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The father of dead schoolboy Stephen Dudley says his family were the "the only ones sentenced today". Speaking outside the High Court in Auckland immediately after the boy who admitted assaulting his son was discharged without conviction, Brent Dudley said it was "no wonder we have a culture of youths getting away with murder". "It was absolutely brutal what they did to our son," he said. "They've both had name suppression, they both now walk away without a conviction. "It's all been one-way." Stephen, 15, died of a heart condition shortly after being assaulted by two boys, then-aged 15 and 17, after rugby practice in July last year. Justice Helen Winkelmann said Dudley had a pre-existing, undiagnosed heart condition called cardiac sarcoidosis and his subsequent death could not be taken into account in the sentencing. The incident was accordingly treated as a low-level "school-yard fight". The older boy, now 18, appeared for sentence today after pleading guilty to assault with intent to injure. Justice Winkelmann began her sentencing by indicating she was going to discharge the boy without conviction. Dudley's father Brent, who had earlier delivered an emotional victim impact statement, erupted in disbelief, yelling from the back of the court: "You're f ... ... joking." "You've got to be joking, this guy beat my son to death," he yelled to the judge. As he was led from the court he yelled "That's justice for you in New Zealand. The law's an ass." Justice Winkelmann said the older boy saw a fight involving Dudley and the younger boy and ran over and hit Dudley in the neck with a swinging right hand. He landed a few other blows before being dragged off the unconscious boy. Dudley died but an initial charge of manslaughter was dropped after his heart condition was discovered in an autopsy. The boy pleaded guilty to assault with intent to injure after a charge of manslaughter was dropped. The younger boy was discharged without conviction. Brent Dudley told the court his son was a young man who had a love of life and always saw the good in people. He said Stephen was a peacemaker and not a violent person. The assault was an "act of cowardice and brutality". SUPPLIED STEPHEN DUDLEY: Died after being punched at rugby training. "He was smaller than you and you attacked him from behind," he told the accused. Dudley said the boy continued the assault even after Stephen was unconscious. "You are a coward and any thoughts of forgiveness are entirely out of the question." Dudley said he considered the boy to be "the hand of evil". "I've recently seen you on TV playing rugby - wasn't that nice for you?" he said. "I've followed your Facebook page and I don't see much remorse in that." Dudley said he got up early in the morning and visualised Stephen coming out of his bedroom. Dudley's sister Talita told the court her brother was an important figure in her life. He was a "kind, strong, inquisitive young man" who was a role model to his younger brothers. Stephen's mother Mona Dudley said she "no longer felt safe in parts of our community". "I have never felt so robbed of my heart and soul," she said. Defence lawyer John Munro said his client sought a discharge without conviction. He had "misread a situation in a very tragic way". He had no explanation for his offending and it was the over-reaction of an older boy protecting a younger boy. Munro said the boy had displayed heartfelt and sincere remorse and had taught the lessons he had learned from the incident to other young people at his church. Having a conviction for violence on his record could prevent him from realising his goal of becoming a teacher, Munro said. Though the Crown opposed a discharge, Justice Winkelmann said it was "school-yard violence ... and we don't usually haul those boys before the court". The judge said they were "punches thrown in a school-yard fight" and had Dudley not died it would have been dealt with by the school. The fact the 17-year-old was protecting the younger boy, however misguided that was, showed that he had not "maliciously" involved himself in the events, she said. She discharged the boy without conviction. Outside court, Brent Dudley recommended people support organisations like the Sensible Sentencing Trust. "Too many young criminals and thugs are getting away with murder," he said.
Hello all, Allow me to introduce myself. I am Deeksha and I come from plains of North India. My tryst with embedded technologies has been 5 years long and every single day I am amazed with the vastness and learning involved. The thing with embedded technologies is either you are into it, or you aren't. You cannot just hang around half-heartedly (I guess that holds true for every field, for that matter).You have to keep the learning and sharing process going on. And that is the reason I am here. I look forward to the comments, feedback and questions so as the topics turn into an interesting voyage. To start with, I plan to write a series of posts on boot sequence in an ARM based embedded system. And I hope to learn a few things as I write this. Boot Sequence for an ARM based embedded system This post is going to explore the boot sequence for a Boot ROM based embedded system. It is based on my experiences with an ARM processor based embedded system, but the concept of an integrated Boot ROM is used by other modern CPUs and microcontrollers as well. In an ARM embedded system, at the time of power on, CPU is uninitialized and a basic clock setup, system specifics' setup is required before proceeding to the bigger and complex tasks. A piece of code is required at power on which does the basic system setup before handing over the control to the bootloader present in flash(already programmed) or to support the download tool for programming the flash and then handing over the control to the bootloader present in flash. For this purpose, a hardware bootloader generally called as Boot Rom is provided by vendor (pre-loaded into the processors’ internal ROM).This is hardwired at the manufacturing time. After a power on reset, that causes the processor core to jump to the reset vector, Boot Rom is the first code to execute in the processor. Responsibilities of Bootrom Bootrom performs the essential initialization including programming the clocks, stacks, interrupt set up etc. Bootrom will detect the boot media using a system register. This is to determine where to find the software bootloader. A particular sequence of probing for boot media is followed as defined by the manufacturer. This includes the order of looking for bootloader in external NOR/NAND flash, or probing for some specific characters on UART /USB for establishing connection with downloader to download the binary in flash. If no bootloader is found in any external memory, bootrom listens for a download request on UART/USB port to start the download process. Thus during the probing process, if the flash has already been programmed, software bootloader will be detected to be available in flash , if not so –it will be downloaded to the flash by bootrom.(This probing sequence will generally assign higher priority to external memory , so if bootloader is detected to be present in memory, it won't proceed to downloading the image again) For platforms using NAND flash , the bootrom will load this boot loader to internal RAM and set the program counter at the load address of the SW bootloader in RAM. For platforms using NOR flash, control is transferred to the external flash (NOR flash is XiP- Execute in Place). There is another point to be noted here regarding bad block management support in Boot ROM. If sw bootloader is residing only in block 0 of flash, no Bad block Management is required in Boot ROM as block 0 is guaranteed to be good by the manufacturer but if sw bootloader resides in block 1 onwards or is large enough to span multiple blocks, then ,Boot ROM needs to include bad block handling. Bad block management will include relocating the contents of the block in flash that goes bad in the process of accessing the block to a new block and updating the bad block/relocation table of the platform. Software Bootloader The main task of S/W bootloader is to load the OS and pass over the execution to it after setting up necessary environment for its setup. For this, the bootloader must first initialize the DDR memory (this includes setting up the controller, refresh rate etc).It must also perform bad block management while accessing the flash memory. After the system setup, bootloader’s responsibility would be to look for an OS to boot. Again, like Boot Rom, if OS is not already loaded to flash, it will load this from the boot media in flash and execute-in-place in case of NOR flash, or place it in RAM in case of NAND flash. It will also place some boot parameters in memory for the OS to read when it starts up if required. After all the necessary system setup, bootloader will pass over the execution to OS and go out of scope. In my upcoming posts, I plan to move on to the details that constitute a bootloader.An ARM bootloader specifically.Till then , happy booting!
.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... This year marks the 13th U.S. presidential election in which I have voted, and the most discouraging. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the two worst presidential candidates in my lifetime. In a Gallup poll from Sept. 23, only 33 percent said that Clinton was “honest and trustworthy,” compared with 35 percent for Trump. Polls have consistently showed that over half of the electorate believes that Clinton should have been indicted by the Department of Justice. Scandals continue to plague both candidates. Either candidate would be a terrible president, although for different reasons. ADVERTISEMENTSkip Trump is inexperienced, incoherent and says dangerous and misguided things; Clinton is experienced but corrupt, and she has done dangerous and misguided things – especially her hawkish foreign policy initiatives. Neoconservatives and the military-industrial complex are eagerly supporting Clinton over Trump in anticipation of a return to the more aggressive foreign policy orientation of George W. Bush. Some say, “Well, we have to vote for the lesser of the two evils.” I myself have voted in this way much of my life. However, although lesser-evil voting seems to make sense in the short run, when one looks at the effect over time, its problems become clear. Repeatedly voting for the perceived lesser evil lowers standards and creates a “race to the bottom.” By voting for candidates who do not share our values just because they seem better than the opposing candidate, we have given carte blanche to party elites to choose the nominee. As a result, both parties have moved to the right in recent decades: the Republicans to the far right and the Democrats to the center right. Both parties are increasingly influenced by corporate donors and the military-industrial complex. I have decided to say “enough is enough” and reject both of the corrupt and undemocratic political parties. I am working with others to build a progressive alternative by supporting the Green Party and their presidential ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. The Green Party is an international party with parties in almost 90 countries. Green parties have been particularly influential in Western Europe and Scandinavia, where they work for environmental and social democratic policies. The German Green Party, founded in 1980, has participated in coalition governments for many years. Green parties have been at the forefront of raising environmental concerns and addressing climate change, but they also prioritize social justice, grass-roots democracy and nonviolence/peace. To learn more about Green party politics, you can find its U.S. platform at gp.org/platform. It is a detailed and excellent platform. Whomever you vote for on Nov. 8, I would encourage you to vote based on your values rather than your fears. The more that we vote out of fear, the more fearful our world becomes. The more that we disregard our values, the more corrupt and amoral our society becomes. Vote not for the lesser evil but rather for the greater good. The Green Party ticket will not win this year’s election. However, if it receives 5 percent of the national vote, the Green Party will qualify for millions of dollars in federal matching funds and easier ballot access in future elections, and will become a viable alternative to the two parties that are asking us to make an impossible choice between two unacceptable candidates.
The Coalition government’s new citizenship test appears to include talking points that might have been prepared by the coal industry in defending their role in climate change. Details of the extraordinarily complex reading material that new citizens are being asked to comprehend, in preparation for their citizenship tests, have been revealed in The Australian newspaper, which was concerned by the level of complexity in the language. What struck us at RenewEconomy from the examples used by The Australian was the nature of the content. It looked like marketing spiel from the coal industry, so we checked it out further. Take this, for example: “The worldwide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.” And then there is this: “Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into super-clean coal (35 per cent ash) and ultraclean coal (less than 1 per cent ash). Super-clean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants.” And on it goes. You can read more here. But having absorbed this, the hopeful new citizen is then given some practice multiple choice questions. Such as: And then: Now, we wouldn’t want any new citizens to get any fancy ideas about wind and solar, would we? But would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the correct answers are? The truth or the marketing? It makes us think if there was a real test about climate change and coal, some of the Coalition’s most prominent climate deniers, as well as the likes of One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, should be thankful that they are already citizens. In fact, we suspect that Dutton himself might struggle to pass the test. Someone alert passport control! (Note: We’ve updated the second screenshot).
Scott Sinclair has scored 10 goals for Celtic this season England manager Gareth Southgate has cooled talk of Celtic's Scott Sinclair earning an international call-up. The 28-year-old winger has scored 35 goals in 65 matches since joining Celtic from Aston Villa in August 2016. "I had a conversation with Brendan (Rodgers, Celtic boss) about him at the end of last season," Southgate said. "He's a good player but we have good quality in that area of the pitch and at the moment I think he is just below the level of what we have already got." And he added: "I would be happy to have that conversation (what he needs to do to break through) with him but I don't think it's appropriate to talk about performance aspects in public." Sinclair scored the third goal as Celtic beat Belgian champions Anderlecht Sinclair has already hit 10 goals this season, including the third in Celtic's impressive 3-0 Champions League triumph away to Anderlecht last week. But with the likes of in-form Harry Kane, Jamie Vardy, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford fighting for the England starting slots in forward roles, Southgate has plenty of strong options. England lead World Cup 2018 qualifying Group F by five points going into their last two games against Slovenia and Lithuania. Scotland are in the same pool and know they can guarantee second spot, and a probable play-off place, by defeating Slovakia at Hampden on Thursday and Slovenia away on Sunday. Southgate reckons the Scots can make it to Russia next year, and singled out two of Sinclair's Celtic team-mates for praise. "I think some good young players have come through, the likes of (Stuart) Armstrong and (Kieran) Tierney," he said. "They've got themselves on a roll. And yeah, they have two very difficult games but games where it's in their hands. There's no reason they can't qualify."
The opening up of Eastern Europe to the rest of the world in the early 1990s brought about tremendous benefits. The inflow of capital and innovation has led to better institutions, better economic management, and higher efficiency. On the flip side, it has also led to sizable and persistent outflow of people. Close to 20 million, mostly young and skilled Eastern Europeans—equal to the combined population of the Czech Republic and Hungary—left their countries over the past 25 years to seek better opportunities abroad (Chart 1). And even as they have contributed to the riches of the receiving countries and the EU as a whole, their departure has slowed growth and convergence of their home countries to the living standards of advanced Europe. A study by IMF staff proposes policy options to balance the scales. Emigration slowed growth in Eastern Europe Economic migration is driven by personal choices. For Eastern Europeans, the motivation to leave is mainly better jobs and higher pay (Chart 2). Many of these economic migrants are highly skilled (e.g., doctors, architects, engineers) and younger than the average person at home. The less effective the government and the weaker the institutions (guarding the rule of law, upholding accountability and fighting corruption) in their home countries, the more likely the young and educated are to seek better opportunities abroad. While emigrants themselves tend to be better off and their families back home often benefit from remittances, their departure weakens the economic potential of their home countries. This has left Eastern European countries worse off (Chart 3). Large and persistent emigration appears to have slowed both overall and per capita output growth rates. In the absence of emigration between 1995 and 2012, real GDP growth would have been altogether 7 percentage points higher on the average in the region, according to analytical work by IMF staff. Some skills are in short supply, lowering productivity growth in the East. And while the large inflow of remittances has supported investment and consumption, it also led to exchange rate appreciation, making economies less competitive. Moreover, the money sent back to relatives pushed up starting wages and reduced incentives to work. As a result, wages have risen faster than productivity, eroding returns on investment and weakening incentives to invest in home countries. With lower output, government spending on social benefits has increased in relation to GDP. The departure of the young adds to the already existing trend of the elderly occupying an increasing share in the population, leading to more spending on retirement benefits relative to GDP. Governments have tended to respond to these budgetary pressures by raising labor taxes that lower employers’ incentives to create jobs, thus making budgetary structure even less jobs and growth friendly. The departure of some of the youngest and brightest makes Eastern Europe’s process of catching up to advanced Europe more challenging. Boon for Europe as a whole How about the impact of the east-west migration on receiving countries? The westward migration seems to have contributed to stronger growth in Western European countries and been an economic boon for the European Union as a whole. As such, economic migration is an indicator of success of the European Union project, which sees freedom of movement as necessary for greater economic integration and, ultimately, higher incomes for all. With income and institutional differences between East and West remaining wide, the push and pull factors driving emigration from the east are likely to persist for some time. What’s more, the trends could further intensify with new countries getting ready to join the European Union. Making it work for all Overall, European Union membership brought substantial benefit for Eastern Europe. Now what can be done to ensure that the free flow of people leads to a win-win outcome for both labor sending and receiving countries? Although there are some tasks to be done locally, there is also room for a pan-European response. For Eastern Europe: better institutions and economic policies in home countries would make it more attractive for people to stay, for emigrants to return, and for people from other countries to seek jobs in Eastern Europe. Further liberalization of immigration regimes, especially for skilled workers, could be considered as well. Governments can do more to work with diasporas abroad in order to leverage their expertise and savings, and to provide more incentives for people to invest rather than spend remittances. In addition, more can be done to retain and better use the existing workforce, for example, through better matching of education to employment needs and providing more opportunities for on-the-job training. The choice of policy responses to emigration-related fiscal pressures matters as well: avoiding increases in labor taxes and relying more on consumption taxes would be more conducive for investment and long-run growth. For the European Union: given that the East-West migration has benefited the European Union as a whole, there is a case for better redistributing the gains. For example, the size and composition of the European Union structural and cohesion funds—transfers from wealthier to poorer European Union regions—could explicitly account for the negative effects of emigration on sending countries’ economic potential. This would also be consistent with the European Union’s goal of reducing economic and social disparities across regions and promoting sustainable development. You can watch the video about Eastern Europe's emigration here
Believe it or not I was newly introduced to Nutella only a few months ago. I have no idea how someone with a sweet tooth as bad as mine could overlook something so delicious for so long but I did. These cookies are so cute with their little peaks of Nutella. This recipe will make 24-30 cookies. This recipe is adapted from one by Martha Stewart. Nutella thumbprint cookies 12 tbsp butter, softened 1/2 cup icing sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 1/4 cups flour 1/2 cup Nutella 1 cup hazelnuts Directions Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line 2-3 baking trays with parchment paper. Finely chop the hazelnuts. Set aside. Using a hand or stand mixer, combine the butter and icing sugar. Beat for a few minutes until smooth. Add the flour and mix until combined. Form the dough into tablespoon sized balls. Roll each ball into the chopped nuts and place on the baking trays. Bake for ten minutes, remove from the oven and press a round teaspoon into the center into each cookie to make an indentation. Place back in the oven for another 7-10 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are lightly browned. Place the cookies on a rack to cool. Once the cookies are cool fill a pastry bag with the Nutella and pipe into the middle of each cookie.
The federal law that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria during the 1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time. This racially freighted history lives on in current federal policy, which is so driven by myth and propaganda that it is almost impervious to reason. The cannabis plant, also known as hemp, was widely grown in the United States for use in fabric during the mid-19th century. The practice of smoking it appeared in Texas border towns around 1900, brought by Mexican immigrants who cultivated cannabis as an intoxicant and for medicinal purposes as they had done at home. Within 15 years or so, it was plentiful along the Texas border and was advertised openly at grocery markets and drugstores, some of which shipped small packets by mail to customers in other states. The law enforcement view of marijuana was indelibly shaped by the fact that it was initially connected to brown people from Mexico and subsequently with black and poor communities in this country. Police in Texas border towns demonized the plant in racial terms as the drug of “immoral” populations who were promptly labeled “fiends.” As the legal scholars Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread explain in their authoritative history, “The Marihuana Conviction,” the drug’s popularity among minorities and other groups practically ensured that it would be classified as a “narcotic,” attributed with addictive qualities it did not have, and set alongside far more dangerous drugs like heroin and morphine. By the early 1930s, more than 30 states had prohibited the use of marijuana for nonmedical purposes. The federal push was yet to come. The stage for federal suppression of marijuana was set in New Orleans, where a prominent doctor blamed “muggle-heads” — as pot smokers were called — for an outbreak of robberies. The city was awash in sensationalistic newspaper articles that depicted pushers hovering by the schoolhouse door turning children into “addicts.” These stories popularized spurious notions about the drug that lingered for decades. Law enforcement officials, too, trafficked in the “assassin” theory, under in which killers were said to have smoked cannabis to ready themselves for murder and mayhem.
SEVRAN, France — The last will and testament of Quentin Roy, a good-looking 23-year-old from the Paris suburb of Sevran, was written in neat blue biro on a piece of paper torn from a notebook. He gave instructions for his Samsung tablet to be given to fellow fighters, and listed mobile phone numbers for “Maman” and “Papa” so that his parents could be informed of his death via Whatsapp. Véronique Roy, who sells advertising for health magazines, received a photograph of her son’s will on January 14. The Islamic State member who sent it added that Quentin had blown himself up in Iraq, “martyred on the soil of the caliphate.” Sevran, an unloved town a 20-minute train ride from Gare du Nord, has seen 15 of its young men depart for Iraq or Syria since 2014. Nine are now believed dead, according to Véronique and Thierry Roy, who are in touch with families in the same situation. When Quentin left Sevran in September 2014, his parents recalled that many young men from the local housing estates had sounded impressed. “So he’s gone to look for a life,” was a common refrain. “Respect, man. He’s got balls.” Sevran lies in the banlieues, the French word for “suburb” that has come to serve as shorthand for the poverty, crime and failed integration that have blighted the edges of French cities for decades. Cities minister Patrick Kanner estimates there are “a hundred” French neighborhoods that bear a resemblance to Molenbeek, the Brussels district now globally infamous as a jihadist breeding ground. Sevran is high on the list. “What is Molenbeek? It is a concentration of enormous poverty and unemployment,” Kanner told Europe 1 radio. “It’s a system where public services have practically disappeared, it’s a system where politicians have thrown in the towel.” The topic is especially sensitive since men from both Molenbeek and the Parisian banlieues coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in Paris last November. French commentators have warned against assuming that if a neighborhood is poor, crime-ridden and full of immigrants, it must also be a hotbed of radical Islam. The last thing Sevran’s residents want is for “jihad” to top the list of things for which their town is already notorious — crime, drugs, poverty. But it may be too late. In an open letter, Véronique and Thierry Roy accused Sevran’s mayor of failing to shut down a jihadist recruitment network. “We are outraged by your inaction,” they wrote. “Radicalization is all the rage. One recruiter has been arrested, but there are others still hard at work.” ‘The government has no idea’ In the late 19th century, Sevran was a leafy village at the heart of France’s explosives industry, and home to the national gunpowder factory. To Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite before his name took on more peaceful connotations, it was the perfect place to experiment. Today, Mayor of Sevran Stéphane Gatignon says the banlieues themselves “risk exploding.” The riots that engulfed suburbs nationwide in 2005 could easily repeat themselves, he warned on the 10th anniversary of the uprising. While France’s economy is officially growing again, there is little to show for it here. The gunpowder factory closed in the 1970s, followed by two other major factories in the 1990s. The old industrial quarter is a ghost town. Gatignon is a lean man of 46, and an unusual mayor. He went on hunger strike in 2012 to demand more state funding for hard-up towns, and walked away with a budget increase. Now he looks exhausted. He has been hounded by the media over the Roy family’s letter, and regularly refers to being “at war.” Sevran has indeed paid the price for radicalization in more ways than one: A member of Gatignon’s town hall staff was killed in the carnage at the Bataclan concert venue in November. Gatignon says he has done everything he can to stop jihadist recruiters from operating in Sevran, but that there are limits to what a mayor can do. He lays the blame firmly on the state. “The government has no idea what is happening on the ground,” he says, wearily rubbing his eyes. “There is a total disconnect between what happens in offices in Paris and what happens in reality.” Many of the young Sevranais who left to wage jihad had frequented an informal prayer hall known locally as the “Daesh mosque.” Gatignon repeatedly asked the state to shut it down — he did not have the authority to do so himself — but says he was ignored. It was finally closed for good in March. The mayor has a raft of other problems to deal with. Sevran’s public housing is overcrowded and school funding is scarce. In 2011, violence between drug gangs got so bad that Gatignon suggested U.N. peacekeepers should be brought in. Forty percent of young adults are officially unemployed, a rate that surpasses Molenbeek’s. The government recently placed Sevran on a list of 12 “priority neighborhoods” with particularly dire social problems, and ordered officials to be brought in from Paris in April. ‘Wanted to stay open-minded’ Sevran is home to more than 70 nationalities. “It’s not like the Muslim community dominates everything,” says Gatignon. The 15 young men who left Sevran to join the Islamic State came from a variety of family backgrounds: Algerian, Moroccan, Mauritanian, Haitian. Some came from Muslim families; several, including Quentin Roy, were converts. Some came from the cités, the post-war housing blocks synonymous with drugs and gang violence. Quentin, privately educated, did not. His parents live in a neat detached house. Thierry, a hippyish Haitian, works as a medical salesman. Their remaining son is a software engineer. Quentin was raised a Catholic. He converted in 2013 and made no attempt to hide it from his parents, who tried to be supportive. “We wanted to stay open-minded with him, to have a conversation about it,” Thierry says over dinner at their home, which is full of pictures of both of their sons. In the space of a few months, Quentin’s views became increasingly extreme. He quit his job at a sports store when they wouldn’t let him schedule his shifts around prayer. He refused to join in family celebrations or attend his grandmother’s funeral because it was held in a church. A month later, he left for Frankfurt. Quentin told his parents he was picking up a new car for his work as an Uber driver. He never came back. From the battlefield, Quentin sent sporadic messages defending the holy fight. The manager of Sevran’s Grand Mosque helped Véronique write a reply, using quotations from the Koran to tell her son why he was wrong to think he should fight in Syria. An energetic woman, she says she has been let down by the authorities. She and Thierry feel lonely and helpless. They say Gatignon has tried to shift the blame for things he should have fixed himself, doing little, for instance, to publicize a helpline for parents worried that their kids have been radicalized. The reason, she says, is political. “It’s a way of not sticking the town with the ‘radicalization’ label when we already have a drug problem.” The Daesh mosque Véronique and Thierry Roy are the only Sevran parents to have gone public about their son’s death as a jihadist. Most parents don’t speak out, Véronique says, “because they don’t want to get involved with the authorities and they don’t want to be judged by the community.” The couple receives regular messages from other Sevran families who have lost their children to ISIL. They want to raise the alarm but avoid the public scrutiny the Roys have dealt with since their open letter to the mayor. The young men who left Sevran departed between 2014 and the end of 2015, when the Islamic State appeared to be making massive inroads in its mission to create a caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq. All were younger than 25, and many had played soccer together. Instead of worshiping at the mainstream Grand Mosque of Sevran, several of the boys began frequenting the informal prayer hall known as the Daesh mosque. This was not, in fact, a mosque: It was a former shop rented out as a private prayer space by Muslims who felt that the town’s official mosque did not preach a strict enough version of Islam. Among the young men who worshipped there is a Sorbonne history graduate called Ilyes. He has been in detention since November for “criminal association in relation to terrorist activity,” a charge he denies. He is the one who accompanied Quentin Roy to the airport when he set off for jihad. Achraf Ben Brahim, a law student at Nanterre University who has known both Quentin and Ilyes since childhood, describes Ilyes as “someone who joked with everyone and smiled 24/7.” The pair shared a spirit of intellectual curiosity and would often linger after soccer matches, “imagining a better world.” Ilyes had a clean criminal record, and had previously held a job as a middle school supervisor. The last time Ben Brahim saw Ilyes, in September 2015, he worried that his friend’s opinions had become increasingly extreme. The next thing he knew, he was phoning his old friend in prison. ‘They work in the shadows’ Members of Sevran’s mainstream Grand Mosque were the ones to first alert officials to radical preaching at the Daesh mosque two years ago. Merzak El-Bekkay, an imposing man who manages the Grand Mosque’s administration and finances, says that beyond warning the authorities, there was little he could do to stop the extremist preaching at the informal prayer hall across town. “We can’t stop people meeting in a private setting,” he says. “Our mission is to have a dialogue — and, when we hear people preaching hate and violence, to come up with counter-arguments.” The shopfront of the Daesh mosque has now been bricked up, but no one believes this puts a definitive end to radical preaching in Sevran. “They work in the shadows,” El-Bekkay says of the preachers who frequented the makeshift mosque. “Today they’re in Sevran, tomorrow it might be Aubervilliers or somewhere else.” Suburbs on the defensive There is, experts are at pains to say, no such thing as a French jihadist “profile.” Some are radicalized in prison, others self-radicalize on the Internet. Some grew up in the banlieues, including Bataclan attackers Omar Ismail Mostefai and Samy Amimour. Many French citizens heading to Iraq and Syria have been women. Some, like Quentin, played the piano. The renewed media attention has banlieue mayors like Sevran’s on the defensive. Trappes, on the southern fringe of Paris, and Lunel in southern France have also seen a trickle of young men leave to fight in Syria. Authorities announced they had foiled another attack on France last month when police raided an apartment in Argenteuil, a banlieue in northwestern Paris, and found assault rifles, handguns and TATP, the homemade explosive most often used by the Islamic State. Mayor Georges Mothron angrily denied that he presides over a “French Molenbeek.” ‘Lifelong humiliation’ In a country built on liberté, egalité and fraternité, people from places like Sevran often talk of changing their name to something “more French” to get a job interview, or using a fake address on their CVs. For Ben Brahim, it does not come as a surprise that alienated French Muslims from the banlieues have headed to Syria. He points to rising Islamophobia after the Paris attacks. “In a social crisis doubled by contempt for Muslims, how can you get outraged by the idea that the youth of this country might be won over by the arguments of ISIL?” he says. “Because ultimately, what future does a kid from the banlieues have in France? Getting into debt to open a kebab shop? Or finishing up as an Uber driver?” Thierry and Véronique Roy, meanwhile, are embroiled in a legal fight to stop plans to build a large mosque on their street. Then there is their ongoing public battle with the mayor — and a struggle to pick up the pieces at home. “They stole my son,” Véronique says. Claire Sergent is a freelance journalist working for Europe 1 and other media in France, previously based at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. Katy Lee is a journalist with Agence France-Presse in Paris, formerly reporting from London and Hong Kong.
In a previous post, I’ve argued that no one should call a show good or bad until the end is known. Which means, now that the end is known, we can decide if True Detective‘s second season was good or bad. People love complaining about how confusing the plot of this season was. And I won’t disagree. The show’s storylines sprawled and overlapped, losing its audience. Some moments lingered, while other plotlines appeared and disappeared without explanation. But why is this a bad thing? Are we supposed to understand all the media we consume? Do things have to make immediate sense in order to be good? TD’s second season and its response reminds me of a famous anecdote about William Faulkner and Raymond Chandler. Faulkner had adapted Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep into a film, and during filming he and director Howard Hawks realized there was something they didn’t understand. Had a certain character committed suicide or was he murdered and, if murdered, who did the murdering? And the best part, the part that makes it an anecdote worth repeating, is that Chandler couldn’t figure out the answer either. Chandler didn’t understand the plot of his own novel. Faulkner is no stranger to incomprehensible plots. Some of his best novels are things that no one can understand, at least not on first attempts. And he’s not the only one: how many other great pieces of literature are confusing and elliptical and frustrating? James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Virginia Woolf. I could go on. Is it fair to evoke highly-regarded literature in the defense of True Detective? Maybe, maybe not. But consider what David Simon set out to do with The Wire: create “a novel for television.” As George Pelecanos, a writer for The Wire, said: “That struck home, because if it’s not about something more than the mystery, the thriller part, I’m not going to do it. Life’s too short.” And is it not accurate to say that True Detective is a continuation of The Wire’s legacy? What I liked about the first season of True Detective is the same thing I like about the second season: the plot doesn’t matter. It’s the characters that matter. We watch not to find out who did it, but to watch the relationships between the characters. I cared far more about Ray’s dynamic with Chad than I cared about some stolen diamonds or an unsolved murder. Just as in the first season, it did not matter that many of the killers and conspirators were still out in society at the end. What mattered was that Marty’s family visited him in the hospital room and that Rust dreamt of his daughter and his father. Frank’s journey through the desert mattered far more than the plotlines that brought him there. To dwell on the confusing plot is to miss the point of True Detective. I liked this season of True Detective. But I also think that the best season of The Wire is its second season, and that Tim Burton’s Batman is the worst Batman ever. So we might have to agree to disagree. Enjoy this? Read more True Detective content here. Advertisements Share this: Facebook Print Twitter Pinterest Email
Under the provision to set up state-based marketplaces, subsidies are supposed to be available to many lower- and middle-income people who do not have access to coverage from employers or other sources. It may be difficult, however, for officials running the exchanges to know who is entitled to subsidies if employers do not report information on the coverage they provide to workers. Enrollment in the exchanges is to begin Oct. 1, with insurance coverage taking effect on Jan. 1. “We are on target to open the health insurance marketplace on Oct. 1 where small businesses and ordinary Americans will be able to go to one place to learn about their coverage options and make side-by-side comparisons of each plan’s price and benefits before they make their decision,” Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser and liaison to the business community, wrote on the White House Web site. But even some supporters of the law dispute that the establishment of the health insurance exchanges is on schedule, especially since progress varies by state and some Republican-led states are resisting the health care law and withholding resources for putting it into effect. Much of the administration’s public effort, especially at the Department of Health and Human Services, has been directed toward spreading the word to uninsured Americans, especially younger and healthy individuals whose participation is needed to help keep down premiums for everyone else. About 85 percent of Americans are insured, so most individuals will be unaffected, at least initially. Behind the scenes, however, the administration has been fielding questions and criticisms from businesses about the reporting requirements — especially the Treasury Department, which has responsibility, given its oversight of the tax reporting system. Employer groups were quick to applaud the delay. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has strongly opposed the law, Randy Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, said in a statement, “The administration has finally recognized the obvious — employers need more time and clarification of the rules of the road before implementing the employer mandate.” E. Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, said the delay “will provide employers and businesses more time to update their health care coverage without threat of arbitrary punishment.”
Hans Noel flunks this test and says no: I don’t think Clinton should be given a “tenured professorship.”+ Not because of his lack of a Ph.D. per se, but because, smart as he is, Clinton is not a scholar. He doesn’t do research. He is not in the business of contributing to the store of human knowledge. If Clinton is given a job as a tenured professor, what would he do? A “tenured professorship” is not a plum given to reward success. It’s an actual job. The job of a professor is not the same as “being smart.” Academics write those pesky obscure papers that Kristof finds impenetrable and irrelevant because that’s how we learn things. The demands for publication may have perversities, but it is what drives people to do research. I would offer a tenured professorship to any ex-President who is willing to spend real time with students and academic programs. That would be in a public policy school, a public administration department, a university-wide appointment, or even a political science department. A class actually taught by Clinton, even half of the time with another professor doing most of the actual work, would be fascinating. And if you don’t like Clinton, or don’t think he is smart (not my view at all), consider this a student’s chance to see the (ex) emperor with no clothes, which is itself a learning experience. I know people who have had Obama as professor — before he was President of course — and loved him, and not for partisan reasons. Have I mentioned that universities tenure plenty of people who don’t do research? Check out your music department, for a start, or Fine Arts. Or (very likely but not always) your business school. I recently read Noel’s book on political polarization and enjoyed it, especially his discussion of how intellectual elites have led the process of polarization. Still, I would trade in having read that book for a five minute chat with Bill Clinton. Addendum: I also would offer a tenured professorship to any ex-President who is not willing to spend real time with students and academic programs. The job offer would more than pay for itself, given the money it would bring into the university, directly and indirectly. Most universities support athletics programs, and pay the successful coaches millions more than any other state employee earns — can they not find room for a former Commander in Chief or two?
$16 BILLION SPENT ANNUALLY LOCKING UP PRISONERS 50 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER WHO POSE LITTLE SAFETY RISK FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 14, 2012 CONTACT: Will Matthews, (212) 549-2582 or 2666, media@aclu.org; Ryan Kiesel, Executive Director, ACLU of Oklahoma, (405) 524-8511, rkiesel@acluok.org NEW YORK/OKLAHOMA CITY – States would save on average more than $66,000 per year by releasing each elderly prisoner they needlessly keep behind bars, a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union finds. Despite evidence showing that elderly people are far less likely to commit crime than the rest of the population, more than $16 billion of taxpayer money is spent annually locking up hundreds of thousands of relatively low-risk prisoners who are 50 years of age and older, according to the ACLU’s report. Age 50 is the criminological consensus of when a prisoner becomes elderly because people age physiologically faster in prison. “Extremely disproportionate sentencing policies, fueled by the ‘tough on crime’ and ‘war on drugs’ movements, have turned our prisons into nursing homes, and taxpayers are footing the bill,” said Inimai Chettiar, ACLU advocacy and policy counsel. “Lawmakers need to implement reforms that lead to the release of those elderly prisoners who no longer pose a safety threat sufficient to justify their continued incarceration and reform our sentencing policies to prevent this epidemic at the outset.” The ACLU’s report, “At America’s Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly,” finds that by 2030, there will be more than 400,000 elderly prisoners behind bars, a 4,400 percent increase from 1981 when only 8,853 state and federal prisoners were elderly. This despite universal agreement among criminologists that the propensity to commit crime plummets with age. In 2009, just over two percent of individuals between the ages of 50 and 54 were arrested, and virtually no people 65 or older were arrested. As a national average, just five to 10 percent of aging prisoners return to prison for any new crime, according to the report. In Oklahoma there are 4,262 state and federal prisoners age 50 and over, constituting 16.7% of the total prison population. While the total prison population in Oklahoma grew at a rate of 18.85% from 1997-2006, the percent increase for prisoners age 50 and over great at an alarming rate of 85.4%. “We are currently witnessing unsustainable growth in the aging prison population in Oklahoma,” said Ryan Kiesel, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. “We encourage policy makers to take a close look at this situation and adopt reasonable policies that ensure our limited resources are invested so as to achieve the twin goals of fiscal responsibility and public safety.” The United States currently imprisons 246,600 Americans 50 and older, a generally low-risk population that costs much more to keep locked up than younger prisoners, according to the report. It costs $34,135 per year to house an average prisoner, but $68,270 per year to house a prisoner 50 and older. And according to a fiscal analysis conducted by the ACLU’s in-house economist William Bunting as part of the report, states would save on average $66,294 per year by releasing an elderly prisoner who no longer poses a public safety threat – even when factoring in any government expenditures on released aging prisoners like healthcare or housing costs. “Simply put, it is an unwise use of taxpayer dollars to spend enormous amounts of money locking up elderly prisoners who no longer need to be behind bars,” said Bunting. The ACLU’s report calls on states to grant elderly prisoners access to a parole hearing, during which parole boards can use risk assessment tools to accurately evaluate whether a prisoner continues to pose a public safety threat or whether he or she can be safely released. Last year the state legislature in Louisiana, which incarcerates more people per capita than any other state, passed such a law, easing taxpayer burden and allowing prisoners to return to their families to care for them while at the same time maintaining public safety. “The nation’s graying prisoner population has become a national epidemic that needs to be addressed immediately,” said Chettiar. “The United States cannot afford to continue to lock people up for no reason.” A copy of the ACLU’s report is available online at www.aclu.org/elderlyprisoners
The thing about travelling to amazing places and spending all your time absorbing new sights and sounds and smells is that sometimes you get homesick. This past weekend, homesickness crept up and surprised me in the middle of a trip to the French countryside where the landscape was so beautiful it felt like we were walking through a painting: wide expanses of green fields and forests, medieval stone barns dotted throughout, rotting rose vines climbing 12 century churches, rolling hills of champagne vineyards, old wooden farm houses with crooked stairs, and a heavy fairytale fog. It happens; for reasons I cannot explain, the experience of true beauty – in life or art – often makes me feel sad and achey in my bones. But this was different. I was at the top of La Tour Cesar looking over the red rooftops of the medieval town of Provins when I suddenly thought that I would give it all up – all this beauty, all this wonderful experience – for a chance to be back in my old apartment in Vancouver with my old bed and my old house plants, listening to the sounds of the port to fall asleep. The memories made my stomach turn over and I thought I might cry in front of all my new road trip companions, but I didn’t. Instead I spent a good chunk of the next two hours chastising myself for feeling homesick. It felt like betrayal, like I wasn’t as grown up as I thought I was, or that I was ungrateful or overly sensitive or weak. Now that I’m back in the city and thinking clearly in the absence of intense stimuli, I realize that it is perfectly normal to feel homesick when moving to a foreign country. Even Gertrude Stein, who lived in Paris for most of her adult life, was homesick for America sometimes! This I know because I brought Alice B. Toklas’s cookbook/memoir along with me for the trip, and as it turns out, most of her recipes are concerned with recreating American dishes in France for Gertrude, who missed American food. If I had been reading this book while still living in Canada, I would have thought it was crazy to prefer chicken pot pie to duck confit, but I think I get it now. After being turned away from the one restaurant in town, my road trip companions and I decided to make a feast in our Airbnb on Saturday night, each taking on a dish that we knew how to make well. By some miracle, I was assigned dessert, and so I found myself in an ancient farmhouse in the middle-of-nowhere France with a bunch of strangers (and Anthony) throwing together an apple crisp – a Grandma Tien standard – in an old French tart tin. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t French, and I didn’t even have the exact measurements on hand, but the act of baking that simple dish that reminded me so much of home, and then seeing people enjoy it fresh out of the oven, cured my homesickness. I suddenly understood the value of “comfort” food on a whole new level. And besides that, I realized how much I had changed from the girl of a few years ago who got most of her nutrition from frozen pizzas. I’m now someone whose emotional life depends on cooking, at least a little bit. Cooking, as Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and countless other writers and chefs have realized before me, is a way to travel – abroad or home. It’s kind of magical. All this is to say that, after making that apple crisp in the countryside last weekend, I was inspired to make another one when we got back to Paris, but with different flavours: peach and basil. That’s the thing about crisps (or crumbles, according to some); the ingredients are probably already in your cupboard, they’re easy as sin to make, and they only benefit from improvisation! The perfect kind of recipe, in my opinion. The idea for a peach basil crisp comes courtesy of reddit, of course, where I got lost in a vortex of unique flavour pairings for stone fruit. But it’s also because peaches remind me of childhood trips to the Okanagan, where fruit stands selling fresh peaches and cherries lined the road. Growing up in Alberta, a ripe peach was a miracle to behold and so the mouth-feel memories of those BC peaches are still strong in me. I don’t know about you, but I have never eaten peaches and basil together in the same dish. Now that I’ve tried it, I can’t believe I’ve lived 27 years without it. The basil makes the peaches taste like a whole new fruit. In this peach basil crisp, the basil is subtle, but game changing. The mascarpone adds a level of richness that just can’t be compared to regular whipped cream (although whipped cream or ice cream would be a fine substitute if you can’t get your hands on mascarpone). I opted for mascarpone as a topping because the basil was offering a savoury vibe and I knew the peaches were so ripe that the crisp would be hella sweet on its own. Mascarpone almost has the texture of cream cheese; when paired with basil, this crisp is almost a pizza. Weird? No, just very, very yummy. This peach basil crisp is the perfect no-fuss, knock your socks off, post dinner on the balcony with a glass of chilled rosé summer dessert, whatever place in the world you’re currently inhabiting. I pretty much beg you to try it, especially if you’re a prairie person aching for some of those prairie skies and grandma home-cooked vibes. The directions I’ve laid out here are extremely flexible. At its heart, a crisp is just one layer of fruit topped with a layer of crumble. So don’t worry if you’re missing the exact right size of pan or number of peaches, etc. You can eat now! PS: Because it was dreamed up in the medieval countryside, where sheep actually still have shepherds, etc., I flirted with calling this peach basil crisp the “Pastoral Peach Crisp”. However, Google’s algorithms know better than me. You should call it the Pastoral Peach Crisp though, if you want. PPS: The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook Peach Basil Crisp with Mascarpone 2016-06-08 10:47:10 Serves 6 Write a review Save Recipe Print Prep Time 30 min Cook Time 30 min Total Time 1 hr Prep Time 30 min Cook Time 30 min Total Time 1 hr Filling 8 peaches 2 tbsp fresh basil zest of 2 small lemons 2 tablespoons granulated sugar couple pinches of coarse salt Crisp 2/3 cup oats 2/3 cup slivered almonds 2/3 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp flour 6 tbsp cold butter mascarpone or whipped cream (for serving) Instructions Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. For the filling Wash and slice peaches lengthwise. Assemble peaches evenly in a 10-inch tart pan. Sprinkle sugar, lemon zest, salt and basil (tear the leaves if they are too large) over the peaches. For the crisp Combine all ingredients (except mascarpone) in a large bowl, rubbing the butter in with your fingers until mixture is crumbly. Crumble over top of the peaches. Bake until mixture is bubbling and topping is golden brown, about 30 minutes. Best served immediately, but also good chilled. Notes Peach basil crisp can stay in the fridge for up to 3 days, covered, without getting too soggy. If it's anything like the rhubarb or apple crisps I am used to eating, you should be able to freeze peach basil crisp for a really long time. Don't worry too much if the peaches leak a lot of liquid at the bottom of the dish during the cooking process. It tastes almost like syrup if you spoon it on top of individual portions. Alternatively, it also seems to go away after a day in the fridge. This peach basil crisp can easily be made gluten-free by subbing regular oats for gluten free oats and flour for almond flour (or just an entire crust of slivered almonds) or vegan by omitting the mascarpone and subbing butter for some cold coconut oil. You Can Eat Now http://www.youcaneatnow.com/ Did you make this recipe?We want to know how it turned out! Share a photo on Instagram and use the hashtag #youcaneatnow
Ribbon Profile Blog Joined April 2010 United States 5278 Posts Last Edited: 2011-07-19 08:06:12 #1 Are you a nerd? Are you a slob? Do you have a girly screen name on Team Liquid? If you answered any of these questions, there's only one thing can salvage your life BUFFCRAFT! HUAH! You see, I know a lotta y'all wanna spread the word of e-sports, but how you gonna get taken seriously if you look like the sterotypical gaming nerd. Y'aint, t's how. In order for our fandom to be taken seriously by today's materialist culture, we must be more than devoted, funny, and all around cool people. The Starcraft 2 fandom must be known o'er the land as the fandom with the ROCK! HARD! ABS! Huah! Rules When you're a real man (or real woman, as they case may be. Muscles are not a patriarchy, they're a pec-riachry), you make your own rules. Here's what they are: 1. You gotta ladder, bro. How you gonna be taken serious as a Starcraft 2 player if you don't ladder. That's common sense. 2. When you win a game, reward yourself by doing a manly act of your choice. Flex! Punch something! Headbutt a tree! What matters is that you stay pumped 3. But when you LOOOOOSE, that's when you need to earn back the right to play. 3a. If you lose a macro game, you need to do 10 crunches OR 10 jumping jacks OR ten push-ups 3b. If you lose to cheese, you need to do 25 crunches, jumping jacks, OR push-ups 3c. If you yourself are the cheeser and still you lose, you must do 30 crunches, jumping jacks, or push-ups 4. After payin' your dues, you can rest if you feel you feel you need to. Play when you're ready, don't actually hurt yourself. We don't judge you...out loud. 5. If you wanna keep track of your weight-loss and share the results with the thread, fucking go for it, bro. If you want to keep it to yourself, that is also dude. The goal is self-improvement through self-indudement. 6. Buffcraft is not a substitute for an actual exercise regime. I'm not a doctah. Go see one before starting this program if you feel the need, due a medical condition, pregnancy, or anything like that. Remember, the most important rule is to get a little healthier and manlier (or womanlier!) while having fun playing Starcraft 2. Anything in accordance with that rule is not only allowed, but encouraged. You think you can have more fun adding "flex and then yell" at 50 food in your build order. Fucking do it. You wanna ladder dressed as David Coverdale from the band Whitesnake? Huah! And if you get flex and crunch your way to Masters, then you're just goddamn winning at everything. EDITED: A lot of y'all in the thread thing that the Buffcraft regime is insufficiently masculine. I'm proud of you for recognizing that more can be done. You wanna participate, and you think you can handle MORE than the vanilla pansy-ass version of Buffcraft. Post your alternative regimen in the thread, and keep us updated as you step up further. But remember, lying causes your secondary sexual organs to shrink to the size of raisins. And nobody likes raisins. Ribbon Win: Having crushed my enemy and seeing him driven before me, I imagine the lamentations of his women. Lose a macro game: 25 crunches. 25 jumping jacks Lose to cheese: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 10 push-ups Fail at committing cheese: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 20 push-ups. However, Ribbon does not cheese, and thus never has to face this punishment. Are you a nerd?Are you a slob?Do you have a girly screen name on Team Liquid?If you answered any of these questions, there's only one thing can salvage your lifeYou see, I know a lotta y'all wanna spread the word of e-sports, but how you gonna get taken seriously if you look like the sterotypical gaming nerd. Y'aint, t's how.In order for our fandom to be taken seriously by today's materialist culture, we must be more than devoted, funny, and all around cool people. The Starcraft 2 fandom must be known o'er the land as the fandom with theHuah!When you're a(or, as they case may be. Muscles are not a patriarchy, they're a pec-riachry), you make your own rules. Here's what they are:1. You gotta ladder, bro. How you gonna be taken serious as a Starcraft 2 player if you don't ladder. That's common sense.2. When you win a game, reward yourself by doing a manly act of your choice. Flex! Punch something! Headbutt a tree! What matters is that you stay3. But when you, that's when you need toback the right to play.3a. If you lose a macro game, you need to do 10 crunches OR 10 jumping jacks OR ten push-ups3b. If you lose to cheese, you need to do 25 crunches, jumping jacks, OR push-ups3c. If you yourself are the cheeser and still you lose, you must do 30 crunches, jumping jacks, or push-ups4. After payin' your dues, you can rest if you feel you feel you need to. Play when you're ready, don't actually hurt yourself. We don't judge you...out loud.5. If you wanna keep track of your weight-loss and share the results with the thread, fucking go for it, bro. If you want to keep it to yourself, that is also dude. The goal is self-improvement through self-indudement.6. Buffcraft is not a substitute for an actual exercise regime. I'm not a doctah. Go see one before starting this program if you feel the need, due a medical condition, pregnancy, or anything like that.Remember, the most important rule is to get a little healthier and manlier (or womanlier!) while having fun playing Starcraft 2. Anything in accordance with that rule is not only allowed, but encouraged. You think you can have more fun adding "flex and then yell" at 50 food in your build order. Fucking do it. You wanna ladder dressed as David Coverdale from the band Whitesnake? Huah!And if you get flex and crunch your way to Masters, then you're just goddamn winning at everything.EDITED:A lot of y'all in the thread thing that the Buffcraft regime is insufficiently masculine. I'm proud of you for recognizing that more can be done. You wanna participate, and you think you can handle MORE than the vanilla pansy-ass version of Buffcraft. Post your alternative regimen in the thread, and keep us updated as you step up further. But remember, lying causes your secondary sexual organs to shrink to the size of raisins. And nobody likes raisins.: Having crushed my enemy and seeing him driven before me, I imagine the lamentations of his women.: 25 crunches. 25 jumping jacks: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 10 push-ups: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 20 push-ups. However, Ribbon does not cheese, and thus never has to face this punishment.
