: 25 dispensaries' closure to protect "students," not just children"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked US Secretary of State John Kerry for blocking an Egyptian-led drive on a possible Middle East nuclear arms ban at a United Nations conference, an Israeli official said on Saturday.
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It was a rare message of thanks from Netanyahu, who has repeatedly accused President Barack Obama of undermining Israel's security by attempting to reach a nuclear deal with Iran.
The United States on Friday blocked a global document aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons, saying Egypt and other states tried to "cynically manipulate" the process by setting a deadline for Israel and its neighbors to meet within months on a Middle East zone free of such weapons.
The now-failed final document of a landmark treaty review conference had called on the |
a person he hates or some money to pay for his drugs. I mean “good” here only in this thin sense, of being in some way desirable or providing some benefit. And that is all Aquinas means by it when he famously tells us that the first principle of the natural law is that “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” This is not meant by itself to be terribly informative; it is meant only to call attention to the obvious fact that human action is of its nature directed toward what is perceived to be good in some way, whether it really is good or not. But when we add to this the consideration that the good for us is in fact whatever tends to fulfill our nature or essence in the sense of realizing the natural ends or purposes of our various natural capacities, then there can be no doubt as to why someone ought to do what is good in this sense.
…
>”Now modern philosophers, over-impressed as always by David Hume, have thought that there is a frightfully difficult problem of “deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’” or upholding morality in light of the “fact/ value distinction.” There are facts, and then there are values, you see, and knowing any number of things about the first – about what is the case – can (so it is said) never tell you anything about the second – what ought to be the case. To confuse the two is to commit the “naturalistic fallacy.” And so forth. The usual genuflecting to Hume’s supposed genius ensues, as does an industry of producing fruitless attempts to solve the “problem” of justifying ethical judgments in light of this purported chasm between objective reality and moral value. Well, there is such a problem if, as modern philosophers have done, one denies the reality of formal and final causes. But for those who avoid this foolish and ungrounded denial – such as Aristotle and Aquinas – there is no problem at all, and what has been said already shows why. Like everything else, human beings have a formal cause – their form, essence, or nature – and this formal cause entails certain final causes for their various capacities. So, for example, our nature or essence is to be rational animals, and reason or intellect has as its final cause the attainment of truth. Hence the attainment of truth is good for us, just as the gathering of acorns is good for a squirrel. These are just objective facts; for the sense of “good” in question here is a completely objective one, connoting, not some subjective preference we happen to have for a thing, but rather the conformity of a thing to a nature or essence as a kind of paradigm (the way that, again, a “good” triangle is just one which has perfectly straight sides, or a “good” squirrel is one that isn’t missing its tail). We are also by nature oriented to pursuing what we take to be good. That is another objective fact, and for the same reasons. But then, when the intellect perceives that what is in fact good is the pursuit of truth, it follows that if we are rational what we will value is the pursuit of truth. “Value” – or rather, as the ancients and medievals would put it, the good – follows from fact, because it is built into the structure of the facts from the get-go. 8 All of this falls apart if we deny that anything has a final cause or that there are forms, essences, or natures in the Aristotelian sense; and of course, Hume, like the moderns in general, denies just this. If there are no Aristotelian forms, essences, or natures, then there is no such thing as what is good for human beings by nature. If there are no final causes, then reason does not have as its purpose the attainment of truth or knowledge of the good. What we are left with are at best whatever desires we actually happen to have, for whatever reason – heredity, environment, luck – but these will be subjective preferences rather than reflective of objective goodness or badness. And the most reason can do is tell us how we can fulfill these desires; since there are no natures or essences of things, nor any final causes or natural purposes either, it cannot tell us what desires we ought to have. Thus can Hume say such things as that reason is the “slave of the passions,” and that there is nothing contrary to reason in preferring that the whole world be destroyed rather than that my little finger gets scratched. Thus can nearly universal reactions of disgust at certain sexual practices, which from an Aristotelian point of view are nature’s way of getting us to avoid what is contrary to her purposes, be written off as mere prejudices.”[23]
There’s a lot to unpack here, and I think this may be the most important section of the book. The objections I raise, therefore, will (again, in my view) form enough of a riposte to demolish much of the foundation for Aristotelianism.
*Major Objection 1: The heart of Aristotle’s (and by extension, Feser’s) moral philosophy hinges upon the assertion that “the sense of “good”…is a completely objective one, connoting, not some subjective preference we happen to have for a thing, but rather the conformity of a thing to a nature or essence as a kind of paradigm (the way that, again, a “good” triangle is just one which has perfectly straight sides, or a “good” squirrel is one that isn’t missing its tail) (page 139). However, there is no reason whatsoever to take “conformity to one’s nature/essence/form” as good in the sense of normatively obligating (‘desirable,’ ‘praiseworthy,’ etc). Feser’s attempt to defeat Hume’s is/ought problem with a bit of sophistry has failed.
Once again, as I explained above, Feser’s argument seems to rely on a quirk of the English language, and assumedly Greek, Latin, and the others Aquinas spoke: That the word ‘good’ can mean either ‘desirable or praiseworthy’ or ‘conforming to a standard’ is merely a flaw of these languages that leads to confusion, and really isn’t something to build a whole philosophy on. It is obvious that “conformity to a paradigm” is not and cannot be axiomatically desirable and praiseworthy. A mass murderer who kills hundreds of people is a “good mass murderer” in the sense that he conforms to the paradigmatic Essence of a mass murderer (he would be a ‘bad’ one if he only killed, say, half a dozen) but that obviously makes him *worse* from any sane moral perspective, not better.
We don’t even have to use such an extreme example—a few more from the animal kingdom will suffice. Feser’s fond of squirrels, but let’s go with something yuckier—ticks and mosquitoes.
Sucking blood is undoubtedly part of the “essence” of these gross little things. I’m sure Feser would agree, I can’t imagine anyone saying that “sucking blood” is *not* a defining feature of the critters, part of what makes them what they are (female ones, to be specific, but that’s not important). Now, let’s say we were to one day encounter a tick or mosquito that didn’t suck blood, for whatever reason—maybe its mouthparts were damaged or it just had no desire or ability to. Such a thing would be “bad” in the sense of defective, or Failing to Instantiate the Form/Essence of a Tick/Mosquito, or Failing to Fulfill the Final Cause of Sucking Blood (in order to produce eggs, specifically, but again, not important), but we would not consider it “bad” in the sense we normally consider bloodsuckers bad (that is to say, hateful and undesirable). This “defective” tick would annoy us a lot less than “more perfect” ones. In fact, we would likely call such a critter “good” (in the sense of ‘desirable’) and wish all ticks and mosquitos were like that. This is not a position contradictory to what we commonly understand as good, what Plato or Aristotle would understand as good, or what common sense or our intuitions tell us is good—what sane person wouldn’t want to live in a world where bloodsucking parasites “failed” to suck blood?
If that example was a little yucky, let’s return to Feser’s example of the squirrel eating toothpaste or laying on the freeway. As I mentioned earlier, this behavior can only be taken as “bad” in a consequentialist framework—if you ask any normal person (aside from a Thomist) why eating toothpaste or laying out on the freeway is bad, they’d tell you it’s because such behaviors harm the squirrel in the long run (death by starvation or death by car).
Perhaps Feser would try to say that this is just proof “instantiating one’s Form/Essence” really is what’s good in terms of consequences, but that’s not necessarily so. Let’s modify the example Feser gave earlier a bit. He said, “if you somehow conditioned a squirrel to live in a cage and eat nothing but toothpaste on Ritz crackers, to such an extent that it no longer wanted to leave the cage, scamper up trees, and search for acorns, etc., even when given the chance” this would be bad as the squirrel wouldn’t be instantiating its Essence. However, let’s change “eating toothpaste” to “eating nutrition pellets” or “eating peanuts” (i.e eating something that’s actually edible for squirrels, but that they don’t normally eat in the wild). This squirrel would “fail to instantiate its Form” to at least a similar extent as the toothpaste-eating one, but it’s a lot harder to argue it’s just as worse off. Squirrels in the wild, “scampering up trees,” have to worry about being eaten by owls or cats or whatever, and also starvation if they can’t find enough acorns. However, our “domesticated” squirrel (and domestication is something we’ll get back to) won’t have to worry about being eaten by predators or starving to death. Or, to put it as clearly as I can:
*In a meaningful, objective sense, the squirrel who lives in a cage eating nutrition pellets is better off than one which lives in the wild—it doesn’t have to worry about starvation or predation, and will therefore almost certainly live longer, and likely “happier” than a wild squirrel, despite the wild one “more perfectly instantiating its Form.” Therefore, at least from the example Feser gives us, there is no reason to assume “conformity to a paradigmatic Form” is necessarily what is good (desirable, praiseworthy, morally normative) for anything—squirrels, humans, whatever.
To address Feser’s thesis directly, it seems *the definition of “objective good” as merely and necessarily “conforming paradigmatically to Form/Essence” is useless in practical terms and utterly unconvincing on its own merits. Common sense and empirical experience tell us that there are many instances where “failure to instantiate an essence” is a *good* thing by any reasonable definition aside, of course, from the one Feser and Aristotle give us. Hume’s is-ought problem, therefore, remains unaddressed.*
This also applies to Final Causes, by the way. The mere fact that “Final Causes” exist does not give them any normative or obligating power; indeed, cannot, as I prove in Major Objection 3. That “good” and its cognates in European languages can mean either “fulfilling Final Causes” or “desirable and praiseworthy” is simply one flaw of the language that leads to confusion, not something to build a philosophy out of.
Major Objection 1a: Not every defection from an Essence or paradigm is necessarily bad (as in undesirable).
This is a corollary to the first major objection, so I’ll try to make it a little more lighthearted. Let’s take another animal example this time, but something cuter than ticks or mosquitoes—cats! As cat-lovers know, cats have five toes each, this is part of their “essence” along with being furry, having tails, meowing, etc. However, some cats are born with six toes (or more). According to Feser, this would be deviation from the Form of the Cat and therefore bad. However, this “defect” is not considered a bad thing at all. Six-toed cats are widely considered to be lucky, and according to Wikipedia the “defect” helps them climb and hunt rats better. How can this be, if “conformity to paradigmatic Form” is the only “good?”
Perhaps more snidely, it’s not necessarily easy to discern what is a “defect” and what’s actually a mere difference in being, or perhaps even an advantage. The six-toed-cat is an example, of course—what seems like a defect can actually be useful upon closer examination—but it applies to humans as well. When describing homosexuality as a defect, Feser compares it to several other things: “nor would it be plausible to suggest that God “made him that way,” [clubfooted] any more than God “makes” people to be born blind, deaf, armless, legless, prone to alcoholism, or autistic. God obviously allows these things, for whatever reason; but it doesn’t follow that He positively wills them, and it certainly doesn’t follow that they are “natural.” So, by the same token, the possibility of a genetic basis for homosexual desire doesn’t by itself show that such desire is natural.” [24]
In the list of defects (defined as whatever hinders one’s ‘natural purpose’), some of the entries seem uncontroversial—it’s hard to imagine being born blind, legless, or alcoholic to be good things in any sense. However, a few things on that list are a little harder to pin down. Strange as it may seem, some folks don’t consider being deaf to be a disability but rather a different way of being. I don’t want to get into this too deeply now, but look up “Deaf Culture” if you’re interested. Even more important is Feser’s choice of “autism” as a defect. Now, I’ve been chastised more than a few times on various places for using “autistic” as an insult, so I’d like to clarify I’m not doing that here—Feser is. But even on Feser’s own terms, we have a problem with this example: Is autism actually a defect? The answer to that is not necessarily obvious, especially when you consider that Aquinas is one of the heroes of Feser’s book. Aquinas himself was likely autistic, or somewhere on that spectrum. According to Feser, Aquinas was known for memorizing the entire Bible, chasing a prostitute out of his room, and being so caught up in his intellectual flights of fancy he wouldn’t notice a candle burning his hand.[25] Those all sound eerily like the symptoms of autism, and I’m not the only person who’s noticed this.[26] And if Aquinas was autistic, it seems likely he owed his intellectual accomplishments, in part, to his autism—nobody could have written 8 million words on abstruse theological and philosophical topics without the single-minded obsessiveness and attention to detail that often comes along with autism. Therefore, it seems likely, contra Feser, that God may well will some of us to be autistic, at least some of the time.
So how does one discern whether a deviation from the human norm is necessarily a “bad” (undesirable) thing? Just as a deviant six-toed cat can be better at some things, the same applies to a ‘deviant’ human, as some ‘defects’ like autism can be useful under some circumstances. You could argue (and this is a point Feser brings up a little later, which I’ll address) that some defects actually aid in fulfilling an organism’s final cause—thus, a polydactyl cat is “good” (in Feser’s sense) because it fulfills its “final cause” of hunting rats better, and that an autist…uh, autistic person like Thomas Aquinas could better fulfill his “final cause” of worshipping God. But that leads us to a tension in this Thomistic and therefore Aristotelian moral framework: Is it more important to “conform to one’s paradigmatic Essence” or “fulfill one’s Final Cause?” For instance, Feser thinks that someone who wanted to make themselves blind or cut off their own arms would be sick, because they would make themselves less able to instantiate the Form of Man, which is sighted, two-armed, etc. But what if they wanted to do so in order to glorify God, which is mankind’s Final Cause, and assumedly a higher metaphysical priority than anything else? Christ did say, after all, to take out your eye or cut off your hand if either led you to sin. Would someone blinding himself as an act of religious devotion be “bad” or “good?” How could Feser tell?
Major Objection 1b: The theory of forms/essences isn’t coherent from an evolutionary standpoint.
On a related note, the way evolution works would seem to pose a significant challenge to any meaningful conceptionNot one of the 30 Republican senators who voted against Sen. Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment agreed to explain their rationale when MSNBC came calling, news host Rachel Maddow told her audience Wednesday evening.
Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman whose alleged gang rape at the hands of co-workers at defense contractor KBR was the inspiration for the amendment, appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night to laud its passing in the Senate earlier this month. The amendment prohibits the government from contracting with companies that refuse to allow employees to pursue rape allegations in court.
As Jones explained to Maddow, that was the case with KBR — then a subsidiary of Halliburton — when the company responded to Jones’ allegations of rape by locking her in a shipping container and refusing to give her access to medical treatment or contact with the outside world.
“I cannot even understand the reasoning as to why anyone would vote against” the Franken amendment, Jones told Maddow. “I’m thrilled it’s gotten as far as it has gotten.”
But, according to a report at the Huffington Post, the amendment — though considered to be wildly popular — may have trouble getting any further. Reporter Sam Stein cites “multiple sources” who told him Sen. Daniel Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, is considering watering down the amendment, or eliminating it altogether, when it goes to a vote on the Senate floor as part of a defense appropriations bill. Stein reports:
Inouye’s office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up.
As Rachel Slajda reported at TalkingPointsMemo, despite the horrible optics of appearing to be in favor of rape, both the White House and the Pentagon are opposed to the amendment, at least in its current form.
The [Pentagon] argued that it and its subcontractors “may not be in a position to know about such things,” i.e., whether contractors employ the mandatory arbitration clauses. “Enforcement would be problematic,” the note read, because contractors may not be privy to what’s in their subcontractors’ contracts. The department suggests that “it may be more effective” to seek a law that would prohibit the clauses in any business contracts within U.S. jurisdiction.
A White House spokesman told Slajda that President Obama supports “the intent of the amendment,” and is working with legislators to rewrite the amendment so as “to make sure it is enforceable.”
But even as the wheeling and dealing over the Franken amendment continues inside the Beltway, on Main Street the GOP’s opposition to it has been turned into a powerful talking point for Democrats and progressives. A Web site entitled Republicans For Rape has sprung up, satirizing the 30 senators’ opposition to the amendment.
On her show Thursday night, Maddow listed the names of all 30 senators who voted against the amendment, and suggested she continues to hope they will eventually speak up about their vote.
“Senators, I want you to know, the invitation [to appear on the show] remains open,” she said.
The following video was broadcast on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, October 22, 2009.Amid fears of more violent protests in the Muslim world, the German government has announced it will close its diplomatic missions in the region on Friday, the Islamic holy day.
With further escalation of protests expected after Friday prayers, Berlin is also considering whether to provide additional security for German diplomatic facilities, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said.
Many embassies are closed on Fridays in the Islamic world in honor of the holy day to begin with, but a number of German diplomats have received specific instructions to avoid embassies that day. "We have intensified security precautions everywhere in the region, and in some cases increased security personnel too," Westerwelle said.
The news came as backlash continued against the controversial anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims," followed by additional unrest in reaction to the publication of Muhammad caricatures by French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, which added fuel to the fire on Wednesday. Paris subsequently announced it would shutter its embassies in sensitive areas on Friday as a precaution too.
On Thursday, German satire magazine Titanic announced that it would also publish its own Muhammad issue later this month, which could provoke further unrest.
Last Friday the German embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum was attacked and set on fire by an angry mob. It has been closed since, operating on an emergency contingency plan.
Violence continued in the Middle East on Thursday, when hundreds of protesters descended on the French embassy in Tehran. A large police presence, however, managed to prevent the mob from storming the compound.MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — So its mid-August and you’re focused on the Olympics, maybe some back-to-school shopping and the State Fair is right around the corner. You may not realize that there is a major political event happening this week.
Minnesota’s state primary is on Tuesday. In most of the state, there has not been a lot of interest in the primary, but in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, there is a fierce three-way race to see who will run against incumbent Congressman Chip Cravaack.
When it comes to congressional races, incumbents win 90 percent of the time. But two years ago, in Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District in Northeastern Minnesota, the longtime DFL incumbent Jim Oberstar lost to first-time candidate Republican Chip Cravaack.
But because the district is traditionally Democratic, Cravaack is seen as one of the most vulnerable congressional incumbents in the country. On Tuesday, three candidates are facing each other in the primary for the chance to run against him.
They are former Duluth City Council Member Jeff Anderson, former State Sen. Tarryl Clark and former Congressman Rick Nolan. Political Analyst Katherine Pearson appeared on WCCO Sunday Morning. She said the primary is too close to call.
“What we have seen is a pretty big battle,” Pearson said. “The candidates have criticized Representative Cravaack but they have also begun to criticize one another. We have also seen a lot of outside money — both by the DFL in support of Nolan but we have also seen a lot of outside money in support of Clark, as well. So this does have the potential to be a high turnout primary.”
Turnout in the rest of the state is expected to be very low — with the exception of another primary race that is too close to call. And that is in Minnesota’s first Congressional District in southeastern Minnesota.
There, two Republicans — former State Rep. Allen Quist is facing State Sen. Mike Parry, for the chance to run against incumbent DFL Congressman Tim Walz.
You can watch WCCO Sunday Morning with Esme Murphy every Sunday at 10:30 a.m.Valentino Rossi Marc Marquez Drama at Sepang
Only occasionally do I take the time to photograph the Thursday press conference. To me this event is usually not all that interesting, as the riders receive fairly standard questions and over the 20-30 minutes the session can have the feel of a chore that must be endured. But sometimes I go if I think something might come up in the interchange between the riders and journalists that might lead to interesting photos. Those used in this article are from Brno, by the way.
But the Sepang Thursday press conference was one of those that suddenly got very interesting. I think most fans realize that a lot of things happen in the MotoGP paddock that go unreported, things that remain private or known only to a small number of people. But occasionally such things bubble to the surface and we get a glimpse into the complexities of those battles that rage off track.
Love him or hate him, Valentino Rossi is often at the center of such battles and has been since he became the dominant rider in MotoGP. Rossi is not only an elite rider but a character, and a character not in spite of himself as some riders are but a character of a sophisticated and calculated nature. While things happen to other people, Rossi seems more often an agent of those things that happen than he is a subject of those things.
Fighting with teammate Jorge Lorenzo for the 2015 title, Rossi has once again made things happen to people around him. In the Thursday press conference (those with a MotoGP.com video pass can watch here) Rossi was asked if we might see another race like Phillip Island this coming Sunday. He replied that to answer this question they’d need to speak with Marc Marquez. Rossi continued to say that Marquez had played with them (Rossi, Lorenzo, Iannone) very much, and that his goal was not merely to win the race. Rossi proposed that Marquez wants to help Lorenzo claim as many points as possible, and that Jorge has a new supporter in Marquez.
Lorenzo was then asked is he felt Marquez had helped him at Phillip Island and in that wonderful Lorenzo sarcasm that occasionally shows up, he replied that yes, Marquez had helped, especially on the final lap (when Marquez passed Lorenzo to claim the victory).
Marquez passed on his first opportunity to comment on Rossi’s claim that he’d played with the other leaders of the Phillip Island race, but Iannone agreed when he next spoke. As Iannone struggled in English, I could only wonder what he might say on the subject in Italian.
Later in the press conference a Spanish journalist asked Marquez the question that everyone wanted asked, had he played with the field and intentionally helped Lorenzo? Marquez laughed and said, of course not. He pointed out that he hadn’t helped Lorenzo by passing him to take the victory. He said he had managed the tires as he managed the race, had tried to open a gap but it was not possible, and that he would only ever help his teammate. Otherwise he would try for the victory.
The issue seemed settled at least for the time being. But when speaking to the Italian press later Rossi expanded on his earlier statements. You can read Rossi’s remarks for yourself via that link (which goes to an English translation of his comment made in Italian). Some highlights are: “…the case is that [Marquez] isn’t playing fair (something that a professional rider has to do in these situations).”
“I feel disappointment, regret and worry, because surely [Marquez] will try to do it here and also in Valencia.”
“He is angry at me for a personal matter. Although he never said it, he thinks that in Argentina I made him crash; and then at Assen he is still thinking about the last chicane, in his head he feels he should have won that race. Since then he has been angry and thinking like a child: I do not win, but you do not win either. At this point, the lesser evil is for him is for Lorenzo to win.”
“…at Laguna Seca he wanted to do what I had done to Stoner five years before, when he could easily have passed three corners later. It was the first signal. And I said so, but I did not want to believe it. To think evil, it takes forever.”
If you have an opinion, you can either keep it to yourself or you can express it. If you’re going to express it, you choose to whom and when and where. Expressing a controversial opinion in a press conference and then to members of the Italian media is an act sure to cause things to happen. But what is Rossi trying to make happen?
Continues on the next page:First Premier Bank removes credit card with 59.9% APR
First Premier's 59.9% interest rate credit card no longer appears on the bank's website.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- First Premier Bank yanked its fee-laden 59.9% APR MasterCard from its credit card offerings.
If you go to the company's website, this message appears: "The credit card you have shown interest in is currently not available."
Customers calling First Premier's toll-free number to open an account are given this automated message: "The offer associated with this phone number is no longer available."
A First Premier spokeswoman said the card has been so popular that the bank has reached its issuing limit for the month.
"Due to the high demand for this credit card, we have reached our monthly volume requirements and are not currently offering this product," she said. "Individuals are being asked to consider another offer at this time or they can check back with us next month."
Taking the place of the 59.9% card is a secured credit card with a 19.9% APR. With secured cards, payments are reported to credit bureaus just like with credit cards, allowing consumers to build their credit. But customers have to deposit their own money into an account, so they are technically charging against their own cash. If they don't make payments, the bank keeps their money.
The 59.9% card, which had nearly 300,000 active customers as of early February, charged more than $100 in fees per year and typically extended a credit line of about $300.
The bank originally offered the credit card with an even higher rate of 79.9%. But the company found that too many consumers ran up their bill and then didn't pay, First Premier CEO Miles Beacom told CNNMoney last month.
Beacom said the card serves a growing need for customers with less than perfect credit.That's got to hurt! Man has scrotum TORN 'by girlfriend' during violent row
Victim left unable to walk - and may be left permanently wounded
Christina Reber, 43, who had been dating man, 57, for eight months, accused of carrying out the attack
Attack: Christina Reber, 43, is accused of grabbing hold of her former partner's scrotum
A man had his scrotum torn ‘by his on-off girlfriend’ during a row in his home, it was revealed today.
Christina Reber, 43, marched into her former partner’s home and grabbed hold of his genitalia and squeezed ‘as hard as she could’, it has been claimed.
The victim, 57, was left with a long and wide tear to his scrotum following the attack in Muncie, Indiana.
The man had ended their eight-month relationship just days before she allegedly carried out the attack, The Smoking Gun reported.
Reber, 43, was arrested on suspicion of several offences following the incident last Friday.
She was released from prison yesterday after providing a $10,000 bond.
She has been charged with two felonies - aggravated battery and illegally entering the property. She is also accused of domestic battery.
The traumatised victim has such bad swelling he is unable to walk and has been off work.
A police report said the wound is still bleeding – and doctors still do not know whether he will be permanently wounded.
According to a police report, Reber walked into the victim’s property unannounced and yelled at him to ‘call the f****** police’ before she attacked him.
Wounded: The victim, 57, was rushed to the nearby Ball Memorial Hospital in Indiana. He has been left unable to walk or work following the attack
The report by officer Nick Ramsey said: '(The victim) stated that after he grabbed Reber he felt her grab his scortum and begin squeezing as hard as she could.
'(He) stated that he was in incredible pain when Reber grabbed his scrotum and began digging in her fingers.
'(He) stated that Reber refused to let go of his scrotum and that both of them fell to the ground.'
It added that he was covered in blood - and part of his scrotum had been completely torn from his body.
The man was rushed to the nearby Ball Memorial Hospital following the attack.Free agency made a lot of NFL players rich over the last few weeks. But hitting the open market hasn't worked out for every big name.
Some very well known NFL players are still without jobs, and they won't see the big contracts that were routinely handed out the last two weeks. Here's a look at some notable names still looking for work:
1. Michael Crabtree, wide receiver: It wasn't so long ago that Crabtree put up 1,100 yards on a run-first offense, including two 100-yard games in the playoffs. Crabtree is only 27 years old, but he had the lower leg issues of a much older player last season. NFL Media's Albert Breer says coaches thought he "slowed down" and teams could be concerned about his attitude.
Crabtree visited the Dolphins last week, and it's possible that he's priced himself out of a market. Teams don't want a guy who sees himself as a No. 1 receiver when teams aren't sure if he'll start.
2. Jake Long, offensive tackle: The former No. 1 overall pick could return to St. Louis on a much smaller deal if his rehabilitation from knee surgery goes well. Retirement would not be a surprise.
3. Dwight Freeney, defensive end: Would a return to Indianapolis be so crazy? Freeney had 53 combined pressures on 372 snaps last season, according to Pro Football Focus, but the 35-year-old hasn't received interest yet. He could still help a team as a situational pass-rusher, especially on turf. Freeney doesn't want to start the clock on his Canton debate yet.
4 and 5. Wes Welker and Reggie Wayne, wide receiver: We group these two receivers together because they face similar challenges. Welker has to prove to teams that he's not a risk because of his concussions, and that he hasn't lost his quickness. A disastrous season in Denver last year could be his last. Wayne had no explosion late last year, and underwent triceps surgery after the season. He's open to playing for teams other than the Colts, but it would be a surprise if any team bit.
6. Rolando McClain, linebacker: Remember him? The Comeback Player of the Year candidate is getting no interest in free agency, including from the Cowboys. Jean Jacques-Taylor of ESPN Dallas wrote on Twitter that Cowboys fans shouldn't expect McClain to be back because he's a "high maintenance" player who faded down the stretch. Perhaps the Cowboys are just waiting for his price to come down.
7. Greg Jennings, wide receiver: He met with Carolina on Sunday, and could do worse than trying to be an upgrade for Jerricho Cotchery on the Panthers. Just two years from a big contract from Minnesota, Jennings will have to settle for battling for a role in 2015.
8. Stevan Ridley, running back: The Patriots draft pick isn't great on passing downs and is coming off a torn ACL. That explains why he hasn't found work yet, but he is a talented between-the-tackles runner who is worth a shot. The Cowboys and Vikings have reportedly showed some interest. Ridley has similar talent to Ryan Mathews at a fraction of the price.
9. Hakeem Nicks, wide receiver: Nicks battled for balls well at the end of last season, but he looks like an old player. It's a terrible sign for him that the Colts showed so little interest in keeping him. Once destined to be a top-10 NFL wide receiver, Nicks is dangerously close to sliding out of the league at age 27. He'll find a job, but a roster spot isn't guaranteed.
10 and 11. Lance Briggs and Charles Tillman: Briggs, 35, hasn't received a peep of interest on the free agent market. The Bears don't want him back and Briggs will have to settle for a low-cost, one-year deal elsewhere. Tillman, 34, is also hoping to keep his career going. Both veterans have a chance to latch on elsewhere because they played reasonably well when on the field in 2015.
12. Michael Vick, quarterback: The Falcons have shown up on Vick's Twitter avatar, but a return to Atlanta is not in the cards. Is a return to the NFL? The backup-quarterback jobs around the league are filling up, and there isn't a logical fit for Vick out there.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast makes some bold free agency predictions and discusses Adrian Peterson's future. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Story highlights "In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton," Bush wrote
Bush said Trump has "not demonstrated" the necessary "temperament or strength of character"
Washington (CNN) Jeb Bush said Friday that he will not vote for Donald Trump in November, joining a list of Republican Party luminaries who will not back the party's presumptive nominee.
"In November, I will not vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, but I will support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels, just as I have done my entire life," the former Florida governor wrote in a statement published on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. "For Republicans, there is no greater priority than ensuring we keep control of both chambers of Congress. I look forward to working hard for great conservatives in the Senate and House in the coming months."
Trump has "not demonstrated" the necessary "temperament or strength of character. He has not displayed a respect for the Constitution. And, he is not a consistent conservative. These are all reasons why I cannot support his candidacy," Bush said.
Trump responded to Bush at an afternoon rally in Omaha, Nebraska, saying, "No, I won't talk about Jeb Bush. I will not say, I will not say that he's 'low energy,'" Trump said, reviving his memorable nickname for the former Florida governor. "I will not say it. I will not say it."
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3.040, -3.070 No Yes Yes No law on herd shares Yes Yes By Milk Board policy, both on farm and off farm sales are permitted for raw milk to the end consumer. A producer may only sell at a farm stand or other limited retail type establishment if they comply with state requirements under the Retail Raw Milk Permit. This permit is still limited to farm-to-consumer sales (no grocery store, restaurants, etc.)
Montana MT Admin Rules Title 32, Ch. 8, Sub-Chapter 1; 32.8.102; 32.8.103 No No No No law on herd shares To be determined No Raw milk is banned for retail sale and cannot be legally purchased. Statute provides that no retail raw milk dairies will be licensed to sell Grade A raw milk for public consumption.
Nebraska Nebraska Revised Statutes Ch. 2, Art. 39 No Yes No No law on herd shares To be determined No Milk and cream produced by farmers exclusively for sale at the farm and sold directly to consumers for consumption and not for resale is exempt from the Nebraska Milk Act.
Nevada NV Admin Code Ch. 584: NAC 584.2031; NV Statutes Title 51, Ch. 584: NRS 584.205 & 207 Yes Yes Yes No law on herd shares To be determined Yes, per county milk commission. Raw milk sales are legal in Nevada, but only dairies that have been certified by a county milk commission and have otherwise met statutory requirements may obtain a license to sell raw milk. Only one county has a milk commission currently, and there are no dairies licensed to sell raw milk in that county.
New Hampshire NH Statutes Title XIV, Ch. 184: 184:30-a, 79, 84; Code of NH Rules Ch. He-P 2300, Pt. He-P 2303: He-P 2303.01 Yes Yes, if direct to consumer Yes, if direct to consumer, or served at a boarding house where signage clearly indicates that raw milk is served. No law on herd shares To be determined Yes, except for on-farm or farm market producers/sellers who sell less than an average of 20 quarts per day. Sales of raw milk or cream from the producer, store, or milk pasteurization plant to the final consumer or milk or cream from a producer to stores is allowed. It is also permitted to sell raw milk cheese aged a minimum of 60 days above 35 degrees F and labeled as unpasteurized. Also permitted are the direct sales of raw milk yogurt if clearly labeled.
New Jersey NJ Statutes Title 24, Subtitle 1, Ch. 10, Art. 6: 24:10-57.17 No No No No No N/a Statute clearly prohibits any sale or distribution of raw milk to ultimate consumers.
New Mexico NM Statutes Section 25-8-1; NM Regs. Title 21, Ch. 34, Pt. 2: 21.34.2.9, 2.12 NMAC Yes Yes Yes No law on herd shares Yes Yes, if producer/seller wants to use “Grade A” designation. Raw milk retail sales of “Grade A” designated milk and milk products are permitted, and the producer must obtain a state permit in order to advertise or label milk as “Grade A.” Raw milk offered for retail sale must be clearly labeled with a health risk warning, as provided in the statute. On-farm sale of raw milk is also allowed. State regulations require testing of all cows before production of milk and every 12 months thereafter. Milk must be bottled at the farm. Raw milk must be displayed separately from pasteurized milk products.
New York NY Codes, Rules & Regs. Title 1 Ch. 1 Subch. A Pt. 2: 1 NYCRR 2.3 No Yes, with a permit No Yes, with a permit Yes Yes Direct to consumer, on farm sales of raw milk are allowed if the producer/seller has obtained a state license and if milk is bottled in accordance with statutory requirements and appropriate signage is posted on the point of sale. Currently permits are only issued for sale of fluid raw milk. State law requires a permit for raw milk sellers or those who “otherwise make raw milk available for consumption by consumers.” Thus herd shares would appear to be included in license/permit requirements.
North Carolina NC Gen. Statutes Ch. 130A, Art. 8, Pt. 9: 130A-279; NC Admin Code Title 15A, Ch. 18, Subch. 18A, §1200: T15A-C18-S18A.1210; NCAC 09G.2010 No No No Yes Yes (see North Carolina General Statutes 130A-279) No All forms of distribution of raw milk for human consumption are prohibited. Herd shares are expressly permitted. Distribution for animal feed must be conducted in accordance with state and federal regulations.
North Dakota Currently: ND Statutes: Title 4.1, Ch. 4.1-25; Title 33, Art.33-33, Ch. 33-33-04: 33-33-04-12 No No No Yes, see ND Century Code Section 4.1-25-40 To be determined No Sale of raw milk is not permitted. Distribution by shared animal arrangement is expressly allowed by statute.
Ohio ORC Title IX, Ch. 917: §§917.02, 04, 09 No No No Yes To be determined No Raw milk sales are illegal in Ohio, but there is a grandfather provision for those engaged in the continuous sale of retail raw milk since 1965. There are no longer any raw milk producers meeting this criterion in Ohio. Herd share arrangements have been allowed pursuant to court ruling. Schmitmeyer v. Oh. Dept. of Agriculture, Darke County Ct. Comm. Pls. No. 06-CV-63277 (Dec. 29, 2006).
Oklahoma OK Statutes Title 2, Ch. 1, Art 7: §2-7-406; §2-7-414; 2-7-408; 2-7-403; §2-7-417 No Yes No No law on herd shares Yes No Incidental raw milk sales on the farm and direct to consumers are permitted without a license. Incidental sales are not defined for cow milk, but are defined for goat milk as no more than 100 gallons sold per month.
Oregon OR Statutes Title 49, Ch. 621: 621.012,.116,.003,.072,.076 Goat and sheep milk only. Yes No No law on herd shares Yes No to small herd, on-farm, direct-to-consumer milk sales. Yes to retail store sales of goat or sheep milk. On farm sales of raw cow, sheep, or goat milk are permitted, so long as the milk is bottled on premises and the producer maintains a limited group of producing animals on premises: not more than 3 cows, 9 sheep, or 9 goats, max. Raw goat or sheep cheese is permitted to be sold in retail stores if it has been aged for at least 60 days, and raw fluid goat and sheep milk may be sold in retail stores if the producer has obtained a license and the milk is bottled on premises.
Pennsylvania PA Statutes Title 31, Ch. 13: 31 P.S. §646; PA Code of Regs. Title 7, Pt. III, Subpt. B, Ch. 61, Subch. C: 7 Pa. Code §59.302,.773; §59a.401-416; 007 Pa. Code §7.24; §9.34 Yes Yes Yes No law on herd shares Yes, mentioned along with milk for human consumption, and milk must be from a tested, disease-free herd. Yes Retail sales of raw fluid milk and of cheese are allowed so long as the producer has obtained a state permit and the milk and cheese production conform to state sanitary standards. End consumers who purchase raw milk on the farm may use their own containers. Otherwise, containers for raw milk must be labeled in accordance with state requirements. Milk bottled for retail re-sale must be bottled and capped by mechanical means. The state may exempt producers with only one cow from the statutory requirements.
Rhode Island RI Regs. See 2001 Pasteurized Milk Ordinance; RI Gen. Laws: Title 21, Ch. 2: §21-2-2, et seq. No Yes, goat milk only with prescription Yes, goat milk only with prescription No law on herd shares To be determined Yes, with restrictions Sales of fluid raw milk and raw milk products (with the exception of licensed raw milk cheese) are generally illegal, except that a person may purchase raw goat milk pursuant to a physician’s prescription.
South Carolina SC Regs.Ch. 61: 61-34 §§ 1, 3, 9; 61-25 Ch. 1 Defs. P26 Yes Yes Yes No law on herd shares Yes Yes Raw milk sales are legal in retail establishments, so long as the producer/distributor has a state permit. Raw milk is subject to the same requirements and standards as pasteurized milk, including facilities inspection and herd testing.
South Dakota SD Admin Rules Title 12, Art. 12:05, Ch. 12:05:14: 12:05:14:01; SD Statutes Title 39, Ch. 39-6: 39-6-3; Title 40, Ch. 40-32: 40-32-2; 40-32-4 No Yes Yes, if by delivery from the farm on which the milk was produced No law on herd shares Yes Yes On farm and delivery direct from the farm sales are legal, if the producer has first completed an educational course and obtained a state license. Raw milk containers must be clearly labeled by the producer as raw milk. In addition, producer/sellers must maintain purchaser records for a minimum of 90 days.
Tennessee Tenn. Code Ann. 53-3-119; Attorney General opinion No. 12-04 (on butter and value added products) No No No Yes, by statute Yes No Direct sales are allowed for pet consumption only. Must be labeled as pet food. Herd shares are allowed by statute. Value added products are allowed along with the herd share.
Texas Texas Administrative Code: Title 25, Section 217.32 No Yes No No law on herd shares To be determined Yes Direct to consumer on-farm sales are legal, so long as producer/seller has a state permit and otherwise complies with state requirements for Grade A raw milk for retail sale.
Utah UT Statutes Title 4, Ch. 3: 4-3-14; UT Admin Rules R70-330: R70-330-5; UT Statute 4-3-9.5 Yes Yes Yes Yes, see Title 4 Utah Agricultural Code / Chapter 3 Utah Dairy Act Yes, but must be denatured/decharacterized in accordance with state regulations. Not for those producers who sell direct to consumer, on farm, and less than 120 gallons per month. Utah does allow sales in retail stores under certain circumstances as well as delivery off the farm by licensed dairies. Raw milk must be labeled as raw, in accordance with state established labeling standards. Raw cheese, processed under statutorily established conditions, may be sold in retail venues as well as on farm. All other raw milk products are specifically prohibited from sale, on or off farm.
Vermont VT Statutes Title 6, Pt. 6, Ch. 152, Subch. 1: 6V.S.A. §2672; Subch. 3, Art. 1: 6 V.S.A. §2721, §2723; §2775-2778 No Yes Yes, but only for delivery regarding prepaid advance sales. No law on herd shares Yes, but must be denatured/decharacterized in accordance with state regulations. No license required if producer sells no more than 25 quarts of milk per day Direct to consumer sales on farm are legal. Off-farm delivery of advance milk orders is also legal for larger volume/delivery (Tier II) producers. Vermont classifies raw milk producers into two tiers: Tier I for those who sell 12.5 gallons per day, and Tier II for those who sell more than 350 gallons each week or who deliver their product. Tier II producers are required to obtain and maintain a state license. All raw milk producers/sellers are required to maintain frozen daily samples of their milk for 2 weeks, are required to maintain a customer contact list and record of transactions, and must label their product. There is a 4 day permitted maximum time between milking and transfer of the milk to the purchaser.
Virginia 2 VAC 5-490-70 through 75 No No No No law on herd shares To be determined No Sale of raw milk and raw milk products are illegal in Virginia.
Washington Rev. Code of WA Title 15, Ch. 15.36: RCW 15.36.012,.041,.051,.231; Title 16, Ch. 16-101; Ch. 15.37: RCW 15.37.100; WA Admin Code Title 246, Ch. 246-215: WAC 246-215-020 Yes, for milk and cream and subject to labeling and signage requirements established by state law. Yes Yes, but statute provides that raw milk for off site consumption may be sold in retail stores only. Yes. See Washington
State Code — Title 15 — Chapter 15.36 — Section 15.36.012, “Definitions,”
— “NOTES, Findings—2006 c 157” Yes, and milk must be colored to denote use for animal consumption Yes, retail raw milk sellers must maintain both a State Milk Producer License and a Milk Processing Plant License. Raw milk and cream intended for off-site consumption are legal for sale in retail stores. Raw milk and raw milk products are also legal for sale in food service establishments. In the former case, the milk must be plainly labeled in accordance with state standards. In the latter case, the products must be conspicuously labeled and appropriate signage must be posted informing consumers of the raw dairy products. In general, raw milk for sale must meet bacteria counts established in the federal pasteurized milk ordinance. Dairy producers must be licensed and milk must be bottled on site in accordance with process and sanitary standards established by law. Raw milk sold for animal food must meet the same standards as that intended for human consumption and must be colored to distinguish it as intended for animal consumption.
West Virginia WV Code of State Rules Title 64, Series 34, §§64-34-2,3; Title 19, Series 1, §19-1-7 No No No Yes. Ch. 19. Agriculture, Art. 1. Department of Agriculture, §19-1-7. Shared animal ownership agreement to consume raw milk. No Not a license per se, but raw milk herd share producers must register with the state and the subject animals must pass health inspection by state veterinarian. Producers must agree to report “illnesses related to consumption of raw milk.” Sale of raw milk is illegal in the state. Herd shares are permitted but must be registered and shared herd animals must have tested negative for brucellosis and tuberculosis.
Wisconsin WI Statutes Ch. 97, 97.24; Ch. 551, Subch. II, 21.21,.22. See also opinion/ruling at summary PDF No Incidental only. “Incidental” is defined as not in the regular course of business. No No Yes, and milk must be colored to denote use for animal consumption No Retail sales of raw milk and raw milk products are prohibited, except for incidental sales of raw milk directly to consumers on the farm on which the milk is produced. In those cases, consumers may use their own containers for transporting the milk off site. Herd shares, as individual interests in the produce of cows (or presumably sheep and/or goats as well) are not allowed. However, dairy farmers may issue ownership interests in the form of shares in the underlying milk production business, so long as the sole purpose is not to distribute raw milk to consumers/shareholders. So long as the shareholder participates in the risk of the business venture, the dairy producer may sell raw milk to those shareholders, and such sales are considered exempt from state regulation and the general prohibition on raw milk sales.The expectation is that Liam Livingstone will play white-ball cricket for England this summer, probably as soon as next month. But with 168, the highest of his five first-class centuries, and second outstanding contribution in Lancashire’s match – he made 68 of 109 in the first innings – against Somerset, he became a very real contender for selection for July’s Tests against South Africa too.
Livingstone, captaining Lancashire at 23, is extremely highly regarded by England’s selectors after being the standout red-ball batsmen for the Lions this winter, making twin tons against Sri Lanka A in Dambulla in February.
The 245 he shared for Lancashire’s third wicket with the 22-year-old Alex Davies – who made 130, his second century this season – helped turn a first-innings deficit of 169 into a lead of 254 with three wickets in hand going into the final day, and a chance of winning the match. Livingstone, as if to hammer home that he has all the strokes, brought up his ton with a flamboyant six over long-on, but was solid in defence before falling to Jack Leach.
His was the third of four Lancashire wickets to fall – two in an over for Craig Overton and two for Leach – in quick succession, but Ryan McLaren and Stephen Parry shared an unbeaten 44 to provide Jimmy Anderson with a position of some strength going into the final day.
Liam Livingstone: ‘I have always had that confidence that I could make it’ Read more
As Yorkshire were made to follow-on at Hampshire – despite a century from captain Gary Ballance – Joe Root was dismissed cheaply for the second time in as many days. Ballance made 108, his ninth ton in 13 first-class matches as captain, but was the penultimate wicket to fall as Yorkshire were dismissed for 231, a deficit of 214. With the lunch interval following the final wicket, Reece Topley’s first for Hampshire, James Vince had no hesitation enforcing the follow-on.
Adam Lyth, caught behind off Gareth Berg, and Root, lbw to Kyle Abbott, were soon gone, however, and it was left to Alex Lees and Ballance to rebuild with a stand of 150. Abbott dismissed Lees late in the day, but Balance reached stumps on 78 (and top of the run charts this summer), with Yorkshire still 46 behind.
After surviving six overs on the third evening, Alastair Cook returns to Lord’s on Monday with a game to save for Essex against champions Middlesex, who earlier declined to enforce the follow-on, then were slow to declare. On a dull wicket, Middlesex did superbly to bowl Essex out for 295, including the last five wickets for 42, for a lead of 212. Steven Finn looked in fine fettle and took the final three wickets, including the superb Dan Lawrence (75), who had shared 127 with Adam Wheater.
Middlesex’s top three, Sam Robson, Nick Gubbins and Stevie Eskinazi, then hit rapid half-centuries to supplement their first innings tons before the declaration — which was particularly conservative with rain forecast on Monday afternoon – finally arrived. After a couple of sumptuous straight drives from Nick Browne, who was dropped at second slip, Essex require a nominal 433 more on the last day.
Cook’s former England team-mate Ian Bell has a similar job on his hands at Edgbaston, where he closed on 68 with Warwickshire 57 ahead with six wickets in hand against Surrey. Earlier, Kumar Sangakkara had made his second century this week, and 58th in first-class cricket, as Surrey gained a first-innings lead of 105. Jade Dernbach took two wickets as Warwickshire reached stumps 162 for four, at least ensuring that they will not lose all of their first three matches by an innings.
Forty, so the saying goes, is not that old if you’re a tree. It’s also not that old if you’re a Division Two all-rounder, as Paul Collingwood and Darren Stevens are determined to prove. Stevens, seven days shy of his 41st birthday, made it four half-centuries and 22 wickets for the season – and, most important three wins for second-placed Kent – by scoring 90 and taking three for 63 as Derbyshire (three points to Kent’s 21) were seen off by 169 runs at Canterbury. Adam Rouse had been left stranded five shy of a maiden first-class century in Kent’s second innings, while the on-loan Middlesex seamer took four wickets in Derbyshire’s chase, including Gary Wilson, ninth man out for 97.
Meanwhile Collingwood, 41 next month, was last man out for 93 in Durham’s 419, a lead of 116 over Gloucestershire, who had turned that to a lead of 59, three wickets down, by the close.
Leicestershire head into the final day in control against Glamorgan, who are also winless. Colin Ingram’s 137 helped Glamorgan to a six-run first innings lead, but captain Ned Eckersley (unbeaten on 70) guided Leicestershire to the close 200 for three.Takara Tomy has found the best way to suck the cash from our wallets save for some kind of reverse-ATM tractor beam. First teased earlier in the year, you can finally pre-order the toymaker's homage to robots and classic gaming consoles with these updated Optimus Prime and Megatron figures that transform into the original Sony Playstation and the Sega Genesis respectively.
Both are available for pre-order from the BigBadToyStore for $120 each, and while the Megatron variant is expected to be available sometime this month (which is pretty optimistic at this point) the Optimus Prime figure won't ship until February of next year, which is probably a far more accurate—and agonizing—ETA. [Takara Tomy via The Awesomer]
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Toyland: We love toys. Join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.The Progressive Conservatives have held on to the riding of Whitby-Oshawa, successfully fending off a strong challenge from the governing Liberals, including a late-campaign boost by the prime minister.
With all 76 polls reporting, MPP-elect Lorne Coe had more than 52 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Liberal candidate Elizabeth Roy at just over 27 per cent support.
NDP candidate Niki Lundquist trailed with just over 16 per cent support, while Green Party candidate Stacey Leadbetter garnered a little less than 2 per cent of the vote.
The PCs held on to a riding that had been a family dynasty until Christine Elliott resigned the seat last summer after losing her party's leadership race to Patrick Brown.
Elliott had held the riding since 2006. Prior to that, her late husband, Jim Flaherty, was the area's MPP for 10 years.
Brown declared Coe's victory "a sign of things to come across the province."
"Congratulations to our newest member of the PC caucus, MPP Lorne Coe," Brown told supporters at Coe's victory party Thursday night.
"It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"
Brown couldn't resist getting in a dig at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who brought his "sunny ways" governing mantra to the riding earlier this week when he attended a campaign rally for Roy alongside Premier Kathleen Wynne.
"It's nice to see that sunny ways have come with blue skies here in Whitby-Oshawa," Brown said.
He added that he could think of no better candidate to fill Flaherty's and Elliott's shoes.
"Lorne has lived and breathed Whitby-Oshawa for 30 years," Brown said. Coe served on local council for 13 years.
Coe said his easy victory makes clear that "residents in Whitby-Oshawa are demanding a higher standard of governance than we've witnessed for the past decade."
Coe will take his seat at Queen's Park when the legislature resumes on Tuesday, after the Family Day holiday.
'Tonight is not a loss'
After it was clear Coe had won, Roy thanked supporters, saying that "tonight is not a loss. Tonight is an opportunity for us to move forward."
Even though Roy finished well behind Coe, the premier said Thursday that she hopes Roy will remain "part of our family for a long time."
While more than 111,000 voters were registered to cast a ballot in the byelection, voter turnout was just over 28 per cent, according to Elections Ontario.
Earlier Thursday, the agency said turnout in advance polls was up slightly from the 2014 general election. Preliminary figures indicated that 6,861 voters cast their ballot in an advance poll, compared to 6,613 in Whitby-Oshawa in 2014.
Meanwhile, Elections Ontario's pilot project to test electronic voting machines seems to have gone off smoothly. Forty-two of the riding's 76 polls used electronic voting machines Thursday. In addition to the voting machines, a scanning machine was used to electronically check off names from the voting list.Tom Rockliff fears footy is becoming too soft
Honestly I'm not one to make stuff up or lie … that's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard Tom Rockliff Tom Rockliff
BRISBANE Lions midfielder Tom Rockliff fears the AFL will become a'soft' competition if players are not allowed to push in a contest.
His comments come after Collingwood defender Ben Reid was penalised for shoving Essendon's Tom Bellchambers in the side during a marking contest on Anzac Day.
AFL umpires chief Jeff Gieschen has since declared the decision was correct, as players were not permitted to "push, bump, block or hold in a marking or ruck contest".
Gieschen told AFL.com.au not only a push in the back should be be penalised.
"You can't push in the side, you can't push in the chest, you can't push in any part of their body in a marking contest," he said on Monday.
His comments have concerned Rockliff, who told SEN Radio on Tuesday he was unaware of the rule.
"That's the first time I've ever heard that, and honestly I'm not one to make stuff up or lie," he said.
"That's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard."
Rockliff thought the Reid penalty was incorrect at the time.
"I thought that was just a show of strength.
"He stood tall in the contest, took the mark, and if you take that away from our game it's going to become a very soft game, and unfortunately that's not going to be the best thing for the AFL.
"If you take away a show of strength, I'm not sure what they expect, how you're supposed to win a contest.
"Otherwise we'll just have 22 athletes running around there, and we might as well not be playing with an AFL footy, and make it non-contact."
The midfielder also believed the new contact below the knees rule needed tinkering.
"I think the rule does warrant it, and you don't want to see blokes slide in and taking blokes legs out, because you do get the serious injuries, but there's got to be commonsense," Rockliff said.
"That's probably the hardest thing for the umpires at the moment, and I do feel sorry for them that they've been told to pay free kicks for the sliding intention, but it's got to be the force on them.
"If someone's leading with their heads first to win the footy and they've got their heads over it and they make contact with someone's legs, then commonsense has got to prevail.
"I think the ones we've got to get out of the game are where they're running from 20m and they're sliding nearly legs first or going to take someone's legs out. They're the really dangerous ones."
His comments have garnered support from Richmond defender Steven Morris, who tweeted, " I think players & fans would agree with a lot of what was said".Are you ready to explore over 100,000 digital comics, graphic novels and manga from Marvel, DC, Image, and more? By downloading the comiXology app, you can buy books in-app and get instant access to all your titles on all your devices.
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If you need additional help, please reach out to support@comixology.com.An armed man was killed by police after taking hostages inside a cinema complex in Viernheim, western Germany, local officials confirmed, adding that no one was hurt in the incident. Previous reports said the man had fired a gun, injuring up to 50 people.
#viernheim shooting: Suspected German gunman shot dead by police at cinema complex Видео опубликовано RT (@rt) Июн 23 2016 в 9:17 PDT
The interior minister of the German state of Hesse, Peter Beuth, confirmed that the man was shot and killed after police stormed the complex.
The man reportedly entered the Kinopolis cinema wearing a mask and a cartridge belt around his shoulder.
READ MORE: Suicide belt, grenade found near German cinema complex attacker - Bild
Beuth said the man was armed with a rifle.
"The police had an emergency call at 2:45pm (12:45 GMT). The caller said there was a masked man...armed with a long gun. It is unclear whether it was a real gun," Beuth told the Hesse parliament.
"The caller heard four shots and said that the masked man appeared a little mentally unstable. Police special forces were called."
Police arrived at the scene shortly after the initial reports, including a number of officers from the SEC special task force. The area was cordoned off by authorities.
Initial reports stated that the man had fired shots at people inside the building, and that between 20 and 50 people had been injured.
#Breaking Unconfirmed Reports suggest 40 people are being held hostage #viernheimpic.twitter.com/JDrniMzTPi — News This Second (@NewsThisSecond) June 23, 2016
The man then reportedly barricaded himself inside the premises.
Reports suggest 25-50 injured in Germany cinema attack. No confirmation yet #viernheimpic.twitter.com/FMP7kYlLVs — News This Second (@NewsThisSecond) June 23, 2016
However, Focus later reported that the man was armed with a blank weapon, and that people were only hurt by tear gas.
#BREAKING: Masked gunman opwned fire and took hostages in a cinema in #Viernheim#Germany. 25 people injured pic.twitter.com/5VXrteCJuT — Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) June 23, 2016
Police confirmed to Germany's N-TV channel that the man appeared to have no terror background. Beuth referred to the man as a "disturbed individual."
Dr. Paul Lashmar from Sussex University told RT that the whole incident in Viernheim looks “random.”
It’s now important to figure out if the perpetrator’s actions were a manifestation of mental illness or a terrorist attack, he said.
The rapid reaction of the German security force indicates that country is prepared for dealing with such attacks, Lashmar stressed.
“Germany has been on alert for years. The whole of Central Europe is on high alert, watching for this kind of things – very hard to deal with when they pop up. This isn’t a major city… so that fact that the police managed to get armed people there fairly quickly must be a bit of a tribute to them,” he explained.Ryan Reese, a U.S. Air Force veteran, helped to establish a marijuana cultivation facility in Phoenix over the past year and recently worked as its CEO. Reese retired as a mechanic from Beale Air Force Base and uses marijuana to treat chronic pain.
PHOENIX — Inside his large corner office at the marijuana cultivation facility, U.S. Air Force veteran Ryan Reese kept a model U-2 on his desk and a copy of Time magazine – a special edition about the booming business of pot.
In the past two years, Reese has traded one world for the other.
The 38-year-old father of three retired as a flight chief from Beale Air Force Base in August 2015. His 18-year military service included time in Afghanistan and working as a mechanic on U-2s, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
By the time he left the military, his list of ailments was long. He had work done on both knees and one shoulder, and he had back pain. He’d be on a rotation of prescription opiates for about five years. The drugs, and a loss of purpose he felt after exiting the military, led to anxiety and hyper-aggression.
Before he considered marijuana as a treatment option, he had stopped going to doctors altogether. Then, he stopped going anywhere.
“I was a recluse,” Reese said. “I wouldn’t go to the grocery store, birthday parties. I said, ‘I need help.’ That was the hardest thing. Being in the military so long, it was all about resiliency.”
He went through an in-patient program for opioid abuse and talked to mental health care providers. In Arizona, where medical marijuana has been legal since 2010, Reese had another choice. He uses high-CBD, low-THC oil a couple of times each week. THC is the compound that gets users high. High-CBD weed is used mostly by those seeking pain relief.
He’s working to share the choice with others – especially veterans.
Opioid addiction is driving accidental deaths due to overdose in the United States, and overdoses are at an all-time high, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. VA data from 2014 shows veterans are twice as likely to die from an accidental overdose than non-veterans.
Reese said he’s witnessed the problem in the veterans community in Phoenix, home of Luke Air Force Base. Last month, he was attempting to find and intervene with a military buddy he knew had taken opioids and become addicted to heroin.
“We chose to serve; give us the choice to medicate with marijuana,” Reese said. “I think that veterans, given the current state of affairs, deserve a choice.”
For the past year, Reese has helped establish a cultivation facility in Phoenix, where last month roomfuls of marijuana grew behind doors secured with biometric fingerprint readers. Plant scientists in blue scrubs went up and down the hallways, checking on the plants that were in various stages of growth – from seedlings to those about |
,” Roberts continues. “He was particularly fond of her, so much so that the other girls got jealous of my mother, and Charlie bought her a bus ticket to go home.
“Some of his letters seem to suggest that he knew she was pregnant, and that may have been another reason for sending her back.”
Roberts learned the truth in stages. Initially he found out his mother had named him Lawrence Alexander, but that she could only tell him his real surname in person, for security reasons. The story slowly became darker.
“She said that I was the product of a rape — I was conceived in a drug induced sex orgy with multiple people involved, and that she was raped. Later she recanted, and said that she might have confused male aggression for male vigour, or male vigour for male aggression.
“She said she was part of a very infamous hippie group in the ‘60s that involved Charles Manson. I asked if he was at that orgy and she said, ‘Yes’, and I asked, ‘Did you have sex with him?’ and she said ‘I don’t know’.
“Well, when I looked in the mirror, I looked like his twin.”
Whenever Roberts brought up Manson with his mother, she got angry and shut down any further conversation. Seeking more concrete answers, he contacted Manson.
“I wrote letters to him in 2001 and asked if he remembered my mother, and the events surrounding my conception and he wrote back immediately — like two weeks later, I got a letter from him and another one right away, and he remembered my mother and told me details that he seemingly could not have known had he not at least been there at that time: Details about her father — my grandfather — chasing him away, calling him ‘bad biker trash outlaw bandit’ — all of which was consistent with what my mother told me.”
In fact, it was Roberts’ grandfather scaring Manson off that saved her from a worse fate, especially considering how her fragile mental state might have made her susceptible to influence. “She was able to avoid all of the murder and mayhem, as she was not around for all of that.”
While Manson was not present during the infamous Manson Family murders of 1969, in which seven people were brutally killed, he was found guilty of directing members of his cult to commit the acts. As a consequence, he was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder by a Californian court.
Despite corresponding via post over the past 15 years, Roberts has never met his father, and admits he doesn’t have much of a relationship him. As may be expected for the son of one of the 20th Century’s most infamous figures, safety is an issue.
“At one point I asked him if I could come visit, and he was suggesting that bad people were intercepting my mail — murderers and rapists — that were threatening to do me harm once they got out of jail and he suggested that these people were not people I would want knowing who I was. So this, mind you, was Charles Manson telling me that these were bad people wishing to do me harm so I took it to heart and chose not to go visit him.
“One letter he wrote, ‘I hope you weren’t in St. Louis recently because there was a little black girl who was cut up into pieces and put into a brown suitcase and they’re already calling you Suitcase Alexander [his given surname from his birth mother] because they want to get you accused of the crime to get you in jail.”
Despite their mail correspondence, Roberts is under no illusions regarding their bond.
“Some of his letters are very heartfelt and kind of fatherly advice, and then others he gets mad at me like when he got upset about the lyrics of my song that reads, ‘What would you do if you found out Charlie Manson raped your mum?’”
This was prior to his mother recanting this, and now Roberts realises the full impact of his public claim.
“They don’t treat people in prison very well who are accused of rape, so I regret any problems that might have caused him. He also got upset when I called his girlfriend Star [Afton Elaine Burton] an opportunistic pariah, even though I was just kind of joking — but it became a headline and went viral."
Not surprisingly, being the son of Charles Manson isn’t really a door-opener when it comes to pursuing a life in music, Roberts’ chosen profession. Despite this, Roberts has enjoyed a successful career, with his music published in 52 countries. Still, there are those who think he is attempting to use his father’s infamy to further his own agenda.
“I get a lot of flack from people saying I’m trying to ride on some kind of legacy or trying to build a career”, he admits. “It has done nothing to advance my career; if anything it has ruined it.
“From the age 29 until this very day — I am now 48 — I live in chaos and uncertainty, and frankly it sucks. I think it is the worst possible outcome.”
There are also many who doubt that he is Manson’s son, despite both parents acknowledging this to be so — and the uncanny resemblance. Despite the trouble his lineage has caused him, the alternative would be much worse.
“It seems to me to be much more troubling a thought [if I were] to find out it’s not true, because then I have to wonder how it was that I got led down this path in the first place. I’m a proud double-Aries alpha-male and I’m not happy at the thought of being a sucker. I’m certainly not trying to be anyone’s follower.
“It’s all very surreal to me; it’s like a Hollywood movie. I haven’t really personalised it much, or allowed myself to have an emotional connection to it... any of it.”
“It has been good, bad and ugly — but never boring.”One of Bahrain’s most prominent human rights activists has been released from prison after two years. Nabeel Rajab spoke exclusively to RT about his experiences, saying he was “held in dire conditions and subjected to abuse.”
It has been a long two years for Nabeel Rajab, who lived in virtual solitary confinement for most of his time in prison, for simply speaking out about the government’s brutal crackdown on protesters who were merely wanting to make their voices heard.
“I was kept separate in a separate building for two years, just to make sure that I do not connect with the other prisoners,” Rajab said, who helped to found the Bahrain Center for Human Rights in 2002.
“There were very few people who were with me in that separate building. They were people who did not speak my language or people who were charged with criminal charges, which was completely different from what I was charged with.”
He added that he was forbidden from discussing anything political or about the human rights situation in Bahrain, including with his family by telephone. Even after his release, the authorities were still worried that the human rights activist could prove to be a threat.
“I am not aware about what is happening on the outside and that is why I am not speaking much since I came outside. After two years, I have written a lot of things whilst being in jail, but even these were taken away from me at the last moment before I came out,” Rajab said.
Happy to be out and thanks for your support - pls continue supporting our struggle for freedom, justice and human rights #Bahrain#Saudi — Nabeel Rajab (@NABEELRAJAB) May 24, 2014
Despite his harrowing experience behind bars, Rajab, who lost a number of close relatives, including an aunt and uncle during his time in prison. However, his biggest bereavement was the passing away of his mother. He was allowed out of jail for three days to bury his mother, but after just one day, he was ordered back to jail and was not allowed to attend a condolence gathering.
Bahraini authorities claimed that Rajab was not allowed to stay out of prison longer because he had violated the terms of his release and "delivered a speech inciting mourners to stage illegal protests.” However Rajab argued that his speech was a "peaceful expression of opinion." However, despite huge personal setbacks and turmoil, he has no intention of giving up his struggle to make Bahrain a more democratic country.
“I know this is the cost of the struggle in this part of the world and I am planning to continue my struggle, no matter how much is the cost, knowing that all the countries have freedom and democracy today. Maybe some people have to pay this cost in order to achieve democracy and human rights and I am one of many people in this country who is willing to pay this cost for my nation and my second generation to have democracy, justice and human rights,” the 49-year-old stated.
Rajab was able to carry out his human rights work in Bahrain largely untroubled for nine years after setting up the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. However, following the uprising in the Gulf state in 2011, he started to speak out against the regime and the brutal crackdown on protestors.
In the spring of 2012, he was arrested after appearing on Julian Assange's show that was aired here on RT. In August later that year, Rajab was sentenced to three-year's in prison for organizing and participating in gatherings, that authorities say were aimed at overthrowing the Monarchy.
On the whole Rajab says he was treated well physically and was only tortured on one occasion. Mentally he found things much tougher, being placed in solitary confinement almost naked alongside a dead animal. Despite his horrors, he says others were even more unfortunate.
“I have witnessed other people being tortured in front of my eyes. I have seen people being tortured by the police and I made a lot of noise while I was there. I sent a complaint to the United Nations and they finally told me that they are looking into those accusations,” the human rights activist added.
He believes that the plight of political prisoners in Bahrain has received little to no interest in the west and he implores that more should be done.
“We have been ignored by the international community because Bahrain is with the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, which has a lot of influence in the west,” Rajab said.
He believes greater democracy and freedoms are a long way off, as the ruling family has no desire to change the current situation, while they are not willing to engage in a proper and credible dialogue with the opposition. This he says will only inflame an already volatile situation.
“When I was sent to jail, there was no violence. I tweeted that I have said to the government that if you take peaceful people like me, who advocate peaceful gatherings and put them in jail, then you will face people who commit violence. All human rights activists in Bahrain are behind bars and this is why you see such violence.”
After his release on Saturday, he was welcomed by hundreds of supporters and paid a visit to his mother's grave. However, he says that the support that he receives is a decisive factor in helping him to keep up the struggle to make Bahrain a more democratic country.
“All the aims which I am holding and the values that I am fighting for, it keeps me going, knowing that a lot of people are waiting for me, a lot of people need me to be out, need me to be focused and strong. I will be there for my people.”Analysis
Professedly, there is nothing all too overly special about Carrie; she is the "punk rock" made for the purpose of being a stoic and somewhat of a contrast to the colorful and creative world of Gumball by being "grim". Although, her being a natural-born ghost is not helping in that matter. There's nothing inherently wrong with this archetype. More often than not, characters that fall into this category prove to be quite popular, especially when the writers play up the darker edge.
Carrie is one of the show's more popular supporting characters, and there is no doubt her ghastly nature has something to do with it. However, Carrie separates herself from other "dark stoics" by having a softer, more vulnerable side. Most works of fiction will have their stoics be overly dark and foreboding to the point that in itself is the joke: they're way too "dark" and dare I say, "edgy", for the universe they reside in. Carrie's gentler traits is where the show can draw a good portion of both the comedy and the stories involving the character; the fact that such a supposedly apathetic character is actually one of the gentler characters on the show is amusing. Carrie's personality is basically an oxymoron.
A shining example of this unique oxymoron is Carrie's scene in "The Pony". The episode enforces that A Pony's Tail is nothing more than overly saccharine mush that even the most desperate of children (namely Anais) will find no pleasure in. All of the characters that come into contact with the film are disgusted with its contents; all except Carrie, oddly enough. For a character that the show was trying to portray as "hardcore", it comes across as a refreshingly amusing surprise. Having one of the series's most stoic characters moved to tears by a stereotypical "kiddy" movie is hilarious because it's such a drastic departure from the archetype she is supposed to play.
Carrie's soft side is not strictly limited to comedy. As of late, this facet of Carrie's personality has been used to drive stories and make her one of the more dynamic characters. This is especially evident in her interactions with the Watterson brothers in fan favorites "The Scam" and "The Matchmaker".
"The Scam" employs an interesting use of Carrie's personality. Carrie can be seen as a foil to Gumball of sorts in the episode: Carrie's selfless stoic to Gumball's selfish vigor. This relationship between the two becomes more pronounced during the climax. Where as Carrie drops her aloofness in favor of dealing with Gargaroth, Gumball becomes more apathetic to his friends' peril, being more focused on his sugary delicacy. Where as most shows would have the stoic be the stubborn one, conflicting feelings and all, this show utilizes Carrie's peculiar personality to create a role reversal. Having such a serious character be so open about her feelings with little hesitation makes her all the more fascinating, and it bounces off of Gumball's fun-loving but more selfishly hesitating character quite nicely.
"The Matchmaker" is arguably the most dynamic Carrie has ever been because of emotional and vulnerable her character is. Because the episode has Darwin temporarily get together with Teri, Carrie is put through an agonizing experience in which she is forced to overcome her jealousy for the sake of showing some maturity. It's not very often characters such as Carrie are put through such character growth. Grim and serious stoics tend to be the most static characters among the cast, especially in comedy-focused works. "The Matchmaker", however, puts a dent in that notion. Carrie is a dynamic stoic, a breath of fresh air among most characters in the same category.
Carrie is a unique take on the apathetic archetype; sure, she still has her moments of being the typical dark and apathetic character, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, Carrie stands out best when she presents herself as an oxymoron: an emotional stoic.
Closing Notes
I said I was going to get to Carrie eventually, and I did. That leaves me with another character I need to tackle soon enough.
Don't have much else to say at the moment. Bye.
You can look at my other stuff if you choose so.Banksy, the elusive British street artist, pulled off another fantastic stunt over the weekend, selling pieces of his spray artwork — which typically fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction — from a Central Park vendor stall for $60 apiece.
“Yesterday I set up a stall in the park selling 100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases," the artist wrote on his website Sunday. "For $60 each."
Just three people took advantage of the one-day sale, with passersby assuming the works were knockoffs.
In a video documenting the pop-up shop, the first buyer, a woman, successfully haggles with the vendor — an old man apparently hired by Banksy — who sells her two canvases for half-price.
Another buyer, a man from Chicago, explained, "I just need something for the walls." He bought four paintings for $240.
Total sales for the day: $420. (The Sydney Morning Herald estimated the artwork was worth 233,200 to 339,200 Australian dollars ($221,000 to $322,000.)
"Please note: This was a one off," Banksy added. "That stall will not be there again today."
Banksy has been causing quite a stir in New York during his monthlong residency, with his spray artwork and installations popping up throughout the city unannounced.
One — a slaughterhouse delivery truck dubbed "The Sirens of the Lambs" — was seen driving through the Meatpacking District carrying stuffed animals.
Last week, several news outlets, including the Daily News, reported that Banksy may have been inadvertently photographed near one of his installations: a mobile waterfall constructed in the the back of a different truck.Syria has a turbulent economic history. In 1963, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party came to power, and instituted socialist policies of nationalization and land reform.[9] In 1970, General Hafiz al-Assad took power. Socialism morphed into state capitalism. The restrictions on private enterprise were relaxed, but a substantial part of the economy was still under government control. By the 1980s, Syria found itself politically and economically isolated, and in the midst of a deep economic crisis.[10] Real per capita GDP fell 22 percent between 1982 and 1989.[11] In 1990, the Assad government instituted a series of economic reforms, although the economy remained highly regulated.[12] The Syrian economy experienced strong growth throughout the 1990s, and into the 2000s.[11] Syria's per capita GDP was 4,058 US dollars in 2010.[13] There is no authoritative GDP data available after 2012, due to Syria's civil war.[12]
Before the civil war the two main pillars of the Syrian economy were agriculture and oil, which together accounted for about one-half of GDP. Agriculture, for instance, accounted for about 26% of GDP and employed 25% of the total labor force.[14] However, poor climatic conditions and severe drought badly affected the agricultural sector, thus reducing its share in the economy to about 17% of 2008 GDP, down from 20.4% in 2007, according to preliminary data from the Central Bureau of Statistics. On the other hand, higher crude oil prices countered declining oil production and led to higher budgetary and export receipts.[15]
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Syrian economy has been hit by massive economic sanctions restricting trade with the Arab League,[16] Australia,[17] Canada,[18] the European Union,[19] (as well as the European countries of Albania,[20] Iceland,[20] Liechtenstein,[20] Moldova,[20] Montenegro,[20] North Macedonia,[20] Norway,[21] Serbia,[20] and Switzerland)[22] Georgia,[20] Japan,[23] South Korea,[24] Taiwan,[25] Turkey,[26] and the United States.[27]
The sanctions, destruction and dislocation associated with the Civil War have devastated Syria's economy. By the end of 2013, the UN estimated total economic damage of the Syrian civil war at $143 billion.[28] The total economic loss from the Syrian Civil War will reach $237 billion by the end of 2015, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, with the Syrian opposition's capture of Nasib border crossing costing the government a further $500–$700 million a year on top of this.[29] In 2018, the World Bank estimated that about one-third of Syria's housing stock and one half of its health and education facilities had been destroyed by the conflict. According to the World Bank, a cumulative total of $226 billion in GDP was lost due to the conflict from 2011 to 2016.[30]
The Syrian economy suffered from conflict-related hyperinflation. The Syrian annual inflation rate is one of the highest in the world.[31][32]
Basic information [ edit ]
During the 1960s, along socialist lines, the government nationalized most major enterprises and adopted economic policies designed to address regional and class disparities.[10] Economic reform has been incremental and gradual. In 2001, Syria legalized private banking. In 2004, four private banks began operations. In August 2004, a committee was formed to supervise the establishment of a stock market. Beyond the financial sector, the Syrian Government has enacted major changes to rental and tax laws, and is reportedly considering similar changes to the commercial code and to other laws, which impact property rights.[citation needed] (Ohachq) Syria has produced heavy-grade oil from fields inside in the northeast since the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, light-grade, low-sulphur oil was discovered near Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria. This discovery relieved Syria of the need to import light oil to mix with domestic heavy crude in refineries. Recently,[when?] Syrian oil production has been about 379,000 barrels per day (bpd).[citation needed] Syria's oil reserves are being gradually depleted and reached 2.5 billion barrels in January 2009.[citation needed] Experts[who?] generally agree that Syria will become a net importer of petroleum by the end of the next decade.[citation needed] Recent developments have helped revitalize the energy sector, including new discoveries and the successful development of its hydrocarbon reserves. According to the 2009 Syria Report of the Oxford Business Group, the oil sector accounted for 23% of government revenues, 20% of exports, and 22% of GDP in 2008. Syria exported roughly 150,000 bpd in 2008, and oil accounted for a majority of the country's export income.[15]
Ad hoc economic liberalization continues to add wealth inequality, impoverishing the average population while enriching a few people in Syria's private sector.[citation needed] In 1990, the government established an official parallel exchange rate to provide incentives for remittances and exports through official channels. This action improved the supply of basic commodities and contained inflation by removing risk premiums on smuggled commodities.[citation needed]
Foreign aid to Syria in 1997 totaled an estimated US$199 million. The World Bank reported that in July 2004 that it had committed a total of US$661 million for 20 operations in Syria. One investment project remained active at that time.
Year Gross Domestic Product US Dollar Exchange Inflation Index
(2000=100) Per Capita Income
(as % of USA) Population 1980 78,270 3.94 Syrian Pounds 8.10 12.17 8,971,343 1985 146,225 3.92 Syrian Pounds 14 11.64 10,815,289 1990 268,328 28.80 Syrian Pounds 57 4.37 12,720,920 1995 570,975 35.30 Syrian Pounds 98 4.18 14,610,348 2000 903,944 49.68 Syrian Pounds 100 3.49 16,510,861 2005 1,677,417 56.09 Syrian Pounds 122 3.70 19,121,454 2010 59,633,000 47.00 Syrian Pounds 21,092,262
External trade and investment [ edit ]
Pre-civil war Syria Export Treemap Syria Export Treemap by Product (2014) from Harvard Atlas of Economic Complexity
Syrian exports in 2006
Despite the mitigation of the severe drought that plagued the region in the late 1990s and the recovery of energy export revenues, Syria's economy faces serious challenges. With almost 60% of its population under the age of 20, unemployment higher than the current 9% is a real possibility unless sustained and strong economic growth takes off.[citation needed]
Commerce has always been important to the Syrian economy, which benefited from the country's strategic location along major east-west trade routes. Syrian cities boast both traditional industries such as weaving and dried-fruit packing and modern heavy industry. Given the policies adopted from the 1960s through the late 1980s, Syria refused to join the "global economy". In late 2001, however, Syria submitted a request to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to begin the accession process. Syria had been an original contracting party of the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade but withdrew in 1951 because of Israel's joining. Major elements of current Syrian trade rules would have to change in order to be consistent with the WTO. In March 2007, Syria signed an Association Agreement with the European Union that would encourage both sides to negotiate a free trade agreement before 2010.
The bulk of Syrian imports have been raw materials essential for industry, agriculture, equipment, and machinery. Major exports include crude oil, refined products, raw cotton, clothing, fruits, and cereal grains.
Over time, the government has increased the number of transactions to which the more favorable neighboring country exchange rate applies. The government also introduced a quasi-rate for non-commercial transactions in 2001 broadly in line with prevailing black market rates.
Given the poor development of its own capital markets and Syria's lack of access to international money and capital markets, monetary policy remains captive to the need to cover the fiscal deficit. Although in 2003 Syria lowered interest rates for the first time in 22 years and again in 2004, rates remain fixed by law.
Foreign debt [ edit ]
Syria has made progress in easing its heavy foreign debt burden through bilateral rescheduling deals with virtually all of its key creditors in Europe. In December 2004, Syria and Poland reached an agreement by which Syria would pay $27 million out of the total $261.7 million debt. In January 2005, Russia and Syria signed a deal that wrote off nearly 80% of Syria's debt to Russia, approximately €10.5 billion ($13 billion). The agreement left Syria with less than €3 billion (just over $3.6 billion) owed to Moscow. Half of it would be repaid over the next 10 years, while the rest would be paid into Russian accounts in Syrian banks and could be used for Russian investment projects in Syria and for buying Syrian products. This agreement was part of a weapons deal between Russia and Syria. And later that year Syria reached an agreement with Slovakia, and the Czech Republic to settle debt estimated at $1.6 billion. Again Syria was forgiven the bulk of its debt, in exchange for a one time payment of $150 million.
Sectors of the economy [ edit ]
Agriculture [ edit ]
Agriculture is a high priority in Syria's economic development plans, as the government seeks to achieve food self-sufficiency, increase export earnings, and halt rural out-migration.[33] Thanks to sustained capital investment, infrastructure development, subsidies of inputs, and price supports, Syria has gone from a net importer of many agricultural products to an exporter of cotton, fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs. One of the prime reasons for this turnaround has been the government's investment in huge irrigation systems in northern and northeastern Syria.[34] The agriculture sector, as of 2009, employs about 17% of the labor force and generates about 21% of the gross domestic product,[35][36] of which livestock accounted for 16% and fruit and grains for more than 40%.[33]
In 2015, Syria's main exports included spice seeds ($83.2 million), apples and pears ($53.2 million).[37]
Most land is privately owned, a crucial factor behind the sector's success.[33] Of Syria's 196,000 km² (72,000 square miles),[34] about 28% of it is cultivated, and 21% of that total is irrigated. Most irrigated land is designated "strategic", meaning that it encounters significant state intervention in terms of pricing, subsidies, and marketing controls. "Strategic" products such as wheat, barley, and sugar beets, must be sold to state marketing boards at fixed prices, often above world prices in order to support farmers, but at a significant cost to the state budget. The most widely grown arable crop is wheat, but the most important cash crop is cotton; cotton was the largest single export before the development of the oil sector. Nevertheless, the total area planted with cotton has declined because of an increasing problem of water shortage coupled with old and inefficient irrigation techniques. The output of grains like wheat is often underutilized because of poor storage facilities.[33]
Water and energy are among the most pervasive issues facing the agriculture sector. Another difficulty suffered by the agricultural sector is the government's decision to liberalize prices of fertilizers, which have increased between 100% and 400%. Drought was an alarming problem in 2008; however, the drought situation slightly improved in 2009. Wheat and barley production about doubled in 2009 compared to 2008. In spite of that, the livelihoods of up to 1 million agricultural workers have been threatened. In response, the UN launched an emergency appeal for $20.2 million. Wheat has been one of the crops most affected, and for the first time in 2 decades Syria has moved from being a net exporter of wheat to a net importer.[38] During the civil war which began in 2011, the Syrian government was forced to put out a tender for 100,000 metric tonnes of wheat, one of the few trade products not subject to economic sanctions.[39]
Less than 2.7% of Syria's land area is forested, and only a portion of that is commercially useful.[1] Limited forestry activity is centered in the higher elevations of the mountains just inland from the coast, where rainfall is more abundant.[40]
Energy and mineral resources [ edit ]
Mining [ edit ]
Phosphates are the major minerals exploited in Syria. According to estimates Syria has around 1,700 million tons of phosphate reserves.[41] Production dropped sharply in the early 1990s when world demand and prices fell, but output has since increased to more than 2.4 million tons. Syria produced about 1.9% of the world's phosphate rock output and was the world's ninth ranked producer of phosphate rock in 2009.[42] Other major minerals produced in Syria include cement, gypsum, industrial sand (silica), marble, natural crude asphalt, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, salt, steel, and volcanic tuff, which generally are not produced for export.[40]
Oil and natural gas [ edit ]
Syria is a relatively small oil producer, accounting for just 0.5% of global production in 2010.[43][44] Although Syria is not a major oil exporter by Middle Eastern standards, oil is a major pillar of the economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, oil sales for 2010 were projected to generate $3.2 billion for the Syrian government and account for 25.1% of the state's revenue.[45]
Electrical generation [ edit ]
In 2001 Syria reportedly produced 23.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity and consumed 21.6 billion kWh.[40] As of January 2002, Syria's total installed electric generating capacity was 7.6 gigawatts (GW), with fuel oil and natural gas serving as the primary energy sources and 1.5 GW generated by hydroelectric power.[40] A network totaling 45 GW linking the electric power grids of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan was completed in March 2001.[40] Syria's electric supply capacity is an important national priority, and the government hopes to add 3,000 megawatts of power generating capacity by 2010 at a probable cost of US$2 billion, but progress has been slowed by a lack of investment capital.[needs update][40] Power plants in Syria are undergoing intensive maintenance, and four new generating plants have been built.[40] The power distribution network has serious problems, with transmission losses estimated as high as 25 percent of total generated capacity as a result of poor quality wires and transformer stations.[40] A project for the expansion and upgrading of the power transmission network is scheduled for completion in 2005.[needs update][40]
As of May 2009 it was reported that the Islamic Development Bank and the Syrian government signed an agreement stating that the bank would provide a €100 million loan for the expansion of Deir Ali power station in Syria.[46]
Nuclear energy [ edit ]
Syria abandoned its plans to build a VVER-440 reactor after the Chernobyl accident.[47] The plans for a nuclear program were revived at the beginning of the 2000s when Syria negotiated with Russia to build a nuclear facility that would include a nuclear power plant and a seawater atomic desalination plant.[48]
Industry and manufacturing [ edit ]
The industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and petroleum, accounted for 27.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 and employed about 16 percent of the labor force.[1] The main industrial products are petroleum, textiles, food processing, beverages, tobacco, phosphate rock mining, cement, oil seeds crushing, and car assembly.[1] Syria's manufacturing sector was largely state dominated until the 1990s, when economic reforms allowed greater local and foreign private-sector participation. Private participation remains constrained, however, by the lack of investment funds, input/output pricing limits, cumbersome customs and foreign exchange regulations, and poor marketing.[40]
Because land prices are not controlled by the state, real estate is one of the few domestic avenues for investment with realistic and safe returns. Activity in the construction sector tends to mirror changes in the economy. Investment Law No. 10 of 1991, which opened the country to foreign investment in some areas, marked the beginning of a strong revival, with growth in real terms increasing over 2001 and 2002.[40]
Services [ edit ]
Services accounted for 60.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017[1] and employed 67% of the labor force, including government, in 2008.[36] As of May 2009, it was reported that Damascus office prices are skyrocketing.[49]
Banking and finance [ edit ]
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, there has been a capital flight to nearby countries. Syria has been subject to sanctions by US, Canada, EU, Arab League and Turkey because of the civil war.[50][51][52] The currency of Syria is the Syrian pound (SYP). The pound's exchange rate has deteriorated significantly, falling from 47 SYP for US$1 in March 2011 to 515 SYP for US$1 in July 2017.
The Central Bank of Syria began operations in 1959. It controls all foreign exchange and trade transactions and gives priority to lending to the public sector. The Central Bank has been subject to US sanctions since May 2004, which has accused the Bank of money laundering.[53] These US sanctions may have increased the role of Lebanese and European banks because a ban on transactions between U.S. financial institutions and the Central Bank of Syria created an increase in demand for intermediary sources for US$ transfers.[needs update][36] The US, EU, Arab league and Turkey all also imposed sanctions on the Central Bank because of the Civil War.[54] [55]
The six specialized state-owned banks — the Central Bank of Syria, Commercial Bank of Syria, Agricultural Co-Operative Bank, Industrial Bank, Popular Credit Bank, and Real Estate Bank — are major financial operators. They each extend funds to, and take deposits from, a particular sector. The Industrial Bank also is directed more toward the public sector, although it is under-capitalized. As a result, the private sector often is forced to bank abroad, a process that is more expensive and therefore a poor solution to industrial financing needs. Many business people travel abroad to deposit or borrow funds. It is estimated that Syrians have deposited US$6 billion in Lebanese banks.
In the 2000s, Syria started reforms in the financial sector, including the introduction of private banks and the opening of the Damascus Securities Exchange in March 2009.[56] In 2001, Syria legalized private banks and the sector, while still nascent, has been growing.[15] Foreign banks were given licenses in December 2002, under Law 28 March 2001 which allows the establishment of private and joint-venture banks. Foreigners are allowed up to 49% ownership of a bank, but may not hold a controlling stake.[36] As of January 2010, 13 private banks had opened, including two Islamic banks.
Syria has taken gradual steps to loosen controls over foreign exchange. In 2003, the government canceled a law that criminalized private sector use of foreign currencies, and in 2005 it allowed licensed private banks to sell specific amounts of foreign currency to Syrian citizens under certain circumstances and to the private sector to finance imports. In October 2009, Syria further loosened its restrictions on currency transfers by allowing Syrians travelling abroad to withdraw the equivalent of up to US$10,000 from their Syrian pound accounts. In practice, the decision allows local banks to open accounts of a maximum of US$10,000 that their clients can use for their international payment cards. The holders of these accounts will be able to withdraw up to US$10,000 per month while travelling abroad.[15]
To attract investment and to ease access to credit, the government allowed investors in 2007 to receive loans and other credit instruments from foreign banks, and to repay the loans and any accrued interest through local banks using project proceeds. In February 2008, the government permitted investors to receive loans in foreign currencies from local private banks to finance capital investments. Syria's exchange rate is fixed, and the government maintains two official rates—one rate on which the budget and the value of imports, customs, and other official transactions are based, and a second set by the Central Bank on a daily basis that covers all other financial transactions. The government passed a law in 2006 which permits the operation of private money exchange companies. However, there is still a small black market for foreign currency.[15]
Tourism [ edit ]
Non-Arab visitors to Syria reached 1.1 million in 2002, which includes all visitors to the country, not just tourists.[36] The total number of Arab visitors in 2002 was 3.2 million, most from Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.[36] Many Iraqi businesspeople set up ventures in Syrian ports to run import operations for Iraq, causing an increased number of Iraqis visiting Syria in 2003–4.[36] Tourism is a potentially large foreign exchange earner and a source of economic growth.[36] Tourism generated more than 6 percent of Syria's gross domestic |
leavened Bread, and at the Festival of Weeks, and at the Festival of Booths. And none should appear before יהוה empty-handed, 2Ch_8:13 even as the duty of every day required, offering according to the command of Mosheh, for the Sabbaths, and for the New Moons, and for the appointed times three times a year: the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths. Act_2:1 And when the Day of the Festival of Weeks had come, they were all with one mind in one place. Act_20:16 For Sha’ul had decided to sail past Ephesos, so that he might lose no time in Asia, for he was hurrying to be at Yerushalayim, if possible, on the Day of the Festival of Weeks. 1Co_16:8 And I shall remain in Ephesos until the Festival of Weeks.
The Historical Understanding of Shavuot
–The Shadow
‘Bring from your dwellings for a wave offering two loaves of bread, of two-tenths of an ĕphah of fine flour they are, baked with leaven, first-fruits to יהוה.’ ‘And on this same day you shall proclaim a set-apart gathering for yourselves, you do no servile work on it – a law forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. ‘And when you reap the harvest of your land do not completely reap the corners of your field when you reap, and do not gather any gleaning from your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am יהוה your Elohim.’” Leviticus 23: 17,21,22
* Shavuot as a Betrothal
YHWH redeemed Israel and led them out of bondage through the blood of the lamb. They applied the blood because they believed Him and He saved them from slavery by favour. They have not done anything to deserve it. It was pure favour.
But that was not enough for YHWH. He wanted more. He wanted a closer relationship with His redeemed community. He wanted their hearts to be knitted to His: the closeness of a Bridegroom and a Bride.
YHWH is set-apart, pure, undefiled, separate and His people are in this world. They used to be slaved to Pharaoh (the devil) and they didn’t know Him. This sets the scene for YHWH’s next encounter.
In Exodus 19 we see how YHWH displays Himself as a very mighty and capable Bridegroom and how many elements of a Jewish Wedding are present.
* The Bride
“Go, and you shall cry in the hearing of Yerushalayim, saying, ‘Thus said יהוה, “I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your bridehood, when you went after Me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” Jeremiah 2:2
My opinion is that believing Israel is the bride and we gentile believers who love Y’shua and are grafted into the olive tree, are also grafted into the bride.
* The Bridegroom
Who then is the Bridegroom? By this time Y’shua had not been revealed to Israel in person, but there are two passages in the Renewed Covenant or New Testament which point to Y’shua as the Bridegroom.
The first is in Ephesians 5:22-33 where Paul speaks about husbands and wives as an allegory of Messiah and the assembly.
The second is by John where he speaks of the wedding of the Lamb and His Bride who has made herself ready. (Revelation 19)
As the Israelites assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai, YHWH called Moses up and told him to say to Israel,
“You have seen what I did to the Mitsrites (Egyptians), and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself.”(Ex 19:4)
That is the heart of the Bridegroom revealed. Now He is going to display His might and power to His Bride so that she may be fully confident that He is well able to look after her completely.
* The Betrothal (much like engagement)
According to the Israeli Wedding, marriage consisted of two stages. The first is the betrothal. You enter the first stage of marriage as soon as a betrothal contract is made between the two parties. The covenant or agreement was made by having bread and wine together.
Our Bridegroom, Y’shua, also cut covenant with us (and even the generations to follow) at the Passover meal, just before He died to pay the price for His Bride.
The written contract is called a ketubah. During betrothal, you are legally married, but do no physically dwell with your mate. Betrothal is so legally binding that you cannot get outof it without a divorce. We think of the betrothal of Yosĕph and Miryam, the parents of Y’shua. Betrothal is also mentioned in Ex 21:8 and Deut 20:7.
The second stage of marriage is the fullness or consummation of the marriage.
The consummation of our marriage with Y’shua will happen later and then we will physically dwell with Him during the Messianic age on earth.
* Endearing Name
With a betrothal the Bridegroom gives his bride a special endearing name. YHWH calls Israel His Special Treasure or Treasured Possession.
“And now, if you diligently obey My voice, and shall guard My covenant, then you shall be My treasured possession above all the peoples – for all the earth is Mine” Ex 19:5
* The Bride has to say YES
So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words YHWH had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together,
“All that יהוה has spoken we shall do”
* The Bridal Canopy or Chuppah
According to Jewish weddings the couple gives their vows under a canopy. YHWH’s canopy was the thick cloud of a thunder storm and heavy smoke because Mt Sinai was on fire. YHWH had descended on it.
Thunder and lightning were frequently seen and heard. The sound of the shofar or ram’s horn became louder and louder and the top of the mountain was enveloped in smoke and fire. (read Ex 19)
* The sign
The ring is nowadays our sign of a marriage between two parties. Could the Sabbath be our sign of marriage to our heavenly Bridegroom?
“My Sabbaths you are to guard, by all means, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, to know that I, יהוה, am setting you apart.” (Exodus 31:13) “And the children of Yisra’ĕl shall guard the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant.” (Exodus 31:16)
* The house
YHWH gave Moses the plans for this house where the marriage couple was to meet in an intimate way: the Tabernacle of Moses in the wilderness, also called the Tent of Meeting. Later Solomon built the beautiful temple also called the House of YHWH.
In the renewed covenant or New Testament Y’shua said”
“In My Father’s house are many staying places. And if not, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I shall come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, you might be too.“ (John 4:2-3)
* The Marriage Contract or Ketubah
A very significant item in the traditional wedding and even unto today is the Marriage Covenant in which both parties would write down the terms of their marriage agreement, their promises and responsibilities.
When YHWH betrothed Himself to Israel He gave them the Torah as the marriage contract or Ketubah. (Ex 20:1-3)
The Torah – an awesome document!
The word Torah is mostly translated into English as LAW. This is very sad, because the Torah is so much more. The root in Hebrew is Yarah which means instruct or teach.
Thus the Torah is for guidance to lead us to our target, which is the revelation of Y’shua and perfect living for our Bridegroom, the living Torah.
Y’shua taught and lived the Torah in such a manner that His followers called Him “The Torah”. He committed NO sin and torah-lessness is the synonymous of sin! Y’shua is the living version of the written Torah given by YHWH on Sinai.
— Which part of the Word is referred to as Torah?
Firstly the 10 commandments or 10 words YHWH gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, which in turn is the summary of the first books of Moses.
Sometimes the whole Old Testament is referred to as Torah, because in it we can learn of all the theological concepts such as sin, sacrifice, salvation, sanctification and even about our Messiah.
The concepts are expounded upon throughout the rest of the Scriptures, even the New Testament, so that it becomes one book given by YHWH, from Genesis to Revelation.
Every command and instruction is part of the Torah.
* First and foremost the Torah is teaching.
It teaches us to serve, worship and please YHWH and to have healthy relationships with our fellowman. It shows us His ways. It is His Word.
* It is instruction for living for the called-out community (Ex 24:12) so that we may know the ways and character of our Bridegroom and also learn how to behave as Bride of the King.
Ester’s strict beauty program comes to mind. And because she adhered to everything Hegai, the caretaker of the Harem had told her, she won the favor of everyone who saw her and ultimately became the Bride. In the book of Ester Heggai is a picture of the Set Apart Spirit Who knows the heart of the King and therefore knows what to instruct His Bride (Ester 2).
* It has elements of a covenant.
Since the Torah is a covenant, both parties involved are subject to certain legal obligations. YHWH initiated the covenant and legally binds Himself to keep His Word which He spoke in the covenant. Israel, or the redeemed community, who receives this covenant, is bound to do the same.
Exo 24:7 “And he took the Book of the Covenant and read in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that יהוה has spoken we shall do, and obey.”
The Torah is set out on the pattern of ancient covenants of the time and all the elements are present.
Jeremiah also speaks of a time when YHWH will make a new covenant with His people when He will put His Torah in their minds and write it on their hearts (Jer 31:31-34). This promise is repeated word by word in Heb 8:8-12
* It is a marriage contract or Ketuba
As a marriage contract the Torah gives the stipulations for set apart living for the redeemed community and how YHWH promises to be their
Elohim, how He will be a Husband to us and care for us.
It contains important historical narrative, like the book of Genesis and poetry, like in Psalms.
It contains His statutes and commands and decrees and percepts (almost like house rules).
We also find His judgments (directives usually associated with legal matters), testimonies and ordinances here.
Psa 19:11 “Also, Your servant is warned by them, In guarding them there is great reward.”
Moses wrote down everything He heard from YHWH, therefore the Torah is the primary authoritative guide to life for us.
However, and unfortunately, most Jews believe Moses did not write all that YHWH spoke to him. Instead they believe he passed some revelation orally through the generations. This revelation is called the “Oral law” and is considered just as authoritative in the RABBINICAL world as the written Torah. The oral Torah was later written down and it was first called the Mishna, later revised and the whole compilation of oral Torah in one volume is now called the Talmud.
YHWH’s Glory in fire:
An awesome display of YHWH’s (God’s) power and esteem for all nations to see…
Exodus 19:16-19 “And it came to be, on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain. And the sound of the ram’s horn was very loud, and all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Mosheh brought the people out of the camp to meet with Elohim, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. And Mount Sinai was in smoke, all of it, because יהוה descended upon it in fire. And its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and all the mountain trembled exceedingly. And when the blast of the ram’s horn sounded long and became louder and louder, Mosheh spoke, and Elohim answered him by voice.”
See also Joh 12:28-29 where the crowd heard the thunder when YHWH answered Y’shua. Also see Job 40:9; Psalm 29:3; 77:18; 104:7, Revelation 14:2.
YHWH’s Shekhinah was revealed in the fire. Shekhinah means esteem and/or presence.
Exo 24:17 “And the appearance of the esteem of יהוה was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain, before the eyes of the children of Yisra’ĕl.“
* The Shadow again
The power display by the Bridegroom: Fire, thunders, lightning, earthquake, shofars.
The giving of the Torah on stone (the Ketuba).
The harvest of wheat.
The waving of the two loaves of break baked with yeast.
Pentecost, the Fulfilment:
Why was the Set Apart (Holy) Spirit given on Pentecost?
Shavuot, which was the wheat harvest, finds it’s spiritual fulfilment in Pentecost, the harvesting of souls as Y’shua explained to them before the time.
Luk 24:49 “And see, I am sending the Promise of My Father upon you, but you are to remain in the city of Yerushalayim until you are clothed with power from on high.” Act 1:8 “But you shall receive power when the Set-apart Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Yerushalayim, and in all Yehuḏah and Shomeron, and to the end of the earth.” Act 2:1-4 “And when the Day of the Festival of Weeks had come, they were all with one mind in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from the heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and settled on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Set-apart Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them to speak.”
So why was the Spirit given to us on Pentecost?
1. To empower us Believers to bring in the HARVEST of souls
In Acts 2:40-41 Peter, who formerly denied Y’shua, now filled with the Set Apart Spirit, preached and 3000 people accept Y’shua as their Messiah and they get baptised. Talk about power! The number quickly grew to 5000 as the people heard the message and believed.
May we draw your attention to the fact that those were all Jews who came from all over the world at YHWH’s command for the Feast of Weeks.
They kept the feasts and other commandments. So the assembly of Messiah started out Jewish, as our Messiah Himself was Jewish, and only later were the Believing Gentiles added to the number, or grafted into the Olive Tree, of Romans 11).
2. The tongues of fire on individuals are YHWH’s Shekhinah or manifestation of His esteem made visible.
Luk 3:16 “Yoḥanan answered, saying to them all, “I indeed immerse you in water, but One mightier than I is coming, whose sandal straps I am not worthy to loosen. He shall immerse you in the Set-apart Spirit and fire.”
3. Many voices, many tongues
When the disciples were baptized in the Set Apart Spirit, they spoke in many tongues which the Jews from all over the, then known, world could understand and respond to. (They were all Jews who came together for the Feast of Shavuot as the word commanded).
4. The Torah is written on our hearts by the Set Apart Spirit
Heb 10:16 “This is the covenant that I shall make with them after those days, says יהוה, giving My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I shall write them,” Footnote: Jer. 31:33, Heb. 8:8-12.
What was written on stone by the finger of Yah, was now written by the Spirit on human hearts.
Some people are afraid to obey YHWH’s commands or instructions, or laws or ordinances for fear of falling into legalism. But legalism wants us to “earn our salvation“.
We are not saved by obeying any laws, only by faith in the Messiah. We cannot work for salvation. It is given for free by the mercy of a merciful Creator.
However, once we are saved from darkness, we need to know how to behave as Set-Apart people (Children of Light).
And YHWH values His Torah so much and He knows how important it is, so that He chose to put it in our minds and write it on our hearts.
Let us read about David’s opinion of the Torah in Psalm 19:7-11
“The Torah of יהוה is perfect, bringing back the being; The witness of יהוה is trustworthy, making wise the simple; The orders of יהוה are straight, rejoicing the heart; The command of יהוה is clear, enlightening the eyes; The fear of יהוה is clean, standing forever; The right-rulings of יהוה are true, They are righteous altogether, More desirable than gold, Than much fine gold; And sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. Also, Your servant is warned by them, In guarding them there is great reward.”
The tongues of fire and the speaking in every tongue in Acts 2 were both direct allusions to the Mount Sinai experience and to the receiving of the Torah. YHWH was underscoring a connection between His Set Apart Spirit and His Torah (instructions).
Pentecost unites the giving of the Torah at Sinai with the giving of the giving of the Spirit in Jerusalem.
Jeremiah said that YHWH would make a New Covenant and put the Torah within us and He will be our Elohim (God).
Ezekiel also foretold in Eze 36:27
“and put My Spirit within you. And I shall cause you to walk in My laws and guard My right-rulings and shall do them.” Footnote: See Eze 11:19-20, 37:6-14, 39:29.
Therefore we understand that one of the purposes of the giving of the Set Apart Spirit is to help us to walk in His decrees and keep His instructions, or in other words, to live according to the Torah, or the Word of YHWH, which is His Torah.
* Understanding the Two Leavened Waves Loaves:
In Lev 23:15-17 the Israelites are commanded to wave two loaves baked with leaven before YHWH (God).
At Passover (Pesah), leaven was absolutely forbidden (Ex 12:15,18,20) and in the regular meal offering, no leaven was permitted (Lev 2:1,4-5,11)
We saw earlier that leaven represents sin (1 Cor 5:6-8)
Passover and Unleavened Bread spoke of the death and burial of Y’shua, Who was without sin. Yet, on Shavuot, YHWH required 2 loaves of leavened bread to be waved. Why? The 2 loaved could point to the fact that YHWH’s harvest of souls would include not only Jews, but also believing Gentiles.
Shavuot speaks of the birth of Israel as a nation. Likewise does Pentecost speak of the birth of the assembly of Believers in Y’shua. The word “church” doesn’t exist in the original language. In Romans 11 we see that the believers are grafted into Israel and therefor Israel is the assembly and the assembly is Israel, the Bride. Separating the two are called “replacement theology” and is a false doctrine.
Although YHWH chose His Bride (Israel) and set her apart for Him, sin is still found in her. (us) In spite of this sin, because we are believers in Y’shua and seek to serve and love Him with all our hearts, we are considered set apart before YWHW. (Deut 7:7-6; 14:2; Eph 1: 4, 5, 27)
Also Col 1: 22
“..in the body of His flesh through death, to present you set-apart, and blameless, and unreprovable before Him“
However, we also have a responsibility:
Tit 2:11-12
“For the saving Gift of Elohim has appeared to all men, instructing us to renounce wickedness and worldly lusts, and to live sensibly, righteously, and reverently in the present age” 1 Pet 1: 15
“instead, as the One who called you is set-apart, so you also should become set-apart in all behaviour”
To be set-apart (holy), consecrated, dedicated to Him!
* Fine Flour: (Lev 23:17)
Rom 5:3-5
“And not only this, but we also exult in pressures, knowing that pressure works endurance; and endurance, approvedness; and approvedness, expectation. And expectation does not disappoint, because the love of Elohim has been poured out in our hearts by the Set-apart Spirit which was given to us.”
* Statute Forever:
The Word requires us to keep Shavuot/Pentecost as a lasting ordinance, for the generations to come, wherever we live (Lev 23:21). And Y’shua promised that the Set Apart Spirit would be with us forever (John 14:16).
So we may live in a Pentecost experience continually.
Please note: PENTECOST is not the name of a DENOMINATION!
The Relationship between Passover and Shavuot:
What was the purpose of Passover?
—To bring the people to Shavuot.
They were redeemed to receive the instruction for life – the Torah
That is the connection between: GRACE and LAW = PASSOVER and SHAVUOT = SPIRIT and TRUTH
Because YHWH redeemed Israel, He had the right to rule over them.
YHWH redeemed them in order to rule.
And it is the same with us. We get saved by grace, believing in Y’shua and the power of His blood – for free! That is imputed righteousness.
And we get blessed when we follow Torah, working out our salvation with fear and trembling. That is outworked righteousness, for which we will be rewarded.
How do we celebrate Shavuot according to Scripture?
1. To proclaim a set apart assembly and do no regular work or to rest and have a special gathering to YHWH.
2. All men were commanded to come up to Jerusalem and present themselves at the temple. While the physical temple is no more, we graciously received the Set Apart (Holy) Spirit in our bodies, the temple of the Spirit. In order for us to truly enjoy Shavuot or Pentecost we need to yield to the Spirit.
Paul says in 2 Cor 3: 17
“Now יהוה is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of יהוה is, there is freedom.”
Indeed of looking at a set order of service, we may yield to the Spirit so that He may prepare us as the Bride and also empower us afresh to bring in the harvest of the Kingdom.
So, have fun with it! It is a Feast after all. Share a meal with others. Share Torah with others. It is the Anniversary of the giving of the Torah. It is also the Anniversary of the giving of The Ruach Ha Kodesh. (“Holy” Spirit) Pray for an outpouring of the Spirit of the Most High like never before. Pray for veils to be removed and people to start walking in the Whold Truth – the Complete Word of YHWH.
The tradition of men is to load up on sweets. Not just any sweets, dairy sweets. Cheesecake is often a part of Shavuot. I could eat Cheesecake 365 days a year. I don’t encourage traditions, but unless you are a lactose intolerant diabetic, have fun! Enjoy your Feast!Regional News of Mon, 2 Feb 20150
Afadjato South District signs $700,000 water project with Latter Day Saints
The District Chief Executive of Afadjato South in the Volta region, Mrs Angella Oforiwa Alorwu-Tey has signed a $700,000 water project agreement with the humanitarian service of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints last Thursday.
The agreement was signed at the premises of the Assembly located at Golokuati witnessed by the staff, the presiding member and some Assembly Members.
Under the agreement, 16 communities shall be provided with mechanised boreholes which begins February next year. The Assembly will contribute only five percent of the total cost of the project.
The beneficiary communities include Nyagbo Sroe, Nyagbo Gagbefe, Nyagbo Konda and Nyagbo Fiafe. Others are Tafi Abuife, Tafi Atome, Leklebi Duga, Leklebi Fiafe, Liate Wote and Liate Dzogbega.
The rest are, Liate Datem New Town, Liate Peter Kofe, Goviefe Dudome, Ando Kofe, Golokuati and Ve Kledzo.
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Mrs Alorwu-Tay expressed appreciation to the church for the support which has come at the time the Assembly is under pressure to facilitate those projects.
She said the request was made since 2012 but has now materialised. She assured the church of the Assembly’s commitment to fulfil their part of the agreement before the project begins next year adding the Assembly is looking forward to work with the church in many areas so that they would alleviate her people and society in general from social challenges.
On his part, the representatives of the church Elder Panter were also happy about the move saying it is part of their duty to help and support humanity everywhere in the world.
In a related development, work begins on Rural Electrification project for eight communities in the district in order to get them on to the national grid. The two months project in these communities are executed by China Water Company Limited, a Chinese energy and construction firm. The cost was not disclosed.
Mrs. Angella Alorwu-Tey said this is part of other developments roles and urged the chiefs and opinion leaders to unite and support to ensure the success of the projects in their various communities.
Source: Charles AgbelieAn international team of astronomers studying 200,000 galaxies has measured the energy generated within a large portion of space more precisely than ever before, discovering that it’s only half what it was 2 billion years ago and fading – the Universe is slowly dying.
Researchers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia used seven of the world’s most powerful telescopes to observe galaxies at 21 different wavelengths from the far ultraviolet to the far infrared.
Initial observations were conducted using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales and supporting observations were made by two orbiting space telescopes operated by NASA and another belonging to the European Space Agency.
The research is part of the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) project, the largest multi-wavelength survey ever put together.
“We used as many space and ground-based telescopes we could get our hands on, to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible,” says ICRAR Professor Simon Driver, who presented the findings at the International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly in Honolulu.
The survey data, released to astronomers around the world, includes 200,000 galaxies each measured at 21 wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the far infrared and will help scientists better understand how different types of galaxies form.
Professor Driver, who heads up the GAMA team, says the study set out to map and model all of the energy generated within a set volume of space.
All energy in the Universe was created in the Big Bang with some portion locked up as mass. Stars shine by converting this mass into energy as described by Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2.
“While most of the energy sloshing around was created in the aftermath of the Big Bang, additional energy is constantly being released by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together,” Professor Driver says.
“This newly released energy is either absorbed by dust as it travels through the host galaxy, or escapes into intergalactic space and travels until it hits something such as another star, planet, or very occasionally a telescope mirror.”
The fact that the Universe is slowly fading has been known since the late 1990s but this work shows that it’s happening across all wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared, representing the most comprehensive assessment of the energy output of the nearby Universe.
“The Universe is fated to decline from here on in, like an old age that lasts forever. The Universe has basically plonked itself down on the sofa, pulled up a blanket and is about to nod off for an eternal doze,” Professor Driver says.
The team of researchers hope to expand the work to map energy production over the entire history of the Universe. To do this, they will use a swathe of new facilities including the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, due to be built in Australia and South Africa in the next decade.
Further Information:
Professor Driver will present this work at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Honolulu on Monday, August 10.
The Galaxy and Mass Assembly Survey, or GAMA, is a collaboration involving nearly 100 scientists from more than 30 universities located in Australia, Europe and the United States.
ICRAR is a joint venture between Curtin University and The University of Western Australia with support and funding from the State Government of Western Australia.
Original publication details:
‘Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Panchromatic Data Release (far-UV—far-IR) and the low-z energy budget’ submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Available from http://www.simondriver.org/mwavev02.pdf
Contact Details:
Professor Simon Driver, ICRAR – UWA
Ph: +61 400 713 514 | E: Simon.Driver@icrar.org
Professor Andrew Hopkins, Australian Astronomical Observatory
Ph: +61 432 855 049 | E: Andrew.Hopkins@aao.gov.au
Dr Luke Davies, ICRAR – UWA
Ph: +61 466 277 672 | E: Luke.Davies@icrar.org
Pete Wheeler, ICRAR Media Contact
Ph: +61 423 982 018 | E: Pete.Wheeler@icrar.org
Supporting Multimedia:
The Galaxy and Mass Assembly catalogue is a detailed map of the Universe showing where galaxies are in 3D. This simulated flythrough shows the real positions and images of the galaxies that have been mapped so far. Distances are to scale, but the galaxy images have been enlarged for your viewing pleasure. Credit: Made by Will Parr, Dr. Mark Swinbank and Dr. Peder Norberg (Durham University) using data from the SDSS and the GAMA surveys. This work was supported by the Ogden Trust, STFC and the Royal Society.GEELONG has been dealt a blow with injured pair Cory Gregson and Josh Cowan set to miss the rest of the season after undergoing surgery.
Gregson has been sidelined by a navicular injury in his foot since the middle of last season, which was his second in the AFL.
The club said the injury was failing to heal, with the small forward set for another six weeks in a moonboot before he can run again in around three months.
Cowan's unlucky run with injury throughout his career has continued after the club decided surgery was the best option with his Achilles tendon. He is expected to be out of action for 10-12 weeks.
Having been drafted in 2009, Cowan has played just 16 games in his career after significant fitness battles.
"Obviously this is disappointing for the players and our team," said Cats football manager Steve Hocking.
"Both procedures will allow the players to move forward with the club's medical team on a rehabilitation plan."Pareto Principle
That is all very nice, but how does it apply to productivity and making your life more stress-free?
Over to you now
Time management, increased productivity, and having too many emails to deal with are all modern-day problems. As such, it only makes sense to solve them with modern-day tools such smartphone apps, Evernote and elaborate systems such as GTD, right?Not quite.Although the tools that we use on a day-to-day basis were all invented just a few years ago (can you imagine that the first iphone came out in 2007?), some of the basic and founding principles of time management were discovered and coined more than 100 years ago. Long before emails, and the internet (in some cases, even before electricity) were invented.How is that even possible?Put your time traveler hat on and let’s take a ride in your very own time machine. Let’s explore one of the founding principles of productivity, how it applies today more than ever and most importantly, how you can put it to use today.Enter the Pareto Principle.It states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.It was observed and discovered by Vilfred Pareto way back in 1906. He figured out that roughly 80% of the land in Italy was owned and managed by 20% of the population. That seems like a strange coincidence so he started testing, what would essentially become the “80-20 rule”, to see if this proportion can be found somewhere else. The more he looked, the more he confirmed his suspicion that this was somewhat of an universal rule.Later on, modern-day economists confirmed his suspicion even further by proving that the 80-20 rule exists almost everywhere. 80% of the world’s wealth is controlled by 20% of the population. In business, 80% of the profits, come from 20% of the clients. In a similar fashion, 80% of the complaints, also come from 20% of the clients. A similar distribution can be found in health, software development, sports and almost any area of your life.If you examine what you do on a weekly basis you’ll most likely discover the Pareto principle at play. 80% of your time is spent doing activities that bring you only 20% of the desired results. If you concentrate the majority of your time, creativity and brainpower on the other 20% of activities (the ones that bring you 80% of the results), you are going to achieve your version of success much faster and more efficiently.The hard part is uncovering the 20%.How can you do it?Start by installing Toggl, or some other time tracking application on your smartphone, or on your computer.On Monday, start tracking your business activities and how much time it takes you to do them.If you are new to time-tracking, combine similar activities under the same broad category. For example, if you have 3 meetings during the week, one is sales, one is design and the other one is staffing related, put them all under the category of “meetings”. This will help you ease into the process and prevent getting you overwhelmed.At the end of the week block out 45 minutes and examine the results.Fire up Excel and create a new spreadsheet with 3 columns.In column #1 put the activity (meeting,, social media, etc). In column #2, put the combined time for the week for that activity (1 hour, 3.4 hours, etc). In column #3, put the result achieved from that activity. To make things easy, for the results column select one metric that measures your highest goal and enter how much closer that activity got you to that goal. In business, that can be the total number of sales, new leads, new customers, traffic to the website, newsletter subscribers, etc.Here is the how the spreadsheet would look like:Now, create a 4th column and name it “Result for 1 hr”. To get the numbers for that column divide the result by the time. This will give you what results can you expect from 1 hr of activity.If you sort the spreadsheet by the last column (#4) you will have a visual representation of what activities bring you the most results. If you take the top 20%, most likely you’ll discover that they bring you 80% of the results (the Pareto principle).Productivity is all about working smarter, not harder. A super-overused phrase, but very true. Use the Pareto principle to your advantage and do the tasks and activities that will bring you closer to your goals, faster. You cannot do it all (and you shouldn’t), so make sure you are spending the majority if your time and creativity where it matters the most.Meet Kosio Angelov atand get instant access to aon howpeople schedule their days (and how you can do it too). Follow him onfor even more productivity tactics.Published on Dec 24, 2012
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space works for as many DC residents and businesses as possible.
Every TIF project that I’m aware of has included funds to support off-street parking. In the past however, the TIFs have been used to finance a loan that is used generally by the development team and the funds are spread across the infrastructure needs. This TIF, for the first time I believe, added a new degree of transparency (which is a good thing) that put the parking costs upfront for all to see. But I absolutely think it's fair and appropriate to disagree and criticize these funds if you believe there should be no parking covered with TIF funds at all.
Separate from this TIF vote, I've been a leading voice on reimagining and rebuilding Florida Avenue to turn into a corridor that supports dedicated cycling, improves pedestrian access, and slower and reduced lanes for vehicles. Making our city – not just this neighborhood – more attractive to bike, metro, bus, walk, or get around by any means besides car is a key goal of mine. I am working hard to improve pedestrian access from the Metro to Union Market and I welcome your support in that endeavor. Not only do we need to create a new NoMa Metro station entrance, but DDOT must move more aggressively to rethink and rebuild the Florida Avenue NE roadway and streetscape as a whole. I don’t need to tell you the sidewalks are not safe and there is little bike infrastructure in place. I am working toward those improvements, and I need your help, but using TIF financing as proposed in the amendment was not the right way to get there. Again, I absolutely respect if you disagree with me, but I will always try to engage and help explain my decision making process, even if it’s different from your own.
During the days leading up to the vote, and immediately after as well, I heard several other questions about the proposed Union Market TIF. I’ve put more information below.
How does a TIF work?
Tax increment financing is a tool where the city uses the expected tax revenue increase (both property and sales tax) to pay the borrowing costs for a loan that is then used as part of the construction. The new tax revenue realized by the development is then used to pay off the loan, but the city must identify those borrowing costs in advance as a guarantee for the loan.
Did the District just agree to spend $82 million in public tax dollars?
Not exactly. The District is using the TIF to finance borrowing of $82 million. To allow it to move forward, the District has to guarantee $2.9 million in the event the new tax revenue isn’t realized by the new development (but the CFO has already projected that it will create enough new revenue to cover those costs).
Why does the Union Market TIF support parking?
Every TIF project that I’m aware of has included funds to support off-street parking. In the past however, the TIFs have been used to finance a loan that is used generally by the development team and the funds are spread across the infrastructure needs. This TIF, for the first time I believe, added a new degree of transparency that put the parking costs upfront for all to see. I think it’s also important to note that the infrastructure work will improve the land and utilities, which includes off-street parking, but also includes sidewalks, streetscapes, pedestrian improvements, bicycle infrastructure, and more. I don't think the city nor the development team have done enough to outline these plans and its certainly left the impression the TIF is only supporting car travel.
Don’t we need people to get to Union Market by ways other than cars?
Yes! I believe we can’t look at this as an “either/or”, but rather, as a “yes, and what more”. Not only as a daily Metro rider, but also as someone that recognizes its importance to our city, I have fought for dedicated funding to improve and expand service. I’ve been battling with DDOT to get our Florida Avenue redesign moving for a safer street and link between neighborhoods, rather than a speedway. I’m going to keep working for a new NoMa entrance. And I’ve continued the push for investments in our bike infrastructure. All of these aren’t going to be wrapped up into one amendment or bill, but they take a concerted and multi-pronged approach that many of us are working to achieve.
Why not use some of these funds for a new NoMa Metro entrance?
I have been and will continue to be a strong advocate to build the new NoMa Metro station entrance. It’s something I’ve been working toward for the last several years. But the amendment offered yesterday wasn’t going to deliver on what it promised. First, the money it sought to set aside for a new entrance wasn’t even enough to pay for the project – leaving it nearly $10 million short. Second, it was unclear if it was even allowed to be used this way, as the entrance falls outside of the geographic area defined in law by the TIF. And third, even if the first two hurdles were cleared, borrowing money through a TIF costs the taxpayers more than if we funded this entrance through the regular capital budget process (which is how I’ve been working to fund this new entrance).
Why not use some of these funds to create affordable housing?
The TIF isn’t an allocation of tax dollars, but rather, it’s financing borrowing. The dollars spent on this TIF next year are roughly $2.9 million. By comparison, the Council has put more than $100 million this year into the Housing Production Trust Fund to finance and leverage millions more for affordable housing. While it could be argued that the $2.9 million could be used to borrow more for affordable housing, please keep in mind that the $2.9 million is actually unrealized tax revenue at this point – meaning that unless the Union Market development gets built, the increased tax revenue isn’t actually generated.
I know this was a long email, but I think you deserve a full set of answers and as much information as I can share. As someone who has fought for investments in our city that build walkable neighborhoods, safer streets, and transit choices that support our communities, I will work with you to achieve what I think are shared goals. I hope this has been helpful, I appreciate your advocacy, and I certainly welcome any other questions you may have.
Thanks,
Charles AllenAnimorphs: The Predator
In this episode hosts Mitchell and Coleman discuss free book swag, the gentle and deadly nature of gorillas, the art of morphing clothes, do lobsters feel fear?, how Cassie once again drops the ball, and why you never, ever morph ant. All that and more in this week’s review of Animorphs book 5, “The Predator.”
Hear ye, hear ye, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, all the cool kids are doing it. Email us nice stuff at Thoughtspeakcast@gmail.com and we’ll read it in a later episode and possibly make fun of you.
As always, thanks for listening to us talk!
SHOW NOTES
Introduction (00:45)
• The guys talk about all the cool free stuff Scholastic stuck inside the books and some other things.
Summary and Plot (10:55)
• Hosts Mitchell and Coleman take us through book 5, the one about Marco’s dead mom.
Book Review (01:12:41)
• Final Verdict:
Mitchell: 5/5
Coleman: 4/5
Final Thoughts/ Wrap up (01:17:35)
• Three words: Animorphs Vs. PredatorPRIVACY POLICY
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With the recent blowback from Charlottesville, the churning wheel of fascist infighting has once again kicked off, exposing a number of fault lines within white nationalist groups in the US.
One major fault line has emerged over homosexuality: While fascist and white nationalist movements have historically condemned queerness, many in the self-described “alt-right” wanted to dash this image, acknowledging that the social mood had shifted on gay issues and that they had a number of homosexual members in their ranks.
Over the summer months, as white nationalists and fascists who rallied under the banner of the “alt-right” were repudiated by their more mainstream counterparts at places like Rebel Media, a final rupture began to take place between those who decided to include gay fascists in their ranks and leaders who determined this to be the hill they wanted to die on.
Disputes Over Gay Membership
Back before the “alt-right” was a household name, Richard Spencer had a sense that the 2015 National Policy Institute conference would be different from past iterations of the annual gathering. Then-candidate Donald Trump had given voice to reactionary beliefs, the #Cuckservative meme had taken off on social media and other “crossover” moments were increasing the appeal of the rebranded white nationalist movement that called itself the “alt-right.” Spencer was sure that attendance would be up and millennials would overwhelm the conventional aging white nationalists. In an effort to create a bridge between the younger members of the alt-right and larger existing movements, such as Southern Nationalism, Spencer brought on his friend Michael Hill, an aggressive racist and anti-Semite who runs the League of the South.
Hill has lived a life of contradictions, teaching at a historically Black college while romanticizing the Antebellum South, segregation and formalized white supremacy. It wasn’t until Hill saw the rest of the National Policy Institute conference lineup that his characteristic rage kicked in, incensed by the inclusion of another speaker: Jack Donovan, a “masculinist” and an open homosexual. In the end, Hill refused to share a stage with Donovan.
Movement infighting on both the right and left can result either from strong personalities clashing or from two contemporaneous ideologies reaching a point where they lose their ability to coexist. Both are true in the case of attitudes toward homosexuality within the coalition between the openly white nationalist “alt-right” and the “alt-lite,” which tends to publicly downplay its support for white supremacy per se while spreading anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-feminist sentiments.
An inability to be clear on issues like gay membership has created schisms and rock-throwing within this coalition. While self-described members of the “alt-right” have certainly never put same-sex relationships on the same ground as heterosexual ones — primarily because of their belief in the sanctity of the “traditional” family unit — they haven’t treated gay people entirely as outsiders either. Spencer has often argued for a place for homosexual men in their movement, presenting a radical version of the “born this way” thesis that follows antiquated Soviet research suggesting that homosexuality is the result of a deficient prenatal “testosterone bath.”
The two homosexually oriented “alt-right” figures that usually stand out are Jack Donovan and James O’Meara. Donovan was first known for writing the book Androphilia (under the name Jack Malebranche), where he argued that as a man attracted to other men, he was not actually “gay,” as that was a modern chosen identity that also aligned itself with “male effeminacy,” feminism and leftist politics. Instead, Donovan thought of himself as a “Mars/Mars” attracted person, a man who rejects the orthodox family life with women in favor of a warrior culture where strong men find partnership in each other. Donovan has argued publicly against gay institutions like same-sex marriage, instead suggesting that male-attracted men should “go their own way,” and families should be limited to the traditional heterosexual context.
Donovan’s writing shifted around 2013 to being almost exclusively about “male tribalism” in opposition to the liberal, multicultural state. In his book, The Way of Men, he prescribes what many would term “toxic masculinity” as natural for men, and writes that men should form tribalistic “gangs” with relativistic morality that is exclusive to group survival. He has since come to dominate this part of what is commonly known as the “Manosphere,” joining the neo-pagan group the Wolves of Vinland and closely associating with white nationalists.
O’Meara, a white supremacist who is out as a gay man, has taken a different approach, arguing that the gay male is an aristocrat of white society. His books have been published by the white nationalist house Counter-Currents. He equates Black identity with violence, hypersexuality and stupidity, and warns white men to eschew a forced culture of masculinity lest they take on these traits. Meanwhile he lifts up white homosexual masculinity — which he portrays as associated with theatre and high arts — as the idealized opposite of the anti-Black stereotypes that he presents.
Milo Yiannopoulos and Gays for Trump added another dimension to this, seeking to justify anti-Muslim immigration restriction by pointing to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub and arguing that Muslim groups persecute gay people. However, Milo’s appearances in drag and comments about child sexual assault have both caused trouble for him, leading the “alt-right” to largely abandon him and now point to him as an example of “queer degeneracy.”
Richard Spencer’s Defense of Gay White Nationalists
Spencer has gone to notable lengths to stand up for gay white nationalists. In 2014, he banned Matthew Heimbach, founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party and Traditionalist Youth Network, from attending that year’s National Policy Institute conference after alleged comments that Heimbach and Scott Terry made about the “biblical” responsibility of executing homosexuals for their sins. Heimbach had been known to be friendly with Donovan, including asking him a question at Donovan’s 2014 speech at American Renaissance, but Spencer was not going to allow for this kind of violent homophobia or the negative media spectacle Heimbach has made for himself.
“It’s not because I was trying to suppress anti-homosexual views,” said Spencer on the Rebel Yell Southern Nationalist podcast, defending himself about the banning of Heimbach. “He literally laced up jackboots on camera.”
Identity Evropa, which is quickly becoming the largest youth-centered white nationalist organization in the country, has a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay members. As Nathan Damigo, the founder of Identity Evropa, told me last year while planning a series of campus actions, gay men would be allowed if they kept their sexual orientation off the radar, but transgender people would be turned away and directed toward mental health services. The Proud Boys, another white nationalist group that has branded itself as a slightly more moderate “Western chauvinist” group, has been more open in allowing gay and transgender members, as long as they believe in Western superiority.
Spencer isn’t the only defender of gay white nationalists. Greg Johnson, editor at the white nationalist Counter-Currents, which publishes O’Meara’s books, writes about the need to deemphasize homophobia as “besides the point.”
For both Spencer and Johnson this halfway support has come at a cost, with many in the more orthodox sectors of the white nationalist right accusing them of being homosexual themselves. Some detractors have also alleged that Spencer coerced young men for sex.
Fractures Within the Coalition
After the accusations were made against both Spencer and Johnson, Spencer tried to put the spotlight more exclusively on Johnson by posting the same article and speech that had been available for years in which Johnson argues that homophobia was a social oppression created by Jews. Matt Forney — a Manosphere blogger associated with the Manosphere website Return of Kings who had moved on to white nationalist media outlets like American Renaissance and Red Ice Creations, which focus on race rather than gender — then put out a large list of accusations about white nationalist figures who had allegedly engaged in homosexual behaviors. This included going after The Right Stuff, one of the most popular white nationalist blogs known for its podcast, “The Daily Shoah,” accusing them of having a “side group” called “Fashy Faggots,” identifying Greg Johnson as a collaborator, and the alleged homosexuality of other commentators.
At the same time, “alt-right” figures began accusing “alt-lite” leaders of acting on queer desires. Occidental Dissent, a white nationalist blog run by Hunter Wallace that has its content republished at altright.com, published an article on March 16 discussing Mike Cernovich’s alleged sexual relationship with a transgender woman. In addition, Occidental Dissent dug up a 2012 blog on Cernovich’s dating website, Danger & Play, about an alleged relationship with a transgender sex worker. Citing that blog, Occidental Dissent accused Cernovich of paying for sex with “lady boys” in other countries and then suggested that this is related to the fact that Cernovich has made tepid defenses for some gay white nationalists over the years.
As white nationalists within the self-described “alt-right” continue to use homophobia to gain clout during their movement’s internal power struggles, it becomes clear that the majority of people in the movement believe both homosexual attraction and gender nonconformity to be social diseases corroding the proper “Western” order of society. Even if they have back-seated these views out of an opportunistic and pragmatic desire to attract younger, more gay-friendly members, the current line of fracturing shows the instability of this coalition and further illustrates the cruel and multidirectional bigotry that defines the movement’s identity.- Advertisement -
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Mittens and Paulie, sitting on the "60 Minutes" set, like dark-haired, dogmatic doppelgangers separated by a generation and a dozen or so IQ points. Ready with their ultra-conservative agenda to oppress women, minorities, and aging baby boomers everywhere in their quest to return white-bread male-dominance to the White House.
They share more than a hairdo and penchant for blue blazers and checkered shirts (no tie, please); they have an equally fanatical vision of America that involves ending many of the hard-won civil rights and equalities that we fought for over the last American century; particularly where it concerns how and when women should be permitted to employ their reproductive organs.
What message was Willard sending with his selection of blue-eyed House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as "the next President of the United States[sic]?" Democracy Now has this posted about Ryan's record on women's rights:
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"Ryan [a staunch Roman Catholic] opposes abortion in all situations, including cases of rape and incest, and opposes abortion in cases that endanger an expectant mother's health. [He endorses the] so-called "Personhood Amendment," which supports defining a fertilized egg as a human being. Ryan was a co-sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which even the conservative state of Mississippi rejected last November, and is favor of de-funding Planned Parenthood."
And The Daily Beast adds this:
"Ryan vehemently opposed the Obama administration's mandate that religious-affiliated institutions provide insurance coverage for birth control, calling it a violation of 'our first amendment rights to religious freedom and conscience.' Also like Romney, Ryan has opposed federally funded family planning services, voting in 1999 to deny birth-control coverage to federal employees. During the primaries, Romney advocated eliminating Title X funding, a Nixon-era program that covers birth control and cancer screenings. Ryan has voted repeatedly against funding international family-planning programs. Ryan was a co-sponsor of the federal Sanctity of Human Life Act, a bill that declared that life begins with fertilization. The bill states that a fertilized egg should 'have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.' If it had passed, the bill also would have outlawed certain types of birth control and in vitro fertilization.
Meghan Rhoad, researcher for Human Rights Watch, said "The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion. It is a vicious attack on women's rights and on the most basic right to life." Infertile couples who look to in vitro for a much-wanted baby? Screw 'em. Forget that fancy cancer-screening, ladies. Who needs mammograms and pap smears? The Pill? That's just abortion-in-a-bottle. The HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer? Fughetabout it. And if you're raped, become pregnant -- with complications -- and will die if you carry the baby to term? Get ready for your Last Rites because Ryan is on record for just letting you die.
Even Ayn Rand would wince at that one.
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But Ryan doesn't reserve his disdain for women, Ryan's proposed "reforms" include a heartless crackdown on immigrants, a blueprint for dismantling Medicaid, and he has made a mantra out of repealing Obama's Affordable Care Act.
He's not exactly winning the Latino vote by voting against the DREAM Act -- a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, which was a considerable Obama victory in 2010. "I understand the points that DREAM Act supporters have raised," he says, but adds that "it would be a serious mistake to pursue piecemeal reforms like the DREAM Act without first putting in place these fundamental components of immigration reform."
He also voted in favor of the medieval "Sensenbrenner bill" in 2005, which would have turned undocumented workers into felons. Oh, and if you aided an undocumented worker, you were a felon, too, and subject to serious prison time. Even if you were that person's pastor or priest. This marries nicely with Romney's infamous "self-deportation" plan of making America so inhospitable to immigrants they'd just leave. Poof! Disappear.
With the Doublespeak Twins' stances on women and immigrants, Lady Liberty might as well lower her torch, snap on a chastity belt and paddle to the nearest kitchen.
Ryan is unflappable on Medicare. His bulls-eye to blast was carefully detailed in his Orwellian-titled "Prosperity for America Plan," released this Spring. Medicare, while not officially "ended," would be turned over to the states to manage on their own -- or dispose of entirely. In place of our current taxpayer-supported federally-funded safety net, seniors would pick an insurance plan of their choosing (this is the wonderful "choice" part of the double-R plan) then the government would deposit periodic small stipends (aka vouchers) directly into their chosen plan to "supplement" the out-of-pocket expenses they were expected to pay out of their personal (but mandated) health savings accounts. There is no limit of out-of-pocket costs incurred by seniors, and the plan doesn't allow for any payment for prescription drugs.
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and failed to adopt some safeguards.
► Some department chiefs have ignored warning signs and minimized allegations.
► Ride-alongs in police cruisers have allowed law enforcement advisers to groom and abuse victims in one-on-one settings.
► Advisers have used their positions to exploit vulnerable teens who look up to them as mentors.
► Many offenders received only slight punishments, in part because of questions about whether victims had consented.
► Victims say their trust was violated and their dreams of law enforcement careers shattered.
In April, when residents of Rolling Hills learned their “Code Enforcement” official had been charged with raping a teenage boy, they demanded he be fired. He was. Both Betts and Woods are facing decades in prison for charges of sexual abuse, and sodomy against one of the teenage cadets they were sworn to protect.
The criminal charges were filed against the two officers after the male victim known as “N.C.” filed a civil suit in March against the two men and Flaherty. The suit alleged the two officers began having sex with N.C. while he was 17 and continued doing so until he was 19 and that those sex acts were filmed for the purposes of creating pornography.
We at TFTP call on anyone and everyone who has ever been abused by any police officer within the Louisville Police Department to come forward with their story. It is the age of reckoning and the pedophile network of abusers and protectors needs to be broken. The RCFOP should be ashamed of itself. Instead of demanding that its officers report crimes to their superiors, by filing a lawsuit preventing officers from testifying, they have given the public the impression those potential crimes should remain hidden.(Alessandro Della Bella/Keystone/AP Photo)
ABC News’ Pierre Thomas, Aaron Katersky and Jack Cloherty report:
Wall Street power player Rajat Gupta arrived at the White House State dinner in 2009 at the pinnacle of American business: on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs and Proctor and Gamble, and widely respected in the financial community.
But today, federal investigators accused Gupta of being a symbol of Wall Street greed — an inside trader.
Authorities say he used his sensitive positions to provide billionaire hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam with tips that allowed him to pocket $23 million playing the stock market.
While small investors saw their portfolios crater in 2008-2009, Rajaratnam, the found of Galleon Management, profited no matter what happened on Wall Street.
The government released wiretaps of telephone conversations between to two men to show how they operated. This conversation took place in July, 2008, just after a Gupta attended a Goldman Sachs board meeting. The Galleon fund manager quizzed him about what acquisitions Goldman Sachs might be interested in.
RAJARATNAM: There’s a rumor that Goldman might look to buy a commercial bank. … Have you heard anything along that line?
GUPTA: Yeah. This was a big discussion at the board meeting … on whether we …
RAJARATNAM: Buy a commercial bank?
GUPTA: Buy a commercial bank.
No stock transactions came from that particular call, but many other calls between the two did result in insider trading, according the indictment. In fact, that wiretapped conversation was part of the evidence last spring when Rajaratnam was convicted in the biggest insider trading case ever brought by the U.S. government.
This discussion was also entered into evidence to establish Rajaratnam was pumping Gupta for critical investment information:
RAJARATNAM: All right, anything else? Anything interesting? … Keep your eyes and ears open if you hear anything.
The government claims something “interesting” did come up — as 2008's financial meltdown became evident. At a 3:15 p.m. board meeting on Sept. 22, 2008, Gupta learned that Warren Buffet and Berkshire-Hathaway were going to invest $5 billion dollars in Goldman Sachs.
Gupta allegedly called Rajaratnam at 3:53 and tipped him off. The hedge fund manager then bought more than 217,000 shares of Goldman minutes before the market closed at 4 p.m. The next day, Goldman stock soared on the news of the Berkshire-Hathaway investment. Rajaratnam then sold the Goldman stock just before the market closed, turning a $800,000 profit in just 24 hours, thanks to the tip from Gupta.
In another example cited in the indictment, Gupta was on the phone with Rajaratnam a mere 23 seconds after a Goldman Sachs board meeting,. This time, Gupta allegedly told Rajaratnam that Goldman was about to announce big losses. The stock price would surely take a beating when the news surfaced publicly. Rajaratnam quickly dumped his Goldman stock and avoided losses of more than $3.6 million.
The government also charges that Gupta abused his position at Proctor and Gamble by tipping Rajaratnam off to P&G’s financial results for the quarter ending December 2008.
Gupta called Rajaratnam to tell him that P&G would soon release information that its sales would not meet expectations. Galleon funds then sold short approximately 180,000 P&G shares, making, according to the indictment, “an illicit profit of more than $570,000.”
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, “Rajat Gupta was entrusted by some of the premier institutions of American business to sit in their boardrooms … so that he could give advice and counsel for the benefit of their shareholders. As alleged, he broke that trust and instead became the illegal eyes and ears in the boardroom for his friend and business associate, Raj Rajaratnam, who reaped enormous profits from Mr. Gupta’s breach of duty.”
Gupta’s attorney responded, “The government’s allegations are totally baseless. The facts in this case demonstrate that Mr. Gupta is innocent of any of these charges and that he has always acted with honesty and integrity. He did not trade in any securities, did not tip Mr. Rajaratnam so he could trade, and did not share in any profits as part of any quid pro quo.”
In fact, his attorney said, Gupta lost his entire investment in the Galleon Fund at the time of the events in question, removing any motive he may have had for helping Rajaratnam.Just to make it clear: I’m not a part of Women Against Feminism. I’m on the fence about whether the term “feminism” can be reclaimed, but that’s a question for another time. (In case you missed it: here’s my Time.com article on the subject.)
But some of the responses to WAF just make me roll my eyes.
Here’s an example:
Do #feminists seriously say this shit then tell ME to get educated? Another reason 2 have #WomenAgainstFeminism — Miss Misanthropist (@TamedInsanity) August 2, 2014
First of all: a recurring theme on the Women Against Feminism site is that feminism fought important battles in the past, but those battles have been won and feminism has morphed into something counterproductive. Whether that view is right or wrong, to say that today’s fourth wave (or whichever wave it is) feminists are entitled to women’s allegiance because of the rights previous generation of feminists have won for women is, as my friend Brian Carnell has observed on Twitter, a bit like saying that blacks must be forever loyal to the Republican Party because it was instrumental in ending slavery.
Secondly: while it is certainly true that women pre-feminism generally faced far greater obstacles than men of the same class when it came to intellectual pursuits, the idea that women (at least in the West) were barred from expressing opinions and denied all voice is preposterous. Christine de Pizan wrote books, including ones that defended women against misogynist caricatures, all the way back in the 14th-15th Centuries. There were plenty of other women writers, including popular pamphleteers, whose work long predates anything like an organized feminist movement. In fact, if women had been denied the right to have and publish their opinions, how could (first-wave) feminism even have happened? Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges, two women who can probably be justly called feminist pioneers, both published their work at the end of the 18th Century. (Both, it should be noted, had written and published extensively on other subjects before turning to advocacy of women’s rights.) Feminists certainly did not make it possible for them to get published and reach large audiences.
It is true, however, that women authors–particularly ones who wrote on feminist topics–were often singled out for ridicule and disparagement. They could be mocked as ignorant and stupid, or derided as mere conduits for men’s ideas (because, after all, women couldn’t possibly have the brains to come up with intelligent arguments!), or slandered as immodest and unchaste…
… which is exactly what some feminists are now doing to Women Against Feminism.District in Ontario, Canada
Kenora District is a district and census division in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. It was created in 1907 from parts of Rainy River District. It is geographically the largest division in that province; at 407,213.01 square kilometres (157,225.82 sq mi), it comprises almost 38 percent of the province's land area, making it larger than Newfoundland and Labrador, and slightly smaller than Sweden.
Kenora District also has the lowest population density of any of Ontario's census divisions, and it ranks 37th out of 50 by population.
The district seat is the City of Kenora.
The northern part, north of the Albany River and known sometimes as the Patricia Portion, became part of Ontario in 1912. It was originally designated as the separate Patricia District, but was added to the Kenora District in 1937.[5]
Politics [ edit ]
As with the other districts of Northern Ontario, Kenora District has no equivalent to the county or regional municipality level of government that exists in Southern Ontario. All government services in the district are instead provided by the local municipalities, by local services boards in some unincorporated communities, or directly by the provincial government.
Geography [ edit ]
The climate is very harsh because of the influence of the cold waters of Hudson and James Bays: most of the region is taiga characterized by discontinuous permafrost, but on the extreme northern coast there are – remarkably for a latitude of only 54°N – patches of true Arctic tundra and continuous permafrost. This is the southernmost point in the Northern Hemisphere reached by the circumpolar line of continuous permafrost on any continent.
The Kenora District is so geographically large that it shares a border with both the contiguous United States (the boundary between it and the Northwest Angle is located in the Lake of the Woods) and the Canadian Arctic waters (Hudson Bay), the only district in Canada to do so.
The Kenora District contains the Sturgeon Lake Caldera, which is one of the world's best preserved Neoarchean caldera complexes and is some 2.7 billion years old.[6]
Subdivisions [ edit ]
City Population Ref. Dryden 7,749 Kenora 15,096
Towns [ edit ]
Red Lake, Ontario
Townships [ edit ]
First Nations reserves [ edit ]
Unorganized areas [ edit ]
Demographics [ edit ]
Canada census – Kenora District community profile 2016 2011 2006 Population: 65,533 (13.8% from 2011) 57,607 (-10.6% from 2006) 64,419 (4.2% from 2001) Land area: 407,213.01 km2 (157,225.82 sq mi) 407,192.66 km2 (157,217.96 sq mi) Population density: 0.1/km2 (0.26/sq mi) 0.2/km2 (0.52/sq mi) Median age: 34.9 (M: 34.5, F: 35.2) Total private dwellings: 31,191 29,606 30,940 Median household income: Notes: Excludes census data for one or more incompletely enumerated Indian reserves. – References: 2016[2] 2011[1] 2006[7] earlier[8]
Historic populations:[8]
Population in 2006: 64,419
Population in 2001: 61,802
Population in 1996: 63,360
Economy [ edit ]
The area near Lake Minnehaha saw a gold rush between 1902 and 1909. The settlement of Gold Rock served 14 area mines. These included the Big Master, Laurentian, Detola and Elora. According to Barnes, "Approximately 180,000 ounces of gold was won from 27 mines in the Kenora district from 1880 to 1976," with "over 331 known gold occurrences." The more successful mines included the Bully Boy, Cameron Island, Champion, Combined, Cornucopia, Gold Hill, Golden Horn, Kenricia, Mikado, Oliver, Olympia, Ophyr, Regina, Scramble, Severn, Stella, Sultana, Treasure and Wendigo.[9]
Most of the population of the district is concentrated in the extreme south where some agriculture is possible: the main crop is barley. In the north, mining is extremely extensive: northern Kenora district contains among the largest and highest-grade reserves of uranium in the world, and is also one of the world's major producers of nickel. Traditional native activities such as hunting and fishing dominate the northern half of the district outside of the few mining settlements.
A major mining exploration project is currently underway in the Ring of Fire region, centred on the district's isolated McFaulds Lake.
Transportation [ edit ]
Highway 599, longest secondary highway in Ontario
Permanent roads (Highway 599) only reach about halfway to the northernmost point of Kenora district, with the provincial highway network ending at Pickle Lake, although some more northerly communities have access to a seasonal ice/winter road network, via the Northern Ontario Resource Trail. Year-round air and summertime river transport are the only means of reaching the most remote parts of the district. The major railroad lines between Toronto and British Columbia passes through the south of the district.
Patricia Portion [ edit ]
Provincial boundaries of Canada prior to 1912. The portion of Ontario's modern boundaries which is not represented as part of Ontario in this map constitutes the "Patricia Portion" of Kenora District.
The Patricia Portion is an informal name for the part of the Kenora District lying north of the Albany River, which was transferred from the Northwest Territories to Ontario on May 15, 1912 in the Ontario Boundaries Extension Act, 1912. This area was originally a separate division named Patricia District, but became part of Kenora District in 1937.[5]
With the exception of a few communities along the northernmost ends of Highway 599 and the Highway 105/Highway 125 corridor, the Patricia Portion consists almost entirely of remote First Nations communities which are only accessible by float plane or winter road. Accordingly, the name "Patricia Portion" is still sometimes used to distinguish the area from the more populated southern portion of the district.
See also [ edit ]Hell hath no fury like a Snow Queen scorned!
For week we've been warning Once Upon a Time fans about the "worst" curse in Storybrooke history, and now we finally know the truth: The Spell of Shattered Sight is not just going to devastate our favorite fairytale relationships, it could kill everyone in town!
The enchanting drama returns this Sunday with an all-new episode and only ETonline has your exclusive sneak peek of The Snow Queen's (Elizabeth Mitchell) evil plan — and a potential ally who is looking to make a deal before the destruction hits.
NEWS: Jennifer Morrison Talks What's Next for Captain Swan!
ABC
We're personally keeping our fingers crossed that Rumple (Robert Carlyle) has some kind of trick up his sleeve, and is not fully reverting back to his dark ways. (Think of Belle before you act, Rumple!)
Speaking of reformed villains, we had the pleasure of chatting with the lovely Lana Parilla at the Once Upon a Time set in Vancouver, and she spilled that Regina is determined to do whatever it takes to secure her happy ending in spite of the Snow Queen's wicked ways.
"A villain's fate is always — ugh I don’t want to say the five letter word, but it starts with a "D" and ending with an "H" — and usually that's how it ends," Parilla admitted to reporters. "So Regina wants to fix things before she gets to that place."
NEWS: Elizabeth Mitchell Teases Future Devastation on 'OUAT'
Fans know that Regina is currently on a mission with Henry (Jared Gilmore) — code-named Operation Mongoose — so she can find the author of their fairytale book and change her seemingly doomed fate.
"I think that finding the author is a major priority, but it will happen over time," she said. "I'm excited to explore that. Villains deserve their happy endings, and I think that's something we're really going to explore on the back end [of the season].
(By the way, did you know that the brunette beauty desperately wishes that her mission with Henry had been named Operation Honey Badger instead? Parilla confessed with a laugh, "Because honey badgers don’t give a s—t! That what I wanted to say, actually." Consider our day made.)
WATCH: Rumple Makes a Deal, Emma Makes a Date and More!
ABC
Meanwhile Regina's love life has been heating up since things with Robin Hood's wife have cooled down. "Regina is torn because there's this love for Robin Hood, and yet she wants to save Marian," she explained. "So she moves forwards in helping him save Marian, which is very unlike Regina. But if she were to do what she would normally do, which is crush that heart, then she would just revert to her old ways. And she's worked way too hard to be that person again."
Not to worry, Outlaw Queen fans! Despite the fact that Marian's well-being is a priority, something incredibly swoon-worthy is going to happen in this week's episode while the couple prepares for the Spell of Shattered Sight to finally hit.
We're not going to spill exactly what is going to be said, but you should definitely scatter some pillows around the room for when you pass out from adorable overload. (But maybe some tissues, too!)
NEWS: Everything We Know About 'OUAT' Season 4!
And although Jennifer Morrison described the Spell of Shattered Sight as the "worst," Parilla was quite thrilled to experience such a shocking turn of events. "Oh my god how awesome is that?" she gushed. "We get to become our worst selves and what does that mean? Regina is about to scare the living hell out of everyone, so I'm so excited that's coming up."
Once Upon a Time airs Sunday, Nov. 30 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
Related GalleryOne peculiar satisfaction of being a reader is seeing an author you have followed for a long time finally break into the big time. VanderMeer has been a favourite among aficionados of New Weird fiction for more than a decade, exploring his fascinations with fungi, subterranean spaces and decay across half a dozen books. But with his Southern Reach trilogy – Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance, all released in 2014 – he has finally hit the bestseller lists. And with good reason. This trilogy is a modern mycological masterpiece.
In the first volume, a team of four scientists, identified by occupation rather than name (biologist, anthropologist, psychologist and surveyor), are sent to explore the mysterious "Area X", a wilderness in the American deep south. Eleven previous expeditions have failed, with mysterious influences driving the explorers to suicide, madness and cancer. This 12th trip is narrated by the group's biologist. She descends a spiral staircase into a subterranean structure she insists on calling a "tower", and finds a mysterious message written on the walls in letters made of some sort of fungoid vegetable growth. Expedition members appear to have been hypnotically conditioned by the Southern Reach, the organisation that sent them. But this does them no good, assuming it was ever supposed to. They go bonkers, or start glowing yellow, and are killed off one by one. Remnants of previous expeditions are found, including the journal kept by the narrator's now-deceased husband. There's a weird beast in the wilderness, and a strange being called the Crawler seems to be stalking the group. But what makes this book so remarkable is less what happens in it, and more its tense, eerie and unsettling vibe. Creating such an atmosphere is a balancing act: on the one hand, the writer must not destroy the mood with too much brute explanation; and on the other, he must not alienate the reader by being too annoyingly oblique. VanderMeer hits exactly the right balance, like a gymnast on a beam – albeit a creepy gymnast who's been infected with occult fungal spores and is starting to glow yellow.
The second volume, Authority, takes us inside the Southern Reach organisation itself. Its leader, Control, is struggling with the repeated failure of its missions into the slowly expanding Area X. This is a novel built around interviews with baffled returning explorers, unhelpful video evidence and the paranoid internal politics of the organisation. Of the three novels in the trilogy, it's the least successful. It may be that you find hordes of strange rabbits or phones apparently creeping across a roof to be the stuff of nightmares; but for me it had too much exposition and too little genuine creepiness.
But where Authority drags a little, Acceptance is much more on the button. (Or, we might say, the button mushroom.) The biologist from Annihilation and Control plus two others stage a new expedition into Area X, and their adventure recaptures the eerie momentum of the first volume. We get answers – but not to everything, and the ones we do get are not facile. If I'm sounding evasive, I can't help that. Giving too much away would spoil not just this novel but its two predecessors, and that would be a shame. Your best bet is to ignore the publisher's slightly gimmicky decision to release three novels in one year, and treat the trilogy as a single piece of work. If you start reading it, you will read right through in short order. You may also have nightmares.
Science fiction is sometimes seen as obsessed with shiny, futuristic technological equipment; but in fact nowadays the genre tends much more towards VanderMeer's Poe-like unease with a pulsing, microsporidic natural world. Mind you, VanderMeer writes much better prose than Poe ever did; and Acceptance in particular is full of beautiful descriptions of the natural environment. Structurally it hops a little distractingly between its various points of view, and the shortness of the chapters sometimes creates a choppiness that is at odds with the book's longer-burn Lovecraftian spookiness. But this choppiness is accidental: one of the things this novel is doing is playing non-linear games with time, wrongfooting any preconceptions we have been foolish enough to build up from the first volumes. Finding a way satisfactorily to pay off so much mysteriously tense apprehension is no small challenge for a writer – and VanderMeer manages to avoid banality and opacity both, and generates some real emotional charge while he's about it.
In interviews, VanderMeer has claimed the landscapes of the Southern Reach novels are autobiographical, based on hikes he has taken along the coast of northern Florida. All I can say is: if that's true, remind me never to book a holiday there. This is genuinely potent and dream-haunting writing. VanderMeer has arrived.
• Adam Roberts' novels include Yellow Blue Tibia. To order Acceptance for £10.39 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.Labour locked in ‘brutally honest’ debate over UK air strikes on Isis in Syria
Labour are locked in what one shadow minister has described as a “brutally honest” debate over whether the party should back David Cameron’s plan to launch UK air strikes on Islamic State (Isis) targets in Syria. The row broke out after Jeremy Corbyn wrote to MPs explaining that he was unconvinced by the prime minister’s case for war in the House of Commons.
“The prime minister did not set out a coherent strategy, coordinated through the UN, for the defeat of Isis. Nor has he been able to explain what a credible and acceptable ground force could retake and hold territory freed from Isis control by an intensified air campaign,” the Labour leader and former Stop the…In this spooky horror meets science fiction, humanoid technology is compared to false prophets in the Bible, as filmmaker Ariel Martin playfully depicts a dark future where automation encourages sinful indulgence and a lack of great parenting.
Very early on, you get the sense of what will happen in this short with its ominous music, shots of raw chicken, a knife… a baby. But don’t let that predictability keep you from watching. What makes this short special is its execution.
Using found footage coupled with an infomercial type strategy to introduce the robotic star of the short, The iMom, on the TV screen, we hear testimonials from users of the robot who swear that the invention has “changed their lives!” and given them new-found freedom. The too-perfect reviews are enough to set anyone on edge with skepticism.
Martin continues to allude to the darkness to come with striking cinematography and perspective from various surveillance cameras throughout the home that iMom serves. It’s comparable to something out of Paranormal Activity or Panic Room. The idea that those cameras could catch something scary will mess with your psyche as you continue to watch.
The filmmaking techniques in this short are truly akin to a horror film and the suspense of this short builds with a slow burn. But it’s the performance by Australian actress, Matilda Brown (who also starred in previously featured short Cockatoo), who takes it to the next level. She commits to her role as a robot so genuinely that it’s to the point of creepy, especially during the final scene of the film.
Throughout the short, there’s a biblical presence, that again, gives off the classic horror film vibes. Is the iMom a prophet or false prophet? Is she good or evil? ‘Sam’, played by Karl Beattie, isn’t so sure. This building conflict and his ever-present fear of darkness is sure to tug you in many different directions as the plot plays out.
We asked writer/director Martin what inspired The iMom: “I came across a photo of a baby interacting with a robotic arm and was struck by how it captured the idea of ‘man verses machine’, and wanted to take a narrative look at where technology is taking us as a society.”
Let us hope that Martin’s prediction isn’t going to come true.
The iMom has gotten quite a bit of festival recognition this year, including the Catalina Film Festival, Flickerfest and Aspen Shortsfest. Martin is currently working on a new short film based in Kiev, Ukraine, which is inspired by YouTube clips of the kids who climb enormous abandoned cranes and Soviet structures. He also has feature projects in the works.The eponymous hero of the Hellboy mythos has been around for more than 20 years now, and for most of that time fans have been aware of the fact that even though he may be good at heart... he's still destined to kick off the apocalypse.
The events of recent story arcs in the world of the Mignola-verse (so named for Mike Mignola, the writer, artist and creator of the character) have started to deliver on that long-held promise, what with dragons and England disappearing and other general harbingers of doom. Things haven't been great for our hero either, as Hellboy in Hell is a story about exactly what it sounds like. Hellboy finally winds up in hell, not in a vision, a portal or a brief trip... but because he died. And he went to hell.
Written and drawn by Mignola and colored by Dave Stewart, the first collection of Hellboy in Hell: The Descent is already out digitally and in trade paperback, and the newest installment, Hellboy in Hell #7, is out today. If you're not sure if you're ready to hop on board, Dark Horse has offered the entire first issue of The Descent for your reading pleasure below.Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson is one cool dude.
Not only is he one of the best players in the NFL in his second season. Not only is his team 12-3 and one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl this season.
Not only has he thrown for 3,185 yards and 25 touchdowns while running for 540 yards and a touchdown; but he bought every member of the Seahawks; offense an Xbox One for the holidays.
Talk about spreading holiday cheer. These guys are prepping for perhaps the biggest playoff run of their careers and in the midsts of it all, they’ll be able to go win the Super Bowl in Madden. That’s called visualizing success folks.
Speaking of success, there’s no doubt in my mind that when you think about success; Wilson’s name should come to mind.
You can check out Russ’ Instagram account for a the original picture of the holiday cheer, or just enjoy this picture of it that I was able to screen grab below:
The caption on the photo really says it all. Wilson is taking care of those who take care of him. And I quote:
“Spreading holiday cheer to all the guys that keep me whole on Sundays. OL, WRs, TE, & RBs Enjoy!@Microsoft #XboxOne”
They say that football is a team sport. Need anymore proof?
Note: Big h/t to my friends at Bleacher Report.c.1981/82 | age 13? There’s an odd mix of drawing ability this one. Panel 2—the closeup on Ben—shows an ability beyond my young years. So why is the bottom one so badly done? Puzzling indeed. Panel 2 actually reminds me somehow, of Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comics.
Practicalities
Once again, as in so many (!) instances with the comic—the positioning of speech/thought balloons is shown to be critically important. Read the two middle panels and see if they make sense? It’s a case of being so close to what you’re creating that you lose sight of whether it’s actually intelligible to others. It wasn’t meant for public consumption but as a kid you like to make-believe it is.
Speaking of which, it was even a great thrill to take a finished comic, flatten it out, open up the stapler (courtesy of dad’s work) and bang the staples through it with the heel of my hand. Then I’d pull the comic and staples out of the bedroom floor and bend the staples in with my thumbnail. I chipped my thumbnails many times doing that.
I actually made a comic page for my Between * Wars webcomic this year, showing that very thing!
Even more exciting still – was when one of my dad’s Work Study magazines carried an ad for colour copying. WHAT? Colour? It probably cost about £1.00 a copy, but the idea was thrilling: to colour copy one’s own home-made comic, put staples in it and have it look like a real comic from the newsagent!
I suppose girls would play house, and I’d play ‘Independent Comics Publisher’.
Please help this Webcomic--by Sharing
TweetEquifax hack may affect one in two US consumers: Here's how to protect yourself 4:40 PM ET Fri, 8 Sept 2017 | 01:24
People who are worried about whether their personal information was compromised in the Equifax data breach may be in for another unpleasant surprise: being forced to settle claims against the credit reporting company in arbitration instead of joining forces with other wronged consumers to sue in court.
Equifax is allowing people to sign up on its website for free identity theft protection and credit file monitoring following the disclosure Thursday of the data breach, which Equifax said was detected July 29 and affected 143 million consumers.
But the credit monitoring service, through an Equifax company called Trusted ID, has a provision that limits liability to the company, and consumers who sign up for what is billed as a free service will be charged for it after a one-year trial period if they don't call the company to cancel their subscription.
The provisions, buried in the fine print of Trusted ID's terms of service, added to confusion on Friday about how much help consumers are being offered. In a broader set of terms on Equifax's website, visitors are told they must accept certain terms, including arbitration, before being permitted to register for and purchase any product from its site.
"You also agree to be bound by this agreement by using or paying for our products or taking other actions that indicate acceptance of this agreement," it says.
TrustedID's terms also include this mandatory arbitration provision.
But Equifax's general terms have an arbitration opt-out provision for consumers who know to look for it and notify Equifax in writing within 30 days to a snail mail P.O. box address in its headquarters city of Atlanta.
TrustedID's terms do not include that opt-out provision, something that could trip up consumers if they sign up for the service.
"You're not going to find a lot of consumers who would read the lengthy terms of use, especially when they've been told on the previous page that they will get it for free," said Allison Zieve, the director of litigation for Public Citizen, a consumer protection group, who adds she believes Equifax's general opt-out clause wouldn't apply to TrustedID.
Scott Nelson, who is also a lawyer at Public Citizen, says Equifax uses broad terms to cover activities that fall under arbitration, though he notes that many consumers have never intentionally entered into a formal customer relationship with Equifax.
Equifax is one of three major credit reporting companies that collect data on hundreds of millions of people. That data is used by lenders to judge individuals' creditworthiness to buy a home, take out a credit card or obtain insurance. But there is no requirement that people go to the credit reporting firms to access that information, much less look at their websites, Nelson said.
Companies have pushed consumers to accept arbitration for a broad range of financial services and "it hasn't always held up. Courts look at it on a case-by-case basis," Nelson said. Most recently Wells Fargo has pushed back at lawsuits over its own arbitration requirements in the fake account scandal, Nelson added.
Arbitration usually results in less money recovered for consumers in disputes with companies.
On Friday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a relatively new consumer watchdog agency created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, issued a statement calling Equifax's required arbitration for credit monitoring "troubling."
"It is troubling that Equifax is forcing people to waive legal rights in order to receive fraud monitoring after the company's breach put their personal information at risk. Equifax could remove this clause so that consumers can receive this service without condition."
The agency has been battling Republicans over a new rule set to go into effect next year that would prevent companies from forcing consumers to waive their rights to class-action lawsuits. The rule will apply to new transactions beginning next March, but House Republicans have already voted to repeal it and the Senate could take up its own repeal measure as early as next week.
New York's Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, likewise said in a post on Twitter Friday that the arbitration language was "unacceptable and unenforceable," adding that his staff had contacted the company to get them to remove it. His office opened an investigation into the data breach.
Equifax's website says the arbitration provision (again, assuming one doesn't opt out) applies to "any claim, dispute, or controversy between You and Us relating in any way to Your relationship with Equifax, including but not limited to any Claim arising from or relating to this Agreement, the Products or this Site, or any information You receive from Us, whether based on contract, statute, common law, regulation, ordinance, tort, or any other legal or equitable theory, regardless of what remedy is sought."
But there is another out for consumers in the small print: an individual can take Equifax to small claims court, where disputes are usually for amounts of $10,000 or less, as long as the claim isn't combined with the claim of another person.
At the end of one year, consumers who signed up for the TrustedID product will begin being charged an unspecified amount unless they cancel by calling the company.
"That's just not right," said Public Citizen's Zieve. "They shouldn't be making money off the hack."Things I would find fantastic....
1. SERIOUS weather aspects!
A. Can you do snow 3 feet deep (low inertia, high surface tension - ie clumpy) so that moving through the deep snow is like pushing through 3-feet of thick undergrowth (possibly use 'powder' version of water) with few ripples, but some splashes of snow as you tromp through it! PS Even a Ranja could track you through this!!
B. Serious rainfall and snow effects. Massive drop in lighting and view distance from torrential rain... loud enough to mask stealthy footfalls.
C. Not spot the undead standing stock still until it attacks.... because it is covered by a snow drift.
D. Aradune required to hit the start button on his Fiery Avenger more than one to get it started in the cold wet weather!
2. IMPACT between PC and the weather...
A. Cold diminishing your Fire spells... Fireballs vaporising huge circles of snow into slush......
B. Rain reducing your Archery (Bow + Water = bad)
C. Ice making keeping your footing hard work...
D. Actually SEE the rain turn to steam as it lands on my Fire-Pet..... see the snow melt as my fire pet moves through the virgin drifts....
E. Watch as the Froglock gets its tongue stuck frozen on the Tank's chainmail bikini!
PS Ever since The Overthere, Dreadlands etc.... I have always been a bit suspicious of ruins.
I look at ruins and try to categorize them. After all, you know what they say....
'The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to:
(a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.'
Beware!
EDIT: typos, typos, typos.After all the hubbub and controversy caused by the release of SingPlayer for iPhone back in May, we knew it would take a serious change of heart for AT&T to reverse course on the issue of 3G streaming. The app's super-conspicuous lack |
,” Schiff said on ABC.
On Sunday morning, in a similar push for clarity surrounding Trump's wiretapping claims, in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union, Sen. John McCain said President Trump either has to retract his claim that Obama wiretapped the Trump Tower, or provide evidence of the allegations.
“President Trump has to provide the American people, not just the intelligence community, but the American people, with evidence that his predecessor, former president of the Unites States was guilty of breaking the law,” McCain told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
McCain said on Sunday that if Obama “violated the law” by ordering a wiretap, then "we’ve got a serious issue.”
“I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the Unites States could clear this up in a minute,” McCain said, adding that Trump could call the director of the CIA and the director of national intelligence for proof.
For now, the White House hasn’t provided evidence for the claim, saying it won’t comment beyond asking the relevant congressional committees to look into the allegations as part of their probes into allegations that Russia tried to help Trump during the 2016 presidential election.
Since then, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from investigations related to the 2016 presidential campaign, instead told a conservative radio host on March 9 that he was open to naming a outside counsel to look into the Justice Department under Obama. On Friday, Sessions asked 46 U.S. attorneys who were appointed by Obama to resign.
Meanwhile, following James Comey's plea to the DOJ last Sunday afternoon that the Justice Department deny Trump's wiretapping allegations, so far the DOJ has failed to do as requested.Tonino Guerra, an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world, died on Wednesday at the age of 92.
Tonino Guerra, an Italian poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world, died on Wednesday at the age of 92.
“I have sad news. Tonino Guerra died,” head of the Italian Culture Institute in Moscow Adriano del Asta told RIA Novosti.
Since 1960, Guerra has been one of the most prolific contributors to the Italian cinema. He wrote over 100 screenplays through his career and collaborated with Michelangelo Antonioni on L'avventura, La notte, L'eclisse, The Red Desert, Blowup, Zabriskie Point and Identification of a Woman, Federico Fellini on Amarcord, and Andrei Tarkovski on Nostalghia.
He regularly visited the Soviet Union and Russia, where he had many friends among painters, writers and movie makers. He was married to a Russian woman and joked that he was Russian by his marital status.
Guerra earned Oscar nominations for Amarcord, Blow-Up and Casanova 70.Founding Fathers did not anticipate or desire the existence of political parties, viewing them as "factions" dangerous to the public interest
Founders' republican ideology called for subordination of narrow interests to the general welfare of the community
Under republican ideology, politics was supposed to be rational and collaborative, not competitive
But the first American political parties began to form while George Washington was still president
The Founding Fathers got this one wrong. They were pretty smart guys—they got the whole separation of powers and checks and balances things right—but they completely missed the boat on political parties. They were convinced that political parties (or factions, as they called them) would only destroy representative government and that there should be no place for parties in American democracy. But we have since become dependent on political parties. For the past two centuries, they have played a critical role in both the political and governing processes.So why were the Founding Fathers, in this case, so far off the mark? And why exactly did parties prove so essential to our system of government?The Founders were republicans. No, not George Bush or John McCain Republicans; they were philosophical republicans (with a small "r"). This meant they believed that successful representative governments required the subordination of individual personal interests to the welfare of the community. They believed that the political process was all about identifying the common good. It was not about competition and disagreement; politics was a process in which rational voters and officials calmly sorted out what best served the entire community. The end result was not one camp of winners and another of losers, but the entire electorate united behind a common vision.As good republicans, the founders believed that parties (or factions) threatened this rational, collaborative process. If the political community broke into small groups committed to their own narrow interests, the search for the common good would be compromised. Politics would disintegrate into battles between conflicting visions, and elections would generate division rather than consensus.But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification, political parties had emerged. Some of the Founding Fathers originally most concerned about these "factions" had actually helped to bring them about. George Washington lamented that political party wrangling "agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another."And Thomas Jefferson, always good for a pithy line, swore "if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."But as president, Washington pursued economic and foreign policies that alienated a huge part of the electorate. And in 1793, Thomas Jefferson resigned his seat in Washington's cabinet to lead the opposition to the administration—a move that led directly to the formation of the first American political parties.As the Founders discovered, to their dismay, the simple fact was that consensus was impossible to maintain. People simply disagreed about things. Reasonable people held conflicting visions of the common good. Politicsabout conflict and division; and elections did produce winners and losers. And as politicians moved toward a more realistic understanding of politics, they discovered that some sort of political organization would facilitate—not destroy—the political process.Fresh details on Naughty Dog’s upcoming standalone story
Last month, I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at an early version of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Though still early in development, it’s showing loads of promise. I was able to get unprecedented access to the minds at developer Naughty Dog to learn more about Naughty Dog’s next Uncharted adventure.
First, the setting. In moving the action to the southern tip of India, The Lost Legacy injects a fresh surge of colour and personality – closer to the pulpier feel of the original Uncharted, in some ways. “Beautiful, big landscapes to traverse and explore, that sense of a surprise around every corner,” Creative Director Shaun Escayg told me. “We wanted to bring more of that back.”
The Lost Legacy is a new story set six to 12 months after the events of Uncharted 4. The action kicks off with a search for a priceless relic – the Tusk of Ganesha – and a decidedly unlikely pairing.
How and why Nadine and Chloe are Lost Legacy’s co-leads
Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross are reluctant partners who don’t see eye-to-eye, but who must work together to obtain the priceless Tusk from a mysterious warlord named Asav. “I like to figure things out as I go,” Chloe mutters at one point in the gameplay demo. “I noticed,” Nadine snorts.
“Asav, Chloe, and Nadine all have different reasons for wanting the Tusk.” — Josh Scherr, writer, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Why revisit Chloe? For Naughty Dog, it was an easy decision. “She’s an interesting character with a darker moral compass compared to Drake,” Writer Josh Scherr remarks: “They’re both treasure hunters. Drake has a bit of a hero complex, but Chloe looks out for number one, first and foremost.” It’s Chloe who initiates the hunt for the Tusk.
Nadine reenters the picture for different reasons, partially born out of the consequences of her actions in Uncharted 4. With Shoreline crumbling, she’s out of work and desperate.
“Chloe would need somebody with military expertise,” Escayg said. “In all of Uncharted, Nadine is probably the most rational and practical character we’ve ever introduced,” Scherr added. “She tends to take a direct approach.”
Bringing them together helps each character accentuate the other. “They’re opposites. Chloe is spontaneous and impulsive, where Nadine is by the book, structured,” Escayg explained. “That made for a good pairing.”
And you better believe that relationship is going to develop over the course of the game. “Both of them are in positions they aren’t used to being in,” Game Director Kurt Margenau said. “Chloe, in terms of taking charge. Nadine, who is used to running the show, is now the hired gun. They’re both figuring it out as they go.”
The biggest Uncharted levels yet
With characters and the setup out of the way, it was time to get a closer look at the game itself. Based on what I saw, The Lost Legacy’s overall gameplay style will be familiar to Uncharted 4 veterans. But Naughty Dog is determined to add further refinements and enhancements based on lessons learned during Uncharted 4’s lengthy development cycle.
Starting with the level design. In one pivotal section of the game, the team wants to provide a more expansive environment that gives players more ways to explore at their own pace – “the biggest [area] ever for an Uncharted game,” Margenau mentioned.
While developing Uncharted 4, Naughty Dog had hoped to go even bigger on certain huge locations such as Madagascar, Art Director Tate Mosesian explained to me. But some concessions had to be made in the interests of maintaining the game’s development schedule. Not so with The Lost Legacy, where the game will benefit from an updated production process that can see up to five teams working on one location at a time.
“It’s got a bigger, more organic feel, with more player choice.” — Kurt Margenau, game director, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
In The Lost Legacy, this translates into a sprawling level with traversal challenges, environmental puzzles, shootouts, and more.
It’s honeycombed with secrets too, with new hidden treasures that will reward persistent players who try to traverse everything they can see.
There’s loads of environmental variety, too, partly thanks to the natural diversity seen in the Western Ghats region of southern India. You’ll explore lush jungles, soaring mountains, and ancient temples, in addition to the war-torn urban environment seen in the PSX 2016 reveal.
The new weapons and tools of the game
There is some new combat gear to master, too. A silenced pistol (The first lethal stealth weapon in Uncharted history!) will add new tactical wrinkles to The Lost Legacy’s stealth play and expand your combat options.
Meanwhile, C4 proved so popular among Uncharted 4’s loyal multiplayer community that Naughty Dog couldn’t resist adding it to The Lost Legacy. Why not?
There also seems to be an increased range of options available for combat encounters. “There are entire combat setups that you can skip, go around, or approach from any direction,” Margenau explained. “It’s got a bigger, more organic feel, with more player choice and more stealth options.”
Another new mechanic, lockpicking, was first seen in the game’s PlayStation Experience 2016 debut trailer. Though the exact lockpicking mechanics are still a work in progress, the team was so fixated on capturing the tactile feel of the act in-game that they purchased a real lockpicking kit to practice with. That’s dedication!
One thing that definitely won’t be changing, though, is Naughty Dog’s approach to the series’ iconic action setpieces – some of the most memorable moments in gaming. “We obviously love them,” Margenau teased, adding that The Lost Legacy will include setpieces that do “things we’ve never done.” Sorry folks – I couldn’t squeeze anything more out of him than that.
About a possible Nathan Drake cameo…
It’s worth noting that The Lost Legacy, which will be launching later this year as a standalone game, will be a lengthier experience than The Last of Us: Left Behind, but shorter than Uncharted 4.
As for fans hoping for a Nathan Drake cameo in The Lost Legacy? “We entertained a few possible ideas around including Nate as a secondary character,” Scherr explained. “But everything we did felt superfluous because we tied it all up with Uncharted 4.” Margenau was even more direct. “We’re not going to touch on Nathan Drake in this, at all.” So, uh, maybe don’t hold your breath.
“You can sort of imagine Drake sitting on the couch playing Crash Bandicoot while Chloe and Nadine are off galavanting,” Scherr joked. “Yeah, the Crash Bandicoot remaster,” Margenau added.Loyal fans to be rewarded by Club
WEST Bromwich Albion will re-introduce a Loyalty Points scheme for the new season to give ticket priority to the Club’s most loyal fans.
The scheme will be up-and-running for the start of the new campaign following today's eagerly-awaited release of the 2015-16 Barclays Premier League fixtures - which sees Albion begin their campaign at The Hawthorns against Manchester City.
Below is a guide to the points to be awarded for each category of ticket purchased.
But there are some key elements for fans to note.
* Only the previous season’s Loyalty Points will be added to the running total. For example, supporters will begin this season with their purchases for the 2014-15 campaign adding to their total. However, these will be dropped at the end of next season when the points accrued during the 2015-16 will replace them.
* We cannot issue Loyalty Points for tickets purchased on the day of the game. Loyalty Points will only be garnered by fans ordering their tickets before match day.
* At the moment, the Club are working on up-dating the system and until this up-grade is complete - do not panic if your total is not immediately on view when you book your tickets. It will be added after games.
When the upgrade is complete, a running total will be visible at the point of purchase.
The Club have not used the Loyalty Points system for a couple of seasons because of a combination of technology issues and lack of demand.
But a couple of fixtures last season – notably the away FA Cup tie at Birmingham City – saw huge spikes in the scramble for tickets and persuaded the club to press ahead with the scheme’s re-introduction.
Supporters with any queries are urged to contact the ticket office on 0121 227 2227 or email tickets@wbafc.co.uk.
The new points totals awarded will be as follows:
Loyalty Points Season 2015-16: Points Awarded
Season Ticket Purchase 2015-16: 1000
Season Ticket Purchase from a renewal of 2014-15: 500 (NOTE: 1500 points awarded in total if 15/16 season ticket is renewed from 14/15)
Away Season Ticket Purchase 2015-16: 1000
Away Season Ticket Renewal of 2014-15: 500 (NOTE: 1500 points awarded in total if 15/16 season ticket is renewed from 14/15)
Membership Purchase 2015-16: 300
Membership Renewal of 2014-15: 150
Away League Match Purchases 2015-16: 5
Away League Match Purchases 2014-15: 5
Home League Match Purchases 2015-16: 5
Home League Match Purchases 2014-15: 5
Away Cup Match Purchases 2015-16: 10
Away Cup Match Purchases 2014-15: 10
Home Cup Match Purchases 2015-16: 10
Home Cup Match Purchases 2014-15: 10Virtual reality’s (VR) applications within the military industry have been well-documented in the past, pre-dating the likes of the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD). Despite this, the rise in popularity of consumer-level VR is causing some companies in this sector to utilise better-known VR technology. American global aerospace and defence technology company Northrop Grumman, for example, is will this week use the Oculus Rift to showcase the latest updates in its unmanned aircraft systems (UAS).
The company will feature the VR HMD at the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International trade show running from 5th – 7th May 2015 at the Georgia World Congress Center. Attendees will be able to put on an Oculus Rift and view pre-eminent UAS in a virtual environment. This consists of a hangar with a high altitude long endurance (HALE) that users will be able to walk around and interact with. The company will also be exhibiting the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration aircraft at the show.
VRFocus will continue to follow any and all applications of VR, reporting back with the latest updates on them.Chris Deschene says he plans to appeals today's Office of Hearings and Appeals decision on Thursday in Window Rock. (Times photo - Donovan Quintero)
C
hris Deschene repeatedly refused to answer questions Thursday in a hearing meant to determine whether he speaks Navajo fluently.
Chief hearing officer Richie Nez said he had no choice but to rule against Deschene.
“I’ve been pushed into a corner by clear and convincing evidence that by refusing to answer questions which will lead me to pass on whether or not Mr. Deschene is fluent,” Nez said.
Deschene said he would appeal to the Navajo Nation Supreme Court.
“The collective rights of our people have not been heard,” Deschene said. “This case highlighted one simple issue, that nobody is protecting the voice of those that voted in the primary and those who will vote in the general.”
Deschene has 10 days to appeal Nez’s decision.
How to get The Times:
Back to top ^MM’s Coverage of Park51 (Mislabeled “Ground Zero Mosque”)
UPDATE: Came across this interesting State Department’s daily press briefing. Scroll towards middle-bottom half. Apparently, the Imam may be under clear instructions not to talk about Park51, likely to avoid conflict of interest. He is on state business and can’t use a taxpayer supported trip to “fund-raise”. However, still can’t see why he shouldn’t talk about the controversy (not equal to promoting the project).
Let me preface the post by mentioning that the injection of “radical” into the title was purely tongue-in-cheek!
True radicals would be offended by the use of radical for Imam Faisal Rauf, whose message today was as soft as his voice. As part of a State Department sponsored visit, the Imam visited Fanar Islamic Cultural Center and gave the Friday khutbah (sermon). Afterward, I was able to sneak in a couple of questions, though I wish he would have answered more. A press black-out was in effect, though loosely enforced. After the khutbah, I also had a chance to have a chat with the cultural attaché of the US Embassy in Qatar.
In the khutbah (audio below), Imam Faisal talked about the meaning of shahadah and its true implications. He reminded Muslims that we have to move beyond Islam to Iman and Ihsan. He asked if we think our prayer is equal to the prayer of the Prophet (S), and if it is not (which he agreed was not), then how do we close the gap between the acceptance and the essence of the Prophet (S)’s prayer vs. ours.
He reminded everyone about the Prophet (S) being a mercy to mankind and that means that we as followers have to also be part of that mercy. The khutbah can be heard below.
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Unfortunately, the Imam did not talk about the “Ground Zero Mosque”, which was the big elephant in the room. An AP photographer was in the crowd and kept taking pictures with his giant professional camera, much to the chagrin of the musaleen. I also snapped a few pictures in the beginning but with my small, silent Canon camera : -)
After the khutbah, I made my way into the front, shook hands with Imam Faisal, introduced myself as an American Muslim and a blogger for MM. I told him that we have been following the issue of the Cordoba House/Park 51. I attempted to audiotape the session, but unfortunately the tape’s too grainy to play here, so I’ll try to transcribe, and make up for the gaps:
MM: Imam, we have been obviously following the matter very closely
Imam: I’m sure you have MM: We are wondering how it [the controversy] has affected your trip here?
Imam: Alhamdulillah, it hasn’t. But, except that I have been getting less sleep [kind of half-serious]. Everyday, [I spend] 2-3 hours following the issues of the day. MM: A lot of people are asking. Do you feel that you are needed more there. Do you feel that it would have been prudent more to be there [in America] than here?
Imam [the voice was fuzzy here so this may be less than perfectly accurate transcription]: That’s a difficult question but the decision was made/justified to stay on course with the program. [And I think he said he was content with that]
I tried to grab him again after he prayed his sunnah, but he had to go, and frankly, he seemed a bit annoyed at this point. I can imagine the stress he is under, and that he is probably constantly bombarded with this issue. However, I do feel that at this time, he needs to be even more open to questions and answers and be front and center discussing the issues, and making himself available at every opportunity.
Afterwords, I engaged in a discussion with the cultural attaché (a friendly guy named Kevin) and another American friend about the visit. I asked him about the purpose of the Imam’s visit. He said the purpose was to improve inter-faith understanding and religious tolerance (I assume he meant highlighting American values of tolerance).
My friend and I asked him about the big elephant in the room, the issue of Park51 and why it was ignored in the khutbah? We mentioned that everyone knows of the issue, so its not like it can be swept under the rug, rather it needs to be brought up by the Imam to highlight that the bigotry against it is not an American value. If the purpose is really to convince Muslims that America is good to its Muslim minority, then the Imam’s closeness to the issue necessitates that he discuss the fiasco and refute the bigotry. Kevin seemed to agree, and our hope is that he would pass that message to Imam Faisal.
As others have mentioned and I alluded to, it just seems Imam Faisal is not taking the bull by its horns, and rather perhaps feels/hopes that the issue would just disappear. Perhaps he is the shy/quiet kind, definitely very soft-spoken and finds these situations uncomfortable. But no Muslim is comfortable these days because how the issue has pitched Muslims against non-Muslim Americans, as a result of a successful campaign by the worst bigots that America has to offer, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller (who by the way are also in bed with white supremacist groups).
So, my message to the Imam, if you ever read this: Pls stand up and be heard.
Audio of Khutbah:
[audio:http://muslimmatters.org/audio/Rauf/Faisal Rauf Khutbah.wav]
One of the photos is a book, What’s Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West” translated into Arabic from English by Imam Faisal, given free of charge by the US Embassy.
P.S. I have a grainy video of the khutbah, not sure if it has any benefit?Presidential Pardons White criminals seeking presidential pardons are nearly four times as likely to succeed as people of color, a ProPublica examination has found.
This story has been updated with more details and comments and was co-published with The Washington Post.
The head of the Justice Department's pardons office failed to accurately convey key information to the Bush White House regarding a federal inmate's plea for early release, the department's inspector general concluded in a report released Tuesday.
In overseeing the case of Clarence Aaron, the report found that Pardon Attorney Ronald L. Rodgers engaged in "conduct that fell substantially short of the high standards expected of Department of Justice employees and the duty he owed the President of the United States."
In a measure of the seriousness of the evidence against Rodgers, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz referred his findings to the deputy attorney general for "a determination as to whether administrative action is appropriate."
Rodgers's advice to the president, the inspector general concluded, "was colored by his concern... that the White House might grant Aaron clemency presently and his desire that this not happen." The report includes excerpts of emails Rodgers sent to another Justice Department official expressing hope that Aaron's request be denied.
"The details that emerge from this report about the way the Justice Department handled my client's case shock me," said Aaron's attorney, Margaret Love. "Justice is long overdue for Clarence Aaron, and I hope the president will take immediate action to free him."
The pardons office has come under increased scrutiny in the last year since ProPublica and The Washington Post began reporting on race disparity in the selection of pardon recipients and the handling of the Aaron case. ProPublica's study showed that white applicants have been nearly four times as likely as minorities to be pardoned. Aaron is African American.
The review also showed that Obama has granted clemency at a lower rate than any modern president.
Rodgers, a career civil servant and former military judge, took over the pardons office in 2008. Despite calls for his resignation, he has remained in office. Nearly all pardon recipients are preselected by Rodgers and he personally reviews each application from federal inmates seeking early release. Under his leadership, denial recommendations have soared while pardons have been rarely granted.
Justice spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. had full confidence in Rodgers. Hornbuckle declined to reiterate that support Tuesday. He said Holder's deputy, James Cole, was reviewing the inspector general's findings and that "further comment would not be appropriate." The Justice Department refused requests for interviews with Cole or Rodgers.
The White House relies almost exclusively on Rodgers in deciding whom the president will forgive or release from prison. Asked whether the president also has confidence in Rodgers's advice, the White House declined to comment.
The inspector general began looking into the pardons office earlier this year following ProPublica's reporting on the case. The story revealed that Aaron had won crucial support for a commutation from the U.S. attorney in Mobile, Ala., and the sentencing judge there. But Rodgers, who opposed Aaron's release, failed to accurately convey those views to the White House. Acting on Rodgers's advice, President George W. Bush denied Aaron's request for commutation in the final weeks of his presidency.
Kenneth Lee, who served as associate White House counsel then, said that he would have recommended Aaron's immediate release from prison four years ago had he known of the views of the prosecutor and judge at that time.
Aaron was a 24-year-old college football star at Southern University when he was convicted in 1993 for his role in a drug conspiracy. Although Aaron was not the buyer, the user, the supplier or the dealer, he received a triple life sentence without parole, the stiffest punishment of anyone in the conspiracy. The severity of the sentence shocked civil rights groups and elected officials from both parties who rallied to support Aaron's quest for a commutation.
In July, the Obama administration asked the pardons office to review Aaron's current petition, which has been pending since April 2010. Aaron remains incarcerated at a federal penitentiary in Talladega, Ala., pending a decision.
Justice officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Rodgers has been removed from weighing in on Aaron's new petition.
Advocates said that is not enough. "Rodgers has to go," said Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "No one, least of all the president, can have any confidence that this pardon attorney is giving the president the unbiased information he needs to make clemency decisions."
Tuesday marked the second major inspector general's report on the pardons office in recent years. A 2007 investigation led to the removal of Rodgers's predecessor who engaged in inappropriate conversations about the ethnicity of an applicant born in Nigeria.Daredevil season 2 has new showrunners, Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez, and a big new Marvel character as the anti-hero Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, is set to bring violent vigilante justice to Hell’s Kitchen. Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead) will play Castle when the show’s second season gets going.
Since the casting announcement, we’ve wondered to what degree the Punisher would factor in to Daredevil. Turns out, he might be a huge part of the season, to the degree that he could provide the most significant opposition to Daredevil in the new collection of episodes.
Nerdist reports that co-showrunner Ramirez has described the new season as “Daredevil vs. the Punisher.”
BUT. That doesn’t mean that Frank Castle is going to be taking Wilson Fisk’s place as the Big Bad. Instead, it sounds like the battle between Daredevil and Punisher will be essentially a moral battle. After all, Daredevil may be violent, but he’s not a killer, while Frank Castle is often explicitly a killer.
In the show’s first season, Daredevil and Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, moved towards being arch-nemeses. Their opposing approaches to rebuilding Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil sought to help the lower classes, while Fisk favored gutting and rebuilding provided the spine of the season’s story. (With Daredevil’s martial arts tutor Stick showing up as sort of a violent good guy version of Fisk.)
With (spoiler) Fisk now in prison, we’re going to see other criminals trying to take control of Hell’s Kitchen. Expect to see the Punisher reloading to blow them away to whatever degree he can. That will naturally lead to conflict with Daredevil. Could that turn out to be a two-front war that the blind hero cannot hope to sustain? Or will this season take hints from one big Daredevil story arc to find the horned hero himself trying to fill the power vacuum left by Fisk?
Meanwhile, rumors persist that both Elektra and Bullseye will show up in season 2; we’ll await more casting reveals to help predict their futures.For months now, we've been hearing about BlackBerry's next QWERTY device and seemingly for even longer there has been purported renders of the device floating around in various forms, some possibly more accurate than others. Adding fuel to the fire is a new set of images which have now appeared on Weibo, which COULD be the first real look at the device.
At this point, there's very little comment associated with the photos and there's no history of the poster having shared any previous BlackBerry images so alas, take these photos with a massive grain of salt. Even in their unconfirmed form, still interesting to see considering we know that whatever the next QWERTY looks like, it will be the last QWERTY BlackBerry device built in-house. Thoughts?
Discuss more in the CrackBerry ForumsOn October 1, 1910, International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers member James McNamara blew up the Los Angeles Times building because the paper’s publisher, Harrison Gray Otis, was spearheading the city’s effort to crush unionism and remain an open shop alternative to heavily unionized San Francisco. The explosion and fire killed 21 people and wounded about 100 more, giving a black eye to the entire labor movement, embarrassing the American Federation of Labor, and setting back the labor movement in Los Angeles for decades.
In the early 20th century, Los Angeles was arguably America’s most conservative city. An hotbed of anti-union extremism, organized labor was almost entirely nonexistent. No one did more to push this policy than Harrison Gray Otis. In 1896, Otis took over the city’s Merchants Association and turned it to an virulently anti-union organization. Using his powerful newspaper as a mouthpiece for antiunionism, Otis spent the next two decades as the nation’s most important anti-union advocate. Some of this was ideology, some of it was LA boosters trying to undermine unionized San Francisco as the center of the California economy.
The Iron Workers were a tough bunch of unionists, to say the least. Formed in 1886, the union remained weak until it won a strike against a U.S. Steel subsidiary in 1902. This opened the door to them and within a year had most of the nation’s iron shops under their control, even signing some collective bargaining agreements with employers. In 1903, US Steel struck back, organizing the nation’s iron industrialists for a concerted union busting campaign that included spies, state complicity, and violence against workers. It was successful and by 1910, the union was out of every US Steel facility and most others. Responding to this campaign, beginning in 1906, the Iron Workers started using bombs to force companies to the bargaining table. Mostly this was just showing companies what they could do–the total damage of all these 110 bombs was small. But they did know how to manufacture and detonate bombs, that was for sure. No Alexander Berkman were these men.
During this tumult, a pair of Irish brothers named John and James McNamara rose into the Iron Workers’ leadership. John became Secretary-Treasurer of the union in 1905 and was heavily involved in the bombing campaign. In 1910, the Iron Workers launched a major organizing campaign in Los Angeles. They wanted a minimum wage of 50 cents an hour and overtime pay. Otis led the opposition. He and his employers organization raised $350,000 to fight the strike. A court judge issued injunctions that banned picketing. The Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance banning picketing or “speaking in public streets in a loud or unusual tone.” The strikers refused to follow these absurd laws and 472 were arrested. The strike was going pretty well and the total number of union members went up by 60%.
John and James McNamara
Yet on October 1, a bomb went off under the LA Times building. It was supposed to explode at 4 a.m. in order to not hurt anyone but the faulty timing mechanism set it off just after 1, meaning people were still working, including a bunch of reporters finishing a story late. Most of the dead were killed by the fire caused by the explosion. The next day, unexploded bombs were found underneath Otis’ home, as well as other sites around the city, although many claim that these were probably planted by the police to frame the union, an entirely possible scenario regardless of who bombed the actual building.
Ruins of the Los Angeles Times building
Otis immediately claimed the unionists had blown up his building. He wrote in the Times, “You anarchic scum. You cowardly murderers, you midnight assassins, you whose hands are dripping with the innocent blood of your victims, have committed one of the worst atrocities in the history of the world.” Unionists on the other hand believed Otis dastardly enough to bomb his own building just to frame the union.
Samuel Gompers immediately denied that any union was involved in such a dastardly crime. But a spy placed in the Iron Workers Union found out that the bombing campaign had come straight from the union’s top leadership. A hotel clerk recognized a photo of John McNamara, confirming he had rushed in and out of the hotel just before the bomb exploded. On April 13, James McNamara and Ortie McManigal, a rank and file union member, were arrested in Detroit with bombing equipment on them. They were taken to Chicago where instead of going to the police station they were held for a week in the home of a police sergeant. McManigal finally spilled the beans and implicated the entire Iron Workers leadership in the bombing. John McNamara was also discovered to have bombed a local iron manufacturing plant.
The labor movement was infuriated with the treatment of the prisoners, hiding them in a private home and forcing a confession. McNamara and McManigal claimed they had been tortured by the private investigators. For labor, this felt like the 1906 case when IWW leader Big Bill Haywood and other labor leaders were framed for the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Clarence Darrow took the defense case. But it was so clear they were guilty that an ailing Darrow could do little for them. Muckraker Frank Norris got the brothers to confess in prison and convinced them to make their case that it was a justifiable bombing campaign. Seeing an inevitable defeat in court, Darrow got Otis and the AFL to agree to a plea bargain that would give the McNamara brothers light sentences in return for the end of the Iron Workers strike, which was ultimately what Otis wanted to begin with. But although Otis and the business community agreed to this, the prosecutor refused and the trial went forward with the stipulation that James would receive life and John a shorter sentence. That final plea agreement also stipulated a meeting between capital and labor and the end of the employers’ open shop campaign.
1911 Socialist Party pins in support of the McNamara brothers.
When Gompers found out the McNamara’s had pleaded guilty, he said they “had betrayed labor.” James McNamara received life in prison. John received 15 years. Thirty-eight Iron Workers were convicted of various crimes. The employers completely ignored their side of the agreement and continued fighting any unionization in their conservative town.
The bombing convinced national labor reformers to push for a greater government role in labor relations so that violence could be avoided. This led to the remarkable U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, created by President Taft in 1912, which will receive later coverage in this series.
The entire Los Angeles labor movement collapsed. Harrison Gray Otis almost couldn’t have asked for a better gift. Los Angeles remained a city with unusually low union density until the 1950s.
Ortie McManigal served 2 1/2 years as part of his plea deal. James McNamara died in prison in 1941. John McNamara served his full 15 years. Upon his release, he returned to union organizing, dying in Butte 2 months after his brother.
There’s a whole website dedicated to the bombing and those involved, which is actually quite good.
This is the 77th post in this series. The rest of the series is archived here. |
between them, McNeil illustrated Burroughs’ submissions to Cyclops magazine, “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart” and impressed him enough so that he wanted to meet the young artist. (It’s worth noting that McNeil scarcely had any idea who Burroughs was at the time, even so, he drew Mr. Hart, the villain, to look a lot like a younger version of El Hombre Invisible.)
After a year of museum research and preliminary design on a mockup, Rolling Stone’s Straight Arrow Books imprint agreed to publish the “Ah Puch” book and McNeil moved to San Francisco to work on it. Straight Arrow was shuttered in 1974 and eventually the project was abandoned before the text portion alone saw the light of day in Ah Pook Is Here and Other Texts in 1979. Malcolm McNeil went on to a distinguished career as an illustrator for the likes of National Lampoon, Marvel Comics and The New York Times and a motion graphics designer and director for film, advertising and television, including winning an Emmy for his work for Saturday Night Live. (This will be of interest to no one save for fellow vets of the 1980s New York advertising world, but McNeil’s Paintbox work was synonymous with Charlex, the NYC-based video production house probably best known for The Cars’ “You Might Think” video, dozens of TV show openings and hundreds of commercials.)
After some 30 years in storage, the by now fragile “Ah Puck is Here” artwork was restored by Malcolm McNeill for exhibition, and was shown at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, the Saloman Arts Gallery in Manhattan and elsewhere.
Fantagraphics have published two separate Ah Pook books, one a gorgeous coffee table book of McNeil’s extraordinary panoramic illustrations for the Burroughs collaboration, The Lost Art of Ah Pook Is Here: Images from the Graphic Novel and a memoir, Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me, an intimate, affectionate portrait of their unlikely friendship and multi-year/multi-continent joint project.
The first book has very little text, and although it’s impossible to make heads or tails out of what is going on with the drawings alone, trust me, you get a very good sense of the epicness of the vision and also see some of what would have made 99% of the publishers of the 1970s very squeamish. Sadly, for reasons McNeil politely declines to go too far in-depth about, he was denied the use of Burroughs’ text for the Fantagraphics publication by his estate and this is a real shame.
However, if you have a copy of truncated 1979 Ah Pook Is Here (I do) it becomes an even more satisfying excuse to dive in deeply on the detective work and match passages from the text to the artwork. If you’re interested enough to purchase the coffee table book, surely you are going to have to rush over to eBay or ABEBooks and get yourself a copy of Ah Pook Is Here and Other Texts, just bear that in mind.
Observed While Falling: Bill Burroughs, Ah Pook, and Me, the memoir and the third book in this trilogy, is no less essential for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what made Burroughs tick, and should, along with the artwork that was regretfully parted from WSB’s text, be seen as one of the most exciting things to come along in Burroughs scholarship in recent years. It is, by far, the most observational—and highly personal/subjective, which makes it fun—look at Burroughs produced by any of his friends or collaborators. McNeil is a fine writer—the man must be a superb raconteur—and he never forgets who the book is really about.
I must say, as a longtime William Burroughs fanatic, I was wowed by McNeil’s twinned Fantagraphics books (which are beautiful matching objects) and spellbound by his tales of working with Burroughs. There are really three books here that you need, so it’s not a cheap proposition to acquire the lot, but if you’re a big Burroughs fanboy, it’s certainly well worth the expense.
Furthermore, if you’re so inclined Malcolm McNeil is selling very reasonably priced limited edition prints of several of his incredible “Ah Pook” panels.
The Dead City Radio recording of Burroughs reading “Ah Puck is Here” provides the soundtrack to this amazing short animated film directed by Philip Hunt with music by John Cale.For an overwhelming majority of Americans, weary of the longest war in United States history—which has cost trillions in taxpayer dollars and exacted more than 2,300 deaths and 20,000 wounded among U.S. soldiers since Operation Enduring Freedom commenced on Oct. 7, 2001—Afghanistan is a lost cause.
The latest National Intelligence Estimate, the considered analysis of all 16 of the U.S. government’s intelligence agencies, predicts that Afghanistan will eventually descend into chaos, that the central government in Kabul will be increasingly marginalized as the once-ousted Taliban gains power and influence, and that much of the social progress and security improvements will ultimately be reversed. All this will come to pass, even if the United States leaves behind thousands of troops and keeps pouring billions into the hard-scrabble, impoverished country of 30 million souls that borders Pakistan and Iran.
Yet that depressingly bleak assessment is not universally shared. During a high-level panel discussion of Afghanistan’s future at New York’s Asia Society on Wednesday, the participants offered a vision of hope and change.
“It’s very difficult to predict what will happen if the Americans and the international community completely disengage,” said Afghan media mogul Saad Mohseni, who took part in the discussion moderated by MTV founder and former Viacom chief executive Tom Freston, who lived in Afghanistan as a textile exporter in the 1970s. “What we’re seeing today, and what’s very interesting, is 85 percent of all military operations are conducted by the Afghan forces,” continued Mohseni, whose Moby Group runs the country’s dominant television and radio outlets. “They are capable now. They’re beginning to take a lead role, which they have been for some months now. So things are falling into place.”
Mohseni—whose right index fingernail was covered in dark ink to indicate that he’d voted in Afghanistan’s April 5th presidential elections—argued that the United States and other western democracies have a vested interest in continuing to support his homeland.
“There’s no doubt that we will require international assistance for some more years,” he said. “The cost of our military is five billion dollars and Afghanistan cannot afford to pay for that. A stable Afghanistan is good for the region…We talk about counterterrorism and Al Qaeda, but even more, a stable Afghanistan will bode well for the future of Pakistan…If you look at predictions for 2050, Pakistan will have a population of almost 400 million people—it will be the fourth largest country in the world—and Afghanistan will have a population of 100 million. It will be the 16th largest country in the world…A stable Afghanistan is very important for the world.”
Mohseni was joined in his measured optimism by Afghan women’s rights activist and government reformer Aarya Nijat and Pakistani business advocate Faiysal AliKhan, a Carnegie fellow and a national security expert at the New America Foundation. All three suggested that the fact that 60 percent of eligible Afghan voters lined up for hours at the polling places—displaying courage and determination in the face of Taliban threats of violence (and an estimated 20 deaths and 43 wounded from Election Day attacks on voting centers)—proved that a thriving democracy in Afghanistan is a realistic ambition. Freston noted that the election to replace President Hamid Karzai, who is making good on a promise not to run again, will be the first peaceful transition of power in Afghan history.
Millions of ballots are still being counted—with the winner expected to be announced by mid-May—but the three front-runners, Mohseni said, are all highly educated, multi-lingual, sophisticated public servants, “aspirational modernists” who could do a credible job reforming the historically troubled country.
“Space and time is very important for us,” he said, mentioning the bloody Soviet invasion of the 1980s. “We have certainly needed these years for the wounds to heal. Afghanistan was basically an instrument of the West in its proxy war against the Soviets. Our population in the late ‘70s was 12 million. We lost a million individuals in that war…and another million were handicapped. Afghanistan sacrificed a lot for the world, and it’s going to take us time to get up again.”
AliKhan, who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan during the election campaign interviewing voters and candidates, said rampant corruption remains a problem, with only 38 cents of every foreign-aid dollar making its way into the local economy.
As for the Taliban—which has enjoyed protection from Pakistan as well as the respectful attention of other governments in the region—Nijat pointed out that the extreme Islamist and violent group is deeply unpopular in Afghanistan, even in the southern part of the country where its political base resides. Mohseni said a recent survey conducted by his Tolo television network indicated that the Taliban had around 8 percent support overall (even worse than the U.S. Congress!).
“Violence attracts attention,” Nijat said, “but it’s not going to go a very long way” to help the Taliban’s bid for power. She added that the Taliban has tried to capitalize on the resentments of Afghans who are “socially alienated” and “disappointed in the lack of public service delivery and the lack of law enforcement” by the Afghan authorities.
Mohseni, for his part, warned against naïve efforts to negotiate and compromise with the Taliban, especially recent attempts at constructive engagement by the U.S. state department, lest the violent extremists are “legitimized.” He said the Taliban typically dangle peace talks as a time-buying tactic, and “believe they will win on the battleground.” Only when that proves not to be true by the end of 2016, Mohseni predicted, will the Taliban seriously consider its non-violent options.
“By overdoing it, you’re legitimizing the Taliban and also creating the impression that they’re going to become a very important part of the Afghanistan of 2015 and 2016,” Mohseni said, referring to the period when the planned drawdown of U.S. combat troops is scheduled to be completed. “We have to be careful of that, because they don’t deserve to have an equal partnership just because they’re violent.”Please Consider Purchasing A Copy Of White, Right, and Libertarian
Introduction
In response to the acceleration of the Western world’s leftward trend, the paleo-conservatives/libertarians have risen from the ashes in the form of the controversial and rapidly growing Alternative Right (Alt-Right). This movement has been mercilessly condemned by the Left, the media, and the mainstream or neo-conservative Right since its inception. However, this attention has only added fuel to its growth and popularity as a large portion of the American population’s trust for politicians, academia, and the mainstream media (MSM) are at an all-time low. This is likely due to the elite’s ever increasing and blatant erosion of the very traditional Western institutions which made America great.
The focus of the Alt-Right has almost exclusively been a cultural one. They have correctly diagnosed the cultural ailments of society, yet many seem confused as to which political or economic principles are most conducive to setting Western civilization back on course to be the beacon of prosperity and progress it once was.
Conversely, many libertarians have focused exclusively on sound political and economic principles, whilst neglecting or dismissing the role traditional Western values play in enabling their practical implementation in the real world. They seem to be under the delusion that, for instance, the cultural values of the average Afghan are no less conducive to one’s willingness to subscribe to libertarian and capitalist principles than the average American’s…etc. Such neglect has hamstrung the ability of many libertarians to move from the realm of theory to application. Tragically, in their naive and misguided attempt to prove their principles to be universally acceptable, they have compromised on the fundamentals in order to achieve a broader multicultural appreciation. Of course, when the ideological core is compromised, the philosophy itself loses its value as being sound, rational, and practical.
Hence, the focus of this work is to demonstrate that not only are the Alt-Right and libertarianism compatible, but they are, in fact, complementary and symbiotic. That they are distinct, yet mutually reinforcing in that they supply the missing components in what the other is lacking for each of their realization. That what is needed is more than an alliance, but rather a fusion wherein libertarians become alt-righters and alt-righters libertarians. It is this “libertarian Alt-Right” which offers the best hope against the malignant cancer of both the State and the Left.
Defining Libertarianism
As a strictly legal/political philosophy, libertarianism is only concerned with answering the question: “When is the use of physical force (or threats thereof) justified?” The answer is entirely contingent on the property norms upon which the given legal system is grounded. Proper libertarianism, i.e. anarcho-capitalism, is defined by the particular property norms to which it subscribes: the private property ethic. This ethic states that all scarce goods, including land and other means of production, are subject to private ownership (i.e. the right of exclusive use/control) provided they are acquired via original appropriation/homesteading (i.e. the first user rule) or voluntary exchange. That any uninvited physical invasion/interference with the persons or property of others, or threats thereof, is considered an act of aggression and thus justifies responsive force against the perpetrator, whether aimed at defensive or retributive ends.
For a more detailed explanation as to the nature of libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism see Rachels’ “What Anarcho-Capitalism Is”. For a rational justification of libertarianism see Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Ethics Of Argumentation”.
Many alt-righters are unaware of the concerted effort to pervert and “thicken” libertarianism, typically with the intent to make it more palatable to the Left. Some, like the self-described left-libertarians, engage in these efforts deliberately whilst others (sometimes referred to as “lolbertarians” or “lolberts” for short) are led astray due to ignorance and an unrefined understanding of the fundamentals. Left-libertarians seek to achieve this perversion by regrounding libertarianism in the more obscure and manipulable concepts of “freedom”, “social equality”, and “anti-exploitation” while at the same time confusing libertarianism’s strictly political individualism with a hyper-individualism.
For more on this see Rachels’ “A Critique of Left-Libertarianism”, Ethan Chan’s “Libertarianism Is Not Opposed To All Forms Of Collectivism”, and CJay Engel’s “Thick Libertarianism Eviscerated: A Response To Charles Johnson”.
Defining the Left and Right
At this juncture, it behooves one to examine what is meant by the terms “Left” and “Right” (at least in their contemporary American sense). These terms denote dispositions ranging from culture, politics, and economics. To help add clarity to this distinction, I’ve crafted a chart which illustrates the respective attributes of both the Left and Right. The chart lists the attributes on a spectrum and explains how one may still be considered overall Right or Left despite having some Leftist or Rightist beliefs. When one tallies his score for each attribute he is able to determine approximately how far to the Left or Right he is (moreover, if one considers any pair of attributes a false dichotomy, then he may pick a position on both without affecting the ultimate score). Of course, this chart is neither perfect nor exact but it does provide a clear picture of the general differences between each wing of thought:
Defining the Alt-Right
Owing to the immense stigma and propaganda surrounding the Alt-Right, it would likewise behoove one to review a coherent definition of its nature. Hoppe, true to form, provides such a trenchant explanation in the following:
“Alt-Righters are not united by a commonly held theory, and there exists nothing even faintly resembling a canonical text defining its meaning. Rather, the Alt-Right is essentially united in its description of the contemporary world, and in particular the US and the so-called Western World, and the identification and diagnosis of its social pathologies. In fact, it has been correctly noted that the Alt-Right is far more united by what it is against than what it is for. It is against, and indeed it hates with a passion, the elites in control of the State, the MSM and academia. Why? Because they all promote social degeneracy and pathology. Thus, they promote, and the Alt-Right vigorously opposes, egalitarianism, affirmative action (aka “non-discrimination”), multiculturalism, and “free” mass immigration as a means of bringing multiculturalism about.
As well, the Alt-Right loathes everything smacking of cultural Marxism or Gramsciism and all “political correctness” and, strategically wise, it shrugs off, without any apology whatsoever, all accusations of being racist, sexist, elitist, supremacist, homophobe, xenophobe, etc., etc. And the Alt-Right also laughs off as hopelessly naïve the programmatic motto of so-called libertarians such as the Students for Liberty (which I have termed the “Stupids for Liberty” and my young German friend Andre Lichtschlag as “Liberallala-Libertarians”) of “Peace, Love, and Liberty,” appropriately translated into German by Lichtschlag as “Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen.” In stark contrast to this, Alt-Righters insist that life is also about strife, hate, struggle and fight, not just between individuals but also among various groups of people acting in concert. ‘Millennial Woes’ (Colin Robertson) has thus aptly summarized the Alt-Right: ‘Equality is bullshit. Hierarchy is essential. The races are different. The sexes are different. Morality matters and degeneracy is real. All cultures are not equal and we are not obligated to think they are. Man is a fallen creature and there is more to life than hollow materialism. Finally, the white race matters, and civilization is precious. This is the Alt-Right.” [1]
For more on this see Hoppe’s “Libertarianism and the Alt-Right”
Traditional Western Values
To this definition, it should be added that the Alt-Right promotes Western Civilization and, by extension, the traditional Western values and institutions which undergird it. These include, but are not limited to (though some alt-righters may disagree): political individualism, rationalism, personal responsibility, low-time preference, capitalism, ingenuity, and the nuclear family. One could stop here, but it’s important to expand on time preference and the nuclear family a bit more. Time preference is defined by Orwell N’Goode in the following:
“One’s time preference refers to how much he values present consumption over future consumption. Someone with a relatively high time preference generally prefers to consume now as opposed to later, even if forgoing immediate consumption would result in a greater number and/or quality of future goods. A relatively low time preference is simply the inverse.” [2]
Thus low time preference refers to prudence, restraint, and self-discipline. This also apples to social interactions, not purely financial ones. Someone with low time preference is more inclined to act with generosity, civility, and integrity towards friends, spouses, and professional associates now for he knows doing so will enhance the long-term value of such relationships by encouraging reciprocal behavior later.
For more on this see Orwell N’Goode’s “How ‘Time Preferences’ Make or Break Civilization”
Matthew Dewey defines the nuclear family as “..a monogamous pair bonded couple raising their mutual offspring” and goes on further to claim this institution is “…the first and last defense of private property and, by extension, civilization itself.” [3]
The family unit itself was born from practicality and necessity. Hoppe explains:
“Given the peculiar, parasitic nature of hunter-gatherer societies and assuming land to be fixed, invariably the moment must arise when the number of people exceeds the optimal group size and average living standards will fall, threatening whatever degree of intragroup solidarity previously might have existed… This situation is captured and explained by the economic law of returns…that states that for any combination of two or more production factors an optimum combination exists (such that any deviation from it involves material waste, or “efficiency losses”).
The technological invention, then, that solved the problem of a steadily emerging and re-emerging ‘excess’ of population and the attendant fall of average living standards was a revolutionary change in the entire mode of production. It involved the change from a parasitic lifestyle to a genuinely productive life. Instead of merely appropriating and consuming what nature had provided, consumer goods were now actively produced and nature was augmented and improved upon. This revolutionary change in the human mode of production is generally referred to as the ‘Neolithic Revolution’: the transition from food production by hunting and gathering to food production by the raising of plants and animals… The new technology represented a fundamental cognitive achievement and was reflected and expressed in two interrelated institutional innovations, which from then on until today have become the dominant feature of human life: the appropriation and employment of ground land as private property, and the establishment of the family and the family household.” [4]
Thomas Malthus goes on to explain the rationale for the nuclear family in particular and why it was adopted in the West:
“the most natural and obvious check (on population) seemed to be to make every man provide for his own children; that this would operate in some respect as a measure and guide in the increase of population, as it might be expected that no man would bring beings into the world, for whom he could not find the means of support; that where this notwithstanding was the case, it seemed necessary, for the example of others, that the disgrace and inconvenience attending such a conduct should fall upon the individual, who had thus inconsiderately plunged himself and innocent children in misery and want. — The institution of marriage, or at least, of some express or implied obligation on every man to support his own children, seems to be the natural result of these reasoning’s in a community under the difficulties that we have supposed.” [5]
Finally, Hoppe affirms the peril faced by the Nuclear family and its central role in Western civilization:
“Hence, as the result of the trans-valuation of all values promoted by the ruling elites, the world has been turned upside down. The institution of a family household with father, mother and their children that has formed the basis of Western civilization, as the freest, most industrious, ingenious and all-around accomplished civilization known to mankind, i.e., the very institution and people that has done most good in human history, has been officially stigmatized and vilified as the source of all social ills and made the most heavily disadvantaged, even persecuted group by the enemy elites’ relentless policy of divide et impera.” [1]
For more on this, see Hoppe’s “A Short History Of Man“, and “Libertarianism and the Alt-Right”, as well as Dewey’s “Going Nuclear (Family) Against The State”
Culture
As previously mentioned, the Alt-Right correctly understands that a key ingredient to a peaceful, stable, and prosperous civilization is common culture. Inhabitants of a culturally homogeneous society know what to expect from others and what is expected of them and thus are able to secure a higher social trust with their fellow citizens. This helps mitigate interpersonal conflict, decrease transaction costs, and promote cooperation. In this environment, long term business relationships are more viable which in turn enables the execution of more productive and roundabout production processes. Unfortunately, many libertarians deny the impact that culture has on one’s willingness to adopt libertarian and capitalist principles. They naively believe that such principles are universally and equally acceptable to people of all cultures. Hoppe disputes this idealistic notion in the following:
“Many libertarians hold the view that all that is needed to maintain a libertarian social order is the strict enforcement of the non-aggression principle (NAP). Otherwise, as long as one abstains from aggression, according to their view, the principle of ‘live and let live’ should hold. Yet surely, while this ‘live and let live’ sounds appealing to adolescents in rebellion against parental authority and all social convention and control (and many youngsters have been initially attracted to libertarianism believing that this ‘live and let live’ is the essence of libertarianism), and while the principle does indeed hold and apply for people living far apart and dealing with each other only indirectly and from afar, it does not hold and apply, or rather it is insufficient, when it comes to people living in close proximity to each other, as neighbors and cohabitants of the same community.
A simple example suffices to make the point. Assume a new next-door neighbor. This neighbor does not aggress against you or your property in any way, but he is a ‘bad’ neighbor. He is littering on his own neighboring property, turning it into a garbage heap; in the open, for you to see, he engages in ritual animal slaughter, he turns his house into a ‘Freudenhaus,’ a bordello, with clients coming and going all day and all night long; he never offers a helping hand and never keeps any promise that he has made; or he cannot or else he refuses to speak to you in your own language. Etc., etc.. Your life is turned into a nightmare. Yet you may not use violence against him, because he has not aggressed against you. What can you do? You can shun and ostracize him. But your neighbor does not care, and in any case you alone thus ‘punishing’ him makes little if any difference to him. You have to have the communal respect and authority, or you must turn to someone who does, to persuade and convince everyone or at least most of the members of your community to do likewise and make the bad neighbor a social outcast, so as to exert enough pressure on him to sell his property and leave. (So much for the libertarians who, in addition to their ‘live and let live’ ideal also hail the motto ‘respect no authority!’)
The lesson? The peaceful cohabitation of neighbors and of people in regular direct contact with each other on some territory – a tranquil, convivial social order – requires also a commonality of culture: of language, religion, custom and convention. There can be peaceful co-existence of different cultures on distant, physically separated territories, but multi-culturalism, cultural heterogeneity, cannot exist in one and the same place and territory without leading to diminishing social trust, increased tension, and ultimately the call for a ‘strong man’ and the destruction of anything resembling a libertarian social order.” [1]
For more on this see Ethan Chan’s “Preserving Liberty Requires Common Culture” and Hoppe’s “Libertarianism and the Alt-Right”
Nationalism
Black’s law dictionary defines the “Nation” as:
“A people, or aggregation of men, existing in the form of an organized jural society, inhabiting a distinct portion of the earth, speaking the same language, using the same customs, possessing historic continuity, and distinguished from other like groups by their racial origin and characteristics, and generally, but not necessarily, living under the same government and sovereignty [State].” [6]
This should make clear that a nation does not necessarily entail a State, yet it usually entails commonality in at least one, but more often a combination, of the following: language, custom, religion, race…etc. Nationalism, on the other hand, simply involves placing a premium on the interests of a particular nation defined as such. Once elucidated, it becomes clear that nationalism is quite natural and harmless. In the contemporary Western world, it is not only tolerated but encouraged for non-whites or people of non-Western descent to embrace a strong sense of nationalism. This is typically extolled as a celebration of beauty found in the diversity of cultures around the world. However, the same such celebration when conducted by white people of European descent is scorned and severely ridiculed as “racist”, “supremacist”, “fascist”, “xenophobic” and a slew of other meaningless yet stigmatized leftist epithets. This has to do with the spread of Cultural Marxism which will be explored in greater depth further on.
For more on this see Rik Storey’s “Libertarianism Needs Nationalism (Not Statism)”, Griffin Daughtry’s “In Defense Of Libertarian Nationalism”, and Ethan Chan’s “There Is Nothing Unlibertarian About White Nationalism”
Covenant Community
The question now becomes how to form and sustain a stateless nation? One solution is to form contractual covenant communities. When one purchases property in such a community, he does not acquire full ownership. His ownership, instead, is limited to the extent of the community’s covenant conditions. Such conditions may include prohibitions on certain types of public behavior such as lewdness, drug use, drinking, the promotion of aberrant sexual behavior…etc. They may also entail certain requirements relating to the upkeep of one’s lawn etc. Thus, if one violates these conditions, then legal action may be taken against him without violating his private property rights, or the libertarian non-aggression principle (NAP). Many of you may have heard of Hoppe’s infamous remarks regarding the “physical removal” of communists, Democrats, and those who publicly promote homosexuality. However, these remarks were made in the context of a covenant community which prohibited the conduct of such behavior and the entry of such people. Stephan Kinsella elaborates in the following:
“…..in a private, covenant-based order, one that is not only libertarian but also traditionalist and based on the family-based social unit, people who are openly hostile to the underlying norms of this society would tend to be shunned, maybe even expelled (not aggressively, but consistent with property rights). Some of your uncharitable critics say you mean that homosexuals themselves would be expelled merely for being gay. I thought what you meant was not gays per se, but rather those people openly hostile to the basic cultural norms of society, who openly and habitually advocate incompatible lifestyles/ideas and against the underlying normative purpose of the community—like a guy who hates science fiction would be out of place at a Star Trek convention. Thus, the gay couple down the street who mind their own business would not be expelled, but only those who are openly hostile to the basic heterosexual or private property basis of society.” [7]
For more on this see Stephan Kinsella’s “Covenant Communities Explained”.
Race
Perhaps one of the more noteworthy attributes of the Alt-Right is its explicit interest in the preservation of the White race. But what exactly is race and why does it matter? Eli Harmann provides some insight:
“…there is remarkable consistency and repeatability in colloquial understandings of ‘race’ and population geneticists and forensic anthropologists can map these popular conceptions with great accuracy to a variety of objective features which are much more than ‘skin deep’ (genetic markers, bone structure, etc…)
Racial and ethnic demarcations are actually about kinship and relatedness, defining extended human families that share some degree of kinship. Why is this important? Kinship altruism is the norm throughout the animal kingdom, though altruism is rare in other contexts. The main reason is that kinship makes altruism, and its reciprocity, more evolutionarily stable and self enforcing.
……In a nutshell that’s why race is important, because race is a close proxy for kinship and trust is always higher and transaction costs lower with people who are more akin, along any number of dimensions, but especially genetic. Thus racial and ethnic criteria are sound, rational, and adaptive criteria for in-group/out-group identification.
This is why ethnocentric cooperation evolved a.k.a in-group preference. This always evolves under a wide variety of conditions and assumptions provide only that reproduction is local (offspring are not randomly distributed geographically but emerge in proximity to parents) and traits are at least somewhat heritable.” [8]
The “white race” essentially refers to European descended people. However, what relationship do white people have with libertarianism? What is the connection? Rik Storey answers:
“It has been hypothesized that European libertarian and individualistic cultures and institutions are the result of four socio-biological qualities: IQ, time-preference, testosterone, and psychopathy. It so happens that ethnic Europeans fall between the East Asians (China, Korea and Japan) at the higher end of the spectrum, and the Bushmen and Aboriginal Australians at the other (but closer to the East Asians) on all these factors. For example, the average East Asian IQ is 110, for Europeans it is 100 and Bushmen average at just over 60. Having a relatively high IQ with moderate levels of testosterone and psychopathy has culminated in a general spirit which was described by Spengler as ‘Faustian’ in its restlessness.” [9]
Finally, Hoppe recognizes the role white people, especially white men, have played in both developing and establishing a libertarian social order:
“…libertarianism, as an intellectual system, was first developed and furthest elaborated in the Western world, by white males, in white male dominated societies. That it is in white, heterosexual male dominated societies, where adherence to libertarian principles is the greatest and the deviations from them the least severe (as indicated by comparatively less evil and extortionist State policies). That it is white heterosexual men, who have demonstrated the greatest ingenuity, industry, and economic prowess. And that it is societies dominated by white heterosexual males, and in particular by the most successful among them, which have produced and accumulated the greatest amount of capital goods and achieved the highest average living standards.” [10]
For a more elaborate analysis of the nature of race and its relevance to one’s genetic and cultural predisposition to western libertarian values see Eli Harmann’s “The Relationship Between Race, Culture, and a Libertarian Social Order”, Rik Storey’s “Why Libertarianism Is Unique To The West”, and Francis’ “Race and IQ: The Case For Genes”
Developing A Strategy With Race In Mind
In America, an incredible 94% of libertarians are White and 68% are male [11]. Anyone who dismisses this as mere coincidence is either a liar or a useless idiot for the Left. To a libertarian with common sense, this would cue him to take deliberate measures to protect white people, especially white men, from systematic legal and social targeting. Hoppe affirms this in the following:
“…any promising libertarian strategy must, very much as the Alt-Right has recognized, first and foremost be tailored and addressed to this group of the most severely victimized people. White married Christian couples with children, in particular if they belong also to the class of tax-payers (rather than tax-consumers), and everyone most closely resembling or aspiring to this standard form of social order and organization can be realistically expected to be the most receptive audience of the libertarian message” [1]
White Genocide
Another oft ridiculed topic earnestly discussed by the Alt-Right is that of “White Genocide”. It would benefit one to clarify what exactly “genocide” is so as to dispel some common misconceptions:
“Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation... It is intended to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions of culture, language, national feeling, religion, and the economic institutions and systems of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.
….In any case, it is the point (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, that is the main aspect of ‘White genocide’.
If we observe what is happening in the Western world, we can witness that there is in fact a policy of relentless massive Third World immigration into all White countries, and only White countries. These open border policies, combined with forced assimilation and legally forcing White areas to become more ‘diverse’ (meaning less White people and a blended humanity in all and only White countries), is what qualifies current goings-on as (white) genocide as defined by Article II part (c) of the United Nations Genocide Convention, because these deliberate policies are inflicting on our people conditions of life calculated to bring about our physical destruction in whole or in part.” [12]
Socially, one may witness efforts towards these ends taking place through the popular diminishing of marriage, endorsement of interracial relationships, promotion of homosexuality, advocacy of abortion, and the encouragement of transgenderism to name only a few. All such campaigns are primarily directed at white people. For example, it is socially acceptable to encourage black men to partner and procreate exclusively with black women, however encouraging white women to exclusively partner and procreate with white men is utterly taboo.
Legally, the subsidization of immigration, anti-discrimination laws, welfare, and affirmative action laws serve to not only forcefully integrate and intermingle unwanted foreigners with white people, but also enable non-whites (excluding Asians) to enjoy a parasitical relationship with them as a whole. (Obviously some whites are parasites, and some non-whites are net-tax payers and contributors.)
For more on this see Rachels’ “The War Against White People” and Rik Storey’s “Why Whites Choose White Genocide”.
Hoppe explains that such efforts aimed at White genocide not only place white people in jeopardy, but also imperil the parasitic class which feeds upon them:
“….most if not all technical inventions, machines, tools and gadgets in current use everywhere and anywhere, on which our current living standards and comforts largely and decisively depend, originated with them. All other people, by and large, only imitated what they had invented and constructed first. All others inherited the knowledge embodied in the inventors’ products for free. And isn’t it the typical white hierarchical family household of father, mother, their common children and prospective heirs, and their ‘bourgeois’ conduct and lifestyle – i.e., everything the Left disparages and maligns – that is the economically most successful model of social organization the world has ever seen, with the greatest accumulation of capital goods (wealth) and the highest average standards of living? And isn’t it only on account of the great economic achievements of this minority of ‘victimizers’ that a steadily increasing number of ‘victims’ could be integrated and partake in the advantages of a worldwide network of the division of labor? And isn’t it only on |
lick's draft in February 2007 in an attempt to emphasize the themes of brotherhood and redemption. Hoping to start production in Massachusetts in June 2007,[23] Wahlberg had Martin Scorsese read the screenplay, hoping he would direct. Scorsese turned down the offer, finding the Massachusetts-setting redundant after having finished The Departed.[25] The actor cited Scorsese's Raging Bull as an influence for The Fighter,[24] but Scorsese was not interested in directing another boxing film.[25] Darren Aronofsky was hired to direct in March 2007,[26] with Scott Silver rewriting the script in September 2007.[27]
"I’ve seen every boxing movie ever made. I’m also a huge fight fan. I fought a little bit when I was younger. Nobody in my opinion, and some of the greatest movies ever made – you talk Raging Bull and Rocky I saw 30 times – but the fighting just wasn’t as realistic as what we hope to achieve and accomplish in this movie." Mark Wahlberg in an October 2007 interview[8]
Production proceeded with filming set to begin October 2008[11] and Christian Bale replaced Brad Pitt.[12] By then Aronofsky had dropped out to work on MGM's RoboCop remake,[28] followed by Black Swan.[29] Wahlberg and Bale chose David O. Russell as Aronofsky's replacement. Wahlberg had also starred in Russell's Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees.[12] Aronofsky was given an executive producer credit for his contributions on The Fighter, and was enthusiastic to have Russell as the director.[29] In April 2009, Relativity Media stepped up to entirely finance the film,[30] selling the international distribution rights to The Weinstein Company a month later.[31] The Fighter began principal photography on July 13, 2009, on an $11 million budget in a 33-day shooting schedule,[12] which was half the budget that Paramount was working with.[32] The production utilized Massachusetts' film tax credits to cover parts of the film's cost.[33]
Filming [ edit ]
Principal photography took place on location in Ward's hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. Its boxing matches were shot at the Tsongas Center at UMass Lowell, and gym scenes at Arthur Ramalho's West End Gym, one of the real-life facilities where Ward had trained.[4][34] The boxing-match footage was created "in big, choreographed sections that were taken directly from [video of] Micky's actual fights," said Russell. "And we used the actual commentary from [HBO's] Larry Merchant, Roy Jones Jr. and Jim Lampley." Russell used "[t]he actual cameras from that era. [They were] a sort of Beta [video-format] camera that gave a very certain look, and we actually hired the director from HBO and his crew who had done those fights"[4] to replicate them shot-for-shot.[8][14]
Comparison to actual events [ edit ]
The film has Ward on a losing streak coming into the 1988 Mike Mungin fight. In reality, Ward was 18–1 and on a four-fight winning streak when he fought Mungin. Ward's four-fight losing streak actually took place in 1990–91.
In the film, Ward is knocked down in round six of the Neary fight. In reality, Ward was not knocked down in that fight.
The film has Ward's career record as 30–7 with 20 KOs as he fights Neary. In reality, his record at that time was 34–9 with 25 KOs.
The film depicts Ward taking a severe beating in the Mungin fight. In reality, the fight went the full ten rounds and Mungin won by very narrow decision: 96–93, 95–94, 95–94.
The film depicts Shea Neary with an Irish accent when in fact Shea Neary is from Liverpool, England.
In the film, during Ward's fight with Alfonso Sanchez, which took place on April 4, 1997, Ward's entrance song is "The Warrior's Code" by Dropkick Murphys. However, that song was not released until 2005 on their album of the same name.
Release [ edit ]
To promote the film, Wahlberg appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Men's Fitness, and Bale on Esquire,[17] in November 2010. An advanced charity premiere took place in Lowell, Massachusetts, the setting of The Fighter, on December 9, a day before the film's scheduled national release.[35]
Home media [ edit ]
The Fighter was released in a Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack and standard DVD in the United States on March 15, 2011.
Reception [ edit ]
Critical reception [ edit ]
The Fighter received largely positive reviews, with critics praising the performances of Wahlberg, Bale, Adams and Leo. Bale was seemingly praised more for his performance than his fellow costars, with comments about his weight, accent and mannerisms. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 90% based on reviews from 239 critics, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Led by a trio of captivating performances from Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Amy Adams, The Fighter is a solidly entertaining, albeit predictable, entry in the boxing drama genre."[36] Metacritic gives the film an average score of 79 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[37]
Due to the film involving boxing, Ring Magazine also gave its critique, saying that because it left out the Trilogy with Arturo Gatti, it was like doing a movie about the entire life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and not including World War II.[citation needed]
Sports Illustrated dubbed the film the best sports film of the decade and "one of the best since Martin Scorsese backlit Robert De Niro's Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.".[38] Richard Corliss of TIME Magazine named Christian Bale's performance one of the Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010, saying "In a little festival of tart, savory performances, notably from Melissa Leo as the boys' mother and Amy Adams as Micky's girlfriend, Bale shines the brightest, because he knows that no character, however depraved his status, is only a monster. He finds beauty in the beast".[39]
Box office [ edit ]
The Fighter had grossed $93.6 million in United States & Canada and in other territories it collected $35.5 million, for a worldwide total of $129.1 million.[5]
Accolades [ edit ]
The film received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning two.[40] The film was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards: Best Picture (Drama), Best Actor (Drama) for Wahlberg, Best Supporting Actress for Leo and Adams, Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and a nomination for Best Director for Russell.[41] The film received three Chicago Film Critics award nominations: Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and Best Supporting Actress nominations for Adams and Leo. Bale won a Satellite Award, the Critics' Choice Award, the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor, and the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor. Leo won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
Sequel [ edit ]
Wahlberg has been involved in developing a sequel, The Fighter 2, which would focus on the legendary fight trilogy between Ward and Arturo Gatti.[47] In 2013, Jerry Ferrara signed on to play Gatti.[48]Former LA Lakers power forward Carlos Boozer (L). (Photo : Reuters)
One of the few remaining big men still available in free agency is former Los Angeles Lakers power forward Carlos Boozer. Recent reports reveal that the Denver Nuggets, Portland Trailblazers, and Philadelphia 76ers are all interested in the veteran and that he also has offers to play overseas particularly in China.
