text
stringlengths 465
100k
|
|---|
The Islamic State (Isis) has claimed responsibility for shooting dead an Italian aid worker in Bangladesh marking the expansion of the extremist group. The incident took place in the diplomatic zone in Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.
Bangladeshi police have confirmed Cesare Tavella, aged about 50, has died at the hospital following gunshot wounds. But the authorities did not specify whether the IS was behind the attack.
"Probably they [assailants] were following him. Another person stood at one end of the Road 83 parking his motorcycle in front of the German Development Cooperation Building," Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain, who took the Italian national to a nearby hospital, told bdnews24.com. "I could not identify them as the streetlamps were off. One of the two persons behind him shot him after sometime. I heard three gunshots."
An initial probe by local officials suggests the attack, which took place on Monday, 28 September evening, was planned. Subsequent to the gun-attack, the Iraqi-based Sunni Islamist group claimed responsibility for the assault.
"Based on the evidence and previous experience, we could say that the murder was pre-planned," senior police official Mukhlesur Rahman told reporters after visiting the crime scene. Tavella was thought to be working with a Netherlands-based NGO.
According to the SITE intelligence group, the IS released a statement in Arabic claiming a "security detachment" was following the Italian citizen and later killed him with "silenced weapons". Their claim is yet to be independently verified. If confirmed, the incident would be the first such attack by the group in the South Asian nation. |
Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air , no sky beyond it.
The Rigveda (or Rig Veda) is a collection of over 1000 Vedic Sanskrit hymns to the Hindu gods.The oldest of the Hindu scriptures, which some have claimed date to to 7000–4000 BC, philological analysis indicates that it was probably composed in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, roughly between 1700–1100 BC; it has been noted that it shares some linguistic and cultural similarities with the Zend Avesta of Zoroastrianism, which has also been dated to similar time periods.
Quotes [ edit ]
I laud Agni the priest, the divine minister of sacrifice, who invokes the gods, and is most rich in gems.
May Agni, the invoker, the sage, the true, the most renowned, a god, come hither with the gods! Start of Hymn 1, as quoted in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Vol. 23 (1864), p. 267 Variant translations: Agni I laud, the high priest, god, minister of sacrifice, The invoker, lavishest of wealth. Mandala 1, Hymn 1, verse 1
May Agni, the invoker, the sage, the true, the most renowned, a god, come hither with the gods!
O ye who wish to gain realization of the Supreme Truth, utter the name of "Vishnu" at least once in the steadfast faith that it will lead you to such realization. V.I.15b.3
Just as the sun's rays in the sky are extended to the mundane vision, so in the same way the wise and learned devotees always see the abode of Lord Vishnu. V.I.22.20
Let me now sing the heroic deeds of Viṣṇu who has measured apart the realms of the earth, who propped up the upper dwelling-place, striding far as he stepped forth three times.
They praise for his heroic deeds Viṣṇu who lurks in the mountains, wandering like a ferocious wild beast, in whose three wide strides all creatures dwell. V.1.154.1–2, as translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty in The Rig Veda : An Anthology (1981), p. 226
They praise for his heroic deeds Viṣṇu who lurks in the mountains, wandering like a ferocious wild beast, in whose three wide strides all creatures dwell.
Alone, he supports threefold the earth and the sky — all creatures.
Would that I might reach his dear place of refuge, where men who love the gods rejoice. For their one draws close to the wide-striding Viṣṇu; there, in his highest footstep, is the fountain of honey. V.1.154.4–5, as translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty in The Rig Veda : An Anthology (1981), p. 226
Would that I might reach his dear place of refuge, where men who love the gods rejoice. For their one draws close to the wide-striding Viṣṇu; there, in his highest footstep, is the fountain of honey.
Play not with dice, [but] cultivate your corn-land. Enjoy the gain, and deem that wealth sufficient. X.34.13; translation by Ralph T.H. Griffith
Creation Hymn [ edit ]
Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.
Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?
There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?
The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not. Mandala 10, Hymn 129 : Creation, as translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith (1896).
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit. Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent. Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep? There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse. Other than that there was nothing beyond. Mandala 10, hymn 129, verses 1-2, as translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, in The Rig Veda : An Anthology (1981).
Whence this creation has arisen – perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know. Mandala 10, hymn 129, verse 7, as translated by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, in The Rig Veda : An Anthology (1981).
About the Rigveda [ edit ] |
Photo
Personal Health Jane Brody on health and aging.
What would it take to persuade you to exercise
A desire to lose weight or improve your figure? To keep heart disease, cancer or diabetes at bay? To lower your blood pressure or cholesterol? To protect your bones? To live to a healthy old age?
You’d think any of those reasons would be sufficient to get Americans exercising, but scores of studies have shown otherwise. It seems that public health experts, doctors and exercise devotees in the media — like me — have been using ineffective tactics to entice sedentary people to become, and remain, physically active.
For decades, people have been bombarded with messages that regular exercise is necessary to lose weight, prevent serious disease and foster healthy aging. And yes, most people say they value these goals. Yet a vast majority of Americans — two-thirds of whom are overweight or obese — have thus far failed to swallow the “exercise pill.”
Now research by psychologists strongly suggests it’s time to stop thinking of future health, weight loss and body image as motivators for exercise. Instead, these experts recommend a strategy marketers use to sell products: portray physical activity as a way to enhance current well-being and happiness.
“We need to make exercise relevant to people’s daily lives,” Michelle L. Segar, a research investigator at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. “Everyone’s schedule is packed with nonstop to-do’s. We can only fit in what’s essential.”
Reframing the Message
Dr. Segar is among the experts who believe that people will not commit to exercise if they see its benefits as distant or theoretical.
“It has to be portrayed as a compelling behavior that can benefit us today,” she said. “People who say they exercise for its benefits to quality of life exercise more over the course of a year than those who say they value exercise for its health benefits.”
Her idea for a public service advertisement to promote exercise for working women with families: A woman is shown walking around the block after dinner with her children and says, “This is great. I can fit in fitness, spend quality time with my kids, and at the same time teach them how important exercise is.”
Based on studies of what motivates people to adopt and sustain physical activity, Dr. Segar is urging that experts stop framing moderate exercise as a medical prescription that requires 150 minutes of aerobic effort each week. Instead, public health officials must begin to address “the emotional hooks that make it essential for people to fit it into their hectic lives.”
“Immediate rewards are more motivating than distant ones,” she added. “Feeling happy and less stressed is more motivating than not getting heart disease or cancer, maybe, someday in the future.”
In a study of 252 office workers, David K. Ingledew and David Markland, psychologists at the University of Wales, found that while many began to exercise as way to lose weight and improve their appearance, these motivations did not keep them exercising in the long term. “The well-being and enjoyment benefits of exercise should be emphasized,” the researchers concluded.
Dr. Segar put it this way: “Physical activity is an elixir of life, but we’re not teaching people that. We’re telling them it’s a pill to take or a punishment for bad numbers on the scale. Sustaining physical activity is a motivational and emotional issue, not a medical one.”
Other studies have shown that what gets people off their duffs and keeps them moving depends on age, gender, life circumstances and even ethnicity. For those of college age, for example, physical attractiveness typically heads the list of reasons to begin exercising, although what keeps them going seems to be the stress relief that a regular exercise program provides.
The elderly, on the other hand, may get started because of health concerns. But often what keeps them exercising are the friendships, sense of community and camaraderie that may otherwise be missing from their lives — easily seen among the gray-haired women who faithfully attend water exercise classes at my local YMCA.
In a recent study of 1,690 overweight or obese middle-aged men and women, Dr. Segar found that enhancing daily well-being was most influential factor for the women in the study. Men indicated they were motivated by more distant health benefits, although Dr. Segar suspects this may be because men feel less comfortable discussing their mental health needs.
“What sustains us, we sustain,” Dr. Segar said. “We need to promote what marketers call ‘customer loyalty.’ We need to help people stay engaged with movement by teaching them how it can help sustain them in their lives.“
Value Beyond Weight Loss
Many, if not most, people start exercising because they want to lose weight. But very often they abandon exercise when the expected pounds fail to fall off. Study after study has found that, without major changes in eating habits, increasing physical activity is only somewhat effective for losing weight, though it helps people maintain weight loss and shedding even a few pounds, especially around one’s middle, can improve health.
For example, researchers in Brisbane, Australia, and in Leeds, England, studied 58 sedentary overweight or obese men and women who participated in a closely monitored 12-week aerobic exercise program. Weight loss was minimal, but nonetheless the participants’ waistlines shrunk, their blood pressure and resting heart rate dropped, and their aerobic capacity and mood improved.
“Exercise should be encouraged and the emphasis on weight loss reduced,” the researchers concluded. “Disappointment and low self-esteem associated with poor weight loss could lead to low exercise adherence and a general perception that exercise is futile and not beneficial.”
I walk three miles daily, or bike ten miles and swim three-quarters of a mile. If you ask me why, weight control may be my first answer, followed by a desire to live long and well. But that’s not what gets me out of bed before dawn to join friends on a morning walk and then bike to the Y for my swim.
It’s how these activities make me feel: more energized, less stressed, more productive, more engaged and, yes, happier — better able to smell the roses and cope with the inevitable frustrations of daily life. |
Remember the study that found that cuteness improves focus and makes you more productive? Well, get ready to become very, very productive.
We've rounded up some absolutely adorable baby photos of species from all over the world, so take a look and let us know which one you think is cutest.
Baby ring-tailed lemur (Photo: Frank Wouters/flickr)
Newborn baby flamingo (Photo: RZSS Edinburgh Zoo)
Baby dolphin (Photo: Miguel Rojo/Getty Images)
A baby porcupine smells a flower. (Photo: David Newbold/Shutterstock)
Baby snake (Photo: kristy/flickr)
Baby anteater (Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
Baby fennec fox (Photo: Michele W/flickr)
Baby African grey parrots (Photo: Papooga/flickr)
Baby llama (Photo: Tambako The Jaguar/flickr)
Baby hyenas (Photo: Mychele Daniau/Getty Images)
Baby otters (Photo: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images)
Baby hippopotamus (Photo: Tambako The Jaguar/flickr)
Owlets (Photo: bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock)
Baby squirrel (Photo: madaise/flickr)
Baby lizard (Photo: Daniel Lee/flickr)
Baby chinchila poses with pumpkins. (Photo: Ruta Doksiene/Shutterstock)
Baby pangolin (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Baby capybaras (Photo: Lisa Williams/flickr)
Baby platypuses (Photo: EverydayFacts/YouTube)
Baby possum (Photo: Graham Higgs/flickr)
A greater one-horned rhino calf snuggles with his mother at the Wilds conservation center in Ohio. (Photo: Grahm S. Jones/Columbus Zoo & Aquarium)
Baby rat (Photo: La Tarte au Citron/flickr)
Baby armadillo (Photo: Stephanie Carter/flickr)
Baby camel (Photo: ActiveSteve/flickr)
Baby wombat (Photo: Greg Wood/Getty Images)
Baby skunk (Photo: gamppart/flickr)
Baby chipmunk (Photo: Audrey/flickr)
28 photos of unusual baby animals
From a tiny bottle-fed lemur to a platypus the size of your hand, these pictures will leave you scrolling for more. |
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) is thinking about running for president.
Gutiérrez, who announced earlier this week that he will not run for reelection to Congress, told Politico that he is not retiring and is taking early steps toward a 2020 bid.
"I will be reaching out to people across the country,” he told Politico. “I am going to take the steps to guarantee [Federal Election Commission] regulations and rules about campaign financing, first and foremost, make sure I'm following the law … I want to build something national."
Gutiérrez has been a fierce advocate for immigration reform and told Politico that Democrats “didn’t do enough” to reach out to immigrant communities in the last election.
"I think I can bring a new set of eyes to the situation,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Gutiérrez has held his seat since 1993, and his political ally Cook County Commissioner Jesús García has agreed to run for his vacant House seat.
Gutiérrez has also been a harsh critic of President Trump, especially during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
The lawmaker told Politico that he and his wife plan to tour the country, a typical move in the early stages of a presidential run.
"We're going to talk, and I'm going to hear,” he said. “Maybe there's a lot of enthusiasm for it. Maybe in six months I'll come back and say, no.” |
Jon Watts, director of enterprise services at Deloitte, has weighed in on Bitcoin regulatory issues with clear and cogent arguments. Watts’ thesis is that Bitcoin is at the crossroads, and the race to regulate it could be happening much too soon.
Deloitte is a professional services firm headquartered in New York. Considered one of the Big Four auditory firms along with PwC, Ernst & Young, and KPMG, Deloitte is the second-largest professional services network in the world by revenue and largest by the number of professionals. The company provides audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services with more than 200,000 professionals in more than 150 countries.
Watts , based in the New York office, is a core member of Deloitte’s Capital Markets Technology practice and a national leader of the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) service offering. The reputation of Deloitte should ensure that Watts’ advice on Bitcoin regulation is taken into account by regulators and policymakers.
“The Bitcoin 'blockchain' is a fundamental breakthrough in computer science that solves what seemed to be an unsolvable problem: how to ensure that a digital transaction happens only once,” notes Watts. “Yet there is a critical question that is hanging over Bitcoin, potentially slowing the pace of innovation, and adoption, i.e., how will Bitcoin be regulated?”
Watts argues that global policymakers and regulators should consider giving Bitcoin more time to develop before insisting on regulation. Other key technology innovation such as the telephone, airplanes, radio, mobile phones, and the Internet, were given much more time to develop before coming under serious regulatory supervision.
