{"text": " 40 Police responding to a break-in at a gun store in Marietta, Ga., were shot at early Tuesday morning during a tense stand off that ended when the county's SWAT used anarmored vehicle to enter the store. 21 Marietta police Officer Brittany Wallace said no injuries were reported and four suspects have been apprehended at the Deercreek Gunshop. 15 Gun shop burglary turns into shots fired & the SWAT Team called in Marietta. 46 @Fox5Kaitlyn has live report in minutes pic.twitter.com/AiXBBeNhYr \u2014 FOX 5 Atlanta (@FOX5Atlanta) July 19, 2016\n\nWallace said officers responding to a report of a burglary noticed movement on top of and inside the building, and soon apprehended two suspects. 25 She said a third suspect inside the business fired on officers, who returned fire, but no one was hit by the gunshots. 15 She said a fourth suspect came out of the business with his hands up. 9 SURRENDER 4th man taken into custody in Marietta. 29 WATCH: #breaking pic.twitter.com/jD3e1puglX \u2014 Kaitlyn Pratt Fox 5 (@Fox5Kaitlyn) July 19, 2016\n\nThe store is about 18 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta. 31 Wallace said shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday that police were using an armored police vehicle to make entry into the business and make sure there was no one else inside. 26 Wallace told FOX 5 that as the scene progressed, someone from inside the gun shop began firing and that's when police fired back. 25 \"As far as we know, no one was struck and that third suspect has been taken into custody,\" she said. 36 Wallace said she didn't know exactly how the report was received by police, but she said there were no signs of any type of ambush or attempt to lure officers to the store. 24 Police nationwide have been on high alert in the wake of recent killings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 18 Video from a television news helicopter showed officers taking cover behind police cars outside the gun store. 22 \"There are several officers, and our response to anything here lately has been that way,\" Wallace said. 22 \"We want to make sure the business is secure, but also the surroundings are secure for our safety.\" 7 The Associated Press contributed to this report"} {"text": " 22 Astronomers just uncovered hundreds of hidden galaxies a mere 250 million light years away from Earth\u2014well within our own galactic neighborhood. 10 But how did they stay unknown for so long? 17 The fault isn\u2019t with them, it\u2019s with our own Milky Way. 42 The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research just completed a survey, published today in the Astronomical Journal, detailing the hundreds of newly discovered galaxies\u2014as well as giving a much better idea of where some older suspected galaxies were hiding. 22 Altogether, they mapped 883 galaxies lurking behind the Milky Way; you can see an artist\u2019s representation above. 20 Advertisement\n\nScientists had some idea that there was something out there \u2014 but they didn\u2019t know what. 30 Some of the brightest clusters of galaxies were already visible, an even better clue, though, was a strange gravitational force pulling the Milky Way towards it. 17 Astronomers have been aware of the mysterious pull\u2014dubbed the \u201cGreat Attractor\u201d\u2014since the 1970s. 13 So how did this all of this stay hidden for so long? 37 For an answer, take look at this picture:\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThat\u2019s a map NASA put together of the Milky Way last year\u2014and it shows that we\u2019re blinded by our own galaxy. 21 The Milky Way is dust and stars and light and gas and space, all swirled together into a spiral. 11 It\u2019s a beautiful, but limiting, place. 34 Essentially, we can look outwards but we can\u2019t see past ourselves\u2014and the light those galaxies are sending out towards us gets lost in the brighter, closer light surrounding us. 60 To get around that, researchers used a radio telescope, along with a new receiver developed especially for the purpose, to survey the (rather marvelously named) \u201cZone of Avoidance.\u201d This is what they found:\n\nAdvertisement\n\nOf the 883 galaxies astronomers mapped there, a full third of them were completely unknown before. 25 It\u2019s an incredible reminder of just how much there is left out there for us to discover, even right around us. 10 [Astronomical Journal]\n\nFollow the author @misra."} {"text": " 30 TYPICALLY, when politicians attack rivals in campaign speeches, they must distort their opponents\u2019 words for maximum effect, or at least wrench them out of context. 42 When Hillary Clinton used a foreign-policy address on June 2nd to savage Donald Trump as a man unfit to be commander-in-chief, her speech gained much of its power by quoting the businessman\u2019s boorish inanities more or less verbatim. 50 Striking a tone that mixed derision with indignation and disbelief, Mrs Clinton reminded an audience in San Diego that Mr Trump \u201csays he has foreign-policy experience because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.\u201d As a point of pure fact, Mrs Clinton is right. 36 Explaining his understanding of Russia in an interview with the Fox News Channel on May 5th, Mr Trump\u2014the presumptive presidential nominee of the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. 8 Bush\u2014declared: \u201cI know Russia well. 44 I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, Miss Universe contest, which was a big, big, incredible event.\u201d\n\nGet our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. 39 \u201cThis is a man who said more countries should have nuclear weapons, including Saudi Arabia,\u201d charged the Democratic front-runner, who was fierier and more energetic than she has seemed in a long time. 9 There, the fact-checkers might stumble a little. 38 Mr Trump has offered many thoughts on nuclear proliferation in recent months, some of them straightforwardly alarming, and some of them resembling what some prose-stylists refer to as a \u201cword salad\u201d of incoherence. 43 Because nuclear proliferation is really quite important, and to make quite clear Mr Trump\u2019s lack of clarity on the subject, here is a bit of an interview with CNN to which Mrs Clinton was referring, from March. 126 Reminded by the host, Anderson Cooper, that it is American policy to oppose new members of the nuclear club, Mr Trump responded: \u201cMaybe it\u2019s going to be time to change, because so many people, you have Pakistan has it, you have China have it, you have so many other countries [with the Bomb].\u201d Then, a moment later, he went on: \u201cWouldn\u2019t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?\u201d Asked in the same CNN interview if Saudi Arabia should have nuclear arms, Mr Trump responded, at first: \u201cSaudi Arabia? 25 Absolutely\u201d, and then \u201cno, not nuclear weapons,\u201d and then finally, \u201cCan I be honest with you? 67 It\u2019s going to happen, anyway.\u201d\n\nThe crowd in San Diego roared \u201cNo\u201d like the audience at a Christmas pantomime when Mrs Clinton bundled all of that into a single rhetorical question: \u201cDo we want his finger anywhere near the button?\u201d\n\nIt was a neat punchline, but in the real world this is not a joke. 44 On June 1st the official newspaper of the North Korean ruling Worker\u2019s Party praised Mr Trump for threatening to pull American troops out of South Korea, unless America is paid a great deal more for maintaining forces on the peninsula. 30 North Korean news outlets have called Mr Trump \u201cwise\u201d for saying that he would be willing to talk to Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader. 23 That is the problem with candidates for the American presidency saying rash and ignorant things about isolated, paranoid and ruthless regimes. 25 Even when the only thing being shot off, for now, is a populist\u2019s mouth, real people risk getting hurt. 29 Mrs Clinton criticised her opponent for praising \u201cdictators like Vladimir Putin\u201d and for having spoken admiringly about the bloody Chinese crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. 8 True and true, again, alas. 16 At moments, Mrs Clinton seemed to be having just a bit too much fun. 90 The 2016 election cycle has offered many confounding moments, but even Lexington, in his jaundiced state, was briefly startled to hear a former secretary of state and senator saying of her Republican opponent: \u201cI will leave it to the psychiatrists to explain his affection for tyrants.\u201d Maybe I am being priggish and this is the election cycle in which madman gags become the norm, but one of the two people in the sentence above is likely to be the next American president. 11 Why did Mrs Clinton lay on the scorn so thickly? 112 One cynical answer, swiftly supplied by conservative commentators on social media, is that she needs to distract attention away from her own vulnerabilities, from her terrible decision to use an insecure private e-mail server while running the State Department, to the fact that some big diplomatic initiatives of her time as America\u2019s top diplomat did not work out very well, from the toppling of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, to the abortive \u201creset\u201d of relations with the Kremlin, when America tested the theory that President Dimitry Medvedev might be a more constructive partner than his then-prime minister, Mr Putin. 65 A typical gibe came from Hugh Hewitt, a radio talk-show host who has made foreign policy a speciality, who tweeted during the speech: \u201cWhy believe anything @HillaryClinton says about @realDonaldTrump when you can\u2019t believe anything she says on her server?\u201d Others poured scorn on Mrs Clinton\u2019s right to talk tough about Russia. 19 But their bluster cannot conceal a real problem for Republicans whose foreign-policy beliefs are even vaguely Reaganesque. 102 For while many Republicans are sincere in their belief that President Barack Obama and Mrs Clinton have been insufficiently tough on Mr Putin, they still have to wrestle with the idea that Mr Trump, their own nominee, calls the Russian president \u201cvery bright\u201d and a \u201cstrong leader\u201d; has mused aloud about \u201can easing of tensions\u201d with Russia; and said that he would ask members of the 28-member NATO alliance to \u201cpay up\u201d or \u201cget out\u201d, while suggesting that the alliance is itself \u201cobsolete\u201d. 12 Mrs Clinton\u2019s speech served several purposes, in fact. 63 Her aim is in part to make foreign-policy hawks in the Republican Party squirm and writhe at the idea of backing Mr Trump, an \u201cAmerica First\u201d unilateralist who says that he would be willing to walk away from providing security in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, unless allies over and above the cost of maintaining American bases worldwide. 25 Sneakily, Mrs Clinton portrayed Mr Trump as simultaneously rash and clueless in his policy pronouncements, but consistent in his pessimism about America. 67 Mr Trump has for decades said that the world is \u201claughing\u201d at America, she noted, even buying full-page newspaper ads in 1987 when Reagan was president, \u201csaying that America lacked a backbone and the world was\u2014you guessed it\u2014laughing at us.\u201d You have to wonder why someone with so little confidence in America wants to be president, she added. 19 Within the bubble of Washington, DC, diplomatic types, Lexington can report this is already working. 41 One Republican expert on Russia policy confided recently that: \u201cI can\u2019t stand her, but I am going to vote for her,\u201d smiling mirthlessly when this reporter suggested that might make a neat bumper-sticker. 21 Among the ranks of elected Republican politicians, it is proving harder to resist the pressure to embrace Mr Trump. 42 During Mrs Clinton\u2019s speech, news broke that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, has issued an op-ed in his local Wisconsin newspaper, saying that he will vote for Mr Trump in November. 42 That surrender, which follows weeks of resistance by Mr Ryan, was a bit grudging, with the Speaker writing that he is \u201cconfident\u201d that Mr Trump can make the conservative policy agenda of House Republicans a reality. 17 But an endorsement is an endorsement, and shows the awful dilemma that Republican leaders face. 36 As much as some of them may loathe Mr Trump\u2019s policies, and fear that he will lose them the White House, they do not know how to win without his voters. 14 But Mrs Clinton\u2019s speech was not only aimed at wavering Republicans. 30 She has yet to put the Democratic nomination away, though it is almost impossible for her left-wing rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, to beat her. 36 So another clear aim of the San Diego address was to woo leftish Democrats who think of Mrs Clinton as too hawkish, and have never forgiven her for supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq. 30 Mrs Clinton\u2019s attack on Mr Trump duly cast him as a dangerous and thin-skinned blowhard with such a short temper that he might blunder into a war. 39 Still, millions of Americans on right and left will probably have tuned out Mrs Clinton: she heads into this election with appallingly low approval ratings, beaten only by Mr Trump\u2019s even lower scores. 11 So why the glee and unfeigned passion in her delivery? 21 One answer is that perhaps the most important audience for her speech was one man: the Republican nominee himself. 25 Mrs Clinton has a strong interest in needling and provoking Mr Trump, for the simple reason that he responds so badly to criticism. 43 There was a certain blood-sport aspect to hearing Mrs Clinton predicting that Mr Trump would respond to her speech with rude tweets, and asking her listeners to imagine him in the White House\u2019s Situation Room, making life-and-death calls. 26 \u201cDo we want him making those calls\u2014someone thin-skinned and quick to anger, who lashes out at the smallest criticism?\u201d she asked. 4 Her tactic worked. 23 Moments earlier, Mr Trump had indeed sent out a snarky tweet, saying: \u201cBad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! 6 Reading poorly from the teleprompter! 32 She doesn\u2019t even look presidential!\u201d It is a measure of the campaign to come that provoking a thin-skinned Trump-tweet, for Mrs Clinton, is a win. 9 The country faces 22 more weeks of this."} {"text": " 10 Heavy is the head that wears the Pok\u00e9mon crown. 30 After two days of card-game combat in Washington, D.C., a new boy-king of the Japanese role-playing game has emerged and he is 16-year-old Andrew Estrada of Burlington. 22 Andrew Estrada holds the three most important cards in the Pokemon Card World Champion game, along with his 2014 trophy. 57 ( Chris So / Toronto Star )\n\nThe two-time Canadian Pok\u00e9mon champ and first-ever Canuck to beat out competitors from more than 30 countries and win the invite-only world tournament last month came away from D.C. with a championship trophy, a $10,000 university scholarship and a paid trip to next year\u2019s contest. 22 For fans of Pok\u00e9mon, the Japanese video game turned collectible card game, there is no brighter star than Estrada. 28 But as quickly as his name became household fare for international apostles of Pikachu and the gang, the reluctant royal started declining interviews, cancelling photo-ops. 22 \u201cEngland\u2019s been calling, Brazil has been calling, Spain,\u201d said his mother, Marcy Estrada. 13 Article Continued Below\n\n\u201cThis has always been his secret little life. 69 The moment he won, people wanted to touch him, people wanted his autograph, people wanted to be with him, and it was a little too much for a 16-year-old.\u201d With 3,000 fans in attendance and a further 800,000 watching the matches live online on Aug. 16-17, the popularity of the Pok\u00e9mon card game is a phenomenon understood by few outside the circle. 28 \u201cI almost wish I could just win and get out without anyone knowing,\u201d the elusive Estrada told the Star in a brief phone interview. 55 \u201cIt just happened and I\u2019m learning to deal with it, but I don\u2019t like the attention.\u201d After his victory at the Washington convention centre, Estrada was assigned two personal handlers just to make sure he could get out of the building, according to his mother. 42 \u201cIt\u2019s my last year of high school and I really don\u2019t need distractions or people coming up to me, making possible accusations or making fun of me, calling it nerdy,\u201d Estrada said. 32 \u201cIt\u2019s such an intellectual game.\u201d\n\nCompetitors play head-to-head matches, usually with a deck of 60 or so cards assembled beforehand from a possible field of hundreds. 22 Points are scored by how the various combinations of a player\u2019s cards stack up against their opponent\u2019s. 60 \u201cIt takes time and skill to know what everyone else is going to be playing and then build your deck to counter that or outspeed it,\u201d said Morpheus Meadows, an employee at Oakville\u2019s Comic Connection, where Estrada \u2014 once a regular \u2014 hasn\u2019t been seen in at least a month. 42 Article Continued Below\n\nFrom a $29 starter deck bought for his bedroom five years ago to modern YouTube superstardom, the Corpus Christi Catholic Secondary School student still keeps his cards close to his vest \u2014 even around his friends. 10 \u201cMy close friends know,\u201d Estrada said. 89 \u201cBut only a selected few.\u201d Related: Hundreds of thousands try to beat one game of Pokemon Pokemon: Easy to get caught up again The aspiring astrophysicist\u2019s mother categorized her son\u2019s baptism into the world of the Pok\u00e9mon \u00fcber-elite as \u201cjust insane.\u201d Over four years of international competition, Marcy estimates her son has bagged about $14,000 in scholarships plus thousands more in prizes and flights to and from exotic locales like Hawaii, San Diego and Vancouver. 16 \u201cWhen Andrew is playing, he becomes a different person,\u201d she said. 45 \u201cIt\u2019s amazing.\u201d The realtor admitted to frequently putting her own career \u2014 and that of her husband \u2014 on hold to travel with her son to competitions far and wide, shelling out for cards and accommodations along the way. 8 \u201cWe put our lives into this. 10 It\u2019s his passion,\u201d Marcy said. 9 \u201cIt\u2019s not about the money. 67 But I\u2019d say that maybe we\u2019ve come out on top.\u201d The Pok\u00e9mon World Championships is a \u201ccelebration of the global Pok\u00e9mon community and embodies the Pok\u00e9mon spirit of fun, friendship, and mutual respect,\u201d said J.C. Smith, marketing director for the Japanese company\u2019s Seattle-based subsidiary, Pok\u00e9mon Company International, in a press release. 12 \u201cWe extend well-earned congratulations to our new Pok\u00e9mon World Champions. 19 They will travel home as heroes and will inspire others to strive for greatness.\u201d\n\nRead more about:"} {"text": " 276 Start of Title Rest of Title Year (# missing) Austin Powers... 1997 - 4 Dr. Strangelove or... 1964 - 10 The Treasure... 1948 - 4 Wallace & Gromit: ... 2005 - 5 Precious: Based on... 2009 - 5 Eternal Sunshine... 2004 - 4 The Day... 1951 - 4 Talladega Nights... 2006 - 5 Lemony Snicket's... 2004 - 5 Pirates of the Caribbean... 2003 - 6 Don't Be a Menace to South Central... 1996 - 7 I Now Pronounce... 2007 - 4 Lock, Stock... 1998 - 4 Who's Afraid... 1966 - 3 Indiana Jones and the... 2008 - 5 Snow White... 1937 - 4 The Assassination of Jesse James... 2007 - 5\n\nStart of Title Rest of Title Year (# missing) The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill... 1995 - 5 The Good... 1966 - 5 Close Encounters... 1977 - 4 Sweeney Todd... 2007 - 6 10 Things... 1999 - 4 Master and Commander... 2003 - 6 Butch Cassidy... 1969 - 4 Mr. Smith... 1939 - 3 Honey... 1989 - 4 The Postman... 1946 - 3 Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for... 2006 - 6 The Unbearable... 1988 - 3 The Sisterhood... 2005 - 4 Sky Captain... 2004- 5 To Wong Foo... 1995 - 5 Seven Brides... 1954 - 3 I Know... 1997 - 5 1997 - 5 1997 - 5 1997 - 5 1997 - 5 1997 - 5 1997 - 5"} {"text": " 21 An orphaned kangaroo adopted by a police officer in outback Western Australia has survived being abducted by a wedge-tailed eagle. 6 Audio Player failed to load. 32 Try to Download directly (1.75 MB) Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. 43 Download (1.75 MB)\n\nLoad more chevron right\n\nThe six-month-old kangaroo was in a yard at the remote Burringurrah Community Police Station on Wednesday when the eagle swooped in, lifted him over the two-metre high fence and carried him away. 29 Named Cuejo, the red kangaroo was adopted by Cue Police's Constable Scott Mason after its mother was hit and killed by a truck in early March. 15 Constable Mason was on police duties at Burringurrah when he witnessed the eagle swoop. 15 \"I ended up chasing after him and the eagle,\" he said. 30 \"A short distance away the eagle landed with Cuejo and another eagle, which was circling over as well, started pecking or having a go at Cuejo. 29 \"I managed to scare the eagles away, and then Cuejo got up and obviously being frightened he started running away again,\" Constable Mason said. 28 The eagles, who were circling above, saw Cuejo running away and began to chase him down again, putting Constable Mason in pursuit as well. 28 \"I finally caught up with him a few hundred metres down the way and found out that he was bleeding quite heavily,\" he said. 32 \"He has a puncture wound to his chest and another puncture wound to his face, as well as heaps of fur pulled off the back of his neck.\" 19 Share Cuejo is having a high-vis uniform made up for when he accompanies Constable Mason on police duties. 16 Constable Mason said he had to call upon his paramedic background to treat the injuries. 40 \"Being out in Burringurrah there's nothing available \u2014 no vets \u2014 so I went to the nursing post and got a whole lot of Betadine, sutures and everything that we could utilise,\" he said. 46 \"I made several phone calls to vets in Geraldton and back in Cue to the people that assist me in looking after Cuejo ... with their help and guidance we managed to stem the bleeding and now he seems to be slowly recovering.\" 19 \"He's just started getting back up and is feeding, he hasn't fully recovered.\" 26 Constable Mason said he would take Cuejo \u2014 who weighs nearly four kilograms \u2014 to Perth in the next few days for a veterinarian check-up. 23 Before the eagle incident, the kangaroo had settled into police station life and was often seen hopping along behind Constable Mason. 19 The kangaroo often accompanies him on police duties, and a high-vis uniform is being made for him."} {"text": " 24 Majorana dynamics\n\nWe first simulate the Majorana dynamics to show the \u2018unphysical\u2019 capability of the EQS before implementing antiunitary symmetry operations. 30 The Majorana equation26, one of the representative relativistic equations,\n\nwhere the Feynman slash notation with being the Dirac matrices27, describes the dynamics of a non-Hamiltonian system. 17 Note that the spinor and its charge conjugation are present simultaneously in equation (1). 32 Majorana envisioned that equation (1) together with the Majorana condition would be the fundamental equation describing neutrinos26, which exhibit the novel phenomenon as \u2018neutrino oscillation\u201928. 21 Besides, the Majorana equation (1) has its own theoretical importance in exploring physics beyond the standard model. 21 Moreover, the utility of the relativistic equations is not limited to relativistic quantum mechanics and the quantum field theory. 44 For example, electrons propagating through graphene are described by the (2+1)-dimensional Dirac equation29, and the symmetry breaking induced by tachyon condensation is described by a (1+1)-dimensional Dirac-like equation with imaginary mass30, a non-Hamiltonian system. 26 Recently, a quantum simulation of the Majorana dynamics was performed in a photonic quantum platform, by decomposing its evolution in two Dirac equations31,32. 39 Through the quantum simulation of the inherently unphysical Majorana equation, we demonstrate various unique features, such as violation of charge and momentum conservation, broken orthogonality and nontrivial effect of the state\u2019s global phase. 29 Embedding quantum simulator\n\nThe essential idea of an EQS is the mapping from the original Hilbert space to the enlarged one for spinors in 1+1 space-time dimension, . 10 In the position basis, as shown in Fig. 45 1, the EQS mapping is defined as\n\nFigure 1: Schematic of the embedding quantum simulation (EQS) (a) The \u2018unphysical\u2019 process in the original Hilbert space, where the evolution of the two-component Majorana spinor is considered. 29 We also implemented the unphysical processes, such as the time-reversal and charge-conjugation operations during the Majorana dynamics, which are forbidden by the laws of quantum mechanics. 29 (b) The unphysical processes can be implemented in physical systems through the embedding scheme, which maps the original Hilbert space to the enlarged Hilbert space. 15 After the physical process, the final results are remapped to the original space. 32 The embedding quantum simulator is built in a single 171Yb+ ion trapped in a linear Paul trap, where the enlarged space is encoded in the ground-state manifold of the ion. 43 (c) The physical unitary operations in the enlarged Hilbert space are implemented by applying microwaves with six frequencies, which are generated by mixing the monochromatic microwave (12.442812 GHz) with the signals from computer-programmed arbitrary wave form generator. 13 Full size image\n\nwhere are real functions satisfying the overall normalization condition . 7 Inversely, as depicted in Fig. 67 1, the original spinor is retrieved through a matrix multiplication after evolving in the EQS for certain duration,\n\nThrough the EQS mapping (equation (3)), the complex conjugate operation, , is represented by a unitary operator in the enlarged Hilbert space, which can be implemented directly in a quantum system (see Methods and Supplementary Note 1). 25 With a certain choice of the Dirac matrices in the (1+1) dimension, and , the charge-conjugate spinor is properly defined as . 23 The Majorana equation in 1+1 dimensions,\n\ninherently contains the complex conjugate operator , which makes the Majorana dynamics prohibited by nature. 28 For simplicity, we introduce a set of dimensionless units, that is, mc2 for the energy, mc for the momentum and for the time. 38 In the enlarged Hilbert space, the original non-Hamiltonian system is mapped to a Hamiltonian one governed by an effective Hamiltonian,\n\nNote that the equation of motion in the enlarged space, , keeps evolving inside . 60 Because the effective Hamiltonian (equation (5)) does not contain a position operator, we perform the experimental implementation in momentum representation, where the dynamics of the Fourier-transformed spinor is governed by a simpler Hamiltonian obtained by substituting the momentum operator with its eigenvalue in equation (5) (see Supplementary Note 2). 37 Along the same line, some discrete symmetry operations, that is, the time reversal and the charge conjugation take form of unitary two-qubit gate operations in the enlarged Hilbert space: and , respectively. 20 Experimental set-up\n\nThe EQS is built in an ion-trap system, which is a leading platform for quantum simulation5. 20 The system consists of a single 171Yb+ ion confined in a linear Paul trap33, subjected to multifrequency microwaves. 5 As shown in Fig. 73 1, the four internal states of the ground-state manifold 2S 1/2 are encoded as |F=0, m F =0\u3009\u2261|1\u3009 and |F=0, m F =\u22121, 0, 1\u3009\u2261|m F +3\u3009, |1\u3009 and {|2\u3009, |3\u3009, |4\u3009} are separated by the hyperfine splitting , and a uniform static magnetic field B=9.694 G is applied to define the quantization axis and causes Zeeman splitting among the upper states. 6 As shown in the Fig. 23 1, the couplings between |1\u3009 and the upper states can be directly driven by microwave with frequencies as and , respectively. 32 The couplings among the equally spaced upper states, that is, |2\u3009, |3\u3009 and |4\u3009, are implemented by the stimulated Raman process of microwaves (see Methods). 26 On the basis of the multi-fold microwave technique, we achieve ultimate controllability over the Hilbert space spanned by all of the four internal states. 22 In other words, we construct a ququad, an elementary unit of quantum information processing consisting of four basis states. 41 In principle, large-scale EQS can always be constructed by substituting one of the qubits in an array by a ququad, and the requisite microwave techniques involved in the control of the ququad have been developed in this work. 29 With the ability to perform any single-ququad operation, we implement the effective Hamiltonian equation (5) in the momentum space,\n\non top of the EQS. 9 Experimental procedure\n\nThe experimental procedure is as follows. 17 First, we map an initial Majorana spinor to a real bispinor in the enlarged space. 14 The momentum representation of the bispinor evolves according to the enlarged space Hamiltonian . 21 After encoding the initial condition into the EQS, we implement for a certain duration to simulate the Majorana dynamics. 30 Then we perform quantum-state tomography (see Supplementary Note 3) to obtain the enlarged space density matrix , which can be mapped to the original space density matrix . 24 The average value of a diagonal operator A d in the momentum space can be directly obtained via integration over the momentum, . 56 To obtain the average value of an off-diagonal operator in the momentum space, for example, the average position of the Majorana particle, we change the four-component equation of motion in the enlarged Hilbert space into a pair of decoupled two-component equations by diagonalizing the first qubit (see Supplementary Note 4). 22 By coherently evolving a couple of two-dimensional equations with different momenta, we obtain the phase information between different momentum components. 12 We repeat each measurement 1,000 times to get the expectation value. 18 The statistical errors, which are mainly due to quantum projection, are estimated by the s.d. 4 of mean value. 29 Majorana dynamics\n\nFigure 2 shows our experimental results of the Majorana dynamics, where the initial spinors are chosen to be plane-wave states with , that is, . 11 Figure 2a shows the momentum-space Zitterbewegung for a Majorana particle. 36 Due to the existence of the complex conjugate operator in the Majorana equation, the momentum, which is conserved for free Dirac particles, is no longer a conserved quantity in the Majorana dynamics. 33 Because the violation of momentum conservation is originated by the Majorana mass term, the amplitude of the oscillation is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the momentum of the initial state. 27 Meanwhile, the frequency of the oscillation is determined by the relativistic dispersion relation , so the initial plane wave with larger momentum will oscillate faster. 5 As shown in Fig. 20 2b, the Majorana dynamics also violates charge conservation, which may lead to physics beyond the standard model34. 26 In the rest frame, the charge operator measures the difference between the populations of the internal states, which is equivalent to the operator35. 52 For the non-zero momentum case, the particle and antiparticle basis is obtained by diagonalizing the corresponding Dirac equation with the same momentum, and the charge of a Majorana spinor is defined as the difference between the populations of the particle and antiparticle components (see Supplementary Note 5). 24 For the same reason, the amplitude and frequency of the charge oscillation exhibits similar momentum dependence as that of the momentum-space Zitterbewegung. 6 Figure 2: Majorana dynamics. 16 (a) Zitterbewegung in momentum space during the evolution of a single Majorana particle. 12 (b) Violation of charge conservation in the Majorana dynamics. 24 The average values of the physical observables in a and b are measurement results of the Majorana spinor evolving from the initial state . 12 (c) Nonconserved fidelity caused by an initial global phase. 11 The Majorana spinors evolve from the initial states with \u03b8=\u03c0/2. 11 (d) Nonconserved orthogonality for initially perpendicular Majorana spinors. 8 The Majorana spinors evolve from initial states . 42 We choose the momenta of the initial plane-wave states as P=0 (black dots and dotted line), 0.5 (green squares and dashed line) and 1 (red diamonds and solid line), where Majorana mass m=1. 7 The curves are from theoretical simulation. 37 (e) Density matrices in the enlarged space obtained by quantum-state tomography, related to the data point marked by the black arrow in c. (f) Reconstructed density matrices in the original space. 25 The value of each observable for the state tomography in the enlarged space is measured by averaging the experimental results after 1,000 times repetition. 40 We estimate the error bars in a\u2013d by using the standard error propagation method of the standard deviation (1\u03c3) of each observable in the tomography mainly from the quantum projection noise (see Supplementary Note 3). 20 Full size image\n\nBesides the above physical consequences, the dynamics governed by Majorana equation also shows unphysical phenomena. 35 For example, the fidelity , where and are two Majorana spinors that evolve from initial states differing only in a global phase, , will not always be unity as shown in Fig. 2 2c. 19 In other words, a Majorana spinor does not have the freedom to choose an arbitrary global phase. 23 The reason for this surprising effect is the existence of the complex conjugate in the Majorana equation in equation (4). 34 This effect can be more explicitly shown in the mapping in equation (2), that is, the global phase actually changes the initial four-component spinor in the enlarged Hilbert space. 31 Figure 2e,f shows an example of the experimental results of the density matrices in the enlarged and original Hilbert spaces, which are indeed different from each other. 3 In Fig. 25 2d, we experimentally observe the non-conservation of the orthogonality defined as , with being the Majorana spinor evolved from an orthogonal initial state . 27 During the evolution, the initial Majorana spinor will be coupled to through the Hermitian relativistic kinetic term , and through the non-Hermitian Majorana mass term . 19 The orthogonality , where is the Majorana spinor that evolves from the initial state , is always zero. 19 This clearly indicates that the non-conservation of the orthogonality stems from the non-Hermitian part of the Majorana Hamiltonian. 27 As a result, given the same Majorana mass, we understand that the amplitude of the orthogonality oscillation is inversely proportional to the initial momentum. 22 Symmetry operations\n\nOther than the plane waves, we also implement Majorana dynamics with realistic initial wave packets in our EQS. 32 For example, the initial states for the Majorana dynamics in Figs 3 and 4 are moving Gaussian states with momentum distributions centred around P 0 =1 with an internal state . 43 The first part of the time axis (0\u2264t<4) in Figs 3 and 4 represent the Majorana dynamics of a moving wave packet, where we observe damping oscillation in the momentum space and Zitterbewegung in the position space. 32 The reason of the damping in the momentum space is that a Gaussian wave packet has distribution over many different momentum components, and each momentum component oscillates with different frequency. 44 To our surprise, although the average momentum of a Majorana particle behaves quite different from that of a Dirac particle, there is no visible difference in the behaviours of the average position as well as the probability distribution in position space. 35 This is because a Majorana particle oscillates between the particle and antiparticle components with inverse momentum, but the positions as well as the velocities of the particle and antiparticle are exactly the same9. 6 Figure 3: Time-reversal operation. 19 The time-reversal operation is performed at the mid-point (t=4) of the evolution of a Majorana particle. 27 The initial state is a moving Gaussian wave packet in momentum space and in position space, respectively, with initial average momentum P 0 =1. 11 (a) Time-dependent probability distribution in the momentum space. 23 The solid curve represents the theoretical results of the average momentum , whereas the red dots with error bars are experimental results. 15 The same conventions are used for c, and a and c of Fig. 2 4. 31 Right after the time-reversal operation at t=4, the momentum p of the Majorana particle is reversed to \u2212p, which makes the discontinuity at the evolution of the picture. 