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Willie Soon is a name that pops up every so often in climate ‘debate’. He was the lead author on the Soon and Baliunas (2003) paper (the only paper that has ever led to the resignation of 6 editors in protest at the failure of peer-review that led to its publication). He was a recent speaker (from 37.20) at the 2011 Heartland Institute conference, and can be counted on to produce a contrarian take on any particular issue that anyone might care about – ranging from climate, to mercury in fish and polar bear population dynamics.
Recently, there has been a renewed focus on how much money Willie Soon has taken from fossil fuel companies for his ‘research’ (over a $1 million dollars). While that is impressive, the real issue is not how he gets paid, but the quality of his science. The discussion last week about his finances did lead people to notice his publically accessible website where he has posted papers, emails, calculations and reviews going back to 2003 (Update: since this piece was posted, many items have been blocked. We have switched the links to saved versions). There is quite a lot of interesting stuff there, including a few curious tidbits.
Figure: Distinct populations of polar bears across the Arctic. WH = Western Hudson Bay, nr. Churchill, Manitoba.
One particularly amusing find is evidence of some outrageous cherry-picking in what ended up as the Dyck, Soon, Baydack, Legates, Baliunas, Ball and Hancock (2007) paper. This paper attempted to cast doubt on the sensitivity of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay to climate change, a basis of the eventual US Fish and Wildlife listing of the polar bear as ‘threatened’. Earlier work by Andy Derocher, Ian Stirling and others had documented the clear reduction in sea ice in Hudson Bay and the subsequent reduction in the period available for hunting seals, and the impacts on the population.
Note that as a “viewpoint” paper, the Dyck et al submission was not peer-reviewed. Instead, it was accepted (March 2 2007) only 1 day after it was received (March 1 2007). Soon’s website indicates that a very similar paper had been submitted as a normal paper at least once before (in 2003, with only Dyck and Soon as authors). The reviews for that paper (or one very similar), are also available (dated June 2003).
The paper itself (both versions) is a collection of standard arguments for why everything is uncertain and nothing can be concluded, but did actually include a little analysis. Specifically, the claim was made that temperatures in Churchill, Manitoba (close to the center of the Western Hudson Bay population of bears) had not risen, and that instead, any multidecadal variations in temperatures affecting the bears were related to the Arctic Oscillation (AO), a mode of natural variability. Of course, temperatures in the Churchill region have risen, and the ice extent in Hudson Bay is melting earlier and forming later (by about a month in each case) than 30 years ago. But the interesting aspect is the impact of the AO which certainly affects short term temperatures in the Arctic.
Regressions of winter temperature anomalies with the strength of the AO (JISAO). (ºC change in temperature per unit increase in the AO – for reference, the AO varies from roughly -3 to 3 on a monthly timescale).
Andrew Derocher, who signed his review, queried why the figure showing an impact of the AO on temperature (r2=0.52) used the data from Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) in the Labrador Sea instead of the data from Churchill. Frobisher Bay is just under 1000 miles away from Churchill and doesn’t border Hudson Bay at all, so its relevance to bears in Western Hudson Bay is somewhat mysterious. It is however very close to the center of the AO influence (as seen in the above figure). Derocher suggested that Dyck et al use the correlations at Churchill instead (makes sense, no?). In the finally published paper (in 2007) however, the correlation with the AO was still using the Frobisher Bay data – exactly as it appears in the first draft in 2003.
What the files reveal however, is that Soon had already calculated the correlations of Churchill temperatures to the AO, and found that the correlation was very low – regardless of what month or season he used (the files are dated to January 2003 – prior to Derocher’s review). None of the correlations showed an r2 > 0.24 (highest in August), and most were much smaller (especially during the key spring period where the variance explained was less than 5%). Note that a value like r2=0.24 is not necessarily meaningless — indeed, for the number of data points involved here (between 50 and 60), this is probably statistically significant relative to a standard ‘red noise’ null hypothesis. However, the variance explained is small.
Soon had also calculated the impact of the AO on the Frobisher Bay data and, unsurprisingly, used the seasonal correlation that had the highest correlation. The fact that Frobisher Bay temperatures and Churchill temperatures are only loosely correlated (also calculated by Soon) (highest monthly r2 was 0.22) was not mentioned in either version of the paper.
The link is made (in the 2003 version) using:
… the temperature and climatic conditions around the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay areas have close association with the AO circulation index
which is an attempt to imply that the Hudson Strait connection, also applies to Hudson Bay (which Soon already knew was untrue). The version in the 2007 paper was only slightly different:
… the air temperature and climatic conditions around the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay areas have a close association with the AO circulation index.
but is equally misleading.
So, the picture here is quite clear. Soon knew that the relevant data series for discussing the AO influence on Western Hudson Bay temperature (and by proxy, sea ice) was from Churchill and despite being reminded of the fact by the first set of reviewers, nonetheless continued to only show the AO connection to a site 1000 miles away, which had a much higher correlation without any discussion of whether this other data was at all relevant to Churchill or the bears nearby.
There was much else in the Dyck et al paper that was worth criticising (see Stirling et al (2008) for details), but the evidence of the cherry-picking of data for the sake of an (irrelevant) higher correlation from the files is a very clear black flag.
In my opinion, this kind of ‘scientific’ sleight-of-hand is far more egregious than Soon’s ability to get funding from coal, oil, and fossil-fueled foundations. | 0.980677 |
Benfica midfielder Renato Sanches was a UEFA.com Weekly Wonderkid back in December; now the 18-year-old is one of the most expensive teenagers in Europe, the Portuguese club announcing that he has gone to Munich for an initial fee of €35m, which could rise to €80m.
"Bayern have been watching Renato Sanches for a long time," the club's chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge explained. "We are happy to have signed him despite big-name competition from across Europe. Renato is a dynamic, combative and skilful midfielder, who will make our team even stronger."
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Outgoing Bayern boss Josep Guardiola took time to sing Sanches's praises after his side eliminated Benfica in this season's UEFA Champions League quarter-finals. "He is by far one of the best young players in Europe," Guardiola noted. "He's everywhere on the pitch. He has a great future ahead of him."
He was not the only top coach to have noted the battling midfielder's qualities. "He has a strong shot and good vision for someone in his position," noted Atlético boss Diego Simeone. "It's always nice to see good young players."
Born in Lisbon, Sanches made his way through the youth ranks at Benfica, announcing his arrival in the first team this season with a a fantastic long-range strike in a Liga game against Académica. Comparisons with Edgar Davids and Yaya Touré had scouts from big clubs flocking to watch him, with a move to Manchester United mooted.
Where will Renato Sanches fit in at Bayern?
UEFA.com's Phil Röber explains
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Bayern's decision to sign young talent makes sense; some key players are aged 30+, while youngsters Joshua Kimmich and Kingsley Coman – both signed last season – made their mark in their debut season. Sanches is just a month younger than Coman was when he joined the club, with the Frenchman's acclimatisation to a new league and a new language a great example for the new arrival to follow.
Bayern have staggering strength in midfield already, especially in central positions, but the dynamic, tactically-astute Sanches looks to be perfectly suited to their aggressive pressing game, and it will be interesting to see how new boss Carlo Ancelotti tailors his midfield selections to each opponent next season. Sanches willl not breeze into the first team in Munich, but he showed at Benfica that he is a huge talent, and there is every reason to believe he will show his potential at Bayern.
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What will Mats Hummels bring to Bayern?
"I am returning to my home city in the summer," said the 27-year-old central defender, who came through the youth ranks at Bayern and made his league debut under Ottmar Hitzfeld. Back at his old club, he will team up with Jérôme Boateng and Holger Badstuber – forming a trio of the best central defenders in Germany.
The signing of Hummels is a statement of intent for Bayern, who are on their way to building a squad that will allow them to field two different yet almost equally strong teams from match to match during busy periods. Hummels is a perfect fit: effective initiating build-ups, accurate with his long passing and strong in the air, he is a born leader for whom the 'mia san mia' (we are who we are) ethos will come naturally.
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When Morrissey comes to town, it’s a big deal—so big, in fact, that the Hollywood Bowl is going meatless for the famous vegetarian’s two shows this weekend.
In addition, the Los Angeles City Council has declared this Friday, November 10 “Morrissey Day.” Valley councilmember Monica Rodriguez introduced the resolution at today’s city council meeting, complete with an official commemorative certificate.
“Morrissey Day honors the man who put the ‘M’ in Moz Angeles, an icon whose music continues to touch and uplift countless people across the globe,” said councilmember Rodriguez. “Morrissey uses his voice to raise awareness for many social issues while ‘in his own strange way,’ always staying true to his fans.”
Outside of government, L.A. shows a lot of love to the former Smiths frontman, with karaoke nights, mariachi tributes and even a vandalized sign on the 101 that changed the Hollywood Bowl exit to read “Morrissey.” In return, Morrissey will mount a pop-up shop next weekend, November 17 to 19, at 8250 Melrose Avenue.
The not-at-all-promotional declaration comes ahead of Morrissey’s aforementioned performances at the Bowl, plus his upcoming album Low in High School. It’s also not the first time the city has recognized pop culture favorites; official days have recently been declared for Kobe Bryant, La La Land, the Doors and X, ahead of the punk band’s Grammy Museum exhibition. | 0.489839 |
In 1971, a young writer graduated with his Master's degree in Journalism from Northwestern University. He spent the first 13 years of his career writing professionally and made a living from it, but without major success. In 1983, he released his fourth book, The Armageddon Rag.
Nobody read it—the book was a total flop. In the author's own words, “It essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time.” 12
But he was determined and so he found ways to keep writing. He landed a job writing a television script for CBS. Soon after, the show was canceled. He managed to work his way onto another TV series, this time on ABC, but it was canceled again. In 1991, after nearly a decade of bouncing around, he decided to start writing fiction again.
Two million words later, George R.R. Martin was famous.
Martin is the best-selling author of the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. The first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, has also been turned into a blockbuster television series on HBO. (The first season of the show was nominated for 13 Emmy awards.) 3 The epic 7-part series that hasn't even been finished (Martin is currently working on the sixth book), but it has already sold more than 25 million copies.
What is most surprising isn't how good the books are, but how, exactly, Martin writes his best-selling works…
The Power of WordStar
In total, Martin has written almost 2 million words for the series thus far…
Book 1: A Game of Thrones – 298,000 words
Book 2: A Clash of Kings – 326,000 words
Book 3: A Storm of Swords – 424,000 words
Book 4: A Feast for Crows – 300,000 words
Book 5: A Dance with Dragons – 422,000 words
That is a total of 1,770,000 words—an incredible effort.4 And what does Martin use to churn out such an amazing quantity of work?
He writes the novels with a program that most people have never even heard of: WordStar 4.0. To give you an idea of just how ancient this program is, here's a picture of the typical WordStar screen…
Martin says, “I still do all my writing on an old DOS machine running WordStar 4.0, the Duesenberg of word processing software (very old, but unsurpassed).”
He goes on, “I am not on Facebook. I am not on Twitter. I will not be on the next new thing to come along, the one that makes Facebook and Twitter as obsolete as GEnie and CompuServe and The Source, those halcyon communities of yore.” 5
Focus, Consistency, and Patience
One of the greatest lessons I've learned from weightlifting is that there are 3 simple things that you need for success.
Focus: You can't be good at everything and it's hard to be great at more than one thing, so pick the one thing you're going to become great at and focus on it. Consistency: Focus is useless if you're only focused every now and then. It's showing up time after time that makes the difference. Patience: If you're focused and consistent, then let time work for you. Results will come when they come. Focus on the system, not the goal.
George R.R. Martin's creative process employs all three of these methods.
Focus. He writes on a computer without the internet, without social media, without apps or distractions or graphics. But his computer can do one very important thing: type words. And typing words is his craft. That's what he needs to create. He is 100 percent focused on doing the work that matters and he has completely eliminated anything that impedes that goal.
Consistency. Martin was a working writer for twenty years before he sat down to write A Game of Thrones. He worked on shows that were canceled and found himself without a job. He wrote early books that flopped commercially. And I'm willing to bet that if A Song of Ice and Fire was a total dud, then he would have found another way to keep writing. He's not just focused on writing when it's easy. He's focused on writing, plain and simple.
Patience. I'm sure Martin wanted to achieve glorious success and commercial fame just as quickly as we all do. I'm sure he would have liked his first book to sell 25 million copies. I'm sure he didn't want to put in 20 years of work to find commercial success. The difference is that he didn't let the urge for overnight success derail his commitment to daily work. The greatest display of patience is a continued commitment to the process when you're not being rewarded for it yet. 6
The Minimum You Need to Succeed
George “WordStar” Martin is selling more books than nearly anyone on the planet and his computer can't even send an email. Think about that for a moment.
So often we think that we need more to be successful. More outside funding for our startup. More software programs or productivity tools to handle our to-do list. More business contacts, a bigger network. More clothes or cars or credit cards.
But maybe what we really need is less. Maybe what we really need are fewer distractions and more focus. Maybe what we really need are a few carefully chosen constraints that narrow our energy onto what really matters rather than compiling a bunch of resources that pull us away from what we actually need to do.
It's very possible that eliminating distractions, not accumulating resources, is the best way to maximize your potential. Constraints drive creativity. What is the minimum you need to succeed?7 | 0.279103 |
Image copyright SPL Image caption Oranges are a good source of vitamin C
Vitamin C can kill multidrug-resistant TB in the lab, scientists have found.
The surprise discovery may point to a new way of tackling this increasingly hard-to-treat infection, the US study authors from Yeshiva University say in Nature Communications.
An estimated 650,000 people worldwide have multidrug-resistant TB.
Studies are now needed to see if a treatment that works using the same action as vitamin C would be useful as a TB drug in humans.
Early work
While the findings of this study appear promising, further research to confirm the observations would be essential before Vitamin C can be used to supplement TB treatment Dr Ibrahim Abubakar, , Head of TB at Public Health England
In the laboratory studies, vitamin C appeared to be acting as a "reducing agent" - something that triggers the production of of reactive oxygen species called free radicals. These free radicals killed off the TB, even drug resistant forms that are untreatable with conventional antibiotics such as isoniazid.
Lead investigator Dr William Jacobs, professor of microbiology and immunology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, said: "We have only been able to demonstrate this in a test tube, and we don't know if it will work in humans and in animals.
"This would be a great study to consider because we have strains of tuberculosis that we don't have drugs for, and I know that in the laboratory we can kill those strains with vitamin C.
"It also helps that we know vitamin C is inexpensive, widely available and very safe to use. At the very least, this work shows us a new mechanism that we can exploit to attack TB."
Potential treatment
It might be that vitamin C could be used alongside TB drugs. Alternatively, scientists could create new TB drugs that work by generating a big burst of free radicals.
Drug-resistant TB TB is caused by infection with the bacterium M. tuberculosis
Increasingly, doctors are discovering that the drugs they normally use to treat the infection no longer work because TB has developed resistance
Drug resistance arises due to improper use of antibiotics - for example, when patients do not finish the full course of their medicine
Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, has many important functions in the body, including protecting cells and keeping them healthy.
Good natural sources of the vitamin include oranges, blackcurrants and broccoli and most people get all they need from their diet.
Dr Ibrahim Abubakar, head of TB at Public Health England, said: "We welcome any new research which will widen our understanding of how to treat TB. While the findings of this study appear promising, further research to confirm the observations would be essential before Vitamin C can be used to supplement TB treatment." | 0.989166 |
Six racehorses burned to death after driver flicks a cigarette into their trailer
Six racehorses burned to death after a driver flicked a cigarette into their trailer as they were being driven to their first start of the season.
The young thoroughbreds desperately tried to escape but were trapped in their box when the hay around them caught on fire.
As smoke started billowing from the New York bound-trailer its drivers pulled over and tried to put out the fire but they unable to save the animals.
Terror in the trailer: Six thoroughbreds died when their trailer caught fire
One of the drivers sustained burns while trying to haul them out.
Police said that the cause of the blaze was a passing motorist who flicked his still-lit cigarette out of the window and into the horse box.
One of the horses is said to have belonged to Barry Schwartz, the childhood friend of Calvin Klein who co-founded his fashion empire.
Other equines belonged to well-known trainers like Rudy Rodriguez and Mike Hushion.
Racing tragedy: The six horses were bound for the famous Belmont Park track in Long Island
The Loraine Course Transport tractor-trailer had started out in Florida and was on its way to the famous Belmont Park racetrack in Long Island, New York, when disaster struck.
North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper K.B. Heath said the drivers of a tractor-trailer pulled the vehicle over after discovering smoke coming from it on Friday evening on I-95 about three miles south of Rocky Mount.
They also saw the horses in a state of distress on a TV screen on the driver’s dashboard that is linked up to a camera in their box.
Personal loss: Entrepreneur Barry Schwartz, pictured with wife Sheryl, owned one of the horses in the trailer
Trooper Heath said straw and hay inside the trailer ignited and the drivers were unable to get the horses out.
He added that so far investigators have no leads as to the identity of the driver who flicked the cigarette.
Mr Schwartz is a former president of the New York Racing Association and has trained thoroughbreds at his stables in Westchester, New York, for more than 30 years.
Such is his commitment to the sport that in 2001 he was given that year’s award for The Person Who Did Most For Racing by the New York Turf Writer’s Association.
Journey's end: The horses were being transported from Florida to New York when the trailer caught fire in North Carolina
He has also suffered tragedy before and Three Ring, the best horse he ever owned, died in a freak accident at Belmont Park in 1999.
'It was the worst fatality I have ever seen,’ he said at the time.
‘'I have lost horses before. Anyone in the business loses horses, but I was right there for this. We were standing right next to her.’
Mr Schwartz, a former grocer who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment in The Bronx in New York, co-founded Calvin Klein with a $10,000 loan in 1968.
It is now a multi-million dollar fashion empire. | 0.017883 |
by Raph Graybill, Fellow, Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS)
This spring, western state legislatures will consider a series of laws demanding the end of public land management by the federal government. The bills, which evoke the “Sagebrush Rebellion” anti-conservation movement of the 1970s, issue a state-law “demand” that the United States relinquish its title to American public lands and transfer ownership to states.
Nearly two years after Utah passed its “Transfer of Public Lands Act” (TPLA), similar laws are under consideration in a majority of western states. At stake is the core of American conservation policy. Under state ownership, state governments could restrict public access, authorize commercial development or even divide lands for private sale. Current federal environmental law effectively forecloses these possibilities, limiting privatization and preventing environmental degradation.
Other outlets have addressed the policy wisdom of transfer demand laws, but very little work has been devoted to understanding their constitutional validity. This post will address the legal arguments behind transfer demands with an eye toward understanding both the Constitution’s text and a newer, nontextual argument advanced by supporters.
A legal analysis of transfer demands begins with the Constitution itself, and the plain text of the Constitution speaks directly to transfer demand laws. The Property Clause, Article IV, § 3, cl. 2, states, “The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.” The text leaves little room for ambiguity over who may make decisions affecting United States land: Only Congress may initiate the sale or transfer of federal public lands.
The Supreme Court has regularly upheld this plain text understanding of authority over American public lands. In its 1840 case, United States v. Gratiot, the Supreme Court held that “[t]he power over the public lands is vested in Congress by the Constitution, without limitation.” A hundred years later, the Court held the same in United States v. City & County of San Francisco: “Congress may constitutionally limit the disposition of the public domain to a manner consistent with its views of public policy.”
The Constitution grants the United States exclusive legal control over American public lands. Congress may initiate a transfer or sale, but demands by state or local governments have no constitutional foundation.
Even without the clear prohibition in the Property Clause, transfer demands face constitutional problems under the Supremacy Clause as well. Article VI makes the Constitution and federal statutes “supreme” over state statutes. In the words of the Supreme Court, the Supremacy Clause “secure[s] federal rights by according them priority whenever they come in conflict with state law.”
Insofar as state transfer demands conflict with federal laws, they are unconstitutional. Such conflict is inevitable with respect to state transfer demands. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), for example, articulates a comprehensive policy for managing American public lands. Set against a state transfer demand law, the Supremacy Clause gives effect to the federal law and renders the state demand invalid.
Recognizing the clear hurdles created by the text of the Constitution, transfer demand supporters have also advanced a new, nontextual argument rooted in analogies from contract law. According to the argument, state enabling acts (federal laws giving rise to new states) resemble contracts between the United States and states gaining admission to the Union. By looking at historical evidence at the time of a state’s admission (e.g. newspaper clippings, statements by politicians), supporters argue, it can be established that states expected to eventually gain control over federal lands. Because a contract should give effect to the expectations of both parties at signing, the United States should turn over its land.
Unfortunately for its supporters, the “enabling act theory” relies as much on a misunderstanding of the Constitution as it does on poor contract law theory. To begin with, state enabling acts are not “like” contracts. Plainly, they’re statutes. They interact with other laws in the manner that statutes do; when an enabling act comes into conflict with a subsequent state law, the enabling act trumps the state law. And the plain text of most Western state enabling acts expressly renounces state claims to federal land.
The Enabling Act of 1889, for example, grants the admission of North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Montana to the Union on the condition “[t]hat the people inhabiting said proposed States do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.” The Act reserves the right to “disposition” of public lands to the United States. As a federal law, the enabling act is clear about the division of political authority: The United States makes ownership decisions about United States land; state governments will not.
Even viewed as contracts, however, state enabling acts offer little support for the idea that the United States has a “duty to dispose” of its public land. Under ordinary contract interpretation, the written contract itself is the central basis for determining the scope and terms of an agreement. Exogenous evidence is not evidence of a party’s intent. Cherry-picked statements from newspapers or political officials at the time are far worse indications of what the parties intended than the actual agreement. As the leading proponent of the state enabling act theory notes, “the interpretation of any written instrument must be informed by surrounding words and all sections.” When states said they would disclaim their rights to United States land as a condition of entry to the Union, they meant it.
In the end, states have no constitutional power to force federal land transfers. The same strategy was attempted during the “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the 1970s and met an emphatic defeat in federal courts. Though transfer demand proponents have refashioned their legal arguments, their constitutional invalidity remains the same. The Property Clause and the Supremacy Clause make state land transfer bills unconstitutional. A vague “contract like” theory based on state enabling acts does not avoid the constitutional problem, either. To require a transfer, a state enabling act must say so in its text.
If transfer demand supporters want a change in United States land policy, they should petition the United States through Congress. Under the Constitution, state transfer demand laws can amount to little more than spent paper. | 0.98578 |
There's no such thing as a 'pure' European—or anyone else
When the first busloads of migrants from Syria and Iraq rolled into Germany 2 years ago, some small towns were overwhelmed. The village of Sumte, population 102, had to take in 750 asylum seekers. Most villagers swung into action, in keeping with Germany’s strong Willkommenskultur, or “welcome culture.” But one self-described neo-Nazi on the district council told The New York Times that by allowing the influx, the German people faced “the destruction of our genetic heritage” and risked becoming “a gray mishmash.”
In fact, the German people have no unique genetic heritage to protect. They—and all other Europeans—are already a mishmash, the children of repeated ancient migrations, according to scientists who study ancient human origins. New studies show that almost all indigenous Europeans descend from at least three major migrations in the past 15,000 years, including two from the Middle East. Those migrants swept across Europe, mingled with previous immigrants, and then remixed to create the peoples of today.
Using revolutionary new methods to analyze DNA and the isotopes found in bones and teeth, scientists are exposing the tangled roots of peoples around the world, as varied as Germans, ancient Philistines, and Kashmiris. Few of us are actually the direct descendants of the ancient skeletons found in our backyards or historic homelands. Only a handful of groups today, such as Australian Aborigines, have deep bloodlines untainted by mixing with immigrants.
“We can falsify this notion that anyone is pure,” says population geneticist Lynn Jorde of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Instead, almost all modern humans “have this incredibly complex history of mixing and mating and migration.”
Wind back the clock more than a thousand years—a trivial slice of time compared with the 200,000 years or so since our species emerged—and stories of exclusive heritage or territory crumble. “Basically, everybody’s myth is wrong, even the indigenous groups’,” says population geneticist David Reich of Harvard University.
Tacitus, the Roman historian, reports that in 9 C.E. a member of the Germanic Cherusci tribe called Arminius led a rebellion against the Romans near the village of Kalkriese in northern Germany. Against all odds, the tribes slaughtered three Roman legions in what became known as the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
After Tacitus’s account resurfaced in the 15th century, German nationalists resurrected the myth of Arminius, who is often depicted as a blond, muscular young chieftain and known as Hermann. Hailed as the first “German” hero, he was said to have united the Germanic tribes and driven the Romans from their territory. That was considered the start of a period when fearsome Germanic tribes such as the Vandals swept around Europe, wresting territory from Romans and others.
In the 20th century, the Nazis added their own dark spin to that origin story, citing Arminius as part of an ancient pedigree of a “master race” from Germany and northern Europe that they called Aryans. They used their view of prehistory and archaeology to justify claims to the tribes’ ancient homelands in Poland and Austria.
Scholars agree that there was indeed a real battle that sent shock waves through the Roman Empire, which then stretched from the island of Britain to Egypt. But much of the rest of Arminius’s story is myth: The Romans persisted deep in Germania until at least the third century C.E., as shown by the recent discovery of a third-century Roman battlefield in Harzhorn, Germany. And Arminius by no means united the more than 50 Germanic tribes of the time. He persuaded five tribes to join him in battle, but members of his own tribe soon killed him.
Moreover, Arminius and his kin were not pure “Aryan,” if that term means a person whose ancestors lived solely in what is now Germany or Scandinavia. The Cherusci tribe, like all Europeans of their day and later, were themselves composites, built from serial migrations into the heart of Europe and then repeatedly remixed. “The whole concept of an ethnic German … it’s ludicrous when you look at the longue durée [long time] scale,” says archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel.
After World War II, many scholars recoiled from studying migrations, in reaction to the Nazi misuse of history and archaeology. The Nazis had invoked migrations of “foreign” groups to German territory to justify genocide. “The whole field of migration studies was ideologically tainted,” says archaeologist Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Some researchers also resisted the idea that migration helped spread key innovations such as farming, partly because that might imply that certain groups were superior.
Nor did researchers have a reliable method to trace prehistoric migrations. “Most of the archaeological evidence for movement is based on artifacts, but artifacts can be stolen or copied, so they are not a real good proxy for actual human movement,” says archaeologist Doug Price of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who tracks ancient migration by analyzing isotopes. “When I started doing this in 1990, I thought people were very sedentary and didn’t move around much.”
Today, however, new methods yield more definitive evidence of migration, sparking an explosion of studies. The isotopes Price and others study are specific to local water and food and thus can reveal where people grew up and whether they later migrated. DNA from ancient skeletons and living people offers the “gold standard” in proving who was related to whom.
The new data confirm that humans have always had wanderlust, plus a yen to mix with all manner of strangers. After the first Homo sapiens arose in Africa, several bands walked out of the continent about 60,000 years ago and into the arms of Neandertals and other archaic humans. Today, almost all humans outside Africa carry traces of archaic DNA.
Migrations through the ages Modern humans have been on the move ever since a small band of people migrated out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago. New studies of genes and isotopes are helping reveal how major migrations shaped who we are today. (See slideshow below for artifacts that trace some of these ancient journeys.) version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? 60,000 years ago 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 Today Ancient Aborigines The ancestors of today’s Aborigines migrate into Australia. Out of Africa Modern humans first leave Africa. First Europeans Modern humans first settle in Europe. Ice age Glaciers cover Northern Hemisphere, driving humans south. European resettlement Hunter-gatherers from the Middle East migrate back into northern Europe. First Americans Hunter-gatherers from Asia migrate to the Americas. First farmers Anatolian farmers migrate into Europe. Cultural revolution The creators of the successful Corded Ware culture spread throughout Europe. Yamnaya invasion Yamnaya herders expand from the Pontic Steppe into both Europe and Asia. Philistine formation Sea people from many ports migrate to Israel and create the Philistine culture. Celtic movements Genetically diverse Celtic-speaking peoples of Europe move to Britain and Spain. Anglo-Saxon arrival Angles, Saxons, and Jutes sail to Britain from their homelands across the North Sea. Barbarian invasions Germanic tribes migrate through Europe, displacing Romans and mixing with Celtic speakers. Viking voyages Vikings sail and raid through Europe. 2 3 4 1 G. GRULLÓN/ SCIENCE
That was just one of many episodes of migration and mixing. The first Europeans came from Africa via the Middle East and settled there about 43,000 years ago. But some of those pioneers, such as a 40,000-year-old individual from Romania, have little connection to today’s Europeans, Reich says.
His team studied DNA from 51 Europeans and Asians who lived 7000 to 45,000 years ago. They found that most of the DNA in living Europeans originated in three major migrations, starting with hunter-gatherers who came from the Middle East as the glaciers retreated 19,000 to 14,000 years ago. In a second migration about 9000 years ago, farmers from northwestern Anatolia, in what is now Greece and Turkey, moved in.
That massive wave of farmers washed across the continent. Ancient DNA records their arrival in Germany, where they are linked with the Linear Pottery culture, 6900 to 7500 years ago. A 7000-year-old woman from Stuttgart, Germany, for example, has the farmers’ genetic signatures, setting her apart from eight hunter-gatherers who lived just 1000 years earlier in Luxembourg and Sweden. Among people living today, Sardinians retain the most DNA from those early farmers, whose genes suggest that they had brown eyes and dark hair.
The farmers moved in family groups and stuck to themselves awhile before mixing with local hunter-gatherers, according to a study in 2015 that used ancient DNA to calculate the ratio of men to women in the farming groups. That’s a stark contrast to the third major migration, which began about 5000 years ago when herders swept in from the steppe north of the Black Sea in what is now Russia. Those Yamnaya pastoralists herded cattle and sheep, and some rode newly domesticated horses, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
In the journal Antiquity last month, Kristiansen and paleogeneticist Eske Willerslev at the University of Copenhagen reported that the sex ratios of the earliest Yamnaya burials in central Europe suggest that the new arrivals were mostly men. Arriving with few women, those tall strangers were apparently eager to woo or abduct the local farmers’ daughters. Not long after the Yamnaya invasion, their skeletons were buried with those of women who had lived on farms as children, according to the strontium and nitrogen isotopes in their bones, says Price, who analyzed them.
The unions between the Yamnaya and the descendants of Anatolian farmers catalyzed the creation of the famous Corded Ware culture, known for its distinctive pottery impressed with cordlike patterns, Kristiansen says. According to DNA analysis, those people may have inherited Yamnaya genes that made them taller; they may also have had a then-rare mutation that enabled them to digest lactose in milk, which quickly spread.
It was a winning combination. The Corded Ware people had many offspring who spread rapidly across Europe. They were among the ancestors of the Bell Beaker culture of central Europe, known by the vessels they used to drink wine, according to a study by Kristiansen and Reich published this month. “This big wave of Yamnaya migration washed all the way to the shores of Ireland,” says population geneticist Dan Bradley of Trinity College in Dublin. Bell Beaker pots and DNA appeared about 4000 years ago in burials on Rathlin Island, off the coast of Northern Ireland, his group reported this year.
This new picture means that the Hermann of lore was himself a composite of post–ice age hunter-gatherers, Anatolian farmers, and Yamnaya herders. So are most other Europeans—including the ancient Romans whose empire Arminius fought.
The three-part European mixture varies across the continent, with different ratios of each migration and trace amounts of other lineages. But those quirks rarely match the tales people tell about their ancestry. For example, the Basques of northern Spain, who have a distinct language, have long thought themselves a people apart. But last year, population geneticist Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala University in Sweden reported that the DNA of modern Basques is most like that of the ancient farmers who populated northern Spain before the Yamnaya migration. In other words, Basques are part of the usual European mix, although they carry less Yamnaya DNA than other Europeans.
Farther north, the Irish Book of Invasions, written by an anonymous author in the 11th century, recounts that the “Sons of Míl Espáine … after many wanderings in Scythia and Egypt” eventually reached Spain and Ireland, creating a modern Irish people distinct from the British—and linked to the Spanish. That telling resonates with a later yarn about ships from the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the shores of Ireland and the Scottish Orkney Islands in 1588, Bradley says: “Good-looking, dark-haired Spaniards washed ashore” and had children with Gaelic and Orkney Islands women, creating a strain of Black Irish with dark hair, eyes, and skin.
Although it’s a great story, Bradley says, it “just didn’t happen.” In two studies, researchers have found only “a very small ancient Spanish contribution” to British and Irish DNA, says human geneticist Walter Bodmer of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, co-leader of a landmark 2015 study of British genetics.
The Irish also cherish another origin story, of the Celtic roots they are said to share with the Scots and Welsh. In the Celtic Revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, writers such as William Butler Yeats drew from stories in the Book of Invasions and medieval texts. Those writings described a migration of Gaels, or groups of Celts from the mainland who clung to their identity in the face of later waves of Roman, Germanic, and Nordic peoples.
But try as they might, researchers so far haven’t found anyone, living or dead, with a distinct Celtic genome. The ancient Celts got their name from Greeks who used “Celt” as a label for barbarian outsiders—the diverse Celtic-speaking tribes who, starting in the late Bronze Age, occupied territory from Portugal to Turkey. “It’s a hard question who the Celts are,” says population geneticist Stephan Schiffels of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.
Bodmer’s team traced the ancestry of 2039 people whose families have lived in the same parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales since the 19th century. These people form at least nine genetic and geographic clusters, showing that after their ancestors arrived in those regions, they put down roots and married their neighbors. But the clusters themselves are of diverse origin, with close ties to people now in Germany, Belgium, and France. “‘Celtic’ is a cultural definition,” Bodmer says. “It has nothing to do with hordes of people coming from somewhere else and replacing people.”
English myths fare no better. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recounts that in 449 C.E., two Germanic tribespeople, Hengist and Horsa, sailed from what is now the Netherlands to southeast England, starting a fierce conflict. As more Angles, Saxons, and Jutes arrived, violence broke out with the local Britons and ended in “rivers of blood,” according to accounts by medieval monks. Scholars have debated just how bloody that invasion was, and whether it was a mass migration or a small delegation of elite kings and their warriors.
An answer came in 2016 from a study of the ancient DNA of Anglo-Saxons and indigenous Britons, who were buried side by side in the fifth and sixth centuries in a cemetery near Cambridge, U.K. They lived and died together and even interbred, as shown by one person who had a mix of DNA from both Britons and Anglo-Saxons, and a genetic Briton who was buried with a large cruciform Anglo-Saxon brooch. Although the stories stress violence, the groups “were mixing very quickly,” says Duncan Sayer, an archaeologist at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, U.K., who co-wrote the study.
The team went on to show that 25% to 40% of the ancestry of modern Britons is Anglo-Saxon. Even people in Wales and Scotland—thought to be Celtic strongholds—get about 30% of their DNA from Anglo-Saxons, says co-author Chris Tyler-Smith of the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K.
The boom in studies of migration is centered on Europe, where access to ancient remains is relatively easy and cold climates can help preserve DNA. But geneticists are beginning to probe the makeup of ancient people elsewhere. For example, findings from recent excavations in Israel are close to solving a long-standing mystery from the Bible: the identity of the ancient Philistines.
In biblical texts, those “uncircumcised” people are known as the bitter enemies of the Israelites; the name “Philistine” is still a slur in English. They’re said to have lived in Canaan, between present-day Tel Aviv and Gaza in Israel. They ate pork, battled Samson’s armies, and stole the Ark of the Covenant. Goliath, whom David slew with a sling, was a Philistine. But after Old Testament times, the group disappears from both scripture and historical accounts.
To find the Philistines’ origins, researchers have studied artifacts and remains from ancient Philistine cities in Israel. The evidence, including isotopic analysis, shows that the Philistines were a motley crew of immigrants, possibly pirates, who hailed from many ports, bringing pigs from Europe and donkeys in caravans from Egypt. “The Philistines are an entangled culture from western Anatolia, Cyprus, Greece, the Balkans, you name it,” says Maeir, who has directed excavations at the Philistine city of Gath for 2 decades.
Maeir says he thinks that the Philistines soon intermarried with people already living in Canaan instead of going extinct. If so, the loathsome Philistines are part of the ancestral stock for both Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews. Those groups, so full of enmity today, are genetically closely related, according to a study in 2000 of the paternally inherited Y chromosomes of 119 Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews and 143 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs. Seventy percent of the Jewish men and half of the Arab men inherited their Y chromosomes from the same set of paternal ancestors who lived in the Middle East within the last few thousand years.
As techniques for probing ethnic origins spread, nearly every week brings a new paper testing and often falsifying lore about one ancient culture or another. The Kashmiri of northern India do not seem to be related to Alexander the Great or the lost tribes of Israel. Parsis in Iran and India are not solely of ancient Iranian heritage, having mixed with local Indian women, although Parsi priests do descend chiefly from just two men.
“Ethnic groups in the past and present create an ‘imagined past’ of the longtime and ‘pure’ origins of their group,” Maeir says. But that created past often has “little true relation to the historical processes” that actually created the group, he says.
So far, the origin stories that appear to hew most closely to reality belong to indigenous peoples around the world. For example, the Tlingit and Tsimshian tribes of British Columbia in Canada and Alaska claim to have lived along the west coast of North America from “time immemorial.” Living tribespeople do descend in part from three ancient Native Americans who lived in the region 2500 to 6000 years ago, according to DNA analyses published last month. Even so, most modern Native Americans are not directly related to the ancient people who lived in the same areas because their offspring moved, were displaced, or went extinct over the millennia, Reich says.
In Australia, aboriginal stories recall even longer connections to their lands, even seeming to refer to times when sea levels rose and fell more than 15,000 years ago. Those claims are among the few that genome studies support. DNA evidence puts aboriginal ancestors on the continent 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Once the first Australians arrived, they settled in three regions and remained in those discrete homelands for tens of thousands of years, a DNA study published in March suggests.
But the Aborigines are rare among the peoples of Earth, where migrations have been the norm. Almost always, Reich says, “the idea that the ancestors of any one population have lived in the same place for tens of thousands of years with no substantial immigration is wrong.”
Back in Sumte in the fall of 2015, the 750 refugees from Syria arrived on schedule. The adults mostly kept to themselves, learning German and taking occasional construction jobs. But their children sang “O Tannenbaum” in a local church at Christmas and their teens ventured out often, seeking cellphone signals in the quiet town.
In the following months, almost all the refugees dispersed to larger towns throughout Germany. In time, some of the young immigrants will contribute their DNA to the next generation of Germans, re-enacting on a small scale the process of migration and assimilation that once played out repeatedly on this same land—and far beyond. | 0.9954 |
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 25: Television Host Chris Gethard attends 'The Chris Gethard Show' - Panel Discussion - 9th Annual New York Television Festival at Tribeca Cinemas on October 25, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images)
"The Chris Gethard Show" is filming a pilot for Comedy Central.
Comedian Chris Gethard has been hosting his variety show since 2009, first at New York's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and then broadcast online and on Manhattan Neighborhood Network's public access station since 2011. He announced that the cable channel commissioned a pilot on Wednesday's episode of the show.
"This opportunity is not going to replace 'TCGS,'" said Gethard in announcing the possible move from public access to cable on Wednesday's show. "If all we ever make is a pilot, we took if further than we ever thought we would."
According to Deadline, Funny or Die is co-producing the Comedy Central show. Will Ferrell and sometime guest Zach Galifianakis are listed as producers alongside Gethard.
The show would air on Fridays after "The Colbert Report." Comedy Central has seen a new hit in that time slot Monday through Thursday with the social media game show "@Midnight," hosted by Chris Hardwick.
The network previously worked with Gethard, 33, on the 2010 sitcom "Big Lake," on which the actor was a last minute replacement for lead actor Jon Heder. Since then, he has released a memoir, "A Bad Idea I'm About to Do," which IFC commissioned to be adapted into a TV pilot starring Gethard.
Billing itself as "the most bizarre and often saddest talk show in New York City," "The Chris Gethard Show" has accumulated a cult following due to an eclectic group of recurring characters, Gethard's frequent interaction with his fan base, his self-deprecating and uplifting style of comedy as well as his connections within the comedy industry. For instance, in one episode he surprised a young fan by commissioning custom videos for her by Tina Fey, Seth Meyers and other comedy luminaries.
The show also made news in 2010 when Gethard booked Diddy as a guest by reaching out to him on Twitter and encouraging his followers to do the same. | 0.001777 |
Whatever it is that sits locked away in a clerk’s office at the Arapahoe County courthouse could hold the key to understanding why a gunman opened fired at an Aurora movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 58.
In court filings, the judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys in the case involving suspect James Holmes have described the item as a “package.” Multiple sources speaking anonymously to multiple news agencies have said it is a notebook, one in which Holmes may have detailed murderous plans before mailing it to his psychiatrist at the University of Colorado.
But is it evidence?
That question will dominate the next two scheduled court hearings for Holmes, the first of which is Thursday afternoon.
Holmes’ attorneys are arguing that prosecutors should not be able to view the package because, they have argued, it is a confidential communication between a doctor and a patient. Deciding whether they are right will require 18th Judicial District Chief Judge William Sylvester, who is handling Holmes’ case, to closely read the Colorado law that creates doctor-patient confidentiality.
“The big issues for the court to decide are whether or not a privileged relationship between psychiatrist and patient actually exists, whether anything the patient has done has waived that privilege and whether there is an exception,” said Patrick Furman, a law professor at the University of Colorado.
If Holmes’ attorneys can show that Holmes was a patient of the psychiatrist — Dr. Lynne Fenton — and that the package was mailed to her as part of the treatment relationship, then prosecutors will have a hard time being able to see it, said David Kaplan, the former head of the state public defender’s office.
“If that is established, then nobody gets to see it,” Kaplan said. “He (Holmes), as the holder of that privilege, looks up and says, ‘I don’t want to reveal it.’ “
But the package’s timing is important, Furman said. If it was mailed after Holmes stopped seeing Fenton as a patient — he left the school weeks before the shooting — prosecutors might argue that the doctor-patient relationship had ended. Holmes’ attorneys would probably counter that by saying that any additional communication with Fenton should remain confidential, Kaplan said.
Because Fenton apparently took concerns about Holmes to authorities, prosecutors might also argue that the package fits within a “dangerous patient exemption.”
“If there was a legal requirement that she report behavior, then privilege is limited and doesn’t cover certain topics,” Furman said. “But even if the court were to find a waiver because of that communication, … it does not mean it’s a waiver to all other communications.”
To make their arguments, prosecutors and defense attorneys will have to rely on documents and witness testimony. Prosecutors have signaled in case filings that they have subpoenaed witnesses for the Aug. 30 hearing at which the package is scheduled to be discussed.
The hearing Thursday will center on whether prosecutors should have access to roughly 100 pages of educational documents produced by CU. Holmes’ attorneys don’t want prosecutors to get the documents, which prosecutors say they need to prepare for the Aug. 30 hearing.
If prosecutors are denied access to the package now, that does not mean it will be off-limits forever. If Holmes raises a mental-health defense at trial, the doctor-patient privilege is waived, and prosecutors can see his medical and mental-health records, Kaplan said.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, [email protected] or twitter.com/john_ingold | 0.692955 |
Will THC in Soon-To-Be Legal Hemp Products Show Up In Government Drug Tests? Paid Study Seeks Participants
Background
Hemp-seed and other hemp-based products will soon be legal in Australia. THC, the active ingredient in cannabis (marijuana), may be found in small amounts in hempseed oil.
THC is a substance which is easily detected by roadside drug tests, and therefore it is possible that people may be prosecuted under the drug-driving legislation as a result of ingesting hemp seed products. This study will test the effectiveness of a commonly used drug test to detect the presence of THC in sesame oil, which is designed to mimic the levels of THC likely present in these legal hemp products. In addition, the study will test how these levels of THC affect driving ability.
This study seeks healthy men and women aged 21 – 55 who have previously used marijuana or a hemp product to contribute to medical research. Participants will be required to attend 3 study visits at the research site where they will also use a driving simulator.
Benefits to Participation
You will be compensated $150 for participating in this study and receive a $100 taxi voucher.
You will be helping to advance medical research.
Your Rights
If you decide to participate in the study and later feel that you no longer wish to be part of it, you may withdraw at any time.
Your records relating to this study and any other information received will be kept strictly confidential, except as required by the law.
Qualified health professionals will monitor your health as it relates to the study.
Who Can Participate?
Men and women aged 21 – 55 years old who:
Have a full driver’s license (no P-Plates)
Have tried marijuana or a hemp product at least once before
Have no past or current history of severe psychiatric or other medical conditions
Able to attend 3 study visits at the research site over 3 weeks
Save | 0.418217 |
Police say a man instigated a fight with an anti-gay slur, then slashed the victim at a West Village McDonald's Sept. 19. View Full Caption NYPD
MANHATTAN — Cops are on the hunt for a knife-wielding suspect who allegedly slashed a 22-year-old patron after hurling anti-gay slurs at the victim when his transgender girlfriend tried to use the women's bathroom at the West 3rd Street McDonald’s, police and sources said.
The problems began shortly after 7 p.m. at the crime-plagued West Village fast-food-joint when the alleged victim and his transgender girlfriend were accosted at the entrance to the women's bathroom by a male patron who allegedly hurled anti-gay slurs at them.
"You're going to the wrong bathroom," the suspect said, according to sources. The man then threatened to "f--- them up"
The pair walked outside the West 3rd Street and Sixth Avenue location to escape the attacker, who police described as 5-foot-10 and weighing between 300 and 350 pounds, only to have him follow them out and try to take a swing at one of them, sources said.
One of the victims returned the punch, then kneed the assailant in the groin, sending him down to the ground, sources said.
The suspect pulled out a razor blade and repeatedly slashed the victim in the elbow, face, back and neck, police said.