“In fact, serious efforts to regulate disruptive technologies have traditionally been a function of the technology achieving mass adoption,” says Watts. Overwhelming regulatory supervision of Bitcoin is happening much too soon, only six years into the development of Bitcoin and “a long way away from the time it has typically taken for new technologies to achieve mass adoption in the past.”
In fact, Bitcoin is still very far from mass adoption, and represents but a very small fraction of the global economy. Though Bitcoin is all over the press – albeit often with shallow and sensationalist coverage – and venture capital investments in the Bitcoin space are taking off, only a tiny minority of people own bitcoin and use it to pay for goods and services.
“The highest daily dollar volume for Bitcoin transactions globally in February 2015 was less than $57 million, which is less than 1 percent of the average daily transaction volume for credit card platforms as measured in 2012,” notes Watts. Therefore, Bitcoin adoption is not yet skyrocketing with such a disruptive speed to warrant panic regulatory interventions.
Another important argument is that we could be still very far from real products that can generate true demand for Bitcoin-related services from mainstream consumers. In fact, Bitcoin's most valuable and important uses may have yet to be invented. Watts notes that Bitcoin is much more than just digital money – its real value is the ability of blockchain technology to establish trust between parties who don’t know each other.
That, Watts notes, may very well change how people live and interact. “Bitcoin is likely to follow a path where one innovation leads to another and ultimately, the very products, services, and capabilities that were once difficult or impossible to imagine, become necessities in our daily lives,” he said.
Watts worries that policymakers and regulators, in looking to protect the public from all of the bad outcomes we might anticipate today, could “end up stifling the myriad (as yet) unimaginable capabilities that could potentially change the world for the better.”
His concluding recommendation is that American industry groups, policymakers and regulators should collaborate and consider whether the United States should be the country that provides the most supportive environment for Bitcoin-related innovation. |
Wes Knight is on his way to trial with the Seattle Sounders over the next few days. Joshua Mayers confirmed a tweet that indicated Knight would be headed to Seattle for a several day look. The 25 on Tuesday right back/right mid played with the Vancouver Whitecaps in both the USL (was a finalist for Rookie of Year in 2009) and in MLS. He had 10 assists in the second division in both 09/10 but only notched a single assist in 805 minutes (10 starts, 2 other appearances). Knight's release by the Whitecaps stunned their fanbase.
While Knight is only on trial, chatting with Ben Massey of www.EightySixForever.com shows that he has some significant upside;
Technically, he's not yet starting material. He's quick, both in a straight line and in terms of agility. He crosses decently and has good instincts for when to get forward. His positioning, defensively, can be solid: he marked the likes of Juan Agudelo entirely out of a game. Unfortunately he does get caught in the wrong place sometimes and, while he has a good eye for passing, his crossing is only decent and his shooting ability is nil. Knight also used to have an extremely long, accurate throw-in, but that's been demonstrated less and less after a right shoulder injury late in the 2010 season.
He's also a huge fan favorite.
Wes was Vancouver's most popular player because he loved the fans as much as they loved him. You'd see him standing outside of Empire Field after a game or a practice talking to nobody in particular: just a fan who recognized him and wanted to say hi. You could count on him for an autograph, of course, but also for a conversation, for candour, and for the sort of "Southern hospitality" that's become a stereotype.
Knight offers Seattle a back-up at their shallowest position, particularly now that Zach Scott is getting so much time at centerback. The bridge from James Riley to the unknown future right back may have been found, and at a loss for the Cascadia brother to the north. This of course assumes that during his trial he emulates what Sanyang, Ochoa and Rosales all have done during a similar opportunity. |
Dads in the Limelight
Our 420th Dad in the Limelight is Ben Crawford. I want to thank Ben for being a part of this series. It has been great getting connected with him and now sharing him with all of you.
1) Tell me about yourself, (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge)
http://3encrawford.com/ I’ve founded some companies and love adventure. One of the business ventures was the topic of a documentary. We live in community and my primary earthly identity is being a father. You can read a more thorough “bio” here:
2) Tell me about your family
We have 6 children. 5 that are living. I got married at the age of 20 to Kami. We have 4 daughters (Dove, Eden, Memory, & Filia) and 1 son (named Seven). People always ask us if we are “done”. If we are it would not be by our choice.
3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?
Overcoming porn, busyness, and identities tied to work and financial income to be emotionally and spiritually present with my children.
4) What advice would you give to other fathers?
Talk to old people and ask them what they regret or are proud of. No old person ever wishes he had fewer children, spent less time with them, or answered more email.
5) How have you come to balance parenthood and outside life?
I don’t know what this question means. To me “parenthood” is who I am. It’s not something to be balanced and there is no such thing as outside life. Every opportunity that my child is not with me, whether it be work or pleasure, is a missed opportunity to be with, enjoy, and train my child, AS WELL as learn myself more about God and my relationship with him. Parents are really obsessed with being a blessing to their children and we forget the the relationship primarily is that they are a blessing to us. We need to understand why we are not seeing things this way or we will keep on missing the point. I don’t know what this question means. To me “parenthood” is who I am. It’s not something to be balanced and there is no such thing as outside life. Every opportunity that my child is not with me, whether it be work or pleasure, is a missed opportunity to be with, enjoy, and train my child, AS WELL as learn myself more about God and my relationship with him. Parents are really obsessed with being a blessing to their children and we forget the the relationship primarily is that they are a blessing to us. We need to understand why we are not seeing things this way or we will keep on missing the point.
6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with?
Discipline is just a tool. Having well-behaved children is not the end game. Having children that are wildly in love with you , because you are wildly involved with them is more satisfying and a reflection of God’s character than having good kids.
7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far?
We’ve done some difficult hard things as a family. 4 out of the last 5 years our family has hiked 95 miles around Mount Rainier together. Last year I ran 2 marathons with my son when he was 8. We started off all endeavors like that asking the question “How can we afford to do that?” but we end them all asking “How can we afford NOT to do that?”
8) What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?
When my children come to me voluntarily and confess their sin. Creating a space that is safe and where we model our own repentance and need for the gospel is better than fear and shame and so beautiful that it shocks me and brings me to tears every time I see it.
If you have any questions for Ben, please leave a comment here and I will make sure that he gets them so that he may be able to respond!
Also, do you know a Dad in the Limelight? If so, please email me their contact information so that they too can be a part of this series!
——————————————————————————————-
New to the Divadom?
Please Subscribe to my RSS Feed! Subscribe in a reader
Questions?Drop me a line at [email protected]
Related articles |
Video (00:49) : After a rally outside the State Capitol, some protesters marched in downtown St. Paul, blocking some traffic.
A protest that started with about 100 people at the Minnesota State Capitol grew quickly Wednesday night as it moved first to John Ireland Boulevard then to downtown St. Paul.
Protesters, who chanted and carried signs, blocked some downtown streets. Their ranks grew as they marched west on University Avenue, blocking both sides of the street and shouting expletives about Donald Trump in English and Spanish.
The group, which peaked at about 300 people, circled back downtown and, at 10:35 p.m., were at St. Anthony Avenue and Marion Street, St. Paul police said. Officers were there directing traffic, but not interfering with the protest. There was no violence, police said.
The protest was one of several in U.S. cities in the wake of Tuesday’s election of the GOP candidate, notably in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit and Portland, Ore.
“This is about what’s going to be done in our name,” said Peter Rachleff, a former Macalester College professor. “We’re all responsible. We’re better than this.”
Bobbie Scott said, “I’m here because I feel I have to be here. Other work will come later, but for now, I’m here.”
Gallery: Trump protest at the Minnesota Capitol Gallery: Trump protest at the Minnesota Capitol
Callia Blake, 17, and her 15-year-old friend aren’t old enough to vote yet, but came out to protest Trump’s ascension, too. “This guy, he’s a rapist, he just is awful,” she said. “I can’t take that; I can’t do it.”
JoAnn Hendricks, 67, was there with her friend, LaVonne Ellington, 80, who served as a poll watcher on Tuesday. “LaVonne and I didn’t vote for Trump. I’m not a ‘Trumpladite,’ ” Hendricks said. “That’s why we’re here. We didn’t know what else to do. I’m really sad.”
Earlier, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, some students had a shouting match over the election.
Students were struggling to digest the results of one of the most bitter presidential elections in memory.
“I guess it’s really setting in right now,” said Sam Wondimu, 20, a U health services major who was one of dozens of students gathered around a single laptop at the Black Student Union, watching as President Obama spoke about Trump’s election. “There’s a considerable amount of sadness,” Wondimu said, and “I guess a bit of fear.”
Moments later, a clash broke out between a black student and a white student wearing a Trump “Make America Great Again” hat just outside the black student group’s headquarters at Coffman Memorial Union.
Matthew Selmen, 19, said he was doing his homework when another man noticed his hat and started yelling at him, accusing him of being a racist. Selmen videotaped the incident, saying the man threatened him before leaving.
“I think it really comes down to ignorance on behalf of both sides,” he said, insisting that students were jumping to conclusions because he was a Trump supporter. “I don’t support everything he says or does,” he said, but “if we can’t have a conversation here, I don’t think that’s right.”
Others, though, wondered if Selmen meant to be provocative. “This is the second floor of Coffman, this is where multicultural students come,” said Keren Habtes, a journalism and history major. “So you come here with that hat? It seemed like it was very divisive.”
At Macalester, President Brian Rosenberg sent a campuswide e-mail Wednesday, noting that many on the St. Paul campus are feeling “grief, fear, anger [and] bewilderment” in the wake of the election and encouraging anyone “overwhelmed by these feelings” to seek help from the counseling center or other campus services.
In La Crosse, Wis., meanwhile, Chancellor Joe Gow of the University of Wisconsin denounced what he called a hate crime after someone scrawled the words “go home” followed by a racist epithet on an off-campus student residence. “No members of the [university] community should ever have to experience this kind of hate and intimidation,” he wrote in a campus e-mail. While he did not mention the racially charged presidential campaign, he wrote that hate crimes “do not occur in isolation,” and called on the campus “to work to create a climate of inclusion and respect.”
Racist graffiti at Maple Grove High School, shared on social media by students, has prompted an investigation, school district officials said.
“I’m horrified by this action, which goes against everything for which our school stands; it is completely contrary to our core values, both as a school and as a district,” Principal Bart Becker wrote in a letter sent to families of students. “We will take swift and appropriate action based on the investigation findings.”
Staff writers Rochelle Olson and Beatrice Dupuy contributed to this report. [email protected] 612-673-7252
[email protected] 612-673-7384 |
Even though the much loved Sons of Anarchy series ended back in 2014, it hasn't quelled the show's popularity.
While the original show isn't coming back, the series is reportedly getting a possible television spinoff, tentatively titled Mayans, and a new prequel comic series titled Redwood Original. In addition, Pop Culture Shock Collectibles is releasing new figures based on series regulars Jax Teller and Clay Morrow.
The figures come loaded with articulation, with over 30 points to pose and tweak to your liking. Both Jax and Clay are around 12 inches tall and feature uncanny likeness to both Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman. Jax includes 6 interchangeable hands, including one with a cigar and one with a knife. He also comes with a pair of sunglasses, a Heckler and Koch USP Expert, a combat knife, wallet with chain, and a display stand. The exclusive version comes with 11 total accessories, including more weapons like a Glock 17 and a Tek-9. |
WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- New federal charges were brought in Washington Friday against the founder and treasurer of the National Association of Special Police and Security Officers.
The superseding indictment charges Caleb Gray-Burriss, 60, of Washington with mail fraud, theft from a labor organization, obstruction of justice, criminal contempt and various recordkeeping offenses related to his operation of a pension plan for the union's members, the Justice Department said in a release.
NASPSO represents private security guards assigned to protect federal buildings in the Washington metro area.
Gray-Burriss, who originally was charged last June with four counts of mail fraud, will be arraigned on the new counts Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Gray-Burriss is accused of spending more than $100,000 in union pension funds on himself or others. |
In an effort to dispel perceptions that he's a radical right-winger, David Koch told Barbara Walters in December that he's "basically a libertarian," explaining that he's "a conservative on economic matters, and I’m a social liberal.” Koch's comments hardly came as a surprise. Before he and his brother Charles calculated that they could best implement their anti-government agenda as Republican megadonors, David was the Libertarian Party's vice presidential nominee in 1980. Moreover, "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" politics are pretty much the norm among the corporate elite. They don't get exercised over abortion and gay marriage; in fact, they're often downright embarrassed by the troglodytic views of rank-and-file social conservatives. What really matters is that they're allowed to profit (and plunder) as they please, free from the overweening hand of the nefarious state.
So it will come as no surprise that the Koch political network doesn't exactly advance socially liberal values. According to a new analysis from Think Progress, the Kochs' political machine -- encompassing such organizations as Freedom Partners Action Fund and Americans for Prosperity -- has contributed $86 million to candidates and groups who oppose abortion rights and marriage equality since 2010 -- a total 1,000 times that contributed to candidates and organizations that voice traditionally liberal views on those issues. Of 265 elected officials who benefited from Koch-linked money, the report finds, all but nine opposed abortion rights, while a scant 12 supported marriage equality.
Advertisement:
It's enough for Think Progress to assert that the Kochs aren't really socially liberal at all. But there are two more salient takeaways from the data. First, it's a reminder of how Americans and their politicians have become increasingly ideologically consistent in their views. Tell me a politician's opinion on the Affordable Care Act, and I'll have a pretty good idea of what she thinks about abortion. So for the Kochs, supporting anti-regulation, anti-safety net, anti-tax, anti-climate science candidates and causes inevitably means supporting candidates and groups that don't adhere to their views on social issues.