15 It is clearly shown that the momentum-space Zitterbewegung is revived after the time-reversal operation. 24 (b) Probability distributions in the momentum space at various times t=0, 3, 5 and 8 from bottom to top. 15 The solid curves are obtained from theoretical calculation whereas the shades are from experiment. 15 The same conventions are used for d, and b and d of Fig. 2 4. 11 (c) Time-dependent probability distribution in the position space. 18 The average position is not affected right after the time-reversal operation, but the trajectory is reversed. 12 (d) The same as b in the position space. 38 The error bars in a and c are estimated by the standard error propagation method of the measured observables with mainly the standard deviation (1\u03c3) of quantum projection noise (see Supplementary Note 3). 9 Full size image\n\nFigure 4: Charge-conjugation operation. 8 For the same initial state in Fig. 14 3, the charge-conjugation operation is performed at the mid-point (t=4). 11 (a) Time-dependent probability distribution in the momentum space. 33 Similar to the time-reversal operation, right after the charge-conjugation operation at t=4, the momentum p is reversed to \u2212p, which makes the discontinuity at the evolution of the picture. 20 However, the momentum-space Zitterbewegung fades away, which is clearly different from the result of the time-reversal operation. 24 (b) Probability distributions in the momentum space at various times t=0, 3, 5 and 8 from bottom to top. 11 (c) Time-dependent probability distribution in the position space. 17 Although the charge-conjugation has changed the internal components of the Majorana spinor (see Supplementary Fig. 17 1), the trajectory of the Majorana particle is not affected by the charge-conjugation operation. 12 (d) The same as b in the real space. 11 The corresponding data points are marked by blue dashed lines. 17 The error bars in a and c come from the same method to those in Fig. 2 3. 20 Full size image\n\nDuring the evolution of the Majorana equation, we implement the antiunitary time-reversal and charge-conjugation operations. 16 Figure 3 shows our experimental results of the time-reversal operation during the Majorana time evolution. 5 As shown in Fig. 18 3a, right after the time-reversal operation, the momentum as well as the velocity changes sign. 17 As a result, the direction of the wave packet is reversed as shown in Fig. 2 3c. 26 The damped average momentum as well as the position centre of the wave packet is revived, which clearly shows that time is indeed reversed. 11 Figure 4 demonstrates the experimental implementation of the charge-conjugation operation. 26 The latter interchanges the particle and antiparticle components, which are defined from the corresponding Dirac equation with the same momentum as discussed in Fig. 2 2b. 16 By definition, the particle and corresponding antiparticle have opposite momentum but the same velocity. 20 As a result, right after the charge-conjugation operation, the average momentum is reversed but not the velocity. 18 Therefore, the trajectory in position space remains intact, which is different from the time-reversal operation."} {"text": " 30 Thirteen historic properties in Covington's Mainstrasse Village will be fully restored to historic standards, a developer told The River City News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. 42 Last week, The River City News broke the news that the properties had been acquired in a transaction involving the Welcome House and the Model Group, a move that changed ownership of the multi-family residential buildings from Dudley Properties. 18 On Monday, the ambitious project was awarded nearly $700,000 in federal low-income housing tax credits. 32 The Welcome House is a Covington-based social services agency whose executive director, Linda Young, said is moving towards developing more affordable housing opportunities particularly for single parents raising children. 29 \"We're really looking at people on fixed incomes or working who just can't make it if they are renting market rate,\" Young said. 13 \"This whole thing, for me, is about kids.\" 23 Young pointed to the high transient and homeless rate of students within the Covington Independent Public Schools system as a primary motivator. 36 \"We've already got a poverty rate that is going up and nobody can convince me that it's going to go down if they are not getting an education,\" Young said. 21 Having suitable housing is one way to keep families in place and children in the same school, she said. 52 Steve Smith, CEO of the Model Group, a Cincinnati-based development company with a long resume of success in Over-the-Rhine and with Covington's former Fifth District School that is now a residential building, said that the housing development will create residential units that people aspire to live in. 31 \"This pushes Covington forward by getting a responsible owner in place, a full gut rehab, and exterior renovations that will inspire additional development,\" Smith said. 29 The goal is to make low-income housing indistinguishable from market rate rental units, something that cannot be said about the current state of the targeted properties. 26 City Manager Larry Klein told The River City News last week that Dudley Properties had been a consistent target of Covington's code enforcement board. 21 Young said that code enforcement is never called to any of the properties owned and operated by the Welcome House. 21 \"We made a turn four years ago that we needed to focus on affordable housing,\" she said. 42 The problem was that the decision came amid the economic downturn and related real estate troubles, so a large contribution from a donor that wants a focus on single-parent affordable housing rested in the agency's coffers until conditions improved. 33 Early this year, the opportunity arose for the Welcome House to make its move and already Young said that her supervision is having a positive impact on the historically troubled properties. 12 \"We have already started some walk-throughs,\" she said. 21 She assures neighbors that the housing will be improved and that her agency will have responsible oversight of the properties. 30 \"Drug dealers don't want anything to do with me,\" Young said, adding that there would be additional lighting and security cameras added where needed. 8 The work will come in two phases. 37 The low-income tax credits awarded this year through the Kentucky Housing Corporation will be applied to 801 and 803 Main Street, 710-712 Greer Avenue, and 257, 301, and 315 West 7th Street. 17 The other properties purchased in the deal will be targeted for additional tax credits next year. 20 The project will also be eligible for historic tax credits because the Model Group plans a full historic renovation. 26 Currently there are 53 rental units spread out across the properties, a number that will be reduced to 41 when the work is completed. 17 At least one commercial space, at 801 Main Street, will be restored, too. 24 Smith said that having a viable commercial operation in a building boosts the effort of making the low-income housing indistinguishable from market rate. 26 After some additional paperwork and housekeeping items, the closing date on the tax credits is in early December and construction should begin shortly after. 15 The first phase will be complete by the end of 2016, Smith said. 17 In the meantime, the Welcome House will begin its strict oversight of the current units. 25 After all, the properties are part of the largest financial deal that the agency has ever been a part of, Young said. 20 \"We want this to be successful because we want to continue down this path,\" she said. 13 \"There are college graduates who can't afford market rate.\" 34 \"The big advantage that this development has is that it is already a big part of a community that has been around for more than a hundred years,\" Smith said. 11 \"We're not trying to copy a beautiful neighborhood. 5 I'm a preservationist. 8 This is a big deal for me. 21 These are real buildings that are part of the street grid and part of the fabric of the community.\" 13 Written by Michael Monks, editor & publisher of The River City News"} {"text": " 26 During the month of December, we\u2019ll be compiling a new list every day celebrating the best of the year in pop culture. 10 We begin with the 50 Best Albums of 2010. 15 Every day, the PasteMagazine.com office gets about 15-20 new CDs in the mail. 32 Add to that the dozens of albums that digitally arrive in our inboxes, and you have more new music than a small group of people can possibly give adequate consideration. 33 But we listened to a ton of it in 2010, and we\u2019ve done our best to narrow it down to the 50 we think are most worth your time. 36 Of course, our tastes aren\u2019t exactly yours, so if you think there are albums that deserve the attention of your fellow readers, please add them to the comments section below. 15 Not matter how overwhelmed we get, we could always use more good music. 14 Here are our picks for The 50 Best Albums of 2010:\n\n50. 37 Marnie Stern: Marnie Stern [Kill Rock Stars]\n\nStern may be the best guitarist on this list, but her third album isn\u2019t about technical wizardry as much as attention to detail. 29 Aided by drummer Zach Hill, the music is both intricate and expansive\u2014a spazz-pop symphony with each three-minute song broken into carefully orchestrated movements rushing past in succession. 18 The result might be a terrible bore if the melodies weren\u2019t also so darned catchy. 30 And with song titles like \u201cFemale Guitarists are the New Black,\u201d there\u2019s plenty of attitude to bolster themes of loss and hurt.\u2014Josh Jackson\n\n49. 29 Flying Lotus: Cosmogramma [Warp]\n\nThe third album from Los Angeles-based producer Flying Lotus (n\u00e9e Steven Ellison) is an engrossing exploration of sonic possibility. 39 Featuring contributions from Thom Yorke, vocalist Laura Darlington, bass producer Thundercat and jazz instrumentalist Ravi Coltrane, it\u2019s a study in contrasts: provoking but reassuring, kinetic but focused, clean but clattering. 38 Flying Lotus has truly mastered the silicon machine: His byte-and-bass combo screams, buzzes and pounds through ever-shifting beats, which clink with mantra-like repetition until they suddenly give way to a universe of unforeseen noise. 41 On Cosmogramma, this never-ending stream of aural textures sounds effortless, and the enthralling swirl of jazz, drum \u2019n\u2019 bass, dubstep and hip-hop beckons you toward the edge of something damn near cosmic.\u2014Katelyn Hackett\n\n48. 60 Local Natives: Gorilla Manor [Frenchkiss]\n\nIn recent years, West Coast rock has become hazier (No Age), noisier (HEALTH) and woodsier (Fleet Foxes) compared to the East Coast\u2019s more melodic (Grizzly Bear), cosmopolitan (Dirty Projectors) and experimental (Animal Collective) style. 46 And with their much-anticipated full-length debut, former SXSW darlings Local Natives unify the camps, bridging Brooklyn\u2019s tumbling tribal rhythms, rousing choruses and sophisticated pop arrangements with the CSNY harmonies, guitar eruptions and straightforward hooks of their Left Coast neighbors. 34 The band\u2019s clear vocals and well-cultured namedropping of European cities and NPR make Vampire Weekend an easy comparison, though the Natives\u2019 anthemic arrangements are more self-consciously grandiose.\u2014Matt Fink\n\n47. 55 Yeasayer: Odd Blood [Secretly Canadian]\n\nHaving delivered its 2007 debut right on the cusp of indie rock\u2019s imminent turn toward world music and day-glo psychedelics, Yeasayer\u2019s All Hour Cymbals was more experiment than proper pop album, a disorienting maze of harmonized yelps and frantic handclaps. 31 More than two years later, the Brooklyn trio\u2019s uneven edges are polished by layers of finely calibrated melodies on a backdrop of perky polyrhythms and analog abstractions. 63 The same manic energy remains, bubbling through the skittering beats and farting synthesizers of \u201cAmbling Alp\u201d and the slippery white-boy funk of \u201cLove Me Girl.\u201d But here the focus never shifts from Chris Keating\u2019s surprisingly soulful lead vocals, which seem pulled from some alternate \u201980s, strangely familiar yet startling in their immediacy. 49 With only the cascading harmonies of \u201cGrizelda\u201d offering evidence of the band\u2019s tangled roots, this version of Yeasayer has as much in common with New Order as it does Animal Collective, its many moving parts rebuilt upon a synth-pop engine.\u2014Matt Fink\n\n46. 30 The Black Keys: Brothers [Nonesuch]\n\nYes, Danger Mouse produced a track (\u201cTighten Up\u201d) for this blues-rock duo on its sixth album. 30 But the name to note in the credits is mixer Tchad Blake, who gives the songs a swampy texture that nevertheless carves out individual space for each instrument. 40 Guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney swing more loosely than usual, too, particularly on the Bo Diddley-gone-glam stomp \u201cHowlin\u2019 For You.\u201d \u201cThe Only One\u201d incorporates droning organ chords to nice effect. 28 And Auerbach\u2019s vocals on Jerry Butler\u2019s \u201cNever Gonna Give You Up,\u201d are reminiscent of vintage Todd Rundgren.\u2014Michaelangelo Matos\n\n45. 45 Deerhunter: Halcyon Digest [4AD]\n\nDeerhunter has graduated, by degrees, from conjuring moods to writing proper songs, and fourth album Halcyon Digest finds Bradford Cox and company strip-mining new aural territory and toeing the line between structure and abstraction. 34 Opener \u201cEarthquake\u201d lowers a looping trio of sounds\u2014a snare trill, a struck match, a tape noise swipe\u2014into a deep sonic chasm where legions of guitars and dissolving vocals dominate. 31 The synthesizer early in \u201cHe Would Have Laughed\u201d soars into kaleidoscopic infinity, and the feather-light \u201cSailing\u201d has just enough melody to stick in your head. 26 \u201cCoronado\u201d injects jaunty jangle-pop with saxophone honks\u2014a first for this Atlanta band that\u2019s as surprising as it is satisfying.\u2014Raymond Cummings\n\n44. 38 Swans: My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky [Young God]\n\nAs founder of Young God Records, Michael Gira has introduced the world to acts like Akron/Family and Devendra Banhart. 20 As frontman of noisy post-punk band Swans, Gira is alternately a malevolent singer and maker of beautiful sound. 23 For the band\u2019s first album in close to 15 years, he plays a little bit of both those roles. 15 The result is a pummeling record that Liars no doubt wish they had made. 5 \u2014Austin L. Ray\n\n43. 44 Stornoway: Beachcomber\u2019s Windowsill [4AD]\n\nWith bouncy bass lines and bright vocals, British chamber-pop quartet Stornoway is the first band in a while to recall all the best qualities of \u201890s 120 Minutes darlings The Ocean Blue. 38 The 11 tracks, while not always overflowing with joy, convey a sort of contentment that you\u2019d expect from four friends enjoying this new chapter of life that involves playing music for a living. 33 Employing cello, horns, organ and banjo, songs like \u201cZorbing\u201d and \u201cI Saw You Blink\u201d have been in regular rotation in the Paste office since July. 4 \u2014Josh Jackson\n\n42. 41 Wavves: King of the Beach [Fat Possum]\n\nAfter their disaffected debut Wavvves, the San Diego trio fronted by Nathan Williams had a rough 2009, riddled with low-grade rock beefs and a widely publicized onstage meltdown. 17 No one would have blamed Williams for retreating deeper into his quivering fortress of 4-track distortion. 14 But for Wavves\u2019 follow up, he\u2019s come out swinging. 65 King of the Beach finds him communing with his inner songwriter, forgoing nihilistic static for hi-def clarity; the album is saturated with high poly-harmonies, finger-snaps and hand claps, but the Charles Atlas-invoking title communicates Wavves\u2019 real agenda\u2014\u201cnyah-nyah\u201d pop sucker-punches, sunny smiles so forced they come off as sneers, intense self-deprecation as psychic body armor. 11 Shiny packaging aside, Williams hasn\u2019t really changed. 16 He\u2019s still letting his demons run wild\u2014this time, in Technicolor.\u2014Raymond Cummings\n\n41. 25 Ana\u00efs Mitchell: Hadestown\n\nA musical for way, way off Broadway, Anais Mitchell\u2019s stunning folk opera succeeds on many levels. 13 It\u2019s a brilliant recasting of the Orpheus and Euridice myth. 28 It\u2019s a pointed political commentary on what may be the downtrodden, cash-strapped America of 1933, or the downtrodden, cash-strapped America of 2010. 63 And it features some wondrous ensemble singing, from Mitchell as Euridice, from Bon Iver\u2019s Justin Vernon as a seductive Orpheus, from Ani DiFranco as Persephone, and, most notably, from gruff-voiced folkie Greg Brown, who imbues the lord of the underworld with both maniacal glee and Dick Cheney\u2019s calculus of pragmatic deathdealing.\u2014Andy Whitman"} {"text": " 23 Mariana Cook photographed Jasper Johns in his studio in Connecticut on February 8 2014 as part of her \u2018Artists\u2019 series. 39 \u00a9Mariana Cook 2014/Courtesy Lee Marks Fine Art\n\nOn a bright but raw January day in Sharon, Connecticut, Jasper Johns turns the ignition key in his green Gator golf cart, enclosed in Plexiglas for the winter. 2 Nothing. 14 \u201cFrozen again,\u201d he says in his deep, commanding voice. 40 We climb out and, rather than trudging through the snow, drive a car from the Coach Barn, which houses his painting and printmaking studios, a short distance on his sprawling estate to the Blue Barn. 43 Before he converted it into an elegant private gallery a couple of years ago so he wouldn\u2019t have to upend his studios every time a curator came by for a look-see, the barn sheltered his collection of guinea fowl. 10 The birds, he explains, had \u201cdisappeared. 5 One was run over. 33 A few were eaten by fox or coyote or whatever we have up here.\u201d They\u2019re particularly stupid, in his view, but he was fond of them nonetheless. 10 \u201cThey made horrible sounds, which I love. 78 They were beautiful birds.\u201d\n\nToday the serene views of New England hills gleaming white under a fresh coat of snow contrast sharply with the artworks lining the gallery walls: paintings and works on paper, predominantly in greys and blacks, all riffing on the same image of a man sitting, with one leg tucked under him, on an old-fashioned iron bed, clutching his head in his hand as if in despair. 28 If there were any question as to the mental anguish portrayed here, Johns has stamped an emphatic \u201cRegrets, Jasper Johns\u201d on each piece. 19 The series, the latest from the renowned but elusive artist, is also titled \u201cRegrets\u201d. 26 There is an introspective poignancy to the work, a declarative statement in the artist\u2019s late period \u2013 he turns 84 in May. 32 It may be viewed as a window to the artist\u2019s own state of mind, a vigorous confrontation with the waning of life by a virtuoso painter and draughtsman. 46 The impact is potent enough that when two curators from the Museum of Modern Art paid separate studio visits last summer, they both proposed putting it directly into a solo exhibition at the museum, bypassing the typical introductory show at Matthew Marks Gallery. 39 \u201cI hadn\u2019t planned a showing,\u201d says Johns, who has led me to a pair of black leather chairs in another room, opposite an enormous Bruce Nauman sculpture hanging from the ceiling. 36 \u201cI was just making new work.\u201d\n\n\u201cRegrets\u201d will have its public debut at MoMA on March 15 and is likely to spark the kind of debate that has long engulfed Johns. 53 Since his breakthrough first solo show, at the Castelli Gallery in 1958, when he put forth a nervy rebuke to the ubiquitous Abstract Expressionism, he has never failed to command the art world\u2019s attention, even when his idiosyncratic iconography felt to some like a wild-goose chase. 52 These latest works hold enough potential allusions to a web of art world names \u2013 late great masters Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, one-time Johns intimate and peer Robert Rauschenberg, and Johns\u2019 erstwhile assistant James Meyer \u2013 to keep postgrad students mired in \u00addissertations for years to come. 19 Silver-haired, with rosy cheeks, Johns has perfected the trick of being simultaneously dour and disarmingly self-deprecating. 59 Asked if he reads art criticism about himself, he replies with a subtle smile, \u201cHas there been any lately?\u201d Notoriously laconic, he is circumspect about any autobio\u00adgraphical component to \u201cRegrets\u201d; he has always subscribed to the Duchampian notion that viewers should complete an artwork by bringing their own meaning. 52 Still, it is impossible to ignore the starting point for the series: early 2012, not long after he learnt that Meyer, who had served as his studio assistant for 27 years, had allegedly been stealing unfinished works and covertly selling them through a New York gallery. 8 Johns was \u00adreportedly shaken by the betrayal. 13 \u201cCertainly not a pleasure,\u201d he says of the ordeal. 10 \u201cBut I can\u2019t talk about it. 10 I don\u2019t want to talk about it. 36 I don\u2019t want to define it in any way.\u201d\n\nHe is cagey about the new artworks\u2019 connection to Meyer: \u201cFor me [the meaning] is within the picture. 7 The word is in the picture. 12 I think you\u2019ll have to interpret that for yourself. 30 It\u2019s certainly in the painting, but so is the rest of the painting in the painting, and the image that\u2019s in the \u00adpainting. 16 It\u2019s not meant to be a sign of something not in the painting. 26 Regrets belong to everybody, don\u2019t they?\u201d\n\nThe photograph of Lucian Freud by John Deakin that inspired Johns\u2019 latest artworks. 48 \u00a9Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane/The Estate of Francis Bacon\n\nJohns began \u201cRegrets\u201d after he came across an old photograph in a 2012 auction catalogue from Christie\u2019s, London \u2013 though he seems little concerned with the image\u2019s context or provenance. 14 \u201cIt was a sale of \u2013 who\u2019s the other artist? 43 Francis Bacon.\u201d On the block was Bacon\u2019s \u201cStudy for Self-Portrait\u201d (1964) and the catalogue had published the source material, a portfolio of photo\u00adgraphs found in Bacon\u2019s studio after his death in 1992. 21 Taken by the photographer John Deakin, the pictures were of Bacon\u2019s friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud. 16 Bacon had married Freud\u2019s body with his own face in \u201cSelf-Portrait\u201d. 37 \u201cThis is the one that struck me,\u201d Johns says, pointing to the image of Freud perched on the quilt-covered bed and hiding his face in his hand, newspapers at his feet. 40 The photograph was paint-splattered and torn, with a large chunk of the lower left side missing \u00adaltogether, and the creases and voids \u2013 the photograph as object \u2013 were as interesting to Johns as the image itself. 17 \u201cBacon mistreated the photographs \u00adphysically, is what it looks like,\u201d Johns says. 39 \u201cI just saw that and it caught my eye.\u201d\n\nHe began toying with the page from the catalogue almost immediately, ripping it out, tracing the silhouette, then copying that drawing on a photocopier. 27 After filling in the space with coloured pencil, he glued it to a larger sheet of paper, making an abstract watercolour opposite the drawing. 11 Explaining the reasons behind his methodology is difficult for him. 20 \u201cI saw it and wanted to do something,\u201d he says, taking a sip of tea. 12 \u201cI don\u2019t know how you go from there. 28 You start thinking.\u201d\n\nThe way he makes it sound, the faint stamp of \u201cRegrets\u201d in the upper right corner was almost a lark. 34 He ordered the rubber stamp of his own handwriting years ago to use as an ironic reply to \u00adautograph-seekers, among others \u2013 invoking the word\u2019s other meaning, polite refusal. 28 \u201cWhen people ask me to do things I don\u2019t want to do, I stamp that,\u201d he says with a big smile. 27 \u201cI don\u2019t use it very often, but occasionally.\u201d\n\n'Regrets 2013'\n\nHe\u2019d never before used it to make an artwork. 3 Why now? 21 \u201cWell, it was right there in front of me,\u201d near the copy machine, he says. 29 \u201cI assume I associated it with the image of [Freud].\u201d On another drawing Johns wrote in pencil at the bottom, \u201cGoya? 2 Bats? 22 Dreams?\u201d The words are not a title, he says, \u201cjust notes of mine, association\u201d. 34 It may be simply another coincidence that Bacon and Freud were once close friends but had a bitter break, mirroring the rupture between Johns and Rauschenberg more than half a century ago. 10 Johns, though, insists any similarity is accidental. 25 \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about their lives, so that wouldn\u2019t be important to me,\u201d he says. 54 Johns also claims never to have met either artist, though his friend Bill Katz, who was also close to Bacon (and who renovated the barns and Johns\u2019 grand, stone house), recalls with a chuckle, \u201cI remember introducing [Bacon and Johns] at lunch. 46 When I tell Jasper things he thinks he doesn\u2019t remember, he says, \u2018Interesting if true\u2019.\u201d\n\nThough Johns owns a small Freud painting, \u201ca portrait of a poet\u201d, he denies especially admiring either artist. 74 \u201cI don\u2019t think it had anything to do with either of them,\u201d he says before allowing, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what happens in your unconscious.\u201d\n\nWhile Johns tends to lay plenty on his subconscious \u2013 an amusing irony in this case, considering Lucian\u2019s grandfather was Sigmund \u2013 his long-time print collaborator Bill Goldston advises, \u201cJasper never does anything idly. 49 There\u2019s nothing in his work that isn\u2019t considered.\u201d Goldston, at Johns\u2019 behest, made silkscreens of the \u201cRegrets\u201d stamp, complete with the artist\u2019s written instruction, \u201cEnlarge,\u201d which also appears in the works. 26 Though they have worked together for more than 40 years, Goldston knows better than to assume he comprehends the meaning behind Johns\u2019 gestures. 14 \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to understand his motivation,\u201d he says. 17 \u201cHow can you possibly understand what he was thinking about Bacon in relation to Freud? 19 I\u2019m still working on the image and trying to understand how it\u2019s broken up. 65 The real fun is looking at the work and getting what you get.\u201d\n\nWhether rubbing and making lines with charcoal, painting with watercolour and dabbing pastel on heavily textured paper, or using India ink on mylar (polyester film) for a set of four drawings that break up the image in varying degrees, Johns offers a masterclass in technique. 19 Despite the same starting point, each work is emphatically unique, a tour de force of experimentation. 46 One of the paintings \u2013 in oil, not his signature encaustic made of pigmented hot wax \u2013 obscures Freud in a brooding palette of greys; in another, Freud is a jigsaw of cascading red, blue and yellow against a grey backdrop. 11 Next to him, he outlined a small empty rectangle. 22 Asked what it\u2019s doing there, Johns shrugs his shoulders, smiles and takes a bite of a cookie. 25 For all the influence he has wielded in contemporary art, he is also known, quite simply, as a first-rate paint handler. 8 But Johns isn\u2019t so sure. 23 \u201cI think it\u2019s something I don\u2019t know how to do,\u201d he says with a laugh. 18 \u201cI don\u2019t know what my limitations are and what the opposites of that are. 42 I don\u2019t know what my virtues and faults are.\u201d\n\n'Regrets 2013'\n\nShowing the series in full, says Ann Temkin, chief curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA, opens a window to Johns\u2019 creative process. 28 \u201c[It] gives viewers the opportunity to feel you are there in the studio and in the artist\u2019s imagination,\u201d she says. 14 \u201cHe seems to have an urgency, which is thrilling to encounter. 24 It\u2019s very palpable when you look at these.\u201d\n\nMany of the works play with mirror images of the Freud portrait. 17 \u201cI don\u2019t know why I decided to double it,\u201d Johns says. 27 \u201cIt\u2019s curious because there\u2019s one with it doubled one on top of the other \u2013 a completely different use of space. 49 The others \u00ad[opposite each other], I found it interesting \u2013 the forms, the negative space where he\u2019d torn the \u00adpicture.\u201d Where the twin images adjoin, they form a skull, a reference to mortality that Johns claims is accidental. 63 \u2026\n\nAs with most people who make it to their mid-eighties, many of Johns\u2019 close friends from his formative years have died: the radical composer John Cage and his partner, the equally inventive choreographer Merce Cunningham; Leo Castelli, Johns\u2019 dealer of 40 years; and Rauschenberg, the artist with whom Johns is inextricably linked. 17 Together, the group formed a hub of creativity in the New York of the 1950s. 17 Johns had endured an epically painful childhood bouncing from one relative to another in South Carolina. 12 \u201cIt had no stability at all,\u201d he says. 17 After his parents divorced when he was two, he was sent to his paternal grandfather. 16 When I inquire if he grew up on a farm, Johns inexplicably laughs uproariously. 15 \u201cMy grandfather didn\u2019t live on a farm,\u201d he says. 5 \u201cHe had farms. 38 He lived in town.\u201d The farms, plural, were still set up like antebellum plantations, Johns recalls, each with a big house and a group of small structures where the black labourers lived. 13 \u201cI assume they had been slave quarters,\u201d he says. 19 \u201cMy best friend was a black boy who was the son of my grandfather\u2019s overseer. 17 That family lived in town, only about a block or two away from our house. 24 His mother, I think, did our laundry.\u201d\n\nThe disparities of the racially segregated South seeped into his consciousness over time. 35 \u201cI have one odd memory: we had a cook, a black woman named Donie, and I remember one afternoon going home with her to her house,\u201d Johns recalls. 14 \u201cDonie made a cake when we got there, a coarse cake. 17 When it was out of the oven, she cut it, gave me a piece. 14 She had two children, and she gave them [a piece]. 9 When I finished I asked for another piece. 53 She said no, she had made it for her children; I had so much at home and she wasn\u2019t going to give her children\u2019s cake to me.\u201d At the time, he felt wounded, since \u201cshe was somebody I trusted with my wellbeing. 21 Only later I saw how touching her feelings were.\u201d\n\nWhen Johns was in third grade, his grandfather died. 35 Johns stayed briefly with his mother and her new family before being sent to his paternal aunt, a schoolteacher who taught in a \u201ctwo-room schoolhouse, but only one room was used. 20 There were 12 to 13 children at most.\u201d In high school he returned to his mother yet again. 35 In 1949, when he was 19, Johns dropped out of the University of South Carolina to move to New York, where he tried studying commercial art at Parsons School of Design. 13 \u201cWhen I came to New York, I was not adventurous. 26 I had a kind of formless existence of always wanting to be an artist, but I had not much training,\u201d he says. 11 \u201cI had no contact with people who were artists. 19 That\u2019s why meeting Bob Rauschenberg and John Cage and Merce Cunningham was so important to me. 40 In my past I had no artists.\u201d\n\nHe and Rauschenberg became exceptionally close, taking studios in the same building, making money by designing window displays together for Tiffany\u2019s, and pushing one another artistically. 7 They are frequently described as lovers. 37 As recently as 2013, some critics scorned them \u2013 and MoMA, on the occasion of its show, \u201cJohns and Rauschenberg\u201d \u2013 for not being blunt about the nature of their relationship. 62 When I asked him several years ago if he and Rauschenberg had been romantically involved, he retorted, \u201cHow is it relevant?\u201d For Johns, who once said that while growing up he always felt like a guest in someone else\u2019s house, what mattered was that he\u2019d finally found \u201ckin\u201d. 21 'Untitled 2013'\n\nIt was one night during that period in the 1950s that Johns dreamt he was painting a flag. 33 That dream led to \u201cFlag\u201d, a seminal painting of the Stars and Stripes that conflated image and object: was it a flag or a representation of a flag? 23 Looking back, Johns isn\u2019t sure if he realised how radical the piece was in the scope of contemporary art. 11 \u201cIt was radical for me,\u201d he says. 32 \u201cI had no interest or knowledge of what I was doing relative to anything else.\u201d \u201cFlag\u201d helped confirm in his own mind that he was an artist. 6 He destroyed his earlier work. 17 \u201cI did lots of other stuff, but it was done in a different spirit. 41 It was done with the spirit that I wanted to be an artist, not that I was an artist.\u201d\n\nNext came paintings of other universally recognised symbols: targets, numbers, letters and, later, maps. 22 One day when Castelli was visiting Rauschenberg, he saw Johns\u2019 work and offered him a show then and there. 13 It was an \u00adauspicious debut: MoMA bought an astounding three pieces. 11 \u201cFor me it was unbelievable,\u201d Johns recalls. 10 \u201cIt was my first experience having a show. 28 It was my first contact with people important in the art world.\u201d Alfred Barr, MoMA\u2019s influential first director, made the selections himself. 60 \u201cAlfred thought they might not last very long the way they were made\u201d \u2013 with ephemeral materials such as news\u00adpaper encrusted in the paint \u2013 \u201cbut then he said something like, \u2018We might not last very long either.\u2019\u201d\n\nIn 1961, after seven years, Johns and Rauschenberg had a falling out. 17 Even after all this time, Johns does not have a neat explanation as to why. 56 \u201cI wonder if I know,\u201d he says, before adding for good measure, \u201cBut I certainly don\u2019t want to talk about it if I do.\u201d He stretches in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head and crossing his legs at the ankles, defiantly silent. 31 Their split has repeatedly been described as bitter and total, with critics speculating that Johns\u2019 \u00adpainting \u201cLiar\u201d, for instance, was in reference to Rauschenberg. 11 But Johns\u2019 version of the aftermath is less dramatic. 12 \u201cBob and I were not unfriendly,\u201d he says. 22 Neither were they friendly \u2013 he told me nine years ago that they saw each other \u201conly by chance\u201d. 7 Perhaps they both mellowed with age. 11 Johns did attend Rauschenberg\u2019s memorial service in 2008. 4 \u201cMyths develop. 11 I think people make things up,\u201d he says. 32 \u201cThere\u2019s nothing I want to set straight about the record.\u201d When he chooses to reveal something, one friend says, it\u2019s in his art. 13 \u2026\n\nJohns retreated from New York to bucolic Sharon in the 1990s. 36 Meyer, a painter whom Johns had hired in 1985 after he knocked on the door of Johns\u2019 Manhattan studio, moved to the nearby town of Salisbury where he lived with his family. 58 Sometime between 2006 and 2012, according to an indictment handed down last August, Meyer allegedly removed at least 22 unfinished artworks from Johns\u2019 studio, where he was responsible for their safekeeping, and transported them to New York, where he sold them through an unnamed gallery, falsely claiming they were gifts. 28 To prove their authenticity, he allegedly went so far as to create fictitious inventory numbers and produce fake pages for Johns\u2019 ledger of \u00adcompleted artworks. 19 The gallery sold the works for roughly $6.5m, $3.4m of which allegedly went to Meyer. 25 If convicted of interstate transport of stolen \u00adproperty and wire fraud, Meyer could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison. 11 Neither Meyer nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment. 51 While friends of Johns say he was devastated by the alleged deception \u2013 one likens it to his parents\u2019 virtual abandonment of him \u2013 they also hesitate to draw a straight line from the incident to \u201cRegrets\u201d, calling this too linear for such a complicated man. 34 For decades Johns also spent a good deal of time at his house on the Caribbean island of St Martin, but he has mostly stayed in Connecticut for the past few winters. 25 \u201cFor some reason, the last time I worked there and finished something, I cleaned out the studio,\u201d he says. 17 \u201cThe only reason to go is to sit in the sunshine for a few days. 21 That\u2019s not very interesting to me.\u201d He\u2019s comfortable here, in the big stone house. 