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Watches, Art and Ownership
December 2, 2019 by Michael LaBossiere 9 Comments
Artists often claim to have a special relationship with their art that gives them rights over it even after it has been sold. One past example involved artist David Phillips and Fidelity. Fidelity hired Phillips to create a sculpture park and after its completion the company wanted to make changes to the work, the. With neither side willing to compromise, Phillips sued Fidelity alleging that the changes would mutilate his work. A rather famous example occurred in 1958 when the owner of the mobile Pittsburgh donated it to Pennsylvania's Allegheny County. Alexander Calder, the creator of the mobile, unsuccessfully opposed the plan to repaint the black and white mobile green and gold. In 1969 sculptor Takis (Panayotis Vassilakis) tried to remove his work from New York City's Museum of Modern Art. He claimed he had the right to determine how his art was exhibited—even after it had been sold. The most recent example involves watches.
Dann Thorleifsson and Arne Leivsgard, founders of the Kanske watch brand, purchased painter Tal R's Paris Chic with the intent of cutting it into pieces to serve as watch faces. The painting was selected because it is considered a masterpiece and would, one presumes, serve to warrant their intended asking price of 10,00 Danish kroner per watch. The two have also purchased paintings by other famous Danish artists for the same purpose. Tal R has condemned the project and has endeavored to stop the scheme. While the court battle will sort out the legality of the matter, the philosophically interesting problem is determining what rights an artist retains over their work once they have sold it.
One obvious approach is to consider a work of art as any other commodity or service in which ownership changes hands. This view can be defended by an analogy. Suppose Sally hires Jane to paint the interior of her house. After the work is done, Sally decides she has changed her mind about one room and plans to repaint it. Imagine Jane learns of this and demands the room be left unchanged because she painted the room. Imagine further that Sally learns that Jane intends to spend her painting fee on a new laptop and demands that Jane give the money to charity instead. While Sally's demand might seem absurd, it is no more absurd than Jane's demand—either both have a right to control their former property or neither does.
It seems reasonable to see this situation as a change of ownership and hence a change of control: Sally now owns Jane's painting and Jane now owns Sally's money. Neither has a right to tell the other what she can or cannot do with her new property.
If the analogy holds, an artist who wishes to retain the right to control his work must place such restrictions in the original agreement (or not sell it at all). To simply insist on new conditions after the sale would be unfair, as the above analogy shows.
It might be objected that the artist has a special relationship with their art that places it outside the "commercial" realm and that this gives an artist the right to control their work even after selling it. In reply, when the artist agrees to sell their work, they place the art within the "commercial" realm. They cannot consistently accept payment and at the same time insist that art is special. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.
It might be claimed that a work of art itself has an inherent right not be altered. In reply: A work of art does not intuitively seem to be an entity that can have rights. While it is reasonable to suppose that people and animals have rights, it seems odd to assert that a non-sentient thing has rights. After all, rights against abuse are often because the thing in question can suffer and while art might cause suffering, art cannot suffer. Thus, the burden of proof would seem to rest on those who claim that a work of art has such a right. So, some other approach is needed.
A practical approach to the matter of the post-sale control of art is to focus on the importance of a contract—which can be an explicit legal document or an implicit set of agreements that might even pre-date the artist and purchaser. This can be seen as analogous to the social contract of political philosophy. The legal and moral obligations would be specified within the contract. Following Socrates this contract would hold as long as it was not the product of neither force nor fraud.
Explicit contracts cannot and should not be expected to cover everything. As such there is the matter of what should be simply assumed to be rights of each party (artist and purchaser)? This involves sorting out the moral default of what can be done with a work of art that has been sold. This assumes that a unique work is being purchased rather than a mass-produced copy of a work. For example, buying a copy of a Harry Potter book is rather different than buying an original painting—one owns that specific copy of the book, but not the work itself.
A right to resell s clearly a basic right, unless otherwise specified in an explicit contract. The right to destroy a work also seems to be an assumed right. While Tal R would prefer that the painting not be destroyed, he does agree that the owners have the right to do so. The point of dispute is that the owners want to use the painting to create watches that are to be sold as art. This seems to be a reasonable concern on the part of Tal R.
Taking Tal R's painting and using it to create new art without his consent would not be work by Tal R, but a forced collaboration. In fact, it would no longer be a work by Tal R, since they are not participating in the creation of the work.
To use an analogy, consider a crime in which a criminal uses custom software created for non-criminal purposes by a programmer: the programmer's work is being used in a crime, but they are not thus a criminal. Likewise, the watches could be sold as having cut up pieces of the painting in them but could not justly be called works by the artist. They have no responsibility for the work if it is created without their knowledge and consent for use in that manner. Going back to the crime analogy, the programmer is not part of the criminal work if they did not know or consent to the criminal use of their work.
As such, the owners of the painting can sell the unmodified original as a work by Tal R, but to use the painting to create new works while the author is still alive (and thus can consent or not) to sell as works involving Tal R would be wrong. The same would hold of other works. For example, if an author sells their book to a company and the company then decides to split up the chapters and combine them with the works of other authors to create numerous books to sell as works by that author, then this would be wrong.
The owners of the painting could contend that the watches merely contain pieces of the painting and this would seem to allow for some possible trickery. They could claim the derived work is not a derived work while cashing in on the artist's status. In defense of this approach, one could draw an analogy to cutting up some valuable item, such as an historic flag or jersey worn by an athlete and selling the pieces as collectable objects—the same could be done with the painting. This seem to come down to intuitions about whether the watches would be sold as having a piece of the painting in them and thus serving as an odd sort of case for the fragment or if the watch was being sold as a collaboration without consent.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Law Tagged With: Aesthetics, art, Tal R, Watch
Overlord & Historical Accuracy
As a fan of both WWII and horror movies, it took me a surprisingly long time to get around to seeing Overlord. Having seen it, I found the film disappointingly predictable. However, my concern here is not with assessing the aesthetic aspects of the film, but the glaring historical inaccuracy. If you have not seen the movie yet, there will be some spoilers.
The film opens in a way that shows the director is familiar with the Call of Duty series (over-the-top CGI explosions) but also includes a surprise to those familiar with history: the focus is on an integrated team from the 101st Airborne. While the soldiers engage in the usual early movie insulting banter of war films, there is not even a hint of racism. In fact, the white soldiers are incredibly respectful of their black sergeant. There are, of course, two problems here. The first s that there was no hint of even the slightest racism against the black characters. The second is that the U.S. Military was not integrated until 1948—well after the June 6, 1944 setting of the movie. As such, the movie is historically inaccurate on a significant and obvious matter. i
The first problem can easily be addressed: not everyone was racist in the 1940s, so these soldiers could just be very enlightened on race. While this seems improbable, it is not impossible—and one might say that if you can accept the Nazi science that re-animates the dead and grants the living superhuman abilities, then accepting enlightened soldiers in 1944 is easy.
The second problem does not admit of an easy solution: the movie is simply wrong about the historical facts. One solution, which would also address the first problem, is that the movie is set in an alternate reality that contains Nazi super-science but lacks American racism. While absolutely no backstory is provided for this, one could imagine that in this alternate reality the civil rights movement started decades earlier or something else occurred to create an integrated and tolerant military. It could be argued that the screenwriters left this out because the characters would not discuss such alternative history while on a mission. That said, if the real explanation for the apparent inaccuracy is that it is an alternative reality, then the movie should at least make some gesture of trying to address that point. Audiences that know history are certainly owed some explanation for the inaccuracy. It is certainly possible that they did not care about the inaccuracy and gave no real thought to it when selecting the actors.
While some might suspect that I have suddenly become a racist and will now rant against casting black actors in what should be white roles; this is not a point I will make. I have no issue with casting women and minorities in roles traditionally occupied by white men. One of my concerns is with historical accuracy—although I can certainly accept arguments for inaccuracies that make for a better movie. In the case of Overlord, they could have retained the accuracy about integration and had an integrated cast by having the soldiers be from different units thrown together for some plausible story reason (though this might require some historical tweaking, the only African American combat unit landing on D Day was the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion). Since such an easy fix exists to retain historical accuracy on a significant matter available, the failure of the movie stands out even more. Whatever goals the filmmakers wished to achieve through in integrated cast could have been met without sacrificing accuracy.
I also have a more significant moral concern with the movie being inaccurate on this matter. The integration of the armed forces and the acceptance of black soldiers were major milestones in American history that required a great deal of effort and sacrifice. While a movie is under no obligation to make political or moral points (and doing so can sometimes detract from a work), there is an obligation not to simply ignore important historical matters such as the integration of the armed forces of the United States. This would be somewhat like having a movie set in 1916 and having women legally voting in the United States without any explanation for why this is happening. Ignoring such achievements is an insult, albeit not a major one, to those who gave so much to accomplish them. As such, Overlord suffers from an easily fixable historical inaccuracy that is somewhat of an insult to those whose efforts made the integration of the armed forces possible.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Ethics Tagged With: Aesthetics, armed forces, historical accuracy, history, integration, Overlord, Race
Mass Shootings & Video Games
Once again politicians are claiming video games are a cause of mass shootings. In doing so, they are making an argument that dates back at least to Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that exposure to certain types of art can have a corrupting effect on people, making them more likely to engage in wrongful behavior in real life. While Plato focused mainly on the corrupting influence of tragedy (which could, he contended, cause people to fall victim to inappropriate sadness) he also discussed the corrupting influence of fictional violence. As he saw it, exposure to fake violence could cause a person to be more inclined to engage in real violence. Plato's solution to the threat presented by such art was to ban it from his ideal city.
This argument is not without appeal—people are influenced by their experiences and it certainly makes sense that repeated exposure to fictional violence could impact how a person feels and thinks. It also makes sense that exposure to non-fiction, such as hateful speech, writings and tweets could influence a person in negative ways. The critical question is whether the influence of video games can be a causal factor in a person engaging in violence, especially a mass shooting.
Determining whether video games are a causal factor in mass shootings involves assessing causation in a population. The challenge is showing whether there would be more mass shootings in a population if everyone played video games than if no one did. If there is a statistically significant difference, then video games can be rationally said to have a causal influence on violent behavior. So, let us consider this matter.
If video games were a statistically significant causal factor for mass shootings, then we would expect to see the number of mass shootings varying with the number of video game players in a country. While the United States is a leader in both video game revenues and mass shootings, other countries also have large populations of gamers, yet do not have a corresponding level of mass shootings. As such, video games would not seem to be a significant causal factor. To use an analogy, if it were claimed that smoking caused cancer in the United States, yet other countries had large populations of smokers with little or no cancer, one would suspect that smoking did not really cause cancer.
This does not prove that video games are not a factor—it could be that video games combined with other factors do cause mass shootings. In this case, we would need to look at the differences between the United States and other countries to see what factors combine with video games to cause mass shootings. This does suffice, however, to show that video games are not the primary driver of mass shootings. Now, suppose that video games do have a role to play in causing mass shootings. The question that now arises is the extent to which they cause the shootings.
About 67% of Americans play video games of one form or another. But the concern is not with video games in general but with violent video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. While most Americans do not play these games, millions of Americans do. The overwhelming majority of people who play these games never become mass shooters. As such, if violent video games do have causal influence, it must be incredibly limited—otherwise mass shootings would be more common. This does not, of course, prove that violent video games do not have a causal influence—but it does show that there must be other factors in play. As such, it is an error to claim that video games are a primary cause of mass shootings. But perhaps a case can still be made for it being a factor.