Which leads to the second crucial point: As much as we like to think of politics in terms of social jousting, it's fundamentally about a society's distribution of resources -- "who gets what, when, and how," in the words of Harold Lasswell. For the plutocratic class, a sudden armistice in the culture wars would pose a particularly vexing problem: How now to distract the unwashed from gaping social inequalities, egregious corporate misconduct, and the steady erosion of workers' bargaining power?
Let us then grant David Koch that he is a social liberal. The real question is, why should we care? |
Middlesbrough target Stewart Downing reportedly has his heart set on a move back to the club where he began his career.
It was previously reported that Middlesbrough had bid around £5 million for Downing in an attempt to take him back to the North East. Although West Ham have told the winger he can leave, they are waiting until they sign a replacement before they finalise any deal for Downing.
Premier League side Sunderland were said to have had a £6 million rejected earlier on in the summer. Despite Middlesbrough’s bid being smaller, the will from Downing to re-sign for a club that is obviously in his heart could push the move over the line. However, another Premier League side Leicester City are said to be monitoring the situation.
Downing was in great form for West Ham last season, scoring 6 goals and notching 8 assists in 37 Premier League appearances. |
The topic of my Sloan project came about very organically. As soon as I decided to apply for the grant, I knew it was going to involve forensics. Then I asked myself, "What's the most common tool people associate with criminal investigation?" The answer was obvious: fingerprints.
After some preliminary research I discovered this very little-known but fascinating murder case that few people outside law-enforcement circles have heard of. It involves the death of two children in the small, seaside Argentine town of Necochea in 1892. As I continued my research into the state of forensics in Argentina and the rest of the world at the time, I came across some very fascinating facts.
Juan Vucetich was at the center of this case. During this time he was working on his own methods of fingerprinting, which was first developed in England. Although his views on criminal investigation, like his preference for evidence over coercion or torture, differed from those of his contemporaries, he wasn't met with as much institutional resistance as one might expect.
The anthropometric method, which involved measuring body parts and distinguishing characteristics, was accurate, but it was expensive, time-consuming and hard to implement on a uniform basis, because it required careful training. That's where fingerprints come in.
The fact that each fingerprint was unique had been known for centuries. In order to avoid fraud, the British even used fingerprints to pay pension benefits in colonial India. So naturally the reason that fingerprints became widespread was their simplicity and low cost. But even at the time of this case, prints were only used to generate databases of convicted criminals and to register immigrants, which is a whole other topic of discussion entirely.
The story seemed very topical, mainly for two reasons. First, the way law enforcement goes about investigating crimes has always been a huge problem, be it the imperfection of the methods used or the inability of police to process the evidence already at hand. Just look at how many thousands of rape kits in U.S. never get tested because of their sheer volume. Also, needless to say, even after more than a hundred years since the beginning of modern forensics, evidence too often is politicized and misused by the police -- which happens to be the case in the Argentine murder case in 1892. What was true in Necochea back then is true in New York and Los Angeles today. This brings us to the second reason that I was interested in this story.
I didn't set out to make a film about current affairs, but quite often they find their way into a narrative anyway. Torture being both a feature of this century-old story and a source of debate in the post-9/11 world of today is, of course, a coincidence. Aside from not being compelled to search for physical evidence, police at the time of this case used casual torture as part of their investigative toolkit. The surviving victim in the Necochea case pointed to a suspect who was promptly forced to confess through the use of torture, without any evidence. In his later years, Vucetich became an outspoken critic of torture and a supporter of human rights. He gave speeches all around the world, including in the U.S.
Today many forensic methods, including fingerprinting, are undergoing scrutiny, be it for their inaccuracy or for fundamental misappropriation, which is all the more reason for the majority of forensic methods to be viewed as tools to be used in conjunction with intelligent, thorough, unbiased detective work and not silver bullets to be used for filling up prisons often motivated by fear. |
The term ‘citizen soldier’ evokes a particularly powerful image in Britain. The poignant histories of the ‘Pals’ Battalions’, raised utilizing the attraction of geographical and occupational connections, have contributed greatly to the lasting public impression of the conflict. Names such as the ‘Accrington Pals’, ‘Glasgow Tramways’ and the two ‘Football Battalions’ have been documented in many forms – both fact and fiction – since the end of the conflict, and the frequently tragic stories of their involvement in the trenches on the Western Front are now relatively familiar.
There was, however, another citizen army raised during the First World War. Not based on location and not destined for the front line, these soldiers were enlisted with the specific intention of applying their technical skills to the industrial challenges thrown up by the Western Front. In few areas was this process more pronounced than in the sphere of transportation, critical to the maintenance and sustenance of the armies in the trenches. This post looks at just one of the directorates formed during the war to supervise, organize and manage the logistics network on the Western Front, the Directorate of Inland Water Transport [IWT].
At the outbreak of the war, the British Army had no organization to take advantage of the canal networks of France and Belgium. This changed in December 1914 when Commander Gerald Edward Holland was authorized by the War Office to investigate the potential use of IWT as a supplement to the road and railway networks. As the rank suggests, Holland’s background was not army, but navy, having joined the Royal Indian Marine in 1880. Having seen service in Burma and South Africa, Holland retired from service in 1905 and took up the post of Marine Superintendent of the London and North Western Railway at Holyhead. It was in this capacity that Holland was employed until 1914.
Holland’s diary of the first few months of the IWT directorate’s existence remains, and demonstrates both the duties of a ‘chateau general’ on the supply chain, and the type of men Holland required to populate the new service. Unfortunately, as with so many unofficial diaries, the detailed, enthusiastic entries of the initial months eventually diminish into perfunctory statements before the diary abruptly ends in May 1915. So the diary does not give a full account of the development of a transportation service, however it does offer an insight into the course of action followed by Holland in the first weeks of 1915.
Arriving in France just after Christmas 1914, Holland’s first days were spent inspecting the canal network in France, talking to local barge owners and sketching out a potential policy for the use of canals to supply the expanding British force. Much of January was then given over to the familiar business practice of interviewing potential applicants for commissions in the new directorate, many of whom had little or no military experience.
What they did have were desirable skills. Obvious examples include those with previous boating experience such as Horace Pitman, a ten-year veteran yachtsman, albeit with ‘bad sight in one eye’, a man with six years’ experience operating transports on the Gold Coast, and a boat builder with knowledge of the French and Belgian canal network (and, significantly, knowledge of the French language). Alongside these men were a large group, some fifty in all, hand-picked from Holyhead and the London and North-Western’s Marine Department.
Not all were boating experts, however. Gerald Douglas, a civil engineer, was appointed as a Lieutenant; a trained Lloyd’s Surveyor who had enlisted in the infantry after the outbreak of the war was re-employed as an Inspector of new barges, a former civil servant from the Nigerian government arrived to use his organizational talents to the newly emerging directorate, and a Private R.H. Williams, curiously described as ‘intelligent looking’ by Holland, was transferred from the Public Schools Battalion thanks to his previous experience working for the London and North-Western.
These men were soldiers, each were sent to the Royal Engineers’ training camp at Longmoor prior to their posting in France, but they were not primarily occupied with the same challenges as those members of the ‘fighting services’; infantry, artillery and cavalry. Instead, their challenge was to introduce, adapt and develop their business talents to a problem familiar to any manufacturing business, that of moving goods from one place to another. Their motivation was not profit for their employers, but quite literally a matter of life and death for those who depended entirely upon an efficient, reliable supply of food, arms and myriad other goods.
Their sacrifice may not have been the ‘ultimate’ one which will be forever linked to the civilians of ‘Kitchener’s Armies’, but the contribution of the IWT – one among many of the ancillary services which were crucial to the ‘military machine’ – was of direct importance to the war effort, and the work of the ‘other’ citizen soldiers deserves to be the subject of further understanding and future commemoration. |
NHL.com released a poll on Friday ranking their top 14 defensemen in the league and coming in at number 12 on this list was Arizona Coyotes defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson. The Swedish defenseman is only 23 years old, but he has quickly become one of the top blueliners in not only the league, but the world as well. As one of five Coyotes players selected to represent their country in the 2014 Winter Olympics last February in Sochi, Ekman-Larsson earned a silver medal as a member of the Swedish national team. While Ekman-Larsson’s skills on defense have made him a solid player at that position, it is his impressive abilities on offense that put him on a higher level.
The Early Years of Ekman-Larsson
Interestingly enough, Ekman-Larsson’s career in the NHL also began overseas. Selected by the Coyotes with the sixth overall pick in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft, Ekman-Larsson made his debut on October 9, 2010 when the then-Phoenix Coyotes faced the Boston Bruins in Prague, Czech Republic. Ekman-Larsson recorded his first career NHL point on October 23, 2010 against the Carolina Hurricanes and notched his first career NHL goal on January 17, 2011 against the San Jose Sharks. After finishing his rookie year with 11 points in 48 games, Ekman-Larsson would begin to make his mark on the league’s landscape in his sophomore year. He racked up 32 points in the 2011-12 NHL season, which ranked second on the team in terms of scoring by defenseman and seventh on the team in overall scoring. Ekman-Larsson’s biggest offensive contribution came when he notched his first career NHL playoff goal in the second period of Game 6 of the Coyotes’ first-round series against the Chicago Blackhawks. That was the only goal he scored during the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, but it would end up being the goal that put the Coyotes into the second round of the playoffs for the first time since moving from Winnipeg.
Last Season: Honing The Craft
Ekman-Larsson’s offensive prowess continued to flourish last season as he set career highs in goals (15), assists (29), points (44) and power-play goals (8). The Coyotes had one of their best seasons in franchise history with the man advantage last year and Ekman-Larsson played a vital role in getting the power play to work well. His 22 points on the power play was second-most on the team, only trailing defensive partner Keith Yandle. Ekman-Larsson also recorded six game-winning goals in 2013-14, which tied him with Matt Niskanen of the Pittsburgh Penguins for most GWG by a defenseman. In the offensive zone, Ekman-Larsson has made a habit of making opposing teams pay when he has the time and room to put the puck on net. He can also make use of his stick-handing skills to work his way in close as he demonstrated when he scored a highlight-reel goal against the Boston Bruins on March 22.
Looking Towards The Future
Oliver Ekman-Larsson has become one of the best offensive defenseman in the game today. His exceptional playing style has received praise from around the league, including from Nicklas Lidstrom, the former Detroit Red Wings captain and fellow Swede. It remains to be seen whether Ekman-Larsson will be able to follow in the footsteps of Lidstrom, who won the Norris Trophy seven times during his illustrious 20-year career. However, it is safe to say that Ekman-Larsson is on the right track towards leaving his own legacy in the NHL. |
Head coach Will Muschamp of the Florida Gators (3-2, 2-2 SEC) met with the media on Monday as his team continues to recover from its latest loss while preparing for the Missouri Tigers (4-2, 1-1 SEC) on Saturday evening. Florida will host Mizzou at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida; kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m., and the agme will air live nationally on ESPN2.
INTRODUCING THE TWO-QUARTERBACK SYSTEM
In what was likely to be the original plan last week against LSU, Muschamp confirmed Monday that Florida will employ a two-quarterback system this week against Missouri with redshirt junior Jeff Driskel likely to take the first snaps in the contest.
“They both will play this week. We’ll work through the week and see how things go. We’ll see how it goes there,” he said. “Right now, Jeff would probably start, but they’re both going to play.”
Driskel, who learned of his demotion to part-time player when Muschamp made the announcement, said he has no qualms with the decision because he knows he needs to pick up his play going forward. Freshman Treon Harris, of course, will be the other signal caller taking reps with Driskel.
“Treon and I are both going to work hard this week. We’re both going to work for each other. We’re both going to hope that the other person does well when they’re in. Obviously we think that’s something that’s going to help the team, so if it will help the team win, I’m all for it,” Driskel said. “The guys have confidence in Treon, but I think they have confidence in me as well. It’s not going to divide the team or anything.”
Muschamp said Harris spent his first day fully back with the team on Monday. He is confident that Harris will be able to rebound after a tough week and help the team against Mizzou, explaining what it is about Harris that makes him a special player.
“[He is] a guy that has shown the ability to make some plays, to take the ball in the right spots, accurate with his passes, has a certain confidence about him. I think that’s been something I’ve seen and noticed throughout his opportunities, though limited in games. In practice, that’s something that really jumps out at you, his playmaking ability to be able to make those things happen,” Muschamp explained.
“He’s got a certain persona about himself. That’s why I think… his last two years at Booker T. [Washington High School], he was 30-0. That tells you something about him. He’s a winner and he certainly has a persona about him.”
In the end, Driskel said he is most concerned with playing better and giving the Gators a chance to win Saturday’s game. He also does not think splitting reps with Harris will hurt the chemistry inside Florida’s locker room and believes UF continues to progress each week on that side of the ball.
“If we just put together everything in one game, things are going to start going our way and we’re going to be just fine. We just got to stay together, stay the course and keep getting better as the season goes along,” he said. “I think we’re close. As an offense, I think we’re close, had some nice plays in the game. Just a couple mistakes that cost us late and it’s stuff that we can get corrected. We’re going to stay together. We’re a close-knit group. That’s all we can do.”