21 Even after 60 years of making art, though, Johns is still not entirely at ease with his practice. 16 \u201cI laboured over these a lot,\u201d he says of \u201cRegrets\u201d. 44 \u201cSomehow what you end up with seems to be something you should have known was there to begin with, even though you had to work so hard to find it.\u201d\n\nThat being an artist is still so arduous perplexes him. 23 \u201cI worry about the difficulty of making things, or the difficulty of knowing what to do,\u201d he admits. 23 \u201cI may think, having been working at this all these years, why don\u2019t I find it easy? 41 Since it\u2019s a relatively simple activity.\u201d\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-\n\n\u2018Jasper Johns, Regrets\u2019 opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, on March 15\n\nTo comment on this article, please email magazineletters@ft.com"} {"text": " 60 Last August, Jon Schwarz over at The Intercept wrote a piss-take about how if the dreaded Koch brothers* really cared about corporate welfare and criminal justice reform and intervention-skepticism, instead of just cynically using those issues to make their self-interested policy atrocities go down smoother, then they would be backing the democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. 67 \"The alternative to taking the Koch brothers at their word,\" Schwarz wrote, \"is to conclude that all the stuff they say that progressives love is just a scam \u2014 that when it's time to get out their checkbooks to put people in office, the only thing they actually care about is whether those politicians will make them richer.\" 49 This kind of binary gotcha game, in which there are forever only Doors #1 and #2, and politics always counts 100 times more than decades worth of philosophically based issue advocacy, is an almost-amusing attempt at enforcing tribal norms via cheap rhetorical entertainment. 59 (Here's how easy it is: \"The alternative to taking George Soros at his word about drug legalization, foreign policy overreach and the death penalty is to conclude that all the stuff he says that libertarians love is just a scam\u2014or else he would have supported Ron Paul instead of Barack Obama.\") 33 Like almost everything about two-party presidential politics, such exercises are designed to erase ideological complications, sort people into clearly delineated camps, and make us all a little bit dumber. 28 Complicating such efforts today is a Washington Post op-ed from Charles Koch himself, in which he spends most of it exploring areas of commonality with\u2014yes\u2014Bernie Sanders. 33 Excerpt:\n\nThe senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. 23 He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. 22 He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field. 5 I agree with him. 32 [\u2026] [T]he United States' next president must be willing to rethink decades of misguided policies enacted by both parties that are creating a permanent underclass. 25 Our criminal justice system, which is in dire need of reform, is another issue where the senator shares some of my concerns. 21 Families and entire communities are being ripped apart by laws that unjustly destroy the lives of low-level and nonviolent offenders. 109 Koch goes on to explain how his policy solutions differ from those of Sanders (\"History has proven that a bigger, more controlling, more complex and costlier federal government leaves the disadvantaged less likely to improve their lives\"); points out that it's \"results, not intentions\u201d that matter, and closes with a passage that reads as much as anything else like a warning shot across the bow of Republicans:\n\nWhen it comes to electing our next president, we should reward those candidates, Democrat or Republican, most committed to the principles of a free society. 31 Those principles start with the right to live your life as you see fit as long as you don't infringe on the ability of others to do the same. 22 They include equality before the law, free speech and free markets and treating people with dignity, respect and tolerance. 17 In a society governed by such principles, people succeed by helping others improve their lives. 52 I don't expect to agree with every position a candidate holds, but all Americans deserve a president who, on balance, can demonstrate a commitment to a set of ideas and values that will lead to peace, civility and well-being rather than conflict, contempt and division. 15 When such a candidate emerges, he or she will have my enthusiastic support. 17 Those last italics are mine, to underline the not-so-veiled slap at the remaining Republican field. 35 Now, this rhetorical olive branch hardly means that the Kochs are suddenly going to stop focusing their vast major-party-influencing efforts on the GOP, any more than George Soros will abandon the Democrats. 16 (I have written on the commonalities between the opposing billionaires here and here.) 27 But it does demonstrate anew that the strenuous effort to demonize them as ultra-conservatives are as reductionist and absurd as calling the Hungarian-born Soros a socialist. 86 And as importantly, the generosity toward Sanders from one of his biggest targets illustrates something that the dwindling number of partisan dead-enders cannot accept during the tribalist din of a presidential campaign: that it is possible, even probable, for individual Americans to find individual candidates from opposing parties to be the best in the field on certain important issues and the worst in the field on others, and that such collections of disparate judgments can make comparative evaluations challenging. 12 Bernie Sanders is great on pot, lousy on higher education. 22 Ted Cruz is decent on ethanol, indecent on subjecting Supreme Court nominees to a public vote because of gay marriage. 14 Even the thoroughly awful Donald Trump makes a good point now and then. 15 The point of Olympic Year politics is to make you forget all of this. 11 The point of living, as ever, lies elsewhere. 24 * David Koch is on the Board of Trustees of the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine and this website. 15 Organizations connected with both brothers have donated money to the Foundation over the years."} {"text": " 15 The Rbmake Project\n\nRbmake is a \"book maker\" for the Rocket eBook. 25 It consists of a set of commandline tools that assemble or disassemble .rb files -- the book format that is native to the ReB. 17 The C code also contains a library of routines that can be linked into other applications. 16 Rbmake is being hosted at sourceforge.net, so feel free to visit its project page. 25 There you'll find the links you need to download the source or binaries, report bugs, and chat on the mailing list. 16 Also, feel free to check out the ChangeLog file or to email the author. 21 I'd love to hear from people who'd like to help out, or are just enjoying the tools. 22 Authoring Tips\n\nIf you're creating content for the Rocket eBook, you should check out the new Authoring Tips page. 25 This will help you to get the most out of rbmake in those times when you want to take full control of the tags. 34 New Features\n\nIf you're just trying to see what's new, be sure to visit the tools page to see a few of the new things that various tools can do. 15 The newest items will always be on the top of the list of features. 21 Also, don't miss the sample option files that show off some of the advanced configuration features of rbmake. 25 If you're installing the Win32 zip files, all the relevant EXEs are already supplied for you in one zip file: w32-rbmake-1.2.zip. 31 Unzip this into a single directory, and put that directory on your PATH (or choose a directory that is already on your path) and you're done. 24 The source and rpm releases require the presence of a couple other packages for you to be able to build and/or install rbmake. 41 If you are installing the binary rpm, all the relevant dependencies will be checked automatically for you, especially the first item in the following list:\n\nRequired These items are needed for both the binary and source distributions. 14 You need a reasonably recent version of libxml2: at least version 2.3.1. 21 You can download libxml2 from www.xmlsoft.org, or run a query for libxml2 (and perhaps libxml2-devel) at rpmfind.net. 21 The pcre (Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions) library is required for various text-rewriting features of the library and its tools. 20 Either search for it at rpmfind.net or visit the pcre web site and download the source tar from there. 14 The zlib is also required to be able to handle the file compression. 10 Most \"modern\" OSs already have this available. 26 If you can't track it down, it is available from the infozip ftp site and can be easily found via an rpmfind.net search. 14 Suggested These items are optional if you build your own version from source. 24 If you get one of my binary releases, you need to install binary versions of these to get the rpm to install. 45 If you want to be able to include images in the books, we use the image libraries libpng and libjpeg to read and (in the case of libpng) write image info (a GIF reader is built into the source). 19 If you don't have libpng installed, rbmake won't be able to do any image processing. 19 If you don't have libjpeg installed, you won't be able to import any .jpg images. 26 If you plan to build rbmake (or rbmake-using tools), you'll need to install the \"devel\" version of these packages. 23 Most modern OSes have these libraries installed already, but you can find them easily enough by doing a search at rpmfind.net. 68 Optional The following item is not currently used in my binary releases, and has not been used by me in quite some time (let me know if you encounter any problems): If you have the W3C's libwww installed, rbmake will choose to use that library to fetch the web pages (as it can fetch several web pages in parallel). 16 Without this, rbmake just uses the simple HTTP support that is present in libxml2. 25 Documentation\n\nYou can read about the commandline tools, the library interface, or a summary of how the .rb file is put together. 12 Also available is the rbmake documentation pages in .rb book format. 23 Rbmake was created by Wayne Davison with some hashing code written by Geoffrey Collyer and some image routines written by Jef Poskanzer. 10 See the license information for more detailed copyright info."} {"text": " 29 The Georgia congressman who last month read a Bible verse to the House Republican Conference calling for the death of homosexuals stands by his actions, without regrets. 35 But he told CQ that he and his wife are praying for the loved ones of those killed in a mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, over the weekend. 26 \u201cMy wife and I, our prayers are with those family and friends,\u201d GOP Rep. Rick W. Allen said in an interview. 40 \u201cThe members of Congress who represent that district are just devastated.\u201d\n\nThe shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida has so far claimed the lives of 49 people and is the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. 23 While the investigation is still underway, it appears the shooter targeted the nightclub because of the sexual orientation of club patrons. 29 Allen told CQ he does not feel a need to clarify his intention behind reading from Romans 1:18-32 and Revelations 22:18-19 during the May 26 Republican conference meeting. 33 Allen read the verses prior to a floor vote on the Energy-Water spending bill, which was then voted down in a 112-305 vote, with 130 Republicans voting against the bill. 35 The bill's rejection was largely attributed to its inclusion of an amendment from New York Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney that would have affirmed an executive order barring LGBT discrimination in federal contracting. 19 Conservative advocates outside Congress urged that members turn down the bill on the basis of the Maloney amendment. 37 [ Homosexuals 'Worthy of Death' Bible Verse Read Before Key Vote ]\n\nIn the aftermath, gay rights advocates called on top Republicans to condemn the \"vile and dangerous remarks\" and censure Allen. 98 \"At a time when LGBT people face staggering rates of discrimination, harassment and violence, Rep. Allen's comments spread hate that does real harm,\" JoDee Winterhof, a senior vice president at the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said in a \"At a time when LGBT people face staggering rates of discrimination, harassment and violence, Rep. Allen's comments spread hate that does real harm,\" JoDee Winterhof, a senior vice president at the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. 26 Maloney, who heard about the Republican conference prayer from another representative, said the prayer and the vote speaks to the values Republicans hold. 36 Allen, asked whether he felt the need to make any clarifying statements about his reading of the verses in light of the Orlando tragedy, said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m imperfect. 32 And I consider that we are all imperfect and we all fall short of the glory of God, which is why we need a savior, by the way.\" 28 He said that he read the verse because he believes a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values needs to come together, and he does not condemn anyone. 37 \u201cI just simply shared that, in what\u2019s supposed to be a private setting with fellow members of my conference, just like I would in a Bible study,\u201d he said. 24 The Romans passage that he read discusses what types of penalties the Bible says should be applied to those who are not heterosexual. 18 Asked if he stands by his decision to read the verse, Allen said, \"Yes. 15 I read a scripture from Romans and that\u2019s what I did.\" 36 [ Regular Disorder: Another House Free-For-All ]\n\nMadison Fox, a spokeswoman for Allen, said after the interview that Allen was in no way wishing death for anyone in reading the Bible verse. 43 \"Again, he read Revelations 22:18-19 and Romans 1:18-32 while delivering a prayer in a private closed-door meeting, not in front of a crowd, to the press or out in public,\" Fox said in a written statement. 15 \"The passage in Romans discusses sin, in all its shapes and sizes. 35 The congressman will be the first to admit that he is a sinner, as we all sin \u2014 but he never condemned anyone or would condemn anyone, especially not to death.\" 20 \"The attack in Orlando was a terrorist attack on all humanity and the freedoms we have as Americans. 22 It was the act of a radical Islamic terrorist who was hell bent on murdering innocent people,\" Fox said. 62 One of the verses that Allen read to the conference, Romans 1:27, says: \u201cAnd likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.\" 143 According to Allen's office, he also read lines verses 28-32: \u201cAnd even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.\" 16 Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call on your iPhone or your Android."} {"text": " 39 Russia seeks to have as many reliable partners around the globe as possible, President Vladimir Putin said during annual address to the Federal Assembly, adding that Moscow will never sever ties with Europe and the US. 69 \u00a9 Sputnik / Aleksey Nikolskyi Highlights of Vladimir Putin's Annual Address to Federal Assembly\n\nMOSCOW, December 4 (Sputnik) \u2013 During his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow seeks to have as many reliable partners as possible, both in the West and the East, and will never sever ties with Europe and the United States. 18 \"Under no circumstances are we going to scale back our ties with Europe and the US. 38 At the same time we will revive and expand traditional ties with the south of the American continent, we will continue to cooperate with Africa, with countries in the Middle East,\" Putin said. 45 Putin reiterated that Russia aims to have as many reliable partners as possible, both in the West and in the East, stressing that many of the world\u2019s economic powerhouses are Russia\u2019s \"true friends and strategic partners\". 31 He added that Russia is open to the world and would never choose self-isolation, for that would be a sign of weakness, whereas Russia is strong and confident. 28 Putin also stressed that Moscow \"will continue to stand up for global diversity \u2026 so that everyone sees the true, undistorted image of Russia.\" 34 According to the Russian constitution, the president addresses parliament every year with a speech focusing on the country\u2019s current situation and on the main aspects of domestic and foreign policy. 33 Leaders of the Constitutional, Supreme and Arbitration courts, regional governors, heads of traditional religions and other prominent public figures take part in the event along with deputies and senators. 14 The first address was made by Boris Yeltsin on February 24, 1994. 10 This year, this tradition celebrates its 20th anniversary."} {"text": " 60 With multiple reports now indicating that Apple will be introducing its 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro at next week's rumored media event, details on the machine are also beginning to leak out.According to a forum thread Google translation ] posted to Chinese sitelast week, the new 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro will indeed be launching late this month. 131 The report claims that it will carry the same thermal design as the larger 15-inch model, but with only one contact pad indicating that it will not include a discrete graphics chip.The source reports that the 13-inch model will include an \"unprecedented\" battery design and offer the same set of ports seen on the 15-inch model: MagSafe 2, a pair of Thunderbolt ports, a USB port, and a headphone jack on the left and a USB port, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader on the right.The report's source has also added a pair of photos showing what is claimed to be the display of the 13-inch model wrapped in plastic atop the same part from the 15-inch model. 107 It doesn't appear that part can be conclusively identified as for a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro given the poor quality of the photos and an inability to assess the thickness of the display assembly, but it does appear consistent with the 15-inch Retina display and lacks the \"MacBook Pro\" branding seen on the bezel of non-Retina models.The forum poster does have at least some track record of obtaining photos of unreleased product parts, as he previously posted a photo of the current 15-inch non-Retina MacBook Pro's graphics chip and surrounding logic board components a day before the machine was announced."} {"text": " 28 This article is from Dollars & Sense: Real World Economics, available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org\n\nThis is a web-only article, available only at dollarsandsense.org. 9 Do Lower Tax Rates Really Increase Government Revenue? 28 By Alejandro Reuss | June 2011\n\nA co-worker of mine said that, when tax rates go down, the government actually collects more money from taxes? 6 How is that even possible? 16 This is an old saw from a school of thought called \u201csupply-side\u201d economics. 20 The supply-side economists, or \u201csupply-siders,\u201d were group of conservative economists influential with the Reagan administration. 29 The term \u201csupply-side\u201d comes from their rejection of Keynesian economics\u2019 emphasis on total demand to explain the total level of output (or GDP). 28 The main issues, they argued, were on the supply side of the economy, especially the supply of labor and money capital (saving). 22 The supply-siders claimed that high marginal tax rates were a big disincentive for people to work, save, and invest. 34 If tax rates were lower, and people got to keep more of their incomes from work or investments, this would create incentives to work more and to save and invest more. 14 As a result, the supply-siders argued, the economy would grow faster. 30 The government, they claimed, could get more tax revenue by taking a smaller slice (lower tax rate) from a larger pie (higher GDP). 55 The idea that lower tax rates could translate into higher total tax revenue is described by the \u201cLaffer curve.\u201d Legend has it that supply-side economist Arthur Laffer sketched the curve on a cocktail napkin at a Washington restaurant in 1974, showing it to then-Ford administration officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. 20 At a tax rate of 0%, total tax revenue would, of course, be $0. 34 At a tax rate of 100%, Laffer argued, it would also be $0, since the tax would kill all incentive for people to engage in the taxed activity. 16 Therefore, he concluded, tax revenues would not keep rising with increasing tax rates. 19 At some point, increasing tax rates would reduce total tax revenue\u2014and diminishing tax rates would increase it. 11 You said that supply-siders emphasized \u201cmarginal\u201d tax rates. 5 What does that mean? 25 When we think of tax rates, especially income taxes, we usually think about the average rate we pay on all our income. 10 Suppose you have an annual income of $51,000. 48 If the tax rate on income up to $25,000 is 12.5%, the rate on income between $25,000 and $50,000 is 25%, and the rate on income above $50,000 is 82.5%, you will owe $10,200 in taxes. 13 Your average tax rate will be 10,200 \ufffd 51,000 = 20%. 24 A \u201cmarginal\u201d tax rate, on the other hand, is the rate you pay on your last dollar of income. 35 Under the set of tax rates we just sketched out, at an income of $20,000, the marginal rate (the tax rate paid on that last dollar) is 12.5%. 11 At an income of $30,000 it is 25%. 16 At an income of more than $50,000, the marginal rate is 82.5%. 24 If you had an annual income of $51,000, you would pay $825 out of that last $1000 in taxes. 22 The supply-siders believed that marginal tax rates were the key to understanding how taxes acted as disincentives to work and investment. 11 The idea is that work and saving require some sacrifice. 24 If you work for pay, you sacrifice free time and whatever you might have enjoyed doing with that time (leisure). 24 If you save (in order to invest), you sacrifice present consumption and the enjoyment you would have gotten from that. 31 They reasoned, on the basis of assumptions from mainstream \u201cneoclassical\u201d economics, that the sacrifice involved (for work or saving) increased with each additional unit. 33 For example, it may not be much of a sacrifice to work a few hours each week, since you could just cut out the leisure activities that you least enjoy. 16 Work some more hours, and you have to sacrifice activities that you enjoy more. 22 Work a very large number of hours and you may have to sacrifice activities that mean a great deal to you. 35 Likewise, if may not be much of a sacrifice to save a little income each month, since it may mean cutting back on things you don\u2019t care about very much. 24 To save a very large portion of your income, you may have to tighten your belt in ways that are pretty painful. 38 Neoclassical economists argue that people will make such sacrifices up to a break-even point\u2014where the pain of the additional hour of work done, or the additional dollar saved, is equal to the reward\u2014but no further. 26 Supply-siders reasoned that high marginal taxes cut back on the rewards for making these sacrifices, so much that they were not worth making anymore. 19 Cut those taxes, they argued, and people will work and save (and invest) more. 17 To really appreciate the supply-side argument, let\u2019s look back at our numerical example. 44 If you reason the way neoclassical economists think you do, you will compare the sacrifice required (say, in extra hours of work, or extra saving) each year to have an income of $51,000 instead of $50,000. 22 But the reward is not really $1000, since you would have to pay 82.5% of it in taxes. 12 It is really $1000 - $825 = $175. 7 Would it be worth the trouble? 7 OK, I understand their point. 11 But is the \u201cLaffer curve\u201d theory really true? 7 Let\u2019s break it down. 33 The \u201chill\u201d shape of the Laffer curve is based on three things:\n\nFirst, if the tax rate were 0%, total tax revenue would be $0. 6 That\u2019s just math. 12 If you multiply any number by 0, you get 0. 14 Second, at some positive tax rates, total tax revenue is positive. 6 That\u2019s common knowledge. 18 Third, if the tax rate were 100%, total tax revenue would be $0. 15 Whether this proposition is true or not depends on a theory of human behavior. 38 If people are engaged in an activity giving them some money income, and the government imposes a 100% tax (taking away all that income), will people continue to engage in that activity? 26 If we think people will never engage in any activity unless they get some money income from it, then the answer is clearly no. 14 But people engage all the time in activities that generate no money income. 16 For example, people raise children, and that is definitely not a money-making venture. 43 One can easily account for this behavior if one thinks that people may gain satisfaction (or, in econo-speak, \u201cutility\u201d) from something other than money \u2014 for example, intrinsic enjoyment, altruism, duty, etc. 23 (Mainstream economics, far from excluding non-monetary motives, routinely includes at least some such motives in its behavioral models.) 43 If people are willing to engage in some activities even though there is no financial \u201creturn,\u201d however, this means they may be willing to engage in an activity beyond the point where a 100% marginal rate applies. 34 The financial return may be taken away by the tax, but if there is some non-monetary reward associated with the activity, people may still have a motive to engage in it. 27 If this is the case, then even a marginal tax rate of 100% (at least on some activities) may generate positive revenue. 27 For the rest of the discussion, however, we can go ahead and assume that a 100% tax will result in zero tax revenue. 21 (This will allow us to consider some other critiques of the Laffer curve and supply-side economics in general.) 64 In that case, we have a curve that starts at 0 (for a tax rate of 0%), rises and then falls over a range of positive amounts (for tax rates between 0% and 100%), and ends at zero again (for a tax rate of 100%)\u2014as the Laffer curve does. 34 If the Laffer curve is accurate, how exactly does that relate to the idea that higher tax rates result in lower total revenue and lower tax rates result in higher total revenue? 30 According to the supply-siders\u2019 own theory, increasing the tax rate does not always reduce tax revenue, nor does decreasing the tax rate always increase tax revenue. 30 It all depends on whether the current tax rate is above or below the tax rate where tax revenue reaches a peak (the \u201crevenue-maximizing\u201d rate). 30 If the tax rate is already above the revenue-maximizing rate (labeled t* on our graphs), an increase in the tax rate will reduce total revenue. 27 A decrease in the tax rate, meanwhile, will increase total revenue, so long as the new tax rate is still above t*. 28 (If the new tax rate is below t*, then we cannot say for sure whether total tax revenue will increase or decrease.) 28 On the other hand, if we start out with a tax rate below t*, a decrease in the tax rate will decrease total revenue. 28 An increase in the tax rate, meanwhile, will increase total tax revenue, so long as the new tax rate is still below t*. 28 (If the new tax rate is above t*, then we cannot say for sure whether total tax revenue will increase or decrease.) 22 To make the supply-side case, one would have to prove that a tax rate was already above the revenue-maximizing rate. 16 Well, is there historical evidence that shows whether marginal tax rates are too high? 16 I know some people say that the Reagan tax cuts ended up increasing tax revenue. 4 Is that true? 37 First, we can\u2019t just go and look at tax revenue data for the year or two after a change in tax rates and think that\u2019s going to tell us the answer. 41 Whether tax revenue went up or down in the years after the Reagan tax cuts, we would not know if the tax cuts were the cause or not, since many other things were changing at the same time. 28 In fact, total federal tax revenue was lower in 1981 and 1982 than in 1980, but the U.S. economy was also in a severe recession. 18 (When the economy is in a recession, incomes decrease and so do tax revenues.) 38 By 1983, with the economy in a recovery and incomes increasing again, federal tax revenue recovered to a little more than the 1980 level, and continued to grow for the rest of the decade. 16 The recession was triggered, at least in part, by very high interest rates. 10 (This is altogether separate from tax rates.) 42 The U.S. Federal Reserve (aka, \u201cThe Fed\u201d), which makes decisions affecting the money supply and interest rates, deliberately adopted a \u201ctight-money\u201d (high interest-rate) policy to combat spiraling wages and prices. 21 Higher interest rates rein in demand, by making it more expensive for firms and consumers to borrow and spend. 17 In this case, the sharp decline in demand triggered a deep recession and massive unemployment. 15 As GDP declined and unemployment soared, however, the Fed reversed this policy. 13 Lower interest rates stimulated spending, and helped bring about a recovery. 10 Did the tax cuts also contribute to the recovery? 15 Perhaps, but it may not have been for the reasons the supply-siders thought. 21 With more after tax-income, people may have been inclined to spend more, increasing demand and stimulating increased production. 25 In other words, the effect may have been on demand side (as Keynesians argue), rather than on the supply side. 39 If we look at the historical evidence more broadly, there doesn\u2019t seem to be much evidence that high marginal tax rates mean slow economic growth, or that low marginal tax rates mean fast growth. 25 In fact, between the 1950s and early 1960s, the top marginal income-tax rates were much higher that they have ever been since. 29 (They were cut dramatically by the Kennedy administration, so the top marginal rates were already much reduced by the time of the Reagan tax cuts.) 20 Those decades, however, saw high rates of economic growth, along with low unemployment and low inflation. 21 If lower marginal tax rates don\u2019t lead to more work and investment and faster growth, why not? 39 Remember, the supply-side argument was based on assumptions about how people make decisions: for example, that they calculate the number of hours they will work in order to achieve some kind of maximum overall benefit. 32 This requires that they make \u201cmarginal\u201d decisions (for example, weighing the benefit an extra bit of income to the burden of an extra bit of work). 16 This may not describe the ways people make decisions about, say, work hours. 19 First, many people may not be able to fine-tune the number of hours they work very easily. 17 For example, someone in a regular full-time job may not have much flexibility on hours. 41 They may not be able to choose to work, say, 37 hours (for less pay) or 42 hours (for more pay), even if that would suit them better than the usual 40 hours. 19 Another way of increasing work hours, picking up an additional part-time job, may not be convenient. 15 The minimum number of additional hours, for example, may be too large. 33 Just because someone wants to work more than 40 hours a week doesn\u2019t mean they will be happier working, say, a total of 60 hours at two jobs. 22 For someone who would like to work fewer than 40 hours, switching to part-time may not be practical, either. 17 This might involve too big of a decline in hours\u2014say, down to 20 per week. 28 Moreover, they may not be able to get a part-time job, in their occupation, at comparable hourly pay (or with needed benefits). 28 Second, many people just may not think in terms of \u201cmarginal\u201d effects, even if they could fine-tune their work hours if they wanted. 20 Many people may never calculate how much extra income they will take home for each extra hour of work. 33 They may not think about their effective pay rate as changing with each extra hour (due to the change in the marginal tax rate as their income from work increases). 30 They might not ever compare the extra income from, say, working 41 hours instead of 40, against the extra burdens of an additional hour of work. 48 Instead, when they think about how much they work and how much they are paid, they may think about other things, like their total annual income (before or after taxes), or their total income compared to their total hours of work. 38 They may compare what they make to what they made at some point in the past, to what co-workers make, or to what they might make at a different company or in a different occupation. 24 These considerations may not have much to do with the sort of \u201coptimizing\u201d calculations that mainstream economic models assume people make. 106 Third, if people get accustomed to a certain income and certain material standard of living (perhaps with the expectation of gradual increases with increased experience, seniority, and rank) they may make decisions about how much to work primarily in terms of hitting their income \u201ctarget.\u201d This is especially true if a large part of their spending is \u201cnon-discretionary.\u201d That is, most of their income goes to spending they can\u2019t easily avoid (e.g., rent or mortgage payments, car payments, utility bills, insurance premiums, tuition, etc.). 21 In that case, an increase in tax rates (on income from work) could actually increase work hours. 36 If tax rates increase, and now people cannot make as much as they are accustomed in the same work hours, they might have to increase their work hours to make ends meet. 23 For all these reasons, work hours may not respond to changes in tax rates in the way that supply-side economists assume. 6 This undermines the supply-side story. 62 The effect of a change in tax rates on total tax revenue depends on the relative strength of two opposing effects\u2014how much tax rates decrease (which means the government takes a smaller share of the economic \u201cpie\u201d) and how much the decrease in tax rates causes incomes to increase (causes the economic pie to grow). 45 If a change in tax rate has little effect on work (and investment) decisions and, therefore, does not have much of an effect on GDP (the size of the pie), it is unlikely to increase tax revenue. 15 Are the supply-siders just mistaken, then, or is there more to it? 7 There\u2019s more to it. 46 For people who would favor tax cuts anyway, the Laffer curve offers an appealing argument\u2014we can have a tax (rate) cut, but get increased tax revenue, and so not have to sacrifice any of the things we want from government. 16 (That is, we can have our cake and eat it, too.) 25 If true, this takes away one of the main reasons to oppose tax cuts\u2014that they will require painful sacrifices of needed public programs. 16 This argument, however, runs counter to other reasons people may favor tax cuts. 16 First, any particular tax cut is likely to benefit some people more than others. 23 If tax cuts result in reduced tax revenue, as they certainly can, they may result in cuts in government programs. 12 The programs cut might have benefited a different group of people. 21 In that case, the combination of tax cuts and spending cuts will have helped one group and harmed another. 24 Some people may just favor tax cuts that benefit themselves and people like them, while coming at the expense of someone else. 33 Critics have argued, for example, that Reagan- and Bush-era tax and spending policies cut taxes mostly for corporations and affluent individuals, while mostly cutting programs that benefit lower-income people. 16 Second, proponents of \u201csmall\u201d government may actually want to reduce government revenue. 27 Some conservative strategists have argued in favor of tax cuts precisely to reduce government revenue and ultimately force spending cuts (to balance the budget). 11 This is sometimes known as the \u201cstarve-the-beast\u201d strategy. 25 Notice that this strategy requires that tax (rate) cuts result in lower government revenue, the opposite of the supply-siders\u2019 argument. 22 If you follow budget debates carefully, you will sometimes hear the same politician, in effect, making opposing arguments. 27 When arguing in favor of tax (rate) cuts, a politician may make the supply-side claim that government revenues will increase as a result. 26 When arguing against new or expanded government programs, however, they may argue that the new spending will require tax (rate) increases. 28 If they really believe the supply-side story, they should be arguing that increased government programs will require tax cuts, in order to increase tax revenues. 17 Alejandro Reuss is an economist and historian and a member of the Dollars & Sense collective. 