Some politicians have tried to make use of the method of difference to argue that video games are causing mass shootings. This method involves comparing cases in which an effect has occurred to similar cases in which the effect did not occur and finding a plausible difference that could be the cause. This method is certainly reasonable to use but must be used with due care to avoid falling into error. The gist of the argument is to conclude that violent video games cause mass shootings because mass shootings increased when violent video games were created.
While it is true that the number of mass shootings does correlate with the number of violent video games available (both have increased over the years), correlation is not causation. After all, the number of tech startups has also increased, yet it would be absurd to conclude that they are causing mass shootings. To simply assert that since mass shootings increased as more violent video games appeared would be to commit the cum hoc fallacy—that because two things correlate, there must be a causal connection. This does not entail that violent video games do not play a role, but more is needed than mere correlation. As argued above, there seems to be no significant causal connection between violent video games and mass shootings; they merely happen to correlate as do many other things.
While blaming video games has political value, it does nothing to address the problem of mass shooting since there seems to be no meaningful causal connection between real violence and video games.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics, Technology Tagged With: Dayton, El Paso, mass shooting, Politics, video game
Blackface, Shoes & Clothing Part II: Perception
February 18, 2019 by Michael LaBossiere 8 Comments
Behind the saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is the philosophic theory that beauty is a subjective quality that depends on the judgment (or feelings) of the perceiver. This saying could be modified to apply to determining whether an aesthetic object, such as a black balaclava jumper or shoes, is a blackface object: "blackface is in the eye of the beholder." The underlying principle would be that whether an object is blackface or not depends on the judgment (or feelings) of the perceiver.
If blackface is in the eye of the beholder, then it is up to the beholder to determine whether an object is blackface or not. This might be a matter of judgment or a matter of feeling, depending on the broader aesthetic theory in play. One problem with applying this principle in general would be that whether an object is blackface or not would be subjective. As such, those who assert that an object is not blackface because they do not see it this way would be just as right (or wrong) as those who take the opposite position. However, there is a way to grant a certain audience a privileged right to judge (or feel).
One obvious way to argue for this view is to draw an analogy to insult. Whether something is an insult or not depends on the target of the alleged insult. If the target does not judge or feel that the alleged insult is an insult, then it is not. If the target judges or feels the alleged insult is an insult, then it is. In the case of objects alleged to be blackface, there is the question of who is analogous to the target of a suspected insult
One easy and obvious approach, one that would presumably be favored by those cast as social justice warriors, is that the potential target of any potential blackface object would be blacks. As such, whether an object is a blackface object or not would be decided by the judgment or feeling of black people (and perhaps also those with adequate levels of woke). One could easily get bogged down in the logistics of group consensus, but there are two easy approaches here. One would be to go with the majority opinion of the group. The other would be to break it down to the individual level so that an object could be blackface for one person but not another. While messy and inexact, this does seem to reflect the messy and inexact reality of such judgments (or feelings). Thus, an object would be blackface if the majority of blacks judged (or felt) it is such an object. Alternatively, it could be done at an individual level: an object would be blackface for an individual if they judged (or felt) it was blackface.
One obvious concern here is that whether an object is blackface or not would be subjective. One might raise the objection that under this definition, anything could be blackface, thus opening everyone up for charges of racism. Alternatively, one could argue that if blackface is subjective, then anyone could simply point this out to avoid accusations of racism.
The solution is a messy one: as with disputes over beauty or insults, there would need to be arguments advanced in favor of the various positions and the better arguments should settle the matter as to which interpretation seems to be the most plausible. Even if blackface is in the eye of the beholder, better and worse cases can be made that the judgment or feeling is a sensible one. That no perfect resolution is possible should be expected.
But some might object, being accused of racism has real-world consequences. A person's career could be ended and their life ruined—surely this should not be left up to subjective judgments or feelings. While, as a practical matter, this is how things tend to work, philosophy does offer a better approach. Turning back to the analogy of insults, there is the question of whether the person making the alleged insult intended to be insulting or not. This can be investigated by considering their history, character and the context of the situation. Likewise, if a work is judged (or felt) to be a blackface object, there is still the question of the intent of the creator. While one cannot know the true heart and mind of another, the creator's history and character as well as the context can be assessed to reach a plausible conclusion. As such, a person could create a blackface object without intent and without being a racist, just as a person could horribly insult another without any intention to do so. In such cases, the object should be condemned but the creator should be held innocent of racism. Naturally, if the creator's history and character and the context provide evidence of racism, then that is another matter.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Ethics, Race Tagged With: Aesthetics, blackface, Katy Perry
Blackface, Shoes & Clothing Part I: Intent
February 15, 2019 by Michael LaBossiere 1 Comment
Gucci recently got into trouble because of its black balaclava jumper. This jumper could be pulled up to cover the lower half of the face and featured big, red lips that created, in the eyes of many, the appearance of blackface. The designer of the clothing claimed that he was inspired by the works of a performance artist Leigh Bowery.
Katy Perry, no stranger to accusations of cultural appropriation, was accused of having blackface shoes in her shoe line. Her defenders point out that the shoe comes in a variety of colors and all feature the same face (attached eyes, nose and lips).
Unlike cases in which a person wears blackface, the Gucci and Perry incidents admit of ambiguity. After all, a white person putting on blackface and posing with another person in a KKK costume is a clear statement of racism. Clothing and shoes that can be interpreted as blackface objects still allow room for plausible denial. It is to this matter that I now turn.
One approach to determining whether an aesthetic object like Gucci's clothing or Perry's shoe is to consider the intent of the creator. If the clothing designer and shoe designer had no intention to create a blackface object, then it could be contended that the objects are not blackface. This is because being a blackface object is more than merely looking like such an object, it must be created (or used) for that purpose.
In support of this view, it can be argued that since an object of blackface is racist, it requires racist intent to create it. A person who creates an object that looks like a blackface object without racist intent (that is, they are not trying to create a blackface object) cannot be justly accused of racism for that act. To use an analogy, suppose a designer created a design in which some people claim to see pornographic images. If the designer did not intend to create those images, then they should not be considered as pornographers and the work should not be considered a work of pornography.
As a practical matter, the challenge would be determining the intent of the creator. While this can be difficult, the sensible approach would be to consider the person's history and their explanation of their inspiration and goals. If they have no history of racism and deny that they intended to create a blackface object, then it would be reasonable to accept their assertion of innocence. Naturally, if a person were to persist in creating objects that seem to be blackface objects, then this would tend to indicate that they are creating such objects with intent.
It could be objected that the creators of objects such as the clothing and the shoes cannot plead ignorance. While they might not have intended the works to be blackface objects, they should have recognized how the objects would be seen. After all, anyone familiar with American culture and history should recognize when something would be seen as blackface and they should be aware of the consequences of putting it out for sale. To use an analogy, a designer who accidentally creates a work which most people see as containing pornographic images should be aware of what the work looks like. If they elect to put it on sale while denying they are aware of what the images look like, then they could be justly considered to be selling pornographic images.
It could be replied that the creators might simply be unaware of the history of blackface in the United States or that they simply do not see the objects as blackface objects. Using the pornographic image analogy, the designer might simply be unable to see what other people think they are seeing. If the designers of the clothing and shoes honestly have no idea of the history of blackface or honestly cannot see that their work would be seen as blackface, then they can perhaps be excused. Some might, of course, insist that they should be aware of the history and that they cannot honestly say that they did not see a problem with the objects before it was pointed out by others. In the next essay, I will move beyond the intent of the creator to the perception of the audience.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Ethics, Race Tagged With: Gucci, Katy Perry, racism
AI and Art V: Named Art
December 31, 2018 by Michael LaBossiere Leave a Comment
David Pogue and others have raised the concern that AI generated works will disrupt the realm of art. As noted in the previous essay, this is a very real concern in the area of content art (art whose value is derived from what it is or how it can be used). However, I will endeavor to show that the realm of named art should be safe from AI incursions for the foreseeable future.
Named art, at least in my (mis)usage is a work whose value arises primarily from the name and fame of its creator. Historical examples obviously include the big names in art such as Picasso, van Gogh, and Rembrandt. An anecdote illustrates the key feature of named art.
Some years ago, I attended an art show/sale at Florida State University with a friend. She pointed to a small pencil sketch of a bird that was priced at, I recall, $1500. She then pointed to a nearby sketch that seemed to be of equivalent (or slightly better) quality but was priced at around $250. Since I taught aesthetics for years, she asked me what justified the difference. After all, the sketches were about the same size, in the same medium, in the same realistic style and were executed with similar skill. My response was to point to the names—one artist was better known than the other. If a clever rogue managed to switch the names and prices on the works, the purchasers would convince themselves they were worth the price—because of the names. The nature of named art can also be shown by the following discussion.
Imagine, if you will, that an amazing painting is found in an attic that might be a lost van Gogh. If the value of a work was based on the work itself, one would not need to know who created it in order to know its likely worth. Obviously enough, the value of the might-be-Gogh depends on whether it can be verified as a real-Gogh or dismissed as a mere look alike. It is easy enough to imagine that the experts first confirm that it is genuine (making it worth millions), then other experts confirm it was painted by Rick von Gogh (making it worth little), and then later experts re-affirm that it is genuine van Gogh (making it worth millions again). While nothing about the work has changed, its value would have fluctuated dramatically, because what gives it value is the creator and not the work itself. That is, a van Gogh is not worth millions because the painting is thousands of times better than a lesser work, but because it was created by van Gogh and the art economy deems it worth that much. As such, the value of named art is not a function of the aesthetic value of the work, but of the name value of the work. This feature provides the realm of named art with an amazing defense against the incursion of AI.
While an AI might be able to crank out masterpieces in a style indistinguishable from van Gogh, the AI can never be Vincent van Gogh. Named art, as repeatedly noted, gets its value from who created it rather than from what it is. As such, the works created by an AI in the style of van Gogh will not be of value to those who only want the works of van Gogh. This can be generalized: those looking for work created by Artist X will not be interested in buying AI created art; they want works created by X. As such, as long as people value works because of the creator, named art will be safe from the incursion of AI. But, one might wonder about AI created forgeries.
While I expect that AI will be used to forge works to sell as being by specific artists, successful deceit would not disprove my claim about named art being safe from AI incursion—the purchaser is buying the work because they think it is by a specific artist; they are merely being deceived. This is not to deny that AI forgeries will not be a problem, just that this would be a forgery problem and not an AI replacing artists problem (other than stealing the job of forgers, of course).
It might be objected that named art will not be safe from AI art because AI systems can crank out works at an alarming rate and, presumably, low cost. While this does mean that content artists are in danger from AI, it does not impact the named artists. After all, the fact that millions of human artists have produced millions of drawings and paintings does not lower the value of a Monet or Dali; the value placed on such paintings is independent of the works of these "lesser" artists. The same should hold true of AI art: even if one could click a button and get 100,000 original images ready to be painted onto canvas by a robot, the sale price of the Mona Lisa would not be diminished.
If AI systems become advanced enough, they might themselves become named artists with collectors wanting a work by Vincent van Robogogh because it was created by Robogogh. But that is a matter for the future.
Filed Under: Aesthetics, Philosophy, Technology Tagged With: AI, art