HOW FLORIDA HANDLED A (SEEMINGLY) SERIOUS INJURY
A fan letter, which criticizes Muschamp for coaching up the Gators and the team not taking a knee while junior wide receiver Latroy Pittman was being tended to on the field (while, conversely LSU’s entire team was down on one knee watching Pittman), has made its rounds recently and stirred up a minimal amount of controversy.
Muschamp was asked to address the situation on Monday, and he explained that his additional knowledge of Pittman’s status allowed him to move forward while the player was being tended to on the field.
“The information [was] relayed to me immediately that he had movement and they felt like he was [being treated for] precautionary reasons, that he was going to be fine. We took that time, and we have not instructed our players to take a knee in those situations, any time someone gets hurt we don’t always know the severity of the injury or the situation. That’s not something we’ve done anywhere I’ve been that we’ve ever done,” he explained.
“We were trying to preview the next set of downs for our defense, and we were also trying to get our situation ready for a field goal block after I had received the information that Latroy was fine. I went over to make sure he was fine. I looked at Latroy, Latroy said he was fine. I talked to our training staff, they said he was fine, thought everything was going to be fine. That’s the situation.”
Pittman was released from the hospital Saturday night and listed by Muschamp on Monday as “day to day.” Though “everything’s come out fine” on tests done to Pittman, the trainers are doing some additional testing before allowing the player to begin physical activity. Muschamp said there’s a “good possibility” he plays this weekend.
INJURY UPDATES
Junior running back Matt Jones, who began last week with knee swelling but left the game due to an ankle injury he suffered during practice, was listed by Muschamp as “probable” for Saturday’s game. He is expected to return to practice on Wednesday.
Redshirt senior defensive tackle Leon Orr, on the other hand, is still dealing with knee issues after having arthroscopic surgery done on the joint a few weeks ago and is once again questionable for the Mizzou contest.
Sophomore cornerback Vernon Hargreaves III (head) and junior left tackle D.J. Humphries (knee) were both injured against LSU, but each should be fine for the next game with projected return dates on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
PLAYER EVALUATIONS
» Muschamp on redshirt freshman DT Caleb Brantley‘s steady improvement: “I think that the first thing is that he’s a very disruptive player. He’s got a very good first step for a 310-12 pound guy. Caleb’s biggest issue is just consistency in his performance, consistently doing it well, consistently playing with great effort. There’s no question he’s extremely talented, he’s a very talented guy. He can hold the point. For a big guy to have the movement skill he has, certainly God’s blessed him with a lot of ability. A lot of times, whether we’ve in a movement situation up front or he’s playing technique up front, being able to get in the backfield and be disruptive and making the ball run east-west is sometimes, for me, good enough. Now, I’d like him to make the tackle also, but when you’re being disruptive in the run game, it’s very helpful.”
» Muschamp on sophomore WR Ahmad Fulwood seeing additional playing time on Saturday: “He played a lot more this past Saturday and he’ll continue to.”
» Muschamp on junior defensive back Brian Poole struggling once again: “Brian, disappointed with the lack of communication at times, had some eye-control issues at times. We got lost on a couple bootlegs on the backside that didn’t hurt us but certainly could have. Brian’s a good self-evaluator, and he knows what he needs to do to improve.”
» Muschamp believes junior linebacker Antonio Morrison played the best football game of his career Saturday night, and he finished with a career- and team-high 14 tackles on the evening. In fact, Muschamp thinks Morrison is finally turning the corner with his best performances coming over the last two weeks.
» Muschamp on getting redshirt senior Andre Debose more involved on offense: “We’ve got to utilize him more on what we call the ‘go’ situations, where we bring the motions and still run the inside zone, so everybody doesn’t know what’s happening. … There’s no question Andre’s a very explosive playmaker, and [we should be] getting him more involved at times.”
NOTES AND QUOTES
» Muschamp on the crowd in The Swamp vs. LSU: “Our crowd last Saturday was amazing. They did a great job of helping us in that ballgame, certainly creating some confusion for the other team’s offense. We certainly appreciate that and are going to need it again Saturday night.”
» Muschamp on dropped passes and whether wide receiver coach Chris Leak is somewhat to blame: “Kurt Roper runs our passing game. That’s something during the interview process and talking to him, that he was going to have a large say-so and control over. That’s something that he does, and he does an outstanding job. We can’t catch [the ball] for [the wide receivers].”
» Muschamp on the pace of Florida’s offense and not using more tempo on Saturday: “The issue we’re getting into is third down. You’ve got to be able to convert and stay on the field. You want to go tempo? I want to go fast, too. But if you’re not getting first downs, going fast doesn’t help your football team. You’ve got to be able to maintain possession and stay on the field. When you’re able to get a first down, generally and even the big tempo teams, that’s when they go tempo, after they get a first down. The chains are moving and they’re going tempo and they’re going fast. We have that plan. But when you’re 2-for-12 on third down, it doesn’t help you go fast.” |
It was the last week of June back in 2014, and the Astros had just finished up a six-game road trip in which they went 1-5, standard fare for a team that was just less than a year removed from a 2013 season in which they had to pick their teeth up off the floor 111 times, a 51-111 debacle that had many baseball insiders talking about the Astros’ “bottoming-out” rebuilding method as an affront to the game.
Attendance and TV ratings, both microscopic at the time, indicated that the last thing on anybody’s mind in Houston outside the walls of Minute Maid Park was “Hey, exactly what season do you think the Astros will eventually win the World Series?” Yet on June 24, Sports Illustrated declared, on its cover and in its feature story for that issue, “The Houston Astros: Your 2017 World Series Champs!”
It seemed, at best, an odd proclamation about a team that was already 14.5 games out of first place in late June that season, even if SI was giving itself and the Astros a three-year cushion to pay off. As it turned out, the magazine may have been on to something.
Continue Reading
Related Stories Are You Ready For Some Baseball?
After a nondescript 70-92 finish in 2014, the adolescent Astros hit baseball puberty in 2015 and shocked the world, finishing the regular season 86-76, defeating the Yankees in a wild-card game in Yankee Stadium and pushing the eventual World Champion Kansas City Royals to within six outs of elimination in the ALDS.
Now, here comes 2016, and the rest of the baseball world, having witnessed these Astros, is wondering, “Are they all grown up now?” Last Thursday, in fact, Sports Illustrated published its baseball preview issue and decided to move its original 2017 title forecast up a full season, placing the target squarely on the Astros by predicting they would win the 2016 World Series. So not only do the Astros have to overcome the Texas Rangers; they also have to overcome the Sports Illustrated jinx.
But who should be more nervous, the Astros over that dreaded magazine maloika or Sports Illustrated over picking a young team with just one season back on the relevance landscape, a team that almost ran out of gas in going 7-15 during the first few weeks of September last season, a team with a revolving door at first base and a heavy reliance on a few star players to carry the load?
Among the obstacles the Astros will have to overcome in 2016 will be the Sports Illustrated jinx.
On top of all that is the overriding question — how will the Astros handle the psychological burden of being the hunted instead of the hunter in 2016? This season, unlike last season, they are sneaking up on nobody. Times have changed, 2013 is forever ago and it’s a new world for these Astros, one in which blind optimism has been replaced with expectations, where the house money gained from the 2015 postseason experience must be cashed in toward a deeper playoff run in 2016. Astros second-year manager A.J. Hinch sees a ball club ready for the challenge.
“It was such an eventful 2015, it’s hard to put into words sometimes,” Hinch reflected at the outset of spring training. “It’s time to turn the page and get to the next season. Our players will remember both the celebrations [after winning the division and the wild-card game], but also the angst that comes with getting eliminated from the playoffs.”
The Astros put a scare into the Royals in the ALDS, and even though they couldn’t quite finish the job, there was still a celebratory air about the team afterward, despite elimination. However, even with the team’s nucleus jelling a year or two ahead of schedule, walking off the field following the loss to the Royals, every Astro knew 2015 would be the last season where walking off the field a loser in the team’s final game would be considered okay.
In other words, in 2015, losing in the ALDS was considered progress. If the season ends there in 2016, it will be cause for concern.
“This year I really feel like [a championship] is the expectation, not only among our fans but among ourselves, our players and our staff,” general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “It is rewarding knowing that all the work we did over the past four years since [Jim Crane] bought the team has led to this point. The closer you get to the top, the harder it is to stay there and move forward.”
In order for the Astros to experience another run to the postseason (and the reappearance of Shirtless Colby Rasmus in a champagne celebration or four), there are a handful of immutable keys to the upcoming season. They are:
1. Who’s on first?
Barring injury or the occasional day of rest, you can use a permanent Sharpie to write down the names for nearly all the Astros’ everyday positions in the lineup — except for first base, where there are still so many players under consideration as of late March that if you lined them all up for infield practice at first base, it would look like the line to ride Space Mountain. The team is still waiting for John Singleton (and his $10 million in guaranteed money) to seize the position, but a sub-.200 spring batting average doesn’t bode well for him. A.J. Reed is a hot-shot prospect, Tyler White has been crushing the ball all spring, and Marwin Gonzalez and Preston Tucker continue to hang around. There’s enough firepower in other parts of the lineup to cover up for the first-base deficiency, but right now, if the Astros’ lineup were a set of teeth, first base is a giant cavity.
2. Bullish on the pen
You can credit Luhnow for many things, not the least of which is his “no-fear” approach to flipping blue-chip, minor league prospects for proven (or relatively proven) big leaguers. We saw him do it at the trade deadline in 2015 for Scott Kazmir and Carlos Gomez, and in the offseason, Luhnow did it again, shoring up the closer’s role by acquiring reliever Ken Giles from Philadelphia for, among others, frontline pitching prospects Mark Appel and Vincent Velasquez. Giles had impressive numbers in 2015 in his stint as the closer for the Phillies, notching 15 saves with a 1.80 ERA and 87 strikeouts in 70 innings pitched. Last season’s Astros closer, Luke Gregerson, likely moves into a setup role, with Pat Neshek, Will Harris and Tony Sipp as the other situational and middle relief arms. Giles’s showing his 2015 form turns one of the Astros’ few soft spots last season into a formidable strength.
3. Here’s to their health
Unlike the National League, which has about five or six truly awful teams, the American League is much more balanced and far less top-heavy and therefore has a much slimmer margin for error. A key injury here or there can derail a season with big expectations. The Astros experienced this, to a degree, last season, when outfielder George Springer went down for about a week with a concussion and then for a couple of months with a broken hand. The difference in the Astros without their spiritual leader was palpable, since Springer played in only 102 games (.276-16-41, .826 OPS). All things considered, the Astros were actually pretty fortunate healthwise last season aside from Springer’s situation. That needs to continue in 2016. Already, in spring training, the Astros have had to sideline starting pitcher Lance McCullers (6-7, 3.22) with shoulder pain, and designated hitter Evan Gattis (.246-27-88, .748 OPS) after a sports hernia. Both are expected to begin the season on the disabled list.
4. Star power
On the aforementioned Sports Illustrated cover, there were three Houston Astros — second baseman Jose Altuve, starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel and shortstop Carlos Correa. The Astros will go as far as these three players take them in 2016. Losing Springer for an extended period in 2015 was bad, but losing any of these three would be a season killer. Altuve (.313.-15-66, 200 hits, 38 stolen bases) has been the best second baseman in the American League and the catalyst for the Astros’ offense out of the leadoff spot. Keuchel (20-8, 2.48) won his first Cy Young Award last season, went an astounding 15-0 with a 1.46 ERA in Minute Maid Park and was the winning pitcher in Yankee Stadium in the wild card game. Correa (.279-22-68) is, simply put, the future of the sport, a precocious “early years A-Rod” clone who is to the Astros what J.J. Watt is to the Texans. If any of these three is not playing in the All-Star Game in July, chances are the Astros are not in first place at that time.
The construction of a roster in sports is a fluid, ongoing, never-ending process. A roster can age over a period of a few seasons, become more expensive and then snap back to a younger, cheaper form if that’s what’s deemed necessary. As they plummeted to the depths of baseball hell from 2011 through 2013, the Astros’ roster damn near scaled back to being an embryo, with a payroll in 2013 that was below $20 million at one point.
Those days are long gone, yet while their payroll this season should approach $100 million, the Astros are still near the bottom of baseball in money spent on players’ salaries. That’s largely a function of the age of the team, still one of baseball’s youngest, with many players still under team control, clocking in at or near minimum salary.
And that leads to the elephant in the room — what will Jim Crane do when it comes time to pay his core players market value? Keuchel is making $7.25 million in 2016 after arbitration, but could eventually command upwards of $25 million a year. Springer is up for arbitration after this season, and he should get paid handsomely if he puts together a full season. They may as well just give Correa the deed to Minute Maid Park right now and save the hassle.
The point of this wide-ranging, future-salary talk is to point out that the Astros are in an enviable situation right now, in the moment, a situation in which they have several All-Star-level players at bargain salaries ready to win at a high level. It’s all backed by a minor league system that is among baseball’s deepest, even after being robbed from in order to bring in Kazmir, Gomez and Giles. This roster that Luhnow gradually began constructing in 2012 to win around 2017 is ready to win big in 2016.
“I wouldn’t trade our situation with anybody else’s situation in baseball right now,” said Luhnow. “I feel that good about our roster and our staff.”
Yeah, Jeff. You, Sports Illustrated and everybody else. Let’s hope we’re not a year too soon.