7 Did you find this article useful? 10 Please consider supporting our work by donating or subscribing."} {"text": " 27 WAUWATOSA -- Neighbors are concerned after a Wauwatosa man found a dead deer near the area a popular buck named \"Bow Tie\" was killed. 10 A DNR spokesperson says wardens are investigating the incident. 27 After the Packers game on New Year's Day, Adam Field opened the back door of his home on North Glenway near Menomonee River Parkway. 44 \"I went to let the dog out in the backyard, and I was startled by a large buck laying about 10 feet from our back door on our patio, and it seemed to be dead,\" explained Adam Field. 15 He saw a small spot of blood, but didn't notice a wound. 9 Adam woke up his wife and stepped outside. 14 \"Had her look at it too and it looked dead to her. 24 So I kind of went out with a flashlight, poked around and nudged it's hoof and obviously it didn't flinch. 6 It was definitely dead.\" 10 The couple planned to call authorities in the morning. 34 \"My first suspicion was that it was probably hit by a car or something, and it traveled a little bit through the neighborhood and fell dead there,\" said Field. 13 An hour later, he looked out and the deer was gone. 51 \"It made us, both my wife and I, think that somebody had to of known it was there or were looking for it....just the odd part of the deer being removed in the middle of the night on our property is just very suspicious.\" 13 Adam became even more suspicious in the morning when he went outside. 37 \"There were definitely a couple footprints from one or two people and you can definitely see a drag mark and some of that carcass was moved from that spot and taken,\" explained Field. 6 The incident is under investigation. 9 Be sure and try our new SNOWCAST APP! 29 It is the \"snow equivalent to STORM SHIELD\" - a great new product that gives you high resolution snow forecasts for any part of the nation! 17 It has just been introduced for iPhones, but we are working on the Android version! 11 Just search SNOWCAST in the App Store or click here."} {"text": " 10 The Midnight Riders are hosting another charity trivia night! 18 We\u2019ll be back at The Pour House in Boston for this one (downstairs). 42 Wednesday, October 15\n\n7:00pm \u2013 10:00pm\n\nThe Pour House\n\n907 Boylston St #21\n\n\u200bBoston, MA 02115\n\nThis trivia night will take place during OCD Awareness week, and we will be raising money for the International OCD Foundation. 25 So, round up your team, brush up on your obscure facts, and come play trivia with us for a good cause! 6 Light food will be provided. 25 Sign up as an individual ($10) or sign up your whole team \u2013 max of 8 people ($75). 10 Individuals will be matched into teams before we start. 11 You may also pay at the door before the event. 30 Some of the prizes for winning teams:\n\nNew England Revolution Bobble Heads\n\nMidnight Riders Scarves\n\nBanshee Giftcard\n\nCopies of FIFA14\n\nMidnight Riders Store Gift Certificate\n\nPour House Gift Card"} {"text": " 25 [TRANS] http://bit.ly/12w6Xdd For the first time after debuting, Girls' Generation's Yuri will be making her screen debut. 29 Yuri has been cast as the lead female role in Korea's first swimming themed film, portraying the friendship and love of youth, 'No Breathing'. 25 Yuri is planning on showing an enthusiastic performance of the role of 'Jung Eun', a girl who dreams of becoming a musician. 25 It's a character who has a variety of charms, from an easygoing personality, innocent/pure appearance, along with emotion-filled singing skills. 21 There will be a love triangle between her and childhood friends [played by] Lee Jongsuk and Seo Inguk. 24 (\u2026)\n\nYuri stated, \"I'm glad to be able to show a new side of me through a movie. 25 After reading the scenario for 'No Breathing', I liked the character, and got the feeling of wanting to act as her. 11 I will work hard to create a great work.\" 23 'No Breathing' will officially begin filming on the 19th, and is scheduled to premiere near the end of this year. 4 Reply \u00b7 Report Post"} {"text": " 6 The first official Minecraft novel! 53 In the tradition of iconic adventures like Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, the number one New York Times best-selling author of World War Z tells the story of a hero - stranded in the world of Minecraft - who must unravel the secrets of a mysterious island in order to survive. 14 Washed up on a beach, the lone castaway looks around the shore. 4 Where am I? 4 Who am I? 8 And why is everything made of blocks? 12 But there isn't much time to soak up the sun. 15 It's getting dark, and there's a strange new world to explore! 7 The top priority is finding food. 7 The next is not becoming food. 21 Because there are others out there on the island...like the horde of zombies that appear after night falls. 14 Crafting a way out of this mess is a challenge like no other. 22 Who could build a home while running from exploding creepers, armed skeletons, and an unstoppable tide of hot lava? 21 Especially with no help except for a few makeshift tools and sage advice from an unlikely friend: a cow. 21 In this world, the rules don't always make sense, but courage and creativity go a long way. 18 There are forests to explore, hidden underground tunnels to loot, and undead mobs to defeat. 11 Only then will the secrets of the island be revealed."} {"text": " 8 Prostitution is described as the oldest profession. 30 It often feels as if the arguments between those who want it abolished and those who are pragmatic about it continuing have been going on for almost as long. 33 Today, as the European parliament prepares to vote on whether men who buy sex should be criminalised, both sides are squaring up for yet another battle in this long-running war. 7 Sex work straddles a vast spectrum. 16 Not everyone who engages in sex work is raped, trafficked, beaten and unpaid. 18 Nor are sex workers, who are mostly female, all safe, happy and well remunerated. 42 Abolitionists say that the act of a woman \"selling her body\" to a man for sex is exploitation, irrespective of how much she is paid and whether or not the sex act is violent or accompanied by violence. 10 Many sex workers and their advocates beg to differ. 9 They are unlikely to agree any time soon. 26 Prostitution statistics are notoriously unreliable, as many sex workers are operating in a hidden, underground way and aren't included in any headcounts. 24 But according to the Association of Chief Police Officers' 2010 report, 2,600 of 30,000 women working in indoor premises were trafficked. 31 Yet Labour MEP Mary Honeyball, a keen advocate of the proposal to criminalise men who buy sex, insists that a majority of women in sex work are trafficked. 42 The abolitionists' arguments might work if every woman selling sex was desperate to stop doing so, and if there was a comprehensive support package in place to help women exit prostitution and provide them with lucrative, alternative employment. 28 But many sex workers say they are willing to engage in this work because they can earn more than they would be able to in other jobs. 34 Those who do want to get out lament the lack of financial and emotional support available to them, and equate leaving sex work to tumbling into a bottomless, moneyless rabbit hole. 43 They insist that the proposals backed by Honeyball won't \"rescue\" them or prompt them to walk away rejoicing from their work but will simply make it more dangerous for them to continue doing what they have chosen to do. 26 Whether laws are passed to criminalise buyers or criminalise sellers, the impact on sellers who choose to remain in sex work is the same. 7 It makes their work more dangerous. 18 Working together in small groups, whether inside or outside, makes things safer for sex workers. 38 Yet women who work together indoors are committing a crime under current UK laws, and those who work on the streets together are more likely to attract negative attention from police and be charged with soliciting. 17 Police chiefs have recently called for women to be allowed to work together to improve safety. 9 Two sex workers were recently murdered in London. 39 The first, Mariana Popa, was working alone outside as there was a police enforcement operation going on in the area, while the second, Maria Duque-Tunjano, was also working alone indoors to avoid prosecution. 23 Would both these women still be alive today if they had been allowed to work in a small group with other women? 15 When sex workers raise their voices it is usually to call for their rights. 43 Italian sex workers have been demanding the right to pay taxes so they can receive pensions, while sex workers in London's Soho have hailed a new court victory rejecting a closure order on two flats they have been working in. 24 The judge ruled that the women were not being controlled for gain in their work, despite police putting forward a contrary argument. 16 Sweden, Norway and Iceland have already made the purchase of sex a criminal offence. 14 France has voted the same way, and Ireland is considering following suit. 24 Academic Jay Levy has recently completed a piece of research about the \"Swedish model\" of criminalising men who pay for sex. 29 He argues that levels of sex work in Sweden have not reduced, while the law has caused great harm to sex workers, especially the most vulnerable. 26 If the European parliament endorses the Swedish model today, the very women they say they want to protect will be put at increased risk. 16 Isn't it time to call a truce between both sides in the prostitution debate? 45 Increase real support to women who want to leave sex work while allowing women who have chosen to sell sex to increase their safety by working together, without fear of prosecution, leaving police to focus on victims of trafficking and underage girls."} {"text": " 37 During the 2008 Vice-Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, in St. Louis, Biden offered a memorable brief on behalf of struggling communities like the one in Pennsylvania where he spent his childhood. 49 Biden, whose common-man bona fides were seen as an antidote to Barack Obama\u2019s Ivy League credentials and relative aloofness, spoke evocatively of the pain felt by a portion of America that is more usually described in the gauzy, romantic tones of American greatness. 17 \u201cLook, the people in my neighborhood, they get it,\u201d Biden said. 15 \u201cThey know they\u2019ve been getting the short end of the stick. 31 So walk with me in my neighborhood, go back to my old neighborhood, in Claymont, an old steel town, or go up to Scranton with me. 12 These people know the middle class has gotten the short end. 7 The wealthy have done very well. 6 Corporate America has been rewarded. 57 It\u2019s time we change it.\u201d\n\nIn hindsight, what\u2019s notable about Biden\u2019s statement is not how it presaged the populist concerns of this year\u2019s Presidential election but the fact that he referred to his neighbors\u2014steelworkers, denizens of factory towns\u2014as middle class, not as working class. 25 In fact, the phrase \u201cworking class\u201d came up twice during the debate\u2014but it was Palin who said it, not Biden. 12 Things didn\u2019t change much rhetorically in the 2012 election. 27 Obama and Mitt Romney, in the course of three Presidential debates, invoked the \u201cmiddle class\u201d forty-three times but never mentioned the proletariat. 40 For decades, both American culture and American politics have elided the differences between salaried workers and those who are paid hourly, between college-educated professionals and those whose purchasing power is connected to membership in a labor union. 17 Some ninety per cent of Americans, including most millionaires, routinely identify as middle class. 38 For many years, this glossing over of the distinctions between the classes served a broad set of interests, particularly during the Cold War, when any reference to class carried a whiff of socialist sympathies. 23 Americans considered themselves part of a larger whole, and social animosities were mostly siphoned off in the direction of racial resentment. 12 But, this year, Americans are once again debating class. 7 We are clearly out of practice. 87 The current language of \u201cincome inequality\u201d is a low-carb version of the Old Left\u2019s \u201cclass exploitation.\u201d The new phrase lacks rhetorical zing; it\u2019s hard to envision workers on a picket line singing rousing anthems about \u201cincome inequality.\u201d The term lacks a verb, too, so it\u2019s possible to think of the condition under discussion as a random social outcome, rather than as the product of deliberate actions taken by specific people. 40 Bernie Sanders has tended to frame his position as a defense of an imperilled middle class, but he has also called out the \u201cgreedy billionaires\u201d and \u201cWall Street\u201d\u2014a synecdoche for exploitation in general. 29 Donald Trump\u2019s populist appeals are all the more remarkable given that the modern Republican Party has been the largest beneficiary of this collapsing of class interests. 24 Ever since Ronald Reagan\u2019s Presidency, progressives have pondered why working-class and poor whites vote Republican, against their own interests. 32 The fact that the charge is being led on the right by a billionaire real-estate developer, however, suggests that the new recognition of class is not without its contradictions. 75 It\u2019s also worth noting that Romney, the man leading the attempt to quell this populist uprising, on behalf of the Party\u2019s alarmed establishment, is a multimillionaire who lost the previous election, in part, because he dismissed forty-seven per cent of Americans as \u201cfreeloaders.\u201d\n\nStrikingly, the emerging dialogue on class is informed by the ways in which we have typically talked about race. 16 In 1976, the majority of welfare recipients in the United States were not black. 66 But when, during the Presidential campaign that year, Reagan made his famous comments about the \u201cwelfare queen,\u201d they were widely taken to mean that the problem wasn\u2019t poor people in general but, rather, certain blacks in inner cities, who were purportedly cheating the system (and whose votes the Republican Party had already jettisoned). 103 Today, in the battle over, say, public-sector unions, it\u2019s hard not to hear an echo of those complaints about social parasitism, though when Governor Scott Walker, of Wisconsin, campaigned to strip most public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining rights he did so in the language of Madison progressivism: \u201cWe can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots.\u201d\n\nThere are other hints that the old stereotypes about inner-city blacks are beginning to be deployed against working-class whites. 51 Heightened mortality rates among middle-aged working-class whites and the concomitant spike in opioid addiction have, on the whole, generated sympathetic examinations of social displacement, in which addiction is seen as a public-health concern symptomatic of the changing economy, as opposed to a sign of moral failure. 28 But, last month, in National Review, Kevin Williamson wrote:\n\nThe truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. 7 Economically, they are negative assets. 6 Morally, they are indefensible. 9 Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. 10 Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns. 1 . 1 . 1 . 23 The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. 10 Donald Trump\u2019s speeches make them feel good. 4 So does OxyContin. 11 These are the communities that Biden spoke of in 2008. 24 Yet, according to Williamson, the apt metaphor isn\u2019t getting the short end of the stick but dropping the ball. 32 In 2010, Charles Murray published \u201cComing Apart,\u201d a lamentation on the decline among poor whites of religiosity, of the work ethic, and of family values. 35 It received just a fraction of the attention paid to his 1994 book, \u201cThe Bell Curve,\u201d which argued that a supposed intellectual inferiority factored into the plight of poor blacks. 46 But in 2016 there is a new market for the ideas in \u201cComing Apart.\u201d The fact that we are examining class may be novel, but it is almost certain that what we\u2019ll hear said about poverty won\u2019t be. 1 \u2666"} {"text": " 11 Airbus has filed a patent for a downward-facing winglet device. 22 The new wing tip device is being described as a wing extension that may be swept and may deform during flight. 24 This flexible wing tip extension provides a drag reduction whilst decreasing the bending moment of the wing, particularly at the wing root. 12 Aircraft performance might benefit during both steady flight and high-lift manoeuvres. 27 Because of its flexible behaviour, the downward-facing winglet may provide a larger span during flight in comparison to when the aircraft is on the ground. 40 The wing tip device allows not to be mounted directly at the tip of the wing, but may for example be mounted spaced apart from the wing tip that might have mounted an additional wingtip fence or winglet. 10 It may be also fully blended with the wing."} {"text": " 50 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The law of retribution means the victim can demand his attacker suffers the same punishment as he caused\n\nThe UK has urged Saudi Arabia not to carry out a reported sentencing of paralysis for a Saudi man as punishment for paralysing another man. 22 A Foreign Office spokesperson said London was \"deeply concerned\" by the sentence, describing it as \"grotesque\". 14 Such punishment was \"prohibited under international law\", the official added. 26 Saudi media reports earlier said the 24-year-old man could be paralysed from the waist down if he could not pay his victim \u00a3250,000 in compensation. 20 Ali al-Khawahir was 14 when he stabbed a friend in the back in the Eastern Province town of al-Ahsa. 9 He has been in prison for 10 years. 32 The judge in the case has reportedly interpreted the Islamic law of qisas, or retribution, that Saudi Arabia follows as meaning that he in turn could face being paralysed. 10 Amnesty International has described this as tantamount to torture. 19 The sentencing is the latest example of Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law attracting international criticism. 35 BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's comments mark an unusually strong plea to the Saudi authorities in what is, by any standards an unusual and disturbing case. 38 Successive British governments have struggled at times to harmonise their concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia with the fact that the Kingdom remains a key ally and a major customer for British weaponry, he adds."} {"text": " 41 Motorcyclist killed in head-on Highway 1 crash identified\n\nAuthorities on Sunday identified a motorcyclist who was killed after a sport utility vehicle veered into oncoming traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway north of Jenner and wiped out two other riders. 28 Anthony Cruz, 44, of Vallejo died at the scene after being hit head-on around 12:30 p.m. Saturday, Sonoma County sheriff\u2019s officials said. 33 The deadly crash happened when 19-year-old Alexander Odgers-McGuire drifted in his Toyota Rav4 into oncoming northbound traffic while negotiating a right-hand curve on Highway 1 near Fort Ross Road, said Sgt. 8 Ross Ingels with the California Highway Patrol. 24 Odgers-McGuire first clipped the leg of 55-year-old Oakland resident Robert Rodgers, who was riding on a Ducati motorcycle, the CHP said. 35 The Toyota continued on and smashed head-on with Cruz, who was riding a Triumph motorcycle, and 54-year-old Phillip Telesforo of Rohnert Park, who was riding a Yamaha motorcycle, Ingels said. 30 After colliding with the riders, Odgers-McGuire drifted southbound for 35 feet before he ran off the east side of the road and his vehicle came to a rest. 9 Cruz died at the scene, authorities said. 14 Rodgers and Telesforo were airlifted to Santa Rosa Memorial hospital with major injuries. 16 Odgers-McGuire, who had minor injuries, was taken to a hospital in an ambulance. 11 Investigators were working to determine the cause of the collision. 12 They don\u2019t believe drugs or alcohol played a role. 10 Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. 9 E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky"} {"text": " 90 CEO Dan Brambilla, who is stepping down at the end of this month, also expensed an undisclosed sum for eating in the centre\u2019s cafeteria, which was later justified as \u201cquality control testing.\u201d\n\nThe departing boss of the Sony Centre was reimbursed in part with public funds for \u201cinappropriate\u201d expenses \u2014 including a $890 boozy Christmas lunch with staff \u2014 and his personal company was paid a $572,000 consulting fee to plan a new facility that was later scrapped. 42 Brambilla is now at the centre of a renewed spending scandal at the city-owned theatre, after audit findings released Wednesday outlined the troubling reimbursements the centre made to the CEO, which were approved or overlooked by the previous board. 33 And his $15,000 wedding at the centre in 2010 resulted in Brambilla\u2019s company being paid nearly $8,000 by the centre for the rights to promote the ceremony online. 31 \u201cWe have a situation here that has been seemingly brewing out of control,\u201d said Councillor Shelley Carroll , who sits on the city\u2019s audit committee. 45 \u201cWe\u2019ve lost confidence in what\u2019s going on over there.\u201d\n\nA response from \u201cSony Centre management\u201d defending the expenditures was also made public Wednesday \u2014 though it\u2019s not clear who specifically wrote the three-page document. 10 Brambilla did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday. 31 Council voted Wednesday to replace the board with a temporary team of eight councillors and senior city staff and added other control measures, including training for a future board. 43 The findings come after an auditor general\u2019s report found issues with the management of the Sony Centre\u2019s massive redevelopment \u2014 the cost of which rose from $28 million to over $40 million under the previous board. 17 Since 2008, the city has subsidized the centre at about $1 million per year. 10 Brambilla\u2019s salary has not been made public. 42 After he assumed the role of CEO in 2002, Brambilla\u2019s personal company, Stage By Stage Holdings, was paid $572,000 for consulting on the CityCentre project, a proposed cultural and arts hub at the theatre. 14 That project was eventually scrapped and replaced by the redevelopment project still underway. 44 Brambilla\u2019s company \u2014 which according to the CEO\u2019s LinkedIn page is \u201cdevoted to the development of new musicals\u201d \u2014 received the payment as part of $3.4 million spent by the centre on preparing a business plan. 23 The audit found the payment was \u201cinappropriate,\u201d as Brambilla was an employee of the centre, not a consultant. 29 As for expenses, the CEO was compensated for $1,250 in airfare and event tickets for his wife, Nancy, while on two Canadian business trips. 39 The audit found Brambilla also expensed at least six political fundraising events, including for former federal Liberal party leader Bob Rae and two events for former Liberal MPP George Smitherman \u2014 to a total of $4,650. 27 \u201cThe appropriateness of using taxpayer money to fund certain political parties is questionable even though the amounts are not significant,\u201d the audit reads. 16 In 2009, the CEO charged $890 for a Christmas lunch with seven staff. 16 More than a third of the pre-tax bill was for alcohol, the audit found. 42 Brambilla also ate an unknown number of lunches with his wife at the centre\u2019s cafeteria over an undisclosed period of time \u2014 but he expensed his half of the meal, including $225 over two weeks in 2010. 20 In September 2010, Brambilla and his wife were married at the Sony Centre in a $15,000 affair. 13 He paid that cost in full in 2011, the audit said. 43 But before he paid off the wedding, Brambilla\u2019s company was paid $7,910 by the centre for promotional rights to the wedding photos and and to demand the couple be available for interviews, to garner other prospective events. 20 \u201cWe found that to be a very odd transaction,\u201d auditor general Jeff Griffiths told councillors Wednesday. 10 The management response addresses the allegations point by point. 16 It claims Brambilla was \u201cself employed\u201d when he was paid a consulting fee. 56 The document also said Brambilla\u2019s wife\u2019s travelled with him to Ottawa \u201cto determine if a cooking show being presented at the [National Arts Centre] would work in Toronto.\u201d A later trip to Quebec City was \u201cin error\u201d and repaid with interest, the document said. 21 Political fundraisers were attended largely to solicit support from senior governments for the earlier CityCentre project, the document said. 32 And the document claimed paying Brambilla\u2019s company for wedding promotion rights was determined to be \u201creasonable\u201d because it was a \u201cbeta test\u201d for future events. 45 Councillor Pam McConnell, who sits on the Sony Centre board, told reporters those explanations are \u201cnot comprehensible.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s comprehensible to anybody who knows about defending the public purse,\u201d she said. 24 \u201cI think it\u2019s much more an action of someone who is in the private sector playing loosey-goosey with private money. 66 But this was public money.\u201d\n\nCouncillor Josh Matlow, who also sits on the audit committee that first heard the new findings, said the spending \u201craises eyebrows.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe board and Brambilla were entrusted with those public dollars to serve the public interest and to make the Sony Centre a great success for the City of Toronto,\u201d he said. 24 Last week, all eight civilian members of the board, who took over in 2011, resigned ahead of their pending replacement. 28 The controversy has raised questions at council over the city\u2019s role in the three theatres it owns and how it manages arm\u2019s-length boards. 49 \u201cIt\u2019s not just the right people; we need the right rules,\u201d said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who called the expenses \u201cdisturbing.\u201d\n\nThe temporary board will be responsible for picking a new board after and a new CEO, said Carroll."} {"text": " 27 Over the course of a decade, Platinum Games has established itself as a developer capable of bringing style and fast-paced gameplay to most any property. 33 While there have been some stumbles along the way \u2013 namely the cancellation of the highly anticipated Scalebound in January \u2013 the company continues to steam ahead toward new projects and endeavors. 39 Atsushi Inaba, head of development and a producer at Platinum, sat down with us to talk about some of these future plans, as well as what defines the studio in terms of design and structure. 17 When I look at all your games, it seems they\u2019re all very stylish. 13 And you said smooth, which I thought was an interesting description. 28 But I\u2019m curious if you think that\u2019s an important thing for video games to be, and why you think that might be. 47 Atsushi Inaba: I wouldn\u2019t actually say \u201cstylish\u201d is necessarily in our DNA, but it certainly conjures up the idea of smooth controls, pretty art that pops, something that sticks out and has a unique visual footprint, etc. 11 It\u2019s nice to be thought of that way. 26 And ultimately for us as an independent developer, we\u2019ve just naturally grown into being able to focus on that sort of gameplay. 9 Probably it is in how we develop games. 57 Even with our independent game that we\u2019re going to do, the engine has been built out in a way so that programmers can work with animators very smoothly, and a lot of times that\u2019s what helps smooth the nature of the controls, the action being on pace, etc. 21 And so we\u2019ve planned on that in advance to make sure it can be in the final product. 30 Do you have just a huge development team or are you guys structured in a way that allows you guys to take on more work than a traditional studio? 16 We\u2019re about 200 people, including some of the external partners we use. 25 But probably, at the end of the day, we do more projects at the same time than a traditional Western studio might. 33 With 200 people at a Western studio, maybe you\u2019re doing two games at once, maybe three, but sometimes only one even with that sort of head count. 19 And that\u2019s because we\u2019re selfish and we want to do a lot of stuff. 29 Looking at Platinum\u2019s history, all the games you\u2019ve put out, what do you think is the core through line for all those? 10 What do you think defines what you guys do? 6 What makes your games special? 9 Most of our games have really smooth interfaces. 11 You can control the action without a lot of stress. 21 The combos that you link together, they link together seamlessly in the right way and it just makes sense. 52 But if I was really going to list one thing that ties those games together, that makes Platinum Games unique, it would have to be that every time we come up with a design idea, a game idea, it\u2019s based on something original, new. 29 It\u2019s not copying some trend that we see and then adding a plus one to it, which a lot of developers you sometimes see do. 20 It is us building up something new that people probably haven\u2019t seen before from the ground up. 17 A couple years ago you guys did a Transformers game, which was kind of surprising. 12 I\u2019m curious as to how that game came about. 11 That was initially a project brought to us by Activision. 39 And every time we determine whether you\u2019re going to do a work-for-hire project or work on somebody else\u2019s IP, we like to feel that we\u2019re going to be motivated by it. 32 Either it\u2019s going to be fit our schedule or financially something that makes sense and certainly that we know it, or there are people internally that like it. 17 And honestly in the games industry there\u2019s a lot of people that like Transformers. 7 It\u2019s a cool IP. 8 There\u2019s no doubt about it. 50 But what they really got us with was when they came over and said, \u201cHow about we do generation one Transformers, the original.\u201d And there\u2019s lots of older developers here in their late 30s or early 40s that grew up watching the Transformers. 12 And so that was when everybody was like, \u201cYes! 16 We really want to do it.\u201d So it was a no-brainer from that point. 29 It seems like microtransactions are a pretty hot topic these days and a lot of people are saying single-player focused adventures are maybe going away because of that. 14 Do you think it\u2019s still a viable game genre to make? 20 We feel that we can add in the right pieces, whether it\u2019s multiplayer or something else. 58 Honestly, microtransactions are a whole different hornet\u2019s nest to consider, and I\u2019m not saying that that business model doesn\u2019t have its place, but I do feel that it\u2019s a different issue rather than whether games are multiplayer and more expansive versus a single-player story-driven action game. 22 But, honestly, when you design games they need to be designed with those sorts of modes from the beginning. 10 That needs to be a core piece of it. 29 And a lot of these games that have multiplayer in them, obviously it\u2019s just been tacked on because the publisher has felt it was necessary. 29 So we feel that we can definitely design those sorts of games \u2013 strong multiplayer experiences and whatnot \u2013 but it has to be done from the beginning. 39 It can\u2019t be the core fun of the game is a single-player experience and then I\u2019ve just added this extra mode on because that doesn\u2019t work out really well in any game. 9 So what has Platinum been focusing on lately? 24 One of the things Platinum is focused on is we\u2019re looking into creating our own IP, creating our own game. 19 Up until now, obviously we\u2019ve worked on original IPs for a wide variety of publishers. 15 We\u2019ve also worked on other Hollywood IPs for other publishers as well. 20 But we\u2019re becoming more and more interested in the idea of self-publishing and doing our own title. 6 So how would that look? 10 What would that process look like for you guys? 40 Over the last year we\u2019ve pretty much opened the company up to \u201cAnybody can pitch a game,\u201d and so over the last year we\u2019ve gotten about 70 design documents from different people. 29 And if you\u2019re going list out the other random ideas, the scratched stuff on paper, that\u2019s a hell of a lot more. 41 So this year has been about us basically diluting which stuff we wanted to focus on and not focus on, and drilling down to the point where we now have two designs that we\u2019re genuinely focused on. 23 Are those all ideas for bigger games, or do you guys kind of look at what the indie space is doing? 11 Are you thinking about doing a small, indie-style game? 30 We can\u2019t put together a AAA, $10 million-plus game, because we just don\u2019t have that sort of cash as an independent developer. 59 However, we don\u2019t plan to go the indies route with just a few people on a team making a game, so it\u2019ll be somewhere in the middle, looking at probably about 20 people on the staff making the game, so that\u2019ll still be a healthy [size]. 31 Are you guys looking at what people are doing elsewhere in Japan, or anywhere in the West, for examples of what those kinds of games could look like? 34 Rather than looking at other companies and how they\u2019ve done it, for us the reason we want to do it is we want to motivate the people that work here. 13 We want to give them an opportunity to make their own game. 50 That being said, if you\u2019re going to put 20 people on the development, it has to be something that\u2019s on brand and on topic, and obviously when people think of the Platinum Games brand, they expect crazy hardcore action, right? 10 That\u2019s what they\u2019re looking for. 10 And so we have to be reticent of that. 24 We want to surprise them by the fact that we\u2019re doing this independent title and hopefully get support from the fanbase. 22 But we don\u2019t want to surprise them by, say, doing a princess-clothing-making game or something like that. 12 It would totally not be what people want from Platinum Games. 15 I would be interested to see what you guys did with a princess-clothing game. 53 You know, as we got down to the selection process, there was actually a game that was kind of in that direction, but when we made the final round picks, it was just like, yeah, this one\u2019s not going do it [laughs]. 11 Does this change your direction for releasing big AAA games? 19 If you\u2019re going to self-publish, does it affect your relationship with other publishers as well? 40 First off, we will continue to do AAA games for other publishers and that\u2019s because, again, we don\u2019t have the cash flow to take on the risk to only do self-published games. 28 In order to do a AAA title with that amount of risk, you need to be with a big company, a publisher so to speak. 76 We don\u2019t think that us doing self-published titles, just based on the scope and scale of what they are, is going to interfere with relationships with other publishers because, again, the style and the size and scope of games that we do with them is going to be much bigger compared to this to the point where they realize we\u2019re not really competing in the same markets. 33 Doing something on our own, self-publishing it, releasing it, all of that is a challenge for us, but right now everybody is incredibly motivated and working on that. 27 So all the fans, anybody who looks at the website or reads the magazine, look forward to something cool in the future from Platinum."} {"text": " 19 GLENDALE, Ariz. \u2014 It\u2019s time for the Chicago Bears to have a real quarterback competition. 17 That doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s going to happen, but it should. 48 Anybody with a remote control and a television tuned to either of the Bears\u2019 first two preseason games can see who the most talented quarterback on the roster is \u2014 it\u2019s the one that was playing in the fourth quarter Saturday night in Arizona. 7 And the Bears know that already. 13 That\u2019s why they traded up to draft Mitch Trubisky No. 5 2 overall in April. 16 That\u2019s not to say Trubisky should be anointed the Bears\u2019 starting quarterback. 12 But he should get a fair chance to win the job. 15 Saturday night\u2019s preseason game in Arizona was anything but a fair chance. 