The suspect fled and is now wanted for assault as a hate crime, cops said.
The victim was taken to Bellevue Hospital and received multiple stitches, police said.
The episode was the latest attack for that McDonald’s location, which has been a hotbed of violence to Village residents and elected officials.
In April, the fast-food restaurant was outfitted with surveillance cameras for cops to monitor after a string of assaults.
One major brawl occurred on St. Patrick’s Day this year, when two groups of teens were caught on cellphone camera fighting outside the venue.
Damian Furtch was caught on surveillance being beaten by another patron who he said bombarded him with anti-gay slurs on the sidewalk outside of that McDonald's location in March 2011.
And two patrons — Denise Darbeau and Rachel Edwards — were indicted for burglary after allegedly hopping the counter in Oct. 2011 to attack a McDonald's worker Rayon McIntosh, who was cleared of beating them with a metal grill cleaner.
McDonald’s, meanwhile, had hired two private security officers after City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who represents the neighborhood, called for a boycott until the burger joint beefed up security measures.
Carmen Paulino, the McDonald's franchise owner, said that "While the incident occurred outside of my restaurant, we are cooperating with the police in their investigation."
Police are requesting anyone with information about the latest attack can call 1-800-577-TIPS. Tips can also be submitted at NYPDCrimeStoppers.com or by text at 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577.
Editor's Note: The intial version of this story incorrectly identified the victim as a transgender woman. The victim is a man, and his girlfriend is transgender. | 0.000875 |
I found Kids Step Stool – Kitchen Step Stool for Toddlers easy to put it together and it is made of genuine wood. This stool can be used in backing up to 500 lbs.
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I am certain the item would work better with more seasoned children since the stage, as it goes down, commonly makes a security hole. At the point when utilizing Kids Step Stool with an 18 to 24-month old youngster, we positively prescribe the protection for 3 of these gaps
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We've had it for one year and my 2 years old is continually moving into it. He cherishes being up high and seeing what's going on. So far, we've made biscuits, utilized the counter to consume breakfast off of, and showered his infant sibling on the island together. The principal day she spent around 3 hours in this product.
Your child isn't on the ground when you're attempting to accomplish stuff in the kitchen, particularly hazardous things like opening the broiler entryway and emptying sharp things from the dishwasher. On the grounds, that my little son prefers hanging out in it and can see, he's not whining while I'm attempting to work in the kitchen. He used to chase after me with her arms circulating everywhere crying up and now he simply moves into the Kids Step Stool.
Obviously it’s extraordinary to incorporate your child in whatever action you're doing since it is the learning tower, however frequently you simply need to take care of business and this permits you to do so. I can achieve so much now while he's joyfully playing in Kids Step Stool (Kitchen Step Stool for Toddlers). | 0.059123 |
For three years, Congress has prevented a sensible American policy on Iran. It was largely Congressional pressure that turned Mr. Obama’s Iran policy in 2009 into “a gamble on a single roll of the dice,” in the words of one senior State Department official. Diplomacy had to work right away or not at all.
Then, in 2010, it was again domestic politics and the activities of Congress that ultimately caused the Obama administration to reject a nuclear breakthrough brokered by Brazil and Turkey, which would have cut Iran’s uranium stockpile in half and deprived it of any pretext for enriching uranium to higher levels.
In Baghdad, Congress succeeded in depriving American negotiators of the political space necessary to reciprocate Iranian concessions. The Iranians focused on what they could get. Mr. Obama had to focus on what he wouldn’t give.
For the sake of peace, Congressional obstructionism must end. Sanctions against Iran should be used as leverage in negotiations to extract tangible, verifiable and valuable Iranian nuclear concessions.
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The second problem with Mr. Obama’s strategy is an exaggerated belief in what sanctions can actually achieve. Many American officials seem to think that the embargo on Iranian oil can bring down the entire mullahcracy. Believing that such results are within reach, Washington appears mesmerized by its own sanctions and seems to doubt the utility of using them as a bargaining chip. Consequently, there is growing resistance to lifting them, regardless of what concessions Tehran might offer.
That would be a serious mistake.
We have seen this trap before. Whenever either side believes it has the upper hand, the desire for compromise diminishes, and the desire to checkmate the other side increases. But if we don’t negotiate when we are weak (because we are weak), and we don’t negotiate when we are strong (because we don’t have to), then when do we negotiate?
Moreover, the empirical track record of embargoes does not support the notion that this pressure will bring down the clerical autocracy in Tehran and lead to democracy.
Of the 35 states that have made the transition from authoritarianism to democracy since 1955, only one did so under the weight of an embargo: South Africa. Twenty states endured limited sanctions, and the remaining 14 found the path to democracy without any sanctions. Of the 10 states that endured embargoes, again only one democratized and gave up its nuclear program: South Africa. The others became more undemocratic, reactionary and oftentimes more dangerous.
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This is the opposite direction of where we want Iran to go.
If Iran agrees in Moscow to accept the American demand that it halt uranium enrichment at the 20 percent level — too low a level to quickly create a nuclear weapon — this would effectively obstruct any Iranian shortcut to a bomb. Congress must then give Mr. Obama the political space to be able to take yes for an answer.
Congress must make up its mind. Does it want to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb or does it want to maintain its sanctions? Going forward, it can’t have both. | 0.004527 |
Euro Fantasy Tips For Matchday 2
Welcome to our Euro Fantasy Tips for Matchday 2 article where we’ll be analysing possible transfers, defensive strategy and captaincy rotation. As usual we’ll be using recent form and the bookies odds to back up our opinions.
Matchday 1 was full of lessons for EuroFantasy managers and one thing that stood out to the @fplbet team was how prominent points from defenders were. Only 5 of 24 teams scored more than one goal, 58.33% of fixtures were goalless at H/T and 7 teams kept a clean sheet.
Due to the lack of goals scored by teams, we think that optimising defensive rotation and factoring in defenders to your captain strategy could prove a shrewd move in Matchday 2. After all, a clean sheet is worth the same amount of points to a defender as a goal is to a striker.
A change in the slate:
Matchday 1 was spread across five days which included an opening day with one fixture and day five with two fixtures. Matchday 2 will be spread across four days, with three fixtures on each day kicking off at 14:00, 17:00 & 20:00 (GMT).
This means that the team submission deadline – for substitutions and captain changes – will be at 14:00 each day. Please note, if you substitute out a player you will lose their points and if you change your captain your will lose the x2 multiplier.
Clean Sheet Odds:
Odds provided by William Hill.
Team Vs. Odds Implied Chance France ALB 1.53 65.36% Spain TUR 1.75 57.14% Ukraine NIR 1.75 57.14% England WAL 1.95 51.28% Italy SWE 2.00 50.00% Belgium ROI 2.15 46.51% Portugal AUT 2.25 44.44% Croatia CZE 2.25 44.44% Germany POL 2.25 44.44%
As usual, the opening day of a tournament arrived with it’s fair share of surprises and multiple managers will have no doubt suffered due to one of their defenders not starting. To name a few, Hector Bellerin (ESP) and Jason Denayer (BEL) seem out of favour whereas Lorik Cana (ALB) and Aleksandar Dragovic (AUT) received red cards in their opening matches and will serve suspensions.
When chasing a clean sheet, the most logical way in Euro Fantasy is to carefully plan your rotations. As we previously mentioned the slate has been condensed into four days, rather than five, which lessens the possible amount of rotation.
Let’s take a look at which teams, play on which days. The five teams which the bookies rank the highest have been made bold.
Defensive Rotations:
Day Players From Stick 1 RUS, SLO, ROU, SWI, FRA , ALB 6 points (clean sheet) 2 ENG , WAL, UKR , NIR, GER, POL 6 points (clean sheet) 3 ITA , SWE, CZE, CRO, ESP , TUR 6 points (clean sheet) 4 BEL, IRE, ISL, HUN, POR, AUS 6 points (clean sheet)
If you’re considering transferring out a defender this week, then your best bet is to combine both our clean sheet odds table and defensive rotations table.
Use the defensive rotations table to see which days your defenders play on, whichever day has least is the day that you should bring your replacement in from. For example, if you’re looking to transfer out Bellerin and have no defenders playing on day two, look towards ENG, WAL, UKR, NOI, GER, POL for a replacement.
Possible Transfers In:
In accordance to our partnership with @Euro2016Fantasy we were asked to list three players to transfer in and three to transfer out. You can see the graphic they produced with our information here.
Dimitri Payet 8.0m (50.0% Ownership)
The West Ham man got his tournament off to a flyer, assisting Olivier Giroud’s header before scoring an 82nd minute winner. Payet ran the show vs. Romania, orchestrating a large majority of France’s attacking play. France now face Albania, who are without captain Lorik Cana.
Emanuele Giaccherini 5.0m (2.0% Ownership)
Classified as a defender, but handed one of three central midfield slots by Antonio Conte, Giaccherini offers attacking potential with an boosted points output. For every goal, just like his smart finish on Monday, he banks an extra point (5) than a midfielder (4) – the perfect out of position pick.
Marcelo Brozovic 6.5m (3.0% Ownership)
Although Brozovic only managed to score 3 points in Croatia’s opening fixture, he was the danger man throughout. Attempting six shots (the most during Matchday 1 of any player), it’s clear to see the Inter Milan midfielder has an eye for goal, and with the likes of Modric, Rakitic and Srna supplying, he’s an excellent differential.
Possible Transfers Out:
Hector Bellerin 5.0m (10.0% Ownership)
10.0% of Euro Fantasy players owned the Arsenal full back, but unfortunately for them Juanfran was given the nod at right back. It’s unlikely that Vicente del Bosque will drop the Atletico Madrid man do the Bellerin funds should be spent elsewhere.
Mario Gotze 9m (5.0% Ownership)
Although Germany won their opening game vs. Ukraine 2-0 there were some doubts over Mario Gotze’s performance. The Bayern Munich man was poor in possession and wasteful in the final third, it seems as if Joachim Low’s plan to play him as a striker failed, this could lead to Mario Gomez taking his place against Poland.
Anthony Martial 9.0m (3.0% Ownership)
Manchester United’s prodigy is unlikely to start for France anytime soon. Initially he was popular – being classified as a midfielder, but playing very advanced. However, in competition with Griezmann (scored 32 goals for Atletico Madrid this season), and an in-form Payet, Martial is out of his depth – if you don’t want a non-starter then get him out, simple as that.
Captaincy Rotation:
Day Att Def 1 Payet, Dzyuba Schar, Schennikov 2 Bale, Muller Dier, Shevchuk 3 Ibrahimovic, Mandzukic Alba, Giaccherini 4 Ronaldo, G. Sigurdsson Alderweireld, Guerreiro
Only Dimitri Payet managed to tally up a goal and assist in Matchday 1, elsewhere, we were dealt with a sea of 6 pointers from attacking players. However, several defenders managed to keep a clean sheet whilst also tallying goals and/or assists.
Therefore, we’ve decided to restructure our captaincy rotation table to include two attacking and two defensive picks from each day.
If you would like to hear more information about our captain picks for each day then head over to our Captain Tips For Matchday 2 article on Bet4TheBest. | 0.002153 |
THE SNP will not push for one of its MSPs to become the next Presiding Officer - as the party still hopes to achieve an overall majority at Holyrood in the coming parliament.
SNP sources indicated the party would sit out this week’s contest for Presiding Officer, partly because it was right for another party to have a turn, but also to maintain SNP numbers.
The post is politically neutral and requires the holder to cut all links with their former party.
Labour’s Elaine Smith, a deputy presiding officer in the last parliament, yesterday became the first declared candidate for the job.
“I am considering it,” she confirmed to the Sunday Herald last night.
With the SNP having 63 MSPs, just two short of a majority, a government source said there was no appetite to go even lower when by-elections or defections might improve the picture.
Even one more MSP would help the SNP, as it would mean the party would have the same number as the opposition combined and could not be out-voted.
The calculation means Labour, as the only major party yet to provide a Presiding Officer (PO), are odds-on to supply the next one.
The first PO was the LibDem Lord David Steele, the second the SNP’s George Reid, the third the Conservative Alex Fergusson and the fourth the SNP’s Tricia Marwick.
Although she stood down as an MSP in March, Marwick will return to the chamber on Thursday to oversee the election of the next PO.
Also tipped as potential candidates are former Labour leader Johann Lamont, Tory John Scott, who like Smith was a deputy presiding officer, and his fellow Tory Murdo Fraser.
The SNP’s former parliamentary business manager Bruce Crawford, a popular cross-party choice had been tipped for the post, but this now seems unlikely.
The Presiding Officer’s salary is the same as that of a Cabinet Secretary, meaning around £45,000 extra on top of the standard MSP’s pay of £60,000.
Scottish Labour democracy spokesperson Claire Baker said: “We need a Scottish Parliament where the many voices of opposition – from all parties – are heard. As a start, the Presiding Officer and the majority of committee convenerships should not come from the governing party.
“We saw in the last term that SNP dominated committees did not provide anywhere near the level of scrutiny that the Government’s work required. We will work to change that.
“People require confidence that the politicians they elect to serve are giving them the full attention they deserve. That is why we will push for a ban on MSPs holding second jobs, including paid directorships and consultancies.” | 0.085727 |
VP Leni eyes housing along railroad tracks 17677 SHARES Share it! Share Tweet
by Raymund F. Antonio
With the approval of the south line of the North-South Railway project, Vice President Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo is looking at mass housing for informal settler families (ISFs) living along railroad tracks.
Robredo, also chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), revealed a housing plan for ISFs as the railway project is expected to displace them from their homes.
“We will utilize mass housing for informal settlers near the tracks because it would be difficult to remove them. They would just come back,” she said.
Robredo noted that the informal setters keep on returning to their old homes because they were relocated far from their work.
Speaking to reporters in Camarines Sur, the Vice President said they would conduct a survey of available lands that could possibly be used for mass housing.
The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board recently approved nine projects, including the south line of the North-South Railway Project.
The 634-kilometer railway will cost R170.7 billion, according to its website. It will run from Tutuban in Manila to Matnog, Sorsogon.
Once completed, the government will bid out the railway maintenance and management to the private sector.
Under the project, she said there would be a shift from narrow to standard gauge tracks.
“Kasi sinasabi ko na parang dalang-dala na tayo sa narrow-gauge, ilan na iyong nagsubok, ilang pera na ng government ang nilagay diyan only for it to break down again at some point in time,” the Vice President said.
Tags: Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo, Manila Bulletin, mb.com.ph, News today, North-South Railway Project, Philippine news, VP Leni eyes housing along railroad tracks | 0.245391 |
In the few days since Craig Ferguson announced his departure from CBS’ The Late Late Show, a host of candidates have been suggested as possible replacements. CBS insists it’s not thinking about who will take over for Ferguson yet, while candidates like Aisha Tyler, John Hodgman, and Amy Schumer have mostly remained quiet about their prospects. Not so for Norm Macdonald, whose fans started tweeting about what a good host he’d make under the hashtag #latelatenormnorm late last week. Since then, Macdonald has been tirelessly retweeting their supportive messages on his own feed.
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In response to a question from a Twitter fan, Macdonald admitted he hadn’t been approached by CBS and that he has “no idea” whether he’s even being considered for the job—so he may just be goofing off. Still, the comedian comes front-loaded with experience and appeal: Macdonald previously hosted the short-lived Sports Show With Norm Macdonald and has proven himself to be a fun, unpredictable late night guest. And were he chosen, he would only strengthen the Weekend Update-to-late-night-talk-show pipeline, all but ensuring that Cecily Strong takes over for Jimmy Kimmel sometime within the next decade. | 0.001844 |
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Male bands (Mumford and Sons, the Black Keys, Fun.), poppy collaborations (like Gotye and Kimbra’s tired duet), and, as Stereogum put it, predictable “mom-safe and Starbucks ready” favorites (Adele and Beyoncé) predominated the list of Grammy winners this year. Meanwhile, I’ve been struck by the array of refreshingly bold new female vocalists blossoming behind the mainstream. Quirky, fresh, raspy, vintage, or full of lungs, all five of them are under-the-radar but destined for bigger spotlights. Check out the videos below so you can say you heard them before they were famous.
Rachael Price (of Lake Street Dive):
Australian by birth, Nashvillian by pedigree, Price earned a degree in Jazz Studies from New England Conservatory and performed with T.S. Monk Sextet at jazz festivals around the world. After hearing a recording of Price in 2003, actress/singer Kathryn Grayson deemed her “the best young voice I’ve heard, period. No one around her can even touch her voice and style.” While Price mostly stuck to standards in her early career, she’s now departed from strictly jazz as a member of the indie group Lake Street Dive.
Price’s voice soars with clarity and classically trained precision. She can make the most of a Motown cover but also glides easily into blues, country, and pop. The video above, featuring Price belting out a relaxed cover of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” aptly showcases her glamor and command. But also make sure to listen to the band’s original song “Bad Self Portraits” (below), which has Price sounding like a young Bonnie Raitt. Bonus: Her band mate Bridget Kearney rocks it on the upright bass and has a lovely voice, too. Lake Street Dive just finished touring with Yonder Mountain String Band, will soon be touring with Josh Ritter, and has a date this week opening for Mavis Staples in Iowa.
Aluna Francis (of AlunaGeorge):
AlunaGeorge, featuring chanteuse Aluna Francis, is quickly becoming one of the breakout bands of 2013. Consisting of Francis and producer George Reid, the electronica group combines intimate vocals with synthesized pop, house, R&B, and dub-step. Though already pretty big in the UK—the duo nabbed second in BBC’s Sound of 2013 contest—Francis’ voice will likely get way more air time in the US in the coming year.
Francis, who is half Indian and half Jamaican, worked as a reflexologist and previously sang for the band My Toys Like Me. She first met Reid when he remixed one of My Toys’ songs, and they paired up and released their first commercial single (“Your Drums, Your Love,” above) late last year. Though minimalist and futuristic, AlunaGeorge’s songs are made human by Francis’ velvety touch. She imbues the pulsing drive of a late-night dance tune with soulful emotion, and her high-pitched timbre balances well with Reid’s beats, to a mysterious but alluring effect. “You can’t say I’m going nowhere, when you don’t know where I am from,” she croons. On the contrary, I’d say she’s barreling straight toward stardom. AlunaGeorge’s debut album, Body Music, is due out in June.
Luz Elena Mendoza (of Y La Bamba):
Portland-based band Y La Bamba draws from Mexican folk songs and mariachi singers as influence for its eerie tunes. Emerging in 2003, the band has enjoyed limited success in indie circuits, but never much widespread attention, apart from becoming one of NPR Music’s darlings. That could change this year, as they just wrapped up an East Coast tour alongside the Grammy-nominated Lumineers.
Lead singer Luz Elena Mendoza has a distinctive and charged voice, filled with nostalgia and mourning. She often manages to sound both completely in control and completely unhinged. Y La Bamba’s recent EP, Oh February, showcases her chilling vocals, and also demonstrates how she continues to evolve and experiment. While she may never be an American Idol-type star, she’s an original and wise artist who will continue to turn heads at her live shows.
Sarah Dugas (of Sarah and Christian Dugas):
With a sound like bottled smoke, French-Canadian roots singer Sarah Dugas might just be the next Grace Potter. Sarah and brother Christian Dugas grew up in the French quarter of Winnipeg and found their calling covering old-school soul and rock. After stints with the Grammy-nominated band the Duhks, the siblings struck out together and released the EP Another Day in 2011 and are currently working on a new album on the Southern Ground label.
The Dugas’ music has a deep Southern feel, and appropriately, they’ve appeared on stage with the likes of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Blind Boys of Alabama. Sarah has quite the pipes and sings with unwavering conviction (see video above), but she’s currently light on material. With any luck, the duo’s forthcoming album will deliver more bluesy numbers brimming with her electric voice.
Laura Mvula:
Mvula told the Guardian she doesn’t think she has “a great voice.” Though I beg to differ, her 2013 EP—so far the only widely distributed example of her talent—reveals something even better: a distinctive sound merging tribal African influences, jazzy vocals, and a mosaic of rhythms. As her backup dancer Dominique Young put it, “she hears the rhythm differently so it causes you to hear it differently and dance to it differently.” Mvula studied classical music in Birmingham, England, and worked as a receptionist and a youth orchestra member before being spotted by the RCA record label. Her debut album, entitled Sing To The Moon, is due out in March. In the meantime, she already landed on the Brit Critics’ Choice Award shortlist.
With her shaved head and dramatic eye makeup, Mvula is like a cross between Amy Winehouse, Erykah Badu, and the tUnE-yArDs’ Merill Garbus. The video “Green Garden” (above) is a whole lot of fun to watch and even more fun to dance to. Meshing hopeful vision and pure energy, and often backed by a luminous chorus, Mvula’s songs enter sublime territory and promise lots more to come.
Click here for more music coverage from Mother Jones. | 0.038148 |
OTB: Everyone remembers the " " call. What are some of your memories of your call of the famous Rutgers football win over Louisville in 2006? Pandemonium in Piscataway " call. What are some of your memories of your call of the famous Rutgers football win over Louisville in 2006?
CC: I remember the whole week pretty vividly. I did spend a lot of time thinking about what I might say if that moment came, and 'pandemonium' came to mind because I couldn't come up with another word that would describe what the scene would be. (Also, Gorilla Monsoon was a favorite wrestling announcer when I was a kid, and he used 'pandemonium' all the time. I always loved that word.) After the fact, I remembered Tim Pernetti saying there is 'Bedlam in Piscataway,' back in 2002, when Rutgers played Miami tight through three quarters. (He said it after Shawn Seabrooks recovered a blocked punt for a touchdown.) Credit Tim, because I turned it into an unconscious spinoff.
I've never been hit up for tickets more than I was that week. I somehow was able to come up with 16, and still was 14 short of all the requests. That, and my phone was ringing off the hook for interviews to preview the game.
Leading up to the game, I felt that for the die-hards, those folks who had been there every Saturday through so much of the struggle, the moment right before kickoff might be the most special. To look out, and see that stadium packed to full capacity and beyond, with white towels waving and the eyes of the college football world squarely on US, wow. The thought of it still brings a tear to my eye.
I happened to live in Astoria, New York at the time. It was normally a 90 minutes ride at the most. That day -- it took me 3 1/2 hours, and I left my apartment at 1:00! I've never been more frustrated in traffic. God and I were having a few choice words during that car ride.
The game is a bit of a blur, until there were about five minutes left. During a commercial, as Rutgers got the ball and the game was tied at 25-25, I looked over at Tim. We had talked at length the night before, and I said, "You know, Jeremy Ito has never kicked a game winner late. Tomorrow night, why not?"
My favorite play from the drive -- was Brian Leonard, on 3rd & 6. He hadn't caught a ball all night, and at the time, he had a reception in 42 straight. He came back in 2006 -- for this night, and of course, he delivered. 26 yards on a swing pass. Fantastic.
When Jeremy missed the first attempt, but got another chance because William Gay was offside, you just knew it was meant to be. On the ensuing kickoff, JaJuan Spillman almost took back his second return for a touchdown of the night, but got knocked out of bounds at the 50 with :01 left. People were already charging the field, when Coach Schiano was running onto the field, urging them all to go back.
Then, it happened. The sack that capped off the best defensive performance I've ever seen in a half of football. After I said it, words just kept coming. Tim, who hated to speak over me, let out a loud "YES!!!!" He was in tears. Fooch was grabbing anyone he could in the middle of that melee, and Clark Harris was just screaming into his microphone, 'THIS IS UNBELIEVABLE!!!!'
I've never had goosebumps for a moment like that. I love New Jersey, and I hate it when we get kicked around. That night was undeniably one of the great nights in the state's history. I'm literally getting chills as I write this.
Seeing all the fans in the parking lots -- laughing, hugging people they didn't even know, taking in every moment -- man, that was the best part. As fans, you guys had been through so much, it was just awesome to see you get to enjoy it.
(On a personal note, my fiance - now wife - Sheryl and I drove home. I got home about 2:00 AM, and had to get up at 4:00 AM to go to work on the Imus show. I woke up, turned on ESPN, and heard my voice. I can't even begin to explain what that felt like. Imus was trying to get under my skin (like any other day,) and I just said to him, 'You can say whatever you want today, old man. You ain't knocking the smile off my face."
All morning, I had friends texting and calling, telling me that 'Mike & Mike' were playing it all morning. It's a dream of a broadcaster to get an opportunity to call a game and get a moment like that, and I will forever be indebted to Bob, Kevin, Greg, and Rutgers for giving me that opportunity.)
OTB: Going beyond that game: What are some of your favorite Rutgers calls you've made in both football and basketball over the years? Why?
CC: For football, the end of the regular season against Cincinnati in 2005, when Rutgers got its first bowl invitation since 1978, to the Insight Bowl. I remember saying something like, 'How does Christmas in the desert sound?' Tim immediately came back with, 'Sounds good. I'll be there!'
In 2006, Ray Rice ripped off a 90 yard run at Pitt that was pretty remarkable. (Darrelle Revis was the only guy in Western Pennsylvania who could possibly catch him.) The South Florida win in 2007. One of my alltime favorites -- 2009 at Connecticut. When Tom Savage hit Tim Brown, and Timmy took it 81 yards, that was just amazing. I remember Ray Lucas yelling something like "WAHHHOOOEYYY!" in the middle. Tim was one of my favorite players over the years. Kid had great heart.
In hoops, my first year was 2008-09. The win over #7 Georgetown in 2010, on a Sunday afternoon. The win over Seton Hall in the 2011 Big East Tournament, and the remarkable game in Round 2 against St. John's. (Still can't get over how badly we got hosed there. The image of Jim Burr walking off the floor is still burned in my brain.) Wins against Florida (Mike Rosario's return) & Connecticut were awesome games to call.
But my favorite in hoops -- the win over Villanova in 2011, down 10 with about 90 seconds left I believe, and the Jonathan Mitchell 4-point play. Admittedly, there was so much noise when he hit the shot, that I wasn't sure immediately there was a foul. But that was one of those moments where whatever just pops into your head comes out of your mouth, and for me it was....."NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED!!!" Unreal night at the RAC.
OTB: Eric LeGrand is now in the booth with you. Can you tell us a little about your relationship with Eric and how it's grown since you called the play that caused his injury?
CC: It's hard to get to know a lot of the kids on the football team well, because honestly, there's just so many of them, and my time with them is so limited. I had a few interactions with Eric before his injury, but I didn't know him well at all. When he came charging down the field and launched into Malcolm Brown from Army, we could tell he was hurt immediately. As we were watching it unfold, we were just thinking the same thing everyone was: Please God, let him be OK.
As the months passed after the injury, a producer at SNY, Carly Lindsey, and I were starting to figure out how exactly we could start to follow his journey back. Watching him in work in rehab, seeing his mother Karen care for him everyday -- it was so inspirational. Eric & Karen gave us access to come and follow him intently, and that's honestly when we got to know each other better.
Eric and I spent a lot of time talking football, and he had expressed an interest in broadcasting. At first, Coach Schiano asked him to be an analyst on the Pregame & Postgame shows, and then he tried a few games. He gives terrific insight, and he's a pleasure to be around. To watch him embrace the role every day that he truly believes God picked him to play is uplifting. He never turns anyone away, and he's an incredible example to kids. They really gravitate toward him.
He's become a great friend. I love the kid so much.
OTB: As you entrench yourself in a new era of Rutgers athletics, there are three new faces you'll be interacting with. What can you tell the fans about Pat Hobbs, Chris Ash, and Steve Pikiell? How will they change the direction of Rutgers or help it grow?
CC: Like the fans, I'm still getting to know Pat, Coach Ash, and Coach Pikiell. It took me about 3 minutes when I first met Pat - the day after he was hired - to understand this was an incredibly sharp guy. Very impressive, and energetic. Pat walked in the door, and immediately recognized some changes that had to be made, and wasn't afraid to do what needed to be done. That's not easy for someone just walking in the door, but he had an easily recognizable leadership quality right away. Love his enthusiasm for Rutgers. There's nothing he wants more than to get this done.
Coach Ash is impressive, and all business. Watching him interact with players, staff, and fans during the spring, he commands respect with his presence. Incredibly detail oriented. Great energy, and the staff he has brought in is a direction reflection of him: young, smart, tireless. Quick story: I set up an interview with Coach Ash for halftime of one of our basketball broadcasts, and went to the Hale Center one day at 7:00 AM to tape it. There were coaches & staff flying around that place like it was 3:00 in the afternoon. It had a dynamic feel.
When Coach Pikiell was hired, I immediately got 4 or 5 texts to the effect of, "You're going to love this guy. You don't know what a great coach Rutgers just hired." The staff is obviously fantastic. I haven't had a chance to interact with Coach Pikiell yet, but we're actually getting together soon. I'm very much looking forward to it.
OTB: How important are the facility upgrades to Rutgers Athletics? Why should fans donate to the Big Ten Build?
CC: Imperative. I get the chance to travel around the Big Ten, and see everyone's facilities up close. We're behind, and that has to change. There's no sugarcoating it. If we want to compete, it has to happen. When Pat launched the campaign, he wanted people to be 'All in.' He wanted everyone to have "some skin in the game." Every time I've seen him speak, the message has been the same: Failure is not an option, and we need you.
My wife Sheryl works for Shawn Tucker, in the Rutgers Leadership Academy. After I heard Pat speak about it a few times, we sat down and talked. We wanted to get "some skin in the game," so we decided to donate $10,000. We're not rich, but Sarah Baumgartner and everyone in Athletic Development make it easy. We're donating $2,500 a year for the next 4 years. We're cutting back on our admitted Starbucks addiction (we don't have kids, just our dog Snoozer, and she has enough toys.) We'll take some money here and there, and put it aside. It's much easier than we realized, and we feel like we're "all in." We feel great about that. We love Rutgers, we've made some amazing friends, and there's nothing we'd like to see more than the success we know is coming.
OTB: Lately, on Twitter, you've been dropping some great Mike and the Maddog anecdotes from your time working for them. Do you have any Rutgers related Mike/Dog stories you could share?
CC: Not too many, when it comes to Rutgers. Mike came down to the Spring Game in 2002, and he coached one team, while Tom McCarthy, Tim and myself coached the other. We won, and I got the Gatorade bath. Could've done without that.
When they came to the Louisville game in 2006, they couldn't get over the atmosphere. Say what you will, and I know there are many who aren't big fans, but their presence gave the game even a little more juice. They came and hung out in the booth for a while during the game, and naturally offered plenty of analysis during the commercial breaks. I left that to Tim on the air.
I've dropped some stories lately, primarily because of the reunion show back in March. I worked for them for 7 years, and it was an incredible experience. I miss the show, frankly, Throughout my senior year of high school and college, I drove a delivery car for Hasler's Pharmacy in Chatham Township. I listened to them all day, every day. To get to work with them for as long as I did was a dream come true. | 0.001157 |
Blockchain has become among the hottest technologies today. Companies are now keen on exploring its possible applications to their business while scores of startups are also rushing to offer blockchain-based services across a variety of verticals. Even large traditional financial institutions like banks have acknowledged the disruption blockchain has brought to their industries and are putting up efforts to leverage the technology for their own use.
The integration of smart contracts into blockchain has allowed developers to extend its capabilities beyond record keeping and coins. Now, companies could offer their own cryptocurrencies thus giving rise to initial coin offerings (ICOs) as means of fund raising for startups. Anything of value can now be “tokenized” through blockchain platforms resulting in new ways to trade both tangible and intellectual assets.
As with such trends, tech officers may face the question of blockchain adoption from their respective organizations. It may not be a straightforward issue to address since the rapid development of blockchain technologies may yield applications that could directly and indirectly affect businesses. The impact could be on their ways of doing business, competition, or opportunities. Here are five ways blockchain is disrupting just about everything today.
1. Gold
As of writing this, bitcoin is currently trading at around $4,500, hitting all-time highs this year. This led to speculation whether or not cryptocurrencies should be a preferred investment over precious metals such as gold. Still, gold continues to be a popular means of investing. It is tangible and less volatile than cryptocurrencies making it a practical option for some investors. Blockchain, however, can change how gold is traded. Physical assets like gold can be tokenized and traded through blockchain.
For instance, one startup, GoldMint offers a platform that offers gold ownership through blockchain where investors can trade gold and fiat currency for gold-backed tokens. Asset-backed tokens are less volatile compared to most cryptocurrencies. Such mechanism provides investors with a new channel to diversify their portfolios and a more liquid way of investing in precious metals.
To address the need to physical handle gold, GoldMint is developing a vending machine-type device dubbed the “Custody Bot” that could accept physical gold deposits and tokenize them. Companies and individuals who are looking to diversify their assets can now look into trading gold and still have the liquidity needed by businesses.
2. Payments
Coins and payments have been the initial use cases for blockchain. As such, most of the available blockchain services today revolve around these functions. Services such as coin exchanges, remittance services, and payments processing are now maturing that companies can confidently explore supporting cryptocurrencies in their respective businesses.
Bitcoin is now also widely recognized as a legal payment method. Adoption by tech companies such as WordPress, Intuit, and Microsoft have been instrumental in enhancing bitcoin’s reputation as a legitimate tender for online transactions. Japan’s move to legalize bitcoin for payments has driven adoption of widespread support even by brick-and-mortar businesses.
Blockchain does solve some of the issues with traditional payment methods. Blockchain can credit payments faster. Traditional methods often have to route transactions through banks and clearing houses before the money is actually credited to the merchant’s account. In addition, since transactions can’t be reversed, merchants have little to worry about chargebacks from fraudulent transactions.
3. Real Estate
The introduction of smart contracts to blockchain has given opportunity for high value assets such as real estate to be traded digitally. Real estate applications and services often are limited to connecting buyers and sellers. Much of the process still relies on face-to-face transactions and third parties like brokers, banks, and lawyers.
Blockchain smart contracts could upend this way of doing things as the process can now happen within the digital platform including listing, payments, and documentation. Blockchain startups now seek to redefine the real estate trading experience. By tokenizing real estate, these assets can then be traded like stocks over an exchange essentially lowering the barriers for investors can get into real estate through fractional ownership. This also increases the liquidity of real estate assets.
Even governments are looking into the technology. Sweden, for instance, is currently testing blockchain for its land registry.
4. Legal
While there have been exciting developments in the technology, blockchain isn’t without its challenges. Since it’s a disruptive technology, regulation and legislation have yet to catch up on its applications. Despite the growing acceptance of cryptocurrencies, consumers are still cautioned by governments and central banks about their risks. Only a handful of boutique banks are supporting bitcoin. Even ICOs have yet to be fully regulated by exchange commissions and smart contracts have yet to be widely accepted as legally binding.
However, there is great effort in the blockchain community to push for the legitimacy of these various blockchain-based products and services. Several US states such as Vermont and Arizona have passed legislation that would make smart contracts admissible as records.
5. Identity
Security has now become a major concern for just about anyone today. Because of the increase in reported cyberattacks, more consumers are becoming more discerning at how companies value customer information. Companies are also putting up more stringent measures to combat fraud.
The downside to increased security is the increase in friction in the customer experience. Advanced algorithms are often needed to minimize instances of false positives when processing transactions. The use of blockchain to verify identity is now being explored. Since blockchain is transparent and immutable, information stored on blockchain can work much like digital fingerprints and signatures.
Civic offers identity verification and protection tools for its customers. The service uses blockchain to verify hashed identity data in order to provide real time and accurate authentication. Civic never receives or stores member data thus preventing the possible leak of such sensitive information in cases of a breach. These new platforms would give businesses new ways to handle verification and authentication.
Companies and their tech leaders must be on top of these developments in blockchain. Certain applications like payments are maturing and are emerging to be alternatives to existing ways of doing things. As with these trends, consumer preferences may shift which would compel businesses to support these new ways of doing things. Startups are also aggressive in developing their blockchain initiatives. These new applications may then be ushering in disruption across a wide variety of verticals. Almost any endeavor could benefit from blockchain’s strengths so it would only be both wise and prudent to examine the angles in which businesses could leverage the technology to their advantage.
This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join? | 0.934813 |
One of the great hopes for stem cells is that they'll allow us to eventually replace injured or damaged tissues. But there's a big gap between the cells of stem cells and anything resembling an organ. Organs are complex, three-dimensional structures populated by multiple cell types. Getting a bunch of cells to form these structures is a significant challenge.
One idea has been to use 3D printers. With multiple print-heads and a protein polymer gel, it's possible to construct a rough approximation of the structure of a mature organ. Now, a team of California scientists has come up with an interesting alternative: use DNA as a sort of cellular velcro to get cells to stick to each other and form a complex, three-dimensional tissue.
The basic idea is pretty simple. If they have the appropriate sequences, individual DNA molecules will pair up to form a double helix. If you coat one cell type with a short DNA sequence and then a second cell type with the sequence's partner, the two cells will stick to each other. And it's possible to coat a cell's surface with DNA simply by adding a lipid molecule to the end of the DNA strand.
To get the process started, the researchers used a standard 2D printer to coat specific areas of a microscope slide with DNA. Then they coated some cells with that DNA's complement and floated them across the slide, which caused them to stick in the pre-defined pattern.
It's possible to print different sequences on the slide, allowing different populations of cells to stick in a more complex pattern. It's also possible to build the cells up by coating a second population of cells with a DNA sequence that allows them to stick to the first population of cells. Combined, the two techniques can produce some pretty complicated structures.
(The authors have posted a time-lapse movie of the process as part of their supplemental data.)
Once the cells are in place, the authors cover them in a protein solution that slowly solidifies to form a gel that the cells are happy growing in. (It's a bit like a simplified extracellular matrix.) As they grow, they can organize and form contacts with each other, eventually forming a coherent tissue.
It's important to note, however, that the authors only test this with cell types that tend to naturally form coherent tissues if put in the right environment. Not all cell types are quite that cooperative.
And there are trade-offs. 3D printing probably allows finer control and construction of more complicated structures. But the cells are squirted out of the print heads at random, meaning that their density is going to vary quite a bit. That may limit their ability to interact and organize. Here, while the structures probably aren't as complicated, the cells necessarily start out in contact with each other, making it a bit easier for them to self-organize.
In any case, this sort of technology is at its infancy, and it's not clear whether any of it will work out the way we hope it will. It's nice to have options, since it's likely that one of them will work out well enough to get us what we need.
Nature Methods, 2015. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.3553 (About DOIs). | 0.994433 |
Hidden chips are used by We have discussed many times in our stories the network of Intelligent devices , their capabilities and the possibilities that cyber criminals could exploit them for illegal activities.Hidden chips are used by cyber criminals and state-sponsored hackers to infiltrate company networks and organizations for various purposes, to send out spam or for cyber espionage
Rossiya 24 has showed the images of an electric iron is planting Microchips practically in every electrical device, as recently it has been discovered that the electric iron and kettles were modified with this technique to launch spam attacks.
The Microchips were equipped with a little microphone and according to the correspondent the component were mostly being used to serve malware and the chips in fact are able to connect any computer within a 200m radius on unprotected Wi-Fi networks. The fact has happened in Russia, the State-owned channelhas showed the images of an electric iron included in a batch of Chinese imports where the operators find a chip used for spying the environment surround. China is planting Microchips practically in every electrical device, as recently it has been discovered that theand kettles were modified with this technique to launch spam attacks.The Microchips were equipped with aand according to the correspondent the component were mostly being used to serve malware and the chips in fact are able to connect any computer within a 200m radius on unprotected Wi-Fi networks.
If you believe that these cases are isolated, then you are completely wrong. Many other common-use products have found to have rogue chips, including gaming console, network devices, News agency Rosbalt reports that while the last delivery of appliances were rejected by officials, but tens of devices had already been sent to retailers in St Petersburg.If you believe that these cases are isolated, then you are completely wrong. Many other common-use products have found to have rogue chips, including gaming console, chargers mobile phones and car dashboard cameras.
The discovery is disturbing for many, but not for security experts, and it raises once again the necessity for hardware qualification in both military and civil sectors. I have detailed in various posts the possibility to hide malicious components in the software as in the hardware.
But not only this category of object could be compromised by cyber criminals, devices apparently inanimate and devoid of intelligence like a blender or a flat iron can hide pitfalls.
While in military sector similar incident have triggered a series of initiative to for hardware validation, in large consume products the problem is relevant and approach it is not so simple ... Events like this are the demonstration. | 0.21119 |
Right at this moment in Toronto, there are as many as 4,000 illegal guns tucked under beds, stashed in closets or hidden in dresser drawers.
Complicated amnesty laws around gun legislation have many owners confused. Now the city's Guns and Gangs unit is going door to door setting people straight.
"If you have to ask the question if you are licensed... I can pretty much guarantee you are not in compliance," said Superintendent Greg Getty, who works with the Organized Crime Enforcement unit.
So Getty and his team are going through tens of thousands of old gun registry documents to try and locate weapons where registration may have expired.
So far, they've gone through 5,000 and located 400 guns. Offending individuals are either given an opportunity to obtain the necessary permits and educate themselves on safe storage procedures — while Toronto police hold the gun for safe-keeping — or else the weapon is destroyed. | 0.469094 |
Mayor Walsh,
I received word of your arrogant response to my rejection of City Council honors today, for my role in organizing Saturday’s Fight Supremacy March.
Let me be clear:
My rejection of City Council’s resolution was in no way a slight to Tito Jackson, Ayanna Pressley, Michelle Wu, or my co-honorees, Monica Cannon-Grant and Angie Camacho. I have nothing but respect for them, and all Black people and POC who are committed to using political or other means to subvert the white supremacy embedded in Boston’s government and throughout your administration.
Today, as I stood at Faneuil Hall — a gift to our city from a slave trading family — I reflected on the irony of bestowing honors to Black women in a building that was named in honor of a notorious Boston slave trader. Why do we honor our oppressors with monuments of granite and steel, yet honor those who oppose them with bits of paper and criminal charges?
Mayor Walsh, my rejection of Boston City Council honors was a transparent attempt to use that podium to make a statement about your role in upholding white supremacy in the city of Boston. You — and District Attorney Conley, and BPD Commissioner Evans — should be ashamed for granting white supremacists a platform and thereby placing Boston residents in danger. We witnessed first hand, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, what happens when we prioritize hate speech over Black lives. Four days before the rally you stood at City Hall Plaza and said, “There is no place here for that type of hatred. […] Boston doesn’t want you here,” but your actions proved otherwise. Three days later, in a show of cowardice, you granted a permit and stated “[white supremacists] have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are. […] They have the right to free speech.”
That is not leadership.
You put our residents in danger because you lacked the courage to do what was right. History will remember that, as I’m sure Boston’s electorate will.
Furthermore, you used riot police to target, assault, and detain protesters assembled as a result of your blatant negligence and failure to govern with honor. Any pride Bostonian’s may have resulting from our resistance march is tainted by the fact 33 protestors remain charged for having the audacity to do what you couldn’t — to take an unapologetic stand against white supremacy. I, for one, will never forget you used your power and influence to uphold racism and oppression this past weekend.
And while I welcome the election of Boston’s first Black mayor, in part as a result of your recent failings, I’d prefer this administration take the necessary steps to right its wrongs.
So once again I call on you, DA Conley, and Commissioner Evans, to drop ALL CHARGES faced by those you unjustly arrested this past Saturday. To date, thousands of concerned citizens have written letters, sent emails, called your office, and signed our petition demanding you do the right thing. We are giving you an opportunity to correct the egregious and shameful errors made under your leadership.
You would be wise to accept it.
Sincerely,
-DiDi Delgado
BLM Cambridge | 0.120183 |
AI warns of risk on lives of captives Barq and Safadi Amnesty International warned of the deterioration of health conditions of Palestinian captives Samer al-Barq and Hassan al-Safadi, who are facing the risk of death due to their ongoing hunger strike.
An Israeli court in Jerusalem rejected on Thursday an appeal for the release of Samer Isawi (33 years), who was liberated in the Shalit exchange deal. A court hearing is slated for October.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine condemned the decision of the Zionist occupation court that acquitted the occupation army of all responsibility in its murder of American solidarity activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed by an occupation bulldozer in southern Gaza in 2003 as she was defending a Palestinian home from demolition.
U.N. official calls Israel’s verdict on Rachel Corrie ‘defeat for justice’ A U.N. official Thursday condemned an Israeli court finding that cleared the army of any blame for the death of U.S. peace activist Rachel Corrie as “a defeat for justice and accountability.”
Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said that the legacy of the martyr and leader Comrade Abu Ali Mustafa inspires the Front to continue to raise high the banner of resistance and continue on his path to achieve our national goals or die as martyrs.
Former prisoner Samer Abu Seir, who was released from occupation prisons in October 2011 and deported to Gaza as part of the prisoner exchange, called on September 1 for active participation in upcoming events in Gaza in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners who are suffering from fierce attacks from occupation forces. He also called for broad participation in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners who remain on hunger strike in occupation prisons, and with Comrade Mohammad Rimawi, who is suffering from serious health crises.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine warned on August 31, 2012 that the occupation government is fully responsible for the life of Comrade Mohammad Rimawi, imprisoned in the Nafha occupation prison. He was transferred yesterday late at night to Soroka Hospital from the prison.
IOF to impose buffer zone near the Egyptian border Israeli occupation forces (IOF) announced plans to impose a buffer zone at the borders with Egypt in light of the volatile security situation in the Sinai Peninsula, Hebrew media revealed.
Some anti-wall marches of the West Bank on Friday afternoon were dedicated to advocating the issue of slain peace activist Rachel Corrie who was crushed brutally to death by an Israeli bulldozer.