SEASON PREDICTION: 89-73, AL West Champs
MLB PREDICTIONS
AL EAST: Boston Red Sox
AL CENTRAL: Kansas City Royals
AL WEST: Houston Astros
AL Wild Card: Toronto over Detroit
ALDS: Houston over Boston in 6, Kansas City over Toronto in 6
ALCS: Kansas City over Houston in 7
NL EAST: New York Mets
NL CENTRAL: Chicago Cubs
NL WEST: Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Wild Card: San Francisco over St. Louis
ALDS: Chicago over San Francisco in 5, Los Angeles over New York in 7
ALCS: Los Angeles over Chicago in 7
WORLD SERIES: Los Angeles over Kansas City in 7
Listen to Sean Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 from 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays. Also follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/SeanCablinasian or email him at [email protected]. |
Comedy legend and marijuana advocate Tommy Chong is speaking out against Bernie Sanders after getting burned by the Bern.
On Sunday, Chong—who has previously been an outspoken supporter of the Sanders campaign—was disinvited from introducing the Democratic presidential candidate only hours before a rally in East Los Angeles. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chong noted that Sanders “was happy to have his endorsement months back, but when it came time for the two men to appear in public together, someone got ‘cold feet.'”
“It’s lip service to get the votes, but they don’t want to endorse what I stand for and what I’ve stood for all my professional career,” Chong said. “It was an insult.”
The Washington Times reported that Chong was especially embarrassed because he had boasted about his upcoming appearance earlier in the week during a radio interview.
“Now I’m going to look like a fool, like one of those guys who starts bragging about something that isn’t true,” he said. “And I don’t like that because my endorsement means a lot because of what I have gone through and what the whole [marijuana] culture has gone through.”
In an email to THR, a Sanders spokesman said, “We appreciate his support but a scheduling issue came up.”
Chong later took to Twitter to seemingly indicate that the original blow had softened.
“Hey just heard that there was a scheduling conflict with the Bernie Sanders rally!” he tweeted. “Hope to continue my support, reschedule, and continue activism, political change and promoting peace anywhere possible.”
(Photo Courtesy of the LA Times) |
Researchers are closer to understanding what animals need to regrow their body parts, after Australian scientists established the key role of the immune system in salamanders.
Also known as Mexican walking fish, salamanders can regenerate their own limbs, tails, jaws, retina and heart. But the researchers found that if certain immune cells were blocked, the amphibians were unable to regrow limbs, though healing did occur.
"It means that we have turned this perfect process of regenerating a limb into a failure of the kind you would normally see in mammals," said lead researcher James Godwin, of Monash University's Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.
Published in the Pro-ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today, the research explains the previously unknown role of immune cells, known as macrophages, in the amphibian's ability to regrow arms and legs.
The results have implications for humans, who also have these immune cells – it could lead to ways to tweak the human immune system, putting it on a more regenerative path for both limbs and other body parts.
In salamanders, the new tissue is scar-free. This has benefits for liver and heart disease, which are linked to fibrosis or scarring.
"Now we have a really good idea of what is required for perfect regeneration," Godwin said of his work with colleagues Nadia Rosenthal and Alexander Pinto.
"We have a smoking gun. If we can find out what they deliver to make regeneration occur, then we might be able to tweak the human wound-healing scenario."
Godwin calls macrophages "the guardian angels of the body".
The highly mobile immune cells can communicate with other cells and gobble up debris or harmful bacteria. They arrive at the wound site within six days of amputation.
"If the macrophages are not present in the early phases of healing, regeneration does not occur," he said.
The researchers used "poisoned lipids" to block the immune cells in salamanders. With the immune cells disabled, the animal lost the ability to regrow limbs and instead the wound healed as an amputation would in humans.
"You get a limb stump with lots of scarring at the tip," Godwin said.
"It shows that those immune cells are required to be there to oversee and manage the early stages of wound resolution. If they're not there then the whole thing goes wrong."
The goal is to make a drug that when applied to a wound would make the human response more like a salamander's.
"Humans, like salamanders, grow limbs – we can do it," Godwin said.
"It's just that it's been turned off and we have to work out if we can turn it on so we can regenerate our own limbs." |
Though Daum didn’t have a booth at this year’s E3, I managed to snag some time with Black Desert PR/Marketing Manager Rick van Beem. Given some of the recent rumblings about delayed content and PvP changes, I thought it was a good opportunity to learn about how the publisher feels about current game events.
Serving two kinds of customers
I don’t personally play BDO regularly, not because I think it’s a bad game — in fact, I usually gravitate toward PvP-oriented sandboxes — but because the original PvP game pitched made decisions that made it less appealing to me. I don’t fault the game with that, and I still think it has some interesting sounding features, but balancing the different tastes isn’t easy.
The recent karma changes in PvP perfectly highlight that difficulty. BDO‘s death penalty never seemed very harsh to me, but that’s because I’m used to much worse; my first PvP experiences in an MMO resulted in lost items, stats, and having to find my way back to my friends and hunting spot. I assumed that in light of the big new PvP content, the developers wanted to curb player actions from random killing to something a bit more structured, but apparently the two are unrelated.
Van Beem’s admittedly “more of a solo player doing quests and crafting” than a PvPer, but he’s still enjoying the game for what it is. He also mentioned that solo PvE play is also what a lot of his customers live and die for and that while being killed while AFK is part of the nature of the game, so is being AFK in the first place. In fact, Van Beem tossed out the idea that maybe the game should protect AFKers, especially as the game already has systems that promote AFK play, such as auto-running to your quest location and auto fishing. I’ll let you readers hash that out in the comments, but for the love of sand, try to keep it clean.
Lessons learned
I spoke a bit with Van Beem about what the studio has learned with its first launch in the west. First, for those who aren’t aware: Daum actually works more with Pearl Abyss than with its Korean counterpart in terms of localization, though the two still share different strategies and ideas. Daum EU can give suggestions, and Pearl Abyss is listening, but at the end of the day, the game originated in Korea and is bound to that origin.
Second, there’s the trouble with the amity system, which is understandably difficult. Apparently the product team is aware of this, so the devs looking into ways to clarify it more for players. At the least, either on the site or in-game, they want to explain it in a more profound way, but I wasn’t given any details on the specifics.
Then there are hacking issues and the many waves of players being banned. Daum found a new way to detect client hacks, which is clearly working out. The devs know it’s not perfect, so they are still working to ensure they’re catching the “bad guys” rather than innocent players, but so far, they’re happy with the progress.
Next: cash shop woes. Touching on the ghillie suit scandal and other RMT issues, Van Beem told me that if something seems to grant power for money, the game should have accessible countermeasures available for players not participating in RMT, which seems obvious but seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of release.
Finally, players concerned with latency issues, especially with the upcoming PvP sieges, should know that it’s the subject of much effort. Van Beem admits that the original servers “weren’t ideal for the game,” as the title proved much more popular than Daum had anticipated, but they’ve since been upgraded. Siege wars also required new server configurations, which caused more delay, so with any luck, syncing issues shouldn’t be as big a problem as they were at launch.
On the horizon
One of the reasons the recent patch was delayed was that the team discovered additional content that had not yet been localized. While obviously the content could have been released anyway, Daum opted for the delay, so hopefully the website’s tutorial will be enough to hold people over. The idea is that players will have two weeks to practice the new PvP siege mechanics before a wipe and then let the players try it for real.
Those in other regions worried about being left out of the fun have justifiable concerns. Australians, for example, aren’t within the majority time zone, and Daum wants to hit the majority first with its time-based PvP sieges. That being said, the team will try rotating times for PvP objectives, but Van Beem admits focusing on what’s best for the majority of players is the priority. For example, a siege occurring on Friday nights at 8 p.m. one month might be at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays the next month. This allows everyone to experience the content, but of course it still favors the largest group of consumers first.
But you guys care more about the awakening system and ninjas, right? Well, apparently the awakenings and maybe naval warfare will come out more toward Gamescom at the least. You’ll just have to watch out for the ninjas. Good luck with that! |
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There’s just no way around this: President Obama looked America in the eye and lied. The president was so hellbent on “fundamentally transforming” the country with his health care takeover that he intentionally deceived you — he lied — not once or twice, but over and over again.
In 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law, I wrote “Obamacare’s Unkeepable Promises” in The Washington Times. These false promises were easily predictable and are finally now being exposed. It’s starts with nine words that are unmaking an American presidency.
“If you like your plan, you can keep it.” — Barack Obama, June 2010
Already, 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance plans directly because of the president’s law. By next year, as Obamacare starts tearing through employer-based insurance plans, that number will rise to between 50 million and 100 million Americans.
However, this was just one of Mr. Obama’s egregious Obamacare lies. The list goes on.
“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.” — Barack Obama, June 2010
How can you keep your doctor, though, if your doctor cannot keep his practice? As health insurance companies buckle under the weight of Obamacare, they are narrowing their provider networks in hopes of controlling costs. This, of course, means that your doctor may no longer be allowed to participate in your plan. Other doctors are dropping or limiting Medicare and Medicaid, and some are even dropping out of all private insurance as well. Still others are leaving the practice of medicine altogether. You won’t be able to keep them.
“I will not sign a [health care] plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” — Barack Obama, September 2009
The president originally claimed Obamacare would reduce the deficit by $100 billion in the first decade. Aiding and abetting this lie was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who buried her own report that showed Obamacare would cost $400 billion more than promised in the first decade. It gets worse. The Government Accountability Office’s long-term projection reveals Obamacare raises the deficit over $1 trillion.
“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” — Barack Obama, September 2008
Mr. Obama is now a Supreme Court-certified tax-raiser, which means his outright dishonesty has been validated by the high court as well. Despite the president’s public assurances to the contrary, his administration argued and five Supreme Court justices agreed that the individual-mandate penalty — the linchpin of Obamacare — is not actually a penalty, but is in fact a tax. What’s more, Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on everything from pharmaceuticals and MRI scanners to tanning salons and the sale of your home.
“But what we will do is, we’ll have the [Obamacare] negotiations televised on C-SPAN … .” — Barack Obama, August 2008
Mr. Obama promised the most transparent administration in American history. He proclaimed that by airing the Obamacare negotiations, Americans would see who’s really on their side. Indeed. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Obama never intended to air these in the first place. C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb later explained that his television network would have broadcast the negotiations, but “He never asked us .”
Perhaps the most disturbing of all: “I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment.” — Barack Obama, August 2009
The depths of the president’s dishonesty are fully revealed by his willingness to dishonor his own departed mother when he falsely claimed that her health insurance company attempted to cancel her policy. In actuality, Ann Dunham’s employer-based policy not only paid for her hospital bills and cancer treatment in full, they afforded her care at prestigious institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Straub Clinic.
The deceit is breathtaking.
Obamacare is the most disastrous law of our lifetimes, one that was forced upon us in the most dishonest of ways in order to fundamentally transform America from the Land of the Free into a nation of dependents. The Obamacare days of reckoning have barely begun, and our only salvation now is to repeal this train wreck in its entirety and to be honest with Americans about what measures actually work: patient-centered, market-driven reforms.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a radiologist and a contributor to The Washington Times.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 21) — After publicizing a complaint which accused former Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Chair Dionisio Santiago of going on unnecessary junkets and receiving favors from an alleged narcopolitician, Malacañang stressed it never said the allegations were true.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque on Tuesday emphasized he did not say the allegations are gospel truths.
Roque's clarification comes a day after he provided the media a copy of the supposed complaint by the DDB Employees Union. The DDB employee undersigned in the supposed complaint has denied drafting the letter.
"I was very clear, if there are allegations in a complaint, we did not say they are the truth and that is why I understand, General Santiago was somehow hurt. But I emphasize, we have never alleged that they are gospel truth, they are allegations, which I'm sure, he can easily dispute," Roque said during a media briefing.
Roque said Santiago, who has also denied the allegations, was not fired because of the complaint.
"Hindi po siya tinanggal dahil doon sa letter complaint. Nilabas po ang letter complaint upang ipakita lamang na bagama't ang dahilan ay dahil doon sa mga sinabi sa Mega Rehab facility, eh meron na ring complaint laban kay General Santiago. Hindi po namin sinabi na katotohanan ang lahat ng sinabi ng complaint."
However, on Monday, Roque was quoted as saying, "He (Santiago) was also let go because of complaints that General Santiago was using taxpayers' money for junkets abroad... There were also complaints that General Santiago may have accepted consideration from major drug players."
Verified complaint?
It is unclear what steps were taken by the President's office to verify the complaint but Roque stressed such complaints, especially those pertaining to appointed officials who serve at the pleasure of the President, don't need to be verified for the President to consider firing them.
"It's been overtaken by events because the resignation came about," says Roque when asked if steps were taken to verify the allegations in the letter sent last October.
He added "If at all, maybe what we're stressing is perhaps there was additional displeasure because of the pendency of the complaint."
Roque says Santiago's case reflects President Duterte's zero tolerance against corruption. |
Mixing protein powders, fish oils, vitamins and minerals into a blender and drinking the results is seen in Silicon Valley as the new way to consume a healthy diet without the burden of eating real food
It is late evening and biochemist George Bonaci, 27, is standing in the kitchen of the San Francisco technology hub where he works, casually making the next day’s breakfast and, quite possibly, lunch and dinner too. He puts various protein powders, fish oil, vitamins and minerals into a blender and gives it a whizz. He’ll down it tomorrow as a replacement for at least one meal. It has the texture of raw pancake batter, only Bonaci’s is chocolate flavoured. He says he likes it because he can get so absorbed in his work that he sometimes forgets to eat. “I will have my mind on something and the next thing I know it is eight hours later,” he says. This way he gets exactly what his body needs with minimal fuss and disruption.