One week after launching his one-man protest at Amazon headquarters in Seattle, former Amazon employee Kivin Varghese is still at it, trying to bring attention to his allegations of unethical and deceptive business practices at the company. Today he will be trying a new tactic, handing out a new letter to employees calling on the company to augment its 14 leadership principles with new points addressing 1) employee treatment 2) business ethics and 3) environmental responsibility. On the first point, the letter (PDF) takes the unusual step of urging Amazon employees not to work so hard. Writes Varghese in the letter … 1) Life is short, enjoy it – don’t give it all to Amazon. Leave work at a reasonable hour, don’t work nights and weekends. 2) If you’ve got more work on your plate than you can do, the company should hire more people, not drive you like a slave to get it done. 3) Don’t kill yourselves to keep the ship running. Slow down. Amazon will be fine. Oh, boy. Questioning the company’s business ethics is one thing, but urging employees to be less productive? It will be interesting to see how Amazon reacts. Varghese says via email that he has so far successfully resisted efforts by Amazon security to move his protest, and notes that he has been getting an “unbelievably positive response talking to hundreds of employees over the past several days.” Varghese is involved in a protracted legal battle with the company, which has declined to comment on his protest.
AutoGuide.com Common sense would tell you that wearing headphones (those not made to communicate hands-free with a phone) while driving would be illegal – or at least stupid. But apparently it’s not that clear cut in the majority of the 50 states in America. According to AAA, wearing headphones is “mostly illegal” in just four states, while it’s “mostly legal” in 33 states. In the remaining 13, it’s apparently a Facebook relationship status of “it’s complicated.” The complicated states have differing laws from state to state but for the most part it means that unless headphones are built into a helmet or is a Bluetooth headset, it’s illegal. In case you thought that it was perfectly safe and legal to use headphones while driving, you might want to double check your state’s law. Or just be a nice, safe driver and avoid wearing them altogether. [Source: Geekwire]
Exactly two months after the summer’s Unite the Right white nationalist rally that left three dead and many injured, a legal group has filed an unprecedented complaint on behalf of Charlottesville, local businesses and neighborhood associations that could prohibit “unlawful paramilitary activity” in the city. Lawyers with the University of Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection claim the independent militiamen and women, many carrying “60 to 80 pounds of combat gear,” such as semi-automatic assault rifles slung over their shoulders, made tensions boil at what some have called the largest gathering of white supremacists in recent history. “Regardless of ideology, the presence of these private armies, whether armed with assault rifles or bats, batons or clubs, significantly heightens the possibility of violence, as we saw on August 12,” said Mary McCord, an attorney with Georgetown Law’s ICAP, who filed the complaint which is, as she says, “seeking to ensure that the streets do not become battlefields for those who organize and engage in paramilitary activity.” According to the complaint, rally organizers, including homegrown Jason Kessler, solicited private militias to attend the rally, held group-wide planning calls and circulated an instructional document called “General Orders.” “All the while, attendees encouraged one another to ‘prepare for war,’” according to ICAP. Named defendants in the lawsuit include Kessler and Identity Evropa CEO Eli Mosley, white nationalist groups Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, League of the South, and the National Socialist Movement, and private militia groups Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, New York LIght Foot Militia, Virginia Minutemen Militia, American Freedom Keepers, American Warrior Revolution, Redneck Revolt and the Socialist Rifle Association. Kessler and the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia did not immediately respond to interview requests. “It’s a unique lawsuit,” says Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead, who has represented far-right and far-left defendants for 40 years. “There are some real complications.” According to Virginia law, “the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power,” but Whitehead points to the 2008 Supreme Court decision of District of Columbia v. Heller, in which justices voted 5-4 that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry weapons unconnected with service in a militia. He says the definition of “militia” under Virginia law is vague, and several groups named in the suit do not identify as militia groups. The 75-page complaint is a culmination of investigations, including interviews with residents and bystanders, hours of footage, hundreds of photos and thousands of social media posts, McCord said outside Charlottesville Circuit Court after her group and members of City Council filed the suit. “The investigation uncovered overwhelming evidence, much of which has only become available after August 12, of planning by alt-right groups to engage in the very type of militaristic violence that resulted,” McCord says. “They have vowed to come back, as have the self-professed militia purporting to be peacekeepers.” Michie Hamlett attorneys Lee Livingston and Kyle NcNew will serve as the local counsel for the suit. Livingston reminded those outside the courthouse of the terror the city faced that day. “August 12 is a tragic story now—a part of the lives of all Charlottesvillians,” he says. “A street we walk to restaurants, where we enjoy life with our neighbors, on that street, our neighbors were plowed over by a car. The images of bodies being smashed by that car will never leave us. A park where we celebrate festivals became a scene of medieval squad maneuvers, people struck down, people bleeding. We fear that a dark chapter was opened in our nation’s history on our doorstep, a chapter many had thought was closed in the 20th century.” He said he hopes the suit will provide public servants “who protect the peace” a tool to prevent private armies from returning to the area, protect those who use Emancipation Park and the surrounding area from the “intimidating, unregulated soldiers,” and allow the community to come together, “in at least a small step, to reduce what feels like a dark turn of our story.” Added Mayor Mike Signer, “I support [the lawsuit] as a stand against the disintegration of our democracy, and as a call for us to put a firm close to this horrible chapter in our democracy where people think it’s okay to parade in military outfits in public, to openly threaten violence against other people, to fire weapons into crowds, to beat people in public and to use a car as a weapon.”
"It is increasingly being recognised that many individuals who receive the diagnosis of BPD are naturally highly intuitive and perceptive. What was previously thought of as a genetic vulnerability may actually reflect an innate talent." People who were born emotionally intense, sensitive and are gifted with heightened perceptivity are like powerful sports cars. It is as if they have an extremely powerful engine that requires a special fuel and a specific kind of care. In the right condition and with the right keeping, they can be one of the most high-performing machines in the world and win many races. The problem is, however, that they may not have been taught how to run this powerful machine. To borrow a metaphor from psychologist Dr Hallowell, it is like having a Ferrari with bicycle brakes, and these brakes are simply not strong enough to control such a powerful engine. Many emotionally intense people are diagnosed or misdiagnosed with various mental disorders throughout their lives, some of the most common ones are mood disorders, including bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), eating disorders and personality disorders. Whilst these conditions are real and extremely painful, we should not immediately assume that they are signs of a defect. A ‘diagnosis’ in psychiatry simply represents a cluster of symptoms, which are manifestations of internal conflicts and disease. In reality, the distinction from one disorder to another is unclear. The purpose of having these arbitrary categories is so that clinicians can fall back on a standardised framework to do research and to prescribe medication. Plus, they serve a purpose for the insurance industry. With the dominance of the medical model, we tend to pathologize and overlook the possibility that the distress may be a result of us not honouring our utterly unique make-up as individuals. In this article, we consider how this might be the case with BPD. It is increasingly being recognised that many individuals who receive the diagnosis of BPD are endowed with heightened sensitivity and perceptivity, and what was previously thought of as a genetic vulnerability may actually be a form of giftedness. Drawing on psychological research and theories, we see that many people who struggle with BPD do so as a result of two combing factors: A) their innate intuitive talents, and the specific developmental requirements that go along with it, and B) a childhood environment that fails to meet their emotions needs. What does it mean to be 'hyper-empathic'? BPD is also known as emotional dysregulation disorder or emotionally unstable personality disorder (World Health Organization, 1992). Despite being referred to as a ‘personality disorder’, it is not a character flaw but is best understood as a limitation in a person’s capacity to regulate emotions. This means that the person with BPD often experiences emotions as rapidly changing, or spiralling out of control. These symptoms go alongside impulsive self-soothing behaviours and a chronic sense of internal hollowness. Although the link between BPD and empathy remains controversial, many people with BPD identify with the traits of being an “empath” or being hyper-empathic. Empathy is broadly defined as the way we react to one another (Davis, 1983), and it defines how we conduct ourselves in this world. An empath is extremely sensitive to the emotions and energy of other people, animals and places (Orloff, 2011). Although the term ‘empath’ has not been used very much within the academia, psychologists have extensively studied what it is like to have high empathy, and they have found the following phenomenon: Individual differences in empathy level affect the way people recognise facial expressions (Besel and Yuille, 2010) and react to social cues (Eisenberg and Miller, 1987). People with high empathy are better at recognising emotions in others. However, they also have a ‘bias’ towards negative emotional expressions, meaning that they are more sensitive and alert to negative feelings in others. Perhaps due to these propensities, they are also more likely to experience ‘empathic distress’ (Chikovani, Babuadze, Tamar Gvalia, Surguladze, 2015). Interestingly, it was found that women with high empathy are better than their male counterparts in noticing and recognising sadness. Excessive empathy - an intense sharing of other’s negative emotions - is linked to emotional disorders in health professionals and caregivers. Their empathic distress is often framed as compassion fatigue or burnout. (Batson et al., 1987, Eisenberg et al., 1989, Gleichgerrcht and Decety, 2012). It is important that naturally empathic people learn to hone their empathic skills, such as emotional regulation, perspective taking, empathic accuracy (the ability to accurately identify and understand emotional states and intentions in yourself and others) (McLaren, 2013). Without these skills, many empaths ended up ‘absorbing’ the emotions of others to the point of being burned out. The 'borderline empathy paradox' It has long been recognised that individuals with BPD seem to possess an uncanny sensitivity to other people’s subconscious mental content - thoughts, feelings and even physical sensations. They also seem to have a talent in involving and influencing others (Park, Imboden, Park, Hulse, and Unger, 1992, p. 227). In the first study that explicitly investigates this observation, Frank and Hoffman (1986) found that individuals with BPD showed a heightened sensitivity to non-verbal cues when compared with people without BPD. This finding has been validated through other follow-up research (Domes, Schulze, and Herpertz, 2009). A well-known study, for instance, compared the way people with BPD react to photographs of people’s eyes to those without BPD. The researchers found that the BPD group was more able to correctly guess what emotions these eyes expressed, which showed their enhanced sensitivity to the mental states of others (Fertuck et al., 2012). At their best, these highly intuitive individuals’ ability would constitute what giftedness psychologists call 'personal intelligence' (Gardner,1985). This kind of giftedness consists of two components: ‘interpersonal intelligence’ - the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people, and ‘intra-personal intelligence’ - the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one’s feelings, fears and motivations. Despite their enhanced empathic ability, many people with BPD have difficulties navigating social and interpersonal situations. Without the ability to regulate their emotions and manage attachment relationships, their hypersensitivity may end up showing up as emotional storms and mood swings (Fonagy, Luyten, & Strathearn, 2011), being easily triggered by stressful situations, and a constant fear abandonment and rejection (Fertuck et al., 2009). This phenomenon is known as the ‘borderline empathy paradox’ (Franzen et al., 2011; Krohn, 1974). Why do I feel and see so much? It is true that high empathy may be an outcome of growing up in a traumatic and unpredictable childhood environment. Indeed, many people with BPD have a history of abuse, neglect or prolonged separation as children. Some studies show that as many as 70% of the people with the disorder reported being sexually abused. As a response to confusing or neglectful parenting, these children had to ‘amp up’ their empathic functioning in order to protect themselves. They were trained by their environment to become highly attuned to the subconscious cues given out by their parents so that they can be prepared for their unpredictable behaviours. Environmental factors alone, however, do not explain why many siblings who grow up in the same household are not affected in the same way. Thus, we must also consider the biological and innate temperament-based factors that affect people’s distinctive reactions to traumatic events. As psychologist Bockian (2002) suggested: “It is extremely unlikely that someone with a placid, passive, unengaged, aloof temperament would ever develop borderline personality disorder.” Child psychologists have found that there is a subset of children who has ‘heightened sensitivity to the social world’, whose developmental and emotional outcomes are critically dependent upon their early childhood conditions. (Boyce, Chesney, Kaiser, Alkon-Leonard and Tschann, 1991) In most cases, serious difficulties in emotional regulation, or BPD, is a result of two combing factors: A) Being born with heightened sensitivity and a gift in perceptivity, and B) a deficient or vicarious childhood environment that fails to meet these children’s emotions needs. If it is a gift, why do I suffer so much? Under favourable, 'good enough' circumstances, a child who is born with a gift in perceptivity would not grow up to have serious emotional regulation issues or BPD. However, if the primary caretakers did not have the capacity to attune to their child, or even resented or were threatened by their unusually perceptive child, they may consciously or subconsciously sabotage the child’s healthy development. The nature of psychological abuse may differ, but it always includes an assault on the child’s perceptions and the development of their autonomy. For gifted children, ongoing negative feedback towards their intuitive perception is ‘particularly damaging’ (Park et al., 1992, p.228). Attachment theories have us know that children will do all they can in order to preserve a good image of their parents. Even when their parents are incompetent, abusive or neglectful, children naturally blame themselves because it is not safe to think of the people they depend on as ‘bad’ (Winnicott, 1960). This scenario is complex if the child is naturally intuitive; many emotionally gifted children have strong feelings of love and responsibility for their parents and often feel compelled by a need or desire to take care of them. If the parents either explicitly or implicitly reject the child - he or she will internalise the shame of being rejected, and experience him/herself as being profoundly bad (toxic shame). As a result of their negative experience of themselves and those around them, these children’s natural gifts in perceptivity become ‘hijacked’ by negative bias and negative projections. Without an environment where they can learn to set healthy boundaries and experience secure attachment without exploitation, these children develop ’symptoms’ such as an inability to self-soothe and regulate emotions, a fear of rejection, and a deep sense of internal hollowness. Many emotionally intense adults have struggled all their lives feeling lonely, misunderstood, with the belief that there is something deeply wrong with them. If you are one of them, I hope that you can reconsider the potential gifts that are within you. Whilst the history cannot be changed, you can re-write the story that you have been telling yourself. You are in no way ‘bad’. You are not ‘too much’. What you are, is a sensitive, intuitive, gifted individual, who were deprived of the right kind of nourishment as you were growing up. Your high level of awareness and acuity to subtleties is not only unusual but also extremely precious. Because of your innate perceptivity, you cannot ‘un-see’ or ‘un-feel’ things. Perhaps like a poppy that has outgrown his peers, you were being shamed and ‘chopped down’. Your struggles are not your fault, and the shame that you carry is a natural reaction to a childhood environment that has failed to support you. Perhaps there is a little voice within you that have always known you were not fundamentally wrong. If you can begin to listen to that voice, you can liberate yourself to retrieve the long-forgotten gifts inside you. Your psyche wants to heal. Once you can begin to recognise and trust your own fundamental goodness, restoration and integration would naturally happen. Counselling Directory is not responsible for the articles published by members. The views expressed are those of the member who wrote the article.
"Wow! I just got my bell rung." That's what we used to say growing up playing youth football in the late 1970s. I remember the first time -- I wore it like a badge of honor. I got my first concussion! I immediately said, "Put me back in, Coach!" Including peewee football, Pop Warner, high school and college, all the way through to my 16 years in the NFL, I played tackle football for about 30 years -- more than half my life -- and I can honestly say I have no idea how many concussions I have had. One reason for that: There was no "concussion protocol" when I played, even up until the time I retired in 2005. After a hard hit to the head, you just got up, shook your head, saw some stars and tried to play through it. If you were hit hard enough to come out of the game, you were asked, "How do you feel?" and, "What's your address?" and, "How many fingers?" If you answered correctly, then you could go back in the game. Today's game is much different. The good news is, in 2016, if there is even a question as to whether a player is concussed, he must go through a much more complex series of tests and his helmet is taken away. If it is determined he suffered a concussion, then he must sit out at least the following week. The reality is, football is a contact sport and concussions will continue to occur. My kids are athletes and love to play all sports. They have gravitated towards baseball and basketball, which makes me exhale. Why? Because football has done so much for me and brought me so much joy that it's hard for me to speak ill of the sport in any way whatsoever. It has been at the core of my existence on this planet. I am the son of a retired NFL and NCAA football coach, and my brother Skip is a veteran NFL assistant coach currently with the LA Rams (still getting used to saying that!). Ours is a bona fide American football family. I cannot pretend I didn't have dreams of my sons following my footsteps onto the gridiron. I was the runner-up to Barry Sanders for the Heisman Trophy in 1990 and often fantasized about my son winning it... If my kids were as passionate about football as I was, I don't know how or if I could say no to them. Enter my wife, Holly. She's not your average "football wife." I married a die-hard lifelong Eagles fan and, as they say, I "out-kicked my coverage" with her! She is a force and is never shy about expressing her opinions! Holly has made it clear about her extreme unease with the concept of our sons playing the sport that brought us so many highs. She, like me, feels a bit hypocritical because of her love of the sport and her dreams of watching the Peete boys extend the family football legacy. But, she has also nursed me back from countless concussions, a torn patella, two torn Achilles tendons, surgeries, rehabs, busted fingers and everything in between. I think for her, repeating that movie with her boys is not something she wants to relive. Injuries are a part of any sport, but the effects of concussions down the line scares the mess out of her. For me, to be 100 percent honest, the fear of the unknown is unsettling when I sit alone and dream of my cognitive health 10 or 15 years from now. Although I feel fine, the delayed effects of so many blows to the head understandably worries me. I have been personally touched by the impact of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), which is a disease brought on by repeated brain trauma. I was great friends and teammates with the late, great Junior Seau, who had CTE and took his own life. I will never get over losing him. I just lost my former teammate Kevin Turner to ALS that he felt was linked to too many hits. My former teammate and dear friend Erik Kramer also recently attempted suicide, and though we don't know for sure that he has CTE, it is all still so jarring for me because these are my contemporaries. And, so, I speak their names because we must continue to spread awareness to help make the game safer and to rally to take care of those who are suffering now. As for me, the damage has been done, so what do I do now? First, I thank God every day for a loving, proactive wife. She is all over me to stay in front of this thing. Thankfully, the advances in medicine and technology are allowing us to actively study and discover ways to treat, protect and heal the brain. The Football Players Health Study at Harvard University is using a whole-player, whole-body approach, studying not just the brain but the entire player and his history to get a more comprehensive snapshot that will help improve the care and treatment of players like me and so many who came long before -- and after.
Searchers often prefer the view-all vs. paginated content with arbitrary page breaks and worse latency. If your site includes view-all pages We aim to detect the view-all version of your content and, if available, its associated component pages. There’s nothing more you need to do! However, if you’d like to make it more explicit to us, you can include rel=”canonical” from your component pages to your view-all to increase the likelihood that we detect your series of pages appropriately. rel=”canonical” can specify the superset of content (i.e. the view-all page, in this case page-all.html) from the same information in a series of URLs. Why does this work? If you’d like to surface individual, component pages (or there’s no view-all available) It may be the case that one or both of the situations below apply to your site: The view-all page is undesirable as a search result (e.g., load time too high or too difficult for users to navigate). Your users prefer the multi-page experience and to be directed to a component page in search results, rather than the view-all page. If so, you can use standard HTML rel=”next” and rel=”prev” elements to specify a relationship between the component pages in your series of content. If done correctly, Google will generally strive to: Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, between the component pages/URLs. Send users to the most relevant page/URL from the component pages. Typically, the most relevant page is the first page of your content, but our algorithms may point users to one of the component pages in the series. To better optimize your view-all page, you can use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the single-page version; otherwise, If a view-all page doesn’t provide a good user experience for your site, you can use the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” attributes as a strong hint for Google to identify the series of pages and still surface a component page in results. Webmaster level: Intermediate to AdvancedUser testing has taught us that searchers much prefer the view-all, single-page version of content over a component page containing only a portion of the same information with arbitrary page breaks (which cause the user to click “next” and load another URL).Therefore, to improve the user experience, when we detect that a content series (e.g. page-1.html, page-2.html, etc.) also contains a single-page version (e.g. page-all.html), we’re now making a larger effort to return the single-page version in search results. If your site has a view-all option, there’s nothing you need to do; we’ll work to do it on your behalf. Also, indexing properties, like links, will be consolidated from the component pages in the series to the view-all page.Interestingly, the cases when users didn’t prefer the view-all page were correlated with high latency (e.g., when the view-all page took a while to load, say, because it contained many images). This makes sense because we know users are less satisfied with slow results . So while a view-all page is commonly desired, as a webmaster it’s important to balance this preference with the page’s load time and overall user experience.In the diagram, page-2.html of a series may specify the canonical target as page-all.html because page-all.html is a superset of page-2.html's content. When a user searches for a query term and page-all.html is selected in search results, even if the query most related to page-2.html, we know the user will still see page-2.html’s relevant information within page-all.html.On the other hand, page-2.html shouldn’t designate page-1.html as the canonical because page-2.html’s content isn’t included on page-1.html. It’s possible that a user’s search query is relevant to content on page-2.html, but if page-2.html’s canonical is set to page-1.html, the user could then select page-1.html in search results and find herself in a position where she has to further navigate to a different page to arrive at the desired information. That’s a poor experience for the user, a suboptimal result from us, and it could also bring poorly targeted traffic to your site.However, if you strongly desire your view-all page not to appear in search results: 1) make sure the component pages in the series don’t include rel=”canonical” to the view-all page, and 2) mark the view-all page as “noindex” using any of the standard methods.It’s not uncommon for webmasters to incorrectly use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the first page of their series (e.g. page-2.html with rel=”canonical” to page-1.html). We recommend against this implementation because the component pages don’t actually contain duplicate content. Using rel=”next” and rel=”prev” is far more appropriate.Because users generally prefer the view-all option in search results, we’re making more of an effort to properly detect and serve this version to searchers. If you have a series of content, there’s nothing more you need to do. If you’d like to hint more to Google how best to serve users your information:As always, feel free to ask in our Webmaster Help Forum
Council backs incentives policy on housing After a months-long debate, a revamped incentives policy for multifamily projects, intended to help add 7,500 housing units downtown by 2020, has gained the consensus of the City Council. It's the latest attempt by the city to attract more young professionals to the urban core. The new policy removes cash grants from the city's incentives repertoire and now consists of tax reimbursement grants, loans and fee waivers. It also adds brevity to the process by basing the incentives amount for each project on a formula. Before, negotiations between the city and developers could take up to 10 months. “There is certainty now in our incentive policy,” Mayor Julián Castro said. “My hope is that this will unleash a floodgate of great vibrant projects downtown, and I'm confident that we'll create the 7,500 more units we're looking for.” District 9 Councilwoman Elisa Chan, an early opponent of the policy, said she was pleased with the latest version. “Before, it really wasn't well defined,” Chan said. “I think we can see after the debate we came up with a better product.” Next week, council members are scheduled to formally vote on the policy, which is one component of an overall action plan for downtown that covers transportation, infrastructure and the regulation of hotel development in certain areas. Property tax reimbursement grants would be doled out in 10- and 15-year increments. One requirement would be that 10 percent of the units being built would remain at the initial rental rate for the duration of the abatement. Loans would be based on several factors, including the project's placement. In an attempt to create a geographic housing balance, the policy would create zones as far north as Mulberry Avenue and as far south as the Lone Star Brewery. The closer the project is to the urban core, the bigger the loan. For example, a developer would receive $3,000 to $6,000 per unit if the project was located in downtown's core. The increments would decrease as projects were planned farther from the core. A project's characteristics would also play a factor. For example, a project could get a larger loan if it was a high-rise or a rehabilitation of a historic structure or if it included housing for college students. Additional loan bonuses would be available for things such as the creation of structured parking or mixed-use, retail or commercial office space. The new policy also lifts the cap on San Antonio Water System fee waivers per project, which currently plateaus at $500,000. The total amount of $2 million for SAWS fee waivers would stay the same. An earlier version of the policy was the cornerstone of an overall action plan for downtown by national consultants HR&A, which Centro Partnership, a public-private group charged with leading the revitalization of downtown, helped commission. That version had also drawn criticism from District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules. “What I want to make sure of, particularly as we look at cash incentives, is that we don't reach a point where we are asking taxpayers across the city to subsidize a lifestyle of someone who wants to live closer to downtown,” Soules said at a May council meeting. He didn't broach that topic during the question-and-answer portion of Wednesday's meeting. For developer Ed Cross, who built residential projects The Vistana and 1221 Broadway, the new policy makes the process less arduous. “All the variables made it a matrix,” he said. “Now you know from Day 1 what you're going to get.” bolivo@mysanantonio.com
Moisturize, Moisturize, Moisturize By Worker Bee Conventional wisdom (our dear, dear friend) tells us that without the constant application of skin creams and face lotions and mineral moisturizers, we’ll become haggard parchment people with wrinkled mugs that’d put an elderly Sharpei to shame. It seems to have worked, too. Most bathroom mirrors conceal impressive caches of creams, lotions, and oils, and many people instinctively and compulsively lather the stuff on any chance they get (similar to our infatuation with Purell, but that’s another post altogether). But, as we’ve often wondered, is confronting a totally natural occurrence – dry skin – with unnatural methods and products really such a good idea? As you know, we here at Mark’s Daily Apple tend to prefer the natural to the artificial – but that’s only because we’ve found that following nature’s way and listening to biology and evolution often go hand in hand. It’s not a dogmatic ideology of naturalism we espouse here; it is a pragmatic approach to life that tells us the natural way most often is the best way, but that also allows the use of artificial aids, if they are safe and effective. With that in mind, we weren’t all that surprised to read about a recent scientific study that discovered using lotions and skin creams can actually weaken your skin’s resistance to the elements and create a dependency on skin products. Swedish scientist Izabela Buraczewska found that creams can actually make the skin drier in the long run. Basically, once you start using a cream or lotion to combat dry skin, you have to keep using it or your skin will regress to a point even drier than it was before you started using the cream. She used several different kind of creams and oils to test her results, and she found that even different pH levels didn’t change the effects on the skin. Both mineral and vegetable oil were tried, and both resulted in the skin having less resistance to drying elements. Strangely enough, however, using a complex cream had less of a drying effect. To Buraczewska, this meant that a blanket assignation of blame to all creams and lotions simply isn’t realistic. The problem wasn’t with the idea of artificial skin creams; the problem was that an effective skin cream simply hadn’t been created that could deal with the drying effects. Tissue samples taken from patients suggest that the application of skin creams affects the activity of certain genes that regulate the production of skin fats, which figure prominently in the skin’s moisture levels. If we can isolate the compounds in the creams that do dry the skin, perhaps new moisturizers can be developed without the bad stuff. So maybe smearing raw avocado and palm oil on your body isn’t the best Primal moisturizer. Maybe using unnatural oils and creams will eventually be a better way to fight dry skin. There’s a lot of things you can call us, but rigid isn’t one of them. Better living through rigorously tested and nearly perfected chemistry? Sure, we’ll take that every time. only alice Flickr Photo (CC) Further Reading: We Like Drugs – Fair and Balanced How to Get that Natural Glow 10 Rules of Aging Well Post navigation If you'd like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here!
Susan Olsen, who played the youngest daughter, Cindy Brady, on The Brady Bunch, was fired from her hosting gig on a Los Angeles–based radio show after she posted a homophobic rant on Facebook. The 55-year-old former child star spoke with openly gay actor Leon Acord-Whiting as she cohosted LA Talk Radio's Two Chicks Talkin' Politics segment on Wednesday, December 7. After the show, Acord-Whiting took to Facebook to accuse Olsen of spreading "outrageous misinformation." "It is wildly irresponsible for LA Talk Radio to allow a Trump fanatic to co-host one of their programs, where she can spew her idiotic lies unchecked. (Being a liberal and a patriot are mutually exclusive? Hillary is causing the protests & hate crimes? The Koran is a political tract?)," he wrote, referencing the numerous topics discussed on Wednesday's episode. "As much as I love [cohost] Sheena Metal, I think LA Talk Radio needs to give 'Cindy Brady' her walking papers. I will not listen to or appear on any shows there from this point forward until she's gone. This isn't just disagreeing on, say, tax plans or foreign policy. Susan Olsen spreads outrageous misinformation & it is dangerous and unprofessional." A day later, Olsen responded on her Facebook page, writing, "This is the little piece of human waste. He blocked himself from me before I could even get one hit in. If you can find him, please send him my love." Acord-Whiting then took the feud a step further and shared a screenshot of an expletive-filled private message that Olsen allegedly sent him on Facebook, which read: "Hey there little p–sy, let me get my big boy pants on and Reallly take you on!!! What a snake in the grass you are you lying piece of s–t too cowardly to confront me in real life so you do it on Facebook. You are the biggest f—-t ass in the world the biggest p–sy! My D–k is bigger than yours Which ain't sayin much! What a true piece of s–t you are! Lying f—-t! I hope you meet your karma SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY." LA Talk Radio announced on Friday, December 9, it had fired the actress in the wake of her homophobic rant. "LA Talk Radio takes pride in its close and collaborative relationship with the LGBT community, and will continue to provide a home for those who have hopeful and positive messages of togetherness and tolerance to share with our listeners," the station wrote in a statement on Facebook. "We will not tolerate hateful speech by anyone associated with our radio station and have severed our ties with a host that veered off the direction in which we are going." Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox! Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!
Real Ghostbusters star Slimer passed away peacefully at his home in Beverly Hills at the weekend, his agent has confirmed. He was a ghost, and therefore of indeterminate age. Slimer rose to fame in the animated adaption of the movie Ghostbusters, a hit with audiences worldwide for seven seasons in the 80’s. Speaking about the role in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2001, he said “As an actor it was a dream come true for me. When I saw the movie I just thought ‘That’s me, that’s my life up there’. When I heard they were putting together a TV series I got on to my agent straight away. ‘Get me an audition, whatever it takes!’ I shouted, but he couldn’t really make me out over the phone. I’ve got a ridiculous voice and the handset gets all clogged up with goo.” Slimer was subsequently cast as the iconic lime-green spook, going on to appear in 147 episodes. He brought his own twist to the role. “I said right from the get-go I wanted his character to be sympathetic. I thought there was a naive vulnerability there that hadn’t been fully explored in the movie. He just basically shoveled sausages into his mouth and attacked Bill Murray. I felt there was more driving this guy than that.” Slimer was rewritten as a friendly pet of the Ghostbusters, who paid their own personal tributes yesterday. The cartoon version of Peter Venkman released a statement that read: “As the guy who did my voice died in 2001 I am unable to say anything at this sad time. To put on the page my feelings about that little fella is just too painful. So I’ll simply say this. He was a friend.” The Cartoon version of Egon Spengler said: “I spent a lot of time pouring my heart out to Slimer. He was a great listener. More than that, he was a disgusting individual.” In later years the series was re-branded as Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters, but by this stage many thought the show to be past its best. “I disappeared up my own butthole” the star told Time Magazine in 2005. My behavior became unacceptable. I would spray whipped cream into my mouth, wash it down with a gallon of cream soda and a carton of fried chicken, then burp and smear myself all over the rest of the cast in a kind of frenzy. I recognize now I must have been difficult to work with.” After the show’s cancellation in 1991 Slimer concentrated on low-key hauntings of derelict buildings, a passion he had enjoyed before taking up acting. Dan Aykroyd said last night: “How can a ghost die? That doesn’t make any sense”, but Dan Aykroyd says a lot of things. Advertisements
UPDATED: The companies' previous agreement expired Sept. 30, but there has been no progress made in the ongoing negotiations. DirecTV has told Fox Networks that it will drop the channels Nov. 1 if the two companies don't come to an agreement in the ongoing carriage dispute. Fox said late Thursday that it has offered an extension during the ongoing negotiations but that DirecTV "has informed us and their customers that unless we agree to their demands, they 'will suspend our networks on Nov. 1.'" Fox added that DirecTV sent a proposal out Tuesday. "They have given us no chance to respond before taking an unnecessarily aggressive posture and going public," Fox Networks said in a statement. "It is disappointing that they have chosen bad faith tactics over meaningful negotiation. "We have proposed to keep the Fox Networks on DirecTV for the same price, and on the same terms as they are currently carried while we attempt to work out a fair agreement. Unfortunately, DirecTV has decided that unless they get their way, they are going to pull the plug on their customers Nov. 1." Meanwhile, DirecTV issued its own statement late Thursday. "After months of making little progress in our talks with News Corp and Fox to renew our agreement to carry their regional sports networks and other national channels we’ve regrettably reached a point where we will be forced to suspend the channels as soon as Nov. 1 unless News Corp is willing to move toward a more reasonable price increase," the company said. According to DirecTV, Fox Networks is seeing a 40% increase in its carriage fees. "They are currently asking our customers to pay 40% more for the exact same Fox channels that they already receive, and that’s simply unfair and unwarranted," the company said. "We hope to resolve this situation before any action is taken, but we will do what’s necessary to protect our customers from excessive and unwarranted fee increases. We already provide News Corp. nearly a billion dollars a year for their channels, and we have no problem continuing to compensate them fairly." Fox's carriage agreement with DirecTV expired Sept. 30. Fox Networks includes FX, National Geographic Channel, 19 regional sports networks, Fox Movie Channel, Speed, Fuel TV, Fox Soccer and Fox Deportes. Fox broadcast stations and Fox News Channel are not involved in the negotiations. Fox's dispute with DirecTV marks the latest in a series of carriage disagreements for the company. Fox and its parent, News Corp., were engaged in a dispute with Cablevision a year ago, and the Fox channels were blacked out on Dish Network in October 2010 amid a dispute with the satellite TV giant.
0 Shares The WWE ran a live event in Sydney, Australia over the weekend. Seth Rollins was defeated at the event by Roman Reigns in the main event. After the match, Seth received an INCREDIBLE reaction from the fans. Seth looks amazed and takes in the moment by recording it. Below is the video from Seth’s official Facebook page. Here is the video: Awesome stuff. Here is the video Seth posted on his Instagram story: Video from Seth’s Instagram story. The fan reaction at #WWESydney overwhelmed our man a bit ? #SethRollins #WWE pic.twitter.com/WT7xfRGKwO — Daily Ambrollins (@DailyAmbrollins) August 13, 2016 [irp posts=”14768″ name=”Chris Jericho and Seth Rollins Admit They Are Wankers” At WWE Melbourne (VIDEO)”] Pretty cool moment. It is going to be incredible if the WWE ever turns him babyface. Let us know if you attended the WWE Sydney Live Event! I would love to see a photo from fans perspectives that were up top waiting for him. Would be pretty great!
RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has said that one should not think of making a fortune while serving poorest of the poor. Reuters Asking micro-lenders to look at only a “reasonable profit” to sustain their business while serving borrowers at the bottom of pyramid, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has said that one should not think of making a fortune while serving poorest of the poor. Advertising The comments come in sharp contrast to management guru late CK Prahalad’s views in his book ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’. The concept of the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid originally appeared in an article by Prahalad and Stuart L Hart in business journal ‘Strategy+Business’ in 2004. That was followed by a book with the same title that discussed new business models targeted at providing goods and services to the poorest. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a philanthropist who has seen so far spent millions annually to help the poor, has described the book as something that offers an intriguing blueprint for how to fight poverty with profitability. Advertising Rajan, himself is a renowned economist, said during a recent micro finance event, “I think Prahalad did a disservice by saying that there is a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. “My sense is that you cannot, in good conscience, make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Make reasonable profits, but if you start making a fortune, it does start raising societal anxiety about how the fortune is being made”. Following the advice of Prahalad, many companies across the world and especially consumer goods, auto and telecom marketers in the country, have begun to tap the underserved markets and made a big market out of them, Rajan said. He added however that reasonable profit must be there at the bottom of the pyramid as the business has to be self-sustaining. “If business is not self-sustaining, then entities Will make a pretence of doing the business, but they are not really going to get engaged until there are profits,” Rajan noted. The poor who want to borrow often face local monopolies, which in the long-run can be taken care of by market competition, but in short-run borrowers have to deal with it, Rajan said. “When they face local monopolies, then essentially we don’t have the presence of a competition commission right at the grassroots. And therefore, sometimes laws like you cannot charge more than a certain amount may be necessary to protect the poor,” he said. Rajan said an interest rate cap on loans given by MFIs may force some people to go to money lenders who are outside the formal system and can charge an arm and a leg, but at the same time it ensures protection of consumers. He said: “So, we should have a reasonable ceiling…not too low but not so high that it is irrelevant. When we have more competition we can remove this ceiling. “For now, despite the MFIs saying that the ceiling is harmful, and I admit it does harm certain individuals who are forced into the hands of the money lender, it is something that we should continuously re-examine but we probably have to live with it at this point.” The Reserve Bank had in April 2012 capped the interest rate on MFI loans at 26 per cent following the Malegam committee report. RBI set up the Malegam committee after the October 2010 MFI crisis in Andhra, when the state banned MFIs from coercively collecting instalments after some borrowers allegedly committed suicides fearing recovery agents. Advertising This led to a massive default by borrowers in the undivided state from which the then largest MFI market is yet to recover.