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Sports World Report recently conveyed the three team's pursuit of the two-time All-Star although there were no clear indications of which among them are likely to sign the 33-year-old Boozer this season.
The 6-foot-9 former Duke standout averaged 11.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 1.3 assists in limited minutes off the bench for Byron Scott last season and could still provide much-needed bench depth and rebounding and scoring support to any team who acquires him.
Aside from the three teams mentioned, the report also said that the New Orleans Pelicans and New York Knicks negotiated with Boozer during the summer, but no deals came into fruition.
Rumors have also emerged that the 13-year pro was waiting until the regular season to finally decide which team he would like to play for.
Meanwhile, CBS Sports reported that Boozer is also "being chased by several CBA teams" during the offseason. Although he was said to be interested in going to China, he allegedly wishes to stay in the NBA if the right deal comes along.
The "right deal" might mean along the lines of his previous salary of $13.5 million annually, but it looks like it is not a realistic deal for Boozer anymore.
If he is willing to play for a veteran's minimum then his desire to remain in the NBA may be possible. However, he can earn a lot more playing in China at this stage of his career.If you just can't get enough of you, Panasonic has joined the recent parade mirrorless cameras marketed at selfie photographers. The Lumix GF7's Micro Four Thirds, 16-megapixel sensor will give you much nicer shots than your smartphone ever could without being a burden to haul around. Panasonic transformed the GF7 into a more classic-looking camera than the GF6 and managed to shave a few millimeters from the already-small form factor, too. The 3-inch, 1.04 million-dot screen switches to selfie mode as soon as it's flipped around, and built-in WiFi lets you activate the shutter via a smartphone. It's also nicely specced with 1920/60p video, 25,600 ISO and a 5.8 fps shooting speed. You'll be able to get one February 20th for $600, with a 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 lens that's wide enough to capture you and at least several pals.First of all, the system can organize "takes" and match them to lines of dialogue from the script. It can also do voice, face and emotion recognition to encode the type of shot, intensity of the actor's feelings, camera framing and other things. Since directors can shoot up to 10 takes per scene (or way more, in the case of auteurs like Stanley Kubrick), that alone can save hours.
However, the real power of the system is doing "idiom" editing based on the rules of film language. For instance, many scenes start with a wide "establishing" shot so that the viewer knows where they are. You can also use leisurely or fast pacing, emphasize a certain character, intensify emotions or keep shot types (like wide or closeup) consistent. Such idioms are generally used to best tell the story in the way the director intended.
All the editor has to do is drop their preferred idioms into the system, and it will cut the scene to match automatically, following the script. In an example shown (below), the team selected "start wide" to establish the scene, "avoid jump cuts" for a cinematic (non-YouTube) style, "emphasize character" ("Stacey") and use a faster-paced performance.
The system instantly created a cut that was pretty darn watchable, closely hewing to the comedic style that the script was going for. The team then shuffled the idioms, and it generated a "YouTube" style that emphasized hyperactive pacing and jump cuts.
What's best (or worst, perhaps for professional editors) is that the algorithm was able to assemble the 71-second cut within two to three seconds and switch to a completely different style instantly. Meanwhile, it took an editor three hours to cut the same sequence by hand, counting the time it took to watch each take.
The system only works for dialogue, and not action or other types of sequences. It also has no way to judge the quality of the performance, naturalism and emotional beats in take. Editors, producers and directors still have to examine all the video that was shot, so AI is not going to take those jobs away anytime soon. However it looks like it's about ready to replace the assistant editors who organize all the materials, or at least do a good chunk of their work.
More importantly, it could remove a lot of the slogging normally required to edit, and let an editor see some quick cuts based on different styles. That would leave more time for fine-tuning, where their skill and artistic talent are most crucial.Real estate developer Bruce Makowsky’s ‘eighth wonder of the world’ targets a narrow market. ‘I’ve found a niche. I’m trying to build houses only for billionaires’
Bruce Makowsky does not believe in underselling, which is just as well because he’s listed a house in Los Angeles for $250m – America’s most expensive home.
“I wanted to build the most spectacular house in the United States,” said the developer. “I wanted to have every spectacular thing in that house, in one place. This house is the eighth wonder of the world.”
That may sound brash even for real estate speak, but 924 Bel Air Road is designed for a modern pharaoh.
Perched in the rarified hills of Bel Air, which make Beverly Hills feel ghetto, the 38,000 sq ft property boasts panoramic views, 12 bedrooms, 21 bathrooms, five bars, a massage studio, a fleet of luxury cars and motorbikes, an 85-foot Italian glass infinity pool, an outdoor hydraulic theater-sized screen, a James Bond-themed indoor cinema, a bowling alley, 130 art installations and, as a roof adornment, the helicopter from the 1980s TV show Airwolf.
Oh, and a crocodile-embossed elevator, a Hobie Cat sailboat, glass ping pong and billiard tables, two wine cellars, 56 TV screens, Willy Wonka-style cylinders filled with sweets and an interactive digital work starring Disney’s Seven Dwarfs.
The aim, Makowsky said in an interview, is shock and awe. “It’s purely emotional. Someone walks through here and thinks, ‘I have to have it’.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The view from the Bel Air mansion. Photograph: Photos Courtesy of Bruce Makowsky/ BAM Luxury Development
Someone, that is, with a spare quarter-billion dollars. “I’ve found a niche. I’m trying to build houses only for billionaires.”
Makowsky, 60, created this California xanadu on spec – all built, designed and furnished without any buyer lined up. It went on sale last week, priced far above the record $147m paid for an East Hampton estate in 2014.
Is he worried about finding a buyer? “Absolutely not. I’m not worried at all because there’s so much super-wealth in this world. It’s getting crazy. There are probably 100 new billionaires every single year. Super-yacht manufacturers are slammed with orders.”
Forget the 1%. Billionaires are a caste so select (estimates range from 1,800 to 3,000) you could fit them all in the Royal Festival Hall.
Makowsky made his first fortune selling purses and handbags on QVC, a home shopping television network.
He got to know the Riviera crowd and noticed something that struck him as odd: billionaires would spend up to $200m on yachts and planes but live in homes worth far less. “I thought: nobody’s toy should be more expensive than their house.”
So Makowsky – who lives in a 27,000 sq ft estate once leased by Prince – started building increasingly lavish mansions in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, where buyers commonly buy impeccable properties and demolish them to make way for newer ones.
Jaws dropped when he sold a $70m property to Markus Persson, the founder of Minecraft, in 2014. It seemed an absurdly high figure at the time but the developer was already working on what would become 924 Bel Air Road.
Tonnes of marble and other stone from Italian quarries, Lamborghini wall clocks, champagne-filled fire extinguishers – it is a temple to luxury and whimsy. The house comes with a staff of seven – including a masseuse and yoga instructor – whom Makowsky will pay for two years. Southern Californian sunshine completes the package, he says.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The James Bond-themed indoor cinema. Photograph: Photos Courtesy of Bruce Makowsky/ BAM Luxury Development
“When you put all those things together that’s pretty much the magic. It’s the best of everything put into one home. It’s like you’d never want to leave.”
The developer’s website casts luxury in metaphysical terms: “Opulence without substance has no meaning. Nor is luxury a synonym for unimaginable comfort. Indeed, luxury is an art – the art of living well … true luxury is rebellious, above the status quo – it is lofty, it is life amplified by reverie, it is boundless beauty.”
To some critics what is boundless is the extreme inequality of Kubla Khans inhabiting ever plusher redoubts while 43,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles County, a policy failure which leaves human misery on display in streets, doorways, parks and beaches.
Steve Lopez, a Los Angeles Times columnist, seethed at mega-mansions in 2015, comparing one to a “giant tombstone marking the death of humility”.
Widening inequality is global. Makowksy’s mega-home went on sale the same week that Oxfam published a report saying eight of the richest people on Earth own as much combined wealth as half the human race, and that a plutocrat moved into the White House on a promise of tax cuts for the wealthy.
“All this growing hyper-wealth chases trophy assets in a few places – the hills north of LA, Manhattan, London, driving up prices to stratospheric heights,” said Walter Scheidel, a Stanford history professor and author of The Great Leveler, a history of wealth inequality from ancient times to the present.
“Prospective buyers come from all over the world, which is not surprising since inequality in many countries is higher now than it has ever been – China, India, Russia, not just the US. In this context of globalization and rising inequality it would be odd if the value of such trophy assets wasn’t going through the roof; and as long as these two trends continue, there is no ceiling in sight.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Inside the Bel Air mansion. Photograph: Photos Courtesy of Bruce Makowsky/ BAM Luxury Development
Edward Kleinbard, a USC law professor and author of We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money, said the US undertaxed the very wealthy and underfunded education and other public services which could help the poor to move up. “Because we do that, those with great wealth can accumulate even more. We are drifting towards neo-feudalism. We’re making wealth a hereditary gene.”
Makowsky bristled at mention of inequality and its cousin, excess. Bel Air’s eighth wonder was many things, but not vulgar, he said. “I don’t think it’s garish. It’s not a palace. We don’t have a lot of gold in it. It’s more contemporary, it’s like a resort, an oasis.”
The opulence merchant espoused a hope Marx might have applauded. “I didn’t create this [inequality]. I think it’d be great if everyone had the same amount of money.”
Instead of sitting on his fortune, Makowsky said he had created 300 jobs during the house’s construction. Now, all going well, a buyer will fork out $250m. “Hopefully in my own little way I’m helping the US economy. I’m trying to unleash some of the wealth that the super-wealthy have.”
He has competition. Nile Niami, a film producer and property developer, is reportedly building a 100,000 sq ft mansion with its own casino and 30-car garage with a target price of $500m.Whenever journalists, futurists and ethicists come up with Top Ten lists of ways the human race will bring about its own demise, an entry for “synthetic biology” inevitably edges up in the rankings. Pundits love to cite the example of how this technology might let smallpox be turned into an unstoppable weapon by marshaling the capabilities of this emerging technology.
So far, this type of doomsday scenario has come nowhere close. In fact, borrowing an enzyme from one organism and repurposing it for a new use in another—as if one were transferring a part between two used cars—has so far only shown its benign side. Synthetic biology has already demonstrated new ways to make anti-malarial medicine, scents, flavors, industrial chemicals and such.
The honeymoon for any new technology does not last forever. One of the first instances of the possible dark side of synthetic biology just appeared online in Nature Chemical Biology. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Concordia University in Montreal have just reported on a means to coax yeast to make the chemical, reticuline, a critical intermediate step in producing morphine and other opiates.
Combining reticuline with other parts of the manufacturing process, already demoed in separate laboratories, would enable the making of opiates in yeast—no poppies required. All that is needed is to feed spoonfuls of sugar to the engineered microbe. Putting all of this together into an integrated morphine-making machine has yet to be done. But all the steps are now in place. “This sort of metabolic engineering optimization is fairly straightforward,” says George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and one of the pioneers of synthetic biology. “Once the recipe is published, it becomes very easy to reproduce it—something that many amateur garage labs could do.”
The paper is more than a technical tour de force. The researchers also went to extra lengths to anticipate unavoidable questions about the risks of a home-brew opiate kit. Before going to press, John Dueber of Berkeley and Vincent Martin of Concordia, the lead researchers in the study, contacted two political scientists from MIT and a professor of public health from the University of Alberta, all experts in technology policy, to provide analysis and commentary about ways to ensure the technology does not fall into the wrong hands.
In an accompanying online comment in Nature, Kenneth Oye and Chappell Lawson of MIT and Tania Bubela from the University of Alberta issued a call for establishing a regulatory framework that goes beyond existing rules for anthrax, smallpox and other pathogenic bacteria and viruses. “You really want to control this before it gets out,” Bubela says. “Once the barn door is open and it’s unbolted, it’s a lot harder to control.” To prevent illict use, they advocate measures such as making yeast strains with a DNA watermark that could be identified by law-enforcement.
The yeast could also be engineered so that an additional nutrient has to be added for the production process to proceed. Screening could be instituted for DNA sequences that might be ordered from commercial outfits to engineer opiate-producing yeast. Microbes could be stored in biosecurity facilities and the U.S. Controlled Substance Act could be extended to encompass yeast that produce opium.
The publications will likely lead to prolonged debate about bioengineered narcotics and also force a larger look at synthetic biology in general. Christina Smolke, a Stanford researcher who has also labored on opiate production in yeast, took issue with the idea that a new regulatory scheme should be immediately brought up for consideration. Making opiates from yeast “will require very specialized and highly controlled fermentation conditions, which are not readily accessible to nonspecialists,” she says. “In fact, it is more likely that a person could more easily access morphine by dumping a bunch of poppy seeds in their home brew (or tea).” Smolke agrees that careful discussion of risks and ensuing regulatory issues are needed, but does not see the assertive urgency reflected in the commentary. “This should ideally not be led with a sensationalist, inflammatory approach that is not grounded in accurate representations of the technical capabilities.”
Hank Greely, a bioethicst from Stanford, endorsed the commentary’s call to action, but added that a new technology to manipulate genes—CRISPR/Cas9—may make it relatively easy for a criminal syndicate to engineer an opiate-producing yeast strain. He also thinks that regulators may be slow to give their nod to the new technology. “It seems to me entirely possible that the only uses of this discovery will be illicit,” he says.
The publication, he says, also illustrates the need to revamp the existing regulatory infrastructure to accommodate new technologies that may soon range the gamut from preventing disease transmission to bringing back extinct animals. "We need to think hard about new regulatory systems—national and international—that don't foreclose the potential benefits of engineering life, but that provide some protection against its risks - from environmental damage to new waves of drug abuse."
What drives Dueber and Martin’s research is not the novelty of cranking out opiates in modified beer-making equipment. Feeding in sugar at one end of the pathway and collecting the valued reticuline at the other will enable them to find new ways of making more than just morphine and its cousins. A ready source of reticuline can be used to explore new leads for anti-cancer, antibiotics, among others.
Their research exemplifies a new trend that is advancing biotechnology into the realm of synthetic biology, moving beyond inserting a single gene into an organism and making single proteins. Engineering entire chemical pathways into yeast and other biomanufacturing systems—borrowing molecules from different organisms to facilitate each step of the process—is what inspires researchers whose wish is to harvest the nascent power of synthetic biology.(Reuters Health) - Women who suffer from migraines may be at an increased risk of cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes, according to a new U.S. study.
SEE ALSO: Why you should drink coffee before your workout
Researchers analyzed data from 115,541 female nurses aged 25 to 42 who entered the study in 1989 and were followed through June 2011.
Initially, 17,531 women said they had a diagnosis of migraine from a doctor. Another 6,389 reported a migraine diagnosis during the 20 years of follow up.
During that time, there were also 1,329 cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes and 223 deaths related to cardiovascular disease among the women.
Women diagnosed with migraine were more likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, a family history of heart attacks, to be smokers and be overweight.
After accounting for risk factors that may influence the women's risk for cardiovascular events, the researchers found women with migraines were 50 percent more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than women without the severe headaches.
RELATED: 7 Surprising Signs of an Unhealthy Heart
7 PHOTOS 7 Surprising Signs of an Unhealthy Heart See Gallery Migraines tied to cardiovascular problems among women Sexual problems Something cardiologists know but the average guy doesn't: Erectile dysfunction (ED) is one of the best early tip-offs to progressive heart disease. "Today, any patient who comes in with ED should be considered a cardiovascular patient until proven otherwise," says Goldstein. In women, reduced blood flow to the genital area can impede arousal, make it harder to reach orgasm, or make orgasms less satisfying. Scary stat: Researchers at the Mayo clinic followed men ages 40-49 with erectile dysfunction and found they were twice as likely to develop heart disease as those with no sexual health problems. Another study looked backward and found that two out of three men being treated for cardiovascular disease had suffered from erectile dysfunction, often for years, before they were diagnosed with heart trouble. Why it happens: Narrowing and hardening of the arteries restricts blood flow to the penis, which can give men trouble when it comes to getting or keeping an erection. And because those arteries are smaller than the ones leading to the heart, erectile dysfunction can occur before any other sign of artery stiffness. Lack of oxygen can also lead to ongoing fatigue and weakness, which can sabotage libido, so lack of desire may accompany lack of success. What to do: If you or your partner has difficulty getting or maintaining an erection or has problems with sexual satisfaction, that's reason enough to visit your doctor to investigate cardiovascular disease as an underlying cause. Get a full workup to assess possible causes of erectile dysfunction or difficulty with orgasm. (Guys, see your GP, not just a urologist; gals, don't just see an ob/gyn.) If your doctor doesn't mention heart tests, request them. Image Credit: Getty Snoring, sleep apnea, and other breathing problems during sleep If you snore loudly enough to keep your sleeping partner awake or to force him or her to resort to earplugs, your heart may be at risk as well. Restricted breathing during sleep -- the underlying cause of snoring -- is linked with all types of cardiovascular disease. Sleep apnea, in which breathing briefly stops during sleep, is linked with a higher risk of both cardiovascular disease and heart attack. Scary stat: Those with sleep apnea were found to have three times the normal risk of having a heart attack within five years. Why it happens: Sleep-disordered breathing, which includes sleep apnea and a lesser condition known as UARS, lowers the blood oxygen that feeds the heart. Obstructive sleep apnea is thought to damage the right side of the heart, which has to pump harder to support the lungs, which are strained by trying to overcome the airway obstruction. What to do: Any sleep-related breathing problem is a clue that something's wrong, so call the doctor. She may recommend a sleep study, but get your heart checked out too. Image Credit: Getty Sore, swollen, or bleeding gums Sore, swollen, or bleeding gums are symptoms not only of periodontal disease -- in which exposure to bacteria causes the gums to become inflamed and pull away from the teeth -- but also a possible early sign of underlying cardiovascular disease. Scary stat: A 2010 study by the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP) estimated that the prevalence of periodontal disease may be underestimated by as much as 50 percent. Why it happens: Experts believe that poor circulation due to heart disease could be an underlying cause of periodontal disease. Researchers are also studying whether a common bacteria is involved in both gum disease and plaque buildup inside coronary arteries. The link may also have something to do with the body's response to prolonged inflammation. What to do: See a dentist to treat gum disease and prevent the presence of bacteria. Because gum disease can be a red flag for inflammation and circulatory problems, ask your doctor if ongoing gum symptoms warrant a checkup. Image Credit: Getty Puffy or swollen legs or feet If you notice that your feet swell enough to make your shoes tight; your ankles, wrists, or fingers are noticeably puffy; or there are deep pressure marks or indents when you take off socks or hose, you may have a problem with fluid retention. Also called edema, fluid retention can be a sign of coronary artery disease (CAD), heart failure, and other forms of cardiovascular disease. Scary stat: More than 80 million people have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease, and approximately 900,000 people die from it each year. Why it happens: Fluid retention occurs when the heart doesn't pump strongly enough and blood doesn't carry waste products away from tissues. Edema usually starts in the feet, ankles, fingers, hands, and legs because they're furthest from the heart, where circulation is poorer. What to do: Report problems with edema to your doctor, who can run tests that may indicate CAD and can determine if your heart function is normal. Image Credit: Getty Irregular heartbeat or arrhythmia An early sign that something in the cardiovascular system is out of whack is irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia. It may feel like your heart is skipping beats, beating too fast, or pounding too hard. Scary stat: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of sudden death for both men and women because it can lead to both heart attack and stroke. Why it happens: The most common cause of irregular heartbeat is CAD, which restricts blood flow to the heart, straining the electrical system that keeps the heartbeat regular and coordinates it with other functions. Heart failure can also cause arrhythmias because the weakened heart overcompensates by beating harder and faster. What to do: An EKG can measure the electrical activity of your heart, including the regularity of the heartbeat. A stress test, which measures your heart rate while you walk on a treadmill, can determine if your heart is pumping properly. Image Credit: Getty Constriction or aching in the chest or shoulder The most common symptom of coronary artery disease (CAD) is angina, a type of chest pain. Angina (officially called angina pectoris) is different from the sharp clutching pain of a heart attack; it's likely to feel like a deep ache or a constriction or weight on the chest, and it may worsen when you draw in a breath. One of the reasons angina is often missed is that it feels different to different people; to some it's more of a heaviness, fullness, or pressure rather than pain. It can also be mistaken for indigestion or heartburn when the pain occurs lower down in the abdominal area. The tightness, constriction, or pain may also occur in the shoulder, neck, jaw, arm, or upper back, where it may be mistaken for a pulled muscle. A tip-off to angina versus a pulled muscle or gastrointestinal problem is that you're likely to experience the problem repeatedly rather than to have one isolated or prolonged episode. Scary stat: According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 17 million people are living with angina. Cases of angina are divided almost equally between men and women, with men being slightly more at risk. Why it happens: When plaque builds up in the coronary arteries, it deprives the heart muscle of blood, making it feel squeezed. Most people with stable angina find that episodes are most often triggered by anything that puts an additional strain on the heart, such as exercise or stress. What to do: If you're diagnosed with angina, your doctor will recommend resting when episodes occur; or she may prescribe nitroglycerin, which relaxes the coronary arteries and other blood vessels, increasing blood supply to the heart and easing its workload. Image Credit: Alamy Shortness of breath An early sign that something is wrong with a major bodily system is shortness of breath, typically with exercise, exertion, and stress. (Typically, shortness of breath indicates either early-stage heart disease or early-stage lung disease, and it's not possible to know which it is without seeing a doctor.) It may feel like you can't catch your breath, or you may notice a feeling of compression in the chest and lungs, making it difficult to take a deep breath. Another breathing symptom of poor circulation may be labored breathing, which occurs when fluid accumulates in the lungs. If you notice that your breathing problems are worse at night or anytime you lie down, that can also indicate a heart problem. Scary stat: In a landmark study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Institute, 95 percent of women who'd had heart attacks reported experiencing unusual symptoms in the weeks and months before the attack, and 40 percent reported shortness of breath. Why it happens: When your heart isn't pumping strongly enough, less oxygen circulates in your blood. The result is shortness of breath; you might feel like you do at high altitude or when you've run for the bus, unable to draw enough oxygen into your lungs. What to do: Shortness of breath, either with exercise and stress or all the time, is always a reason to see the doctor for a checkup, since it can be a symptom of a number of serious conditions. Image Credit: Alamy Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
The results are similar to those from a study of older U.S. women working in the health field, but limited to those who had migraines with aura. For the new study, the researchers didn't know if the women experienced migraine with aura.
Lead author Tobias Kurth, director of the Institute of Public Health Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany, said women shouldn't be scared by the new results. It's not known, he said, whether treating migraines would decrease the risk of cardiovascular events.
"We certainly hope we have the opportunity to study this, but at this point there is not data to make such statement," he said.
In an editorial, Drs. Rebecca Burch and Melissa Rayhill say the new study also raises the question of whether women with migraine should be treated with aspirin or cholesterol-lowering medicines called statins.
One analysis found that women with migraine who took aspirin actually had an increased risk of heart attack, they added.
"Thus, what little evidence we do have suggests the need for therapeutic restraint until we have a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the link between migraine and vascular disease," wrote Burch, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and Rayhill, of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
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Eating after 8 p.m. could be adding 2 inches to your waistlinePresidential candidate Bernie Sanders is holding a rally Tuesday at the San Diego Convention Center, backing up his pledge to forge ahead with his campaign through the June 7 California primary and to the Democratic convention -- despite an uphill battle against Hillary Clinton's growing lead in the delegate count.
The upcoming rally is the Vermont senator’s only official stop in California on this trip, and he’ll arrive in town after a day of campaigning in the West, including events in Utah, Idaho and Arizona, states that all have primaries on Tuesday. Polls show Sanders leading in Utah, but trailing Clinton in Arizona, while Idaho polls weren’t available.
Doors at the convention center open at 5 p.m. Tuesday, though the program isn’t expected to start until sometime later.The event is free and open to the public, but admission is first come, first served. Sanders’ campaign encouraged people who planned to attend to RSVP, but by mid-morning Monday his website had stopped accepting reservations.
The event will be held in Exhibition Halls D & E at the convention center at 111 W. Harbor Drive, San Diego. The Green Line Trolley stops outside of the venue at both First and Fifth avenues on Harbor Drive.
Sanders plans touch on several themes of his campaign, including getting |
African American from Galveston, rose to the chairmanship of the Texas Republican Party and even the national committeeman.[140]
Democrats regain control after Reconstruction [ edit ]
Like other Southern states, by the late 1870s white Democrats regained control of the state legislature. They passed a new constitution in 1876 that segregated schools and established a poll tax to support them, but it was not originally required for voting.[141]
Within the Republican Party the Lily-white movement emerged, a movement to wrest control of the party by whites and eliminate black influence altogether. The movement had its origins in Texas but spread across the nation. This in addition to wider efforts to restrict the influence of non-whites rapidly reversed the fortunes of the black population.[142]
19th century post-Reconstruction (1876–1899) [ edit ]
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad --the "Katy"--was the first railroad to enter Texas from the north
Racial violence continued by whites against blacks as they enforced white supremacy. Despite this, freedmen pursued education, organize new churches and fraternal organizations, and entered politics, winning local offices. By the 1890s, more than 100,000 blacks were voting in state elections.[143] In 1896 and 1898, Republican Robert B. Hawley was elected to Congress from the state by a plurality, when most white voters split between the Democratic and Populist parties. Democrats were determined to end competition by Republicans and Populists, and reviewed what other Southern states were doing to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites. Mississippi's new constitution of 1890 had survived a Supreme Court case, although in practice it was highly discriminatory against freedmen.
Land use politics [ edit ]
Much of Texas politics of the remainder of the 19th century centered on land use. Guided by the federal Morill Act, Texas sold public lands to gain funds to invest in higher education. In 1876, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas opened, and seven years later the University of Texas at Austin began conducting classes.[144]
New land use policies drafted during the administration of Governor John Ireland enabled individuals to accumulate land, leading to the formation of large cattle ranches. Many ranchers ran barbed wire around public lands, to protect their access to water and free grazing. This caused several range wars.[145] Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross guided the Texas Legislature to reform the land use policies.[146]
Map of the Colorado & Southern Railroad lines, including the Fort Worth and Denver City lines in Texas
The coming of the railroads in the 1880s ended the famous cattle drives and allowed ranchers to market their cattle after a short drive, and farmers move their cotton to market cheaply. They made Dallas and other cities the centers of commercial activity.[147] Ft. Worth became the gateway to the west, via the Fort Worth and Denver Railway.[148] However the passenger trains were often the targets of armed gangs.[149]
Governor Lawrence Sullivan Ross had to personally intervene to resolve the Jaybird-Woodpecker War (1888-1889) among factions of Democrats in Fort Bend County; at bottom, it was a racial conflict. The majority population was black by a large margin, and had been electing county officers for 20 years. But, the white elite Democrats wanted their own people in power. Conflict became violent and the Jaybirds ordered several blacks out of town. Tensions increased and a total of seven people were killed. In the fall of 1889, the Democratic Party created "white-only pre-primary elections," which in practice were the only competitive contests in the county, and thus disenfranchised the blacks. This situation lasted until the US Supreme Court ruling in Terry v. Adams (1953) declared it unconstitutional[150] in the last of the white primary cases.[151]
Under Jim Hogg, the state turned its attention toward corporations violating the state monopoly laws. In 1894, Texas filed a lawsuit against John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company and its Texas subsidiary, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company of Missouri. Hogg and his attorney-general argued that the companies were engaged in rebates, price fixing, consolidation, and other tactics prohibited by the state's 1889 antitrust act. The investigation resulted in a number of indictments, including one for Rockefeller. Hogg requested that Rockefeller be extradited from New York, but the New York governor refused, as Rockefeller had not fled from Texas. Rockefeller was never tried, but other employees of the company were found guilty.[152]
Texas in prosperity, depression, and war (1900–1945) [ edit ]
1913 cotton harvest in East Texas
Galveston, the fourth-largest city in Texas and then the major port, was destroyed by a hurricane with 100 mph (160 km/h) winds on September 8, 1900. The storm created a 20 ft (6.1 m) storm surge when it hit the island, 6–9 ft (1.8–2.7 m) higher than any previously recorded flood. Water covered the entire island, killing between 6,000 and 8,000 people, destroying 3,500 homes as well as the railroad causeway and wagon bridge that connected the island to the mainland.[153] To help rebuild their city, citizens implemented a reformed government featuring a five-man city commission. Galveston was the first city to implement a city commission government, and its plan was adopted by 500 other small cities across the United States.[154]
In the aftermath of the Galveston disaster, action proceeded on building the Houston Ship Channel to create a more protected inland port. Houston quickly grew once the Channel was completed, and rapidly became the primary port in Texas. Railroads were constructed in a radial pattern to link Houston with other major cities such as Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin.
By 1900, the Dallas population reached 38,000 as banking and insurance became major activities in the increasingly white-collar city, which was now the world's leading cotton center. It was also the world's center of harness making and leather goods. Businessmen took control of civic affairs; with little municipal patronage, there was only a small role for the Democratic Party to play. The predominantly black Republican Party was essentially closed out of politics by the disenfranchisement in 1901 of most blacks through imposition of a poll tax (see below).
Disenfranchisement [ edit ]
Determined to control politics in the state, reduce competition from Republicans and Populists, and close blacks out of politics, in 1901 the Democrat-dominated state legislature passed a poll tax as a requirement for voting. Given the economic difficulties of the times, the poll tax caused participation by African Americans, poor whites, and Mexican Americans to drop sharply, effectively disenfranchising more than one-third of the population of the state.[155][156]
By the early 20th century, the Democratic Party in Texas started using a "white primary." Restricting the Democratic primary to white voters was another way of closing minorities out of politics, as the primary was the only competitive contest for office in the one-party state. By 1906, the number of black voters had dropped from more than 100,000 in the 1890s to 5,000. The state also passed a law for white primaries.[143] In 1896, 86.6% of all voters in Texas voted in the presidential election; following disenfranchisement, voter turnout in 1904 was 29.2% and in 1920 was 21.6%.[157]
When the Supreme Court ruled in 1923 that white primaries established by political parties were unconstitutional, in 1927 the Texas state legislature passed a bill that authorized political parties to establish their internal practices. The Democratic Party reinstated the white primary. That law survived until 1944 before another Supreme Court case ruled that it was unconstitutional. After 1944, the NAACP and other organizations worked to register black voters and participation increased. But the major disenfranchisement continued until passage in the mid-1960s of civil rights legislation, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to provide for federal oversight in areas in which historically minorities did not vote in expected numbers based on population.[156]
Dallas growth [ edit ]
The Praetorian Building in Dallas, completed 1909, was the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi and the tallest in Texas.
Texans in 1909 marked an icon of progress with the construction of the first skyscraper west of the Mississippi.[158] The 190-foot steel-frame skyscraper was the 14-story Praetorian Building, housing the Praetorian Insurance Company. Dallas became the regional headquarters of the Federal Reserve in 1914, strengthening its dominance of Texas banking. The city had reached 260,000 population by 1929 when the effects of the Stock Market Crash hit Texas, causing a sharp drop in the prices of oil, cotton and cattle; growth came to a standstill.
Oil [ edit ]
On the morning of January 10, 1901, Anthony F. Lucas, an experienced mining engineer, drilled the first major oil well at Spindletop, a small hill south of Beaumont, Texas. The East Texas Oil Field, discovered on October 5, 1930, is located in east central part of the state, and is the largest and most prolific oil reservoir in the contiguous United States. Other oil fields were later discovered in West Texas and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting Texas Oil Boom permanently transformed the economy of Texas, and led to its most significant economic expansion after the Civil War.
Great Depression [ edit ]
The economy, which had experienced significant recovery since the Civil War, was dealt a double blow by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. After the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the economy suffered significant reversals. Thousands of city workers became unemployed, many of whom depended on federal relief programs such as FERA, WPA and CCC. Thousands of unemployed Mexican citizens received one-way bus tickets to their home villages in Mexico.[159]
Farmers and ranchers were especially hard hit, as prices for cotton and livestock fell sharply. Beginning in 1934 and lasting until 1939, the Dust Bowl, an ecological disaster of severe wind and drought, caused an exodus from Texas and the surrounding plains, in which over 500,000 Americans were homeless, hungry and jobless.[160] Thousands left the region forever to seek economic opportunities in California. For the majority of farmers who remained, the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Act was a crash program started in 1933 that in two weeks signed up cotton growers, even as agents and committeemen faced poor roads, bureaucratic delays, inadequate supplies, balking mules, and language barriers. It brought recovery by the mid-1930s, raising cotton prices by controls on how much farmers could plant.[161]
World War II [ edit ]
World War II had a dramatic effect on Texas, as federal money poured in to build military bases, munitions factories, POW detention camps and Army hospitals; 750,000 young men left for service; the cities exploded with new industry; the colleges took on new roles; and hundreds of thousands of poor farmers left for much better-paying war jobs, never to return to agriculture.[162][163] Texas needed more farm workers. The Bracero Program brought in 117,000 Mexicans to work temporarily.[164]
Existing military bases in Texas were expanded and numerous new training bases were built: Texas World War II Army Airfields; Brooke Army Medical Center, Camp Mabry, Corpus Christi Army Depot, Fort Bliss, Fort Hood, Fort Sam Houston, Ingleside Army Depot, Red River Army Depot, especially for aviation training. The good flying weather made the state a favorite location for Air Force training bases. In the largest aviation training program in the world, 200,000 graduated from programs at 40 Texas airfields, including 45,000 pilots, 12,000 bombardiers, 12,000 navigators, and thousands of aerial gunners, photographers, and mechanics.[165] Fred Allison in a study of Majors Field, the Army Air Forces Basic Flying School, at Greenville during 1942–45, shows that the base—like most military bases in rural Texas—invigorated the local economy, but also changed the cultural climate of the conservative Christian town, especially around unprecedented freedom regarding alcohol, dating and dancing, and race relations.[166]
A factory worker in 1942. Fort Worth, Texas.
The Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant and the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant were built as part of the WWII buildup. Hundreds of thousands of American (and some allied) soldiers, sailors and airmen trained in the state. All sectors of the economy boomed as the homefront prospered.
During WWII, Texas became home to as many as 78,982 enemy prisoners, mainly Germans; it held 15% of the total POWs in the United States. There were fourteen prisoner-of-war camps in the state. The men in the camps were put to work to supplement the local farm labor lost to the war.[167][168] Though contemporary War Department officials claimed that government attempts at denazification of the prisoners were highly successful, Nazi influence upon prisons in individual camps was common for the duration of the POW program.[169] Walker examined Nazi activities in Texas POW camps during 1943–45 and found that the military authorities had failed to eradicate the influence of Nazi leaders.[169]
Previously a largely rural area, East Texas became more urban as workers were recruited for the oil, shipbuilding, and aircraft industries. East Texans made many contributions to the war effort, both at home and in the armed forces. High schools had patriotic programs as well, but so many teachers and older students left for the military or for defense jobs that budgets were cut, programs dropped, and the curriculum had to be scaled down. Hospitals reported a shortage of supplies and medical personnel, as many doctors and most of the younger nurses joined the services.[170]
Harmon General Hospital, one of the Army's largest, opened in Longview in November 1942 with 157 hospital buildings and a capacity of 2,939 beds. The facility was designed for the treatment of soldiers with central nervous system syphilis, psychiatric disorders, tropical illnesses, and dermatological diseases. At the end of the war, the facility was adapted for use as the campus of LeTourneau University.[171]
Baylor University, like most schools, was successful in the multiple missions of aiding national defense, recruiting soldiers, and keeping the institution operational while the war continued.[172] Texas Tech University likewise had many roles in the war; the most famous was the War Training Service Pre-Flight program during 1943–44. It prepared Air Force pilots for full-fledged military aviation training. The efforts of Clent Breedove and M. F. Dagley, private contractors for the Civilian Pilot Training Program at the university site since 1939, with Harold Humphries as chief pilot, brought an economic boost to Lubbock. 3,750 cadets received classroom instruction and flying time.[173] From February 1943 to January 1944, more than 2,000 women completed training at the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps Branch Number One, Army Administration School, at Stephen F. Austin State Teacher's College in Nacogdoches.
Nowhere were the wartime effects greater than in Houston, which in 1940 was a city of 400,000 population dependent on shipping and oil. The war dramatically expanded the city's economic base, thanks to massive federal spending. Energetic entrepreneurs, most notably George Brown, James Elkins and James Abercrombie, landed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wartime investment in technologically complex facilities. Houston oil companies moved from being refiners and became sophisticated producers of petrochemicals. Especially important were synthetic rubber and high octane fuel, which retained their importance after the war. The war moved the natural gas industry from a minor factor to a major energy source; Houston became a major hub when a local firm purchased the federally-financed Inch pipelines. Other major growth industries included steel, munitions, and shipbuilding.
Tens of thousands of new migrants streamed in from rural areas, straining the city's housing supply and the city's ability to provide local transit and schools. For the first time, high-paying jobs went to large numbers of women, blacks and Mexican Americans. The city's African-American community, emboldened by their newfound prosperity, increased its agitation for civil rights; they backed and funded the legal case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), in which the Supreme Court ruled against the latest version of the white primary in support of voting rights.[174]
Throughout East Texas, black family growth and dissolution came more rapidly than in peacetime; blacks were more mobile as an adjustment to employment opportunities. There was a more rapid shift to factory labor, higher economic returns, and a willingness of whites to tolerate the change in black economic status so long as the traditional "Jim Crow" social relations were maintained.[175]
Texas modernizes: 1945–present [ edit ]
1950s Texas drought [ edit ]
Beginning in 1949, Texas was hit with a devastating drought that extended until 1957. Rainfall decreased 30 to 50 percent, while temperatures rose, killing crops, livestock, and triggering a rise of dust storms. As a result, the number of Texas farms and ranches declined by nearly 100,000, and Texas experienced a period of mass urbanization as the rural population moved to the city to rebuild their livelihoods. The state's rural population declined from more than a third of the population to a quarter.[176] As a result, the Texas Water Development Board was created in 1957, and the state began a period of building a diverse system of water conservation plans. This included increasing access to groundwater, and creating lakes by damming rivers.[177]
JFK assassination [ edit ]
On Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC), Lee Harvey Oswald, an alienated loner, assassinated President John F. Kennedy. The Texas Governor, John B. Connally, was also shot but survived. The episode caused a national outrage focused on right wing elements in Dallas that had long been hostile to Kennedy.[178] For a half-century and more the people of Dallas still struggle with being branded as having some responsibility. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, located where the assassin is believed to have fired the shots, has become a historic tourist site.[179]
Higher education [ edit ]
During World War II the main universities like University of Texas and Texas A&M University gained a new national role. The wartime financing of university research, curricular change, campus trainee programs, and postwar veteran enrollments changed the tenor and allowed Texas schools to gain national stature.[180]
From 1950 through the 1960s, Texas modernized and dramatically expanded its system of higher education. Under the leadership of Governor Connally, the state produced a long-range plan for higher education, a more rational distribution of resources, and a central state apparatus that managed state institutions with greater efficiency. Because of these changes, Texas universities received federal funds for research and development during the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations.[181]
Economic and demographic change [ edit ]
Beginning around the mid-20th century, Texas began to transform from a rural and agricultural state to one that was urban and industrialized.[182] The state's population grew quickly during this period, with large levels of migration from outside the state.[182] As a part of the Sun Belt Texas experienced strong economic growth, particularly during the 1970s and early 1980s.[182] Texas's economy diversified, lessening its reliance on the petroleum industry.[182] By 1990, Hispanics overtook blacks to become the largest minority group in the state.[182]
Shift to the Republican Party [ edit ]
Prior to the mid-20th century Texas was essentially a one-party state, and the Democratic primary was viewed as "the real election". The Democratic Party had conservative and liberal factions, which became more pronounced after the New Deal.[183] Additionally, several factions of the party briefly split during the 1930s and 40s.[183]
The state's conservative white voters began to support Republican presidential candidates by the mid-20th century. After this period, they supported Republicans for local and state offices as well, and most whites became Republican Party members.[184] The party also attracted some minorities, but many have continued to vote for Democratic candidates. The shift to the Republican Party is much-attributed to the fact that the Democratic Party became increasingly liberal during the 20th century, and thus increasingly out-of-touch with the average Texas voter.[185] As Texas was always a conservative state, voters switched to the GOP, which now more closely reflected their beliefs.[185][186] Commentators have also attributed the shift to Republican political consultant Karl Rove, who managed numerous political campaigns in Texas in the 1980s and 90s.[186] Other stated reasons included court-ordered redistricting and the demographic shift in relation to the Sun Belt that favored the Republican Party and conservatism.[182]
The 2003 Texas redistricting of Congressional districts led by Republican Tom DeLay, was called by the New York Times "an extreme case of partisan gerrymandering".[187] A group of Democratic legislators, the "Texas Eleven", fled the state in a quorum-busting effort to prevent the legislature from acting, but was unsuccessful.[188] The state had already redistricted following the 2000 census. Despite these efforts, the legislature passed a map heavily in favor of Republicans, based on 2000 data and ignoring the estimated nearly one million new residents in the state since that date. Career attorneys and analysts at the Department of Justice objected to the plan as diluting the votes of African American and Hispanic voters, but political appointees overrode them and approved it.[187] Legal challenges to the redistricting reached the national Supreme Court in the case League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006), but the court ruled in favor of the state (and Republicans).[189]
In the 2014 Texas elections, the Tea Party movement made large gains, with numerous Tea Party favorites being elected into office, including Dan Patrick as lieutenant governor,[190][191] Ken Paxton as attorney general,[190][192] in addition to numerous other candidates[192] including conservative Republican Greg Abbott as governor.[193]
See also [ edit ]
Cities in Texas
Bibliography [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
"The Most Powerful Texans. THE POWER GAME IN TEXAS: HOW IT WORKS AND WHO CALLS THE SHOTS." Texas Monthly, Harry Hurt. (April 1976)
Surveys [ edit ]
Geography and environment [ edit ]
Doughty, Robin W. "Settlement and Environmental Change in Texas, 1820–1900," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1986 89(4): 423–442
1986 89(4): 423–442 Gould, Lewis L. Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment (1988)
(1988) Guthrie, William Keith. "Flood alley: An environmental history of flooding in Texas," Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Kansas, 2006, 397 pages; AAT 3243474
Gutmann, Myron P. and Christie G. Sample. "Land, Climate, and Settlement on the Texas Frontier," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1995 99(2): 136–172
1995 99(2): 136–172 Horgan, Paul, Great River, The Rio Grande in North American History, (1977), ISBN 0-03-029305-7
(1977), ISBN 0-03-029305-7 Meinig, D. W. Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography, University of Texas Press, 1969, 145 pages.
University of Texas Press, 1969, 145 pages. Platt, Harold L. City Building in the New South: The Growth of Public Services in Houston, Texas, 1830–1910 (1983) covers waste removal, sewage and clean water
(1983) covers waste removal, sewage and clean water Pratt, Joseph A. "Growth or a Clean Environment? Responses to Petroleum-Related Pollution in the Gulf Coast Refining Region," Business History Review 1978 52(1): 1–29 in JSTOR
1978 52(1): 1–29 in JSTOR Schmidly David J. Texas Natural History: A Century of Change (2002) 534 pp.
(2002) 534 pp. Stephens, A. Ray. Texas: A Historical Atlas (U. of Oklahoma Press, 2010) 432pp; ISBN 978-0-8061-3873-2
(U. of Oklahoma Press, 2010) 432pp; ISBN 978-0-8061-3873-2 Steely, James Wright. Parks for Texas: Enduring Landscapes of the New Deal (1999) 274 pp.
(1999) 274 pp. Webb, Walter Prescott. More Water for Texas (1954)
(1954) Webb, Walter Prescott. The Great Plains: A Study in Institutions and Environment (1931)
Ethnicity and minorities [ edit ]
Alonzo, Armando C. Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734-1900 (1998)
(1998) Barr, Alwyn. Black Texans: A History of African Americans in Texas, 1528-1995 (1996)
(1996) Blackwelder, Julia Kirk. Women of the Depression: Caste and Culture in San Antonio 1984. excerpt and text search
1984. excerpt and text search Buitron Jr., Richard A. The Quest for Tejano Identity in San Antonio, Texas, 1913-2000 (2004) excerpt and text search
(2004) excerpt and text search Crouch, Barry, et al. The Dance of Freedom: Texas African Americans during Reconstruction (2007)
(2007) De Leon, Arnoldo. Mexican Americans in Texas: A Brief History (2nd ed. 1999). online edition
(2nd ed. 1999). online edition Deleón, Arnoldo. "Whither Tejano History: Origins, Development, and Status," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 2003 106(3): 348–364
2003 106(3): 348–364 Deutsch, Sarah No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on the Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 1987
1987 Dysart, Jane. "Mexican Women in San Antonio, 1830-1860: The Assimilation Process" Western Historical Quarterly 7 (October 1976): 365-375. Template:Jstor.org.
7 (October 1976): 365-375. Template:Jstor.org. García, Richard A. Rise of the Mexican American Middle Class: San Antonio, 1929-1941 1991
1991 Glasrud, Bruce A. and Merline Pitre. Black Women in Texas History (2008)
(2008) Hinojosa, Gilberto M. "The Enduring Hispanic Faith Communities: Spanish and Texas Church Historiography," Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture 1990 1(1): 20–41
1990 1(1): 20–41 Matovina, Timothy M. Tejano Religion and Ethnicity, San Antonio, 1821-1860 (1995)
(1995) Montejano, David. Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (1987).
(1987). Márquez, Benjamin. LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization (1993)
(1993) Quintanilla, Linda J., "Chicana Activists of Austin and Houston, Texas: A Historical Analysis" (University of Houston, 2005). Order No. DA3195964.
San Miguel, Guadalupe, Jr. "Let All of Them Take Heed": Mexican Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910–1981 (1987).
(1987). Stewart, Kenneth L., and Arnoldo De León. Not Room Enough: Mexicans, Anglos, and Socioeconomic Change in Texas, 1850-1900 (1993)
(1993) Storey, John W., and Mary L. Kelley, eds. Twentieth Century Texas: A Social and Cultural History (2008)
Taylor, Paul S. Mexican Labor in the United States. 2 vols. 1930-1932, on Texas
. 2 vols. 1930-1932, on Texas Taylor, Quintard. "Texas: The South Meets the West, The View Through African American History," Journal of the West (2005) 44#2 pp 44–52.
(2005) 44#2 pp 44–52. de la Teja, Jesús F. San Antonio de Béxar: A Community on New Spain's Northern Frontier (1995).
(1995). Tijerina, Andrés. Tejano Empire: Life on the South Texas Ranchos (1998).
(1998). Tijerina, Andrés. Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 1821-1836 (1994),
(1994), Trevino, Roberto R. The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston. (2006). 308pp.
(2006). 308pp. Willett, Donald, and Stephen Curley, eds. Invisible Texans: Women and Minorities in Texas History (2005) 236pp ISBN 0-07-287163-6
(2005) 236pp ISBN 0-07-287163-6 Winegarten, Ruthe et al. eds. Black Texas Women: A Sourcebook (1996), primary sources
(1996), primary sources Zamora, Emilio et al. eds. Mexican Americans in Texas History: Selected Essays (2000) 226pp ISBN 0-87611-174-6
Historiography [ edit ]
Bell, Walter F. "Civil War Texas: A Review of the Historical Literature," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 2005 109(2): 204–232.
2005 109(2): 204–232. Buenger, Walter L. and Arnoldo De León, ed. Beyond Texas through Time: Breaking Away from Past Interpretations (Texas A&M Press, 2011), essays by scholars
(Texas A&M Press, 2011), essays by scholars Cantrell, Gregg and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, eds. Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas (Texas A&M Press, 2007), essays by scholars
(Texas A&M Press, 2007), essays by scholars Cox, Patrick L., and Kenneth E. Hendrickson Jr., eds. Writing the Story of Texas (University of Texas Press, 2013) 310 pp. Scholarly essays about Charles Ramsdell, Eugene Barker, Walter Prescott Webb, and Earnest Winkler, as well as Llerna Friend, J. Frank Dobie, J. Evetts Haley, Robert Maxwell, Carlos Castañeda, Robert Cotner, Joe B. Frantz, Ruthe Winegarten, and David Weber. online review
(University of Texas Press, 2013) 310 pp. Scholarly essays about Charles Ramsdell, Eugene Barker, Walter Prescott Webb, and Earnest Winkler, as well as Llerna Friend, J. Frank Dobie, J. Evetts Haley, Robert Maxwell, Carlos Castañeda, Robert Cotner, Joe B. Frantz, Ruthe Winegarten, and David Weber. online review Crouch, Barry A. "'Unmanacling' Texas Reconstruction: A Twenty-Year Perspective," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1990 93(3): 275–302
1990 93(3): 275–302 Cummins, Light Townsend, and Alvin R. Bailey Jr. eds A Guide to the History of Texas (1988) online edition
(1988) online edition Deleón, Arnoldo. "Whither Tejano History: Origins, Development, and Status," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 2003 106(3): 348–364
2003 106(3): 348–364 Glasrud, Bruce A., and Cary D. Wintz. Discovering Texas History (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). online review
(University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). online review Hinojosa, Gilberto M. "The Enduring Hispanic Faith Communities: Spanish and Texas Church Historiography," Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture 1990 1(1): 20–41
1990 1(1): 20–41 Poyo, Gerald E. and Gilberto M. Hinojosa. "Spanish Texas and Borderlands Historiography in Transition: Implications for United States History," Journal of American History 1988 75(2): 393–416 in JSTOR
1988 75(2): 393–416 in JSTOR Sneed, Edgar P. "A Historiography of Reconstruction in Texas: Some Myths and Problems," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1969 72(4): 435–448
1969 72(4): 435–448 Wooster, Ralph A. and Robert A. Calvert, eds. Texas Vistas (1987) reprinted scholarly essays
Business, labor and economics [ edit ]
Campbell, Randolph B., and Richard G. Lowe. Wealth and Power in Antebellum Texas (1977).
(1977). Glasrud, Bruce A., and James C. Maroney, eds. Texas Labor History (Texas A&M University Press, 2013) 444 pp.
Gender and social history [ edit ]
Enstam, Elizabeth York. Women and the Creation of Urban Life: Dallas, Texas, 1843-1920. (1998). 284 pp. online edition
. (1998). 284 pp. online edition Jones, Nancy Baker, and Ruthe Winegarten. Capitol women: Texas female legislators, 1923-1999 (U of Texas Press, 2000).
(U of Texas Press, 2000). McArthur, Judith N., and Harold L. Smith. Texas Through Women's Eyes: The Twentieth-century Experience (U of Texas Press, 2010).
(U of Texas Press, 2010). McComb, David G. The City in Texas: A History. (U of Texas Press, 2015).
(U of Texas Press, 2015). Matovina, Timothy M. Tejano religion and ethnicity: San Antonio, 1821-1860 (U of Texas Press, 2014).
(U of Texas Press, 2014). Taylor, A. Elizabeth. Citizens at Last: The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas (1987).
(1987). Turner, Elizabeth Hayes, Stephanie Cole, and Rebecca Sharpless, eds. Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives (U of Georgia Press, 2015).
(U of Georgia Press, 2015). Turner, Elizabeth Hayes (1997), Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880–1920, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-508688-0
Winegarten, Ruthie, ed. (2014). Black Texas Women: A Sourcebook. University of Texas Press. pp. 44–69., primary sources.
Reconstruction [ edit ]
Barr, Alwyn. Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876–1906 (1971)
(1971) Buenger, Walter L. The Path to a Modern South: Northeast Texas between Reconstruction and the Great Depression (2001)
(2001) Campbell, Randolph B. Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865–1880 (1997).
(1997). Gould, Lewis N. Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (1973).
(1973). Jordan, Terry G. Trails to Texas: Southern Roots of Western Cattle Ranching (1981).
(1981). McArthur, Judith N. Creating the New Woman: The Rise of Southern Women's Progressive Culture in Texas, 1893–1918. (1998).
(1998). Martin, Roscoe C. The People's Party in Texas: A Study in Third Party Politics (1933).
(1933). Pitre, Merline. Through Many Dangers, Toils, and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868–1900 Eakin Press, 1985.
Eakin Press, 1985. Rice, Lawrence D. The Negro in Texas, 1874–1900 (1971)
(1971) Sneed, Edgar P. "A Historiography of Reconstruction in Texas: Some Myths and Problems," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 1969 72(4): 435–448
1969 72(4): 435–448 Spratt, John Stricklin. The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875–1901. (1955).
(1955). Utley, Robert M. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers (2002). online edition
(2002). online edition Wooster, Ralph. Texas and Texans in the Great War (2010) 256ppNote: I updated the pinch hitting data to include a larger sample (previously I went back to 2008. Now, 2000).
Note: It was pointed out by a commenter below and another one on Twitter that you can’t look only at innings where the #9 and #1 batters batted (eliminating innings where the #1 hitter led off), as Russell did in his study, and which he uses to support his theory (he says that it is the best evidence). That creates a huge bias, of course. It eliminates all PA in which the #9 hitter made the last out of an inning or at least an out was made while he was at the plate. In fact, the wOBA for a #9 hitter, who usually bats around.300, is.432 in innings where he and the #1 hitter bat (after eliminating so many PA in which an out was made). How that got past Russell, I have no idea. Perhaps he can explain.
Recently, Baseball Prospectus published an article by one of their regular writers, Russell Carleton (aka Pizza Cutter), in which he examined whether the so-called “times |
a terrorist enterprise”. At issue are allegations about payments that were made to banned groups.
Two of the people under investigation are former executives of the company in Syria. The third is a former head of security for Lafarge - which merged with Switzerland’s Holcim in 2015 - and who still works for the company.
The three individuals had been questioned on Wednesday.
Lawyers for two of the men said on Friday that their clients denied any wrongdoing. A lawyer for the third person declined to comment.
LafargeHolcim has also declined to comment on the case.
An independent internal inquiry had found that protection payments made to intermediaries to keep open the Jalabiya plant in northern Syria were not in line with its policies.
LafargeHolcim CEO Eric Olsen said afterwards in April that he would quit after the company admitted it had paid armed groups to keep a factory operating in war-ravaged Syria.
Olsen said at the time that he had not been aware of any wrongdoing and that he hoped his departure would bring back “serenity” to the group.JAKARTA (Reuters) - An Indonesian air force transport plane has crashed into a mountain, killing all 13 people board, during a training exercise in the remote region of Papua, a search and rescue agency official said on Sunday.
The Hercules C130 plane had taken off from the city of Timika before crashing near its destination of Wamena at around 6.15 a.m. local time (2315 GMT), said Ivan Ahmad Riski Titus, operational director of Indonesia’s Search and Rescue Agency. The crash site on Lisuwa mountain had been found and the bodies of the victims were being brought back to Wamena, he said.
Air transport is commonly used in remote and mountainous Papua, Indonesia’s easternmost province, where land travel is often impossible.
Indonesia has a patchy air safety record and President Joko Widodo promised a review of the country’s aging air force fleet last year after a military transport plane crashed, killing more than 100 people.The Making of Under The Shadow
The making of Babak Anvari’s Under The Shadow
In-depth interview with Writer/Director Babak Anvari and DP Kit Fraser
Learn about the making of a successful low-budget first feature film
Writer and Director Babak Anvari’s first feature film Under The Shadow has enjoyed a wild ride to success…
The day before the world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival Netflix snapped up the world wide streaming rights to the film, before it had ever been seen publicly.
“Under the Shadow” is written and directed by first-time filmmaker Babak Anvari, who is poised to be one of the big discoveries out of Sundance… The movie, which premieres on Friday night as part of the “Midnight” section, is among this year’s most buzzed about indies at Sundance…” – Variety
The film then quickly picked up theatrical release thanks to a partnership between XYZ Films and Vertical Entertainment.
“This distribution alliance with Vertical and Netflix will ensure that Under The Shadow has a chance to be seen by the largest audience worldwide for years to come,” says XYZ’s Nate Bolotin. “Babak Anvari is a breakout filmmaking voice and it’s an honor to be a part of this chilling yet harrowing tale with its defiantly strong female performances.” – Deadline.com
Since Sundance the film has gone on to numerous film festivals around the world, winning the grand prize at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival and other awards.
It has also been highly reviewed by several major critics, currently enjoying a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Anvari deftly builds and sustains tension throughout, crafting a horror movie that respects genre conventions (right down to the safe/not safe ending), while firmly establishing its own distinctive identity.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“Shadow delivers the sort of sleek, swiftly paced freakout that streaming customers will gladly look past subtitles to experience.” – Justin Chang, Variety
“The first great horror movie of the year… Under the Shadow smartly observes the emotions stirred up by a world defined by restrictions, and the terrifying possibility that they might be inescapable.” – Eric Kohn, Indie Wire
“The film’s triumph lies in its ability to critique Iran’s post-revolution regime for its blatant sexism, while still working as a full-throttle horror when the demons come out to play. Anvari proves himself to be a master at modulating fear: the jump scares are executed with effective precision, leading up to a magnificently intense climax.” – Nigel M Smith, The Guardian
The latest achievement for Under the Shadow is to have been selected by BAFTA as the UK’s submission for best foreign language film at next year’s Academy Awards.
Essentially the filmmakers have done exceptionally well for their first feature film, and in the following in-depth interview you can find out how they did it!
Behind the Scenes on Under The Shadow
Fortunately for me, I’m old friends with both Babak Anvari and Director of Photography, Kit Fraser, so they were kind enough to make time to sit down and chat through how they brought Under The Shadow to the screen. Huge thanks goes to another old friend Alex Stephens for filming the whole thing for me!
In 2012 Babak’s short film Two & Two (also shot by Kit) was nominated for a BAFTA for best short film, which led to his being signed by a UK agent. Off the back of this success, Babak set out to write his first feature script for Under The Shadow, whilst still working full time as a director at MTV. Kit was the first person Babak came to with the idea and he remained closely involved through the process.
After two years of writing his script for Under The Shadow was optioned by Wigwam Films, who, unfazed by the Farsi language, set out to make the film happen. One further year of script development later and the film secured the financing it needed to jump into production stewarded by producers Lucan Toh, Emily Leo and Oliver Roskill.
In this 45 minute conversation with the filmmakers behind Under The Shadow you can learn what it took to bring the film to reality and pick up a lot of great insights on what it takes to create a first feature film on a low-budget and tight filming schedule, including working with a child non-actor and shooting exclusively on a foreign location.
Sit back and enjoy the whole interview as one chapter builds on the next or jump to specific topics with the following links:
If you can catch the film in cinemas from October 7th in the US and September 30th in the UK or enjoy it on Netflix after the theatrical release.
For more info on Under The Shadow check out the Facebook page, Instagram feed and Twitter accounts as well as on IMDB.com
UPDATE – More Interviews and Videos
Babak and lead actress Narges Rashidi are interviewed in a post screening Q+A at the BFI in London.
Another post screening Q+A with Babak, Narges and director John Landis! This time at the Sundance Next Fest.
Mark Kermode loves Under The Shadow – check out his vlog above and his radio review below.Hello you pitiful peasants, bumbling blacksmiths and manic merchants, welcome to the Devblog #2!
This week has seen a new crafting system, the building of a monastery and a new fridge in the office! Here’s the breakdown!
New crafting system on beta servers & update delay.
The new crafting system is shaping up great, but unfortunately due to a few nasty crashes, we’ve had to delay rolling it out to new servers whilst we fix the bugs.
The new crafting and items add a whole new complexity to The Black Death. There are now multiple tiers of different quality items. Using poor items to craft will usually produce a poor quality result. But you can offset this with the audacity bar.
This system is going to be the base of a world rich with various items and resources!
If you want to try out the system for yourself jump on the beta servers now!
The Monastery.
Next up we have the Monastery. A hub for any player playing a monk. As we continue development this will be inhabited by monk NPCs who sell certain items not available elsewhere and the Templar guards who protect the monks.
Farleigh Citadel progress.
Farleight Citadel is still undergoing its renovation. As development goes on the military stronghold will a feature dining hall, barracks and an archery range. With the twin settlement of Dunstead fort across the valley this area is prime for some PvP battles!
Laketown progress.
Laketown is also taking shape. A trade hub for Mercia, used to ship resources between to Raven’s Reach and Freeman’s Port. As we continue to build this location it will be a key place for players to acquire raw, average quality resources. There are also several new houses available to purchase!
Audio update.
We have teamed up with Pitstop Productions (Lords of the Fallen, Assassins Creed Chronicles, Divinity: Original Sin) to re-create every audio asset in The Black Death!
We’re really excited for you to all hear the new SFX and music going into the game! There’s a huge amount of content here, so it will be implemented gradually over the course of development.
Here’s a sneak peak!
Studio fridge!
With the warm weather we’re currently experiencing in the UK we’re very excited to announce we have acquired a fridge in the SIG HQ! We can now have cold water to drink whilst we work, hurrah!
Thanks for reading, see you in V0.06!
Pete.The Ted Cruz campaign purchased ad space on Snapchat, allowing users the option of including the logo on their videos and photos. The image was provided by the campaign Wednesday. (Photo11: Ted Cruz Campaign)
The Ted Cruz campaign appears to have learned the same lesson Jeb Bush’s campaign experienced earlier this fall: Major-college athletics conferences don't like being drawn into presidential politics, especially not without their consent.
The Cruz campaign had developed logos modeled on those used, respectively, by the SEC and the Big 12 Conference, and was planning to deploy them through a Snapchat filter it had bought and scheduled to be available to users at seven games involving those conference’s schools on Friday and Saturday.
However, on Saturday morning, Big 12 spokesman Bob Burda said the conference’s legal counsel, Kevin Sweeney, had sent a letter to Cruz campaign chief strategist Jason Johnson saying the campaign’s Big 12-style logo causes the conference “serious legal concerns.”
The use “also implies a passive endorsement,” said Burda, who added that the conference’s non-profit charter prevents it from making any political endorsements.
Then on Saturday afternoon, SEC spokesman Herb Vincent said in a statement: “We have communicated to the Ted Cruz campaign that we have concerns about their use of the mark and its similarities to the SEC mark."
By that time, Snapchat images and filters captured by Gannett reporters at the Clemson-South Carolina game in Columbia, S.C., and the Alabama-Auburn game in Auburn, Ala., did not carry the logo, as it had been shown on a sample image provided to USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday evening by Cruz campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier.
The Cruz logo modeled on the SEC’s circular mark also appears on drink koozies that the campaign, as of late Saturday morning (Eastern time), was selling through its online store at $20 for a set a four. As of 2:45 p.m. (Eastern), the koozies had been removed from the site.
The Snapchat filters, which were first reported by CNN, were scheduled to be available to fans at Friday’s Missouri-at-Arkansas game and at Saturday’s matchups of Kansas State at Kansas, Oklahoma at Oklahoma State, Alabama at Auburn, Clemson at South Carolina, Texas A&M at LSU, and Mississippi at Mississippi State.
According to a report earlier this week in The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, the Mississippi-Mississippi State game also is scheduled to be the site of a tailgating appearance by Bush, who has made similar appearances before other SEC games this season. Republican campaigns are fighting for attention and votes in nine states that have SEC and/or Big 12 schools and will be holding primaries or caucuses on March 1 or March 5.
“The whole point is to reach out to voters and connect with voters at these games and get them engaged in what we are doing,” Frazier said Wednesday evening.
Frazier said at that time the campaign had not heard from either of the conferences concerning the logos or the Snapchat plans.
She could not be reached for immediate comment on Saturday.
Bush’s campaign had developed a logo based on the conference’s circular SEC logo, but instead using the letters “JEB.” A version of the “JEB” logo using yellow lettering on a blue background — nearly the same color scheme as the SEC’s — was appearing on campaign signs and a white-on-blue version was appearing on drink koozies the campaign was selling.
In mid-October, SEC officials discussed the matter with the Bush campaign, whose website also has been carrying a video titled “Jeb’s SEC Favorites,” in which the candidate discussed — among other topics — mascots, rivalries and his picks for which teams would play in the SEC championship game. During the video, as Bush spoke, the logos of Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Florida and LSU alternately appeared in the background.
In addition, Bush appeared at tailgating events prior to football games at the University of Georgia and the University of Tennessee.
The Cruz campaign’s SEC- and Big 12-style logos utilize the candidate’s last name. The SEC-style version on the Snapchat filter uses white, capital letters against a background of no color. The version on the drink koozies uses red letters on a white background. The Big 12-style version on the Snapchat filter uses white, capital letters presented in concave fashion on a red background — the same color scheme the Big 12 uses for its logo, which presents the Roman numeral “XII” in a stylized, concave fashion.
Contributing: Mandrallius Robinson of The Greenville (S.C.) News in Columbia; Brad Zimanek of the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser in Auburn.Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Buckling under economic duress, lack of education and skilled labor, shallow industry, and deforestation, the country’s injuries are only further insulted by merciless national disasters. Four years ago, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake blitzed the region, sending the community in a tailspin and drawing relief efforts from around the world. One of those individuals who responded was Andrew MacCalla with an international non profit, and it was during this service that he and his friend Brett Williams searched for greater solutions to Haiti’s problems.
“This country needs jobs, not handouts,” MacCalla says. 70% of Haitians are without work. Without the formal training and resident industry to support viable careers, their biggest problem can be dependency on international economic assistance. MacCalla and Williams looked around Haiti and noticed two things: poverty and plastic bottles. The answer was right before their eyes. After all, plastic bottles equate to money.
They partnered with longtime friend Mike Shinoda (Linkin Park) and Louis “Pino” Blanchard of Eau Nacionale Water (Haiti’s premier drinking water provider), whose headquarters were located just a stone’s throw from the aid organization. Pino provided the guys with a flat parcel of land, they posted a wooden sign with a price sheet out front, and through word-of-mouth, news spread that a couple Americans were collecting used plastic bottles in exchange for currency. SRS was born.
The first thing SRS did was buy as many giant white bags as possible for people to collect with. A bag could take a day to fill and net the gatherer the equivalent of $10 USD, which was twice the minimum wage. The next thing they did was hire and send out locals with pickup trucks around Haiti to accumulate the bags. Drivers can tally up an average of $400 a day. One regular was beside herself upon earning a couple hundred bucks in a few weeks’ work, as she could now afford to put her 6 children in school for a year. Within a month, the lot was rolling with mountains of bloated white bags and SRS didn’t even have walls yet to protect their assets. In the meantime, they hired night guards to stand watch.
Haiti produces 9 million pounds of plastic a month. In their best month, SRS retrieved half a million pounds’ worth in bottles. To date, they’ve collected 113 Million bottles, which averages out to about 150,000 a day.
But once they have the bottles, the story doesn’t end there. The next step is sorting and processing the bottles so that they can then be recycled into new consumer products like lumber, furniture, toys, and this is where The Hundreds comes in: apparel.
I’m onsite here at SRS as we are working on collaborating with them on a T-shirt that is 50% cotton and 50% made of recycled bottles. And I’m not just here to learn the process, but to meet SRS’ founders and investors, whom include joint investors Todd Wagner and the Clinton Foundation, who have provided a $250,000 grant to the company.
From left to right, Andrew MacCalla, Socrates Joachim, President Bill Clinton, Brett Williams, and Mike Shinoda:
Workers drag in a white bag of found plastic bottles:
Clinton oversees the unloading of the trucks:
Bottles are sorted and processed:
And then compacted. This cube amounts to 30,000 bottles:
President Clinton, Robert of Impact Ecowear (the developer who converts the plastics into apparel), and Mike Shinoda examining the finished product:
Todd Wagner and the President:
President Clinton listens as Robert explains the process by which the plastics are reappropriated into fabrics:
Teamwork makes the dream work.
The faces of SRS:
A big and generous Thank You to Mike for inviting me to participate in this project, bringing The Hundreds into the Haiti relief vernacular, and for all of his assistance in drawing attention to this beautiful land and people. We would also like to thank Andrew and Brett of SRS, as well as Todd Wagner for all of his charity.
And a loud and vehement show of gratitude to the President for his presence, interest, and support!
More news on The Hundreds’ project with SRS to come… Until then, think of Haiti.ARLINGTON, VA — Several protesters were arrested during a protest against U.S. involvement in wars abroad outside the Pentagon Monday morning.
A total of 21 protesters from multiple groups were arrested, according to Chris Layman, a spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. They were charged with "failing to obey a lawful order," Layman said.
Specifically, the arrested protesters were attempting to block the employee entrance, he said, adding that standard procedure is to give them three warnings before arresting them.
Layman could not provide a figure on the total number of protesters, but one protest group, World Beyond War, said in a press release that there were several dozen there.
"Dozens of war protesters demonstrated at the Pentagon this morning. Most voiced their concerns from within a free speech cage," according to the statement. "Others attempted to deliver petitions and letters to the Pentagon and were arrested for their trouble and for 'Disturbing the Peace.' In fact, said World Beyond War's David Swanson, they were disturbing the wars."
The protest began at 9 a.m. outside the Pentagon near the top of the Pentagon Metro station escalators.
Image via the Pentagon Force Protection AgencyChinua Achebe is celebrating his 80th birthday on November 16, 2010. Born and raised in the eastern section of what later became Nigeria, he came to fame in 1958 with the publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart. The success of that novel, along with his profound thinking on the role of the writer in Africa, earned him the tag „Father of African Literature.“
During the 1960s, Achebe became one of the most vociferous critics of the social and political developments in Nigeria and other newly independent African countries. He also became a major spokesman for Biafra, the territory that sought to seperate itself from Nigeria.
Chinua Achebe has been living in the United States since 1990. He is the recipient of numerous awards, such as the International MAN Booker Award (2007) and the „Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels“ (2002).
Ehling: No condition is permanent, even some that are very unpleasant: “No Condition is Permanent” is of course the buzzword when it comes to looking at Nigeria, talking about Nigeria. In the past couple of years, some slight changes have occurred. The Abachas and Babangidas have gone, the military regime has been ousted. Mr Obasanjo is trying to establish some sort of order. How do you perceive what is going on in your country?
Achebe: Well, quite frankly, I find Nigeria very frustrating. I am not alone in this. There are many Nigerians abroad. As you know, the brain drain is just incredible. And when we talk to one another and there is a certain sense of frustration and but I struggle not to let the frustration degenerate into dispair,. Because it is easy to be impatient, because we know the potentiality of that country and the talent and the resources and to see it having no effect on the lives of the people, on the infrastructure, the roads, the hospitals, the schools, seeing no effect of these talents, these recourses is very frustrating. But it is the result of the damage that was done to the country, especially during the various military regimes. We were considerably damaged by colonial rule. Colonial rule means that power, initiative is taken away from you by somebody else who makes your decisions. If that goes on long enough, beyond one generation, then the habit of self-rule is forgotten. People are no longer able to realize what it means. To be dependant for a hundred years! And suddenly when this thing ends there is nobody who actually knows how to set about running the country. So that is one thing. We got rid of that in 1960 and then we did not really have too much of chance because within six years after independence there was the huge crisis of civil war and then a succession of military regimes. And I think it was in that period that the damage was done. And to recover from it is not going t be easy. It is a very long background to the question you asked.
Ehling: Where were you when the first massacres [that led to the civil war] started? Were you in Lagos?
Achebe: Yes, I was in Lagos. I stuck to my place in Lagos as long as I could because I just did not believe the time had come to run away from my national capital.
Ehling: When did you realize that you had to go?
Achebe: Well, when practically everybody else had gone. And first of all I sent my family, my wife and two kids, away from the town and stayed on. And then, in hiding, one day I realized that my cover had been blown, somebody telephoned asking for me and there was nobody who knew I was there, so I realized that I had to go, so I left.
Ehling: With massacres as such happening, with neighbours turning against neighbours, and retaliation – how does such a situation start, how does is brew up? It is outside effects that drive people to do what they do? Is it existing anatagonism?
Achebe: Well, it is a mixture of everything. But the real, the main course is the lack of responsible leadership. If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses. There are all sort of resentments festering, but under control. In the colonial period you see, Britain did not particularly set about making one group “like” their neighbours. That would not be as sensible way of maintaining control over the whole. It is not just Britain, anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone. There was a considerable policy of separating people, the various ethnic groups: The Muslim North, the non-Muslim South, East and West. But it did not erupt into sort of a full scale war. There were occasional skirmishes. But if you have good leaders, you know that this is a problem, you keep an eye on it, but this was not done.
Ehling: Has Nigeria had any good leaders, ever?
Achebe: Well, we have had… – some are better than the others obviously. But I do not know that I can say that we had a really outstanding political leader in the country. I think some of them have been reasonably good.
Ehling: How would you define a good leader? What are the qualities?
Achebe: Well, a good leader, the kind of person I am talking about, would be almost a miracle. A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers, that is what I am talking about, but you do not bank on that. So, competent, responsible leadership is possible for many more people and that is what I mean. We have had some reasonably good people who had merit, and made some faults. But there was nobody who could put this great diversity of people together and get them to work.
Ehling: Quite often with leaders emerging, over time they develop into something utterly disappointing – from the example of Mugabe, this is very clear at the moment. Is there any way in which the people of Nigeria can actively encourage their leaders not to develop such habits? What can the individual person in Nigeria do to create an agreeable society of some sort?
Achebe: Well, they have a whole range of things to do. You have to put your own house in order. For the ordinary person, the ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres. That habit of being good neighbors can be developed, can be worked out, consciously. Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now artists, like writers and sort of course have an added option of using their scale and talent with this in view. It is their business to create an environment in which our people will prosper and be happy.
Ehling: In your work, in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, I think it is quite obvious that you are rather critical of the way things were during the time of colonial incursion, and that the time was right for some sort of change. Possibly not the sort of change that actually did occur, but were these changes brought forward by colonialism? Where was the junction?
Achebe: I do not think that there is any time in our history when things were perfect. I do not expect such times in the near future either. But I think every generation has to examine what needs to be done, what belongs to its peace and proceed. And so what needs to be done will change with time depending on the conditions, whatever the conditions happen to be. And they will not be the same for generation after generation. Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
Ehling: A new generation of African leaders is emerging slowly. South African president Thabo Mbeki is one of those. And with a person of the older generation, like Obasanjo – he has been instrumental in setting up a new agenda for better cooperation with Africa on the condition of good governance in Africa. How do you see this situation?
Achebe: That is a major change for the better. I think that Nigeria could have done much worse than Obasanjo. He has certain qualifications which in his position should be effective. One is that he has experience in leadership, number two is that he has insight into the army, the military, who are still hovering around. And having been its commander in chief before he is able I think to talk to the military in a way that a civilian would have found rather difficult. So this are the qualifications I think he brought to the leadership of Nigeria. Nigeria is a complex place. He also has that additional qualification of having physically suffered under the repression of Abacha, in fact coming to be quite close to being dead. So I think he is very highly qualified to know exactly what Nigeria is and should not be. And so these are the good marks. The doubt is whether he has done as much as he should do in the circumstances. Many people would perhaps think that he let things slight. I am not there [in Nigeria] to be able to assess this myself but things are very slow. The change that one has expected does not seem to be coming. Now it might well be that things are really much worse than we thought. Which I believe is probably part of the answer: that Obasanjo himself did not even know how bad things were when he was promising that in six months we are going to do this and do that – and it has not been done. It is possible that he was over optimistic. But you know, in Nigeria, the pace is slow, and this is the reason for this impatience that I mentioned.
Ehling: One way to accelerate things in the opinion of many people is to look for radical solutions, some of them based on extreme interpretations of religion, both Christian and Muslim. In Nigeria, we have the big problem of quite a number of the Northern states imposing the Sharia, which opposes federal law in many aspects. Is the idea of a cohesion of Nigeria under such circumstances really a realistic idea? Would is not be better, easier, less stressful to break up something which might have been cobbled together without really belonging together?
Achebe: Well, you know that was precisely the thinking behind the Biafra experiment. Staying together seemed to be just too destructive, too self-destroying, and that it would come to a stage when we ought to separate and live rather than stay together and die. But it did not work, it did not succeed, we did not succeed and instead we got back together. I think we should give this as much time and energy – this idea of one nation, as much time and energy as we possibly can. I would not say that it must go that way forever, I think at some point one may be able to say: look this thing is not ever going to work, or this is going to tie us down for too long – let us separate peacefully. Now I think the sharia question may well be one of those issues around which such a decision maybe called for. Because the thinking behind some matters of sharia and others is so radical, the difference [between the parts of the nation] is so huge. Now, the reason I am not saying this is the time to separate is that those who are talking sharia in Nigeria are really just politicians exploiting what they think is available. But if it should turn out that there are in fact whole sections of the country which believe that it is legitimate to chop off peoples hands because they stole a hen – if that should really turn out to be the genuine belief of responsible, educated people in the North than I would say there is no chance. But I do not believe that is the case. The sharia was always there but it was never force onto non-Muslims and it was not ever applied in the area of criminal law. It was applied as a kind of civil law of those who want to. But now I think it appears to be getting out of hand and that is one era to watch very carefully.
Ehling: The advocates of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) are offering a new approach to development, but they are also demanding a control of good governance, standards for good governance in Africa. With powerful people like Robert Mugabe, Daniel arap Moi, Eyadema, Biya and many others clinging to their positions and powers, is there really a chance for such a control of good governance?
Achebe: Well, I think we are in the beginning stages. One thing we must bear in mind is that the crop of really bad leaders we have had, have come largely as a result of the cold war. This is something we often forget: that there was a short period following on the optimistic era of independence. That era was really squashed by the manipulations of the cold war in which the quality of a leader did not matter at all. What mattered was whether he said he was a communist or a democrat. And money was just poured into Africa in defence of ideologies had nothing to do with continent. That destroyed the hopes and the prospects of independence of the middle of the 20th century. And so these people you mentioned are, if you like, the remnants of that period. Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others. Twenty years as president is too long for anybody. And I think Africa is slowly learning – and painfully – that importance of insisting on responsible leadership. It will come eventually, and we may be impatient and rightly so, because it is not coming fast enough. But that is the way to go.
Ehling: The standards of good governance – who should set them, and who should control them? Would not the idea of the West, of Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair and Mr. Chirac and others imposing standards and then allocating gifts and goodies according to good behaviour be the bluntest of neo-colonialist approaches?
Achebe: Yes, it does not sound right, does not seem right at all and it is not right. I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there – you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable. But at the same time if I am the same man who has this money to give I should be very very careful in the way I present this case. A lot depends on the presentation of the case. If I say look unless you change your leaders I will not give you any aid, you are likely to have people who say: “To the hell with you, we will struggle on the way but we will do it”. Therefore what I am saying is – and I do not whether it is coming through clearly – there has to be a lot of care exercised by the people who are in the position to give or withhold assistance: if they start throwing their weight around, using extreme language, seeming to order other nations to do their bidding, then there will not be a good result, it will not be done.
Ehling: Africas is the continent that has both been most ravaged by the consequences of globalization and has profited least from it. I mean economic globalization, the availability of swift transport to take ressources from A to B. and create wealth for Africa. Africa’s historical problem has always been that it is so resource-rich and that is has been easily available even in early colonial times, when the Portuguese transported goods and people from West Africa very easily, when the slaves were easily to be had, no matter whether they lived or died on the way. This aspect of economical globalization also has one aspect which probably is more damaging than the plundering of physical resources, that is the plundering of intellectual resources. Starting with the brain drain from Africa to the United States, to France to the United Kingdom – these are of course only very few selected people who are picked – to such blatant attempts such as what British government has done in the last two years in recruiting nurses and doctors from especially South Africa, because England hasn’t invested at home. Is there any way in which such a policy can be countered?
Achebe: Well, I think at this stage all we can do is to recognize it and talk about it. It is very tragic and it is also complex because, take doctors for instance, if the economy of a country collapses completely and the hospitals are no longer able to function as hospitals, it will be very difficult to tell every doctor to stay home to work without drugs, to work without equipment. You might tell some to stay but there a lot of young people who are at the beginning of their careers who would be very difficult to persuade. I tell you one example, when I had my accident in which I broke my spine 12 years ago, I was flown out of Nigeria because the hospitals could not cope. I was there for about a week. I was flown out, and there was a doctor who has set to accompany me and my wife to the hospital in Britain. When we got there to the hospital that had pioneered in spinal injuries during the second World War, it turned out that the surgeon who performed the operation on my spine and the doctor who accompanied me from Nigeria were class mates. And they just recognized each other there and so the Nigerian doctor was part of the team. Now the point I am making there is, that if the facilities had been there in Nigeria, that Nigerian doctor would have had no reason to take me to Britain. But the facilities were not there and so he couldn’t perform, and that is the problem.
Ehling: Facilities non-existant as the result of non-investment, as a result of the money having been transferred out of the country …
Achebe: Oh, yes. One thing goes for an other, so we have to break the circle. I think a whole lot of thinking and planning and patience is needed.
Ehling: I would like to leave this subject and come to your writing. When did you start?
Achebe: Well, I would say I thought it is cool. I was sort of playing around with words but seriously it was at the University that I began. I did not think of writing as a career and I don’t think that I did this ever really, but I think of writing as something that I could do, I should do alongside whatever else I was doing. It simply grew on me. I think as you grow up and you see things which are around you and you ask questions and you hear the answers, your situation becomes more and more of a puzzle. Now, why is it like this, why are things like this and since writing |
utrinos Medium High Crossing the Rubicon High Medium Biblical Creationism Low Low
Neutrinos
Plausibility: On the positive side, we know of other very small subatomic particles and we saw some effects that could be explained by unknown particles. On the negative side, it’s hard to imagine a particle so small that billions pass right through you every day as if you were thin air.
Testability: Scientific experiment is the best case scenario for this measure. The reasons for this would take us too far outside the scope of this piece, though. For now, let’s agree that you can conduct them in the present in controlled environments and they are repeatable, which are all good things.
Crossing the Rubicon
Plausibility: This is very intuitive. We can go to the Rubicon and determine that it is plausible for Caesar’s army to have crossed given their known capabilities. We can also couple that with Caesar’s expansionist policies. (To avoid the appearance of circular reasoning, we are not just trusting historians to tell us about Caesar’s army, capabilities, and policies. The information gathered from historians is combined with archaeology and other disciplines that fare pretty well on our spectrum.)
Testability: This is the tricky part for historians. I rated it as medium because there is a wealth of information on the Roman Empire, but generally the further back in time you go, the worse your testability will fare. Historians do have a number of methods, though, for testing claims. These include, but are not limited to, making sense in the historical context and multiple independent attestations from disinterested parties.
Biblical Creation
Plausibility: Within this story, we are told that God took a rib from Adam and made Eve from it. This does not fare well intuitively. We have never seen such demonstrable physical interaction with a super being, as described here (God actually walks with them in the story). We have also never seen anything to suggest a rib could be turned into a woman. Modern genetics might actually someday challenge that latter statement, but there is still testability to consider.
Testability: Assuming this ever makes it past the plausibility stage to be considered for a test, I’m not even sure how we would test it. This does not rate well, which should be obvious considering the claim. It’s quite clear that asking God to come show us again will not be successful.
Conclusion
So we have examined three beliefs, which could be accused of being based on faith. But we see quite clearly that there are differences among them. My hope is to provide you a way to easily break down how beliefs differ. The next time you are accused of having faith in science, you can say the difference between it and supernatural claims is its verifiability. Even though you haven’t yet verified a belief, if it measures well in both plausibility and testability (assuming that’s true for your case), then you’re in pretty good standing.
Similar Posts:OSAKA -- Panasonic plans to open model homes in China, India and the United Arab Emirates this fiscal year as the Japanese company looks to accelerate overseas sales of its housing equipment.
The model homes will showcase a wide range of products, from electrical wiring devices such as outlets, lighting, switches and breaker panels to construction materials including gutters and insulation.
By letting local homebuilders and developers directly examine its product features and functions, Panasonic hopes to boost equipment sales and create opportunities for future marketing of turnkey homes outfitted with appliances.
In all three countries, Panasonic intends to team with local construction and real estate companies to build the model homes and jointly run the businesses.
Panasonic is partnering with Al-Futtaim Group in the United Arab Emirates to build model homes in Dubai, and the Japanese company aims to use that conglomerate's network to expand sales of housing materials.
In India, Panasonic is opening such homes in the northern city of Gurugram, near Delhi, and the southern city of Bangalore. The company also intends to build the homes in China this fiscal year and expand later into other major Asian cities.
By fiscal 2020, Panasonic aims to book one-quarter of its housing equipment sales overseas.
(Nikkei)Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton announced plans Monday to cap monthly out-of-pocket costs for specialty drugs, citing the "outrageous" case of a lifesaving tablet that saw its price go up by 4,000 percent overnight.
She is expected to allude to her plan in remarks on Monday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and to spell it out in more detail at a health care forum in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, her campaign said. It added the proposal aims to reduce profiteering by drug companies.
Biotech stocks tumbled on Monday after Clinton's tweet against "price gouging" in specialty drug markets, citing a New York Times story.
Clinton tweeted, "Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous. Tomorrow I'll lay out a plan to take it on."
The Times article referred to drug prices that have skyrocketed, in some cases because of drug shortages. But others have seen their price jump because of a business strategy of buying older drugs and turning them into expensive specialty drugs.
Turing Pharmaceuticals increased the price of Daraprim — a treatment against toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection — by 4,000 percent in August after it bought the drug earlier in the summer.
The pricing maneuver is a cause of rising concern for patients nationwide, with retail prices for branded prescription drugs increasing by an average of 12.9 percent in 2013 from the year before, according to a study by the AARP’s Public Policy Institute. That year’s jump was the highest since 2006, the report found.
Advocacy organizations the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicines Association sent a letter to Turing last week to demand the company lower its price for Daraprim after reports from hospitals said they could no longer afford the drug.
"This cost is unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population in need of this medication and unsustainable for the health care system," they wrote.
Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing, dismissed the criticism and told the Times that he would inject additional profits into research to develop a better drug. “This isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients. It is us trying to stay in business,” he told the Times.
Stock markets reacted sharply to Clinton’s announcement. After climbing more than 1 percent in the early portion of trading, Wall Street pared gains on the biotech weakness, with the Nasdaq composite in negative territory and the S&P 500 hovering near the unchanged mark.
Al Jazeera and ReutersWith benchmarks of the Radeon R9 290X doing rounds, it's getting increasingly clear that NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780 won't remain competitive with the Radeon R9 290X for too long; and the R9 290X isn't competitive with the GeForce GTX TITAN enough to warrant a price-cut for the $999.99 SKU. NVIDIA's solution to the tangle is a newer SKU that replaces the GTX 780 from its current $649.99 price-point, which trades blows with the R9 290X. Called GeForce GTX 780 Ti, the SKU could be an overclocked GTX 780, or one that ships with a few more CUDA cores. NVIDIA didn't reveal any technical specifications, other than posting a teaserCGI render. To quote NVIDIA on this, "Stay tuned for details."
128 Comments on NVIDIA Announces GeForce GTX 780 Ti to Counter Radeon R9 290X
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#1 Am*
Is this finally the Titan Ultra/fully enabled GK110 we were promised over half a year ago?!
And are they finally going to cut the price of the Titan in half like they should have lord knows how long ago? Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:01 Reply
#2 Zubasa
Am* said: Is this finally the Titan Ultra/fully enabled GK110 we were promised over half a year ago?! This is sitting below the Titan, why will it get a fully enabled chip when Titan isn't? This is sitting below the Titan, why will it get a fully enabled chip when Titan isn't? Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:02 Reply
#3 the54thvoid
This is called Nvidia going "bollocks, what now?" Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:05 Reply
#4 Am*
Zubasa said: This is sitting below the Titan, why will it get a fully enabled chip when Titan isn't? Titan is an old SKU that will clearly struggle to compete with the R290X, at least at its price point, and there are already a crapton of custom GTX 780s flooding the market with higher clocks -- and almost no-one buying them. AMD clearly lit a fire under Nvidia's arses, because 700 series are nothing but re-brands of 600 series cards up to the 770 and everything above that has sold next to nothing. The only smart thing that will save Nvidia's high end range is a huge price cut across their entire range, because if they pull their retarded arrogant act yet again, like they did earlier this year with their stupendous overpricing, and refuse to budge on the costs, they will end up with a mountain of GK110 salvage parts by Q1 2014 and nobody buying them. Nvidia cannot expect their customers to keep buying into the fake "demand" for their top of the range, overpriced GPUs for so long before everyone starts seeing through the BS. Titan is an old SKU that will clearly struggle to compete with the R290X, at least at its price point, and there are already a crapton of custom GTX 780s flooding the market with higher clocks -- and almost no-one buying them. AMD clearly lit a fire under Nvidia's arses, because 700 series are nothing but re-brands of 600 series cards up to the 770 and everything above that has sold next to nothing. The only smart thing that will save Nvidia's high end range is a huge price cut across their entire range, because if they pull their retarded arrogant act yet again, like they did earlier this year with their stupendous overpricing, and refuse to budge on the costs, they will end up with a mountain of GK110 salvage parts by Q1 2014 and nobody buying them. Nvidia cannot expect their customers to keep buying into the fake "demand" for their top of the range, overpriced GPUs for so long before everyone starts seeing through the BS. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:05 Reply
#5 rtwjunkie
PC Gaming Enthusiast Seems to me the true money to be made by Nvidia would be to lower the prices on their mid-range, and even throw an extra model or two in there to compete better with AMD, instead of trying to claim the flagship crown again which very few people will buy. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:08 Reply
#6 RCoon
Gaming Moderator You've got to be fucking kidding me.
NVidia will never learn. Dumbass kid execs. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:30 Reply
#7 1d10t
Am* said: Titan is an old SKU that will clearly struggle to compete with the R290X, at least at its price point, and there are already a crapton of custom GTX 780s flooding the market with higher clocks -- and almost no-one buying them. AMD clearly lit a fire under Nvidia's arses, because 700 series are nothing but re-brands of 600 series cards up to the 770 and everything above that has sold next to nothing. The only smart thing that will save Nvidia's high end range is a huge price cut across their entire range, because if they pull their retarded arrogant act yet again, like they did earlier this year with their stupendous overpricing, and refuse to budge on the costs, they will end up with a mountain of GK110 salvage parts by Q1 2014 and nobody buying them. Nvidia cannot expect their customers to keep buying into the fake "demand" for their top of the range, overpriced GPUs for so long before everyone starts seeing through the BS. Wow...you must be fun at parties :)
Although i'm with red camp,i never see Titan as a fail.They had their own market even it's very segmented.And NO...that's not pun or sarcasm :p Wow...you must be fun at parties :)Although i'm with red camp,i never see Titan as a fail.They had their own market even it's very segmented.And NO...that's not pun or sarcasm :p Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:32 Reply
#8 TheMailMan78
Big Member RCoon said: You've got to be fucking kidding me.
NVidia will never learn. Dumbass kid execs. Haters gonna hate! Haters gonna hate! Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:32 Reply
#9 the54thvoid
TheMailMan78 said: Haters gonna hate! He owns a 780. 2 actually, want to buy one? He owns a 780. 2 actually, want to buy one? Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:36 Reply
#10 Am*
1d10t said: Wow...you must be fun at parties :)
Although i'm with red camp,i never see Titan as a fail.They had their own market even it's very segmented.And NO...that's not pun or sarcasm :p LOL you discuss computer hardware at parties? Guess I'm not so bad then. :laugh: LOL you discuss computer hardware at parties? Guess I'm not so bad then. :laugh: Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:41 Reply
#11 the54thvoid
Am* said: Nvidia cannot expect their customers to keep buying into the fake "demand" for their top of the range, overpriced GPUs for so long before everyone starts seeing through the BS. Although I disagree which much of what you said I agree with this 100%. I bought a Titan to replace two 7970's which gave stutter in certain games. Then Nvidia released the 780 a month or so later for £200-300 less.
It's disturbing how fast they can churn out as new (not new) card to replace the price SKU of the old (still new) card.
I'm still looking at a 290X if it truly does beat Titan (I game at 1440p so it does make a difference). I doubt the 780Ti will improve on the 780 by more than 10-15% (keeping it under 290X 'leaked' performance). Although I disagree which much of what you said I agree with this 100%. I bought a Titan to replace two 7970's which gave stutter in certain games. Then Nvidia released the 780 a month or so later for £200-300 less.It's disturbing how fast they can churn out as new (not new) card to replace the price SKU of the old (still new) card.I'm still looking at a 290X if it truly does beat Titan (I game at 1440p so it does make a difference). I doubt the 780Ti will improve on the 780 by more than 10-15% (keeping it under 290X 'leaked' performance). Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:46 Reply
#12 harry90
increased competition
Seems like AMD got the attention of Nvidia, 780ti vs Amd 290x. i guess gtx titan doesnt have much reason to exist specially at $1000, when you can get 90% of its performance for 400 less. 290x will own, we'll c about 780ti. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 13:55 Reply
#13 Casecutter
Well we now need to know the MSRP for the R9 290X... So Nvidia is responding with their "Ghz version" for the same price... somehow that's so un-Nvidia? I see them doing that 780Ti at $700, 780 price break to $600? I wouldn't consider AMD just playing along at $600-650.
I'm still holding for $550, that's what AMD needs to put Nvidia back on its' heels. Back like the 4870/GTX260 days'.
I'm thinking now with the GeForce event in Montreal done, AMD can lift the NDA say next Tuesday the 22nd. I think they waited for Nvidia to show their hand, now AMD can table theirs! Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:30 Reply
#14 Hilux SSRG
GTFO Nvidia. Wow Nvidia have stepped it up big time! ;)
Just remember everyone, AMD has the 290X Ghz editions coming! :D Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:30 Reply
#15 1d10t
Am* said: LOL you discuss computer hardware at parties? Guess I'm not so bad then. :laugh: what do you expect in an expertise parties with senior citizen?strippers? :D
harry90 said: Seems like AMD got the attention of Nvidia, 780ti vs Amd 290x. i guess gtx titan doesnt have much reason to exist specially at $1000, when you can get 90% of its performance for 400 less. 290x will own, we'll c about 780ti. It's seem everyone at nVidia is losing their sanity,panicking for something that not even released.Just add 1 more SMX,enabling a couple of CUDA and priced it $799,people will forget R9 290X said Jen-Hsun Huang...ever. what do you expect in an expertise parties with senior citizen?strippers? :DIt's seem everyone at nVidia is losing their sanity,panicking for something that not even released.Just add 1 more SMX,enabling a couple of CUDA and priced it $799,people will forget R9 290X said Jen-Hsun Huang...ever. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:34 Reply
#16 radrok
I have a feeling that the current Titan chip will be put into this 780 Ti and the new Titan will feature 2880 CUDA cores.
Or they could just release a 780 with 192 CUDA more, aka 2496.
Either way I'd love a proper GK110 chip with a power delivery capable to actually sustain 1.4v-1.5v.
My Titan can reach stable clocks close to 1550 MHz with 1.4v on bad VRMs (you can actually hear them screaming when putting load on it lol) with lots of dirty power, can't imagine what it could do with clean power. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:39 Reply
#17 Am*
1. 780 Ti is a 2880 core, full-fat GK110 with some overly gimped DP capabilities and Nvidia replaces the Titan with the 2880 core GK180 with lower voltage/higher clockability and maintaining some decent compute performance, hence we go back to the days of the 8800 Ultra.
or
2. 780 Ti is a 2688 core GK110 at a higher clock and the full 2880 core GK110 replaces the Titan.
Either way, Titan and 780 owners won't be happy.
I hope it's the first one, as it seems the most likely and the safest long term option for Nvidia to play in case Mantle poses a serious challenge to these Keplers.
the54thvoid said: Although I disagree which much of what you said I agree with this 100%. I bought a Titan to replace two 7970's which gave stutter in certain games. Then Nvidia released the 780 a month or so later for £200-300 less.
It's disturbing how fast they can churn out as new (not new) card to replace the price SKU of the old (still new) card.
I'm still looking at a 290X if it truly does beat Titan (I game at 1440p so it does make a difference). I doubt the 780Ti will improve on the 780 by more than 10-15% (keeping it under 290X 'leaked' performance). If you can still afford to upgrade (hats off to you if you can, after that beastly rig you've built) and if I was in your shoes, I would sell off the Titans and save up for a pair of custom 8GB R290X's with some waterblocks. My personal prediction is on either1. 780 Ti is a 2880 core, full-fat GK110 with some overly gimped DP capabilities and Nvidia replaces the Titan with the 2880 core GK180 with lower voltage/higher clockability and maintaining some decent compute performance, hence we go back to the days of the 8800 Ultra.or2. 780 Ti is a 2688 core GK110 at a higher clock and the full 2880 core GK110 replaces the Titan.Either way, Titan and 780 owners won't be happy.I hope it's the first one, as it seems the most likely and the safest long term option for Nvidia to play in case Mantle poses a serious challenge to these Keplers.If you can still afford to upgrade (hats off to you if you can, after that beastly rig you've built) and if I was in your shoes, I would sell off the Titans and save up for a pair of custom 8GB R290X's with some waterblocks. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:47 Reply
#18 buildzoid
radrok said: I have a feeling that the current Titan chip will be put into this 780 Ti and the new Titan will feature 2880 CUDA cores.
Or they could just release a 780 with 192 CUDA more, aka 2496.
Either way I'd love a proper GK110 chip with a power delivery capable to actually sustain 1.4v-1.5v.
My Titan can reach stable clocks close to 1550 MHz with 1.4v on bad VRMs (you can actually hear them screaming when putting load on it lol) with lots of dirty power, can't imagine what it could do with clean power. WTF are you cooling it with that's in the low area of what liquid nitrogen does also if you run that kind of voltage for long enough the mosfets will get permanently stuck in the on state and blow up.:eek: WTF are you cooling it with that's in the low area of what liquid nitrogen does also if you run that kind of voltage for long enough the mosfets will get permanently stuck in the on state and blow up.:eek: Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:50 Reply
#19 xvi
As pointed out in other threads, it is speculated that nVidia should be able to increase performance of existing cards with nothing more than a firmware update. I doubt they're going to upgrade existing cards when they could sell green users a new card. Either way, I'm not surprised they're simply releasing a new card, most likely either with a simple clock bump and/or a few more unlocked bits. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:54 Reply
#20 harry90
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/17-gaming-benchmarks-leaked-for-radeon-r9-290x/0122845 Folks check out the benchmarks of r290x here: Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 14:56 Reply
#21 Aithos
Am* said: Titan is an old SKU that will clearly struggle to compete with the R290X, at least at its price point, and there are already a crapton of custom GTX 780s flooding the market with higher clocks -- and almost no-one buying them. AMD clearly lit a fire under Nvidia's arses, because 700 series are nothing but re-brands of 600 series cards up to the 770 and everything above that has sold next to nothing. The only smart thing that will save Nvidia's high end range is a huge price cut across their entire range, because if they pull their retarded arrogant act yet again, like they did earlier this year with their stupendous overpricing, and refuse to budge on the costs, they will end up with a mountain of GK110 salvage parts by Q1 2014 and nobody buying them. Nvidia cannot expect their customers to keep buying into the fake "demand" for their top of the range, overpriced GPUs for so long before everyone starts seeing through the BS. Do you red fanboys even realize that except for the 290x AMDs entire "new" lineup of cards are rebrands? In fact, you actually have less than nVidia because both the 780 and Titan were on a new chipset (110 instead of 104). AMD is literally rebadged and repricing last years cards.
Also, the nVidia cards have sold amazingly well. This is just a response for the "reference" card, the aftermarket cards that have already been overclocked (EVGA superclocked) for instance are already near Titan performance (which the 290x doesn't beat). This is just a posturing thing, it won't be full fat and it won't be a significant change to Titan. It is PURELY so that AMD can't claim the 290x crushes the reference card. Do you red fanboys even realize that except for the 290x AMDs entire "new" lineup of cards are rebrands? In fact, you actually have less than nVidia because both the 780 and Titan were on a new chipset (110 instead of 104). AMD is literally rebadged and repricing last years cards.Also, the nVidia cards have sold amazingly well. This is just a response for the "reference" card, the aftermarket cards that have already been overclocked (EVGA superclocked) for instance are already near Titan performance (which the 290x doesn't beat). This is just a posturing thing, it won't be full fat and it won't be a significant change to Titan. It is PURELY so that AMD can't claim the 290x crushes the reference card. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 15:01 Reply
#22 HumanSmoke
radrok said: I have a feeling that the current Titan chip will be put into this 780 Ti and the new Titan will feature 2880 CUDA cores. That would seem the easiest and fastest implementation. It also allows Nvidia to smoothly drop every SKU one segment price bracket without upsetting the applecart (AIB's mainly).
HumanSmoke said: Nvidia have a few combinations to work with. A fully enable 2880 core Titan Ultra at the $999 price point, dropping the Titan down to $650-750 (depending upon whether they do/do not split the model into 6GB and 3GB versions) and the GTX 780 down into whatever the R9-290X ships at. There is also the possibility that Nvidia could bifurcate the line by allying the GK 110 with 7Gb/sec memory as per the GTX 770/760. Throw in the dual and triple BIOS and/or relaxed voltage that EVGA are shipping and there's more than a little scope for tweaking the lineup. Of course, that strategy of dropping the SKU's one notch in the hierarchy then open the door for the same price cut/leeway for the GTX 770 to be more competitive in pricing with the 280X, and any further matchups lower down the product stack
Aithos said: Do you red fanboys even realize that except for the 290x AMDs entire "new" lineup of cards are rebrands? I really wouldn't bother. The "AMD Never Subtle Bundle™" now not only ships with a tinfoil hat but tinfoil glasses too That would seem the easiest and fastest implementation. It also allows Nvidia to smoothly drop every SKU one segment price bracket without upsetting the applecart (AIB's mainly). I'd actually thought a month ago that dropping the Titan (and removing 3GB of VRAM) down a notch made the obvious choice...that choice looks even more clear cut now:Of course, that strategy of dropping the SKU's one notch in the hierarchy then open the door for the same price cut/leeway for the GTX 770 to be more competitive in pricing with the 280X, and any further matchups lower down the product stackI really wouldn't bother. The "AMD Never Subtle Bundle™" now not only ships with a tinfoil hat but tinfoil glasses too Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 15:09 Reply
#23 the54thvoid
radrok said: My Titan can reach stable clocks close to 1550 MHz with 1.4v on bad VRMs (you can actually hear them screaming when putting load on it lol) with lots of dirty power, can't imagine what it could do with clean power. My friend I think your Titan is already 10 years older than mine :laugh:
Am* said: If you can still afford to upgrade (hats off to you if you can, after that beastly rig you've built) and if I was in your shoes, I would sell off the Titans and save up for a pair of custom 8GB R290X's with some waterblocks. You know me so well! :roll: My friend I think your Titan is already 10 years older than mine :laugh:You know me so well! :roll: Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 15:09 Reply
#24 radrok
Am* said: Either way, Titan and 780 owners won't be happy. I wouldn't mind to be honest.
buildzoid said: WTF are you cooling it with that's in the low area of what liquid nitrogen does also if you run that kind of voltage for long enough the mosfets will get permanently stuck in the on state and blow up.:eek: High end water, GPU never goes above 45C and VRM are around 80c ish. ;)
Am* said: I would sell off the Titans and save up for a pair of custom 8GB R290X's with some waterblocks. He'd have to be crazy to ditch a SLI setup for a CFX setup.
SLI is much, much smoother than crossfire right now, it's better on frame pacing drivers but it's not up to SLI levels, Nvidia has been doing their multi gpu homework for a much longer time than AMD. I wouldn't mind to be honest.High end water, GPU never goes above 45C and VRM are around 80c ish. ;)He'd have to be crazy to ditch a SLI setup for a CFX setup.SLI is much, much smoother than crossfire right now, it's better on frame pacing drivers but it's not up to SLI levels, Nvidia has been doing their multi gpu homework for a much longer time than AMD. Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 15:12 Reply
#25 15th Warlock
Shit, I was really hoping for a price cut for Titan, would this new 780 card be able to do SLI with existing Titan cards? Posted on Oct 18th 2013, 15:18 ReplyWinner announced for National Contemporary Art Award
17 July 2015
A conceptual off-world colonisation project represented by a flag and a media release by artist Bronwyn Holloway-Smith has won the National Contemporary Art Award hosted by Waikato Museum.
Judge Aaron Kreisler chose Pioneer City flag as the ultimate winner from 325 entries submitted to the 2015 National Contemporary Art Award.
“There is sophistication to Bronwyn Holloway-Smith’s Pioneer City project that is both vital and compelling. Launching the flag at the National Contemporary Art Award today is savvy and timely as NASA’s New Horizons continues to chart the far reaches of our solar system and closer to home the national flag debate is starting to reach the pointy end of the process,” he said.
This is a conceptual work with many strings attached. There are ideas of settlement, of promotion and colonisation of a new place.”
Pioneer City flag is part of a larger online project dealing with the concept of colonisation on Mars. The entry joins 52 finalist’s works exhibited at Waikato Museum until Sunday 1 November 2015.
Waikato Museum Director Cherie Meecham says a record number of New Zealand-based artists entered the National Contemporary Art Award this year.
“Contemporary art loves attention and comes in many forms, and each year we see entries that push boundaries, invite us into the hearts and minds of the artists, and art that questions our thinking. For our entrants, winning is important but our 52 finalists also have the advantage of being exhibited in a high profile gallery space until 1 November with their works available for sale.”
The exhibition is open daily from Saturday 18 July until Sunday 1 November 2015. Several works can be found outside the gallery. Karl Bayly and Thomas Hinton’s entry is a kayak anchored on the Waikato River, directly behind Waikato Museum. A work by Shannon Novak is located on walls inside and outside the Museum. The artist intends visitors to see this as a musical score composed especially for this place.
The 2015 National Contemporary Art Award winner Bronwyn Holloway-Smith received S15,000 from the major sponsors, Chow:Hill and Tompkins Wake.
Find out more here.
For more information contact:
Louise Belay
Waikato Museum Partnerships and Communications Manager
07 838 6956
021 536 557
louise.belay@hcc.govt.nzAs everyone who reads my content should know, I am an unwavering proponent of Fair Netrunner. For those of you who have not yet figured out that Battle of Wits was satire, it should be clear that I only champion decks that I believe embrace just and true Netrunner as it ought to be played. I often scold people for playing with Personal Evolution shell game, Blackmail Spam, CI7, and other combos and gimmicks. It is my belief that the death of a game comes when players feel that to be competitive they must subvert one or more facet of the game’s core mechanics.
There has been much debate in the community lately around what makes a deck fair or unfair, overpowered or not, or if fairness and power even have anything to do with each other. I like to think of fair and Unfair decks as components of a meal. The fair decks are the meat and potatoes, the Unfair ones are the spices and seasoning. You need some unfair decks to keep things interesting and exciting, but with no fair component, a Meta just becomes an unpalatable mound of spice. Additionally, some spices are just too strong or aggressive for most people, and the presence of even one of these can ruin the whole dish.
For this reason, I think a good rule of a healthy, diverse meta is:
There should be numerous options for unfair strategies, but they should all be limited in their unfairness. There must always be multiple fair options for each side at the top tier of competitive play.
What makes a deck unfair?
The unfair decks are the ones that provoke these reactions from their opponents:
“How am I supposed to stop that?”
“I didn’t feel like anything I did mattered.”
“My decisions felt pretty random this game.”
“I didn’t feel like I had any control over how this game went.”
“I don’t think I could win after how the first few turns went.”
“Do you ever run?/Do you ever try to score out?”
“Do you even have any Ice/Icebreakers in that deck?”
“Don’t show that to a new player, they might get the wrong impression about the game.”
“That didn’t feel like Netrunner…”
I’ve tried to take the emotions behind these statements and concretize them into a few core tenets of the game. These are statements about how the game should be played so that it feels fair and pure. Remember that violating one of these is OK, just so long as a deck does not do so to an unacceptable extent, and that multiple competitive options exist that do not violate any.
Non-Interactivity is Unfair
The most impactful plays should involve decisions made by both players. You should feel like you care what your opponent does on their turn and they should care about what you do on yours.
High Impact Hidden Information is Unfair
Players should be able to use hidden information to create advantages, but a single piece of hidden information should be limited in its impact, especially if high impact instances can be created frequently.
High Variance, Especially Early in the Game, is Unfair
Players should be able to make meaningful decisions and leverage their skill before a random occurrence determines or strongly influences the outcome of the game. Opening hand strength should be of minimal importance.
Ignoring Large portions of card-types/game actions is Unfair
Players attempting to play a simple strategy should not feel like their deck contains an overwhelming number of useless cards. Players should feel like, although some cards are more effective against a given strategy than others, most of their deck will be relevant every game. Corp decks should, to some extent, attempt to protect servers and score agendas. Runner decks should attempt to make runs and steal agendas.
To illustrate these metrics, I will now go through several competitive archetypes that have been present in the game over the last 2 years, rating each of them. I accept that my ratings are purely executive and that you may disagree by 1 point here or there, but this should still give some semblance of objectivity to the question of whether a deck is unfair. I also know that I have not covered every competitive deck, but I leave it as an exercise for you to rate whatever you feel I’ve left out for yourself.
For each category above, I will give a rating of 1 to 4 for each deck:
1: Acceptable
2: Potentially Frustrating
3: Often Frustrating
4: Unhealthy
Totaling the 4 categories gives the deck’s overall rating:
7 or Lower: Fair (We need at least a few of these to be viable for each side)
8-10: Unfair (These are OK, if they are not obviously better than all fair options)
11 or Higher: Too spicy (These decks can exist, and are cool to see occasionally, but should never be commonplace at top tier play. When one makes the cut, we should feel excited by it as a rare occurrence, not roll our eyes saying “not again…”)
Remember that these final categorizations are still based on a spectrum. A deck coming in at a 7 may still feel unfair to many players, whereas a deck coming in even as high at 10 |
30, 2016. Photo: Pro 21 Video Photo: Pro 21 Video Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Five shot in overnight party by man dressed as Freddy Krueger on Northwest Side 1 / 12 Back to Gallery
The suspects then fled. Three male victims were transported to University Hospital in unknown condition. Police say the fourth male victim was treated at Baptist Medical Center downtown.
The female victim attempted to drive herself to the hospital, police say, but wrecked on the way. Though she managed to make it to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital - Westover Hills, police say.
The five people injured in the shooting all suffered non-life-threatening injuries, said SAPD Sgt. Jesse Salame.
Police continue to investigate.OPPOSITION Leader Bill Shorten has accused Tony Abbott of being stuck in the 1950s and says he “ruined Australia Day” by choosing to award Prince Philip an Australian knighthood.
In his opening remarks to the first caucus meeting of the year, Mr Shorten said the Coalition government had broken trust with the Australian people.
TONY ABBOTT: “Good government starts today”
PRINCE PHILIP KNIGHTED: Tony Abbott has no friends left
“The government is in chaos — it is most certainly in a mess of its own making,” Mr Shorten said.
“They are a most dishonest group. They are responsible for looking backwards, continuing the romance with the Australia of the 1950s. This is not a 21st century government. They have no plan for our future. It is purely the past.”
‘YOU CONFUSED US’: The simple question Abbott won’t answer
TURNCOATS: Six ministers among the traitors as Abbott safe beyond the Budget
Mr Shorten said the government had moved “too far to the right” and were “inflicting an extreme ideology through their own unfair budget which Australians have rejected”.
“A lot can change in a week in politics, but it’s remarkable to think that its been only two weeks since Tony Abbott ruined Australia Day by making Prince Phillip a knight.”
Mr Shorten, who backed Julia Gillard to become PM in 2010 and then supported Kevin Rudd to replace Gillard as PM in 2013, said his Labor government would fight to the end to ensure the Coalition was a one-term government.
He said focusing on Asia and moving towards a republic were among some of Labor’s key priorities.
“We would rather be working through the greatest economic story of hundreds of years, the rise of Asia,” Mr Shorten said.
“And we should have the discussion about being a Republic. I believe Australians are ready for a discussion about an Australian head of State.”THE POOR, BESPECTACLED MAN in front of the meeting room had prepared a speech about hope. He had just returned from a trip to Minnesota, in minus-7 wind chills, and maybe his brain was still frozen. When would Ron Rivera get a clue? It was Dec. 1, one month left in the 2014 season, and it was over.
The Carolina Panthers could not win in the heat, nor the cold, nor with two weeks of preparation off a bye. And Rivera was so meticulous in those weeks before the game against the Minnesota Vikings. They packed chicken broth and extra layers, and the coach droned on and on about "the two big dudes," as Carolina return specialist Corey Brown liked to call them, who liked to come after punts.
Regardless of the preparation and warnings, Minnesota blocked two punts that were returned for touchdowns -- something that hadn't happened in the NFL for 24 years -- and the Panthers lost 31-13.
They were 3-8-1, and hadn't won in two months. Brown said when the Panthers walked off the field that Sunday, they were mentally beat. "At that point," Brown said, "we weren't a very good football team."
The next morning, Rivera opened his Charlotte Observer and saw a front-page headline in caps that read, "THE SEASON IS SHOT."
But it was Monday, and Rivera, a man of routine, had to walk his dogs, go to work and get up in front of his team.
"Guys," he said, surveying the room during the team meeting, "we're still in this. Believe it or not, like it or not, we're still in this."
He referenced the Monday paper, and how everyone was counting them out. Rivera told them that the organization picked every man in the room for a reason, and that they are his team and he believes in them.
Somewhere in the mass of Panthers fleece sat Ryan Vermillion, the head athletic trainer. Now, other than the coach's own wife, there might not be any bigger Ron Rivera fan than Ryan Vermillion. They had grown tight in their four years together at Carolina, and when things were going bad, Vermillion was the guy who was there to listen. But even Vermillion was having a hard time swallowing the message.
"I remember going, 'Holy smokes. We believe in these guys?'" Vermillion said. "We just got handed our lunch to us pretty badly.
"I'm sure a lot of guys were saying, 'Here's another coach throwing a bunch of stuff at us.' Because their confidence level was shook. We just needed them to believe in themselves. We needed someone to tell them they were good."
What followed in the next few weeks helped change the course of Carolina's franchise. The Panthers have won 22 of 24 games since then and will play in their first Super Bowl in more than a decade on Sunday night in Santa Clara, California. It would be silly to say that one rah-rah speech on a desperate winter morning was what catapulted a team from a middling NFC contender to one of the league's most dominant forces.
But the journey has been one of patience, trust, luck and hopeless optimism. It is hard to remember, now, how precarious Carolina's franchise looked just 14 months ago. Quarterback Cam Newton was coming off an ankle surgery and a rib fracture, and in a week, on Dec. 9, 2014, he'd be involved in a car accident that would sideline him for a game. For most of the season, he looked nothing like the self-assured superhuman of present day.
And Rivera wasn't exactly the most popular man in Charlotte at the time, either. At least twice in his first few years at Carolina, there had been multiple reports that he'd either been on the brink of being, or was in fact going to be, fired.
Rivera casually told ESPN last week that he never was worried about losing his job. Crazy? Maybe. But no one is questioning Rivera now as he stands on the verge of giving Carolina its first championship in franchise history.
"Sometimes," Rivera said, "all you ask for is just a chance."
It is hard to remember, now, how precarious Carolina's franchise looked just 14 months ago. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
RON RIVERA, more than anything, is an optimist. James Lofton worked with him for one season in San Diego. It was 2007, and Rivera had every reason in the world to be bitter at the time. A few months earlier, Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith had fired Rivera despite his running a defense that helped the team to the Super Bowl.
Lofton used to sit behind Rivera in the general team meeting every day for an entire year. Every day, Rivera was in his chair, scribbling up a new blitz.
"He's always upbeat," Lofton said. "That's the thing. He doesn't let what happened on Sunday affect the rest of the week."
Lofton was asked whether every coach, to some degree, is upbeat.
"No," he said. "No they're not."
Perhaps Rivera believes just a little bit more because he was once the guy most people counted out. He interviewed for eight head-coaching jobs in six years before the Panthers finally took a chance on him in 2011. At the end of the 2012 season, when the Panthers finished 7-9 and second in the NFC South in just his second season, the NFL Network ran a video with the headline, "Ron Rivera expected to be fired today."
"Sometimes, all you ask for is just a chance." Ron Rivera
Like most good coaches, he benefited from luck. His boss, Jerry Richardson, did not pull the trigger like so many other owners have in the past five years, even when a poll in The Charlotte Observer from 2013 said that 80 percent of those polled wanted him gone.
And in the winter of 2014, Rivera had more good fortune. The NFC South was atrocious. After the Vikings game, Rivera found out that both Atlanta and New Orleans had lost, leaving Carolina within striking distance of those teams' 5-7 records.
Rivera knew there were reasons behind the Panthers' struggles in 2014. They'd lost four regular offensive linemen to retirement in the offseason, were decimated by injury at running back, and went into the season needing to replace receiver Steve Smith and cornerback Captain Munnerlyn, staples in the lineup. Rivera also acknowledged that the Greg Hardy domestic violence case and subsequent timeout loomed large over the team. (Hardy signed with the Dallas Cowboys in March 2015).
After the Vikings game, Rivera actually found several things encouraging. Mike Remmers had started at right tackle for the first time, and he looked solid; Rivera finally felt good about the offensive line. He also inserted rookie defenders Bené Benwikere, Tre Boston and Kony Ealy in the second half and was satisfied by what he saw. All three have played significant roles in 2015.
Around this time, the Panthers had also implemented a no-huddle offense for Newton.
"It's not the hurry-up no-huddle like Philadelphia does," Rivera said. "It's the no-huddle where Cam gets up and audibles and checks and tries to put us in the best offense to give us a chance. And that really took off. Cam really grasped onto that."
Undrafted cornerback Lou Young was signed to Carolina's practice squad in late November 2014. He was surprised to see such energy in a locker room that had absorbed so many losses. Young remembers Rivera constantly saying, "We're still in the hunt!" "We've still got a shot!"
He said it every single day.
"Coach never panics," Panthers assistant head coach Steve Wilks said. "Everything can be in disarray, but you look back on that season, and I never saw a sense of panic in his facial expressions. When you have a leader like that, it's easy to fall in line."
After the November 2014 loss to the Vikings, the Panthers were 3-8-1 and hadn't won in two months. Bruce Kluckhohn/USA TODAY Sports
BACK AT HOME, Rivera stuck to his routine. He and his wife, Stephanie, had date nights on Fridays. The week after the Minnesota game, Stephanie thinks they went to Dogwood Southern Table & Bar that night and ordered one of her favorites: bacon jam on country bread.
The couple met in college, at Cal, in the 1980s. Ron was taking summer school and saw her at a frozen-yogurt shop called Yogurt Park. Stephanie was working a basketball camp and asked him if he'd round up some guys to play pickup ball. "That's how we started hanging out," she said.
More than anyone else in his life, she gets him. She coached in the WNBA, college and high school. She loves it so much that she has even helped coach a third-grade YMCA team. After wins and losses, they break down games together.
Ask Stephanie to analyze that Minnesota game, and she says nearly the exact same thing Ron does. The Panthers, at that time, were so close to being a good team. Take away the two blocked field goals, she said, and it's 17-14 and winnable. Everything the team was doing then, she said, was correctable. So they had hope.
Rivera, the son of a military man, craves structure. When he was out of the league for a few years after he retired as a player, he missed the set routine of having his practices and meetings and meals all on a schedule. Today, Stephanie wonders whether it's structure or superstition. Every morning, he has to walk their two dogs before he goes to work. He eats the same breakfast before every game. If there are guests over and it's time for Rivera to go to sleep, he politely turns in and leaves it up to Stephanie to entertain.
The thing that Stephanie and many of the Panthers appreciate about him is that he's steady. He's also sentimental. Whenever the couple is in Northern California, they stop at Yogurt Park.
"We understand the pressures. That's why I think we get along so well," she said. "Our date night in college was probably renting a movie and staying in because we were always exhausted."
ON DEC. 7, 2014, the Panthers went to New Orleans to play the league-leading Saints. Newton threw for three touchdowns, and he appeared to start a fight when he went over the pile for another score. He jawed with a couple of players, then ripped out his Superman celebration. The crowd booed, and Carolina blasted the Saints 41-10.
The Panthers were animated, cocky and loose, hints of what they'd become in 2015. After the game, Rivera was nonchalant about the win. "It's what we expect," he said.
They'd go on to win their last three contests, wrap up the division and beat Arizona in the wild-card game. Rivera believes that the confidence the team earned in those final weeks of the season was a springboard to this year's success.
Rivera saw a confidence in Newton that hadn't been there in his first three seasons. Rivera believes the car accident was "an enlightening moment." It matured him, and Newton grew more comfortable in Mike Shula's offense.
In the offseason, Newton signed a $103.8 million contract, solidifying his spot as the team's cornerstone. Their struggles for much of the season seemed to draw them closer.
Tight end Greg Olsen said the team couldn't have done it without Rivera's even temperament.
"I think in this league, everybody just assumes that in order to be a football coach, you've got to be standoffish, you've got to be secretive, and you've got to be a little bit of a prick," Olsen said. "But you don't. You can demand guys' respect, you can have the respect and the ear of the entire organization by the way you go about your business. The way you treat people.
"Ron, I think, is the perfect example. He treats guys like men; he has high expectations. His standards are through the roof. Guys take a lot of pride in upholding his standards. They don't want to disappoint him."
Two years ago, before 3-8-1, Rivera built a second office, this one on the ground floor of Bank of America Stadium, near the locker room. He wanted a better handle on how his players were feeling and what they were thinking. He'd sit in the cafeteria and make rounds through the training room, learning about their wives and their dreams and the things that annoyed them.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons Rivera always knew, even back in 2014, that this moment at the Super Bowl would come. He knew their abundant talent, sure. But he also knew their hearts.
Just a few days after his speech, Rivera huddled his team together again on the Saturday night before the New Orleans game. He said that after 30 years, he finally got it. He understood the meaning of any given Sunday. It's not the best team that wins; it's the team that plays better.
He tells them that every single day.
ESPN's Dylan Hanley and Carl Carchia helped research this story.Administrator Long's Message to Employees
"I never imagined I would ever receive a call from the White House to serve as FEMA Administrator. " Administrator Brock Long. " Administrator Brock Long. Read message in entirety
PrepTalks
This week on PrepTalks, join certified health physicist Brooke Buddemeir as he discusses "Saving Lives After a Nuclear Detonation". He emphasizes the importance of sheltering after a nuclear detonation.
FEMA Podcast This week on the podcast, we dive into the details of the National Response Framework update and how it will emphasize stabilization of critical lifelines and coordination across the critical infrastructure sectors.
Youth Preparedness Camp
FEMA Region 10 is seeking 40 high-school aged youths representing Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska who will be selected to attend a Youth Preparedness Camp in Stanwood, Washington on 8/18-8/23. This will be an engaging and empowering way for teens to learn about and practice emergency preparedness.
Great ShakeOut
February is #EarthquakeAwarenessMonth. Follow the Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drills on Facebook and check out ready.gov/earthquakes for more info!
Winter Weather
FEMA and its partners continue to monitor the effects the dangerously cold temperatures. Check on family, friends, and neighbors who are at risk and may need assistance. More information on dealing with extreme cold visit Ready and ready.gov/winter
California Wildfire
The California Wildfire deadline to register for disaster assistance was 2/15/2019. To check the status of your application visit DisasterAssistance.gov or call 800-621-3362.
Hurricane Michael
Individuals or businesses that suffered damages from Hurricane Michael can check their eligibility for different types of disaster assistance online, by calling 800-621-3362, or by visiting a disaster recovery center.
Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018
On Oct. 5, 2018, President Trump signed the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018 into law, these reforms acknowledge the shared responsibility of disaster response and recovery, aim to reduce the complexity of FEMA and build the nation’s capacity for the next catastrophic event.
Super Typhoon Yutu
If you received damage from Super Typhoon Yutu,you may be eligible for assistance. Survivors can view their status online or call 1-800-621-3362.
Hurricane Florence
The federal government continues to stand strong with survivors impacted by Hurricane Florence. To check the status of your application visit DisasterAssistance.gov or call 800-621-3362.
Hurricane Maria
FEMA continues to help both Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to build back stronger. Survivors can view their status online or call 1-800-621-3362.
DisasterAssistance.gov
There are new procedures in place to access your online FEMA assistance account on DisasterAssistance.gov.Anne-Marie Slaughter, who gave up her job as a high level State Department official to better care for her kids, has created enormous buzz with her Atlantic cover story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.” Duh: It’s not like men ever could, either.
I know, lots of women juggling work and family are still angry — feminism promised us we could do both. “Have it all”: Be the main caretaker of your healthy, happy, smart children and still have a great career.
Slaughter goes on at length to conclude that women like her can’t indeed have their professional achievement and their family time, too. But what’s weird about the whole debate about women’s struggle to balance their lives is that men have absolutely no hope of achieving this kind of equilibrium.
It’s almost unheard of for a man to take a prolonged paternity leave, for example. And most who do take a week or three are helping the wife, not because anyone believes he can handle his child full-time.
My own wonderful husband took some time after our girl was born — but basically worked from home, doing conference calls all week. I couldn’t wait for him to go back to the office, so we could have some quiet. (Sorry, honey.)
If an older child is struggling, the possibility of a man downgrading his career to step in (as Anne-Marie Slaughter did) would never even be considered.
That’s not because men don’t want to be there for their families. It’s just that, for all that women struggle with the choices they have, men rarely have such choices at all.
A woman may look for fulfillment in a career, but the man has to focus on taking financial care of his family — whether or not the work is fulfilling. (And, for the record, for most people work is work.)
Of course, the media still go nuts about every hint that the feminist promise might somehow be true. They played up the study last week that informed us that the number of stay-at-home dads doubled in the past decade.
Ha! That was only from 1.6 percent of all stay-at-home parents to 3.4 percent — a miniscule number.
Even then, while some very few men might get a true choice to stay home, I wonder how many of these new Mr. Moms just couldn’t find a job. In the Obama Economy, their choice to stay home is still no choice at all. (And even in this “man-cession,” 65 percent of men are still the main breadwinners in their families.)
Then, too, most of the women even bothering to debate this question lead privileged lives already. When Slaughter stepped off her career ladder, she downgraded to merely being a tenured professor at Princeton. Would that we all had that “choice.”
The whole phenomenon of women as “equals in the workplace” is still fairly new, so perhaps it’s no wonder that so many of us are setting ourselves up for failure by chasing an impossible “all.” For men, though, the “all” is so unlikely and out of reach that they settle for success, professional and personal, where they find it.
If feminism is still about equality between the sexes, women should look to men to see what successful, guilt-free “balance” looks like. Hint: The formulais a lot less “have it all” and a lot more “suck it up.”
Karol Markowicz blogs at alarmingnews.com.
Twitter: @KarolNYCVideo (02:33) : The Star Tribune's Jerry Zgoda joins CineSport's Noah Coslov after Wolves head coach and president Flip Saunders announced he is two months into treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Flip Saunders, the Timberwolves head coach and president of basketball operations, announced Tuesday that he has been undergoing treatment the past eight weeks for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Saunders said he is receiving chemotherapy treatment for what his doctors consider to be a “very treatable and curable form of cancer.” Team owner Glen Taylor said he doesn’t anticipate any changes in the team’s coaching and basketball operations, and team officials said Saunders has attended to all of his duties during the past eight weeks.
“I don’t think it will impact him at all,” Taylor said. “We can work around his schedule.”
Saunders has been receiving treatment from a medical team at the Mayo Clinic since being diagnosed with the disease eight weeks ago.
“I am taking it step by step and day by day to understand how to best manage this process,” Saunders said. “I am attacking this with the same passion I do everything in my life, knowing this is a serious issue. I also know that God has prepared me for this battle.”
Late in the day, Saunders tweeted about the public’s reaction: “The outpouring of support today has been overwhelming, has truly reminded me that the goodness of people should never be questioned.”
Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Flip Saunders watches his team during an NBA basketball scrimmage in Minneapolis, Wednesday, July 8, 2015.
Dr. Veronika Bachanova, a University of Minnesota hematologist and oncologist, said Tuesday that “chemotherapy is extremely effective for the disease. This is indeed a highly treatable and, in most cases, a fully curable malignancy with a chemotherapy.”
Bachanova said the Timberwolves coach would likely need six months of outpatient chemotherapy, and that Saunders’ goal of being cancer-free was “absolutely very achievable.” She said that his age — he turned 60 in February — should not be a factor. Even if doctors did not find the cancer relatively early, added Bachanova, Hodgkin’s lymphoma was “not an aggressive” form and was “more slower growing.”
She added that Saunders should be able to continue his coaching duties, “with some adjustments,” but needed to realize that becoming cancer-free should be the top priority — and not the demands of coaching an NBA team. He should be “focused on getting well and getting better,” Bachanova said.
Taylor said he continues to talk with Saunders almost daily, just as he always did before the diagnosis. “I’ve been aware of it since he has been aware of it,” Taylor said. “He’s upbeat and confident, as he should be.”
Reached in Mexico where he is attending a wedding, Wolves veteran guard Kevin Martin said that he spoke with Saunders the other day about the diagnosis, before Tuesday’s announcement.
“He sounded real upbeat about the whole situation,” Martin said. “I think any time that happens to somebody, it’s an unfortunate situation. Something like this goes beyond basketball, that’s real life. We all take care of each other. We’re a family and this is a time to come together like a family.”
Even during his chemotherapy, Saunders has been preparing for his second season back as Wolves coach, regularly checking in with players on their summer training progress.
“It hasn’t been affecting him at all this month,” Martin said. “He has been sending us texts, what he wants from us. He’s upbeat about the coming season.”
Twins’ Ryan battled cancer
Saunders is the second top sports executive in the Twin Cities to be diagnosed with cancer in the past 18 months. Twins General Manager Terry Ryan was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer in February 2014 and underwent surgery to remove lymph nodes in his neck followed by six weeks of radiation. Ryan missed the first several weeks of the 2014 season but has been on the job full-time since.
Although Ryan said he does not know Saunders well, “all of a sudden you get acquainted just going through something like this.” Ryan said he is heartened by the news released Tuesday.
“It sounds like he’s very strong, he has great people taking care of him and that it was caught early enough where it’s treatable and curable,” Ryan said. “It sounds like it’s under control and he has good piece of mind, and that’s the important thing.”
Among those who have had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and returned to athletic endeavors are hockey great Mario Lemieux and major league All-Star Anthony Rizzo.
Former Denver coach George Karl continued to coach the Nuggets while fighting throat cancer five years ago.
Martin said he’s never been on a team that has faced such a thing but likened Saunders’ cancer to those months when then-Wolves coach Rick Adelman and his wife, Mary Kay, sought answers about her seizures.
“We experienced that, we felt his pain,” Martin said. “It brings a team closer together.”
Flip Saunders said Tuesday that he is undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s lymphoma but will keep doing his job as coach.
Staff writers Mike Kaszuba and Dennis Brackin contributed to this report.Posted on September 11, 2014 by Bryan Ball
Catrike has introduced it’s new 5.5.9 trike at Interbike. Here are some photos and a press release.
From Catrike Press Release…
The Catrike 5.5.9, a premium Grand Touring Catrike capable of high performance and spirited long-distance rides with extreme comfort.
It fits a very desirable and high demand spot in our family of products for riders looking for impressive handling characteristics on long stretches of beautiful roads or to carve through the next set of corners rapidly approaching you. It also provides the practicality for everyday use, thanks to our exclusive folding mechanism incorporating the seat, frame, chain managing kickstand and rollers. It will fit in your car, apartment or you can stroll it to catch the next train. Because of its long wheel base and large rear wheel, it provides a very smooth, stable and self-centering ride. Its narrow overall width and the significant Catrike technology alloy frame deliver a lightweight, nimble and efficient.
Finally, the 5.5.9 is completely developed with comfort, ergonomics and safety in mind thanks to its high seating position, open cell padded seats, low bottom bracket, standard mirror mount, clip less pedals and fully adjustable padded hand rests. It is equipped with our unmatched Catrike group including our custom FSA external bearing crankset and headsets, SRAM 10 speed drivetrain, Avid disc brakes and TT500 bar end shifters. Each one is made per order with our premium materials from scratch in our facilities in Orlando, FL in the USA and distributed through our selected special group of Catrike dealers.Jamaat Ansar al-Islam is a jihadist Iraqi insurgent group that claims to have expanded into Syria at least two years ago under the name "Ansar ul-Sham", supposedly participating from the start in the rebel operations to capture Mannagh airbase, which fell a year ago in an offensive spearheaded by the Islamic State. Ideologically, as I have documented previously, the group aspires to the establishment of a Caliphate, something neatly summarized in this pro-Jamaat Ansar al-Islam graphic. At the same time, it should be emphasized that Jamaat Ansar al-Islam is NOT an al-Qa'ida affiiate, despite its origins in the original al-Qa'ida-linked Ansar al-Islam of Iraqi Kurdistan. This was made most apparent when Jamaat Ansar al-Islam appealed to Aymenn al-Zawahiri in 2013 to restrain what was then Islamic State of Iraq, referred to as "your wing" in Iraq. Also note the group has an ongoing dispute with the Islamic State both in Syria and Iraq.
In light of such alignments, it was predictable that Jamaat Ansar al-Islam would not subsume itself under Jabhat al-Nusra's Islamic emirate project that is a predecessor to the Caliphate, but rather offer support to the jihadi "Jabhat Ansar al-Din" coalition that is similarly working on its own proto-state/Caliphate project. As I have noted before, all four constituents (Harakat Sham al-Islam; Jaysh al-Muhajireen; Green Battalion; Harakat Fajr al-Sham al-Islamiya) aspire to the Caliphate but are independent or have other alignments (e.g. the second to the Caucasus Emirate): the only possible surprise at first sight is Harakat Sham al-Islam but becomes explicable in light of the death of Ibrahim bin Shakaran in the spring who was the main link to al-Qa'ida Central (AQC), just as Abu Khalid al-Suri was the main link to AQC for Ahrar ash-Sham, hence the ambiguities in Ahrar ash-Sham's discourse while he was still alive over transnational/national distinctions in goals.
Below is a translation of the relevant parts of the recent Jamaat Ansar al-Islam Syria contingent statement supporting Jabhat Ansar al-Din.
[...]
"For after the announcement of the Jabhat Ansar al-Din coalition composed of:
- Jaysh al-Muhajireen wa al-Ansar
- The Green Battalion
- Harakat Sham al-Islam
- Harakat Fajr al-Sham al-Islamiya
And the announcement that the foremost intention behind the formation of this coalition is the establishment of the original law of God in liberated areas, to defend the precepts of religion and to support the oppressed among our people in the blessed land of al-Sham.
So we in Jamaat Ansar al-Islam in Bilad al-Sham bless this gathering of these allied battalions which we reckon for the best and we commend no one to God.
[...]"by Don Paskini
Eighteen days too late, the Blairite “Progress” group has announced their intention to spend Lord Sainsbury’s money on publishing a new pamphlet in September called the “Purple Book”, which aims to emulate the success of the Lib Dem “Orange Book”.
Contributions will come from Alan Milburn, Liam Byrne, Tessa Jowell, Paul “the Thinker” Richards, Tristram Hunt and a range of other credible and exciting activists who have hitherto been denied the media platforms to put forward their fascinating ideas.
Those discussing the project hope that they may in future be known as the Purple Book group rather than Blairites, and apparently look forward to the possibility of a Purple/Orange coalition based around the “liberal centre” rather than the social democratic Left.
The name “Purple Book” was coined because “Purple was the colour of new Labour,” says one of those involved. “It’s what you get if you combine red and blue. It symbolises the need to stay on the centre ground.”
The pamphlet will include essays on the economy, the role of the State, public service reform, welfare, crime, the family and social mobility. The overarching theme will be the need to move away from reliance on a big State and redistribute power to individuals and communities.
The announcement of this new pamphlet has already given members of the “Purple Book Group” the opportunity to brief journalists from the Times anonymously about how useless they think Ed Miliband is, which is a really helpful thing to do just over two weeks before the local elections.
A few years ago, these guys were the dominant faction in a party which won successive landslide elections. Now they are reduced to using handouts from multi millionaires to try to follow in the footsteps of right wing Liberal Democrats. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.WASHINGTON — After one of the nation’s most protracted cabinet-level confirmation delays, the Senate Thursday approved Loretta E. Lynch to be attorney general. She is the first African-American woman to hold the position.
Ms. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was confirmed 56 to 43, with 10 Republicans voting for her.
Her confirmation took longer than that for all but two other nominees for the office: Edwin Meese III, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan, and A. Mitchell Palmer, who was picked by President Woodrow Wilson, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Republicans have found themselves in a quandary for months. They longed to replace Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., and they agreed that Ms. Lynch was qualified for the job. But they opposed her because Ms. Lynch defended President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.The Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) has no business approving a program that authorizes the government to distribute syringes and needles to drug addicts in a Cebu City barangay as part of a research study on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, according to Sen. Vicente Sotto III.
Sotto took to the Senate floor on Monday to denounce the program, allowed under an October 2014 DDB resolution, that designated Barangay Kamagayan as a “safe zone” where there will be no arrests for drug paraphernalia possession insofar as the needle and syringe exchange program is concerned, with respect to the registered drug users and Kamagayan health personnel.
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The 24-month “scientific and medical study” is being undertaken by the Department of Health, Philippine National AIDS council, the Cebu City local government and Population Services International, and is funded by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
The study is intended to assess the effectiveness of community-based comprehensive services for people who inject drugs in Barangay Kamagayan. The barangay has been identified as one of key areas of widespread sharing of needles among people who inject drugs, and which has a growing number of reported HIV positive cases.
Sotto said this was related to the “Harm Reduction strategy,” which comes from the Western way of thinking and is being advocated by big international organizations in the Philippines.
The strategy provides that if something cannot be curtailed, it would be better to minimize the harm it creates.
He said there was the thinking among drug users that the spread of HIV/AIDS was due to the sharing of needles. Thus, to prevent its spread, it would be better if the government provided new and clean needles and syringes to the drug users.
But Sotto bristled at that.
“It’s as if we are saying that if we cannot stop a criminal from using a rusty knife, it would be better if the government gave killers clean and stainless knives so that nobody would die from tetanus if he gets stabbed,” he said.
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MOST READWorld War II planes are not just a part of history; they are symbols of ingenuity, sacrifice, and courage!
If there is one thing that is iconic about World War II and the era that it took place in, it is the dedicated and durable machines that played a big role in the conflict. This quiz is not for amateur flyboys; it is for knowledgeable aviation enthusiasts that can appreciate the rugged beauty of these metal birds.
In the United States alone there were more than 300,000 airplanes that were produced during World War II – proving that their importance on the battlefield was well understood and appreciated. As a testament to just how skillfully a lot of these World War II planes were designed and made, many of them still have models that are flyable to this day.
While it is possible to see many of them in museums all across the US and across the world, there is nothing quite like seeing an F4F Wildcat or a B-17 soar through the sky like a graceful yet deadly predator.
So strap in flying ace and let’s see if you can navigate this dogfight of a quiz!AMC is an American pay television channel that is owned flagship property of AMC Networks. The channel's programming, similar to that of FXM, primarily consists of theatrically released films, along with a limited amount of original programming. The channel's name originally stood for "American Movie Classics", but since 2002 the full name has been de-emphasized as a result of a major shift in its programming.[1][2]
As of July 2015, AMC was received by approximately 94,832,000 households in the United States that subscribe to a pay television service (81.5% of U.S. households with at least one television set).[3] In March 2015, Dish Network's Sling TV announced it would soon begin making AMC channels available to cord cutters, including AMC, BBC America, IFC, Sundance TV, and We TV.[4][5][6]
History [ edit ]
1984–2002: Focus on classic films [ edit ]
American Movie Classics, as AMC was originally known, debuted on October 1, 1984, as a premium channel. Its original format focused on classic movies – largely those made prior to the 1950s – that aired during the afternoon and early evening hours in a commercial-free, generally unedited, uncut and uncolorized format.[7] AMC was originally operated as a joint venture between |
? Or if none of the input circles contains all the other input circles? We’ll need to handle these cases, too. Let’s work our way up slowly. If we have two input circles, and neither contains the other, we can compute the smallest circle that contains them using only geometry: the enclosing circle is internally tangent to the two input circles. The diameter of this tangent circle is the distance between the centers of a and b plus the radii of a and b. Likewise, the center of the tangent circle lies on the line intersecting the two centers of a and b.
{ var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height)).style("overflow", "visible").datum([{x: 290, y: 201, r: 80}, {x: 302, y: 130, r: 47}]); var delta = svg.append("line").attr("stroke", "red").attr("stroke-width", 2).attr("stroke-linecap", "round"); var e = svg.append("g"); e.append("circle").attr("fill", "none").attr("stroke", "red"); e.append("circle").attr("fill", "red").attr("r", 3.5); var circle = svg.append("g").attr("cursor", "move").selectAll("g").data(d => d).enter().append("g").attr("transform", d => `translate(${d.x},${d.y})`).call(d3.drag().on("drag", dragged)); circle.append("circle").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).attr("r", d => d.r); circle.append("circle").attr("r", 3.5); svg.append("path").attr("class", "path-move").attr("transform", `translate(20,${height - 20})scale(0.05)`).attr("d", path).append("title").text("Try dragging a circle!"); function dragged() { var d = d3.select(this).datum(); d.x = Math.max(0, Math.min(width, d3.event.x)); d.y = Math.max(0, Math.min(height, d3.event.y)); update(); } function update() { var circles = svg.datum(), ad = circles[0], bd = circles[1], dx = bd.x - ad.x, dy = bd.y - ad.y, l = Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy); circle.attr("transform", d => `translate(${d.x},${d.y})`); delta.attr("x1", ad.x - dx / l * ad.r).attr("y1", ad.y - dy / l * ad.r).attr("x2", ad.x + dx / l * (l + bd.r)).attr("y2", ad.y + dy / l * (l + bd.r)); if (encloses(ad, bd) || encloses(bd, ad)) { e.style("display", "none"); return; } var ed = encloseBasis2(ad, bd); e.style("display", null).attr("transform",`translate(${ed.x},${ed.y})`).select("circle").attr("r", ed.r); } update(); return svg.node(); }
In code:
// Given the basis B = {a, b}, returns the enclosing circle. function encloseBasis2(a, b) { const x1 = a.x, y1 = a.y, r1 = a.r; const x2 = b.x, y2 = b.y, r2 = b.r; const x21 = x2 - x1, y21 = y2 - y1, r21 = r2 - r1; const l = Math.sqrt(x21 * x21 + y21 * y21); return { x: (x1 + x2 + x21 / l * r21) / 2, y: (y1 + y2 + y21 / l * r21) / 2, r: (l + r1 + r2) / 2 }; }
The tangent circle is the smallest enclosing circle for a and b if and only if a does not enclose b and b does not enclose a. If a ⊆ b, then b is the smallest enclosing circle of a and b; likewise if b ⊆ a, then a is the smallest enclosing circle. This property, a ⊈ b and b ⊈ a, means that the set {a, b} forms a basis. A basis represents the smallest enclosing circle as a set of tangent circles. We can test whether two circles a and b form a basis as follows:
// Returns true iff the set {a, b} forms a basis. function isBasis2(a, b) { return!encloses(a, b) &&!encloses(b, a); }
Similarly, we can write a function that computes the smallest enclosing circle of any two circles:
// Given the set L = {a, b}, returns the enclosing circle. function enclose2(a, b) { return encloses(a, b)? a : encloses(b, a)? b : encloseBasis2(a, b); }
So we’re making progress! But what if we have three circles? Well, again, if we know that these circles form a basis, we can apply geometry to compute the internally tangent circle. A basis test for three circles looks like this:
// Returns true iff the set {a, b, c} forms a basis. function isBasis3(a, b, c) { return isBasis2(a, b) &&!encloses(encloseBasis2(a, b), c) && isBasis2(a, c) &&!encloses(encloseBasis2(a, c), b) && isBasis2(b, c) &&!encloses(encloseBasis2(b, c), a); }
The two-bases are shown below in gray ; the three-basis is shown in red. Notice that a two-basis disappears when one of its circles encloses the other circle, and that the three-basis disappears if any two-basis disappears, or a two-basis contains the remaining third circle.
{ var circles = [{"x":328,"y":125,"r":47},{"x":415,"y":222,"r":23},{"x":257,"y":258,"r":22}]; var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height)).style("overflow", "visible").datum(circles).property("value", d => d); var e2 = svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "gray").attr("fill", "none").selectAll("circle").data([[circles[0], circles[1]], [circles[0], circles[2]], [circles[1], circles[2]]]).enter().append("circle"); var e3 = svg.append("circle").attr("stroke", "red").attr("fill", "none"); var p = svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).attr("cursor", "move").selectAll("circle").data(d => d).enter().append("circle").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r).call(d3.drag().on("drag", dragged)); svg.append("path").attr("class", "path-move").attr("transform", `translate(20,${height - 20})scale(0.05)`).attr("d", path).append("title").text("Try dragging a circle!"); function dragged(d) { d3.select(this).attr("cx", d.x = Math.max(0, Math.min(width, d3.event.x))).attr("cy", d.y = Math.max(0, Math.min(height, d3.event.y))); svg.dispatch("input"); update(); } function update() { e2.each(function(pair) { var a = pair[0], b = pair[1]; if (!isBasis2(a, b)) { return d3.select(this).style("display", "none"); } var d = encloseBasis2(a, b); d3.select(this).style("display", null).attr("cx", d.x).attr("cy", d.y).attr("r", d.r); }); e3.each(function(triple) { var a = triple[0], b = triple[1], c = triple[2]; if (!isBasis2(a, b) ||!isBasis2(a, c) ||!isBasis2(b, c) ||!isBasis3(a, b, c)) { return d3.select(this).style("display", "none"); } var d = encloseBasis3(a, b, c); d3.select(this).style("display", null).attr("cx", d.x).attr("cy", d.y).attr("r", d.r); }); } update(); return svg.node(); }
I’ll omit the geometric solution for the three-circle case as it is a bit complicated. (See Apollonius’ Problem.) It requires solving a system of three quadratic equations:
tex.block`0 = (x - x_a)^2 + (y - y_a)^2 - (r - r_a)^2`
tex.block`0 = (x - x_b)^2 + (y - y_b)^2 - (r - r_b)^2`
tex.block`0 = (x - x_c)^2 + (y - y_c)^2 - (r - r_c)^2`
function encloseBasis3(a, b, c) { const x1 = a.x, y1 = a.y, r1 = a.r; const x2 = b.x, y2 = b.y, r2 = b.r; const x3 = c.x, y3 = c.y, r3 = c.r; const a2 = x1 - x2; const a3 = x1 - x3; const b2 = y1 - y2; const b3 = y1 - y3; const c2 = r2 - r1; const c3 = r3 - r1; const d1 = x1 * x1 + y1 * y1 - r1 * r1; const d2 = d1 - x2 * x2 - y2 * y2 + r2 * r2; const d3 = d1 - x3 * x3 - y3 * y3 + r3 * r3; const ab = a3 * b2 - a2 * b3; const xa = (b2 * d3 - b3 * d2) / (ab * 2) - x1; const xb = (b3 * c2 - b2 * c3) / ab; const ya = (a3 * d2 - a2 * d3) / (ab * 2) - y1; const yb = (a2 * c3 - a3 * c2) / ab; const A = xb * xb + yb * yb - 1; const B = 2 * (r1 + xa * xb + ya * yb); const C = xa * xa + ya * ya - r1 * r1; const r = -(A? (B + Math.sqrt(B * B - 4 * A * C)) / (2 * A) : C / B); return { x: x1 + xa + xb * r, y: y1 + ya + yb * r, r: r }; }
Extending a Basis Now let’s generalize from three circles to an arbitrary number of circles. In two dimensions, it’s not possible to have a basis of four or more circles, so we only need to consider bases of three or fewer. Assume we have a basis B that consists of zero, one, two or three circles, and represents the smallest enclosing circle for circles {L[0], … L[i - 1]}. We can compute the tangent circle for the basis B as follows:
// Given a basis B, returns the enclosing circle. function encloseBasis(B) { switch (B.length) { case 1: return encloseBasis1(B[0]); case 2: return encloseBasis2(B[0], B[1]); case 3: return encloseBasis3(B[0], B[1], B[2]); } }
Next we test whether this tangent circle encloses the next circle, p = L[i]. If it does, then we can continue to use the basis B, and move on to the next circle. If it doesn’t, then we need to compute a new basis. The most conservative new basis (the smallest increase from our previous basis B) considers only circles in B ∪ p; we’ll call this operation “extending” B to enclose p. Because p was outside the old enclosing circle, we know that the new basis must include p. We also know that the resulting basis must contain either one, two or three circles in total; so, there may be one or two circles from the old basis B that remain in the new basis. Thus, computing the new basis is simply a matter of testing each possible basis, starting with the simplest one-basis, {p}. In code:
// Given a basis B and a circle p ⊈ B, returns the new basis Bʹ. function extendBasis(B, p) { var i, j; if (enclosesWeakAll(p, B)) return [p]; // If we get here then B must have at least one element. for (i = 0; i < B.length; ++i) { if (!encloses(p, B[i]) && enclosesWeakAll(encloseBasis2(B[i], p), B)) { return [B[i], p]; } } // If we get here then B must have at least two elements. for (i = 0; i < B.length - 1; ++i) { for (j = i + 1; j < B.length; ++j) { if (!encloses(encloseBasis2(B[i], B[j]), p) &&!encloses(encloseBasis2(B[i], p), B[j]) &&!encloses(encloseBasis2(B[j], p), B[i]) && enclosesWeakAll(encloseBasis3(B[i], B[j], p), B)) { return [B[i], B[j], p]; } } } // If we get here then something is very wrong. throw new Error; }
Let’s look at examples of each of these three cases.
One-Basis If p encloses every circle in B, {p} is the new basis. The old enclosing circle is replaced with p. If B is empty, {p} encloses it trivially.
{ var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height - 100)).datum([ {"x":328,"y":85,"r":47}, {"x":415,"y":182,"r":23}, {"x":257,"y":218,"r":22}, {"x":325,"y":138,"r":130,color:"steelblue"} ]); svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).selectAll("circle").data(d => d).enter().append("circle").attr("stroke", d => d.color).attr("fill", d => d.color).attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("circle").datum(enclose(svg.datum().slice(0, 3))).attr("stroke", "red").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); return svg.node(); }
Two-Basis If B ⊈ p, then we must next look for a two-basis {B[i], p} that encloses every circle in B. Below, the tangent circle of circle p and circle B[i] encloses every circle in B and thus replaces the old tangent circle. If B only has one circle, then {B[0], p} must be a two-basis that encloses B because B[0] ⊈ p.
{ var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height - 100)).datum([ {"x":328,"y":85,"r":47}, {"x":415,"y":182,"r":23}, {"x":257,"y":218,"r":22}, {"x":430,"y":105,"r":30,color:"steelblue"} ]); svg.append("circle").datum(enclose(svg.datum().slice(0, 3))).attr("stroke", "red").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("circle").datum(enclose(svg.datum())).attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).selectAll("circle").data(d => d).enter().append("circle").attr("stroke", d => d.color).attr("fill", d => d.color).attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); return svg.node(); }
Three-Basis If no suitable one- or two-basis is found, there must be a three-basis {B[i], B[j], p} that encloses every circle in B. Below, p replaces a circle from B to form the new three-basis.
{ var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height - 100)).datum([ {"x":328,"y":85,"r":47}, {"x":415,"y":182,"r":23}, {"x":257,"y":218,"r":22}, {"x":430,"y":210,"r":30,color:"steelblue"} ]); svg.append("circle").datum(enclose(svg.datum().slice(0, 3))).attr("stroke", "red").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("circle").datum(enclose(svg.datum())).attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).selectAll("circle").data(d => d).enter().append("circle").attr("stroke", d => d.color).attr("fill", d => d.color).attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); return svg.node(); }
The Algorithm Whew, almost there! Unfortunately it’s not sufficient to simply extend the basis B to enclose p. The extended basis represents the smallest enclosing circle of B ∪ p, but a bigger circle might be needed to enclose the other circles {L[0], … L[i]}: there may exist an input circle that is enclosed by the old tangent circle but not enclosed by the new tangent circle. This gap is highlighted below. We must find a new basis Bʹ that encloses all the input circles seen so far before we can move on to the next circle L[i + 1].
{ var svg = d3.select(DOM.svg(width, height)).datum([ {"x":328,"y":135,"r":47}, {"x":415,"y":232,"r":23}, {"x":257,"y":268,"r":22}, {"x":430,"y":260,"r":30,color:"steelblue"} ]); var e0 = enclose(svg.datum().slice(0, 3)), e1 = enclose(svg.datum()); svg.append("circle").datum(e0).attr("stroke", "red").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("defs").datum(e0).append("clipPath").attr("id", "danger").append("circle").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("path").attr("fill", "red").attr("clip-path", "url(#danger)").attr("d", "M" + e0.x + "," + (e0.y - e0.r) + "a" + e0.r + "," + e0.r + " 0,0,0 0," + 2 * e0.r + "a" + e0.r + "," + e0.r + " 0,0,0 0," + -2 * e0.r + "M" + e1.x + "," + (e1.y - e1.r) + "a" + e1.r + "," + e1.r + " 0,0,1 0," + 2 * e1.r + "a" + e1.r + "," + e1.r + " 0,0,1 0," + -2 * e1.r); svg.append("circle").datum(e1).attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill", "none").attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); svg.append("g").attr("stroke", "black").attr("fill-opacity", 0.1).selectAll("circle").data(d => d).enter().append("circle").attr("stroke", d => d.color).attr("fill", d => d.color).attr("cx", d => d.x).attr("cy", d => d.y).attr("r", d => d.r); return svg.node(); }
Fortunately, finding the new basis Bʹ is easy! We simply start over from the first circle each time we extend the basis by setting i back to zero:
function enclose(L) { var i = 0, n = d3.shuffle(L = L.slice()).length, B = [], p, e; while (i < n) { p = L[i]; if (e && enclosesWeak(e, p)) ++i; else e = encloseBasis(B = extendBasis(B, p)), i = 0; } return e.basis = B, e; }
function* encloseStar(L) { var i = 0, n = d3.shuffle(L = L.slice()).length, B = [], p, e; while (i < n) { p = L[i]; yield {p: p, e: e, i: i, B: B, L: L.slice(0, i)}; if (e && enclosesWeak(e, p)) ++i; else e = encloseBasis(B = extendBasis(B, p)), i = 0; } yield {e: e, i: i, B: B, L: L}; return e; }
The algorithm must terminate because extending a basis always makes it bigger and there are only a finite number of possible bases in L. And that’s the Matoušek-Sharir-Welzl algorithm! Acknowledgements Many thanks to Robin Houston for contributing an implementation of the MSW algorithm to d3-hierarchy as d3.packEnclose, and for reviewing this article.
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width = 640
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d3 = require("https://d3js.org/d3.v5.min.js")EVEN if Tony Abbott were caught streaking naked down Collins Street in Melbourne the Coalition would probably still win the looming election, former Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says.
The nation's longest serving Treasurer is tipping victory with a "large majority" for the Coalition on September 14.
But this boast from a Liberal elder won't be welcomed by the current leadership team struggling to keep the lid on expectations.
In an interview ahead of being made a life member of the Liberal Party this evening, Mr Costello talks to News Limited about the difficulties facing the next government in returning the budget into the black, the Coalition's prospects at the ballot box and his tumultuous relationship with former Prime Minister John Howard.
The Coalition has lifted its game in recent months but it is still too early to tell if an Abbott-led government would have the reforming zeal needed to revolutionise the nation's tax system and put it on a more sustainable footing, he claims.
"The (broken) promise to have the budget in surplus has been quite catastrophic for Gillard," Mr Costello said.
"Unless Tony Abbot gets caught stark raving naked in Collins Street, I think it's over and even then he might win."
The Coalition's decision to postpone the planned increase in the superannuation contributions to 9.5 per cent for two years was welcomed as a good first move as it will deliver "big money" to the nation's bottom line over the coming financial years.
The key advice from the last Treasurer to deliver a budget surplus - 10 surpluses out of 12 budgets - to shadow treasurer Joe Hockey was to get spending under control.
The Gillard government's centre piece - the Gonski education reforms - are blasted as a "pie in the sky" promise that will lift spending but not necessarily educational outcomes.
Mr Costello is also critical that while the National Disability Scheme is a worthy project, the funding of the national roll-out in 2018-19 will be enormously expensive.
But he defended the axed Baby Bonus scheme - one of his signature decisions while Treasurer - as being the right thing at the time, even if the introduction of the much more generous paid parental leave was the beginning of the end for the program.
Mr Costello said that after 19 years in parliament and more than 13 years as deputy leader it was "pleasing" to become only the fourth person to receive honorary life membership of the Federal Liberal Party.
The award was first given to John and Janette Howard and former Victorian MP and state president David Kemp last year.
But Mr Costello seems prouder of his legacy in terms of former staff members who are part of the next generation of Liberal leaders.
His alumni includes Victorian Treasurer Michael O'Brien, Federal MP Kelly O'Dwyer - who succeeded her former boss as the member for Higgins - and Victorian Federal Senators Mitch Fifield and Scott Ryan.
Despite sitting beside him in cabinet for 12 years, Mr Costello admits not being disappointed about former PM John Howard's decision to miss the gala dinner at the Melbourne Museum.
"I don't spend a lot of time with him," Mr Costello said.
"I advised him that it would have been in his interests and the interests of the Liberal Party for him to stand down. And I think history confirmed I was right. He lost his seat."
"I don't think he liked that advice but I think it was the right advice for him and the Liberal Party and he knows that. He is not the kind of person to say sorry but he knows that. So you let bygones be bygones. I don't have to remind him of it."
Mr Costello is also upbeat the Victorian Liberal Party is moving in the right direction since the dumping of former Premier Ted Baillieu.
"Napthine has made a very good start. The public response to Napthine has been very good and that has turned Victoria's fortunes quite a bit at a federal level," he said.
Mr Costello also credited the Opposition's move towards major issues such as the economy has also played a key role in lifting the Coalitions' support base, especially in states such as Victoria.
QUOTABLE QUOTES
Getting the budget back in the black:
"We need a full court press. And we have got to stop the increases in spending."
Telling John Howard to step down
"I don't think he liked that advice but I think it was the right advice for him and the Liberal Party and he knows that. He is not the kind of person to say sorry but he knows that."
Gonski education reforms
"Gonski is pie in the sky stuff with massive big increases. It is not a question of less money going into schools. But spending doesn't need to be increased as much as recommended."
This year's budget
"By and large the people that will benefit are the high income earners. It will be harder on poor families and much more generous to middle and high income earners."
Liberals in Victoria after Ted
"There has been a big turnaround. Napthine has made a very good start. The public response to Napthine has been very good and that has been reflected in the polls and turned Victoria's fortunes quite a bit at the federal level,"
NDISIt’s a very common tactic employed by users and abusers of all shapes and sizes. White clergymen write a letter titled “A Call For Unity” to Martin Luther King, Jr. saying they support civil rights but disagree with his methods of civil disobedience. The entitled white man tells Black Lives Matter protesters, “Come on now, stop with the division. ALL lives matter!” The CEO who doesn’t want to pay his workers more accuses union members of hurting their fellow coworkers. The abusive husband accuses the battered wife of tearing the family apart when she finally leaves. Hillary Clinton refuses to stand with Standing Rock during her campaign and says instead that “all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects.”
In each case it’s the same thing: the empowered party telling the disempowered party to suck it up and fall in line under the pleasant-sounding pretense of unity and togetherness in a way that, if believed, can only benefit the empowered party and prevent the disempowered from getting what they want.
Barack Obama has built an entire eight-year administration on the strategy of responding to every single public grievance by saying, “Well I certainly sympathize with those grievances; that’s a very serious problem that needs to be addressed. We’re going to have to all come together and, uh, look at all sides of the issue and make sure everyone gets a say in this conversation we need to have.” If you watch the news and pay attention to press conferences, you’ve heard him regurgitate essentially the same line literally dozens of times by now. I bet you read it in his voice. Meanwhile he keeps doing exactly what he wants to do, continuing and expanding upon all of Bush’s most evil policies while paying lip service to unity, togetherness and collaboration, shoring up more power for his fellow ruling elites while the American people get stomped down further and further under the boot of the Walmart/welfare trap and an increasingly militarized police state.
And this is exactly what the establishment Democrats are doing right now when they call us all to unite against Trump. They’ve got Pelosi in the House, Schumer in the Senate, they’ve got all the powerful alliances, all the corporate media shills, all the Wall Street funding and plutocratic support behind them. Their hands are so firmly on the steering wheel that people who criticize them are immediately pegged as Trump supporters and nobody’s able to advance their career in the party without publicly pretending that Obama was a phenomenal president and bandying his name about like some kind of saint instead of the refugee from George Orwell’s nightmares that he is. And now, after treating their party’s progressive base with all the respect and dignity that Michael Vick gave his dogs, they’re calling for “party unity”. How precious.
When establishment Democrats say “unity”, what they really mean is subservience. They want those annoying Sanders progressives to forget their newfound sense of emboldened self worth and get back in line where they belong. Sit down and shut up, whore. Get in the kitchen and make me a sammich. I just decided that I’m going to mentally replace the word “unity” with “sammich” whenever an establishment loyalist is talking from now on.
“Now is the not time for in-fighting and divisiveness! Now is the time for sammich!”
Well they can get their ass in the kitchen and make their own damn sammich. I’m sick of this. You don’t get to shove our faces in the dirt all year, subvert the will of the people by using your DNC stooges and corporate media shills to sabotage our beloved candidate, then drag him through your mud and leverage him into endorsing your corporate crony war hawk, blame us for all your spectacular failures and mistakes, and then demand “party unity”. Nuh-uh. That’s not a thing.
Here’s how you’ll know the elites of the Democratic party actually want party unity, dear reader: they’ll stop marginalizing their essential progressive base and give us an actual platform to get behind. Then they'll have unity. They can give the centrists the reasonable middle-class tax breaks and protection from radical Islam they want so much too, that’s fine. That wouldn’t deter progressives from voting Democrat, and it’s really all the centrists care about at this point. They can keep their guns too, we don’t care. Seriously. You can give the centrists what they want and still create a much, much more progressive party than the one that currently exists, and we can all get behind that. The only people you’d be alienating if you did that would be your zillionaire plutocrat bosses.
Oh.
Well when I put it like that, this all makes a lot more sense, huh? The ruling elites of the Democratic party don’t care about unity. They don’t even care about centrists; from far-left to center-left, they don’t care about any of us. All they care about is keeping Wall Street happy.
So they’re going to have to make a choice at some point. Unify the party, or keep the plutocrats happy. If they’ll work with us, though, we’ll work with them. Can you imagine how much energy and enthusiasm would be injected into the Democratic party if they did that? If they were willing to lose some corporate funding, and let us advertise them for free like crazy on social media instead? If they stop actively sabotaging us and start collaborating with us instead, we can win them election after election if they’ll give us quality candidates with policies we can get behind.
We can even fund them, too, if they don’t mind a flood of smaller donations averaging twenty-seven dollahs. All they have to do is stop cozying up to those users and abusers at the top.
---
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, help me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even tossing me some money on Patreon so I can keep this gig up. I love you.Seeing an announcement for The Last of Us Part II was a significant surprise for me. Even though I've pondered a lot on the first game's ending, it gave me a somewhat unresolved feeling. So the idea of a continuation filled that void, and it formed this image in my mind.This piece was quite a unique experience - my art is usually rather colorful and stylized and rarely features backgrounds. So creating a more monochrome, realistic and backgrounded image was a total adventure. I got some guidance on anatomy from my brother, so if you want to go give him a high-five:Since the story for this game is still only suggestive, I'm not sure if this perfectly aligns with what Naughty Dog has planned. But, my hope is that this can at least be seen as a canonical metaphor. I'm certainly very interested to see if they revisit this location in Part II.---This is actually my first official submission as a Patreon creator. So, I'm totally chuffed to thank my new Patrons for helping make this happen. Their rewards include a 3-page walkthrough of the entire process, a series of WIP progression screenshots, as well as the layered PSD. So, if those sound interesting to you too, hop on over to my Patreon page or Gumroad store: www.patreon.com/ZedEdge“September was a dramatic pullback in terms of spending on consumer electronics,” said Kamalesh Roa, director of economic research for MasterCard SpendingPulse. In particular, “people are pulling back from buying big-ticket items.”
Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest retailer, was one of the few companies to report positive September sales figures last week, but the company’s sales of discretionary items were soft. At the company’s Sam’s Club division, electronics and videogames were among the weakest categories.
BJ’s Wholesale Club, which had strong September sales over all, said sales of electronics, TVs and prerecorded videos declined from the previous year, although computer sales were up.
The sudden and steep drop in the economy and consumer confidence has caught retail chains by surprise and left them scrambling to adapt their sales strategies. The holidays are a critical time for sales of electronics and in-home entertainment products. The video game industry traditionally does 50 percent of its business in the holiday quarter.
Photo
If the early sales trends continue or get worse, they are likely to push some troubled retailers into bankruptcy. Industry analysts view Circuit City Stores, whose stock closed Tuesday at 40 cents a share, as the electronics retailer that is most vulnerable.
Circuit City fired its chief executive last month and said that sales at stores open at least a year, a measure of retail health, fell 13.3 percent for three months ending in August. The company said sales dropped in virtually every category of electronics, from personal computers to GPS navigation units. The only exception was flat-panel TVs |
Meaning + Beauty in Data Vis and Data Art
tl;dr: In Data Vis, we should see aesthetics as a tool to increase understanding. In Data Art, we can see aesthetics as the purpose.
My last blog post let to a great, great debate on Twitter with great, great people. Thanks to everybody who attended and made me learn something new! E.g. that in 2009, Manuel Lima wrote a Manifesto in which he touched the divide between Information Art and Information Design, and which let to almost exactly the same debate that I had on Twitter. The points made reached from: A divide is necessary, to help both fields to A divide doesn’t benefit anybody and It’s not possible to make the divide.
I stumbled across one argument in this debate which I’ve met a few times so far: A data vis needs to be beautiful to be insightful. For example, Kim Rees noted in her comment on the Manifesto:
"Visualizations should be coherent, convey information, and be good looking. We can compare this to architecture. An architect may focus solely on the structure and not the aesthetic and fail. Or she may focus solely on the aesthetic not the structure and fail. It’s the great (and few) architects who excel at both who create the truly wonderful buildings. [...] I believe aesthetics are crucial to a coherent visualization."
I think she’s right, but it actually works in favor of thinking that “A divide is necessary, to help both fields”, as I do. I want to extend on her point and result in a claim for more Data Art. For that, I’ll use the same “goals” of Data Vis that Kim Rees mentioned: a) conveying information, being insightful and increasing “understanding” of a dataset, being meaningful. And b) Aesthetics, beauty, being visual pleasing, being good looking. For me, the first point – understanding – is the ultimate goal of a Data Vis. This can mean proving a point, providing an overview of a topic or optimizing an exploratory Data Vis for insight discovery.
How to increase the understanding of a Data Vis? Besides choosing the right data points, aesthetics can certainly serve the understanding of a visualization – to structure the content in a better way, make it better readable or get the reader’s attention in the first place. But more added aesthetics only means better understanding to a certain degree. Meaning, an insightful chart which is ugly as hell is worse than an insightful chart which is well readable because of added aesthetics. But an insightful chart with too much focus on aesthetics and visual innovation (and therefore bad readability) is a worse chart than the ugly, insightful chart. For example, if a bar chart is the most graspable way to design a dataset, choosing a circular visualization will increase aesthetics, but will decrease understanding. In a formula:
Beauty that increases Meaning > Meaning without Beauty > Beauty that decreases Meaning
or, extremely broken down:
Meaning + Beauty > just Meaning > just Beauty
BUT that formula is only true when talking about Data Visualization and their purpose of being insightful. In Data ART, aesthetics CAN and sometimes SHOULD be the first priority. “Too much aesthetics” or “just beauty” can be a good thing. Not being dependent on the understanding anymore will make the visual experience enormously better – and it will make circular visualizations look like a dull compromise.
An example: I find some NYT and Periscopic charts visually pleasing – and I’m glad they are, because it helps to convey the data. But Jorinde Voigt? WOAH. Her images blows my mind! “The data itself is not important for the message, but serves to communicate a higher, sublime experience.”, I wrote about the work of Jorinde Voigt a few years ago in an university essay.
Yes, art is not only about aesthetics. Got it. But lots of people get attracted to the field by exactly that: The aesthetical side of Data Vis. They like that Data Vis combines “the serious stuff” (data) with “something pretty” (vis). Often, the visualization of data is an accessible way for them to get in touch with aesthetics. They buy coffee table books, get amazed by the looks and want to replicate it. But that results in an overhang of Data Vis which tries too hard to be beautiful to be meaningful.
I want these people to discover Data Art. To stand to their love of data aesthetics and to not sell their Data Art as Data Vis anymore. To get rid of compromises. To say openly: “Yes, this visualization piece doesn’t tell you anything about the data points. My aim was a different one.” Only then we can have an honest conversation about how to improve their work. To make that happen, it’s important to recognize Data Art as valuable. As Jer Thorp said in 2009: “I’d argue that work that might get classified as Information Art should be considered to be as serious and as important as that which gets labeled as Information Visualization.”
My source for the assumptions made are not only students of mine and people I talk to at the Data Vis Meetup Berlin, but also myself. My portfolio makes clear that I’m often on the “too much beauty for data vis”-side; I’m on the right side of the chart. I’ve traded meaning and readability for aesthetics many times. In the last few months and with blog posts like this, I’ve tried to move more to the left side of the chart. But because of my love of aesthetics, I should also move into Data Art; to the bottom right of the chart. For me – and in my opinion for lots of other people, too – it’s better to separate the two purposes (insights and aesthetics) then to satisfy both.
Where do you stand?Tankers!
The Month of Clans is a special event designed to reward those players who have taken that extra step to improve their gaming experience by creating or joining a Clan. Throughout this month, there will be several features:
Rebate for New Clans
We understand that it's a challenge trying to build a new Clan, so we can at least help you take care of the initial investment. All Clans that meet the following requirements will get their 2,500 creation fee returned to their Clan Treasury:
Clan must be created between May 22 - June 30
Clan must have 20 or more players
Clan must set up a Clan Profile in the Recruiting Station
Clan must set up a recruiting topic in the forums
If your Clan has completed the objectives, click the Submit button below. If you have questions about this special, click the Discussion Topic button below.
Clans that complete the above objectives are eligible to win even more by completing other tasks
Objective Reward Create and upload a Clan Emblem for your Clan 500 for your Clan Treasury Capture at least one landing (or rioting) province on the Clan Wars map 1,000 for your Clan Treasury Capture at least one standard or high value province on the Clan Wars map (rioting provinces do not count towards this objective) 2,000 for your Clan Treasury Advance to Round 2 of the June Clan Wars Map Exhibition tournament. (Tournament page) 1,000 for your Clan Treasury in addition to your tournament prize As a Clan, participate in a combined total of 15,000 battles during the Month of Clans event. To each Clan member: 2x Large Repair Kits
2x Large Repair Kits 2x Large First Aid Kits
2x Large First Aid Kits 2x Automatic Fire Extinguishers
Entry Into the 2014 Summer Clan Invitational Tournament
Two new Clans will earn an entry into the Summer Clan Invitational Tournament during the Month of Clans event. All Clans that complete all of the primary objectives and at least 3 of the secondary objectives will be entered into a playoff-style tournament. The top two Clans in this tournament will earn their entry to the Invitational Tournament.
Social Media Contests
All Clans which were created after March 1, 2014 and have 20 or more members are eligible for daily Gold and Premium Time giveaways on Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter: Simply send us a screenshot from your Clan's profile page and include @WorldofTanks and #MonthofClans in your tweet to enter! Be sure the screenshot includes your Clan Tag, Created Date, and Member Count (Example).
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Daily Prize: Weekly Prize: 8,333 for your Clan 7 Days of Premium for each Clan Member
The weekly prize will be given every Friday in June.
Clan and Clan Wars Missions
This month we're doubling down on missions for Clans. Complete the missions for Consumables, Equipment, and Crew Experience!(CNN) French law enforcement officers have been told to erase their social media presence and to carry their weapons at all times because terror sleeper cells have been activated over the last 24 hours in the country, a French police source who attended a briefing Saturday told CNN terror analyst Samuel Laurent.
Amedy Coulibaly, a suspect killed Friday during a deadly kosher market hostage siege, had made several phone calls about targeting police officers in France, according to the source.
It was one of a flurry of developments Saturday, including reporting in a French-language magazine that brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi had been under watch by the French, but despite red flags, authorities there lost interest in them.
L'Express national security reporter Eric Pelletier shared with CNN details of his story, for which he talked to multiple French officials.
Tipped off by U.S. intelligence agencies that Said Kouachi may have traveled to Yemen in July, France placed him under surveillance in November 2011 but terminated the scrutiny in June 2014 when French security services deemed him no longer dangerous, officials told Pelletier.
The surveillance of his brother Cherif terminated at the end of 2013 when his phone calls suggested he had disengaged with violent extremism and was focused on counterfeiting clothing and shoes.
A U.S. official told CNN's Barbara Starr that Said Kouachi's 2011 travel lasted three or more months and that he is believed to have trained with al Qaeda in Yemen during that period.
French intelligence officials believe there is a strong probability Cherif Kouachi also traveled to Yemen for a short trip in 2011, separately from his brother, Pelletier's sources told him.
A Yemeni journalist and researcher, Mohammed al-Kibsi, told CNN that he had met and spoken with Said Kouachi in Yemen in 2011 and 2012.
But al-Kibsi, who said he met the man twice, said Said Kouachi was in Yemen most of 2011. Kouachi first went there in 2009 and stayed until mid-2010 before leaving briefly and returning at the end of that year, according to al-Kibsi.
Kouachi entered Yemen multiple times with an officially issued visa, a senior Yemeni national security official told CNN.
"Said was not being watched during the duration of his stay in Yemen because he was not on the watch list," said the official, adding that, at the time, Yemen's Western allies had not raised concerns about Kouachi. The official did not specify when the visits took place.
Kouachi, who was studying Arabic grammar, and underwear bomber Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab previously were roommates for one to two weeks in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, living in the same small apartment, al-Kibsi said. AbdulMutallab is serving a life sentence for trying to bring down a Northwest airlines flight over Detroit on Christmas in 2009 with an underwear bomb.
Kouachi's residence was very near to the famous Al-Tabari School and he and AbdulMutallab used to pray together there, said al-Kibsi by telephone Saturday. It wasn't clear when they were roommates, but AbdulMutallab was arrested after the 2009 bombing attempt.
There has been no official confirmation of the claim that he and AbdulMutallab were associates.
The Kouachi brothers, who authorities say carried out Wednesday's deadly attack in the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, were killed Friday in a shootout with French security forces outside of Paris.
France, meanwhile, continues to cope with three days of terror that left 17 people dead. Thousands gathered on the streets for vigils Saturday and hundreds of thousands were expected at massive rallies Sunday, along with heads of state and other dignitaries.
JUST WATCHED Brothers trained with terror groups Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Brothers trained with terror groups 02:04
Suspect's significant other reportedly in Turkey
The alert came amid word that the lone remaining suspect wanted in connection with a terrorism spree -- Hayat Boumeddiene -- entered Turkey on January 2, a Turkish prime ministry source told CNN.
Boumeddiene was tracked by Turkish authorities to a location near the Turkey-Syria border, according to an official in the Turkish Prime Minister's office.
Boumeddiene arrived at the Istanbul airport on a flight from Madrid with a man. During routine screening of passengers, the couple were flagged by Turkey's Risk Assessment Center and a decision made to maintain surveillance on their movements, the official said. The official in the Turkish Prime Minister's office would not elaborate as to when Boumeddiene was tracked to the border province.
That means Boumeddiene may not have been in France at the time of Thursday's deadly shooting of a policewoman in Paris, as authorities originally believed. Authorities offered no immediate explanation of the discrepancy, but have said she is wanted in connection with a terrorist attack.
French authorities on Saturday asked security officials in Spain to look into the possibility that she transited through Spain on her way to Turkey, a source close to the Spanish officials said.
'Nation relieved'
The attack at the Paris office of the Charlie Hebdo left 12 dead and shocked France.
"The nation is relieved tonight," Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after the two standoffs concluded
Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Helicopters fly over a printing shop in Dammartin-en-Goele, France, where there was a standoff Friday, January 9, between police and two men suspected in the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this week. Cherif and Said Kouachi, the two brothers wanted in the case, were killed by security forces, authorities said. Hide Caption 1 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French authorities released photographs of the Kouachi brothers, warning that both could be armed and dangerous. A third suspect, Hamyd Mourad, surrendered to police earlier this week, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse. Hide Caption 2 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police officers leave after storming the printing shop in Dammartin-en-Goele on January 9. Hide Caption 3 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Smoke rises from the building in Dammartin-en-Goele, a town about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Paris. Hide Caption 4 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police take position on a roof during the standoff. Hide Caption 5 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France A bird flies overhead as police snipers take aim from a roof. Hide Caption 6 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French gendarmes stand guard as a nearby school is evacuated in Dammartin-en-Goele on January 9. Hide Caption 7 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Children wait inside a school before being picked up by their parents. Dammartin-en-Goele residents were told to stay inside during the standoff, and schools were put on lockdown, the mayor's media office told CNN. Hide Caption 8 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France A police officer checks a car in Dammartin-en-Goele. Hide Caption 9 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French authorities block access to a road leading to Dammartin-en-Goele on January 9. Hide Caption 10 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Armed security forces fly in Dammartin-en-Goele on January 9. Hide Caption 11 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police vans line up in Dammartin-en-Goele on January 9. Hide Caption 12 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police officers communicate inside a school in Dammartin-en-Goele. Hide Caption 13 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police and military forces take positions in Dammartin-en-Goele. Hide Caption 14 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France A police officer stands guard in Fleury, France, on Thursday, January 8. Hide Caption 15 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French soldiers patrol the Gare du Nord railway station in Paris on January 8. Hide Caption 16 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police walk down a street in Corcy, France, on January 8. Hide Caption 17 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France On January 8, police tape and vehicles block off the entrance to a gas station north of Paris where the two suspects were reportedly seen the night before. Hide Caption 18 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French police officers gather January 8 in Longpont, France, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from where the suspects were reportedly spotted. Hide Caption 19 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French police patrol a street in Corcy on January 8. Hide Caption 20 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France A police officer stands guard in front of Paris' Elysee Palace on January 8. Hide Caption 21 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Police stand guard in front of an apartment building in the Croix-Rouge suburb of Reims, France, early on January 8. Forensics officers were looking for evidence related to the three suspects. Hide Caption 22 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Sharpshooters are seen outside during the operation in Reims. Hide Caption 23 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France Forensics officers are seen through a window in Reims. Hide Caption 24 of 25 Photos: Manhunt for terror suspects in France French national police arrive at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, France, on Wednesday, January 7. Hide Caption 25 of 25
But the French government's work is not over.
There's still a lot of healing to do, and questions to answer on how this happened and how to prevent future attacks. Meanwhile, police continue the hunt for Boumeddiene, Coulibaly's partner.
France will remain at a heightened security as investigations continue, Cazeneuve said after an emergency security meeting.
All necessary measures will also be taken to ensure the safety of people who attend a massive unity rally planned in Paris on Sunday, he said. Extra steps will also be taken to protect religious institutions.
Cazeneuve and other officials outlined the extraordinary security measures, including snipers, plainclothes and anti-terror officers as well as parking and transit restrictions, that will be in place for the rally.
European leaders including Britain's David Cameron, Germany's Angela Merkel and Spain's Mariano Rajoy will join French President François Hollande at the unity march. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will attend, according to Russia's Foreign Ministry and Turkish semi-official news agency Anadolu.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will take part in Sunday's march, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
Jordan's King Abdullah II and Queen Rania will participate, Jordan's Embassy in Washington said. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to France for the event, according to his office.
In a statement, Netanyahu said he spoke by phone with Celine Shreki, who was a hostage at the kosher market Friday.
"To Celine and all French Jews, and to all European Jews, I would like to say: The State of Israel is not just the place to which you turn in prayer. The State of Israel is also your home," the statement said.
A total of 1,100 French troops are currently deployed in the Paris region, alongside police forces, to increase security following the attacks, the Defense Ministry said. An additional 250 soldiers will be on duty Sunday for the march, the ministry said.
Altogether, nearly 1,900 French troops will take part in providing additional security across the country as part of the France's security alert system, known as Vigipirate.
The precautions may help to ease the nerves of a country left on edge by the wave of violence.
The targeting of the kosher grocery store has shaken Jewish communities in particular. And amid the heightened security concerns, the Grande Synagogue of Paris was closed Saturday for the first time since World War II.
Rabbi Jonas Jacquelin, who serves in a different synagogue, told CNN that an attack on one member of the Jewish community was felt by everyone else.
But, he said, it was important for his synagogue to stay open to demonstrate that the community is not afraid. "We have to show to the world, we have to show to our enemies that all of us are continuing to pray today as we are doing every week and every Shabbat -- nothing can disturb us," he said.
Two sieges
Friday's deadly events started in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, where the Kouachi brothers took refuge in a print shop in an industrial area after two days on the run.
Hours later, after a major police operation locked down the town, the brothers were dead and a man who'd been hiding out in the building was freed unharmed.
JUST WATCHED How manhunt for French terrorists ended Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH How manhunt for French terrorists ended 02:54
At the scene of the other violent siege that capped an uneasy week in Paris, Jewish and Muslim leaders gathered to pay their respects to the four people who died there. They held hands and left flowers and spoke of unity amid tragedy.
The deadly kosher grocery store standoff unfolded in Porte de Vincennes, eastern Paris.
Four hostages were killed, officials said. Coulibaly was killed after police moved in to end the siege.
The four victims were identified by the French Jewish publication JSSNEWS as Yohan Cohen, 22, Yoav Hattab, 21, Philippe Braham and Francois Michel Saada.
Israeli government sources told CNN that Hollande told Netanyahu that 15 were rescued. The four hostages were killed by the gunman before police stormed the market, sources said.
One of the hostages, identified only as Marie, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that the gunman was heavily armed -- and that she was very happy to be alive.
"As soon as he got inside, he started shooting. He scared us because he told us: I am not afraid to die and he said either I die or I go to jail for 40 years. He knew this was his last day," she said.
Hollande called the Porte de Vincennes deaths an "anti-Semitic" act and urged citizens not to lash out against Muslims.
"Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion," he said. "Unity is our best weapon."
On Saturday, Hollande and Cazeneuve met with several police officers injured in the raid on the Kosher market.
Ties to Islamist extremists?
While Said Kouachi is suspected of links to al Qaeda in Yemen, Cherif Kouachi has a long history of jihad and anti-Semitism, according to documents obtained by CNN. In a 400-page court record, he is described as wanting to go to Iraq through Syria "to go and combat the Americans."
Cherif Kouachi was a close associate of Coulibaly, a Western intelligence source told CNN.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for orchestrating the Charlie Hebdo attack, the founder of the magazine The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill, told CNN. CNN has not independently confirmed this claim.
A man claiming to be Amedy Coulibaly, the hostage-taker at the Paris grocery store, told CNN affiliate BFMTV that he belonged to the Islamist militant group ISIS
The Western intelligence source said Coulibaly lived with Boumeddiene, his alleged accomplice in the police shooting.
Boumeddiene exchanged 500 phone calls with the wife of Cherif Kouachi in 2014, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. The wife told investigators that her husband and Coulibaly knew each other well.
French media outlets AFP, iTele and Le Point reported that police released Hamyd Mourad, 18, who turned himself in Wednesday after seeing his name on social media in connection with the Charlie Hebdo attack.
What's next for the magazine?
Charlie Hebdo plans to go on even without its leader and cherished staffers. It's set to publish many extra copies of its latest edition next Wednesday.
On Friday, Charlie Hebdo staff held their editorial meeting at the Libération newspaper offices.
"I don't know if I'm afraid anymore, because I've seen fear. I was scared for my friends, and they are dead," said Patrick Pelloux, a columnist for the magazine.
He and many others are defiant.
"I know that they didn't want us to be quiet," Pelloux said of the slain colleagues. "They would be assassinated twice, if we remained silent."Image copyright Reuters
Entertainment company Netflix has severed ties with Kevin Spacey, star of its House of Cards show, amid a number of sex assault allegations against him.
Netflix said it would hold talks with the producers to see if production, which was suspended this week, could resume without Spacey.
Netflix also said it would not release Spacey's film about writer Gore Vidal.
Meanwhile, police in the UK have opened an investigation into the American actor over an alleged sexual assault.
A British actor said he had woken up to find Spacey performing a sex act on him in 2008, the Sun newspaper reported. The man is said to have run from the property after Spacey allegedly said: "Don't tell anyone about this."
Spacey said on Thursday he was seeking treatment after facing allegations of sexual misconduct from a string of men.
Netflix suspended production on House of Cards on 31 October following allegations by Star Trek actor Anthony Rapp, who said Spacey had tried to "seduce" him when he was 14.
Spacey said he was "beyond horrified" to hear of the incident, which he said he did not remember.
'Hiatus time'
House of Cards, which is based on a BBC programme, was first broadcast in 2013.
The first season garnered nine Emmy nominations, becoming the first online streaming series to win such mainstream accolades.
"Netflix will not be involved with any further production of House of Cards that includes Kevin Spacey," a company spokesperson said in a statement.
"We will continue to work with MRC [series producer Media Rights Capital] during this hiatus time to evaluate our path forward as it relates to the show.
"We have also decided we will not be moving forward with the release of the film Gore, which was in post-production, starring and produced by Kevin Spacey."
MRC said in a statement earlier that it was "deeply troubled" about the allegations against Spacey.
It said it had dealt with one incident in 2012 in which an unnamed crew member "shared a complaint about a specific remark and gesture made by Kevin Spacey", that immediate action had been taken and that the issue had been resolved.
Spacey had "willingly participated in a training process", it added.I’ve been getting a bunch of feedback that my last blog post is wrong for various reasons, and I’d just like to say that I would absolutely LOVE to be proven wrong. Being wrong is awesome, that’s how you learn.
If you want to read my reasoning behind various assumptions, click “read more”.
Why I assume it’s voxels and not point clouds:
* Voxels store only the information about each point, and their positions are implicit in the location of where the voxel is stored. Point cloud data stores both the information about each point and the position of each point.
* They mention “64 atoms per cubic millimeter”, which is 4*4*4 points per mm^2. While it’s possible they only refer to the sampling frequency for turning polygonal structures into point data, the numbers are just too round for me to ignore as a programmer.
* All repeated structures in the world are all facing the same direction. To me, that means they aren’t able to easily rotate them arbitrarily.
About the size calculation:
* I was trying to show that there was no way there was that much UNIQUE data in the world, and that everything had to be made up of repeated chunks.
* One byte per voxel is way lower than the raw data you’d need. In reality, you’d probably want to track at least 24 bits of color and eight bits of normal vector data per voxel. That’s four times as much data. It’s quite possible you’d want to track even more data.
* If the data compresses down to 1%, it would still be 1 700 three-terrabyte hard drives of data at one byte of raw data per voxel.
Animated voxels:
* Holy crap, people sent me videos of this actually being done!
* I was wrong! :D
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkn6ubbp1SE
* (But please note that just that single animated character runs at 36 fps)
Why it’s a scam:
* They pretend like they’re doing something new and unique, but in reality a lot of people are researching this. There are a lot of known draw-backs to doing this.
* They refuse to address the known flaws. They don’t show non-repeated architecture, they don’t show animation, they don’t show rotated geometry, and they don’t show dynamic lighting.
* They invent new terminology and use superlatives and plenty of unverifiable claims.
* They say it’s a “search algorithm”. That’s just semantics to confuse the issue. Sparse voxel octrees is a search algorithm to do very fast ray casting in a voxel space.
* They seem to be doing some very impressive voxel rendering stuff, which could absolutely be used to make very interesting games, but it’s not as great as they claim it is. The only reason I can see for them misrepresenting it this bad is that I assume they’re looking for funding and/or to get bought up.
If these guys were being honest with the drawbacks and weaknesses of their system, I’d be their biggest fan. As it is now, it’s almost like they’re trying NOT to be trustworthy.
All this said, voxels are amazing. So is raytracing and raycasting. As computers get more powerful, and storage gets faster and cheaper, we will see amazing things happen.
And a final word to the engineers who worked on this: Great job, I am impressed! But please tell your marketing department to stop lying. ;)THE TOPLINE: President Trump reversed longstanding U.S. policy on Wednesday and announced that the country will recognize the Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
The Hill's Jordan Fabian reports:
Trump on Wednesday recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy there, a decision that could inflame tensions in the region and throw a wrench in potential peace negotiations.
"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said during a speech in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.
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Trump, who has vowed to broker a historic peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, declared he will try to resolve one of history's oldest conflicts his way, arguing that past approaches, such as delaying the recognition, have not worked.
"It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result," he said, calling his announcement "a long-overdue step to advance the peace process and work towards a lasting agreement."
Trump also directed the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as mandated by a 1995 law that has been waived by the past three presidents on national security grounds.
But U.S. officials say the move could take years to complete and Trump signed the embassy waiver, which officially puts off the move for another six months.
Nonetheless, Trump's announcement is his boldest foray yet into the Middle East.
Read the rest here.
MATTIS, TILLERSON REPORTEDLY OPPOSED DECISION: Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Trump to hold one-on-one with Kim | What to watch as summit kicks off | Top general dodges on Trump emergency declaration Retired officers express 'grave concern' with Trump's defense of transgender military policy Trump backs off total Syria withdrawal MORE and 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 both reportedly opposed the Jerusalem decision over security concerns, though both would not publicly say.
Via The Hill's Ellen Mitchell:
Mattis and Tillerson both expressed to Trump that moving the embassy would endanger American diplomats and troops stationed in the Middle East and Muslim countries, The Associated Press reported.
Reuters also reported that Tillerson and Mattis opposed the move from Tel Aviv, citing U.S. officials.
Tillerson, in a statement released after the announcement, said that the safety of Americans is the State Department's highest priority, and it had "implemented robust security plans to protect the safety of Americans in affected regions," prior to Trump's decision.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Tuesday told reporters that Tillerson had "made his positions clear to the White House," on moving Israel's U.S. embassy, but would not say whether the secretary agreed with Trump's decision.
Mattis also dodged questions from reporters Tuesday while returning from a trip to the Middle East and Africa.
The retired four-star general said he met with Trump "late last week" over the matter and the two had an "open discussion" that "went on for some time."
Read more here.
MORE ON TRUMP'S JERUSALEM DECISION:
The Memo: Five takeaways from Trump's Jerusalem speech
Emergency UN Security Council meeting called after Trump's Jerusalem announcement: report
US Embassy in Jordan warns of violent protests after Jerusalem move
Netanyahu: Trump's Jerusalem announcement marks 'historic day'
France's Macron criticizes Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital
British PM criticizes Trump for 'unhelpful' decision on Jerusalem
Trump has yet to name ambassadors to key nations in Mideast
TRUMP CALLS ON SAUDIS TO LIFT YEMEN BLOCKADE: President Trump on Wednesday said he's directed his administration to push Saudi Arabia to completely lift its blockade on war-torn Yemen.
"I have directed officials in my administration to call the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it," Trump said in a brief statement Wednesday. "This must be done for humanitarian reasons immediately."
Last month, Saudi Arabia ramped up its blockade on Yemen after Houthi rebels fired a missile on the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Under international pressure, Saudi Arabia partially lifted the blockade, and the first aid shipments since the blockade arrived last week.
Read the rest here.
AIR FORCES CHANGES CRIMINAL REPORTING PROCEDURES: Following the failure to report last month's Texas shooter to a criminal database and several similar oversights, the Air Force says it has made changes to ensure records are reported.
The Hill's Ellen Mitchell writes:
The top Air Force civilian told lawmakers Wednesday that the military branch has taken steps to ensure that criminal records make it into federal databases, after a mass shooting in Texas last month at the hands of a former serviceman.
"Since the tragedy, the Air Force has implemented additional measures to ensure current and future offender criminal history data is submitted to federal law enforcement agencies in a timely manner," Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in prepared testimony.
Wilson said the Air Force has added steps that require local offices to notify higher levels of command before closing criminal cases.
Read more here.
PENTAGON ACKNOWLEDGES 2,000 TROOPS IN SYRIA: Months after Defense Secretary James Mattis promised to increase transparency on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday there are four times more troops in Syria than previously stated.
The Hill's Ellen Mitchell reports:
The Defense Department on Wednesday acknowledged that the U.S. has roughly 2,000 troops on the ground in Syria, four times more than what officials had claimed just a month ago.
The number does not represent an increase in troop levels in the country, a Pentagon spokesman said, but instead reflects a more accurate count. The U.S. military had as recently as November said the official troop count in Syria was 503.
Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters that troop numbers are actually "trending downward" in Syria, with the recent departure of 400 artillery Marines. Those forces left the country after helping local forces retake the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) one-time de facto capital of Raqqa.
Read more here.
ON TAP FOR TOMORROW:
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on counterterrorism in Africa with testimony from State Department and Pentagon officials at 9:30 a.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building, room 2172. http://bit.ly/2ke4LtH
The military service secretaries and the under secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics will testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on acquisition reform at 10 a.m. at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, room G-50. http://bit.ly/2j6Tubb
ICYMI:
-- The Hill: Trump says government shutdown 'could happen'
-- The Hill: GOP chairman warns of ISIS's 'cyber caliphate'
-- The Hill: US bombers to fly over Korean peninsula: report
-- Military Times: Number of homeless vets rises for first time in seven years
-- Stars and Stripes: No plans to evacuate families off Korean Peninsula, US military says
Please send tips and comments to Rebecca Kheel, rkheel@thehill.com, and Ellen Mitchell, emitchell@thehill.com.
Follow us on Twitter: @thehill, @Rebecca_H_K, @EllenMitchell23In the months after 9/11, America’s spies and intelligence analysts came to realize that they had contributed to a disaster. The lack of focus on terrorism, the inability to share the information they had on jihadis—U.S. intelligence professionals realized they had to change their ways. And so they did, reorganizing and refocusing the intelligence community in large part around the fight |
, the entire region, minus only Israel, is in chaos, with no sign of an end and a potential butcher’s bill in the tens of millions. (Nobody ever realized that Power’s epic study of genocide was actually a handbook.) Moving on to scandals, we find another cornucopia. Fast and Furious! Lois Lerner! Solyndra! Jonathan Gruber! The Muslim Brotherhood! Illegal executive orders! Illegal ObamaCare changes! And going back, Obama’s award of a trillion-and-a-half dollars to his friends in the financial industry, for which he had no constitutional or legal sanction whatsoever. All this before the last phase of Obama’s tenure -- historically the period when festering scandals begin to bubble up. So pathetic is Obama’s record that his supporters have been driven to claim credit on his behalf for endeavors that he not only had nothing to do with (fracking, e.g.) but actively opposed, and still opposes. The notion of recovery simply beggars credulity. The Obama administration is in a state analogous to what aerodynamicists call “dynamic stall,” in which an aircraft is trapped by its own control surfaces at an angle in which no lift is generated and it begins plummeting like a brick. Efforts to regain control simply redouble the forces gripping the aircraft. The only solution is to punch out and watch the plane dig a hole. (See the climax of The Right Stuff for an example of this effect in action.) There’s no way out for Obama. All we can hope for is that the most urgent threats -- China, the Jihadis, a renewed financial crisis -- will hold off until a competent hand takes the controls. So what’s his alternative? Some hysterical elements have answered: tyranny. Obama, they claim, will “call off the elections,” “suspend the Constitution,” and fill up the FEMA camps. This is unlikely for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that the man behind the “Arab Spring” is totally incapable of any such effort. Obama is simply too incompetent to bring it off. His admiration for tyrants is well known, and he has no doubt reflected on the career of his largely overlooked political hero, Suharto, who obtained office in exactly that way. As generalissimo of Indonesia, Suharto loomed over Barry Soetero’s boyhood like a colossus. Much of Obama’s practical politics -- cronyism, government by decree, turning one ethnicity against another -- is derived directly from Suharto. But looking closely at Obama -- at his record, his personality, the way he walks -- we see that this man is clearly not one to embark on a coup d’etat. He can’t even throw a baseball right. Like ObamaCare, he’d need to have it done for him, and it’s doubtful anybody would volunteer. (As a final note, “calling off the elections’ has been shouted from one end of the spectrum to the other since Reagan. Every ensuing president has been accused of this. It has become the emblem of the loser, and should be dropped.) So what’s left for him? That has been obvious for the past several months, clearly evinced by his senseless executive orders, his annoying appointments, and his unwillingness to face up to the facts. Obama plans to be a pest Virtually every major action by Obama since autumn has been taken not to accomplish anything, or to achieve a goal, or to satisfy a public need, but merely to cause as much trouble, chaos, and heartache as possible. We finally know which godling Obama actually is -- he’s Loki, the Norse god of discord and strife. Taking a look at his recent actions, the pattern is clear: Immigration Decree: This failed to accomplish anything. It actually did little for the illegals, merely formalizing current government practice. What it did do was confound the Red states most victimized by illegal immigration, increase economic stress across the country, and expose Americans to novel tropical diseases. Opening to Cuba: Obama ended the embargo unilaterally, with no warning or planning. The U.S. gained absolutely no concessions from the Castros. Outside of the communists, criminal syndicates, and Obama’s friends among the financial elite, it promises to benefit no one -- the Cuban people least of all. The Paris March: No real explanation has been put forward for this, for the simple reason that the explanation can’t be spun for Obama’s benefit. Obama simply didn’t give a damn. What was in it for him? Waste a day flying the Atlantic to share the camera with European leaders, all for a bunch of dead white media bohos? And in defiance of his beloved Islam to boot. No way -- not on a playoff game Sunday. And just to twist the knife a little, he assured that nobody else apart from the ambassador showed up either. Nicely played. Release of the Yemeni Jihadis -- A week after four Jihadis associated with the Yemeni Al Qaeda murdered 17 people in Paris, Obama ordered the release of five Yemeni Islamists from Gitmo. No greater insult to France and the victims can be imagined. In the late 19th century, this, coupled with the march fiasco, would have caused a serious diplomatic incident that would have required years of work to repair. Fortunately, nobody expects anything better from Obama at this point. The Community College Scam -- What Obama is proposing here is adding another two years of high school. Anybody who has ever attended a community college knows that’s what it amounts to -- a means of warehousing students for two years to keep them off the job market. And Obama wants to spend billions to render this universal. Ingenious. The Tax “Plan” -- That this was intended to embarrass the GOP was demonstrated by the way that Obama broke tradition to announce it before the SOTU. That it has absolutely no hope of doing so was shown by the way the details were released on Saturday night of a holiday weekend. Not even Obama’s own staff thinks this one can work. Class warfare simply does not play in the U.S. for adults outside of academia. Only a throwback leftist would think otherwise. Seen side-by-side, Obama’s intentions concerning these efforts are obvious (as is the fact that all this started the week after the midterms). A seriously embittered Obama wants to annoy as many people as possible in his remaining two years. Thus far, he has struck out at the Red states, the wealthy, the leadership of Europe, the Jewish people, and American conservatives. But there is no group that can safely assume that they are not on the list. Sullen and infuriated, Obama will continue to strike out. The more chaos the better, as he looks on with that world-renowned superior smirk on his face. We can make some educated guesses as to what’s next. Racial antagonism is an obvious ploy and will continue. Obama will also do his best to aggravate relations between Muslims and Americans both domestically and internationally. Deliberately fumbling or ignoring conflict with China holds great promise, as does rewarding Putin with concessions. Gitmo is likely to be closed by fiat in the last weeks of his tenure, under the most dangerous circumstances imaginable. Curtailing fracking by “executive order,” empty negotiations with Al Qaeda, ISIS and so on… the possibilities are endless. The duty of Congress is obvious. An adolescent mentality inhabits the Oval Office. All procedural means must be taken to prevent him from doing the damage he’s capable of. (Forget impeachment. By the time that got rolling we’d be in the midst of Election 2016.) The voters, the United States, and the world at large may well deserve a thrashing for accepting, encouraging, and tolerating this clown -- and I believe they do. But there are limits. The possibilities for damage by a rogue president are nearly unimaginable.Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email
By 2060, the chance that two randomly selected Michiganders will be of different racial or ethnic backgrounds will increase from 39% to 60%, according to a USA Today Diversity Index, which analyzed census data and demographic trends. In that time, the state's Hispanic population will more than double, its African-American and Asian populations will increase, and six times as many Michiganders will identify themselves as multiracial, according to projections by USA Today.
Yet, even as the state becomes more diverse, its population will not grow as fast as populations in many other states, and Michigan's political clout in the U.S. Congress is likely to diminish. Other states, particularly in the South and Southwest, will benefit from larger and faster-growing numbers of Hispanic Americans. After the 1960 census, Michigan had 19 congressional districts. If trends continue, Michigan could lose another congressional seat, dropping from 14 members in the U.S. House of Representatives to 13 after the 2020 census., demographers predict. By 2060, the state's congressional districts could drop to 12, according to an analysis by the Institute for Southern Studies.
If annual birth and migration trends continue, Michigan is expected to drop to 10th largest by year's end as North Carolina's gains outpace Michigan's. Over the next decade, it is likely that Virginia will push Michigan out of the top 10, according to Kurt Metzger, founder of Data Driven Detroit, a nonprofit data analysis firm, and the mayor of Pleasant Ridge.
From their porch steps, many Michiganders already are witnessing a world of change.
Michigan's bracelet of diversity stretches from southwest Michigan, where Hispanic migration has helped grow communities, through the university towns of Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, to the changing suburbs of metropolitan Detroit.
Population trends by mid century will make Michigan's I-94 corridor —- from the state's southwest counties to suburban and urban Detroit —- a distinctive, multihued bracelet of racial and ethnic diversity around the wrist of the mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula.
Many of Detroit's historically white suburbs are undergoing rapid integration. By the mid-2020s, there will be as many African Americans living in the Detroit suburbs as in the Motor City, where more than eight out of 10 residents are black, said Metzger.
Some 23% of metro Detroit residents live in integrated communities, a nearly eightfold increase from 3% of communities in 2000, according to a University of Minnesota 2012 study of the nation's suburban racial diversity. A racially diverse community, according to the study, applies to municipalities that are 20% to 60% minority.
Among racially diverse suburbs in southeastern Michigan now are Novi, Troy, Farmington Hills, Eastpointe, Harper Woods, Oak Park, Redford Township, Taylor, Warren, Westland, West Bloomfield and Wixom.
In the once predominantly Polish enclave of Hamtramck, Mayor Karen Majewski's neighbors include African Americans, new arrivals from eastern European nations such as Bosnia and Albania; Asian Americans originally from Bangladesh, and Arab Americans who hail from Yemen. Hamtramck's City Council includes three Bangladeshi Americans, one African American and two Polish Americans.
During the Hamtramck Neighborhood Arts Festival on Oct. 11, 2014, Karen Majewski, the Mayor of Hamtramck and owner of Tekla Vintage on Jos. Campau, teaches Gregory Mulkern, 34, of Portland, Ore., a Hungarian Gypsy dance. Majewski was hosting a "Dancing with the Mayor" event at her store during the festival.
(Photo: Eric Seals, Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press)
"Because our homes are too close to each other, there is no escaping people who are different than you," said Majewski. "That's really the glory and the opportunity, especially for young people living in Hamtramck. There's no retreating to your suburban fortress. You are living and interacting with people from around the world."
Sometimes there are conflicts, she continued, "but that's also the opportunity you have to work out those everyday issues with anybody who lives in close quarters." She said it's wrong to paint those contentious interactions as ethnic conflicts, "when it's often who is parking in front of your house in your parking space."
In Washtenaw County's Superior Township, Brenda McKinney, the township's first elected African-American treasurer, has a diverse social circle that includes professionals who've moved to the community from Korea and China, and Hispanic business entrepreneurs.
CLOSE Superior Township residents talk about what diversity means to them. Patricia Montemurri/Detroit Free Press
Superior Township, its rural landscape tucked between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, is one of Michigan's most diverse communities. Among its 13,000-plus residents is Gov. Rick Snyder. The Asian community is growing because the Korean automaker Hyundai's America Technical Center is located in the township, and Japanese automaker Toyota Technical Center is nearby.
In the Oakbrook Park subdivision, McKinney counts many of them as neighbors. Among her close girlfriends are Nahid Sanii Yahyai, an Iranian-born scientist, and Hyun Choi, a Korean-born artist who met McKinney the first time when she visited the township hall to pay her taxes.
Brenda McKinney, center, the first African American elected treasurer for Superior Township, loves the fact that she lives in one of the most diverse communities in Michigan. She gathered on Oct. 17, 2014, with some of the people who call the township home: (from left) Karina Aguirre, with her husband, Roberto Gaytan, and their son, Roger Gaytan; Hyum Choi; (behind McKinney) Ken Schwartz; John Chun; and Nahid Yahyai and her husband Matthew Yahyai.
(Photo: Jessica J. Trevino, Detroit Free Press)
"I thought it was important for my daug
hter to be raised in a diverse neighborhood," said McKinney. "That's what the real world is like once you leave home."
In Grand Rapids and Lansing, the mix of white, black and Hispanic residents today forecasts the face of Michigan over the coming decades. In the Capitol City, according to census data, about six out of 10 residents are white; about 25% are black, and about 13% are Hispanic.
The most diverse community in Michigan is Covert Township, near the Lake Michigan resort town of South Haven in Van Buren County. Dating to the 1860s, with the arrival of Covert's first African-American settlers, the township has maintained a stable integrated community. In the last several years, the township's 3,000 residents also have included a growing number of Hispanics, who account for 31% of Covert's residents.
Michigan's increasing diversity especially impacts school districts. One of the most diverse schools in the state is R. Grant Graham Elementary School in Auburn Hills, part of the 3,800-student Avondale School District. The district also enrolls students from parts of Troy, Rochester Hills and Bloomfield Township. About 343 students in Avondale Schools speak English as a second language and hail from 40 countries, including Mexico, India, Iraq, Romania, Russia, Senegal and Congo.
"We have several constituencies across the district — from both an ethnic perspective and a socioeconomic perspective," says Avondale Superintendent Jim Schwarz. "We have to respond to both those levels of diversity. This is a challenge for all school districts."
In these places, comes a glimpse of Michigan's changing face.
BEHIND THE NATIONAL CURVE
But even as Michigan becomes more diverse, it will not match the overall pace of change in the U.S.
Nationally in 2060, on average, there will be a 71% chance —- or greater than two out of three —- that two randomly selected Americans will be of a different race, according to the USA Today Diversity Index. In Michigan, that diversity index number will be 60%. About 28 other states will record greater diversity than Michigan.
When the majority of Americans will be people of color —- expected to occur sometime around 2043 and already a reality in states such as Texas —- Michigan will be a state where the majority of residents remains white, demographers predict.
"Michigan will be behind the curve because we'll probably be 65%-68% white at that time," said demographer Metzger. "It's because the black population in the U.S. isn't growing and Michigan's predominant minority is African American."
"Diversity in this country is being driven by Hispanics, not by blacks, and not by Asians," said Metzger. "Our major changes will come more from Middle Eastern populations."
The USA Today Diversity Index includes the census' racial and ethnic categories of white, black, Asian, Hispanic, American Indian/Alaska native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Ancestry data is not included in the index. That means the contributions of Michiganders who are of Arab ancestry, estimated at about 2% in 2013, are not included in the USA Today Diversity Index.
Is southeastern Michigan's history of racial segregation changing? There are signs.
But even though 23% of metro Detroiters live in integrated communities, the national rate is 40% for residents in the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a study by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota.
But suburbs such as Eastpointe, along the Eight Mile Road border with Detroit, showed big gains in diversity since 2000. Eastpointe's African-American population grew from 5% African-American to 30% in 2010, spurred partly by the drop in housing prices during the recession.
"Eight Mile is an artificial construct, and people, whatever race and ethnicity, move for the same reasons. They want want nicer houses, better schools and less crime. They all want the same thing," said Patricia Becker, executive director of the Southeast Michigan Census Council. "The key to making the city of Detroit attractive is to making it attractive to families, and not just young singles."
If Michigan can attract immigrants, that will help the state both grow and become more diverse, said Becker.
And, half of all metro Detroit residents still live in predominantly white communities, defined as 80% or more white. That's down from 65% in 2000, but across the country, only 18% of metropolitan area dwellers live in predominantly white suburbs, according to the University of Minnesota study.
"Detroit is kind of average in diversity overall compared to metropolitan areas, but it's very segregated," said Myron Orfield, director of the University of Minnesota's institute.
Yet, Detroit segregation patterns set it apart, said Orfield, and the 2020 census may show history repeating itself. Will some Detroit suburbs follow the patterns of white flight that changed Detroit neighborhoods from all white to nearly all black in the past?
"Other metropolitan areas tend to become diverse more gradually. Detroit tends to have abrupt change," said Orfield.
Communities in metro Detroit, said Orfield, tend to "become diverse and suddenly... not diverse anymore."
"Diverse suburbs represent some of the nation's greatest hopes and its gravest challenges," Orfield wrote in the study. "The rapidly growing diversity of suburban communities suggests a degree of declining racial bias and at least the partial success of fair housing laws. But the fragile demographic stability in these newly diverse suburbs presents serious challenges for local, state and federal governments."
Past patterns are a continuing worry, said Shirley Stancato, president and CEO of New Detroit Inc., the nonprofit formed after the 1967 Detroit riot to address race relations
"Race is becoming more and more complex in our community," said Stancato.
"To measure the likelihood of standing next to someone who is different is an amazing approach," said Stancato of USA Today's Diversity Index. "But we still don't live next door to each other in many communities."
"All states are eventually going to reap the rewards of the diversity boom in the U.S.," according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey. But, instead of relying on gains, Frey notes, "we need to make a concerted effort to create opportunities in education and employment for young people and young families of color."
The Diversity Index projections follow a path set by past trends. They can't account for future unknowns — such as whether immigration policy will change or some new invention or technological innovation sprouts and blossoms in Michigan.
Foreign-born residents represented less than 4% of Michigan's population in 1990, and accounted for more than 6% in 2011, according to the Washington D.C-based Immigration Policy Center.
"We're not going to grow at the same rate as the rest of the country until we start attracting immigrants," said demograph Becker. "That's how the state grew to begin with. First with Europeans... then with African Americans from the South. If we can attract immigrants, that will help the state both grow and become more diverse."
There were about 617,000 Michigan residents who were foreign-born as of 2013, according to the census. Together, they equal the population of Grand Rapids, Warren, Lansing, Sterling Heights and Midland combined.
Diversity trends for Michigan
Year Diversity Index White Black Hispanic American Indian Asian Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander Other Two or more races 2010 39 79% 14% 4% 1% 2% 0% 1% 2% 2060 60 66% 16% 10% 1% 3% 0% 3% 12% SOURCE: USA TODAY and DETROIT FREE PRESSS analysis of 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data
SOURCE: USA TODAY and DETROIT FREE PRESSS analysis of 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data
Multiracial: This percentage of Michigan residents who identify themselves as multiracial is projected to increase by 10 percentage points to 12% of the population in 2060. Of the approximately 200,000 residents in 2010 who said they were multiracial, about 35% said they were black and white. One out of four said they were white and American Indian, and 20% said they were white and Asian. In addition, about 40,000 Michigan residents said they were Hispanic and multiracial.
Hispanics: Based on current trends, Michigan is expected to see a 6 percentage point increase in the Hispanic population, from about 4% now to 10% by 2060. The nation, as a whole, will have a greater Hispanic population than Michigan.
Michigan has not experienced the large influx of Hispanic Americans, who have higher birth rates than the general population, as other regions in the U.S., says demographer Metzger. In metro Detroit, Metzger says Hispanic Americans account for about 7% of the population, and have concentrated in southwest Detroit and adjacent inner-ring downriver suburbs, as well as Pontiac and near Romeo. Over the coming decades, Hispanic populations will grow in western Michigan.
The Pew Research Center, in analyzing U.S. Census data, estimates Michigan has about 447,000 people of Hispanic origin, with the country's 20th largest number of Hispanic residents. But the state ranks 38th when Hispanics as a percentage of a state's population is considered.
African Americans/Blacks: Blacks comprise 14% of Michigan's population in 2010. The African-American population is expected to increase by two percentage points, to 16% of the population statewide in 2060 — higher than the U.S. rate of 14% in 2060.
Asian Americans: Asian Americans accounted for about 2% of the state's population in 2010, and is predicted to grow to 3% in 2060. Immigrants from India, Pakistan, Korea, Japan and China have settled in southeastern Michigan for professional jobs in the auto industry and other professions. They've contributed to the diversity registered by such communities as Superior Township, Novi and Farmington Hills. Asian Americans tend to have low birth rates, and based on current trends, the community won't grow that much, said Metzger. In Hamtramck and nearby Detroit neighborhoods, Bangladeshi immigrants have settled as small business entrepreneurs. Small communities of Hmong and Vietnamese reside in southern Macomb County.
American Indians: The percentage of the population in Michigan that identifies themselves as American Indian population is expected to remain the same over the next several decades at 1%. A majority of communities in the eastern area of the U.P. have some of the largest percentages of American Indian residents in the state. For example, Bay Mill Township's is 50% American Indian, and St. Ignace city and township included about 30% in 2010. In the central lower peninsula, about 18% of Chippewa Township's 5,000 residents are American Indians.
Caucasian/Whites: As the nation become more diverse, Michigan follows suit, but will still have a higher percentage of whites that make up the population base compared with the nation as a whole. In 2010, about 79% of the state population was white. That number is expected to decline by 13 percentage points in 2060. Whites are older than other groups, and have a decreasing share of women in their child-bearing years. The combination of age and lower fertility rates compared with other groups are the primary drivers behind declining white population, explains Metzger.(RNS) The Boy Scouts of America and the Unitarian Universalist Association signed a new agreement Thursday (March 24) after the two organizations had previously been divided over gay rights.
“BSA Scout Law defines a Scout by qualities that Unitarian Universalists also lift up,” reads the memorandum of understanding signed by Scouting and Unitarian Universalist officials at the BSA headquarters in Irving, Texas.
It also notes “both Scouts and Unitarian Universalists strive to be good stewards of Earth.”
The UUA dissolved a previous agreement with the BSA in the 1990s because the Scouting organization had banned openly gay members. In July 2015, the BSA dropped its ban on gay adult leaders, two years after it allowed gay youths.
“I am happy to see our two organizations form new bonds of mutual understanding which will allow Unitarian Universalist boys and young men who want to participate in scouting to be able to do so within their own Unitarian Universalist community,” said the Rev. Peter Morales, president of the UUA.
Zach Wahls, co-founder of Scouts for Equality and a Unitarian Universalist, also welcomed the juncture, calling it “a good day for the future of scouting.”
Boy Scouts officials said they look forward to renewing their work with Unitarian Universalists.
“America’s youth are better off when they are in Scouting, and the Boy Scouts of America is successful because of its relationships with valued chartered organizations like the UUA,” the BSA said in a statement to RNS.
RELATED STORY: Mormon church sticking with Boy Scouts
Since the BSA’s 2015 decision, other religious groups — which have long been the majority of chartering organizations — have resolved or dissolved their relationships with the Scouting organization. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the BSA’s largest sponsor, announced last year that it would continue as a chartering organization.
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod cut its ties to the BSA in December, saying their previous agreement was “no longer tenable.”
Other groups renewing relations include the United Church of Christ and the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism.
(Adelle M. Banks is production editor and a national reporter for RNS)Collection MountainGoats
01. Unmasked! *
02. Up the Wolves
03. Foreign Object
04. Slow West Vultures
05. Animal Mask
06. The Young Thousands
07. Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan
08. Steal Smoked Fish *
09. Linda Blair Was Born Innocent *
10. Beyond the Mysterious Beyond *
11. Southwestern Territory
12. Love Love Love
13. Werewolf Gimmick
14. Game Shows Touch Our Lives
15. Cry for Judas
16. Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod
17. Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1
ENCORE:
18. Get Lonely
19. The Legend of Chavo Guerrero
20. This Year
* John solo
Identifier mountaingoats2015-04-02.flac16 Lineage RecForge2/Galaxy S5 > Goldwave 5.23 > CDWAV > WAV Location Nashville, TN Run time 92:12 Source Sony ECM-DS70P > SPSB-11 Batt Box > RecForge2/Galaxy S5 Taped by ezralite23 Transferred by ezralite23 Type sound Venue Mercy Lounge Year 2015Giants pitcher Matt Cain poses for the NoH8 LGBT rights campaign. (Adam Bouska/NoH8) Giants pitcher Matt Cain poses for the NoH8 LGBT rights campaign. (Adam Bouska/NoH8)
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – San Francisco right hander Matt Cain has become the latest celebrity to be photographed as part of the NoH8 campaign for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.
The campaign was established in response to California’s 2008 passing of Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. According to founders Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley, the photographic protest, which is known for depicting celebrities and ordinary people with a piece of duct tape over their mouths, symbolizes voices being silenced by Prop. 8.
Cain, the longest tenured Giant, was featured by the campaign Thursday as the photo of the day. The Alabama native is identified by the NoH8 as an “LGBT Ally.” He was one of several Giants to appear in a video for the It Gets Better Campaign. The Giants were the first professional team to join the anti-harassment campaign.
The 27-year-old signed a five-year contract extension in the offseason. On June 13th, he pitched the 22nd perfect game in Major League history and first in franchise history.
(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)Spread the love
Arsonists reportedly destroyed a well known Science Center in Naples Italy that promotes Evolutionism. From the pages of the Journal Nature:
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/496169c On the night of 4 March, unknown arsonists destroyed the famous City of Science centre in Naples. This shocking event has been publicly welcomed by some hard-line creationists in Italy, who disapprove of the teaching of evolution at the centre.
…..
The conservative commentators who instead seemed to rejoice at the centre’s destruction include the national news paper Il Foglio, which applauded the flames as purification against the sourge of evolutionism — “a nineteenth-century superstition” destined to bring young people to “despair and simian behaviors”. This inflammatory anti-Darwinism has been rapidly amplified on the Internet.
….
Italy’s current climate of political uncertainty seems to have fostered an unexpected resurgence in creationism…
The article only claims the creationists welcomed the burning of the center, it does not actually, imho, demonstrate that creationists ever said they approve of arson! But, in the spirit of openess, if any of our Italian readers can provide original source material and translate it for us, I would be grateful.
By the way, it is nice to see the pages of nature use the term “evolutionism” since the commitment to the theory of evolution is one of dogma rather than evidence.Veteran Fighter Blas Avena Found Dead, Police Suspect Suicide
Thirty-two-year-old mixed martial artist Blas Avena was found deceased in his Las Vegas apartment on Wednesday. Las Vegas Metro Police are investigating his passing as a possible suicide.
“Arriving police and medical personnel located an adult male who was pronounced deceased at the scene. As of now, the death is being investigated as a suicide,” a LVMPD spokesperson told TMZ.
HOT TOPIC > Bellator Fighter Jordan Parsons, 25, Dies Following Hit-and-Run Incident
Avena made his professional MMA debut in January 2005. He competed six times in the WEC and last fought at Bellator 96 in June 2013, losing to War Machine by TKO.
An autopsy was performed on Avena, but the cause of death won’t be determined until further tests are competed and the results returned.
Avena was a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with an MMA record of 8-7, 1 NC.
Follow MMAWeekly.com on Facebook, Twitter and InstagramTruffle Tricks for Ethereum Development: Dispelling 8 Myths & First Impressions
Tim Coulter Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 22, 2015
If you haven’t heard of Truffle, go get it. It’s a tool that makes developing Ethereum projects much easier. When people first interact with Truffle, they think they’re confined to fitting into the structure first provided, having a very rare scope that supports only specific types of projects. I’m here to dispel that myth — and many others — and show you some Truffle tricks you didn’t know were possible.
Myth #1: You must use the folders provided to you in the `app` directory
When you run `truffle init` and you’re given an app directory with “javascripts”, “stylesheets” and “images” within it, you might think you have to use those directories to take advantage of Truffle’s build process. You don’t. You can delete those folders, add new ones, or rename them to your heart’s content. Here’s an example build configuration where files have been renamed (notice no images directory):
Directory structure:
/app
— pages
— controls
— vendor
App configuration:
{
“build”: {
"app.js": [
"vendor/react.js", // structure is up to you
"controls/button.js",
"pages/page_one.jsx",
"pages/page_two.jsx"
]
},
//...
}
Myth #2: Dependencies must live in the app directory
Paths are relative to the app directory, but that doesn’t mean dependencies have to live there. Here’s an example where the build process refers to dependencies that exist outside of “app”, allowing you to take advantage of package managers like npm:
{
“build”: {
"app.js": [
"../node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js",
//...
]
},
//...
}
Myth #3: Truffle can only build web apps
False. Here’s a great example of Truffle building a library, creating both a distributable and minified version.
Myth #4: Truffle can’t have multiple dependent build targets
Oh but it can. Taken from the same example as Myth #3, you can use build targets as they’re created, since each build target within app.json is created in order:
{
“build”: {
// The main library file.
“hooked-web3-provider.js”: “hooked-web3-provider.es6”,
// Note, the first one will be processed before this one,
// so we can refer to the built file.
“hooked-web3-provider.min.js”: {
“files”: [
“../build/hooked-web3-provider.js”
],
“post-process”: [
“uglify”
]
}
},
//...
}
Myth #5: Like it or not, you must use Truffle’s build process
Nope — this is perhaps the biggest myth. Just delete the “build” configuration from your app.json if you need something more complex (or don’t want a build process at all). You can still use Truffle for contract compilation, testing and deployment.
Myth #6: Contract code requires lots of copy pasta
This isn’t so much a myth it is a lesser-known feature we added to Truffle. Solidity’s import statement leaves much to be desired, so we wrote our own. If you want to include one contract as a dependency of another, simply import it in the order you want it included; Truffle will take care of the rest.
import "Permissioned"; // Looks for./contracts/Permissioned.sol
contract MyContract is Permissioned {
//..
}
You can even import nested contract files:
import "tools/Hammer"; // Looks for./contracts/tools/Hammer.sol
And viola! Mangeable, maintainable code separation, sans pasta.
Myth #7: Truffle doesn’t support different blockchains like development vs. staging vs. production, or a testnet vs. Olympic vs. Frontier)
Au contraire. Truffle has the concept of environments — pulled from Rails — that you can use to configure different blockchains and contracts deployed to those blockchains. By default you’re given development, staging, production and test, but they’re not required. If you don’t need one, just delete it and Truffle will respond accordingly. If you want to make your environments more tailored to you, then rename them. Here’s an example file structure with environment names tailored to the context the app will be deployed to:
Directory structure:
/config
— development
— consensys-testnet
— ethereum-mainnet
- app.json
Each of the directories within `config` should contain a `config.json` file that at minimum defines the network they connect to. You can also use this config file to overwrite the default configuration of any value within `app.json`:
{
"rpc": {
"host": "xx.xx.xx.xx",
"port": "1234"
}
}
Once in place, you can build your application as well as compile and deploy your contracts to use the environments you’ve specified:
// Both compile and deploy will write a contracts.json file to the
// environment specified:
$ truffle compile -e consensys-testnet
$ truffle deploy -e consensys-testnet
// Building will hook up the contracts in the specified environment
// to the frontend for use. If you keep the production environment,
// `truffle dist` will create a `dist` folder you can commit to
// your respository.
$ truffle build -e consensys-testnet
$ truffle dist
Myth #8: Truffle doesn’t support complex deployment processes
Truffle hasn’t taken a stance on the ideal contract deployment process, so you won’t see any advanced deployment options if you take a deep dive into the code. But complex deployment processes are possible, and can easily be scripted with `truffle exec`. Truffle’s `exec` command lets you run a Node script within the environment you specify (details below), interacting with your contracts the same way you would when writing your frontend or your tests.
Here’s an example script that can be run after `truffle deploy` that hooks up an AppStore contract with an AppFactory:
File Name: register_factories.js
-----------------------------------------------------
var store = AppStore.at(AppStore.deployed_address);
store.registerFactory(“app”, AppFactory.deployed_address)
.then(function(tx) {
console.log(“Registered AppFactory successfully.”);
process.exit(0)
}).catch(function(e) {
console.log(e);
process.exit(1);
});
To run this script, simply run the following. In this example, `truffle exec` will use the contracts that were already deployed to the “consensys-testnet” environment created above:
$ truffle exec./ |
energy always tend to change from complex and ordered states to disordered states. Therefore the universe could not have created itself, but could not have existed forever, or it would have run down long ago. Thus the universe, including matter and energy, apparently must have been created.
Ham’s statements, though, contradict the efforts of such organizations, because in his opinion, looking toward scientific principles for explanation is not going to be sufficient.
The estimated percentage of scientists who believe in evolution is between 95-99.9%. Those scientists say that the earth has existed for billions of years and continues to evolve. According to a website about evolution from the University of California at Berkeley:
At the heart of evolutionary theory is the basic idea that life has existed for billions of years and has changed over time. Overwhelming evidence supports this fact. Scientists continue to argue about details of evolution, but the question of whether life has a long history or not was answered in the affirmative at least two centuries ago. The history of living things is documented through multiple lines of evidence that converge to tell the story of life through time.
Whether or not this new admission by lead creationist Ken Ham will make waves in the creationism community remains to be seen. Ham says there is no scientific proof of Intelligent Design. Will his statements be accepted or rejected by most creationists?
By: Rebecca Savastio
Source 1
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Source 4Now Cook is taking his case to a broader audience this evening by appearing on ABC World News Tonight with anchor David Muir. Clips of the show have surfaced before the 6:30pm ET air time and Cook remains steadfast in his insistence that helping the FBI unlock the iPhone 5c would set a chilling precedent.
"The protection of people's data is incredibly important. So the trade off here is, we know that doing this could expose people to incredible vulnerabilities. This is not something we would create. This would be bad for America," Cook tells Muir during the interview.
When Muir asks Cook if he had any concerns that he might prevent a terrorist attack by unlock that phone. Cook replied, "some things are hard and some things are right and some things are both. This is one of those things."
Cook also said that he wished there had been more of a dialog with the administration and Justice Department before the filing to compel the company to help unlock the phone. "I don't think something so important to the country should be handled this way," Cook added.
Apple's deadline to reply to the government's motions to help the FBI unlock the iPhone is February 26.
Update: In the full interview (available below), Cook told Muir that what the FBI wants is "what we view as sort of the software equivalent of cancer," because it could compromise the security of hundreds of millions of other users.
Cook also cautioned that if Apple complies with the request, both it and other companies could be compelled to do more. "If a court can ask us to write this piece of software, think about what else they could ask us to write. Maybe it's an operating system for surveillance. Maybe it's the ability for law enforcement to turn on the camera. I don't know where this stops," the Apple CEO said.
During the interview Cook said multiple times that this is about civil liberties, safety and privacy. Noting that smartphones have more personal information about users than any other device. He named off items in stored on the devices including personal messages, banking information and the location of people's children and other family members.
The CEO will be meeting with President Obama about the matter and was optimistic that everything would work out, but he noted that the company is in it for the duration. When asked if the company was prepared to go to the Supreme Court to fight the order he answered, "we are prepared to go all the way. I think it's that important for America,"The International Bowl is a high school football game held in January USA Football and the American football governing bodies of international countries. The game is held in Arlington, Texas at AT&T Stadium. The game brings 100 of the world's top high school football players in a Team USA vs. The World Team matchup.[1]
The game began as a tournament in 2009 with the United States, Canada, Mexico and France. All the players are under 19. Virginia Tech running back David Wilson was a part of the first tournament in the first season.[2]
The game has been broadcast through NFL Network, CBS Sports and currently USA Football has television rights with ESPN, which televised the 2018 International Bowl. The United States won the first five meetings against Canada, Mexico, France and the World Team. The World Team was the first to defeat Team USA, with a 35–29 win in the 2012 International Bowl.Jan 13
The 100, a new post-apocalyptic (kiddie) series (2014)
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The 100, or ‘The Hundred’ is an upcoming American post-apocalyptic drama television series that is expected to air on the Northern American television network ‘The CW’ during the 2013–14 American television season. Set 97 years after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization, when a spaceship housing humanity’s lone survivors sends 100 juvenile delinquents back to Earth in hopes of possibly re-populating the planet.