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Smaller businesses targeted by new Beechbrook Capital debt fund
Hunter Ruthven -
Aimed at supporting businesses turnover over between £5m and £50m, Beechbrook has revealed the fund will target predominantly senior secured loans in non-private equity backed UK companies.
Speaking to Real Business, Beechbrook partner Paul Shea said the decision to raise the new fund came about from the number of parties asking if finance could be provided for companies not supported by private equity.
Shea cited Office for National Statistics data which shows that there are currently 40,000 UK businesses with revenues of between £5m and £50m as evidence of the large community, and revealed that the majority of private debt and direct lending had focused on larger companies in the upper mid-market.
"Banks typically used to do this, and still do to a degree, but the banking market is now quite consolidated," he went on to say. "Given recent changes to regulation and the pressure on capital, they are focused on keeping existing customers happy – but with plain vanilla finance."
A first close for the fund wis planned for October 2015, with it providing an "attractive risk adjuster return", said Shea.
He expects the majority of finance applications to the new fund to be event driven, perhaps an acquisition or necessity for one founder to exit.
To support the operation of the new fund, Beechbrook has appointed Jon Herbert as the managing director of the new fund, as well as to a position on the investment committee. Having worked as a director at LDC and head of Lloyds Acquisition Finance, Shea believes he brings with him a "wealth of contacts and networks".
Joining Herbert will also be Jon Penfold, a new member of the Beechbrook advisory board. Penfold has experience of managing loans and equity investments in SMEs at RBS and four years in the private equity space with 3i.
Beechbrook's other operations see it manage two debt funds with combined assets under management of approximately €250m. Its last fundraising was completed in July 2014, when €151m was secured from sources such as the European Investment Fund and the British Business Bank.
"The bigger picture is that the amount of net lending from banks has been static, despite the economy growing," Shea added. "We think there is significant opportunity to help fund the growth of UK SMEs, and UK plc will benefit from more jobs and tax revenues."
Tagged Bank Finance, Fundraising, Investment, Loans, News, Private Equity, SMEs
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Routes to funding: how SMEs are weathering the storm
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Tag Archives: Basketball
Dwyane Wade Plays His Last Game In Atlanta, Solidifies Legacy
January 7, 2019 sytonnia	Leave a comment
(Atlanta, GA) – Sunday afternoon the Atlanta Hawks took on the Miami Heat at State Farm Arena. This was the last time Dewyane Wade would be playing in Atlanta, so there were definitely more D Wade fans in attendance than there were actual Hawks fans. Wade showed up and gave the crowd a couple highlights and scored 11 points. The energy in the Arena was amazing. It felt like a playoff game whenever Wade made one of his amazing plays.
Dwyane Wade at State Farm Arena, January 6th, 2019. Photo Credit/ Christopher London
Despite all the excitement the Hawks were able to go out and take care of business at home to get a dominating 106-82 point victory. The Hawks led the entire first period and through most of the 2nd, but the heat finally took their first lead around the 7 minute mark in 2nd. That lead was very short lived and the Hawks were able to take a 38-37 point lead into halftime. The Hawks picked back up on the the momentum they started the game with in the 3rd, and proceeded to take full control of the game by outscoring the Heat 41-21 in the 3rd quarter. Miami never recovered from that dominant 3rd period from Atlanta. The Hawks cruised their way through the 4th period on their way to a 24 point victory.
Photo Credit: Christopher London
Trae Young had a great night leading the Hawks to a victory vs one of his Idols. Young finished with 19 points and swapped jerseys after the game with Dwade. DeAndre Bembry continues to show and prove. Bembry ended his night with 17 points and has really been coming into his own this season. Hawks head coach Lloyd Pierce stated that Bembry will be starting these next 4 games so he has a chance to see Exactly what works for him as a starter. John Collins had a quiet night, but even his quiet night always make a huge impact.
John Collins campaigns for an All-Star seat. Photo Credit/Christopher London
Collins contributed 13 points and 13 rebounds in this victory.In addition to this being Wade's final game in Atlanta, the future Hall of Famer also reached another milestone. With less than a minute to go in the 3rd Wade landed the 500th 3 pointer of his career. With this shot Wade joined an elite club with only Michael Jordan and LeBron James as the only players to have at least 20,000 points, 5000 assists, 4,000 rebounds, 1,500 steals, 800 blocks, and 500 3s. This was another great motivating victory for the Hawks who had just lost really badly to the Bucks on Friday night.
The Hawks are going on a 3 game road trip starting in Toronto so that should be another interesting game. Can't wait to see what this young team is able to do vs the best team in the league Tuesday night!
By Kennan Johnson
Atlanta HawksBasketballDwyane Wadejohn collinsMiami HeatNBAtrae young
Sports, Your Health
NBA G-League Player Dies After Collapsing On Court
(Grand Rapids, MI) – The NBA community is mourning the loss of player Zeke Upshaw, who is dead at the age of 26. Upshaw died Monday, two days after collapsing during an NBA G-League game for the Grand Rapids Drive. Upshaw suddenly collapsed in the game's final minute and had to be stretchered off the court Saturday night.
The Drive are the minor-league affiliate of the Detroit Pistons, and they clinched a playoff spot with a win in the game Saturday. The NBA G-League is postponing the conference quarterfinals until March 30th and 31st due to Upshaw's death.
The Chicago native played three seasons at Illinois State before transferring to Hofstra for the 2013-2014 season. He joined the Grand Rapids Drive in 2016 and averaged 7.6 points per game in 75 appearances over the past two seasons.
BasketballGrand Rapids DriveMedicalNBA G LeagueYour HealthZeke Upshaw
UMBC Killed Everybody's Bracket With Shock Win Over No. 1 Seed Virginia
(Charlotte, NC) – The University of Maryland-Baltimore County has pulled off one of the biggest upsets in NCAA history. UMBC routed top overall seed Virginia 74-54 in Charlotte to become the first 16 seed to beat a No. 1. The 25-10 Retrievers blew things open against the 31-3 Cavaliers in the second half after the game was tied after 20 minutes.
Jairus Lyles had a game-high 28 points for UMBC, which takes on ninth-seeded Kansas State on Sunday. The Wildcats posted a 69-59 wire-to-wire win over No. 8 Creighton despite playing without leading scorer Dean Wade. Wade had been expected to play after suffering a stress fracture in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament, but never got on the floor.
Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome netted 15 points apiece for the Cavaliers, who finish the year 31-and-3. Entering this game, number-one seeds were 135-and-0 all-time since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
BasketballJarius LylesMarch MadnessNCAARetrieversThe University of Maryland Baltimore CountyUMBCVirginiaVirginia Cavaliers
Athletes, Sports
Big Trade Leaves Cavs Shorthanded, But The 3-Point King Kyle Korver Was Alive So Nobody Noticed
February 10, 2018 sytonnia	2 Comments
(Atlanta, Ga) – At the trade deadline, the Cleveland Cavaliers shocked the sports' world with some blockbuster moved that frankly had some people asking WTF? Isaiah Thomas was sent to the Lakers while D. Wade found himself back in Miami and Derrick Rose…well, he went to Utah, but was quickly released. Channing Frye, Iman Shumpert and Jae Crowder were also released. For the Cavs they picked up Rodney Hood from the Utah Jazz and George Hill from the Sacramento Kings to go with the acquisitions of Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. from the Lakers. Post game I asked LeBron about the changes between the new lineup and the old lineup.
Granted none of them hit the court tonight which left even more suspense hanging over Cleveland's head but it played out as expected. Malcolm Delaney and Dennis Schroder got started out of the gate and by halftime Schroder led all scorers with 19 pts, but it ended pretty much there with him only scoring 6 pts in the the second half.
The Cavs on 53% percent of shooting would end the 2nd qtr ahead by 5 (61-56). Jeff Green, who the Cavs acquired during the trade proved he fits right in with the offense playing 32 minutes and putting 24 on the board.
But it was Kyle Korver who took matters into his own hands living up to his reputation of being the 3-point king. He was 7-11 from downtown and had the game high all across the board with 30.
LeBron James' King status was intact as well with a triple double ( 22 points, 17 assists and 12 rebounds). One strategy that stood out was the eight man rotation the Cavs played with. LeBron says, "We played together offensively and defensively. The communication was very high. The ball was moving around. the was popping. Everybody felt like we were in a good rhythm. This team has played us tough every single season, no matter their record. Tonight we finally played them tough. We played Cavaliers basketball. "
What was missing from the Hawks? For one, Taurean Prince needs to learn when to back away from the 3-point line. He was 0-9 from long range. He put up 15 but that came with a +/- of -21. Not good. Late in the 3rd was when the quality of ball the Hawks were playing dropped tremendously. When Lebron says they played them tough, they did just that. Atlanta never really rebounded from the 18-2 run Cleveland went on to which Kent Bazemore says, "We definitely lost focus."