When racism is legalized and institutionalized, things like this happen: “France has first burka rage incident:” A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making “snide remarks about her black burka”. A police officer close to the case said: “The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow shopper wearing a veil and wanted the ban introduced as soon as possible.” At one point the lawyer, who was out with her daughter, is said to have likened the Muslim woman to Belphegor, a horror demon character well known to French TV viewers. Belphegor is said to haunt the Louvre museum in Paris and frequently covers up his hideous features using a mask. An argument started before the older woman is said to have ripped the other woman’s veil off. As they came to blows, the lawyer’s daughter joined in.
Thanks. Yeh its a nice little case if you need a small, good looking machine. Yes it can fit a PCI card but it has to be half height or you have to remove the bracket (this is what i did as i added a 2 port intel nic. The issue is that the pci slot when filled will block the top fan. Depending on how big your card is, this will likely impact the air exhaust. My card is about 3 inches wide and 7 inches deep. After adding, my avg temps increased 2C so acceptable. If you were to put a GFX in there, probably worse. My CPU fan is variable but regardless even at its max 1500 rpms, its very quiet. the Zalman is a nice SFF cooler. The included fans are very quiet as they max at 1000 rpms. Depending on your cooling needs, you may benefit a lot by replacing these (120mm) with fans that more more air (but are prob louder). I have no issues with cooling now that i have "fixed" my 4790K. These had an issue with overheating and turns out it was the default settings in the BIOS (as was case with many other MB brands). I think the biggest design decision is the CPU cooler vs PSU. If you want the SFF PSU like the Silverstone, you will need a cooler that is about 3-4mm smaller that the Zalman. If i ever have power issues i may look at this but so far, its been great.
Of all the songs on Derek And The Dominos’ Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, the one that sounds most out of place is the title track. Layla is largely a laid-back jam record—a collection of electric blues and country-tinged folk music banged out on the quick by Eric Clapton, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, and Duane Allman. And then there’s “Layla,” with its mammoth opening guitar riff, wailing Allman slide-guitar solo, and plaintive Gordon piano coda. The song is more arena-rock than roots-rock; in fact, it sounds like the birth of arena-rock, at least as it would come to sound in the ’70s. By and large on Layla, producer Tom Dowd held to his philosophy of always recording what happened in the studio rather than trying to force it; but with “Layla,” Dowd moves gracefully between the recording’s various elements, giving each their spotlight and maximizing their power, right down to the playful little “bird-tweet” that ends the track. This song doesn’t feel off-the-cuff in any way. This is a pronouncement, delivered from a mountaintop. Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs was released 40 years ago, and will be re-released later this month in a special edition containing the original album, a disc of additional Derek And The Dominos records, and two discs of the Dominoes in concert. It’s not a complete document of the Dominos’ brief run. An earlier anniversary edition featured a full disc of Clapton/Allman instrumental jams that don’t appear on the new set, and though the second disc of the new Layla includes some songs recorded for an unfinished second Dominos album, it only includes those that were pretty well “finished,” which leaves a few oft-bootlegged tracks on the outs. Still, with the addition of a few previously unreleased performances from The Johnny Cash Show—including a joyous take on “Matchbox,” performed with Cash and Carl Perkins—this is fairly close to a definitive document of what Clapton’s intentions were with this band. Those intentions are something Clapton talks about in his autobiography: It began with me just talking to these guys about music and getting to know them, and then we just played and played and played. I was in absolute awe of these people, and yet they made me feel that I was on their level. My musicianship fit with their musicianship. We were kindred spirits, made in the same mold. To this day I would say that the bass player Carl Radle and the drummer Jimmy Gordon are the most powerful rhythm section I have ever played with. They were absolutely brilliant. When people say that Jim Gordon is the greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer who ever lived, I think it’s true, beyond anybody. All we did was jam and jam and jam and night would become day and day would become night, and it just felt good to me to stay that way. I had never felt so musically free before. We kept ourselves going with fryups and a cocktail of drink and drugs, mostly cocaine and Mandrax. ‘Mandies’ were quite strong sleeping pills, but instead of letting them put us to sleep, we would ride the effect, staying awake by snorting some coke or drinking some brandy or vodka, and this would create a unique kind of high. This became the chemistry of our lives, mixing all these things together. God knows how our bodies stood it. I had no game plan at this time. We were just enjoying playing, getting stoned, and writing songs. Advertisement To understand the significance of Clapton writing about feeling like a peer with the other Dominos, it helps to know where his head was at prior to 1970. While Clapton’s peers in the British rock scene were courting success on the pop charts, Clapton remained a purist, holed up in his room trying to master the techniques of Big Bill Broonzy and John Lee Hooker. He quit The Yardbirds because he thought they were sellouts; and he quit John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers because he felt he was way beyond his bandmates. Along the way he left behind just a little recorded evidence of his guitar prowess—primarily the pistol-hot Five Live Yardbirds and the rollicking Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton—but for the most part, Clapton’s reputation was built on his cockiness and his fiery performances. Around the time Clapton abandoned Mayall, graffiti started popping up around London: “Clapton Is God.” Then Clapton formed Cream with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, and reality finally began to catch up with the hype. Cream had a monster sound, influenced by jazz, blues, and psychedelia, and the band quickly became one of the top touring attractions at home and in the U.S. But Bruce and Baker couldn’t stand each other, and Clapton grew wary of the idolatry. As he crisscrossed two continents, he heard musicians like The Band writing and recording new classics with little of the fuss or bluster of Cream. Clapton quit Cream and formed a new band, Blind Faith, with Baker and Steve Winwood, intending to emulate The Band and make the music the star. Instead, the industry rushed to capitalize on Clapton’s iconic status and make Blind Faith the next “supergroup.” Sensing a repeat of his Cream frustrations, Clapton killed the band quickly and went out on the road with Blind Faith’s American supporting act: husband-and-wife roots-rockers Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. He worked strictly as a sideman and asked not to be the main attraction. (Nevertheless, Delaney & Bonnie did release a live album from the tour called On Tour With Eric Clapton. It’s excellent.) During his stint with Delaney & Bonnie, Clapton met—and stole—Whitlock, Radle, and Gordon, and Derek And The Dominos were born. Bobby Whitlock is himself a superior singer-songwriter, whose self-titled 1972 solo debut (with backing music provided primarily by the Dominos) is an under-heralded classic. Layla is often talked about as a Clapton album, but the Stax-trained Whitlock wrote or co-wrote six of its 14 songs, and provided a much-needed foil for Clapton, keeping him in a down-home, country-soul mood. Then, partway through the Layla sessions, Dowd took Clapton to see The Allman Brothers, and Clapton tried to steal Duane Allman for the band too. Instead, he had to settle for Allman playing ferociously on 11 of the album’s songs, giving the blues workouts in particular more gas than they might have otherwise had. Advertisement Which is good, since those blues workouts dominate Layla. Clapton reached way back into his repertoire for songs like “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out” and “Key To The Highway,” which according to his autobiography he’d been playing since before he joined The Yardbirds. As he did with Cream, Clapton stretched out on the classics, except he wasn’t trying to overpower the listener anymore; he and the Dominos were just enjoying the moment, in no hurry to see it end. In the songs Clapton co-wrote with Whitlock—like the easygoing album-opener “I Looked Away” and the exuberant “Keep On Growing”—the Dominos show what they learned from their time on the road with Delaney & Bonnie. The music is loose and rootsy, designed to give off a pleasurable buzz. It’s this mode of the Dominos that Clapton carried into the live performances and the second-album material on the Layla reissue. The live tracks are funky and jammy, even when the band tackles poppier non-Dominos Clapton songs like “Let It Rain” and “Presence Of The Lord.” The songs for the unreleased record—like the stormy “Evil” and the acoustic “One More Chance”—are even more steeped in country-blues than the music on Layla. When Clapton dissolved Cream, part of him wanted to go back to being a talented journeyman, playing alongside the likeminded. With Derek And The Dominos, he almost got his wish. But traditionalism and a happy-dudes-hanging-out vibe are only part of the legend of Derek And The Dominos and Layla. The band’s story can’t be told without acknowledging the rampant drug use, which quickly shaded into abuse once heroin entered the mix. Derek And The Dominos fell apart because Clapton was often in too rough a shape to play, which left Whitlock in the lurch and wrecked their friendship. Later, Radle’s various addictions caused the kidney infection that killed him in 1980, while Gordon was institutionalized in the mid-’80s after he had a psychotic break and killed his mother with a hammer. (Allman, who was never an official member of the band, died in a motorcycle accident in 1971, before sessions for the second album began.) Advertisement As for Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, it’s rightly hailed as one of the best albums Clapton ever made, though it doesn’t have the arc of a great album. Because of the jams, it was originally spread across four LP sides, with sides two and three each containing only three songs; but on CD it all fits on one disc, and the sequencing doesn’t have any particular flow or build. And yet it still works as a concept album of a kind. When Clapton formed the Dominoes and recorded Layla, he was smitten with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his friend George Harrison. Much of the album was written with her in mind, and even covers like “Have You Ever Loved A Woman” and “It’s Too Late” are not-so-coded expressions of Clapton’s unrequited affection. Clapton’s covert mission to win Boyd’s heart through music also partly explains the album’s swagger. He gets sensitive and self-lacerating with the Eastern-influenced ballad “I Am Yours” and the aching “Bell Bottom Blues”—the latter being the most Clapton-y song on Layla besides “Layla”—but he also gives the band’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” a weirdly triumphant air for a song that’s so wistful in its original form. Though Clapton craved anonymity after Cream, the part of him that believed he was unassailably the best young blues guitarist in Britain didn’t just disappear overnight. So while on the surface “Layla” sounds like an outlier on the album that bears its name, deep in its bones, the song is the album. It’s the modern blues: a raw howl from a man desperately in love. And it’s his way of showing off. “Why don’t you love me,” the song seems to ask, “When I can do this?”
Thursday's blast in Ludwigshafen also gutted parked cars and created a crater 10 meters (33 feet) in diameter and 5 to 6 meters deep. Police in the western industrial city said they continued to investigate the cause. The explosion left a 10-meter crater The company Gascade announced that workers had attempted to dig down to a buried line near apartment blocks at the time - as well as near a factory site operated by BASF, the world's largest chemicals company, which has its headquarters in Ludwigshafen. Gascade officials said it remained unclear what had damaged the pipe, a section of a 57-kilometer (35-mile) line that leads southward to the city of Karlsruhe. Police said that rescuers had managed to extinguish the main blaze at the site by the late afternoon, as well as control the smaller fires. In September, an explosion at a chemicals plant in the northern town of Ritterhude damaged dozens of homes. mkg/jr (AFP, dpa, AP)
While he may have lost his bid for the White House, John McCain did not lose his sense of humor. “I’ve been sleeping like a baby,” the GOP candidate said on The Tonight Show Tuesday. “I sleep two hours, wake up and cry. Sleep two hours, wake up and cry.” The Arizona senator’s 14th visit to the show brought a loud and spontaneous ovation from Jay Leno’s special Veteran’s Day audience of U.S. service men and women. Noting that Americans “don’t like a sore loser,” McCain defended his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and of Joe the Plumber as his campaign everyman. Asked why he thought he lost, he deadpanned: “I think my personality. Or maybe too many people saw me on the Jay Leno show.” Avoided the Newspaper On the day after the election, McCain said he and wife Cindy celebrated, if not a political victory, at least their release from the smothering oversight of the Secret Service. “We got in the car and we went down to get a cup of coffee,” he said. “Not the newspaper though. We knew what it would say.” McCain called Barack Obama “a good and decent person,” adding, “I salute and admire the Senator, uh, President-elect Obama.” Leno noted that there seemed to be “two McCains” – one the funny Tonight Show guest and the other a not-so-entertaining presidential candidate. “Well,” said McCain, “these are tough times. Frankly, I don’t think people wanted a stand-up comic.” Proud of Sarah Palin Although some polls – and any number of reports from unnamed “top advisors” – suggest that Palin hurt his candidacy, McCain would hear none of it. “Nah,” he said. “Sarah Palin and her husband. … I’m so proud of her and very grateful she agreed to run with me. She inspired people and she still does. (She is) among a group of young Republicans who are the next generation of leadership of our party.” But don’t expect another McCain-Palin ticket. “In 2012, you’ll be 76,” said Leno. “I’ll be ready to go again,” McCain joked to cheers. “No, I wouldn’t think so, my friend. It’s been a great experience.” Who’s your Favorite Star Under 35? PEOPLE.com and the People’s Choice Awards are counting your votes! Click here to vote now! RELATED GALLERY: • John McCain has Usher in his iPod!
4-year-old Alyssa Brown visited Snow White’s wishing well atCalifornia’s Disneyland theme park with only one single wish in her mind. "Iwish with all my heart that my daddy would come home," she said inregards to her father who was serving in Afghanistan. Covering both hereyes over the well’s edge, Alyssa opened her eyes to see her father,Marine Lt. Scott Brown, down on one knee before her in Marine Dress uniform. It was a touchingmoment for everyone involved and it lived up to the fairy tale endingonly Disney can deliver.Watch the event unfold below,tissues optional….Grasping the success of such a magical well, Alyssa later told her parents shealready had her next wish ready. “My next wish is for a puppy!”, hermother said of her daughter’s wish. ‘No, we’ve got a brother instead.’Kids. You give ‘em an inch.Uploaders remarks:Welcome Home Marine LT Brown! Thank you for your service to this nation.
Rate Expectations Versus Rates Which Point To Use? Interest Income Concluding Remarks One of the more intractable controversies within monetary economics is measuring the effect of interest rates on the economy. Within mainstream economics, a strong effect is assumed, and a series of non-falsifiable models are built around that assumption ( as discussed here ). For those of a post-Keynesian persuasion, this is unsatisfactory, as there are a number of potential channels from interest rates to the economy, and the effects can move in opposite directions for these different channels. I would like to ignore the theoretical debate how interest rates affect the economy, rather look at the data. Unfortunately, it is not even clear what interest rate to use.Within modern mainstream Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models, the level of interest rates is not supposed to be the variable of interest, rather it is expected path of rates. This leads to some fairly complex mathematics, as we are now defining interest rate policy as a "reaction function," and not just a time series of interest rates.Although I have my doubts about DSGE macro, I do not object to the importance of interest rate expectations as a concept. This is because long-term government bond yields reflect the expected path of interest rates. Roughly speaking, a bond yield is equal to the expected average of the policy rate over the lifetime of the bond, plus a "small" risk premium (term premium). All of the mathematical difficulties of DSGE models become understandable if we realise we are interested in the entire term structure of interest rates, and not just a single point of the yield curve.If we want to do econometric analysis to determine the effect of interest rates on the economy (without just assuming we have the model dynamics), we need to do something like run regressions on an interest rate time series versus other economic time series. Unfortunately, it is unclear what point to pick.Pretty well any borrower has the option of locking in a fixed rate of interest for multiple years, or else borrowing at a floating rate. Which rates appear most attractive at any given point in time depends upon the psychology of borrowers. Given the fragmentation of the lending markets, we only have a limited idea of the mix of borrowing maturities. As a result, we do not have an idea what points on the curve matter most for borrowing decisions at any given time.For central bankers, they administer the overnight rate, and it is natural for them to pick that point to run their statistical analysis. "If we move the administered rate by 100 basis points in this direction, what happens?" However, the relationship between the policy rate and points further on the curve is vague.If we are at very short maturities, it does not make too much of a difference what point you choose. As the chart of the 2-year Treasury yield and the overnight policy rate (Fed Funds) shows, the two rates are fairly close together most of the time. If the Fed hikes rates by 400 basis points, the 2-year yield will rise 300-400 basis points. That is pretty close to a 1:1 relationship, at least when we compare the error to the other sources of error in any estimates we are trying to make.This breaks down even when we go out to the 5-year point of the curve. If we look at the interest rate cycle of the mid-2000s, the slope from the overnight rate to the 5-year yield went from +300 basis points to about -100 basis points. Although the time series for the 5-year yield and the overnight rate are correlated, the magnitudes of the change in yields are quite different. This means that it is very unclear what the sensitivity of other variables towards interest rates will be.This relationship between the overnight rate and the 5-year yield is what you would expect to happen if the bond markets are efficient; they will price in yield reversion at both extremes of the cycle. (Many observers, including those at the Fed, were mystified by this "conundrum," which tells us how well the Fed understands their own models.)Making the situation even more complicated is the fact that only the Federal Government borrows at the "risk free" rate; other entities are borrowing at a spread over the Treasury curve. The variability of these spreads further muddies the relationship between the policy rate and the interest rates faced by private sector borrowers.Mainstream analysis is almost entirely focused on the rate of interest (the price of borrowing money), and not the income flows associated with borrowing. Post-Keynesian analysis (in particular, Modern Monetary Theory) puts much more emphasis on the income flows from debt. Changing interest rates will change the income flows within the economy.If you want to pursue this angle, you will need to dig into the interest income flows within the flow of funds. The rate of interest has only a slow lagged effect on these flows, as a great deal of borrowing is done a fixed rate of interest, and the interest rate paid has been already locked in. For example, if you are looking at government interest expense, it will only move slowly as the average maturity of most developed government bond markets is at least 5 years or so. So long as the Treasury Bill segment of the curve can be locked down near the policy rate, the average interest cost on the portfolio of government debt will only move slowly, with a reversion time comparable to the average maturity of the debt.Although some analysts can generate very precise sounding predictions about the effect of Fed rate hikes on other economic variables, the reality is that even if we had good models of the economy, the sensitivity of other variables towards the overnight rate would be hard to pin down. Unless the Fed hikes rates by several hundred basis points (which admittedly was the norm for previous cycles), the flattening of the yield curve would reduce the effect of hikes on effective interest costs.(c) Brian Romanchuk 2015
Trudging through an icy, snow covered parking lot at 7AM in the middle of January isn’t most people’s idea of a “good time.” They don’t know why the cold, dark days of a Western New York winter will always be the best days of the year. They don’t know how refreshing it is hearing crunch of skates digging in to the ice or the hollow pop of a clean pass hitting a stick on the tape. Those people will never understand any of it. Those people are not hockey players. When the 2016 NHL Draft commences this Friday night at the First Niagara Center in Buffalo, NY, four local players, who all grew up playing in rinks you’ve likely been to, will be sitting by waiting to hear their name called. Waiting for a dream that began during those cold, dark, Western New York winters to become a reality. For Austin Osmanski, Stephen Dhillon, Matthew Ladd and Tyler Johnson, those dreams might come one step closer to being realized this weekend in the same city that they all grew up in. One of the local players likely to hear their name called this weekend is Stephen Dhillon, a 6’4” 185 lb goaltender from Buffalo, NY. Dhillon, a product of the Buffalo Regals program has just completed his second season with the Niagara IceDogs of the Ontario Hockey League. After a successful 2013-2014 season with the Buffalo Regals U15, Dhillon was drafted in the 3rd Round, 52nd overall by the IceDogs and quickly signed with the Niagara for the following season. Dhillon is already an incredibly accomplished goaltender with very impressive resume even at this early point in his career. In addition to appearances at the USA Select 15, Select 16 and Select 17 festivals, Dhillon was also invited to participate in the CCM All-American Prospects game, an event designed by USA Hockey to showcase the best draft eligible talent from the United States. Adding to his already impressive resume as an elite American goaltender, Dhillon was a member of Team USA U18 Team that traveled to the Czech Republic in August of 2015 for the Ivan Hlinka Tournament. Dhillon is in a unique situation this year as his talent and future projection will make him an enticing pack on Day 2 of the draft, yet he was not the IceDogs starting goaltender for the second half of this season. The IceDogs, who were one of the best team in the OHL and made a run all the way to the OHL Finals, traded for veteran netminder Alex Nedeljkovic (A 2014 Second Round pick of the Carolina Hurriances) mid-way through the season. For some players this might not sit well but from the OHL personnel I have talked to, Dhillon handled the move very well. The trade for Nedeljkovic should not be seen as a slight against Dhillon or an indictment of his play. As it stands, Dhillon will only make the cutoff for the 2016 NHL Draft by a few days and had he been born two weeks later, would not even be eligible for the NHL Draft until 2017. The IceDogs were simply looking for a veteran goaltender to help take their team as far in to the OHL playoffs as possible. Dhillon, plays a very aggressive style for a goaltender, frequently coming out of the crease to attack and challenge shooters, a trait that is very rare in a young netminder. The enticing combination of size and quickness the young Dhillon possess are something more and more NHL teams covet and I would not be surprised if Dhillon was the first Western New York player to come off the board. He has an incredible amount of potential and will have two full season as the #1 option in Niagara to develop his game further following his selection. Look for Dhillon to hear his name called somewhere between the 2nd and 4th Round of this weekend’s draft. Although Dhillon will almost certainly be the first local goaltender to hear his name called this weekend, he could have some real competition as the first Western New York Hockey Prospect to be selected as East Aurora native Austin Osmanski is also ranked in the same range. Standing 6’4″ and weighing in at a solid 205 lbs, the left shot Osmanski already possesses something nearly every scout and general manager covets; an NHL-ready build. Osmanski, who has just finished his first OHL season with Mississauga Steelheads, was ranked #153 among North American prospects when NHL Central Scouting released its mid term rankings. Likely to be selected somewhere between Rounds 3 and 7, there is a lot to like about Osmanski’s game. Above everything, it’s hard work that he takes the most pride in: “In my opinion, my work ethic and dedication to the sport is what separates me from others. I have no problem spending 5 or 6 hours a day, everyday in this sport because I know that’s what it takes. I may be under the radar now but I’m confident that if I continue to do things the right way on and off the ice, I have a chance to make a living playing this game. I know defense wins games and I try to be the toughest player to play against in my own end each and every night.” Following the 2013-2014 season with the Buffalo Regals U15 of the SCTAMM, Osmanski was selected in both the OHL and USHL Draft. After deciding to stay at home for one more season, he moved to the Buffalo Jr. Sabres program and tallied 9 goals and 15 assists while splitting time between the Jr. Sabres U16 and U18 teams. After weighing his options following the 2015-2016 season, Austin and his family decided the jump to the OHL would be the best move for his career. Now that he’s looking at potentially being selected this weekend, it appears it was the right move. When I asked Austin what it would mean to hear his name called this weekend he told me: “That’s something that I try not to think about right now but in all honesty it’s impossible not to think about it. Growing up as a kid it’s a dream you have every night but now that its finally here you find yourself feeling anxious, nervous, etc. but my family has done a great job of preparing me for what might happen whether it goes in our favor or not. When the time comes I’m sure it will be a special moment for not only me but my family, friends and supporters who have helped me get this far. “ In addition to Stephen Dhillon and Austin Osmanski there are two other Western New York players who could slide in to the later rounds on Saturday and both players happen to be goaltenders in Matt Ladd and Tyler Johnson. Ladd, an imposing presence in the net at 6’3″ and 200lbs spent the first three years of high school with both the Buffalo Saints and Buffalo Regals programs before moving on to play last season with New England Prep powerhouse Avon Old Farms. During his time with the Buffalo Regals, Ladd played under former Buffalo Sabres forward Matthew Barnaby, an opportunity that Ladd relished: “Playing for Coach Barnaby was great and he is one of the best coaches I ever had. With him playing in the NHL and having so much experience it helped my development and our team succeed, as well. He is a great guy and coach. He expects a lot of you and pushes you to the best that you can be. Playing for him last year really improved my play.” Ladd’s play certainly did improve during his time with the Regals and it showed at Avon Old Farms as Ladd was one of the best goaltenders in New England and is now the highest rated Prep goaltender heading in to the 2016 NHL Draft. Currently uncommitted to an NCAA Division I program, Matt has caught the of some NHL scouts and will likely play in the USHL next season for the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, the team that took him in the 4th Round of USHL Entry Draft. Matt told me he tries to model his game off of Carey Price and Braden Holtby because of their calm demeanor, a trait he says is very important for goaltenders and a sentiment echoed by Cedar Rapids scout Daniel Reidel who told me “I like that he’s calm in the net. He’s very imposing to shooters and very technical in his game. He’s very fluid and he battles for every puck.” When I asked Matt what the strongest part of his game was he told me “The strongest part of my game would be my size and my crease movements and athleticism. As a big goalie, it is important to use your size to your advantage and to take away space for the shooter. It is important to be athletic and be able to move quickly as well. As a goalie you need to be the best skater on the team because hockey is a game of inches and you need to be able to get around the crease easily.” Tyler Johnson is yet another imposing Buffalo netminder who could hear his name called in the later rounds on Saturday as well. Standing 6’3′ and 185 pounds, the Amherst native has found himself playing all over the country the past few seasons with stops in New Hampshire, Michigan, Kansas and Illinois. After spending last season with Compuware U18 of the HPHL, Johnson moved on to Junior Hockey and has posted a 2.27 goals against along with a .911 save percentage this season with the Topeka Roadrunners of NAHL. Currently ranked as the #18 North American goaltender headed in to the 2016 NHL Draft. Much like Stephen Dhillon and Matt Ladd, Johnson excels at using a combination of size and athleticism to keep the puck out of the net. It is his size and athleticism that caught the eye of quite a few college programs and Tyler recently committed to play NCAA Division I hockey for the 2016-2017 season at the University of Maine. Before joining Maine Johnson will have one hurdle to clear however. During his time with Compuware last season Johnson was called up and played one period of hockey for the Plymouth Whalers of the OHL, the team that selected him in the 7th Round of the OHL Priority Selection, putting his college eligibility in to question. The NCAA has since given Tyler a 1 year suspension, forcing him to sit a next season, a ruling that both John and the University of Maine will be appealing. When I asked him what it would mean to be drafted, I think Tyler summed of the feelings of all these players pretty well.
Armored Corps instructor course, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Infantry instructor course, 2000 (Photo: Abir Sultan/IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Armored Corp instructor, 1993 (Photo: Michael Chai/Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters reading a map during training, January 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Hike to receive supplies parachuted from a plane, 1954 (Photo: Assaf Kutin, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Hike to receive supplies parachuted from a plane, 1954 (Photo: Assaf Kutin, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Hike to receive supplies parachuted from a plane, 1954 (Photo: Assaf Kutin, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Hike to receive supplies parachuted from a plane, 1954 (Photo: Assaf Kutin, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Rabin comes for a visit, 1959 (Photo: Assaf Kutin, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Soldier carries a rifle with a sniper scope, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighter hurls a grenade during infantry commanders course, 2000 (Photo: Abir Sultan, IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Infantry commanders course, 2000 (Photo: Abir Sultan, IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters during pushups during training, 2000 Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training with an Uzi, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Fighters training, 2000 (Photo: IDF Spokesman, courtesy of the IDF Archive) An Armored Corps instructor directing an APC, 1993 (Photo: Michael Chai, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive) Anti-tank instructors practicing the firing of Tau missiles (Photo: Eran-Yofi Cohen, Bamahane, courtesy of the IDF Archive)
Dunking Science: Do Cookies Really Taste Better Dipped In Tea? Enlarge this image toggle caption Daniel M.N. Turner/NPR Daniel M.N. Turner/NPR Brits and Americans may have split less than amicably a couple of centuries ago, but we can still find cultural common ground when it comes to life's pleasures: The Beatles, Downton Abbey and dunking cookies. Of course, the Brits call them "biscuits" and dip primarily in tea, while we are more promiscuous and are willing to plunge our treats into coffee, hot chocolate or even milk. But does immersing a cookie into a warm beverage really make it taste better? And if so, why? That's what the British chef Heston Blumenthal recently set out to discover on his TV show, Heston's Fantastical Food. With the help of a high-tech gadget inserted up the nose, he found that a chocolate-covered biscuit dipped into hot black tea did indeed have more flavor than an undunked one. Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the University of Nottingham Courtesy of the University of Nottingham Blumenthal isn't well-known the U.S., but he's a household name in England. He writes cookbooks, stars in TV shows and runs The Fat Duck restaurant just west of London. A few years ago, The New York Times said The Fat Duck "is widely considered one of the world's finest cathedrals to modernist cuisine, the sort of restaurant where a meal could start with nitro-poached aperitifs, finish with 'the smell of the Black Forest' and take four hours in between." The chef likes to understand the chemistry behind his food. So to solve the mystery of the tea-drenched biscuit, Blumenthal enlisted the help of food scientists at the University of Nottingham. They've developed a device, called MS-Nose, which measures the amount of flavor released in your mouth as aromas when you take a sip of cabernet, melt a chocolate bar on your tongue or chew on a cookie. When Blumenthal hooks himself up to the device and starts chomping on a chocolate-covered digestive, the MS-Nose sends data back to a computer screen, where the levels of flavor released are plotted on a chart. "We're measuring the biscuity flavor — known as methylbutanol to the boffins" — (that's British slang for science types) — he says during an episode of his show that aired in the U.K. last November. Methylbutanol is a compound that gives cookies and baked goods a toasty or malty taste. When Blumenthal chews on a dry biscuit, the flavor dutifully registers on the line graph on a screen. But when he then dips the biscuit into tea and takes another bite, the "flavor line" noticeably spikes up on the chart. "The results are astonishing!" he exclaims. The wet biscuit not only released more cookie flavor, but the aromas also burst into Blumenthal's mouth more quickly. "Dunking makes the biscuit taste more biscuity," Blumenthal says. "That's complete evidence that dunking is better than not dunking." Enlarge this image toggle caption Screenshot from shazzandfred/YouTube Screenshot from shazzandfred/YouTube Shoving a tube up one's nose may seem like a funny way to measure flavor, but it makes sense when you consider that flavor is made up of both tastes and aromas, says food scientist Avinash Kant, who works with the MS-Nose at the company Flavometrix on the Nottingham campus. Tastes, Kant explains, are detected on the tongue and include the basics, like salty, sugary, sour and bitter. The aromas, meanwhile, are sensed in the nasal passages, right between the eyes and behind the bridge of the nose. "There are connections of passageways through your nose, ears and mouth," Kant tells The Salt. "When food interacts with your saliva in your mouth, aromas get released" and travel to your nose from the back of your throat. That's where the flavor magic happens, Kant says. "There are thousands of aromas, all with slightly different properties. They are the primary factor that determines a food's flavor." They separate $100 Bordeaux from "Two-Buck Chuck" (which is now $2.49, FYI), Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano from string cheese, and a dunked biscuit from a dry one. To reach your nose, Kant says, these aromas have to jump from the cookie into the air. The hotter and wetter the biscuit, the more easily the aromas can make this leap. "Typically, the hotter the food, the faster things move," Kant says.
The melanoma-treating drug, selumetinib (red) bound to its protein target MEK1 (blue). (Image by Dr. Lucky Tran.) NEW YORK, NY (June 19, 2014) — For the first time, a therapy has been found that can delay progression of metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly form of melanoma of the eye. Results from a multicenter clinical trial show that a new drug called selumetinib increases progression-free survival, the length of time during and after treatment that a patient with metastases lives with the disease without its progressing. The findings were published in the online edition of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Although the effects of the drug were modest, we now know that we can influence the course of the disease, and we expect to build on this success with other drugs, including some already in development,” said senior author, Gary K. Schwartz, MD, professor of medicine and chief of hematology/oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and associate director of its Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. (At the time of the trial, Dr. Schwartz was chief of the melanoma and sarcoma service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.) Uveal melanoma is a cancer of the iris, ciliary body, or choroid—structures in the eye collectively known as the uvea. Uveal melanoma (which is biologically distinct from skin melanoma) arises from the uvea’s melanocytes, the pigment cells that give the eye its color. Once the disease has spread—most metastases appear in the liver—existing treatments are largely ineffective. About 1,500 cases of uveal melanoma occur in the United States each year, usually among older adults. The median survival rate for patients with metastatic uveal melanoma is 12 months. Several years ago, researchers found that 80 percent of patients with uveal melanoma had mutations to GNAQ or GNA11, genes that activate signals in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. Dr. Schwartz and others subsequently demonstrated that inhibition of MEK, a key enzyme in the MAPK pathway, can inhibit the growth of uveal melanoma cells in the laboratory. Dr. Schwartz’s laboratory was the first to show this with selumetinib. In 2013, Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues launched the first large-scale, Phase II, randomized trial of selumetinib. One hundred and one patients with metastatic uveal melanoma at 15 centers in the United States and Canada were randomized to receive either selumetinib or standard chemotherapy. Those in the chemotherapy group could receive selumetinib at any time if they showed signs of disease progression. Median progression-free survival among patients receiving selumetinib was more than double that of patients receiving chemotherapy (15.9 weeks vs. 7 weeks). Forty-nine percent of patients treated with selumetinib exhibited tumor regression, compared with none in the chemotherapy group. Median overall survival for patients on selumetinib was 11.8 months, compared with 9.1 months for those on chemotherapy, but the difference was not statistically significant. “We suspect that there may have been improvement in survival in the selumetinib group, but it was unclear, because patients who didn’t respond to chemotherapy were allowed to cross over to selumetinib,” said Dr. Schwartz. “That’s something we hope to clarify in a follow-up study that is now under way.” The vast majority of patients taking selumetinib experienced side effects, including rash, swelling, and visual changes. Most of the side effects were considered manageable, although 37 percent of patients required at least one dose reduction and 6 percent discontinued therapy. Dr. Schwartz thinks that treatment of uveal melanoma will ultimately involve rational drug design and a combination of drugs, similar to the approach used to combat HIV infection. “In preclinical studies, we’ve shown that when a MEK inhibitor was combined with an Akt inhibitor, which affects another cancer-related pathway, the results were better than when using MEK alone,” he said. “Overall,” Dr. Schwartz added, “the study underscores the importance of rational drug design, in which drugs are designed to interact with specific molecular pathways involved in a particular disease. This is a huge improvement over chemotherapy, which is basically a blanket approach to cancer that does not directly address the underlying biology.” About:
GT Walsheim Medium “I never properly learned typography, I just draw letters for my posters.” “I never properly learned typography, I just draw letters for my posters.” Swiss poster artist Otto Baumberger GT Walsheim is inspired by the poster lettering of Otto Baumberger (1889–1961). He was a Swiss painter, stage designer, lithographer, and poster artist who created over 200 posters during his career. This website introduces the refreshed GT Walsheim typeface family and highlights Baumberger’s beautiful poster designs. You can tap on most images to reveal sketches, animations, and more. Zürich Metropolis 1929 • 100×64cm Zürich Metropolis 2017 • 00:07 Walsheim Weisse 1930 • 110×70.5cm Walsheim Weisse 2017 • 00:06 Zürichsee 1935 • 100×70cm Zürichsee 2017 • 00:10 His work is fascinating for many reasons. Like most designers of his time, Baumberger created a lot of tourism posters with the Swiss Alps in the starring role. His career was marked by the ascendancy of branding and consumer products in society. At times Baumberger’s work leaves the aesthetics of landscape painting behind for a more abstract, geometric look that was so characteristic of the later Swiss Style. All those posters have in common that they allow Baumberger’s geometric lettering to take center stage. Forster Ausverkauf 2017 • 00:06 Forster Ausverkauf 1928 • 128×90cm Balatum 2017 • 00:03 Balatum 1928 • 128×90cm Forster 2017 • 00:03 Forster 1930 • 127×90cm Brak Liqueur 2017 • 00:04 Brak Liqueur 1937 • 127×90cm
About 'Requiem For The Big East' Launched in 1979 -- the same year that ESPN was born -- the Big East used the burgeoning cable TV channel and the media as a whole to help spread its gospel and product to fans and future players across the country. But "Requiem For The Big East" is also a tale of change as the super conference eventually found itself in a new era fighting for survival. Told primarily through the lens of famed Big East coaches such as Jim Boeheim, Lou Carnesecca and John Thompson as well as some of its most iconic players such as Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin and Ed Pinckney, the film chronicles the story of an extraordinary group who rode the rivalries and successes of their teams to become household names. The Big East was a groundbreaking athletic and business creation that encapsulated the era and region in which it was born -- from the toughness of the players and coaches hailing from some of the Northeast's most storied cities, to the executives and Wall Street brokers who thrived because of it. "Requiem For The Big East" explores the meteoric ascension of the Big East Conference and how, in less than a decade under the innovative leadership of founder and commissioner Dave Gavitt, it became the most successful college sports league in America. For most of my adult professional life, there has been one week each year that I looked forward to more than most: the week in early March when the Big East tournament was played at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Having grown up a rabid Georgetown Hoyas fan in Washington D.C., the allure of the tournament inspired me on more than one occasion to play hooky and drop hundreds of dollars on a scalped ticket when I should have been hard at work. With the proximity of its schools, the competitiveness of its rivalries and the ambience of the World's Most Famous Arena, the Big East tourney was always worth the price of admission. But when I heard in 2011 that Syracuse and Pitt, two Big East schools I'd grown up watching and rooting against, were leaving the conference to join the ACC, I knew that the Big East tournament that I knew and loved would be no more. No more afternoons watching Syracuse wrestle against Georgetown. No more six-overtime games between the Orange and UConn. And I didn't exactly understand why. In setting out to make a film about the Big East, I hoped to not simply tell a story about the rise of a great basketball conference but also understand and ultimately convey the causes of its fall. That, in doing so, I would get to sit down and talk with many of the players and coaches who were a part of so many afternoons and evenings during my childhood was an added benefit. And what I quickly realized in talking to them was that it wasn't just fans like myself who were saddened, even angry, by the Big East's demise: so, too, were many of those who helped build the league from nothing. Hopefully, "Requiem For The Big East" will educate the uninitiated on what made the Big East great, while also informing long-time fans why it was doomed to fall apart.