The series is based on a book of the same name (3,43 out of 5 on Goodreads), the first in a series by Kass Morgan, and developed by Jason Rothenberg.
Ever since a devastating nuclear war, humanity has lived on spaceships far above Earth’s radioactive surface. No one knows when, or even if, the long-abandoned planet will be habitable again. But faced with dwindling resources and a growing populace, government leaders know they must reclaim their homeland… before it’s too late.
Now, one hundred juvenile delinquents, that are being considered expendable by society, are about to be sent on a dangerous mission: to recolonize the planet. It could be their second chance at life…or it could be a suicide mission. After a brutal crash landing, the teens arrive on a savagely beautiful planet they’ve only seen from space. Confronting the dangers of this rugged new world, they struggle to form a tentative community. But they’re haunted by their past and uncertain about the future. To survive, they must learn to trust – and even love – again
Some of the main characters are Clarke Griffin, played by Eliza Taylor was arrested for treason, though she’s haunted by the memory of what she really did. Reckless Bellamy Blake, played by Bobby Morley, fought his way onto the transport pod to protect his sister, the other half of the only pair of siblings in the universe. Wells Jaha, played by Eli Goree, the chancellor’s son, came to Earth for the girl he loves — but will she ever forgive him? And Glass managed to escape back onto the ship, only to find that life there is just as dangerous as she feared it would be on Earth.
Confronted with a savage land and haunted by secrets from their pasts, the hundred must fight to survive. They were never meant to be heroes, but they may be mankind’s last hope.
First thoughts when I watched the trailer is ‘damm this looks good’.. But very quickly my excitement dropped when I thought more about it. It looks like a mix of Hunger Games (oke movie I guess), Battle Royale (great movie) and felt more like Revolution, a show that is just a soap/drama series in a post apocalyptic background. I fear this series is going precisely the same. A hundred kids, means a lot of hormones, what means a lot of romance. Also that little sentence in the description, ‘To survive, they must learn to trust – and even love – again‘ tells me this series is probably going to be one big letdown. Maybe the series is focused on a younger audience and maybe they are going to love it, I fear that after 2 episodes I can quit watching it 😀
Anyway we will see how it turns out, for now you can watch ‘The 100′ series trailer and another clip that you just have to watch for the part at 0:55.0
One of the reasons Marvel Studios has been able to maintain such consistency throughout its inter-connected Marvel Cinematic Universe (which is now 11 films deep) is because Kevin Feige, the studio’s President, has remained the creative driving force since its inception. A producer on every Marvel Studios film, Feige is the “grand architect” of the MCU, and he’s the one who helps implement the studio’s ambitious plans.
Steve recently spoke with Feige at the press day for Avengers: Age of Ultron, and he asked the Marvel Studios head an incredibly important question: when is his Marvel contract up?
So obviously this doesn’t mean that Feige is leaving the Marvel world in 2018, but at that point in time—assuming Marvel continues to churn out massive hits (they will)—he’ll be in a position to decide if he wants to extend his post at the studio.
Again, Feige is one of the main reasons Marvel has been able to execute what’s essentially a series of comic books in film form. Directors, writers and stars vary from movie-to-movie, but Feige is intimately involved in every single one from conception to release, ensuring that they all feel part of one universe no matter their specific eccentricities.
It’s unclear when exactly in 2018 Feige’s contract is up, but currently Marvel has three films slated for release that year: Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the first half of its two-part Infinity War saga. I’d be shocked if Feige didn’t stick around to see Infinity War conclude in 2019, since it’s the culmination of the Thanos battle that Marvel first teased in The Avengers, but it’ll be interesting to see what else Marvel has on the horizon beyond 2019 once that event concludes.
Click here if you missed what Feige had to say about the next Spider-Man movie. Look for more from Steve’s interview with Feige on Collider soon. For a refresher on all of Marvel’s confirmed releases, see below. And for a catalog of all upcoming superhero movie release dates, click here.Looking for news you can trust?
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Update (5/26/16): Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) signed the legislation this afternoon. The passage of the bill was roundly criticized by the New Orleans chapter of the Black Youth Project 100, a prominent organization within the Black Lives Matter movement.
—-
In keeping with the trend of Southern states proposing puzzling legislation in recent months, Louisiana is set to pass a bill that would add law enforcement officers to the list of classes protected under the state’s hate crime law.
Louisiana House Bill 953, the “Blue Lives Matter” bill, would also add firefighters and emergency medical responders to the list. The current hate crime law covers crimes committed against people because of their race, age, gender, religion, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, or ancestry. People convicted of hate crimes can have up to five years added to their sentence. Both houses of Louisiana’s legislature have passed the bill, and a spokesman for Gov. John Bel Edwards, whose family includes four generations of police officers, indicated that the governor would sign the bill this week. (Similar legislation was introduced in the US House in March.)
Hate crime laws are designed to protect people who are victimized because of immutable characteristics.
State Rep. Lance Harris, who introduced the Blue Lives bill last month, said it was needed because of rising attacks against law enforcement personnel. As examples, Harris mentioned the August 2015 shooting of a Texas sheriff and the ambush of two New York City police officers in December 2014. But the suspect in the Texas case was found incompetent to stand trial, and the assailant in the NYPD incident showed signs of emotional instability before that attack—and killed himself afterward. This past September, the American Enterprise Institute put out a report noting that shootings of police officers had hit their lowest point in a decade. A December 2015 report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund found that 42 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2015—a 14 percent drop from the previous year.
Allison Padilla-Goodman, regional director for the south-central division of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), says adding cops to the list of categories covered by hate crime law is a bad idea for many reasons. For one, Louisiana—like every other state—already treats crimes against police officers more seriously than crimes against civilians.
Adding police officers to the list of protected classes, she says, distorts the purpose of the original legislation. Hate crime laws are designed to protect people who are victimized because of immutable characteristics, “something that someone cannot change about themselves or should not have to change about themselves,” notes Padilla-Goodman, and occupation is temporary and an inherently different kind of attribute. Adding occupations to the list, she says, will “water down” the law, weakening its impact and opening the door to further inappropriate categories. Some states have proposed giving homeless people protected status under hate crime laws—the ADL doesn’t support that, either.
“There’s no confusion that crimes against law enforcement should be handled seriously…The same cannot be said about crimes against transgender people.”
Another problem with putting occupations on the list, Padilla-Goodman says, is that it will sow more confusion about what constitutes a hate crime—as it stands, hate crimes are drastically underreported in Louisiana, largely because police officers don’t understand how they are defined or why it’s important to report them. In 2014, only eight of 86 Louisiana state law enforcement agencies reported hate crimes to the FBI, and those agencies reported only nine hate crimes in all. (States of comparable population—Kentucky and Colorado—reported 163 and 96 hate crimes, respectively.) “There’s no confusion that crimes against law enforcement are serious and should be handled seriously,” Padilla-Goodman says. “The same cannot be said about crimes against [for example] transgender people.”
Ironically, she told me, Louisiana’s current law could be interpreted to cover attacks on police or firefighters: People who target someone based on “actual or perceived membership or service in, or employment with, an organization” are eligible to receive a harsher punishment. In any case, hate crimes can be hard to prove. “If I go out and shoot a cop, I’m going to have an enhanced penalty already,” Padilla-Goodman says. But “if somebody wants to try to prove that I committed a hate crime against a cop, somebody had to hear me say, ‘I hate all cops.'”
Randy Sutton, a spokesman for Blue Lives Matter, a national law enforcement group, told CNN last week that “it’s usually people committing crimes like robbery, or that are being pursued by police, that turn to shooting officers.” That, notes Padilla-Goodman, is essentially a concession that people don’t usually attack cops because they hate them: “Somebody committing a crime against somebody because they’re black didn’t mean that the black person had to do anything” to provoke it.In the House of Representatives, Republicans claim they’ve braced themselves to let the full force of the sequester hit government programs of all kinds on March 1, defense most directly, rather than compromise with Democrats to replace it with a mix of more thoughtful cuts and higher taxes.
Whether all their chest puffing is an authentic sign of confidence or not, it’s designed to suggest that they are more prepared than Democrats to weather the political consequences: job losses, reduced economic output, lower profits for key stakeholders.
Democrats by contrast are saying they want to avoid the sequester, if only in brief spurts.
“What we think would be a better effort would be to move forward and, on short increments, pay for the sequestration,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters at his weekly Capitol press availability on Tuesday.
But Democrats aren’t just auditioning to play foil to the GOP.At the same press conference Reid tipped his hand to his party’s subtler strategy.
“There are many low-hanging pieces of fruit out there that Republicans have said they agreed on previously,” Reid added. “I’m not going to go into detail, but one of them, of course, is deal with oil companies.”
That’s a tip of the hand. As the sequestration deadline approaches at the end of next month, Republicans will be be stuck with an absolutist line. Letting the sequester hit would be better than replacing it with even a penny of revenue; and their offer, from the last Congress, is to replace the entire sequester largely with deep cuts to social programs for the poor.
Democrats will have a counteroffer. Perhaps the parties can’t agree on a complete sequester replacement. But they can pay it down for a few months with popular cuts and revenue raisers, including by eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies.
“[T]here’s a lot of things we can do out there, and we’re going to make an effort to make sure that … sequestration involves revenue,” Reid added. “Remember, the American people still believe, by an overwhelming margin, that the rich should contribute to this. They believe that Medicare shouldn’t be whacked. They believe domestic discretionary spending has been hit very hard already. They believe that there could be a better way of dealing with defense than this meat cleaver that sequestration does.”
This is another way of saying the Democrats will attempt to clarify both the stakes and the parties’ positions to voters and incumbent interests — to signal to voters that Republicans would rather cut spending on programs for the poor than raise even a small amount of revenue by ending subsidies for oil companies; and to signal to the defense industry leaders that their long-time GOP allies will abandon them rather than tax oil companies even a little bit. In fact, Republicans’ position amounts to telling defense contractors that they’ll happily threaten their profits unless Democrats agree to cut social insurance programs.
It’s yet another reason to suspect the GOP’s bluster about the sequester is simply that.Arunima Sinha, the first female amputee to climb the world's highest peak, Mount Everest (8,848 metres), added another mountain to her impressive done-that list when she hoisted the Indian tricolour atop Monte Rosa (4,634 metres), the highest peak in the Alps in Switzerland, rather aptly on Independence Day.
She has dedicated her latest victory to the countless Indians who prayed for her success, her much elated family members told reporters in her native Ambedkar Nagar on Monday.
Arunima, who has an artificial leg after a train accident, has set herself the goal to conquer all the highest mountains in all the seven continents. She has already scaled the 5,895-metre Mount Kilimanjaro (Africa), Elbrus (5,642 m, Russia) and Kosciuszko (2,228 m, Australia). Her next expedition would be to scale the 6,960-metre-high Aconcagua (South America), which is the highest in the world outside Asia.
Arunima lost one of her legs in April 2011 when she was pushed from a running train by thugs trying to snatch her bag and gold chain. The young volleyball champ turned her handicap into her strength and went on to scale the Mount Everst under the legendary mountaineer Bachendri Pal.
Actor-Director Farhan Akhtar is working on a film on her life based on her book "Born again on the mountain".This 1960 Ford Ranchero was built in the first model year of the compact Falcon-based version, during which just under 22,000 were produced. This example is powered by a 170ci straight-six with a 3-speed manual gearbox and was acquired recently by the selling dealer, who describes it as a nice driver that is usable as-is but will provide the opportunity for occasional tinkering. Recent work includes installation of a new windshield, weather stripping, and front wheel cylinders along with other minor freshening as described below. Condition is detailed in 175 photos and over 30 minutes of video. This Ranchero is sold with a clean Oregon title.
Originally a slightly paler Monte Carlo Red, the current finish is likely over 20 years old according to the seller. Areas of the original color are visible around the bed due to removal of a formerly mounted canopy, though the color-matched bed rails were reportedly repainted within the past year. An assortment of chips, scratches, and other flaws is detailed by the seller in the photos and video below.
This video provides a detailed tour of the exterior, interior, engine bay, and underside along with running and driving footage. The seller points out the overall presentable nature while noting mild ripples, a dent low on the passenger rear quarter panel, and bubbling in the driver’s rear wheel arch.
Red-painted 13″ factory steel wheels wear polished caps, and other brightwork is represented in detailed photos below. Radial tires are older but retain good tread depth according to the seller. A new windshield, gasket, and door weatherstripping have been installed. Exterior lighting is shown to be functional down to the license plate light, though the driver-side exterior door lock is broken as pointed out in the video. A filler piece has taken the place of a formerly mounted antenna, and a trailer outlet is present over the rear bumper.
Originally red and white, the bench seat and matching door panels were refinished in black and white vinyl with all described as presentable. The steering wheel, column shifter, and other controls are factory items. Newer wind lacing is present, and fresh-looking carpets cover floors coated in rust-preventive paint. The heater works on the medium setting and a period air conditioning system is equipped and operational, but blows cold only briefly when charged with refrigerant. A matching spare wheel is tucked behind the driver’s seat.
Turn signals, windshield wipers, and dash lights are all said to work, though the speedometer optimistic. The five-digit odometer reads just over 29k indicated miles and is assumed by the seller to have rolled over. Control knobs are described as fragile and likely in need of replacement in the near future. The factory AM radio and dome light are inoperative along with the fuel and temperature gauges.
A 170ci straight-six has replaced the original 144ci unit and features a rebuilt 1960 head with integrated intake manifold on a 1964 bottom end according to the seller. The engine is shown to start quickly, idle well, and rev smoothly in the video. The underhood area includes heavy black undercoating on the firewall, though the powerplant itself has been detailed by the seller. The 3-speed column-shifted manual is linked to a 3.89:1 differential, with both appearing in good shape according to the seller.
Four-wheel drum brakes have received new wheel cylinders up front along with a fresh passenger-side brake hose. The brakes are noted as pulling slightly to the right during the first few applications after extended periods of sitting, but the car is said to stop straight afterward. Various suspension bushings and mounts are cracked and noted as in need of future replacement.
Rockers retain open drain holes and are said to remain solid along with unibody chassis rails as detailed in undercarriage photos and the video above. Occasional surface rust and flaking undercoat are pointed out as well as pinholes in the floors. A newer muffler and fresh section of fuel hose are also shown.The attendance roster, which was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the list, reveals a mix of White House staff, including David Plouffe, a senior adviser and campaign manager from 2008; Jacob J. Lew, the chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, senior advisers; Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director; and Alyssa Mastromonaco, a deputy chief of staff who has worked for Mr. Obama since his days in the Senate.
The campaign team includes Jim Messina, the campaign manager, who sets the agenda for the meeting; David Axelrod, a senior strategist; Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager; and Larry Grisolano, a top political adviser.
The president, who is set to open his re-election campaign formally on Saturday with back-to-back rallies in Ohio and Virginia, has been preparing to run against Mr. Romney since well before the Republican nomination was settled. Mr. Obama has been studying the statements and record of his opponent — particularly on the Massachusetts health care law, a model for the national law — and is well on his way to becoming a student of Mr. Romney’s positions.
Mr. Obama, who three years ago became the first president to demand a BlackBerry to keep in touch with the outside world, has now become the first sitting president to rely on an iPad to stay informed. He watches campaign commercials, offering his seal of approval to the first wave of advertisements to be used against Mr. Romney, and he follows his rival through newspaper articles and blogs.
The president has already made clear that he is well acquainted with Mr. Romney’s views. At a news conference this week, Mr. Obama urged people to “take a look” at his opponent. He reprised a comment by Mr. Romney in 2007 when he said he would not invade a country to capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
“I said that I’d go after Bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him,” Mr. Obama said, “and I did.”
If running for president the first time is a full-time job, running for re-election is a bit like moonlighting. For all the planning that Mr. Obama’s team employs, uncertainties like the jobs report on Friday mornings often end up driving the election.
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Even so, some presidents are more political than others. Mr. Obama is intensely competitive, but far from obsessive about politics in the way that former President Bill Clinton is. Mr. Obama’s approach is closer to that of former President George W. Bush, who assumed a bird’s-eye view of his re-election bid.
In a contest increasingly guided by factors beyond the direct control of either candidate, Mr. Obama has gradually increased the attention he has devoted to the race. Yet aides say he still spends far more time on his iPad checking scores on ESPN than obsessively reading up on Mr. Romney, or digging into the weeds of his own polls or campaign metrics.
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The Sunday meeting, which participants have sworn to keep secret, was devised by his advisers to help Mr. Obama begin focusing on his re-election bid. The time is intentionally carved out to discuss big-picture themes that the president will use to challenge Mr. Romney.
“They have a candidate now, and the president is certainly paying more attention to that candidate, his arguments and his record and approach,” said Mr. Axelrod, a senior adviser, whose cellphone rings with increasing frequency, with the president on the line hoping to talk about the campaign. “He’s homing in on the race, but unlike the other guy, he has a day job, and that is still where the bulk of his attention has to be.”
Mr. Obama has told associates that he is aware of the precariousness of the political environment for him. He asks aides about his campaign message. He craves the bullet-point summaries of polls, but he does not delve into the fine print of surveys or other campaign research.
They say he is intensely motivated to win not only because of his personal legacy and the historic nature of his presidency. He also sees a second term as essential, they said, to ensuring that key policies like his national health care law, which could be overthrown by the Supreme Court, are not wiped from the books.
“Every election is the most important election in our history,” Mr. Obama said the other night at a fund-raising event, offering a window into his campaign message. “But let me tell you, this one matters. This one matters. This one matters.”
The president will make his case against Mr. Romney on Saturday more forcefully than he has, aides said, hoping to define his opponent before the fall campaign.
He has met Mr. Romney only once — they shared the stage at a 2004 Gridiron dinner in Washington — and he has told friends that he respects Mr. Romney’s intellect, but bristles at his view of government and economic fairness.
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When their paths crossed eight years ago, Mr. Obama playfully mocked Mr. Romney and encouraged him to “go for it.” He reflected on the losing presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and jabbed Mr. Romney, “I hear that Massachusetts is a great launching pad.”
The rallies for the president on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., are expected to help capture the enthusiasm of students before the summer begins.
Campaign aides will register volunteers with iPads, and keep their information for the fall campaign. Aides said more than 48,000 people signed up by text message to win “Backstage with Barack” passes.
Six months before Election Day, Mr. Obama waxes nostalgic at the events of his presidency. He seldom talks about the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded. The oil spill along the Gulf Coast — once described as his Hurricane Katrina — is rarely mentioned. But he warns Democrats that the trials of his first term are about to be unspooled in a bare-knuckle campaign.
“There’s nothing more humbling, actually, than being president,” Mr. Obama said the other day at a fund-raiser, where his words almost lapsed into past tense as he stood beside Mr. Clinton and talked about Air Force One. “It’s a great plane, and I’ll miss it, too!”
“But not yet!” a supporter shouted from the audience, trying to buck him up.
As applause rose from the crowd, Mr. Obama paused and declared, “But not yet!”Kim Jonghyun passed away on December 18th, 2017 at the age of 27. Known simply as Jonghyun, he was one of the five member group, SHINee. Jonghyun's distinct voice and passionate performances helped SHINee make their mark in the kpop industry. He also was an accomplished songwriter and composer, contributing not only his own solo songs, but also to songs for SHINee, Lee Hi, EXO and IU.
All five members of SHINee - Taemin, Jonghyun, Onew, Key and Minho - are part of the golden era of Kpop. Their work set the stage for future generations of artists, like BTS and EXO. An idol to many idols, Jonghyun's death shocked the artist community and fans worldwide.
His death, which has been ruled a suicide, has shone a blinding light on the downfalls of South Korea's mental health industry. In a country where the suicide rate has steadily been increasing since the 90's and depression is a common, but stigmatized illness, the death of an adored idol like Jonghyun has shaken the community.
For now, we at WKP would like to honor Jonghyun in the best way we can. In the days since his death, we have been sharing favorite moments and favorite songs of Jonghyun, remembering him as the perfectly imperfect person he was. Fandoms, not only Shawols, are using online forums to mourn together and to try to make sense of this loss.
WKP invited guest contributor, Brianna, to pen some words about Jonghyun, which we have shared below. As a Shawol, Brianna hopes to reach out and connect with others who may feel the same way about this devastating loss.
[This was written on December 19th]
I don't even know really what to say. I've thought all day about what can I possibly say. Nothing seems sufficient.
I've been following SHINee since 2009. I watched them go from awkward, adorable babies to awkward, beautiful men. They never failed to make me smile, to laugh, and to feel good about myself.
There was a time in my undergraduate years where I lived in a dark place. I would sit in my room and just cry and cry. I didn't understand why. It took me far too long to realize that nasty cloud of feelings I carried around was depression.
I grasped at anything in these moments to try and feel better. I felt so lonely and empty. When I was at my lowest point with my thoughts, contemplating my own life, my worth and reason - I turned to SHINee.
I wasn't a big follower of Kpop during this time, but I did always keep up with SHINee no matter what. I listened to their music, I watched them dance, I laughed at their variety. When I was feeling sad and depressed, my light was SHINee.
No matter how low I felt, they could always make me smile. Especially during Blue Night radio, Jonghyun's calm voice and words to live by advice were enough to give me peace. He always knew what to say and it saved me. Shinee, Jonghyun...saved me. And my heart is so heavy that I couldn't do the same.
They have brought me immeasurable joy and happiness that I can't repay. Of course as a fan, I wish I could have done more. I ache knowing how terrible that dark place is and that Jonghyun suffered from it. I love them so very much and they will always hold a spot in my Shawol heart.
I could write an essay more but I just wanted to spew out the general gist of it. Nothing I say could ever be adequate enough to express my feelings and of those who love you so dearly.
My sweet darling Jonghyun, I hope you are at peace. You worked hard and you did well. You did so well.
- Brianna
Brianna and WKP also came together to choose some of the many great Jonghyun/SHINee moments. Here are just a few that resonated with us...
SHINee - Juliette
Their first win to this is just really memorable. Jonghyun cried SO HARD because it was his first contribution as a writer to SHINee. He truly had a sensitive soul.
- Brianna
SHINee - Internet War
As an idol, Jonghyun was unique in being extremely open minded and outspoken in his beliefs. He was unafraid of being bold. 'Internet War' is one of my favorite Jonghyun moments, as he radiates confidence, sexuality, power, and rage. **Warning - above video may induce sweating, swooning, fainting, etc**
- Kerry
SHINee - Excuse Me, Miss
The live version of this song is amazing. SHINee is truly a cut above the rest in terms of performance. The song itself is a classic R&B tune, a style that Jonghyun especially excels at. His part at the bridge can send shivers down your spine.
- Brianna
Jonghyun - Y Si Fuera Ella
Jonghyun performed a Korean version of 'Y Si Fuera Ella,' originally sung in Spanish by Alejandro Sanz. This particular song and its stage is on another level. His performance is brimming with emotion. Clad all in white, Jonghyun ends the song in a pool of 'blood,' after being brought to his knees. If nothing else, this performance showcases Jonghyun's immense vocal talent and great love of singing.
- Brianna
You did well, you worked hard. Rest in peace, Jonghyun.
If you are experiencing thoughts of suicide, please do not hesitate to reach out to these resources. Please remember, there is one person somewhere who loves you more than you love yourself.
International Suicide Hotlines
South Korea Suicide HotlinesPhoto Credit
The danger to most marriages isn’t infidelity, or any of the other “big” things we tend to think of when we think of marriages dissolving. Even if infidelity is involved, the problems started long before that line was crossed. No one in a healthy marriage wakes up and says “I think I’ll have an affair today.”
No, as I mention in my book, Intentional Marriage, ruining a healthy marriage is a “slow fade” to borrow the Casting Crowns phrase. It is one bad decision at a time, a little bit of complacency at a time. So, if you’re interested in ruining your marriage? You can try these steps:
1. Criticize your spouse.
Girl, you deserve the absolute best, and if you aren’t getting it, you need to tell him all about it. Nag him about everything. Analyze, criticize and micromanage everything he does. After all, if he isn’t doing it your way, he’s doing it wrong. If he hasn’t messed up lately, be sure to bring up all his past mistakes!
While you’re at it, complain about him to your girlfriends, crack belittling jokes about him in social settings, whether he’s standing right there or not. I mean, how else are you going to fit in with your friends? What can we talk about if we don’t make fun of our husbands? These days, you’re accused of being a fuddy-duddy if you don’t.
Finally, while you’re criticizing, go ahead and ream him about his family, too. They are just the people who raised him for all these years.
2. Be selfish.
Focus on your needs and wants, not his. He isn’t meeting your needs and that’s all that matters. He doesn’t deserve any effort from you. Make a mental list of all the ways that he isn’t living up to his side of things in your marriage. But don’t dare think about any of your own failures. Refuse to change until he does.
Since you’re being selfish, you should probably go ahead and tack on some unreasonable expectations, and expect him to fill the void in your life that only Jesus can fill. If you aren’t feeling complete or fulfilled, it must be your husband’s fault. Yet another reason you shouldn’t do anything to meet his needs. They aren’t as important as yours anyway.
If you do have faults, you can easily find excuses and justifications for them.
3. Ignore your spouse.
Dating? That ends after you say, “I do.” right? Don’t spend time with him. Don’t try to learn his love languages.
Don’t make him a priority. You need time with your girlfriends. Your kids need time with you. You live with your spouse every day, you shouldn’t have to make time with him a priority. Go ahead and multi-task when you’re spending time with him. It’s not your fault that you just have too much stuff to do.
And, obviously between his lack of attention and your to-do list, he should understand why there |
create chaos for retailers and shoppers as every local authority will have different Sunday trading hours".
He added: "Our members working in retail are extremely worried that devolution will lead to deregulation by the back door, and that is why 91% of workers in large stores oppose the proposal.
"We are aware that there is a great deal of concern and opposition among MPs from all parties.
"It would be wrong for the government to bring forward an amendment to the Devolution Bill, when Parliamentarians have not had the opportunity to read and digest the views of consultees and the government has not justified their position by issuing a reply, which is standard procedure."Continue Reading
Seemingly bewildered, Tsingine shook off his grasp and kept on walking down the empty street.
Shipley yanked on the hood of her jacket, which hung off her slim, 5-foot, 2-inch frame. She fell to the ground, her body colliding with the cold pavement.
When she got back up, she was clutching the small pair of metal scissors she used to trim the ends of her long, black hair, which that day was pulled back into a messy bun. Shipley threw her to the ground again. Pill bottles containing the anti-psychotic medication she hadn’t been taking fell out of her purse and scattered across the sidewalk.
She got up again, and began to stride confidently toward the cop.
Shipley pulled out his.40 caliber Glock 22.
He fired five rounds.
Then Loreal Tsingine, who’d been nicknamed Dreamer and loved her 8-year-old daughter more than anything else, collapsed for a third, and final, time.
Another officer, who’d just arrived on the scene, picked up his radio and called for help as she rolled, painfully, from her side onto her back. Shipley’s gun stayed drawn and pointed at her. He breathed heavily, almost hyperventilating, as her blood spilled out onto the dirty pavement.
“She came at me with those scissors,” he said, then started retching, just as sirens became audible in the distance.
It was March 27, 2016 — Easter Sunday — in Winslow, Arizona, a high-desert railroad town that borders the Navajo reservation. Just moments before, a cashier at the Circle K had called police to tell them that the Native American woman in gray sweatpants who’d shoplifted two six-packs of Bud Light earlier that day had returned to the store.
Later, Tsingine’s friends and family watched the police body camera footage from the last 30 seconds of her life again and again, trying to understand what went wrong, and how an arrest for shoplifting had turned deadly.
“She was kind of lost in the world, but that wasn’t a reason to kill her,” says her friend Dedrick Romero. “That’s not being a cop; that’s being a murderer.”
Tsingine’s death shocked people in Winslow, who thought of their town as a quiet place where not much happened besides the occasional meth bust. Suddenly, the young mother with the quick smile who’d worked at a nearby animal kennel was part of a national statistic: the growing number of Native Americans who’ve been fatally shot by police officers.
Native Americans aren’t typically thought of as the face of police violence. But a 2014 study using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control showed that over a 12-year period, Native Americans were statistically more likely to be killed by police than any other group, including African-Americans.
Nationally, Native Americans make up just 0.8 percent of the population. Yet they comprise 1.9 percent of all police killings.
And between 2015 and 2016, Native Americans were the only racial group to see their death toll due to police shootings go up, even as the number of officer-involved shootings across the country fell.
Until we understand why this is happening, we won’t be able to make sense of Loreal Tsingine’s senseless death.
Loreal Juana Barnell grew up in Teesto, a community of 900 people living in ranch houses scattered amid the juniper and sagebrush in the southeast corner of the Navajo reservation. It’s roughly a 45-mile drive on the two-lane road from Winslow, passing by flat rangelands and purple-gray buttes. Horses graze under wide-open skies, and sunflowers grow on the side of the road. Cell service arrived a few years ago, but some people in Teesto still don’t have running water. Seba Dalkai, the Bureau of Indian Education school that Loreal attended, is the only employer in the area, so residents often travel into Winslow to find work instead.
When Loreal was 10, her father died. Her mother, who had grown up at a time when Native American children were still taken away from their families at a young age and sent off to abusive boarding schools intended to “civilize” them, suffered from alcoholism. Child Protective Services placed Loreal with an uncle who lived in Winslow instead. She bounced back and forth between his house and her grandmother’s home on the reservation, rarely staying in either place for too long.
By 17, she’d dropped out of high school and moved to Flagstaff to live with a man who was four years older. A year later, her daughter, Tiffany, was born. In photos taken at the hospital, Loreal looks like she can hardly believe her luck. She got Tiffany’s name tattooed on the front of her wrists, and “Blessed Forever” on the back.
“Being a mother is not about what you gave up to have a child, but what you’ve gained from having one,” she posted on her Facebook page.
The following year, in 2009, her own mother died. It was around this time, her family says, that she rediscovered the Christian faith that she’d been brought up in. According to her friends, she also began turning to drugs and alcohol to cope with the pain.
Loreal Tsingine/Facebook
In 2011, things began to look up when she married Michael Tsingine, who was 10 years older and had kids from a previous marriage. He’d been living up in Page, near Horseshoe Bend and Antelope Canyon, and the two went hiking together in the dramatic sandstone canyons. They posed for pictures, squinting in the northern Arizona sunlight, and carved their names, Mike and Loreal, into the red rock.
But after a few years, she returned to Winslow. Her posts on Facebook give a sense of her mental state at the time. On November 19, 2014, she wrote, “I’m done, I’m through, I can’t do this anymore. Each day is getting harder and harder. If ya don’t see or hear from me no worries I’m sure I’ll be in a better place.”
A few days later, she shared a quote: “I am a strong person, but every now and then I need someone to take my hand and say everything will be alright.” Within hours, she posted again, this time in her own words: “Hey we should do some things we shouldn’t be doing?!?! Adrenaline rush, baby!!!”
On Thanksgiving Day, she typed, “Right about now I really wish I had wings so I could fly so high and far away. I’m sure I wouldn’t be missed anyway. I’m invisible even now. I’m just a waste of space … real talk.”
Loreal’s relatives have declined to discuss her mental health history, and Phoenix New Times was unable to reach Michael Tsingine. But police records show that she’d been prescribed aripiprazole, an anti-psychotic medication used to treat bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression, and was carrying the pill bottle when she was shot. (A toxicology report suggests that she hadn’t taken the medication recently.)
In the wake of a fatal shooting, discoveries like these are alarmingly common. In fact, when researchers from California’s Claremont Graduate University studied fatal police shootings of Native Americans over a 15-month period, they found that nearly half the victims had documented histories of mental illness.
And regardless of their race, people with untreated mental-health issues face an increased risk of being killed by police officers.
The Washington Post, which maintains a database of fatal police shootings, has found that over the past two years, mental illness played a role in roughly a quarter of all incidents. In most of these cases, no crime had been committed; rather, police were responding to a call reporting a mentally ill person behaving erratically.
“From an officer’s perspective, they’re trying to manage and control the situation,” says Heather Hamel, a Phoenix-based civil rights lawyer and the founder of Arizona Justice That Works. “"There’s a huge focus on getting people to comply, often by using force and waving guns around, but the problem is people may emotionally respond to that threat — justifiably so — which then causes the officer to panic more, and the situation just escalates."
A study conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum found that, on average, new recruits get only eight hours of training that teach them how deal with people who are experiencing mental-health crises. That means officers often lack the ability to accurately assess whether an individual poses a legitimate threat, and may not even recognize the symptoms of mental illness in a suspect.
And when a mentally ill individual is at risk of hurting themselves or others, the officer who responds to the scene may not know how to safely subdue them.
Loreal Tsingine and her daughter, Tiffany. Loreal Tsingine/Facebook
But that doesn’t mean that more training is the answer, Hamel says. Rather, it should be mental-health professionals who respond to mental-health crises — not law enforcement.
After all, she points out, mental-health professionals have years of education and training in their fields. Expecting cops to play the role of psychologists and social workers, with only a sliver of that knowledge, is unrealistic.
“We’re relying on them to do these things because we don’t want to invest in mental-health care,” she says. “But that lack of investment is deadly.”
Funding for mental-health services is dismal across the board, but the problem is compounded in Native American communities. Indian Health Services, which approximately 60 percent of Natives rely on for health care, is chronically underfunded and overburdened, with a budget that hasn’t kept pace with inflation.
In fact, one UCLA study found that the U.S. government spends half the amount, per capita, on IHS as it does on health care for federal prisoners.
Meanwhile, thanks to hundreds of years of genocide and trauma, Native American communities report shockingly high suicide rates, with one recent Department of Justice study noting that Native children experience PTSD at the same rate as combat veterans.
And less than 1 percent of the IHS budget goes toward urban health initiatives — despite the fact that census data shows that more than 70 percent of Native Americans live in a metropolitan area.
On top of that, there’s a nationwide shortage of Native American psychologists and counselors.
All in all, the UCLA researchers concluded, accessing culturally relevant care was next to impossible.
“What I have found is that a lot of people who have mental-health problems don’t know their diagnosis,” says Winslow’s new police chief, Daniel Brown, who took over in May 2017. “So then they turn to substances of one sort or another.”
“You couple the mental-health disorder with a substance-abuse problem and you have a firestorm. It leads to criminal activity, and that’s when a lot of folks get arrested. And then it’s a downward spiral.”
In December 2014, Loreal Tsingine’s beloved uncle, Benny Barnell, died. The next year, her behavior became increasingly erratic, and she had a number of run-ins with the police, getting cited for shoplifting from the Family Dollar, riding in a stolen car, and getting in a fight with two other women outside Walmart.
By then, she was living with a man described in police records as a 31-year-old Hispanic male. On two occasions, the Winslow Police Department received calls from concerned neighbors saying they believed Tsingine was the victim of domestic violence. She declined to cooperate with investigators, and no charges were filed.
On April 27, 2015, Winslow police were notified that Tsingine had woken up with no clothes on and might have been sexually assaulted. Officer Austin Shipley responded to the call.
Tsingine didn’t want to talk to him. “Victim appears to be on some kind of drug,” the incident report notes. It was the second time he’d been sent to do a welfare check on her.
A month later, Tsingine shared a variation of the Serenity Prayer on her Facebook page: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept stupid people the way they are, courage to maintain my self-control, and wisdom to know that if I act on it, I will go to jail.”
Roughly two weeks later, she did go to jail. A store clerk at R. B. Burnham & Company, an old trading post from the frontier era that now sells Navajo rugs and jewelry to tourists passing by on Interstate 40, called to report that she’d been running around the store and had refused to leave.
When a deputy from the Apache County Sheriff’s Office found her, she was poking at an electrical box full of wires, swinging a padlock in one hand. Seemingly confused, she gave her name as “Barnell Yazzie” and claimed she had been born on June 11, 2015.
Tsingine tried to wriggle away when the deputy attempted to arrest her. When he pinned her against the hood of his car, she reached for the pistol in his holster. But before she could grab it, he knocked her onto her back. As she kicked and punched at him, he held her down and forced her into handcuffs.
“OH yea feels good to be FREE….lol,” she posted after her July release.
Yet before long, she was back in jail again, this time for drinking at a bus stop in Holbrook. Through the fall and into the winter, she fell into a cycle where she’d get arrested for a minor offense, skip her court appearance or violate the terms of her parole, then get sent to jail when a police officer ran her name and found her open warrants.
In February 2016, a month before her death, Michael Tsingine filed for divorce.
Then, on Easter Sunday, she showed up at the Circle K in gray sweatpants and a tank top. Seemingly unaware that everyone in the store was staring at her, she grabbed a hot dog off the rack and began to eat it. The cashier, who later told investigators that Tsingine had seemed “a little out there,” dialed the police.
“She’s back again,” the cashier told them.
The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission has spent years documenting racism and discrimination in predominantly white towns that border the reservation, such as Flagstaff, Winslow, and Holbrook.. New Times illustration
To understand the context of Loreal Tsingine’s death, you have to start in a place like Winslow.
Four blocks from the Circle K, a seemingly endless stream of tourists stop to take pictures at Standin’ on the Corner Park, which commemorates the city’s main claim to fame — a brief mention in the Eagles’ “Take It Easy.” Ignoring the young Navajo woman selling jewelry in the 100-degree heat, they head for the souvenir stores that display Confederate flag bandannas and fake Border Patrol badges alongside T-shirts plastered with Glenn Frey’s face.
Then, they get back on the highway.
Away from the few blocks that make up the tourist area, there isn’t much to see in Winslow besides abandoned motels and service stations along U.S. Route 66, which in 1979 was replaced by an interstate highway that decimated the city’s economy.
Largely unbeknownst to nostalgic white baby boomers, towns like Winslow that sit on the edge of reservations have long been the site of violence and harassment directed at Native Americans, both from civilians and the police officers who are ostensibly there to protect them.
The earliest examples date back to when these communities were first built by white settlers, but brutal violence is hardly a thing of the past. With alarming regularity, reports emerge of Native Americans being beaten to death, their bodies found in ravines or on the side of the road.
Barbara Perry, an internationally recognized expert on hate crimes, spent close to a decade at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff in the late 1990s and early 2000s, studying racially fueled violence against Native Americans in the Four Corners area.
“I could have not have anticipated how emphatic participants would be in their indictment of police as enablers — if not participants — in the racial harassment and violence directed toward Native Americans,” she wrote afterwards.
In towns that border reservations, she found, police were eager to investigate cases where Native Americans were accused of wrongdoing, but less interested when Native Americans themselves were the victims of crimes.
“It is as if police are ready and willing to accept the mythology of the ‘savage’ Indian, and act accordingly,” she concluded.
For the past four decades, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been holding hearings in border communities across the western United States, compiling hundreds of pages of reports that describe, in detail, the many forms of discrimination that Native Americans face when they leave the reservation for work, school, or simply to shop for groceries.
The 1975 Farmington Report — written after the bodies of three Navajo men who had been severely tortured were found scattered in the canyon country outside Farmington, New Mexico — documented a realm of civil rights abuses akin to conditions found in the Jim Crow South. Included among them were claims that policemen frequently beat up Navajo men, calling them “red dogs” and accusing them of living off welfare.
In 2004, the Commission on Civil Rights returned to Farmington and noted “marked improvement,” while also acknowledging that racial profiling was still a concern. The new report had not even been out for a year before William Blackie, a 46-year-old Navajo man, was driven to a secluded area of town by three young white men who beat him over the head with a club, shouting, “Die, nigger! Just die!” Miraculously, Blackie survived; when the Farmington Police showed up, he begged them not to shoot him.
Six days after Blackie’s near-death experience, Clint John, a 21-year-old Navajo man, was fatally shot by a white Farmington police officer during a confrontation in a Walmart parking lot. Shortly afterward, the Navajo Nation created its own Human Rights Commission to investigate racism and discrimination in border towns, and began holding hearings throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
During those hearings, Navajos testified that they were told, “I hate educated Indians,” refused service in restaurants, and picked up by law enforcement officers who would then drive them to the city limits and drop them off on the side of the road. Farmington may have developed a reputation as the Selma, Alabama, of the Southwest, but its problems were (and are) by no means unique.
”There’s not a sense that the town fathers have any kind of accountability or responsibility to the Navajo people who come into these towns,” says Jennifer Nez Denetdale, a professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico who serves on the Human Rights Commission.
“We’re always treated as outsiders, even though that is our territorial land. Anything that we have to say is not regarded as anything that the fine mayors of these towns have to consider.”
In many communities that border reservations, Native people have no representation in local government. Winslow, for instance, is 23 percent Native American and 29 percent Latino, yet the mayor and everyone on the city council is white.
By contrast, the jails are full of Native Americans, who are disproportionately arrested, ticketed, and incarcerated. In Winslow, 65 percent of the people arrested in 2016 were Native American — a rate consistent with previous years. Likewise, in Flagstaff, nearly half the arrests over a five-year period involved Native Americans, who make up 12 percent of the city’s population.
Graffiti on a building on the Navajo reservation reads, "Fuck the police." Antonia Noori Farzan
In both cities, the disparity in arrests is frequently attributed to the large number of “visitors” — that is, people who live on nearby reservations.
Winslow police chief Daniel Brown points out that since alcohol sales are banned on the Navajo reservation, people often travel to border towns to drink instead, then end up getting arrested for fighting, panhandling, or trespassing. “We have criminalized something that we should look at as a public health issue,” he acknowledges.
Statewide statistics from the Arizona Department of Public Safety confirm this: In 2015, Native Americans made up 21 percent of the arrests for liquor law violations, despite only being 4.5 percent of the population.
Undoubtedly, alcohol abuse is an issue in Native communities. But that doesn’t fully explain some of these statistics.
Take underage drinking, for instance — a law frequently broken by bored teenagers of all races. In Flagstaff, Native Americans received 57 percent of the citations handed out for underage drinking in 2016, even though the city is home to a large (and predominantly white) university that has a reputation as a party school.
Similarly, in Farmington, New Mexico, where Native Americans make up 22 percent of the population and 68 percent of arrests, 84 percent of citations for underage drinking went to Native kids last year.
Complaints about being pulled over for “driving while Native” are also common. Andrew Curley, an organizer with the Bordertown Justice Coalition, says that he was routinely pulled over by police in Flagstaff while he was conducting research there for his Ph.D.
“I’ve lived all over the country, but it’s only in Flagstaff that I’ve had constant harassment for petty infractions like a crack in the windshield,” he says.
He draws the comparison to Ferguson, Missouri, where low-income black residents were frequently pulled over for minor infractions like a broken taillight, then handed expensive tickets that they couldn’t afford to pay.
“We are poor — we have less resources than most of the white population,” Curley says. “Driving around on these BIA roads, they’re not well maintained, and if rocks end up in your windshield, it’s going to be expensive to get it fixed. A lot of people on the reservation don’t have disposable income, and as a result they get pulled over by police and searched.”
Police agencies routinely deny that they engage in racial profiling, which is easy to do since they receive relatively few formal complaints about it. Widespread distrust of law enforcement means that even getting people to raise grievances at a public hearing is a challenge, Jennifer Nez Denetdale says.
“They don’t want to draw attention to themselves,” she explains. “If they provide testimony, they’re subjected to possible intimidation and harassment again.”
Outright violence, too, often goes unreported, according to Roberto Sheets, a former Winslow police officer.
One time, he says, he saw a fellow officer punch an intoxicated Native American man who’d been handcuffed and was waiting to be transferred to the county jail in Holbrook. Another time, he witnessed an officer drag a 14-year-old into his car and start kicking him, supposedly because the teenager had spat on him after being handcuffed.
“I’ve seen an officer beat up on a 19-year-old in a holding cell, no threat to nobody, because she didn’t want to blow into the tube to get her B.A [blood alcohol content],” he adds. “So he stamps on her foot — a 200-pound man — and she punches his leg ’cause it hurt. I’d have done the same thing. Then, he started whaling up on her face.”
Winslow Police Chief Daniel Brown told New Times that the allegations were “alarming” and that he would investigate Sheets’ claims.
But Sheets isn’t optimistic. He told the 19-year-old girl that she could file a complaint and he’d be a witness, he says. But she didn’t want to do that.
“They [Native Americans] are so scared of retaliation from the police department,” he says. “Once they got to know me, they would tell me, ‘That officer kicked my leg,’ or whatever. I’d say, ‘I need a name.’ But they were afraid.”
After eight years with the Winslow Police Department, Sheets was let go in 2015. He can't talk about what happened because he has an EEOC complaint pending, but documents obtained through a public records request show that he was terminated for discussing official department business outside the chain of command.
Seeing what happened to Loreal Tsingine, he says, has made people even more fearful. But what upsets him most is his belief that her death could have been prevented — if only someone had listened to the concerns that he and other officers had shared about Austin Shipley.
“Her death should never have happened,” he says. “And it’s devastating, because she’s got a little girl who’s going to grow up without a mom.”
EXPAND Former Winslow police officer Roberto Sheets says he witnessed other cops beat up Native Americans who were in their custody. Antonia Noori Farzan
On September 22, 2016, Austin Shipley walked into the two-story glass atrium that greets visitors to the Mesa Police Department. He sat down in front of a panel of veteran cops who’d be conducting an independent investigation into Loreal Tsingine’s death. Then, over the course of an hour, as his voice grew hoarse, he tried to explain what had happened that Easter Sunday.
By that point, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office had already conducted their own investigations, so some of the answers were routine. Yes, it was normal in Winslow to respond to calls before backup could arrive. No, he hadn’t known that Tsingine was carrying scissors. Yes, he’d been given a Taser and was carrying it at the time.
Tom Denning, a former homicide detective previously tasked with investigating cold cases, led the questioning. He stumbled over the pronunciation of Tsingine’s last name several times (it’s SINN-uh-gin-ee,) then gave up.
“Did you utilize your full potential physical strength on Miss, uh, on her, when you attempted to detain her?” he asked Shipley, a 200-pound man who spent his spare time powerlifting.
“No, sir,” Shipley croaked.
“And why not?”
Silence.
“I — in my mind — ”
“At the time,” Denning prompted, sounding almost paternal.
“At the time, I just didn’t think it was necessary. I mean, in my mind at the time, speaking frankly, I was thinking, this is stupid. Why is she acting like this over a petty shoplifting incident?”
“So, is it fair to say that if you chose to, you could have used more physical force on her?”
“Yes, sir.”
As a recruit, Officer Austin Shipley had displayed a propensity for violence. Facebook/Austin Shipley
A month later, the Mesa investigators presented their findings to the Winslow Police Department. Shipley resigned on the spot. To this day, he has not publicly commented on the shooting. His wife, Rachael Roberts Shipley, a nurse at the Little Colorado Medical Center, tells New Times that he’s joined the military.
“He wants to just put the incident behind him,” she says.
What we do know about Shipley comes from his internal affairs file. The son of a railroader, he was born in 1989, the same year as Loreal Tsingine, and grew up in Winslow. He got his high school diploma from Abeka Academy, an online distance-learning program run by Pensacola Christian College that’s been criticized for denying scientific concepts like evolution. In July 2012, he joined the Winslow Police Department.
Training records show that as a recruit, he was admonished at least five times for failing to follow orders, and dinged for six other policy violations, including falsifying a report that almost led to a wrongful arrest, taking home a domestic violence report and showing it to his wife so she could proofread it for him, failing to establish probable cause for an arrest, and improperly removing evidence from a secured box.
Instructors noted that he was too quick to reach for his weapon. He also appeared to relish the thought of violence.
“Officer Shipley has made the statement that having a badge gives him the right to harass the public,” Sergeant Ken Havlicek wrote, noting that on one occasion when an intoxicated suspect approached them, Shipley had later stated that “he was waiting for the subject to get stupid with him, so he could fight him.”
In another situation, a suspect became verbally aggressive, but officers were able to calm him down. “Shipley advised me that the next day he went home and ‘pouted’ because I took the fight away from him again,” Havlicek reported afterward.
Shortly before Shipley’s training came to an end in September 2013, Corporal Ron Chisholm wrote a memo to Police Chief Steve Garnett and Lieutenant Ken Arend, urging them not to hire him.
“Officer Shipley continues to falsify reports,” he wrote. “This is not a wording issue. The issue [is] accurately reporting the facts as they took place.”
But Shipley got the job anyway. In a memo later sent to Arizona POST, the standards board for law enforcement agencies, Lieutenant Jim Sepi said he’d been told, “There’s nothing to it; they just don’t like him,” when he asked Arend about Chisholm’s concerns.
Arend, who is still employed by the Winslow Police Department, declined to comment.
And once Shipley became a full-fledged officer, the complaints continued to come in.
In 2013, he was suspended and required to attend diversity training after a woman complained that he’d called her teenage daughter a cunt. (She also accused him of slamming the girl against his squad car, which he denied.)
Then, a month before Tsingine’s death, he received a one-day suspension, this time for using his Taser on a 15-year-old girl who’d disobeyed his orders. He was still on probation the day he responded to the shoplifting call from the Circle K.
There’s little question that Shipley should never have become a police officer, or at very least shouldn’t have been allowed to carry a gun. But was his quickness to pull the trigger indicative of insidious and deep-seated racial prejudice? Because of Shipley’s silence, it’s hard to tell.
“Would he have done the same thing to a white person who was accused of shoplifting?” Andrew Curley of the Bordertown Justice Coalition asks. “Would he have pushed her down like that? I don’t know.”
And virtually nothing is known about whether unconscious biases make it more likely that a police officer would perceive a Native American suspect as violent or threatening.
Michael Friedman, a clinical psychologist in New York City, has documented how sports-team mascots reinforce negative stereotypes and lead to negative perceptions of Native Americans, particularly among non-Natives.
But there isn’t any evidence connecting that phenomenon to the high rate of Native Americans being fatally shot by police. No one’s ever done the research.
Nor, to his knowledge, has anyone studied the biases that people have against Native Americans, generally, and whether law enforcement officers share those biases.
“The bottom line is we simply don’t know,” Friedman says. “But I think it’s important to look at this issue. If there’s this much of a disparity — what’s going on that this keeps happening?”
Then he adds, “If this were happening to other groups of people, it would get a lot more funding, a lot more research, and a lot more resources.”
EXPAND A memorial to Loreal Tsingine at the spot where she died. Antonia Noori Farzan
On March 27, 2017, roughly 20 people, most of them Navajo, marched down Winslow’s usually quiet streets under overcast skies. Dressed in hoodies to fend off the March chill, they carried photos showing Loreal Tsingine smiling widely at the camera, her newborn daughter in her arms. It was the one-year anniversary of her death.
When the protesters reached the Winslow Police Department, which is located in an otherwise-empty shopping center, there wasn’t a single officer in sight. But someone had been expecting them. Caution tape and safety barriers surrounded the building, preventing them from getting too close.
They waited in the potholed parking lot until the sun went down, lighting candles that flickered as the wind began to pick up. Tsingine’s grandmother, Sarah Morris, grabbed a bullhorn from one of the activists from the Bordertown Justice Coalition. “Austin Shipley, I know what you did,” she shouted. “You won’t get away with it.”
Activists from the Bordertown Justice Coalition and the Red Nation protest outside the Winslow Police Department. Courtesy of The Red Nation
The lights inside the police station went on, but no one came out to address the group, according to the Arizona Republic. “Winslow police, where the fuck are you?” her cousin, Alta Barnell, yelled. “I’m never going to let this go.”
Toward the end of the vigil, gentle rain began to fall. It was a sign, some of the marchers said, that Loreal was watching.
“We’re still angry, we’re still frustrated, but above all we still have faith we will get justice,” Tsingine’s aunt, Floranda Dempsey, told the crowd.
So far, justice has proven to be elusive. Six weeks after the shooting, Winslow Police Chief Stephen Garnett, who’d signed off on Shipley’s hire, announced plans to retire. Winslow city officials claimed the timing was purely coincidental.
Then, last July, after what he called a “careful review,” Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery announced that Shipley wouldn’t face criminal charges.
A month later, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced it would be conducting its own investigation into Tsingine’s death. There was hope that the federal government would come in and demand meaningful reforms in Winslow, like it had in Ferguson and Baltimore.
But then the 2016 election happened. Under the Trump administration, the Department of Justice’s priorities have shifted away from police reform. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made it clear that he thinks the DOJ has no business telling local law enforcement agencies what to do — in his confirmation hearing, he claimed that federal investigations of police departments were bad for morale, and dismissed the abuses described in the Ferguson Report as “anecdotal.”
Tsingine’s family say they haven’t heard from the Department of Justice since the investigation was opened. Likewise, Winslow’s new police chief, Daniel Brown, says he’s heard nothing since taking over in May.
In response to queries from New Times about the status of the investigation and whether it has been closed, spokesman Devin O’Malley sent a one-sentence response: “The DOJ declines to comment.”
A memorial to Tsingine still sits at the spot where she was killed. Painted pink and decorated with fabric flowers and prayer candles, it’s become a familiar part of the landscape, just like the Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains that pass through town so often that locals no longer notice the noise. For a while, Tsingine’s friends and relatives gathered there on the 27th of each month, but eventually life got in the way, their numbers dwindled, and the monthly vigils came to an end.
Shortly before her death, a cashier at the Circle K on North Williamson Avenue had called police to report Tsingine for shoplifting. Antonia Noori Farzan
On one recent hot Friday afternoon, the parking lot at the Circle K was packed with trucks towing rafts and inflatable tubes as people on their way to Clear Creek stopped by to pick up firewood, propane, and frozen slushies in insulated foam cups.
The white guy working behind the counter had never heard of Loreal Tsingine. He’d only been on the job for six months, since moving out west from Arkansas.
“Arkansas was kind of violent,” he says. “There were a lot of shootings. It’s nice here. Peaceful, quiet. You don’t have a lot of problems.”
(Selected scenes in this story were reconstructed with the use of police records, media reports, videos, photographs, and descriptions from people present.)Even as President-elect Donald Trump vows to immediately deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants when he takes office in January, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is reaffirming Chicago’s commitment as a so-called “sanctuary city.”
“To be clear about what Chicago is, it always will be a sanctuary city,” the mayor said Monday.
Emanuel sought to reassure those worried about Trump’s interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he said he plans to immediately deport or incarcerate up to 3 million undocumented immigrants who have criminal records.
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“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl. “But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally.”
Trump also has promised to block federal funding for sanctuary cities like Chicago.
Lurie Children’s Hospital CEO Patrick Magoon called Trump’s vow a public health crisis, and said undocumented immigrants and their relatives have been making calls to suicide hotlines since the election.
“Calls, which have increased by 200 percent at the state level and 250 percent at the national level,” he said.
Congressman Luis Gutierrez said if Trump revokes President Barack Obama’s executive order shielding more than a million children of undocumented immigrants from deportation, the president-elect would be declaring war on the immigrant community.The conflict in Yemen could be the main cause of the Chinese Foreign Minister's visit to Moscow. The visit comes on the same day as Saudi Arabia's expected UN resolution for ground intervention in Yemen.
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi is coming to Moscow on Monday for a three-day visit after an invitation was made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
While the high-profile visit is officially intended to primarily prepare both sides for the expected Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit for May 9 Victory Day festivities, it was not officially announced until Thursday.
This is the second such high-profile multi-day visit since the March 18 visit of a Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee chief, Li Zhanshu. Li Zhanshu's |
designed to guide AI development.
The world renowned cosmologist and Tesla CEO agree that machines are becoming more prevalent and more intelligent, and could eventually parallel human intelligence. In 2014 Professor Hawking warned that AI has the potential to threaten humanity and Musk has said that AI could be “more dangerous than nukes.”
This is why Hawking and Musk have thrown their support behind the 23 Asimolar AI Principles, drawn up by the Future of Life Institute, which are designed to ensure that machines exist to serve man, and never to rule over him.
The principles are as follows:
Research Issues
Research Goal:
The goal of Artificial Intelligence research should be to create not un-directed intelligence, but beneficial intelligence.
Research Funding:
Investments in Artificial Intelligence should be accompanied by funding for research on ensuring its beneficial use, including thorny questions in computer science, economics, law, ethics, and social studies, such as:
How can we make future AI systems highly robust, so that they do what we want without malfunctioning or getting hacked?
How can we grow our prosperity through automation while maintaining people’s resources and purpose?
How can we update our legal systems to be more fair and efficient, to keep pace with AI, and to manage the risks associated with AI?
What set of values should AI be aligned with, and what legal and ethical status should it have?
3) Science-Policy Link: There should be constructive and healthy exchange between AI researchers and policy-makers.
Research Culture:
A culture of cooperation, trust, and transparency should be fostered among researchers and developers of Artificial Intelligence.
Race Avoidance:
Teams developing Artificial Intelligence systems should actively cooperate to avoid corner-cutting on safety standards.
Ethics and Values
Safety:
Artificial Intelligence systems should be safe and secure throughout their operational lifetime, and verifiably so where applicable and feasible.
Failure Transparency:
If an Artificial Intelligence system causes harm, it should be possible to ascertain why.
Judicial Transparency:
Any involvement by an autonomous system in judicial decision-making should provide a satisfactory explanation auditable by a competent human authority.
Responsibility:
Designers and builders of advanced Artificial Intelligence systems are stakeholders in the moral implications of their use, misuse, and actions, with a responsibility and opportunity to shape those implications.
Value Alignment:
Highly autonomous Artificial Intelligence systems should be designed so that their goals and behaviors can be assured to align with human values throughout their operation.
Human Values:
Artificial Intelligence systems should be designed and operated so as to be compatible with ideals of human dignity, rights, freedoms, and cultural diversity.
Personal Privacy:
People should have the right to access, manage and control the data they generate, given Artificial Intelligence systems’ power to analyze and utilize that data.
Liberty and Privacy:
The application of Artificial Intelligence to personal data must not unreasonably curtail people’s real or perceived liberty.
Shared Benefit:
AI technologies should benefit and empower as many people as possible.
Shared Prosperity:
The economic prosperity created by AI should be shared broadly, to benefit all of humanity.
Human Control:
Humans should choose how and whether to delegate decisions to AI systems, to accomplish human-chosen objectives.
Non-subversion:
The power conferred by control of highly advanced AI systems should respect and improve, rather than subvert, the social and civic processes on which the health of society depends.
AI Arms Race:
An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided.
Longer-term Issues
Capability Caution:
There being no consensus, we should avoid strong assumptions regarding upper limits on future AI capabilities.
Importance:
Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.
Risks:
Risks posed by AI systems, especially catastrophic or existential risks, must be subject to planning and mitigation efforts commensurate with their expected impact.
Recursive Self-Improvement:
AI systems designed to recursively self-improve or self-replicate in a manner that could lead to rapidly increasing quality or quantity must be subject to strict safety and control measures.
Common Good:
Superintelligence should only be developed in the service of widely shared ethical ideals, and for the benefit of all humanity rather than one state or organization.Many of those are the type of people the NRL is trying to attract to the game as new fans - specifically women and children - and while it is merely coincidental, the fact it occurred on Mother's Day has also been commented on. While the incident with Mason will soon be largely forgotten, the impending selection of Sims for the Maroons has the potential to cause ongoing damage to the game's credibility in an even bigger way than what Greg Inglis playing for Queensland does as brother Tariq may line up against him for NSW. This has nothing to do with the NRL's proposed changes to representative eligibility rules, which are extremely positive as they would allow the likes of Anthony Milford to play for both the Maroons and Samoa - unless he was chosen for Australia. A misunderstanding of the proposed changes by some in the media has caused confusion but no-one who is ineligible to represent Australia now would be able to play Origin, ruling out the likes of Semi Radradra, Jordan Kahu, Sio Siua Taukeiaho and Wellington Albert. In fact, the residency requirements for Origin are far stricter than they are at international level in league and most other sports as only players who lived in Queensland or NSW before the age of 13 can play for those states.
Also ineligible are those players who were either born or grew up in Australia but have chosen to play for England or New Zealand, such as Kieran Foran, Jason Nightingale, Dean Whare, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, Gareth Widdop and Jack Reed. Under the current eligibility rules, players are allowed to change their country of choice once in between World Cups. As a result, Milford would have had to change his allegiances from Australia to Samoa to have been able to play in the recent Pacific Test after representing Queensland Under 20s last year but the Brisbane-born playmaker would then be ineligible for State of Origin. Others Australian-born or raised players such as Josh Papalii (Samoa), Andrew Fifita (Tonga), Daniel Tupou (Tonga), Tariq Sims (Fiji) and James Segayaro (PNG) could only have played for their country of heritage if they were prepared to give up on playing State of Origin, despite not being chosen for Australia in the Trans-Tasman Test that was played on the same weekend. The proposed eligibility rule change would allow them to play for a Pacific nation without being ruled out of Origin contention, provided they lived in either Queensland or NSW before the age of 13.(Reuters) - U.S. regulators have relied on flawed and outdated research to allow expanded use of an herbicide linked to cancer, and new assessments should be urgently conducted, according to a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.
There are two key factors that necessitate regulatory action to protect human health, according to the column: a sharp increase in herbicide applied to widely planted genetically modified (GMO) crops used in food, and a recent World Health Organization (WHO) determination that the most commonly used herbicide, known as glyphosate, is probably a human carcinogen.
The opinion piece was written by Dr. Philip Landrigan, a Harvard-educated paediatrician and epidemiologist who is Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, and Chuck Benbrook, an adjunct professor at Washington State University’s crops and soil science department.
“There is growing evidence that glyphosate is geno-toxic and has adverse effects on cells in a number of different ways,” Benbrook said. “It’s time to pull back... on uses of glyphosate that we know are leading to significant human exposures while the science gets sorted out.”
The column argues that GMO foods and herbicides applied to them “may pose hazards to human health” not previously assessed.
“We believe that the time has therefore come to thoroughly reconsider all aspects of the safety of plant biotechnology,” the column states.
The authors also argue that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has erred in recently approving a new herbicide that uses glyphosate because it relied on outdated studies commissioned by the manufacturers and gave little consideration to potential health effects in children.
Glyphosate is best known as the key ingredient in Roundup developed by Monsanto Co MON.N, one of the world’s most widely used herbicides, but it is used in more than 700 products.
It is sprayed directly over crops like corn genetically engineered to tolerate it and is sometimes used on non-GMO crops, like wheat before harvest. Residues of glyphosate have been detected in food and water.
The WHO’s cancer research unit after reviewing years of scientific research from different countries on March 20 classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
But regulators and agrichemical companies in the United States and other countries still consider glyphosate among the safest herbicides in use.
In July, Monsanto said it had arranged for an outside scientific review of the WHO finding.Fellow Conservative,
Today is Election Day. Today is the best chance we have as a nation to undo everything that Barack Obama has done to this country over the last 8 years.
Over the past years, we have sent millions of faxes to Congress urging them to resist and put an end to calls for more gun control. Hillary Clinton has promised to overturn the very Supreme Court case (Heller v. DC) that affirms our individual right to keep and bear arms. Donald Trump not only has a concealed carry permit, but also has promised to implement nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, de-regulate silencers and suppressors, dismantle all unconstitutional executive orders, and protect the Second Amendment. If you firmly believe in the natural right to keep and bear arms that is protected by the Second Amendment, please vote for Donald J Trump.
We have sent millions of faxes on your behalf to fight back against Barack Obama’s illegal alien executive amnesty. Currently, the only thing that stands between us and amnesty is an Appeals Court injunction. Obama tried to have the Supreme Court approve his amnesty plan, but fell one vote short. The Justice that the next President adds to the Supreme Court will decide whether amnesty is legal and constitutional. If you care about enforcing the Immigration laws in this country, please vote for Donald J Trump.
Well over a million faxes have been delivered to Congress on your behalf to stop the GOP from confirming Obama’s radical Supreme Court nominee. The next Justice added to the Supreme Court bench will swing to court’s ideology for the next half 30-40 years. Donald Trump has promised to appoint Constitutional conservatives to the Supreme Court to uphold and defend the Constitution as written. Hillary Clinton has promised ore of the same legislating from the bench. If you care about maintaining an originalist Supreme Court, please vote for Donald Trump.
We have sent hundreds of thousands of faxes on your behalf to Congress in opposition to the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, stemming back long before Trump announced his candidacy. If you believe that the American government should protect American workers instead of working to benefit foreign corporations’ profits, please vote for Donald J Trump.
We, as an organization, got our start by opposing Obamacare. We have sent millions of faxes to Congress on your behalf in opposition to this horrible Unaffordable Care Act. My family’s insurance premium is going to go up by over 20% next year and we will only have a couple insurers to choose from. If you believe that Obamacare should be repealed and replaced, please vote for Donald Trump.
We have focused, without fail, on the plight facing our military and veterans. American heroes are being purged from the military for minor infractions and veterans are being left to die on long VA wait lists because bureaucrats would rather cook the books to get bonuses than tell the truth and get more resources to help these American heroes. If you are tired of seeing illegal aliens receive better treatment and benefits than our brave vets, please vote for Donald J Trump.
We have sent hundreds of thousands of faxes to Congress demanding that they put a stop to Barack Obama’s unvetted Syrian refugee program. Hillary Clinton has promised to increase Obama’s suicidal program by 550%. If you believe that people entering the US from war zones controlled by ISIS should get full, certified background checks, please vote for Donald J Trump.
Hundreds of thousands of faxes have been delivered on your behalf to dismantle the unconstitutional and burdensome regulations that Obama has enacted. Trump has promised to do just that on day one. Mr. Trump has promised to place a moratorium on all new executive branch regulations and has promised that if a new regulation is necessary, the agency or department must first repeal two other executive regulations. If you believe, as I do, that government functions best when it governs the least, please vote for Donald J Trump.
With your help, we have been one of the largest and most vocal proponents of term limits. Donald Trump has promised to implement term limits in his first 100 days in office and ban former lawmakers and executive branch employees from becoming lobbyists. He has pledged to “drain the swamp” of Washington DC. If you believe that Public Service should be just that – service – and not a pathway to personal enrichment, please vote for Donald J Trump.
And finally, every week, without fail, we have bombarded Congress with faxes on your behalf to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for her crimes. She violated the Espionage Act, the Federal Records Act, and conspired to circumvent the Freedom of Information Act. She perjured herself before both Congress and a Federal Judge and after receiving lawful subpoenas and preservation orders, her staff destroyed this subpoenaed evidence using both sophisticated technology (Bleachbit) and unsophisticated technology (hammers). She emailed classified information to her immigrant maid and had her maid print these documents out for her. She deliberately left America’s national security secrets vulnerable. She literally belongs in prison and if you agree, please vote for Donald J Trump.
I admit that we will not agree on everything. But on the majority of these issues that I listed above, we do agree. I know this because we have covered each and every one of these topics and the feedback and participation from our community has been off the chart.
Over the past 16 months, the Media and Establishment have worked overtime to portray Donald Trump as an enemy to conservatism and a lunatic. They were convinced that they could take down his candidacy and preserve their power structure. Meanwhile, he has put forward policy proposals that deal with every single complaint that we, as a Conservative community, have had since Obama took office.
We stand on the brink of putting a Republican back in the White House. If Trump wins, we will continue to hold him accountable for his promises, just like we do for every other elected Republican. Even if you don’t believe Trump will do everything he has promised, he is our only viable choice. Hillary Clinton is guaranteed to put forward a leftist agenda to continue and expand on every Obama policy that you and I have fought so hard to defeat. Even if you don’t trust Trump on everything, he is the only viable candidate that presents a non-zero chance of accomplishing what is important to us. Statistically, that makes Mr. Trump infinitely better for Conservatives than Hillary Clinton is.
A lot of people will tell you that they don’t care how you vote and they will tell you to just make sure that you do vote. I will not be one of them.
We will not get another shot at this in four years, especially if a President Hillary Clinton [shudder] succeeds in implementing her open border strategy and gives citizenship to millions of undocumented Democrats.
Regardless of today’s outcome, we will continue to fight on your behalf for these conservative issues and more. But that fight becomes immeasurably easier with Donald J Trump in the White House.
Please vote the issues. Please vote for Donald J Trump and Mike Pence.
All the best,
Joe Otto and the Conservative Daily teamNvidia is preparing a pair of new budget-minded Maxwell architecture graphics cards, reports VideoCardz. According to its sources the green team will shortly reveal the successors to the GeForce GTX 750 and 750 Ti with second generation Maxwell-based products.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 and 950 Ti will be based upon a version of the GM206-300 GPU, which features in the current GeForce GTX 960. It will obviously be cut down somehow, probably featuring less than the full complement of 1024 stream processors on offer in the GTX 960 graphics card. The 'GM206-250' GPU, which will power the new lower midrange GeForce GTX 950 and 950 Ti cards, will also probably offer lower standard clock frequencies and a maximum of 2GB of graphics memory via its 128-bit bus.
It is thought that Nvidia will be launching the GeForce GTX 950 and 950 Ti cards to hit back against AMD's new Radeon R7 360 and R7 370 products. AMD compared these cards, price and performance wise, to the 18 month old Nvidia GeForce GTX 750(Ti) graphics cards. To compete effectively Nvidia is expected to price the GTX 950(Ti) cards at around $150 while obviously keeping far enough away from the $200 region that its GTX 960 sells for.
Being based upon a second generation Maxwell processor the new graphics cards should feature modern graphics technologies and GPU support for H.265 (HEVC) encoding and decoding, HDCP 2.2 protection over HDMI 2.0, DirectX 12.1, OpenGL 4.3, and OpenCL 1.1.Ok first of all credit has to go to for his art work, I simply animated it.For those that would like the screensaver.Secondly SPOILER WARNING, if you have not played Portal 2 yet turn it off NOW!!!!!You heard me NOW, now go play the game.Only taken me about 4-5 hours from start to finish over a few days which is great for me.Hepled a lot Fen was kind enough to give me the PSD to play withOther credits of course go to Valve for characters/audio used taken directly form the game.The wind is from [link] HOLY CRAP 1000+ views while I was sleeping/and in under 9 hours!!It's gone mad!! Christ I promise I will thank everyone individually in my normal fashion.Edited in Photoshop, Animated in After Effects and Published in Flash (Audio edited in Audacity).In the late summer of 2011, President Barack Obama declared the reign of Bashar al-Assad “illegitimate” and told him the time had come to “step aside.” In the early fall of 2015, U.S. officials laughingly dismissed Vladimir Putin’s unexpected direct military intervention into Syria as an accident waiting to happen at Russia’s expense.
Today, Secretary of State John Kerry formally legitimized Assad’s military by way of delimiting its zone of combat; and he welcomed the Russian Air Force as a prospective U.S. partner prosecuting an increasingly complex and muddled war against the so-called Islamic State and al-Qaeda, two separate and competitive terrorist organizations in Syria. Significantly, the latter group often intermingles with U.S.-backed insurgents.
In a tardy press conference in Geneva that most reporters were so sure would never happen they began ordering champagne and pizza, Kerry mapped out this fingers-crossed bilateral plan of action. His remarks were leavened with repeated qualifications and conditional tenses as he described an agreement that must perforce be founded on trust between the United States and Russia would not in fact be based on anything of the sort.
“If, and again I want to emphasize the if —” Kerry began his presser tonight, “If the plan is implemented in good faith, if the stakeholders do the things that are available to them to do and are being called on them to do, this can be a moment where the multilateral efforts at the diplomatic table… could take hold and you could really provide the people of Syria with a transition.”
Except that nobody really believes that.
According to Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Damascus who resigned from Kerry’s State Department in disgust at the Obama administration’s Syria policy, “Reduced hostilities, if they last, will ease the human suffering, and that’s a good thing. There is not, however, any visible road forward to a political deal that would resolve in an enduring manner the root causes of the Syrian crisis.”
And whatever may be good from this deal is by no means sure to come about.
The Assad regime, Kerry said, will be prohibited from flying combat missions “anywhere where the [Syrian] opposition is present in an area where we have agreed on with any real specificity.” But he did not specify what constitutes the large and ideologically variegated Syrian opposition except to say that it did not include ISIS or the al-Qaeda faction Jabhat al-Nusra, now rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.
Noting that indiscriminate and devastating Syrian Air Force raids pursued for years under the pretext of hitting Nusra have only swelled the ranks of the jihadists, Kerry seemed to suggest that precision strikes would somehow do the opposite. He also insisted that any “legitimate” opposition forces must “distance themselves in every way possible from Nusra and [ISIS]” to retain their legitimacy, a contingency that even the smartest of smart bombs is unlikely to facilitate.
“I can’t see enough of the armed opposition de-coupling themselves from front-lines on which Nusra is present,” Charles Lister, author of The Syrian Jihad and a close monitor of the civil war, told The Daily Beast. “There are just too many risks for such a move and they have no previous proof of regime willingness to comply on such restrictions. Nusra will do all they can now to convince opposition factions that this is merely a conspiracy to undermine the revolution. I fear that’s something that many on the ground will buy hook, line and sinker.”
Also problematic is Kerry’s verbose qualification that Assad is only banned from bombing where the U.S. and Russia have jointly determined. This is a rather sneaky way of saying what a draft text of this agreement, which was leaked weeks ago, already stated in no uncertain terms, namely that Assad can deploy his warplanes (PDF) “outside of designated areas if Nusra acquires territory there” and “Russia can use airpower in defense of Syrian government forces in the event of attack by Nusra from within a designated area, if agreed in advance with the United States.”
Assad and Russia can even bomb Nusra in places without prior U.S. consent if “imminent threats” by the group make such consent “infeasible.” But then what is to stop Damascus and Moscow from suddenly finding “imminent threats” everywhere against parties they insist are Nusra or Nusra-affiliated before Washington can concur?
For almost six years, Assad and his surrogates have claimed that the regime is exclusively at war with some shade of “al-Qaeda,” while Putin has insisted since September 2015 that he has been mainly striking ISIS, against all empirical evidence and Pentagon assessments to the contrary.
“If the Russians do as they did last time, a cessation of hostilities was attempted and continue to bomb the anti-regime rebels—under the guise that are in fact ‘terrorists’—this thing will fall apart in short order,” said retired U.S. Air Force Col. Rick Francona, formerly the air attaché stationed in the U.S. Embassy in Syria.
Not that the White House is leaping straight into bed with the Kremlin just yet. A “sustained period” of “reduced” violence in Syria is the litmus test for joint U.S.-Russian airstrikes, Kerry stipulated. Except that this period isn’t going to be very sustained; it will last for just seven days, beginning on September 12, the second day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, and it must include all armed groups in Syria, excluding Nusra and ISIS. Those groups presumably will be doing all they can to keep hostilities from abating, and they’ll most likely continue to be bombed.
During this Eid interregnum, two quarters in besieged Aleppo are supposed to feel immediate effects. One is the Castello Road, a main artery for human, commercial, military and humanitarian traffic in Syria’s northern province. Kerry mistakenly said it currently is blocked by two sides.
In fact, three “sides”—broadly speaking—are contesting that road: forces loyal to the Assad regime, the Syrian rebels of various loyalties, and the U.S.-backed Kurdish militias known as the People’s Defense Units, or YPG. All have fought one another at one point and will now be asked to stop doing so as the thoroughfare is turned into what Kerry termed a “demilitarized zone.”
Furthermore, the Ramouseh Gap, a strategically important sliver of territory in Aleppo City, which has changed hands three times in the last several weeks and is now under renewed regime control, will see unprecedented levels of cooperation as both the regime and opposition (which, awkwardly, is here led by Nusra and allied jihadist factions), must now provide “safe, unhindered and sustainable humanitarian and commercial access to eastern and western Aleppo.”
There can be no attacks or retaking of territory in the Ramouseh Gap, even as the skies above (ideally) remain clear of barrel and incendiary bombs for a week and even as Nusra was planning a major counteroffensive to re-break the siege there.
“Will they just cancel these plans and abide by all of this?” Lister asked.
Finally, Kerry announced, if everything goes swimmingly, on September 12 preparations for setting up a Joint Implementation Center, or JIC, will commence with the hosting of initial discussions on what Syrian territories are currently held by Nusra and opposition groups, and the outcome of this discussions will then be vetted and certified by as-yet-unnamed U.S. and Russian experts.
Two experts I would not recommend for the job are Mikhail Khodarenok, a retired Russian Air Force colonel, and Washington, D.C.-based Syria watcher Tobias Schneider, both of whom this week offered withering indictments of the Syrian regime’s military capability and the dependability. The questioned whether the atomized armies doing the heavy lifting for Assad will answer to the president’s commands.
”The regime’s force structure today is not entirely different from that of opposition militias,” Schneider wrote in an article for the website War on the Rocks. “While much better supplied by the Syria Arab Army’s still-standing logistics skeleton, the government’s fighting force today consists of a dizzying array of hyper-local militias aligned with various factions, domestic and foreign sponsors, and local warlords.”
They traffic in weapons, people, and oil to ISIS and rebel groups—the very element with which they’re meant to be in existential conflict—and they also regularly clash with Syrian security forces with impunity because, as Schneider writes, “there is no force loyal to Damascus today that is strong enough bring these brigands in line.”
Khodarenok is even less optimistic about Assad’s chances for fighting real or imaginary terrorists and controlling his infinite proxies.
In an article published in the pro-Kremlin Russian outlet Gazeta, he concluded that “while militias, Iranian volunteers, Hezbollah and [Popular Mobilization Committees] fight in lieu of the Syrian army, Bashar Assad’s soldiers busy themselves with collecting bribes at checkpoints.”
Assad’s conventional army, which Khodarenok believes might be better off disbanded in favor of recruiting a wholly new one, hasn’t waged a “single successful offensive” in a year. “The country’s air force is worn down and uses home-made bombs, the soldiers dig moats to protect from terrorists’ tunnels, while the militants enjoy tactical and moral superiority.” Nor can Russia do much to control the ragtag paramilitaries because “Hezbollah and the Iranians have their own interests.”
All of which is to say that getting the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army and dozens of non-designated Islamist rebels to rid themselves of any association with al-Qaeda and not fire a shot on September 12 or afterward without prior American approval might actually be the easy part of Kerry’s latest Hail Mary diplomacy. There’s no guarantee that Putin and Assad can, even if they want to, deliver on their end of the bargain.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Nov. 18, 2016, 5:04 AM GMT / Updated Nov. 18, 2016, 5:09 AM GMT By Kristen Welker and Alex Johnson
President-elect Donald Trump asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn to be his national security adviser Thursday, a senior transition official told NBC News.
The news was first reported by the Associated Press. It was not clear if Flynn had accepted.
Flynn — a controversial figure who has been known to eschew "political correctness" — is a Trump loyalist who stayed by the candidate's side even as other national security experts sharply criticized him during the campaign. NBC News reported in July that Trump's team vetted Flynn as a possible vice presidential running mate.
The special assistant to the president for national security affairs coordinates the synthesis and presentation of the information generated by the vast U.S. national security apparatus — the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA, the National Security Agency and a host of other intelligence agencies. The national security adviser serves as the president's top day-to-day counselor on foreign and military affairs.
The appointment doesn't require confirmation by the Senate.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn. Defense Intelligence Agency
Flynn, 57, a 33-year veteran of the Army, was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014. His tenure was reportedly cut short over clashes with top Obama administration officials.
Flynn proposed sweeping changes at the DIA and, when asked how he would deal with employees who disagreed with his vision, said he would "move them or fire them."
Some of Flynn's rhetoric makes military people "very uncomfortable," retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said on MSNBC's "11th Hour" late Thursday.
But Flynn is "the best intelligence officer of his generation," McCaffrey said. "He's a good guy. He's objective. He's tough."
As speculation about Flynn's appointment spread Thursday night, critics highlighted some of his controversial past statements, which The New York Times characterized Thursday night as exhibiting "a loose relationship with facts."
In May, Flynn said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that he supported Trump's stated campaign proposal to temporarily bar the entry of Muslims into the United States. Flynn said he was urging Trump to narrow the scope of the proposed ban and to use "more precision" in his language," however. Trump later called for "extreme vetting" of persons from "territories" with a history of terror.
In February, Flynn said on Twitter that "fear of Muslims is rational."
Last year, Flynn flew to Moscow and was pictured sitting at the head table with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a banquet in Moscow celebrating Russia Today — a state-funded news network that has been accused of disseminating propaganda for Putin.
Flynn told The Washington Post that he saw no distinction between a state organ like Russia Today and U.S. networks like MSNBC and CNN. Asked about the symbolism of his sitting next to Putin, he dismissed the question as "boring.The federal government and the four Atlantic premiers are launching a three-year pilot project to dramatically increase immigration, nearly doubling the intake into the region, as part of a new strategy to counter aging populations and slumping economies.
Under this immigration plan – a key plank in the new Atlantic Growth Strategy, which is also aimed at boosting job creation and innovation – the federal government will admit 2,000 immigrants and their families in 2017. This is in addition to what the provinces are allowed under the current provincial nominee program.
If the new program works well, the number of spots could increase over the remaining two years. The number of immigrants will not be divided equally among the four provinces; rather, the program is focused on better matching the skills of immigrants to the requirements of local businesses and employers.
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"We have a collective responsibility to banish the term 'come from away' from our vocabulary," Treasury Board President Scott Brison, a Nova Scotia MP, told The Globe and Mail in an interview after the announcement on Monday.
He was referring to the term Atlantic Canadians give to people who now live in the region, but weren't born there. Newcomers say the term makes otherwise friendly Atlantic Canadians seem cliquey and insular.
Mr. Brison said the region now has to start building a "welcoming culture to attract and retain new Canadians." If the project is successful, it could provide a template for other provinces.
This new strategy is being promoted as a fix for the future of the region. In addition to the promise of more immigrants, it is also aimed at improving infrastructure, such as providing better broadband connectivity, marketing the region internationally for its food products and tourism and creating clean-energy jobs as Atlantic Canada moves to a low-carbon economy.
It reflects increasing co-operation between Ottawa and the four Atlantic provinces. All 32 Atlantic ridings went Liberal in last year's election and the four provincial governments are led by Liberal premiers.
The announcement was made on Prince Edward Island by the four Liberal premiers and six federal cabinet ministers – the ministers from each of the Atlantic provinces plus Immigration Minister John McCallum and Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains – at Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay's converted barnon his farm with its breathtaking views of St. Peters Bay.
However, in trying to tackle the profound challenges in the region – three of the four provinces, with the exception of PEI, now have more people dying every year than being born – the politicians must also deal with a perception that immigrants will take jobs away from local residents.
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"We need to be frank about ourselves. If we are unprepared to do things differently, we're going to stay where we've been, which is in a declining population and the worst performing economy in the country," Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil said at the news conference after the announcement.
He has been concerned with increasing immigration levels since his government took office three years ago. The federal government had capped immigration levels at 700 for his province in 2013, but had increased them to 1,350 just before last year's election.
"This has been an issue that I have really been pushing, and premiers have all recognized we need to grow our population," he said in an interview with The Globe. He said the federal government has also committed to streamlining the process of bringing in immigrants, making it faster.
Mr. Brison noted, too, there is an emphasis on trying to retain the immigrants by working with the provincial governments and employers to help ensure the immigration is tied to labour market needs.
The strategy, however, has its detractors.
Marco Navarro-Genie, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, a conservative think tank in Halifax, says the announcement "favours politics over effective policy."
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"More people alone can't fix the economy, especially when we can't retain the people that we do bring and we can't keep our own children working here," he said. "So we're not really addressing the real issue. The real issue is the economic conditions that prompt people to leave."
Those conditions, he said, include that Atlantic Canada has higher personal and sales taxes than most provinces do. Food, gas, natural gas and electricity are expensive, too.
In addition to the heavy tax burden, he said the provinces are opposed to certain types of economic activity that would bring growth and investment to the region. For example, three of the four provinces, he said, have either legal or regulatory bans on hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. He said there is a "huge contradiction" in the fact that some Atlantic Canadians are leaving the region to work in places that are fracking to extract natural gas.
Mr. Navarro-Genie also criticized the federal government, which played a big part in this announcement, with stalling on approval of the Energy East pipeline that would move oil from western Canada to the refinery in Saint John.
"We keep postponing it and postponing it while our children leave for greener pastures," he said. "And the federal government … is one of the main culprits of stalling on the pipeline."Before he was terrorizing androids as the Man in Black on HBO’s sci-fi thriller Westworld, Ed Harris appeared in more than 70 films, racking up four Oscar nods. While his roles are diverse, the actor, 65, is perhaps best known for his authentic-feeling portrayals of traditional American can-do leaders for whom, as his Apollo 13 flight director famously declared, “failure is not an option.” Below, Harris recalls some — but by no means all — of his finest and most popular work.
THE RIGHT STUFF (1983) After a few minor film roles, Harris joined Philip Kaufman’s stellar historical drama as astronaut John Glenn. “I wasn’t really happy with [my audition], and Phil saw me pounding a wall in the hallway [afterward], and that inspired him to say, ‘Hmm, this guy’s got some energy, maybe he’d be good for Glenn’ … One of the funny things about it was Phil really wanted me to smile a lot — and that’s a little tough for me.”
THE ABYSS (1989) Harris nearly drowned while shooting James Cameron’s notoriously difficult underwater action epic, and once swore he would never discuss the film (though he has commented on it a few times since then). There’s an 11-minute sequence in the film where Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s character sacrifices herself, and then is revived by Harris, that ranks among his finest work (and is arguably Cameron’s best setpiece as well). “We were guinea pigs, in a way, Jim wasn’t quite sure how this was all gonna go down… [in the drowning scene I was] screaming at her to come back and wake up, and I was slapping her across the face and I see that they’ve run out of film in the camera — there’s a light on the camera — and nobody had said anything. And Mary Elizabeth stood up and said, ‘We are not animals!” and walked off the set. They were going to let me just keep slapping here around! … It was very difficult, but it was worth it, I met some great people. The Abyss is a really great movie up until the last 10 minutes, which was the big disappointment.” And nowadays there are no hard feelings toward Cameron. “I like Jim. He’s an incredibily talented, intelligent guy. In subsequence years after filmming it was always good to see him.”
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992) Harris joined an all-star boys’ club to bring David Mamet’s play about desperate salesmen to the big screen, which included being repeatedly berated in Alec Baldwin’s iconic seven-minute motivational speech. We asked if there was any competitiveness on set. “The word ‘competitiveness’ in terms of acting is always a strange one for me — it’s just about doing your best job. I give it to you, you give it back to me, and vice-versa … It wasn’t the most fun thing down there having Alec Baldwin give you that speech, but that was part of the character — just sitting there, taking it from this guy.”
APOLLO 13 (1995) Harris picked up his first Oscar nom for his |
set the Internet off on a good path. I don’t expect nastiness to ever go away, and the sites that you just mentioned are not only home to nastiness. There’s a lot of cool and creative shit that goes on in a lot of message boards. I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at 4chan, but I get how there’s something really cool about the anonymity that allows you to express yourself in a very uncensored way, and I believe there is an upside to that, even though it has led to a bunch of hostility. I wouldn’t demonize any particular tool; it’s up to the people that use the tool.Security forces have been deployed in several Congolese cities on the eve of the official end to President Joseph Kabila’s second mandate. The streets of the capital Kinshasa and eastern city of Goma were quiet on Monday, opposition politicians and activists told RFI. There were also reports of arrests ahead of protests expected to coincide with the end of Kabila’s mandate on Tuesday.
“Tomorrow the country will wake up without a president,” said Martin Fayulu, leader of the Commitment for Citizenship and Development party, which is a member of the Rassemblement opposition coalition.
Kabila’s second term is set to end at midnight and he is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. However, the government has said it cannot organise elections until 2018 and the constitutional court ruled that he can remain in power pending the polls.
“The national assembly, the governors, the local assembly – all of them, they don’t have the mandate anymore from the people of Congo – we are in trouble,” said Fayulu.
Kabila has shown no sign of stepping down and several rounds of mediation between the government and opposition have failed to find a compromise.
The streets of the capital Kinshasa were quiet on Monday in anticipation of protests with little traffic circulating on the streets. “It’s a ghost town,” said Fayulu, “nobody’s on the streets”.
It was a similar story in Goma, according to an activist with the civil society Lucha (Fight for Change) movement. “Since this morning, we’ve seen security forces – so the police, elements from the army – positioned in all the city’s hotspots, at all the roundabouts,” said Serge Sivya.
Lucha, which is leading the Bye Bye Kabila campaign, is anticipating protests to coincide with the end of Kabila’s mandate. “We’re in the middle of preparing ourselves and mobilising the people because for a long time it was already expressed that the constitution must be respected,” said Sivya, by telephone from Goma, in North Kivu.
Eleven members of opposition parties and activists were arrested, according to Fayulu and Sivya. He said three people from his own party as well as three from the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), three from the Social Movement for Renewal (MSR) party besides others were arrested early on Monday. “One Lucha activist was also arrested,” said Sivya.
Kabila has been in power since 2001 when his father Laurent was assassinated. He was elected in 2006 and in 2011, although the opposition said the country’s last polls were rigged.
“Tomorrow the president of the republic will no longer be president because today it’s his final day,” said Sivya. “He must truly leave power because that’s it, that’s democracy.”Russell Contreras, The Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A documentary explores the decline of videogame giant Atari and the secret dumping of its flopped "E.T." game in a New Mexico landfill.
"Atari: Game Over" began airing on Xbox last year and was released on Netflix on Wednesday. It also will air on Showtime on April 16.
The documentary investigates claims Atari hid its biggest failure -- 1982's "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" -- by burying the cartridges in an Alamogordo dump. The game had a reputation of being the worst ever made and contributed to the company's demise.
But the film also is about Atari's rise and the pioneering mark it made on the gaming industry, said Gerhard Runken, VP of property development at digital agency Fuel Entertainment, which obtained the rights to excavate the landfill.
"It's part of American history," Runken said. "It shows how we evolved. This is not just about gaming."
Two years ago, Fuel approached Xbox Entertainment Studios about shooting a documentary of the excavation. Word of the project spread and generated interest around the world, with people watching to see to see if any games would be discovered.
Between 300 and 400 games were uncovered from the landfill last year and were auctioned on eBay. The city of Alamogordo, which owned the games, earned thousands of dollars from the sale.
One of the "E.T." game cartridges unearthed from a heap of garbage was added to the Smithsonian's videogame history collection. A museum in Rome even opened an exhibit on the dig that includes dirt from the landfill.
While the documentary dives into the search and excitement of finding forgotten Atari games, it also tells the story of "E.T." game developer Howard Scott Warshaw.
Warshaw, now a therapist in California's Silicon Valley, was often blamed for Atari's downfall.
"It's actually an emotional story," Fuel Entertainment spokesman Nick Iannitti said. "It talks about how he was scapegoated for everything."Archaeologists found a treasure trove of everyday artefacts after digging up nearly 800 sacks of compacted human waste from the tank, which lies beneath the remains of a Roman apartment block in Herculaneum, destroyed after it was buried by ash from the volcano in AD79.
The British team has found hundreds of objects, including bronze coins, precious stones, bone hair pins and an exquisite gold ring decorated with a tiny figure of the god Mercury.
Close scrutiny of the composted human waste has revealed that the estimated 150 middle- and lower-class inhabitants of the three-storey block of flats had a much more varied diet than previously thought.
They regularly feasted on fish, spiky sea urchins, figs, walnuts, eggs and olives, using the olive pips as fuel in their homes.
Each apartment’s kitchen and latrines was linked to the septic tank via waste disposal chutes, down which households would chuck broken plates, cups and other everyday items.
The septic tank is actually in the form of a 10ft-high tunnel which extends for nearly 100 yards beneath the apartment block.
It was discovered entirely by accident when archaeologists started looking for a way of preventing the ancient site from being flooded during heavy rain.
The team, from the British School at Rome, an archaeological institute, has been digging at the site on the Bay of Naples for a decade.
Their work has been financed by 15 million euros from David Packard, a billionaire American philanthropist and the eldest son of the co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard computer company.
“What we’ve found is a fantastically good snap shot of what the Romans were using in their kitchens, from pots and pans to glass ware and broken cups,” said Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project.
“What is striking about the organic material is the sheer range of food they were eating. “We’ve found an incredible number of fig pips because they go straight through the gut. And they may have eaten dormice - they had pots of ingenious construction in which they fattened them up,” said Prof Wallace-Hadrill, who is also the master of Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University.
The recent discoveries will form part of a major exhibition on Herculaneum and Pompeii at the British Museum in 2013.LOCAL booksellers would be better able to meet consumer demand for the faster delivery of cheaper books as a result of recommended changes and make bookstores more viable in the process, according to Gleebooks co-owner David Gaunt.
''I would get asked almost every day or somebody at our store about the price of a book on our shelves relative to an overseas internet supplier,'' said Mr Gaunt, a member of the federal government's advisory panel.
Prices would fall... David Grant of Gleebooks. Credit:Steven Siewert
''We do our best but, of course, we can't match the prices.
''At least if we put the reforms into place, we can go a long way to doing that. Not only would the price of books fall, but everyone would get their books faster and there would be a resurgence in confidence among Australian consumers to buy locally.''Fox News reporter Doug McKelway was in attendance during yesterday’s deadly events in Charlottesville, VA, where he reported that the police were called off as soon as things started turning violent.
“But when the tear gas started to fly, thrown by protesters, the police themselves began to evacuate then. I asked the guy who was in charge, “Where you going?” He said, “We’re leaving. It’s too dangerous.” They had a chance to nip this thing in the bud and they chose not to.“
People were throwing soda cans filled with cement…
VA Police Spox Corinne Geller to @dougmckelway on @ANHQDC: describes the earlier violence, people throwing " soda cans with cement in them" pic.twitter.com/C00uwnyGLi — Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) August 12, 2017
Of note, “Unite the Right” held a rally which was legally organized with a permit from the city, as it is their first amendment right to do so, and Antifa showed up with cement-filled cans and other weapons with plans to violently protest the event – creating a dangerous atmosphere police did nothing to control.
Stand Down
The ACLU confirmed that Charlottesville police were ordered to stand down, which allowed the KKK and Antifa to meet face to face with no interference.
ACLU confirms that police were given stand-down order. This invited the violence the city used to shut down a court-permitted protest. https://t.co/FQUhcYaIIm — Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) August 12, 2017
#Charlottesville Mayor who wanted electoral college coup against Trump allowed Antifa and KKK to walk right into each other—no police. pic.twitter.com/3LhsBBuZ3U — Rep. Steven Smith (@RepStevenSmith) August 13, 2017
Some have suggested that the violent atmosphere and lack of police presence was a factor in the decision and ability of 20 year old white supremacist James Alex Fields to drive his 2010 Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32 year old paralegal Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others.
Fields is expected in court on Monday at 9AM to face one charge of 2nd degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit and run – which was filmed from several vantage points, including a drone which happened to be above the scene of the crime.
A drone captured the terrifying moment a car plowed into the crowd in #Charlottesville, Virginia. pic.twitter.com/N9mVUpEPm3 — Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) August 13, 2017
Mother interviewed
When approached by a pair of individuals at her home, Fields’ mother said she was unaware of what her son had done, and she thought that he was simply going to a Donald Trump rally.
If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on TwitterEvery year around this time, marketing executives have the opportunity to sear their products into our sub-conscious like never before. To bombard us with the same images over and over again, until one day you wake up, and you realize you were just dreaming about Kyra Sedgewick on The Closer.
I'm talking about the NBA Playoffs, of course. Forty Games in 40 nights on the same network (TNT, mostly) means we all get to watch A LOT of the same commercials. And maybe it's just me, but haven't this year's ads seemed... what's the word... Insufferable? Gawdawfully horrible? Stick-your-head-in-the-oven depressing? I'm not going to be the guy that sits here and points to ads as some profound commentary on American life, but for the record, that guy is off sticking his head in an oven somewhere.
It's been pretty brutal this year. So with that in mind, just for the sake of catharsis, let's take a closer look at the genesis of some of the NBA's most popular ads.
Before we get started, though... Advertising isn't as easy as Mad Men makes it look. Between the idea and the commercial there's a lengthy casting process, painstaking filming, focus groups, demographic analysis, five billion approval meetings, and finally, like a decade later, you get a commercial. Really, I sympathize with marketing folks.
Between the endless anthropology studies and the corporate interference at every possible turn, you're talking about a process that blends the most mind-numbing aspects of science with the most frustrating aspects of art. Or maybe it's all complete nonsense, and the only thing dumber than America's commercials are the people making them.
On that note, let's begin with a talking basketball.
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "You know what nobody's ever done before? Had a basketball pretend to be a human being."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Likin' it... Likin' it.... Tell me more."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Well first you'd have a basketball. And then it would pretend to talk."
Ad Exec No. 2: (purses lips, stares out window)
Ad Exec No. 1: "He could narrate some of the greatest moments in NBA History. Tell his side of the story, you know? Humanize the basketball a little bit. Synergy."
Ad Exec No. 2: "(slams both hands down on conference table) LOVIN IT."
WEAKNESSES. When the best thing you can say about a commercial is, "It would make for great parodies," it's not a good sign. Given how many awesome playoff highlights the NBA has to work with, this really shouldn't be that hard. And yet here we are, with a talking basketball ruining Michael Jordan's moment for us on a nightly basis.
STRENGTHS. It's not a WNBA commercial? They picked Charlie Murphy and John Slattery to do most of the voiceovers, so at least they got guys with cool voices... And there really is some great potential for parodies. For instance, if the talking basketball remembered his encounter with John Starks in the 1994 NBA Finals, it'd single-handedly make this whole campaign worthwhile. "He just... He wouldn't stop touching me. No matter what I did, he just kept coming back for more. He couldn't take a hint. The whole thing was incredibly awkward. I'm still scarred from all the abuse I took from the rim that day."
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "Have you heard about those talking basketball ads the NBA's planning?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Of course. Tested off the charts. They're the next Budweiser Frogs.
Ad Exec No. 1: "...But have you thought about talking lemons?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "(slams hands on conference table) WE'RE THE NEXT BUDWEISER FROGS."
WEAKNESSES. It looks like the lemons are constantly squinting. Like someone just squirted lemon juice in his lemon eyes. Basically, the lemon looks exactly like James Gandolfini from that scene Inside The Loop. Here's a screencap for comparison's sake. I can't write how he describes himself in that scene, but it doesn't make me want to drink lemonade.
STRENGTHS. As games go later in the night, there's a better chance that large chunks of the NBA audience will be high, which increases this ad's appeal exponentially. Not only is a talking lemon a lot funnier, but a frozen lemonade sounds AMAZING to someone who's high. Speaking of which...
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "What if the bottom of shoes could talk?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Did you get high before this meeting?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Very."
[boardroom goes silent]
Ad Exec No. 2: You know what? F—k it."
Ad Exec No. 1: (giggling) "F—k it."
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands down on conference table) "F—K IT."
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "So we've got this deal with the NBA..."
Ad Exec No. 2: "How do we integrate our brand to leverage that relationship?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Well, we need something that'll go viral."
Ad Exec No. 2: (sits up, develops massive erection) "Keep talking."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Dunks go viral."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Dunks go viral."
Ad Exec No. 1: "If we could get a star to dunk over our car, the 'net would go NUTS."
Ad Exec No. 2: (creepy grin) "What if it was the winning dunk of the NBA Dunk Contest?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Well, we'd need to rig the dunk contest for that to work."
Ad Exec No. 2: "I'll e-mail Stern this afternoon."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Wait, we can do that?"
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands on conference table) "WE CAN DO THAT."
WEAKNESSES. Every time a basketball fan sees this commercial, it's just a reminder that the dunk contest was fixed... Every time a basketball fan see that dunk again, it's a reminder that it really wasn't that impressive. 40% of the NBA could pull that. So, "not your average dunk, not your average midsize sedan"? The folks at KIA are really taking some liberties with the facts here.
STRENGTHS. The music is awesome, everything looks better in slow-motion, and Blake's voice-over is pretty great, too. You gotta admit, if this weren't so unintentionally hilarious, it'd be pretty damn awesome. Plus, it's an excuse to remember Baron Davis exists, so that's always a plus.
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad. Exec No. 1: "I've got a name for you—Calvin Johnson."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Ooo... That is a name! Who can we find named Calvin Johnson?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Working on it. Gotta be a pro athlete named Calvin Johnson, right?"
[15 minutes later]
Ad Exec No. 1: "Found him! He plays pro football."
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands on conference table) "HE PLAYS PRO FOOTBALL."
WEAKNESSES. "Wait, was that racist?" is not a question you want audiences asking.
STRENGTHS. I actually don't even know whether this ad's been running during the NBA Playoffs, but hey, it's Calvin Johnson!
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "Okay, now hear me out."
Ad Exec No. 2: "I'm listening."
Ad Exec No. 1: "What's cool?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Twitter."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Yes, but other than Twitter...'
Ad Exec No. 2: "Okay, what's cool?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Music is cool. Tuxedos are cool. Mustaches are cool.
Ad Exec No. 2: "Keep talking."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Fake gun fights... Hitting a shot a 50-foot basketball hoop.... Practicing tae kwon doe with the Asian guy from Ocean's Eleven... Jumping on stage... Playing the flute."
Ad Exec No. 2: "I'm pickin up what you're droppin down. What else?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "You know what else is cool? Doing all that, and drinking an ice cold Heinken."
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands on conference room table) "WHOAAA... SAVE ONE FOR AMERICA."
WEAKNESSES. This commercial thinks it's way too cool. And it is cool, which is part of the problem. We want that guy's life. But we also sorta want to punch that guy in the face, right?
STRENGTHS. That... song... is... so... damn... catchy. Especially since Heinken apparently paid TNT a billion dollars this spring. I swear to God this commercial's on during every single timeout. It's the most inescapable commercial of the NBA Playoffs. And hey, even if we remember it for being incredibly obnoxious, I'm pretty sure that still counts as a victory in the marketing world.
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "What's hip?"
Ad Exec No. 2: (purses lips) "Charlie Sheen."
Ad Exec No. 1: "No. Think... Hipper. And blacker."
Ad Exec No. 2: "50 Cent."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Exactly. Hip-hop."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Who's the hippest hipster in hip-hop right now?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Way ahead of you big man. Got a meeting with a group called (uses airquotes) 'Odd Future' tomorrow. They are BLOWING UP the underground right now. Literally ON FIRE.
Ad Exec No. 2: (creepy smile) "Sounds like they could use a cold one, amirite?"
Ad Exec. No 1: "How does an underground explosion sponsored by Coors' Light sound?"
Ad Exec No. 2: (creepier smile) "Sounds like we'd all be on fire."
[24 hours later]
Ad Exec No. 1: "So, I talked to Odd Future."
Ad Exec No. 2: "...and?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "When I pitched them the idea, their leader spat on me. I doubled the offer, and then he threatened to rape my grandmother and started freestyling about murdering a puppy."
Ad Exec No. 2: (furrows his brow) "Hmmmmmm."
[Five minutes of dead silence]
Ad Exec No. 2: "How 'bout someone a little less hip?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "We could call Ice Cube?"
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands on conference table) "LET'S CALL ICE CUBE."
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "What are we looking for here?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "America. Go."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Hmmm... Okay. Barack Obama."
[Five minutes of dead silence]
Ad Exec No. 1: "...George Bush?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Getting warmer..."
Ad Exec No. 1: "War."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Too bloody."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Troops."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Too depressed."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Troops coming home?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Coming home to an ice cold Budweiser?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Coming home to America's beer."
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands on conference table) "AMERICA'S BEER."
WEAKNESSES. Might make you hate America.
STRENGTHS. Definitely makes a lot more people love America. Speaking of which... "Proudly serving those who serve"? You gotta admit, it's a pretty outstanding catchphrase if you're a European-owned beer company trying to align yourself with the U.S. Military.
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "Fellas, fellas, fellas..."
Ad Exec No. 2: (slams hands down on conference table) "DONE."
WEAKNESSES. That guy is as annoying in the commercial as he is in real life.
STRENGTHS. But... Yeah, can't help it. The longer the Playoffs go, the more I love this stupid, stupid commercial. The train whistle gets me every time. WOOOOOOO-WOOOOOOO.
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "Okay, this can't miss."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Hit me."
Ad Exec No. 1: "You sure you ready for this?"
Ad Exec No. 2: (leans back in his chair) "Ohhhhh baby this better be good."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Picture one of those apple commercials. With the Mac and PC."
Ad Exec No. 2: (sits up) "Whoa."
Ad Exec No. 1: "All white background. Two people standing in the middle of the screen, but instead of two guys, one of them's a hot chick, and the other one's a white guy rapping."
Ad Exec No. 2: "Seriously?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "A white guy rapping about T-Mobile."
Ad Exec No. 2: "What's the girl doing?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Bobbin her head to the beat, just like everyone else. Can't miss, right?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "(slams his hands down on conference table) "ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT."
WEAKNESSES. The commercial's description on YouTube: "The 2011 NBA Playoffs and Finals are here and the all-new T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is ready to play ball. Listen closely as Witness unleashes a fast-break of Sidekick 4G features while trying to impress the "woman in pink" with his NBA knowledge."... Can't miss, right?
STRENGTHS. Pretty sure everyone wants to marry T-Mobile girl after these playoffs. And for the record, it's one thing to find a supermodel for a commercial. But the T-Mobile girl is in a different league, precisely because she's not in a different league. She's hot, but so, so attainable-hot.
Finally...
BRAINSTORMING SESSION. Ad Exec No. 1: "What if we wrote a show about ourselves?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Mad Men's been done, bro. (points to signed Jon Hamm poster)
Ad Exec No. 1: "No no... What if we weren't in marketing?"
Ad Exec No. 2: "Where is this going?"
Ad Exec No. 1: "Straight to Southern California. We're two single guys lookin' to cause a little trouble, if you know what I mean. (winks). We're lawyers, but we don't play by the rules. We don't just cross the line, we forgot where the line was a lonnnnng time ago. We throw hot tub parties. Bathing suits? Optional. We makeout with hot chicks in the court room. We shotgun beers. We get buzzed. We don't care about the consequences."
[30 seconds of silence]
Ad Exec No. 2: (grinning) "F—k you, Franklin."
Ad Exec No. 1: "F—k YOU, Bash."
Ad Exec No. 2: "This could be epic."
Ad Exec No. 1: "Dude, you gotta think bigger. This could be Entourage."
Ad Exec No. 2: "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool?
[in unison, slamming conference table] "A BILLION DOLLARS."
Ad Exec No. 2: "I'll call TNT..."DICE has confirmed that PS3 users should expect an update this Monday to address the VOIP issues. The developers also commented on various issues.
Bugs, MAV, and DLC Rumor
DICE has assured fans that “the developers are aware of” the game freezing, on the 360, when players bring up the scoreboard right after dying on Sharqi Peninsula. Another map issue is when, in Team Deatchmatch, players can reach the highway on Tehran Highway, DICE revealed that “we are aware and investigating!” In regards to the MAV exploit, when asked if it is considered cheating, the developers stated, via Twitter, that they “certainly don’t encourage it, put it that way.” Cheating or not, this issue will patched soon. On different note, DICE’s Alan Kertz expectedly refused to comment on the “All American” DLC rumor, stating that it’s a “rumor, speculation;” therefore, he didn’t comment on the subject.
PS3 VOIP Update
The VOIP problems that have plagued the PS3 version of Battlefield 3 will finally be ironed out on February 6th. The mandatory patch, which was promised last month, will set you back 20MB in memory, DICE announced on the official blog (can’t be accessed at the moment). Unfortunately, we still don’t know if this is the long awaited February patch, or a PS3 specific patch for VOIP. The other, rather more important, PlayStation 3 issue, input lag, wasn’t commented on, but we will make sure to update you on the matter when more information surfaces.
Follow MP1st on Twitter and Facebook for the latest Battlefield 3 news.Why Duterte is popular among wealthy, middle class voters
RG Cruz, ABS-CBN News
Posted at 01 May 2016 02:55 AM | Updated as of 01 May 2016 10:01 PM
Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte. Photo by Fernando Sepe, Jr., ABS-CBN News
MANILA – A political analyst and a member of the academe said Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s growing popularity among the nation's wealthy and middle class indicates a war among the country’s elites.
De La Salle University Political Scientist Julio Teehankee pointed out Duterte is outpolling administration standard bearer Mar Roxas in his own social class ABC, proof that this has become a war of the elites.
Teehankee pointed out, Duterte enjoys a mass base of support across all social classes which is why his rise can be characterized as the rise of a new elite.
In the April 19-24 ABS-CBN Survey by Pulse Asia Research, Duterte was picked by 37% of class ABC, way ahead of Roxas’s 23%, Vice President Jejomar Binay’s 16% and Senator Grace Poe’s 12%.
READ: Duterte, Marcos sustain leads in ABS-CBN survey
“Class ABC accounts for an estimated 4-10% of the population. Even if Mar's number improved in this demographic, it is not enough to compete with Duterte's 37%. This is an indication that there is an emerging counter-elite challenging the old elite,'' he said.
''The Duterte phenomenon is elite-driven. It is not the revolt of the poor. It is the angry protest of the new middle class: BPO workers, Uber drivers, and OFWs."
Teehankee noted this is the elite that has been left out by other elites.
''They are the ones who are taxed the most and financing Daang Matuwid. They are working hard for their families and the country and yet they are the ones who suffer from lack of public service land and air traffic. Breakdown of peace and order corruption, laglag-bala. The poor have their conditional cash transfer fund. The rich have their PPPS. What's there for the middle class? They've been short changed!"
Overall, Duterte polled 33%, followed by Poe who got 22%, Roxas 20%, Binay 18% and Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago 2%.
In an immediately preceding ABS-CBN survey from April 12-17, Duterte polled 34%, Poe 22%, Binay 19%, Roxas 18% and Santiago 2%. That’s a 2-point increase for Roxas and 1-point decrease each for Binay and Duterte. However, the margin of error in both surveys is 1.5%.
Teehankee pointed out, Roxas’s numbers remain dismal outside of Visayas, his bailiwick.
“Mar's only bailiwick is the Visayas and his numbers every where else is dismal. Not enough to be competitive,'' he said.
Roxas shares the lead at the Visayas at 37% with Duterte polling 32%. Roxas trails in the National Capital Region (11%), Balance Luzon (15%) and Mindanao (17%).
For the 2016 elections, Visayas accounts for only over 11 million registered voters based on data from the Commission on Elections gathered by the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group.
NCR has 6,253,249 registered voters; Balance Luzon 24,164,541; Visayas 11,316,789; and Mindanao 12,629,265.
Teehankee was among the first to point out in late 2015 that this race will be between Duterte and Poe in the homestretch -- an observation he maintains.
Teehankee noted Binay’s numbers are on the downtrend.
“Binay's numbers are free falling. His last competitive bailiwick is balance of Luzon where he is third."
Binay polled 19% in NCR, 24% in Balance Luzon, 12% in Visayas and 10% in Mindanao.
On the other hand, Teehankee pointed out that Duterte has momentum, while Poe is the top alternative candidate.
Poe is the top alternative candidate in the April 19-24 survey, polling 33% as the top 2nd choice. She is followed by Binay with 16%, Duterte 12%, Roxas 12% and Santiago 6%.
Duterte’s numbers stayed similar despite his controversial remarks on the rape of a female Australian missionary. What remains to be seen now is if the numbers will hold after the exposés on his alleged hidden wealth.
Teehankee said, ''The momentum is definitely on his side. The bank account issue might be too late to stop him. Grace remains to be the second candidate of choice per Pulse Asia."
EXPOSÉ VS DUTERTE
Vice Presidential candidate Senator Antontio Trillanes IV led the exposé against Duterte, with the other bets joining the fray later on.
READ: Duterte accounts had P2.4-B in transactions: Trillanes
Teehankee said, Duterte may take a hit but should that happen, the beneficiary won't necessarily be Roxas.
“The momentum is definitely on his side. The bank account issue might be too late to stop him. Grace remains to be the second candidate of choice per Pulse Asia. If they have the goods on him it will benefit Grace or Mar. But Grace will have the better chance.”
Poe has so far refused to engage in any negative campaign against her rivals.
Roxas's campaign spokesperson, Akbayan Rep. Barry Gutierrez said, ''Only Mar's ratings improved in the latest Pulse - ABS-CBN survey. He is now tied for second place. We were able to reach this point due to the efforts of so many of our fellow Filipinos who remain committed to the dream of a just, prosperous, and decent Philippines. If we add the effects of Mar's call for action in the last debate, the silent majority now actively campaigning for him, the exposé on the secret bank accounts of Mayor Duterte, and the organization of the Daang Matuwid Coalition all over the country, victory on May 9 is now within reach.
''We will win because Mar and Leni continue to stand up for what is right, good, and decent in all of us, and with so many of our fellow Filipinos have come out to stand with them in this struggle.''
Pulse Asia Research President Ronald Holmes, however, said any changes in the national standings in the survey are not significant.
“Within the margin of error ang changes sa national level for all candidates. Check whether margin of error for NCR from survey to survey is lower than change in Digong's rating. When national preferences do not shift significantly, it means voting disposition remains as in previous survey and developments prior to or during the survey period do not have a substantial impact,'' he said.Deans of colleges of arts and sciences—where faculty members who work off the tenure track are most likely to be employed—struggle with many issues related to the use of such faculty, including how many to hire and how to support them on the job, according to a national survey on various aspects of non-tenure-track faculty.
Nearly 160 deans who are members of the Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences responded to the survey. They said that, in their colleges, no more than 30 percent of the faculty should be working off the tenure track and that no more than 20 percent of those faculty members should be part time. At the same time, they acknowledged that the use of non-tenure-track faculty has increased.
Adrianna Kezar, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, helped organize the responses, which were collected in February and March of this year, and presented a summary of the findings at the council's annual meeting, in early November.
In an e-mail to The Chronicle, she said that when it comes to hiring non-tenure-track faculty, the survey's responses showed that "there are few conversations about what the makeup of the faculty should be."
Discussions that stemmed from the presentation at the council meeting revealed that deans saw hiring non-tenure-track faculty as a way to keep costs down while making sure that the classes students need are available, she wrote. However, "they stressed being caught in a bind of affordability, access, and non-tenure-track faculty hiring."
The deans' responses showed that full-time faculty who work off the tenure track are getting more support than in the past—although mentoring, professional development related to teaching, and similar kinds of support that would help them shine in the classroom wasn't typical, the data showed. Support for part-time faculty members, however, is still lacking. For instance, more than half of the deans disagreed that part-time faculty should be able to serve on departmental or college committees or be hired on multiyear contracts.
Ms. Kezar said that deans didn't think non-tenure-track faculty were always teaching the courses they were best suited for. For instance, only 38 percent thought full-time non-tenure-track faculty should teach high-enrollment courses |
rev'd on other grounds, 155 F.3d 628 (2d Cir. 1998); see also L. Tribe, supra, § 16-33, p. 1616 (sexual orientation, whether homosexual or heterosexual, is central to personality of individual). It is equally apparent that, ''[b]ecause a person's sexual orientation is so integral an aspect of one's identity, it is not appropriate to require a person to repudiate or change his or her sexual orientation in order to avoid discriminatory treatment.'' In re Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal. 4th 842; see also Hernandez-Montiel v. Immigration & Naturalization Service, 225 F.3d 1084, 1093 (9th Cir. 2000) (''[s]exual orientation and sexual identity... are so fundamental to one's identity that a person should not be required to abandon them''); Watkins v. United States Army, supra, 875 F.2d 726 (Norris, J., concurring in the judgment) (''Scientific proof aside, it [also] seems appropriate to ask whether heterosexuals feel capable of changing their sexual orientation. Would heterosexuals living in a city that passed an ordinance burdening those who engaged in or desired to engage in sex with persons of the opposite sex find it easy not only to abstain from heterosexual activity but also to
shift the object of their sexual desires to persons of the same sex?... [T]he possibility of such a difficult and traumatic change does not make sexual orientation'mutable' for equal protection purposes.'' [Citations omitted; emphasis in original.]); Jantz v. Muci, supra, 759 F. Sup. 1548 (''to discriminate against individuals who accept their given sexual orientation and refuse to alter that orientation to conform to societal norms does significant violence to a central and defining character of those individuals'').[...] In other words, gay persons, because they are characterized by a ''central, defining [trait] of personhood, which may be altered [if at all] only at the expense of significant damage to the individual's sense of self''; Jantz v. Muci, supra, 759 F. Sup. 1548; are no less entitled to consideration as a suspect or quasi-suspect class than any other group that has been deemed to exhibit an immutable characteristic. See id.; see also note, supra, 98 Harv. L. Rev. 1303 (sexual orientation, like race and sex, is ''one of only a handful of characteristics that ha[s] such a pervasive and profound impact on the [relevant] aspects of personhood''). To decide otherwise
would be to penalize someone for being unable or unwilling to ''change... a central aspect of individual and group identity''; Watkins v. United States Army, supra, 726 (Norris, J., concurring in the judgment); a result repugnant ''to the values animating the constitutional
ideal of equal protection of the laws.''
On the effectiveness of the "traditional marriage" argument:
A classification, however, cannot be maintained merely 'for its own sake' [Romer v. Evans, supra, 517 U.S. 635]. Instead, the classification ([that is], the exclusion of gay [persons] from civil marriage) must advance a state interest that is separate from the classification itself [see id., 633, 635]. Because the 'tradition' of excluding gay [persons] from civil marriage is no different from the classification itself, the exclusion cannot be justified on the basis of 'history.' Indeed, the justification of 'tradition' does not explain the classification; it merely repeats it. Simply put, a history or tradition of discrimination-- no matter how entrenched--does not make the discrimination constitutional....'' (Citation omitted.) Hernandez v. Robles, supra, 7 N.Y.3d 395 (Kaye, C. J., dissenting); cf. Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, supra, 440 Mass. 348 (Greaney, J., concurring) (''[t]o define the institution of marriage by the characteristics of those to whom it always has been accessible, in order to justify the exclusion of those to whom it never has been accessible, is conclusory and bypasses the core question [that the court has been] asked to decide''). Indeed, ''the fact that same-sex couples have traditionally been prohibited from marrying is the reason [the action challenging the ban on same sex marriage] was commenced; it cannot be converted into the dispositive reason it cannot succeed.'' In re Marriage Cases, supra, 49 Cal. Rptr. 3d 750 (Kline, J., concurring and dissenting).
And the conclusion:
We recognize, as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court did in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, supra, 440 Mass. 309, that ''our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law. Many people hold deepseated religious, moral, and ethical convictions that marriage should be limited to the union of one man and one woman, and that homosexual conduct is immoral.
Many hold equally strong religious, moral, and ethical convictions that same-sex couples are entitled to be married, and that homosexual persons should be treated no differently than their heterosexual neighbors. Neither view answers the question before [the court]. Our concern is with [our state] [c]onstitution as a charter of governance for every person properly within its reach.'' Id., 312. The drafters of our constitution carefully crafted its provisions in general terms, reflecting fundamental principles, knowing that a lasting constitution was needed. Like the framers of the federal constitution, they also ''knew [that] times can blind us to certain truths, and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the [c]onstitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.'' Lawrence v. Texas, supra, 539 U.S. 579. Not long ago, this court made the same essential point, explaining that ''as we engage over time in the interpretation of our state constitution, we must consider the changing needs and expectations of the citizens of our state.'' State v. Webb, 238 Conn. 389, 411, 680 A.2d 147 (1996). This admonition applies no less to the guarantee of equal protection embodied in our constitution than to any other state constitutional provision. Even though the right to marry is not enumerated in our constitution, it long has been deemed a basic civil right. E.g., Loving v. Virginia, supra, 388 U.S. 12 (''[m]arriage is one the basic civil rights of man'' [internal quotation marks omitted]); Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S. Ct. 1110, 86 L. Ed. 1655 (1942) (same). Although we traditionally have viewed that right as limited to a union between a man and a woman, ''if we have learned anything from the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views and official policies toward members of minority races and toward women over the past half-century, it is that even the most familiar and generally accepted of social practices and traditions often mask unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed by those practices or traditions. It is instructive to recall in this regard that the traditional, well-established legal rules and practices of our not-so-distant past (1) barred interracial marriage, (2) upheld the routine exclusion of women from many occupations and official duties, and (3) considered the relegation of racial minorities to separate and assertedly equivalent public facilities and institutions as constitutionally equal treatment.'' In re Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal. 4th 853-54. Like these once prevalent views, our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. 83 The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.84
Update III: And the statements are coming in.
The org of the hour, GLAD, which argued the case:
In an historic decision, Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled today that gay and lesbian couples in the Constitution State deserve marriage. Not domestic partnerships or civil unions, but full and equal marriage and the respect and security that only marriage provides. Today's ruling, in GLAD's case Kerrigan & Mock et all v. Connecticut Department of Public Health, makes Connecticut the second state in New England--and the third in the United States--to swing open the doors to true equality for lesbian and gay couples.
The Task Force:
"This is a momentous victory for the people of Connecticut and all Americans who hold fairness as a fundamental value. The high court's analysis comes down to this simple yet profound principle: All of Connecticut's families deserve and need the protections, rights and responsibilities that support and sustain them, and should be treated equally under the law. "We thank the plaintiffs for their courage and our colleagues at Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and their cooperating counsel for their outstanding advocacy on behalf of our community. We also applaud the years of work undertaken by our state partner, Love Makes a Family, which played a central role in creating a climate in Connecticut that made today's historic opinion possible."
And HRC:
This is a very proud day for Connecticut and a very proud day for every American who believes in the promise of equal rights for all. The Connecticut Supreme Court recognized that gay and lesbian couples who form committed relationships and loving families deserve the same level of respect afforded to straight couples. The court did its job by making clear that the state constitution guarantees the same rights and protections for everyone. This decision strengthens Connecticut families. We congratulate and commend the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), Love Makes a Family, which worked closely with GLAD on this case, and, of course, the courageous plaintiff couples and their families who looked to the courts to vindicate their rights.
Update IV: Here's video of the plaintiffs winning.Ivan101/Getty Images
Human solid waste doesn't seem like a great idea for a cafe, but the opening of Poop Cafe in Toronto late last year led to long lines and lots of media attention. The Koreatown spot serves desserts like patbingsu—shaved ice and red beans—in bowls that look like toilets, and personifications of the poop emoji can be found throughout. The desserts themselves don't look like poop but the decor of the spot, based on one the owner visited in Taiwan, doesn't seem to be turning anybody off all the same.
Nonetheless, North America is a strange spot for Poop Cafe. Time and again, we have shown ourselves to be far more squeamish on the topic than our fellow poopers around the world. Exhibit A: We live in the dark ages of post-shit cleanup. In a wide world that has long embraced the effectiveness of anus-washing after doing number two, America hangs back, clutching our rolls of Charmin, despite plenty of evidence that it would serve us better to wash instead of wipe. We may be obsessed with sanitation, yet we insist, against reason, on the least-sanitary, least-healthy option for managing our poop.
Several bidet companies have tried to market their products in North America on a variety of different measures, from their technological impressiveness to the evidence of the health benefits they offer. But they have yet to overcome the significant hurdle that exists because North American consumers simply aren't used to considering the purchase of a toilet for any reason but an immediate need for one.
"The toilet in North America is not seen as an upgradable item in the home," says Rose George, author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. "You only get a new toilet if you move or if your toilet breaks. There has been some change in the industry at marketing a toilet as a desirable, upgradable object rather than what is known as a 'distress purchase,' but it's slow-going."
"Toilet paper moves shit, but it doesn't remove it. You wouldn't shower with a dry towel; why do you think that dry toilet paper cleans you?"
It's not easy to find statistics on the number of bidets in American homes, perhaps because they remain uncommon. About 22 percent of bathroom designers saw requests for bidets in 2015, according to research by the National Kitchen and Bath Association, but that group skews towards higher-end markets. Kohler has seen demand for its "intelligent toilets" grow 50 percent year over year for the past three years, but a study the company conducted last year found that 53 percent of Americans were still unwilling to use a bidet, says media representative Katie Dilyard.
Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of homes in Spain, Italy, and Greece have a bidet. And about 60 percent of Japanese households have high-tech washlet toilets with features like spraying and air drying, reports Justin Thomas of Metaefficient.com, and the country's cabinet office includes Toto-style washlets among the penetration rates it tracks for consumer goods.
"I find it rather baffling that millions of people are walking around with dirty anuses while thinking they are clean," George says. "Toilet paper moves shit, but it doesn't remove it. You wouldn't shower with a dry towel; why do you think that dry toilet paper cleans you?"
"I think we owe it to the English," says Harvey Molotoch, a New York University professor and author of Toilets: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing. "So many of the conventions of American life come from the British."
This particular convention, dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, has a surprisingly tawdry origin considering the taboo that surrounds it today. "English men met up with bidets when they would go to Paris, often to live a libertine life," Molotoch says. In particular they associated bidets with brothels and prostitutes and in that way they took on an extra element of salaciousness.
Bidets were also suspected by some to be a form of birth control, Molotoch says, which added to the anxiety around the appliance. "It's associated with frivolity, weakness, immorality, femininity so therefore denigrated," he says. Those associations continue today: bidets were a punch line in the movie Get Him to the Greek and part of a joking Jennifer Lawrence video.
One luxury hotel in New York took a leap and installed bidets in the late 19th century, Molotoch says. The public reaction was strongly negative and the bidets eventually had to be torn out. "So in a way they learned their lesson and nobody tried it again for a good long time."
That lesson had a strong logistical component as well: The small size of many North American bathrooms made it difficult to accommodate both a regular toilet and a bidet, and plumbing in homes wasn't a simple thing to change once it was standardized for the non-bidet flush toilet.
"The more hurdles there are, the more you have to talk about these things," Molotoch says. "And given that these things are all sort of surrounded by taboo, then that further erodes the possibility of anything changing."
Those taboos are seen in the very way that we market bathroom fixtures, toilets in particular. There's a reason that white has remained the standard color for toilets for decades even as other home decor trends shift considerably, Molotoch says. "There's a kind of implication that if things are white, then they are sanitary."
The health and sanitation benefits that companies have leaned on in marketing bidets in the United States are backed up by evidence. Regular bidet use has been shown to prevent hemorrhoids in those prone to them, says gastroenterologist Partha Nandi, and can offer relief to those who already have the condition. "It can be useful with patients who suffer with hemorrhoids since toilet paper can be quite irritating," Nandi says. "Hemorrhoids can be further aggravated due to the friction of toilet paper, so bidets offer a less harsh alternative."
Bidets have also been associated with reduced occurrence of urinary tract infections as well because they help remove the bacteria that can multiply at the opening of the urethra and travel up to the bladder, Nandi says. "While the use of toilet paper does not ensure cleanliness in the restroom, bidets can prevent UTIs by offering a refreshing and sanitary way to remove bacteria and ensure the spread of bacteria does not occur," he says.
Living among the squeamish in Canada and the US are people of Muslim and Hindu backgrounds who are the satisfied owners of far cleaner butts than the rest of us.
Meanwhile, infectious diseases are commonly spread by direct person-to-person contact, according to the Mayo Clinic, and fecal matter is one agent of direct transmission. Research done by Michigan State University in 2013 found that only 5 percent of people wash their hands for long enough to destroy infectious germs after using the bathroom. If they have a bidet, at least something is getting washed properly—and there's less need for your hands to be near fecal matter at all.
It's also common sense that washing with water will remove more fecal residue and bacteria than simply wiping. "It has always baffled me," says George. "We wash every part of our body except the dirtiest part." She points out that we wash our cars with soap and water and buy special products to wash our pets but have a continued aversion to using water on one of the parts of our bodies that could really use it more often.
Living among the squeamish in Canada and the US are people of Muslim and Hindu backgrounds who are the satisfied owners of far cleaner butts than the rest of us. George wrote in her book about Muslim and Hindu customs around toilet cleanliness, which includes washing with water to cleanse the genitals.
"It's not easy to be a water user in a toilet-paper society, so Muslims and Hindus and other water-cleansing cultures have had to adapt," George says. For the most part they do this quietly—or example, bringing an empty soda bottle into the bathroom in public places, or keeping a plant in a shared apartment so you have an excuse to have a watering can around. These groups can't make their need known if they don't feel comfortable talking about it, and it's unlikely they'll feel comfortable talking about it if they're in a wider society that keeps quiet about what happens in the bathroom.
"I admire coping strategies," George says, "but really, why are we ashamed?"
It seems our deeply ingrained ideas about sanitation and fears about appearing somehow unclean actually work against the adoption of the bidet. We have a lot of misplaced anxieties about how clean our bathrooms and toilets are, Molotoch says. "There is great fear of toilet seats as a sanitation issue and that's a false fear," he says. "The filthiest sponge in a house is the kitchen sponge." It can seem counterintuitive, even somehow deviant, to spend time and energy and money on something somehow luxurious for something we all see as dirty.
And unlike cleansing wipes we can put in our medicine cabinets or cans of Lysol that can be hidden under the sink, a bidet is out there for everyone who happens to be in our bathroom to see—or worse, perhaps ask about.
It seems our deeply ingrained ideas about sanitation and fears about appearing somehow unclean actually work against the adoption of the bidet.
"A bidet signals some secret dirtiness," Molotoch says. "You don't want to reveal to anyone that you have done anything that would require special measures of sanitation because you live such a clean life."
How did the polite-as-hell Japanese come to embrace their butt-cleaning technology so wholeheartedly? "Japanese people are very circumspect and do not speak of intimate things, but the Japanese are super straightforward about the toilet," Molotoch says.
The process wasn't easy, George says, and took about 60 years. It was also helped along by cultural factors like the Japanese concept of wabi sabi, she says, a difficult-to-translate concept that centers around purity and cleanliness.
"Though this is of course generalizing, there is a prudishness in Japan which meant that a hands-free device that cleansed the body properly would eventually be popular," George says. "But it took decades of advertising, of installing bidet toilets in business hotels so that salarymen would go home and want one in their own house too."
Japan has also pushed much of the technological advancement around toilets and bidets. Features like heated seats, the option of warm or cool water for the bidet spray, and air drying are commonly found in Japanese washlet toilets. In North America, automatic-flush toilets are top of the line in technology, but it's not unusual for a toilet in Japan to have a dozen different buttons.
Japan has another leg up on the pursuit of cleaner asses: cute poop. Japanese children are taught very specifically how to clean themselves when they are being potty trained, Molotoch says. An element of adorableness is helpful when you're trying to teach something to young kids.
In the past couple years we all watched, mesmerized, as a unicorn shat rainbow soft-serve into a toilet courtesy of the folks at Squatty Potty.
Shit talk has, of course, also finally made it to North America. In the past couple years we all watched, mesmerized, as a unicorn shat rainbow soft-serve into a toilet courtesy of the folks at Squatty Potty. A fetching redhead with a proper English accent and a poufy dress defecated unapologetically in front of the camera in a spot about Poo-pourri (a product that nonetheless plays upon our squeamishness about the way our shit smells). And like in Japan, we are also embracing cute feces. Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo, the star of the holiday episode for South Park, is equal parts gross and adorable. And the smiling poop emoji has of course made its way from being a funny thing to send in a text to a bonafide mascot: you can now buy phone cases covered in the little guy and a stuffed version to keep on your bed, among other items. A report on emoji use published by Swiftkey in 2015 found that bidet-averse Canadians are the smiling poop emoji's biggest global fans.
"Things do change, and also they arise in the most unlikely places," Molotoch says.
We're also becoming more open to discussing defecation and fecal matter in a medical sense, even if it's usually in somewhat coded terms. Ads for probiotic yogurts talk about their ability to keep you regular. Major publications have written about the growing body of research on the benefits of fecal transplants. And food trends like gluten-free eating are in part fueled by an interest in preventing constipation and digestive distress.
"I think we have made great steps in legitimizing talking about guts and bowels, but I'm not sure yet that that has translated into hygiene change in our private bathrooms," George says.
The increasing availability of inexpensive bidet attachments might soon start moving us towards that hygiene change. George is a fan of her Washlet attachment. Writer David Sax spoke in glowing terms about the bidet attachment in his home in an article for GOOD. And Tushy is marketing its minimalist, easy-to-install bidets to design-conscious millennials.
"It's not this ugly geriatric old-person-looking thing that you're embarrassed about," says Tushy founder Miki Agrawal about her company's bidets. (Agrawal is also the founder of Thinx period-proof underwear.) "It's this beautiful designer product you're proud of." If your bidet is attractive and appealing-looking, the thinking goes, you're a lot less likely to be embarrassed about using it—and talking about it.
"Hopefully affordable bidet attachments might lead the way to nations with cleaner butts," George says. "Honestly, I think once you start cleansing with water, you can't go back to dry toilet paper."
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Meditation Helped Me Poop Less
Why Do Nerves Give Me The Shits?Reusing Buffalo's abandoned grain silos is something talked about but rarely done.
Light shows are projected nightly on the Outer Harbor's Connecting Terminal. Silo City comes alive several times a summer with artistic events at its cluster of grain elevators.
Now, the most challenging project so far has been completed: Buffalo RiverWorks this past weekend opened a $2.2 million brewery in silos that were once part of the Wheeler-GLF grain elevator.
[Photo Gallery: Brewery opens at RiverWorks]
"We were able to salvage these silos to create what we think is the first brewery built inside a silo in the world," said William Casale, general manager for the Pearl Street Family of Companies, which includes Pearl Street Grill & Brewery and the Pan-American Grill & Brewery.
"I think the uniqueness of it is going to be worth it in the long run," Casale said.
Jessie Fisher, executive director of Preservation Buffalo Niagara, hailed the new use.
"The grain elevators more than anything else in Buffalo are our defining image on the world architectural stage," Fisher said.
"We have the largest extant collection of them in the world," said Fisher, who did her graduate thesis at the University of Washington on the reuse of grain elevators. "The brewery is perfect, because it's that marriage of grain and the Great Lakes beer comeback happening in New York State with the push to have more local beer production."
Abstract Architecture, Kromac Design and RiverWorks employees overcame the engineering challenges. They used four of the six silos that sport vinyl Labatt brewing logos. The biggest challenge was cutting through rebar-reenforced concrete to open up space. A second floor was added inside the silos, and all of the work had to be done without the benefit of utilities, mechanicals or plumbing.
The brewery, which will serve eight craft beers, is the latest addition to a complex that in its first full year of operation in 2016 drew around one million people, Casale said.
The grain will come in at ground level, then augured up to a second-floor space to be cracked in a mill. It is then moved into the brewhouse in a second silo, where it goes into a grist case and mixed with hot water in a mash tun. After the liquid is drained, it is pumped into a kettle where it will be boiled and mixed with hops.
The hot liquid batch is then chilled in heat exchangers and pumped into one of eight fermentation tanks in the first silo.
Inside the cooler, 14 stainless steel serving tanks go directly to taps at the Silo Bar and four indoor stations, using a distribution system created by brewer Chris Herr.
Ironically, a grain silo had to be installed to store the base malt used in all the beers.
Creating a distillery in the silos is also being considered, Casale said.
Outside in the beer garden, the remains of silos demolished in 2011 over preservationists' objections are now seating areas bathed at night in colored LED lights. The surroundings include a water feature and two gas-fired pits.
Nearby is "Medusa's Front Porch" – with shards of steel left to stick out of concrete columns.
Later this week, hanging flower baskets will adorn the seating area, along with vines in cedar planter baskets and in old buckets from grain elevators.
New activities are planned for this summer at RiverWorks.
Indoor rock climbing began in other silos this weekend. The progressively harder climbs are at heights of 35, 40 and 50 feet. Rock climbing will be extended outside later this summer.
An Escape Room and a zip line will also come by mid-July, Casale said. The zip line will run from the top of one of the silos, 110 feet up in the air, across to a bunker building that was part of the silo operation. The zip line will be handicapped-adaptable. A ropes bridge and 65-foot freefall drop are also planned.
The top of the silo will also have an observation deck.
Other projects are also under consideration. They include adding museum-like text panels to the silos to enhance brewery tours that will be held, improving the entrance's appearance and installing new signage at 333 Ganson St., and constructing a small amphitheater in a former rail barn.
In the meantime, RiverWorks keeps adding to its wide array of programming. Current offerings range from arena football, roller derby, Hope Chest dragon boat races and jiujitsu tournaments to curling, ice hockey, murder mystery dinner theater and recent performances by a circus.
"It never stops. It's one thing after another," Casale said.
"We're an entertainment-adventure complex first," he said. "The bar and restaurant are an enhancement to what we do, but the numbers are off the charts. We've had a great first full year, and we're hoping to double that over the next two years."Untitled a guest Sep 16th, 2014 271 Never a guest271Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.67 KB Never tell your password to anyone. Geo: good day fine sir Geo: how may i be of assistance? BEEZLE?: ello matew BEEZLE?: i would like to trade please Geo: *adjusts monicle* BEEZLE?: i have a field tested gut knife Geo: LOL BEEZLE?: lol i know Geo: *picks up walking cane BEEZLE?: LOL Geo: *sits back down BEEZLE?: at least youre funny BEEZLE?: i will give you BEEZLE?: an awp as well BEEZLE?: for your crimson web Geo: *lights cigar Geo: awp, which skin? BEEZLE?: hang on i forget let me shift tab' BEEZLE?: electric hive BEEZLE?: factory new Geo: *inspects gut knife with monicle* Geo: blue steel you say BEEZLE?: yes BEEZLE?: field tested Geo: *consults book from bookshelf with prices & listings BEEZLE?: lol BEEZLE?: k BEEZLE?: the gut knife goes up to 80$ usually BEEZLE?: someone is low balling in market atm Geo: *sips brandy and becomes aggitated BEEZLE?: if its not enough i have a usp Geo: it appers the listing price starts at mere 47 shillings BEEZLE?: its field tested BEEZLE?: no way its 47 Geo: i suggest you view market prices chapter 7 Geo: serverl start at 47 BEEZLE?: https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/730/%E2%98%85%20Gut%20Knife%20%7C%20Blue%20Steel%20%28Field-Tested%29 BEEZLE?: thats the knife i have Geo: yes and observe the prices sir Geo: i see two at 47 Geo: two at 48.50 Geo: and a few more at 50 BEEZLE?: but the one i have is starting at 76.25 BEEZLE?: and goes up to 80$ + Geo: the maximum price here listed for one such blue steel is £54.97 Geo: unless we have our currencies confused BEEZLE?: ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh BEEZLE?: pounds BEEZLE?: lol BEEZLE?: im lookin at $$$ Geo: but sir this is the currency of the land BEEZLE?: no wonder BEEZLE?: sorry Geo: even so my fair yankee comrade Geo: my knife starts at £70 Geo: and that is a how u say " lowballer 360 no scope newb" BEEZLE?: i figured i cvould throw a few extra things in Geo: observe the pattern and condition of my knife also BEEZLE?: like my awp n stuff Geo: the webbery is equisite BEEZLE?: lol Geo: and appears under the guise of a minimal wear BEEZLE?: so no trade then Geo: let me observe your inventory BEEZLE?: okay BEEZLE?: might be private Geo: it is not BEEZLE?: k Geo: fine wares you have BEEZLE?: thanks Geo: prey, what rank do you reside? BEEZLE?: ak 1 Geo: unfortunate BEEZLE?: yeah BEEZLE?: i keep getting derankede BEEZLE?: because of friends Geo: sir, it has been an honour however none of your wares willl amount to the value herin Geo: * boards horse and carrige BEEZLE?: okay Geo: *tips fedora through window BEEZLE?: bid you ado BEEZLE?: sir Geo: *flicks a shilling from the window of carrige BEEZLE?: sugar cube for you horse
RAW Paste Data
Never tell your password to anyone. Geo: good day fine sir Geo: how may i be of assistance? BEEZLE?: ello matew BEEZLE?: i would like to trade please Geo: *adjusts monicle* BEEZLE?: i have a field tested gut knife Geo: LOL BEEZLE?: lol i know Geo: *picks up walking cane BEEZLE?: LOL Geo: *sits back down BEEZLE?: at least youre funny BEEZLE?: i will give you BEEZLE?: an awp as well BEEZLE?: for your crimson web Geo: *lights cigar Geo: awp, which skin? BEEZLE?: hang on i forget let me shift tab' BEEZLE?: electric hive BEEZLE?: factory new Geo: *inspects gut knife with monicle* Geo: blue steel you say BEEZLE?: yes BEEZLE?: field tested Geo: *consults book from bookshelf with prices & listings BEEZLE?: lol BEEZLE?: k BEEZLE?: the gut knife goes up to 80$ usually BEEZLE?: someone is low balling in market atm Geo: *sips brandy and becomes aggitated BEEZLE?: if its not enough i have a usp Geo: it appers the listing price starts at mere 47 shillings BEEZLE?: its field tested BEEZLE?: no way its 47 Geo: i suggest you view market prices chapter 7 Geo: serverl start at 47 BEEZLE?: https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/730/%E2%98%85%20Gut%20Knife%20%7C%20Blue%20Steel%20%28Field-Tested%29 BEEZLE?: thats the knife i have Geo: yes and observe the prices sir Geo: i see two at 47 Geo: two at 48.50 Geo: and a few more at 50 BEEZLE?: but the one i have is starting at 76.25 BEEZLE?: and goes up to 80$ + Geo: the maximum price here listed for one such blue steel is £54.97 Geo: unless we have our currencies confused BEEZLE?: ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh BEEZLE?: pounds BEEZLE?: lol BEEZLE?: im lookin at $$$ Geo: but sir this is the currency of the land BEEZLE?: no wonder BEEZLE?: sorry Geo: even so my fair yankee comrade Geo: my knife starts at £70 Geo: and that is a how u say " lowballer 360 no scope newb" BEEZLE?: i figured i cvould throw a few extra things in Geo: observe the pattern and condition of my knife also BEEZLE?: like my awp n stuff Geo: the webbery is equisite BEEZLE?: lol Geo: and appears under the guise of a minimal wear BEEZLE?: so no trade then Geo: let me observe your inventory BEEZLE?: okay BEEZLE?: might be private Geo: it is not BEEZLE?: k Geo: fine wares you have BEEZLE?: thanks Geo: prey, what rank do you reside? BEEZLE?: ak 1 Geo: unfortunate BEEZLE?: yeah BEEZLE?: i keep getting derankede BEEZLE?: because of friends Geo: sir, it has been an honour however none of your wares willl amount to the value herin Geo: * boards horse and carrige BEEZLE?: okay Geo: *tips fedora through window BEEZLE?: bid you ado BEEZLE?: sir Geo: *flicks a shilling from the window of carrige BEEZLE?: sugar cube for you horseSpoilers ahead! We have some massive, juicy news. But first, please indulge me by reading this this 2 minute intro for proper impact.
Since our inception in 2001, we’ve been a vision and purpose-driven company.
One of the guiding principles in shaping Telepathy has been asking ourselves, “Are we creating meaningful and positive impact on the humans we interact with on a daily basis?”
This question drives us to turn down big deals and work with people that inspire us. We’ve grown at a measured pace to ensure that our clients always come first and we stay focused on our craft. We’ve sacrificed profits to build our own products — just to scratch our own entrepreneurial itch. As a result, we’ve taken the long road to success and built one hell of a foundation of design culture, talent and client happiness along the way.
We designed Telepathy as a platform to celebrate our vision of elevating life’s experiences within the work we do. It’s our aspiration to inspire more organizations to become design-forward and to impact millions of people, not just through digital interactions, but any touchpoint in life.
To be honest, it’s not easy to accomplish an audacious vision while being a successful agency and often times, these two intentions are in conflict with each other. It’s costly to provide meaningful services with a top tier team while refusing to take on meaningless, high-profit accounts to keep the equation balanced. Thus, navigating our vision tends to be a grand adventure of ups and downs with an unknown arrival date at our destination.
Despite |
possible by 20 frames earlier
Lightning
Crushing Blow:
+ Attack occurs 2 frames earlier
+ Attack duration shortened by 3 frames
Lightning Strike:
+ Attack occurs 1 frame earlier
0 Where the HP damage is determined is readjusted
Army of One:
0 Tracking distance of the enemy in the initial portion of the attack readjusted
Y'shtola
Stone:
- Attack cancels are now 5 frames slower
- When hit, enemy's stiffness is reduced by 5 frames
Ruin:
- Attack cancels are now 5 frames slower
- When hit, enemy's stiffness is reduced by 5 frames
Ramza
Holy:
- Radius of attack reduced by 0.5m
Ace
Cannon Laser:
0 The size of contact determination with stage readjusted
Fire RF:
0 Speed and tracking readjusted
THE END
User Info: LeafJounin LeafJounin 1 year ago #4 Do you have any idea what that brave mid to brave noncontact stuff actually means?
User Info: Rouenne Rouenne 1 year ago #6 Nothing really worth saying here. No changes to summons? So that means another few months of Ramuh onlyCAF Confederation Cup match report SuperSport United v TP Mazembe 25 November 2017 Posted: 25 November 2017 Time: 13:35 Print this article
TP Mazembe successfully defended their CAF Confederations Cup title by defeating SuperSport United 2-1 on aggregate after the second leg ended goalless on Saturday night.
The first leg final ended 2-1 in favour of Mazembe last week.
Matsatsantsa were on the back foot early on with Mazembe pressurising them in their own half.
Nathan Sinkala had a wonderful opportunity to open the scoring in the 13th minute after finding space inside the box from a corner but his strike sailed over the bar.
Rainford Kalaba should have opened the scoring in the 27th minute after finding space on the far side of the box, but his low left-footed shot was saved by Ronwen Williams who narrowed the angle.
Pamphile Mihayo's troops were all over Eric Tinkler's charges after 40 minutes as their strategy seemed to have been to get a goal that would put the hosts under tremendous pressure.
Aubrey Modiba had a rare chance to put Matsatsantsa in the lead two minutes before the halftime break after making a galloping run on the left wing, however his left footed scorcher sailed over the bar.
The first stanza ended goalless favouring the visitors who created good chances.
The hosts started to play better in the first 10 minutes of the second half but lacked the final pass to unlock the Ravens' defence.
Thuso Phala had a chance in the 67th minute but he was not given enough space and forced a shot on the edge of the box that sailed inches wide of the upright.
Mazembe showed their experience in not giving Matsatsantsa enough space in the final third to operate.
As such, Tinkler withdrew striker Jeremy Brockie with 15 minutes remaining and brought in Dove Wome.
Bradley Grobler had an opportunity to give United the goal that they were craving for in the 80th minute from a free-kick on the edge of the box but he skied his strike over the bar.
Mazembe were reduced to 10 men eight minutes from time as defender Kabaso Chongo was picked up his second yellow card of the game.
The gamesmanship started for the visitors with minutes left on the clock as they started to wine down the clock by delaying tactics.
Phala was also shown his marching orders five minutes from time for a studs-up tackle as the numbers were evened out to 10-each on the field.
The final five minutes were tense as a goal for Matsatsantsa was going to hand them the title but their lack of goals at home handed Mazembe a 2-1 aggregate win.
Teams:
SuperSport: Williams, Nhlapo (Kekana 46'), Mashamaite, Daniels, Modiba, Furman, Letsholonyane, Phala, Mbule (Nkhatha 81'), Grobler, Brockie (Wome 66').
Subs: Pieterse, Farmer, Wome, Alexander, Nkhatha, Lakay, Kekana.
Mazembe: Gbohouo, Kimwaki, Kiaku, Mpeko, Traore (Asante 74'), Sinkala, Kabaso, Kouame, Kalaba (Elia 60'), Adjei (Mika 64'), Malango.
Subs: Matampi, Mondeko, Kasusula, Mika, Elia, Asante, Ushindi.
Article by: Staff ReporterKORG has a big update for its electribe and electribe sample line – with features that, while subtle, are just what you asked for.
The latest generation KORG electribe and electribe sampler were the “music production station” grooveboxes we all really wanted to like. First off, they do bear that beloved electribe name. And the layout looks clean and appealing – 2×8 pads, clean knobs, a little X/Y pad. They do things you’d like in mobile hardware: the electribe is a synth/sequencer, the electribe sampler doing what it says on the tin (and actually sampling) in a similar design. And there are innovative new features, like the ability to export directly to Ableton Live’s native file format – something we’ve only seen (in official form, at least) from KORG.
In fact, the electribe sampler in particular has some key tricks that Novation Circuit I love so much lacks. The electrie sampler can genuinely sample from an external audio input. It has more sample slots. And it has the ability to use an SD card (the Novation box is limited to 60 seconds of internal audio, non-expandable).
Here’s where things get tricky, though. By being more ambitious than devices like Novation’s Circuit or Korg’s own volca series, the electribe also raises expectations – particularly given that there’s so much you can do on a computer. And that means there’s more chance to disappoint on workflow. So while it’s all fine and dandy to dump on laptops and sing the praises of standalone hardware, well… there’s a reason we still keep the laptops around.
And so, it’s a good thing I didn’t review the electribes when they were first released, because what I heard was … well, let’s say atypical for KORG and electribe. It’s not so much that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the electribes as a kind of typical death by a thousand cuts workflow wise.
But Korg has been steadily improving the electribes, and if you heard some mixed reviews early on, maybe the end of summer is actually the right time to give these a look. (Ah, the joys of firmware and software updates – if only we could re-edit Batman versus Superman and Suicide Squad after their initial releases!)
So, in recent versions: version 1.14 added key shortcuts for changing scale and arpeggiator settings, and improved how scales and X/Y and editing worked. Version 1.15 fixed an audio noise bug.
And now version 2.02 offers some absolutely essential features.
The big one: you can Chain patterns. You can do that by repeating a chain or chain “to” a particular pattern.
Wait, the even bigger one: there’s an Undo feature. Whatever the previous operation – edit, sequence record, or (yipes) erase, you can now hold shift plus < and save your butt. Plus there's an "original value" function which shows the saved value of a parameter on the display when selected. As a bonus, KORG are also offering 200+ new patterns to add when you download. If you own the KORG hardware, this is already good news. If you don't, though, this to me makes the whole package far more interesting - and I'm asking KORG to send me the sampler unit to review in September, so stay tuned. (Honestly, the biggest problem I had with KORG this year wasn't niggling complaints about the electribe line - it was that the volca fm and minilogue were each so stupidly amazing that it was hard to think about anything else. You must agree, because the minilogue is everywhere and the volca fm is impossible to buy.) Also, because I'm a superficial person living in a looks-oriented world whose head is quickly turned by beauty... uh... yeah, they've replaced that dull red and blue matte plastic with a much more electribe-ish metallic red and blue. And it looks really handsome in photos, as you can see.
And remember, all this is US$399.99. The metallic units are available this month, but apart from the paint scheme they’re identical to the original models and those can also be updated to the latest firmware.
At that price, this is definitely worth considering, so watch for our September review. In the meantime, with undo and chaining, I’m already keen — especially when you watch what else these can do. In videos:
Here’s a nice demonstration of how pattern chaining is working. (Also, it’s got to be the most hilarious juxtaposition I’ve seen ever of dramatic 3D opening graphic and … charmingly cheap camera in low light. I love YouTube.)
This video goes into some detail on how sample management works – and how it works with Ableton Live.
On one hand, this gets into some of why people find the electribe annoying – like the fact that you can easily forget to export samples, or that loading samples takes time. On the other, it’s a reminder of just how powerful the electribe sampler is – loads of sample space, customization on SD or via audio input, powerful sample manipulation on the unit as standalone, and nice export workflows to Ableton.
Oh yeah, and – resampling, one of the coolest things about this hardware.
So, you can listen to Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, rant on about not looking at computer screens. But… actually with all due respect to one of my personal heroes and musical inspirations, I have to feel that’s missing the point.
What matters about hardware like the electribe isn’t looking away from the screen or avoiding presets – both of which are eminently possible with computer software, too, if you like. (And in fact, creating your own presets and saving them and having access to screen real estate I think are each good things!)
I think it’s about accessibility and immediacy – about really being able to get into sound and play. And having that in hardware that has fixed workflows and controls, something that’s portable and friendly, is so lovely. Now, it also means that something as simple as not having undo (cough) can be a deal breaker. But I’m really excited to give the electribe a go, particularly alongside gear like the Circuit or volcas.
If you’ve got questions – or want more tips – we’re also in touch with KORG’s product specialists, who are some of the best in the industry. (Not to mention nice to see some random YouTube strangers who also show some expertise!) So do feel to ask. And if you’ve got one, we’d love to hear how it’s going.
http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/electribe/
http://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/electribe_sampler/GOP presidential candidate and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul says that while he is all for helping those in need, the United States should be "very, very careful" in weeding out any potential terrorists."I read in the newspaper one young man that had just left Afghanistan in the last few weeks, he was 19 years old, and all we had for identification was political asylum from Hungary. No preceding documents, no passport," Paul said Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Hannity." "This is a terrible humanitarian crisis. It's also a recipe for disaster if tens of thousands of people want to attack us," Paul said.President Barack Obama has ordered the United States to take in at least 10,000 refugees "Even of the 60,000 Iraqis that came over after the war, some of them, even in my little town, Bowling Green, Kentucky, have tried to attack us," he said.The End of the Past
Mark Koyama Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 3, 2017
(crossed posted at Notes on Liberty)
On Branko Milanovic’s recommendation, I read Aldo Schiavone’s The End of the Past. Scholarly and elegantly written, it provides one of the best imaginative reconstructions of the ancient Roman economy.
Previous posts have touched on the economies of late antiquity, the modernist primitivist debate, and diagnosed problems in many recent assessments of the ancient economy (here, here, here, and here). I want to use Schiavone’s book to revisit a question raised by Peter Temin in The Roman Market Economy. How advanced was the Roman economy? Specifically, how did it compare to the economy of Europe in late medieval or early modern times? Was the Roman economy only as developed as that of Europe circa 1300 or was it as advanced as that of western Europe on the eve of the Industrial Revolution in say 1700.
This question is not mere idle speculation. It matters for our understanding of the causes of long-run economic growth whether an industrial revolution could have happened in Song China or ancient Rome. This type of counterfactual history is crucial for pinning down the causal mechanisms responsible for sustained growth, especially as historians like Bas van Bavel are now proposing explicitly cyclical accounts of growth in societies as varied as early medieval Iraq and the Dutch Republic (see The Invisible Hand? (OUP, 2016))
Temin’s GDP estimates suggest that Roman Italy had comparable per capita income to the Dutch Republic in 1600. The Empire as a whole, he suggests, may have been comparable to Europe in 1700 (Temin 2013, 261). My gut reaction is that this is plausible as an upper-bound. Schiavone (who was writing several years before Temin), however, raises important points that I had fully not considered previously.
Schiavone opens with an account of a speech given by Aelius Aristides celebrating the wealth of the Roman empire in the mid-2nd century AD.
“Whatever each culture grows and manufactures cannot fail to be here at all times and in great profusion. Here merchant vessels arrive carrying these many commodities from every region in every season and even at every equinox, so that the city takes on the appearance of a sort of common market for the world. One can see cargoes from India and even from southern Arabia in such numbers that one must conclude that the trees in those lands have been stripped bare, and if the inhabitants of those lands need anything, they must come here to beg for a share of what they have produced….
Your farmlands are Egypt, Sicily, and all of cultivated Africa. Seaborne arrivals and departures are ceaseless, to the point that the wonder is, not so much that the harbor has insufficient space for all these merchant vessels, but that the sea has enough space (if it really does). Just as there is a common channel where all waters of the Ocean have a single source and destination, so that there is a common channel to Rome and all meet here: trade, shipping, agriculture, metallurgy— all the arts and crafts that are or ever were and all things that are produced or spring from the earth. What one does not see here does not exist” (Aristides, The Roman Oration).
This is a panegyric addressed to flatter the emperor but its emphasis on long-distance trade, commerce, manufacturing is highly suggestive. Such a speech is all but impossible to imagine in an predominantly rural and autarkic society. Aristides is painting a picture of a highly developed commercialized economy that linked together the entire Mediterranean and beyond. Even if he is grossly exaggerates, the imagine he depicts must have been plausible to his audience. In evaluating the Roman economy in the age of Aristides, Schaivone notes that:
“Until at least mid-seventeenth century Amsterdam, so expertly described by Simon Schama — the city of Rembrandt, Spinoza, and the great sea-trade companies, the product of the Dutch miracle and the first real “globalization of the economy — or at least, until the Spanish empire of Philip II, the total wealth accumulated and produced in the various regions of Europe reached levels that were not too far from those of the ancient world” (Schiavone, 2000, 94).
This is the point Temin makes. Whether measured in terms of the size of its largest cities — Rome in 100 AD was larger than any European city in 1700 — or in the volume of grain, wine, and olive oil imported into Italy, the scale of the Roman economy was vast by any premodern standard. Quantitively, then, the Roman economy looks as large and prosperous as that the early modern European economy.
Qualitatively, however, there are important differences that Schiavone draws out and which have been obscured in recent quantitative debates about GDP estimates.
Observe that Roman history leaves no traces of great mercantile companies like the Bardi, the Peruzzi or the Medici. There are no records of commercial manuals of the sort that are abundant from Renaissance Italy; no evidence of “class-struggle” as we have from late medieval Europe; and no political economy or “economics”, that is, no attempts to systematize one’s thoughts and insights concerning the commercial world. The ancient world, in this view, only superficially resembled that of early modern Europe. Seen from this perspective, the latter contained the potential for sustained growth; the former did not. Why is this?A high-stress environment may be a boon rather than a bane for some. According to new research published in the Journal of Individual Differences, some anxious individuals can use that experience to motivate themselves.
Past research has found that anxiety can harm concentration and memory. But the new study suggests that the way people experience and respond to anxiety influences their academic and job performance.
“I have the impression that much of the research in the psychology literature focuses on hedonic emotion regulation, in other words, when people strive to be happy,” said the study’s corresponding author, Juliane Strack of Strandklinik St. Peter-Ording. “However, I observed that there are situations where people seem to thrive on stress — situations that tend to evoke negative emotions such as anxiety or anger. That led me to look into the concept of instrumental emotion regulation (when we maintain or strive for emotions that help us to attain goals; these emotions can be negative, such as anxiety in dangerous situations) as well as eustress (positive stress).”
The three-part study investigated the tendency to use anxiety for self-motivation by surveying 194 German adults, 159 undergraduate students in Poland, and 270 journalists in Germany. People who score higher on measures of anxiety motivation tend to agree with statements such as “feeling anxious about a deadline helps me to get the work done on time” and “feeling anxious about my goals keeps me focused on them.”
The researchers found anxious students with higher anxiety motivation tended to have better grades than anxious students with lower anxiety motivation. Likewise, anxious journalists with higher anxiety motivation tended to report higher job satisfaction than anxious journalists with lower anxiety motivation. This was particularly true among individuals who were clear about their feelings.
In other words, the typical association between anxiety and negative outcomes appeared to be disrupted among those with higher levels of anxiety motivation. “Using anxiety as a source of motivation seems to offset the otherwise detrimental effects of anxiety,” Strack and her colleagues wrote in their study.
“I hope that people can understand the positive sides of negative emotions, in particular anxiety, which many people try to suppress or avoid,” Strack told PsyPost. “We see in these studies that anxiety can actually provide us with a lot of energy and focus. In other words, some people use anxiety to motivate themselves, which we label as ‘anxiety motivation’.”
The study had some limitations. “As the studies rely on self-report, future research may benefit from exploring the concept of anxiety motivation in the context of performance ratings or other types of objective indicators for motivation and/or performance,” Strack explained.
The study also used a cross-sectional methodology, preventing the researchers from drawing inferences about cause-and-effect.
“In other studies we have further looked into the concept of anxiety motivation, and found that people differ in how they use anxiety to motivate themselves: some use the energy that anxiety can provide, while others use the information value that anxiety can provide (emotions serve as a feedback system that helps us monitor goal progress; for example anxiety can signal that our goals are threatened),” Strack added.
“Furthermore, anxiety motivation can buffer some of the negative consequences of stressful situations: in experimental settings as well as longitudinal studies we observed that anxiety motivation can protect against emotional exhaustion, as well as helping people to appraise stressors as positive challenges, rather than threatening problems.”
The study, “Must We Suffer to Succeed? When Anxiety Boosts Motivation and Performance“, was also co-authored by Paulo Lopes, Francisco Esteves, and Pablo Fernandez-Berrocal. It was published online May 24, 2017.Spirits are essential to just about everything in Roshar, the world of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. When it’s raining, rain spirits come out to splash in puddles. When the wind blows, ghostly, luminescent, mischievous women ride the zephyrs. Fire dances, not figuratively, but literally. And it’s not just physical phenomena, either, that attract spirits in this world: glorious deeds, perfectly logical arguments, and especially creative or beautiful artwork also have spirits associated with them. These spirits are called spren, and you might think they would suggest a world in which the scientific mind could easily shut itself off entirely. After all, it’s hard to imagine a setting where it would be easier or more tempting to answer any new problem with “a spren did it,” and then stop thinking.
And yet, the people of Roshar saw those little spirits and used them to formulate the germ theory of disease hundreds of years early.
Introducing rotspren:
“Keep that wound clean. We don’t want to attract any rotspren. Let me know if you see any. They are small and red, like tiny insects.”
Cute little things, aren’t they? Like ladybugs that give you gangrene! Rotspren are drawn to open wounds and decaying corpses. Wounds that draw rotspren will quickly become inflamed and infected, causing illness and death if treated poorly. However, rotspren may be small, but they’re still visible, and this has given the people of Roshar the chance to learn a lot more about germs than they should have.
“Hands,” Lirin said, not turning away from gathering his tools. Kal sighed, hopping off his stool and hurrying over to the basin of warm, soapy water by the door. “Why does it matter?” He wanted to be at work, helping Sani. “Wisdom of the Heralds,” Lirin said absently, repeating a lecture he’d given many times before. “Deathspren and rotspren hate water. It will keep them away.”
When you can actually see germs crawling all over everything, it becomes much easier to realize some basic things about hygiene: If you wash your hands, you aren’t covered in deadly ladybugs that make wounds rot. A strong incentive, no? It gets even better: the visibility of rotspren has massively sped up their discovery of antiseptics. The people of Roshar have found multiple naturally occurring compounds that frighten away rotspren: larmic mucus, knobweed sap, and lister’s oil. And, although it’s not made explicit, I imagine other practices that caused a lot of real life trouble weren’t a problem in Roshar. (It’s hard to imagine people looking at corpses that were crawling with rotspren and saying “Yes, let us put these corpses next to our drinking water.”)
To review briefly: In our world the transmission of diseases remained largely mysterious until the invention of the microscope. Although Girolamo Fracastoro invented the contagion theory of disease in 1530, and suggested that tiny particles that he called spores transmitted infections and caused epidemics, his theory was not widely adopted, and science didn’t formally recognize microorganisms as disease vectors until Louis Pasteur’s experiments between 1860 and 1864. Only when he could show people bacteria under a microscope would they begin to believe in germs. Before that the predominant theory of disease, at least among the theories that didn’t revolve entirely around acts of God, was the miasma theory, which proclaimed that sickness spread through bad smells. Pasteur’s experimental demonstrations that microorganisms caused disease paved the way for Joseph Lister to massively improve sanitation in hospitals by inventing antiseptics. He also invented Listerine, although he intended it to be used to clean floors and cure gonorrhea, not to clean out your mouth before a date.
Is this the same Joseph Lister who discovered lister’s oil in the world of The Stormlight Archive? Probably not, although it’s possible that Lister represents the Platonic ideal of inventing sanitation in Sanderson’s mind. Either way, his fantasy innovations have brought medical science to the levels of the dawn of the modern era, while most of the rest of Roshar’s technology is still medieval at best. Surgeons are extremely highly trained, maintain clean operating rooms, use antiseptic, have primitive anaesthetic, and seem to save far more people than they lose, even when they have to amputate limbs. None of this was possible in real life until a time when we had guns, trains, steamboats, and light blubs. People in Alethkar, the main nation in The Way of Kings, are still riding horses, traveling long distances by carriage, and swinging swords at each other, albeit massive ancient swords called Shardblades that cut through stone like paper and burn the souls right out of a person’s body. I’m not sure they even have crossbows. There is a certain amount of disconnect here.
By using the magical elements of his world to screw around with its tech level, Sanderson reminds me of what I love about fantasy, and speculative fiction more generally. When an author makes a new world, they get to set new rules, rules that can do so much more than just set the terms of magical battle. Rotspren change the rules of medicine just as much as Shardblades change the rules of warfare. After introducing these elements, a fantasy author can use them to build an entire world.
For example, by using rotspren to push medicine forward, Sanderson neatly escapes a typical trap of medieval fantasy. By rights, any given scratch on a battlefield should have a significant risk of death. Alethi armies still lose as many men to rotspren as to enemy arrows, but there are battlefield medics with good antiseptics and moderately clean medical facilities with proper triage procedures in place to lighten the losses. A soldier with a medical background and training in field first aid can save many lives, and a soldier whose wounds are not too severe and who receives prompt medical attention has an odds-on chance to live. In other fantasy universes this problem has to be dealt with using magical healing. For example, consider Frodo Baggins, who was stabbed with a Morgul blade. Within days he was desperately ill, and without immediate attention from the most magical healers on the continent, he would’ve had no chance to survive. Without antispetics just about every wound works that way.
When there’s a reasonable chance to heal wounded soldiers, every loss can feel like a failure, and the obsession of protecting a squad can become all-consuming. Enter Kaladin Stormblessed, the main character of The Way of Kings. Kaladin is the son of a surgeon who left home and became a soldier, and he holds every death he can’t prevent as a personal sin. He spends the entire book striving to achieve a goal that may be impossible, but in most other fantasy worlds would be simply inconceivable.
And, of course, the existence of medicine enables many other plot developments. After all, how else would you justify a city like Kharbranth having so many hospitals? Best to say no more about that for now.
Roshar is a world with beautiful contradictions. In many ways, the spren do inhibit thought—after all, they do believe that things fall from the sky because groundspren are pulling on them—but they also cultivate curiosity and drive scientific endeavor. Sanderson shows us multiple spren researchers who have devoted their lives to the taxonomy and physics of these creatures. There’s even an elderly couple who seem to be drawing close to some kind of Heisenberg uncertainty principle by researching spren. Complicating this is the fact that we have to question our assumptions that we know more about how science should work on this world. I assume that rotspren are drawn to infection, rather than causing it, but it could easily be the other way around. Where does Roshar diverge from Earth? How far can we trust our scientific instincts? And if rotspren provide reliable information, how are we supposed to feel about creationspren and logicspren? Maybe we have to let magical spirits decide what is beautiful and logical. After all, they taught us how to do surgery right. I figure we owe them this.
Carl Engle-Laird is the Production Assistant for Tor.com. A spren told him to write this post, and that is totally healthy. You can find him on Twitter.Since injuring Kevin Love this weekend, Boston Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk has been targeted by mountains of Cleveland hate. Searching through his Twitter mentions is seeing how angry humans can be.
"I'd probably get killed if I went to Cleveland right now," Olynyk told the Boston Globe.
He might not be wrong. The 24-year-old has received plenty of death threats on Twitter, but other users have expressed their fury in more creative ways:
@KellyOlynyk I hope that next time you do to Mcdonald's and buy a six piece, they give you five nuggets. Sucka — Haden's Biceps (@HadensBiceps) April 28, 2015
.@KellyOlynyk i hope everytime you go to change your sheets you can never get the corner on just right — Megan Huyghe (@MeganHuyghe) April 28, 2015
.@KellyOlynyk I HOPE YOU BUY AVOCADO AND IT'S NOT RIPE AND THEN THE NEXT DAY IT IS TOO RIPE AND UNUSABLE. — sportsyelling. (@sportsyelling) April 27, 2015
.@KellyOlynyk I HOPE YOU SEE SOMEONE WAVING AND YOU WAVE BACK AND IT TURNS OUT THEY WERE WAVING TO THE GUY BEHIND YOU. — sportsyelling. (@sportsyelling) April 27, 2015
Honestly hope Kelly Olynyk gets charged double meat prices every time he goes to Chipotle from now on. Karma. — Elijah (@da_eeester) April 28, 2015
.@KELLYOLYNYK I HOPE YOU CLOG THE TOILET OF A NEW FRIEND AND YOU HAVE TO ASK THEM FOR THE PLUNGER. — sportsyelling. (@sportsyelling) April 28, 2015
I HOPE YOU REALLY LIKE SOMEONE YOU'VE TALKED TO A FEW TIMES AND WHEN YOU SEE THEM AGAIN THEY SAY "NICE TO MEET YOU" @KELLYOLYNYK — sportsyelling. (@sportsyelling) April 27, 2015
Now those are ill wishes.Looking for news you can trust?
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For all of his focus on industrial workers in the Rust Belt and his dire warnings about America’s inner cities, President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t had much to say about his plans for those in the deepest levels of poverty—including America’s homeless. And that—along with his recent choice of Ben Carson as Housing and Urban Development secretary—is making advocates across the country worried.
For the last six years, homelessness in America has been on the decline, thanks in part to improved federal, state, and local coordination of homeless services and increased investment in permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, and rental assistance programs, particularly for veterans. Since 2010, veteran homelessness dropped 47 percent; meanwhile, the number of chronically homeless individuals and families with children fell by more than 20 percent.
But advocates hear Trump’s calls to cut taxes and rein in government spending and are reminded of the 1980s, when drastic cuts in federal funding for low-income housing and social services set off a homelessness crisis. “We’ve never really recovered from those hits,” says Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
Since 2010, veteran homelessness dropped 47 percent; meanwhile, the number of chronically homeless individuals and families with children fell by more than 20 percent.
Trump’s so-called “penny plan” would cut 1 percent of government spending each year to pay for part of his proposed tax cuts. A fact sheet on Trump’s campaign website noted that defense and entitlement programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, would remain untouched, leaving education, environmental, health, and housing programs up for grabs. It’s unclear how much specific programs would be slashed, but the end result could be substantial: A Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report in September noted that the proposed cuts would slice $150 billion from the federal nondefense discretionary budget by 2026, 37 percent less than what the government spent in 2010.
The federal government allocated at least $5 billion toward addressing homelessness in 2016, with 89 percent of funding split among the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Veteran Affairs. (The Obama administration proposed an additional 11 percent in its 2017 budget and an additional $11 billion over the next decade toward a permanent housing program for families with children who are homeless.)
Nearly half of roughly $5 billion in federal funding—geared toward supportive housing, rapid re-housing, and emergency shelter programs—is distributed in grants to states, communities, and nonprofits. So when there are cuts to funding at the federal level, the pool of money distributed to cities and counties becomes smaller. If Trump goes ahead with the penny plan and ends up curbing housing programs like Community Development Block Grant program or Section 8 housing vouchers, “we could see really devastating effects,” says Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. She added: “At its core, homelessness is about a lack of access to affordable housing. Ending homelessness is about increasing and expanding affordable housing solutions.”
For the places that have seen homelessness rise over the past years—mostly West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle—the threat of further cuts is particularly worrisome. Take Trump’s pledge, for example, to cut off funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with federal immigration officials. San Francisco gets $38.5 million in federal funds to spend on sheltering and housing homeless people (Its new homelessness department has an overall budget of $224 million). Seattle Mayor Ed Murray told the Seattle Times he predicted cuts that could “worsen what happens with the homeless and the addiction crisis we see in this country”; of the $85 million in federal money the city spent last year, $11.5 million went toward homelessness programs.
On top of the potential spending cuts, there’s the Republican promise to repeal Obamacare. For America’s poor, that could spell an end to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion program. Funds from Medicaid reimbursement have been used to support services for the chronically homeless who live in permanent supportive housing. Those services, according to Nan Roman, the president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, can help cut down on pricey emergency room visits.
“The mental-health issues, the substance abuse, the cycling in and out of programs, and really abject poverty—I directly connect [them] to our federal government’s failure to maintain a sensible housing policy.”
The National Health Care for the Homeless Council noted in a letter to advocates that while Congress may introduce repeal legislation quickly, the changes would likely not go into effect for another year or two. The council warned that if Congress moves forward with ending Medicaid expansion and replace it with state-issued block grants, “states will not likely have enough funds to pay for basic care, let alone for ‘extras’ like case management, housing assistance, or outreach. Such changes would seriously jeopardize the services that currently support people in housing and medical respite care, as well as limit the much-needed expansions of these programs.”
Municipalities around the country, then, are preparing for the worst. Jeff Kositsky, director of San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, told KQED’s Forum that the city’s permanent supportive housing would be secure. Still, he said, the city is working on contingency plans if federal funding is pulled.
“Oftentimes I hear people talking about homelessness as individuals failing to fit into the system. I really just see it as the system failing to meet the needs of individuals,” Kositsky said, adding: “So when our federal government stopped investing in low-income housing is when we saw this increase in homelessness and all the devastation that goes along with it. The mental-health issues, the substance abuse, the cycling in and out of programs, and really abject poverty—I directly connect [them] to our federal government’s failure to maintain a sensible housing policy.”Story highlights Bruce L. Castor Jr. will become Pennsylvania's acting attorney general
Kathleen Kane was convicted of perjury and obstruction; she has denied the charges
(CNN) Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane said Tuesday she will resign, according to a statement from her office.
The announcement comes a day after Kane was convicted on charges of perjury and obstruction. Critics had called for her to step down right away.
The resignation will be effective at the close of business Wednesday. The new acting attorney general will be Bruce L. Castor Jr., Kane's top deputy, office spokesman Jeffrey Johnson said.
In the statement, Kane said: "I have been honored to serve the people of Pennsylvania and I wish them health and safety in all their days."
Kane will be sentenced later. The felony offense of perjury carries a potential jail term, and prosecutor Kevin Steele said jail time may be recommended.
Read MoreVancouver's newest high school is leaking so badly students will soon be sitting in portables while a contractor replaces all the windows and |
Statistics. The population figures are based on mid-2012 projections from the Office for National Statistics. Download chart XLS format
(33 Kb) Notes for Geographical distribution of firearm offences Population estimates are based on number of people resident in each police force area while number of offences recorded may include those committed against non-residents, for example people who travel into the city to work. This could partly explain the differences in rates between those areas with large non-resident populations (for example. cities) and those with lower non-resident populations.
Firearm offences by victim characteristics As in previous years, in 2012/13 there was variation in the risk of being a victim of an offence involving a non-air weapon by age. Of the non-air weapon offences in which the age of the victim was known (91% of all instances), 43% of victims were aged between 15 and 29 even though they make up only 20% of the population of England and Wales.
People aged 60 years and over were less likely to become victims, accounting for 5% of victims of non-air weapon offences but comprising 23% of the population.
When the analysis is restricted to victims who were seriously or fatally injured (196 victims for whom age was known) the difference is even more pronounced: 15 to 29 year olds formed 62% of victims, while 2% of victims were over 60 years old (Figure 3.12). Figure 3.12: Age profile of fatally or seriously injured firearm victims, excluding air weapons, compared to population profile for England and Wales, 2012/13(1,2) Notes: Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics. Excludes four cases where victim age was unknown. The population figures are based on mid-2012 projections from the Office for National Statistics. Download chart XLS format
(34.5 Kb) Of the 4,499 (87%) offences involving non-air weapons in which victim ethnicity was recorded, 66% were White (2,949 offences), 17% were Asian (752), 15% were Black (669) and 3% (129) were from other minority ethnic groups. By way of comparison, 2012 population estimates (based on the 2011 Census) indicate that 86% of the population of England and Wales were White, 8% Asian, 3% were Black and the remaining 3% were of other ethnicities. Black and Asian victims are therefore over represented and White victims are under represented but there are other important factors which must be considered in the interpretation of this finding. Firstly, it should be noted that these results have not been age-standardised and there is a relationship between age and being a victim of offences involving firearms. In addition, the age profile of the population varies by ethnicity, for example the Black ethnic group has a younger age profile than White3. Finally, there are also likely to be important socio-economic factors in offences involving firearms that cannot be examined using police recorded data. There is evidence from other studies that suggests that ethnicity is just one of many factors in violent incidents in general. Leyland and Dundas (2009), for example, investigated Scottish homicides between 1980 and 2005, and concluded that “contextual influences of the neighbourhood of residence might be more important than individual characteristics in determining the victims of assault”. When analysing overall CSEW violence, the 2009/10 survey (Flatley et al., 2010) showed that ethnic groups other than white do not have a higher risk of being a victim of CSEW violence. While the CSEW looks at violence overall (and does not cover homicide), and the Leyland and Dundas study is for Scotland, this does provide some evidence that other socio-factors may also be important. Notes for Firearm offences by victim characteristics 2011 Census results are published on the ONS website.
Misappropriated (stolen) firearms Additional information on the number of firearms that are ‘misappropriated’, that is stolen, obtained by fraud or forgery, or handled dishonestly is also collected by the police. However, to reduce the burden on police forces, the Home Office stopped collecting information on stolen firearms on 1 April 2013 and as such this data will not appear in future publications. The number of firearms recorded by the police as being stolen has fluctuated between 2,000 and 3,000 in the past ten years. During 2012/13, 2,155 firearms were stolen, a similar level to the previous year (2,133; Appendix table 3.15 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ). Overall in 2012/13, the majority of firearms (69%) that were stolen were taken from residential premises, this pattern is also observed for each of the different firearm types ( Appendix table 3.16 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ).
Offences involving knives or sharp instruments: Introduction Seven of the more serious types of offence in the recorded crime data (homicide, threats to kill, actual and grievous bodily harm, robbery, attempted murder, rape and sexual assault) can be broken down by whether or not a knife or sharp instrument was involved. Data are regularly updated with revised information from the police. Statistics on offences recorded by the police involving a knife or sharp instrument are also published on a quarterly basis in the Crime in England and Wales release. The knife and sharp instrument offence figures reported in this publication differ slightly from the Crime in England and Wales quarterly releases because of these updates. Unlike the data for firearms, the police do not provide detailed information at an offence level. For this reason it is not possible analyse victim characteristics or the particular type of sharp instrument used for police recorded knife crime.
Offences involving knives or sharp instruments: Prevalence and trends In 2012/13, knives or other sharp instruments were used in a total of 26,340 offences recorded by the police, a fall of 15% compared with 2011/12 and more than double the 7% fall in total recorded crime over the same period. Over 90% of knife or sharp instrument offences were for robbery (13,139 offences) or actual/grievous bodily harm offences (11,372 offences). Homicides involving a knife or sharp instrument made up around 1% of the total number of knife or sharp instrument offences (Figure 3.13). Figure 3.13 Offences recorded by police in which a knife or sharp instrument was used, 2012/13(1,2) Notes: Source: Police recorded crime and Homicide Index, Home Office. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics. ‘Other offences’ includes: attempted murder, rape and sexual assault. Download chart XLS format
(33.5 Kb) Before 2010/11, there were known inconsistencies in knife or sharp instrument recording practices between police forces. West Midlands police force included unbroken bottle and glass offences in their returns but have excluded these offences in line with other forces since 2010/11 (see Chapter 5 of the User Guide). As such, the data since 2010/11 are not comparable with those from earlier years. Two forces (Surrey and Sussex) continue to recorded offences involving unbroken bottles and glass in their knife or sharp instrument returns; however the estimated number of such offences is small enough that it is not likely to impact on national trends. Thus, the years from 2010/11 onwards are broadly comparable, while in order to extend the time series further back it is necessary to exclude West Midlands. In the three years from 2010/11, offences involving a knife or sharp instrument fell 20% from 32,889 to 26,340, with a large part of this decrease occurring between 2011/12 and 2012/13 (Figure 3.14). With the exception of sexual assault, all of the selected offences involving knives or sharp instruments described above decreased by around 20% during this three year period ( Appendix table 3.17 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ). The extended trend beginning 2008/09, which excludes West Midlands police, is broadly similar to the trend for all forces beginning 2010/11: both show decreases in recent years with the sharpest fall being between 2011/12 and 2012/13. The total number of offences for the extended trend is shown in Figure 3.14, while more detail on individual offence trends is given in Appendix table 3.18 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet). Figure 3.14: Number of police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, including and excluding West Midlands PFA, 2008/09 to 2012/13(1,2) Notes: Source: Police recorded crime and Homicide Index, Home Office. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics. Offences included in figures are all those listed in figure 3.13. Download chart XLS format
(33.5 Kb) Although the number of knife crime offences has fallen in recent years, the number as a proportion of total police recorded offences in which they have been used has changed little. Over the three years for which there are complete police force area data, the proportion of police recorded crimes for the seven selected offences in which a knife or sharp instrument was used has fallen only slightly from 7% in 2010/11 to 6% in 2012/13 ( Appendix table 3.19 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ).
Geographical distribution of offences involving knives or sharp instruments The Metropolitan Police recorded 43% (11,375 offences) of all knife or sharp instrument offences. This figure is equivalent to 137 offences per 100,000 population, three times the rate of England and Wales as a whole and more than double the rate of Greater Manchester (the force with the next highest rate). In forces other than the Metropolitan Police, those covering urban areas typically recorded more offences involving knives or sharp instruments and had higher offence rates per 100,000 population than those in rural areas ( Appendix table 3.20 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ).1 Notes for Geographical distribution of offences involving knives or sharp instruments Population estimates are based on number of people resident in each police force area while number of offences recorded may include those committed against non-residents, for example people who travel into the city to work. This could partly explain the differences in rates between those areas with large non-resident populations (for example. cities) and those with lower non-resident populations.
Hospital admissions for assault with knives or sharp instruments Although injuries resulting from offences involving knives or sharp instruments are not recorded by the police, some data for England is available from the NHS Hospital Episodes Statistics1. The recording of the cause of hospital admission is not mandatory so the figures should be treated with some caution. Between 2011/12 and 2012/13, hospital admissions for assault with sharp instruments fell by 14% (641 admissions) to 3,849. This follows a period of steady decline between 2006/07 and 2011/12 from 5,720 to 4,490, a fall of 22% over this period ( Appendix table 3.19 (1.38 Mb Excel sheet) ). Between 2008/09 and 2012/13, hospital admissions for assault with sharp instruments and police recorded offences involving knives or sharp instruments have followed a similar pattern, although, as expected, the absolute number of recorded knife crime offences is considerably higher. Both are at their lowest level recorded in the last five years, having fallen sharply between 2011/12 and 2012/13 (Figure 3.15). Figure 3.15: Indexed admissions to NHS hospitals with injuries from assault with a sharp object and police recorded offences involving a knife or sharp instrument, England, 2008/09 to 2012/13(1,2) Notes: Source: Police recorded crime and Homicide Index, Home Office; Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre. Police recorded crime data are not designated as National Statistics. All Welsh PFAs and West Midlands PFA are excluded. Download chart XLS format
(33 Kb) Notes for Hospital admissions for assault with knives or sharp instruments Hospital Episode Statistics records describe episodes (periods) of continuous in-patient care under the same consultant.
Background notes A list of the organisations given pre-publication access to the contents of this bulletin can be found on the ONS website. In accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, statistics based on police recorded crime data have been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and found not to meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics. The full assessment report can be found on the UK Statistics Authority website. While data relating to the Homicide Index used in this release is covered by the de-designation of all data based on police recorded crime, Home Office and ONS statisticians do not have significant concerns about the accuracy of recording of homicides. However, ONS accepts that there is currently insufficient evidence to provide that assurance. The ONS will work with partners to obtain fuller information on the quality of the Homicide Index and will request a re-assessment by the UK Statistics Authority in due course. Data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) continues to be badged as National Statistics, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. For more information on statistics designated as National Statistics, see background note 3. Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available by visiting www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/index.html or from the Media Relations Office email: media.relations@ons.gsi.gov.uk The United Kingdom Statistics Authority has designated these statistics as National Statistics, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Designation can be broadly interpreted to mean that the statistics: meet identified user needs;
are well explained and readily accessible;
are produced according to sound methods; and
are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest. Once statistics have been designated as National Statistics it is a statutory requirement that the Code of Practice shall continue to be observed.SALEM -- All throughout Oregon, some of life's basic rituals -- from voting to pumping gas to preventing pregnancy -- are about to change.
And you can blame (or, fine, thank) Gov. Kate Brown and the Oregon Legislature. Of the hundreds of bills passed by lawmakers in 2015, more than 300 are set to take effect Jan. 1.
Some of the new laws were major enough to win national attention.
Rep. Knute Buehler, the Bend Republican who championed nearly-on-demand birth control prescriptions, was talking to The New York Times about his bill as recently as November. In the spring, Oregon's plan to use driver records to automate voter registration hit The Washington Post and got a nod from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Others bills, meanwhile, will be plenty important for regular Oregonians. Thousands of workers won't lose pay when they call in sick. And, in an end-run around Oregon tradition, drivers running low on gas in rural counties won't have to pray someone is still working the pumps. They'll be able to do it themselves.
What else is changing? Take a spin through The Oregonian/OregonLive's roundup of the 20 most consequential laws waiting for you in 2016:
Birth control: Women who want or need oral contraception will be free to head straight to their local pharmacist for a prescription -- skipping costly or inconvenient doctor visits. And they'll be able to stock up for a year. Oregon, in 2015, was the first state to require all insurers to cover 12-month refills.
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Sick time: Employers with 10 or more workers will have to provide five paid sick days a year. The new law preserves Portland's 2013 sick-leave measure, which applies to smaller businesses.
Pumping your own gas: Oregonians driving non-commercial vehicles will be allowed to pump their own gas -- so long as they're stopped at a service station in a rural area (counties with 40,000 people or fewer) between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
"Vaping": Puffing on electronic cigarettes or other related devices inside a public place -- on the job, at a bar, at a restaurant, wherever -- will no longer be allowed.
"Motor voter" bill: The next time you renew your Oregon driver's license, or when one of you transplants finally signs up for one, you'll be automatically added to Oregon's roster of registered voters. (Assuming you're eligible to vote -- as in, you're 18 and can prove American citizenship.)
"Ban the box": Employers will lose the ability to ask job applicants to check a box on an application form that asks whether they've been convicted of a crime. The law, seen as a means of easing recidivism by making it easier for ex-convicts to find work, will be enforced by the state Bureau of Labor and Industries.
Hidden cameras: Using a hidden camera to record someone in places where privacy is normally presumed, such as a bathroom or changing area, will become a felony instead of a misdemeanor.
Sex crimes prosecutions: Rape victims will have 12 years -- instead of six -- to report an attack before the statute of limitations expires. The issue was crystallized in 2015 by testimony from rape survivor Brenda Tracy.
Filming the police: Bystanders will have the explicit right to film police officers as they perform their official duties.
Same-sex marriage: The words "husband and wife" will no longer appear in state marriage statutes. They'll be replaced with "spouses in a legal marriage."
Domestic workers: Oregon's 10,000 domestic workers, many of them women and immigrants, will receive workplace rights including overtime pay, rest periods and paid personal leave.
Collecting wage claims: The Bureau of Labor and Industries will have the power to garnish someone's income when collecting on delinquent orders and judgments -- without spending time asking a court's permission.
Animal abuse: Knowingly possessing video recordings that show bestiality will become a misdemeanor crime punishable by jail time or a large fine. Sexually abusing an animal will become a felony instead of a misdemeanor.
Bomb threats: If you phone in a fake bomb threat or something similar at a courthouse or public building, you'll now be committing a misdemeanor crime.
E-vehicles: Parking your non-electric vehicle in a parking space reserved for alternative-fuel vehicles will jolt you with a $250 fine.
Adoptions: Grandparents will have the right to remain in the lives of children whose parents have had their own legal rights revoked.
Social media freedom: Bosses will lose the right to force employees to use social media for work purposes or to make employment conditional on having a social media account.
Animal neglect: Police officers who see an animal suffering inside a hot vehicle will have the legal right to break in and make a rescue.
Death and cable TV: Cable companies and other telecommunications providers will have to stop charging early-termination fees when customers enter hospice. Or die.
Stoplight mercy: Bicyclists, motorcyclists and anyone else on two wheels will get to run a red light -- cautiously! -- if the light strands them by failing to go through a full light cycle and turn green.
-- Denis C. Theriault
503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDXBorn in Hungary as László Elkán, Lucien Hervé (1929-2007) moved to Paris in 1929 where he worked as a photographer for the French news magazine, Marianne. He also became politically active joining various unions and parties, ultimately becoming part of the anti-Nazi French Resistance movement in 1941 under the pseudonym ‘Lucien Hervé’. After the war, he resumed his work as a photographer and in 1949 he met Le Corbusier.
A self-taught architect, Hervé became Le Corbusier’s official photographer which marked a real turning point in his career on which he remarked: ''With Le Corbusier I learned to discern and identify beauty in its nascent form, along with a need for total purity, this notion forced me to work with rigor and precision...''. Interestingly, Hervé also went on to work with a number of other world-renowned architects including Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Jean Prouvé and Oscar Niemeyer.
As well as agnès b.’s Lucien Hervé: Le Corbusier in India, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will be showcasing a retrospective of Le Corbusier’s work, Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes from the 15th of June to the 23rd of September. The exhibition will further underline the link between the work and explorations of these two historical figures.
Lucien Hervé: Le Corbusier in India will run from the 10th of May until the 28th of July 2013 at agnès b. Galerie Boutique, 50 Howard Street, New York, NY 10013, USA.Saudi Arabia, once the world’s largest energy producer before the US took over with huge amounts of shale gas, is facing its biggest economic challenge in a decade. Oil prices continue to crash with no clear end in sight; last week, the price of oil fell below the price of an actual barrel. The IMF says Saudi Arabia is in danger of draining its financial reserves within five years.
So the energy-dependent nation—oil made up 73% of revenues last year—will try to tackle its almost $100-billion deficit with ambitious new plans to strengthen other industries, which range from information technology to tourism, and diversify away from oil.
But can Saudi Arabia wean itself off its most precious resource?
Some are skeptical, and for good reason. Other countries have struggled to do just that. Take Brunei, whose people benefit from no income tax, free education, and access to social housing because of its oil and gas sector, which accounts for 60% of its economic output (paywall).
But it’s also down to oil that the small wealthy nation is now facing an uncertain future, despite a great deal of effort to diversify its economy going back as far as the 1950s. According to the BP World Energy Outlook, the country has enough oil left for just 22 years at its current pace of extraction. (Saudi Arabia has 63 years.)
Brunei has a new development plan—Vision Brunei 2035— to build other parts of its economy. The government has targeted a number of key sectors, including halal manufacturing, information technology, and tourism. But despite the government’s best efforts, these prioritized sectors have failed to kick off.
According to the Financial Times, Brunei’s fiscal deficit was expected to reach 10% of GDP in 2015—compared with a 28% surplus in 2011. More than half the population are still employed by the public sector.
“I don’t think any economist would be very bullish about the future of Brunei’s non-oil and gas sectors, to put it mildly,” Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, told The Globe and Mail. Faced with a slump, Brunei has decided to double down and deal with the oil crisis—by producing more oil.
Here’s hoping the Saudis have an easier time. In Saudi Arabia, only 16% of the workforce is in the private sector and it’s coming off a huge boom—between 2003 and 2013, Saudi Arabia’s GDP doubled and household income rose by 75%, according to the consultants McKinsey.Marvel Films Officially Moving To Disney Streaming Service
A while ago, it was revealed that Disney is starting its own streaming service as they plan to move their Disney films away from Netflix. This caused some concern for Marvel fans, as it remained unclear if Marvel films would be moving from Netflix too. Despite previous talks of Netflix and Disney being in negotiation to keep all Marvel and Star Wars related films on Netflix after the current deal expires in 2019, things have changed.
The studio’s CEO Bob Iger revealed today during a Q&A at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2017 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, that they are indeed moving Marvel and Star Wars films to the new streaming service.
“We’ve now decided we will put the Marvel and Star Wars movie on this app as well.
However, fans of Marvel TV have no need to worry. A Netflix statement confirmed to Bloomberg in August that the relationship will continue in terms of Marvel TV shows.
“U.S. Netflix members will have access to Disney films on the service through the end of 2019, including all new films that are shown theatrically through the end of 2018. We continue to do business with the Walt Disney Company on many fronts, including our ongoing relationship with Marvel TV.”
What are your thoughts on Marvel (and Star Wars for that matter) leaving Netflix and heading to the studio’s official new streaming service in 2019?Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.
Shulman’s extensive access to the White House first came to light during his testimony last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Shulman gave assorted answers when asked why he had visited the White House 118 times during the period that the IRS was targeting tea party and conservative nonprofits for extra scrutiny and delays on their tax-exempt applications.
By contrast, Shulman’s predecessor Mark Everson only visited the White House once during four years of service in the George W. Bush administration and compared the IRS’s remoteness from the president to “Siberia.” But the scope of Shulman’s White House visits — which strongly suggests coordination by White House officials in the campaign against the president’s political opponents — is even more striking in comparison to the publicly recorded access of Cabinet members.
An analysis by The Daily Caller of the White House’s public “visitor access records” showed that every current and former member of President Obama’s Cabinet would have had to rack up at least 60 more public visits to the president’s home to catch up with “Douglas Shulman.”
The visitor logs do not give a complete picture of White House access. Some high-level officials get cleared for access and do not have to sign in during visits. A Washington Post database of visitor log records cautions, “The log may include some scheduled visits that did not take place and exclude visits by members of Congress, top officials and others who are not required to sign in at security gates.”
The White House press office declined to comment on which visits by high-ranking officials do and do not get recorded in the visitor log, but it is probable that the vast majority of visits by major Cabinet members do not end up in the public record. (RELATED: How much have scandals hurt Obama’s approval ratings?)
Nevertheless, many visits by current and former Cabinet members are in the logs, and the record depicts an IRS chief uniquely at home in the White House.
Attorney General Eric Holder, President Obama’s friend and loyal lieutenant, logged 62 publicly known White House visits, not even half as many as Shulman’s 157.
Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, to whom Shulman reported, clocked in at just 48 publicly known visits.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earned a cool 43 public visits, and current Secretary of State John Kerry logged 49 known White House visits in the same timeframe, when he was still a U.S. senator.
Shulman has more recorded visits to the White House than HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (48), DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano (34), Education Secretary Arne Duncan (31), former Energy Secretary Steven Chu (22) and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (17) combined.
The Daily Caller’s analysis includes current, former and presently-nominated members of Obama’s Cabinet.
After Shulman, Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank (86), Asst. Attorney General Thomas Perez (83) and Penny Pritzker (76) — Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary — have the most publicly known White House visits.
The sheer volume of Shulman’s White House visits has left congressional investigators puzzled.
“What would be some of the reasons you might be at the White House?” Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly asked Shulman during a congressional hearing last week.
“Um, the Easter Egg Roll with my kids,” Shulman replied. “Questions about the administrability of tax policy they were thinking of; our budget; us helping the Department of Education streamline application processes for financial aid.”
Shulman said it “would not have been appropriate” to tell the White House about the IRS’s intimidation of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
That answer has done nothing to mollify the critics. (RELATED: Walter Williams: ‘Americans deserve the IRS’)
“Is it really believable that someone who had a Wall Street career before coming to Washington five years ago was so politically naïve that he didn’t see the potential for scandal in that information and give the White House a heads-up?” Commentary’s John Steele Gordon wondered Tuesday.
“Sooner or later this [question] will have to be answered,” tweeted Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, “What was the ex-IRS chief doing at the White House all those times?”
Shulman’s integrity has come under fire in recent weeks as he — in the face of congressional investigators — failed to recant his March 2012 testimony, during which he insisted that the IRS was not targeting conservative groups.
Public White House records are incomplete, with records only showing visits after September 15, 2009. The White House releases several months of records at a time. The last few months should be released later this year.
William Green contributed to this report.
Follow Vince on TwitterThe word ‘poverty’ is not well liked. There are few words that can evoke as much tear-jerking grist for the political mill as this single, three syllable word. Say it aloud and then close your eyes. Some of us may imagine the smokestacks of Victorian London being scrubbed by scrawny children who have to wheeze into their shirt sleeves. Flick a penny at them and they will tip their frayed top-hats at you. Some see a tiny African boy with gray hair and a belly bloated by starvation. He won’t have long to live unless you pick up the phone and call now. Others think of Chinese peasants in black rags planting rice for fourteen hour days with bent and aching backs. Whatever your thoughts, whatever the images, none of them are good. Poverty is, by definition, a word signifying a grim reality.
The Random House Dictionary defines poverty as the state of “having little or no money, goods, or means of support.” This definition does not mince words. It clearly states that there is a lack of something, a scarcity, a relentless and enduring absence — much like what is in the heads of your average American voter.
We inhabit a material world and we therefore tend to think of more stuff as better; and, as such, the great lack of stuff caused by poverty will always be bad. Having a bathtub is a lot better than not having one, and certainly cleaner. Most would agree that having food to eat is considerably better than starving. Of course, there are some people who deem poverty a virtue but they’re all hare-brained hermits and Quakers so nobody takes them too seriously.
Maybe it is because of these holy, hermetical airs that the word ‘poverty’ is sometimes paired with lofty words like ‘noble’ and ‘hard-working’. At other times, in decidedly less religious company, we hear people speak of ‘crippling’ and ‘abject’ poverty. This is a powerful word and if our own eyes are to be believed, probably more powerful than poverty itself. It is a word that can shake the world.
In fact, it is so easy to tug people’s heartstrings with the word ‘poverty’, that the word has done far more to create poverty than cure it. The left has turned the word into a club which they can use to bludgeon the middle class. Rest assured that when the taxman comes to skim the fat off of your hard day’s work, he will claim to do it on behalf of someone else’s poverty. He will call it the first great step in the “war on poverty” or the “poverty relief act” or the “poverty prevention program.” If the left is feeling cryptic they will couch their legislation in roundabout terms that still suggest the old smokestacks and withering Kenyan babies: “affordable care,” “social security,” “supplemental nutritional assistance,” and so on.
It is plain to see that with the help of their clubs the leftists have turned poverty into a lucrative industry. This kind of theft is a perfectly good reason for Americans to stand up and complain while the club is a perfectly good reason to sit back down again. And that is exactly what white, middle class Americans have done for decades — we gripe quietly in our homes or in hushed tones around the water cooler at work, but not openly, and never so loudly as to attract attention. We raise our children on the supposed virtues of white-funded ethnic diversity so that we can continue to gripe with a forced smile; after all, the bitter pill is a lot easier to swallow if you convince yourself ahead of time that cyanide must be good medicine.
The success of this industry might be one reason why the left has been looking rather red faced and worried as of late: the meteoric rise of the Western world’s standard of living, thanks primarily to free enterprise, has stamped out genuine poverty. It is a lot easier to rob Peter to pay Paul when Paul wears a pair of dusty overalls and a straw hat; when he wears name-brand shirts, designer jeans, and two-hundred dollar shoes, Peter may start to get skeptical. And now Peter is getting very skeptical indeed; the water cooler talk is getting a little louder at work and the griping has roped in the neighbors. A growing sense of unease is spreading.
Poverty in America has transformed from soot-faced coal miners who live in a one room shack by the railroad to blubbery Jaquita who drives a Cadillac and has a thousand-dollar weave in her hair. By most estimations, when a nation’s poor live better than four-fifths of the world’s population, the nation has done well for itself. America should take a moment to straighten its tie and admire itself in the mirror. To the left, however, an affluent underclass is a disaster and being proud when they look in the mirror is not the leftist way.
The left needs to be able to promise ever increasing riches to rile up the poor; once the poor have grown sleepy and content, once their fridges are stocked with government-paid two liter sodas and their tables are laid with fried chicken or hamburgers each night, rioting becomes an afterthought since the TV will suffice for cheap entertainment. The left still riot — but the riots have become an amusement, a break from the monotony of being idle, rather than a means to fill their stomachs.
The foremost solution to this problem has been immigration. The left decided that if there are no more native-born poor, they can import genuinely poor people from poor nations. The European left has welcomed Muslims for this purpose. In the United States in particular, Latin America has been a fertile ground for cranky socialists who like to benefit from America’s working white majority. It also helps, I’m sure, that Pew Research released data which shows that the majority of Hispanics vote Democrat even three generations after their initial immigration, since after all, voting Democrat goes hand in hand with being a cranky socialist.
The second solution is much more insidious and subtle: the left has started to redefine poverty. Since the fence bothers them they have decided to dig up all of the fence posts. In Britain, the leftists recently started punching the keys of their calculators and gazed into some very magical crystal balls in order to redefine what constitutes poverty. They may have even consulted a few well-respected witch doctors in the London area. After much consideration and patient augury, they announced their own definition of poverty as 60% of whatever the year’s current median income is. The US Census Bureau uses similar alchemical formulas to determine poverty.
Most men’s jaws will not drop upon hearing news of this. This is because most men will not catch the sleight of hand employed by these bureaucratic hucksters. This is a very under the table definition. For those of you who have not yet figured out the trick, I will explain: the leftists have defined poverty as a percentage. This means that no matter how affluent a society becomes, no matter how much food the poor shovel in their mouths, no matter how many cars they have in their driveways, no matter how jammed packed their closets are with designer clothes — according to the left, these people are living in poverty. We have come a long way from chimney-sweeps and Chinese rice planters.
This is how we have arrived at the absurd situation where the US Census Bureau claims that 14% of America is living in poverty yet you would be hard pressed to find a poor person in America who doesn’t look like a blubbery land whale. We are some of the fattest people on the planet. You would be hard pressed to find a single mother who doesn’t have a TV in her home or a phone in her pocket. We are some of the most wired people on the planet. Analysts speak of American healthcare as being one of the most expensive in the world, and it is, if you are middle class. If you are poor, on the other hand, Medicaid ensures that healthcare is completely free. Compare the American so-called poverty to Haitian poverty and it is clear that there is no comparison.
We don’t have genuine poverty here. It has become an American pastime that the poor get to have all the benefits of welfare and none of the bother of work. Our welfare programs are so generous, and so discouraging of hard work, that we have a class of people who can cheerfully remain below the government’s percentage-based poverty line. They won’t be inconvenienced at all; or rather, they won’t be inconvenienced until they try to rise above the poverty line. Unfortunately, there is no incentive to make more money when making more money will make you liable to lose more of it.
Consider the absurdities of this situation. In most states, if you are single and make more than $22,000 per year, you will be liable to pay your own healthcare costs. Imagine that you earn $21,000 per year. Your greatest financial setback would not be to lose one thousand dollars per year; it would be to gain an extra thousand dollars per year. Once you make that extra thousand, you have to start shouldering your healthcare costs in addition to filing federal income tax. In effect, as a poor man |
taking expressions of interest from architects and engineers who would like to be involved in the design. Interested parties should email atheisticspirituality@gmail.com asking to be included on their mailing list.Russia on Saturday ended a massive three-day nuclear war exercise involving 10,000 soldiers, as the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War continues.
The drill, which utilised over 30 military units and 1000 pieces of equipment, was to ensure that Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces are prepared to conduct offensive operations in the event of a massive and simultaneous international use of nuclear weapons.
News of the exercise was carried by Russian daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which cites senior military officers.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
The report says Russia’s Strategic Missile Command emphasized that the event was scheduled last year and has nothing to do with the Ukraine crisis.
It was nevertheless, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta the largest such exercise carried out in recent times.
Nato is increasingly concerned over Moscow’s intentions following the ousting of Russian backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Currently up to 40,000 Russian troops continue to be stationed on the Russian-Ukraine border and Andrej Illarionov, Vladimir Putin’s former chief economic adviser, has said the Russian President wishes to “conquer” Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland.
US secretary of state John Kerry is set to meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Paris today, in an attempt by both sides to ease tensions.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowI've been writing a very long document over the past couple of years. Because I love tracking my own behavior and Open science, I decided to version control the whole editing process of my thesis on GitHub. Because I've been keeping track of all my updates with git, that means I can monitor all the changes that have gone into my thesis over time. This can also be useful for collaborating on writing papers too (though my prototypical Luddite advisor would rather do things by emailing Mac Pages documents).
Git PDF movie maker
As a cool way to visualize all the changes, I wrote a series of a couple of scripts that checkout each version and make a movie out of all the.pdfs in the repo over time. Here's the current state (note that the thesis isn't even close to finished yet; I'll update when I get more on it.)
If you think you'd like to use this, you can bounce over to the git-pdf-viz GitHub repo and download it now. Read on below for more info on how it works, how to modify it, and to see the results of running git-pdf-viz on my thesis.
A Real Bash!
Writing bash scripts is a party, I know. This entire project is comprised of just a few bash scripts that are meant to be run sequentially (with some editing maybe).
save_all_pdfs pdfs_to_ims ims_to_montage montage_to_frame frame_to_movie
Save All PDFs
The first script really takes care of the core of this program. There's lots of extra details but the key piece of save_all_pdfs.sh is "git rev-list master," which gives you all the commit ids for your repo. This pseudo-bash shows the general idea:
for commit in $(git rev-list master) do git checkout $commit...copy all pdfs to somewhere safe... done
"git checkout" updates all the files that are sitting in the project directory locally. So with the list of revisions from "git rev-list master" I can reset the state of my file system to reflect the state at each committed phase of the project. After that, I just need to copy all the files I need (in this case my pdfs) somewhere safe for use later. (Caveat: I'm currently only copying pdfs if they have a corresponding latex file because I wanted to ignore any figures that weren't included. You can modify the script accordingly if you need all your pdfs copied.)
Playing with pdfs and images
The next three scripts rely on GhostScript and ImageMagick suite to jockey our pdfs into a composite image that will eventually be turned into movie frames. You can view the scripts themselves for more details about implementation, but I'll explain the idea behind each script for reference.
gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf *.pdf uses ghostscript to merge all the saved pdfs together
uses ghostscript to merge all the saved pdfs together convert merged.pdf im/i_%03d.png converts the merged pdf to a sequence of individual pngs
converts the merged pdf to a sequence of individual pngs montage -mode concatenate -tile 10x i_*../final.png stitches all the individual png "pages" into a "montage" panel with 10 columns
stitches all the individual png "pages" into a "montage" panel with 10 columns convert "${now}/final.png" -resize 1000x -gravity northwest -background white -extent 1000x700 -colorspace RGB "PNG32:bydate/${now}.png" rescales each montage and ensures that all images are the same size and colorspace
rescales each montage and ensures that all images are the same size and colorspace mogrify -gravity southeast -pointsize 26 -annotate +10+10 %t *.png adds a little timestamp (based on the title) in the southeast corner
At the end of this process there will be a folder named bydate/ with an image for every frame of a movie that's about to get made.
Lights, Camera, Action
As the final step we use ffmpeg to convert all of the images into an mp4 movie. This requires two lines because ffmpeg is made to work with numerically sequential files, and my files are named based on their date.
ls *.png | sort -V | xargs -I {} echo "file '{}'" > list.txt ffmpeg -r 2 -f concat -i list.txt -r 30 -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p../git_pdf_viz.mp4
This is a good example of how compicated ghostscript, ImageMagick, and ffmpeg can be to use. Through all of this there are about 20 extra parameters that have to get passed to each of these programs to make them work properly. I can't explain all of them in detail, so I recommend the individual software's documentation if you find you need to modify these extensively. These are amazingly powerful programs that make life so much easier for any kind of batch audiovisual project so I highly encourage getting acquainted with them at some point in your life.
Have fun, and I hope that this encourages you to use open source version control whenever you write/edit any large document project.I got the inspiration to do this from the last mani I did, the Vogue inspired rainbow nails. But I opted out for more spring shades. While I’m not that happy with the look, I still want to share it with you all!
Easter is such a fun holiday. While I do not celebrate it, I love to go along with the festivities. So why not decorate your nails to go along with the fun as well. I went with the same concept as my last mani, but I added a baby chick for my accent nails.
Here are the colors I used:
Peach: L’oreal Macaroon Me Madly
Purple: China Glaze Spontaneous
Blue: Essie Bikini So Teeny
Pink: OPI Shorts Story
Teal: Naughty Nautical
White: Kiss Nail Art Polish
Yellow (Chick): Revlon Sunshine Sparkle
Orange (Beak): Deborah Lippmann Lara’s Theme
*Sorry for the quality of this mani and pictures. I guess I was off. But thanks for reading!
AdvertisementsThe Simon Wiesenthal Center has written a letter to the Dutch Prime Minister asking him to disband a statutory government body that has called on the Netherlands to develop closer ties to the terrorist organization Hamas at the expense of Israel.
The letter to PM Mark Rutte condemns a report by the Advisory Council on International Affairs which calls for the Netherlands to distance itself from Israel and develop closer ties with Hamas. The Dutch Parliament is set to debate the report on October 8th.
In the letter, Head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, says the report is riddled with factual errors and calls for closer ties with Hamas, a terrorist organization whose founding document invokes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a basis to "carry out genocide against Israel's six million Jewish citizens."
The Protocol of the Elders of Zion is a fabricated document detailing Jewish plans to control the world.
Rabbi Cooper said: "It is clear that the advisory Council on Foreign Affairs has produced a fatally flawed document that does not serve the cause of peace but only the most extreme forces in the Middle East."
The letter also said it was dismayed at a worrying trend in the Netherlands quoting a university poll in 2011 that found "38% of Dutchmen thought Israel was exterminating the Palestinians."
Israeli President Shimon Peres has just ended a visit to the Netherlands where he met with the Dutch King, and leading politicians.
Arutz Sheva asked anti-Semitism expert Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, who has published extensively on the Netherlands, to comment on the letter of the SWC to Prime Minister Rutte:
‘It seems on the surface quite far-going for the SWC to ask the Dutch Prime Minister to disband a Dutch government advisory body. Yet, the AIV report represents probably the lowest point with respect to what a government body has permitted itself concerning whitewashing or omitting Palestinian crimes and lies.
"It is thanks to the enormous effort of former Dutch parliamentarian Wim Kortenoeven who has commented the AIV document with hundreds of notes that one can understand how unprofessional and morally bankrupt the document and thus the AIV itself is. It is clear that the AIV presents itself falsely as a serious study organization. Its document which in essence is Palestinian propaganda is likely to be discussed in the Senate.
"The chairman of the AIV and a member of the commission for the Middle East which is responsible for the document is former Dutch Justice Minister Frits Korthals Altes. As Minister of Justice he freed the two last German Nazi war criminals in Dutch jails out of humanitarian reasons in 1989.
"One of them, Ferdinand Hugo Aus der Funten, was in charge of the deportation of the Dutch Jews to extermination camps. More than 100 000, or over 70% of Dutch Jews, were murdered or perished there. This Nazi criminal had after the war been condemned to the death sentence but Queen Juliana refused to sign the execution order.
"I discussed this with Korthals Altes in an interview with him a number of years ago, but his explanation for the freeing seems far from convincing now.
"Another member of the AIV Board is Joris Voorhoeve, who was Minister of Defense when the Dutch UN troops fled Srebrenica in 1995, which made the genocide of about 8 000 Muslim men and boys there by Bosnian Serbs possible. His functioning as minister has been heavily criticized and one wonders why, after this failure, he would be appointed to a government advisory body.
Until earlier this year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has given little or no attention to the Netherlands. However the many worrying developments in that country concerning both Jews and Israel seem to have led to a necessary change of policy. A 2011 study of the University of Bielefeld shows that over 38% of the Dutch population of 16 years and older think that Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians. This attitude of falsely accusing Israel of extreme crimes by about 5 million adult Dutchmen is an indication of their own criminal mindset.
"It is in this general Dutch societal climate that a heavily manipulated and biased document as that of the AIV could at all be published."I wish I could display my thanks to my Santa in a spectacular way in the way he showed my children.
This year, I asked for my children to be gifted in place of me; there has never been and seriously never will be a greater joy than seeing the magic of Christmas on their faces.
From the start, my Santa messaged just as jolly old St. Nick would. When we got their last message, my kids were eager with anticipation! When we got our Santa’s package today, they were thrilled (even the baby haha!)
Oh Santa, you didn’t disappoint. Their reactions were PRICELESS. My son, a pretty active swimmer, was in awe of his cool new goggles and snorkeling mask. He can’t wait for his swim class break to be over so he could try it out!
AND A FINGERLING?!? My daughter was STUNNED! These are SO hard to find and she just about flipped!! (Almost literally...she just got back from gymnastics!)
And my baby...well, suffice to say, Big Bird now holds a special place in his nursery along with his new sound machine (the gift of sleep to his parents is something immeasurable)!
Thank you THANK YOU Santa. My children couldn’t believe how well you knew them and neither could I.VIII. DELIBERATE INDIFFERENCE: STATE AUTHORITIES' RESPONSE TO PRISONER-ON PRISONER SEXUAL ABUSE Rape occurs in U.S. prisons because correctional officials, to a surprising extent, do little to stop it from occurring. While some inmates with whom Human Rights Watch is in contact have described relatively secure institutions--where inmates are closely monitored, where steps are taken to prevent inmate-on-inmate abuses, and where such abuses are punished if they occur--many others report a decidedly laissez faire approach to the problem. In too many institutions, prevention measures are meager and effective punishment of abuses is rare. It might be assumed that victims of prison rape would find a degree of solace in securing accountability for the abuses committed against them. Unfortunately, our justice system offers scant relief to sexually abused prisoners. Few local prosecutors are concerned with prosecuting crimes committed against inmates, preferring to leave internal prison problems to the discretion of the prison authorities; similarly, prison officials themselves rarely push for the prosecution of prisoner-on-prisoner abuses. As a result, perpetrators of prison rape almost never face criminal charges. Internal disciplinary mechanisms, the putative substitute for criminal prosecution, also tend to function poorly in those cases in which the victim reports the crime. In nearly every instance Human Rights Watch has encountered, the authorities have imposed light disciplinary sanctions against the perpetrator--perhaps thirty days in disciplinary segregation--if that. Often rapists are simply transferred to another facility, or are not moved at all. Their victims, in contrast, may end up spending the rest of their prison terms in protective custody units whose conditions are often similar to those in disciplinary segregation: twenty-three hours per day in a cell, restricted privileges, and no educational or vocational opportunities. Disappointingly, the federal courts have not played a significant role in curtailing prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse. Of course, the paucity of lawyers willing to litigate such cases means that only a small minority of rape cases reach the courts. Filed by inmates acting as their own counsel, such cases rarely survive the early stages of litigation; the cases that do survive rarely result in a favorable judgment. While there have been a few generous damages awards in cases involving prisoner-on-prisoner rape, they are the very rare exceptions to the rule. In sum, the failure to prevent and punish rape results implicates more than one government body. The primary responsibility in this area, however, is borne by prison authorities. Rape prevention requires careful classification methods, inmate and staff orientation and training, staff vigilance, serious investigation of all rape allegations, and prosecution of those allegations found to be justified. At bottom, it requires a willingness to take the issue seriously, to be attentive to the possibility of victimization, and to consider the victim's interests. Without these basic steps, the problem will not go away. Rape is not an inevitable consequence of prison life, but it certainly is a predictable one if little is done to prevent and punish it. Failure to Recognize and Address the Problem--and the Perverse Incentives Created by Legal Standards Regrettably [rape] is a problem of which we are happier not knowing the true dimensions. Overcrowding and the "anything goes" morality sure haven't helped. --High-level state corrections official who spoke on condition of anonymity. (396) The sharp disparities between correctional authorities' reports of the prevalence of rape and the findings of empirical studies, described in the previous chapter, signal a fundamental obstacle to prevention efforts: correctional authorities' failure to acknowledge that a problem exists. Nearly half of all state jurisdictions do not even collect statistics regarding the incidence of rape (a telling indicator of their lack of seriousness in addressing the issue); those that do collect such data report that it is an infinitely rare event. Yet, as previously stated, empirical surveys of inmates and correctional staff disclose much higher rates of rape and sexual assault. Since the causes of underreporting are well known to prisoners and prison administrators alike, a low frequency of reported cases is no reason for correctional authorities to turn a blind eye to the problem. Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch's survey of the prevention practices of state and federal correctional departments revealed that few departments take specific affirmative steps to address the problem of prisoner-on-prisoner rape. (397) Nearly all of the departments who responded to our request for information had not instituted any type of sexual abuse prevention program and only a very few--such as Arkansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Virginia--stated that correctional officers receive specialized training in recognizing, preventing, and responding to inmate-on-inmate sexual assault. (398) Similarly, not many departments had drafted specific protocols to guide staff response to incidents of assault. (399) Nor, according to a recent survey, do many departments' internal disciplinary policies explicitly prohibit sexual harassment among male inmates. (400) Until very recently, the same was true for the problem of custodial sexual abuse of women inmates. (401) Even now, much remains to be done to address the problem effectively, but important steps in that direction have been taken. The National Institute of Corrections (NIC), for example, provides specialized training to corrections staff on the issue, and a number of states have promulgated specific written policies to guide staff handling of cases of abuse. High profile class action law suits helped spur correctional authorities to take the problem of custodial sexual abuse seriously. Normally, the threat of litigation creates an important incentive for state authorities to come to grips with certain problems. Notably, the state of Arkansas--one of the only states that was able to provide Human Rights Watch with a concrete description of the training and orientation measures that it takes with regard to the problem--included a discussion of litigation and staff liability for prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse at the very beginning of its training curriculum on the subject. (402) Yet, unfortunately, the legal rules that the courts have developed relating to prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse create perverse incentives for authorities to ignore the problem. Under the "deliberate indifference" standard that is applicable to legal challenges to prison officials' failure to protect prisoners from inter-prisoner abuses such as rape, the prisoner must prove to the court that the defendants had actual knowledge of a substantial risk to him, and that they disregarded that risk. As the courts have emphasized, it is not enough for the prison to prove that "the risk was obvious and a reasonable prison official would have noticed it." (403) Instead, if a prison official lacked knowledge of the risk--no matter how obvious it was to anyone else--he cannot be held liable. The incentive this legal rule creates for correctional officials to remain unaware of problems is regrettable. Indeed, in many lawsuits involving prisoner-on-prisoner rape, the main thrust of prison officials' defense is that they were unaware that the defendant was in danger. More generally, officials in such cases often argue that rape in their facilities is a "rarity"--"not a serious risk." (404) They certainly have no incentive, under the existing legal standards, to try to ascertain the true dimensions of the problem. The North Carolina Pilot Program An encouraging exception to the overall absence of particularized attention to prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse can be found in North Carolina. In 1997, the legislature passed a law establishing a pilot program on sexual assault prevention in the prisons. (405) Covering only three units of the state prison system, the program is otherwise a laudable attempt at addressing the problem of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse. It provides that the orientation given inmates will include information on the reducing the risk of sexual assault and that counseling on the topic will be provided to any prisoner requesting it. It also requires that the correctional authorities collect data on incidents of sexual aggression and develop and implement employee training on the topic. The program's rules on classification and housing are particularly valuable. They provide that all prisoners must be evaluated and classified as to their risk of being either the victim or perpetrator of sexually assaultive behavior. These classifications are to be taken into account when making housing assignments. In particular, inmates deemed vulnerable to assault are barred from being housed in the same cell or in small dormitories with inmates rated as potential perpetrators. Lack of Prisoner Orientation I have been to 4 Ohio prisons and at no time was I ever warned about the danger of sexual assault. No one ever told me of ways to protect myself. And to this day I've never heard of a procedure for reporting rape. This is never talked about. --An Ohio inmate. (406) Prisoners almost uniformly related to Human Rights Watch that on entering prison they received no formal orientation regarding how they might avoid rape or what steps they should take if they were subject to or threatened with rape. As described in chapter IV, prisoners who are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of prison life tend to be more vulnerable to rape. Not knowing the tricks and ruses that lead to sexual abuse, they have no idea when they are being set up for victimization. A detailed and realistic prisoner orientation program--one that explains common exploitation scenarios as well as describing how to obtain official protection--could be effective in strengthening prisoners' abilities to react appropriately to sexual targeting. A few states, whose example should be followed more widely, have in fact established orientation programs relating to the issue. The Virginia Department of Corrections, for example, told Human Rights Watch that all inmates receive orientation on how to avoid sexual aggression upon entry the prison system. The inmate handbook, which is provided to all prisoners, also includes a short section on "How to Avoid Homosexual Intimidation." (407) It gives advice such as "don't get into debt," and "don't solicit or accept favors, property or drugs." Arkansas has a similar orientation program; it too includes such warnings. (408) The Illinois Department of Corrections said that it had a similar orientation program, and it forwarded Human Rights Watch excerpts discussing sexual assault from inmate handbooks distributed in several facilities. One excerpt was particularly useful in that it included a detailed description of the procedure by which the facility handled claims of sexual assault. (409) North Carolina, while it did not provide a copy of the course materials, also told Human Rights Watch that incoming inmates were advised "about the risks of sexual assault and what steps they may take to prevent such assault and seek assistance from staff." (410) Improper Classification and Negligent Double-Celling Among the goals of prisoner classification policies is to separate dangerous prisoners from those whom they are likely to victimize. At one extreme are "supermax," or administrative segregation units, where prisoners with a history of violence or indiscipline are held; at the other are protective custody units where the most vulnerable inmates are held. (411) Yet even between these extremes, the existence of various security levels (e.g., minimum, medium, maximum or close custody), and the range of categorization alternatives within these levels, are supposed to allow prison authorities flexibility in arranging inmates' housing and work assignments so as to minimize inter-prisoner violence and victimization. In the overcrowded prisons of today, however, the practical demands of simply finding available space for inmates have to a large extent overwhelmed classification ideals. Inmates frequently find themselves placed among others whose background, criminal history, and other characteristics make them an obvious threat. In the worst cases, prisoners are actually placed in the same cell with inmates who are likely to victimize them--sometimes even with inmates who have a demonstrated proclivity for sexually abusing others. The case of Eddie Dillard, a California prisoner who served time at Corcoran State Prison in 1993, is an especially chilling example of this problem. Dillard, a young first-timer who had kicked a female correctional officer, was transferred to the cell of Wayne Robertson, a prisoner known by all as the "Booty Bandit." (412) The skinny Dillard was no match for Robertson, a huge, muscular man serving a life sentence for murder. Not only was Robertson nearly twice Dillard's weight, but he had earned his nickname through his habit of violently raping other prisoners. Before the end of the day, the inevitable occurred: Robertson beat Dillard into submission and sodomized him. For the next two days, Dillard was raped repeatedly, until finally his cell door was opened and he ran out, refusing to return. A correctional officer who worked on the unit later told the Los Angeles Times: "Everyone knew about Robertson. He had raped inmates before and he's raped inmates since." (413) Indeed, according to documents submitted at a California legislative hearing on abuses at Corcoran, Robertson had committed more than a dozen rapes inside Corcoran and other prisons. (414) By placing Dillard in a cell with Robertson, the guards were setting him up for punishment. Whether as a purposeful act or through mere negligence prisoners are all too often placed together with cellmates who rape them. A Connecticut prisoner told Human Rights Watch how he too was raped by a cellmate with a history of perpetrating rape: [I] was sent to the orientation block to be cellmate with another prisoner already occupying a double cell. I did not know at the time that I was to share a double cell with him, that he was a known rapist in the prison.... I must point out that only a month and a half prior, he was accused of raping another man. On my fourth day of sharing the cell, I was ambushed and viciously raped by him. After being raped, I remained in shock and paralized in thought for two days until I was able to muster the courage to report it, this, the most dreadful and horrifying experience of my life. (415) The pressures of overcrowding facing so many prisons today means that double-celling is much more common than in the past--often with two men being placed in a cell designed for single occupancy--while little care is taken to select compatible cellmates. Numerous prisoners told Human Rights Watch of being celled together with men who were much larger and stronger than them, had a history of violence, were racially antagonistic, openly threatening, or otherwise clearly incompatible. In such circumstances, rape is no surprise. Understaffing and the Failure to Prevent The greatest preventive measure [against rape] is posting staff, monitoring areas that are high risk for assault. The reality however, is that funding for prison administration doesn't provide for adequate patrolling.... Prisoners are pretty much left on their own. --A Virginia inmate. (416) You know, when you look at the low numbers of staff around--who really owns these prison? --High-level state prison administrator who prefers to remain anonymous. (417) Another casualty of the enormous growth of the country's prison population is adequate staffing and supervision of inmates. The consequences with regard to rape are obvious. Rape occurs most easily when there is no prison staff around to see or hear it. Particularly at night, prisoners have told Human Rights Watch, they are often left alone and unsupervised in their housing areas. Several inmates have reported to Human Rights Watch that they yelled for help when they were attacked, to no avail. Although correctional staff are generally supposed to make rounds at fifteen minute intervals, they do not always follow this schedule. Moreover, they often walk by prisoners' cells without making an effort to see what is happening within them. Texas, one of the largest prison systems in the country--and one in which rape is widespread--is known to be seriously understaffed. It is short an estimated 2,500 guards, what a high official in the prison guards' union characterizes as a staffing crisis. (418) Prison attrition statistics reportedly show that about one in five guards quit over the course of 2000. Paradoxically, lower numbers of correctional staff can lead to more ineffective monitoring by existing staff. Instead of redoubling their efforts to make up for their insufficient numbers, they are more likely to remain as much as possible outside of prisoners' living areas, because fewer staff makes close monitoring more dangerous to those employees who do make the rounds of housing units. Being at a disadvantage, they also have a stronger incentive to pacify--rather than challenge--the more dangerous prisoners who may be exploiting others. Poor design, especially common in older prisons, exacerbates the problem of understaffing. Blind spots and other areas that are difficult to monitor offer inmates unsupervised places in which to commit abuses. Explained one Florida inmate: "Rapes occur because the lack of observation make it possible. Prisons have too few guards and too many blind spots." (419) Inadequate Response to Complaints of Rape An absolutely central problem with regard to sexual abuse in prison, emphasized by inmate after inmate, is the inadequate--and, in many instances, callous and irresponsible--response of correctional staff to complaints of rape. When an inmate informs an officer that he has been threatened with rape or, even worse, actually assaulted, it is crucial that his complaint be met with a rapid and effective response. Most obviously, he should be brought somewhere where his safety is protected and where he can explain his complaint in a confidential manner. If the rape has already occurred, he should be taken for whatever medical care may be needed and--a step that is crucial for any potential criminal prosecution--physical evidence of rape can be collected. But from the reports Human Rights Watch has received, such a response is uncommon. Typical of inmate accounts is this one, from an inmate who was compelled to identify his rapist in front of numerous others and then returned back to the same unit: Lt. B.W. had me identify the assailant in front of approximately "20" other inmates... which immediately put my safty & life in danger as a "snitch" for telling on the other inmate who sexually assaulted me.... the Prison officials trying to Place Me Back in Population after I identified the assailant in front of 20 inmates clearly placed my life in danger Because of the "snitch" concept. (420) Such actions demonstrate to prisoners, in a very effective way, that it is unwise to report rape. A blatant display of disbelief is another improper response that numerous inmates have described. One prisoner, who claimed to have been raped several times, said that officers refused to take his complaints serious, telling him, "no way--you're not that good of a catch." (421) Frequently, correctional staff intimate that any sexual contact that may have occurred was consensual. A Texas inmate said that after he reported that he had been raped: "I was pulled out and seen by Mrs. P, Capt. R, and Major H. I told my complaint and Mrs. P said that I was never raped that I just gave it up." (422) Significantly, consensual sex is a rules violation in all prison systems, leaving the complaining inmate with the possibility of facing disciplinary sanctions. Staff allegations of consensual sex are frequently combined with allegations that the complaining prisoner is gay, the implication being that gay inmates invite sex. A Florida inmate told Human Rights Watch: "I have been sexually assaulted twice since being incarcerated. Both times the staff refused to do anything except to lock me up and make accusations that I'm homosexual." (423) A Texas inmate who was raped by numerous other prisoners over a long period of time experienced similar treatment by correctional staff when he tried to obtain their assistance: Defendant J.M, a security officer with the rank of sargeant, came to investigate the series of latest allegations. Defendant J.M. refused to interview the inmate witnesses and told plaintiff that he was lying about being sexually abused. After plaintiff vehemently protested that he was being truthful, defendant J.M. made comments that plaintiff "must be gay" for "letting them make you suck dick." (424) As these accounts suggest, gay inmates, or those perceived as gay, often face great difficulties in securing relief from abuse. Unless they show obvious physical injury, their complaints tend to be ignored and their requests for protection denied. Prison officials are particularly likely to assume consent in sexual acts involving a gay inmate. (425) Although homosexuality is generally regarded as a factor supporting an inmate's claim to protective custody, many guards appear to believe that gay inmates are immune from rape--that when a gay inmate has sex with another man it is somehow by definition consensual. Moreover, some gay prisoners have told Human Rights Watch that the guards themselves make homophobic comments, further encouraging sexual harassment from other inmates. Another common guard response is that the inmate should defend himself using physical force, or even retaliate violently against the aggressors. "Be a man," guards urge. "Stand up and fight." (426) The suggestion is often meant well--violent retaliation may, in fact, be quite effective against sexual abuse--but the advice nonetheless represents an abdication of responsibility. It is correctional staff who are responsible for protecting prisoners from violence, not prisoners themselves. Indeed, the use of force by inmates, even in self-defense, is a disciplinary offense. Some correctional officers do respond to reports of sexual abuse, typically by moving the inmate to a place of safety, often to a holding cell or what is called the "transit" area of the prison. Sometimes a medical examination is conducted and sometimes an investigation into the incident is opened. The problem is that these steps rarely lead to adequate measures being taken against the perpetrator of abuse. Rather than internal disciplinary proceedings or external criminal prosecution, the solution is typically found in isolating the two parties. Either the rapist or, more commonly, the complaining inmate may be transferred to another prison. Serious investigation of abuses is all too rare. The basic procedures followed when a crime is committed outside of prison--involving collection of physical evidence, interviews with witnesses, interrogation of suspects--are much less likely to be employed when the crime involves inmates. Failure to Prosecute I have yet to hear of an inmate being charged in court with sexual assault of an inmate. Have you? If just one was found guilty, got more time, things would change. --A Nebraska prisoner. (427) As of this time I have almost 14 years in prison and have never heard of a prison rape case being prosecuted in court.... I'm quite sure if a man committed a rape in prison and got 5 or 10 years time, prison rape would decline. --An Ohio prisoner. (428) Human Rights Watch surveyed both correctional departments and prisoners themselves regarding whether rapists faced criminal prosecution. The response--or more accurately, lack of response--was instructive. Although corrections authorities generally stated that they referred all or some cases for prosecution by outside authorities, they had little information regarding the results of such referrals. (429) Prisoners were much more blunt: they uniformly agreed that criminal prosecution of rapists never occurs. Judging solely by the direct accounts of rape we have received, criminal prosecution of prisoner-on-prisoner rape is extremely rare. Of the well over 100 rapes reported to Human Rights Watch, not a single one led to the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators. Even the most violent rapes, and those in which the victim pushed strongly for outside intervention, were ignored by the criminal justice system. Unlike rape in the outside community, rape in prison is a crime the perpetrator can commit without fear of spending additional time in prison. The following letter, from an official with the Minnesota Department of Corrections, suggests just how rare such prosecutions are. Questioned in 1997 as to specific instances in which prisoners had been prosecuted for raping other prisoners, he cited a case that occurred twelve years previously: You also asked if I was aware of any cases in which perpetrators of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault have been criminally prosecuted. I spoke with staff in our Office of Special Investigations and they informed me of one such case in September 1985. An inmate was charged and pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the third degree. He received a sentence of 1 year and 1 day to be served consecutively to his original incarceration offense. (430) Although this response clearly indicates that rape prosecutions are rare in Minnesota, it is worth noting that almost all other state corrections department did not bring up any cases in which a perpetrator of rape in prison was prosecuted for the crime. Several said that they simply did not follow the progress of such cases. (431) The Missouri correctional authorities told Human Rights Watch in mid-1998 that three cases in the category "Forcible Sexual Misconduct" were submitted for prosecution in 1996, two of which had been refused by the prosecutor and one of which was still pending. They noted, in addition, that there were no criminal convictions stemming from inmate-on-inmate rape or sexual abuse during the past two years. The case of M.R., the Texas inmate whose case was described in chapter V, is a particularly egregious example of the failure to criminally prosecute rape in prison. Not only was M.R. raped repeatedly, the last time in full view of other inmates, but he was nearly killed by the rapist, receiving a severe concussion, broken bones, and scalp lacerations. Desperate to see the man prosecuted, M.R. wrote both the local district attorney and sheriff explaining his strong desire to press charges. He even filed a grievance against the Texas correctional authorities requesting their help in securing the criminal prosecution of the rapist. None of his efforts made a difference: the prosecution was never instituted. Why are criminal prosecutions of inmate-on-inmate rape so rare? First, it is obvious that the severe underreporting of cases of abuse means that only a small minority of rapes are known to prison authorities, let alone to anyone outside the prison. Second, the failure of prison authorities to react appropriately to complaints of sexual abuse--including collecting physical evidence of rape--and to properly investigate such complaints means that the necessary fact-finding to support a criminal prosecution is lacking. Since local police do not patrol prisons, they rely on correctional authorities to gather the proof of crime. But another crucial problem is the low priority that local prosecutors place on prosecuting prison abuses. Although |
their revolutionary work. Europe is experiencing a revolutionary situation. The war and the high cost of living are aggravating the situation. The transition from war to peace will not necessarily eliminate the revolutionary situation, for there are no grounds whatever for believing that the millions of workers who now have excellent weapons in their hands will necessarily permit themselves to be “peacefully disarmed” by the bourgeoisie instead of following the advice of Karl Liebknecht, i.e., turning their weapons against their own bourgeoisie.