Final score 123-107. Hopefully, the Hawks can get back on track Sunday when they host Detroit. The Cavs will continue their 3 game road trip playing the Celtics Sunday and OKC on Tuesday.
atlantaBasketballCavsclevelandDennis SchroderhawksJeff GreenJose CalderonKyle KOrverLebron JamesMalcolm DelaneyNBA
LiAngelo And LaMelo Ball Headed Overseas To Play Bal
December 9, 2017 sytonnia	Leave a comment
(SL) – LaVar Ball has told ESPN that his sons LiAngelo and LaMelo Ball have signed with an agent with the plan to play on the same team overseas.
LaMelo initially was targeted to play at UCLA in two years by his father, but that plan has now changed. Agent Harrison Gaines represents all three of Ball's sons, including Lakers rookie Lonzo.
LaVar pulled LiAngelo from UCLA on Monday, telling ESPN that he was frustrated that the school hadn't made a determination on the length of his son's suspension following an arrest for shoplifting while in China last month.
BasketballLaMelo BallLaVar BallLiangelo BallNBAoverseasUCLA
Federal Bribery Charges Brought Against Top NCAA Coaches
September 27, 2017 sytonnia	Leave a comment
(SL) – An acting U.S. Attorney in New York is shedding some light on what he calls the dark underbelly of college basketball. Joon H. Kim announced Tuesday at a press conference that federal criminal charges have been brought against ten people, including four top-tier college basketball assistant coaches, managers, financial advisers and representatives of a major international sportswear company, widely reported to be Adidas.
Kim says coaches at some of the nation's top programs took cash bribes to deliver star athletes to an adviser or agent. He also said employees of the sportswear company funneled cash to the families of college recruits to have them play at schools sponsored by the company.
Court documents show the assistant coaches charged in the corruption scheme are Arizona's Emanuel Richardson, Auburn's Chuck Person, Oklahoma State's Lamont Evans, and USC's Tony Bland. Kim said the bribes and payouts ranged from 13-thousand-dollars up to 100-thousand. The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office have been investigating the criminal influence of money on coaches and NCAA student-athletes since 2015.
ArizonaAuburnBasketballChuck PersonEmmanuel RichardsonFBIFederal BriberyHoop DreamsLamont EvansNCAA CoachesOklahoma StateTony BlandUSC
Robbing The Culture, Basic Baller Brand Wants To Charge Kids Big Baller Bucks For Knockoff Sneakers
(SL) – Let's be clear, what LaVar Ball is trying to do is plausible and he should believe that his kids are the best. There's a way to go about it though and he seems to be lacking tact and common sense. The fact that he has turned off every major retailer who wanted to sign his oldest son should be a big enough hint that he's doing too much. However, the signs are wafting over him. If the father of 3 is going for shock value, it's not working.
Nike passed, Adidas passed, Under Armour passed and everyone else. A Billion dollar merchandising deal for all 3 of his sons, two of which are still in high school? Is he high? And then he comes back, releases a line of shoes for Lonzo called the ZO2 and places a $495 price tag on it. $995 if you want them autographed. We see what you did there LaVar, but we're not impressed.
Now before we really ask what's he smoking, let's see the shoe and see if it's worth it. Oh, I forgot to mention that you can get the sliders for $220. But the biggest catch is, reportedly if you order the shoe, you can't even get them until November. Maybe LaVar should secure a deal with a manufacturer and distributor before he starts selling shoes. Not to mention, his son hasn't even gotten drafted yet and recent comments have probably turned off quite a few teams.
Once believed to be a top 3 draft pick, after Lonzo's pops insulted Lebron James' kids, and claimed his son was better than Stephen Curry, many believe his stock has decreased. Let's be blunt. Nobody likes a loud mouth jerk. He claims that he himself beat Michael Jordan. Really? Okay. Can you imagine LaVar brokering his son's NBA contract. 1 year deal for $195 million because of course he likes 3 different digits.
On Friday, LaVar was asked on "The Dan Le Batard Show" why he decided to charge $495 for the shoes. His response, "I figured that's what the shoe was worth," Ball told Le Batard. "I liked the way it sounds. You see, when you are your own owner, you can come up with any price you want."
Ball said he wasn't in competition with Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour and that they were battling below Big Baller Brand. "Let Nike and Adidas and Under Armour — they battling below me," Ball said. "They'll go ahead and put all their stuff in Foot Locker. I'm better than them. I'm a step above."
As for why the shoe was specifically priced at $495 and not, say, $500, Ball again acted like the question was a bit absurd. "Five hundred dollars?! Four-ninety-five sounds better," Ball said. "I like three different digits."
Ball further defended the shoe's price by saying it was "symbolic" — Lonzo is the first basketball player to have a brand before entering the NBA. He also said there was some value in knowing that his son "designed all of it" and that other shoe companies don't allow rookies to do that.
There's only one problem with that. The shoe is being criticized for looking a lot like the Kobe 11s and the logo appears to be ripped from another source. See below.
A whole lot of talk, not enough originality or profit margin sensibility. Maybe LaVar never took Economics, but supply and demand is a real thing. And right now…your son isn't there yet. Even the greats that have highly priced shoes are deemed collectors' items. For example, the Kobe 11s cost $500 because it's the last shoe Kobe wore in the NBA. Lebron James' first shoe he wore in his first NBA game will cost you a pretty penny too.
The shoe Blake Griffin wore when he was jumping over cars in the NBA All-star contest will hit your pockets even harder. But again, if you're a collector..collect. Lonzo Ball may be an outstanding athlete, depending on who you ask, but he hasn't touched the big leagues yet.
The most disturbing piece in this ridiculous tale of a father thinking his balls are bigger than they are, is the insult levied at kids that can't afford the shoe. Good thing a real baller like Shaq stepped in to acknowledge the foul verbal spew.
Wale didn't appreciate it either.
Ball's youngest son attempted to support his dad. But kid this is way more than a father believing in his sons.
And as for LaMelo or LiAngelo wearing the BBB shoes when they hit UCLA's court, forget about it. It's not happening. UCLA has an almost $300 million dollar sponsorship deal with Under Armour. Group consensus…LaVar Ball should humble himself. Above everything, there are reports that Balls's wife is suffering from a recent stroke.
Speculation alleges he refuses to let his sons see her in that condition out of fear that they might get distracted. I personally, don't think the man is that out of touch, but who knows. Blessings to his wife for sure, if that is the case.
AdidasBasketballBig Baller Brandkobe bryantLaVar BallLonzo BallNBANBA draftNikeShaqSHoesTina BallUnder ArmourWaleZO2
Hawks vs Wizards Game 3 Post Game Presser With Paul Millsap And Dennis Schroder
(SL) – The great comeback indeed! The Hawks were phenomenal against the Wizards during game 3 of the playoffs. After falling 0-2 and determined to get their MMA skills up, it looks like Atlanta came ready to battle. John Wall didn't have much help making it an easier win than anticipated. Post Game with Atlanta's ball master and the golden kid as they talk about resetting the series and leaving their mark on Washington.
Atlanta HawksBasketballDennis SchroderNBANBA PlayoffsPaul MillsapSportsWashington Wizards
Sports, Uncategorized
Discipline Curtails Effort With Hawks During Warriors Game
(Atlanta, GA) – The Atlanta Hawks were hoping to get a win against the Warriors and build some momentum with what could've have been a solid defeat over the number 1 team in the West. Poised to make it happen, the Hawks led by Dennis Schroder with 19 1st quarter points kept an impressive lead over Golden State until the second half when things took a turn for the worse.
Third quarter starts and what could've ended up being a high point game for Dennis switched directions to another trip to the bench and Coach kept him there for the rest of the game after scoring 23 points in the first half. So what happened? Looking at a replay it appears Dwight Howard and Dennis Schroder were exchanging words over D. Howard turning the ball over again. Howard who was smashing the boards (19) may have had a problem with Schroder's pass but unless you were on the court or have bionic ears we'll never know.
In a great PR display, all Coach Mike Budenholzer would say about the situation is that they need to pay attention and play together as a team the entire 48 minutes. During that on-court discussion Steph Curry was able to slide right to the perimeter and bank a 3 and Coach told Dennis to take his jersey off.
He spent the rest of the game on the wood and Golden State would turn the game around in the 2nd half and talk the W ending their road trip over .500 with the 119-111 win. Didn't hurt that Vet ANdre Iguodala put up 24 points. Matching Stephen Curry's effort, Post Game Andre's says he's still got it while Steph didn't care about Dennis being benched one way or the other.
Post Game Wrap-Up
Andre IguodalaAtlanta HawksBasketballDraymond GreenGolden StateNBASportsStephen Curry
Coach's Corner: Coach Bud On Taking Advantage Of Carmelo Anthony's Ejection In 102-98 Win Over Knicks
December 29, 2016 sytonnia	Leave a comment
(SL) – The Atlanta Hawks took advantage of a Flagrant 2 penalty placed on Carmelo Anthony after he elbowed/chopped Thabo Sefolosha in the neck. The Hawks were able to contain the efforts of Derrick Rose and Kristaps Porzingis in a game that went into OT. Final score Atlanta over New York 102-98. Dennis Schroder was in beast mode leading the Hawks with 27 points. Dwight Howard had a double double crashing the boards with 22 and scoring 16 buckets.
BasketballNBANew york knicksSports