Like many of you, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for the Volvo XC70. To me, it’s the perfect balance of utility, handling, and under-the-radar luxury for going up fire roads in the fall. Every once in a while, though, I find myself wishing the XC70 had a bit more of a summer vibe, you know? That’s where the Volvo XC70 Surf Rescue comes in. First shown at the 2007 SEMA show as part of the launch of the then-new Volvo XC70, the Surf Rescue took the standard car and cranked it up- literally. The XC70 Surf Rescue is lifted a few inches over stock and equipped with some of the first diamond-cut wheels Volvo’s ever produced. The bright, primary color scheme, too, makes the Surf Rescue exactly the kind of vehicle you’d picture Miami’s South Beach lifeguards cruising around in. You don’t need to listen to me rave about the XC70 Surf Rescue and whether or not it’s a proper homage to Old Milwaukee’s Swedish Bikini Team anymore, though. Check out the photos and the official SEMA press release from 2007, below, then let me know what you think of the Surf Rescue in the comments. Las Vegas, NV (October 30, 2007) – It’s only fitting that a SEMA concept car from Volvo be focused on safety. It’s a natural fit. Yet 2007 marks the first year that Volvo has built a SEMA vehicle with a specific safety theme: enter the Volvo XC70 Surf Rescue (SR). Inspired by the surf rescue vehicles rolling up and down the Southern California beaches, the XC70 SR embodies Volvo’s core value of protecting life in a bold and eye-catching concept that will make its world debut at this year’s Specialty Equipment Market Association tradeshow. As with every SEMA concept from Volvo, all of the XC70 SR’s standard safety equipment is intact and functioning. The 2008 Volvo XC70 is all new and incorporates the leading edge of passive and preventative safety systems. “We developed the all-new XC70 with the goal that it should be the safest vehicle in its segment,” says Ingrid Skogsmo, Director of Volvo Cars Safety Center. “The XC70 model shares the same sophisticated network of interacting safety systems as the all-new Volvo S80. The patented body structure absorbs energy in a highly efficient way. And the interior safety system includes the latest generation of side airbags and whiplash protection. Furthermore, we are introducing a world innovation in the field of child safety.” In a true demonstration of versatility of the family/adventure XC70, Volvo combines a height-adjustable integrated booster cushion – a world’s first – with an extended inflatable curtain to provide the industry’s best passenger safety system for precious cargo in the rear seat. Safety innovations do not end there. The latest technological updates include a new, stronger side structure to optimize side-impact protection, not only for children but for all occupants. The body’s entire side structure is both stronger and lighter thanks to a well-balanced combination of high-tensile steel of different grades. In addition, a new type of side-impact airbag – first seen in the all-new S80 model – refines Volvo’s patented SIPS (Side Impact Protection System) into an even more effective safety system. The new side-impact airbags have two separate chambers, one for the hip section and one for the chest. Since the hips can withstand greater force than the chest, the lower chamber inflates with up to five times more pressure than the upper section. The side-impact airbags interact with the inflatable curtains and the body’s network of safety beams to provide the most effective protection. Volvo’s system for avoiding neck injuries – WHIPS (Whiplash Protection System) – is one of the most effective on the market. In the event of a rear-end collision, the front seat backrest accompanies the passenger’s initial body movement and dampens the incoming force rather like one’s hand does when catching a ball. The all-new XC70 features the next generation of WHIPS mechanism, further developed to ensure that the damping motion is gentle and to provide good contact between the head and head restraint throughout the impact sequence. With the high ground clearance of the all-new XC70, there are relatively high-positioned bumpers which may create a greater risk of damage to an oncoming passenger car with lower positioned bumpers. To reduce the risk of injury in a collision, the front suspension sub-frame is supplemented with a lower cross-member positioned at the height of the bumper in a conventional car. This lower beam is integrated into the XC70’s structure and is neatly concealed behind the spoiler. In a collision, the lower cross-member is aimed to strike the oncoming car’s protective structure, activating its crumple zone as intended so the occupants can be given the maximum level of protection. Protection for pedestrians and cyclists has also been further developed in the all-new XC70. The front has been given energy-absorbing properties, not least with a generously dimensioned soft structure in front of the bumper that helps reduce the risk of leg injuries. In addition, the spoiler’s lower edge has been reinforced and moved forward, almost on a level with the bumper. The aim is that the area of contact on pedestrians or cyclists should be distributed across a larger area, thus helping to further reduce the risk of injury. The hood lines are raised and a honeycomb structure underneath spreads the load in the event of an impact, thus helping to absorb the energy and reduce the risk of personal injury. Further protecting the driver and passengers inside the all-new XC70 is the collapsible steering column which, upon deformation, moves horizontally for the best possible interaction with the airbag; pedals that functionally limit the risk of penetration into the passenger compartment; airbags with two-stage function; seat belt pre-tensioners and belt reminders for all five seats; force limiters for the front seat belts; reinforced, transversely fitted tubular beam between the A-posts; strong SIPS tubes in the seats and a sturdy magnesium bracket in the middle of the vehicle; diagonally fitted beams of Ultra High Strength Steel in the doors; and, as with all Volvo cars, a compact transversely mounted engine. “The best way to protect the vehicle’s occupants is to avoid accidents,” says Skogsmo. “That’s why we’ve developed a number of advanced driving and support systems that interact intelligently to assist the driver in difficult situations, yet without taking over the driving itself or taking over responsibility for safe progress. The task is to assist the driver to take the right decisions, by alerting him or her and in various ways indicating how best to get out of the situation.” In order to help the driver stay a safe distance behind the vehicle in front, Volvo has developed Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC). This system should be primarily regarded as a comfort function but it does also contribute to more controlled progress if the rhythm of traffic is uneven. The technology also is used as a basis for several of Volvo’s advanced driving and support systems. Using a radar sensor, the adaptive cruise control continually monitors the gap to the vehicles in front and automatically adjusts the vehicle’s speed to ensure that this gap does not shrink too much. The driver activates the cruise control by setting a desired speed between 18 and 124 mph and then selecting the minimum time gap to the vehicles in front. There are five different time gaps to choose between. Rear-end collisions are a common type of accident. In many of these cases, the reason is that the driver is distracted and fails to respond in time. Against this background, Volvo has developed a system known as Collision Warning with Brake Support. The area in front of the vehicle is continuously monitored with the help of a radar sensor. If the all-new XC70 approaches another vehicle from the rear and the driver does not react, a red warning light flashes in the windscreen. At the same time, a warning buzzer sounds. In certain situations, this is enough for the driver to respond and take action to avoid the danger. If the risk of a collision increases despite the warning, the brake support system is activated. In order to shorten the reaction time, the brakes are prepared for action by automatic application of the pads against the discs. In addition, brake pressure is amplified hydraulically which results in good braking effect even if the driver does not press particularly hard on the brake pedal. “If the road speed is not too high, brake support helps reduce the consequences of a collision,” says Skogsmo. “However, it is always the driver’s reactions that are crucial to the outcome.” To help drivers maintain better control over the driving situation, the all-new XC70 is equipped with BLIS (Blind Spot Information System). Using cameras integrated into the door mirrors, BLIS registers whether another vehicle is in the blind spot offset to the rear. If there is a vehicle there, a light illuminates at the relevant mirror to alert the driver and increase his or her chance of making the appropriate decision. The all-new XC70 has a highly advanced braking system with a number of functions that interact to ensure the shortest possible braking distance under all circumstances. They include Hydraulic Brake Assist (HBA), a new generation of Volvo’s emergency braking support system that utilizes both vacuum and hydraulic reinforcement to help the driver brake in the shortest possible distance in a panic situation; Optimized Hydraulic Brakes (OHB) to reinforce deceleration under hard braking by compensating for low vacuum pressure in the brake servo; Ready Alert Brakes (RAB) that can predict rapid braking and apply the brake pads against the discs even before the driver has time to press the brake pedal; and Fading Brake Support (FBS) that utilizes hydraulics to gradually build up braking pressure during long hard braking, thus helping cut the risk of brake fade and maintaining pedal feel. In order to contribute to the best possible visibility during night-time driving on curving and twisting roads, the all-new XC70 can be equipped with Active Bending lights (ABL) — swiveling headlights that follow the sweeps and bends of the road. A mini-processor is used to calculate and analyze a number of parameters and optimize the light beam to suit the situation. The headlights can be swiveled up to 15 degrees in either direction. In order to save wear and tear on the system, it is automatically deactivated in daylight conditions. In an increasingly insecure world, control is important even when the vehicle is parked. As a matter of theft-prevention and avoiding situations that may involve personal risks, Volvo’s Personal Car Communicator (PCC) provides information aimed at security and safety. This advanced pocket-sized control center can tell the owner if the vehicle is locked or unlocked, and if the alarm has been triggered. In the case of the alarm having been triggered, PCC will indicate whether someone is inside the vehicle via a highly sensitive heartbeat sensor and an advanced calculation process. Furthering security, the all-new XC70 can be specified with laminated glass in all the windows, including the rear side windows and the tailgate, making break-ins more difficult. This means that the luggage compartment also gets effective protection. The rear storage system under the luggage compartment floor has a capacity of more than 1.62 cubic feet (without spare wheel), and it is now lockable. It is locked automatically and conveniently when the tailgate is closed and locked. The all-new XC70 packages both security and convenience with its optional power-operated tailgate. With the press a button on the remote control, complete access to the storage area occurs courtesy of the vehicle’s hydraulics. In order to reduce the risk of accidentally squashing one’s hands or fingers, it is closed from the panel on the tailgate itself. In addition, a dual-stage safety function is integrated into the tailgate, involving a pinch protection molding on each side and an emergency stop. The hydraulic system is equipped with a force sensor, stopping immediately if it senses an obstruction during operation.
Two-Fisted Action & Adventure Against The Mythos Calling All Heroes! It’s Time To Take The Fight to Cthulhu! Pulp Cthulhu is a game of two-fisted adventure, weird science, dark deeds, and brave heroes. With this book, some roleplaying dice, and the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook, you have everything you need to adventure and explore games set in the pulp genre. Tired of your investigators dying in quick succession when jaunting around the world in a desperate bid to save humanity? Wishing that sometimes your investigator could make a stand instead of hiding and waiting for the eldritch horror to pass? Pulp Cthulhu ups the ante and provides you with tougher, more capable heroes—ready to take on the villainous machinations of the Cthulhu Mythos! Here you will find an adapted character generation system, rules for psychic powers, sanity, augmented skills, and weird science, as well as tips for Keepers on developing and running pulp-style games. Also, you will find information on “the Pulps” themselves and the 1930s era when America was in the grip of the Great Depression and on the road to World War II. A collection of pulp villains and monsters, and a range of pulp organizations provide the Keeper with a firm basis for running pulp style scenarios and campaigns. Four action-packed scenarios round out the book, getting your Pulp Cthulhu games started with a bang. The guidance in this book means that you can apply the Pulp Cthulhu rules to any setting and time period, enabling Keepers to bring the flavor and action of pulp to the classic 1920s or modern-day eras, as well as anywhere else they see fit. A Time For Heroes And A Time For Adventure! What the Critics Say "Pulp Cthulhu turns up the action and the threat to turn Lovecraftian investigative horror into Lovecraftian heroic horror."—Reviews from Rl’yeh. Runner-up, Best Artwork and Presentation—Golden Geek Awards 2016. "If you play Call of Cthulhu, do you need this supplement? ...if you want to play with a rule set deliberately intended to help your characters kick some ass, you'll probably have a lot of fun with Pulp Cthulhu."—H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. "Pulp Cthulhu is one of those products that could very easily have been done wrong. It’s a genre full of easy cop-outs and shortcuts, but Chaosium stuck to their guns and delivered on all fronts… You might be able to confront the creatures of the mythos to some extent, but Pulp Cthulhu only promises that you can go down swinging rather than screaming and that’s not a bad thing."—Jay Anyong, The Philippine Gamer "I love the classic, cerebral, investigative feeling of Call of Cthulhu. I have to admit however that many times I wanted my Investigators to, basically, kick some serious ass... Pulp Cthulhu is here for that ass-kicking!"—Antonios S. Review, RPGNet. "It’s a beautiful book, brimming with content and ideas. A worthy purchase for any Keeper, even if Pulp isn't to your taste. "—Total Party Kill. "I love the Pulp Cthulhu idea. Having pulp heroes fight evil cult organizations can be tons of fun… The production quality deserve(s) praise. The binding, illustrations, artwork, handouts are exceptional. The books are super-high quality and even come with a red ribbon bookmark bound into the text. Chaosium did not skimp on any aspect of production..."—GrogHeads. Download the character sheet PDFs here. Why just buy the PDF when you get it included with the printed copy? Physical Product Name: Pulp Cthulhu Physical Book URL: /pulp-cthulhu-hardcover/ Purchasers of physical books get the PDFs for free. If you add the book to your cart, you can add the PDF for this book to your shopping cart after you add the physical book in order to receive your FREE PDF. Please check your shopping cart for a link to the PDF before you begin the check out process.
Research at the University of Liverpool has shown it is possible to develop an ‘invisibility cloak’ to protect buildings from earthquakes. The seismic waves produced by earthquakes include body waves which travel through the earth and surface waves which travel across it. The new technology controls the path of surface waves which are the most damaging and responsible for much of the destruction which follows earthquakes. The technology involves the use of concentric rings of plastic which could be fitted to the Earth’s surface to divert surface waves. By controlling the stiffness and elasticity of the rings, waves travelling through the ‘cloak’ pass smoothly into the material and are compressed into small fluctuations in pressure and density. The path of the surface waves can be made into an arc that directs the waves outside the protective cloak. The technique could be applied to buildings by installing the rings into foundations. Sebastien Guenneau, from the University’s Department of Mathematics, who developed the technology with Stefan Enoch and Mohamed Farhat from the Fresnel Institute (CNRS) in Marseilles, France, explained: “We are able to ‘tune’ the cloak to the differing frequencies of incoming waves which means we can divert waves of a variety of frequencies. For each small frequency range, there is a pair of rings which does most of the work and these move about a lot – bending up and down – when they are hit by a wave at their frequency. “The waves are then directed outside the cloak where they return to their previous size. The cloak does not reflect waves – they continue to travel behind it with the same intensity. At this stage, therefore, we can only transfer the risk from one area to another, rather than eliminate it completely.” He added: “This work has enormous potential in offering protection for densely populated areas of the world at risk from earthquakes. The challenge now is to turn our theories into real applications that can save lives – small scale experiments are underway.” Seismic waves also include coupled pressure and shear body waves which are less destructive than surface waves. Sebastien Guenneau and Sasha Movchan at the University of Liverpool, together with Michele Brun at Cagliari University, have designed an ‘elastic’ cloak to protect against these particular seismic waves and the team is currently seeking a suitable material to accommodate the elastic parameters of the cloak.
Earlier this week, a post from Paul Qui on Instagram started a gossip storm in the Houston restaurant world. Qui mysteriously ‘grammed a rendering of a space at 520 Westheimer, and now it’s confirmed that the Austin-based chef is headed to Clutch City. The Houston Chronicle reports that Qui will open an upscale Asian eatery called Aqui (get it?) in the building at 520 Westheimer. The restaurant will focus on “wood and wok cooking,” including meats grilled on a ripping hot Josper oven, along with a raw bar and menu of cocktails. According to Eater Austin, the restaurant is being designed by A Parallel Architecture, and will feature a similar aesthetic as Kuneho, Qui’s flagship restaurant in Austin. The restaurant is set to open its doors in “spring or early summer,” which is right around the same time that Qui will head to court to face a 2016 assault charge for allegedly hitting his girlfriend. Qui, who denies that he committed the assault, later checked himself into a “medical treatment facility.” It’s going to be a busy next few months for Qui. Today, Eater Austin reports that he is also facing a lawsuit from a vendor that accuses the chef of skipping out on a $24,000 bill. Hopefully he’ll be able to stay out of court long enough to get Aqui open before the Houston summer sets in.
As Christian clergy members, we place a high value on nonviolence. We are part of a national campaign that promotes proven solutions to reducing gun violence in our cities, and each of us has worked to achieve peace in our neighborhoods. But we know there has never been a time in American history in which movements for justice have been devoid of violent outbreaks. Thanks to the sanitized images of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement that dominate our nation’s classrooms and our national discourse, many Americans imagine that protests organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and countless local organizations fighting for justice did not fall victim to violent outbreaks. That’s a myth. In spite of extensive training in nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, individuals and factions within the larger movement engaged in violent skirmishes, and many insisted on their right to physically defend themselves even while they proclaimed nonviolence as an ideal (examples include leaders of the SNCC and the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Mississippi). The reality — which is underdiscussed but essential to an understanding of our current situation — is that the civil rights work of Dr. King and other leaders was loudly opposed by overt racists and quietly sabotaged by cautious moderates. We believe that current moderates sincerely want to condemn racism and to see an end to its effects. The problem is that this desire is outweighed by the comfort of their current circumstances and a perception of themselves as above some of the messy implications of fighting for liberation. This is nothing new. In fact, Dr. King’s 1963 “Letter From Birmingham Jail” is as relevant today as it was then. He wrote in part: I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action.” National polling from the 1960s shows that even during that celebrated “golden age” of nonviolent protest, most Americans were against marches and demonstrations. A 1961 Gallup poll revealed that 57 percent of the public thought that lunch counter sit-ins and other demonstrations would hurt integration efforts. A 1963 poll showed that 60 percent had an unfavorable feeling toward the planned March on Washington, where Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. A year later, 74 percent said that since black people had made some progress, they should stop their demonstrations; and by 1969, 74 percent said that marching, picketing and demonstrations were hurting the civil rights cause. As for Dr. King personally, the figure who current moderates most readily point to as a model, 50 percent of people polled in 1966 thought that he was hurting the civil rights movement; only 36 percent believed he was helping. The civil rights movement was messy, disorderly, confrontational and yes, sometimes violent. Those standing on the sidelines of the current racial-justice movement, waiting for a pristine or flawless exercise of righteous protest, will have a long wait. They, we suspect, will be this generation’s version of the millions who claim that they were one of the thousands who marched with Dr. King. Each of us should realize that what we do now is most likely what we would have done during those celebrated protests 50 years ago. Rather than critique from afar, come out of your homes, follow those who are closest to the pain, and help us to redeem this country, and yourselves, in the process.
The HGST Ultrastar 7K3000 HDD features 7200 RPM, SATA 6Gbps interface and 64MB high speed cache to meet the needs of demanding applications. It delivers unbeatable quality, reliability and availability field proven by top sever and storage OEMs as well as leading Internet giants, resulting in reduced downtime and minimized TOC. It also boasts five Advanced Power Mange modes, ultra low standby power consumption, and halogen-free design, making the Ultrastar 7K3000 an energy-efficient and eco-friendly choice you can purchase and deploy with full confidence. Delivering Industry-leading Quality and Reliability When the highest quality and reliability are a top requirement, customer field data proves that the Ultrastar 7K3000 delivers by reducing downtime, eliminating service calls and keeping TCO to a minimum. Engineered for the highest reliability, the Ultrastar 7K3000 is not only put through grueling design tests during development but must also pass stringent ongoing reliability testing during manufacturing. Across the entire Ultrastar family, world-class quality control, combined with scientific root-cause analysis and multi-faceted corrective actions, ensure that HGST remains the recognized leader in quality and reliability for enterprise-class hard drives. Combining 7200 RPM Performance and Granular Power Control Operating at 7200 RPM, the HGST Ultrastar 7K3000 offers better overall performance than slower RPM capacity-oriented drives, and does so at impressively low power consumption rates. When compared to HGST’s previous generation Ultrastar A7K2000, the 7K3000 is up to 3 times faster in sustained data transfer rates. The Ultrastar 7K3000 can help data centers achieve lower AC power and HVAC requirements. With five Advanced Power Management modes, the Ultrastar 7K3000 achieves a 59% reduction in watts during low RPM idle mode, and uses less than 1W during standby/sleep modes, freeing up precious headroom for growing enterprise needs. Innovating for a More Sustainable Environment The Ultrastar 7K3000 demonstrates HGST ecological leadership with its halogen-free design and power-efficient operation. Both these features serve to qualify the drive for the HGST EcoTrac classification, which identifies products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation and disposal.
You have gathered here for many purposes dear ones, but there is one thing that you all have in common, and that is your eternal quest for finding that inner peace you know reside somewhere, not just in you, but in every single being that inhabit this beautiful planet of yours. For you are indeed those that will serve to open the doors to this peace of mind, this space of tranquility and bliss, this vibrational field that will support all of mankind for eternity. You see, this hunger that has driven mankind closer and closer to the abyss, is the hunger that stems for the inner knowing that there is something else out there, something that will make you all complete. But as we have discussed on many an occasion, this hunger has led mankind on a misguided quest for an external solution to this inner longing. And as you all know so well by now, that gaping void within cannot be filled by anything that is separate from you, it can only be filled by connecting with what is already there. For in order to become whole, you must relinquish any ideas of any superficial and temporary substitutes, and the reason you are reading these words, is that you have already seen the truth in this, and acted upon this. And so, some time in the past, you all started on this journey that would bring you home to you, in every single aspect of that word, and in every single aspect of your being. And this journey has taken you all through hardships and pains, through exhilaration and joy, and through adversities and successes, but whatever you have encountered on your way, it has all come for one single reason, to help you in this all-important purpose of reconnecting you with you, and through that, reconnect you fully with Source, that eternal guiding light that has been hidden away from most of humanity for such a long time. But you have broken through barrier after barrier, and you have ascended peak after peak, and bit by bit, step by step you have attained such a high level of understanding, you have found much of what you have been looking for. But still, you will feel far from complete, and at times like these, what you still sense as missing will seem to take up an inordinate space within you. But again, you are not missing anything at all, you are simply not fully aware of the full magnificence of your being, and that is why were are here to keep shining that light into your inner sanctum the better for you to be able to discern it through this somewhat befuddling haze you still seem to hover within. Remember you are still very much in a holding pattern, the one we discussed in our previous message, the preparatory stage that is all important, but also an extremely challenging place to reside. For what you want more than anything at this stage, clarity, is something that will seem to be even more elusive than normal, and so, you will fret and push and strive while at the same time you may feel as if unable to do anything at all. And so, you think you are literally falling back in exhaustion, and you will think that you have lost your grip on it all, and that any previous advancement will be lost and gone with the winds that seem to push you down continuously. Again, that is definitively not the case, but again, we fully understand your reason for feeling thus. But as you have all managed to lift yourself free from the old yokes that used to keep you tethered to the old, but as yet have not been able to fully savour this with all that you are, you will still have to adjust to these external energetic showers that will impart more and more information into your being. And so, what you crave most of all at the moment is not something that you will be able to access. For you are still very much under the influence of these outside forces that are helping you and your physical body to come together in the very best way, and as such the battle fatigue that many of you are suffering at the moment, may seem to be resting heavily on your shoulders for a little while yet. But fret not, you will all find a way to give yourself a little respite, and some of the clues on just what to do you will find here in this space. For as we said early on in this missive, there is something that connects you all, and there is something within you that has brought you all together in this space, and the more you manage to tune into this, the more you will feel that peace of mind that you may search for at the moment. Remember, at times, strength does come in numbers, and now, that is indeed true. This does not mean that you have to force yourself to go out into the world and face your compatriots, either directly or through showing yourself in this space. No, this simply means that all you have to do, is to open your heart to your brothers and sisters in any way that feels right for you, and then, you will feel a sense of communion that will better enable you to see your own connection to your core. This may sound confusing, for indeed, we usually ask you to within and seek there, but this time, we ask you to rather open up to what is already created around you, in the form of an energetic layer that was not there before, but that now will serve to connect you all at a deeper level, and one that will also serve to help you see you with a clearer eye. So again we say know that all is well, and that you are exactly where you are meant to be, and even if this may seem to be a period of solitude and isolation, it is in fact a phase where an even deeper connection between you will begin to crystallize. And remember, this does not mean that you have to push yourself out from that safe space you might find yourself seeking to at the moment, that inner sanctum where you can just be with yourself. For you can still be there, but you can at the same time allow this brand new layer of connectivity to enter your space, in a way that will enable you to find a way to balance yourself better through this rather intense period of seeming disconnect. This may sound very contradictory, for as you all know more than well by now, this feeling of being in a void also implies a heightened sense of disconnection. But now, we want to you try to find that new frequency that is already in place, there for you to connect to any time you feel able to do so. And when you start to tap into this field of magnetics, you will find your own energy starting to flow more in sync with the current that is engendered by all that are already connected to this grid you have created by your very presence in this space that you call your Pond. And we think you will all find that this brand new current will help to buoy you all in a way that will help to lift not only your spirit, but also your physical vehicle so that the remainder of this phase will be lighter on you all. Advertisements
seahawks fans After a trade with the San Francisco 49ers that would have brought safety L.J. McCray to Seattle fell through, the Seattle Times is reporting that the Seahawks will fill the open spot on their 53-man roster by resigning Tani Tupou. Seattle had plans of adding both Dewey McDonald from Oakland and McCray to their secondary before the trade with the 49ers fell apart because of conditions revolving around the physical. The Seahawks were originally going to give San Francisco a conditional seventh-round pick in the 2018 NFL Draft for the safety, but now have a chance to sign McCray without additional compensation, if he is waived by the 49ers. McCray was only able to play in eight games during the 2015 season after suffering a torn ACL. It is still unclear exactly what prevented the defensive back from passing his physical on Monday. Scroll to continue with content Ad The Seahawks final 53-man roster didn’t have a fullback heading into the first week of the regular season after they released Will Tukuafu and waived Tupou on Saturday. The Seahawks will have the option to bring Tukuafu back on the roster after week one without a guaranteed salary. AROUND COVER32 Seahawks: Betting big on 2016 rookies Seahawks: Why cutting Jahri Evans is a good thing Preseason: Winners and losers around the NFL Highlights: Watch the best of Preseason Week 4 Fantasy Football Taking a chance on Prescott Fantasy Football: Seven people you meet at an auction draft Story continues After signing with the Seahawks as an undrafted rookie free agent, Tupou played both fullback and defensive tackle throughout the summer and preseason.He played at the defensive tackle position during college at the University of Washington and has picked up the fullback responsibilities relatively easy so far. Tupou will become the 15th rookie on the roster for Seattle, and the seventh who has signed without being drafted. The move is a perfect example of while the rosters became final on Saturday, they are still subject to change. On Sunday, following the league’s deadline for teams to have put their final rosters together, the Seahawks made a change at the defensive tackle position by waiving Justin Hamilton in order to claim Garrison Smith from the 49ers. The post Seahawks to resign Tani Tupou appeared first on Cover32.
Excellent accuracy! I got it from the FFL dealer 12/23/14 and when I got it home, measured the chamber with a Hornady C.O.A.L gauge. I reloaded 50 cartridges with IMR 7828 SSC, 80 gr. and seated the bullets so the length was 3.779" I mounted a Vortex Viper PST 6-24X50 with the MRAD reticle and 2 days later took it to the range. I started with 100 yards, and my 5th, 6th, and 7th shots were in a 1" bullseye, 2 going through the same hole. I switched to a 3" target at 100 yards and had a 3 shot group .5" just high and to the left, made the adjustments to center in the small bullseye and noticed the scope rings had loosened even using locktite, so I stopped. I've ordered Vortex's Precision Matched 30mm rings and am waiting to receive them. Once I remount the scope using the new rings, I'm going to zero it for 200 yards and post another review, but initially I'm VERY pleased! Oh, this is my 4th Savage rifle. I have a model 114 in 7mm magnum and can hit golf balls all day long at 100 yards. Dropped a large doe at 70 yards and she never even kicked because I shot the top of her heart off.
Smokers who indulge in their first cigarette shortly after waking up have an increased risk of developing lung and head and neck cancers, according to two new studies published in Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society. The findings may help identify smokers who have a greater risk of developing cancer. These smokers could then be more urgently targeted for smoking cessation programs. The first studies to show a link between cigarette smoking and cancer were published back in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 1980 that nicotine dependence was recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a psychological and physiological problem. The new studies out of Penn State College of Medicine look at nicotine dependence, which in part can be determined by the amount of time elapsed before a smoker lights up his or her first cigarette after waking up in the morning. “These smokers have higher levels of nicotine and possibly other tobacco toxins in their body, and they may be more addicted than smokers who refrain from smoking for a half hour or more,” says Joshua Muscat of the Penn State College of Medicine, who led the investigation. Subjects who smoked their first cigarette between 31 and 60 minutes after waking up were more than 30% more likely to develop lung cancer; the odds increased to nearly 80% for those who smoked in their first half-hour awake. For head and neck cancers, subjects were more than 40% more likely if they indulged in the 31-60 minute window, and nearly 60% more likely for those who smoked in their first half-hour awake. “One of the things we use to measure dependence is called the Heavyness of Smoking Index, which includes two questions,” says Dr. Richard D. Hurt, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Nicotine Dependence Center, who is not affiliated with the new studies. “How much do you smoke, and how long after you arise do you have your first cigarette?” Hurt also points out that waiting a little longer before indulging in a first cigarette of the day would mean fewer total cigarettes in a day. “The more dependent are more likely to be heavier smokers,” he says. “But you also have to look at how aggressively these people are smoking. Those who inhale deeper, hold longer, and smoke their cigarettes all the way to the end are receiving more of the harmful constituents of that cigarette.” This makes them more likely to develop cancer than those who smoke less aggressively. The half-life of nicotine is relatively short – only two hours – so after six or eight hours of sleep, your body has gotten rid of nearly all of the nicotine you’ve inhaled the day before. There’s very little left in the body in the morning and the receptors in the brain are crying out for more nicotine. Those who are the most dependent need that cigarette earlier, and often smoke more cigarettes throughout the day, more intensely. The takeaway here is about what you’d expect. “Stop smoking as soon as you can,” says Hurt. “We have more things to offer now than ever before. [You] can go to a physician or call a telephone quit line. We combine behavioral counseling with medications, which can double, triple, or even quadruple your chances of successfully quitting.”
Stripe Open Source: Behind the Scenes Benjamin De Cock Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 22, 2015 Earlier this month, we released a page about Stripe’s involvement with open source that showcases some of the projects we’ve released over the years. I’m proud to be part of a team that understands the importance of open source and generously gives back to the community, so I felt enthusiastic about designing our communication around it. Thankfully, the overall response to this page has also been enthusiastic, so I thought I’d write a technical breakdown of some of its parts. Game of Life The Game of Life is a zero-player game created by John Conway. Its rules are simple, yet fascinating, in how they open endless patterns. We thought it’d be a nice and appropriate little touch to use it as the background for the header and content. The implementation uses canvas, which is perfectly suited performance-wise for that kind of task. The script starts by grabbing the canvas and defining the shared constants: const canvas = document.querySelector(“canvas”); const ctx = canvas.getContext(“2d”); const cellSize = 10; const cellMargin = 2; const cellsPerLine = canvas.width / (cellSize + cellMargin); const cellColors = new Map(); cellColors.set(“dead”, “#eee”); cellColors.set(“alive”, “#5be”); Then each cell is defined and drawn to create the grid: const cells = []; for (var row = 0; row < cellsPerLine; row++) { const y = row * (cellSize + cellMargin); for (var col = 0; col < cellsPerLine; col++) { const cell = new Map(); cell.set(“x”, col * (cellSize + cellMargin)); cell.set(“y”, y); cell.set(“isAlive”, false); cell.set(“willLive”, false); cells.push(cell); ctx.fillStyle = cellColors.get(“dead”); ctx.fillRect(cell.get(“x”), cell.get(“y”), cellSize, cellSize); } } Each cell is a Map containing its position and state. It also references the surrounding cells to figure out if it’ll live or die on the next round. Most of the cells have 8 direct neighbors (3 top, 2 middle, and 3 bottom cells) though some of them won’t — a cell in the first line won’t have top neighbors, for example. Neighbors are added to each cell Map: cells.forEach((cell, i) => { const neighbors = []; const isNotInFirstLine = i + 1 > cellsPerLine; const isNotInLastLine = i < cells.length — cellsPerLine; const isNotFirstInLine = i % cellsPerLine > 0; const isNotLastInLine = (i + 1) % cellsPerLine > 0; // top if (isNotInFirstLine) { if (isNotFirstInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i-cellsPerLine-1]); neighbors.push(cells[i-cellsPerLine]); if (isNotLastInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i-cellsPerLine+1]); } // middle if (isNotFirstInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i-1]); if (isNotLastInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i+1]); // bottom if (isNotInLastLine) { if (isNotFirstInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i+cellsPerLine-1]); neighbors.push(cells[i+cellsPerLine]); if (isNotLastInLine) neighbors.push(cells[i+cellsPerLine+1]); } cell.set(“neighbors”, neighbors); }); The implementation on stripe.com/open-source is slightly different as it uses an infinite canvas but the idea is roughly the same. The cells now have all the data they need and the animation function that relies on this data can be created. The Game of Life requires all computations to be done before changes occur, so our function will loop over the cells twice to: Define all the cells that will live and die on the next round based on each cell’s neighbors; Apply these changes. This is how it looks in practice: const anim = () => { // define cells.forEach(cell => { const livingNeighbors = cell.get(“neighbors”).filter(el => el.get(“isAlive”)).length; // A live cell with 2 or 3 live neighbors stays alive // A dead cell with 3 live neighbors becomes a live cell cell.set(“willLive”, cell.get(“isAlive”) ? livingNeighbors > 1 && livingNeighbors < 4 : livingNeighbors == 3 ); }); // draw cells.forEach(cell => { if (cell.get(“isAlive”) == cell.get(“willLive”)) return; cell.set(“isAlive”, cell.get(“willLive”)); ctx.fillStyle = cellColors.get( cell.get(“isAlive”) ? “alive” : “dead” ); ctx.fillRect(cell.get(“x”), cell.get(“y”), cellSize, cellSize); }); // repeat setTimeout(() => requestAnimationFrame(anim), 100); }; Before launching the animation, we should obviously define some default living cells. The Open Source page uses various complex “spaceships” but, for the sake of the example, we’ll define 500 random living cells: const randomInt = (min, max) => Math.floor(Math.random() * (max — min + 1)) + min; for (var i = 0; i < 500; i++) { const cell = cells[randomInt(0, cells.length — 1)]; cell.set(“isAlive”, true); ctx.fillStyle = cellColors.get(“alive”); ctx.fillRect(cell.get(“x”), cell.get(“y”), cellSize, cellSize); } We’re now ready to launch our animation and watch the Game of Life happens! requestAnimationFrame(anim); Line Drawing Animation The category icons use a simple technique to create a color-filling animation as you hover over the navigation links. The color doesn’t progressively fill, it’s faked by moving a stroke. Here’s the idea: Each SVG icon is cloned and placed above its model. The stroke of these cloned icons is then modified: stroke-dasharray and stroke-dashoffset are set to the icon’s path length, resulting in a single big dash located outside the path. On hover, each dash’s offset is animated from its current value to zero, creating the line-drawing effect. I’m using Animate Plus for these animations but the principle would remain pretty much the same no matter what tool you use. Here’s how it works: // The default grey icon const inactive = document.querySelector(“svg”); // The cloned icon we'll use for the animation const active = inactive.cloneNode(true); // A reference to all the paths composing the icon const paths = […active.getElementsByTagName(“path”)]; // Calculate the path lengths and make the stroke dashed const pathLengths = paths.map(path => { const pathLength = path.getTotalLength(); [“array”, “offset”].forEach(attr => path.setAttribute(`stroke-dash${attr}`, pathLength)); return pathLength; }); // Change the stroke color and append the cloned icon active.querySelector(“g”).setAttribute(“stroke”, “#0CB”); document.body.appendChild(active); // Animate the offset of all the paths active.addEventListener(“mouseenter”, () => paths.forEach((path, i) => animate({ el: path, easing: “easeOutQuart”, duration: 500, “stroke-dashoffset”: [pathLengths[i], 0] }))); A different animation is then added for mouseleave using a similar workflow and the opacity and offsets are reset to their initial values at the end of the animation: active.addEventListener(“mouseleave”, () => paths.forEach((path, i) => animate({ el: path, easing: “easeOutQuad”, duration: 500, opacity: 0, complete() { path.setAttribute(“stroke-dashoffset”, pathLengths[i]); path.style.opacity = 1; } }))); Elastic Scrolling Scrolling the page programmatically to a specific position is a common behavior on the web. The Open Source page uses a similar pattern for its 6 sub-categories but introduces a subtle yet significant difference: the page itself doesn’t scroll, the elements in the page move independently in order to emulate a natural and arguably interesting behavior. Just like with the previous section, we’re going to use a simplified example: <nav> <a href=#category1>Category 1</a> <a href=#category2>Category 2</a> </nav> <h1 id=category1>Category 1</h1> <ul class=cards> <li><li><li><li><li><li><li><li> </ul> <h1 id=category2>Category 2</h1> <ul class=cards> <li><li><li><li><li><li><li><li> </ul> Our script will start by selecting the elements we’ll use: const nav = document.querySelector(“nav”); const navLinks = […nav.querySelectorAll(“a”)]; const animatedElements = […document.querySelectorAll(“h1, .cards li”)]; The navLinks and animatedElements NodeLists are expanded into arrays using the spread operator in order to access Array.prototype methods. The last element that still needs to be referenced is the scrolling root. Despite the specification being clear on it, browsers disagree on which element should handle the scroll position. Firefox and Edge use html, while Safari and Chrome consider body as the scrolling element. A new DOM API has been introduced to deal with this issue (document.scrollingElement) but we can’t rely on it yet as it’s not widely supported. Thus, fetching the correct scrolling element without relying on UA sniffing is unfortunately verbose and inelegant: const scrollRoot = (() => { if (“scrollingElement” in document) return document.scrollingElement; const initial = document.documentElement.scrollTop; document.documentElement.scrollTop = initial + 1; const updated = document.documentElement.scrollTop; document.documentElement.scrollTop = initial; return updated > initial ? document.documentElement : document.body; })(); This scrollRoot is used to calculate and set the scroll position correctly at the end of the custom scrolling animation which works like this: When a category link is clicked, the delta is calculated between the current scroll position and the position of the section we reach. Animate all the elements in the animatedElements array using a vertical translation of delta. At the end of the animation, cancel all the translations and set the correct scroll position. We start by looping over the navigation links and fetch the position of each title which marks the beginning of the sections: const navHeight = nav.getBoundingClientRect().height; navLinks.forEach(link => { const title = document.querySelector(link.getAttribute(“href”)); const pos = title.getBoundingClientRect().top — navHeight; }); This loop adds an event listener to each link that triggers the animations. The animations are created again with Animate Plus: link.addEventListener(“click”, e => { e.preventDefault(); const delta = scrollRoot.scrollTop — pos; // Reversing the array if it scrolls to the top so the delays are // applied in the right order. const elements = delta < 0 ? animatedElements : animatedElements.slice().reverse(); elements.forEach((el, i) => { const params = { el, translateY: delta, easing: “easeOutExpo”, // Increase the delay for each element to create the elastic // scroll effect. delay: i * 40 }; // When the last element finishes to animate, cancel all the // transforms and set the correct scroll position. if (!elements[i + 1]) params.complete = () => { elements.forEach(el => el.removeAttribute(“style”)); scrollRoot.scrollTop = pos; }; animate(params); }); }); And that’s it! Keep in mind this simplified example skips quite a lot of details (for example, the actual implementation only animates the elements visible during the scroll) but it illustrates the core principles behind a custom elastic scroll. 3D Cards The 3D effect that occurs as you click and drag on the project cards is slightly overkill, but it was also extremely fun to build! The example below is pared down from the original. We’ll be recreating the effect for a single element only. Let’s start by selecting the element and calculating its center coordinates: const card = document.querySelector(“.card”); const cardCoordinates = card.getBoundingClientRect(); const cardCenter = { x: cardCoordinates.left + cardCoordinates.width / 2, y: cardCoordinates.top + cardCoordinates.height / 2 }; The center of the card is used to define the angle of the rotation, as the angle should increase proportionally to the distance between your cursor and the center of the card. The angle limit and the perspective of the rotation are defined arbitrarily. const angle = { max: 15, perspective: 800 }; const setAngle = e => { angle.x = angle.max * (cardCenter.y - e.clientY) / (cardCoordinates.height/2); angle.y = angle.max * (e.clientX — cardCenter.x) / (cardCoordinates.width/2); card.style.transform = `perspective(${angle.perspective}px) rotateX(${angle.x}deg) rotateY(${angle.y}deg)`; }; setAngle is called on mousedown to set the initial rotation and on mousemove to update the rotation accordingly to the cursor position. We need to account for two additional events to complete our behavior: mouseup and mouseleave. In both cases, the card will animate from its current rotation to zero. A callback will be defined to be used by both events: const end = () => { animate({ el: card, perspective: [angle.perspective, angle.perspective], rotateX: [angle.x, 0], rotateY: [angle.y, 0] }); }; The tricky part is that the mousemove, mouseup and mouseleave events must be added and removed dynamically: you start listening for them as soon as you start clicking on the card and stop when you release the mouse or leave the card. A toggleDynamicEvents function will deal automatically with the dynamic events: const toggleDynamicEvents = (() => { var added = false; const events = { move: setAngle, up: end, leave: end }; const toggle = event => card[`${added ? “remove” : “add”}EventListener`] (`mouse${event}`, events[event]); return () => { Object.keys(events).forEach(toggle); added = !added; }; })(); toggleDynamicEvents is then called when mousedown fires and inside the end function we previously defined: const start = event => { setAngle(event); toggleDynamicEvents(); }; const end = () => { animate({ el: card, perspective: [angle.perspective, angle.perspective], rotateX: [angle.x, 0], rotateY: [angle.y, 0] }); toggleDynamicEvents(); }; card.addEventListener(“mousedown”, start); And voilà! Just like with the previous sections, the code shown here purposely ignores some technical details to keep the example concise and focused. If you use similar techniques in your own projects, make sure you take the edge cases into account in order to provide a robust and consistent user experience.
The incident took place on the Thursday evening edition of Aktuellt, the flagship primetime news programme of public broadcaster Sveriges Television (SVT). After delivering a no-nonsense introduction to a segment on O'Leary's denial of allegations that the budget airline had poor working conditions, anchor Nike Nylander was unable to keep a straight face when the camera returned to her. The reason? The taped segment showed the colourful Ryanair CEO invoking the gestures and speech of a ghost in his attempt to illustrate that the complaints of poor labour conditions at the airline amounted to nothing but a fabrication. "False, false, and misleading information, provided by people sitting in darkened rooms... ooohh," O'Leary said in the piece, waving his hands in the air. "Anonymous pilots...oooohhhh... cause we're so terrified oooohhhh." As Nylander began to read her script following the clip, she was overcome with laughter. "It was just totally absurd, it was so surprising that I just couldn't believe it," Nylander told The Local. "It was the way Mr O'Leary impersonated a ghost doing the whole 'oooohhh' thing... The fact that CEO of big corporation does that when talking about working conditions of his employees just made me laugh." Since the airing of the programme, Nylander has been flooded with warm messages from viewers around the country, many saying they're glad to see a newsreader with a human side. But the veteran news anchor took her gaffe in stride, taking to Twitter to thank viewers who had shown their appreciation for the unexpected dose of humour she had brought to the evening newscast. "Thanks for all the kind shout outs after my laugh attack tonight. It feels a bit better thanks to you," Nylander wrote. Tack för alla snälla tillrop efter min skrattattack ikväll. Det känns lite bättre tack vare er :-) — Nike Nylander (@NikeNylander) August 29, 2013 While Nylander claims it was the first time she has burst out laughing during a news programme, she is adamant it will be the last. "I'm usually in control, most of the news I read is very serious. While it's unprofessional, it could have been worse," she said with a laugh. "I'm not sure if I hurt Mr O'Leary's feelings, but I'm glad to have put a smile on people's faces and kept them laughing." The Local/dl Follow The Local on Twitter
Considering how many times the work of Stephen King has been adapted for film and TV over the past 40 years, it may seem surprising that it's taken this long for The Dark Tower to make the jump. As can happen with some titles, The Dark Tower has been through various filmmakers' hands and studios in the past decade alone; in 2007, a film adaptation was going to be directed by J.J. Abrams and written by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof of Lost, and a few years after that, Ron Howard was going to take the helm. The just-released feature film, directed by Nikolaj Arcel, suggests this much, unfortunately: The Dark Tower may not work as a movie. It was always going to be a challenge to tackle the series of books that King wrote between 1982 and 2012. Eight novels being translated into films potentially could have been successful, if the franchise followed in the footsteps of massive hits like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, the latter of which serves as one of many cultural reference points within Dark Tower. The core conflict of the story — the forces of good and evil fighting each other with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance — is plenty familiar to audiences worldwide. But King's version of this battle doesn't unfold without jumping back and forth in time, introducing characters before removing them unexpectedly, and so on; it zigs where other franchises zag, which is admirable to experience as a reader, but becomes an obstacle in the adaptation process. There are four credited writers for the final cut of The Dark Tower: Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen and Arcel himself. Goldsman was involved in the project since Howard was first attached in 2010, with Pinkner helping him rework the script a few years later, before Jensen and Arcel joined. There is an unavoidable sense of too many cooks in the kitchen when considering the script for Dark Tower, even though the film is only 95 minutes long. There's nothing inherently wrong with short films; frankly, most summer movies have a habit of being 20 to 30 minutes too long, so 95 minutes feels like a breath of fresh air. But weirdly, the world of Dark Tower being unveiled in film form in just an hour and half seems wrong; the movie feels like it should be 20 to 30 minutes longer. However, the relative brevity of Dark Tower masks the genuine problem at its core: This isn't a straight-up adaptation of King's first story, The Gunslinger. Instead, it's a kind of sequel/reboot, focusing not on Idris Elba's heroic character Roland Deschain but squarely on the tortured boy Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor). In this version of the story, Jake is haunted by dreams of another dimension, known as Mid-World, and of Roland and his immortal foe, the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). Eventually, Jake finds his way into Mid-World at the center of the battle, in part because he's gifted with psychic abilities known as "the shine" (one of a number of references in the film to other King works). Jake functions very clearly as an audience surrogate, encountering Roland and the Man in Black after a surprisingly long buildup. While it makes sense to ease unfamiliar audiences into the world of Dark Tower, this choice also suggests a timidity on the writers' part to dive straight into the weirdness of King's stories. What's most baffling about the way that Dark Tower unfolds on the big screen is that it's clearly designed to be the first chapter in a longer filmed series. On Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that the Dark Tower TV series now has a showrunner. The plan has always been for a show to follow the first movie (before once again shifting back to another film), but even if Dark Tower always planned to shift from film to TV, it's hard to grasp why the film isn't just a direct adaptation of The Gunslinger, the opening salvo in the franchise, as opposed to something that sometimes calls to mind The Last Action Hero, with a larger-than-life hero reacting as a fish-out-of-water to the way that the real world operates. The resulting film is strangely, painfully lifeless outside of the gruff and firm performance from Elba as Roland. It may seem impossible to imagine a film where McConaughey appears less seductively charismatic than flat-out bored, but even in a role of innate cruelty and villainy, that's what you get from him, and from the film itself. There are parts of Dark Tower that work onscreen, such as a brief moment where we see Roland pause and carefully listen to the air around him before he aims to kill a bad guy who is hundreds of feet away. Casting Elba was the shrewdest decision involved with making this film, as he makes far more out of his diminished role than the script does. But every other choice surrounding the pic suggests that someone — the studio or the filmmakers or someone else — was just so intent on making a Dark Tower adaptation that they were less worried about handling the time-spanning source material correctly. There's still a good story or two to tell in this universe, but this film sets things back.