The question is not, as the pacifist Kautskyites maintain: either a reformist political campaign, or else the renunciation of reforms. That is a bourgeois presentation of the question. The question is: either revolutionary struggle, the by-product of which, in the event of its not being fully successful, is reforms (the whole history of revolutions throughout the world has proved this), or nothing but talk about reforms and the promise of reforms.
The reformism of Kautsky, Turati and Bourderon, which now comes out in the form of pacifism, not only leaves aside the question of revolution (this in itself is a betrayal of socialism), not only abandons in practice all systematic and persistent revolutionary work, but even goes to the length of declaring that street demonstrations are adventurism (Kautsky in Die Neue Zeit, November 26, 1915). It goes to the length of advocating and implementing unity with the outspoken and determined opponents of revolutionary struggle, the Südekum, Legiens, Renaudels, Thomases, etc., etc.
This reformism is absolutely irreconcilable with revolutionary Marxism, the duty of which is to take the utmost possible advantage of the present revolutionary situation in Europe in order openly to urge revolution, the overthrow of the bourgeois governments, the conquest of power by the armed proletariat, while at the same time not renouncing, and not refusing to utilise, reforms in developing the revolutionary struggle and in the course of that struggle.
The immediate future will show what course events in Europe will follow, particularly the struggle between reformist pacifism and revolutionary Marxism, including the struggle between the two Zimmerwald sections.
Zurich, January 1, 1917
Notes
[1] Lenin intended this article for the newspaper Novy Mir (New World) published in New York by Russian socialist émigrés. The article did not appear in Novy Mir and Lenin re-edited the first two sections, which were published in the last issue (No. 58) of Sotsial-Demokrat, January 31, 1917, under the heading “A Turn in World Politics” (see pp. 262–70 of this volume).
[2] The Manifesto of February 19, 1861 abolished serfdom in Russia.
[3] The French Confédération générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labour) was founded in 1895 and was strongly influenced by anarcho-syndicalists and reformists. Its leaders recognised only economic struggle, opposed proletarian party leadership of the trade union movement, sided with the imperialist bourgeoisie in the First World War and advocated class collaboration and “defence of the fatherland”.
The congress mentioned by Lenin met in Paris on December 24–26, 1916 and discussed: (1) report of the Executive for the period from August 1914, and (2) industrial issues. At the concluding session the Executive informed the congress of President Wilson s peace appeal to the belligerent nations, and the congress adopted, by a nearly unanimous vote, the resolution cited by Lenin.
[4] The French Socialist Party was founded in 1905 by the merger of the Socialist Party of France led by Guesde and the French Socialist Party led by Jaurès. Dominated by reformists, the party adopted a chauvinist position from the very start of the imperialist war. Its leaders openly supported the war and justified participation in the bourgeois government. The Centrist wing, led by Longuet, took a social-pacifist line and a conciliatory attitude towards the social-chauvinists. The Left, revolutionary wing adhered to internationalist positions and drew its support mainly from the party rank and file.
The party congress mentioned by Lenin met on December 25–30, 1916, the chief agenda item being the question of peace. A number of resolutions were adopted, including one opposing propaganda of the Zimmerwald principles, and another, moved by Renaudel. am proving socialist participation in the war-time government.
[5] La Bataille (The Battle)—organ of the French anarcho-syndicalists, published in Paris from 1915 to 1920 in place of the banned La Bataille Syndicaliste. Leading contributors included Grave, Jouhaux, and Cornelissen. Adopted a socialchauvinist position in the First World War.Popular talk show host Ellen De Generes is set to film an episode of her show 'Ellen' in Dublin during the St. Patrick's day festival.
Crew from the show will descend upon the capital to film for broadcast next week on the talk show. Bord Fáilte have organised the event, as part of an initiative to get big-name celebrities and international media outlets to Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.
Media like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and Askmen.com will be present in the capital as well as journalists and freelance reporters from across the world.
“Ireland is blessed to have an event such as St Patrick’s Day which proves such a magnet for publicity and visitors," said Fáilte Ireland spokesperson Ciara Sugrue.
She continued, "as the tourism season starts, it is the perfect advertisement for visiting this country and we will be doing all we can to make sure that tourism benefits as much as possible from the all the colour, variety and energy of the event."
On average 4.5 million tune in to the Ellen show. Crew are scheduled to film pieces in the Guinness Storehouse as well as carry out quirky tasks throughout the city.
The comedienne has marked St. Patrick's Day on her show in previous years, as well as inviting singing family Crystal Swing on as guests and special performers.
The episode will air on March 21st in the USA.This week, I and tens of thousands of other residents of rural Ireland wondered how they could handle the coming weeks, with the bus drivers going on strike. We all talked with our employers about missing work, to our children’s teachers about missing school, and to our neighbours and co-workers about carpooling or making some other arrangements. I and friends of mine e-mailed and called the Minister of Transport, urging him to force a solution and reminding him that he is an independent politician voted into office with Ireland’s unusual election last year, and that he can be voted out just as easily.
Thankfully, the strike was called off – I’m not saying because of our efforts, of course, but I’m sure the public pressure didn’t hurt — and the company and the union went back to the negotiating table for the time being. Still, it reminded all of us how much we, and any healthy society, depend on public transportation.
The healthiest cities in the world have one thing in common; a network of trains, trolleys, trams, subways, buses, and other ways of getting around that don’t depend on everyone having a personal vehicle. Such services save everyone money, use less energy, generate less exhaust to pollute the air and less rubbish to pollute the water and soil. They tip the balance of power on roads, making them light with cars and bustling with humans — walkers, bicyclists and sidewalk vendors. Cities with healthy bus and rail systems feel like neighbourhoods threaded with capillary streets, rather than rows of buildings built alongside highways.
We think of Ireland as having progressed in recent decades, but a hundred years ago trains covered much more of Ireland, with perhaps twice as many lines as there are now. A map of Dublin in the 1920s, likewise, would show a spaghetti-explosion of streetcar lines winding through the narrow streets, pulled by horses at first, and later powered by overhead lines. The recent construction of light rail systems like the Luas were promoted as a next great step forward in transportation, but like most Great Steps Forward, it was merely restoring a tiny piece of what we once had.
Dublin’s once-great streetcar service
The USA used to be the same; for more than a hundred years cities there were networked with a web of streetcars that acted as a circulatory system from one end of a city to the other, as well as buses that filled in the gaps. Streetcars and buses seem slow to modern eyes only because we compare them to a car on the Autobahn; compare them to a car in the city and they were often faster. One of the Dublin lines ran out to the suburb of Lucan a hundred years ago, and passed through town at 25 miles an hour — a goodly speed in Lucan’s daily traffic jams today.
Children could play in the street, for there were few cars. Streets in old photos appear clean and graffiti-free, not because people were necessarily more angelic in 1840 or 1940, but because thousands of people walked on them every day, so vandals had little privacy.
Passengers might be the most under-appreciated factor in how much fuel and money you waste. I remember reading headlines about multi-million-dollar plans to boost fuel efficiency by 25 percent, with the usual discussion of what this will mean for the economy and the climate. Any of us, however, can boost the efficiency of our cars by several hundred percent instantly, with no additional expense or technology, simply by getting more people in the car. Buses and trains can multiply such efficiency by thousands of percentile points.
If you don’t live in an area serviced by trains or buses, life becomes more difficult – as it will for all of us if the strike begins again. Finding a job, getting clothes for an interview, getting to a temp assignment – all are extremely difficult without a car or any other way to get around. Car payments, insurance and petrol can take up a sizable chunk of one’s paycheque, locking many people into an unending cycle. All to have a private vehicle built for five people, which will be 80 per cent empty on most trips.
Unfortunately, many countries now regard public transportation as expendable; it doesn’t make headlines or make money for elites, and it’s easy to let them go. If Ireland’s bus lines are allowed to erode to nothingness, then thousands of the nation’s elderly or vulnerable people will be isolated, and every little village will become an island again.
Streetcar to Howth, north of Dublin
I know that from experience, for I grew up in the USA, a nation that once had trolleys and streetcars in every major city and most minor ones. According to historian Bradford Snell, 90 percent of all trips in the 1920s were by rail; only 10 percent of Americans needed a car. My grandmother and grandfather met on the St Louis trolley, the one Judy Garland sang an ode to in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and said most people she knew never needed to drive.
After World War II, however, my country’s cities were transformed; most of the streetcar lines were reduced, sold, cancelled and destroyed, many by a coalition of car, tire, oil and truck companies. Those companies were found guilty of criminal conspiracy in 1951, and fined a pittance, long after the damage was done. Snell believes the corporations were not just trying to monopolise streetcar lines – the actual charge – but consciously conspiring to transform America to a car-dependent society. When they bought out the streetcars they didn’t just tighten belts – they destroyed the infrastructure, ripping the rails out of the streets and paving over their grooves, effectively salting the earth.
Our cities are now built around the fact that there is about one car for every American. Half of all urban space exists for cars, the other half for people. Many newer suburbs don’t have sidewalks, since the expectation is that people will leave their homes mainly to get inside cars. Many new minivans have televisions, a feature that assumes children will spend a hefty chunk of their childhood in the back seat.
Since most train lines were ripped up in the USA, Ireland and most other Western countries, many people must rely on buses. My native USA’s buses are less readily available than most other countries. In many cities I’ve been in, bus lines habitually run late or not at all, and can be expensive for the financially-strapped people most likely to need them. In many places they carry a stigma of poverty, or require people to wait in unsafe neighbourhoods.
We’re grateful to have a double-decker bus roll across the Irish countryside, stop a few kilometres from our house every fifteen minutes or so in the morning, and take me to work in Dublin. We’re pleased to live in a country where four-to-six lane roads devote one lane each way to buses, so that we can zip past the traffic jams.
I don’t like having to spend three hours a day on a bus, but it’s better than four hours in a car – and sitting in the bus allows me to do my writing and home-schooling lessons, chat with my neighbours or read a book, all things I couldn’t do while driving. Many of my neighbours even sleep the entire trip, and on groggy mornings I envy them their talent for napping.
We give out about the buses all the time, of course – when the buses are packed to bursting with people, I’ve had to wait an hour or more in the rain to pick one up. When disrespectful teenagers leave rubbish on the seats, I clean it up for the sake of the other passengers, and many bus stops lack an overhanging shelter – a useful thing in a country where it rains much of the time. All these, however, are arguments for investing more in the bus system, not less.
Critics of public transportation accuse such systems of not making money. But how much money did the road in front of your house make last year? How much money does our asphalt make, or our electric wires, or our sewage pipes? The questions are ridiculous because these are not moneymaking enterprises; they are basic infrastructure, one of the legitimate reasons for paying taxes or having a government.
As the world’s resources run thin and former superpowers continue their decline into Third-World countries, more and more governments are cutting back even further on public transportation; I’ve talked to immigrants from India or Africa to Europe who say that the transport is better in their native countries than here. For years the Irish government has threatened to privatise some of the bus routes, turning them over to for-profit industries – which will mean that the least profitable routes will be cut, harming the elderly, working-class and least profitable people.
Dr. Seuss-drawn poster during World War II.
Knowing that this might keep happening, my neighbours and I have talked about forming carpools, which also used to be normal across the Western World. Sharing rides is one of the easiest ways of cutting your expenses, fuel and carbon footprint, and since most of us travel similar routes from clusters of houses to clusters of offices, carpools could serve many of us – and the more people participate, the easier it will be.
According to the website carfinance.ie, the average car in Ireland, driven 10,000 kilometers a year, will cost 1,750 euros in petrol. Divide that by four people, however, and you each save 1,300 a year. Carpooling could even pay for itself, if you propose to friends and co-workers that they pay you slightly more than the cost of fuel, as compensation for driving a little out of your way.
If that happens, people can form carpools – and since people tend to live in population clusters, and work in many of the same places, so carpools can start regular routes. Some vans can seat up to ten people, and if everyone pays for their share the rides can become very cheap indeed.
Eventually, people could create a network of carpools, with phones that you can call to set you up with the next person coming through. Enough people doing this through the day creates a regular, dependable form of public transportation, one that does not require a government or corporation to function.After a year in the making, the cryptocurrency NEM (New Economy Movement) has officially been launched. Cointelegraph had the chance to site down and discuss the ambitious project with one of the lead developers, Makoto, to find out more.
“NEM was started to rectify some of the problems with not only the world economy, but also with other cryptocurrencies. One of the problems is of course distribution of wealth.” - Makoto, Lead developer, NEM
Cointelegraph: Please introduce yourself to our readers.
Makoto: I am Makoto, one of the lead devs on NEM. I am a PhD student in computer science and my areas of expertise are cognitive science and artificial intelligence, fields where I have published many papers. NEM's consensus algorithm, Proof-of-Importance (POI) was proposed based on work I am doing for my PhD.
CT: How long have you been working on this project?
M: I joined NEM last February. They were looking for devs who knew Java and I just happened to find the project at the right time. Other devs joined the team in January or so, so NEM development has been ongoing for about 14 months at this point.
CT: Who is the NEM team and what is it like working with them?
M: Working with the NEM team has been a wonderful experience. First, the main devs are incredible. Out of 5 core developers, several have PhDs and others have high profile jobs as coders at companies that would be instantly recognizable. Gimre, BloodyRookie, and Jaguar are amazing programmers and some of the smartest people I have ever met. I learn new things from them everyday and it is truly an honor to be a part of this team.
Besides the 5 main developers that are just writing code for the core of NEM, we have about another 10 periphery developers supporting us, and 20 translators making sure that NEM can reach out to as many people in as many countries as possible. And then we have a marketing team with 7 dedicated workers giving it their all. So our main team has over 40 people, but on top of that we have another 40 community members with unofficial roles that are very active and contribute regularly.
And then there are the people who regularly join in on our forum and other outlets. We have almost 800 forum members and almost 2,000 likes on Facebook. We are still a pretty small community at this point, but we are hoping that our launch will really help to kick start the community and make it more active, as well bring in more marketers and core developers.
CT: Why did you start making another cryptocurrency? Do you see any problems in bitcoin?
M: NEM was started to rectify some of the problems with not only the world economy, but also with other cryptocurrencies. One of the problems is of course distribution of wealth. In fiat-based economies, the richest 1% will soon own more wealth than the other 99% of people. In crypto currencies like Bitcoin, wealth is concentrated to such an extent so as to be an existential threat, and other crypto currencies have been similarly criticized.
“If one person can dump and destroy an entire currency, then that reduces the opportunity of others.”
Some level of inequality is not necessarily a bad thing, and indeed people have significant individual differences, but it can be a bad thing when it hampers equality of opportunity. If one person can dump and destroy an entire currency, then that reduces the opportunity of others.
With NEM, we really want to bring the focus of money back to the people. The world today is one where money is controlled by powerful elites, banks, and governments; at NEM we want to empower regular people and that is why our motto is, "A new economy starts with you."
CT: Tell us what NEM is and what problem it solves?
M: NEM is about empowering individuals. By solving structural problems present in today's economic system, we want to enable people to do more with their lives. Money can be considered as a quantization of human life, as we all commit our time, which is finite and irrevocable, to the pursuit of money.
Thus economic power is power over life itself and those who deny an equal economic opportunity to others, especially through the centralization of power or borrowing wealth from future generations, are causing tremendous harm to our planet and are the cause of much human suffering.
The NEM platform gives people direct control over the transfer of value (sending XEM) and information (sending encrypted messages) to others. Multisignature accounts allow people to collaborate to send money to others safely. In future releases, features like colored coins will allow people to transfer arbitrary digital properties to each other. Together, these features form a comprehensive platform that gives people power over their own finances, without having to rely on centralized authorities. It also helps people to be more efficient.
CT: Proof-of-importance. What is it and what's the advantage over proof-of-work or proof-of-stake?
M: Transactions in NEM are organized into blocks that form a distributed ledger known as a blockchain. As there is no central authority in NEM, the creator of the next block must be agreed upon using a consensus algorithm, such that everyone knows that the block creator has the authority to do so.
In NEM, Proof-of-Importance is the name of the algorithm that handles the consensus, where "importance" refers to graph-theoretic importance in the transaction graph. The NEM economy is built from transactions, so for our purposes here, the importance of an account in the transaction graph is a good approximation of the importance of the account in the economy.
Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work is probably the most famous probabilistic Byzantine consensus (Nakamoto consensus) algorithm, where computers compete to find the solution to a computational problem. Bitcoin has shown this to be a reasonable solution to Byzantine consensus, but unfortunately it comes with a very high energy cost, as computational power and electricity are expended to do worthless computation. It also ensures that the rich get richer, as those who have money can afford more hardware to solve the computational problems.
“Proof-of-Importance improves upon Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake by rewarding accounts that actively participate in the economy. The balance of an account, who transacts with them, and how much they transact to others are all combined to calculate an account's importance.”
Proof-of-Stake, especially as implemented in NXT, was a huge advancement over Proof-of-Work, because it showed that you do not need to expend large amounts of finite resources like electricity to achieve probabilistic Byzantine consensus. Instead, you could just use the stake, or balance, of an account to generate a probability distribution that could then be sampled from to determine who would create blocks in the blockchain.
The account balances and information are known to all, so it can be proved that the creator of a block had the authority to do so. Unfortunately, this leads to the situation where the rich get richer, as block creators collect transaction fees. Also, just because someone is rich (has a high balance), it doesn't mean that they productively contribute to the overall economy.
Proof-of-Importance improves upon Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake by rewarding accounts that actively participate in the economy. The balance of an account, who transacts with them, and how much they transact to others are all combined to calculate an account's importance. This effectively rewards accounts that help to support the NEM economy, while a temporal vesting schedule of XEM used in the calculation makes account importance approximately invariant upon account splitting, making Sybil-style attacks impractical.
CT: Why is NEM always compared to NXT. Is it based on NXT? How are the two projects related?
M: Very briefly in the beginning, we were considering basing NEM off NXT's code base, but in actuality this option was not seriously considered and we decided early on to create a new code base from scratch. A lot of people who joined NEM also are active in the NXT community, which is probably why NXT and NEM are often thought to be related.
“When a person really takes a look at NEM and NXT, they can see that they are both written in Java, but after that the differences start to really stand out.”
There are many differences between NEM and NXT, such as our anti-spam protection, Eigentrust++ to make sure nodes are trustworthy, delegated harvesting for safely interacting with any node on the network, and multisignature accounts with blockchain-based alerts. We also have progressive fees and wallet files instead of pass phrases. When a person really takes a look at NEM and NXT, they can see that they are both written in Java, but after that the differences start to really stand out.
CT: How many NEM coins were released, how were they distributed, and who are the stakeholders?
M: At launch 8,999,999,999 XEM were created (XEM is the currency of the NEM ecosystem) and distributed to almost 1,500 people. Some XEM were set aside for rewarding future development, building a mobile wallet for iOS and Android, giving rewards to people running nodes, creating a community fund run as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), making a marketing fund where the community can propose ideas, starting a silver coin project where founding members of NEM will be given a limited edition 1 oz 999 silver NEM coin, and building a NEMSELF fund that will be used to help create a sustainable loop where XEM isn’t just constantly traded back and forth for fiat, but is instead passed from person to person for goods and services on its own.
These extra funds will not be used for bonuses for developers and important members in NEM, but are instead set aside in certain funds controlled with multisignature accounts and will only have the XEM released when these projects move forward.
CT: With the software now launched. How do you feel about it? Has there been any issue with it so far?
M: It's really quite unbelievable to have NEM launched after more than a year of work. It has been constant work for the entire team and this project has really dominated our lives. We have had an open test network since June 25th of last year, so by now our software is very stable and mature.
“[W]e want to work with governments, corporations, communities, and individuals to transform economies to be more efficient and help people to lead more productive lives.”
CT: What are your future plans with NEM? How is it going to be a new economy movement?
M: NEM is much more than just a technical solution or a cryptocurrency. We are a movement made up of thousands of individuals and we want to work together to empower individuals across the world. Towards this end, we want to work with governments, corporations, communities, and individuals to transform economies to be more efficient and help people to lead more productive lives.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones:- A Frisco apartment resident fatally shot a man he thought was a burglary suspect. It turns out he was just at the wrong apartment.
The shooting happened just after midnight Thursday. A resident at the Stewart Creek Apartments off Stonebrook Parkway called 911 to report that someone was trying to break into his apartment.
Officers arrived to find 43-year-old Edward Jerome Rembert suffering from a gunshot wound. He died at the hospital.
"It's a little disturbing, especially when gunshots are involved. I didn't hear anything but it's kind of freaky when it's your apartment complex," said Scott Miller, who lives nearby.
Police said it turns out Rembert lived in the same complex, just a different apartment. The shooter is cooperating with the investigation, police said.
Frisco police still ask anyone with information about the incident to call 972-292-6010.I'm the developer of a game called Airships: Conquer the Skies. It can be bought through a bunch of platforms, including Steam, and, until it shut down earlier this year, Indie Game Stand.
I supplied IGS with builds of the game and a set of 500 Steam keys to give to buyers with their purchase, which is pretty standard practice. I've done the same with itch.io and the Humble Store.
On June 6 this year, the Indie Game Stand home page was replaced by a short message stating they were undergoing server migration and would be back soon. Instead, on July 25, the site went dark entirely. I didn't receive any messages from IGS about any of this, nor did they send me the (admittedly small amount of) money they owed me for sales.
I just kind of sighed and thought, "well, that's a shame". It did cross my mind that they had not sold the vast majority of the 500 keys I gave them, but with their site down, there was no way for me to reliably tell which of the keys they had sold. I could have revoked the keys through Steam's systems, but I didn't want to punish people who had bought my game!
Over the past few weeks, I have noticed an uptick in the number of Steam key activations for Airships, without a corresponding increase in sales through itch.io or Humble Store. I had a look and found that Kinguin did indeed have keys for my game in stock. I don't do large-scale giveaways, I don't do bundles, I don't do big sales, so where were those keys coming from? Of course, a regular buyer might decide that the download link they got was good enough for them, and that they could sell on the key, but why was this happening so much more now?
So earlier today, I gave in and forked over some money to Kinguin for a key of my own game. Now, of course I keep records of what keys go where. And yes, indeed, it was an IndieGameStand key.
With the help of my partner, I then went and checked my list of every single key supplied to IGS up to that one to see if it had been activated on Steam, meaning that it had been bought.
The first 92 keys had, with a few exceptions, been activated between February 25, 2015, when the game first became available on Steam, and August 31, 2017. Only six of those had been activated in 2017 at all.
Then, there was a gap of 103 keys that had not been activated.
Finally, there was a new group of seven activated keys, starting October 8, 2017, with the most recent one on November 2, 2017.
I think it's highly unlikely that 103 people bought but then didn't activate the keys, followed by seven of them all activating their bought keys within a month, a long time after IGS had folded.
So, in conclusion, I believe that the keys I supplied to IGS have fallen into the wrong hands, and that this person is now selling them through Kinguin.
I have now revoked all of the unused keys I supplied to IGS. I'm also looking into taking further action.
It's pretty likely that if this happened to my keys, it's happened to all the keys supplied to IGS. I mean, why stop at one game? So if you're a developer who supplied Steam keys to IGS, I urge you to revoke them now. And get in touch with me so we can figure out how widespread the damage is, and what we can do about it.
ClarificationsThe café chain of Ziferblat (Clockface Cafe), a revolutionary Russian start-up where patrons are charged only for the time they spend inside, is planning to launch its business in New York.
Source: Ziferblat Facebook page
The café chain of Ziferblat (Clockface Cafe), a revolutionary Russian start-up where patrons are charged only for the time they spend inside, is planning to launch its business in New York.
Ziferblat is the brainchild of founder Ivan Mitin, who came up with the groundbreaking concept of a free café where guests are charged only for the time they spend there.
Patrons can read, work, play games, play piano, listen to lectures, drink free tea and coffee and even bring their own food, all in a laid-back bohemian atmosphere.
Mitin and his wife are currently looking for a location in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg and plan to open their time café in the upcoming months.
They are searching for a premises with an area of 1076 sq ft and promise that the New York Ziferblat will be furnished in a similar style to the London one, without any mass-produced furniture.
The New York venture will be the third Ziferblat café to open abroad. In March 2012, Ziferblat appeared in Kiev, and in December 2013 the chain opened a branch in London's fashionable Shoreditch neighborhood. The chain consists of eight cafés around Russia, the first of which opened in fall 2011.
The London Ziferblat café has been featured in reports by the BBC, CNN, and USA Today.
Based on materials from the Village magazine.
All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: dbmigrations 0.1
dbmigrations is: A library and program for the creation, management, and installation of schema updates (called migrations) for a relational database. In particular, this package lets the migration author express explicit dependencies between migrations and the management tool automatically installs or reverts migrations accordingly, using transactions for safety. This package is written to support any HDBC-supported database, although at present only PostgreSQL is fully supported. To get started, see the included README and MOO.TXT files and the usage output for the "moo" command. Get it from Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/dbmigrations Or get the source with darcs: http://repos.codevine.org/dbmigrations/ This package is motivated by the need for a framework-independent, solid tool to manage database schema changes in a clean way without assuming a linear sequence of changes assumed by existing tools. dbmigrations lets you manage a forest of schema changes. Future work will include an hscurses-based tool to visualize and manipulate available migrations and their dependencies and support for other database engines. Please don't hesitate to send patches, feedback, and criticism directly to me at drcygnus AT gmail DOT com. I'd like to say thanks to Josh Hoyt and Jason Dagit for suggesting improvements, providing support, and showing me how beautiful Haskell is. Thanks! Enjoy! -- Jonathan DaughertyCalifornia is home to Silicon Valley, Silicon Beach, and now — it appears — Silicon Sky. The state comes in No. 1 for having the most registered drones, both in the commercial and hobby space.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday released two databases of all registered commercial and hobby drones in the U.S., five months after announcing a rule that all owners of drones greater than 0.55 pounds need to register their aerial vehicles online with the government.
Sally French, MarketWatch A heat map shows where most of the commercial drone users have registered.
View an interactive version of this map here.
In the commercial drone space, Menlo Park, Calif. takes the cake for having the most registered drones. Menlo Park, which has 176 registered drones, is one of the cities that makes up Silicon Valley and is home to Facebook Inc. FB, -0.30% (which is working on drones of its own). It’s also home to startups such as drone delivery company Matternet, commercial drone maker Kespry, and Skydio, which was founded by a team of researchers from MIT and Google’s drone team, and creates drones that are smart enough to react to and avoid obstacles like trees.
AFP/Getty Images A drone by Matternet carries a piece of mail to demonstrate package delivery by drone to isolated villages.
Other areas topping the list include Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, as well as Los Angeles and its neighboring city Burbank, where crews are increasingly using drones to shoot Hollywood films.
Cities with the most registered commercial drones
Ranking City Number of commercial drones registered 1 Menlo Park, Calif. 176 2 Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Ala. 138 3 Los Angeles 83 4 San Diego 61 5 Austin, Texas 59 6 Burbank, Calif. 57 7 Houston 53 7 Atlanta 53 9 Miami 50 10 Portland 46 Source: Federal Aviation Administration
And if you’re looking for drones being used for hobby purposes, look to Houston. The city is No. 1 with 3,061 registered hobby drone users. But Houston also comes in the top 10 for having the most registered commercial drone users.
Dyan Gibbens, founder and CEO of Houston-based drone company Trumbull Unmanned, says she’s not at all surprised that Houston ranks so high for commercial drone use, given Houston’s strong energy sector.
“Houston is supportive of innovation, and when you look at oil and gas companies, they are really technology companies,” she said. “Drones make operations better, faster and safer.”
Trumbull Unmanned uses drones for mapping, inspecting and monitoring, primarily in the energy sector, and its clients include Chevron Corp. CVX, +0.27% and BP BP, +0.02% Using a drone for projects like a flare-stack inspection can cost about an order of magnitude less in time and money than using a ladder truck or scaffolding, Gibbens said.
“Particularly in oil and gas, safety is paramount at all times and the cost savings are amplified during a downturn, which we are in currently,” she said.
Cities with the most registered hobby drone users
Ranking City Number of users registered to operate hobby drones 1 Houston 3,061 2 San Diego 2,445 3 Austin 2,111 4 Los Angeles 2,104 5 Miami 2,047 6 Las Vegas 2,028 7 San Jose 1,955 8 Phoenix 1,799 9 San Antonio 1,775 10 Chicago 1,664 Source: Federal Aviation Administration
Nearly a half a million drone users have registered for hobby purposes since registration opened in December. And Goldman Sachs says the market is only growing. The consumer drone industry will grow from a $1.6 billion market in 2015 to a $3.3 billion market by 2020, according to a March 2016 Goldman report.
*Note that commercial drone operators must register each drone they operate. Hobby drone users must register themselves, so the number doesn’t factor in how many drones they actually have.
Sally French, MarketWatch A heat map shows where most of the hobby drone users are registered.
View an interactive version of this map here.
Chinese manufacturer DJI currently dominates the drone market, with Intel-funded INTC, +0.24% Yune |
install it and get it done right," he said, adding he thought the move was part of the company's effort to cut costs.
Caris & Co. analyst R. Scott Tilghman noted electronics' evolution to more integrated and connected devices has created the need for a service element at Best Buy like that at Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) stores. He also noted services tend to be a higher-margin business.
A key element to Best Buy's turnaround strategy is a smaller-store prototype it is testing in two markets, focused on connecting customers with employees who can answer questions or help program equipment, which at its heart has a Solution Central help desk staffed by the Geek Squad.
Interim Chief Executive Mike Mikan said during May's earnings call that at its new, smaller-format store models, Best Buy will expect both Geek Squad agents and the prototypical sales-floor workers known as Blue Shirts to speak with authority about technology, with a mandate to shift customer expectations from repair to one of relationship.
Best Buy's performance has struggled to keep up with changes in consumer electronics, as the weight of its big-box format inhibits it from fending off competitive pressure of online retailers.
Minneapolis-St. Paul news station KARE 11 earlier Friday reported Best Buy was laying off about 650 Geek Squad employees.
Best Buy shares were down 0.6% at $21.61 in recent trading. The stock has risen 8.6% in the last month on speculation that former chairman Dick Schulze could pursue a buyout of the company he founded, but shares remain 32% lower than a year earlier.Thanks to sports fans -- who have been known to drink a beer or two -- college football makes a lot of money.
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- A fan holds up the beverage of choice before the game Saturday afternoon November 2, 2002 in front of a UGA fan bus. Fans came to the stadium several hours before the game to enjoy the festivities known as the 'biggest outdoor cocktail party.' (Rich Addicks/AJC Staff)
UGA athletics, powered mostly by football, pulled down more than $100 million during the 2014-2015 school year.
The coaches are paid well. The highest-paid state employee in 40 states is a college football or basketball coach.
Sports bars keep the cash registers humming during college football season.
Musical entertainers cash in too. Rapper Ludacris, from College Park, was paid $65,000 for a 15-minute performance before a UGA spring scrimmage, according to a contract obtained by The Macon Telegraph.
UGA athletic director Greg McGarity has apologized for the contract, but it wasn't the $4,333-a-minute fee that got people talking, it was the "Money Maker" rapper's list of demands.
Aside from the usual snacks, UGA also provided the performer with six bottles of liquor, two bottles of wine and a box of large condoms.
Ludacris and his entourage may be opening a bar. They also ordered up seven cases of non-alcoholic beverages and two gallons of fruit juice. Lugging all that would make even a lineman break a sweat so they also demanded soap, wash cloths, drying towels and a stick of deodorant.
"Few things in my professional life have bothered me more than this situation," said McGarity, who seems to have mentally blocked out the 2015 Florida loss.
The list of demands met by UGA.
McGarity said he got complaints from "all over the map" but it probably just a map of UGA donors' homes.
Should UGA apologize for supplying liquor and condoms to a musical performer?
Alcohol isn't sold at UGA games, but it is served in suites at Sanford Stadium. When UGA plays in other venues, such as the Sept. 3 Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game against North Carolina in the Georgia Dome, suds will be flowing.
For decades, UGA has participated in the "World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party," aka the Georgia-Florida football game in Jacksonville. Booze isn't sold at EverBank Field during the game, but sports fans are All-Stars at flask hide-and-seek.
The NCAA allows alcohol sales at the baseball and softball College World Series in the general seating areas.
Florida colleges will begin serving alcohol this year. The Gators, for example, will sell to those who purchase "premium" seating.
Will UGA fans ever be able to legally drink between the hedges?
"We have not gone down that route," said McGarity in March. "Who knows what will happen as far as revenue opportunities?"
Translation: We'll see beer being sold at UGA games sooner than condoms.
Maybe the extra cash could be used to not pay players.Donald Trump Has Been Torture for Foreign Correspondents in Russia
MOSCOW — It has never been harder to be a foreign correspondent in post-Cold War Russia than it is now, and not just for the obvious reasons.
It’s not only the Russian government’s worsening secrecy and mistrust that’s making our lives in the foreign press corps difficult. It’s also the cognitive dissonance now inherent to our work. Amid the investigation into alleged collusion between U.S. President Donald Trump’s election campaign and the Kremlin, public demand for reporting on Russia has never been higher — but it’s nearly impossible for any journalists in Russia to add substance to the story that’s on everyone’s mind.
The newfound threat of being labeled a foreign agent by the Kremlin makes the job even harder. Last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing the Russian government to designate non-Russian media as “foreign agents,” meaning their funding and activities will come under intense scrutiny. CNN, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle are expected to be in the firing line, according to Russian media.
But even before the new law, the Kremlin already did a fantastic job of muzzling the foreign press. It’s no accident that nearly all of the major developments in the Trump-Russia story have been reported from within the United States, rather than Russia. We in Moscow are unable to independently verify and corroborate the latest news about the country in which we are based.
Consider the recent news that two former aides to Trump’s presidential campaign were charged on possible collusion with the Kremlin, with a third pleading guilty of lying to the FBI. One might think that foreign correspondents would treat this as an exciting challenge: In a non-Russian context, we would jump on the phones to contact our well-honed government sources and complement Washington’s reporting with details and nuance.
Instead, most journalists in Russia I know reacted with blanket frustration. “I hate this story,” lamented one journalist at an American newspaper. “What is the point of us even being here?” asked a Western television producer.
This is largely because, contrary to common belief, it has been a long time since foreign journalists have been able to cultivate, gain, or develop Kremlin sources. And if we experienced any success at doing so now, we wouldn’t be here for much longer.
Our work is closely monitored by the Russian government; it is no secret that our communications are tapped. We abide by an unwritten rulebook of self-censorship. Straying can and has meant ejection.
The tidbits of information we do manage to secure could have been collected from outside Russia. U.S. officials here tell us that Washington has solid proof of Russian election meddling, but exposure of that information would jeopardize the safety of those involved in gathering and providing it. When we ask the Russian foreign ministry about the claims, we are met with a uniform, and at times hostile, denial.
The only cracks that have been etched in the collusion story from this side of the Atlantic have been courtesy of Russian journalists. In mid-October TV Rain, the country’s sole independent television channel, recorded the first interview with a member from the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin’s notorious “troll factory.” The troll told the web-based outlet that they were forced to watch the Netflix series House of Cards to understand American politics. A day later, Russia’s RBC media group published a massive report into the factory’s finances and focus on the U.S. elections last year, detailing how its trolls had incited racial hatred on both sides, and stirred up debates on immigration and gun rights. Unsurprisingly, TV Rain and RBC are among the few major Russian media outlets not run by the state.
It is a strange sensation being so near a story you cannot access — something like being in a warzone without ever having a clear view of the front line. The story’s players are tantalizingly close to hand. My Moscow apartment is a 15-minute walk from VEB, the state-owned development bank whose head, Sergei Gorkov, met with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner soon after the presidential election. When congressional officials in March revealed the sit-down, journalists in Moscow flooded the bank with requests for interviews. They weren’t granted them.
As I spent weeks piecing together a story on Gorkov I often passed VEB’s large, semicircular building with salmon-tinted windows. But the bank I was writing about might as well have been several time zones away, or in a different country altogether. Physical proximity to it meant nothing in terms of my ability to write about it.
During the summer, many foreign reporters gathered for the annual boat party, an informal event that has taken place in recent years. On the invitation, the dress code read, “Rain: Cosy Bear. Shine: Fancy Bear,” a play on the hacking groups linked by security experts to the Russian government. Putin had recently ordered Washington to cut the size of its diplomatic staff by hundreds, in response to fresh U.S. sanctions slapped on Russia for election interference. And on that warm August evening, as we circled the Kremlin several times, we talked about how this was the closest we’d get, at least for a while.
Unlike the White House, but perhaps similar to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, the Kremlin is a heavily fortified bastion of secrecy, both physically and symbolically. Russian authorities keep a tight lid on the information allowed out to the general population. The most journalists can do is sift through the same set of meager clues offered by state-run media about policymakers’ views. Like Russians across the country, we tune in each Sunday evening to watch news programs on state-run television by hosts Vladimir Soloviev and Dmitry Kiselyov. The leading pundits deliver their views on the happenings of the week, in what are widely seen as choreographed shows designed to deliver the Kremlin line. But this is less journalism than guesswork. The resulting reports often add to, rather than diminish, the cloud of mystery surrounding Russiagate.
It wasn’t always like this. When I first started reporting from Russia, just over a decade ago, nobody doubted the significance of the country’s politics. But we could see the story around us, and we had access. We could call Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov on the phone (today he is almost impossible to get hold of), we would get interviews for (some) government ministers and senior executives, without waiting the obligatory maximum six weeks only to then be told that their schedules are full.
Editors in the West also had wider-ranging interest in Russia stories back then; nowadays, the focus (with some exceptions, such as Foreign Policy’s reporting about Russia’s hearts-and-minds campaign in Syria, growing dissent in the Russian heartland and the church’s mounting campaign against abortion) tends to be trained narrowly on Trump.
And that may be related to the biggest problem that foreign correspondents now face, especially those who write for U.S. audiences. The discussion among Americans seems increasingly on the verge of veering into the realm of conspiracy theorizing. Yes, there were various Russian efforts to sow discord in the United States and influence the presidential election. (Though this was not the first time that Moscow has tried to do this. And the reverse has also taken place, notably when the U.S. financially backed Boris Yeltsin in the 1996 presidential elections.)
But even if we were to gain access to the upper echelons of Russian government, there’s plenty of reason to doubt we would ever find a way to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together into a single master plan. In recent weeks, independent Russian journalists have painstakingly tried to explain what the West, namely the U.S. media, has been consistently getting wrong about this story. The bottom line: The Russian government is a chaotic institution, not a streamlined machine. Putin is no arch strategist, but someone who acts on compulsion, and often at cross-purposes with himself.
And so it’s unlikely Putin ever signed off on a clear plan about how, and to what extent, to interfere in the U.S. election. The motley, continually expanding cast of Russian characters to appear in the scandal were almost certainly trying to impress the Kremlin, not acting on orders from it. A lot of guesswork has always gone into trying to figure out what Putin’s Kremlin wants — and that includes people with power, as well as foreign journalists.Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., the country’s national housing agency, is finally on the path to being operated like a significant financial player which it has morphed into during the past decade.
A new chairman of the board, a soon-to-be unveiled chief executive and a new reporting structure that will overhaul its operations are the tangible indications of the fundamental changes playing out behind closed doors at the Crown corporation that have been set in motion by the federal government.
A house cleaning is already underway
In March, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tabled legislative changes in the federal budget to toughen oversight of CMHC by placing it under the auspices of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), the highly regarded regulator that oversees Canada’s banks and insurance companies. Sources say the banking watchdog is expected to conduct an extensive risk management review of CMHC, and require the housing agency to continue reporting its financials quarterly, which it began in 2011, like all the other banks and insurance firms under its purview. First quarter results are scheduled to be released May 30.
In the meantime, a house cleaning is already underway. CMHC unveiled former Wall Street banker Robert P. Kelly as chairman and will soon announce a replacement for outgoing chief executive Karen Kinsley, who is stepping down after a 25-year career at the country’s dominant mortgage insurer. A source familiar with the internal activities at the housing agency says the structural shakeup is embodied by Mr. Kelly, a Canadian and a veteran financial services executive who was chairman and chief executive officer of the Bank of New York Mellon, and formerly with Toronto Dominion Bank. “Bob Kelly is not a grandpa in a rocking chair, he has a lot of intelligence and energy and market street smarts. You don’t bring him in as chair unless you want him to do something,” said the source who asked not to be named.
“Changes to way the mortgage insurance is administered in Canada are afoot,” said Finn Poschmann, vice-president of research at the C.D. Howe Institute. “There is no question this means tighter oversight and better reporting.”
Amid sharply rising defaults in housing markets in some western European countries, greater scrutiny of CMHC and its operations has assumed a greater urgency. “Housing finance risks emerged in the past half decade as big and important,” said Mr. Poschmann. “They were the proximate cause of a major market meltdown in the U.S., less in other countries, but a major contributor.”
In Canada, the federal government and policy makers are scrambling to engineer a soft landing for the country’s overheated housing market. As the largest provider of mortgage insurance in the country with about 75% of the mortgage default insurance market, CMHC plays a critical role in Canada’s housing market. In fact, the agency has been at the forefront of changes that made it easier to get a loan, much to the chagrin of the Finance minister, who has expressed concerns about the role CMHC has developed from its historical mandate to advance housing in Canada.
Changes to way the mortgage insurance is administered in Canada are afoot
“Looking back over the last decade, I see an unbelievable mandate creep where CMHC was doing things that would infuriate taxpayers and running a massive, potentially public liability in the process,” says Ben Rabidoux, analyst and strategist with U.S.-based Hanson Advisors.
To that end, Mr. Flaherty has attempted to curb CMHC’s growth and reduce taxpayers’ exposure by making it prohibitively difficult to obtain an insured mortgage backed by the federal government. For one, amortization terms were trimmed from a high of 40 years to a 25-year maximum. Furthermore, Ottawa capped the amount it is willing to backstop at $600-billion in an attempt to curb the amount of bulk insurance in CMHC’s portfolio. It is noteworthy that, according to CMHC’s annual report released Monday, it reported that it is insuring less mortgages in dollar terms, roughly $566-billion, in 2012, than it has in recent years.
Having reined in its lending activities, Ottawa also moved to tighten control and oversight of CMHC “to ensure its commercial activities are managed in a manner that promotes the stability of the financial system.” Mr. Flaherty criticized the extent to which CMHC’s commercial functions had commandeered its lending capacity and core functions, most notably CMHC’s willingness to provide default insurance on conventional mortgage loans with more than a 20% down payment, which is not required by law because they are considered low-ratio mortgages.
“If there’s ever been a time to be cautious with giving out mortgage debt, now would be that time,” said Mr. Rabidoux. “What they are doing at CMHC is finally forcing it to act in the best interest of the general public.”The Dane is determined to return to the F1 cockpit next year, having lost his seat at McLaren to Jenson Button this year following a last-minute change of heart by his bosses.
After confessing that he is doing 'everything' he can to return to racing in 2016, he is convinced that he has gained far more knowledge that many people realise with the job he is now doing.
"I have lots of experience that can benefit any team," he told Motorsport.com. "I've been driving McLaren F1 cars since 2012.
"I have had a year racing in F1, I have worked with McLaren for six years – and professionally at F1 level for three years.
"I was official test driver, then racing and then this year. I've learned a lot and more than people realise. I am sure that experience will be beneficial for anyone."
Checking options
Magnussen remains in contention for a race seat at McLaren for 2016 if the team elects not to retain Jenson Button.
He has also been strongly linked with the new Haas outfit, which has made clear that it wants experienced drivers on board.
Although drawing short of revealing which teams he is speaking to, Magnussen says that his only focus is on competing again.
"I am a racing driver, and I want to race in F1," he said. "I haven't got to the top step yet – I need to do, I want to do that and I will do that.
"I have had a really good time at McLaren since I joined as a young guy, and I've learned a huge amount and they have done so much for me.
"It would be great for me to race here, but they have two world champions and they are both doing a very good job. You can see they are so close in every race and every qualifying.
"If there isn't a place here – then I still want to be racing. There has been interest from other teams, they've reached out, and that is good to see. It shows I should be on the grid somewhere.
"I cannot identify any of the teams who have approached, but Haas does sounds like an interesting project – and something that could be good for the future."
Behind the scenes
The lack of in-season testing means that Magnussen does not have the chance to show off his qualities behind the wheel, but says that his efforts are being appreciated behind the scenes.
"I've tried to help the drivers and the team in the best way I could," he said. "There is no way I can come in and do a miracle and solve everything, but I can help and provide a bit more information from a drivers' point of view.
"For example, the race drivers are busy and they need to take big decisions about set-up and stuff, so they don't always get time to analyse the on-board videos of the other cars on the grid; or their own stuff.
"I can go through and analyse; I have all the time in the world! I think that has been very helpful for the engineers and drivers."England Youth International arrives at Griffin Park
Brentford have signed England youth international Rico Henry from Walsall for an initial £1.5m fee, the highest the Club have paid for a teenager. The speedy left-sided player, who turned 19 last month, completed the deal today, Wednesday 31 August, and signed a five-year contract. The teenager, who plays predominantly at left back, will link up again with Brentford Head Coach Dean Smith, who handed Rico a professional debut when he was Walsall manager.
He joined Walsall at the age of 11 and turned professional days after his 17th birthday. Rico played his first professional game five months later and had played nine Sky Bet League One games before he was 18. He established himself as Walsall’s first choice left back last season and helped them finish third in League One. He was named Football League Young Player of the Month in September 2015 and earned a spot in the PFA League One Team of the Year for his performances last term.
Rico was named in the top three for the Football League Young Player of the Year Award last season. The prize was won by Lewis Cook, now in the Premier League with AFC Bournemouth. He also earned himself a first international call-up, winning two England Under-19 caps. He made 58 appearances for The Saddlers, scoring three goals. Rico currently has a shoulder injury that may require surgery and so will not be available for selection at present.
Head Coach, Dean Smith, said: “Rico is a player I worked with at Walsall and threw him into the first team at 16 in pre-season friendlies and he more than held his own in those games, he had no fear, and was playing in League One shortly afterwards. He’s a talented player, fearless, and likes to bring the ball to opponents.
“He will provide competition down the left side along with Callum Elder and Tom Field. I’m surprised and delighted we’ve got Rico to the football club as I thought a Premier League side would have signed him by now. His development hasn’t stopped and there’s a lot more to come from him.”
Co-Director of Football, Phil Giles, said: “The scouting team have known about Rico for some time, and to echo Dean's comments, there was a time where we felt we wouldn't be able to bring him to the Club. However, we have monitored his situation over the summer and I am delighted that there was an opportunity to sign him, and that he was keen to sign for Brentford.
"It is important that Rico has signed a five-year contract. We want to build a side that is capable of challenging towards the top of the division this season. However, it is also our responsibility to ensure that we plan for the long term and build a team that can be competitive over several seasons too. Rico will continue his development with us and be a part of that future.
"We are fully aware of the extent of the shoulder injury and have taken expert advice on it. Our medical team will continue to liaise with the consultant to determine the best treatment option. The main priority is that Rico recovers well and is 100 per cent fit in the long term. We are very comfortable with the fact that Rico may not play for Brentford in the foreseeable future as Tom Field and Callum Elder will continue to compete for the left back position.”Photo: Marcus Bleasdale/HRW
The government to review mining laws (file photo).
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development has started the process of revising some clauses in the mining laws to attract the highly mobile capital and finance needed to establish a modern and viable mining industry.
The laws in question are; the Mineral Policy, which was put in place in 2001, the Mining Act, 2003 and the attendant regulations established in 2004. While speaking at the Mining Policy, Law and Taxation conference held on July 16-18 at Speke Resort Munyonyo, Fred Kabagambe-Kaliisa, the permanent secretary of the energy ministry said globalization has opened up new investment frontiers leading to an increase in the pool of risk capital available for exploration and mining development. Kaliisa said for Uganda to sustain the attraction of mobile international capital, it is imperative to review the current legal regime.
He added that other laws-land laws and tax laws that directly impact on the mineral development have to be amended. Ugandans expects the bulk of its commercial oil production to start by the end of 2017 as it awaits a pipeline to export crude oil and a refinery to be built, according to information from the energy ministry. The discovery could lead to billions of dollars in revenue from expected crude oil exports of 140,000 barrels a day (bpd) and production of about 200,000 bpd, which is expected to boost East Africa's third-largest economy.
Three oil firms - Britain's Tullow Oil, France's Total and China's CNOOC are involved in the oil business. The country has substantial deposits of high-value minerals--precious metal [gold, diamond, silver and copper], construction minerals [limestone, clay and granite] and industrial minerals [salt and tungsten].Two dogs appear to have been hit hard by the loss of their owner, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, who died in a shooting in Ottawa on Wednesday.
The large dogs were seen at Cirillo's family home in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, poking their heads under the gate of the wooden fence, resting their heads in their paws and waiting for the soldier to come back.
The dogs calmly watched as strangers approached the fence around Cirillo's red brick home, where a makeshift memorial of flags, flowers and cards continues to grow.
Cirillo was killed in a shooting at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, where he was serving as an honorary guard.
When he was identified later in the day, social media photos of Cirillo and his dogs appeared on newspapers, websites and television news coverage. A portrait emerged of a young father who loved to laugh. He was rarely seen without the dogs he'd rescued from a shelter.
The burly soldier posted photos of his dogs all over his social media accounts, showing the dogs cuddling with him, sleeping in his bed and draped in towels after a bath. One photo he posted to Instagram combines three shots of the dogs with the caption "Family."
Dogs peek out from under a gate at the Cirillo family home in Hamilton, Ont. near flowers and flags that have been left on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2014. (Peter Power / THE CANADIAN PRESS)Neill Blomkamp's Aliens film — which we've been speculating on since it was announced last week — is going to be a direct sequel to 1986's Aliens. In an interview with Sky Movies (promoting the soon-to-be-released Chappie), Blomkamp said he wants his upcoming film to feel like the "genetic sibling" to James Cameron's classic. "So, it's Alien, Aliens, this movie," he said, referring to his ideal canonic timeline.
Alien franchise star Sigourney Weaver added "I would love to take Ripley from orbiting around in space and give a proper finish to what was such an excellent story.
So, I guess we're pretending that Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection never existed?
According to the newly proposed timeline, the events of Alien 3 were what? A fever dream that Ripley experienced in hyper sleep? Actually, that could work. And technically, the events of Alien: Resurrection could still be considered canon, since that film takes place hundreds of years after the events of Aliens. But I don't think anyone will be upset about Resurrection not "counting."
Fans of Alien 3, however, may not be happy.
There's no release date or official name for the new film. Chappie (which Weaver stars in) will release on March 6.Canadian Real Estate prices only have three main directions they can go: Up, flat or down.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, this article is about what happens if they go down. It is not a prediction, but just trying to paint a picture of just what might be in store for Canadians — and outlining things you can do today to protect yourself.
For the sake of excitement, let’s say that there is a solid decline of 25 per cent from today’s prices. It can certainly happen.
From 1989 to 1996 Toronto average home prices dropped 36 per cent.
In 1980, Vancouver average home prices dropped over 40 per cent within one year.
But is the worst of your trouble simply the drop in value of your house?
Unfortunately, that is only the biggest of a long list of worries if we face a major house price decline. These would likely include:
Your investment portfolio would be hit hard if you own Canadian Bank Stocks, Canadian REITs, Canadian Mortgage and Mortgage Insurer stocks. Also look to declines in any retailer or manufacturer of appliances or building materials with significant exposure to the Canadian market.
Your taxes will go up. This will happen because the gravy boat of real estate related revenues will need to be replaced. This is particularly true of your Municipal Government.
You might see a tax hit due to our collective ownership of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The very large government owned mortgage insurer provides mortgage guarantees (among other services) on many of the most vulnerable loans. These are often for home owners who may have only 10 per cent down on a house. In the event of a 25 per cent price decline, these people would now owe 15 per cent more on their mortgage than the value of their house. I can tell you that many of the recent changes to Mortgage rules in Canada are tied very closely to the Governments’ great fear of what will happen to CMHC if there is a house price meltdown. In total, current Mortgage Insurance in force stands at $523 billion!!
If you are a real estate builder or developer, real estate agent, mortgage broker, real estate lawyer, provider of title insurance or any other job that is directly related to Canadian real estate, clearly there will be a direct employment impact to you. But what about others? How many cars, cottages, boats, vacations, high end watches, nice restaurant meals, and the list could go on, have been bought by those who are directly employed by the real estate industry? Assume that every one of those industries will suffer a hit as spending falls.
What about all of the Canadians who are real estate rich? In Canada today there is a little under $2 trillion of household credit, of which over $1.4 trillion is directly related to borrowing against real estate. Imagine all of the spending that Canadians do that is in part funded by either the actual dollars borrowed against their house or the added confidence that their ever growing house value provides. On both fronts many Canadians will pull back on their overall spending because of a 25 per cent decline in house values. This will hit the Canadian economy across the board.
Selling your house at that point may not save you. It can help, but what might take a week to do in a hot market could take you a year to do when you are desperate, unless you want to take an even bigger loss on your house.
To summarize this doomsday scenario, your house value will drop and selling will be tough, your taxes will go up, your investment portfolio will suffer, the economy will drop and possibly you will lose your job. You must be thrilled that you ever read this article.
Is there anything you can do to avoid getting hit on all fronts? I believe there are four things that you can do today to minimize the pain from a very bad Canadian real estate market:
If more than 60 per cent of your total net worth or equity exposure is in Canadian real estate, you might want to consider selling or downsizing to lower that exposure. For example, if you have non-real estate assets worth $400,000 and a $1 million house and a $400,000 mortgage, I would suggest you have $1 million of net worth, and your equity exposure to real estate is actually 100 per cent. This person would have to sell their home, and buy something worth $600,000 or less to get to a 60 per cent real estate exposure.
How directly is your employment tied to the Canadian real estate market? The harder your job would be hit from a decline in real estate values, the more important that 60 per cent number becomes for you in point No. 1. In fact, you may want to use a 50 per cent number.
You likely have complete freedom in how your RRSPs and other funds are invested. Take a hard look at your exposure to Canadian real estate in your investment portfolio. If you are overly exposed in item number one or two above, then it is even more important to have meaningful investment exposure outside of Canada or at least outside of Canadian Financials, mortgage funds and REITs. We see too many people that believe that these sectors are bullet proof, but unfortunately they are layering on added risk to their large personal Canadian real estate exposure.
The final item is to review your debt exposure. When times are tough, cash is king and debt can be a tremendous weight. It is at those times when you need it most that your income and investments can suffer. If your debt minus your non-registered investment assets is more than double your annual household income, then you should take a hard look at how you will be able to manage a recession.
Nobody really knows which way the Canadian real estate market is headed from here. What we do know is that for much of the country, the past 20 years have been quite kind to real estate. We also know that real estate has cycles just like every other investment, and it has been quite a while since we have seen a sizable decline. It is definitely coming. It is only a question of when. Don’t act like you are immune.
Ted Rechtshaffen is President and Wealth Advisor at TriDelta Financial, a boutique wealth management firm focusing on investment counselling and estate planning. tedr@tridelta.caBreitbart Texas has learned that 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is heading to the Texas-Mexico border to get a firsthand look at the current border security situation. Trump is expected to meet with Border Patrol agents of the Laredo Sector.
“We look forward to giving Mr. Trump a boots on the ground perspective on the Laredo Sector of the Texas-Mexico Border,” said National Border Patrol Council, Local 2455 President Hector Garza. “Mr. Trump is expected to be in Laredo later in the week.”
Garza told Breitbart Texas that following the border tour, Trump will have a town hall style meeting where law enforcement officers will be invited to provide feedback on their perspective of the border situation.
Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby worked with Agent Garza to prepare for Trump’s border tour. “It is of utmost importance that possible future leaders of our country visit the border region, especially the Laredo Sector. Most Texans and other Americans hear that the Texas border was secured, but it wasn’t. The Rio Grande Valley Sector was supplemented with manpower from the State of Texas, but that mostly stopped where that sector ended and the Laredo Sector begins.” Darby added, “Mr. Trump will learn firsthand of the many holes and vulnerabilities that the Los Zetas cartel exploits to enter Texas and oppress their victims. We will keep the details of Mr. Trump’s intended visit private at this time.”
Agent Garza added, “Breitbart Texas has been instrumental in making sure that the voices and experiences of Border Patrol agents in the Laredo Sector have been heard. We appreciate Mr. Trump and anyone else with such a platform who takes the time to hear what we are experiencing and seeing at the border. We assure you that the reality is far different from what the federal government is telling the public.”
Bob Price is a senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas and a member of the original Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and on Facebook.Karen Jacques holds her son's dog, Rascal, in her home north of Bend last week. Jacques' son, Michael Tyler Jacques was shot and killed by Bend Police during a traffic stop in December. (Joe Kline/Bulletin photo) 5991837
Karen Jacques holds her son's dog, Rascal, in her home north of Bend last week. Jacques' son, Michael Tyler Jacques was shot and killed by Bend Police during a traffic stop in December. (Joe Kline/Bulletin photo) - Bulletin
Karen Jacques holds her son’s dog, Rascal, in her home north of Bend in January 2017. Jacques’ son, Michael Tyler Jacques, was shot and killed by Bend Police during a traffic stop in December 2016. (Joe Kline/Bulletin photo) 6009347
Karen Jacques holds her son’s dog, Rascal, in her home north of Bend in January 2017. Jacques’ son, Michael Tyler Jacques, was shot and killed by Bend Police during a traffic stop in December 2016. (Joe Kline/Bulletin photo) - Bulletin
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By Aubrey Wieber • The Bulletin
Where the case stands today The actions of the Bend Police Department are being investigated by Oregon State Police under the direction of the Oregon Department of Justice. Although an autopsy was done, authorities have not released any information about whether Michael Tyler Jacques was drunk or under the influence of illegal drugs. Authorities have also declined to say what prompted officers to use deadly force or whether or not Jacques was armed. OSP has said it will not release any details about the case until its investigation is complete, but an attorney for Jacques’ family is conducting an independent investigation.
In the weeks since police killed her son, Karen Jacques has avoided online comments, news articles and cellphone videos that were broadcast on TV. She’d been told of the graphic content, and the way people characterized her son, Michael Tyler Jacques. They called him a pedophile and a violent drunk.
She stayed away because she remembers him differently. Her son, in her eyes still a boy in so many ways, was a funny, sensitive child with a penchant for being empathetic toward the misfits in his life.
Where the case stands today The actions of the Bend Police Department are being investigated by Oregon State Police under the direction of the Oregon Department of Justice. Although an autopsy was done, authorities have not released any information about whether Michael Tyler Jacques was drunk or under the influence of illegal drugs. Authorities have also declined to say what prompted officers to use deadly force or whether or not Jacques was armed. OSP has said it will not release any details about |
de la transaction immobilière.
Ensuring that this enhanced within-chip etch precision extends across the entire wafer, the Centris Sym3 system has been comprehensively redesigned for True Symmetry™ of power, gas delivery, and thermal characteristics necessary. In addition, improvements to Pulsync™ increase the effectiveness of synchronized plasma pulsing to minimize pattern loading. Users can enhance further performance with optional dual frequency bias that facilitates the etching of challenging high aspect ratio features.
« Depuis 20 ans, DuProprio a développé un modèle d’affaires audacieux, qui donne avant tout le pouvoir au consommateur. Notre collaboration a pour but d’amener la marque à une nouvelle étape de croissance en s’attaquant aux freins et en bâtissant la notoriété de l’offre parfois moins connue de DuProprio », ajoute Julie Dubé, associée, vice-présidente, lg2.
La collaboration est d’une importance capitale chez Centris. Elle prend forme dans l’équipe, avec nos clients immobiliers, mais aussi avec nos précieux partenaires, du Québec et d’ailleurs, avec qui nous concevons environ 50 % des outils. Nous favorisons la mise en commun des talents pour développer des solutions innovantes servant les professionnels de l’immobilier, et pour adapter un outil selon un contexte géographique particulier. Chez Centris, nous voyons grand et nous voyons loin : le partenariat est essentiel au progrès.
A broker provides a complete and accurate description of the property, performs a comparative market analysis, proposes a marketing strategy, verifies the specifications of the desired property, prepares and submits the promise to purchase to the seller, negotiates in the best interest of his or her client, and ensures that all conditions are met on time for the signing of the notarial act.
Le réseau immobilier no 1 dans le monde4 s'est forgé une réputation enviable grâce à l'expertise et à l'efficacité indéniables de ses courtiers. Pour favoriser le développement de ces qualités essentielles, RE/MAX a mis sur pied le Collège d'enseignement en immobilier (C.E.I.) au Québec tandis que RE/MAX International a fondé l'université RE/MAX à Denver, au Colorado. Dans ces institutions, les courtiers reçoivent une formation enrichie qui leur permet de vous assister pendant l'acquisition de votre semi détaché à Victoriaville."Homes are selling faster and faster in the Montréal area, as the average selling time, for all property categories combined, was 80 days in November, which is seven days less than one year ago," said Nathalie Bégin, President of the GMREB board of directors. "Single-family homes and plexes sold the fastest – in an average of 72 days – while it took an average of 94 days for a condominium to sell," she added.18394
Stormzy and Rag’n’Bone Man have been neck-and-neck the entire week, but Official Charts can today reveal that Stormzy has secured the Number 1 spot on the Official Albums Chart.
After switching between the Top 2 throughout the last seven days, it is Stormzy's debut studio album Gang Signs & Prayer that captured the top spot with combined chart sales of 69,000, according to Official Charts Company data.
A huge week for London’s Stormzy’s on UK streaming services, Gang Signs & Prayers has racked up the most first-week streams for a Number 1 album in chart history, surpassing the opening week of streaming giant Drake, and even surpassing the first-week streams of the powerhouse that is Justin Bieber and his latest album Purpose. Purpose still holds the record for most streams ever recorded in a single week, which it achieved in its second week on chart at the Number 2 position.
MORE: See this week's Top 100 Official Albums Chart in full
Stormzy tells OfficialCharts.com: “It hasn’t sunk in yet. Honestly, I wish I could take every person who bought and streamed the album out with me, have dinner with them, dedicate a whole night to them. I don’t take your support for granted. I can’t thank you enough.”
Stormzy sets a new bar for Grime’s commercial success, bettering the first week performance of many other huge albums from leading figures within the Grime music scene; Gang Signs & Prayer is faster-selling than Skepta's Konnichiwa, Kano's Made in the Manor and Giggs' Landlord. Going back even further, the album also pips the opening week of Dizzee Rascal's Mercury Prize winning Boy in da Corner from 2003 by nearly 10 copies to one.
Gang Signs & Prayer is arguably the first pure Grime album to hit Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart. Tinie Tempah's Disc-Overy is the only other Grime-influenced record to sit pretty at the coveted top spot.
Completing this week's Top 5 are Ed Sheeran's x, which rises once place to Number 3 in anticipation for his new album ÷ which was released today, the Trolls Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that has reached a new peak of Number 4, and Adele's 25 is stationery at Number 5.
New entries and high climbers
The BRIT Awards aftermath continues to influence the Official Albums Chart, with Bruno Mars' 24K Magic experiencing a rise of five positions to Number 7. George Michael's Ladies and Gentlemen is also up following the ceremony, hopping from 11 to Number 8.
There are more rises for Rick Wakeman - up five to Number 11 - with Piano Portraits, and Michael Ball and Alfie Boe's Together experiences uplift thanks to their performance on the Let It Shine final last Saturday. The former Number 1 album jumps from 43 to Number 13.
Emeli Sande's Long Live the Angels propels fourteen places to Number 14 thanks to her BRITs spotlight, ahead of a new entry for Future with HNDRXX at 21. David Bowie's Blackstar returns to the Top 40 at 32 following his two BRIT Awards wins, and Train's A Girl, A Bottle, A Boat also rebounds into the top flight, up 51 placings to Number 36.
Finally, two new entries make it into the Top 40 after their first week on sale; Thundercat's Drunk lands at 37 and Rhiannon Giddens' Freedom Highway debuts at Number 39.
Look back through every Official UK Number 1 album of 2017 so far:The open saucy Ubuntu is considering dumping the Thunderbird mail app because users tend to favour using webservices mail instead.
Ubuntu 17.10 may not include a default desktop email app at all and Thunderbird is Ubuntu’s default email app at the moment.
However apparently Linux geeks use webmail providers like Google, Yahoo!, Outlook, or ProtonMail and really can’t be bothered with mail apps these days.
An email posted to the Ubuntu desktop mailing list said that the company switched Ubuntu’s default email client from Evolution to Thunderbird. Six years later, it is time to take another look.
The idea is to get people talking about killing off Thunderbird and the kinds of apps that are offered in Ubuntu by default.
‘This discussion is not suggesting email apps are bunk, it simply asks if one needs to be there by default.’
GNOME’s Michael Catanzaro suggests that, for an ideal ‘pure GNOME’ experience, a distro shouldn’t ship an email client by default because, right now, there isn’t one that’s both well-maintained and well-integrated with GNOME.
The question is though whether enough desktop Ubuntu users find Thunderbird useful enough for one to be given a prized slot on the install disk.
Source: http://www.fudzilla.com/news/43433-ubuntu-might-retire-thunderbird
Submitted by: Arnfried WalbrechtConnolly, Geaney, Ablitt & Willard spent years helping banks foreclose on homeowners throughout the state of Massachusetts. Now, the Woburn-based law firm is finding out what it feels like to be on the other end, according to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.
According to documents from the firm, there were 150 people employed earlier this year and the firm reportedly billed at least $100,000 per day.
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The firm has been bouncing checks lately and forensic accountants have been examining the firm’s books. With all of this going on, the firm is being evicted from his offices as it has failed to pay insurance premiums for employees and has had to lay off most of its lawyers and paralegals.
Later this year, a whistleblower lawsuit against the firm in Florida is set to go to trial.
The problems started to come to the surface when the chief financial officer of the firm, Robert F. Feige, left his post. Feige left the firm in February and his past is littered with allegations of financial misdeeds.
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The Friday before Memorial Day marked the third round of layoffs at the firm in the last four months. In this round, 40 people lost their jobs at the Woburn, West Palm Beach, Florida and Puerto Rico offices.
“Every day it was the same. We had no idea what direction the firm was going,” said Mark S. Barbuto, a paralegal started working at the firm in November of 2013. “There were people crying. There were people who had health issues who weren’t going to have health insurance anymore. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The very first sign of trouble occurred on February 28 when employees did not receive their paychecks.
“I find it hard to believe that we still have not received any official notification or explanation from the management team in our MA office regarding this most serious situation,” Dennis Green, a litigation paralegal in the firm’s Florida office, wrote in an email sent to his co-workers that morning.
Not much later the same day, Steven A. Ablitt sent out an email to the firm stating that Feige was “no longer with the firm and that there are forensic accountants in the office.”
The office building where the law firm operates was sold during an auction in March. It was purchased by Joseph A. and Ronald A. Martignetti.
“They have not paid any rent, and we, of course, are evicting them,” Ronald Martignetti said. “We have eviction proceedings going on right now in Woburn District Court to remove them from that building.”
Visit LawCrossing.com to check all available law firm jobs in Massachusetts.
MOST POPULAR ARTICLES sponsored by BCG ATTORNEY SEARCH Read MoreThis study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment ( N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.
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Google Scholar Crossref | ISIIn the ever-so-smug company of the rich and powerful, it is a given that there is never to be any expression of remorse or other acknowledgment of the pain they have inflicted on the lesser mortals they so cavalierly plunder. It’s convenient for them that the media and the politicians, which they happen to own, rarely connect the dots between the scams that made the rich so rich and the alarming rise in the federal debt that is crushing this nation.
The result of this purchased public myopia is that we are left with an absurd debate over how deeply to cut teachers’ pensions and seniors’ medical benefits while preserving tax breaks for the superrich and their large corporations. At a time when 10 million American families will have lost their homes by year’s end, when $5.6 trillion in home equity has been wiped out, when most Americans face steep unemployment rates and stagnant wages, a Democratic president is likely to compromise with Republican ideologues who insist that further cuts in taxes for the rich is the way to bring back jobs.
Let’s deal right off with that canard. There is currently no shortage of corporate profits or excessive executive compensation to explain away the failure of the private sector to create jobs. On the contrary, as The New York Times reports, “In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.” And to add insult to injury, the top executives, who seem unable or unwilling to create jobs or adequately reward their workers, have increased their own compensation by a whopping 12 percent over the previous year, setting the median pay at $9.6 million per year for those in control of the leading 200 companies. The Times adds that “C.E.O. pay is also on the rise again at companies like Capital One and Goldman Sachs, which survived the economic storm with the help of all of those taxpayer-financed bailouts.”
Lost in this faux debate is the reality that our debt now looms so large because the government had to bail out many of those same corporations, quite a few of which, like General Electric and AIG, pay no taxes and have no problem paying truly obscene amounts to their top executives. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whom President Barack Obama named chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, is making as much as he did before the recession hit, a recession that his GE Capital division did much to cause with its reckless loans. AIG, saved with a government infusion of $170 billion, has just lavishly rewarded its top executives but has provided no relief for the homeowners ripped off by its phony credit default swaps.
The AIG deal was engineered by then-President of the New York Fed Timothy Geithner, who was rewarded for his efforts to save the bankers by being named Obama’s treasury secretary. Geithner, an energetic member of the team of Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers that ran Treasury when the Bill Clinton administration cooperated with congressional Republicans in gutting regulation of the financial community, is proud of saving the banks from the wreckage that they and the Clinton policies caused. Last October he proclaimed the TARP banker bailout program “the most effective government program in recent memory.”
What he is referring to is that in order to escape the federal restrictions on executive compensation, the banks have been eager to pay back the TARP funds. What he and other apologists for the Obama and George W. Bush administrations’ Bankers First program choose to ignore — as Paul Atkins and two other members of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program revealed in a damning Wall Street Journal column titled “TARP Was No Win for the Taxpayers” — is that the banks are not paying back the trillions of dollars in non-TARP governmental assistance that saved them from bankruptcy. ” … It hides the full story of the government’s financial crisis effort, of which TARP is but a minor part,” the Op-Ed column said of the maneuvering. The major part is the $1.1 trillion in toxic-mortgage-based securities that the Fed purchased, relieving the banks of their obligations, and the $380 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, organizations that backed those securities, along with “other Fed and FDIC programs [that] added another $2 trillion of taxpayer money at risk to the 19 stress-tested banks alone. …”
What Geithner celebrates is a shell game of his own construction in which far more costly federal programs, with no serious restrictions on banker greed, were used by the banks to “repay” the TARP funds. Nothing was obtained in return from those banks in the way of mortgage cramdowns to keep people in their homes or any restrictions on the interest rates that banks charge on credit cards: Clearly usurious rates of more than 25 percent are now the norm for those struggling to keep their families above water. No wonder consumer confidence is down, the housing market is expected to decline an additional 10 percent over the next year, and the job market is predicted by most of the experts to stagnate for years to come. Continued tax breaks for the 1 percent of the population that controls 40 percent of the nation’s wealth will do nothing to restore the confidence of the other 99 percent of consumers who are suffering so.
This at least Obama seems to understand, but count on him to betray his own better instincts by once again following the advice of his treasury secretary and the Wall Street crowd that contributed so lavishly to his first presidential campaign and whose support he seeks once again.You may have heard the metaphor about life being a video game with only one man, but what if you were a man whose life benefited from playing a video game? Although one might assume it’s the ultimate laid-back lifestyle, with plenty of spare time and lazy eating habits; on the contrary—there is a level of gaming out there equally as much of an occupation as it is a sport; where winning a tournament could earn you up to $300K or more, (training-related injuries included).
Our latest Urban Beardsman Michael “Flamesword” Chaves is not a casual video game junkie that lives off pizza and Doritos. He literally takes things to the next level as a professional gamer: accompanied by a worldwide fan base, a sponsorship by Red Bull, and often found working just as hard (if not harder) than many who hold down a typical nine-to-five. Chaves knows how to allocate his time wisely: he stays equipped with a solid fitness regimen, a side-job writing game strategies along with juggling his social media outlets—not to mention, he has just a handful of classes left before earning his bachelor’s in Information Technology. His hard work is paying off, earning him the status as a top ranked Halo player since going pro in 2009. He’s also gearing up to compete again in the next Iron Gaming tournaments beginning this April through July.
As a recent Chicago transplant by way of New Jersey, Chaves explains becoming a pro gamer happened organically. Like many of us, he grew up on games with storylines based on acquiring enough 1-Up mushrooms to save the princess from the castle; but since 8-bit technology a lot has changed in the gaming world. “When I was in high school and was on the basketball team, I was only 5/7” and knew that wasn’t gonna work well in the NBA,” laughs Chaves. “However, I learned that you could earn money though playing video games, particularly though the Major League Gaming association. I’d been gaming since I was a kid and that really caught my interest. I started out playing competitively with Halo 2, jumping online and playing with teams. I eventually met a tournament company over the Internet, and realized I really enjoyed the aspect of team gaming.”
Chaves formed a crew known as Status Quo, and as their team leader, they worked up the ladder starting in the amateur levels, later graduating to pro. While continuously winning a multitude of tournaments (placing in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th ranks), a career defining moment happened in his gaming career. The team placed second in Halo 3 at MLG’s 2010 Season National Championship.” My team stuck together for the whole season, which can be rare for some, so it meant a lot placing our best with that squad.” Chaves’ wins were loud enough to catch the attention of Red Bull, landing him a corporate sponsorship. “Red Bull has been such a great brand to work with, they treat us really well and hold events that enable us to meet and hang with other athletes. I’ve been able to do things from skydiving with the Red Bull Air Force Team, to go-kart racing with Mitchell Dejong, a fourteen year old boy that destroyed all of us,” he admits.
Along with the perks of being a pro gamer at Halo, Chaves has branched out to compete in another popular game series. He recently joined forces with his new crew Optic Gaming to tackle coaching for the first time in his career for the Call of Duty series. Being an active member of a team is something Chaves takes much pride in and admits establishing genuine relationships (both in and out of the gaming world) as a key to success. “I always say what I say, and do what I do. I try to make sure the person next to me is having a better day, and always try to send out positive vibes because if you put them out there, they will come back,” he states.
Staying on top of his game has not always been easy. During the time he began taking Call of Duty training more seriously, he developed a collarbone injury due to his intense training and school schedule—resulting in surgery. It was during this time that Chaves let his beard grow out longer than ever before. He states, “I went through physical therapy to recover as quickly as I could, but I stopped shaving after not being as active—so initially it went with my lifestyle theme. Now that I’m working out again, (feeling better), and being more physically active, it’s become even more symbolic of how I live my life today. I’m moving forward and sharing goodwill, not really bound to anything. I get to travel a lot and share great experiences with people, and that’s what I’m all about—sharing goodwill.”
Chaves’ beard has also become a staple of sorts in his competitive game play. The color of his Optic Gaming team is green, and he had an idea for a bet with his Twitter followers. He promised to dye his beard for an upcoming tournament if a certain game-related topic he posted reached 5000 re-tweets. “I looked at my phone a bit later and saw the number had reached 5000, so I had to spray it green. I had a lot fun with that one! I might even go all pink for breast cancer awareness month or another charity color for a future tournament,” he reveals.
As he ramps up training for his next series of competitions, Chaves continues to balance his schedule by hitting the gym regularly and incorporating a healthy diet into his daily routine. He can also be found giving everything from gaming strategies to fitness tips on his YouTube Channel, demonstrating how you can easily exercise in your home; not too far from your game console. “I enjoy staying active and always being on the move, it allows me to stay relaxed and play my best,” he says.
Just like any sport in the game of life, Chaves exemplifies the key to happiness isn’t just about winning, but spending your time wisely, taking care of your health, and forming positive relationships with others. Optimizing full control of his path, we envision multiple bearded lives for Chaves and many more wins to come!By Tim Radford, Climate News NetworkThis piece first appeared at Climate News Network.
LONDON — The answer to one of the enduring puzzles of global warming — the apparently sluggish response of the Antarctic continent to rising greenhouse gas levels — may have been settled by Australian scientists. And, in the course of doing so, they may also have solved another problem: the parching of Australia itself.
Nerilie Abram, of the Australian National University’s Research School of Earth Sciences, and colleagues outline their findings in Nature Climate Change. They report that they looked at the pattern of climate in the southern hemisphere and have concluded that the Southern Ocean winds that normally deliver rain to South Australia are being pushed further south towards Antarctica.
Their research was focused on a meteorological phenomenon known — although probably only to climate scientists — as the Southern Annular Mode, which marks the pattern of climate variability south of the equator. For the last 25 years of climate observation, it has been obvious that changes in the northern hemisphere have not been matched by changes in the south.
There are geophysical reasons for some of the difference. For example, most of the inhabited landmass of the planet is in the northern hemisphere; the North Pole is covered by an ocean, while the South Pole is in the centre of an enormous continental landmass piled high with ice and snow; and the seasons and wind patterns of the two hemispheres run counter to each other. The two hemispheres are very different.
Weather observations
In addition, weather observations in the northern hemisphere are much more detailed and have been conducted over a much longer period than in the southern hemisphere.
Conspicuously, the Arctic has been the fastest warming region of the planet, and for more than a decade there was argument about whether the Antarctic was warming at all.
Lead researcher Dr Abram and her fellow scientists took the measure of the Southern Annular Mode by looking at annual seasonal data since AD 1000 – recorded in Antarctic ice cores and South American tree rings. They then used the information to build up a picture of the past and the changing present.
“With greenhouse warming, Antarctica is actually stealing more of Australia’s rainfall,” she reported. “It’s not good news. As greenhouse gases continue to rise, we’ll get fewer storms chased up into Australia. As the westerly winds are getting tighter, they’re actually trapping more of the cold air over Antarctica. This is why the Antarctic has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on Earth.”
Indirect evidence
Direct climate observations in Antarctica date back only about 60 years. That is why climate scientists must work with indirect evidence from ice cores and tree rings.
But although change has been hard to measure on the continent itself, glaciers have been in retreat and ice shelves have collapsed on the Antarctic peninsula and the west Antarctic is beginning to lose ice at an accelerating rate. The winds of change are blowing in the south.
“The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the last 1000 years,” Dr Abram said. “The strengthening of these winds has been particularly prominent over the past 70 years, and by combining our observations with climate models we can clearly link this to rising greenhouse gas levels.”A TIP off has launched a police man hunt for the gunshot killer of a 5.2m king crocodile in the Fitzroy River.
An autopsy on the slaughtered reptile is under way after he was discovered with an apparent bullet wound to the head at an Alligator Creek location near Etna Creek yesterday afternoon.
Rockhampton Criminal Investigation Bureau officer-in-charge Detective Senior Sergeant Luke Peachey said the EHP contacted police who are now working with the environmental agency to track down who's responsible.
Police have released this image of the 5.2m crocodile shot in the head in the Fitzroy River.
Snr Sgt Peachey said it was the first crocodile murder he has investigated in his career, and was concerned that someone had "taken matters into their own hands".
He said a thorough investigation hoped to bring the killer to justice under the Animal Cruelty Act, and the culprit could face up to three years imprisonment.
Crocodile shooting update: Acting Inspector Luke Peachey updates the media on the 5.2M crocodile which was shot near Alligator Creek north of Rockhampton.
He said a first look at the animal suggested it had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, but no cartridges had yet been extracted.
Snr Sgt Peachey speculated given its size the prehistoric creature was quite old, and said environmental officers had suggested he would have been very territorial.
Reader poll Should people be allowed to shoot crocodiles? This poll ended on 22 October 2017. Current Results Yes 40% No 59% This is not a scientific poll. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate.
"It's obviously a large male and we have been speaking with officers with a little bit more knowledge than myself, we'd believe that would be a very territorial male," he said.
"It's obviously very concerning this male crocodile... would appear to be shot.
"If someone has concerns about that crocodile being in that river obviously there are better agencies and the right methods to go about getting that crocodile removed rather than taking matters into their own hands."
EHP Conservation and Biodiversity Operations director Michael Joyce today said the dominant crocodile's death would impact the balance of the crocodile population in the Fitzroy.
Mr Joyce warned of increased aggressive activity by younger male crocodiles competing for the now vacant position.
"I cannot stress strongly enough the need for all river users to be aware of the risks and to be Crocwise," he said.
Mr Joyce issued an urgent message to everyone in Rockhampton the area is to be extremely careful and to report all crocodile sightings as soon as possible on 1300 130 372.
As part of police investigations, Snr Sgt Peachey said they would be talking to landholders |
of Commons: One backbencher Robert Sheldon tabled a motion concerning a rumour that Britain would be receiving a loan from banks. Callaghan did not wish to lie to the Commons, but at the same time going public about the devaluation decision before the 18th would be financially disastrous for the country. He answered the initial question by stating that he did not comment on rumours. However a follow up question was made by Stan Orme suggesting that devaluation was preferable to deflation, which caused a major problem; Callaghan replied that he had "nothing to add or subtract from, anything I have said on previous occasions on the subject of devaluation"... Speculators seized on the fact that he had not denied there would be a devaluation and started selling Sterling. Over the next 24 hours, the flight from Sterling cost the country £1,500 million. The situation was a great political controversy at the time. As Denis Healey in his autobiography, notes:
Nowadays exchange rates can swing to and fro continually by amount greater than that, without attracting much attention outside the City columns of the newspapers. It may be difficult to understand how great a political humiliation this devaluation appeared at the time—above all to Wilson and his Chancellor, Jim Callaghan, who felt he must resign over it. Callaghan's personal distress was increased by a careless answer he gave to a backbencher's question two days before the formal devaluation. This cost Britain several hundred million pounds.[27]
Before the devaluation, Jim Callaghan had announced publicly to the Press and the House of Commons that he would not devalue, something he later said was necessary to maintain confidence in the pound and avoid creating jitters in the financial markets. Callaghan immediately offered his resignation as Chancellor, and increasing political opposition forced the Prime Minister to accept it. Wilson then moved Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer; Callaghan became the new Home Secretary on 30 November 1967.
Home Secretary (1967–70) [ edit ]
Callaghan's tenure as Home Secretary was marked by the emerging conflict in Northern Ireland and it was as Home Secretary that he took the decision to deploy British Army troops in the province after a request from the Ulster Unionist Government of Northern Ireland.
Callaghan was also responsible for the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, a controversial piece of legislation prompted by Conservative assertions that an influx of Kenyan Asians would soon inundate the country. It passed through the Commons in a week and placed entry controls on holders of British passports who had "no substantial connection" with Britain by setting up a new system. In his memoirs Time and Chance, Callaghan wrote that introducing the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill had been an unwelcome task but that he did not regret it. He said the Asians had "discovered a loophole" and he told a BBC interviewer: "Public opinion in this country was extremely agitated, and the consideration that was in my mind was how we could preserve a proper sense of order in this country and, at the same time, do justice to these people—I had to balance both considerations". An opponent of the Act, Conservative MP Ian Gilmour, said that it was "brought in to keep the blacks out. If it had been the case that it was 5,000 white settlers who were coming in, the newspapers and politicians, Callaghan included, who were making all the fuss would have been quite pleased".[citation needed]
Also significant was the passing of the Race Relations Act in the same year, making it illegal to refuse employment, housing or education on the basis of ethnic background. The Act extended the powers of the Race Relations Board at the time, to deal with complaints of discrimination and unfair attitudes. It also set up a new supervisory body, the Community Relations Commission, to promote "harmonious community relations".[29] Presenting the Bill to Parliament, Callaghan said: "The House has rarely faced an issue of greater social significance for our country and our children."
In 1969, Callaghan, a strong supporter of the Labour–Trade Union link, led the successful opposition in a divided cabinet to Barbara Castle's White Paper "In Place of Strife" which sought to modify trade union law. Amongst its numerous proposals were plans to force unions to call a ballot before a strike was held and the establishment of an Industrial Board to enforce settlements in industrial disputes. If the proposals had become law, many of the activities of the trades unions during the Winter of Discontent a decade later would have been illegal.
Following Wilson's unexpected defeat by Edward Heath at the 1970 general election, Callaghan declined to challenge him for the leadership, despite Wilson's vulnerability. This did much to rehabilitate him in Wilson's eyes. He was in charge of drawing up a new policy statement in 1972 which contained the idea of the Social Contract between the government and trade unions. He also did much to ensure that Labour opposed the Heath government's bid to enter the Common Market—forcing Wilson's hand by making his personal opposition clear without consulting the Party Leader.
Foreign Secretary (1974–76) [ edit ]
When Wilson won the next general election and returned as Prime Minister in March 1974, he appointed Callaghan as Foreign Secretary which gave him responsibility for renegotiating the terms of the United Kingdom's membership of the Common Market. When the talks concluded, Callaghan led the Cabinet in declaring the new terms acceptable and he supported a "Yes" vote in the 1975 referendum.
1976 leadership election [ edit ]
Barely two years after beginning his second spell as Prime Minister, Wilson announced his surprise resignation on 16 March 1976, and unofficially endorsed Callaghan as his successor. Callaghan was the favourite to win the leadership election; although he was the oldest candidate, he was also the most experienced and least divisive. Popularity with all parts of the Labour movement saw him through the ballot of Labour MPs to win the leadership vote. On 5 April 1976, at the age of 64 years and 9 days, Callaghan became Prime Minister—the oldest person to become Prime Minister at time of appointment since Winston Churchill.
Prime Minister (1976–79) [ edit ]
Callaghan was the only Prime Minister to have held all three leading Cabinet positions—Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary—prior to becoming Prime Minister.
During his first year in office, Callaghan started what has since become known as 'The Great Debate', when he spoke at Ruskin College, Oxford about the 'legitimate concerns' of a public about education as it took place in the nation's maintained schools. This discussion led to greater involvement of the government, through its ministries, in the curriculum and administration of state education, leading to the eventual introduction of the National Curriculum some ten years later.[31] Early in his premiership he caused controversy with the appointment of Peter Jay, his then son-in-law as the British Ambassador to the United States.
Callaghan's time as Prime Minister was dominated by the troubles in running a Government with a minority in the House of Commons: he was forced to make deals with minor parties to survive—including the Lib–Lab pact, and he had been forced to accept a referendum on devolution in Scotland as well as one in Wales (the former went in favour but did not reach the required majority, and the latter went heavily against). He also became prime minister at a time when Britain was suffering from double-digit percentage inflation and rising unemployment. He responded to the economic crises by adopting deflationary policies to reduce inflation, and cutting public expenditure—a precursor to the monetarist economic policies that the next government, a Conservative one led by Margaret Thatcher, would pursue to ease the crises.[32]
Despite the economic difficulties faced by the government, over the summer of 1978 (shortly after the end of the Lib-Lab pact)[33] most opinion polls showed Labour ahead, and the expectation grew that Callaghan would call an autumn election that would have given him a second term in office until autumn 1983.[34] The economy had also started to show signs of recovery by this time. 1978 was a year of economic recovery for Britain, with inflation falling to single digits, unemployment declining during the year, and general living standards going up by more than 8%.[35] Famously, he strung along the opposition and was expected to make his declaration of election in a broadcast on 7 September 1978.[36] His decision to put off the election was seen by many at the time[by whom?] as a sign of his domination of the political scene and he ridiculed his opponents by singing old-time music hall star Vesta Victoria's song "Waiting at the Church" at that month's Trades Union Congress meeting. This was celebrated at the time[by whom?] but has since been interpreted as one of the greatest moments of hubris in modern British politics.[37][38] Callaghan intended to convey the message that he had not promised an election, but most observers misread his message as an assertion that he would call an election, and the Conservatives would not be ready for it.
"Winter of Discontent" [ edit ]
Callaghan's method of dealing with the long-term economic difficulties involved pay restraint which had been operating for four years with reasonable success. He gambled that a fifth year would further improve the economy and allow him to be re-elected in 1979, and so attempted to hold pay rises to 5% or less. The trade unions rejected continued pay restraint and in a succession of strikes over the winter of 1978–79 (known as the Winter of Discontent) secured higher pay. The industrial unrest made his government extremely unpopular, and Callaghan's response to one interview question only made it worse. Returning to the United Kingdom from an economic summit held in Guadeloupe in early 1979, Callaghan was asked, "What is your general approach, in view of the mounting chaos in the country at the moment?" Callaghan replied, "Well, that's a judgement that you are making. I promise you that if you look at it from outside, and perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos." This reply was reported in The Sun under the headline "Crisis? What Crisis?". Callaghan also later admitted in regard to the Winter of Discontent that he had "let the country down".[39]
The Winter of Discontent saw Labour's performance in the opinion polls slump dramatically. They had topped most of the pre-winter opinion polls by several points, but in February 1979 at least one opinion poll was showing the Tories 20 points ahead of Labour and it appeared certain that Labour would lose the forthcoming election.[40]
In the buildup to the election, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian supported Labour, while The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and The Daily Telegraph supported the Conservatives.[41]
On 28 March 1979, the House of Commons passed a Motion of No Confidence by one vote, 311–310, which forced Callaghan to call a general election that was held on 3 May.[42] The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher ran a campaign on the slogan "Labour Isn't Working" and won the election.
Callaghan's failure to call an election during 1978 was widely seen as a political miscalculation; indeed, he himself later admitted that not calling an election was an error of judgement. However, private polling by the Labour Party in the autumn of 1978 had shown the two main parties with about the same level of support.[43] After losing power in 1979, Labour would spend the next 18 years in opposition.[44]
Historians Alan Sked and Chris Cook have summarised the general consensus of historians regarding Labour in power in the 1970s:
modus vivendi with the Common Market, unable even to maintain itself in power until it could go to the country and the date of its own choosing. It was little wonder, therefore, that Mrs Thatcher resoundingly defeated it in 1979.[45] If Wilson's record as prime minister was soon felt to have been one of failure, that sense of failure was powerfully reinforced by Callaghan's term as premier. Labour, it seemed, was incapable of positive achievements. It was unable to control inflation, unable to control the unions, unable to solve the Irish problem, unable to solve the Rhodesian question, unable to secure its proposals for Welsh and Scottish devolution, unable to reach a popularwith the Common Market, unable even to maintain itself in power until it could go to the country and the date of its own choosing. It was little wonder, therefore, that Mrs Thatcher resoundingly defeated it in 1979.
Resignation, backbenches and retirement [ edit ]
Notwithstanding electoral defeat, Callaghan stayed on as Labour leader until 15 October 1980, shortly after the party conference had voted for a new system of election by electoral college involving the individual members and trade unions. His resignation ensured that his successor would be elected by MPs only. After a campaign that laid bare the deep internal divisions of the parliamentary Labour Party, Michael Foot narrowly defeated Denis Healey on 10 November in the second round of the election to succeed Callaghan as party leader. Foot had been a relatively late entrant to the contest and his decision to stand ended the chances of Peter Shore.
In 1982, along with his friend, Gerald Ford, he co-founded the annual AEI World Forum.[citation needed]
In 1983, he attacked Labour's plans to reduce defence,[46][47] and the same year became Father of the House as the longest continually-serving member of the Commons.
In 1987, he was made a Knight of the Garter and stood down at the 1987 general election after 42 years as an MP. Shortly afterwards, he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, of the City of Cardiff in the County of South Glamorgan. In 1987, his autobiography, Time and Chance, was published. He also served as a non-executive director of the Bank of Wales.
His wife, Audrey, a former chairman (1969–82) of Great Ormond Street Hospital, spotted a letter to a newspaper which pointed out that the copyright of Peter Pan, which had been assigned by J. M. Barrie to the hospital, was going to expire at the end of that year, 1987 (50 years after Barrie's death, the current copyright term). In 1988, Callaghan moved an amendment to the Copyright Designs & Patents Act, then under consideration in the House of Lords, to grant the hospital a right to royalty in perpetuity despite the lapse of copyright, and it was passed by the government.
In July 1996, he was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University.[citation needed]
Tony Benn recorded in his diary entry of 3 April 1997 that during the 1997 general election campaign, Callaghan was telephoned by a volunteer at Labour headquarters asking him if he would be willing to become more active in the party. According to Benn:
One young woman in her mid-twenties rang up Jim Callaghan and said to him on the phone, "Have you ever thought of being a bit more active in politics?" So Callaghan said, "Well I was a Labour Prime Minister – what more could I do?"
During an interview broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Human Button, Callaghan became the only Prime Minister to go on record with his opinion on ordering a retaliation in the event of a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom:
If it were to become necessary or vital, it would have meant the deterrent had failed, because the value of the nuclear weapon is frankly only as a deterrent," he said. "But if we had got to that point, where it was, I felt, necessary to do it, then I would have done it. I've had terrible doubts, of course, about this. I say to you, if I had lived after having pressed that button, I could never, ever have forgiven myself.[48]
In October 1999, Callaghan told The Oldie Magazine that he would not be surprised to be considered as Britain's worst Prime Minister in 200 years. He also said in this interview that he "must carry the can" for the Winter of Discontent.[49]
Personal life [ edit ]
Callaghan's interests included rugby (he played lock for Streatham RFC before the Second World War), tennis and agriculture. He married Audrey Elizabeth Moulton, whom he had met when they both worked as Sunday School teachers at the local Baptist church,[50] in July 1938 and had three children—one son and two daughters.
Margaret, Baroness Jay of Paddington
Julia, who married Ian Hamilton Hubbard and settled in Lancashire
Michael, who married Jennifer Morris and settled in Essex.
Although there is much doubt about how much belief Callaghan retained into adult life, the Baptist nonconformist ethic was a profound influence throughout all of his public and private life. According to InfoBritain, Callaghan slowly became an atheist while working with the Inland Revenue union.[51]
One of his final public appearances came on 29 April 2002, when shortly after his 90th birthday, he sat alongside the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and three other surviving former Prime Ministers at the time - Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major at Buckingham Palace for a dinner which formed part of the celebrations for the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II, alongside his daughter Margaret, Baroness Jay, who had served as Leader of the House of Lords from 1998-2001.[52]
Callaghan died on 26 March 2005 at Ringmer, East Sussex, of lobar pneumonia, cardiac failure and kidney failure. He would have been 93 the following day. He died just 11 days after his wife of 67 years, who had spent the last four years of her life in a nursing home due to Alzheimer's disease. He died as the longest-lived former UK Prime Minister, having beaten Harold Macmillan's record 39 days earlier. Lord Callaghan was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in a flowerbed around the base of the Peter Pan statue near the entrance of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, where his wife had formerly been chair of the board of governors.[53]
Historiography [ edit ]
After four decades, the historiography on him is still contested territory. The left wing of the Labour Party considers him a traitor whose betrayals of true socialism laid the foundations for Thatcherism.[54] They point to his decision in 1976 to allow the International Monetary Fund to control the government budget. They accuse him of abandoning the traditional Labour commitment to full employment. They blame his rigorous pursuit of a policy of controlling income growth for the "Winter of Discontent".[55] Writers on the right of the Labour Party complained that he was a weak leader who was unable to stand up to the left.[56] The "New Labour" writers who admire Tony Blair identify him with the old-style partisanship that was a dead end, which a new generation of modernisers had to repudiate.[57]
Practically all commentators agree that Callaghan made a serious mistake by not calling an election in the autumn of 1978. Bernard Donoughue, a senior official in his government, depicts Callaghan as a strong and efficient administrator who stood heads above his predecessor Harold Wilson.[58] The standard scholarly biography by Kenneth O. Morgan is generally favourable—at least for the middle of his premiership—while admitting failures at the beginning, at the end, and in his leadership role after Thatcher's victory. The treatment found in most textbooks and surveys of the period remains largely negative.[59]
Titles from birth to death [ edit ]
Mr James Callaghan (27 March 1912 – 1943)
Lieutenant James Callaghan RNVR
James Callaghan MP (26 July 1945 – 21 October 1964)
The Right Honourable James Callaghan MP (21 October 1964 – 23 April 1987)
James Callaghan MP (21 October 1964 – 23 April 1987) The Right Honourable Sir James Callaghan KG MP
Sir James Callaghan The Right Honourable Sir James Callaghan KG
Sir James Callaghan The Right Honourable The Lord Callaghan of Cardiff KG PC
Arms [ edit ]
Coat of arms of James Callaghan Crest A Sea-Dragon sejant Gules, langued and scaled Or, its tail Or, scaled Gules, the dorsal fin Gules, gorged with a Mural Crown Or, masoned Gules, supporting to the front with the fin of the dexter foreleg a Portcullis Or. Escutcheon Quarterly Vert and Azure, in the former a portcullis chained Or, in the latter a lymphad with an anchor at its prow and masted also Or, the sail set Argent, and pennants flying Gules, over all a fess Or, to the sinister thereof a grassy mount thereon a hurst of oak trees and issuing therefrom passant to the dexter a wolf, all proper. Motto MALO LABORARE QUAM LANGURE (I had rather labour than be idle)
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Conroy, Harry (2006). Callaghan (The 20 British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century). London: Haus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-904950-70-7.
Further reading [ edit ]
Books by Callaghan [ edit ]
Callaghan, James. Time and Chance. Collins, 1987.
. Collins, 1987. Callaghan, James. Challenges and Opportunities for British Foreign Policy. Fabian Society, 1975.
Biographies and studies [ edit ]PISCATAWAY -- His name in the Sesotho language is translated to mean "one who greets with fire and energy like the sun,'' which explains a lot about Ntwademela Perry's desire to succeed on the football field.
"My expectations are, first of all, to be the best player I can be for this team,'' said Perry, a Rutgers true freshman from South Africa. "My goal, as with any young college football player, is to go to the NFL. The only way I can do that is through hard work, listening to my coaches and learning.''
The hard work and listening parts haven't been an issue for Perry, a 6-foot-3, 190-pound preferred walk-on wide receiver who has gained the attention from the Scarlet Knights' coaching staff since he arrived last January.
"I think he has a chance to help us,'' Rutgers coach Kyle Flood said. "He's one of those walk-ons who really has a chance to get on the field. I think right now he's helping us in practice every day and he's a scout-team guy. But I don't see that being the end game in his career. I think he's got a chance to play some really big football for us.''
Perry has also proven to be a quick learner, especially with how quickly he digested football. At the age of 10, the now 18-year old dreamed of following in the footsteps of his father, an inside linebacker/defensive end at West Virginia from 1986-88.
The younger Perry excelled in soccer, basketball, baseball, gymnastics and even played cricket as a kid growing up in Westville, a city located in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.
"He tends to like fast-moving games,'' Ed Perry said.
Still, Perry aspired to play the sport his father excelled in while growing up in the New York City neighborhood Harlem. There was no organized football to play in South Africa, so his dad did the next best thing: he bought him a PlayStation and a Madden Football video game.
"One thing people should know about my son is how much of a student of the game he is,'' Ed Perry said on a recent Saturday morning by phone from South Africa. "For six years he studied the game of football. Most kids are only focused on on playing. He learned his position, he learned to study defensive coverages, all the nuances of the sport.''
It came in handy once Perry was old enough to participate in football scouting showcases in the United States. For a five-year period beginning at age 13, Perry competed in recruiting combines such as the Offense-Defense All-Star Game in Dallas, the FBU International Bowl, and then a variety of camps hosted by Atlantic Coast Conference schools and the few that Rutgers had to offer.
"He's a better athlete at his age than I was,'' Ed Perry said of his son, who was born in Morgantown, W.V., but moved to South Africa with his mother and father before his first birthday. "He graduated (Star College) high school with a 3.6 grade-point-average. Rutgers just seemed to fit. It was the first school he applied to, it's only an hour away from my mother's -- his grandma's house -- in Brooklyn, and being one of the early Colonial schools it has a reputation for being excellent academically.''
Perry first gained the attention of former Rutgers wide receivers coach Matt Simon, who, Ed Perry said, received an endorsement from Eugene Napoleon, a former teammate at West Virginia.
Once he began running routes in the Rutgers practice bubble, it didn't take Flood long to extend an offer to join the program as a preferred walk-on.
"We saw him at a camp and we were excited about him,'' Flood said. "He's a great young man to work with because he's very intelligent, he's got some nice physical attributes, he's tall, runs well, has pretty good hands, and he's a really hard worker.
"He's what you want in your walk-ons in your program because he's got super-high intangibles.''
Perry's dream is to reach the highest level of the sport, but he's grounded enough to know his education comes first. After all, he's the rare Rutgers football player double-majoring as a freshman.
He may be following in dad's footsteps as a college football player, but this Pre-med and economics major is striving to reach the standard that his mom -- who earned her phD while at West Virginia -- set as well.
"I like challenges,'' Perry said. "I don't like taking the easy road.''
Ed Perry, who also earned his phD and currently works as a fitness instructor at the gym he co-owns, said his son's dream is to play in the NFL "like everybody else.''
"At some point in time,'' Ed Perry added, "one has to understand you only go so far. I see him as having no limitations as long as he continues to stay healthy. He's self-disciplined and coachable enough to know what he needs to do once he's instructed. He just needs to get extra reps and wait his turn. When it's his turn I don't personally see him having trouble competing with anyone.
"He's got the size, he's got the speed, he's got the hands. Like anyone else, it'll be talent versus talent. The one thing I appreciated about Rutgers is over the years the opportunities they've extended to walk-ons have been better than most schools I've seen. The opportunities are there. He just has to continue to prove himself.''
The kid whose name is pronounced N-twa-da-mel-a -- the player who Flood simply calls, "T'' -- said he's "just trying to be the best player for myself and for my family.''
"It's been going great so far,'' Perry said. "I really love it here. The coaching staff has been great, the academics are great. It's just been fun.''
Keith Sargeant may be reached at ksargeant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @KSargeantNJ. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.Instantly recognizable and tirelessly self-promoting, Donald Trump has long been a natural candidate for movie and TV cameos. In the 1990s and 2000s, the golden-coiffed casino owner racked up numerous IMDB credits, including Zoolander, 54, The Nanny, and Home Alone 2, usually playing himself. A.V. Club contributor Zach Schonfeld has talked to the people who worked on those projects with Trump and compiled a piece on the GOP candidate’s acting career for Newsweek. The defining sentence in the article appears in a parenthetical aside: “He’s never a hard get but rarely an easy shoot.” Trump, the insiders say, is more than happy to appear in films and television shows. Julio Macat, director of photography on Home Alone 2, calls him “a bug attracted to bright light.” But once he shows up, he’s likely to throw temper tantrums, make diva-like demands, hit on women, and nitpick the script. None of the interviewees here seem eager to work with him again.
One recurring theme is that Trump wants viewers to know exactly how rich he is, meaning that he should be called a “billionaire,” not a mere “millionaire.” Peter Marc Jacobson, co-creator of The Nanny, found this so amusing that he kept and framed Trump’s script notes. Another common observation is that Trump is not much of an actor, so he’s usually entrusted with very little dialogue. Peter Tolan, who wrote Trump’s episode of The Job, recalls: “He had very little to do. And what little he did, he did very stiffly.”
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The most infamous chapter of Trump’s acting career, however, was his thwarted cameo in Oliver Stone’s 2010 sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. Trump’s assistant sent a memo to producers containing demands on how his boss should be filmed. An excerpt:
The preferred camera angle is Mr. Trump sitting front face to camera slightly favoring his right side, while avoiding left hair part and back and sides of head and hair. Camera eye level or above.
Ironically, the memo could prove very handy for anyone wanting to shoot Trump from especially unflattering angles.British Library to put on display Austen’s notes of what friends, family and correspondents thought of her third novel
Many novelists studiously avoid hearing opinions about their writing, but Jane Austen not only encouraged it, she meticulously compiled them in thorough, sometimes hilarious notes.
Next month the British Library will put on display Austen’s handwritten notes of what friends, family and correspondents thought of her third novel, Mansfield Park.
A display marking the bicentenary of Austen’s death will also include three volumes of writings from her teenage years, being brought together for the first time in 40 years.
The Mansfield Park document is fascinating. It shows that Austen’s mother, Cassandra, thought the novel not as good as Pride & Prejudice and found the heroine, Fanny, “insipid”. Her sister, also called Cassandra, on the other hand was “fond of Fanny” and “delighted much in Mr Rushworth’s stupidity”.
A lady called Augusta Bramstone is recorded by Austen as thinking Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice “nonsense … but [she] expected to like M.P. better, & having finished the 1st vol. – flattered herself she had got through the worst”.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Austen’s notes. Photograph: British Library
The library’s manuscripts curator Sandra Tuppen said Austen was keen to know the opinions of as many people as possible. “She wasn’t getting published reviews, so this was a way of justifying what she was doing by getting these opinions. I don’t think she would have done it if she felt completely confident.”
Austen collected dozens of opinions and documented them faithfully, good or bad. Mrs Bramstone, for example, was much pleased, particularly with Fanny. She preferred it to Austen’s other books, although she “imagined that might be her want of taste – as she does not understand wit”.
A man called Charles “did not like it near so well as P&P – thought it wanted incident.”
Austen, one suspects, would have been a regular self-Googler, but other writers prefer not to know. In a Radio Times interview this week, Julian Barnes revealed he allowed his agent to send him only the “three best” reviews of the latest novel. And as for online reviews: “I never go there. I think a lot of mad people operate there.”
Tuppen said what was striking about the Austen notes was that she had phrased them in her own voice: “It is creative writing as well as just gathering information.”
Mansfield Park was published in 1814 and is sometimes, unfairly, called Austen’s dullest book. Her notes about it will be displayed next to three volumes from her formative years, two owned by the library and one being lent by the Bodleian in Oxford.
They include a spoof version of English history featuring illustrations of kings and queens by sister Cassandra, with her drawing of Mary Queen of Scots looking suspiciously like young Jane.
The library’s chief executive, Roly Keating, said it was impossible to mark every literary anniversary, but it felt it had to for Austen. “This is the British Library … we can’t let the moment pass without a bit of a celebration.”
The objects going on display said much about “her humour. and wit, and liveliness, and invention, even at that young age,” he said.
The library also formally announced that it was making the archive of PG Wodehouse publicly available for the first time. Containing letters, manuscript drafts and notebooks, it is being loaned by the writer’s step-grandson Sir Edward Cazalet.
• Jane Austen Among Family and Friends is at the British Library 10 January-19 February.May 11, 2017 5:16 PM By Nina Moini
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The St. Olaf College campus is still reeling from a reported racist note that turned out to be a hoax. …
Psychologist Dr. Cheryl Bemel of Allina Health says she hopes the school community will continue to focus on moving forward in a spirit of unity.
“Any type of false accusation is a lightning rod,” Bemel said. “We can’t forget that there are very likely some pretty deep emotional wounds that would lead to this kind of a behavior.”
While Bemel does not know the student who fabricated the note, she says hoaxes happen for a variety of reasons depending on the individual.
“It’s very difficult to feel isolated and unheard and not as visible,” Bemel said.
What is certain, Bemel says, is an opportunity for growth moving forward as a campus.
“It can lead to more discord or it can lead to some healing,” Bemel said. “It depends on how the institution and the community deal with the issue.”
St. Olaf President David Anderson has said he is committed to continuing conversations about race and campus climate.With UCLA losing to Arizona State, there were only two undefeated teams left in the Pac-12. After beating Washington State, it is Cal who stands unbeaten in the North, along with their counterpart Utah in the South. Both set to square off in a duel for supremacy with College Gameday on site in Salt Lake City next Saturday.
Stanford beat up Arizona, so they now stand as the only 3-0 team in Pac-12 play and are currently 4-1. Arizona drops to 0-2 and it feels like they have a mountain to climb to win the South this season. UCLA is now 1-1 and will drop to 4-1 in the Pac-12, while Arizona State has recovered from their shellacking of USC and improved to 3-2 overall. Oregon eventually took care of business against Colorado and are now 3-1, but they are currently looking up at Stanford and Cal, who are a combined 5-0 in conference play.
So odd. All these words jumbled together. Can't make sense of any of them.
Below are the standings. What are your thoughts?
North Conference Overall STRK vs Top 25 Stanford 3-0 4-1 W4 1-0 California 2-0 5-0 W5 0-0 Oregon 1-1 3-2 W1 0-2 Washington State 0-1 2-2 L1 0-1 Washington 0-1 2-2 L1 0-1 Oregon State 0-1 2-2 L1 0-1This seems to be the season for centrist Obama-bashing. He’s ineffectual, we’re told, a drag on his party, Democrats are complaining (although none on the record), and so on.
By any objective standard, this is very strange. Obama’s signature initiative, health reform, made a stunning comeback from a rocky start and will almost surely be irreversible by the time he leaves office. He’s taken the most important step on environmental policy since the Clean Air Act. Financial reform is less sweeping and well short of what should have happened, but it’s still significant. If the point of being president is to do things with lasting effect, Obama has delivered. So why the bashing?
Part of the answer, I think, is that these are the wrong achievements. He was supposed to be serious in the approved way, slashing entitlements to deal with the fiscal crisis. The fact that there wasn’t actually a fiscal crisis, and that anyone who really cares about the long run should worry a lot more about carbon emissions than about the Medicare age, doesn’t change the bias; strong presidents are supposed to use that strength on behalf of the elite’s pet obsessions, not other stuff.
Another part of the answer is that Obama does, indeed, have a weak approval rating. But as Jonathan Chait points out, he had a weak rating going into the 2012 campaign too; what mattered was that while voters weren’t enthralled with him, elections are zero-sum, and voters really disliked the Republican agenda.
Actually, I suspect that we won’t see a president with sky-high ratings for a long time, no matter how successful he or she is. America is bitterly polarized, and Republicans in particular will despise any Democrat no matter how much peace and prosperity he or she brings. But a Democrat who has the approval of 40 percent of voters and can attract another 12 or 13 percent who dislike her but dislike Republicans even more can win big, and that’s the likely shape of the future.
Long-time readers know that I was highly critical of Obama back when many were swooning. And I wish that he and his circle had done more on a number of fronts in 2009-2010. But right now he’s doing what presidents are supposed to do: change the country significantly for the better.by Casey Bennett
When I was a little girl, I used to dream about going to college. I was fascinated by the notion that I would be living away from home, carrying my state-of-the-art laptop around to each one of my interesting classes, mingling with other students at the campus bar, and having the time of my life. The moment I reached high school, I began researching colleges in my area |
the process that went into it while filming it.
“There wasn’t one particular thing as I think there were a number of different things. I said what made it, like everything else both, very simple and very difficult, is that like any dramatic scene, if you are really tethered in your point of view, then you know how to tell a story. I’m with her going across that battlefield and I’m telling the story of that. That I know how to do, so this one wasn’t difficult because I’m doing it like I would in any other scene. You need [to know] what adds up to making it exciting [which] is the shots of this story. Somebody shooting [with a gun], these guys are running and you’re always going to look for the greater shot you can find from when you are standing there, saying, “Oh, looking straight down, that’s pretty cool” as it helps to tell the story. There is no influence in something like this. You are just living up to a scene and how to really beat through it emotionally. Then when it came to where to employ different tricks and moves, I don’t even know where to start and to end. Because we’d look at hundreds of things, for every scene and how we should go about this to get the feeling that we’re looking for. You know, to really see her in action for the first time or in the beach battle to be, again I was kind of in her point of view in the beach battle, where you are watching, going “Woah, what’s going on?” when someone’s seeing a battle for the first time which makes it different then when you’re questioning who is going to win. If your reaction is “Woah, warfare”, then that’s a different approach than “Who is going to win? Who is going to win?”, and you are going to shoot it and approach it differently in how to get those shots and what those shots are [which is] when you look from all kinds of influences. But that was the interesting thing that I cared about, was in telling this story completely from inside of her point of view for the most part.”
For more details on our edit bay visit to Wonder Woman, check out:
Directed by Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman also stars Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Lucy Davis as Etta Candy, Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta, Robin Wright as General Antiope, Lisa Loven Kongsli as Menalippe, Danny Huston as General Erich Ludendorff, David Thewlis as Sir Patrick Morgan, Elena Anaya as Doctor Maru, Ewen Bremner as Charlie, Saïd Taghmaoui as Sameer and Eugene Brave Rock as the Chief.
Wonder Woman opens in theaters on June 2, 2017.The Visegrád Group of Central European states – Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic – are putting together proposals to take back powers from the European Union’s institutions and return them to the bloc’s national governments. But the group is facing attacks from NGOs funded by globalist billionaire George Soros.
EurActiv reports the four countries are drafting a common contribution to the Rome Declaration, the document which will be unveiled on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome in March.
Poland and Hungary, in particular, have had a number of recent clashes with Brussels, and worked to increase Visegrád co-operation in response.
Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), believes the EU’s mishandling of the migrant crisis risks the “liquidisation of the civilisation that grew out of Christianity” in Europe. He also sees Brexit as an opportunity to push for treaty changes which will “strengthen the nation-states and reduce the jurisdiction of the Union”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, pledged to lead a “cultural counter-revolution” alongside the PiS leader in late 2016.
“There is a saying in Hungary that if you trust somebody, we say ‘you can steal horses together’,” Orbán said at a public conference in September.
“There are a few stables, and one particularly large one called the EU, where we can steal horses with Hungarians,” replied Kaczyński.
EurActiv cites a number of civil society figures who are opposed to the Visegrád’s plans to enhance national sovereignty within the EU, however.
Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, director of the Open Europe Programme at the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland, is quoted as complaining that “strengthening the sovereignty of member-states will be harmful for the Polish position in Europe”.
The Stefan Batory Foundation was established by George Soros and receives funding from his Open Society Foundations organisation. Soros, the billionaire financier advocate for European integration and open borders, achieved infamy in the United Kingdom as ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank of England’.
In Hungary, Central European University visiting professor Róbert Csehi is cited as saying that “in most cases, the blame [for problems in the EU] can be put on intergovernmental institutions and member-states”. Csehi advises that Orbán should attempt to build a coalition within the European Council if he is dissatisfied with EU decision-making.
The Central European University was also founded by George Soros.
Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó complained in January 2017 that it was “very clear” that “[Soros] would like this government to fail, he would like to kind of ‘fire’ this government because he doesn’t like our approach, doesn’t like our policies – but, it’s not George Soros who has to make that decision… it’s the Hungarian people. We find it very anti-democratic”.
More recently, Prime Minister Orbán used his state of the nation address to warn Soros-funded NGOs were seeking to exert direct influence on politics in countries with anti-globalist governments:
“Here there are large predators swimming in the water,” he said, “and this is the transnational empire of George Soros.”Story highlights The cast of Republicans battling for the party's nomination has amounted to divine intervention for Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday
Biden has never hid his feelings about Trump, calling his immigration message "sick"
Baltimore (CNN) The cast of Republicans battling for their party's nomination has amounted to divine intervention for Democrats, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday.
"We may be given a gift from the Lord in the presidential race here," Biden told House Democrats during their annual party retreat in Baltimore. "I don't know who to root for more -- (Sen. Ted) Cruz or...what's that guy's name? He's having a fundraiser for veterans tonight, I'm told."
His name, of course, is Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who leads most national polls for the Republican nomination. Instead of participating in Thursday evening's Fox News debate in Iowa, Trump says he's holding a fundraiser for wounded servicemen and women.
Biden has never hid his feelings about Trump, calling his immigration message "sick" over the summer and railing against the Republican candidate's plan to bar Muslims from entering the country.
Those feelings aside, Biden chose to forgo a battle against Trump for the presidency, announcing last fall he wouldn't enter the race.
Read MoreAfter selling my startup, Shopkick, to SK Planet in 2014, and handing over my CEO role a year later, I packed up my 1- and 3-year-old sons and my wife Angel, and flew to Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong for three weeks, hoping to better understand the Chinese startup world and its entrepreneurs and VCs.
I hadn’t been to China in several years, but had almost moved there 12 years ago, so I was very curious what I would find. I met with two dozen startups, from very late-stage — including valuations of $20 billion — to pre-seed stages. I also met with a dozen VCs, two dozen startup entrepreneurs and successful angel investors.
I started at 30,000 feet with late-stage startups and investors, including a long breakfast meeting with the founder Xing Wang of Meituan — a highly valued Chinese startup at about $20 billion. Then I went to Series B and A, and met with startups like VIPkid and 700bike and VCs like Matrix and BlueRun.
Then I went to the seed stage, and met a PhD in aerodynamics who is developing a new electric car engine with high-energy density. He demonstrated it to me from the trunk of his car in a subterranean parking structure in Beijing. I visited the hardware incubator HAX in Shenzhen, and met the ZhenFund on the VC side.
Inspired, I decided I needed to go even earlier stage — to the root of it all — so I went to see the idea and even pre-idea stage at Garage Café, and at the top-rated Tsinghua University’s x-lab and SEM entrepreneurship program, where Peter Thiel happened to be giving a lecture on "Zero to One" right when I arrived.
As my trip to China drew to a close, I started to reflect on what we in Silicon Valley can learn from China. Here is what I found.
1. Beijing will be the only true competitor to Silicon Valley in the next 10 years.
Beijing is not just a nice startup playground which might become truly interesting in a few years. This is the big leagues now. Startups can achieve massive scale quickly, because the domestic market is 1.3 billion people, which is four times the U.S. or European population.
An increasing share of these 1.3 billion people is actually targetable. In the U.S., 190 million people carry a smartphone; in China, it is more than 530 million today, and it will be 700 million or more in three years.
Beijing is not a startup playground. This is the big leagues now.
But a large market alone does not mean that a place will become a startup hub. It is the combination of market size and the extreme consumer-adoption speed of new services, combined with the entrepreneurial spirit and hunger for scale of Chinese entrepreneurs.
Beijing is the main hub where it happens. Here, entrepreneurs, engineering talent from the two top Chinese universities — Tsinghua and Peking — and VC money come together. Seeing the scale, speed, aspirations, money supply and talent here, I walked away thinking this will be the only true competitor to Silicon Valley in the next 10 years.
Yes, there are other hubs, such as Berlin, but the scale is different. (India is the only other possible contender here.) And it's good for Silicon Valley to have a true competitor, because it sparks impulses on how to evolve to the next level.
Let’s look at speed, cloning versus innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit of Beijing versus Silicon Valley.
2. We pride ourselves on being fast in Silicon Valley. Chinese startups are faster.
In Beijing, tales abound about the sometimes crass competition between startups, and the often not ethically acceptable methods used to win.
The extreme competition only secondarily stems from the entrepreneurs; the main driver is the consumer adoption rates. New mobile apps often take off at mass scale even faster than in the U.S., and become a phenomenon overnight.The improvement from new services is large for most consumers, as the majority only went online recently with the arrival of smartphones.
Big startups are built in three to five years versus five to eight in the U.S. Accordingly, entrepreneurs who try to jump on the bandwagon of a successful idea scramble to outcompete each other as fast as they can.
Work-life balance is nonexistent in Chinese startups.
Meetings are anytime — really. My meeting in Beijing with Hugo Barra, who runs all international expansion for Xiaomi — the cool smartphone maker and highest-valued startup in China, at around $45 billion or so — was scheduled for 11 pm, but got delayed because of other meetings, so it started at midnight. (Hugo had a flight to catch at 6:30 am after that.)
In China, there is a company work culture at startups that's called 9/9/6. It means that regular work hours for most employees are from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. If you thought Silicon Valley has intense work hours, think again.
For founders and top executives, it's often 9/11/6.5. That's probably not very efficient and useful (who's good as a leader when they're always tired and don't know their kids?) but totally common.
Teams get locked up in hotels for weeks before a product launch, where they only work, sleep and work out, to drive 100 percent focus without distractions and make the launch date. And while I don't think long hours are any measure of productivity, I was amazed by the enormous hunger and drive.
3. The argument that Chinese entrepreneurs are mainly cloning Western startups is outdated.
Yes, they clone where they can. But cloning is starting to reach its max — there are just not enough successful ideas to clone. In addition, clones often fail in the local market due to different consumer behavior and needs.
In China, cloning is just the starting point, not the end point.
Take Meituan. I had a two-hour Saturday breakfast with one of China's best entrepreneurs, Xing Wang. He founded his startup, Meituan, in 2010, and within six years built it into one of the largest commerce companies in China. Meituan is currently valued at about $20 billion, which, at the time, made it the highest-valued startup in China besides Xiaomi (the mobile phone maker).
Meituan is the largest mobile group buying company, largest online ticket sales company and largest food-delivery company in China.
Xing was up against hundreds of other startups in China trying to be Groupon here when Groupon's star was rising in the U.S. He outcompeted all of them by not even trying to outspend them in marketing, but instead by quickly transforming Meituan into a company very different from Groupon. Today it is focused on bringing customers back to retailers, rather than acquiring them only once with a margin-cutting deal that can't be offered continuously.
Meituan is making shopping smarter for consumers and sustainable for local retailers. Now Xing has 200 million monthly active customers. Oh, and he has a baby son.
4. A wave of innovation is coming from China.
Chinese entrepreneurs are totally pragmatic. They just want to find the fastest way to win. As cloning reaches its max, the next fastest way to win is innovation.
Take consumer drones. That’s basically hardware meeting software meeting design. Sounds like a typical Silicon Valley play to win, right? Well, DJI dominates the consumer drone market from China (Shenzhen) with 70 percent (!) global market share. DJI is a harbinger of many more cases like these to come. We just don’t see them yet.
Chinese entrepreneurs just want to find the fastest way to win.
Innovation takes longer than cloning. For example, in Beijing I met with a young PhD in aerodynamics, who in the past three years has led a mini team of six in stealth mode with next to no funding, to design a 60kW electric engine for cars and robots that weighs 13 kg (29 pounds). Typical electric engines of that power weigh 58 kg (128 pounds) or more. He unveiled his invention to me in an underground parking structure out of the trunk of his car.
In Shenzhen, the electronics manufacturing capital of China, on the Chinese side of the border to Hong Kong, I visited Benjamin Joffe's HAX, a hardware startup accelerator. Right after the border control in Shenzhen (sort of "from China to China"), you enter a different world, where parts suppliers deliver in less than a day and electronics factories are ready to produce your new gadget.
At HAX, I tested the $9 computer and the water-and-sand-pressure jet that cuts metal precisely at a fraction of current machines' cost. (Yes, you read correctly: For $9, you can add a Linux computer with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to any device.)
I thought I was done when one of the startups offered me some dried flour worms, telling me they are "like crisps, only healthier," and made in their new electronic insect farming machine. They told me that insects are the new trend — we just have to overcome our mental blocks.
5. What Chinese startups lack.
The recent generation of Chinese entrepreneurs is driven too much by money and financial success ("get rich fast"). Such a motivation is not sustainable when things are not working out for long periods of time, which happens especially in innovation-based startups.
But this attitude seems to be shifting as the next generation of entrepreneurs comes along — they have already grown up in a more middle-class environment, and getting rich fast may not be their main motivator.
Beyond the "money mindset," what Chinese startups lack the most is knowledge on how to run high-quality product development in parallel with rapid distribution growth — in other words, how to get both done at the same time.
Deep technology is evolving — there is some interesting AI work under way in Beijing, for example — but Silicon Valley’s edge is still hardcore tech and the fusion of consumer ideas, technology and product design.
Another shortcoming of Chinese startups is expertise on how to enter markets outside China quickly and efficiently. Beyond cultural and language barriers, the fact that the Chinese market is so big means that Chinese startups can easily fall into the trap of never even getting to the international expansion, because others will have already quickly copied them. It's the exact problem that U.S. startups have long faced from Chinese startups.
Finally, Chinese startups lack clean air.
6. We are too well-fed in Silicon Valley. We are perked out.
Overall, I have been very impressed with the Chinese entrepreneurs, their spirit, their speed, their dedication, their friendliness.
The massive scale they can accomplish here helps turn the aspirations into reality. We will soon see a wave of innovation coming from China. The argument that China is mainly about cloning is outdated.
In Beijing, entrepreneurship feels like a raw, and sometimes more authentic, form of Silicon Valley.
I loved the lack of pretense of Chinese entrepreneurs, their authentic entrepreneurialism. Silicon Valley can sometimes be too well-fed — from startup offices to clubbiness. Strip all that away. Get to the core of it, the true entrepreneurial endeavor, the obsession with the product and the company, come hell or high water.
And, yes, China has massive issues, from freedom of speech (The Great Firewall) to competition that can get out of hand in terms of business practices. But that doesn't change the fact that there is much to learn from here.
Do I love Silicon Valley and my home country Germany? Oh, yes. And because of that, it's so important to look outside and bring fresh thoughts and input home. After all, entrepreneurship combined with science is the engine of all our futures — whether you live in the U.S., Europe, China, or anywhere else.
In Beijing, entrepreneurship feels like a raw — and sometimes more authentic — form of Silicon Valley. We can learn a lot from China. (Or perhaps "relearn" might be the more appropriate term.)
Let’s keep the inner Silicon Valley spirit alive, and be focused on creating awesome things out of almost nothing. That’s entrepreneurship. Let’s beware of getting perked out and distracted by stuff that doesn’t matter.
Cyriac Roeding is a German-born entrepreneur and angel investor mainly active in Silicon Valley. A former EVP of CBS, where he started the mobile division, he then became an entrepreneur in residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He was most recently the CEO of Shopkick, a mobile shopping business he founded. Follow him on Twitter at @cyriac1.
Recode Video: How do high valuations change CEOs?Image copyright Getty Images
MPs have called for an end to the dominance of big home-building firms to fix the "broken" housing market.
The communities and local government committee said the eight biggest firms built more than half of all new homes.
MPs said the government should do more for smaller builders who do not have the scale to bid for big projects.
But the Home Builders Federation, which represents large and small businesses, said only big firms could spread the risks large-scale projects pose.
The committee also said local authorities should prepare land for home building.
That would include providing the infrastructure needed, such as roads and public transport.
"The housing market is broken, we are simply not building enough homes," said Clive Betts MP, chair of the committee.
"Smaller builders are in decline and the sector is over-reliant on an alarmingly small number of high-volume developers, driven by commercial self-interest and with little incentive to build any quicker.
"If we are to build the homes that the country so desperately needs, for sale and for rent, then this dominance must end."
Government promises more affordable homes
Labour promises to build one million new homes
The committee found that smaller builders struggled to obtained land for development, as local authorities focused on large sites which only big companies could afford to take on.
The Homebuilders Federation said: "We fully support the committee's call for measures to assist smaller builders, encourage new entrants and scale up specialist housing sectors, such as the retirement housing market.
"The vast majority of the big increases in housing supply in recent years have come from the larger, mainstream builders - but we need more builders of all sizes and specialisms if we are to tackle our acute housing shortage."
'Feeble' measures
In February the government promised to build more affordable houses and help people buy and rent, after admitting the current market was broken.
The housing strategy for England included giving councils powers to pressure developers into starting building on land they own.
Ministers also pledged to make renting more "family-friendly" with longer tenancies offered.
However, Labour called the measures announced "feeble beyond belief".Editors know a good book when they see one. They’re experienced (that is, overworked) readers, deluged with manuscripts from hopeful writers and their agents. They battle perpetual eyestrain. And they regularly dip into the slush-pile abyss and make it back alive—sometimes with a truly great book in their hands.
You’ve heard what librarians read. Now, I’ve asked some stellar editors to tell us what books they’re excited about right now.
Jeffrey Yang | New Directions Publishing and New York Review Books
What I’m reading now: Poems of Osip Mandelstam, selected and translated by Peter France, Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin, Great Guns by Farnoosh Fathi, Second Childhood by Fanny Howe, Capital by Thomas Piketty.
What’s on my to-be-read list: Cat Town by Sakutaro Hagiwara, Spontaneous Particulars by Susan Howe, Thinking Its Presence by Dorothy Wang, The Play of Time by Janet Hoskins, Wings of the Dove by Henry James.
How I choose my next book: Either whatever’s under editorial consideration at work or whatever I’m editing next; or pulling from a growing stack of books I have outside of my publishing jobs—i.e., usually the book chooses me and I just blindly obey.
What’s your favorite book to recommend? Depends on the conversation and who I’m talking to, but I’ve given away many copies of Inger Christensen’s Alphabet. But if I’m talking detective books it’d be anything by Leonardo Sciascia.
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Anitra Budd | Coffee House Press
What I’m reading now: Echo’s Bones by Samuel Beckett and S by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
What’s on my to-be-read list: I’d most immediately like to dig in to Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi, Reasons She Goes to the Woods by Deborah K. Davies, Missing by Sam Hawken, and The Brunist Day of Wrath by Robert Coover.
How I choose my next book: I keep a running list of titles I want to read in whatever bookmarking app I’m using at the time (right now it’s Evernote). When I’m looking for the next book, I check my list for the book that best fits my mood, available time, etcetera. My ideas about what to read next come from all sorts of places: reviews, friends’ recommendations, trips for work (I found out about several of my current to-be-read titles at this year’s London Book Fair, for example).
Favorite book to recommend: The Impossibly by Laird Hunt. When people tell me they’re not fans of “experimental” literature, this is the book I recommend. It’s also the book that really made me fall for Coffee House back when I was an intern, so it’s very dear to my heart.
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Clara Platter | NYU Press
What I’m reading now: I read exclusively nonfiction for work so my pleasure reading is always fiction. Right now I am reading an amazing book called Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi which a friend gave me. It’s beautifully written, but I think the reason for the gift is that it’s about a dwarf, and I am extremely tall! So, there you go. Opposites attract? I am also reading Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn after reading a profile about the writer’s life in The New Yorker. It’s an extremely funny account of a three-day drug binge in Manhattan. I think I am most attracted in my fiction reading to the wildly unfamiliar.
What’s on my to-be-read list: I just got Lucky Jim from the used bookstore. I haven’t read any Maya Angelou since middle school so maybe one of her books?
How I choose my next book: Either by scouring reviews or browsing the tables at the Strand and looking for a gem.
Favorite book to recommend: The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
—
Jeff Shotts | Graywolf Press
What I’m reading now: With my older son, we have just finished C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, arguably the best of The Chronicles of Narnia. Rebecca Solnit coincidentally references The Magician’s Nephew in her marvelous The Faraway Nearby, which I have waited and waited to read until this summer.
And I’m reading a lot of manuscript submissions, including those for the latest Graywolf Nonfiction Prize.
What’s on my to-be-read list: My older son has pulled out C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, and slipped a bookmark at the title page. I hope to read soon Anne Carson’s latest, The Albertine Workout, and Lydia Davis’s Can’t and Won’t. I am excited to read Marlon James’s new novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, when it comes out this fall.
And those many manuscript submissions...
How I choose my next book: I listen to writers, colleagues at Graywolf, and other editors, and I read a lot of reviews. I listen to booksellers most of all, what they are reading and getting excited about and recommending. But let’s face it, our two boys choose most of what my wife and I read.
Favorite book to recommend: The book I have most recommended over the last five years is Eula Biss’s essay collection Notes from No Man’s Land, an astonishing achievement of new nonfiction writing.
The book I have most recommended over the last five months is Leslie Jamison’s essay collection The Empathy Exams, which so brilliantly and movingly provides spaces for broad and humane conversation.
____________________
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By signing up you agree to our Terms of ServiceLight has reciprocity with bidirectional transmission in ordinary media. Circulators and isolators are indispensable components in classical and quantum information processing in an integrated photonic circuit. Therefore, all-optical controllable non-reciprocal devices are always a hot topic in the research of photonic chips. Normal non-reciprocal devices are based on magnetic-optical material. However, incorporating low optical-loss magnetic materials into a photonic chip is technically challenging.
DONG Chunhua's group and ZOU Changling from the Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences first experimentally demonstrated non-magnetic non-reciprocity using optomechanical interactions in a whispering gallery microresonator. This work was published in Nature Photonics.
This study utilizes ordinary optomechanical interaction in whispering gallery microresonators, where the two optical modes are the degenerate clock-wise (CW) and counter-clockwise (CCW) traveling-wave whispering-galley modes with opposite orbital angular momentums. For such an interaction, the CW and CCW modes are independently coupled with the mechanical mode.
Because of the conservation of orbital angular momentum, the driving field can stimulate coherent interaction between signal photons and phonons only when the driving and signal optical fields are coupled to the same optical mode. As a result, the directional driving field breaks the time-reversal symmetry and leads to non-reciprocal transmittance for the signal light.
Optomechanically induced non-reciprocal transparency (OMIT) and amplification (OMIA) are observed, and a non-reciprocal phase shift of up to 40 degrees is demonstrated in this study. Optomechanically induced non-reciprocity is actually controllable using two oppositely propagating driving fields that excite the CW and CCW modes simultaneously, which behaves as a controllable narrowband reflector with nonreciprocal transmittance.
Note that the underlying mechanism of the non-reciprocity demonstrated in this study is actually universal and can be generalized to any traveling wave resonators via dispersive coupling with a mechanical resonator. With the mechanical vibrations being cooled to their ground states, applications in the quantum regime, such as single-photon isolators and circulators, also become possible.
Aside from these applications, non-reciprocal phase shift is of fundamental interest for exploring exotic topological photonics, such as the realization of chiral edge states and topological protection.
The results of this study represent an important step towards integrated all-optical controllable isolators and circulators, as well as non-reciprocal phase shifters.
This work is an extension of last year's research by DONG's group regarding Brillouin scattering non-reciprocity (Nature Communications), which expanded the applications of non-reciprocal devices based on cavity optomechanics to the whole optical wavelength or even the microwave wavelength. Especially when the system is in the ground state, single-photon isolators and circulators also become possible, which will play important roles in a hybrid quantum Internet. Not sure what "which" is referring to here.
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This work was financially supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation, Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information & Quantum Physics, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities."The Albino Moose" "The Albino Moose" "The Albino Moose" The first two pictures were taken by Tammy Tarbet in 2002 in Southeast Idaho. The third was taken by her neighbor. The Idaho Fish and Game Department also has them on their site and has issued an order protecting the animal. Web posted Friday, October 18, 2002 White moose off-limits to Idaho hunters IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) -- A group of eastern Idahoans smitten by a white moose have persuaded the state to make the animal off-limits to hunters. Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, made an emergency order last week making it illegal to shoot the albino cow moose, which has been spotted with a black calf on private land in southeastern Idaho. Albino moose have been showing up in the area for several years, said Dale Toweill, trophy species manager for the fish and game department. Normally, only 1 in 100,000 moose have the albino trait, which is recessive. But the gene appears to run in the herd in southeastern Idaho, where Toweill theorizes the probability of an albino moose may be 1 in 10,000. Protecting a single animal is not unprecedented. Alaska game officials voted in August to protect a rare white bear there after concerned residents flooded them with e-mails and phone calls. ******************** White Moose From British Columbia
Pictures provided by Lynn Chisholm. They were taken by Joan Evans, who reports (Oct. 21, 2007) that the moose has made it through a winter, and was seen recently with twin calves, with normal brown colour. Joan wishes her peace and quiet so she can raise her young. I agree! To insure that she has peace and quite the British Columbia government should follow the enlightened path taken by Idaho and make it illegal to harm her. ******************* The odds of seeing an albino moose are astronomical and to see one in the upper peninsula of Michigan, near Wisconsin, is even greater than astronomical. To see two of them together is nearly impossible. We wanted to share these photos with as many people as possible because you will probably never have a chance to see this rare sight again. This is a really special treat, so enjoy the shot of a lifetime. ******************** Dr. Paul, A friend of mine sent me an email of pictures from Park City, Utah of a white moose. Then I did a search to find out more about them and came across your website. I thought you might like these pictures for your website. I think they were taken this winter. Thanks for having your website available. Dana Vaughn, February 25, 2008 On March 3, 2008, I was advised by Jacquelyne Mohn, of Longmont, Colorado, that the pictures were taken near Breckenridge, Colorado. The photographer is still unknown. ******************** This photo was taken by me on the outskirts of Timmins, Ontario, about 80 km west of our city Regards.
Dan Racicot ******************** White Buffalo Miracle, the Sacred White Female Buffalo Calf, was born on the farm of Dave, Valerie, and Corey Heider near Janesville, Wisconsin during the morning of August 20, 1994 - died September 19, 2004. Not an albino, she was considered to be the first white buffalo calf born since 1933. Furthermore, she was extremely important to the religious beliefs of many American Indian and Canadian First Nations tribes. Click to read more about Miracle The Heider Farm - Janesville, Wisconsin ******************** Multi Colored Deer Photo and Copyright: Martin Kilmer, Wildthings Photography, East River, NS
Martin can be contacted at: kilmer.mf@gmail.com ******************** BLACK FAWN Pictures taken by Richard Buquoi, Texas. Black deer are more rare than albinos. Photos were taken near Austin Texas. "Black Fawn" "BlackFawn" BACK HOME WEB SITE MAPA windstorm with gusts up to hurricane strength is expected to slam into the entire B.C. coast Wednesday morning.
Environment Canada issued a severe weather alert Tuesday for the coast and immediate inland sections, including Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.
The "potentially damaging" southerly winds of 70 to 100 km/h could develop in and around Metro Vancouver and Victoria.
Northern Vancouver Island will be the hardest hit with gusts that times could reach 140 km/h, Environment Canada noted.
The gusts that devastated the woods near Stanley Park's Prospect Point in 2006 topped out at 158 km/h.
The winds will begin as southeasterlies early Wednesday morning as the low pressure system approaches off the Pacific and will peak in the late morning or early afternoon as the direction of the wind switches to the southwest.
B.C. residents can expect ferry disruptions and should prepare for power outages.
Cancellations are likely for ferry routes that cross Georgia Strait, said Deborah Marshall of BC Ferries. "So that would be Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay, Tsawwassen-Duke Point, Horseshoe Bay-Departure Bay, Comox-Powell River, as well as the Northern Gulf Islands," Marshall said. "I would imagine that [the storm] would affect our Port Hardy-Prince Rupert service as well."
BC Hydro spokeswoman Simi Heer said the utility will open new operations centres on the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island during the storm and that contract crews were being put on standby.
City of Vancouver streets crews will be positioned around the city with chainsaws and other gear to help remove downed trees or limbs that block roads and sidewalks, the city said in a release Tuesday.
City electrical staff will also monitor traffic signals and will be ready to make repairs and maintain safety where possible. If electrical power is out in the area of a high-volume traffic light, staff will provide temporary power to traffic signals until service is restored, the release said.• Fish consumption rates spike among American Indians, recreational fishers and people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent, studies conducted in Washington indicate.
• Nationwide, about 8 percent of women of child-bearing age have elevated levels of mercury in their blood.
• The American Heart Association recommends two servings of fish per week, which are high in oils that prevent heart disease, reduce inflammation and lower the risk of developing dementia.
Washington residents eat more fish than the national average – probably no surprise for a state whose borders include the Pacific Ocean and the lower Columbia River.
From salmon and steelhead to walleye and lake trout, fish is a staple of many residents’ diets.
Yet the state’s water quality standards are based on the assumption that Washington residents eat one 7-ounce serving of fish per month, said David McBride, a toxicologist with the state Department of Health.
As a result, residents are potentially exposed to unhealthy levels of mercury, lead, PCBs and dioxins – waterborne toxins that accumulate in fish tissue and negatively affect brain development and IQ in fetuses and young children. Nationwide, about 8 percent of women of child-bearing age have elevated levels of mercury in their blood.
“The paradox of eating fish is that it provides benefits but also has risks,” McBride said last week during a meeting in Spokane. “Our current discharge standards … don’t protect you.
“Washington uses one of the lowest fish consumption rates in the nation to set water quality standards, but we have some of the highest fish-consuming populations in the nation,” he said.
Fish consumption rates spike among American Indians, recreational fishers and people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent, studies conducted in Washington indicate. Some members of Puget Sound tribes eat up to 12 ounces of fish per day.
Washington’s Department of Ecology has begun the process of reviewing fish consumption levels, with the ultimate goal of tougher water quality standards to protect the health of the fish-consuming public.
Neighboring Oregon has become a national leader on the issue.
After years of urging from Columbia River tribes, Oregon updated its fish consumption rates to 23 meals per month. The push was based on studies documenting that Native Americans eat far more fish than the average population.
Last year, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality adopted tougher pollution discharge standards to reduce toxins |
sat around college dorm room-style with his trusty keyboard and my acoustic guitar and in a very short time polished the arrangements to what you hear now."
Drozd assisted with six of Songs for Dustmites's 11 tracks, and Lips bassist Michael Ivins engineered the LP. David Fridmann, producer of The Soft Bulletin as well as several other Flaming Lips albums, also worked on the album, though band frontman Wayne Coyne did not. Coyne did, however, cast Burns in his film about the first Christmas on Mars that he's been working on for several years. In the flick, it's Burns whose actions give rise to the red-planet holiday.
When Burns first immigrated to the Big Apple from rural Boyertown, Pennsylvania, he had aspirations of being an actor and landing a role on a crime drama like "Law & Order." However, he scored the "Clues" job almost upon stepping off the bus, and it's been his main gig ever since. And while he's somewhat worried about being typecast as the "Blue's Clues" guy though without the green shirt and dorky haircut you'd never peg him as such his tenure at the long-running program has left him with proud memories.
"I took this about as far as I could, I guess," Burns said. "It was a really difficult decision, too, because on one hand, if I wanted to, I could do this for a really long time. The show is extraordinarily popular in several countries. I could be like Fred Rogers ('Mister Rogers' Neighborhood'), which I consider a very noble profession. But I thought, 'Well, is this really what I came to New York to do? Why not quit right when I'm at my peak.'
"I just don't think it's true that people can't do something else after they've done something that seems so permanent," he added. "I hope I'll be remembered for that show for the rest of my life. That will always be a part of my identity, and I'm totally cool with that."NAIROBI, Kenya — United Nations investigators hoped they would get some help from Facebook when they asked to see information on suspected pirates operating in Somalia.
But Facebook refused.
A report by the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea this month pointed out that while many private companies helped in the group's investigative work on matters such as piracy, al-Qaida-linked militants and government corruption, Facebook provided no such assistance.
"Despite repeated official correspondence addressed to Facebook Inc., it has never responded to Monitoring Group requests to discuss information on Facebook accounts belonging to individuals involved in hijackings and hostage-taking," the report said.
Facebook said in a statement Tuesday that the U.N. group had no legal authority to demand data from the company. "We therefore declined their request and referred them to law enforcement authorities," the company said in an e-mailed statement.
Facebook's refusal to share information with U.N. investigators comes as reverberations continue from the disclosure by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, that the NSA has cooperated with companies as Yahoo, Google and Facebook to access emails, video chats and pictures. U.S. officials have said the program is narrowly focused on foreign targets, and technology companies say they turn over information only if required by court order.
"Facebook has faced such pressures relating to privacy and the use of account information in various jurisdictions, even just for marketing purposes, that I would expect them to be very cautious about sharing personal information even with a U.N. Monitoring Group," said Matt Bryden, a former coordinator of the Somalia monitoring group.
Pirates use social networks
The nearly 500-page U.N. report said that investigations have confirmed that numerous piracy facilitators "are interlinked through various communication channels and employ social network services, such as Facebook."
In any case, two Somali pirates who spoke to The Associated Press said pirates don't use social networks for piracy work.
"There are more personal accounts than general ones for the pirates," said Bile Hussein, a Somali pirate commander in Gracad, a pirate base in central Somalia by phone. "We use emails for deals."
"Many of us keep our distance away from the Internet to avoid getting tracked or captured," said another pirate, Hassan Abdi.
The U.N. Monitoring Group would have been interested in access to non-public phone numbers and email addresses that might be listed on Facebook accounts, or to see what "friends" a pirate might have, said Bryden, now the director of Sahan Research, a think tank focusing on peace and security in the Horn of Africa
A page in Facebook's "Safety Center" titled "Information for Law Enforcement Authorities" says that a valid subpoena in connection with a criminal investigation is required to compel the disclosure of basic subscriber records. If a matter could result in the imminent harm of a child or risk of death or serious injury, a law enforcement official is asked to contact Facebook.
The U.N. Monitoring Group does not have subpoena power. Bryden said international companies often resist, at least at first, assisting the U.N. group because the companies aren't familiar with its work or authority.
"All it has is the force of the Security Council mandate that requests all member states and private entities... to assist the Monitoring Group's efforts, so cooperation varies considerably," Bryden said.
Bradley Shear, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer who runs a blog focusing on social media law, noted that Facebook frequently cooperates with U.S. law enforcement officials investigating issues surrounding child safety, but he speculated that Facebook may be reluctant to help a U.N. body because the U.N. is trying to become involved with Internet regulation.
Shear said Facebook is not likely to be legally culpable just because Somali pirates or members of al-Shabab use their social media platforms.
"In general, absent knowledge that illegal activity is occurring on your platform, social/digital media platforms have little legal liability for the illegal activity that is occurring on their websites," Shear wrote in an email. "However, there is a growing trend to hold social media/digital media operators accountable for the illegal content/activity on their websites if they turn a blind eye towards it."
Social media use by al-Shabab militants in Somalia is common. Twitter shut down the account of an al-Shabab spokesman earlier this year after the micro-blogging site was used to post a hostage video and death threat, posts that violated Twitter's terms of service.
A new Twitter handle that the U.N. Monitoring group believes is run by a British member of al-Shabab opened a short time later and remains in use.
Associated Press reporter Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia, and Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration includes the critically acclaimed Rise of the Tomb Raider, nominated for over 100 “Best Of” awards. Lara Croft becomes more than a survivor as she embarks on her first Tomb Raiding expedition to the most treacherous regions of Siberia, in search of the secret of immortality. Xbox One X players can choose from three visual modes, including Native 4K for the highest fidelity resolution, Enriched Visuals for stunning graphic upgrades, and High Frame Rate for the smoothest possible gameplay. Additional Xbox One X tech enhancements include HDR display support for more vibrant and accurate color representation, spatial audio support, including Dolby Atmos® for true 3D audio, enhanced texture resolution, and improved anti-aliasing for even more immersive and realistic details. Additional visual enhancements include improved volumetric lights and reflections, enhanced foliage, upgraded polygonal detail and amplified texture filtering. Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration includes the new “Blood Ties” single player content, new Co-Op play for Endurance mode, “Extreme Survivor” difficulty setting for the main campaign, 20 Year Celebration outfit and gun, and 5 classic Lara skins. It also includes all previously released Downloadable Content such as Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch, Endurance Mode, Cold Darkness Awakened, 12 outfits, 7 weapons, and 35 expedition cards. With over 50 hours of gameplay, this is the most comprehensive version of the award-winning experience.
Show moreEconomic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too.
The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially.
Image Credit Source: Russell Sage Foundation
The Russell Sage study also examined net worth at the 95th percentile. (For households at that level, 95 percent of the population had less wealth.) It found that for this well-do-do slice of the population, household net worth increased 14 percent over the same 10 years. Other research, by economists like Edward Wolff at New York University, has shown even greater gains in wealth for the richest 1 percent of households.
For households at the median level of net worth, much of the damage has occurred since the start of the last recession in 2007. Until then, net worth had been rising for the typical household, although at a slower pace than for households in higher wealth brackets. But much of the gain for many typical households came from the rising value of their homes. Exclude that housing wealth and the picture is worse: Median net worth began to decline even earlier.Have you ever had days where you just don’t feel like doing anything? At the end of the day, you look back and you realize you’ve accomplished nothing. These are called zero days. Zero productivity, zero accomplishments, zero wins.
It’s alright to relax and unwind once in a while, but if it happens too often, you need to change something. And the best time to start that change is in the morning.
The morning is the most important part of our day. It sets the tone and tempo for the rest of the day. If you’re feeling lethargic and unmotivated in the morning, you’ll likely retain that feeling all day long.
Here are 5 things you can do in the morning to ensure that you stay productive and motivated all day long.
Wake up early
You know how you feel tired and cloudy when you oversleep? You have this dull ache in your head all day, and that totally destroys your productivity. No amount of coffee will lift that cloudy feeling.
Sleep is important, but sleeping too much is bad. Start waking up earlier and giving yourself more time in the morning. Try waking up at 6 am, or 7 am, or even 8 am. This gives you more time in the morning to accomplish things, and a psychological boost when you reach lunch time to find out you’ve already done so much.
You can even use an app that wakes you up when you’re in the light phase of your sleep. Sleep Cycle is one such app. It tracks your sleep and wakes you up after you’ve completed your REM phase, which is the most important part of your sleep.
Exercise
Starting the day with a workout provides massive benefits. It doesn’t have to be a proper workout. The aim is to get your blood flowing, and pump oxygen into your brain.
Even a quick 10-minute jog is good enough. No space to run? Run up and down a staircase. No staircase? Do a few jumping jacks and pushups.
You’ll see that you feel more energy and this stays with you throughout the day. You’ll feel revitalized, and any tiredness you felt from waking up early will vanish after a short run.
Drink water and eat rich
The moment you wake up, drink a glass of water. Staying hydrated is important, especially in the morning because you haven’t had any water all night long.
Also, don’t skip breakfast. This is the most important meal of the day for a reason. Starting with a rich and healthy breakfast gives you the energy you need to power through your mornings.
Organize
Starting your day with a quick organization and planning session help you accomplish more tasks. When you’ve written down the tasks you have for the day, and prioritized them, it gives you a good roadmap to follow for the rest of the day.
Most of the time, people are unproductive simply because they don’t know what task to handle next. With a priority list sitting in front of you all day, you won’t waste time trying to decide what to do.
Meditate
We’ve already seen the benefits of meditation in previous posts. A short meditation in the morning is a good exercise in improving focus. Your mind becomes clearer and you learn to cut out distractions.
By implementing these habits, you’re setting yourself up for success. A super productive morning gives you a huge psychological boost and motivates you for the rest of the day. You’ll be able to do more and finish things faster, leaving you with more time in the evenings to enjoy with your friends and family.
What do you do in the morning that keeps you productive and motivated all day?G4S, which operates the private jail, says teams are responding to incident after some inmates refused to return to their cells
An incident at HMP Birmingham that left one inmate needing hospitalisation was resolved late on Sunday night.
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “Specially trained prison staff successfully resolved an incident at HMP Birmingham on 3 September. There were no injuries to staff or prisoners.
“We do not tolerate violence in our prisons, and are clear that those responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars.”
One man, believed to be in his 20s, was taken to hospital with a facial injury as well as cuts, bruises and a reduced consciousness, West Midlands ambulance service said. No prison staff were injured.
An unknown number of prisoners refused to return to their cells at the end of Sunday evening at the category B jail, which is run by G4S.
A spokesman for G4S said earlier: “Our teams are responding to an incident on one wing at HM Prison Birmingham. We are working with colleagues from Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to bring the incident to a safe conclusion.”
A prison service spokesperson said earlier on Sunday night: “We are aware of an ongoing incident involving a small number of prisoners at HMP Birmingham. It is confined to one wing and prison staff are working to resolve it quickly and safely.”
Unconfirmed reports suggested that prisoners were chanting “we want burn” – slang for tobacco.
A smoking ban has been phased in at the jail, which went entirely smoke-free at the end of July. The prison’s website states: “Assistance with giving up smoking is being offered to prisoners in accordance with national guidelines.”
G4S has run the prison, previously known as Winson Green, since 2011 when it became the first public sector jail to be privatised.
A 12-hour riot took place at the same prison in December 2016 and involved more than a third of the 1,450 inmates at its height. The incident was the worst since the Strangeways riot in Manchester 26 years ago and caused about £2m of damage.
The Guardian reported last week that an unforeseen summer surge in prisoner numbers in England and Wales is adding to the pressures on a jail system that is already “woefully short of spare capacity”.
The number of prisoners locked up in England and Wales has risen by 1,200 since May to 86,413 – 1,900 higher than the official 2016 projection of prison numbers for this summer.
Sunday’s disorder follows a riot in early August at a prison in Hertfordshire, where there were only 20 officers on duty to supervise more than 1,000 inmates, and another in Wiltshire.
A prison in Cumbria lost the use of an entire wing late last month because of a serious disturbance, the former prison service director-general Phil Wheatley said.Rock Port will become America’s first 100-percent wind powered community when city officials throw the switch bringing the Loess Hills Wind Farm on line next Friday.
When fully operational, the four Suzlon S-64 wind turbines will have the capacity to generate a combined total of five megawatts of energy, 16 million kilowatt hours a year.
Historically, Rock Port electrical customers use approximately 13 million KwH annually.
The celebration commemorating the symbolic "throwing of the switch" is scheduled to begin when the exhibit hall opens at 9 a.m. that Friday at the Atchison County Memorial Building in downtown Rock Port. The formal switching ceremony is slated for 11:30 a.m. and lunch will be served from 12:15 to 2 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Atchison County Development Corporation.
Rock Port Mayor Helen Jo Stevens will serve as master of ceremonies for the program and U. S. Rep. Sam Graves will be the featured speaker. Representatives of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities, the Association of Electric Cooperatives and the project’s principal developers, Wind Capital Group and John Deere Capital’s Wind Energy will join the Tarkio Republican on the dais.
The idea for the Loess Hills Wind Farm was conceived by Eric Chamberlain, Rock Port, before construction began on the larger Cow Branch Wind Farm, the 24-turbine development located between Rock Port and Tarkio. Chamberlain had been researching the possibility of municipal wind energy and evaluating local wind resources and the cooperative effort seemed reasonable. He took his idea for the smaller municipal system to Tom Carnahan, founder of Wind Capital Group and developer of Northwest Missouri’s first wind farm near King City, and the concept ultimately has become reality.
"We would not have the Loess Hills Wind Farm to provide power for Rock Port without the development of the Cow Branch project," Chamberlain said during a recent tour of the two wind farm sites. "It would have simply been cost prohibitive for Rock Port to attempt what we have here."
The construction costs have run to "several millions of dollars," he said. That is where John Deere Credit U.S.A. became involved as the principal financier of both Atchison County wind farm projects. "They can recover their investment through the sale of electricity" into the area’s power grid, Chamberlain explained. Some of JDC’s investment will also be recovered through federal per-kilowatt tax credits allowable to wind energy developers. All area wind farms — a third, comparable in size to the Cow Branch and Bluegrass projects, is nearing completion at Conception Junction — will be eligible for that credit, although the program is scheduled to expire at the end of this year and has not yet been renewed by Congress.
The Rock Port municipal electrical system will be connected directly to the Loess Hills Wind Farm and a double metering system will enable the city to calculate what power is sold directly to municipal customers and how much is funneled into the system shared by the area’s electric cooperatives.
"That in itself will save Rock Port transmission fees and a line loss charge of something like seven percent," Chamberlain said, "so it will reduce the city’s wholesale utility cost.
"It may not actually lower the utility bills people have to pay, but it will at least be a hedge against inflation that is almost a certainty in utility costs."
The four towers comprising the Loess Hills Wind Farm are 250 feet tall each, the same height as those at the larger Cow Branch project. The Loess Hills turbines utilize three 90-foot blades to capture wind energy from an area that is about an acre in size. Those at Cow Branch have 140-foot blades and can each generate 2.1 MW of power. That combined output will provide enough output to provide clean, renewable energy for 30,000 homes.The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the best Star Wars movie & Attack of the Clones the worst. I agreed with that until I saw this film.
The previous main installment The Force Awakens is a well oiled machine. The J.J. Abrams directed vehicle is perfectly paced and edited with heavy echoes to the original trilogy’s charm and old characters returning along with some new ones. It’s clever and well calculated references to what worked before is Abrams mode of operation. One wonders what tricks this film has in store to drive the force of nature that has become Disney’s Star Wars and steer it into its final chapter. Does it live up to the second chapter of the original trilogy or down to the clones titled prequel chapter?
The Last Jedi like Episode VII beforehand does have some parallels to the original trilogy. Luke Skywalker is in position to mentor ‘Rey’ just as Master Yoda did to him. Thankfully this repeated plot aspect takes up less time than I expected and solo writer/director Rian Johnson (Looper) adds a few interesting wrinkles. He flirts with the idea of shaking down the pious Jedi legend and complicating the dark side. He also inventively furthers the Disney friendly idea of the inclusivity of the force most notably in the opening battle [the film’s greatest highlight]. This is much to the prequels dismay. Finally, Johnson’s solo credit [a rarity among nine figure budgets] includes the frequently bold choice to zag when it is expected to zig; though it is hard to tell if this happens too often or not often enough as its ideas and its final impact won’t be fully rounded out until the trilogy is completed two years from now [with Abrams returning to the fold].
I will come out and say that neither I, nor my viewing partner liked this Star Wars movie. We considered it to be boring and uneventful; maybe the worst Star Wars movie next to II. But that opinion as right as it is doesn’t necessarily make it a bad film. II for all its flaws has great imagination and features John Williams’ BEST WORK. VIII is clearly made with great skill and care, but for my money [$21.98] Rian Johnson bets wrongly on the characters and subversion of expectations over the action & mythology, basically deciding on his own written language over advancing the established visual language. His rhythms are far better suited to a star wars spin-off a la Rogue One rather than the second movie in a franchise. His callbacks to other famous films though intelligently raised, follow the annoying derivative nature of The Force Awakens and make you wish they [the top brass at Disney] could decide on trying something new already rather just riffing on established forms. The Last Jedi in its drifting ambition is a long-winded exercise that feels like wheel spinning exercise. It’s frustrating that all that confidence can stage a memorable image and show the audience new possibilities while just making it very expensive window dressing.
Rating: 4/10Lauren Rain Williams
Lauren Rain Williams during her visit to Oregon
(Courtesy of Lauren Rain Williams)
Lauren Rain Williams' mom has a saying when her daughter is on the track.
"There's always a 100 percent chance of Rain."
That weather report contrasts wildly from the one delivered in Eugene by Don Essig that, "it never rains in Autzen Stadium."
But it seems unlikely Duck fans will mind the disparity over the next few years.
On Monday evening, Williams, the nation's fastest 200-meter runner, announced her commitment to the University of Oregon.
Williams, who has posted the sixth-best 200-meter time in history at the high school level (22.80), is a two-time New Balance Nationals Indoor champion in the 200 and won the 200-meter silver medal at the IAAF World Youth Championships in 2015.
For the senior, out of Oaks Christian High School (California), the road to Oregon was a long one, as she originally signed a national letter of intent with USC.
However, after having second thoughts, she asked to be released from the bidding NCAA contract.
"It was in my hometown, it's 20 minutes away from me, it's been my dream school since I was about nine," Williams said. "I love the institution itself and I just felt like that was it for me. Then, moving on, these last few months, I felt like I might have rushed my decision a little bit in just being like, 'Oh, I'm going to go there.' I had my mind set."
The decorated sprinter made a point to thank her once-future school for being so gracious throughout her recruiting process.
"USC was very willing to help me out, and I really appreciate that part," she said.
Williams committed to coach Robert Johnson on the phone earlier this week, and said a major factor in her decision was Oregon's recent success.
She hopes to emulate two current Duck athletes during his college career.
"Hannah Cunliffe and Daejah Stevens," she said. "Hannah is special to me, just because I've known her my whole track career. She's like family to me and I've always looked up to her."
Williams is set to enroll at Oregon in the fall, where her top 200-meter time from her junior season in high school (22.44; wind-aided) would've won the Pac-12 Championships, and placed third at the NCAA championship meet last year - behind only Oregon sprinters Stevens (22.25) and Ariana Washington (22.21).
-- Andrew Nemec
anemec@oregonian.com
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The Pentagon Wants to Replace Passwords with the Way You Move or Walk Steven Wallace is a system innovation scientist at the Pentagon's Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. In an interview with The Washington Post, he discussed smartphone technology that the Pentagon is testing that will authenticate smartphone owners by using "the gait of your walk, the tension in your hand or...
San Francisco Uses Computer Algorithm to Dismiss 9,362 Marijuana Convictions San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon has teamed up with nonprofit Code For America to use a computer algorithm based on its "Clear My Record" technology to overturn 9,362 marijuana convictions dating back to 1975. The algorithm automated the scanning of many thousands of court records to find cases...
The HTC 5G Hub Will Bring Cloud-Based Virtual Reality to the Home The new HTC 5G Hub harnesses the power of 5G technology to bring cloud-based virtual reality to the home. For example, this will allow HTC Vive owners to stream VR content from the cloud to their headsets. No PC or cables will be required. Other features include...
The Verge Investigates the Life of a Facebook Moderator Here at HardOCP, I think the sheer volume of garbage that makes its way into Facebook posts before moderators take it down is common knowledge. Facebook itself has the daunting task of trying moderate all that content, and according to a recent writeup from The Verge, they subcontract some of...
Latest Nvidia Drivers Patch Security Vulnerabilities Nvidia released the 419.17 drivers a few days ago, and as we noted, they featured a number of new SLI profiles, GPU video encoding improvements, and the usual round of bug fixes and enhancements. But yesterday, Bleeping Computer found that the new drivers also came with fixes to a number...
AMD Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.3 Drivers Add Support for AMD Ryzen Mobile APU's Senior Director of AMD Software Strategy Terry Makedon has announced that Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 Edition 19.2.3 is out and it adds support for AMD Ryzen Mobile Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics. The Radeon Software Adrenalin 2019 series of drivers give up to 17% average performance gains in eSports...
GOG in Financial Trouble as Layoffs Hit the PC Games Digital Storefront GOG is in financial trouble as the DRM-free PC games digital storefront has confirmed it laid off 12 members of its team. This number may seem small, but it equates to 10% of the total workforce at GOG. On a more positive note, the company is hiring more...
Android Receives FIDO2 Certification to Usher in a World Without Passwords The FIDO Alliance has announced that compatible devices running Android 7.0+ are now FIDO2 certified. FIDO2 certification allows these devices to have simpler, stronger authentication capabilities as users can utilize the device's built-in fingerprint sensor and/or FIDO security keys for secure passwordless access to websites and native applications that...
Linus Torvalds Comments On Apple's Potential Move to ARM Rumors about the Mac's theoretical transition to ARM have been swirling ever since the original iPhone came out, if not earlier, but those rumors got particularly heated last week when both Bloomberg and Axios published reports claiming that the Cupertino-based company could make the switch sooner rather than later. While...
Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron to Face Revenue Drops in Q1 2019 Digitimes claims that Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, the world's top 3 memory manufacturers, saw their Q1 2019 revenue drop dramatically. Combined DRAM and Flash revenue was down 18% sequentially and 26% "from a year earlier in the fourth quarter of 2018." The big 3 manufacturers have reportedly...
Microsoft Is Reportedly Bringing Xbox Game Pass to Nintendo Switch Nintendo Switch owners who are contemplating the purchase of an Xbox One may want to hold off on that decision, as multiple reports are suggesting Microsoft is bringing its game-subscription service to the portable console. The idea of Crackdown 3, Forza Horizon 4, and Sea of Thieves "running" on a...Kenya Wakatsuki’s two-run, fourth-inning double sparked a five-run inning as the Orix Buffaloes came from behind to beat the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 8-4 on Friday night and knock them out of first place.
“I hit it on the sweet spot. It’s been so long since that happened that I was surprised,” said Wakatsuki, a career.210 hitter.
Before 26,324 at Kyocera Dome, Eagles starter Takayuki Kishi survived one tough scrape, but the second proved fatal. The right-hander stranded three runners in the second after walking in a run, but blew a 2-1 lead in the fourth.
After a leadoff single by his former Seibu Lions teammate Hiroyuki Nakajima, Kishi issued a one-out walk to Ryoichi Adachi. Kishi bounced a curve to Wakatsuki, allowing the runners to advance on a wild pitch. The Buffaloes catcher then golfed a low, inside fastball into the gap in right-center for an opposite field double.
Takahiro Okada singled in Wakatsuki, who scored when right fielder Louis Okoye’s throw short-hopped his catcher. Chris Marrero capped the rally with his 10th homer.
Kishi allowed six runs on eight hits and three walks over six innings. It was the most runs he’s allowed since joining Rakuten over the winter from the Lions as a free agent.
“My pitching was poor from the first inning. I made too many unnecessary mistakes,” Kishi said.
The Buffaloes opened the scoring when Okada worked a walk after falling behind 0-2 against Kishi in the second. But the Eagles took the lead in the third against Brandon Dickson on a double by Okoye and RBI singles by Ginji Akaminai and Japhet Amador.
Dickson was chased in the sixth, when Hiroaki Shimauchi doubled and scored on Ryo Hijirisawa’s no-out single. Dickson surrendered three runs on eight hits and a walk in five-plus innings.
“He (Dickson) has pitched well for us a lot this season and we haven’t done much to help him win. So I want to get him to 10 wins,” Wakatsuki said of his batterymate, who is in his fifth season with Orix.
Right-hander Gonzalez German got Orix out of the inning after allowing a one-out single and pitched out of trouble in the seventh after allowing a run.
Marines 5, Lions 3
At Chiba’s Zozo Marine Stadium, Katsuya Kakunaka tied it 3-3 with his two-run, fifth-inning homer and Wily Mo Pena’s seventh-inning RBI double put Chiba Lotte in front for good.
Seibu’s Hideto Asamura drove in three runs by homering in his first two at-bats.
CENTRAL LEAGUE
Swallows 10, Dragons 2
At Nagoya Dome, David Buchanan (6-9) allowed two first-inning runs but went the distance for the win after Yakult came from behind by making the most of five walks from Chunichi’s Raul Valdes (6-7).
Tigers 8, BayStars 1
At Yokohama Stadium, Hanshin’s Minoru Iwata (2-0) allowed a run over seven innings and Masahiro Nakatani broke the game open with his 13th home run, a three-run, third-inning blast off tough Yokohama lefty Kenta Ishida (4-5).
Giants 9, Carp 2
At Hiroshima’s Mazda Stadium, Kazuto Taguchi (10-2) allowed eight hits over the distance and singled in a run in a six-run fifth inning as Yomiuri rallied to beat Hiroshima.
Shinnosuke Abe put the Giants in front with his 1,998th career hit, a three-run double.A small but significant set of data points in the ongoing discussion of how – potentially – China’s economy has altered the global economy, especially as it impacts the current economic downturn.
I received this first one last week from my pal Bob Garino, Director of Commodities at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries [ISRI] in Washington, D.C. It tracks the relationship between (in blue) the US IP Manufacturing Index, a measure of metals intensive US manufacturing; and (in green) the CRB Metal Index, a measure of key scrap metal commodities, including copper, lead, and steel. Note that the two indices were relatively correlative until December 2008 – or right around the time that China began to stockpile key metal commodities (click for enlargement).
The data is interesting in its own right, but even more so when seen in the context of how the two indices behaved during the prior three recessions. Below, that data, as supplied by the ISRI Broadsheet (click for enlargement).
To quote Garino (my favored expert on the relationship between raw materials and the overall global economy):
“There was a close correlation between two but that relationship has sure changed, and we think it’s mostly due to Chinese buying, and not the influence of domestic [US] purchases in the manufacturing sector … [T]he concern (if there is one) is what it will take to see a return to the past relationship? Perhaps due to the nature of commodities within the context of a changing global economy, the current correlation we’re seeing between IP and the CRB has forever changed and has now become meaningless.”
And that’s the question, isn’t it? Has China overturned the realationship between commodities demand in the US, and global commodities prices? My personal opinion is that this kind of question is probably best answered during an economic expansion, and not a recession when – in the case of China – economic stimulus creates non-market demands for commodities. And despite overheated talk (from, among others, me) about the potent power of China’s economic stimulus on the price of global commodities, the actual data is less than encouraging. Below, China’s imports of scrap aluminum and copper (the latter an important component of the CRB index) from January to May 2009, as compared to the same period during 2008:Update: In early September, U.N. war crimes investigators determined that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons “more than two dozen times,” including the attack discussed in this article, which it called “the gravest incident.” The report relied on “interviews with witnesses, victims and emergency services as well as photographs and satellite imagery.” Per the U.N.’s Paulo Pinheiro, at a subsequent news conference: “Not having access did not prevent us from establishing facts or reasonable grounds to believe what happened during the attack and establishing who is responsible.”
Let’s see if we can inject a bit of sanity into this developing story. First, the White House released a statement last night claiming they’d found new evidence that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was planning a second chemical attack in his country’s ongoing civil war. The preparation, they said, looked similar to another alleged chemical weapons attack that took place in April, and that resulted in a U.S. tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat Airbase that destroyed a few planes. The White House statement ended with a threat:
As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”
After the announcement, Trump’s own defense department responded with total bafflement:
Summary: “We haven't seen any intelligence indicating this is true, and the White House's motivation is completely beyond us.”
So, what the hell is going on? What is Trump doing?
A cynical person might get the sense, judging by the volume of POTUS' recent tweets about Russia, that this is an attempt to distract the public from whatever is about to come down the pipeline on that front. After all, the last time he launched an attack against Syria, the minions stepped in line: MSNBC's Brian Williams waxed poetic about the beauty of our missiles, CNN's Fareed Zakaria declared that Trump had suddenly become presidential by virtue of blowing things up, and the general public stopped despising him for a moment to circle the war wagons. So if he's about to get smeared by Russia allegations, why not go back to what works?
An obvious psy-op deployed by an unpopular president who's outsourced his foreign policy to Strangelovian generals. And no sources provided. pic.twitter.com/0xqKfXW7hj — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 27, 2017
But let’s look beyond that for a moment, and focus on the actual allegations themselves. There are a few facts worth knowing here:
1. Bashar al-Assad has survived the worst of the rebels’ challenge, and is winning the war. After taking back Aleppo in December, it was widely conceded that the writing was on the wall, and that Syrian government forces would eventually prevail. Just two months ago, Spicer himself conceded the “political reality” that Assad had all but prevailed.
2. Assad is backed by the Russians—he needs the Russians—and the Russians clearly don’t want their support associated with a guy who will gas his own people.
3. He is not yet opposed by the U.S., but there is no more direct path to involving the Americans than to commit these kinds of human rights atrocities—crossing the so-called “red line.” That’s what gets people’s attention. In fact, a main impetus behind the |
to pass, at least in some circumstances, a benefit-cost test, I was still set-back because of its political intractability.”
Five dollars and seventy-two cents per gallon. That’s what the tax would have to be. Considering that at the time the data was collected for this study, gas was about $3.50, the tax would have raised the price at the pump to about nine dollars and twenty-five cents per gallon.
Here’s the part of this story where another reporter might quip, “Should we expect to see gas prices in Utah spike anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath.” But maybe you should. Because those benefit-cost analyses that Caplan mentioned, some show that paying just about $10 per gallon at the pump is still cheaper in the long run than the public health cost of chronic exposure to unhealthy air.
“People suggest that these costs are hidden in a way, that we don’t think about them. Our lives are busy and hectic and we don’t stop to think about what we’re breathing into our lungs, and so in our minds we keep hidden these costs. But our medical professionals, our health professionals, our researchers, are telling me that they’re real. In fact, they’re very high and very damaging. So when you take it from the research and put it up on the screen and say these are the numbers, and you actually start looking at the numbers, in dollars and costs, then it becomes real. ”
The study was published in the journal Environmental and Resource Economics.GETTY Cancer risk: There have been concerns wifi could harm health
Wi-Fi is technology that allows computers, smartphones, or other devices to connect to the internet within a particular area. It is a relatively new invention and was first released to consumers in 1997. These days, it is virtually everywhere, and there have been increasing concerns about possible long-term damage to our health. The technology works by using man-made radio frequency radiation in a similar way to bluetooth, microwaves and television signals.
GETTY Cancer risk: Wifi radiation is different from that used for x-rays
While Wi-Fi might seem like unknown territory, there has been extensive research on radio waves for decades. Researchers recently concluded that the technology dose not pose a risk to health.
While Wi-Fi might seem like unknown territory, there has been extensive research on radio waves for decades. In 2013 a review published in the Radiation Safety Journal researchers concluded that Wi-Fi technology does not pose a risk to health. This is because the type of radiation it uses is at the low-energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum. According to the American Cancer Society, this has enough energy to move atoms in a molecule around or cause them to vibrate, but not enough to ionise. This is in contrast to high-energy radiation - such as x-rays - which have been linked to increased risk of cancer. What’s more, unless you’re constantly streaming video, Wi-Fi devices only usually transmit information just 0.1 per cent of the time.
Signs and symptoms of head and neck cancer Wed, June 21, 2017 Head and neck cancers: The signs and symptpoms you should know. Play slideshow Getty 1 of 8 Head and neck cancers: The signs and symptpoms you should know
GETTY Cancer risk: Mobile phones transmit more strength than wifi during a phone call
In comparison, mobile phones transmit - next to your head - at a strength a hundred times more powerful during a call. Even then, current research has found no adverse effects from constant phone use for a decade. That might change for longer use, and the World Health Organisation and the International Agency for Research on Cancer have stated that mobiles are “possible carcinogen” because there’s currently not enough long-term research to say whether it does or not. However, some research does appear to have found a link between Wi-Fi and health issues. A 2016 study published in the journal Endocrine associated high levels of Wi-Fi and mobile phone exposure to hormonal shifts and oxidative stress, which could lead to cancer or brain diseases. There are also concerns about how radio wave radiation might harm children.
GETTY Cancer risk: Wifi has allowed people to access the internet in many placesThere is speculation that planners and designers at Dublin City Council are about to propose an even more radical vision for College Green than that unveiled late last year.
This new plan for College Green is due to be shown to councillors within the next two weeks and should cause fresh controversy among various stakeholders, most probably private car-park owners, retail interests and public transport bodies.
However, the council is likely to argue that its vision for College Green is about returning a major public space of standout architectural significance back to its rightful, and historic, place as the city’s showpiece. For too long, the council could contend, College Green has been a place to transit through rather than linger in, and this has been to its detriment.
Plans for the redesign of College Green, including a ban on private cars and a new piazza in front of the Bank of Ireland, are being mooted primarily to accommodate the Luas Cross City line.
This €368 million project, which will run as a double line in front of Trinity College before splitting at Westmoreland Street, is expected to be in service by the end of 2017.
“Luas Cross City is on time and on budget,” says Gráinne Mackin, communications director for the project.
Banning buses through College Green could clear the way for the council to create a major piazza in front of the Bank of Ireland which would extend to the opposite side of the street and around into Foster Place, one of the city’s most underappreciated corners currently dominated by mature broadleaf trees. As a result, College Green would be closed to through traffic.
But this could cut-off vehicle access to the small car-parking area under the central portico of the Bank of Ireland branch. “The provision of vehicular access to the piazza at the front of our College Green buildings is an important part of the bank’s business operations at College Green,” said a spokesman for the bank.
Bank of Ireland has also just spent eight months cleaning the facade of its College Green branch and is planning to refurbish its main banking hall and other primary spaces as part of works to create a €10 million cultural centre in the complex which will open in 2017 with a Seamus Heaney exhibition. In addition, the bank has obtained planning permission to re-instate the surface of its front piazza and upgrade disabled access to the branch.
Luas Cross City will also run as a twin line around the Dawson/Nassau Street corner, and this could have major implications for bus routes which currently use these streets. Turning right or left for buses at this busy corner may be impossible once Luas is in place.
It’s reasonable to assume that the authorities have known for some time how much road space Luas Cross City would take up at key city centre intersections.
This has led to suggestions that the council has been engaged in a long softening up process of the various stakeholders’ concerned before finally unveiling its real plans. For College Green, that moment might be at hand.
*This article was amended on February 7th, 2016On July 20th, Girls’ Generation continued their quest to concur the world by pursuing their world tour. The “2013 Girls’ Generation’s World Tour – Girls & Peace” headed to Taipei, its second stop, and displayed a breathtaking performance for the fans at the Taipei Arena. The world tour started with two concerts in Seoul at the beginning of June.
Before the performance, Girls’ Generation held a press conference to introduce themselves once again to their fans in Taiwan. For fantaken and news photos of the press conference, visit Soshified’s Photos Section. To download a short clip of the press conference, check out Soshified’s Video Downloads Section.
During both days of concerts, several fan events were revealed. At first concert, SONEs all around the arena took out banners reading, “Happy 6th Anniversary!”, as the girls sang the ballad version of “Baby Baby”. Along with that, fans in the upper level held pink and white squares, forming hearts and the first syllable of each of the girls’ names. As per the girls’ request, SONEs executed a pink wave in the midst of the concert, lighting up the stadium after the venue lights were turned off.
Once the girls left the stage after singing “Forever”, fans shouted, “Let’s go Soshi, let’s go!”, signaling an encore. The girls made a quick change and returned on stage to perform their final songs. As the girls concluded the concert with “Twinkle” featuring all nine girls, huge balloon spheres filled with smaller balloons were released and passed around in the audience. Eventually, some balloons ended up on stage, where the girls were able to kick them back to the audience, and vice versa.
But the surprises did not end with the first concert, as SONEs unveiled different fan events for the second performance on July 21st. This time, the eager fans made two different banners, which were pulled out during various points of the concert. The first banner read, “Because of Soshi, we are happy”. The second banner, on the other hand, was dedicated to Tiffany’s birthday. It read, “8/1 Happy Birthday” in the middle, with “♥TIFFANY♥” and “Today is MY day!” on the top and bottom, respectively. The attendees of the concert also performed another pink wave for the girls.
Another special event prepared by SONEs in attendance was the releasing of huge pink ribbons from the upper levels of the arena, decorating the arena in pink. The girls had fun with the ribbons, wrapping them around the birthday girl, Tiffany. In addition, the audience sang an acapella version of “Into The New World” a number of times to get the girls to perform an encore.
Even though the concert was finished, SONEs stood outside the hotel where the girls were staying, awaiting Tiffany. As soon as she arrived, fans gave her a birthday cake and sang to her. She happily thanked Taiwanese SONEs for all their work and effort, as well as for coming to the concert.
Girls’ Generation enjoyed another successful stop on their world tour, laughing, crying, and having a blast performing in front of the 22,000 SONEs in attendance who organized so many special events for the girls. If you’d like to download fancams from the concerts, visit Soshified’s Video Downloads Section by clicking here, here, and here. For fantaken photos taken during the first and second days, visit Soshified’s Photos Section. Photos of the girls’ arrival and departure from the airport and hotel can also be found in Soshified’s Photos Section.
Sources: GirlsGeneration@Facebook.com 1, GirlsGeneration@Facebook.com 2, Chunyoon, AppleEnews@Facebook.com, sisan009@YouTube.com, bee ty@YouTube.com, pagantsai@flicker.com, NATE, GirlsGeneration@Facebook.com 3, GirlsGeneration@Twitter.com, onepiece03@YouTube.com, mantou741@YouTube.com, Girls’ Generation’s Official Line Account
Written by: Taengo932@soshified
Contributor: MoonSoshi9@soshified, bhost909@soshified, FrozenArctic@soshified
Edited by: kt9823@soshified, moonrise31@soshified
Have a news item that you think Soshified should know about? Leave us a tip or e-mail us at tip@soshified.com.
Follow us on Twitter – http://twitter.com/soshified – for the latest on Girls’ Generation.What could possibly be more grossly negligent than sending unsecured emails in places where hostile actors can read them?
No reasonable person could possibly square what FBI Director James Comey said about Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail system during her time as Secretary of State with his final recommendation.
On Tuesday, Comey spent 15 minutes meticulously detailing every illegality of Clinton—including her negligent behavior and obstruction of the investigation. And yet, at the end of it all, he offered the absurdly counterintuitive position that no “reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges in such a case.
Well, everything the director said challenged that conclusion. At one point, for example, Comey explained that any “reasonable person should have known this was not an appropriate venue for classified emails.” Only minutes before that, Comey also said that “gross negligence” would suffice for prosecution. So is he accusing the presidential candidate of being too dumb to comprehend what a top secret document is or how an email account works? Because any other explanation makes no sense.
According to the FBI, Clinton sent 110 emails containing clearly marked classified information. Thirty-six of them contained secret information. Eight of those email chains contained “top secret” information. Worse still, “We assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account,” Comey explained.
There are few, if any, scenarios I can conceive of that are more grossly negligent when it comes to classified documents than sending them through an unsecured email account in a place where hostile actors can access them. Perhaps Comey could offer the nation an example of what it takes to be prosecuted. What if Hillary left a folder marked “top secret” in front of the Chinese embassy in Russia? Would that do it? I doubt it.
Here’s another question that worth asking: Do presidential candidates have to admit they intended to commit a crime for the FBI to recommend the Justice Department prosecute? In the case of Clinton, it seems so. The FBI doesn’t believe there was intentional misconduct on the part of Clinton. Why did she ignore FIOA requests and fight Congress every step of the way? Why did Hillary lie or mislead law enforcement and the public if it was just an innocent mistake?
On March 1 of this year, Clinton alleged that she “never sent any classified material — nor received any — marked classified.” This was a lie. Hillary asserted that before becoming secretary she merely wanted only one device “for convenience.” This was also lie. The FBI found that Clinton “used numerous mobile devices”—not to mention servers. Any reasonable person could ascertain she was attempting to evade the public. She archived nothing and hid everything until she was discovered. The FBI unearthed several thousand more work-related emails by finding traces of these in decommissioned servers. Other emails were found in accounts of high-ranking officials at other agencies who also, according to Comey, should have known better. It was widely known that she used a private, unsecure email. How is that not grossly negligent?
Granted, I’m not a lawyer, but 18 U.S. Code 1924 — “Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material” — clearly states that anyone who “knowingly removes” materials “without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.” Perhaps a prosecution would have been tough, but everything Comey laid out in his press conference — until the very end — only substantiated that Hillary had nonchalantly mishandled classified information.
The case also speaks to trust of government. Comey claimed that he put on this unusual press conference because a high-impact case deserves extraordinary transparency. But transparency doesn’t exempt him from criticism or his investigation from political pressure. Comey basically admits as much near the end of his press conference.
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Many people have been prosecuted for far less, including John Deutch, Sandy Berger, David Petraeus, and lesser-known names. Comey’s own words tell us Hillary should have met a similar fate. Hillary will campaign with Barack Obama today, creating the perception that the fix was in. Yesterday, a week after her husband had a private meeting with the Attorney General, some Democrats signaled through a New York Times story that Hillary would probably rehire Loretta Lynch. The stench of Clinton corruption is back. She is above the law. And there is no one to stop her.Cleveland, OH — Perhaps because of its last-minute nature, only a small group of people were in attendance this morning for an Obama get-out-the-vote rally featuring legendary music superstar Stevie Wonder giving a free concert.
The event was held at Cleveland State University in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, starting at 9:30 am.
According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Fewer than 200 people showed up to watch Wonder perform a handful of his hits at the early voting event in support of President Barack Obama.”
The Washington Post reports that the crowd was only 50.
The Plain Dealer added that Obama for America Ohio tweeted its 34,000 follower about the event shortly before Wonder took the stage at 10:30.
Even though there was a shuttle bus standing by, Steve Wonder’s performance reportedly did not motivate anyone in attendance to actually head to the polls, however, although apparently many of them had already early voted:
” ‘I do a song. You go vote. You come back. We do some more music,’ [Wonder] said before opening with ‘Sir Duke.’ “No one left to vote after the first — or any — song.”
Stevie Wonder, who recently wrote a new song for the president called “Keep Moving Forward,” performed at a fundraiser for President Obama on October 7. He also joined Katy Perry, Bon Jovi, and Earth, Wind & Fire at a campaign rally on October 21 in Las Vegas. Wonder has also made other campaign appearances for the Obama-Biden ticket.
As a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Stevie Wonder has recorded more than 30 top ten hits and received 22 Grammy Awards, the most ever awarded to a male solo artist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.
Do you think in general that it would be better for celebrities and entertainers to steer clear of politics?Dr. Kammen is the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the department of Nuclear Engineering. He was appointed the first Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) Fellow by Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton in April 2010.
Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), Co-Director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, and Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. He has founded or is on the board of over 10 companies, and has served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities.
Dr. Kammen was educated in physics at Cornell and Harvard, and held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Harvard. He was Assistant Professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University before moving to the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kammen has served as a contributing or coordinating lead author on various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He serves on the Advisory Committee for Energy & Environment for the X-Prize Foundation.
During 2010-2011 Kammen served as the World Bank Group’s Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. He was appointed to this newly-created position in October 2010, in which he provided strategic leadership on policy, technical, and operational fronts. The aim is to enhance the operational impact of the Bank’s renewable energy and energy efficiency activities while expanding the institution’s role as an enabler of global dialogue on moving energy development to a cleaner and more sustainable pathway.
He has authored or co-authored 12 books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, testified more than 40 times to U.S. state and federal congressional briefings, and has provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports. Dr. Kammen also served for many years on the Technical Review Board of the Global Environment Facility. He is a frequent contributor to or commentator in international news media, including Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. Kammen has appeared on 60 Minutes (twice), Nova, Frontline, and hosted the six-part Discovery Channel series Ecopolis. Dr. Kammen is a Permanent Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society. In the US, he serves on two National Academy of Sciences boards and panels.BentoBlocks has been signed to a publisher and is no longer available to download. In the meantime, try one of my other games.
Roll dice and chow down! BentoBlocks is a roll-and-write game for 2-4 players, which takes 10 minutes to play. Players will roll dice and attempt to fit shapes into their bento boxes - a kind of Japanese takeaway meal. Only through careful planning and by keeping a watchful eye on their opponents, can players hope to create the best meal and take away victory!
While BentoBlocks uses dice-rolling, it's central mechanic is an "I divide, you choose" mechanic, giving a layer of strategy and player interaction to this compact game.
BentoBlocks is contained on 3 sheets of paper and requires pencils and dice to play.It was a shock to be detained by the FBI, although I can't say I've never been in trouble with the law. We've all been to college, right?
The agent looked remarkably average with a “guy” haircut, polo shirt, even cargo pants—until I noticed the gun at his hip.
He refused to drop his stare. It was one of those glances they must teach when training new agents. Someone must have told him that you can tell if someone is lying by staring at them. So he did.... but I wasn't.
I was standing on the sidewalk taking pictures of the new FBI Field Office Building designed by Larry Speck of PageSoutherlandPage in a joint venture with Leo A Daly. Two cars paused as they exited the compound—both drivers reached for their phones—and before long three security guards and an agent, all armed, brought me inside the security booth and questioned me.
That was as close as I got to an actual tour of the building.
The new FBI building is a part of the General Service Administration’s Design Excellence program, where the federal government hires accomplished architects to design buildings emphasizing creativity. The intent is to attract the admiring public, so this wasn't the reception I expected. If the architect does a job right the public will drop by to admire the building, maybe even take a photo. After all there are no signs prohibiting such behavior. Yet even from a public right of way across the street, this is a privilege that is evidently not respected.
As I was told by the detaining agent, “It’s different here.”
Architecturally at least, the new building, located on Justice Park at Highway 290 and 43rd street, is a good thing. Though one must question the thinking behind putting one of the most insular and secretive government departments in a structure that attracts notice, this building certainly deserves the attention of the curious.
Slowed by security reevaluations in a post-9/11 world, the building has been a long time in the making. Many in my profession have watched eagerly as it slowly emerged. The light color of the metal skin in combination with a glass screen that covers the building has led some to wonder if it remains unfinished.
Contrary to popular rumor, the green glass is not “blast-proof.” But it performs an important function—cutting down the direct exposure of the sun on the face of the building. The glass, along with reflective aluminum, contributes substantially to keeping the building cool. This double-skin technique is common in more architecturally progressive regions and should be utilized more in Houston if it can cut the temperature 15-20 degrees as calculated.
Though the voids in the glass are “compositional” and expose the building behind the screen, brief reflection suggests that those within would prefer no indication of what is going on inside, and that these elements, much to the chagrin of functionalists, must remain an aesthetic gesture.
But this compositional quality is exactly what should be celebrated about this building. I am thankful that the government sees value in design. Instead of building another banal, inward-looking and isolated building, someone decided that there was added value in making it an attractive part of the community.
Now only if the inhabitants would feel the same way.David Cameron 'piggate' allegations: PM 'will not dignify' claims he put genitals in pig's mouth BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Prime Minister David Cameron will not "dignify" allegations that he once "inserted a private part of his anatomy" into a dead pig's mouth with a response, Downing Street has said. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron-piggate-allegations-pm-will-not-dignify-claims-he-put-genitals-in-pigs-mouth-31545768.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article31544607.ece/add8a/AUTOCROP/h342/David%20Cameron%20andrew%20parsons%20PA.jpg
Email
Prime Minister David Cameron will not "dignify" allegations that he once "inserted a private part of his anatomy" into a dead pig's mouth with a response, Downing Street has said.
Extracts from the inflammatory book included claims that he smoked cannabis with friends, allowed cocaine in his London home and alleged that he misled the public over the non-dom status of Lord Ashcroft, a prolific Tory donor.
"If this was just a revenge job then Lord Ashcroft and I could have published it before the election" #wato https://t.co/drKsEp3gF7 — The World at One (@BBCWorldatOne) September 21, 2015
However the Prime Minister's spokeswoman said: “I’m not intending to dignify this book by offering any comment or any PM reaction to it."
She added that the author "has set out his reasons for writing it,” suggesting the Prime Minister views the book as an act of revenge for his refusal to offer Lord Ashcroft a top job when he entered Downing Street in 2010.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, also refused to comment on the extraordinary claims, published in a new biography of the Prime Minister by the former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott, Call Me Dave.
The Chancellor, asked by reporters during his trip to China what he made of the claims, simply said: "I haven't seen that book".
Lord Ashcroft and Mr Cameron fell out after the Tory leader failed to make good on an alleged promise to give Lord Ashcroft a top job once he became Prime Minister in 2010. The new biography is seen by some as an act of revenge after years of feuding between the pair.
The book accuses David Cameron of being part of a debauched group called the Piers Gaveston Society, as well as the infamous Bullingdon Club, during his time at Oxford.
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Valentine Guinness, the founder of the Piers Gaveston Society, told The Spectator on Monday: "It is a ridiculous story. As far as I know David Cameron was never a member of the Piers Gaveston Society, so there would have been no need for an initiation ceremony. He may well have attended one of their parties, but the pig’s head story is purely malicious gossip."
Lord Ashcroft and the book's co-author, Isabel Oakeshott, the former Sunday Times political editor, wrote that an unnamed “distinguished Oxford contemporary”, who is now an MP, recalled how Mr Cameron took part in an “outrageous” initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event.
“His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth,” an excerpt published by the Daily Mail claimed. However, the MP reportedly states that he had not seen any evidence himself and that it could be a case of mistaken identity.
The book also contains allegations that smoked cannabis with university friends who nicknamed themselves the "Flam Club", and later later allowed cocaine at his home in London.
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister told The Independent: “It’s a no comment from us. On any of it.”
Few sitting MPs have commented on the story but the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, wrote on Twitter: "I've never been more pleased to be a vegetarian."
Former Conservative MP Louise Mensch emphasised that the claims were unproven and characterised the story as: “I didn't see anything – but a mystery bloke has a photo.”
She added: “I'm sorry, Corbyn fans. Cam just didn't Kermit the Crime.”
Others suggested that the unnamed source may be trying to damage Mr Cameron’s reputation during his second term as Prime Minister.
However perhaps more damaging politically is the suggestion that he knew in 2009 that Lord Ashcroft, a major Conservative party donor, had “non dom” status and therefore did not pay UK tax on overseas earnings.
In March 2010, after it was publicly revealed that Lord Ashcroft was a non dom, there were claims he was attempting to influence a British election while keeping his assets abroad.
When the story broke, Mr Cameron’s spokesman said the Prime Minister had only known for a month, but Lord Ashcroft’s book claims he was made aware the year before.
Mr Cameron has refused to say whether he took drugs at university, only insisting he had not taken cocaine since becoming an MP in 2001. In an interview after being elected leader of the Conservative party in 2005, he said: “What is private in the past should remain private.”
It is not the first time he has faced claims he smoked cannabis at university. Mr Cameron would not comment to claims made in a 2007 biography that he was grounded from Eton as a 15-year-old after being caught smoking weed.
George Osborne defended him at the time, insisting the public did not care what political leaders got up to during their youth.
“It's not been denied by David, but he's also said that we are not in the business of saying that politicians can't have a private life before they come into politics,” Mr Osborne said.
Independent
Independent News ServiceThe Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice issue of Empire magazine doesn’t go on sale until tomorrow, but subscribers have already received an early copy. Comic Book Movie has been flipping through the pages, and have provided great info and scans for those of us who are waiting for it to hit newsstands.
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“Initially I thought, ‘I’m older, it doesn’t seem like the right sort of fit for me,'” Ben Affleck explained. “Then Zack pitched me his concept for this older, more broken, kind of f*cked up Batman. It was something we haven’t seen. We have seen that Batman is willing to cross the line to protect people. That vigilantism has been a part of his character all along, and we are tapping into that mentality when faced by something as potentially as deadly a Superman.”
Director Zack Snyder also commented on Ben Affleck playing an older Batman than we’ve seen on screen before. “We are playing him 45 or 46, he has been Batman for 20 years. All the history is there. Was there a Robin at one time? Possibly.”
Obviously this interview was done before the Comic-Con trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released. We all saw the Robin costume hanging in the Batcave with the Joker’s graffiti all over it.
The Empire feature also reveals that Batman has a history with The Joker, Harley Quinn, and the rest of the Suicide Squad. In fact, he’s the one who captured them all and put them in the prison that we see in the Suicide Squad trailer.
There are also some great new images in the latest issue of Empire. I’ve added some from the iPad edition while we wait for hi-res versions from Warner Bros..
SOURCE: Empire (via Comic Book Movie)Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James (23) passes against Orlando Magic's Tobias Harris (12) in the first half of an NBA basketball game Monday, Nov. 23, 2015, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak) (Photo: The Associated Press)
CLEVELAND (AP) — Make room, Big O.
LeBron James joined Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson as the only players in NBA history to rank in the Top 25 in points and assists.
With his fifth assist Monday night against Orlando, James pulled into the elite company of Robertson, the legendary "Big O," who finished with 26,710 points and 9,887 assists. James entered the game needing 21 points to pass Reggie Miller (25,279) for 18th on the career scoring list. Robertson is 11th.
James reached the milestone with 5:00 left in the second quarter. The Cavaliers' star drove the lane, jumped and made a quick pass into the corner to Kevin Love, who knocked down a 3-pointer. It moved James past Norm Nixon (6,386) for 25th on the assist list.
Before the game, Magic coach Scott Skiles, who holds the NBA record with 30 assists in a game, said James is more like Robertson and Magic Johnson than Michael Jordan, the player with whom he is most often compared.
"Every time there's a young great player everybody talks about Michael, but to me he's always been more like a Magic (Johnson) or an Oscar-type player because of his vision," Skiles said. "That's what makes it so difficult. If you think you're going to give him a steady diet of running and double teaming him, he's going to carve you up. He's going to find everybody, find the open man."
Skiles marvels at how James can take over any game.
"The really great players play at the pace they want to play at in the game," Skiles said. "It could be fast for a while. It could be kind of slow for a while. It could be they're in the post. It could be they run pick and rolls. It's very, very difficult to get them out of their pace. There are a lot of talented guys that can't go all the way into that upper echelon because they haven't quite got that part mastered — but he does.
"He's going to play the game the way he wants to play it, but his vision certainly sets him apart from a lot of the great players."
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Anonymous hacktivist breached a government of Chile website and leaked login details of officials in support of student protests against the government’s education policy.
The online hacktivist Anonymous breached into the official website of Chile’s National Municipal Information System and leaked login credentials of thousands of officials in support of students protesting against government education policy and against the police brutality on students.
The attack was conducted under the banners of OpChile and OpMarchaestudiantil.
[must url=”https://www.hackread.com/anonymous-world-trade-org-hacked-data-leak/”]Anonymous Hacks World Trade Organization, Leaks Personal Data Of Thousands Of Officials[/must]
Anonymous hacker behind this breach goes with the Twitter handle of CyberBloc and while talking to HackRead, we were told that the breach is in support of 18-year-old Exequiel Borbaran and 25-year-old Diego Guzman who were shot to death in a protest against the government.
After scanning the data, we have found it to be legit and never been leaked on the Internet before. The leaked data includes full names, email addresses, password hashes and telephone numbers.
The hacktivist also claims to deface the National Municipal Information System website. However, at the moment the site shows a black page with no content.
[must url=”https://www.hackread.com/anonymous-hacks-animal-abuse-websites/”]Anonymous Hacks And Removes X-Rated Animal Abuse Websites[/must]
A tweet from Anonymous regarding the breach:
Link of the supposedly defaced website along with its zone-h mirror is available below. In case of fake defacement, the mirror will be automatically removed by zone-h.
http://www.sinim.gov.cl
http://zone-h.org/mirror/id/24328856
Stay tuned for more..!This cheatsheet glances over some of the common syntax of F# 3.0. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggested additions, please open an issue or send a pull request to https://github.com/dungpa/fsharp-cheatsheet.
Comments
Block comments are placed between (* and *). Line comments start from // and continue until the end of the line.
(* This is block comment *) // And this is line comment
XML doc comments come after /// allowing us to use XML tags to generate documentation.
/// The `let` keyword defines an (immutable) value let result = 1 + 1 = 2
Strings
F# string type is an alias for System.String type.
/// Create a string using string concatenation let hello = "Hello" + " World"
Use verbatim strings preceded by @ symbol to avoid escaping control characters (except escaping " by "" ).
let verbatimXml = @"<book title=""Paradise Lost"">"
We don't even have to escape " with triple-quoted strings.
let tripleXml = """<book title="Paradise Lost">"""
Backslash strings indent string contents by stripping leading spaces.
let poem = "The lesser world was daubed
\ By a colorist of modest skill
\ A master limned you in the finest inks
\ And with a fresh-cut quill."
Basic Types and Literals
Most numeric types have associated suffixes, e.g., uy for unsigned 8-bit integers and L for signed 64-bit integer.
let b, i, l = 86uy, 86, 86L val b : byte = 86uy val i : int = 86 val l : int64 = 86L
Other common examples are F or f for 32-bit floating-point numbers, M or m for decimals, and I for big integers.
let s, f, d, bi = 4.14F, 4.14, 0.7833M, 9999I val s : float32 = 4.14f val f : float = 4.14 val d |
rel shows ended a long time ago. They weren't cool in the 19th century, and no one's asked for a comeback. So stick to keeping your skin its actual colour. Thanks.
3. Any type of Dashiki costume (unless you're African, or of African ancestry)
Black culture and pride ≠ costume. Simple as that.
4. "Gorgeous Fuchsia Geisha"
Geishas are female Japanese entertainers with a deep history rooted within the Asian nation's traditions. So again, cultures are not costumes.
5. "Sexy Eskimo"
The term "Eskimo" is extremely offensive to Inuit peoples. So there's red flag number one when it comes to this type of Halloween attire. On top of that, the costume looks absolutely nothing like this group's dress, therefore...
6. "Seductive Spanish Dancer"
Calavera, otherwise known as sugar skull makeup, is associated with Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, according to Latina.com. The Mexican spiritual holiday is a celebration of loved ones who have passed away, and has nothing to do with being "seductive."
7. "Arab Costume"
Other than the fact that the term "Arab" dismisses the many cultural differences of Middle Eastern groups, Islamophobia is real. And while some may think wearing this costume is funny, those who deal with the discrimination probably aren't going to feel the same way.
8. Donald Trump
Why would you want to dress up as "a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther" for Halloween?
9. "Pregnant Nun"
This is offensive for pretty obvious reasons. Let's respect people's religious choices, shall we?
10. "Anna Rexia"
Why on earth would anyone make a costume of a serious eating disorder? Not cool.
11. "Tequila Bandito"
Yes. Let's dress up in a bootleg serape and pretend that all Mexican people do is drink Tequila. Or not. Definitely not.
12. "Funky Disco Diva"
Being a "disco diva" is OK, but wearing an afro isn't (unless this is how your actual hair grows from your scalp). Black people get enough grief from society about wearing their natural hair, so it's not fair that others can wear it as a costume and take it off at the end of the night. Leave the hairstyle for those who can rock it naturally.
13. "Primitive Troglodyte African Leopard Dress"
Primitive...troglodyte...African...leopard...dress. Yeah, we're going to just go ahead and suggest you definitely pass up on this one.
14. "Kids China Boy Costume"
Yikes. Let's not get children involved in this mess, please.
15. "Sexy Harambe"
found my halloween costume pic.twitter.com/LQBQnsJHMw — RACHEL WILLIS (@asaprach) September 2, 2016
The story of Harambe the gorilla set the Internet ablaze earlier this summer after a small child fell into his entrapment. For the sake of the child's safety, officials fatally shot the primate, which caused quite a bit of controversy. But whether you agree with the decision to kill the animal or not, this case made a lot of people, parents and animal lovers alike, very upset. So please, just don't even go there, because there's nothing "sexy" about it.
There you have it, folks. While there are definitely way more costumes out there that people should avoid, let's hope more of us will use some better judgement this year and aim to acknowledge that there's a plethora of things to dress up as that won't get anyone upset.
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Also on HuffPostWashington, October 19
Majority of Indian-Americans prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump as their choice for the next US President when it comes to issues of immigration, religious freedom and outsourcing, a Silicon Valley-based think-tank has said.
However, the New York-based billionaire has an edge over Clinton when it comes to India-specific foreign policy of the United States and the fight against terrorism, the Indian-American think-tank said on Tuesday quoting its recent survey.
(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)
Most of the respondents preferred Clinton over Trump on immigration (59 to 29 per cent), religious freedom (67 to 27 per cent), outsourcing (52 to 22 per cent) and trust issues (40 to 17 per cent), the Foundation of India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS-USA.org) said while releasing the results of the survey carried out on Indian-Americans about their opinions on the two US presidential candidates.
Trump fared a little better against Clinton over terrorism (48 to 43 per cent) and India-specific strategic alliances (47 to 40 per cent) with respect to countries like Pakistan, China, Russia, among others.
FIIDS is a US think-tank based working on dialogues and research-related socio-economic and geo-political issues and policy matters related to India and the Indian diaspora.
An overwhelming majority of the respondents were naturalised citizens (89 per cent) and male (82 per cent). PTILines at DMV locations across the state were long when the program opened in January.
New information released Friday from the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows the agency has received nearly twice the number of applications for driver licenses from undocumented immigrants as projected.
As of March 27, 2015, nearly half a million people have applied for the license under AB 60 which went into effect earlier this year. Here’s a look at the numbers:
493,998 Total number of applications for a driver license
Total number of applications for a driver license 448,693 Applicants with necessary documents to obtain a license without further review
Applicants with necessary documents to obtain a license without further review 203,000 Approximate number who have obtained a license
Approximate number who have obtained a license 28,163 Applicants requiring additional review (duplicate records or other administrative process)
Applicants requiring additional review (duplicate records or other administrative process) 17,142 Applicants without necessary documents who can schedule a second review
DMV Director Jean Shiomoto said the agency had expected to reach the half-million milestone in July 2015.
California DMV Sees Rush for Driver's Licenses
The California DMV can start issuing driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants now and there was a rush to San Diego's offices on Jan. 2, 2015. NBC 7's Elena Gomez reports on the influx. (Published Friday, Jan. 2, 2015)
California is one of 10 states that now provide licenses to immigrants in the country illegally. The licenses issued to immigrants without legal status will include a distinctive marking and are not considered a valid form of federal identification.
Before the law went into effect, it was estimated that approximately 1.4 million people would apply over the next three years.
Immigrant advocates have cheered the licenses as a way to integrate immigrants who must drive to work and shuttle children to school.
Critics have questioned state officials' ability to verify the identity of foreign applicants, citing security concerns.
In preparation for the added workflow, the DMV opened four locations in San Diego County on Saturdays: Clairmont, Chula Vista, San Ysidro and El Cajon.QPR on brink of stunning £10m deal to bring Spurs defender Dawson to Loftus Road
Michael Dawson will join Queens Park Rangers if he passes a medical in a deal that could rise to £10million.
Dawson, Tottenham captain under Harry Redknapp, will cost an initial £8m plus bonuses for appearances and success.
Sportsmail revealed on Tuesday how Loftus Road boss Mark Hughes was hoping to capitalise on the uncertainty over the central defender’s future at White Hart Lane by launching a surprise move.
Wanted man: Michael Dawson is being targeted by QPR
He sees Dawson, 28, as a leader and a potential skipper.
The club agreed a deal after an initial bid of £7m was turned down. It is believed Nottingham Forest have a 10 per cent sell-on clause in Dawson’s contract and so will enjoy a windfall of around £800,000.
Dawson was left out of Tottenham’s squad for Saturday’s opening day loss at Newcastle, raising questions over his future under new Spurs manager Andre Villas-Boas. The Portuguese is believed to want quicker players.
QPR could do with bolstering a defence who let in five goals at home against Swansea at the weekend..
Rangers, who have agreed a fee with Cardiff for defender Matt Connolly, expect midfielder Joey Barton to finalise his loan to Marseille this week.
Out for more: QPR boss Mark Hughes
Spurs’ central defensive options were further depleted on Tuesday when Sebastien Bassong signed for Norwich City on a three-year-deal. The Cameroon defender had been deemed surplus to requirements by Villas-Boas.
Norwich manager Chris Hughton said: ‘Sebastien is a player I have known well since my time at Newcastle and I’m delighted to have brought in someone with the Premier League experience he has.’As the owner of Riot Games and League of Legends, Tencent Games has literally a stranglehold over the MOBA genre globally. But the company is not resting its laurels in the lucrative China market, with a new MOBA game teased for reveal at its upcoming annual event.
After going through the handful of MOBA games we have in the western market, they don’t seem to relate to any existing title. The search also dawned on me that there really aren’t many mainstream MOBA games out there.
Update: This is NOT Dota 2, as Dota 2 China is signed by Perfect World.
A famous China industry veteran is claiming that RGame is a new MOBA developed by ex-employees of Blizzard who worked on Warcraft 3 and also folks from Electronic Arts (EA).Adelaide researchers believe a vaccine they have developed for the Chikungunya virus could be adapted to help combat the Zika virus.
For the past four years, a team from the University of South Australia have been working with biotech company Sementis to develop a vaccine for the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus.
With pre-clinical studies showing the vaccine to be 100 percent effective, they believe it could – if adapted – prove a game changer in the battle against what could be the next global health epidemic.
“We think we're in a good position. We could be among the frontrunners for not only Zika virus but other emerging infectious diseases,” researcher professor John Hayball said.
“I think the work we've done with Chikungunya virus proves that our approach is rapid and effective and I think we're going to apply this in the case of the Zika virus.”
The researchers hope to extract genes from the Zika virus to create a safer version, which – when inserted in the body – would produce antibodies and create immunity.
The claim comes amid global concern over the virus, already believed to have spread to 23 countries, linked to serious complications including birth defects in Brazil.
Researchers are planning to start pre-clinical lab based experiments immediately, but it could still be years until an approved vaccine is developed and made available to the public.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2019Why you should build your business around your passion.
Should I follow my passion to start a business? That is the question from one of the visitors to this website. If he had sent the question as a comment, I would have approved it and responded on the website so that other people can read. Having sent it as a mail, I Felt I have the responsibility to reply him via this article. While I may not be able to reply all the mails I receive individually, what I do is to look for common questions and try as much as possible to publish an article that answers the question. This particular question of whether one needs to follow his passion when starting a business actually caught my attention. Therefore, I will like to give my own opinion below.
Before answering the question, I will like to ask this question first: Why do you want to start a business? People start a business for different reasons. Some of the reasons people start a business are:
To make money To leave legacy for children To enjoy freedom To live a fulfilled life
Read Also: How to Get and Start Entrepreneur Ideas while Working Full Time
The list can go on and on. But I like to focus on the first point. If your main objective for starting a business is to make money, I will say you may not need to follow your passion. You can decide to do things that are not comfortable for you as a person to make money. Please, I am only talking about legitimate ventures. After all, following your passion is not a guaranty that you will make money. There are situations where your passion may not be marketable. If there is no enough market for what you have passion for, there will be no justification for starting a business that focuses on the passion. That is when the sole objective for starting the business is to make money. Personally, I will advise anybody considering starting a business to follow his passion for the following reasons:
Fulfilment: I don’t know what success may mean to you. One thing I know is that money does not bring fulfilment. If it does, you will not hear about millionaires committing suicide. Amassing wealth without sense of fulfilment will lead to more frustration. It is not worth it to labour and labour doing what you don’t enjoy, all in the name of money. Eventually when the money comes, you will still realise there is a vacuum. It will be like the Preacher who said that vanity upon vanity, all is vanity. If you pursue the business you are passionate about, there is greater probability that such business will give you fulfilment.
Read Also: How To Choose The Right Small Business Idea
Productivity: I wonder how one can be very productive doing what he does not have passion for. You may be forcing yourself to do the work; the work will not be as natural to you as someone doing what he likes. I have shared my experience about when I was still working as an employee. I realised that my productivity level was dwindling gradually. Naturally, I am not lazy. But it doesn’t matter how I tried to force myself doing the job, I was not making head way as I expected. It got to the point that I realised that I was not helping myself by holding on to the job. That was how I decided to quit so that I could follow my passion. Though it was very challenging, the truth is that I enjoy what I do now.
Boredom: Have you ever get bored before? How did you feel then? Can you afford to continue living such a bored life? If you choose to start a business you are not passionate about, you may be signing up to a life full of boredom unknowingly. Of course, you may not know this initially but a time will come that the business will become so boring to you that you will wish you did not start it at all.
Obstacles: The path to entrepreneurship is full of obstacles. You will experience bumps such as rejections, failures, disappointments etc. There will be a lot of ups and downs. When the chips are down, it takes passion for one to be able to summon courage and continue with the business. If you do the business you don’t have passion for, you can easily give up in moments like this.
Read Also: How to Know Whether You Can Be an Entrepreneur
In conclusion, I still encourage budding entrepreneurs to start a business that they have passion for. It may seem that there is no enough market for it. But if you are truly passionate about the business idea, you will be creative. You can easily find a way of making the business profitable. It may requires that you bring in more features to the ideas in order to widen the market. Money is not enough motivation to start a business, you need passion When other things fail, it is the passion you have for the business that will keep you going.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The attempt by the U.S. Navy to use an anti-missile missile to shoot down a potentially hazardous satellite will cost between $40 million and $60 million, Pentagon officials told CNN on Friday.
A missile is launched from the Navy guided missile cruiser USS Shiloh during a 2006 test.
The missile alone costs almost $10 million, Lt. Gen. Carter Ham said at a Pentagon briefing. He declined to give an overall cost estimate.
"I think we're working with all the parties to [find] how much did it cost to modify the missiles, the fire control, that kind of business," he said.
Pentagon officials argue the effort is worth the expense because of the slim -- but real -- chance that the satellite's unused fuel, 1,000 pounds of toxic hydrazine, could land in a populated area.
Because the super-secret spy satellite malfunctioned immediately after launch in December 2006, its fuel tank is full, and it would probably survive re-entry and disperse harmful, even potentially deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields.
The missile will carry no warhead; the objective is to break the satellite apart through the force of impact alone, defense officials said. Learn more about the mission »
One Pentagon official -- who spoke on condition of anonymity because the planning for the operation remains classified -- told CNN that since early January, a Navy team, including 200 industry experts and scientists, has been working furiously to modify its sea-based Aegis missile defense system so it can shoot down a satellite in low orbit.
Don't Miss U.S. to shoot down errant satellite
U.S. to shoot down errant satellite More on satellite, missile that will shoot it down
Among the challenges is modifying sensors designed to detect the heat from an incoming warhead so they can spot the much-cooler satellite, which has no heat source and is warmed only by the sun's rays.
In addition, the official says, a floating X-band radar has to be modified to track the satellite's trajectory, and the "fire-control" systems on the Navy ships also needed modification.
No attempt will be made to shoot down the satellite until after the U.S. space shuttle lands next Wednesday.
"The window will open when the shuttle is on the ground," Ham said.
Pentagon officials say three missiles have been modified for the mission, so in theory, the Navy may get three shots at the satellite, although only one at a time.
"They want the period of a day or two to assess the effect of the first missile... to probably get an orbit or two, to get an understanding of what effect the first intercept had on the satellite before launching another interceptor," Ham said.
The Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie was chosen for the mission. It's fully equipped with sea-based missile defense systems, has long been the Navy's primary ship for the sea-based missile defense program and has the technology needed for the operation, officials said.
It will be accompanied by two destroyers --- the USS Decatur and the USS Russell -- at an undisclosed location in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator. The Decatur will feed trajectory information to the Erie, and the Russell will back up the Decatur.
Defense officials say the ships' radars and software were modified to track targets much faster than the ballistic missiles they were designed to track.
A host of ground-based radars, telescopes and sea-based radars will help determine if the satellite was hit. The Air Force also will have a plane in the air that can detect the release of hydrazine gas.
The USNS Observation Island, a ship that uses telemetry to monitor objects in space, will collect information on the satellite both before and after the missile launch.
The Navy will use its $9.5 million Standard Missile 3 in the shoot-down. The combined speed of the missile and satellite at impact is expected to be about 22,000 miles per hour.
The government started thinking about how to approach the satellite problem in December. And on January 4, President Bush and various senior officials agreed to begin planning for the shoot-down.
On Tuesday, the president approved the plan. E-mail to a friend
CNN's Mike Mount contributed to this report
All About U.S. Navy Activities • The PentagonA new study by the US Department of Labour has found that people currently in the most creative professions, including Designers, Musicians and Artists, came predominantly from richer parents.
The people in these creative professions were by far and away the most likely to be earning significantly less than their parents earned, usually no more than Janitors, Maids or Waiters. This study showed that therefore these creative professionals were experiencing the biggest drop in income, and by extension living standards, between what they were used to as children and how they would live as adults.
The study by the US Department of Labour (NLSY72) and analysed by the good people over at NPR tracked over 12,000 individuals and their household income (inflation adjusted), from 1979 when they were predominantly teenagers living with parents to 2010 when they were adults and gainfully employed.
What I find fascinating is the insight this information sheds on the legend of the struggling artist, who came from humble beginnings full of hardship. Now don’t get me wrong, those creative professionals from poorer backgrounds do definitely exist, but the evidence suggests that the vast majority of designers, artists and musicians nowadays actually came from very well-off families. In fact, most of them came from families who had a higher income than those who ended up becoming doctors (see the graph above).
So what does all of this information mean? There are two main discussion points which I believe need to be raised:
1. Is something preventing children from lower-incomes pursuing a life in the creative professions?
While it’s important to remember that creativity is a part of almost all businesses and professions, the ‘Creative Professions’ described in this study are predominantly artistic. And interest in the arts has been shown to develop throughout a child’s time at school. Their affinity towards considering a career in the arts will therefore be affected by their access to it, as well as the perception of its value.
There is a relationship between the amount of money available and the number / quality of art programmes, both in schools and in communities. Every year we hear about funding for art programmes being cut further as budgets get tighter. And richer / private schools often have much higher investment in their arts programmes than publicly-funded schools, with everything from their own performance halls to regular student art exhibits. So it is a fact that children from higher-income families who go to more expensive schools will be more surrounded in the art subjects.Suffolk Police Commissioner Timothy Sini holds a press conference following the discovery four young men's mutilated bodies in a Long Island park in April. (Getty)
Four suspected MS-13 gang members have been arrested in connection with the deaths of four teenagers, who were found butchered in a Long Island park in April.
According to federal court documents that were unsealed this week, Alexis Hernandez, Santos Leonel Ortiz-Flores and Omar Antonio Villalta, along with an unnamed juvenile, have been charged with the murders of Michael Lopez Banegas, 20, his cousin Jefferson Villalobos, 18, Justin Llivicura, 16, and Jorge Tigre, 18.
All four victims were found in Recreation Village Town Park in Central Islip on April 11th, and their bodies appeared to have been beaten to death and mutilated with machetes; at the time, Suffolk Police Commissioner Timothy Sini told reporters, "the manner in which they were killed is consistent with the modus operandi of MS-13." The killings prompted Governor Cuomo to create a "High Intensity Gang Unit" to aid Suffolk County police in combating MS-13.
The NY Times reports that two of the victims had come to the U.S. in order to escape gang violence in their native Honduras.
Yesterday, the three named defendants pleaded not guilty to murder charges in federal court in Central Islip. Authorities are reportedly investigating whether more alleged gang members may have been involved.
The arrests are eliciting mixed reactions among the victims' relatives, some of whom see them as a small step out of the darkness of loss. "I demand justice, what can I say," Bertha Ullaguari, Tigre's mother, told the Associated Press. "I want them to be tortured like my son was tortured."
Others say the arrests are bringing the pain back to the surface. "It’s like opening a wound again,” Marcelo Llivicura, the father of Justin, told the Times. "There’s nothing we can do, my son is gone. Still, there is the promise of justice. "I hope that they pay their debts," Llivicura added. They took the lives of these young boys just at the beginning of their own lives."
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York declined Gothamist's request for comment.The loss of a once popular road race from the UK cycling calendar is never a good thing, but a unique legacy has emerged from the ashes of one event in Scotland.
The demise of the Davie Bell Memorial Race in 2015 – a National ‘A’ event which had been running since 1966 – prompted the organiser to look for other ways to promote cycling.
Two years later, South Ayrshire now boasts the UK’s only “road cycling park”, a 15-square mile network of little-used roads that criss-cross a series of hills in South Carrick – about 10 miles south-east of Ayr – known as the “Ayrshire Alps”.
“South Ayrshire council had supported the race but were more interested in something that left a legacy,” says organiser Chris Johnson. “I’d had the idea of promoting the area as the road equivalent of a mountain bike trail centre, but it was hard to explain. In order to demonstrate the potential I built a basic Wordpress website and showed this to the team that had funded the race. They were really keen and helped set up a meeting for me to present the idea to the South Carrick community. Following this, the council committed approximately £5,000 to get my website professionally redesigned, and to commission the logo and map idea.”
The website now includes descriptions of the climbs of all 14 “Ayrshire Alps” – detailing their lengths and average gradients – with a “piste map” that categorises them as easy, moderate, challenging or difficult. There are also suggested itineraries, ranging from “The Shark” – 20 miles and two climbs – to the “Omnibus 8” – 88 miles and nine climbs The website also offers information about accommodation, food stops and public transport links offered in the local villages. There are plans to introduce French-style roadside markers indicating the average gradient every kilometre.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scenic route. Photograph: Trevor Ward
Johnson, along with local hotelier Rod Henderson, is also the brains behind the Ayr Burners cycling club, set up in 2014 with the emphasis on recreational, family-friendly cycling rather than racing. The club’s annual sportive – which consists of 60 or 40-mile routes through the area and this year takes place on 27 August – raises money to promote cycling.
Some of that money, together with funding from the Ayr Active Travel Hub, has been used to produce pocket maps of the routes, which will be available to visiting cyclists from May.
Johnson, a former youth racer who now promotes cycling as a sustainable travel choice for Cycling Scotland, is full of praise for the support received from the local council.
“With local elections coming up again this year we hope to engage with the new council to showcase the economic potential of the park, and how the project aligns with local tourism and community objectives,” he says. An increase in the number of riders visiting the Ayrshire Alps has been recorded on the performance analysis website Strava, he says.
I was one of those riders when I visited the area for the first time at the end of last year, and was blown away by how quiet and remote the roads seemed, despite being less than 15 miles from the busy coastal town of Ayr.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The route is remote and quiet. Photograph: Trevor Ward
I did a four-hour ride that took me over six of the climbs. In that time, I barely saw another vehicle, and there were long stretches, particularly through the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park and over Tairlaw – the highest Alp at 433 metres – and Nic O Balloch – one of the steepest with an average gradient of 7.6% – where the only signs of civilisation were the occasional farmhouse or a flickering solitary bar on my mobile phone.
Along the way, I paid my respects at the Davie Bell memorial at the foot of the Tairlaw. It’s fitting that the park should be a legacy from the race that bore his name, as Bell is considered the forefather of cycling in these parts. In the 1930s and ‘40s, his weekly column in the Ayrshire Post under the byline The Highway Man is credited with encouraging readers to take up cycling.
“If I rest, I rust”, was his motto.Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech yesterday all about the fight against ISIS in the wake of the Paris attacks. While most of the attention (quite reasonably so) on the speech was about her plan to deal with ISIS, as well as her comments on the ridiculous political hot potato of how to deal with Syrian refugees, she still used the opportunity to align herself with the idiotic side of the encryption debate, suggesting that Silicon Valley has to somehow “fix” the issue of law enforcement wanting to see everything. Here’s what she said:
Another challenge is how to strike the right balance of protecting privacy and security. Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem. We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack. On the other hand, we know there are legitimate concerns about government intrusion, network security, and creating new vulnerabilities that bad actors can and would exploit. So we need Silicon Valley not to view government as its adversary. We need to challenge our best minds in the private sector to work with our best minds in the public sector to develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy. Now is the time to solve this problem, not after the next attack.
It does not. Weakening encryption undermines both security and privacy. There’s no “balance” to be had here. You want to maximize both security and privacy and the way you do that is with strong encryption.
Also, the bit about “Silicon Valley” has to “not view government as its adversary” is another bullshit line that has been favored by James Comey and others, who keep insisting that when technologists explain to him that backdooring encryption in a manner that only “the good guys” can use it is impossible that they really mean they haven’t tried hard enough. Once again, that’s not it. What pretty much the entire tech community has been saying is that it’s impossible to create such a thing without undermining the whole thing and making everyone less safe. Hell, here’s security expert Steve Bellovin explaining this pretty clearly. He goes step by step through why it won’t work, why it makes things more dangerous, why it will be abused, and why it will put us all at risk.
And the reason that Silicon Valley views the government as adversaries is because speeches like Clinton’s sets them up that way. Her speech, like Comeys’ past speeches are directly setting up the government as an adversary to good computer security, asking technologists to undermine their own creations and make everyone less safe for some unclear amorphous belief that it might make a few people more safe at some point in the future. So, the answer isn’t scolding Silicon Valley as Hillary has chosen to do, but rather understanding reality, and recognizing that what she is directly advocating for is to harm the safety of Americans and others around the globe.
This raise serious questions about who is advising Clinton on tech policy. When she was at the State Department, it actually did a lot of really good things on encryption and protecting communications of people around the globe. It’s pretty ridiculous for Clinton to undermine her own efforts with such a dumb statement in this speech.For those who've already seen or own the movie, check out the bonus materials on their own! (This package does not include the film.)
a heist comedy about the love of film
Miles, a headstrong but naive film buff, finally ends his job search with a gig for a local film studio. He's overjoyed… until he realizes the Z-grade company churns out nothing but laughably schlocky cinematic messes. After stealing a copy of the latest production's script and secretly making a few critical revisions, Miles recruits key members of the disillusioned crew to his cause in filming a better version of the troubled film behind their director's back. Split down the middle between a fast-paced comedy and a fun heist flick, Coup de Cinema is a heartfelt and hilarious look at the trials of guerrilla filmmaking — and how much you're willing to risk for a renewed sense of purpose. (93 minutes, not rated.)THOMPSON: For years I've suggested that racism was in decline and yeah, there are some, you know, incidents that still happen with regards to racism, but most of the claims I've said for years, well, they're not really real. But I realize now that I was wrong. For I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans. The health care bill the president just singed into law includes a 10 percent tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don't think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United States of America -- a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism -- why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.You can read previews for Arsenal, Bournemouth, Brighton, Burnley, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton, Huddersfield, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle, Southampton, Stoke, Swansea City, Watford, West Brom and West Ham.