text:
<?php

use Behat\Behat\Context\ClosuredContextInterface,
    Behat\Behat\Context\TranslatedContextInterface,
    Behat\Behat\Context\BehatContext,
    Behat\Behat\Event\SuiteEvent;

use \WP_CLI\Process;
use \WP_CLI\Utils;

// Inside a community package
if ( file_exists( __DIR__ . '/utils.php' ) ) {
	require_once __DIR__ . '/utils.php';
	require_once __DIR__ . '/Process.php';
// Inside WP-CLI
} else {
	require_once __DIR__ . '/../../php/utils.php';
	require_once __DIR__ . '/../../php/WP_CLI/Process.php';
}

/**
 * Features context.
 */
class FeatureContext extends BehatContext implements ClosuredContextInterface {

	private static $cache_dir, $suite_cache_dir;

	private static $db_settings = array(
		'dbname' => 'wp_cli_test',
		'dbuser' => 'wp_cli_test',
		'dbpass' => 'password1'
	);

	public $variables = array();

	/**
	 * Get the environment variables required for launched `wp` processes
	 * @beforeSuite
	 */
	private static function get_process_env_variables() {
		// Ensure we're using the expected `wp` binary
		$bin_dir = getenv( 'WP_CLI_BIN_DIR' ) ?: realpath( __DIR__ . "/../../bin" );
		$env = array(
			'PATH' =>  $bin_dir . ':' . getenv( 'PATH' ),
			'BEHAT_RUN' => 1
		);
		if ( $config_path = getenv( 'WP_CLI_CONFIG_PATH' ) ) {
			$env['WP_CLI_CONFIG_PATH'] = $config_path;
		}
		return $env;
	}

	// We cache the results of `wp core download` to improve test performance
	// Ideally, we'd cache at the HTTP layer for more reliable tests
	private static function cache_wp_files() {
		self::$cache_dir = sys_get_temp_dir() . '/wp-cli-test core-download-cache';

		if ( is_readable( self::$cache_dir . '/wp-config-sample.php' ) )
			return;

		$cmd = Utils\esc_cmd( 'wp core download --force --path=%s', self::$cache_dir );
		Process::create( $cmd, null, self::get_process_env_variables() )->run_check();
	}

	/**
	 * @BeforeSuite
	 */
	public static function prepare( SuiteEvent $event ) {
		self::cache_wp_files();
	}

	/**
	 * @AfterSuite
	 */
	public static function afterSuite( SuiteEvent $event ) {
		if ( self::$suite_cache_dir ) {
			Process::create( Utils\esc_cmd( 'rm -r %s', self::$suite_cache_dir ), null, self::get_process_env_variables() )->run();
		}
	}

	/**
	 * @AfterScenario
	 */
	public function afterScenario( $event ) {
		if ( !isset( $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] ) )
			return;

		// remove altered WP install, unless there's an error
		if ( $event->getResult() < 4 ) {
			Process::create( Utils\esc_cmd( 'rm -r %s', $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] ), null, self::get_process_env_variables() )->run();
		}
	}

	public static function create_cache_dir() {
		self::$suite_cache_dir = sys_get_temp_dir() . '/' . uniqid( "wp-cli-test-suite-cache-", TRUE );
		mkdir( self::$suite_cache_dir );
		return self::$suite_cache_dir;
	}

	/**
	 * Initializes context.
	 * Every scenario gets it's own context object.
	 *
	 * @param array $parameters context parameters (set them up through behat.yml)
	 */
	public function __construct( array $parameters ) {
		$this->drop_db();
		$this->set_cache_dir();
		$this->variables['CORE_CONFIG_SETTINGS'] = Utils\assoc_args_to_str( self::$db_settings );
	}

	public function getStepDefinitionResources() {
		return glob( __DIR__ . '/../steps/*.php' );
	}

	public function getHookDefinitionResources() {
		return array();
	}

	public function replace_variables( $str ) {
		return preg_replace_callback( '/\{([A-Z_]+)\}/', array( $this, '_replace_var' ), $str );
	}

	private function _replace_var( $matches ) {
		$cmd = $matches[0];

		foreach ( array_slice( $matches, 1 ) as $key ) {
			$cmd = str_replace( '{' . $key . '}', $this->variables[ $key ], $cmd );
		}

		return $cmd;
	}

	public function create_run_dir() {
		if ( !isset( $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] ) ) {
			$this->variables['RUN_DIR'] = sys_get_temp_dir() . '/' . uniqid( "wp-cli-test-run-", TRUE );
			mkdir( $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] );
		}
	}

	private function set_cache_dir() {
		$path = sys_get_temp_dir() . '/wp-cli-test-cache';
		Process::create( Utils\esc_cmd( 'mkdir -p %s', $path ), null, self::get_process_env_variables() )->run_check();
		$this->variables['CACHE_DIR'] = $path;
	}

	private static function run_sql( $sql ) {
		Utils\run_mysql_command( 'mysql --no-defaults', array(
			'execute' => $sql,
			'host' => 'localhost',
			'user' => self::$db_settings['dbuser'],
			'pass' => self::$db_settings['dbpass'],
		) );
	}

	public function create_db() {
		$dbname = self::$db_settings['dbname'];
		self::run_sql( "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS $dbname" );
	}

	public function drop_db() {
		$dbname = self::$db_settings['dbname'];
		self::run_sql( "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS $dbname" );
	}

	public function proc( $command, $assoc_args = array(), $path = '' ) {
		if ( !empty( $assoc_args ) )
			$command .= Utils\assoc_args_to_str( $assoc_args );

		$env = self::get_process_env_variables();
		if ( isset( $this->variables['SUITE_CACHE_DIR'] ) ) {
			$env['WP_CLI_CACHE_DIR'] = $this->variables['SUITE_CACHE_DIR'];
		}

		$path = "{$this->variables['RUN_DIR']}/{$path}";
		return Process::create( $command, $path, $env );
	}

	public function move_files( $src, $dest ) {
		rename( $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] . "/$src", $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] . "/$dest" );
	}

	public function add_line_to_wp_config( &$wp_config_code, $line ) {
		$token = "/* That's all, stop editing!";

		$wp_config_code = str_replace( $token, "$line\n\n$token", $wp_config_code );
	}

	public function download_wp( $subdir = '' ) {
		$dest_dir = $this->variables['RUN_DIR'] . "/$subdir";

		if ( $subdir ) {
			mkdir( $dest_dir );
		}

		Process::create( Utils\esc_cmd( "cp -r %s/* %s", self::$cache_dir, $dest_dir ), null, self::get_process_env_variables() )->run_check();

		// disable emailing
		mkdir( $dest_dir . '/wp-content/mu-plugins' );
		copy( __DIR__ . '/../extra/no-mail.php', $dest_dir . '/wp-content/mu-plugins/no-mail.php' );
	}

	public function create_config( $subdir = '' ) {
		$params = self::$db_settings;
		$params['dbprefix'] = $subdir ?: 'wp_';

		$params['skip-salts'] = true;
		$this->proc( 'wp core config', $params, $subdir )->run_check();
	}

	public function install_wp( $subdir = '' ) {
		$this->create_db();
		$this->create_run_dir();
		$this->download_wp( $subdir );

		$this->create_config( $subdir );

		$install_args = array(
			'url' => 'http://example.com',
			'title' => 'WP CLI Site',
			'admin_user' => 'admin',
			'admin_email' => 'admin@example.com',
			'admin_password' => 'password1'
		);

		$this->proc( 'wp core install', $install_args, $subdir )->run_check();
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Remove a string in the middle in php I want to remove 10th character from right of this string .
    $string = '1230789456123';

Output should be  123789456123
Any idea

A: You can simply use str_replace along with strrev function as
$string = '1230789456123';
$str = strrev($string);
$string = strrev(str_replace($str[9], '', $str));
echo $string;

What I'm doing over here is

*

*Using strrev I'm reversing string which will result into 3216549870321

*Using str_replace I'm finding the 10th position and replacing it with empty value

*Once again reversing string using strrev.And here it is what you want

Or simply use
$str=substr_replace($string,"",-10,0) ;

Fiddle

A: use substr_replace. your output is remove 0 from the string. and it is at 10th postion from the end
$string = '1230789456123';
$str=substr_replace($string,"",-10,0);
echo $str;

A: try
<?PHP

    $string = '1230789456123';
    $str = substr_replace($string,'',3,1);
    echo $str;

?>

A: I didn't get your question. Do you want to replace the 10th characterer strating from the last character. For this you can use:
$string = '1230789456123';
$new='';
for($i=0;$i<strlen($string);$i++){
if((strlen($string)-$i)!==10){
$new.=$string[$i];
}
}
echo $new;

Hope this helps you

A: If you wish to remove a specific character from the string you can use a function like this one
<?php
$string = '1230789456123';
$stringTest = '';
for($i=0;$i<strlen($string);$i++){
    if($string[$i]!='9'){
         $stringTest .= $string[$i];
    }
}
$string = $stringTest;
print_r($string);
?>

Or you can do for a specific place in the like, for example, if you wish to remove the 10th character of a string:
<?php
$string = '1230789456123';
$stringTest = '';
for($i=0;$i<strlen($string);$i++){
    if($string[$i]!=$string[9]){
        $stringTest .= $string[$i];
    }
}
 $string = $stringTest;
print_r($string);
?>