A New York City day camp was abruptly canceled without explanation, and parents are trying to find out what happened to the camp and their money as they scramble to find alternate childcare arrangements for their kids. Ida Siegal reports. (Published Tuesday, July 8, 2014) A New York City day camp was abruptly canceled, leaving parents without an explanation and their tuition money as they scramble to find alternate childcare arrangements for their kids. The Empire Day Camp operating out of the Ella Baker School on the Upper East Side was supposed to open on Monday, but families arrived to find a sign saying it was closed. Parents trying to get answers couldn't reach any administrators. "I can't reach anyone from the camp, my money has not been refunded, and my son is pretty much stranded," said one parent. Felicia Pezold said she'd been counting on the camp to keep her child safe and occupied while she worked each day. NYC Summer Camp Unexpectedly Closes Parents expecting to drop their kids off at Empire Day Camp on Monday got an unwelcomed surprise. On what should have been opening day, the place was empty. Michael George reports. (Published Monday, July 7, 2014) "That was her activity for the summer, and now that money's gone," she said. Pezold paid between $2,300 and $2,400 for the summer day camp. Another parent, Rosa Striano, paid more than $3,500 for four weeks of camp for her two daughters. "I have two girls who have no summer plans now," said Striano. "Thankfully, we have a big family who's helping us, but other camps are also full right now." Empire's founder and former director Kinya Trotman died in March, but its camp and afterschool program continued, according to former employees, who say they have also been left in the lurch. They say Trotman's teenage son Kyree took over, but things deteriorated quickly. "Once he took over the company, that's when things started going downhill. Checks started bouncing," said camp counselor Brandi Sampson. Sampson said Kyree sent a letter at the end of June announcing the program was closing. When she asked about her last paycheck, Kyree called her "yelling and cursing, 'Don't ever call me again, stop texting me. As of today, there's no check,'" according to Sampson. A person at an address listed for Kyree Trotman answered from behind the door but refused to speak to NBC 4 New York. Administrators at the Ella Baker School, which has no affiliation with Empire Camp, would not comment to NBC 4 New York, but parents said they sent them a letter saying they could not reach anyone from the camp either. "I'd like to get my money back first and foremost, but an explanation as to why this happened," said Pezold. "All these families are scrambling. No childcare, no activities for their children." Striano said, "I want my money back, but more than anything I want them to be accountable for what they've done." The Empire program's website states it is licensed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. A request for comment from the department was not immediately returned. Parents say they will file police reports and complaints with the attorney general's office in the coming days.
Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. Earlier this year, AKB48—Japan's biggest girl group—released a candy commercial that grossed out pretty much the entire country. This year, AKB48 is back with a new ad that won't gross everyone out. It'll freak them out instead. Progress! In the commercial, the members' heads were superimposed on the bodies of six-year-old children. The concept behind the commercial is that it's supposed to be like the NHK kiddy shows that feature adults singing and dancing with children. Here, AKB48 member Yuko Oshima is the "big sister" type character. Online the reaction in Japan is ranging from, "This is creepy" to "Holy crap, this is creepy." You can watch the commercial in the above TV clip. It starts about 26 seconds in; there's also a making-of. AKB48の「ぷっちょ」新CMが気持ち悪すぎると話題 / ネットユーザー「吐きそうになった」「生理的嫌悪感を抱く」「口移しよりダメ」 [ロケットニュース] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Ubisoft couldn’t have found a better way to conclude their 3oth anniversary giveaway than this: The company has decided to offer Assassin’s Creed 3 absolutely free for the entire month. This makes the title its final gift to loyal gamers after their year-long series of giveaways launched this summer in honor of its 30th birthday. Assassin’s Creed, being the biggest franchise of Ubisoft, makes the giveaway pretty generous. Although it is certainly not the first decent gimmick by the company, over the past few months, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil, and Far Cry have also been offered as freebies. With Assassin’s Creed 3, they have saved the best for last. Revealed at E3 2006, Assassin’s Creed puts the audience in the middle of an ancient war between two age-old factions: the Assassins, who fight to protect freedom and the Templars, who aspire to impose a New World Order,” Ubisoft said. “From Italian Renaissance to the Russian Revolution, the player meets real historical heroes, takes part in events and shapes its own destiny. From one episode to the other, the creative teams have constantly added new layers of interaction and new gameplay making each world deeper and more fascinating. Assassin’s Creed 3 will be available as a free download for Ubisoft Club members starting December 7. As expected, players will need a registered Uplay account to get their hands on their very own copy. The previous giveaway title, Far Cry: Blood Dragon, is still available to those who haven’t signed up yet. PC gamers can experience the truth behind the most grisly war in history: the American Revolution. What makes this 2012 title so special is that it’s a sequel not just to Assassin’s Creed 2, but to Assassin’s Creed: Revelations. The most prominent change from the previous Assassin’s Creed games is the introduction of star Desmond Miles. Assassin’s Creed The Ezio Collection is a compilation of the Ezio trilogy by Ubisoft released this fall. The game is out now on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and contains some impressive improvements compared to Assassin’s Creed 2. RELATED STORIES YOU NEED TO CHECK OUT:
DetroitPlanner said: First tier suburbs are in a real pickle. . Click to expand... My personal view is that maybe this is changing. Think of Denver.. or San Diego. The infill redevelopment of the inner ring is practically the only thing going on in those two cities right now. They are denser, more transit accessible, already have infrastructure that municipalities don't have to force developers to build for them, and they have the programs and tax base that go with being part of the larger city (as opposed to a suburban municipality). They also offer some of the benefits of "suburbia" while still feeling "urban" to the younger families who want live in a 'burb but still have a hip urban lifestyle.The outer suburban rings in San Diego are essentially dead. 50%+ declines in property values, nobody can afford the gas to commute 30+ miles into the center each day, and their schools are no longer a differentiator since the state and the increasingly fiscally constrained munies out there have been forced to slash programs and school funding into oblivion. There was a time not too many years ago when people would be willing to sell their limbs to live in some of those outer burbs just so their kids could go to the local schools. Now, with class sizes in outlying areas pushing 35-40+, after mass teacher layoffs, the vast inner city SDCS isn't looking that bad anymore. And for those who can afford it, who cares about the local schools if you feel you have to send your kids to private schools anyway. And the private schools are all in the city and the inner ring. Many a planning consultant working for these strapped burbs have been asked to run future growth projections for new subdivisions based on "zero children" assumptions. Asked how they intend to keep kids from moving in, the municipal officials just shrug. They have no clue. All they know is that they absolutely cannot afford to issue building permits if children comes with the homes associated with them.The outer burbs have finally realized that, without vast state subsidies, they're financially unviable as going concerns, with residential-only tax bases incapable of supporting public services. Now that those subsidies are long gone, some of them are quickly becoming the new ghettos. They're shutting down schools, ending police protection, consolidating fire stations, in some cases firing virtually their ENTIRE city staffs. Roads are going unmaintained, capital highway-building projects are cancelled or postponed, the landscaping is going untended, graffiti is going unremoved, and crime is going up. To give you an idea of how bad things are, between 2007 and 2011, San Diego's estimated metro population increased by the same absolute amount of people as the city proper... in other words, the city absorbed virtually all of the (net) growth, and almost all of that growth was absorbed into the core neighborhoods (defined as centre city neighborhoods + the inner ring suburbs).Outer ring suburbs only work if somebody else pays their bills or when their entirely residential ad valorem tax base is inflated by a property bubble. Without such a bubble.. or massive infrastructure and public employment subsidies, single-use residential doesn't pay for much at anything short of penurious tax rates. Therefore, when the gravy train stops, such places fail, victims of their location and their historical NIMBYistic desire to bar virtually all land-use diversity.
Whether it is the driverless cars technology or high-end robotics , Linux is becoming the preferred platform of choice in many high-tech fields. Dronecode Project by Linux Foundation is the latest attempt at creating a new unified Linux based platform to be used in Drones of the future.The Linux Foundation announced on October 13 at LinuxCon Europe the founding of the Dronecode Project. The goal of this project is to unify existing open-source drone projects and assets under a non-profit structure. Eventually, there will be a Linux based platform for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).The project's founding members include 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, jDrones, Laser Navigation, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec. It is reported elsewhere that Qualcomm and Intel are also joining the efforts to build a truly opensource platform for UAVs.Dronecode already has more than 1,200 developers working the project. The platform is also being adopted by many of drone companies such Skycatch, DroneDeploy, HobbyKing, Horizon Ag, PrecisionHawk, Agribotics, and Walkera.[Further reading @ ZDNet.com
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took to Twitter to call for Secretary of State John Kerry to resign for calling global warming the “world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” Gingrich, a failed Republican presidential candidate, tweeted out his disgust with Kerry’s comments (Note: He spells Kerry’s name wrong in the tweets): Does kerrey really believe global warming more dangerous than north Korean and iranian nukes? More than Russian and Chinese nukes? Really? ? — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014 On his trip to Indonesia, Kerry said that global warming is “the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction” and particularly harms low-lying countries that are at risk from rising sea levels. “This city, this country, this region, is really on the front lines of climate change,” Kerry said in a speech in Jakarta, one of several in a series of speeches planned throughout this year. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that your entire way of life here is at risk,” Kerry added. “In a sense, climate change can now be considered the world’s largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.” Kerry has been playing up the national security angle of global warming since at least 2009, during his Senate years, when congressional Democrats were trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill. Kerry told The New York Times that he touted the national security concerns of global warming as a way to lure Republicans to support the bill. But Gingrich, a longtime Republican, is not buying it. Every American who cares about national security must.demand Kerrey’s resignation.A delusional secretary of state is dangerous to our safety — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014 Gingrich ended his Twitter rant by apologizing to former Nebraska Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey for the misspelling of Sec. Kerry’s name. I apologize to bob kerrey for spelling john kerry’s name as though he were bob’s relative. Callista caught my error. Please edit to kerry — Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) February 18, 2014 In a 2008 ad with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for Al Gore’s We Can Solve it campaign, Gingrich introduced himself as “lifelong Republican” who “used to be speaker,” saying “our country must take action to address climate change.” (Gingrich on global warming ad with Pelosi: ‘The dumbest single thing I’ve done in years’) Kerry’s remarks come after the Obama administration submitted their proposal to the United Nations for an international climate agreement for the next round of negotiations in 2015. The administration’s proposal would have countries impose domestic policies to cut emissions. “We simply don’t have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation,” Kerry said, adding that “big companies” that “don’t want to change and spend a lot of money” to stop global warming are behind the pushback. Most importantly, Kerry stressed that other nations do not “get a free pass” in the fight against global warming, despite industrialized nations being most responsible for emissions. “They don’t have a right to go out and repeat the mistakes of the past,” Kerry argued. “At the end of the day, emissions coming from anywhere in the world, threaten the future of everyone in the world.” One of the biggest sticking points for other industrialized countries signing onto a climate agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol was that large developing countries were not required to cut carbon dioxide emissions — virtually undoing the efforts of rich countries that cut emissions. The Obama administration’s climate proposal would bind some developing countries, like China and India to the same carbon emissions reduction targets as industrialized nations. Obama’s proposed international climate deal would also not require any congressional approval to implement, since it’s already being done in the U.S. through executive orders. “So this is just the latest example of President Obama’s contempt for obeying the Constitution and our laws,” Myron Ebell, director of the Center of Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In the past, rulers who act as if the law does not apply to them were called tyrants.” Follow Michael on Twitter and Facebook Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. 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.
PM Narendra Modi with Russian President Vladimir Putin in New Delhi. The US is unhappy over India doing "business as usual" with Russia, but it will have no effect on US President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to India which remains an "important partner.""No. India remains an important partner," US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday when asked whether deals reached during Russian President Vladimir Putin's just concluded visit to India would change Obama's plans.Obama has been invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be the chief guest at India's Republic Day parade on January 26. He will be the first US President to get that honour and the first one to visit India twice while in office."Obviously, our economic relationship is a big part of what we continue to work on," Psaki said while repeating its caution to "allies and partners" that it was not time for doing business with Russians following its intervention in Ukraine.The US, she said, had seen reports about India and Russia signing agreements in oil exploration, infrastructure, defence and nuclear energy including construction of 12 Russian-built nuclear units in India over the next two decades."We continue to monitor it, but we haven't looked at all the specifics of the contracts, for obvious reasons," Psaki said. But "We continue to urge all countries not to conduct business as usual with Russia."Noting that "there are already sanctions in place" imposed on Russia by the US and its Western allies, Psaki said it was not calling for sanctions on other countries."In general, though, given the situation, it shouldn't be business as usual," she said.Asked if the US had spoken to Indians before Putin's trip that it's not the right time to do business with Russia, Psaki said: "Well, we've been engaged in that discussion.""I'd remind you India doesn't support the actions of Russia and the actions - their intervention into Ukraine," she said. "They've been pretty outspoken about that as well."On the presence of Sergey Aksyonov, Prime Minister of Crimea, the former Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia, in Putin's delegation to India, which too has upset Washington, Psaki said: "I don't have anything new to offer on that."Asked if the US had confirmed if he was there or not, she said: "There have been a range of reports." But "I don't have any US government confirmation. We're obviously not in on the trip with them." Asked again if there's any change in Obama's trip to India, the spokesperson said emphatically: "No. No, no."
It's prom season at high schools across the country, a special time that until recently has been reserved for straight student couples. A sign of growing acceptance and change took place in West Virginia on Saturday night. The Mussleman High School senior prom was held at The Heritage Hall in Inwood, West Virginia. Among the couples attending were Michael Martin, a Mussleman senior, and his boyfriend Logan Westrope, who attends Hedgesville High School. Michael was a four-year starter on his school's soccer team, making all-state as a goalie. He is also an all conference swimmer and tennis player. He told his coming out story on Outsports in December, in what was our most-viewed story of 2014. Michael will attend Wilson College in Pennsylvania this fall, major in Environmental Sustainability and play soccer. Logan plays tennis for Hedgesville High School. He will attend Penn State University and major in meteorology. The two have been dating for four months. "We knew this would be a night to remember," Logan told Outsports. "We walked in, checked in with our tickets, and were off to have fun! At first we were both a little hesitant to hold hands, not knowing how the rest of the student body would react. But after a short while, we were always next to each other and danced together the whole night. "Some of the slow songs we danced to were 'Stay With Me' (Sam Smith), 'See You Again' (Wiz Khalifa), and 'All of Me' (John Legend). At the moment when the slow songs played, we would just stare into each other's eyes and would think of how lucky we are to have each other. "We didn't hear any negative comments about Michael and I. A lot of people would come up to us (especially the girls) and say, 'You both are so cute!' or 'You guys look great!' Once we left the prom, I remember Michael saying to me in the car, 'Logan, this is our last prom and I'm so glad I got to spend it with you.' I couldn't have asked for a more perfect night." Michael asked Logan to the prom in March in the parking lot of Chik-fil-A, where Logan works. "I asked Logan to the prom after his work. I gave him a bag with a chicken sandwich inside and asked, 'Are you a chicken or will you go to the prom with me?' " Michael said. "He easily and gladly said yes." "Most everyone knows that I am gay and for the most part everyone that I work with there accepts me for who I am," Logan said. "I was extremely nervous to tell my fellow employees but then realized I wasn't afraid to show the real me." Here are photos from their big prom night. All photos were taken by Logan's mom, Jodi Brotman Westrope: Michael and Logan get ready for the night West Virginia cool Logan's dog, Piper, sees her master and his man off An avid photographer (his Instagram page has 19,000 followers), Michael takes a shot of Logan at Poor House Farm Park in Martinsburg Michael adjusts Logan's corsage Logan returns the favor No prom these days would be complete without a selfie The happy couple at the end of the night Michael Martin can be reached via email (soccer4h96@gmail.com), Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Logan can be reached via email (logan.westropehhs@gmail.com), Facebook and Instagram.
Archives reveal "comfort women" official actions of Japan Forcing women into sex slavery and setting up "comfort stations" were official actions of the invading Japanese army during World War Two in Asian countries, newly publicized wartime archives reveal. A total of 89 wartime documents were made public on Friday as a response to Japan's right-wing politicians' denial of its wartime crimes in China. Twenty-five files relate to "comfort women". The use of "comfort women" was the state action of Japan during the war, said Su Zhiliang, a professor on the history of "comfort women" at Shanghai Normal University. The actions harmed China, the Republic of Korea and Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The archives showed that the first "comfort station" was in the Southeast Asian country of Indonesia on Java Island. The invading Japanese army in northeast China, documented what happened during the war, revealing their criminality. The files are from archives of the military police corps of Japan's Kwantung Army and the national bank of the puppet Manchurian regime, which are stored in Jilin Provincial Archives in northeast China. The 25 files on "comfort women" include two investigation reports, two telephone records and 21 documents on troops forcing women to have sex and enslaving them. They revealed conditions at "comfort stations", including ratios between Japanese soldiers and "comfort women" and details of gruesome rapes. The invading Japanese army allocated women proportionally. In Feb. 1 to 10 in 1938, there were six "comfort women" for 1,200 soldiers, a ratio of 1:200, in Xiaguan district of east China's Nanjing. After Feb. 20, there were eleven more "comfort women", representing a ratio of 1:71. In five months since November 1944, the invading Japanese army paid 532,000 Japanese yen on setting up "comfort stations". The expenditure was approved by the Kwantung Army, said a telephone record of the national bank of the puppet Manchurian regime. The invading Japanese army had abducted and forced women from occupied Korea to some "comfort stations" in Chinese regions, such as Heihe in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and Wuhu in eastern China's Anhui Province, according to the files. Invading Japanese troops set up "comfort stations" everywhere they reached. The stations appeared in at least twenty to thirty counties in northeast China, said Su Zhiliang. "The archives showed that the 'comfort station' in Java in Indonesia, strongly demonstrated the 'comfort women' system had reached the southeast Asian country," he said. One soldier of the police corps was reported and received a verbal criticism after he went to a "comfort station" on March 5, 1944, recorded on a monthly report of the invading Japanese troops in Java. Several letters Japanese soldiers wrote but seized by army officers expose the invaders' rapes of local women. "Japanese armies raped tens of thousands of women in Nanjing, including a 12-year-old girl, and many were even killed thereafter. The crimes were appalling," said one letter. The documents represent only a small portion of the nearly 100,000 wartime Japanese files in 1931-1945 period retrieved underground during construction work in 1953, said Yin Huai, president of the Jilin Provincial Archives in Changchun, capital of Jilin Province. Ninety percent of the files are in Japanese. "The files recorded by the invading Japanese troops themselves are the real documents about their invasion history in China. They are of significant value," said Yin. The invading troops buried some of their archives when fleeing Changchun, the then "capital" of the puppet Manchu State, in wake of a war with the Soviet Union, as they had no time to burn the documents. The Jilin Provincial Archives started in 2013 to translate and study the archives. Further work is under way. Newspaper headline: Archives reveal 'comfort women' official actions of Japan
The Twithe World Wye or World Wye Two (Mean English: World War Two or Second World War) was a worldwide wye fought between the Gathered Ethels and the Axlemight, from 1939 until 1945. Spanning much of the world, the wye led to the death of over 62 micklered, making it the deadliest wye in the eretide of man. It was mainly spured up by pent up wrath from Theechland's loss at the end of The First World wye. The wye the end won by the Gathered Ethels. Overlook Edit On the first day of Holimonth, 1939, Theechland, under the steering of Adolf Hitler, overran Poland in line with a hidden runing with the Band of Soviet Fellowship Ledewealths. On the third Holimonth, the Foroned Kingdom, Andland and New Sealand, followed six logs later by Frankric, answered by spelling wye on Theechland, beginning a widespread sea wye. South Highsun followed their lead on 6 Holimonth, and Settlingland four days later. The BFSL also overran Poland from the east on the seventeenth day of the month, but the Western ethels did not likewise spell wye on the Folkwield Band. Theechland swiftly overcame Poland, then Norway, the Netherlands, Belgy and Frankric in Erelith 1940, and Southslavland and Greekland in 1941. Italish and later Theedish heramen fought the British in North Highsunlandnland. By summer 1941, Theechland had overcome Frankland, and most of Western Europe, but it had swethered to overcome the Banded Kingdom thanks to the arful withstanding and stalworthness of the British Loftmight. In 1941, Dawnland struck Seahurst Harbor in the Banded Folkdoms of Americksland. In little time, the BFA spelled wye on Dawnland, Italy, and Theedishland. Earlier in the year, Theedishland had began an onslaught against Russland, and they were nighing Leninborough, Stalinborough and even Moscow itself. However, the tide of the wye soon shifted, and the Red Weremight held off the Theedish Weremight at Stalinborough, and then thrutched them back to wyes in Borderland. At the same time, British Wyemen fought the Afrika Korps of Theechland in North Highsunland, and began to halt them, starting at El Alamein, Egypt. In the Frithful Highsea, the BFA overcame the Dawnland lofthera on the iland of Midway. From 1942 to 1944, Gathered ethels beat back or held off Samened strikes, with many more ethels such as Rudwood, Moonsnavel, Columbland, the Filip Ilands, and Joan Iland. However, inroads were slow, and they needed to help in on the western head, while the BFSL were on the east. So on the sixth day of Forelithe, 1944, better known as D-day, Western Gathered wyemen landed and struck the Norman shore, and overran the Theech harmen within. Paris was freed, and soon Gathered thracks were nighing Theechland. However, in the Struggle of the Lump, wyemen fought and tolled dearly for the biding of both sides. Soon, Red Weremight thracks overtook Berlin, and meeting up with the Gathered Ethels on the Elb, Theechland yold and threw down her weapons, a day know as V-E Day, the Eighth of Blossommonth, 1945 In the Frithful Highsea, Dawnland fought boldly from iland to iland, never yielding until death. Bloody Struggles were fought, and the BFA in the end overtook the Eailands, Ellentown, the Westfrith Ilands, and a few of the Japan home ilands, such as the Searopes. Hilds such as the Hild of Brimstone Iland were later heavily ared. With the dropping of two uncleftish blasters upon Dawnland by the BFA, Japan at last yielded and V-J was bemarked on Weedmonth 15th, 1945, also the upheld end of The Twith World Wye.
* Israel says major operation may last days * Does not rule out ground invasion of Gaza * Hamas, militant groups vow to fight * First target was Hamas commander * Southern Israel braced for Gaza rockets By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza on Wednesday, killing the military commander of Hamas in an air strike and threatening an invasion of the enclave that the Islamist group vowed would "open the gates of hell". The onslaught shattered hopes that a truce mediated on Tuesday by Egypt could pull the two sides back from the brink of war after five days of escalating Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli strikes at militant targets. Operation "Pillar of Defence" began with a surgical strike on a car carrying the commander of the military wing of Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls Gaza and dominates a score of smaller armed groups. Within minutes of the death of Ahmed Al-Jaabari, big explosions were rocking Gaza, as the Israeli air force struck at selected targets just before sundown, blasting plumes of smoke and debris high above the crowded city. Panicking civilians ran for cover and the death toll mounted quickly. Seven people including two girls under the age of five were killed, the health ministry said. A second Gaza war has loomed on the horizon for months as waves of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli strikes grew increasingly more intense and frequent. Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 began with a week of air attacks and shelling, followed by a land invasion of the blockaded coastal strip, sealed off at sea by the Israeli navy. Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 13 Israelis died. Hamas said Jaabari, who ran the organisation's armed wing, Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam, died along with an unnamed associate when their car was blown apart by an Israeli missile. The charred and mangled wreckage of a car could be seen belching flames, as emergency crews picked up what appeared to be body parts. GATES OF HELL Israel confirmed it had carried out the attack and announced there was more to come. Reuters witnesses saw Hamas security compounds and police stations blasted apart. "This is an operation against terror targets of different organisations in Gaza," Israeli army spokeswoman Colonel Avital Leibovitch told reporters. Jaabari had "a lot of blood on his hands", she said. Other militant groups including Islamic Jihad were on the target list. Immediate calls for revenge were broadcast over Hamas radio. "The occupation has opened the gates of hell," Hamas's armed wing said. Smaller groups also vowed to strike back. "Israel has declared war on Gaza and they will bear the responsibility for the consequences," Islamic Jihad said. Southern Israeli communities within rocket range of Gaza were on full alert, and schools were ordered closed for Thursday. About one million Israelis live in range of Gaza's relatively primitive but lethal rockets, supplemented in recent months by longer-range, more accurate systems. "The days we face in the south will, in my estimation, prove protracted," Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, Israel's chief military spokesman, told Channel 2 TV. "The home front must brace itself resiliently." Mordechai said Israel was both responding to a surge in Palestinian rocket salvoes earlier this week and trying to prevent Hamas and other Palestinian factions from building up their arsenals further. Among the targets of Wednesday's air strikes were underground caches of longer-range Hamas rockets, he said. Asked if Israel might send in ground forces, Mordechai said: "There are preparations, and if we are required to, the option of an entry by ground is available." HAMAS EMBOLDENED Israel's intelligence agency Shin Bet said Jaabari was responsible for Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, when the militant Islamist group ousted fighters of the Fatah movement of its great rival, the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. It said Jaabari instigated the attack that led to the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in a kidnap raid from Gaza in 2006. Jaabari was also the man who handed Shalit over to Israel in a prisoner exchange five years after his capture. Israel holds a general election on Jan. 22 and conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to retaliate harshly against Hamas. Hamas has been emboldened by the rise to power in neighbouring Egypt of its spiritual mentors in the Muslim Brotherhood, viewing them as a "safety net" that will not permit a second Israeli thrashing of Gaza, home to 1.7 million Palestinians. Egypt condemned Israel's strikes on Gaza and urged it to end the attacks at once. Hamas has historically been supported by Iran, which Israel regards as a rising threat to its own existence due to its nuclear programme. In the flare-up that was prelude to Wednesday's offensive, more than 115 missiles were fired into southern Israel from Gaza and Israeli planes launched numerous strikes. Seven Palestinians, three of them gunmen, were killed. Eight Israeli civilians were hurt by rocket fire and four soldiers wounded by an anti-tank missile. Helped by Iran and the flourishing contraband trade through tunnels from Egypt, Gaza militias have smuggled in better weapons since the war of 2008-09. But Gaza's estimated 35,000 Palestinian fighters are still no match for Israel's F-16 fighter-bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, Merkava tanks and other modern weapons systems in the hands of a conscript force of 175,000, with 450,000 in reserve. Israel's shekel fell nearly one percent to a two-month low against the dollar on Wednesday after news of the Israeli air strikes broke. Earlier, Israel killed the head of the Hamas military wing, Ahmed Jabari, in an airstrike. In all, Palestinian officials say six people have been killed in the Israeli attacks. Israel says the airstrikes are the beginning of a broader operation, launched in response to days of heavy rocket fire from Gaza.
Radios allow players to transmit short in-game messages across large distances. Radio communication requires two ingredients: a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter Edit The simplest transmitter is made of a jukebox, a sign, and a redstone power source. To transmit a message, place the sign on the side of the jukebox and then power the jukebox with redstone. The sign contains your message, and must have the frequency of your broadcast (that is, a number of your choosing) written in brackets on the first line of the sign. When the radio is powered, your message will repeatedly broadcast every few seconds, so no redstone clocks are needed. However, in this state, your radio won’t broadcast very far. To boost the range of your radio, you must give it an antenna. An antenna is a column of iron bars built on top the jukebox. The range of your broadcast increases exponentially with the height of the antenna. The receiver Edit A radio receiver is a compass. To use the compass as a radio receiver, it must be in your hotbar. Radio receivers have two modes: tune and scan. To tune a radio receiver to a specific frequency, hold the compass in your hand and type /radio tune <frequency>. The radio will then pick up messages broadcasted on that frequency, if the player is within range of the transmitter. To scan with a radio, type /radio scan. The receiver then has a one percent chance of picking up broadcasts from any transmitter within range of the player. Once a random message has been intercepted, the radio automatically stays on that frequency until it is reset to scan mode. The messages you receive may not come through with perfect clarity. If you are in the outer half of the transmitter’s radius, then the message will be a little bit scrambled. The transmitter can be configured so that message clarity drops off less quickly. FAQ Edit What can I set as the radio’s frequency? Any number you want. It can even have decimals, but will be truncated after two decimal places. (i.e. 100.1234 is the same as 100.12) How is broadcast range related to antenna height? A radio without an antenna will broadcast 300 meters. With an antenna, the radio’s range follows this formula: radius = 300*1.023^n where n is the height of the antenna. How do I make my message longer than one sign? You can continue your message by placing additional signs on the other sides of the jukebox. They will all be strung together to form your final message. You only need to write the frequency once, at the top of the first sign. Also note that spaces are NOT automatically added between signs, or between lines of signs. This lets you continue words from line to line for maximum space efficiency. How do I boost the clarity of my signal? If you put an iron, lapis, gold or diamond block between the jukebox and the antenna, then your message will retain clarity over longer distances. Diamond gives the biggest boost, and iron the smallest (in order of increasing effectiveness: iron, lapis, gold, diamond). This clarity-boost block is an optional configuration. Can I change the font color of my broadcast? Yes! You can do this (again, optionally) by putting wool block of the desired color between the jukebox (or clarity block, if present) and the antenna. I was receiving radio messages just fine, then suddenly they got all garbled! Why?
It’s hard to say how much knowing what happens in a story affects our enjoyment of it. We live in the age of the spoilerphobe, where nerds like me abandon social media in the days leading up to a major release for fear of having significant plot points or major twists revealed too soon. But in Shakespeare’s day, everyone more or less knew the ending ahead of time, and the lack of novelty didn’t lessen the draw. That’s a reminder that what the story is need not, and arguably should not, overshadow how the story is told. Which is to say, I’m not sure how much the greater effect of Spotlight was lost on me given that I already knew a decent amount about the molestation scandal within the Catholic Church that played out in the newspapers and on our television screens for years after the time depicted in the film. The movie is, if not exactly a mystery, then certainly a story of the intrepid reporters of the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” team starting a small investigation and slowly but surely uncovering how widespread a pathology there was. Much of the film is framed as the Spotlight team investigating something seemingly isolated and being shocked to find how far the tendrils stretch out, reaching areas and individuals they never would have expected. But the impact of this gradual discovery is blunted when you already know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Sure, there’s something to the characters’ realizations that tries to drive the magnitude of the discovery home, but as horrible as what they uncover is, the film loses some of its narrative punch when its big developments are telling you something you already know. Which is why the film’s most vivid and poignant scenes are those involving the Spotlight team interviewing the victims of the abuse. There’s a stark quality to these sequences, which feature straightforward but moving recountings of how these men were taken advantage of as boys, that make them stand out. The film as a whole has a Wire-esque sparseness in the production design and cinematography that makes these scenes, and the horrors they represent, more palpable, awful, and affecting. But they also reveal a difficult hurdle for the film — the story of what happened is more striking than the story of the people who found out what happened. But that’s a sprawling, very individual story, splintered across thousands of victims and abusers, leaving director/co-writer Tom McCarthy to focus on the newspaper investigation in an attempt to tie it all together. The unfortunate side effect is that this mediates the terrible events that the film is concerned with, mixing them up with didactic discussions of psychological pathology and the personal effect that learning all of this has on the reporters who discover what happened. There’s a fair attempt made both to educate about this crisis and to bring its wide-ranging impact home by showing how it affects Mike Rezendes’s (Mark Ruffalo) connection to his faith, or Sacha Pfeiffer’s (Rachel McAdams) relationship with her grandmother, or Matt Carroll’s (Brian d’Arcy James) sense of the safety of his children in his neighborhood. And yet even as the film is about the Catholic Church’s molestation scandal, at a broader level it’s just as much about the way that communities close ranks in the face of a potential crisis, and in how there’s a certain complicity to it, a sometimes unconscious acceptance of how things are that invites horrific actions to be swept under the rug. A laudable performance from Michael Keaton as Spotlight editor Walter Robinson anchors the latter theme in the film. As Robinson hunts down old leads and sources, he encounters resistance from well-meaning fellow journalists who believe the story was culled from the crank file, less-than-subtle suggestions from friends and community leaders who urge him not to rock the boat for the good of the city, and disdain from veteran soldiers in the fight to expose the abuse who chastise him, and by extension The Boston Globe, for not doing more and not doing it earlier. Carpetbagging editor-in-chief Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber, who makes a strong impression with a textured performance in a smaller role), represents the way an outsider can cut through the status quo and see the collective shame for what it is without the history in the community or the stomach to ignore it. It’s legitimate material to explore in a film of this sort, and yet it ultimately feels very paint-by-numbers in the attempt. Spotlight has all the trapping of the prestige picture. It hits on a Big Issue; it features palatable protagonists fighting against something abhorrent; and it boasts an impressive cast who are given more than enough room to underline the film’s major points. Every scene seems to end with a line or an exchange that ties a very obvious bow on whatever the audience has just witnessed. Ruffalo gets his Oscar reel moment to bang on the table and demand justice. And the end of the film features the predictable moment of self-questioning, the inevitable bit of triumph, and the white text on a black background explaining the real life consequences of the “Based on True Events” story the viewer has just witnessed. That means that the film gets every opportunity to make its statements, to throw in standard-if-creditable character moments, and to work in small but salient details of the scandal. It fails, however, to make this all feel like something other than a movie going through the motions in the lead up to the Academy Awards. The film has something to say, and it’s worth saying, but it doesn’t delve particularly deep into these ideas and doesn’t offer anything especially novel or creative in how it presents them either. Spotlight is a good enough film. It has a sturdy structure, quality acting across the board, and locks in on some worthwhile thematic material. It’s not a movie I’m sorry to have watched, but it’s also not a movie I’m likely to ever watch again, because even if I haven’t seen this exact film before, I’ve seen this type of film 100 times before. It’s a solid take on the “dogged reporter breaking a scandal” story, and it hits all the right notes for an Oscar hopeful. But Spotlight never goes a step beyond that commendable-yet-spiritless flavor to the proceedings that seems to persist through so many movies in the same vein.