59 Playing behind an offensive line that killed the running game and allowed two scary hits to their quarterback (one to the head and one to the legs, both of which were roughing the passer penalties), Trubisky didn\u2019t really get a chance to repeat last week\u2019s impressive debut at Soldier Field. 21 And yet he still completed 6-of-8 passes for 60 yards and a touchdown in a solid, but abbreviated performance. 31 On the other hand, uncontested starter Mike Glennon \u2014 who had adequate protection and running back Tarik Cohen averaging 7.0 yards per carry \u2014 was, well, fine. 36 \u201cI thought it was a big improvement,\u201d head coach John Fox said about Glennon, which is technically true following the quarterback\u2019s 0.0 passer rating in the first preseason game. 21 \u201cI thought we had a very limited look in Week 1, like most first offenses in this league. 12 Some starting quarterbacks don\u2019t even play in Week 1. 90 But I thought the whole offense responded, including Mike.\u201d\n\nHere\u2019s the key question though: Why are the Bears treating Glennon\u2019s first team unit like \u201cmost first offenses in the league?\u201d It consists of a quarterback who hasn\u2019t started an NFL game in almost three years, a third-year wide receiver who has played four of 32 games in his career, a different third-year wideout who went undrafted and an offensive line missing a three-time Pro Bowler. 19 In other words, the Bears\u2019 first-team offense shouldn\u2019t be treated like an established unit. 5 It\u2019s not. 24 And that starts with the quarterback, whose \u201cbig improvement\u201d Saturday can\u2019t be described as anything more than ordinary. 35 Glennon\u2019s best pass was an 18-yard throw to Cam Meredith and his worst was a goal-line toss up that was easily picked off by Cardinals safety Tyrann Mathieu and returned 52 yards. 17 \u201cI thought he reacted really well (to the interception),\u201d Fox said. 74 \u201cI think he was involved in helping get the guy down, which I appreciate.\u201d\n\nSo, using the two preseason games as evidence, the reasons for keeping Glennon as the uncontested starter are: he\u2019s a great leader, he threw a really nice pass to Meredith on Saturday night and he tried to tackle the safety who picked off his floating pass near the end zone. 40 Remember, Fox is the same guy who said \u201cI don\u2019t think there are any givens\u201d when asked to reaffirm Jay Cutler as his starter last year while Cutler was recovering from a sprained thumb. 11 So why is Glennon\u2019s starting job a given? 14 To be clear, I\u2019m not calling for a change already. 15 I\u2019m just questioning why there isn\u2019t more of a competition. 23 Sure, if the regular season started tomorrow, I could understand why the Bears would want to start Glennon over Trubisky. 6 But it doesn\u2019t. 6 It starts in 21 days. 14 And the Bears still have one more good opportunity to test their No. 12 2 overall draft pick next Sunday in Nashville against the Titans. 23 Heck, the Bears don\u2019t even need to call it a real competition if they don\u2019t want to. 46 But they\u2019ll be wasting a big opportunity if they don\u2019t give Trubisky time to play with the Bears\u2019 starters and against the Titans\u2019 starters to see what he can really do with adequate protection and a strong running game. 8 And why does that matter so much? 10 Let\u2019s fast forward to the regular season. 34 If Glennon continues to play like this (his passer rating Saturday was 74.4) against the Falcons, Buccaneers, Steelers and Packers, mind you, the Bears will be 0-4. 31 And that\u2019s a shame, because here\u2019s another significant development from Satuday\u2019s game in Arizona: the defense and special teams look secretly decent. 4 Maybe even good. 39 And considering the Bears even boasted an explosive rushing attack behind Cohen Saturday, it didn\u2019t take a trained football eye to see what was missing: a quarterback that can open up the offense downfield. 6 Maybe Glennon is that guy. 10 Admittedly, the sample size is still very small. 22 But in two preseason games and a whole bunch of practices, we have yet to see him be that guy. 20 On the other hand, we have seen Trubisky be that guy \u2014 albeit with backups, against backups. 9 So why not see if it is real? 19 Why not alternate series next week in Nashville to see what Trubisky looks like with the first-team offense? 44 When asked that question Saturday night, Fox dodged a real answer, simply saying \u201cour first unit will get the most extensive amount of playing time that they\u2019ll see in the preseason against Tennessee.\u201d\n\nThat\u2019s good. 12 The first-unit needs an extensive amount of playing time against Tennessee. 15 And it should get that playing time with both Mike Glennon and Mitch Trubisky. 12 Adam Hoge covers the Chicago Bears for WGN Radio and WGNRadio.com. 11 He also co-hosts The Beat, weekends on 720 WGN. 8 Follow him on Twitter at @AdamHoge."} {"text": " 18 The text of a talk given at Occupy Wellington, New Zealand, on October 27 2011. 22 The talk was organised to try to counter the prevalence of conspiracy theories amongst the local wing of the Occupy movement. 9 Kia ora kotou, thanks everyone for coming. 34 Firstly, a brief run-down of how this workshop will work: first, I'm going to give a brief talk, followed by an open discussion which anyone can contribute to. 22 I also want to make it clear that I'm not here today to debunk or debate any specific conspiracy theory. 17 I've got no interest in doing that, I don't think its particularly productive. 25 What I want to be doing is talking about the title of the workshop is \u2013 why our activism must be based in reality. 73 So we'll be talking about the whole conspiracy world-view, we'll be talking about what I think is a much better alternative to that, but I'm not going to sit here and argue with you over whether the Government is secretly poisoning us from the skies, or whether shape-shifting reptilian lizards are controlling our lives, or whether or not you can cure cancer with baking soda. 7 First up, who am I? 35 For those of you who don't know me my name is Asher, I'm born and bred in Wellington, though I have also spent a few years recently living in Christchurch. 24 I've been involved in activism and radical politics for around about 7 years, in a variety of different campaigns and struggles. 23 If we're going to talk about conspiracy theories, the first important question is obvious: what is a conspiracy theory? 33 Now, if you go by a dictionary definition, a conspiracy is just a group of people who get together to plan something, and don't tell others about it. 19 If I'm organising a surprise birthday party for my friend, then I am conspiring with others. 17 But that's not a particularly useful definition for the purposes of a discussion like this. 79 So, for this discussion, the way I'm defining a conspiracy theory is thus: a conspiracy theory is a theory based in supposition, one that flies in the face of evidence or science, often one that claims its correctness can be shown by the paucity of evidence in favour of it, in the sense that 'this conspiracy goes so far that they've even buried all the evidence that proves it!' 16 Conspiracy theories often encourages an 'us few enlightened folk versus everyone else' world view. 36 This creates an atmosphere where conspiracy theorists look down on people, or sheeple as they are often called, and ignores the fact that people, by and large, are actually pretty intelligent. 56 In and of itself this world-view is hugely problematic for as I will discuss later, mass social change requires the participation of the masses and therefore, we have to have faith in the ability of people to decide things for themselves, to come to correct conclusions and ultimately to change the world. 15 Why am I interested in conspiracy theories, or at least arguing against them? 24 Firstly, because I'm passionate about science and rationality, and I find it fascinating how and when these things are ignored. 35 Secondly, because I'm Jewish, and many conspiracy theories are antisemitic \u2013 whether directly and obviously (eg: Jews run the world, or the media, or the banks). 42 Sometimes its more subtle \u2013 people might not talk about Jews explicitly but they may use Zionist as a code word, or talk about the Rothschilds, or an elite cabal of shadowy bankers who all coincidentally have Jewish surnames. 34 Lastly, I'm interested in conspiracy theories because I want radical social change, and to have radical social change, we need to have an understanding of how society actually works. 12 We are here at Occupy because we want to see change. 42 What we want differs: some want new regulations on the financial sector, others want to change taxes or the minimum wage, while others still want to destroy capitalism and bring in a new form of production and distribution. 25 Regardless of which of these boxes you fit in, if you fit in any of them at all, we all want change. 23 We're also here because we know we can't simply rely on Government to benevolently grant us the changes we desire. 21 If we believed that, we'd sit at home and wait for the Government to give us these gifts. 36 We're here because we know that those with power won't give it up lightly, and that it is only through our collective strength that we can win reforms, or create revolution. 13 But what do I mean when I say 'our collective strength'? 16 I think it's important to clarify who is contained within the word 'our'. 29 While people involved in the Occupy movements around the globe frequently refer to it as the 99%, I actually think that's a really imprecise term. 11 So, instead, I refer to the working class. 25 When they hear the term working class, some people think simply of male factory workers, but this is not what I mean. 31 The working class is not limited to blue collar workers in factories, but instead it includes all of us who are forced to sell our labour power to survive. 21 This includes people who are in paid employment, whether in a factory, office, caf\u00e9 or retail store. 57 It also includes those who are unable to find paid employment, or have chosen to refuse the drudgery of paid work in order to attempt to live on the meagre benefits supplied by the state, and who provide a vast potential pool of labour that enables the ruling class to further keep wages down. 22 The working class includes stay at home parents, doing vital unpaid work to raise the next generation of human beings. 15 It includes people who are too sick or unable to work for other reasons. 55 In short, if you don\u00b4t own a business, if you aren't part of the Government, if you aren't independently wealthy (such as from an inheritance), then chances are you are a part of the working class that I'm talking about, this collective 'our'. 76 If we agree that we can't simply rely on Government to benevolently grant us gifts, and that we need to fight for it using our numbers and our power, then it becomes necessary to understand how society is structured and how capitalism actually functions, in order to know where our collective strength comes from, where we have the most power, and where we need to apply the metaphorical blowtorch. 10 So, why are conspiracy theories not helpful here? 11 Why are conspiracy theories not useful for developing that understanding? 7 There's a variety of reasons. 35 Some conspiracy theories, such as those around 9/11, even if they were true, which I don't believe they are, would only tell us \u201cGovernments do bad things\u201d. 8 That's not actually news to anyone. 19 We know that the British Crown & the New Zealand Government stole vast tracts of land from Maori. 17 We know that the Crown and the Australian Government engaged in genocidal acts against Australian aborigines. 21 We know that Governments the world over have repeatedly sent people overseas to fight, kill and die in wars. 25 There's so, so much more, but to cut a long story short, everybody knows that sometimes Governments do bad things. 21 So theories that only serve to prove that, even if they were true, aren't actually particularly useful. 22 Some conspiracy theories are simply bizarre and the logical conclusions from them, don't fit with what their believers do. 50 If you actually believed that the majority of people in power around the world was a blood-sucking shape-shifting reptilians from another solar system, then you wouldn't limit your activity to promoting one guy's book tours around the globe and chatting with other believers on the internet. 12 Conspiracy theories often feed on people's mistrust and their fear. 24 They claim to provide simple answers to complicated questions, but actually when you examine them in detail they're highly complex themselves. 25 For example, with 9/11, it seems like a simple solution to say 'it was an inside job by the US Government'. 35 But actually, when you look into what would be required for this to be true, the thousands upon thousands of people who would need to be lying, it becomes incredibly implausible. 32 Some conspiracy theories, such as many of the shadowy financial cabal conspiracies, only serve to mystify capitalism and falsely suggest a level of control that doesn't actually exist. 16 Additionally, they remove any sense of our own power, whether real or potential. 49 A theory which suggests such overwhelming power and control over the entire way we live our lives is actually a catalyst for inaction \u2013 if a group has such a high level of control over everything, then there's not really anything we can do about it. 24 On the contrary, capitalism is not a static system, it is dynamic and changing and constantly adapts in response to threats. 37 The threat of working class power has resulted in a number of changes to the functioning of capitalism over time, including the introduction of Keynesian and Neoliberal economics in the late 1930s and 1970s respectively. 33 Even if conspiracy theories can sometimes seem relatively harmless on the surface, they play a role of absorbing us into a fictional world, somewhat like a dungeons and dragons enthusiast. 34 Once you are in this fictional world, it becomes really easy to get lost in it and to be defensive when challenged, even when challenged on a logical, rational basis. 30 I'll quote British political blogger Jack Ray:\n\nThe trouble with conspiracy theories is that they're all rendered pointless by one fundamental, unarguable element of capitalism. 21 That it is, whatever else you have to say about, positive or negative, a system of elites. 26 It has elitism coded into it\u00b4s DNA, from the smallest company, to the largest multinational, from the political system to the culture. 8 It's purpose is to promote elites. 11 It does this legitimately within the logic of the system. 21 It does this publicly, lording super-capitalists like Bill Gates or even for a time, Enron boss Ken Lay. 24 It lays its theories of elitism out for all to see, in policy projects, in university research, through political theorists. 11 It has no interest in secret cabals, or conspiracies. 7 It has no need for them. 13 It is a system openly, and publicly, run by elites. 30 They might go home at night and secretly dine with their illuminati, lizard-jew, Bilderberg Group friends, and laugh about how they've taken over the world. 14 It doesn't matter to me or you whether they do or not. 19 They are the elite, and we can see who they are and how they live their lives. 28 People know that we live in a system of elites, that acts in its own interests, according to the logic of the society they dominate. 7 Everyone who looks around know this. 46 We don't need internet documentaries to tell us that we're dominated, we just need to go to work, or walk through a posh neighbourhood or have a run-in with any politicians, big businessman or even a celebrity to know that. 24 What we need are weapons, ways of challenging that domination, so maybe we don't have to live under it forever. 12 Quote:\n\nSo what is the alternative to this conspiracist world-view? 10 For that, we need to look at history. 15 The history of how social change comes about is not always easy to find. 45 It suits those in power to downplay the role of mass movements, so the dominant narrative is often one that ignores the long term grassroots organising that has happened, and simply focuses on legislative change enacted by the Government of the day. 54 But a people's history is out there \u2013 often in the form of first hand accounts by those who took part in these movements, such as those for homosexual law reform, of the 1970s strike wave across New Zealand, of the movement against native forest logging and so on. 13 One thing, from looking at this history, is abundantly clear. 8 Mass action is vital for mass change. 38 If you look through history, time and time again, it is when large groups of people have got together and shown themselves to be a threat to those in power that concessions have been granted. 44 This happens on a small scale as well as a big one \u2013 when all 10 employees at a small business go on strike and refuse to work until their boss gives them a pay rise, the boss is forced to listen. 21 From this example, it becomes obvious that it isn't simply numbers alone that allow us to exercise power. 16 It is also using those numbers strategically to hit those in power where it hurts. 17 As workers, we create wealth for the bosses each and every day at our jobs. 19 Some of this wealth is returned to us in the form of wages, but much is stolen. 9 This stolen wealth is often called \u00a8surplus value\u00a8. 22 It is the accumulation of surplus value, stolen by our bosses, that forms the wealth of the ruling class. 38 But because the goods and services that create this surplus value ultimately come from our hands and our brains, through collectively withdrawing our labour, we can force the bosses to give in to our demands. 27 So taking collective action the workplace is one way we can impose our power on the bosses to help us better meet our needs and desires. 41 And if we extrapolate this to larger numbers of work-sites, to larger numbers of people both employed and unemployed, then we can begin to see how we can make changes to the functioning of society as a whole. 28 I don't have all the answers, though I do have plenty more to say than I've had time to touch on in this talk. 48 But I want to open things up to discussion soon, because I think that's one thing that is really important about this Occupy Wellington space, that we can talk through things, together, to come to new ways of thinking and working politically. 35 To finish things off, I want to emphasise that while it is important to have an open mind, this must be tempered with a commitment to rationality and the examining of evidence. 27 Or, to quote Australian sceptic and comedian Tim Minchin, \u201cIf you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out\u201d."} {"text": " 46 Image copyright Reuters Image caption More than 140 of the defendants are in custody over the attack at the Kerdasa police station\n\nA court in Egypt has upheld death sentences on 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters over a 2013 attack on a police station near Cairo. 15 The men were convicted over the deaths of at least 11 officers in Kerdasa. 21 The attack took place after Egyptian military forces cracked down on Islamist supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi that July. 19 Hundreds of death sentences have been passed on Mr Morsi's supporters but none has been carried out. 24 Human rights group Amnesty International says the death sentences follow grossly unfair trials and highlight Egypt's disregard for national and international law. 37 Image caption Egyptian security forces have often clashed with Muslim Brotherhood supporters in their stronghold of Kerdasa\n\nMr Morsi will face a new espionage trial on 15 February, Egypt's official Mena news agency says. 20 He and 10 others will be charged with leaking \"classified documents\" to Qatar and Qatari-based broadcaster al-Jazeera. 15 Mr Morsi is already facing three other trials, including another case of espionage. 12 He too could be given the death penalty if found guilty. 28 Appeal still possible\n\nMore than 140 of the 188 defendants in the Kerdasa case are already in custody, while the rest have been sentenced in absentia. 22 The court also sentenced a minor to 10 years in prison in the case, and two other defendants were acquitted. 23 The verdict follows a recommendation by Egypt's top religious authority, the Grand Mufti, but it can be appealed against. 34 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Hundreds of death sentences have been handed down against members of the Muslim Brotherhood\n\nLast month, the death sentences of 37 people were overturned on appeal. 26 The defendants had been convicted of attacking a police station in Minya, south of Cairo, on the same day as the Kerdasa attack. 31 The violence came after security forces killed hundreds of people when they cleared protest camps set up in the capital by supporters of the ousted Islamist president, Mohammad Morsi. 16 The original trial also saw some 377 people sentenced to life in prison in absentia. 47 \"[The] death sentences are yet another example of the bias of the Egyptian criminal justice system,\" Amnesty's Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said in a statement in response to Monday's verdict. 31 \"These verdicts and sentences must be quashed and all of those convicted should be given a trial that meets international standards of fairness and excludes the death penalty.\" 33 Mr Sahraoui said it would be wrong to impose capital punishment \"when there are serious doubts hanging over the fairness of the trial\" which \"outrageously flouted\" international law. 12 The United Nations has called the mass trials \"unprecedented\". 25 Mr Morsi was succeeded by President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, a former military chief who has been heavily criticised for his crackdown on Islamists. 17 Hundreds of people, mostly Islamists, have been killed since the army deposed Mr Morsi."} {"text": " 33 Local businesses be aware: The Society Of Composers, Authors And Music Publishers Of Canada (SOCAN), the licensing organization for music in Canada, is coming to Peterborough. 50 As recently reported by the Peterborough Chamber Of Commerce and the DBIA, a SOCAN agent will be stalking the streets of Peterborough in the next two weeks looking for any business (especially retail) playing music (even background music) without paying the appropriate license fees. 40 Any business playing unlicensed music could be slammed with heavy fines for copyright infringement \u2013 because clearly, the best strategy to save the music industry is to go after the small local businesses who are still supporting it. 46 Here\u2019s what the DBIA has to say about it:\n\nPlease be aware that an agent of the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) will be working in the Peterborough area in the next two weeks. 8 SOCAN informed the DBIA of the visit. 14 We understand the agent, Philippe Girouard, will focus on retail stores. 27 This has potential financial implications for businesses that play music from anything other than radio stations in their stores but aren\u2019t paying SOCAN fees. 21 There is no fee for playing the radio in stores or workplaces as the radio stations pay the SOCAN fees. 38 If the SOCAN agent discovers a store playing music off a CD or MP3 player, such as an iPod, without paying fees to the organization, the organization could send a bill to the retailer. 37 Under the examples provided by SOCAN, a 100-square-metre (1,076-square-foot) store that uses CDs to play background music for its customers needs to pay an annual fee of $123 plus tax to SOCAN. 25 An 800-square-foot (74-square-metre) restaurant using MP3s to play background music would need to pay an annual fee of $94.51 plus tax. 19 Please see the attached SOCAN tariff card to work out what the fees could mean for your business. 13 The DBIA contacted SOCAN for clarification on some issues surrounding its fees. 15 Here\u2019s what we learned: \u2013 The tariffs are equal across Canada. 18 It\u2019s the same per-square-metre rate for a store in Peterborough and a store in Toronto. 15 They don\u2019t take into account the difference in traffic through the store. 16 \u2013 If a store exclusively plays the radio, it is exempt from SOCAN fees. 16 \u2013 If a store plays music via Internet radio, a SOCAN fee would apply. 28 \u2013 If a store exclusively plays music of a local musician whose music hasn\u2019t been registered with SOCAN, they are exempt from SOCAN fees. 24 However, if the store plays a single song that\u2019s in SOCAN\u2019s catalogue then a SOCAN licence is required. 28 \u2013 A SOCAN licence is not required for stores or workplaces playing music through a satellite provider if they have a commercial agreement with that satellite provider. 34 \u2013 The fee for tariff 15A, which covers the playing of background music in retail stores and restaurants, is based on the square footage that\u2019s accessible to the public. 13 Find out more about business licenses in SOCAN\u2019s licensing FAQ."} {"text": " 38 SALT LAKE CITY \u2014 The Utah Transit Authority has received a $5.4 million low- or no-emission vehicle deployment grant from the Federal Transit Administration for the purchase of five electric buses, the agency announced Thursday. 26 The new vehicles will support service from downtown Salt Lake City to the University of Utah, which partnered with UTA in securing the grant. 38 Three of the electric buses will be put into service on Route 2 serving downtown and traveling through the heart of the central business district on 200 South to the university, UTA spokesman Remi Barron said. 15 Route 2 makes frequent stops and serves a variety of populations, he added. 24 \u201cProviding environmentally friendly public transportation is one of UTA\u2019s long-term goals,\" said UTA chief planning officer Matt Sibul. 78 \"We are happy to be able to put these electric buses into service right through the center of Salt Lake City, where the air pollution sometimes gets trapped and where so many people work, live and play.\u201d\n\nThe other two all-electric buses will run on a new University of Utah shuttle route through the center of campus, supporting the university\u2019s Energy and Environmental Stewardship Initiative \u2014 2010 Climate Action Plan. 38 \u201cIt is a direct health benefit to provide electric bus service through the heart of campus without pumping emissions into the air,\u201d said Alma Allred, executive director of commuter services at the U. 43 \u201cThis fits with one of the university\u2019s goals of helping the people of Utah improve their health and quality of life.\u201d\n\nThe new vehicles are the first zero-emission, all-electric buses to be purchased and operated by UTA. 22 Currently, the agency has a fleet of low-emission buses that includes 32 hybrid electric and 47 compressed natural gas buses. 70 Barron noted that part of the grant will also support other transit partners, including Utah State University, which will provide data collection, analysis and technical assistance; the Utah Governor\u2019s Office of Energy Development; Rocky Mountain Power; bus manufacturer New Flyer; and CALSTART, a leading advanced transportation technologies consortium providing data collection, analysis and technical assistance and grid optimization."} {"text": " 12 This Litha ritual for the solitary witch creates a solar potion. 21 A potion is a liquid preparation of herbs, fruits and spirits that is blended for a specific magickal purpose. 48 Through it\u2019s creation, we provide a conduit through which the attributes of several spiritual allies may be physically imbibed \u2013 meaning, you can drink this delicious brew, and let it nourish you and the Great Work of Magick, on all levels. 24 Solar Potion for Fortune, Success and Prosperity\n\nLitha is the sabbat of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. 32 Just as the Sun is at its most powerful in the Northern Hemisphere, witches also celebrate the masculine side of Deity, at his most fiery, potent and powerful. 36 He is Father Sky, the Sun God, the Lord of the Greenwood, and his vitality aids the Great Goddess, our Mother Earth, who emerges as burgeoning life all around us. 8 The fruit of their union sustains us. 13 At Litha, we celebrate life and our power to live abundantly! 15 Our coven first enacted this potion ritual together at our Litha sabbat last year. 22 It was created by our High Priest, Preston Craddock, and I share this slightly Heron-ified version with his permission. 38 I\u2019ve adapted it here to be a solitary rite, but it worked wonderfully well with a group, with each ingredient passed around the circle to be charged before adding it to the chalice. 171 Materials Needed \u2013 Makes 7 cups (56 ounces)\n\n3 cups of a light, fruity white Wine \u2013 Abundance and Prosperity\n\n\u2013 Abundance and Prosperity 1 cup Orange Blossom Water \u2013 Solar vitality and Good Fortune (Or substitute freshly squeezed juice of one large orange, strained of pulp blended with enough water to make 1 cup), God, Sun, Fire\n\n\u2013 Solar vitality and Good Fortune (Or substitute freshly squeezed juice of one large orange, strained of pulp blended with enough water to make 1 cup), God, Sun, Fire 1 cup Pomegranate Juice \u2013 Wishes and Wealth, Goddess, Earth\n\n\u2013 Wishes and Wealth, Goddess, Earth 1 cup infusion of Cinnamon Bark \u2013 Power and Success, Love and Money, Fire, Sun\n\nPour 1 cup of boiling water over 1 cinnamon stick in a glass jar, cover and allow to steep for a few hours while sitting in the summer sun. 3 Remove stick. 33 Alternatively, a single shot of Goldschl\u00e4ger cinnamon schnapps has edible gold flakes, which is as solar a potion as ever there was one, but beware the additional alcohol content. 43 \u2013 Power and Success, Love and Money, Fire, Sun Pour 1 cup of boiling water over 1 cinnamon stick in a glass jar, cover and allow to steep for a few hours while sitting in the summer sun. 3 Remove stick. 33 Alternatively, a single shot of Goldschl\u00e4ger cinnamon schnapps has edible gold flakes, which is as solar a potion as ever there was one, but beware the additional alcohol content. 55 1 cup infusion of Fresh Ginger Root \u2013 Success, Fruition, potency, Passion, Fire, Mars\n\nPour 1 cup of boiling water over 2 tablespoons of diced fresh Ginger root, in a glass jar, cover and allow to steep for a few hours while sitting in the summer sun. 4 Strain out roots. 30 After the cinnamon and ginger infusions are done, I like to re-bottle them in witchy-looking, food-safe glass bottles in fiery colors of yellow, orange and red. 28 I think it makes a difference psychologically, especially in group work, when things have that dramatic aesthetic flare, but that part is totally optional. 48 \u2013 Success, Fruition, potency, Passion, Fire, Mars Pour 1 cup of boiling water over 2 tablespoons of diced fresh Ginger root, in a glass jar, cover and allow to steep for a few hours while sitting in the summer sun. 4 Strain out roots. 9 Altar Tools\n\nChalice \u2013 the larger the better. 23 We have a very large coven chalice that holds a whole bottle of wine, and we can mix directly into it. 46 Alternatively, a larger bowl, or pitcher, and a spoon to blend ingredients prior to pouring into a smaller ritual chalice\u2026choose something special, perhaps that family heirloom crystal punch-bowl, or that glass margarita pitcher you pull out for the good parties. 14 Athame \u2013 ritual knife\n\nYellow or Gold candle lit to represent the sun. 18 Altar cakes of your choosing: orange, ginger or cinnamon favored treats are a good choice! 37 Litha Ritual for One\n\nPrepare your altar and create sacred space in the way you normally would for your Litha Sabbat \u2013 I always have lots of yellow and orange, sunflowers, and sun images. 32 Give your chalice (and/or mixing bowl/pitcher) and athame a central place on the altar, and lay out the bottles of potion ingredients so they are easy at hand. 20 Call to be present any Solar God(s) and Earth Goddess(es) you work with. 20 Take up the Wine, holding it aloft over the altar:\n\nAwaken wine, fruit of the vine! 8 Lend your spirit of abundance and prosperity! 13 Pour slowly into the mixing vessel, chanting: abundance and prosperity! 19 (If you are working with others, this is where they can chant along with you.) 16 Take up the Orange Blossom Water:\n\nAwaken Orange, Great God of the Sun! 9 Lend your Spirit of good fortune and vitality! 14 Pour slowly into the mixing vessel, chanting: good fortune and vitality! 14 Take up the Pomegranate Juice:\n\nAwaken Pomegranate, Great Goddess of Earth! 8 Lend your Spirit of wealth and fertility! 13 Pour slowly into the mixing vessel, chanting: Wealth and fertility! 14 Take up the Cinnamon Infusion:\n\nAwaken Cinnamon, of Fire and Sun! 8 Lend your Spirit of success and energy! 13 Pour slowly into the mixing vessel, chanting: Success and Energy! 14 Take up the Ginger Infusion:\n\nAwaken Ginger, of Fire and Mars! 8 Lend your Spirit of passion and potency! 13 Pour slowly into the mixing vessel, chanting: Passion and Potency! 36 Stir that Cauldron\n\nStirring the potion now in the pattern of the invoking pentagram, then circling deosil 13 times, chanting to build power: Prosperity, vitality, fertility, energy, potency! 13 (repeat with vigor until you feel it is well charged.) 16 Pour some solar potion into your chalice, if it isn\u2019t there already. 35 Blessing the Cup and Cakes for the Simple Feast\n\nHolding the athame now high over the chalice, visualizing the bright sun shining down, and the dark nutrients of the earth rising up. 20 Where they intersect, see the growing bounty of the plants grow lush and green, full of flowers. 35 Lowering the knife slowly to dip into the potion, say:\n\nAs the Athame is the God, so the Chalice is to the Goddess, and when conjoined, all bless\u00e8dness flows. 24 Once more, draw the invoking pentagram in the potion with the athame, and see all the raised power filling the cup. 14 Bless your altar cakes with gratitude for the promise of sustenance they fulfill. 9 Touch a drop of potion onto each cake. 17 Offer a libation of cake and potion to the powers who\u2019ve aided your work. 3 Drink up! 19 Hold the chalice in both hands, in a powerful stance raising your glass to the high sun. 11 Say:\n\nPowers of the Sun, shine through me! 7 In fortune, success and prosperity! 9 As I will, so mote it be! 13 Now, drain that cup of every delicious drop of liquid sunshine. 24 Enjoy your cake, and meditate while visualizing yourself glowing yellow, warm, full of good cheer, fortune, shining brightly. 36 Just like the massive ball of burning gas that is our actual star, you have the gravity to attract all the resources and opportunities you need so that you are fulfilled on all levels. 25 See that the outcome of your Great Work of magick, that you\u2019ve been striving toward all year, is being achieved. 17 Release your temple as is your custom, and enjoy a very happy and healthy summer! 3 Happy Litha! 10 ~Heron\n\nHeron\u2019s Sabbat Rituals for every Season! 87 Candlelight Yule Ritual: A Meditation for Hope and Peace\n\nYule Log Ritual for Winter Solstice Magick\n\nImbolc Ritual: Dedicating to The Great Work of Magick\n\nOstara Ritual Ritual for the Large Coven\n\nRites of Beltane: Sacred Marriage of MayQueen and King, Tying the Knot\n\nLitha Ritual of Highlight and Shadow\n\nLitha Ritual for One: Solar Potion for Fortune, Success and Prosperity\n\nLammas Ritual of Integration and Sacrifice\n\nMabon Ritual of Feasting and Toasting\n\nSamhain Ritual: Wake of the Fallen King"} {"text": " 19 Until now, pharmaceutical companies in Germany have been allowed to set their own prices for prescription drugs. 32 As a result, public health insurers spent more than 32 billion euros on medicine last year - which is one of the main reasons for their 11 billion euro deficit. 40 New laws passed on Thursday in the German parliament will limit the amount that pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge for prescription drugs - and, hopefully, bring the Germany's public health insurers back in the black. 34 The health minister, Philipp Roesler, said that the government \"doesn't want to allow prices for medicine in Germany to be significantly higher than in other countries in Europe.\" 34 According to the new rules, the benefits of new medicines must be verified and the manufacturer must negotiate a final price with the insurers and a board of doctors and insurance representatives. 25 If a new drug is found to have additional medicinal benefits, the manufacturer and the insurers will negotiate a price within a year. 48 Don't reinvent the wheel\n\nThe rules only impact new medicines- not existing drugs like Aspirin\n\nBut if a new drug is not found to have any additional benefits over an existing drug, the public health insurance scheme won't pay for patients to obtain it. 20 However, critics have argued that it won't be easy to prove that a drug has no benefits. 