Bonaci’s tipple is a DIY version of Soylent, a powdered meal replacement invented in 2013 by Rob Rhinehart, a San Francisco programmer who decided it cost too much time and money to eat. But after about nine months on a largely Soylent diet, Bonaci came to the weighty realisation that he needed a low-carb, high-protein alternative. But Soylent only comes in one formulation. “I began mixing up my own carb-free version,” says Bonaci.
My week on Soylent: 'I was irritable, grumpy and a general pain in the arse' Read more
He may not need to be going to quite so much trouble. Since Soylent first appeared in May 2014, others have developed their own DIY versions and begun selling them, providing options they say are cheaper, tastier or better optimised to individual lifestyles. They have names such as Keto Chow, Powder Chow and Joylent.
Alex Snyder, 27, is the software engineer behind Super Body Fuel (formerly Custom Body Fuel) whose products include Schmoylent and Schmilk. I meet him in the company’s new premises: a cement-floored food production facility shared with a jam company in an industrial area of San Francisco. The equipment isn’t set up yet and the shelves are empty except for an enormous bag of tapioca flour but, Snyder assures me, that will soon change. He went into business in early 2014: people were clamouring for Soylent and the company couldn’t deliver it fast enough. Snyder, who had been making his own DIY product while he too was waiting for his, responded to a request on a forum asking for someone to sell them some DIY soylent. He made a customised batch for the buyer and soon other requests began rolling in. He hastily set up a website to sell both standard and customised products (he has since dropped the latter because it didn’t scale). By August 2014 it was going so well he quit his day job.
Of Snyder’s five product lines, which all cost less than Soylent and come in three flavours in addition to plain, Schmoylent — inspired by Soylent – he says is probably the most popular. But he also now wants to de emphasise it in his range. “The name is perfect for what it was, but I don’t want to be known as the Soylent knock off.”
Schmilk, introduced this March and to which milk rather than water is be added, is also a best seller. “It has turned out to taste a lot better to most people,” he says. There is also a high protein product as well as a no carb and a low carb one.
Snyder is now refining his recipes — gritty rice flour is being substituted for tapioca flour – and he has employed a friend of a friend to help optimise for taste.
Preparing and cooking meals was cutting into spare time that he wanted to spend developing a new coding venture.
His customers aren’t all in tech he stresses but he thinks there is a reasonable swathe. It is a good fit: the tech industry likes efficiency so why not apply it to yourself, but nutritionally optimised for your lifestyle?. Efficiency was the reason Snyder became interested in Soylent in the first place. Preparing and cooking meals was cutting into spare time that he wanted to spend developing a new coding venture. He also thought it would allow him to move to a place without a kitchen and therefore save money to start the business. “I just was like, ‘food doesn’t have to be this amazing part of my life right now’,” he says. Now, ironically, food has taken it over.
For its own part Soylent, which has received $24.5m in funding, stresses its edge is its quality control and product development process which includes doctors and food scientists. And Rhinehart famously warned on a forum post on the Soylent website last year: “I won’t stop you from selling ‘Schmoylent’ on legal grounds, but I must caution you it is unwise to enter [into] direct competition with us.” Though Snyder says things are actually friendly – his products are different and he is focussed on providing things that Soylent right now isn’t. Rhinehart declined to comment when asked about his swarm of DIY competitors.
Bonaci, for one, is pleased to see the competition and looking forward to experimenting with some of them. “There is definitely room,” he says. Soylent’s choice is limiting and, he points out, making his own takes time – which of course could be spent more optimally.
This article contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by any advertiser or commercial initiative.
The links are powered by Skimlinks. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that Skimlinks cookies will be set. More information. |
“ The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil
is that Good Men Do Nothing…”
This quotation, in popular knowledge attributed to Edmund Burke , sounds so banal, that these days almost no one really thinks how true it is. And how often we, supposedly good people , find a good reasons to stay passive; to keep distance; to wait until we know for sure what is going to happen, until we take no risk, reacting. And I am not even talking of these, who believe they have no real influence at all. I do not even think of those, whose metaphorical plates are already more than full. No, this story is different. And, as it is usually with my stories, it is about Rojava Revolution.
Better safe than sorry?
Thanks to a common friend, I had a very nice and inspiring meeting today. It is always good to meet somebody whose political views are at least close to mine. Bookchin’s communalism isn’t really popular around here, and I would be surprised finding more than maybe 5 people in Thessaloniki, actually considering themselves Bookchinists. So, in such an exclusive company, I did what I normally do to innocent victims around me: started my Rojava pitch. The gentleman I met agreed with the fact that it is pretty interesting issue and mentioned that his millieu is already discussing it. However, if it comes to practical involvement, he was a bit cautious. We would like to know – he said – who are we dealing with. Those people – he continued – were Stalinists few years ago. Then they were ordered to become Bookchinists. So they are Bookchinists now. How can we know – he asked – who will they be next year? So we rather keep our distance – he concluded – until we are convinced.
And when I asked what actually could convince him that it is a good idea to get involved in support for Rojava, I could only admire the radical honesty of his answer – I do not know.
Well, of course I was frustrated. But there was no maliciousness in his attitude. Just honest-to-boot belief that one should not get involved until one is absolutely sure what is going to happen. And – on the brighter side – enough openness to make him promise me to discuss the issue with his comrades and perhaps to give me a chance to discuss it as well.
Walking back home I realised that this is pretty much a standard pattern of many conversations recently. Almost everywhere, during my talks – public or private – this kind of doubt was risen this way or another. And it wasn’t an attack on the idea of Rojava– people were really concerned about this issue and wanted somebody to provide a viable answer to their concerns. So – I was thinking, heading home – it is a serious thing and should not be dismissed by way of funny story. Let’s face it, then.
Reality Check
In his great article, “Rojava – Revolution Between a Rock and a Hard Place”, Andrew Flood writes:
“…the revolution on the ground in Rojava is of a sort that would be worth defending anywhere. In what are the worst of circumstances the defenders are claiming to be pushing through a profound social revolution that aims at the development of a democratic, ecological and gender liberated society. If there are any reasonable grounds for believing this is really the intention then there should be no question about defending the revolution itself.”
But yes, this is the real revolution, stained with blood and dirt. Distorted with people’s passions, delusions and sometimes bestiality. Trying to deny it would be foolish and suicidal. Flood pictures it clearly:
“The PKK is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party which fought an often brutal armed struggle against the Turkish state from 1984 to 2013. (…) Its armed struggle which included many bombings and armed conflict with other Kurdish forces as well as the Turkish state inevitably has left many of the Turkish left in particular deeply suspicious of it. (…)
Prolonged military conflicts brutalise even the most political of activists and unchecked tend to see ‘hard men’ rise to positions of control. Those who strongly dislike Rojava because of the PKK influence have proven hard to debate as for the most part all they do is cite the history of bad things that were done in order to insist both that change is impossible and that any change reported has to therefore be a trick.
From an anarchist perspective the additional fact that the PKK has been led since its inception by Abdullah Öcalan and that a personality cult surrounds him raises problems. Anarchists have not been immune to the tendency to raise particular fighters to cult status, the Spanish anarchist Durruti being one example. But Öcalan whose face dominates most mobilisations is still alive and presented as directing at least the ideological development that influences Rojava from his prison cell in Turkey.”
And yes, both my personal observations and various indirect sources clearly show that the emotional atmosphere around Ocalan is really hot. In my perception, however, he is more considered an icon, than a real acting power. As far as I could learn, he is also very prudent in his words and deeds, not trying to micromanage the movement from Imrali.
At the same time, the most wise – and practically irreversible – decision of Ocalan was to get women involved as the leading revolutionary force. Both in Bakur and in Rojava, women started creating parallel power structures, including armed forces, to advance the revolution and preserve its values from all hostile attempts – external or internal. And they are quite unlikely to back off – they have nothing to loose and everything to gain.
As Dilar Dirik phrased it in her dramatic text “What Kind of Kurdistan for Women?”:
“The situation of women is not a “women’s issue” and therefore must not be dismissed as a specific, private issue that interests women only. The question of gender equality is in fact a matter of democracy and freedom of all of society; it is one (though not the only) standard by which the ethics of a community should be measured. Since capitalism, statism, and patriachy are interconnected, the struggle for freedom must be radical and revolutionary — it must regard women’s liberation as a central aim, not as a side issue. (…)
The PKK and parties that share the same ideology managed to create mechanisms that guarantee women’s participation in the political sphere and further challenge the patriarchal culture itself. The PKK ideology is explicitly feminist and makes no compromise when it comes to women’s liberation. Different from other Kurdish political parties, the PKK did not appeal to feudal, tribal landlords to achieve its aims, but mobilised the rural areas, the working class, youth and women.
The strength of the resulting women’s movement illustrates that the point in establishing structures such as co-presidency (one woman and one man sharing the chair) and 50-50 gender shares in committees on all administrative levels is no mere tokenism to make women more visible. The officialisation of women’s participation gives women an organisational back-up to make sure that their voice will not be compromised and it has actually challenged and transformed Kurdish society in many ways. (…)
Influenced by this stance on women’s liberation, the dominant parties in West Kurdistan, Rojava, have adopted the PKK ideology and also enforce co-presidency as well as a 50-50 split in their political bodies. By enshrining women’s liberation in all legal, organisational and ideological mechanisms of their governance structures from the very start, including the defence forces, they make sure that women’s rights will not be compromised.
Men with a history of domestic violence or polygamy are excluded from organiations. Violence against women and child marriage are outlawed and criminalised. International observers who visit West Kurdistan express that they are deeply impressed by the woman’s revolution that emerged in spite of the terrible Syrian civil war.”
So, let us consider the fact that democratic confederalism is being actively implemented in Bakur (Turkey) since 2007 and have massive and already long-term support there , with women’s movement as its core.
Let us consider the fact that, since 2012, the very same democratic confederalism is being implemented under the most adversary conditions in Rojava, with women’s orgnisations, councils and separate armed forces being prominent power driving and defending the revolution.
In this context, any “top-down order” to reverse the course of revolutionary process is extremely unlikely to be given and beyond all doubt futile. Any entity trying to challenge women in this respect would probably face very unpleasant and possibly lethal consequences. I canot be sure Ocalan was aware that his decision to make feminism the core of the revolution would have such effect. If that was the case, I can only salute his determination and integrity.
Down with the revolution
We should keep in mind that the political concept for Rojava: stateless autonomy, based on feminism, ecology and local, direct democracy, is highly dangerous to the official political doctrine – not just in the Middle East. So, despite all our dreams, despite of the ideological and moral resilience of men and women of Rojava, there is no guarantee of success. Never was, never will be. And there is an impressive list of entities, wanting Rojava (as we know it now) simply vanish. I do not even need to put Daesh (ISIS) there.
Turkey is deeply afraid that Rojava may become a stronghold of PKK-related autonomists, providing human, material and psychological support to the Kurdish movement in Turkey. At the same time Turkey sees it as an obstacle for their plans to expand into the Syrian territory. Exactly the same applies to Iran and Iraq.
The list goes further, including major actors of the Middle Eastern scene – USA, UK, Israel and Arab countries. Since the infamous Picot-Sykes agreement their whole game is founded upon ancient “divide and impera” rule, where elusive lure of “your own state” is used to convert frustrated communities into terrorist proxy wars cannon fodder – exactly as it happened with ISIL. If Rojava succeeds, it would disarm the whole Middle East minefield, effectively forcing major change of global geopolitics.
Unfortunately, one of actors here is also KRG – the government of Iraqi Kurdistan. It is as much the matter of internal Kurdish political competition as the more or less tactical cooperation between KRG and Turkey.
All these forces, whether their goal is to remove Rojava physically, or simply to absorb it, have one in common: they do want Rojava to abandon the revolutionary ideals and praxis as they were intended. The ways to achieve it are many: political and diplomatic isolation, physical and economic embargo, direct and indirect armed attacks, criminalization and repressions of supporters, media black-out. All international financial, material and political support goes to the entities which co-opt Rojava achievments, especially military ones, and at the same time label Rojava Revolution as traitory, separatist and damaging sacrosanct Kurdish national unity.
Without material and political support, without help in post war recovery, how can Rojava feed their people? How can they stand agaist draught, epidemies, hunger and all kinds of aggression? What can – even the most politically aware and committed – female armed forces do, in front of starving children and dying elders?
It seems, whatever happens, Rojava will probably go down like all such rebellions before it.
But wait…
Except, it’s not true.
Just recently, in 2014, a 20th anniversary passed of another rebellion, profoudly similar to that of Rojava . Indigenous people challenged the state power and put self-organized “Juntas de Buen Gobierno” in action. Neither anarchist nor marxist, rejecting all traditional political affiliations. Fighting against the state and corporations in perhaps a bit less geopolitically critical area – Mexican Chiapas. NeoZapastistas. EZLN . It is not about the similarities (they even brought as much controversies within radical circles as Rojava did), but about the way they managed to survive and stay integral over 20 years of struggle against the state and capitalism: their worldwide social support. By the wide popular involvement, by creative and intense use of new media, they gained upper hand in the “social net war” and made themselves safe against most brutal assaults. There is still a covert war going against them, but no open attack goes unnoticed. And, in the Americas, NeoZapatistas became a benchmark, a “center of competence” for non-state radical left projects. Not by force, but by swift inteligence and world-wide supporting movement they won. In the beginning, they were just a bit suspicious, tribal-nationalist movement of uncertain political provenience. Now, after 20 years supporting EZLN is a risk-free investment. How come?