Here’s the website for Bay Area Stop $30 Billion Military Aid to Israel. The group members are not identified, but our own Annie Robbins has played a role. Remember that Muni is in hot water right now over the Islamophobic “Savage” ads that it ran from Pam Geller. A coalition of groups, including the American Muslims for Palestine, the Council of American Islamic Relations, the Asian Law Caucus and Jewish Voices for Peace compelled Muni to run a disclaimer from those ads. And Muni is working on a counter campaign to promote understanding of Muslims.
Solidarity activists disrupt Jerusalem municipality session, chaired by Mayor Nir Barkat, a pillar of discrimination on all levels against Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. Barkat’s statements reflect a view of Palestinians as a demographic threats. This racism underlies the mob attacks on Palestinian youths in central West Jerusalem.
On August 28th, the day that an Israeli Judge absolved the military of any responsibility in the 2003 killing of peace activist Rachel Corrie as she stood to protect a Palestinian home from demolition, the majority of the small Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta was demolished. In the South Hebron Hills, the Israeli military destroyed homes, animal shelters and water wells. Villagers tried unsuccessfully to stop the demolition by sitting on the excavator’s shovel. Eight villages in the region are currently at risk of evacuation because the Israeli military intends to use the area for military exercises.
An Israeli court ruling that Rachel Corrie was responsible for her own death is a manifestation of the disregard for human rights that dominates all Israeli institutions.
Tuesday 28 August was an extraordinary day for the BBC, even by its own low standards of reporting on Palestine. This was the day an Israeli court absolved the State of Israel of any responsibility for the death of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli armored bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. BBC Radio 4’s World at One program ran a seven-minute segment on the court’s decision, including an interview with Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev. Partway through this interview, the BBC presenter, Martha Kearney, made this astonishing claim: “Clearly Rachel Corrie was one of the casualties of what happened that day, and I know Israeli soldiers died too.”
US scales down military exercise with Israel: report The United States has significantly scaled down a planned joint military exercise with Israel most likely because of disagreements on how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Time magazine has reported on its website.
In contrast to former Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, Efraim Halevy speaks not in black-and-white but in shades of gray, writes Ari Shavit.
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Gaza Strip is not a threat to Egypt’s security, prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said Saturday. Haniyeh made the comments while meeting with a security delegation in the coastal enclave, a statement said. The Gaza premier applauded Egypt’s treatment of the Palestinian people and Gazans in particular, adding that Gaza can be a source of security and cooperation for Egypt. Relations between Egypt’s new government led by President Muhammad Mursi and Hamas had deteriorated since an attack in which gunmen killed 16 Egyptian soldiers on the Israeli border in early August. Egypt closed the Rafah crossing and moved to seal myriad smuggling tunnels with Gaza on suspicion they might have been used by militants who shot dead the soldiers.
Northern Command officials say Israel is wary that a large-scale conflict will erupt within Lebanon and that Hezbollah would take advantage of the situation on the border.
Ahmadinejad ‘supports Palestinian reconciliation’ BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stressed his country’s commitment to reconciliation between estranged Palestinian factions, his office said Friday, days after invitations to Iran strengthened a rift between Hamas and Fatah parties. Ahmedinejad told President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday: “We love Palestine, and we are committed to achieve Palestinian national reconciliation as it will contribute to the Palestinian resistance.”
Non-aligned nations ‘to confirm Palestinian refugee rights’ BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The final statement of the Non-Aligned Movement summit will confirm the rights of Palestinian refugees, President Mahmoud Abbas’ diplomatic adviser said Friday. The 120-member Non-Aligned Movement is expected to issue a 680-clause statement on Friday. Majdi al-Khaldi said the closing statement would affirm the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, as outlined in UN resolution 194 and international law.
Abbas declined invitation by Ahmadinejad for formal visit to Tehran Iranian president suggested that reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas be held in Tehran; Abbas said he would consider such a visit in the future.
Palestinian parliamentary delegation meets South African ministers A Palestinian parliamentary delegation has spent the week in South Africa following an official invitation from their South African peers. The delegation met with South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Ibrahim Ibrahim, as well as the Minister of Public Works. Chaired by Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the senior Deputy Chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the delegation included elected PLC members Dr. Marwan Abu Ras and Gamila El-Shanti, as well as Nafez El-Madhoun, the PLC’s Secretary General.
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Authority said Friday that recent statements by Israel’s far-right foreign minister were incitement and he should be charged in international courts for his extremism. Avigdor Lieberman has “crossed every red line in his continuous incitement against (President Mahmoud) Abbas when he called for Abbas’ assassination,” the PA information ministry said. Lieberman did not call for Abbas’ assassination but he has urged new Palestinian elections to oust the president in the hopes of finding a more amiable negotiating partner.
Report: Hamas takes on Gaza’s Salafists London’s Al-Sharq Al-Awsat says Gaza government is trying to curb radicals’ terror activities fearing Israeli operation.
Hamas ‘to ban pornographic sites’
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza, is to block access to pornographic websites to protect social and moral values, local media say.
Analysis / Op-ed
Tunisia – For the past three months, the Arab Maghreb countries have been witnessing a growing number of controversies and scandals concerning cells linked to Israeli espionage activities. It began when an informants network was dismantled in Mauritania early this year. Then Mossad made the headlines in Algeria and Morocco in a string of reports, rumors, and hoaxes. Finally, a new scandal reverberated across Tunisia last week involving a wide network of Mossad operations, including espionage centers using the country as a base to spy across the Maghreb region. Abderraouf al-Ayadi, head of the Wafa Movement which split from the Rally for the Republic (RPR), caused a huge stir last week when he revealed that Mossad has stepped up its activities in post-revolutionary Tunisia.
“On another front, every American is less secure today because he has failed to slow Iran’s nuclear threat. In his first TV interview as president, he said we should talk to Iran. We’re still talking and Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning. President Obama has thrown allies like Israel under the bus, even as he has relaxed sanctions on Castro’s Cuba.”
(Video) Romney’s Jerusalem is ‘the capital of Israel’ ad, Allison Deger Continuing to push daylight between presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s position on Israel and President Obama’s, the Republican National Committee played a one-minute and 35-second campaign ad that, accompanied by dramatic music, re-states that Jerusalem is “the capital of Israel.”
When Mitt Romney walked down the aisle toward the stage Thursday night , among the people whose hands he shook was the conservative billionaire and major political donor David Koch. But it was a moment missed by the tens of millions of viewers at home. While Democracy Now! was there on the floor and captured the handshake on video, the networks cut away just before the handshake to show footage of two enthusiastic young women supporters and then an overhead shot of the convention center. Then, the shot came back to Romney shaking hands further down the aisle as he ascended the stage. Groups in the network of David Koch, and his brother Charles, intend to spend nearly $400 million ahead of the 2012 election.
“Moreover, Obama responded to Israel’s obduracy by offering it F-35 fighter jets and other goodies. The U.S. president has since coddled Israel, extending additional military assistance and vetoing U.N. resolutions criticizing settlement activity. He also opposed the Palestinian initiative for statehood last September, delivering the most pro-Israel American speech ever at the U.N. And though it seems of no importance in Washington, the Palestinians are as far from freedom from Israeli subjugation as ever. Meanwhile, Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, who held a big-money fund-raiser in Jerusalem last month, said last December that when it comes to Palestinian-Israeli policy, “I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I said this? What would you like me to do ?’ ”
I’m on the mailing list of Rabinowitz-Dorf, which works for the Democratic Party (and which was hired to help rehabilitate the Democratic-Party-affiliated Center for American Progress when it got into trouble for running pieces criticizing the Israel lobby). And here are two recent communications from my friend there.
Next week Ethan Bronner, a NY Times reporter who till recently was the Jerusalem bureau chief for the newspaper, is speaking about “My Israel” and his transformative experience with respect to the country, and the $75 donation goes to the New Israel Fund.
Review: tortured optimism in Raja Shehadeh’s “Occupation Diaries”, Sarah Irving
Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority come under sharp criticism in Raja Shehadeh’s Occupation Diaries.
www.TheHeadlines.Org | 0.003143 |
IFC said today it is postponing by a week tonight’s scheduled episode of its just-renewed comedy series Documentary Now in the wake of Monday’s on-air shooting of a reporter, her cameraman and a local official in Virginia. The episode, “Dronez,” follows a pair of reporters trying to track down El Chingon, the infamous and elusive leader of a Mexican drug cartel. The network said in a statement: “In light of yesterday’s tragic events, IFC decided to air ‘Kunuk’ as tonight’s episode of Documentary Now! in place of ‘Dronez.’ Our thoughts are with the victims.”
The move comes on the heels of USA pulling the season-finale episode of its hacker drama Mr. Robot, due to that episode containing a scene the network says is could evoke similarities to the tragedy yesterday. | 0.347996 |
Canadian opposition leader displays faulty logic and blindness to huge FTA benefits
Canada's Liberal government is in exploratory talks with China over possible negotiations on a free trade deal, but the country's opposition Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer said in a recent interview that he would not hold free trade talks with China if his party was in government, citing concerns about human rights, labor standards and the environment. The opposition leader's statement shows nothing but his arrogant and biased attitude toward China.
"There are so many concerns with the Chinese government - their human rights record, the way their economy works. We don't want to see Canadian manufacturers, Canadian workers put on a completely uneven playing field," Scheer said, according to a Global News report on Sunday. He also mentioned that the differences in the two countries' labor standards would put many Canadian companies at a huge disadvantage to Chinese competition under a free trade deal.
Scheer's logic is beguiling but wrong. As Canada is a developed country and China is a developing one, inevitably there are differences between the two economies in terms of economic structure, State-owned companies, labor standards and other aspects. But the essence of a free trade agreement (FTA), which countries sign to lower trade barriers so as to further complement each other's advantages in trade relations, should not be overlooked.
China has already signed FTAs with several developed countries like New Zealand and Australia. The China-New Zealand FTA has allowed New Zealand's trade with China to nearly triple over the past decade. Meanwhile, since the signing of the China-Australia FTA at the end of 2015, China's outbound direct investment into Australia soared 56.1 percent year-on-year in 2016.
Canada would become another developed country to ink a free trade deal with China if negotiations between the two governments are successful. A China-Canada FTA would increase Canada's GDP by 7.8 billion Canadian dollars ($5.9 billion), boost its exports by 7.7 billion Canadian dollars and add 25,000 jobs by 2030, according to a 2016 white paper released by the Canada-China Business Council and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.
But if Canada requires a potential FTA partner country to have the same ideology and labor standards as itself, then it should probably only look at Western countries. Few developing countries could meet Mr Scheer's standards for a level playing field.
The author is a reporter with the Global Times. [email protected] | 0.937749 |
In April, Google announced that Google Chrome was finally supporting headless mode, at least on Linux and Mac OS. Back then, I noted to myself that this might be a good time to revisit my rough prototype of WWW::Mechanize::Chrome. According to Git, I had written a first prototype of it in 2010 which used the old, raw socket protocol. But time has progressed and the protocol now uses Websockets. My original approach used AnyEvent, so I quickly replaced my own approach using AnyEvent::WebSocket::Client, and the HTTP parts with Future::HTTP.
In one afternoon, I was able to talk to Chrome and have it talk back, so now I have yet another task in front of me, implementing WWW::Mechanize::Chrome. But as this is the third incarnation of modules using the WWW::Mechanize API to automate browsers, I found some code that has been copied between the earlier incarnations, and being in a clensing mood, I released them as separate modules onto CPAN.
For testing only, there now is Test::HTTP::LocalServer, which fires up a specialized local HTTP server usable for testing, convenient if you write your own HTTP clients. It mainly deals with the setup of starting an external process and finding the port address it listens on. It offers some convenience methods to generate URLs that respond with an error, redirect or specialized response and otherwise offers a simple HTML form to fill out from the "browser".
use LWP::Simple qw(get); my $server = Test::HTTP::LocalServer->spawn; my $html = get $server->url; # Retrieve $server->url my $html = get $server->error_timeout(5); # gets a timeout after 5 seconds $server->stop;
The object offers a convenient way to launch the server as well as methods that return URLs to trigger specific behaviour. You can also retrieve the web server logs to ensure identical behaviour of your clients towards the web server between runs.
This module was distributed with the earlier incarnations, mostly because it is a very specialized prerequisite only used for testing the browser functionality. But as it now lives in three separate distributions and WWW::Mechanize contains an earlier copy of it as well, I've released it onto CPAN and made it an explicit testing prerequisite. | 0.001086 |
pebble444 Profile Blog Joined March 2011 Italy 2049 Posts Last Edited: 2015-08-12 05:20:38 #1
With this new system even noobs like me can hit C- .....
thats what happened, i got to 2700 and then i was like oh shit i can actually hit C- if i want to now.... so i took 1 day and thought it over and then i went for it, from that it took 7 or 8 games, and i got to the infamous C rank; note: i actually seeked only D- games, so there you have it; This is the game that got me past the 3000 mark point, kinda dissapointing, very dissapointing ttbh, but thats that; if it had gone my way, the 2v2 that i played is better, so will share both:
http://repdepot.net/replay.php?id=56586
2v2
Please congrat me :D this was my dream since i started to play bw in 2010 to hit C-
Finally :DWith this new system even noobs like me can hit C- .....thats what happened, i got to 2700 and then i was like oh shit i can actually hit C- if i want to now.... so i took 1 day and thought it over and then i went for it, from that it took 7 or 8 games, and i got to the infamous C rank; note: i actually seeked only D- games, so there you have it; This is the game that got me past the 3000 mark point, kinda dissapointing, very dissapointing ttbh, but thats that; if it had gone my way, the 2v2 that i played is better, so will share both:2v2 http://repdepot.net/replay.php?id=56587 Please congrat me :D this was my dream since i started to play bw in 2010 to hit C- "Awaken my Child, and embrace the Glory that is your Birthright"
Ty2 Profile Blog Joined March 2013 United States 1175 Posts #2 Nice, glad you got something out of it. Writer I feel weird.
nbaker Profile Joined July 2009 United States 1322 Posts #3 Congratulations! I was so excited when I first hit C-. I hope now that you made it, you'll try to play more d+/c- level players and really cement your skill.
floladriblere Profile Joined August 2011 France 83 Posts #4 Good job bro! boum su4ka!
JSH Profile Blog Joined July 2009 United States 3675 Posts #5
check out my sig Congrats!check out my sig "It's called a miracle because it doesn't happen" - Just like my chances of reaching C- on ICCUP
JieXian Profile Blog Joined August 2008 Malaysia 4190 Posts #6 let's be honest, it's not a "proper" c- Please send me a PM of any song you like that I most probably never heard of! I am looking for poeple to chat about writing and producing music | http://www.youtube.com/c/JeiShian |
f10eqq Profile Joined January 2014 United States 318 Posts #7 Congrats! Tbh, I first got C- by bashing D- and low D players too, but kept playing better and better players with each season. So I progressed to C- from mainly D/D- players to C- from mainly D/D+ players with a positive winrate. Small steps are the key to progress imo. aka iNs.ArmadA
Cele Profile Blog Joined December 2008 Germany 3524 Posts #8 congrats! C- was a big step for me too. You know for yourself you cheated a bit, but you can improve next season (; Broodwar for life!
art_of_turtle Profile Blog Joined September 2012 United States 831 Posts #9 Congrats on the huge C- step up. I remember the first time I hit C- and I was completely stoked. Just remember after awhile rank won't matter, and the biggest accomplishments will start being counted as wins off of koreans, and bigger named players. Out here, am I floating on my tin can.
ninazerg Profile Blog Joined October 2009 United States 7163 Posts #10 yO, no matter what anyone says, nobody can take away from you that you worked hard at something you love and improved to a new level. "If two pregnant women get into a fist fight, it's like a mecha-battle between two unborn babies." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
fearthequeen Profile Joined November 2011 United States 671 Posts #11 I remember years and years ago when you were one of my first practice partners on iccup. It's cool to see that you're still active and getting some enjoyment out of the game.
"Please congrat me :D this was my dream since i started to play bw in 2010 to hit C-"
I don't mean to be a drag, but if your goal in 2010 was to get C-, then currently you should aim to hit at least C+ (time permitting), as that's around the modern day equivalent.
Either way, happy Brood Warring. flying
Chef Profile Blog Joined August 2005 10670 Posts #12 i actually seeked only D- games, so there you have it;
Hahahaha, I think maybe you could do that even in the old days. Although D and D+ used to be quite formidable. Hahahaha, I think maybe you could do that even in the old days. Although D and D+ used to be quite formidable. LEGEND!! LEGEND!! | 0.000889 |
Rosanell Eaton was talking to her daughter at home in Louisburg, North Carolina, not long ago when she suddenly lowered her voice and looked strangely deflated. “You know, all of this is coming back around before I could get in the ground,” she said. “I was hoping I would be dead before I’d have to see all this again.”
She was referring to the turbulent years of her childhood growing up in the 1920s and 1930s in the Jim Crow south. She went to a segregated school, drank water from a fountain marked “blacks” in the town square. Her family’s plot of tobacco and cotton fields was, according to her daughter, the only land in the neighbourhood owned by African Americans and, tiny though it was, bitterly resented by white neighbours. More than once she woke up to the sight of charred crosses in the yard.
One day, the slide truck on which they loaded the tobacco they harvested was scattered in broken pieces across the front lawn. Another time, the shed that her mother had put up beside the road to shelter the kids from the sun as they waited for the school bus was riddled with bullet holes.
And then there was the day in 1939 when Rosanell turned 18 and gained the right to vote. She was a vibrant young woman, eager to learn and engage with the world, and determined to have her electoral say at the first chance. But when she arrived at Franklin County courthouse, she was met by three white officials.
“What are you here for, young lady?” one of them asked.
“I’m here to register to vote,” she said.
The men looked at each other, then back at her. “Stand in front of us,” she was instructed. “Look directly at us. Don’t turn your head to the right, nor to the left. Now repeat the preamble to the constitution of the United States.”
It was a common ruse at the time, one of several that electoral officials used to deprive black people of the vote. Aspiring black voters would be asked to count beans in a barrel, or name their state’s entire congressional delegation. If they couldn’t, they were turned away. But Eaton just stood there and recited from memory the preamble to the US constitution, without a glitch.
“Well, little lady,” one of the officials conceded. “You did it.”
Rosanell Eaton is now 93. To her consternation, she finds herself once again facing an obstacle that she believes is designed, just as it was 75 years ago, to disenfranchise her and her fellow black North Carolinians. In July 2013 the state’s Republican-controlled general assembly pushed through HB 589, a law that in several ways makes it more difficult for those who are young, older, poor and, especially, African American to participate in the democratic process.
Eaton is a plaintiff in a challenge to the new law that will be heard on Thursday by the fourth US circuit court of appeals in Charlotte, North Carolina. The case, in which the plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to block the law’s implementation ahead of a full trial next year, is being watched intensely by both sides of the political divide, as it will determine the rules under which the midterm elections will be fought in a key swing state with a closely fought Senate battle, between sitting Democratic senator Kay Hagan and one of the Republican architects of HB 589, Thom Tillis.
In court documents the plaintiffs – including the NAACP, represented by the Advancement Project, and the League of Women Voters, represented by the ACLU – set out the various ways in which the new law, HB 589, throws obstacles in the path of potential voters. It reduces the number of early voting days; imposes a requirement, to go into effect in 2016, that voters show photo ID cards at the polls; eliminates the ability to register to vote and then cast a ballot on the same day; invalidates any ballot cast by an individual outside her or his precinct; encourages strangers to challenge the eligibility of people standing in line to vote; and scraps a program to pre-register teenagers ahead of their 18th birthdays.
The outcome of the appeal could have nationwide ramifications: were the new voter ID law to be allowed to stand it could become a template for conservative reforms across the country ahead of the 2016 presidential race.
Reverend William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, sees the voting changes as part of a clear political strategy by southern Republicans. The benefit that Republicans stand to gain by potentially making it harder for black North Carolinians to vote can be seen in the 2012 presidential election. Black voters cast almost a quarter of the total ballots in the state and supported Obama, according to exit polls, by a whopping 96% to 4%. (Despite that, the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, still took the state by a narrow 50% to 48%.)
Barber also sees the manner in which HB 589 was passed as suggestive of motive. He notes that an expanded version of HB 589 was rushed through the general assembly in the final two days of the legislative session and passed both chambers on 25 July, a month to the day after the US supreme court knocked down key parts of the Voting Rights Act that for almost 50 years had served as a federal block on discriminatory ambitions in a group of largely southern states.
Armenta and Rosanell Eaton. Photograph: Nick Pironio
“They moved to pass the worst voter suppression bill since Jim Crow,” Barber said. “We know this is the fight for the nation. They are using North Carolina as the first post-Shelby test, and it is our job to make sure they don’t get away with it.”
The plaintiffs’ challenge to the law was rejected in August by a federal district court. If the appeal is to succeed, the plaintiffs must convince the three justices hearing it that under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act the new provisions are unlawful as they would result “in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color”.
In court filings the NAACP and the US Department of Justice, which is playing a supporting role in the legal action, set out why the reduction of early voting days under HB 589 from 17 to 10 days will act as a burden in November that will fall disproportionately heavily on African Americans. In 2008 and 2012 – two years that saw higher than usual African American turnout in the state due to excitement about the prospect of the election, and then the re-election, of America’s first black president – more than 700,000 black North Carolinians voted before election day. That was equivalent to about 70% of all African American voters in the state, compared to 51% of white voters.
In 2012, during the seven days of early voting ended by HB 589, a total of 900,000 North Carolinians of all races voted, representing about 35% of all votes cast. Break it down by race, and 28% of African Americans who voted in 2012 did so in the now-eliminated seven days compared with 17% of white voters.
Part of the reason for the disparity, the plaintiffs will argue in court, is that poverty levels are higher among African Americans, which makes it more difficult for them to get to the polls within the allotted 12 hours on election day. Almost one in three poor black residents in the state have no access to a car compared with one in 10 poor whites, and many black workers are paid by the hour so that a decision to take time off work to vote literally comes at a price.
There is also a cultural factor. In its legal memo supporting the legal challenge, the Department of Justice argues that many black people use early voting because they have lingering fears from the days of segregation that someone will try and trick them out of their vote. Getting to the polls ahead of election day “gives them confidence they will have time to overcome such obstacles”.
As in many other states, particularly in the south, African American churches in North Carolina have developed a tradition of driving their congregants to the polling stations on the Sundays before election day. Known as “souls to the polls”, the occasion has not only become an important part of the communal calendar, but also a crucial way of helping older black voters to take advantage of their rights.
Cutting the first week of early voting, as the law now does, will eradicate one “souls to the polls” on Sunday. Pastor Jimmie Hawkins of North Carolina’s only African American Presbyterian church, the Covenant Presbyterian church in Durham, who testified in earlier court hearings against the new law, says that the whittling down of “souls to the polls” has already hit morale among his members hard.
Pastor Jimmy Hawkins. Photograph: Nick Pironio
“People right now are very dispirited. They ask themselves why is this happening to them now, how did we go from a progressive state to a regressive state, from a community with some of the most positive voting rules, to a political leadership that is doing away with all that and attacking our voting rights.”
Of the 220 regular attendants of his church, Hawkins says that almost half are senior citizens who grew up in a segregated state. “They know the impact of being denied their voting rights,” he said. “They know what happens when you aren’t able to elect people to represent you and how that affects the laws and policies of the land.
“The legislators don’t realize – or maybe they don’t care – about the emotional and psychological impact of the moves they are making. They are dividing this state, and hurting people. I’ve come strongly to believe that if you can convince someone they are less than others, then they are going to live less than, think less than.”
In their submission to the appeals court, the state of North Carolina, led by Republican governor Pat McCrory, argues that the proposed changes are “neutral” and framed to ensure “uniformity and fair treatment of all voters”. The state insists that HB 589 “did not have the effect of burdening and decreasing voter participation”.
“If everyone has an equal chance to register to vote,” the brief says, “but fewer members of minority groups choose to register, then it cannot reasonably be said that those persons have ‘less opportunity’ to vote. In this example, these individuals simply failed to take advantage of the opportunity.”
The state denies that there is any racial or partisan intention behind the new law. Officials insist it will reduce the cost of elections while also reducing fraud at the ballot box. As McCrory put it soon after he enacted the legislation: “Protecting the integrity of every vote is one of the most important duties I have as governor of this great state. And that’s why I signed this common sense legislation into law.”
Eaton at a demonstration.
But statistics compiled by the state’s own board of elections show that out of a total of 32 million votes cast at the ballot box in general elections between 2000 and 2012, only two fraudulent in-person votes were recorded.
In its defence, the state points to the 6 May primary election in North Carolina as evidence that the voting reforms have not harmed minority participation. Turnout on that day, it emphasises in its legal argument, was higher – including among African Americans – than in the equivalent primary in 2010.
But the NAACP says that using primary election turnout as a marker is “grossly misleading”. The May primary was unrepresentative because turnout was less than 16% and limited largely to “the most committed partisans who are less likely to be affected by electoral changes”, it argues.
The NAACP and its fellow plaintiffs also fish out statistics that underline the disproportionate burden on black voters of the new restrictions. HB 589 ends out-of-precinct voting – the system whereby voters can cast a provisional ballot in a precinct other than the one where they are registered – and black residents are twice as likely to vote out of precinct in North Carolina than white residents. The law also eliminates same-day registration for voting, something African Americans do at double the rate of white people. Similarly, the rate of early voting among black voters is about 140% that of white voters.
The most contentious single element of HB 589 – the demand that voters must show a current photo identification card at the polls – will not come into effect until the presidential election in 2016. But this November it is being given a “soft rollout” in which poll workers will be required to ask voters whether they have such identification available.
Rosanell Eaton is one of those who could have difficulties under the new voter-ID rules. She does have a birth certificate, a driver’s license and a voter registration card, but the names on each of them conflict. She is variously Rosa Nell Johnson, Rosa Johnson Eaton or Rosanell Eaton. It is not clear whether the inconsistency would trip her up at the polling station under the new legislation, which states that a driver’s license counts as valid identification. But given the possibility of confusion over her name, combined with her own personal history of Jim Crow, she is anxious, as she put it to her daughter, that “all of this is coming back around”.
Rosanell Eaton at the state assembly.
“In her lifetime, she’s seen an improvement in the way we were treated in this community,” said her daughter Armenta Eaton, speaking in her mother’s home in Louisburg. “But now she sees a regression back to the bad old days. It’s more sophisticated now, but she understands there’s racism involved, mean-spiritedness, and it bothers her that others can’t see that.”
Given her age, Rosanell speaks rarely in public these days. One of those occasions was last June, just as HB 589 was being rushed through the state assembly. When she heard that there was to be a peaceful demonstration at the legislative building in Raleigh as part of a series of protests branded as “Moral Mondays”, she insisted on joining it, and was duly arrested – aged 92.
Rev Barber remembers Eaton arriving at the steps of the building leaning on her walking frame. “Rosanell, you don’t have to do this you know,” Barber said to her.
“I know what I have to do,” she replied, shoving her walker away and striding ahead unaided. She led the crowd, about 100 people, into the building and then addressed them, telling them the story of her childhood experiences under segregation.
“She said, ‘I’m fired up and I’m fed up,’” Barber recalled. “When she spoke that day it broke something in the crowd. A 92-year-old woman who had fought these battles long ago was now having to fight them all over again.” | 0.985089 |
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Former White House ethics chief Walter Shaub described what he thinks Trump’s motives are behind the Arpaio pardon. He believes that Trump was testing the waters for future Russia investigation pardons and sending a clear message to the targets of Mueller’s investigation.
Shaub tweeted:
Pardon motives? I suspect: Court alt-right votes, test water for more pardons, encourage loyalty, signal Mueller targets (fear not/be quiet) — Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) August 26, 2017
It is easy to get lost in the swirl of Trump events and miss the big picture. Beyond sending a clear message to his racist supporters that he is still with them, and there going to be no moderation in the White House even with Bannon and Gorka gone, the President was doing much more.
Donald Trump is actively working to eliminate the restraints and norms that are associated with presidential power. Shaub did a good job of connecting the dots. The Arpaio pardon was a signal to targets of Mueller’s investigation that Trump is going to bail them out of trouble. Trump was also testing the limits of what he can get away with on the pardon front. If Arpaio’s pardon
had gone unnoticed due to the hurricane coverage, it would have given Trump the green light to bury Russia related pardons under heavy breaking news cycles.
Walter Shaub was right. The sending of a message to his racist supporters was a small part of the plan. The bigger objective appears to be Trump’s intention to use presidential pardons as literal get of jail free cards on the Russia scandal.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human: | 0.00131 |
By some estimates, as many as 375,000 babies a year are born to women who are users of illicit drugs.
In recent years, to scare pregnant women away from drug usage, prosecutors in several states have begun to order the arrests of women whose newborns tested positive for drugs. The arrests of the more than 160 women have taken place in 24 states, but most of them have been in Florida and South Carolina.
In most of the cases, women have pleaded guilty. But of the 19 cases in which women challenged the prosecution, Ms. Johnson was the only one to be convicted. In July 1989, she was found guilty of two counts of drug delivery and sentenced to 15 years' probation. Rejecting 'Delivery'
That conviction was upheld in April 1991 by the Fifth District Court of Appeals, over the dissent of a judge who noted that Ms. Johnson could have avoided "delivering" the drugs only by severing the umbilical cords, an act that could have killed her and her children.
The dissenting judge, Winifred J. Sharp, noted that the Florida Legislature had considered, and rejected, a specific statutory provision authorizing criminal penalties against mothers for delivering drug-affected children.
The unanimous decision yesterday by seven judges of the Florida Supreme Court quoted that dissent extensively, and ruled that the Florida Legislature had never intended "to use the word 'delivery' in the context of criminally prosecuting mothers for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor by way of the umbilical cord."
The state argued that the prosecution was justified under the plain language of the criminal law prohibiting delivery of any controlled substance to a minor.
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"The court declines the state's invitation to walk down a path that the law, public policy, reason and common sense forbid it to tread," the State Supreme Court opinion said.
Ms. Johnson, who said she had started using drugs at the age of 20, the year after her first child was born, is now in a residential drug-treatment program, Operation Par. Her four children live with relatives. Although she had dropped out of her earlier attempts at drug treatment, Ms. Johnson sounded confident that she would stay in her current 18-to-24-month program.
"I've been here almost three months," she said yesterday. "I'm going to graduate this time."
The public health authorities say prosecutions of women like Ms. Johnson are misguided and serve more to scare women away from the health care they need than to stop them from using drugs. The American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Resources and Education were among the groups filing briefs on Ms. Johnson's behalf. | 0.177036 |
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Articles
Check out the many articles we've written about various aspects of GMAT prep. | 0.786556 |
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Saturday new measures allowing authorities to list foreign media outlets as "foreign agents" in response to what Moscow says is unacceptable US pressure on Russian media.
The new law has been rushed through both Russian houses of parliament in the last two weeks. It will now allow Moscow to force foreign media to brand news they provide to Russians as the work of "foreign agents" and to disclose their funding sources.
A copy of the law was published on the Russian government's online legislation database on Saturday, saying it entered into force from the day of its publication.
Russia's move against American media is part of the fallout from allegations that Russia interfered in last year's US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump.
US intelligence officials have accused the Kremlin of using Russian media organisations it finances to influence U.S. voters, and Washington has since required Russian state broadcaster RT to register a US-based affiliate company as a "foreign agent". | 0.063808 |
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the brutal murder of Dutch writer, filmmaker, and free-speech advocate Theo van Gogh. He died at the hands of a Muslim fundamentalist, Mohammed Bouyeri, who silenced Theo’s criticism of Islam with bullets and blades. For the crime of making a movie (with Ayaan Hirsi Ali) that called out Islam’s widespread misogyny, Theo was assassinated in public, in broad daylight — Bouyeri, after emptying his gun, calmly and methodically almost severing his victim’s head while horrified bystanders looked on. Then he plunged two knives into the body — one pinning a threatening note to Hirsi Ali to Theo’s flesh — and left them there as he tried to make his getaway.
Like the Islamic death sentence received by Salman Rushdie, it was a defining moment in one of the defining fights of our time.
Back when I lived in Amsterdam, I’d met Theo a few times and interviewed him once (about local architecture, of all things; he was quite the renaissance man). I was struck by how easily he carried himself in all kinds of different company. As combative and fierce as he could be in print, in person he was a very social and genuinely curious man, always probing, trying out ideas and theories, soaking up new information. He was blunt but kind, passionate but not wrathful, eager to drive home a provocative point but careful not to twist the knife, so to speak.
In short, he was the antithesis of his assassin.
As a private remembrance of sorts, I’ve been re-reading Ian Buruma‘s Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, which came out about two years after the outrageous end of Theo’s life. And just as it had the first time around, the part that floored me was Buruma’s encounter with a second-generation Dutch-Moroccan man, an actor then in his twenties named Farhane el-Hamchaoui.
First, let’s establish this: El-Hamchaoui’s family, Buruma writes, is unusually successful.
His father taught himself to speak Dutch and owned several shops in The Hague. His two elder brothers were the first Moroccans to finish the prestigious Gymnasium Haganum. One works as an IT expert for the ministry of justice, the other for a large insurance firm.
And Farhane? He became a juvenile delinquent, getting into fights, smoking dope, gang-banging girls, mugging elderly people, even robbing the headmaster of the school for difficult children he was sent to. But gradually, he turned his life around; and when Buruma met up with him, Farhane was performing in an autobiographical play about his dubious adventures, a drama intended to convey a message about redemption and the importance of “doing something positive for the community.”
One man to whom El-Hamchaoui undoubtedly owes a debt of gratitude was Theo van Gogh. Theo hired El-Hamchaoui to play in his movie Cool!, launching the young man’s professional acting career.
Now, here’s the passage that grabbed me and won’t let go:
I asked Farhane whether he ever felt Dutch. “Neither Dutch nor Moroccan,” he replied. What if Holland plays soccer against Morocco? “Then I’m for Morocco, for sure! But if I had to choose between a Dutch passport and a Moroccan one, I would choose the Netherlands. You have to think of your interests. A Moroccan passport would be useless. But with soccer I can choose for my own blood.” […] otherwise he “would have been seen as a traitor.” He had only seen a small bit of the eleven-minute film. “It was totally ridiculous, totally missing the point.” Van Gogh must have been “tricked into making such a film.” Projecting the Koran onto the naked body of a woman is “an insult, the kind of insult I could never forget, like that time I wasn’t allowed to play with my best [white Dutch] friend at school. All Moroccans feel that way. I would never support Mohammed Bouyeri. But about the film he was right.“
“Right to kill Van Gogh?” asks Buruma. El-Hamchaoui doesn’t really answer the question, except to say, with a startling non sequitur,
“No Moroccan respects Mohammed Bouyeri. To commit a murder during Ramadan — that is totally unacceptable.”
When Buruma presses him further, El-Hamchaoui says that murder is “never justified,” but he adds that he can see how Bouyeri was “pushed into it.” He also says that in coffeehouses where Muslims congregate, his fellow believers “say things they would never say in front of a camera” (presumably, “I condemn bloodshed in the name of my faith” isn’t one of those things). And El-Hamchaoui also reveals that someone in his social circle remarked, apparently admiringly, that “millions of Muslim women want to marry Mohammed Bouyeri.”
It’s worth reassuring oneself that El-Hamchaoui is, of course, no extremist — not even close. He’s a modern Muslim. No jihad for him! And why would it be otherwise? He was raised in a famously broad-minded country that bestowed relatively generous subsidies upon immigrants and their children, and whose ruling classes insisted that every Dutch burgher fully embrace the tenets of unfettered multiculturalism. He had the benefit of fairly well-to-do immigrant parents (who arrived poor but thrived), and was offered a top-notch secondary education. He is a full Dutch citizen, with all the rights and privileges that entails. Also, he was given a rare opportunity to become a professional actor, by a man — Theo — whose open-mindedness and company he confesses to have liked a lot.
And yet El-Hamchaoui’s loyalties are murky at best. He openly says he doesn’t much value his Dutch passport, except that it suits his “interests.” He doesn’t stick up for his murdered benefactor, because he understands what drove the killer, and about Submission at least, that killer “was right.” He thinks of Submission not simply as a controversial movie that he didn’t care for, but — despite his knowing and liking the director — as a personal insult, on a par with being discriminated against by the parents of his best friend in school.
In terms of integration, Muslims like El-Hamchaoui — moderate, thoughtful, steeped in western values, capable of change, relatively successful — are the Netherlands’ best hope.
And it’s impossible to not find that a bit disheartening. | 0.036155 |
Ultimate Skills Project sneak peak: A Study In Throwing
Learning to throw is important at every stage of ultimate, from rookies learning a flick and a reset pass, to club veterans expanding their arsenal and refining their control.
There are numerous throwing resources available: instructional articles and books; throwing sessions with more experienced players in your community; and just playing more.
Simply throwing with a good thrower and trying to mimic movements can be very helpful. However, it can be difficult to discern which aspects of the throwing motion are personal style and which are core components of the throw. If you have someone in your community who is good at translating instructions into action (talking you through slight shifts in grip and movement), ask them for help before asking the hucker on your team who can’t really explain what they’re doing.
Over the last seven years, I have been collecting photos and video footage of top throwers, with the goal of identifying the key to throwing with power. I’ve reviewed photo bursts and slow-motion video of a couple hundred powerful throwers, as well as some less powerful throwers. I have worked with throwers as a coach, at throwing clinics, and one-on-one with teammates.
Through this work, I’m hoping to reveal key components to powerful throws, with examples from different throwers, while also identifying areas with acceptable variation and minor tips and tweaks that may help solidify technique.
For example: I have observed that the backhand grip is one of the simplest aspects of throwing. Four fingers under the rim and thumb on top. I want to take that further: How exactly are the fingers positioned? Which parts of the fingers touch which parts of the disc? Where do we create pressure and how are the hand and wrist aligned? This is where the challenging balance between rigid minutia and unhelpful generality presents itself.
Do you grab like you are shaking hands? Place the distal phalanx of the ring finger at a 60-degree angle to the rim, resting lightly on the flight plate? And what about the old league player who can throw 90 yards and uses a loose fan grip?
I’ll be asking these questions and revealing what I’ve learned this month in the Ultimate Skills Project. Here’s a sneak peek at my throwing module for this August:
Let’s get started!
For a backhand huck, having a secure grip makes all the difference for being able to comfortably throw harder. I have one little exercise I like for thinking about gripping with the whole hand, plus some tips on setting up the grip and some examples of grips from powerful throwers with different hand sizes.
Solo Cup Exercise
If you haven’t guessed already, you’ll need a solo cup for this exercise.
Stretch your hand wide open. Place a solo cup against your palm. Relax your hand and let your fingers and palm contact the cup. Without squeezing, you are still able to grip the cup. This is how I set up a backhand grip.I feel like it gives me a baseline of effortless grip, which increases the overall security of my hold on the disc.
Grip Tips
Now, try this next exercise with a disc. Lefties, reverse your grip.
Looking at your palm, rotate your hand so your thumb is in line with your forearm, and stretch your hand open (like the solo cup exercise). Place the disc into your hand, in line with your forearm, running roughly from the left base of the hand up to the first crease of the forefinger. Relax your hand around the disc, and place your fingers underneath the rim, while wrapping the fleshy base of your thumb around and on top of the disc. The exact positioning may vary for your own comfort, but you should be able to cock your wrist back and bring the disc in line with your forearm (maybe touching, depending on flexibility). For finger placement: the forefinger and middle finger curl tightly around the rim and provide the majority of the grip strength with the thumb. Depending on hand size, the forefinger may not curl completely underneath the rim (see examples below). Having a little space between the forefinger and middle finger is common. For my grip, the ring finger and pinkie are pressed flat against the inside of the rim. Notice, these grips are not grabbing the disc inside a fist with all the fingertips curled underneath. In my view, the pictured grip provides greater and more consistent grip security and a more consistent release. For thumb placement: Place your thumb on the flight rings along the top of the disc. Stretching the thumb beyond the flight rings toward the center of the disc can give an airbounce effect and reduce grip security for smaller hands. (Airbounces also require extra power to travel the same distances.)
Troubleshooting and Check-ins
If the thumb is too far forward, it becomes difficult to line the disc up with the forearm. Play around with the grip a little to get comfortable, and compare to examples from similar hand sizes (additional examples included in module). Don’t hesitate to use your off hand to help set your grip and even stabilize the disc on your windup.
Module Highlights
This month, I’ll invite you to film yourself to understand what your body is doing as it relates to what you are trying to get your body to do. I’ll teach core components of the backhand huck and the pull, with examples and analysis of powerful throwers. I’ll also cover some core components to the forehand huck, with additional examples from powerful throwers.. You’ll also get drills and practice exercises for you to learn the mechanics, ways to track your progress, and feedback to help you improve your technique and skill.
Like what you see? Join Colin and the rest of our community in the Ultimate Skills Project. You can sign up now for his August throwing module, right here. | 0.533166 |
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick knows what he cares about. And what he cares about is public toilets. Patrick, Texas’s self-styled Lord of the Lavatory, our Wizard of the W.C., our Pasha of Pee, has vowed that in 2017, he will make sure that the State Legislature passes the “Women’s Privacy Act,” a bill that will require “people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender on their birth certificates.”
I’ll be honest, I’m a traditionalist. The world is changing, quickly and, for us older people, confusingly. LG became LGB, then LGBT, and LGBTQ. Last time I checked, we were up to LGBTQIA+. I have no idea what the “A” and the “+” stand for. I want to be fair and kind and compassionate to my neighbors, but I suffer from Old Man Lag, always a step or two behind the times.
Our daughter, the college senior, attends a university that’s so relentlessly conservative, one of the raging on-campus debates is whether to allow caffeinated Coke products in the student union’s soda-pop machines. The other day, she told me that I was hamstrung by my “insistence that gender identity is a binary construct.”
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“In my ‘Gender Identity and the Modern Cinema’ class,” she replied. She’s a Humanities major. The world is changing, even in Provo, Utah. I muttered something about how she should be taking a seminar called “'Would You Like Fries With That?’: Professional Strategies for the Post-Baccalaurate Humanities Graduate.” She was unamused.
The world is changing. North Carolina’s decision to pass legislation very similar to Mr. Patrick’s bathroom bill has cost the state $600 million in lost revenue so far this year, as everyone from Deutsche Bank to the National Basketball Association has canceled or relocated corporate expansions and performances in protest of the legislation. Bruce Springsteen explained his cancellation of a concert scheduled for Greensboro, North Carolina as a show of “solidarity” with those fighting “prejudice and bigotry” in the Tarheel State.
No one wants to be on the side of “prejudice and bigotry.” No one is opposed to “protecting women” — Patrick’s stated rationale for the bathroom bill — either, although the lieutenant governor’s shadowy vision of predators setting up shop in the state’s ladies rooms under the guise of “transgender equity” seems ridiculously far-fetched. But I’m not here to debate the merits of Patrick’s proposal. I’m here to reveal a deep secret, a secret I have heretofore shared only with the members of my Inner Circle:
My birth certificate says I’m a girl.
Back in 1983, while living in Los Angeles County, I needed my birth certificate to apply for a California driver’s license. The original had been lost; I contacted the clerk in Niagara County, New York, my birthplace, for a replacement. Six weeks later, it arrived, neatly embossed with the Niagara County clerk’s official seal, and bearing all of my vital statistics. Name: Cort Anthony McMurray. Birth Date: November 9, 1962. Gender: Female.
I’ll admit, as a man, I’m pretty disappointing. My physique is less J.J. Watt than Elmer Fudd. My voice is sort of willowy. On the telephone, I am frequently mistaken for a woman. When you answer your telephone, and the voice on the other end, the gravelly result of a lifetime of whiskey, unfiltered cigarettes, and refinery work, rasps, “Why, hello there, darlin’,” you can’t do much more than giggle and purr, “Well, bless your heart!” I’ve flirted with more old men than a phalanx of truck-stop waitresses.
(There are limits to this charade. Once, a woman gave me a brisk, “Yes, ma’am, I need to speak to someone in customer service.” “I can help you,” I replied, “but I’m not a ‘ma’am;’ I’m a ‘sir.’” She was incredulous. “Really?” she asked. “Are you sure?” “Hold on,” I said. “Let me check.” I put the phone on the desk and made some fumbling noises. “Yep. I just took a look. I’m a man, all right.” She told me I was very rude, and hung up the phone. Another satisfied customer!)
Granted, I’m no Sam Elliott, but I have fathered three children. My taste in clothes runs to vintage flannel baseball jerseys and cargo shorts. I’m somewhere between Ed Asner and Sasquatch on the hairiness scale. A photo montage of my life would look like the cast of Up: one moment, I’m Russell, the round and exuberant Boy Scout; the next I’m Carl Friedricksen, right down to the stooped shoulders and the Harry Caray glasses. The last place I belong, is in a women’s restroom.
If Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick — the Potentate of Piddling, the Kaiser of the Crapper, the Fidalgo of Flush — has his way, the women’s rest room is precisely where I’m bound. Because my birth certificate says I’m female. And Dan Patrick isn’t concerned about common sense, or fairness, or sensitivity to people who are frequently misunderstood and usually mistreated. Dan Patrick is only worried about protecting folks from the fantastical beasts of his own creation.
I won’t miss the men’s room, with its overflowing trash cans and unflushed toilets and sickeningly slick floors around the urinals (it gives one pause to know that in a state that prides itself on its long history with firearms, so many men have such terrible aim). I wish this had happened twenty years ago, when the Astrodome was still a going concern.
The Dome men’s rooms didn’t have urinals; they had stainless steel troughs, roughly the length of a football field. You’d belly up to the pee trough, in full view of the fellers on either side of you, all of you crammed together, boot to boot, unzip, and let it rip. It was an unholy Texas Trinity: bad hygiene, performance anxiety, and a crushing sense of male inadequacy, all rolled into one.