Alex Flanagan, who had been a sideline reporter for NBC’s national broadcast of Notre Dame football games since 2007, is being replaced, sources tell The Big Lead. Flanagan had also been a reporter for NBC’s Sunday Night Football pregame show, and sources say she will no longer appear on the program. NBC Sports spokesman Chris McCloskey said in a statement to The Big Lead: “We are fine-tuning our Notre Dame coverage and will reveal our new plans closer to the start of the season. Alex will not be with us in South Bend, but she remains in the NBC family.” It’s unclear who NBC is going to replace Flanagan with on Notre Dame games, but sources at the network say that three of the names that have been discussed are Julie Donaldson (Comcast Mid-Atlantic), Liam McHugh (does a little bit of everything for the network) and Carolyn Manno (NBCSN’s SportsDash and Football Night in America). It is unclear whether or not Notre Dame has to approve the sideline reporter. Sources say that shifting into Flanagan’s spot on the NFL pregame show – she previously reported from the afternoon games – will be Josh Elliott, who the network hired in March. He’ll be a features reporter. Flanagan, who will still be working for the NFL Network this Fall, didn’t respond to a text message today seeking comment. [UPDATE: Flanagan emailed The Big Lead a statement: “I’m grateful for the time I spent on the sideline in South Bend. I will truly miss the Notre Dame community. I’ll still work with NBC Sports on other projects. I’ll have more news about where I’ll be spending my fall weekends soon.” ]
Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? Hillary Clinton is running for president not only on her record as secretary of state, but also by presenting herself as tougher than Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as “weak” in his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the supposedly more hawkish instincts of much of the electorate. Ad Policy It is therefore necessary to ask a number of related questions, the answers to which are of crucial importance not just to the likely course of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the future of the United States in the world. These questions concern her record as secretary of state and her attitudes, as well as those of the US foreign-policy and national-security elites as a whole. They are also linked to an even deeper and more worrying question: whether the country’s political elites are still capable of learning from their mistakes and changing their policies accordingly. I was brought up to believe that this is a key advantage of democracy over other systems. But it can’t happen without a public debate—and hence mass media—founded on rational argument, a respect for facts, and an insistence that officials take responsibility for evidently disastrous decisions. The difficulties that a Democratic politician must overcome in designing a foreign and security policy capable of meeting the needs of the age are admittedly legion. These include US foreign-policy and national-security institutions that are bloated beyond measure and spend most of their time administering themselves and quarreling with one another; the weakness of the cabinet system, which encourages these institutions and means that decisions are constantly thrown in the lap of the president and a White House staff principally obsessed with the next election; an increasing political dysfunction at home, partly as a result of the unrelenting American electoral cycle; a Republican opposition that is positively feral in its readiness to use any weapon against a Democratic White House; a corporate media that, when not working for the Republicans directly, is all too willing to help turn minor issues into perceived crises; and problems in some parts of the world (notably the Middle East and Afghanistan) that are indeed of a hideous complexity. * * * Even more important and difficult than any of these problems may be the fact that designing a truly new and adequate strategy would require breaking with some fundamental American myths—myths that have been strengthened by many years of superpower status but that go back much further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism. These myths, above all, depict the United States as—in one of Clinton’s favorite phrases—the “indispensable nation,” innately good (if sometimes misguided), with the right and duty to lead humankind and therefore, when necessary, to crush any opposition. It is the strength and centrality of these nationalist myths that have prevented our elites and the American public from learning or remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave the way for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has made herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility of escape. As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices: Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation. And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that, before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are Americans, all with a personal stake in our country. It’s the same old nationalist solipsism: all we have to do is stick together and talk more loudly to ourselves about how wonderful we are, and the rest of the world will automatically accept our “leadership.” This is not a case—as has sometimes appeared with Obama—of a naturally cool and skeptical intellect forced to bow to the emotions of the masses. To all appearances, Clinton’s nationalism is a matter of profound conviction. And let us be fair: this may help to get her elected president. Once she is, however, it is likely to constrain drastically her ability to shape a foreign policy appropriate to the new circumstances of the United States and the world. Above all, perhaps, it hampers her ability to learn from the past, and from her own and America’s mistakes—a defect blazingly on display in her latest memoir. Instead, even when (on very rare occasions) she does make the briefest and most formal acknowledgment of a US crime or error, it is immediately followed by the infamous statement that we must put this behind us and “move on.” This phrase is dear not only to Clinton, but to the foreign-policy establishment as a whole. It makes any serious analysis of the past impossible. Of course, one hardly looks for great honesty or candor in what is, in effect, election propaganda—and one must always keep in mind the presence of a Republican Party and media ready to tear into even the slightest appearance of “apologizing for America.” Nonetheless, a passage early in the book did give me hope that it would contain at least some serious discussion of past US mistakes and their lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton acknowledges as her own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War: As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility. Neither in her book nor in her policy is there even the slightest evidence that she has, in fact, tried to learn from Iraq beyond the most obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground invasions and occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn. For Clinton herself helped to launch US airpower to topple another regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the results have been anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist extremists that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria. Clinton tries to argue in the book that she took a long, hard look at the Libyan opposition before reporting to the president her belief that “there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible partners”—but however long she looked, it is now obvious that she got it wrong. She has simply not understood the fragility of states—states, not regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk that “humanitarian intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the inadequacy of a crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis for state reconstruction. It does not help that the US record on democracy promotion and the rule of law—including Clinton’s own record—is so spotted that very few people outside the country take it seriously anymore. Her book manages simultaneously to repeat the claim that the United States and its allies were only enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya and to try to take personal credit for destroying the Libyan regime. And she wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or America’s honesty! There is also no recognition whatsoever in her book that those who opposed US military action were in fact right and not “despicable,” to use her phrase about Russian opposition to the US military intervention in Syria. Nor has her disastrous record on Iraq led her to take a more sensible stance toward Iran. On the contrary, in her anxiety to appear more hawkish than Obama, she has clearly aligned with those who would make a nuclear deal with Iran impossible and therefore leave the United States in the ridiculous and unsustainable position of trying to contain all the major forces in the Middle East simultaneously. This kind of nationalist faith in American strength and American righteousness is no longer adequate to the challenges the country faces. Above all, such a faith makes it impossible to deal with other nations on a basis of equality—not only on global issues or those of great interest to Washington, but on issues that other countries regard as vital to their own interests. This also makes it far more difficult for US officials to do what Hans Morgenthau declared is both a practical and moral duty of statesmen: through close study, to develop a capacity to put themselves in the shoes of the representatives of other countries—not in order to agree with them but to understand what is really important to them, the interests on which they will be able to compromise and those for which they will feel compelled to fight. Clinton displays not a shred of this ability in her book. * * * The greatest future challenge in this respect is our relations with China. The arrogance with which Washington treats other countries is at least understandable given that none of them are or are likely to be equals of the United States—though some, like Russia, can often compete successfully in their own regions. China is another matter. If, as now seems all but certain, its economy soon surpasses that of the United States, then on issues of interest to Beijing, it will indeed demand to be treated as an equal—and if Washington fails to do so, it will propel the two sides toward terrifying confrontations. In terms of the day-to-day conduct of relations with Beijing, Clinton had a generally good record as secretary of state—though in this, she was following what has generally been a restrained policy by both political parties. But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was pragmatic, her long-term strategy may prove disastrous. This was the Obama administration’s decision—in which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.” As Clinton’s writings make clear, “pivot” means the containment of China through the enhancement of existing military alliances in East Asia and the development of new ones (especially with India). This strategy is at present reasonably cautious and somewhat veiled, but if Chinese power continues to grow, and if collisions between China and some of its neighbors intensify, then a containment strategy will inevitably become harsher—with potentially catastrophic consequences. This is not simply a case of a knee-jerk US reaction to the rise of a potential peer competitor. Some of China’s policies have helped to provoke the new strategy and also enabled it by driving China’s neighbors into America’s arms. This is above all true of Beijing’s territorial claims to various groups of uninhabited islands in the East and South China seas. While some of its claims seem reasonably well founded, others have no basis in international law and tradition; and by pushing all of them at once, Beijing has frightened most of its neighbors and created real fears that in East Asia, at least, its “peaceful rise” strategy has been abandoned. But if aspects of China’s strategy have been aggressive, that does not necessarily make the US response to them wise—especially since Obama and Clinton’s announcement of the pivot to Asia, at least in part, preceded the new aggressiveness of Chinese policy. In particular, Clinton appears to have forgotten that a key difference between the Cold War with the USSR and the current relationship with China is that during the Cold War, Washington was careful never to involve itself in any claims by neighbors on Russian territory. In consequence (as I can testify from my work as a British journalist in the USSR during the years of its collapse), there was no successful mobilization of Russian nationalism against the United States. That has come later, when with monumental folly the United States (under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations) involved itself in the quarrels of the post-Soviet successor states. As a senator, Clinton was entirely complicit in the disastrous strategy of offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which led to the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 (and a de facto US strategic defeat) and helped set the scene for the Ukraine crisis of this year. This is not to excuse Russia’s mistaken and criminal reactions to US policy; but to judge by her book, Clinton never bothered to try to understand or predict likely Russian reactions—let alone, once again, to acknowledge or learn from her mistakes. On the Georgia War, she simply repeats the lie (which, to be fair, she may actually believe) that this was deliberately started by Putin and not by Georgia’s president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili. In her policy toward China, Clinton and the administration in which she served have embroiled the United States in the islands disputes. Formally, Washington has not taken sides concerning ownership of the islands. Informally, though, by emphasizing the US military alliance with Japan and its extensive character, it has done so—at least in the case of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. As a result, Clinton may have helped put her country in a position where it will one day feel compelled to launch a devastating war to defend Japanese claims to uninhabited rocks, and at a time dictated by Tokyo. As the Australian realist scholar Hugh White has suggested, underlying the other disputes between the United States and China is Washington’s refusal to accord legitimacy to China’s system of government, something repeatedly demonstrated in Clinton’s book. White argues that such recognition is essential if the two countries are to share power and influence in East Asia and avoid conflict. This is admittedly a very difficult moral and political issue, given China’s human-rights abuses. Clinton made human-rights advocacy a hallmark of her tenure at the State Department (without, it seems, understanding the disastrous effects on this advocacy of the US international record). More substantial has been her contribution to raising global awareness of women’s rights; and perhaps most praiseworthy of all (because it is deeply unpopular with many Americans as well as others around the world) is her staunch defense of gay rights. It would be an immense help, however, if American representatives could recognize the degree to which the US model at home and abroad is now questioned by enemies as well as concerned friends—at home due to political paralysis and the increasing and obvious inadequacy of an eighteenth-century Constitution to deal with a twenty-first-century world; abroad due to a series of criminal actions carried out in defiance of the international community, as well as the catastrophic failure of the US war and state-building effort in Iraq—and very likely in Afghanistan, too. There is not the slightest indication of such a recognition in Clinton’s book. * * * When it comes to the Obama administration’s dysfunctional policy toward Afghanistan, Clinton herself cannot be held chiefly responsible. As her work and books by others make clear (notably Vali Nasr’s The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat), this was a policy driven chiefly by the White House, and for domestic political reasons. Nonetheless, she can hardly evade all responsibility, since on issues that can in any way be presented as successes, she is so anxious to claim responsibility. At the core of the administration’s failure (leaving aside the horribly intractable nature of the Afghan War itself) was the combination of a military surge with the announcement of early US military withdrawal. As far as hardline Taliban elements were concerned, this meant they only had to wait. As far as actual or potential moderates were concerned, Washington failed to accompany the surge with any serious attempt at a peace settlement. For this failure, opposition by the US military and Afghanistan’s then-president, Hamid Karzai, was chiefly responsible, together with the fear of a political backlash in the United States. But as Clinton makes clear, there was no way that she would have supported any peace offer that even the most moderate Taliban elements would have discussed. In her words, “To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda and accept the Afghan Constitution.” In other words, not a settlement but surrender. Such an offer should indeed have been made by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003; it probably would have been accepted by many Taliban commanders, since at the time the Taliban appeared to have been thoroughly defeated. That opportunity was missed, and today—with the United States withdrawing, the Afghan “constitution” deep in crisis, and the Taliban conquering more and more of the east and south—it will not even be looked at. And this syndrome, of either pretending or genuinely believing that Washington is offering compromise when it is actually demanding surrender, is a leitmotif of Clinton’s work. It is very sensible to make such offers if you are winning, not so if you are retreating. This is not to say that, in Afghanistan or the Middle East, there are easy answers that Clinton has somehow missed. In both cases, there are no real “solutions,” only better or worse management of crises based on a choice of lesser evils. Perhaps as president, Clinton would prove to be a competent manager of these crises; but on the basis of her record and writings so far, the verdict on this must at best be “unproven.” So far, her actions and those of the United States have succeeded only in making things worse. Can the United States escape the trap created by its belief in its own supreme morality and right to lead? To do this would require its leaders to tell the American people a number of things that a majority of the country’s political classes (which on foreign policy can generally manage to impersonate the people) really do not want to hear: about the relative decline of US power and the need to adjust both policy and rhetoric to accommodate this development; about the consequent need to seek compromises with a number of countries that Americans have been taught to hate; about the insufficiency of the American ideology as a universal path for the progress of humankind; and, most important of all, about the long-term unsustainability of the US economic model and the absolute need to take action against climate change. In an ideal world, an astute president with popular support should be able to reach past the elites to appeal to the generally sensible and generous instincts of the majority of Americans. As recent polls have demonstrated, on the question of arming Syrian rebels and of seeking a reasonable compromise with Iran, large majorities have shown much more cautious and pragmatic instincts than Clinton, let alone the Republicans. Only 8 percent of Americans want Washington to attempt to lead the world unilaterally, compared with overwhelming majorities in favor of seeking cooperation (and cost-sharing) with other powers. But as Peter Beinart has shown in a recent essay in The Atlantic, there is a yawning gap on these issues between the American public and the political and media elites—and, most crucial of all, the big donors on whom candidates increasingly depend. If, as many now believe, the United States is heading toward a de facto oligarchy, then the views of that oligarchy on foreign-policy and security issues are clear—and they’re close to those of Hillary Clinton. There is certainly little basis for the belief that she would be prepared to challenge the oligarchy on these issues. Thus, on the crucial question of climate change, she has indeed taken a rhetorical stand sharply different from the Republicans and a number of conservative Democrats. On the other hand, the chapter on it in Hard Choices begins with an extended passage in which Clinton crows about a tactical victory over China at the 2009 Copenhagen summit—a victory that did nothing to combat climate change and only managed to alienate further the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians. Clinton’s verbal commitment to this central issue is impressive and commendable, her actual record much less so. But again, the real question is whether any US statesman could do better, given that most Republicans—who now dominate Congress and control federal legislation on this issue—have managed to convince themselves that the problem does not even exist. How is it possible to implement rational policies if much of the political class has abandoned respect for facts and evidence? Given the US record of the past dozen years, there is a great deal to be said in principle for a long period in which Washington simply pulls back from involvement in international crises. In practice, though, as several administrations have found, international affairs will not leave a US president alone. Crises blow up suddenly, and to craft an appropriate response requires a consistent philosophy, deep local knowledge, a firm grip on the US foreign-policy apparatus, and the ability to frame that response in ways that will gain the necessary support from the policy establishment, media and population. These are sufficiently great challenges in themselves. To expect in addition that a statesman will display originality, moral courage and a willingness to challenge national shibboleths is probably too much to ask of anyone. On the evidence to date, it is certainly too much to ask of Hillary Rodham Clinton. More on Hillary Clinton in this issue… The Editors: “Wanted: A Challenge to Clinton” The Editors: “How Many Ways Can Goldman Give?” Michelle Goldberg: “David Brock’s Long Strange Trip” Kathleen Geier, Joan Walsh, Jamelle Bouie, Doug Henwood, Heather Digby Parton, Steven Teles and Richard Yeselson: “Who’s Ready for Hillary?”
Arkansas state Senator Jason Rapert took to Facebook to suggest that the best way to “quickly turn things around” in territory captured by Islamic State extremists would be a “strategically placed nuclear weapon.” “With ISIS spreading all over the Middle East and Africa and Islamic Extremists carrying out violence in Europe, the United Kingdom and even in the United States, I wonder why the civilized world just sits by when we have weapons that could wipe out these barbarians where they are concentrated?” he asked. “I believe,” Rapert continued, “it is time to annihilate the strongholds and pursue the rest till we have them all captured or killed. A strategically placed nuclear weapon would save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around.” “It is time for the insanity to be stopped.” It is unclear in the borders of which nominal United States ally Rapert believes this nuclear weapon should be “strategically placed,” but there is no scenario in which fallout from a nuclear explosion would not endanger lives in staunch U.S. allies like Israel. Earlier today, Rapert took to Twitter to claim that opposition to his plan indicates that “liberals love ISIS”: Seems liberals even love ISIS more than stopping them cold in their tracks. They truly amaze me with their anti-American arguments. Bizarre. — Sen. Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) February 16, 2015 View his entire Facebook post below.
From RationalWiki Computing woo refers to a range of pseudoscientific practices and urban legends associated with computing, especially computer security. Technical support [ edit ] The world of technical support is a magical place. User[Who?] beliefs include: Programming [ edit ] Technicians and software developers many of whom consider themselves rational logical thinkers are not immune from all kinds of sloppy thinking and superstitions: Heisenbugs , issues that never seem the same when you attempt to study them , issues that never seem the same when you attempt to study them Cargo cult programming It works on my machine: some programmers and IT have a tendency to assume that because code will run on one computer, that if it doesn't run on another one, that the other one is broken. It's usually the opposite. If you have code that runs on your personal computer but not on other machines, it is probably doing something dangerous that should cause segmentation faults or similar, but somehow is being allowed to do it. Alternatively, it may be set up in a way that is peculiar to the settings and file system on your machine. Name, time, addresses, maps, gender misconceptions and more![4][please explain] And among most people there is little conception what's involved in programming, to the point that the moviegoing public can accept the idea that a sufficiently good programmer can write a virus for a completely alien operating system, in a completely alien language, and have it work right the first time.[note 1] BadBIOS [ edit ] BadBIOS is firmware malware that was created by Ruiu ... in his head. Individuals like Ruiu are extremely concerned about malicious firmware from hackers and the NSA to the point of literal paranoia. Origin [ edit ] According to Ruiu (@dragosr on twitter), BadBIOS is a rootkit that can infect computers without bluetooth, ethernet, or Wi-Fi. Instead it can infect other computers by emitting "ultrasonic sound [...] from the device's loudspeakers". Computers nearby somehow pick up the sound via the speakers and thus get infected. Ruiu suspected his computers were infected with BadBIOS once his computers were acting strange.[5] Ruiu later provided data dumps of his BIOS only to have experts reveal it was normal data. Ruiu then countered stating that the malware probably erased itself whenever he tried to make a data dump.[6] While these claims are not outside the realm of science fiction, Ruiu has not provided a silver bullet, only speculation. Despite this, his reputation seems to be intact somehow. Years later, Ruiu came to the conclusion that BadBIOS can also contaminate USB , through some way of knowing...[7] The subreddit [ edit ] Yep, /r/badBIOS/ is a subreddit for a malware that probably never existed! Unsurprisingly, it's inhabited by some users who think that one weird thing in a computer means infected malware. These people are generally paranoid, judging by the threads: User thinks hackers infected his ... mp4 file because it got corrupted. [8] OP blatantly states they used a dirty electricity filter to evade hacking. Ironically, his means to evade being hacked is the reason why he thinks he got hacked — having poor connection to an external device can disconnect a device when it's not ready, resulting in corrupted file. [ citation needed ] OP blatantly states they used a dirty electricity filter to evade hacking. Ironically, his means to evade being hacked is the reason why he thinks he got hacked — having poor connection to an external device can disconnect a device when it's not ready, resulting in corrupted file. A user claims that they're picking up ultrasonic sound ... must be badBIOS! [9] Ultrasonic sound is just high-frequency sound above the human hearing range. There are other (plausible) sources of such frequencies such as bats. Ultrasonic sound is just high-frequency sound above the human hearing range. There are other (plausible) sources of such frequencies such as bats. "Neuroimaging tech will soon be able to decode our thoughts"[10] An example of just how paranoid this subreddit is. Truth to it [ edit ] Despite Ruiu's paranoia, there is truth to the madness: Through an "internal NSA catalog", the NSA performs firmware attacks through backdoors thus confirming proof that such attacks do exist. Unlike BadBIOS, these attacks are actually detectable and actually have documentation; however, certain tools in the catalog require tools priced as high as 250,000$USD, something not to be wasted on the average Joe. Despite this discovery, it doesn't confirm Ruiu's brain fart that has no evidence. [11] [12] [13] [6] In the paper Journal of Communication, Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz showed that BadBIOS is possible but only at 20 bps.[14] Deep web [ edit ] See the main article on this topic: Deep web Cargo cult paranoid computer security practices are often advocated by naive internet denizens and trolls towards even more naive newcomers. High profile attacks aimed at Tor hidden services Operation Onymous as well as large attacks on users such as the FBI's legally dubious network investigation malware[15] has created an association of insecurity and surveillance associated with what is in fact one of the most secure and surveillance-resistant networks ever created. Prospective explorers often ask if they should put tape over their webcam or use Tails in order to 'safely' explore the dark web. They will fixate on how technological configurations can secure their machines, but are entirely clueless about vectors such as password reuse, identity segregation or how to verify safety of file downloads. Such common misconceptions stem from limited public understanding of threat modelling , privacy and practical computer security. As such, there is a massive market for bloggers and YouTube charlatans such as Takedownman and SomeOrdinaryGamers to offer off-the-shelf tips which increase the user's feeling of security. Every day, an intrepid dark web explorer will read that the US Navy founded the initial creation of the Tor network and fancy themselves the next Edward Snowden by disseminating this information.[16] Hackers and viruses [ edit ] [17] Or maybe to keep their missiles from crashing into the Firmament. Russian Orthodox Leader Sprays Holy Water on Government Computers to Magically Stop WannaCry Attack.Or maybe to keep their missiles from crashing into the Firmament. [citation NOT needed] Criminal hackers don't wear balaclavas except when it's cold or they are being ironic. Due to the low understanding of what hackers do and how viruses and malware works, it has been a relatively accepted trope for someone to claim their account was hacked as a get-out-jail-free card in the event of certain drug-fuelled rants and dramas.[18] Some computer users will attribute changes to their computer to malevolent forces in a method comparable to astrology when it comes to rationalising changing and intermittent issues. Of course, in a video gaming context, anyone who is better than you is a hacker. There is a small number of 'anti-updaters', an anti-vaccination movement-like contingent of people arguing against automatically updating applications due to the misplaced belief that significant numbers of people care to manually review and install all patches.[19][20] Patches and updates are generally good, except maybe if you're working with the CIA.[21] Yes, there are occasions where an update breaks something that was working before or causes other mischief, but by and large updates are something you want: they fix problems and improve the security of your system. Cryptography [ edit ] See the main article on this topic: Cryptography Depending on who you ask, encryption can be anything from the largest piece of social good modern mathematics has ever produced or a dangerous weapon utilised by terrorists[22] and child abusers[22] in order to evade justice which must be carefully controlled. In the early days of strong cryptography, the US government attempted to issue export bans, classifying the technology as akin of munitions.[23] While such bans were overturned in 1992, it wasn't until the rise of ubiquitous personal computing that governments would once again characterize mathematics as a dangerous tool. The 2010s saw an increased call from politicians[Who?] around the world to backdoor common encryption software.[24] From the encrypted-by-default iPhone[25] through to bans on WhatsApp [26] in Brazil[27] and proposed and later withdrawn in the UK,[28] governments around the world remain convinced they can create a secure back door into software to counter criminals; however, it's not like backdoors are only exclusive to government agencies. Said statements could be considered rhetoric to coerce tech giants deeper into mass surveillance programs, and less charitably as mathematical denialism from senior elected officials. Monitoring your Internet usage [ edit ] How much do your teachers, coworkers, employers, or other people really know about what you do online? "The Internet" is really an inter-network, or a network of networks.[note 2] Your home Internet, the free WiFi at a coffee shop, your campus or work networks, etc. are all networks that talk to other networks. When you view a website, check your email, or chat with your friends, your computer achieves that by sending traffic from your network to someone else's, and routing it through every network in between. Anyone with control of the network can try to figure out what kind of traffic you're sending, where it's going, and what's in it. The modern Internet is moving toward HTTPS by default, which is an attempt to make things more secure. If your browser reports that your connection is "secure" or "insecure", it's talking about HTTPS specifically. It doesn't mean that there's no chance that anyone can intercept what you're doing. By analogy, you're writing letters to a friend, and passing them through the hands of a series of strangers. By agreement, everyone has agreed not to tamper with the contents of the letter. HTTPS lets you seal the letter from (most) prying eyes, but does nothing to hide which friend you're mailing. It's important to remember that there are good reasons for network administrators to monitor what goes into or out of their networks. If someone downloads and runs malware from an unsafe site, it puts the whole network at risk. If an employee does something illegal with their computers, their employer might be implicated. Few admins should have any kind of interest in spying on individual users, but every good admin has an interest in a safe and healthy network. Email security [ edit ] Who can read your email? Whoever provides you with email services, for starters. Microsoft read a blogger's Hotmail inbox in 2012, suspecting a software leak.[29] Ironically, around this same time, Microsoft was running the Scroogled ad campaign, attacking Gmail for using inbox contents to serve up targeted ads. It also defended its own right to read your mail.[30] Email alternatives such as Slack might also expose even direct messages to your boss.[31] Secure email and instant-messaging tools do exist, but no security system is absolute. Web filtering [ edit ] Web filtering is a magical solution to all the world's problems. Simply by stopping people (particularly children, but also library patrons) reaching the wrong website you can prevent sexual depravity bringing about the fall of modern civilisation, and prevent terrorism. Companies including Impero, Future Digital, and Securus sell "anti-radicalisation software" which prevents children reading about Islamist terrorism'.[32] According to online security company Akamai, British law requires schools and universities to consider the use of such software.[33] Whether Akamai is an unbiased source of legal advice is for you to judge. The traditional use of such software is to block access to pornography online, but such filters are pathetically useless. A British newspaper report complained that one filter blocked searches for "sex education" but allowed explicit searches in Spanish; it concluded they provide false security and could be easily circumvented (as anybody who knows anything about children could tell you). More seriously, anti-porn filters may discourage children from talking to their parents and actually promote porn addiction: "Filters can also encourage secrecy, deception and shame – key conditions for nurturing dependency or even potential addiction."[34] Because the naughtiness is half the reason why porn is appealing. Web filters also rarely if ever consider the blocking of pornography or jihadism to be their first priority. The majority of their efforts go to the blocking of websites offering alternative proxies and websites offering translation software. The former because it allows people to easily and perhaps even unintentionally bypass these filters and the latter because they often allow for diverse translations of the thing that people want to be censored and thus increase exponentially the work required to censor everything. Even more worrying is that some have them by default, meaning that no matter what you do, you won't be able to access Babelfish.[35] You'll be glad to know that the best in the business who have a firm place in the international market are currently selling their software to dictatorships that want to avoid their citizens reading about any information that might potentially harm the way the government is perceived by its citizens. [36] On the plus side, since these governments are spending their time with censoring internet traffic and they will never be able to fully do so anyway, this is often accompanied with a more uncensored traditional press and television. However, one might still question why democratic governments support something that is partially marketed to dictators. Misc [ edit ] Things that are not computing woo [ edit ] Whilst common computing misconceptions are numerous, often too many serious issues are written off[citation needed][Who?] as such including: See Also [ edit ] /r/itsaunixsystem on Reddit - dedicated making fun of Hollywood hacking willusingtheprefixcybermakemelooklikeanidiot.com - You should always be cautious with the about mainstream media reporting of cyber-anything. If in doubt, be sure to check Notes [ edit ] ↑ As seen for instance in Independence Day ↑ Hence the abbreviation of "Inter-net(work)".
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Eyewitness Tania Galbraith: "The whole building began to shake and it just wouldn't stop" New Zealand's prime minister says at least 65 people have died after a 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch. John Key said the toll was expected to rise further, adding: "We may be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day." The tremor caused widespread damage as it occurred at a shallow depth of 5km (3.1 miles) during lunchtime when Christchurch was at its busiest. The mayor of New Zealand's second-biggest city says 120 people have been rescued from the ruins. The country's deadliest natural disaster in 80 years struck at 1251 (2351 GMT on Monday), 10km (6.2 miles) south-east of the city. Screams from rubble The damage is said to be far worse than after the 7.1-magnitude quake on 4 September, which left two people seriously injured but no fatalities. We've had friends in town call us and say there are just bodies lying around: lots of dead bodies outside shops just lying there just covered in bricks Jaydn Katene, Christchurch resident Christchurch earthquake: Eyewitness accounts The epicentre of that quake, which occurred in the middle of the night, was further away from the city and deeper underground, but it still caused an estimated $3bn (£1.9bn) in damage. TV pictures of the aftermath of Tuesday's disaster showed scores of collapsed buildings in the South Island city of nearly 400,000 people. Shocked survivors could be seen wandering the rubble-strewn streets, which cracked open as the ground beneath was liquefied by the tremor. Police said that the dead included people on two buses which were crushed by falling buildings. Helicopters plucked survivors to safety from rooftops, and dumped water on fires. Officials said up to 30 people were feared still trapped inside the razed Pyne Gould Guinness building, where screams have been heard from the ruins. CLICKABLE Select the images for more details. Bexley Streets in the north-eastern suburb of Bexley were flooded as the quake caused water mains to burst, which coincided with heavy rain. Pyne Gould Guinness The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, which normally houses around 200 workers, collapsed. A number of people were thought to be trapped inside. Cathedral The 63m spire of the city's Anglican cathedral was toppled by the earthquake. A New Zealand TV reporter took a look inside the damaged building. CTV building Part of Christchurch's Canterbury Television [CTV] building completely collapsed in the earthquake. Some 24 people have been rescued from the building, but police said there might be between 60 and 120 bodies trapped underneath. Oxford Terrace In the aftermath of the earthquake, Rhys Taylor took this video on Oxford Terrace, 50 metres away from the city's main hospital. He said: "Cars were being used as ambulances to transport the injured." Trapped under her desk inside the building, Anne Voss told Australia's Channel Seven by mobile phone: "I am hoping they will get me out soon because I have been here so long. And it's dark. And it's horrible." Asked whether she was injured, she said: "I know I am bleeding and I can feel the ground is quite wet. I think it's blood." Glacier smashed A dozen visiting Japanese students are among those reported missing. Bystanders have been using bare hands to try to free survivors trapped under debris. Many injured people were carried out on blood-soaked stretchers or in the arms of shocked workmates and strangers. Some escaped on ropes lowered from office towers. Others managed to crawl out of the rubble. Analysis By nature, earthquakes tend to cluster in space and time. And Tuesday's tremor in Christchurch is almost certainly related to the much more energetic event that hit the region last September. The critical difference on this occasion is the ground broke almost directly under the country's second city, and at shallow depth, 5km (3 miles) below the surface. Contrast this with September's magnitude 7 quake: its epicentre occurred some 40km west of the city and at a depth of 10km, and it continued to rupture mainly away from the major built-up areas. New Zealand lies on the notorious Ring of Fire, the line of frequent quakes and volcanic eruptions that circles virtually the entire Pacific rim. The country straddles the boundary between two tectonic plates: the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates. On South Island, the location of the latest quake, the plates rub past each other horizontally. Depth and location key The tremor sent the spire of Christchurch Cathedral, a landmark in the centre of the city, toppling into the square below. John Gurr, a camera technician, told Reuters news agency the area outside the cathedral was "like a warzone". Power and telephone lines have been knocked out, while burst pipes have deluged streets with water. The suburbs of Lyttelton and New Brighton are reportedly "unliveable". Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement she had been "utterly shocked" by the news. "My thoughts are with all those who have been affected by this dreadful event," the statement said. The quake caused some 30m tons of ice to shear away from New Zealand's biggest glacier. Witnesses say massive icebergs formed when the Tasman Glacier in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park broke, tossing a nearby lake with huge waves. Back in Christchurch, emergency shelters were set up in the city's Hagley Park, a race course and schools as night approached. City Mayor Bob Parker told the BBC: "This is a terrible, terrible toll on our city." "There is no power in most of the city; there is no water in most of the city," he added. PM John Key said: "It is just a scene of utter devastation. We have to work as fast as we can to get people out of environments where they are trapped. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Grant Beedie in Christchurch: "There was no time to run" "This is a community that is absolutely in agony. We just need this community, as it has done before and as it will do again, to come together, to check and support one another," he added. Aftershocks The military has been deployed to help the rescue effort, and the government has accepted an offer of specialist help from Australia. A series of aftershocks, some as big as magnitude 5, have already rattled the stricken city, and officials warned residents to brace for more. One Christchurch resident, Jaydn Katene, told the New Zealand Herald: "We've had friends in town call us and say there are just bodies lying around; lots of dead bodies outside shops just lying there just covered in bricks." A British backpacker said the city "looked like a bomb had hit it". New Zealand experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which only around 20 have a magnitude in excess of 5.0. The last fatal earthquake was in 1968, when a 7.1-magnitude tremor killed three people on the South Island's western coast. Tuesday's was the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier killed 256 people.
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2017 we take a look at some inspirational and bold Welsh women from our history. 5. KATE ROBERTS Kate Roberts was our “Queen of Letters” and one of ‘the most important Welsh woman of the 20th century’ according to her biographer Alan Llwyd. She was a prominent author, a prolific journalist and a major benefactor. Kate Roberts was one of the earliest members of the National Party and was the owner of Y Faner. She served Wales on various committees and in eisteddfods, and was prominent in several national and local campaigns, including the one to establish Ysgol Twm o’r Nant school in Denbigh. She lived a varied and industrious life, but also a life that was filled with tragedy and sadness. 4. MARGARET JONES Margaret Jones (1842-1902), was a woman from Rhosllannerchrugog, north Wales, who became famous in the nineteenth century as “The Welsh Lady from Canaan”. She travelled extensively and spent time living in Paris, Jerusalem, Morocco, the United States and Australia. She published two books of her observations, “Llythyrau Cymraes o Wlad Canaan [The Letters of a Welsh Lady from Canaan] (1869) and “Morocco, a’r hyn a welais yno” [Morocco, and what I saw there] (1883). 3. ZONIA BOWEN Zonia Bowen is an Englishwoman who embraced the Welsh language and became a key figure in the period leading up to the establishment of Merched y Wawr. She came to Wales at age 17, married a Welsh man and learnt Welsh – well before the days of Welsh lessons for adults. 2. ESME KIRBY Esmé Kirby was the conservationist who formed the Snowdonia National Park Society. Her career began as an actress, and at 23 she married Thomas Firbank, whose bestselling book, I Bought a Mountain (1940) tells of their married life at Dyffryn, a 3,000-acre farm near Capel Curig. Their marriage ended as the Second World War began but Esmé continued to farm on her own in the rugged Snowdonia landscape and made a success of it. She remarried and became a volunteer conservationist and formed the Snowdonia National Park Society, to ensure the mountains were protected from future development. The local farming community saw her strength and determination, and helped her to succeed… She made a success of Dyffryn against all the odds, leaving a lasting legacy. 1. KATE BOSSE GRIFFITHS Kate Bosse-Griffiths, of German-Jewish descent, succeeded in fleeing from Germany to the Britain in 1937. She fell in love, married, began writing in Wales and established Cylch Cadwgan whilst the Nazis made life in Germany and Europe hell on Earth. Her family was persecuted. A few tried to become a part of the system, others struggled in spite of the system, and some self-sacrifed in opposition of the system. In Oxford she met fellow Classics scholar and Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths and they soon settled as a married couple in Rhondda where Kate established the Cadwgan Literary Circle. She fled the brutal regime of the Nazis and became one of Wales’ leading academic and literary figures. The story would have been lost forever if it wasn’t for the thousand and more pages that have been kept by the family; letters, diaries and documents. They give an account of the attacks during Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), life under the insane regime, details of prison camps, fleeing to Shanghai, suicide, imprisonment and killing. Hers is a story of love and hatred, protection and persecution, yearning and terror during the most destructive period in European history. Read more at ylolfa.com Advertisements
DAVAO CITY, Philippines—There are few and far between times when tough-talking Mayor Rodrigo Duterte would just shut up. An encounter with officials in Cotabato City on Wednesday was one of those times. He was virtually speechless. Duterte was preparing to leave the stage after speaking about “federalism” before hundreds of local leaders and residents of Cotabato on Wednesday when lawyer Ranibai Dilangalen took the microphone and asked the mayor to stay for a while. ADVERTISEMENT Dilangalen, a member of the Duterte for President Movement-Cotabato City and Maguindanao chapter, then announced: “Mayor President, we will officially start today our small effort to help you and the country. We will launch the ‘Piso para sa Presidente’ (Peso for President).” Then, Mohamad Ali Datumanguda, another member of the group, presented Duterte a small handwoven basket filled with P1 coins. For a moment, Duterte froze, his face red and tears welling in his eyes. After staring at the crowd, he approached the podium and said: “I don’t know what to say. I am really, really surprised. Thank you for having me here. The presidency is not in my plans, but if I become President, I assure you, one of your feet is in Malacañang.” Target: P10 billion Duterte has repeatedly said that he is not running because he does not have the financial capability to run a presidential campaign. Launching the “Piso para sa Presidente” campaign, Datumanguda said his group would start passing the “bayong” (native bags) in Moro communities to gather P1 donations from the villagers and hopefully collect P10 billion he said would be needed—initially, at least—for the presidential campaign expenses. An old man who joined the crowd at the gymnasium of Cotabato Polytechnic State University took out coins from his pocket and counted P8. “My fare back home is P7. I can still contribute P1 for Duterte,” the old man said. ADVERTISEMENT From Mindanao to Manila Datumanguda said the basket, which contained a little over P100 in coins, was “just a symbol” of what they would do to raise funds for Duterte’s campaign. “Piso para sa Presidente will move from Cotabato City to Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. It will then be moved to the Visayas, Luzon and Metro Manila, in the hope that we can raise funds for Mayor Duterte,” Datumanguda said. Duterte’s camp said it did not know about such a project. Nur Misuari During the symposium, Duterte said that he was not against the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), contrary to what other people were thinking, after he issued statements warning the administration of President Aquino not to railroad the legislation that would create the new political entity. “I am for the BBL, but we need to scrutinize some provisions because I do not want you to be frustrated,” Duterte said. The mayor said he was communicating with Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) founding leader Nur Misuari and that Misuari should be considered in the peace process because he was instrumental in the signing of the Tripoli Agreement, which led to the establishment of a Muslim autonomy region in Mindanao. “Misuari should see the draft,” Duterte said, adding no one should be left behind in the peace process, including the sultanates. The mayor is pushing for a shift to federalism in the government structure, asserting that the people of Mindanao should be given a chance to decide their future. RELATED STORIES Duterte calls presidency a ‘destiny’ after meeting with Roxas Duterte warns Aquino on rushing BBL Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READ
Okay, my views on the tarot are complicated. Let me just say, so I don’t lose the skeptics right off the bat, I do not believe I am predicting the future. I will be happy to elaborate as I go. So I am going through a monumental day in my life today, I essentially just decided to make building my own company my number one priority and am potentially sacrificing my current job in the process. I have a few ground rules for divination, one is never do divination on something you are currently sure of. Inverted cards: since inverted cards usually carry a negative meaning I tend to see them as the thrill of the tarot reading. Some readers do not inverse the cards, but I need some potential for bad news. Though one of my ground rules is that even bad news is good news. The whole purpose is to inspire a sense of the heroic in the querent, so to give bad news is to find the silver lining. According to Joan Benning, an inverse card can mean a low energy in a process, or a reduction of energy. So if you have the Sun, its the Sun turned down for whatever reason. The interpretation of reversed cards demands a higher need for the reader to feel free to interpret. Many occultists would consider this being psychic, I reject psychic phenomena as a hypothesis that has been disproved. A good review of the scientific literature of psychic phenomena I recommend Paul Kurtz’s book “The Transcendental Temptation.” For my purposes the tarot awakens the imagination, that is their utility. I am listening to Beethoven’s 3rd, Eroica. A powerful symphony. My life is full of possibilities and I want to live it passionately. I am doing a Celtic Cross spread, and I am using the technique of choosing the querent. My Celtic Cross spread comes from Louis Stewart’s Life Forces, which is slightly different in its lay out than some Celtic Cross spreads. I am using the iconic Rider Tarot deck. I am interpreting my reading using guidance from Stewart, and Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning. In the position of the first card I am laying The Magician with a king of spades from an ordinary playing card deck. This is to represent myself. I am choosing these cards deliberately to hold the position of one card. The rest of the cards will be determined randomly. Second Position (this card crosses the querent, and signifies obstacles and opposing forces in the matter at hand) : Seven of Swords: Separation from others. Man tiptoeing away from society, appears perhaps to be stealing the swords. Could this be a promethean theft? This card sometimes represents the “lone-wolf” style. There are other ways to interpret this card, but this is the way that I feel about the card. That there is a challenge facing me now. I believe this card does not signify the obstacles so much as how I am responding to them. There are synchronicities that I feel highlight this interpretation: being a lone wolf. Third Position (This card crowns the querent, and in my humble opinion represents the whispering of the True Will) : The Hanged Man: This card is about letting go. For me in this chapter of my life its about letting go to pursue my dream. I have been very restrained and conservative in my approach, it was definitely an uphill climb. My favorite business guru Gary Vaynerchuk often talks about the role of your DNA in business. He feels if you want to be truly successful, truly happy, and be able to maintain the energy levels one needs to do great things you have to play to your DNA. You have to focus on the things you really enjoy and come naturally to you. This makes sense because if you focus on these tasks you will be able to work much, much harder. This is counter intuitive for me and for the things that I want to be focused on, it can seem like I am dropping out of society and facing terrible debt. But I know its my DNA and that I can work my ass off if I embrace that. I think another aspect of reading this card that I want to embrace is giving up urgency. I know from my study of positive psychology that this kind of approach is healthier. Interestingly enough the Hanged Man is considered to be the opposite of the Mage which I chose to represent me. Though I would point out that in the esoteric and mystical approach one can gain more control and power by surrendering it. Fourth Position (The base of the matter, that from which the querent rises): Wheel of Fortune (inverted) : This is one of my only two inverted cards. The Wheel of Fortune seems to be one of those cards that you read the inverse as just being a toned down version of the right side up version. One of the meanings of this card is a sense of destiny. I think it is fair to say that my life has been building up with a deeply suppressed sense of destiny. I am a deterministic materialist. I don’t believe in any cosmic sense of destiny, and believe that randomness overall prevails. But I do believe that one must have a sense of the destiny they want to create, and that this is likened onto Gary Vaynerchuk’s concept of DNA or Crowley’s concept of the True Will. There is also an aspect of having a personal vision built into this card. Its inversion makes me laugh because I would definitely say that I have been indulging in these things at a toned down level building up to present events. Fifth Position (What is behind the querent, what is passing away) : 9 of Pentacles: Tee-hee. One of the meanings of this card is discipline. This definitely works for my current situation. I have been living at a repressive level of self discipline. I think it is an interesting line within the journey to see myself as going from the 9 of Pentacles to the Hanged Man. Sixth Position (What is before the querent, what is now coming into effect): The Emperor: Fathering. Well, if my lovely wife and I get pregnant in the next seasons I will laugh about this. But I prefer to imagine it as giving birth to Mindcore Studios, my company. The Emperor implies a lot of things I consider to be virtuous and positive, and especially considering its relationship in the Celtic Cross spread I would like to interpret this to mean that the 9 of Pentacles is getting perfected, especially in my DNA/True Will related goals. But it is important that the end game is to let go. To embrace the message of the Hanged Man. Seventh Position (the querent’s position): The Empress: Interestingly this is the other half of the female archetype coupled with the High Priestess, who concludes the story of this reading. So lets continue. Though I am an atheist, I am definitely inclined to feel my religious impulses for a feminine deity. The female energy is a good projection for the universe, the proverbial mother nature. Consider these aspects of the card; She can suggest material reward, but only with the understanding that riches go with a generous and open spirit. The Empress asks you to embrace the principle of life and enjoy its bountiful goodness. This is my wife. Eighth Position (querent’s environment and influence) : Strength : The environment and influence, gotta keep that in mind. This card is about being calm and having strong resolve. Its about patience. Its about being compassionate. Quiet determination. This is definitely how I should cope with my hostile work environment. The trick to this card is that its a gentle lady controlling the Lion. The Lion is not in control, it is the gentle woman. My imaginary goddess. Ninth Position (querent’s hopes and fears) : The Star : Regaining hope. Feeling inspired. -Just for the record, I have “keep hope” tattooed across my knuckles. This card is definitely useful for my hopes. This card also offers serenity. Finding your still center, as someone who is training in mindfulness meditation I can certainly appreciate this promise. Pretty much everything attributed to the Star can be useful for imagining my goals, and hopes. This card is the good life. Tenth Position (the outcome) : The High Priestess (Inverted) : So the endgame of this present cycle is the inverted High Priestess. The feminine principle that balances the masculine force of the magician (the card I chose to represent me). Stopping, unconscious, potential, mystery. These aspects are all attributed to the High Priestess, but we must remember her knob is turned down in the inverted position. Using this reading as a therapeutic story telling narrative, I chose to interpret my endgame as manifesting these aspects of the High Priestess: In readings, the High Priestess poses a challenge to you to go deeper – to look beyond the obvious, surface situation to what is hidden and obscure. She also asks you to recall the vastness of your potential and to remember the unlimited possibilities you hold within yourself. The High Priestess can represent a time of waiting and allowing. It is not always necessary to act to achieve your goals. Sometimes they can be realized through a stillness that gives desire a chance to flower within the fullness of time. But I must keep my ear to the ground lest I miss her presence. It immediately stands out to me that in spite of my random selection I have found a ton of Major Arcana in my reading. It is unusual since most of teh deck is minor arcana, I only have two minor arcana in this reading. One interpretation of this phenomena is that the current event is one charged with magic(k)al energy. A good skeptic dismisses this, but in my system one embraces this as a wonderful opportunity to charge your current adventure with deep meaning, and a powerful sense of adventure. It is not by accident that I listen to Beethoven’s Eroica, I mean to be heroic as a lifestyle.