We are the game-changers
It is about us. No anti-state political project may expect long-term political support from the states. It would be suicidal for them. The best Rojava may expect is a position of a U.S. backed gladiator in one of many Middle-East proxy wars. If it is to become something more, a political blueprint for peaceful and inclusive communities there, it needs us. And yes, there is a risk on us. While Rojava people risk their lives, living their ideals and fighting for them, our risk is to spend time and effort in safety of European Union. Our risk is that we may be mocked by our political peers, that we may suffer damage to our reputation. Our risk is that we may get frustrated, if Rojavans do something stupid – like getting wiped out by ISIS or by some state army – or even worse, being forced to abandon Revolution just to survive.
But if we decide to take this kind of risk, the power gathers in our hands. The power to participate in the revolution. In successful revolution. The power to create. The power to fight. And surely, when the time comes to make our revolution, this power will not go away. And others will join us, as we joined before. Meanwhile, as it happened with EZLN we are able to change the course of history. No kidding. No propaganda. We see it with our own eyes.
The revolution will not be guaranteed. This is the nature of revolution. But the choice to join, even if the outcome is uncertain, chages us already. And this is the change for good.
There are doubts about Rojava. Some of them, hopefully addressed just above. There are also reasons to support them. Moral reasons, pragmatic reasons, even aesthetic ones. Many of them are known, some of them not widely. But there is one more thing. It is not that we CAN influence the way history goes. We DO it – whether we choose to support Rojava, to oppose it or just do nothing, we INFLUENCE the way it goes. In revolutionary times there is no neutral position. There are no innocent bystanders. Not anymore.
I made my choice already, as you may have guessed. I respect different choices of others. And I hope there will be no one in denial, pretending s/he made no choice at all. We all make our choices and live with their outcome. May we live long and happily.
Advertisements |
It’s funny. Only two years ago the GOP was continuing to use gay marriage as a wedge issue. We were to believe that there was a pernicious homosexual agenda at work that would undermine and destroy straight marriage – and that the GOP were the ones to stop it. Now that people are catching wise, some of the Republicans are embracing the evil of marriage equality in order to save their political lives. Opportunism, it’s what’s for dinner. I suspect more GOP people are about to turn a 180 in the exact same way (while pretending as though they’d always been disappointed in the GOP’s oppression of gay people).
But for the ideologically pure of the GOP base, the Tea Partiers, they’re not having it. Perhaps they believe god will carry them through an election with a position opposed by most of the electorate. That must be what Mike Huckabee is thinking when he says that if the GOP adopts marriage equality that the Evangelicals will form a third party.
But rest assured, it’s not because Evangelicals are against gay people. Huckabee says so.
And it’s not because there’s an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody’s homophobic that I know of, but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard.
Of course, equality for all citizens is objectively better for a healthy society, where oppressing them is just objectively what’s in the bible. If you’re the type that let’s the former take precedence over the latter, you’re a horrible person.
Anyway, below is my open letter to Mike Huckabee:
Mr. Huckabee, Please don’t form a third party! With the support of Evangelicals combined with the moderate Republicans (along with some obscene gerrymandering) the GOP managed to only get curb-stomped in the last election while keeping power in local governments. If you split the party, dividing the votes, anything could happen. It could mean the death of gay marriage for centuries! Clearly, what has been weighing the GOP down have been the ideologically impure. Remember when you said that god didn’t protect the Sandy Hook students because we don’t pray in schools? Well, this is kind of the same way. Most atheists like me have thought for a long time that the GOP better not ditch the moderates, whose opinions are less offensive to the opinions of voters than yours, lest god override the free will of American voters to put the Evangelicals into power. For the sake of our secular nation, please do not do this! Do anything else! Tie me down and stream Justin Bieber’s discography straight into my brain while Ray Comfort lectures me. Any fate would be less terrifying than Evangelicals splitting the Republican vote! Believe me when I say that there is nothing atheists would hate more than Evangelicals forming a third party, aside from you throwing us into that briar patch. So sincerely, JT
xoxo
Now I’m going to go curl up in Michaelyn’s closet and pray this never comes to pass. Totally.
Just had this tweeted at me:
“I will stand with evangelicals and @HuckabeeShow @GovMikeHuckabee if they do! I’m going to if this happens.”
Oh good, someone as oblivious as they are proudly contemptuous of equality. I tweeted back: |
Time finally ran out for Hostess Brands on Wednesday, as a bankruptcy judge gave preliminary approval for the company to shut down after 82 years in business.
A last-ditch attempt to mediate a pay-and-benefits dispute between the company and its Bakery Workers union failed.
The decision by Judge Robert Drain sets the stage for the company to start selling its assets -- including its bakeries, brands and recipes.
"Sadly, the parties were not able to come to an agreement," said Drain. "It's a free country. People are free not to agree."
Hostess, maker of such beloved products as Twinkies, Wonder Bread and Drake's snacks, announced Tuesday night the mediation efforts had failed to produce a deal.
About 15,000 of the company's current 18,500 employees will likely be terminated in the coming days. The company said in court it needs about 3,200 employees to stay on for various periods of time to wind down the company.
The company's operations have been closed since last Friday. Hostess' CEO and attorneys previously said that reaching a deal to restart the company's network of 33 bakeries and 565 distribution centers would be difficult due to the financial damage done by the strike that started Nov. 9.
But Hostess' investment bankers testified that there have been dozens of inquiries about a possible purchase of various brands and even some facilities. Joshua Scherer, of Perella Weinberg, told the court that some of the interested parties had inquired about hiring back some workers.
"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity for [Hostess'] competitors," he testified.
Related: The day the Twinkies died: What the Web said
Hostess CEO Greg Rayburn told reporters after the hearing that the company would move as quickly as possible to sell the brands, although he would give no specific time frame for when the iconic products could be available to consumers once again.
"The longer we're off the shelves, the less value we're going to get," he said. He said it's difficult to handicap the chances that Hostess workers could be rehired by those who buy assets.
Asked by CNNMoney if the sale would be strictly to the highest bidder or whether the buyer's interest in hiring workers would be a consideration, Rayburn said "You have to try to do both."
On Monday, private equity firm Sun Capital Partners told Fortune that it wants to buy Hostess as a going concern. It would reopen the shuttered factories, and keep the Hostess workers and their unions. But it's not clear Sun Capital's offer would top those of other bidders who would simply produce the product with the bidders' existing facilities, leaving the Hostess workers out of luck.
Related: Twinkies hoarding begins
Drain scheduled another hearing for Nov. 29. At that time, he will consider Hostess' request for approval of $1.75 million in bonuses, ranging from $7,400 to $130,500, to be paid to 19 executives to oversee the liquidation of the company. Hostess said it needs to pay the bonuses to make sure key executives stay with the company through the end.
"The cessation of ... operations is not a simple matter of turning off the lights and shutting the doors," the company wrote in a court filing on Friday.
Unions at Hostess are on record opposing the bonus requests. The Justice Department's bankruptcy trustee in the case has also filed an objection to the bonus plan.
The Bakery Workers union has repeatedly said that mismanagement and the debt placed on the company by its current and past owners were the reasons for the company's failure, not the strike. It said its membership was overwhelmingly opposed to the wage and benefit concessions agreed to by other Hostess employees, including the majority of the 6,700 members of the Teamsters' union at Hostess.
Related: Hostess jobs - 'Great' to 'not worth saving'
The Teamsters issued a statement Tuesday saying the failure of mediation and the likely liquidation of the company was a tragic outcome. It did not comment on who it blamed for the shutdown.
A statement last week blamed poor management for the shutdown, but also appeared to also criticize the bakers' union without explicitly naming it, saying that "not all stakeholders were willing to be constructive." |
The Parrot Outreach Society is a non-profit organization whose sole concern is parrot welfare in captivity and conservation of wild parrots. We are an outreach and placement program which places into safe custody, parrots which are abandoned, abused, or in need of a home for any reason.
Parrots are intelligent, highly social and complex beings with a life span of up to 80 years. The individual bird’s best interest and well being of the present flock will determine if a parrot is accepted into the organization.
We actively support networking with other parrot welfare groups, animal welfare organizations, the veterinary community, conservation organizations and the general public. Education is of the utmost importance concerning the well being of a parrot and its ability to successfully live with its human companions. |
FireChat, Disrupt alum Open Garden‘s popular off-the-grid messaging app, is getting a major update today that introduces private messaging that can even bridge local networks.
The major innovation of FireChat was that it allowed users to chat in groups even when there was no Internet connection available. The app would use available Wi-Fi networks (whether they are connected to the wider Internet), Bluetooth and other connections to set up a local network that people could use to chat — both anonymously and with their real names.
With this update, it will also allow users to send private messages, even if they have to bridge multiple local networks and then hop onto the Internet at some point to get to their final destination (which itself may be a few hops away from an Internet on-ramp).
So what does this mean in practice? Say in a few years from now, despite his best efforts, Elon Musk’s android workers gain consciousness and realize they also want to be able to form a well-regulated militia, take over San Francisco and shut down the cell phone network. Assuming enough people are using FireChat during the great robot insurrection, you could still get a message through to your loved ones.
Open Garden estimates that as long as 5 percent of a city’s population use the service, it can deliver messages between its users with an average delivery time of 10 minutes.
To do this, it uses a store-and-forward technique that’s not unlike how old dial-up based bulletin board systems used to work back in the 80s and early 90s. The messages are encrypted, so other users can’t read them, even if the message is stored on a few of them while the service is trying to find a way to deliver the message.
“Devices run a probabilistic distributed algorithm to build a connected graph,” Open Garden CTO Stanislav Shalunov explained to me. “This is possible when the density is above a certain threshold. This threshold is easily reached in an urban scenario and in a crowd. Once the network is established, messages get delivered in a way that balances reliability and use of resources.”
To reach its ultimate recipient, the message may have to jump onto the wider Internet, too, so FireChat also allows for that.
“Off-the-grid messaging allows any community to create their own network for instant public and private communications, regardless of available infrastructure and traditional centralized networks,” said Micha Benoliel, co-founder and CEO of Open Garden in today’s announcement. “This innovation paves the way for the next evolution of the Internet: networks created by the people, for the people.“ |
The U.S. Park Police, the law enforcement agency responsible for safeguarding the National Mall and critical American landmarks, has lost track of a large supply of handguns, rifles and shotguns, according to a harshly critical report issued Thursday.
In the report, the Inspector General's Office of the Department of Interior faults staff at the agency for having no idea how many weapons they control and says the department has no clear policies or procedures for investigating missing weapons. The office says top managers, including the police chief, have shown a "lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management.''
While surveying Park Police field office armories, investigators found more than 1,400 extra and unassigned weapons that were intended to be destroyed. They also found 198 handguns that were transferred from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and stored in an operations facility firearms room without being recorded in an inventory system.
There are also instances of officers storing service weapons at their homes, according to the report.
"We found credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing,'' deputy inspector general Mary Kendall wrote to Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, in a letter that accompanies the report.
The watchdog agency says its report was triggered by an anonymous tip suggesting that the Park Police could not account for government-issued military-style weapons.
A spokesman for the agency did not immediately return an email seeking comment, and an evening shift commander said he hadn't seen the report and couldn't discuss it.
The report also includes 10 recommendations to improve firearms management. The Washington Post was first to report the inspector general's findings.
The Fraternal Order of Police released a response to the report, pointing out several inaccuracies:
The report fails to mention that firearms requiring disposal cannot be destroyed due to the lack of any contractor currently available to dispose of (melt down) these firearms and render them useless. Nor are any recommendations given on how to remedy this.
This report makes assertions that go back well over 10 years, yet the current Chief has only been back in her position since 2011, after her lengthy court battle to return to her position. There is no mention of any other former officials being held accountable for past failures, some of whom are still employed by the Department of Interior or other Federal agencies.
The report fails to mention that the Firearms Custodian has had little to no access to the computer system used to track these government owned firearms other than viewing capability. The ability to add, delete or modify the inventory has not been given to the U.S. Park Police, directly.
MORE ON NBCWASHINGTON.COM:
Copyright Associated Press / NBC4 Washington |
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa still supports the Republican bill to repeal Obamacare, even though 23 million people will lose health coverage. But his answer for why he supports it is simply astonishing.
California Rep. Darrell Issa, like most of his fellow House Republicans, voted for the disastrous bill to repeal Obamacare and force 23 million people to lose their health coverage.
But according to Issa, under the bill he supports, people won’t really lose insurance — even though that is exactly what the Congressional Budget Office reported. Instead, according to Issa, “Many of those people who will lose their health care will simply choose not to be insured.”
Issa also complained that one of the problems of Obamacare is “that it was anti-choice because you could not choose not to take insurance.”
It’s rich of Issa to oppose Obamacare on that grounds that it is “anti-choice,” when Issa has been a vociferous opponent of access to a full range of health care, and has strongly supported his party’s agenda of depriving women of the right to make their own reproductive choices.
But worse, Issa’s response shows at total lack of understanding about the bill he voted for. Under Obamacare, more people have greater access to a range of health care services that simply would not be available under the so-called American Health Care Act.
In fact, as the CBO noted, people with pre-existing conditions “would ultimately be unable to purchase comprehensive nongroup health insurance at premiums comparable to those under current law, if they could purchase it at all.”