Women’s restrooms, I imagine, are a little like Athena’s quarters on Olympus, orderly and pristine and smelling faintly of ambrosia and lilacs.
The law is the law. If Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick — the Baron of Bowel Movements, the Emperor of Evacuations, the Duke of Dooky — says that a 54-year-old man with an erroneous birth certificate has to do his business in the ladies’, who are we to argue? As for all of those transgender people who have been quietly using the “wrong” restroom for decades without anyone experiencing even a shred of discomfort or unpleasantness, well, this isn’t about them.
This is about fairness.
Cort McMurray is a Houston-area businessman and a frequent contributor to Gray Matters.
Bookmark Gray Matters. It's flirted with more old men than a phalanx of truck-stop waitresses. | 0.995484 |
On Sunday, Ryan McHenry, who made a name for himself by poking fun at the celebrity actor in his “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal” Vine series, lost his battle to osteosarcoma (a type of bone cancer) at the age of just 27.
And so on Monday night, Gosling recorded a heartfelt tribute to the man who brought humor to hundreds of thousands as well as providing a deeply personal insight into his battle against cancer.
While McHenry’s creativity brought smiles to fans’ faces, his honesty about his struggle with cancer was the real inspiration.
Below you can enjoy a YouTube compilation of “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal.”
Read next: Ryan Gosling Might Star in the Blade Runner Sequel
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Listen to the most important stories of the day.
Contact us at [email protected]. | 0.003777 |
CTVNews.ca Staff
Protests have turned violent after a grand jury decided not to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., in a case that has elevated tensions between the community and local law enforcement.
That means officer Darren Wilson, 28, will not be charged in the death of Michael Brown, based on the decision of the 12-person panel convened by St. Louis County.
Police in tactical gear used pepper spray and smoke bombs against protesters as demonstrations grew violent Monday night.
One police cruiser was reportedly vandalized with rocks and, after being abandoned, was apparently set on fire.
A second cruiser was later set on fire, along with a Little Caesar’s pizza shop, which looked to have been completely burned down.
Several gunshots were also reportedly heard.
Some protestors chanted “Hands up, don’t shoot” as they marched peacefully through the streets, while others began looting local shops.
Several people were seen climbing out through the windows of the store from which Brown was reported to have stolen a box of cigars before the fatal shooting occurred.
Leslie McSpadden, Brown’s mother, was screaming when she learned the news from a nearby hotel room, according to the family’s lawyer.
Ben Crump, the lawyer, said that the family had deep mistrust of the prosecutor’s office from the beginning.
Crump also released a written statement from Brown’s parents shortly after the decision was announced around 8:30 p.m. local time.
"We are profoundly disappointed that the killer of our child will not face the consequence of his actions,” said the statement. “While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change.”
“Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera,” they said.
The grand jury -- which considered photographs, medical reports, eye-witness accounts and four hours of voluntary testimony from Wilson -- was made up of nine white people and three black people.
Wilson’s defence team issued a statement saying the officers wanted to “thank those who have stood by his side throughout the process.”
“Law enforcement personnel must frequently make split-second and difficult decisions. Officer Wilson followed his training and followed the law,” his lawyers said.
“We recognize that many people will want to second-guess the grand jury’s decision. We would encourage anyone who wants to express an opinion do so in a respectful and peaceful manner.”
A decision in favour of the officer was expected to bring protests. Earlier in the evening, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon outlined the planned response.
“The police have been trained to make sure we are respecting people’s rights,” he said, “however, on the other side, if people are violent or threaten property, resources will be used to manage the issues.”
“Our focus today, in the short run here is to protect lives, protect property and to protect speech,” he said, “and in the longer run, to find paths for progress.”
And after the decision was announced, President Barack Obama appealed for peace.
“We are a nation built on the rule of law, so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make,” he said.
He said it was “understandable reaction” that some Americans would be disappointed or angry but emphasized Brown’s father’s wishes for “positive change.”
“Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone,” he said. “We should be honouring their wishes.”
What exactly happened when Brown, 18, was killed by Wilson on Aug. 9 in the small city of Ferguson has been widely disputed. Many believe race was a factor.
Two men said they witnessed Brown raise his hands when the officer approached with his weapon and repeatedly fired.
Some interpret Brown’s gesture as surrendering. Officer Wilson, however, said that he feared for his life during a struggle over his gun that occurred when he was pinned up against his police car.
Brown’s death ignited simmering tensions between the St. Louis suburb’s predominantly black population and the municipality’s mostly white police force, who many believe used excessive force.
Brown’s death was followed by days of protests and looting that began the next day. Some protesters stood atop police cars. Others made off with bags of food, toilet paper and alcohol.
On Aug. 11, the FBI opened an investigation into Brown’s death, but it was not enough to quell the protests.
Three days later, the Missouri Highway Patrol took over security in Ferguson and officers were equipped with armoured vehicles, body armour and assault rifles.
On August 16, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency.
Two days later the National Guard was called to Ferguson to restore order.
Protests have continued, often with marchers raising their arms in the air and saying “don’t shoot.”
The case generated such interest that both the FBI and U.S. Justice Department are investigating whether civil rights have been breached.
Last week, Brown’s father issued a statement thanking protesters for fighting to end racial profiling and police intimidation, but urged them to remain peaceful regardless of the grand jury's decision.
"I do not want my son's death to be in vain," he said.
On Monday, Brown’s family reiterated their request that protests remain peaceful. They also asked that supporters observe four-and-a-half minutes of silence after the announcement, as a reminder of the four-and-a-half hours that Brown’s body remained in the street after he was shot.
An autopsy conducted by a military doctor on behalf of the Justice Department found Brown was shot six times.
The Ferguson Police Department has four black members among its 53 officers.
In 2010, the City of Ferguson had about 21,000 residents, more than two-thirds of them black, according to the U.S. Census.
The St. Louis County prosecutor’s office has said the grand jury’s proceedings have been recorded so that they can be released to the public. | 0.114335 |
We will never know who was Stalin's real father. The paternity of great men is often steeped in mystery. In Stalin's case, it was even suggested that Emperor Alexander III was his real father. Another candidate was a gay aristocratic Russian explorer. Neither of these two is a convincing can didate, but Stalin himself, a self-made man in every sense, liked to imply sometimes that his natural father was not his official one. But in his home town of Gori, in Georgia, there were in fact four very plausible candidates, including his official father - but of these four, only one, Koba Egnatashvili, remained in his life as a sort of foster parent.
Until now, his story has never been fully told. There were no photographs of him and most biographies simply repeated the inventions of other sensationalist historians. Yet the truth is more bizarre still, for this other family became the most trusted part of Stalin's court right up until the 1940s. Indeed, his possible half-brother became his NKVD food taster nicknamed "the Rabbit". It is a connection even more extraordinary because under the Rabbit served a young chef who would become the grandfather of another secret police officer: Vladimir Putin.
Stalin was born Josef "Soso" Dzhugashvili on 6 December 1878 (not 21 December 1879, his official birthday) to Beso Dzhugashvili, a cobbler, and his pretty and strong-willed wife, Keke. Beso was soon to become a wife-beating and child-beating alcoholic, tormented by rumours in the town that he was not Stalin's real father. Keke was determined that Stalin should receive a priestly education so that he could become a bishop. Beso, who had been helped throughout his career by a local hero named Koba Egnatashvili, a legendary wrestling champion, wealthy local merchant, wine dealer and owner of a successful tavern, wanted him to become a cobbler. And now we have a photo of this virile Georgian who was to play such an important part in Stalin's life.
When Beso became such a drunken embarrassment that he was known in the town as "Crazy Beso", Koba Egnatashvili helped Keke by finding her work, feeding Stalin and helping pay for his education at the church school and later at the seminary of Tiflis.
But he was not the only local man of power who aided young Stalin: Keke was also helped by the local priest, Father Charkviani, and the local police chief, Damian Davrichewy, both of whom were also said to be Keke's lovers. Indeed, Stalin himself, who encouraged mystery about his own origins to embellish his mythology as a great man, told several people that he was the son of this priest. The police chief's son later claimed that his father was Stalin's real father. But Stalin also implied to several people that Koba Egnatashvili was. He certainly worshipped the rich wrest ling cha m p ion: he was still talking about him 70 years later. When he became a revolutionary, he paid Koba the great compliment of adopting the name "Koba" as his own nom de guerre.
We will never, of course, know who was Stalin's biological father. In my book Young Stalin, I lean towards Crazy Beso simply because there is no conclusive evidence otherwise. But Koba Egnatashvili was actually the closest thing Stalin had to a father figure. It is also quite pos sible that Koba was indeed the biological father, for Keke, perhaps innocently, perhaps leaving a portentous message for posterity, admits in her memoirs that "Koba Egnatashvili helped us in the creation of our family".
As Stalin grew up, Koba certainly took the place of his real father. It seems that he loved little Stalin, and the affection was repaid. Stalin never lost his respect for him, and remained a somewhat mysterious part of the Egnatashvili family. While Crazy Beso beat the child and terrorised Stalin and several times kidnapped him from school to force him to train as a cobbler, Koba protected him, funded him and helped him in many ways. He may not have been Stalin's real father, but he acted like a father to him.
When Stalin left Gori to become a revolutionary in an adventurous career as terrorist mastermind, gangster godfather, poet, pirate, bank robber, Marxist fanatic and Bolshevik org aniser, he kept in contact with the Egnatashvilis. This was somewhat ironic, as the Egnatash vilis were prosperous capitalist entrepreneurs. Koba's two sons, Sasha and Vaso, were given expensive educations at a Moscow gym nasium (high school). Even after the Bolshevik (October) revolution in 1917, the family prospered as "Nepmen" (private businessmen) during Lenin's economic compromise with capitalism. They ran a chain of taverns and restaurants in Baku and Tiflis, in today's Azerbaijan and Georgia. Old Koba died in 1930 in his eighties, but in 1928 Stalin had executed his "Great Turn" leftwards, ending Lenin's New Economic Policy and embarking on a ruthless drive to fund industrialisation by collectivising the peasantry.
Ten million innocent people were shot or died of hunger. The Egnat ashvili brothers lost their taverns and were arrested. But Vaso managed to convince local officials that he had to speak to Stalin in Moscow, and so, while his brother remained in jail, he headed to the capital. Through the good offices of Abel Yenukidze, an affable Georgian womaniser and top Bolshevik official, Vaso was received by Stalin who immediately ordered that the two brothers be freed and summoned them to Moscow.
Even though neither brother had been a socialist, let alone a Bolshevik, Stalin needed trustworthy henchmen around him. Besides, he had grown up with the Egna tashvili boys and loved their old father. Amazingly, he made Sasha a secret police officer in what became, in 1934, the dreaded NKVD, while Vaso became his eyes and ears in his homeland, Georgia, first as a newspaper editor and later as secretary to the Georgian central executive committee. The Caucasus was then ruled by the fast-rising young Stalinist henchman Lavrenty Beria, but Stalin liked to keep up his own sources of information in the south: Vaso always had direct access to Stalin, which infuriated Beria. And everyone in the NKVD soon knew (and whispered) that the Egnatashvili brothers were not just Georgian favourites: they were Stalin's half-brothers.
As for Sasha - a genial, handsome athlete and a wrestling champion like his father, Koba (as his photograph on page 35 shows) - he became a powerful courtier at the court of the Red Tsar. He enjoyed a special position because, although he was an NKVD officer, he served with the independent Kremlin security guards, which Stalin, cautious and paranoid about his security, kept under separate command even though it was nominally under the secret police, the People's Commissars for Internal Affairs.
When Stalin unleashed the Great Terror in 1936, he became ever more sensitive about his own security: he promoted Sasha to command the secret world of his food supplies and the country houses where he actually lived. So Sasha the successful restaurateur became master of dictatorial feasting and luxury.
I had read in various sensationalist books on the secret police that Sasha Egnatashvili was nicknamed the Rabbit because he actually became Stalin's food taster. This was one of those rumours that I discounted as being too outré: however, it turned out to be true. Indeed, Sasha soon became a very important courtier, always present in the background wherever Stalin went. Whether Stalin was holding huge banquets at the Kremlin for foreign visitors such as Ribbentrop in 1939 or Churchill in 1942, or just private dinners at his own villas for Politburo magnates, the Rabbit was in charge and, at smaller dinners, he often joined the company.
Among the Rabbit's staff at Stalin's villas was an experienced and trusted cook who rather extraordinarily had served Rasputin and Lenin, and now cooked for Stalin, too. This was President Vladimir Putin's grandfather. Given that he cooked for Rasputin, Lenin and Stalin, he is surely the most world-historical chef of modern times. When he was running for president in 2000, Putin proudly revealed the connection but said that his grandfather, a loyal Chekist to the last, had never yielded any secrets of his remarkable career.
Yet Beria, by now Stalin's tireless and hugely competent NKVD boss, super-manager and Politburo grandee, hated the Egnatashvilis because they had closer relations with Stalin than he himself had and because they were Georgians independent of him.
He was determined to destroy them.
Stalin's deadly game
Meanwhile, even though a food taster and catering maestro, Sasha Egnatashvili, whether or not he was Stalin's half-brother, was not immune to the deadly game of Stalin's Byzantine court.
Just before the Second World War, Stalin, whose wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva had committed suicide in 1932, became suspicious about the wives of his henchmen. The pretty young wives of his intimate chef de cabinet, Alexander Poskrebyshev, and of his top military hench-man Marshal Kulik were both shot, but their husbands continued loyally to serve Stalin without complaint. In addition, President Mikhail Kalinin's wife was in prison. And Sasha Egnatashvili's German wife was arrested and shot even as the Rabbit continued to taste the dictator's food.
During the war, Sasha was promoted to general and showered with medals: the rising young Politburo magnate Nikita Khrushchev grumbled in his memoirs that Stalin had made his kebab cook into a bemedalled general. Khrush chev did not know that the so-called cook was in fact Stalin's probable half-brother and trusted NKVD officer. Sasha accom panied Stalin to most of the summit meetings of the war and it was General Egnatashvili who or ganised the Yalta conference for Stalin where he met Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Chur chill in early 1945.
Vaso Egnatashvili kept his key post in Georgia, but Beria had found a way to break Sasha's position: Stalin hated corruption all his life. While living in many villas and existing in a world of privilege, he was personally uninterested in money and highly austere in his personal arrangements. Yet General Egnatashvili presided over a huge machine of villas and farms and catering systems that produced enormous quantities of food and wine. Most of it went to waste and it seems almost certain that Stalin's chief of security General Vlasik and his senior colleague Egnatashvili were, if not selling this food, enjoying the luxuries at their disposal in wild parties, orgiastic womanising and general decadence.
At least twice, Stalin was presented with evidence of this and forgave Vlasik and Egna tashvili, but eventually Vlasik was dismissed and arrested. Sasha was never arrested. Beria wanted to destroy both brothers, but Stalin protected them. Sasha was left in charge of the Politburo sanatoria in the Crimea, where he died of natural causes in 1948.
On Stalin's death, Beria temporarily became strongman of the Soviet Union and immediately sacked and dismissed Vaso Egnatashvili, who languished in jail until Beria himself was arrested and shot three months later. He died in the Fifties. There are Egnatashvili descendants of Sasha and Vaso in Tbilisi, Moscow and the United States, all displaying the genial charm of their ancestors. Now, finally, the story of Stalin, his possible father Koba Egnatashvili, his putative half-brother the Rabbit, and their connection to President Putin can be revealed.
"Young Stalin" is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£25) | 0.103757 |
I love a good PR stunt or outlandish claim as much as the next guy. You know the type—where a company decides that the best way to tell people about a new product is to slaughter a few goats and serve fake entrails up to guests or to declare that a certain developer is going to make you his bitch. Imagine my delight, then, when AMD's Raja Koduri took to the stage during the unveiling of the RX 480 to say that, with two of them in Crossfire, they were faster than Nvidia's GTX 1080 and would cost far less. Everyone was intrigued.
Here's the thing about making bold claims involving competitor products, though: you'd better be damn sure those claims stand up under scrutiny. Sooner or later, someone will actually test it.
With the RX 480 in shops and the initial batch of press reviews near universally declaring it an excellent graphics card for the budget-minded gamer (something I agreed with too), it's time to put AMD's bold claims to the test. Are two AMD RX 480s faster than a GTX 1080?
In a word: no. In fact, they're not even faster than a GTX 1070 in many games. To be fair to AMD, though, the company only ever said that two RX 480s were faster than a GTX 1080 in one game, under specific settings. So let's start with that one.
According to a Reddit AMA with AMD's Robert Hallock, AMD ran version 1.12.19928 of the game Ashes of the Singularity under DirectX 12 at 1080p and multi-GPU enabled with crazy settings, 8X MSAA enabled, and v-sync off during its benchmark. Hallock also detailed the system specs, which included an Intel i7 5930K, 32GB of 2400Mhz DDR4 memory, and Windows 10 64-bit.
The result? According to AMD, Ashes of the Singularity ran at 62.5FPS on the AMD cards and 58.7FPS on the GTX 1080.
While I can't replicate the exact same setup as AMD during its testing—I have a newer version of the RX 480 driver, for instance—I can get pretty close. The Ars UK test system just so happens to be based on a 5930K processor with 32GB of DDR4 memory. I even have access to the same Nvidia beta driver. With that in mind, I ran the benchmarks on the GTX 1080 several times using both the old driver and the new driver, the latter to better represent the experience consumers have with the Nvidia card right now.
The result on the Ars UK rig? 55.2FPS to the dual RX 480s and 57.2 to the GTX 1080. So it's close—very close. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn't get the dual RX 480 setup close to the 62.5FPS figure that AMD quoted during its stage presentation. Weirdly with the newer Nvidia driver, its score actually goes down, this time to 54.9FPS. It effectively matches the frame rate of the RX 480.
Either way, while buying two RX 480s and running them together in a very specific setup might get you close to GTX 1080 performance, they're aren't faster.
How does dual RX 480s fare in other tests?
Widening out the dual RX 480 tests to include Crossfire in other games and benchmarks throws up some interesting results. Again, to be clear, AMD never claimed that two RX 480s would be faster than a GTX 1080 in anything other than Ashes of the Singularity, but it is interesting to see Crossfire performance nonetheless. In 3DMark, for instance, the dual 480s are five percent slower than a single GTX 1080, the gap shrinking slightly to just over two percent at 4K. In Metro Last Light, the RX 480s are 17 percent slower than a GTX 1080 at 1080p, with the gap shrinking to around five percent at 4K.
While my second RX 480 had to be sent back to the publication I borrowed it from before I could conduct more tests (thanks, guys!), the folks over at TechPowerUp also managed to pull together some Crossfire benchmarks. It found that while the RX 480 fared well in certain games, on average it was much slower than a GTX 1080 and just slightly slower than a GTX 1070. Given that the 1070 costs roughly the same as a pair of 4GB RX 480s, buying them outright isn't a particularly good idea.
Buying a single RX 480 now and adding another at a later date is an option, but running two cards is nearly always the inferior solution to a single, more powerful GPU. Not all games support Crossfire or SLI, and even those that do don't necessarily scale that well.
This was to be expected, of course. While it's nice to see higher scores in 3DMark when running more than one graphics card, the reality has always been much messier. Games have to be developed with multiple GPU support in mind, and the vast majority aren't. DX12 promised that we'd be able to play games with any combination of graphics cards, but that too has gained little traction with developers.
Ultimately, the lesson is this: always take company claims with a pinch of salt, and if you are looking to promote a product, you can't go wrong with a bit of blood and guts. If nothing else, you'll get Daily Mail readers talking. | 0.000935 |
IT’S women-only, risque, raunchy, a little R-rated, and it’s sashaying into Sydney.
Skirt Club — an exclusive, all-female sex club for bisexual and bi-curious women which began in London and now has branches in New York, Miami and Manchester launches in the Harbour City Sydney on June 29.
The first rule of Skirt Club is no men. While the idea of a play party of glamorous, curious women may be the stuff of straight male fantasy, boys are banned.
The other rules are no pictures, no pressure, and keeping confidentiality paramount.
After that, what happens at the secret club where attractive, open-minded women gather to explore their sexual curiosities with each other — is entirely up to those who attend.
And what happens is anything from straight out bonding to burlesque dancing, body shots and bondage, says Skirt Club co-director Renee Nyx.
Nyx is based in London but grew up in Sydney, and joined Skirt Club UK in late 2013 — attending the first Skirt Club founder Geneviève LeJeune held.
LeJeune had attended ‘play parties’ with her male partner, (now her ex) but felt she was doing things for his pleasure, not her own, and wanted a place of her own to experiment.
Nyx, who is bisexual, went along to see what the fuss was about.
Turns out she wasn’t the only one. Skirt Club now boasts a membership of about 5000, most of them in the UK, and in Sydney already has 50 members, largely through word of mouth.
Nyx says there is a demand for the club in Sydney — on a visit home last year it took only a few says and a series of swipes on dating app Tinder to find 35 women interested in the concept.
“There is truly not a place in Sydney at the moment that bi-curious and bisexual girls feel necessarily welcomed,” Nyx says.
“There is a very strong gay scene, and that is fantastic but there is a bit of intercommunity negativity towards this.
“Some bi-curious girls may not feel comfortable enough to go to a lesbian gathering. They might not be comfortable enough to date a gay girl, because they are thinking ‘you know what, I’m here to experiment, I don’t know what to do, I’m nervous’, so this an opportunity for women to explore in a safe environment and feel empowered.”
LeJeune was stunned by the popularity of the club when she set it up.
“Female bisexuality is nothing new, it has been common for centuries just never openly discussed,” she says.
“By spearheading a movement that gives women the freedom to choose, we have opened the door to public discussion. And it turns out women’s appreciation for one another is widely favourable.”
Skirt Club runs two levels of events — Mini Skirt — a ‘try it on for size’ post-work social event, usually in a bar, where newbies basically meet other women, and see what the concept is about.
Mini Skirt events are held every three or four weeks.
“There are no expectations at all — some women will honestly just go meet other women, they’ll connect and swap numbers perhaps for a date or a one-to-one catch-up or they might just go on their way,” says Nyx.
Others might be intrigued enough to try out the more risque side of Skirt Club: play parties, held about every six weeks, usually at private homes, which feature themed nights, guest speakers, ‘and of course, play’, Nyx says.
Again, says Nyx, there are no expectations.
But, she confesses, sexy entertainment like burlesque dancers, guest speakers (recently one party heard from a dominatrix), candles, music, fragrances, hostesses ensuring people are introduced to each other and are comfortable, cocktails and games like body shots set the scene: “It’s not just a sex club, but let’s say sex will happen ... somewhere, if that’s what a member wants.”
“We do feel in many ways that this is quite empowering,” says Nyx.
“True independence comes from owning your sexuality — and feeling free to explore it.
For first-timers the experience can be intimidating. Newbies are given a vintage key charm, tied around the wrist with a black ribbon, both as a keepsake and as a subtle way of telling others they’re new to the game.
“What we offer is an environment in which to do that which is safe and non-threatening,” Nyx says.
“And it can be a scary thing to take that leap.”
Most Skirt Club members use pseudonyms to protect their privacy (Nyx is among them). Some have male partners, some are bisexual, some ‘just don’t know, and that’s why they’re here’.
“Some women are just trying it out. Some do it to say that they’ve lived a fantasy. Everyone is different,” Nyx says.
“It’s not that they want to identify as anything particularly, they are just thinking ‘I just want to see if this works for me’, Nyx says.
Skirt Club Sydney’s launch is a mini Skirt event is on June 29. To attend, you’ll need to apply — and survive the vetting process to be accepted as a member.
Details at the Skirt Club website. | 0.659145 |
This photo provided by the Michigan House Republicans shows state Rep. Tom Barrett, third from left, standing with legislative staff, a bill supporter and a service dog as Gov. Rick Snyder signs Barrett's bill creating service dog registration on Oct. 20, 2015. (Photo: Photo provided)
LANSING – Seeing-eye dogs and other service animals can be tagged as a civil right, powdered alcohol is banned from Michigan stores, and more property and tax documents can be maintained electronically thanks to lawmakers representing Greater Lansing.
As of Monday, the start of the Legislature’s two-week deer-season-and-Thanksgiving break, the 11 Lansing-area legislators had introduced a combined 168 bills this term. Eighteen of those bills have been signed into law.
Laws recently autographed by Gov. Rick Snyder included:
Jones — who has introduced 53 bills thus far this term, more than any other Greater Lansing legislator — has two other bills awaiting Snyder’s signature: One would clarify how corrections, probation and parole officers prove eligibility to carry weapons in weapons-free zones. The other would allow longer truck-trailer combinations for trucks that haul other trucks.
Laws from Greater Lansing lawmakers signed earlier by Snyder protected military parents’ custody rights, gave local governments more control over troubled mobile home parks, and removed the term “crippled children” from Michigan statutes.
Among Greater Lansing lawmakers’ 148 still-pending bills is legislation that would prohibit the government from requiring doctors to provide patients with “information that is not medically accurate” (Hertel), prohibit the state from providing employee benefits to people who are not state workers’ spouses or dependents (Jones), and give a larger share of state roads money to local governments (state Rep. Andy Schor, D-Lansing).
Only three local lawmakers — state Reps. Tom Cochran, D-Mason, Tom Leonard, R-DeWitt Township, and Ben Glardon, R-Owosso — have had zero bills signed into law thus far this term. Those three also have introduced the fewest bills of any area legislators, with five each.
The local lawmaker with the highest rate of success this term is state Sen. Mike Nofs, R-Battle Creek, who’s introduced 10 bills and had three signed into law, for a 30% rate. He’s followed by Barrett, who’s had 27% of his 15 bills made into public acts, and Schor, who’s had about 14% of his 14 bills signed into law.
Across the Legislature, about 10% of 1,704 bills introduced this term — 1,080 in the House, 624 in the Senate — have been made into public acts. Seven bills are waiting for the governor’s pen.
Contact Justin A. Hinkley at (517) 377-1195 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.
Greater Lansing lawmakers' bills
Bills introduced Bills now law State Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr., D-Meridian Township 29 2 State Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge 53 4 State Sen. Mike Nofs, R-Battle Creek 10 3 State Rep. Andy Schor, D-Lansing 14 2 State Rep. Sam Singh, D-East Lansing 14 1 State Rep. Tom Cochran, D-Mason 5 0 State Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Potterville 15 4 State Rep. Tom Leonard, R-DeWitt Township 5 0 State Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville 11 1 State Rep. Ben Glardon, R-Owosso 5 0 State Rep. Brett Roberts, R-Eaton Township 7 1 TOTAL: 168 18 Total Legislature: 1,704 173
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/1j3fkcj | 0.755848 |
An Italian clothing company can be named for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, an Italian court ruled Thursday. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Italian brothers Vincenzo and Giacomo Barbato on Thursday won the right to use 'Steve Jobs' for the name of their clothing company, after years of legal battles with electronics giant Apple.
The court said the Italian clothier can legally carry the name of the iconic tech executive because Apple never trademarked it.
The Barbato brothers chose the name "Steve Jobs" for their company in 2012. Apple responded with a lawsuit over the Italian company's logo -- a letter 'J' with a bite taken out of it, which is similar to the California-based organization.
The brothers said the judge ruled in their favor because their logo didn't represent something edible -- and, therefore, could not be a "bite."
The European Union Intellectual Property Office registered the name for the designers' company in 2014, and the duo only recently registered the name internationally.
The brothers already make jeans with "Steve Jobs" on the label and say they wouldn't mind expanding into the tech world, adding that the brand was "born absolutely for electronics."
Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, left the company in 1985 to work on other ventures and returned in 1997. He died of cancer in 2011. | 0.014813 |
Much of the contemporary discourse on urban design is rooted in acclaimed architectural theorist Oscar Newman’s influential 1973 book, Defensible Space. Newman believed that criminal and generally irresponsible behavior was facilitated by (typically modernist) “anonymous public spaces”—large disassociated corridors where it was impossible to tell residents from intruders. He advocated, instead, for buildings that would give residents a feeling of ownership and control. Whether or not one takes strangers as intruders or acclaimed activist Jane Jacobs’s watchful “eyes on the street,” these strategies have slowly fought their way into urban planning and policy.
Although problems of concentrated social disadvantage are more complex than any theory of space can account for, many policy makers, city councils and urban management have distilled Newman’s words into one idea: that certain activities can be ”designed out” of public (and private) spaces. And so can certain people.
This approach has developed to the extent that today we have whole industries focusing solely on products that keep out unwanted behavior, activities, and people. From the perspective of property owners and city administration, it might seem convenient to outsource caretaking of the space to architecture itself, a trend that requires no additional costs and no supervision: designers prevent unwelcome uses of areas and features with specifically-engineered shapes, materials, or other features.
Nils Norman Spikes similar to the ones seen outside some British department stores make loitering of any kind uncomfortable.
Take the famous anti-loitering Mosquito device, which emits an annoying sound only younger ears are able to hear, or the numerous anti-pigeon deterrents (see also our case study of anti-pigeon design). Probably the most infamous recent example has been the use of so-called anti-homeless spikes outside supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Although spokesmen for the British market chain Selfridges have claimed the spikes were meant to reduce litter, the forbidding studs have clear implications for anyone looking to sleep beneath the store’s protective ledges.
It hasn’t always been this way. In the 1980s, New York’s city council was advised by William H. Whyte, author of classic architectural tome The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, on how to create inclusive and pleasant “spaces that work.” Whyte’s guidelines were in turn used to create incentives: developers who provided publicly accessible space were rewarded with more floor space or higher building permits. Whyte saw no problem in having a homeless person share the space with an office worker—to the contrary, he advocated diversity of urban experience and occupancy.
Nils Norman Besides being an eye-sore, these wrought iron additions serve no purpose other than to make a potentially pleasant space in New York City distinctly unpleasant.
More than a decade into the war on terror, however, this goodwill has mostly disappeared.
We feel increasingly threatened by the “other,” a fear that has influenced even seemingly innocuous public objects like public dustbins. The need to defend our cities from the homeless, the poor, the “antisocial” youth, the feral animals, etc. has escalated as well.
Skaters are growing more and more unwelcome everywhere outside skateparks, while storefronts are featuring dubious installations that prohibit sitting or sleeping. In at least one British mall, hoodies have been banned because they interfere with automated surveillance systems. In short, contemporary urban space is becoming micro-zoned for singular use-scenarios only.
A great example of this singularity of purpose is the London-designed Camden bench, which claims to incorporate 28 different contemporary street seating needs—most of which actively resist any behavior not related to sitting. Created in the name of “inclusive design,” these benches are supposed to encourage social interaction. Yet as a result, skating, hanging out (loitering), littering and of course sleeping is made impossible. Who, or what, benefits from this “inclusive” design?
Nils Norman This Camden bench in London has been designed to prevent multiple activities: a sloping edge makes sleeping or reclining on it uncomfortable, angles stop litter accumulating, and it has a fluctuating edge to prevent skateboarders.
Vulnerable homeless communities seem to be most at risk. While the latest anti-homeless installation in Selfridges, Manchester, caused widespread outrage, it is only one of many examples of such installations around the world. In June 2014, anti-homeless studs were installed in a London apartment block in Southwark Bridge Road. These were removed six days later by the developer following pressure from London’s mayor Boris Johnson among others. Around the same time, spikes were also removed from a Tesco storefront.
What is interesting here is the shifting idea of what is “acceptable.” Anti-homeless spikes have been used for quite some time, as documented by numerous city activists like Survival Group’s Anti-Sites. But nobody objected until pictures of the installations went viral on social media, prompting mainstream media outlets like the Guardian article to pay attention.
This is the brilliance of good defensive architectural design—it’s easy to miss unless you are part of the community being targeted.
Nils Norman Unobtrusive but effective anti-skating features in Bristol, England.
The mainstream media is ultimately not catering to the types of vulnerable populations defensive mechanisms most often focus on. Still, the good news is that more and more people seem unwilling to allow these populations to be punished and marginalized by the sidewalks and benches that make up their cities.
Ultimately, unpleasant design or defensive architecture doesn’t defend us from real threats: a systematic decay of privacy and anonymity in public interactions; overall surveillance and tracking; misuse of meta-data and other types of private information; structural threats to civil liberties through coupling of private interests and weak public institutions. These are the real threats to our society today.
As evidenced by the anti-homeless spikes backlash, people can affect change if they are willing and able to harness their collective power. So far, such attention has been both short-lived, and uninformed by historical and sociological precedent. This is why it is necessary to foster an educated approach to urban design, noting these examples and learning from them. “What attracts people is other people,” Whyte wrote. The least we as architects can do is to try to design pleasant spaces for people to share.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers. | 0.995118 |
-- If the trailer is any indicator, this could become a cult classic; at least in Asia. Love the kung fu chops.
China's box office sales for 2012 hit a record 16.8 billion yuan, or around $2.7 billion. That's paltry for a nation of 1.7 billion, but considering the industry is only now starting to modernize, the future holds promise for entertainment in this up-n-coming middle class society.
In 2008, box office sales in China were a mere 4.8 billion yuan. The number jumped to more than 10 billion yuan in 2010 after witnessing a decline to 6 billion in 2009. In 2011, domestic and foreign movies took in over 13.1 billion yuan.
The bulk of the movie cash cow comes from Hollywood films, however.
A total of 303 movies were shown in Chinese theaters in 2012. The number of domestic movies accounted for three quarters of the total. They earned 8 billion, or 47.6 percent of the box office, according to a report by the Chongqing Economic Times. Only three Chinese movies, "Lost in Thailand", "Painted Skin: The Resurrection" and Jackie Chan's "Chinese Zodiac 12", made into the list of the top ten highest-grossing movies in the year. The rest were all American flicks.
James Cameron's "Titanic" in 3D took in 935 million yuan in China and was the year's highest-grossing foreign film. "Lost in Thailand" was number one overall.
See: Lost In Thailand Tops Titanic 3D In China -- The Los Angeles Times | 0.11315 |
As NASA's Mars rover Curiosity prepares to use its rock-boring drill for the first time, engineers are troubleshooting an issue with the power tool that may affect the entire mission.
Curiosity's fast-spinning percussive drill should make it through the originally planned two-year prime mission, team members say. But at some point a bond in the drilling mechanism will fail, causing an electrical short that could threaten to knock out the entire rover.
"Unless you do something about it, all hell breaks loose electronically, because it takes our power bus and rattles it around," Curiosity chief engineer Rob Manning, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told SPACE.com in a video interview. "It's almost like the drill grabs the rover and shakes the whole thing electronically."
By the time the Curiosity team noticed the issue, it was too late in the planning of the mission to rework the drill and correct it, Manning said. But engineers were able to install a potential safety net just a month or two before the rover blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in November 2011. [Video: Curiosity's Drill Will Break]
They bolted in an additional set of wires that could be used to keep Curiosity's power bus safe, by shorting it temporarily in advance of any big drill problems.
"So if this short happens on the spacecraft, it doesn't rattle around everybody," Manning said. "We've been testing all that — to see what's going on, to make sure it all works properly."
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater on Aug. 5, kicking off a mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life. The percussive drill is a key part of this quest, allowing the six-wheeled robot to bore 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) into Martian rocks — deeper than any rover has been able to go before.
Curiosity has not used its drill on the Red Planet yet, but that should change soon. The mission team is currently looking for rocks that would make a suitable target for its first drilling operation, which scientists hope to complete before the Christmas holidays.
While the drill should last at least two years on Mars, Curiosity may be able to keep chugging around the Red Planet for far longer than that. The car-size rover's nuclear power source, for example, should be good for at least a decade, and perhaps much longer.
And NASA will keep funding Curiosity as long as possible. Last week, the agency announced that it would continue to operate Curiosity and its other Mars spacecraft as long as they're scientifically viable.
Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. | 0.270553 |
Kelly Murphy uploaded a video of a bear chasing her in Hakuba, Japan. She apparently didn't notice the bear until after filming the video. Kelly Murphy/YouTube Waking up Monday morning you may have seen the video that appears to show a snowboarder accidentally capturing footage of herself being chased by a bear.
Amidst all the shock and awe, quite an argument has developed over the video's authenticity.
Upon request for comment, Kelly Murphy insisted that the footage was genuine, telling The Independent:
"Yes the video is real! I didn't know anything was happening at the time but it's so scary to watch it back now! I think I'll stick to the runs with my friends from now on lol."
For those still doubtful, below are some reason viewers are suspicious:
The bear does seem to be consistently the same distance behind the snowboarder while in shot. It is then hidden before each time it changes position, whether exiting the frame or being covered by the boarder's helmet.
The speed at which the snowboarder is first travelling doesn't appear to be very fast, perhaps even one that a bear could surpass to catch up with her.
The video itself does appear to be a rather short and uneventful episode of snowboarding to film (excluding the bear's presence of course), although analysing the minds of Go Pro users isn't in our immediate interest.
One of the video's more jarring aspects is the sound. Of course the boarder is clearly mid-Rhianna sing-along with some expectedly stylish headphones and a fair wind is blowing. However, that bear is roaring loudly, frequently and as soon as it appears on camera.
Ms Murphy's YouTube channel boasts a couple of related, although bearless, videos of her boarding in similar clothing and surroundings to support the idea of a solo snowboarding holiday accompanied by Go Pro.
Her first videos were posted five days ago while the 'chase' appeared this morning. A long holiday, myriad footage to sift through or an extended editing process could be among the countless reasons for such a gap. | 0.061271 |
Zionist Union MK Tzipi Livni on Tuesday said she views Donald Trump’s presidency as an “opportunity” for Israel, as it will force the Israeli government to formulate its policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians rather than painting Washington as the “bad cop” forcing its hand.
Speaking at the annual INSS conference, the former justice and foreign minister, who served in the high-level security cabinet during the 2014 Gaza war, also said Israel has no coherent policy in the Strip, and called for the release of a damning state comptroller report on the 50-day conflict.
“I’m going to surprise you, because I also see an opportunity, even a big opportunity” with Trump in office, she said.
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Livni’s comments came a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump for ushering in a “change of approach” in the White House after eight years of “enormous pressure” from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Netanyahu and Trump spoke on the phone on Sunday evening, and the two are set to meet in Washington early next month, though a final date has yet to be set.
With Trump seemingly giving Israel more leeway, the Netanyahu government will have to lay down its positions, said Livni.
“If Israel can really do whatever it wants — it’s time that Israel decide what it wants,” she said.
The government will no longer be able to portray the White House as the “bad cop” coercing decisions opposed by its right-wing base, said Livni. “There is no one left in the government or in Washington to blame.”
The former peace negotiator also urged Netanyahu to drum up support in the Trump administration in Washington next month for the “important strategic” issues that would arise during peace talks, such as retaining the settlement blocs and blocking the Palestinian right of return.
Also during her speech, which came as a Knesset state control subcommittee was set to debate whether to release the full report on the Gaza war, Livni said she supported a full declassification, as the public had the right to know of the government’s failures.
“The problem with Operation Protective Edge was larger than the tunnels,” she said, referring to the cross-border passages used by Hamas fighters during the war to attack IDF soldiers, which were reportedly a major focus of the report. “Israel has no policy vis-a-vis Gaza and the IDF is desperate for one.”
The army came to the security cabinet during the war and demanded the government lay out a broader strategy on Gaza, she said. But “we are working with micro-tactics, extinguishing fires one after the other.”
The revised draft of State Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s report intensifies its criticism of Netanyahu and then-former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon while toning down its disapproval of the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces, according to leaks to Israeli media.
Shapira’s report found that despite Netanyahu’s claims to the contrary, the prime minister and Ya’alon did not properly inform the high-level security cabinet of the extent of the tunnel threat, Channel 2 reported in November. The cabinet was only notified of the dangers one week before the start of the war, after then-economy minister Naftali Bennett presented the ministers with the information and offered possible solutions to disarm the underground network, the report said, according to Channel 2.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that cabinet members were not apprised of the threats, but two of his chief political rivals, Bennett and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, both of whom were cabinet members during the war, have repeatedly claimed the forum was not properly updated on the issues.
Bennet, Lapid, and Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog on Monday called on the government to release the report. | 0.010509 |
Microsoft's invasion of Android phones just took a new turn. Up until now, the company has strong-armed device makers into pre-installing Microsoft apps on Android phones. With the Samsung Galaxy S8, however, Microsoft is selling its own version of the phone called the Samsung Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition. (There’s also a Galaxy S8+ edition.)
The specialized phone comes with “Microsoft customization” that is applied when it's unboxed and connected to Wi-Fi. Microsoft says the customization adds a “best-in-class productivity experience with Microsoft applications such as Office, OneDrive, Cortana, Outlook” and so on.
It sounds like these phones are just generic Galaxy S8 devices with a special script built-in that automatically downloads Microsoft’s various Android apps when you set it up. It’s not clear if Microsoft also downloads its Next Lock Screen as part of the experience.
The Microsoft Edition phones are available for pre-order now and start shipping on April 21. You can’t order them online, however. They're only available from Microsoft retail stores in the U.S. That suggests this is a trial program to gauge public interest in a Microsoft-centric Android phone. It’s not known if Microsoft has ambitions beyond that.
The story behind the story: The Galaxy S8 Microsoft Edition is an interesting turn of events for the company’s approach to Android. Samsung and Microsoft first signed a cross-license patent agreement in 2011 that resulted in Samsung paying licensing fees to Microsoft. A dispute over payments in 2015 changed that deal and although the terms of the new deal weren’t publicized, Samsung began pre-loading Microsoft apps on its phones and tablets soon after.
The deal with Samsung may have expired, forcing Microsoft to take a different approach. That’s just speculation, but the reality should become clearer if more Microsoft Edition Samsung phones show up in the coming years. | 0.165353 |
Grimm used in a tutorial at DEF CON 23's Car Hacking Village at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas. "/>
Imagine it’s 1995, and you’re about to put your company’s office on the Internet. Your security has been solid in the past—you’ve banned people from bringing floppies to work with games, you’ve installed virus scanners, and you run file server backups every night. So, you set up the Internet router and give everyone TCP/IP addresses. It’s not like you’re NASA or the Pentagon or something, so what could go wrong?
That, in essence, is the security posture of many modern automobiles—a network of sensors and controllers that have been tuned to perform flawlessly under normal use, with little more than a firewall (or in some cases, not even that) protecting it from attack once connected to the big, bad Internet world. This month at three separate security conferences, five sets of researchers presented proof-of-concept attacks on vehicles from multiple manufacturers plus an add-on device that spies on drivers for insurance companies, taking advantage of always-on cellular connectivity and other wireless vehicle communications to defeat security measures, gain access to vehicles, and—in three cases—gain access to the car’s internal network in a way that could take remote control of the vehicle in frightening ways.
While the automakers and telematics vendors with targeted products were largely receptive to this work—in most cases, they deployed fixes immediately that patched the attack paths found—not everything is happy in auto land. Not all of the vehicles that might be vulnerable (including vehicles equipped with the Mobile Devices telematics dongle) can be patched easily. Fiat Chrysler suffered a dramatic stock price drop when video of a Jeep Cherokee exploit (and information that the bug could affect more than a million vehicles) triggered a large-scale recall of Jeep and Dodge vehicles.
And all this has played out as the auto industry as a whole struggles to understand security researchers and their approach to disclosure—some automakers feel like they’re the victim of a hit-and-run. The industry's insular culture and traditional approach to safety have kept most from collaborating with outside researchers, and their default response to disclosures of security threats has been to make it harder for researchers to work with them. In some cases, car companies have even sued researchers to shut them up.
Sticker shock
By contrast, Tesla has embraced a coordinated disclosure policy. The company recently announced a vehicle security bug bounty program that offers $10,000 for reproducible security vulnerabilities. Tesla even participated in the presentation of vulnerabilities discovered by outside researchers in the Tesla S' systems at DEF CON. The company's chief technology officer, JB Straubel, appeared on stage with the researchers who performed the penetration test of the Tesla S—Marc Rogers of Cloudflare and Lookout Security CTO and co-founder Kevin Mahaffey—in order to present them with Tesla "challenge coins" for their work.
But no one from Fiat Chrysler was anywhere near the stage when Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek presented their findings on Uconnect. And it might be a while before any other carmaker makes a move to embrace the security community in the wake of the Chrysler recall.
It's not like Miller and Valasek caught Fiat Chrysler by surprise. Miller told Ars that he worked with Fiat-Chrysler throughout his many months of research, advising them of what he and Valasek found. The company had already issued a patch to fix the problems, but it was only a voluntary update to be performed using USB. Sprint moved to block remote access to the network connection on Chrysler vehicles that Miller and Valasek's attack exploited just before the pair revealed their research at Black Hat.
Sean Gallagher
Sean Gallagher
Sean Gallagher
Still, it wasn't until after Wired published video of reporter Andy Greenberg in the driver's seat on an interstate highway reacting to the vehicle's throttle being remotely taken over that Chrysler issued a recall on over a million affected vehicles. Miller said that the demonstration for Wired was completely safe. "It wasn't nearly as bad as the Wired video made it look," he said, explaining that what he and Valasek had done to Greenberg was the same as would happen to any driver during a typical breakdown. Greenberg still had control of the wheel and limited acceleration, according to Miller, and the reporter would have been able to maneuver to a shoulder. But even if things looked a tad over dramatic, Miller felt that the highway demonstration was needed to make the problem real to the American public and to Chrysler. After all, other researchers funded by DARPA—the same program that had funded previous research by Miller and Valasek— demonstrated the same sort of attack for 60 Minutes only a few months earlier with reporter Leslie Stahl driving on a closed course in a parking lot. That time, however, the brand of the car was concealed, and the test took place on a closed circuit. "People couldn't relate it to real life," Miller said.