I'm using PHP 7.4.33

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Sebastian+Barquet, together with Industry Gallery, is pleased to announce 'Substance', a solo show of work by designer Jens Praet. Opening May 9th, 2014, the show will introduce an edition of Praet's 'Shredded' furniture made exclusively from copies of Art+Auction magazine.
BUM BUM in and outdoor collection by Eugeni Quitllet for Vondom was born from the principle of not designing objects, but rather musical instruments to be used for another purpose; the same as a person who holds a shell to their ear to hear the ocean.
Volume Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with Matthias Merkel Hess, Things, opened April 25th.
'Pierre and the Almond Tree' is a collaborative exhibition inspired by 90 year old artist Pierre Leron Lesur and the source of his work the Almond tree.
Britain's design dream team, Barber & Osgerby, were busy this year in Milan - having premiered new works for five manufacturers including: a new collection of five pieces for Vitra including the Mariposa sofa, Planophore shelves, Wood Table and Wood bench as well as Zeb bar stool. They have also launched the Button and Tobi Ishi tables for B&B Italia, upholstery for Knoll, Port vase for Venini and Mews tile collection for Mutina.
From the 7th to the 13th of April, for the 53rd edition of the Salone del Mobile, Moooi welcomes you to enjoy and gather inspiration at their presentation in via Savona 56.
From 8th to 12th April 2014, Sadie Coles HQ presents 14 limited edition, numbered, stamped and signed new furniture designs by the British artist Sarah Lucas, on display at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano.
Abundance as added value. Luxury of light flashing through pieces of research, the desire of more saturated milieus and of a new sumptuousness creating Nilufar Baroque. Magnificent mirrors and streaked marbles alternating with the glows of coloured glasses.
Designed by Helsinki-based practice AOR, Viewpoint is a peaceful respite floating on the canal in London's Kings Cross.
Maddox Arts is delighted to present About Time, a group exhibition curated by Laura Culpan, bringing together artists who use very diverse medium within their practice, but for the occasion are united by the concept of Time.
Ferruccio Laviani has created yet another fanciful world from the depths of his prolific imagination.


text:
Taksim Taksim
Imagining the Ottoman Palace Dances…
Taksim Taksim is a performance of Ottoman court dance and Turkish classical music created by choreographer and dancer Berrak Yedek in collaboration with Tanbur player Murat Aydemir and Ney player Salih Bilgin. Through a contemporary approach to interpretation it aims to revive the long forgotten Ottoman court dances.
photos by Kaan C.Senol
The programme comprises Turkish Classical music not commonly associated with dance from the 16th to 20th centuries and includes improvisation (taksim) for both the dancer and the musicians, in which they explore different makams (Turkish scales of music) and emotional states using historical dance and music vocabulary whilst drawing inspiration from contemporary forms.
As the third in the series of the "Turkish" dance work that I have been doing since some years now, taksim//taksim is a performance created in order to resurrect the Ottoman Palace dances, done by the female dancers known as Çengi. It is an attempt to reconstruct the palace dances that seem to be forgotten...
...fortunately the music has not been forgotten. Through our mutual talks with my brother, Burak Yedek, we decided to invite his master, ney player Salih Bilgin, and tanbur player Murat Aydemir, into a very inspiring collaboration, which resulted in a creation of a repertoire of Turkish Classical music, which is not typically known as "dance" music. The presence of the harp, played by Zeynep Öykü, added polyphony to the compositions which are originally monophonic, and encouraged the musicians to create very unique orchestrations for the pieces. The repertoire includes known pieces from the 16th to 20th century, but also pieces that are not so often heard in the classical music concerts.
Listening to the pieces that have inspired me over the last few years, I now have found the depth in me to transform them into dances, letting myself be invaded by their colour, moods and rhythms in order to find the right movements, the right aesthetics, expressions and dynamics.
As the historical pieces are brought more into the contemporary light by the presence of improvisations known as taksim, the dances are built with movement vocabulary of traditional Turkish dances but also have improvisations within giving them the contemporary touch. My wish has been to react to the music as a dancer of today, and open my perception and heart to the sounds of the past, the images of history that inspire my way of moving, and to produce a dance that has the flavour of the ottoman art.
We cannot claim that this is the way it has been, but how nicely Salih Bilgin expressed it: "we feel that it might have been this way!"
A Limpid Works Production with:
Berrak Yedek: choreography and dance
Salih Bilgin: ney
Murat Aydemir: tanbur
Türker Çolak: percussion
Zeynep Öykü: harp
Burak Yedek: ney
Murat Aydemir: orchestration
Jan Komarek: light design
Christopher Vinz: costume design
Dinçer Demirci: sounds
Jana Doubnerova: costume making
Performed at:
12th September 2011, 18.00. Talimhane Theater, Istanbul Turkey.
12th December 2011, 20.30. Istanbul Bilgi University, Dolapdere Campus BS2 Theater Hall, Istanbul Turkey.
29th December 2011, 20.30. Kadıköy Oyun Atölyesi, Istanbul Turkey.
16th April 2012, Suleyman Demirel Conference Hall, Canakkale Turkey.
10th May 2012, garajIstanbul, Istanbul Turkey.


(DALLAS COUNTY, TX); November 3, 2016 – At a custody hearing today at the Dallas County Government Center Precinct 1, Place 2 court in Lancaster, TX, Judge Valencia Nash found that 19 animals seized from a Pleasant Grove property had been cruelly treated and awarded custody of the animals to the SPCA of Texas. The judge also awarded $4,667.25 in restitution to the SPCA of Texas for the cost of investigation, expert witnesses, housing and care for the animals from the time of the seizure to the hearing in accordance with Texas Health and Safety Code. However, the SPCA of Texas does not expect to receive any of this money to help offset costs. If the animal owner does not file an appeal in the next ten days, the SPCA of Texas would at that time individually evaluate the animals for adoption or placement on a case by case basis. If the animal owner does file an appeal in the next ten days, that hearing will take place at a later date, and that court's ruling will be final.
On Friday, October 28, the SPCA of Texas, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office and the Dallas Police Department seized and took custody of 18 cruelly confined animals from a property in the Pleasant Grove area of Southeast Dallas County. The animals include 13 dogs and 5 cats. The animals were transported to the SPCA of Texas' Emergency Rescue Center in Dallas, and will be examined by medical staff and cared for until a custody hearing could take place. One additional dog was found at the same home on November 2.
Most of the animals were found living in a urine-soaked, feces-filled house on the property. One dog was found shut in a tiny closet, forced to live in approximately three feet of what appeared to be insulation of some type mixed with urine and feces. The cats were kept in a bathroom in the house. That bathroom floor was barely visible through a mix of trash, feces, litter and household items. A few dogs were found outside the house.
The animals appear to have varying health issues, including flea infestation, hair loss, extremely long nails and skin sores and growths.
The SPCA of Texas received a complaint regarding cruelly treated animals on the property in June of 2015, and Investigators visited the property two times. After these visits, there was not sufficient evidence of animal cruelty and the case was closed. Then, in mid-September of this year, the SPCA of Texas received another complaint of cruelly treated animals on the property and SPCA of Texas Animal Cruelty Investigators visited the property four times. During the first three visits, the animal owner refused the Investigators entry into the residence. During the final visit, Tuesday, October 25, the animal owner stated to the Investigator that she had moved out of the residence due to the conditions inside and had been sleeping on patio furniture under a covered structure behind the residence. Based on that information and other probable cause factors, the Investigator filed for a search warrant, and the warrant was signed on Friday, October 28. When the investigator gained access to the residence and observed the animals' living conditions, which were not in compliance with Texas Health and Safety Code, he determined that the animals were in need of immediate removal. The SPCA of Texas, Dallas County District Attorney's Office and the Dallas Police Department concurred that it was in the animals' best interest to remove them and sought a seizure warrant.
The custody hearing was held on Thursday, November 3 at 10:30 a.m. at the Dallas County Government Center Precinct 1, Place 2 courthouse located at 107 Texas Street, Lancaster, TX 75146, the Honorable Valencia Nash presiding.
To help support the SPCA of Texas and its efforts to help abused, neglected and homeless animals and to support the SPCA of Texas' other programs and services, please visit www.spca.org/helptheanimals.
Cuddle puppies and kittens, dote on dogs and cats, provide post-operative care for canines and felines and teach four-legged foster friends what snuggling is all about.
"I'm absolutely in LOVE with Kitty (formerly Kaleigh). I know her name isn't original at all but I just started calling her that until I could think of a name and it just stuck - it's so her! I've attached two photos - she's seriously the most beautiful kitty in the world! She loves to steal tennis balls and bones from her dog sister - she thinks she's a dog! She enjoys going for walks and car rides, snuggling with mom, bird watching, drinking from the sink, playing with her pipe cleaners and getting into mom's makeup in the mornings. I couldn't 'imagine life without her. She's the absolute best!"
The SPCA of Texas is a 501(c)3 charity. Our EIN is 75-1216660.