26 Prof. Gerd Glaeske of the University of Bremen told the website of German public broadcaster ARD, \"This uselessness is impossible to prove.\" 24 Rather, explains Glaeske, if the drug-makers cannot submit evidence of additional medicinal value, the board can request more studies. 13 If those aren't submitted, then the medicine can be disallowed. 34 Excluded from the new pricing regulations are so called \"orphan drugs,\" those that are used to treat rare diseases and bring in less than $50 million euros a year. 6 An attack on the industry? 46 Pharmacies and wholesalers, who already have to refund part of the price of every package of medicine to the insurers, will have to pay more in future, bringing in an expected 200 million euros per year for the compulsory health insurance fund. 23 The Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA) described the law as an \"attack\" on the industry. 18 ABDA President Heinz-G\u00fcnter Wolf warned that the existence of many pharmacies is at risk as a result. 41 Pharmacuetical firms will now have to negotiate with Germany's health insurers\n\nThe overhaul is part of a wider reform of the healthcare system, where costs are running way ahead of the insurance premiums which workers and employers pay. 20 Members of the main party in the governing coalition, the Christian Democrats, praised the pharmaceutical savings package. 21 \"We're breaking the price monopoly of the pharma industry,\" said Christian Democrat health expert Jens Spahn. 10 Others say the reform doesn't go far enough. 53 Kathy Vogler of the Left Party opposed the legislation, saying it \"does not bring the industry firmly enough under control\" by allowing companies to continue charging \"astronomical prices\" for one year after they bring the medication on the market, before the various commissions have examined it. 31 The health expert for the Greens, Birgitt Bender, criticized the law as bringing \"no reorganization of the pharmaceutical market,\" but rather \"more clutter.\" 13 Author: Sarah Harman (AFP, dpa)\n\nEditor: Michael Lawton"} {"text": " 49 OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian retail sales rose in April on higher gasoline prices and increased demand for home appliances and garden supplies, Statistics Canada said on Thursday in a report that lent support to the Bank of Canada\u2019s recent hawkish monetary policy stance. 17 People walk out of the going-out-of-business sale at Target Canada in Toronto February 5, 2015. 23 Target Corp is closing its stores in Canada after the insolvent retailer came to an agreement with its landlords to start liquidation. 28 REUTERS/Mark Blinch\n\nThe value of retail sales rose 0.8 percent, exceeding forecasts for a 0.2 percent gain and providing a firm start to the second quarter. 22 Stripping out the effects of price changes, April\u2019s sales volumes were less robust, rising just 0.3 percent. 32 Canada\u2019s economy is on track to grow at an annual rate of near 3 percent in the second quarter, said Brittany Baumann, macro strategist at TD Securities. 17 The economy expanded at a 3.7 percent pace in the first three months of the year. 47 The report increases the odds the Bank of Canada will raise interest rates at its next meeting in July, though Friday\u2019s inflation report will be key, particularly in regards to the central bank\u2019s measures of core inflation, Baumann said. 50 \u201cFurther deceleration in core inflation is more likely to stay the bank\u2019s hand in July, while some stabilization or uptick, which cannot be excluded at this stage, will put further pressure on the Bank of Canada to act,\u201d she said. 19 Bank of Canada policymakers took a more hawkish turn last week, setting the stage for rate hikes. 34 The central bank has held its policy rate at 0.50 percent since 2015 when it cut rates twice to offset the impact of cheaper oil, one of Canada\u2019s main exports. 24 The Canadian dollar gained against the greenback and was trading at C$1.3253 or 74.45 U.S. cents after Thursday\u2019s report. 26 [CAD/]\n\nSales in the building material, garden equipment and supplies sector rose 3.5 percent, the biggest increase in nearly two years. 19 Increased sales of home appliances and hardware have helped the sector rise for eight months in a row. 59 Canada\u2019s housing market has been robust, with sales and starts rising in the first months of 2017, though activity has cooled in Toronto since the provincial government imposed in late April a foreign buyers tax in Canada\u2019s largest city and surrounding areas as part of an effort to rein in the market. 16 Sales rose 2.1 percent at general merchandise stores, which include big-box and department stores. 23 Sales at gasoline stations rose 1.7 percent, the seventh increase in nine months as Canadians paid higher prices at the pump. 21 Vehicle and parts dealer sales fell 1.0 percent following a solid increase in March as consumers bought fewer new cars. 11 Excluding the auto sector, retail sales rose 1.5 percent."} {"text": " 4 OSEN via Naver1. 28 [+718, -97] I'm not trying to curse the show or anything but don't you think this show reeks of failure?2. 24 [+681, -142] The entire cast is from SM... just stick in Kim Jung Nam and Kim Sung Soo instead.3. 19 [+696, -170] The SM package deal is amazing... isn't Yuri in this too4. 15 [+545, -135] Basically an SM line-up... won't last long.5. 11 [+299, -97] Will look forward to it6. 32 [+122, -87] This is why I hate SM so much \u314b\u314b\u314b at least YG has some shame and keeps their actors in acting work and singers in music. 25 SM, on the other hand, sticks their singers in dramas and varieties on any show they can get their hands on \u314b\u314b\u314b7. 11 [+52, -20] He's good at variety. 12 I've liked his variety style so looking forward to it~8. 25 [+88, -55] Eunhyuk is fast on his feet and has sense so it'll be fun \u314e\u314e\u314e: Mydaily via Naver1. 10 [+945, -35] Too many cast members. 9 Nine people in the cast already...2. 20 [+798, -38] Why are there more people than animals on a show called Animals...3. 14 [+498, -76] A bit worried for this show..4. 16 [+591, -255] People are so mean \u3161\u3161 Yuri's pretty and outgoing5. 12 [+586, -298] Sigh, another SM package deal6. 18 [+79, -10] Yuri's not the problem, the show itself just sounds boring. 15 There's only so much you can do with animals on a variety show. 8 Too many cast members too...7. 27 [+85, -30] I'm going to predict a sub 5% viewer rating and the show being taken off air early..8. 17 [+50, -7] So many cast members, they won't all get enough screentime"} {"text": " 18 Chandra Lye, CTV Edmonton\n\nEdmonton police have been investigating after a shooting in the downtown area. 16 Officers said they heard gunshots around 108 Street and Jasper Avenue at 2:45 a.m. Saturday. 19 When police arrived at the scene there were several bullet casings found at 101 Avenue and 108 Street. 12 A 32-year-old man was also found nearby suffering from gunshot wounds. 11 He was treated at the scene and taken to hospital. 15 A resident who lives nearby said it sounded like a \u201chail of gunfire. 15 \u201cI heard a couple of gunshots and then a whole volley of gunfire. 22 It sounded like at least two shooters about 20 shots in total I\u2019d say,\u201d Rob Cool explained. 29 \u201cWhoever was shooting, they wanted the guy dead.\u201d\n\nOfficials said the victim was known to police and they do not believe the shooting was random. 24 Anyone with information has been asked to contact police, 780-423-4567, #377 from a mobile phone or Crime Stoppers, 1-800-222-8477. 5 With files from Josh Skurnik"} {"text": " 7 Pick One\n\nAbundance is a curse. 10 You can have anything that you want for lunch. 11 So why eat another bland fast food hamburger and fries? 10 There are literally hundreds of shows on the television. 12 So why stare at another hour of screaming reality TV stars? 17 You don\u2019t eat, drink, or watch bad things because they are cheap. 9 You default to them because they are easy. 8 You are responsible for what you consume. 23 If I told you that you could watch just one movie this month, you might spend more time considering your choice. 6 You\u2019d pick carefully. 21 If you were limited to just one hour of television a day you\u2019d say no to most programs. 26 If you lived on bread and milk and had just one meal a week of your choice you be careful not to waste the opportunity. 6 Your options are virtually unlimited. 12 And you, you alone are responsible for limiting your options. 3 You are. 3 Pick one. 28 Share this:\n\nPrint\n\nEmail\n\nThe Pick One by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License."} {"text": " 30 Doc Rivers of the Los Angeles Clippers looks on during the game against the Dallas Mavericks on April 5, 2017 at STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California. 17 Doc Rivers talked to The Undefeated before our exclusive interview with former Clippers guard Chris Paul. 42 LAS VEGAS \u2014 Doc Rivers sat on a stage at a news conference alongside newcomer Danilo Gallinari last weekend and made a proclamation after being asked if his Los Angeles Clippers were going to take a step back without Chris Paul. 8 \u201cI don\u2019t think so. 11 I think we added talent,\u201d Rivers boldly said. 18 Rivers was able to get forward Blake Griffin to re-sign and still has DeAndre Jordan at center. 31 The rest of the Clippers, led by the arrival of Gallinari, are mostly new, and fans will be scrambling for a roster at season\u2019s start. 30 But considering Rivers\u2019 success as a coach, it\u2019s hard not to believe in his projection in the Clippers\u2019 new era without the franchise-altering Paul. 71 In an interview with The Undefeated, Rivers talked about Paul\u2019s trade to the Houston Rockets and moving forward, the success and failures of his coaching career, his responsibility of being a black president of basketball operations for an NBA team, the odd Blake Griffin free agency T-shirts, whether he can reunite Ray Allen and the 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics, and more. 17 How did you get word from Chris that he wanted a trade to the Houston Rockets? 13 We met with him, but he didn\u2019t tell us. 12 We just met with him and then his agent told us. 15 Listen, it wasn\u2019t like it was hard to figure it out. 4 \u2026 We met. 8 We had a very good meeting overall. 15 The main reason he left was because of [Rockets guard] James Harden. 15 He went down the road with this team and it didn\u2019t work. 9 He wanted to try it with another team. 10 Contractually, it was going to be close enough. 43 On June 28, the Clippers traded Paul to the Rockets for Patrick Beverley, Lou Williams, Sam Dekker, Montrezl Harrell, Darrun Hilliard, DeAndre Liggins, Kyle Wiltjer, a protected first-round pick next year and cash considerations. 26 Instead of having a star player walk away as a free agent, how important was it for you to get value back for him? 6 That was huge for us. 9 But that was huge for him, too. 12 It wasn\u2019t like they were doing us a favor. 44 One of the things that [Clippers executive vice president of basketball operations] Lawrence [Frank] said was that, \u2018We were very light on our feet going into free agency.\u2019 We knew exactly what was going to happen. 7 We showed everybody the game plan. 33 Other than getting [one other major trade] that would have taken us to a whole different level, we\u2019ve gotten exactly what we wanted to get this summer. 21 When the dust settled and you realized that Chris Paul is not here anymore, what went through your mind? 12 Losing Chris is tough, because he is a great player. 18 But we have a lot of great players on our team that play so many different ways. 43 That is why \u2018Gallo\u2019 is so important to us, because our thought was that if you\u2019re not going to run a point guard-dominated offense, then you\u2019ve got to run a movement offense with versatility. 9 And I think we\u2019ve accomplished that. 9 How good can this Clippers team be now? 5 We\u2019re good. 14 Listen, we have 10 new players, so who the heck knows? 8 Visually, I love how we look. 15 The next step is actually getting on the floor and seeing how it fits. 9 Did the Clippers need to shake things up? 2 Yeah. 2 Yeah. 7 I said that after the season. 35 I said after last season, \u2018I don\u2019t know how we are going to be, but we are not going to be the same team.\u2019 And we are not. 9 We\u2019ve won a lot of games. 13 The one thing with Chris, Blake [Griffin], D.J. 21 [DeAndre Jordan], over the last four years we\u2019ve had the fourth-best record in the NBA. 7 We\u2019ve had ample opportunities. 15 The fiasco in Oklahoma [in 2014], that was a brutal blow. 10 We were about to go to the West finals. 22 The next year, a 3-1 lead, a huge lead, and we blow that [to the Rockets]. 11 We\u2019ve had some self-inflicted wounds on our own. 29 But as far as being a good, solid basketball team, I don\u2019t think we should be ashamed about anything except for not winning it. 7 And that was the ultimate goal. 11 What is the truth about your coach-player relationship with Paul? 5 Our relationship was fine. 8 We had more good days than bad. 12 Chris\u2019 numbers were the best in his career under me. 6 But I still coached him. 7 That\u2019s what I do. 7 I thought Chris handled it fine. 7 Did he love me every day? 2 No. 12 But that\u2019s part of my job as a coach. 13 My job is to make you a better player and push you. 13 A lot of guys handle it, and some don\u2019t. 8 I thought that Chris handled it well. 30 [Rivers was asked about a report that his son Austin received preferential treatment from Rivers and that Paul and some of his teammates had a problem with it. 14 Rivers said the report was not true and was not worth discussing.] 15 Did you have to meet with Blake and De\u2019Andre after trading Chris? 2 No. 11 We were bringing Blake in because we were recruiting him. 6 We had to get him. 4 Blake was fine. 11 How did you sell Blake on re-signing with the Clippers? 13 (Griffin agreed to a five-year, $173 million deal.) 6 We showed him the model. 4 We were prepared. 16 We showed Blake the model exactly how it would look with Chris and without Chris. 5 And Blake liked both. 7 That\u2019s why he signed. 7 And Blake wants to be here. 14 Blake started with the Clippers, and he wants to be a Clipper. 10 He wants to end his career as a Clipper. 13 For me, that tells me our franchise is doing something right. 15 When is the last time a guy said he wants to be a Clipper? 7 And we have a great one. 9 And I think that\u2019s really cool. 21 Despite the new additions, do you think the Clippers are being slept on because of Chris\u2019 big departure? 10 Yeah, but I don\u2019t mind that. 3 They should. 12 The team that everyone should be looking at is Golden State. 14 Everyone else is just noise until someone proves they can beat those guys. 23 After winning an NBA championship nearly 10 years ago with Boston, how painful has all the tough luck been since then? 4 Not at all. 9 People forget the first three years in Boston. 20 The first year in Boston we won the [Atlantic] Division with that team, which is crazy. 16 Then we only went bad for two years, and then we started winning again. 13 If I learned anything in Boston it is that winning is hard. 5 It\u2019s hard. 20 It\u2019s only one team that does it, and everybody else is still trying to do it. 13 So I don\u2019t mind that part of it at all. 22 It\u2019s not far away from the 10-year anniversary of the Celtics\u2019 2008 NBA championship team that you coached. 9 How do you reflect on your lone title? 5 Just the whole run. 17 Building it from scratch with [Celtics president and general manager] Danny [Ainge]. 22 That experience alone \u2026 when I took the job and we were going to rebuild and then we won the division. 14 After that we did it anyway, which took a lot of guts. 9 We had some things go down our way. 21 Kevin [Garnett] turning us down [for a trade] allowed us to get Ray [Allen]. 7 That allowed us to get Kevin. 8 So things had to go our way. 41 The thing I liked most about that team was, well, Kevin, Paul [Pierce] and Ray Allen were phenomenal, but if you look at that team, they had a bunch of instigator tough guys. 24 Tony Allen, Leon Powe to [Big] Baby [Glen Davis] to Perk [Kendrick Perkins], James Posey. 7 That team was built to win. 16 The only mistake was after that year we allowed too many of them to go. 4 We kept changing. 20 That 2010 [NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers] is something that we will think about forever. 7 Perk going down in Game 6. 8 Losing Game 7 was tough for us. 20 Was losing a Game 7 in Los Angeles during the 2010 NBA Finals the toughest loss of your career? 2 Yes. 2 Forever. 17 When you\u2019re that close to winning something where no one gives you a chance. 15 \u2026 No one gave us a chance to be in the Finals that year. 7 We came from the fourth seed. 6 People thought we were down. 5 We were too old. 9 We kind of knew what we were doing. 5 We paced them perfect. 16 In 2008, everyone thought it would take us a year to get it together. 13 We won right away, which tells you how hard it is. 11 In 2010, everyone thought we were over the hill. 8 What bothers me the most is 2009. 18 When you look at that season, Kevin got hurt when we were on a record clip. 7 We were playing the best basketball. 12 When he got hurt, we never came back that season. 8 Kevin was never the same after that. 18 I always look back like he can\u2019t, but what if Kevin never gets hurt? 8 Do we win two [titles]? 5 Do we win three? 12 That\u2019s something that you can\u2019t get back. 7 That group was the best group. 4 We still talk. 5 All of us talk. 6 It was a good group. 29 The departure of Allen to the Miami Heat fractured the relationship between him and key players on the Celtics like Pierce, Garnett, Perkins and Rajon Rondo. 14 Will the relationship with Allen be mended before the 10-year anniversary is celebrated? 4 The Ray thing? 6 I don\u2019t know. 8 I think it will [heal]. 23 At the end of the day, that team was as close of a group of any I have ever been around. 10 So when one leaves, it hurts your feelings. 11 I think that\u2019s what happened with our guys. 7 Ray\u2019s a terrific guy. 5 We all know that. 9 The guys that are with him are terrific. 5 It will get back. 10 Do you have to do something to fix it? 2 Yeah. 8 I\u2019ve tried to, slowly. 12 But I think the time will help them get back together. 9 Well, at least I\u2019m hoping. 5 So far, unsuccessfully. 8 But I do think it will happen. 22 Do you ever look back and appreciate your 2008 NBA championship even more now knowing how hard it was to get? 5 It means a lot. 5 It\u2019s won. 7 I\u2019ve been there twice. 9 But I also know how hard it is. 12 Honestly, without that I probably wouldn\u2019t be coaching. 6 I probably would have stopped. 27 The fact that I realized how hard it is and how tough the chase is, I swear it\u2019s the only reason I coach. 5 I love the chase. 6 I want to get there. 5 It\u2019s pride. 7 It\u2019s hard, man. 6 You have to have luck. 6 You have to have health. 7 Your guys have to play well. 7 They have to make big shots. 10 There are so many things that go into it. 15 As good as Golden State was last season, they will tell you that. 21 As good as they were and as easy as it looks, they know it wasn\u2019t that easy. 7 It\u2019s hard to win. 5 And I respect that. 30 How much pride and responsibility do you have being one of three black NBA presidents of basketball operations among 30 teams in a league that is 75 percent black? 19 (The Los Angeles Lakers\u2019 Magic Johnson and Toronto Raptors\u2019 Masai Ujiri are the others.) 5 I take that seriously. 4 I really do. 12 I think there should be more and there will be more. 11 Every time one of us does well, it helps. 6 We are all often criticized. 18 All I know is my record as the president of this organization is in the tops ever. 12 We just want to keep this going and keep getting better. 16 [Clippers owner] Steve [Ballmer] is the one who allowed this stuff. 6 He\u2019s been phenomenal. 8 He allows us to do our job. 12 He\u2019s responsible, and he\u2019s been great. 22 Without him this whole thing wouldn\u2019t have been successful, and there is no way it would have worked. 18 How do more black front-office prospects get interviews or a consideration for president and general manager jobs? 2 No. 22 1, there are a lot of analytical guys coming into the league, and we have to join that force. 7 I think it\u2019s coming. 17 I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s coming because there are a lot of qualified guys. 64 What did you think about the chatter regarding the T-shirts Clippers employees were wearing after Griffin\u2019s recent free-agency meeting with him pictured among the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali, Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln with \u2018LA Pioneers\u2019 underneath? 11 It\u2019s a story that no one knows about. 5 Those T-shirts are phenomenal. 4 They really are. 8 It wasn\u2019t for anybody else. 9 Those T-shirts have a special meaning to us. 8 The players know exactly what they mean. 20 Anyone else, we really don\u2019t give a s\u2014 if they know what they mean or not. 7 We know exactly what they mean. 17 I wore that shirt all [season] without Blake and no one even noticed it. 9 We put other guys on there at times. 5 We moved guys around. 11 I have shirts with other guys\u2019 pictures on it. 19 There is a special meaning for our team, and we\u2019re glad that we just know. 7 Would you like to explain it? 4 Oh, no. 5 It\u2019s ours. 6 We\u2019re keeping it."} {"text": " 23 The reaction from sellers has been understandably fraught, with many saying it's going to cut directly into their bottom line. 26 For its part, Amazon says that the change here is to protect customers and make sure they aren't burned by a bad purchase. 21 \"We want customers to be able to shop with confidence on Amazon,\" a spokesperson said to CNBC. 21 \"For certain products and categories, Amazon requires additional performance checks, other qualification requirements, and fees.\" 21 If that means fewer people wind up with knock-off goods, as a customer, it's hard to complain. 10 Just ask basically anyone who's shopped on Alibaba. 2 But! 26 This will have an impact on smaller merchants, creating a schism between bigger sellers that can afford the fee and those who cannot. 45 If this goes more widespread beyond things like running shoes or TVs and into smaller items like music and kitchen items, for example, it's possible we could see less selection, higher prices and fewer sellers overall on the digital emporium."} {"text": " 18 Matt Maiocco started a podcast this year, and he has had some strong guests thus far. 22 This week, he had a name from 49ers past, welcoming former head coach Mike Nolan for a lengthy discussion. 25 That got into plenty of topics, but the topic of interest for many is Nolan\u2019s thoughts on Trent Baalke and ownership. 25 Nolan told Maiocco that he believes the problems in Santa Clara are systemic, as opposed to something to blame specifically on Trent Baalke. 31 \u201cThe problem there in San Francisco, in my opinion, is systemic,\u201d Nolan said during an appearance on CSN Bay Area\u2019s 49ers Insider Podcast. 11 \u201cThey love you, and then they hate you. 17 They love the next guy, and then they don\u2019t like him any more. 16 \u201cRight now, unfortunately for Trent, he\u2019s on the down slide. 38 But about three years ago, he was the man, and there was a lot of love for him.\u201d\n\nNolan offered up plenty of cover for Baalke, saying he is a good personnel guy. 20 Nolan would know a thing or two about Nolan because they arrived in San Francisco at the same time. 13 Nolan was hired to be head coach and general manager in 2005. 25 Scot McLoughan came on at the same time as Vice President of Player Personnel, a role he served in from 2005 to 2007. 11 Baalke joined the organization in 2005 as western region scout. 18 I don\u2019t know specifically who hired him, but my guess is it was McCloughan. 16 Things got messy in 2007, and in 2008, McCloughan was named general manager. 31 There was all sorts of talk about who had \u201cthe trigger,\u201d and McCloughan\u2019s promotion to GM put him in charge of personnel, almost entirely. 13 That same year, Baalke was promoted to director of player personnel. 30 Baalke was later promoted to VP of player personnel when McCloughan and the 49ers \u201cparted ways\u201d in what was later described as due to his drinking problem. 48 Nolan brought up an interesting development in the podcast, saying that Baalke served as interim general manager in 2008 when McClougan \u201cwas dealing with some personal issues.\u201d As we learned in a 2014 feature, McCloughan spent 30 days in rehab around this time. 22 Mike Nolan was fired at some point during all this, but clearly he developed a strong relationship with Trent Baalke. 11 \u201cSo I think Trent does a very good job. 85 I would hate to see Trent let go for anything after the season or if they dump it all on him, because when it comes to winning football games, you need to have good players, and you can do a lot worse than Trent Baalke when it comes to picking players.\u201d\n\nThere is plenty of old boys network in the NFL, so it is hard to know what to make of comments one person makes about a past co-worker. 31 At the same time, he was there when Jed York was first developing into a leadership role, and when Baalke was beginning his rise through the organizational ranks. 8 He offers a perspective few can match. 6 Give the podcast a listen."} {"text": " 23 Box Hill Senior Coach Chris Newman reviews every Hawthorn-listed player\u2019s performance for Box Hill in its thrilling Round 1 clash. 24 The VFL men\u2019s team started its season on a positive note, outlasting reigning premiers Footscray to secure a two-point victory. 29 According to Newman, Kade Stewart and Dallas Willsmore were among the best players on the ground, while Jonathan O\u2019Rourke impressed on return from injury. 29 Read: VFL Match report Round 1\n\nJack Fitzpatrick\n\n\u201cFitzy competed really well in the ruck for us, and also provided a strong target up forward. 43 He finished with two goals and took a couple of big contested marks for us at really imported stages throughout the game, so he was quite influential.\u201d CN\n\nHarry Morrison\n\n\u201cIt was another solid game down back for Harry. 15 He finished with 17 disposals and provided some really good rebound run for us. 27 He continues to get better and better.\u201d CN\n\nLuke Surman\n\n\u201cSurman played back for the first time, and really thrived with the opportunity. 18 He finished with 16 disposals, which is the most Surmo has had in any one game. 26 His aerial contest stood out; he took three contested marks, and was pivotal in stopping the opposition\u2019s surges going inside 50. 58 He\u2019s still got a way to go, but that was certainly a great step forward.\u201d CN\n\nMitchell Lewis\n\n\u201cLewis didn\u2019t finish with massive numbers in his Box Hill debut (eight touches), but he took a really strong contested mark for us and had two shots on goal. 30 He continues to learn his craft and get better.\u201d CN\n\nKade Stewart\n\n\u201cHe had an outstanding game with 26 disposals, nine tackles, and a goal. 17 He was really tough for us and finished with 37 pressure acts, which is huge. 21 It was a really balanced, consistent game from Kade.\u201d CN\n\nTeia Miles\n\n\u201cMilesy finished with 18 disposals. 25 He is really crafty with the footy, and his strength is his ability to create some instability for the opposition with his defence. 34 He went forward late and looked dangerous and lively, so he\u2019s still got the ability to play both ends.\u201d CN\n\nConor Nash\n\n\u201cConor did his job really well. 44 He finished with 14 disposals and competed really hard throughout the game.\u201d CN\n\nJonathan O\u2019Rourke\n\n\u201cO\u2019Rourke played two and a half quarters on return from injury and had 25 disposals, so he was looking really sharp. 19 He had five inside 50s, four clearances and was quite influential for us early in the game. 43 He\u2019ll be quite happy with that, and hopefully he pulls up well and can play a four-quarter game this week.\u201d CN\n\nConor Glass\n\n\u201cHe played a little bit on the wing and a little bit down back. 43 He\u2019s an elite ball user for someone who hasn\u2019t been kicking the footy for long, so 16 disposals is a good output from Conor.\u201d CN\n\nJames Cousins\n\n\u201cCousins had 20 disposals and kicked a goal. 13 He loves the contest so a lot of his ball was contested. 31 It was good signs for a young kid.\u201d CN\n\nDallas Willsmore\n\n\u201cDal finished with 31 disposals, and kicked a really important long range goal for us late. 9 His work rate throughout the day was outstanding. 17 He provided us with some inside 50s and also drifted back to support the back line. 40 That\u2019s what we want from Dal.\u201d CN\n\nMarc Pittonet\n\n\u201cPitto had 13 disposals and provided a really strong physical presence for us, so that\u2019s what we expect out of him every week. 28 He finished with 46 hit outs which is a fantastic result.\u201d CN\n\nRyan Schoenmakers\n\nSchoey finished with 19 disposals and worked really hard throughout the day. 11 He provides some impressive leadership and physical presence playing forward. 19 He didn\u2019t kick a goal, but created quite a few opportunities for his teammates.\u201d CN"} {"text": " 67 by Sean Cahill\n\nEDGE Media Network Contributor\n\nTuesday May 2, 2017\n\nToday, The Fenway Institute of Fenway Health released a policy brief analyzing how a new amendment to the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the Trump Administration's proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), could impact LGBT people and people living with HIV (PLWH). 12 \"This amendment takes a bad bill and makes it worse. 47 If enacted, it would make it much more difficult for people with pre-existing health conditions such as HIV to obtain health insurance that is affordable,\" said Sean Cahill, PhD, Director of Health Policy Research for The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health. 34 \"It would also permit the sale of health insurance plans that do not provide coverage for preventive care, such as screenings for cancer and sexually-transmitted diseases, or substance use treatment. 19 This amendment seems designed to make it harder to obtain coverage for health care, not easier.\" 65 The amendment, authored by Congressman Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, would permit states to opt out of requiring coverage for essential health benefits, which includes core elements of health care like prescription medication; annual physicals; routine cancer screenings such as mammograms and colonoscopies; routine screenings for sexually-transmitted diseases; treatment for substance use; and mental health care. 26 The amendment would also permit states to opt out of the requirement to use community ratings to set health insurance premiums instead of individual ratings. 28 Individual ratings were banned under the Affordable Care Act because they often resulted in prohibitively expensive health insurance options for people with pre-existing conditions such as HIV. 35 The Fenway Institute analysis of the amendment to the AHCA also notes that its passage would be especially harmful to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; people living with HIV. 13 Such groups are disproportionately burdened by mental health and substance use issues. 14 Ending the practice of requiring such coverage would exacerbate these disparities in health. 54 Last, the amendment would do nothing to mitigate the risks to low-income LGBT people and PLWH posed by the passage of the AHCA that were outlined in the policy brief, What the American Health Care Act means for LGBT people and people living with HIV, which can be read here. 32 Since 1971, Fenway Health has been working to make life healthier for the people in our neighborhood, the LGBT community, people living with HIV/AIDS and the broader population. 27 The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health is an interdisciplinary center for research, training, education and policy development focusing on national and international health issues. 49 Fenway's Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center cares for youth and young adults ages 12 to 29 who may not feel comfortable going anywhere else, including those who are LGBT or just figuring things out; homeless; struggling with substance use; or living with HIV/AIDS. 30 In 2013, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts joined the Fenway Health family, allowing both organizations to improve delivery of care and services across the state and beyond. 26 The policy brief Amended American Health Care Act Poses New Threat To People Living with HIV, LGBT People is available online at http://fenwayhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Policy-Brief-What-AHCA-means-for-LGBT-PLWH-final.pdf"} {"text": " 14 As of late I have been contemplating a lot about where I am. 15 The last six months have been some of the most testing of my life. 7 I have made enormous lifestyle changes. 25 I have seen a lot of success, at times, and others were painfully frustrating- filled with relapses, flares and stand stills. 17 Being a part of the online Autoimmune Paleo community has been one of my biggest comforts. 33 Although, I don\u2019t see my disease well represented in it- I know the reason\u2026 We, all of us who suffer with Hidradenitis Suppurativa, we suffer in silence. 7 I use the word suffer knowingly. 15 There is no living with HS, there is, often, only pain. 20 A few months before I got pregnant, I was working in a health centered kitchen and eating healthy. 27 My skin was on fire in this picture, although it was not cold I was wearing a jacket to hide a boil under my arm. 5 What Is Hidradenitis Suppurativa? 24 Hidradenitis Suppurativa is a chronic, debilitating skin condition where your body is riddled with boils, abscesses, wounds, or scars. 28 It often starts as a lump or a pimple in your groin or underarm and usually gets worse & worse, leaving a lot of people handicapped. 11 It can affect one to several areas of your body. 15 While our faces might glow, and people say\u2026 but your skin looks great! 10 Underneath our clothes there is a war going on! 19 HS affects delicate areas, and as such, makes it really hard for people to talk about. 29 Only in threads, in closed groups, do people often feel comfortable to commiserate of the painful boils surrounding their genitals, breasts, underarms and groin. 4 I get it. 16 People who have known me my whole life do not know what I have suffered. 20 Hiding my scars became an art, coming up with excuses for wincing when I sat down or walked. 6 Always changing away from others. 5 Shorts at the beach. 5 Band aids, everywhere. 5 Lights out during sex. 5 Pants in the summer. 23 Honestly, the only reason I think I can be so open about it now is because I have it under control. 13 As I write this my skin is clear\u2026 of boils that is. 15 Still riddled with scars, but healthy, not swollen or red or painful. 10 Dark spots that mark where they used to be. 11 Healthy, for the first time since I can remember. 4 How, why? 2 Paleo. 3 Autoimmune Paleo. 2 Whole30. 2 FOOD. 19 It\u2019s been a long journey; I\u2019ve had to examine my resolve many times. 14 I\u2019ve had to begrudgingly give up foods I was clinging to. 12 Many tears have been shed, especially when my skin flares. 38 But I\u2019ll tell you\u2026 what I now call a flare-up is a regular sized pimple that lasts no more than a day or an old scar swelling that also lasts no more than a day. 18 No more are the days of multiple boils, which drain and swell over weeks and months. 8 I\u2019m still fine-tuning my diet. 10 I often yell to the skies, why me? 20 Why do I have to give up so much?\u2026 but then again it\u2019s worth it. 22 Will I ever eat a hot dog at a ball game or order pizza in with my kid?\u2026 no. 11 I WILL be happy, healthy & not in pain. 15 My scars will fade, and along with them, the emotional scars too. 6 What I\u2019ve learned\u2026. 7 Hidradenitis Suppurativa is an autoimmune disease. 9 The root of the cause is leaky gut. 14 To get your HS in remission you need to heal your leaky gut. 31 To heal your leaky gut you need to find your trigger foods & stay on an anti-inflammatory diet until you see progress (less, no or shorter flare-ups). 3 What diet? 4 Autoimmune Paleo Protocol. 5 What\u2019s that? 35 NO: grains, dairy, legumes, nuts, seeds, processed foods of any kind, chocolate, coffee, nightshades (pepper, eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes) & eggs. 49 YES: Lot\u2019s of vegetables, organ meat, seafood, pastured animal proteins, fruits, coconut (will be your BFF), coconut aminos (are a life saver), tallow, lard, coconut oil, olive oil, bone broth. 