Beyond awareness, the video of the researchers shouting "You're doomed!" to Greenberg as they took remote control may have other consequences. At least two automakers that planned to announce new initiatives to cooperate with security researchers during the DEF CON 23 pulled back in the wake of the Uconnect disclosure, according to Joshua Corman, one of the founders of I Am The Cavalry. This grassroots organization focuses on cybersecurity and public safety issues by lobbying automakers to adopt better software security practices. According to Corman, the news coverage triggered intervention by company attorneys who saw the Wired video as a "reckless stunt."
"Right now people are cheering [Miller and Valasek] as heroes," Corman told Ars. "But what they don't see are the hidden costs that have been paid. Right now it could just set us back for a little while, or it could set us back permanently."
No one at Ford, GM, and Chrysler would talk with Ars about their strategy for uncovering potential security issues in software that could be used for "cyber-physical" attacks—hacks that could have an impact in the physical world by interfering with the operation of cars. Ford would only provide the following statement:
Ford takes cyber security very seriously. We invest in security solutions that are built into the product from the outset. We are not aware of any instance in which a Ford vehicle was infiltrated or compromised in the field. Our cyber security team routinely monitors, investigates, resolves concerns, and works to mitigate threats. Our communications and entertainment systems feature a different architecture than what was hacked, but we are interested in learning more about the Chrysler Uconnect, GM Onstar, and Tesla issues and whether there are additional enhancements we can make in our vehicles. Our security team has developed hardware and software safeguards as well as specific processes to help mitigate remote access risks in all our vehicles, whether they feature embedded cellular connections or not.
For his part, Miller said he's done with car hacking for now. He achieved his goals, but there are plenty of other security researchers in line to try to help the industry. Corman believes automakers need to work with them because the number of potential security bugs is only going to grow as vehicles continue to add software-based functionality and connectivity to the Internet.
Listing image by Sean Gallagher | 0.982519 |
Familiarity breeds contempt in the NBA playoffs. When two teams play each other for a potential seven straight games with their seasons on the line, they grow to know each other inside and out. That goes double for the players themselves. One-on-one matchups aren’t quite as important as they were in the ’90s or in the early 2000s, when everyone played isolation basketball, but even in the pace-and-space era, the game still eventually breaks down to one player trying to score on the other. If enough of the players on your team outplay their counterparts, your team is going to win the series. It’s basketball at its most basic.
There’s nowhere to hide in a playoff series. If a player cannot guard his position, his coach has to scramble defensive assignments, which puts everyone else on the team at a disadvantage. When people talk about one team posing “matchup problems” for another, they generally mean that there are no weak links in the lineup for the opponent to hide a poor defender on. One reason that the Warriors have historically been so tough in the playoffs is that opposing point guards who don’t guard Steph Curry end up being an even bigger liability when they are guarding Klay Thompson or Harrison Barnes (and now Kevin Durant). If you go back to 2013, before they were a historically great juggernaut, they pulled off the upset of the Nuggets in the first round in large part because there was no one the 5-foot-11 Ty Lawson was capable of guarding.
The beauty of the NBA playoffs is that any weakness a team possesses will be exposed. This isn’t like the NCAA tournament, where one hot shooting night or an overeager set of officials can help a team cover up its flaws. Winning an NBA championship means winning four consecutive seven-game series against the best teams in the NBA, who are often built around radically different types of players. Everyone in your rotation is going to be tested at some point. Basketball is not an individual sport like tennis or boxing, but individuals can still have a much bigger impact on the outcome of a game than in baseball or football. There’s a fascinating game within a game that occurs in the playoffs, even if the outcome of the larger game is never really in doubt. With that in mind, here are the five best individual matchups to watch in the first round:
LeBron James vs. Paul George
The main event. The last time these two faced each other, on April 2, LeBron had 41 points, 14 rebounds, and 11 assists, while George had 43 points, nine rebounds, and nine assists. The Cavs won 135–130 in 2OT, but all anyone could talk about after was the epic one-on-one duel between the two stars, à la Larry Bird vs. Dominique Wilkins in the 1988 playoffs. LeBron had the edge in size, while George had the edge in quickness, and they went back and forth for a full 48 minutes. Just look at the plays these two were making against each other. This is as good as it gets:
The way the Cavs and Pacers are built means LeBron and George have no choice but to guard each other. Kyrie Irving, J.R. Smith, and Kevin Love have no chance against George, while Jeff Teague, Monta Ellis, and Thaddeus Young are similarly hopeless against LeBron. Iman Shumpert and Richard Jefferson will come off the bench and get their cracks against George, and Lance Stephenson (thank the basketball gods) and C.J. Miles will do the same with LeBron, but each team’s respective star is just too skilled for a smaller defender to hang with them for long. Foul trouble will be huge in this series — LeBron had four in that last game, while George had five — as will the substitution patterns. How much of the game will LeBron play without George on the floor, and vice versa?
In last season’s playoffs, George nearly single-handedly knocked out a 56-win team in the first round. He averaged 27.3 points (on 45.5 percent shooting), 7.6 rebounds, and 4.3 assists against the Raptors, taking his game to a completely different level than in the regular season. George has gotten the better of LeBron at points in their three playoff matchups when James was in Miami, but he has never been able to get past him in a series. While the Pacers almost certainly aren’t good enough to knock off the Cavs, George can make a statement about his place in the NBA hierarchy with a strong showing against LeBron. Barring an unlikely playoff run by Giannis Antetokounmpo or Jimmy Butler, George is the best wing LeBron will face until a possible Finals series against Kevin Durant. That alone should get his competitive juices flowing. There’s no more rationing energy or saving himself. The best player in the world is squaring off against a legitimate challenger to the throne.
Steph Curry vs. Damian Lillard
This matchup isn’t quite as exciting as George vs. LeBron since Steph has rarely guarded Lillard in the past (and both are far better at offense than defense), but the stretches in this series where they trade off-the-dribble 3s will be worth the price of admission. Klay Thompson, as he does in a lot of games against elite point guards, usually starts on Lillard. Curry still has to guard C.J. McCollum, so he isn’t getting much of a breather on defense. However, Steph won’t be asked to do as much on both ends as Dame, who has to initiate most of the offense for the Blazers and try to stay in front of Curry and chase him through screens. Defense has been the biggest hole in Lillard’s game since he came into the league, and he’s going to have to improve at that end of the floor for the Blazers to take the next step as a franchise.
Related How Klay Thompson Became More Valuable Than Ever
Steph missed the first three games of the second-round series between these two teams last season while recovering from a knee injury, but he showed no ill effects upon his return, averaging 34.5 points on 50 percent shooting, seven rebounds, and 9.5 assists a game to close out Portland in Games 4 and 5. Lillard scored a bunch of points in the series (averaging 31.8 points on 36.2 percent shooting, 4.4 rebounds, and 7.6 assists a game), but he had to work to get them against the Warriors’ stifling perimeter defense and the waves of long and athletic players they threw at him. It was the least efficient series of his playoff career, and he will have to play much better for the Blazers to even match their one win against the Warriors from last season.
With Jusuf Nurkic’s health up in the air, it’s unlikely that any of the games at Oracle will be very competitive. However, when the series returns to Moda Center, the always-intense Portland crowd should at least be able to keep things interesting. And if the game is close late, Dame has shown the ability to steal it with clutch shot-making. An Oakland native who always gets up for games against his childhood team, Lillard will do everything in his power to stir up some magic. It won’t be enough, but it should be fun to watch.
Rudy Gobert vs. DeAndre Jordan
A matchup between two of the best centers in the league looks a lot different in 2017 than it would have in the 1990s. According to the tracking numbers at Synergy Sports, Jordan gets only 10.6 percent of his offense out of the post, while Gobert checks in at 4.2 percent. They are both primarily used as screeners and roll men in the half court, and they probably won’t spend too much time facing each other one-on-one. The individual battle between them will primarily come on the offensive boards: Jordan has 20 pounds on Gobert, but Gobert has a 3-inch advantage in reach. Jordan had the advantage on the boards in those four games, but not by much.
Gobert will have more pressure on offense than Jordan, since he’s not playing with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin. The Jazz aren’t nearly as explosive as the Clippers, and L.A. has an elite defender it can throw on Gordon Hayward (Luc Mbah a Moute) and George Hill (Chris Paul). Gobert has made tremendous strides offensively this season, and it will be interesting to see if he can carry some of the burden and potentially get Jordan in foul trouble. The Clippers’ backup centers aren’t nearly as good as the bigs on the Jazz bench are, and Gobert could feast on Marreese Speights and Griffin when he plays at the 5. He can short-roll on his way to the rim and make plays at the free throw line, and he’s developing some moves around the basket. Jordan probably isn’t going to get much better on offense, but Gobert, who’s only 24, has a chance to develop into a shot creator.
Related The Utah Jazz Are the Most Interesting Team in the First Round
The last time Jordan faced an elite center in the playoffs, Dwight Howard got the better of him. While everyone focuses on the insane comeback the Rockets made in Game 6 of their second-round series with the Clippers in 2015, not enough is said about the way Howard dominated his younger counterpart in the game. Howard had 20 points and 21 rebounds in that game, compared with only eight points and nine rebounds for DeAndre. Gobert isn’t nearly as physical as Howard, but he’s much more skilled, and Utah’s best chance in this series is for him to similarly dominate the individual matchup upfront.
Russell Westbrook vs. Patrick Beverley
If Beverley doesn’t dive toward Westbrook for a steal in Game 2 of the Rockets’ first-round series with the Thunder back in 2013, and Westbrook doesn’t tear his meniscus, the course of NBA history might have changed. Even if there weren’t any history with these two, the playoff matchup between two of the most intense players in the league will be a bloodbath. Westbrook doesn’t change his game for anyone, and neither does Beverley. The only way the Thunder beat the Rockets is if Westbrook continues, if not improves on, what he did in the regular season. Beverley will draw the unenviable assignment of slowing him down.
In the three games that Beverley played against Oklahoma City this season, Westbrook averaged 38.3 points (on 41.2 percent shooting), 9.7 rebounds, and eight assists. Guarding Westbrook is a team effort, and he’s just too good and the ball is in his hand too much for him not to put up ridiculous numbers. The best a defender can do is try to impact Westbrook’s efficiency by making him work for his points. That’s one of the strengths of Beverley’s game: He plays like a guy from inner-city Chicago who started his career in Europe and had to earn his way into the NBA because he is that guy. He has already gotten the better of Westbrook once this season, when he forced Russ into an air ball with five seconds left in the game and the Rockets up three:
Defending Westbrook takes its toll on a body, and it’s clear when his defender switches to offense. Russ wasn’t exactly locked in defensively this season, but the guy who guards him is often so worn out it doesn’t matter. Beverley averaged 4.7 points on 25 percent shooting in his three games against the Thunder, and the Rockets will need more from him on offense in this series, if only to make Westbrook expend some energy on defense. What Mike D’Antoni will have to decide is how much he alters his rotation pattern so that Beverley’s minutes match Westbrook’s, and how much he throws his hands up and goes all-offense by playing Eric Gordon and Lou Williams with Harden. Oklahoma City doesn’t have a lot of other options on the perimeter, so D’Antoni could slide Trevor Ariza on Westbrook and hide one of his scorers on Andre Roberson in those lineups.
Jimmy [Butler] vs. World
Everything probably isn’t going to be just fine for the Bulls, who snuck into the playoffs as the no. 8 seed with a 41–41 record and a point differential (plus-0.4) barely above zero. But don’t write them off just yet. If they are going to upset the Celtics, it’s going to be on the back of Butler, who has had a great season amid the chaos in Chicago, averaging 23.9 points (on 45.5 percent shooting), 6.2 rebounds, 5.5 assists, and 1.9 steals a game. He’s probably going to have to bulldoze his way through double teams in this series and hope someone in supporting cast will knock down some open 3s.
The player who will get the first crack at Butler is Jae Crowder, who can’t be too happy about all the rumors linking Butler to the Celtics, a move that would send him back to the bench. The two share an origin story (junior-college product who starred for Buzz Williams at Marquette and then slipped in the draft) as well as a hard-nosed style of basketball, although Butler is the bigger, more athletic, and more skilled player. Avery Bradley and rookie Jaylen Brown will probably spend some time on Butler as well, but the real fireworks could spark when Marcus Smart gets his turn: He’s one of the best defenders in the NBA and his willingness to get physical and then fall to the ground at the slightest amount of contact has gotten under the skin of a lot of players.
Butler averaged 20.3 points (on 36.2 percent shooting), 6.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists in four games against the Celtics this season, although his numbers are held down by a miserable five-point performance in a 100–80 loss to the Celtics in March. He can match up with anyone on the Celtics roster, so Fred Hoiberg might want to play him at small-ball power forward in order to place more shooters on the floor and open up the offense. Butler is arguably the best player in this series, and the team with the biggest star always has a chance, no matter what the seedings say. The shame of the whole thing is that Butler trying to win with the Celtics would have been a lot more interesting than him trying to beat them nearly single-handedly. | 0.439703 |
Hillary Clinton. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Eight years ago Tuesday, Hillary Clinton formally conceded the Democratic primary fight to Barack Obama. Tuesday she emerges as the party's presumptive nominee with the conclusion of the primary process in California, New Jersey and four other states.
What changed in those intervening eight years that turned Clinton from loser to winner? I put that question to more than a dozen top Democratic strategists. Their responses are below.
Before we get to it, it's important to note that Clinton didn't run a flawless campaign and isn't even close to a flawless candidate. Her race against Bernie Sanders was far closer than anyone — including Clinton and her team — expected. And she badly mishandled the controversy caused by her decision to exclusively use a private email server while serving as secretary of state.
And yet, she won. Let's look at how.
1. The 2008 race changed how Democrats perceived her
In her first run for president, Clinton struggled to get out of the large shadow cast by her husband, a.k.a the 42nd president of the United States. Clinton's willingness to accept her loss to Obama in 2008 with aplomb, coupled with her service as the nation's top diplomat, imbued Clinton with a gravitas and respect that wasn't as present in her 2008 campaign. Because of that, she started at a higher elevation — and with a deeper reservoir of goodwill among Democratic primary voters — than she ever had eight years ago.
2. No drama
In 2008, the Clinton campaign felt like the most dysfunctional of families. She jettisoned her original campaign manager as well as much of her inner circle halfway through the race. Once it became clear she wasn't going to win — and it became clear long before she ended her campaign on June 7, 2008 — her aides fought viciously behind the scenes to blame each other for what went wrong. Bill Clinton was a permanent distraction, regularly veering far off message in his attacks on then-candidate Obama. All of that stood in stark contrast with Obama's campaign, which prided itself on its lack of drama.
Clinton learned her lesson from that race. She brought in a (mostly) new team for the 2016 race led by low-profile operative Robby Mook, a nerdy, self-effacing numbers geek who promised a campaign built on organization and efficiency. Clinton stuck with Mook even after she lost New Hampshire by 20-plus points to Sanders amid considerable chatter that a change was needed.
"There was less a projection of entitlement, less campaign drama, less petulance during hard times, less unfortunate focus on the former president," said Jim Jordan, a veteran Democratic operative of Clinton's 2016 effort.
3. Bernie Sanders ≠ Barack Obama
Clinton won this nomination before any votes were cast. She cast herself as such a prohibitive favorite that she scared away the likes of Vice President Biden or any other top-tier candidate who could have been a real problem. What was left was Sanders, a 74-year-old Democratic Socialist from Vermont. While Sanders drastically overperformed — a sign of Clinton's inherent weaknesses — he was never able to re-create the three legs of the Obama electoral stool: Affluent, highly educated whites, young people and minority voters. Sanders got the first two but was beaten incredibly badly by Clinton among blacks and Latinos — making his path to the nomination impossible.
To Clinton's credit, she saw that without minority votes, Sanders's math wouldn't add up. And she and her team executed brilliantly to ensure that she monopolized that vote. "The coalition she smartly built early focused on African Americans and Hispanics," said Patti Solis Doyle, who was Clinton's first campaign manager in 2008.
4. Donald Trump
As the primary process wore on, it became clearer and clearer that Trump — against most odds — would be the Republican nominee. That development helped Clinton drive a contrast with Trump that worked in her favor in the primary. Clinton seized on that comparison in the race's dying days; her speech slamming Trump on foreign policy was evidence of a belief that talking more about her experience in contrast to his was a winner in the primary.
"I think having Donald Trump as the main foil was helpful because it helped accentuate (with Democrats) the strength of her candidacy — the 'ready to be president on Day One' credential," said Democratic pollster Fred Yang. "I think especially in the last week or so, as she got closer to the nomination, she stepped up her explicit contrast with Trump, and I think that helped."
5. The calendar
In 2008, Clinton lost the race not in January but in February when a series of heavily Republican states held caucuses in which Obama swamped her. It was in February when Obama built the delegate lead he would never relinquish.
There was no such run of states this time around. While the earliest part of the calendar favored Sanders with a caucus in Iowa (one consistent thing from 2008 to 2016: Clinton never performed well in caucuses) and a primary in New Hampshire, much of February, March and even April worked to Clinton's advantage with a slew of southern states with large black populations dotting the electoral landscape. Sanders, on the other hand, had to hold out until, well, now, when a series of states, such as South Dakota and Montana — as well as California — voted.
As a sidebar to the calendar conversation: Mook and the rest of Clinton's inner circle understood the delegate allocation process far better this time around than did the 2008 team. Clinton won the nomination in 2016 in the same way she lost it in 2008 — through the grinding accumulation of delegates to the point at which the math became determinative.
"In 2008 they didn’t understand the delegate fight anywhere near the way that the Obama team did," said one senior Democratic consultant granted anonymity to speak candidly. "This time Robby and team knew exactly what they needed to do to get the delegates they needed." | 0.016123 |
The Premier League is considering introducing a play-off system to determine the fourth club to qualify for the following season's European Champions League.
Currently the club which finishes fourth goes through but the new proposal would mean a play-off between the clubs finishing fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. The intention is to inject more competition into a league in which qualification has for years remained in the hands of the same four clubs.
Premier League sources have confirmed that the play-off proposal was presented at the most recent meeting of all clubs, on 4 February, and the league's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, was authorised to return with further details in April.
It is understood that the idea was enthusiastically supported by all clubs – except the so-called big four of Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Scudamore, and the league's secretary, Mike Foster, will examine the practicalities of how a play-off system could work: whether it should take the form of a home-and-away knockout system, similar to that in the Football League, or incorporate seeding. They will also look into when matches could be fitted into a crowded fixture calendar before making recommendations.
The idea was presented as part of the Premier League's strategic review of its format and operations and springs from two particular motivations. The first is to crack the problem of England's top league becoming less open and competitive, with the richest clubs, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, having strengthened their hold on the top four places over several years. One league source said it was an odd twist that the idea has been raised now, in a season when Liverpool's claim to the fourth place is being seriously challenged.
The response among clubs outside the top four is understood to have been positive, with some believing that a play-off system would create more competitive matches and give more clubs a prize to challenge for. Most clubs now feel they have no chance of attaining fourth place but almost the whole Premier League could be brought into a competition to finish seventh and make it to the play-offs. The medium-sized clubs, which increasingly aspire to break the cartel, are said to have been enthusiastic, seeing play-offs as a great opportunity.
The big four, who have been qualifying on merit at the end of each season and reaping the footballing and financial rewards of Champions League participation are understood to have been less keen. Self-interest is clearly a factor, with those clubs concerned about protecting their own advantages. However, there is also a feeling that the league should be more sophisticated about addressing its major challenges, particularly the financial ones, rather than incorpor-ating an awkward play-off system for a prize as ostensibly moderate as fourth place.
The other motivation for the play-offs is a waning of the proposal for an international round of matches, dubbed "Game 39", which was widely criticised for lacking coherence and being territorially expansionist. The play-offs would mean extra matches, which would be sold to pay-television and so generate more money for all clubs.
The consistent qualification of the same four clubs, widely seen as stifling competition, is not replicated across Europe. The Premier League largely blames the Uefa Champions League money, distributed to participating clubs, for entrenching the big four's financial power. Uefa, however, points out that Champions League income represents a small part, 8–13%, of Manchester United's, Chelsea's, Arsenal's and Liverpool's total turnover. Most of the big clubs' money is made in this country; Premier League television income is relatively evenly distributed but United, Chelsea and Arsenal in particular make much more than their nearest rivals from commercial activities and match-day revenues in the Premier League.
The Dutch league tried a play-off system for the second Champions League qualification place but abandoned it after the 2007-08 season, when FC Twente Enschede beat Ajax 2-1. The issues in Holland were the risk of crowd trouble at such high-stakes matches and a perception that the play-offs were one-sided.
In the Premier League there is some confidence that neither of those would present major problems. As a means of encouraging competition, opportunities and increasing income, the play-off proposal already seems to have enough support to suggest it could gain the necessary 14-6 majority to be implemented. | 0.099541 |
Congestion charges could be introduced in every town and city in the UK
Councils should be introducing congestion charges in every town and city in the UK, the European Commission recommends.
A strategy for cutting emissions report recommends the move in urban centres, saying it will send a clear message to polluters.
It also suggests charging for recycling collections, claiming this will encourage sustainable living.
The Mail reports that the European Commission’s Committee of the Regions reckons the charges will ‘generate revenues and serve wider public policy objectives’.
MORE: Major search for missing junior doctor Rose Polge
MORE: Mairead Philpott finally shows regret for killing her six children
The EU has a target for reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent compared to 1990 levels, and believes the two charges could help.
But it’s not gone down too well – Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told the Sunday Express it is an example of the EU ‘trying to by-pass our so-called sovereign Parliament’.
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Officials from The University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Houston agreed on Wednesday that the previously postponed game against Houston will not be made up this season.Following recovery from Hurricane Harvey, administrators from both universities will work together to reschedule the game for a date in a future year. This game is part of a four-game series that calls for two home contests for each program. UTSA and Houston will face off again on Sept. 3, 2022, at TDECU Stadium in Houston, on Sept. 2, 2023, at the Alamodome and on Aug. 31, 2024, back in Houston.All tickets will be refunded and ticket holders do not need to do anything to receive a refund. Detailed information on this process will be disseminated by the UTSA Ticket Office to all ticket holders."We appreciate the support and understanding of our fans, and their concern for those who have been impacted by Harvey," Associate Vice President/Director of Athleticssaid. "We encourage everyone to consider using their ticket refund to make a donation to hurricane relief and recovery efforts. The devastation in South Central and Southeast Texas is beyond imagination, and as the Roadrunner Family we can make a real difference at this critical time."UTSA will officially open its seventh season and second under head coachon Saturday, Sept. 9, against Baylor. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas, and the game will be televised on Fox Sports Networks (Fox Sports Southwest in the state of Texas). | 0.00177 |
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An event dubbed the Bitcoin Funfair will take place in Stockholm next month with the aim of encouraging use of the digital currency among consumers.
The event, organised by The Forumist, a group of creative Swedish individuals and bitcoin users, will host upcoming designers, entrepreneurs and vintage shops who will showcase and sell their products.
To encourage shopping, visitors will be asked to exchange a minimum of 100 Swedish krona (SEK) into bitcoin, which they will be able to spend, save or exchange back into fiat currency if unused.
When asked about the purpose of the event, Gustav Bagge, content creator at The Forumist, said:
“We just want regular people to discover bitcoins, and help young upcoming artists, designers and innovators learn about the possibilities of permission-less innovation.”
The idea, he continued, was to demonstrate to people, business owners, innovators and emerging entrepreneurs that bitcoin is a fun, modern and simple tool for economic transactions.
Something for the kids
The Funfair, described as “a flea market from the future with dazzling colours, delicious food, fascinating products, enchanting music and entertainment”, will take place on 14th and 15th February in Stockholm’s Södra Theatre.
The organisers have also opened up the event to children. Kids Hack Day, a group which encourages technology-related play among children, will be present to supervise them as they swap, sell or buy items from each other using bitcoin.
Bagge said that “there seems to be a great interest for something like this”, and confirmed plans for future events, citing Tokyo or Barcelona as possible destinations.
He added:
“We are tired of reading about hacks and thefts in the mainstream media, when the reality is that bitcoin is an amazing new technology that empowers anyone to start a business.”
Funfair image via Shutterstock | 0.8893 |
In a record-setting move, Puerto Rico has filed for a form of bankruptcy protection that puts part of its monumental $70 billion debt in the hands of a federal judge.
The historic announcement comes a day after several major creditors sued the U.S. territory seeking to recuperate the millions of dollars they invested in bonds issued by Puerto Rico’ s government, which has declared several defaults amid a 10-year recession.
A federal district court judge will now be in charge of determining how Puerto Rico's debt will be restructured.
"We have reached this decision because it protects the best interests of the people of Puerto Rico," said Gov. Ricardo Rossello in a statement on Wednesday.
PUERTO RICO HIT WITH 1ST LAWSUIT FROM BONDHOLDERS
Puerto Rico is barred from traditional bankruptcy because it is a U.S. territory. The case was filed under Title III of the PROMESA law, which allows an in-court debt restructuring process akin to U.S. bankruptcy protection.
The process will give Puerto Rico the legal ability to impose drastic discounts on creditor recoveries, but could also spook investors and prolong the island's lack of access to debt markets.
Unlike a regular bankruptcy on the U.S. mainland, a judge cannot unilaterally seize any of Puerto Rico's assets without prior authorization from the federal control board.
It is the biggest restructuring ever by a local government, far larger than Detroit’s.
"The governor needed to show that his primary allegiance lies with the citizens of Puerto Rico, and that was the justification for the filing," said David Tawil, whose fund, Maglan Capital, held Puerto Rico GO debt but has since sold it. "I’m not sure whether bondholders are going to get any better treatment or recovery under this course of action."
PUERTO RICANS PROTEST ON MAY DAY AS DEBT DEADLINE NEARS
The legal proceeding does not mean negotiations toward a consensual restructuring agreement must stop, the governor said.
"It is my hope that the Government’s Title III proceedings will accelerate the negotiation process," the governor said in the statement.
Rossello's fiscal plan for the island, approved by the oversight board in March, forecasts Puerto Rico having only $800 million a year to pay debt, less than a quarter of what it owes. The low figure alienated creditors, and negotiations toward a restructuring deal have foundered.
In addition to its debt, Puerto Rico is facing a 45 percent poverty rate, a shrinking population and unemployment more than twice the U.S. average.
Puerto Rico and its general obligation bondholders, whose $18 billion of debt is backed by the island's constitution, were negotiating until the last minute.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report. | 0.380665 |
by
Perhaps nothing symbolizes the decline of the New Yorker magazine more than the hatchet job on Vandana Shiva that appears in the latest issue. Written by Michael Specter, the author of “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress”, the article is a meretricious defense of genetically modified organisms (GMO) relying on one dodgy source after another. This is the same magazine whose reputation was at its apex when Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking articles on DDT appeared in 1962. If DDT was once a symbol of the destructive power of chemicals on the environment, GMO amounts to one of the biggest threats to food production today. It threatens to enrich powerful multinational corporations while turning farmers into indentured servants through the use of patented seeds. Furthermore, it threatens to unleash potentially calamitous results in farmlands through unintended mutations.
Specter represents himself as a defender of science against irrational thinking. Since many activists regard Vandana Shiva as grounded in science, it is essential that he discredit her. For example, he mentions a book jacket that refers to her as “one of India’s leading physicists”. But when he asked her if she ever worked as a physicist, she invited him to “search for the answer on Google”. He asserts that he found nothing and furthermore that no such position was listed in her biography. Not that I would ever take an inflated publicity blurb that seriously to begin with (having read one too many of those for Slavoj Žižek), I wondered what being a physicist would have to do with GMO in the first place. Is a degree in particle physics necessary for understanding the transformation of vast portions of the Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone because of fertilizer-enriched algae?
Specter is a defender of the Green Revolution, a technology-based approach to farming that Norman Borlaug developed in the 1940s and that serves as one of the pillars of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Like Specter, the Gates Foundation sees GMO as the latest and greatest tool for carrying the Green Revolution forward.
To buttress his case for the Green Revolution, Specter calls upon a couple of witnesses to testify. They are a husband and wife team consisting of Raoul Adamchack, the former president of California Certified Organic Farmers, and Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant genetics at UC Davis. Without the Green Revolution, the planet would be “smaller, poorer, and far more agrarian”, according to Adamchack. Hmm. That’s the first time I ever heard “agrarian” used as a swear word but let’s leave that aside for the moment.
Maybe Specter thought that New Yorker magazine readers’ eyes would glaze over the reference to Ronald’s work in “plant genetics”, which could conceivably be conventional in nature, and settle upon her husband’s “organic” credentials. But not mine. I have learned to become a careful reader over the years, especially when it comes to the neoliberal New Yorker magazine. As it turns out, Pamela Ronald is one of the most fanatical supporters of GMO in the USA and hardly a neutral judge on chemistry in agriculture. It is like someone treating Bjorn Lomborg as a disinterested expert on global warming.
Furthermore, Pamela Ronald would be far less credible as a scientific expert than Vandana Shiva in light of her multiple gaffes in peer-reviewed journals. As CounterPunch contributor Jonathan Latham pointed out, she was forced to retract two papers and possibly a third that constituted the core of her pro-GMO research.
A while back Ronald excoriated Mark Bittman for urging that GM food be labeled (in another article in the same issue of the New Yorker, Specter denigrates that demand). She dubbed him “a scourge on science” who “couches his nutty views in reasonable-sounding verbiage”. I think I will stick with Bittman, one of the few reasons to read the New York Times.
Specter assures us that scientists have crossbred plants long before Monsanto came along, so what’s the big deal? He writes, “Nearly all the plants we cultivate—corn, wheat, rice, roses, Christmas trees—have been genetically modified through breeding to last longer, look better, taste sweeter, or grow more vigorously in arid soil.” Leaving aside Christmas trees (taste sweeter?), the other crops are associated with the type of monoculture that has led to one environmental disaster after another. If genetic modification allows corn production to be doubled, what would that mean for a farming system that is groaning under the weight of a crop that is despoiling the ecosphere and hastening the onset of one illness or another through corn syrup, including diabetes?
Next up as a prosecution witness is Mark Lynas, who Specter describes as a repentant ex-opponent of biotechnology. Speaking before the Oxford Farming Conference a while back, he said, “For the record, here and up front, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up G.M. crops. I am also sorry that I . . . assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.”
Before his conversion, Lynas was identified by EuropeBio as a leading candidate for a campaign they were mounting in defense of GM crops. This is an industry coalition that includes Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, BASF, Eli Lilly, and Dupont—a rogue’s gallery of biotechnology. Lynas claims that they never made contact with him but at least they figured out that he was their kind of guy. To give you an idea of his other credentials on Green issues, he is a fan of nuclear power. Lyman was a featured interviewee on the British Channel 4’s documentary “What the Green Movement Got Wrong” that aired in 2010. He told Telegraph readers where he was coming from: “The documentary follows me as I visit Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, and discover that wildlife in the area is thriving, and that the effects of the radioactive contamination on people are much less serious than previously thought.” If this guy is speaking in the name of the Greens, we have to find another color—rapidly.
Specter cannot understand why Shiva is so recalcitrant. Not only does she hold the Gates Foundation in contempt, she dismisses government agencies that are responsible for regulating GM products including the FDA, the EPA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). When I read this, I wondered if Specter was trying to cover two bases with one article: science and humor. The trust in such agencies was a bigger hoot than any Woody Allen piece I had read there in ages.
As I pointed out in a review of “Food Inc.”, a very fine documentary on industrial farming, USDA boss Tom Vilsack is committed to GMO. I cited the Organic Consumers Organization:
–The biggest biotechnology industry group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, named Vilsack Governor of the Year. He was also the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership. –When Vilsack created the Iowa Values Fund, his first poster child of economic development potential was Trans Ova and their pursuit of cloning dairy cows. –Vilsack was the origin of the seed pre-emption bill in 2005, which many people here in Iowa fought because it took away local government’s possibility of ever having a regulation on seeds- where GE would be grown, having GE-free buffers, banning pharma corn locally, etc. Representative Sandy Greiner, the Republican sponsor of the bill, bragged on the House Floor that Vilsack put her up to it right after his state of the state address.
Specter makes sure to put in a good word for glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsansto’s herbicide Roundup, since it is two hundred and thirty times less toxic than atrazine. It is a little hard to make sense of this since I don’t know what that ratio is meant to prove. For example, arsenic might be two hundred and thirty times less poisonous than cyanide but I don’t have plans to sprinkle either over apple pie any time soon.
One would hope that Scientific American passes Specter’s stringent standards for accuracy. If so, the verdict on glyphosate is guilty as charged. In an article titled “Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells”, Crystal Gammon points out:
Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study, scientists found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns. One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.” “This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert,” wrote the study authors from France’s University of Caen. “Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual levels” found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and gardens.
Once again resorting to dodgy ratios, Specter tries to turn the peasant suicide epidemic in India into an urban legend by assuring readers that it is “comparable” to those in France. If your image of the French countryside is that of a plump, prosperous and happy petite-bourgeoisie smiling at overflowing cornucopias of sunflower seeds and artichokes, then maybe this makes sense. But the truth is that France is suffering as well. Between 2007 and 2009, male farmers were 20 percent more likely to commit suicide than in other professions. Indeed, a farmer killed himself every two days, in nearly all instances because of economic ruin—the same problem that is driving Indian farmers to kill themselves.
In the chapter titled “The Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground-Rent” in volume 3 of Capital, Karl Marx wrote about problems that continue to this day:
Large-scale industry and industrially pursued large-scale agriculture have the same effect. If they are originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and ruins labour-power and thus the natural power of man, whereas the latter does the same to the natural power of the soil, they link up in the later course of development, since the industrial system applied to agriculture also enervates the workers there, while industry and trade for their part provide agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil.
Every advance in agriculture based on chemicals creates new contradictions that will in turn require a new chemical solution. The answer to the food crisis is not more chemicals but a reorganization of society that eliminates the profit motive and that overcomes the breach between city and countryside, a key demand of the Communist Manifesto. When animals such as cows, chickens and pigs provide the fertilizer for crops—as was the case for millennia—the natural balance will be restored.
The problem with Vandana Shiva is not a lack of scientific clarity. It is rather a lack of political clarity. As is the case with so many environmental activists, the inability to get to the heart of the crisis undermines its ultimate resolution. In India there is no solution for hunger that is possible without the overall solution of the economic problem.
Like Thomas Friedman on one of his frequent junkets to a third world country, Michael Specter visits Maharashtra to get a handle on what the natives are thinking. He visits a dozen farmers in Dhoksal who were supposedly in tune with the globalization that is transforming the world. A local petty official tells Specter that he waved to a cotton farmer riding into town on an elephant but he did not respond because he was too busy talking on his cell phone.
But not all is well in Maharashtra. Every farmer Specter met told him that they knew of a farmer who had taken his or her life. Why? Because there was almost no available credit, no social security, and no meaningful crop-insurance program. One farmer told him: “We want to live better. We want to buy equipment. But when the crop fails we cannot pay.” In other words, there are suicides because of capitalist insecurity, a global epidemic growing worse day by day. Ultimately, the environmental crisis will be resolved when there is a resolution of the capitalist crisis. Eliminating private property and producing for human need rather than private profit is the precondition for health and happiness, notwithstanding the New Yorker magazine’s blatant defense of corporate farming and, more generally, the capitalist system.
Louis Proyect blogs at http://louisproyect.org and is the moderator of the Marxism mailing list. In his spare time, he reviews films for CounterPunch. | 0.882087 |
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will call for an emergency debate on the turmoil in Ukraine when Parliament resumes next week.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivers a statement while aboard a plane en route from Amman, Jordan to Ottawa on Saturday. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
"We understand that this violence is occurring because the majority of the population is very worried about the steps taken by their government that very much remind them of their anti-democratic and Soviet past," Harper told reporters on his plane returning from Jordan on Saturday.
"The government of Canada very much shares the concern of the majority of the Ukrainian people,"when it comes to the "growing political conflict and violence," he said in a statement.
Two Conservative MPs, Ted Opitz and James Bezan, have asked for an emergency debate in the House of Commons, which Harper says his government supports.
Harper took no questions but added, "We will continue to work with our allies and partners to determine what the necessary and the appropriate response to all this should be."
Anti-government protesters in Ukraine were once again clashing with police on Saturday in the capital, Kyiv. The unrest has spread to many other cities in the country, despite the promise of government concessions.
On Friday, President Viktor Yanukovych promised amnesty to detained activists and a change to harsh anti-protests laws, according to news agencies in Ukraine. | 0.001495 |
The gravestones of veterans were toppled, smashed and scribbled on in an inexplicable act of vandalism in Massachusetts just ahead of Veterans Day.
Vandals also smashed figurines and snapped flags at the West Bridgewater cemetery over the weekend.
The destruction has broken the hearts of families who saw the gravestones of their loved ones toppled.
"They were very close to me. This just kills me," Jane Borus told MyFoxBoston. "They must have something better to do with their time than to do this. I don't understand it."
Some of the gravestones included Civil War veterans and others from the 18th and 19th centuries that are said to be irreplaceable.
It's not the first time the cemetery has been hit by vandals, but it's reportedly the first time war veterans were singled out.
Police are trying to track the suspects down.
A GoFundMe page was created to help cover the cost of repairs, as well as a security system for the cemetery.
Watch the "Fox & Friends First" report above.
Disabled Veteran's Car Repeatedly Vandalized
VIDEO: SWAT Team Orders Passengers Off Plane in Miami Airport Security Scare
Skier Survives Terrifying 1,600-Ft Plunge Down Mountain | 0.005244 |
Image caption Opponents of the government in Syria have been spied on using many different hi-tech tools
Widely used security software has been discontinued after its creator discovered the Syrian government was using it to spy on its opponents.
The "disgusting" way the DarkComet Remote Admin Tool (Rat) was being used in Syria had led to its production being halted, said Jean-Pierre Lesueur .
He said his intention had only ever been to produce tools that were better than those commercially available.
Experts welcomed DarkComet's demise, saying the Rat was being widely abused.
Syria's use of the tool emerged earlier this year as the government sought to keep tabs on opponents in the country's ongoing civil conflict.
Once DarkComet is installed on a target PC it allows remote access to that machine and can log any activity on it.
The Syrian government attempted to use this function of the Rat by trying to trick its opponents into opening a booby-trapped Skype chat message.
In a message posted to the DarkComet website, Mr Lesueur said he was ending the project after four years of work because of the widespread "misuse of the tool".
He said it was never his intention for the tool to be used by hacker groups and he did not want to be held responsible for what people, and governments, had done with DarkComet.
Mr Lesueur said he would continue working in computer security but only on projects that could not be turned to malicious ends.
Rat poison
The decision to shut down DarkComet means there will be no future versions, but nothing has been done to remove copies of the programs already in use.
Rik Ferguson, director of security research in Europe for Trend Micro, said he and many other professionals had used DarkComet for penetration testing and malware detection but not as a management tool.
However, he said, the overwhelming use of DarkComet was by those with malicious or dubious intentions. He said some of the tool's menu items and functions made it hard to believe it was intended entirely for legitimate use.
"It was no surprise to hear of the Syrian regime using this Rat to spy on their population," Mr Ferguson told the BBC. "It follows in the grand tradition of using Rats in targeted, politically motivated attacks such as LuckyCat, Gh0stnet and Shadownet."
He added: "It's not often you can welcome the demise of anything, however, let's hope DarkComet is only the first Rat to take the poison." | 0.06572 |
About The Author Manuela is a Digital Illustrator from Napoli, Italy. She started as a Web Designer but then followed her primary passion: Adobe Illustrator. Drawing is her … More about Manuela…
How To Draw A Cartoon In Illustrator
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Drawing a cartoon is no trivial pursuit. It turns us into a director, writer, narrator. Through a cartoon or comic, you tell a story that takes place in a certain time, a certain environment, with certain characters. This is why you will learn here not just how to draw a cartoon in Adobe Illustrator, but how to decide on character, place and situation. Before grabbing your pencil or software tool, ask yourself, “What will be my topic?” How many characters you will use, and who will they be? What background will they move against? What era will they live in? In what scene will you put them? Through the steps in this tutorial, I will explain to you my own choices. Let’s begin.
Drawing a cartoon is no trivial pursuit. It turns us into a director, writer, narrator. Through a cartoon or comic, you tell a story that takes place in a certain time, a certain environment, with certain characters.
This is why you will learn here not just how to draw a cartoon in Adobe Illustrator, but how to decide on character, place and situation. Before grabbing your pencil or software tool, ask yourself, “What will be my topic?”
How many characters you will use, and who will they be?
What background will they move against?
What era will they live in?
In what scene will you put them?
Through the steps in this tutorial, I will explain to you my own choices. Let’s begin.
Meet Smashing Book 6 — our brand new book focused on real challenges and real front-end solutions in the real world: from design systems and accessible single-page apps to CSS Custom Properties, CSS Grid, Service Workers, performance, AR/VR and responsive art direction. With Marcy Sutton, Yoav Weiss, Lyza D. Gardner, Laura Elizabeth and many others. Table of Contents →
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
1. The Subject
The topic I’ve chosen for my cartoon relates to a recent discovery. For the first time, we’ve picked up a signal caused by gravitational waves. Albert Einstein first theorized the existence of gravitational waves in 1918. Exciting!
So, what better topic for my cartoon?
2. The Character
The character I’ll draw, then, is Einstein.
Open Adobe Illustrator.
Insert the file I’ve provided in Illustrator by going to “File” → “Place.”
Now, adjust the artboard by going to “Object” → “Artboards” → “Fit to Artwork Bounds.” The dimensions of your artboard should now match the file you’ve just inserted: 2305 × 3250 pixels.
Block the layer where you’ve just put the file. Double-click on the layer’s name and rename it “Sketch.”
Create another layer above the “Sketch” layer by hitting Command + L on a Mac or Control + L on Windows, and call it “Lines.”
Now, we need to trace the image with the Pen tool (P), similar to how I showed you in my previous tutorial.
What we are going to learn here is not the mere tracing of shapes, but rather how to trace the black outline of a drawing.
We do this because we are drawing a cartoon, and cartoons usually have this black outline around the shapes to distinguish them.
Double-click on the stroke’s color, and set the hexadecimal value to #FF06A0 .
We use this color to distinguish our lines on the artboards. We will change it later.
Zoom into the drawing at 200%, and begin to draw the face outline with the Pen Tool (P).
Do this until you’ve drawn the top of the head.
Once you’ve finished drawing the head’s outline, draw the internal outline.
Now, select both outlines you’ve created, the external and internal one, and click on the Shape Builder tool ( Shift + M ).
Go to the button to swap the fill and stroke color ( Shift + X ), and click on that little arrow. The stroke’s color should now be changed to the fill’s color.
Now, enable the Shape Builder tool ( Shift + M ), and put the cursor in the empty space between the two outlines we created before. You will see something like a transparent background, which indicates the space where the Shape Builder tool will create a shape.
Just click and you will see the selected area be given the fill color.
Thus, we’ve created a fill-colored outline for our cartoon.
Now, let’s repeat the same action with the other body parts: mustache, eyes, ears, nose, hair and so on.
For the little shapes, like the forehead wrinkles, you can just draw a closed shape and then swap the stroke with the fill.
For shapes like the eyes, use the Ellipse Tool (L) and set the stroke weight to 8 points.
This is our work so far. Notice how I’ve closed the paths, even if they cover the face. I did that because we will be able to fill the shape with color with just a click, simply by creating a closed path.
Then, we will hide some parts, positioning one part over another. But we will see that later.
It’s a little different for the hand holding the old phone. Here, you have to draw the hand in two shapes: the fingers and the palm. Do it using Pencil Tool (N).
Et voilà! Here is our drawing:
Hide the “Sketch” layer, and you will see your clean vector.
Now, double-click on the Magic Wand tool (Y), and select “Fill Color” in the popup window, setting the tolerance to 20.
After you’ve set the tool this way, it will select all objects with the same fill color. Just click on your work to see it in action.
After you’ve selected them, double-click on the fill color and set it to #000000. Your image should look like this:
Double-click again on the Magic Wand Tool (Y) and select “Stroke Color,” setting the tolerance to 20. Click on your image, and all strokes with the same color will be selected now. Set the color to #000000.
Now, our image will have all black outlines.
Let’s color Einstein.
Set the skin color to a hexadecimal value of #FBD2B7.
Select the head with the Selection tool (V), and then click on Live Paint Bucket (K). Click on the face to fill it with the selected color.
Do the same with the other shapes, giving them the same color: ears, chin, neck, hands. Remember that you have to select a group of objects first and then color them with the Live Paint Bucket (K), or else it won’t work.
Note: If you are not able to color something with the Live Paint Bucket (K), it probably means your object has open paths. It happened to me with the fingers:
In this case, you can use the Blob Brush tool ( Shift + B ) to color the internal shape of the fingers. Set the color to #FBD2B7, set the brush’s weight to 30 points, and fill the fingers and other shapes that have open paths.
When you color in this way, the color is positioned above the path. To move it under the path, just select the color shape and hit ⌘ and [ to move it down.
If other objects are overlying the fingers, select them and move them down the same way you did for the fingers’ color. Or you can right-click and select “Arrange” → “Send Backward” to send them back.
Go on coloring with these two methods.
Note how the path under Einstein’s mustache disappears when you fill the mustache with color:
Remember that you can move objects forward (right-click → “Arrange” → “Bring Forward” or ⌘ + ] ) or backwards (right-click → “Arrange” → “Send Backward” or ⌘ + [ ) to find their right position.
Here’s our Einstein colored in.
We still have to correct something. The antique phone’s handset is divided into pieces because of our previous tracing:
We have to unify these pieces into one. With the handset selected, enable the Shape Builder tool ( Shift + M ) and drag on the objects we need to unify:
Now, we have to get rid of that line under Einstein’s ear:
We’ll use the Scissors tool ©. Select our two lines and cut them in four places as shown here:
Now, select the cut lines and delete them.