In a world where ‘winning the transfer window’ is an actual thing discussed by actual people, it is easy to forget that there might be another way. Yet the problem with being the only elite coach in the Premier League to focus on keeping, developing and improving what he has is that it puts all the spotlights squarely on Mauricio Pochettino.
Pochettino is the poster boy for this different strategy, one which involves keeping a core of highly motivated key players and using the understanding and goodwill created between them to produce team performances greater than the sum of the individual parts. If a ridiculous offer does come in for a key player who has a strong competitor in his position, you sell. That is how you fund the stadium build. In taking Tottenham into the top four with a negative net spend and a far lower wage bill than their rivals, Pochettino deserves huge praise.
Yet there is a growing section of Tottenham’s support who are beginning to question Tottenham’s dealings this summer. While nobody wants to splash vast sums of money, there is a middle ground between spending nothing and spending everything. There is still no viable replacement should Harry Kane get injured, still no adequate back-up so that Christian Eriksen doesn’t have to play a ludicrous amount of matches, and still doubts about the fitness of Danny Rose and ability of Kieran Trippier.
The truth is that Pochettino is in the ground between rock and hard place, even if Daniel Levy is willing to loosen the pursestrings. Tottenham are in the unique position of having a high number of irreplaceable key players, who the club would have no hope replacing. Not only does that mean they should bat away even high offers for players such as Eric Dier, but it also makes signing players difficult. When you can’t guarantee a player a first-team place and you can’t guarantee him a high wage, you quickly become unattractive.
The halfway house solution seems to be to reject any notion that you will buy players, and then buy Ross Barkley for £25m towards the end of the window. It certainly makes more sense that last year’s version, doing exactly the same but for Moussa Sissoko and £5m more.
There really are very few reasons why Tottenham shouldn’t again enjoy a wonderful season, albeit one in which Pochettino will be expected to reach a domestic final and Spurs progress out of their Champions League group. The Wembley factor is clearly an issue, but Tottenham should be more used to those surroundings than any of their opponents.
Most importantly, Tottenham’s 2017/18 has wider consequences for the Premier League, the litmus test of their holistic approach. Should Pochettino’s team again thrive amongst some of the most expensive squads the game has ever seen, it can be a blueprint for others to follow. Should Tottenham drop out of the top four and back into the Europa League pack, both owner and manager will be told that only money makes this world go round.
Fan view
Chris Miller: After a strong end to the season, Spurs fans went into the summer brimming with bravado and optimistic about the inevitable title challenge that the club would mount next season. Some of that still exists if you speak to the right people, but transfer window anxieties are at a particular high just now; rival clubs’ enormous spending has led to a sense of ‘falling behind’.
In truth Pochettino won’t let this happen, at least without a fight. He is a demanding coach with high expectations of his players and will want further improvement on last year, both individually and collectively. Daniel Levy will most likely back him… eventually. But on his terms, and that means that deals will be later than a manager might want and integration might be delayed.
I think there’s a realisation amongst the fanbase that playing at Wembley could very well impact the team over the course of the season, but at the very least Pochettino will want to maintain Champions League qualification and add a trophy this year.
Possible line up
Major transfers
IN:
OUT: Kyle Walker (Manchester City, £51m), Federico Fazio (Roma, £2.6m), Clinton N’Jie (Marseille, £6m), Luke McGee (Portsmouth, undisclosed), Filip Lesniak (Aalborg, free)
Pre-season results
July 23: Paris St Germain 2-4 Tottenham (Eriksen, Dier, Alderweireld, Kane)
July 26: Tottenham 2-3 Roma (Winks, Janssen)
July 29: Manchester City 3-0 Tottenham
Aug 5: Juventus (Wembley)
Predictions
Matt Stanger: 6th. I’m looking forward to being reminded of this |
Alexander, 1979, p. 368)
…then, 33 years later:
“To grasp the nature of the subtle structure [of wholeness] fully, we must learn to avoid the danger of trying to see [wholes] made up of parts. Present-day conventional wisdom (perhaps Cartesian and mechanistic in origin) tells us that everything is made of parts. In particular, people believe today that every whole is made of parts. The key aspect of this belief is the idea that the parts come ‘before’ the whole, in short, the parts exist as elements of some kind, which are then brought into relationship with one another, or combined, and a [whole] is ‘created’ out of these parts and their combinations as a result.
I believe accurate understanding of wholeness is quite different.” (Alexander, 2002a, p. 86)
Now consider this statement, which starts to clarify what he means by quite different:
“This [approach to design] is a differentiating process.
It views design as a sequence of acts of complexification; structure is injected into the whole by operating on the whole and crinkling it, not by adding little parts to one another. In the process of differentiation, the whole gives birth to its parts: the parts appear as folds in a cloth of three dimensional space which is gradually crinkled. The form of the whole, and the parts, come into being simultaneously.
The image of the differentiating process is the growth of an embryo.
It starts as a single cell. The cell grows into a ball of cells. Then, through a series of differentiations, each building on the last, the structure becomes more and more complex, until a finished human being is formed.
The first thing that happens is that this ball gets an inside, a middle layer, and an outside: the endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm, which will later turn into skeleton, flesh, and skin, respectively.
Then this ball of cells with three layers gets an axis. The axis is laid down in the endoderm, and will become the spine of the finished person.
Then this ball, with an axis, gets a head at one end.
Later, the secondary structures, eyes, limbs, develop in relation to the spinal axis and the head.
And so on. At every stage of development, new structure is laid down, on the basis of the structure which has been laid down so far. The process of development is, in essence, a sequence of operations, each one of which differentiates the structure which has been laid down by the previous operations” (Alexander, 1979, p. 370-371)
So how might this apply in practice to a given design process? As Alexander then explains:
“At the beginning of a design process, you may have an idea that the open space should be ‘more or less over here,’ and the building ‘more or less over there.’ Neither the pattern for ‘open space’ nor the pattern for ‘building’ is very precisely defined at this stage. They are like two clouds, whose size is imprecise, and with imprecise edges. It is not even perfectly certain, at this stage, that the cloud called ‘open space’ will be entirely open—nor that the cloud called building will be entirely roofed. What is happening, is that you place these two clouds, roughly, at this stage of the design, with the full understanding that the design is accurate only to within the order of magnitude of the clouds themselves, and that all kinds of details which are smaller in scale, may be changed later.
Later in the process, you may be placing the ‘entrance’ to the building. Again, the pattern which you call the entrance is a cloudy volume, about the right size, clear enough so that you can pin point its location, with respect to other larger clouds, and to show its relations to the things next to it, but no more exact than that.
And, yet another stage in the design process, you may place a column. This column has a height, and a rough size—but again, at the time you place it first, it has little more. Later, you make the column more exact, by placing the edges of the column, its reinforcing bars, its foundation, and so on.
Whenever we want to make one of these vague cloudy patterns more precise, we do it by placing other smaller patterns, which define its edge and interior.
Each pattern is an operator which differentiates space: that is it creates distinctions where no distinction was before (Alexander, 1979, p. 372-373)
I find it curious that permaculture authors (including those cited above) don’t acknowledge Alexander’s critique of their core understanding of design, not to mention his extensively documented and detailed attempts to flesh out and apply his alternative understanding.
Don’t these seem like worthwhile ideas to explore and try out? The idea of design as a differentiating process? The idea of design as a program or sequence of injecting structure into a whole, moving from larger wholes toward smaller wholes? The idea that each smaller whole is placed, shaped, oriented and sized according to its relation to the wholes it sits within, and the wholes that surround it and overlap with it? Indeed, how else are we supposed to design from patterns to details?
Same End, Different Means
As it happens, Alexander’s approach and the permaculture approach agree on the end they are aiming for. Compare Alexander’s…
“…it is important that we, as a people on Earth, learn to create our towns, buildings and landscapes so that they too – like nature – are living structures, and that so our artificial world is then a nature-like system” (Alexander, 2002b, p. xvi)
…with the two definitions of permaculture this article started with.
While permaculture focuses more on the agricultural productivity of such systems and Alexander more on the built environment, there is a common striving toward landscapes or systems with deep natural character (i.e., that “mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature” in the statement from Holmgren, or that are “living structures” in Alexander’s).
Going further, both Alexander and permaculture share the contention that we can only approach such systems through a process of conscious design.
The two approaches part company, however, when it comes to specifying the essence of this process – the means to the end.
For permaculture, systems and landscapes with the character of nature are to be achieved by a process of assembling or combining parts or elements into whole systems:
For Alexander, systems and landscapes with the character of nature are achieved by a process of differentiating wholes into parts, as inspired by the process by which an organism comes into existence:
Summary & Conclusion
Permaculturalists have formulated principles and patterns intended to capture key aspects of healthy natural ecosystems. They have then attempted to mimic these principles and patterns in the systems they design.
Details aside, a common theme to how design is defined in the permaculture literature is as a process of element assembly.
This is a process of starting with parts then creating wholes by addition.
Christopher Alexander argues that if we want to mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, we must understand and copy the patterns and relationships inside the process by which nature produces these patterns. We need to mimic the means as well as the ends.
He then proposes that the key to nature-mimicking design process is differentiation:
“The key to complex adaptation… lies in the concept of differentiation. This is a process of dividing and differentiating a whole to get the parts, rather than adding parts together to get a whole” (Alexander, 2002b, p. 197)
This is a process of starting with wholes then creating parts by differentiation.
This radically different understanding of what sound design process is challenges a core idea in permaculture.
I encourage permaculturalists (including myself) to wholeheartedly accept this challenge. Let us engage with it, understand it, discuss it, try it out, reach some sort of clarity on what we make of it, and whether we see any value in it.
Further, let us not forget that this challenge comes not from someone totally outside or foreign to permaculture. A small portion of Alexander’s thought and writing has already infused and enriched permaculture. Yet somehow we have missed perhaps the most important thing he has to offer us. In other words, we have barely started the important work of exploring and assimilating the riches he has to offer. I for one can’t wait to see where his thinking takes us next.
In conclusion, permaculture is defined as a process of consciously designing agriculturally productive, nature-mimicking landscapes. Conscious design implies consciously questioning our understandings of what design is, and where necessary, making improvements. In Alexander’s work, we find somebody we already like showing us a way forward.
See the next post for David Holmgren’s reaction to this post.
References
Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksdahl-King, I., & Angel, S. (1977). A Pattern Language. Oxford University Press. Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. Oxford University Press. Alexander, C. (2002a). The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe: Book One: The Phenomenon of Life (Vol. 1). The Center for Environmental Structure. Alexander, C. (2002b). The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe: Book Two: The Process of Creating Life (Vol. 2). The Center for Environmental Structure.
Bloom, J., & Boehnlein, D. (2015). Practical Permaculture. Timberpress.
Hemenway, T. (2015). The Permaculture City. Chelsea Green. Holmgren, D. (2002). Permaculture: Patterns and Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Melliodora. Mollison, B. (1988). Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual. Tagari.
Acknowledgements
I thank David Holmgren, Dave Jacke, Rosemary Morrow, and James Andrews for their supportive and insightful feedback on an earlier draft of this post.
EndnotesAlleged day care fraudster approved to work with children despite sword attack, terror investigation
Updated
A man charged with fraud as part of an investigation into the suspected funnelling of millions of dollars in Australian taxpayer money to Islamic State (IS) was authorised to care for children in his home, despite being convicted of threatening to kill someone with a sword at a Sydney shopping centre.
Hussain Dandachi, 26, was charged last Friday with rorting more than $80,000 in childcare benefits for day care services that were allegedly never provided, as part of an Australian Federal Police (AFP) investigation into an alleged fraud syndicate suspected of funding IS.
Key points: Hussain Dandachi was last week charged with childcare fraud
Arrested in April for threatening people with a sword at Campbelltown Mall
Worked for day care network founded by Australia’s most senior terrorist Abu Sulayman
The revelations about Dandachi on Monday night's 7.30 program have sparked questions about how he continued to be authorised to work with children, despite being under close watch by counter-terrorism authorities and becoming involved in a standoff with police at gunpoint, in which he threatened them with a sword.
Dandachi was arrested last week in raids on a Sydney childcare network which was founded by Australia's highest-ranking terrorist, Mostafa Mohamad, who calls himself Abu Sulayman and is now a senior official for the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group in Syria.
The network has claimed nearly $27 million in government subsidies since 2012 and employs nearly 600 home providers of family day care.
Police have been unable to locate a massive portion of the $27 million and are investigating whether the money was defrauded to fund IS, potentially making Australian taxpayers one of the biggest funders of the terrorist group.
Do you know more about this story? Email 7.30@abc.net.au
The AFP uncovered the network after Dandachi, a 26-year-old waterproofing contractor, was stopped from boarding an international flight from Sydney late last year and his passport was cancelled.
Authorities suspected he was bound for the Middle East to join IS.
The AFP launched an investigation into Dandachi and discovered he was claiming tens of thousands of dollars in government subsidies to provide day care services in his home.
Dandachi allowed to work with children despite sword attack
Dandachi remained authorised to work with children even after he brandished a sword at Sydney's Campbelltown Mall in April and became involved in a tense standoff with police at gunpoint.
He had stormed into the shopping centre with the 85-centimetre sword and threatened to kill someone in revenge for a scuffle involving his family over their faith.
He was pepper sprayed by police and arrested at gunpoint after assaulting two officers.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Hussain Dandachi is arrested at the Campbelltown mall (ABC News)
Dandachi was handed a 12-month good behaviour bond last month for assaulting police and being armed with intent to carry out an attack, but even then, his Working With Children authorisation was not revoked.
Australian Childcare Alliance NSW chief executive Nesha O'Neil Hutchinson said the revelations showed the Working With Children check system across Australia was "inherently flawed" and "very much overloaded".
"Unless you have been convicted of a crime against a child, you will still pass your Working With Children checks," she said.
"Even if you are convicted of a crime or a threat or a risk against an adult, that doesn't mean under the current system that you'll have your Working With Children check cancelled.
"And even if you have been committed of a threat or a crime against a child in another state, that won't necessarily show up on a Working With Children check in each state, so the system itself has some flaws and some serious restrictions to it."
How the alleged fraud played out
Dandachi was employed by a network which is now owned by Sydney brothers Mohammad and Ibrahim Omar, who were also raided by the AFP last week.
Police believe the Omars' day care network was claiming government benefits for bogus children using fake Centrelink numbers, under the noses of the federal and New South Wales departments responsible for the scheme.
7.30 has learned the network is also under investigation for allegedly falsifying immunisation records to circumvent Australia's new No Jab, No Pay laws.
A second day care provider, Ali Assaad, 22, was also charged with fraud last week as part of the investigation.
Assaad is the secretary of charity Dar al Quran Wa Sunnah, which is accused by Lebanese authorities of funding IS.
The charity is also the subject of an Australian investigation into the financing of the terrorist group.
'Taxpayers should be outraged'
Nesha O'Neil Hutchinson, chief executive of Australian Childcare Alliance NSW, said taxpayers should be "outraged" by the fraud allegations.
She said the Australian day care system remained open to exploitation, despite promises from successive Federal Governments to clean up the industry over the past decade.
"These scams have been going on for a while," she told 7.30.
"It has been known for a number of years in early childhood education with the federal funding system there is the opportunity to defraud the system.
"Taxpayers should be outraged because when you look at a figure like $27 million, at this service here, with the amount of subsidies we are receiving from the Government to support these children accessing early childhood education, that kind of money would be the equivalent for 60 children a day, seven days a week.
"It's 100 years' worth of subsidy. It is a phenomenal amount of money."
A Government report in 2014 found more than $7 million each week was rorted by day care providers.
Last year, police uncovered an alleged $16 million fraud by day care workers in Melbourne.
The federal Government claimed it had closed loopholes in the industry late last year.
Promises were also made to clean up the industry by former prime ministers John Howard in 2006 and Tony Abbott in 2014.
Topics: child-care, police, fraud-and-corporate-crime, corruption, law-crime-and-justice, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, sydney-2000
First postedNew Zealand Cricket (NZC) announced on Monday (28 August) that they will be hosting their first-ever day-night Test match in 2018.
The Kiwis will play under the floodlights in the first match of their two-Test series against England that takes place from 22 March at Eden Park in Auckland next year.
The proposal for a day-night Test was approved by The Auckland Council following an application from Eden Park as the venue was previously not allowed to host matches under lights.
"NZC has a particular focus on improving access to cricket for everyone," New Zealand Cricket chief operating officer Anthony Crummy said, as quoted by CricBuzz. "Being able to stage the Test as a day-nighter is a significant step in the right direction.
"This means we can promote cricket in its most modern and vibrant incarnation; we can improve accessibility for new audiences, and we can showcase Eden Park, Auckland and New Zealand to a truly global audience."
There have only been five day-night Tests that have been staged so far, with Australia hosting the first-ever match when they took on New Zealand in late 2015.
Most recently, England hosted a day-night Test against West Indies in August in an event that saw 70,000 tickets sold over a three-day period, according to CricBuzz.
The major benefits of this format is that it is played at a time when more fans would be able to watch it live at venues while also attracting a larger TV audience, even if it might not be for everyone.
"This a very important outcome for Test cricket lovers in New Zealand – simply because it allows us the opportunity to play the game at a time when more people can engage with it," Crummy added.
"We're sure it will be a very successful event, and that English and New Zealand fans alike will make the most of the opportunity."Hands-on Lenovo's X1 Carbon ThinkPad is the company's flagship business laptop and has just been refreshed for 2017. But the new model may frustrate.
The Reg got its claws on the new model for a couple of weeks, equipped with a core i5-7200 at 2.5GHz, 8GB of RAM, Windows 10 Pro build 1607 and a 256GB solid state disk that said it has 237GB capacity. Your correspondent schlepped it around to conferences and to the office for much of the last two weeks and found a lot to like.
The battery stood out, as I found it possible to get through a day's intermittent work without needing a recharge. Lenovo claims the X1 can run for 15-and-a-half hours on battery alone, and for once that may not be just an ambitious claim.
On one day at a conference I used the X1 for several periods of 30-45 minutes taking notes during conference sessions, a dash to somewhere quiet to work, more note-taking and writing, time in the Reg content management system, and a spot of recreational surfing. Through that day the PC sometimes claimed it had 15 hours of juice. After after five-and-a-half hours of use through the day, all of it on WiFi, I ended the day with the X1 claiming it could go another four hours.
The workload matters, though: later, I used it to stream a 90-minute movie and found that feat drained the battery by nearly 30 per cent, suggesting my day at the conference may have been kind to the battery. Recharging was pleasingly rapid, even when I found an old USB battery pack in my bag and plugged it in to the USB-C port.
The machine's keyboard is excellent. Pleasingly large keys with decent travel made typing easy. I found I was quickly up to speed.
Size and weight are good. The machine weighs in 1.13kg (2.5 pounds), a bit lighter than the 1.35kg early 2014 MacBook Air that's my workhorse. A nicely narrow bezel means theres a 14-inch, 1920x1080 screen that worked well in all light conditions. The speakers surprised, in a good way: the first time I played video I found myself marvelling at the volume and richness of sound.
The X1 also presents some irritants. The touchpad often interpreted a gentle single-finger slide as a two-fingered right click. I initially thought that might be a feature, not a bug and I was right: there's an option to have the bottom-right corner of the touchpad set to always register a right click. But even after I turned that off the mistaken interpretations continued, which was damnably annoying.
There's also a TrackPoint micro-joystick that ThinkPads have used since the 1990s, plus physical buttons atop the touchpad.
Fit and finish worried me: there's a gap wide enough to catch a fingernail between the machine's base and sides. I found I could really get my nails in and dig or pull at the machine (and I'm a once-a-week nail trimmer, so it's not as if I have substantial claws to work into a crack). I don't think the machine will come apart, but fidgety people might do some damage over months of use.
The machine also seized up from time to time, pausing under moderate load for up to 30 seconds. Enlarging windows sometimes defeated Windows' animations, drawing a swathe of black where an expanding document ought to have been.
The X1's also a heavy sleeper: it sometimes took thirty seconds or more to become usable after I flipped it open.
Whether those performance glitches are down to Windows 10 or the X1 is hard to know. Whatever the cause, they aren't welcome and don't represent a premium experience. Indeed, my MacBook Air is two years old, has a three year old design, a 1.4GHz CPU that's years older than the 2017 X1's and still wakes up faster than the Lenovo machine. The MacBook Air does throw a wobbly with about 20 Chrome Tabs, Slack, Spotify, OpenOffice and TweetDeck open, but also has half the X1's RAM … and the X1 threw wobblies under lesser loads.
This year's X1 Carbon is a typically slick device, albeit one that revealed some worrying wobbles when we took it on the road. None were show-stoppers, but in your correspondent's experience PCs hardly ever go better after they've been carried around and used hard for a couple of years.
I handed the X1 back hoping it would be the exception to that rule, because while impressive it also hinted at unhappier days ahead. ®Weekend Sales and Bundles
This weekend we have some rather large sales on the fantastic work Belsimtek has done on their helicopters. Particularly with the new Normandy 1944 Map and the upcoming Caucuses map update and the new Strait of Hormuz map, flying helicopters has never been so good in DCS World.
Starting today at 1500 GMT and lasting until 18 September at 0900 GMT, we are offering the following sales:
We are also offering two great Belsimtek helicopter bundles with campaigns with 65% off savings:
Find these bundles in the Special Offers page.
A-10C: Tactical Training Qualification Campaign for Steam
A-10C: Tactical Training Qualification Campaign is now available purchase on Steam.
DCS World Steam Store.
The A-10C Tactical Training Qualification campaign puts you in the cockpit of an A-10C Warthog, and tests your ability to interact with JTACs, Airborne FACs, AC-130 Gunships and manage Close Air Support (CAS) assets.
Based on real world qualification requirements you will fly 15 performance check rides to execute against pre-defined performance objectives. If successful you will rate a Qualified rating and proceed to the next performance objective.
The campaign covers a number of key areas including FAC & JTAC Coordination, Stationary and Moving Target Tasking, Danger Close Tasking, SEAD Tasking, Deep Interdiction Tasking Day & Night, and Deep Interdiction Special Forces Coordination.
In addition you will work with additional CAS assets and cover SADL Datalink Engagement, CAS Mission Management Day & Night, Battlefield Air Interdiction Mission Management Day & Night, and Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) Mission Management Day & Night culminating in a final Simulated Combat Mission using everything you have learned in the previous missions.
Additionally 15 single player practice missions are provided so you can perfect your tactics, techniques and procedures.
There are over 1300 voiceovers and over 470 pages of briefing material including the A-10C Amplified Checklist, Blue Force In Flight Guide, Operation Agile Spirit SPINS, Maps, Target Diagrams, Mission Data Cards and Custom Kneeboards.
Please note that this campaign is for DCS World 1.5 and requires DCS: A-10C Warthog. This campaign also uses Steam keys.
DCS: AV-8B Night Attack by RAZBAM Update
This past week was an important milestone for RAZBAM's AV-8B NA as it entered internal testing. Over the next several weeks, the module will be de-bugged, tuned, and added to in order to bring it to being available for pre-purchase and then its Early Access release.
Here are some images of this beautiful machine that RAZBAM is bringing to DCS World.
More WIP screenshotsThe taxi driver in East Jerusalem is a thin Palestinian man in his mid-sixties, with a stubby salt-and-pepper beard and 9 children, the youngest just 7. He is taking all the shortcuts he knows around Wadi Joz, at speed as now we are hopelessly late for the morning school run. The children in the back are completely still, leaning tightly against their seats, as if glued to them. The image of the house being ripped apart had clearly torpedoed childish chit-chat even after a short glance.
Minutes before, our taxi had come to an abrupt stop against a huge Israeli police Jeep, (a vehicle out of “Judge Dread”, with oversized chunky contours out of a schoolboy’s imagination) parked perpendicularly onto the road. The two officers were leaning against the car bonnet with their backs to us and the screech of our taxi breaks did not arouse their interest. They and a gathering of about 30 people separated from our taxi by the police jeep, were watching a bulldozer taking down- methodically, dispassionately, relentlessly – the shell of a house. There were loud shouts, wailing and chants from the small crowd. I could just make out in the distance army vehicles and personnel.
The physicality of the demolition of a home, with the bulldozer teeth tearing through walls of rooms painted in happy bright colours, has a heightened malefic quality when seen “live” – when the TV screen displays one during the news broadcasts, it almost mellows it, it makes it more presentable. Disbelief (the limping prosaic question “Is this really happening in this day and age?” formed in my mind) is soon run over by surging outrage.
The home demolition skews all perception of the world: a desert of solutions or fairness, where the strongest perpetually win and the weakest get predictably crushed, and no heroes are ever flying in to restore humanity. It felt like that to me, even after the briefest of exposures and from the safety of the speedily turning-away taxi; how must it feel if one lived in Gotham every day?
The taxi does a quick U-turn and snatches us all out.
I venture: “Do you have hope for better, are you waiting for better?” The driver answers in a friendly tone, as if we are discussing the quickest route to somewhere. “I am not waiting for better so much…no, I am waiting for Isa.” I am stunned and have just enough time to work out quickly who he means, but have no time at all to work out the “Muslim or Christian?” query in my head, as the driver retorts: “Are you?” Yes, in Jerusalem life takes you by the lapels even in a taxi, gets up in your face and asks a question you just have to answer. “Yes, I am”, I answer.
“But I meant today”, I am ploughing on. The man sets off without hesitation, like he had thought about it many times: “It’s the leaders…we need leaders who are strong men for peace, strong men to make peace. Look, me and my Jewish friend who has a coffee shop, we could do it. He knows me, my family, I know him, his family, we meet up, we have a coffee most days…we could do it, no, seriously, why do you smile? We could do “better” for both…”better” for just the one, no peace!”
I am clinging on to hope firmly. This man blows out of the water the “intractable conflict” cliché that justified our inaction for years, shackled by the threat that we have not a hope of understanding the complexity of the situation on the ground.
Child-like simplicity: “better” for both. That would be something new here -desperately needed.
Simplicity has a quirky way of sprouting. The soldiers on patrol in Hebron, recent impromptu dancing with Palestinian youth to Gangnam-style music (link via The Guardian @guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/29/hebron-israel-soldiers-dance-palestinians-gangnam-style ) is not just for hopeless inveterate optimists to marvel at. It is a ray of simple (natural) peace escaping from under the bushel, lighting our day when reading about it in the papers.
Lift off that bushel, make “better” for both, Gangnam –style it if you have to. Maybe the politicians involved in the 2013 peace talks should take a taxi every so often.
AdvertisementsISIS Using Churches as Torture Chambers, Forcing Christians to Convert or Be Killed
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The head of a Christian humanitarian organization reports that the Islamic State terrorist organization in has turned captured church buildings into torture chambers that are being used to coerce Iraqi Christians into renouncing Christ and converting to IS' brand of radical Islam.
Christian Freedom International, a Virginia-based aid organization that provides necessities to Christians living in nations that are the most hostile toward Christianity, has released a new video that reveals alarming statistics showing the number of Christians throughout the world who are being persecuted or killed for their faith.
The video, released ahead of the organization's day of prayer on Nov. 8, explains that there are over 200 million followers of Christ who face some form of persecution in 105 of the world's 196 countries.
The video also provides an even more staggering statistic by stating that one Christian is martyred every 5 minutes because of their faith. CFI also estimates that more Christians have been martyred in the 20th and 21st centuries than in the previous 19 centuries combined.
Since the summer of 2014, the Islamic State terrorist group has taken over large territories throughout Iraq and Syria, including many predominantly Christian towns. The group has become notorious for brutally killing anyone who does not agree ideologically with the group, or refuses to renounce their religion and follow IS' extremist brand of Islam.
As hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iraq and Syria have fled their homes and villages in order to spare themselves from IS' brutality, CFI President Jim Jacobson told Breitbart London that some captured Christians in Iraq have been tortured into converting to Islam inside of buildings that used to be churches.
"Islamic State militants in Iraq are using Christian churches as torture chambers where they force Christians to either convert to Islam or die," Jacobson said.
Not only is IS trying to cleanse the region of Christianity and any other religions that are not its own brand of Islam, the militant group has also destroyed ancient Christian monasteries and holy sites.
Jacobson also explained that IS is selling ancient Christian artifacts to help fund its jihad.
"Islamic State militants are also stripping the former places of Christian worship of ancient relics which in turn are smuggled to Western collectors to help fund their terrorist activities," Jacobson said.
The CFI video states that the organization's goal is to "reach the part of the persecuted Church that is the most repressed, most at risk and most isolated. In parts of the Middle East and Africa, CFI provides emergency aid, security, education, Bibles and other necessary supplies to Christians living in slavery and suffering persecution at the hands of the Islamic extremists."
In India, Hindu extremists often attack Christian villages in order to force Christians out of their homes. For the persecuted Christians in India, CFI provides clothing, drinking water and Bibles for those who've been forced to flee their homes.
"I encourage you to pray for persecuted believers," Jacobson said. "They are your Christian family throughout the world. Pray for their safety; that they would be emboldened to continue sharing the Gospel even in the face of persecution; that their persecutors would also come to know Christ as they observe the courageous witness of these believers."Wendy Davis is proposing an end to the statute of limitations on sexual assault in the State of Texas.
Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate locked in a heated campaign with Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, proposed abolishing the statute on Wednesday, as part of an aggressive move against her opponent.
In most cases, state law in Texas prohibits prosecution for rape that occurred more than ten years ago. Davis listed a number of cases where victims were no longer able to seek justice because the deadline had expired.
Davis pointed to an ongoing issue with a backlog of rape kits in Texas as part of the problem (there is an estimated backlog of 20,000 kits currently). "The fact that we would throw survivors' trauma and courage on a shelf for months or years without a second thought is offensive to them and to everything we say we stand for," Davis said at a news conference Wednesday. "But then to turn around and make survivors pay the price for our failure and neglect by denying them justice is almost criminal in itself."
Davis is also running an which attacks Abbott for his siding with a vacuum cleaner company in the case of a rape victim, according to Talking Points:
The ad, which goes for a little over a minute, tells the story of a woman who was brutally raped by a vacuum cleaner salesman. The woman, the ad says, went to court against the vacuum cleaner distributor for failing to do a background check on the salesman. The state Supreme Court sided with the woman 6-3 with Abbott on the losing end. "Six judges, Democrats and Republicans, ruled in their favor and they won," the narrator in the ad said. "But Greg Abbott sided with the company against the victim, saying that the company against the victim saying that the company had no responsibility. "Thank god this time Greg Abbott lost," the narrator in the ad said.
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So how is this tactic working for Davis? According to a Rasmussen poll in August, she's still lagging behind Abbott, but not by the huge double digit margin so many in Texas had predicted.
A new Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Texas Voters finds Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott picking up 48% of the vote to Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis' 40%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, while nine percent (9%) are undecided.
Conservatives dubbed Davis "abortion Barbie" because she dared challenge hideous legislation that has all but destroyed access to reproductive options for impoverished women in the state. So yeah. Vote Wendy Davis, y'all.Ryan Pace
New Chicago Bears general manager Ryan Pace speaks at a news conference in Lake Forest, Ill., Friday, Jan. 9, 2015. Pace was introduced Friday as the Bears' GM, charged with turning around a franchise with just one playoff appearance in the past eight years. (AP Photo/Daily Herald, Steve Lundy) MAGAZINES OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT ORG XMIT: ILARL104
(Steve Lundy)
New Orleans Saints regional scout Josh Lucas, a Harvard graduate who spent a decade working his way up the NFL ladder, is joining the Chicago Bears as director of player personnel.
Lucas joins Ryan Pace, who served as the Saints' director of player personnel before being hired as Bears' general manager earlier this month.
The Bears confirmed the hire on Sunday afternoon. It was first reported by Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports.
Lucas joined the Saints in 2005 as a scouting assistant and was promoted to area scout in 2007, according to his team bio.
He was assigned to the southern region in 2013 after scouting the southwest for five years, where he filed reports on college players like safety Kenny Vaccaro.
Lucas worked for the Jacksonville Jaguars in marketing from 2002-2004.
He graduated cum laude from Harvard University, where he he played safety on the football team in 1997-1998, according to the bio. Injuries ended his playing career.
Lucas' move to Chicago could indicate that the Saints' top two executives in the personnel department won't be joining Pace. Rick Reiprish is director of college scouting and Terry Fontenot is director of pro scouting.
The Saints haven't said how or if they will replace Pace's position.Remember the good ole' days of MTV… when it was actually about music? You could discover or become a fan of bands just based off their music videos that was shown, a marketing tactic that has beat the test of time transitioning now to Youtube. From claymation and CGI to wacky skits and the traditional mock performances, there are music videos we identify with or are inspired by. For the first time, Metal Injection is running a poll for the 'Best Music Video of 2016.' We understand that voting on this sort of topic can lead to a popularity contest or be reflective of one's interest in the song over the actual music video, so we encourage all the peruse the videos rather than voting purely on their favorite songs. Also, in order to maintain the amount of choices to a reasonable number, we chose the music videos that provide a creative or original narrative rather than the majority of footage being the band performing.
Don't see your favorite music video down there or think we forgot a good one? If the comment section shows a large enough demand, we will likely add the option as soon as possible. You may vote from the choices below with up to a total of 3 votes.Some of my favorite conversations with male clients are about masturbation.
Hard to imagine?
Picture this.
Everything’s going well. As they say in Developmental Psychology “shit is off the hook,” which roughly translates as a butt load of healing and development taking place. We’re also laughing a lot which usually surprises them because we’re supposed to be “working.”
Then out of the blue I say that we have to dive |
Andoh even excels at differentiating Ifemelu’s snarkier blog voice from her IRL one.
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James: This audiobook read by a superbly talented cast of actors is really more of a radio play than an audiobook. Men, women, black, white, American, Jamaican, queer, and straight, all of these voices contribute to James’s epic story centring on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late ’70s. Not for the faint of heart, A Brief History of Seven Killings, as the title implies, is full of violence as well as ample swearing and drugs. But that’s not all there is to this multi-layered piece of fiction. For readers not familiar with Jamaican dialect, it is amazing to hear it pronounced as it should be by Jamaican actors. All of the acting is phenomenal: I’ll never forget the scene where a gang member dies and you could hear it in the actor’s laboured breathing. I can still hear the voices of the characters in my head almost a year after listening to it.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: This is a classic you may have already read that would be amazing to re-visit in audio form. You’ll see the main character Janie Crawford, the Southern black women living in the 30s and gaining her independence, in a whole new way. Like Marlon’s Brief History, there is dialect and vernacular speech in this book that if you’re not familiar with you just can’t appreciate if you’re only hearing it inside your own head. Ruby Dee, who narrates, has the gorgeously velvety voice of an old-school actress, full of feeling and poetry, just like Hurston’s words. I especially love how she does the characters’ laughs; they sound so real.
Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson: This is another audiobook superbly narrated by Robin Miles, although in a voice almost unrecognizable from Under the Udala Trees. Sister Mine is a delightfully odd book about queer polyamorous demi-gods, dysfunctional families, sibling rivalry, Afro-Caribbean mythology, and present day Toronto. What really epitomizes the wonderful oddities of this book is the fact that there’s a character who used to be Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. You know, he’s an enspirited object, currently in human form. No big deal. Miles’s narration evokes both the magical and everyday elements of the book.
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By signing up you agree to our Terms of ServiceTrue credit-card-sized calculators – Casio SL-800
As it says in my bio for this site, I’m a calculator collector. Mostly Hewlett-Packard LCD calculators it must be said, but every now and then I pick up something from another manufacturer.
Back in the early 80s, I remember buying one of these Casio SL-800 calculators for fun, a gold one. And then – because it was the size of a credit card -- I put it into my wallet, which of course sounded its death knell after a few months. They are just not that robust. Sad to say, my original one bent and came apart and I didn’t bother replacing it.
These SL-800s really are the size of a credit card, not only in width and length, but also in thickness. Yes, like a credit card, they’re only 0.8mm thick.
This is an edge on view of the black one with a quarter alongside for comparison.
As you can see, they’re a simple “four-banger” type calculator with memory, running off solar power. Originally made from 1983/84. Without the thickness feature, these two calculators would be totally and utterly uninteresting. Because they get wrecked pretty easily, they tend to go for relatively high prices on eBay, say between $50 and $100. Mine came with the original instructions, warranty document, and slipcase box and look unused.
(For fun, and to follow on from my previous post about continued fractions, the gold one is displaying 22/7 and the black one 355/113, the first two continued fractions – not counting 3, that is – for π.)Acura NSX wins its North American racing debut by more than 11 seconds
American-built NSX wins Time Attack 2 class at 100th running of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb
NSX-inspired Acura 4-Motor EV Concept finishes second in the Electric Modified Class
The recently-launched 2017 Acura NSX claimed victory Sunday in its North American racing competition debut, climbing the 14,115-foot pinnacle of Pikes Peak and clinching first place in the Time Attack 2 class at the 2016 Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, the 100th anniversary of the running of America's second oldest race.
The production-based Acura NSX is powered by Acura's revolutionary three-motor Sport Hybrid Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive™ powertrain (Sport Hybrid SH-AWD®), the first electrified torque vectoring powertrain in the world of exotic sports cars. With added required safety equipment for competition, the NSX negotiated the 12.42-mile course in a time of 10:28.820 to win the Time Attack 2 class of the Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Nick Robinson, North American R&D team member and engineer in charge of the next-generation supercar's dynamic performance, drove the production-based Acura NSX to victory. Nick is also the reigning PP250 winner from the 2015 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.
"I'm incredibly happy to have won the Production Class with the new NSX!" Robinson reported. "The hard work the entire development team has put into the NSX over the past few years really paid off."
Two additional Acura vehicles - the NSX-inspired 4-Motor Acura EV Concept, driven by Tetsuya Yamano, and a modified 2017 Acura NSX, driven by Nick's brother, James Robinson – also campaigned in the race. Yamano finished second in the Electric Modified class in the NSX-inspired EV, posting a time of 9:06.015 (79.119 mph), which made him the third fastest on the overall charts. The Acura EV Concept's all-electric SH-AWD® powertrain boasts peak output three times the total system output of the CR-Z prototype that ran last year, featuring a world's first technology that enables four-wheel independent torque allocation.
"For our new NSX to win one of the most historic and challenging races on the planet in its North American racing debut is a great achievement for everyone involved in creating the American-built supercar," said Jon Ikeda, vice president and general manager of the Acura Division. "The performance of NSX in this year's race is a testament to Acura's Precision Crafted Performance DNA and will serve as a launching pad for future racing endeavors."
For More Information
Consumer information is available at www.acura.com. To join the Acura community on Facebook, visit facebook.com/Acura. Additional media information including pricing, features and high-resolution photography is available at acuranews.com/channels/acura-automobiles.
About Acura
Acura is a leading automotive luxury nameplate that delivers Precision Crafted Performance, an original approach to technology and design that creates a new driving experience. On March 27, 2016, Acura celebrated the 30th anniversary of its launch as the first luxury nameplate from a Japanese automaker.
The Acura lineup features five distinctive models – the RLX luxury flagship sedan, the TLX performance luxury sedan, the ILX sport sedan, the 5-passenger RDX luxury crossover SUV, and the seven-passenger Acura MDX, America's all-time best-selling three-row luxury SUV. This spring, Acura launched its next-generation, electrified NSX supercar as a new and pinnacle expression of Acura Precision Crafted Performance. The NSX is built in Marysville, Ohio using domestic and globally sourced parts.
# # #(Julie Notarianni /for The Washington Post)
Most home gardens would be far more interesting and enriching if we simply upped the number of plants in them. We have too much lawn, too many areas of mulched beds and too limited a range of plants to carry the landscape through the growing season and beyond.
In any landscape development, perennials play a vital role in providing the layer that is both colorful and structural, especially when used boldly as a massing or ground cover. Perennials die back each winter and then regrow from the roots. From their spring emergence, seasonal flowering and gentle decline, perennials provide the most dynamic layer in the garden. Some perennials, especially ornamental grasses, carry a measure of beauty through the winter even if their top growth is lifeless at that point.
[Three sun loving perennials to carry the dog days]
Perennials arguably represent the single most exciting aspect of horticulture in our time, because they fit so well with the idea of creating gardens that not only are beautiful but also provide shelter and food for wildlife and help to address environmental issues such as protecting soil, checking storm water pollution and reducing the need for pesticides.
The current interest in perennials has spawned the introduction of many species and varieties that excel in the Mid-Atlantic region but are generally not well known and little used as a result.
With help from Roy Diblik of Northwind Perennial Farm in Burlington, Wis.; the New York Botanical Garden’s Kristin Schleiter; George Coombs, research horticulturist at Mount Cuba Center in Hockessin, Del.; and Elise Zylstra of Sandy’s Plants nursery in Mechanicsville, Va., I came up with a list I call the 10 best perennials you’ve never heard of. Consider them when reworking garden areas in late summer and early fall. Some are for areas of full sun, some for shade, and most will work in areas of light shade.
Tricyrtis
Tricyrtis Sinonome (Chicago Botanic Garden)
The tricyrtis or toad-lily is interesting on two counts. First, it blooms late, in September and October. Second, the flowers are strangely invisible until you study them, when they reveal themselves as extraordinarily exotic and orchidlike. Some varieties bloom in the leaf joints, others at the end of their arching stems. The variety Sinonome is one of the latter and is valued for its maroon markings on creamy white blossoms.
Place a clump of tricyrtis at the edge of shade garden paths, where they can be admired. They grow to three feet and should be spaced 18 inches apart. Because they grow and appear late, they can be interplanted with other woodland perennials and small shrubs. Kristin Schleiter of the New York Botanical Garden particularly commends Sinonome and the species Tricyrtis lasiocarpa, which blooms about a month earlier, starting in late summer. The flowers are lilac and have gentian blue tips to the petals that are so mesmerizing, she said, “that you can get lost in the world of that flower.”
In performance trials at the Chicago Botanic Garden a few years ago, Sinonome and a variety named Tojen (lavender and white) performed well, and the top rankings went to a species named Tricyrtis formosana (white and dark purple) and the variety Miyazaki (white and pale purple).
Oak sedge
Oak sedge-Carex pensylvanica (Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post)
Sedges are low-growing, grasslike perennials that flourish in difficult situations such as dry shade or wet soil, depending on type. Most prefer partial to full shade. Grown in masses, they make excellent alternatives to such boring groundcovers as English ivy, liriope or pachysandra. They can also be squeezed in between other herbaceous plants as textural highlights.
I am partial to fine-leafed sedges that will adapt to dry conditions once established, such as the oak sedge, botanically Carex pensylvanica. The wispy plant is a fresh green and grows to about 10 inches. It spreads slowly by stolons and will knit together after two years if planted eight to 12 inches apart. In small beds, the bristleleaf sedge (Carex eburnea) is half the size of oak sedge, and forms mounded clumps. For moister soil, use the brome sedge (Carex bromoides), which is slightly larger than oak sedge but will fit in nicely with other shade plants thanks to its similarly fine texture.
Blue grama
Blue Grama Blonde Ambition (Monrovia)
This is another fine-textured, native ornamental grass for full sun. Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) forms clumps of upright blades topped with straw-colored seed heads that age to brown-purple. They are held horizontally to the stem and quiver in the slightest breeze. The grass grows to about 15 inches and needs an open and well-drained location. Use it to edge paths, as filler or as an accent. Blonde Ambition is a showier variety.
Cranesbill
Geranium sanguineum Max Frei (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Cranesbills, or hardy geraniums, have been gaining popularity over the past decade, but they deserve greater use in their attractive and unfussy role as fillers and ground covers, and work in areas of full afternoon sun or partial shade. Not all of them do well in the heat and humidity of our region, so be selective. I have had consistent success with a species named Geranium macrorrhizum and grow one named Ingwersen’s Variety. It has a muddy pink flower in late April and May. It works as a ground cover in partial shade and will take dry conditions once established.
A hybrid named Rozanne is possibly the most commonly used variety because it blooms for most of the season, almost like an annual, with dainty blue flowers on slender stems. It tends to be short-lived, and for that reason Schleiter advises against its use as a ground cover (too many gaps appear). Instead, she favors the low-growing, compact Geranium sanguineum, particularly a rich magenta variety named Max Frei.
In shadier beds, a coarser native species named the spotted cranesbill (Geranium maculatum) is a sturdy choice, with lavender blooms throughout May.
Barrenwort
Epimedium versicolor Sulphureum (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Barrenwort — often called by its botanical name, Epimedium — is another perennial that is gaining steam and should be in every garden with light to heavy shade. Its early-spring blooms are delicate and interesting. (For good display they rely on the gardener removing the previous year’s foliage by March.) But the real value of this plant is its clean and lovely mounded clumps of heart-shaped leaves. Its other virtue is that it is one of the few perennials that will adapt to dry shade, though it will take longer to reach a good size (four years or so) in such a location than in the optimum conditions of richer but well-drained soil.
Many fancy and expensive varieties have been developed for connoisseurs, but the workhorse Sulphureum is as good as any, with lemon yellow blooms, as is Rubrum, with magenta blooms and a crimson tinge to the new leaves of spring.
Prairie dropseed
Prairie dropseed. (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) is a soft, mounding grass that remains fresh and green until the fall, when it turns a beautiful shade of burnished orange. In high summer, its clumps are topped with a haze of flowering stems that perfume the air with a scent reminiscent of bruised cilantro.
It can be planted as a filler or accent in a sunny bed. It takes three to four years to reach its mature size of three feet high and two feet across.
Yellow false indigo
Yellow false indigo Screaming Yellow. (Chip Tynan/Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder)
False indigo (Baptisia australis) is a shrubby perennial that makes a fine addition to the garden, with gray-green leaves and spikes of lupinelike blooms, a deep indigo blue, that appear in May on plants that are already three to four feet high. The yellow false indigo is another species (Baptisia sphaericarpa), but it is smaller and tidier and is covered in shorter spikes of bright yellow blooms in late spring. A number of varieties have been introduced, including the particularly floriferous Screaming Yellow.
Use it singly or in small groups as a filler plant or accent, in full sun to light shade. It won’t work well in moist soil.
Slimleaf ironweed Iron Butterfly
Slimleaf Ironweed Iron Butterfly. (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Common New York ironweed is a tall and somewhat rangy wildflower of damp meadows that is valued for its sprays of purple flowers in August and September. Slimleaf ironweed is another species (Vernonia lettermannii) and grows to about three feet in height and spread. In late summer, it is smothered in small purple flowers that are magnets for butterflies. Until then, it looks tidy and compact, with dark, fine-textured foliage that makes it a great foil for other perennials. Diblik pairs it with prairie dropseed in a hot dry setting. Iron Butterfly is a selection that is more compact and densely flowered, growing about three feet high and two feet across. As with blue grama, vernonia needs a sunny location.
Calamint Montrose White
Calamint Montrose White (Monrovia)
The calamint (Calamintha nepeta) is an aromatic, ornamental mint that calls to mind the gray-leafed, blue-flowered mounds of the related catmints of early summer, except the calamint produces masses of small white blossoms all summer long. It draws a host of pollinating insects and hummingbirds.
The variety Montrose White corrects a couple of disadvantages of other calamints: It is somewhat compact, though can still spread to three feet, and the flowers are sterile, so it doesn’t seed about. It grows in full sun or partial shade but does require free-draining soil, which is especially important during winter dormancy. A mulch of grit or gravel would be preferred to one of wood chips or shredded bark. Another good variety is White Cloud.
Use calamint as a filler in a sunny border, as an edging plant along paths (for its aroma) or in a container.
Tufted hair grass
This is a handsome mid-size native grass valued for showy seed heads that provide ornament from summer into fall, when the foliage turns a bronze color. Its botanic name is Deschampsia cespitosa. The stalks move in the breeze, giving a kinetic quality to the grass. Goldtau (German for “golden dew”) is a variety that was selected for its more compact habit and the yellow cast to its inflorescences.
Tufted hair grass Goldtau. (Missouri Botanical Garden)
It grows to 24 inches with a spread of about 30 inches and should be used as an accent grass or in drifts in a larger border. Grow tufted hair grass in our hot climate as you would a hosta; give it a little afternoon shade, and place it in enriched soil that captures moisture without being wet. Water during dry periods.
Where to get these plants
There is no single source for all 10 of these, and some plants on this list will be easier to find than others. Some may not be available until early spring for them to become available, but be patient, because these cultivated varieties are worth seeking out.
The cost of multiple perennial plants can add up. There are ways to handle this:
● Tackle single, manageable areas of the garden once or twice a year. Don’t seek to transform the whole garden overnight.
● Do the work yourself, including lawn reduction, bed clearing and soil preparation in advance of planting.
● Buy the smallest sizes you can find, but make sure you space plants for their eventual girth, even if the planting looks thin for a year. Most perennials reach a mature size in three years. Weed regularly between growing plants.
● Look for end-of-season plant sales.
● Driving to a distant nursery can save on shipping costs and can make for a pleasant day trip.
● Native plant societies hold periodic sales with good prices on perennials, sedges and grasses.
Sources
The region’s many independent garden centers have rich offerings of perennials. Call to check availability. Some will order specific plants from growers.
The following sources are farther afield but will ship plants:
● High Country Gardens, www.highcountrygardens.com, 800-925-9387.
● Rare Find Nursery, www.rarefindnursery.com, 732-833-0613.
● Forest Farm, www.forestfarm.com, 541-846-7269.
@adrian_higgins on Twitter
washingtonpost.com
^Chat Thursday at noon Join Higgins for a live Q&A about gardening at washingtonpost.com/home.
8Gardening archive Read past columns by Higgins, including those on ferns and boxwood.The Philadelphia Eagles' 2017 training camp schedule continues today with the team's first full practice. The entire roster has reported for work. Today's practice begins at 12:45 PM ET. It'll be a little light since it's a 10-10-10 day (explanation here). Head coach Doug Pederson will have a press conference after practice around 2:45 PM ET. Players will be available to the media right after practice as well.
Follow @BrandonGowton
Follow me (@BrandonGowton) on Twitter for live practice updates. I'll be covering the entirety of 2017 Eagles training camp daily from Philadelphia's headquarters: the NovaCare Complex. Also give us a "Like" on Bleeding Green Nation's Facebook page (CLICK HERE) to see live videos from practice and press conferences. Check out tweets from myself and other Philly beat reporters that will appear in the list below.
Tweets from https://twitter.com/BleedingGreen/lists/eagles-news
Eagles Training Camp Schedule
As a reminder, here is the entire Eagles training camp schedule including the two practices open to the public.
Thursday, July 27
12:45 pm - Practice begins (10/10/10)
2:45 pm - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Friday, July 28
8:15 am - Practice begins
10:30 am - Jim Schwartz press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
***Saturday, July 29 (open practice at Lincoln Financial Field)***
9:45 am - Frank Reich press conference
10:05 am - Practice begins
12:20 pm - Players available on field and in locker room
Sunday, July 30
8:15 am - Practice begins
10:20 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Monday, July 31
Players day off. No media availability.
Tuesday, August 1
8:15 am … Practice begins
11:00 am … Jim Schwartz press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Wednesday, August 2
8:15 am - Practice begins
10:20 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Thursday, August 3
8:15 am - Practice begins
11:00 am - Frank Reich press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Friday, August 4
9:05 am - Practice begins (10/10/10)
11:00 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Saturday, August 5
Players day off. No media availability.
***Sunday, August 6 (open practice at Lincoln Financial Field)***
9:45 am - Jim Schwartz press conference
10:05 am - Practice begins
12:20 pm - Players available on field and in locker room
Monday, August 7
9:15 am - Practice begins
11:20 am - Frank Reich press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Tuesday, August 8
9:05 am - Practice begins (10/10/10)
11:00 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Wednesday, August 9
Mock Game walkthrough. Travel day. Closed to fans and media.
Thursday, August 10 (First preseason game)
8:00 pm ET - Eagles at Packers
Friday, August 11
Players day off. No media availability.
Saturday, August 12
9:15 am - Practice begins
10:45 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice
Sunday, August 13
9:15 am - Practice begins
11:20 am - Jim Schwartz press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Monday, August 14
9:15 am - Practice begins
11:45 am - Frank Reich press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Tuesday, August 15
9:05 am - Practice begins (10/10/10)
11:00 am - Doug Pederson press conference after practice, players available on field and in locker room
Wednesday, August 16
Mock Game walkthrough. Closed to fans and media.
Thursday, August 17 (Second preseason game)
7:00 pm … Eagles vs. Bills
Friday, August 18
Players day off. No media availability.
Some links to check out while waiting for updates:
The 6th Annual Definitive Twitter List for Philadelphia Eagles Fans
8 Eagles training camp battles to watch in 2017
20 notes from Eagles training camp practice
What the Allen Barbre trade means for the Eagles
Previewing the 2017 Eagles schedule: Los Angeles Rams
The Biggest Draft Busts in Recent Eagles History
Philadelphia players react to findings of CTE study
Building the Eagles from scratch, one position at a time
Allen Barbre trade: Eagles send offensive lineman to the Broncos
Eagles sign a linebacker after cutting two players
Eagles offensive coordinator names the starter at left guard
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BGN Manager: Brandon Lee Gowton: Follow @BrandonGowtonLast Tuesday, N.C. Secretary of Transportation Tony Tatathe shit-canned former superintendent of Wake County Public Schools who, after joining the McCrory administration in 2013, became a prominent backer of the governor's going-nowhere-fast infrastructure bond proposalabruptly stepped down. This was... strange. And unexpected.
He said the thing that politicos always say, that he was quitting to spend more time with his wife and kids, and to evaluate "what opportunities might be out there," which probably means a run for Congress. But Tata, retired Army brigadier general, also cited his apparently burgeoning career as a military suspense novelist, five books in all, on Amazon.
And so we pondered: Was there any chance these books were actually, you know, good?
The answer, of course, is no. They are terrible, awful, LOL-worthy dregs of literature, bush-league Tom Clancy affectations with one-dimensional characters and enough plot holes to drive a Mack truck through, works of suspense that draw their mystery from their Rube Goldberg-esque contortions of logic.
Or maybe we are being cynical. Who knows. But we did take the time to speed-reador at least speed-skim; Netflix dropped Wet Hot American Summer on Friday and there went our weekendfour entries in Tata's catalogue: his three-book Threat series and his newest offering, Foreign and Domestic.
Below you'll find brief synopses of these works, as well as an assemblage of some of the choicest lines Tata has put to paperand trust us, there are some doozies.
Warning, in case you care, which you don't: spoilers ahead.
Sudden Threat
Intelligence gurus have taken codes names for each of the Rolling Stones (well, except for Mick Taylor and Brian Jones; the spooks are apparently not fans of the pre-1976 era), then meddle in a confusing CIA paramilitary operation in Pakistan. Here, soldier Matt Garrett, so close to pulling the trigger on Osama bin Laden, gets reassigned to the Philippines: mortus interruptus.
Somehow, and we couldn't follow this, distracted as we were by the attempted-rape scene ("Don't you want to make love to one of the most powerful men in the world, Meredith?"), but the action also takes us to Japan, where people are not only bombed, but also knifed to death. We're still not sure which side won. And we don't really care.
Hidden Threat
American Sniper meets The Young and the Restless in this war-torn soap opera. Zach Garrett, brother of Matt, has spawned an ungrateful daughter, Amanda, with his gold-digging wife (now his ex, Melanie), who has poisoned Amanda against him. (Please consult your flowcharts.)
Zach, ostensibly killed in action, leaves Amanda $500,000 deliverable upon her 18th birthday. In the process of getting the booty, she learns that Zach was not a deadbeat dad, but rather her mother and grandmother had been siphoning money from him, and essentially had been using her as a personal ATM.
Leave it to the unreliable, evil, wicked media, Del Dangeur, who (rightfully) believes Zach is alive. Tired of writing reviews of Aerosmith reunion albums, Dangeur's out for a scoop, and incidentally, a little hot sex with Miss Barely Legal, aka Brianna, a best friend of Amanda.
By the end, Amanda's high school journalism teacher is wielding a pistol at Melanie, Amanda has a lighter, some people scream, there's a fire. We don't know who survived. Hopefully no one.
Mortal Threat
Once a bratty, rich teenager and a soldier's daughter featured in Hidden Threat, the blond, well-toned Amanda Garrett returns to save the world as a med student.
She and several American doctors have been working on a super-duper-top-secret project in Africa and, whoa, you won't believe this, but they've found cures for both Ebola and HIV.
Not so fast, smarty-pants. Leaders of the Islamic State want to steal the secret formula, claim it as their discovery and thus convince all the African nations that Muslims are the good guys.
Meanwhile, President Jamal Barkham (hmm, this name sound like it belongs to a black guy) is convinced that the Book of Catalyst, a 30,000-year-old African text and counter-narrative to the lily-white Book of Genesis has fingered him as the Messiah. What's more, the Garden of Eden was really in Tanzania. Then shit gets really crazy.
Foreign and Domestic
There's an incoherent international conspiracy involving an American Taliban and his father, a (spoiler!) high-ranking Pentagon official. There's a separate conspiracy centering on stolen gold and a scheme to snatch Al Qaeda militants and turn them over to a North Carolina-based contractor that acts a whole lot like Blackwater. There's some babbling about Croatan Indians and Virginia Dare. There's the cardboard characterization of a woman who is of course hot and nubile but also needs a strong man to rescue her. And there's that man, that chiseled, strong-jawed man, Chayton Mahegan, a soldier with a troubled past and heart of gold.
But hey, noted literary critic Newt Gingrich blurbed that "General Tata's experience as a combat veteran and paratrooper is captured in realistic scenes and characters we care about," so what do we know?
And now, 33 of our favorite lines from the collected works of Tony Tata.
Mortal Threat
1. Urine never hurt anything.
2. Vice President Dillon leaned against the windowsill and stared at the Washington Monument sticking into the sky like a middle finger.
3. "I killed children smaller than you in Rwanda. I am Cheetah."
4. Looking down at Democracy in America, de Tocqueville's magnum opus, she found his writing pedestrian but still necessary.
5. Are we products of mere bacterial evolution or did God truly create us?
Sudden Threat
6. The alcohol had flipped a switch in his brain, sending an electrical current to his penis, thereby relinquishing all control to the lower appendage for the time being.
7. "These political appointees have their hands so far up their asses they can't see straight."
8. Takishi, who had been given the codename Charlie Watts, pulled out his satellite-enabled phone and sent a text message to his contact, who demanded he use the ridiculous alias, "Mick Jagger."
Satisfaction
A moment later "Mick Jagger" sent a return note.
Let it bleed
9. "Well, with a blond Virginian as a gatekeeper I must be doing something right."
10. Sure he loved Asian women but there was no replacement for a girl-next-door American knockout such as the one standing in front of him right now.
11. Leaning over the admiral's corpse, he whispered to the man's lifeless face, "Politics? This is about national survival, my dear friend."
Sudden Threat
12. "If we're going to one day get married like we've talked about, I don't want you having all these man-hating feelings."
13. The aphorisms rushed from her calculating mind like horses from the opening gate at the Preakness.
14. Amanda's mind swirled with confusion, a stormy sea tossing the vessel of her soul against competing swells.
15. His talents were too great, in his view, to waste on proclaiming that Les Miserables was passé or that Aerosmith Reunited was like, totally awesome.
16. Nina stood motionless, years of poison and Old South genetics boiling around inside her.
17. "You're nothing but your mother's money bitch."
Foreign and Domestic
18. The water rippled outward, inviting the coming day. The vee eventually disappeared, and he wondered about his life path. What was left in his wake so far?
19. Mahegan noticed she had placed a gold necklace around her neck, which suspended a large gold C on the torn T-shirt above her moderate breasts.
20. He just wanted to cruise through life, hammer some chicks as often as possible, and make more money than everyone he knew.
21. He felt his emotions begin to gallop away from him like a herd of mustangs, but he kept them in check.
22. He flashed white teeth that looked like a row of Chiclets.
23. "This needs to be quicker than a Dale Earnhardt, Jr. pit stop, understand?"
24. Streaks of blood and muck angled across his face like a football player's black eye. For a moment, he felt like a Croatan warrior, bare-chested, camouflaged, and defeating the scheming interlopers.
25. "On the outside you're this reasonably hot chick with quirky connections to the sheriff and other locals, plus in DC and the Pentagon."
26. She had showered and smelled like fresh citrus.
27. "All of us are brothers in arms and we are more brutal than ever before. Some may call us the Junior Varsity. Well, okay. Put me in, coach!"
28. Nix scoffed. "First-class lying bitch. Other than that, she's good. Wildcat in the sack."
29. "This thing is coming apart faster than a Kmart sweater in a washing machine."
30. "You know, I graduated from the Academy in 1979. As I said the other day, we were the last class with balls. All male. They brought the bitches in for the class of 1980."
31. "Well, this chat has been useful, but now I must get on with the business of killing you, a federal agent, on live video streaming."
32. "You can't be Chief of Staff with a son who is The American Taliban."
33. "I said call the medics, captain, that's an order!" Bream shouted.
By now, Mahegan had picked up Bream's general officer Beretta pistol. He looked at Bream and said, "Order this."
Then shot the general twice in the forehead.
Reach the INDY's Triangulator team at triangulator@indyweek.com.
This article appeared in print with the headline "Don't quit your day job, Tony Tata"When you’re preparing for colorectal surgery, it feels like your surgeon throws a ton of information at you. Left and right, risks and benefits, pros and con. However, no matter how much information they throw at you, there is always something you won’t know until you’re living it. In this 4 part series, I hope to tell you some of the things that I learned after my own surgeries. This series is not meant to scare anyone but to educate on the things I wish I had known.
Part 2 - Long Term Complications
Recovery from each of my four abdominal/intestinal surgeries was 6-8 weeks. After that time I could resume normal activity, I could run a half marathon, I could jump and lift milk jugs. I could do anything according to my surgeon because I was healed.
What they didn't tell me
I was given the impression that once I was cleared for normal activity that I was healed, and essentially that my body may go back to doing whatever it did before. Perhaps this was a silly assumption on my behalf, but my surgeon spent a lot of time telling me that my life would go back to normal or at least some sense of normality after I had completed the steps to my j-pouch. It was never explained to me that these surgeries would continue to affect my body for the rest of my life.
A weak core
I had four open surgeries and I have the badass scars to prove it. What this meant at the time of my surgeries was that I was too sick for laparoscopic surgeries (again, another thing they didn’t tell me until I was being wheeled into the OR) and that I would have a harder time healing those inc |
meetings against Harumafuji, got a turbo jump at the tachiai and before he knew it had the yokozuna on the ropes.
After jettisoning his opponent from the raised ring for his first “kinboshi,” top-ranked maegashira Shohozan broke down into tears of joy as he exited the arena.
Sumo’s second-highest rank remained unscathed and in a share of the lead along with Hakuho and several others after the first two days in Tokyo, with all four ozeki notching wins.
Kisenosato, who saw his hopes for yokozuna promotion fizzle after suffering three early losses at the Nagoya basho in July, bulldozed Tochiozan (0-2) in a lopsided affair, while fellow ozeki Kotooshu made mincemeat of Takarafuji (0-2).
Kotoshogiku sent Aoiyama (0-2) backpedaling off-balance with a fierce belly charge out of the crouch before toppling the bigger man with a beltless arm technique.
Kakuryu prevailed against Takayasu (0-2), knocking the newly promoted komusubi over the straw bales after the pair engaged in a heated exchange of thrusts and shoves.
A throng of sumo fans were not deterred from coming out to Ryogoku Kokugikan, despite the havoc wrought by Typhoon Man-yi, which ripped through Japan’s main island with torrential rain and strong winds lashing a large portion of the country earlier in the day.
In an early bout, Endo, the 2012 amateur champion, got a warm round of applause for his first career win in the elite makuuchi division after grinding out Sadanofuji (1-1) in a frontal take-out maneuver.Last week, the House of Representatives voted on a number of bills related to state medical marijuana laws and the federal government’s tendency to ignore those laws. Among the resolutions voted on is a bill to cut the DEA’s budget. One measure the house voted on that was unfortunately defeated was a bill to prevent the feds from enforcing federal cannabis prohibition laws over individual state’s laws. That bill was defeated 206-222, with 24 House Democrats voting against the bill and a majority of House Republicans in favor of it.
In a statement with US News and World Report Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated, “It’s time for the federal government to no longer make marijuana use and possession criminal. It’s clear the public is already there, and it takes Congress sometimes a little bit of time to catch up. But with the votes you’ve already seen and I believe you will see there’s growing bipartisan support to no longer have marijuana as a federal crime.”
Lieu’s words match a recent Quinnipiac University poll stating that a majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use. Opponents of legalization called the measure’s defeat “a victory for America’s kids.”
In a victory for medical cannabis advocates, the House voted again on a law passed in 2015, barring the federal government from prosecuting legal dispensaries and their patients. Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) who favored the law said, “Passage of this amendment brings us one step closer to providing relief for those suffering from multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, cancer, HIV/AIDS and other medical conditions.”
The House also voted again on a law protecting farmers growing hemp legally from their crops being seized by the Feds. Overall 9 million was cut from DEA departments specifically devoted to cannabis and most of their budget was reappropriated to help children of domestic violence victims.
For more information, check out the original article here.
Featured Image Source: Freep.com
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Some say that the type of mood the policymakers the Representatives present towards cannabis is positive, others claim the Representatives just wish to allow states the right to decide for themselves, what do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments!The Confederations Cup, considered an important dress rehearsal, will not be held in Qatar in the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup, FIFA announced Wednesday.
Earlier this week, a FIFA task force recommended that the Qatar World Cup be played in November and December (rather than the traditional June and July) in order to avoid the brutal summer heat in the host country.
FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke said Wednesday that the 2021 Confederations Cup, which is usually held one year before the World Cup, will be played “in an Asian country,” though the host nation has not yet been decided.
Valcke also said club teams wouldn't be compensated for the World Cup taking place during their seasons.
"We are doing nothing which destroys football," Valcke said of the move away from a summer tournament. "There is seven years to reorganize football around the world for this World Cup.”Traders information
STALL PRICES;
Stalls cost £42 for one table, £37 per extra. Tables are provided.
BOOKING :
Regular traders.....
We will offer stalls via email two weeks after each event for the following fair. If offered a stall, please confirm your attendance by return email within seven days to facilitate the allocation of stalls to those still on the waiting list.
All traders are free to pay in advance if they wish to.
Traders who cancel within seven days of the event will be asked to forward full payment if we are unable to re-allocate the space at short notice.
New traders.....
If you wish to be placed on the waiting list for future events, please provide us with the number of tables required, genre and format of what you wish to sell and contact information. Be sure to respond to offers of a place, even if you can't attend, to maintain your place on the list.
All first-time traders should forward full payment within seven days of being offered a stall. E-mail
________________________________________
GROUND RULES ON THE DAY
Please avoid blocking access and fire exits when loading and unloading. Do not leave your vehicle parked unattended for long periods to allow everyone the chance to gain access.
Traders may set up from 7am onwards, though early arrivers should avoid any interruption of the fair set-up process, for obvious reasons.
The use of extra space or tables and the rearranging of stalls allocated is at our discretion at all times.
Please don't abuse the good will shown by us when doing so if you wish to attend in the future. If in doubt - ask.
The playing of music is welcome, assuming any request to lower the volume by either us or the hall staff is respected and observed.
For all traders sake, any suspicion of theft should be reported to us or the hall staff without delay.
All trading stops at 4pm, please load in good time to facilitate the clearing and cleaning of the foyer ahead of evening events.
*IMPORTANT NEW UNLOADING INFO*
Due to the refurbishment of the Colston Hall, trader tables may need to be delivered on the day. On these occasions we require access to the lower Ground entrance to be kept clear until the unloading of tables is complete. Early arrivers should avoid parking on the pavement or unloading at Lower Ground Level until all tables are unloaded and the delivery vehicle has moved.
There will also be road closures and limited loading/unloading space until June 2020 to facilitate refurbishment work. To view the details please refer to the Colston Hall website :
https://www.colstonhall.org/news/building-updates/road-closures-during-our-transformation/Unless you’re a die hard Flames fan, you may not have heard of Mark Jankowski.
But that’s about to change.
With the start of the 2017-18 regular season just around the corner, opening night rosters must be submitted no later than Oct. 3, and Flames fans should expect to see Jankowski’s name on that list. Throughout training camp and the preseason, Jankowski, 23, has done nothing but impress, showing vast improvement on both ends of the ice.
In five preseason games this year, the young center recorded three points, all of which were goals, while also earning time on both the power play and penalty kill.
Despite seeing power play time, Jankowski will likely only be used sparingly, if at all, with the man advantage during the regular season. However, he could easily find himself in a distinguished role on the penalty kill with his big frame and improved defensive game playing key factors.
“I think I’m doing well so far,” said Jankowski in a Calgary Sun article. “I think I’ve shown I can be a good player for this team and I can make an impact on the ice. I’ve been feeling good about my game, and I’ve been feeling better as camp has gone on. That’s a good sign. I just have to keep doing what I’m doing and show I can help the team.”
Where Will Jankowski Fit In?
With the center position on the top two lines being locked down by Sean Monahan and Mikael Backlund, and Sam Bennett having a tentative hold on the third line spot, Jankowski will likely start out centering the fourth line.
Perhaps the biggest strength Jankowski will the bring to the lineup is size, which is something the Flames have been lacking in recent years. The 6-foot-5, 210-pounder will be a step in the right direction for the Flames to become more physically competitive, especially against teams like the Anaheim Ducks.
In two playoff series with the Anaheim Ducks in 2014-15 and 2016-17, the Flames were noticeably outmatched physically, with players like Ryan Getzlaf and Ryan Kesler playing the role of bullies. Jankowski won’t completely solve the problem but it’s a start.
Although he’s demonstrated his offensive abilities in all levels of his hockey career, as a fourth line center Jankowski won’t be relied on to produce offense at a high rate. Not yet, anyway. If Bennett struggles to start the year and Jankowski continues to impress, the rookie could move up the depth chart, making his offensive capabilities more of a focus.
In 72 games with the Flames’ affiliate Stockton Heat, he recorded 62 points (29 goals, 33 assists) and in 265 collegiate games between Providence and Stanstead College, he totalled an impressive 267 points (122 goals, 145 assists). He’s no stranger to lighting the lamp when given the opportunity.
Just like his college and AHL career, Jankowski continued to show his supremacy at the faceoff dot during the preseason. Although his preseason faceoff percentage of 46.6 percent may not jump off the page, he had three of five games with an average of 50 percent or more, with one poor showing of 26.7 percent skewing his overall average.
He will have to battle Matt Stajan for the final center spot on the roster. But with Stajan’s contract expiring this season, it seems logical to have Jankowski step in and Stajan shift over to left wing.
Long Journey to the Promised Land
After being drafted 21 overall by the Flames in 2012, it’s been a long road. On draft day, Jankowski was six-foot-three and a scrawny 170 pounds. Not exactly NHL-ready. The Flames ownership and coaching staff knew he was going to be a project. Not only did he need to develop his game, he needed to develop physically which doesn’t happen overnight.
Both Jankowski and the Flames have been patient during the extended journey and it’s finally time to reap the rewards. The rookie centerman has filled out his massive frame by adding 40 pounds since his draft day, while also growing a couple more inches. With his gigantic frame, experience, and ability to light the lamp, he will no doubt be a handful for the opposition to handle, and it’s about time the Flames unleash him.
“I’ve put in a lot of hard work over the years and a lot of time and effort, and I think it’s going to pay off,” said Jankowski in a Calgary Herald article. “It’s been an incredible journey. Ever since I was drafted, my goal was to make the Flames and stick with the Flames, and I think this is the year where I can do that.Journalist and hacker Jacob Appelbaum says Clinton camp are out to get the WikiLeaks founder, while Laura Poitras, whose documentary about Assange has premiered at Cannes, denies rumours of a falling out
Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who is still confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, would find life no easier under a President Hillary Clinton, according to the journalist, hacker and WikiLeaks representative Jacob Appelbaum.
Speaking at a Q&A after the Cannes film festival premiere of Risk, Laura Poitras’s documentary about the WikiLeaks activist, Appelbaum said Clinton’s representatives had made it clear that, thanks to Cablegate – the 2010 leak of more than 250,000 classified US State Department messages by WikiLeaks (published by media partners including the Guardian) – Clinton’s office was in no mood to rethink their strategy when it came to Assange.
“I had a meeting with someone from then secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s office some time after the Cablegate,” Appelbaum said. “He let me know that Clinton did not like Julian or myself. I think that if Hillary Clinton were to run for president, she would continue to assert her political will and bitterness about the exposure of diplomatic cables that documented crimes.”
Poitras began filming Risk before she started work on Citizenfour, her Oscar-winning film about Edward Snowden. In Risk, Poitras follows Assange in the aftermath of the US diplomatic leaks as he learns of the accusations of sexual molestation and one of rape against him by two Swedish women that were, he believes, part of a smear campaign. The film shows Assange after he sought refuge from extradition in the Ecuadorian embassy, holding WikiLeaks meeting, working out with a boxing trainer and being interviewed by Lady Gaga.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Risk director Laura Poitras. Photograph: Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images
In October 2014, the New Yorker published an article suggesting that Assange had grown disillusioned with Poitras, thinking her timid. Asked by a Cannes audience member if reports of friction between the pair were true, Poitras questioned their source, before criticising the mainstream media for being distracted by minor details.
“When I first started doing the reporting on Edward Snowden’s documents, one of the first things the mainstream media did was a comparison [with WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning],” she said. “It’s a move by the mainstream media to try and separate people. Edward Snowden came very much after Chelsea Manning. It’s not about comparing the two, it’s about looking at what they’re actually revealing.”
“Julian is a political prisoner who has been demonised in the press,” said Appelbaum to applause. “There’s a real split between journalists who are working to reveal information and journalists who are propagandists. And in the United States most of the journalists are propagandists. They’re stenographers for the state.”
The pair were joined on stage by Sarah Harrison, a journalist and legal researcher who is a close confidante of Assange’s. She wore a T-shirt that read: “Liberate Assange.” She noted that 28 May will be Assange’s 2,000th day in exile, cited a recent UN report that called the UK’s detention of Assange “arbitrary”, and called for his immediate release.
“He’s been in that space for four years,” she said. “Think of that when you’re out in the Cannes sunshine”.Image copyright SPL Image caption Our own Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda (pictured) are both blue, star-forming galaxies
When galaxies stop making stars, their death is usually a slow process that chokes them of the necessary cool gases over about four billion years.
That is the conclusion of astronomers who surveyed thousands of galaxies, living and dead, to assess whether the transition is rapid or slow.
In the dead galaxies they detected high levels of metals, which build up during star formation and point to a slow strangulation process.
The work appears in the journal Nature.
"Metals are a powerful tracer of the history of star formation: the more stars that are formed by a galaxy, the more metal content you'll see," said Dr Yingjie Peng from the University of Cambridge, the paper's lead author.
"So looking at levels of metals in dead galaxies should be able to tell us how they died."
If a galaxy's death was quick and violent, with the cool gas that feeds star formation stripped away by internal or external forces, it would immediately stop forming stars and its metal content would remain the same.
In essence, we know the cause of death, but we don't yet know who the murderer is Dr Yingjie Peng, University of Cambridge
On the other hand, if the galaxy is cut off from its supply of gas but it continues to use up what remains, metal would continue to build up until the galaxy eventually "suffocates".
Slow way to go
In a commentary for Nature, fellow astronomer Andrea Cattaneo from the Observatoire de Paris compared this tell-tale evidence to the high levels of carbon dioxide seen in a strangled human body.
"During [strangulation], the victim uses up oxygen in the lungs but keeps producing carbon dioxide, which remains trapped in the body," wrote Dr Cattaneo.
"Instead of building up CO2, the strangled galaxies accumulate metals - elements heavier than helium - produced by massive stars."
The team led by Dr Peng spotted that accumulation of metal when they compared the spectrum of light emitted by 23,000 red, passive galaxies and 4,000 blue, star-forming ones.
They used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - a vast collection of detailed, multi-coloured images spanning a third of the sky, which has been used to compile a precise 3D map of the universe.
Image copyright SPL Image caption Red galaxies like NGC 2787 have seen the last of their star-forming days
On average, the living, star-forming galaxies were four billion years younger than the dead ones. This matches the amount of time that the astronomers calculate would be needed for the galaxies to burn up their remaining gas supply during the strangulation.
It is also considerably longer than the four minutes it takes to strangle a human - but the analogy stands.
"This is the first conclusive evidence that galaxies are being strangled to death," Dr Peng said. "What's next though, is figuring out what's causing it. In essence, we know the cause of death, but we don't yet know who the murderer is, although there are a few suspects."
One of the likely culprits is overcrowding; if a galaxy is in a busy group or cluster, its collection of gas from from the surrounding environment might face disruption, commencing the strangulation process.
Within galactic clusters, the astronomers saw even more pronounced differences in metal content, which supports this idea.
For very big galaxies, which are relatively rare, the differences dwindle, suggesting that violent galactic deaths are more common at those extremes.Admittedly, I have a slightly unhealthy addiction to chocolate. I just love everything about it. It’s something I can safely say I’ve always loved, and always will. One of my favourite childhood chocolate treats was fudge. Asides from the chocolate kind, I did also have another favourite flavour – cherry bakewell fudge. I honestly have no words to describe it, it was one of the best foods I’ve ever tasted. However, I’m yet to come up with my own recipe for that – even though I’m sure that one day I will. So, asides from cherry flavoured fudge, I was determined to make my own version of my favourite chocolate kind. I always found that it’s the softer, stickier fudge that tastes better, so that’s what I set out to achieve with this. To me, fudge is all about that rich, buttery taste that melts in your mouth. There’s simply nothing better.
With this recipe, I’ve recreated a traditional take on classic chocolate fudge, and made it into my own rich and indulgent treat. You can use either coconut oil or coconut butter with this. I personally prefer to use coconut butter. If you use coconut oil, the fudge will have a fairly strong coconut flavour, so if you want to enjoy the taste of chocolate alone, then use coconut butter. I know it can be quite tricky to get hold of coconut butter, so don’t worry if you can’t find any – this fudge still tastes delicious with coconut oil! I recommend leaving this fudge to set for at least 4-5 hours, so that it’s easy to cut and slice. I’ve found that it’s at its best the next day, when it’s fully set and has a firmer texture that really melts in your mouth with every bite. Heaven. Enjoy!
chocolate fudge
makes about 10 squares
ingredients
3/4 cup (165g) dates
3/4 cup (185ml) boiled water
1/2 cup (90g) extra virgin coconut oil – I used Coconut Merchant
3/4 cup + 1tbsp (90g) cocoa powder
1/2 tsp truvia stevia sweetener
salt and vanilla, to taste
method
1. Firstly, roughly chop your dates into small pieces. Then, add them into a food processor with the still hot, boiled water and coconut oil/butter. Blend until as smooth as you can get it.
2. Then, add in your cocoa powder, stevia, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Blend until smooth. When this is done, scoop the mixture into a small cake tin with a removable base. Using a spoon, spread the top of the mixture smooth. Move the fudge into the fridge and leave to set for at least 4 hours – if you can wait, it’s best left overnight. When the fudge has set, remove from the fridge, slice and serve.
shop this postNavy Secretary Ray Mabus thinks one of the reasons the ship is misunderstood is the nontraditional LCS designator. He directed an effort to find a more traditional and appropriate designation for the LCS and several other recent ship types, such as the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV), the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) and the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB).
The first of the types to be redesignated is the LCS.
"If it's like a frigate, why don't we call it a frigate?" he said Jan. 14 to a roomful of surface warfare sailors at the Surface Navy Association's annual symposium just outside Washington.
"We are going to change the hull designation of the LCS class ships to FF," Mabus said, citing the traditional hull designation for frigates. "It will still be the same ship, the same program of record, just with an appropriate and traditional name."
Mabus has long been irked by the habit in recent years of applying program-like designations to ships, and LCS is an example. In the Navy's designation system, the first letter sometimes is the key to the overall role of the ship, and "L-class" ships are widely considered to be those involved in carrying Marines and their equipment for an amphibious assault. LCS is the sole exception — a ship the Navy counts as a surface combatant, not an amphibious lift ship.
"When I hear L, I think amphib," Mabus said. "And it's not an amphib. And I have to spend a good deal of my time explaining what littoral is."
Redesignating the ships as FF puts the ship squarely back in the surface combatant category, and is appropriate, since the Pentagon direction in developing the modified LCS was to make it more "frigate-like."
Navy sources said it was intended to designate only the modified LCS as frigates, but many of the upgrades intended for those ships are to be backfitted into earlier LCS hulls, blending the types. Mabus said the designation definitely will apply to the modified ships, and will likely be extended to all LCSs.
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Navy sources said a decision on what hull numbers the ships will carry has yet to be made. There are several possibilities — if the ships pick up with the frigate series, the next number available is FF 1099.
The fleet's last guided-missile frigates (FFGs) will be decommissioned in September, and the next number in that sequence is FFG 62. But unlike the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates being phased out, the LCS doesn't carry an area air-defense missile such as the Standard missile — the basis for the "G" — so the FFG series isn't entirely appropriate.
The Navy also could decide not to change the hull numbers but simply change the designator — something that was done in the late 1970s when new Aegis guided-missile destroyers were redesignated as cruisers without changing the numbers.
Ship redesignations are happen from time to time for a variety of reasons. The first Ticonderoga-class cruisers, for example, started out as guided missile destroyers (DDG) and were changed to guided missile cruisers (CG) just before construction began to reflect their higher cost and the need for more experienced officers.
Until the 1970s, US Navy frigates were ships larger than destroyers but smaller than cruisers. In 1975 all frigates were redesignated either as cruisers or destroyers, while the fleet's destroyer escorts and ocean escorts were changed to frigates. That move brought the US into line with all other foreign navies, where frigates are considered smaller than destroyers but larger than corvettes or patrol boats.
Mabus said he would announce additional designation changes in coming weeks.Michael Tortorello is a writer in St. Paul, Minnesota.
If the polling numbers for the primaries have the voters’ blood pressure spiking, imagine what it’s doing to the presidential candidates themselves. Actually, we don’t need to imagine. Recently, a number of the leading presidential candidates, who are also the oldest candidates, released their doctor’s notes for public inspection. We learned from Bernie Sanders’ personal physician that the senator has experienced a bad back, laryngitis from acid reflux and gout. But his heart is good. Hillary Clinton suffers from seasonal allergies, her physician said. She also eats a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Donald Trump’s gastroenterologist proclaimed, with Trumpian bravado, that Mr. Trump “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
But the most interesting subject may be the one item the candidates’ physicians never mention: their brains. We learn about a presidential candidate’s appendectomy at age 10. But we’re left to guess about the likelihood that he or she will stay mentally acute in office. In this election, it’s a serious consideration: Sanders, Clinton and Trump would all be among the oldest ever sworn into office. Clinton is the baby of the group, at 69 and 3 months; Trump (70) or Sanders (75) would replace Ronald Reagan as the oldest president in history. (The non-candidate Michael Bloomberg would be 74.)
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Some of the more partisan commentators, like Breitbart.com and Karl Rove, have insinuated that Clinton suffers cognitive impairments due to a fall she took in December 2012. The notable absence of an M.D. on the end of those sources makes us skeptical. Politico asked the candidates to discuss their brain health, but perhaps not surprisingly they declined. So we turned to the neuroscientists who have used advanced imaging techniques to study the structure and the function of the brain as it performs different tasks: learning a new language, memorizing strings of numbers and repeating them backwards, playing Go.
As it happens, the field of neuroscience has studied closely the trajectory of cognitive aging, and there is a fair amount of agreement about how our cognitive abilities—memory, learning, attention, reasoning—decline as we get older. Research shows that the decline, if it were a ski slope, would appear fairly flat until the age of 50 or 60. For the next decade or two, it would look like a bunny hill. Then somewhere around age 70, the slope would drop off like a black diamond run. Then a cliff. All three of those leading candidates are approaching, at least statistically speaking, the downhill-race-course portion of that decline.
But neuroscience also tells us that the difference between individuals is often much bigger than the changes in one person’s brain through the years. Anyone who is running for the presidency, weathering the demands of the campaign trail and lengthy debates, is probably an outlier on the cognitive scale already.
But they are, unquestionably, old. The comforting news here is that older brains aren’t necessarily incapable of handling a job as complex and stressful as the presidency—even something really surprising and fast-moving like the next financial meltdown, a coordinated global terrorist attack or a pandemic. We know the brain changes over time, losing a little speed on its fastball, but it also compensates in ways that might enable it to make even better, “wiser” choices than a fresh-packed 25-year-old brain.
“I think we should be thinking seriously about this issue,” said Mark Fisher, a professor of neurology and political science at the University of California. In a paper published last year, Fisher writes, “we should probably assume that a significant proportion of political leaders over the age of 65 have impairment of executive function.” These are the complex cognitive processes that guide “normal decision-making.” The onset of these changes can be sudden, as in a stroke, or slower, as a result of microbleeds or routine, age-related changes to brain structure.
Having watched the candidates speak spontaneously in the debates, “I think it is very likely many of these candidates are functioning fine in the area of executive function,” Fisher added. But “how we handle those who are below” is a historical riddle that the presidency has not solved. He concluded, “We can’t start to get anywhere unless the public is aware.”
***
Science has yet to study the brains of politicians as a species. But Timothy Salthouse, a pioneering aging researcher at the University of Virginia, considered the brains of another group of aging executives—CEOs—in a 2012 paper called “Consequences of Age-Related Cognitive Declines.”
The study methodically establishes the correlation between intelligence and professional achievement. And then it documents a consistent, age-related decline in “fluid intelligence”—the ability to learn, reason and solve novel problems. (“Crystallized intelligence”—your accumulated skills and stuff you pull out of your hat during pub trivia—spikes later and holds up longer.)
What are the “consequences” of that brain slump? For Fortune 500 CEOs, who typically ascend to the top of their profession in high middle age, there don’t appear to be any.
Yet cognitive aging isn’t just something that shows up on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The change originates in the structure and performance of the brain itself. There’s shrinkage of the pre-frontal cortex, an area important to thinking, decision-making, judgment and social relationships. At the same time, the aging brain experiences a back-to-front shift. Complex learning and memory tasks that used to be accomplished efficiently in the back of the brain now occupy the front, as well. In a processing change with the friendly name HAROLD—hemispheric asymmetry reduction of older adults—single-sided brain activities, like encoding (or tagging) and retrieving information, now recruit both hemispheres. It takes more brain to do the same job.
That description of physical transformation may leave you with a picture of the elderly brain as something like the rotting lung depicted on a pack of cigarettes. This comparison would be wrong. Broad differences would be visible if you examined a batch of brain scans for 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds. However, “If you are looking at the MRI of a person,” explained Dilip Jeste, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, “you may not be able to tell her age.”
“There are 40-year-old people whose brain is like an 80-year-old person’s,” Jeste said, “and there are 80-year-old people whose brain is like a 40-year-old person’s.”
In truth, there is no one ski slope that traces our cognitive path. It’s more like a resort, with a multitude of runs that correspond to separate skills. According to an ambitious study conducted by the neuroscientists Laura Germine and Joshua Hartshorne, peak cognitive performance spreads out across the decades of life. Tests of vocabulary show people maxing out around 50 and descending slowly afterward.
The areas of intelligence that show the greatest falloff would seem to be among the most important for a CEO—or a president. These would be the capacity to absorb large amounts of new information and data in a short time span and apply it to solve problems in unaccustomed fashion. Take the 2007 financial crisis. Even with an MBA, George W. Bush couldn’t have known beforehand about the different tranches of failing debt, asset-backed commercial paper, money markets breaking the buck, collateralized debt obligations and a mystery meat called “CDOs squared.”
Hartshorne, an assistant professor of psychology at Boston College, is willing to entertain the possibility that a younger person might be better suited to vacuuming up that mess of information. But it’s at best a parlor game to try splitting the job of governing into discrete, measurable tasks. “If I thought being smart was something important in being a president, then I would worry about how smart they were starting out instead of how old they are,” Hartshorne suggested.
An older president, Jeste believes, might depend more on wisdom: a complex human trait that includes empathy, resilience, emotional regulation and positive thought. (Running for office is almost the definition of optimism, he said. “Most of them are going to lose; only one will become president.”) His recent research has involved looking for the seat of wisdom in the prefrontal cortex and the limbic striatum—in evolution, the newest and oldest parts of the brain.
The most consistent rule about cognitive aging, it turns out, is heterogeneity. “As people become older, people become more different instead of more similar,” Jeste said.Even Nigel Farage accepts that Ukip is nearing the limit of its appeal to disaffected former Conservatives. The party's ability to grow depends on its ability to take votes from Labour – hence Farage’s bluster about putting his tanks on Ed Miliband's lawn. There are signs that it is working, too. Before 2013, Ukip took only one Labour vote for every nine they took from the Conservatives. But since January 2013, Labour has lost six voters to Ukip for every nine that Ukip has taken from the Conservatives.
The rebranding of Ukip has taken three forms. The party, for so long hopeless at campaigning, has learned from the Liberal Democrats about the importance of relentless campaigning in by-elections – and sheer opportunism, as with the recent attacks on Labour’s left flank. As a disproportionate number of by-elections this parliament have occurred in northern seats, Ukip has become well versed in attacking Labour.
Ukip has also shifted its policies – and especially which ones it chooses to emphasise. Privately, many leading figures within the party do not consider the NHS viable in its current form. But the party has chosen to oppose not only the current government’s reforms, but also New Labour’s. "The NHS is a battle for another day," one party source tells me, reflecting how Ukip has decided that opposing all reform of the health service is the most fertile source of votes. Such populism is detectable in other policies, too. Ukip has flirted with the "wag tax" (until Farage shot down the idea) and party figures are even floating renationalising the railways. "I do think that we should be considering, and there should be an open debate at the moment, whether we should have nationalisation or [run the railways] through an organisation like a co-op," Steven Woolfe, the party’s financial affairs and migration spokesman, recently told me.
Finally, there has been a change in personnel in the party. To undermine the caricature of the party as one of disillusioned shire Tories, Ukip has pushed forward figures like Woolfe, Diane James and Paul Nuttall, who each have working class credentials. It is a long way from the last election when the party was led by Lord Pearson, an Eton-educated life peer, although the defection of two privately-educated Conservative MPs could yet undermine Ukip’s appeal to Labour supporters.
Labour has decided that its general election attack on Ukip will be to present the party as "the Tories on speed," as a shadow cabinet member puts it. "We’ve found that’s what works best." But Labour’s problem, as a new Comres poll shows, is that the electorate don't quite agree. Asked to put leaders and parties on a left-right scale of 0-10, they put Farage (6.59) and Ukip (6.61) to the left of David Cameron (6.81) and the Conservative Party (6.91).
This is very significant. For some voters who consider the Conservatives too right-wing to support, Ukip is a more palatable option. Though Ukip is significantly to the right of the average voter, the poll suggests that the party’s repositioning – away from libertarianism and towards the populism of a leftist and rightist bent favoured by the most successful anti-immigration parties on the continent – is proving successful. Ukip’s judgement is that many former Conservatives fuelled by resentment of David Cameron are now in the party to stay, so it can shift leftwards to try and broaden its appeal without alienating them. Labour has been warned.Platonic relationships between women have always been “suspect” in the general opinion. We can look back as far as the Salem witch trials, for example, to see exactly how dangerous it was in America for women to build sustainable relationships with one another without the supervision of men. Back then, women who were single, financially independent, involved in midwifery or other medical practices and/or spent too much time with other women were accused – and sometimes tried and convicted – of witchcraft. Even today, the myth persists that women are somehow not able to maintain healthy relationships (an idea that is fueled by the onslaught of reality television shows that show women hating each other). And if women have close relationships with other women, it is easier to filter the relationship as sexual/romantic. Oprah and her best friend Gayle have been accused of being lesbian lovers for years now.
When talking about the undermining of female friendship, Maya mentioned that we live in a culture where sexual and familial relationships are prioritized over friendships. This is so true that sometimes are willing women devalue the friendships that we have for the sake of being good romantic partners |
you do on behalf of your client, you've got to put their interests before what your own would be," Rosenhaus said. "We've always subscribed to that."
But numerous financial professionals who have worked with Rosenhaus and spoke with Y! Sports on the condition of anonymity said Rosenhaus and his employees consistently refused to make referrals to financial advisers who would not send them business in return. This practice continued long after it should have been clear that the reciprocal referral relationship they had with Rubin and his company had exposed their clients to risk.
"Drew's employees have said to me, 'Drew likes you, he thinks you do great work for the players, but he said we can't refer business to you because you don't refer business to us,' " one of the financial professionals said.
Another well-placed financial source said "I asked [a Rosenhaus sports employee] how come they don't refer clients to me and their response was 'because you don't recruit.' The inference was they wouldn't send me players because I didn't recruit to send players their way."
The Rosenhaus brothers declined to comment when asked if the financial professionals' claims were true.
In his arbitration filing with the NFLPA, Martoe said Rosenhaus sought more than a reciprocal referral relationship with some of the financial advisers they introduced to players. Martoe alleged he was told that if he introduced clients "like Dez Bryant and others" to a financial adviser at SunTrust bank, he would receive his commissions faster. That's because Rosenhaus' firm would get a "bigger loan and a better rate" from SunTrust, Martoe said.
While the Rosenhaus brothers declined to comment on whether they had ever referred a player to a specific financial adviser, citing the confidentiality of the NFLPA arbitration process, Drew Rosenhaus acknowledged they had given some players "a couple of names of guys that we think could possibly do a decent job for them."
When asked if referring a player to those financial advisers subjected them to a duty to investigate an adviser's credentials, Jason Rosenhaus said "the short answer is 'yes,' to a reasonable extent." When asked to define what "reasonable" efforts they would take to vet an adviser when making a referral, Jason Rosenhaus said it was "impossible" to do as "everything depends on a particular circumstance."
[Around the NFL: Rise and fall of former financial adviser Jeff Rubin]
"I think that obviously it should be somebody that's registered with the NFLPA in good standing and who our clients speak highly of," Drew Rosenhaus said. "If our clients are happy with a financial adviser, that speaks well of [him]."
Asked if NFLPA registration was an endorsement of an adviser's skill, honesty or competence, the Rosenhaus brothers said it was not, it was merely a "minimum qualification." When asked if they were making "reasonable" efforts to refer clients to honest, ethical, and competent advisers by relying solely upon the "minimum qualification" of NFLPA registration and their clients' willingness to "speak well" of a given adviser, Drew Rosenhaus said "The biggest problem is, you can do a bunch of research on a financial planner, [he] could have great recommendations from players …. could be in good standing and then [he] goes off and does something … out of character.....Anytime you recommend someone, that's a tough thing. I make sure to tell guys that I can't vouch for anybody but myself and Jason."
The NFLPA declined to comment on whether Rubin was ever registered in the NFLPA financial adviser program.
Asked if there was a heightened duty to conduct periodic due diligence on an adviser like Rubin who represented such a large number of Rosenhaus clients, the brothers said they were prohibited from doing so. It's unclear what rule or regulation they were citing as authority.
"Once a player has a relationship with a financial adviser, at that point, unless a player asks us to get involved, asks us to evaluate their financial investments, we can't," Drew Rosenhaus said. "There's nothing that we can do."
While the Rosenhauses reject the suggestion they shared in the responsibility for the losses their clients experienced in dealing with Jeff Rubin, they did shed some light on why they may have missed so many seemingly discoverable issues.
The Rosenhaus brothers didn't want to be fired.
"As long as [Rubin] didn't say to the guys we had with him, 'fire Drew,' we peacefully co-existed," said Jason Rosenhaus. "Our clients were mesmerized by this guy."
Asked if their concern for appeasing clients may have impacted their ability to represent the players' best interests, the Rosenhauses said they were as surprised as anyone by Rubin's fall.
"It's not something where we looked the other way and we knew what was going on," Jason Rosenhaus said. "We were shocked. Everybody was shocked."
"I guess the point I would make to you is … there are people who have to pay for this, and there are people who should be punished for it," Drew Rosenhaus said. "There are people who should be accountable, but Jason [Rosenhaus] and I are innocent victims, just like our clients."
NFL video from Yahoo! Sports:Keeping your baby safe, secure and comfortable overnight means everything to you. And it's always been at the core of our mission here at HALO. Our founder, Bill Schmid, and his wife Cathy, lost their first-born to SIDS, which is why we've made it our mission to make safe sleep easier for families.
Every day we see images of babies in unsafe sleep areas, so when we heard about First Candle's Safe Sleep Guardian Program, we jumped at the chance to join, as we've always been committed to showing safe sleep environments since our very inception.
We know that parents, grandparents and all of baby’s caregivers learn proper safe sleep practices when they are modeled. So, it’s critical to us that all of our imagery follow safe sleep criteria as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). We are thrilled to join First Candle’s Safe Sleep Guardian Program to help in their shared mission of educating parents about safe sleep.
What does it mean to be part of this program? As a brand, HALO is committed to only showing babies in safe sleep environments, as we have since the beginning. This includes all imagery on social media, on our website and in marketing materials. Read all of the safe sleep image guidelines we commit to as part of this program.
Are you practicing safe sleep with your baby? Check out our safe sleep reminders below to find out.
Safe Sleep Reminders
1. Baby's sleep space should be completely bare, save for a tight-fitting sheet on a firm, flat surface. This means no pillows, blankets, sleep positioners, loungers or stuffed animals. Even when supervised, these items can be dangerous. For safe sleep on the go, look for a portable crib that is designed for sleep, like the HALO™ DreamNest™ open air sleep system.
2. Babies on their backs are always safest from risks associated with suffocation, so it's the sleep position recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The "Back is Best" embroidery on all our SleepSack wearable blankets and swaddles reminds caregivers to lay baby down to sleep on their back. This video is a great demonstration of what these dangers look like.
3. Room share, don't bed share. Bed sharing is another risk for suffocation. If you want to be near your baby, try a bassinet. Once baby has outgrown its bassinet, it's time to give them their own safe sleep space.
4. Never dress your baby too warm for sleep. A wearable blanket is recommended to use over pajamas so baby doesn't overheat or risk suffocation from loose blankets. Hats are cute, but they shouldn't be used for sleep after baby has left the hospital.
Find more safe sleep tips here.Original ‘Godzilla’ Star Set To Appear In New Reboot
Fans of Godzilla and monster movies in general couldn’t help but instantly think of Roland Emmerich’s 1998 disasterpiece of a remake when it was revealed that a new reboot was on the way.
But thankfully things appear to be going in the right direction with the reboot as far as casting is concerned, and the latest actor to be confirmed for the movie brings with them some positive vibes that the reboot will be very faithful to the original Godzilla movie, titled Gojira.
Legendary Pictures has released a new image via the Twitter of reboot director Gareth Edwards and Akira Takarada, one of the stars of the 1954 original movie.
Takarada played Hideto Ogata in the original movie, and has appeared in numerous Godzilla flicks since then.
He joins a cast that includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, and David Strathairn.
Godzilla is currently set for a May 16, 2014 release date.GETTY Tommy Robinson is launching the UK branch of PEGIDA today
The UK branch of the far-right German campaign group PEGIDA marked its introduction into the UK political sphere with a series of provocative and divisive statements about Islam and the current refugee crisis. The new group, which has been set up by former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, also announced its first planned protest with a message calling on supporters to "save our culture".
Addressing reporters at a pub in Luton, Mr Robinson said: "We have an ideological problem in this country with Islam. It's not assimilated in any sort of way. "Our political leaders and our European leaders are working against the interests of the people with the refugee influx - which is a migrant invasion - and we want to replicate the resistance of PEGIDA in Germany in the UK. It will be very different to how the English Defence League used to do things. He then added: "I'm opposed to Islam as a fascist ideology. We are not an anti-Muslim group. We feel Muslims are victims of Islam."
AP More than 25,000 people attended a recent PEGIDA march in Germany
GETTY The pan-European group has vowed to stop the 'Islamification of the West'
He also announced PEGIDA's first major rally will take place in Birmingham and is being billed as a "peaceful silent walk". Organisers have warned participants that "no alcohol or face coverings will be tolerated" in a bid to prevent the sort of drink-fuelled violence that marred EDL protests. The walk is being organised in conjunction with PEGIDA branches across Europe and is centred on the theme "Save Our Country, Save Our Culture, Save Our Future". Birmingham City Council leaders issued a statement ahead of the upcoming march saying: "Brummies do not subscribe to ideas based on prejudice, intolerance and hate. "That is why the planned launch of a new group in Birmingham is rejected by the council." The group, whose name is a German acronym standing for Patriotic Europeans Against The Islamisation Of The West, has been accused in some quarters of being a far-right hate group. But Mr Robinson looked to distance it from both the British National Party and the EDL, retweeting a message from a supporter saying it is "completely wrong" to suggest the three are related. The controversial campaigner quit the EDL in 2013, citing his fear that far-right protestors had hijacked the group and bemoaning its reputation as alcohol-fuelled and violent.
GETTY The far-right group also has movements in Scandinavia and Holland
Migrant Crisis: Mass exodus from the migrant camp continues Tue, October 25, 2016 Hundreds of migrants are continuing to arrive in Europe as they flee the scenes of chaos and brutality of the Islamic State in the Middle East. Play slideshow 1 of 224
I think we should oppose it Weyman Bennett, Unite Against Fascism
He briefed journalist about PEGIDA UK's aims alongside its new leader, Paul Weston, at the Cuckoo pub in Luton yesterday afternoon. Mr Weston is seen as a controversial appointment by some following his arrest in 2014 on claims of inciting racial harassment. The veteran campaigner was hauled away from a rally in Winchester by police after he quoted an apparently anti-Islam passage from a book by Winston Churchill. No further action was taken against him. But he said: "If we are allowed to have peaceful, quiet demonstrations, that will appeal to moderate England, people who feel they can bring their children, their grandchildren out," Weston said. "We would like everything to be removed. We don't want to have confrontations with the far-left."Please enable Javascript to watch this video
Three search-and-rescue teams saved an "incredibly lucky" 2-year-old dog that was apparently uninjured after falling some 600 feet from the side of a cliff in the San Gabriel Mountains on Tuesday, authorities said.
The dog was hiking on the Sam Merrill Trail when he slipped and fell, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Dan Paige said.
Search and rescue teams from Altadena, Montrose and Sierra Madre responded.
"Angel," a white German shepherd mix, fell about 600 feet down very steep terrain, Paige said. It took about two hours to locate him, the deputy said.
Crews used some 700 feet of rope to lower rescuers down to the animal, which was stopped on an outcropping that was just about 2 feet square, Paige said.
The dog was visibly afraid and apprehensive, said rescuers, who offered him a piece of beef jerky, according to a news release from the Sheriff's Department.
Angel was then placed into a specially designed dog harness, allowing rescuers to lower themselves and the dog to the canyon bottom, the release stated.
Paige called the dog "incredibly lucky," noting that a mountain biker broke multiple bones after falling from nearly the same spot last year.
The dog's owner, Francine Banzali, was waiting at the entrance to the Sam Merrill Trail, next to Altadena's Cobb Estate.
"My dog Angel and I were running down the trail and all of sudden he was gone," she said. "I backtracked and I couldn't find him, but I could hear him crying down in the canyon."
Banzali ran down the trail and could see Angel in a ravine, unable to escape. She called the Sheriff's Department, which responded quickly.
Angel was very excited to be reunited with his owner, and he did not appear to be seriously hurt except for a scratch on his nose.
"He's going to be on the leash from now on," Banzali said. "I'm so thankful to these guys, the Sheriff's Department, search and rescue."
The popular Sam Merrill Trail leads about 2 1/2 miles up to the top of nearly 3,210-foot Echo Mountain.
More video:
Please enable Javascript to watch this videoEntrance to Underground Atlanta
Underground Atlanta is a shopping and entertainment district in the Five Points neighborhood of downtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States, near the Five Points MARTA station. It is currently undergoing renovations. First opened in 1969, it takes advantage of the viaducts built over the city's many railroad tracks to accommodate later automobile traffic. Each level has two main halls, still called Upper and Lower Alabama and Pryor Streets.
The location has been purchased and the lower level is officially closed as of August 13, 2017 for construction.
History [ edit ]
[1] This historic Gas Lamp, located in the Underground, was 1 of 50 erected by the Atlanta Gas Light Company in 1856. It was shelled by Union artillery prior to the Battle of Atlanta of the American Civil War. There are two bronze plaques mounted on it which commemorates Solomon (Sam) Luckie, 1 of 40 free blacks, who died from the wounds that he received from the shell that struck the lamp. Also commemorated on the plaques are the Confederacy, the Battle of East Atlanta, and one of the local men who fought in that battle.
Merchants lining the halls of Underground Atlanta in March, 2008.
Shopping at Atlanta Underground
The buildings comprising Underground Atlanta were constructed during the city's post-Civil War Reconstruction Era boom, between 1866 and 1871, when the city's population doubled from 11,000 to 22,000 residents. In 1869, the Georgia Railroad freight depot was constructed to replace the one destroyed by Sherman's troops in 1864. The depot, which stands at the entrance of Underground Atlanta, remains the oldest building in downtown Atlanta. However, the depot was originally three stories tall but the second and third story were destroyed by fire. Besides the train station, the bustling district included hotels, banks, law offices, and saloons. An electric streetcar was installed in 1889 to points South, and by 1900 the depot was serving 100 trains per day with direct service between Atlanta and New York City; Cincinnati, Ohio; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Knoxville, Tennessee; Augusta, Georgia; Macon, Georgia; and Columbus, Georgia. By 1910, several iron bridges had been built to cross the railroad tracks at Union Street. At the suggestion of Atlanta architect Haralson Bleckley, the bridges were rebuilt in concrete and connected by a linear mall between them. Eventually, Bleckley envisioned public plazas between the bridges, but only one, Plaza Park (later Peachtree Fountains Plaza), was ever built.
As construction took place in the 1920s, merchants began to move their operations to the second floor of their buildings, and turned the original ground floors' storefronts into basements for storage and service. Given that this occurred during Prohibition, and the fact that these "basements" were relatively obscured from the city above, some of the basements became sites for speakeasys and juke joints, with music and illegal drinking a common occurrence. One of the first mentions of the area is in the opening lines of Bessie Smith's 1927 "Preachin' The Blues" which documents its importance as an entertainment district:
Down in Atlanta G.A. Underneath the viaduct every day Drinking corn and hollerin' hoo-ray Pianos playin' till the break of day
By the end of the 1920s, the street level had been raised by one and a half stories, and a five-block area was completely covered up. For the next forty years, as Atlanta continued to grow at street level, the 12-acre (49,000 m2) area was effectively abandoned and forgotten.
In the 1960s, the original storefronts were rediscovered and many architectural features from a century earlier had survived intact including decorative brickwork, granite archways, ornate marble, cast-iron pilasters, hand-carved wooden posts, and gas street lamps. Two Georgia Tech graduates, Steven H. Fuller, Jr. and Jack R. Patterson,[2] began to plan a private development there[3] to restore and reopen "the city beneath the city" as a retail and entertainment district. Underground Atlanta, Inc. was incorporated May 2, 1967 and began acquiring options to lease buildings under Central Ave, Pryor, Whitehall, Hunter, Alabama, and Wall Street viaducts. Fuller and Paterson purchased all the corporation's stock in October 1967 and construction began in November 1968.[4] A constitutional amendment was passed in Georgia naming the area a historic site.[5]
Postcard showing Underground Atlanta in the 1970s.
On April 8, 1969, "Underground Atlanta" officially opened with new restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and music venues installed in the old individual storefronts. At the time, Fulton County was the only county in the state of Georgia that permitted mixed alcoholic beverages to be served, provided that men wore coats and ties in places that served them. As a result, Underground Atlanta quickly became the center of downtown Atlanta nightlife. Among the more popular spots in Underground Atlanta were Dante's Down the Hatch, Scarlett O'Hara, The Blarney Stone, The Rustler's Den, The Pumphouse, The Front Page, The Bank Note, and Muhlenbrink's Saloon, where Atlanta's Piano Red, under the name Dr. Feelgood and the Interns, played from 1969 to 1979. Other attractions included a souvenir shop owned by governor Lester Maddox and a wax museum. With the old-style architecture lending considerable charm to the district, Underground Atlanta was compared to Bourbon Street in New Orleans. By 1972, its most profitable year, Underground had 3.5 million visitors and $17 million in sales.
The heyday of Underground Atlanta lasted for only half a decade. When neighboring DeKalb County relaxed their restrictions on alcohol consumption in the early 1970s, new bars sprouted up in other parts of the city, generating competition. The dress code restrictions were dropped and fights began to break out. The construction of the MARTA East Line beginning in 1975 tore out several blocks of clubs and eliminated parking. Crime became uncontrollable and the area was considered dangerous. In 1980, Underground Atlanta was closed. A few businesses struggled to stay open, but by 1982, they left and the area was once again abandoned.
Underground sat mostly dormant for most of the 1980s. Vagrants occupied several of the historic buildings, some of which were consequentially destroyed by fires. In 1982, newly elected Mayor Andrew Young vowed to reopen Underground as part of his plan to resuscitate downtown Atlanta. During this time, some of the clubs that were destroyed by the MARTA construction eventually won a claim for damages from federal mass transit authorities and used the money to help revitalize the area a second time.
An expensive $142 million renovation conducted by The Rouse Company began in 1987. This included $85 million in city municipal bonds. On June 15, 1989, Underground Atlanta re-opened as more of a modern shopping mall than an entertainment district. Its 140 tenants included the retail outlets Sam Goody and Olivia Newton-John's Koala Blue boutique, as well as a reopened Dante's Down the Hatch in the Kenny's Alley section. Although the historic buildings and architecture remained a major draw, some critics felt that the now-sanitized district had lost its original charm and lively atmosphere.
In August 1990, The World of Coca-Cola, a museum chronicling the history of The Coca-Cola Company and its products, opened adjacent to Underground Atlanta, bringing further influx of tourists to the area. An organ grinder monkey was a regular, who was trained to tug on people's clothing and hold out his hand for money. But on April 30, 1992, in the wake of the Rodney King trial verdict, the area was severely damaged by protesters who frightened tourists and were attacked by police. A new marketing campaign which stated "The Fun in Town is Underground" was designed to help its public image, and although the area saw significant attendance during the 1996 Olympics, Underground Atlanta still ended the year $6.5 million in the red.
Underground Atlanta is home to retail stores, restaurants, and several nightclubs and bars in Kenny's Alley. In 2004, in an effort to keep Underground Atlanta from closing a second time, the city passed an ordinance allowing bars in the complex to remain open and serve drinks until 4:00 AM -- a last call 90 minutes later than the rest of the city had recently been restricted to. Patrons were also permitted to take their open alcoholic drinks from bar to bar. Despite this, Underground Atlanta has consistently struggled to attract consistent and diverse patronage.[6] Indeed, since its re-opening in 1989, Underground has become a conundrum that leaves tourists befuddled and struggles to attract locals.[7]
Planned renovation [ edit ]
On December 17, 2014, an announcement was made by Atlanta's then mayor, Kasim Reed, that the city of Atlanta was under contract to sell Underground Atlanta to developer WRS Inc. The developer plans to turn Underground Atlanta into a mixed-use development with more retail options and above ground apartments, with total investments of $150–$200 million.[8] The sale was completed in March 2017,[9] and the lower level closed to the public on August 13, 2017.[10]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:For as long as I’ve been blogging about being a parent raising a daughter in the shadow of princess culture, I’ve had online feedback suggesting I check out the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon (aka MLP:FiM).
At first, I ignored them. What were they thinking? These people clearly didn’t understand I wanted to show my daughter content with themes of female empowerment and self-confidence; to find stories and characters that didn’t patronise young girls; that had imaginative female led tales of action and adventure yet with stimulating and thought provoking scenarios. My Little Pony was surely part of the problem – not the solution. Yet, the recommendations kept on coming, from even the most feminist community members. Could it be true? Could My Little Pony – which in my mind typified the kind of content I was opposed to – really provide a substantive alternative to Disney Princesses? So with some (many) reservations, one afternoon we took the plunge and watched it.
Is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic the princess alternative I’m looking for?
I couldn’t quite believe it. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a delightful, smart, funny, really well written & animated show – that most importantly treated its intended audience of young girls with respect and intelligence. I was rather gobsmacked. And an instant fan…
While it has the colours, the coiffed manes, the “cutie marks”, and the like from its 80s stablemate I was judging it from – it also has a ‘hip’ factor that really surprised me. But above all it is the core of distinctive female characters that make this show. There is a character here for everyone, but to be honest even the least favoured ones have endearing qualities.
Creator Lauren Faust was inspired by her love of the toys as a child, but how the cartoons of the 80s failed to live up to the adventures in her imagination and play. Well, this new incarnation is full of creativity and adventure.
The set up is this (some spoilers): Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria sends bookish unicorn Twilight Sparkle to the town of Ponyville to study the magic of friendship. She forms bonds with cowgirl apple farmer Applejack, high-energy Rainbow Dash, party girl Pinkie Pie, animal lover Fluttershy, and fashionista Rarity.
It turns out each one represents one of the ‘Elements of Harmony’: Honesty, Loyalty, Laughter, Generosity, and Kindness. Twilight Sparkle is the last element – Magic. Also in the mix is Celestia’s sister Princess Luna, a dragon called Spike, and all sort of sub-characters and adventures…
It may sound confusing and/or convoluted – but my point in going through this is I think there’s real thought been put into setting the scene for female led tales of magic, adventure, and friendship. Lauren Faust has admitted that while the show is riddled with pink, has princesses, and that she was somewhat at the behest of Hasbro’s needs to sell toys – she and her team tried to manage this with integrity and creativity. I think they succeeded brilliantly.
Isn’t My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic just a silly girly cartoon?
In an early defence of the show, creator Lauren Faust said: “…many people without even watching the show (will) label it girly, stupid, cheap, for babies or an evil corporate commercial. I encourage skeptics like this to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic with an open mind. If I’m doing my job right, I think you’ll be surprised.”
I would take issue with one thing she said – that labelling the show ‘girly’ is derogatory. Why? Perhaps one of Lauren Faust’s achievements is that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic helps redefine the word ‘girly’ to no longer be an insult.
‘Girly’ should simply mean something that is of – or for – girls, and not judging because it is. I have not mentioned the pony in the room – the brony. Male fans (of which I must now count myself) are collectively referred to as ‘Bronies’, and we are many. So while the show may have been made to for girls, this doesn’t mean that boys won’t like it either.
Is ‘My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic’ feminist?
Of course it’s feminist. Completely so. Unashamedly so. This is a show created by a woman, about female characters supporting each other, in a land ruled by a female, where the default for any additional character is female, in a show that absolutely doesn’t patronise the intended audience of little girls with an assumption of frivolous interests alone. Feminism – as well as friendship – is magic.
My wife commented on an episode the other day. It involved two ponies engaged in a sporting rivalry who faced off in a sporting tournament. She observed that when growing up she would NEVER have seen a cartoon or TV show where two female characters engaged in a testing physical sporting competition. She only ever saw males doing that.
This is a show that resets the norm from the male default. There are male characters (most notably Spike the baby dragon) but they are supporting cast – the norm is female. This is a cartoon that I cannot imagine has a single episode which doesn’t pass the Bechedel Test.
In many ways, the show reminded me of the cheery empowering tone of Amy Poehler’s Lesley Knope in Parks and Recreation – I think if Knope had a favourite cartoon, it would be My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
Lauren Faust’s involvement tailed off after season 1 (which we are currently watching). The reasons for Lauren Faust leaving My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic have never been made clear.
Perhaps it was the struggles mentioned earlier – in trying to balance her desire to make a great show for girls with the desire for Hasbro to market the toys their way? Perhaps it was other ‘creative differences’.
I hope the adventurous empowering tone of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic continues in subsequent seasons. We shall definitely see, as my daughter and I are now hooked – so will continue watching the show despite Faust’s departure. On a recent foreign holiday, we picked up our first MLP toys, something I NEVER thought I would happily buy for our daughter. My transformation to a Brony-dad of a daughter is complete.
=====
NB: Subsequent to her time running MLP:FiM, Lauren Faust created the short lived DC Nation animated shorts Super Best Friends Forever, about the team up of Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Girl. If you haven’t done so already – please watch the five episodes in all their glory here:
=====Express Wi-Fi is one of Facebook’s many connectivity initiatives under its internet.org umbrella. Unlike more futuristic projects like the Aquila drone, though, the emphasis here is on existing Wi-Fi technologies and allowing local entrepreneurs to resell internet access.
In India, Facebook is currently working with a number of local ISPs and 500 local entrepreneurs, but that number is about to grow quite a bit.
As the company announced today, it’s now launching the service commercially in India and has partnered with the Indian telecom firm Bharti Airtel, which plans to bring an additional 20,000 hotspots online, starting in the next few months. The other ISPs involved in the project so far are AirJaldi in Uttarakhand, LMES in Rajasthan, Tikona in Gujarat and soon with Shaildhar in Meghalaya.
The company previously launched the service commercially in Kenya and it’s also trialing it in Tanzania, Nigeria and Indonesia.
As James Beldock, Facebook’s product manager for Express Wi-Fi, told me, the idea behind this project was always to create an entrepreneurial grassroots base for the service. That means Airtel and its other ISP partners will continue this work with local entrepreneurs who want to resell internet access to their communities. “Our strategy has always been that these programs work if they are financially sustainable for the partners we work with,” Beldock told me, and added that while Facebook provides the software, it’s the ISPs and their partners that decide what to charge, for example. “Facebook’s strategy is to enable partners to make connectivity at scale sustainable, not to dictate pricing.”
Wi-Fi, of course, is a far easier onramp to the internet than most other means of getting online, Beldock stressed. After all, you don’t need a SIM card or data plan to go online. It also offers a low-cost way of getting online (with daily, weekly or monthly data packs) and the partnership with local entrepreneurs could help the local economy.
As Beldock noted, the challenge of expanding the service to other countries isn’t so much technical as it is about understanding the local markets and needs. Chances are, though, that we’ll soon see more commercial launches in the other countries where Facebook is already testing the service.OTTAWA — In Calgary Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed a unique pattern he began last fall in Medicine Hat — a sitting prime minister who will jump right in and openly campaign for any underdogs flying the Liberal flag in a by-election.
Last fall, in the southern Alberta riding of Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, the Liberals were handily beaten by the Conservatives and, the early line is that Conservatives should be able to count on easy wins on April 3 when voters in the southern Calgary ridings of Calgary Heritage and
Calgary Midnapore pick the MPs that will succeed Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney respectively.
Nonetheless, Trudeau was the star attraction at a Wednesday campaign rally in Calgary, a city which sent two Liberal MPs to Ottawa in the 2015 general election, an election that saw Liberal success in Calgary for the first time since another Trudeau swept to power in 1968.
Trudeau the Younger is not content to have simply a beach-head in Alberta, with two seats in each of Calgary and Edmonton.
“Albertans are tired of being taken for granted and they want a better option, and that’s exactly what we’re putting forward,” Trudeau said in Calgary. “We will not write off any corner of this country.
“That’s what I’m doing right here. That’s why I go to every byelection.”
While it is rare but not unheard-of for a sitting PM to stump in a by-election, Trudeau’s decision to campaign in Medicine Hat last fall and now Calgary has raised some questions for his own party — and his party’s opponents — about how to account for the costs of a campaigning prime minister.
Are taxpayers, for example, helping to pay for a campaigning PM? And what about election spending limits? Isn’t the expense of a prime minister’s tour — with all the security, special vehicles, additional prime ministerial aides — likely to be too much for the spending limits by which all campaigns must abide?
So far, the Liberal Party of Canada has satisfied itself that it will not only be doing right by the taxpayer but it will also be doing right by Elections Canada, the referee that enforces the election financing rules.
Indeed, the party’s compliance officer has what amounts to a ‘comfort letter’ from Elections Canada about some aspects of how the party is interpreting what counts as an election expense for a campaigning PM and what does not.
Moreover, Braeden Caeley, the party’s communications director, says that, so far as the taxpayer is concerned, the party will reimburse the federal treasury for expenses such as hotels, meals, or airfare incurred as a result of the prime minister’s political activity.
Mind you, those airfare costs will be at the rate of equivalent economy airfare for a Calgary-Ottawa flight and not the $5,000-an-hour that the Department of National Defence says it costs to operate the RCAF Challenger executive jet that took Trudeau to Calgary and will take him back to Ottawa.
Canadian security agencies do not want prime ministers on commercial aircraft and prefer they use military jets and military pilots. But that is not a hard-and-fast rule, particularly when there are elections.
During a general election campaign, an incumbent prime minister — like other party leaders — will campaign using a chartered commercial jet flown by commercial pilots. The cost of that aircraft is borne exclusively by political parties and not by the taxpayer.
Moreover, Trudeau, during his short time in office, has already flown at least twice on a non-military aircraft. As the National Post first reported, during his Christmas holiday, he and his family used the personal helicopter of the Aga Khan to make the 110-km journey between Nassau and the Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas.
If the party had to account for the full cost of flying Trudeau to Calgary and back on the Challenger — Trudeau has no publicly announced official events there other than the campaign appearances — the bill could easily top $35,000.
That would go against the national party’s anticipated spending limit of about $450,000 for the five by-elections currently underway. (In addition to the two in Calgary, there is one each in Markham, Ottawa, and Montreal.)
All federal parties do not have to report details of spending in any by-election in 2017 until June 30, 2018.
Campaigning prime ministers and campaigning party leaders are also exempt from the costs of the security detail assigned to protect them, Elections Canada has ruled. Those costs, be it during a general election or a by-election, come from the RCMP’s budget which, in turn, comes from the government’s general revenue fund.
Stephen Harper never campaigned publicly in any of 29 by-election contests held during the nine years while he was prime minister. But he did show up in a 2010 by-election in Winnipeg North with a brief appearance at the Conservative candidate’s headquarters.
That 2010 appearance, though it was captured on a video posted to YouTube, was not public, no reporters were invited to witness it let alone even told about it, and Harper spoke only to campaign staff and not to voters.
The Conservative Party later claimed a “miscellaneous expense” that day of about $450.
The party did not respond Monday to questions about expenses associated with Harper’s 2010 by-election appearance..
Harper, though, had been in Winnipeg that day for some other business associated with this official duties as prime minister.
(In that by-election, the Conservative candidate finished third with 10 per cent of the vote and the riding, which had been held mostly by New Democrats since the early 1960s swung to the Liberals.)
Neither Paul Martin nor Jean Chretien are believed to have campaigned in by-elections.
Former political staffers for Brian Mulroney can recall him campaigning in by-elections at least three times in the nine years he was prime minister. Pierre Trudeau also stumped for his candidates in some by-elections.
The thinking at Liberal Party headquarters right now is that Trudeau is a major asset to the Liberal brand and should be deployed in support of that brand whenever possible.
The party also believes that it’s only fair that all leaders should be able to campaign in by-elections, even if that leader is the prime minister.(Reuters) - Like millions of Americans, |
9-2 loss to the Spokane Indians. “Coming out of the bullpen is definitely a different game and I’m ready to do that now. More importantly, I’m feeling great. I think that’s the most important thing to come out of this.”
A lefty specialist out of the Seattle bullpen, Furbush missed the second half of last season and the first half of this season while recovering from a partially torn rotator cuff.
“For me, it’s more about fine-tuning my delivery because I haven’t pitched in a year,” Furbush said. “So it’s going to take a little bit (and) I’m kind of treating this like my spring training and trying to get the fastball command down, because that’s going to be the most important thing. Every pitch is going to come off of that. I feel like I have a few things to work on, but overall I feel good.”
On Monday Furbush threw 21 pitches, nine for strikes. Nineteen were fastballs, but he got Blaine Prescott to swing over the top of a breaking ball for the first out
“I can still strike guys out and that was nice to see,” Furbush said. “It’s one of those things where (what’s) going to be my bread and butter is that breaking ball, especially with two strikes. I just gotta keep working on it and keep getting after it and I should be good.”
Furbush issued two walks, including one to leadoff hitter Darius Day. Furbush had Day picked off, but his toss to Everett first baseman Nick Zammarelli was wide, allowing Day to reach third. Seth Spivey drove in Day with a sacrifice fly for a 1-0 Spokane lead. Xavier Turner then walked, prompting Everett manager Rob Mummau to go get Furbush and bring in Matt Festa.
Furbush said the plan is to make another rehab appearance Thursday with Triple-A Tacoma. He’ll then progress to making back-to-back appearances, followed by a two-inning stint. He said he hopes to join the Mariners when they travel to Pittsburgh July 26-27.
The AquaSox (13-12) erased a 2-0 deficit in the bottom of the third thanks in part to three walks and a wild pitch.
But the Indians took the lead for good in the top of the fifth when Day drove in two with a single and later scored on Spivey’s double. Charles LeBlanc’s solo homer made it 6-2 in the sixth, and the Indians added two more in the seventh and another run in the ninth to complete the scoring. Turner drove in two of Spokane’s final three runs.
Notes
Everett outfielder Kyle Lewis was named the Northwest League Player of the Week on Monday. The No. 11 overall pick in this year’s draft is hitting.359 with 12 runs, three home runs and 11 RBI in his past 10 games.On Sunday, after his team suffered a 4-3 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins' coach Claude Julien blasted Montreal for what he thought was a performance full of embellishments that helped cost his team the game.
These rants tend to happen from time to time from coaches in the NHL, and oftentimes those same coaches lead teams that have employed their fair share of embellishers. Apparently a fan considered Julien to be one of those coaches and put together an amazing video compilation of Boston dives over Claude Julien's tirade. It even has a clip of Jack Edwards yelling at Shawn Thornton to stop diving.
The best part? The soft music in the background. Well done.
(h/t MAKAVELI719696)
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Celtic winger Jonny Hayes has been dealt a crushing blow after being told his season is over.
The Irishman is facing six months out with a fractured tibia sustained in the 2-0 Boxing Day win over Dundee.
Hayes was stretchered off after a crunching challenge with Josh Meekings.
At first the Hoops were hopeful he had just suffered bruising but an X-ray has shown a fracture and Hayes is set to undergo surgery.
(Image: SNS Group)
(Image: SNS Group)
It's a massive blow for the 30-year-old who moved to Parkhead in a £1.3m move from Aberdeen in the summer.
Hayes kept his place in the starting line up against Dundee after his best 90 minutes for the Hoops against his old side on Saturday.
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Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers praised the winger for his performance against the Dons and said: "He is just settling into the club, but the last couple of months have really seen him make a step forward, be that bit more direct in training.
"Sometimes when you come into a club you are a little bit safe and be everyone's friend but now he is really aggressive in his game, with and without the ball. I am delighted for him."Should a Christian hotel-owner be allowed to refuse a gay couple a double-bed, or is such discrimination no more than bigotry which the law should not allow them to indulge?
The case of Christian hotel-owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull is currently before the Court of Appeal. Earlier this year, the Evangelical couple were ordered to pay compensation to a couple in a civil partnership who had been turned away from their establishment in Cornwall. The conflict is easier to describe than to solve: the law regards civil partnership as equal, in almost all respects, to marriage. But the God worshipped by the Bulls does not.
There would be less debate if the Bulls had refused to employ a receptionist because they discovered that she was in a lesbian relationship, or indeed if they had refused to allow a lone gay man to occupy a single room. But the intimate circumstances of bed-sharing do seem to complicate the situation. The Bulls claim that only married couples are allowed to sleep together in their beds, and that any other arrangement would be an indulgence of sin. Put bluntly, the matter at issue isn't sexual orientation, it's sex - or rather the possibility of sex.
There's some dispute about whether, in fact, the Bulls have been quite so strict about unmarried heterosexual couples as they claim. A prominent member of the National Secular Society who stayed at the hotel in 2006 with his female partner reports having had no trouble getting a room (though they were a bit disconcerted to discover "religious tracts all over the place" once they had booked in). Be that as it may, if the bed being offered is a double one, then the owners are in effect facilitating sexual conduct that may go against their deeply-held convictions.
It's no coincidence that religion has emerged in recent years as a major battleground of social and legal rights. There have been rows about Islamic dress, crosses in the workplace, nurses praying for their patients, sex education in schools. In human rights law spiritual belief occupies an ambiguous status. It is both a category of protection -- for religion is increasingly seen as a source of personal identity -- and a cause of discrimination. It's not always easy to distinguish between the two. Behaviour which a believer may regard as intrinsic to his or her religious identity may involve inconveniencing or discriminating against other people, who also have rights. The law, and society, must choose whose right to upheld. Someone must lose.
Can philosophy help? The British Humanist Association has recently put out a pamphlet, Right to Object?, which takes a broader view of some of the issues at stake.
In his introduction, Alan Howarth locates the point at issue in the conflict between two principles: that of obeying the law (necessary for a functioning society) and that of following one's own conscience, without which one can scarcely be said to enjoy moral autonomy. Balancing the two involves defining a sphere of exemption from what would otherwise be legal requirements. Such a definition, Howarth writes, "must appear especially desirable in a society which prides itself upon its liberalism, tolerance, and its respect for the moral autonomy of individuals." This is true enough, but it does suggest that a certain self-congratulation may be at work here, and also perhaps an element of wishful thinking.
As the philosopher Peter Cave points out in his essay, the weighing and balancing that judges engage in when deciding difficult cases "are smokescreens for'muddling through'". His own view, which I tend to endorse, is that the law should err on the side of liberality, allowing "a thousand preferences to bloom" provided that there are not significant social ill-effects. He would allow the right of a small hotel run by Evangelical Christians to refuse to offer a gay couple a double-bed, but also allow companies to enforce dress-codes that make no allowances for religious dress. What this seems to mean in practice, though - and what may be going on at a deeper level - is the privileging of the interest of both employers and service-providers at the expense of both employees and customers. Is this really sustainable?
In the case of Mr and Mrs Bull, their preference for a hotel run on the basis of traditional Christian morality need not unduly inconvenience gay couples provided that most hotels don't impose such restrictions. Indeed, hotels like the Bulls' might be said to increase consumer choice for Christian holidaymakers who share their unease at being in the proximity of gay sex.
And consider the converse case. There are hotels and guesthouses that specialise in serving members of the gay community, and may wish to turn away heterosexual couples. In February 2011, shortly after the Bull case came to court, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (in a typical piece of empire-building) announced that they would look into whether gay-only hotels discriminated against straight guests, even though it hadn't actually received any complaints.
In response, the owner of a gay hotel in Bournemouth complained that that Equality Act was a "double-edged sword" that was "killing gay culture." And indeed, one hotel in Blackpool that used to boast openly that it was "exclusively gay" now states on its website that it "welcomes all guests, new and old", presumably in response to the EHRC move. This is surely a perverse outcome of laws designed to protect minorities from discrimination. In the name of diversity, a bland conformism prevails, reducing choice and opportunity for customers as well as owners.
I strongly support the right of bar and hotel-owners to run single-sex gay-only establishments, so long as they are clearly signposted as such. They provide an important service to their community which would be compromised if they were forced to open their doors to heterosexuals. The quid pro quo must be the right of a few Christian hotel-owners to run their enterprises upon openly religious lines.Hot on the heels of the first list of major breakthroughs of humanity, we have the second installment. Here we continue from where we left off – breakthroughs after 1724 (vaccination). If you want to read the original list in case you missed it you can do that here. Be sure to mention any other significant events in man’s history via the comments – obviously listing only 10 items on two lists we can’t cover everything!
10 Anaesthesia 1842
Although a number of substances were known for a long time to make people insensible to pain, they were not used in surgery until the nineteenth century. Up until this point, surgery was performed by butchers and their ilk, as it was done with the patient fully conscious (although often inebriated to dull the pain) and as quickly as possible. The patient would violently struggle, scream, and frequently bleed to death in a very short amount of time. Traditionally, a team of people held the patient down, a butcher chopped off the damaged extremity, and the stump was immediately coated with tar to stop the bleeding. Surgery was not done on a fine scale or with any attention to detail, as there simply was not enough time for such things. It was one’s last option, as the surgery more often than not resulted in death. The use of anesthesia allowed doctors the time to work more cautiously, to learn how to stem blood flow more carefully, and to perform increasingly delicate operations. Modern surgery and medicine are thankfully unrecognizable next to their barbaric ancestors. Even in the most underdeveloped countries, eye surgery is fairly common, something unheard of before the dawn of anesthesia.
9 Penicillin 1928
In 1928, Alexander Fleming showed that the fungus Penicillium notatum could be grown in a special way that caused it to produce a substance he called penicillin. This had the wonderful property of killing many disease-causing bacteria, especially syphilis. In fact, earlier people had used similar fungi to treat illnesses, but never with a systematic, scientific approach. Penicillum was developed into many strains and for the first time, all kinds of incurable diseases were easily eliminated. The idea that a cure could be easily and specifically grown from simple mold was unprecedented, and today we use antibiotics as the modern descendants of the original breakthrough. Cures are found almost as quickly as new bacteria emerge, and bacterial diseases are no longer the formidable threat they once were.
8 Green Revolution 1940s to late 1980s
There is a finite amount of farmable land on Earth, which can be used to grow only so much food and in turn support only so many people. Up until the 1940s, this maximum number seemed to have been reached in many countries, with starvation and famine being rife due to there simply not being enough food. The father of the Green Revolution, Dr. Norman Borlaug, studied plant genetics before developing strains of wheat which produced a much higher yield than traditional wheat. This was followed by the development of better rice and other staples. Cereal production in India and many African countries doubled and famine was finally not a normal part of people’s lives. Thanks to Dr. Borlaug, a Nobel laureate, well over a billion more people are able to exist on the Earth today. Arguably, no single person has directly saved or enabled the existence of as many people as Dr. Borlaug.
7 Steam Engine 1750
Although the steam engine has a history that is thousands of years long, it was not used widely until it brought about the industrial revolution. It heralded a new era of mass-production and transportation of goods through the widespread use of engines. It was the first engine to be extensively used around the world, and still today makes up the main power source on Earth: 90% of all the electric power in the world is derived from steam. The steam engine and the large-scale construction and manufacturing it enabled not only reshaped the lives of all in or near the British Empire, but it gave rise to modern capitalism, for which there had been no need by the paltry businesses that had previously existed. Electric lighting, travel by boat and railways, mining, textiles, chemicals, and glass manufacture all increased on a gigantic scale, turning much of the world into a machine of production. Today, even those who live without electricity use products created elsewhere by steam power. The effects of steam power, the Industrial Revolution, and mass-production have become ubiquitous.
6 Fossil Fuels 5,000 years ago
Fossil fuels had been used by ancient civilizations for a variety of purposes, but never on a large scale. In the middle ages, coal began to be mined extensively for use by smiths and metalworkers. Coal saw its biggest use at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Intimately connected with the use of the steam engine, fossil fuels provided a rich source of energy. Coal is the most widely used fossil fuel on the planet, although other forms such as liquid oil and various gases are also used. Coal provides much more energy when burnt than an equivalent mass of wood, and when a large quantity of fuel is needed, fossil fuels are more economical and less wasteful. Fossil fuels allowed the steam engine to proliferate and enabled electricity to be given to the world.
5 The Automobile 1885
The use of steam power and the widespread use of large transport vehicles such as trains and ships gave rise to the natural human desire to refine what they already had to a more delicate scale. A personal transportation machine, a steam-powered carriage, was the dream of many. Several prototypes were produced, but all had various problems and were not suitable for widespread use. When the internal combustion engine, a specialized steam engine, was developed, it began to be adapted for automobiles. The technology developed, but was never entirely successful until Karl Benz created what is acknowledged as the first modern automobile in 1885. Gradually, the usefulness of these cars was seen and production steadily increased. There nearly a billion cars and small trucks being used on roads today, and although most people do not yet own their own car as has always been dreamed, many villages have one car which is shared between all the villagers in case of emergency. Cars are used all over the world when urgent travel is needed. The very layout of every city on earth is dictated by roads for use by cars.
4 Aeroplanes 1903
Since our vague beginnings, humans have clung to the Earth, only able to gaze longingly at the divine freedom enjoyed by flying creatures. Around the world, all kinds of ancient myths and legends concern people taking flight as a sign of divinity or hubris. Kites and gliders were keenly investigated, but these could not, in their early form, carry the weight of a single skyward-yearning man. The first glider to support a man was built in 1853, and further developments lead to the controlled and powered flight of the Wright brothers. Aeroplane designs have been greatly modified since that time, but the use of an engine for propulsion and a body shape for lift remain constant. Today, flight still captivates the imagination, and it has played a major role in exploration, travel, and warfare. Even people in developing countries who might never fly themselves are often given aid via airplane.
3 Telecommunications 1839
With the ease of inter-continental travel, communication between distant people became the norm. Postal services struggled to keep up with people who were increasingly used to the notion of speedy replies. Smoke signals, flags, and fires have all been used, but never widely. The availability of electricity in the Industrial Revolution enabled the development of the telegraph wire, which was used with Morse Code to transmit messages across thousands of miles instantly. Further developments in the new field of electricity and electronics allowed the telegraph to evolve into the telephone, which could convert sound into current at one end and back into sound again at the other end. Incredibly, people could speak to one another when they were on opposite sides of the Earth. Instant communication has sped up business, reshaped warfare, and has changed the standards at which we live our lives in ways too numerous to mention. Very nearly every human settlement on earth has telephone access, and telecommunications are now less dependent on wires and have developed into instant messages, email, and data transfer. The amount of information available to people has drastically increased, just as the effective distance between foreign people has decreased through telecommunication-induced globalization.
2 Genetic Modification 1973
This was what enabled Dr. Borlaug to create better strains of wheat. The understanding of the heritability of traits has always been with people, if only in a vague sense. After all, children resemble their parents, and livestock can be selectively bred. Direct manipulation of genes, a more accurate and accelerated form of genetic manipulation through clever breeding and directed evolution, first occurred in 1973. A number of medicines and other substances used today are produced from bacteria and yeasts which have been genetically manipulated. Insulin, vaccines, multivitamins, and all manner of antibiotics used today are produced through simple genetic manipulation. There is even research in the direction of growing whole organs from a single cell for the purpose of organ transplantation, which has been met with some success but is not yet ready for wide-scale use. Similarly grown meat tissue might eliminate the need for farming animals, and genetically modified bacteria can be used to clean up oil spills and nuclear waste. With genetic modification, we can and have improved the lives of billions of humans and innumerable other animals.
1 Computers 1936
In the past, abacuses and other instruments have been used to help with human mathematical computations. The first machine to be able to store data and perform all four basic arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication) was conceived by Charles Babbage and was entirely mechanical. The next major development was the mechanical loom of Joseph Jacquard. It wove intricate patterns according to the sequence of holes it detected in paper fed to it, the early beginnings of programming. The computer, in the modern electronic sense, was developed by Alan Turing and used in the Second World War to break the unprecedentedly complex Nazi codes. Computers were originally the size of buildings, but they have since shrunk thanks to advances in the miniaturization of electronics. Computers and telecommunication together gave birth to the World Wide Web. Computers are now used in watches, cars, televisions, phones, and all sorts of other casual everyday items. The public availability of computers has made information accumulation and education increase to levels never seen before, and is the most recent step in a globally aware populace.Coup leaders have promised to return country to democracy in 2017 but continue to use powers to stifle dissent
Thailand’s military junta, which took power in a coup last year and has smothered public criticism of its rule, has conducted a poll that found more than 99% of Thais are happy with its performance.
The National Statistics Office released the results of the poll, which questioned 2,700 people nationwide, one day before the government was due to present its one-year performance review.
Thailand’s rulers, who toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra in a coup in May 2014, have stifled the media and banned political gatherings. They have promised to bring stability to a country that suffered months of bloody protests.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has attempted to boost morale in the country while also detaining journalists, academics and activists. The general wrote a new song this week for the end of the year titled “Because You Are Thailand” in an attempt to boost morale.
“I have only two hands and breathe alone. There may not be enough power to make a dream come true,” the song goes. “But if we join hands and breathe together, the day we hope for is not far away.”
It is not clear if the lyrics refer to general elections, which the military has promised to hold but not until at least 2017 as part of a complicated roadmap that can be delayed at several points.
Prayuth’s other tune, written a month after his military took power and called “Returning Happiness to the People”, is frequently played on state media.
The performance poll found 98.9% of respondents were confident in the government’s efforts to solve Thailand’s problems and 99.3% said they were satisfied with the overall performance.
However, more than half said they wanted the government to further curb rising prices.
The Thai economy has suffered this year, with the IMF cutting growth forecasts for 2016 from 4 to 3.2%. A lack of private investment, in part due to political instability, has hampered economic gains.
The military-run government has been loath to accept criticism of its efforts and rights groups accuse it of using the country’s strict lèse-majesté law, written to protect the reputation of the monarchy, to silence those who oppose it with long jail terms.
Earlier this year, Prayuth said he had the power to shut down news outlets and when asked how the government would deal with journalists who do not “report the truth”, he responded: “We’ll probably just execute them”.
He has also defended the use of “attitude adjustment”, a detention program where anyone can be held for a few hours to several days to be scolded for criticism of the government.
“If you let them blame me, the people and society will listen to them every day, and one day they’ll believe in the things they say,” Prayuth explained in September after two politicians were brought in for questioning his handling of the economy.
Asked who else he would use the law against, Prayuth said: “Everyone whose comments cause division, bad intent to the government, criticising the things the government didn’t do, causes trouble and blames a government that’s trying to improve the country, I will consider.”Charts created by the
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
On the April 9 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, after co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that "yesterday we were reporting a story that 47 percent of all Americans don't pay any taxes," Fox Business host Stuart Varney stated: "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes. And some of those households actually make a profit from the Treasury." Co-host Steve Doocy asked, "Is that fair."
A couple of months ago, Media Matters took note of yet another typical bit from the liars at Foxaganda:
The message was clear: They're freeloaders. Just a new version of "welfare queen."
Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities demonstrate just how utterly bogus that claim is:
The notion that “half of Americans don’t pay taxes” not only overstates the share of households that do not pay federal income taxes in a typical year. It also ignores the other taxes people pay, including federal payroll taxes and state and local taxes.... The reality is that the income tax is one of a number of types of taxes that individuals pay, both over the course of their lifetimes and in a given year, and it makes little sense to treat it as though it were the only one that matters. Some 86 percent of working households pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. In fact, low- and moderate-income people pay a much larger share of their incomes in federal payroll taxes than high-income people do: taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale paid an average of 8.8 percent of their incomes in payroll taxes in 2007, compared to just 1.6 percent for taxpayers in the top 1 percent of the income distribution.... Low-income families also pay substantial state and local taxes. Most state and local taxes are regressive, meaning that low-income families pay a larger share of their incomes in these taxes than wealthier households do. The bottom fifth of taxpayers paid 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2010, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) model. That was well above the 7.9 percent average rate that the top 1 percent of households paid.
Chopping taxes for the wealthy has been a going concern in America for half a century. In the latest installment, a majority of Representatives in the House of Representatives agreed this spring with Rep. Paul Ryan that the top tax rate for the top tier of American billionaires should be the same as it was 85 years ago, 25 percent. Because, you see, the tax burden is just too great on "job creators" and makes America uncompetitive with the rest of the world. In fact, the average tax rate in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the latest year for which data are available, 2008, was 44.8 percent. In the United States, it was 26.1 percent.
But, hey, please do not inject facts into the discussion.
The claim that top income Americans are being crushed by their tax burden is bad enough. It's made worse by the divide-and-conquer-at-the-polls claim that half the country is made up of low-income freeloaders getting a hand-out from the hard-working other half.
But worst of all is that, at a time of spending cuts in programs for Americans with the toughest economic row to hoe, these demonizing claims are being deployed as persuasion for making the tax code ever less progressive. In the name of fairness. In the name of prosperity. In the name of those who prefer not to be named, and who, thanks to Citizens United, don't have to be.WE BELIEVE SOME things, down here. Some of them, I have lived long enough to question. We believe that if a snapping turtle bites you, it will not turn loose until it hears thunder, but since I have seen a snapping turtle as big as a turkey roaster bite a broomstick in two, I believe it will turn loose any time it damn well wants. We believe snakes have mystical powers and will charm you if you look into their eyes. When I retire, I plan to test that theory on water moccasins at my stock pond, and if they have not charmed me in four or five seconds, I will shoot them. Then, in times of drought, I will hang them in a tree. That, we believe, will make it rain. My grandmother, God rest her soul, told me so, so it must be true.
And we believe -- well, maybe all but the Unitarians -- that God himself favors our football teams. On Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, our coaches, some of them blasphemers and backsliders and not exactly praying men the other six days of the week, tell their players to hit a knee and ask his favor at the same exact instant the other team is also asking his favor, which I have always taken to mean that God, all things being equal, favors the team with the surest holder on long field goals.
It is gospel -- the gospel according to Bear. After a rare Alabama loss in the Bryant era, Bear's sidekick on his weekly television show told him: "The Lord just wasn't with us, Coach."
"The Lord," growled Bryant, "expects you to block and tackle."
QB Ken Stabler and the Tide finish 11-0 with a Sugar Bowl win over Nebraska on Jan. 2, 1967. Paul W. Bryant Museum/The University of Alabama
The point is, and we talk real slow down here, so it may take awhile to get to it, that we believe some things regardless of science and sometimes common sense. And what we mostly believe in -- across racial, political, religious and economic lines -- is football. We believe absolutely in our supremacy over all pretenders, upstarts and false prophets from the North, East, West and some heathen parts of Florida that are too sissy to mix it up with the real men of the SEC. We have been fed that belief since we were infants. That, and an unhealthy amount of Coca-Cola in our baby bottles.
But for years and years, we have even had the science of the BCS on our side and have grown accustomed to the pretty way that crystal trophy catches the light; for three years it has not even exited the state of Alabama. We are sure of this pre-eminence -- so sure that we view all the years when the South was not dominant in college football as a surreal space-and-time fluctuation, like the dancing hot dog and bun they used to show at intermission at the Bama Drive-in theater on Highway 21 north of Anniston, Ala., which we watched through a blur of Boone's Farm. It was just temporary, just intermission, 'til the real show resumed.
We felt no disappointment in January, when two SEC teams played in a rematch for the national championship in New Orleans. We have long known that the real battle was in playing each other anyway. South Carolina's Steve Spurrier, who was nicknamed the Evil Genius when he was the head coach at Florida, said recently that it is harder to win an SEC championship than a national one. "Ask Nick Saban," he said, though he might have just been trying to be a smart aleck.
My uncle John Couch, who made tires for 20 years at the Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Ala., is a Crimson Tide fan. Years ago, in the era of Bear Bryant and Shug Jordan, he suffered through a brief Auburn resurgence, in years he cannot precisely recall, nor cares to. But he remembers seeing a co-worker strutting around the plant in an old Auburn jacket. He remembers how he walked up to the man, leaned in close to him and sniffed.
"I thought so," he said.
"What?" the man asked.
"Mothballs," he said.
Somewhere, right now, an Auburn man is telling that same story, the other way around. We know the true big games. We might not even be able to tell you whom we played in a bowl game long ago, probably against a Yankee team that would melt like Crisco in the furnace of a Southern summer, but we remember how we did against Florida or Tennessee or Georgia. We know that if our teams survive the outright savagery of an SEC regular season, their regional rivalries, they can beat anyone.
There will always be the occasional Utah or rare Boise State in down years, but they are an aberration, like heat lightning. "Somebody else might win a championship," says my uncle John, "sneaking out through the back door." Don't get him started on Notre Dame.
We know deep in our guts that it is not truly a birthright. We know that it takes blood and sweat to win in college football. We know that dominant programs are built by smart and relentless taskmasters like Saban, who is so serious about the process -- the science of it -- that when he allowed himself a big smile after winning a second national championship in three years, it kind of scared me, as if
Billy Graham had done a handstand.
When Spurrier went to South Carolina seven seasons ago, he was disheartened when he heard fans applaud the team after a close loss. "Please don't clap," he told them, "when we lose a game."
I, personally, think we're a little wack-a-doodle but usually in a good way. Before the hate mail begins to flood in, or people start leaching bile into a chat room, they should know that this story -- half of it, anyway -- is written in fun, because that is how I view this game.
The Gators take their first of two BCS titles with a win over Ohio State in '07, beginning a run of SEC dominance and birthing the legend of Tim Tebow. Charles Sonnenblick/Getty Images
I had Alabama season tickets once, but it's hard to take anything too seriously when you're up around Neptune and can barely discern actual human beings. Situated somewhere above the catfish concession, I came home smelling like french-fried taters. And while it is a joy to watch real Southern football, from any seat, my self-worth has never been bound to this game, though there have been times in our history as a region when it seemed it was all we had. For Southerners, to say we do not care is to invite suspicion. We must know football to be Southern.
"At LSU, for instance, everybody knows what Les Miles should have done," says George C. Rable, the Charles G. Summersell chair in Southern history at Alabama, whose football heart belongs mostly to his grad school alma mater, LSU. That means last season he was 1-1...in a purely mathematical sense. A friend at LSU tells him that since the championship game, "one of the big donors has refused to wear any LSU attire...he is not wearing his hat." How mad do you have to be to not wear your hat?
An award-winning author of books on Southern history, Rable is not a native Southerner but grew up in another football incubator, in Lima, Ohio, in the swirl of Ohio State-Michigan, rooting for the Buckeyes. He came down here to see real obsession. He once exited Tiger Stadium as the faithful chanted: "Go to hell, Ole Miss, go to hell."
"And," he says, "we weren't playing Ole Miss."
We do not care so much about professional football here because it is a new phenomenon and has had only 40 or 50 years to catch on. Whereas college football has been an antidote to an often dark history for as long as even our oldest people can recall. We are of long memory here. I gave a talk once in Mobile, Ala., and mentioned that the Southern aristocracy had been on the wrong and losing side in two great conflicts: the Civil War and the civil rights movement, prompting one older gentleman to rise from his seat, huffing that I did not know what I was talking about, and leave the room. Later, I said I was surprised that mentioning the turbulent 1960s would anger anyone so, after so much time. A nice gentleman told me, no, that wasn't it. "He's still mad," the nice man said, "about the war."
Wayne Flynt, professor emeritus of history at Auburn, says the South's devotion to college football probably reaches that far, to a time before there even was any football, to defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, "to a whole lot of times when we just got the hell beat out of us, as a culture."
Reconstruction starved us. Then, the Ku Klux Klan swept candidates into pretty much every elected office in the state of Alabama and burned crosses on the skyline across the South. The rest of the nation, not that it was without sin, looked down in disdain. Then, just after Christmas 1925, the Alabama football team boarded a train for California, for the 1926 Rose Bowl, and fought back against that derision, even if the players did not know they were doing so at the time. Those young men drew, Flynt explains, "on a long history of not being afraid," of the hottest days or endless rows of cotton or a million bales of hay. "It's not like you're unprepared for a little physical suffering," he says, and next to the pain of just living down here, football was, well, like playing games.
Not knowing any of this, the rest of the nation gave Alabama no chance against its Rose Bowl opponent, the vaunted University of Washington, but Southerners knew there was too much at stake to lose. "Even the president of Auburn sent a telegram," says Flynt, "telling them, You are defending the honor of the South, and God's not gonna let you lose this game." Halfback Johnny Mack Brown ran, as one writer described, like a "slippery eel," and the South won something of great value, at last.
Years later, as the apparatus of Southern politics threw itself violently into the shameful oppression of civil rights, white Southern players again won national championships and acclaim on the gridiron, as front-page headlines belittled and ridiculed the region for its backwardness. College football was not a cure, not a tonic for what was wrong in the |
]
Personal life [ edit ]
Marriages [ edit ]
Melville See Jr. (1962–1965) [ edit ]
Eastman's first marriage was to Melville See Jr., whom she had met in college. He graduated with a geology degree from Princeton and undertook graduate studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson to earn a master's degree. Eastman followed him there, where she enrolled at the university to study art history. She was studying there in March 1962 when her mother was killed in a commercial plane crash.
She married See in June 1962; their daughter Heather Louise was born six months later on December 31, 1962. The couple had dissimilar lifestyles and became increasingly unhappy. They divorced three years later in June 1965. He was an academic who spent much of his time studying or doing research, while she preferred a less intellectual home life. She loved the wide open spaces in Arizona and enjoyed riding horses through the desert landscape. The settings, with saguaro cacti, reminded her of scenery from western films, which inspired her to take up photography as a hobby.[9]
Paul McCartney (1969–1998) [ edit ]
On May 15, 1967, while on a photo assignment in London, Eastman met Paul McCartney at the Bag O'Nails club, where Georgie Fame was performing. They met again four days later at the launch party for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at Brian Epstein's house. When her assignment was completed, she flew back to New York City.[31]:432
They got together again the following May in New York, while he and John Lennon were there to inaugurate Apple Records. A few months after he returned to London, he invited her to spend some time with him there. When she arrived, they went to his home, where they spent the evening. "He must have been really happy that night," said one of the fans who often loitered outside his home. "He sat on the windowsill with his acoustic guitar and sang 'Blackbird' to us" from his upstairs room.[33]
Paul was attracted to her for a number of reasons. He explained later: "I liked her as a woman, she was good-looking with a good figure, so physically I was attracted to her."[31]:471 But he also liked her sense of independence:
"Her mental attitude was quite rebellious... [growing up] she was the kind of kid who would hang out in the kitchen with the black maids" to learn cooking. She disliked socializing. They both liked natural surroundings, he said, and they shared a love of nature, which became one of their most important emotional links.[31]:471 He knew that because of her "very free spirit," she was considered a rebel and a black sheep by her family for avoiding excelling in education, unlike her father and brother. "She was an artist," Paul said, "and was not cut out to be an academic."[31]:471
Linda's daughter, Heather, created another strong bond between them, since he had always liked and wanted children of his own. When he first met Heather, who was nearly six, he insisted that she and Linda move to London to live with him. After they did, he devoted time to Heather, playing with her, reading her stories, and drawing cartoons with her. He sang her to sleep at bedtime.[33]
Biographer Philip Norman notes that Linda had some personality aspects which Paul admired. She seemed less concerned with clothing or her public appearance, preferring to dress casually, even in semi-formal settings. She typically held his arm when they were together, often "gazing up at him in awe," and seeming to idolize him.[33] Paul's friends said that he began to be less formal, whether shaving less often or just wearing simpler clothes. "He could go on the bus down to Apple," said his maid, "and no one would recognize him."[33]
Linda's relaxed attitude about everyday things began to affect him in other ways. He recalls once feeling guilty because he was exhausted from work and, having trained himself to never appear tired, apologized to her. She simply replied, "it's allowed," which amazed him. "I remember thinking, Fucking hell! That was a mind-blower. I'd never been with anyone who thought like that... it was patently clear that it was allowed to be tired."[33]
Around this time, Paul fell into a deep depression due to the Beatles' pending breakup.[34] He would spend days in bed and drink excessively, not knowing what to do with his life.[35] McCartney later said that Linda helped him pull out of that emotional crisis by praising his work as a songwriter and persuading him to continue writing and recording:[36]:131
After he got through that troubled phase of his career, Paul McCartney wrote "Maybe I'm Amazed" in Linda's honour. He explained during an interview that the song was written "for me and Linda," and that with the Beatles breaking up,
"that was my feeling: Maybe I'm amazed at what's going on... Maybe I'm a man and maybe you're the only woman who could ever help me; Baby won't you help me understand... Maybe I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time, hung me on the line, Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you." He added that "every love song I write is for Linda."[35][37]
They were married in a small civil ceremony in the Marylebone area of London on March 12, 1969.[38][39] British fans reacted negatively, partly because his marriage ended McCartney's status as the last unattached Beatle.[36]:51 John Lennon married Yoko Ono a week later, and both women were perceived by fans as reasons for the group's break-up.[36]:50 Lennon at one point publicly criticized the way the press had treated Linda: "She got the same kind of insults, hatred, absolute garbage thrown at her for no reason whatsoever other than she fell in love with Paul McCartney."[36]:52
His marriage to Linda, viewed as such a disastrous misstep at the time, became by far the happiest and most durable in pop. Despite the immensity of his fame and wealth, the couple managed to lead a relatively normal domestic life and prevent their children from becoming the usual pampered, neglected, screwed-up rock-biz brats. If the public never quite warmed to Linda, thanks mainly to her militant vegetarianism and animal-rights activism, she was acknowledged to have been the right one for him, just as Yoko had been for John. —Biographer Philip Norman[40]
During their 29-year marriage, the McCartneys had four children: she brought her daughter Heather from her first marriage (whom Paul later formally adopted), and together the couple had Mary (b. 1969), Stella (b. 1971), and James McCartney (b. 1977).
Linda McCartney in 1976
They sometimes went to his farmhouse retreat in western Scotland, which he purchased before they met, a hidden place he used to "escape Beatlemania."[31]:470 They both liked and needed time away from the city, and were equally attracted to natural surroundings, writes biographer Barry Miles. "We'd just enjoy sitting out in nature," Paul said.[31]:470 The song "Two of Us" on the Let it Be Album was written by Paul during one of their country drives. "This song was about that: doing nothing, trying to get lost... [and] the wonderfully free attitude we were able to have.[31]:470 [41]
Linda recalled the setting:
Scotland was like nothing I'd ever lived in. It was the most beautiful land you have ever seen, way at the end of nowhere. To me it was the first feeling I'd ever had of civilization dropped away... so different from all the hotels and limousines and the music business, so it was quite a relief.[31]:522
McCartney began writing more of his songs away from the studio. "I found that I was enjoying working alone," he said.[31]:571 He wrote the song "The Lovely Linda" for his debut solo album while they were staying in Scotland.[31]:571 In 1971 they both recorded the album Ram.
She became Lady McCartney when her husband was knighted in 1997. Her brother, entertainment lawyer John Eastman, has represented McCartney since the breakup of the Beatles.[42]
Lifestyle [ edit ]
Vegetarianism [ edit ]
Paul and Linda McCartney became vegetarian in 1971, and she promoted a vegetarian diet through her cookbooks: Linda McCartney's Home Cooking (with author Peter Cox, 1989),[43] Linda's Kitchen, and Simple and Inspiring Recipes for Meatless Meals. She explained her change to vegetarianism by saying that she did not "eat anything with a face... If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian".[5][17]
Animal rights activist [ edit ]
The McCartneys became outspoken vegetarians and animal rights activists. In 1991, Linda introduced a line of frozen vegetarian meals under the Linda McCartney Foods name, which made her wealthy independently of her husband. The H. J. Heinz Company acquired the company in March 2000, and the Hain Celestial Group bought it in 2007.[16]
As a strong advocate for animal rights, Linda lent her support to many organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and Friends of the Earth. She was also a patron of the League Against Cruel Sports.[16] She narrated a TV advertisement for PETA, in which she said: "Have you ever seen a fish gasping for breath when you take it out of the water? They're saying, 'Thanks a lot for killing me. It feels great, you know.' No! It hurts!"[44] After her death, PETA created the Linda McCartney Memorial Award.[45]
Marijuana [ edit ]
In 1984, McCartney was arrested in Barbados for possession of marijuana; her husband had been arrested in 1975 in Los Angeles on the same charge.[46] After flying to Heathrow Airport, London, she was arrested on charges of possession. She later commented that, while hard drugs are "disgusting", marijuana is "pretty lightweight".[17][47][48]
Death [ edit ]
McCartney was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1995, and her condition soon grew worse when it metastasized to her liver.[49] She died at the age of 56 on April 17, 1998, at the McCartney family ranch in Tucson, Arizona. Her family was with her when she died.[50]
She was cremated in Tucson, and her ashes were scattered at the McCartney farm in Sussex, England.[51] Her husband later suggested that fans remember her by donating to breast cancer research charities that do not support animal testing, "or the best tribute – go veggie." A memorial service was held for her at St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, which was attended by George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Billy Joel, Elton John, David Gilmour, Peter Gabriel, and other celebrities among a congregation of 700.[52] A memorial service was also held at Riverside Church in Manhattan, two months after her death.[53] "She was my girlfriend," McCartney said at her funeral. "I lost my girlfriend."[54]
She left all her property to Paul, including royalties from books or records, and all rights to her photos.[55][56] He has pledged to continue her line of vegetarian food, and to keep it free from genetically modified organisms.[57]
The Linda McCartney Memorial Garden and bronze statue
Tributes and dedications [ edit ]
A few months after her death, the Edinburgh International Film Festival premiered Wide Prairie, a six-minute cartoon fantasy film she made with director Oscar Grillo.[58][59]
In April 1999, Paul McCartney performed at the "Concert for Linda" tribute at the Royal Albert Hall, which had been organized by two of their friends, Chrissie Hynde and Carla Lane.[60] Among the artists that performed, besides Paul, were George Michael, the Pretenders, Elvis Costello, and Tom Jones.[61] Paul closed the concert by dedicating the event to Linda, whom he called his "beautiful baby," and their children.[62]
In January 2000, Paul announced donations in excess of $2,000,000 for cancer research at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the Arizona Cancer Center in Tucson, where Linda received treatment. The donations, through the Garland Appeal, were made on the condition that no animals would be used for testing purposes.[63] Also in 2000, The Linda McCartney Centre, a cancer clinic, opened at The Royal Liverpool University Hospital. In November 2002, the Linda McCartney Kintyre Memorial Trust opened a memorial garden in Campbeltown, the main town in Kintyre, with a bronze statue of her made by her cousin, sculptor Jane Robbins.[14][64]
Representation in other media [ edit ]
Linda McCartney and husband Paul appeared as themselves on an episode of Bread in 1988, and an episode of The Simpsons, called "Lisa the Vegetarian", in 1995. After her death, The Simpsons' 200th episode "Trash of the Titans", which aired on April 26, 1998, and Paul McCartney's Tuesday from 2000 (directed by Geoff Dunbar)[citation needed] were both dedicated to her memory.[65] Simpsons executive producer Mike Scully said, "It just seemed like the right thing to do. Everyone here was surprised and saddened by her death."[66]
Elizabeth Mitchell and Gary Bakewell played the McCartneys in the 2000 TV movie The Linda McCartney Story.[67] She was portrayed as "Linda Eastman" in the 1985 TV movie John and Yoko: A Love Story.[68]
Discography [ edit ]
Solo albums [ edit ]
Solo singles [ edit ]
Year Song UK US Hot 100 Album 1998 "Wide Prairie" 74 – Wide Prairie 1999 "The Light Comes from Within" 56 –
Paul and Linda McCartney [ edit ]
Session work [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Get the biggest Middlesbrough FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Middlesbrough FC want to make Borussia Dortmund defender Neven Subotic their next signing after completing a deal for ex-Barcelona goalkeeper Victor Valdes.
The Serbian defender has been in talks with Boro's top brass about a possible summer move to the Premier League.
Boro have already strengthened their defensive ranks with the addition of out-of-contract Sporting Gijon centre-back Bernardo Espinosa, but see the 27-year-old Serbian as an ideal new recruit.
Subotic announced last month that he will leave Dortmund this summer, and is understood to have already looked around the Riverside ahead of a possible £8m move.
The uncompromising centre-back, previously linked with Liverpool and Sunderland, could become Boro's sixth signing of the summer - should talks continue to progress well.
Boro tonight confirmed the signing of ex-Barcelona and Manchester United stopper Valdes, who has signed a two-year deal.
The Spaniard follows Viktor Fischer, Espinosa, Marten de Roon and Jordan McGhee into the Riverside, as Boro prepare for their first season in the top-flight since 2008/09.It has long been obvious to anyone following health policy that Republicans would never devise a workable replacement for Obamacare. But the bill unveiled this week is worse than even the cynics expected; its awfulness is almost surreal. And the process by which it came to be tells you a lot about the state of the G.O.P.
Given the rhetoric Republicans have used over the past seven years to attack health reform, you might have expected them to do away with the whole structure of the Affordable Care Act — deregulate, de-subsidize and let the magic of the free market do its thing. This would have been devastating for the 20 million Americans who gained coverage thanks to the act, but at least it would have been ideologically consistent.
But Republican leaders weren’t willing to bite that bullet. What they came up with instead was a dog’s breakfast that conservatives are, with some justice, calling Obamacare 2.0. But a better designation would be Obamacare 0.5, because it’s a half-baked plan that accepts the logic and broad outline of the Affordable Care Act while catastrophically weakening key provisions. If enacted, the bill would almost surely lead to a death spiral of soaring premiums and collapsing coverage. Which makes you wonder, what’s the point?This article is over 6 years old
Kelly Brown confirmed as Scotland captain for Test against New Zealand
Kelly Brown will captain Scotland in the Autumn Test against New Zealand, the head coach Andy Robinson has confirmed.
The 30-year-old Saracens back-row forward succeeds the Edinburgh hooker Ross Ford, and will lead the team out on the occasion of his 50th cap against the world champions on 11 November.
Brown was in line for the role before a broken ankle forced him to miss this year's ill-fated Six Nations and the successful summer tour to Australia, Fiji and Samoa as Ford led the side throughout.
Now the former Glasgow Warriors player, who can play No8 or blindside flanker, will become Scotland's fifth captain in two years.
Robinson said: "Kelly Brown is an inspirational person. He has an aura, confidence and belief about him and a firm understanding of the game.
"He has been a very consistent performer for Scotland. It's because of these qualities that he has been appointed Scotland captain."Netflix has risen to the occasion to win a bidding war for The Eggplant Emoji, a spec by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider, the creators of digital animated series Gentlemen Lobsters.
Ben Stiller and Nicky Weinstock will produce the dark comedy via their Red Hour Films banner. Blake Anderson, Adam Devine, Anders Holm and Kyle Newacheck, the creators and stars of the hit Comedy Central show Workaholics, are also on board to produce.
The plot is anything if not fully formed: When a teenager accidentally cuts off his penis during a camping trip, he and his friends rush to save the appendage before it's too late. The intent is to make a comedy in the vein of Superbad, something that focused on friendship but throbbed with insane situations and R-rated language.According to reports in The Sun and elsewhere, a vacationer who was walking past Bono's home in the South of France managed to record four songs from U2's upcoming album as they blasted from Bono's windows. (The house in question is thought to be the orange one in the photo to the right.)
The four muddily recorded tracks available on this page, via YouTube, are believed to be "No Line on the Horizon" (the presumptive title track), "Sexy Boots," "Moment Of Surrender," and"For Your Love," all from the band's upcoming album. They appear to have been posted by Vetle Vik Gundersen, a 15 year old Norwegian guitarist and U2 fan.
In addition to male and female voices, waves are audible in thebackground of the recordings, lending credence to the theory that thesesongs were recorded from the beach. Celebrities often encounter issueswith photographers hassling them from beaches, since they're generally public property below the high tide mark. But this is thefirst we've heard of someone leaking songs from an unreleased album inthis way.
No Line on the Horizon appears
to be slated for a November 14th release. The band recently releasedremastered versions of their first three albums War, October and Boy –
all playable for free on imeem.
See Also:
Photo: merrionsqAs the Ravens count down to their Monday Night Football showdown in New Orleans against Drew Brees and the Saints tonight at 8:30, former-Ravens great and all-time points leader Matt Stover joined the folks over at Glenn Clark Radio to discuss the end of the Ravens season and what they will have to do to compete in the headache-inducing AFC North.
Stover had some especially salient words about the realities of playing in the National Football League, particularly the rigors of a primetime matchup.
"It’s very much more of an emotional game. It kind of tells you how fragile the NFL really is, and all the guys,” said Stover. "You would think that we would be these strong men [who] are out there that can do anything and it doesn’t matter and we should play 100-percent all the time.
"Well, all of a sudden, you get a Monday Night Football game and Sunday Night Football, everybody’s watching you — your emotions go up even more. And the teams that are able to have the maturity enough to, I guess, control them better, are the teams that have success in those times.”
For fans of fast-paced football, those games under the lights are often a spectacle to behold. However, the end result is only possible due to the players' near-inhuman ability to remain focused amidst these high-energy environments.
Photo Courtesy of Sabina Moran/PressBox.
"You can’t go out there ever thinking you’re not going to get shot at,” Stover said. "Really, that’s how you’ve got to be as an NFL player; you’re running across the field and you’re getting shot at, and you [have] got to have enough emotions and courage to run across that field every single game. And sometimes you’re getting shot at by muskets, and sometimes you’re getting shot at by machine guns. And Monday Night Football, it’s machine guns, man. And they know it, and you better have it ready to go.”
To a larger extent, that level of composure and confidence is what Stover feels will be needed from the Ravens if they want to find themselves at the top of their division, and in the playoffs, by season’s end.
"You’ve got to win five — you can drop one more game in this division,” Stover said of the Ravens prospects moving forward at 6-4 in the AFC North. “You’re going to have to take care of home … you’ve got the first game tonight, Monday Night Football in New Orleans. Steal it, take it, it’s mine — do whatever you’ve got to do to win this game, and those are the emotions that you have to come in with.
"So as a whole, I do think that this team has to understand the state that they’re in. They’ve got to [have] at least ten-to-eleven wins to get into the playoffs this year, and they’ve got to take care of home and win a couple on the road; and I think they can get there.
"But you know, that’s tough to do. Let’s say they drop tonight, they can still win — cause I know that this team, when their backs [are] up against the wall and they’ve got to win, I’ve seen them do it time and time again.”
Stover’s experience on Ravens’ teams of yesteryear gives him a unique perspective on the organization’s current direction while dealing with outside controversy.
"You remember back in 2000 when we won Super Bowl XXXV,” Stover said. "Ray Lewis had had a lot of issues that summer and that offseason — as you all know — and we end up winning the Super Bowl from it.
"It’s the teams that can trust one another, believe in one another and go out there and have that cause and purpose that’s greater than themselves — and that’s to play for the guy next to you and to play for the team as a whole — those are the teams that can win.
“Let’s not talk about the past, let’s think about how they’ve handled their adversity and how they’re moving forward."
As always, you can listen to full episodes of Glenn Clark Radio at our archives page. You can also stream the above segment in its entirety below.Five top multinational oil companies have been targeted by members of Anonymous, who published about 1,000 email addresses for accounts belonging to the firms, as well as hashed and unencrypted passwords.
The hacks, against Shell, Exxon, BP and two Russian firms – Gazprom and Rosneft, were conducted as digital protests against drilling in the Arctic, a practice that critics say has contributed to the melting of the ice caps there.
"To drill in the Arctic, oil companies have to drag icebergs out the way of their rigs and use giant hoses to melt floating ice with warm water. If we let them do this, a catastrophic oil spill is just a matter of time," Greenpeace notes on its Save the Arctic web site.
The hackers used some of the stolen credentials to add signatures to Greenpeace's "Save the Arctic" petition.
"We know we’re going up against the most powerful countries and companies in the world," the hackers wrote in a note accompanying the release of the credentials on Pastebin. "But together we have something stronger than any country’s military or any company’s budget. Our shared concern for the planet we leave our children transcends all the borders that divide us and makes us – together – the most powerful force today."
The latest disclosure follows an earlier one in June in which credentials for Exxon were released. The hackers noted at the time that they obtained the credentials not through a vulnerability in Exxon's network, "but just because of the mistake of their webmaster!", suggesting an administrator misconfigured or mismanaged something related to the website.
The hackers noted in their post that they are not associated with Greenpeace, they just support its cause.
Photo: Justin/FlickrThe owner of the Massachusetts company recently hit with a multimillion dollar fine for paying illegal kickbacks to Boston bars also runs a beer distributor in Brooklyn that gave gifts to New York area bars and retailers to control which beers were available to consumers, according to recently unsealed court documents.
Sales representatives and managers for Union Beer Distributors, which is part of the Sheehan Family Cos. of Kingston, testified in a lawsuit against a competitor that they routinely gave some of the company’s 7,000 retail customers gifts worth as much as $15,000. In return, they said, the shops and bars would stock beers sold by Union and freeze out competitors.
The giveaways, approved by managers, included free beer, high-end draught equipment, maintenance services, signs, televisions, and even donations to charities in retailers’ names, according to the testimony. Sheehan officials insist the practice has been discontinued.
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While the New York testimony dates to 2011, it offers a rare firsthand account of “pay-to-play” tactics used to gain business, the very issue that got Union’s affiliated company in trouble in Massachusetts. The practice is legal and common in other industries — food companies use it to ensure top placement in grocery stores, for instance — but is banned in the alcohol business under Prohibition-era rules intended to prevent large brewers from dominating the market.
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Critics say pay-to-play unfairly freezes small craft breweries and other rule-abiding companies out of the market. Others believe the ban on pay-to-play should be repealed, calling it antiquated and impossible to enforce.
But many alcohol industry executives contend pay to play is rampant in the US beer market, an unseen system that determines which beers are available to consumers by awarding tap handles and shelf space to the highest bidder.
“All... wholesalers that we compete with engaged in the same activity,” Union Beer assistant general manager Paul Bussiere testified in 2011. “What we did was in response to competition.”
In a statement, the Sheehan Family Cos. — which runs 19 wholesalers in 13 states and is among the country’s largest beer distributors — noted New York is “an extremely competitive market.” It said any pay-to-play activities at Union Beer ended in April 2011 after regulators at the New York State Liquor Authority, or SLA, warned distributors at a meeting they would initiate a crackdown against the practice.
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“Any statements made in the depositions regarding market practices relate only to the period prior to the SLA meeting... and prior to SLA guidance and clarification,” Sheehan Family Cos. said.
In Massachusetts, Sheehan subsidiary Craft Brewers Guild is set to pay a record-setting $2.6 million fine to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission. The agency punished the company after investigators found it had paid Boston bars $120,000 in kickbacks over several years to carry Yuengling and various craft beers it distributes.
The New York depositions were recorded in 2011 and 2012 as part of an unrelated lawsuit between Union and a competing wholesaler in Brooklyn. The depositions were sealed until a lawyer for Union Beer’s competitor entered them into the case’s public record last year. The transcripts do not detail particular transactions but instead describe Union’s general practices over the preceding decade.
New York regulators told the Globe they are not investigating Union because the transcripts do not themselves constitute evidence of a violation. Officials at the SLA said they investigated a complaint made around the time of the depositions that Union had installed a draught system at a bar for free but couldn’t substantiate the claim.
But in April 2011, state regulators took the unusual step of calling every beer distributor in the New York City area to a meeting, where they were warned the authority would begin enforcing its longstanding ban on pay-to-play. Bussiere testified officials called the meeting because they knew Union and its competitors routinely offered incentives to bars.
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“It was standard practice, which is why the State Liquor Authority called everyone to a meeting to say that everybody has to put an end to this,” Bussiere said, according to a 144-page transcript of his December 2011 deposition. The SLA “wanted to clarify a number of policies that were previously not being enforced, and that would be going forward.”
The New York Liquor Authority’s general counsel, Jacqueline Flug, said the agency has recently punished wine and liquor suppliers and distributors, but has been unable to prove similar cases against beer companies.
Flug also noted the agency has just three investigators to monitor the state’s 1,300-plus suppliers and wholesalers.
“I wish I had a whole list of beer cases to show you,” Flug said. “It’s not for a lack of trying. We just haven’t been able to prove it. Everyone seems to have nice, neat records about where they’ve obtained their tap lines from.”
Union — technically UB Distributors LLC — distributes Budweiser and other beers from Anheuser-Busch in Brooklyn. It is also a wholesaler of craft beers in much of New York City and on Long Island, including from Allagash Brewing Co., Left Hand Brewing Co., and other breweries.
The depositions of Union’s employees were conducted by Alan Trachtman, an attorney for the wholesaler Union sued in 2009. Union accuses the company of collecting 5-cent deposits from Union on beer cans that had already been redeemed elsewhere; in response, the competitor countered that Union had violated various trade rules. The suit is pending in state court in Brooklyn.
When Trachtman asked Bussiere whether Union gave retailers gifts and services in violation of SLA rules up until the April 2011 meeting, Bussiere replied, “yes.” Asked whether it was clear that SLA rules prohibited that practice, Bussiere also answered, “yes.”
Union salesman Matthew Rogers told Trachtman that giving away beer “was a typical trade practice in New York.”
Rogers testified he gave bars draught equipment worth up to $5,000 or $6,000. Such gifts were approved by Union managers, whom Rogers said “would pick up the phone and call a draught parts company.” The equipment company would then send an invoice to Union — “which, obviously, we paid,” Rogers added.
Andrew McLeod, an assistant sales manager, testified Union gave bars the equipment “in hopes that they would do business with us.” Asked what percentage of the bars that received such equipment did business with the distributor, he replied, “one hundred percent.”
McLeod also said the company would sometimes pay for employees at bars Union Beer supplied to play in charity golf tournaments.
“Do you write checks to the charity for the benefit of the [bar] owner?” Trachtman asked.
“Sometimes, yes,” McLeod said, explaining that some were donations above $1,000, which needed approval from a supervisor.
Union Beer salesmen also testified they would hand their credit cards to bartenders, who would charge the salesmen for phony transactions. Union would then reimburse the salesmen for the charges.
Such credit card swipes were used “typically just for financial support related to draught lines and gaining products,” McLeod testified. “You are not paying for something that you consumed.”
Union salesman Kevin Muller testified he gave bars gifts when he needed to meet sales targets.
“What was the criteria that was used to give free goods?” Trachtman asked.
“I had to hit a Bud Light number,” Muller replied.
The salesmen also testified Union extended credit to retailers for longer than was allowed by New York rules. And they said they would avoid notifying competing wholesalers when they displaced those companies’ products from store displays — which Union managers and salesmen said they knew was required by state law.
Union managers testified that money for the incentives came from a marketing budget set by Sheehan executives in Massachusetts and was substantially funded by its suppliers, including Anheuser-Busch InBev.
The records do not indicate whether the brewers knew their money was being spent on the gifts; an Anheuser-Busch spokesman emphatically denied the company was aware of Union’s banned practices.
Dan Adams can be reached at dadams@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielAdams86Enda Kenny, leader of Fine Gael, poised to become Ireland's prime minister if he can broker a deal with second-placed Labour
Ireland's most dominant political party, Fianna Fáil, is on the road to a historic and devastating defeat in the republic's general election.
Just months after accepting an EU/IMF bailout, the government is likely to finish in fourth place behind a resurgent Labour party and a slew of independent candidates.
The scale of Fianna Fáil's losses is so great that a number of high-profile ministers, including finance minister Brian Lenihan, who negotiated the bailout, are in danger of losing their seats. His outgoing ministerial colleague Mary Hanafin also faces the possibility of being unseated in her Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown constituency.
Fine Gael is now poised to form a government, possibly even as a single party, its director of elections, Phil Hogan, told RTÉ Radio. "Anybody that writes [us] off so early in the day... I think they'll probably get a fright as the day wears on," he said. If the party fails to win an overall majority, however – which an exit poll from RTÉ suggested would be the outcome earlier in the day – it is likely to seek to form a coalition with the Irish Labour Party. Either way, Enda Kenny is certain to be elected Taoiseach.
According to RTÉ, Fine Gael took 36.1% of the vote, with Labour coming second with 20.5%. Fianna Fáil support is put at just 15.1%, by far its worst general election result, and will mean a massive loss of seats across the country – including a wipeout in the capital.
Sinn Féin's support is put at 10.1% – again a record in the Irish Republic – while the Greens are on 2.7%, which could see the party save some seats despite predictions they would be wiped out.
Independents and others got 15.5% of the vote – a high figure thought to be spread quite thinly given the number of candidates. Where those votes transfer could be crucial to the final outcome of counts across 43 constituencies.
The independents combined have pushed Fianna Fáil into fourth place – the party's worst performance since Éamon De Valera founded the party in the 1920s. In Dublin, Fianna Fáil support barely hit 8%.
The exit poll put support for Fine Gael lower than some opinion polls had suggested, where they had been tipped to secure as much as 40% of the popular vote, potentially allowing for a single-party government propped up by independents. The last RTÉ exit poll in 2007 proved to be 99% accurate when compared to the actual number of votes cast.More than a month after Microsoft issued an emergency patch for a Windows vulnerability that allows for self-replicating exploits, researchers have spotted a wave of new attacks in the wild that target the critical flaw.
Exploits of MS08-067 have been reported on and off since Microsoft issued the patch in late October, but over the past week, the volume and sophistication of the attacks have grown, according to Ziv Mador, a researcher in Microsoft's Malware Protection Center. His assessment was echoed in reports issued this week by anti-virus providers McAfee and Symantec, the latter which ratcheted up its ThreatCon alert level as a result.
A worm dubbed Conficker.A by Microsoft and Downadup by Symantec is aggressively slithering through corporate networks and home systems alike. It opens up a random port and connects to a server using HTTP. It uses several techniques to obfuscate the attack.
The worm is notable because once it takes hold of a machine it patches the vulnerability to prevent competing attackers from taking hold of the same valuable resource. Infection reports are coming mostly from the US, but other regions, including Western Europe, Japan, China and Brazil, are also affected. Conficker.A avoids infecting PCs based in Ukraine, which is presumably where the attackers are based.
MS08-067 is among the more critical vulnerabilities to hit Windows because on XP versions and earlier a single successful attack can touch off a chain reaction in which other machines on the same network are also compromised. The threat posed by the flaw was so severe Microsoft took the unusual step of issuing an emergency patch outside of its normal update cycle.
It's not surprising that bad guys would target a hole as nasty and gaping as MS08-067. What we still can't fathom is why anyone hasn't yet installed the patch. We're not ones to blame the victim, but anyone attacked by Conficker deserves a generous portion of the responsibility. ®A founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network, who says federal agents seized his laptop because of his support for the alleged Wiki-leaker, will have his day in court.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston yesterday ruled that a lawsuit challenging activist David House's border searches and other interviews by government agents may continue.
In an opinion (PDF) rejecting the U.S. government's request to dismiss the case, Casper wrote that just because "the initial search and seizure occurred at the border does not strip House of his First Amendment rights," especially because it would have disclosed "internal organization communications" related to the |
as Rita Shwerner), and The Road to Christmas. She appeared in a recurring role in David Milch's HBO series, John From Cincinnati, and has also guest starred on Friends and The New Adventures of Old Christine opposite husband Clark Gregg. Grey also appeared as a guest star on the Fox hit House. Grey was recently featured in the Lifetime TV movie Bling Ring and Joss Whedon's upcoming In Your Eyes. The daughter of Broadway legend Joel Grey and the granddaughter of famed Yiddish musician/ comedian Mickey Katz, Grey got her start in the NY theater, starring first in the off-Broadway hit Album, and later on Broadway in The Twilight of the Golds. Grey lives in Los Angeles with her husband and 13-year-old daughter.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Amazon Video X-Ray
Spouse (1)
Trivia (14)
She and Clark Gregg had their first child, a daughter named Stella, on December 3rd 2001.
Was cast as Gene Wilder's wife in the 1994 sitcom Something Wilder (1994) in 1994, but was replaced when test audiences disapproved of the two lead characters' age difference in the pilot.
Studied acting at New York City's prestigious "Neighborhood Playhouse" under legendary acting coach, Sanford Meisner
Classmate of Tracy Pollan at the private Dalton School in New York City.
In a recent interview for Channel 5 (UK), she said that having plastic surgery to her nose was the worst mistake she had ever made. This was because she was no longer recognizable as the girl from the film Dirty Dancing (1987), just somebody who looked a bit like her.
Began her career as a dancer in a Dr. Pepper TV commercial.
Was with Matthew Broderick in a car crash in 1987. She suffered whip-lash, which caused damage to her vertebrate. Has suffered constant pain since then but has recently found some relief with the aid of doctors and exercise.
As of March 2010 was living in Los Angeles with family.
Her parents are both from Jewish families (from Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine).
Personal Quotes (1)A new Public Policy Polling survey of Colorado voters finds that Donald Trump is extremely unpopular in the state and that Democrats have the early edge for Governor next year over Republican front runner Tom Tancredo, with Jared Polis posting the biggest lead against him of the Democratic contenders.
Key findings from the survey:
-Trump has just a 36% approval rating in Colorado, with 56% of voters disapproving of him. Independents disapprove of the job he’s doing by a 2:1 margin, with 58% giving him poor marks to only 29% who are happy with his performance. He also has a problem within his own party, with 19% of Republicans rating him poorly. Trump’s only at 41/53 even with white voters.
-Early Republican primary polling has shown that Tom Tancredo is the front runner to be his party’s candidate for Governor, but he trails 4 prospective Democratic opponents by anywhere from 4 to 8 points. Jared Polis does the best of the Democrats with a 46/38 advantage, followed by Cary Kennedy who leads 45/38, Donna Lynne who leads 43/38, and Mike Johnston who leads 43/39.
-Democrats are both more unified around their candidates than Republicans are around Tancredo, and have the advantage with independents. Polis, Kennedy, and Lynne are all running 3 points better with Democrats than Tancredo is with Republicans. And all 4 Democrats have leads ranging from 4 to 9 points with independents.
Public Policy Polling interviewed 770 Colorado voters on December 4th and 5th through a combination of automated telephone interviews and online interviews to reach cell phone only households. The survey’s margin of error is +/-3.5%. This research was conducted on behalf of RBI Strategies and Research, Inc.
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Police in Paris have detained a gunman who fired shots near cafes targeted in last November's attacks. No injuries have been reported.
Security forces cordoned off the area, and several police officers stood with their weapons drawn at the building, according to a witness. He spoke on condition of anonymity for his security.
Paris police spokeswoman Johana Primevert says officers deployed Thursday after shots rang out and the gunman later surrendered to police.
The building is at the junction of the Rue de Bichat and Rue du Faubourg du Temple in eastern Paris, near two cafes targeted in the Nov. 13 Islamic State attacks that left 130 people dead and wounded hundreds. France remains on edge and under a state of emergency since the attacks.MUKILTEO, Wash. — In a little over a year, you will have two airports to choose from if you want to fly in and out of the Seattle area. Everett’s Paine Field will be on the map for commercial flights — something the city of Mukilteo has been fighting to stop.
If you live anywhere near Paine Field, you already live with noise. Once the commercial airport is up and running, many Mukilteo residents say they are bracing for the noise to get even worse.
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But the gripe goes beyond the noise.
“More fuel, more pollution,” resident Susan Tarpley said.
There are also worries about property values decreasing and traffic increasing.
“Mukilteo Speedway is already bogged down,” Tarpley said.
But Mukilteo’s efforts to keep commercial flights grounded ended when the state Supreme Court decided not to even hear the case.
“Our city is not a place (where) we want a lot of rental car agencies, that’s not a vision for our community,” Mukilteo Mayor Jennifer Gregerson said.
Although the legal fight is over, the mayor says they will continue to hold Propeller Airports, the company operating the flights, accountable.
“We want to make sure they stay true to those and they don’t take a step beyond those lines that were drawn,” Gregerson said.
Alaska Airlines is the first to announce it will fly at least nine flights a day from Paine Field in the fall of 2018.
That’s reasonable for many Mukilteo residents -- but not anything more than that.
“I think we have opened Pandora’s box; it’s going to become much more of an expanded use,” Tarpley said.
Propeller Airports says they will work with stakeholders, emphasizing the airport will be an engine for more job growth and tax revenue for the region.
“I think it’s awesome,” Bianca Chivers said.
When you talk to local travelers outside of Mukiteo, more flights mean more options.
“I didn’t know it was happening. Sea-Tac gets really busy and packed, so that would be great,” Chivers said.
“Depending on the ticket prices, I think I would rather go all the way up there instead,” Quintrell Stenson said.
Alaska Airlines has not released the cities they will be flying to. The current restriction is 23 flights coming and going every day from Paine Field.
Gregerson says she is hoping Propeller Airports will stick to operating flights at reasonable hours so her residents can get some sleep.ST. MARIE, Mont. — Howling winds sweep across the high plains. Weeds spring up in gravel streets that bend through the empty neighborhoods that once housed a vibrant community of airmen at the forefront of the Cold War. Only the sight of an occasional human dispels the atmosphere of total abandonment.
In the early 1960s, what would later be dubbed St. Marie grew up around the Glasgow Air Force Base, one of dozens of launch points for Strategic Air Command bombers. But when the Defense Department shuttered the base for a final time in 1976, after an earlier closing between 1968 and 1971, its military residents were shipped elsewhere. A population that once numbered over 7,000 people dwindled to a few hundred, infrastructure crumbled, vacant houses began to fall apart, and the settlement 50 miles from the Canadian border became a near ghost town.
There were efforts to repurpose the once-thriving community — by the military at first, then a private developer who sought to create a military retirement village, then another developer who ended in bankruptcy — but they each failed for reasons that remain hotly disputed among today’s population of just 264 people.
And then came the attempt that is still roiling St. Marie.
Three years ago, much to the consternation and bewilderment of those who lived there, odd signs began to appear around the bleak remains of the community, posted on homes, the dilapidated officers club, the former school and more.
Strange signage: No-trespass notices citing the Constitution were one of the early signs that something odd was happening in St. Marie, Mont. Residents soon learned that two “sovereign citizens” were behind the warnings.
“NO TRESPASS,” the posters warned. “YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED, THAT THE OWNER OR TENANT OF THIS PROPERTY REQUIRES ALL PUBLIC OFFICIALS, AGENTS, OR PERSON(S) TO ABIDE BY ‘THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND,’ THE CONSTITUTION FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE RATIFIED AMENDMENTS THERETO. … ALLEGED ZONING OR CODE NON-COMPLIANCES DO NOT ESTABLISH CONSTITUTIONAL REASONS FOR ENTERING THIS PROPERTY.
“VIOLATORS WILL BE TREATED AS INTRUDERS.”
The language, with its insistent references to the Constitution, didn’t sound like a normal no-trespassing notice. Some attributed the posters to the recent appearance of the Montana Aviation Research Company, a subsidiary of Boeing that maintains one of only a handful of runways long enough to land the now-discontinued space shuttle. The firm was engaged in top-secret research, and residents who lived among some 1,000 empty buildings thought that might explain the forbidding signs.
But then they remembered how three mysterious men had recently appeared in a green pickup truck, driving up and down St. Marie’s semi-abandoned streets for unknown reasons. They initially had been taken for just another odd set of visitors, maybe wildcatters or venture capitalists hoping to capitalize on the extraordinary oil boom happening just to the east in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation.
They were, it turns out, something more than that.
Enter the Sovereigns
Nick Murnion, the Valley County attorney, remembers it well.
“They showed up and paid the back taxes on 400 condo units,” Murnion told the Intelligence Report in November. “We had no dealings until they showed up, speculating on these properties and trying to make a quick buck.”
Those units were just part of the town’s enormous inventory of empty and blighted buildings, which include a church, a high school, the officers club, a bowling alley and more. Huge numbers of the properties have been abandoned or are in bankruptcy proceedings, and many were years delinquent in their taxes.
Under Montana law, similar to that of many states, when a property’s taxes are delinquent, the county can impose a tax lien on it to prevent its sale without the tax bill being settled. Third parties are allowed to buy the tax lien by paying back taxes — a process known as “tax assignment” — and then, if the original owners can’t reimburse them within a set period, they are given clear title to the property.
It all took Pat Kelly by surprise.
A former Air Force officer with dreams of turning St. Marie into a retirement community where military veterans could swap stories and maybe play a round of golf on the course he planned to build, Kelly began buying up homes in the 1980s. According to Kelly, that was only the latest attempt to save the place.
Kelly says that the federal government had earlier spent “tens of millions of dollars” trying to find a new use for the base and its housing before ultimately giving the commercial buildings and runways to the county and putting the area’s 1,223 housing units up for sale. Those housing units were auctioned off, with a salvage firm winning the bidding but then backing out after failing to get financing.
Ultimately, Kelly found financing and he and his late wife, Judy, began to build what they envisaged as a “Christian Community” they named St. Marie. But in the end, after the county drastically raised taxes, they, too, fell behind on taxes.
It was in late 2012 when the three strangers showed up, Kelly said, telling him that they had plans to build camps for the surge of workers then flocking to the Bakken. They said they represented a Washington state company called DTM Enterprises. Welcoming them, Kelly put them up in a guesthouse he kept on his property. Then, to his shock and surprise, DTM Enterprises paid $187,086.43 in back taxes on 371 of his properties, leaving Kelly with only 60 days to regain them by settling the tax debt. Although that worked out to an average of just $504.28 per home, Kelly was unable to come up with the money and lost out to DTM.
Around the same time, Kelly began to research the men he’d initially welcomed to town. He is still amazed at what he found out about the two who said they were partners in DTM — Terry Lee Brauner and Merrill Leon Frantz.
Curiouser and Curiouser
Both Brauner and Frantz, it turned out, are self-described “sovereign citizens.” The term describes antigovernment radicals who, as a rule, believe that most laws, especially federal laws, do not apply to them. Typically, sovereigns believe they are not required to have driver’s licenses or pay federal taxes, and they are known for their nonsensical legal pleadings and theories and their use of property liens.
Brauner, who follows sovereign convention by writing his first names as “Terry-Lee” rather than Terry Lee, has a particularly colorful past. In the mid-1970s, he several times tried to go over towering waterfalls in a craft built of truck tire inner tubes in Washington state, telling reporters that he had been trying to draw attention to himself since childhood and wanted to live a life like that of Evel Knievel.
In 1992, he battled the IRS over more than $1 million in tax debt. In 2010, he ran for sheriff as a “constitutionalist” in Stevens County, Wash. After garnering almost 2,000 votes but losing the race, Brauner wrote to a local newspaper to say he had been the only “absolutely constitutional candidate.” Much later, in St. Marie, he spent two weeks in jail and paid an $800 fine for driving a car without a license or insurance. He told authorities he wouldn’t get a license because the application form required that he affirmatively answer the question, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”
In 2013, before his traffic arrest, according to the Glasgow (Mont.) Courier, Brauner sent a 25-page “memorandum of law” to officials explaining why he didn’t need a driver’s license. According to the Courier, he also “provided legal education on topics such as personal liberty, travel, distinctions between the terms ‘driver’ and ‘operator,’ licenses, traffic, surrender of rights and taxing power.” Brauner described himself as a “Citizen of the Republic of Montana” as opposed to the “municipal corporate State of MONTANA,” typical sovereign verbiage. His affidavit, the paper reported, referred to himself at the end as “Terry-Lee, a sovereign being.”
Much less is known about Frantz, who is listed as the registered agent of DTM Enterprises by the Montana Secretary of State. Frantz also appears as one-third owner of Alaska Premier Wood Products, LLC, which was “involuntarily dissolved” for reasons not explained in paperwork from that state’s licensing division.
According to an account in the Billings Gazette, the largest paper in the region, DTM has engaged in a series of maneuvers to take over St. Marie properties.
In 2012, the paper said, the sovereigns, calling themselves Citizens Action Committee of Valley County, posted a newspaper announcement that they intended to take over unincorporated St. Marie, declare it blighted, and then exercise eminent domain to take over properties. That failed, but was followed by an effort to join and take over the local property owners association by using proxy votes from the many properties DTM controlled. That failed as well, the Gazette reported. Then they tried to create their own homeowners association, an attempt that also fell apart.
But the biggest clarion call came from Pat Kelly, in an Oct. 19, 2013, letter to the Glasgow Courier, written after he lost a first wave of properties. “A member of DTM said he plans on teaching the sovereign citizen theory in St. Marie,” Kelly warned. “I believe that everyone needs to be aware of what I’ve written.”
Fears, Hopes and Promises
Is DTM Enterprises trying to build a sovereign citizens’ redoubt?
Terry Lee Brauner says he’s merely trying to make money with the purchase of hundreds of empty homes in St. Marie. His neighbors are not so sure.
Terry Lee Brauner says no. He told the Intelligence Report that his whole interest has been to “make a pile of money” based on the boom in the Bakken Shale Formation, although that possibility seems to have faded dramatically with the plunge in oil prices and the near-halt in fracking for oil in shale sediments.
“We come in there as businessmen, just regular, ordinary businessmen, with a million dollars in our pocket,” he said. “We assumed that the oil boom was going to come all the way over. It got within 50 miles of [St. Marie] and stopped.”
Pat Kelly, for his part, doesn’t believe that. He worries that DTM is spearheading an effort to make St. Marie a sovereign enclave, and that without a local police department the community could do little to stop that. “Researching them,” he said, “you find that they’re big in the [sovereign] movement.”
Kelly has some historical reasons to be concerned. It was just two years ago that Craig Cobb, a foul-mouthed neo-Nazi, attempted to take control of another near ghost town, Leith, N.D., to build a white supremacist enclave. And just two hours’ drive from St. Marie, the Montana Freemen, whose beliefs were close to those of today’s sovereigns, declared their own independent “Justus Township” in 1996. That group engaged in an 81-day standoff before finally surrendering to the FBI.
And sovereigns in general don’t have a good reputation. In 2010, a sovereign father-son team murdered two police officers in West Memphis, Ark., and recent surveys have shown that sovereigns are a top concern of police. In 2011, the FBI released a report calling sovereign citizens “a domestic terrorist movement.”
Brauner and Frantz, aside from Brauner’s run-in with police over his refusal to get a driver’s license or insure his vehicle, apparently have not employed illegal tactics in their attempts to win control over St. Marie properties. Still, Brauner, at the very least, is clearly a true believer in classic sovereign ideology.
Reached by telephone, Brauner refused to speak to an Intelligence Report writer until the writer had read Plantation America, a book by longtime sovereign theorist Anthony L. Hargis. The book argues that the federal government is working to enslave every U.S. citizen and rob them of their rights. In 2005, it was advertised in the pages of an infamous anti-Semitic tabloid called American Free Press.
When Brauner finally did speak to the Report, he referenced a racist version of sovereign ideology promoted by the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus in the 1980s. “Everybody’s an American, even the blacks are American,” he said. “We’re all Americans, but it’s whether you’re a federal citizen, with benefits and privileges, or a state citizen. … There are two different citizenships.” The Posse used to say only whites could be true sovereigns, or state citizens, because black people were granted citizenship by the 14th Amendment and so were beholden to the federal government.
That idea of different types of citizenship is a core belief of the sovereign movement, although it does not always take the racist form plugged by the Posse. “Once you understand how they’ve taken control of everybody,” Brauner said in an apparent reference to the federal government, “it just blows me away that nobody stopped this from happening and educated everybody to the two citizenships.”
But Brauner insists that he’s genuinely trying to spark development, and that opponents are hurting St. Marie. “They don’t want to see any development,” he complained. “They have cost the county and state of Montana over $10 million in lost property tax revenues because they stop every movement of guys like me coming in here to develop the place.” Apparently referring to Kelly, Brauner added, “Trying to force us out of there so he can take control, it’s all this is about.”
Meanwhile, residents can only shake their heads and wonder. As DeAnn Ketchum of the St. Marie property owners association told the Billings Gazette, “We all find it a little bit, I don’t know — I want to use the term unbelievable.”LPSO identifies pizza delivery driver murdered in Duson Copyright by KLFY - All rights reserved Lafayette Parish sheriff's deputies investigate the murder of a Papa John's Pizza delivery driver on December 23, 2016, in the 300 Marigny Circle near Duson, La. (Photo Credit: Megan Kelly/KLFY) [ + - ] Video
DUSON, La. (KLFY) - Lafayette Parish deputies have identified the Papa John's Pizza delivery driver who was murdered this afternoon at a Duson apartment complex.
Public Information Officer John Mowell said the driver victim was 54-year-old William D. Kline, of Duson.
Kline was reportedly found dead with a gunshot wound to the chest.
Deputies responded to the area to the report of a gunshot in the 300 block of Marigny Circle around 3:38 p.m.
Mowell said the case is being investigated as a homicide.
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office at (337) 232-9211.
LPSO says they are still notifying the victim's families of the death. They say they will provide updates soon. @KLFY — Megan Kelly (@MeganKellyTV) December 24, 2016
Neighbors say officials found the Papa Johns pizza man right outside the apartment lying on the ground, appeared to be shot. @KLFY pic.twitter.com/q2N6MuAenB — Megan Kelly (@MeganKellyTV) December 23, 2016Before D’Angelo Russell canceled a meeting with the Sixers last weekend, raising eyebrows, the Ohio State guard quietly worked out for the Knicks on June 11 in Westchester, The Post has learned.
Russell, after the Knicks meeting, didn’t show up for the Sixers workout reportedly because he got sick. But he was back East Wednesday to work out for the forever-rebuilding Philly franchise, which may hold the key to Phil Jackson’s draft fortunes.
If Karl-Anthony Towns, Jahlil Okafor and Russell are off the board at No. 4 in the June 25 NBA Draft, the Knicks may try harder to trade down and accumulate an extra asset. They have three trade exceptions to use to engineer a trade down to the No. 7-to-14 range and still land a much-coveted big man such as Willie Cauley-Stein or Frank Kaminsky, who will work out for the team Thursday.
The Post reported last week the Sixers have been set on Russell at No. 3 for a while. Sixers head coach Brett Brown is a Rick Pitino disciple, and the Louisville coach is enamored of the crafty Russell, who grew up in Louisville.
However, an enormous publicity campaign has been waged in the past five days by agent Andy Miller for Spanish league 7-footer Kristaps Porzingis, who had a stirring open workout in Las Vegas on Friday.
Prominent draft site Draftexpress.com has penciled in Porzingis to the Sixers at No. 3. With the news that injured center Joel Embid may not be ready for the start of next season, the Sixers may prefer another big man and eschew the point-guard position.
That means Russell would fall to the Knicks.
However, a league source insists the Sixers taking Porzingis over Russell is a reach and they are after the best available player regardless of position.
“If you’re basing taking him because of last week’s workout, you should be fired,’’ the league source said.
Porzingis is a polarizing player because he put up minimal statistics for Seville, is just 19 years old and his body is not NBA-ready. He’s listed at 220 pounds, and some feel he’s two seasons away from contributing.
However, Tim Shea, a former Knicks scout in Europe who now tutors coaches in Spain, says Porzingis can become a player similar to Bob McAdoo, the original sweet-shooting 7-footer, who played for several teams, including the Knicks and Nets.
“He plays within himself, plays for the team and has gotten better every year since I’ve seen him,’’ Shea told The Post. “He loves to play, loves the game, puts the work in and is well-liked by teammates because he puts team first and has a good character. I wouldn’t be obsessed with his numbers over here.’’
Jackson, coach Derek Fisher and personnel director Mark Warkentien attended the Porzingis workout. Most of the lottery teams interviewed Porzingis afterward, including the Knicks.
Even though Carmelo Anthony is said to be intrigued by Porzingis, players such as Russell, Justise Winslow, Cauley-Stein and Emmanuel Mudiay would give the Knicks a bigger boost the next two seasons.
After Russell’s workout for the Lakers 10 days ago, he told reporters he could be the next Stephen Curry, the reigning MVP and NBA champion.
“I just try to really model my game after Steph Curry,’’ Russell said. “He didn’t come into the league playing the way he’s playing now. It took some time. The player that he’s developed to be — I see a great resemblance. His ball-handling is off the charts. His shot selection I can say is kind of similar to mine. But like I said, his work ethic to get him where he’s at I would say is similar to mine also.’’
Despite speculation Russell is trying to avoid the Sixers, he realizes he will be drafted by a losing team regardless. The Knicks were 17-65 last season.
“Most of these teams are in the same situation to pick the top guys because they didn’t win,’’ Russell said. “So I definitely know they want a guy to come in and help them win games. That’s my main focus. If that’s going to the No. 1 pick or third, fourth, fifth — whatever pick it is — it’s going to a team to help them win.’’Social justice? The recent energy crisis in Gaza has enraged many of the Strip's residents, who are now launching a new campaign on Facebook, calling to hold a general strike on Thursday.
The campaign organizers are calling on all drivers, business owners, schools and universities to strike as an act of protest in the face of a growing rift between Gaza and the West Bank, and the deepening electricity and fuel crisis.
Related stories:
Organizers noted that the general strike is only the first move in a series of protest acts planned in the Strip if the crisis is not resolved and the Gazan residents' suffering is not alleviated.
While organizers stressed that the campaign is not backed by a rival political party, they also laid blame on Hamas, saying it was not doing enough to resolve the situation.
Queuing for fuel in Gaza (Photo: EPA)
Though authorities tried to alleviate the transportation crisis by operating governmental vehicles to transport residents, the organizers of the campaign claimed they could do more, such as temporarily freeze tax collection or stop payments onvehicle licenses that are not being used due to the petrol crisis.
In order to fend of accusations of siding with Fatah, the protest initiators stressed that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' party was also responsible for the grim situation in Gaza. "For six years the politicians were busy dialoguing in Egyptian hotels. These talks didn't bare fruit and today we are telling them – enough is enough."
'Gazans scared of Hamas'
An official Palestinian source told Ynet that the planned strike will not succeed because Gazans are too afraid of Hamas' security apparatus. However, the source added that the very call for a strike should be seen as a sign of Hamas' failure to smoothly run the Strip.
According to the source, "Hamas will do anything to curtail any acts of protest, including arrests.
As for the prospects of resolving the energy crisis, the Palestinian source noted that Hamas has no interest in reaching an agreement with Egypt or the Palestinian Authority because it makes a large profit from smugglings.
"Hamas is not interested to see taxes from fuel sales reaching Ramallah," he noted.
Meanwhile, it seems that the Gazan authorities are starting to show signs of distress over the growing disapproval; The Hamas' police department stated on Monday evening that it had arrested 120 local residents over the past month, in suspicion that they spread rumors on the fuel and electricity crisis in the Strip.
The police stated that all detainees were released after they signed an affidavit, vowing not to spread rumors again.
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitterby
As the Israeli massacre of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip continues, a review of some pertinent facts surrounding this tragic, deadly, genocidal situation may be useful.
Military preparedness. Palestine, including the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, has no army, navy or air force. Israel has one of the most powerful military systems in the world, backed and financed by the most powerful (United States). It has the deadliest and most technologically-advanced weaponry in the world.
The killing of three residents living in illegal settlements was not the cause of the Israeli bombardment and invasion. Earlier, much to Israel’s dismay, the divided government of Palestine, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Fatah in the West Bank, reunited. Their seven-year separation was seen, disingenuously, as an impediment to a peaceful solution, a solution Israel has no interest in achieving. Further angering Israel was the fact that most of the world, including its favorite puppet and open-ended check book, the U.S., said it would work with the new government.
In May, video showing Israel Defense Forces (IDF; also known as terrorists), shooting unarmed teenagers in the back caused hardly a ripple of condemnation from the international community. IDF terrorists killing innocent, unarmed Palestinians has become so commonplace that it is no longer even news.
The current bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip is simply business as usual. Israeli officials have stated that it’s necessary to ‘mow the lawn’ of Gaza periodically, bringing its residents, already impoverished and suffering because of the illegal blockade imposed by Israel, to the most absolute level of suffering imaginable.
The U.S., which for years has made a show of trying to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, has no interest in doing so. The Israeli lobby donates countless millions of dollars to the election and reelection campaigns of U.S. officials, and that, not human rights, the will of the people or international law is what establishes U.S. policy towards Israel. The U.S., with a straight face, embarks on negotiations, as Israel continues to build illegal settlements. Israel has no reason to accommodate anything the U.S. asks, because of the influence that Israeli lobbies have on Congress and the White House. The U.S. has refused to condemn such blatant violations of international law, not to mention basic human decency, as the bombing of school, mosques, hospitals and United Nations refugee centers.
The U.N. has issued at least ninety (90) resolutions critical of Israel, more than it has of all other nations combined. And the number would be greater, but the U.S. has begun vetoing any such resolutions critical of Israel. A further indication of U.S. hypocrisy and bias towards Israel is the fact that, in 2002, the U.S. invaded Iraq after one (1) resolution, saying that Iraq was in violation of international law.
The United Nations, and most of the world, recognizes Palestine’s boundaries as those that existed prior to 1967. Israel has no interest in giving Palestine any borders; the complete annihilation of Palestine, its nation, people and culture, is Israel’s only goal.
Israel’s total disdain for world opinion is obvious, but the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) movement, modeled after the same movement that greatly contributed to the success of ending apartheid in South Africa a generation ago, continues to grow. Academics and entertainers refuse in increasing numbers to visit Israel. While this takes a toll on the Israeli economy, that country can always count on the U.S. to supplement any loss. Currently, the U.S. gives Israel over $3 billion annually. That comes to $9 million dollars every day of the year. Palestine, of course, receives nothing from the U.S.
That Israel is an apartheid regime cannot be denied. In the occupied West Bank, Israel builds roads that Palestinians cannot drive on. And if a new Israeli road crosses over an existing Palestinian road, Palestinians cannot even cross over it. Palestinian homes are routinely bulldozed, with only a few hours notice, to make room for illegal Israeli settlements. Farmers must apply to Israel for permission to plant on their own fields, and to harvest their own crops. It is not unusual for Israel to grant permission to plant only after planting season has passed, or to harvest only after the crops have long since spoiled. If farmers are fortunate enough to get permission to plant and harvest at reasonable times, when taking their crops to market, they may be delayed at illegal internal checkpoints for so long that the crops spoil. Palestinians in need of critical and acute medical attention may be delayed at illegal checkpoints for so long that they die. Countless women in labor over the years have been delayed so long at illegal checkpoints that they give birth there. Dozens of newborns in need of medical attention have died, because IDF terrorists manning the illegal checkpoints have arbitrarily delayed them at the checkpoint.
Also, it must be remembered that Israel was established only through the violent, forced displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Another 10,000, at least, were massacred. Some of those who, as children, were violently driven from their homes in 1946 and 1947 still remember the horrors of those days. And things have not improved for them since that time.
As evidence of Israel’s clear and countless violations of international law and human decency are sent around the world through social media, its isolation in the world community can only grow. Any parent, regardless of nationality of political affiliation, feels the grief of Palestinian mothers and fathers, shown in unspeakable anguish, as they cradle the battered, bloodied, mangled bodies of an innocent toddler, blown apart by U.S-supplied, Israeli weapons. The cruelty of pictures shown on shirts worn by IDF terrorists, outlining a pregnant Palestinian, with the caption, ‘One shot, two kills’ can only horrify. The shock of seeing people who believe they are safe in a U.N. shelter, perhaps for the first time in weeks feeling that they and their precious children are safe, only to be shredded into bloody, unrecognizable masses by Israel bombs, cannot but cause sympathy where it justly belongs, with the victims of these horrors.
The current massacre of the Palestinians by Israel may destroy the tunnels, used mainly to smuggle much-needed goods into the Gaza Strip, but Israel is already taking a terrible toll in the public relations arena. Its lies and horrific crimes are being boldly exposed. The world’s citizens are finally taking notice. It may take some time, but their governments will inevitably follow.
Robert Fantina’s latest book is Empire, Racism and Genocide: a History of US Foreign Policy (Red Pill Press).Posted 12 December 2017 - 03:04 PM
"A Ridge too far, a Panicbutton Story"
Good Day Community,I come to you all, in the aftermath of Mech Con 2017 with a simple request for PGI to be supported by my peers here. I talk of course of the noble cause of permanently adding a fixture into the game of what happens when "Keeping it real, goes wrong".This fixture could take many different forms but I believe the best possible form could be simplyIf you are confused, or don't understand the reference the following quote should allow you to get a picture of the noble event that this fixture would represent...
Bogus, on 10 December 2017 - 09:58 PM, said:
This dude is my hero. I didn't even watch the match and he's my hero. So much so that I am gonna bookmark this thread and bring it up every time some whiny muchkin posts a rant thread about the injustice of being in a crummy match with 1-2 people who didn't provide a sufficiently legendary performance. On this day in history, a literally world class comp team player got shot down with an embarrassing score. Guess what? **** happens. You get out of position, or you get primaried, you bring a situational build to the wrong situation, or you're just out to have some fun in a fun mech that's not the normal meta lord. He's probably none too happy about it either. But, rightly or wongly, the game mechanics tend to snowball with someone being left with a very short end of the stick. Is what it is. *raises wine glass* So here's to you, Random Executioner Guy, for keepin' it real for all us puglets in the trenches!
Because some people have asked what really "happened" here is a quote from the 228 member "one last byte"
Quote
To clarify, it was panicbutton for our team who brought it on Polar Highlands. He brought a HLL/ERML build (leveraging the high mounts for the HLL and the speed of the EXE for defending caps / rotating more quickly), but he set up one ridge farther back than he meant to, so when he went to move forward into what was supposed to be a mech-height ditch, he ended up walking straight into a shallow area that gave him no cover in full view of EON's entire team.
Thus the 12 dmg EXE meme was born out of peoples' shock or amusement at a player on one of the teams making the finals doing so little damage. Given the context it's a little more understandable but it still sucked at the time.
Please let this be something for the ages, I leave |
the police apparently now would like the public to believe.
The incident started after an emergency call to 911 described a distraught suicidal individual with a gun — but, as audio and video footage indisputably proves, Kinsey told officers the patient had a toy truck, and begged them not to shoot.
Officers fired three total shots, according to a union official as cited by the Daily News, because they feared the confused patient with the truck somehow posed a safety threat.
“The movement of the white individual looked like he was getting ready to discharge a firearm into Mr. Kinsey,” explained Miami-Dade union boss, John Rivera — the white individual being the patient — as quoted by WSVN.
“And the officer discharged, trying to strike the white male and unfortunately, he missed.”
How this could be unfortunate, considering the autistic man’s obviously fraught state, and the fact he posed literally no threat by wielding a … toy truck … remains to be explained.
Rivera chastised the media for reporting the story (as the video shows in no uncertain terms) with a sensationalist bent.
“Be responsible in your reporting,” he rebuffed, Photography Is Not A Crime reported. “We’re asking the community to please allow facts — not sensationalism, not politics — facts to allow their way to work through the system.”
Though how subjective that video could be is, perhaps, an open question only in the eyes of the department and the union — considering Kinsey can be overheard saying,
“All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I am a behavior therapist at a group home.”
Kinsey even attempted to tell the patient, whose first name is Rinaldo, to lie down, as he feared for the man’s safety with officers aiming rifles from behind their patrol car.
Once the officer or officers fired, hitting Kinsey in the leg, he asked flatly,
“Sir, why did you shoot me?”
To which the apparently equally stunned cop replied,
“I don’t know.”
North Miami Police Chief Gary Eugene called the investigation into the matter a “sensitive issue,” and added following a press conference:
“I realize there are many questions about what happened on Monday night. You have questions, the community has questions, we as a city, we as a member of this police department and I also have questions … I assure you we will get all the answers.”
Though the standoff with police is captured leading up to the point they shot Kinsey, footage cuts off before the shots are fired, and recommences with the wounded therapist on his stomach with his hands in cuffs behind his back.
Kinsey further explained to WSVN from his hospital bed that it took at least 15 to 20 minutes for emergency services to arrive on scene to treat him.
As the Daily News reported, the union official said the officer responsible regretted the error and wishes Kinsey a speedy recovery. That officer has also been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of internal and external investigations.
This shooting marks yet another incident of an officer far too eager to pull the trigger with no fathomable justification for doing so — and the explanation the cop had intended to shoot the patient, an autistic man, certainly won’t help to calm a public already irate over what appears on video to be a blatantly unjustified attack.
Help Us Be The Change We Wish To See In The World.A ridiculous controversy going on in Nashville, Tennessee illustrates exactly why it is important for atheists to be out and loud if it is possible for them to be so. There’s a mayoral election going on and voters are receiving robocalls telling them that Megan Berry, a liberal candidate for the position, is an atheist. So naturally, she had to come out and make a huge public show of her Christianity to counter those “malicious” allegations.
Mayoral candidate Megan Barry professed her Christian faith to a round of applause and then delivered a speech that earned a standing ovation on Monday morning in front of black faith leaders, activists, politicians and local media gathered at Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church.
Barry’s speech was a strategic one, delivered amid rumors that she is an atheist. She also called on her runoff opponent, David Fox, to repudiate the spread of that message, which her campaign said has spread by a phone banking effort where callers warn that she doesn’t believe in God…
“There have been a lot of comments from my opponent and a lot of really not nice things said about me,” Barry said. “So let me just start off with, I’m a Christian.
“I was raised as a Catholic, but my faith, which was always very personal to me, has suddenly become a public conversation, which has made me uncomfortable.”…
“In prayer and in Jesus, we are all together in this,” she said…
“My faith is something I will always take with me into the mayor’s office,” she said. “I know this is such a pivotal election for Nashville. We’ve already seen what a Super PAC will do and what a Super PAC is capable of talking about. I would like to reach out to Bordeaux, where a minister recently received an anonymous call saying I want you to make sure you tell your church that Megan is an atheist.
“That’s just hurtful, and I wish we were in a place that this wasn’t the kind of campaign that was going to be run, but I don’t think it is. As we move forward, I need all of you to help me get out the vote.Prospects are always fun to follow for fantasy baseball enthusiasts. When the next big thing makes his mark on baseball’s biggest stage, fantasy geeks take pride in saying “I knew about him when he was riding the bus in Biloxi!”
This season I’ll once again help you navigate through the murky prospect waters on a regular basis, so be sure to check in regularly on RotoBaller.
My 2017 prospect coverage kicks off with a three-up, three-down piece on MLB prospects both gaining and losing steam. So before the popular industry lists are released, you can get a “one up” on your competition here.
Editor's note: Be sure to also check out our 2017 fantasy baseball rankings dashboard. It's already loaded up with tons of great rankings articles and draft analysis. Aside from our tiered staff rankings for every position, we also go deep on MLB prospect rankings, impact rookies for 2017, and dynasty/keeper rankings as well. Bookmark the page, and win your drafts.
Three Up - Rising Prospects
Ian Anderson, RHP, Atlanta Braves
The Braves thought so highly of Ian Anderson that they took the hard-throwing righty with the third-overall pick in last year’s draft. After signing a $4 million bonus, the 18-year-old was ready to roll. Over two different levels of rookie-ball, Anderson finished the season with a 2.04 ERA and 1.13 WHIP in 39.2 innings. He also had a 36/12 K/BB ratio.
Anderson will turn 19 years old in May, and he will likely start the season in rookie-ball once again. He is quite a way from joining the big leagues, but with the electric stuff he possesses, the Braves believe Anderson is their ace of the future.
The likes of Kolby Allard, and possibly even Mike Soroka will rank ahead of him on Atlanta’s organizational prospect list, but make no mistake about it: Anderson is the young Braves pitcher to own in dynasty. He should launch his way up all the industry lists this year.
Eloy Jimenez, OF, Chicago Cubs
Eloy Jimenez turned 20 years old in November and has already completed three years in professional baseball. Jimenez has improved by leaps and bounds every year, and the Cubs think he will only continue to get better.
Jimenez hit.227/.268/.367 with three HR in 2014. He improved that to.284/.328/.418 with seven HR and 33 RBI in 2015. In his first year of low-A ball, he hit.329/.369/.532 with 14 HR and 81 RBI. The biggest knock on Jimenez right now is that he doesn’t draw enough walks, but the Cubs aren’t going to complain about his career.297 batting average. Expect Eloy to hit at the Double-A level at some point this summer. He has the chance to become the next big Cubs’ prospect to make a splash at Wrigley Field. That will likely come in 2018, but for now he is a prospect who is seeing his stock rise.
Juan Soto, OF, Washington Nationals
I was very bullish on Victor Robles last year, and felt as though the industry was not giving him enough respect. Sure enough, by year end, Robles made an ascent up all the prospect rankings you could find. The next line of Washington’s international signing gems is headed by Juan Soto.
Soto was signed by the Nationals back in 2015 and made his debut last season. The youngster was just 17 years old during his debut season, turning 18 in October. In short-A and rookie-ball combined, the phenom hit.368/.420/.553 with five HR and 32 RBI in 190 at-bats. The sweet-swinging lefty displayed his incredible knack for barreling up balls while having a keen eye at the plate; he also played more than adequate defense in right field.
Expect Soto to start the season in rookie ball, with the chance to hit his way to Single-A as an 18-year-old. The Nationals seem to have no qualms about moving prospects through their system quickly, and Soto could be on the fast track to the big leagues. Another solid season will propel the Dominican up all of your favorite prospect lists.
Three Down - Falling Prospects
Phil Bickford, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers
Phil Bickford’s potential is so good that he was selected in the first round... twice. The Toronto Blue Jays took him 10th-overall in 2013, but he decided to go to junior college instead. The San Francisco Giants then selected Bickford with the 18th-overall pick in 2015, before dealing him to Milwaukee last summer in the Will Smith trade.
Bickford has dominated throughout his minor-league career, posting a 2.78 ERA and 1.10 WHIP with a 10.56 K/9 IP in 142.1 innings. He’s still just 21 years old and he can continue to grow into an even better pitcher, but the concerns for his status as a prospect are starting to take over his potential.
Bickford was suspended for 50 games for using marijuana in 2015, and he received another suspension in December. So, Bickford will sit for the first 50 games of 2017, hurting his development by almost half a season. Even without the suspension, there have been rumblings of a possible move to the bullpen. The fact that he can’t seem to lay off the marijuana, as well as a possible shift to the bullpen really hurt his stock, and he is likely too big of a risk for dynasty owners at this point. In the words of Stephen A. Smith: “stay off the weeeeeeeeed!”
Tyler Glasnow, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
Tyler Glasnow has made a lot of noise over the last couple of years, and rightfully so. Glasnow can light up the radar gun and has a devastating breaking ball. At 6-foot-8, the 23-year-old has all the makings of a superstar.
Glasnow has a career 2.03 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 500 career minor league innings, and has a ridiculous 11.61 K/9 IP. The stuff is not the question, and it never has been for the former fifth-rounder. Simply put: Glasnow can’t throw strikes. He has a career 4.43 BB/9 IP in the minors, and his control issues came to light in his 23.1 major league innings in 2016. He walked 13 batters while serving time as both a starter and reliever. In those innings, Glasnow showed his swing-and-miss stuff, picking up 24 strikeouts.
Again, the stuff is not the problem with Glasnow, but the legitimate question posed is if he will ever harness that electrifying stuff? Without the control, he’ll never realize that ace-like potential that he has. And if he doesn’t, he could wind up pitching his way into a relief role. Glasnow is still one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, and the case could be made that he’s the best. If he continues to struggle with the command, however, it will be a matter of time before he starts struggling as a starter.
Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees
Gary Sanchez was not the only Yankee young buck to make a spectacular debut. Aaron Judge also did the same; unfortunately his assault only last three games. After going 5-for-10 in his first three games, with two HR and two BB, Judge fell flat on his face. He went 10-for his last 74, with 40 strikeouts.
The jury is definitely not out on Judge yet. He still has a chance to develop into the 30-plus homerun hitting prodigy that Yankees fans hoped he would develop into. His career minor league slash line of.278/.373/.473 and roughly 25% K-rate shows that he is more than capable of hitting.
Expectations have been tempered a bit, leaving some in the New York front office to be hesitant to hand the reigns to Judge. He will get an opportunity though. When the verdict is in, Judge will likely wind up being an everyday player, but again, his stock has dropped a bit.Everything wrong with Free basics and Mark’s Op-ed
Mohan Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 28, 2015
Today, Mark Zuckerberg wrote an OP-ed in The Times of India. I found his use of Nationalistic sentiments to push his agenda very concerning. I must say that I have lost every bit of respect that I might have had for this man. I would not have felt this way, if he had been honest about what they were doing.
We have collections of free basic books. They’re called libraries. They don’t contain every book, but they still provide a world of good.
We have free basic healthcare. Public hospitals don’t offer every treatment, but they still save lives.
We have free basic education. Every child deserves to go to school.
Mark seems to compare Government services with Free Basics. Then why doesn’t he let the Government handle the selection of those services? Why should the power to select or reject an app lie with Facebook?
India is not a poor country; The Government has more than enough resources to provide all government online services for free, like they already did with All India Radio and Doordarshan at different points of time.
We know that when people have access to the internet they also get access to jobs, education, healthcare, communication. We know that for every 10 people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty. We know that for India to make progress, more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet.
That’s not theory. That’s fact.
Another fact — when people have access to free basic internet services, these quickly overcome the digital divide.
Mark simply makes these claims, without supporting any of these with facts. He then says *That’s fact*. He wants us to take his word for gospel. India doesn’t have 1 Billion mobile users and India’s number of internet users is already growing. India will overcome the digital divide, even without Free Basics.
And half the people who use Free Basics to go online for the first time pay to access the full internet within 30 days.
So the data is clear. Free Basics is a bridge to the full internet and digital equality. Data from more than five years of other programs that offer free access to Facebook, WhatsApp and other services shows the same.
Again, We have to take his word as gospel. No Facts to support his claim. If so many people end up buying internet pack, why don’t the telecom companies give a month of data free to people who have never bought data?
If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services.
Completely unrelated things. Ironically, It is Free basics that stands in between people and the internet.
Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims — even if that means leaving behind a billion people.
What false claims does he speak of? That the critics were spreading false claim is a false claim and guess who is spreading it? Mark. Include that to an array of other dubious claims like “9 out of 10 Net neutrality activists support Free Basics”.
Net neutrality activists, unlike Mark here, always support their arguments with facts.
Instead of recognizing that Free Basics fully respects net neutrality, they claim — falsely — the exact opposite.
Sure, Free Basics protects net neutrality, like thugs “protecting” shops in the market.
A few months ago I learned about a farmer in Maharashtra called Ganesh.
Anecdotal. We do not know if Ganesh had Internet access prior to Free Basics. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that Ganesh is a real person. How did Mark learn of Ganesh? Did Ganesh take the effort to contact Facebook’s office to tell them that his crop yields increased because of Free Basics? How did he know to do that, given he didn’t have access to Internet a month ago..?
or Could it be that Facebook simply made up the whole story up just to further their agenda? The proposition with fewer assumptions is always more likely to be true.
This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests — there aren’t even any ads in the version of Facebook in Free Basics. If people lose access to free basic services they will simply lose access to the opportunities offered by the internet today.
Complete Bullshit. It most definitely is about Facebook’s commercial interests. Facebook needs data from the untapped Indian market so that they can sell the Indians targeted ads in a few years, when India gets access to the actual Internet. Facebook is simply trying to outmaneuver their only other competitor who’s selling ads.
How does Ganesh being able to better tend his crops hurt the internet?
It doesn’t. We never said it does. Mark’s simply begging the question.
We’ve heard legitimate concerns in the past, and we’ve quickly addressed those.
Yes. They changed the name from Internet.org to “Free Basics”
There’s no valid basis for denying people the choice to use Free Basics, and that’s what thousands of people across India have chosen to tell TRAI over the last few weeks.
Choose facts over false claims. Everyone deserves access to the internet.
Yes, my fellow Indians. Everybody deserves access to the internet. Most Indians will have internet access in a few years anyway, with or without free basics.
Free basics gives Facebook the control to sway public opinion of a larger portion of the population on any matter. Imagine what that would mean for our democracy. If they can make you believe that Free basics is about the people and not facebook’s expansion, imagine the power they get in this country.
Free basics gives Facebook the control to choose which startups live and which startups die: because even though they say their platform is open to join, any startup that doesn’t meet their *requirements* would be outmaneuvered by competitors who do and will cease to exist. Since the apps that are part of Free basics must abide by the Facebook Terms and conditions, which they also have the power to change at anytime they like, they can technically kick any app out of free basics. Remember what Twitter did with Meerkat?
Fellow Indians, Let’s not let these fake philanthropists turn our nationalistic sentiments against us. Let’s not let them exploit Indian market. Let’s not let them decide the fate of Indian start-up scene.
Facebook doesn’t care about the poor. This is East India Company all over again, except they used billboards and advertisements instead of guns.
Free Basics must not succeed. Not at the cost of Indian economy.FILE - In this Aug. 30, 2013, file photo, Americans for Prosperity Foundation Chairman David Koch speaks in Orlando, Fla. The United Negro College Fund announced a $25 million grant from Koch Industries Inc. and the Charles Koch Foundation, a large donation from the conservative powerhouse Koch name that Democrats have sought to vilify heading into the 2014 mid-term elections. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)
A conservative group with financial and political ties to the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch sent hundreds of North Carolina voters -- and at least one cat -- incorrect voter registration information, according to the State Board of Elections.