16 Once you begin to feel better you can start adding in foods little by little. 4 Keep a journal. 4 Write down everything. 2 Read. 4 Read a lot. 2 Shop. 2 Plan. 3 Batch cook. 4 Join the community. 55 My GO TO resources:\n\nThe Paleo Mom, blog: thepaleomom.com, books: The Paleo Approach, The Healing Kitchen\n\nAutoimmune-Paleo.com, related books: Mickey Trescot\u2019s The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook\n\nThe Phoenix Helix, Eileen Laird, awesome pod cast, articles and just a constant stream of information. 30 Go in Instagram, search #AIP #autoimminepaleo #autoimmuneprotocol\n\nMy personal AIP Journey in a nutshell:\n\nOK, so my elimination phase was a little wonky. 9 I read The Hidden Plague by Tara Grant. 22 She has HS, she put it in remission, it was a good read that outlines an altered AIP diet. 8 I think AIP diets vary per individual. 33 It still helped, but in the end, after keeping coffee, almonds & cashews in my diet in the beginning I took all nuts and seed out for a while. 16 I read The Paleo Approach, read all the blogs\u2026 went back to the basics. 12 AIP Elimination phase has to be militant\u2026 temporary, but militant! 11 6 weeks later, I started adding foods back in. 11 Not going to lie\u2026 I started with wine\u2026 then eggs! 15 After 4 months of reintroducing and testing foods I found out my trigger foods. 11 I can\u2019t do nightshades or gluten at all! 6 Lactose is also a trigger. 19 Very starchy vegetables like yuca or plantain as well as nuts & seeds are fine in limited amounts. 9 Eggs are perfectly safe (win!). 3 No sugar. 14 I\u2019m very sensitive to sweets, even honey and maple syrup. 9 Little sleep/lots of stress are major inflammation triggers. 14 I can do moderate amounts of wine or tequila, but not often. 27 Updated #1 (October 2016): I have found that guar gum and xantham gum make me flare, it starts with a migraine.. 12 If I keep consuming it, my HS will then flare. 14 Since I wrote this I have done a few more Whole30\u2019s. 9 I can eat most nuts and seeds too. 13 I can eat rice without flaring but usually, don\u2019t. 9 I can eat some cheeses (lactose-free). 4 Still no nightshades. 9 Alcohol and I don\u2019t get along. 9 I have started working out, a lot. 7 Spinning, HIIT training and weightlifting. 12 Things have only gotten better and my scars are actually fading! 6 My body is really changing. 9 I feel really strong and capable of anything. 24 Update #2 (August 2017): Still thankful for the miracle that is the AIP and the dedication I have had. 5 Almost 3 years paleo! 8 Nightshades and stress are my biggest triggers. 15 I have also started working on balancing my hormones and am seeing great results! 26 I am doing a combination of keto (low carb/no sugar) and paleo (no grains or dairy) and I feel really good! 11 My scars continue to fade and my body keeps changing. 13 It\u2019s so much stronger and leaner than it was before. 15 It\u2019s been an amazing journey and I\u2019m not done yet! 22 Update# 3 (December 2018): I had 2 major flares in the last year due to ingesting nightshades. 27 After being fat adapted for over a year, and starting my NTA training, I have begun to use to strategic supplements like digestive enzymes. 3 Nothing crazy. 17 The benefit is that I have been able to add some foods back into my diet. 19 I still do a super clean, low carb paleo without nightshades and have no plans of stopping. 12 Whole30\u2019s are a great way to get in gear. 24 If you\u2019re worried about going full AIP, do a Whole30 first, and start eliminating inflammatory foods little by little. 14 Before you know it, you\u2019ll be crushing your elimination phase. 6 Lastly, talk about it. 3 Reach out. 10 You don\u2019t have to do it alone. 3 Feeling great! 5 Inside & out <3"} {"text": " 68 In light of the recent death of popular Kanata teenager Chloe Kotval from an apparent drug overdose, and warnings from Ottawa police and Ottawa Public Health about counterfeit prescription drugs they suspect have been the cause of \u201crecent life-threatening overdoses\u201d in the city, on Saturday, concerned father Sean O\u2019Leary posted an emotional Facebook message about teen drug overdoses in Kanata. 44 Below is the full text of his message:\n\nTo all whom are concerned,\n\nAs many if not all of you are aware from news reports a beautiful 14-year-old Kanata girl passed away this week as a result of a drug overdose. 31 Related\n\nWhat hasn\u2019t been reported as of yet is that Chloe Kotval was the third Kanata teenager to die of a drug overdose in the last eight weeks. 14 Many of you that are receiving this initial email are aware of this. 16 The two other children that have died were a 17-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy. 39 At this time the families of these two other children do not want the publicity of having their children\u2019s names and causes of death known and unless I am told otherwise I will respect their wishes. 16 If I know of three in Kanata you can be assured there are many more. 10 My 16-year-old daughter Paige is also a drug addict/abuser. 14 I feel so sad for the parents of the children that have died. 26 But even worse than the sadness I have for them is the fear I/we and many others live with every day that is so real. 13 My first thought every morning is to check that Paige is alive. 29 It is a nightmare of a way to live life especially when you have other children and have to try to make their lives as normal as possible. 10 Paige has been an addict/abuser for about 20 months. 23 Our family dealt with it the best we could with the limited resources that are available to families in situations like ours. 42 The nightmare that we have lived for 18 months was nothing compared to the nightmare our lives turned into starting on December 31 at 10:30 p.m.\n\nAt that moment I arrived home to find a 17-year-old boy dead in my garage. 34 Thankfully I arrived when I did and that one kid was not high and she had called 911, we performed CPR, eventually got his heart going and then the paramedics arrived. 29 I put a post on \u201cBell\u2019s Let Talk.\u201d\n\nSince then I can\u2019t even to begin to explain what we have been through. 28 I personally know the names of eight Kanata teens whom have overdosed in the last two months\n\nSadly the deaths that have occurred are only the beginning. 31 If you look at statistics from any other communities where the kids started getting hooked on counterfeit opioids the prognosis for our community and our children does not look promising. 20 The point of this letter is not to discuss my family\u2019s problems and/or the problem in general. 9 Most of us know there is a problem. 14 We have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on psychologists, counsellors etc. 2 etc. 14 Our daughter has spent 10 weeks at the Dave Smith Youth Treatment Centre. 45 I have locked her at home, chased her around, grabbed her off the streets, walked in to people\u2019s homes uninvited to take my daughter out of there, we have had paramedics and police to our home numerous times. 19 But here we sit not knowing day to day whether our beautiful little girl will be alive tomorrow. 20 I have talked to a few parents of other addict/abusers in Kanata and their stories are all the same. 23 I do not know the answer nor am I any closer to finding the answer than when I first started seeking it. 22 I do know that when any of us have questions or need help having 2 families asking is better than one. 11 Having 10 families is better than 2 and so on. 18 The only people that really know what is going on are the kids and they need help. 12 My goal is not to try and solve the drug problem. 25 It has been going on for many decades but never before right now have the drugs been indiscriminately taking our children\u2019s lives. 23 I do not know how many families are suffering the same fate as us right now but I know there are many. 23 The first thing I would like to do is have a meeting with as many parents of addicts/abusers as I can find. 15 We have all experienced the futility of dealing with this scourge on our own. 19 We the parents of these kids and future kids need to unite for ourselves and for our kids. 14 Please forward this to as many people you know whom have teenage kids. 12 I will keep all replies confidential unless permission is granted otherwise. 19 If they want to come to the meeting great or I can send them notes after our discussion. 29 Primary focus will be making sure everyone is aware of what resources are available, what treatments are available, use of Suboxone and if it is working. 16 Ottawa Health will give us full support and supply Naloxone kits, training, etc. 17 Then we can have an open discussion of ideas, questions to be asked, etc. 19 The days of the saying \u201cThey need to hit rock bottom before getting better\u201d are over. 14 Sadly in most cases today rock bottom is a slab at the morgue. 21 ALSO: Chloe Kotval\u2019s family call on officials to address counterfeit drug problem and its \u201cdevastating impact\u201d"} {"text": " 28 In July of 2016, Donald Trump, Jr. met a 42-year-old Russian attorney named Natalia Veselnitskaya who had promised him damaging information about then-candidate Hillary Clinton. 38 One of his father\u2019s contacts, a music publicist named Rob Goldstone, had arranged the meeting as a favor to a client of his, the Azeri real estate developer and pop singer Emin. 15 Goldstone had worked with the Trumps on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. 49 There were other reasons to take the meeting, too: Emin\u2019s father, Aras Agalarov, is the 51st-richest man in Russia and an instrumental figure in the President\u2019s aborted foray into Russian real estate: the Moscow tower he tried\u2014and failed\u2014to erect. 19 Trump Jr. has said he knew absolutely nothing about Veselnitskaya before their meeting, not even her name. 36 She turned out to use the promise of information that could help his father\u2019s campaign as a pretext to discuss reinstating a popular Russian-American adoption program, according to his version of events. 6 What could be more harmless? 60 In fact, Veselnitskaya was already a key figure for the defense in one of the most notorious money-laundering scandals in recent memory, encompassing $230 million in public funds allegedly stolen from the Russians by a network of corrupt bureaucrats and routed into real estate sales, including some in Manhattan, through ironclad Swiss bank accounts. 41 And she was accused of lobbying U.S. officials for a Russian NGO that sought to overturn the Russian ban on U.S. adoptions, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Justice Department and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). 31 Veselnitskaya\u2019s Facebook page paints a picture of a conservative Russian woman eager to defend her government from insults, hawkish on Israel and deeply concerned about American politics. 18 \u201cLiberalism is a fucking mental disorder,\u201d she wrote on July 1, 2016\u2014American liberalism. 26 She also had derisive remarks for Brooklyn-born Muslim organizer Linda Sarsour and crusading former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was ousted by Trump. 38 \u201cThe current U.S. Attorney General (Sally Yates) stated that all lawyers working for the government do not have the right to defend the government and trump orders!\u201d Veselnitskaya wrote on Jan. 31. 23 \u201cIn such cases, the general should resign.\u201d\n\nVeselnitskaya received her degree from Kutafin Moscow State Law University in 1998. 25 In 2013, she agreed to represent Denis Katsyv, the son of Russian railroad baron Petr Katsyv and owner of the Prevezon group. 16 The younger Katsyv was accused of collaborating with corrupt Russian officials in the money-laundering scheme. 39 Then-U.S. attorney and \u201cSheriff of Wall Street\u201d Preet Bharara led the charge against Prevezon; the company, his office said, had used cash from the theft to buy condos in Bharara\u2019s jurisdiction. 38 Katsyv had been Veselnitskaya\u2019s highest-profile client by far, and his defense would be a world-historic success not just for the wealthy real estate investor, but for the Russian establishment under President Vladimir Putin. 26 Until this weekend, the closest Veselnitskaya had come to the public eye was as a footnote to the compounding scandal of the Prevezon affair. 21 Veselnitskaya had come to the United States with Katsyv, who was to be deposed by Bharara\u2019s team. 22 Not only wasn\u2019t she deposed herself, she didn\u2019t attend her client\u2019s deposition in person. 28 But after the deposition, she moved to the Plaza Hotel for the remaining two nights of her stay at a cost of $995 per night. 42 Her firm then billed the U.S. government for the entire stay, as well as a single meal for five that included eight grappas, two bottles of wine, eighteen dishes and a bill that came to nearly $800. 17 The group\u2019s total expenses topped $50,000, and they promised to file more. 24 The legal proceedings in which Veselnitskaya was enmeshed contain a spy novel\u2019s-worth of twists, turns and tragic, suspicious accidents. 60 Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblowing accountant who called attention to Russian bureaucrats\u2019 alleged widespread embezzlement, was arrested and detained without trial for nearly a year until his death in 2009 from what prison staff described as \u201cpancreonecrosis, ruptured abdominal membrane and toxic shock,\u201d according to the U.S. government\u2019s suit against Prevezon. 14 The Russian Interior Ministry later revised the cause of death to heart failure. 38 When Magnitsky\u2019s family examined his body, they found bruises and that his fingers had been broken, according to an early draft of a report by then-president Dmitry Medvedev\u2019s own investigative committee. 35 The incident led to a controversial piece of legislation: 2012\u2019s Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned 18 Russian officials believed by the US to have been involved in Magnitsky\u2019s death. 28 Five days later, the Russian parliament voted to ban adoptions of Russian children by Americans, a move understood to be retaliation for the Magnitsky Act. 30 Putin, by that time president of Russia again, also began to compile an \u201canti-Magnitsky\u201d list of his own, according to the New York Times. 9 Bharara was among the prominent names on it. 50 Trump Jr.\u2019s conversation with Veselnitskaya, to his disappointment, focused on \u201ca program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government,\u201d he said in a Sunday statement. 17 That may be a roundabout way of saying Veselnitskaya wanted to discuss sanctions on Russian officials. 64 Veselnitskaya campaigned unsuccessfully to keep Magnitsky\u2019s name off the punitive 2012 law, according to the Times, and then, through an NGO called The Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGIF), to have it repealed, supposedly for the sake of Russian children who could find American homes if the adoption ban were lifted in response. 9 The latter activity got Veselnitskaya some unwanted attention. 59 She is not named on HRAGIF\u2019s list of lobbyists under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, but she was accused of lobbying U.S. politicians, according to an email provided to Sen. Grassley by Hermitage Capital in a complaint (Magnitsky was at work for Hermitage CEO William Browder when he discovered the alleged money-laundering scheme). 39 HRAGIF listed only two lobbyists, one of whom is Renit Akhmetsin, the former agent for the Russian FSB security service who in April met with Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) in Berlin to discuss Prevezon. 27 Russian friendliness to Rohrbacher has been a bone of contention with the FBI and the butt of \u201cjokes\u201d from Rohrbacher\u2019s fellow Republicans. 105 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told colleagues in an audio recording that surfaced in May: \u201cThere\u2019s two people I think Putin pays, Rohrabacher and Trump.\u201d\n\nMagnitsky\u2019s death, and the original theft by Russian bureaucrats, are believed by many, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), to be the work of the Klyuev Group, a network of criminals working in the Russian government to enrich themselves at the expense of Russian citizens (its exploits are chronicled in English in a number of articles by reporter Michael Weiss). 23 Magnitsky and others sought to expose what they believed was hundreds of millions of dollars\u2019 worth of graft by the group. 9 The suit against Prevezon never went to trial. 61 On March 11, Donald Trump fired Bharara, and on March 21, Nikolai Gorokhov, the Magnitsky family\u2019s attorney and a key witness for the prosecution, fell from the fourth floor of an apartment building, apparently when a rope broke while he and others were trying to move a bathtub in through the window. 5 He sustained head injuries. 32 The United States settled its case against Prevezon and its associated companies in May for $6 million, a fraction of the judgment a guilty verdict would likely have brought. 23 Veselnitskaya declared victory on Facebook: \u201c[A] 4-Year-old battle of the American State with a Russian citizen is over. 10 With the Russians,\u201d she wrote on Facebook. 6 This post has been updated."} {"text": " 41 Xbox One Unlikely To Hit 1080p With DX12, Says Witcher 3 Dev By William Usher Random Article Blend\n\nThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, due for release next year. 49 GamingBolt asked about whether or not the implementation of DirectX 12 software tools would raise the Xbox One's capabilities for hitting native 1080p in games, as well as what sort of effect it could have on the video game development scene for PC and Xbox One. 21 According to Torok...\n\n\u201cI think there is a lot of confusion around what and why DX12 will improve. 22 Most games out there can\u2019t go 1080p because the additional load on the shading units would be too much. 42 For all these games DX12 is not going to change anything,\u201d\n\n\u201cThey might be able to push more triangles to the GPU but they are not going to be able to shade them, which defeats the purpose. 84 To answer the first question, I think we will see a change in the way graphics programmers will think about their pipelines and this will result in much better systems hopefully.\u201d\n\nThere's a lot to cover in that quote, but the most important thing to discuss first is that the reason he mentions that 1080p would be too much load on the \u201cshading units\u201d is because the GPU itself can't handle that kind of processing load. 27 When people say the \u201cPS4 is 50% more powerful than the Xbox One\u201d, this is part of what they're talking about. 24 The PS4 has more shader units on its GPU, thus allowing it to output more visuals per frame than the Xbox One. 56 This is why games will more frequently hit 1080p on the PS4 (in addition to having a slightly more powerful CPU, according to the\n\nAdditionally, when a game on the Xbox One can hit 1080p, usually it's doing so while sacrificing something else that's being rendered to the screen. 43 Simply put, every piece of hardware has a technical ceiling, and the Xbox One's GPU has a ceiling so low due to the older and lower grade architecture that it makes it difficult to hit 1080p consistently in games. 14 The added convoluted setup with the eSRAM doesn't really help matters either. 64 But the real meat of Torok's comment is in the ability for the Xbox One to only push more \u201ctriangles\u201d with\n\nThe main reason this is so big is that it basically opens up a feature for the Xbox One that isn't worth exploiting since pushing more triangles without shaders is the equivalent of drawing a picture without color. 25 Sure it might have a lot of detail and a ton of character to it, but without color it'll always look incomplete. 22 The below image from\n\nThe second image is how a 3D mesh would look without having any shaders applied to it. 48 The likelihood is that the extra triangles might have some shading added, just not up to par to the rest of the game, so you might have an uneven or unpolished look, making it an uneventful \u201cupgrade\u201d if there ever was one. 71 Ultimately, DirectX 12 has been mentioned before as being better for CPU pipeline instructions as opposed to overhauling the way GPUs operate, but we'll find out when the toolkit finally becomes available, but the general consensus is that The Xbox One has had a rough time of it lately, not only in the marketplace but also when it comes to game performance and spec capabilities. 29 We've seen many big (and small) games fail to hit the holy grail of 1920 x 1080p or consistently maintain 60 fluent frames per second. 30 Well, there have been many instances where rumors spurred that with the introduction of DirectX 12 we could see more games on the Xbox One hitting 1080p consistently. 11 However, one developer doesn't buy into that belief. 18 GamingBolt managed to get in word with CD Projekt RED's lead engine programmer, Balazs Torok. 71 He's currently hard at work on the upcomingfor the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, due for release next year.GamingBolt asked about whether or not the implementation of DirectX 12 software tools would raise the Xbox One's capabilities for hitting native 1080p in games, as well as what sort of effect it could have on the video game development scene for PC and Xbox One. 55 According to Torok...There's a lot to cover in that quote, but the most important thing to discuss first is that the reason he mentions that 1080p would be too much load on the \u201cshading units\u201d is because the GPU itself can't handle that kind of processing load. 27 When people say the \u201cPS4 is 50% more powerful than the Xbox One\u201d, this is part of what they're talking about. 24 The PS4 has more shader units on its GPU, thus allowing it to output more visuals per frame than the Xbox One. 58 This is why games will more frequently hit 1080p on the PS4 (in addition to having a slightly more powerful CPU, according to the benchmarks ).Additionally, when a game on the Xbox One can hit 1080p, usually it's doing so while sacrificing something else that's being rendered to the screen. 90 Simply put, every piece of hardware has a technical ceiling, and the Xbox One's GPU has a ceiling so low due to the older and lower grade architecture that it makes it difficult to hit 1080p consistently in games.The added convoluted setup with the eSRAM doesn't really help matters either.But the real meat of Torok's comment is in the ability for the Xbox One to only push more \u201ctriangles\u201d with DirectX 12 instead of being able to do anything more with them. 90 Essentially, what he's saying is that DirectX 12's pipeline might help the Xbox One render more polygons on the screen at a time (which could help with the display of geometry density) but him mentioning that they won't be dynamically shaded is a HUGE thing.The main reason this is so big is that it basically opens up a feature for the Xbox One that isn't worth exploiting since pushing more triangles without shaders is the equivalent of drawing a picture without color. 56 Sure it might have a lot of detail and a ton of character to it, but without color it'll always look incomplete.The below image from About.com gives you a perfect illustration of what Torok is talking about.The second image is how a 3D mesh would look without having any shaders applied to it. 109 The likelihood is that the extra triangles might have some shading added, just not up to par to the rest of the game, so you might have an uneven or unpolished look, making it an uneventful \u201cupgrade\u201d if there ever was one.Ultimately, DirectX 12 has been mentioned before as being better for CPU pipeline instructions as opposed to overhauling the way GPUs operate, but we'll find out when the toolkit finally becomes available, but the general consensus is that it's not going to help as much as some may hope Blended From Around The Web Facebook\n\nBack to top"} {"text": " 30 Mere months after releasing Demise Rites, a demo collection released on vinyl by IRON BONEHEAD PRODUCTIONS, Australia's Eucharist are back with a two-song EP entitled Endarkenment. 13 This is the band's first new material in almost five years. 46 I am not familiar with the group's history, but I am told that Endarkenment shows a \"new side\" to the band while also \"diving deeper\" into the duo's sound; \"invoking ritualistic possession and nocturnal obeisance.\" 11 Maybe bring some holy water with you on this one. 8 Now comes the inevitable comparison with Portal. 25 The delivery is perhaps even more vaccuous and less produced than the darlings of the atmospheric death metal world, but the comparisons stand. 9 Other worthy nods go to Abyssal and Vacivus. 26 listening to Endarkenment is the equivalent of listening to Satanic-sounding death metal from inside of some remote space shuttle where you are the only passenger. 20 There is an overwhelming sense of dread and isolation within the reverb-heavy layers of dense distortion and indecipherable growls. 26 Each track is like some demonic mantra designed to wear down the mind and senses over time, entering from all directions and contorting perception. 7 A snake hissing in the ear. 15 Every aspect throbs and pulsates, with the drums quickening to our inevitable possession. 7 That's the feeling, anyways. 15 I still conjured enough self will to put this summary together, after all. 27 The closing remark here is simply that Eucharist have succeeded in bringing us a truly emersive EP that satisfies similar urges as did Adversarial last year. 7 It's aggressive, yet subdued. 18 And throughout, it should make the average person feel just a little uncomfortable listening to it. 18 They may not be sure exactly why, but they will most certainly recognize the recoiling effect."} {"text": " 33 Just one week into office, the Trump administration cost taxpayers more than $1 million in a botched attempt to curtail advertising efforts for Obamacare, a government watchdog has found. 47 The attempt came just five days into the new administration, when the so-called beachhead team at the Department of Health and Human Services (the individuals who effectively took over the agency following the presidential transition) began imparting instructions to the remaining career staff. 59 According to a little-noticed report from the Office of Inspector General at HHS (PDF), on the morning of Jan. 26, the beachhead team instructed staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS to cancel all marketplace enrollment outreach for the remainder of Obamacare\u2019s fourth open enrollment period. 13 HHS staff had expressed concern over such cancellations, the report noted. 97 Before Trump had formally took office, officials had briefed his team that ending outreach would \u201cresult in roughly $5 million in unrecoverable costs and $4 million in costs recoverable without penalty.\u201d They also noted that \u201coutreach close to the deadline would be critical to enrolling young and healthy consumers.\u201d\n\nBut when the order went out to cancel the contracts, both career staff and a member of the beachhead team \u201cunderstood these initial instructions to apply to all Marketplace outreach being conducted,\u201d the IG report noted. 57 That evening, a contracting officer \u201cemailed letters of partial termination to Weber Shandwick and Elevation that instructed the contractors to immediately cancel all outreach related to the fourth open enrollment period.\u201d (Emphasis ours)\n\nBy then, the report noted, members of the beachhead team had already begun changing their mind. 35 According to records obtained by the IG office, career staff reiterated their concerns about non recoupable costs and the damage that could be done to the Obamacare marketplace if all outreach was ended. 33 The beachhead team put together a revised set of instructions \u201cto cancel only certain outreach activities and indicated that the goal was to save money.\u201d\n\nBut it came too late. 36 It would take until the next morning for the updated set of instructions to be sent to Weber Shandwick and Elevation about which Obamacare outreach HHS wanted to nix and which one it wanted reinstated. 30 By then, the contractors\u2014who were tasked with broadcast and digital advertising as well as supporting the government\u2019s own outreach efforts\u2014had already acted upon the earlier instructions. 32 Obama administration officials often complained that they had little interaction with the teams that were to succeed them, making it hard for there to be a smooth continuation of governance. 9 The Trump administration often publicly dismissed these concerns. 24 And when the news came down that they were pulling Obamacare outreach advertising, they pitched it as a long-thought-out cost saving measure. 23 \u201cThe federal government has spent more than $60 million promoting the open enrollment period,\u201d a spokesman told Politico. 45 \u201cHHS has pulled back roughly $5 million of the final placement in an effort to look for efficiencies, where they exist.\u201d\n\nIn reality, the administration\u2014whether through miscommunication or an unintended misstep\u2014had burned money that they couldn\u2019t recoup. 46 \u201cWeber Shandwick estimated that the dollar value of outreach that it had already canceled, before receiving the updated instructions, was approximately $1.1 million in costs that could not be recovered for HHS,\u201d according to the IG\u2019s findings. 10 The outreach that Elevation had canceled was all recoverable. 16 A request for comment made to the Trump administration and HHS was not immediately returned."} {"text": " 25 WATCH: Texas Forcing a Supreme Court Standoff Over Marriage\n\nTexas lawmakers want to force the state to openly defy the U.S. Supreme Court. 5 What could go wrong? 32 Last week, a bill that would force Texas officials to defy the U.S. Supreme Court if it rules in favor of marriage equality failed to make it to a vote. 28 That means the bill has no chance of passing in this session \u2014 but the same language could still be slipped into another bill as an amendment. 29 The recently defeated bill is clearly unconstitutional \u2014 a state can't simply pass a law in order to \"opt out\" of a Supreme Court ruling. 39 Nevertheless, Republican Rep. Cecil Bell, and nearly every single Republican in the state House, signed a letter in support of the measure, which would defund state offices that obeyed a pre-equality Supreme Court ruling. 19 Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has refused to clarify his position on defying the Supreme Court. 37 When pressed by a reporter, he simply wouldn't say whether he would enforce a pro-equality ruling, claiming he needed to see the court's ruling before he could discuss a course of action. 19 Ultimately, any laws that force the state to ignore federal law will almost certainly be overturned eventually. 22 But that could take years and millions of dollars to resolve, during which time LGBT Texans will continue to suffer."} {"text": " 27 Weekend Whipper: Alabama Backwoods Bouldering Fail\n\nAlex Wolnski chooses the wrong hold while climbing at her secret local bouldering spot, outside Birmingham, Alabama. 22 Alex Wolnski was climbing solo at a secret boulder spot her family calls \u201cFlat Rock\u201d in Birmingham, Alabama. 21 It was dusk when Wolnski reached the boulder after a two mile bike ride and a one mile uphill hike. 38 \u201c[After] knocking out a couple problems I was feeling pretty good about myself and decided to prop up my phone on a tree to film the action,\u201d Wolnski tells Rock and Ice. 18 \u201cI began climbing the route and the rock I grabbed onto was sandstone and broke off. 15 I fell 10 feet, landed on my feet and rolled to the ground. 24 Immediately I knew something was wrong and ripped my Evolv climbing shoes off.\u201d\n\nWolnski crawled over to her phone and called home. 16 Her parents then had to borrow a 4-wheeler from a neighbor to rescue their daughter. 29 They had to hike the last mile of steep trail and then assist Wolnski, who couldn\u2019t weight her ankle, back down to the 4-wheeler. 21 \u201cWaiting alone for 45 minutes in the woods at night was not fun at all,\u201d says Wolnski. 14 \u201cFinally we made it home and I rested for a couple days. 20 Later we went to the doctor because I was still unable to put pressure on [my ankle]. 18 It turned out I pulled three of the five ligaments in my ankle and chipped my bone. 21 Luckily it wasn\u2019t worse, and I have learned to always climb with safety and with a buddy! 23 I wish everyone safety and I hope y\u2019all laughed at my fail video!\u201d\n\nWishing Alex a speedy recovery. 11 Happy Friday, folks, and climb safe this weekend! 18 Watch last week\u2019s Weekend Whipper: Super Phrique (5.13a), Shelf Road, Colorado"} {"text": " 4 Are Supplements Necessary? 10 Is It Necessary to Add Supplements to My Diet? 24 Studies show that adding vitamins and supplements can both improve your health and increase your chances of living a longer, healthier life. 12 The Nagging Question\n\nEverywhere you look someone is giving you advice. 24 This is true for many areas of life, but none more evident than the plethora of advice about your health and diet. 12 But the nagging question is, \"Are Supplements Necessary?\" 33 The media, your doctor, your Mom, the internet, TV commercials and 'friends' are just a few of the things bombarding you with the right thing to do. 35 So it's only natural to be confused and completely understandable for you to be asking yourself the question of whether or not you should be spending your hard earned money on food supplements. 19 Now you can add me to the list of people and places giving you their 2 cents worth. 11 So why should you read on and take my advice? 17 Simply put, I am backing up my opinion with solid scientific evidence and research studies. 15 Plus I urge you to question what I say and read the studies yourself. 13 Don't take my word for it; prove it to yourself. 27 Two Compelling Scientific Studies\n\nHere are just two of what I am sure are many sources that help to answer the question of Are Supplements Necessary. 33 Study 1\n\nThe first study I looked at was \"The Vitamins and Lifestyle Study\" (Pocobelli et al, American Journal of Epidemiology, 170: 472-483, 2009). 15 The study was done on a group of people from the state of Washington. 30 It was a survey of over 75,000 residents between the ages of 50 and 76 and it looked at their lifestyles as well as their use of food supplements. 38 The groups were divided up into those who took multivitamins almost every day, those who took extra Vitamin E, those who took Vitamin C, and those who didn't supplement their diet at all. 29 The main focus of the study was the overall death rate of the participants and the death rate due to cardiovascular reasons during a 10 year time span. 22 Basically the study found that those taking supplements had a reduced mortality rate compared to those who didn't use supplements. 26 Here are some details: (all reductions are comparisons with non-supplement users)\n\nMultivitamin users reduced their risk of cardiovascular mortality by 16%. 26 Addition of at least 215 mg of vitamin E each day reduced the death rate by 28% for cardiovascular reasons and 11% overall. 25 Taking at least 322 mg of vitamin C every day decreased mortality by 25% and 9% for cardiovascular and overall mortality respectively. 19 Study 2\n\nThese results fall right in line with the results of the second study I looked at. 53 The study has become known as the Landmark Study but is formally named \"Usage patterns, health, and nutritional status of long-term multiple dietary supplement users: a cross-sectional study\" (Nutrition Journal 2007, 6:30doi:10.1186/1475-2891-6-30 Published 24 October 2007)\n\nThe Landmark Study looked at 3 different groups. 8 One group consisted of multi supplement users. 17 This group was specifically from people who took vitamins and supplements manufactured by the Shaklee Corporation. 22 A second group consisted of people who took a multivitamin/mineral supplement and the third group was made up of non-supplement users. 11 Overall there were over 1000 people involved in the study. 24 The results of the study showed that that people who took Shaklee supplements had markedly better health than both multivitamin and non-supplement users. 14 The full article and scientific details can be found on http://www.landmarkstudy.com. 20 Two separate studies both confirming the same thing; Food Supplements can lead to a longer and healthier life. 30 The Vitamin Study shows that long term food supplementation decreases the risk of dying and The Landmark study shows that the use of food supplements creates a healthier life. 21 Stop Waiting - Start the Change Having a Hard Time getting all the Essential Nutrition you need from your Diet? 18 Maybe it's time to supplement with the highest quality Nutritional Supplements available... Order Yours Today!"