Here’s the result:
3. Environment (Laboratory)
Let’s move on to the next image.
When we think of Einstein, the first objects that come to mind (well, to my mind) are a laboratory and a blackboard.
Let’s draw our laboratory on another artboard.
Click on the Artboard tool ( Shift + O ), and then click on “New Artboard” in the menu. You will get a copy of your first artboard with the same height and width.
Set the width to twice that of the previous table:
You should have something like this:
It’s time to create the room. We need a floor and two walls. The tones and colors of the room will be similar because the room is a background.
The character will stand out because of the different colors and the thick edges. The uniform tone of the background will serve not to distract from what is happening.
Create a new layer and call it “Room.” Block the other layers.
Take the Pen Tool (P) and draw a polygon like the one in my image. Set the fill color to #424974.
Draw the front wall with the Rectangle tool (M). Divide it into two colors, so that we have a more dynamic background. Use #53649C for the bottom rectangle, and #424974 for the top rectangle.
Finally, insert the side wall. You can use the Rectangle tool again. Then, put your shape under the floor by right-clicking, then “Arrange” and “Send Backward” (or ⌘ + [ ).
I’ve split it into two shapes. The bottom rectangle is set to #65739B, and the top one to #506799.
In a cartoon laboratory you will find strange machinery, buttons, screens and handles. Let’s create our first machine, a screen and a handle.
Create a rectangle with the Rectangle tool (M), sized to 587 × 323 pixels and the color set to #6A75AA.
Create another rectangle inside that with the Rounded Rectangle Tool (M), the color set to #172432.
Go to “Effect” → “Warp” → “Arc” and select “Horizontal.” Set the bend to 3%, and under “Distortion,” set “Horizontal” to =0% and “Vertical” to -4% .
With the Pen tool (P), create three rectangles to draw the screen’s sides, as shown below.
Finally, grab the Pen tool again and draw a zig-zag line, with the color set to #D8D89C and the stroke weight set to 5 points.
Draw a line as shown here:
Now, create another rectangle with dimensions of 160 × 372 pixels and the color set to #6A75AA. Put it on the side of the first one.
With the Pen tool, draw the sides of the rectangle, the same way you did for the first one.
Create another rectangle inside this one, with the color set to #172432.
Create a rectangle again, coming out of the slot, as shown here:
Draw the handle’s knob with the same color.
On the other side, create two circles with the Ellipse Tool (L), with the same dimensions as the knob and the color set to #6A75AA.
With both circles selected, go to the Pathfinder panel and click on “Minus Back” (or by selecting “Effect” → “Pathfinder” → “Minus Back”). You will get this shape:
Apply this to our knob to get a light effect.
Repeat the same steps to create our second machine. Draw some shapes, such as trapezoids and circles, with the color set to #6A75AA.
Do the same for our third machine, this time with rectangles, circles and squares. You can create every single object by repeating the previous steps.
To create the pipe sticking out of the ground, just draw two rectangles with the same dimensions, 560 × 158 pixels.
Right-click on the bottom pipe and select “Transform” → “Rotate,” with the angle set to 90°.
Make an L-shape from the two rectangles:
Select both rectangles, go to the Pathfinder panel and click “Unite.”
With the Direct Selection Tool (A), select the resulting shape. Some little circles will show up, giving you dynamic corners. Click and drag to the bottom right the ones shown here:
This is the result:
Let’s work on the table now.
Draw a simple rectangle and let it extend past the artboard, so that it appears to be in the foreground.
The colors are #787FAD for the light violet, #6A75AA for the dark violet, and #8C92AD (very light violet) for the lighting.
Create a button with the Ellipse tool (L), set to #F7DF79.
Draw sides of the bottom the way we did with our first machine, the colors set to #D3B42F and #8E6621.
Create all of the other buttons the same way, with the following colors:
red button: #DD7676, #DB5A5A, #D84141
green button: #C0C478, #BFBB32, #9B962A
brown button: #937A44, #A08453, #8E6621
blue button: #34495E, #172432
pink button: #E0B39D, #DD9376
With the Pen tool (P), create a curved shape, with a darker side. This will be the base of another knob, the colors being #787FAD and #424974:
Create a curved line in the center of the shape, again using the Pen tool. Set the stroke weight to 16 points.
Now, create a handle with two simple rectangles.
Create the handle’s sides with our trusty technique, the colors being #172432, #2a4359 and #3a4a56.
Let’s create a futuristic table.
Create an ellipse with the Ellipse Tool (L), and drag the anchor points as shown here:
Hit Control + C and Control + B to paste in the back. Move down the shape we’ve just pasted, and set its color to #172432.
Finish your futuristic table by adding the other shapes as shown below, simple ellipses and two triangles.
I’ve created a couple of objects on the table as well, a book and a lamp, simply by using shapes, rectangles and the Ellipses tool.
Now, draw a big blackboard for where Einstein will write his formulas.
Take the Rectangle Tool (M) and draw a rectangle, the color set to #172432.
We need to write some formulas on the blackboard, and they need to look as though they’re written in chalk.
Grab the Pencil Tool (N) and write some formulas (mine are almost all made up!). Set #e6e6e6 as the color. When you’re done, select what you’ve written, go to the Brushes panel, and click on the little arrow on the top right:
Select “Open Brush Library” → “Artistic” → “ArtisticChalkCharcoalPencil,” and select the last type of charcoal, which will give you a beautiful charcoal effect on the blackboard.
Take the Einstein vector and put it on the side of the blackboard.
4. The Period
The period in which our cartoon is set is about 1920. Einstein’s theories about gravitational waves date back to 1918. For this reason, I’ve inserted an old telephone, the kind Einstein would talk on.
5. The Scene
I wanted to put Einstein in a scene in which he’s talking with aliens, who are giving him this information. (It is a cartoon after all — it should be a little funny!)
Draw a cloud in the top right with the Pencil tool (N), and then fill it with white (#ffffff).
With the Rounded Rectangle Tool (M), draw a rectangle, and round its corners until they are completely curved. Set the fill to #d6d989 and the stroke to #000000.
With the Ellipse Tool (L), draw an eye and a pupil, setting the color to #787fad.
With the Pen Tool and Ellipse tool, draw two little antennas.
Draw a small rectangle, which will be its phone, and tilt it by grabbing an angle and drawing the cursor down.
With the Pencil tool, draw a hand holding the phone and some lines for the phone’s signal.
Conclusion
We’re done!
I hope you’ve liked this tutorial. Feel free to leave a comment below, and show us your cartoon! Last but not least, some of you were asking a high-res image of Einstein. So here you go:
The final, traced Einstein carricature. | 0.021044 |
A new set of leaks on Intel’s upcoming Skylake purports to lay out how the chip’s will be positioned and what features they’ll offer. If the data is correct, Skylake will continue scaling up Intel’s graphics cores, set new records for “big core” x86 power consumption, and offer DDR4 support, as well as copying a page from AMD’s book and shipping a configurable TDP. Skylake is set to be a major update on the CPU side too — the core will reportedly integrate a new instruction set (AVX3) as well as PCIe 4.0 on the high-end Skylake-E, Thunderbolt 3.0, and new security extensions. Intel also wants to move towards a cable-less future with this new chip, though whether that takes off is anyone’s guess.
If WCCFTech’s data is accurate, Intel will launch multiple Skylake flavors, including SKL-Y (embedded and ultra-mobile dual-core with a 4W TDP, LPDDR3 support, and GT2 graphics), SKL-U (dual-core, 15-28W TDP, 64MB of L4 cache, LPDDR3-1600), SKL-H (quad-core, 35-45W TDP, 128MB L4, DDR4-2133), and SKL-S (quad-core, 35W-95W TDP, 64MB L4, support for multiple types of DDR3 and DDR4, and multiple graphics engines ranging from GT2 to a new GT4e.
We can’t draw many conclusions from the graphics engines themselves; Intel tends to keep the same labels while increasing the relative horsepower. The HD 4000 and HT 4600 are both referred as “GT2” solutions in Intel’s nomenclature, even though the two chips have different performance capabilities and feature sets. Broadwell is supposed to deliver a major update to Intel’s graphics engine and the company’s performance has been increasing with every product line — we don’t know yet if Skylake will continue this trend, but Intel’s decision to include a smaller version of its EDRAM cache on more processors also jives with what we’ve heard about Broadwell.
Other features, time frames, DDR4
The launch of a dual-core 4W part, if the company can pull it off, would be a major coup for Intel’s big-core business. Right now, Bay Trail and Haswell remain separated by a sizable TDP gap — Intel’s 11.5W Haswell is a dual-core/quad-thread CPU with a 6W Scenario Design Power (SDP) and a 1.7GHz base clock/2.9GHz Turbo. Its fastest Bay Trail is a quad-core with a 1.6GHz base clock, 2.4GHz Turbo, and a 2W SDP — but an 11W TDP.
If Intel can actually push down to a 4W TDP, it means the SDP of a 2016 Skylake and a 2014 Bay Trail are likely identical. It’s difficult to predict how much performance changes — that’s going to be workload dependent, and hinge on factors like cache efficiency, length of time spent in turbo, and architecture — but it’s going to give Intel a fighting chance to put Skylake in the same form factors and battery lifespans where Bay Trail excels.
As for when the chip will launch, Skylake was originally supposed to drop in 2015, but that was before the Broadwell delay. Private sources have indicated that the 14nm Broadwell pushback will have trickle-down effects across Intel’s product lines, meaning that launches that were originally supposed to happen in early 2015 will be delayed to later in the year, while late 2015 launches will likely slip into 2016. Intel’s own Xeon roadmaps may have tacitly confirmed this, though the Xeon roadmap can also lag behind the desktop. Intel’s first Haswell-based Xeon E3 CPUs arrived shortly after the chip’s desktop introduction, but its E5 and E7 chips are still based on Ivy Bridge more than a year after Haswell launched.
Finally, as far as DDR4 is concerned, the chips will top out DDR4-2133 and will only officially support DDR3-1600. If that’s true, it implies Intel is fudging configurations a bit to compensate for DDR4-2133’s higher latency — at the same clock speed, DDR3 is faster than DDR4 thanks to its intrinsically lower latency. DDR4 won’t pull ahead from DDR3 until it hits at least DDR4-2700 and I wouldn’t expect to see significant improvement until DDR4-3200. AVX3 should provide significant acceleration — AVX2 gave Intel chips a hefty kick over standard AVX — but its aimed at the same HPC markets where Xeon Phi has done well. The impact on consumer software may be minimal, at least in the near term. | 0.012367 |
0 BRIDGE COLLAPSE: I-85 repairs will take months
ATLANTA - Three people are in custody after a fire that caused a bridge to collapse on I-85, according to the state fire marshal's office.
Basil Eleby has been charged with first degree criminal damage to property and two others are charged with criminal trespass. Authorities have not said what led to them to the charges.
[READ MORE: 3 charged in connection with fire that led to I-85 collapse]
Georgia’s Department of Transportation is working to determine the extent of the damage caused by a massive fire near the Buford-Spring Street Connector.
GDOT began its assessment of the damage Thursday before the fire was even extinguished, Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurray said Friday.
Channel 2’s Aaron Diamant got an exclusive tour of the damage Friday with the Georgia Department of Public Safety.
[MINUTE-BY-MINUTE updates: I-85 fire, bridge collapse]
Demolition crews are already working to remove tons of crushed concrete and look for clues as to how coils of non-combustible high-density plastic pipe, which GDOT stored underneath the bridge, caught fire.
“So the storage area under the bridge was storing normal highway construction materials. The PVC material has been there for some time, probably since 2006 or 7,” McMurry said.
THE LATEST:
GDOT says at least three sections northbound and three sections southbound will have to be replaced at the site of the collapse
Repairs will take at least a few months
Department of Public Safety says the area of the bridge collapse is "now is a construction site"
Take I-285; use MARTA as alternates to I-85, authorities say
Atlanta fire chief says he does not know what caused the fire
The massive blaze started at about 6:15 p.m. Thursday beneath I-85 northbound near Piedmont Road.
[Download the WSB-TV news app for breaking alerts on this story]
Both northbound and southbound lanes of I-85, as well as several roads in northeast Atlanta, were closed for hours Thursday and into Friday. Interstate 85 will remain closed as crews rebuild the bridge on both sides.
“We are underway with designs now to replace the damaged area,” McMurray said. “This is a dynamic situation, and we’re learning as much as we can as time unfolds.”
[ALTERNATE ROUTES: Get around the I-85 bridge collapse]
So far, McMurray said they know that at least three sections northbound and three sections southbound will have to be totally replaced, which includes the section that collapsed.
GDOT confirms they'll have to remove three full sections of standing roadway (in addition to the one collapsed one) to make full repairs. pic.twitter.com/2CzRSBwLNx — Richard Elliot (@RElliotWSB) March 31, 2017
"That is a total of approximately 350 feet in each direction, and it includes rebuilding the support columns that hold up the bridge itself, McMurray said."
"The cork is in the bottle here, you're going to have to use 285." Months of construction. Georgia Public Safety on 85 collapse @wsbtv. pic.twitter.com/wpaBZSXRim — Linda Stouffer (@LindaWSB) March 31, 2017
GDOT said it is aware everyone wants to know when the reconstruction will be complete.
“We’re not able to give you a firm estimate at this moment, but you should know this will take at least a few months,” McMurray said. “It will take at least several months to rebuild.”
Atlanta Fire is leading the investigation to determine how the fire started.
[PHOTOS: Massive fire causes I-85 bridge to collapse]
“We don’t know what caused the fire and it’s going to take us a while to get our crews inside to do a full-scale investigation,” Atlanta Fire Chief Joel Baker said.
An ATF-certified fire investigator was at the scene Thursday night and ATF is lending its expertise in determining the cause and origin of the fire as part of the investigation.
Fire investigators from the state fire marshal’s office have also been on the scene to work with Atlanta Fire.
Baker said the fire department will send evidence to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, if needed, as the investigation unfolds.
“We’re working hand-in-hand with GDOT,” Baker said of the investigation.
Atlanta police captain Michael Butler said traffic is APD’s key job right now.
[8 things to know about the I-85 bridge collapse]
“The hard closures are the important posts that we have,” he said.
No one was injured in the fire or collapse.
© 2019 Cox Media Group. | 0.016853 |
Chapter 5: Fallen Star, Pt. 2
"Star, who is that?"
Marco had learned very quickly that when it came to Star, anything was within the realm of possibility. Still, a woman emerging from the wand who Star was clearly terrified by? That was pushing it a little.
Star, on the other hand could hardly speak. She didn't know much about Eclipsa, having only first known of her on her journey to fix her wand and then reading a little more about her in her spellbook. But it was enough to know that she was not someone you ever wanted to cross paths with. And besides, Eclipsa had lived hundreds of years before. Yet here she was, admiring her reflection in a mirror she had conjured up as though she had just woken up from a light nap.
"Star..." Marco tried asking again, "What's going on?"
Star finally discovered the ability to form words again, but before she could say anything she was interrupted. "Why Star, aren't you going to introduce me to this lovely boy of yours?" Star looked around for the source of the voice, and when she couldn't find anyone else in the room she turned back to where Eclipsa was standing. Star was surprised at the sound of her voice, it was...almost pleasant. Definitely not the voice you'd imagine a centuries old evil witch to have. "Well, are you just going to stand there or are you going to come say hi to your Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother?" Star laughed nervously, holding Marco's hand tightly. "I'm...gonna stay right over here if that's alright. Marco, this uh, this is Eclipsa. She's one of my ancestors from a long time ago. Also...she might be very evil." Eclipsa had heard her and smiled almost demurely, "Evil? I prefer to think of myself as...misunderstood. What was mine was taken from me; I simply fought to get it back." She turned to Star now, and Star could see now that her eyes were dark and cold. "Isn't that what you'll do, my dear girl?" Star was taken aback. "What're you talking about?" Eclipsa's smile suddenly turned wicked. "Why, you don't think they'll let you keep him, do you? Sure, they'll let you have your fun now, but when your time comes you'll marry who they want you to. That's what a queen must do after all! How do you think they'll react when they meet him?" Star tilted her head to the side quizzically, if Eclipsa had been inside the wand shouldn't she have known? "Uh...my parents have already met Marco, and they like him. A lot. And besides...even if something were to happen, I wouldn't hurt anybody over it. Marco wouldn't want that." Eclipsa sighed. "Oh, Star...I so hoped you would see things my way." The star symbol at the tip of her umbrella started glowing, and a powerful pulse of green light came from it. The ground around them started shaking. Bones started emerging from the ground and out of the cave walls, quickly putting themselves back together into what must have been hundreds of monster skeletons. Eclipsa was raising an army. Two of them immediately grabbed Star, pulling her away from Marco. "MARCO!" she cried out after him, but when he tried to run to her two more of them seized him as well. Eclipsa looked around at her newly assembled army and nodded with approval. Then she turned to Star, still struggling to try and free herself. "You may be the most powerful user of that wand since, well since myself. I hope you will understand why I must do this then." Eclipsa raised her umbrella once again, casting a vortex of green light at Star. To her horror, Star could feel herself being pulled towards the source of the spell, her signature headband getting knocked off in the process. Marco finally managed to throw off his captors and lunged to grab her, but it was too late. Star had vanished into the heart of the vortex.
"STAR!" Marco cried out, lunging at Eclipsa only to run into two of her guards. "What have you done to her? Where is she?" Eclipsa smiled at Marco, unfazed by his attack. "Don't worry dear boy, I believe she will be quite safe where she is. Besides, I've awaited this far too long and nothing can be allowed to stand in my way now." She turned now to the skeletal masses assembled there. "Prepare to march, we are going home!" Eclipsa's army fell into formation as quickly as they could and began marching towards Mewni Castle.
Star woke up on a cold, hard floor. She sat up, trying to take in her surroundings and figure out where she was. The place looked like Mewni Castle but something seemed...off about it. Star couldn't put her finger on it as she walked around, but then she turned a corner and gasped. The room before her contained a star shaped window that reached from the floor to the ceiling, and through it Star could see Eclipsa's army advancing towards the castle with Marco in tow. Star instantly realized where she was.
"I'm...inside the wand?"
Buff Frog made his way through the woods as fast as he could. Luckily, he alone knew the fastest way to get to the castle. After the army had left, he had grabbed Star's headband and started making his way there. He may not have particularly cared for the royal family, but he felt like he owed Star for the help she had given him. They had to be warned of what was coming.
It wasn't far to the barrier surrounding the castle, at which point the army stopped to allow Eclipsa to reach the front. She struck the barrier with the wand and immediately it started to disappear. A moment later and it was gone completely, allowing her to advance. The castle was strangely quiet. The guards normally at the gate and patrolling the walls were nowhere to be found. Another spell was all it took and the front gate was lowered to allow them entry. Mewni Castle had fallen without a sound.
Eclipsa made her way to the throne room with Marco being dragged along close behind. She frowned, there were still no guards to be found and the king seemed to have disappeared as well. Queen Moon sat alone in her throne, she had clearly been expecting someone.
"And there she is, dear old Moon the Undaunted! Surprised to see me?"
"Somewhat. I knew of the prophecy about your return, but I had hoped it would never come to pass."
Your daughter has told me so much about you. But where, oh where is your dear husband? Has he run away to hide? It was always the women in the family who were the strong ones..."
"You will never find him or our army. You may take this castle, but as long as they are out there you will never take all of Mewni."
The wicked grin returned to Eclipsa's face. "And whatever makes you think Mewni is what I'm after? I have plans far greater than simply this boring old place. In fact..." She turned away and walked out to the balcony. Hundreds of monsters were gathered in the courtyard below, having been emboldened by the disappearance of the castle's barrier. Eclipsa stood on the edge of the balcony and started addressing the crowd gathered below. "Creatures of Mewni, my name is Eclipsa Butterfly, and I have come to set you free! No longer will you suffer under the tyranny of the Mewman royalty, no longer will your lives be spent in hunger and fear, Mewni belongs to you!" The crowd erupted into cheers, Eclipsa smiled to herself and continued. "No longer will you be driven away and force to hide in the woods like beasts, you will live amongst the Mewmans as their equals! My humble servant Ludo will remain here as your protector, and this castle that has stood here a thousand years as a symbol of your oppression shall be taken away forever!" The crowd went wild, and with a wave of her hand they went off to enforce her reign. Eclipsa turned back to her prisoners. "Well now that that's taken care of...there's a whole new realm I've had my eyes on for the longest time." Eclipsa now looked into the orb at the end of her umbrella, "I told you you were the most powerful wielder of this wand since myself, but sadly you just don't have the knowledge to make use of it's true power. Watch now, and see the power I wield!"
Suddenly, the entire castle started shaking. Marco could only watch in awe as the entire castle started pulling away from the ground below. Above them, a dimensional portal much bigger than any he had ever seen before, and the castle slowly floated up and into it. Almost instantly, they were through the portal to the other side. Eclipsa motioned at the two minons holding Marco, and they brought the struggling boy forward to her. "Look familiar, Marco? I've seen so much of this realm in such a short time...I've grown quite fond of it." Marco's eyes grew wide as he recognized where they were: Earth.
Mewni Castle now hung in the skies above Earth, overlooking the Los Angeles skyline.
"Hold this for me, will you? I don't want her to miss a moment of this." Eclipsa seized Marco by the arm, handing off the umbrella to one of her guards. Marco thrashed around to try and free himself, but Eclipsa's grip was surprisingly strong. "Let. Me. Go!" She laughed, "You want me to let you go? Well, since you asked so nicely..."
Inside the wand, Star was transfixed in horror at the sight of Eclipsa inching Marco closer and closer to the edge. She pounded against the giant star window, desperately trying to free herself and save him. They were now at the very edge of the balcony, looking down to the city hundreds of miles below. Eclipsa looked directly at her with cold, heartless eyes.
"Believe me, Star...it breaks my heart to have to do this. But you must understand, I cannot allow you to interfere with my plans. Even trapped in there you still threaten to undo everything...but without him, I imagine you'll be in no state to cause me any trouble."
"NO NO NO!" Star had never felt more powerless, continuing to pound on the glass to no avail.
Eclipsa looked back to Marco, who was now panicking as he dangled over the edge, "Now, Marco...say goodbye."
Marco looked to the wand, continuing to struggle against her grip. "I love you, Star."
Eclipsa stayed true to her word and let him go. Marco screamed as he plummeted off the edge of the castle towards the ground below.
"MARCOOOOOO!"
Star felt numb. She slumped against the window, hugging herself tightly to try and keep herself together. "No...no no no no no no...", she mumbled. When she had seen Marco kissing Jackie it had broken her heart; now, it felt as though half of it had been ripped out entirely. It wasn't fair! It had only been hours since Marco had confessed his love to her, yet this was going to be her last memory of him. Helpless, terrified, and falling to his doom. The realization of that was too much for Star, and she broke down sobbing on the floor. Tears pooled around her face, but Star didn't care. She just wanted to cry and cry and never stop. But then, she heard something over the sound of her sobs. Footsteps.
The footsteps were slow and shuffling, and Star could hear what sounded like a cane of some sort with every other step. Slowly but surely, the footsteps drew closer and closer. Then suddenly, they stopped. A wrinkled, reptilian hand reached out to Star. Her eyes followed the hand upwards, and when she saw the stranger's face she gasped. The face appeared to have aged several centuries and the hair was white now, but Star still recognized it instantly. "T-Toffee?"
The lizard-man looked down at Star, his eyes full of regret. "Princess Butterfly...I have much to answer for."
Author's note: Here we are finally! This...this was interesting. I got stuck several times, especially when it came to Eclipsa, but her voice finally came to me which helped immensely (side note: if/when she appears I nominate Helena Bonham Carter to voice her) It doesn't flow as well as I'd like it too, hopefully I can make up for it in the next chapter. Good news is that now that I've appeased the followers for my other work (for now), I should be able to devote all of my writing time towards seeing us through till the end. Till next time
-fatal | 0.001976 |
I was between jobs and needed a pick-me-up.
That uncertain space between completing an internship and not knowing what next step your life will take is a weird funk to be in. Despite any positive progress toward future endeavors, sometimes the job hunt will zap it out of you and you just need something cheery to inhabit your mind. It was in such a state that I browsed the Watch ABC app and was thrilled to find The Muppets available for viewing. I had watched the short-lived series in its entirety during its initial airing in the 2015-2016 broadcast season, and never really understood why it wasn’t renewed for a second season. Ah, well. If anything can put a smile on my face when I need it most, it’s the Muppets, right? Unfortunately, wrong.
The show didn’t make me happier; on the contrary, it affected my mood in a negative way. How was that possible? The franchise that exists to create joy instead made me gloomier. And it is in this startling discovery that we find the reason for this project’s failure. It was then that I finally realized why ABC canceled The Muppets:
Was the concept itself poor, or just its execution? Or, was the lack of success instead due to a bigger-picture lack of audience interest for the Muppet brand? Was it marketing? Was it the time slot? What went wrong here?
Let’s back up by first saying this: The Muppets got a lot better as its production progressed. While it only aired one season with 16 episodes, it might as well have been two separate seasons. Its approach and broadcast was treated as such. In response to mixed reviews and low ratings, the show took a winter break and returned mid-season with new producers, new writers, and a renewed sense of existence.
By the time it got things right, though, hardly anyone had stuck around to see it. An admirable series premiere viewership of nine million viewers quickly settled to an average of three million viewers in successive weeks. Its post-winter return was even lower. That’s not terrible, but a major new show on a network station in primetime needs to show more stride than that, especially in its inaugural season, if it wants any promise of a future.
If the Muppets are known for variety shows, it makes sense that in a modern climate they’d be working on a late-night talk show together. In the parameters of this new half-hour sitcom, it makes sense that ABC would approach this series in the mockumentary style of The Office or Modern Family to show us the backstage antics of putting together that talk show. It even makes sense to give the series a would-be fresh spin by making the content edgier and more adult. What doesn’t make sense is how mismanaged all of those factors became when tossed into a stew.
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it makes sense that Muppet fans like myself were so awestruck by seeing favorite characters in primetime that we didn’t realize what the general public seemed to notice from the beginning. The Muppets, as characters, put on shows. And they do that with joy. If you’re not showing us either of those elements, you’ve lost the core of what has drawn audiences to them for decades. The autumn episodes of the show focused so much on the personal lives of the characters that we hardly ever saw the talk show itself, the very subject the series supposedly revolved around. The edgy nature of each week’s teleplay took characters to a drastic extreme that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing conceptually, but to that effect no longer made the program appropriate for children. Predecessor Muppet outings were always a family gathering that smartly balanced mature humor in clever ways. This just threw it at us with no warning. Not only that, but if it wasn’t disheartening enough to merely see beloved characters treated with such disregard, those beloved characters were themselves disheartened within the story. Kermit and Miss Piggy were broken up, leaving Kermit depressed and Piggy psychotic. Fozzie Bear existentially questioned every move he made to the nth degree. The point may have been to show that Muppets’ lives are just as jacked up as our own, but that’s a difficult pill to swallow when we’ve always looked up to them as heroes in their own right for what they bring to our lives.
Those final six episodes after the winter break are these characters in their prime. We got to see more of Piggy’s talk show, which gloriously spotlighted musical numbers and even revived sketches from The Muppet Show. Characters’ boundaries were pushed, but in a way that challenged their relationships with each other rather than attempted to prove their relevance to the audience.
Not only that, but the tone improved by leaps and bounds. Rather than the gang’s staff meetings being held in a dull sound stage with depressing florescent lighting, they were held in a warmly lit greenroom with windows and decorated with plants. Instead of the opening theme concluding with Kermit somberly forecasting, “It’s time to get things started” with the monotony of a stapler, he instead said those same words with an upbeat, optimistic cadence that he once did in the hands of Jim Henson. Subtle changes like this, as well as more significant ones directed toward content, made a huge difference.
In a story arc brilliantly indicative of who the Muppets are at their core, the first episode of the post-winter reboot acknowledges that the stakes are high. Kermit implores Miss Piggy to make changes to her show, or else she’ll end up “Sh’doink: canceled!” The remainder of the season, but particularly that first rebooted episode, is a candidly meta, expertly brilliant showcase of the troupe behind the scenes giving all they have to show the world the characters they love. Alas, despite a phenomenal race to the creative finish, the ratings just never improved, and… sh’doink: canceled.
It’s curious that the show was at its best when its existence was on the line. This same framework surrounded the franchise’s 2011 theatrical film (which was also titled The Muppets) starring Jason Segel. That movie’s purpose was the re-introduce the franchise to a new generation. If it failed, arguably so could these characters’ withstanding legacy. The film sought to define what made the Muppets special, and in doing so delivered a fantastic finished product. The follow-up theatrical film, 2014’s Muppets Most Wanted, was respectable but didn’t reach near the emotional heights as Segel’s attempt did. Was it because it didn’t have that same pressure? Here we have a similar study: The first episodes of ABC’s show certainly are aware of their expectation to perform well, but it’s not until they were received negatively and the threat of cancellation loomed that personnel changes were made and the production got its act together.
Does this mean that any future Muppet production has to exist as a definitive project for the franchise in order to succeed? Certainly not, though it should keep the core values of what makes the characters special no matter what direction it takes. We’re already seeing that Disney still believes in Kermit and the gang following their ABC downfall. The Muppets have a surprisingly large new presence at Walt Disney World, the centerpiece of which is a live show starring real Muppets in person. Going forward, a reboot of Muppet Babies is headed to Disney Channel. In a perfect world, maybe the ABC show should’ve been given one more shot, if not on ABC itself then in another medium like Netflix. Thankfully, though, even if individual projects fail, the Muppets are an evergreen franchise that will continue to be used in different ways. One mistake does not equate permanent failure, and with that context in mind, at the very least ABC gave us six episodes of our favorite characters at their very best.
All 16 episodes of The Muppets are available on the Watch ABC app under the “Throwback” category. Back when The Muppets first aired, RotoWriter Jonathan North recapped each episode the week it aired. You can read those reviews here.
Did you watch The Muppets when it aired? Do you agree with ABC’s decision to cancel the show?
Edited by: Hannah Wilkes | 0.206094 |
Jeremy Forrest, the East Sussex teacher who spent eight days on the run in France with 15-year-old pupil Megan Stammers, will return to the UK after he appeared in court in Bordeaux and agreed to be extradited.
The 30-year-old maths teacher spoke to confirm his name and address and agreed to be questioned by British police. His lawyers had said earlier he would not contest extradition and had agreed to return as soon as possible. French magistrates will make their final decision on Thursday and Forrest is expected to be flown back to the UK soon afterwards.
He has been held in French police custody since his arrest last Friday in Bordeaux on suspicion of child abduction.
The married teacher from Ringmer, East Sussex, triggered an international police hunt after he took a cross-Channel ferry from Dover to Calais with Megan on 20 September. She had told her mother she was going to spend the night at a friend's house but failed to turn up at school the next day. Forrest and Megan were captured on CCTV holding hands on the ferry to France but after arriving in Calais they disappeared. A European arrest warrant was issued amid family appeals on TV for them to get in touch and a social network campaign to find them.
Last Friday, French police swooped as the couple walked down a busy shopping street in Bordeaux following a tipoff from a member of the public. Forrest had abandoned his Ford Fiesta in Paris and taken a high-speed train to Bordeaux with Megan. He had begun making inquiries about finding a job in a bar. One bar-owner recognised him from media coverage, told him to return the next day and contacted police.
In court in Bordeaux, Forrest appeared in the dock with two security guards and an interpreter, and gave his birthplace as Aberdeen. He was asked if he agreed to return to the UK to be questioned by police. He nodded and said yes.
Megan flew back to the UK at the weekend shortly after police found her with Forrest.
Outside court, his lawyer, Phil Smith, said: "Now that he has agreed to be extradited to the UK, we look forward to the full story emerging. He is very appreciative of the support of his family and concerned about the impact of this on all those concerned".
Forrest was Megan's maths teacher at the Bishop Bell school, Eastbourne. | 0.001426 |
How easy is it to get to the beach without driving?
Last weekend, I knocked something off my New Haven Bucket List I’ve wanted to do for a long time: I rode my bike to the beach.
Why did it take so long?
Well, mostly cause the idea of riding back from the beach in the sweltering heat with no reward of an ocean to swim in is… somewhat unappealing.
So I typically drive, like some kind of 20th century dummy. Sure, there’s free parking for residents, but even still, nothing makes me feel like a selfish lazy American than driving six miles to a beach in my own city.
Then, the solution hit me like a ton of bricks. It was in front of me this whole time:
The Bus.
But first, the ride out to Lighthouse Park.
The Bike Ride
First up, riding out to Lighthouse Point. It’s about 6 miles from the Green and can be done mostly on not-terrible roads in about 35 minutes. The beginning part involves a left turn onto Forbes Ave from East St which is… slightly horrible, I admit, but after that, it’s not bad.
Here’s the route. (And the actual link.)
Basically, you ride up Chapel St, take a right on East St, trying not to ride over any broken glass/dreams. Next up, you need to take a left on Forbes Ave, acrossing the Quinnipiac River and praying to whatever deity you believe in that you don’t get stuck waiting for the drawbridge.
Next up, the lovely Port Area, where you will discover new and interesting smells. I bet you didn’t even know what a Water Pollution Abatement Facility smelled like! Now you do. And it is… not… great.
Yeah, the scenery is a bit (literal) garbage, but hardly anybody drives there, which is nice.
Next, you’re sailing through East Shore Park, where kids play Little League Baseball and soccer and probably other things.
Once you’re back on the road, you take a right onto Townsend Ave, which takes you straight to Lighthouse Rd, and bam! No waiting in line for you, buddy! You just sail through your bicycle, a hot, sweaty mess.
But you’re about 30 seconds away from locking up your bike and plunging into the probably not polluted Long Island Sound!
(For the record, I think people are silly about this stuff. The EPA tests for stuff and would probably tell us if anything is wrong, right… ?)
The Beach
It’s a bit tricky if you’re at the beach by yourself. I wouldn’t necessarily bring vast amounts of cash and every credit card you own. Maybe just enough to buy a Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich at the snack bar. Which is legitimately a thing you can do. For realsies.
I’ve honestly never had a problem, but your mileage may vary. Then again, I usually pop into the water, hang out for a bit, have a nice pee, and back out again.
Plus, the conversations you overhear at Lighthouse Park are some of the greatest things you’ll ever hear. One year, after a rash of heroin drug dealer busts, I overheard a guy discussing how they could bump up the price because of the decrease supply.
It’s not often you get to hear the direct market forces of supply-side economics of the drug trade at the beach.
Of course, now you’re at the beach, and you’ve got your bike, how are you gonna get home?
It’s simple. It’s easy. And it has air conditioning.
The Bus
Why didn’t I think of it earlier? Of course the bus makes perfect sense. And I’d seen the elusive G line bus at Lighthouse Park before. How hard could it be to figure it out?
Turns out: Not that hard.
You could check out CT Transit’s newly redesigned website and try to figure out which lines go there, or you can download the free Transit App which tells you which buses are nearby, where they go, how often they run, etc.
It’s great.
So I saw that the G line runs about every half hour until the last one at 6:40 on Saturdays (it runs later during the week). Not bad!
I also had never used one of those fancy bike racks on the bus and was a little worried how tricky it might be. After all, you don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of all the cool, veteran bus riders.
Turns out: Also pretty easy!
In fact, it has instructions right on there. Can I follow simple instructions of “Pull Handle, Lower Rack, Pull Hook, Put Over Tire?”
Yes. Barely. But I did it. It seemed stable-ish.
Next thing you know, I’m riding back downtown along with my fellow denizens, many of whom are making the trip to see En Vogue perform on the Green. Actually, there were a couple of young ladies with posh British accents, even. I’m not surprised. They love the bus over there.
I arrive downtown with my bike and plenty of time to go pick a spot and hear En Vogue tell me I’m Never Gonna Get It, which isn’t a huge surprise, but a mild disappointment, as they still look great.
As a kid growing up in Coventry, it never would’ve occurred to me that I’d ever live in a place where I could easily get to the beach without even driving a car. Heck, many adults I know in New Haven would find the idea ridiculous.
But I did it. And it was fun. And you should do it too.
I’ll see you on the G bus.
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[FBW] | 0.178603 |
I often get asked in the comments on a post here or on my Google+ account about the details of my map-making. First of all I should aim anyone interested in my mapping styles and techniques to the appropriate graphical tutorials that I posted last year. But now, let’s talk about the tools involved in my cartography.
Until this year I used a 0.7mm Gel Pen that I bought from Staples / Business Depot (the Zebra Sarasa) for most of my maps. There’s also a bunch that I drew in pencil using a classic HB / #2 pencil that I would hand-sharpen instead of using a pencil sharpener (most of the pencil-drawn maps have been released under the “Lost Maps” tag).
I would draw on just about anything, but the vast majority of my 2012-2013 maps were drawn in little 4×6 books I would buy at the Dollar Store – I had to keep an eye out for them because most books at the Dollar Store have lines, and these were pretty sweet little plain-paper books. One of them is completely filled with maps and is hidden away in storage somewhere. Two others are each about 1/4 to 1/2 full now, but I don’t pull them out very often.
But really, I draw my maps on everything. I have maps on the insides of novel covers, on receipts, post-it notes, graph paper, and random bits of paper that cross my path.
Things changed in 2014 thanks to my Patreon Campaign. People who like the free maps and who feel like they should / can contribute financially to the continued production of said act as patrons of my work – the maps remain free, but some fans help pay for the continued production of these maps for everyone through Patreon. It’s been a total game-changer for me.
Now I use Sakura Micron pens for my work. Typically I use the 03 for walls, the 01 for crosshatching and the 005 for small details. If I’m working on super-fine graph paper or drawing a city then I switch to the 01 for for most stuff and the 005 for crosshatching and details.
I do most of my drawing now on Canson graph paper pads. Canson uses very light blue lines making it easier to lose the gridding in scanning (they were designed so the blue would wash out completely when photocopied).
When I’m done a map, I slap it on the scanner I have. It’s just the built-in scanner from a 4-in-1 printer. Back when I was really really poor I was using a printer that I got for free on Craigslist – the printer heads were fucked, but the scanner still worked.
I scan it into Photoshop (used to use the Gimp) as greyscale at 600 dpi. Then I increase the brightness by +20, and the contrast by +40 to +60. This removes most marks except some pencil marks, and definitely kills the grid in all but the darkest graph papers.
I go around and try to white out any remaining blobs, blots, dots and dust on the scan. Then I use Photoshop’s “Stylize -> Diffuse -> Anisotropic” filter to clean up the edges. Then I reduce the dpi down to 300 to clean up any artifacts from the scan and it also reduces how unnaturally smooth the edges of each line are after the diffuse filter. This also brings the file size down enough that I can host it here. I also keep a backup on my google drive for every map I’ve scanned in the last three years, just in case. For some of my maps I also add a screen – like the dots in the water in the maps slice shown above. I have these screens saved as patterns that I overlay over specific areas in photoshop. I generally use dot screens for water and I have some tree screens I use for regional maps.
But that’s all the technical stuff. The reality is that isn’t what makes my maps what they are. One of the things you’ll note with a majority of my maps is that they work into three dimensions as much as I can. This is something that I feel makes my maps stand out in the field. If there are two levels to something, and they don’t cross over each other TOO much, why not put them both on the same map?
I make heavy use of stairs, ramps, ladders, cliffs, drops, and other methods of changing elevation in a map because discussing elevation is a quick way to stop the players from seeing it as just a 2D game board. The trick is to get their brains involved in visualizing stuff, and a bit of 3-dimensional thinking is a great method to make them think it through a bit.
I also just draw whatever comes to mind. A lot of my maps started out as just an entrance to a dungeon, or a single room, and the map spread out organically from that point. Most of my maps are drawn straight in pen in a single draft. I generally only use pencil to rough out my maps when working on commissions or when dealing with surface structures that need to make use of 100% of their available space. | 0.303218 |
With the possible exception of whoever's in charge of determining which comics get banned from being sold on Apple devices, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarksy's Sex Criminals has been universally hailed as one of the best comic books of the year. The story of strange sexual awakenings, bank robberies, and the untold impact of porn left in the woods has earned its creators a huge fan following, a fourth printing of the first issue set for January, and being declared Time 's best comic book of the year.
To cap off a pretty triumphant year, I talked to Zdarsky about how he hooked up with Matt Fraction, his reaction to the response the book's been getting, and, perhaps most importantly, the secret origin of Sexual Gary.
ComicsAlliance: How did you and Matt Fraction hook up and decide to do Sex Criminals ?
Chip Zdarsky: Matt and I knew each other, obviously, online, the way we all know each other. We'd chatted before about doing something, and a couple years ago I was on assignment in Ottawa. They sent me to Ottawa to cover a politician boxing match, which was very weird, and I ended up working all night. I was up 'til 4 in the morning, and I think I had to catch a train at 6, and while I was on the train working, I e-mailed him and said "We should do something!"
I originally suggested we do our take on fantasy, because we both don't care for fantasy. I've never read Lord of the Rings , as a kid, I remember throwing the book across the room after forty pages. I know Matt and I both make fun of Ed Brubaker for his love of Lord of the Rings , and I thought it would be really funny if we did a comic about fantasy, knowing nothing about fantasy. Matt was like "that's a good idea, but here's a better idea: what about a comic about people who f**k, and they stop time by doing that and rob banks?" I was like "oh... yeah, okay, that's pretty good. That's cool." I was just delirious because I hadn't slept and I was on this train, but we went back and forth for the whole trip and I got super excited about it, and that was the beginning.
CA: It's such a weird premise, and yet, as someone who's followed your work for as long as I have, and who's been a... do your fans have names yet?
CZ: "Restraining Orders."
CA: As someone who's been a Restraining Order for so long, it kind of is the perfect comic for you to draw.
CZ: Yeah, I think Matt likes the idea of really tailoring what he's pitching to a specific artist, especially when he's doing a creator thing. Like with Chaykin and Satellite Sam , that's perfect, right? Picturing someone else doing it doesn't even make sense. I think Sex Criminals is the same thing, like Casanova , oh my God. Those brothers working on that. He's good at figuring out exactly who should be working on what.
CA: There's so much stuff in here that seems purely visual. I don't want to go through a list of awesome background gags, because I could, but there's that bit in the first issue where it's two pages of weird sex positions. Was that in the script as, like "pages 18 and 19, go nuts," or did those names come from the script?
Censor bars added by ComicsAlliance
CZ: Issue #1, we spent a long time on, just feeling each other out and setting the stage, creating the world and everything. With that sequence, it wasn't in the original script. There was another scene, I don't want to give it away in case Matt uses it somewhere down the line, but it was a touching scene of Suzie's youth. Reading it through, I was like "this is really good, but I feel like we need a break where it's just a barrage of laughs." I had an idea for a bathroom scene that was a bit more convoluted and didn't really work as well in comics, and Matt took that and was able to pace it out much better.
When it came to the time to come up with the sex moves, we just went back and forth and I think we came up with a hundred of them. Just names that meant nothing. When he scripted it out, he just narrowed it down to his top twenty, I think. I was able to put them in where I needed to, and then I just had to come up with how to draw them. We didn't actually talk about what each of the names meant, we just came up with as many as we could, and I had to figure out visually how to do it.
CA: I think my favorite is "ET: The Sex Move."
CZ: With that one... I kept trying to make them not super obvious. I knew there would be a finger involved, there would have to be a finger involved, but I thought "if we could get a Reese's Pieces in there somewhere..." that's art. That's art.
Even after I did it, Matt rearranged them for maximum joke effect, and we went back and forth on it for a while. It was the one scene that I was most worried about. If it didn't work, the comic would not do well, I think. That seemed to be the barometer right there, because we'd promised a lot of sex jokes, and that was the scene with the sex jokes. If nobody liked it, we were kind of dead in the water.
CA: It makes an interesting contrast with the rest of the book, because you hear the premise of time-stopping orgasms and bank robberies, and you go in expecting a sexy action romp, then on page 3, Suzie's dad commits suicide.
CZ: [ Laughs ] Yeah, that's the thing. When we first started talking about it, it was like "hey, it's going to be a couple of guys with their amateur dick jokes," even up until the solicitation. The solicitation really played it up a bit more as a sex romp with jokes all over the place. I don't think it even hinted on any kind of sexual journey or sexual awakening. By the time I got the script to #1, I was floored. I was like "Oh my God, this is beautiful, I probably shouldn't be the one to draw this." It was too much of a heartwarming story to wrap my head around the idea that Matt wanted me to draw it.
CA: It works well, though. It's immediately compelling and engaging and fun and sexy and horrifying. There's a lot of emotions involved.
CZ: It's a weird thing to try to pull off. I'm glad Matt trusted me with it.
CA: Before we move on from the subject of the background gags, two questions. First, I want to know where Sexual Gary came from.
CZ: I had to decorate a teenager's bedroom, and I knew I was going to put a pop star on the wall. I was just like, it's got to be one of those weird, hypersexualized guys. "Gary" is my default name when I'm working with the National Post , whenever I have to name a character in a column, they're always Gary for some reason.
Actually, I know the reason. The guy I work across from dated a guy named Gary for a while, and after they broke up, I just, I don't know why, I was so mean to him, I would just put "Gary" in the paper all the time, just to drive him nuts.
CA: [ Laughs ] That's horrible!
CZ: Yeah... I think Gary recently got married, so I brought Gary back again. I'm a bit of an asshole. I don't know if he appreciated it as much. So yeah, Gary is my defaut name, and the idea of a teen pop sensation named "Sexual Gary," I was pretty happy with that.