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GamerGate anger at women all too real for gamemaker
By Beth Teitell and Callum Borchers Globe Staff,October 30, 2014, 12:00 a.m.
Brianna Wu with a poster of some of her video game characters.(Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)
Brianna Wu, a software engineer so absorbed in her work that she considers eating a waste of time, did not want to be a cultural figure.
"I got into video games," she said recently, "to make video games."
But Wu was thrust into the spotlight on Oct. 9, when she tweeted what she intended as a joke. It mocked members of a shadowy and threatening gaming movement called GamerGate, ridiculing them for, among other things, "fighting an apocalyptic future where women are 8 percent of programmers and not 3 percent."
That's when the harassment began — a frightening online campaign threatening rape and death that forced Wu to flee her Arlington home. In the process, she became the latest of several female targets across the country — the second in the Boston area — as well as a symbol of the sexism that some say is roiling the $21.25 billion gaming industry in the United States.
"Guess what [vulgar name]?" read one tweet from "Death to Brianna." "I now know where you live." Her home address was posted.
The mostly unknown participants behind GamerGate — named for its Twitter hashtag — contend that they are fighting against what they see as favoritism and a lack of ethics in gaming journalism. They're also unhappy about what they see as an increasingly liberal agenda in video games. Critics say that GamerGaters are brutish bullies trying to drive women out of a field that men have long dominated, using tactics that include online harassment and "doxxing," slang for posting personal information, such as a home address, bank information, and Social Security number.
Many fear that the online harassment of female game developers — in addition to the hyper-sexualized depiction of women in many videogames — will dissuade girls and young women from entering a creative and growing field.
Timothy Loew, executive director of the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute , said the attacks in his industry have importance beyond the gaming industry.
"Situations like GamerGate cause real harm — both personal and professional — to half the population," he said. "This is an issue of equity, and we need to make sure this sort of conflagration doesn't crop up again."
And although the battle for the soul of video games is raging online, one of the real-world fronts may be Boston, which has a robust indie game scene. Locally produced games — made by women with uncommon frequency — are among the leading examples of the increasingly diverse audiences and subjects that dot today's gaming landscape. Wu's game, "Revolution 60," features four female action heroes.
"There's this moment that's happening right now," said Nina Huntemann, associate professor of media studies at Suffolk University and cofounder of Women in Games Boston, a professional network.
RELATED READING: A primer on GamerGate
"Here you have an industry that for a very long time was a niche product with a niche market, and has become more mainstream. There are people who feel, 'This is ours. It's the only thing we social outcasts can hold on to that's not going to be infiltrated.' "
At this point in her ordeal, Wu is regularly forwarding incoming rape and death threats to the local police, and said she has been in communication with the FBI, the Arlington Police, Twitter, and Apple. She and her husband, Frank Wu, have been forced to pack their dogs, Crash and Kablam!, barky Bichon Frise, into their crates and escape to a safe house or hotel.
Slender, 6-foot, 2-inches, and in her mid-30s, Wu has started taking private self-defense lessons, and stopped telling even friends her schedule.
"I don't know who I can trust," she said last week, speaking, at her request, from an undisclosed suburban location. "The slow paranoia is exhausting."
Still, Wu says she's more bothered that young women might steer clear of gaming development than by the intimidation she is experiencing. Women represent 47 percent of gamers but only about 12 percent of game developers, according to a 2014 report by the Women's Media Center .
The report also notes that at least since the mid-1980s, "men have become a larger and larger share of college graduates in information technology and computer science" — key fields in the current job market.
"Death and rape threats I can deal with emotionally," said Wu, the founder of Giant Spacekat, a company that makes games with female protagonists, and the host of a popular podcast. "What takes the biggest toll is when young girls write me and tell me they're too scared to go into this field."
The gaming industry culture war kicked into high gear two years ago, when feminist and media critic Anita Sarkeesian launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund something called the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series. Her online harassment started almost immediately, and escalated to the point where, just last month, Sarkeesian was forced to cancel a talk at Utah State University because of anonymous threats promising a massacre.
GamerGate took off after the ex-boyfriend of a Boston area independent game developer, Zoe Quinn, blogged about her alleged infidelity with a gaming journalist, and other gamers claimed the alleged relationship lead to positive reviews of her game, Depression Quest. The claim was never proven. GamerGaters maintain that their campaign is about ethics in gaming journalism.
As the controversy began to spill from the gaming world into the mainstream in recent weeks, the Entertainment Software Association , an industry trade group, issued a statement. "Threats of violence and harassment are wrong," it read. "They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community — or our society — for personal attacks and threats."
Wu's harassment started after she posted a meme called "Oppressed Gamergater" that ridicules members for, among other things, basing their entire identity on the gaming world. On a recent morning, as Wu sat drinking Soylent and monitoring the hate directed at her on two large computer monitors, she said she wished she could just get back to making games.
But, she added, her life has prepared her to stand up to bullies.
"I grew up in a deeply racist Mississippi," she said. "I used to believe that that kind of prejudice was limited to the South. But I no longer do. People in the South would say the Civil War was a long time ago." Similarly, she continued, some men in the gaming industry say women have achieved equality and "that's the end of the story," even though they make up just a small fraction of the workforce.
Wu got into video games as a "nerdy" child who didn't fit into the ambient culture of guns, church, and football.
"When we got the Nintendo I was instantly addicted," she said. "Games like Final Fantasy blew my mind, letting me take part in an interactive story. I was instantly hooked, it's all I ever wanted to do."
A graduate of the University of Mississippi, Wu worked briefly in politics in Washington. "People are going to hate me," she said, "but I worked for Republicans."
She moved to Palo Alto, Calif., in 2008 when her husband — a PhD in bacterial genetics — took a job at a pharmaceutical company.
As news of her harassment spreads, her Twitter following has grown from 8,000 to 26,500 and counting, and she's using her platform to fight back.
"We're using zerging to fight doxxing," Wu said. She helpfully translated: "zerging" is a video game technique that involves sending small, weak things at someone constantly until they get overwhelmed and die. It comes from the game Starcraft, where you can make a quick, cheap creature called a Zerg.
"The idea with GamerGate," Wu said "is to flood someone with tweets and low level harassment until they just quit."
"People are so frustrated they are looking for a message of hope, a public figure," she said. "I won't let women be bullied out of one of the best fields on the entire planet."
"What takes the biggest toll is when young girls write me and tell me they're too scared to go into this field," Brianna Wu said.(Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)
More from today's paper
As Mark Wahlberg seeks a pardon, some aren't ready to forgive
In D.C., Charlie Baker makes his case
Accused smuggler brought to Boston
Big challenges loom for Ashton Carter at Pentagon
Pipeline plan rerouted from many Mass. towns
Beth Teitell can be reached at beth.teitell@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter@BethTeitell.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the ex-boyfriend of independent game developer Zoe Quinn claimed in a blog post that her alleged relationship with an industry journalist led to positive reviews of her game. It was other gamers who made such claims, not Eron Gjoni.


netkas.org » Common quiestions and answers.
Q: what acpithrotle.kext for? should i install it?
Q: what does vanilla kernel means ?
Q: do i need dsmos.kext ?
Q: what cpus can run vanila kernel with pc_efi ?
Q:if my cpu can't run vanila kernel, can i use advantages of pc_efi?
Q: do i need hpet for vanila kernel?
A: HPET exists on most modern motherboard, but only HPET on mobos with intel chipsets supported by osx.
Q: what about AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext in leopard?
A: in tiger this kext was making some cpus cooler, but in leo, this kext make cpus hoter, so, i suggest to do not use it.
Q: what is ToH kernel?
A: speedstep kernel from topic of #10.5 channel on irx.osx86.hu network.
Q: Time machine doesn't work/I have error 35, what can i do to fix it ?
Q: Installed PC_efi and trying vanilla kernel on c2d and intel-based mobo, but get reboot after kexts loaded, how can i fix it ?
A: Check No Exectuable (nx/xd) enabled in your bios, otherwise vanilla kernel will reboot.
netkas.org » PS2 fix from def and Updates to faq.
PC EFI is by far the best Emu Project I have heard of for a long time.
I use vanila appleacpiplatform and smbios, but geekbench2 show Model empty. How i can make my PC real MAC for geekbench2 and me?
I have Pentium 4 HT.
can i run vanila kernel with pc_efi ???
Hello….I am trying to install mac os x 10.5 (leopard) using iDeneb v1.4 and Darwin x86…..
How to fix this problem? Does it mean my machine can't run Mac?


text:
1959 Austin Healey Sprite MKI
ENQUIRE NOW £13,491
The Austin Healey Sprite MKI was designed by Healey Motor Company within the bounds of their partnership with BMC, the idea being to use as many parts from the corporate parts bin as possible. Most parts came from the A35, front suspension, engine, gearbox and back axle, with the steering rack from the Morris Minor and other off the shelf parts being Smiths instruments and Lucas electrical components. The use of these 'off the shelf' parts helped keep the development costs to a minimum, thereby satisfying the requirement that the car should be cheap to produce. When first launched on the 29th May 1958 the costs was £660.00 including tax and in all a total of 49987 were built between 1958 and 1961.
This Sprite was built on the 18th March 1959; the colour was Nevada Beige with Cherry Red interior, engine number 9CU-H/13087 with heater, toughened glass windscreen and rev counter as factory fitted equipment. It was dispatched to Charles Clarke Limited, Shrewsbury on the 3rd April 1959, and first registered on the 13th May 1959. The original registration number is unknown, as it was kept on retention on the 18th July 1974 when FRE 202A was allocated.
Christine Hancock, who purchases the car in July 1976 kept it for 31 years. There are 13 MOT certificates, the earliest going back to 16th June 1978 showing a speedometer reading of 22,866 miles, proving that in the 30 years the original engine had covered just 15,235 miles.
She sold the car to Sid Locke on the 15th January 2008 and he and his brother in law, Keith Wright restored it with a new body tub from Wheeler and Davies.
A beautiful classic that has been well maintained and represents great value for money.
For more information, please contact a member of our sales team:
Make Austin Healey
Model Sprite
£13,491 $17,606 €15,787