The Raleigh News & Observer first reported Thursday that Americans for Prosperity's North Carolina chapter was responsible for sending an “official application form” to voters that contained erroneous information.
The mailers contained conflicting information about the deadline to submit voter registration forms, incorrect contact information for the Secretary of State and State Board of Elections offices and an incorrect explanation about how voters are notified that their information has been received.
Americans for Prosperity spokesman Levi Russell told HuffPost in a statement Friday that the forms had to be viewed within the context of what he called an otherwise "highly successful" voter registration drive.
"Americans for Prosperity Foundation has registered thousands of North Carolinians to vote through this registration drive, which is a great thing for the democratic process and getting more people involved," he said. "While there were a few minor administrative errors in our mailers and some old information in the data, the program has been highly successful so far. Any large mailing even with 99.9% accuracy is always going to have a few inaccurate recipients, but we'll always be striving to make it better. Ultimately our forms are working as intended – when a resident fills out our form and sends it in consistent with our directions, they will be registered to vote, period."
Joshua Lawson, a public information officer with the State Board of Elections, told the News & Observer that his office has been receiving phone calls "all day, every day" asking about the mailings. He said that one resident had even received a registration form addressed to her cat.
“It’s unclear where [Americans for Prosperity] got their list, but it’s caused a lot of confusion for people in the state,” Lawson said, explaining that the group did not alert the board before sending the forms.
Misinformation about voter registration can be a felony if it is intentionally misleading and suppresses votes.
Progressives in the state mocked the voter registration form mailed to the cat on Twitter Friday:
Bob Hall, the executive director of Democracy NC, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to increasing voter participation, told The Huffington Post that he believed an investigation should be conducted.
"The State Board needs to thoroughly investigate these complaints to determine if the felony statute about purposeful misinformation was violated," Hall said in a statement Friday. "Unfortunately, we’ve already had to stop the Republican leader of the NC Senate from broadcasting a false ad about a photo ID being required to vote now. There’s a sad tradition of misleading voters, going back to the days of Jesse Helms. At a minimum, the State Board needs to get the mailing list to see who was targeted by these mailings, interview the people involved in putting this project together, and see how the mailing fits within a multi-state campaign by Americans for Prosperity. All that will help the Board determine whether this was stupid and dangerous or also a criminal violation."
In his statement, Hall referenced a television spot state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R) was forced to change after the state's NAACP chapter complained that it gave misleading information to voters after a new identification requirement that doesn't go into effect until 2016.
Voting rights are a politically charged issue in North Carolina this year. The Republican-controlled state legislature passed a package of restrictions that prohibited counting votes cast out-of-precinct, eliminated same-day registration and reduced the early voting period by a week.
Lawmakers argued that the changes would reduce fraud. A group of plaintiffs have sued the state seeking an injunction to prevent the restrictions from going into effect ahead of Nov. 4, saying that the restrictions would disproportionally impact seniors, students and low-income and minority voters.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Thursday on the restrictions.The weeks-long standoff between HBO and a hacker intent on extracting money from the Time Warner-owned cable network intensified Sunday with the leak of several episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as well as other series.
The Larry David-fronted comedy series wasn’t scheduled to return to TV until October. But in a statement issued Sunday after the hacker’s dumping, the network did not indicate it would yield to pressure tactics.
”We are not in communication with the hacker and we’re not going to comment every time a new piece of information is released,” the network said in a statement. “It has been widely reported that there was a cyber incident at HBO. The hacker may continue to drop bits and pieces of stolen information in an attempt to generate media attention. That’s a game we’re not going to participate in. Obviously, no company wants their proprietary information stolen and released on the internet. Transparency with our employees, partners, and the creative talent that works with us has been our focus throughout this incident and will remain our focus as we move forward. This incident has not deterred us from ensuring HBO continues to do what we do best.”
Among other series leaked by the hacker included the latest episode of HBO comedy “Insecure,” which was to have premiered tonight. Episodes of a series already airing a new season, “Ballers,” as well as new series that have yet to air a single episode, including “Barry” and “The Deuce” were also distributed.
The hacker or hacking group, which has remained anonymous, has been relentlessly stepping up the intensity of its attack. Last Thursday, a message HBO had sent the perpetrator after its initial communication with the network was leaked, detailing a $250,000 “bounty payment” offer.
Two days prior, it became evident that a previous leak in which the hacker suggested the disclosure of a contact list belonging to HBO CEO Richard Plepler was apparently manipulated. While so far the depth of the hacked material does not appear to have reached the scale of the one that devastated Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, there have been some disclosures suggesting the hacker is in possession of some internal HBO documents.The owner of a Halal market in Maine pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in a The owner of a Halal market in Maine pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in a massive scheme to defraud the government of funds meant for low-income Americans.
Ali Ratib Daham, 40, of Westbrook, Maine, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to food stamp trafficking, money laundering, theft of government funds, and conspiracy charges. A naturalized citizen originally from Iraq, Daham was the owner of Ahram Halal Market in Portland from 2011 to 2017.
According to court records, Daham conspired with others to give cash to customers in exchange for vouchers under both the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program. He then turned in those fraudulent vouchers to the government for compensation at the full amount, according to court documents.
Prosecutors alleged that Daham received more than $4 million from 2011 through April 2016. At least $1.4 million of that amount was through illegal transactions, according to court documents.
The money laundering charge arose from allegations that Daham deposited proceeds from the conspiracy in a personal bank account. He also admitted to using welfare programs himself, stealing at least $39,000 in MaineCare benefits by underreporting his income and assets to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
“The defendant stole from programs designed to provide nutritional items to some of our most vulnerable community members — low-income households, mothers, infants, and children.”
“The defendant stole from programs designed to provide nutritional items to some of our most vulnerable community members — low-income households, mothers, infants, and children,” U.S. Attorney Halsey B. Frank said in a prepared statement. “The defendant put his own financial profit above their needs. People who defraud these programs should expect to be brought to justice.”
Daham faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy and 10 years for theft of government funds, plus a fine of up to $250,000 on each count. He also faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for money laundering.
Defendants typically get less time under advisory sentencing guidelines, which judges usually follow.
Daham’s plea agreement requires him to pay more than $1.4 million in restitution, including $80,000 by his sentencing date. He also agreed to forfeit $80,814 in cash that authorities seized from him last year.
Co-defendant Abdul Kareem Daham faces charges as well.
The FBI The FBI raided the small grocery store last year after an investigation in 2015 uncovered an “exponential growth” in the market’s WIC redemptions. Investigators determined that the market was billing substantially more in food stamp claims than other nearby stores of similar size and inventory.
An FBI affidavit filed last year showed that redemptions to the WIC program increased from $87,352 last year to $268,047 in fiscal year 2015 — a roughly 207 percent increase.
The affidavit states that federal investigators helped break the case open by repeatedly sending an undercover witness into Ahram Market posing as a recent immigrant, beginning in September 2015.
“Mainers can take comfort knowing that our dedicated Fraud Investigation and Recovery Unit (“FIRU”) team is hard at work every day, ensuring state welfare benefits are going to the Mainers who need them most,” Maine Health and Human Services Commissioner Ricker Hamilton said in a statement.I wrote this 42-page, step-by-step guide to making the through dovetail joint for Craftsy. Compiled from a series of blog posts I wrote for them last year, it is available for free here. I think you will find it helpful.
With over 8000 words and 75 detailed photos, the guide walks you through the process. I don’t just say what to do but show you how – exactly how – and what it looks like in detail, right at the workbench. I explain it so you can truly understand it.
If you’ve wondered about matters such as how close is close enough when sawing to layout lines, just how much to angle the chisel when chopping to the baseline, and what are the critical junctures that make or break success, this guide is for you. There are also several nice tricks in there, including an expedient method for making clamping cauls.
Below, and at the top of this post, is a sampling of the photos in the guide.
Novice and intermediate woodworkers will find in the guide an effective progression to make the joint, while more advanced woodworkers may find useful alternatives and refinements to their techniques. Many will find some things with which to disagree, but I think almost all will find it to be solid information. In any case, I use the demonstrated techniques in my shop and they work for me. There is more than one good way to do almost everything in woodworking.
By the way, the preview to the guide on the Craftsy site shows a cover photo of an awfully proportioned, machine-cut joint. Don’t let it dissuade you; it is not mine and not part of the guide. It was added by an editor and not yet removed.
I hope you enjoy the dovetail guide and find it helpful.
Happy woodworking,
RobLight, small and surprisingly fast, this single-wheeled cycle is designed to let you zip around cities, then stop and pick it up like a suitcase when you arrive at your destination – a sweet last-mile solution for urban commuters and travelers.
The Urban Glider uses a gyroscopically-stabilized electric mono-wheel to help you stay upright as you stand on footplates straddling the sides of a central 16-inch wheel.
Leaning back lets you slow, stop or reverse while leaning forward engages the engine in that direction, and tilting to either side allows you to turn using intuitive movements.
The convenient size of the device means you don’t have to worry about parking or locking up your car, scooter or bike. And unlike other small-scale solutions, you also do not need to switch out blades or skates for shoes between uses.
Hopping from the glider to other transit is also simple, since you can carry the 24-pound vehicle onto buses, trains or planes.
With a top speed of around 13 miles per hour you won’t be breaking any records for velocity, but can get places much faster than you would be able to on foot.
The battery is designed to last for up to 6 hours of use and can be charged in last than 30 minutes. Currently, crowdfunding on Kickstarter is paused but the company seems adamant about making a go of this personal vehicle one way or another. The Urban Glider is set to retail for $1200 – expensive on some metrics, perhaps, but fairly cheap as short-distance electric transit goes.UPDATED 10:14 a.m.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday appeared to scold NBC News's Andrea Mitchell when she tried asking 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 a question.
“Mr. Secretary, the Russians don’t believe the intelligence,” Mitchell says in video circulated by Russian media at the opening of the Tillerson-Lavrov press conference in Moscow. “How confident are you, Mr. Secretary—?"
Lavrov then seems to cut Mitchell off, saying in English: “Who was bringing you up?
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“Who was giving you your manners, you know?” Lavrov said before switching to Russian and beginning his remarks.
In a statement provided to The Hill, Mitchell, NBC News's chief foreign affairs correspondent, suggested that she was not Lavrov's target, but that Moscow wanted to suggest that she was.
She noted that she was standing behind Lavrov and that another journalist, The Washington Post's Carol Morello, was also asking questions to Lavrov.
"My colleague Carol Morello was the brave journalist who started asking questions. Lavrov was looking right at her. I was on the opposite side of the room, behind him, out of sight. Perhaps I was a convenient foil, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't his target," she said.
Here's another video of the incident from ABC News, that appears to show that Lavrov might have been responding to another reporter:
As #Tillerson and Lavrov enter room for photo-op, reporter yells question at Tillerson. Lavrov asks "Who gave you your manners?" pic.twitter.com/2OJCRQrSzC — Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) April 12, 2017
The remarks came during during Tillerson's first visit to Russia since becoming President Trump’s secretary of State and amid growing tension between the U.S. and Russia over Syrian President Bashar Assad's recent actions during his nation's ongoing civil war.
Trump ordered a missile strike in Syria last week following reports that forces loyal to Assad conducted a chemical strike on Syrian citizens in the northern part of the country.
Lavrov earlier Wednesday accused the U.S. of an “unlawful attack” against Syria, adding that Moscow would not abandon its longstanding support of Assad.
“We consider it of the utmost importance to prevent the risks of replay of similar action in the future,” he said of Trump’s strike.
Mitchell was escorted from a State Department press conference in March after repeatedly trying to question Tillerson about China and Russia.
The veteran reporter on Monday criticized Tillerson for shunning the press when making major diplomatic trips.
“You should not be flying into Beijing without a press corps. You should not be going to Moscow without the press corps. It’s wrong.”
Tillerson reportedly left the press pool behind when he went to the Kremlin earlier for an unannounced visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Some days the weather in the Coachella Valley makes it feel like you are on the surface of the sun. Soon, you will also get to feel what it is like to be on the moon.
A $4 billion, 4,000 all-suite, five-star lunar-themed resort is headed to Coachella. Moon World Resorts, which originally wanted to open in Las Vegas, is now looking to open in 2022, reports the Las Vegas Sun:
Three thousand workers will be required during the single-phase construction, and, when completed, 8,000 Coachella Valley careers will be created. The 10 million-square-foot project likely to impact Las Vegas tourism will include cutting-edge space technology over a 10-acre lunar surface with a realistic lunar colony set in the world’s largest and tallest sphere reaching 750 feet. There also will be a 10,000-seat flexible event center and a 2 million-square-foot convention center, several star-chef celebrity restaurants and wellness spa with holistic health treatments. Only 12 people have walked on the moon’s surface, but 7 billion people want to visit it! Moon World Resorts will use the world’s largest 4.5 billion-year-old romantic billboard orbiting 240,000 miles above Earth for its energy efficient, stunningly illuminated backdrop. The architectural and engineering wonder will be brought to life by more than 100 companies.
Mark Weber, economic development manager for the City of Coachella, seemed pretty stoked about the project, saying in a news release: “We are thrilled Moon World Resorts chose the City of Coachella as the location for this truly amazing and highly imaginative project. We look forward to assisting as the team proceeds through the various planning, approval and development stages.”
Here are some renderings:
And here is some propaganda from when the resort was planned for Vegas, via blastr:
There’s no skimping on exactly how the ultra-luxurious $5-billion, 10,000-room, five-star, five-diamond, 250-acre Moon resort would have looked. The complex includes the Moon Casino, replete with multiple levels of gaming floors that culminate in the all-night party that is the Metropolis Discotheque. At the center of the Resort complex there’s the Crater Wave Pool, with its surrounding private pools and spas. The 500-foot pool laps gently to the rhythm of a true ocean tide. Guests can frolic in the Sea of Serenity Aquatic Center, then pour themselves directly into the Crater Pool via waterslides. A Lunar Lander Lounge at the center of the Pool is accessible via glass underwater walkways beneath the Pool’s surface. Moon visitors can unwind at the Tranquility Spa and Wellness Center, where body treatments from skin treatments to aromatherapy are available. At the Moon Buggy Activity Landscape, you can slip into the driver’s seat of one of the Apollo landing’s famous lunar cruisers. Stopping by Rock Climbing Mountain, first time climbers or seasoned veterans can scale to new heights of physical achievement and gripping thrills. The Moon River Jazz Bar sports a two-story waterfall that cascades dramatically over a lengthy bar and turns into a river. Then, toss in loads of shopping spots, a giant convention center, a winter-sports |
for the future of School of Haskell and FP Haskell Center. We're now half a year later, and it's time to start moving ahead with those plans. The summary is:
FP Haskell Center will be retired by the end of the year, please migrate your projects now.
School of Haskell will be transitioned to its own domain name, schoolofhaskell.com, with hopefully no interruption in service.
Migrating projects from FP Haskell Center
In order to migrate your projects, please:
Open your project on fpcomplete.com Select the Git menu from the top bar To get a tarball with all of your sources, choose "Source dist" To retain your full project history, push to an external Git repository (such as on Github or Bitbucket)
As readers of this blog are likely familiar already, FP Complete and the Commercial Haskell group have been putting a lot of effort into the Stack build tool for easily and reliably building Haskell code. We recommend migrating your project to Stack.
School of Haskell
We have three milestones along the path to our new, open sourced School of Haskell:
Release ide-backend - the core engine powering School of Haskell - as open source. We completed this process in March, and ide-backend has continued as a successful open source project since then. Create a School of Haskell API service, allowing arbitrary websites to "activate" Haskell code on their sites to create interactive snippets for their users. The open source schoolofhaskell repository is mostly feature-complete, and we are currently making refinements before launching the service. Extract the School of Haskell HTML display and edit code to its own project and host on schoolofhaskell.com. At that point, users will be able to view and edit their content on schoolofhaskell.com instead.
Once all three steps are complete, we will begin redirecting users from fpcomplete.com to schoolofhaskell.com.
Timeline
We expect the School of Haskell changes to be completed by the end of October. We will be sharing more information about this process as it unfolds, and once the new deployment is available, will welcome contributions to improve the School of Haskell. We also look forward to seeing how others are able to take advantage of the new service API to extend their own websites.
For FP Haskell Center: we will be shutting down the service completely at the end of 2015. We will soon deploy changes to provide a warning when accessing FP Haskell Center about the impending shutdown. Once the service is shut down, your data will be inaccessible. Please ensure that you have backed up any data and code you wish to retain.When citizens think about where local taxpayer money goes, they often assume it pays for things like public safety, snow removal and trash collection -- routine operating expenses that come with running any big city. And that’s mostly true. But what they rarely realize is that legacy costs also eat up large portions of the typical city’s budget. Debt accumulated over many years, contributions to employee retirement systems and the expense of fixing long-neglected infrastructure all take a significant toll.
Merritt Research Services provided Governing with data on current debt service, pension costs and other post-employment benefit (OPEB) expenses for cities with populations exceeding 500,000. These three cost drivers collectively averaged nearly a quarter of total governmental fund expenditures in recent years. What’s worrisome is that legacy costs are rising, taking up ever-larger shares of budgets. For the large cities reviewed, the three line items accounted for a median of 22.4 percent of fiscal 2016 governmental fund spending, up from 19.8 percent in fiscal 2011. In some big cities, the increase has been much greater. Consider Jacksonville, Fla. Debt, pensions and OPEB made up less than 20 percent of expenditures there in 2008. Since then they have climbed to about 32 percent in recent budgets.
As legacy costs continue to rise, cities have less money for public safety, health care and other essential services. “The trend continues to squeeze out other operating expenses over time,” says Richard Ciccarone, president of Merritt Research. “Many cities are going to have to increase taxes to retain current levels of services.”
The largest legacy line item for many localities is debt. Older cities with outmoded infrastructure typically have to borrow more than newer cities, especially if they operate transit systems or public utilities. But newer cities that need to accommodate growth are also finding that their borrowing costs can rise quickly.
Milwaukee is a prime example of this legacy problem. It utilizes more short-term debt than most other cities -- debt service alone took up 34 percent of fiscal 2015 governmental fund spending, according to the city’s comprehensive annual financial report. Once pensions and OPEB contributions are factored in, legacy costs accounted for an average of 43 percent of spending over the past three fiscal years, the highest share of any city reviewed.
Depending on the circumstances, high-debt loads don’t necessarily signal mismanagement of a city’s finances. “There are good and bad capital projects,” says Tracy Gordon, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. But, she adds, “places that are poorly run could be taking on more debt than they can afford.”
Some states and localities impose strict limits on debt or restrict the purposes for which it can be issued. That’s the case in Boston, which limits debt to 7 percent of expenditures. Boston, which spent an average of 14 percent of its recent budgets on debt service, pensions and OPEB, is one of the cities on the low end of the legacy cost spectrum. Seattle’s legacy costs were the smallest of all larger jurisdictions reviewed, accounting for an average of just over 12 percent of fiscal 2013-2015 expenses. Generally speaking, small and mid-size cities tend to be less saddled by legacy costs than the biggest ones.
Pension payments figure prominently along with debt in siphoning funds from routine government operations. Pension and OPEB contributions accounted for roughly a quarter of Los Angeles’ expenditures in recent years, while they’re less than 10 percent in about a dozen other large cities. But a low number for pension costs isn’t always a sign of civic health: Some governments shortchange pension contributions to stave off cuts in other areas when times are bad. Moody’s Investors Service recently reviewed a sample of state and local pension plans, finding 57 percent failed to make contributions sufficient to keep their net pension liability from increasing if all plan assumptions held. Contributions can also fluctuate dramatically from year to year, as they have in Detroit and several other major cities.
For all these reasons, legacy costs that cities are paying now don’t necessarily reflect future expenses. Additional legacy costs not included in Merritt’s data are very tricky to estimate. Perhaps the most difficult is deferred maintenance on infrastructure, which comprises everything from bridge and road repairs to upgrading IT systems.
No matter what a city’s legacy cost situation may be, local officials must consider just how much more of these expenses they can afford to take on. Jurisdictions suffering population or job losses will be hard pressed to direct more of their budgets to costs largely unrelated to current operations. Others with expanding tax bases are better positioned to minimize the crowding-out problem. “Having high fixed costs in San Francisco is very different than having high fixed costs in a place like Detroit,” Gordon says. Steep cuts in state funding also have compounded legacy issues much more significantly in some parts of the country than in others.
Natalie Cohen, managing director of Wells Fargo’s municipal securities research, cautions that policymakers shouldn’t think about legacy costs such as pensions separately from investments in future growth. “We have to think about economic development and not only what funding pensions is going to do,” she says. “If you have economic growth, then you have more resources to pay down your pension obligation.”
Going forward, the scenario for many cities appears to be less debt, but more pension and OPEB costs. “There has been a noticeable reduction in the amount of debt that’s out there,” Cohen says, “but the pension and OPEB pressures are likely to continue to trend upward.”
How Legacy Costs Add Up
Debt service costs and contributions to pensions and other post employment benefits account for a sizable portion of many large cities’ budgets. Their share of total governmental fund spending, averaged over the past three fiscal years, is shown for cities with over a half million population:
Figures were provided by Merritt Research Services from comprehensive annual financial reports; some numbers were standardized to ensure consistency across cities. Percentages refer to shares of governmental fund spending and don't account for spending on business-type activities, deferred maintenance on infrastructure or other expenses. Three-year averages for fiscal years 2014-2016 are shown for all cities except for 2013-2015 averages for Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee and Seattle. Complete data was unavailable for Louisville.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Not all Republicans are happy with the Comey firing
President Donald Trump had been considering firing former FBI Director James Comey since he was elected, a White House spokeswoman says.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders told media there had been an "erosion of confidence" in Mr Comey over the last year.
The administration maintains he was removed on Tuesday for his handling of the Hillary Clinton emails inquiry.
But US media report Mr Comey recently asked the Justice Department for more resources for his Trump-Russia inquiry.
The US Senate Intelligence Committee has invited Mr Comey to testify next week.
The White House is rejecting calls to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate allegations the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin in last year's US presidential election.
"We don't think it's necessary," Ms Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday. "No one wants this to be finished and completed more than us."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Democratic Senator Ben Cardin: 'We know that this involves Russia'
In a farewell letter to staff, Mr Comey wrote: "I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for no reason at all.
"I'm not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed."
He signed off: "Working with you has been one of the great joys of my life. Thank you for that gift."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Donald Trump was with Henry Kissinger when he told reporters James Comey was "not doing a good job" as FBI chief
'Not good optics' - Analysis: Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington
If Donald Trump is trying to avoid comparisons with Richard Nixon's scandal-plagued presidency, welcoming Henry Kissinger - the man probably most closely connected with the former president - in the Oval Office probably isn't the best move.
The whole group meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak was a bit strange, starting with the fact that it happened at all. Given the allegations that Mr Trump fired James Comey because of the FBI investigation into Russia ties to the Trump campaign, meeting Moscow's envoy the very next day isn't exactly good optics, as they say.
Neither is keeping US media out of the room and having Russian state photographers provide the only public images of the event - images that are sure to feature in Democratic campaign adverts in the not-too-distant future.
During the campaign, Mr Trump famously joked that he could shoot somebody, and his supporters would stick by him. Smiling with the Russian ambassador in the midst of a growing Russian hacking controversy is the diplomatic equivalent - a brazen move sans firearms.
Many in Washington will howl, but there's no guarantee it will move the needle among the president's legions.
Image copyright EPA Image caption On Wednesday, Mr Trump also met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak
Why was James Comey fired?
The White House insists it was because of how he handled the investigation into Mrs Clinton's use of private email while she was secretary of state.
But many are sceptical that the FBI director would be fired because of actions that have been widely attributed for Mr Trump's shock election victory.
The White House spokeswoman said Mr Comey had committed "atrocities, circumventing the chain of command" within the Justice Department.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trump's love-hate relationship with Comey over a tumultuous year
The White House said the "final catalyst" was Tuesday's letter from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein condemning Mr Comey's "serious mistakes".
Mr Rosenstein faulted Mr Comey's decision last July to announce the Clinton emails case was closed, and for revealing in October - 11 days before the election - that the inquiry had reopened.
The deputy attorney general said Mr Comey's conduct had "usurped" the then-attorney general.
Unnamed White House officials briefed Reuters news agency that Mr Trump finally lost patience with the FBI director last week over a perceived act of insubordination.
They said Mr Comey had refused to preview for top presidential aides his planned testimony to a 3 May Senate hearing on the Clinton email issue.
What about the Russia investigation?
Critics accuse the Republican president of firing the nation's top law enforcement official because he was leading an inquiry into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in last year's election.
On Wednesday, Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Durbin told US media that Mr Comey had asked the deputy attorney general for more resources - mainly staff - for the FBI investigation.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores called those reports "totally false".
Either way, Republicans and Democrats vowed the House and Senate Intelligence Committees' investigations into the Russia claims would continue.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said if Mr Trump believed replacing Mr Comey would halt the inquiries "he made a big mistake".
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Playing hockey, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed a reporter's question about Mr Comey
What does President Trump say?
The president stood by his actions on Wednesday during a surprise meeting with Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Mr Trump said Mr Comey was fired "because he was not doing a good job".
His remarks preceded a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergei Kislyak - his first with any Russian official since taking power.
Mr Trump later tweeted: "Dems have been complaining for months & months about Dir. Comey. Now that he has been fired they PRETEND to be aggrieved. Phony hypocrites!"At 17, Brian Banks had what high school juniors dream of. Ranked 11 th nationwide as middle linebacker, the Californian had committed to play football at the University of Southern California after a series of offers from other Division 1 schools.
All of that went away the day he was wrongfully convicted of rape.
Now, at age 27, after spending five years in prison, five on probation and receiving an exoneration, Banks revived his dream and signed on to the Atlanta Falcons on Wednesday.
ap brian banks falcons kb 130404 wblog Exonerated Football Player Brian Banks Signed by Atlanta Falcons More
"I can't believe this is happening. It's surreal," he said in a conference call to Atlanta and national media shortly after signing his contract. "Aside from getting my life back and my freedom back, this is the biggest accomplishment of my life. But it is also just the beginning."
In 2002, Banks was accused by a friend of rape and kidnapping. After waiting a year to stand trial and despite a lack of DNA evidence, he pleaded no contest in order to avoid a possible 41-year sentence. The plea deal resulted in five years behind bars.
After he was released from jail in 2007 at the age of 22, he was placed on probation. The restrictions outlined that he had to register as a sex offender, could not live within 2,000 feet from any school or park, and he had to keep a GPS device around his ankle to ensure that he did not leave the state.
One day, he received a friend request on Facebook from the woman who had started it all.
"She was hoping that we could allow bygones to be bygones," Banks told "60 Minutes."
Upon meeting with her twice, he and a private detective were able to tape a retraction in which she stated, "No, he did not rape me."
On May 24, 2012, he was exonerated by the same judge who put him behind bars nine years earlier.
RELATED: Football Star Exonerated of Rape Conviction, Won't Sue Accuser
RELATED: Former NFL Hopeful Cleared in Rape
Two weeks later he got a call from Jay Glazer, a trainer, the owner of MMAthletics, and a Fox Sports NFL Insider.
"I said, 'Let's get your butt into a gym tomorrow,'" Glazer said to ABC News. "Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, so let's get going."
Banks had let go of his football aspirations while he was incarcerated in order to focus on what was ahead of him in prison.
"Football was the last thing on mind and it wasn't until a few months before I was actually being released from prison that I thought about possibly trying to play football again," Banks told reporters Wednesday.
"He had a lot of room to make up," Glazer said. "I just tried to convince him that he had already pushed himself way more than we could push him physically. If being incarcerated for something he didn't do couldn't break him, then nothing we could ever do to him on the field or in the training room could break him."
Eventually, his hard work began to deliver results and he was invited to participate in the Seattle Seahawks' and San Francisco 49ers' minicamps. He also worked out with the Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers before signing on to play for the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League (UFL).
Shortly before the start of the 2012-2013 season, the Falcons invited him to try out.
"He had a great workout, but the timing was bad," Glazer said. "But the Falcons gave me their word that they would sign him. Not then but soon."
Eight months later, they kept their word.
"We're putting together our roster and this isn't a charity case," Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff told the NFL Network. "This is a great, feel-good story, but it's also one that we believe that he has a chance to come in there and compete."
Wednesday's signing is only the beginning of Banks achieving his dream. Now, he must prove his ability to receive a spot on the 53-man roster.
"I don't expect any handouts or favoritism," Banks said. "I'm here to work like everybody else. The result of my hard work will be whatever they deem necessary. All I can do is do my best."
"There's still a long distance to go. He understands that. We understand that," Dimitroff said. "Given his character and his makeup and what he's gone through … I think that speaks volumes to his perseverance and his drive to continue to learn and grow."
Glazer, while acknowledging the disadvantage that comes with Banks' age and the uphill battle he has ahead, has unwavering faith.
If there's anybody who's already bucked the odds it's him," he said. "Why not do it again?"Mario Party 3 (Japanese: マリオパーティ3, Hepburn: Mario Pāti Surī) is the third in a series of board game style video games for Nintendo platforms, featuring popular Nintendo characters. It was released for the Nintendo 64 in Japan on December 7, 2000, followed by a North American release on May 7, 2001. It was released in Australia on September 3, 2001 and in Europe on November 16, 2001.
Mario Party 3 is the third and final Mario Party title for the Nintendo 64 and the final first-party game released for the console. The player can choose between eight playable characters: Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Wario, Donkey Kong, and newcomers Waluigi and Princess Daisy. Mario Party 3 features duel maps, in which two players try to lower each other's stamina to zero using non-player characters such as Chain Chomps. It is also the first Mario Party game to have multiple save slots. The game is also notable for allowing characters to have three items at once instead of only one. It is the third game in the Mario Party series. Mario Party 3 is followed by Mario Party 4.
Gameplay [ edit ]
Mario Party 3. Bounce 'n' Trounce, one of the 71 mini-games in
Mario Party 3 has 2 types of board modes: Battle Royale and Duel boards.
The game has a standard party mode where up to 4 players can play on the battle royale maps or the mini-game library, and up to 2 can play a duel map, and can control various settings in the game.
Battle mini-games, introduced in Mario Party 2, are featured in Mario Party 3 as well. These games are like the 4-player games, but generally more elaborate. When done on the board, battle games are usually tense because every player has to put a certain number of coins (10, 20, 30, 50 or sometimes 0, in which case the battle is cancelled) into a pot. First place gets 70% of the pot, second place gets 30%, and a random player gets any coins lost in rounding.
Duel games pit 2 players against each other. These are engaged through a Dueling Glove and in the last 5 turns in the game where if a player lands on the same space as another a duel is initiated. In Party Mode, 1 player initiates the duel and bet coins against another player. The winner of the duel wins all of the coins in the bet.
New (and exclusive) to this edition are Game Guy mini-games. When a character landed on a Game Guy space, he/she is forced to surrender all of his/her coins and play a chance-based mini-game. If the game is won, the coins of the character are multiplied, usually twofold, but in 2 of the games, it is possible to win up to 64-fold. However, if the game is lost, then the character will not receive his/her coins back. These games proved to be unpopular and were not continued in subsequent Mario Party games.
Mario Party 3 retained Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Wario, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong as playable players from the last 2 Mario Party games, with the addition of Waluigi and Princess Daisy. However, the two of them are only playable in Party Mode.
Battle Royale [ edit ]
The objective, as in the other games, is to take turns moving around the board by hitting a dice block, the game's equivalent of rolling a die, and collect coins and stars. The character moves the given number of spaces and may trigger special actions or events by passing or landing on certain spaces. After all four characters have moved, a mini-game begins. Mini-games can also be triggered by certain special event spaces, or various in game actions. The player with the most stars at the end of the game wins, but if 2 or more players have the same number of stars, the one with the most coins wins. If 2 or more players have the same number of stars and coins at the end, they each roll a die and the one with the higher number wins. Coins are found on many spaces on the board and also earned in mini-games. Stars are found on the board for purchase and can also be acquired through certain items or special events. All types of mini-games (except the 3 special ones) can be played on the battle royale boards.
Like in the previous Mario Party games, items can be collected and used. Characters can carry up to 3 items instead of just 1. They can be bought from either Toad or Baby Bowser at two locations in each map, or won from an item space that will either make the player play an item mini-game, or have the player answer a question from either Toad or Baby Bowser. The two characters can only provide the items they sell in their shops, depending on which answer is given, and the options of items the player can win from the mini game are either Toad's items or Baby Bowser's.
Duel [ edit ]
Mario Party 3 introduced the duel mode, in which only two players participate. The players have a health meter in the shape of a heart that goes to 5, and the objective is to reduce the opponent's health to zero by battling with partners. The players use minor Mario characters as a partner. The players each get one partner at the start of the game, and can have up to two partners, one in front of them as they move, the other behind. When they get back to start, they get another partner, and it can go to front or back, and replace the partner that is already there if there is one. The partners do the battling to reduce the opponents health, and defend the player from incoming attack. Each partner has its own health, and if it reaches zero, they disappear, and if the attacking partner deals more damage than the defending partner can take, the player takes damage equal to the difference. If no partner is between the attacking partner and the opponent, they take all the damage directly. The characters cannot attack their opponent directly. Some of the partners attacks cannot be protected against, and each partner costs a certain number of coins for the player to keep it, and if the player has 2 partners, their salary combines. If the player does not have enough coins to pay their partners, they disappear. Occasionally, if a partner is attacked by the opponents partner, the attack will miss. When the turn count expires, the winner is decided, and it is whoever has more health left. The game will end before the turn count expires if either player's health hits 0. If the turn count expires and both players have the same amount of health, whoever has the most coins wins. If both their health and coins numbers are the same, which is rare, the game ends in a draw. In party mode, the game settings can be set so that the turn count is infinite and the game goes until one player's health hits 0.
Duel mini-games and Game Guy mini-games are the only mini-games available to be played on a duel board. Unlike battle royale, they do not occur after every turn, but only if either player lands on mini-game space. There is also a part of each map that makes the players play a duel mini game for 20, 30 or 40 coins after it is passed 5 times. Game Guy mini games occur more often here than in battle royale. Items are not present in duel mode.
Story mode [ edit ]
This game introduces Story Mode to the series, in which 1 player starts a campaign through every board, challenging computer controlled opponents at a shortened version of party mode. The player's objective is to defeat the other characters and earn stamps from the Millennium Star. After all seven stamps are acquired the player is challenged to a final duel with the Millennium Star, in which the player must hit the Millennium Star 3 times (6 times on Normal difficulty and 9 on Hard difficulty) with stars in order to defeat story mode. Each time the player completes an objective, they are given a rank of S, A, B or C depending on how well they completed that objective. When all the objectives have been completed, a title representing the player's overall progress in the game is awarded. This is determined by the ranks they earned for each objective. If at least 8 "S" ranks are acquired, that character becomes a "Miracle Star" and the Game Guy Room in the Mini Game House is opened for use. Simply beating the Story Mode and not earning a high title will cause the character's face to be sculpted into the mountain. The original six playable characters from the first two Mario Party games are playable in this mode while Princess Daisy and Waluigi are unplayable in this mode, instead acting as non-player characters.
Development [ edit ]
Like most games in the Mario Party franchise, Mario Party 3 was developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo. It is also the first Mario Party game to have multiple save slots and the first to have Princess Daisy and Waluigi as playable characters. It is also the final Mario game for the Nintendo 64 and the third and final Mario Party game to be released on the Nintendo 64 as the next game would be released on the Nintendo GameCube.
On August 9, 2000, while Nintendo was about to release Mario Tennis in the United States, Nintendo Power Source updated its website with details on Mario Party 3 to be featured at the firm's Space World show, which happened on August 24 at a pre-event press briefing. Nintendo Power Source posted only one screenshot of the game on their site at the time.[1] Later that month, Nintendo released 12 more screenshots of the game's adventure boards. The game was about 70% completed during the time being.[2]
Reception [ edit ]
Mario Party 3 received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[3] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 31 out of 40.[6]
Nintendo Power said that "the real life of the party is the batch of 71 new minigames."[13] One negative comment among the staff review was that "it seems like many of the challenges are based on overcoming unresponsive controls."[13] AllGame called it "probably the most enjoyable title yet" in the series.[4] The website also noted that "much like the two titles before it, Mario Party 3 provides less enjoyment when played by fewer than four people."[4]
In 2015, IGN listed the game at number one on its list of "Best Mario Party Games," writing, "The best Mario Party games know the balance between luck and skill, and Mario Party 3 best exemplifies this rule. Just about everything that made Mario Party 2 so great was pushed further as Mario Party 3 introduced even more strategic items, creative new boards, and some truly fun minigames."[14]
Awards [ edit ]
The game won the Console Family Award from Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences for 2002.[15] The game sold over 1 million units worldwide.[citation needed]Alex Galchenyuk’s improved play of late could not have come at a better time for the Montreal Canadiens. He has helped the team win five of their last seven games. It has been a nice turnaround for Galchenyuk. The beginning of this season was rocky. The Canadiens brass was not happy with Galchenyuk’s play and this saw him bounce around the lineup before settling on the fourth line. Until recently, his improved play has not meant an increase in ice time. That changed this weekend, as Galchenyuk was moved onto the top line. It produced immediate results and seemingly instant chemistry between Galchenyuk and Jonathan Drouin.
Montreal Canadiens and Alex Galchenyuk Make Improvements
Start Of The Season
Galchenyuk’s play was uninspiring to start the season. It seemed like he was on a different page from his linemates and from the coaching staff. Whether the cause was from his position change or the criticism about his play, it did not matter. It was clear that head coach Claude Julien was not happy with his play.
In Galchenyuk’s first two games of the season, he skated a total 18:09 in the shootout win over the Buffalo Sabres. And in the loss to the Washington Capitals, he had a total ice time of 18:11. After that, ice time dwindled. During the next five losses, his total average ice time per game was 13:59. This also coincides with his spiral to a fourth line spot. Then in the Canadiens eighth game, a loss to the Anaheim Ducks, Galchenyuk’s ice time jumped to 18:03 on twenty-three shifts. Galchenyuk at this point seemed to have worked through his bad spell and seemed to have gained Julien’s trust again.
Scoring Streak
During the Canadiens first eight games, Galchenyuk had just one goal. It came in a loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Galchenyuk has scored three goals in the teams last five games. He also picked up a couple of assists, including on Drouin’s game winner last night. With four goals and two assists, he is seventh in team scoring. Brendan Gallagher leads the squad with six goals and 11 points. During the five-games before the weekend, Galchenyuk averaged just 12:43 per game.
Loss Of Ice Time
Out of the gate, Galchenyuk’s ice time averaged 18:10. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to click for him. So his reward for that was winding up in Julien’s doghouse and a drop in average ice time by 4:11 and a reduced role on the team.
Now Galchenyuk’s hard work is starting to pay off. He’s started to wind up on the score sheet. And his play away from the puck has improved as well. With better play and finally finding his scoring prowess his reward is another drop in ice time. So he gained another 1:16 of bench time. It’s a loss of 5:27 of ice time per game from the first two games of the year.
New Start
During the November 3rd practice, Galchenyuk patrolled the left wing with Jonathan Drouin at centre and Artturi Lehkonen on the right side. This was the top line in practice. There was an increase of 2:55 in the Canadiens loss to the Minnesota Wild last Thursday. This was the start of Galchenyuk’s ice time increase. He played 18:43 against the Jets and assisted on the winning goal, and followed that up with 16:15, and another big assist against the Blackhawks.
In 2015-2016 his total ice time was 16:16 per game for 82 games. That year he had 30 goals and 26 assists for 56 points. Last year, Galchenyuk’s season was shortened by injury, he still produced 17 goals, 27 assists, and 44 points with an average ice time of 15:56 per game.
Give Him More Ice Time
With Galchenyuk’s inspired play, plus the need for him to produce, the need for him to be on the ice more is imperative. With the hole the Canadiens dug themselves to start the season, now more than ever the skilled players need to be on the ice to create and convert scoring chances. Singling him out and bouncing him throughout out the lineup constantly is undermining his development.
Galchenyuk has made the improvements in his game to merit more ice time. Now is time for the organization to reward him. More ice time equals more confidence, more confidence equals more opportunities and more scoring. More scoring equals more wins, and that’s what it’s all about. This weekend was a good start.
Embed from Getty ImagesOne-kilogram gold bars. (Photo11: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO AFP/Getty Images) Story Highlights Talk of "extraordinary selling" on the Comex
$77 drop to below $1,500 an ounce Friday caps slide from $1,900 in September 2001
No apparent economic reason for Friday's drop
Gold prices plunged nearly $77 an ounce -- more than 5% -- to below $1,500 Friday afternoon on massive selling.
"From what I've heard it's just extraordinary selling on the Comex," says Caesar Bryan, portfolio manager of the Gabelli Gold fund.
Gold has been falling steadily since its peak at about $1,900 an ounce in September 2011. Early reports said much of the selling Friday was tripped by stop-loss orders, which are directions to sell an asset when the price reaches a specific point.
Clusters of stop-loss orders near a specific price will often cause a cascade of selling as each order is tripped and brokers dump their holdings.
FULL STORY: Gold plunges to $1,487 an ounce
The collapse in gold is unusual in that it seems to have little relation to economic events. Gold typically rises on worries about inflation or currency collapse, neither one of which has seemed likely lately.
The most recent economic news has indicated a softer economy, which is unlikely to spark inflation. And the dollar has risen against the euro and the yen.
Shares of SPDR Gold Shares, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that buys and sells bullion, were down more than 4% shortly before the close. Gold bullion was down $77, to $1,487. Volume was heavy in the early morning, but tapered off by the afternoon.
Sales by gold ETFs could be making the debacle worse. Worldwide, gold ETFs hold 80.8 million ounces. SPDR Gold Shares, the largest gold ETF, has 38 million ounces.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/ZQJ8izTwo thumbs up. This was the “gift” of encouragement from a stranger I passed on the street while jogging around my neighborhood. While I’ll certainly never know if this person makes a habit out of offering exercising randos non-verbal signs of approval, I can’t help but Two thumbs up. This was the “gift” of encouragement from a stranger I passed on the street while jogging around my neighborhood. While I’ll certainly never know if this person makes a habit out of offering exercising randos non-verbal signs of approval, I can’t help but wonder if this gesture was fatphobic as fuck. “Look at that! A fatty trying to get her shit together. Thumbs way up!”
Shows what you know, man. I’m not even trying to lose weight. I’m toiling in the summer sun and not watching that extra episode of Forensic Files before work because... because... Oh god, because why?
Here’s the thing. When I was younger and the force of my youth was enough to have me feeling physically OK 99% of the time, I rarely did the thing we call exercise and I always thought that people who said they loved and lived for it ( OMG… ) looked a little sad behind the eyes. I figured they were slaves to beauty standards and diet culture and I pitied them in between bites of double cheeseburger I refused (and still refuse) to live without. Here’s the thing. When I was younger and the force of my youth was enough to have me feeling physically OK 99% of the time, I rarely did the thing we call exercise and I always thought that people who said they loved and lived for it ( OMG the endorphins, OMG my stress management, OMG…) looked a little sad behind the eyes. I figured they were slaves to beauty standards and diet culture and I pitied them in between bites of double cheeseburger I refused (and still refuse) to live without.
I cast stones at the imbalanced appearance of their priorities from the porch of my glass house.
Years later, well into my eating disorder recovery, taking care of my body became a personal priority and not a moral issue. I started flossing my teeth and joined a gym. All it felt like at the time was adulting — not resolving or aspiring or transforming. It felt loving but firm, like the mom I wanted to be to my son, only this time to myself.
Then it got all fucked up |
we’ll ever get there.Carlos Barria/Reuters President Donald Trump pictured in the White House on December 11, 2017. Trump was not invited to attend a global climate conference that's being held in Paris this week.
On Tuesday, the two-year anniversary of the adoption of the historic Paris Agreement, 50 world leaders planned to gather in the French capital to attend an invite-only climate change conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the World Bank and the United Nations. In attendance will be British Prime Minister Theresa May, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, UN Secretary-General António Guterres and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, among other global leaders and heads of state.
There, however, will be one conspicuous absence: Donald Trump.
Macron had said pointedly in November that he had not extended an invitation to Trump, who in June announced plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. Macron said that he could be persuaded to change his mind about the invitation if Trump showed a willingness to “join the club” to fight global warming.
As Time magazine noted on Monday, however, Trump has expressed little interest in shifting his climate change stance. His administration continues to champion fossil fuels and has actively taken steps to unravel policies enacted during former President Barack Obama’s tenure to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Tuesday’s conference, dubbed the One Planet Summit, aims to mobilize public and private financing to fund the global transition to a carbon-free future. Other than the 50 world leaders, 4,000 other participants and 800 organizations are expected to attend.
Tackling climate change and mitigating its effects for the world’s poorest are among the most critical challenges the world faces. That is why I will join other world leaders gathering in #Paris today for the #OnePlanetSummit: https://t.co/MfoppawOp9 #OnePlanet — Theresa May (@theresa_may) December 12, 2017
Trump may not be attending the conference but other Americans will be there.
California Gov. Jerry Brown, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Secretary of State John Kerry are among the attendees.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the famed actor and former California governor, is also attending the summit, according to the Associated Press. The Austrian-American was quoted as saying this week that it doesn’t matter whether Trump is on board with the climate accord or not, “because companies, scientists and other governments can ‘pick up the slack’ to reduce global emissions.”
Macron on Monday announced the recipients of new climate change grants proposed in the wake of Trump’s decision, dubbed his “Make Our Planet Great Again” program. The researchers, most of whom are U.S.-based, will now have the option to relocate to France to continue their research.
Macron told the grant winners that France "will be there to replace" U.S. support for climate science.Crisis Counselor 1 of 13
When the ending ofbrought back the pre-version of DC’s multiverse, DC Comics promised that the door was now open to the return of elements of its pre-"New 52" continuity – and, to any version of its history and characters.
While those possibilities have yet to be largely explored, DC does have a handful of titles coming up that promise some connection to DC’s long (and discarded) history. Superman: Lois & Clarkfollows a version of Superman based on his pre-"New 52" incarnation, but in the current mainstream DC Earth and married to Lois Lane, and the pair even have a child together. Meanwhile, Titans Hunt will delves intothe “secret history” of the Teen Titans. And though it focuses on the current incarnations of the characters, its connection to the Teen Titans of old is clear.
Even though there is plenty to love about DC’s new direction, there’s still a lot we miss about what came before. DC’s 75+ years of continuity hold many treasures still missing from the New52, and DCYou. Here are 11 things we (still) miss about the old DC Universe.After attempting to work collaboratively to address the Westin's baseless noise complaints, the Nook Amphitheatre and all of Austin music is in jeopardy. Because the Nook operates within legal sound limits, the Westin's 12 months of harassing noise complaints have been without merit and unpersued. But instead of collaborating on a guaranteed joint solution, the Westin sued the Nook for music as civil nuisance.
Austin is now a place where international corporate giants come to profit from our culture and our taxpayers, yet would prefer to shutter local businesses than work with them to achieve mutually beneficial results.
Sign this petition to tell Mayor Adler and the City Council to take action -- by local ordinance or otherwise -- to prevent new big cororate interests from moving into a protected entertainment and music distric and then usurping control over that very entertainment and music from which it seeks to profit.
Don't Let The Westin Kill Austin's Weird!Looks like HBO and John Oliver are going to have to dig a little closer to the core to get out of the defamation lawsuit by coal baron Robert E. Murray after a judge today rejected the premium broadcaster’s efforts to move the case to federal court from the jurisdiction of West Virginia.
“This Court passes no judgment as to the merits of either motion, but notes that both contain questions of law suited for the state court,” said U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey on Thursday in a detailed order (read it here). “Based upon the foregoing, this Court hereby GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Motion to Remand,” he added in the 10-page document. “Accordingly, this action is hereby REMANDED to the Circuit Court of Marshall County, West Virginia.”
The CEO of Murray Energy Corporation and various subsidiaries filed the action in state court on June 22 after being mocked as a “geriatric Dr. Evil” and more on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver by the former Daily Show correspondent. As the ACLU sought to file a brief in the matter, HBO moved to have the whole thing shifted to federal court – a move that, while not reflecting at all on the merits of the case in any way, has obviously not worked out for them.
Watch the segment that has Murray so upset here:
HBO did not respond when contacted by Deadline for comment on the order. The home of Last Week and Game of Thrones had argued that a shift to federal court was warranted because not HBO nor Oliver nor Murray himself actually were located in West Virginia, and the other more local plaintiffs were “not properly joined.” With the Marshall County Coal Company and three other Murray entities named as plaintiffs in the initial civil action situated in the Mountain State, like this case will seemingly now be, Judge Bailey saw it differently.
At the same time, regardless what you think of his legal reasoning, the District Court Judge’s order also serves a fine example of solid concise writing when it comes to describing some of the fictions referenced by Oliver in his take-down of Murray – as this wonderful, perhaps once in a generation footnote on Page 7 of today’s order makes clear:
“For those who might not be familiar, Dr. Evil, whose real name is Douglas Evil Powers, gained notoriety as the villain of the Austin Powers film franchise,” explains the Judge of the comparison Oliver made to Murray. “He is a parody of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a nemesis of James Bond,” it is additionally noted. “Along with his cat, Mr. Bigglesworth, a colorful supporting entourage, and a plethora of secret lairs, Dr. Evil made several attempts at taking over the world, before ultimately finding redemption by the end of the final film.”See? We made the quarter!! http://scams.wikispaces.com/file/view/Bonneteau_-_March%C3%A9_aux_Puces_de_Clignancourt.JPG/78501159/Bonneteau_-_March%C3%A9_aux_Puces_de_Clignancourt.JPG I agree with Felix Salmon that the former Lehman staffers who defend Repo 105 are psychopaths - certifiably insane. They state (as if this justifies it) that …
The only people who would worry about using an old trick to reduce leverage from 13.9 to 12.1, are "yappers who don't know anything."
For those that don't know Repo 105 was a sale and repurchase agreement by which Lehman parked about 50 billion in assets (presumably assets they did not want to discuss) overnight via a repo transaction so they would not appear on the balance sheet.
By now anyone who does not realize that sort of accounting legerdemain is unacceptable is (a) entirely out of touch with reality and (b) self aggrandizing on a magnificent scale. Both are signs of mental illness.
But unfortunately the Lehman executives do have one point. Repo 105 type balance sheet faking was "an old trick" and well known to anyone who cared to read balance sheets (very) carefully.*
Let me take you back to 2006 and Bank of America. Pages 94 and 95 of the 2006 Annual Report show (amongst other things) the average total assets by quarter from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006 inclusive. Here are the numbers:
(US dollars - millions) Q4 2006 Q3 2006 Q2 2006 Q1 2006 Q4 2005 Average total assets 1,495,150 1,497,987 1,456,004 1,416,373 1,305,057
Now lets extend this table by including period end assets. You can find the data here (see page 4 for both fourth quarters and third quarter, and page 4 here for the first and second quarters).
(US dollars - millions) Q4 2006 Q3 2006 Q2 2006 Q1 2006 Q4 2005 Average total assets 1,495,150 1,497,987 1,456,004 1,416,373 1,305,057 End period total assets 1,459,737 1,449,211 1,445,193 1,375,080 1,291,803 end period less average assets -35,413 -48,776 -10,811 -41,293 -13,254
You will notice that the end period assets were always lower than the average assets. Moreover it was not obvious unless you really looked because the quarterly earnings releases did not include average assets (but you could work it out because they stated return on average assets).
It was not just 2006 either - this had been happening for a while. Bank of America was parking its assets off balance sheet at the end of every quarter for some time and had been obscuring the fact.
Counterparties
If Bank of America wanted to shove the assets off balance sheet someone (credit worthy) needed to be found to house the assets overnight. There are not that many parties credit worthy for $50 billion or more of overnight repos.
Well - being an obsessive reader of bank accounts I found the counterparty. It was MUFJ. If you wish to you can show - the same way that MUFJ had end period assets higher than average assets and that the differences and timing roughly match. Someone had to assist BofA in its financial legerdemain and we know the counterparty.
Once - through an interpreter - I asked senior MUFJ executives about this. Any nuance in the answer was lost in translation.
So back to Repo 105
Repo 105 is fraud. Its a lie to investors and rating and regulatory agencies. It was also fraud when BofA did it. But both Lehman and Ken Lewis compartmentalized it as OK. And it was not the fraud that undid them - it was the overweening arrogance that thought this was alright. The same overweening arrogance that made Ken Lewis think it was alright to pay a big premium to close for Merrill Lynch (and later force mass dilution of BofA common shareholders).
But the chief executive (or other executive) who thought this was alright was probably certifiable. Just as certifiable as the Lehman execs who Felix rightly chastises.
Do we want to prosecute?
There is a big debate in the blogosphere as to whether anything in the Valukas Report rises to the level of prosecution.
I suspect in a vacuum it does. But this was a collective insanity every bit as mad as the poisoning craze written about Charles Mackay. Mass insanity does lower moral culpability and it takes an extraordinary person to stand up to it.
Besides - if we are going to slap Erin Callan's wrists in handcuffs then we are going to have to do the same to Ken Lewis and probably have to extradite the top-end of the Japanese establishment who were the counterparties.
I do not want to go there - and I do not think it would be constructive.
Disclosure: Long a lot of Bank of America - surprising given this post I guess.
*It is my burden to read balance sheets like this and to remember details four years later.
This post first appeared at John Hempton's blog, Bronte Capital. It is reprinted here with permission.When I was 11 years old, around the 20th time I died just trying to walk between towns in the post-apocalyptic role-playing game Wasteland, my father asked me, “David, if these games make you so frustrated, why do you play them?”
If I couldn’t answer his question, at least I can take comfort that I was not the only one to face it. Dark Souls II was released last week to the simultaneous cheers and groans of millions of hard-core gamers. Cheers for its immersive world, epic sweep, and challenging gameplay; groans for its extremely challenging gameplay, sadistically unfair fights, and unforgiving checkpointing that sends players to repeat the same portions of the game dozens of times before progressing—or giving up.
Dark Souls, belaboring the obvious.
Creative director Hidetaka Miyazaki cheerfully admitted that playing the game is an exercise in masochism, and was designed to be such. When asked in 2012 if he was a sadist, he replied:
If I had to say for myself, it’s actually the opposite – I’m more masochistic. Because I created Dark Souls while thinking about what type of game I would personally like to play. I wanted somebody to bring out a really sadistic game, but I ended up having to make it myself.
Miyazaki’s disappointment with insufficiently sadistic games is endemic to the increasingly significant numbers of gamers seeking “masocore” gaming experiences. The term “masocore” may sound like an offshoot of D.C. punk circa 1987 (back when “emocore” referred to hardcore punk bands like Fire Party and Rites of Spring instead of Dashboard Confessional), but it’s actually a term coined to refer to computer games that are even less forgiving than the harshest titles of the 1980s and 1990s. The term was popularized in 2008 on the Auntie Pixelante gaming blog, attributed by author Anna Anthropy to a SelectButton.com forum member. Anthropy’s definition of a masocore game was “a game that plays with the player’s expectations, the conventions of the genre that the player thinks she knows.”
The line between violating conventions and simply upping difficulty levels is blurrier than it seems. Loosely speaking, a masocore game exhibits some combination of the following:
Perfect timing: Your margin for error in executing certain moves may literally be less than a tenth of a second.
Your margin for error in executing certain moves may literally be less than a tenth of a second. Instadeath: Your character is sickly and fragile, exploding sometimes after just a single hit.
Your character is sickly and fragile, exploding sometimes after just a single hit. Permadeath: Saved games? No. If you lose, you go back to the beginning and start over.
Saved games? No. If you lose, you go back to the beginning and start over. Dirty tricks : See that gold across the bridge? Just cross it and BRIDGE COLLAPSED YOU’RE DEAD HAHA. OK, let’s go around the bridge and pick up the OH NO IT’S A GOLD MONSTER IT KILLS YOU HAHA.
: See that gold across the bridge? Just cross it and BRIDGE COLLAPSED YOU’RE DEAD HAHA. OK, let’s go around the bridge and pick up the OH NO IT’S A GOLD MONSTER IT KILLS YOU HAHA. Unhelpfulness: How does that thing work? What am I trying to do? Like the game’s gonna tell you.
The iconic masocore game was notorious for screwing with gamers: I Wanna Be the Guy, a free indie release from 2007. Like the plurality of masocore games, I Wanna Be the Guy is what’s termed a “platformer”: a 2-D, horizontal-perspective action game of jumping across obstacles (including the titular platforms), dodging or killing enemies, and most importantly, not dying. Super Mario Bros. is the classic platformer, and its many siblings, from Mega Man to Metroid to Ninja Gaiden, form a core canon on which today’s masocore platformers draw. I Wanna Be the Guy is probably the most proudly obnoxious, though (excepting the almost literally unplayable ROM hacks of old games like Kaizo Mario).
Dracula hurls a bushel of fireballs and exploding fruit at you in I Wanna Be the Guy.
I Wanna Be the Guy is the story of “The Kid” (i.e., you) and his struggle to become “The Guy,” who is the evil final boss of the game. Along the way you have to navigate treacherous terrain and be subject to parodies of three decades of platformers (as well as non-platformers like The Legend of Zelda, Tetris, and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!).
Dodging falling Tetris blocks in I Wanna Be The Guy. The Kid is on the leftmost block (and about to be crushed).
The game is plenty tough, but primarily memorable for its sheer subversion: Spikes that aren’t supposed to move shoot out of the floor at you, scenery falls on you, and a glass thrown at you in a seemingly non-interactive dialog scene will actually kill you if you don’t dodge it. Some of these tricks are exceptionally nasty, like a “save” button that comes to life and kills the player. The wittiest of these comes toward the end, when the game suddenly crashes:
Stupid buggy game …
Actually, the game hasn’t crashed, and if you don’t move out of the way fast, that error box will fall on you and kill you.
The old “fake error box that kills you” trick. Note the explosion of blood from your corpse.
At its lowest ”moderate” difficulty setting, the game isn’t all that frustrating thanks to frequent save checkpoints that reduce the amount of progress you lose each time you die. (Designer Michael “Kayin” O’Reilly has said that the game pales next to legendary proto-masocore Nintendo title Battletoads (1991), which was somehow released commercially with its preposterous dexterity requirements.) If you die, you aren’t set back too far, and so the game becomes a matter of endless practice on each screen until your muscle memory has gotten the timing exactly right. Of course, someone had to go and complete the game without dying at all—and though the player is speaking Japanese, the language of anxiety, delirium, relief, and finally exhausted triumph is sufficiently universal that no Japanese is needed to understand him.
There is evidently a strong social component to masocore. Achieving in these games doesn’t necessarily grant bragging rights, but there is certainly some prestige in besting the unstinting, unblunted efforts of a game designer to kill you as much as possible. I Wanna Be the Guy made for ideal voyeurism too, as people would post videos of themselves groaning, sighing, shouting, and screaming as the game threw exploding fruit and spikes at them from all directions. There was a surreal epilogue to I Wanna Be the Guy four years after its release, in 2012: One of the most profane YouTube players, Ari “Floe” Weintraub, played through the sequel, I Wanna Be the Guy: Gaiden, at the game tournament EVO while O’Reilly intermittently tormented him in real time (doing things like rotating the screen or sending random crap flying at the Kid), while the audience raved and two commentators mocked Floe’s slow and frustrated progress. It’s not so far from the ritualized public humiliation of The Gong Show, Japanese gameshow Takeshi’s Castle, and Roman gladiator fights.
Nonetheless, after the surprise of I Wanna Be the Guy’s dirty tricks wore off, people persisted with the game just to master it (as in the case of our Japanese player above). The most salient characteristic of these masocore games—the characteristic by which they make people masochistic—is not their trickery but their sheer imposing impossibility, and the Sisyphean struggle to master them. A trick, once seen through, is no longer a trick. But difficulty is eternal. And conquering difficulty is eternal as well.
So it was with Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes’ Super Meat Boy, the tale of an animate hunk of meat’s attempt to save his true love, Bandage Girl, from the clutches of the evil Dr. Fetus (and later Bandage Girl’s attempts to save Meat Boy). An indie platformer released in 2010, Super Meat Boy played very few tricks, but instead offered a very large array of extremely challenging platform levels. Possibly the hardest was a bonus three-level tribute to I Wanna Be the Guy, featuring this hellish screen:
Yeah, all those jumps have to be executed with perfect timing with no pauses until you pass point 6. This isn’t even the hardest level, thanks to subsequent level packs and fan-made levels (in the Super Meat World extension) that ratcheted up the difficulty even further; e.g., RockLeeSmile’s absurd “Let It Rain,” which the designer makes no claim to have completed.
Super Meat Boy fan-level “Let It Rain” by RockLeeSmile. Watch out for the blades.
Super Meat Boy was a huge hit, garnering critical acclaim and selling more than a million copies in the 15 months after its release, and showed that two independent game designers could make something a lot more compelling than most of what comes out of the huge studios. McMillen’s follow-up game, the sacrilegious The Binding of Isaac, was equally challenging and popular, and McMillen remains one of the most intriguing creators around in both form and content.
More recently, there has been Derek Yu’s Spelunky, which procedurally generates randomized caves for your Indiana Jones-like character to explore and loot. No two games are identical except in their extreme difficulty and preponderance of instadeath (and permadeath).
Spelunky.
Making it through 20 or so levels that constitute the game will take on the order of an hour if you survive (which you won’t), but Spelunky king Bananasaurus Rex practiced and rerolled the game enough until he finished the game in five minutes (though that record has since been beaten). Not content to stop there, he then did a “Solo Eggplant Run,” an elaborate, arcane, and gratuitously hard challenge that was not even supposed to be possible—Rex even had to exploit a bug in the game to pull it off. There’s no space to get into it here, but this Polygon article explains just how surreal an obsession besting these games can become.
Dwarf Fortress: Your imagination is more vivid than any graphics. Or at least these graphics.
Masocore doesn’t only apply to reflex-based arcade games. There are strategy and role-playing games that manage to be just as unhelpful and unforgiving, as with the indie cult favorite Dwarf Fortress—the personal obsession of designer Tarn Adams, who expects that the game won’t be fully completed for another few decades. If you can get past the somewhat cryptic ASCII text graphics, you will be confronted with a world of ridiculously overmodeled complexity, where dwarfs run amok in your fortress fighting, boozing, sleeping, throwing tantrums, creating wall paintings, and occasionally working—each creature modeled down to individual body parts. The obstacles to keeping your fortress up and running and the total absence of any winning conditions whatsoever led to the slogan “Losing is fun” and this reappropriation of an old learning curve graph:
Never fear, however, because with enough practice, you too can have a beautiful, smooth-running fortress like this one, helpfully annotated in pink by a player:
The infamous Dwarf Fortress of Boatmurdered
Two years ago in these very pages, Michael Thomsen complained of the sheer pointlessness of the original Dark Souls: “Dark Souls takes so long to play because it refuses to tell you its basic ground rules, then kills you over and over again for failing to understand them.”
The question remains: why engage in such ultimately pointless tasks? Well, why read the sports pages or go bowling or watch True Detective? There is probably something in the dopaminergic brain system that seeks out brief moments of triumph against meaningful adversity. (See Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens for more on agonistic play.) The social approbation made possible by YouTube and sites like Twitch.tv encourages people to engage in a very difficult but carefully regimented environment in which your successes and failures are wholly under your control, and most importantly, where success is indisputably possible. Yes, the task is Sisyphean, but you know it is possible to roll the boulder up that hill: Just look on YouTube and see the few and the proud displaying their boulders at the peak. The games may play tricks, but they are fair, and they can be mastered—so unlike life. Gaming allows us to improve on Samuel Beckett: “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. Oh my God, I finally won!”
ROBOT ODYSSEY CHALLENGE WINNER: In a tribute to a different and more educational sort of masocore, I am happy to announce that David Hunter has completed the Robot Odyssey challenge and escaped from Robotropolis! He writes: “I’m glad to have finally experienced this masterpiece. Oh … and my wife will be happy to see me again.” Sincere congratulations to Hunter on his achievement.The Suns' Jason Richardson was
charged with unspeakable evil.
Jason Richardson of the Phoenix Suns did some hard time on Sunday night for driving 90 in a 35-mph zone in Scottsdale, Arizona, as his three-year-old son was rolled around "unrestrained" in the back seat, presumably while bound in barbed wire and covered in crawling insects. The official charges include: Endangerment, reckless driving, failure to use a child seat, excessive speed, and "being way more evil than Hitler ever was, even after his living brain was transplanted into that nuclear-powered robot body."Parent groups are calling for an immediate execution by lethal ass-kicking, or at the very least permanent exile to some ghastly hell dimension where he will be transformed into a shapeless blob of flesh that can neither cry out in pain nor die, after which he will be beaten forever with a club made out of rusty metal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Also, Doogie Howser, M.D. will be playing endlessly in the background. Some are calling the proposed punishment "too humane," while others believe "it's a good start."Speaking of punishments, the Suns -- who absolutely WILL NOT TOLERATE such intolerable behavior -- have suspended Richardson without pay for Tuesday night's home game against the Los Angeles Clippers. Said Suns President of Basketball Operations and General Manager Steve Kerr: "This is about sending a message that our organization will not abide by such reprehensible behavior, even if it means severely handicapping ourselves during a game in our home arena against a bitter division rival like the Clippers. Seriously! They once took us to seven games in the 2006 NBA playoffs! And I assure you, this is only the first measure. We're also looking into docking his $30 per diem money when we play the Clippers in L.A. on Wednesday, and maybe even limiting him to one massage per day...indefinitely." Kerr then placed a pinky finger to his lips before reaching down with the other hand to depress a "Destroy The Phoenix Suns Forever" button, after which he erupted in mirthless laughter.A remoseful Richardson is taking his medicine without the usual spoonful of sugar, but he can't understand why people are questioning his daddy skillz : "I just want to apologize to everybody, teammates, my family, especially my fiancee. This is a tough time for me. I've been questioned as a basketball player, questioned as a person, but my fatherhood in question is tough, because I try to be the best father I can be and try to keep my kids out of harm's way." This statement was issued shortly after Richardson finished throwing his children through flaming hoops but just before he used a bow and arrow to shoot various pieces of fruit off of the top of their angelic heads.
Labels: Jason Richardson, Phoenix Suns, Steve Kerr, unspeakable evilThis is a simple recipe of a very healthy eggless Cinnamon Raisin Bread. It is great recipe for healthy breakfast or snack. This easy cinnamon bread works great for kids lunchbox, gift giving or even bake sale. You can keep this bread in freezer for almost 2 months. Whenever ready to eat, keep it out for few minutes and it will be as good as fresh.
Ingredients:
1. All purpose flour - 2 cup
2. wheat flour 1 cup
3. 1tsp rice flour (optional - helps digestion)
Sending this recipe to
bake fest #21
by
4. sugar 3tb spoon5. salt 1 tsp6. cinnamon powder 3 tsp7. Raisin 1/3 cup8. Butter 4 tbsp. + 6 tsp oil9. Dry yeast 3 tsp10. Milk 1/2 cup + Water 3/4 Cup11. Milk 2 tsp1.Warm milk and water together in microwave for 30 seconds. It should be littler warmer more than room temperature. Add yeast and sugar and leave it for 10 minute2.In a mixing bowl take first three ingredients add butter and oil mix it well3.After 10 minute yeast will be formatting now with yeast milk and water make a dough knead very well at least 7 to 10 minute. Put dough in a greased bowl, cover it and put it in warm place at least one hour4. After one hour dough volume will be double again knead well roll rectangle apply 2tsp milk on itapply cinnamon powder now raisin on it smoothly press it and roll it for second rise put it 9" grease pan5.After one hour it will be double in size again. Pre-heat oven 350' [gas oven355']. Bake for 45 minute. After 45 minute take out of oven apply butter on it enjoy with milk, tea or jam.If you liked this healthy eggless recipe, please check our other eggless baked recipes like eggless bun or Tutty-Fruity Bread.BILOXI, Miss. -- "To Kill a Mockingbird" is being removed from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district.
The Sun Herald reports that Biloxi administrators pulled the novel from the 8th-grade curriculum this week. School board vice president Kenny Holloway says the district received complaints that some of the book's language "makes people uncomfortable."
Published in 1960, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee deals with racial inequality in a small Alabama town.
School bans two literary classics
"There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books," the district's vice president, Kenny Holloway, told The Sun Herald. "It's still in our library. But they're going to use another book in the 8th grade course."
A message on the school's website says "To Kill A Mockingbird" teaches students that compassion and empathy don't depend upon race or education. Holloway says other books can teach the same lessons.
The book remains in Biloxi school libraries.A team of doctors and one survivor of the Pulse nightclub attack, Angel Colon, on Tuesday discussed how the night unfolded in the ER and at the club
It was just after 2am on Sunday morning when the first wounded club-goer was brought into the emergency room at Orlando regional medical center from Pulse nightclub just two blocks away. There was nothing unusual about that – as in any big American city, shootings happen in Orlando on a Saturday night, and the trauma team at the hospital, one of the most experienced in the country, was used to dealing with them.
But then everything changed. This was not an ordinary Saturday night. This was a war zone.
“The patients just started coming. One came, then another came, and then another came. They just did not stop,” recalled Dr Chadwick Smith, the trauma surgeon who was on call that night.
Within minutes the entire ER was backed up with injured young people on stretchers, who had been brought in any available vehicle – ambulances if possible, pickup trucks if not. Chadwick immediately started calling the cellphones of his colleagues to tell them to join him in the melee, telling them: “This is not a drill, this is not a joke, you need to get here fast.”
Among the first wave of about 20 wounded men and women who were brought to the ORMC was Angel Colon, who had been enjoying Latin dance night at Pulse and was drinking his last drink when the shooting broke out. On Tuesday morning he was brought in front of the media at the hospital in a wheelchair with both his legs wrapped in surgical cloth, the first of the seriously injured patients to speak publicly about their horrific experiences.
Colon said he had been hesitant to speak out “as it’s still so fresh to me”. But he said he wanted to tell his story so that everyone could know about the exceptional medical care he had received. “The way these guys have taken care of us is amazing – if it wasn’t for you guys I wouldn’t be here,” he said.
The club-goer was shot in the right leg three times by the gunman and when he tried to scramble away from the dance floor he was trampled upon by other panicked club-goers, shattering the bones in his left leg. At that point he was unable to walk and just lay on the ground as the carnage unfolded.
“All I could hear were the shots, one after another, and people yelling for help.”
The shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, went away for a while to another part of the club, but then returned.
“He was shooting everyone on the floor, making sure they were dead. I could hear him getting closer and saw him shoot the girl next to me. I’m thinking, ‘I’m next, I’m next, I’m dead.’ He shot me in my hand and again in my hip.”
Now with five bullet holes in him, Colon said he kept as still as he could. “I lay down so he wouldn’t know that I was alive,” he said.
Colon, 26, was one of 44 patients who were brought to the ORMC on Sunday morning, and among the 27 who are still admitted to the hospital. Of those, the latest update is that six remain in intensive care in critical condition and 21 on the general wards.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angel Colon, left, is kissed by his sister at a news conference at the Orlando regional medical center Tuesday. Photograph: John Raoux/AP
Dr Michael Cheatham said, somberly, that he wouldn’t be surprised to see the death toll rise given the six who are still critically ill.
The first patient to arrive at the hospital soon after 2am was relatively stable, which gave medical staff a false sense of what was about to hit them. Within minutes four or five people had arrived who were so seriously hurt they did not live for long; in total nine people died en route to the medical center or shortly after arrival.
The drama inside the hospital mirrored the bloody carnage inside Pulse. There was an initial burst of violence from the shooter in which he killed many people on the dance floor, and then he retreated under fire from police to the back of the club, where he barricaded himself inside a bathroom along with hostages.
After the gunman retreated, there was a lull inside the ER lasting three hours or so while police mediators negotiated with the shooter and tried to persuade him to give himself up. At around 5am police let off a controlled explosion, pierced a hole in the wall of the club and killed the gunman in a firestorm.
At that point, emergency responders could reach the remaining people trapped in the club, setting off a giant second wave of activity two blocks away at the hospital where a new batch of up to 25 wounded club-goers were brought in. The ER filled up again to overflowing.
“We had to start all over again,” Chadwick said. “People were in pain, people were worrying about their loved ones, not knowing where their loved ones were. We tried to help them all.”
Dr Joseph Ibrahim said that the medical staff saw “the full gamut of wounds” presented that Sunday. Patients bore gunshot wounds to the extremities, chest, abdomen, pelvis. Some looked as though they had been shot from below.
Ibrahim said that the wounds could also be divided into those that were small caliber in nature, and those that were unusually large in size and that caused horrendous destruction to tissue. That correlated with the two guns that the shooter is known to have wielded: a Glock 9mm handgun and a Sig Sauer.223 semi-automatic rifle that was presumably the cause of the larger bullet holes.
The most seriously injured patients were rushed into the operating room. By 6am surgeons had completed 13 operations, an astounding number for any trauma team. That figure rose to 28 in total on the first day, and eight on Monday with a further eight scheduled for Tuesday.
“The cases just kept coming throughout the day, there was never any downtime,” said anaesthesiologist Dr Sandy Mukherjee.
Dr Will Havron said: “We would treat one patient and after the procedure was finished we would walk to another operating room and start all over again.”
As a sign of how grievously people had been hurt, a second patient, Felipe Antonio Marrero Sanchez, who had been scheduled to tell his story to the media, cancelled at the last minute saying he could not face it. A further indication of the widespread impact of the gun rampage was that people were continuing to come into Orlando hospitals in small numbers, presenting with injuries that they only gradually realized that they had.
Colon said that his ordeal inside Pulse ended after police stormed the venue. An officer grabbed him by his wounded hand and he was in deep pain, and dragged him out |
agreed that Coelophysis was a "hunter of small, fast-moving prey".[9] Carpenter also identified three distinct models of theropod forelimb use and noted that Coelophysis was a "combination grasper-clutcher" as compared to other dinosaurs that were "clutchers" or "long armed graspers".[43]
It has been suggested that C. bauri was a cannibal, based on supposed juvenile specimens found "within" the abdominal cavities of some Ghost Ranch specimens.[22] However, Robert J. Gay showed in 2002 that these specimens were misinterpreted. Several specimens of "juvenile coelophysids" were actually small crurotarsan reptiles such as Hesperosuchus.[44] Gay's position was lent support in a 2006 study by Nesbitt et al.[45] In 2009, new evidence of cannibalism came to light when additional preparation of previously excavated matrix revealed regurgitate material in and around the mouth of Coelophysis specimen NMMNH P-44551. This material included tooth and jaw bone fragments that Rinehart et al. considered "morphologically identical" to a juvenile Coelophysis.[9]
In 2010, Gay examined the bones of juveniles found within the thoracic cavity of AMNH 7224, and calculated that the total volume of these bones was 17 times greater than the maximum estimated stomach volume of the Coelophysis specimen. Gay observed that the total volume would be even greater when considering that there would have been flesh on these bones. This analysis also noted the absence of tooth marks on the bones as would be expected in defleshing, and the absence of expected pitting by stomach acids. Finally, Gay demonstrated that the alleged cannibalized juvenile bones were deposited stratigraphically below the larger animal that had supposedly cannibalized them. Taken together these data suggested that the Coelophysis specimen AMNH 7224 was not a cannibal and that the bones of the juvenile and adult specimens were found in their final position as a result of "coincidental superposition of different sized individuals.[46]
Pack behavior [ edit ]
The discovery of over 1000 specimens of Coelophysis at the Whitaker quarry at Ghost Ranch, has suggested gregarious behavior to researchers like Schwartz and Gillette.[47] There is a tendency to see this massive congregation of animals as evidence for huge packs of Coelophysis roaming the land.[22] No direct evidence for flocking exists; the deposits only indicate that large numbers of Coelophysis, along with other Triassic animals, were buried together. Some of the evidence from the taphonomy of the site indicates that these animals may have been gathered together to feed or drink from a depleted water hole or to feed on a spawning run of fish, and then became buried in a catastrophic flash flood[22][47] or a drought.[22]
With 30 specimens of C. rhodesiensis found together in Zimbabwe some palaeontologists have suggested that Coelophysis was indeed gregarious. Again there is no direct evidence of flocking in this case and it has also been suggested that these individuals were also victims of flash flooding as it appears to have been commonplace during this period.[24][48][49]
Growth and sexual dimorphism [ edit ]
Rinehart (2009) assessed the ontogenic growth of this genus using data gathered from the length of its upper leg bone (femur) and concluded that Coelophysis juveniles grew rapidly, especially during the first year of life.[9] Coelophysis likely reached sexual maturity between the second and third year of life and reached its full size, just above 10 feet in length, by its eighth year. This study identified four distinct growth stages: 1-year, 2-year, 4-year, and 7+ year.[9] It was also thought, that as soon as they were hatched, they would have to fend for themselves.[22]
Two "morphs" of Coelophysis have been identified: a more gracile form, as in specimen AMNH 7223, and a slightly more robust form, as in specimens AMNH 7224 and NMMNH P-42200. Skeletal proportions were different between these two forms;[50] the gracile form has a longer skull, a longer neck, shorter forelimbs, and has sacral neural spines that are fused; and the robust form has a shorter skull, a shorter neck, longer forelimbs, and unfused sacral neural spines.[14] Historically, many arguments have been made that this represents some sort of dimorphism in the population of Coelophysis, probably sexual dimorphism.[8][14][51][52] Raath agreed that dimorphism in Coelophysis is evidenced by the size and structure of the forelimb.[51] Rinehart et al. studied 15 individuals, and agreed that two morphs were present, even in juvenile specimens, and suggested that sexual dimorphism was present early in life, prior to sexual maturity. Rinehart concluded that the gracile form was female and the robust form was male based on differences in the sacral vertebrae of the gracile form, which allowed for greater flexibility for egg laying.[9] Further support for this position was provided by an analysis showing that each morph comprised 50% of the population, as would be expected in a 50/50 sex ratio.[53]
However, more recent research has found that C. bauri and C. rhodesiensis had highly variable growth between individuals, with some specimens being larger in their immature phase than smaller adults were when completely mature; this indicates that the supposed presence of distinct morphs is simply the result of individual variation. This highly variable growth was likely ancestral to dinosaurs but later lost, and may have given such early dinosaurs an evolutionary advantage in surviving harsh environmental challenges.[54]
Reproduction [ edit ]
Through the compilation and analysis of a database of nearly three dozen birds and reptiles, and comparison with existing data about the anatomy of Coelophysis Rinehart et al. (2009) drew the following conclusions. It was estimated that average egg of Coelophysis was 31–33.5 millimeters across its minor diameter, and that each female would lay between 24–26 eggs in each clutch. The evidence suggested that some parental care was necessary to nurture the relatively small hatchlings during the first year of life, where they would reach 1.5 meters in length by the end of their first growth stage. Coelophysis bauri invested as much energy in reproduction as other extinct reptiles of its approximate size.[9][55]
Paleopathology [ edit ]
In a 2001 study conducted by Bruce Rothschild and other paleontologists, 14-foot bones referred to Coelophysis were examined for signs of stress fracture, but none were found.[56]
In C. rhodesiensis, healed fractures of the tibia and metatarsus have been observed, but are very rare. "[T]he supporting butresses of the second sacral rib" in one specimen of Syntarsus rhodesiensis showed signs of fluctuating asymmetry. Fluctuating asymmetry results from developmental disturbances and is more common in populations under stress and can therefore be informative about the quality of conditions a dinosaur lived under.[57]
Paleoecology [ edit ]
Restoration showing hypothetical wattle and feathers.
Distribution [ edit ]
Specimens of Coelophysis have been recovered from the Chinle Formation of New Mexico and Arizona, more famously at the Ghost Ranch (Whitaker) quarry in the Rock Point member[9] among other quarries in the underlaying Petrified Forest member, the sediments of which have been dated to approximately 212 million years ago, making them part of the middle Norian stage of the Late Triassic.[58][22]
C. rhodesiensis has been recovered in the Upper Elliott Formation in the Cape and Free State provinces of South Africa as well as the Chitake River bonebed quarry at the Forest Sandstone Formation in Zimbabwe.
Fauna and habitat [ edit ]
Ghost Ranch was located close to the equator over 200 million years ago, and had a warm, monsoon-like climate with heavy seasonal precipitation. Hayden Quarry, a new excavation site at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, has yielded a diverse collection of fossil material that included the first evidence of dinosaurs and less-advanced dinosauromorphs from the same time period. The discovery indicates that the two groups lived together during the early Triassic period 235 million years ago.[59]
Therrien and Fastovsky (2001) examined the paleoenvironment of Coelophysis and other early theropods from Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, and determined that this genus lived in an environment that consisted of floodplains marked by distinct dry and wet seasons. There was a great deal of competition during drier times when animals struggled for water in riverbeds that were drying up.[60]
In the upper sections of the Chinle Formation where Coelophysis is found, dinosaurs were rare, so far only Chindesaurus and Daemonosaurus[61] are known, the terrestrial fauna being dominated instead by other reptiles like the rhynchocephalian Whitakersaurus;[62] the pseudosuchian Revueltosaurus;[63] the aetosaurs Desmatosuchus,[63] Typothorax[63] and Heliocanthus;[63] the crocodilomorph Hesperosuchus;[63] the "rauisuchians" Shuvosaurus,[63] Effigia[64] and Vivaron;[65] along other rare components like the dinosauriform Eucoelophysis,[66] and the amniote Kraterokheirodon.[63] In the waterways we find the phytosaur Machaeroprosopus;[63] the archosauromorph Vancleavea;[63] the amphibians Apachesaurus[63] and Koskinonodon;[67] and the fishes Reticulodus,[63] Arganodus[63] and Lasalichthyes.[63]
The Upper Elliot Formation is thought to have been an ancient floodplain. Fossils of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus and Ignavusaurus have been recovered from the Upper Elliot Formation, which boasts the world's most diverse fauna of early Jurassic ornithischian dinosaurs, including Abrictosaurus, Fabrosaurus, Heterodontosaurus, and Lesothosaurus, among others. The Forest Sandstone Formation was the paleoenvironment of protosuchid crocodiles, sphenodonts, the dinosaur Massospondylus and indeterminate remains of a prosauropod. Paul (1988) noted that Megapnosaurus rhodesiensis lived among desert dunes and oases and hunted juvenile and adult prosauropods.[68]
Taphonomy [ edit ]
The multitude of specimens deposited so closely together at Ghost Ranch was probably the result of a flash flood, which swept away a large number of Coelophysis and buried them quickly and simultaneously. In fact, it seems that such flooding was commonplace during this period of the Earth's history and, indeed, the Petrified Forest of nearby Arizona is the result of a preserved log jam of tree trunks that were caught in one such flood. Whitaker quarry at Ghost Ranch is considered a monotaxic site because it features multiple individuals of a single taxon. The quality of preservation and the ontogenic (age) range of the specimens helped make Coelophysis one of the best known of all genera.[69] In 2009, Rinehart et al. noted that in one case the Coelophysis specimens were "washed into a topographic low containing a small pond, where they probably drowned and were buried by a sheet flood event from a nearby river."[9]
The 30 specimens of C. rhodesiensis found together in Zimbabwe was also probably the result of a flash flood, which swept away a large number of Coelophysis and buried them quickly and simultaneously as well.[24][48][49]
Ichnology [ edit ]
Edwin H. Colbert has suggested that the theropod footprints referred to the ichnogenus Grallator, located in the Connecticut River Valley across Connecticut and Massachusetts, may have been made by Coelophysis.[70] The footprints are from the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic aged Newark Supergroup. They clearly show digits II III and IV but not I or V. That condition is strange for footprints of their age. The digits were presumed to be stubby and ineffective, not touching the ground when the dinosaur was walking or running. They have been thought to be from an unidentified, primitive saurischian similar to Coelophysis by David B. Weishampel and L. Young more recently.[71] Skeletal remains resembling Coelophysis have also been found in the valley, supporting the idea that a species similar to Coelophysis is responsible for the footprints.[72]
Dinosaur footprints that were later attributed to C. rhodesiensis were discovered in Rhodesia in 1915. These tracks were discovered at the Nyamandhlovu Sandstones Formation, in eolian red sandstone that was deposited in the Late Triassic, approximately 235 to 201 million years ago.[73]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Coelophysis was the second dinosaur in space, following Maiasaura (STS-51-F).[74] A Coelophysis skull from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-89 when it left the atmosphere on 22 January 1998. It was also taken onto the space station Mir before being returned to Earth.[74][75]
As being over 100 years old, Coelophysis is one of the best-known dinosaurs in literature. It was designated as the official state fossil of New Mexico, and is now the logo of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.[18] Coelophysis bauri also became a state fossil of New Mexico in 1981.[76]
References [ edit ]Image copyright PA Image caption Poundland was one of the employers which took part in the scheme.
The High Court has ruled emergency laws underpinning a government back-to-work scheme are "incompatible" with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The government says it should not have to repay claimants docked benefits for not doing all they could to find work.
But a judge said the retrospective application of legislation passed in 2013 "interfered with the right to a fair trial" of those affected.
Ministers said they were "disappointed" and would appeal.
The case originates in a legal challenge brought by Cait Reilly in 2012. She maintained that her participation in an unpaid work placement in a Poundland store in 2011 breached her human rights.
The 24-year-old graduate challenged the legality of the scheme, part of the government's "mandatory work activity" programme, where claimants risk losing their Jobseeker's Allowance if they do not take part.
She said she had not been informed prior to the placement that she would, as a result, have to give up her voluntary work in a museum - where she hoped to build a career.
'Minority of cases'
The government was forced to pass emergency legislation amending the regulations last year after the Court of Appeal ruled that Ms Reilly had not been properly notified about the scheme and its undertakings.
Image caption Ms Reilly challenged the legality of the unpaid work scheme
The legislation, which came into force in March 2013, strengthened the rules to make it clear that claimants must do all they could to find work in order to claim benefits.
It also sought to ensure the government did not have to repay claimants who had been penalised for not complying with the conditions of their benefit claims by retrospectively "validating" sanctions.
But claimants argued that this was unfair and insisted they were entitled to compensation.
Mrs Justice Lang, sitting at the High Court in London, ruled on Friday that the retrospective nature of the legislation interfered with the "right to a fair trial" under Article Six of the Convention on Human Rights.
She said the claimants could apply for a judicial review of the relevant legislation.
The Department for Work and Pensions said it was "disappointed" by the ruling - which it said applied to a minority of claimants - and would appeal.
"We disagree with the judgement on the legislation and are disappointed," a spokeswoman said.
"It was discussed, voted on and passed by Parliament. While this applies to only a minority of past cases and does not affect the day-to-day business of our Jobcentres, we think this is an important point and will appeal."
She said the legislation remained "in force" and the government would not be compensating anyone pending the outcome of its appeal.
'Slave labour'
But Paul Heron, a solicitor for Public Interest Lawyers, said it was a "massively significant" ruling and the DWP's decision to appeal against it would be a further blow to the "upwards of 3,000 cases sitting in the tribunal system waiting for this judgement".
About £130m was owed to people who had fallen foul of the retrospective legislation, he said, ranging from four weeks' benefit, about £250, to several thousand pounds.
He told BBC News it was "about time the DWP just held their hands up, admit they made an error, and pay people the money they were entitled to at the time. That is what a responsible government would do".
The back-to-work schemes have been condemned by critics as "slave labour" because they involve work without pay. But they are seen by supporters as a good way of getting the unemployed back into the world of work.
The Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal's ruling on the regulations last year, although the judges also rejected claims that the schemes were "exploitative" and amounted to "forced labour".
Ministers said that the most recent legal judgement had upheld this view.
"We're pleased the court recognised that if claimants do not play by the rules and meet their conditions to do all they can to look for work and get a job, we can stop their benefits," the spokeswoman added.
Poundland, one of several employers which took part in the scheme, withdrew from it in 2012.When Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman gets interviewed about his famous rubber duck sculpture, he often describes it as a “yellow catalyst.” He believes his artistic creation absorbs the environment around it, whether that atmosphere is one of beauty or ugliness.
“This rubber duck catalyst shows exactly what he needs to show,” Hofman tells Billy Penn. “And that came out. I hope the festival got taught their lesson.”
In case you missed it, the massive rubber duck that was the centerpiece of last weekend’s Tall Ships Festival couldn’t handle the Delaware River. It sustained a 60-foot gash on Thursday and didn’t make a comeback. This Philadelphia duck wasn’t Hofman’s, though. It was built and operated by Draw Events, an event management company based in Minnesota. Earlier this month, Hofman claimed in an interview with Philly Mag that Tall Ships was illegally using his design. He had originally contracted with Tall Ships for using his design patterns for the duck sculpture in Los Angeles but not here.
“That’s what you get when you’re using an unauthorized work,” he says. “You don’t get the technical information from the artist and his production team.”
Don’t take his response as complete schadenfreude. Hofman says he is more disappointed than anything and believes the problems in Philadelphia inflict further damage on his work of art. He says Tall Ships used his patterns and design to make a “commercial milk cow” rather than respect his work.
Hofman’s rubber duck design, which has been used more than 20 times internationally since 2007, stems from a famous Rene Magritte painting of a pipe, featuring the words “This is not a pipe.” His duck is not meant to be a “rubber duckie or something funny” but an image for people to see so they can disassociate from the stresses of their lives and be “free again as (they) were in youth.”
Tall Ships producer Craig Samborksi told Philly Mag earlier this month the duck used for Tall Ships Philadelphia wasn’t Hofman’s duck but “another large inflatable duck.”
“He makes it into a joke,” Hofman says. “It’s contemporary art. Maybe that’s difficult for a lot of media to understand. But it is art. It has higher purpose and not to just be used to promote a Tall Ships Festival. That was never the idea when we started working with them. They unfortunately disrespected that goal.
“Now the rubber duck made a really bad impression in Philadelphia by what we read and heard this last week. It created even more damage to the project, makes it even more ridiculous. It’s a pity and shame.”
A few fans from Philadelphia have been sending Hofman emails after the mishaps with Tall Ships’ duck. One of them, he says, was about karma. He is not one to believe in religion or karma, but he did find some meaning in that email when it came to his yellow catalyst.
“This,” he says, “is what you get when you do things like this.”It was a cold, foggy morning in Delhi on January 21, 2014. I had just broken a story about Motorola’s quirky plan to re-enter the Indian market on BGR India. My sources had confirmed that Motorola was indeed coming back to India and had planned an online exclusive go to market model and was most likely partnering with Flipkart. It had barely been 30 minutes since the story went online when my phone rang. On the other end was a seemingly irritated man, who identified himself as Amit Boni from Motorola and who didn’t exactly seem too pleased with my reporting. There were two big things I did not know back then when I answered that call.
I had no idea that I had unwittingly stolen the thunder from probably one of the biggest moments of Boni’s professional life. I also did not know that this partnership between Flipkart and Motorola will change the way India sells and buys smartphones.
What follows is the story of Motorola India, and how it went from being a smartphone brand no distributor wanted to touch, to being the pioneer of a successful online sales model.
The Motorola India Trio
One December evening in 2013, a contract rested on the table of Motorola’s Corporate VP for EMEA and APAC Magnus Ahlqvist. The contract was an agreement with a distributor, who, after many rejections and tedious negotiations, had agreed to bring Motorola back into the Indian market. Everything was finalized and a celebratory banquet was set up downstairs at a five-star hotel in Gurgaon. But this executive’s mind was distracted by an idea his India strategy guy (Boni) had suggested. He postponed signing the contract. This impulse decision by Ahlqvist changed the course for Motorola in India.
Motorola’s India innings was written off soon after the company’s acquisition by Google. In August 2012, BGR India broke the story about Motorola shutting shop in India and how it had fired most of its employees. For the next one year, the company was mostly dormant in India.
Motorola had retained Amit Boni, who was looking after the go-to-market strategy for India and South East Asia. After the massive reshuffle of August 2012, the company promoted Boni to lead strategy and sales for APAC. Prasoon Sharma had joined Motorola just a few months earlier and was also looking after strategy and planning for South East Asia in Boni’s team. Harsh Bansal had been with Motorola since 2008 as a financial planner doing weekly short term forecasting for EMEA, APAC and China as well as long-term planning for APAC region. No one knew back then in August 2012 that in less than two years, this trio would chart Motorola’s dramatic re-entry into the Indian market.
The Do-Not-Distribute Brand
A substantial chunk of Motorola’s success in India can be attributed to a plan that this trio hatched to bring back the brand no one wanted to touch. This plan, which was to be imitated by almost all smartphone vendors later, was pronounced crazy when it was first proposed.
It was May 2013, when Motorola first started talking about the Moto G internally. It was the first smartphone developed from scratch by Motorola under Google. The product sounded fit for the Indian market, which had just started growing rapidly in terms of smartphone shipments. Boni and his team thought it was the perfect smartphone for India but back then India was nowhere on Motorola’s radar. They were strategizing for the APAC market, but his team started driving the conversation about launching the Moto G in India.
In August 2013 Boni & Co started approaching distributors describing them a product like the Moto G to get feelers about their interest. While most felt a product like that could sell in the market, no one really wanted to touch Motorola. All distributors told them that Motorola was dead as a brand in India and there was no coming back. However, considering it is India, “where everything sells,” most distributors suggested they could sell between 20,000-80,000 units of the Moto G but no one wanted to make any commitment. In other words, they would help distribute the phones and ensure they are on shelves, but they didn’t want to play any role with unsold inventory. It had to be Motorola’s headache.
One national distributor told Motorola that he could sell a million units provided Motorola committed a marketing budget of $50 million. But Motorola India had no marketing dollars to spend. The next day, the distributor met the team again having reworked some numbers. He offered to do 110,000 units of the Moto G if Motorola was willing to spend $10 million on marketing. The talks ended there.
After several failed discussions with distributors, the trio started doing market visits asking retailers about Motorola and what they thought. To their surprise, many thought it was a brand that would sell if reintroduced in the market. Irrespective of what distributors, analysts and even Motorola’s internal teams were saying, this gave them confidence that it wasn’t over, yet.
However, to say the very least, things looked bleak for Motorola India. The top management back in the US was not too keen on entering the Indian market. They cited Motorola’s past Indian misadventure and declared they were in no mood to get into the pricing bloodbath that was intensifying in the country. Plus, they had a very lean operation in India to support a full fledged distribution and retail operation.
Not-Flipkart-First
While Motorola was still amidst thick dilemma over the Indian market, Motorola launched the Moto G globally in November but India was not on the map. Boni however, was invited to an internal conference on disruptive distribution models in California. That’s where he presented a model for going with an e-commerce exclusive distribution model for India and even called out Flipkart. He went on and even suggested acquiring a smaller e-commerce player. On returning to India, the trio started working on the Motorola-Flipkart strategy. But even before it took off, it was shot down.
In 2013, online retail was just 5 percent of the total smartphone retail market in India and Flipkart accounted for 2 percent of that pie. The management wasn’t willing to put their bets for just two percent of the total addressable market.
It seemed Motorola would go for a traditional offline distributor led retail model, which would have meant a launch limited to just the top cities of the country. Ironically, it was a senior Sony executive who came to Motorola’s rescue in India.
Motorola had hired Magnus Ahlqvist from Sony, where he was looking after the greater China region. Ahlqvist flew down to Delhi in December 2013 where he was presented with two go to market strategies for India – one with a distributor while the other was going online exclusive. He asked Boni, which one did he want to do. He preferred the online distribution model.
Boni’s logic was that Flipkart had just started selling smartphones and even if there could be any way Motorola could get half of Flipkart’s smartphone sales, it could account for one percent of India’s total smartphone market. No one remembered when Motorola last had that much market share in India in smartphones.
He also felt that this model would give it an edge over Samsung and others, which had invested millions of dollars in setting up their offline retail channels that they wouldn’t be able to reap the benefits of an online-exclusive model. There were no middlemen and retailers who got a share of margins, which would give Motorola a big pricing advantage.
There was only one problem. The deal with the distributor had been negotiated and they were waiting for Motorola to sign it. A banquet had been set up downstairs to celebrate the signing of the deal! But Ahlqvist didn’t sign the contract saying he needed more time and flew back to London. The next day he pinged Boni to work on the e-commerce strategy and sent him a deck to look at and work on.
Ahlqvist had seen the online retail boom in China and was expecting the same to happen in India. On December 15, 2013, he told Boni he was presenting his e-commerce strategy to CEO Dennis Woodside as their India go to market strategy. There were massive disagreements during the meeting and while many declared that this cannot work, there were some who found it worth giving a shot.
That was the good thing about the new Motorola under Google. There was more appetite to do new things and take risks. Woodside eventually gave the go ahead. Though, as some insiders suggested, he also asked the India team to keep their resignations ready if this did not work.
Here again, there was a small impediment. They had to create and sign a contract with Flipkart between December 20 and January 5 so that Motorola’s supply chain could start the process of manufacturing and shipping devices to Flipkart. But being Christmas holiday season, there was nobody working in US or Europe. So it eventually came up to Motorola’s Indian team and Flipkart to chalk out the contract.
Indian teams from Motorola and Flipkart had to come up with the contract – an American contract – that had no precedence. It was the first such contract Flipkart would have signed with a smartphone maker, where it wasn’t just picking up a small inventory but looking at importing a huge volume of smartphones over a long period of time.
Eventually the two companies managed to create a contract that gave visibility for hundreds of thousands of units and was much bigger than the distributor contract Motorola dropped signing at the last moment. It also gave Motorola much better pricing since the distribution, marketing and retailing overheads were negligible.
Change of Guard, and History in Making
Between the signing of the contract and the launch of Moto G in India, news came out the Lenovo had agreed to buy Motorola from Google for $2.91 billion. However, the transaction would take long to close, which meant it was business as usual for Motorola.
On February 5, 2014, Motorola launched the Moto G in India exclusively on Flipkart. The smartphone went on sale at midnight on February 6 and was sold out in 25 minutes, during which Flipkart’s site crashed a few times. For the first time Motorola has revealed that it had sold 40,000 units of Moto G during its first sale.
However, the first sale didn’t go as smoothly as everyone expected. Within minutes of going live, Flipkart’s site crashed – something that wasn’t a normal occurrence. The site came back up, only to crash again. In less than 30 minutes, Flipkart’s site started showing it had no more Moto G units to sell.
People at Motorola’s HQ in the United States were agitated with the crashes followed by what seemed to be technical glitches that showed there were no more phones to sell. No one even thought of the possibility that the phones would sell out in under 30 minutes during an online midnight sale.
But it turns out consumers stayed awake for the clock to strike 12 so they could buy the Moto G and Flipkart had indeed sold 40,000 units of the device in under 30 minutes. Flipkart co-founder and CEO, Sachin Bansal had then told BGR India that the Moto G sale had brought more traffic to Flipkart than what they had experienced during the Diwali sale a couple of months ago. All this only signified one thing – that Motorola was back in business in India!
The rest, as they say, is history. Within a year, Motorola announced it had sold three million smartphones in India and crossed 5.6 million units in September. Flipkart then announced it had sold half-a-million units of the latest Moto G (third-generation) in just 47 days.
ALSO READ: Meet Flipkart’s Mr Exclusive
Motorola’s online exclusive retail model became the blueprint for other smartphone brands that wanted to do business in India. Xiaomi took the same route and perhaps used a tweaked version of the contract Motorola and Flipkart had hammered to start its India operations. Buoyed by the success of Motorola and Xiaomi, Flipkart aggressively courted other brands like Huawei’s Honor while Amazon bagged OnePlus and Yu. Snapdeal started exclusive online retail deals with Micromax for the Canvas Spark range.
Perhaps the biggest endorsement of Motorola’s online strategy’s success came from Samsung. Despite having a massive offline distribution and retail channel, Samsung too created online exclusive models in its portfolio.
In April 2014, Motorola formally announced the formal appointment of Amit Boni as general manager for India operations and made him responsible for the company’s India strategy.The Elwha River’s rebirth happened in dramatic fashion. There were explosions that ripped out dams. There were floods that bled lakes dry. There were new river channels that bit into roads and swallowed forested banks. At the Elwha’s mouth, a dust-colored plume erupted, sending a century’s worth of pent-up river sediment miles into the sea.
U.S. Geological Survey diver and biologist Nancy Elder was under the waves documenting a sudden explosion in new sea life when the current caught the plume and pushed it her way.
“It was like a curtain came over me,” she said. “It was pitch black out there.”
She waited for it to pass, a little impatiently. The real excitement — the Elwha’s real drama — was happening under the settling plume, where acres of new river delta were taking shape. The shoreline — formerly steep and rocky — was now covered in wide drifts of sand that pushed the Elwha’s mouth northward, deeper into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. On top of this softer sub-tidal landscape, a new ecosystem was on the rise, drawing salmon and dozens of other species that had been largely or completely absent since the first of the river’s two dams went up in 1913.
“What we’re seeing is a complete transformation,” Elder said.
A Century of Sediment
The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams were built to supply inexpensive hydroelectric power to Port Angeles lumber mills and the homes of their workers. But the dams also halted one of the region’s richest salmon runs and blocked the downstream flow of sediment and nutrients that are vital for any estuary.
The bold notion of undertaking the world’s largest dam removal project took hold in the 1980s after the U.S. Supreme Court, in the landmark Bolt Decision, ruled that Washington’s tribes were entitled to half of the state’s salmon catch. The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, whose members live at the river’s mouth, pushed for the river’s protection and the revival of its salmon runs. Environmental groups and eventually members of Congress took up the cause. Over the course of two decades, laws were passed, property disputes were settled and more than $325 million in federal funding was secured for the removal project, which began in 2011.
The last bit of concrete was blasted out of Glines Canyon on Aug. 26, 2014, reopening 70 miles of river habitat to steelhead and salmon.
Enlarge Glines Canyon Dam before demolition. Olympic National Park
The intense worldwide interest in the project is fading. But for the many scientists paying close attention to the river, the good part’s only just starting.
“It was a groundbreaking dam removal project, but it was about so much more than dams,” said Ian Miller, a Washington Sea Grant coastal hazards specialist.
The most dramatic changes will be triggered not from fish going upriver but from the tons of sediment heading down.
“The Elwha (restoration) is, by definition, a sediment project,” said Anne Shaffer, a biologist and executive director of Coastal Watershed Institute (CWI), a Port Angles-based nonprofit that conducts research in and around the Elwha estuary.
About 15 million cubic yards of sediment has flowed down the river since dam removal began in 2011.
That’s enough sand, gravel and silt to fill CenturyLink stadium seven times. Load it all into dump trucks and there’d be a bumper-to-bumper line stretching from Seattle to Miami and back.
So Much Sediment About 15 million cubic yards of pent-up sediment has flowed down the Elwha River since its two dams were removed. Here’s what that amount of sediment would fill:
7
Pro Football Stadiums
83,000
Dump Trucks
135,000,000
Wheelbarrows
The sediment flow hit a high point in 2013, when a big chunk of the Glines Canyon Dam was removed and much of Lake Mills was allowed to drain.
Most of the finer sediment went out to sea. About a third of the load accumulated at the river’s mouth, pushing the beach seaward by about 15 feet per year since the dam removal project began. As it stands now, there are about 80 acres of new habitat at the river’s mouth and 2 miles of sand-covered beach stretching from its edges.
Mouth of the Elwha, 2006-2015
On a recent afternoon, CWI nearshore restoration biologist Jamie Michel walked out to the new edge of the river delta.
“A few years ago, we’d be standing in water 20 or 30 feet deep right here,” he said. “And the shoreline back there was steep and cobbly, with rocks the size of dinner plates and basketballs — the kind of stuff you could easily turn an ankle on. Now you don’t have to drive out to the Pacific Coast to see this kind of dynamic sandy beach. Now we have it right here.”
New Landscapes, New Life
Salmon, long walled off from their historic spawning grounds, are again on the move in Elwha.
The chinook salmon run already tops 4,500 fish, and some of them are spawning above the dams.
It’s great news, said Robert Elofson, the Elwha Klallam Tribe’s river restoration director.
“But it’s nowhere near the 30,000 range it should be,” he said.
Last year, young sockeye salmon were spotted in the river’s mouth. It’s the first time they’ve appeared near the Elwha since monthly sampling began nearly a decade ago. It |
mainly caused by regular break-ins at the Spa Road ground, despite the best efforts of both LGFC and Atherton LR.
Genesis, who now have 30 junior teams and a full-time youth programme attached to it were hoping to return to Leigh Sports Village to share with Leigh Athletic FC at Leigh Harriers athletics’ ground, but that option has been unsuccessful and no other suitable venues available, the club were left with no option other than to withdraw their application to join the North West Counties League following last season‘s relegation from the Evo-Stik League First Division North.
Manager Alan Kershaw was understandably disappointed with the news after taking the reigns partway through last season and blooding several youngsters in to first team action.
“This is incredibly disappointing. With a bustling junior section and 30 full-time youth players affiliated to the club, we have the most amazing foundations and it is difficult to understand why Leigh Genesis can’t play in Leigh and cannot be given the base that it deserves.”
Kershaw himself attended the first of six LGFC Junior presentation nights last weekend with 300 people in attendance, while Leigh Genesis Under 11's even made an appearance at Bolton Wanderers’ Reebok Stadium at the weekend where they won the Players Cup Final in the most prestigious event in the club's junior history.
Board members of the Club are clearly feeling exasperated. Even the assistance of Leigh MP Andy Burnham wasn’t enough to find a solution for the club to continue operating it’s senior side.
“This is an absolute disgrace” said secretary Mary Croasdale. “We left Hilton Park in 2008 on a long standing promise by the council that Leigh Sports Village Stadium would be our permanent home, but the original promises seem to have been ignored and financial gain has overtaken the original ideal of a ‘community stadium’ for the town. Blackburn Rovers Reserves play all their home matches at the ground and do not seem to struggle getting a lease at the ground, whilst the town's own team is given the cold shoulder.“
“Maybe Wigan MBC should look at the success of Chorley this season who have enjoyed record crowds and secured promotion, all from the back of a supportive council, not to mention the coaching team, several board members and the majority of the playing staff that was in place at Leigh last season! I’d like to say well done Chorley for embracing your team and recognising the potential for growth and most tellingly the benefits that can be brought to a town’s credibility and economy with a successful side.”
“One of the most aggravating aspects of the club’s trials with the LSV was the stadium company turning down £400,000 of funding towards the massive cost of the project. This funding was obtained through the club via the Football Foundation but was never handed over to the stadium company as LSV chiefs would not assure the Football Foundation that Leigh Genesis would be playing there for the next 10 years. Surely any short term financial hardship would have been cushioned by this amount? And who is filling that shortfall now?”
Matt Lawton, secretary of the Leigh Genesis Supporters Association and also the club’s press officer was equally downcast by the news.
“I and many others have enjoyed supporting the club over the years and will enjoy memories that will last a lifetime, and it’s such a shame that the club has been left with no option but to call it a day at senior level because of the issues that all stem back to not having our own home ground. Since leaving Hilton Park, it’s been virtually one huge nightmare, despite the club and it’s supporters trying to make the best of a bad situation. Let’s be honest, you don’t expect to outlive the football club that you support, do you?”
Croasdale finished; “The club has been praised by the Evo-Stik League and FA this season for it’s efforts in keeping going in such difficult circumstances and indeed it was shortlisted in the final five nominations for two major FA awards this year. The club continues to hold the respect of the league, the FA and its rival clubs but sadly this does not reflect in its treatment closer to home.”
The club directors would like to thank the club’s hugely dedicated supporters for their help, understanding and vast amounts of time, money and effort that have been donated over the years and only wish that circumstances could allow the club to continue at a senior level. Leigh Genesis Juniors will continue to operate as normal and carry on providing expert coaching to hundreds of children in the area and are wished the very best of luck for the future.Rescue personnel watching a navy ship near the crash site of a Russian military Tu-154 plane, which crashed into the Black Sea on its way to Syria on Sunday, in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Russia, on Monday. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov MOSCOW — Russia has found the first flight recorder from a military plane that crashed into the Black Sea, killing all 92 on board, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday, amid unconfirmed reports that authorities had grounded all aircraft of the same type.
The recorder, one of several reported to be on board, contains information that could help investigators identify the cause of Sunday's crash, which killed dozens of Red Army Choir singers and dancers en route to Syria to entertain Russian troops in the run-up to the New Year.
Investigators have so far said pilot error or a technical fault, rather than terrorism, are most likely to have caused the Defense Ministry Tupolev-154 to crash into the sea.
The first black box, which was founded by a remote-controlled underwater vehicle at a depth of about 55 feet and 1 mile from the resort of Sochi, will be sent to a Defense Ministry facility in Moscow for analysis.
"During the night during the (search operation)... a further five fragments of the plane were found," the ministry said in a statement. They included pieces of fuselage and engine fragments.
The Interfax news agency cited an unnamed source as saying Russia had grounded all Tu-154 planes until the cause of Sunday's crash became clear. There was no official confirmation of that.
The Defense Ministry says the downed jet, a Soviet-era plane built in 1983, had last been serviced in September and underwent more major repairs in December 2014.
Russian pilots say the Tu-154 has a decent safety record, though major Russian commercial airlines have long since replaced it with Western-built planes.
The last big Tu-154 crash was in 2010 when a Polish jet carrying then-President Lech Kaczynski and much of Poland's political elite went down in western Russia, killing everyone on board.
The Interfax news agency, citing a law enforcement source, said a second flight recorder had also been found in the wreckage of Sunday's crash but not yet raised to the surface.
The Defense Ministry said search-and-rescue teams had recovered 12 bodies and 156 body fragments.
(Editing by John Stonestreet)How absence of a loving father can wreck a child's life: New study shows relationship with both parents is crucial
Finding was part of large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection
Researchers say it should help reduce the incidence of'mother blaming' for trouble children
Influence: New research has revealed that the love of a father is one of the greatest influences on the personality development of a child
A father's love is as important to a child’s emotional development as a mother’s, a large-scale study has confirmed.
Examining the cases of more than 10,000 sons and daughters revealed how a cold or distant father can damage a child’s life, sometimes for decades to come.
The review of 36 studies from around the world concluded that his love is at least as important to youngsters as that of their mothers.
Researcher Professor Ronald Rohner said that fatherly love is key to development and hopes his findings will motivate more men to become involved in caring for their offspring.
‘In the US, Great Britain and Europe, we have assumed for the past 300 years that all children need for normal healthy development is a loving relationship with their mother,’ he said.
‘And that dads are there as support for the mother and to support the family financially but are not required for the healthy development of the children.
‘But that belief is fundamentally wrong. We have to start getting away from that idea and realise the dad’s influence is as great, and sometimes greater, than the mother’s.’
His conclusions came after he examined data from studies in which children and adults were asked how loving their parents were.
Questions included if they were made to feel wanted or needed, if their parents went out of their way to hurt their feelings and if they felt loved.
Those taking part also answered questions about their personality. These ranged from ‘I think about fighting or being mean’ to ‘I think the world is a good, happy place’.
Tallying the results showed that those rejected in childhood felt more anxious and insecure as well as hostile and aggressive.
Many of the problems carried over into adulthood, reported the study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.
Crucially, a father’s love was often just as important as a mother’s. In some cases, it was even more so. One reason for this may be that rejection is more painful when it comes from the parent the child regards as more powerful or respected.
'Children and adults everywhere – regardless of race, culture, and gender – tend to respond in exactly the same way when they perceived themselves to be rejected'
Professor Rohner, of the University of Connecticut, US, said rejection in childhood has the most ‘strong and consistent effect on personality and development’.
He added: ‘Children and adults everywhere – regardless of race, culture, and gender – tend to respond in exactly the same way when they perceived themselves to be rejected.’
Professor Rohner said that children who feel unloved tend to become anxious and insecure, and this can make them needy. Anger and resentment can lead to them closing themselves off emotionally in an attempt to protect themselves from further hurt.
This may make it hard for them to form relationships. They can suffer from low self-esteem and find it difficult to handle stressful situations.
Teaching the ways of the world: If a child perceives her father as having higher prestige, he may be more influential in her life than the child¿s mother
Professor Rohner added that research shows the same parts of the brain are activated when people feel rejected as when they suffer physical pain.
He added: ‘Unlike physical pain, however, people can psychologically relive the emotional pain of rejection over and over for years.’
His research shows a father’s input is particularly important for behaviour and can influence if a child later drinks to excess, takes drugs or suffers mental health problems.
Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust, said: ‘This study underlines the importance of intact and stable families where both the father and the mother are committed to bringing up their children together.
‘Successive governments have failed to recognise the fact that men and women are different and that they parent differently.’
He criticised ministers for ‘pretending that one parent is as good as two, or that two parents of the same sex are as good as two natural parents of the opposite sex’.He crawled toward the backstage area hoping to find an exit. Since there was no way to escape from behind the stage, he climbed up the stairs to the balcony area, where there were two windows.
Sébastien told La Provence that when the lights went on in the theater, he saw "two or three guys armed with Kalashnikovs" near the entrance. The men were firing shots into the crowd indiscriminately, he said, targeting those who were at the bar first.
"That was maybe our first stroke of luck," he said. "When they fired the first shot, we all thought it was pyrotechnics. Then when the second shot was fired, we understood."
In an interview with the French daily La Provence, the man — a resident of the southern French city of Arles who is known only as "Sébastien" — said he showed up at the venue around 8pm to attend the Eagles of Death Metal concert. Sébastien and his friend Jeff had just moved from the bar to the front of the stage when the first shots rang out.
A man who saved a pregnant woman who was left dangling from a window ledge after attackers stormed the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on Friday has described his experience to a French newspaper.
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A man who saved a pregnant woman who was left dangling from a window ledge after attackers stormed the Bataclan concert hall in Paris on Friday has described his experience to a French newspaper.
In an interview with the French daily La Provence, the man — a resident of the southern French city of Arles who is known only as "Sébastien" — said he showed up at the venue around 8pm to attend the Eagles of Death Metal concert. Sébastien and his friend Jeff had just moved from the bar to the front of the stage when the first shots rang out.
"That was maybe our first stroke of luck," he said. "When they fired the first shot, we all thought it was pyrotechnics. Then when the second shot was fired, we understood."
Sébastien told La Provence that when the lights went on in the theater, he saw "two or three guys armed with Kalashnikovs" near the entrance. The men were firing shots into the crowd indiscriminately, he said, targeting those who were at the bar first.
He crawled toward the backstage area hoping to find an exit. Since there was no way to escape from behind the stage, he climbed up the stairs to the balcony area, where there were two windows.
"At one of them, a pregnant woman was begging those below to catch her if she jumped," he recalled. "It was chaos below, too. I climbed out of the other window and clung on to an air vent, fifteen meters (50 feet) above the ground. I held on for five minutes and then the pregnant woman, who was exhausted, asked me to help her get back inside. That's what I did."
Sébastien told the paper he had no idea what happened to the woman after he pulled her back inside. He tried to hide but was subsequently found by one of the attackers and held hostage, along with 15 or so other concert-goers. The men, who spoke French, said they belonged to the Islamic State.
"From the balcony above, terrorists were shooting at the people downstairs," he said. "We heard screams, like people being tortured. They said, 'We're here to make you endure what innocent people are enduring in Syria. Do you hear the screams, the suffering?' "
Sébastien described the moment when one of the attackers handed him a roll of 50-euro banknotes and told him to set fire to it.
"They wanted to know if money was important to me," he said.
The attackers then asked the hostages to call French news broadcasters BFM TV and Itélé to connect them with reporters. They also wanted to speak to the police and posted Sébastien at one of the windows, instructing him to yell if anyone approached the building.
"They told us to say they had explosive belts on and that if the police approached, they'd blow everything up. But they didn't," he said. "I only saw their Kalashnikovs — one of them patched up with black tape — and a bag of ammunition. They didn't seem very organized. They spoke to the negotiator using one of the hostages' phones. They had no requests except for the withdrawal of law enforcement."
Sébastien said the men then threatened to kill one hostage every five minutes and to toss the bodies out of the window. Eventually, they agreed to let the emergency crews in for 20 minutes to remove the wounded.
"Then we waited. The longest minutes of my life," he remarked. "I went through all the emotions, hope, then the acceptance of death, even though I was closing my eyes to not see it, to not see the Kalashnikov aimed at me."
Eventually, a French SWAT team stormed the Bataclan, breaking down the door with a battering ram and throwing stun grenades into the hall to disorient the attackers.
"The grenade exploded and propelled me under the battering ram. Then the entire RAID [SWAT] team walked over [me]," Sébastien remembered. "I got trampled, but it was the happiest pain I've ever experienced. I was protected. Like my friend Jeff, with whom I was reunited later, I was alive."
Frans Torreele, a friend of the pregnant woman, told the Huffington Post that the woman and her baby are also doing well.
"Soon after, she wanted to thank all those who had reached out to her, particularly the man who quickly held out his hand as he was fleeing and helped her back up," said Torreele.
Pour elle, merci de RT largement ce message. — Frans /A\ Torreele (@__F_A_T__)November 15, 2015
On Sunday, Torreele reached out on Twitter to try and find the woman's rescuer, and she and Sébastien have since been in touch.SB Nation's Power Rankings are back after Week 2, and our analysis is augmented with much-needed context for some of the performances in Week 1. Maybe the Saints' defense really isn't as good as we thought it'd be and the Bengals' defense is better than we even knew. Perhaps reports of the Panthers', Cardinals' and Bears' demise were greatly exaggerated. It's now conceivable that the Texans are actually going to be pretty good again this year after their disastrous 2013, and the Bills could be the class of the AFC East.
All these things are possible, but let's all be honest...
Our Power Rankings are an attempt to assign a numerical order for which teams are the "best" in the NFL (what could go wrong?), putting weight in both their current level of play and their legitimate outlook for the rest of the season. In other words, we're hoping to not just simply regurgitate the standings, though obviously each team's record comes into play since every win or loss is important in the NFL. With that in mind, let's look at some implications from Week 2.
The Seahawks drop from their top spot after losing a close game to the Philip Rivers and Antonio Gates-led Chargers. That duo connected for three touchdowns and San Diego dominated on third downs and time of possession (42 to 18 minutes!), wearing down Seattle's normally stingy defense and outlasting its offense in the stiflingly hot Southern California sun. Denver held off a furious comeback attempt by division rival Kansas City to stay perfect on the year, vaulting the Broncos into the top spot. The two Super Bowl XLVIII teams meet this week, conveniently enough.
The Bengals move up with another dominating defensive performance combined with efficiency on offense, though the potential loss of A.J. Green throws up a big red flag. Carolina also had another masterful performance on defense, and a hobbled Cam Newton provided a spark on O.
The Niners take a slight step back this week after surrendering a big lead at home to Jay Cutler and the Bears. The loss was an ugly one for Colin Kaepernick, as the signal caller turned the ball over four times.
The second-half performance by San Francisco's defense may also cause concern over its revamped secondary. Ultimately, the Niners have been through these types of trials over the past couple of seasons and always seem to emerge unscathed (or even better), so I'm not giving one loss too much weight just yet.
With Seattle's and San Francisco's defeats in Week 2 -- the first time both teams have lost in the same week since 2011 -- sole ownership of first place in the NFC West belongs to the Cardinals, who knocked off the Giants with their second straight fourth-quarter comeback. Arizona may be playing without Carson Palmer for an indeterminate amount of time and the Cardinals are without several of their defensive stars from last season, but they're showing they're not a third wheel in the division.
The Eagles moved to 2-0 with another second-half comeback victory, this time over the Colts, but it wasn't pretty, and the Packers and Aaron Rodgers launched a big second-half comeback of their own to get past the Jets. The Patriots easily handled the Vikings, and the Chargers' excellent performance against Seattle helps them round out the top 10.
If the Bears can consistently field a defense that looks anything like what they did in the second half on Sunday night against the Niners, they could end up surprising people this season. The combination of Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery and Martellus Bennett with a quarterback who shows no fear in throwing it up into traffic for them -- well, this is a dangerous thing.
Here are this week's rankings, with more analysis after the table.
Rank Team Last week 1 Denver Broncos 2 2 Seattle Seahawks 1 3 Cincinnati Bengals 7 4 Carolina Panthers 13 5 San Francisco 49ers 3 6 Philadelphia Eagles 4 7 Green Bay Packers 5 8 Arizona Cardinals 14 9 New England Patriots 10 10 San Diego Chargers 15 11 Chicago Bears 16 12 Baltimore Ravens 17 13 Buffalo Bills 24 14 Houston Texans 22 15 Atlanta Falcons 8 16 New Orleans Saints 6 17 Indianapolis Colts 11 18 Pittsburgh Steelers 9 19 Detroit Lions 12 20 Minnesota Vikings 19 21 New York Jets 20 22 Miami Dolphins 21 23 Cleveland Browns 28 24 Kansas City Chiefs 18 25 Dallas Cowboys 26 26 Tennessee Titans 23 27 Washington 29 28 St. Louis Rams 31 29 New York Giants 25 30 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 27 31 Jacksonville Jaguars 30 32 Oakland Raiders 32
The Bills continue shooting up the rankings after knocking off the Dolphins at home. Both of their wins have come against worthy opponents (the Bears in Week 1), and a balanced attack on offense combined with good use of their weapons has helped EJ Manuel settle in as the starter. These Bills and their tough defense could be the real deal.
The Texans make a huge jump as well. Bill O'Brien's squad has run the ball 78 times over their first two games compared to just 43 called passes, leaning on J.J. Watt and their defense heavily while not asking too much of veteran signal caller Ryan Fitzpatrick. Fitz just so happens to trail only Peyton Manning in passer rating thus far, though, so efficiency is the name of the game. Overall, the Texans seem to have their mojo back, and could continue to climb in the rankings, but may need to beat a higher-ranked team to really break away from their 2013 demons.
Atlanta's defense was the big question mark in Week 1 despite a big win over the Saints, but this week the offense couldn't get much done versus Cincinnati.
The Saints are strong on offense, obviously, but their defense has been surprisingly ineffective. After an 0-2 start, Rob Ryan has to start coming up with some answers.
The Browns just narrowly missed out on a comeback victory over the Steelers in Week 1 and pulled off the upset over the Saints in Week 2, showing what PFT Commenter might call a lot of "grit" and "moxie" in the process. Brian Hoyer might not be "elite," but he's getting the job done so far. The Browns' run game is looking very strong, averaging 150+ yards and 5.1 yards per carry after two games.
Indy squandered a big lead to the Eagles in the second half on Monday Night Football, and fell to 0-2 on the year. The offensive line has been decimated by injuries and the loss of Robert Mathis for the year hurts. Can the Colts bounce back?
Washington jumps a few spots with a dominating defensive performance and a quality relief effort by Kirk Cousins. Cousins' play over the next several weeks will be interesting to watch.
The Steelers' last three halves of offensive football haven't been pretty, as Big Ben's squad has only managed three field goals in 15 possessions -- their other drives ending with nine punts and three turnovers. It's still early, obviously, and their first half in Week 1 against the Browns offers hope, but they need to get things going.Not a subscriber? Subscribe here to get this in your inbox every Saturday!
This is a hand-curated newsletter with the best articles this week on the mobile app ecosystem and creating and monetizing mobile apps. Please share this newsletter and spread the word!
#app
1. App Of The Week: For a change, we thought it would be a good idea to create a compilation of all the previous App Of The Week apps, in case you missed any. Enjoy!
#design
2. Do not make your app icon white. As Jared Sinclair shows, your white app icon disappears into the crowd.
3. Not hiding the password on login forms on the mobile is the best user experience. It is still cumbersome to enter passwords on the mobile, and this article explains why. Also, Amazon’s app has switched over to showing the password by default. Mobile Design Details: Hide/Show Passwords
Evolution of the Amazon app’s login screen:
#growth #monetization
4. Dynamic Pricing for In-App Purchase in apps is essential and not difficult to do. Here’s an excellent primer from our very own blog on Dynamic Pricing and how to capture the low hanging fruit. Simple Dynamic Pricing for Mobile Games and Apps
#ecosystem
5. The Android equivalent of HealthKit – Google Fit SDK – is available for developer preview. It creates a uniform API for app and device manufacturers to store and access a user’s activity data from fitness sensors and apps. Google Fit Preview SDK now available
6. Flappy Bird (re-)releases on the Amazon App Store, with an exclusive deal with Amazon. The lengths app stores are going to court app developers indicate that apps play a huge role in smartphone / device sales. Flappy Bird is back, and now you can play with friends (if you have an Amazon Fire TV)
#data
7. Women make 31% more In-App Purchases and spend 35% more time than men on mobile games. Here is the full report from Flurry, that breaks this down by game category too. Mobile Gaming: Females Beat Males on Money, Time and Loyalty
8. AOSP (the open-source Android version without the Google tie-in) has been growing at a rate of 20% quarter-over-quarter. Largely fueled by the Chinese and Indian markets. It goes to show that Apple is not the only competitor Google needs to contend with. 2Q 2014 Smartphone Results: Forked Android AOSP Grows 20% Quarter-on-quarter, Driven by Chinese Domination
9. Consumers are shifting from small smartphone screens and tablets to Phablets and this is good for developers. Apple’s rumored 4.7″ and 5.5″ iPhones are probably an indication of this. Average Revenue per Device is much higher for tablets than phones, and if the phablet can capture the ubiquity of the phone and the monetization of the tablet, it will benefit app developers. The rise of the phablet
That is it for this week! See you next week!
If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please help us by spreading the word about this newsletter!Image copyright Peter the Great Museum Image caption The DNA comes from a man who lived in westernmost Russia some 36,000 years ago
The genetic ancestry of the earliest Europeans survived the ferocious Ice Age that took hold after the continent was initially settled by modern people.
That is the suggestion of a study of DNA from a male hunter who lived in western Russia 36,000 years ago.
His genome is not exactly like those of people who lived in Europe just after the ice sheets melted 10,000 years ago.
But the study suggests the earliest Europeans did contribute their genes to later populations.
Europe was first settled around 40,000 years ago during a time known as the Upper Palaeolithic.
But conditions gradually deteriorated until ice covered much of the European landmass, reaching a peak 27,000 years ago.
The ice melted rapidly after 10,000 years ago, allowing populations from the south to re-populate northern Europe - during a time known as the Mesolithic. But the genetic relationships between pre- and post-Ice Age Europeans have been unclear.
Some researchers have in the past raised the possibility that pioneer populations in Europe could have gone extinct some time during the last Ice Age.
And one recent study looking at the skull features of ancient Europeans found that Upper Palaeolithic people were rather different from populations that lived during the later Mesolithic period.
In the latest study, an international team of researchers sequenced the genome (the genetic "blueprint" for a human) of a man buried in Kostenki, Russia.
They discovered a surprising genetic "unity" running from the first modern humans in Europe, through to later peoples. This, they claim, suggests that a "meta-population" of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers managed to survive the Ice Age and colonise the landmass of Europe for more than 30,000 years.
"That there was continuity from the earliest Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, across a major glaciation, is a great insight into the evolutionary processes underlying human success," said co-author Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES).
Image copyright S. ENTRESSANGLE/E. DAYNES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Image caption This reconstruction shows an Upper Palaeolithic woman from southern France
"For 30,000 years ice sheets came and went, at one point covering two-thirds of Europe. Old cultures died and new ones emerged - such as the Aurignacian and the Gravettian - over thousands of years, and the hunter-gatherer populations ebbed and flowed.
"But we now know that no new sets of genes are coming in: these changes in survival and cultural kit are overlaid on the same biological background."
She added: "It is only when famers from the Near East arrived about 8,000 years ago that the structure of the European population changed significantly."
The arrival of the first farmers transformed the genetic landscape of Europe - to the extent that no modern population is a good match for the Mesolithic Europeans encountered by the farmers as they spread out across the continent.
The farmers carried the signature of a cryptic population which split off very early from all other Eurasians, including early Europeans and East Asians, and survived in some unknown place until some of their descendents invented agriculture in the Middle East - carrying it into Europe after 8,000 years ago.
"This mystery population may have remained small for a very long time, surviving in refugia in areas such as the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Iraq, for example," said Dr Mirazón Lahr.
"We have no idea at the moment where they were for those first 30,000 years, only that they were in the Middle East by the end of the ice age, when they invented agriculture."
Intriguingly, the Kostenki man already shows some evidence of mixing with this very old population, which has been dubbed Basal Eurasians. But analysis of the Europeans who emerged from the Ice Age 10,000 years ago show little sign of this ancestral component in their genomes.Hey there! Just a quick note to let you know that Sanura and myself have decided to take a little bit more time restructuring MSO, plus that thing we call real life has been very busy lately for both of us..
So, the re-launch will now take place in July 2015. One thing that we can let you know about is that it will no longer be a monthly event. We are moving to every three months and plan to have even more fabulous creators joining us each round. Please feel free to apply if you are interested in participating. To answer a common question …you do not need to apply if you already have in the past.
If you have any other questions please contact Lexi Morgan or Sanura Snowpaw.
Thank you for your patience and we will let you know more details soon.Although we have created an almost complete game in the previous chapters, there are still some ways to make it better. Great, that’s why we have these additional chapters!
Currently, there is clearly one area that we could improve on: animations.
Even if the visual style could justify to not use animations — after all we are using handmade drawings —, we will add a new super enemy, a boss, and create some animations for it.
In Unity, animations are made of a few things:
Some animation clips defining keyframes for each animated property. An animation controller which is a state machine handling the transitions and order of all the clips for an object (or a prefab).
To lighten things a bit, we have separated this tutorial in two parts as there are many topics to cover.
Warning: this part of the tutorial has not been updated to Unity 5. There are some differences, especially about components access, but the features are the same.
The new sprite
The sprite is made of multiple images: a body, the eyes and some additional stuffs.
(Right click to save the image)
Import the image in Unity. Set its “Sprite Mode” to “Multiple” in the “Inspector”. Click on the “Sprite Editor” button.
Use the automatic slicing feature (a size of 32 should be fine):
Remember to “Apply” the slicing.
Boss object
The boss object is made of four parts:
A body
Two eyes
A mouth
To have the proper configuration, create an empty game object. Then:
Name it “Boss”. Add a “Rigidbody 2D” with no gravity/fixed angles. Add a “Box collider 2D” with a size of (6, 6). Set its scale to (0.5, 0.5, 1). This object does not display anything. That is why we don’t have a “Sprite Renderer” here.
Create 4 empty game objects as children of the “Boss” object. For each one, add a “Sprite Renderer” and select the appropriate image (body, eye or mouth).
Change their position to get something like this:
With, as a hierarchy:
For example, the left eye game object has been positioned with the mouse in the editor. We’ve got:
Tip: we only have one sprite for the eyes. We simply flip the other sprite to mirror the image. To do that in Unity, set the scale to its opposite value. For example, here, we set the right eye scale to (-1, 1, 1). You can reuse this simple tip everywhere and even on the y property (mirror vertically).
Set the body object a bit deeper than the rest, to (0, 0, 1).
The 3D view will reveal our layers:
By using an object with multiple sub-sprites, we will be able to manipulate them separately.
Save the “Boss” object as a prefab. We are now ready to animate it!
The old-school manner to animate an object is to have a single spritesheet and change the whole image position every “n” seconds. It also works in Unity, but this is not the aim of this chapter.
Animation clips
We are going to create a few clips to define the states of our boss:
Idle — just floating around.
Attack — launching projectiles.
Hit — being hit by a shot.
For this tutorial, we will describe the first animation with as many details as possible. Then we will show the others with a gif and we will let you reproduce them. It’s a good way to learn how to manipulate the animation tool.
And of course, you are encouraged to make them better. :)
Tip: when you are working on an animation, you should do it in an empty scene. This way, you can clearly see what is happening and you don’t need to run the whole game to work (faster: no music and no scripts). Here we will work in a scene called TestAnimations. This scene is just for designers and should never be included or launched in the final project.
Idle animation
Creating a new clip
Open the “Animation” window (not “Animator”!):
A new window should be displayed:
Select the boss object in your scene (instantiate it if necessary, you can’t work directly on a Prefab ).
Now, create a new clip. The option is available in the animation list:
Create an “Animations” folder, and save the new clip as “Boss_Idle”. The clip is now selected in the animation pane.
New clip: in fact, by using the “Create New Clip” button in the animation view, Unity do three things. First, it creates an “Animator Controller” for the selected game object (the boss here). Then it adds an “Animation” on this animator. An “Animator” is also added to the game object as a component (the “Animator” component references an “Animator Controller”). If the game object already has an “Animator”, it simply adds the animation to it. Look in your “Animations” folder: there’s also a “Boss” animator near your “Boss_Idle” animation. We will talk about that in the next chapter. For the moment, don’t touch it.
Adding keyframes
To start working on the clip, click on the “Record” button (the red dot) in the top left corner of the “Animation” view. Now, everything you will do in the scene for this object (the boss) will be recorded as a keyframe on the animation.
Attention: clicking on the timeline or on the time ruler will also trigger the “Record” button. Be careful! This behavior is handy when you want to work quickly: just click on a time and do your changes (the record starts when the red line marker appears on the time).
A keyframe is a set of values for a precise time moment.
To add a keyframe:
(You can click on the “Record” button.) Select the time by clicking on the time ruler. It should move the selector (a red line).
Select the “Boss” object in your scene. At 0:30 change its rotation to (0, 0, 30).
Rotation: in your “Scene” view, if you put your mouse near an handle of an object, you will see that the mouse pointer change. By holding and dragging the mouse, you can alter the rotation of the selected object.
You can see that a keyframe has been created:
Hotkeys: the alt key can be used to move the timeline. Your mouse wheel can be used to zoom in or out where your pointer is.
If you press the “Play” button of the “Animation” view, you will see the animation in the “Game” or “Editor” pane:
That’s a start! The boss looks stupid, so we will add two new keyframes:
1:00 - “Boss” object rotation of (0, 0, -30). 1:30 - “Boss” object rotation of (0, 0, 0).
Now, the animation can loop smoothly (because the rotation is the same at the end and at the beginning).
In the editor, if you click on a value of a keyframe, Unity will activate the record mode |
[7-Day] Yeti Mount Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Advanced Giant Potion : Untradeable. Req. Lv: 70. Elite Boss Transformation Potion : Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Giant Potion : Untradeable. Req. Lv: 30. Red Surfboard : Req. Lv: 15. Pole Arm. Weapon ATT: +39. Speed: +5. Upgrades Available: 7. Green Surfboard : Req. Lv: 45. Pole Arm. Weapon ATT: +64. Speed: +5. Upgrades Available: 7. Sky Blue Surfboard : Req. Lv: 55. Pole Arm. Weapon ATT: +75. Speed: +5. Upgrades Available: 7. Purple Surfboard : Req. Lv: 95. Pole Arm. Weapon ATT: +99. Speed: +5. Upgrades Available: 7. Watermelon Popsicle : 3 -day duration. Req. Lv: 10. Face Accessory. Jump: +10. Chocolate Popsicle : 3 -day duration. Req. Lv: 10. Face Accessory. STR/DEX/INT/LUK: +3. Strawberry Popsicle : 3 -day duration. Req. Lv: 10. Face Accessory. Weapon ATT/Magic ATT: +5. Melon Popsicle : 3 -day duration. Req. Lv: 10. Face Accessory. Speed: +10. Spell Trace (x10 - 100): Maximum of 2,000 per day.
Reindeer Milk (x5): Untradeable. Sunrise Dew (x5): Untradeable. Hand Sanitizer : Untradeable. Cup of Coffee : Untradeable. Snake Soup : Untradeable. Cologne : Untradeable. Carrot Juice : Untradeable. Hair Wax : Untradeable. Heroes Coin : Untradeable. Maximum 60 per day receivable from the Heroes Box.
Heroes Coin Shop
August 3 - September 6
Requirement: Lv. 33 and above
Spiegelmann can be found in the Event Hall.
His items can be purchased with Heroes Coins obtained through summer events as well as from the Heroes Box.
Coin Shop Rewards:
Special Bonus Potential Stamp : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Pure Clean Slate Scroll 10% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Incredible Chaos Scroll of Goodness 60% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 1. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Chaos Scroll of Goodness 50% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 2. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Gold Potential Stamp : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3.
Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3. Innocence Scroll 60% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Epic Potential Scroll 50% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3.
Golden Hammer 50% : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
SP Reset Scroll : Untradeable. 1-day duration.
AP Reset Scroll : Untradeable. 1-day duration.
Master Craftsman's Cube : Movement only possible within account. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3.
Mastery Book 20 : Can only purchase 2.
Mastery Book 30 : Can only purchase 2.
Basic Damage Skin : Untradeable.
Throwback Gear Box : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 10 per day. Will contain one of the following items: Rose Earrings : Magic DEF: +70. Maple Scarf : Weapon DEF/Magic DEF: +30. Untradeable. Maple Earrings : MaxHP/MaxMP +25. Magic DEF: +50. Untradeable. Work Gloves : Weapon DEF: +2. Pan Lid : Weapon DEF: + 10. 30 Day Scuba Diving Suit Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Throwback Weapon Box : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 10 per day. Will contain one of the following items: Wooden Baseball Bat : Weapon ATT: +20. Aluminum Baseball Bat : Weapon ATT: +48. Maple Umbrella : Weapon ATT: +45. Speed +12. Red Whip : Weapon ATT: +48. Speed +15. Frozen Tuna : Weapon ATT: +60. Maple 1500 Anniv. Flag :STR/DEX/INT/LUK +1. Weapon ATT: +38. Speed +15.
Throwback Hat Box : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 10 per day. Will contain one of the following items:
Blue Bamboo Hat : STR +3. Weapon DEF: +15. Green Bamboo Hat : DEX +3. Weapon DEF: +15. Brown Bamboo Hat : LUK +3. Weapon DEF: +15. Chief Stan Hat : Weapon DEF: +27. Magic DEF: +13. Maple Hat : MaxHP/MaxMP +5.
Throwback Cape Box : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 10 per day. Will contain one of the following items: Old Raggedy Cape : Avoidability +10. Icarus Cape : Jump +5. Maple Cape : Weapon DEF: +23. Magic DEF: +28. Speed +10. Jump +5. 30 Day Pretty Pink Bean Balloon Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration. 30 Day Pink Teru Cape Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration. 30 Day Floaty Snowman Balloon : Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Special Medal of Honor : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 3.
Fusion Anvil Coupon : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 2.
Heroes of Maple OST Player : Untradeable.
Selective 4 Slot Coupon : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 1.
Neon Sign Damage Skin : Untradeable.
Freeze Tag Damage Skin : Untradeable.
2x EXP Coupon : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 1 per day.
Recipe 8 Slot Bag : Untradeable. Can only purchase 1.
8-Slot Soul Bag : Untradeable. Can only purchase 1.
Snow Pepe : Untradeable.
Hibernation : Untradeable.
4 Title Holder : Cannot be traded after use. Can only purchase 1.
Ten-chair Bag : Cannot be traded after use. Can only purchase 1.
Evan Emoji : Untradeable. Double-click to turn ON/OFF.
Job Advancement Coin : Movement only possible within account. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 1.
Pink Coin Purse : Untradeable. Can only purchase 1.
12 Slot Herb Bag : Cannot be traded after use. Can only purchase 1.
12 Slot Mineral Bag : Cannot be traded after use. Can only purchase 1.
Production 8 Slot Bag : Untradeable. Can only purchase 1.
Pollo and Fritto Entry Ticket : Untradeable. 1-day duration. Can purchase 1 per day.
Monster Park REBORN Coupon : Movement only possible within account. 1-day duration. Can purchase 1 per day.
Complete Sylph Ring Coupon : Movement possible only within account. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 1. Available in non-Reboot worlds only. Pick 1 of 6 Complete Sylph Rings: Fire : Maximum Critical Damage increased. Thunder : Critical Rate increased. Ice : Minimum Critical Damage increased. Nature : Abnormal Status Resistance increased. Darkness : Ignore Defense effect amplified. Light : Boss ATT increased.
Reboot Complete Sylph Ring Coupon : Movement possible only within account. 1-day duration. Can only purchase 1. Available in Reboot world only. Pick 1 of 6 Reboot Complete Sylph Rings: Fire : Maximum Critical Damage increased. Thunder : Critical Rate increased. Ice : Minimum Critical Damage increased. Nature : Abnormal Status Resistance increased. Darkness : Ignore Defense effect amplified. Light : Boss ATT increased.
Strong Sylph Stone : STR +4. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Dexterous Sylph Stone : DEX +4. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Intelligent Sylph Stone : INT +4. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Lucky Sylph Stone : LUK +4. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Healthy Sylph Stone : MaxHP +200. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Balanced Sylph Stone : STR/DEX/INT/LUK +2. Weapon ATT: +1. Weapon DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Strong Sylph Crystal : STR +4. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Dexterous Sylph Crystal : DEX +4. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Intelligent Sylph Crystal : INT +4. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Lucky Sylph Crystal : LUK +4. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Healthy Sylph Crystal : MaxHP + 200. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
Balanced Sylph Crystal: STR/DEX/INT/LUK +2. Magic ATT: +1. Magic DEF: +15. Untradeable. Available in non-Reboot worlds only.
OTHER NEW EVENTS
Hot Time
August 6, 2016, at 2:30 PM Pacific (5:30 PM Eastern)
[Updated 8/3]
Requirement: Lv. 33 and above to receive and open the gift box. Zero characters must have completed up to Chapter 2.
Once the time reaches 2:30 PM Pacific (5:30 PM Eastern), a quest will appear in the event quest notifier called ‘[Hot Time] Do you want your Hot Time participation reward?’ The quest will be available from the star event notifier on the left side of the screen, or from your 'Available Quest' log until 11:59 PM Pacific on August 6 (2:59 AM Eastern on August 7).
Accept the quest to receive your rewards below!
One gift box per account.
Once the reward is received, it is able to be opened after 3:00 PM Pacific (6:00 PM Eastern).
The gift box will disappear if unopened by 11:59 PM Pacific on August 6 (2:59 AM Eastern on August 7).
Please note: to ensure you receive the Hot Time box, make sure you are in a Major Town (such as Henesys, Leafre, Orbis, etc.), not in the Cash Shop, Star Planet, Cross World PQ, Boss Arena, etc.
Rewards:
Pendant Slot Coupon (30 Days) : Can be traded once within account. 30-day duration. Req. Lv: 100.
2,000 Maple Point Coupon : One-of-a-kind item, Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Lucky Meso Bag : Untradeable. 3-day duration. Use to receive a random number of mesos.
Kinship Ring Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration. Use to receive: Kinship Ring : Untradeable. 7-day duration. Only one Kinship Ring can be worn at a time. Equip to earn 10% bonus EXP. When in a party, equip to also earn 5% more EXP for you and your party. Bonus EXP can be stacked up to a 20% bonus if multiple players in a party equip the ring.
Monster Park REBORN Coupon (x2): Untradeable. 3-day duration. Use to receive: Monster Park REBORN Coupon : Movement only possible within account. 3-day duration.
Heroes Coin (x50): Untradeable
In addition to the items above, some very special players will also randomly receive one of the following special items!
AbsoLab Weapon Box : One-of-a-kind item, Movement only possible within account. 7-day duration. Open to receive an AbsoLab weapon based on your job.
Fafnir Weapon Box : Untradeable. 7-day duration. Open to receive a random Fafnir weapon.
Gold Richie's Handkerchief : Trade disabled when equipped. Req. Lv: 140. Pocket Item. STR/DEX/INT/LUK: +7. MaxHP/MaxMP: +100. Weapon ATT/Magic ATT: +7.
Tyrant Boots Coupon : Untradeable. Use to receive a pair of Tyrant Boots based on your current job.
Magnificent Soul Box Coupon : One-of-a-kind item, Untradeable. 7-day duration. Use to receive: Magnificent Soul Box : 7-day duration. Use to receive a Magnificent Soul. This item cannot be moved to the Cash inventory.
100,000 Maple Points Coupon: Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Beast Tamer Character Creation
August 3 - September 6
Beast Tamer will be available for creation for a limited time.
Nihal Desert Trade Tycoon
August 3 - September 6
Requirements: Lv. 33 and above. Zero characters who have completed Story Quest Chapter 2.
Spiegelmann needs your help in Nihal Desert!
Accept the quest 'Nihal Desert Trade Tycoon' from the coin icon in the star event notifier on the left side of the screen.
You will receive 50 gold coins, which you can use to trade with the merchants in the Nihal Desert trade zone.
Purchase wagons and hire porters from Wealthy Merchant Hatsar to increase your speed and weight limit.
This is av ailable 10 times per day per world.
Spiegelmann Rewards:
Trade gold coins with Spiegelmann to receive rewards:
Heroes Coin
1 Million Mesos
Multimillionaire Energy Buff : Untradeable, 1-day duration. Gives buff of STR/DEX/INT/LUK: +30. Weapon ATT/Magic ATT: +20. Boss ATT: +10%. Ignore Enemy DEF: +10%. MaxHP/MaxMP: +2000 for 10 minutes.
Frog Wagon Mount (Permanent) Coupon : Untradeable. 1-day duration.
Ostrich Wagon Mount (Permanent) Coupon : Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Camel Wagon Mount (Permanent) Coupon: Untradeable. 7-day duration.
Spiegelette Rewards:
Successfully complete the following quests from Spiegelette to receive rewards. Quests can only be completed once per world.
Basics of Trade - Obtain 100 Gold Coins and gift them to Spiegelette to receive: Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
The Camel, Ship of the Desert - Obtain a Camel Wagon to receive: Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
The Suspicious Porter - Hire the unidentifiable suspicious porter to receive: Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
Brilliant Diamonds - Obtain 5 Brilliant Diamonds and gift them to Spiegelette to receive: Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
H idden Oasis - Find the hidden oases and drink the water 10 times to receive: Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
Celebrating 2016 - Gather 2016 gold coins to receive:
Heroes Coin x50 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
Giving is... Good? - Get your goods stolen by your porters 30 times to receive: Heroes Coin x100 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
The One Percent - Save 3 million gold coins to receive: Heroes Coin x150 Coupon : 7-day duration. Can be transferred within account.
2x EXP & Drop Weekends
August 6 - August 28
Requirement: Available for all levels
We will continue running 2x EXP & Drop events throughout the summer! Be sure to mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this chance to power through your level-ups!
Dates:
August 6 - August 7
August 13 - August 14
August 20 - August 21
August 27 - August 28
Times:
12:00 AM - 4:00 AM Pacific (3:00 AM - 7:00 AM Eastern)
2:00 PM - 6:00 PM Pacific (5:00 PM - 9:00 PM Eastern)
Spell Trace Fever Time
August 13 - August 14
Requirement: Available for all levels, in non-Reboot worlds only.
Enjoy higher success rates when upgrading your equipment during our Spell Trace Fever Time Event!
Times:
12:00 AM - 3:00 AM Pacific (3:00 AM - 6:00 AM Eastern)
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM Pacific (5:00 PM - 8:00 PM Eastern)
Burning Project
August 17 - September 6
Requirements: Once per account. Lv. 149 or below.
Zero characters cannot use Burning Effect.
Blaster characters cannot use the Burning Effect.
Resistance characters who have received the Burning Effect will not be able to Job Advance to the Blaster class.
For this summer, we've temporarily raised the level for the Burning Effect to last until level 150!
Characters in Reboot world, as well as Kinesis characters, can participate in this occurrence of the Burning Project!
Select a character in the Character Selection screen to have the "Burning" effect.
Use the Burning Effect on one of the characters on your account to gain two extra levels for each level you gain.
O nly one character per world is able to participate at a time.
The Burning Effect begins to work on your character after level 10.
I f a character with the Burning Effect is deleted, you will be able to place the effect on another character.
Select the event quest 'The Burning Project!' in the star event notifier on the left side of the screen with your Burning character to receive the following rewards.
Rewards:Welcome to the second installment of the Top 25 Prospects in MMA. We'll travel around the world, from south Florida to Japan and Brazil to the United Kingdom and everywhere in between, to bring you the most promising young fighters in the world. In case you missed the first piece, remember that we're focusing on fighters who started young, who are only a few years into their careers, with serious bonus points for those who train at high-level camps. Additionally, fighters who have already appeared in the UFC are ineligible, as are those currently signed to Bellator. Most importantly, this isn't a list of the 25 fighters who are most prepared for the highest levels of competition, but those who have the best chance of becoming mainstays of their division's top ten and potentially challenging for a title down the road. Without further ado, let's jump into the list.
25) Steve Mocco, Heavyweight (4-0)
Age: 31
Camp: American Top Team
Although he's only been fighting for a year, many have pegged the former Olympic wrestler Mocco as a potential future star in the heavyweight division. Why? I'll cite Bloody Elbow's own eminently quotable Mike Riordan, who wrote extensively about Mocco when his move to MMA first became public:
Steve was the greatest high school heavyweight...ever. He was built like something imagined by Maurice Sendak and he wrestled with brutality, a brutality he did not hesitate to unleash on any quality of competition. Whether he was wrestling the pud who took up wrestling because it was the only sport without cuts, or a collegiate All-American, Steve would attempt to obliterate his opponent with extreme prejudice.
A description like this certainly doesn't bode poorly for someone whose job is pummeling or twisting another human being into unconsciousness or submission. So what does Mocco bring to the table? Obviously, he's a truly world-class wrestler, with a seventh-place finish in Beijing and two NCAA Division One national championships under his belt. He also has a significant amount of experience in Judo. Check out his signature foot sweep:
via cdn0.sbnation.com
That Judo background, combined with his extensive wrestling experience, translates to a nearly unshakeable top game. Three of his four wins have come by topside submission (arm triangle, north-south choke, and kimura), and there's no reason to think that he won't continue to improve that facet of his game. His squat frame (6' even) should help him push opponents up against the fence and aid him as an in-fighter, though we haven't seen much of that from him yet. His striking is still a work in progress, obviously, and there's no reason to think that he'll ever rival his fellow Olympian Daniel Cormier as a wrestle-boxer. That's not his game, and it likely never will be.
So what can we expect from Mocco in the future? He's only a year into his career, and he remains pretty raw as a fighter. Based on what I've seen, he needs at least another year before he's ready to compete against topflight heavyweights: a bout with a journeyman like Mike Kyle or Tim Sylvia would be a perfect step up in competition for him. Given his age, Mocco doesn't have the time to take a long detour to Bellator if he eventually wants to compete with the world's best.
Luckily, all current reports have him training at American Top Team with the likes of Antonio Silva and Mark Hunt, along with a host of other talented fighters and consistently outstanding coaching. Combined with his nasty attitude and the work ethic that made him a world-class wrestler, all signs are promising. While his lack of striking and late start in the sport suggest that he's unlikely to win a title, there's every reason to think that he'll eventually be a fantastic addition to the heavyweight division's top ten or even top five.
Edited to add video of Mocco's last fight against Alonzo Roane (thanks to DPK for the link):
24) Michinori Tanaka, Bantamweight (9-0)
Age: 23
Camp: Reversal Gym
There's a lot to like about Michinori Tanaka, who should be the undisputed pick as Japan's top prospect. The current bantamweight champion of Guam's Pacific Xtreme Combat, he already has two five-round fights under his belt despite the fact that he's only a three-year veteran of the sport. Most importantly, he's shown substantial improvement from fight to fight, and he certainly possesses the athletic gifts necessary to succeed at the highest levels of the sport.
Showcasing solid technical movement and footwork, Tanaka fires a powerful right hand and left hook. He complements them with hard, snapping low kicks, and he's recently added a deceptively quick high kick to his arsenal. Don't be fooled by his lack of knockouts: the power is there, but he prefers to jump on hurt opponents and work for submission finishes instead of finishing with punches. I tend to view this as a positive rather than a negative, since it points to promising instincts when it comes to phase-shifting. Striking, however, isn't Tanaka's best asset; instead, it's his ultra-quick shot, which he prefers to finish with a single leg or trip. His takedowns from the clinch are likewise excellent.
Grappling is both Tanaka's strength and a potential source of future problems. He has an excellent submission arsenal, with finishes by mounted triangle, armbar, and rear-naked choke, but he isn't as aware of his positional grappling as he probably should be. He can be reversed from top position, and has a tendency to get himself into trouble in scrambles (see the video of the Caleb Vallotton fight below for numerous examples). He also relies far more on his substantial athleticism to repel takedowns and escape from bad positions than technique at this point in his career.
Given these positives, you might ask why Tanaka isn't ranked substantially higher. Two reasons: first, he's a bit undersized for bantamweight (5'5"), and a drop to flyweight might be the best option for him. Second, there are legitimate questions about his training environment. Reversal Gym is one of the better camps in Japan, by all accounts, but Alpha Male it certainly is not. It's possible that Tanaka will continue to improve at his current gym, but it's more likely that he hits a wall within a year or two. If he gets to a better team, the top ten of his weight class is certainly within reach.
Michinori Tanaka vs Kyle Aguon (via Атай Атанаев)
PXC 36 - Michinori Tanaka vs Caleb Vallotton (via PXC MMA)
And here he is against recent UFC signee Russell Doane:
❤❤❤ URIAH: PXC 34 (russell doane vs. michinori tanaka) 1 of 3 ❤❤❤ (via iamkoreanbug)
❤❤❤ URIAH: PXC 34 - (russell doane vs. michinori tanaka) 2 of 3 ❤❤❤ (via iamkoreanbug)
❤❤❤ URIAH: PXC 34 - (russell doane vs. michinori tanaka) 3 of 3 ❤❤❤ (via iamkoreanbug)
23) Nick Newell, Lightweight (11-0)
Age: 27
Camp: American Top Team
Let's get it out of the way right now: yes, Nick Newell is the one-armed fighter. One-handed is actually a better description, as his left arm ends just below his elbow due to a condition known as congenital amputation, leaving him without a left hand or forearm. No, this isn't an advantage for him, and conversely, I haven't included him on this list out of some misguided desire to be politically correct. He's a legitimate prospect with excellent athleticism in one of the most talent-rich weight classes in MMA, with finishes in ten of his eleven wins.
A former wrestler at Division 3 Western New England, Newell's game predictably revolves around the takedown. He has a quick shot, and finishes well with a variety of foot sweeps; his throws from the clinch are also a dangerous facet of his game, and he consistently scrambles well in transition. From the top, Newell is an absolute beast. His ground and pound is outstanding, particularly his left elbow, and he has a variety of effective guard passes. Once he's established a dominant position, Newell will rain down blows before finishing with something from his deep arsenal of submissions, which features a fantastic guillotine.
As one would expect for a former collegiate wrestler four years into his professional career, Newell's striking is a work in progress. The lack of a left hand is a distinct disadvantage at range, and several of his opponents have demonstrated that it's possible to hit him with a right hand or kick, though none have been able to fully capitalize on this opening: given that both he and Justin Gaethje, who throws an enormously powerful right hand, are signed to WSOF, we should soon find out precisely how problematic this really is. For his part, Newell features hard left kicks from his southpaw stance, throws a decent right hand, and has recently added a dangerous spinning elbow to his arsenal. Although he won't be winning a Glory tournament anytime soon, Newell's striking has shown consistent improvement.
Newell reminds me a great deal of a more athletic Jim Miller, with a good wrestling game, dangerous submissions, and solid-enough striking to threaten opponents at range and facilitate closing the distance. He trains at an outstanding camp, American Top Team, and seems to get better in every fight. WSOF has a number of good lightweights on their roster, and with a signature win, Newell could find himself in the UFC soon (despite Dana White's comments to the contrary). If he continues to develop, and there's every reason to believe he will, the top ten is a legitimate possibility.
Video:
History is Made -- Nick Newell Becomes XFC Champ on AXS TV (via AXS TV Fights)
XFC 15 - Denis Hernandez vs Nick Newell (via JIUJITSUPHANTOM)
Nick Newell ''Notorious'' Highlights 2013 (via Naser Jr)
Check back soon for the next installment in the series.Recently, I made a parenting mistake.
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I showed my kids the best video on the internet: Lemon Demon’s great song, “Ultimate Showdown,” describing an epic battle. I was focused mostly on the great beat and all of the references to superheroes and cultural icons—many of whom the boys already knew—and completely neglected the graphic cartoon violence that ends poorly for everyone.
After a while, I saw a tweet from my wife that illustrated its impact: “OH: It’s a bit gory, and Mr. Rogers covered in blood was a little much, but it’s got a catchy tune.” Bad Dad.
The experience forced me to think more deeply about how to bring the boys up to speed on Internet culture without spawning years of therapy. Inspired by Piaget, my two sons and I poured through about four dozen videos representing important memes over the years. At an average of 3-5 minutes per video, that’s a lot of opportunity to test the patience of children. I tried to filter out the raunch to protect their naive view of the world—which unfortunately, now includes the image of Mister Rogers as a berserker—and focus on the best candidates for kids to enjoy … and what to avoid.
Fuggetaboutit
Some popular memes are verboten because of their content, where vulgar, sexually explicit, foul and disturbing are often intermixed. There is no appropriate age for “Two Girls, One Cup,” but there’s a lot of middle ground between that and Dramatic Chipmunk. Kids respond to different content in unusual ways.
There are several memes you can probably skip:
RickRoll
On the one hand, the ingredients are there for unending hours of enjoyment. Tell someone you have a cool link to show them, and instead send them an ’80s music video of Rick Astley. Hilarious. Two problems on the parenting front, however. First, they won’t “get” the video (“Why is the bartender running up walls?”). Second, they will get the joke. Arming your Internet-savvy youngster with this prank will all but guarantee you will be RickRolled until graduation. Not a good idea.
Miss South Carolina
Watching Caitlin Upton garble an answer in a beauty pageant may provide parents an opportunity to talk with youngsters about stereotypes, gender inequalities, and the anxieties of public speaking. For the under-ten set, watching some grown-up make no sense is B-O-R-I-N-G.
Hello, My Future Girlfriend
Completely lost on my kids is how amazing it was that an 11-year-old could make a web site a decade ago, when only around 3 million U.S. children were online. Kids are smart enough to recognize ridicule when when sense it. (See also: Star Wars Kid)
Long Stuff
Despite liking both chocolate and rain, the boys had enough after a few seconds of Tay Zonday singing into a condenser microphone. Similarly, “Boom goes the dynamite” may be a hip thing to say, but the boys couldn’t survive the boredom of Brian Collins’ sportscast to get to the Internet catch phrase. My eldest did enjoy watching Noah’s hair flicker for a while, but six years is a long time to see the same face.
Stuff in Foreign Languages
The fictitious laughing interviewer (played by Flemish comedian Tom Van Dyck) was mistaken for real by many. “Erik Hartman” can’t control his laughter when one of his two guests speaks in a high voice. In the a longer version, Hartman looks back on the incident that caused him to be fired. The humor isn’t in the words, but the words aren’t in a language familiar to my boys. They tuned out quickly.
Scary Stuff
In 2006, my friend Apurva gleefully had me crank up the volume and lean into YouTube—my first experience with the site—to look for a ghost in car commercial. It’s not something I’d do to my kids, even on nights when they are already screaming.
Kid-tested, Mother-approved
Based on my sons’ reactions, attention span, and later reflection, this is their Top Ten of Internet Memes:
1. Diet Coke and Mentos
The boys were first introduced to these junk food geysers through Mythbusters, so perhaps they were a bit predisposed to loving the video of two men in lab coats and goggles recreating the fountain in front of the Bellagio hotel. They are now more than a little obsessed with getting me to fall for a related prank.
2. Will It Blend?
If kids were the target market for kitchen appliances, Blendtec would have two more customers. The viral marketing campaign uses Blendtec’s product in interesting ways. There is something satisfying about seeing an iPhone become smoke and powder, but the kids most loved watching a wiimote get the same treatment.
3. Cup Stacking World Record
Did you know stacking cups quickly was a sport? It’s also an iPhone app. Jaws dropped while watching Emily Fox set a record placing cups in stacks (since broken). I am clinging to the hope that this feat becomes tied to general cleaning, prompting the boys to go for a world record of their own.
4. Here It Goes Again
I don’t know if the pop song by OK Go owes it success to the Internet, but this music video of the band’s creative use of treadmills is a hit with the kiddies. That’s without showing them the LEGO version.
5. Animals
Whether it is a ninja cat, a skateboarding bulldog, or a primate hating on David Letterman, nothing says kid-friendly entertainment like a critter doing something wacky. Dramatic Chipmunk gets additional points because it is only 5 seconds long.
6. Charlie Bit Me
Take two adorable brothers, throw in a British accent and a set of young teeth, and you get a YouTube sensation to which all siblings can relate. Harry, now 6, won’t re-do the clip, but Charlie may be willing to assume the big brother role: Jasper turns 1 this month.
7. Babies
New humans are very versatile, sporting evil looks and mastering Kung Fu. Some are only virtual but can still land a featured role in a network dramas.
8. Matrix Ping Pong
My kids have never seen The Matrix, nor have they played ping pong. Put the two together on a Japanese game show, however, and they are delighted.
9. Ask a Ninja
Ninjas are everywhere, fighting the good fight against pirates. I include the Ninja because of how much the boys howled when he described how to kill a ninja. (Psst, it involves John Cougar Mellencamp.)
10. Mind-numbing Songs
Inane songs don’t discriminate. They can be about anything, including food, mammals, reptiles, or a gummy bear. Repetitious lyrics and a relentless beat are a hypnotic combination for children of all ages.
The Jury is Out
Even if they didn’t quite make the cut with my kids, here are some other memes yours may appreciate:
For more memes, try browsing Know Your Meme and the Internet Meme Timeline. After taking your kids on a tour of Internet history, they may be ready to appreciate Weezer’s homage video, Pork and Beans. If the next generation can spot at least 5 memes on sight, you’ll know they have been properly assimilated.It was his day off, yet he could hardly force a smile while eating breakfast with his girlfriend.
He involuntarily made small talk to avoid involving her with his problems.
What she couldn’t see was a troubled mind, brewing with negative thoughts.
His mind was full of concern, his heart was racing, and quite frankly he was sick of dealing with these emotions.
He felt trapped inside his own head.
Thankfully he had one escape he could always fall back on.
He packed his bag, grabbed his keys, and took off to find his happy place.
As he arrived at his destination, and opened the door, the smell of fresh equipment struck his sinuses, and the sound of weights clanging pierced his eardrums.
An instant relief came over him. This gym was his sanctuary, a place of peace and healing.
After a brief warm up, he made his way over to the weight rack, and with each step closer, the outside world closed off just a tiny bit more.
Before he knew it, he was halfway through his workout. The problems he brought with him?
They hadn’t even made it through the front door.
Do you recognize the relationship between exercise and mental health?
If someone was to ask my opinion on what the number one tool for dealing with mood disorders is, I would tell them without a doubt, it is exercise.
Exercise can, and will, improve all aspects of your life.
You will start to eat healthier, you will take your health more seriously in order to further improve your fitness, and you will experience better sleep.
All three of these are essential factors to improving your mental health from the ground up.
Furthermore, exercise is one of the best natural stress reducers available. Even 20 minutes of exercise can lower your stress levels dramatically.
Would you believe me if I told you people who exercise are less likely to experience depression? How about if I told you, exercise could dramatically lower any depression you currently deal with?
Exercise and Mental Health
Exercise, whether it is running, lifting weights, hiking, playing sports, etc, releases endorphins in the brain that naturally boost |
those advantages, and if possible, magnify Sri Lanka's own.
"The difference between dustbowls and greentops, perhaps, is that the latter have tended to defang spinners more effectively than the former does to quicks"
The conspiracies don't always play out in reality as they do on paper (or perhaps even as they do in the imaginations of the visiting cohort). The Galle pitch, for example, is immutably a spin-bowling stomping ground - attempts to make it batting-friendly having gone awry most notably in 2013, when after a festival of runs with Bangladesh, Angelo Mathews labelled it "absolutely a road". At other times, the scheming has backfired: in 2015, it was India's quicks who prospered on a seaming SSC deck.
Nevertheless, on this tour, and their two recent tours to New Zealand, Sri Lanka have tasted a little of their own moonshine. In Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton, Dunedin and now Port Elizabeth and Newlands, Sri Lanka have consistently been greeted by green tracks. Pitch doctoring has, in the past, been cast a South Asian sneakery, but other teams have begun to get a taste for it. They have started to catch on.
South Africa have been clear about their intentions: they want to neutralise Rangana Herath. With the 0-3 drubbing on Indian dustbowls perhaps still playing on Faf du Plessis' mind, he has had pitches made to order in this series, and that is power he seems to like.
"If there's one or two percent that I can add as a captain with my voice, it's making sure that we have the conditions that we ask for," du Plessis said after the 282-run win at Newlands. "It's something I'm really big on. I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs to make sure that we get it. Because I feel there's been too many times when I feel teams come here and they get the conditions that favour them. And when you go overseas you don't get that. You've got to make sure that you maximize the conditions you have."
Faf du Plessis knows South Africa's strength is their fast bowlers and he is doing all he can to enhance that Cricket Australia/Getty Images
This is new ground for a South African captain, partly because in the past, the team's clout over curators has been tempered by commercial concerns. As is the case in Australia and many grounds in England, venues and broadcasters want matches to last five days and have prepared surfaces primarily suited to that purpose. But now, even at Newlands, where no Asian team had ever won, an unusually verdant track helped bring the game to an early conclusion, and du Plessis was only too pleased.
"This has been an amazing Test wicket once again - the groundsmen can take a lot of credit," he said, having also thanked the St George's Park groundsmen after the first Test. "We asked for a wicket that took no spin, and there was a good contest between bat and ball, and that's exactly what it was. Day one, it was green and moving around. Day three, four and five, if you batted, you could get a big score. It was a fantastic Test wicket."
The difference between dustbowls and greentops, perhaps, is that the latter have tended to defang spinners more effectively than the former does to quicks. On a pitch that takes little turn, a spinner is left only with drift, dip and flight - which are valuable weapons to be sure, but are largely supplementary ones. Fast bowlers, meanwhile, are often still envenomed by movement in the air, and on drier tracks, by reverse swing.
In Galle in 2014, for example, vicious bursts of reverse brought Dale Steyn match figures of 9 for 99, and carried South Africa to victory. In the most recent New Zealand series, by contrast, Yasir Shah was largely ineffective in Christchurch, and was left out entirely in Hamilton, where the surface was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the square on the eve of the match.
Perhaps it was only a matter of time until non-Asian sides began to pursue home advantage as unapologetically as South Africa in this series. It has been common practice in Asia for so long, that on one occasion, Pakistan even took their own curators to the UAE to oversee preparation of surfaces there.
And Sri Lanka can hardly complain. It has been the unqualified failure of their batsmen that has seen them lose the series; only two fifties have been hit in 40 completed individual innings.
But perhaps this is the new way of the world. Under Mike Hesson, New Zealand are at least two seasons into preparing tracks that suit them. If South Africa continue to follow suit, Asian sides can expect even tougher tours outside the continent than they have been accustomed to.Tournament organizer Alex Jebailey recently put together a great primer for CEO 2012 this weekend, which contains everything you’ll need to know whether you’re attending or watching online. With the insane amount of domestic and global talent attending the event, almost every pool contains a variety of killers. Daigo and Mago of Team Mad Catz, Evil Geniuses’ Momochi and ChocoBlanka, recent AVerMedia pick-up Gamerbee, B.A.L.A. of Immortal Gamers League, and Kayane will be descending on Orlando, Florida to take on some of the best the United States has to offer, including ECT4 Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 champion Fanatiq, Evil Geniuses’ Justin Wong, Ricky Ortiz, and Floe, Mike Ross, Combofiend, and Filipino Champ of Complexity Cross Counter, Immortal Gamers League’s Honzo Gonzo, DJ Huoshen, MarlinPie of Always Godlike, Fingercramp’s Chris G, and a multitude of others.
As an official pit stop on the Road to EVO, top placers in the official line-up of games will receive seeding points and exclusive monetary bonuses in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and Soul Calibur V. In addition, Mortal Kombat will receive a pot bonus courtesy of NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros, Skullgirls top eight pot will include a bonus, and Jebailey has even issued a bounty for King of Fighters. The complete list of games and bonuses are as follows:
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 – $750 first place bonus
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 – $750 first place bonus
Soul Calibur V – $500 first place bonus
Street Fighter x Tekken – $500 first place bonus
Mortal Kombat – $1000 top eight pot bonus
King of Fighters XIII –$500 top three bonus, $100 first place bounty for US players
Skullgirls – $500 top eight bonus
Super Street Fighter II Turbo – Tournament of Legends qualifier
Tekken 6
BlazBlue Continuum Shift: Extend
In addition to the official games, 3 vs. 3 team tournaments for both AE 2012 and UMvC3 will be run by community members, the details of which can be found in the full primer. Keits will also be bringing out indie darling Divekick for a special location test, so be sure to check out the original announcement for what that will entail.
For any and all additional info regarding the tournament, its numerous events, and the streaming situation, do yourself a favor and head over to CEO Gaming and give the primer a bit of your time.
Source: CEO GamingEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak
Not long ago, a close comrade of mine was dining with a person who I can’t identify beyond telling you that his father is a long-term absolutist ruler of an Arab Muslim state. “Tell me,” said this scion to my friend, “is it true that there are now free elections in Albania?” My friend was able to confirm the (relative) truth of this, adding that he had once even acted as an international observer at the Albanian polls and could attest to a certain level of transparency and fairness. The effect of his remarks was galvanic. “In that case,” exclaimed the heir-presumptive, thumping the table, “what does that make us? Are we peasants? Children?” The gloom only deepened, apparently, as the image of the Arab as a laughing stock—lagging behind Albania!—took hold of the conversation.
Who could have predicted that such a comparison would have turned out to be such a catalytic one in the mind of this nervous dauphin? So multifarious are the sources of grievance in the Arab world that it could have been any one of a host of pretexts that ignited a revolt, or revolts. This ought to make one beware of too glibly selecting the ostensibly crucial one. Poverty and unemployment? These are so pervasive that they could explain any rebellion at any time—and in any case Tunisians are among the richest per capita in North Africa. Dictatorship and repression? Again, these are commonplaces, and so far the most conspicuously authoritarian despotisms—Syria and Saudi Arabia, for instance—have been spared the challenge of insurrection. (May these words of mine go out of date with all speed.)
I think that the factor of indignity and shame, of the sort manifested in the anecdote above, makes a more satisfactory initial explanation. And one of the cheering and reassuring things about dictatorship is the way that it consistently fails to understand this element of the equation. How gratifying it is that all such regimes go on making the same obvious mistakes. None of them ever seems to master a few simple survival techniques: Don’t let the supreme leader’s extended family go on shopping sprees; don’t publicly spoil some firstborn as if the people can’t wait for him, too, to be proclaimed from the balcony; don’t display your personal photograph all over the landscape; don’t claim more than, say, 75 percent of the vote in any “election” you put on. And don’t try to shut down social media: It will instantly alert even the most somnolent citizen to the fact that you are losing, or have lost, your grip.
People do not like to be treated like fools, or backward infants, or extras in some parade. There is a natural and inborn resistance to such tutelage, for the simple-enough reasons that young people want to be regarded as adults, and parents can’t bear to be humiliated in front of their children. One of Francis Fukuyama’s better observations, drawing on his study of Hegel and Nietzsche, was that history shows people just as prepared to fight for honor and recognition as they are for less abstract concepts like food or territory.
Sooner or later, the line gets crossed and people can take no more. Nicolae Ceausescu wrote his own death warrant on the day in December 1989 when he decided to summon the people of Bucharest for just one more compulsory rally where they would have to stand, screaming with inner boredom, and clap their hands to order while he spoke for as long as he liked. I remember thinking, of the Egyptian “elections” of last fall, that President Hosni Mubarak would have gotten more respect for simply canceling them than for pretending to hold them in the insulting way he did. Something similar applies to the “green” rebellion that followed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent plebiscite: Everybody already knew that things were “fixed,” but this time the mullahs didn’t even trouble to pretend that they were not fixed. It’s possible that people will overlook outright brutality sooner than they will forgive undisguised contempt.
The best of the Egyptian “civil society” dissidents, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, produced the extraordinary effect that he did by the simple method of challenging the Mubarak regime on those very terms. If it was going to pretend to hold elections, then Ibrahim and his fellow researchers claimed the right to conduct independent surveys of the voters and to publish the results. One can hardly imagine a milder form of resistance, yet, because of the overweening stupidity and crudity of the authorities, it had consequences of an almost seismic kind. Show trials of mild-mannered opinion pollsters and think-tank scholars; dark accusations of secret foreign funding for the practice of political sociology: The whole lumbering apparatus of the Egyptian state conspired to make itself appear humorless and thuggish and to convince its people that they were being held as serfs by fools. Again, the sense of insult ran very deep, and Mubarak’s bullies were too dense to understand their own mistake.
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is one of the minority of Arab public intellectuals to have supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and to have believed that it might contribute to a democratic renaissance in the region. This argument will go on for a long time and can’t be resolved too simplistically one way or another, partly because the liberation of Iraq can’t be described as the act of its own people, and thus in a way underlines the same problem of dependency. The post-2003 democratic wave was brief and somewhat shallow, and it indirectly benefited Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the Kurds and Shiites of Iraq and the Lebanese democracy movement. But the regime-change school in America can claim a degree of vindication.
We argued that the supposed attractions of authoritarian “stability” are in fact illusory, since nothing is more volatile and unsafe than dictatorship, which lacks any self-critical method for learning from its mistakes. Earlier “people power” episodes, in Asia in the early 1980s and in Eastern Europe in 1989, as well as in the general repudiation of military rule in Latin America and the peaceful liberation of South Africa, had definitively proved this point. They had also left the Arab regions looking rather conspicuous, and rather backward, in consequence. In the long term, this sense of being relegated to infancy and immaturity has had a salutary effect, which one hopes will outlast the temptations—of the immature culture of self-pity and victimhood, plus the equally false reassurances of theocracy—that are certain to arise now that the period of enforced adolescence is over.
Like Slate on Facebook. Follow Slate and the Slate Foreign Desk on Twitter.NEW DELHI: Upset over a line of women leggings carrying images of Hindu gods and goddesses, a Hindu group in the United States has urged online retail giant Amazon to withdraw the product immediately from its website, terming it inappropriate.
President of Universal Society of Hinduism, Rajan Zed, in a statement, said Hindu gods and goddesses were highly revered in Hinduism and were meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be worn around one’s legs, crotch and hips.
Inappropriate usage of Hindu deities or concepts for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurts devotees, said Zed.
Asking Amazon to offer a formal apology, Zed further said that such trivialisation of Hindu gods and goddesses was disturbing to the Hindus world over.
Hindus were for free artistic expression and speech as much as anybody else if not more. But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivialising it hurt the followers, Zed added.
Products that have upset Hindus are leggings and waist yoga pant from the clothing brand Yizzam that carry images of Ganesha, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu, Muruga, Bajrang Bali, Rama, Radha-Krishna, Kali.SAINT PAUL, Minn., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- A former U.S. Army sergeant entered a guilty plea Thursday for his role in a failed coup attempt in The Gambia.
Papa Faal, a dual U.S.-Gambian citizen, appeared in a Minnesota courtroom on Thursday where he admitted to trying to overthrow Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.
Faal said he was recruited in August and given money to buy eight semi-automatic rifles that he concealed in 50-gallon drums and shipped to The Gambia. He traveled to The Gambia in December, where met other members of the group. The plan was to overtake the State House, the president's official residence, while Jammeh was out of the country.
The attempted coup was launched Dec. 30 against the president, who himself seized power in a 1994 coup and has said he plans to rule the country for "a billion years."
"The intent was not to kill anybody" unless fired upon, Faal told the court, but acknowledged "we were surprised by the fact that we had more resistance than anticipated."
Gambian forces repelled the attack and Faal fled to neighboring Senegal where he turned himself in to the U.S. embassy.
Faal's account of hoping to restore democracy to The Gambia by removing the president and doing so without loss of life reflected the account in his arrest affidavit.
U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery told Faal on Thursday that federal sentencing guidelines call for a jail term of 51 to 63 months, and a fine that could range from $10,000 to $100,000.
A conspirator, Cherno Njie of Austin, has been accused of leading and financing the coup attempt. Njie will be also be tried in Minneapolis.While not typically known for their pointing peripherals, Verbatim recently released a line of small, portable notebook mice that should make your mobile computing more productive. Called the Color Nano Wireless Notebook Mouse, it features a tiny USB dongle / receiver that is designed to be left in your USB port without risk of snapping off, making setting up easier when working on-the-go.
Like the Lingo Wireless Mouse we’ve seen previously, Verbatim’s Color Nano Wireless Notebook Mouse also includes a small storage space in the mouse itself for the USB dongle (in case you run out of ports and can’t leave it plugged in). This optical Color Nano uses the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum for reliable and responsive performance, comes in your choice of 7 colors (hence the name) and plays equally well with both PC or Mac.
The dimensions of the mouse itself have been omitted, but the focus here is on the diminutive size of the transmitter and usability. It is certainly not a Z-Nano competitor.
Verbatim’s Color Nano Wireless Notebook Mouse is available now in pink, blue, red, green, purple, yellow or graphite – priced between $20 and $30 from Amazon.com.
Sources:
BusinessWire (Press Release) and Amazon.com
Via: UbergizmoChris Casper in action for Manchester United's youth team in 1993. Shaun Botterill/Allsport
A sixth member of Manchester United's Class of '92 has joined Salford City as their sporting director, according to the Daily Mirror.
Chris Casper, 42, has been appointed to the role by joint-owners Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Gary and Phil Neville to lead Academy '92, a new youth development programme at the National League North club.
Casper was forced to retire from professional football at the age of 24, but has managed Bury and also worked for Bradford City and Grimsby Town.
The former defender has been working with Salford for the past few months, and his appointment has been made permanent just after the club went fully professional last week.
Salford reached the National League North playoffs last season but were beaten in the semifinals on penalties by Halifax Town, so remain two divisions below the Football League.
Another week on site & another big step forward at #MoorLane, as the east stand takes shape at @SalfordCityFC's super revamped ground👌 🛠️⚽️ pic.twitter.com/IlKL721Lkq — Stadium Solutions (@stad_solutions) June 8, 2017
They are currently in the process of completely revamping their Moor Lane home into a modern, 5,000-capacity venue that will cost up to £5 million.
Scholes hopes to take Salford to the Championship and insists the former United players are in for the long haul and want to build a successful football club.
United will send a team to play Salford City on July 19 as part of their preseason programme. The team will likely include a mixture of under-23 and U18 players with the fixture scheduled a day before the first team face Manchester City in Houston in the International Champions Cup.For aesthetic reasons, plastic surgeons are sometimes required to re-position male nipples – after dramatic weight-loss for example. In such a case they are presented, in effect, with a substantially blank canvas. But the presently accepted methods for calculating ideal nipple locations are far from straightforward.
“Currently available guidelines create areolas that are too large, place the nipple-areola complex too high and too far medially, and/or require complex abstract mathematical calculations.”
- explain Dr. Bishara Atiyeh and colleagues at the Beirut Medical Center, Lebanon, who have together developed an entirely new scientific method for male nipple re-positioning. It makes use of the so-called ‘Golden Ratio‘ (also known as the ‘Divine Proportion‘) which has been much admired and utilised by architects, artists and sculptors – stretching at least as far back as the Renaissance.
“Relying on the recently appreciated aesthetic value of the golden number Phi (ϕ) we propose an easy and reliable method to determine the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the male nipples. With only 2 easily measurable distances, umbilicus-anterior axillary fold apex and umbilicus-suprasternal notch, the internipple distance and the position of the horizontal nipple plane relative to the suprasternal notch can be calculated.”
- say the researchers, clarifying how their new and substantially simpler nipple-positioning method can achieve outstanding levels of precision.
“The internipple distance can be determined with 95% accuracy and the distance from the suprasternal notch can be determined in 80% of cases within a range of 3.33 ± 1.25 cm.”
The authors remind us though that slight mal-positioning of the male nipples can be tolerated – pointing out too that
“… exact determination of internipple distance is more ‘eye catching’ and aesthetically important than the vertical location of the NN [Nipple-Nipple] plane.“
In the final analysis, however, the aesthetic and manual skills of the plastic-surgeon-as-artist still remain paramount.
”Even with the accuracy attainable with the best formulae, final surgical decisions must be dictated by the surgeon’s sense of sculptural form as there still is no substitute for adequate preoperative evaluation and surgical talent, experience, and skill.”
The research paper ‘Vertical and Horizontal Coordinates of the Nipple-Areola Complex Position in Males’ was published in Annals of Plastic Surgery : November 2009 – Volume 63 – Issue 5 – pp 499-502.In a new review article summarizing several cross-cultural studies, an Australian scientist argues that there is a cluster of psychological traits and attitudes that can be defined as a “conservative syndrome.”
“I was not interested in this particular topic when I started the work some ten years ago,” explained Lazar Stankov of the University of Sydney and University of Southern Queensland. “My intention was to study cross-cultural differences. Much of my previous work was in the area of intelligence and I wanted to branch out into the non-cognitive field. Studying differences in personality traits, social attitudes, values, social axioms and social norms was appealing to me.”
“It just happened so that the outcome of my studies could best be interpreted in terms of what is known in political sciences as social conservatism. It is a constellation of diverse psychological traits and dispositions focused on preserving the status quo. I chose the term ‘syndrome’ in order to emphasize that at least some components of this kind of conservatism do not have high correlations among themselves.”
His research was published May 29, 2017 in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.
The syndrome describes people who want to preserve the current social order value, score low on the personality trait of openness, and who value authority, obedience, family, self-discipline, and conventional religious beliefs. Such people also display more hostility toward people from outside groups.
Importantly, the conservative syndrome differs from other definitions of conservatism because it includes psychological dispositions — not just political beliefs.
“Needless to say, there are considerable differences between individuals and countries in terms of conservatism/liberalism,” Stankov told PsyPost. “In our work the most important turned out to be the differences in two broad categories of psychological constructs. People scoring high on this syndrome tend to be more religious and harsher towards those who are not accepted as members of their own group. Religion and morality are seen as a way of maintaining the existing way of life and harshness towards outsiders is a defense against the threat of change.
“It is interesting that the average IQ of conservative individuals and countries tends to be lower than the average of the population at large,” Stankov added. “In other words, conservative people tend to be less knowledgeable about the world they live in and are afraid of the unknown. They also seem to be more ready to fight the intruders into their environment.”
The studies were based on two different datasets, which included a total of 11,208 participants from more than 30 countries. Stankov found that the conservative syndrome existed in virtually every country. In other words, the same conservative traits and dispositions tended to be associated with one another regardless of the country.
But there are several political labels that can be a source of confusion. People who are socially conservative, for instance, value faith and tradition — and are opposed to “progressive” change in society. These people typically fall within the conservative syndrome. But there are also fiscal conservatives who oppose high taxes and government regulations. Their views are often similar to those who describe themselves as classical liberals. This latter group of conservatives may or may not be part of the conservative syndrome, depending on their other traits and attitudes.
“An important issue is the relationship between conservative syndrome and political conservatism. The motivation of those voting for conservative parties varies,” Stankov explained. “In Western countries a sizeable proportion of people may do so for fiscal rather than social reasons. Their main concern is with the preservation of the free market and less so with social and psychological aspects of life. Given the rise of populism in politics it may be interesting to study the interaction between fiscal and social conservatives and the extent to which each is using the other to achieve political gains.”
“Another line of our research has been the study of militant extremist mindset (MEM),” he added. “Our findings are that some ingredients of MEM resemble those of conservative syndrome. If some additional aspects of MEM were to be triggered, a new wave of conservative terrorism may emerge. The targets may be not only members of the out-groups but also professions that are perceived as advocating tolerance towards the dissenting views.”This is an interesting point and raises a number of issues which are worth exploring (including the reasons behind this inequality, and the role of FFP).
Although many would like to see a more exciting Champion League, UEFA’s FFP rules were never intended to make football more competitive. The FFP rules are intended to bring greater stability and sustainability to European Football. With a number of clubs getting into financial difficulty and overspending to chase success, UEFA is aiming to reduce insolvency events and ensure clubs balance their incomings with their outgoings. FFP is aimed at ensuring clubs balance their books, rather than making it more competitive. Clubs with larger incomes will always be able to spend the most money on players - although this might viewed as somehow ‘unfair’, it is something FFP was never intended to address. Indeed, it appears to be an inequality of income, rather than a restriction on club’s ability to spend, that is the underlying reason for a lack of competition.
Essentially, there are three main factors that contribute to this inequality of income.
Champions League incomeDerion Jayvon Stevenson, 9, was killed by a pit bull mix in the Las Vegas Valley on Aug. 17, 2016. (Lavender Kiing/Facebook)
The pet “pit bull mix” that mauled and killed a 9-year-old Las Vegas boy Wednesday had been involved in a fight with another neighborhood dog in July, but Clark County animal control didn’t deem the animal dangerous or vicious at the time, county officials announced Friday.
The day of the dog fight, the pet’s owner was also cited for not neutering it and ordered to do so. When the boy was killed, the dog still hadn’t been neutered — a procedure veterinarians say can make a dog less aggressive.
The boy, Derion Stevenson, died at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center late Wednesday after the dog, named Left Eye, attacked Derion while he was visiting a friend’s house about 3:35 p.m. in the 6400 block of Duck Hill Springs Drive, near Desert Inn Road and Hollywood Boulevard.
Police haven’t confirmed if the dog slipped out the front door or was intentionally let out before the quick, fatal attack. The dog was euthanized early Thursday.
The dog fight announced Friday happened July 11, county spokesman Dan Kulin said. A neighbor told animal control she had been walking her Labrador retriever that day — in the same neighborhood where the boy was killed —when Left Eye attacked the Labrador.
Left Eye’s owner told animal control the Labrador initiated the fight. At the time, both dogs were scratched, but neither suffered significant injuries.
“County Animal Control has the authority to declare a dog dangerous or vicious, which could result in a dog being removed from a home,” the county said in a statement Friday. “However, the July incident was not serious enough to warrant a dangerous or vicious declaration.”
In order to deem a dog dangerous or vicious, “the victim animal would have to sustain substantial bodily harm or die as a result of the altercation,” the statement clarified.
Still, on the day of the dog fight, animal control officers cited Left Eye’s owner for failing to neuter the dog, as well as failing to vaccinate it for rabies.
“Dogs who are not neutered do tend to be more aggressive,” said Orlena Tampira, a veterinarian with Craig Road Animal Hospital. All valley dog and cat owners are required to spay or neuter pets 4 months or older under ordinances that were originally meant to help lower shelter euthanasia rates, she said.
But Tampira said “there are other advantages” to neutering pets.
“When you do neuter a dog, they can become more docile,” she said. That’s because after a dog is neutered, the dog has no testosterone, and the presence of testosterone makes dogs more inclined to “act as an alpha” and be disobedient, she said.
It’s unclear if Left Eye’s original owner will face consequences for not neutering the dog. Though the July dog attack was in the same neighborhood as Derion’s fatal mauling, the dog owner cited then was not the same person in custody of the dog Wednesday, when Derion died.
It’s unclear if Left Eye had been moved to a different, nearby house with his new owner sometime in the last month, or if Left Eye’s previous owner moved out.
As of Wednesday, animal control had responded to 196 dog-versus-dog altercations, according to the county. In five cases, the dogs involved were deemed dangerous. None was deemed vicious.
As of Friday, detectives still hadn’t determined whether Left Eye’s current owner will face charges in connection with Derion’s death. Police said the investigation is ongoing.
Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Find @rachelacrosby on Twitter.On Friday, in a speech to law-enforcement officers at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, Long Island, President Trump offered one of the clearest distillations of Trumpism since it became a significant political force, two years ago. Several Long Island communities have struggled in recent years with violence associated with Mara Salvatrucha, more widely known as the MS-13 gang. By some estimates, as many as a thousand members of the gang are living in the area. Trump, whose very first statement as a Presidential candidate decried “rapists” whom Mexico “sends” over the border to the United States, struck the familiar law-and-order and anti-immigration themes of the campaign: the country has been suckered by wily foreign regimes; the “tough” people who can handle the problem have been handcuffed by politically correct élites. He is here to unshackle the hands of our protectors.
That rhetoric was key to him winning the endorsement, last September, of the Fraternal Order of Police, which stated that Trump “understands and supports our priorities and our members believe he will make America safe again.” (Black police organizations, notably, rejected the F.O.P.’s Trump endorsement.) Alarmingly, Trump urged the police officers gathered in Brentwood to be more cavalier in their use of force:
Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody—don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, O.K.?
The comment drew approving laughter from the crowd. Trump assailed Chicago for its “unbelievable violence” and pointed to his interactions with an unnamed, “really respected officer,” who said that, if the police weren’t held in check, violent crime in the city could be resolved in “a couple of days.” This is vintage Trumpism: the revelation that our problems have been presented as unduly complex. There is always a simple solution that our leadership lacks the gonadal audacity to implement.
Yet, as with Trump’s rambling, inappropriate address to the Boy Scouts earlier in the week, what he said about killing Obamacare and hot yacht parties was less troubling than the way people reacted to it. Pressed to respond to Trump’s statements, the Boy Scouts of America released a statement distancing itself from the commentary that brought cheers from many of the youth in the audience. Trump’s demagogic charisma is disturbing enough when it excites thirteen-year-olds, but it’s cause for full-blown alarm when law enforcement—the only institution in American life authorized to kill citizens—reacts in the same way. In response to Trump’s speech, the Suffolk County Police Department issued a statement declaring that the President’s recommendations were at odds with the department’s procedures, as did the N.Y.P.D., the L.A.P.D., and the International Association of Police Chiefs. The denunciations of Trump’s rhetoric always come in the cooler aftermath of his utterances; in the febrile atmosphere of his rallies, his most anti-democratic statements inspire rapt endorsement.
Trump has been making inflammatory statements since literally the first day of his life as a politician, and in that time a life cycle of Trumpian outrages has become apparent. Whenever his words provoke the most sustained backlash—his comments implying that gun owners might shoot Hillary Clinton to protect the Second Amendment and his request that Russian hackers target the Clinton campaign, for instance—the tendency is to explain them away as an attempt at humor. Predictably, on Monday, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, dismissed as a joke Trump’s line about police use of force. There is little comedy, however, in the ways in which that line reflects his Administration’s broader priorities when it comes to policing.
In April, the Department of Justice curtailed the use of consent decrees—negotiated best-practice agreements that, in the years since the Rodney King beating, in Los Angeles, had become the primary tool for reforming chronically troubled police departments. One result of the Justice Department’s policy shift was that the Baltimore Police Department, which came under federal investigation following Freddie Gray’s death, in April, 2015, had to negotiate its reform agreement over the objections of the very Justice Department whose examination pointed out the need for reform in the first place. The implicit message was that the Trump Administration would be far less aggressive in its oversight of rogue police departments.
In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed a gathering of law-enforcement officers in Memphis, hitting notes similar to those in Trump’s Brentwood speech: pointing to the specific crime problems of the local community, decrying the lack of support that police departments have received in handling those problems, and denouncing the evils of gangs and pledging to eliminate them. Here is Sessions on gangs:
If you’re a gang member, know this: you think you are targeting us. Well, we are targeting you. We will find you. We will devastate your networks. We will starve your revenue sources, deplete your ranks, and seize your profits. We will not concede a single block or single street corner to illegal gangs.
Nine days before Trump’s Brentwood speech, Sessions issued Justice Department guidelines strengthening police departments’ ability to use civil forfeiture, the seizure of assets from individuals who are suspected of a crime but have not been convicted of, tried for, or, in some cases, even charged with any offense. As Sarah Stillman pointed out in the magazine in 2013, the practice has effectively incentivized corruption among cash-strapped police departments, which now have both a rationale and a financial motive to pull over motorists and seize their cash and vehicles with scant cause.
In Trump’s world, toughness is not a means to an end—it is an end in itself. When Trump invokes Chicago as the exemplar of what is wrong with American law enforcement, the irony is that the city’s crime problem was made worse by its anything-goes ethic of policing. The city where police ran a black site for torturing suspects, attempted to cover up the circumstances in which the seventeen-year-old Laquan McDonald was killed, and regularly paid out millions in police-brutality settlements is the same city where seventy per cent of residents do not believe that police can be trusted to treat all residents fairly. The idea that community trust is more valuable to a police department than “toughness”—really a Trumpian euphemism for brutality—might seem quaint, but Chicago’s experience would point to the contrary. When Trump says police need not be concerned if suspects suffer head injuries in their custody, it’s not simply a wink and a nod at the old days of unrestrained policing. It’s a foreshadowing of a world he’s actively attempting to resurrect.It makes sense. Authorities and the media have been very-very reluctant to suggest the Vegas shooter’s motive. Why? Is it a cover-up? More and more are saying it could be. When you mention the recent shooting of a United States Congressman by a far left activist most have no idea what you’re talking about? That’s because the media (and social media powers) worked double-time to push the story away. They didn’t report on it therefor it never happened.
Given the many deaths and injuries that took place in Las Vegas that will be more difficult to do but that doesn’t mean the Establishment Media won’t try. Listen carefully to Lt |
more aggressive in checking for lymph node involvement in people younger than 50."
This is the first study to show that age is associated with the risk that rectal cancer will spread to the lymph nodes, says Meyer. The idea for the project came out of an observation by his collaborator Steven Cohen, MD, chief of gastrointestinal medical oncology at Fox Chase, who noticed a couple of young patients with an early stage of rectal cancer that had unexpectedly spread to the lymph nodes--"which is not something one would expect," says Meyer. "Because of that, he said, 'I wonder if the risk of spread is somehow connected to their age.' I said, 'Well, this is something we can test.'"
Indeed, the researchers had access to a massive database of information about cancer patients run by the National Cancer Institute. They reviewed the case history of more than 56,000 patients diagnosed with rectal cancer between 1988 and 2008. Approximately 2% of patients were ages 20-39; 7.5% were in their 40s.
Overall, the younger patients were, the more likely it was that their cancer had spread to their lymph nodes--regardless of the stage of their tumors. For instance, among those whose tumors were the least invasive into the rectal wall (stage T1), 22.3% of 20-39 year-olds had affected lymph nodes, versus only 10.8% of patients ages 60-69. The same differences appeared in people whose tumors were more invasive--in T3 tumors, the most common presentation, 60.7% of younger patients had tumors that had reached the lymph nodes, versus 49.4% of those in their 60s.
It's not clear why age might influence the spread of rectal cancer, notes Meyer. Perhaps the tumors of younger patients are simply biologically different from those of older patients, rendering them more likely to spread, he speculates.
Even though the researchers reviewed data collected from tens of thousands of patients, these initial findings should be followed up by more research, notes Meyer. "Since this is a first study, I don't think you can definitively say that age is directly related to risk of lymph node involvement in rectal cancer. But it is something one should keep in mind."
Consequently, when young people are diagnosed with rectal cancer, it makes sense to ask their doctors to thoroughly check their lymph nodes for signs of spread before skipping chemotherapy and radiation prior to surgery. "I think it's worth talking about with your doctor."
###
Meyer's and Cohen's co-authors include Michael Hall, Elin Sigurdson, and Karen Ruth from Fox Chase.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of the Temple University Health System, is one of the leading cancer research and treatment centers in the United States. Founded in 1904 in Philadelphia as one of the nation's first cancer hospitals, Fox Chase was also among the first institutions to be designated a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1974. Fox Chase researchers have won the highest awards in their fields, including two Nobel Prizes. Fox Chase physicians are also routinely recognized in national rankings, and the Center's nursing program has received the Magnet status for excellence three consecutive times. Today, Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research, with special programs in cancer prevention, detection, survivorship, and community outreach. For more information, visit Fox Chase's Web site at www.foxchase.org or call 1-888-FOX CHASE or (1-888-369-2427).It sounds like Jenna Jameson is ready to move on from Tito Ortiz
with another man – she’s into Quinton
“Rampage” Jackson now.
Article continues below...
“He’s hot, he’s sweet and he’s really
good at what he does,”
href="http://www.tmz.com/2013/11/11/jenna-jameson-tito-ortiz-rampage-jackson-mma-bellator" target="_blank">Jameson told TMZ. “And he doesn’t
cry all the time.”
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The former porn star must have a thing for washed-up,
middle-aged ex-UFC champions. But it’s clear she didn’t
exactly understand the question. The video interviewer asked
Jameson if she roots for Ortiz (her ex-husband) or his opponent
during a fight.
Jameson said: “I’m rooting for
‘Rampage.’”
There’s just one problem, of course. The two aren’t
fighting. Not anymore. Not after Ortiz – you know, the father
of Jameson’s kids – pulled out of a November bout with
a fractured neck.
You would think Jameson knows that, especially with as much as
she tweets and
href="http://msn.foxsports.com/ufc/story/jenna-jameson-attacks-tito-ortiz-on-twitter-053013" target="_blank">talks about Ortiz during interviews.
Recently, Jameson had to cut short a press tour promoting her
new book “Sugar,” because, well, her interviews were
href="http://msn.foxsports.com/ufc/story/jameson-dealing-with-ortiz-issues-102213" target="_blank">an absolute train wreck complete with
word-slurring and making absolutely no sense.
Then there’s the confusion over custody of the
dysfunctional couple’s two kids. Jameson has been saying in
interviews that she sees the boys all the time. Not so, Ortiz
tweeted Monday night.
NEWS FLASH: @jennajameson hasn’t seen our boys n 5 months so she must b taking care of some other family.U ppl r being fooled.The jokes on u! — Tito Ortiz (@titoortiz) href="https://twitter.com/titoortiz/statuses/400168580290854914">November 12, 2013
“U ppl r being fooled.The jokes on u!”
And it’s quite the gut-busting joke.
It’s a wonder how two completely stable and well-adjusted
individuals ended up like this.Chrissy Teigen briefly took her Twitter account off its private setting on Saturday to unleash a tweetstorm directed at Donald Trump.
Earlier that morning the president-elect demanded that the cast of the “Hamilton” apologize to Mike Pence who attended the Broadway musical on Friday night and was booed by the audience and addressed by the cast from the stage after the show.
“Wow @realdonaldtrump is right. I can’t believe they would subject poor, innocent Mike Pence to such abhorrent, evil hate speech,” she wrote sarcastically. “Look who wants a f—ing safe space now. The very thing him and his supporters make fun of as liberal political correctness. God, what a POS.”
The model and TV personality rattled off about half a dozen more tweets in one of which she called Trump’s presidency an “inevitable dumpster fire.”
She also referenced what has become frequently-referenced backlash to the amount of attention the ordeal has gotten — that Trump is using the events at “Hamilton” to distract from the fact that he agreed on Friday to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits against Trump University.
Related Celebrities React to #BoycottHamilton: ‘Good Luck With That’
“Donald knows very well what he is doing. He knows the Hamilton speech was NBD. He knows his tweet will fire both sides up to distract from the 25 million dollar settlement of yesterday. Most conniving human on planet earth,” she wrote.
Teigen is married to John Legend who also commented on the “Hamilton” situation and the call of Trump supporters to boycott the show.
“If #boycotthamilton goes like #boycottbeyonce I’m gonna start #boycottjohnlegend. S— seems lucrative,” he wrote.
Other celebrities have also insinuated that they suspect Pence’s trip to see “Hamilton” was used intentionally as a distraction. “The Big Short” director Adam McKay tweeted Saturday that he suspected involvement from Trump’s newly appointed chief advisor Steve Bannon.
“Could the Pence Hamilton night have been intentional from Trump camp? Perfect “culture war” distraction. And Bannon is very smart,” he wrote.
Could the Pence Hamilton night have been intentional from Trump camp? Perfect "culture war" distraction. And Bannon is very smart. — Adam McKay (@GhostPanther) November 19, 2016
In October Teigen switched her Twitter account to private, citing that she was “not strong enough anymore.” Since her tweets bashing Trump on Saturday she has changed her privacy settings back to private.Any baseball fan, from the casual to the hardcore, who didn’t know Waseda Jitsugyo first-year player Kotaro Kiyomiya had an RBI hit in his Summer Koshien debut on Saturday, probably spent the day off the grid.
Kiyomiya was everywhere long before the tournament began. That he got a hit in his debut, one that drove in a run no less, eclipsed even the news of the day from the pro ranks — Kiyomiya even garnered a mention on the video board at Tokyo Dome, as the Hiroshima Carp warmed up for their game against the Yomiuri Giants.
All four of his at-bats were replayed on various news programs that night and again on Sunday morning. In Akihabara station, one kiosk adorned part of its newspaper section with cutouts of the teenager’s head. Nikkan Sports and Sports Nippon devoted their back pages to Kiyomiya, and they probably weren’t alone.
Not bad for a kid who was 1-for-4.
This is just the beginning. If Waseda can win a few games, Kiyomiya-fever will rocket into the stratosphere — especially if he has the game to match the hype.
“He’s not an ordinary first-year player,” former NPB pitcher Daisuke Araki said during a televised interview Saturday night.
Kiyomiya, who checks in at 184 cm and 97 kg, certainly looks the part and he definitely has a bat opponents have to be wary of facing.
Kiyomiya was installed as the star of this Summer Koshien before it even began. His face was plastered across various magazines, and media attention swelled when Waseda finally punched its ticket to Kansai.
It helped that he was hardly an unknown. He’s the son of a sporting celebrity, rugby star Katsuyuki Kiyomiya, and attends a school that counts Araki, Sadaharu Oh and Yuki Saito as alumni.
Kiyomiya was also the driving force behind the Kitasuna team from Tokyo that represented Japan in the Little League World Series in 2012. Kiyomiya wowed onlookers both at the plate and on the mound during that event, helping to lead Japan to the title.
The American media fawned over the Japanese sensation, wondering aloud what the future might hold.
His present is as the main ingredient in Japan’s ultimate kingmaker.
High school baseball has always had a special place in the hearts of many Japanese, one even the pro game doesn’t fulfill — twice a year, in fact, the high schoolers force the Hanshin Tigers into extended road trips as they take over the stadium.
The tournament is as much about the past as the present. Koshien Stadium, the oldest stadium in Japan, is so revered and full of history the losers of each contest drop to their knees to scoop handfuls of the old ballpark’s dirt into bags as souvenirs. The event is marked by pageantry, emotion, and uniforms dirtied by head-first slides into first and often wet from the tears that sometimes flow from the eyes of winner and loser alike.
Japanese fans love high school heroes and are always on the lookout for the next kaibutsu (monster), who stands above all others.
Only time will tell if Kiyomiya is that player, but if the attention he drew after his debut was any indication, this is a revolution that will most certainly be televised.Philippos Christou/Associated Press
Athletikos Podosferikos Omilos Ellinon Lefkosias, or Apoel as it is known across Europe — more widely than ever these days — is the club from the island of Cyprus that is slowly showing the world it can play soccer with anyone.
While Apoel does not have the same rich history as Barcelona or Real Madrid, after finishing first in its Champions League group like those clubs, Apoel has the confidence to face anyone.
UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE This Week’s
Matchups Tuesday
Barcelona at Bayer Leverkusen, 2:45 p.m. (Fox Soccer)
APOEL at Lyon, 2:45 p.m. (Fox Soccer Plus)
Wednesday
Benfica at Zenit St. Petersburg, noon (Fox Soccer)
Arsenal at A.C. Milan, 2:45 p.m. (Fox Soccer)
“Apoel definitely cannot be compared with all these giant football clubs,” the team’s Cyprus-born midfielder Constantinos Charalambides said in an email exchange. “However we will compete” with any opposing club, he added, because of the team’s newfound confidence.
Apoel’s claim to fame before this season was a 2-2 tie against Chelsea during the group stage in 2009. The tie, at Stamford Bridge in London, came on the last matchday of group play, with Chelsea already assured of advancing. Nevertheless, it was an impressive result and a sign of things to come.
Skip ahead two years and Apoel again found itself in the Champions League, this time in a group with last season’s Europa League winners, Porto; the 2010-11 quarterfinalist Shahktar Donetsk; and Zenit St. Petersburg. Apoel’s mission was to prove the earlier result at Chelsea was not a fluke.
“The fact that we ended up in the first place of our group was not a matter of luck, but it was the result of a steady performance in all the games of the group stage,” Charalambides said. “We have shown team spirit, passion, discipline and great effort.”
Apoel’s shocking run into this year’s Round of 16, where it will play at Olympique Lyon on Tuesday, might have been a surprise to the rest of the field, but it was expected in Cyprus. Having won 21 first division titles, Apoel is the Cypriot equivalent to Manchester United. A few wins in the Champions League gave the club the confidence it needed to believe it could thrive at such a level. With that confidence, the players did not just excel, they shocked their critics by becoming the first Cypriot club to advance to the round of 16 and win a Champions League group.
In other Champions League knockout-round games this week, Barcelona is at Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal travels to A.C. Milan and Benfica visits Zenit St. Petersburg.
Apoel’s astonishing journey could have been a brief one, though. After losing the first leg of its Champions League play-in to Wisla Krakow, 1-0, Apoel got a 3-1 win at home and two crucial goals from the Brazil-born Ailton to advance.
“The fact that we turned it to 3-1 has proved that Apoel players are strong characters, disciplined and with full confidence during the game,” Charalambides said. “That didn’t happen once but repeated in the home games against Zenit and Porto as well.”
The confidence from the aggregate win over Wisla Krakow carried over into the group stage. This time it was a 2-1 comeback win over Zenit, with goals from the Brazilian tandem of Manduca and Ailton — the first win for Apoel in Champions League group play. The winning goal was set up by a perfectly weighted through ball from Gustavo and a curling finish by Ailton.
Confidence grew after back-to-back draws away from home against Porto and Shakhtar put Apoel in first place in the group. The club had a one-point advantage over Zenit and Porto going into its fourth match. A loss against Porto would have opened the group, but a win would give the club control of its destiny.
Robert Pratta/Reuters
An early penalty kick by Ailton gave Apoel the lead, but Hulk responded with a penalty in the 89th minute to tie the score. It seemed the match was heading down the usual path in soccer, a last-second win for the bigger club, but Charalambidis had other ideas. His first-time cross in the final minute found Gustavo, and the Brazilian buried the chance.
“I think the goal against Porto here in Nicosia was the most important and exciting because it made us dream even with the qualification for the 16,” Manduca said.
Apoel now only needed a point in St. Petersburg, Russia, to become the first Cypriot club to advance to the round of 16. The club tied Zenit, 0-0, on an emotional day, one that was especially so for Charalambidis.
“It was, for me, a moment which I will never forget in my entire life,” he said. “I don’t know if a Cypriot team will succeed in the forthcoming years to qualify in the 16 best clubs in Europe and be the first of the group.”
Added Manduca: “I think Apoel has won the respect of the big teams. At this point we believe that anything can happen, and who knows if God-willing we can still go a little further.”
The odds of Apoel’s winning the Champions League are long. But coming into the group stage, it was viewed by many as a speed bump for Porto or Shakhtar. Instead, Nicosia has proved a fortress; Apoel has a record of 4-1-1 in Champions League at GSP Stadium, where Lyon will visit in three weeks in the return leg.
“We know a lot of people believe we will easily win against Apoel,” Lyon Coach Rémi Garde said. “Of course, it’s not our opinion.”
Lyon is right to be wary of a club out to prove wrong the naysayers who remain.
Corner kick: What do you expect from Apoel, Lyon and the other six teams who will be in action in the Round of 16 this week?
Anthony Mannino is a journalism student at the University of Texas who spends his time between classes covering soccer. He writes for The Daily Texan and the Cedar Park Citizen, blogs at www.USA10kit.com and provides soccer updates on Twitter at @anthonymannino.RALEIGH, NC - Carolina Hurricanes forward Derek Ryan has been named as one of three finalists for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy. The Masterton Trophy is an annual award under the trusteeship of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association (PHWA) recognizing the National Hockey League player who best exemplifies perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey. The winner will be named at the 2017 NHL Awards to be held June 21 in Las Vegas.
Ryan, 30, was nominated for the Masterton Trophy on March 25, by the Carolina chapter of the PHWA. In its news release announcing Ryan as its nominee, the chapter stated:
Few players have taken a longer, or more unlikely, journey to the NHL than Ryan, undersized and undrafted, who has finally established himself with the Hurricanes as a 29-year old rookie.
His journey took him through nearly every level of hockey, from juniors to Canadian universities to the UHL and AHL and Austria and Sweden. He finally got his first NHL shot last season with the Hurricanes, then became a full-time player this season.
Ryan's decade-long quest to become an NHL player epitomizes perseverance and dedication to hockey and makes him an ideal choice for the Masterton Trophy.
Ryan (5'10", 170 lbs.) completed his second full season of North American professional hockey in 2016-17, scoring 11 goals and earning 18 assists (29 points) in 67 games with the Hurricanes. The Spokane, WA, native began the season with Carolina's American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers, notching five goals and earning eight assists (13 points) in Charlotte's first nine games.
Ryan made his NHL debut with the Hurricanes during the 2015-16 season, nearly a decade after concluding his four-year junior hockey career with Spokane of the Western Hockey League (WHL). He played his first NHL game at New Jersey on March 1, 2016, scoring a goal that night to become the oldest player (29 years, 63 days) in Carolina franchise history to score in his NHL debut. Along with scoring two goals in six games last season with the Hurricanes, Ryan led all Checkers scorers in 2015-16 with 23 goals and 55 points, finishing 19th in scoring among all AHL players.
Ryan played his four seasons of junior hockey in Spokane, including the final two (2005-06 and 2006-07) under now-Hurricanes Head Coach Bill Peters. Following his junior hockey career, Ryan played four seasons at the University of Alberta where he helped the Golden Bears to four conference titles and two Canadian Intercollegiate Sports (CIS) national championships. After college, Ryan played three seasons in Austria before spending the 2014-15 season with Orebro of the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). He led Orebro in assists (45) and points (60) that season, and was named the SHL's Forward of the Year. On June 15, 2015, he signed a free-agent contract with the Hurricanes.Tatiana Maslany is once again pulling double duty. In this exclusive first image from season 2 of Orphan Black, we see the actress playing two clones doing battle. (You can see the photo in all of its huge, high-resolution glory by clicking on the magnifying glass button above.) On top is Sarah Manning, the fearless protagonist who acted as our entry point into the mysterious world of human clones. On the bottom with the gun on her face is Rachel Duncan, the Neolutionist “Proclone” who appeared primed to strike back in the season 1 finale after Sarah refused to cooperate. Judging by what we see here, they will be none too chummy when season 2 kicks off on April 19, 2014 (on BBC America here in the States and Space in Canada). Entertainment Weekly spoke with Orphan Black creators John Fawcett and Graeme Manson to get the full scoop on what this image means and what else to expect in season 2.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Okay, so clearly Sarah and Rachel are still at odds a bit here.
JOHN FAWCETT: Yeah, I’d say so.
GRAEME MANSON: And It’s not easy to get a gun on Rachel.
EW: What else, if anything, can you tell us about this image here and what it means for season 2?
MANSON: Probably that if Rachel launched the first volley in this war, this is one of Sarah’s steps in this war.
FAWCETT: Our launching framework for season 2 is really the war between Sarah and Rachel.
EW: You guys just scratched the surface with what we saw with Rachel last season. She’s clearly not a clone we’re not rooting for at this point, nor are we really sympathetic toward her, as we became somewhat sympathetic to Helena over the course of season 1. Where are you planning to go with her in season 2?
FAWCETT: For us, using Helena as an example, it was very interesting to draw a character that began really as one thing — for example, a serial killer — and then through the course of a few episodes become able to add layers and add flesh to the point where you could understand her and be sympathetic to her. So, to me, that was about creating a really dynamic deep interesting character that wasn’t just a cartoon. And I think we feel the same about Rachel. I think you could probably tell from the end of season 1 that Rachel’s got a little bit of heavy to her. And I think what’s interesting to us is that we’re having fun creating a new character this season who isn’t just a heavy. There’s other aspects to her. And that’s been a really fun developing a new girl.
MANSON: No one is just who they seem on Orphan Black. That’s the most important thing. Maybe things get set up as kind of a cliché or as one thing, but we’re always trying to bend it and find the layers to keep it fresh and original.
FAWCETT: Even as a villain, Rachel is going to hold a lot of surprises for us. She’s been a really fun nemesis for Sarah.
EW: Season 1 on any show is all about introducing the story and the characters, and it’s essentially setting the table. And if you do it right, a lot people want to come sit down at that table. But now, in season 2 what do you do to keep them sitting there?
MANSON: Right off the bat we’ve really hit the ground running. We left a lot up in the air, so it’s been a lot of fun figuring out how and when and where those balls land and how they land in unexpected ways. As for Rachel, we did leave last season knowing that Rachel was a child of Neolution, therefore much connected to the origins of the experiment. So I think Rachel is going to help to open a window for us and we ’re going to begin to understand a lot more about the conspiracy.
FAWCETT: Plus, I also think one of the big things we’re going to have to deal with in season 2, which is finding its own twists and turns, is Cosima’s illness. And that is a very pressing bit of drama that is not just straight ahead. It’s got a lot of mystery to it. It’s got a lot of twists and turns to it and it is thematically a big part of season 2 also.
MANSON: It’s a genetic mystery. It’s a genetic biological mystery and it feeds into some of our body horror and it feeds into our science mystery.
EW: Body horror! Nice! Okay, so would it be safe to assume we will be seeing some new clones this season?
FAWCETT: I think of course it’s safe to assume that. We are really excited about doing that. We want to do it in a way that is unexpected. We want to do it at a time that’s unexpected. But it is obviously something that we talk about a lot. And it’s part of the fun of making Orphan Black and making a show about clones is that we can be having those discussions. We have some surprises in store.
MANSON: Yes, we do.
EW: What’s it like being in production on season 2 now that you have all these fans. I have to imagine it’s a bit different than season 1 when nobody knew who the hell you were or what you were doing. Have you had to take any more precautions in terms of worrying about people getting on set and stealing script pages or anything?
MANSON: We have much tighter protocols on our scripts and things like that.
FAWCETT: Yeah, we definitely had to get a little medieval with security in terms of scripts and sides and scenes for auditions.
MANSON: Our first audition scenes were up on Spoiler.com the same day we put out the casting call. We were like “Oh, I guess we better start cloaking these things or else we’re going to end giving away our secrets without telling anyone anything.”
FAWCETT: So we definitely had to get a little bit more cagey about the material and who had access to the material
EW: What’s it been like seeing people get so into your show not just during the run of season 1, but well after it when everyone starting binge watching over the summer and now into fall?
FAWCETT: Well, I think a good part of it is because it’s being aired internationally right now. It’s on England on BBC3. It’s beginning to air in France. There’s a lot of international territories that are starting to air it now, so I think the fan base is kind of been building from that point of view also which is really cool. It’s exciting right now because Graeme and I are in the position where we’ve actually seen the first three episodes [of season 2]. And until you are kind of sitting there looking at the final product, I mean we’re both still a little ‘Is this gonna work? Is this gonna be as great as we really want it to be?” And I think Graeme and I can both attest after seeing the first three episodes that…it’s f—ing great.
For more ‘Orphan Black’ scoop, follow Dalton on Twitter @DaltonRoss.In what's being heralded as one of the most significant underwater discoveries in history, the wreck of Christopher Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria, has been discovered lying at the bottom of the sea off the north coast of Haiti.
"All the geographical, underwater topography and archaeological evidence strongly suggests that this wreck is Columbus' famous flagship, the Santa Maria," said lead archaeological investigator Barry Clifford.
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This news is being reported as an exclusive by the UK's Independent.
To date, Clifford and his team have carried out non-invasive surveys of the supposed wreck, but the evidence gathered so far has been substantial. It's in the right location as described by Columbus in his diary as it relates to his fort. The ship sank off the northern coast of Haiti in 1492 shortly after Columbus's discovery of the New World. It was one of three ships to make the journey.
A Re-Examination Of Old Data
The identification was made possible by virtue of separate discoveries made by archaeologists in 2003, suggesting the likely location of Columbus's fort, which was built nearby. This information was used to work out where the wreck should be.
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The same team of archaeologists investigated the wreck over a decade ago, but they didn't know what they were looking at. The re-examination involved another look at the 2003 photographs, along with new reconnaissance dives at the site.
Historically Consistent
Indeed, all the evidence points to the wreck being the Santa Maria. The site is an exact match in terms of what we know about the underwater topography, while the local currents are consistent with what's known about the way the ship drifted onto a reef. What's more, the remains of the wreck, a pile of the ship's ballast, is consistent with a vessel the size of the Santa Maria.
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The remains of the Santa Maria (Brandon Clifford via The Independent).
Back in 1492, Columbus hired the ship and sailed in it from southern Spain's Atlantic coast in search of a new western route to Asia. Along with La Pinta and La Nina, Columbus reached the Bahamas after a 37-day journey.
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Image: 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
But 10 weeks later, with Columbus on board, the Santa Maria had to be abandoned after it drifted onto a reef during the night. Columbus began building a fort in a native village nearby. A week later, leaving many of his men behind, he used the remaining two vessels to sail back to Spain to report his discovery to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.
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Future Excavation
Another tantalizing clue was found in the 2003 photographs: a probable early cannon of exactly the type known to have been on board the vessel. But when the team returned to the site last month, many of the objects observed in the photographs had been looted by illicit raiders — including the cannon.
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A model of the Santa Maria ( Daderot ).
The researchers have informed the Haitian government of their discovery, along with their intentions to see that the site is fully protected and preserved.
"I am confident that a full excavation of the wreck will yield the first ever detailed marine archaeological evidence of Columbus' discovery of America," notes Clifford in the Independent. "Ideally, if excavations go well and depending on the state of preservation of any buried timber, it may ultimately be possible to lift any surviving remains of the vessel, fully conserve them and then put them on permanent public exhibition in a museum in Haiti," adding that, "I believe that, treated in this way, the wreck has the potential to play a major role in helping to further develop Haiti's tourism industry in the future."
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The investigation is being supported by the History Channel, which has secured the exclusive rights to produce a major television program on the subject.
Read the entire article at The Independent: "Exclusive: Found after 500 years, the wreck of Christopher Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria."
Top image: Alamy.
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AdvertisementJava EE Guardians Launch Web Site, Petition Oracle
The Java EE Guardians launched their public Web site last week and simultaneously posted a petition on the change.org Web site aimed at Oracle executives.
The original core group of volunteers committed to securing the continuing evolution of enterprise Java founded the formal organization in March with a Google Group and a Twitter handle (@javaee_guardians). But the Web site provides what founding member Reza Rahman calls "the essential public face of our movement."
"It makes us public in a way that the Google Group and Twitter account do not," Rahman told me in an e-mail. "It basically gives our movement identity, structure and presence. It says, we are here, we are serious and we are persistent."
The Web site includes a home page that explains the group's purpose, an "Evidence" page that makes their case that Oracle is neglecting Java EE, a page that tracks the group's activities, and one that lists its growing membership, which currently includes James Gosling (the Father of Java) and Java User Groups from all over the world.
The Web site also links to the change.org petition page, which Rahman said the Guardians posted to provide a wider range of people who might be interested in this issue with a place to take some action. "It's a way to empower average people and engage them with our movement," he said.
The title of the petition reads: "Tell Oracle to Move Forward Java EE as a Critical Part of the Global IT Industry," and it's directed specifically at Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison, co-CEOs Safra Catz and Mark Hurd, president of Product Development Thomas Kurian, EVP of Fusion Middleware Development Inderjeet Singh, and Group VP of the Microservices-Cloud group Anil Gaur.
The document lays out the case again that "Java EE is incredibly important to the long term health of the entire Java ecosystem," and that "Oracle is conspicuously neglecting" it. And it asks visitors to the site to sign up to petition Oracle to do three things:
Clarify how it intends to preserve the best interests of the Java, Java EE, and servers-side computing ecosystems.
Commit to delivering Java EE 8 in time with a reasonable feature set that satisfies the needs of the community and the industry.
Effectively cooperate with the community and other vendors to either accept contributions or transfer ownership of Java EE 8 work.
"As committed as we are," the document states, "we still need Oracle to cooperate with us as a responsible, community focused steward to move Java EE forward."
Shortly after the Web site and petition went up, I chatted via e-mail with one of my favorite industry watchers about the Java EE Guardians and their efforts. Forrester principal analyst Jeffrey S. Hammond believes that they are sincere in their efforts, but also that, despite those efforts, the future of Java EE is uncertain.
"I take them at their word that they are concerned about the pace of Java innovation," Hammond said, "especially Java EE. For years it was a pretty basic choice in the dev world: Java or.NET. But the reality these days is that there are more options than ever when it comes to building modern systems, including full-stack JavaScript, PHP, Python, Go, Ruby and more. If a framework like Java EE doesn't adapt to the needs of modern developers, those who've built their careers on it have a different choice: shift gears, accept becoming legacy, or try to reinvigorate the technology. My sense is these folks are pursuing option three."
What about the charge that Oracle is neglecting enterprise Java?
"We see evidence that Oracle is investing in both its cloud capabilities and in JavaScript runtimes, and it's possible some of this is taking away from or slowing down the standards process," Hammond said. "That said... it's not clear whether the status quo with Java EE is even preservable any more. Hopefully [the Guardians'] genuine concerns will elicit a positive response, but I think I'd be inclined to also consider other alternatives in the event that Oracle continues its benign neglect."DENVER (CBS4) – A man from Aurora says he was racially profiled while waiting to pick up a friend at an apartment in Denver.
The incident led to a man’s arrest and now a federal civil rights lawsuit against Denver and three officers.
“I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was parked. In my vehicle waiting for a friend to come down,” said Deon Jones. “I know I don’t have any warrants, I don’t have any reason for them to even be approaching me. That’s why I was ready to give them my license and insurance for them to do whatever they needed to do.”
The incident was captured on multiple officers’ body cameras around 2 a.m. on April 26, 2016. The encounter is roughly four minutes long and ended with Jones in handcuffs.
His charges for not obeying a lawful order and drug possession were later dismissed. Jones and his attorney say the Denver police were racially profiling as they ran license plates searching for criminals.
At one point during the video an officer can be heard saying, “This car is registered out of Aurora so he doesn’t belong here.”
“In order to detain someone they need reasonable suspicion a crime has been committed,” said David Lane, the attorney representing Jones. “They pull him out of the car illegally, they search him illegally, they search his car illegally. They have no reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe he’s done anything wrong other than sitting in his car.”
“When they opened my vehicle that really shocked me and I grabbed the door back. I was like, ‘Man are they going to kill me because I didn’t get out of the vehicle?’ What’s really going on?”
The lawsuit is filed against the City and County of Denver and three officers. The city attorney’s office has not yet responded to CBS4’s request for comment.
Jones says he’s hoping the lawsuit will bring better training for Denver officers.
“I was able to see all the violations,” Jones said after seeing the body camera videos. “You can’t do this; you can’t keep violating |
s. In Detroit, for instance, each homicide investigator still expects to "catch" a dozen cases a year — well above the four or five that's considered the national standard.
And each case takes a lot of man-hours as it is. On a freezing afternoon in late February, about 10 Detroit police officers have spent an hour on a fruitless search of a house for a murder weapon — even though investigators don't expect to find the gun there.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Martin Kaste/NPR Martin Kaste/NPR
"It's one of those T's you gotta cross," says Sgt. Brian Bowser. He says the suspects are already in custody and talking, so they don't need the weapon to prove the case. But they have no choice but to take these steps. "When we go to trial, they're going to say, 'Well, if you knew the weapon was there, did you search that residence?' And now we can say, 'Yeah, we searched it.' "
In the modern legal system, even "easy" homicide cases are complex, bureaucratic tasks. In Detroit, a city with one of the worst murder rates in the country, these investigators admit to feeling intimidated by the pressure to keep up.
Bowser's squad uses a whiteboard to track its cases' clearance status. Open cases are written in green; cleared cases, in red. But investigators can be superstitious when it comes time to declare a case cleared. Bowser's partner, James Kraszewski, won't even pick up the red marker.
"I will not change my own color," he says. "I feel if I change my own color, my next one, I will not be able to change."
So who changes the marker color on Kraszewski's cases? "Whoever wants to do it for me," he says, as his partner laughs.I consider Salon to be among the worst offenders of the new pseudo-journalism, and I have long maintained a personal boycott of the website. I ask my publishers to ignore any requests from its editors for interviews or for review copies of my books. And on the rare occasions that Salon publishes good work—the articles of Jeffrey Tayler stand out—I decline to forward the links on social media. My reason is simple: Despite the work of a few blameless writers, Salon has become a cesspool of lies and moral confusion.
However, in response to the repeated requests of one Salon writer, Sean Illing, I decided to make an exception. I agreed to do an interview with Illing under two conditions: 1) I would get final approval of all the words attributed to me; 2) I could say whatever I wanted about Salon. These conditions were agreed to, and I spent several hours producing the following exchange by phone and email.
In the end, Salon published a bowdlerized version of my interview, cutting out the parts that were critical of the website. I don’t blame Illing for this. He was a pleasure to correspond with and appears to have made his best effort to get the whole text of our conversation published. And I’m actually happy that his editors decided to help make my case for me by further demonstrating their lack of integrity. Salon is irredeemable. I urge the few talented writers left there to flee a sinking ship.
Salon would have its readers believe the following:
[Harris’s] remarks were edited merely for clarity and length. No substantive changes were made to the text beyond those considerations.
I’ve published my full remarks below. The section that Salon deleted is highlighted in blue.
—SH
* * *
The short answer is that I think the problems we are seeing throughout the Muslim world—jihadism, sectarian conflict, and all the attendant talk of Muslim “humiliation”—are almost entirely religious. And wherever rational grievances do exist, they are invariably viewed, and become magnified, through a religious lens. The truth is that a belief in specific religious doctrines is sufficient to produce all the violence, intolerance, and backwardness we see in the Muslim world.
The abysmal treatment of women, the hostility to free speech, the daily bloodletting between Sunni and Shia—these things have absolutely nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy or the founding of Israel. And, contrary to the assertions of many regressive Leftists and Islamist apologists, violent jihad is not a product of colonialism or the 20th century. The tactic of suicide bombing is relatively new, of course, as is the spread of jihadist ideology on social media, but if you had stood at the gates of Vienna in 1683, you could have not helped but notice the civilizational problem of jihad.
Yes, politics and ordinary grievances enter into many of these recent conflicts. It isn’t difficult to see why a person who has lost his or her family in an errant drone strike might hate America, and there is no question that a desire for revenge transcends religion or culture. But the truth is that a sincere belief in the metaphysics of martyrdom can turn an ordinary person into a dangerous religious maniac. And only Islam preaches this doctrine as one of its central tenets.
There are obviously regressive tendencies in all religions, particularly Christianity, which is not to say Christianity and Islam are equivalent. But the question is: If there are external, non-doctrinal factors that have shaped Islam and the Muslim world, how should Western critics incorporate that into their critiques of Islam as such?
Well, the developed world has a responsibility to act with the welfare of humanity in mind. So, to the degree that the liberal critique of American power holds any truth, we should address these injustices and do our best not to manufacture new ones. We are living in a global civilization, with economic, environmental, and political concerns that transcend national boundaries. I’m not saying that we’ll have a world government anytime soon, but we need to do our best to rectify the worst disparities of wealth, health, and education globally, so that everyone can enjoy a minimum standard of well-being.
So, I agree that the West bears a disproportionate responsibility to help the world, given our relative wealth and power. And I certainly can’t argue that we’ve done the best job of this. But that doesn’t mean we are responsible for the global death cult of jihadism. We are confronting people, in dozens of countries, who despise more or less everything that we value, and are right to value—including free speech, open societies, gender equality, scientific rationality, and more or less everything else about civilization that is worth preserving. And the reasons why they hate these things are almost entirely religious.
You can make the list of U.S. crimes and missteps as long as you want, but it still doesn’t explain ISIS. The fact that we invaded Iraq is merely a background condition for a local explosion of jihadist triumphalism and horror—one that is fully explained by a commitment to a specific interpretation of Islamic scripture. Unfortunately, these same ideas are currently addling the brains of people throughout the world who have no terrestrial grievances whatsoever. Medical students and engineers, who are second- and third-generation British citizens, have joined ISIS. There is nothing about Western foreign policy, global capitalism, or white privilege that explains this.