CA: My other question is that when they go to the unprintable porn store, the store I can't name at my job, thanks, there's all these different background gags for genres of porn, like "Obamacore." Is that another one where you went back and forth or was it all you?
CZ: It's back and forth. In the script, usually, Matt will list four or five items to set the scene, and for me, it's kind of like automatic writing, where I'll just sit there and sketch it out, and as I'm sketching I'm just filling in boxes. Like "Obamacore," I just made the space for text and thought "hardcore, softocre, Obamacore..." and just wrote it in.
After I do all that and show it to Matt, he usually has a couple of extras to play off what I've done. Background stuff is mostly me, but Matt's got a good eye to start it off, and what should stay and what should go.
CA: Another interesting thing about your work on this book is that, unless I've missed something, it's been a long time since you've done a big sequential project like this.
CZ: Yeah. The last one I did was the third issue of Prison Funnies , which I didn't even really put through Diamond. I just had a party here in Toronto and released them, and said "oh yeah, one day I'll set up shipping and get these out to people," but I never did. I was just too busy. So yeah, it's been a long, long time.
CA: I was really surprised by it, because I know your illustrations from the Post . A lot of times you see people going from spot illustrations and static pictures to sequential pieces, and everything looks really staged. Everything in Sex Criminals looks natural. Nothing looks stiff -- unless it's meant to. Was that a challenge?
CZ: At the newspaper, they let me do whatever styles I want for illustration, so I've been keeping pretty busy in terms of illustrating and keeping it as natural as possible. With the comic, Matt's script helped me a lot, because he was a bit more descriptive than he'd probably normally be, I think because he knew it'd been a while since I'd done comics, and to get a feel for each other. He's done it on a very strict eight-panel grid. The entire book, when you flip through, the first two pages are the only times we really break any panel borders. It's very easy to lay out, and that's definitely made it easier for me to get into and set the stages. I've just been practicing.
I've been doing illustration every day for fifteen yeras, so at some point, you get a bit more natural at it. Comics, you're telling a story, so it's different than static illustration, but I think most illustrators are okay to make the jump from illustration to comics, because they've been telling stories in single panels for so long that it's kind of liberating to be able to spread it out a little bit.
CA: An eight-panel grid would certainly make it easy to read on an iPhone.
CZ: I've never even thought of that. I've never done anything on a grid before, Prison Funnies I just made up as I went along. If I had done anything on a grid, it would be nine panels, because Watchmen was my Bible in terms of layout. When I first started doing eight panels, I thought "my God, this is so awkward, all the balloons have to be off to the side." There's not a lot you can do besides wide panels. I never even thought about reading it on a phone. That's funny.
CA: Do you want to talk at all about the Apple stuff ?
CZ: [ Laughs ] Ah yeah, the Apple stuff. That was an unpleasant surprise. It was weird.
CA: The book has been a hit. It's been a pretty strong seller, and it's so weird.
CZ: It's upsetting. The most upsetting thing for me is that people who buy exclusively on Comixology don't know what's wrong. If they go there and they bought #1, they're just waiting on #2. There's no notice that pops up that says "Guess what? You have to get #2 through the website and upload it to your device. Sorry!" I see people posting messages like "The second issue's taking forever to come out!" and I have to ask if they're trying to get it on Comixology. I have to tell them they're not going to get it because it's bad. It's bad and naughty.
CA: They're anti-Obamacore.
CZ: It was both a blessing and a curse. I hate, hate the idea that anyone who wants something can't get it, or doesn't know it's available. But at the same time, it was a fun little burst of press for us.
CA: It always sucks to have a book that's controversial for not being available, but it is one of those things that keeps it in the news after that first issue. The first issue always gets a lot of coverage, and when the second issue comes out, even if it's really good, which Sex Criminals #2 and #3 are, nobody talks about twos and threes the way they talk about #1s. This has kept you guys in the news cycle, and you've gone out of your way to let people know that they can get it on the web, through Image, in stores... You've got multiple printings of the first issue. The fourth printing is, I think, everyone's favorite cover of 2014.
CZ: That was another pleasant surprise.
CA: How long was that in the works? You're in Toronto, Fraction's in Portland. I know you guys had that release party where Fraction got his nipples pierced onstage...
CZ: The funny thing was that it came out last week, and we discussed it and did it two days before that. We knew there was going to be a fourth printing, because Image had already said that. They said "We know you don't have a cover ready, so we're just going to mention it to retailers," and I was like "maybe we should do this ." The question was how, so I basically did a sketch and sent it to Matt, and said "you pose like this, light it from the front, and send me that photo. I'll take care of the rest." He did it overnight, and then in the morning, I got my girlfriend to take a photo of me, and then by mid-afternoon it was done.
CA: So you weren't together for it.
CZ: No.
CA: I feel like you just told me there's no Santa Claus.
CZ: I know! I'm proud of the fact that I was able to pull it off and people thought we were together to do it. That's another thing with my newspaper job, they get me to PhotoShop things all the time, so I'm pretty good at quick, basic, not-cinema-quality photo manipulation stuff. Matt sent me his photo and his friend Alex was taking the place of me, and it was an iPhone quality photo, so it took me half an hour to match that and make it look like a studio photo. It was maybe two or three hours of work in the morning and then I sent it off to Image, and they were like "hoooooly s**t." The next morning, it came out.
It was really quick. It all happened extremely quickly, and I didn't even know if people would like it. I have no concept of that, really, I do something because it makes me laugh. Originally, across the top, we had "The Time Magazine Comic Of The Year!" and then Matt suggested the Hawkeye / Inhumans gag and the Applebee's gag, and yeah. That's what went out.
CA: Time Magazine Comic of the Year. I mean, I know you were excited about being in ComicsAlliance's Best of the Year list...
CZ: They both hold a special place in my heart.
CA: That's gotta be nice.
CZ: It's one of those things. My parents have never quite understood what I do, even for a living. They understand that I'm in the newspapers and that I'd do comics once in a while. Whenever I'd do Prison Funnies , I'd hand it to my dad and he'd look at it and laugh and go "oh, son." That was kind of the extent of it. Then the Time thing happened and you get the call from the parents and they're super happy, Image is super happy, Matt's super happy, and wow, people are super happy with me. That's weird!
CA: And then your parents ask you what the book's about...
CZ: My parents love it!
CA: Really?
CZ: Yeah, it's pretty funny. They were there at the launch party at the sex club.
CA: [ Uncontrollable laughter ]
CZ: The funny thing is that Matt knew they were coming, and said "oh, when I'm onstage getting my nipple pierced, I should call your mom up to hold my hand, that would be amazing." When it came time to do that, the club was beyond capacity, it was so hot, we said into the mic "Chip's parents are here, can Chip's mom come up and hold his hand?" They weren't even there. They were upstairs in the sex rooms. There's a third floor where everyone goes to have sex and apparently my parents went up there, so they couldn't hear Matt's cries for help.
CA: That's uncomfortable.
CZ: It's mildly uncomfortable. My parents are pretty happy with everything.
CA: Was that the first time they were aware that you own that Garfield suit?
CZ: Yeah, probably. But they didn't even flinch. There were photos being taken of us together and they never once said "hey, I couldn't help but notice that you're dressed as Garfield. That's, uh... that's something new." They just roll with it. It's great.
CA: On the subject of real-life interactions with Sex Criminals (the book), I saw you mention on Twitter that you use a model for Suzie, and she's getting recognized.
CZ: She went into a comic shop in London, Ontario with her fiancee, and they asked for Sex Criminals and the guy was telling her they'd sold out of some but might have a couple left, and her fiancee goes "yeah, she's in it! She's the model!" and the guy goes "Oh my God!" and has photos taken with her, got her to sign copies, wrote a blog post about encountering her . She's ecstatic with this weird level of notoriety. I don't know if she's told her parents yet that she's the main model for Sex Criminals .
CA: For Time 's Comic of the Year.
CZ: Exactly. It was funny. I knew I wanted her for the character when Matt and I first started discussing the character, I had the visual in my head, and it looked just like my friend. For the guy, for Jon, he's a friend of mine that works for the Beguiling, the comic shop. We mostly used them because of the wide disparity in height, because we thought it'd be really funny. The idea of a very tall man and a very short woman making love is always a pretty good visual, I think. So when I got them into the studio for the first time to take reference shots, they'd never met each other, and I was like "so, okay, so, um, scene one, you will be... kind of... grinding.. her body... with your body... on a sink, and, uh, all right, let's start!" It was a nice uncomfortable three hours.
CA: It's just like Love Actually !
CZ: It's just like Love Actually . Imagine being invited, by me, into my studio, where I'm going to take pictures of you simulating sex acts for a few hours.
CA: And I assume you're in the Garfield suit in this scenario.
CZ: The one thing I've noticed with this, and so has Matt, is the fact that since the models are real people and they're friends of mine, it stops me from making them objects of titillation, if that makes sense. If I'm going to draw them in a sexual situation, I'm not going to play up my friend's sexiness or something, you know? It keeps the focus on the story and less on someone getting off to the comic, which I can't really imagine, and which is what Apple imagines people doing.
CA: You say that, but people are determined, Chip.
CZ: But still!
CA: One last question: When's Monster Cops coming back?
CZ: Well, I've got a five-issue outline sitting here on my computer. A few years ago, I pitched the idea around to a couple of companies, and nobody quite bit, but I'd love to do more.
CA: Are you going to call those same people up again and go "Hi, this is the artist of Time Magazine's Comic of the Year, Chip Zdarsky."
CZ: I know I should be more business savvy and leverage this, but Sex Criminals is going to take time. We have a fair number of issues planned out. Unless something horrible happens, we're going to keep doing that for the forseeable future. I've definitely got the Monster Cops scripts sitting here ready to go, it's the kind of pitch where I come back to it every couple of months and just think "oh man, this is good." I'm not usually a fan of my own work, but I love the idea of getting into fans of kids, you know? And it would be such a funny follow-up to the sex book that's banned: my all-ages book.
CA: It is, without question, my favorite use of Vampirella in a comic.
CZ: I can't believe they went for it!
CA: You can't believe the people who published Vampirella let you do a comic where Vampirella was illiterate?
CZ: I know, but in the end, she learns to read, so it's all right. I remember when Harris approached me to do some sort of crossover. I said "all right, here's the pitch, I don't expect you to go for it," and they were like "no, do it."
CA: One imagines that Harris Comics had a sense of humor about Vampirella. Congratulations on a pretty successful year.
CZ: I honestly did not think it would happen. It's pretty weird. I'm used to being this weird guy right outside of comics, and I'll do one weird thing once in a while and people will go "oh, ho ho ho, that's good, but you can just go right back to where you came from." But yeah, this... this is a whole different thing. | 0.003321 |
"A group of scientists from seven research centres are taking smog readings in several cities through February 10th to assess the environmental impact from the increased use of fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, the Athens network SKAI TV reported.
The scientists, together with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, have warned that burning wood in the home releases 30 times more air pollution than using a well-maintained heating oil or gas-burning boiler.
They found that concentrations of particulates in the atmosphere from wood smoke increased 200 percent from December 2010 to the same period in 2012, stressing that the problem is especially acute at night, when demand for heating increases. The centre warned an increase in air pollution can lead to respiratory problems as well as aggravating allergies and disturb the neurological and reproductive systems.
Now apparently as heating oil has become a luxury that most people cannot afford (and with most of the population living in apartment buildings, if one resident in a block of flats cannot afford it, this means that the whole building does not buy heating oil and everyone is on their own to figure out a way to keep warm) consumption has reportedly dropped by as much as 80%. This means that alternatives to central heating must be found. Thus a lot of people turn to electric, grid powered heaters (your's truly included), that are now cheaper than oil and as many use fireplaces, and old wood stoves, occasionally with tragic consequences We are now discovering that picturesque and traditional methods of heating seen in villages. In fact I just realized how darn environmentally friendly heating oil is compared to burning things in a fireplace or a stove. And I do mean: " People are burning furniture, plastic, construction materials and even their slippers " to heat themselves when it does get cold. This makes the toxic mix of deleterious fumes covering major cities, even more unhealthy
The price of firewood has, naturally, doubled since last year, so the incentive to chop down trees in forests and parks is great. In fact both parks and national forests have suffered great losses:
As winter temperatures bite, that trend is dealing a serious blow to the environment, as hillsides are denuded of timber and smog from fires clouds the air in Athens and other cities, posing risks to public health. The number of illegal logging cases jumped in 2012, said forestry groups, while the environment ministry has lodged more than 3,000 lawsuits and seized more than 13,000 tons of illegally cut trees.
Such woodcutting was last common in Greece during Germany's brutal occupation in the 1940s, underscoring how five years of recession and waves of austerity measures have spawned drastic measures
As one could have easily imagined in the first place, the measure flopped revenue-wise:
Oil suppliers claim of a 75-80% sales decrease for the period October-November-December 2012, when compared to the same period of 2011. Greek Fuel Suppliers Association estimates that the black hole in the state pockets are 400 million euro due to the sharp decrease in heating oil sales.
The Finance Minister, Yiannis Stournaras, an Economics Professor, Banker and former head of the Greek Industrialists' Economic Think Tank IOBE, was however adamant, having the perfect economics background to help him deny what is palpably (indeed chillingly) evident to every bloody citizen in the country: He has refused any extra aid to poor families, advising the freezing to "to be patient for another year" and wait out the cold. Really. And he also attributed the collapse of heating-oil revenues to "people having stockpiled heating oil from last year" despite the fact that it is consumption of heating oil that has declined by 80%. Obviously the economic cult he belongs to is loathe to price-in "externalities" such as health effects, fire hazards and illegal wood-cutting. The troika however seems happy with the results - and who are the victims of its policies to disagree? (although allegedly the troika demanded leveling the tax on heating and transport oil, to fight smuggling, but didn't state to what level - it was Stournaras who chose the highest of the two prices). Since people are turning to the power grid for heating BTW, a pinch of "energy liberalization" will see that this too becomes untenable, as electricity consumers will see a 9% hike on their bills (higher for smaller consumptions, smaller for larger ones!), pending a rumoured 20% increase spread over 2013. Already the Public Power Corporation is cutting off power to customers that can't pay at a rate of 30.000 connections a month! This means that ~300-500.000 households in Greece are living without electricity - literally powerless. Truly an achievement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize...
The heating debacle is the perfect example of austerian madness as misanthrope feast. It has no point, it doesn't achieve its stated goals, and it has tremendously disastrous side-effects. It adds one more in the troika's long list of crimes against humanity in the European South and serves to demonstrate the imbecility of the current government and its experts... | 0.996019 |
MS Dhoni talks about his move up the order, the pitch, and more after their seven-wicket win in the third ODI against New Zealand in Mohali (2:01)
In the movie MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, a teenage Dhoni persuades his coach to let him open the batting in an inter-school limited-overs match. He even convinces one of the regular openers to give up his place, and goes on to score a double-hundred. As India's limited-overs captain, Dhoni doesn't have to haggle for his preferred batting slot. Yet, it isn't as simple as walking up to the coach and seeking a promotion.
Considering Dhoni's approach has always been dictated by the match situation and the team's requirement, his decision to bat lower is easy to understand. In nine matches, between the 2015 World Cup and the start of this series, where India had batted second, they have mounted successful chases on only four occasions, of which three came against Zimbabwe.
The role of a finisher could not be left to the younger batsmen, who are just settling into the side, so Dhoni found himself unable to move higher up the order. And when batting in the final overs, Dhoni admitted after the Mohali ODI, he "is losing his ability to rotate" the strike.
So on Sunday evening, he walked in at No. 4, more importantly as early as the ninth over, ahead of Manish Pandey. The crowd took a few seconds to process - and then go delirious over - Dhoni's promotion. There was nothing knee-jerk about this, and it wasn't entirely a situation-specific decision either, like at Wankhede Stadium on April 2, 2011. Instead, it became clearer over the course of India's chase that the decision was geared towards extracting the best out of Dhoni the batsman who, when batting lower down, feels bogged down by consequences in absence of other finishers.
"We were having a conversation in the team management about the things we want to do. One of the things was for me to play free cricket," he said after the match. "The first thing that helps [when batting at No.4] is you are only two down. It was important for me to start with a positive intent. I could have got out, but that is the risk you can afford to take if you are batting at No. 4."
On the surface, Dhoni's innings was moulded on a familiar template - nurdles, nudges and an overall busy presence - but he also shrugged off the inertia that had built up in recent times. It was a return to the build-before-explode space he likes to operate in.
He began with a rasping pull to backward square leg for one and then walked down the crease to disturb Trent Boult's length. After having decided five deliveries were enough to find his bearings, he gave Tim Southee a furious charge and smacked him over midwicket.
"At that slot [No 5 or 6], it becomes very result-oriented. That has actually hampered my batting to a great extent." Associated Press
New Zealand looked to attack him with the short ball, but Dhoni did not back down, even if he did not always manage to hit boundaries. He was temporarily bottled up by James Neesham and Mitchell Santner - moving from 10 off 12 balls to 13 off 24 - but once he smashed Neesham's length ball over mid-off, things were quickly out of New Zealand's control. The familiar lofts over the bowler's head - Neesham and Santner were the worst affected - were duly reprised.
Batting at No.4, Dhoni said, freed him up to play the big shots right from the start. "It was something that I wanted to do for a long time, but if you are batting at No.5 or No.6, and especially when your top order is batting brilliantly, you don't get to chance to bat how you want to bat," he said.
"Often, you will get in with the last 10 or 12 overs trying to slog and trying to get as many runs as possible, or the other way round where in the 20th over maybe where you have lost five wickets and you go in to bat looking for a partnership. If it keeps happening for a long time, you don't fluently rotate the strike. When you know there is just one batsman after you, you have to be close to 90% sure all the time when you are setting out and looking for a big hit.
"At that slot it becomes very result-oriented. That has actually hampered my batting to a great extent. Going at No.4, it was important to go and play the big shots. It was the first innings I played and I got runs, but it's not easy to come out of it so I could have taken a few more innings. So, it's good I got runs. Personally for me also, I am not looking too much into what needs to be done. I can play the shots over the fielder and I feel that was what was needed in my batting. Today was the first day and I am hoping to continue with this."
The knock-on effect of Dhoni's promotion was that two of the all-time best limited-overs batsmen spent maximum time at the crease. Dhoni offered his pet example of "converting one-and-a-half runs into two" while batting alongside Virat Kohli.
"If I'm successful at No.4, it gives the team a bit of a liberty because I'll try to score at a decent pace," he said. "Even today I felt I slowed down a bit but I feel it's important for me to keep playing the big shots. Also it gives me a chance to bat with Virat. We run between the wickets very well, we can take on the opposition fielders even the best ones. If you get a good partnership in the middle, that is 100-125, it becomes slightly easier for the batsman coming after that.
"[Even today] it was a nice wicket but over the time what happened was without much dew it slowed down, so it was not easy to keep rotating the strike. I thought we adjusted very well in the middle overs because we knew there will be overs where we won't get more than 3-4 runs per over and we knew later on we can always get overs where we can score 8-9 runs and compensate for it."
By stating that his promotion is an opportunity for youngsters to take ownership of the finishing role, Dhoni is allowing them to learn on the job. Given his utility at the top of the order, it is hard to disagree with his logic that it's a "win-win" for everybody. | 0.000964 |
The new residential and commercial development that will replace the Newport Intermediate School next year was presented to the Newport City Commission on Monday evening as the city explores the possibility of utilizing industrial revenue bonds to help the project.
"One item in the contract, a condition in the purchase, is that there be consideration of industrial revenue bond financing," said attorney Jim Parsons, the former Newport city manager who, through his position with prominent law firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, advises local cities on such matters. "That is something that was important to the development when they put the bid in."
In June, The River City News was first to report that the Newport Board of Education entered into an agreement with Carmel, IN-based CRG Residential which would buy and redevelop the site. The deal proceeded earlier this month when the school board pushed the $2.625 million sale further.
The school building will be razed to make way for new construction.
For the first time, CRG presented a rendering of what the new development may look like. "I view this project as something in between Monmouth Row and Aqua," said David George with CRG, referencing the successful Towne Properties development on Monmouth Street and the under-construction CIG Properties project on the riverfront. "Obviously, we won't be right on the river, but we want you to see a lot of upper-level amenities."
There will be 7,300 sq. ft. of retail space on Monmouth Street and 3,600 sq. ft. of residential amenities, including two outdoor courtyards, one of which could be used to accommodate outdoor dining should a restaurant opt to locate at the unnamed project.
CRG is no stranger to the region. They developed the One Lytle Place apartment tower in downtown Cincinnati and are currently working on the redevelopment of the old Woodward High School in the Queen City. As it has on other projects, CRG will partner with Indianapolis-based Barrett & Stokely to own and manage the site.
Future projects in the region could be forthcoming, George told the city commission.
"Especially on the Kentucky side," George said. "I'm very big on this side of the river. It's a life cycle. You've done a great job with retail and that allows the amenities. The next step would be, once you have enough people and population density, you'll start getting the businesses and offices."
Newport Independent Schools is still using the building for the 2015-16 academic year, but work on the project is expected to begin with school lets out next spring.
Other Newport notes:
The city commission accepted the proposal of the Commonwealth of Kentucky's Transportation Cabinet related to the construction of the Kentucky Route 9 extension, though there was some confusion. The city agreed to spend more than $100,000 for decorative street lights in a median that it negotiated to be included in the project, but City Commission Frank Peluso said that he interpreted the agreement to include language that indicated the city would take over responsibility for more than a mile and a half of state roadway. City Manager Tom Fromme disagreed with that interpretation.
"The full resolution says the city assumes full responsibility, maintenance of sidewalks, outside travel lanes," Commissioner Peluso said. "Further it talks about taking over the existing state route and there is a map attached of all the traffic signals that we're going to take responsibility for."
"I don't understand it that way," Fromme said, noting that the city is already responsible for all sidewalks along state routes. The proposal was accepted by a vote of 4-1 with Peluso dissenting.
Written by Michael Monks, editor & publisher | 0.368606 |
How do you know when an MSM member is pushing pro-Obama spin to the absurd? When even the most partisan of Dems, in the person of James Carville, can't stomach it.
On today's Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell, claiming that the world was "coalescing" around Obama's position on Syria, said that there was "a lot of optimism" surrounding the Obama team's negotiations with the Russians. Mitchell said she had seen this kind of thing before back in the 80s, when the US negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union. "It starts slowly but things happen," comforted Mitchell. All this was too much for Carville, who forsaw a future in which the negotiations went on and on and led nowhere. Said Serpent Head: "I love Andrea and she's optimistic. God love her, I hope she's right. Count me a little more pessimistic." View the video after the jump.
Watch Andrea's shameless support for a president who makes Jimmy Carter look bold and decisive. | 0.004301 |
HOUSTON – Oil-company bankruptcies surged over the past two months as drillers ran into hefty interest payments amid one of the toughest financial squeezes for the industry in decades.
Eighteen North American oil companies filed for bankruptcy in March and April, a big two-month haul that included two of Houston’s midsized public drillers, Energy XXI and Ultra Petroleum Corp.
Several of the 18 producers chose not to make quarterly interest payments on a combined $8.9 billion in debt while banks cut oil company credit lines, part of a semi-annual review by lenders.
“There’s no point in paying the interest to bond holders at that point,” said Buddy Clark Jr., an attorney at Dallas law firm Haynes & Boone. “They’ve got to conserve cash. A lot of the bondholders will be out of the money.”
Since the start of the downturn, 69 oil companies in the United States and Canada have filed court papers seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to Haynes & Boone. Eleven of them filed in April. And 27 filed this year, compared to just eight that filed in the first four months of 2015. | 0.98804 |
(CNN) -- Tony Gwynn, a Hall of Fame outfielder who spent his entire Major League Baseball career with the San Diego Padres, has died after a multiyear battle with salivary gland cancer. He was 54.
"Major League Baseball today mourns the tragic loss of Tony Gwynn, the greatest Padre ever and one of the most accomplished hitters that our game has ever known, whose all-around excellence on the field was surpassed by his exuberant personality and genial disposition in life," MLB Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement.
Gwynn -- known for slapping singles between third base and shortstop in his 20-year career with the Padres -- had 3,141 hits and a .338 batting average. He also was a 15-time All-Star. In 2007, Gwynn was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame with Cal Ripken.
"He was beloved by so many, especially the Hall of Fame family, for his kindness, graciousness and passion for the game," Jane Forbes Clark, chairman of the board of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a statement. "Tony was one of baseball history's most consistent hitters and most affable personalities. He was an icon for San Diego Padres fans, never more evident than on Induction Day of 2007, when tens of thousands of Tony's most appreciative fans filled Cooperstown for his Hall of Fame speech. We extend our deepest sympathies to Alicia and the entire Gwynn family."
"I am deeply saddened to learn that Tony Gwynn has lost his courageous battle against cancer," Tony Clark, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, said in a statement. "Since his diagnosis, Tony displayed the same tenacity and drive in his fight against this horrible disease that he brought to the plate in every at bat of his Hall of Fame career."
Gwynn was known as "Mr. Padre" during and after his career in the majors. The team retired his No. 19 jersey in September 2004 at Petco Park. In the spring of 2005, the street on which the stadium is located was named Tony Gwynn Drive in his honor. There's also a statue of Gwynn at Petco Park, which was unveiled in 2007.
After Gwynn retired from the Padres in 2001, he became the head baseball coach for San Diego State University, his alma mater.
He was diagnosed with cancer almost a decade later. In March, Gwynn took a medical leave of absence while undergoing cancer treatment, but he had recently signed a one-year extension with the Aztecs.
San Diego State tweeted Monday, "Our hearts are heavy today. RIP Tony Gwynn. Thoughts to the entire Gwynn family and SDSU Baseball family."
As a collegiate baseball player, Gwynn was an All-American at San Diego State. He also played basketball while growing up in Long Beach and arrived at San Diego State as a highly recruited point guard in 1977.
He played basketball for the Aztecs for four seasons and baseball for three seasons, garnering all-Western Athletic Conference honors in both sports. According to San Diego State's athletics website, Gwynn remains the only athlete in WAC history to be honored as an all-conference performer in two sports.
Baseball still runs in the Gwynn family. Gwynn's son, Tony Gwynn Jr., followed in his father's footsteps and currently is an outfielder for the Philadelphia Phillies.
"Today I lost my Dad, my best friend and my mentor," Gwynn Jr. tweeted on Monday. "I'm gonna miss u so much pops. I'm gonna do everything in my power to continue to... Make u proud!"
Gwynn died surrounded by family at Pomerado Hospital in Poway, California.
People we lost in 2014
Tony Gwynn and a habit all too common in baseball
Opinion: The joy of Tony Gwynn | 0.001087 |
In a stunning, unexpected development, Moonlight has won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards... after La La Land was initially, incorrectly announced as the winner. The shocking turn of events happened when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were erroneously given Emma Stone's Best Actress win announcement envelope instead of the Best Picture one, resulting in the wrong film's name being announced. Three La La Land producers had given acceptance speeches before the mistake was revealed. Below, find video footage of the moment, as well as an apology statement from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm in charge of tallying Oscar votes and handing out the envelopes.
PricewaterhouseCoopers statement:
We sincerely apologize to Moonlight, La La Land, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, and the Oscar viewers for the error that was made during the award announcement for best picture. The presenters had mistakenly been given the wrong category envelope and when discovered, was immediately corrected. We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.
The film beat out other movies including La La Land, Arrival, Hidden Figures, Manchester By the Sea, and more for the coveted accolade. It marks the third award for the Barry Jenkins-directed picture tonight. Earlier in the evening Mahershala Ali won for Best Supporting Actor, and the film won Best Adapted Screenplay as well. Moonlight was nominated for 8 awards in total.
Read “Director Barry Jenkins on the Music that Made Moonlight” and “No More Classic Men: On Moonlight’s Bizarre Jidenna Moment” on the Pitch.
For more of Pitchfork’s coverage of this year’s Oscars, click here. | 0.001085 |
CONSOLE: Famicom DEVELOPER: Shimada Kikaku PUBLISHER: Character Soft RELEASE DATE (JP): December 11, 1992 GENRE: Platformer // review by SoyBomb This won't take long. Obviously, this game is based on the Hello Kitty franchise, and it shows. There is about as much challenge here as there is sitting in an old lawn chair: takes about half a minute to finally settle down into the thing, and then once you finally get comfortable, you discover there's a twig in your bikini shorts. You play the role of Kitty, and your duty is to make every flower in the land grow. 'Tis a noble quest, prettying up the world, one flower at a time, and perhaps it is a lofty one, knowing how many gardens exist in the world today. Luckily, for Hello Kitty, the world is very small and she can probably take care of the situation in about an hour. With a watering can in tow, Kitty goes through 18 stages, trying to water all the potted plants conveniently strewn about to make a tall flower grow out of each of them. By holding Down, Kitty will release water from her can to cause a sprout to grow. But you have to keep watering it until a full impressively-surprised flower pops out. Isn't that a grand central theme for a video game? Oh, Kitty.
If it wasn't for Kitty's absolutely adorable flat feet, I wouldn't give this a second look. Sounds pretty simple, eh? For the most part, it IS simple — perhaps TOO simple. The only major obstacles that really get in your way are moving platforms (yikes!) and some foes that are nothing to scoff at, although feel free to do all the scoffing you wish against these little creatures: snails, small squirrels, and those pesky bouncing beach balls. Okay, who forgot to put their beach ball on a leash?! That's it: six months in the hoosgow! (Did I spell that correctly?) Luckily, Kitty has a secret weapon: a wooden mallet! Kitty isn't so harmless now, is she? Within those pleasant whiskers and those adorable flat feet flows the blood of a cold-hearted killer! Okay, not really. She just temporarily stuns enemies. We can't have violence in a Sanrio game. That would be unreal. That being said, if you grow a flower and a strawberry pops out, you can become invincible and knock out anything that gets in your way. Oh, Kitty. At least the game is cute, even if it's painfully plain for a game from 1992. One cannot say no to the ever-powerful warming glow of Kitty. Also, every part of this world in which she lives is coated with wallpaper. Where even IS this? Are there lands out there coated in polka dots and dull fish design? If there is, I'm packing my bags! (There IS a place like that, actually. It's called a wallpaper store.) So I've basically described the game. Does it ever get difficult? No. Does it ever get particularly exciting? Not really. Did it make me love Hello Kitty more? Not at all. Maybe it caused me to love her a little less. It's a Hello Kitty game; it was designed primarily for kids, not for adults with fetishes for flat-footed felines. Yet as a reviewer, it just didn't pop for me. Perhaps that's because it can be completed in under an hour on the first try... with minimal effort... while fending off wild miniature squirrels. Oh, Kitty. Kitty Carlisle. | 0.002095 |
Film theatre owners have also received threats of disruptions if the film is screened, UP has said
Highlights Rajput groups protesting against 'Padmavati' alleging distortion of facts Film suggests romance for Queen Padmini and Alauddin Khilji: detractors Consider public outrage before clearing film: UP government to Centre
The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday wrote to the Union Secretary of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting requesting them to ensure that the prospects of public outrage and unrest over the Bollywood film 'Padmavati' are considered owing to alleged twisting of historical facts before certification of the film by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).In the letter written by the state home department, the I&B official was asked to also ensure that the public view and dissent on the matter was taken into consideration before the film is certified.The letter also states that this has been brought to the notice of the UP government that makers of the historical saga have submitted the film before the Censor Board for certification.Hostile reactions like effigy burning, slogan shouting, vandalism, demonstrations, submission of memorandums are taking place, the top-ranking home department official Arvind Kumar said in the letter.Film theatre and multiplex owners have also received threats of disruptions if the film is screened, Arvind Kumar further informed the ministry. In light of these issues, it would be pertinent to raise the matter before the CBFC, the official further said. The state government has also pointed out that UP is going for urban body polls on November 22, 26 and 29 and counting of votes would take place on December 1, making it a fragile period for the law and order machinery. | 0.02017 |
While corporate welfare is lining the pockets of Canadian aerospace firms and even rural pizzerias, many of the country’s top employers have not collected a cent, says a new analysis by the Fraser Institute.
“You can’t blame the companies; if politicians are silly enough to offer up taxpayer cash, those companies will seek it and hire the lobbyists to get it,” said Mark Milke, a senior fellow at the institute.
Tuesday’s 15-page report is his sixth on corporate welfare.
Since 1961, Industry Canada and its successors have doled out an inflation-adjusted $22-billion in grants, loans and various “contributions” to private companies, based on Access to Information requests filed by Fraser Institute researchers.
All four of the top recipients were aerospace firms.
Pratt & Whitney Canada, the Longueil, Que.-based aircraft engine manufacturer, received 75 disbursements totaling $3.3 billion.
Quebec transportation heavyweight Bombardier has pulled in $1.1-billion since securing its first Industry Canada payout in 1966. Another $1-billion was collected by de Havilland, makers of the iconic de Havilland Beaver single-engine bush plane.
In fourth place, CAE Inc., the Mississauga, Ont.-based flight simulator manufacturer, has collected $646 million since 1993.
At the same time, the country’s top three employers, Onex Corp., George Weston Ltd. and Loblaw Cos. were paid nothing. Collectively, the three keep 536,000 people on the payroll.
Of Canada’s top 25 employers, in fact, only five had received Industry Canada contributions.
Industry Canada payouts were but a sliver of the total subsidies handed out by Canadian governments in the same time period.
If politicians are silly enough to offer up taxpayer cash, those companies will seek it and hire the lobbyists to get it
The figures do not include any provincial and territorial subsidies, as well as the $14-billion federal/Ontario bailout for Chrysler and General Motors in 2009. It also leaves out “most” of Ottawa’s much-advertised $63-billion Economic Action Plan, said Mr. Milke.
A 2009 Fraser Institute accounting of all government subsidies in 1994-2007, for instance, tallied up more than $202-billion.
However, the point of the exercise was to figure out whether there were “repeat offenders, so to speak, at the public trough,” said Mr. Milke.
At the same time, his report notes a bizarre smattering of small-scale Industry Canada payouts to hot dog stands, ice cream shops, gas stations and pizzerias.
Over the years, 24 payouts totalling $856,570 have been handed to ice cream shops, while $1.3-million went to subsidize pizzerias, some of them in rural centres such as Le Pas, Man., and Indian Brook, N.S.
“These smaller disbursements … signal how successive governments spent tax dollars not only on the smallest of businesses, but on the civil servants necessary to parse through such requests to then deny or approve them,” the report reads.
Said Mr. Milke, “it boggles the mind to think that somebody in Ottawa thought it was a good idea to have a federal department to sift through grants for $5,000 or $10,000 — and that there was some kind of market value in the provision of ice cream in this country.”
The abolition of “corporate welfare” has been embraced by both sides on the political aisle.
The term was popularized by David Lewis, then-New Democratic Party leader, who campaigned against “corporate welfare bums” during the 1972 federal election.
Talk of corporate welfare was resurrected in June, 2004, when then-Opposition leader Stephen Harper told the Toronto Board of Trade, as prime minister, he would “get out of the grants and subsidies game.”
Instead, the practice has continued unabated since the Conservatives were elected in 2006.
In a paper published last month, the Institute for Research on Public Policy claimed Canada is seeing a “resurgence of industrial policy.”
National Post
• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: TristinHopper | 0.988584 |
At the end of August this year, the US Department of Transport's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new standards to significantly improve the fuel economy of cars and light trucks by 2025. Last week, we took a look at a range of recent engine technologies that car companies have been deploying in aid of better fuel efficiency today. But what about the cars of tomorrow, or next week? What do Detroit, or Stuttgart, or Tokyo have waiting in the wings that will get to the Obama administration's target of 54.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2025?
The problem is historic
Ars tackles the future of cars "The road ahead" is just the second installment in the Ars' three-part series. Last week Jonathan Gitlin tackled "The road ahead" is just the second installment in the Ars' three-part series. Last week Jonathan Gitlin tackled innovation in engine design . Next week: alternative methods for manufacturers to create more efficient vehicles.
Whatever the technology, it's going to involve gasoline for at least the foreseeable future in the US. Automotive history helps us understand why. Author and journalist LJK Setright told us "we need hardly worry about who invented the motor car." While there are several inventors to whom the first horseless carriages can be attributed, Setright had a point when drawing the starting line through 1885 and Karl Benz's gas-powered three-wheeled machine. Victorian and Edwardian car makers drew on a wide range of fuels and engines. If a man in the street then predicted the next century, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to expect a diverse vehicular landscape. Back then, electric cars were marketed to women as they neither gave off clouds of exhaust nor required someone strong to crank the engine over (the invention of the electric starter motor finished this feature off). By 1900, Thomas Edison was ready to pick this technology as the winner.
Electricity might be making a comeback now, but it was the internal combustion engine—powered either by gas or diesel—that made automobile what it is. Unlike steam, drivers didn't need to stop for heavy fuel to burn or to top up the water for their boilers. Back then, much like today, batteries didn't charge fast enough or contain enough energy to meet most of our needs. But liquid hydrocarbons are cheap and easy to extract, they have good energy density, and don't require high pressure containment. So for over a century, the infrastructure to support the gas-powered car built up across the globe.
Of course, burning hydrocarbons isn't problem-free. They are a finite resource, one we're pulling out of the ground much faster than it took to get down there in the first place. Many of the richest deposits are controlled by autocratic or otherwise unpleasant regimes, upon which another nation might not wish to depend. And then there's the waste problem: nitrogen compounds can cause respiratory disease; lead additives affect development; and the big one, carbon dioxide, drives climate change. Despite these issues, the depth of infrastructure to support the gasoline engine is such that, for the foreseeable future, alternatives like hydrogen or even electricity will remain very niche choices.
The MPG equation
The basics of today's engines may have been put together more than 130 years ago, but that hasn't stopped engineers and scientists from finding new ways to travel further on the same gallon. That benefits drivers who have to pay to fill up their tank, as well as to society at large. It's why governments are using differing approaches to increase fuel efficiency. In Europe, that's mainly via escalating gas taxes, but here in the US we have the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) regulations.
CAFE was introduced following the oil crisis in 1979 resulting from the Iranian revolution. It started with a modest goal, a mere 18 mpg, something even the Ford Model T was capable of achieving. CAFE increased average fuel efficiency over a number of years, up to 27 mpg in the mid-1980s, but the 1990s saw both oil prices and the idea of the US government exercising regulatory power both drop like stones. There we languished, until rising oil prices and growing sentiment about the need to address climate change intervened (such are the difficulties of making anything happen in Washington, DC). It was actually the car companies that moved first this time around, sensing that parsimonious punters might respond well. DC followed, and in August 2012, the government published new CAFE regulations that will raise average fuel economy to 54.5 mpg by 2025—almost double what they were a mere two years ago (you can find an interesting infographic showing the last 100 years of fuel economy here.)
Now, it's important to note that what CAFE says is a 54.5 mpg car and what the EPA says is a 54.5 mpg car are not really the same thing. For one thing, CAFE standards apply to, and are calculated for, a company's entire product lineup based on a complicated formula. That isn't the same as the simulation of supposedly real-world driving conditions that the EPA uses. What's more, within that product lineup, cars with a smaller footprint (say, a Mini) are expected to get better mileage than larger vehicles (your trucks or SUVs). So, in 2025, a car with a footprint of 41 sq. ft or less will be expected to deliver 61 mpg under CAFE, but only 43 mpg according to the EPA. At the other end of the scale, a truck with a footprint greater than 75 sq. ft only needs a CAFE rating of 30 mpg, or a mere 23 mpg from the EPA. Suddenly it seems like we're not even asking that much!
At this point, some of you might be thinking "there are plenty of fuel-efficient cars, but they're all small and on sale in Europe!" Euro car nerds are but a tiny minority within these great United States. Most car buyers, whether they're in Manhattan, New York, or McAllen, Texas, are not going to be lining up for VW Lupos or Renault Twingos—even if they can do 70 mpg. But that's a problem of taste—let's worry about the technology first!
How the magic may happen
The first technology to consider is start-stop. It's arguably a current technology, at least in Europe where I've been hard pressed to rent a car without it. In fact, you could even get a VW Golf equipped with an early system as far back as 1994, but they didn't sell well. Since this is a US-centric site and start-stop is only just beginning to arrive on US roads, it counts.
Start-stop is designed to save gas when it's being most wasted, which is when the engine is running but the car is stationary (i.e. in a traffic jam). Simply, when the car comes to a halt, the engine cuts out. When it's time to move another car length forward, the engine refires and the driver carries on their merry way. One reason for the prevalence of start-stop in European cars, and its late arrival on these shores, is the preference our continental cousins have for manual transmissions. That's because stopping the engine when the car is stationary is the easier part.
As we discussed in part one, car engines are made up of many components with inertia and momentum. This means they can be started quickly, but not instantaneously. It's not so much of a problem with a manual transmission, as selecting first gear from neutral refires the engine (in practice—I've found it's still horribly easy to stall when trying to get moving quickly). But companies like Ford found it wasn't quite that simple with automatic transmissions.
In order to keep the gearbox's hydraulic pressure up, Ford fitted an electric pump. Also, to minimize the delay between the driver wanting to dart into an opening in traffic and the car moving, the transmission is kept in gear instead of dropping to neutral at a stop. "We had to develop some unique control algorithms for the engine and transmission to overcome this obstacle and still ensure an extremely quick, smooth, and quiet restart," said Birgit Sorgenfrei, Ford’s Auto Start-Stop program manager.
And to prevent the nightmare scenario of cars stranded in traffic jams with dead batteries, the control software also monitors the electrical drain on the car (from AC, audio, headlights, etc.) and disables start-stop when necessary. While start-stop doesn't offer much in the way of benefit when it comes to the EPA's fuel efficiency calculations, in city driving, such a system should be able to realize a gas saving of up to 10 percent. Not too shabby, but still not 54.4 in the near-term. Where do engines go from here?
The automotive industry has come up with plenty of ways to increase the efficiency of existing engines. Unfortunately, to reduce fuel consumption and emissions to the low levels of future standards, we can’t just rely on incremental improvements—entirely new kinds of internal combustion engines need to be developed. Fortunately, the research and industrial community has known this for the past few decades. They've been hard at work coming up with these.
Before talking about the new engine concepts, first we’ll dig a little deeper into how traditional engine types work to understand their limitations. | 0.991315 |
The RCMP is alleging top brass of the Ontario Provincial Police union participated in a sophisticated financial scheme involving a travel company, a consulting firm and high-risk offshore investments, “to profit and deceive” their members, putting their union in peril. Among the alleged investments: two beachside condos in the Bahamas, one valued at $1.5 million, and $100,000 in union money wired to an income fund in the Cayman Islands.
OPP Association president Jim Christie, right, and chief administrative officer Karl Walsh are two of the union's leaders alleged to have committed theft, breach of trust, fraud and laundering the proceeds of crime, according to unproven allegations in an affidavit the RCMP used to obtain search warrants executed late last week. ( FACEBOOK ) OPPA president Jim Christie, left, chief administrative officer Karl Walsh and vice-president Martin Bain stepped aside Monday in the wake of the RCMP raids. No charges have been laid.
According to unproven allegations in an affidavit the RCMP used to obtain a series of search warrants executed late last week, Ontario Provincial Police Association president Jim Christie, vice-president Martin Bain and chief administrative officer Karl Walsh are alleged to have committed theft, breach of trust, fraud and laundering the proceeds of crime. “(Christie, Bain and Walsh) have made numerous decisions that demonstrate an intentional lack of stewardship and accountability,” wrote RCMP Sgt. Gordon Aristotle, who petitioned the court for permission for the Mountie raids on the OPPA office, union vehicles and residences of Christie, Bain and Walsh, and more. “I believe they have financially benefited from their actions, breached the trust of the OPPA membership and placed the OPPA and its membership at a significant financial risk,” Aristotle concluded.
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The trio stepped aside on Monday in the wake of the RCMP raids. No charges have been laid. Their alleged accomplices include Toronto criminal lawyer Andrew McKay, a former police officer, as well as Noel Francis Chantiam and Klara Kozak, who are partners in First Response, the travel company believed to be involved in the scheme, the affidavit states. McKay, Kozak and Chantiam are alleged to have committed fraudulent concealment, laundering proceeds of crime and fraud, according to the affidavit.
(L-R) Partner - First Response, Klara Kozak, Lawyer and owner First Response, Andrew McKay. RCMP search warrant document, unsealed Friday, detail a complex web of suspected criminal activity within the top echelons of OPP union.
The following report is based entirely on allegations in the affidavit, none of which has been tested in court. None of those named in the document could be reached for comment Friday. Acting OPPA president Doug Lewis said in a statement that he was “saddened and shocked to learn of the allegations contained in the document.”
The union is currently conducting its own independent internal investigation by the legal firm of Stikeman Elliott, Lewis said. In a message to the union’s more than 6,000 members on Thursday, the OPPA said, “the RCMP investigation is in early stages, and ... no charges have been laid.”