NEW DELHI: In a move that is aimed at speeding up the decision making process, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that various ministries can now approve projects up to Rs 1000 crore without the Cabinet approval.Till now the process entailed inter-ministerial discussions, Finance Ministry being kept in loop and finally the cabinet approval, ET Now reported.According to ET Now, the ministries were required to seek Cabinet approval for projects above Rs 200 crore. The five fold hike in the discretionary spending power of ministries is meant to allow faster clearances of projects, particularly those related to infrastructure.The infrastructure sector is a key focus area for the Modi-led government. The Centre is keen to speed up infrastructure development and investment to boost economic growth which remained at sub-5 per cent level during the previous two fiscals.Last week it was reported that the government is set to finalise the policy for implementing its ambitious plan to convert 100 existing cities into smart cities, where it will allow large-scale participation of private sector.Apart from the 100 existing cities that will be retrofitted to smart cities, the government is also considering developing three-four greenfield cities, urban development secretary Shankar Aggarwal told ET. A key to developing the smart cities will be unravelling the large number of rules and regulations that have slowed down development for years, the secretary said.PM Modi has already asked the government to revisit all old rules and regulations, manuals and laws, and cut them down wherever needed.(With inputs from ET Bureau & PTI)
Update: 11:15 am Allen Wayne Densen Morgan, a 29-year-old veteran from Munford, Ala. entered a guilty plea in federal court Thursday for attempting to hire what he thought were Ku Klux Klansmen to murder his neighbor. According to court documents, Morgan told an undercover FBI agent he wanted to see his neighbor “hung from a tree like he is an animal” and “his dick cut off” over accusations that the man, a convicted sex offender, had raped his wife. An affidavit given by FBI Special Agent Cornelius Harris Jr. in support of a criminal complaint filed Aug. 26 explains that Morgan believed his neighbor, Clifford Maurice Mosley, raped his wife earlier that month. Records show that Mosley, who is African American, was arrested in 2008 for sexual abuse, a fact Morgan was aware of. Harris wrote that Morgan told an undercover FBI agent he responded to the alleged rape by attempting to “force a confrontation” with Mosley on Aug. 22 by firing “multiple rounds of ammunition” at Mosley on the street outside their homes. “Mosley fled on foot as Morgan fired several shots in the ground beside him in an effort to intimidate him,” explained Harris. “Morgan assessed that Mosley must be guilty of the rape of his wife because Mosley never tried to defend himself by standing his ground or offering to reason with Morgan.” Shortly after this incident, Harris said an undercover FBI agent who identified himself as a Klansman called Morgan in order to “verify his desire to murder” Mosley. According to the complaint, during that conversation, Morgan described the shooting incident and said he would meet with the agent on Aug. 25 to arrange payment. The undercover agent claimed he was “en route to Tennessee to pick up a partner to take care of this matter for Morgan.” “Morgan advised that he and his family are supportive of the plan to murder Clifford Maurice Mosley,” Harris wrote, adding that Morgan said his father-in-law and mother-in-law wanted “to dynamite the entire block.” Harris also quoted Morgan as having provided detailed instructions about how exactly he wanted Mosley to be killed by the Klan. “I want this man hung from a tree like he is an animal. I want his dick cut off and I want him cut,” Morgan said, according to the complaint. “You’re a hunting man right? … I want him hung from a tree and gutted and left him hung in that tree. … That’s how I want him to die. Die a slow and painful death.” As promised, Morgan met with the agent posing as a Klansman on Aug. 25 at a local motel. Harris said he told the two undercover agents “he would pay them money to commit the murder,” but also informed them “he had no money.” “He then offered as payment … a watch and a necklace from his person,” wrote Harris. “Additionally, Morgan offered to tender as additional payment, a firearm located at his residence as payment.” The criminal complaint said that at “the conclusion of the meeting” in the motel, Morgan was arrested and confessed that he “intended” to hire hitmen to kill Mosley. According to a statement from the Department of Justice Morgan was subsequently charged with “one count of using and causing someone else to use interstate facilities and travel — a telephone and a motor vehicle — with the intent to commit a murder-for hire” in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Based on a Facebook page that appears to belong to Morgan, he may have attempted to sell a Playstation and some video games to raise money in the days before his meeting with the supposed hitman. The Facebook page matches Morgan’s name and identifies him as an Iraq War veteran who lives in Munford. In a pair of updates posted on Aug. 22, the same day Morgan allegedly first spoke with the agent posing as the Klan contract killer, the Facebook used identified as Allen Morgan discussed his efforts to sell the video games. “PlayStation 3 plus Â³ games for sale super cheap, inbox me series [sic] inquiries only,” Morgan wrote. “Lowest j can go and I’m losing money, PS3 plus 3 games for $160.” On Facebook, Morgan listed one item under “interests:” “United Klans of America Inc.” Following his guilty plea Morgan is due to be sentenced on February 27, 2014. Read the full criminal complaint below. Criminal Complaint: United States of America v. Allen Wayne Densen Morgan Photo: Facebook
Nowadays we have computers and phones equipped with multi-core processors. These computers can actually perform multiple computations in parallel. All the cores or processors share the same memory (RAM) and IO bus. The operating system is able to schedule work on different cores simultaneously. This is called symmetric multi processing (SMP). Programs take advantage of SMP. With the help of the operating system, the programs distribute computation to multiple cores, and bring down the overall execution time by a huge factor. The operating system, and programming language features play a huge role in making SMP available to programmers. The intension of this post is to delve deep and understand how the language features, operating system and hardware architecture enables use of SMP in applications. If one is already well versed in multi-threaded application programming, he/she may skip directly to “Understanding SMP hardware architecture“. Multi-threaded applications Each task that a process performs is a series of operations. The processing of these series of operations is called execution of a thread. A process can distribute tasks to multiple threads. It creates threads by calling a function exposed by the operating system. The operating system creates, manages and schedules threads. It does this for all the applications and services running on it. The operating system usually ends up creating a much larger number of threads than the number of cores on the computer. To be able to handle so many threads, each core has to serve multiple threads. The operating system assigns a thread to be executed on a core for some time, and then uses the same core for another thread. This process is called scheduling, and the duration for which a thread is assigned to a processor / core is called a time slice. When the time slice for a thread is over, it is pre-empted (taken off the processor) and put aside for scheduling. Whenever the thread gets another time slice for itself, it resumes from where it had been pre-empted in the last run. This post will cover the issues related to a single process using multiple threads. Applications use multiple threads mainly to: decrease effective time needed for huge computations increase responsiveness to external events such as: user input messages from other systems Such applications are called multi-threaded applications. Programming multi-threaded applications is considered challenging and rightly so. Many language features and operating system facilities try to abstract the details to simplify writing multi-threaded applications. Though it has helped application programmers, it also has a flip side: Due to improper use of these features and facilities, a large number of applications have turned out to perform worse than expected. Quite often, lack of true understanding has led to: undefined behaviour (crashes / memory corruption) hung processes (due to deadlocks) Sharing memory between threads The main reason for all the complexity in multi-threaded applications is that, the same data / memory location gets shared between multiple threads. Let us take a very simple task of incrementing a counter. Whenever an event occurs, we need to increment the counter. A simplified series of operations needed for incrementing a counter is as follows: Read the current value from the counter’s memory location Add 1 to the current value Write the new value to the counter’s memory location Let us say two events happen, and they are processed by our application in parallel. The process being multi-threaded, schedules the task of incrementing the counters on two different threads. The threads run on different processors simultaneously. Both of the threads execute step 1 above and see the value, say 998. They then add 1 to it and the new value happens to be 999. Then both want to write 999 to the memory location. Regardless of who writes first, in the end it would be 999 in the counter’s memory location. So instead of having 1000, we have 999. This is called a race, and it can be avoided using synchronisation features provided by the language or the operating system facilities. Synchronisation One of the synchronisation features is mutex (mutual exclusion). A thread locks a mutex, and until the thread unlocks it, no other thread can lock it. A mutex is typically used to protect a variable from data races. To avoid race in the counter example, lock a mutex before the read operation, and unlock after the write operation. Thus any one of the two threads gets to lock the mutex first. The other thread remains blocked. Once the counter is updated and written back, the first thread unlocks the mutex. This is when the second thread gets to lock the mutex and is able to proceed. By this time the counter is already updated by the first thread, hence the read by the second thread gets the incremented value. This provides the needed consistent behaviour. Programmers have to follow a discipline of using mutexes whenever they have to use variables that are shared between threads. Due to the simplicity of the counter example, one may be led into believing that using mutexes around all shared variables will solve all multi-threading related issues. There are two kinds of problems that arise: The process slows down. The process hangs. Slow down: If two threads are contending to get a lock on a mutex, the operating system or language makes sure that only one of them gets it. The other thread blocks. This causes only one thread to effectively proceed. In-spite of having multiple cores / processors on the system, it behaves as if it were single threaded. In fact if the application is single threaded, it could have avoided acquiring locks, and thus could have been faster! After all acquiring lock is some overhead even if there are no contending threads (it is an operation after all). Hence indiscriminately sharing all data between threads and thereby protecting it with mutexes would lead to slow down of the system. The process hangs: Let us say there are two variables which are protected using different mutexes. Now suppose there are two threads operating on the variables. The example below illustrates how two seemingly un-related functions get blocked indefinitely. thread 1 (function trying a swap) lock obj1 lock obj2 ( blocked ) ... swap obj1 obj2 ... ... unlock obj2 unlock obj1 thread 2 (function incrementing objects) lock obj2 lock obj1 ( blocked ) ... obj1 = obj1 + 1 obj2 = obj2 + 1 ... unlock obj1 unlock obj2 This is called a deadlock. This is an over simplification of code causing deadlocks. Usually industrial code is very complex, and huge. It is becomes extremely difficult to find deadlocks until they actually occur! Different synchronisation mechanisms There are features like Mutexes, Semaphores and Condition Variables and even more higher level of synchronisation techniques provided by languages and operating systems. A well written program will strive to improve through put of the program. It would parallelise functions using multiple threads. With locks being used while sharing memory between threads, it becomes important to acquire locks only when needed and unlock immediately after the need is over. Acquiring a lock is costly in a high performance system. To further increase the performance of the system, a programmer can make use of hardware instructions exposed by languages like C/C++. The programmer avoids locking a mutex. This completely alters the design of the system. The technique is called lockless programming. It is considered very advanced, and is best avoided by application developers. This post attempts to explain the basics of lockless programming. Lockless programming techniques are used by device driver writers, compiler writers. It is also used in ultra low-latency systems and in a few operating system kernel modules. From an application developer’s perspective, the only benefit of lockless programming is that there is no chance of a deadlock! Understanding SMP hardware architecture Modern hardware architectures have multiple cores / processors and often 3 levels of caches. The sample image below is a 2 level cache taken from Intel’s website, just to illustrate. To manipulate a variable in a thread running on say Core 0, it has to fetch the value of the variable from the system memory. The Core 0 actually manipulates the value in a register and stores the new value in the location of the variable. In essence the Core 0 is actually operating on a copy of the variable, not directly on the system memory. The steps needed for incrementing a counter: 1. load counter from system memory in C2 (C2 is location in L2 Cache) 2. load C1 from C2 (C1 is location in L1 Cache) 3. load R1 from C1 (R1 is a register in the processor) 4. R1 = R1 + 1 5. store R1 to C1 6. store C1 to C2 7. store C2 to location of counter in system memory The reason for these levels of caches is higher performance. It is much faster to load a value from L1 cache into the register compared to loading from L2 cache. Similarly the access to system memory is very slow compared to the L2 cache. Hence, the processors predict the data they might need, and pre-fetch those into the caches. Sometimes the predictions go wrong, so it has to drop the existing contents in the cache, and get the right ones. This is called a cache miss. In the example above, R1 could be the register eax of the x86 architecture. This register is 32 bits. So even if the counter happened to be an unsigned char, that is, just one byte (8 bits), R1 would load 32 bits. The remaining unneeded 24 bits next to the counter therefore get loaded in the register. Please bear this in mind, as the implication of this is elaborated later on. Optimisation by the processor Consider the following multiple lines which are unrelated, eg: 1. x = x+1 2. y = 100 3. pi = 3.14 It would not matter in which order the lines are executed. The processor exploits this and depending upon the proximity of the variables in the caches, executes the one which are closer first. This is called memory ordering. Quite often it even predicts conditional statements as well: 1. if(some_bool == true) 2. x = x+1 3. else 4. y = y+1 Whenever it predicts which direction the code is likely to flow, it would initiate executing based on the prediction even before the condition is evaluated. This is called branch prediction. This link provides the details: Intel processor’s branch prediction. There is a heavy cost associated with mis-prediction here, as a lot of work done by the processor needs to be thrown and other branch needs to be executed. This aspect is not being discussed / delved-into in this post. Optimisations by the compiler Even the compilers are intelligent enough to optimise the execution. The compilers quite often provide hints to CPU through instructions. Branch predictions can be influenced by developers by using appropriate macros in the code. The developer actually provides hints to the CPU on the likely result of a condition. The compilers often optimise poorly written code to get faster executions. (The code could be stylistically good, however from the processors perspective it could be poor.) Various levels of optimisations can be turned on while building the code. Sometimes these optimisations can become very aggressive in reordering instructions and cause various kinds of issues. Deeper understanding of data races Let us consider the incrementing counter example from the processor’s point of view again. If two threads were running the same code simultaneously on two separate cores we could easily end up in a situation where thread1 is executing step 5 above, while thread 2 is executing step 4. Thread 2 would have taken an older value of counter in the register R1. Thus we end up with a race, similar in nature as “Sharing memory between threads” section above. Another kind of race Let us now consider two seemingly unrelated lines of code: Thread 1: 1. x = result_of_this_function_call() 2. is_x_initialized = true The line 2 above possibly has been added by the programmer as a variable capturing if the line 1 has already been executed. The processor does not know this, nor does the compiler. The intent is in the programmer’s mind, and has not been explicitly indicated. The compiler does not understand English, and hence does not interpret the variable name to understand the intent. The memory ordering explained above will most likely reorder the above piece of code. If that happens, the variable is_x_initialized will be set to true even before x has the value from the function. If the two variables were used only in one thread, there would be no issues because of such reordering. The impact of such optimisation becomes evident when there is another thread which is reading the value of is_x_initialized. Eg: Thread 2: 1. while(!is_x_initialized) 2. do_something_else_and_wait_for_some_milliseconds() 3. do_something_with_x(x) Due to the optimisations explained above, the variable is_x_initialized could be set to true in Thread1 even before the value of x is set. Meanwhile Thread2 would come out of the loop, and execute do_something_with_x() with an “uninitialized” x. This is undefined behaviour. We don’t know what could have been the value of x when do_something_with_x is called. Apart from memory ordering optimisation of Thread1, there is another problem. For Thread2, the compiler can optimise as well! The compiler may optimise the code to look at is_x_initialized once, and decide not to look at it over and over again. This decision for such aggressive optimisation is justified as the loop is not modifying the value of is_x_initialized and we have not told the compiler that it can be modified by the processor or another thread. The aggressive optimisations happen when we turn on optimisations for release builds. Two outcomes are therefore possible: If is_x_initialized is true due to memory ordering of Thread1, the wait will never happen. If is_x_initialized is false, due to the compiler’s optimisation, it could never look for it again. Then the thread2 will loop indefinitely! How to solve this problem is explained later in the post. Language guarantees, compilers and processors Lets reflect upon the note above. Consider the lines of code below: 1. unsigned char counter = 0 2. char x = 'A' 3. counter = counter+1 It might just happen that counter and x are adjacent in memory. The memory layout for such a code could be: (each column represents 8 bits) counter x 0xFF 0xFF The processor loads the memory location (32 bits) as shown above into its register. The counter will get incremented by operating on the register, and then the whole 32 bits will get written back to the memory location. However, if x was updated by some other thread, it would get overwritten right? Surprise! It does not! This is because the language states that two unrelated variables should behave independent of each other. The language guarantees, and the compilers help keep sanity in a programmers life. Synchronisation through lockless programming Locks cost performance. Locks are best avoided, when performance is of prime importance. If some form of synchronisation is needed in these high performance systems, programmers prefer atomic operations. Consider the counter example. The counter can be implemented as an atomic integer. Whenever an increment happens all other threads can see the effect of this increment. The complete set of operations needed for READ, MODIFY, WRITE happen as one unit. This seems ideal. The atomics are implemented by making use of the processor instructions. No lock/unlock call is done. Hence using atomic operations one can be sure that the thread will make progress, and deadlocks cannot happen. The atomics exploit hardware instructions only as long as the atomic object is of the size of a WORD or less, i.e. the object fits in a register. All other atomic objects use locks to get the atomic behaviour. Also the memory ordering optimisations and compiler optimisations are prevented by using atomics. The atomic operations therefore prevent the problem of “is_x_initialized” being set before the actual initialisation of “x”. Simply make is_x_initialized an atomic variable to solve the above problem. Atomics are much faster than mutexes as they exploit hardware instructions. Faster than atomics Most of the modern hardware architecture support the notion of memory barriers. These memory barriers are used by C / C++ compilers to implement what are called the acquire and release semantics. These are not the same as the acquire and release of a mutex or semaphore. acquire semantics An acquire operation guarantees that the effect of that operation in a thread is seen by other processors before any subsequent operations in that thread. This means none of the subsequent operations in that thread will be optimised to be executed before the acquire operation. This is sometimes referred as “load acquire”. release semantics A release operation guarantees that the effects of all the operations prior the release operation are seen by other processors before the release operation. This means that memory ordering will not delay the effect of a prior operation beyond the release operation. This is sometimes referred as “store release”. acquired_and_release semantics This is a very strong fence. In this form, none of the operations before the acquire_and_release operation can be delayed beyond the acquire_and_release. Also none of the operations after the acquire_and_release operation can be ordered before this operation. consume semantics The consume is a weaker form of acquire, in which some of the subsequent operations can be performed before this operation. The operations which are inconsequential with regards to consume can be optimised to be performed before the consume! Using hardware instructions, these semantics are implemented by the compiler. They are known as barriers or fences. Atomics are implemented using the barriers. Needless to say, if these are exploited, a programmer can get performance better than using atomic variables. In a subsequent post, I will attempt to explain using these techniques for producer / consumer queues. Conclusion Under usual circumstances of application development, the techniques which exploit hardware instructions are rarely needed. For one or two modules in a huge system which demands very high performance do we ever need to exploit hardware instructions. In most cases of high performance systems, ensure that cache misses and acquiring locks is avoided. This yields satisfactory performance. The purpose of this article was to try to elaborate SMP, multithreading and advanced synchronisation techniques. Writing high performance software is a very huge subject, which is not covered by this post. I hope this post was as enjoyable, and informative enough to create interest and curiosity in exploring the techniques further. Advertisements
Rosetta spacecraft's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera obtained this close-up detail of a smooth region on the "base" of the "body" section of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on August 6, 2014. It's only been a few hours since Europe's Rosetta spacecraft arrived at a comet in deep space, but the robotic probe is already beaming incredible close-up photos of its target. The latest images from the Rosetta probe reveal details on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko like never before. House-size boulders can be seen on the surface of the comet, and the "neck," "body" and "head of the dirty snowball are all on stark display. The photos were taken when Rosetta was about 81 miles (130 kilometers) away from the comet. "We've arrived. Ten years we've been in the car waiting to get to scientific Disneyland, and we haven't even gotten out of the car yet and look at what's outside the window," Mark McCaughrean, senior scientific adviser with the ESA's Directorate of Science and Robotic Exploration, said during a webcast of the Rosetta's comet arrival today (Aug. 6). "It's just astonishing." [Europe's Rosetta Probe's Historic Comet Arrival (Video)] Rosetta spacecraft's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera obtained this close-up detail of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on August 6, 2014. The comet’s "head" lies at the left, casting shadows onto the "neck" and "body" to the right. (Image: © ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA) And McCaughrean wasn't alone in his enthusiasm at Rosetta's mission operations center in Darmstadt, Germany. "This is a very, very emotional moment," Holger Sierks, the principal investigator for Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument, said during the webcast. "You see a lot of detail coming out here. We see the bright areas. We see the head. We see the depression and a lot of stuff laid out there. We see the sides, the body, the lower body of the nucleus and a lot of detail." Both Rosetta and Comet 67P/C-G are flying in tandem at about 251 million miles (405 million km) from Earth. Rosetta set off on its quest to link up with the comet in 2004, traveling about 4 billion miles (6.4 billion km) before making its historic rendezvous with the comet this morning.While today does mark an event 10 years in the making, it is just the beginning of the mission for many ESA scientists. ESA officials still need to find a suitable landing spot for the Philae lander, a robotic craft that hitched a ride with Rosetta to the comet. Philae (named for an obelisk found on an island in the Nile River) is designed to touch down on the surface of Comet 67P/G-C to learn more about the composition and properties of the 2.5-mile-wide (4 km) comet. Rosetta spacecraft obtained this 330 second exposure of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. from a distance of 342 miles (550 km). The comet nucleus was saturated to bring out detail. Note a ghost image floats at the right. (Image: © ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA) Mission controllers will now put Rosetta into a triangular orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G) before moving the probe closer to the comet. Eventually, Rosetta will move into an even tighter circular orbit to release its lander down to the comet's surface in November. The $1.7 billion (1.3 billion euros) Rosetta mission is expected to end in December 2015 when the spacecraft moves away from Comet 67P/C-G. Before the end of the mission, however, Rosetta will accompany the comet as it makes its closest pass of the sun in its 6.5-year orbit. During that close pass, the probe should be able to observe the comet in a very active state. "After landing, Rosetta will continue to accompany the comet until its closest approach to the sun in August 2015 and beyond, watching its behavior from close quarters to give us a unique insight and real-time experience of how a comet works as it hurtles around the sun," Matt Taylor, Rosetta project scientist, said in a statement. Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Storefront of Merlin's Beard, coming June 4th. (Photo: Emma Ea Ambrose) In a world where restaurants traditionally serve only food and drink and people typically play board games at home, one couple sought to unite the two diversions. In less than a month, owners John and Alicia Iles will open Merlin's Beard — a board game library and restaurant — at 1001 Main St. The Iles are modeling their business off Game Paradise in Indianapolis and The Uncommons board game cafe in New York City. The idea, John Iles said, is to have a place where a wide selection of board games are available and to be able to eat, drink and play with friends. The business will charge a $5 cover to play for as long as customers like. The cover will only apply if you decide to play a game. In addition to games and refreshments, Merlin's Beard employees will help customers pick an appropriate board game and introduce them to the rules and procedures. "For people who are not into games, we want to provide a service where we can help you find something you’re interested in and help you learn how to play it so you can have an enjoyable evening," Iles said. Iles, a mathematics teacher at Logansport High School, said teaching people board games has always been a passion and playing with his wife and their friends is a favorite pastime. The couple used to live in Greater Lafayette, where Iles taught at Harrison High School for six years. He said they are excited to be moving back into a community that is thriving. Iles said the restaurant's food and drink offerings will be cafe fare — paninis mostly — and beer and wine, once all the permitting comes through. He said they are hoping to source everything as local as possible. "We’re just trying to be a strong part of the community and support the other businesses in the area," Iles said. John and Alicia Iles (Photo: Provided by John Iles) Iles, who is a fan of "sci-fi miniature games," said popular games like Pandemic and Settlers of Catan will be available, as well as more obscure board games. He said the collection will grow as the business does. Although Merlin's Beard will have a table outside its space for the May 14 Mosey Down Main Street, Iles said they plan to open for the June 4 Mosey. "We’ll gradually increase what we can offer in terms of food as our different permits come through," Iles said, "but we'll start playing board games June 4." About Merlin's Beard The cafe with food, drinks and board games will open June 4 at 1001 Main St. Learn more on Facebook or donate at GoFundMe. • Facebook: facebook.com/merlinsbeard42. • GoFundMe page: gofundme.com/merlinsbeard. Read or Share this story: http://on.jconline.com/270INsR
My name is Pax Enstad, and I’m a high school junior, a son, a brother and a friend. I’m also a transgender boy. When I tell people this, it seems like everyone wants to know: What’s the precise moment when you realized you are transgender? The thing is, there was no single moment, no bolt of lightning that suddenly hit me. It was more of a process of admitting who I am to myself. When I hit puberty, I felt really gross and unhappy with my body. I stopped swimming and doing things outside, and started wearing baggy shirts. I asked my parents for a chest binder, but I didn’t tell them it was to flatten the breasts I was getting. My body was a thing that I tried to forget about. I’m close with my sister, Maya, who is two years older and in college now. When we realized we both liked girls, we decided to come out to our parents together. On the day that same-sex marriage became legal nationwide, Maya and I bought rainbow balloons and streamers. We went to the Pride parade with our parents and afterward, we gave them a rainbow card that said, “We’re gay.” I had yet to confront my own fear of being transgender. I thought, maybe all these feelings will go away, but they didn’t. Existing in a body that didn’t feel like mine became increasingly unbearable. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis, and the distress it caused me was severe; I panicked when I didn’t have my chest binder on. I put off telling my parents about my being transgender. I was embarrassed about it, and didn’t want to say anything until I was totally sure. By the time I finally told them, I knew I needed to have surgery to confirm the gender identity I’ve had all along. What had been a years-long process for me was for my parents a sudden revelation. They love me and have done their best to be supportive of me. But PeaceHealth, my mom’s employer, refused to pay for the chest reconstruction surgery my doctor prescribed to treat my gender dysphoria, citing an exclusion for “transgender services.” It felt terrible to know that PeaceHealth, a nonprofit health care system, had decided that transgender people like me don’t deserve coverage for the same double mastectomy surgeries it will cover for others. It was treating essential treatment as something frivolous. The possibility that PeaceHealth’s refusal to cover my surgery might lead to a delay in me receiving the surgery made me extremely anxious and desperate. I told my parents I could not wait. They could see this was not about making a “choice” to have surgery – this was something I needed to be me. To come up with the $10,000 to pay for it, my parents dipped into my college fund and took a second mortgage on our house. After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. After I had chest reconstruction surgery, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. It was also literally true; I had lost six pounds. I felt so light and amazing. The relief was immediate, like, ‘Oh finally, that’s over!’ I went to homecoming with my best friend and was able to wear boys’ shirts I couldn’t wear before. I looked dapper and I felt proud. But I’m still devastated by the fact that simply because I’m transgender I was refused coverage for the medical care that my doctor prescribed for me. With the help of the ACLU, we’re bringing a lawsuit against PeaceHealth because no one should be refused care because of who they are. Gender dysphoria is real and serious. If left untreated, it can have terrible consequences, including suicide. Surgeries like the one I had are recognized as medically necessary treatment by every major medical association in America. Ensuring that transgender people get the health care they need will help save lives.
NEW DELHI — India used small boats this weekend to ferry some of its citizens to a naval destroyer anchored near Aden, Yemen, as an operation to evacuate about 4,000 Indians from Yemen’s war zone entered a difficult phase. The Indian ship was not able to dock in Aden because of shelling, so the small boats carried people in groups of about 30, said Syed Akbaruddin, the spokesman for India’s External Affairs Ministry. About 2,000 Indians have now been transported out of Yemen, but the deteriorating conditions there mean that no more evacuations from Aden will be possible, he said. “It’s been a hard task, and as the situation worsens, the time available to us lessens,” he said. “Difficult situations now are becoming more difficult as time passes.” Several thousand Indian women work as nurses in Yemen, and many have been reluctant to leave, despite the intensifying conflict, because their families are so heavily dependent on their remittances.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) AP Our government is a disaster because of a small group of Republicans in the House of Representatives. I'm not talking about the group of Republicans you might think. Yes, there are 30 to 50 arch conservatives in the House who have been insistent they won't reopen the government without putting a major dent in Obamacare. These people are not the key problem. They are only relevant because so-called "reasonable" or "realistic" Republicans allow them to be. The most dangerous group in Congress is moderate Republicans, many from the northeast, who could reopen the government and break extremists' grip on their caucus' agenda, but choose not to. According to the Washington Post, 21 House Republicans say they are prepared to vote for a "clean" continuing resolution to reopen the government. Together with Democrats, this is enough votes to pass the bill that has already passed the Senate, reopen the government, and stop the madness. Yet these Republicans who publicly say they favor a clean CR have repeatedly voted with their extremist colleagues to prevent it from coming to a vote. If moderate House Republicans don't want a government shutdown and favor a clean CR, why have they passed up on ways to end the shutdown? Here are the three things they could do if they wanted to: 1. Defeating the rule. On Sept. 30, Republicans voted on two plans that would only keep the government open with major changes to Obamacare. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) opposed this approach, saying the House should instead vote on a clean continuing resolution like the Senate's. King declared his intention to vote against a rule bringing the last Republican plan to the floor; a defeat would have left Republicans with no bill to reopen the government and likely led to a vote on a clean CR. And King claimed that 20 to 25 moderate Republicans were prepared to vote with him. But when the rule came up for a vote, only one other moderate joined King in voting no: Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). All the other "moderates" lined up the likes of Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), and the government shut down. 2. Recommitting with instructions. Since the government shut down, House Speaker John Boehner has repeatedly brought up bills to reopen only parts of the government. And five times, Democrats have made motions to recommit these bills with instructions. What those motions would do is amend the bills to be identical to the "clean" continuing resolution that already passed the Senate. Each time, the Republican presiding officer has ruled the motions out of order, and Democrats have appealed the ruling. If you favor a clean CR and want one brought to the floor, you should vote in favor of the appeal. But each time Democrats have made this move, not a single Republican has voted with them — not even Peter King. 3. Discharging the bill. Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) filed a bill earlier this year that would cause the government to stay open at current funding levels even if Congress fails to pass a continuing resolution. Democrats have proposed a discharge petition for this bill. If 218 members signed that petition, the bill would come to the floor, and if it passed the House and Senate, the government would reopen. But no Republican has backed this approach, either. Peter King told National Review he wouldn't sign the petition because Democrats "are not bargaining in good faith." If you look at members' actions and votes instead of their statements, the number of Republicans in the House who favor a clean CR and oppose the Cruz-driven strategy of shutdown and hostage-taking is not 21. It's 0. The entire House Republican caucus is responsible for its shutdown-based legislative strategy. The only difference among the members is that Tea Party conservatives have the decency to admit what they're up to.
Chapter 39 "I could just take care of both fights." Yosuke offered. "Ah but you can't." Thanatos said. "You must each take a round." "Well, I guess that's out the window." Yosuke sighed. "Alright, it would make sense if the second round was more difficult than the first, so maybe you should take this one." "I can handle it." Rise said. She picked up her spear/laser and walked down the ramp. Taking up her place on the arena floor, she waited for her opponent as the ramp transformed back into a wall. "You all accused me of playing mind games." Thanatos said. "I won't deny it, and if it's mind games you want it's mind games you'll get." The mass of shadow-goo that bubbled up from the arena floor grew massive before collapsing into a small humanoid form. As the excess fell away it became clear that it had taken the form of Naoto. "You think because it has my friend's face I won't kill it?" Rise asked. "That's part of it, but I intend to give you the full shadow experience." Thanatos laughed. "What's that supposed to mean?" Rise demanded. "I think you know." The shadow said. It sounded like Naoto but distorted like a bad recording and filled with malice. "I would think that this form would make you a more eager killer." "That's absurd." Rise said. "Why would I be eager to hurt my friend?" "Friend, such a funny word." The shadow said. "It means different things to different people. Apparently for you it's a person of whom you are jealous. A person you resent." "I...I don't know what you're talking about." Rise said. She was less than convincing. "You want what I have." The shadow was now talking as if it were Naoto. The shift was subtle but disturbing. "You want what I have with Yu. Why would he choose me over you? You're so much sexier and so much more fun. You'd do anything to have what I have. Anything except actually saying it. You're too afraid to make us both hate you so you just keep it to yourself and act like it's not important. You act like it's not eating you up inside but it is. You just tell yourself it's for the best. Just let everyone be happy. Everyone except you." "Alright, I get it!" Rise shouted. "I feel that way sometimes and I'm not proud of that. I don't hate Naoto for it. It certainly doesn't make me want to hurt her. You, on the other hand, you're just a shadow. I have no trouble hurting you, no matter what form you take." "Then let's do this." The shadow hissed. It reached into its jacket and drew a revolver as Rise readied her weapon. The shadow leveled its gun at Rise. She took aim herself and shined her laser in the shadow's eyes. The shadow recoiled and fired blindly, emptying its gun. By the time its vision cleared Rise was no longer where she had been. The sound of footsteps made the shadow turn, just in time to see Rise rushing toward it. She thrust her spear forward and the shadow jumped aside, narrowly escaping the attack. It attempted to pistol whip her but Rise was already ducking under the strike and it missed by a comfortable margin. Rise planted her spear against her foot and fired. The point extended with extreme speed and hit the shadow in the chest. The shadow was lifted off the ground and tossed onto its back. Rise attempted to pin the shadow to the ground with her spear but it rolled out of the way and left her off balance. Jumping to its feet, the shadow went for a punch but Rise easily dodged it. It was like she knew it was coming. The shadow jumped back and raised both arms over its head. It brought them down and a blast of wind fired out in all directions. Rise tried to brace herself but was thrown off her feet and sent sliding across the arena floor. She did not waste a second, rolling to her feet and running as soon as her wild skid stopped, narrowly avoiding a fireball produced by the shadow. While running, Rise fired her laser in the shadow's general direction. Her fire was inaccurate but appeared to be doing some damage. The shadow clenched its fist and a spectral shield appeared between it and Rise. Her laser fire was stopped well short of the target and the shadow was given time to counterattack. A black circle appeared on the ground ahead of Rise. She stumbled but managed to stop before hitting it. The circle collapsed and another appeared below her. She took off running erratically as a series of collapsing black circles appeared around her. A gigantic white square formed, too large for Rise run out of in time. She planted the tip of her spear in the ground. The square collapsed in a blinding flash that filled the arena with light. When the light faded, Rise was gone. The shadow raised its arm in triumph but the match did not end. With an angry shriek Rise came falling out of the sky, heading straight for the shadow. She slammed the heavy, blunt end of her weapon down on its head, slamming it to the ground. Before the shadow could recover Rise plunged her spear into its chest. The shadow writhed for a moment before bursting into a cloud of glowing ash and evaporating away. "Congratulations, you've won." Thanatos said flatly. "Please leave the arena floor." Rise walked up the ramp to the others, still trying to catch her breath. "Okay, how the hell did you pull that off?" Yosuke asked. "You were trapped in the middle of the giant light attack and then the next time we saw you, you were flying." "I wasn't really flying." Rise said. "I used my spear to launch myself off the ground. I got a lot more air than I was expecting but it worked out." She took a deep breath. "All that running was exhausting and that shadow was...humiliating. Senpai, Naoto, I'm really sorry." "Sorry for what?" Yu shrugged. "You're only human. We all have nasty thoughts sometimes." "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of you sometimes." Naoto added. "The way you interact with people so easily, your fame, your exciting career, there's a lot to be jealous of." "We can talk about it more after this is over, but just know that we don't hold it against you." Yu said with a comforting smile. "Oh, you guys are the best!" Rise exclaimed. She hugged both of them in turn. "Sorry to interrupt, but this is a disturbing development." Mitsuru said. "Thanatos is clearly changing tactics." "Well straight up fights weren't working." Weiss said. "Playing mind games is a way to throw us off without having to expend energy on summoning more powerful shadows." "It's a disturbing thought, but we really don't know what he's capable of." Pyrrha said. "This tactic is bad enough but if it fails we have no way of knowing what he will try next." "I'm sure whatever it is we'll be ready." Yosuke said. "We've dealt with some pretty bizarre stuff before." "We have seen our share of strange occurrences too." Aigis said. "We were once trapped in a time loop." "Yang once blew up a nightclub." Ruby added. "I'm not sure that really applies here." Yang said. "Me and Ren rode an Ursa!" Nora exclaimed. "It was so fun. Well, at least until it broke." "What were we even talking about?" Yosuke asked, clearly confused. "Time for the next match." Thanatos announced. "Jaune or Pyrrha, who will it be?" "I should probably take this one." Jaune said. "I'll have to fight sometime." "Alright, just be careful." Pyrrha advised. "Remember what we practiced." "I guess we'll get to find out if that practice has been worth it." Jaune said with a forced laugh. He descended the ramp and waited as it transformed into a wall behind him. Jaune had already faced his shadow and he was confident he could handle whatever Thanatos could throw at him. He had learned a lot from Pyrrha and his other teammates, and now he was ready to put those newfound skills to the test. The glob of shadow material that rose up in the center of the arena piled upon itself before condensing into a humanoid form. "Hey there Jauney-boy." The shadow said before it even finished forming. "Oh come on!" Jaune protested. "Cardin? I thought I was done with him." "Well I'm not done with you." The shadow laughed. "If I'm not mistaken, the last time we had a proper fight I beat the tar out of you." "I've learned a lot since then." Jaune said. "I'm sure you're just as useless as you were when you were my lackey." The shadow hissed. "You're not even the real Cardin." Jaune said. He drew his sword and pointed it at the shadow. "Let's just get this over with." "I always preferred kicking your ass to talking to you anyway." The shadow said. The shadow charged as Jaune crouched behind his shield. At a full sprint, the shadow swung its mace. Jaune blocked it and the force sent him sliding back several meters. It hit at least as hard as the real Cardin. The shadow lunged forward with a wild swing and Jaune side-stepped it. He bashed the shadow on the back with his shield and stabbed forward with his blade. The stab was misjudged and missed badly, leaving Jaune open when the shadow whirled around and smashed him in the face with the mace. Jaune saw stars and stumbled back. The shadow kicked his legs out from under him and Jaune slammed down on his back. Jaune rolled out of the way as the shadow slammed its mace down where his head had been. Scrambling to his feet, Jaune got his shield up just in time to deflect another mace shot. Now as the shadow's turn to be off balance. Jaune pressed forward, attacking the shadow's side. He blocked its attempt to counter with his shield and got inside its reach. Jaune slashed at the shadow, his blade drawing a shower of sparks as it deflected off the shadow's armor. He swung his sword again but this time the shadow ducked underneath the attack, grabbed Jaune behind the legs and threw him to the ground. The shadow leapt atop Jaune, straddling his torso. Holding its mace with both hands, it lifted the weapon over its head and slammed it down on Jaune's face. There was a blinding flash as the mace bounced back harmlessly. The shadow was clearly stunned and Jaune used the opening to turn the tables. He slammed his shield into the side of the shadow's head, knocking it off. Jaune quickly rolled over, pinned the shadow's mace arm down with his shield. He flipped his sword around and plunged the blade into the shadow's stomach. Black sludge bubbled from the wound as the shadow writed for a moment then fell still. Jaune withdrew his sword and headed back for the seats. It looked like the others were cheering for him, even if he could not hear anything. Interesting, the ramp had not reappeared. Suddenly Jaune was on the ground. His head ached and he was seeing double. "Man you're stupid." The shadow laughed, standing over him. "Finish your kills moron." The shadow lifted Jaune by the collar, set him on his feet and kneed him in the gut. As Jaune doubled over the shadow nailed him in the face with an upward strike from its mace. Jaune found himself on his back again. The shadow had played a nasty trick. As it approached, Jaune decided to play a trick of his own. The shadow stepped up to him, a confident smirk on its face. Jaune kicked it in the groin. The shadow stumbled back, giving Jaune the opportunity to get to his feet. He took a few steps back to catch his breath as the shadow recovered from the low blow. After a moment the pair charged each other. Jaune deflected the shadow's mace with his shield, spun around and stabbed the shadow in the arm. It groaned in pain and dropped the mace. The shadow tried a desperate punch. Jaune ducked it and sliced off its arm. He stepped back then lunged forward, thrusting his blade through the shadow's neck. With a quick twist, he lopped the shadow's head off. It burst into a cloud of glowing ash that evaporated away. "Congratulations, you've actually won this time." Thanatos said. "Rejoin your companions." Jaune climbed the ramp to the others feeling more than a little embarrassed. He expected some jokes at his expense. "I know, that was dumb." He sighed. "You need to be careful." Pyrrha said, laying a hand on his shoulder. "You should never turn your back on an enemy. Your life is at stake." "Yeah, my bad, I guess I got overconfident." Jaune said. "As long as you learn from it, it's fine." Pyrrha encouraged him. "I have to say, I'm a little annoyed." Rise said. "Unless I'm missing something, you got off easy with the mind games." "You're not wrong." Jaune admitted. "He was a problem a while ago but I'm totally over it." "Maybe Thanatos didn't think you were strong enough to bother." Blake said. "Again, not wrong." Jaune groaned. "I don't think that performance is going to change anyone's mind either." "You did fine." Pyrrha said. Jaune was unconvinced. "I've been thinking, we've all got very different levels of ability but all the fights have been pretty close." Ruby observed. "That means Thanatos must be tailoring the strength of the shadow to each of us." "It makes sense to a degree." Naoto said. "If it drains even a little of his power to create the shadows, he wouldn't want to waste energy by summoning shadows that totally overmatch us. That said, if he did that and killed us all, it would hardly matter." "What if just killing us isn't the goal?" Mitsuru theorized. "Thanatos said as much. His aims may not be what he says, but there may be some truth to that." "Maybe we're missing the point." Blake said. "Maybe he doesn't have a choice." "Do you think he really is following Nyx's will?" Akihiko asked. "That would tie his hands." "No, nothing like that." Blake replied. "I don't believe that at all. Maybe it's a more basic limitation on his power." "Shadows are the produce of the unconscious mind." Yu said. The look on his face said he was putting pieces together. "Maybe he can only summon shadows by drawing them out of us. If that's the case, the shadows would naturally be similar to us in terms of ability level." "Or it's something else entirely." Naoto sighed. "As painful as it is to admit, I can't figure this out. I need more evidence. It's a terrible thing to say, but I think we would learn a lot if one of us died." "If you're looking for volunteers I don't think you'll find any." Ren said. "We've been down that road with our shadows already." "No, that's not what I meant." Naoto said. She was clearly sorry she had said anything in the first place but it was too late now. "Sorry, I'm used to investigating crimes. Examining the body can tell you a lot about the killer. Seeing what Thanatos does if one of us falls would be similarly enlightening, though I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that." "If I survived you guys shouldn't have any problems." Jaune said. "You've come up with some interesting theories." Thanatos said. "No matter, it's time for the next match. Aigis or Labrys, you're up." "I'll do it." Labrys volunteered. "I am sure you can handle whatever Thanatos may have in store." Aigis said. Labrys nodded and descended into the arena. "It's almost too easy with Labrys." Hypnos laughed. "She's so unstable." If Labrys was angered by the insult she did not show it. She did look worried though. A swell of black sludge filled the center of the arena then collapsed, leaving behind a humanoid figure holding a gigantic sword. As the excess fell away it revealed a gray-haired robot girl with a close resemblance to Labrys. Labrys did not appear to be surprised but she did seem discouraged. "You're not exactly creative." Labrys sighed. "You made me face Unit 024 the last time too Hypnos." "Why would he need to be creative?" The shadow said. "It's so effective! You keep having to kill me over and over. You say how hard it is. You say you can still see the look of pain and disappointment on my face the moment you crushed the life out of me. Yet you don't seem to have any difficulty repeating the process. Well, at least a part of you doesn't. It makes me wonder who the real Labrys is, you or the one with the yellow eyes. She seems to take charge whenever something important needs to be done. Maybe it's because you're too weak to do it without her. Come on now, bring her out so we can fight. I know you couldn't bear to kill me again. You're too weak to relive that pain." "My shadow won't be making an appearance." Labrys declared. "You're not Unit 024. You're just a monster wearin' her face. Everythin' you say drives that point home. She would never say those horrible things. She would never be that evil. I won't have a problem killin' you." "We'll get to find out won't we." The shadow said. It swung its huge sword around as if it were no heavier than cardboard. Labrys pulled the axe off of her back and it unfolded. She closed her eyes for a moment and a look of grim determination replaced the one of doubt. But there was no madness, no rage, it was just Labrys, facing her past, however painful.
Image copyright AFP/Greenpeace Image caption Daldykan river: If there was a chemical discharge the source of it is not clear Russian environmental inspectors are trying to establish why a river near the Norilsk Nickel industrial complex in the Arctic has turned blood-red. Dramatic pictures of the discoloured Daldykan river have been posted widely on Russian media. The government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta says a leaking slurry pipeline carrying waste copper-nickel concentrate could be to blame. Norilsk Nickel is the world's largest nickel and palladium producer. Its vast furnaces were built on the Taimyr Peninsula, in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, in the Soviet era. The mining group has a production facility called Nadezhda by the Daldykan river. But company officials said they were not aware of any river pollution from the plant. Billionaire oligarch Vladimir Potanin is president of Norilsk Nickel.