Many would push back and say much of that is true but there’s also the problem of antecedent causes. After World War I, for example, countries like Britain and France and Russia constructed the modern Middle East, for reasons of self-interest and without concerns for sectarian rivalries. These agreements prepared the way for much of the political chaos we’ve seen since. In Iraq, for instance, where ISIS was born, the British imposed a Hashimite monarchy which marked the boundaries of the country irrespective of ethnic and religious tensions. We can’t sidestep this history when talking about these problems today; it’s only part of the story but it absolutely matters. Do you agree?
But the religious lunacy and tribalism was already in place—and that is why the West’s careless partitioning of the region was so problematic. I agree that the history of colonialism isn’t pretty. But the example you raise just proves my point. In fact, this practically became a science experiment that dissected out the crucial variable of religion. There are (or were) Christians living in all these beleaguered countries. How many Christian suicide bombers have there been? Where are the Pakistani, Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian, and Palestinian Christians who are blowing themselves up in crowds of noncombatants? Have there been any? I’m guessing there must have been a few, but the Muslim supply of such people is apparently inexhaustible. In every case, we’re talking about the same people, speaking same language, living in the same places, enduring the same material deprivation. In fact, the Christians of the Middle East have it worse. They’ve not only suffered the legacy of colonialism, they’ve been hounded out of their countries and often killed outright by their Muslim neighbors—and they still haven’t organized themselves into a death cult. What’s the difference that makes the difference? Religion.
We can also look outside the Muslim world to see that mere injustice and inequality rarely produce such destructive behavior. Many countries in Latin America have legitimate grievances against the U.S. Where are the Guatemalan suicide bombers? Where are the Cherokee suicide bombers, for that matter? If oppression were enough, the Tibetans should have been practicing suicidal terrorism against the Chinese for decades. Instead, they practice self-immolation, for reasons that are totally understandable within the context of their own religious beliefs. Again, specific beliefs matter, and we deny this at our peril. If the behavior of Muslim suicide bombers should tell us anything, it’s that certain people really do believe in martyrdom. Let me be very clear about this: I’m not talking about all (or even most) Muslims—I’m talking about jihadists. But all jihadists are Muslim. If even 1 percent of the world’s Muslims are potential jihadists, we have a terrible problem on our hands. I’m not sure how we deal with 16 million aspiring martyrs—but lying to ourselves about the nature of the problem doesn’t seem like the best strategy.
A key difference I see is that Islam is bound up with a civilization and a culture in way that Christianity isn’t, or isn’t any longer. The enlightenment project, the modern scientific revolution – these things prepared the way for secular politics in the West; they made possible Jefferson’s wall. And I don’t think there’s a “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” equivalent in Islam – though perhaps I am mistaken. How significant is this difference and do you think it matters in terms of our expectations and our approach to dealing with the Muslim world?
Yes, these are points I’ve often made. Islam hasn’t suffered the same collisions with secularism and science that Christianity has. And there are also doctrinal differences that make it more impervious to these collisions than Christianity and Judaism were. Unfortunately, the Qur’an doesn’t contain anything like that line from Matthew, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” To the contrary, it is difficult to find an Islamic rationale for truly separating religion and politics. Finding a durable basis for such a separation is one of the great challenges of our age, and that’s why I support reformers like Maajid Nawaz, who is attempting to do just that. As you know, he and I have written a book together, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue. The whole point of the book is to find a path forward, toward Islamic secularism and liberal reform. But the thing that has to be admitted up front, is that Islam presents some unique challenges in this regard.
You’ve been critical of liberal commentators like Glenn Greenwald, Reza Aslan and Nicholas Kristof. Do you not take any of their points, especially as it relates to blanket condemnations of Islam?
Unfortunately, these people are consistently on the wrong side of the issues. For instance, each of these men, with varying degrees of malice and stupidity, has publicly attacked Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a bigot. And yet Ayaan is a pure victim of Islamic theocracy. She is also a humanist hero who fully recapitulated the Enlightenment project, having been given almost no intellectual tools with which to do it.
Just think of it: Here is a woman who was raised in a condition of medieval theocracy in Somalia and subjected to FGM. Sensing that there was more to life than this, she fled an arranged marriage, emigrated to Holland, learned Dutch, got an education, and became a member of Parliament—only to see her colleague Theo Van Gogh killed in the street by a jihadist. To this day, these barbarians threaten her wherever she goes. And people like Greenwald, Aslan, and Kristof attack her for the stridency with which she criticizes the misogyny and intolerance of free thought that are endemic to Islam. Not only do they get the ethics of the situation absolutely wrong, they make her life more dangerous in the process. It is an absolute scandal.
These people are part of what Maajid Nawaz has termed the “regressive Left”—pseudo-liberals who are so blinded by identity politics that they reliably take the side of a backward mob over one of its victims. Rather than protect individual women, apostates, intellectuals, cartoonists, novelists, and true liberals from the intolerance of religious imbeciles, they protect these theocrats from criticism.
The profundity of this moral blindness seems to have achieved an almost crystalline form in the person of Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald is a gay, Jewish atheist who would be murdered three times over in scores of Muslim communities for reasons that are unambiguously religious. And yet, he considers any focus on this particular brand of theocracy—even by someone who has suffered under its shadow as much as Ayaan has—to be a sign of malice toward innocent people. When cartoonists get butchered in Paris to shouts of “We have avenged the Prophet!” Greenwald races to his keyboard to castigate the dead, liberal cartoonists for their (nonexistent) bigotry. He allies himself with a group like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and works tirelessly to blur the line between legitimate civil rights concerns and theocratic bullying. These are the people who get Ayaan blacklisted from speaking at universities, and Greenwald has publicly stated that there is no group he is prouder to have collaborated with.
According to Greenwald and the rest of the regressive Left, one can criticize religion in general, but any special focus on Islam must be motivated by bigotry or “Islamophobia.” And on that assumption, many of these people think it’s fair to slander and demonize anyone who does focus on Islam—even a true Muslim reformer like Maajid Nawaz. Maajid is a former Islamist, who now runs a counter-extremist think tank in the UK. And yet for merely entering into a dialogue with me about the prospects of spreading secular, liberal values in the Muslim world, he was branded a “native informant” and a “porch monkey” by Greenwald’s colleague at The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain, and a “lapdog” by Reza Aslan’s employee, Nathan Lean. These people are simply desperate to shut down dialogue on what is fast becoming the most important political and moral question of our time. Everything they do in this area is dishonest and destructive.
So, no, I don’t take any of their points to heart. And contrary to what you imply in your question, I don’t offer any “blanket condemnations” of anything or anyone. I speak about the specific consequences of specific ideas, in so far as they are believed. If 68 percent of British Muslims believe that anyone who “insults Islam” should be prosecuted and punished—then when criticizing the disastrous consequences of that idea for the U.K., I’m talking about those 68 percent. If 30 percent want to live under shari’ah, then I’m talking about precisely those people in that context. These are real poll numbers, by the way, and they’re very troubling.
When talking about America’s role in the world, you’ve used the phrase “well-intentioned giant.” Did you coin that or were you borrowing it? And do you really believe that America’s intentions in the world are especially noble?
No, I was simply commenting on the work of Arundhati Roy, who coined that phrase to disparage U.S. foreign policy. In certain respects, I believe we are a well-intentioned giant—guilty of all the lumbering ineptitude that the image implies.
Do you think that’s true because there’s a difference in terms of the intentions and goals that America pursues in the world, relative to other nation-states? And how might our intentions and goals look to people on the receiving end of our foreign policies?
I’m glad you asked, because many people appear totally confused about this, especially on the Left. Intentions are hugely important. In many cases, intention is the only thing that differentiates a truly evil person (or regime) from one who is a mere victim of circumstance. A surgeon performing an appendectomy is not the same as Jack the Ripper just because he’s cutting another person with a knife—and this remains true even if the patient dies. Needless to say, we make such distinctions in our criminal justice system all the time. The difference between first-degree murder, manslaughter, and a tragic accident is largely a matter of what the defendant intended to do and why.
I understand the importance of intention in that context, but it’s more complicated when you apply that logic to something like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which I know you’ve written about. You’ve argued that there’s a discernible difference in intentions here. But this conflict, like many others in the world, is asymmetrical. One side has more refined and advanced methods of killing and certain luxuries that the other side doesn’t, and you might say that one side is extreme by virtue of their circumstances. I’m not interested in drawing a moral equivalence. But I am asking if you think these distinctions matter when you’re talking about intentions and goals and tactics in a geopolitical context?
Generally speaking, I think we have to listen carefully to what people say they want out of life and take these declarations at face value. And when they say they want to go over to the next valley and murder every man, woman, and child, we should believe them. Given the fact that human beings have repeatedly shown themselves capable of genocide, it doesn’t take an especially morbid imagination to accept that people who say they want to commit genocide will do so, if given the chance. In the case of Hamas, we have an avowedly genocidal organization (just read its charter) that was democratically elected. And this occurred in the context of a wider culture that has nursed a genocidal hatred of Jews for generations—and expressed this hatred in everything from its scripture to its textbooks. I’m not saying that the Palestinians don’t have any rational grievances against Israel. Of course they do. But their culture has also been poisoned by religious hatred. And this same hatred exists throughout the Muslim world. Ayaan Hirsi Ali remembers being instructed as a teenager in Somalia to pray for the destruction of the Jews. Needless to say, neither she nor her teachers had ever met a Jew. In fact, they had very likely never met anyone who had ever met a Jew. And yet this annihilationist hatred was still central to their worldview.
Sure, but there are genocidal instincts and commands strewn through the Christian tradition too. They just happen not to be operative at this moment in time.
Yes—and they are not operative for historical and theological reasons that we can understand. We must find some way recapitulate these changes in an Islamic context.
Returning to your original question, we know that the Israelis aren’t genocidal because it is well within their power to commit genocide today, and they’re not doing it. That’s a very important difference. Given what is being said on the Palestinian side, and given the atrocities they’ve perpetrated with their limited means, we have every reason to believe that if the power balance were reversed, and the Israelis were an impoverished minority living within and beside a well-armed Palestinian state, we would see a very different outcome.
To be fair, though, that’s a counterfactual and we don’t really know what would happen if that were the case, if in fact it was Jewish settlements and neighborhoods that were being oppressed and occupied and backed by major powers for decades. It’s hard to know what people will do when they lack the luxury of options, when moderation fails.
It is a counterfactual, but recall what I said about the Palestinian Christians, Tibetans, Native Americans, and so forth. Not every oppressed group readily becomes a death cult. Not every religious ideology can spawn ISIS. There is no reason for us to pretend that all belief systems are the same.
The reality is that the Israelis, for all their faults, have been more restrained in their use of force than the U.S. has—if for no other reason than that they are more vulnerable to world opinion. Every Palestinian child the IDF kills inches Israel ever closer to the brink of exile from the community of nations. Thus, when four children are blown up on a beach in Gaza by an Israeli missile, one thing should be absolutely clear: The missile went astray. Children were not the target because, even by the most self-interested and cynical calculus, killing Palestinian children is disastrous for Israel. Intentions matter—not to the dead children, obviously, or to their grieving parents—because intentions are the only guide to what a person or nation will do next. What people intend to do, the story they tell themselves and others about why they are pursuing specific goals, is the best indication of what they will do if they acquire the power to do it. The Israelis currently have the power to kill as many Palestinian children as they want. The fact that they kill so few, amid circumstances that have all the hallmarks of “collateral damage,” tells us something about them. The fact that the Taliban enters a school in Peshawar and methodically butchers 132 kids, after forcing them to watch their teacher being burned alive, tells us something about them.
The regressive Left is blind to these distinctions. For instance, we recently bombed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, killing 22 doctors, nurses, and patients. This was an utter tragedy—for the bombed, obviously, but also for U.S. foreign policy. It was obviously a mistake (on some level), because bombing this hospital was totally against our interests. The details are still unclear. Perhaps it will prove be a case of criminal negligence. But, judging from my Twitter feed, fans of Noam Chomsky reacted as if President Obama had called a meeting and declared his intention to destroy one of the most beloved charities on earth by murdering its staff en masse.
We are better than our enemies. And the horror is that even such a simple statement of moral fact will be derided as wartime propaganda by many of our readers. Indeed, many will think that even using a term like “enemy” in this (or any) context is a kind of jingoistic outburst. These people take civilization for granted—which is a luxury we can’t always afford. As impossible as it may be to believe, many of our readers think that we are worse than the jihadists. I am long past imagining that there is anything I can say to rectify this sort of moral confusion. (But here goes…)
Simply recall who we’re fighting—groups like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. These people kill doctors, aid workers, and journalists on purpose. They are telling us with every breath how they want the world to be. They are not saying, “Sorry guys, we just don’t have the weapons you have, and so we’re obliged to use asymmetric, seemingly barbaric tactics like burning people alive in cages, taking sex slaves, and crucifying children. However, all this savagery doesn’t reflect how we want to live at all. Sorry for shooting Malala in the head. We won’t behave like that once we build the Caliphate.”
On the contrary, the Taliban still intends to kill Malala, and they have proudly told us so. And the ghoulish videos we see streaming out of ISIS are not their My Lai massacre. They’re not some moral error these people are struggling to correct. They reflect a sustained and conscious effort to put their best foot forward to the rest of the Muslim community. This behavior, which would otherwise be impossible to understand, makes perfect sense given their interpretation of Islam. And that’s the problem.
What do you say to someone like Reza Aslan, who has a legitimate point when he argues that religions don’t promote peace or violence—people do. Do you think it’s true that, fundamentally, religions are justificatory props and that it’s more concrete or existential grievances that are really animating behavior?
Interestingly, Maajid Nawaz has made that the same statement—“Islam isn’t a religion of peace or a religion of war; it’s a religion.” But, as you can tell from my very different relationships with Aslan and Nawaz, there are differences in how they approach this topic. Aslan uses this statement to shut down any discussion of Islam per se and to deny, against all evidence, that there is any connection between certain of its doctrines and the specific forms of violence and intolerance we see in the Muslim world. Aslan has a postmodernist view of religion. According to him, religions don’t make any substantive claims about the nature of reality. They’re just creative ways of organizing people’s emotions, through architecture, art, ritual, and so forth. Bad people will do bad things, and good people will do good things, but religious beliefs do no real work in the world.
This is just post-modernist nonsense. Everything Aslan says stands in stark contradiction to the obvious fact that many people believe preposterous and divisive doctrines that come straight out of scripture—and these beliefs affect their behavior. Many people believe that changing one’s religion is wrong, even a killing offense. Many believe that Jesus will be returning to Earth to raise the dead and that he disapproves of masturbation in the meantime. Many believe in past and future lives and that you can be reborn in this world as an animal. These are not ideas that people are bringing to their holy books.
There is a kernel of truth in Aslan’s statement—but it doesn’t have the consequences he alleges. It’s true that people also take their values to their texts and purport to discover what they already value there. This is especially true of moderates and those who are in the process of losing their faith. When you talk to moderate Christians or Jews and ask them how they read the bible, you find yourself in the presence of people who are using their values to interpret (and effectively edit) their scripture. They believe in human rights and secular tolerance, and they’re making a heroic effort to ignore the barbarism in the Old Testament and to find the pearls of wisdom that can be salvaged. They ignore all the crazy prophecies about the end of the world. Clearly, their core values have come from a larger cultural conversation, and they are doing their best to find support for those values in their faith tradition. It’s not an especially honest endeavor, but it’s not all that harmful either.
When we’re talking about fundamentalists, however—those who read their religious books more or less literally—then we really are talking about pulling values and behavioral commitments directly out of the text. Here you find people thinking and saying and doing things that they would never endorse otherwise. It’s not an accident that millions of Muslims shun alcohol and bacon. It’s not an accident that they make pilgrimage to Mecca. It’s not an accident that they pray five times a day. And it’s not an accident that many of them despise Jews as the spawn of apes and pigs, treat women as second-class citizens, and answer the call to jihad. These beliefs and practices come right out of scripture.
Aslan or Greenwald are more than capable of defending themselves, but there are plenty of well-intentioned liberals, people who genuinely care about liberal values, who are looking for ways to talk honestly about illiberalism in the Muslim world or about theocratic encroachments on free societies elsewhere, but they want to do so without veering into xenophobia and bigotry. How do you suggest they do that?
It’s actually very easy. I haven’t veered into xenophobia and bigotry—unless you believe the lies that Aslan and Greenwald tell about me. You simply have to differentiate criticism of ideas from a hatred and intolerance of people. That is trivially easy to do. Regressive Leftists and theocrats pretend that it is difficult. They pretend that anyone who worries more about Islam than about the Anglican Communion must be a racist. This is a dangerous, divisive, demeaning lie. And it is fast becoming an article of faith on the Left.
If racism and bigotry were my underlying motive, explain my fondness for the spiritual aspects of the Islamic tradition. Or explain the fact that I have an even greater fondness for those of Buddhism and Hinduism, and often make invidious comparisons between these religions and Islam (are most Buddhists and Hindus white like me?). Or explain my friendships with current and former Muslims who I do everything in my power to defend from slander and hate. People like Maajid Nawaz, Asra Nomani, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Or explain the solidarity I feel with freethinkers like Sarah Haider, Ali A. Rizvi, Faisal Saeed al Mutar, Ibn Warraq, and all the other Muslim and ex-Muslim authors, bloggers, activists, and reformers whose names I don’t even recall. I support these people unconditionally. If I’m a bigot, I’m one of the most confused bigots who ever lived.
The crucial irony to notice here is that it’s people like Greenwald and Aslan who have abandoned the most vulnerable Muslims to theocracy and intolerance. This is what Maajid Nawaz calls the problem of “the minorities within the minorities”—the women, gays, intellectuals, apostates, within the Muslim world who can’t even speak freely for fear of being murdered by their neighbors. I am explicitly making common cause with these people whenever I criticize the Islamic doctrines that are putting their lives in jeopardy.
One doesn’t have to be a bigot to see shari’ah as a problem. In fact, it’s impossible to be a true liberal without seeing shari’ah as a problem. It’s impossible to be a true liberal and not acknowledge that one has to be very unlucky indeed to born a girl in almost any Muslim-majority country. And this is an injustice that liberals should be the first to care about. Just because you were born a woman in Afghanistan, you shouldn’t be condemned to live like a slave. There’s not a shred of bigotry behind observations of this kind. On the contrary, it’s the bigotry of low expectations that allows white, privileged secularists to imagine that a majority of woman and girls forced to wear the veil probably enjoy it.
[Note: Salon deleted the following section from the interview.]
As long as we’re talking about the regressive Left, it would be remiss of me not to point out how culpable Salon is for giving it a voice. The problem is not limited to the political correctness and masochism I’ve been speaking about—it’s also the practice of outright deception to defame Islam’s critics. To give you one example, I once wrote an article about Islamist violence in which I spoke in glowing terms about Malala Yousafzai. I literally said nothing but good things about her. I claimed that she is the best thing to come out of the Muslim world in a thousand years. I said she is extraordinarily brave and eloquent and doing what millions of Muslim men and women are too terrified to do, which is to stand up to forces of theocracy in her own society. I also said that though she hadn’t won the Nobel Prize that year, she absolutely deserved it—and deserved it far more than some of its recent recipients had. And in response to this encomium, Salon published a piece by the lunatic Murtaza Hussain entitled, “Sam Harris Slurs Malala,” which subjected my views to the same defamatory and dishonest treatment that I’ve come to expect from him. And this sort of thing has been done to me a dozen times on your website. And yet Salon purports to be a forum for the civil discussion of important ideas.
Most readers simply don’t understand how this game is played. If they read an article which states that Sam Harris is a racist, genocidal, xenophobic, pro-torture goon who supported the Iraq war—all of which has been alleged about me in Salon—well, then, it’s assumed that some journalists who work for the website under proper editorial control have actually looked into the matter and feel that they are on firm enough ground to legally say such things. There’s a real confusion about what journalism has become, and I can assure you that very few people realize that much of what appears on your website is produced by malicious freaks who are just blogging in their underpants.
I’m not saying that everything that Salon publishes is on the same level, and I have nothing bad to say about what you’ve written, Sean. But there is an enormous difference between honest criticism and defamatory lies. If I say that Malala is a total hero who deserves a Nobel Prize, and Salon titles its article “Sam Harris Slurs Malala,” that’s tabloid-level dishonesty. It’s worse, in fact, because when one reads about what a nanny said about Brad and Angelina in a tabloid, one knows that such gossip stands a good chance of not being true. Salon purports to be representing consequential ideas fairly, and yet it does this sort of thing more often than any website I can think of. The latest piece on me was titled “Sam Harris’ dangerous new idiocy: Incoherent, Islamophobic and simply immoral.” I don’t think I’m being thin-skinned in detecting an uncharitable editorial position being taken there. Salon is telling the world that I’m a dangerous, immoral, Islamophobic idiot. And worse, the contents of these articles invariably misrepresent my actual views. This problem isn’t remedied by merely publishing this conversation.
[Of course, Salon didn’t actually publish that part of the conversation.]
I’d like to pivot away from politics and talk about your views on spirituality and atheism, which are unique among the so-called New Atheists. In a few articles I’ve written, I’ve tried to draw an existential distinction between truth and meaning, and I was pummeled by people like Jerry Coyne, who called me a confused apologist. On almost every relevant question concerning science and religion, I agree with you and Coyne, but I’ve argued that atheists need to think more about the existential function of religion, which means thinking about religion as more than a set of beliefs—even though beliefs are obviously important. I don’t think we should tolerate untruths, particularly dangerous untruths, because they give meaning and shape to people’s lives, but I do think we’re missing something if we consider religion only in empirical terms. Am I wrong?
When it’s generically stated like that, it’s easy to agree. But we shouldn’t lie about the zero-sum contest between reason and faith—and, therefore, between science and religion. Religious people do make claims about the nature of reality on the basis of their faith, and these claims conflict with both the methods and conclusions of science. If you believe that the historical Jesus was born of a virgin, resurrected, and will be coming back to Earth, you are a Christian. Indeed, it would be controversial to call oneself a Christian without believing these things. But each of these claims rests on terrible evidence and stands in contradiction to most of what we now know about the world. The odds are overwhelming that Jesus was neither born of a virgin, nor resurrected. And he didn’t ascend to some place in the sky where he could abide for thousands of years, in a form that leaves him free to use his powers of telepathy to eavesdrop upon the private thoughts of billions of people. Nor will he return from on high like a superhero, flying without the aid of technology, or magically raise his followers to meet him in the stratosphere for the Rapture. All of these expectations—which most Christians harbor in one form or another—entail claims about biology, history, physics, and the nature of the human mind, that defy the centuries of intellectual progress we’ve made on these topics. To believe any of these things is to ignore one’s commonsense and a dozen specific sciences at the same moment.
Of course, we can pretend that none of this is happening and that science and religion represent “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould infamously said. But this is a lie. And it’s a lie that has many unhappy consequences. Ironically, one of the consequences, which I have focused on more than my atheist colleagues have, is that it bars the door to rational and modern approaches to getting what religious people claim to want out of life. We can’t develop truly rational and nonsectarian approaches to spirituality, for instance, if every generation is taught that faith in the divine origin of scripture must be preserved at any cost.
I’ve written and spoken a fair amount on these topics, because I share the sense that there really is something that religious people are right to want out of life and fear to lose under the glare of scientific rationality. It’s understandable that they’re afraid to lose an objective foundation for morality, because many overeducated people will tell you that morality is a fiction—we just make it up to summarize apish preferences that were etched into our brains through evolution. Notions of good and evil have no grounding in truth, because they are just culturally derived ways of talking about emotions like shame and disgust. Thus, to say that something is “good” is not to say anything about reality. As I argued in The Moral Landscape and elsewhere, I think this is utterly false. There are perfectly rational ways to think about moral truth.
Religious people are also right to worry that many scientists and secularists believe that spiritual experience is synonymous with psychopathology or conscious fraud. Again, this is untrue. But if one hopes to save the baby in the bathwater of religion, one mustn’t ignore the fact that our world has been dangerously riven by divisive nonsense, simply because most people were told, since the moment they could speak, that one of their books was written by the Creator of the universe.
I agree that most of the claims religions make about the world are empirically untrue. One of the things I appreciate about your work on this subject is that it really wrestles with some of these existential questions, certainly more than other New Atheist writers – I’m thinking here of your book, Waking Up. But I wonder what you’d say to non-literalist believers, people who might see God not as an empirical claim about reality or history but rather as a motive force or a bridge to self-transcendence, something that links the individual to a tradition or a community. How can atheists deal more with this aspect of religion, which is deep, universal and profound?
I doubt that |
would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone's physical possession."
'Troubling Precedent'
Apple believes that the government is asking the company to Apple to hack its own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect its customers and make users less safe.
Apple is challenging the FBI and has now drawn support from both Google and WhatsApp, as well as praise from Snowden who revealed the mass surveillance that put companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft under pressure to confess to what they knew of the mass surveillance.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai responded Thursday in a series of tweets, saying:
— sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) February 17, 2016 4/5 But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent — sundarpichai (@sundarpichai) February 17, 2016
WhatsApp founder Jan Koum responded by saying:
"I have always admired Tim Cook for his stance on privacy and Apple's efforts to protect user data and couldn't agree more with everything said in their Customer Letter today. We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set. Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake."Liberian Stanley Gaye of the Liberian Community Association of Dallas-Fort Worth—despite the lack of a cowboy hat, Mr. Gaye is a “Texas Man”
It’s an ill epidemic, apparently, that blows nobody any good: How the Ebola case gives Rick Perry a second chance to make a first impression, by Chris Cillizza, Washington Post, October 2, 2014. This might be a problem—VDARE.com has pointed out that the Texas governor and possible boob bait presidential candidate is still all hat, no cattle on immigration despite his grandstanding symbolic deployment of the Texas National Guard on the border—but in fact Perry’s comments on Ebola show his fatal trademark combination of big talk, Establishment conventional wisdom and immigration ignorance.
Thus Perry said on Wednesday:“Rest assured that our system is working as it should. Professionals on every level on the chain of command know what to do to minimize this potential risk to the people of Texas and of this country.”
But a day later, it materializes that Possible Ebola contacts now up to 80 [By Bill Hanna, Star-Telegram.com, October 02, 2014] and the New York Times reports: Delay in Dallas Ebola Cleanup as Workers Balk at Task [by Kevin Sack and Marc Santora, Oct. 2, 2014).
Still, with Rick Perry and the Obama Administration on top of things, what could possibly go wrong?
Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian individual with Ebola, arrived in the U.S. on September 20th, after having had contact with an Ebola patient in Liberia four days earlier and allegedly lying about it to officials (duh!). [Liberia says Dallas Ebola patient lied on exit documents, by Doug Stanlin, USA Today, October 2, 2014]
So why was Duncan in Dallas anyway? To visit relatives. Did you not know there is a sizable Liberian community in Dallas? The Dallas Morning News [Liberians in Dallas area grapple with Ebola fears, October 1, 2014] even mentions the Mandingo Association of Texas—“an organization that brings together members of the Mandingo tribe from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.”
Why are we still bringing in people from an epidemic zone—apparently without scrutiny?
I realize we can’t blame Rick Perry for all of this—immigration policy, as we all know, is a Federal prerogative, unless you are a sanctuary city—but of course he completely failed to point out that Ebola is a threat to the U.S. because of lax immigration and refugee policies. And this parallels Perry’s attitude toward our southern border—swagger, talk big, but don’t do what is really necessary.
I’ve personally heard Texas Governor Rick Perry speak twice. I was called up by my Texas National Guard unit to go to Iraq and Perry spoke at our big going-away ceremony. Then on our return, we had a welcome-back ceremony, at which he also spoke. Thanks, Governor Perry!
Superficially, Perry has an appealing style, coming across as a real straight-talking Texas conservative who isn’t afraid to defy Washington. And this certainly ticks off liberals.
But look at Perry’s statement in response to the Oklahoma beheading perpetrated by Alton Nolen.
According to Politico,
Rick Perry said on Monday [September 29] that the Obama administration will have to address the beheading of an Oklahoma woman in what the Texas governor noted closely resembled an act of terrorism. “At some point in time, the administration does have to address this as what is appears to many people that it is—and that is an act of violence that is associated with terrorism,” Perry said on Fox News ‘ ‘Fox & Friends.’ Rick Perry: White House must address beheading, by Kendall Breitman, September 29, 2014]
The governor may be scoring points with some fans, but why would anybody suppose that “the administration does have to address this”? In the past six years, the Obama Regime, with the help of a supportive Main Stream Media and the pusillanimous congressional GOP, has done whatever it pleased. It doesn’t have to address anything it doesn’t want to.
And let’s look at something closer to home for Rick Perry, something that he really could do something about—the border with Mexico.
The guardsmen are doing their best—I speak as a veteran of the Texas Guard—but they lack a real mission (although Texas does cheekily plan to bill the federal government for the money it’s spent on the Guard deployment.) [Texas Lt. Gov.: National Guard Troops Still Needed At Border, by Elise Foley, Huffington Post, September 26, 2014]
In August, I proposed a real mission: Texas’ Rick Perry Could Seal The Border Himself—If He Had The Will. Funny thing, it’s been over a month since that article was published, and I have yet to receive a message from the Perry administration, though I would be glad to help run the program.
Helpfully for Perry’s tough-guy image, the Mexican government has been going ballistic over his Guard call-up.
The Mexican Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning the deployment (hypocritically, since its own border is already militarized). When California Governor Jerry Brown visited Mexico, he joined together with Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade to criticize Texas Governor Perry’s announced deployment. Meade proclaimed that “you can never justify the use of public military force”—this from a country that uses its own military to fight drug cartels, carry out road blocks and search vehicles. [Mexico, California officials question Texas border troop plan, AFP, July 28, 2014]
Cesar Duarte Jaquez, Euro-Mexican governor of Chihuahua, Mexico’s biggest state and a neighbor of Texas, publicly called Rick Perry a "racist". Perry’s great act of racism: calling for a secure border. [Governor of Chihuahua llama 'racista' a Rick Perry Informador, September 18, 2014]
The Perry-bashing went all the way to the top. In an interview, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called the deployment “unpleasant”, “deplorable” and “reprehensible”. [Mexican president slams Texas border troop deployment, AFP, September 12, 2014]
But here’s the point: Governor Perry responded to the Mexican president’s criticism by sending a letter inviting Pena Nieto to visit. It was tellingly reminiscent of the style of his pandering predecessor George W. Bush. It began:
I read with interest and concern your comments regarding border security on the week of September 11, which called Texas’ increased law enforcement presence on the border 'unpleasant' and'reprehensible.' As neighbors and economic partners, Mexico and the United States are inextricably bound by shared interests and culture. As friends we might not always agree, but we must have an honest and respectful dialogue about the challenges we share, which is why I write to you today. Rick Perry Slams Mexican President for 'Concerning' Criticism of National Guard, By Kristin Tate, Breitbart.com, September 18, 2014
When will Texas governors learn? They shouldn’t care what the Mexican politicians think! What did Perry gain by going on about “ shared interests and culture?” Did he gain more respect in Mexico?
Securing our border depends on us, we can’t rely on Mexico, and we shouldn’t be afraid of their irrational cries of “racism” and “militarization of the border”.
Finally, as recently as September 21st, Perry said he still supports in-state tuition for illegal aliens in Texas. [Perry backs in-state tuition law,By Aman Batheja, WFAAA, September 21, 2014]. Remember, his arrogance on this issue punctured the first hole in his 2012 Presidential balloon.
That makes it very hard to take seriously what Perry says about the border.
The historic American nation needs defenders, but it sure doesn’t look like Rick Perry is going to defend us. It’s a shame, since he does have political talent and his platform as Texas governor is a valuable one. Just don’t expect him to use his talent or platform on our behalf.
We have to look elsewhere.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here ; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.Do Limbaugh's followers share his despair for the GOP? Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday January 22, 2008
del.icio.us |
Print This Email This Conservative talk radio pundit Rush Limbaugh has been finding it easier to identify candidates he dislikes in the Republican presidential primaries than anyone he might support. Some analysts even believe that Mike Huckabee's disappointing third-place finish in the Michigan primary was a result of Limbaugh's constant claims that Huckabee is not a true conservative and that his nomination could destroy the Republican Party. Now Limbaugh has gone a step further, telling his listeners that he's not too fond of McCain either and that "I can see possibly not supporting a Republican nominee" because "you don't have a genuine down-the-list conservative." A political blog at the Los Angeles Times found reason for merriment in Limbaugh's admission. Blogger Andrew Malcolm wrote, "Across the country, people were dropping their coffee cups, choking on sandwiches, fainting and driving off the road. The king of conservative talk-radio not supporting the Republican nominee?... 'And I never thought that I would say that in my life. This stuff is very tough.' No kidding. Who'd a thought? It's tough enough just listening to him go through this, let alone live it like he is." However, Limbaugh's actual followers seemed far less fazed by his confession than liberals might have imagined. One conservative blogger wrote approvingly of Limbaugh's position, saying, "Its heartening to know that such a prominent conservative is willing to stand on principle and not act as a cheerleader for whoever the eventual GOP nominee is. A pro-Romney blogger agreed with Limbaugh that both McCain and Huckabee "are trying to redefine Republican and Conservatism" and was delighted by Limbaugh's statement that "it's easier for me to support a Romney than a McCain, for example. Because I believe his conversion is genuine." Even a blogger who took issue with Limbaugh's position did so in temperate terms, merely complaining that "One doesnt have to pretend Romney or McCain or whomever is the second coming of Ronald Reagan to decide youd rather have him running the executive branch than Hillary Clinton." Limbaugh himself was not enthusiastic about any of the Republican candidates, even Romney, concluding that "it's going to come down to which guy do we dislike the least."Showing how to mine Ethereum/Ether/ETH in 3 easy steps, just by using your computer's graphics card!
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- USA East: us-east1
- USA West: us-west1
- If you are mining with your CPU instead of your graphics card change
the -G to -C. Usually this will take way more time though and is
probably not even worth it, but it is an option.
-------------------------------
Unfortunately from what I've read online, I think I was mistaken about
2GB cards being able to mine Ethereum. If you'd still like to try, here
is the code:
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
ethminer.exe -F htt
p://eth-eu1.nanopool.org:8888/YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS/YOUR_WORKER_NAME/YOUR_EMAIL
-G
(REMOVE THE SPACE BETWEEN 'htt' AND 'p' - DO NOT COPY THIS LINE)By 1984, the portion of America that was expecting George Orwell’s dystopian future to become a present reality had relaxed a bit. Although “relax” is kind of a strong word to use in light of the fact that, at least in New York City, crack had hit, and hard — so much so that subway vigilantes in full-blown Death Wish–style were shooting suspected perps. Essentially, all hell had broken loose.
That was in the city. The outlying suburban area, where whites had taken flight and where working-class people of means struck out in search of peace, quiet and lawns, was supposed to be different. Except it wasn’t. And on June 16, 1984, in Northport, on what city people call the Island, or Long Island, 17-year-old Gary Lauwers was tortured and murdered, driving that point very clearly home.
Lauwers, in the face of Kasso screaming, “Say you love Satan!,” said, “I love my mother,” and died.
“The Island was a different kind of crazy …,” says John Maasbach, a Queens restaurateur with deep family roots in the area. “Drugs,” he adds, by way of explanation. Not inner-city drugs, which is to say not the jagged highs of crack (or even the relatively normalized mellow of weed), but a bouillabaisse of more exotic shit: LSD, mescaline, hash and, yeah, weed, but weed laced with PCP. A prime prescription for crazy.
Which makes what happened next almost anticlimatic: Seventeen-year-old Ricky Kasso and three of his friends, who sometimes called themselves the Knights of the Black Circle, retreated to the woods to get high, or to nurse an earlier high. Alhough Kasso’s parents, according to Newsday, had had him committed to a mental institution for a while, the clinical determination had been that Kasso wasn’t crazy, just anti-social, and he had been released. Kasso had returned to what the police later pieced together was steady involvement in the low-grade drug trade.
Which is where Gary Lauwers comes in. After Kasso passed out at a party, some of his PCP had been stolen by Lauwers, who, according to police reports, later confessed. A confession without cash was grounds enough — so on the night of June 16, the teens headed into the woods to get high and invited Kasso to join them. A few hours later, with up to 36 stab wounds, mutilated eyes and bites on his chest, and in the face of Kasso screaming, “Say you love Satan!,” Lauwers said, “I love my mother,” and died.
On top of using leaves and sticks to not-so-effectively conceal the crime, Kasso started bragging about it, and this is where it enters dark legend: Kasso credited Satan with the murder and then led guided tours to the corpse, claiming satanic crows had appeared to him immediately after the slaughter, and sanctioned it. Nineteen days later, on the basis of an anonymous tip, Kasso was arrested, and the Lauwers missing person case closed. Two days later, Kasso hanged himself in his cell.
Which is where the handful of books and more than a dozen songs, screen adaptations, films and inspired-bys began, helped along no doubt by the square-jawed, long-haired pretty-boy cut of Kasso’s arrest photo, an AC/DC T-shirt, his freak flag that day, sported loudly and proudly. “Kasso was like some kind of suburban swashbuckler,” says Tommy Turner, director of the 1985 Kasso-influenced flick Where Evil Dwells, which was recently lighting-corrected and bumped up from 8 mm to 16 mm by New York University as part of its museum restoration. That is, as Turner says, “if you could forget for a second that he gouged out his friend’s eyes.”This spring, Tamara Cartwright dropped off an envelope at her local post office outside Lethbridge, Alta. A friend had sent her a jar of hemp-based ointment, so she replied with a thank you card, wrote her name and return address on the envelope and, in a decision certain to haunt her for years to come, enclosed four grams of her homegrown marijuana, enough for perhaps four cigarettes. On an April morning some days later she returned to the post office to pick up another package. Moments later, police pulled her over, handcuffed her, put her in a cruiser and hauled her off to the police station.
It made quite a spectacle, says the 41-year-old mother of four, who suffers from colitis and is one of more than 10,000 medical marijuana patients registered with Health Canada. “It was embarrassing,” she says. “I was still in my pyjamas.” She emerged four hours later with a trafficking charge for giving away those four grams.
Her charge is part of a recent marked increase in arrests for cannabis offences. Cannabis arrests jumped 13 per cent in 2010 to 75,126. Of those, almost 57,000 were for simple possession, a 14 per cent jump from the year before. (The statistics reflect cases where the arrest was the most serious charge a person faced, not the thousands more where a pot charge was tacked onto a string of more serious crimes.) The cannabis arrest rate is an anomaly at a time when the overall crime rate in 2010 fell to its lowest level since the mid-1970s.
Ironically, Cartwright’s legal predicament may be linked to that falling crime rate, which comes at a time when policing costs are climbing relentlessly and the number of sworn officers in Canada is at its highest level in almost 30 years. It may simply be that with less overall crime, police have the time, staffing and inclination to focus on minor drug arrests. The vast majority of those arrested are younger than 24, and mostly male, if past findings hold true. And the majority of those arrests are for pot possession, “the low-lying fruit,” as Dalhousie University criminologist Christopher Murphy puts it.
Heavy policing levels may also explain the preponderance of manpower-intensive RIDE and other roadside screening programs searching for impaired drivers or seat belt infractions, as well as the semi-permanent speed-traps established in Toronto and other cities, and the steady police-generated rise in traffic ticket revenue.
Whether such priorities make for a safer Canada is open to debate. Certainly, many question the wisdom of saddling some 57,000 people last year with arrest records for cannabis possession, limiting their chances to cross borders or gain employment. “The reality is, most of the people who are charged are relatively young people who are just starting out in life,” says Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, who estimates there are close to one million Canadians with cannabis convictions. “So, they are being handicapped for something that I would suggest more than half of Canadians over the age of 30 have at one time or another engaged in—and that’s conservative.”
The counter-cyclical nature of drug arrests and overall crime, like strangers passing on up and down escalators, was noted in a 2009 analysis by Statistics Canada. “For example, targeted initiatives to ‘crack down’ on drugs may result in more incidents being identified by police, rather than more incidents actually occurring,” said the report by StatsCan analyst Mia Dauvergne. “Likewise, police may focus law enforcement efforts more on addressing drug-related crimes when time, resources and priorities permit; in other words, when other types of crime decline.” StatsCan said effectively the same thing this summer when it released its report on 2010 crime rates. Indeed, there’s evidence pot use fell last year, even as arrests soared. Health Canada’s alcohol and drug monitoring survey showed marijuana use by Canadians 15 and older dropped to 10.7 per cent in 2010 from 14.1 per cent in 2004. It begs the question: are soaring pot arrests and traffic violations a manufactured crisis created by too many police chasing too little crime?
There are obvious security benefits to the current peak in policing levels. While crime rates have fallen, police reported more than two million criminal code incidents last year, 437,000 involving violence, hardly an insignificant number. Closely targeted initiatives led last year to an astonishing 36 per cent increase in child pornography offences. Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, representing 41,000 rank-and-file members, says there’s no simple correlation between falling crime rates and increasing police resources, but “I would like to think that the police community can take some credit for those reductions achieved in a variety of categories.” For example, he cites the use of crime analysts to map crimes and help draft enforcement strategies specific to local neighbourhoods, as well as targeting chronic offenders, and following them through the criminal justice process to ensure they’re jailed and off the streets.
Many of the factors driving up police costs have little to do with crime, adds Stamatakis, a veteran Vancouver police officer. Charter of Rights cases have required a higher standard for obtaining arrest warrants, and for the level of information disclosure given to defence lawyers, he says. There’s also a cost for continually revised training standards for things like use of force, and more robust police oversight and investigation of complaints, he says. “That just adds to the administrative duties of a police officer and has an impact on that police officer’s time.”
Rising police costs, valid or otherwise, are harder to justify in an era of falling crime rates. The expense eats into the budgets of other community programs, yet to question police and government-directed policing priorities is tantamount to heresy. “There doesn’t seem to be any consistent opposition other than from pointy-headed academics,” says Boyd of the punishment-focused crime agenda. It’s difficult to gauge the impact of police levels on crime rates, says Murphy, another academic. “What we have is a very crude system of allocating funds and resources without any clear ability to document whether these funds are being invested wisely, whether they’re producing results.” Last Christmas season, the Ontario Provincial Police RIDE program charged 294 people with impaired driving, which can only be a good thing. But to do so required police to check more than one million vehicles, a massive undertaking for a.029 per cent capture rate. Perhaps such a show of force is a necessary deterrent, but are there more efficient strategies?
Certainly until now, police forces across North America have benefited from the fact that in increasingly conservative times, no politician at any level and of any stripe wants to question police staffing or to be labelled soft on crime. “I don’t think we can ever have enough police officers,” Toronto Mayor Rob Ford said during the campaign that won him city hall last fall, well before today’s harsh budgetary realities risk dampening the mayoral ardour. In Vancouver, Mayor Gregor Robertson is several thousand kilometres to Ford’s left, both geographically and ideologically, but he loves the cops, too. In fact, he would have loved a whole lot more of them on the streets the night of the Stanley Cup final riot—if only the budget permitted it.
As for the federal Conservatives—Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson—love seems such an inadequate word. Their tough-on-crime agenda has been very good to them. “This is the third mandate that we’ve received, and we keep getting stronger every time we continuously put this [crime agenda] before the Canadian public,” Nicholson told CKNW radio during a recent visit to Vancouver. “And I can tell you I’m very grateful.”
Neither he nor his government was thrown off message by the inconvenient release by Statistics Canada in July of news that the Crime Severity Index, which tracks more serious crimes, was at its lowest level last year since that measure was introduced in 1998. Nicholson is adamant that Canadians live in fear, though attempted murders fell to their lowest rate since 1977, and homicides to the lowest level since the mid-1960s.
Nicholson dismisses those who question the government’s tough-on-crime agenda, or the need for the omnibus crime bill coming this fall that will put more people in jail, with a host of mandatory minimums, will keep them incarcerated longer, and make it more difficult to have criminal records expunged. “We’ve made it very clear that we don’t govern on the basis of statistics,” said the justice minister. “We govern on the basis of what law enforcement agencies have told us. What victims and law-abiding Canadians have told us.”
On Monday, Nicholson weathered criticism of the Tory crime agenda from a generally hostile crowd at the Canadian Bar Association annual meeting in Halifax. They passed a resolution condemning the increasing use of mandatory minimum sentences, but Nicholson was adamant the bill will go ahead as planned. “I think mandatory minimum sentences are quite reasonable,” he said. “It’s our job to provide guidance to the courts.”
And yet there’s an argument to be made that as much as it seems a comfort to have overflowing jails and a police officer on every corner, the law of diminishing returns suggests otherwise. In 2010, after years of steady increases, there were 203 sworn police officers for every 100,000 Canadians, the highest rate in 30 years. Total spending on police topped $12 billion in 2009, the last year for which costs are available. That’s a 7.3 per cent increase from the year before, and the 13th year in a row that costs have climbed, even after adjusting for inflation. “The current rate of growth and cost isn’t sustainable,” says Murphy, whose research has included policing and community resources.
Policing and prison costs have already hit the wall in the United States and the U.K. In the U.S., a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum found that 51 per cent of major American police forces had their budgets cut by an average of seven per cent last year, with most expecting further cuts this year. In some American states, Illinois being one, prisons became so crowded and costs so high that hundreds of dangerous felons have been released, with predictable results, after serving just weeks of their sentences. In England and Wales, the deficit fight leaves police facing a 20 per cent budget cut and a reduction of about 20,000 officers by 2015.
In Toronto, the policing issue has come to roost at city hall, where Ford and his council confront a $774-million deficit next year. Ford’s critics have painted the challenge as a battle between policing costs and what Ford calls “nice-to-haves”: libraries and a host of other soft services, from the arts and day cares to social housing and street programs for the most vulnerable—services that can also contribute to a more civil society. For all his determination not to see police officers laid off, Ford wants the force to cut eight per cent of a near $1-billion budget. Some estimate that will mean cutting as many as 750 officers and 400 civilians.
Whether such a reduction would lead to chaos seems unlikely. Police duties like traffic control at construction sites and bylaw enforcement could be handled by lower-cost personnel. Toronto has about 216 officers per 100,000 citizens. That’s the fourth highest rate of police personnel among the country’s 30 largest police forces, for a city with a crime severity index that ranks a lowly 17th.
Financing the rising cost of policing isn’t a challenge unique to Toronto. “You have extremely well-paid police in Canada,” says Murphy, “maybe the best-paid police in the world.” Nationally, police costs, most going to salaries, have consistently, and sometimes dramatically, exceeded the rate of inflation every year since 1997—something to think about the next time you get a traffic ticket.
Hiring more police wins political points. The unintended consequence in a lower-crime environment, however, is a substantial jump in rates of traffic violations, as police become ticket collectors in part to justify their numbers and their cost. “I think that’s a real revenue generator,” says Murphy. “Cities put pressure on police services to provide revenue, which, in turn, helps justify budgets.”
A Maclean’s survey of selected cities found errant drivers are an increasingly lucrative source of funds. In Calgary, the number of speeding and other traffic violations jumped 31 per cent between 2005 and 2010. That dumped more than $39 million into city coffers, in addition to a provincial share of almost 17 per cent per cent of ticket revenue and a 15 per cent share for a victims of crime program. In Toronto last year, city police issued 700,721 traffic tickets, a 48 per cent increase from five years earlier. That amounts to some $60 million in fine revenue flowing through Toronto’s court service, of which the city gets the lion’s share. Yes, perhaps, every traffic stop makes the streets a little safer. Still, one wonders if the 94 per cent increase in stop sign violations means Toronto attitudes toward this most basic of traffic signs have degenerated these past five years, or if police have a greater incentive to enforce.
In Montreal, with the largest per capita police presence among major cities, that isn’t even open to question. The force admitted earlier this year that some officers have what it described as ticket “objectives” rather than the more loaded term “quotas.” Perhaps as a result, moving violations (bad lane changes and such) jumped by 93 per cent over the past five years, and speeding ticket revenue, in a city long noted for its spirited drivers, soared by 140 per cent. The tickets are issued in the name of safety, driven by nationwide concerns over traffic deaths and drunk driving, rather than by revenue needs, says Stamatakis, the police association head. “If there was any overt attempt to try and use the members that I represent to generate more revenue in that kind of obvious manner, there’d be a bit of a backlash.”
By that standard, Canadian roads must be safe indeed. All of Canada’s major cities are well represented on the National Speed Trap Exchange, a website of the Washington-based National Motorists Association. The site allows drivers to post and share the favoured hunting spots for traffic police in cities and towns across North America. While hardly a scientific measure, Edmonton and Montreal drivers have listed 13 Internet pages of declared speed traps, Calgary lists 26 pages. Toronto lists a whooping 64, just two short of the 66 pages for Chicago and Los Angeles combined. Gary Biller, executive director of the motorists’ association, says drivers the past two years have noted a jump in ticket enforcement, “coincident with the economic downturn.” Police seem to be ticketing at a lower speed threshold, he says, “where, in the past, such minor violations would have resulted in a warning, if a traffic stop was made at all.”
But while traffic tickets are an annoyance, and often a deserved slap on the wrist, an arrest or criminal record for a relatively minor pot charge is a life-altering experience. “It’s telling that it’s young people, and the ones generally with the least amount of money, that are arrested,” says Jacob Hunter, policy director for the Vancouver-based Beyond Prohibition Foundation. He finds the arrests a questionable use of police resources, since most of the cases never make it to court. In B.C., it’s Crown attorneys who determine if charges are warranted. Since court dockets are overwhelmed, Crown lawyers often use their discretion not to proceed with minor pot charges. Currently, some 2,300 backlogged criminal cases in the province, many for serious offences, are at risk of being thrown out because they exceed the 18-month threshhold for “unreasonable delay.”
Police could conceivably push far more serious crimes off the docket if all of the 15,638 people they arrested in B.C. for cannabis possession last year ended up in court. No surprise, then, that fewer than one in four violators were actually charged. The rest, however, live with an arrest record that has the potential to trip them up at the U.S. border, or to raise doubts in an employment background check. That said, people can and do get charged, especially in small-town and northern B.C., says Hunter. Compassion clubs, which have been dispensing marijuana for years for a variety of alleged ills, often for people without Health Canada exceptions, have also become a recent target. RCMP raided the Burnaby club a day after Hunter’s interview with Maclean’s.
Pot law enforcement varies widely, based on where you happen to be caught, and the police force’s prevailing philosophy. In most provinces it’s police rather than prosecutors who lay charges, and their blotters in small towns across Canada are full of pot possession cases. By some estimates only about half of those charges lead to convictions. Often charges are stayed for first offenders, or they are diverted to anti-drug programs. In cities like Vancouver, small amounts are likely to be seized without arrest, says Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer who frequently defends pot cases in B.C.’s lower mainland and Vancouver Island. “I certainly run into people all the time who think marijuana possession is essentially legal in Canada,” he says. “I disabuse them of that quickly, because, unfortunately it’s young people and visible minorities who tend to get caught up in these types of offences for a whole bunch of reasons. They don’t have a place to go. They’re less likely to have police exercise discretion to let them go.”
They’re also more likely to be convicted. Minor pot charges don’t usually qualify for legal aid. Tousaw’s basic retainer is $3,000. “If you hired me it would typically cost you not much more than that, but not any less than that,” he says. “For a young person, particularly, that’s a pretty serious burden.”
In Quebec, a simple possession charge will likely be dropped after negotiations with a prosecutor, if the person makes a donation to a charitable organization of between $100 and $500, says Montreal lawyer Xavier Cormier-Lassonde. An arrest record remains, however. His fee for such negotiations runs between $800 to $1,500. As a result, he says, poor people are less likely to win a discharge. “But I can say that Quebec’s lawyers, prosecutors and judges are reluctant to give a criminal record to someone caught for a first offence of simple possession.” That said, almost half of the 11,423 Quebecers arrested for pot possession faced a criminal charge last year. And in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, a significant majority of those arrested by police ended up facing criminal charges.
Enforcement of marijuana laws ebbs and flows over time. There were fewer than 22,000 pot possession arrests in 1991 before the numbers began to climb. In 2003, cannabis possession charges dipped seven per cent to just over 41,000. That year, the Liberal government of the day proposed legislation to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis, though it failed to become law. And a constitutional challenge to the prohibition against pot was before the Supreme Court of Canada. Among the arguments was whether the risk of imprisonment for pot possession constitutes cruel and unusual punishment considering the small perceived level of harm.
Attitudes toward pot use hardened with the election of the Conservatives. One of Stephen Harper’s first acts on forming a minority government in 2006 was to declare the liberalization of pot laws a dead issue. “[I]f we legalize drugs like marijuana, it will make it easier for our children to get hold of it,” he said in a speech to the Canadian Professional Police Association. “That is why my government is opposed to legalizing drugs—especially because of the damage it can do to our cities and our communities because of increased addiction and crime.”
True to his word, legislation expected to be included in his omnibus crime bill calls for a mandatory minimum jail sentence of six months for growing as few as five pot plants. Another expected change will make it substantially slower, and more expensive to remove criminal records, even for minor offences.
But while the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the challenge to marijuana prohibition in 2003, the judges were hard-pressed to find significant personal or societal harm in its use. The majority of judges sided with the existing law, in part because there were no mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana possession and because users were rarely jailed. |
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They added that the protestors wore portable cameras: “They were like baiting us to hit them, they wanted to be able to sue us,” they wrote. “We haven’t ever received threats, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last time this will happen. It won’t deter us, nothing will.”
Big Sleepy’s has since apologized to “anyone who felt threatened or unsafe... during the show or at any point by the Christian hate group outside.” Below, see PWR BTTM's tweets, Big Sleepy’s statement, and PWR BTTM’s remaining tour dates.
Last week, the morning before a show in San Francisco, PWR BTTM’s van was stolen. The van contained all of their gear, as well as that of tourmate Lisa Prank. They have now opened a YouCaring page, where they are seeking donations. The page outlines exactly what was lost and each item’s value. Donate here, and see more information below.
PWR BTTM:
11-17 Nashville, TN - The End ^
11-18 Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade ^
11-20 Durham, NC - The Pinhook ^
11-21 Washington, DC - Rock & Roll Hotel ^
11-22 Philadelphia, PA - PhilaMOCA ^
11-23 Somerville, MA - ONCE Somerville ^
12-03 Brighton, England - West Hill Hall *
12-04 Leeds, England - Brudenell Games Room *
12-05 Glasgow, Scotland - Hug & Pint *
12-06 London, England - Shacklewell Arms *
12-07 Amsterdam, Netherlands - Sugar Factory *
12-08 Cologne, Germany - Blue Shell *
12-09 Berlin, Germany - Lido *
12-10 Hamburg, Germany - Molotow *
01-07 New York, NY - Joe’s Pub
01-12 New York, NY - Joe’s Pub
02-23 Oakland, CA - Starline Social Club
^ with Bellows, Lisa PrankMeet the protectors of the pavé: the tireless, cobble-curating volunteers of Northern France who make up Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix.
When Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix talk about scheduling posts, they tend to mean jamming wooden stakes into the cloying soil.
When they talk about year-on-year growth, they’re talking about the grassy verges in this post-industrial part of Northern France or the moss that creeps in over the dank winter months.
They may have finally joined Twitter the other week, but the philosophy of the Friends of Paris-Roubaix is very much pave first, tweet later.
Read: Sean Kelly and the 1984 Paris-Roubaix cobble, the most prized trophy of them all
It’s just as well: they are integral to the successful running of one of the sport’s most celebrated races. Without this group of volunteers, who first came together in 1977, the biggest one-day race on the calendar would not take place; at least not in its current, irresistible guise.
Cobbles appear an enduring symbol of permanence – as if the worn granite runs through the earth in this part of the world and is simply exposed where the surface has been scraped away. Yet were it not for the concerted effort of Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix they would likely no longer exist at all.
Early editions of Paris-Roubaix never sought out the cobbles – they were just part and parcel of racing north from the capital, as they were in most other early cycle races – but in the 1960s and 70s roads like these all over France were drowning in tides of asphalt and concrete.
Believe it or not, not everyone understood the romance inherent in a series of disintegrating farm tracks caked in slop and manure. Astonishingly some people didn’t agree that they were anything other than a positive reflection of a region or a race. We can’t think why.
But changing times and the efforts of former world champion Jean Stablinksi, who lived in the area around the first sector of race cobbles in Troisvilles and died in 2007, ensured Roubaix became the celebration of cobbles that it is today.
The race is now a vehicle for preserving the stones, objects that president of Les Amis, François Doulcier – whose day job is managing an assembly line in an automotive factory – and his team of volunteers believe are a vital part of France’s rural heritage as much as an irreplaceable part of the cycling world.
Yet even when local farmers and councils can be persuaded to stop salivating at the sight of a fully-loaded cement mixer, the cobbles don’t look after themselves. Like a centuries old row of teeth, sometimes the stones need a dentist.
“Our problem now is that there has been some very heavy farming equipment driving over the cobbles this winter, and it has damaged the underlying layers of the road,” Doulcier explains.
One of the biggest threats to the stones comes from souvenir hunters. The Trouée d’Arenberg is a particular blackspot, which is actually not half as troubling for Les Amis as it is for an amateur rider who generally only learns that a stone has been prized from the crown of the road in the split second before he or she completes a brief trip over the front wheel and onto the ground.
And whether it be the mossy covering of the Arenberg, subsiding stones on the Carrefour de l’Arbre or muddy caking on Orchies, annual cleaning and maintenance is essential.
Each year the volunteers – whose ranks are bolstered by students from local horticultural colleges – repair and re-pave individual sectors that need it most, drawing on a stockpile of cobbles housed near Roubaix.
Read: Fabian Cancellara – the Classics King’s last hurrah
Each year one lucky cobble gets mounted on a plinth and handed to the winner of the race, destined to spend a charmed life inside living rooms, display cases and cycling events.
The really lucky ones join their friends in the sauna.
For those students this is learning about landscaping the hard way; trimming shrubberies and pruning verges in June will be a doddle compared to hammering in 10kg lumps of granite while a fierce February wind bites into your bones.
For all the Friends it’s hard labour, but the ultimate labour of love.
Paris-Roubaix: Hell’s Other People. In Rouleur 17.2Hello everyone, keeping in tradition of Elysian Shadows being as open and as public about game development as possible, I am going to write about something, well, rather unpleasant that I found out about myself recently.
I will preface this, however, with how writing in Elysian Shadows is handled. Whole story idea is handled by Falco and Tyler. Me and Dan can suggest what to add/change, but ultimately everything's up to discussion amongst us all and so far there wasn't a thing that we couldn't agree on after having a civil debate. Also, rest of the team is well known not-givers of fucks (Falco and Tyler with their Alabama redneckness and Dan with his British sass), so we don’t really have to worry about Elysian Shadows self-censoring itself as a whole. I am going to talk about me from my point of view. Also I want to reinforce the point that I am polish, english language and culture is - and always will be - somewhat foreign for me, so if any of you will take an offence, please ask for clarification first - chances are things got lost in translation. And now, without further ado...
I, as art lead, am significantly contributing to the "background lore" of the universe. Writing about cultures, past history and so on. After all, I am designing how these people clothe, how their cities look like and how their environment looks like. It makes it easier for me to have some sort of lore backstory for what I draw, so I naturally write something, submit to rest of the team to discussion and then we move on.
Example of design shaped by culture and their toxic environment. Their culture shuns showing off bare skin and especially eyes; nowadays it's largely ceremonial and of minimal use, but in past long ago it saved lives.
However, I was part of gamedev scene one way or another for past few years (mostly as spectator, recently as participant) and that left considerable mark on me. I saw gamedevs that were fighting against “games cause violence” now supporting “games cause sexism”. I saw gamedevs being threatened and labeled as sexists if they did not comply with angry mob, most recently I saw gamedevs apologising for drawing of a barmaid.
And then I realized, just yesterday - I was already censoring myself too. “Will it upset someone?”, “Will it cause outrage?”, “Will I be called sexist for writing a sexist character in game?”. Questions like these were constantly lingering at back of my head and now shadow of doubt was casted on everything I wrote in past two years. How can I wholly portrait entire world if I hold back myself from certain topics? In Elysian Shadows history we have people destroying entire swathes of land, starving and poisoning entire countries. We have people committing genocide, murdering entire civilizations, slaughtering men, women and children without exception. Committing crimes against humanity, experimenting on live subjects... And yet I didn't wrote a culture that was homophobic for fear of offending someone. As I write this, I wonder laughing bitterly: out of all these topics, what’s more relevant in this day and age? How many countries have sexual discrimination problems and in how many being homosexual warrants jail time or even death penality? (bonus points on checking out how Poland stands on the issue)
I can see some people seeing it as a good thing. That my drive to not offending anyone was noble and just and I did right, not wanting to trigger people. But I disagree with it, examples of bad behaviour are just as important - if not more - than good ones. Most of my views were shaped by seeing what people did bad and what I shouldn’t perpetuate, along with seeing right. I remember my parent’s tales of communism and censorship of that era, I listened to tales of people’s homes being raided by milicja because there dared to be “too political”. I saw my childhood friends being pushed to fulfill their parents dreams and what it did to them. I saw what poverty, true poverty does to people. I saw people bullied at school and I was bullied myself, being an immigrant. I saw what happens when people don’t love each other anymore and decided to lie instead. But these all experiences made me grow, made me a better person. I saw what exactly happens when you do something bad and why you shouldn’t do that, why should we strive to be better people.
Games are in unique position that can put us in someone’s else shoes, in safe environment. They can take aspects of our society and exaggerate them, to show what really is bad or good about it. They can take white, rich, heterosexual man and make him play a role of poor, discriminated against elf in fictional world. They can explain a death of a dear friend to someone who was too young to yet lose anyone. They can force pacifist to chose between brainwashing entire sentient species or xenocide - crime of magnitude that human brain struggles to comprehend. Show everything that we subconsciously hate about ourselves in new context, forcing us to confront it and examine. Show the hardships of living in totalitarian state, or what war does to common folk. We can experience fictional worlds as our own, examine them and draw conclusions. Through lens of gaming we can learn something about others and about ourselves. But if any other gamedevs think like I do (and a lot probably are, I’m hardly an unique snowflake), we could very well lose a lot of that of that. This recent re-emergence of puritanism, of outrage culture, bullies gamedevs away from certain topics, consciously or otherwise. How can we examine the worst of humanity if we’re at risk of being labeled as such for doing so?
Fortunately, I recognized my own biases and can re-examine my work in time. Fortunately our team as a whole embraces difficult topics and encourages discussing them. Fortunately, Elysian Shadows simply doesn’t give a fuck. But if recent months are indicative of larger trend, amongst gamedevs we seem to be in minority.Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West sits outside his Sierra Blanca, Tex., office as an inmate is escorted inside the jail in 2010. (Ivan Pierre Aguirre)
Even among the colorful pantheon of Texas lawmen, Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West has seized his share of the limelight. In his 16-year career patrolling the West Texas outback, he has busted crooner Willie Nelson for pot, accused the Mexican army of invading U.S. territory and repeatedly ripped the federal government on television over border security.
Less well known are the country sheriff’s strange connections to a rogue Navy intelligence office at the Pentagon that has been under criminal investigation for the past three years.
The former director of the intelligence unit, David W. Landersman, a civilian, is facing federal conspiracy charges for allegedly orchestrating a mysterious scheme to equip Navy commandos with hundreds of untraceable AK-47 rifle silencers.
[Probe of silencers leads to web of Pentagon secrets]
A new wrinkle in the case, however, has recently emerged in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., where prosecutors have suggested that Navy officials from the intelligence unit also sought to funnel military equipment to rural Hudspeth County and set up a secret training base near the Mexican border.
This handout photo provided by the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office shows people on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River, Monday, Jan. 23, 2006, removing bundles of what appeared to be drugs from an SUV that got stuck in the river after a chase by U.S. law enforcement agents along the U.S. -Mexico border. (AP)
Even more unusually, two of Landersman’s former subordinates have testified that when they were not working full time on intelligence matters at the Pentagon, they moonlighted 1,600 miles away as reserve deputy sheriffs in Hudspeth County, a desolate, Connecticut-size jurisdiction east of El Paso.
Also serving as deputies to Sheriff West were Landersman, his son, and the husband of one of the Navy intelligence officials, according to two Pentagon officials and others familiar with the case.
Why so many Pentagon officials and their relatives were working on the side as sheriff’s deputies in Texas has not been explained in court, where much of the evidence has been sealed to protect national security. What a training base would have been used for there is just as murky.
West, who was first elected as Hudspeth County sheriff in 2000, did not respond to several phone calls and emails seeking comment. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Hudspeth County is home to only 3,300 people but covers an enormous stretch of parched terrain in the Rio Grande basin. It is best known for a Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10 where drug-sniffing dogs nab hundreds of motorists a year for carrying small amounts of marijuana.
Besides Nelson, other musical performers who have been arrested on drug charges while passing through Hudspeth County include Snoop Dogg, Fiona Apple and Nelly.
West, who has been described by NPR as “a stout, swaggering lawman” with a sign over his office that reads “Boss Hog,” has just 14 full-time deputies under his command. To compensate, he has sometimes recruited outsiders to provide extra muscle.
In 2011, he pinned a reserve deputy sheriff’s badge on Hollywood tough guy Steven Seagal. Insisting the move was not a publicity stunt, West predicted the action star would bring “a wealth of tactical experience and dedication as a peace officer” and teach martial arts to others in the department.
Exactly what the Pentagon officials did during their stints as deputy sheriffs in Hudspeth County remains unknown. But apparently the work could be dangerous.
Worried about threats from Mexican drug lords, West required his special deputies to carry a firearm for self-protection when they flew on commercial airlines, according to Sterling Gill, a civilian Navy official who served in Hudspeth County.
The policy even applied when they traveled outside Texas. At a court hearing this September, Gill testified she once carried a gun on a flight between Washington and San Francisco.
“My sheriff, who has had several threats against his life by the drug cartel and has a bounty on his head, insists that all of his deputies fly armed at all times,” Gill added, noting that she filled out the proper paperwork to carry a weapon on board.
Gill holds personal ties to Hudspeth County through the 32,000-acre Circle Ranch, a property owned by her in-laws. At the court hearing, she acknowledged that Landersman — her boss at the Pentagon and a fellow onetime Marine — had visited the ranch on at least four occasions.
In a brief line of questioning, prosecutors asked Gill whether she and Landersman had tried to set up a military training center at the ranch, along with new roads, an airstrip and $14,000 worth of radios from the Defense Department.
Gill said the radios were intended for the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office. She denied the other allegations without elaborating.
Gill has not been charged in the case. She testified that the Navy has suspended her indefinitely without pay and that she is under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Her attorney, Christopher Man, said Justice Department officials have told him it is unlikely they will bring charges. He declined further comment.
The Texas connection represents another puzzle in an already enigmatic case involving the Navy intelligence unit.
Blandly known as the Office of Plans, Policy, Oversight and Integration, the small agency has about 10 people on staff, mostly civilians, and is supposed to focus on policy matters. Somewhere along the way, however, it started to become more directly involved in secret missions, prompting one former senior Navy official to describe the group as “wannabe spook-cops.”
The office came under scrutiny in January 2013 when one of its civilian executives appeared at a Defense Intelligence Agency office in Arlington, Va., and asked for a badge that would allow him to carry weapons on military property, according to prosecutors.
The executive flashed a set of credentials stamped with the letters LEO — an acronym for “law enforcement officer” — even though he lacked police powers. That prompted federal agents to search his office at the Pentagon, where they found more suspicious badge materials.
The investigation broadened as NCIS agents uncovered evidence that the intelligence unit had arranged an unauthorized, sweetheart contract to purchase AK-47 silencers from Landersman’s brother, Mark, a California hot-rod mechanic.
Under terms of the deal, Mark Landersman produced a batch of 349 homemade, unmarked silencers in a machine shop and sold them to the Navy for $1.6 million, even though they cost only $10,000 in parts and labor to make.
After a federal trial, Mark Landersman was convicted of conspiracy in October 2014 along with a Navy intelligence official who helped arrange the contract, Lee M. Hall. Both men are appealing the verdicts.
The silencers’ intended use remains hazy. Many details are classified, but some court filings suggest they were part of a top-secret operation to help arm Navy SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden.
David Landersman, who was indicted after his brother’s conviction, has pleaded not guilty. His attorney has argued that the intelligence-unit director was kept in the dark about the contract between his brother and the Navy and that a subordinate orchestrated the deal without his knowledge.
Adding to the air of mystery have been revelations in court that Navy security officials burned and shredded piles of sensitive documents shortly after The Washington Post first reported on the existence of the investigation in November 2013.
David Landersman’s attorneys have argued that the case against their client should be thrown out because the destroyed files would show that other Navy officials oversaw the silencer contract.
They have hinted that Navy officials also wanted to get rid of the documents because they contained other embarrassing information, including notes about sexual misconduct at the Pentagon and files related to a massive bribery investigation into the Navy’s 7th Fleet.
Richard Kent Ford, the Navy security officer who supervised the destruction of documents, has said that he was purging old files in accordance with Navy regulations. He originally testified in 2014 that he was unaware that Landersman, Gill and others from the intelligence unit were under investigation or that there had been news coverage of the case.
At a court hearing this September, however, Landersman’s attorneys confronted Ford with an email Ford had written alerting several Navy officials to The Post’s front-page article shortly before he oversaw the elimination of the files.
“He lied to this court straight up,” said Stephen M. Ryan, one of Landersman’s defense lawyers, adding that Navy officials had demonstrated “more than a whiff of bad intent” by destroying evidence.
Ford denied lying on the stand, saying he had forgotten about The Post’s coverage. Records from a separate personnel hearing, however, show that the Navy booted Ford from his job after concluding he was “not truthful” in his original testimony in the silencer case.
Justice Department officials said that Navy security officers destroyed the documents without their knowledge. They also argued that the files were not relevant to the case.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to rule whether to dismiss the charges against Landersman or proceed to trial. “It’s certainly a messier-than-normal case,” she said at a hearing.Haunted, sinister, evil or just plain weird—for those who dream about traveling the world, welcome to your nightmare. These places will blast chills down your spine.
1. The Bone Church of Kutna Hora // Czech Republic
Robin Esrock
In the 13th century, an abbot brought sand from Jerusalem back to Bohemia and sprinkled it over the monastery's graveyard. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be buried there, and it wasn't long before space ran out. For centuries, monks collected and stored human remains, until a local woodcarver was hired to get creative with the surplus skeletons. Using the bones of some 40,000 people, he created wall art, columns, even a chandelier made with every bone in the human body. Today you can visit the church, marvel at the morbid creativity of its contents, and the extensive uses of the human body.
2. San Franciscan Monastery // Peru
Robin Esrock
The hipbone may indeed be connected to the thighbone, but underneath the 17th century San Franciscan Monastery in the Peruvian capital of Lima, it is connected to other bones too. Beneath the impressive monastery lie a series of narrow catacombs, where you’ll find carefully geometrically arranged skeletons of some 25,000 has-beens. Built to withstand earthquakes, the air inside the catacomb is dense, lit with a distinct atmosphere of spookiness as opposed to the intended religious devotion. One catacomb is piled head-high in skulls. With the low ceilings, you’ll want to watch your head too.
3. and 4. Père Lachaise and the Paris Catacombs // France
Old Graveyards and cemeteries are creepy at the best of times. Père Lachaise gets bonus points for its long history, the deathly clutter of mausoleums, the gothic architecture, and occasional weirdness—like spooky graffiti, burnt offerings, or awful angsty poetry visitors leave to honour Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
Creepier still are the Paris Catacombs, a limestone labyrinth snaking beneath the city containing the remains of six million Parisians. The dark abandoned quarry, filled with the bodies from long-closed Parisian cemeteries, will make you long for the tranquility of the graveyard.
5. The Killing Fields // Cambodia
Robin Esrock
Robin Esrock
There is creepy, there is spooky, and then there is just plain evil. Nothing makes your hair stand up, your throat parch, your nerves collapse, and your faith in humanity shatter like the physical site of genocide. And yet, places like Cambodia’s Killing Fields, Auschwitz, and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda are vital to understand the horrors of the past, and make sure they never happen again. It is beyond comprehension to picture murdered skulls piled 30 feet high, or pools of human ashes. It is also beyond the tone of this story. And yet sites like The Killing Fields, Auschwitz and Kigali continue to draw attention to historical acts of genocide, the importance that travellers acknowledge them, and the fact that even today, the horror of mass murder continues to exist.
6. Transylvania // Romania
Robin Esrock
Transylvania is the birthplace of modern horror—at least in books and movies. Some say (though some disagree) that fictional Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler, a ruthless leader who enjoyed the sight of his Turkish enemies being skewered. “Dracula’s Castle” is in Romania, but it’s a renowned hokey tourist joint. Hang on, aren’t the hills of Transylvania perfect roaming grounds for werewolves? Nobody has seen one of them in ages—in fact, nobody has ever seen one outside of a movie theatre. What you will see in Transylvania are small villages alive with traditional music and cuisine. You’ll visit the historical capital of Cluj Napoca, full of cool bars frequented by students listening to dance music or reggae. There’s nothing particularly creepy about Transylvania at all, other than the fact that, hey, it’s Transylvania. And yet, knowing this still, I’m not walking alone in those woods, pal.
7. Lamanai Mayan Ruins // Belize
Most ancient ruins up the creep factor, which is why they frequently feature in horror movies. Some Mayan ruins have the added bonus of having been the setting for human sacrifice. It is uncertain if human sacrifices took place here in Lamanai as it did in other later Mayan temples, although blood-letting sacrifices almost certainly did. Walk up the blackened, cracked stairs, soak up the mystery, and wallow in silence so spooky it could break your fall.
8. Chernobyl and Pripyat // Ukraine
Robin Esrock
Though this was the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, it didn’t feel that weird standing outside reactor number 4. That’s because radiation is a silent killer, and sure enough, the Geiger counter was reading levels dozens of times higher than normal. The true creep only sets when you visit the nearby deserted city of Pripyat. Residents had just hours to leave, abandoning everything, including their pets.
Robin Esrock
A quarter century later, the city is a post-apocalyptic nuclear nightmare. Dead silence, school books flapping in the wind, buildings cracking with time. Since everything inside the 30km Zone of Alienation is considered nuclear waste, there they will remain. Including this haunting doll, one of many to be found in an eerily silent school.
9. The Kataragama Festival // Sri Lanka
Robin Esrock
The Kataragama Festival is a colorful, peaceful and inspiring celebration of faith, as three major religions congregate in worship and respect. Nevertheless, I stumbled across a spectacle soaked in blood and wide-eyed fear. Holy men had gathered in a circle, and to demonstrate the intensity and extent of their faith, proceeded to stab themselves with knives and spears. To the chant of voices and the beat of drums, the holy man pictured jammed two knives deep in his skull, slashed his tongue and chest, but seemed to recover perfectly with a dab of ash on the wounds. Filming an episode of my TV show, the reaction of our sound guy (look right) speaks volumes.
10. Stone Town // Zanzibar
By day, Stone Town feels wonderfully exotic. A maze of narrow alleys, mosques, beautifully carved large wooden doors—there’s a glorious sense of Persian, African, Indian, and European history, a city scrubbed in the fortunes of the wealthy Sultan of Oman. Wait until nightfall. Now you can really feel Stone Town’s dark, seedy past, when the city functioned as a sordid centre of slaving, piracy and smuggling. Blackened buildings, cracked cobblestone, darting shadows in the maze of alleys—it’s enough to spook even the most sceptical imagination. Vampires don’t exist, but if they did, they’d holiday in Stone Town.
11. Lalibela // Ethiopia
Robin Esrock
Built around the 12th and 13th century, the churches of Lalibela have been painstakingly carved top down into red volcanic rock as freestanding structures. The columns, carvings and masonry make nonsense of the idea that ancient Africa lacked a civilization as advanced as any in Europe.
Robin Esrock
The 11 rock churches are dark, musty, and not the kind of place you’d want to be locked up for the night. Mummified corpses of ancient holy men stuffed into holes in the surrounding rocks don’t help. Adding to the creep factor: the fleas infesting the original rugs and carpets, known to climb up visitors’ legs.LUCKNOW: The Aditya Nath Yogi government will launch "cow safaris" in at least 24 districts of Uttar Pradesh. These bovine expeditions follow a lion safari begun by the earlier SP government headed by Akhilesh Yadav. However, what the BJP government refers to as safaris are actually sanctuaries for cows which the government plans to develop on the lines of Kanha Upvan on land freed under an ongoing statewide anti-encroachment drive.These "cow safaris" will be set up in at least 24 districts, mainly around metro cities and in Bundelkhand region. The concept was mooted by chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi in the UP assembly. "We will make grazing grounds for cows. Hum gai ke sanrakshan ke liye abhyaran banayenge (We will launch cow safaris for the protection of cows)," said the CM.Animal husbandry minister S P Singh Baghel said cow shelters on the lines of Kanha Upvan will be started under each of the 16 municipal corporations in the state, each with a capacity to house 1,000 cattle. A similar facility will also start under each of the seven districts of Bundelkhand.When Malcolm Himschoot lost his connection to his childhood church, he found open arms in seminary school.
Himschoot, now a United Church of Christ minister, was at a painful crossroads several years ago. Born as a woman, Himschoot got little support from his church or family when deciding to transition from female to male.
Himschoot enrolled in seminary school to see if he could reconcile the conflict between his gender identity and the things he learned in his home church. At Iliff School of Theology in Denver, he met students and teachers from different religious backgrounds who stayed by him during his transition.
"It was a great place to continue building a relationship with a God who was more generous and more adventurous than the one I was introduced to in Sunday school," he said.
Himschoot occasionally travels the country to talk with congregations about faith and gender identity. He will visit Boulder during the 8 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. services Sunday, Oct. 10 at First Congregational Church, 1128 Pine Street.
"I'll be talking about looking at gender diversity as one of God's gifts," he said.
First Congregational Church pastor Jason Hays said the visit corresponds to the church's 23rd anniversary of becoming an "open and affirming" church, meaning the congregation is welcoming of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.
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"We wanted to invite Malcolm as a way to embody that," Hays said.
Hays said many people in the congregation are interested in social justice issues relating to GLBT topics. The visit is also timely because of the recent national news of young adults committing suicide as the result of continuous bullying about their sexual orientation, he said.
Himschoot said the church's open and affirming designation, the first official designation for a UCC church in Colorado, is a sign that people are moving toward accepting people of different gender backgrounds. But the recent bullying incidents show that "even after 23 years, there is still more education and dialogue that needs to happen," he said.
Other groups and churches are also highlighting GLBT issues this week.
Students with CU's Gay-Straight Alliance, along with the Queer Initiative at Wesley Chapel, held a candlelight vigil Thursday night to remember the lives of six people who committed suicide as a result of bullying.
Himschoot's visit also comes just before National Coming Out Day on Monday.
Himschoot has been speaking about his experiences as a transgender minister and a church member for several years. In 2005, he was the topic of the documentary "Call Me Malcolm," which followed him through his last year at Iliff School of Theology.
During filming, he met well-known transgender advocates from across the country. One is former Navy and Marine hospital corpsman Calpernia Addams. After coming out during her last year in the military, Addams' boyfriend was attacked and killed on his Army base.
Himschoot said he is happy to have found a home in the United Church of Christ ministry.
"I found the United Church of Christ as a young adult, and it's different than what I learned coming from a more conservative Christian church," he said.
Himschoot often speaks about his experiences as a transgender minister, but his work with the United Church of Christ is not limited to topics of gender identity. He has worked with several area churches on poverty and social justice issues. He has also served as an interpreter for several Spanish-speaking congregations.
Megan Quinn writes a weekly faith column for the Camera and can be reached at bubblegumandbibles
@gmail.com.Defense Secretary Ash Carter (Photo11: Kevin Wolf, AP)
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering a version of the NFL's "Rooney Rule" to diversify its officer corps, a proposal that has already raised internal concerns about its legality, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY.
The proposal, sent to Defense Secretary Ash Carter for approval, would require the Army, Navy and Marine Corps to consider minority candidates for key jobs such as aide-de-camp and military assistant to senior leaders. Those slots are often springboards to higher ranks. In the NFL, teams are required to interview minority candidates for top jobs, including head coach, under the Rooney Rule, named after the Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Adopting a similar |
into Yemen’s middle classes, families are encouraged to keep all of the donated meat to share among themselves.
“Each family slaughters its own goats and cooks them as they wish in their own home,” he says.
Humanitarian agencies know that food aid, be it kitchen staples or sacrificial goats, is widely shared.
"Yemeni families are tribal,” says Etefa. “They need every amount of food that they can get. They are sharing the food rations that they receive every month. That's how they survive.”
The price of survival
Observers say near-famine conditions are a product of Yemen’s civil war, including a banking crisis that affects middle-class Yemeni families who have no previous history of starvation.
"The lack of a functioning central bank has left most of the 1.2 million Yemenis employed in the public sector without a paycheck since August [2016],” reports the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, an independent think-tank. “As heads of households they are the breadwinners for as many as 6 million people."
“Middle class families, who used to be government employees receiving salaries every month... today, they have nothing,” says Etefa. “They only have bread to survive on.”
"These were government employees, you know. College graduates, who used to receive a salary from the government are no longer able to receive that, which is definitely impacting their ability to put food on the table for their families,” says Etefa.
“In addition, the economic situation in Yemen is deteriorating fast, so there are no more jobs in the private sector that would absorb all — or any — of these people. I have met, myself, many families of people who used to lead a good life and are no longer able to put food on the table, to buy food from the market — that's very expensive, and they don't have money to buy food.”
The int'l community must find a way to pay salaries of the employees in the public sector #800Days_ForgottenWar pic.twitter.com/IallOt5Vq8 — الجبهة الإعلامية (@MediaFrontYemen) June 5, 2017
Yemen's banking crisis, like the civil war itself, is complicated by politics. On Sept. 18 last year, President Hadi fired the head of Yemen’s central bank. Hadi ordered the central bank’s headquarters to be relocated from the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, to the southern port city, Aden, which was mostly under his control. Yemen’s oil revenues and international loans would now be deposited in Aden, where Hadi appointees are in charge. Since then, many Yemenis in the north and the south have complained that they are not being paid.
Sanaa-based journalist Hussain al-Bukhaiti places the blame squarely on the Yemeni president, who tinkered with the nation’s central bank. "The way [salaries] used to be paid [under] the government of the Houthis... all wages were paid to every corner in Yemen, even areas under the control of al-Qaeda.”
This mock-up of a wanted poster demands President Hadi be brought to justice for depriving government employees of their paychecks.
Hadi the criminal kills children and women in Yemen and prevents the payment of salaries of employees pic.twitter.com/S9j8DQNffs — أوقفوا الحرب (@nagib_hindy) April 2, 2017
Other voices, less critical of the Yemeni president, still point to Yemen’s banking crisis as a major contributor to hunger across the country.
Albert Jaeger of the International Monetary Fund — a global organization that observes strict neutrality in conflicts, including with regards to Yemen — says, “The root of the non-payment of salaries was not relocation." Jaeger says the problem is less about who controls the central bank, and more about how little money is in it. “To avoid famine conditions, Yemen needs urgently foreign exchange grants from donors to pay for import of food; the proceeds from selling that imported food in Yemen could be used to pay public salaries in all of Yemen."
The World Food Program, which assesses economic conditions across Yemen on a monthly basis, has found an increase in the number of people who are joining the ranks of the hungry, Etefa says. “There is a direct correlation... between the increasing numbers and the fact that a lot of people are no longer able to receive their salaries.”
Mona Relief's Fatik al-Rodaini has seen the impact of lost wages across the areas where he delivers food. “And lately, I have seen many families selling their furniture," he says, "selling it to give their children food — or they will die.”
In March, Rodaini conducted a survey of 200 families in the Marib region, in eastern Yemen, near one of the front lines in the civil war. He filmed his visit to two IDP families who have moved their families into caves, living close to one another to provide defense against wild animals.
Who is affected
Hunger has its cruelest impact on the most vulnerable Yemenis.
“The situation is really terrible,” Taiz-based journalist Mohammed al-Qadhi said via WhatsApp on June 2. “A lady with her two daughters committed suicide by drinking poisonous liquid two days ago in Ibb [in central Yemen] as she had nothing and could not go begging for help,” he says. “Several weeks ago, a man who had not received his salary took his furniture to the street and burnt them down.”
Suha al-Mujahed, who grew up in Taiz but was forced to leave because of the war, now works with an aid group funded by UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. Her program provides cash to Yemeni families who have lost everything.
“Last week, we visited a household with five children and a pregnant wife,” she says. The father told Mujahed that he is a teacher, but he had not been paid for the past eight months. “The house owner gave them a notice that they need to leave the house if they didn’t pay the accumulated rent,” she says. “The wife mentioned that the last thing they had was her wedding ring, and they sold it for food.”
Mujahed says last year, her agency was giving unconditional cash grants to the needy. This year, families must demonstrate they are in danger of being evicted. “So, the rental subsidies we provide for those families is just emergency aid,” she says. “It can't be a solution.”
But there are still signs of hope, albeit on an incredibly small scale.
Ahmad Algohbary, a student whose education was interrupted by the war, has found a way to combine humanitarian work with his longtime passion for photography. He regularly travels around Yemen, documenting the lives of Yemenis as they confront the hardship of war.
“I had posted a photo of a child named Jamal on Twitter,” says Algohbary. Jamal, like many undernourished children now in Yemen, had become seriously underweight and in need of medical attention. A woman who saw the post contacted Algohbary to ask what she could do for the child. She wound up paying Algohbary to take Jamal to the doctor.
“I went to Saada,” says Algohbary. “I took him from his village to the nutrition center. After one month after he got treatment, I published his photo, and it was really great.”
saving a kid life is the best thing happened in my life
This is Jamal before&after receiving https://t.co/HmYRE9DcFc by me in Saada #Yemen pic.twitter.com/80eRqD898v — Ahmad Algohbary (@AhmadAlgohbary) April 22, 2017
Algohbary, buoyed by Jamal's recover, found another opportunity to help. “I took a photo of a girl, her name is Batol. People donated for her through Western Union and [a] minigrant. They sent money to me. I went back again to Batol's village,” he says, “and took her to the nutrition center, and now Batol looks better than before.
This is Batol
1st photo before treatment,other after month of treatment n nutrition center n Saada #Yemen
Saving her life is making me happy pic.twitter.com/C8Jon1RcXQ — Ahmad Algohbary (@AhmadAlgohbary) May 20, 2017
"I think today, clearly Yemenis are caught between a rock and a hard place," says Robert Mardini of the ICRC. "The only solution is a political solution. Hopefully, parties will sit around the table and start discussing, again, a political settlement. It's high time for this to happen, of course, but it's higher time to have parties respect the basic rules of war."
This story was updated Tuesday, June 13, with additional reporting about Yemen's banking crisis. A previous version of the story implied, by context, that the International Monetary Fund was in some way critical of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The IMF is politically neutal.Mayor Terence Roberts announces Margaret Mack as the recipient of the community trailblazer award during the Mayor's MLK Breakfast at the Civic Center of Anderson in 2014. (Photo: KEN RUINARD/INDEPENDENT-MAIL)
Anderson Mayor Terence Roberts said he underwent a minimally-invasive procedure Thursday to repair a brain aneurysm, according to a statement issued Saturday by the city.
Roberts, 57, said the brain aneurysm was diagnosed last Sunday after he was taken by ambulance to AnMed Health Medical Center in Anderson and then flown by helicopter to Greenville Memorial Hospital.
According to WebMD, a brain aneurysm is a bulging, weak area in the wall of an artery that supplies blood to the brain.
"I am blessed beyond belief for having not only survived such a serious incident but having done so with no significant long term consequences," Roberts said in the statement emailed by City Manager Linda McConnell. "Given the seriousness of this condition, I remain under the care of the staff at Greenville Memorial Hospital, primarily for precautionary measures."
The mayor also thanked "the citizens of Anderson as well as my family and friends for their prayers and support over the past week."
"I am truly grateful for the outpouring of support from our community during this past week. I couldn't be prouder to be associated with such a caring City and compassionate citizenry," Roberts said. "I look forward to seeing everyone soon at Anderson's Thursday Night Block Party!"
He said he has been in contact with McConnell and "will ensure the business of the City of Anderson continues to move forward."
Anderson City Councilman Matt Harbin presided over the council's meeting Monday night in his role as mayor pro tem. He also is expected to preside over the council's next meeting.
Saturday's statement marked the mayor's first public comments since he was hospitalized. Greenville Memorial issued a statement Monday saying that Roberts had been brought to the hospital as a precaution after experiencing shortness of breath and becoming light headed.
Roberts has been Anderson's mayor since 2006. He is the city's first black mayor.
Follow Kirk Brown on Twiiter @KirkBrown_AIM
Read or Share this story: https://www.independentmail.com/story/news/local/2017/07/01/anderson-mayor-terence-roberts-says-he-had-procedure-repair-brain-aneurysm/446225001/Alan Partridge's recent television series Mid-Morning Matters was shown on Sky because the BBC wanted to "interfere" with the format of the programme, according the Armando Iannucci.
The 48-year-old Scottish comedy writer, who co-created the character with Steve Coogan, also said the move from the BBC to Sky was not financially motivated, during a question-and-answer session after he gave the annual Bafta lecture last night.
He said: "Mid Morning Matters was only there as an online project but because it took off we had interest from the BBC and Sky."
"We didn't take it to Sky because they offered more money, we took it to Sky because they said they would leave it alone, they wouldn't interfere."
"Honestly the money – I've got no idea what we got for it – it wasn't about the money."
"[The BBC] said because it had gone out online they would put it out late night after Newsnight because it didn't feel like a new show. And if there was a new series could we open it up a bit and take it away from the radio station... which for me was essential."
He added that had been "very enthusiastic" about the project.
Sky showed Mid-Morning Matters on its Sky Atlantic channel as a six-part series of half-hour programmes, using edited down footage from the original online series.
It also commissioned two Alan Partridge specials – Welcome to the Places of my Life, and Alan Partridge on Open Books with Martin Bryce, which were shown before the Mid-Morning Matters started.
Last month it was confirmed that a second series of the programme will be shown next year on Sky Atlantic. An Alan Partridge film is also to be released next year, according to reports.Do you like eating strips of cured pork belly*, a.k.a. bacon? Do you have strong feelings about what makes good bacon good and bad bacon bad? Is "bad bacon" even a thing? Can you string words into sentences and paragraphs that convey information and entertain readers?
If you answered "Yes!!!!!!!" to at least three of those, read on. Extra Crispy is seeking a freelance Bacon Critic to cover the bacon beat, spanning bacon’s role in food, drinks, and culture. Our Bacon Critic can live anywhere in the U.S. and will spend a three-month appointment researching, writing about, obsessing over, and critiquing bacon. Yes, this is a very real paid freelance position we’re looking to fill in the near future.
The Extra Crispy Bacon Critic needs to be opinionated and thorough in his or her research, and will be expected to eventually decide which bacon is the best in the country. Other qualifications include serious writing chops, an unmistakable voice, a sense of adventure, and an insatiable hunger—for bacon.
To apply, send a short essay of fewer than 600 words recounting your favorite bacon-related memory to bacon@extracrispy.com by June 24, 2016. Writers with funny and memorable stories are preferred, so let it all hang out. We'll show you ours if you show us yours. Your bacon, we mean, sicko.
Update: We've chosen New Orleans food writer and meat expert Scott Gold to be our Bacon Critic, and we're no longer accepting applications.
Illustration by April McMullan
*Or fatback, side, or loin!
Oh, and here’s some fine print our legal team says we need to publish. You need to be 21 or older to apply.
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9. SPONSOR: The Sponsor of this Contest is TI Media Solutions Inc. 225 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281.Melissa Harris-Perry commented on the 2016 primary race Saturday on her MSNBC show, saying the fact that there are only two Democratic candidates remaining at this point shows how “anemic” the party is.
“I would argue that for me, Thursday night, watching Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, already this early, we are in New Hampshire. and our party is so anemic, that we are down to two candidates, right? Say what you want to say about the mad house going on on the Republican side. They’ve got all kinds of folks that still want the Republican nomination. We have two folks who are advanced in age, who have been in government for a long time.”
Harris-Perry later added that it is “whiter than the Oscars” in the Democratic race.
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrentNot to be confused with Olympos Mons
Olympus Mons ( ;[4][5] Latin for Mount Olympus) is a very large shield volcano on the planet Mars. The volcano has a height of nearly 25 km (13.6 mi or 72,000 ft) as measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA).[6] Olympus Mons is about two and a half times Mount Everest's height above sea level. It is the largest volcano, the tallest planetary mountain, and the second tallest mountain currently discovered in the Solar System compared to Rheasilvia on Vesta. It is the youngest of the large volcanoes on Mars, having formed during Mars's Hesperian Period. It had been known to astronomers since the late 19th century as the albedo feature Nix Olympica (Latin for "Olympic Snow"). Its mountainous nature was suspected well before space probes confirmed its identity as a mountain.[7]
The volcano is located in Mars's western hemisphere at approximately,[1] just off the northwestern edge of the Tharsis bulge. The western portion of the volcano lies in the Amazonis quadrangle (MC-8) and the central and eastern portions in the adjoining Tharsis quadrangle (MC-9).
Two impact craters on Olympus Mons have been assigned provisional names by the International Astronomical Union. They are the 15.6 km (9.7 mi)-diameter Karzok crater ( ) and the 10.4 km (6.5 mi)-diameter Pangboche crater ( ).[8] The craters are notable for being two of several suspected source areas for shergottites, the most abundant class of Martian meteorites.[9]
Description [ edit ]
Horizontal comparison of Olympus Mons with France Vertical comparison of Olympus Mons with Mount Everest (shown sea-level-to-peak) and Mauna Kea on Earth (measurement is sea-level to peak, not base to peak).
As a shield volcano, Olympus Mons resembles the shape of the large volcanoes making up the Hawaiian Islands. The edifice is about 600 km (370 mi) wide.[10] Because the mountain is so large, with complex structure at its edges, allocating a height to it is difficult. Olympus Mons stands 21 km (13 mi) above the Mars global datum[specify], and its local relief, from the foot of the cliffs which form its northwest margin to its peak, is nearly 22 km (14 mi)[6] (a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the ocean floor). The total elevation change from the plains of Amazonis Planitia, over 1,000 km (620 mi) to the northwest, to the summit approaches 26 km (16 mi).[3] The summit of the mountain has six nested calderas (collapsed craters) forming an irregular depression 60 km (37 mi) × 80 km (50 mi) across[11] and up to 3.2 km (2.0 mi) deep.[12] The volcano's outer edge consists of an escarpment, or cliff, up to 8 km (5.0 mi) tall (although obscured by lava flows in places), a feature unique among the shield volcanoes of Mars.[13] Olympus Mons covers an area of about 300,000 km2 (120,000 sq mi)[14], which is approximately the size of Italy, and it is supported by a 70 km (43 mi) thick lithosphere. The extraordinary size of Olympus Mons is likely because Mars lacks mobile tectonic plates. Unlike on Earth, the crust of Mars remains fixed over a stationary hotspot, and a volcano can continue to discharge lava until it reaches an enormous height.[15]
Being a shield volcano, Olympus Mons has a very gently sloping profile. The average slope on the volcano's flanks is only 5°.[12] Slopes are steepest near the middle part of the flanks and grow shallower toward the base, giving the flanks a concave upward profile. The shape of Olympus Mons is distinctly asymmetrical - its flanks are shallower and extend farther from the summit in the northwestern direction than they do to the southeast. The volcano's shape and profile have been likened to a "circus tent" held up by a single pole that is shifted off center.[16]
Due to the size and shallow slopes of Olympus Mons, an observer standing on the Martian surface would be unable to view the entire profile of the volcano, even from a great distance. The curvature of the planet and the volcano itself would obscure such a synoptic view.[17] Similarly, an observer near the summit would be unaware of standing on a very high mountain, as the slope of the volcano would extend far beyond the horizon, a mere 3 kilometers away.[18]
The typical atmospheric pressure at the top of Olympus Mons is 72 pascals, about 12% of the average Martian surface pressure of 600 pascals.[19][20] Both are exceedingly low by terrestrial standards; by comparison, the atmospheric pressure at the summit of Mount Everest is 32,000 pascals, or about 32% of Earth's sea level pressure.[21] Even so, high-altitude orographic clouds frequently drift over the Olympus Mons summit, and airborne Martian dust is still present.[22] Although the average Martian surface atmospheric pressure is less than one percent of Earth's, the much lower gravity of Mars increases the atmosphere's scale height; in other words, Mars's atmosphere is expansive and does not drop off in density with height as sharply as Earth's.
The composition of Olympus Mons is approximately 44% silicates, 17.5% iron oxides (which give the planet its red coloration) 7% aluminum, 6% magnesium, 6% calcium, and particularly high proportions of sulfur oxide with 7%. These results point to the surface being largely composed of basalts and other mafic rocks, which would have erupted as low viscosity lava flows and hence lead to the low gradients on the surface of the planet.
Olympus Mons is an unlikely landing location for automated space probes in the near future. The high elevations preclude parachute-assisted landings because the atmosphere is insufficiently dense to slow the spacecraft down. Moreover, Olympus Mons stands in one of the dustiest regions of Mars. A mantle of fine dust obscures the underlying bedrock, possibly making rock samples hard to come by and likely posing a significant obstacle for rovers.
Geology [ edit ]
Mars Global Surveyor image showing lava flows of different ages at the base of Olympus Mons. The flat plain is the younger flow. The older flow has lava channels with levees along the edges. Levees are quite common to lava flows on Mars.
Olympus Mons is the result of many thousands of highly fluid, basaltic lava flows that poured from volcanic vents over a long period of time (The Hawaiian Islands exemplify similar shield volcanoes on a smaller scale – see Mauna Kea). Like the basalt volcanoes on Earth, Martian basaltic volcanoes are capable of erupting enormous quantities of ash. Due to the reduced gravity of Mars compared to Earth, there are lesser buoyant forces on the magma rising out of the crust. In addition, the magma chambers are thought to be much larger and deeper than the ones found on Earth.
Lava flows on Olympus Mons with older and younger flows labeled, as viewed by HiRISE during the HiWish program.
The flanks of Olympus Mons are made up of innumerable lava flows and channels. Many of the flows have levees along their margins (pictured). The cooler, outer margins of the flow solidify, leaving a central trough of molten, flowing lava. Partially collapsed lava tubes are visible as chains of pit craters, and broad lava fans formed by lava emerging from intact, subsurface tubes are also common.[23] In places along the volcano's base, solidified lava flows can be seen spilling out into the surrounding plains, forming broad aprons, and burying the basal escarpment. Crater counts from high-resolution images taken by the Mars Express orbiter in 2004 indicate that lava flows on the northwestern flank of Olympus Mons range in age from 115 million years old (Mya) to only 2 Mya.[24] These ages are very recent in geological terms, suggesting that the mountain may still be volcanically active, though in a very quiescent and episodic fashion.[25]
Calderas on the summit of Olympus Mons. The youngest calderas form circular collapse craters. Older calderas appear as semicircular segments because they are transected by the younger calderas.
The caldera complex at the peak of the volcano is made of at least six overlapping calderas and caldera segments (pictured).[26] Calderas are formed by roof collapse following depletion and withdrawal of the subsurface magma chamber after an eruption. Each caldera thus represents a separate pulse of volcanic activity on the mountain.[27] The largest and oldest caldera segment appears to have formed as a single, large lava lake.[28] Using geometric relationships of caldera dimensions from laboratory models, scientists have estimated that the magma chamber associated with the largest caldera on Olympus Mons lies at a depth of about 32 km (105,000 ft) below the caldera floor.[29] Crater size-frequency distributions on the caldera floors indicate the calderas range in age from 350 Mya to about 150 Mya. All probably formed within 100 million years of each other.[30][31]
Olympus Mons is asymmetrical structurally as well as topographically. The longer, more shallow northwestern flank displays extensional features, such as large slumps and normal faults. In contrast, the volcano's steeper southeastern side has features indicating compression, including step-like terraces in the volcano's mid-flank region (interpreted as thrust faults[32]) and a number of wrinkle ridges located at the basal escarpment. Why opposite sides of the mountain should show different styles of deformation may lie in how large shield volcanoes grow laterally and in how variations within the volcanic substrate have affected the mountain's final shape.
Oblique view of Olympus Mons, from a Viking image mosaic overlain on MOLA altimetry data, showing the volcano's asymmetry. The view is from the NNE ; vertical exaggeration is 10x. The wider, gently sloping northern flank is to the right. The more narrow and steeply sloping southern flank (left) has low, rounded terraces, features interpreted as thrust faults. The volcano's basal escarpment is prominent.
Large shield volcanoes grow not only by adding material to their flanks as erupted lava, but also by spreading laterally at their bases. As a volcano grows in size, the stress field underneath the volcano changes from compressional to extensional. A subterranean rift may develop at the base of the volcano, causing the underlying crust to spread apart.[33] If the volcano rests on sediments containing mechanically weak layers (e.g., beds of water-saturated clay), detachment zones (decollements) may develop in the weak layers. The extensional stresses in the detachment zones can produce giant landslides and normal faults on the volcano's flanks, leading to the formation of a basal escarpment.[34] Further from the volcano, these detachment zones can express themselves as a succession of overlapping, gravity driven thrust faults. This mechanism has long been cited as an explanation of the Olympus Mons aureole deposits (discussed below).[35]
Detailed THEMIS daytime infrared image mosaic of Olympus Mons.
Olympus Mons lies at the edge of the Tharsis bulge, an ancient vast volcanic plateau likely formed by the end of the Noachian Period. During the Hesperian, when Olympus Mons began to form, the volcano was located on a shallow slope that descended from the high in Tharsis into the northern lowland basins. Over time, these basins received large volumes of sediment eroded from Tharsis and the southern highlands. The sediments likely contained abundant Noachian-aged phyllosilicates (clays) formed during an early period on Mars when surface water was abundant,[36] and were thickest in the northwest where basin depth was greatest. As the volcano grew through lateral spreading, low-friction detachment zones preferentially developed in the thicker sediment layers to the northwest, creating the basal escarpment and widespread lobes of aureole material (Lycus Sulci). Spreading also occurred to the southeast; however, it was more constrained in that direction by the Tharsis rise, which presented a higher-friction zone at the volcano's base. Friction was higher in that direction because the sediments were thinner and probably consisted of coarser grained material resistant to sliding. The competent and rugged basement rocks of Tharsis acted as an additional source of friction. This inhibition of southeasterly basal spreading in Olympus Mons could account for the structural and topographic asymmetry of the mountain. Numerical models of particle dynamics involving lateral differences in friction along the base of Olympus Mons have been shown to reproduce the volcano's present shape and asymmetry fairly well.[34]
It has been speculated that the detachment along the weak layers was aided by the presence of high-pressure water in the sediment pore spaces, which would have interesting astrobiological implications. If water-saturated zones still exist in sediments under the volcano, they would likely have been kept warm by a high geothermal gradient and residual heat from the volcano's magma chamber. Potential springs or seeps around the volcano would offer exciting possibilities for detecting microbial life.[37]
Early observations and naming [ edit ]
Mars Global Surveyor. Colorized topographic map of Olympus Mons and its surrounding aureole, from the MOLA instrument of
Olympus Mons and a few other volcanoes in the Tharsis region stand high enough to reach above the frequent Martian dust-storms recorded by telescopic observers as early as the 19th century. The astronomer Patrick Moore pointed out that Schiaparelli (1835–1910) "had found that his Nodus Gordis and Olympic Snow [Nix Olympica] were almost the only features to be seen" during dust storms, and "guessed correctly that they must be high".[38]
The Mariner 9 spacecraft arrived in orbit around Mars in 1971 during a global dust-storm. The first objects to become visible as the dust began to settle, the tops of the Tharsis volcanoes, demonstrated that the altitude of these features greatly exceeded that of any mountain found on Earth, as astronomers expected. Observations of the planet from Mariner 9 confirmed that Nix Olympica was a volcano. Ultimately, astronomers adopted the name Olympus Mons for the albedo feature known as Nix Olympica.
Regional setting and surrounding features [ edit ]
Olympus Mons is located between the northwestern edge of the Tharsis region and the eastern edge of Amazonis Planitia. It stands about 1,200 km (750 mi) from the other three large Martian shield volcanoes, collectively called the Tharsis Montes (Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons). The Tharsis Montes are slightly smaller than Olympus Mons.
A wide, annular depression or moat about 2 km (1.2 mi) deep surrounds the base of Olympus Mons and is thought to be due to the volcano's immense weight pressing down on the Martian crust. The depth of this depression is greater on the northwest side of the mountain than on the southeast side.
Olympus Mons is partially surrounded by a region of distinctive grooved or corrugated terrain known as the Olympus Mons aureole. The aureole consists of several large lob |
to its problems, fixes them, and gets long-term costs under control. So far, there’s no sign that’s about to happen, and instead, we face the threat of a death spiral and a game of budget chicken.“The long-expected speech has been delivered. What Minister could do, Lloyd George has done. He held the Commons in thrall for an hour and a half yesterday afternoon, and his brave words should carry far wide.”
Lloyd George’s speech on the Labour for Munitions Bill was the big news for the Telegraph today, given centre stage on page 9 as he made “a great speech” of “straight, courageous words” and a “ringing call to labour,” although as page 8 reveals coal miners were proving resistant to coming under its aegis.
As the banner headline on page 9 proclaimed, the drive to improve munitions was making “England an Arsenal,” again forgetting there is more to the UK than its largest country, which might not impress the “Welsh Wizard.” Not that the paper’s former bête noire fully carried the day, for reading between the lines his choice of attire – “dressed as for holiday, in a summer suit of grey” – was not suitable for the occasion.
- Today’s letter appealing for charitable donations comes from the Factory Girls’ Country Holiday Fund on page 4, with another from St John’s Ambulance on page 12
- Germany encourages its large manufacturers to remove “Made from Germany” from its products and replace it with the name of a neutral company so as to assist sales – page 8. “The Brand of Shame” is how the Telegraph considers Made in Germany to now be
- Austria recaptures Lemburg (now the Ukrainian city of Lviv), an event which causes “wild joy” in that country and Germany, although the Russians claim victory in the area after decoying the enemy into a trap, and the Telegraph is at pains to insist the city wasn’t stormed, but taken after a Russian retreat in good order – page 9
- A convicted German spy is shot in the Tower of London – page 9
- Celebrations for the annual charitable Alexandra Day are reported on pages 9 and 10
- Another large batch of gallantry awards on page 13, and the first instalment of military awards from the King’s Birthday honours takes up a fair portion of page 12I first began investigating creationist school vouchers as my part of my fight against creationism in my home state of Louisiana. Over the past few months, I’ve learned creationist vouchers aren’t just a Louisiana problem—they’re an American problem. School vouchers are, as James Gill recently wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “the answer to a creationist’s prayer.”
Liberty Christian School, in Anderson, Indiana, has field trips to the Creation Museum and students learn from the creationist A Beka curriculum. Kingsway Christian School, in Avon, Indiana, also has Creation Museum field trips. Mansfield Christian School, in Ohio, teaches science through the creationist Answers in Genesis website, run by the founder of the Creation Museum. The school’s Philosophy of Science page says, “the literal view of creation is foundational to a Biblical World View.” All three of these schools, and more than 300 schools like them, are receiving taxpayer money.
So far, I have documented 310 schools, in nine states and the District of Columbia that are teaching creationism, and receiving tens of millions of dollars in public money through school voucher programs.
There is no doubt that there are hundreds more creationist voucher schools that have yet to be identified. The more than 300 schools I have already found are those that have publicly stated on their websites that they teach creationism or use creationist curricula.
There are hundreds more voucher schools, across the country, that are self-identified Christian academies, that appear very similar in philosophy to the ones I’ve identified in my research as teaching creationism. These schools may not blatantly advertise that they teach creationism on their websites, or often don’t even have a website, but there is a good chance that hundreds more voucher schools are also teaching our children creationism. Some states, Arizona and Mississippi, haven’t even released lists of schools participating in their voucher programs for the public to audit.
Here are a few highlights from creationist voucher schools I have identified:
The Beverly Institute in Jacksonville, Florida, teaches “Evidence of a Flood,” and “Evidence against Evolution,” and ”The Evolution of Man: A Mistaken Belief.”
Creekside Christian Academy in McDonough, Georgia says,“The universe, a direct creation of God, refutes the man-made idea of evolution. Students will be called upon to see the divine order of creation and its implications on other subject areas.
Life Christian Academy in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma says their life science class will “lead the student to recognize that God created all living things and that these living things are fearfully and wonderfully made.” Evolution is taught only in history class, where students “evaluate the theory of evolution and its flaws.” The school uses the creationist Bob Jones and CSI curriculums.
The principal of the Claiborne Christian School, in West Monroe, Louisiana, says in a school newsletter, “Our position at CCS on the age of the Earth and other issues is that any theory that goes against God’s Word is in error.” She also claims that scientists are “sinful men” trying to explain the world “without God” so they don’t have to be “morally accountable to Him.”
Trinity Academy, in Gary, uses the creationist A Beka curriculum and says it “presents the universe as the direct creation of God and refutes the man-made idea of evolution.”
Rocky Bayou Christian School, in Niceville, Florida, says in its section on educational philosophy, “God mandates that children be discipled for Christ. They must be trained in the biblical world view which honors Jehovah, the sovereign Creator of the universe. It recognizes that man was created in the image of God” and says “Man is presumed to be an evolutionary being shaped by matter, energy, and chance… God commands His people not to teach their children the way of the heathen.”
Wisconsin Lutheran High School, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, says in its biology syllabus that it teaches, “evolutionists are ‘stuck’ because they have no god, therefore they must believe in evolution” and “young earth evidence a disaster to evolutionists.”
This year, we may see even more creationist school vouchers. Both Tennessee and Texas are considering passing voucher programs. Indiana and Georgia may expand their programs.
Advocates for vouchers argue that private schools and more competition would offer a better education for American students. Schools that teach creationism and do not meet basic science standards will fail our students and do not deserve taxpayer funding.
We must to speak out to prevent funding these creationist schools with our public money. We must speak out and end these existing creationist voucher programs. As Americans, we must do the right thing and teach our students evidence-based science.
Zack Kopplin is a 19-year-old student at Rice University, and one of the leading American voices against the teaching of creationism in schools. He was featured as an MHP Foot Soldier last March, and profiled at length this week by io9.SAINTE-FOY, QC.—In the chaos of a catastrophe, it was the shadow that came into Mohamed Belkhadir’s view and the human instinct to save himself that landed the young man in jail. According to his account of the ordeal, the 29-year-old was swept up in the panic of the murderous shooting at Centre Culturel Islamique Québec on Sunday night. Taken into police custody as one of two shooters police alleged were behind the killings, he spent a night in jail and pondered losing his good name, his dreams and his freedom, before terrorism investigators realized they had made a grievous error.
The chaotic scene outside Centre Culturel Islamique Québec on Sunday. ( Pascal Ratthe / La Presse )
In fact, Belkhadir’s actions in the face of the carnage make him more hero than killer. “I was trying to give first aid to my friend who was on the ground. I saw an image that was carrying a gun. I got scared. It was an image of a man who had a gun. I didn’t know it was a police officer. I thought it was a shooter who had come back,” the 29-year-old Université Laval student told reporters upon his return home from jail. Read the latest news on the Quebec mosque shooting
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The bespectacled, bearded young man asked not to be photographed, but told his tale with humility and understanding for the terrorism investigators who held him in custody for more than 12 hours. Belkhadir had skipped out just ahead of the several dozen others who had come to the mosque for evening prayers. He was clearing snow from the steps of the building and so engrossed in his task that he didn’t notice the armed man enter through the front doors. When the gunfire erupted — lasting perhaps 15 or 20 seconds — instinct kicked in. He said he ran inside the building to call 9-1-1 and then he attended to an acquaintance who had been injured in the frenzy. Belkhadir lay a jacket over the man to try and keep him warm as they waited for help to arrive. That’s when he saw the image come into his field of view. “I got scared and I tried to flee,” he said, adding that he ran away from the mosque, toward the parking lot. “But when I heard that I had to drop to the ground, I understood that it was the police... When they saw me running they thought I was a suspect.”
The reports of two “suspects” — a pair believed to have acted as the shooters were fairly categorical from the police. And it was pretty categorical from an early point in the investigation. One of them, police said in their second media briefing late Sunday night, was arrested at the scene of the crime while the other was captured after fleeing in a vehicle. Information leaked out that one of the men was of Moroccan descent while another was a white Quebecer — leading journalists, terrorism experts and most of the thinking public scratching their heads.
A man is in custody Monday after a mass shooting at Centre Culturel Islamique Québec — which killed six men and wounded eight others. ( IAN WILLMS )
Was it a case of a racist extremist group taking out their white hatred on the Muslim faithful, or the result of a schism between a local community and radicalized individuals?
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Sure, Belkhadir was intimately familiar with the mosque — he went there regularly to pray. “He was excellent. He’s a religious Muslim... He comes from a good family. I can’t understand how he could be a suspect,” said Bernard Blaise, owner of the building in which the young man rented his room. The neighbours thought much the same thing, but they were forced to ponder the incongruencies of Belkhadir’s case with their hands in the air. The normally busy street in front of their home was completely blocked off to traffic. Armoured vehicles blocked the roads, preventing anyone from entering or leaving the area. This was the scene at about 9 a.m. Monday morning. By about 11 a.m., the barriers were being pulled down, police units were being redeployed elsewhere in the city and journalists were left to descend on the bewildered residents of Belkhadir’s building. This was just after Belkhadir’s name and that of the principal suspect, Alexandre Bissonnette, had leaked out in the media. It was also just before investigators chose to correct the official record in the case with two tweets, saying that one of the suspects was no longer considered as such — but was now being classified as a “witness” to the shooting. It was touch-and-go for Belkhadir as he contemplated the cruel twist his life had just taken. They investigators were nice to him, offering food and coffee and even loosening his handcuffs when he complained they were too tight. But at the same time he saw his future disappearing. “I saw images. I thought I wouldn’t be able to work, that I would no longer be able to go to university, that I no longer would be able to do what I’ve always dreamed of,” he said upon arriving home Monday afternoon. “I thought there had been a mistake and that it would be stuck to me.” And despite the ordeal Belkhadir insists he would act the same way if it were to happen again. “It’s a reflex. When there is someone who is injured it’s a reflex. You can’t leave people in need of help. Even someone who is sick. You can’t leave them on the ground. It’s an act of humanity for everyone — not just for Muslims.”The number of bank branches in Canada is expected to shrink this year, as more Canadians turn to online and mobile banking for their everyday needs.
The Globe and Mail reports that dozens of bank locations will shut their doors for good this year. Others will pivot to focus more on giving financial advice and less on everyday transactions.
Dozens of Canadian bank branches will close this year, as customers shift to online banking. (Photo: Rostislav Sedlacek/Getty Images)
The trend could spell trouble for tellers and other bank employees.
“Customers are increasingly doing things in a digital way,” BMO chief financial officer Thomas Flynn said last year, when the bank cut 1,850 jobs from its workforce.
Canadians prefer online banking
The Internet is now the main means of banking for 55 per cent of Canadians — making it the most popular method by far, a Canadian Bankers Association study found. Only 13 per cent said they do most of their banking at an actual bank, down from 29 per cent in 2000.
Canada’s banks closed 45 branches between 2014 and 2015, according to data from the CBA. Before that, the number of locations had grown steadily every year, apart from a slight dip in 2009.
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Also On HuffPost:A new study has found that higher levels of racism in white Americans is associated with having a gun in the home and greater opposition to gun control policies.
The research, published in PLoS One, was led by Dr Kerry O'Brien from The University of Manchester and Monash University and used data from a large representative sample of white US voters.
After accounting for numerous other factors such as income, education and political ideology, the researchers found that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.
Each one point increase in symbolic racism (a modern measure of anti-black racism) was also associated with a 27 percent increase in the odds of opposing bans on hand guns in the home. After accounting for those who already had a gun in the home, the odds were reduced to a non-significant 17 percent increase. However, the authors note that this reduction is unsurprising as opposition to bans on guns equates to self interest on behalf of those who already own a gun and do not wish to give it up. And racism was already strongly associated with having a gun in the home.
The research was stimulated by gun control debates in the US after mass shootings such as the Sandy Hook tragedy, and research showing that with all things being equal black Americans are more likely to be shot than whites. The most recent figures show that there are approximately 38,000 gun related deaths in the US each year. With other research suggesting that having a gun in the home is related to a 2.7 and 4.8 fold increase in the risk of a member of that home dying from homicide or suicide, respectively.
Dr O'Brien said: "Coming from countries with strong gun control policies, and a 30-fold lower rate of gun-related homicides, we found the arguments for opposing gun control counterintuitive and somewhat illogical. For example, US whites oppose gun control to a far greater extent than do blacks, but whites are actually more likely to kill themselves with their guns, than be killed by someone else. Why would you keep them? So we decided to examine what social and psychological factors predict gun ownership and opposition to gun control."
Conservatism, anti-government sentiment, party identification, being from a southern state, were also associated with opposition to gun controls, but the association between racism and the gun-related outcomes remained after accounting for these factors and other participant characteristics (age, education, income, gender).
Symbolic racism supplanted old-fashioned or overt/blatant racism which was associated with open support for race inequality and segregation under 'Jim Crow Laws', but it still captures the anti-black sentiment and traditional values that underpinned blatant racism. Symbolic racism has also been found to be related to stronger opposition to policies that may benefit blacks (e.g. welfare), and greater support for policies that seem to disadvantage blacks (e.g. longer prison sentences).
Study co-author Dr Dermot Lynott, from Lancaster University, said: "We were initially surprised that no one had studied this issue before; however, the US government cut research funding for gun-related research over decade and a half ago, so research in this area has been somewhat suppressed."
Dr O'Brien said: "According to a Pew Research Center report the majority of white Americans support stricter gun control, but the results of our study suggest that those who oppose gun reform tend to have a stronger racial bias, tend to be politically and ideologically conservative and from southern states, and have higher anti-government sentiment."
He added: "The study is a first step, but there needs to be more investment in empirical research around how racial bias may influence people's policy decisions, particularly those policies that impact on the health and wellbeing of US citizens."
###It’s difficult to think of a genre in gaming as oversaturated as the shooter. From Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare to Battlefield 1, the best-selling games list of 2016 is mired with monotonous gun simulators. The original Splatoon provided a much needed escape from this never-ending onslaught back in 2015, but the Wii U’s horrendous sales meant that this innovative shooter slipped under the radar for many gamers. This looks to change with the release of Splatoon 2 in July.
Breaking away from the traditional deathmatch gameplay of most shooters, the goal in Splatoon isn’t to simply kill all of your opponents. Instead, the game asks you to cover the environment with your team’s coloured ink. While you still have the ability to shoot the opposite team with your military grade paintball guns, it’s only to delay their attempts at painting over your handiwork. The team who covers the most ground with their colour wins. The ability to turn into a squid and stealthily swim through your team’s ink is the icing on the strategic cake. This innovative – and slightly ridiculous – take on the shooter genre is an example of Nintendo at its most Nintendo-y, the wacky Japanese company refusing to bow to trends and release something more traditional.
Yet, as I said before, the original Splatoon simply didn’t reach enough players to make a big impact. While it received rave reviews, the “ink-redible” shooter remained practically unheard of outside of Nintendo’s core fanbase. Splatoon 2 has the potential to change this. Releasing on the Nintendo Switch in July, the sequel has a much better chance of reaching the audience it deserves. While the Switch only released in March, it is already on track to outsell its disastrous predecessor.
Just like the original, Splatoon 2 promises to include robust online multiplayer and a lengthy single-player campaign. As well as introducing new maps and weapons, the sequel will supposedly fix many of the problems with the original game’s multiplayer. These are mainly logistical tweaks like reducing latency and increasing the number of maps that are playable each day, but with these kinks sorted, Splatoon 2‘s multiplayer should be able to rival that of a more mainstream shooter. Nintendo has yet to announce much about the game’s single-player mode, but we can assume it will play similarly to the original’s campaign. Unlike the majority of modern shooters, Splatoon’s single-player was lengthy and markedly different from what is offered in multiplayer, rarely reusing the same environments or scenarios. From the short glimpses we’ve seen in trailers, this seems to be a trend continuing in Splatoon 2.
The only feature of the Wii U version that seems to have been lost in translation is the original game’s excellent map system. As Splatoon requires you to constantly monitor the environment, it is incredibly useful to have a bird’s eye perspective of the entire map throughout each match. While the original used the Wii U GamePad’s second-screen for this, the sequel has to clumsily integrate the map as part of the main UI. It’s certainly a shame, but this a problem that can’t be helped.
Summer is traditionally a very quiet period for games, so Splatoon 2 is a great choice for anyone looking for something to sink their teeth into. While each online match is short, the addictive battles will have you playing a dozen in a single sitting. Nintendo teased us with a short demo of the game earlier in the year, so I’ll be glad to finally get my hands on the full version. If you didn’t play the original then it should certainly be worth grabbing the sequel.
Splatoon 2 shoots onto the Nintendo Switch on July 21st. Check out the trailer below.Brave New World used to be one of the most terrifying stories about a false utopia. It gave us the concept of “test tube babies,” and its name became synonymous with technological progress run wild. But many of the things Aldous Huxley predicted are coming true, and it turns out they’re not so scary.
Ranked fifth by the American Modern Library among its 100 best novels, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World remains an enduring classic of speculative fiction. Set 600 years in the future, the novel anticipates a number of key advancements, including powerful reproductive technologies (such as in vitro fertilization, human engineering, and cloning), classical conditioning, neuropharmaceuticals, and psychological manipulation. Horrifyingly, these technological and scientific advancements are used by a quasi-totalitarian regime to keep its population subservient and under control.
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Some 80 years after this novel’s debut, it’s clear that our world has not unfolded precisely as Huxley imagined it would—but many of the things he talks about in his book are now reality, or they soon will be. What’s more, a number of advancements portrayed in the book, whether they be technological or social, aren’t as scary as they seemed back then. And in fact, they’re increasingly being seen in a positive light.
Time-stamped
Brave New World was very much a product of its time—a reflection of the many fears and concerns emerging in the early part of the 20th Century. As the grandson of the biologist T. H. Huxley (who was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his vociferous defense of evolutionary theories) and the brother of Julian Huxley (the evolutionary biologist and eugenicist), Aldous Huxley was firmly rooted in the zeitgeist of the time.
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It was through his brother that Aldous was introduced to the work of the controversial British biologist J. B. S. Haldane, who in his seminal 1923 work Daedalus; or, Science and the Future, presented his vision of a future world in which scientists would use biotechnology to reshape humanity. It was Haldane, and not Huxley, who first speculated about biologically engineered humans, clones, in vitro fertilization, and artificial wombs.
Left: J.B.S. Haldane (Credit: EB/PD)
Indeed, like many of his contemporaries, Huxley was horrified by these predictions, and he would use many of Haldane’s ideas to give the frightening society depicted in Brave New World its shape.
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But the novel was far more than just a biotech nightmare. Huxley was also railing against the totalitarian threat.
Vladimir Lenin giving a speech in Moscow (Credit: G. Goldshtein/PD)
The Soviet Union was only 14 years old when Brave New World was written, a time when Marxist idealism was flourishing. Huxley, like many others, was concerned about the loss of human individualism and autonomy—a concern reinforced not just by the threat of communism, but by the rise of Big Bureaucracy and the proliferation of Henry Ford’s “Fordist” industrial ideal.
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A central theme of Brave New World—which takes place in 632 A.F (“After Ford”)—is the deliberate homogenization of the human species by the state in a manner reminiscent of a factory assembly line. What’s more, as an admirer of Thomas Malthus, Huxley was also concerned about human overpopulation, a problem he feared would be dealt with in a draconian manner by an authoritarian power.
Lastly, Huxley was also reacting to changing social norms. With the 19th Century fixed firmly in the rearview mirror, Huxley’s society was witness to unprecedented change. As Victorian and Christian values weakened, new and modern ideas were on the rise, including secularism, feminism, and a greater sense of sexual liberation.
This was the context in which Brave New World was written. And while many of Huxley’s concerns still resonate, the advantage of time has shown us how many of his fears were not just overstated, but also out of tune with the general direction of history.
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Biotech Bugbears
Humans in Huxley’s fictional society no longer produce live offspring. As the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning explains, surgically removed ovaries produce ova that are fertilized in artificial receptacles, and then incubated in specially designed bottles.
Fetuses are engineered to conform to their ultimate station in life, and are classified under a caste system: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Gammas and Deltas are subject to the Bokanovsky Process, which allows scientists to induce eggs to produce up to 96 identical embryos, which go on to form 96 identical humans, or clones. These Gamma and Delta clones go on to spend their lives performing identical tasks at identical machines. (Notably, this is a future that doesn’t include advanced robotics, which would eliminate a lot of the need for these Gammas and Deltas.) It’s all in the service of the state’s motto: “Community, Identity, Stability.”
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There’s something unquestioningly disquieting about these technological advancements. Innovations, particularly those in biotechnology, often elicit a sense of repugnance, or the feeling that the natural world has been violated in some way. As Haldane himself admitted in Daedalus:
The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural.
As we’ve seen time and time again, however, advances in biotechnology are often met with repulsion, only to be supplanted by acceptance once they’re proven safe and effective. As bioethicist James Hughes wrote in “Back to the Future: Contemporary biopolitics in 1920’s British Futurism”:
The response to Brave New World reflected the polarization between techno-pessimists and -optimists. [British philosopher Bertrand] Russell welcomed it, because the novel highlighted the deep-seated suspicion of engineered health and happiness, and of a well-ordered world. Russell acknowledged, however—as the defenders of the “wisdom of repugnance” do today—that this “yuck factor” is basically irrational: a desperate, although necessary, clinging to illusions. Although we object to the brainwashing techniques in Brave New World, all parenting and education are efforts to mould children: “we do not object to molding a human being, provided it is done badly; we only object when it is done well”
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As Hughes correctly notes, the objections raised in Brave New World are illustrative of the long-standing tensions within the Enlightenment tradition as it pertains to optimism and pessimism about technology.
The Evening Independent Newspaper, 1978
The introduction of in vitro fertilization in 1978 provides a good example. This powerful assisted reproductive technique was was initially met with great trepidation, giving rise to the derisive term “test tube babies.” Today, it is a widely accepted process that produces millions of new lives each year.
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Today’s biotech bugbears include three-parent IVF, the advent of cheap and powerful genetic cut-and-paste tools, such as CRISPR, and the world’s first genetically altered human embryo. While potentially alarming, these biotechnologies and others currently in development hold great promise. Advances in genetics will serve to eliminate a host of genetic diseases, while offering humans the opportunity to forgo the haphazard genetic roll of the dice when it comes to determining the traits of offspring. A strong case can be made that it’s both our duty and right to develop these technologies.
IVF (Credit: Eugene Ermolovich (CRMI) | CC BY-SA 3.0)
Today, we no longer fear that in vitro fertilization will lead to the rise of genetically engineered brainwashed working class clones. And we’re starting to get over our fears of the next generation of tools, such as IVF and CRISPR.
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The End of the Totalitarian Experiments
Very importantly, Huxley’s totalitarian fears proved unwarranted—though it didn’t appear that way until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 (not to mention the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945). In fact, the relative success and infamy of the Soviets and Nazis in the decades following the publication of Brave New World helped to endow Huxley’s book with a false sense of urgency.
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Fall of the Berlin Wall (Credit: Daniel Antal/CC)
In today’s democracies we’re poised to use advances in biotechnology and medical science in ways that serve their own personal and family interests.
Eugenics, as a top-down imposition, is dead. So it’s unfortunate that Huxley’s book has perpetuated the fear that governments will use such advances to keep its populace subservient and productive for its own ends. The reality, however, is that these technologies are—and increasingly will be—tools made by the people, for the people.
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Reefer Madness
Citizens in Huxley’s New World are infantilized and rendered harmless through the regular intake of “soma,” a readily available pharmaceutical that alleviates depression and keeps people in a perpetual state of calm.
Soma is described as being “euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant,” while having all “the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.” A “gramme is better than a damn,” say the New World’s citizens, adding that there can be “no social stability without individual stability.” New Worlders attend “solidarity services,” a mock religious activity that more closely resembles a modern drug-infused rave.
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Dystopian? (Credit: Pixabay/CC0 PD)
Some commentators today complain that antidepressants are akin to Huxley’s soma, but it’s an accusation that’s not entirely fair. Millions of people benefit from medicines like Paxil and Lexapro, which allows them to resume normal lives without losing any of their personality.
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Even the burgeoning use and acceptance of marijuana can be seen as a Huxleyesque development—but again, the hysteria against this recreational drug is starting to wane. If anything, cannabis has been proving its value as an effective means to reduce physical pain, while also serving as an acceptable substitute for alcohol—a socially accepted drug that Huxley’s contemporaries would have been all too familiar with.
In the same way we no longer fear a government that uses drugs to control us, we no longer fear drugs as a way to control and alter our emotional and conscious states.
Sex and the Family
Huxley’s future dystopia also features mandated sexual promiscuity, which is yet another state-driven initiative to keep everyone happy. Women wear birth control pills on their belts as a fashion item, and abortion is readily available. With human reproduction relegated to the lab, sex has become more than just a recreational activity—it’s something Huxley’s state has learned to use as a psychological control system.
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Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire by Russell Patterson (Credit: Library of Congress/Public Domain)
New Worlders also enjoy date nights at the “feelies”—what’s known today as pornography. A typical date night ends with a dose of soma and a meaningless hook-up (sounds suspiciously like Tinder). Writing in the Toronto Star, columnist Nancy Wigston puts it well by referring to the indulged New Worlders as the “great-grandparents of today’s texters and sexters.”
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All this dulling of the human experience serves a very important purpose, of course. As Huxley writes, “most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”
Huxley’s prescience here is remarkable, even if these social trends and political developments haven’t unfolded exactly the way he described. People, particularly those in Western cultures, have most certainly become more sexually liberated since the 1930s, the result of declining Victorian and Christian values. Not to mention the rise of feminism, and the sense that people shouldn’t be shamed for their sexual behavior.
Families are different as well, though not exactly in the way that Huxley imagined. Relationships and family dynamics have changed in ways that aren’t frightening to us anymore. We no longer speak of “broken homes,” for example, nor do we fret as much about the demise of the “nuclear family.” At the same time, we don’t worry that the state will outlaw the family, as portrayed in Brave New World.
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In fact, Huxley’s vision of a false utopia seems grossly old-fashioned and moralizing to our modern eyes. Eight decades later, many of his concerns about sex and reproduction can be interpreted as a conservative reaction to changing social mores and the ongoing effort to control women’s bodies.
Malthusian Matters
As already noted, Huxley shared the concerns of Thomas Malthus, a 19th century sociologist who warned about the perils of human overpopulation. It’s a concern that’s still relevant today, though many experts say it’s grossly overstated.
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A population bomb? (Credit: Ngo Trung/CC BY 3.0)
The government in Huxley’s New World addressed this problem by imposing a population measure in which people are euthanized once they reach the age of 60 and are no longer considered economically useful. Aging still exists in this world, but only at the cosmetic level. Elderly folks are “youthful and taut-skinned, slim and upright,” but once they reach the age of 60, “then crack! the end.” After death, people are cremated, where “a kilo and a half of phosphorus per adult corpse” gets harvested for use as fertilizer.
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Today, the idea of a government killing off its elderly seems far-fetched. Rather, scientists, technologists, governments, and institutions are working to decrease our individual carbon footprints, while increasing access to birth control. And a huge turning point in our discussions of population control has come from the recognition that the best way to produce fewer children is by raising standards of living and giving women more access to education, not through coercive mechanisms. The answer to a growing human population is not an authoritarian boot to the face, but sensible humanitarian measures.
Email the author at george@io9.com and follow him at @dvorsky. Top image by iurii/ShutterstockI don’t know if you have noticed it lately or not, but the airwaves and ether zone are bristling with meaningless terms that have become part of the American lexicon. Because we have lost the ability to think logically, the media is able to create a narrative by simply repeating phrases that in no time flat become accepted by millions of Americans as Truth.
In fact, if you are not careful, you will find yourself using the same made-up terms that the mind-benders created to control the way that you view the world. I often find myself, and others, repeating these code words in casual conversations. It is a result of the mind manipulation that has been so effective by those whose job it is to hide the Truth. Here are just a few of the stupid statements that I find myself repeating.
Can anyone say gay marriage? Or anything gay? Check the dictionary and you will find that gay means “happy, exuberant, bright in color,” yet most people think of homosexuality when they hear the term.
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“Choice” is another one of those terms. There was a day when choice meant to make a selection between two or more alternatives. But in modern America, “choice” is a chocolate-coated term that has replaced the word abortion. Trust me on this one…most pro-choice people are really anti-choice. Pro-choice activists fight for abortion, not for birth, and certainly not for the natural choice: adoption. If Americans were sane, the “choice” would be between keeping the child and giving the baby up for adoption.
Abortion is not a very good stand-alone word. Choice makes the medicine go down so much better and gives cover to the ghouls who love baby murder. “No one is for baby murder” I hear you say. That statement simply exposes the fact that most people have never actually dealt with militant pro-aborts. Trust me. Some people do not want ANY child to live.
Words have meaning. If we would simply take the time to THINK about what we just heard, we would find ourselves ahead of the crowd and not as easily herded along like a gaggle of programmed snowflakes.
Which brings me to the diabolic, murderous, falsely labeled Planned Parenthood; everything about them is fake. Their lying CEO Cecile Richards |
Bill in toto, have walked out.
8.42 pm: The FM says it is too soon to start deliberating upon the what the exact tax rate will be. "Today we are passing only an enabling resolution," he says, pointing out that the passage of the GST Constitutional Bill will lead to the setup of the GST Council.
"The GST Council will deliberate upon the tax rate, which will later be ratified by states."
The GST Bill will likely be taken up in Winter Session.
8.40 pm: This is by far the most informed and civilised debate that one has heard in a long time. Through the day, lawmakers took turns to express their concerns over the Bill while the FM now offers a point-by-point explanation.
The discussion has been over six hours and 40 minutes.
It is such a treat to hear a great civilised debate on GST in Rajya Sabha. I wish it could become the norm! @rajyasabhatv
— Dr. S.Y. Quraishi (@DrSYQuraishi) August 3, 2016
8.38 pm: Jaitley now addresses the AIADMK's criticism of the GST, which says the tax is in violation of Constitutional rights of states.
"This is not taking away powers. Under the GST, states will also have power to make laws."
8.36 pm: Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has put up an FAQ explaining the basic concepts of the ambitious GST.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Goods and Services Tax (GST) is available in https://t.co/CRLeq3VCsJ
— Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) August 3, 2016
8.31 pm: FM now goes on to elaborate upon the dispute resolution mechanism.
8.28 pm: Chidambaram now starts talking. Two ace lawyers now making sharp legal arguments citing various clauses from the Constitution.
8.26 pm: The FM is in full flow, now explains why proceeds from the IGST will not go into the Consolidated Fund of India, dismisses Chidambaram's criticism that the GST Bill is "clumsily drafted".
Sh. Arun Jaitley’s reply to the discussion on The Constitution (122nd Amnd.) [GST] Bill, 2014: https://t.co/IpD3VvZ1LA via @YouTube
— Rajya Sabha TV (@rajyasabhatv) August 3, 2016
8.20 pm: FM now takes on the the criticism that the BJP delayed the GST when it was in opposition.
"If we put the 2011 version of the GST Bill before the House and states," Jaitley says. "There was no concrete provision for compensation of losses arising out of GST."
"In fact, even when we came into power into 2014, many states including Gujarat were still opposing the Bill because they were not sure about compensation."
"It was only after I cleared dues arising out of CST's 2005 rollout that states came on board."
8.15 pm: The FM treads cautiously on the benchmark tax rate and is not willing to box himself into a corner with any commitment.
"The 18 percent recommendation of the CEA's report were on the basis of some assumptions, which some states do not agree with," he says.
"The tax rate will have to calculated on the basis of a rigourous arithmetic calculation," he adds.
8.10 pm: The FM says that the average rate currently on manufactured products is over 30 percent for a majority of goods.
"There will be three changes that will come in after the GST is passed. Evasion will become very effect, there will be no cascading taxes, and the average tax rate will come down," he says.
8.05 pm: "However, there is still some need to for us to explain how a post-GST tax system should work."
Jaitley then goes on to address the dispute resolution mechanism, which was the subject of some discussion today. "States will have two-thirds majority in the GST Council."
8.02 pm: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is now speaking. "All parties except one have expressed support."
7.59 pm: The discussion is not yet wrapped up. Two more speakers left.
7.58 pm: A key takeaway by analysts is how Chidambaram's statement that the GST rate should not exceed 18 percent has put pressure on the government.
This, as Sadanand Dhume notes, is a bit of a role-reversal for a percieved left-of-centre (Congress) and a right-of-centre (BJP) party.
One of the ironies of India's #GST debate is how allegedly right-of-center BJP has let Congress emerge as a champion of lower tax rates.
— Sadanand Dhume (@dhume) August 3, 2016
7.56 pm: Lawmakers now quibbling over how much airtime each party was alloted.
7.51 pm: Sharma implores the government to bring petroleum products and alcohol under the GST's ambit. (The former is in under the GST but is zero rated while the latter is kept out.)
"Together, these two contribute about 20 percent to the total tax collection. Without petroleum products being included, there can be no true GST."
7.49 pm: Other lawmakers now getting impatient. "Till when wlll this debate go on," someone says. Sharma ignores the jibe and continues on.
7.45 pm: Meanwhile, even the Rajya Sabha debates the GST Bill, the Cabinet is quietly doing its own work. It has made two key decisions: it has approved amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act and approved flat 3 percent spectrum usage charge for next round of auction.
7.40 pm: If you want to watch the historic debate that is currently under way, here is is.
7.30 pm: Congress MP Anand Sharma is now speaking. The debate has now been running more than five hours. Voting is expected sometime late this evening.
Despite the mood of bipartisanship prevailing in the Rajya Sabha, Sharma is not holding back punches, says PM Modi must be present in the Upper House and express regret over his attacks on the GST when the BJP was in opposition and the Congress was trying it push it through.The GST, however, is likely to pass even without the AIADMK's support.If Centre doesn't respond to AIADMK's concerns, the party will not support the Bill, Pandiarajan says. AIADMK has 13 members in Rajya Sabha.First reactions coming in from AIADMK.
AIADMK spokesperson K Pandiarajan says Parliament has the authority to reduce compensation and the BJP and Congress seem to be against fiscal autonomy for states.
The bill doesn't address AIADMK's issues and in current for is illegal and unconstitutional. Centre should realise that they can't bulldoze through the Bill just because it has Congress's support. India can not gain at the cost of states, he adds.
7. 00 pm: Legendary batsman and Rajya Sabha member Sachin Tendulkar said making GST a reality is only a matter of time.
One nation one tax, making #GST a reality is just a matter of time! Look forward to #GST delivering the benefits.
— sachin tendulkar (@sachin_rt) August 2, 2016
Construction, transport and logistics segments are Dehn's picks. These segments will see benefits of GST implementation, he says.More views coming in from Dehn. If GST Bill is not passed, it will lead to a souring of investor sentiment, he cautions.Moving towards a single tax structure important for long-term growth and GST will validate current valuations in the market says Jan Dehn of Ashmore. More importantly,this is probably the most profound tax reform India could undertake. It will change an unfair perception that emerging markets do not undertake reforms, he says.Earlier in the day in Parliament, former Finance Minister P Chidambaram stressed on the need to cap GST at 18 percent.Pawan Goenka of Mahindra & Mahindra asks for having faith in the government. He says the government is receptive to views, let's be positive, he says. Any rate between 18-20 percent is acceptable, Munjal says.Karnataka looks to set a precedent. We will loose revenues on the manufacturing front but losses will be compensated. National interest is higher in this context says RV Deshpande, Industries Minister, Karnataka.Meanwhile, even as the Rajya Sabha slugs it out, here's a view from economist M Govinda Rao, former director of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP).An NIPFP study had originally pegged the ideal GST rate at around 27 percent. Rao still believes that the assumptions of report by Arvind Subramanian panel were based on "very optimistic assumptions" of widening of the tax base.Rao adds that the ideal GST rate would be around 22 percent though the government should "take a risk" and bring it at around 20 percent.However, even as the GST will almost uniformly be a positive for the manufacturing sector, some concerns remain on its impact on the services sector, which anyway enjoys a low tax rate currently.Seshasayee says that the GST should be able to define and identify the value-added concept, "because in the case of service companies, two teams working across states or countries may come together and collaborate to create value.""Thus the GST should be able to tax this efficiently," he says.Former FICCI President Siddharth Birla says the "devil will be in the detail" of the GST Bill and said the government should ensure tight drafting to plug as many loopholes as possible."The Bill is indeed transformative in nature," says Infosys Chairman R Seshasayee, but he cautioned that the Centre should be cautious about its role of distributing funds it collects on behalf of the states. "Also, the Centre should be cognizant of the fact that some states have special needs and the GST must have provisions for it."Independent Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar is now speaking. He says the GST is a work in progress and will evolve over time and urges parties to support the Bill.Meanwhile, the debate continues in Rajya Sabha. NCP's Praful Patel is now speaking."For far too long, he have too many taxes. The kind of structure under which businesses was operating needs to be changed and the GST is a step in the right direction," he says, pointing out that the government should be mindful of its inflationary aspect in the near term.The average tax rate on services in the country has been pegged at about 14 percent while that on manufacturing is about 28 percent. The standard GST rate is expected to come in at 18 percent.There have been concerns that the rollout of GST will be inflationary -- a similar experience was seen in Malaysia, even though it was introduced at 6 percent last year. Ex-FM Chidambaram touched upon this when he implored the government to keep as low a GST rate as possible so as to contain its inflationary impact.But CRISIL Chief Economist DK Joshi said any inflationary spike will be temporary.The IGST will be levied on inter-state transactions and international trade, explains Kothari.Nihal Kothari, Executive Director, Khaitan & Co, explains how the GST will work between the state and centre."There will be three different taxes: state GST (SGST), central GST (CGST) and integrated GST (IGST)," he tells CNBC-TV18. "While the states and centre will collect and keep the SGST and CGST, respectively, the Centre will collect IGST on behalf of the states and give it to them."Even as the debate continues in the Rajya Sabha, expert reactions have started coming in, who believe that the tone of the debate indicates that the GST Constitutional Amendment Bill is as good as passed.Yechury articulates the need for balancing federal interests with the ease of doing business that GST will usher in. "We are making a radical departure from the way tax revenues are collected in this country," he says, repeating other parties' demand to not bring in the GST Bill as a money bill.Sitaram Yechury of the Left, which had till recently appeared to have not made up its mind on the GST, is now speaking.JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav is now speaking. Like every other party, the JD(U) is trying to take the most credit for the passage of the bill. "We were always in support of the GST".He also cautions the government to not try and pass the GST Bill (which will be taken up during the Winter Session following the passage of GST Constitutional Amendment Bill today) through the money bill route."The Congress says is it is for the 'idea' of GST. We are for its implementation," he says, even as he berates the party for its delaying tactics over its rather dubious demand of inclusion of GST rate in the Constitutional Bill. He then concludes the bill.O'Brien is hitting it out of the park, comes up with novel names for the GST, such as "Girgit Samjhaota Tax" and "Go-Slow Tactics", even as he asks the BJP and the Congress to not indulge in further politicking over the passage of GST.O'Brien pulls out statements from both Prime Minister Narendra Modi (when he was Gujarat CM), FM Jaitley (as leader of opposition) and former FM Chidambaram who have both opposed the GST when they were in opposition.TMC's Derek O'Brien is now speaking. While maintaining that the TMC has always been consistent in its support for the Bill. He takes aim at the both the Congress and BJP, for "playing ping-pong" with the Bill and forcing its delay when they were each in the opposition.The GST Constitutional Amendment Bill, however, is expected to be passed even without AIADMK support.The Bill will need to pass muster with two-thirds majority (164) in the 245-member -strong Rajya Sabha. The NDA has strength of 71 members while the UPA has 63 members. Non-allied parties (TMC, NCP, DMK, Left, SP, BSP, JDU) could chip in with another 65 votes. That would make it about 200 votes.Being a destination-based tax rather than a source-based tax, the GST is believed to be a negative to manufacturing states like Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra while consuming states like Delhi will gain.However, the government has promised to make good any losses that states face for a full period of five years.Of course, because the standard GST rate will be net-net revenue neutral, the combined revenue of Centre and states will be the same as they are currently.A Navaneethakrishnan of AIADMK is now speaking. "We strongly oppose this GST Constitutional Amendment Bill. It will lead to grave revenue loss for the Tamil Nadu government," he says. "Democracy and federalism are the basic feature of the Constitution. This Bill violates these basic rights of the Constitution. The Parliament has no legislative competence to enact this Bill."The AIADMK, which has long had concerns over the GST Bill, has moved amendments to the GST Bill, seeking, among other things, an additional 4 percent tax on inter-state movements of goods if the GST is passed.The Centre should also ensure that the GST should not meet the same fate as VAT, which suffered from differential rates on same products in different states."I would implore the government to provide a clear roadmap how the tax will be rolled out by April 1, 2017. We also need a commitment that the GST Bill will not be passed as a Money Bill," says SP's Yadav.SP's Naresh Yadav is now speaking in the Rajya Sabha. He repeats the Congress' demand of strengthening the dispute resolution. He says this can be done by giving states more say in the GST Council.Meanwhile, even as the GST itself is a huge long-term winner, the short-term impact be somewhat negative, as it could lead to a spike in inflation, according to CLSA.This could actually hurt the BJP's poll prospects in the 2019 elections, the research firm adds. Read more here "For the world, India is a huge market. But we have created 29 different markets, thanks to our existing tax system," Yadav says. "India will become one national market because of GST."Today, if a company wants to start manufacturing, it is faced with the prospect of the intimidating taxes in the form of input taxes, octroi and sales tax among others, says Yadav. "The GST will replace this maze of taxes and ease manufacturing."Bhupender Yadav, BJP RS lawmaker from Rajasthan, is now speaking. A clear reconciliatory tone is evident between the two national parties."This is becoming possible because of the PM's revolutionary idea of 'Team India' [comprising the prime minister and state chief ministers]," Yadav, who was Chairman of the GST Select Committee, says."Tomorrow when the rate comes, the standard rate should not be more than 18 percent. [If it is more] we will campaign against it throughout the country," Chidambaram says, before seeking an assurance from the FM that the GST Bill will not be passed as a Money Bill. (A Money Bill does not needs the Rajya Sabha's assent.)He then concludes his address."A high rate will lead to inflation, tax evasion and an imperfect tax system," says the former FM. "The reason we have let go of our demand of inclusion in the GST rate in the Constitutional Bill because the government itself is not clear on what the revenue neutral rate."The highest rate of GST even in rich countries is about 16 percent, says Chidambaram."The standard rate of the GST, pointed out by the Chief Economic Advisor's report, should not be more than 18 percent."He then harps upon the Congress' staple demand -- and says the government should cap the rate at 18 percent."Even if it is not included in the Constitutional Bill, it should be ensured the GST Bill that will be tabled later.""I now come to the most important aspect of the GST: the tax rate," Chidambaram says. "The GST is an indirect tax, which by nature is a regressive tax as it taxes the rich and poor at the same rate. A poor and a rich man will pay the same tax when he purchases a soft drink.""So even as any government wants to maximise its tax revenues, rates of indirect taxes should be kept as low as low as possible while protecting government revenues."The former FM holds forth on minutae of the Bill, with his legal and financial acumen shining through, as he implores the government to still look to further strengthen the dispute resolution mechanism.The GST in its current problem is not an ideal Bill. There are still many issues that need to be resolved, says Chidambaram. "It suffers from clumsy drafting," he adds, pointing to the legal lacunea in the Bill missing out on specifying that funds will be deposited to the Consolidated Fund of India.But he thanks the government for dropping the 1 percent additional tax proposal. "It would have led to cascading tax and led the tax to be imperfect.""Let me make it clear: The Congress party was never opposed to the idea of GST. I think the country is now ready to embrace the idea of GST."Former FM P Chidambaram, recently elected to the Rajya Sabha, starts speaking. "Today, if we pass this Bill, it will be on the basis of serious discussion and I thank the Finance Minister for mentioning the role that UPA played in first mooting the idea of the GST."Jaitley concludes his speech and presents the Bill for passage."GST is one of the most significant reforms ever undertaken. It will broaden the tax base, reduce cascading taxes (tax on tax) and boost growth," Jaitley says.Jaitley elaborates upon the design of the GST, stresses upon the need for balancing federal interests as well as that of the Centre. He also talks about the features of GST, pointing out that for now, consumable alchohol has been kept out of its ambit while petroleum products have been zero-rated for the next few years.Going forward, the GST Council will able to change this."We have been able to achieve as far a consensus as possible if not unanimity," Jaitley says, as he thanks parties and lawmakers who are present.The Finance Minister talks about the history of the Bill, which was first mooted about a decade back in 2006 by erstwhile FM P Chidambaram.Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has started speaking in Parliament, where he has moved amendments to the previous GST Constitutional Bill.Star Wars is arguably the most celebrated American film franchise, among both adults and children of all ages. But did you know that the original trilogy was going to make children “dumber than they need to be”?
That is what John Simon, the curmudgeonly film critic for National Review, said when the original trilogy was first in theaters.
“I feel they are so bad because [the movies] are completely dehumanizing,” Simon told ABC’s Nightline in 1983. “Obviously, let’s face it, they are for children or for childish adults. They are not for adult mentalities, which unfortunately means that they are not for a lot of my fellow critics who also lack adult mentalities,” he added, swiping at legendary critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who debated him live via satellite.
“They are for children, and they are brutalizing children, they’re stultifying children, they’re making children dumber than they need to be,” he declared. “These films try to keep children stupid children forever. And that I think is wrong.”
Siskel and Ebert laughed off Simon’s fiery rhetoric, but his animosity toward the series has seriously deep roots.
Three years earlier, Simon took to the conservative magazine’s pages to decry the “malodorous offal” of The Empire Strikes Back. Barely concealing his disdain, Simon described the film as “repulsively commercial,” “stale, limp, desperately stretched out, and pretentious.”
Star Wars was “imbecilic,” Simon said, because its “preposterous” plot catered to “the blessed infantilism of children and the blessed regression of adults.”
Indeed, throughout the entire series, Simon was seemingly obsessed with the theory that George Lucas had “infantilized” a nation.
In true get-off-my-lawn fashion, Simon wrote in 1983: “But the children: will they love it? Most likely, because… most children have neither inborn good taste nor innate incorruptibility. As for childish adults, of whom there seems to be no shortage, they should, like most of my critical colleagues, have a ball.”
A socially conservative tendency toward “sky is falling” proclamations about a godless America came into view when Simon fretted that, because of Star Wars, “a whole generation of kids may grow up with the Force as their faith, the Jedi knights as their apostles, Luke (i.e., Lucas) Skywalker as their Savior, and Obi-Wan Kenobi as their Paraclete…. I suggest that, unless it is already too late, an energetic campaign be mounted against this nascent theogony and theocracy.”
In 1999, following the release of prequel The Phantom Menace, Simon did not retreat an inch, writing that the entire series has created a “gaping hole in our education—not to say our religion.”
Geez. Someone get this guy some Corellian brandy.
Perhaps Ebert was right when he countered that Simon was just too “old at heart” to understand the Star Wars appeal.
Or maybe Siskel said it best when he looked into the camera and told his rival critic, point-blank, “I feel badly for you” for being so joyless.Module 1 - Story Structure
Wherein the common characteristics of the Narrative Arc are laid out; wherein the concepts of "plot" and "story" are discussed; wherein the Narrative Contract is alluded to by concepts inherent to story structure. Readings: Alexie's "What You Pawn I Will Redeem," Carver's "Cathedral," and Richardson's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Dinosaurs." Writing Assignments: "Annotate the Structural Changes of a Story" and "Outlines, Part 1." Module 1.1 - Story Structure
Module 1.2 - Readings, Discussion, and Writing Tasks
Module 2 - Character
Wherein types of characters are delineated and tied to the issue of "development"; wherein a taxonomy of characterization is proposed; wherein the issue of "stakes" and "motivations" are considered; wherein bullet-pointed lists of tips are given for building characters and writing dialogue. Readings: Butler's "Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot," Dubus' "The Fat Girl," and Roth's "The Conversion of the Jews." Writing Assignment: 20 Questions for a Character Module 2.1 - Character Development and Characterization
Module 2.2 - Readings, Discussion, and a Writing Task
Module 3 - Time
Wherein time in narrative is broken down into three variables--Order, Frequency, and Duration--and each are discussed with an attention towards their practical usage; wherein tense is briefly touched upon but mostly ignored; wherein an epistemological concern is brought to a reader's attention. Readings: Almond's "Donkey Greedy Donkey Gets Punched," Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," and Wallace's "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature." Writing Assignments: Recasting Tense; Annotating O, F, D; Creating Backstory Module 3.1 - Telling Time
Module 3.2 - Readings, Discussion, and Writing Tasks
Module 4 - Point of View
Wherein the three common points of view are discussed, broken down into subcategories, and framed in terms of their advantages and disadvantages; wherein a very brief description of self-conscious narration is given; wherein an incomplete list of the different methods of delivering character interiority is presented. Readings: Bambara's "The Lesson," Power's "Moonwalk," and Powers' "To the Measures Fall." Writing Assignments: Recasting POV; The Abstract Matryoshka Doll Method of Inventing POV. Module 4.1 - Point of View
Module 4.2 - Readings, Discussion, and a Writing Task
Module 5 - Genre: Bending and Blending
Wherein the history of the novel is presented, and the initial divisions that led to further subgenres are discussed; wherein an incomplete list of subgenres and their conventions is provided; wherein genres of style are very briefly touched upon; wherein the difference between "literary" and "genre" fiction is essentially called stupid; wherein all of the above is tied into issues of the narrative contract and establishing conventions to encourage readers to suspend disbelief. Readings: Brockmeier's "The Ceiling," Barthelme's "Cortes and Montezuma," Link's "The Specialist's Hat," Cortazar's "Letter to a Young Girl in Paris," and Borges' "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." Writing Assignment: The Abstract Matryoshka Doll Method of Blending Genres Module 5.1 - Genre
Module 5.2 - Readings and a Writing Assignment
Module 6 - Language
Wherein signs and the ways signs work together to make meaning are described, and this then is connected with image patterning and other concerns. Readings: Choose your own story to read for image patterning. Module 6.1 - Language and Discourse
Module 7 - Drafting and Revision
Wherein some general tips and useful strategies are given based upon the practices of other professional writers. Writing Assignments: Something for "Outliners"; Something for "Discovery Writers" Module 7.1 - Writing and Revising: Practical Concerns
Module 7.2 - Two Writing PromptsAt the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung has unveiled what appears to be the world's largest hard drive—and somewhat surprisingly, it uses NAND flash chips rather than spinning platters. The rather boringly named PM1633a, which is being targeted at the enterprise market, manages to cram almost 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package. By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital currently max out at 8 or 10TB.
The secret sauce behind Samsung's 16TB SSD is the company's new 256Gbit (32GB) NAND flash die; twice the capacity of 128Gbit NAND dies that were commercialised by various chip makers last year. To reach such an astonishing density, Samsung has managed to cram 48 layers of 3-bits-per-cell (TLC) 3D V-NAND into a single die. This is up from 24 layers in 2013, and then 36 layers in 2014.
Historically, like most computer chips, NAND flash has been planar—that is, the functional structures on the chip are (for the most part), laid down on a single two-dimensional plane. In a similar way to how logic chips are moving towards 3D transistors (FinFETs), Samsung (and more recently Toshiba and Intel) has been forging ahead with 3D NAND.
The simplest way of describing 3D NAND is that everything is turned on its side: so instead of having just one layer of memory cells on a single plane, you can now have dozens of layers of cells, all standing up next to each other. (The "V" in Samsung's V-NAND refers to the vertical nature of these cells.) Process-wise, 3D NAND is very complex, but the massive potential density increase makes it worthwhile.
The 16-terabyte drive (actual capacity 15.36TB) must use between 480 and 500 of Samsung's new 256Gbit dies. We're not entirely sure how you squeeze that many dies into a standard 2.5-inch SSD case, but presumably there's some die or package stacking involved.
At the Flash Memory Summit, as reported by Golem.de, Samsung showed off a server with 48 of these new SSDs, with a total storage capacity of 768 terabytes and performance rated at 2,000,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second). By comparison, the consumer-grade SSD that you have in your PC is probably capable of around 10,000-90,000 IOPS, depending on the workload.
Over the last few years, as NAND manufacturers raced to increase density, we knew that conventional HDDs would eventually be defeated by the seemingly indefatigable march of Moore's law—but we didn't think it would happen quite so soon. That isn't to say that hard drives will be obviated by SSDs any time soon, of course: at least for the foreseeable future, SSDs are an order of magnitude more expensive than HDDs. Today, an enterprise-grade 1TB SSD will cost you about £600 or $1,000; an enterprise-grade helium-filled 8TB hard drive from HGST costs about £400 or $700.
We don't have a price for Samsung's 16TB PM1633a, but we can't imagine that it'll be cheaper than £5,000. But hey, you would be the owner of the world's largest drive!Audio version of this story.
You might have noticed these green signs in East Cobb. They’re around Johnson Ferry Road, near the border of the Chattahoochee River. In white lettering, they read, “Former City Limits Chattahoochee Plantation (1961-1995).”
These signs sparked our curiosity at WABE. We’d never heard of a city called “Chattahoochee Plantation.” But as we looked into the history of the area and the signs, we found a story stranger than we expected.
Not only was there once a city in this part of East Cobb (an area that’s all unincorporated today), but it was one that was once 30 or so miles long. It spanned Cobb County’s entire border with the Chattahoochee River, all the way up to where the county meets Roswell and back down to where Six Flags is today.
And for much of that length, the city was just 10 feet wide.
Now, this got us really curious. What could possibly be the purpose of incorporating such a long stretch of land so narrow it couldn’t even fit a house?
As it turns out, back when these boundaries were drawn in the late 1960s, the purpose was clear. It was to create something like an invisible force field to protect Cobb County from Atlanta.
See at this time, in the ’50s and ’60s, the region was in the midst of a heated debate.
“The larger issue at stake with the city at the time was what would be the size of Atlanta,” said Tim Crimmins, a professor of history at Georgia State University.
Atlanta’s suburban white population was growing, Crimmins said. Former Mayor William Hartsfield thought Atlanta should grow and include these new suburbs. His successor ─ Ivan Allen Jr. ─ wanted the same.
But these additional areas that the two Atlanta mayors hoped to annex? Areas bordering Atlanta, like Sandy Springs or perhaps parts of Cobb County? They weren’t exactly on board.
“The reaction to the people who were living in the unincorporated areas to the expansion of Atlanta was ‘No we would prefer not,'” Crimmins said.
There were concerns about a government that big, and, Crimmins said, there were also concerns about race. Atlanta’s African-American population was gaining political clout.
This is what brings us back to those former city limits signs.
Starting in 1961, there was a brand new city called Chattahoochee Plantation. Developers hoped it would be a wealthy, white suburb. Crimmins said that’s probably why they put “plantation” in the name. To give it an Old South feel.
By 1968, this new city didn’t have all that many residents yet. They hadn’t even voted in a city council or mayor.
But that didn’t matter so much at least in the eyes of Cobb County legislators. They noticed the city was in a convenient place to send Atlanta and its mayor a clear message.
“The Cobb County delegation introduced a change in city limits of Chattahoochee Plantation,” Crimmins said.
In this change, they stretched the limits up and down the Chattahoochee River ─ so that the city covered Cobb County’s entire border with Atlanta and most of its border with Fulton County.
This new incorporated area was just 10 feet across because that’s all that was necessary to make their point.
“What you had then was in effect a symbolic strip, so that there was an incorporated city that would prevent any effort on the part of the city of Atlanta to expand its limits into Cobb County,” Crimmins said.
Basically, this long city along the border of Cobb County was the Cobb County delegation’s way of saying: “Atlanta, stay out.”
It was effective; Atlanta never tried to annex any part of the county. In fact, Atlanta pretty much stopped expanding altogether.
As for the city of Chattahoochee Plantation, well, according to resident Gary McKee, the people there, who lived in the original boundaries that were wide enough to fit homes and neighborhoods, actually didn’t care all that much about being a city.
“Just was never that big of a deal,” McKee said.
The residents never did end up voting in a city council or mayor, and in the mid-1990s, they even gave up their charter ─ that is, what made them legally a city for about 30 years.
Today, all that’s left of it, really, are those former city limits signs.Peter Harvey, 50, is alleged to have lashed out at the boy after he began "sword fighting" another pupil with a wooden ruler as he tried to restore order during a lesson for year 9 pupils.
When the boy picked up a Bunsen burner and told him to "f--- off", he is said to have snapped. Other pupils in Harvey's class at All Saints' Roman Catholic School in Mansfield told how he dragged the boy out of the classroom and down the corridor.
One who followed them said she saw the teacher beating the boy around the head until his blood was "everywhere" and other pupils were screaming.
In the run up to the incident, on July 8 last year, Harvey is also alleged to have kicked a girl with behavioural problems and threatened to kill another female pupil who told him he was having a "mental breakdown".
The court was shown footage secretly filmed by one pupil in which the class is heard baiting their teacher. He was heard shouting at pupils and the children could be heard giggling. One commented: "He's being a bit of a psycho".
Harvey had returned to school just months earlier after being signed off by the school's education adviser in December 2008 when he warned that he might harm somebody, the first day of his trial at Nottingham Crown Court heard.
But according to Stuart Rafferty QC, prosecuting, Harvey - who had been a teacher at All Saints' for 16 years - was "well, happy and in a positive frame of mind" on the morning of the attack.
"A girl who had behaviour difficulties was being disruptive and was messing about with a white board and then started messing about with a window blind," he said.
"He told her to stop and there were words between them. He seems to have pulled her away from the window by her bag on her shoulder and shouted at her and it was alleged he kicked her.
"She left the classroom in a state of tears and some of the class took exception to the way she had been treated and started calling him a psycho. He didn't seem to respond to that and told the class to get on with their work."
He said that the 14 year-old boy – who cannot be named for legal reasons – then began to "mess around" with a wooden metre rule.
"He was wandering about the classroom with it, sword fighting with another pupil, that sort of high jinx," he said.
"He told him to put it down and he did. The boy then took out a metal Bunsen burner stand and was waving it about in a similar way.
"Mr Harvey chased him around the classroom and it came to a point when the boy told him to 'f*** off'.
"That seems to have lit the blue touch paper because Mr Harvey grabbed him by his collar and started dragging him out of the classroom."
Mr Rafferty said that the boy put up little resistance as his teacher pulled him down the corridor into a preparation room.
"He threw him to the ground and armed himself with a 3kg dumbbell and began to hit the boy about the head with it," he said.
"He struck at least two blows to the head which caused serious injury, really serious injury.
"At the time the blows were being struck Mr Harvey was only heard to say one thing. What he was saying was 'die, die, die'."
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In a summer of change at Deepdale, former Norwich boss Neil replaced Simon Grayson who left for Sunderland in June.
The 36-year-old is likely to have been impressed with the performance from his new team, as they beat a side which had reached the Championship play-offs in the past two seasons.
At the start of the Owls' 150th anniversary campaign, the visitors struggled to threaten with their best chances falling to Glenn Loovens, who tested Chris Maxwell early on, and Wallace.
Robinson could have given the hosts the lead with a header which he directed straight at Westwood before curling a shot around the post.
Preston manager Alex Neil:
"Our strength is that we have such a good team spirit, they work so hard for each other and we got what we deserved today.
"When you have that amount of pressure, you want what you deserve. We could and maybe should have scored more.
"That's three points on the board now. Notoriously in the last two seasons we've not started well so it's pleasing to get three points on the board."
Sheffield Wednesday boss Carlos Carvalhal:
"We deserved to lose the game. We were out of everything. We ran too much in the first half but with no brain.
"We didn't win too many second balls, Preston won all the second balls. We had one or two chances, Preston had more than us so congratulations to Preston.
"No excuses about us, we must do much better to win games in the Championship and we must analyse this game to do better in the future."Share
Google launched Chrome 59 for Android, bringing a number of improvements and new features to the mobile browser. While the browser may look the same, Google made a few tweaks under the hood that should seriously improve the browser’s performance.
According to Google, Chrome 59 will allow for faster page loading and will take up less memory. The browser also features a few stability and bug improvements. As a result of the tweaks, Google notes that web pages should load between 10 and 20 percent faster than they otherwise would, which is a nice boost for users.
Chrome 59 also brings full support for animated PNGs, also known as APNGs. APGNs are very similar to GIFs, however, they support 24-bit images, and 8-bit transparency — so they are a little higher quality than GIFs. The format has been gaining quite a lot of traction of late — it has been supported in Mozilla’s Firefox for some time now and Apple added support for it in iOS 10’s iMessage app.
If you do not already have Google Chrome 59, you will likely get it soon — it is currently rolling out to Android devices through the Google Play Store.
Google has been making some serious improvements to Chrome for Android over the past few months. In May, the company updated the browser to add support for saving content for offline viewing. That feature was a pretty important release and not only does it make it easier for people to browse the web without an internet connection but it also takes a bite out of services like Pocket.
To download content for viewing offline, all you have to do is open a page and open the menu, after which you will notice a small download button. Then, to browse through your downloaded content, hit the “Downloads” button and you will be able to scroll through everything you have saved.By Kim Se-jeong
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Tuesday it is considering lowering the age that boys can accompany their mothers to gender segregated areas in public bath houses.
The current law bans boys over the age of five from entering areas used by the opposite sex in public bathhouses. It was reduced from seven in 2003.
"It's time to review the age limit," said Hwang, a ministry official. The official only disclosed his last name for this article.
The ministry's reconsideration of the age limit follows an official request from the association of public bathhouse owners.
In a letter sent to the ministry in late February, the association called for the government to reduce the age limit.
"The number of complaints from individual business owners is mounting," said an official from the association during a telephone interview with The Korea Times, Tuesday.
Last year, an unidentified woman filed a complaint against the age limit with the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea, which was relayed to the ministry.
However, as Hwang said, finding an ultimate solution is not easy.
"We understand some women may feel insulted. But, the new regulation could single out boys who have no male family members to go to bath centers with," said Hwang.
The official said the argument among women that a five-year-old boy in a public bath facility is an object of insult and shame is "rather subjective."
The ministry said it will take time to reach any decision in the near future.
The public bath centers are strictly separated between men and women here. Ones that are designed for family are out there, but very few. And moms often go to public bathhouses with their male children.More than 345,000 AEP customers in central Ohio were still without power as of 11 a.m., the utility reported. About 200,000 of them were in Franklin County.Throughout AEP Ohio's territory, 633,000 people were without power. Hurricane-force winds knocked out utility lines, downed trees and damaged homes and cars last night. Today, homeowners started the process of cleaning up -- many of them without the beneift of electricity and air conditioners.
UPDATE:
More than 345,000 AEP customers in central Ohio were still without power as of 11 a.m., the utility reported. About 200,000 of them were in Franklin County.Throughout AEP Ohio's territory, 633,000 people were without power.
Hurricane-force winds knocked out utility lines, downed trees and damaged homes and cars last night. Today, homeowners started the process of cleaning up -- many of them without the beneift of electricity and air conditioners.
AEP said it could take five to seven days to restore power to everyone. Temperatures for the next five days are forecast to be in the low to mid 90s.
On its website, the utility company called the storm a "catastrophic event" and said it was a larger event than the storm that hit during Hurricane Ike in 2008, when high winds knocked out power to many residents for days. There were more than 4,700 reports of downed lines.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency and said the Emergeny Management Agency is monitoring cleanup efforts.
In Marysville, the female statue of Justice atop the Union County Courthouse lost an arm to the high winds last night.
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ORIGINAL STORY:
Hurricane-force winds borne by a powerful storm front strafed central Ohio yesterday, leaving behind a messy mix of downed trees and power lines that disrupted electricity to more than 300,000 utility customers.
Winds of more than 80 mph lashed central Ohio during an early-evening blitz, blowing over tractor-trailers, toppling trees onto cars and houses, and leaving tens of thousands without air conditioning with a 97-degree day coming up today.
The largest power outages were clustered in Franklin County, where about 200,700 - nearly 39 percent of all American Electric Power customers in the county - were without electricity after the early-summer storm. In the rest of central Ohio, an additional 100,000 households were without power.
It will be five to seven days before AEP can restore power to 90 percent of customers, AEP Ohio President Pablo Vegas said last night. Statewide, more than 500,000 AEP customers were without power. The utility company is asking all 1,500 of its utility-crew workers to work 16-hour days and is trying to get 1,700 more from out of state.Vegas said that the situation was nearly as severe as what the utility faced after the remnants of Hurricane Ike moved through in 2008.Other area electrical utilities also reported tens of thousands without power.
The National Weather Service reported that winds topping 70 mph were recorded across a wide swath of central Ohio, with a gust of 82 mph recorded at Don Scott Field on the Northwest Side.
Street and traffic lights were out, and streets were strewn with limbs and fallen trees throughout the Columbus area as night fell. People left darkened homes in search of dinner at restaurants only to find that they also were without power.
The National Weather Service received a report that a dozen utility poles were toppled along N. Hamilton Road, with one person injured when one of the poles fell on a car. Dozens of people were trapped in their cars while waiting for downed power lines to be removed.Because of power outages at some water-pumping stations, Columbus officials asked residents not to water their lawns overnight and as long as there are widespread outages.Some stations are running on emergency generators and can provide basic water pressure, but are hampered by lawn systems, said spokesman George Zonders of the Department of Public Utilities.
Southwest of Columbus, the Fayette County sheriff's office received multiple reports that a tornado touched down in the Jeffersonville area. Both lanes of I-71 were a mess after high winds blew over several tractor-trailers near the outlet malls, a dispatcher said. Roofs were sheared off several buildings. No injuries were reported.
In downtown Marysville, the storm stripped the roof off the building housing the Fiesta Grande Mexican restaurant and partially collapsed the third floor, sending bricks showering onto W. 5th Street. The building, constructed in 1883, could be a total loss.
City spokeswoman Anna Krutowskis said an employee of the business called police about 5 p.m. to report that he heard a loud noise and water rushing in the building. Restaurant employees got everyone out of the building, and police and fire crews safely evacuated the other businesses in the block.
Damage to buildings was reported in Mount Sterling in Madison County. The roof of one building was peeled off and deposited on top of an adjacent hardware store. Rt. 56 was closed nearby because a roof was blown into the road. Numerous roads were closed across the area by fallen trees and power lines.
The temperature fell from 98 degrees to 80 degrees in less than an hour as the storms moved in. It fell to 72 at Port Columbus after the storm passed. Slightly more than 0.40 inch of rain was measured at the airport.
A high of 96 with partly sunny skies and a slight chance of thunderstorms is forecast for today. Temperatures in the 90s will persist into next week.
Downtown office workers departing for the day reported being lifted off their feet by the gusts that raced through the area.
Cynthia Kincaid, a Huntington Bancshares employee, was walking along High Street to a nearby parking garage when the storm struck.
"It lifted us off the ground. There was a wrought-iron fence and we just grabbed on, both of us," she said. "It was literally pulling us off our feet. I don't know what we would have done had the fence not been there. It was terrifying."
Dispatch reporters Collin Binkley, Holly Zachariah, Mark Williams and Lydia Coutre contributed to this story.
rludlow@dispatch.com
@RandyLudlowAttacks that can wipe out a turn if stacked."Every other player discards a card" is an example of such a card. By itself, it's fine. But if it gets played multiple times -- which, even in a kingdom without Villages or Throne Rooms, can happen easily in a 4-player game -- then the game can degenerate into a state where players discard most or all of their hands all the time and can't do anything.Many of the official Dominion cards are great examples of how to circumvent this problem. Notice that Militia doesn't read "discard two cards" but rather "discard down to 3 cards." Torturer does say "discard two cards" but allows a player to take a Curse instead. Sea Hag has you discard the top card of your deck to prevent five Sea Hags from obliterating your next turn.Cutpurse does hurt in multiples, but its effect is limited to how many Coppers you have in your hand. The damage multiple Bureaucrats can do is similarly constrained to how many Victory cards you have in your hand, and the "gain a Silver" clause of Bureaucrat cleverly dilutes a Bureaucrat-heavy deck, so that multiple Bureaucrats aren't likely to be played repeatedly throughout a game.The bottom line is you don't want to have an attack so strong that it can, by itself or stacked, completely ruin the next player's turn. Otherwise you can wind up in a game state where one player is locked out of being able to make any meaningful progress.If you know of the notorious King's Court-King's Court-Goons-Goons-Masquerade pin, you might cite that as a counterexample to this principle. This is a combination that CAN lock a player out of the rest of the game. But Donald X. has said that if he'd caught this combination in testing, he'd probably have nerfed it. In any case, it's an expensive five-card combination requiring three different unique cards from two different sets; as such, it only comes up relatively rarely and is tricky to pull off even if it does. It's not merely a case of playing a single card multiple times.Attacks that target a specific player.By purposeful design, Dominion doesn't have attacks that target specific players. Many Dominion players appreciate the lack of politics in the game -- that is, the inevitable over-the-table negotiations and protests that result whenever a game allows a player to choose a specific opponent to target -- and thus may not appreciate a fan card that opens that door. That said, there is not necessarily anything broken about having targeted attacks in Dominion, so if that's what you want to do, go for it.Donald X. on this subject: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=80.0 Attacks that offer no benefit to the player.Like almost everything in this list, this is not a firm rule. But before you create an attack card that ONLY harms other players, consider that of all the official cards, there are only two Attack cards that don't also provide some form of benefit to the player. These are Sea Hag, which is so strong for its cost that any additional benefit would overpower it; and Saboteur, which would be even more unpleasant than it already is if there were any additional incentive to use it. Even attacks as brutal as Mountebank, Witch, Ambassador, and Ghost Ship provide additional benefit to the player. Besides that benefit being necessary to achieve forward movement in the game, they also ensure that, if the attack portion is blocked by Moat, the attacking player hasn't utterly wasted his action.All I'm getting at is that if you create an Attack card with no benefit, make sure the decision not to include a benefit was a conscious and considered choice and not just something you overlooked.Cards that reference limited card types.Examples of this would include "Gain an attack card," or "If you have at least three duration cards in play," or "You may trash up to 3 Curses," or "+$1 for every dual-typed card in your hand." The problem with these cards is simply that if they show up in kingdoms without any of these types present, the card is useless.You can still make such a card work if the card also has behavior that is sometimes worth buying anyway. This is the case with reaction cards such as Moat, Secret Chamber, and Horse Traders. In the absence of Attack cards in the kingdom, these may still be worth having for their other functions.Another way to solve the problem is for the card itself to force the intended condition. For example, a card that specifically references Potion cards is fine if it carries a Potion-based cost, as then, whenever that card would be present, Potions would be present also. Similarly, "Choose one: Trash any number of Curses from your hand; or every other player gains a Curse" would work, as then you wouldn't need a separate cursing card to be present.Cards that require resources that frequently aren't available.This is similar to the above. One example of this kind of card would be something that has "-1 Buy" on it. I actually think that's a really cool idea; the problem is that it's dead in a kingdom with no +Buy cards.Another example would be Diadem, a card whose behavior is based on having unused actions. Donald X. experimented with Diadem as a regular kingdom card but found it to be a dead card too often, as in many kingdoms there are no sources of extra actions. (But it works fine as a Prize, where it's not taking up a whole kingdom pile.)Still another example is a repeatedly proposed fan card that does only this: "+1 Card, +1 Action." Normally, this does nothing, as it merely replaces both the card slot and the action it uses up. But the justification for it is that it helps enable Conspirator, it lowers the price of Peddler, it can provide extra cards and actions with Throne Room or King's Court, it provides an extra unique card for Horn of Plenty, and so on. Yes, but the number of kingdoms with any of these cards in it is very small -- and in many of those, other cards will accomplish the same things. On the majority of boards, it's a dead pile.Cards that retrieve cards from the trash pile.When cards are trashed, they're trashed for a reason. A fan card that does something like "Gain a card from the trash pile" is going to be useless most of the time, because even if there are trashers in the kingdom (and there may well not be), who wants Coppers, Estates, and Curses?If there are trash-for-benefit cards in the kingdom (like Salvager, Apprentice, Bishop, and the Remodel family), then you might find something good in there, but this will only be a small minority of boards. And within that minority, there's a good chance the card will be brokenly powerful, and/or players will be dissuaded from using the trash-for-benefit cards on good cards in the first place.Rogue and Graverobber retrieve cards from the trash, but they also put useful cards there to be retrieved at a later time. The balance is extremely delicate; any card that retrieves cards from the trash should be carefully tested.Cards that stay out permanently.Nothing inherently wrong with this idea, but a minor point: Usually this kind of idea is proposed with a new card type of "Permanent" or something. If the card otherwise behaves like a Duration card, then just call it a Duration card instead of inventing a new type. According to the Seaside rules, Duration cards stay out until the last turn in which they have an effect. Although the specific Duration cards in Seaside all get discarded after the following turn (except for a failed Tactician, which gets cleaned up immediately), the Duration type itself allows for a card to remain out for any arbitrary number of turns.Actions that are unnecessarily non-terminal.The presence or absence of +Actions might be the single most defining characteristic of an Action card. Two versions of the same card, differing only in one having +1 Action and the other not, will likely play wildly different from one another. It's not the differing number of +Cards, for example, that distinguishes Smithy from Laboratory.There is no firm rule concerning what kinds of Action cards should be terminal and which non-terminal. That decision is largely subjective. However, many fan cards include +1 Action when they might be more interesting without it. Make sure you consider the gameplay ramifications both ways. The right choice will be the one that makes the game's strategy more interesting, not necessarily the one that makes the card more appealing to purchase and use.Sometimes the lack of +Actions is best. Consider how much less interesting Courtyard would be if it provided +1 Action (assuming its price was adjusted to compensate). The strategic feature of the official version of the card -- being able to save a dead Action card for the next turn -- would be destroyed.On the other hand, sometimes you need +Actions to make the card work. A terminal version of Minion would be cute but weak; certainly not a card that a whole strategy could be built around.Again, though, the distinction isn't always clear, and there isn't always one right answer. The important thing is just to consider the matter and make a thoughtful decision.Cards without accountability.An example of such a card would be, "If this is in your hand at the start of your turn, you must play it immediately." The problem is that players can't be held accountable for following this rule. You'd have to have each player reveal his hand at the start of every turn, just so the other players can confirm that there is no copy of that card in hand to play. Otherwise it would be easy to keep the card in hand and secretly discard it underneath the other cards during clean-up.That said, if you only intend to use such a card when playing with friends you trust, by all means, try an idea like this out. Otherwise, make sure your cards allow for accountability. Note Bureaucrat and Cutpurse, which provide such a mechanism.Interestingly, not all of the cards in the base set are fully accountable. Throne Room, Mine, and Moneylender all require you to do something with a card in your hand, but if you don't have a card of the correct type, they don't tell you to reveal your hand to prove it. (Treasure Map, from Seaside, is also like this.) Donald X. has expressed regret over Throne Room specifically; however, these cards are not really that problematic since the "fix" for them would probably have been to make their effects optional, rather than adding in accountability to the requirement. On a card whose effect needs to be mandatory (e.g., the aforementioned Bureaucrat and Cutpurse attacks), accountability is much more important, and you should make sure your own cards allow for it.Cards that look at the number of victory points or coins in your hand.There are lots of different incarnations of this. And example might be, "The player to your left reveals the top two cards of his deck. +$ equal to the number of victory points he reveals." Another one might be, "All players reveal their hands. The player with the least total treasure gains a Curse."Sidestepping balance issues in these specific examples that might jump out at you, these types of cards are unworkable because it's not always easy to quantify how many victory points or how much treasure you have in your hand. If only the base Victory cards are out, fine, but what if Gardens, Duke, Vineyard, or Fairgrounds is in play? You can't really calculate how much these are "worth" until the end of the game.Treasure values are similarly nebulous. Technically, treasure isn't worth any coins at all until it's played. When a treasure card is played, only then does it yield some number of coins. In the case of the base treasures, this amount is always the same. (Well, almost. See Coppersmith.) But Bank, Philosopher's Stone, and Diadem vary, and Potion's yield isn't in coins at all.Better approaches would be to count the number of Treasure or Victory cards, or look at the costs of those cards. In the latter case, you'll still have special cases in Philosopher's Stone and Vineyards, but many other Dominion cards (Salvager, Forge, Apprentice, etc) deal with (or ignore) Potion-based costs just fine.Cards with special-case rules.Before using a special-case rule, be very sure you cannot achieve the effect you're after any other way. Even then, think long and hard about whether your special-case rule will cause conflicts with other rules or cards.For example, you might want to have a powerful card limited by the clause, "You may only play one copy of this card per turn." Fine, but what happens when Golem turns up two copies of it? Which card's rules get broken?Generally it's better for cards to work within the rules of Dominion than to override them. Even if a special-case rule poses no problem with the current set of official cards, you never know if something in a future expansion will cause a conflict.Cards that depend on the order of the discard pile.An example of this would be, "Look at the top five cards of your Discard pile. Put two of them in your hand."Usually opening up Dominion's strategy space is a good thing; once in a while, not so much. It's no accident that no official Dominion card cares about the order that cards appear in the discard pile. The moment you introduce one that does, suddenly every player who buys it will have to think very carefully about how they perform every single clean-up phase, just in case they happen to draw that card in the next hand. This will dramatically slow down the game, and most of the time it'll still be wasted effort.You can still use the discard pile -- Counting House does it fine -- but if you use it at all, it's probably best to use all of it.Cards that allow unlimited accumulation of victory tokens.Designing cards that award victory tokens is a trickier challenge than it seems. The reason is that you have to be careful not to allow a game to devolve into a game state where the optimum strategy for all players is to forego buying victory cards in favor of playing and replaying their victory-token-earning cards. Then the game never ends.Of the three official cards that award victory tokens, two of them are tied to finite resources. Goons only awards victory tokens when you buy a card, which ensures that sooner or later the game will eventually end normally. Bishop awards tokens by trashing cards, which indirectly ensures the same thing -- if you don't buy cards, you won't have cards to trash.Monument is the exception. In theory, if all players wind up with hands consisting of King's Court-King's Court-Monument-Monument-Monument, you could indeed wind up in an unending game state. But this doesn't really happen in practice, probably because of two things: one, Monument being a terminal makes it difficult to spam; two, it offers $, which encourages the purchase of cards.The lesson these official cards teach us is that if you have a fan card that awards victory tokens, make sure the game can't wind up in an unending game state. If you can't prove this to yourself with theory (as is the case with Goons), then you'll need even more playtesting than usual to make sure.Before I discuss how to price your cards, it's worth saying how NOT to price your cards, so you can undertake that task without any misleading preconceptions.Myth: The cost scale is linear.One of the most important things to remember about card costs is that they are not linear. Since your initial starting deck generates an average of $3.5 every turn, that means the difference between $2 and $3 -- in terms of how difficult to is to achieve that amount -- is near insignificant. By contrast, $5 takes a bit of work to achieve, so the difference between $4 and $5 is quite a leap.In general, card costs of $6 and up are probably close enough to linear that you can treat them that way. But below that, you should be aware that the jumps between the different costs are not necessarily all equal.Myth: Card costs are proportional to their strength.Card cost and strength are usually correlated, especially at $5 and up. But since there is so little practical difference between costs $2 to $4, costs in that range are more a function of gameplay balance with respect to the opening.Treasure Map, for example, is not priced at $4 because it's "roughly stronger than the $3 cards." (Ambassador would take issue with that.) It's priced at $4 to prevent players from opening double Treasure Map and potentially cashing them in for four Golds on Turn 3, which would be ridiculous. Treasure Map is swingy enough as it is, but a $3 Treasure Map would reduce Dominion to the strategic equivalent of High Card Draw.Another example of a power/cost mismatch is Chapel, whose strength would be competitive at $4 but was priced at $2 for game balance reasons.These thoughts on pricing, from Donald X., are essential reading for anyone creating fan cards: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=84.0 A more obvious way that card costs can be out of sync with their strength is when there are special circumstances concerning buying them. Grand Market is probably worth $7.5 or so on strength alone, but its "no Copper" clause allows it to be balanced at a cheaper price. Peddler, similarly, is not as strong as an $8 price tag suggests, since its cost fluctuates depending on the circumstances.Myth: Given the above, card strength doesn't matter with respect to cost.Well, yes it does. Card strength is not a completely distinct issue from opening gameplay considerations. It's just not, on its own, the only and overriding concern.However, you do want to be careful about cards that are "strictly superior" or "strictly inferior" to other cards and price them accordingly. Worker's Village, being strictly superior to Village -- that is, essentially always at least providing all the benefits that Village provides -- kind of has to be priced higher. I say "kind of," because a $3 Worker's Village is more of an aesthetic problem than a gameplay problem. Worker's Village wouldn't really break the game at $3. But if Village and Worker's Village were both on the table at the same time, it would feel wrong, right? And the poor Village pile would go untouched. Pricing Worker's Village higher is better game design, because it keeps both cards useful and, therefore, leaves a larger number of strategic decisions up to the player.So if you figure out that your custom card is strictly superior or strictly inferior to another card, you should probably price it accordingly, and then make sure the card is still balanced at the resulting price. This may mean that some cards are just too difficult to price well. Suppose your card offers "+3 Cards, +1 Buy." It has to be higher than $4, because the strictly inferior Smithy is priced at $4. But at $5, your new card looks pretty weak next to Torturer, which also offers +3 Cards. Still, it is not STRICTLY weaker than Torturer, so $5 it is.Note, however, that it doesn't take much to break out of these "strict" constraints. Hunting Party might look funny priced at the same price as Laboratory, but there's at least one case where Hunting Party is inferior: if you have one copy of every card in your deck, playing Hunting Party will just cycle through your deck without letting you draw a second card, whereas you'd get a second card with Laboratory. This is a small case, but it's enough to allow Hunting Party to cost $5 instead of getting stuck with a less appropriate $6 cost.If you get stuck in a pricing dilemma like this, another option is to use a Potion-based cost. Note how Laboratory's and Alchemist's costs are incomparable, because they're priced on completely separate scales.[Continued in the next post...]There was fear this week – real fear. There was fear eliminating $2.5tn from the value of global shares in a mere five days. There was fear provoking the dumping of Italian government bonds at rock-bottom prices. And there was fear taking the yield on short-dated US treasury bills to below zero: investors were so anxious to park their cash somewhere safe that they were, in effect, paying the US government money to steward their savings – something not seen since the second world war.
Yet the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's ended the week by casting a shadow over the creditworthiness of American government debt, unprecedentedly downgrading it from its AAA status, a monumental blow to the standing of the richest country on Earth and its political system. S&P's held its ground despite intense lobbying from the US treasury. Without tax increases, it said, the US could never recover its fiscal position – but tax increases, given the implacable opposition of congressional Republicans, have become impossible. The markets lurched downward.
Meanwhile in Europe, France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, chair of the G20, finally managed to disturb German chancellor Angela Merkel's holiday and, with Spain's prime minister José Zapatero, discussed in a conference call how best to react. It was long overdue. Even the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, described a week in which individual governors of the European Central Bank, and the German government, were openly saying different things about whether the ECB would support the Italian and Spanish stricken bond markets as "undisciplined communication". The ECB said it was "constructive ambiguity". To panicking markets, it looked what it was: hesitation and indecision that could only fan the flames.
What we have witnessed is a mass global flight from risk and an accompanying hoarding of cash on a huge scale. It was the worst week in the financial markets since the dark days of autumn 2008 at the height of the implosion of the western banking system – itself one of the worst periods since the early 1930s. But in important respects this week was worse. At least in 2008, governments could put their national balance sheets behind their respective banking systems to restore confidence. Now the fears are more deep-seated and far harder to counter.
The markets have lost confidence that western governments can successfully manage the legacy of vast private debt and broken-backed banks without imposing huge and nameless costs. They don't know what the costs will be – perhaps a series of chain defaults on government debt starting in Europe, perhaps worldwide debt deflation, or even helplessly printing money to pay off public and private debts, so generating unmanaged and volatile inflation. But they know the costs will be huge. And unpredictable.
After all, Greece's eurozone creditors, who were part of the EU deal two weeks ago, accepted that Greece might not be able to pay its public debts in full. What about other countries in the eurozone, such as Italy and Spain, with even bigger public debts? Will their creditors be similarly hammered if the contagion spreads? And if individuals, companies and governments have collectively got too much debt that they cannot repay, whether inside or outside the euro, what prospects for the banks – and indeed any of their creditors – who lent the money? What is the extent of their writedowns or even potential bankruptcy?
The markets have known these truths for some months but have trusted that policymakers in Europe and the US also knew the risks and also how to respond. In any case, it was hoped, global growth and the steady rebuilding of western banks' balance sheets would gradually allow the world to lower its massive debts and banks to remain solvent. But events of the past few weeks have shaken that faith to the core.
The scale of the economic challenges that the western industrialised countries now confront may be impossible to handle. The markets' judgments are brutal. For example, this week yields on American 10-year treasury bonds fell to levels – 2.2% – that only make sense in a world close to falling prices and economic stagnation. Meanwhile, the yield on Italian government debt rose at one time on Friday to 6.4%, meaning that the government would have to plan for vast and deflationary budget surpluses for years just to service its debts worth more than 120% of its GDP.
On Friday evening, prime minister Silvio Berlusconi bowed to the inevitable and promised to balance the Italian budget a year earlier than his government had planned only a fortnight ago.
"No major advanced economy is doing anything to promote growth and jobs," says George Magnus, a senior policy adviser to investment bank UBS. He is right. Wherever you look, it is an economic horror story. Put bluntly, too many key countries – the UK in the forefront, with private debt an amazing three and half times its GDP, but followed by Japan, Spain, France, Italy, the US and even supposedly saint-like Germany – have accumulated too much private debt that cannot be repaid unless there is exceptional global growth.
That looks ever more improbable. Yet without growth there are only three ways out. The first is to increase public borrowing to compensate for the collapse of private borrowing. Private spending is bound to be depressed as individuals and companies lower their borrowing – so for a time exports (as long as other countries are buying) and growing public debts are the only reliable avenue to promote economic growth. But now there is a veto on growing public debt – due to the Tea Party movement in the US, the collapse in confidence in the euro and Britain's conservative government – and export demand from Asia is slowing.
The lessons from history are clear. Without publicly or privately generated growth there are only two other ways forward to pay down private debt after credit crunches: default or inflation, either containably managed or dangerously unmanaged.
What has unnerved the financial markets is that if the world cannot grow we are moving ineluctably towards these options. In the US, where the recent downward revisions to its economic growth statistics show how alarmingly weak its recovery has become, there has already been $300bn (£183bn) of private debt write-offs, according to McKinsey Global Institute's research. Now the Tea Party movement has vetoed any creative action by the federal government to stimulate growth, the pace of writing off consumer and mortgage debt can only accelerate. The impact on the American banking system, house prices and consumer confidence is bound to be serious.
In Europe the interconnectedness of public and private choices over debt is even more obvious – and being made more invidious with every hesitation by the EU's leaders about how to restore confidence in the euro. In July, the EU at last seemed to have come up with an effective response, proposing a nascent European Monetary Fund to police the economic policies of euro members and which could, alongside the European Central Bank, lend to governments and banks in trouble.
But having risen to the occasion, which heartened me, Europe is now moving at stately pace. To be told by the EU commissioner for monetary affairs, Olli Rehn (who at least broke off his holidays to engage with the crisis), that the technical work would start in September while the German government simultaneously insisted that no more need be done, reassured nobody. There is no political leadership, and worse, a paucity of original ideas about what to do even if there were.
The markets' reaction is made worse by herd effects – magnified by the many instruments, so-called financial derivatives, that have been invented supposedly to hedge and lower risks but which in truth are little more than casino chips. Long-term saving institutions such as insurance companies and pension funds now routinely lend their shares – for a fee – to anybody who wants to use them for speculative purposes. The financial system has become a madhouse – a mechanism to maximise volatility, fear and uncertainty. There is nobody at the wheel. Adult supervision is conspicuous by its absence.
What is required is a paradigm shift in the way we think and act. The idea transfixing the west is that governments |
that when their personal finances are so hard hit, Americans' view of politics sours. Caddell's study largely reflects what other pollsters are reporting: a significant level of dissatisfaction with the United States, which is affecting the favorability ratings of both individual politicians and political institutions.
Obama's current approval rating hovers around the mid-40s, while Congress is facing historically low approval ratings.
A study released by Gallup this week shows that confidence in all three branches of government is at new or near-historic lows, with Gallup's Justin McCarthy adding, "There should be concern that now fewer than one in 10 Americans have confidence in their legislative body."
Meanwhile, new studies find that Americans have more faith in the military and the police than in any of the three branches of federal government, and that Americans are less satisfied with their freedom than they were seven years ago.Bulb Ban: As of Wednesday, the manufacture and import of 60- and 40-watt incandescent light bulbs will be illegal — one more setback in the fight against government interference into the daily lives of the American people.
First they came for our light bulbs. Before the onset of ObamaCare and its mandate to buy health insurance as a condition of citizenship, there was the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), one of the first things Democrats took up on retaking the House of Representatives in the 2006 elections.
A well-intentioned President George W. Bush signed the incandescent bulb ban in 2007. After all, Edison bulbs were old technology and a little energy efficiency couldn't hurt.
But it was a precursor to the power grab that ensued on President Obama's election in 2008, the beginning of the total war on fossil fuels and consumer choice where government, not the free market, would tell us everything from what energy we could use to what cars we should drive.
The EISA mandated a phaseout of the Edison bulb, to be replaced by the more costly but said to be more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL).
Consumers immediately claimed the light from CFLs was not as bright, no matter what the ratings said, the bulbs had to "warm up" to reach full brilliance, and the mercury they contained made breakage problematic and disposal complicated.
Never mind, we were told, they will help save the planet and promote energy independence.
Consisting of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, the CFLs require more hand labor and so are made largely in China, where labor costs are lower and environmental regulations are not so strict.
The Times of London reported that "large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent light bulbs."
The EPA recommends an elaborate cleanup ritual in case of breakage, including throwing away any clothes or bedding that come in direct contact with the mercury from the bulb.
The mercury in one bulb, for example, is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels. According to a British study, CFLs were "a fire hazard that could burn down your home."
The EISA in effect made incandescent bulbs a controlled substance and outlawed that bane of civilization, the 100-watt bulb, by 2012, with the rest outlawed by 2014.
The ban on 75-watt bulbs kicked in at the beginning of this year. As with electric cars and solar energy, the new bulbs were so beneficial consumers had to be forced to use them.
We can still buy them while supplies last, as the saying goes. Home Depot spokesman Mark Voykovic told Fox News his chain anticipates running out of its stock of 40-watt to 60-watt bulbs six months into 2014.
After that, they will be illegal.
Even government coercion cannot stop the advance of technology, and now American companies are leaking LED bulbs that don't have the mercury problem, have a more natural light, and last longer.
They also cost more initially than an Edison bulb. Again, the decision to purchase them should be made by individual informed consumers, not as the result of government coercion.
Government does not have the right, even if it has the power, to decide what's good for us.
It does not have the right to tell us to buy health insurance or what kind to buy, which cars to drive and what foods to eat.
Those decisions are best left to individual Americans educated on the risks and benefits but free to choose what's best for them.
One might call it the right to light, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.Richard Desmond's newspapers ran discount coupon but offer was available to anyone who shopped at supermarket
The advertising watchdog has criticised the Daily Star and Daily Express for running a front page reader offer of £5 off at Tesco, when the deal was in fact a standard offer available to anyone who shopped at one of the supermarket giant's stores.
Richard Desmond's newspapers both ran front page promotions stating a "£5 off shopping at Tesco when you spend £40. Details: Page...".
On the relevant page there was additional text which said: "Simply spend £40 at Tesco this week and receive a £5 off coupon for your next week's £40 shop …".
Express Newspapers, parent company of the Daily Express and Daily Star, said it did not believe that any part of its front page splash implied that there would be a £5 coupon within the newspaper.
The publisher claimed it was only highlighting that it was possible to get £5 off shopping at Tesco on spending £40.
Furthermore the publisher bizarrely claimed that if it had made it clear that a coupon was not required to get the deal it would have actually encouraged more consumers to buy its newspapers, "because it was an additional benefit compared to coupon offers".
The Advertising Standards Authority disagreed with Express Newspapers' position, saying the overall impression of the promotional ads indicated there was a discount offer only available to readers.
"We understood that promotion was generally available to Tesco customers, rather than only to readers of the Daily Star and Daily Express," said the ASA. "We considered the ads misleadingly implied the newspapers included a £5 discount offer that could be redeemed without further significant conditions when spending £40, for example in the form of a coupon, and therefore concluded that they breached the [advertising] code".
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• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.Robert Hardy, a veteran British stage and screen actor who played Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge in the "Harry Potter" movies, has died at 91.
His family says Hardy died Thursday.
Born in 1925, Hardy began his career in Shakespearean roles onstage in Stratford-upon-Avon in the years after World War II.
PHOTOS: Stars we've lost in recent years
He played avuncular veterinarian Siegfried Farnon in TV drama "All Creatures Great and Small" between 1978 and 1990, and portrayed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill onscreen half a dozen times.
In a statement Thursday, Hardy's family said he was also "a meticulous linguist, a fine artist, a lover of music and a champion of literature, as well a highly respected historian, and a leading specialist on the longbow."
Hardy is survived by his children Paul, Justine and Emma.TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Employers in New Jersey might be limited from asking job applicants about their criminal records.
The state Senate and Assembly on Thursday passed a bill that would prevent employers from asking applicants to check a box saying whether they’ve ever been convicted of a crime. Employers would not be allowed to ask the question until after they’ve given applicants at least one job interview.
The measure applies to companies with 15 or more employees. Law enforcement and jobs that require criminal background checks would be exempt.
Supporters say the bill aims to help those convicted of crimes to get jobs and rebuild their lives.
The bill goes to Gov. Chris Christie, who has not yet said whether he would sign it into law.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
You may also be interested in these stories:The NRMA Insurance Western Sydney Wanderers are delighted to announce that fan favourite from the first two seasons, Jerrad Tyson, has returned home for the Hyundai A-League 2016/17 season.
Forever remembered for his tireless work in the community and his connection with the fans, Tyson embodied what it meant to be a Wanderer and used his role as a force for good in the West.
The goalkeeper made three appearances for the Red & Black in his two year stint, keeping three clean sheets in his two AFC Champions League matches and his sole Hyundai A-League start.
Since last pulling on the gloves for the Wanderers, the 26-year-old spent a season as first-choice keeper with Sun Pegasus in Hong Kong before returning to the Hyundai A-League with Perth Glory.
It was with his time at Sun Pegasus that Tyson made perhaps his most memorable appearance in Western Sydney: flying over from Hong Kong to lead chants from the capo stand in the RBB during the AFC Champions League Final.
With such a rich relationship with Western Sydney and the fans, Tyson was excited about returning to the Wanderers.
“This feeling is one of a homecoming; Western Sydney is a place I feel really passionate about and somewhere that I feel comfortable. It feels like I’m coming home,” said Tyson.
“The support the fans gave me over the two years I was at the club and then the two years I’ve been away from the club has been incredible and something that I’m looking forward to coming home to and doing my best to reward that support.
“This club is where players reach their full potential so I’m excited to come back and work with Zeljko and Popa. This is a year where I think I’ll be able to get as close to my potential as possible and reach a new standard for myself.”
Membership renewals begin in July with non-Members able to express interest by clicking here.Kindle Unlimited is being flooded with 3,000-page garbage books that suck money out of the system
Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service allows subscribers to download as many books as they want, and then pays writers based on the number of their pages that readers have read.
The service surveils your reading habits by checking the "furthest page visited" status on every book in your library, meaning that if you skip to the last page, the book considers you to have finished the whole thing.
Crapflooding scammers have therefore supplied a glut of "books" that run up to 3,000 pages (the longest Amazon will permit), filled with garbage, which open with a link to the last page. By paying (or tricking) people to download their "books" and click the link, they rack up 3,000 pages' worth of credit to their author accounts. At $0.005/page, it can add up.
The more of this there is, the less money there is in the system for writers who produce actual books, and the less reason there is for anyone to participate in, or subscribe to, the system.
But e-books don’t have to be linear. You might, for example, open up a new Kindle book and find it has a link on the first page, to take you to a later chapter or a table of contents or another language. Tapping that link could put you hundreds of pages into the book — which means that the author of that file is now making money off you, even if you haven’t read a word… or even if there’s not a single real word there to be read. And that is exactly what’s happening. Scammers are basically uploading “books” that are nothing but files full of nonsense with some link on page 1 that puts readers on page 300 or 3000 (the maximum page length for which Amazon will pay out) almost instantly. In between there’s nothing but nonsense, but the scammer can use click farms to drive up the ranking of their book and so people download it anyway.
Amazon Unintentionally Paying Scammers To Hand You 1000 Pages Of Crap You Don’t Read [Kate Cox/Consumerist]
(via Super Punch)
(Image: Open Book, George Hodan)Chechyna's hugely controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov has announced he's prepared to step down - because he'd like to travel to Jerusalem to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On Wednesday (July 26) Kadyrov, a staunch Muslim, was quoted by the Tass news agency as saying: "My personal suggestion for ruling out conflict situations around the Islamic holy site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is to pass all the rights for it to Jordan.
"I myself am ready to abnegate powers and to serve in the agencies that ensure the safety of this holy for all Muslims site.
"[I'm ready to] be a volunteer and protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the rest of my life."
Several violent clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians have broken out in Jerusalem since additional security measures were put in place at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The measures were installed by the Israelis after an attack by Palestinians killed two Israeli policemen. They have now been removed by the Israelis in an attempt to quell the protests.
However, today (July 28) the compound was protected by heavy security, with police cordons were put in place at entrances and only those aged over 50 were allowed to pass.
Kadyrov has been the subject of a string of controversies, the latest centring on reports that gay men are being persecuted in Chechnya.
It is claimed that homosexual men are rounded up and placed in camps, before being subject to bullying and torture.
Kadyrov has denied the claims, suggesting that there is not a single gay man in Chechnya.It seems that everyone and their brother today is talking about conversion rate optimization. Site owners large and small are leveraging conversion rate optimization software programs to test every button, link, and widget on their landing pages. Most of these site owners have adopted the practice to have a blog for various reasons – including (but not limited to) establish themselves as an authority within a sector for which they are providing a product or a service and provide a reason for users to keep visiting their site.
And while optimizing the pages to convert website visitors into customers is itself not a bad thing (after all users visit your site to achieve an objective too), this can be problematic if these site owners ignoring the place that users spend most of their time: the blog!
How many times have you landed on a site with a beautifully designed homepage … only to end up on a blog area that is ugly, hard to read, and clearly under-performing in the user experience department. This is something I run into almost every day with my SEO clients that haphazardly attach a blog to their corporate site.
And the irony of it all?
Some of the content in these ugly blogs are damn good!
So if you’re not getting the readership, the social shares, backlinks and comments your blog’s content deserves, first ensure that you know your readers and that you are writing usable blog posts for them. If you need some help with writing great content, then do check out our articles about writing for the web.
On the other hand, if your content is great, but traffic and popularity of your blog is low, then consider tapping into these tested strategies.
#1: Increase Font Size
Yes, I’m really putting font size #1 on the list.
Font size is one of those little details that makes a HUGE difference in how people consume your content. In fact, some people won’t even read a blog post if the typography is too small or hard to read.
I mean, would you read a 1,000-word article with font like this?
I wouldn’t either.
There’s no golden rule for font size, but Derek Halpern of Social Triggers has a mountain of research showing that font sizes of at least 12 perform best. And you may even want to experiment with 16.
#2: Increase Your Page Margins
Again, this is a web design fundamental that many bloggers completely ignore.
If you want people to read every single word you write, your words need to be smushed between two huge margins.
This is especially important for posts with 1,000 words or more. Small margins make your eyes work harder to read (they have to travel a larger distance when going back and forth). And with the attention span most internet users have, you can’t make them work hard to read your stuff…or else they’ll hop over to another site.
An example of a site that rocks massive margins is QuickSprout.com:
When you read a post at Neil’s site is almost feels like you’re browser is on rails: the thin margins keep you scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling until — before you know it — you’ve read a 1,500-word post.
If your blog posts have wide margins, consider cutting them down by 10% to see if they’re easier to read. If they are, cut another 10%. Continue this process until you feel that your content is “on rails.”
#3: Add (Functional) Design Elements
When it comes to livening up a dense blog post, nothing beats pretty (yet functional) design elements. And I’m not talking about the usual suspects of images and embedded YouTube videos (although those are nice, too).
I mean design elements that make your content easier to consume and take action on.
For example, check out this post at Backlinko:
In this post I discuss 5 lessons that I’ve picked up over my SEO career.
I knew that there would be a certain segment of my readers that would pour over every single word.
But I also knew that most would skim the article to try to glean the most important points.
To make that easier for the second group I placed each takeway point in a yellow box.
Is this a huge design element that’s going to make or break a site? Of course not. But it’s one of those little things that makes your content easier to consume (and it’s also something that your competition probably isn’t doing).
#4: Cut Down on Options
This is a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) / UX (User Experience) one-two punch. No one likes to see busy pages with a thousand and one banners and links.
Remember: as much as it’s important to convert your traffic, it’s much easier to do so if they’ve read your stuff.
And the fastest way to alienate people from your content is to overwhelm them with options (“Like me on Facebook”, “Follow me on Pinterest”, “Sign Up for My Newsletter”).
Otherwise it’s very easy to create a cluttered design that simply doesn’t convert.
A blog that does a great job of placing the focus on content and conversions is CopyBlogger:
When you hit the page you’re presented with two options: read the latest post or sign up for free updates.
When it comes to conversions, think of the ONE thing that your users want to achieve when they visit your blog (usability) … and think of that ONE thing that you want users to do when they land on your blog (conversion). Very often, you will find that they are closely aligned. Then tailor your blog’s design around your content and that ONE thing.
For example, suppose you develop software that is used to conduct website usability testing. You would have a website that provides information about that software (including features, available subscription models etc.) and a blog in which you write about usability. The objective of users visiting your blog will be to learn about usability or inform themselves about usability testing software. Your objective would be to sell that software. If the content on your blog is written and styled for the reader, then conversion of a site visitor from a reader to a customer is greatly facilitated.
#5: Space Things Out
This is a general rule of thumb for any page with lots of text: add as much space as you possibly can!
Space between sentences
Space between design elements
Even consider adding space between your letters!
When people read your content they want to be able to sit back, relax, and read away.
But it’s hard to do that if you have a jumble of text and images in every post.
To see what I’m talking about, check out the posts from the Thesis Theme blog:
That’s a lot of white space!
As you can see every word, sentence, and paragraph has more white pace than the average blog. This makes their content much more inviting.
Conclusion
I hope that through these 5 tips served to highlight that blog user experience should never be underestimated. Overselling your products or services by blatantly stating that “our company is the best” and “we have the best products” simply doesn’t work.
Establishing yourself and/or your company as an expert in the field via a blog is a lengthy and time consuming process. However, it is one that is truly rewarding. The sheer commitment is what keeps some companies (and probably your competitors) away from seriously investing in their corporate blog. This is also why you need to seize the opportunity and take that competitive edge.
(Lead image: Depositphotos)by Bill Pearis
Meemaw visits ‘Wake Up, White People’ host David Cross on ‘The Heart, She Holler’ S3
John Lee and Vernon Chatman have been weirding out late night television viewers for 10 years as the primary creative forces behind PFFR: first with not-for-kids kids show Wonder Showzen, then with the hallucinogenic, hard-to-look-at Xavier: Renegade Angel and, most recently, on the Southern Gothic soap opera The Heart, She Holler. (They were also writers and producers on Jon Glazer‘s awesome Delocated.) The thread running through them all: Lee and Chatman’s gleeful dismantling of American culture, labyrinthine and pun-filled dialogue, and a desire to see viewers’ jaws drop.
Season three of The Heart She, Holler debuts on December 1 on Adult Swim, starring folks like Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Amy Sedaris, Scott Adsit (30 Rock), Steve Little (East Bound and Down) and other familiar comedy faces. You can watch the trailer below. There’s a Season Three preview screening on Tuesday (11/18) at BAM at 7:30 with a Q&A with Q&A with Adsit (who just joined the cast) and John Lee. It’s free and you can RSVP to attend, though entry is based on capacity. We’re also giving away a pair of guaranteed passes as well, and details on that are below.
PFFR’s John Lee
In addition to working on his own shows, John Lee has directed episodes of Broad City and a few music videos, and he used to be in a couple bands: jokey late-’90s indie rockers Muckafurgason, and a pre-TV PFFR who put out records in the early ’00s. Full disclosure: I’ve known John for almost 20 years, and he took a few minutes away from scarring Middle America’s eyeballs to talk about The Heart She Holler, food courts, unprecedented sexual positions, Morrissey, David Lynch and the difficulties of wrangling an ex-President for a cameo. PFFR are infamous for their non-interview interviews, but there’s at least a little directness here.
—
BrooklynVegan: So what are you working on now? Season 3 of The Heart She Holler is in the can, right?
John Lee: Yeah, it’s in the trash can as we say. The trash can of America. Any of your local mall food courts, that’s what we call the trash can. We call the South “Food Court America” up here in the North.
BV: How much time have you and Vernon spent in the South?
JL: (Laughs) Together or separately? Well, together it was all in sin. It felt like forever but it was only six minutes. Um, separately? Through touring… it would add up to a handful of peanuts. A bag of boiled peanuts, that’s how long I’ve spent in the South. But the thing is you don’t even need to spend time in the South to understand American culture, like American hillbilly ideals. All you have to do is go 40 minutes outside of any city and you’re there. America, it’s all that. It’s everywhere you go. The South is just the place everyone says “Oh, it’s that.” But it’s not, it’s everywhere.
Did you think you’d be doing a third season of The Heart, She Holler when you guys came up with the idea?
We, as in PFFR, all our shows that are self-created have never gotten past a second season. This is the first time we’ve broken the curse. Wonder Showzen was only two seasons, Xavier was only two seasons. Delocated made it longer, but that wasn’t just our show. It was a thrill, but we were also scared because when you break a curse you never know what sort of demon’s going to show up. The undead will rise? Your nightmares will become reality? We’ll see.
Continued below…
—
What do you think was different with Heart She that was different than the other two?
You mean why the hell would anyone give us money to make this? We’re in the fortunate position at Adult Swim somehow, Mike Lazzo who runs it just has a little sack of money waiting for us every year. He challenges us to get him fired. We try and try and try. We create new sexual positions that are precedent-setting for television. The standards lawyers have actually said “This has never been done before on TV.” We are upset that no other show has copied us, used our positions, or has tried to beat us. Everyone else is just skating along with what we’ve seen before, enjoying their ice cream socials and whatnot.
I was wondering if Adult Swim actually had a Standards & Practices department.
(Laughs) That is an insult! An insult to television! You just spat on your television. No there actually are, and there are things that we can’t do. Or at least do again. We can’t combine sexuality AND the church, because that’s just…too true? Too on the nose. In the first season we did an episode where a Bible had a “glory hole” — we fucking nailed that pun, no one had ever made that pun before — but that joke we couldn’t do again. They said that’s too much. It is a Southern Network and they care about Jesus. What else, we can’t actually show sex or “parts,” unlike say HBO where almost every show takes place in a strip club. “HBO is great” but look how fuckin’ sexist they are for most of their shows. They’re not progressive!
I’ve tapped into some anger here.
No, just truth. There is no anger, there is just enlightenment.
For those who’ve never seen The Heart She Holler, it’s fair to say at this point it’s exactly like Too Many Cooks, right?
That’s the thing, many people have said to us, “Clearly you guys made ‘Too Many Cooks'” and of course I say, “No way.” That guy who made Too Many Cooks is a huge PFFR fan but that thing, it’s not even close to weird, Too Many Cooks. It’s “small w” weird. PFFR are all-caps weird. We might be the reining Kings of Weird on television.
And this isn’t even your weirdest show.
Oh no, but it’s tough to say. Xavier is such a barrage, it’s an assault. The Heart She Holler is like a slow walk into your death. What’s weirder? To be killed or to be beat up verbally? [FYI: nothing is ever likely to top PFFR’s film ‘Final Flesh‘ on the weird-o-meter. – Bill]
Seriously though, how would you describe The Heart She Holler for folks new to the show?
I describe it to laypeople as “If Twin Peaks was weird.” That joke usually lands pretty well. It’s a southern gothic Twin Peaks if it were weird, and it’s really not that weird anymore. It used to be weird.
How do you take the news of Lynch doing more Twin Peaks?
I don’t know how to describe my feelings. I’m worried. I assume it’s going to be great. He’s kind of the Kubrick of creepiness. So you have to trust his wants and interests. So it’s hard to question him, except I didn’t really love Inland Empire. I assume it’ll be great. That TV series was so influential on modern television. It’s hard to imagine what he’ll be able to get away with this round to have the same impact.
Amy Sedaris, Scott Adsit and Heather Lawless on ‘The Heart She Holler’
Season 3 has some new recognizable faces, you’ve pulled a Darren Stephens with the Sheriff.
Yeah, Scott Adsit (of 30 Rock) has taken over the role of Sheriff. And we did a similar thing after the first season, Kristen Schaal played Hurshe, then Amy Sedaris took over in Season 2. We’re fine with that. The characters are the characters. The actors fill in the vessel of that. But Scott Adsit and Amy Sedaris, they’re like prizes for us, both amazingly funny, skilled comedians. Scott does this thing, we shot this bit backwards, and Scott had to figure out how to do his eyes backwards so when we played it forwards it would look normal. It took him like two or three minutes to really focus concentration and then he did it, it’s amazing. We’ve shown it to people and they’re all like “how did you do that?” The eyes is often a “tell” when you shoot stuff backwards, how they blink or the way people look. But it’s quite special, he’s just a gifted, talented person.
You mentioned that some of your time in the South was spent touring. And some folks might not know that you used to be in a couple indie rock bands — Muckafurgason and then PFFR used to be a band too.
Yeah. I would say that PFFR was more successful as a band than Muckafurgason. We were on a more legitimate label, but were Muckafurgason indie rock? How can you combine the words “novelty” and “indie rock”? PFFR was more of an art collective than anything, we had gallery shows and then a CD on Birdman Records which is a super great label. Before that it was Muckafurgason…what was our claim to fame? We opened for They Might Be Giants.
Well you did play Showtime at the Apollo.
Oh yeah, that’s a highlight of my life. We got booed off. It was a Phil Spector Wall of Boos. Once that happened, I was so happy that we did it.
Vernon made a film about your trip to The Apollo. I wish that was online.
The performance is, but not the whole thing. I should probably upload that. I’m so unsavvy with modern technology and social media.
Muckafurgason on ‘Showtime at the Apollo’
Do you still break out the guitar?
Oh yeah. I tried to start an all-comedian Smiths cover band but that sort of fell apart, we’re all unreliable with our time.
Who else was going to be in the band?
David Wain (The State, Stella) was our drummer, me as Morrissey, my friend Tim who’s not a comedian but makes comedy, and Dave Hill was going to play guitar. And Chris Anderson, who was in Muckafurgason and does music for our shows, was going to play bass.
That would’ve been amazing. Dave Hill actually reviewed Morrissey’s Radio City show for us.
Dave got busy, and then Tim had another baby, but I think we’ll get back to it. We were called The Belligerent Ghouls. Our goal was to play once or twice a year and small venues. Like a bathroom, so only two people could see us at a time. And you have to be going to the bathroom while you’re watching. Once you’re done you have to let the next person in line in.
I’m guessing you read Autobiography.
Yeah of course I did. I read the British one, too, even though there’s only like eight lines different, and it’s just a story about a person that clearly needed to be taken out because that person lives in America. Otherwise, I thought it was lovely. He’s a hero of mine so its hard not to enjoy it. He rants and complains, and that’s fine. When it comes down to it, though, he’s a really funny, great writer. Which he’s always been. That skill’s never going away. His songwriting skills may lack a little bit of luster, but his abilities are still charming. Did you read it?
I did, I liked the first half a lot.
Yes, exactly…
The part where he refutes, line-by-line, the royalties lawsuit with Mike Joyce, was tedious.
When I saw those paragraphs coming, I just sort of scanned them. But the end was great — he’s happy! Isn’t that crazy? No one talked about that. Mr. Morose has a happy ending. There’s hope.
So in addition to The Heart She Holler, you’re starting to be an in-demand comedy director.
I’ve finally taken a step to becoming an actual director. For the longest time we were busy doing our shows, and then Delocated. We’d do two shows a year as a company and that was enough for us because we get very involved. I directed half the Delocateds and we helped Jon Glaser write and we were the production company. That took up five to seven years of our time, between Xavier, The Heart She Holler and Delocated. Jon’s show ended and I started to have some free time and I thought “I guess I should really become a professional.” I shot the pilot for Inside Amy Schumer, and I’ve done a few Broad City episodes, and there’s things on the horizon.
Broad City is great.
That’s a really fun show, Abby and Alana are really smart and funny. And also goofballs, which is great, I love when people are comedy-forward.
There is a lot of pot humor in Broad City and you are maybe the straightest person I know when it comes to that kind of thing. How do you tap into the stoner brain?
I get this a lot, and especially Xavier which people say is like being on acid or mushrooms. I think mushrooms, that’s what people really compare it to. It’s just being open minded. I can’t tell you, I’m not a stoner. Vernon has dabbled in what-have-yous and illegals, so he might have a better sense of it.
But specifically, Broad City is super pot-based at times.
Oh yeah, well I had to find out some of their references that I didn’t understand. And I still don’t, but I understand the psychology. Directing Broad City is like what I imagine it’s like to direct a foreign film and not know the language. I can just tell that’s a good take. There are discussions of certain types of weed and technology that I’m just like “what is this?” And they’re “oh that’s a social site that if you have weed and someone needs weed, you can hook up” or whatever. All these little things, and I’m like “Ok, I get the joke now.” You don’t really have to do that stuff to get how to make fun of it.
Just like you don’t have to have lived in the South to make fun…
Hey man, we’re not making fun of them. We’re just revealing a certain truth and if you choose to laugh that’s on you. Don’t put you’re judgement on us! We’re trying to honor these people, these great rednecks of our country. Basically what it is now after these midterm elections.
So it’s not a comedy, it’s a mirror.
Yes. Which is the greatest comedy of all time.
There’s a lot of talk about “The Comining” this season, at least in the two episodes I got to see. Can you tell us a little about that?
Well, The Comining is coming. That’s all there is. It’s a fucking nightmare, The Comining.
Is there anything you’d like to say to convince people to watch?
Yes there is. There’s a lot of stunt casting in television these days. You know like “Jon Hamm” is playing this tiny little roll. Well, we have I think the biggest stunt casting coup of the last two years if not all of television history. We have an ex-President that will be on The Heart She Holler this season. Of the United States of America, not some other country. For real. I don’t think anyone can beat it.
A live ex-President? How did that happen?
As opposed to a dead ex-President? Yeah, it’s Nixon’s nose dust. No a real live ex-President will be on the show. There’s only a few of them that are alive. So that’s the tease. It was a process, let me tell you. If Too Many Cooks is exciting to people because it’s so strange and crazy, this might be the craziest episode we’ve ever made, including “Patience” from Wonder Showzen or the doppelgänger episode in Xavier. It might be the strangest episode of television we’ve ever made.
Well that’s a reason to watch.
Or to run away.
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For a chance at winning a pair of tickets to attend THE HEART SHE HOLLER PREMIERE AT BAM: either tweet something that includes both @BrooklynVegan AND a link to this interview. We’ll choose a winner randomly and contact them. Good luck!
======================The women's basketball version of the Iron Bowl got ugly Thursday night in Tuscaloosa.
In the final moments of the first half, a fight between Alabama and Auburn players resulted in three ejections. Alabama's Breanna Hayden and Meoshonti Knight were tossed along with Tiger Hasina Muhammad.
Video of the incident shows Hayden getting tangled with Muhammad on a made free throw. Hayden threw a punch, connecting with Muhammad's jaw before the Tiger ran after Hayden. An official attempted to separate the two, but she fell to the Foster Auditorium floor.
Muhammad connected with a punch after reaching Hayden at the Alabama bench. Knight lunged at Muhammad after she connected on the punch.
Alabama led 30-24 at halftime of the game. According to the radio broadcast of the game, action was delayed approximately 20 minutes to sort things out. Here are a few videos of the fight.
UPDATE: The SEC is reviewing |
done in 20 minutes after that. I thought that was quick and I expected the same to happen at Cambodia, but unfortunately for me I was in for an unpleasant surprise. A member from the Cambodia passport control office asked me if I already had a visa and on hearing that I had the e-visa, he guided me to the passport control office. Here, I stood in the line (4 parallel lines were there) along with the other tourists.
But, for some reason, the line never moved. Only later did I know that all the four immigration officers took a lunch break together. That was definitely a first for me. While I stood in the queue for 2 hours, I saw some interesting behavior. Some people paid agents who were standing outside the passport office to get their visa on arrival done. Some people paid to get themselves chairs to sit. And some paid to jump the queue and get special treatment. I wasn’t keen on paying any bribes and hence doggedly stood in my line.
While I had the e-visa, I heard from other tourists that it was easy to get the visa on arrival. In fact, the queue for visa on arrival was very less as more or less all tourists either had a visa/e-visa or had the Asean permits. By the time I had my passport stamped, I was hungry, thirsty and tired, but I still had some reserve energy in me. A Cambodia passport officer again met us and told us to wait for the free shuttle bus to the Poipet bus station. The bus was ready in 5 minutes and in the next 10 minutes, we were all dropped at the Poipet international bus terminal.
Upon entering, we were told that we could book ourselves a bus ($9 per person), mini-bus ($10 per person) or taxi ($48 for the full taxi) to go to Siem Reap. This clearly smelled of a scam as the same cost in more organized and expensive Thailand would be half the quoted prices. But, we were left with no options. When I asked for the mini-bus ticket, I was told that the mini-bus was full and was asked to book either a bus or taxi. Since the taxi was too pricey for 2 of us and other didn’t want to share with us, I was forced to take a bus ticket, even though it meant that I had to wait for an hour for the bus to start.
But, thankfully, during the wait at the bus station, I recharged my batteries with some nuts, cake and water that I had bought in Thailand. All the stuff at the bus station was over priced. Now, here is where the interesting part of the story begins. Just before 3 pm when the bus was supposed to start, we were asked to board the bus. In a short while, all the passengers had gotten into the bus and even the ticket collector had checked all our tickets. It was 15 minutes past actual departure time and we were told that the driver was hungry and hence wanted to eat some food. After another delay, we were told that the driver had a stomach upset and had to use the rest room and there was another delay. Suddenly, the fat police officer from the bus station boarded our bus and told us that there has been some problem at the immigration counter and that some of the passenger’s passports have been wrongly stamped as 14 Jan when it was 15 Jan on that day. Upon checking our passports, we got to know that about 40% of the bus had that problem.
The police officer asked the people to come out of the bus and then after a brief discussion told them that they would have to go back to the border to get their passports re stamped. All the passengers cringed unanimously at the thought of going back to the long lines at the border. Then, another police officer came in 10 minutes. He asked everyone to give them their passports and told them that he would get it stamped at the office himself. This is where the bells started ringing loud in my head. Why is he asking for the passports. I told the guys around me not to separate themselves from their passport coz without it they would at the complete mercy of the Cambodia border officials. In the meanwhile, 4 passengers from the bus walked away, decided to lose the bus fare, took a taxi and went to Siem Reap.
The discussion for the passports continued. The officer told them that they would need to get the stamp rectified else they would have trouble at the border while exiting the country. After some discussion, the police officer told them that for 100 baht per person, he would get the stamping rectified in 15 minutes. At this point, everyone started losing their temper and took back their passports. They said that they are ready to bear the consequences and walked back to the bus. Slowly the driver also walked to the bus and we finally reached Siem Reap by 7 in the evening.
My personal take on this scam is that everyone at the border is involved in it and I guess out of the 4 lines at the border, one immigration official used the wrong dates for stamping. And then they use the bus and mini-bus passengers, try to send panic among them and try to make some money for themselves.
As with all scams, do not budge. Be stubborn and never part with your passport. If they say you will face trouble, be ready to face it and walk away.TORONTO, Canada — A political convention where people shout, “Drill, baby, drill” is not one you’re likely to see in Canada. That kind of rapture better fits our neighbors to the south.
Here, things are done more discreetly.
It took the blowout at the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico before most Canadians gave any thought to the potential for a similar catastrophe off their shores. And when questions were raised, the answers were revealing.
Canadians learned that major oil companies were for months lobbying the National Energy Board to ease safety requirements for offshore drilling in the environmentally sensitive Beaufort Sea — a body of water that includes U.S. and Canadian territorial waters north of Alaska and the Yukon.
Oil companies wanted Canada to relax regulations on its side of the Beaufort that require a relief well to be drilled in the same season a main well is completed. In the event of a blowout, relief wells are used to reduce the pressure and, therefore, the amount of oil that would gush into the sea.
In the Gulf of Mexico, a relief well would have made all the difference. Without one, BP was reduced to using mud, golf balls and rubber tires in a failed bid to tap the geysers of crude killing marine life and the livelihood of fishermen.
Canada’s regulator had set June 3 and 4 to hear the request by Imperial Oil — backed by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and other major oil companies — to ease the same-season relief well rule.
In a pre-hearing submission to the National Energy Board earlier this year, Imperial argued the building season in the Artic is too short for a relief well to be finished in the same season. A main well, it added, takes two or three summers to complete.
Imperial further argued that insisting on a same-season relief well would essentially block deepwater drilling in the energy rich Arctic. It instead called on the board to emphasize measures that prevent spills. The company conceded, however, that a blowout in the Beaufort Sea could spew crude for up to three years before a relief well could be drilled.
BP backed Imperial’s main argument. In its pre-hearing submission to the Canadian regulator in March, it said relief well rules “ought to be rescinded” and replaced by preventive measures that allow more time to drill the relief well.
These lobbying efforts were brought to a halt in mid-May by the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Imperial suddenly called for a postponement of the hearings until after an investigation determines the cause of the Gulf blowout.
The National Energy Board agreed, adding it would now conduct a full review of its offshore drilling regulations.
Several companies, including Imperial, have leases to drill offshore wells in the Canadian Beaufort Sea, but none have yet received permits from the regulator to do so. (Canada does, however, have offshore rigs in the Atlantic Ocean, producing about 12 percent of the country’s crude oil supply.)
Gaetan Caron, the National Energy Board’s CEO, assured a parliamentary committee May 13 that there will be no drilling in Canada’s portion of the Beaufort until at least 2014.
Still, one committee member suggested Caron may be too soft on the oil industry, noting he once said his regulating agency’s top priority is to “contribute to innovation and economic growth and to reduce the administrative burden on business.”
Oil companies are scrambling to get their hands on the Arctic’s vast and untapped natural resources. The scramble has become more intense as global warming melts the Arctic ice, opening up waterways for tankers and offshore drilling. It’s no small irony that the burning of fossil fuels is melting Arctic ice, thereby allowing for more drilling for fossil fuels in the Arctic.
A scientist who used to be a senior official at Environment Canada, William Adams, warned the same parliamentary committee in May that an oil spill in the Beaufort Sea would have a “catastrophic” impact on the ecosystem, which includes the summer breeding grounds for bowhead whales, and accelerate the melting of sea ice.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said there will be no drilling in the Arctic “unless the environment is protected.” Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon later described Arctic oil extraction as “a commercial activity of immense potential.”