} {"text": " 28 Grayson Allen is the only senior on a young Duke team that will get its first chance to play together in front of the public Friday night. 70 Two hundred sixteen days\u2014that\u2019s how long it has been since Duke limped off the court at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C.\n\nAnd after a dramatic seven months that included yet another surgery for head coach Mike Krzyzewski, the late-summer commitment of Marvin Bagley III and the return of lone senior Grayson Allen, the Blue Devils will finally take the floor Friday evening. 20 Duke will kick off its 2017-18 campaign with the ninth edition of Countdown to Craziness at Cameron Indoor Stadium. 25 The event will feature team and player introductions at 8 p.m., followed by the annual Blue-White scrimmage set to tip off around 8:25. 45 For college basketball fans, Countdown should give an early look at a Blue Devil team that enters the season with plenty of questions still to be answered\u2014Duke\u2019s roster features seven scholarship freshmen for the first time in Krzyzewski\u2019s tenure. 9 So what should you be watching for Friday? 16 We discuss the five biggest questions heading into the Blue Devils\u2019 season:\n\n1. 11 Besides Trevon Duval, who else will handle the rock? 36 When Krzyzewski talked earlier in the summer at K Academy, he told reporters, \u201cI do know that Trevon is going to have the ball and he knows what to do with it. 8 Will he have it all the time? 12 No, he shouldn\u2019t have it all the time. 7 Will he have it a lot? 2 Yeah.... 32 Pretty much, I want [Duval] to get the ball.\u201d\n\nThere\u2019s little question that the freshman enters the season as Duke\u2019s starting point guard. 46 Duval is a natural fit at the 1, and it should free up Allen to play a majority of the time at the off-guard spot, where the senior is much more effective as an outside shooter and a hard driver to the hole. 37 But Allen knows how to run the point as well\u2014he did it for much of last season as the Blue Devils lacked a true ball handler, and their offense suffered at times as a result. 11 Outside those two, however, things become less clear. 33 Freshman Gary Trent Jr. has the reputation of a slasher, and it seems unlikely that any of the other four guards on the Duke roster will see meaningful minutes this season. 15 Duval, however, is simply not going to play 40 minutes a night. 20 So does Allen continue to spend time on the ball, or will Trent develop his point guard skills? 18 It should be interesting to see who starts at the point guard spot opposite Duval come Friday. 2 2. 15 Will there be any hints at the Blue Devils\u2019 opening night starting 5? 38 It seems pretty clear that 60 percent of Duke\u2019s lineup is set\u2014when the Blue Devils tip off against Elon Nov. 10, we can expect to see Allen, Duval and Bagley on the court. 7 But what about the other two? 23 At Duke\u2019s media day, Krzyzewski mentioned \u201ca small group\u201d that is in the running to be starters. 29 The 70-year-old specifically named sophomores Javin DeLaurier and Marques Bolden, and in theory, Trent and fellow freshmen Wendell Carter Jr. are in the mix as well. 18 Outside of Allen, though, that group of six combines for just 242 career collegiate minutes. 35 It\u2019s hard to guess who will make an impact given the small sample size, but Countdown should reveal a little bit about where all those options are in their development processes. 2 3. 7 How good is Marvin Bagley III? 7 Ever since Bagley pulled that No. 25 35 jersey out of the bag on SportsCenter, Blue Devil fans have been waiting with bated breath to see him in live action. 12 They\u2019ve seen the hoop mixtapes and Drew League highlights. 19 Now, they\u2019ll get their chance to watch the versatile 6-foot-11 forward in a Duke uniform. 37 \u201cI\u2019m willing to adjust my game and learn those spots so wherever the spot may be, I feel like I can adjust and get comfortable,\u201d Bagley said earlier this month. 41 \u201cPost, top, anywhere Coach K or Coach [Jeff] Capel need me at.\u201d\n\nThe Blue Devils could go big with a lineup that features Bagley at the 3 along with Carter and Bolden down low. 27 Or they could go with an uber-athletic lineup, utilizing Bagley as a 5 with Trent and DeLaurier\u2014assuming Duval and Allen fill the two guard roles. 42 It\u2019s unlikely that they all will play together at Countdown, but we should get a taste of how Krzyzewski plans to use Bagley in what will likely be his only season with Duke before jumping to the NBA. 2 4. 8 Where is Marques Bolden in his development? 9 And will he have any help down low? 18 A top-20 recruit entering his freshman campaign, Bolden has yet to live up to the hype. 25 He started the season injured and scored less than two points per game, forcing the Blue Devils to lean heavily on Amile Jefferson. 33 Still, Bolden earned a spot at USA Basketball\u2019s U-19 World Cup training camp before being cut, and reports from the summer say the sophomore has never looked better. 32 Duke now has reinforcements, though, with Bagley and Carter, a pair of top-five prospects that should be among the better big men in the ACC from the get-go. 37 But the Blue Devils have struggled to develop big men (see Jeter, Chase) in recent years\u2014with the exception of Jahlil Okafor\u2014and it remains to be seen if this season can break the trend. 2 5. 6 Are there any role players? 20 Jordan Tucker, Antonio Vrankovic and Jack White all have the potential to sneak their way into the rotation. 33 Krzyzewski noted that this Duke team is unlikely to be the outside shooting threat that past units have been, and White has a slick stroke that could help in that area. 19 Tucker, a top-40 recruit who committed in May, has the build to make an early impact. 46 At 6-foot-7 and 212 pounds, the White Plains, N.Y., native should not be too small to get to the hole, and he too can shoot the ball\u2014Tucker competed in the high school 3-Point Championship at last year\u2019s Final Four. 23 And Vrankovic will certainly be a leader for the Blue Devils, as he is the only scholarship junior on the roster. 30 The forward saw time in just 13 contests last year, though, so it is unclear whether or not Vrankovic can be trusted in big-time situations this season."} {"text": " 22 Nitrogen fixation, the process by which nitrogen is converted to ammonia, is vital for plants to survive and grow. 39 However, only a very small number of plants, most notably legumes (such as peas, beans and lentils) have the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria. 34 A major new technology has been developed by The University of Nottingham , which has the potential to enable crops to take nitrogen from the air rather than expensive and environmentally damaging fertilisers. 39 Click here for full story\n\nThe vast majority of plants have to obtain nitrogen from the soil, and for most crops currently being grown across the world, this also means a reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. 34 Professor Edward Cocking, Director of The University of Nottingham\u2019s Centre for Crop Nitrogen Fixation, has developed a unique method of putting nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the cells of plant roots. 26 His major breakthrough came when he found a specific strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in sugar-cane which he discovered could intracellularly colonise all major crop plants. 18 This ground-breaking development potentially provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. 21 The implications for agriculture are enormous as this new technology can provide much of the plant\u2019s nitrogen needs. 39 Nitrogen pollution is a major global health hazard\n\nA leading world expert in nitrogen and plant science, Professor Cocking has long recognised that there is a critical need to reduce nitrogen pollution caused by nitrogen based fertilisers. 21 Nitrate pollution is a major problem as is also the pollution of the atmosphere by ammonia and oxides of nitrogen. 23 In addition, nitrate pollution is a health hazard and also causes oxygen-depleted \u2018dead zones\u2019 in our waterways and oceans. 61 A recent study estimates that that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen pollution across Europe is \u00a360 billion \u2014 \u00a3280 billion a year.1\n\nSpeaking about the technology, which is known as \u2018N-Fix\u2019, Professor Cocking said: \u201cHelping plants to naturally obtain the nitrogen they need is a key aspect of World Food Security. 50 The world needs to unhook itself from its ever increasing reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilisers produced from fossil fuels with its high economic costs, its pollution of the environment and its high energy costs.\u201d\n\nA natural and environmentally friendly solution\n\nN-Fix is neither genetic modification nor bio-engineering. 18 It is a naturally occurring nitrogen fixing bacteria which takes up and uses nitrogen from the air. 27 Applied to the cells of plants (intra-cellular) via the seed, it provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix nitrogen. 22 Plant seeds are coated with these bacteria in order to create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship and naturally produce nitrogen. 19 N-Fix is a natural nitrogen seed coating that provides a sustainable solution to fertiliser overuse and Nitrogen pollution. 12 It is environmentally friendly and can be applied to all crops. 36 Over the last 10 years, The University of Nottingham has conducted a series of extensive research programmes which have established proof of principal of the technology in the laboratory, growth rooms and glasshouses. 39 The University of Nottingham\u2019s Plant and Crop Sciences Division is internationally acclaimed as a centre for fundamental and applied research, underpinning its understanding of agriculture, food production and quality, and the natural environment. 15 It also has one of the largest communities of plant scientists in the UK. 56 Significant implications for agriculture\n\nDr Susan Huxtable, Director of Intellectual Property Commercialisation at The University of Nottingham, believes that the technology has potentially major implications for the agricultural industry, she said: \u201cThere is a substantial global market for the N-Fix technology, as it can be applied to all crops. 35 It has the power to transform agriculture, while at the same time offering a significant cost benefit to the grower through the savings that they will make in the reduced costs of fertilisers. 44 It is a great example of how University research can have a world-changing impact.\u201d\n\nThe N-Fix technology has been licensed by The University of Nottingham to Azotic Technologies Ltd to develop and commercialise N-Fix globally on its behalf for all crop species. 35 The potential to help feed the developing world\n\nPeter Blezard, CEO of Azotic Technologies added: \u201cAgriculture has to change and N-Fix can make a real and positive contribution to that change. 46 It has enormous potential to help feed more people in many of the poorer parts of the world, while at the same time, dramatically reducing the amount of synthetic nitrogen produced in the world.\u201d\n\nThe proof of concept has already been demonstrated. 36 The uptake and fixation of nitrogen in a range of crop species has been proven to work in the laboratory and Azotic is now working on field trials in order to produce robust efficacy data. 29 This will be followed by seeking regulatory approval for N-Fix initially in the UK, Europe, USA, Canada and Brazil, with more countries to follow. 19 It is anticipated that the N-Fix technology will be commercially available within the next two to three years. 20 The technology is being developed within Azotic Technologies Ltd. For further details, enquirers should contact the company directly. 46 Visit www.azotictechnologies.com\n\n\u2014Ends\u2014\n\nFor up to the minute media alerts, follow us on Twitter or find out more on our Press Office blog\n\nNotes to editors: The University of Nottinghamhas 42,000 students at award-winning campuses in the United Kingdom, China and Malaysia. 27 It was \u2018one of the first to embrace a truly international approach to higher education\u2019, according to the Sunday Times University Guide 2013. 39 It is also one of the most popular universities among graduate employers, one of the world\u2019s greenest universities, and winner of the Times Higher Education Award for \u2018Outstanding Contribution to Sustainable Development\u2019. 27 It is ranked in the UK's Top 10 and the World's Top 75 universities by the Shanghai Jiao Tong and the QS World Rankings. 26 More than 90 per cent of research at The University of Nottingham is of international quality, according to the most recent Research Assessment Exercise. 27 The University aims to be recognised around the world for its signature contributions, especially in global food security, energy & sustainability, and health. 22 The University won a Queen\u2019s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its research into global food security. 31 Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest ever fundraising campaign, will deliver the University\u2019s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. 2 More news\u2026"} {"text": " 19 Scientists say they are seeing more seals trying to mate with penguins, but can't understand why. 17 Seals are forcing penguins into sex and occasionally killing them once they get their sexual release. 34 That was the observation scientists made on Marion Island in the sub-Antarctic, with their findings and rather disturbing videos published in the online edition of the journal Polar Biology, BBC reported. 27 They first discovered a fur seal attempting to copulate with a king penguin in 2006 and returned this year to see if it was still happening. 3 It was. 21 They observed on four separate occasions young male seals sexually coercing what appeared to be healthy penguins of unknown gender. 9 The seals chased, captured and mounted them. 21 The seal then attempted copulation several times, lasting about five minutes each, with periods of rest in between. 14 In three of the four recorded incidents the seal let the penguin go. 23 But on one of the more recent occasions, the seal killed and ate the penguin after trying to mate with it. 22 The scientists speculated the sex act at the time may have been the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced seal. 7 Or an aggressive, predatory act. 8 Or a playful one that turned sexual. 23 Although it was not a complete shock, the scientists still said the findings were surprising and it could be getting worse. 50 \"Honestly I did not expect that follow up sightings of a similar nature to that 2006 one would ever be made again, and certainly not on multiple occasions,\" Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, told BBC. 12 \"I genuinely think the behaviour is increasing in frequency.\" 34 The incidents were the only time pinnipeds, the group that includes seals, fur seals and sea-lions, have been known to have sex with an animal from a different biological class. 32 De Bruyn said seals had the capacity to learn, so the increase in cases could be attributed to male seals seeing each other coercing penguins, then attempting it themselves. 19 Like most birds, penguins do not have external genitalia and instead possess an opening called a cloaca. 28 They mate by pressing these organs together in what was known as a \"cloacal kiss\", in which the sperm was transferred to the female. 31 Traumatically for the penguins, some of the seals were thought to have successfully penetrated the victims' cloacas during the act as blood was observed around the area afterwards."} {"text": " 32 SHARE THIS STORY:\n\nHillary Clinton\u2019s campaign has called off its planned election night fireworks display, it emerged Monday, the day before America goes to the polls. 33 Staffers were going to put on a two-minute show over the Hudson River after the results come in on Tuesday, but the proposal has been canned, TMZ reported on Monday. 38 The campaign called the Coast Guard last week to tell them the event was off, three days after the New York Post reported it was planning the bash \u2013 although the cancellation was secret until Monday. 29 It emerged as fresh projections of the electoral college showed she has lost the iron grip pollsters believed she had on the 270 college votes needed for victory. 26 CNN has moved Ohio, Utah and one district of Maine from toss-up to leaning Republican, and New Hampshire from leaning Democratic to toss-up. 32 That changes the math significantly for Clinton, putting her projected total at 268 and Trump\u2019s at 204 \u2013 with the rest of the votes to be fought over. 19 10 Things You Didn\u2019t Know About Hillary Clinton:\n\nUntil now she had been above 270. 30 Fox News has changed its projection too, making Utah and North Carolina toss-ups, rather than leaning towards Clinton, while Arizona and Iowa move to leaning Republican. 18 And a series of other measures pointed to a far tighter race than some pundits had predicted. 30 In Florida, early voting figures obtained by the Drudge Report suggested Trump was doing better than Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton was under-performing Barack Obama in 2012. 15 Similarly, Drudge reported that North Carolina had seen Trump exceed early voting expectations. 24 The figures showed Trump behind be 305,000 when Romney was behind by 447,000 \u2013 a deficit which he still won the state from. 38 The cancellation of the fireworks emerged three days after FBI director James Comey told Congress his agency was investigating a trove of emails found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. 47 The cancellation was made Thursday \u2013 before Comey wrote again to Congress to say that the FBI had not found anything to justify changing its verdict of no charges to the Democrat about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. 19 Still, Clinton\u2019s campaign suffered collateral damage in the nine days which elapsed between the letters. 1 source"} {"text": " 37 After displaying a stealth fighter that was a sort of joke, obsolete missiles as they were new, fake or unrealistic UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), Tehran may have finally unveiled something real. 24 In a ceremony held on Sept. 27, Iran unveiled a modified version of the \u201cShahed 129\u2033, capable to carry weapons. 44 In other words the domestic drone (based on the Israeli Hermes 450 model or the Watchkeeper 450 model, but larger than those types), has eventually become a real UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle) capable to carry missiles. 53 According to the claims of the IRGC AF Commander, the drone can carry 8 bombs/missiles, it has an endurance of 24 hours with a range of 1,700 km and a ceiling of 24,000 feet, and it can monitor an area of 200 km around it with its onboard sensors. 27 Iranian TV has aired footage of the drone flying and firing missiles as well as images allegedly recorded from the IR sensors of the Shaded 129. 29 Furthermore, the two models showcased so far seem to be of different versions: one features a retractable landing gear while the other has a fixed one. 43 Even if accuracy of the sensors and weapons can\u2019t be judged from photos, what can be said is that, unlike many other project, the Shahed 129 seems at first glance to be a \u201ctangible\u201d platform. 24 In other words drones seen in the first images don\u2019t seem to be toys (still they might be so). 8 Image credit: IRINN, FARS\n\nRelated articles"} {"text": " 33 Editor\u2019s Note: For 31 years now, Paul Solman\u2019s reports on the NewsHour have aimed to make sense of economic news and research for a general audience. 42 Since 2007, our Making Sen$e page has vowed to do the same, turning to leading academics and thinkers in the fields of business and economics to help explain what\u2019s interesting and relevant about their work. 16 That includes reports and interviews with economists affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research. 13 Each month, the NBER Digest summarizes several recent NBER working papers. 18 These papers have not been peer-reviewed, but are circulated by their authors for comment and discussion. 22 With the NBER\u2019s blessing, Making Sen$e is pleased to feature these summaries regularly on our page. 22 The following summary was written by the NBER and doesn\u2019t necessarily reflect the views of Making Sen$e. 25 The combination of declining birth rates and increasing longevity in developed countries means labor forces are aging and, in some nations, shrinking. 24 These patterns are particularly evident in Germany, where the population is expected to decline by 18.8 percent over the next 15 years. 15 The labor force will age and may contract by as much as 35 percent. 27 German firms have responded to these demographic changes by instituting targeted training programs intended to induce workers to stay on the job beyond traditional retirement age. 77 READ MORE: Why women over 50 can\u2019t find jobs\n\nIn \u201cThe Relationship between Establishment Training and the Retention of Older Workers: Evidence from Germany,\u201d Peter B. Berg, Mary K. Hamman, Matthew M. Piszczek and Christopher J. Ruhm discover that when employers offer training programs targeted at older workers, women \u2014 especially low-wage women \u2014 are more likely than men to continue working beyond traditional retirement age. 28 The researchers, who analyze data from the Linked Employer-Employee Dataset of Germany\u2019s Institute for Employment Research, cannot definitely explain this gender disparity. 14 They suspect, however, that lifetime earning patterns play a key role. 26 Men nearing traditional retirement age tend to have longer histories of uninterrupted employment than women and higher lifetime earnings as well as higher average wages. 43 Men may be near the top of relevant pay scales, so the promise of slightly higher wages for additional years of employment may be less attractive to them than the promise of substantially higher wages for such years are to women. 40 READ MORE: Male veterans face declining wealth and work prospects\n\nBecause many women interrupted their working careers to raise families, their potential wage gains associated with targeted retraining are often much larger than the gains for men. 31 Because of their often-interrupted work histories, women tend to qualify for smaller pensions than men, and more generally, women are far more likely to be financially insecure. 29 For many women, training programs focus on getting them up to speed regarding developments on the job that occurred while they were out of the labor force. 21 The study strongly suggests that offering targeted training may both improve women\u2019s earnings and encourage longer working lives. 9 \u2014 Matt Nesvisky, National Bureau of Economic Research"} {"text": " 51 Will Noble\n\nMeet The London Punks That Grew Up\n\nHandmade mixtape sleeves, DIY fanzines and shabby-chic threads from the King's Road: not the usual exhibits you'd expect to see on display at the Museum of London, but exactly what you'll find from this weekend. 20 40 years has whizzed by since punk rocked up in London, rudely shaking up the city for good. 21 As part of the year-long Punk London festival, Museum of London has pulled together the collections of 17 punks. 29 Personal items (some of which we hope have been washed since 1976) tell the story of what it was like being a punk in the capital. 36 From asking people to borrow 10p to get into a West End gig, to being told you 'can't be a punk from Kew', here are the tales of true London punks. 24 The Museum of London has made a short documentary featuring some of the punks (which you might be watching right now). 18 Though some have long hung up the Doc Martens, other punks are still hard at it. 12 Punks runs at the Museum of London until 15 January 2017. 4 Entry is free. 18 A series of special events run alongside the exhibition, including plays, photo exhibitions and debates. 10 For more information, visit the Punk London website."} {"text": " 24 OpenAppMkt is a new App Store alternative that takes full advantage of iPhone web apps, which means that no jailbreak is required. 15 Remember when the iPhone first came out and Steve was praising those web apps? 18 Well OpenAppMkt gathered some of them and packed them up in a nice and convenient web app. 16 To install OpenAppMkt simply point Safari to http://www.OpenAppmkt.com/ and follow the onscreen instructions. 16 Installing OpenAppMkt won\u2019t install anything but a Safari bookmark on your iPhone homescreen. 29 Hitting the bookmark will take you to OpenAppMkt web app from where you\u2019ll be able to browse web apps and install their bookmarks on your homescreen. 10 To be clear, these are just web apps. 22 by installing any of these apps, you aren\u2019t actually installing anything but a Safari bookmark on your homescreen. 8 I love the concept and its implementation. 29 You sure are limited to what you can do with a web app but OpenAppMkt is a nice and convenient alternative to the App Store or even Cydia. 11 Update: A few people are missing the point here. 29 I\u2019m going to quote Mike Masnick from TechDirt who sums up why OpenAppMkt is good and different:\n\nOverall, this fascinates me for two reasons. 75 First, it\u2019s good to get more people realizing that HTML is already pretty damn good at creating app-style experiences, without having to create special compiled code and, second, it\u2019s a really clever way to totally route around Apple as a gatekeeper (without requiring a jailbreak), and is a reminder that even on \u201cclosed\u201d systems, openness will often find a way. 5 [TechDirt via B00b1]"} {"text": " 43 Solar Leasing Provides Power for Pennies\n\nSeptember 27th, 2011 by Silvio Marcacci\n\nMillions of visitors go to the Cincinnati Zoo every year, but the newest attraction isn\u2019t the new baby giraffe \u2014 it\u2019s a solar panel. 26 More accurately, over 6,000 solar panels installed over the zoo\u2019s parking lot, spanning an area the size of four football fields. 22 The sheer size of the arrays is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as their price tag: absolutely nothing. 37 The Cincinnati Zoo is the latest solar leasing success story, an innovative program that matches up investors with property owners who want to install solar but may not be able to afford the up-front costs. 2 energyNOW! 24 correspondent Patty Kim visited the zoo and SunRun, a San Francisco-based start-up to learn how solar leasing is generating power for pennies. 35 The full segment is available below:\n\nWhile the new solar array has made the Cincinnati Zoo one of America\u2019s greenest, it\u2019s also making a lot of financial sense. 38 The panels produce 1.5 megawatts of electricity, about 20 percent of the zoo\u2019s total energy needs, and on extremely sunny days, the zoo doesn\u2019t draw any power from the grid. 29 \u201cOn a day like today, every single building in our zoo is off the grid,\u201d said Mark Fisher, senior director, Cincinnati Zoo. 45 \u201cWhen I got my first energy bill, I started reading down and it was zero.\u201d\n\nThe $11 million project was financed through a complex web of private investors, federal tax credits, and Ohio\u2019s alternative energy incentives. 29 The zoo pays a locked-in rate of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour to the solar panel owners, roughly what it would have paid the local utility. 15 Over time, however, the zoo could save millions as electricity prices rise. 30 \u201cThis is the future,\u201d says Steve Melink, who runs the Melink Corporation, an Ohio firm that designed, owns, and operates the array. 31 Solar leasing isn\u2019t just for large landowners \u2013 homeowners can also take advantage of the financing model to put solar panels on their roof for next to nothing. 18 But in order to work for homeowners, the process must be affordable and simple to understand. 35 \u201cWe know for consumer to adopt solar in the mainstream, it can\u2019t be hard and it can\u2019t be more expensive,\u201d said Lynn Jurich, SunRun cofounder. 30 SunRun is one of the largest providers of residential solar in the country, with 11,000 homeowners signed up, and they hope to hit 22,000 households by 2012. 32 Ultimately, solar leasing proponents hope that as more and more people see installed solar panels, more people will warm to the idea of putting solar on their own homes. 35 \u201c1.3 million people a year park under this array, and when they come in the zoo, they\u2019re like, \u2018Wow \u2013 what is that?\u201d said Fisher. 28 \u201cWe can say this project, literally this project, has a direct relationship to motivating other folks, and that would be pretty cool.\u201d"} {"text": " 21 Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) answers questions during an event with constituents in Milton, Fla., on Thursday. 41 (Gregg Pachkowski/AP)\n\nA conservative congressman from northern Florida called on President Trump to release his tax returns at a town hall meeting here Thursday, reflecting the growing pressure on Republican lawmakers this week to assuage angry constituents. 57 Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) faced at least 500 constituents in a crowded bowling alley for nearly two hours Thursday evening in this quiet suburb of Pensacola, where he was grilled about his relationship with Trump, his stance on repealing the Affordable Care Act and his proposal to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. 34 Gaetz, winding up a 14-hour listening tour of his home district, also promised that Congress would not repeal the Affordable Care Act without protecting its provision requiring coverage for preexisting conditions. 28 \u201cNo bill will be before the United States Congress that allows people to be discriminated against as a consequence of preexisting conditions,\u201d Gaetz said. 11 \u201cBut, make no mistake,\u201d he added. 49 \u201cObamacare is a threat to our economy, a threat to our health care, and, as your congressman, I will work everyday to repeal it.\u201d\n\nRep. Matt Gaetz greets constituents on his way to an event in Milton, Fla., on Thursday. 42 (Gregg Pachkowski/AP)\n\nGaetz is an unlikely congressman to push for Trump to release his tax returns; he also ended Thursday\u2019s town hall by shouting \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d over roaring opposition from the audience. 16 [Republican lawmaker who won\u2019t hold a town hall invokes Gabby Giffords shooting. 48 She responds: \u2018Have some courage.\u2019]\n\nThe 34-year-old freshman and former state legislator announced his candidacy for Congress last March, when he promised that Trump would \u201cturn that town on its head and hit the restart button,\u201d according to WFSU. 15 He was elected in his safely Republican district with 69 percent of the vote. 39 Gaetz, who arrived to the town hall 30 minutes late, took questions on a wide range of topics during an event that was often tense but peaceful, with crowds booing the congressman and waving signs. 43 The congressman had been prepared to be shouted down by a hostile crowd; according to CNN, his staff had created several placards that could be hoisted in the event that the audience became too loud for him to be heard. 34 The posters contained such messages as \u201cprofessional liberal protesters.\u201d\n\nDonna Waters, a Pensacola attorney and registered Republican, was one of several to press Gaetz about his relationship with Trump. 28 \u201cThere are allegations that a hostile foreign country is committing acts of undeclared war by infiltrating the highest levels of our government,\u201d Waters said. 5 \u201cThat offends me. 16 I don\u2019t know if it offends my party, but it offends me. 7 You are on the Judiciary Committee. 13 You have said that they are going to investigate the Russian allegations. 1 . 1 . 1 . 48 Will you call for the release of President Trump\u2019s income tax records?\u201d\n\nRep. Matt Gaetz is escorted by Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office deputies as he walks to his car following a meeting with constituents in Milton, Fla., on Thursday. 19 (Gregg Pachkowski/AP)\n\nGaetz responded by saying he \u201cabsolutely\u201d believed Trump should release his returns. 34 Answering a separate question, he stopped short of calling for a special committee or independent commission to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, as another audience member suggested. 22 [Republicans distance themselves from Trump at rowdy town halls]\n\nGaetz also fielded numerous questions about the Affordable Care Act. 16 Jennifer Zimmerman, a local pediatrician, urged the congressman to leave the legislation intact. 41 Zimmerman said that almost 90 percent of her patients qualify for Medicaid, and she noted that her husband and daughter had both suffered preexisting conditions that had limited their access to health coverage before the law\u2019s passage. 29 \u201cIf not for the policies of the ACA, I don\u2019t think any of my family members would be here,\u201d Waters told Gaetz. 20 In response, the congressman told her that he would work to ensure those with preexisting conditions were protected. 50 Thursday night\u2019s town hall was the final event in Gaetz\u2019s all-day tour of Santa Rosa County that also included visits to business groups, a nursing home and a local middle school, where Gaetz delivered a civics lesson to a group of seventh graders. 22 The congressman emphasized the importance of free speech, political protest and a vigorous and oppositional press to a functioning democracy. 14 In discussing the Bill of Rights, he lingered on the 10th Amendment. 20 \u201cThe magic of American government is that we are suspicious of power,\u201d Gaetz told the students. 48 \u201cWe want it for the people, not just the folks who are elected.\u201d\n\nHe returned to this point again when a student asked what would become of the EPA\u2019s roughly 15,000 employees should the agency be abolished, as Gaetz has proposed. 43 \u201cThere are a lot of people who work at the EPA now who would not have their jobs,\u201d Gaetz said, though he added that he expected some of those employees to be hired by state and local agencies. 12 \u201cWe believe in a clean environment,\u201d Gaetz said. 62 \u201cThe question is, under the 10th Amendment principles I believe in, who is best positioned to do that?\u201d\n\nAt midday Thursday, Gaetz also hosted a town hall at a nearby barbecue joint, where he was greeted by a crowd of several hundred, many of whom hoisted signs in opposition to the EPA proposal. 34 The local Democratic Women\u2019s Club had earlier announced plans to protest at the event, prompting a response from Gaetz\u2019s supporters and the local chapter of Bikers for Trump. 31 \u201cI need all patriots in attendance to protect Congressman Gaetz from any potential disruption of his speech,\u201d supporter Geoff Ross wrote on Facebook prior to the event. 31 \u201cConcealed carry permit holders most welcome \u2014 don\u2019t forget your ammo.\u201d\n\nRoss\u2019s comments quickly prompted calls for Gaetz to distance himself from the group. 21 He did the opposite, calling the bikers \u201cfriends\u201d on social media and welcoming them to the event. 32 \u201cWe understand not everyone agrees on every political issue, thus dissent, discord and protests are expected,\u201d Gaetz\u2019s office said in a news release Wednesday. 54 \u201cWe believe dissent and protests are signs of a healthy democracy, but most of all we ask everyone attending to behave in a non-violent and non-disruptive manner.\u201d\n\nGaetz\u2019s office had declared that attendees would need to present identification to attend the event, citing concerns about crowd size. 28 The room where the event was held, at Grover T\u2019s BBQ, could accommodate only 80 of the several hundred people who showed up. 13 Those remaining, mostly protesters, crowded outside while Gaetz fielded questions. 19 Carri Brown, who lives in nearby Pensacola, did not arrive early enough to make it inside. 26 A retired public utility employee, she came to the event hoping to urge Gaetz to reconsider his bid to do away with the EPA. 27 Brown lives in Wedgewood, a low-income, historically black neighborhood where residents have waged a decades-long battle against the encroachment of landfills and borrow pits. 27 Residents have complained to local and state officials for years that the pits jeopardized their safety, health and quality of life, to no avail. 12 \u201cWe are surrounded by pits,\u201d Brown said Thursday. 35 \u201cIt\u2019s almost like we are in a bowl.\u201d\n\nBrown took a dim view of Gaetz\u2019s assertion that state and local governments are best positioned to protect the environment. 11 \u201cIt\u2019s a farce,\u201d she said. 4 Read more at PowerPost"}