A new report from the United Nations says plastics labelled biodegradable rarely disintegrate in the ocean because they require industrial composters and prolonged exposure to high temperatures to break down. Plastic waste is a serious concern in the world's oceans, where as much as 20 million tonnes of plastic ends up each year, according to recent estimates from the United Nations Environment Programme. Biodegradable plastics were created to help reduce waste. However, the report released this week says some polymers need to be exposed to prolonged temperatures of above 50 C to disintegrate. Peter Kershaw is one of the authors of the report. (Peter Kershaw) These conditions are hard to come by in nature, says Peter Kershaw, one of the authors of the study. "When you get in the ocean, the rates of degradation are even lower because UV light penetration is very limited," said Kershaw. "It's cold, there's less oxygen. So once it's in the sea it's just going to stay there for an extremely long period of time." Kershaw says it could take two or three years for some biodegradable plastics to disintegrate. "Essentially the ocean is being used as a waste basket and the waste basket is getting fuller and fuller, and so the impacts of that plastic litter are just going to keep on increasing." Forget recycling The report says biodegradable plastic also poses a problem for recycling. "If you're recycling plastic you don't want to have anything to do with biodegradable plastics," Kershaw says. "Because if you mix biodegradable with standard plastics you can compromise the properties of the original plastic." A lot of the plastic that WWF-Canada finds on the country's shorelines are from every day waste, such as grocery bags, food wrappers and water bottles. (WWF-Canada) He says even when biodegradable plastic does disintegrate, the fragments can pose a threat to ocean life. "Each of those fragments then behaves exactly the same way as a standard piece of polyethylene," adds Kershaw. "The objects may disintegrate, but you're still left with an awful lot of microplastics and those have their own problems in terms of impact on the environment." Some evidence also suggests that labelling products as 'biodegradable' increases people's tendency to litter because they think they are not creating waste. Arctic ice compounds the issue Plastic distributes toxic chemicals throughout Canada's oceans, says David Miller, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund Canada. "It can have an impact on all sorts of marine life, from marine mammals to corals, and of course it can get ingested and become part of the food chain," said Miller. 'In the Arctic, because the ice traps them, the abundance of microplastics are at least three times more than in other areas in oceans,” says David Miller the President and CEO of WWF-Canada. ( WWF-Canada) In the Arctic, ice compounds the issue. "In the Arctic, because the ice traps them, the abundance of microplastics are at least three times more than in other areas in oceans, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is THE concentration of plastics." Miller says a lot of the plastic that WWF-Canada finds on shorelines is from everyday waste, such as grocery bags, food wrappers and water bottles. "What we can do, each of us, is dramatically reduce the amount of plastic we use; the second thing is to dispose of it properly," said Miller. He adds that the good news is that more and more organizations are getting involved in clean up efforts to help restore our coastlines, such as the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup in Iqaluit this past June.
Watergate veterans have seen this movie before about a president firing his attorney general to stop an investigation. It didn’t work back then, and the consensus among three Watergate insiders interviewed by The Daily Beast is that it won’t work now. Just as the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973 marked the beginning of the end for President Nixon, who resigned in August 1974, President Trump would grease the skids for himself if he tries to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with someone who would fire special counsel Robert Mueller. “Mueller is the kind of guy who would say, ‘Fire me without cause, and I’m going to Court.’ And that could end up strengthening the Special Counsel,” says John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel during much of Watergate. “They can’t just cook up a PR campaign. It’s like the Muslim ban. You just can’t do it and pretend there’s cause. The courts could come in and play havoc with Trump. It’s amazing the institutions are working exactly the way they should. It’s a pleasant surprise.” Conservative backing for the embattled Sessions appears to have scared Trump off Sessions, at least for now, as some Republicans are beginning to show some backbone. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley tweeted that there is no room on the committee’s schedule to confirm a new AG—and if Trump tried to slip one in while the Senate was in recess, it would almost certainly trigger a constitutional crisis. Public outrage forced Nixon to name a second special prosecutor to replace the fired Archibald Cox. The White House thought Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski wouldn’t be overly aggressive. After he heard the tape of Dean telling Nixon there is a “cancer on the presidency,” Jaworski told Dean he knew the president was “guilty as sin.” I asked Dean if he thought we could get that kind of clarity today. After all, as Trump likes to point out, the FBI has been investigating the Russia connection for a year, and no one has been charged with a crime. “We’re in a different technical era,” Dean replied. “Who knows what’s out there today. Who knows what the NSA is sitting on. None of us have seen this intelligence.” As news has poured in over the less than 200 days that Trump has served as president, people have forgotten how “agonizingly slow Watergate was,” says Dean. Nixon’s resignation on Aug. 8, 1974 came 782 days after the June 17, 1972, break-in. It was 920 days after the break-in that a jury found former Attorney General John Mitchell and aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice. Elizabeth Holtzman was a member then of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Democrat Peter Rodino in the Democratic controlled House, and in her telling, the Democrats took no action even as the taping system in the White House was disclosed, along with Dean’s “cancer on the presidency” and reports of the Watergate burglars being paid off with hush money (PDF). There were serious abuses of power, if not criminality by the president. In July of 1973, Father Drinan, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, filed an article of impeachment based on Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia. “And nobody paid attention,” she says, even as Nixon was trying to dismantle a signature Great Society program, the Office of Economic Opportunity. “So you had the president thumbing his nose at limitations of power, but none of that moved anybody in the leadership of the House. Peter Rodino had no interest in impeachment. It was really forced by the American people.” The trigger event was the Saturday Night Massacre. Members of the House were inundated with phone calls and telegrams. “The American people were outraged. It was an amazing shift in public opinion,” says Holtzman. “My office was flooded with messages. That’s what started the process [of impeachment]. It was not a partisan process. “The lesson for Trump is if the American people realize that he’s threatening our democracy, and they don’t want to be a banana republic, the president can’t pick his prosecutor. They can force the Congress into action. Nixon had a huge landslide victory in 1972 and 11 months later, the Saturday Night Massacre was the beginning of the end. We expect our president to obey the law.” When the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Elliot Richardson as Richard Kleindienst’s successor in May ’73, they made him name a special prosecutor to their liking, Archibald Cox, and pledge that he would not fire Cox except for “extraordinary improprieties,” a Justice Department regulation that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has adopted in saying he would not fire special counsel Robert Mueller except for “cause.” Richard Ben-Veniste was one of the lead Watergate prosecutors, “following money to find a motive,” he recalled to The Daily Beast, from the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) and then ultimately the White House. He explains that here, investigators are probing Trump’s financial dealings to determine whether they provide a motive for Trump asking Comey to go easy. Ben-Veniste reminds those impatient with the pace of the Russia investigation that for a long period after the break-in, the White House was successful at deflecting investigative efforts to determine who sponsored it. Those efforts to deflect turned out to be obstruction of justice, so a separate crime was committed. As today’s investigation unfolds, he cautions that “we are drifting into what may be uncharted waters if Trump makes good on his threat to fire Mueller. That would create a constitutional crisis.” Asked how that might play out, he says it’s “unclear whether Trump would find anyone” to fire Mueller if Rosenstein refused. Asked how far down in the Justice Department Trump could go, Ben-Veniste said, “I don’t know if the elevator goes down that far.” He concluded our conversation saying that if Trump does what everybody is advising him not to do, and one way or another, gets rid of Mueller, it will come down to “whether Republicans in Congress can put country above party. Our system will be severely tested, and we will find out whether we are a government of laws, where the rule of law is respected, or whether an outrage like firing a person lawfully appointed is acceptable to one political party.” If Trump understood Watergate, he’d be having second thoughts about trying to push out Sessions, says Dean. Unlike Sessions, who has significant support both in the Senate and in the conservative media, Kleindienst was easy to toss overboard. During marathon confirmation hearings over a record 22 days, he repeatedly perjured himself on his knowledge of an antitrust case that involved a $400,000 payoff to the 1972 Republican convention. The case had nothing to do with Watergate, but Kleindienst resigned under fire the same day (April 30, 1973) that Nixon announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and fired Dean. At least Nixon didn’t trash Kleindienst in public, I ventured in my conversation with Dean. “Nixon did that in private,” he said, before there was Twitter. “There’s no one who worked for Nixon he hadn’t trashed on the tapes.” Dean calls the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in September of 1971 the reason the White House was so concerned about the Watergate break-in. Gordon Liddy, who headed the White House Plumbers unit (named for its initial mission of plugging leaks), had used two of the same guys, who were now in jail and could tie the break-ins to the White House. “Otherwise we would have cut the Re-Elect loose,” says Dean. Liddy’s plan had gotten shot down twice before Mitchell signed off, saying, “give them $250,000 and see what they come up with.” The casual straying from dirty tricks to criminal behavior is striking. “We wrote the book on what not to do, and Trump doesn’t seem to have any knowledge of what’s in that book,” says Dean. “A lot of Watergate is just bungling—it’s pure bungling—stupid things, like not hiring a lawyer. I tried to get Ehrlichman to agree to a criminal lawyer on my staff after Liddy confessed to me the same people were used in the Ellsberg break-in—the first I heard of the Ellsberg break-in. Ehrlichman shot me down.” After he left the White House, Dean learned of a handwritten memo signed by Ehrlichman authorizing the Ellsberg break-in “as long as it is not traceable to the White House.” It was an options memo on how to deal with Ellsberg, who had released the Pentagon Papers, and one of the options suggested by the Plumbers was to enter his psychiatrist’s office, take his files and use them to discredit him. Nixon launched into the cover-up very early, not because anybody told him about the Ellsberg situation, but because he was concerned about Mitchell, says Dean. “But for John Mitchell, he never would have become president. Mitchell is to Nixon what Trump’s family is to him—you can’t get any closer.” When Nixon came to New York from California, Mitchell set him up as a partner in a prestigious law firm, put money in his pocket, and when Nixon decided to run again in 1968, Mitchell ran the campaign. Mitchell didn’t want to be attorney general, according to Dean, but Nixon insisted, and the president was very worried on a personal level about Mitchell. “And that comes through on the tapes,” says Dean. “Four days after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, there’s a conversation where Nixon says, ‘Let’s just put all the facts out, put this thing behind us—but if that’s going to hurt Mitchell, we can’t do it. “That was a bungle,” says Dean. At every point where they could have cut their losses, they dug in deeper, and the crimes piled up under the heading conspiracy to obstruct justice. There was also the cover-up Nixon got away with, says Dean, by intentionally disrupting President Johnson’s efforts to get peace in 1968. Nixon biographer John Farrell found the evidence in Haldeman’s notes, “and if that isn’t treason it sure does look, feel and smell like it,” says Dean. “It was long suspected that Nixon wanted to break into the Brookings Institution when he heard they had ‘bombing halt’ papers. He might have been worried they had papers somehow showing what he had done with South Vietnam.” The Republic survived Watergate and people thought the safeguards put in place afterward ensured that a scandal of that magnitude could never happen again. Forty government officials were indicted or went to jail. One Senate investigator who did not want to give his name told The Daily Beast, “In retrospect, everyone in the administration who got anywhere near Watergate, even tangentially, lied or sat still while other people lied. It was a lesson in an administration going absolutely wild. My whole generation of lawyers and politicians feel this is history repeating itself—the same personal characteristics, personal weaknesses, the same personal desire to acquire and embrace power.” Some people saved their reputation then, notably Attorney General Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, who defied Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor. We’re waiting for today’s profiles in courage. There should be ample opportunity.
A suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town in Syria has triggered the first direct US military action against the country’s government forces as the US launched a missile strike against a Syrian air base earlier today. Following the attack on 4 April, there were reports of residents dying in their houses, with victims and injured survivors showing symptoms that match poisoning by nerve agents. However, there is no evidence yet to identify which one. Symptoms included pupils shrunk to the size of pin pricks, foaming at the mouth, breathlessness and convulsions. ‘The best guess is a nerve agent, probably an organophosphate,’ says Dino Pisaniello of the School of Public Health in the University of Adelaide, Australia. ‘The characteristic response of pin point pupils is a key clinical observation here. Sarin is suspected but there are many organophosphates that would exert the same effect in sufficient quantity.’ All nerve agents (see below) work in the same way, latching onto cholinesterase enzymes in blood plasma, red blood cells and at certain nerve endings in tissues. The enzyme can no longer hydrolyze the neurotransmitter acetylcholine involved in muscle contraction, which accumulates, leading to violent muscle spasms and death if the muscles involved in breathing can’t function. The bond between the nerve agent and the enzyme is permanent unless antidotes are administered. Finding the culprit It is important to identify which agent was used to predict the number of people who might be affected and to establish culpability, says Dan Kaszeta, a London-based consultant and former US Army Chemical Corps officer. ‘Knowing the type of nerve agent helps us chase the supply chain and understand the full narrative behind the attack. It is essential for any war crimes tribunal to have this evidence collected by a neutral organisation like The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),’ he says. ‘It looks like people downwind of the attack were affected which means that it was a volatile agent like sarin and not VX,’ speculates Alastair Hay, an emeritus environmental toxicology professor at the University of Leeds, UK. The OPCW has 22 labs licensed to examine chemical weapon samples and can identify a nerve agent from biomedical or environmental samples. There are tests to measure degradation products of nerve agents in urine taken from victims, or the levels of cholinesterase in blood. Environmental samples, such as soil and concrete, can also provide evidence but the clock is ticking as the site remains in a war zone. Hay says timely access to the site is important, but evidence can be retrieved years after an attack in some cases. ‘It looks like people downwind of the attack were affected which means that it was a volatile agent like sarin and not VX’ Alistair Hay, University of Leeds At the moment, there is also still a question mark over where the weapons came from and who is responsible for the attack. In theory, competent chemist could make these nerve agents, says Hay. ‘However, the difficulty is having a virtually airtight facility so there is no risk of exposure. Nerve agents are so toxic that a very small exposure can kill, so containment of the reaction sequence is critical.’ Kaszeta points out that nerve agents need to be produced in a batch process at scale, requiring ‘some heavy chemical engineering’. He continues: ‘There are 5-7 steps required to make sarin, for example, some of which are extremely difficult, and one requires hydrogen fluoride at high temperature and pressure. It is an expensive undertaking.’ That’s one reason why most commentators agree that the Syrian government is most likely to be responsible; the rebel forces don’t have the money, infrastructure or expertise, says Kaszeta. What’s more, the OPCW established that the Syrian government killed hundreds of people using sarin in an attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in 2013.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan delivers a speech in Santiago, Chile, February 1, 2016. (REUTERS/Carlos Vera) According to Turkish media, a man filed a legal complaint against his wife on the grounds that she repeatedly insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the confines of their home. According to news reports, the man, identified by the Yeni Safak newspaper as Ali D., had warned his wife of three years, G.D., not to curse Erdogan -- a popular albeit polarizing political figure -- when he appeared on television. She supposedly defied him, and dared him to lodge a legal case against her. He duly obliged. "I kept on warning her, saying why are you doing this? Our president is a good person and did good things for Turkey," the husband is quoted as saying. "Even if it is my father who swears against or insults the president, I would not forgive and I would complain," he said. The bizarre nature of this case belies the darker context of the moment. Erdogan is criticized by his opponents for presiding over an increasingly authoritarian state, emphasized most garishly in a spate of complaints lodged against civilians for supposedly insulting the country's powerful leader. This included even one incident where a doctor faced charges after uploading an image to Facebook that likened Erdogan to the creature Gollum, from the fantasy "Lord of the Rings" series. As for this couple in the news, the wife has now filed for divorce. More on WorldViews As Syria burns, Turkey's Kurdish problem gets worse Turkey's messy war in the Middle East, explained Why many Turkish Kurds are willing to die in Syria
Thunder and lightning rolled through the metro area Sunday, causing some property damage and even killing some goats in one neighborhood. The two goats were struck and killed by lightning at about 7 a.m. in Kelso, Wash. A witness said the animals had been standing next to a tree when lightning hit the tree. Elsewhere, Sunday afternoon, a tree hit by lightning fell and damaged two homes in the 18700 block of Southwest Hennig Court in Aloha. No one was hurt. "There was just this horrible big boom and at first, I thought it was thunder,"said Karen Lund. "And then I thought 'that's pretty strong thunder.' I went to the kitchen and saw the branches that had gone over the house and into the back yard. Then, when I turned around, I could see the branches that came through the roof and into the den." Throughout the rest of the afternoon, forecasters predicted a chance of showers and wind gusts up to 18 mph, according to the National Weather Service. It looks like the wet, cooler weather is sticking around. Showers and temperatures barely cracking 70 degrees are on tap for Monday and Tuesday, KATU Meteorologist Mary Loos predicts.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will begin building prototypes for President Trump's proposed wall along the Mexican border this summer, authorities said on Tuesday. Agency officials said at a news briefing that the department is ready to begin testing designs on land that is already owned by the government. Four to eight designs will be built and tested, but officials didn't say when the process would actually begin. “We own that land, have access to it and it’s a good place to start testing in a real-world environment,” acting deputy commissioner Ronald D. Vitiello told reporters at the briefing. ADVERTISEMENT Funding for Trump's border wall was not included in the budget submitted by the White House for fiscal year 2018, but DHS has allocated $20 million from other programs to pay for the prototypes. Officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection told The Washington Post that they have received "hundreds" of designs for the border wall, but the agency has yet to choose vendors. Designs for the wall should be at least 18 feet high and have features to prevent climbing over and tunneling beneath the structure, and vendors are instructed to make the designs "aesthetically pleasing" on the U.S. side.
Vasko Kohlmayer is at it again. It was not too long ago that he wrote an article in the Washington Post claiming that there is no such thing as an Atheist. Well here we go again, another silly Washington Post article from Mr Kohlmayer. Apparently he has now decided, in stark contrast to his previous article, that Atheists do actually exist, and are simply illogical. So how does he establish this? Well, he starts out like this … …let us turn to the Secular Web (formerly Internet Infidels) which is the most widely frequented atheist website on the internet. He then proceeds to pick one … count them … one single argument from a long list and proceeds to demolish it. Incidentally, it took me some time to actually find what he was attacking, I’ll not bore you with the details, but if truly curious, it comes from Number 7 on this page. There are two of immediate key points. 1) I personally don’t gave a toss about proofs that God does not exist, and many others hold a similar view. It is not our problem to worry about disproving nonsense. Instead the burden of proof rests with the believers to present some credible objective evidence … so far that has been exactly zero. 2) Mr Kohlmayer is guilty of quote mining. He has plucked the argument away from the surrounding text and then proceeds to demolish it in isolation and so implies the author was being incoherent. What he fails to tell you is that the author expresses some concern regarding this specific argument, but nevertheless includes it for completeness. For example the author writes … “not all nontheists would accept…” … and also explains … “All such arguments, though, would lead into the same sort of difficult and controversial issues as does the Nonphysical-vs.-Personal Argument, and so should not be regarded to be among the most forceful of the various atheological arguments available” The fact that Mr Kohlmayer is prepared to quote-mine and so craft a strawman is no surprise, it’s the sort of dishonesty and lack of integrity we have come to expect from believers, nope no surprise there at all. But he does not stop with that, he then goes on to claim that this is part of an atheist worldview because it comes from a popular web-site, and of course every breathing atheist considers every word on this website to be the absolute truth, especially when quote-mined and taken out of context … yea right. OK, lets pause for a moment, what the heck is an atheist worldview? He keeps using that term, but I honestly have no idea what that actually means. Atheism is not a worldview, instead it is a conclusion ..no evidence has been presented to verify the claim that there is a god, so we simply reject the assertions regarding god. In other words, it’s the null hypothesis, that’s it, nothing more. It’s not a belief, it’s not a religion, it says nothing about how you should live, it says nothing about what is right and wrong … it is just the rejection of silly claims about supernatural gods due to zero evidence (So how many times need I repeat it before they get it? … many more I suspect). In the end what am I to conclude? Well Mr Kohlmayer is well qualified, he has earned degrees in philosophy and literature, and has written for a number of newspapers, so what we learn is that being smart does not in any way prevent you from being either irrational or a complete kook, instead you simply think up really smart ways to justify nonsense. Links Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Pinterest LinkedIn Pocket Skype WhatsApp Email Print Like this: Like Loading...
On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, political comedian and talk show host Bill Maher ripped into Donald Trump’s immigration plan and the Republican party overall. Maher defended his belief that many conservatives are “stupid and racist” and boldly stated that America doesn’t have an immigration problem. “All the conservatives complain about me, and most liberals, that we are dismissive of conservatives. The rednecks, the tea party, we think they’re stupid and racist. And I say they are stupid and racist. Tell me what I should do in a week like this, where the unparalleled leader of the party, Donald Trump, unveiled a plan that is so stupid and racist and its not even addressing a problem that really exists, because there is not a real immigration problem in America, net immigration has been close to 0 for the last 7 or 8 years, and if his plan went into effect, lettuce would cost $25 a head. So, when the party is embracing him and that plan, what does a person like me, who’s tempted to say its stupid and racist, do?” Panelist Charles Cooke, a conservative author, admitted Maher should “gloat to an extent” and even criticized Trump. “I’ll say this. I don’t think he’ll be the nominee. I don’t think he’ll win a single primary. I do think he’s worrying. It’s worth saying he’s not like by 75-percent of the party, and the Republican’s have to decide, are they going to be party full of classical liberals, in the old sense of the word, who believe in freedom for everybody and opportunity for everybody. Or are they going to be the party of white identity politics, and Donald Trump unfortunately is tapping far more into the latter.” Maher pointed out that other Republican candidates, like Ben Carson, are taking on Trump’s style. “The other candidates are now trying to imitate him. They are trying to out Trump Trump. Ben Carson says he’d use drones on the Mexican border. I’m not kidding. He’d incinerate the mother f*ckers from the sky.” Maher went on the lambast the Republican party as a whole. “But is it fair to say that the Republican party in general gets involved in these fantasies about things that will never happen? None of what he’s proposing will ever happen, we are not going to deport 11 million people. The CBO says it would cost $300 billion, take 40 years and send us into a horrible recession. There’d be people outside Home Depot looking for work, but they’d be white.” [Image via Getty Images]
I feel sorry for Police Chief Greg Suhr. From the tone of the attacks against him, you’d think he was the guy who put 20-plus bullets into Mario Woods. That he was one of the guys sending out racist texts. That he personally ordered the stopping and frisking of every person of color in the city. In truth, he’s one of the most progressive police chiefs the city has seen in decades. But every time he makes a move to reform the SFPD’s culture, whether it be to improve racial sensitivity or come up with smarter use-of-force policies, he’s overshadowed by another story about some cop’s inappropriate behavior. Meanwhile, the activists and the progressive supervisors are ramping up their calls for Suhr to step down. Things have gotten so bad that Supervisor Aaron Peskin suggested at a recent board meeting that they bring in me to broker a peace deal between Mayor Ed Lee’s administration and the Black Lives Matter people, as I did during the last labor stalemate at Muni. Are you kidding? Muni drivers are rational geniuses compared with these protesters. Besides, this whole business really isn’t about Suhr. It’s about knocking down Lee. The chief is just the surrogate target. If the audience at my annual talk before the Commonwealth Club the other night was any indication, people around here are more obsessed with national politics than they have been in decades. You would think the Bay Area, with all of its quirks, didn’t exist. What this crowd wanted to know was whether I thought the Democrats could win the House in November. “No.” Could Democrats win the Senate? “Yes.” Will state Attorney General Kamala Harris win the Senate race to replace Barbara Boxer? “Good possibility.” People also wanted to know how history will remember Gov. Jerry Brown. My take: For all his efforts at creating a legacy, Jerry will probably be a chapter in the overall story of the Brown clan’s impact on California. The main character in that story, however, will be his father, the legendary Gov. Pat Brown, who was credited with building the best highway, water and state university systems in the nation. We’ve seen governors since then who have captured the public’s imagination, but Pat Brown is the only governor in modern times who left a lasting legacy. Not even Ronald Reagan’s footprint can compare. My nickel of advice to Hillary Clinton for when Donald Trump attacks: Ignore him. I’m something of an egomaniac myself, and nothing bugged me more in politics than being ignored. Trump is a huge egomaniac, and if you ignore him, he will simply escalate and escalate some more, until he crosses the line of ridiculousness. Movie time: “Captain America: Civil War.” Line up all the superheroes on one side of town and all the super villains on the other side of town. Then have a super war. I don’t know if they intended this latest comic book blowout to be a comedy, but it is so ridiculous you can’t help but laugh. There’s no blood, there’s no death, and with all the crashes and booms, there’s very little hearing left when you leave the theater. Jeannette Etheredge called me the other day and said Francis Ford Coppola had something to show me that he picked up in Paris. So I went to his Cafe Zoetrope on Kearny Street, where I came face-to-face with this little machine with three buttons. You push a button, and out comes a short story. It’s absolutely perfect if you’re waiting for a table or in an airport line. It’s a bit analog, I know. But it could catch on, if you can get people to put down their cell phones for a minute. Hats off to John Konstin of the historic John’s Grill. He did a fundraising event for state Sen. Mark Leno a while back. As fate would have it, Leno brought along the head of the city’s disability compliance program, who was in a wheelchair and could not make it up the three flights of stairs to the banquet room. It’s a very old building, so legally John didn’t need to do anything. Nonetheless, he said, “If you’ll help process the papers, I’ll put in an elevator.” And he did, to the tune of $500,000. Want to sound off? Email wbrown@sfchronicle.com
Lowest Ratings SORT BY: \| Highest Ratings 40 Reviews. Average Rating: 4.9 of 5 Stars! 5 stars: 90% (36 of 40) 4 stars: 5% (2 of 40) 3 stars: 5% (2 of 40) 2 stars: 0% ( of 40) 1 star: 0% ( of 40) Display All Reviews Reviewed By: Jake M on 01/30/2019 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! Reviewed By: stetson s on 09/04/2018 Rating: 4 of 5 Stars! Solid gun. 2 things off the bat to consider. One. The rail is 0 MOA. So. Ranging 1000 is your limit in large part Two rear bags on the standard AR butt stalk is somewhat tough to manipulate/maintain. Not a deal breaker. Still shooting a fair group but things to consider Reviewed By: Weldon P on 08/01/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! I personally love this gun.Besides its great looks it is one of the most fun guns I have ever shot. The only down side i have with the rifle is it magazine. There is not an actual 6.5 mag but you can buy magpul 7.62 AC AICS Short Action mags that'll fit just the same. Reviewed By: David B on 07/30/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! Went back and forth between the stealth and rpr for a while. I like the look and feel of the stealth as well as the fact that you can buy a mid level scope with the $ saved versus the rpr. I\'ve only got 20 rounds of factory match ammo though it, but my last 4 rounds fit under a quarter....and I\'m not some great marksman by any means. The magazine feels cheap with some play in it, but it feeds fine. I feel I got my money\'s worth of rifle. Wish it came with 20 moa rail instead of 0 moa. Reviewed By: Todd B on 07/03/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! Very pleased overall with the value and quality of the firearm. The action is a little tight, but I'm certain that will improve with use. The adjustments on the stock work well. I'm 6' tall and the stock all the way extended is too tall and all the way retracted is too short so somewhere in the middle is where I will end up. The cheek riser gets me where I need to be as well. The trigger is very nice from the factory. I could probably take a little of the effort out eventually, but I will put some rounds through it before I make that adjustment. I was trying to order a muzzle brake for it while I was waiting for the funds to clear Bud's for the amazing cash discount and couldn't find the spec on external barrel diameter at the shoulder of the threads so I knew what OD brake to purchase. Thread info is everywhere. The answer for those wondering is .75". The advise I got from the forum was to call the customer service line. Let me say that the customer service phone people would like to be less than helpful. I'm in the central time zone and called at 4:00 P.M. and it was already shut down. I tried the next morning at 9 AM. I asked the dude on the line for the dimension on the barrel and he gave me thread count. I asked him for the dimension just down barrel where the threads stopped and explained why I wanted it. He said, we don't list that dimension you would have to measure that on the gun. I told him I don't have the gun yet for the 2nd time, I'm trying to purchase an accessory to arrive when the gun does. There is dead silence while I wait on him to process this information. I let it stretch out to 15 seconds and it was clear he had either given up or fully understood and didn't want to do it. So I just asked if he would please go measure one for me. He said a gunsmith would have to do that. I again let the silence go for about 7 seconds this time and I finally broke it with could you ask them to take that measurement please. He says hold on and he's gone off line for about 15 seconds and says the gunsmith is on break. Like there is only one of them working in the Savage Arms company capable of working a set of calipers. I asked how long this poor overworked person would be on break and if they had a direct line I could call. He just said he would leave a message to have him call me. I'm dubious but I go along with it. Sure enough 4:15 PM He calls me back with the measurement. (Note it's after I can't get an answer when I call). I'm certain if I had let the service rep control things I wouldn't have gotten the info. Great rifle, great value Savage. Improve you customer service experience from the crazy two line/two time/two number infrastructure to the attitude of the reps to the info the reps have at their disposal. Minor effort that will pay dividends on your reputation. Reviewed By: Mike M on 04/09/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! Shot 3 factory Hornady Match loads...120 gr., 140 gr., and 147 gr.... at 200 yds. 147 gr shot .75 MOA, 120 gr shot shot .5 MOA and 140 gr shot a "life best" 3 shot .125 MOA. I had to quit at 3 shots as I didn't want to screw it up with a flier. Weather was 55 degrees with a 5-10 MPH crosswind. I will soon try all 3 loads again to see if I can replicate them while using a chronograph so I can start building a reload. Had a SWFA SS 16X42 Tactical scope on the rifle. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the rifle. I hope I can build a load as good as Hornady's factory load. Reviewed By: AL D on 03/25/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! What can I say, right off the bat after putting a Nightforce NXS 5.5-22x56 rifle scope on, it took me five rounds at 50 yards to sight the rifle, 5 rounds at 100 yards to get it on target, the next 10 rounds from 100 yards were less than 1/2" MOA. I was using Hornady Precision Hunter 6.5 Creedmoor 143 gr ELD-X factory rounds. Next week I'll be going to the Homestead Training Center to site in at 300 yards then to Okeechobee Rifle Range a 1,000 yard range to give it a good. Totally awesome rifle. Your service with ordering and shipping was outstanding also. I'm looking forward to purchasing another rifle from you soon. A Ruger Rimfire Precision Rifle, 22LR. Reviewed By: karl c on 03/13/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! Love the rifle! Just the rifle I was looking for! Thanks to Budsgun fast service, fast delivery. Will be doing business again! Reviewed By: Timothy M on 03/12/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! I have been very happy with this rifle. Make sure you remove the rail and reinstall it with loctite so it doesn't loosen up like mine did. Otherwise, wonderful rifle. Sighted it in and normally get 0.4 to 0.6 moa groups. Reviewed By: Michael D on 01/19/2018 Rating: 5 of 5 Stars! This gun was the first time I have ordered a gun at Buds. I really only like to buy things that are in stock, but because of the timeframe of the rebate being offered, I had to order it to get the rebate. The gun arrived at Buds sooner than expected, and was in perfect condition. I will order in the future without hesitation. I haven’t had a chance to shoot the gun yet. I’m waiting on the right scope, and the weather to warm up. Show More Reviews
Summers in Arizona can become unbearably hot. That means there are many days our kids can’t stand being outside for long, and end up cooped up inside for hours at a time. I’m all about finding fun activities that help beat that summer boredom while inside and encourage their creativity. This fun DIY Scented Colored Glue is just the thing to keep them busy. Supplies: – Elmer’s school glue – Kool-Aid packets (cherry, orange, lemonade, lime, blue raspberry lemonade, grape) – Wooden skewers or popsicle sticks – Small funnel There are two ways you can prep this DIY Scented Colored Glue. The first way is to empty the Kool-Aid packet in to the glue bottle and either shake vigorously, and/or stir with a long wooden skewer until the colored drink mix & glue have mixed completely. I found the best way to prep this project was to pour the entire bottle of glue out in to a small bowl. If your glue is thicker you can heat it in the microwave for 10 seconds. Add your Kool-Aid drink mix to the glue, and using a popsicle stick mix until you’ve achieved the desired color. Then using a small funnel pour the glue back in to the glue bottle, using the popsicle stick to push the glue through the funnel. It should just run back in slowly by itself. Be sure to rinse the bowl and small funnel with warm water and dish soap between each color mixing. That’s it! This DIY Scented Colored Glue works best on firm papers like cardstock, poster board, or construction paper. The scents of these glues are super fun and fruity, and the kids will love painting with them. Note: This school glue is washable, but once the Kool-Aid is added it can stain clothing so be careful when creating beautiful artwork. Don’t forget to check out this other fun activity I shared the other day, the kids will love this Wax Paper Crayon Art! This post was originally published at Skip to My Lou on (06/11/14)
The HB2 Provision Few Are Talking About And it has nothing to do with Charlotte's LGBT ordinance, or transgender people in bathrooms By Greg Lacour Noble The Noble Law Firm Update, 4/9: See subsequent post that corrects one mistake below. It’s buried near the bottom of the next-to-last page of House Bill 2, a provision couched in language so legalistic it’s hard to tell at first what it actually means: “The Human Relations Commission in the Department of Administration shall have the authority to receive, investigate, and conciliate complaints of discrimination in public accommodations. Throughout this process, the Human Relations Commission shall use its good offices to effect an amicable resolution of the complaints of discrimination. This Article does not create, and shall not be construed to create or support, a statutory or common law private right of action, and no person may bring any civil action based upon the public policy expressed herein.” Even people directly affected didn’t grasp the ramifications at first. Laura Noble, a Chapel Hill employment lawyer, spoke and exchanged messages with colleagues throughout the day on March 23, when the North Carolina legislature introduced and passed the bill and Governor Pat McCrory signed it into law. Noble told me Friday that she and other lawyers did double- and triple-takes: Wait—does this say what I think it says? “This came out of nowhere,” she said. “It’s just not a debate anyone’s been having.” Much of the public discussion over HB2 in the 12 days since its adoption has centered on its harm to the LGBT community and resulting economic impact. This has gotten lost somewhat, but in its own way is just as momentous: The new law bars workplace discrimination claims from North Carolina courts, nullifying 30 years of common-law precedent and forcing people who say they’ve been unfairly fired from their jobs to turn to the federal courts for relief. Why’s that a big deal? The federal court system is a lot harder, and usually more expensive, to navigate. Before they even file suit, potential plaintiffs have to get permission from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which can take months. They then have 90 days to file the complaint, compared to a three-year statute of limitations for state court. The filing fee is twice as expensive, and damages are capped at $300,000; there’s no such cap at the state level. On her firm’s website, Noble has published a pair of blog posts that outline the differences. Those would be strong incentives for anyone not to sue. Now imagine that you’ve just lost your job. But that’s OK—there’s that Human Relations Commission option at the state level, right? The problem is that the commission has no real enforcement authority. It mainly handles housing discrimination complaints and can only work to mutually resolve them. The commission can’t force anyone to do anything. Its own existence is perilous. Last year, the General Assembly did away with its recurring appropriation in the state budget, funding it only for 2015-16. North Carolina, as an “employment-at-will” state—basically, private employers can fire anyone for any reason—has always occupied the business-friendly end of the employee rights spectrum. But since the mid-1980s, there’s been an exception in common law practice: claims in state court based on wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. Employers can’t fire you, for instance, for refusing to break the law for them. (The principle stems from an N.C. Court of Appeals ruling in 1985, from a case in which a nurse testified truthfully in a wrongful-death suit against Duke University Medical Center and was later fired.) Now, under HB2, even that exception is gone. “We now join Mississippi as the only two states in the union which do not offer our citizens state law protection against the most basic forms of discrimination in private workplaces,” Noble wrote on her firm’s blog. “Being considered a state that does not value principles of equal opportunity for its citizens does not help our businesses in the recruitment or retention of a highly skilled workforce.” She said she doesn’t know yet how the new law will affect her own business. Lawmakers haven’t explained the reasoning behind the provision, but it runs on the same thinking that allows businesses across the state to discriminate against LGBT people for any reason, or no reason at all, without even having to cite a religious belief: the idea that any government regulation of business is inherently bad. The General Assembly has been operating on that principle for a few years now.
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement A 250m-long crop circle of a jellyfish has appeared on farmland. The owners of the land in Oxfordshire have urged visitors to stay away from the circle, which is also 60m (197ft) wide, to avoid further crop damage. Sally Ann Spence and husband Bill, who own Berry Croft Farm near Ashbury, said hundreds of visitors have been trampling over their field. They said it was "beautiful" but the flattened crops were now "useless" and the damage would cost about £600. "We have not given permission for people to walk on our land," Mrs Spence said. "The pattern has already cost a great deal of damage - possibly about £600. "People can get a better view from the air." She said she was not concerned about tracking down the culprits and the incident has not been reported to the police. It is not the first time crop circles have appeared on their land, they said, but the jellyfish is one of the most spectacular. Correction: Mrs Spence inadvertently provided a figure of £600,000, rather than £600, for the damage caused, which was used in an earlier version of this story.
It’s been there for millions of years, and we never even noticed it. Back in 1991, a farmer came across a cave in Phon Nha-Ke Bang National Park that was previously left unexplored. When the sound of water roaring inside the cave was audible, the farmer decided not to proceed further as he was scared. The locales named this cave as Son Doong. However, no one had the guts to go and explore the cave until 2009, when a group of scientists from Britain led by Howard Limbert came across the cave once again and he decided to explore it. He realized that it is a world that is contained in itself and is 5km long and 150 meters wide. Also, it was discovered that Son Doong was the largest cave on Earth. It has its own vegetation, animals, lakes and clouds. Check out more pictures of the cave. Entering the cave involves an 80 meters descent using rope. A fast flowing river inside the cave. There are small, emerald-coloured lakes, and even beaches. It has abundance of stalactites and fossils. Stalagmites of up to 70 meters have been found here. A thick jungle inside the cave that also is home to animals. The climate inside the cave is also different, all thanks to the clouds inside it. Photo credit: flickr
I have been tattooed twice, say, the usual-machine-way and I’m not sure when I started the decision to have a traditional tattoo at least once. It appealed to me so much because it was raw and real. Then some friends went up the mountains to have their tattoos done manually, known as pagbabatok, by famous Whang Od (if you don’t know yet, it’s pronounced as Fang-Od). So I researched more about the traditional art, Whang-Od, and how to get there, through blogs and friends. So if you’ve read the title, I’m not really getting into those details. You can find tons of info in any search engine so go ahead and do that. I told my family and friends about my plans to go and they were all like, am I sure, can I handle the pain, it’s too risky and dangerous, blah blah. Days before our trip to Kalinga, we visited a friend who’s had his “batok” last year and has visited Buscalan many times already. Aside from the usual warnings of the dangerous road and rough trek, he mentioned, “Pero eto ang pinakamadumi na tato ah. Hanggang ngayon pag pinipisil ko yung tato ko, may lumalabas eh.” (“This is the dirtiest tattoo. Even now, when I pinch it, something comes out.”) I asked him if he ever had it checked by a doctor, he said no, simply because it will defeat the purpose of having it done traditionally. Also he was a friend of the group Tado was with on the way there, so he knew the people who died to take this journey, may they rest in peace, that’s why he asked me if I still wanted to go. You can also discover in blogs that though Whang Od changes the pine needle to use per person, she does not change the cloth she uses to wipe over the skin of those getting their tattoos. Even if you give her a new one to use, she won’t allow it. The ink to be used is the soot from her cooking-ware mixed with water. Honestly, knowing all these didn’t even shake my desire to go there. I have decided before I knew. I was ready to go alone, but my friend Keisha wanted to go too, so we went together. We also happen to meet Kuya Paolo along the way who’s heading to Buscalan. You can read about our trip here. So, yes, you already (hopefully) know the process is cringe-worthy. They don’t give you anesthesia. For me, it was 20 times more painful than machine tattoos, and I’d like to believe I have a strong pain tolerance. I managed not to cry or scream though, concentrating on the plants around and savoring the feeling of what the elders in the tribes have felt. Kuya Francis Pa-in, our guide, also told us stories. The pain was too much to bear for some that there were cases when the person peed, fainted, and yes, even pooped. In these instances, Whang Od won’t continue with the tattoo even if you insist, she can always tell if the person can or can’t bear it. Also for women on their dreaded time of the month, it is not advisable since it can be more painful or for whatever reason I don’t know. Ask your doctor. Don’t worry too much though, Keisha was on hers when she got tattooed and she’s fine. Her tattoo just bled profusely more than mine though I’m not sure if it’s the position or her condition that time. I earnestly hope what I’m saying doesn’t discourage you if you happen to plan to go. After we’ve been permanently branded a traditional Buscalan art, I was more than overwhelmed. I was exhilarated. I have never felt more alive and proud. The throbbing wasn’t so unbearable after. They just put coconut oil on it and said we didn’t have to put anything after. It looked like pointillism and it was swelling more than my previous tattoos after an hour. We were allowed to take a bath that afternoon, but getting it wet a day after wasn’t advisable since it might affect the natural scattering of the ink. The following day, about four inches of my arm was swelling in length, and an inch more in terms of width. I could not lower my hand because the blood flows down and it throbs like hell so I held it up all the time. This wasn’t the case for Keisha though, again, it might vary by the tattoo’s position. That’s when I understood what Kuya Francis said about tattoos on the legs and feet are so painful after because the blood flows down and you can’t really put them up unless you’re lying down. My wrist kept throbbing when my hand was down for at least a week. The soot ink started to form solid lines. I also observed that it looked and peeled like a normal wound, except the dried skin was black. Well, it’s really a wound after all. It was my personal choice not to put antibiotic or anything on it because I wanted it to be as genuine as the tradition. When my tattoo started to look out of hand though, I was slightly worried since nobody said that it would look so scathed after a week. People would stare at it with judging looks, like they were telling me I made a very unwise decision getting it. I didn’t really care. And those who inquired were taken aback upon hearing the story behind it. Although I admit, it gets pretty tiring to explain yourself to everyone. Thankfully, Keisha’s tattoo looked the same. So we tried to find out more about the healing process of this kind of tattoo and nothing in the internet mentioned it. So we just resorted to letting it heal naturally. On the third week I decided it was safe to put moisturizer on it since the wound was closed and was just repairing the skin, which was really, really itchy by the way. I applied RestoraDerm, since I use it when my skin gets too dry. It works wonders and it did work its wonder on my healing tattoo. The skin didn’t look too dry and it peeled faster, leaving a grey tint, like ash. It was still embossed though. I thought this was finally how the color was going to look like since the ink used was really soot. I consistently put the lotion every morning after bathing and before I go to sleep at night. Keisha told me she put on a regular lotion so I made her try RestoraDerm as well. She said it works better and the itching lessened, but a normal lotion will do. My tattoo still peeled and it looked like it had blackheads on the fourth week. I admit I always picked on it. I completely don’t recommend doing this though. When the excess skin came off, there were visible holes on my arm where the needle went through. It started to flatten as well but the skin was still unsmooth because of the irregularity the holes bring. Still, it looks healed now. My own eyes tell me that it’s infection free. Now the lines are obviously not perfectly straight, but that’s the beauty of it. It wasn’t made by a machine. It is purely done by the hands of a 95-year old Kalinga tattoo artist, with pine needle and soot as her tools, and almost a century’s worth of experience. I carry this art, traditionally only for the most brave and beautiful. All details mentioned were my own experiences and choices. I decided to share them since I found no other blog saying what happens AFTER you get your batok. So for those of you who are attempting to get your tattoos from Whang Od and are wondering about the risks and joys, you’re welcome. Though I earnestly discourage you to go there if you just want to look cool. Revere the art, the artist and the culture. Feel free to share how you managed your batok or if you have any questions on the comments below. 🙂 Advertisements

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