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RCMP Const. Jean Juneau declined to comment on the investigation, which he described as “complex.” “Those warrants were obtained because we had suspicions of activities that we needed to confirm,” Juneau said. “It’s going to take quite a while before we’re able to establish if there’s a crime or not.” (Click/tap here for a primer on the key players.) The RCMP document, unsealed Friday, suggests a complex web of suspected criminal activity within the top echelon of the union. The allegations range from risky offshore investments, to thousands in unearned pay, to a sudden, unexplained switch to a new travel agency the Mounties allege is partly owned, in secret, by Christie, Bain and Walsh. The probe of the OPPA was triggered from within by four union whistleblowers who approached the OPP in October after growing increasingly concerned about possible fraudulent activity, the affidavit states. Much of the alleged fraudulent activity centres around a mysterious company called PIN Consulting Group. According to the affidavit, it was registered last June and its sole director is McKay, the lawyer. Shortly after PIN was registered, Walsh and Christie signed a three-year contract with the company on behalf of the OPPA, which began last July and was valued at $180,000, roughly $5,000 per month. The services to be provided by PIN, run out of the same Bloor St. address as McKay’s law office, included real estate and commercial investments, vacation property opportunities and travel benefits, according to the document. PIN has no presence on the Internet and whistleblowers told the RCMP that they have no “knowledge or evidence” to show that McKay has skills or experience in the travel and investment industry “which would be of any value to the OPPA,” the document states. “Walsh, Christie and Bain are allegedly benefitting financially from PIN’s business relationship with the OPPA, however, the extent of this benefit is not yet known,” Aristotle wrote. According to the document, the consulting firm was allegedly responsible for introducing the union bosses to Kozak and the travel company First Response. The company was registered just 10 days after PIN, as a partnership between Kozak and Chantiam, who is described by a union whistleblower as McKay’s “rich friend” who hosted OPPA members in a Rogers Centre box. “Without any cause or explanation,” Walsh abruptly dropped the OPPA’s former travel company, Flight Centre, and directed union members to use First Response exclusively for all their travel needs, the document states. The travel company is also allegedly being used to secure contracts for the OPPA’s golf tournament, the annual general meeting and the spring board meeting, which have an estimated value of $400,000.
( FACEBOOK IMAGE )
First Response was listed as a division of Leximco, according to the document, whose directors are shown as Kozak and McKay. One of the whistleblowers told RCMP that emails on Walsh’s computer showed the six players owned all the shares in the travel company, the affidavit states. The document alleges that the monthly consulting fees paid by the OPPA to PIN were being used “for the benefit” of the union bosses, to pay $30,000 for 30 First Response shares. To hide their ownership in First Response, the shares belonging to the union bosses — none of whom disclosed their stake in the company to their board of directors or membership — were held in trust by Kozak “through an offshore investment scheme,” the document alleges. In early 2014, the RCMP says Walsh, Christie and McKay took two trips to the Bahamas. After these trips, they started making “higher risk investment decisions” on behalf of the OPPA, two of which were based in offshore jurisdictions and allegedly not pre-approved by the board of directors, the affidavit states. The first was a $20,000 deposit on two condos in Nassau, Bahamas, which were valued at $1.5 million and $625,000; it was only discovered when union staff requested backup paperwork for the charge on Walsh’s OPPA-issued credit card, the affidavit alleges. According to the document, Walsh claimed he was buying the condos as high-end vacation rental property investments for the OPPA. But the employees who reported their concerns to police did not understand the purchase, which was a departure for the union’s historically conservative investment strategy and not-for-profit status. One of the whistleblowers told the RCMP that the OPPA can’t make profits or the union will risk losing its not-for-profit status with the Canada Revenue Agency. The backup paperwork showed the deposit for the condo investments was made in Walsh’s name, and listed McKay’s office as the mailing address, but had later been changed to the OPPA and its address, the document states. Walsh later advised that he was cancelling the condo investments; however, more than $13,000 had yet to be refunded. Last August, Walsh allegedly made another “high-risk” offshore investment, wiring $100,015 of OPPA funds to the Cayman Islands to pay for shares in the Cayman-based New Providence Income Fund. Walsh told his employees that he intended to endorse New Providence and encouraged the membership to invest in the income fund, according to the document. One of the whistleblowers told police they had been upset that nothing was said about the condo purchase or the Cayman investment at the union’s annual general meeting. The whistleblower told the RCMP that they ran into Walsh, who said, “We could have spent a million dollars and these idiots wouldn’t have said a thing.” The affidavit alleges that PIN was responsible for the OPPA investing in New Providence. Some of the OPPA employees believed that PIN is also involved in the “evaluation, procurement and development” of the proposed site for the new OPPA office in Oro, Ont., and that McKay’s brother, Barry McKay, has a hand in the project. The RCMP is also looking into allegations that the union bosses further profited with fake claims for vacation leave payouts and personal expenses. Aristotle wrote in the affidavit, “The totality of the alleged behaviour demonstrates an ongoing breach of trust . . . by Walsh, Bain and Christie that has escalated in sophistication and significance.” The search warrants were executed last Friday. | 0.009221 |
The Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Wales have formally declared an interest in hosting Euro 2020, it can be disclosed.
The countries have told UEFA that they would be interested in bidding to host the European Championships on a three-way basis.
So far Turkey are the only other nation to inform UEFA that they want to want host the tournament.
A source close to UEFA has confirmed that a written expression of interest from the three ’Celtic’ countries has been submitted to the European governing body.
UEFA have a deadline of midnight tonight for any other declarations of interest.
Bidders would need to put forward up to 10 stadiums to host matches in the European Championships, which is being expanded from 16 teams to 24 from 2016.
Scotland and Wales would struggle to provide that number of stadiums to satisfy UEFA requirements but Ireland’s involvement would cover the shortfall.
The formal declaration of interest does not commit the Celtic countries to proceeding with a bid however – a decision is not due to be taken by UEFA for 18 months.
The countries have not fared well in the past in bidding for the tournament. Scotland and the Republic of Ireland bid jointly for Euro 2008 but were one of the first to be eliminated, and Scotland and Wales considered bidding jointly for Euro 2016 but decided against it.
Turkey’s bid is in some disarray already because their FA has been engulfed by allegations of corruption and match-fixing in Turkish football, and it also conflicts with Istanbul’s bid to land the Olympics in the same year.
UEFA president Michel Platini had signalled he would support’s Turkey bid but only if Istanbul fails in its Olympic bid.
Scottish Football Association chief executive Stewart Regan said the idea of bidding for Euro 2020 had been discussed but would not confirm or deny whether an expression of interest had been made.
Regan told www.insidethegames.biz: “I’m not able to comment publicly at this stage because it has not gone to our board but there will be an exchange of correspondence before the deadline.
“It’s obviously something that has been discussed.”
Asked if Scotland and Wales would be able to meet the UEFA criteria for stadiums, Regan replied: “There are other ways of skinning a cat and alternative ways of being considered for a major tournament.” | 0.204341 |
Two Qantas planes involved in a near-miss over Adelaide on Friday were just 25 seconds from a disastrous mid-air collision, according to the Australian International Pilots Association.
QF581 was flying from Sydney to Perth at 38,000 feet and QF576 from Perth to Sydney was flying at 39,000 feet when the lower-flying craft received permission from an air traffic controller to ascend to 40,000 feet.
At that point, the collision warning computer on the other aircraft went off, advising it to climb to avoid a collision.
"The computer warning system is time-based," said Richard Woodward, vice-president of the AIPA. "But typically it's about 25 seconds head-on. It'll go "climb now" or "descend now", and that's a resolution advisory. They got one of those, so I assume they were within 25 seconds of each other.
Mr Woodward said the two aircraft would have been flying towards each other at about 32 kilometres a minute, or one kilometre every two seconds. When the warning went off, "they would have been within 10 or 15 kilometres of each other", he said. | 0.349713 |
As the financial crisis jolted the nation in September, Senator Charles E. Schumer was consumed. He traded telephone calls with bankers, then became one of the first officials to promote a Wall Street bailout. He spent hours in closed-door briefings and a weekend helping Congressional leaders nail down details of the $700 billion rescue package.
The next day, Mr. Schumer appeared at a breakfast fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan for Senate Democrats. Addressing Henry R. Kravis, the buyout billionaire, and about 20 other finance industry executives, he warned that a bailout would be a hard sell on Capitol Hill. Then he offered some reassurance: The businessmen could count on the Democrats to help steer the nation through the financial turmoil.
“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”
The message clearly resonated. The next week, executives at firms represented at the breakfast sent in more than $135,000 in campaign donations.
He succeeded in limiting efforts to regulate credit-rating agencies, for example, sponsored legislation that cut fees paid by Wall Street firms to finance government oversight, pushed to allow banks to have lower capital reserves and called for the revision of regulations to make corporations’ balance sheets more transparent.
At times in Congress, Mr. Schumer has teamed up with Republicans, like former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who aggressively promoted a free-market agenda. Mr. Schumer pushed for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, passed in November 1999, which knocked down the walls between investment banks and commercial banks and allowed financial supermarkets to flourish.The law also weakened regulatory oversight by fracturing it among different agencies.
– From The New York Times article: A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits
Great way to start off the new year for the Democrats. New Senate Minority leader, and Wall Street mega-defender, Chuck Schumer just went on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show and warned Donald Trump that U.S. intelligence agencies could retaliate against him for disagreeing with their claims (based on no public evidence thus far) that Russia hacked the DNC/John Podesta and released it to Wikileaks with the intent of helping Trump win the election.
Here’s what he said courtesy of The Washington Examiner:
The new leader of Democrats in the Senate says Donald Trump is being “really dumb” for picking a fight with intelligence officials, suggesting they have ways to strike back, after the president-elect speculated Tuesday that his “so-called” briefing about Russian cyberattacks had been delayed in order to build a case. “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Tuesday evening on MSNBC after host Rachel Maddow informed him that intelligence sources told NBC news that the briefing had not been delayed.
Now watch the clip for yourself. I’m certain the near permanent grin on his face will not be lost upon you either.
The exchange is especially disturbing given the CIA’s not so warm and fuzzy history, both internally and externally. For some light reading on the matter, I strongly suggest the following post, How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles. Here’s a brief passage to whet your appetite:
Allen Dulles, the CIA director under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the younger brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and the architect of a secretive national security apparatus that functioned as essentially an autonomous branch of government. Talbot offers a portrait of a black-and-white Cold War-era world full of spy games and nuclear brinkmanship, in which everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy. Dulles—who deceived American elected leaders and overthrew foreign ones, who backed ex-Nazis and thwarted left-leaning democrats—falls firmly in the latter camp. But what I was really trying to do was a biography on the American power elite from World War II up to the 60s. That was the key period when the national security state was constructed in this country, and where it begins to overshadow American democracy. It’s almost like Game of Thrones to me, where you have the dynastic struggles between these power groups within the American system for control of the country and the world… Absolutely. The surveillance state that Snowden and others have exposed is very much a legacy of the Dulles past. I think Dulles would have been delighted by how technology and other developments have allowed the American security state to go much further than he went. He had to build a team of cutthroats and assassins on the ground to go around eliminating the people he wanted to eliminate, who he felt were in the way of American interests. He called them communists. We call them terrorists today. And of course the most controversial part of my book, I’m sure, will be the end, where I say there was blowback from that. Because that killing machine in some way was brought back home.
Threaten the U.S. President-elect with the CIA. How liberal.
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Follow me on Twitter. | 0.191848 |
Oakland police chief under fire for response to raid by federal agents
Anne Kirkpatrick (left) talks after being sworn in as Oakland’s permanent police chief of Police at an Oakland City Hall ceremony Feb. 27. Her response to an August operation by federal agents has been criticized by a city commissioner and several City Council members. less Anne Kirkpatrick (left) talks after being sworn in as Oakland’s permanent police chief of Police at an Oakland City Hall ceremony Feb. 27. Her response to an August operation by federal agents has been ... more Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Oakland police chief under fire for response to raid by federal agents 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Oakland’s police chief is facing a complaint from a city commissioner and questions from City Council members over her department’s assistance in an immigration-related operation by federal agents that resulted in deportation proceedings against a West Oakland resident.
At issue is whether Chief Anne Kirkpatrick made false statements and whether the department’s involvement violated Oakland’s sanctuary-city ordinances that bar police officers from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At the request of Homeland Security Investigations — the criminal division of ICE — Kirkpatrick agreed to send a sergeant, two police officers and two marked police cars on Aug. 16 to provide traffic enforcement while federal agents conducted what they said was a human trafficking investigation at the home of a Guatemalan family.
Federal agents detained two adult brothers. Records indicate that deportation proceedings began against one, Santos Alberto, but that no criminal charges have been filed — contradicting a claim Kirkpatrick later made and meaning that city police officers provided aid to an immigration operation that only saw civil, not criminal, consequences.
Councilwomen Desley Brooks and Rebecca Kaplan have questioned why the police assisted ICE in this case.
In a written response to the council members’ questions, Kirkpatrick defended her actions, saying traffic enforcement was needed in part to reduce the risk of “friendly fire” — in which confused city police officers might shoot at armed plainclothes federal agents, or vice versa. And Kirkpatrick reiterated that she ordered the officers not to participate in the operation itself.
Brian Hofer, chairman of the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission, took issue with both the involvement of Oakland police officers and Kirkpatrick’s statements around the operation. He and seven others concerned about the issue filed a formal complaint against the chief with the citizen police review board and the internal affairs division of the Police Department.
Their complaint points to several purportedly false statements Kirkpatrick made about the operation. At a September town hall meeting, she said that one person had been charged with a crime and that it was “not a deportation matter,” both of which were untrue, the complaint says.
The Police Department initially said on Aug. 16 that federal agents were investigating the sex trafficking of juveniles, but later statements amended the language to “human trafficking.” A news release that day also said the Police Department no longer had an agreement in place with Homeland Security Investigations.
In fact, while the City Council in July voted unanimously to immediately rescind the contract — under which police officers could work on task forces with federal agents to investigate transnational crimes — City Administrator Sabrina Landreth did not send notice to the federal agency until the end of August, and its cancellation didn’t go into effect until a month later.
Officer Johnna Watson, a police spokeswoman, said she couldn’t answer questions about the issues because the case is now the subject of an internal affairs complaint.
In her report to the council ahead of the meeting, Kirkpatrick said the department will start posting after-action reports within two weeks of any immigration operation in the city, detailing what happened, how many police officers were involved and at what cost.
ICE spokesman James Schwab said Tuesday that he couldn’t comment on the case because the investigation is still open. Abraham Simmons, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of California, did not provide information about any criminal proceedings.
Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @kveklerov | 0.002509 |
Do the Crucifix Stretch
Our society has become increasingly sedentary, which isn't good for low back pain and function because prolonged sitting has been linked to low back pain.
Now pain is multifaceted, and biomechanics is just one aspect to the popular biopsychosocial model of pain, so the effects of sitting and back pain (and posture) are probably over-exaggerated. However, we should still try to preserve good posture throughout life, especially since it doesn't take much effort.
The typical desk-worker is slumped over with a rounded spine, rounded shoulders, and a forward head position. We want to "undo" this posture by stretching the shortened muscles and strengthening the lengthened muscles. The crucifix stretch achieves both.
What to Do
Stand tall and place the arms out to the sides. Simultaneously extend the spine by picking the chest up and externally rotating the shoulders by pointing the thumbs behind you. Keep the head and neck in a neutral or packed position (which resembles a double-chin). Hold this position for 3 seconds and repeat 5-10 times.
How to Step It Up
Okay tough guy, you think you're too cool for the crucifix stretch? Give the band face pull/pull apart combo a try.
Related: Increase Athleticism in 6 Minutes
Related: 4 Things to do After Lifting to Boost Gains | 0.906543 |
Match-fixing has reared its ugly head once again at the CONCACAF Gold Cup, according to a report.
Players on the Belizian national soccer team have come forward and told a television outlet that they had been approached to fix Tuesday's match against the United States at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland, Ore.
Andres Makin Jr., Ian Gaynair and Woodrow West said they were approached by an unidentified man, who offered them large sums of money in exchange for losing to the heavily favoured Americans.
Despite losing 6-1, the four national team selections claimed to rebuff the attempt to manipulate the outcome.
"He [the fixer] started talking that we don't really stand a chance to beat the U.S, so he wanted us to promise him that we would lose the game and that he would give us a large amount of money to change our lives in Belize and to help our families," Gaynair told 7 News Belize. "I felt really uncomfortable just to be around the guy because I was already aware about the 'match fixing' and I know that I could get banned for life.
"He saw that my features changed and he saw that we weren't into it, so he got frightened and took out a large amount of money to bribe us, a lot of hundred and fifty dollar bills, and threw it at us on the table and told us to keep it and to not say anything and to keep the money."
'I stood firm'
West, the Belize goaltender, related a similar story.
"I made him understand that we're not into taking money from him or anything like that and we're here for our country," West said. "We are Belizeans and that is what we're doing out here -- to represent our country and, to me, Woodrow West, and being loyal to my country -- that [is] bigger than any amount of money that they can ever give me and that is why I stood firm."
It is not the first time in recent memory that the Gold Cup has been plagued by match-fixing allegations. In 2011, German magazine Der Spiegel revealed three games from that summer's Gold Cup in the U.S. were being investigated by FIFA for alleged manipulation. At the time, former CONCACAF general secretary Chuck Blazer, who faced fraud allegations himself earlier this year, denied any wrongdoing at the Gold Cup in 2011, declaring there was no evidence.
In December of 2011, FIFA reaffirmed it had received information that suggested games had been manipulated and, while they did not name which games had been targeted, it did confirm an ongoing investigation. It left a black mark on the tournament and resulted in CONCACAF, ahead of this year's Gold Cup, promising to ensure there would be no future fixing.
Earlier this year, however, ESPN, as part of a story on the wide-reaching effects match-fixing is having on the global game of soccer, reported that a "prolific fixer" had bragged that he had already arranged to rig the entirety of the 2013 Gold Cup.
'Happy the players came forward'
CONCACAF has yet to release a statement on the Belize report. When asked if Canadian players had been approached by fixers or if they had been offered any bribes at this Gold Cup, the Canadian Soccer Association declined to comment.
Belize soccer federation president Ruperto Vicente did comment and commended the players for their actions.
"I'm happy that the players came forward and made the report when they were approached," he said. "This happens as a result of what happened right before the players left Belize.
"When people like this find that the players are clamoring for monies, they become targets for people who are involved in match fixing. Belize then has become a target because they realize we are a poor federation.
"We're a federation that doesn't have money and who isn't paying the players a lot of money, so monies offered to players by match fixers is very attractive." | 0.002605 |
By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
The majority of the world is convinced that humans are changing the climate, for the worse. Now, evidence is mounting that paints just how grim a future we are making for ourselves and the planet. We will experience more extreme weather events, including hurricanes and droughts, mass extinctions and severe food shortages globally. The world’s leading group of climate-change experts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has issued its most recent report after a five-day meeting last week in Yokohama, Japan. The IPCC, over 1,800 scientists from around the world, collects, analyzes and synthesizes the best, solid science on climate and related fields. The prognosis is not good.
At the news conference announcing the report, IPCC chairperson Rajendra Pachauri warned, “If the world doesn’t do anything about mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases and the extent of climate change continues to increase, then the very social stability of human systems could be at stake.” Pachauri speaks with the discipline of a scientist and the reserve of a diplomat. The latest report, though, states clearly: “Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and inter-group violence.” It stresses how the world food supply, already experiencing stress, will be impacted, and those who are most vulnerable will be the first to go hungry. But the problem is even larger.
The IPCC’s previous comprehensive report came out in 2007. Since that time, the amount of scientific findings has doubled, making human-induced climate change an irrefutable fact. But there are still powerful deniers, funded by the fossil-fuel industry. Oxfam, a global anti-hunger campaign organization, also is challenging the deniers with a report released last week called “Hot and hungry—how to stop climate change derailing the fight against hunger.”
Oxfam’s Tim Gore says that “corporations like Exxon, the powerful economic interests that are currently profiting from our high-carbon economic model … stand to lose the most from a transition to a low-carbon, fair alternative.” Undaunted, ExxonMobil issued its own report following the IPCC’s this week, asserting that climate policies are “highly unlikely” to stop it from producing and selling fossil fuels in the near future.
Fossil-fuel corporations like ExxonMobil exert enormous influence over climate-change policy, especially in the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives this week passed a measure that would effectively force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and related bodies to ignore climate change, focusing instead on forecasting severe weather, but not its likely causes. Meanwhile, at the state level, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill banning investment in certain forms of public transit. According to ThinkProgress, the measure received critical funding from the billionaire Republican oil barons Charles and David Koch. The political influence of people like the Kochs will likely become more direct, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate personal contribution caps to candidates in its ruling in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
One of the IPCC report authors, Bangladeshi climate scientist Saleemul Huq, put it this way on the “Democracy Now!” news hour: “Fossil-fuel companies … are the drug suppliers to the rest of the world who are junkies and are hooked on fossil fuels. But we don’t have to remain hooked on fossil fuels. We are going to have to cut ourselves off from them if we want to see a real transition and prevent temperature rises up to 4 degrees Celsius [7.2 degrees Fahrenheit].”
That is the crux of the crisis: The major polluting nations are obstructing a binding global agreement to combat climate change. They have agreed, in principle, with the rest of the world, at the United Nations climate negotiations, to limit greenhouse-gas emissions to levels that would allow a global temperature increase of only 2 degrees Celsius [3.6 degrees Fahrenheit]. But the science says that goal is quickly slipping away, and that we are facing a 4-degree increase.
Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, another IPCC report co-author, told me: “It’s not just a problem for the rest of the world … think about Hurricane Sandy. Think about how hard it was to deal with that storm. That’s today’s storms. Think about what happens over the next 10, 20, 30 years, when sea level goes up and the storms get worse.”
“America is addicted to oil,” President George W. Bush, himself a failed oilman, famously said at his State of the Union address in 2006. The U.S. political establishment is swimming in fossil-fuel money, which is drowning democracy. Change will come from grass-roots organizing, from movements like students pushing their university endowments to divest from fossil-fuel corporations, from local communities fighting against fracking, and from the growing nonviolent direct-action campaign to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.
© 2014 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate | 0.996264 |
The Tzenkethi are not known for making idle threats. They promised that they would return with better weapons, and return, they did. The Tzenkethi Red Alert is a space-based 5 player Red Alert-style queue in the Alpha Quadrant. The Tzenkethi have found a new way to Protomatter-bomb planets and it’s up to you to stop them.
The genocidal Tzenkethi will be unleashing a new super weapon at unsuspecting planets while you and 4 allies will have to do everything you can to prevent the catastrophic destruction. If you don’t work together, the deaths of billions will be on your hands.
The event is for level 50-60 players of all factions. The queue will reward marks, dilithium, and R&D materials. Check out the alert when it goes live with Season 14: Emergence, and very soon on our test server!
Good luck, Captains! It’s all up to you.
Ryon “Melange” Levitt
Staff Content Designer
Cryptic Studios | 0.001621 |
Chocolate Almond Cookies, which I call Chalmonds, are super tasty, quick to make and have endless topping variations. They aren’t too sweet but are packed with flavor, and are small enough to eat in two bites.
Ingredients:
1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Natural Cocoa Powder (Sifted)
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Salt
3/4 Cup Butter (softened)
1 Cup Granulated Sugar
1 Large Egg (Room temp)
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Tsp Almond Extract
Topping Options: Slivered Almonds (or Whole Almonds), Chocolate Chips, M&M’s, Pecans, Walnuts, and pretty much anything else you can think of!
Whisk together the dry ingredients (except sugar) in a medium bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl (or a stand mixer) beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Once mixed, add the egg and vanilla/almond extracts and blend for about 1 minute (until smooth). Add the flour mixture all at once and mix until well blended.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Roll 1 inch balls out of the dough and place on a cookie tray. Using two fingers, flatten the balls slightly so you have a flat surface to add your topping variations onto. Put your topping into a bowl and press the flat side of the cookie into it. Place cookie back onto tray and repeat until full. Be sure to leave about 1 inch between the cookies as they do puff up a bit in the oven. | 0.030815 |
Aimless Wandering Blog || Politics || Philosophy || Science || Fiction || Quotes
Aimless Wandering: Chuang Tzu's Chaos Linguistics
by Hakim Bey
The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him?
-Chuang Tzu
Certainly later Taoism, influenced by Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, developed elaborate cosmology, ontology, theology, teleology, and eschatology - but can these "medieval accretions" be read back into the classic texts, the Tao Te Ching, the Chuang Tzu, or the Lieh Tzu?
Well, yes and no. Religious Taoism certainly established such a back-reading. But, as J. Needham pointed out, the Maoists of our century were able to evolve a Marxist reading of Taoism, or at least of the Tao Te Ching. No doubt any reading of a "spiritual" text may have some validity (since the spirit is by definition indefinable); the Tao Te Ching has proved especially malleable.
But Chuang Tzu not only has no metaphysics, he actually condemns and derides metaphysics. Supernaturalism and materialism both appear equally funny to him. His only cosmogonic principle is "chaos". Oddly enough the only philosophical tool he uses is logic - although it is the logic of dream. He makes no mention of divine principle, of the purpose of being, or personal immortality. He is beyond Good and Evil, sneers at ethics, and even makes fun of yoga.
The Chuang Tzu must surely be unique amongst all religious scripture for its remarkable ANTI-metaphysics. It qualifies as "revelation" not because it unveils hidden knowledge from "outside" the self - as other scriptures claim to do - but because it transmits a sure way to "spiritual realization", SELF-realization, in this lifetime, in this body, in this daily life. If this way or method can be summed up in one word, one might say spontaneity; and if this term were to be "defined", one might mention the phrase wei wu wei, "action/non-action".
The universe comes into being spontaneously; as Kuo Hsiang points out, the search for a "lord" (or agens) of this creation is an exercise in infinite regress toward emptiness. The Tao is not "God", as some Christian translators still believe. The Tao just happens. On the human scale misery arises solely from the uniquely human ability to fall out of harmony with this Tao - to not be spontaneous.
Chuang Tzu has no interest in why humans are so inept (no concept of "sin"); his only concern is to reverse the process and "return" to the flow. The "return" is an action; the flow itself is not an action but a state - hence the paradox "action/non-action". The concept wu wei plays such a central role in Taoism that it survives even in modern religious Taoism as the truth BEHIND all metaphysics and ritual. In the great expiatory and communal rites of cultic Taoism as practiced in Taiwan or Honolulu today, at least one person - the priest - must attain union with the Tao, and must do so by a process of voiding his consciousness of all "deities", all metaphysical principles. As for so-called ancient "philosophical" Taoism, we might say that it has wu wei instead of a metaphysics.
Lao Tzu's goal seems to have been the conversion of the Emperor to Taoism, on the assumption that if the rule does nothing (wu wei) the empire will run itself spontaneously. Chuang Tzu however shows almost no interest in advising rulers (except to leave him alone!), and his examples of "real humans" are almost always workmen (butchers, cobblers, cooks), or drop-out hermits, or bandits. If Chuang Tzu can be said to advocate a social program - and I'm not sure he does - it certainly has nothing to do with any imperial/bureaucratic/Confucian values or structures. His "program" could be summed up in the phrase AIMLESS WANDERING.
Chuang Tzu is more anarchistic than Lao Tzu - but is he an "anarchist"? I think yes - not because he wants to overthrow the government, but because he believes government impossible; not because he would ever sink so low as to espouse an "ism", but because he sees chaos as the essence of all becoming.
To illustrate this chaos-ontology we could do worse than investigate Chuang Tzu's take on language.
But first let me define a few terms. I call hermetalinguistics the concept that God revealed language and that there exists such a thing as the conveyance of essence through language. This conveyance can be direct (Hebrew and Arabic are languages "spoken" by God) or emanational, as in Neoplatonic linguistics. It can be "hermetic" (or occult, as in Kabbala), or even meta-linguistic (as in religious glossolalia, the "charism of tongues") - but in either case it saves language from utter relativity and opacity.
Against this traditional theory of language we moderns have developed a nihilistic linguistics in which words convey nothing of essence and in fact do not really communicate anything except language itself. I trace this current to Nietzsche, to Saussure and his nightmarish experience with the Latin anagrams, and eventually to dada.
A leading exponent of hermetalinguistics today (oddly enough) is Noam Chomsky, who (despite his anarchism) believes that language is somehow wired in, although he substitutes DNA for the Platonic archetypes! Whom might we pick as a leading exponent of nihilistic linguistics? How about William Burroughs? (In his honour we might call it "heavymetalinguistics".) Much as I admire the aesthetics of both schools I can "agree" with neither. I find myself wishing (as a "spiritual anarchist") for some language theory which might "save" language from the charge of mere re-presentationalism and alienation. However, I want a theory without teleological excrescences - no "lord" of language, no categorical imperatives, no determinism, no revelation from "outside" or "above", no genetic coding, no absolute essence. I find it in two places, one "ancient" nicely balanced against one "modern" - Chuang Tzu, and Chaos Theory.
In part our language troubles arise from the absolute quality assigned to the Word in all western hermetalinguistic traditions. Although some western mystics already express distrust of human words, they can never - on pain of heterodoxy - question the integrity or finality of God's Word. All western religious thought is based on a sort of sacred nominalism which goes unquestioned till "heresy" calls it momentarily into debate. "Orthodoxy" crushes the rebellion against the Word in its own ranks, while the war against the Word becomes an underground guerilla campaign carried out primarily within literature, in criticism, and in linguistics - against "religion".
We might learn something useful for our search by looking at a spiritual tradition with begins with a distrust of words and yet still manages to make language perform in a magical way. Taoism supplies us with precisely such a radical tradition. "The Tao which can be spoken is not the Tao," begins Lao Tzu. Why then did he write the book at all? Why not stick to the silence where all language eventually vanishes, right from the start? One might answer that such a project would amount to precisely the sort of refusal to go with the flow which Taoism most despises. Humans talk, so Taoists talk. This answer might suffice - but a much more interesting response is given by Chuang Tzu.
"Saying is not blowing breath, saying says something," Chuang Tzu asserts - but "the only trouble is that what it says is never fixed. Do we really say something? Or have we never said anything?" Finally this question must remain unanswered, since Chuang Tzu's uncompromising perspectivalism and linguistic relativism make any categorical attempt to distinguish between "It" and "Other" an act of futility. As the translator (A.C. Graham) points out, for Chuang Tzu "all disputation starts from arbitrary acts of naming". Nevertheless, "saying says something" rather than nothing. Language is at once totally "arbitrary" and yet capable of meaning. Otherwise the Taoist would indeed fall silent.
A writer of the School of Chuang Tzu discusses what he calls "ward and sector words", by which he means the sorting and classifying functions of language. (The metaphor refers to the wards and sectors of the grid-arrangement of Chinese cities; it's worth noting that the very earliest cities, such as Jericho and Catal Huyuk, were laid out on strict grid-lines.) This aspect of language is not "the Way", and at worst can become a "chopping to bits and disputing over alternatives". But it is also not not-the-Way. Some paradoxical stance between saying and not-saying is called for, because "the man who perceives the Way does not pursue [names] to where they vanish or explore the source from which they arise," for "this is the point where discussion stops." "There IS a name," but also "there is NO name."
Chuang Tzu distinguishes three kinds of speech. An appended commentary by one of the original editors of the book asserts that all three kinds are used by Chuang Tzu himself.
First there is saying from a lodging-place. Inasmuch as language is arbitrary one may occupy any position or use any definitions to expound the Way. The old editor says Chuang Tzu thought this kind of verbal situationism broadened the scope or "widened the range", i.e. that it could be used to open up ordinary mind to the non-ordinary and meta-verbal Tao. In fact, it works "nine times out of ten," says Chuang Tzu. "Weighted saying works seven times out of ten" - this is the aphorism, the statement made on authority, spoken from a position "ahead of others". Both lodging-place and weighted language would appear to belong to the category of ward-and-sector words. Chuang Tzu's third category clearly interests him the most, since he describes it at the greatest length. He calls it Spillover saying, and comments that it "is new everyday. Smooth it out on the whetstone of Heaven. Use it to go by and let the stream find its own channels."
Since language is arbitrary, and the sage knows it, he (or she - for many Taoists were women, including Lao Tzu's legendary teacher) knows that "in saying he says nothing". And yet paradoxically by knowing this and in fact by "refusing to say", the sage "says without saying" and "refuses to say without ever failing to say". How can this be?
When Chuang Tzu says that "the myriad things [i.e., the signifieds] are all the seed from which they grow," I assume that "they" refers to words, to signs, and that he does assert some link between the two categories, despite his (paradoxical) counter-assertion that no such connection can be found. The connection cannot be found (expressed in words) because in unlike shapes they abdicate in turn, with ends and starts as in a ring.
That is, "things" themselves are ontologically fluid and protean, unfixed. If you mark a wheel and then spin it, none grasps where to mark the grades, and all becomes a blur. As for this flux-state of sign and signified, call it the Potter's Wheel of Heaven or "the whetstone of Heaven" on which the sage is advised to "smooth out" or polish his speech. Without this understanding, "who could ever keep going for long?" What decent Taoist could ever speak at all, much less meaningfully? But because language, by this understanding, becomes "new every day", the sage is finally not stunned or stultified by the arbitrariness and relativity of language, by its failure, but is refreshed and revivified by its freedom.
The most important clue to understanding this teaching about language is in the image "Spillover". Graham says it refers to a vessel which tips over when filled to the brim, then rights itself, like one of those little oriental dolls which are legless and weighted at the bottom, so that they always pop back up when you try to knock them over. These dolls by the way are shaped like gourds and were probably originally made from gourds. The gourd is a symbol of Chaos, "Mr. Hun-T'un", described in the famous final passage of the Inner Chapters. Could the original "Spillover" vessel also have been a gourd, and thus associated in Chuang Tzu's mind with Chaos? In Chinese myth Chaos is not a figure of Evil (as in most western mythology), but is instead full of potential, benevolent if somewhat eerie, the ultimate force and source of all creation. From Chaos comes the "myriad things", like the seeds in a gourd or the chopped-up goodies in a won-ton (hung-t'un), or the water in a spillover-vessel which flows out, letting each stream find its own channel, fertilizing the earth, bringing everything into becoming.
The vessel could refer to the Sage, who spontaneously "overflows" with illumined words. The words find their meanings (channels) spontaneously, according to the language-state of the listener, the reader. And then spontaneously the Sage pops upright and is filled again, and each day overflows again. A chaotic process - but one from which meaning comes into being. Moreover, one can become practiced at this conjuring act, polished, "smooth".
The vessel could refer not only to the sage but even more to the words themselves. A word, which in itself is arbitrary and meaningless, spontaneously fills up and overflows with meaning. The meaning is not fixed, but it is not mere "blowing breath", nor just a semantic raspberry, bllllatttt. The vessel fills up and empties again and again - same vessel, but potentially a new meaning each day. So the word contains more meaning than it appears to nominate or denominate. There is something more, something extra in the word. There are words beneath (or upon) the words, which flow out spontaneously and find their channels, their expression, their use in a given situation. "Taoist Poetics".
Thus, beginning with total linguistic relativism, Chuang Tzu ends with a sort of metalinguistics. Spillover words do not ward and sector, they PLAY. They contain more than they contain. Like the famous cleaver which never needs sharpening because the Taoist butcher can pass it between all tendons and joints, the Spillover word "finds its proper channel". The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather "opens things up to the light of Heaven" by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to "illumine", for language DOES IT by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over.
Now, recall that when Saussure was studying the Latin anagrams, he found that the key words of the poems spilled over into other words. For example, syllables of character's names were echoed in words describing those characters. At first the founder of modern linguistic considered these anagrams as conscious literary devices. However, little by little it became apparent that such a "reading" would not hold. Saussure began to find anagramatic spillovers everywhere he looked - not only in ALL Latin poetry, but even in prose. He reached the point where he couldn't tell if he was experiencing a linguistic hallucination or a divine revelation. Anagrams everywhere! Language itself a net of jewels in which every gem reflects all others! He wrote a letter to a respected academic Latinist who had composed Latin odes - poems in which Saussure had detected anagrams. Tell me, he begged, are you the heir to a secret tradition handed down from Classical antiquity - or are you doing it unconsciously? Needless to say, Saussure received no answer. He stopped his research abruptly with a sensation of vertigo, trembling at the abyss of pure nihilism, or pure magic, terrified by the implications of a language beyond language, beyond sign/content, langue/parole. He stopped, in short, precisely where Chuang Tzu begins.
Words are like wind and water.
-Chuang Tzu
If words can be compared to matter (and why not, give their equally dubious ontological status?!) and "grammar" can be compared to the Strange Attractors (patterns which are "real" but only "come into existence" in the presence of words and are only "real" IN the words), then we may also compare Chuang Tzu's Spillover Linguistics with the chaos theory of such mages as Prigogine and Ralph Abraham, and launch the science (or pseudo-science) of chaos linguistics. This useful fiction will be born under the sign of what Feyerabend calls "anarchist (or dada) epistemology" - a kind of anti-Method already dreamed by Chuang Tzu.
In religious Taoism the deity of automatic or "spirit"-writing, Tzu-Ku-Shen, is also the goddess of the latrine - thus calling up the image of magical language as a kind of caca-phony or defecatory chaos which somehow manages to convey meaning (reminiscent of the paradox known to Information Theory in which "noise" can be "richer" in "information" than certain ordered codes). In time Tzu Ku came to preside over a panoply of Immortals who wielded the magic inkbrush or "flying phoenix" through human mediums. Usually women, as in western spiritualism, these mediums act as amanuensis to the spooks, and have transmitted everything from garbage to canonical scripture. (Mao Shan Taoism was founded in this way, by two mediums channeling a dead woman sage under the influence of hemp incense.) An eleventh-century author named Shen Ku describes the process under the evocative title "Dream Torrent Essays" - a sweeping away of daylight consciousness in a wave of hypnogogia.
A great deal of Taoist scripture, both Canonical and heterodox, has been produced in this way. Some of it is "found", like the tantric Tibetan "treasure"-texts (terma), encased in solid rock or living wood, or under water, or in other impossible places. An entire order of Tibetan treasure-finders devotes itself to the lore and discovery of such texts. Some Taoist texts are not composed in human language or writing, but in the "tadpole" or "cloud" script of the spirits. An immense amount of language has spilled over from the Cinnabar Grottos of the Immortals into our world. While vulgar materialists may content themselves with scoffing at the provenance of this huge indigestible heap of writing, we might prefer simply to marvel at the overwhelming superabundance and generosity of reality itself, a plenitude which seems to conspire with us in all our maddest japes. As Nietzsche and Bataille have suggested, the myth of scarcity is merely a means of control through immiseration, whereas the actual nature of the world is one of absolute fullness, indeed over-fullness, spilling over as constant EXCESS. In language, this over-supply of meaning proves too big to be handled by human consciousness; hence the intervention of the spirits, the "muses" and other extra-conscious sources. Taoist writing serves as a monument to the "generosity of being" or the perpetual overflow of the cornucopias Tao. At its most chaotic and ambiguous peak of expression, it "saves" language itself - both from the tyranny of any lord, and from the abyss of aloneness. | 0.03717 |
About This Game
Key features:
3D First-person bullet-hell giant robot boss-battle(Titans) action!
Build Titans with the Giant Robot Construction Kit -- 600+ Titans in Steam Workshop already!
Create your own levels in the Arena Builder -- 200+ maps in Steam Workshop
Drunken Robot Pornography (DRP) is a bullet-hell first-person shooter for Windows. Battle giant robots -- called Titans -- as they try to slice you apart with their lasers. Pick off their missile launchers, fry away their carbon fiber armor, and tear off their claws, leaving them writhing.You're Reuben Matsumoto. You used to own a bar.You gave your robot bartender, Tim, sentience. He went nuts, stole your other 12 bots, and burned down your bar.He's attacking Boston with 20,000 drones, 40 Titans, and his lieutenants, the 12 Drunken Robot Centerfolds.30-story tall giant robots. Jetpacks. Guns. It all started so innocently. Your robot bartender, Tim, used to make the best drinks at your nightclub. But you gave him sentience so that he could better empathize with the customers. Struck by the world's problems, he went crazy, burned your club to the ground, and fled with your twelve exotic robot dancers. Weeks later, giant robots started attacking the City of Boston -- not a coincidence! | 0.001004 |
A reader sent me an exchange that she had with a recent graduate who applied for a job with her company. The applicant had submitted a three-page resume with short essays about her experience on it. That exchange is further down, but first here’s what the reader wrote to me:
I thought I’d share something that could help a lot of your recent college graduate readers. I keep coming across this complaint that recent and upcoming college grads aren’t ready for the working world. I used to think this was unfair and ageist, as I work with a lot of them that I think are, in fact, ready and able.
However, I’ve recently changed my mind a bit. As I work on hiring for my company, I also come across a lot of graduates who seem to prove this point. Things like keeping your resume to 1 page if you’re a recent graduate really do escape them. I’ve included an email exchange below that proves the point. I’ve taken out the person’s name to protect her. (Please note that her resume is a 3 page debacle complete with short essays about her experience.)
Perhaps my point is that many recent and upcoming college graduates might stop and take some time to do a little research on the finer points of how to hunt for a job, how to behave at their first job, etc. There is also plenty of confusion about graduate school and what its function is (see email exchange below!). I think there may be something to this rumor that recent and upcoming college grads aren’t as prepared as they think. I just want to spare them some pain if this is applicable for them.
Okay, so here’s the email exchange. First, the email our reader sent to a job applicant:
Hi [name removed],
I passed this on to my manager to fast-track things and he declined. Just thought I’d pass on some advice in case you’d like to use it in your future job search. The resume you sent me is way too long and detailed for most employers to want to look at. Try to bring it all down to 1 page with very few details. I am happy to look it over for you if you’d like once you fix it. I read and write about how to search for jobs constantly as part of my job so I’m happy to share any information I know. Good luck in your search and I’m sorry again it didn’t work out here.
The applicant responded with this:
Very few details? Then what is the point? Isn’t a resume meant to “show yourself off” to the world?
I’m skilled in writing, that is what I know, I never had a class in college teaching me the etiquette of prostituting myself on paper. I do not understand a job market that desires watered down individuals. What does that say about the jobs or employers? Are they as watered down as the people they employ?
Thank you it will be Graduate School for me.
Sigh.
There are so many problems here — the “why should I learn about how job searching works” attitude and the idea that if school didn’t teach her something, she shouldn’t be expected to look into it for herself; the expectation that employers should be willing to read whatever she gives them about herself, regardless of length, because she shouldn’t have to “water herself down” (and isn’t this condensing, the opposite of watering down?); the idea that concise resumes are “prostitution” — but the biggest problem of all is the rudeness to someone who went out of her way to help her.
To be clear, I’m not printing this because I think this job applicant is representative of most people in her peer group; she’s not. But she’s also not entirely alone in approaching things this way, even if she’s on the extreme end of the silliness spectrum. This resistance to making an effort to learn what employers want and why — and then getting bitter and huffy when the way that you want things to work doesn’t align with the way employers actually do things — isn’t terribly uncommon … and it will make you far less happy and your life harder than it otherwise would be.
Regardless of how you think things should work, it’s worth learning how things do work, and why. You’ll be happier. You’ll probably be more successful at whatever it is you want to do. And you won’t find yourself heckling kind strangers offering you favors. | 0.963957 |
On Saturday, some of the brilliant folks comprising the hard leftist group Antifa accidently beat the hell out of a fellow Antifa protester whom the morons mistook for a "neo-Nazi" (which basically means anyone right-wing or classically liberal).
No one has ever accused Antifa of being particularly bright.
The leftist group was out in full force to protest a free speech rally in Boston, which reportedly had a grand total of zero "neo-Nazis," though there were some members of the so-called "alt-right" in attendance.
"This anti-white nationalist protester was punched in the face after being mistaken for a neo-Nazi in Boston," reads a Facebook post from Fusion.
"Do not hit someone that you assume is a neo-Nazi. You cannot do that," said one protester. "He's on our side!"
That's right, you must first be sure you don't like their ideology and then you can punch them, because screw dialogue and the First Amendment altogether.
When a reporter asked the man who was assaulted and now bleeding from his head and mouth if he planned on sticking around the fine folks at the rally, he replied, "I'm not exactly sure right now."
Apparently getting assaulted by the people you thought were helping you protest "neo-Nazis" isn't reason enough to reject Antifa and leave the rally. Interesting.
WATCH: | 0.001192 |
The ice maker is perfect for party, gathering, RV, boat or kitchen use.
The portable and compact design makes it convenient for you to enjoy a cold, refreshing drink anywhere you go. This counter top ice machine features a compressor cooling system and operates at low noise. With it, you will enjoy your leisure time. It’s able to see through window for process monitoring & ice level checking. With a 1.5 lbs capacity of ice cube basket, you can make plenty of ice ahead of time to have on hand, and save space in your freezer for other food. You can create ready-to-serve ice in an average of 8 minutes.
In addition, the ice maker has a light indicator. When the water level in the reservoir runs low, you’ll be alerted to add more water. When the ice bucket is full, you’ll be alerted to remove them so more ice could be created. | 0.975474 |
Fallingwater, the legendary architectural masterpiece of Frank Lloyd Wright, famously includes elements of its natural surroundings. Specifically, the house integrates the waterfall on top of which it was built. Like Fallingwater, this stunning home in Portland, Oregon celebrates the natural setting in which it exists.
(all images via: Robert Harvey Oshatz)
Architect Robert Harvey Oshatz conceived of the design when his client declared that he wanted a house which would not only be in harmony with its environment, but also be a physical representation of music.
The home’s lot includes a very steep slope, which allows the main floor to sit on the level of the tree canopy. Surrounding trees lovingly brush their leaves up against the gentle curves of the home’s levels.
Echoing the compelling natural flow of Fallingwater, the Portland house features vast uninterrupted walls of glass and organic shapes throughout.
Walls, floors and ceilings are made of natural wood, reinforcing yet again the feeling of being in a highly sophisticated tree house. Generous use of natural stone and curved shapes add fascinating nature-like elements to the impressive interior.
Overall, the home took seven years to go from concept to completion. The care and thought that the architect obviously put into the realization of the client’s wishes is evident in every facet of this truly poetic home.
Although the photographs are beyond impressive, according to the architect they do the property no justice. To really enjoy this unusual home, he says, one has to walk through it and take in every feature first-hand. | 0.629396 |
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