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Cardinal Dulles on Communion and Pro-Abortion Politicians
Author: ZENIT
A ZENIT DAILY DISPATCH
Outlines What Actions Should Be Taken
NEW YORK, 29 JUNE 2004 (ZENIT)
Cardinal Avery Dulles is encouraging U.S. bishops to dialogue with dissenting Catholic politicians about their moral responsibilities before advising them to not receive Communion.
Cardinal Dulles, the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University, shared with ZENIT what important steps need to be taken to defend human life, protect the sacraments, uphold the teachings of the Church and respond to pro-abortion politicians.
Q: What are the practical steps a bishop could or should take to encourage a Catholic politician to forgo support for abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem-cell research?
Cardinal Dulles: The first step should probably be to make sure that the politicians understand the doctrine of the Church and the reasons for it. Many politicians, like much of the American public, seem to be unaware that abortion and euthanasia are serious violations of the inalienable right to life.
These are not just "Church" issues but are governed by the natural law of God, which is binding upon all human beings. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights, since a person deprived of life has no other rights.
The Church does not herself frame civil laws, but she admonishes lawmakers that the laws must be designed to support justice, including the rights of the unborn child. Bishops should try to get into dialogue with politicians and other persons in public life to remind them of their moral responsibilities.
If, after dialogue, the bishop finds the politician incorrigibly opposed to Catholic teaching on this matter, he may have to advise or order the politician not to receive holy Communion, which is by its very nature a sign of solidarity with the Church.
Other steps might also be considered. For instance, the bishop could instruct Catholic parishes and institutions not to invite such politicians to speak on Church premises, not to give them roles in the liturgy and not to honor them with rewards and honorary degrees.
Q: Some have questioned the insistence on the abortion question when there are other matters — such as the conflict in Iraq and the death penalty — in which there are contrasts between some politicians and the Church position. Why is abortion being singled out?
Cardinal Dulles: The three cases you mention are quite different. The Church recognizes that there are occasions when war and the death penalty are justified, even though such measures are undesirable and should be kept to the necessary minimum.
The present Holy Father has made it clear that he thinks that certain, particular wars and executions are wrong and unnecessary. Catholics will respect this as the prudential judgment of a wise and holy pastor.
But Catholics who fully accept the doctrine of the Church can sometimes disagree about whether a given war or death sentence is morally defensible.
Abortion is in a different class. As the deliberate taking of innocent human life, direct abortion can never be justified. About the moral principle, there can be no debate in the Church. The teaching has been constant and emphatic.
The civil law should not authorize, let alone encourage, such moral evils. It should protect human life and dignity to the maximum degree possible. But in assessing how to proceed, there may be differences of opinion. If it is impossible to obtain passage of a law banning all abortions, or if such a law would be unenforceable, it might be best to work for a law that restricts access to abortion as much as possible, while continuing to work for full justice.
Politics, after all, is the sphere of the possible, not the ideal. Provided that the moral principles are kept clearly in view, bishops and politicians will do well to keep in dialogue about matters of strategy.
Q: What are the risks the Church faces if it enforces stricter penalties against politicians?
Cardinal Dulles: In imposing penalties, the Church is trying to protect the sacraments against the profanation that occurs when they are received by people without the proper dispositions. Dissenting politicians often want to receive Communion as a way of showing that they are still "good Catholics," when in fact they are choosing their political party over their faith. But the imposition of penalties involves at least three risks.
In the first place, the bishop may be accused, however unfairly, of trying to coerce the politician's conscience.
Secondly, people can easily accuse the Church of trying to meddle in the political process, which in this country depends on the free consent of the governed.
And finally, the Church incurs a danger of alienating judges, legislators and public administrators whose good will is needed for other good programs, such as the support of Catholic education and the care of the poor.
For all these reasons, the Church is reluctant to discipline politicians in a public way, even when it is clear that their positions are morally indefensible.
The Church's prime responsibility is to teach and to persuade. She tries to convince citizens to engage in the political process with a well-informed conscience.
The bishops hope that the electorate and the government will strive for a society in which every human life is protected by law from conception to natural death.
Q: A corollary: Is the Church risking its tax-exempt status if it pushes this issue? Could bishops' actions be construed as political? Should that be a consideration at all?
Cardinal Dulles: Since the United States prides itself on its tradition of religious freedom, the country will probably continue to recognize the Church's right to speak out on the moral aspects of civil law and public policy.
The Catholic Church has generally tried to avoid endorsing any particular party or candidate for office. Churches that uphold moral principles in political life do not forfeit their status as religious institutions and their entitlement to tax exemption.
To be sure, some people misunderstand the non-establishment of religion in the Bill of Rights as though it meant the exclusion of religion from public life. In point of fact, this clause was intended to secure the freedom of the church from interference by the state.
It goes with the second clause, which guarantees the freedom of churches to teach and worship in accordance with their beliefs. In carrying out her God-given mandate to labor for morality and justice, the Church renders an inestimable benefit to civil society.
Christians should do their utmost to rectify misconstructions of the non-establishment principle and to safeguard the right of churches to teach and bear witness to what they see as pertaining to the faith.
Q: What should a priest do when confronted with a publicly dissenting politician who appears in the Communion line?
Cardinal Dulles: In that situation, the priest has limited options. Often, to avoid an ugly scene that would disrupt the ceremony, the priest will feel obliged not to refuse Communion. In the absence of some formal decree excluding a person from the sacraments, most priests will be very cautious about turning Catholics away at the altar.
The primary responsibility rests on those asking for Communion to examine themselves regarding their dispositions, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29. Only God can know with certitude the state of the communicant's soul at the moment.
Q: Some observers wonder why canon law stipulates excommunication for a woman who has an abortion — under certain conditions — yet doesn't apply the same penalty to a politician whose votes might help to finance thousands of abortions. Is there a loophole in canon law?
Cardinal Dulles: In moral theology an important distinction is made between ordering or performing an action and cooperating in the action of another. Where the cooperation is remote, its influence on the effect may be very slight.
To vote for an appropriations bill that includes some provisions for funding abortions would not be so gravely sinful as to warrant excommunication under Canon 1398. The vote might arguably be licit if the funding for abortion were only incidental and could not be removed from a bill that was otherwise very desirable.
The legal problem about abortion in the United States does not come primarily from legislators but from the judiciary, which interprets the Constitution as giving a civil entitlement to abortion practically on demand. This interpretation of the Constitution, we believe, is erroneous and should be corrected.
Q: How should the politicians and the public at large view the penalty of excommunication? What is the Church's intention with the penalty?
Cardinal Dulles: Excommunication is not expulsion from the Church. The excommunicated person remains a Catholic but is barred from access to the sacraments until the penalty has been lifted by competent Church authority. This spiritual penalty, the most serious that the Church can inflict, is, so to speak, a last resort.
In extreme cases, the Church finds herself obliged to declare that a given person is no longer in communion with the Church. The purpose of such an excommunication is to protect the sacraments from profanation, to prevent the faithful from being confused about the force of Catholic teachings, and to assist the excommunicated person to reconsider, to repent and to be healed.
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2 Storylines of the Buffalo Sabres Preseason
By Tim Olewniczak September 28th, 2015
The Buffalo Sabres have compiled an impressive 3-1-0 record so far during the 2015-16 preseason. Of course this is during the preseason where, similar to the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the points don't matter.
Teams are focused on their talent pool to see who will earn an opportunity and they are less concerned with a winning record. However, the Sabres have been bad, historically bad, during the past two seasons. Given their regular season struggles, the Sabres' preseason record is at the very least a step in the right direction.
Head coach Dan Bylsma has rotated players in and out of his lineup during the preseason as he studies the club's young talent and veterans. Bylsma noted that the last few preseason games would be more representative of his club's regular season roster but it is still a work in progress.
The Sabres on paper are a very different team than they have been the past two seasons and they are beginning to show this change during the preseason. Here are two storylines that have emerged during the preseason that will be important as Buffalo heads toward the regular season.
[See Also: How They Were Built: 2015-16 Buffalo Sabres]
Sabres' Offense Showing Signs of Improvement in Preseason
In four preseason games, the Sabres have scored 17, yes you read that right, 17 goals. Again, the level of competition is much different during the regular seasons than it is in the preseason yet this goal total is encouraging. The Sabres likely won't be able to replicate this 4.25 goals per game average during the regular season but if they can score goals at half this pace it will be an improvement.
Buffalo had more downs than ups in the past two seasons especially on offense. For the past two seasons, the Sabres owned the NHL's worst statistics on offense. During the 2013-14 season, the Sabres scored 150 goals which was an average of 1.83 goals per game. Similarly, the Sabres managed 153 goals last season good for an average of 1.87 goals per game.
There were many low points during the past two seasons but the bottoming out occurred in January 2015. During that span the Sabres compiled an abysmal record of 0-12-0. Buffalo's offense struggled in a glaringly obvious fashion contributing to their poor performance during this stretch. The Sabres scored only 18 goals in January 2015 while their opponents scored 51 goals against them.
So far during the preseason, the Sabres are a completely different team on offense. In four preseason games, Buffalo has scored almost as many goals as they scored in the entire month of January 2015. While it remains to be seen how this translates to the regular season, the Sabres are demonstrating their offensive potential during the preseason.
According to Fox Sports, Tyler Ennis is leading the charge for the Sabres with five points in two games. Most of Ennis' points were tallied during the Sabres' 6-4 win against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday night where he scored a hat trick. He played on a line with Jack Eichel and Evander Kane during that game and he's showing why many believe this will be a big season for Ennis.
Sabres Preseason Struggle in Goals Allowed
While the offense is showing signs of promise during the preseason, the Sabres' ability to keep the puck out of their own net has left much more to be desired. In their four preseason games, Buffalo has allowed 15 goals which places the club in the bottom five in the NHL in this statistic. With the Sabres' well-documented regular season struggles in goals allowed, their preseason struggles in this area make it an important storyline heading into the regular season.
This won't surprise you but Buffalo's historically poor 2013-14 and 2014-15 teams allowed a ton of goals against. The Sabres allowed 243 goals during the 2013-14 season which was the 25th most in the NHL. Buffalo's goals against situation got worse in the 2014-15 season. The Sabres finished the season allowing 269 goals against. The Edmonton Oilers were the only team below the Sabres in this statistic with a total of 276 goals allowed last season.
Buffalo performed poorly in terms of goals allowed last season despite the fact that goaltending was arguably their strongest asset. Jhonas Enroth and Michal Neuvirth were the netminders for the majority of the Sabres' games last season. After they were traded away, Anders Lindback helped close out the rest of the regular season in Buffalo.
According to NHL.com, Buffalo allowed an average of 35.6 shots against per game which was the most in the NHL. Amid this historically poor Sabres' season, Buffalo's goaltenders performed rather well given the circumstances by putting up respectable save percentage numbers. Enroth had a .903 save percentage, Neuvirth had a .918 save percentage, and Lindback had a .924 save percentage while wearing a Sabres' uniform last season.
Buffalo has allowed an average of 3.75 goals against per game so far during the preseason according to Fox Sports. The goaltending duties have been split by several players including Chad Johnson, Nathan Lieuwen, Andrey Makarov, and Robin Lehner. As Bylsma works his goaltenders, management needs to find the right one to help improve the club's defensive statistics.
Robin Lehner is an important component of Buffalo's goaltending mix. General Manager Tim Murray acquired Lehner and forward David Legwand from the Ottawa Senators this summer for a 1st round pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft. Murray has been criticized for overpaying in this trade and this season will help determine whether or not this critique is valid.
The success or failure of this trade will be heavily gauged by Lehner's ability or inability to earn Buffalo's starting goaltender job. In two preseason appearances, according to Sabres.com, Lehner has logged 80 minutes allowing six goals on 44 shots attempts. These are preseason statistics but Lehner will need to perform far better to emerge as the Sabres' starter during the regular season.
[See Also: David Legwand and the Buffalo Sabres]
Evander Kane
Robin Lehner