There are growing calls for a moratorium on offshore drilling across the Arctic. A recent public opinion poll found 54 percent of Canadians want deep-water oil drilling “suspended until safety can be reasonably assured.” Another 23 percent want it banned outright because it is “not worth the risk.”
One of the problems with oil spills is that they don’t recognize international boundaries.
Greenland has issued offshore exploration licenses in Davis Strait, near Baffin Island on the eastern side of Canada’s Arctic. And President Barack Obama’s administration — while suspending additional sales of offshore oil leases — is allowing Shell Oil to proceed with plans to drill exploratory wells on the American side of the Beaufort Sea and the adjacent Chukchi Sea, near the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee.
Obama seems to have the backing of Americans. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll May 12 found six out of 10 Americans support more offshore drilling, despite the Gulf Coast oil spill. “Drill, baby, drill.”Rebels attacked a United Nations peacekeeping base in eastern Congo, killing at least 14 peacekeepers and wounding 40 others in the worst violence against the mission in this Central African country in years.
Deputy spokesman Farhan Haq in New York said the peacekeepers were mainly from Tanzania, and that at least five Congolese soldiers also were killed in the assault blamed on one of the region's deadliest rebel groups.
"It's a very huge attack, certainly the worst in recent memory," Haq said.
The peacekeeping base is located about 45 kilometres (27 miles) from the town of Beni, which has been repeatedly hit by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces rebel group.
The base is home to the peacekeeping mission's rapid intervention force, which has a rare mandate to go on the offensive, according to Radio Okapi, which is backed by the US mission.
The radio station, citing military sources, said fighting lasted four hours.
Nearly 300 peacekeepers have been killed since the UN mission arrived in 1999, according to UN peacekeeping data.
Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, has seen immeasurable cruelty and greed as a result of its vast mineral resources. The nation suffered through one of the most brutal colonial reigns ever known before undergoing decades of corrupt dictatorship. Back-to-back civil wars later drew in a number of neighboring countries.The Philadelphia Flyers announced today that they agreed to terms with head coach Peter Laviolette on a multi-year contract extension, according to General Manager Paul Holmgren.
"We are thrilled to have Peter continue his work with our group as we push to compete for the Stanley Cup,” Holmgren said. “Peter has done a terrific job for us and is very deserving of this extension."
Laviolette was named the 17th head coach in Flyers history on December 4, 2009. Since joining the club, he has had one of the most successful runs of any Flyers head coach in the last 25 years. Laviolette has posted a regular season record of 122-73-26 since his hiring, including back-to-back 47-win seasons – the most wins the Flyers have had in a two-season period since 1985-87.
Since Laviolette’s hiring, the Flyers have the third-most wins in the Eastern Conference (122), behind only Pittsburgh and Washington (127 each). Over the past two full seasons, the Flyers are second in the Eastern Conference and third overall in the NHL in standings points (209) and in points percentage (.637).
The Flyers have also enjoyed unprecedented success on the road under Laviolette, winning a franchise-record 25 games in 2010-11 and matching that total last season.
Laviolette’s overall record in the playoffs with the Flyers has also been among the league’s best.
He led the club on a remarkable playoff run in his first season as the Flyers won the Eastern Conference championship and made the eighth Stanley Cup Final appearance in franchise history. Under his watch, the Flyers have been the only team in the league to reach the second round of the playoffs (or further) in each of the last three seasons. The Flyers have participated in eight playoff series in that time, more than any other team. In terms of overall playoff performance, Laviolette’s teams in Carolina and Philadelphia have taken part in 12 playoff series since the lockout, which is the third-most by any NHL coach after Mike Babcock (17 with Detroit) and Joel Quenville (13 with Colorado and Chicago).
Get a jump on securing your 2012-13 Flyers full or partial season ticket packages today! Flyers season ticket holders receive great benefits including discounts from box office pricing. Reserve your tickets today by visiting PhiladelphiaFlyers.com or call 215-218-PUCK (7825).Madden NFL 16 Minnesota Vikings Team Breakdown
The Vikings come into Madden 16 in the upper echelon of teams. Their team overall rating may not reflect it, but this team seems to be built for Madden. A good quarterbacks, dominant running back, speedy receivers, and a strong defense.
We have the full Minnesota Vikings team breakdown for Madden NFL 16 below.
Team: Minnesota Vikings
Offensive Strategy: Balance. Jerick McKinnon has the type of tools that make players very dangerous in Madden. That being said, he is probably the 6th most talented skill player on the Vikings Madden 16 roster. Teddy Bridgewater can make all the throws and is mobile enough to make the defense think about his scrambling ability. The receivers are fast and talented, and Adrian Peterson is always one of the best running backs in any Madden game. Stay balanced and you should have no trouble moving the ball.
Defensive Strategy: Bend but don’t break. This might seem like a weird strategy for a team with so many playmakers on defense. All you have to do though is not make mistakes so don’t get too aggressive. Everson Griffen and Anthony Barr can get pressure all by themselves. Eric Kendricks is one of the perfect user middle linebackers. And then the secondary is completely loaded in terms of Madden talent. Your defense should be better than most offenses in Madden 16.
Impact Players: QB Teddy Bridgewater, HB Adrian Peterson, HB Jerick McKinnon, WR Mike Wallace, WR Cordarrelle Patterson, TE Kyle Rudolph, C John Sullivan, RT Phil Loadholt, RE Everson Griffen, DT Sharrif Floyd, LOLB Anthony Barr, MLB Eric Kendricks, CB Captain Munnerlyn, CB Xavier Rhodes, CB Trae Waynes, CB Josh Robinson, FS Harrison Smith
Key Newcomers: CB Trae Waynes, MLB Eric Kendricks
Strengths: Playmakers. Out of the 17 skill positions in Madden (not counting offensive line) the Vikings have 16 players we identify as impact players. That is absolutely nuts but the Vikings are that good this year.
Weaknesses: Lack of dominant playmakers. This might seem weird after we just highlighted the Vikings strength as playmakers. However, outside of Adrian Peterson the Vikings don’t have any players that we consider to be truly elite. A team like the Seahawks has a bunch of truly elite Madden players (Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, Jimmy Graham, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, etc) The Vikings have lots of really good players but they aren’t a team that has great players everywhere.
Overview: The Vikings are a team that a lot of elite level pro gamers will use this year. Depending on how you look at them, they are either a top 5 or top 10 Madden 16 team If you use them correctly, you should win a lot of games.
What did we miss Vikings fans? Sound off in the comments section.* PS3 cut won’t lead to revision in 2009/10 f’casts-president
* Big boost from PS3 cut likely to come in 2010/11-president
* Shares close up 2.4 pct, lifted by brokerage report (Recasts, adds comments from president)
TOKYO, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Sony Corp’s (6758.T) introduction of a cheaper PlayStation 3 will have a big impact on video game sales in the next business year following a limited boost this year, the head of game maker Square Enix Holdings (9684.T) said.
Square Enix President Yoichi Wada told a gathering of reporters on Wednesday the PS3 cut would be positive for game sales but not enough to warrant an upward revision to its sales and profit forecasts in the current year to March 2010.
Last week Sony said it would roll out a slimmer, cheaper version of the PS3 in the first week of September at $299 in the United States, 299 euros in Europe and 29,980 yen in Japan, a quarter of the previous price. [ID:nLI152101]
The move is expected to give a lift to sales of the PS3 and game makers, which include Electronic Arts Inc ERTS.O, Activision (ATVI.O) and Capcom Co (9697.T).
Square Enix and its recently acquired Eidos unit have announced 3 titles for the PS3, including the latest edition of its popular “Final Fantasy” series, which it is planning to launch this winter.
“In terms of the impact (the PS3 cut) will have on this financial year’s earnings, I don’t think there will be a major difference,” Wada said. “But I expect there to be a big impact from next year.”
Square Enix, also known for the Dragon Quest game series, has forecast its operating profit to double to 25 billion yen in the current year to March on sales of 180 billion yen.
Under exchange disclosure rules, Square Enix would need to revise up its operating profit forecast if it determined the result would likely be 30 percent above its estimate.
Square Enix shares closed up 2.4 percent at 2,335 yen, outperforming a 1.4 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average.N225 after Bank of America Merrill Lynch raised its target price on Square Enix to 2,800 yen from 2,530 yen and reiterated its "buy" rating.
In a report to clients the brokerage said Square Enix has a strong line-up of games able to sell more than a million copies including Batman from Eidos, Dragon Quest 9 and Final Fantasy 13, which it predicts will be released in November or December. (Editing by Chris Gallagher)Automatically Generated Transcript (may not be 100% accurate)
What is it just I screwed up that the yes and you know I had it right the first time change it's OK I wanted. I can start I've got one I just saw twittered out. From. Oh and you mentioned Kevin Paul DuPont we noticed that gonna break I could remember red red that we distributed them. Karen called upon in April. Apparently spoke with Jimmy VC's dad. Or. As a father. Said Jimmy BC's senior he would suggest his son not. Signed with the Bruins I agree because of too much scrutiny and pressure for a hometown kid. He would suggest I do not sign with the Bruins OK so if he doesn't Simon his hometown team or does wanna play in his hometown team. And that would mean you know Toronto may want to play when his brother the brother makes it through that and right unless there's a wild card out there. And let's play Richard your good buddy there Jack Michael buffalo. There are so. That summer I write a better forget the that it got to brought to by Seneca poker inside the Seneca Niagara casino the real deal from winners all. TS cents and fifty in Toronto on Naylor lands Burke. But a poll. Question who would you bet to win the Calder trophy next year Austin Matthews or the field. Who will win the Calder next year Gaza trick question okay because he's an American player and Canada usually pretends those guys don't exist. But it played beliefs are there any 27 year old two in the cage out exactly can we get a guy who has played. 500 games professional hockey to show up and when you never know he's gonna win that thing tonight the brand would take the field I would take the field to. Mainly because. Last year's draft is pretty strong draft though Michael McCabe draft and there are guys that didn't play a lot sort and plane off. That will come into the league in this will be a rookie 125 games yet so. I think he'd have people look at. Conservative. Compete with like maybe Dylan stroll home or just think of what you know. Throw still won't be that good what kind of season that the going to have. He's gonna win the Calder you know with if he can he win it was fifties I mean jacket fifty something points fifties that he's gonna get that and win the Calder. That's right to be funny or Chris Drury won it with less than fifty points and I go got 56 have been finished in the top three right that's right is that the field. Is this say that at this point. So forget about Matthews I bet the field to I would bet and it's it's a it's a wide enough field I don't think that Matthews is enough of a favor. The I got an NFL and NBA one for him let's do NFL's three espn.com. Forget who wrote the piece that that he has been upset about Chris Hogan by all accounts he was the star new England's offseason work out. He's a shoo in to start alongside Danny Hamlin dull. And will almost certainly top his best numbers in buffalo 41 catches 426. Yards. Electronic about what the figure is Brady. Better forget it. Sixty catches 600 yards Hogan tops that we think right but he topped that he turned to Welker adult men I don't rocket 8090 catches. And pixel. The end I mean it's that he tops his career high gas Brady throwing the fault all right. But I try to try to come up with like what the numb these issuing to start and it's Brady. Sixty catches 600 yards. Seventy averages 1011 yards a catch in his. Seven catcher X 6570. So that it may I mean they throw the ball awful lot yeah. And if he's starting he's gonna get a lot of chances to catch a lot of passes from embrace all faith on the few adding that it will obliterated I would say. NBA free agency let's talk Kevin Durant. It's. The Golden State Warriors are going ahead with a less from ESPN going ahead with their long held plans to pursue Kevin Durant reportedly extort its. Source Delhi at the end Durant is. The top target for Golden State not their only one of their top target. Frank I solo from the New York Daily News reports. During its preferences to re sign with the thunder. If he leads is most interested in signing with Golden State okay better forget it Kevin Durant ends up with the Golden State Warriors. I do not think he wealth. I don't thinks the warriors a leader replace Harrison Barnes. But I don't think you will okay part two of that. And he sees Oklahoma City editor forget it Dirk Nowitzki ends up with Golden State he is apparently on their radar after Kevin Durant. Think that's more likely but you have to want to leave ballots right he's still under contract. But he's like 75 years old he wants to sneak in another title right now for retires this is still good couple years she gives him some scoring adept at. There have to be the go to guy he's great shooter mean it has been for his entire career if he's he's had a piece to add to curry and Klay Thompson the German Moses himself the burden for the video that. On YouTube go ahead and search German Moses Dirk Nowitzki it's. Full wrap. Song drew you I like. Check it out we've got judge John Malone sabres prospect joining us in a moment here to talk Jimmy VC at 930. And the show major Patrick knows prominent and at some point I'm gonna give you my. I've been waiting to do it all week. I wanna run by UA long live the warriors not rants. But requests that what you want to happen in sports I want I was just keeps saying long live the warriors. Part of why this. Last NBA finals was so great. Is because it was kind of like space jam came to life the Mon star is the best team ever. It was LeBron. Returning home to be a hero against the best team ever right. And I think you'd be pretty great if the warriors worth that powerhouse for five more years keep doing it. I know some people say parity is good I've come to believe that dominance is better. And if there whether there. A villain or people love them if they can be conversation generating all the time the meter fascinating and off Curry's post seasons have been. Often his regular performance and off. Long with the warriors get to that a little bit which. Like the rain that's got to go to the warriors then doing it the war is vs LeBron Dirk got that out OK let me you know I I didn't realize that. I'm so operations. Okay on the AT&T hotline Shawn Malone joining us. Harvard. Hockey players sabres prospect local guy. And hopefully friend of Jimmy these Sean it's Howard and Jeremy good morning and welcome the show how you doing today. Under. Good is that you don't Evan acquire like a Boston accent or anything have you. And our. Good they have adopted Arctic radio on there with Canadian school but that's all right that's still better than a Boston accent. So you know you're a buffalo guy here sabres property you hear the news that they acquired the rights that Jimmy vis your team and Harvard. What did you think. Yeah hired Eric way yeah and it snapped. I have chatted. As great catcher hit the ball well and really nice and I heard a lot from my body is then girl is that excited. You know I just. You know get him a call and you know so goes up then. Outlook audited. Actually mentioned it to home. What it inside not the trying to nationalize them about you. They don't consider buffalo and you know you eat you just talk a little bit about his relationship with. Jack cycle and father and over in the played in the summer league over in Massachusetts are now also. You know in in error an all out then the next couple months. You know all about his game since you know you've watched them play in practice every day. So I don't know I don't I don't know if I'd seen a Harvard hockey game so Sean tell me what is Jamie VC all about as occupied. He's either special player. It I think goal scoring is not. They're not stop the come by especially in NHL now it I think Jenny has that ability. That he disappeared goal scorer but I think he's also. Sort tailored his game. Over the last couple years to be more of a two way guy now. You know he is a fast strong Winger a very big. And you know it's his release is unbelievable and you know your true about this year when Kobe baker award and you know certainly be enough about player called RT. I was gonna ask you about you mentioned the two way game I was reading up some reading some comments from Ted Donato your coach and he talked about how he felt. DC's game had developed over time may be just the last couple years. To a point where he was now a guy they could trust putting on the ice protecting a one goal lead late in the game. Yeah yeah you know it's certainly one of those guys especially America out. So when you on the ice and all situation then. You know they had some penalty kill time this year and you're just out there all the time then it you know all parts or month I'm glad he's in this situation is and how does the that we worked hard to be there and you know it it's just exciting. In a lot and go your all the. You mention his relationship with Jack and sabres fans are kind of banking on Jack cycle to be a recruiting tool and can in convince him that this is ago and a good place from. We can't achy tells how tight they are an outside his overall is that the Boston community when it comes. Those schools and in any guys obviously have big rivalries but in summer leagues in off season kind of stuff outside is that whole community. All very tight. It did not know like guys on the map here in an up and everything and you know that they're all well with each other they'll play in the that beer legal earned knob. And Marlboro. You know it's yeah. Let everyone know that there and pretty much around the Boston area it's kind of funny to see it now like Alec and offload to I don't know Ireland so that is great by. Well yesterday Tim Murray said of these funds in these beer league teams he hopes that the guys aren't going 100%. So all I knew what is it I'm sure it's such a thrown sticks out there you guys are probably trying to win but like how would you compare it to me in Arco an all out right. Right right the autopsy then. Trying to relax but it. At the same time you know they're all competitors Iran and all ought anecdote. That play in that league as well and you know I doubt league it's just yet signed. Targets like any other billionaire planned but you know those guys that are. Competitive edge in. And but I have a pretty on the lot. John yesterday when asked about Jimmy BC Tim Marriott mention that this is kind of like a a college recruiting process now you know you gotta go make your pitch and seeding convince him to come here before he could hit the market in mid August. And he talked about using Jack cycle as a tool to to recruit him. What about you. Has as has happened sabres asked you is that something you would do on your own or are. Sean do you feel like it might infringe on a friendship and you just wanna give ms. space. I have been approached about it but it all given. Whatever you want the know he ought. Ethical questions about the area and you know like hockey like here I'd be glad to hand it out. But no you definitely want battered bodies at school and it on a low and answer any questions he has. But it you know I'd. I can't really comment further on you know his relationship with natural and everything that went down but. You know right now I think it's a Smart move by. It's been married acquires rights deters. You know they still have a month than I believed you know try to invent them so I think I think you might be coming here for the draft then. And you know we'll see where else played so. We say haven't been approached consider this loss loss approaching you sank the go ahead and do this we sign off on it because it's in the regular ideas of UN you know. Start start the recruiting were and a and you can jump shot you can tell him all about the harbor setter in the downtown development and the city coming back and the passionate hockey dad's right I took a few walks up Q. Hey patiently text the other or snatch out of but he touched it says thank. You know buffaloes got my rights OK Sean tell me about buffalo lot what I wanna play there will detail how would you make your pitch. Well I obviously it's violent better places to play in the NH RA thank god. Especially at the young team that they have I think they'll be it Pittsburgh so you know you have players like Jack in Abu. You know have a couple years in the league now and I think they did that they take him under their wing. And you know I I just think that and the so passionate about in other sports here that. You know you can get anywhere else but I think it's a special on here at the though if Kuerten they're vocal and and it's bigger. You know spot that we're an erector action I think. And it keeps it up with the APEC and consideration or any ground making the decision. Well put the hard pressed on I'm I'm gonna be less diplomatic put the hard pressed on this guy the sabres could use him you'd firm from your standpoint. Junior you're done at Harvard get a good year for the Crimson Tide how're things going with your choose your friends and outside I'm too radical opens and I make Alabama and you had a good year for the crimson are you gone back in his senior year what's going on with you. Are you out there Terry writes in new year Iowa graduate school. You know I've I've had her without bride in terms injuries that are. A lot about so I think it's there during outlook for oil. All be attending development camp at least you on ice. Of participation part but. They're not under site in my senior year watching Jimmy eagle everything. You know start but the player in my belly and Columbia you know record all the years gone to rehab and now and you know being a senior next year be special replay bill even a bigger role and I think we're. They have pride nine. 119 in next year's low volume or an older team by a relative or two and you know it it's a bit funnier pitcher. Four let you go you mentioned you know you you're gonna get your degree the closest I got to Harvard was driving by torturing Boston. What what is it what was it like for you what is it like you know I know Jimmy BC did the saving state want to get to the creek securing get a diploma. I'm guessing it's not you know that easy Sean school at our little bit on the difficult side. What's it like going through Harvard education lines. Eight you could say it stopped but you know they'd choose the right people would go there. Elgin is also you know very bright kid and up. You know let's stop and meet the demands of old school and academic at the same time but you know you'd you'd sir you used the word and it's very that prepared you rely. You know we don't get it. As much help on the academic side in terms of you know tutored and everything but. You know it's it's certainly a grind but. I think they'll stop sleeping out in the and then you know having that figure is something special and probably ethical way. You know it's a tremendous honor go to an institution like. I won't embarrass just ask you to compare SAT scores with people say that for another day okay. Well stay healthy have a great senior year in and John thanks very much for coming all of us this morning enjoy the rest your summer to. Yeah no probably that are John Malone Willis Harvard occupier sabres draft picks at buffalo that buffalo kid. So we mention. Yeah he's been for the drafted Dave Reid and in the both of us is species in the house Friday fans need to get on board with some kind of rallying chance. War we need to keep it quiet that he's you mean the building 'cause leaks fans will be there. Keep that in my defense this. I we've got a special guest going to back on got a question for everybody here Andrei wrote in a hockey football comparison. Andrei I don't just says I don't know Stamkos as these marble bills and the sabres families that says you guys talk about stand coast and I'm in. Under wants me to we've Beckham put in context what does it mean stamp coast football would be like the bills dating who. I had no quarterbacks because it's too much to stand coast the sabres would be like who the bills. And insurance I had a knee jerk reaction right away we'll get answers when we return.A young professor has used her favorite childhood toy, a laser printer, and a toaster oven to make microfluidic devices - tiny computer chips with plumbing that are usually fabricated in multimillion dollar labs.
When she began working at the University of California Merced last year, Michelle Khine was eager to get started with her research, but stuck without sophisticated equipment.
In an act of desperation, she turned to Shrinky Dinks– plastic sheets that get smaller when they are baked in a household oven.
"I am not a patient person, and being a new faculty member at a brand new university, I did not immediately have the cleanroom facilities I am accustomed to," says Khine, "And desperation is the mother of invention (or something like that). So as I was brainstorming solutions, I remembered my favorite childhood toy and decided to try it in my kitchen one night."
Khine and her team designed complicated patterns in Auto CAD, printed them onto Shrinky Dinks, and then heated the plastic toys in an inexpensive oven. As the sheets became smaller, the lines of print would bulge out. Taller and more pronounced, the miniaturized pattern served as a perfect mould for forming rounded, narrow channels in PDMS – a clear, synthetic rubber.
In addition to making some simpler devices, Khine and her team emblazoned a Christmas tree design into a piece of PDMS and showed how it can blend different types of food coloring to make a rainbow pattern. Since microfluidic devices are sometimes used for biological research, the young professor also showed that Chinese Hamster Ovary cells can flow through through the narrow channels.
Khine described her work in Lab on a Chip, a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The report, which became available online this November, is completely free and surprisingly easy to understand.
"This is certainly becoming a major thrust of my research, though that was not the intention," says Khine.BRISTOL: Indian captain Mithali Raj today created a world record by becoming the first player to cross 6000 runs in the history of women's ODI during the ICC World Cup match against Australia here today.
The Indian team now have two current world record holders with pacer Jhulan Goswami being the leading wicket-taker in 50-over cricket.
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I'm talking about.
Maryhill is such an anticipated race that people have boards setup just for the event. Ditch Slap is so awesome and with the flood danger as such a lethal possibility, it has been condemned on the news. Whether it's catching air down the the epic grade of Steepcrest or the ridiculous hilarity of the cops trying to catch you with nets at Broadway Bomb, these events are so well known for a reason. It would be a shame if you didn't check out at least one before you kick the bucket (or at least stop kicking wood).
7) Build Your Own Longboard
When the modern popsicle deck was standardized and skateboarders stopped experimenting with different shapes and materials, longboarders picked right up where they left off. Since then, board construction has grown by leaps and bounds: CNC'd wheel wells, bacon concave, carbon fiber spines, foam and hollow cores...nearly anything you could want is possible.
More and more longboards are becoming very personal endeavors. In this sport, pro decks aren't just custom graphics. They're designed from the ground up to be perfect for a skater's own style based on their exact specifications. Most skaters (even the really talented) won't ever reach the pro board level of success, but we all deserve to ride something that fits us like a glove and performs as well as we do. So build your own board, or have a friend do it, who cares? As long as it's yours.
8) Play KOTR
Yes, it's another skate trip. This time though, you're not headed to your dream spot. Instead, you're taking a car and filling it with sweaty skaters and gas station burrito farts. Why? Because you're headed on a road trip my friend!
If you're unfamiliar with Thrasher's "King of the Road" contest then get familiar. It's downright gnarly and basically a mix between a scavenger hunt and a game of skate. Both teams get a list of tasks to accomplish which are mostly skate related, but some, uh, are not so much. Competitors head out across the country to complete in as many as they can. If you don't have two teams worth of friends willing to traverse the open highways with you (or just lack the gas money for the extra car) then bragging rights can be forfeited in a one team version of the game. The competition is very much secondary, what's important is the adventure.
9) Make at Least One Video
So you and four friends rented a van and traveled across the country to skate Lombard Street with Sergio Yuppie on a homemade board? Not bad! I mean, you didn't have to do them all at once, but you're clearly not messing around. In fact, you must have gotten most of that epic journey on tape right? If you didn't, you're blowing it.
Luckily, it's not too late. Make some clips of you and your friends at the local spot. Whether you spend all night on a sick edit or just five minutes on the rawest of runs, you should document your experience as a skater. Who cares if it's 60% falling, 30% goofing around, and just 10% nailing tricks? That's how most people skate anyway and the videos that are willing to admit that are often the most fun to watch. Something about your every day sessions makes it worthwhile for you. Why not share that with others? Or maybe it's not for anyone else. Trust me, one day you and your friends will be glad you put some of your best memories on film. If nothing else, do it for yourself.
10) Spread the Stoke
This may be the last item on the list, but it's also the most important. You could finish 1-9 and then some and you still won't feel as fulfilled as if you dabbled even a little in some stoke spreading. You could be the greatest skater alive and you'd still, by definition, lose that title the minute you croak. No one can live forever, but do you know what can and will? Skateboarding. You can be a part of that, it just takes a little selflessness.
You know this amazing sport has been good to you, maybe even helped you through some rough times. It's time to pass on some of that good will. Even if you don't ever hold that "best skater alive" title, you can make an even bigger impact just giving back to the local scene. You can teach a few groms how to shred, organize a local event, even give half your quiver away as the prizes. Who cares? You'll never ride all of them as much as they deserve anyway. The only way you'll never have to "hang up the wood" is if you give it away instead.
Everyone stops skating eventually, but no one will be remembered longer or more fondly than those who spread the stoke.
Anything else that you'd like to add? We’d love to hear from you. See our contact page or email us here.British banker: I need to wash off the stench of public transport used by the poor
Anton Casey forced to apologise after a public backlash
He talked on Facebook about 'the stench of public transport'
Mr Casey is married to former beauty queen Bernice Wong
A wealthy British banker living in Singapore has provoked fury there by ridiculing poor people and scoffing at ‘the stench of public transport’.
Anton Casey, a wealth fund manager, has received death threats and been vilified after his comments on Facebook spread across the internet. He has issued a humiliating apology to the ‘good people of Singapore’ in a bid to calm the outrage.
It erupted when Mr Casey, 39, posted a picture on Facebook of his young son sitting on a train with the caption: ‘Daddy, where is your car and who are all these poor people?’
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Death threats: British wealth manger Anton Casey and his wife, former Miss Singapore Bernice Wong
British businessman Anton Casey and his son in a YouTube video. The wealth fund manager has offended the people of Singapore by calling commuters 'poor people' Miss Singapore Bernice Wong (left), the wife of Mr Casey, alongside Miss Slovac Republic Petra Mokrosova, Miss Slovenia Polona Bas and Miss South Africa Cindy Nell at the 2003 Miss Universe beauty contest in Panama City
A second photo showed his son sitting in his Porsche alongside the comment: ‘Ahhhhhhh reunited with my baby. Normal service can resume, once I have washed the stench of public transport off me.’
He also brands a taxi driver a ‘retard’ for wearing mittens in hot weather and remarks: ‘After 11 years residency, I am still trying to understand these people.’
Mr Casey, a former London stockbroker, previously worked for HSBC and is married to Bernice Wong, 35, who won the Miss Singapore Universe contest in 2003. The couple married in 2008.
Details of his online gaffes were featured in the local media and on websites and internet forums.
Mr Casey was said to have gone into hiding and spoken to police because of the abuse he was receiving.
He later released a statement through a PR firm, saying: ‘I would like to extend a sincere apology to the people of Singapore. I have the highest respect and regard for Singapore and the good people of Singapore; this is my home. I wish for nothing more than to be forgiven for my poor judgment and given a second chance to rebuild the trust people have had in me as a resident of this wonderful country.
Miss Singapore 2003, Bernice Wong, wears a typical dress during the preliminary round of the Miss Universe contest
Mr Casey posted these updates on Facebook, which he later apologised for
‘In the past 24 hours, due to a security breach of my personal Facebook page... my family and especially my five-year-old Singaporean son have suffered extreme emotional and verbal abuse online.’
Mr Casey is also facing disciplinary action from his employer Crossinvest, the Singapore-based wealth management company.
A spokesman for the company said: ‘Crossinvest does not condone the offending comments. We believe they were made in poor taste. Crossinvest has clear policies regarding codes of conduct expected of its employees. Those codes extend to social media.’
He added: ‘We are currently investigating the comments made by our employee and will take appropriate action once we are in possession of all the facts.’
Comments about Mr Casey on one Singapore media site included: ‘Why oh why do you think you are so much better than others just because you happen to have cash... shame on you mate, shame!’
Another wrote: ‘Can I sue this guy for insulting me?’
And a third said: ‘You are lucky that you are rich, but don’t look down on the poor because you have no ****ing idea what they have to go through.’The driver of a giant blue bus bearing the images of Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine pulled over in front of an auto-parts store in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on Tuesday and emptied a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain. It left behind quite a stench.
According to one local news report, when police arrived on the scene, the street was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious. Local hazmat crews braved the smell to clean up the dumping of dumps, and now Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division is investigating.
The Democratic National Committee has issued an apology, calling the incident “an honest mistake.”
“We were unaware of any possible violations and have already taken corrective action with the charter bus company to prevent this from happening again. Furthermore, the DNC will work with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, as well as local and state officials to determine the best course of corrective action,” a statement from the DNC said.With the solstice behind us, summer has officially begun. Across the country, that means the sun is shining and the mercury is climbing, and our air conditioners and the electricity grids they rely upon are stretched to their limits.
In response, we've seen utilities urge customers to turn up their thermostats a notch or two to ease their burden. They've recommended the use of fans, energy-efficient bulbs, and double-paned windows--all good measures to reduce energy use.
What we haven't seen is much action by the utilities to encourage people to go solar. In fact, in state after state, by proposing to increase fees for solar customers or lower their reimbursement rates, utilities are doing the opposite.
That's a shame, because a new Environment America Research & Policy Center report shows that when people put solar panels on their rooftops and in their neighborhoods through programs like net-metering, they reduce the strain on our electric grid, lower prices for all electric customers, and cut pollution to boot.
Net metering programs credit solar panel owners at a fixed rate -- often the retail price of electricity -- for providing excess power to the grid, similar to rollover minutes on a cell phone plan. These programs are the law of the land in 44 states, and have helped solar energy skyrocket across the country; last year, every two and half minutes, another U.S. home or business went solar.
The report, Shining Rewards: The Value of Rooftop Solar Power for Consumers and Society, examines recent analyses of net metering programs conducted by utilities, public utility commissions, and independent groups to assess the value of solar power.
As this chart details, of the 11 net metering studies reviewed, eight found that the value of solar energy was higher than the average local residential retail electricity rate; the three that didn't were conducted by utilities.
The median value of solar power across all of the studies was nearly 17 cents per unit, compared to the nation's average retail electricity rate of about 12 cents.
In other words, despite utility claims that solar costs too much, and that solar users are benefiting at the expense of other customers, the opposite is more likely true. Solar panel owners are givers, not takers.
Every single one of the studies -- even those conducted by the utilities -- found that solar customers offer net benefits to the electric system, as this chart shows.
Solar panels connected to the grid help bring down ongoing energy costs. They reduce the amount of electricity utilities must generate or purchase from fossil fuel-fired power plants. And they reduce the amount of energy lost in generation, long-distance transmission and distribution, losses that tend to cost ratepayers.
Solar also brings down new capital investment costs. By reducing overall demand, solar energy production helps ratepayers and utilities avoid investing in new power plants, transmission lines and other forms of electricity infrastructure.
What's more, solar power boosts the local economy, producing local jobs that can't be outsourced. And as everyone knows, solar helps cut our dependence on dirty sources of energy and the global warming and air pollution that comes with it.
This study has real implications right now for debates raging across the country over net metering and other rooftop solar programs. Nevada, for example, is considering a new fee for solar panel owners who sell excess power. Arizona Public Service is proposing to lower the reimbursement rates for solar power. The Wisconsin Public Utility Board has approved a similar plan to lower payments to solar customers, which advocates are appealing.In the new study by Rice University and MD Anderson, mice with dual subcutaneous tumors - the left one EGFR-negative, the right one EGFR-positive - were treated with the new Cet/PTX/PEG-HCC mixture, a carbon nanoparticle-based chemotherapeutic drug tuned to target EGFR-positive tumors. Treatment over 30 days proved highly effective in killing the right-side tumors, underscoring the efficacy of the targeted approach. Credit: E. Loďc Samuel/Rice University
A mixture of current drugs and carbon nanoparticles shows potential to enhance treatment for head-and-neck cancers, especially when combined with radiation therapy, according to new research by Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
The work blazes a path for further research into therapy customized to the needs of individual patients. The therapy uses carbon nanoparticles to encapsulate chemotherapeutic drugs and sequester them until they are delivered to the cancer cells they are meant to kill. A paper on the research was published this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. The new strategy by Rice chemist James Tour and Jeffrey Myers, a professor of head-and-neck surgery at MD Anderson, combines paclitaxel (PTX) and Cetuximab (Cet) with hydrophilic carbon clusters functionalized with polyethylene glycol, known as PEG-HCC.
Combination of agents
Cetuximab, the targeting agent, is a humanized monoclonal antibody that binds exclusively to the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a cell-surface receptor overexpressed by 90 percent of head-and-neck squamous cell cancers. Paclitaxel, an active agent in chemotherapy, is used to treat lung, ovarian, breast and head-and-neck cancers. In combination, they have the ability to target and attack cancerous cells. Because paclitaxel is hydrophobic - it won't mix with water - the substances are generally combined with Cremophor EL, a castor oil-based carrier that allows the compound marketed as Taxol to be delivered intravenously to patients.
Tour, Myers and their associates have found a simple way to mix PTX and Cetuximab with carbon clusters that adsorb the active ingredients. The new compound is water-soluble and is more effective at targeting tumors than Taxol while avoiding the toxic effects of paclitaxel and Cremophor on adjacent healthy cells, they wrote. It is very common to administer cortical steroids to limit the allergic response to Cremophor EL. The Cet/PTX/PEG-HCC elements combine easily without use of Cremophor EL.
Moreover, a much smaller amount of the drug for chemotherapy is used.
Advantages of the new drug mixture
A recently approved chemotherapy drug already combines paclitaxel with albumin nanoparticles (Abraxane) and also shows promise. But it still only has about 10 percent of the market after six or seven years of use. Combining Cet/PTX/PEG-HCC and radiation therapy in tests on mice showed a significant boost in killing tumors. A hypothesis is that PTX, the chemotherapy drug, sensitizes the cancer cells to the effects of radiation and the Cetuximab/PEG-HCC increases the delivery of PTX to the cancer cells.
Unlike Cremophor the enhanced carbon clusters are nontoxic. Biodistribution and toxicity studies showed the "large majority" of PEG-HCCs are excreted through the kidneys, while trace amounts in the livers and spleens of mice tested showed no damage to the organs. The strategy sprang from conversations between Tour and Rice chemist and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, who died of leukemia in 2005. This collaborative work has 'proved the principle' that carbon nanoparticles can be used to non-covalently link a chemotherapeutic drug with a targeting antibody that can deliver the drug specifically to a cancer cell. This principle could be used to deliver other drugs to other types of cells through specific targeting of cell surface receptors as a method of increasing the therapeutic ratio. Potential for clinical uses of PEG-HCCs for brain cancer and traumatic brain injuries as well as chemotherapy can also be seen. This paper is the highlight of six years of research.
Original publication:
Sano D., et al.: Noncovalent Assembly of Targeted Carbin Nanovectors Enables Synergistic Drug and Radiation Cancer Therapy in Vivo, ACS Nano 2012, DOI: 10.1021/nn204885f.
http://www.rice.edu/Last week, the United Nations General Assembly again observed the International Day of the Girl Child, the theme of which is "Innovating for Girls' Education." In choosing this theme, the U.N. cited:
"... Girls' education, especially at the secondary level, is a powerful transformative force for societies and girls themselves: it is the one consistent positive determinant of practically every desired development outcome..."
Women now run some of the world's largest companies, a record number of women were elected to the 113th Congress, and perhaps most importantly, women are playing a dominant role in providing for their families. The Pew Research Center recently reported a record 40 percent of all U.S. households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family.
Prominent in this observation is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who the Taliban tried to assassinate as she rode on a school bus. Despite a point blank gunshot wound to her head, Malala survived, has made a truly miraculous recovery, and is now a highly visible advocate for the cause of equal educational opportunities for all.
Her story might make people in the United States think the problem of gender inequality in education is something that exists "over there" as opposed to on our shores. While it is true that the severity of the gap between how boys and girls are educated is much more so in other countries, and while we have not seen the violent extremes to which some go to keep girls uneducated, even here, there is work to be done.
The expanding role of women in all aspects of our society makes it critical that there be programs targeted at providing girls -- especially those from low-income families -- access to the best possible secondary and college education.
To that end, we established The Young Women's Leadership Network (TYWLN) -- a network of inner city public schools for girls in grades 6-12. We operate five schools in New York City, with eight affiliates around the country. These public schools provide a single-sex educational choice for predominantly low-income students, many of whom will be the first in their families to graduate high school and attend college.
We go where the girls need us most, such as East Harlem and the Bronx. Girls from the inner-city are increasingly called upon to be the strength and economic support of their families and communities, yet only 8 percent of low-income adults in the U.S. achieve a college degree. It is imperative that these girls are provided opportunities for first-rate educations, and we must do better. After all, education is still the great and perhaps only real equalizer in this country.
For example, a senior at our school in East Harlem, in fact, the daughter of our school's custodian -- an uneducated man from Sri Lanka -- was recently awarded a full scholarship to Brown University. Early admission, no less! One of her classmates is one of my children.
Our model of public schools may not be the only one that works. But it is one that does, and is worth replicating, especially in low-income communities, where some public schools have not been able to raise up girls to reach their maximum potential so they can assume the broader roles that society is increasingly thrusting upon them.
Our girls stand as examples of what can be achieved when programs exist to get girls into the right academic environment. Since 2001, we have helped close to 5,000 students enroll in college. Our alumni achieve four-year college degrees at more than triple the rate of their peers, but we are only getting started. We offer girls a path, a portal and a destination. The path is the same as for affluent girls: a first-rate education. The destination is also the same: an independent and successful life.
This is what Malala's struggle is all about. In fact, when Malala visited our students in East Harlem last month, she called upon them to use their individual and collective voices to support the education of all girls.
I echo Malala's call. It is essential that we redouble our efforts to provide opportunities to girls. They are the future of our communities and our countries. Indeed, it's been reported that when 10% more girls go to school, a country's GDP increases on average by 3 percent. That holds true for girls everywhere, whether they live in the Swat Valley of Pakistan or East Harlem, New York.
The stakes are high. If we fail to harness the talent of all members of the next generation, we will be doing civilization a great disservice. Perhaps the Egyptian poet Hafez Ibrahim said it best: "When you educate a woman, you create a nation."I have been doing research on what are some of the UI frameworks that are used at twitter.com. Following is a list of those UI frameworks, primarily Javascript. Please feel free to shout if you happen to know that one or more of the following frameworks ain’t actually used:
Testing Jasmine: This is a javascript library. A behavior-driven development framework for testing JavaScript code. It does not depend on any other JavaScript frameworks. It does not require a DOM. And it has a clean, obvious syntax so that you can easily write tests.
UI-based Sizzle: A pure- JavaScript CSS selector engine designed to be easily dropped in to a host library. Bootstrap: As mentioned on the website, Bootstrap is the most popular front-end framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web. Html2Canvas: HTML2Canvas script allows one to take “screenshots” of webpages or parts of it, directly on the users browser. The screenshot is based on the DOM and thus, may not be 100% accurate to the real representation. This is because it does not make an actual screenshot, but builds the screenshot based on the information available on the page. JQuery: A fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation, and Ajax much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers
Security Gibberish-AES: A Javascript library for OpenSSL compatible AES encryption
Performance-based Loadrunner: A generic dependency manager that you can build on to manage any type of asynchronous dependency from CSS templates to DOM events to cache loading. It does include build in support for loading regular JavaScript files, AMD modules and its own, more elegant (IMHO) flavour of modules Boomerang: A Javascript library that measures a whole bunch of performance characteristics of your user’s web browsing experience. All that is needed is stick it into your web pages and call the init() method.
Communication Xdm: Used for cross-domain messaging over postMessage, based on the JSON-RPC 2.0 protocol. It is a stripped down and slightly modified version of easyXDM, a Javascript library that enables the developers to overcome the limitation set in place by the Same Origin Policy, in turn making it easy to communicate and expose javascript API’s across domain boundaries.
[adsenseyu1]Arkady Volozh, Yandex founder and CEO, photographed by WIRED in London Levon Biss
In Russia, Google isn't king. Neither is Uber, Spotify or Amazon. In Russia, Yandex rules. The company commands 54 per cent of all online search in the country and claims 61 per cent of the online advertising market. Shopping service Yandex.Market is used by 19 million people a month and Yandex.Taxi accounts for 60 per cent of all taxi rides in Moscow. Big Silicon Valley companies are struggling there, but Yandex thrives.
So what's its secret? "We call ourselves a trans-local company," says Arkady Volozh, Yandex's Moscow-based co-founder and CEO, who launched the service in 1997 ("A year before Google, so we didn't follow them"). Trans-local is awkward phrasing for a different approach to business: Yandex identifies markets where competitors are weak and builds up its own alternatives. In recent years, it has expanded into Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. But Russia remains its focus, and this closeness had raised questions about Yandex's relationship with the Russian state.
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"I don't have friction with the state," says Volozh, 53. "Just like I don't have friction with the weather. What happens if it's raining? I need to build a service to avoid the rain." All the same though, an increasingly authoritarian and isolationist Russia is having an impact on Yandex's business.
In October 2016, something strange started happening around Red Square in Moscow. Anyone playing Pokémon Go or trying to navigate the Russian capital's gridlocked roads using GPS was suddenly teleported to Vnukovo International Airport, 29km away. The Kremlin, according to Yandex, was secretly blocking GPS signals – a big problem for Yandex.Taxi's fleet of drivers. But for Volozh, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. "They protect themselves from drones or whatever," he shrugs. "I don't know why they're doing it, but they have their own agenda."
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At times, that agenda has been directed squarely at Yandex. In April 2014, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed that the internet was a "CIA project", and insinuated that Yandex was controlled by foreign intelligence. "Oh yes. Our stock dropped by 20 per cent," Volozh says. He explains that Putin's ire was seemingly directed at the international make-up of Yandex's board (which includes American, Swiss and Dutch members). "I don't think we're controlled, I hope we're not," he continues, half-jokingly, before reeling off a list of foreign intelligence agencies he's confident Yandex isn't controlled by.
Yet in Russia's struggling technology sector, Yandex's success is jarring. In May 2011, the company went public in New York, raising $1.3 billion (£1bn), which at the time was the biggest IPO since Google's in 2004. In June 2014, it was listed on the Moscow Exchange and in recent years has opened offices in China, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey. This increasingly international outlook partly protects Yandex against the volatility of the Russian market, Volozh explains, but it's also a realisation that its services can succeed elsewhere. "Yes, the Russian state exists," he says. "It has its own agenda. We build around it."
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"In May 2011, the company went public in New York, raising $1.3 billion (£1bn), which at the time was the biggest IPO since Google's in 2004"
Volozh was born in 1964 in Atyrau, a small city on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea in what was then the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. He studied computer science in the latter half of the 80s. "I was trained and educated in the old Soviet Union system, when my career was supposed to be a professor of something, of computer science, and then everything changed in a minute," Volozh says, while perched on a sofa in WeWork's co-working space in London. He arrived after a visit to Paris to launch Yandex's navigation service. He's softly spoken and his sentences are often punctuated by laughter. Does it annoy him when people describe his company as the Google of Russia? "A little bit," he admits. But the comparisons aren't so wide of the mark. Yandex and Google have always been fighting for the same market.
"Fifteen years ago, when Sergey [Brin, Google co-founder] and I were in Moscow, we were friends. Two startups," Volozh recalls. Back then, they worked on search engines - later, their rivalry entered another domain. "In 2007, Sergey was in Moscow. He was playing with a phone," says Volozh. A year later, Android launched, causing difficulties for Yandex. The dominance of Google on Android in Russia is near-absolute: on Android it has a 60 per cent share of the search market. More Russians are ditching desktop for mobile; 60 per cent have a smartphone and that figure is predicted to rise to 86 per cent by 2021 - Yandex's dominance is under threat.
Despite Volozh's protestations, local companies stand to benefit from Russia's increasingly isolationist outlook. In Russia, just as in the EU, regulators are scrutinising the control and power of Android. While the case in Europe drags on, Russia's antitrust regulator has fined Google 438 million rubles (£6m) and ordered it to loosen restrictions on Android device-makers, following a complaint by Yandex. Volozh dismisses claims that this amounts to unfair state support of Russian firms. "This process is outside our control. In an equal situation, we will win our market share honestly," he insists.
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Other interventions are more troubling. In November 2016, Russia ordered a temporary block of LinkedIn after it failed to comply with local data-storage laws. In both cases, foreign companies were nixed, to the benefit of local business. "In today's world, when everybody is against everybody and people try to divide, it's hard to be an international company," says Volozh. "But it's not our agenda, or our fault."
At times, the agenda of the Russian state, and its use of technology to realise its goals, has huge effects. In December 2016, US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the presidential election to boost Donald Trump's bid. As propaganda and fake news have come to the fore, Volozh admits Russia has had a head start. "Yes, we would know," he says, referring to the power of propaganda in Putin's Russia. "No comment on Brexit and the election," he continues, laughing. "Welcome to the club."
Updated May 15, 2017: Yandex has a 54 per cent share of the online search market in Russia, not 64 per cent.It cannot have been an easy weekend for Judge Neil Gorsuch. At a time that ought to be one of the high points of his life, one wonders if the Colorado jurist tapped by President Trump to fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court might not be quietly second-guessing his decision to answer the phone when the White House called.
Gorsuch was already looking at a really, really painful confirmation process that could result in the Republican Senate majority invoking the so-called “nuclear option” to get him confirmed over Democratic objections. But on Saturday, Trump likely made the entire ordeal infinitely worse.
Related: Judge Grants Nationwide Temporary Restraining Order on Trump Travel Ban
At around the time people in Denver were getting up for breakfast on Saturday morning, Trump was rage-tweeting about a federal judge in Seattle. Judge James Robart, late Friday, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the enforcement of the key elements of Trump’s executive order banning refugees and the residents of seven majority Muslim countries from entering the United States.
It would have been around 6:12 a.m. Denver time when Trump fired off a tweet that set the legal and political worlds ablaze. And if Judge Gorsuch found his cornflakes turning to ashes in his mouth at that moment, well, it would be no surprise.
The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017
Trump, with his attack on Robarts as a “so-called” judge, had by most accounts crossed a serious red line. Presidents have often criticized judicial rulings. President Obama famously used a State of the Union address, with Supreme Court Justices arrayed in front of him, to blast their decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case.
Related: Is Trump’s Travel Ban Already Hurting US Tourism?
But criticizing a decision and questioning the legitimacy of the court are not the same thing. Writing for the Washington Post’s Volokh Conspiracy blog -- hardly a bastion of liberal bias -- Will Baude, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, seemed fairly stunned, calling the distinction “deadly serious.”
If the court has authority, then the parties are legally required to follow its judgment: even if it is wrong; even if it is very wrong; even if the President does not like it. But if the court does not have authority, then perhaps it can be defied. So the charge of a lack of authority is a much more serious one. It is the possible set-up to a decision to defy the courts — a decision that is unconstitutional if the court does indeed have authority to decide the case.
On Twitter, Baude’s University of Chicago colleague, law professor Eric Posner, wrote, “Neil Gorsuch must condemn Trump for ‘so-called judge’ remark; his friends in the legal community must withhold their support until he does.” When someone responded that Trump might revoke the nomination at such an affront, Posner said simply, “That’s the price of integrity.”
Integrity becomes an issue here because, while federal judges are appointed by presidents, they are not supposed to be beholden to them. And Trump’s attack on Robarts, as Posner effectively makes clear, is going to require a response from Gorsuch. That response may come Sunday, or it may have to wait until his confirmation hearings, but at some point in the near future, Gorsuch is going to be asked to condemn the man who appointed him to the highest court -- and to do it in the most public of forums.
This isn’t the first example of Trump attacking the legitimacy of a federal judge. Famously, during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he spent weeks attacking Gonzalo Curiel, the District Court judge in California who heard a class-action suit against the now-defunct Trump University. Trump frequently claimed that Curiel, who was born in Indiana, could not be objective about the case because his parents came to the US from Mexico.
Related: Trump Inherits a Solid Job Market. Can He Really Make It Better?
All of this can only complicate the situation for Gorsuch. He is, by virtual acclamation of the legal community, a brilliant legal mind and an eminently qualified candidate for Supreme Court Justice. He is also, it would appear, a man with a conscience.
With his first phone call after the nomination was made official, he seemed to acknowledge that he knew he had already bitten into the fruit of a poisonous tree. That call went to Judge Merrick Garland, the eminently qualified candidate nominated by President Obama last year who was denied a hearing or a vote in an utterly unprecedented power grab by the Republican-led Senate.
Gorsuch himself had previously spoken out against unseemly partisan delays in the process of confirming judicial appointments, and his decision to call Garland, made “out of respect” according to the White House, looked to many like the act of a man at least troubled by the circumstances in which he finds himself.
Trump, furious at his first collision with the checks and balances built into the Constitution, did his first Supreme Court nominee no favors on Saturday.Which features of music are universal and which are culture-specific? Why? These questions are important for understanding why humans make music but have rarely been scientifically tested. We used musical classification techniques and statistical tools to analyze a global set of 304 music recordings, finding no absolute universals but dozens of statistical universals. These include not only commonly cited features related to pitch and rhythm but also domains such as social context and interrelationships between musical features. We speculate that group coordination is the common aspect unifying the cross-cultural structural regularities of human music, with implications for the study of music evolution.
Abstract
Music has been called “the universal language of mankind.” Although contemporary theories of music evolution often invoke various musical universals, the existence of such universals has been disputed for decades and has never been empirically demonstrated. Here we combine a music-classification scheme with statistical analyses, including phylogenetic comparative methods, to examine a well-sampled global set of 304 music recordings. Our analyses reveal no absolute universals but strong support for many statistical universals that are consistent across all nine geographic regions sampled. These universals include 18 musical features that are common individually as well as a network of 10 features that are commonly associated with one another. They span not only features related to pitch and rhythm that are often cited as putative universals but also rarely cited domains including performance style and social context. These cross-cultural structural regularities of human music may relate to roles in facilitating group coordination and cohesion, as exemplified by the universal tendency to sing, play percussion instruments, and dance to simple, repetitive music in groups. Our findings highlight the need for scientists studying music evolution to expand the range of musical cultures and musical features under consideration. The statistical universals we identified represent important candidates for future investigation.Whether we’re talking about Playmates Toys or one of the many smaller companies who have acquired the license to make their own TMNT toys, one thing is perfectly clear: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are one of the hottest properties in the world today. Who could have foretold this level of success over 30 years after the franchise began? As a matter of fact, the turtles have been so successful that we’re starting to see a resurgence of some interesting concepts from the heyday of the property.
Although this won’t come as any surprise to fans who have been following the latest Playmates lines, it’s still pretty cool to see some new action figures that provide a |
Childhood Essay
BORN: Jesus Christ Allin
August 29, 1956
Lancaster, NH
FIRST 10 YEARS
The first 5 years of my life were infested with sickness & violence. It a consisted of living in a log cabin in the northern woods of New Hampshire with father, mother, & brother. It was an extremely real, primitive, anti-social existence with no running water, little heat, and unbearably claustrophobic. We boiled water, laundered, and bathed in a very tiny, chipped sink. I was immensely sick with asthma, always fighting to breathe amidst emotionally uncomfortable conditions within a cabin where the wall colors were that of the ever peeling paint strips. We lived in darkness. Father hated light. He also didn't care much for the company of other people. The surrounding air was suffocated in eerie tensions, filled with violence, despair and endless destruction. We were more like prisoners than a family. We were prisoners to father, and father was a prisoner of himself. He always had planned to kill brother and I, then commit suicide with mother. This was brought to our attention on many a blistering occasion. Father despised pleasures around the cabin and would consciously not allow any enjoyable items to enter into our home. If he found anything in our possession that we enjoyed, he would take it out in the woods behind the cabin and bury it. We were allowed very little contact with others, we had no phone, and activities were limited. If someone came by to visit, we would all be made to hide or pay severe consequences. So we would hide. But it developed into our worlds. It's all we knew at the time. If mother ever refused him sex, he would furiously drag the bed out onto the grounds and burn it, setting it on fire as if all our souls were alive in the flames. Toward the end of a long, barbaric 5 years, mother was plotting to engage in our escape. She had previously tried but I was kidnaped in the failed attempt. But finally one day when father was at work in the papermill, mother packed up swiftly leaving behind everything that could not be carried and we then escaped. Leaving behind the first 5 years of my life. A 5 years that would be scratched into my soul for eternity.
The first things she did soon after were to divorce father and change my name from Jesus Christ Allin to Kevin Michael Allin. But more violent confrontations followed throughout the years. Mother started dating men with a flair for guns and mayhem. We were again held at gunpoint on occasions and threatened by death. But mother was getting tougher. And she dragged brother and I through all of these hardships & chaos and raised us despite all of the many complications and sacrifices in her life. I began hating, not trusting, fighting, and feeling very distant to everyone and everything at a very early age. I observed the world around me as a mere movie. A movie full of culprits and phonies. I was the leading man outside of the screen with a hammer just waiting for my chance to smash it all to oblivion. I became introverted, keeping things locked up inside the inner fractions of my ever expanding brain map. I hung out and did what I had to do to survive in any situation. Brother and I became partners in drug dealing and theft. I never felt like I belonged around anyone, I was never intimidated. I felt superior. I hated school and all the other students. In the very early days of schooling I would purposely piss my pants so the teachers would send me home. In later days I would just say fuck it, and never go, choosing to break into houses or cars in parking lots to amuse myself and my finances.
My principal once told me that I was a penny waiting for change, but I suspect that I irritated him probably because I was making more money than he was. I also had predetermined very early in life that I obtained a special, very powerful soul that nobody could or would conceive or be able to top me from achieving what ever I wanted. An irritating fire was now starting to blossom. Evil fires and powerful conclusions were around me would ever compete again. Bizarre personalities were awakening within. Personalities that later in life would have me visiting a psychiatrist. I was encouraged to go by the people around me, but I refused to let it penetrate, for I knew who I was even if nobody else did. I would prevail and accelerate over their unimportant, boring, stagnating lives. I realize now that these personalities were the demons living inside of me. I welcomed them as my friends. Later in life I would have intercourse with the devil himself. I learned how to manipulate people very early in life, I had to. I could always make anyone believe what I had to make them believe. But the bottom line was, when you turn your back I'll stab you in it. I also enjoyed wearing mother's clothes as well. Men's clothes were boring and unimaginative. I was a wild child who wanted to look beautifully outrageous and bright, even if I was filled with inner darkness and machine gun thoughts.
Sexual abnormalities were awakening. I liked to play under the table when mother had company, while the folks were playing cards, etc. I would crawl beneath the table to check out the tightly fitted panties and fantasize. Soon fantasy became reality. I got off sucking the crusty cunt scrapings of mother's panties and later, on my aunt's, for that matter, anywhere I would go. I would raid hampers, garbage cans, and toilets for panties, snot rags, piss, shit, bloody rags, etc. If female company came over I would always fix the toilet so it wouldn't flush, that way I could go in afterwards and feast on body fluids while jerking off. Later in life I would hang out at sleazy bars and bus stations collecting jars of piss and defecation for my sexual habits. I was always masturbating. All throughout my school years I had a constant erection. The first sex I had with another human being was with brother, but later in life sexual confrontations with the smelliest of prostitutes, living and dead animals would prevail. I always felt like my parents must have found me on the ground somewhere and that the darkness of night came from an alien storm, leaving me from another galaxy on the back grounds of that broken down cabin...
CONCLUSION
My demons, inner strengths and physical battles have guided me through life. My demons and I are not compatible. We never have been and never will be. We invite you to danger, and possibly, DEATH. We want your blood, then, we want you to vanish...I guess after all I must be my father's son, I am the second coming of Jesus Christ through aim and constant fire...
GG ALLIN
Return to The GG Allin SuperSite Discography - Sickest Of The Sick
The GG Allin SuperSite Liner Notes - Sickest Of The Sick; (updated 18-JAN-2005)
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homeThe sign outside the Oculus VR booth is seen at the International Consumer Electronics show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The founder of virtual reality glasses maker Oculus VR Inc, acquired by Facebook Inc for $2 billion, has been accused of taking confidential information he learned while working with another company and passing it off as his own, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
The plaintiff, Hawaii-based company Total Recall Technologies, said it hired Oculus founder Palmer Luckey in 2011 to build a prototype head mounted display. Luckey signed a confidentiality agreement, according to the lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Throughout the latter half of 2011 and into 2012, Luckey received feedback and information to improve the design of the display. However, Luckey used information he learned from his partnership when he launched a Kickstarter campaign for his own head mounted display called the Oculus Rift, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages but does not specify and amount.
Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus last year was its first-ever hardware deal, as the company sought a way into the fast-growing wearable devices arena.
Oculus is listed as a defendant along with Luckey, and a Facebook representative on Friday declined to comment. The lawsuit was reported earlier by The Recorder, a California legal newspaper.
For its lawsuit Total Recall Technologies enlisted global law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which also counts Google and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd as major clients. Luckey is accused of breach of contract and fraud, among other claims.NAGPUR: In a show of solidarity to Kashmiri protesters demanding the right to self-determination, the Maoists in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur disrict have called for a bandh on October 10 and 11.The Communist Party of India (Maoist), which is a banned organization, put up posters in Bhamaragarth, Hemalkasa, Arewada and Hindewada area of Chandrapur district, asking people to observe the two-day bandh to express their support to separatist forces in Kashmir. The Valley has been on the boil since July when Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani was killed by the security forces.This is the first time the organization has openly supported the demand of Kashmiri separatists for a resolution and their right to self-determination. Till now, they had been a prominent voice for the rights of dalits and adivasi communities in India.The organization has also voiced its support to the separatist forces in the northeastern part of the country.Intelligence agencies have been alerted about this development.
Law enforcement agencies in states like Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (where the organization is reportedly quite active) are looking out for the same after the banners and pamphlets clearly mentioning their support to Kashmir protesters surfaced....Do you know what a sunshower is? Chances are you're not from Idaho if you do. If you say "pop" when referring to a sugary can of carbonation, you're more likely to be from Coeur d'Alene than Boise. And when it comes to what Boiseans call a sale of unwanted stuff, it's kind of a toss-up: "garage sale" and "yard sale" are both acceptable terms.
This is all according to a dialect map produced by a North Carolina doctoral student. The map allows you to look at certain phrases and words used in the U.S., and see how far these speech patterns stretch. Perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of the West and Midwest pronounces words like "pajamas" the same, while the East and South say it differently.
Tim Thornes teaches linguistics at Boise State. He says this mapping project is interesting, because it lets people see how regional dialect patterns play out across the country. Thornes says it’s important to keep doing surveys like this because the way a certain city or region talks changes over time.
Thornes says when it comes to studying U.S. dialect variations, most of the diversity is on the East Coast. That’s due to historical European settling patterns. Many of the places that we think have accents were places where white settlers originally set up shop.
“Then out West, there hasn’t been time I would say for there to be a lot of diversification," says Thornes. "People are still moving in and out so you still get people from all over the country coming to places like Idaho and influencing the regional dialect patterns.”
But Thornes contends that just because much of the West speaks similarly – doesn’t mean that it’s linguistically boring. In Idaho, he points out a divide in the state when it comes to the pronunciation of certain words. How do you say, "realtor"?
As it turns out, people buying and selling homes in the Treasure and Magic Valleys are more likely to enlist the help of a “real-tor” – while in Lewiston you’ll probably ask for a “real-uh-tor.” Thornes says syllabic variance is one way language can differ within Idaho.
And if you were wondering what a sunshower is: It's what people in the Northeast and Upper Midwest might say when it rains and the sun is shining.The future is almost here for Boxee. A few months ago the company announced plans to bring premium for-pay content to the platform. This goal is now one step closer thanks to an agreement with Vindicia who will handle the payment transactions.
The goal is to provide a one-click payment scheme using Vincdicia robust CashBox system as a back-end. The powerful solution currently handles currency exchanges, VAT, and GST automatically, and allows users to pay via credit cards, gift cards, or PayPal. Other sites such as Blizzard’s online gaming store, DeviantArt, Symantec already use the payment system.
The solution will allow content providers flexibility to price and package their wares as they see fit. This could bring subscription models or pay-per-view-type to Boxee, which in theory could turn the platform into a legitimate cable alternative.
Just think, perhaps sometime soon you’ll be able to pay for the TV you want with a subscription to just a few shows with the option to pay for other episodes on the fly. Of course it could go horrible wrong as well, too, once the evil networks get a taste of this sweet, untapped revenue source and start charging for all of their content. Hulu already announced a for-pay service so they days of ad-supported Internet video might be coming to an end.After Pakistan celebrated the same milestone yesterday, it's India's turn to turn 70 today. August 14 and 15, 1947, marked the partition of the British Raj into the two countries, an event that led to an estimated 1 million deaths and caused around 11 million people to cross between Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-dominant India.
Let's face it, Pakistan and India are never going to be best buds. Pointedly, on the shared anniversary of the creation of their countries, the leader of neither nation wished the other one an independence "Happy Birthday."
But they're in stasis. Kashmir is always contentious, but the leaders seem to have their nuclear arsenals locked safely away. Most memories now focus more on enmity over test cricket matches than the end-of-era partition at the close of World War II.
I've noticed a real resurgence in interest in India among investors over the last 18 months or so. Actually, you could call it a surgence - there really wasn't any interest before.
That's because investing in India has not been easy. But investors looking for emerging-market exposure should look at it now.
Years back, I asked an institutional real estate investor who was running a large Asian property portfolio whether he ever looked at India. Never, he said, with a roll of his eyes. The market is impossible to navigate, he felt, with title for properties inevitably split between multiple generations of heirs. Those squabbling family members could never agree on anything, let alone the sales price for their prize asset.
Many industries were off-limits to foreign direct investment, too. That changed substantially with the "Make In India" program introduced in 2014, which opened 25 sectors to international capital. India has its eye on stimulating certain industries in particular such as automobiles, telecoms and biotechnology. Capital inflows leaped 46% the following year, with foreign direct investment hitting $55.5 billion in the 2015-16 tax year.
That flow should continue. India is into the fourth year of market-friendly "rule" under reform-minded, business-friendly conservative Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Institutional investors buy that story, with companies such as Blackstone (BX) placing major bets on projects there.
I know the India portion of my portfolio was doing very well before I offloaded it. The iShares India ETF that I bought last year generated a return of around 22% before I locked in the gains with a sale in June, and the market has continued to advance.
U.S. investors can gain exposure through the iShares MSCI ETF (INDA), up 25.7% in 2017, or consider concentrated exposure such as the VanEck Vectors India Small-Cap Index ETF (SCIF), up 37.0% so far this year. I hesitate to recommend chasing such gains, but the interest is merited if India continues to succeed in pushing structural change.
There are specific segment plays, too, such as with the Columbia India Consumer ETF (INCO), up 32.4% this year. That's incredible performance when you consider that India in November rendered 86% of all the cash in an all-cash economy useless. Holders of 500 rupee ($7.50) and 1,000 rupee ($15) notes had to return them to the bank to get anything for their money.
Because the central bank was as in the dark as anyone over the government's stunt, there was rationing of the amount of "cash money" you could withdraw. The cash crunch left folks such as farmers, who do almost all their trade in money that folds, with crops rotting on the back of their trucks because people were literally unable to produce the goods for produce goods.
Economists were shocked when no disruption showed up in India's figures for the last three months of 2016. The implication was that India was, as many suspected and I explained at the time, just making up the numbers. But the follow-through came in the figures for the first quarter of 2017 instead, when growth slowed to 6.1%, a full percentage point below expectations.
GDP gains seem now to be back on track. The government forecasts growth of 6.75% to 7.5% for fiscal 2018, and most economists envision growth north of 6% every year for the next decade.
Given the amount of red tape that exists in the world's biggest bureaucracy, it's no surprise that the paperwork tracking demonetization took some time to file. India's rules are not easy to follow. Scratch that. Let's say never.
India as of July 1 put in place a national sales tax, its first such nationwide levy. That's designed to streamline state-to-state business. But rather than a single rate, the path chosen by most nations, India has opted to introduce six tiers. You pay sales tax of 0% on essential goods, through 5%, 12%, and on to a standard rate of 18%. There's then a 28% tax for luxury items, which have another penalty on top of them that brings the rate to more than 40%!
Bring your calculator to the checkout if you want to figure out what you'll pay, in other words.
Foreign retailers have had onerous requirements in the past. "Single-brand retailers" were only able to own 51% of a local operation until 2012, when the government began allowing 100% ownership of stores. There's a requirement that those companies source 30% of their goods within India, but that's been put on hold for three years, providing a window of opportunity for companies such as Apple (AAPL), which currently has no Indian stores.
The bottom line for the consumer-focused ETF, though, is that the rules for retail are loosening, gradually, and in a very India-specific way.
There's another good sector play in the Columbia India Infrastructure ETF (INXX), up 33.2% in 2017. Infrastructure investment in particular makes eminent sense in India, where the old cities are so decrepit that it's easier in many cases to start and build an entirely new satellite city than give the original one an overhaul.
There's also a leveraged product on offer, the Direxion Daily India Bull 3x Shares ETF (INDL), but those products are for short-term, preferably daily trading only. Over time, the triple exposure plus the cost of the derivatives used to generate it produces performance that inevitably varies wildly from the performance of the underlying Indian index. That's sometimes in your benefit, sometimes painfully at your cost.
India's $2.4 trillion economy ranks seventh in the world, and is the second-largest emerging nation behind China. While Pakistan remains India's arch-enemy, relations aren't too good with its population rival, either. That's all the more true in recent days, with a border dispute yet to be resolved high in the Himalayas over yet another poorly demarcated boundary line that's a legacy of British rule.
India feels it has operated in China's shadow for too long. At 1.34 billion people now according to Oxford Economics, it will surpass China, now at 1.41 billion, in terms of sheer volume of people by 2022, according to U.N. figures. And, where China was once posting double-digit GDP gains year after year, India's economic growth rate of 7.9% leads the world.
Economically, India soon should overtake has-been economies such as France and the United Kingdom, and what pleasure there will be in overtaking the former colonial power. The transition already has been widely and erroneously reported in domestic and international media. A Forbes contributor made that assumption with a back-of-the-envelope math based on the devaluation of the pound post-Brexit, but he didn't factor in any other factors, as The Hindu explains, including swings in the Indian currency.
Still, India isn't far off on its way to doubling its economy within the next 12 years, hitting $5.3 trillion in 2029. After many a false start, it's a good time to get on the Indian market train before it's too far gone.Okay, so you wake up one day and BOOM! Just like that it hit you, you finally decided to hit the gym. You need to experience metamorphosis in your life. This is it. No turning back.
But before doing so, here are 5 things you need to remember before hitting the gym:
1. Assign a leg day and don’t skip it!
Special shout out if you’re a man. For the love of God, do not skip your leg day or you will look like this. No matter how buff your upper body is, it only draws more attention to a measly set of legs. Symmetry is an extra point to us women. Trust me on this. Aside from this purely aesthetic reason, disproportionate body predisposes you to injury especially if you’re training for sports.
2. Cardio is just the the tip of the iceberg
No matter how many hours you spend running on a treadmill, even you spend the whole day on an elliptical, exercise bike, or rower, if you don’t modify your diet or pay attention in building lean mass, then you’re just wasting your time. Sure, cardio exercises burn calories in real time, but strength training burns calories while at rest e.g. sleeping, sitting, even while you’re eating! Who doesn’t want that? Cardio training only creates a smaller version of you plus the health benefits you’ll get of course. If you want to build muscles, create sexy cuts on your target body parts, then ditch the treadmill and dip your toes in the pool of possibilities A.K.A. weights section of the gym.
3. No one cares
Last time I checked, posting a status that you’re going to the gym is not a requirement. No wonder this made it to the list of Facebook Statuses Nobody Cares. Every gym junkie knows this habit, or at least once made that ‘Off to gym #gym #workout #lifted #motivation’ status update. Aside from the virtual world, no one really cares if you’re fat, thin, fit, newbie, or a pro bodybuilder. Inside the gym, the focus is on yourself. You’re all there because of one common goal, that is to get fit.
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4. It’s all about your posture
Maintaining a proper posture and body mechanics throughout your workout is very crucial to ensure effectiveness and safety. Exercising with an incorrect posture can only lead to injuries, muscle strains and frustration. Either you practice and master the movements via the world wide web or hire a personal trainer, learning the correct posture is to your advantage.
5. Keep your ego in check
There’s no room for your ego inside the gym. It is not a place to exhibit your training prowess and show-off your health and fitness words of wisdom. If no one asks your opinion, keep your criticisms to yourself. If you want to make an impression by lifting or pushing too much weight, you are in the wrong place surrounded by the wrong people. Proper posture and techniques are WAY more important than that. You’re also putting yourself in danger so it’s a no-win for you.
AdvertisementThere have been some new twists in the strange case of an alleged attempt to blackmail Mitt Romney for $1 million in bitcoins, raising additional legal questions about the digital currency.
Two months ago I explained how an anonymous ransom letter threatening the release of then-presidential candidate Romney's tax returns could have profound legal implications with respect to extortion, money laundering, and market manipulation. Appearance of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin in the ransom letter served to add intrigue and complexity to an already juicy story.
This weekend it was revealed that the Secret Service served a search warrant on the Franklin, Tenn., home of one Michael Mancil Brown on Sept. 14, seizing numerous hard-drives and other property in the process. Interestingly, it has been alleged that this is the same Michael Brown who was known to be in possession of 371,000 bitcoins (about $3.7 million today) as early as May of last year. The fate of Brown's crypto-fortune has been the subject of much speculation and the money may or may not be in the possession of the federal government.
This incident may be the first time in which the U.S. Government has utilized Bitcoin addresses on a search warrant. On page five of the warrant it is revealed that Brown is being investigated for aiding and abetting crime, conspiracy, fraud, and racketeering. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Again, the seizure was of evidence relating to violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 2 (aiding and abetting); 371 (conspiracy); 1030(a)(7)(B)&(b), 1341, and 1343 (fraud); and 1951 and 1952 (racketeering). Although this is an ongoing investigation and charges have yet to be been filed, it is beneficial to consider how Bitcoin may be implicated in the language of several of the aforementioned statutes.
For instance, the use of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371(conspiracy) is interesting because from the documents revealed, it is not apparent that Brown worked closely with anyone else. Conspiracy typically requires 1) an express or implied agreement and 2) an overt act. Is it possible that the entire Bitcoin network can now be implicated as co-conspirators? Miners on the Bitcoin network would all be continually agreeing that the two Bitcoin addresses mentioned in the ransom notes were available to receive coins at in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy, fraud, etc. They will have also overtly acted in deciding to dedicate computing power to mining. (This is an admittedly absurd result of a plain application of the law to the facts.)
The invocation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1951 (racketeering) is also noteworthy in stating that it applies to "whoever…obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce." The definition of commerce in that section is not very helpful, but Black's Law Dictionary (ninth edition) defines it as "The exchange of goods and services, esp. on a large scale involving transportation between cities, states, and nations." If Bitcoin affects commerce, then it is probably subject the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, U.S. Constitution).
These facts also support the market manipulation scenario I described in my last post. Michael Brown may or may not have a large number of bitcoins at his disposal, but clearly anyone holding a large number of bitcoins would have a powerful incentive to create demand in the Bitcoin market in order to drive up the price. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 prohibits market manipulation in securities markets. Bitcoin is not generally thought of as a security, and is not traded on formal markets. Whether or not entities like the SEC will pursue market manipulators remains to be seen.
Michal Brown has set up a website for the "Michael Brown Legal Defense Fund and Family Expense Fund" where he is accepting donations. As Bitcoin grows in popularity, spectators are left holding their breath, awaiting answers for both Michael Brown and the legal status of Bitcoin.
Matthew Elias is the Director and Founder of the Cryptocurrency Legal Advocacy Group, a nonprofit at the University of Mississippi School of Law that seeks to promote a clear regulatory environment for peer-to-peer currencies.The new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station faces delays and higher costs as a result of Brexit, the project’s developer EDF has told a committee of MPs.
EDF said that the government must ensure businesses can continue to draw on the European Union (EU) skills base in written evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy select committee. The Committee has been holding an inquiry called “Leaving the EU: negotiation priorities for energy and climate change policy”.
EDF was asked how possible new restrictions on trade and movement of labour affect the business, including investment into energy infrastructure. It replied that although much of the investment it needs to make in terms of materials and labour can be found within the UK, it is also dependent on the import of goods and it will need to draw on EU and global labour markets.
“These requirements will include critical goods and services in the nuclear supply chain and specialist nuclear skills. There is a risk that restrictions on trade and movement of labour will increase the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery,” it said.
It urged the government to ensure it has continued access to EU skilled workers and also improve the immigration process for workers from outside the EU, as well as avoid tariffs on its most important supplies and services.
The committee is now taking oral evidence as part of its ongoing inquiry.8.6k SHARES SHARE THIS STORY
After listening to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmongering speech to Congress and desperate attempt to scare America into going to war with Iran, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders raked him over the coals, calling his proposed war “horrendous”.
“We have got to go as far as we can to prevent another war. A war with Iran, after a war with Afghanistan, after a war with Iraq would be HORRENDOUS for this country and the entire world!”
Kudos to Sen. Sanders for calling Netanyahu out for his incessant warmongering and for using Republicans to drag us into another disastrous preemptive war in the Middle East.
Watch the video BELOW:
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Add your name to millions demanding that Congress take action on the President’s crimes. IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP!If Jets owner Woody Johnson no longer has eyes for Rex Ryan, the coach will have plenty of suitors waiting for him among football-airing networks. Interviews last week with sports television executives confirmed the obvious: Ryan has a golden ticket for an NFL analyst job next year if he is not retained by the Jets, unable to find another coaching job or simply wants a year away from the All-22 life.
“He pretty much has everything TV networks would look for. He has personality, he’s not shy about his opinions, and he’s a colorful character,” said ESPN senior coordinating producer Seth Markman, the executive in charge of hiring ESPN’s NFL studio talent. “I think he would be successful whether it is in studio or doing games. When I close my eyes and listen to him I hear a little bit of John Madden in him. There is going to be a lot of interest in Rex if that is what he wants to do.”
That’s significant praise from a respected sports television exec who has made plenty of talent hires over the years, including Ray Lewis in 2013. The optics and credentials Ryan brings are promising. He is a sound-bite machine with two AFC Championship Games on his coaching resume and longterm experience in the toughest media market in sports. He was also the breakout star of the 2010 edition of HBO’s Hard Knocks thanks to his prodigious swearing and hilarious rants, including the famed “lets go eat a goddamn snack” speech.
You can distill it to four simple words: he makes good television.
Networks will reach out very quickly if Ryan gets fired and some have likely passed along word through emissaries to his business representatives. ESPN would be among the favorites to land him given how many platforms and NFL-related shows it airs. It doesn’t take a leap to see Ryan slotting into Mike Ditka’s current role. CBS has long ties to Ryan given the network airs the AFC package and the coach has been in a ton of CBS NFL production meetings over the years. The network declined comment on Ryan this week.
Fox Sports Media Group executive producer John Entz previously told Sports Illustrated that Ryan was high on his list. The NFL Network certainly has the programming to fit in Ryan and asked about interest in Ryan, an NFL Network spokesperson said, “Our policy is we don’t comment on NFL personnel who are currently under contract to a team or the league.” NBC is the one over-the-air network unlikely to switch any of its major talent but it is located close to Ryan’s New Jersey home.
“Rex will command a big role on a big show and there are only so many of those chairs,” Markman said.
That big role is not going to be cheap. Industry sources put Ryan’s price at $3 to $5 million per year as a broadcaster, and it may only be a one-year rental in the end. People in Markman’s position have a very tricky proposition. While Ryan could be an entertaining and valuable hire, he’s unlikely to stay in television for long given he’s just 51 years old and says he wants to coach again.
“If you think the guy is a one year guy, there are a few things you want to make sure of,” Markman said. “First, you want to make sure he will not be afraid to say what is on his mind and having never talked to Rex, I don’t know that. Now he appears to be that kind of guy but I don’t know. I have experience with other coaches I’ve met who clearly want to get back to coaching and will let you know, 'Hey, I’m not going to criticize other coaches or owners.' When you hear that, it should set off an alarm that you don’t want to go down that road. The second thing is you have a guy that might be a short-term rental and you don’t want to blow up your shows. I feel our shows [Sunday NFL Countdown and Monday Night Countdown] have great chemistry, so if we were going to explore Rex, how do we add him to what we already have and use him properly? Our philosophy has always been do the best show that day for our audience. So what is the best show we can do that day and if Rex is a part of it, that’s fine. But I do think you have to be wary of what the longterm effect is if you hire a certain guy and get rid of someone else. If he leaves a year later, you have lost two people.
"Finally, you have to be careful about your own evaluation. I was in the first meeting where we talked to Jon Gruden about Monday Night Football. My opinion at the time was this is going to be a one- or two-year deal at the most. I listened to him in the room and I was like, 'Man, this is a football coach. He loves football.' Now how many years later is Gruden doing this, and he loves it and is great at it. So you don’t want to draw conclusions that you think the guy is definitely going back because you never know.”
• Jets' Rex Ryan 'anticipates' Geno Smith will remain starting QB
The Jets season ends Dec. 28 in Miami. After that, the silly season for Ryan really starts to begin.
THE NOISE REPORT
SI.com examines some of the more notable stories of the week in sports media.
1. On Friday ESPN.com ran a compelling first-person piece by Janay Rice, wife of former Ravens running back Ray Rice, on what happened that night in Atlantic City and in the months that followed. The piece was done in an “As Told To" format with ESPN staffer Jemele Hill interviewing Rice and writing the piece in her voice. ESPN said Janay Rice was given approval over the content of the piece and the release date. The piece was also edited down for space.
The "As Told To" format has been used often in journalism including a Sports Illustrated piece last July with LeBron James and SI writer Lee Jenkins. James did not place any conditions on SI before his piece was published, but he and his team did see the story before it was published because it carried his byline. What’s interesting, in all these situations, is how much editorial say the outlet has prior to publication.
Hill discussed how the interview came to be in this His & Her podcast and on Saturday I emailed her some additional questions on the subject.
SI.com: You had to interview to get the interview and traveled to New York to meet with Janay Rice and her mother. How did you sell yourself?
Hill: As you know, in these situations, there's a lot of competition to land interviews of this magnitude. I didn't want to "sell" myself, but rather give them an opportunity to get them to know me and for me to know them. I didn't have some PowerPoint presentation, or do anything formal. I was just myself. I was honest. I assumed they'd seen my commentary on this issue, so I didn't try to sugarcoat anything I said. I also didn't promise them anything, other than fairness. I wanted them to understand that a big reason I became a journalist was to tell other people's stories. And from them, I mostly wanted to know what they hoped to accomplish with an interview and a piece in this format, and why Janay felt the need to talk now. The one tactic I didn't want to use is denigrating other networks to make myself or ESPN look better. The goal was to hear from Janay.
How many people (and who) were in the room when you interviewed Janay Rice?
It was me, (Janay’s) PR strategist Matthew Hiltzik, Janay, her mother, Candy, and Ray Rice's manager.
How long was the interview in total?
The interview itself lasted about 2 1/2 hours. But after the interview ended I lingered and spent some time with her and her family.
Did you or ESPN at any point attempt to change or renegotiate the terms at all?
There always were ongoing conversations, most of which were above my pay grade.
• Report: Four teams have expressed interest in Ray Rice
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a bar where many relationships started, and Thomson had ‘married' couples in the bar - albeit unofficially.
From day one, Mighty Mighty always had a strong community feel, she said. "We wanted to just be a local neighbourhood bar, kind of like Cheers.
It had hosted burlesque nights, fringe festival shows and book launches.
"We have four months to celebrate and we are keen to say thanks to Wellington."The first Portland Loo bathroom arrives at Galveston Seawall
The first Portland Loo public restroom has been positioned along the Galveston Seawall at 29th street. Photo provided by the City of Galveston. The first Portland Loo public restroom has been positioned along the Galveston Seawall at 29th street. Photo provided by the City of Galveston. Photo: City Of Galveston Photo: City Of Galveston Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close The first Portland Loo bathroom arrives at Galveston Seawall 1 / 5 Back to Gallery
The first Portland Loo bathroom has been positioned along the Galveston Seawall.
It still needs plumbing, but the public restroom is a significant step for the multimillion-dollar seawall beautification project
"We are as excited as the public is to see this project coming to a close," said Jaree Fortin, PIO for City of Galveston." And we are looking forward to the day when we can open these up to the public."
The first bathroom on the seawall is at 29th street. The stainless steel frame is supposed to be durable and resistant to graffiti. They have hand sanitizer and an outdoor shower.
MORE: Galveston's nearly $20 million beach expansion complete
There will also be bathrooms at 19th, 39th, 45th and 61st streets. These Portland Loos are replacing portable restrooms without plumbing, but such portable bathrooms will still be found at other locations along the seawall during peak beach-going season.
Fortin said the initial Portland Loos are like a pilot program.
"If they do exactly what we've been told they will... then the plan is to purchase more restrooms to put along the seawall," she said.
The restrooms are part of a larger beautification project along the seawall that also includes lighted bollards, additional bus shelters and more planter boxes with palm trees.
MORE: Galveston hits record high tourism revenues
The overall beautification project is being funded by $6.3 million in federal grants, a $1 million grant from Frito-Lay and $500,000 in city funds, Fortin said.
The ribbon cutting on the phase of the beautification project that involves the Portland Loos was celebrated in May 2016. The bathroom installations have fallen behind schedule due to obstructions found under the seawall as workers attempted to bring utilities over.The 3DS was the best-selling video game system in June thanks to strong software sales.
Nintendo sold 225,000 3DS hardware units in the month of June, giving it the number one spot in US video game system sales for the second month in a row.
The strong hardware sales can largely be attributed to the success of the newly released Animal Crossing New Leaf which sold more than 505,000 combined physical and digital units in June. Over 20% of the game's sales were through the Nintendo eShop, a ratio second only to Fire Emblem Awakening.
Sales of other popular 3DS titles continued strong in June, with Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D selling over 108,000 combined units in its second month and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon selling an additional 115,000 units---four months after its launch. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon total units sold have reached 750,000.
Nintendo's bestsellers join Naughty Dog's The Last of Us and the indie smash hit Minecraft as top moving SKUs in June.
We've discussed the 3DS's home console counterpart, the Wii U, and its continued struggles to gain steam. Last time we talked about this we noted the lack of 3rd-party support for the system, and the skepticism of some Western publishers.
If these June numbers tell us anything, it's that Nintendo's first party titles can move systems. Fire Emblem Awakening remains one of the best selling Nintendo games of the year. In fact, all the top sellers for the 3DS this year are first-party titles or titles published by Nintendo and developed by a third-party.
The Wii U may not have the pure horsepower of the PS4 or Xbox One, but if Nintendo can come out with enough strong first-party titles I'm not sure that will matter.
Pikmin 3 is just around the corner. It's one of the first Wii U games to launch in full 1080P, something that will truly distinguish it from the Xbox 360 and PS3.
The 3DS had a hard time getting off the ground too, but sales continue to follow content. The Wii U will be no different, if Nintendo plays their cards right.
Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.Vaccine Controversy
By Norma Erickson
Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia has become ground zero in the international debate over HPV vaccine safety, efficacy, and need. After the administration of the 2nd dose of Gardasil in local schools, beginning in March 2014, hundreds of young girls were admitted to the hospital with mysterious new medical conditions.
According to local sources, doctors who examined the girls and reported symptoms as possible adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine would often find manufacturer’s representatives in their office the next day trying to convince them otherwise.
The National Ministry of Health (Minsalud) initially put forth several theories to explain the symptoms of over 700 girls including mass hysteria, illicit drug use, and even the excessive use of Ouija boards. They even went so far as to enlist the services of Nobel Prize nominee, Dr. Nubia Muñoz Calero, to help ease the tension. (read more here.) Her message was basically that it would be a mistake to halt the current school-based HPV vaccination programs in Colombia.
Apparently parents of those affected, many doctors who personally examined the girls, at least one judge, and Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez do not necessarily agree.
Inspector General responds to Gardasil injury controversy
According to a December 5, 2014 report on Caracol Radio, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez issued a circular addressed to the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, the National Institute of Health, and several other organizations asking that priority be given to ensuring the right to health of those with new medical conditions after Gardasil. He also requested further monitoring and timely comprehensive treatment to girls who were apparently affected by the HPV vaccine.
In addition, he asked the National Institute of Health and other responsible parties to disclose the technical and scientific studies relating to HPV vaccine safety and approval for use in Colombia along with all details regarding the guidelines for the management of Gardasil doses from manufacture through administration.
He also asked for plans to develop plans to implement and strengthen the epidemiological reporting of cases of suspected adverse reactions as well as plans to review and upgrade the rules ensuring rigor in the process of vaccine approvals and to establish communication strategies to make certain health policies in Colombia are developed and implemented in a manner guaranteed to ensure the public’s right to health, control of preventable diseases, and welfare of the entire population.
Judicial system protects those with new medical conditions after Gardasil
15 December 2014: Attorney Monica Leon Del Rio, representing several Colombian girls experiencing new medical conditions after the administration of Gardasil, reported that Honorable Magistrate Dr. Hirina Meza issued a provisional decree in favor of ten girls from Carmen de Bolivar.
This decree orders EPPS-S Mutual, the Secretary of Health in the municipality of Carmen de Bolivar, the Secretary of Health Bolivar Department, and the Ministry of Health to imediately organize complementary and coordinated actions necessary to effectively dispense to the child plaintiffs treatments integral to those who are disabled guaranteeing the supply of medicines, procedures and services, including any and all required treatments regardless of whether or not the costs incurred are covered in the patient’s current health insurance program or the Public Health Plan (POS).
The Honorable Magistrate also ordered Dr. Juan Manuel Anaya, immunologist and Director of the Center for the Study of Autoimmune Diseases, to examine the plaintiffs and report on the following aspects of their cases:
Any relationship between the plaintiffs’ current disability and the administration of Human Papillomavirus vaccine, pointing out whether or not evidence of a causal relationship exists;
Any medications that exhibit similar consequences which may have been administered to the plaintiffs;
Any other potential causes of the disabilities currently exhibited by the plaintiffs;
And to inform the Court of everything in relation to the issues above and/or pertinent to the order of protection being issued by the Court.
This decision in favor of 10 young Colombian girls suffering mysterious new medical conditions after the administration of Gardasil comes a few short weeks after a similar landmark decision issued in favor of a survivor of Gardasil and her newborn daughter, also represented by Attorney Monica Leon Del Rio. on 14 November 2014. (Read more here.)
National Institute of Health adds insult to injuries
According to a January 6, 2015 report on Elheraldo.co, parents of injured girls in Carmen de Bolivar were outraged when the Colombian National Institute of Health (INS) ’leaked’ the final report on their ’scientific investigation’ into the epidemic of new medical conditions occurring after the administration of the second dose of Gardasil.
According to this ’leaked’ report none of the symptoms experienced by the girls are related to the administration of Gardasil. This report specifically stated the children did not have ’organic disorders’ or neurological diagnosis, or other diagnosed conditions so obviously they do not suffer from any physical illness.
The institute stated all doses applied in Carmen de Bolivar were from the same manufacturer, the same batch and that all cold chain transportation requirements were followed, so nothing could have affected the vaccine composition.
After many lengthy explanations, the report came to the conclusion the cases are due to ’episodes of psychogenic cause,’ due to the minor’s fear of being sick, augmented by the media attention on the events and lack of an identified cause.
According to Attorney Monica Leon Del Rio, this ’conclusion’ ignores evidence presented at a December 11 meeting presided over by Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria where Immunologist, Dr. Anaya, presented evidence of a causal relationship between the symptoms of 3 girls and the administration of Gardasil. She questions why Health Minister Gaviria did not order the National Institutes of Health to perform tests similar to those done by Dr. Anaya when establishing the possibility of demyelinating disorders being linked to Gardasil administration.
Why did Minister Gaviria allow the INS to simply examine paperwork, look for other causes, ignore Gardasil as a possible link and issue the conclusion of ’mass hysteria/psychogenic illness’?
Parents of HPV vaccine survivors outraged
More than 700 young girls suffered new medical conditions in Carmen de Bolivar after the administration of Gardasil. Their parents are outraged by the report issued by NIH.
Professor Hector Miranda, leader of one of the two parent’s associations created to defend their children’s fundamental right to life and health, stated,
“This was not the Ouija board, nor witchcraft, or pudding pot, or polluted water, everything is for the vaccine, that is proven with other girls from other parts of the world who suffered the same symptomatology”
Monica Leon Del Rio is no stranger to the HPV vaccine controversy. She is the mother of a young woman who experienced paralysis and various medical dysfunctions after the administration of HPV vaccine in January 2013. She is currently representing at least 50 other girls from El Carmen de Bolivar who are exhibiting new medical conditions after using HPV vaccines. Her mission is to ensure survivors of HPV vaccinations receive proper medical diagnosis and treatment.
According to a report in Colombia Reports, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez is a polarizing figure in Colombia. He has risen through the ranks of Colombian politics to a position of great power, all the while guided by an unyielding moral vision that has made him a righteous crusader to some; a dangerous zealot to many others.
Perhaps Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez and Attorney Monica Leon Del Rio are just what the parents of Carmen de Bolivar need to obtain justice for their children.
Read or print this article in Spanish here.
Read this article in French here.
The SaneVax team would like to thank Alicia Capillia (AAVP) and Mario Lamo for kindly providing the translation of this document. Your hard work and dedication is greatly appreciated.With less than a month to go until the Nov. 5 deadline, congressional Republicans are divided on what strategy to adopt in the fight over the debt ceiling.
Conservatives see the looming debt hike as leverage that could be used to extract concessions from the Obama administration.
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But moderates are wary of flirting with a federal default, something the business world has long warned would be disastrous.
GOP lawmakers can’t even agree on who should take the lead on the issue, with many questioning whether outgoing Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE (R-Ohio) should be involved ahead of his resignation from Congress at the end of October.
Some members see Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE’s exit as a prime opportunity to resolve the issue and clean the slate for the next leadership team.
“Would I rather see it dealt with before Boehner leaves? Yes,” said Rep. Richard Nugent (R-Fla.). “We just need to get it off the table, let it be done under Boehner’s leadership, and not saddle the new incoming Speaker with that same issue.”
“The few weeks that Speaker Boehner has left can be put to good purpose,” added Sen. Roger Wicker Roger Frederick WickerHillicon Valley: Telecom industry to fundraise for Senate chair ahead of privacy hearing | Report finds apps sharing personal data with Facebook | DNC offers campaigns cybersecurity tips Telecom industry to throw fundraiser for Senate chair the night before data privacy hearing Trump signs executive order to boost AI technology MORE (R-Miss.). “It’s better not to leave the mess for his successors.”
But others believe GOP leaders have made a mistake by preemptively ruling out debt-limit drama. They say it’s time for a new leadership team to force the issue and make Obama abandon his no-negotiation stance.
“It should be left to the next leadership team,” said Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.). “It’s a fresh start for whoever is coming in.”
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Jacob (Jack) Joseph LewOvernight Finance: US reaches deal with ZTE | Lawmakers look to block it | Trump blasts Macron, Trudeau ahead of G-7 | Mexico files WTO complaint Obama-era Treasury secretary: Tax law will make bipartisan deficit-reduction talks harder GOP Senate report says Obama officials gave Iran access to US financial system MORE on Friday told lawmakers they need to increase the $18.1 trillion debt limit by Nov. 5, when his department will have exhausted all the “extraordinary measures” it is now using to avoid default.
After that date, Lew said the government would quickly run out of cash to pay its bills, putting the United States at risk for a default that could send shockwaves through the global economy.
Outside analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center released Wednesday projected the government would likely miss a debt payment sometime between Nov. 10 and Nov. 19 without a debt-limit increase.
The leadership shake-up in the House prompted by Boehner’s surprise resignation has complicated the debt issue. House Republicans will meet privately Thursday to cast their votes for Speaker, with Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expected to receive the most votes.
But it remains to be seen whether McCarthy can garner the 218 votes on the House floor necessary to win the Speakership, with a bloc of conservatives in the House pledging their support Wednesday to the long-shot bid of Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.).
The wrangling over GOP leadership positions will continue until Oct. 29, when House Republicans are scheduled to choose the rest of the leadership team.
That timeline would leave the incoming Republican team with only a matter of days to deal with the debt limit. In the past, drawing close to the deadline has caused turmoil in the stock market.
Some Republicans said they are optimistic that the groundwork can be laid in advance for dealing with the debt hike.
“If we know that the next Speaker of the House has to deal with the debt ceiling, then we can have a lot of conversations,” Stutzman said.
Conservatives, emboldened by the Boehner resignation they take credit for, are eager to see the borrowing cap again used as a bargaining chip.
At the start of the new Congress, Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) were adamant that so long as they were in charge, Washington would not return to brinksmanship over shutdowns and defaults.
Conservatives view that stance as relinquishing leverage against the White House and are eager to change course.
Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho) said he would like to see GOP leaders aggressively make the case for fiscal reforms ahead of the debt-limit deadline.
“Imagine a leader who for seven weeks is articulating the position of the conference,” he said. “Versus a leader who starts seven weeks before, saying, ‘We can’t shut down the government. We can’t do this. We can’t do this other thing.’ Every word out of their mouth is that they’re not willing to fight.”
“We haven’t seen much from this administration or from leadership, frankly,” added Rep. Justin Amash Justin Amash13 House Republicans who bucked Trump on emergency declaration House votes to overturn Trump's emergency declaration The Hill's 12:30 Report: First test for Trump emergency declaration MORE (R-Mich.). “If the debt ceiling is going to be suspended or raised, then we need to have concrete reforms.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, all the attention is focused on high-level budget talks that have begun among McConnell, Obama and Boehner.
Senators say they are holding out hope that somehow the three leaders can hammer out a budget agreement that allows them to also address the debt limit.
“It’s an issue that’s totally with McConnell and the White House,” said Sen. Bob Corker Robert (Bob) Phillips CorkerBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Sasse’s jabs at Trump spark talk of primary challenger RNC votes to give Trump 'undivided support' ahead of 2020 MORE (R-Tenn.). “I’m sure that with whatever fiscal arrangement they agree to, they’re going to try and wrap the debt ceiling into it.”
Senate Republicans appear determined to avoid a default in November and a government shutdown before funding runs out after Dec. 11. They are wary of drama on either issue, with their majority at risk in the 2016 elections.
But the road to a deal remains elusive.
“Obviously, there are a lot of controversial items,” said Sen. John Cornyn John CornynGOP lawmaker says panel to investigate drug company gaming of patent system Senators grill drug execs over high prices Cornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll MORE (R-Texas), the Senate majority whip. “I don’t think we have any choice but to get there.”
McConnell disclosed the talks with Obama last week, but when asked for an update from reporters Tuesday, he repeatedly said he had no new news to share.
“It’s going to be very difficult. I’m not making any rosy predictions,” Wicker said.
“But if we’ll all negotiate, if we’ll participate as realists and as Americans, there is a sweet spot.... All-out victory is not possible in divided government. That’s seventh grade civics.”
Cristina Marcos contributed.SURVIVOR SERIES In survivor series we drop in on some of PC gaming's most promising survival games. Today, Holly Nielsen drops into 7 Days To Die in search of improvement.
The concept of 7 Days to Die is decent: a sandbox zombie survival game that turns into a tower defence strategy when the sun sets and increasing zombie hordes attack, each day leading to harder nights. The reality is a game that has been in alpha for years, with poor graphics, boring environments and uninspired combat.
Even with all the settings on ultra, trees and buildings popped in and out of view, textures looked flat, enemies and animals clipped and flailed into the environment. The biggest problem is the over reliance on repeating assets. I’m not sure what kind of world existed before the apocalypse took it, but it was apparently one with identical cinderblocks every third step. The changes in environment are welcome as they give a variation of colour to the scenery but the transitions between, for example, a green forest to a charred wasteland isn’t so much a transition as a line down the map.
You’ll spend the first few minutes of the game punching trees, grass and rocks in order to make rudimentary tools and clothing. You literally have to punch them in order to get the materials—a move seen in games like Minecraft, but looks decidedly odd when the game is at least trying to go for a more realistic tone. Once you’re set up with the basics and you no longer have to punch your way through life, gathering gets a lot easier. There is something satisfying about being able to destroy almost everything in the environment. You can either slowly tear down existing ruins or utilise them in your building, although the most effective way to survive is to dig a big hole and create a series of burrows like a huge grubby badger.
The zombies are your standard shambling affair. During the day they are easily avoided, and you can practically walk past them, or run away. They will, however, dig or tear through your defences when night falls, approaching in a great wave to destroy your hard work. Despite having to keep an eye on stamina, health, illnesses, radiation and temperature, your character apparently never needs to sleep.
There’s little you can do at night other than defend. It’s pitch black and using a torch attracts a dangerous number of enemies. Early on in a playthrough I ended up just crouching in some grass for twenty minutes as I couldn’t do anything, and didn’t have a settlement to defend yet. When I did have to face my first zombie it was an underwhelming experience. The combat feels like an early Elder Scrolls game. There's lots of clicking and flailing without ever feeling like you’re making any contact with the thing you are flailing at.
In singleplayer this routine of gather, build, defend gets repetitive fast. Creative mode allows you to do this without having to worry about your character’s health or enemies. I was having an okay time going through the fairly hefty menu of potential building items until sunset. At which point it was too dark to gather or build, so I left the game running and went to have a cup of tea while I waited for the sun—a limitation that defeats the point of a boundless creative mode.
Multiplayer seems to be where most of the appeal lies. Anyone can create a server and invite their pals or let strangers join them. There's PvP and PvE, but the latter seems to better fit the survivors vs. zombie apocalypse setting. I can understand the appeal in working with people to build up a fortress, then hunker down and work to defend it when night rolls around. However, if you’re playing online with friends, then most things can be enjoyable. It doesn’t feel enough to just say “you know those people whose company you enjoy? It’s also enjoyable spending time with them while doing this.”
There is nothing wrong with a game being in alpha, it’s a work in progress, and if you feel the developers are actively still crafting it then things like bugs and poor graphics can be forgiven. There is also nothing intrinsically wrong with a game being at this stage for around three years. Building a game like this is time consuming and complicated, especially with a small team. However, what feels off is the fact the developers released a port of a far-from-finished PC game to console before completing the game. Online communities seem to be exasperated with the slow patching. In its current state it is incomplete, and after almost three years of slow progress I wonder when it will graduate to beta, or even a finished game.At Big Cube Bash 2017, being held in Newark, New Jersey, USA on May 13th, 2017, Eric Zhao (the organizer) has decided to hold a staff competition 1 week before the actual competition, around Friday night to Sunday night at the Chipotle near his residence. This has gotten approval from the WCA board, who approved this on a vote of 3-2. Eric Zhao stated he couldn’t hold it before the competition because the Chipotle wasn’t available to do it the staff competition closely before the competition. This means that the solves of the staff at the staff competition before the competition offer them opportunities to qualify for events at US Nationals 2017, which has its qualification deadline ending at Monday, May 8, 2017. This also means that the people going to the staff competition will be able to get qualifying solves for US Nationals 2017, unlike the people not going to the staff competition. The reasoning being this controversial decision is that “if Nationals can hold the staff competition, then why can’t this competition do it too? it has a reasonable reason for holding it before the US Nationals 2017 qualification deadline, which is the lack of venue availability”.
AdvertisementsPoliticians want seven-year prison term for ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, according to leaked copy
The Ugandan government could introduce new wide-reaching anti-gay laws before the end of the year, which could see people jailed for up to seven years for “promoting homosexuality”, activists warned on Saturday.
The move comes nearly a year after Ugandan politicians passed legislation that could have imposed life sentences on gays. The bill was struck down by the constitutional court on a technicality.
According to a leaked copy of the new draft law, MPs have instead focused on outlawing the “promotion” of homosexuality – a potentially far more repressive and wide-reaching measure.
Frank Mugisha, a gay-rights activist, said: “People don’t realise that the ‘promotion’ part of it will affect everybody. If newspapers report about homosexuality it could be seen as promotion. My Twitter account could be seen as promotion. All human rights groups that include LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] rights defence in their activities could be accused of promotion.”
According to the draft, anyone convicted of “promoting” homosexuality would be liable to seven years in prison. “We have confirmed that the draft comes from the cabinet. Their plan is to present it to parliament as soon as possible, before the end of the year,” Mugisha said.
“They have just twisted the language but it is the same thing. It’s actually worse because the ‘promotion’ part is harsher and it will punish the funding of LGBT and human rights groups.”
The new draft also outlaws “funding for purposes of promoting unnatural sexual practices” and “exhibiting unnatural sexual practices”, and deems consent invalid as a defence.
Mugisha said the legislation would result in violence against gay people. He believed upcoming elections were the motivation for politicians to make a renewed assault on homosexuality and that activists would seek to have the draft law abandoned.
The government has not commented on the draft, although Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has been under pressure for several months from his own party to ensure that anti-gay legislation is passed.
Homophobia is rife in the socially conservative country, but activists held a gay pride rally in August that was granted permission by the police.
However, Museveni said last month that the country needed to consider the impact on trade and economic growth that such a crackdown could have.
Critics said the president signed the previous law to win support ahead of a presidential election scheduled for 2016, which will mark his 30th year in power.
Although very popular domestically, the previous law was branded draconian and “abominable” by rights groups and condemned by allies and donors including the EU and the US.
Barack Obama had described the legislation as “a step backward for all Ugandans”.
Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda under a 1950s penal code that remains in force and prescribes jail for those found guilty of homosexual acts.As many as 630,000 Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to birth control, STD screening, and other reproductive health services if the organization loses its federal funding, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday.
The House is scheduled to vote later this week on the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, which would bar the federal government from funding the group for one year. In debating the act, there's been significant argument over what would happen to Planned Parenthood patients if the group lost federal funding — whether they would simply transition to other health-care providers or whether they would not find replacements.
CBO, for its part, says it would be a mixed bag: Of Planned Parenthood's 2.6 million patients, the agency estimates that between 130,000 and 630,000 "would face reduced access to care."
"The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without access to other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations," the agency concludes.
Planned Parenthood is undeniably a huge provider of birth control, preventive screenings, and other services for low-income women. Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute estimate that in 103 of America's 491 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only safety-net family planning clinic.
It's places like that where CBO expects Planned Parenthood's loss of federal funds would be most severe — and would leave patients for little option to seek similar care elsewhere.On Todays Show
Thanks to Rob from the Bitcoin Game for recording content on todays show, live at the Texas Bitcoin Conference.
Austin Fatheree shares his idea for "Hypercapitalism" and how it's possible with available technologies rightnow. He lays out his plan to tweak our concept of capitalism, change the incentives and empower the world. Austin has written a book on the topic titled "Art and Democratic Hypercapitalism", available now
Dr. Robert Murphy talks about the Austrian view of money, value, Bitcoin and more. You can find his book "Understanding Bitcoin" here
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Credits for Episode 212
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Content for todays episode was provided by Robert, Austin, the Texas Bitcoin Conference and Rob over at The Bitcoin Game.
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Music for todays show was provided by Jared Rubens, and General Fuzz
Views: 4,952Every year, without fail, less-heralded prospects excel -- and sometimes outperform -- their more famous counterparts. The 2015 AFL season was no different. Many were on team Top 30 prospects lists, but their performance in Arizona could help them move up a few ticks when the lists are reranked in 2016. They now might be seen as a bigger part of their team's future, or perhaps they caught the eye of another team to bring up in trade talks.
The Arizona Fall League season is now in the books and, as usual, many top prospects performed well. But while it's exciting to see known players do what's expected, it's at least as much fun to see other Minor Leaguers put themselves on the map during the six-week AFL campaign.
The Arizona Fall League season is now in the books and, as usual, many top prospects performed well. But while it's exciting to see known players do what's expected, it's at least as much fun to see other Minor Leaguers put themselves on the map during the six-week AFL campaign.
Every year, without fail, less-heralded prospects excel -- and sometimes outperform -- their more famous counterparts. The 2015 AFL season was no different. Many were on team Top 30 prospects lists, but their performance in Arizona could help them move up a few ticks when the lists are reranked in 2016. They now might be seen as a bigger part of their team's future, or perhaps they caught the eye of another team to bring up in trade talks.
Different than the top 20 prospects list coming out on Tuesday, here is a list of 10 prospects who leave Arizona standing a bit taller than they did at the start of the season, a 10-pack of AFL breakouts:
Jeimer Candelario, 3B, Cubs: Because the Cubs need another hitting prospect, right? Candelario, No. 20 on the Cubs' Top 30 list, had a solid 2015 season, reaching Double-A. But he really turned it on in the AFL, hitting.329/.371/.610 with five homers in 82 at-bats. That ensured a spot for him on the Cubs' 40-man roster, a move officially made on Friday.
Video: MSS@SUR: Candelario launches a solo homer to left
Aledmys Diaz, SS/2B, Cardinals: The Cuban infielder -- who isn't ranked by MLBPipeline.com standards because of the rules that dictate international pool spending -- has had an up-and-down two years in the Cardinals' system. Signed to a four-year, $8 million contract in March 2014, Diaz was on the 40-man roster at the start of the 2015 season, then was designated for assignment in July. He rebounded in August and continued to perform well in Arizona, with a.315/.370/.616 line possibly helping the Cardinals decide to put him back on the roster.
Video: SUR@SRR: Statcast™ measures Diaz's 400-foot home run
Adam Engel, OF, White Sox: Chicago's No. 17 prospect had yet to make it beyond Class A Advanced and hit.251/.335/.369, albeit with 65 steals, in the Carolina League this year. All he did in Arizona was win league MVP honors by hitting.403/.523/.642 with another 10 steals to prepare him for the jump up to Double-A in 2016.
Video: White Sox prospect Engel on Fall League, adjustments
Mike Gerber, OF, Tigers: Gerber had a very good first full season of pro ball, hitting.292/.355/.468 with 54 extra-base hits and 16 steals. But as a college senior who spent the entire season in the Class A Midwest League, it was time to see the 23-year-old jump on a faster track. Detroit's No. 17 prospect may have done that with a solid AFL, hitting.280/.371/.440 with four steals and impressing with an ability to make consistent hard contact.
Video: Tigers prospect Gerber making most of his time in AFL
Josh Hader, LHP, Brewers: The twice-traded southpaw, No. 14 on Milwaukee's Top 30, has always had a good arm. But his secondary stuff hasn't always been there, leading many to feel he was destined to the bullpen. After leading the AFL in ERA with a 0.56 mark to go along with a.154 opponents' batting average, an ability to maintain a mid-90s fastball and more consistent alternative offerings, Hader may have convinced some he can stay in a rotation long term.
Video: PEO@SUR: Hader fans four in three innings of relief
Chad Hinshaw, OF, Angels: Hinshaw, a senior signee from the 2013 Draft, has performed well in his pro career, though turning 25 in September means he's been slightly behind the curve, age-wise. The Angels' No. 13 prospect also missed 10 weeks with a thumb injury this year. He not only made up for lost time, he played a solid center field and hit.349/.397/.508 in Arizona.
Video: Top Prospects: Chad Hinshaw, OF, Angels
Chad Pinder, SS/2B, A's: He only played in 13 AFL games, but he started out with a bang by hitting two home runs on Opening Day. Continuing to show positional flexibility by playing both shortstop and second base, the A's No. 7 prospect hit four homers, two doubles and a triple in 51 at-bats, turning some heads along the way.
Video: Athletics prospects prepare in Arizona Fall League
Yadiel Rivera, SS, Brewers: Orlando Arcia, rightfully, gets most of the shortstop prospect buzz in the Brewers' system, but Rivera's AFL turn definitely made more people take notice. The organization's No. 18 prospect hit.315/.405/.425 while continuing to show his typical slick fielding at multiple positions. Most encouraging: a walk percentage of 11.9, much higher than at any other stop in his career.
Video: WEST@EAST: Rivera makes a beautiful barehanded play
Gary Sanchez, C, Yankees: Seemingly on the radar forever, Sanchez has developed slowly, but he is still just 22 years old. The Yankees' No. 5 prospect showed off the plus tools he's been known for -- his power (AFL-leading seven home runs) and his arm (61.5 percent caught-stealing rate), and he also received better than many had seen previously. He could use this to knock on the big league door more loudly in 2016.
Video: Evaluating Sanchez's future after a great Fall League
Nick Travieso, RHP, Reds: Cincinnati's No. 6 prospect had a solid season in Class A Advanced shortened by a wrist contusion courtesy of a comebacker. The AFL allowed him to make up for lost innings, and he took advantage, finishing fifth with a 2.05 ERA and a nifty 20:3 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He didn't light up the radar gun like some in the AFL this season, but he showed his feel for pitching is ready for the jump to the upper levels next year.
Video: Pleskoff on Travieso's live fastball, sinker1 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The Pacific theater's only Army dive unit, the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment, 84th Engineer Battalion, 130th Engineer Brigade, changed leadership with Capt. Robert J. Meyer relinquishing command to Capt. Troy F. Davidson, during an underwater ceremony, Dec. 18, 2014, at the bottom of Richardson Pool on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. The unique unit performs underwater reconnaissance, demolition and salvage missions across the Pacific theater. (Photo Credit: 7th Engineer Dive Detachment) VIEW ORIGINAL 2 / 7 Show Caption + Hide Caption – The Pacific theater's only Army dive unit, the 7th Engineer Dive |
Maryland and Harold Pollack at the University of Chicago found there's no good evidence that tougher punishments or harsher supply-elimination efforts, such as crop eradication, do a better job of pushing down access to drugs and substance abuse than lighter penalties. So increasing the severity of enforcement or punishments doesn't do much, if anything, to slow the flow of drugs.
But the simple act of making something illegal does make drugs more expensive and less accessible, Caulkins said. His 2014 study suggested that prohibition multiplies the price of hard drugs like cocaine by as much as 10 times. And illicit drugs obviously aren't available through easy means, since drugs aren't easily sold. So the drug war is likely stopping some drug use: Caulkins estimated that legalization could lead hard drug abuse to triple or more.
Still, Caulkins said, "There's a lot of opportunity for rejiggering enforcement to get the whole mindset shifted from 'let's maximize the amount of punishment inflicted' to 'let's minimize the amount of punishment inflicted subject to the constraint that we do suppress the flagrant [drug] markets.'"
"There's a lot of opportunity for rejiggering enforcement to get the whole mindset shifted"
Caulkins said the idea is that the public will clearly signal to law enforcement that they only want police and prosecutors to go after drug dealers and traffickers, especially violent ones, but not users. He believes police can be trusted with this kind of discretion, without any changes to the law, as long as they get clear guidance on priorities from the public.
Caulkins acknowledges that this idea would run into a major criticism: Many people believe that police can't be forced to act less punitive unless policies change.
That belief is one driver for support for decriminalization, when harsher criminal penalties (jail or prison time) are replaced with a civil fine for possession of small amounts of drugs. Supporters argue that since the research shows severity of punishment doesn't much matter, keeping drugs illegal but decriminalizing small amounts of them could maintain the benefits of prohibition (making drugs less accessible through illegality) but also cut down on arrests of nonviolent drug users.
But Caulkins argued against using the research on severity of punishment to support decriminalization. "It is possible to over-learn that story," he said. "If you switch from something truly being a crime to something having a $10 ticket — like if robbery were only punishable by a $10 civil ticket, like a parking ticket — that might make a difference to some robbers."
Caulkins said decriminalization could make it much harder to crack down on drug dealers, because law enforcement often uses simple possession laws to go after dealers when they can't prove an intent to sell. "It will complicate enforcement against sellers at the retail level," he said. "Sellers at the retail level are not so often observed to be in the process of making a sale. Often, the sellers get arrested for possession, because they are possessing the amount they're out there to sell. So decriminalizing possession makes it harder to enforce against retail sellers."
"[Decriminalization] will complicate enforcement against sellers at the retail level"
So if law enforcement can continue using possession crimes to go after dealers, then they can be kept off the streets — and not engage in the violence and turf wars that tend to come with outdoor drug markets.
Caulkins also worries that decriminalization could lead to more drug use in general. If this holds, decriminalization could actually make drug-related violence worse — since demand (and subsequently the profitability) of drugs would go up, making them more lucrative for violent criminal groups.
The data on this is mixed. After Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, the country saw a decrease in drug-related deaths and drops in reported past-year and past-month drug use, according to a 2014 report from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. But it also saw an increase in lifetime prevalence of drug use, as well as an uptick in reported use among teens after 2007.
Caulkins said these statistics are weak, since they don't control for other variables. So it's possible that decriminalization pushes up drug use, but other factors — changing cultural fads and other policies — push down use more than decriminalization pushes it up.
For example, when Portugal decriminalized drugs, it also adopted special commissions that attempt to connect drug addicts to treatment. Although the success of these commissions has yet to be thoroughly evaluated, it is possible that even as decriminalization increased drug use, the commissions and more access to treatment got so many people off drugs that drug use still fell overall.
The uncertainty makes Caulkins, who characterizes himself as "a worrier" and "a father of teenagers," cautious of moving too far ahead with relaxing drug laws. So he prefers, instead, to tweak the current model instead of moving too far away from it.
Approach 2: Decriminalization, smart prohibition, and smart legalization
Another possibility is to pull back the drug war even further through decriminalization, but significantly alter how governments enforce prohibition and regulate legal drugs.
Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at the New York University's Marron Institute, calls this approach "smart prohibition" and "smart legalization." "Smart prohibition would try to maintain the gains we have made in terms of drug abuse compared to the legal market with as little ancillary damage as possible," he said. "And smart legalization would try to eliminate the ancillary damage with as little harm on the public health side as possible."
Kleiman elaborated on the two pillars:
Smart prohibition would focus on penalizing and preventing problematic behaviors and actions surrounding drugs, rather than punishing mere drug use. For example, drug users could be punished for repeatedly stealing things to pay for a drug habit, but they would not be strictly punished if their drug habit was not harming anyone. And to the extent someone is punished, sentences would be generally lower and not carry as many punishments after jail or prison time (so convicted drug offenders wouldn't be barred, as they are today, from obtaining student loans or voting).
would focus on penalizing and preventing problematic behaviors and actions surrounding drugs, rather than punishing mere drug use. For example, drug users could be punished for repeatedly stealing things to pay for a drug habit, but they would not be strictly punished if their drug habit was not harming anyone. And to the extent someone is punished, sentences would be generally lower and not carry as many punishments after jail or prison time (so convicted drug offenders wouldn't be barred, as they are today, from obtaining student loans or voting). Smart legalization would allow the use and sales of certain drugs, while minimizing the commercialization of legal drugs — by, for example, putting the state government in charge of drug sales or only allowing nonprofits to sell drugs.
Generally, smart prohibition would apply to all the illicit drugs except marijuana and hallucinogens, and smart legalization would apply to alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and hallucinogens.
In defense of this, Kleiman cites the research that shows harsher punishments don't deter criminal behavior much more than simply making something illegal does. "You need to distinguish between the effects of prohibition and the effects of enforcement," he said. "You'd be able to get a lot of the benefits of prohibition with relatively mild enforcement."
In terms of actually accomplishing smart prohibition, small amounts of drug possession for any drug would be outright legalized to prevent the arrest of simple drug users. But trafficking and selling drugs would remain illegal to prohibit the establishment of legal markets that could increase access to drugs. And special systems would be put in place to discourage problematic drug-related behavior.
Kleiman cited the 24/7 Sobriety Program that's seen success in curtailing alcohol abuse in South Dakota. The program effectively revokes people's right to drink if a court deems it necessary after an alcohol-related offense, such as drunk driving. To enforce this, officials monitor offenders through twice-a-day breathalyzer tests or a bracelet that can track blood alcohol level, and they jail offenders for one or two days for each failed test. Studies from the RAND Corporation have linked the program to drops in mortality, DUI arrests, and domestic violence arrests.
"You'd be able to get a lot of the benefits of prohibition with relatively mild enforcement"
Although this program has been applied to alcohol, it could also be used for legal and illegal drugs. Kleiman emphasized that this should not be used only for drug use — but rather people whose drug use has led to bad behavior, like intoxicated driving, theft, or violence.
Kleiman's hope is to use these programs to ensure someone isn't engaging in harmful drug use, while letting social controls and public health programs address if someone has addiction and needs to be treated for it.
Meanwhile, Kleiman said the drugs that are already legal — and substances that would become legal under his plan, such as marijuana and hallucinogens — would be strictly regulated. "Smart legalization would look a bit like what we're doing with tobacco today," he said. "Yeah, this stuff is legal, but it's not really okay."
Generally, tobacco enforcement would remain the same — with high taxes, restrictions on sales and marketing, and so on. There would be one difference: The regulations and taxes on e-cigarettes could be purposely lower, since these devices seem to be much safer than their combustive counterparts. This would hopefully push people to a safer form of consuming nicotine.
Alcohol and marijuana would be sold in much more regulated outlets than they are today, with a focus on limiting marketing to stop for-profit companies from pushing the heaviest drug users to use even more alcohol or pot. (One of Kleiman's favorite ideas is to let people set quotas for how much of a drug they can buy. So someone would say, for instance, that they can only buy 40 grams of marijuana a month, and after that amount vendors wouldn't be allowed to sell anymore to that person. "This is to give your long-term self a fighting chance against your short-term self," Kleiman said.)
"Smart legalization would look a bit like what we're doing with tobacco today"
As for psychedelics, these drugs would only be available to buy and use in licensed and regulated facilities with supervisors that can guide someone through their experience. This would, hopefully, mitigate the chances of an accident or bad trip, while letting people take drugs that can lead to serious therapeutic benefits. (For more on how this would work, check out Vox's explainer.)
All of this, Kleiman said, could be paired up with public health programs that should be by and large free from the criminal justice system. So whether the country ramps up prevention, treatment, and harm reduction programs — such as clean needle exchanges, easier access to the opioid overdose antidote naloxone, or medication-assisted treatment like methadone and Suboxone — should be left to the health care system, not police and courts.
One gap in Caulkins's and Kleiman's plans is they would leave fairly large black markets for drugs in place, and these markets have fueled huge levels of violence around the world, particularly in Latin America, over the past several decades.
Kleiman argued that this could be largely addressed by demilitarizing anti-drug policies. That seems plausible: Although Mexico has always dealt with some drug-related violence, its conflict wasn't as bloody and deadly as it is now until President Felipe Calderón in 2006 declared a ramped-up, militarized drug war, with significant amounts of US aid through the Mérida Initiative. The result: One study found life expectancy for men in the country dropped for the first time in decades. So a reversal of militarization could undo much of this escalation in violence.
Governments could also signal to criminal groups that while they will generally prohibit drug trafficking, they will really prohibit drug-related violence through much harsher enforcement. Over time, this could encourage drug trafficking groups to avoid violence.
Still, it's true that many countries have dealt with drug-related violence before they militarized their conflicts, and the incentive to avoid violence — to avoid government attention — has always existed. To address much of the violence, then, some argue drug policy may need to go even further.
Approach 3: Legalize and tightly regulate all drugs
The most radical approach — and one most Americans don't agree with — is legalizing and regulating all drugs. This is something no country has done in modern times, as many recreational drugs remain illegal to sell virtually everywhere in the world. So it's difficult to say for certain what would happen.
Still, there was one consistent group that drug policy experts and historians pointed me to when I asked whether anyone had a realistic legalization model: the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. While many don't agree with Transform's plan, it was consistently cited as the most detailed, evidence-based proposal.
Explaining his approach, Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst for Transform, said his group applied what we already know about other vice markets — particularly alcohol, tobacco, and gambling — to illegal drugs.
To be clear, this would not mean letting people buy any drug they want at the grocery store. "Different drugs would be regulated in different ways," Rolles explained. "The determinant of how you would regulate a drug would be what the risks and behaviors associated with that particular drug were. So the more risky a drug is, clearly, the more justification you have for more intrusive or intense regulation."
In its very detailed blueprint, Transform lays out its regulatory models based on tiers that ramp up restrictions based on a drug's dangers. Here's a quick summary of the five tiers, which divide up where and how the drugs would be available based on how potentially dangerous they are:
Medically supervised venues: Drugs put in this category, including heroin or amphetamines, would only be allowed with a prescription (typically for people with drug use disorders) and the direct supervision of a trained expert, like a doctor in a controlled facility.
Drugs put in this category, including heroin or amphetamines, would only be allowed with a prescription (typically for people with drug use disorders) and the direct supervision of a trained expert, like a doctor in a controlled facility. Pharmacies: Drugs in this tier, such as MDMA, powder cocaine, or amphetamine, would only be dispensed through pharmacies with a prescription or over the counter. While it is currently the case that pharmacies focus on medical applications, the blueprint suggests that pharmacists could also act as trained and licensed gatekeepers for drugs used in recreational settings.
Drugs in this tier, such as MDMA, powder cocaine, or amphetamine, would only be dispensed through pharmacies with a prescription or over the counter. While it is currently the case that pharmacies focus on medical applications, the blueprint suggests that pharmacists could also act as trained and licensed gatekeepers for drugs used in recreational settings. Licensed sales: Drugs in this classification, like marijuana and stimulant-based drinks, would be dispensed by licensed, regulated vendors. These sellers don't have to be for-profit entities; they could be nonprofits or government-controlled.
Drugs in this classification, like marijuana and stimulant-based drinks, would be dispensed by licensed, regulated vendors. These sellers don't have to be for-profit entities; they could be nonprofits or government-controlled. Licensed premises: These regulated establishments would dispense drugs, such as smoked opium, psychedelics, or poppy tea, much like alcohol is sold and consumed in bars today — although in some cases, as with psychedelics, the vendors would need training to help guide people through their experiences.
These regulated establishments would dispense drugs, such as smoked opium, psychedelics, or poppy tea, much like alcohol is sold and consumed in bars today — although in some cases, as with psychedelics, the vendors would need training to help guide people through their experiences. Unlicensed sales: Drugs in this category, like coca tea, would be available easily, much like caffeine.
Rolles emphasized that commercialization should be avoided. So even the drugs that are more accessible could still fall under strict regulations, such as a ban on marketing, taxes to keep the prices high, and even price controls. This could make up for at least part of the price drop that comes with the end of prohibition.
The new regulations could also be applied to alcohol and tobacco, as well as marijuana in states that already legalized the drug. (Rolles said he doesn't like that marijuana is moving to a commercialized legal model in parts of the US.)
But why go for legalization and regulation? There are two main reasons for this, Rolles argued: One, it completely eliminates the black market for drugs that enables so much violence around the world, particularly Latin America. Two, it could potentially make drug consumption safer.
The first point is relatively uncontroversial. It is clear that the war on drugs has had an enormously negative effect in several countries around the world, particularly Mexico in recent years. Again, a study found that violence from the drug war caused Mexico's life expectancy to stagnate — and, in men's cases, drop — after decades of increases.
On the second point, Rolles argues that legalizing and regulating drugs could make for safer drug use. So if people get their drugs from a regulated source, governments can ensure there's nothing that would make an already dangerous substance even more dangerous (such as fentanyl in heroin).
It may also eliminate the incentives in the black market to make drugs as potent as possible, since in a black market it's much easier to smuggle a highly potent pound of a drug (such as heroin) than it would be to smuggle a few pounds of something that's not as potent (such as smoked opium).
A similar black market phenomenon occurred during Prohibition, when the US banned alcohol from 1920 to 1933. During Prohibition, the market quickly went to spirits. After Prohibition, it has shifted toward wine and beer.
"The less risky, less potent products are more available, and the higher risk products are increasingly less available or not available at all"
Using heroin as an example, Rolles argues that many opioid users could satisfy their desires by smoking opium. But because the illicit market has moved toward the much more potent heroin, they largely don't have that option. So under Transform's model, smoked opium would be more accessible than heroin — in what Rolles calls harm reduction, since it acknowledges people are going to use drugs anyway but pushes them toward doing the safer version of those drugs.
"The idea that we're trying to promote in the blueprint is that a regulatory model can tilt the market the other way," Rolles said. "So the less risky, less potent products are more available, and the higher risk products are increasingly less available or not available at all."
Of course, this runs the risk of getting people hooked on the less harmful substances and leading them to progress to harder drugs. So someone could start on opium, because it's now potentially more accessible, and eventually climb to heroin. This is similar to what's happened with the opioid epidemic, in which some people went from opioid painkillers provided by doctors to the more potent opioids heroin and fentanyl.
But if someone does get hooked on heroin, Rolles said this could be safer under legalization — since heroin would be available in controlled venues, where users would have access to clean needles (without a risk of HIV or hepatitis infection), and supervisors would have access to naloxone, which reverses opioid overdoses. In several countries, these kinds of injection sites for drug users who prove resistant to treatment have been credited with reductions in drug-related crimes and overdoses, as well as improvements in social functioning through stabilized housing and employment.
Rolles acknowledges Transform's model won't fix every problem related to drugs. But he said it could lead to better results: "All regulation can do is to reduce the harms associated with the market and harms associated with using behaviors. We have to be realistic about what we can achieve. Legalization and regulation does not get rid of the drug problem. It doesn't necessarily deal with addiction. It doesn't stop people dying from drugs. But it may reduce harms; it may reduce deaths. It just won't eliminate them."
The big takeaway: Drug policy is a balancing act
As you can probably tell from the diverse opinions, it's still not clear which drug policies may be best for the United States and the rest of the world. It's possible the final solution may not even be one of these three plans, and governments may land on a different solution after tinkering with all sorts of policies — if they choose to end their drug wars at all.
But whatever policy prescription governments land on, even if it's one of the three plans above, there will always be drawbacks and risks.
For one, anything short of legalization would likely fail to address all or perhaps most drug-related violence in the developing world, even if countries do demilitarize their anti-drug policies. After all, drug trafficking organizations always fought among themselves. So while the escalation and militarization of the war on drugs in Mexico did lead to much more violence, it was in part exacerbating an already-bad situation. (There is also the question of whether the genie can be put back in the bottle now that drug cartels are built to be highly violent.)
But with legalization, it's unclear if the US can actually sustain a strict regulatory model for dangerous drugs, since the country simply doesn't have a good track record for doing this with already legal substances.
Anything short of legalization would likely fail to address all or even most drug-related violence
Consider what happened after Prohibition when the US ended its short-lived ban on alcohol: Many states ended their bans by creating tightly regulated models for alcohol. But these models fell apart over time as big alcohol companies lobbied states to loosen their regulations, particularly by pressing them on the potential tax revenue and jobs that could come if the private market took over and was allowed to flourish. Now 88,000 deaths each year are linked to alcohol, on top of the many non-deadly accidents, illnesses, and poisonings that occur as a result of booze.
(It's worth noting that Prohibition appeared to reduce alcohol consumption and some forms of alcohol-related deaths, at least temporarily. A 2003 study from economists Angela Dills and Jeffrey Miron found Prohibition likely reduced liver cirrhosis deaths by about 10 to 20 percent. But that didn't, according to experts, outweigh the rise in violence and crime that surrounded the black market for alcohol during Prohibition. This conflict between public health and safety is essentially the same debate we're having today with other drugs.)
Or consider what's happened with the opioid epidemic. In the 1990s, companies like Purdue Pharma pushed their opioid painkillers on doctors and patients through a very aggressive marketing campaign. Doctors, who were concerned with treating pain as a serious medical issue, prescribed the drugs in huge droves, letting them proliferate. As a result, the US is in the middle of an opioid epidemic — one that has led to people using stronger, more dangerous opioids, like heroin and fentanyl — that's killing tens of thousands a year.
All this time, one would expect a regulatory body, like the FDA or DEA, to step in and stop the proliferation of dangerous medications. But they only did so after tens of thousands of deaths. Regulation failed.
Something similar could happen with newly legal drugs. Once big companies get a taste of selling poppy or coca tea, they could start lobbying for the ability to sell more of their products or even cocaine and heroin. Given how powerful alcohol and pharmaceutical companies have proven to be, it's not totally unfeasible that coca or opium companies couldn't similarly succeed. And that could lead to tens of thousands of drug deaths — except under legalization, Americans may be desensitized to these deaths, much like they have been for alcohol.
The big counterpoint to commercialization supplanting public health interests is how America has responded to tobacco. Here, the US has sustained a fairly strict regulatory approach toward a big for-profit industry, largely thanks to pressure from public health groups and Americans who were furious at the way the tobacco industry had gotten so many people hooked and killed. It is possible — even likely — that a similar sentiment toward hard drugs like heroin or cocaine would sustain a very strict regulatory approach. After all, it's hard to imagine mainstream America ever embracing these clearly risky drugs.
At the same time, the US only adopted a harsher approach to tobacco after the tobacco industry created one of the biggest public health crises in the country's history. And 480,000 Americans still die each year due to tobacco. It shouldn't take a huge death toll to get regulation in motion, but that's what tobacco — and now opioids — required.
All of this is to say that the best approach may be to proceed with caution. The war on drugs slowly ramped up over decades, from the prohibit-through-taxes model of the early 20th century to President Richard Nixon's declaration of the modern drug war to President Ronald Reagan's incredibly punitive, militarized escalation. Similarly, its end may come over time through incremental reforms.While there is no snowballing social media campaign to boycott the Masters golf tournament because of the lack of a woman member at Augusta National, there is a fledgling Change.org petition and the usual back-and-forth on Twitter. Still, “Where’s the Outrage?,” a colleague wonders.
You can find it in the drumbeat of media stories on the eve of the tournament. In its coverage, CNN.com wrote about “Augusta National: a Powerful Holdout Among Men-Only Clubs.” The New York Times ran a riveting play-by-play of the “touchy” Wednesday press conference of the club chairman, Billy Payne, “Touchy Day at Augusta National Men’s Club.”
At issue, of course, is the fact that IBM sponsors the Masters and its new chief executive, Virginia Rometty, has not been (publicly) invited to don a green jacket and join the exclusive (read: secretive) club. ABC News pointed out that her predecessor at IBM, “Sam Palmisano is a member of the club, along with the CEOs of the tournament's two other major sponsors, Exxon Mobil and AT&T.” Seems as the club’s membership ranks are not so secret.
Meanwhile, back in corporate America, there is a petition afoot over a different matter: the lack of a woman on the Facebook board.
Ultraviolet, which describes itself as a group fighting to expand women's rights and combat sexism, is demanding in a new petition that Facebook appoint at least one woman to its board before the company goes public.
The timing of Facebook’s initial public offering is not clear, but it is thought to be in May, according to Best Stock Watch, which said the date depends upon regulators.
CrunchBase.com has a detailed profile of who’s who on Facebook here.
Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of Ultraviolet, said in a letter announcing its “Face It” campaign, sent to 300,000 members on Thursday:
“The fact that a company as large as Facebook with a massive global reach does not have a single woman on their board is nothing short of shameful. Facebook owes it success and makes a ton of money off of its women users. Women are responsible for nearly two-thirds of the sharing that happens on the site. In addition, women account for more than 70 percent daily fan activity on the site, which is a huge source of revenue for the company. Facebook has a problem and they need to solve it before they go public. Mark Zuckerberg should live up to his company's mission statement and appoint at least one woman to the board today.”
To be sure, Facebook is not the only board devoid of women. Catalyst.org, which tracks women’s leadership, found in 2011 that women held only 16.1 percent of board seats, compared with 15.7 percent in 2010.
Ultraviolet is asking people to sign a petition with the hopes of big media push next week, according to its letter: http://act.weareultraviolet.org/sign/facebook/
Here is more from the Ultraviolet letter:
“Not having a single woman on Facebook’s board makes no sense.
Here's why: Companies with women on the board make more money. Studies have shown that there is a correlation between boards with female representation and increased returns on sales, investments and equity. And companies with women on the board function better. Studies have also indicated that women improve the ways that boards function and make decisions.
Women are also widely seen as the future of the tech industry. Take Pinterest as an example, they've only been around for a year and are already one of the ten largest social network services. They credit their meteoric growth to their 97% female users.
With a white, male board, Facebook is behind the curve.”After a few rough weeks of dealing with rage quitters on Street Fighter 5, Capcom has finally implemented a way to punish those that quit early during a match.
A recent update told players to report when players purposefully disconnected from a match; not just internet problems. With this information, Capcom can now dock players League points for leaving a match midway due to losing the match and not wanting to continue out of spite. The developer decided how to dole out penalties based on the ratio of last-minute disconnections to the number of “unrealistic” wins.
About 30 players have logged on to find that all of their League points have disappeared completely, being tagged as the worst offenders. Capcom assures players that have disconnected because of internet issues that they won’t be targeted for punishment. However, Capcom plans on constantly monitoring this issue, meaning that players that continue to rage quit will continually be punished.I picked up this kit immediately when it came out last year and started working on it. Back then I was finishing up the waterfront diorama and only soaked the kit’s runners in some purple power to strip it and just built it at one of the monthly build gatherings. To be honest, it looked pretty damn good in all it’s translucent nakedness. It would be really cool to completely do up the internal frame and clear coat the translucent parts and be done with it. Maybe a later project, I really liked the kit. For this one, I really wanted to paint some gold. I have a ton of gold paint. Finisher’s blue gold, finisher’s red gold, alclad pale gold, alclad titanium gold, alclad polished brass (very close to a gold), Mr color super metallic gold, testor’s enamel gold, gaia color bright gold, and an endless combination of chrome/polished aluminum/ + clear yellow or a custom mix of clear yellow/clear red/clear orange. I had some testing to do, and I sprayed a few swaths on a test part to see what looked best.
I decided on Finisher’s red gold since I wanted a warmer gold in comparison to the others but I also did not want a very yellow gold or bright gold for that matter.
Last I left the project, the kit was hastily built. Meaning, it was not sanded. So the very first thing returning to the project was taking it apart and getting it all sanded. The translucent properties of the kit make this process a little difficult. But once the sanding was done I can get to painting. I had just gotten done with the Grimgerde commission and I figured I’d use the same painting technique, or rather, process. I painted the frame parts first. Painted all the metallic bits as well as the red parts. Getting to the eyes, I decided to use some aurora decals. It’s a multi spectrum film that when placed on top of a glossy black painted surface, shows off some cool rainbow effects. The decal film is self adhesive, and is a pain in the ass to remove from it’s backing since the film is razor thin. It will wrinkle very easily as well. But the adhesive backing is very strong.
It’s difficult to really show off the effect in pictures, but here is an attempt. I tried shooting a few different angles and you can see the effect.
I painted the frame in alclad steel. The red is painted first with alclad super bright silver, then alclad candy ruby. Little bits and pieces were done with other alclad metallics such as stainless steel, polished brass, polished aluminum, and mr color super titanium. The frame parts are masked off with a parafilm wrapping then the exterior armor pieces are added and we start painting.
I didn’t want to just paint solid colors, and I recently saw a kit that one of our build gathering folks completed and displayed at Robotoyfest; so I was inspired to do some stripes.
So the first step was to paint on the stripe color. I used alclad burnt iron. I really like this color and almost finished off my bottle of the stuff basically priming my kit. Note, I did not prime the damn kit. I only washed it with some diluted purple power and ran the parts through the ultrasonic cleaner. This comes back to bite me in the ass later. But I digress. I paint with major subsections. This is just a build preference. Some folks like to paint all the individual parts, some like to paint on runners. It’s your kit, build it how you want to build it. You’re the one having fun right? So, for me, it’s just easier to paint as a whole part. Again, this also comes back to bite me in the ass; but I’m expecting it, so it’s not a big deal.
I find it quicker and easier to shade when the parts are all together in subjections. BUT, for this project, I am not doing any shading. So that point is moot. But it is still easier for me to paint subsection then all the individual parts; all the subsections are painted and left to cure for a full day.
Next up is the masking process. This time around, I did something that I hadn’t done before. I worked on one subsection at a time. For example, I started with one shoulder and one arm. I masked off these parts, with Aizu masking tape to create some stripes, then immediately painted those masked off parts. Then after the paint dries for about an hour, the masking tape is removed. Previous projects, the masking was a complete stage in the process. ALL the parts for a particular color was masked, and only then, would I progress to the painting stage. I found that I screw up less with this process. The masking tape is fairly low tack, so there isn’t a long span of time that passes from when the first part was masked to when that first part actually gets paint. In the past, the masking tape may lift and all that hard work needed to be redone in sporadic areas. The other bonus is that there is actual visual progress. I can break up the rather boring masking process. My work has adopted the agile approach to software engineering, so the idea to break up everything into small chunks that are easily completed has apparently crossed over to my hobby world.
I want the striping effect for the chest block and backpack as well, so those dark blue parts were base coated with the same blue I used for the 1/100 Gusion project. I still have enough of that mix left over; so waste not, want not. And the next picture is a quick snap together of some different subsections in the various stages of the painting process.
The chest subsection and the head are masked off then painted. I used the same WRX World Rally Blue paint that I had picked up years ago as touchup for my ’11 Rex. The blue has a little bit of a pearl effect so I think it’ll match nicely with the gold. Once painted, and then unmasked, we have another round of quick assembly for visual progression. I am really enjoying the mask and paint progression as it’s not tasking at all. And I have visual progress to keep me going.
The process continues for the legs and rear foils.
Once I finished the primary painting stage; I can now clear gloss the parts and get ready for the final stages. It is at this point that I discover a missed nub. Since I did not prime the part as a check for sanding mistakes; I completely missed sanding down the nub on one of the upper arm pieces. I pull the part from the arm subassembly and get it sanded and polished. Bite on ass part 1.
The part is then masked with parafilm and painted. I was lucky that the nub area was all gold, so I did not have to match up the masking scheme and go through the several layers of paint. I was also lucky that the part wasn’t shaded, so I only needed to paint the gold and unmask the part and it was ready to return to the other parts for clear coating.
I sprayed a clear gloss over all the parts. The clear gloss darkens the tone so the gold and the blue get a slight shade darker. This is also why I make sure I clear gloss all the parts and not just the areas I want to apply decals. I do not want different tones of the same color for my final complete kit. The gloss coat is an important step in decal application.
I had picked up a Hyaku Shiki decal sheet from Samuel Decals a long long time ago. And I’m happy that I finally get to use them. In light of my recent screwups with decaling the Gusion, I made sure I was fully focused. The decal process took about 4 hours from start to finish. Decals are placed. Then the part is left to dry for a while, then Mr mark softer is applied over the decal to soften the edges, then the parts are left to sit over night.
The following day, only the decal areas are hit with the clear gloss. This is to help hide the decal edges. As well as protect the decal ink from the panel line wash. Since the rest of the parts are already clear glossed, it is unnecessary to spray more clear gloss on top of the existing clear gloss. Only the decal areas need it. There is always the question about which to do first. Panel lines or decals. I’ve just always done decals first, then panel lines. Personal preference. It’s my model, I’ll build it how I want!
Clear gloss has had a day to cure, and tamiya gloss black enamel is mixed with some lighter fluid and the parts are panel lined. I leave the parts to sit over night so that the panel line wash can dry. The following morning, I take a paper towel soaked slightly with lighter fluid and clean up any excess panel line ink, then let the part sit for a few hours.
We are getting into the home stretch! I can finally apply the final clear coat. I recently picked up some alclad clear coats. For this, I’m using alclad light sheen. Since gold has a fairly metallic look, I didn’t want an ultra glossy finish, but I didn’t want a complete flat finish either. I’ve used semi gloss a few times, but I really wanted to try out the alclad stuff. So here’s a comparison picture. For the first picture, the glossy is on the left and light sheen on the right. The next picture, for whatever idiotic reason I did this, the glossy is on the right and the light sheen is on the left. Can you see the difference? It’s not too easy to see in pictures, but in person, it is a pretty visual difference. I like it.
The rest of the parts were sprayed and left to sit while I ran off to this month’s build gathering at Funaka’s house. Coming into |
face in national security. I look forward to working with her in this new role."
For Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s director, Jay Coghlan, Wilson’s prospective role as the head of the Air Force — one of the primary customers for Lockheed Martin and the other nuclear weapon contractors that employed her — sets off alarms.
“It obviously raises very serious ethical questions,” Coghlan said. “The presidential vote can be viewed as a popular vote for change, but part of that change should be appointing ethical people to senior positions. And she’s failed that test. I anticipate she’s going to be asked some tough questions during her confirmation hearing.”
Center for Public Integrity Managing Editor for National Security R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this article.
The Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, investigative newsroom in Washington, D.C. More of its national security reporting can be found here.San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging a federal judge to dismiss Facebook's claims that criminal law is violated when its users opt for an add-on service that helps them aggregate their information from a variety of social networking sites.
Power Ventures makes a web-based tool that users can set up to log into their multiple social networking accounts and aggregate messages, friend lists, and other data so they can see all the information in one place. In a lawsuit against Power Ventures, Facebook claims that Power's tool violates criminal law because Facebook's terms of service ban users from accessing their information through "automatic means." By using Power's tool, Facebook argues that its users are accessing Facebook "without permission" under the California penal code. EFF argues in an amicus brief filed Monday that users have the right to choose how they access their data, and turning any violation of terms of use into a criminal law violation would leave millions of Facebook users unwittingly vulnerable to prosecution.
"California's computer crime law is aimed at penalizing computer trespassers," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Users who choose to give their usernames and passwords to aggregators like Power Ventures are not trespassing. Under Facebook's theory, millions of Californians who disregard or don't read terms of service on the websites they visit could face criminal liability. Also, any Internet company could use this argument as a hammer to prevent its users from easily leaving the service as well as to shut down innovators and competitors."
Even the simple use of the automatic login feature of most browsers would constitute a violation under Facebook's theory, since those services are "automatic means" for logging in. But the risk for users is even broader. If any violation of terms of use is criminal, users who shave a few years off their age in their profile, claim to be single when they are married, or change jobs or addresses without updating Facebook right away would also have violated the criminal law.
"The information you put into social networking sites is yours, and you should be able to access it, export it, and aggregate it as you please," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "If Facebook's legal argument is upheld, it will hobble companies that enable consumer choice, as well a create a massive expansion in the scope of California criminal law."
For the full amicus brief:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/facebook_v_power/poweramicus.pdf
Contacts:
Cindy Cohn
Legal Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
cindy@eff.org
Jennifer Stisa Granick
Civil Liberties Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
jennifer@eff.orgTop Five True Medical Facts About a 0.238 Blood Alcohol Content
5. In medical terminology, 0.238 BAC is midway between "Fraternity Hazing Drunk" and "Drinking to Forget It All Drunk"
4. At 0.238 BAC, you are not charged with Driving Under the Influence; you are charged with Sleeping In Motion
3. If you stacked up all the shotglasses needed to get you to a 0.238 BAC, they would reach all the way from the floor to one inch above the floor, because they all fell down already, because you're fucking drunk and really shouldn't be stacking things made of glass
2. If you attempt to evade arrest with a 0.238 BAC, and you succeed for at least 20 minutes, the cops give you a Fucking Medal right there on the spot
1. At 0.238 Blood Alcohol Content, the human body begins spontaneously generating olives
By the way, this is all being completely misinterpreted. Governor Perry's veto threat was an attempt at an Intervention. It was cosponsored by Dr. Drew Pinsky.
In the below video, the money part is 5:30-6:00.
And then there's this.
She was driving in the bike lane, and then weaving into oncoming traffic, according to a phoned-in tip.
She eventually stopped and parked in a church driveway. This is when the cops found her.To me, summer in California isn’t just sand between my toes. It’s wine stains on my teeth. For about three months, the state is buzzing with the country’s best wine events.
These five events are at the top of this summer’s agenda for me. They are special for a reason. One takes you through rugged, off-the-beaten wine paths. A few include wow-worthy food. And most involve doing something in addition to drinking amazing wines.
Passport Days to the Santa Cruz Mountains
Date & Place: July 20 at Santa Cruz, South Bay and Peninsula wineries
Details: $45; www.scmwa.com
Lowdown: Four times a year, some 30 wineries in the Santa Cruz Mountains and outlying areas open their cellar doors for samples of their handcrafted artisan wines, gourmet food pairings and entertainment. You can take vineyard tours, meet winemakers and grape growers and sample exclusive vintages from wineries generally not open to the public. It’s the best way to experience this unassuming yet world-class wine region.
Taste of Terroir
Date & Place: 6 to 9 p.m. July 18, Casa Real, 410 Vineyard Ave., Pleasanton
Details: $85; www.lvwine.org
Lowdown: I’ve been five times, and I still get excited about Livermore Valley’s annual quest for food and wine-pairing excellence. Each year, 20 winemakers partner with local chefs to create signature dishes that complement the local wines — and win your votes. It’s fun to compare your favorite pairings with the picks by the judges, and mingle with winemakers and chefs. Plus, there’s a dessert table of epic proportions.
Catalan Festival
Date & Place: Noon to 4 p.m. July 20 and 21, Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards, 23555 Arnold Drive, Sonoma
Details: $65; www.gloriaferrer.com
Lowdown: This is a multisensory experience that transports you to Spain with traditional savory tapas, classical guitar, flamenco dancing and Gloria Ferrer’s gorgeous sparking wines. The winery’s caves and vineyards are transformed to look like Las Ramblas, the popular main street in Barcelona. Watch a paella cooking demo or join a festive grape stomp while listening to music and entertainment provided by Sol Flamenco and Makru.
Wine Lands at Outside Lands
Date & Place: Aug. 10, 11 and 12 at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Details: $295.50 for three days; www.sfoutsidelands.com
Lowdown: I know, it’s expensive. But if you’re thinking about splurging to attend the Bay Area’s music event of the summer (or if you already have a ticket), consider yourself blessed, because the 2013 Wine Lands lineup reads like a who’s who of cult, natural, rare or otherwise hipster, in-the-know wine purveyors. At press time, the 32 wineries included Scholium Project, Envolve Winery, and Summer of Riesling with Paul Grieco. Be prepared to get slapped with a riesling tattoo.
Family Winemakers of California
Date & Place: 3 to 6 p.m. Aug. 17, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco
Details: $45-$100; www.familywinemakers.org
Lowdown: A showcase for the state’s small (5,000 cases max), family-owned wineries, this epic tasting gives you unlimited access to more than 250 wineries from 20-plus California appellations pouring more than 35 varietals and 800 different wines. Too many numbers? Don’t fret. Note-taking isn’t necessary because orders may be placed at this tasting, and many wineries will be offering special pricing and “Taste and Take” sales. Try. Buy. Repeat.
Contact Jessica Yadegaran at jyadegaran@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/swirlgirl_jy.A little strange news on a celebratory night.
The 2016 NFL Hall of Fame class received their gold jackets tonight ahead of Saturday’s enshrinement ceremony, and two former Rams finally got their jackets: OT Orlando Pace and OLB/DE Kevin Greene.
As I wrote when the class was selected:
Pace makes it the second Hall of Famer from the Greatest Show on Turf following Marshall Faulk's induction in 2011. A seven-time Pro Bowler and three-time All-Pro first team member (five times overall) following being selected first overall in the 1997 NFL Draft out of Ohio State, Pace goes down as one of the best offensive tackles in collegiate and NFL history without argument.... Greene was a fifth-round pick in the 1985 NFL Draft out of Auburn who played with the Rams for the first eight years of his 15-year career. He spent the first three years at defensive end before a move to OLB under DC Fritz Shurmur (whose nephew Pat would take the offensive coordinator reins for two years under HC Steve Spagnuolo in 2009 and 2010) exacerbated his career. In that first year at OLB, Greene jumped up to 16.5 sacks from 6.5 the year prior. It would be the first of Greene's 10 seasons with 10 or more sacks, finishing with 160 career sacks, good for third all-time behind only Hall of Famers Bruce Smith and Reggie White.
The strange part?
The owners of the NFL franchises who have members of the 2016 NFL Hall of Fame class are all in attendance.
Well, all but one.
Owners of NFL teams w/inductees in Class of 2016 introduced a few minutes ago. Irsay, Rooney, Yorks introduced, etc. No Kroenke. — Jim Thomas (@jthom1) August 4, 2016
There’s no other way to describe it. That’s strange. It’s strange that all the other NFL owners with inductees repping their franchises all attended tonight except for Stan Kroenke.
We’ll have to see if there’s any further reporting on this (and given that Kroenke tamps down on any reporting on his personal life pretty intensely...and successfully, I doubt it), but if there isn’t a legit reason for his absence, that’s the kind of thing players notice.
We watch the games. We remember the plays and the moments that define careers and seasons on TV. Players remember the things behind the scenes, the things that I’ve always said Jeff Fisher is so good at. That’s why Fisher has always been popular with his players. He makes an effort to show them he cares.
Tonight, Kroenke didn’t.
Nevertheless, that shouldn’t overshadow what is a celebratory night for Pace and Greene. In two days, they’ll rightfully go into the NFL Hall of Fame.
And just as a new chapter in Rams football is beginning in Los Angeles, a Ram from the St. Louis era and the GSOT and one from the last chapter of Los Angeles football prepare to be celebrated as two of the greatest football players of all-time.The Bank of Canada has opted not to lower or raise its benchmark interest rate, choosing to keep it at 0.5 per cent.
Economists had been expecting the bank to keep its trend-setting target for the overnight rate where it is now. A few believe, however, that another cut might be possible later in the year unless the economic picture improves.
Last month, Statistics Canada put out gross domestic product data showing the Canadian economy shrank for the first two quarters of the year, meeting the bar of what is considered to be a recession.
After sitting on the sidelines for more than four years, the bank has moved to cut its benchmark interest rate twice this year — once in January and again in July. The goal of those cuts was to stimulate the economy by making it cheaper to borrow.
The goal was to encourage businesses to borrow to invest and expand, which would provide Canada's economy with a much-needed shot in the arm after the oil price lost more than half of its value in the past year.
Slow turnaround
The bank's interest rate announcement Wednesday suggests the central bank thinks its two previous cuts might have been enough to achieve that goal.
"The stimulative effects of previous monetary policy actions are working their way through the Canadian economy," the bank said in a statement Wednesday.
Despite the shrinking GDP, other economic indicators suggest that Canada's economy is waking from its slumber.
Canada has added more than 100,000 jobs this year, and exports — especially of things that aren't energy — are slowly rising again.
"Economic activity continues to be underpinned by solid household spending and a firm recovery in the United States, with particular strength in the sectors of the U.S. economy that are important for Canadian exports," the bank said.
'The tone seemed more optimistic than originally expected. - Rahim Madhavji, currency expert
Economists weren't surprised by the decision, noting that the bank has been saying for a while that it was assuming a slight recession to start this year, followed by modest growth, after that.
"In recent weeks, the economy's performance has been unfolding in line with these expectations," TD Bank economist Brian DePratto said.
"The bank's decision to leave rates unchanged was not surprising," he added. That explains why the news had little impact on the loonie, which went from slightly down on the day to inching up a tenth of a cent to 75.83 cents US after the news came out.
At least one bank watcher thought the interest rate news, all in all, was pretty encouraging.
"There was no mention of a possible further rate cut and the tone seemed more optimistic than originally expected," currency expert Rahim Madhavji of Knightsbridge FX said.Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
One of the most shocking illustrations of the housing crisis - we have found that there are ten empty homes for every housing family in our country.
Some of these are in between buyers and renters but others are intentionally being held off the market by investors.
The estimated 635,000 empty properties in England alone are a complete and utter waste of housing when there are so many homeless families looking for somewhere to live. A large number of these (200,000) have been left empty for over six months.
Meanwhile under this government homeless numbers keep rising...
In 2004, the Labour Government set out to halve the number of homeless families living in temporary accommodation by the end of their third term, in 2010. They succeeded in cutting the figure from over 100,000 in 2004 to 48,000 five years later.
The long downward trend in the homeless population stopped in 2011 - in the middle of the economic crisis - and since then it's never really recovered.
We now have the highest number of homeless households in the last five years - three-fourths with children and/or an expectant mother.
The real number of homeless people is almost certainly a lot higher: these stats in fact don't include those homeless who have not approached their local authorities for assistance, as well as those meet the statutory criteria
According to Shelter 90,000 children spent their Christmas in a temporary accommodation last year.
And yet house-building is at its lowest in peacetime since the 1920s
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this is the prime contributor to homelessness.
Nearly 5,000 families are placed in B&Bs
The Government has always said homeless families should not placed in bed and breakfasts for a period exceeding six weeks - local authorities should in the meantime find these families a permanent accomodation.
And yet in 2012 the National Housing Federation found that there had been a 60% increase in the number of children and pregnant women living in bed and breakfasts, and over a third had been there for longer than the six-week limit – that's a 200% increase over two years.
Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, told us that “t he Mayor must commit to building the genuinely affordable homes the capital is crying out for.” Adding “it’s appalling that in one of the wealthiest cities in the world there are forgotten homeless children, hidden from view and living with no stability, often in poor and unsafe conditions."
London - where the housing crisis is most acute - accounts for 75% of the increase in homelessness
Unsurprisingly - given the prohibitive housing costs of our capital - most homeless families are in London. And they're rising here too - by 8% since 2013.
The lack of affordable housing means the bed and breakfast problem is rampant in London.
In September 2013 the Local Government Ombudsman criticised Westminster Council for keeping around 40 families in B&B for longer than six weeks.
In August 2014 three London authorities - Brent, Tower Hamlets and Hillingdon - were found to have broke the B&B rule.
[Source: IPPR, House of Commons Library, Department for Communities and Local Government]
poll loading Do you think the Government is doing enough to tackle homessness? 0+ VOTES SO FAR No the Tories don't care about the poor Yes, but it takes time
Ampp3d Facebook Promotion widgetEric Zuesse
The reliability of all of these reports can reasonably be questioned, but here they are:
On October 14th, NBC News bannered “CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia”, and reported that, “The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. … The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation.”
On October 30th, “Super Station 95” reported an “Update” saying that “a trusted source” said:
It appears the United States is going to engage in battle in Syria. SuperStation95 just received this communication from a trusted source:
I just landed back in the US from Diego Garcia. War is brewing. The island has more aircraft and refueling tankers than I have seen since 2005.
Docks were full and 30 ships were moored off shore.This is a huge buildup.
B1s and B2s and b52s in abundance. Never seen them all at one place. It seems stupid to bunch them up at one facility.
Our layover was only supposed to be for 4 hours but the flight crews were so backed up we stayed overnight. The hotel was full and we bunked in a tent. We have never had to do that before.
AF security is everywhere and they were assey. (Acting like strict, suspicious assholes)
Just a heads up, keep your eyes open. I know that I am not giving away in classified information, the Russians have a satellite dedicated to watching this island.
Also, the navy had 2 subs at the docks at once. I have never seen more than 1 there.
B52s have new paint jobs — all flat black. Whats up with that?
On top of all this, huge numbers of in-flight refueling tankers are also on the island. More than enough to supply air operations to/from the Middle East, non-stop.
This is a very bad development. The US would never stage this much hardware at Diego Garcia unless they were planning a full-out, prolonged, military action.
Based upon my military experience as a contractor who has visited Diego Garcia every 6 months for 11 years, we are going to war.
On November 3rd, NBC News headlined “Exclusive: White House Readies to Fight Election Day Cyber Mayhem”, and reported “Officials are alert for any attempts to create Election Day chaos, and say steps are being taken to prepare for worst-case scenarios, including a cyber-attack that shuts down part of the power grid or the internet. But what is more likely, multiple U.S. officials say, is a lower-level effort by hackers from Russia or elsewhere to peddle misinformation by manipulating Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.” This news-report included a video of Andrea Mitchell, headlined “Is Russia a third party in the 2016 race?”
If the United States government, on or after Election Day, says that Russia had done something of this nature, then the U.S. ‘response’ to the alleged ‘cyber-attack from Russia’ would presumably be one or more of “the exact measures the CIA was considering,” as NBC reported on October 14th, and World War III could then start with a cyber-war that could escalate to serious consequences, such as deactivating a power-grid in one or both of the countries, and, subsequently, a direct military invasion, of one by the other.
But how would the U.S. public ever be able to come to know whether that alleged Russian provocation actually existed and wasn’t instead provoked intentionally by the U.S. government in order to provide a pretext for the U.S. to invade Russia? (After all, we’ve been pouring troops and weapons onto and near Russia’s borders for months now — and how would the U.S. respond to a provocation in which Russia surrounded our border with nukes?)
On November 2nd, ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ an anonymous retired Green Beret, headlined “Something Big Is Underway On All Fronts: ‘Within The Next Few Weeks The Future Of The United States Will Be Decided’,” and he reported that:
As of this writing, the increased U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe includes a battalion-sized element of American troops being emplaced in the Suwalki Gap, Polish territory that borders Lithuania in a 60-mile stretch of corridor. The Russian Defense Ministry announced that 600 Russian and Belarussian airborne troops conducted training exercises in Brest, on the Belorussian-Polish border only a few miles from where the U.S. forces are deploying in Poland. This on the heels of Britain deploying 800 men, tanks, and jets to Estonia, along with pledges of Challenger 2 tanks, APC’s (Armored Personnel Carriers), and drones. Two companies of French and Danish Soldiers will join the British in the deployment to Estonia.
For the first time since 1945, Norway has violated its treaty with Russia (then the Soviet Union) not to station foreign troops on its soil. A company of U.S. Marines will soon be stationed for a 6-month deployment in Norway. The situation is heating up in Ukraine, according to a report on fort-russ.com entitled Ukraine Moves Massive Force up to Lugansk Frontline, published October 28, 2016. The report reveals the Ukrainian Army is deploying 3,500 soldiers and 200 armored vehicles of the 15th Motorized Infantry Brigade to Krasny Oktyabr in the district of Lugansk in Eastern Ukraine. For the first time in history, Romanian airspace is being patrolled by the RAF (Royal Air Force) of Britain.
His report closes: “The next war will be initiated by an EMP [Electro-Magnetic Pulse] device detonated above the continental United States followed by a limited nuclear exchange and then conventional warfare. … Obama is the joker, setting the stage for the transfer of power. That transfer is not going to occur with the losing candidate (in either case) going gently into that good night. The stage is set for a war to begin. The stage is set for a false flag operation to take down our grid. The stage is set to steal the election for Clinton or declare it null and void. Within the next few weeks, the future of the United States will be decided…with or without the consent of the governed.”
If it’s not true, then why is the U.S. engaging in these preparations? Russia has never attacked America. The Cold War was supposed to have ended. The U.S. government obviously thinks it now is actually hotter than ever, and so, apparently, we place the jihadists on the back burner; we’ve got a much bigger war to wage, and we’ll know soon whether it starts soon after the ‘election’.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.December 7, 2014 at 9:01 AM
Mayor Ed Murray is not in town this weekend to personally oversee the city during street protests.
But in an interview Friday, Murray said he was confident that the city’s policing strategy would be successful in his absence.
“We have spent hours and hours, a significant amount of time, preparing our response and getting our policing ready and deciding the strategy we need,” the mayor said.
Murray left Friday for a multiple-day trip to the East Coast. He is in Washington, D.C., this weekend for an annual conference of LGBT elected officials.
Murray will be in New York City on Monday for a summit of mayors on immigration and will return to the nation’s capital on Wednesday for an event with President Obama about early education, he said.
“If something goes wrong, I will come back. But I believe there are numerous issues I need to work on,” he said.
“I have to be mayor on more than one issue,” Murray added. “We’re in constant contact. We have various things that are available to a mayor to stay in touch with the police force, and I can make it back there pretty quickly.”
The mayor said he’d been satisfied with the Seattle Police Department’s reaction to street protests that began last week after a white Ferguson, Mo., cop was cleared of criminal charges in connection with the fatal shooting of a black man.
As of Friday afternoon, there had been 12 arrests related to the mostly peaceful protests.
Police said they made seven additional arrests Saturday after a group of about 150 protesters broke away from a larger march organized by University of Washington students.
“I think we’ve had a measured response,” Murray said Friday. “The numbers (of protesters) are not massive and I think the police have handled it well. When actions have stepped over the line from exercising freedom of speech and political protest, the police have stepped in and acted appropriately and arrested people and will continue to do that.”
Some protesters have complained about police, by blocking westward routes downtown, causing crowds to march east onto Capitol Hill.
“That’s not happening,” Murray said Friday. “The protesters themselves change where they go.”
“I’ve been in command headquarters almost every night,” the mayor added. “The attempt I see is … How do you keep traffic flowing? How do you make sure the city can function?”
During the World Trade Organization protests of 1999, protesters were herded onto Capitol Hill, Murray acknowledged.
“The police know that that was a mistake,” he said. “That’s not a tactic now. For some reason the protesters have chosen to hang out in the area of Capitol Hill and downtown. For some reason they’re not protesting in Bellevue or other parts of the city.”
Times reporter Paige Cornwell contributed material for this article.KOCHI: nion Tourism Minister Alphons Kannanthanam today said 14 out of 16 loss-making hotels owned by state-run ITDC will be sold off to private parties as running money-making hotel business is not a government job The minister, however, said that he wished to retain the prestigious Ashoka Hotel in New Delhi under government control and make it a "very good" international hotel in the national capital."It has been decided to sell off 14 hotels owned by ITDC as running money-making businesses like hotels are not good for a government. The decision to sell off the hotels was taken much earlier.""One or two hotels will be retained under government control...I have a wish...to retain Ashoka hotel in New Delhi under government control and make it a very good international hotel," the minister told a meet-the-press programme organised by the Ernakulam Press Club here.India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) is a public sector undertaking that currently runs 16 hotels in Delhi, Patna, Jammu, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Bhopal, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Guwahati, Mysore, Puducherry and Itanagar.Kannanthanam also said steps would be taken to open high-end restaurants and provide better amenities at important tourist attractions like Qutub Minar as it was necessary to attract more foreign tourists to the country."We will light up the areas around Qutub Minar... We will start high-end restaurants at such tourism destinations without damaging the environment," he said.Noting that better amenities were being provided at international tourism destinations like Eiffel Tower and Louvre in France, the minister said such facilities should be provided at tourist spots in India too so that more tourists could be attracted there.Lamenting that only 8.8 million foreign tourists visit India annually which is a very ancient civilisation, the minister said India's rich cultural heritage has to be showcased in a better way to attract more tourists and generate more revenue from the sector.He said India is a fantastic place to visit as it is also "beyond incredible".Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to conduct “coordinated, complementary” security operations against terrorist groups on their respective sides of the shared border, officials confirmed Wednesday.
A high-powered U.S. bipartisan congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain mediated the deal during its visit this week to Islamabad and Kabul.
“The [U.S.] Senators said that the head of Pakistan’s armed forces, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, agreed to joint operations against terrorist groups in the Durand Line region,” said an Afghan statement after Tuesday’s talks between President Ashraf Ghani and the U.S. delegation.
“They said that the U.S. would provide monitoring and verification of these operations,” the statement quoted McCain’s delegation as saying, while sharing the Pakistani proposal with Ghani.
The nearly 2,600-kilometer, largely-porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is called the Durand Line. Both countries regularly accuse each other of not doing enough on their respective sides to stop terrorist infiltration. The allegations are blamed for deep mutual mistrust and strained bilateral ties.
“The Afghan government has welcomed the [Pakistani] proposal and a mechanism to undertake these simultaneous joint operations will be developed by our defense and security forces,” Afghan presidential spokesman Dawa Khan Meenapal told VOA on Wednesday.
Pakistan military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor, when contacted by VOA, confirmed the security deal with Afghan counterparts. However, he dismissed the reported impression that Afghan forces would be allowed to step on Pakistani soil.
“There is no concept of joint operations [on Pakistani soil]. Pakistan does not and will not allow foreign boots on the ground,” said General Ghafoor.
He went on to explain that under the proposed “coordinated, complementary” operations, when Pakistani forces plan counterterrorism actions on their side of the border, Afghan counterparts will be required to mobilize forces on the other side and the other way around to prevent terrorists from fleeing.
McCain and his fellow senators, including Lindsay Graham, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren and David Perdue, held talks with Pakistani civilian and military leaders and visited a tribal region near the Afghan border on Monday before traveling to Kabul for talks with leaders there.
President Ghani has long blamed Pakistan for not upholding its commitments to prevent terrorists from using Pakistani soil against Afghanistan. He has lately linked complete normalization of relations to the involvement of a third country to oversee actions and commitments undertaken by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Afghan government alleges that Taliban insurgents and their ally, the Haqqani network, are using sanctuaries inside Pakistan for sustaining the insurgency in Afghanistan, charges Islamabad strongly rejects.
The offer of “coordinated” operations to Afghanistan came as Pakistan's military is building a fence on the long border and undertaking other fortification measures to deter militant infiltration in either direction. Islamabad has long complained that a lack of coordination from the Afghan side has allowed militants to flee security operations in the volatile Pakistani tribal belt and take refuge in Afghan border areas to plot attacks against Pakistan.This is the second in a series of blogs based on a seminar by Buzz Hays, chief instructor for the Sony 3D Technology Center in Culver City, California.
3D is an ever-evolving process, which is why the effect can be such a hit-and-miss affair. But those who insist 3D glasses give them headaches are a little wide of the mark, according to the man who trains the filmmaking pros.
“It’s not the technology's fault, it's really the content that can cause these problems,” explains Buzz Hays. “The more care taken when making the content, the better off everyone’s going to be. My mantra is that it’s easy to make 3D but it’s hard to make it good – and by ‘good’ I mean taking care to make sure that this isn’t going to cause eyestrain.”
There are several common mistakes that can cause discomfort, and easy ways for that to be reduced, yet they’re only just being learned and put into regular use.
Interaxial distance
The interaxial, or the distance between the two cameras, controls the overall depth of the 3D effect. Objects will appear closer or further away but they won't change in size, so it's important not to increase the interaxial distance too much. Filmmakers are gradually gaining experience with what types of scene work with different depths of 3D, and Buzz was keen to point out that framing a scene for 3D has similarities to composition for still photographers.
“When it comes to composing in 3D… by using the heads of the audience [in a U2 concert clip] or the ground plane, or some continuous sense of depth in the shot, it holds the shot together. One of the complaints people sometimes have about 3D is that it feels like a cardboard cutout: that there’s a cardboard cutout, then some space and then another cardboard cutout. By using a careful choice of interaxial spacing, and also by having something in the frame like the ground plane, or smoke or atmosphere or something, then you can start to hold the shot together.”
Convergence
Our eyes converge inward as we look at an object moving towards us. In 3D it’s essentially the same thing: we converge (or "toe-in") the angle of the left and right cameras, and this alters the particular 3D plane to which our focus is drawn. Objects in front of the convergence point appear to be coming out at us, while objects behind do the opposite. Care needs to be taken, however, particularly when fast cutting is used.
“There’s a situation where every time we cut to a new shot, the subject of interest is at a slightly different distance from us,” explained Buzz, demonstrating a rapidly cut clip of two people at different convergence points. “What’s happening is on every single cut, your eyes are making an adjustment to depth – you’re trying to find that object. It’s a very subtle distance, it’s not a great distance, but that’s what you’re feeling in your eye muscles as you’re trying to work to catch up with the shot. That’s called the vergence-accommodation conflict.”
“The way we make it much easier to look at is by using convergence in post-production. In that same sequence I adjust the convergence in post [production] to massage the depth. Now your eyes are making the adjustment once in the very first shot, and from that point on they don’t have to adjust again. It’s very subtle but if you don’t do it, it’s the difference between a comfortable experience and a splitting headache after 90 minutes.”
What filmmakers are now learning is that trying to control the convergence during filmmaking is, as Buzz bluntly puts it, “a waste of time”. As cuts are made and scenes are shifted around, it’s difficult to know exactly what shot will follow another, so trying to predict it all is futile.
“It’s far better to find the comfortable place to put the convergence level during shooting, then adjust it in post-production once the edit is finished – that ultimately makes the difference between good and bad 3D.”
Divergence
The opposite of convergence is divergence, and just as our eyes can only converge to a certain point before we go cross-eyed, so they can only diverge to parallel. Overuse of divergence can cause big problems.
“Typically, when we look at an object in the world our eyes are either parallel if it’s at distance, or they’re converged inwards for objects that are closer,” continued Buzz. “There’s a condition that can be created unintentionally where your eyes are forced to rotate outward in order to fuse this image – which frankly only works if you’re a horse or a goldfish, and they don’t buy movie tickets.”
At this point Buzz put a scene on the screen in front of us and had us don our specs. A figure at the back of the image was simply impossible to bring into focus, and even trying was as uncomfortable as you’d expect. Removing the glasses showed why: the left and right views of the figure were several feet apart on the big screen.
“Divergence occurs based on the size of screen you’re using. You might make a neat adjustment [during filming] so it looks great on a monitor, but when you scale it up to 40ft it hurts like heck. Experienced stereographers will be able to avoid it, but some low-budget 3D films have been filled with divergence, as they’ve made the cardinal mistake of falling in love with the image on a video monitor when it was really intended for a cinema display. They’re dialling the depth to within an inch of its life and getting everything they wanted on the small monitor, so their camera settings are out of whack. It can’t be fixed in post – unless you just abandon [the image for] one eye and convert 3D from the other.”
These were just a few of the common faults covered in our brief time with Buzz, and it was clear from his honesty about current 3D's shortcomings that there really isn’t a true 3D expert in existence. The people teaching it are still learning while they go, and doing their best to pass that knowledge on. The hope is that viewers will benefit from gradually better 3D – and, hopefully, fewer headaches.
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stage for devaluing the life of an Indo-Caribbean woman and justifying the brutality of her murder. The "jealous" husband, the "crimes of passion," and the proxy language of inevitability continues to perpetuate the mistreatment, abuse and murders of Indo-Caribbean while refusing to name its core: a pernicious cycle of victim blaming with culturally justifiable rape culture at its core.
The value of a slain Indo-Caribbean woman's life is calculated by the moral barometer of her chastity. The insinuation of infidelity tinged within the same headlines bearing her obituary. Rape culture cross-examines its victims with the familiar compendium of questions: Was she cheating? Was she a good woman? An obedient wife?
The break in silence awaiting these answers perpetuates the disgusting cultural normalization of gender-based violence against Indo-Caribbean women -- in the form of domestic violence, sexual violence, child molestation, marital rape and abuse that is tragically common. Cultural and religious complicity conspire within the jurisdiction of patriarchy to absolve the slaughter of Indo-Caribbean women.
A few years after co-founding Jahajee Sisters, the first organization in the U.S. for Indo-Caribbean women committed to ending-gender based violence, a young male community leader in Richmond Hill asked me what we planned to do about a certain situation: Women were experiencing sexual harassment walking home from the subway station at night.
What did "we" plan to do?
Instead of teaching men not to rape, society teaches women how to dress. Instead of teaching men to stop sexual harassment, society teaches women safety strategies for walking home late at night. Instead of questioning the socially acceptable censuring of women's bodies and women's sexualities, society polices and shames women, prescribing the acceptable limits of their mobility -- and essentially, their existence. The onus of sexual violence must not solely reside with those whom it impacts.
Gender-based violence further manifests in the blatant misogyny and ignorance of criticizing a "woman who does not leave" an abusive relationship -- relying on blaming the survivor of violence rather than the act of violence itself. Gender-based violence is not only the policing and desire control of women's bodies, but the desire to control the gender roles and gender identity of others. Individuals who do not conform to the rigidly boxed categories of gender are subject to violence and harassment. LGBT individuals who are transgender and gender non-binary are disproportionately targeted, assaulted and murdered for their gender identity.
Since 2007, Jahajee Sisters has organized within the Indo-Caribbean community to end-gender based violence — yet the fight is not ours alone. Building a social justice movement demands more engagement than the individuals impacted by the oppression it seeks to fight. An Indo-Caribbean community invested in its people must be challenged to interrogate the cultural and religious norms and the violent narratives that condone the regulation and policing of the bodies of women, and uphold the violent oppression of gender roles. Community-based interventions that rely on familial, religious and community networks for support and accountability are absolutely necessary to disrupting these cycles of violence. Conscious resistance to cultural and religious norms perpetuating violence and abuse must become the mandate within Indo-Caribbean communities. A community founded upon the bonded labor of empire and historical disenfranchisement must never grow accustomed to the normalization of brutality.Image copyright AFP Image caption The WHO says more than 200,000 people could potentially be affected as the virus advances
More than $1bn (£618m) is needed to fight the West Africa Ebola outbreak, which is a health crisis "unparalleled in modern times", UN officials say.
The spread of the disease means the funds needed to fight the outbreak have increased ten-fold in the past month, the UN's Ebola co-ordinator said.
Ebola has killed 2,461 people this year, about half of those infected, the World Health Organization said.
There has been criticism of the slow international response to the epidemic.
The outbreak began in Guinea before spreading to its neighbours Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Nigeria and Senegal have reported some cases, but seem to have contained the transmission of the virus.
'Massive surge needed'
The window of opportunity to contain this outbreak is closing Joanne Liu, MSF president
"We requested about $100m a month ago and now it is $1bn, so our ask has gone up 10 times in a month," the UN's Ebola co-ordinator, David Nabarro, told a briefing in Geneva.
"Because of the way the outbreak is advancing, the level of surge we need to do is unprecedented, it is massive."
At the same briefing, World Health Organization (WHO) deputy head Bruce Aylward announced the latest Ebola case figures.
The virus has infected at least 4,985 people so far, with about half of those infected dying.
"Quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen, this health crisis we're facing is unparalleled in modern times. We don't know where the numbers are going on this," he said.
When the WHO had said it needed the capacity to manage 20,000 cases two weeks ago "that seemed like a lot", Dr Aylward said.
"That does not seem like a lot today," he added.
US President Barack Obama is expected to announce plans to send 3,000 American troops to Liberia, one of countries worst affected by the outbreak, to help fight the virus.
Officials say the troops will build 17 health care centres, each with 100 beds, deliver health care kits to hundreds of thousands of homes and help train 500 health workers a week.
Infected 'turned away'
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) called on other countries to follow the US lead as the response to outbreak continued to fall "dangerously behind".
At the Ebola briefing, MSF president Joanne Liu said there needed to be "co-ordinated response, organised and executed under clear chain of command".
"The window of opportunity to contain this outbreak is closing," she said. "We need more countries to stand up, we need greater deployment, and we need it now."
Image copyright AFP Image caption The WHO says the most urgent immediate need is more medical staff
Sick people in the Liberian capital were banging on the doors of MSF Ebola care centres desperate for a safe place in which to be isolated, she said.
"Tragically, our teams must turn them away; we simply do not have enough capacity for them," Dr Liu said.
"Highly infectious people are forced to return home, only to infect others and continue the spread of this deadly virus. All for a lack of international response."
Earlier on Tuesday, the WHO welcomed China's pledge to send a mobile laboratory team to Sierra Leone, which will include epidemiologists, clinicians and nurses.
"The most urgent immediate need in the Ebola response is for more medical staff," WHO head Margaret Chan said in the statement.
Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Image copyright SPL
Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage
Spread by body fluids, such as blood and saliva
Current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%
Incubation period is two to 21 days
There is no proven vaccine or cure
'Biological war': A week on the Ebola frontline
Ebola: Mapping the outbreak
How bad can it get?TP Mazembe appoint coach Thierry Froger ahead of CAF Super Cup clash with Mamelodi Sundowns Posted: 15 February 2017 Time: 11:17 Print this article
Mamelodi Sundowns’ CAF Super Cup opponents TP Mazembe will arrive in the country this week with a new coach following the appointment of Frenchman Thierry Froger.
Froger replaces countryman Hubert Velud who has since taken over at Tunisian club Etoile du Sahel after dumping the DR Congo side at the end of last year.
Though Froger is expected to link up with the club in South Africa it is unlikely he will sit on the bench on Saturday evening (19h00) when Mazembe square off with Sundowns at Loftus in the Super Cup.
It is expected that the duo of assistants Pamphile Mihayo Kazembe and David Mwakasu will sit on the bench with Froger watching from the stands.
Froger’s agreement with Mazembe is that he will be in charge until the end of the year and will oversee their CAF Champions League campaign this year.
He has previously been in charge of the Togo national team.
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Article by: Lovemore MoyoChinese hackers are suspected of having interfered with the operation of two US government satellites on four occasions via a ground station, according to a report being prepared for the US Congress.
According to Bloomberg, the draft of a new annual report by the US-China Economic and Security Commission includes the claim that in October 2007 and July 2008 hackers used the connection from a ground station to affect the operation of the Landsat 7 and Terra (EOS AM-1) satellites, which are used for earth observation. The allegation was made by the US air force in a closed briefing.
The commission is concerned that the hack might have been carried out by Chinese government-sponsored hackers trying to found out how vulnerable the satellite control systems were to cyber-attack.
The report, which is due to be released next month, warns: "Access to a satellite's controls could allow an attacker to damage or destroy the satellite. An attacker could also deny or degrade as well as forge or otherwise manipulate the satellite's transmission."
The hacks are believed to have been carried out via a commercial satellite station in Spitsbergen, Norway that the US space agency Nasa uses for data transfers over the open internet. It is one of four used for Landsat 7 control; the others are on American soil.
According to the Landsat 7 handbook, the mission operations centre can send data including orbit changes and manoeuvres. That could potentially mean hackers might be able to send faulty data which could make a satellite enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. That could lead to it burning up, possibly resulting in large pieces landing on Earth at unpredictable locations.
The draft report does not give more detail on the form that the attacks took, and does not directly blame the Chinese government for carrying them out or sponsoring them. But the claims are part of a long-standing pattern in reports from the commission, whose purpose is to monitor and investigate the national security implications of the US's trade with China.
The Landsat 7 satellite saw 12 minutes of "interference" in October 2007; the Terra then suffered two minutes in June 2008. In July 2008 the Landsat 7 had another 12 minutes' interference. Finally in October 2008 the Terra was affected for nine minutes.
In a previous report on China's ability to conduct cyberwar (PDF), the commission noted: "Attacks on vital targets such as an adversary's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems will be largely the responsibility of EW [electronic warfare] and counterspace forces with an array of increasingly sophisticated jamming systems and anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons." At the time, it pointed to China's tests of anti-satellite weapons which could fire electromagnetic pulses at orbiting systems, destroying them.
The Chinese government has repeatedly been accused of being behind hacking attacks against western companies and infrastructure, as well as the hacking of dissident groups. It has consistently denied the accusations.It’s been a slow and steady march toward the unbundling of cable TV packages. Americans’ desire for individual choice will gradually demolish their individual choices, as the ability to pick and chose which channels to pay for has long been seen as a death knell (or at least a debilitating injury) for the lesser-watched channels on your TiVo listings. But which channels would suffer the most? Obviously, we all know nobody watches Fuse. (Even Billy On The Street is jumping ship.) But as it turns out, a certain other sports channel also isn’t the unstoppable juggernaut we all thought it was. Variety reports that a new survey, listing which channels customers would pay for if they could pick and choose, rates ESPN much lower than anticipated.
According to Digitalsmiths, a TiVo-owned research company, only 35.7 percent of cable subscribers would want ESPN—the smarmy jock of channels— added to their personal lineup of handpicked stations. That ranks the cable network 20th in the survey, behind Discovery Channel at 62 percent, History Channel at 57 percent, and—most sunnily—behind the Weather Channel’s 39.9 percent. Once more, it appears jocks’ arrogant belief that everyone loves them is undercut by the reality of most folks being kind of annoyed by them.
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Despite the harm it will do to many of the channels lower in the rankings, the financial benefit for customers is obvious. Currently, the largest percentage of subscribers pay an average of $125 a month, with a good portion paying upwards of $150 monthly. The study makes the case that consumers’ ideal compilation of channels—approximately 17 total—would run them an average of $38 a month. That’s a good three to four extra bottles of whiskey we could be drinking every 30 days!
Although, it’s worth noting the unsurprising fact that a study done by a TiVo-owned company is reporting findings favorable to TiVo’s business plan of catering to cord-cutters in the future, especially now that they’ve acquired the TV streaming service Aereo, and want to relaunch it. And frankly, just because we didn’t include Animal Planet in our initial list of preferred channels doesn’t mean we don’t want to binge-watch Too Cute! every now and then.Python moratorium and the future of 2.x
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On November 9, Python BDFL ("Benevolent Dictator For Life") Guido van Rossum froze the Python language's syntax and grammar in their current form for at least the upcoming Python 2.7 and 3.2 releases, and possibly for longer still. This move is intended to slow things down, giving the larger Python community a chance to catch up with the latest Python 3.x releases.
The idea of freezing the language was originally proposed by Van Rossum in October on the python-ideas list and discussed on LWN. There are three primary arguments for the freeze, all described in the original proposal:
Letting alternate implementations, IDEs, catch up: [...] frequent changes to the language cause pain for implementors of alternate implementations (Jython, IronPython, PyPy, and others probably already in the wings) at little or no benefit to the average user [...]
Encouraging the transition to Python 3.x: The main goal of the Python development community at this point should be to get widespread acceptance of Python 3000. There is tons of work to be done before we can be comfortable about Python 3.x, mostly in creating solid ports of those 3rd party libraries that must be ported to Py3k before other libraries and applications can be ported.
Redirecting effort to the standard library and the CPython implementation: Development in the standard library is valuable and much less likely to be a stumbling block for alternate language implementations. I also want to exclude details of the CPython implementation, including the C API from being completely frozen — for example, if someone came up with (otherwise acceptable) changes to get rid of the [Global Interpreter Lock] I wouldn't object.
The proposal turned into PEP 3003, "Python Language Moratorium", which is more definite about what cannot be changed:
New built-ins
Language syntax
The grammar file essentially becomes immutable apart from ambiguity fixes.
The grammar file essentially becomes immutable apart from ambiguity fixes. General language semantics
The language operates as-is with only specific exemptions...
The language operates as-is with only specific exemptions... New __future__ imports
These are explicitly forbidden, as they effectively change the language syntax and/or semantics (albeit using a compiler directive).
Adding a new method to a built-in type will still be open for consideration, and so is changing language semantics that turn out to be ambiguous or difficult to implement. Python's C API can be changed in any way that doesn't impose grammar or semantic changes, and the modules in the standard library are still fair game for improvement.
The duration of the freeze is given in the PEP as "a period of at least two years from the release of Python 3.1." Python 3.1 was released on June 27 2009, so the freeze would extend until at least June 2011. Van Rossum later clarified the duration on python-dev, writing "In particular, the moratorium would include Python 3.2 (to be released 18-24 months after 3.1) but (unless explicitly extended) allow Python 3.3 to once again include language changes."
Most responses to the moratorium idea were favorable, but those who had objections felt those objections very strongly. Steven D'Aprano wrote:
A moratorium isn't cost-free. With the back-end free to change, patches will go stale over 2+ years. People will lose interest or otherwise move on. Those with good ideas but little patience will be discouraged. I fully expect that, human nature being as it is, those proposing a change, good or bad, will be told not to bother wasting their time, there's a moratorium on at least as often as they'll be encouraged to bide their time while the moratorium is on. A moratorium turns Python's conservativeness up to 11. If Python already has a reputation for being conservative in the features it accepts — and I think it does — then a moratorium risks giving the impression that Python has become the language of choice for old guys sitting on their porch yelling at the damn kids to get off the lawn. That's a plus for Cobol. I don't think it is a plus for Python.
The 2-to-3 transition
One of the reasons for the moratorium is the developers' increasing concern at the slow speed of the user community's transition away from Python 2.x. The moratorium thread led to a larger discussion of where Python 3.x stands.
Progress on the transition can be roughly measured by looking at the third-party packages available for Python 3.x. Only about 100 of the 8000 packages listed on the Python Package Index claim to be compatible with Python 3, and many significant packages have not yet been ported (Numeric Python, MySQLdb, PyGTk), making it impossible for users to port their in-house code or application. Few Linux distributions have even packaged a Python 3.x release yet.
For the Python development community, it's tempting to nudge the users toward Python 3 by discouraging them from using Python 2. The Python developers have been dividing their attention between the 2.x and 3.x branches for a few years now, and a significant number of them would like to refocus their attention on a single branch. Given the slow uptake of Python 3, though, it's difficult to know when Python 2 development can stop. The primary suggestions in the recent discussion were:
Declare Python 2.6 the last 2.x release. Declare Python 2.7 the last 2.x release. After Python 2.7, continue with a few more releases (2.8, 2.9, etc.). Declare the 3.x branch an experimental version, call it dead, and begin back-porting features to the 2.x branch.
Abandoning the 3.x branch had very few supporters. Retroactively declaring 2.6 the final release was also not popular, because people have been continuing to apply and backport improvements on the assumption that there was going to be a 2.7 release.
As Skip Montanaro phrased it:
2.6.0 was released over a year ago and there has been no effort to suppress bug fix or feature additions to trunk since then. If you call 2.6 "the end of 2.x" you'll have wasted a year of work on 2.7 with about a month to go before the first 2.7 alpha release. If you want to accelerate release of 2.7 (fewer alphas, compressed schedule, etc) that's fine, but I don't think you can turn back the clock at this point and decree that 2.7 is dead.
A significant amount of work has already been committed to the 2.7 branch, as can be seen by reading "What's New in Python 2.7" or the more detailed NEWS file. New features include an ordered dictionary type, support for using multiple context managers in a single with statement, more accurate numeric conversions and printing, and several features backported from Python 3.1.
Clearly a 2.7 release will happen, and manager Benjamin Peterson's draft release schedule projects a 2.7 final release in June 2010. There's no clear consensus on whether to continue making further releases after 2.7. Post-2.7 releases could continue to bring 2.x and 3.x into closer compatibility and improve porting tools such as the 2to3 script, while keeping existing 2.x users happy with bugfixes and a few new features, but this work does cost effort and time. Brett Cannon stated his case for calling an end with 2.7:
[...] I think a decent number of us no longer want to maintain the 2.x series. Honestly, if we go past 2.7 I am simply going to stop backporting features and bug fixes. It's just too much work keeping so many branches fixed.
Raymond Hettinger argued that imposing an end-of-life is unpleasant for users:
I do not buy into the several premises that have arisen in this thread. [First premise:] For 3.x to succeed, something bad has to happen to 2.x. (which in my book translates to intentionally harming 2.x users, either through neglect or force, in order to bait them into switching to 3.x).
Hettinger is unmoved by the argument that maintaining 2.x takes up a lot of time, arguing that backporting a feature is relatively quick compared to the time required to implement it in the first place. He's also concerned that 3.x still needs more polishing, and concludes:
In all these matters, I think the users should get a vote. And that vote should be cast with their decision to stay with 2.x, or switch to 3.x, or try to support both.
Assessment
Declaring such a long-term freeze on the language's evolution is a surprising step, and not one that developer groups often choose. Languages defined by an official standard, such as C, C++, or Lisp, are forced to evolve very slowly because of the slow standardization process, but Python is not so minutely specified. D'Aprano makes a good point that the developers are already pretty conservative; most suggestions for language changes are rejected. On the other hand, switching to Python 3.x is a big jump for users and book authors; temporarily halting further evolution may at least give them the sense they're not aiming for a constantly shifting target.
It's probably premature to call the transition to Python 3.x a failure, or even behind schedule. These transitions invariably take a lot of time and proceed slowly. Many Linux distributions have adopted Python for writing their administrative tools, making the interpreter critical to the release process. Distribution maintainers will therefore be very conservative about upgrading the Python version. It's a chicken-and-egg problem; third-party developers who stick to their distribution's packages can't use Python 3 yet, which means they don't port their code to Python 3, which gives distributions little incentive to package it. Eventually the community will switch, but it'll take a few years. The most helpful course for the Python developers is probably to demonstrate and document how applications can be ported to Python 3, as Martin von Löwis has done by experimentally porting Django to Python 3.x, and where possible get the resulting patches accepted by upstream.
It remains to be seen if a volunteer development group's efforts can be successfully redirected by declaring certain lines of development to be unwelcome. Volunteers want to work on tasks that are interesting, or amusing, or relevant to their own projects. The moratorium may lead to a perception that Python development is stalled, and developers may start up DVCS-hosted branches of Python that contain more radical changes, or move on to some other project that's more entertaining.
The nearest parallel might be the code freezes for versions 2.4 and 2.6 of the Linux kernel. The code freeze for Linux 2.4 was declared in December 1999, and 2.5.0 didn't open for new development until November 2001, nearly two years later. The long duration of the freeze led to a lot of pressure to bend the rules to get in one more feature or driver update.
Python's code freeze will be of similar length and there may be similar pressure to slip in just one little change. However, freezing the language still leaves lots of room to improve the standard library and the CPython implementation, enhance developer tools, and explore other areas not covered by the moratorium. Perhaps these tasks are enough of an outlet for creative energy to keep people interested.James S. Henry is an economist, lawyer and investigative journalist, and former chief economist at McKinsey & Co. He is an Edward R. Murrow Fellow at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and INSPIRE Fellow at its Institute for Global Leadership.
“There was just a Price Waterhouse conference on this bill yesterday (Nov. 6th) behind closed doors. I heard all about it because I had a friend who went there. And he said, these people have already figured out how to game this new Trump plan, so it will make it even more full of loopholes than the tax system already is… They’re sort of chuckling among themselves at what a gigantic giveaway this would be with their clients sitting there in the room, slapping each other on the back.” James S. Henry: economist, lawyer, investigative journalist, and former chief economist at McKinsey & CoVancouver man, Brice Royer, is selling something amazing.
In the second most expensive city in the world, what Royer is selling is his most prized possession and one of the hottest commodities in the world – unconditional love.
The Vancouverite posted an ad in the real estate section of Craigslist on March 12, advertising unconditional love for $0. He did not expect for people to take him seriously, but in a few short days, he’d received numerous offers and over one million views.
Take a read through Royer’s advertisement below:
Hello, I am selling unconditional love for $0.
Infinite square feet lot. Includes refreshing air, sunshine, the Earth, beautiful mountains and the ocean. A stunning ‘classic’ heritage made 4.5 billion years ago.
Address: Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.
Available now to serious buyers. Perfect for the first-time buyer and experienced investors feeling empty and trapped with stress and pressure to maximize Return on Investment because of family and stakeholders expectation.
HISTORY:
I received it a long time ago when I was born. I received the gift of life from my parents, the sun, the water, the Earth, the air, a smile, a hug, a helping hand, without being asked anything in return. I didn’t earn any of them. They belong to public domain, the commons, “Mother Earth” or God, if you’re religious.
At some point, my ancestors were afraid and decided to own land that once belonged to everyone, sell services that were once freely given, and even own humans through debt. Since it was claimed or stolen by those who made the laws themselves with a series of ‘legitimate’ transfers, then any law that enforces private ownership is perpetuating a crime. Not all laws are morally just. Only recently, slavery was legal and women weren’t allowed to vote. Why pay for something that was stolen from you? They made a mistake. I’m sorry. Let’s start fresh with this new sale.
Although I am only one human and my time and resources are limited, my soul and the intention of love is eternal, and so is yours… and I would like us to share that experience.
PAYMENT:
I don’t accept cheques or mortgage payments, only cash payments of $0. You are also welcome to re-sale it for $0. But I must warn you… it will multiply once you do.
CONTACT ME:
If you would like to join this incredible investing opportunity, you can email me by clicking on ‘reply’ to this post or visiting gifteconomy.ca
Thank you,
The seller
P.S: Yes, I am for real. If you’d like to learn more about me, the seller, you can read this article on the Vancouver Sun. I’m a cancer patient who believes that love can heal me. http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/06/09/unemployed-man-offers-to-pay-strangers-rent-for-a-year/
PPS: If you are disappointed and missed out on the $51 million Point Grey mansion recently sold in Vancouver, then you are in luck. What I am offering is priceless.
REAL ESTATE AGENTS:
Unconditional love is in high demand in today’s Vanvouver housing market. I will give you a 100% commission of $0.00 on the sale. Please inquire for details!
PROGRESS UPDATE:
12 March: Two prospect buyers contacted me.
13: A real estate agent is interested in representing this sale. One new prospect.
14: 3 new buyers.
15: An organization called Sustainable Human shared this to their 1 million fans… many new buyers.. Thank you!
16: It looks like it went viral. Here’s one of a few articles people emailed : “Craigslist Ad for ‘Unconditional Love’ Reaches Over 1 Million Views. Read more at http://expandedconsciousness.com/2015/03/15/craigslist-ad-unconditional-love-reaches-1-million-views/#EIFVWzDdzh2qHmVD.99”
17: More social media shares… many emails…people tell me they heard of this on Film for Action (http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-craigslist-property-ad-that-got-more-than-a-million-views-in-a-couple-of-days/), Gawker, Nature and environmental websites, and more… Some people have re-posted this ad in their city, like this one (http://burlington.craigslist.org/reo/ html) Very beautiful stories. So much love.
Comments from viewers and buyers:
“The best real estate ad ever in Vancouver.”
“Brilliant!”
“Hi, I have been suffering from severe depression and anxiety for years. Your ad and the article about your gift circle gave me something I haven’t felt for what feels in forever… Hope.”
“Greetings. I am interested in investing ALL of my wealth, totalling $0.00, and would ask that you offer any real estate of my surplus $0.00 to those less fortunate.
“Thank you for the smiles. <3 I am hunting for a home, dreaming that one might be affordable…I loved reading your ad. It was reassuring to my soul.”
…More comments
“Thank you, bless you!!! YOU have sent out the best medicine to us all.. ”
“This is the best sale in a human history...”
“WE need this. My husband and I are fighting separate battles against depression, anxiety, addiction, and the everyday injustices of immoral lawmakers. We may lose our home.”
“Is it a dream? your ad, if its for real, made me cry out of emotion, since I believe is the way to return to our healthy connection with mother Earth and ourselves, as a human community with relationships anchored in Love, no more fear. ”
From a 14 year old: “I was actually talking to my sister recently, and she asked about my iPod Touch that I had stopped using, because I’ve switched to my mum’s old iPhone 4s, so I asked “what were you planning to do with it?”, and she told me about this gifting circle and little about your story. I was beyond interested. I mean, what kind of 14 year old isn’t interested in cool stuff, and being able to chip into the city she lives in?”
Frequently Asked Questions:
“Why are you selling the Earth for $0?”
I’m simply correcting the housing bubble. The Earth’s asking price for its abundant gifts to us has always been $0.00.
“Do I have to be a good person to deserve this gift?”
No. The Sun rises on both the evil and the good, the Earth’s rain falls on both the righteous and the wrongdoers.. That’s the Sun’s and the Earth’s unconditional love to all of us. We didn’t earn any of it.
“What does free property have anything to do with unconditional love?”
Everything. Here’s a beautiful poem that may answer your question: “”Even After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky.” – Hafiz, A persian poet of the 1300.
“Can you do that? Is this legal? What if the government evicts me?”
Since I’m returning the Earth which rightfully belongs to everyone, then it makes all previous legal title claims over the Earth invalid. Love is rebellious and revolutionary.
Please, live and eat freely on this Earth wherever you choose as long as it does not cause harm to others. If your government enforces an eviction based on outdated and immoral private property laws, which ignored the formal laws of the commons and of indigenous people, then you can simply show them this “new” title deed of the Earth’s unconditional love which I have sold to you for $0.00. If they refuse to accept it, you may wish to take them to their own Supreme Court to change this law, and who knows, you may eventually win because what I stated above is based on historical facts.
“Am I alone in buying unconditional love? Who else is doing this?”
You’re not alone. For example, there is the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth passed by the President of Bolivia. Indigenous cultures and ancient cultures lived this way. If you’re Christian, perhaps you could use your Canadian rights of religious freedom to live on the Earth based on Acts 2 and 4. “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” This is not legal advice. Please consult your lawyer. Whatever path you decide is up to you!
The truth of the matter is simple. Love, the Earth, the Sun and the stars are not for sale and they cannot be owned for any other price than $0.00.
Can I repost this ad in my city? Can I translate it in my language? Can I share, copy, re-sale, edit, etc on my blog, news website, etc?
Yes. My public content is un-copyrighted, no rights reserved, and free to use, mix, etc, by all life forms including cats… I claim no ownership to my thoughts or pictures because they’re not ‘mine’ to own. I’m not a possessive guy, unless it’s chocolate cookies… Use your own name if you wish, no need to credit me. There’s an infinite amount of unconditional love, so feel free to look for buyers and re-sell it. The Earth’s unconditional love is yours. Why not post it in New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney, etc? Go for it.
“Would you accept £0 as well?”
Yes, I accept all foreign currency as long as it’s 0.00.
“What interesting emails have you received since posting this ad?”
Someone sent me an inspiring letter from the Chief of Seattle in the 1800. I found this inspiring and would like to share it with you: “The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? … One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”
“This is amazing. How can I find out what happens with this sale?”
This ad will expire in 45 days due to Craigslist’s rules. But that’s okay because Love is eternal. And when I have time I’ll be posting updates on my Facebook if you want to follow: https://www.facebook.com/brown.rice.12Reading Time: 2 minutes
30 percent of 10, 532 fear to express “Happiness”
30 % of Chandigarh Youth are Cherophobic
3,160 boys and girls claimed that they are suffering with this fear regularly.
A survey by Chandigarh PGIMER in 2013.
Survey done on 10,532 girls and Boys aged 23-46 years.
M4PNews|Chandigarh:
This may sound weird but it is the reality that They fear #Happiness in their lives. It is #Cherophobia. Sadness do not fear youngsters but Happiness do. Recently, Chandigarh was ranked the Happiest city of the world. There is an eye opening hidden fact here. Youngsters here fear Happiness. As per experts from the Psychiatry departments this fear is nothing but a Phobia called Cherophobia.
Sample Size
Out of 10, 532 girls and boys ages between 23-46 years. They fear expressing Happiness, joyness before anyone because it may lead to some tragic accident as a result they keep everything in them. Out of these 3,160 boys and girls claimed that they are suffering with this fear regularly. Hence they keep happiness away from them. They often feel nausea, hand shaking, headaches after getting some joyous news. 1860 Boys fear happiness and 1300 Girls claimed the same.
What is #Cherophobia
As per Neuropsychiatrist Dr Arjun Arya, Arya Hospital Neuropsychiatry & Trauma Centre ManiMajra, Cherophobia is a mental state of an individual. Where he/she fears to express his/her happiness presuming a negative/traumatic outcome associated. An exaggerated or irrational fear of gratitude, Aversion to happiness, also called cherophobia or fear of happiness. It is an attitude towards happiness in which individuals may deliberately avoid experiences that invoke positive emotions or happiness
Causes of #Cherophobia
The causes of Cherophobia are found to be more of psychological and environmental (faulty learning or conditioning) as compared to genetic, neurological or biological. There are four major reasons why happiness may be avoided by various people and cultures “believing that being happy will provoke bad things |
Machine Dynamics and Maintenan New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Maintenance Engineering Lucknow. Uttar Pradesh Technical University. Department of Mechanical Engineering New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Department of Applied Mechanical Engineer New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Department of Applied Mechanics New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Department of Mechanical Engineering New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Department to Mechanical Engineering Nagpur. visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology. Department of Metallurgical and Mat New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Physics New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Center for Polymer Science and Engineerin New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Polymer Science New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Centre for Polymer Science and Engineerin New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Centre for Polymer Science New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Rural Development & Technology New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Department of Textile Technology Chennai. Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Department of Engineering New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. Department of Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Aeronautical Engineering Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautical Engineering Chennai. Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Department of Aeronautical Engineering Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. Department of Aeronautical Engineering New Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi. Department of Aeronautical Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Mechanical Engineering Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Aerospace Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Civil Engineering Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-bombay. Department of Aerospace Engineering Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. Department of Mathematics Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Computer Science and Automation Delhi. Indian Institute of Technology-delhi. Department of Applied Mechanics Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Engineering Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. Department of Electrical Engineering Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Engineering Chennai. Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Department of Mechanics Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. Department of Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Applied Mechanics Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Applied Mechanics Mumbai. Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. Department of Mechanical Engineering Kanpur. Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur. Department of Mechanical Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Applied Mathematics Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Automation Kanpur. Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur. Department of Engineering Bangalore. Indian Institute of Science. Department of Electrical Communication Chennai. Indian Institute of Technology-madras. Biomedical Engineering Division Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Civil Engineering Kharagpur. Indian Institute of Technology. Department of Naval Architectural Delhi. Indian InstiKevin Pillar of the Toronto Blue Jays and Kevin Kiermaier of the Tampa Bay Rays are two of the top defensive outfielders in today's game. It seems every other night there is a highlight reel catch made by either of these players. While there are stats such as UZR and DRS to measure a player's defensive value, as of the 2015 season, a new form of evaluation was created.
Statcast measures such items as Route Efficiency, Distance covered, Arm Strength, and other items as well. For a more comprehensive look on how Statcast is used as well as what their metrics mean, click here.
For the purpose of this article, I will use Statcast defensive data to compare Pillar and Kiermaier. Since Statcast is still fairly new, there is not a tremendous amount of data available for each player. For Pillar there are seven plays measured; for Kiermaier there are five plays measured. Keep this mind as the analysis progresses.
Route Efficiency
Route efficiency is how well a fielder gets to the batted ball to make the catch. It is measured in percentage. Pillar and Kiermaier's average route efficiencies are within mere decimal points of each other. The average of Pillar's seven catches is 95.8 to Kiermaier's average of 95.4. When comparing their best routes, Pillar edges Kiermaier 97.9 - 96.6. Since they are separated by decimals, there is no definitive edge to either player in regard to route efficiency, but it is clear there will not be many batted balls Pillar and Kiermaier cannot get thanks to the tremendous routes they take to catch the baseball.
Pillar's best route:
Kiermaier's best route:
Distance Covered
Distance covered is the total distance in feet covered from batted ball contact to fielding the ball. Distance covered is a great way to know how far a player had to run to make the catch, but I am hesitant to compare players because the fielder needs help from the batter hitting the ball a great distance for the fielder to run further. In addition, the size of the outfield can play a role in distance covered - balls that go over the fence don't get caught. Of course, the positioning of the player prior to contact plays a huge role in how far he has to run to catch the batted ball.
Nonetheless, Pillar has an average distance covered greater than Kiermaier's, 89.4 to 78.5. Pillar is helped by the fact he ran 116.8 feet to catch a ball hit by Brandon Guyer last season, so his average is heightened. In terms of who has had to run the furthest to catch batted balls, Pillar made three recorded catches over 90 feet, while Kiermaier made only one.
Pillar's furthest distance:
Kiermaier's furthest distance:
Max Speed
In order to cover all the distance in the outfield, particularly CF, you must be fast. Another great feature of Statcast is the ability to track the maximum speed a player ran after the batted ball. It is measured in mph.
Similar to route efficiency, Pillar and Kiermaier are very close in their average max speed. Pillar's max speed was measured six times, while Kiermaier's max speed was measured three times. Of the recorded plays, Pillar edges Kiermaier 18.4 mph to 18 mph. Once again, they are just about even in this aspect. Even their respective highest max speed was similar with Pillar's 19.9 and Kiermaier's 19.6.
Pillar's greatest max speed is the same play from distance covered. Kiermaier's greatest max speed is the same play from route efficiency.
First Step
Perhaps the most important aspect of making a catch is the first step of a fielder. A quick first step can be all the difference in the world between making and not making the catch. There are three recorded first steps for each player, and their averages are not close. Pillar's average first step is 0.28 seconds compared to 0.63 seconds for Kiermaier. A 0.28 first step time is incredible and less than half of Kiermaier's average.
Pillar's best 1st step:
Kiermaier's best 1st step is the same play from route efficiency and max speed.
Unfortunately, in terms of arm strength and throwing distance there are no plays measured for Kevin Pillar as of now, but there is one for Kevin Kiermaier from October 1st, 2015. His arm strength was 100.4 mph and he threw the baseball 232.8 feet.
Based on the above Statcast data, we can get a better analysis of Kevin Pillar and Kevin Kiermaier from a defensive standpoint. While there are some areas where they are just about even, I would give an edge to Kevin Pillar over Kevin Kiermaier defensively. The first step of Kevin Pillar's, according to Statcast, is remarkably better than Kevin Kiermaier's, which can make a huge difference. More data could change everything here, however, so it is important to note that each player could improve or get worse in each metric over time as a reflection of their true talent.
...
Carl Triano is a contributor at Beyond the Box Score.An old saying among farmers is that you want your corn to be “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” That adage doesn’t necessarily apply to Colorado’s newest cash crop: industrial hemp. Unsurprisingly, considering the ubiquitous nickname given to hemp’s cousin marijuana, the plant grows like a weed.
“It’s up to my waist at this point,” said Ben Holmes, owner of Centennial Seeds in Lafayette, Colorado.
Depending on the variety, hemp is grown tall and spindly for its tensile fiber, or squat and seed-laden for its buttery oils. This is the first growing season where the state allowed farmers to register to put hemp in the ground.
Proponents of hemp are quick to praise the plant’s many uses and its potential as a boon to Great Plains farmers. It’s also gaining considerable interest from pharmaceutical companies, Holmes said. Researchers can extract cannabidiol, known colloquially as CBD oil, from hemp plants for medical purposes. It’s being used to treat epileptic children in Colorado and elsewhere.
Holmes procured his seed from overseas sources and didn’t know how it would perform when he planted it.
“Everybody asks me, ‘Well, what’s your yield? And when’s your harvest date?’ We have no idea. These are just unknown varieties,” Holmes said.
Many farmers have been snagged by a seed shortage. Drug enforcement officials have intercepted hemp seed shipments to the U.S. The plant is still classified as a controlled substance, despite an endorsement in the most recent Farm Bill.
More than 200 hemp growers registered with Colorado’s Department of Agriculture earlier in 2014, with plans to grow on more than 1,600 acres throughout the state.After quite a long wait, the new entry of the Battlefield series, called Battlefield 1, has finally been revealed. Shortly after the premiere event, more details have emerged on some of the game’s features and today, even more has come on it from a somewhat reliable source.
Chinese player vaultboyfrank, who has attended the premier event, has revealed some new details on Battlefield 1’s multiplayer factions, weapons, destruction features and more. Reddit user CHINAMAN008 has provided a translation of what vaultyboyfrank has revealed.
There will be four factions available in multiplayer mode.
Bolt action rifle will not serve as primary weapon.
Artillery support can launch toxic gas rounds.
Building made of wood will catch fire and burn. And the building that caught fire will collapse after some time.
You can control battleships like you did in Battlefield 1942.
Only pilot class gets access to parachutes.
Flamethrower will be battle pickups like what we have in Battlefield 4.
As the source is pretty much an anonymous one, we must take it with a grain of salt until more comes in. At the same time, this user has proven to be reliable, correctly revealing some Battlefield 1 details before their confirmation, so there’s the chance that today’s information is actually legit.
Yesterday, EA and DICE have hosted a Battlefield 1 Q&A session on Twitter, confirming that the game will feature a server browser feature. This is definitely a good news for those who don’t exactly like the matchmaking system of many modern games.
Battlefield 1 will release this October in all regions on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. We will let you know more about DICE’s highly anticipated first person shooter as soon as possible, so stay tuned to Wccftech for all the latest gaming news.Financial Review of Magic Origins: Part 3
by SaffronOlive // Jul 04, 2015 Tweet
finance magic origins finance review
Over the past week we've been working out way through a review of Magic Origins. Monday we covered the first week of spoilers in part one of the series and yesterday we reviewed the red, white, blue, and green cards in part two. Today in the conclusion of the series we are going to talk about the black cards and reprints before finishing up with a fun little EV exercise to double-check the price predictions from all three articles. Like last time, our conversation today will focus on the rares and mythics from the set. We'll talk about their place in the format, discuss a few test deck lists and all that fun stuff, but more importantly we'll be exploring the financial ramifications of the cards. In particular we will be looking at the chance a card has of spiking at the upcoming Pro Tour Magic Origins (this is roughly a measure of short term potential) as well as a projected six-month price.
Erebos's Titan
Every time a new set is spoiled I browse through Gatherer in hopes of making Gray Merchant of Asphodel good one more time before he rotates. So far I've been disappointed — there simply have not been enough black mana symbols in standard; but with Magic Origins, things seem to be changing. Not only do we get Titan of Erebos, but also Despoiler of Souls, Liliana, Heretical Healer and Languish. Plus Thoughtseize, Whip of Erebos and Hero's Downfall are still legal for a few more months, so it just might be time for a Mono-Black Devotion reunion tour. While the lack of Underworld Connections might be a deal breaker and we definitely do not have a Pack Rat, I plan on testing something like this:
Whether or not a revival of Mono-Black Devotion is possible, Erebos's Titan reminds me a little bit of Phyrexian Obliterator (the only other black 5/5 for four without a drawback), not because their abilities are similar (because they are not), but because they are both extremely powerful cards if you can cast them. Thankfully, for the next three months we still have Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in the format which solves the triple-black problem on its own. Being a 5/5 is a pretty big deal in our current format since it not only stonewalls Siege Rhino and Tasigur, the Golden Fang, but also dodges Languish. It seems unlikely that indestructibility will come up all that often in standard — there are just too many creatures floating around these days, although against something like UB Control it will be devastating. The second ability also shouldn't be that hard to trigger in most matchups. Not only does Deathmist Raptor and Den Protector (targeting a creature) get the job done, but so do Haven of the Spirit Dragon, delve, and Whip of Erebos. While the post-rotation future of Erebos's Titan is somewhat cloudy, he seems like one of the best Origins mythics for the next few months.
Chance of Pro-Tour Spike: Medium
Six Month Price: $3-$7
Despoiler of Souls
[
[Despoiler of Souls]] might walk, talk and come back from the graveyard like Ichorid, but an Ichorid this is not. Costing two mana and two creatures to buy it back from the graveyard kills any potential this card might have in legacy Dredge, and I'm not even sure it's good enough for modern Dredgevine. Getting back Bloodghast and even Gravecrawler works because the commitment is so low, but with Despoiler of Souls you are likely to run out of resources quite quickly.
As I mentioned a moment ago, I'm currently most interested in the horror for its two black mana symbols in Mono-Black Devotion, but there might be potential in other decks as well. Mostly likely this would have to be some sort of black aggro deck. While white gets a 3/1 for two mana almost every set, this combination of stats is actually extremely rare on black creatures. In fact, Despoiler of Souls is only the second ever printed after Oona's Prowler, which had the downside of letting your opponent discard cards to trim its power (plus, life was hard as a one-toughness fliers in a Bitterblossom format). As a result, we don't have a very good foundation for our evaluation. Sure, it's worse than Ichorid and Bloodghast, but maybe having three power and being semi-recursive is good enough? Only time will tell for sure, but at only $0.99 I'm willing to pick up a few just on the off-chance that it finds a home, in which case being $3 or more isn't out of the question.
Chance of Pro Tour Spike: High(ish)
Six Month Price: $1-$3
Tainted Remedy
Tainted Remedy is one of my favorite long-term casual cards in all of Magic Origins. Kitchen table players love weird effects like this, especially when they involve life gain (see: Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood). Plus Rain of Gore is pushing $5 on extremely fringe modern play as a counter to Soul Sisters and Tainted Remedy is mostly better since it deals with lifelink as well as other forms of life gain and doesn't care who controls the life gain effect.
Tainted Remedy also allows for a modern version of The Cure, a tier 9 legacy life gain combo deck. With a Tainted Remedy on the battlefield, Beacon of Immortality becomes an instant win combo, Pulse of the Fields becomes Flame Javelin, and Wall of Shards becomes an aggressively costed finisher. You can even transmute for Tainted Remedy with Dimir Machinations, Drift of Phantasms or Perplex. This deck probably won't be great since it is relativity slow and gets wrecked by Abrupt Decay in response to Beacon of Immortality, but it is janky enough that someone will try it. I'll be waiting for Tainted Remedy to hit bottom (hopefully as a bulk are) in a few months and stocking up on as many copies as possible for the long-term casual hold.
Chance of Pro Tour Spike: Low
Six Month Price: $0.50-$1.50
Infinite Obliteration
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
So what we have here is a cheaper but less-powerful Cranial Extraction/Slaughter Games/Stain the Mind since it only hits creatures and costs double-black. What do these cards have in common (with the exception of Cranial Extraction when it was first printed)? They we all worth $1 or less during their time in standard. The thing is, these cards are not very good unless your deck is worried about a very specific card that you have to answer or else you lose the game. For example, you're playing standard Jund and you have a great matchups against Esper Control unless they start chaining together Sphinx's Revelations. Or you're are playing Elves and you just can't beat a Wrath of God. These are the instances where you want this type of effect.
What you don't want to do with these cards is just hit some random creature "for value." Sure you can exile four copies of Siege Rhino against Abzan, but guess what? You're just going to lose to Tasigur, the Golden Fang or Deathmist Raptor. Even worse, what if your opponent does not have any copies of Siege Rhino in their hand? You are paying three mana and a card to take away the possibility that your opponent might draw a copy at some point in the future. Probably the best thing you can do with this card in standard at the moment is to take all four copies of Dragonlord Ojutai away from your Esper Dragons, leaving them with one or two Silumgar, the Drifting Deaths to try to win the game. Even here, in the absolute best case scenario, I'm not sure this is worth the price of a card; maybe as a one-of out of the sideboard, but that's about it. The fact that this card is pre-selling for over $3 boggles my mind.
Chance of Pro Tour Spike: Low
Six Month Price: $0.50-$1.00
Priest of the Blood Rite
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
Seven power and toughness, five of it evasive, split across two bodies is a pretty good deal for five mana. As we have been talking about, five seems to be the key number for toughness in the upcoming standard format. Unfortunately, just having good stats isn't always enough anymore. Sidisi, Undead Vizier has a very impressive body and a relevant ability, but still hasn't managed to break her way into the format in any meaningful way. I'm just not sure what a Priest of the Blood Rite deck would look like, or if one even exists. This could change in the future, but my initial feelings are that the cleric will fall into the all too common "powerful but underplayed" category of standard rares.
Chance of Pro Tour Spike: Low
Six Month Price: $0.50-$1.00
Graveblade Marauder
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
Graveblade Marauder has a potentially powerful combination of stats and abilities, although based on the performance of Master of Cruelties, I don't have high hopes for standard playability. I'm not sure Mono-Black Warriors wants him since he isn't all that aggressively costed until your graveyard is full of creatures, and even then getting through combat damage is not a given. This said, having a three mana creature that trades with everything is pretty solid, so if there is a defensive deck that really wants a Horned Turtle, Graveblade Marauder is a good one. I'm not expecting much, but I'm also not willing to write him off completely; Graveblade Marauder could be very strong in a specific deck in the right meta.
Chance of Pro Tour Spike: Medium
Six Month Price: $1-$2
Reprints
$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
$ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00 $ 0.00
Shivan Reef and the other enemy painlands return for the second core set in a row. During the M15 edition of preparing for rotation, I said the cycle was a hold mostly because the price had already decreased so much that it wasn't worth selling them. This ended up being sage advice because now they will be playable for another year. While there will still be some amount of financial ebb and flow based on what color combinations are most popular over the next year of standard, although seeing highs of near $10 like we did last year is less likely because the supply is significantly higher now. I'd be surprised if any member of the cycle manages to push past the $5 mark this time around.
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
Sigil of the Empty Throne seems absolutely insane in standard, at least until Theros block rotates. While it is typically used as a combo finisher in modern and legacy, in standard, much like Starfield of Nyx, it feels most like a value card/finisher for an enchantment or constellation deck. You do need a critical mass of enchantments to make it good so you can't just jam it in UW Control, but thankfully we are on the tail end of an "enchantment block" so there are ample synergies to build with.
The most obvious use and benefit of Sigil of the Empty Throne is generating value whenever you draw a middling enchantment creature off the top in the late game. A Brain Maggot or Courser of Kruphix is a much better topdeck when it comes along with a 4/4 flying angel. While this is probably the most competitive use of the card, there might be a chance to build a true enchantment control deck with Heliod, God of the Sun, Banishing Light, Demonic Pact and the like. Whether or not this deck could be good is beyond me, but grinding out games with enchantments does sound pretty fun.
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
Gaea's Revenge was a sideboard control beater last time around combined with mana from Primeval Titan. It might be able to do something similar against Esper Dragons or UB Control while Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is still in the format, but in most matchups it is going to be less impactful than Dragonlord Atarka. It's pretty embarrassing against Deathmist Raptor and gets chumped by everything, so it seems unlikely to see any main deck play. I'd expect it to float around the bulk/just-above-bulk range unless the format shifts drastically towards control post-rotation.
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
I'm not sure what to make of Knight of the White Orchid in our current standard format. Fetching a plains is fine and the body is on-curve, but it feels strange to have a knight in a format where the tribal synergies are dominated by Warriors and Soldiers. Maybe this will change in Battle for Zendikar, but for now he seems like a value card for non-tribal white weenie strategies. Keep an eye on what Craig Wescoe plays over the next month and especially a Pro Tour Magic Origins. His white decks tend to become the stock lists, so if he plays Knight of the White Orchid, other people will too. However, even if it is adapted as a four-of in a tier one deck, the fact that Knight of the White Orchid is on its third printing severely limits his financial potential. Being anything more than $5 would be a surprise, and trending down to the $1-$2 range wouldn't be that shocking if it does not see much play.
$ 0.00 $ 0.00
Finally, the most exciting of the reprints: Goblin Piledriver. Is the legacy staple (well, former legacy staple; no one plays Goblins in legacy anymore) going to break modern or standard? I honestly have no idea, but judging by the price spikes of several goblin-related cards (Warren Instigator, Cavern of Souls, Aether Vial, Legion Loyalist), people are going to give it their best shot. At first I thought that modern Goblins would just be a worse mono-red deck than Burn, but the more I talk to people about the decks, the more I'm starting to think it might have some real potential in the format.
One thing I'm certain of is that modern Goblins will not be legacy Goblins. In legacy, Goblins is a card advantage deck built around grinding out wins with the the mana denial of Rishadan Port and Wasteland combined with the card advantage generated by the ability to chain together Goblin Ringleaders. In modern, Goblins will almost certainly be an aggro deck built around curving Legion Loyalist/Goblin Guide into Goblin Piledriver/Warren Instigator into Goblin Chieftain/Goblin King. These sort of openings offer a ton of early damage — enough damage that a copy or two of Goblin Grenade/Lightning Bolt can finish off the game.
The advantage of playing Goblins over Zoo or some other multi-color aggro strategy is not only consistency, but the ability to play three or four copies of Blood Moon in the main. If Merfolk can get away with running a bunch of Spreading Seas to get some free wins from islandwalk, I don't know why Goblins couldn't do the same thing with Blood Moon. Blood Moon not only beats a decent percentage of the field on its own, but it also lets Goblin King do a pretty good Lord of Atlantis impression. Here a test list:
While the cardpool is significantly smaller, Goblin Piledriver is actually a pretty scary card in standard as well. Dragon Fodder and Hordeling Outburst both make goblin tokens, Frenzied Goblin and Foundry Street Denizen are solid one-drops, and we have multiple four-damage burn spells. On the other hand, the downside of being an x/2 is probably more significant since Wild Slash is a playable card in standard. Regardless, I imagine Goblin Piledriver and friends will do a pretty good job of punishing players who have a clunky draws or keep hands without answers.
Financially, Goblin Piledriver is limited by the fact it is only playable in one archetype. A card like Goblin Rabblemaster, which reached $20 at its peak, saw play in various Jeskai builds, some midrange builds, and Mono-Red. The only deck that will even consider Goblin Piledriver is tribal Goblins. As a result, I'm expecting $7-$10 to be the the range for Goblin Piledriver; this is about as expensive as it gets for archetype staple in-print rares. If it breaks modern, it could be a bit higher; if we find out it is completely unplayable in both formats, it could head towards $5, but the most likely outcome is somewhere in between.
Checking Our Work
Typically six months after a set is released, the expected value of a booster box is somewhere between $60 and $70 at TCG-mid pricing. While we will break down the actual current EV of a Magic Origins booster box the beginning of next week, to wrap things up today we are going to check my six-month price predictions by doing a quick EV calculation to make sure these prices put the box EV in the normal range.
One quick note: since I wrote an entire article on the flip-walkers, I didn't include them in either part of our financial review. My expectation is that two will end up in the $3-$7 range (most likely Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh), two will end up in the $7-$12 range and one will end up being the most expensive card in the set at $15+. Unfortunately I'm not sure which of the three remaining flip-walker will be the most expensive as I can see positives and negatives for each. Gideon, Champion of Justice is the most playable as a creature and is relatively easy to flip, but the payoff is only okay. Liliana, Heretical Healer is only acceptable as a creature but is the easiest to flip and transforms into an above-average planeswalker. Nissa, Sage Animist is clearly the most powerful as a planeswalker, but is one of the hardest to transform and doesn't excite me as a creature. Regardless of which comes out on top, these are the prices we will be using for our hypothetical six-month EV calculation.
Six Month EV Prediction Rarity Average Price Number in Box EV Added Mythic $5.25 4.5 $23.62 Rares $1.23 (counting "bottom of the barrel" at $0.20) 31.5 $38.75 Total $62.37
Figuring out the hypothetical six-month box EV doesn't tell us anything about the validity of the price predictions for individual cards, but the good news is that it does show us the predictions are in the right range overall. If the predictions added up to $100 in EV (or, on the other side of the coin, $30 in EV) we would know that something, somewhere was off, but the idea that the expected value of a Magic Origins booster box this coming winter will be $62.37 is perfectly reasonable. Currently, Khans of Tarkir is at $68, Fate Reforged is at $62 and Dragons of Tarkir is at $75. If anything, the average mythic value of my predictions could increase slightly (for instance, moving the "chase" planeswalker from $15 to $30 and a couple of mid-level mythic from $5 to $9 jumps the overall box EV up to $70), but as is we are in a perfectly normal range.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. I'll be back the beginning of the week with The Expected Value of Magic Origins, but in the meantime what do you think? How good is Erebos's Titan? Can Mono-Black Devotion be good again? Will Goblin Piledriver break standard or modern? What (non-Piledriver) reprint do you find most exciting? What cards am I undervaluing? Which am I overvaluing? Let me know in the comment, or as always, you can reach me on Twitter (or MTGO) @SaffronOlive.Paul Singer, the CEO of Elliott Management, has been suing Argentina for a decade EPA/REMY STEINEGGER/WEF
It's not every day that Argentina defaults on its debt. It just seems that way.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. After all, it's been 13 years since the last time it did. That's not bad for Argentina, which has now defaulted eight times in its 200-year history. But this latest one was certainly its strangest. Argentina didn't default because it couldn't pay its bondholders. It defaulted because a New York judge wouldn't let it pay its bondholders—not unless it also paid the hedge funds that were holding out for a better deal on its old defaulted debt.
Yes: Argentina was forced to default now, because it wouldn't pay the bonds it had defaulted on in 2001. Confused? Well, here's what you need to know.
1. Once upon a time—100 years ago, to be exact—Argentina had the fifth-largest economy in the world. But decades of bad policies, worse governments and general incompetence turned this one-time powerhouse into a cautionary tale of default and devaluation. By the 1990s, though, Argentina thought it had finally found the cure for its congenital inflation: outsourcing its monetary policy to Alan Greenspan by pegging the peso to the dollar.
It worked, until it didn't. Inflation came down and foreign capital came in, but at the cost of making countercyclical policy impossible. So if a big shock hit Argentina's economy, it wouldn't be able to cut interest rates to cushion the blow, because its currency peg meant it could only do that when the Fed did. And that, of course, is exactly what happened when Europe's and Brazil's currencies fell so much that Argentina's exports suddenly became seriously overpriced in 1998.
Argentina needed a weaker peso, but it couldn't get one—not without abandoning its dollar peg. Instead, it was forced to cut prices by cutting wages. The problem, though, was that this only pushed unemployment up and tax receipts down. And that left Argentina in a catch-22. It had to raise taxes and cut spending to reassure investors about the deficit, but that made the slump even worse—which wiped out any savings. In other words, austerity was both the cure and the disease. So it was really just a disease.
By late 2001, it was hard for things to get much worse. Unemployment was 20 percent, and there was a run on the peso—along with the banks that had them—as people tried to turn their money into dollars. The government tried to stop the run by limiting withdrawals, but this only started violent protests. So, finally, Argentina did what it's always done: it defaulted and devalued.
This $100 billion default—at the time, the largest ever—might have been the most responsible thing an Argentinian government has ever done. Now, that's not to say there weren't any costs. It's cut the country off from international capital markets ever since, and that's limited growth. But not as much as the alternative—a deflationary spiral. Indeed, Argentina's economy has actually grown pretty well the past 12 years, despite relapsing into double-digit inflation.
2. Back in its customary role as a financial pariah, Argentina tried to make at least a little good on its obligations. In 2005 and 2010, it offered the holders of its defaulted debt—which was still trading at deep discounts—new "exchange bonds" that paid about 35 cents on the dollar of the original ones. It was an offer they couldn't refuse. If investors said no, they got nothing. And it's not like they could force Argentina to pay them more. How many divisions does Wall Street have? That's why 93 percent of the old bondholders accepted the new ones.
3. So what were the other 7 percent thinking? Well, they were mostly hedge funds that had bought up Argentina's defaulted debt on the cheap, and thought they could sue for a better deal. A much better deal. They argued that a cookie-cutter clause in the old bonds—what's known as pari passu—meant that Argentina had to pay them in full if it paid the exchange bonds at all.
It's a question of what "equal treatment" means. As Joseph Cotterill explains, pari passu clauses just say that borrowers have to treat all bondholders the same. You can't pay some back, but not others. Sounds pretty innocuous. But is it? The hedge fund holdouts said it really meant that Argentina couldn't force a debt restructuring. That the defaulted bonds and exchange bonds were really the same, so if Argentina paid any it had to pay all.
4. It's a clever argument, but cleverness isn't enough to make a country pay you if it doesn't want to. That's why this legal dispute has gone from the arcane to the absurd. It's not just about winning the case. It's about making Argentina accept that you have.
Take Elliott Management, the most aggressive hedge fund holdout both in and out of court. It's spent the better part of a decade suing Argentina to get it to settle for more. And when that's failed, it's turned to less, well, conventional methods to bring them to the negotiating table. Back in 2012, Elliott actually got Ghana to seize an Argentinian boat as partial payment for what it said it was owed. But even this strong-arm tactic wasn't strong enough to make Argentina any more cooperative. The boat was eventually released without a deal.
5. But now the holdouts might finally have what they need to make Argentina pay up: a New York judge. See, in 2012, Judge Thomas Griesa ruled that the holdouts were right about pari passu: Argentina couldn't pay the exchange bonds without paying the holdouts, too. Now, if that was all he'd said, Argentina could have continued to ignore it consequence-free. But there was more. Griesa also declared that if Argentina didn't start paying the holdouts, any financial institution that helped it pay the exchange bonds would be in contempt. In other words, Griesa would prevent Argentina from paying anyone.
That left Argentina with a choice: It could either pay the holdouts, or it could default on the exchange bonds even though it was able and willing to pay them.
6. Argentina chose default. There were billions of reasons to do so. It owes all the holdouts a total of about $15 billion, and paying that could create hundreds of billions of new obligations. That's because the exchange bonds have "RUFO" (Rights |
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