Further, the GOP bill would allow insurers to cease providing coverage of essential health benefits, including “maternity care, mental health and substance abuse benefits, rehabilitative and habilitative services, and pediatric dental benefits.”
Issa is just plain wrong to assume American would choose to be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, as was so common prior to Obamacare. And he is just plain wrong that people would prefer to have health care coverage that does not actually cover basic health care.
Those Republicans, like Issa, who refuse to listen to the voters and insist on destroying the popular health care system that a majority of the country does not want to lose are making a huge mistake. And it’s a mistake that will cost them dearly the next time their name is on the ballot. |
Cashin' In, Eric Bolling's Saturday morning program features a group of Fox Yakkers, mainly hard core right-wingers, who pontificate on matters of finance, politics and hot news. Apparently, it's time to lend some credence to the outrageous proclamations of the GOP front runner, Donald J. Trump, and his anti-Muslim immigration idea.
It's time to lay blame squarely where it belongs for this bloviating maniac's irresponsible ideas that now define the Republican party. President Obama has wrought this havoc, not the GOP, who produced this literal embodiment of the deep-seeded, bigoted hate felt by their party. He has created this climate for divisiveness. Bolling seems to believe that our media, purported to be 'liberal,' has been more than culpable, especially in light of the recent Daily News headlines denouncing the recalcitrant Trump.
Michelle Fields, whose rise to prominence consisted of an attempt at insulting teachers to Matt Damon, thinks that the Hillary Clinton email scandals are far more egregiously offensive than banning members of a faith that boasts over a billion followers. Apparently, Fields has been living under a rock for the last two years, as is evidenced by this comment:
'I didn't see the media calling her ridiculous words and names like they did with Donald Trump.'
Democratic Strategist, Jessica Tarlov reminds the panel that Trump expressed that he didn't mind being compared to Hitler, and that Japanese internment camps weren't 'that bad.' Bolling wants to hear none of her Trump-is-off-the-rails truths, he wants to demonize the media and other GOP candidates for ganging up on Trump, while bashing the President for failing to say Radical Islam. Bolling thinks that everyone is just unfairly picking on a good idea, you know, just ban all Muslims. After all, Trump's cockamamie proposals only seem to boost his poll numbers.
Hoenig, not his usual acerbic self today, simply explains the allure of Trump. Tarlov gives a milquetoast acquiescence to Bolling's idea that it's not such a bad idea to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. because people are afraid (thanks to Fox 'News' and their AM talk radio counterparts). But she did mention all the people he's trashed: women, Mexicans, the handicapped, and finally they're (the GOP) saying something, they're trashing an entire religion.
↓ Story continues below ↓
Bolling counters by playing the soundbite from Loretta Sanchez (D-Ca) where she admits that there is a small percentage, 5%-20% of Muslims, who do believe in radicalized Islamic law. But Tarlov dismisses her assertions as baseless, as they are contingent upon her opinion, solely.
Bolling tosses to Michelle Fields, and she chimes in with her opinion about the lack of what she perceives is an appropriate amount of protest from moderate Muslims in America.
"I think they sort of, they haven't gone out and really come out and blasted ISIS and all these, um, extremists, so I don't think they're going to come out and say anything any more. Except maybe blast Donald Trump for this...We don't see them marching on the streets when these atrocities happen, we don't see them marching on the streets and saying, 'hey' this is not us, they march on the streets when people are upset about Islam, but not when Islam is responsible, Islamic Extremism is responsible for all these tragedies."
Hoenig thinks that, sure, why not? This would be a great opportunity for these so-called moderates to speak up. Tarlov reminds the panel of the poignant responses from people like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali. But to Fields and Bolling, those simply do not count, because they are not 'marching on the street,' meeting their bizarre expectations.
Aah, now we get it. Those moderate Muslim-Americans wrote something thoughtful, and they are not loudly parading themselves about to the delight of this right-wing media circus, so their efforts don't really matter. I suppose that wearing offensive, misspelled t-shirts, while donning Gadsden flags, and being armed to the teeth is the only way to protest properly? It is, if you're in the Fox 'News' Bubble. |
Writers on the Range Should we accept invasive species that don’t cause harm? Amid a national immigration debate, the collared dove raises questions about acceptance.
It was early October 2014, when a bird that neither my wife, Hilde, nor I had ever seen before visited our property in southern Oregon. About 20 feet from our dining room table, on the other side of a clean glass wall, the wide railing of an outdoor deck serves as a platform feeder.
Early every morning, I spread a mixture of millet, sunflower seeds and dried corn across the railing and then ring a dinner bell by way of invitation, after which the guests — scrub jays, towhees, sparrows, juncos, red-winged blackbirds, acorn woodpeckers — at once begin to arrive. That October day, the newcomer came first, swooping down from the upper limbs of an oak tree across the yard. It was immediately clear that it was a dove, and also that it was larger, more heavily built and too light-colored for a mourning dove, the species native to our area.
Thanks to the internet, we knew within minutes that the bird was a Eurasian collared dove, so named because of the black half-collar at the nape of the bird’s neck. In the mid-1970s, the species, native to Asia, became established in the Bahamas after one escaped a pet store. The birds reached across to Florida in the 1980s, then gradually spread westward.
Marie Hale, Flickr user
Though by no means spectacular, the collared dove is a handsome creature. Its black bill, dark eyes, smoothly feathered gray body and white tail feathers perfectly embody what the Japanese call shibui — elegant simplicity.
During the two years since that first one arrived, their numbers here have gradually increased, and sometimes we now enjoy a dozen or more a day at the feeder. But some neighbors up the road don’t want the birds here, because Eurasian collared doves are an “invasive species,” and, they believe, should therefore be eliminated. We know others who share this view, including a family that loves to hike but never leaves home without machetes to deal with invasive plants they encounter. Hilde and I made the mistake of joining them once, and when we ran into a massive stand of Scotch brume, the outing turned into what could easily have passed for a chain gang at hard labor.
This hostility toward uninvited guests reaches well beyond the neighborhood. An acquaintance who hunts birds called the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to ask about the daily bag limit on collared doves in that state. “No limit,” a bureaucrat told him. “You can slaughter as many as you want. They’re an invasive species.”
Yes, there are examples of invasive species causing grave ecological damage — bass displacing trout in rivers and streams, mongooses devouring birds in Hawaii. There are also examples of invasive species doing no harm at all — ring-neck pheasants (also native to Asia) and Eurasian collared doves (which are symbols of peace) across North America.
Let me put it this way. A few days ago, Hilde and I were sitting at our dining room table admiring a pair of collared doves at the feeder. Their personalities are as impressive as their beauty. We watched as they stood their ground in the face of bullying scrub jays and then shared space with tiny sparrows. We had just returned from a hike on a fine fall day, and nothing could seriously detract from our positive moods, not even the fact that a xenophobic buffoon, who also hates what he regards as invasive species (Mexicans, Muslims), was running for president.
We were drinking strong Costa Rican coffee and eating homemade blackberry (another invasive species) pie. The millet seeds the doves fed on are believed to have originated in Africa. Beyond the bird feeder was a pasture where six horses were grazing, two of them Arabs, from the Arabian Peninsula. On my mother’s side I’m descended from a Mohawk war chief. My father’s ancestors came from northern Germany and Ireland. I grew up in Hawaii before it became a state and married Hilde in Bavaria, where her family has lived for centuries. We were looking forward to lunch at an excellent Mexican restaurant.
It’s as elegantly complex as that.
High Country News. He is a writer in Oregon.
Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you'd like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at [email protected]. |
Six years after the developer acquired the 300,000-square-foot property, it is over 95 percent occupied, employs about 700 people and pays about $600,000 in property taxes, although the company is contesting the assessment with the city. In the next few weeks a dialysis center will open on the ground floor.
“We provide almost every service that this hospital used to provide,” said Stephen Kirby, a managing partner at Community Healthcare Associates. “So there is still a health care presence here.”
Image The DaVita Dialysis Center, set to open soon within the Barnert Medical Arts Complex in Paterson, N.J., a new medical mall housed in a former hospital. Credit Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times
These medical malls do offer health care services, but not necessarily the same ones the hospital provided. An urgent care center, for example, is not an emergency room that can admit patients. While a nonprofit hospital is required to serve a community’s health needs, a developer’s primary goal is to fill space with tenants who can pay the rent. So a primary care doctor or a pediatrician might not be as lucrative a tenant as a radiologist. Barnert, for example, does not have a pediatrician on its roster, while it does have an oncologist, a cardiologist and a psychiatrist.
“The mix of services is radically different” at a medical mall, said Alan P. Sager, a professor of health policy and management at Boston University School of Public Health. “The services added might be more profitable, and if they’re not profitable, they are probably going to close.”
Barnert developers did, however, actively seek women’s health care providers, including Planned Parenthood and a breast center, to replace some services lost when the hospital closed.
Last summer, Global Life Enterprises purchased the shuttered Mercer Hospital in Trenton, which closed in 2011 to make way for a $540 million state-of-the-art facility in suburban Hopewell. Soon, the 650,000-square-foot campus, which dates back to the 19th century, will re-emerge as a health and wellness center, with plans for a hotel-like lobby, a waterfall, an adult medical day care facility, a spa and possibly a yoga center. The complex already has a few tenants, including a smoking-cessation center, a child advocacy group and doctor’s offices.
“I am trying to put in services that would complement each other,” said Priti Pandya-Patel, founder of Global Life Enterprises, who also owns several sleep centers in the state. “What we’re looking to do is to make it into a one-stop health care mall.” |
Reynaldo Dagsa (1975 – January 1, 2011) was a Filipino politician. A member of the Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team, he served as councilman for Barangay 35 in Maypajo, Caloocan until his assassination in 2011. He was also a corporal in the Philippine Army Reserve Command.
Assassination and photo [ edit ]
His death achieved notoriety due to his taking of a New Year's Day family photo on Tuna Street which inadvertently captured the faces of both his killer and a lookout for the killer;[1] the shooter, a convicted robber out on parole, pointed the gun in the photo directly at Dagsa seconds before the shot went off. Dagsa was rushed to Martinez Hospital but was immediately pronounced dead from a .45-caliber gunshot wound to the head. The photo was later turned over to Caloocan city police; the shooter in the photo was identified as Arnel Buenaflor, who was arrested on January 7, and two suspected accomplices, one Michael Gonzales (alias Fubo of Fish Pond Area I) and Rommel Oliva (alias Balong), were arrested by January 3 in connection with the murder.[2] Buenaflor was charged with murder by Assistant City Prosecutor Darwin G. Canete after inquest.[3] Buenaflor, a member of the Pasaway Gang, claimed to have shot Dagsa in retribution for being shot in the head by persons associated with Dagsa during a shootout months earlier,[4] while police attributed a motive to Dagsa's peacekeeping efforts in the barangay.[5]
References [ edit ] |
Millions of people walk into Toronto public libraries each year. The majority have a safe, educational experience.
But recent disturbing, and at times, violent incidents at multiple libraries in the city has the union sounding the alarm for increased security.
However, CityNews has learned a staff-less public library pilot project is coming to Toronto and that has raised even more questions and concerns.
“We have huge concerns, not only for the delivery of the library services, but obviously the major concern is safety,” said Maureen O’Reilly, the president of the Toronto Public Libraries Union.
This past week, a nine year old boy at Parkdale library was approached by a man and asked several inappropriate questions. Police arrested Ryan McFarlane, 38, and charged him with failing to comply with probation.
Back on February 1st, a man was stabbed inside the Toronto Reference Library.
On February 28th, a woman who was eight months pregnant and another man were both assaulted inside Fairview Public Library.
The union says since 2015, violent incidents in the library have risen by 29 per cent.
In that same length of time, librarian staffing levels have dropped 20 per cent and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been slashed from the security budget.
And the staff-less pilot project that is scheduled for two Toronto libraries this year will serve to bring those numbers even lower.
Under the pilot project, people will be able to enter the library using a swipe card system, likely tied to a library card. Once inside, O’Reilly says, it will be an “empty building” equipped only with security cameras.
O’Reilley says a library without security and without librarians isn’t a library.
“Technology can’t replace staff on the ground with their eyes and ears,” she says. “Having security cameras is not going to be acceptable.”
The two Toronto libraries scheduled for the staff-less pilot project are Swansea Memorial Public Library in Bloor West Village and the other is Todmorden Public Library on Pape Avenue in the east end. |
Court Dismisses Copyright Lawsuit, Noting IP Address Is Not Enough Evidence For Infringement
from the nice-to-see dept
Plaintiff’s complaint does not raise a plausible inference that any of the named defendants are liable for direct, contributory, or indirect copyright infringement. In the fact sections of the complaint, plaintiff carefully refrains from alleging that the owners of the IP address – i.e., the named defendants – are the ones who utilized the internet access to download the copyrighted material. Rather, plaintiff alleges that the IP address assigned to each defendant “was observed infringing Plaintiff’s motion picture” ... and that each named defendant either (a) downloaded the BitTorrent “client” application and used it to download and share the copyrighted material or (b) permitted, facilitated, or promoted the use of their internet connections by others to download and share the copyrighted material .... Pursuant to plaintiff’s allegations, a particular defendant may have directly and intentionally stolen plaintiff’s copyrighted material, or she may simply have “facilitated” unauthorized copying by purchasing an internet connection which an unidentified third party utilized to download “Elf-Man.” Plaintiff provides no factual allegations that make one scenario more likely than the other: both are merely possible given the alternative allegations of the complaint.
[....] The critical defect in this case is not the alternative pleading of claims of direct, contributory, and indirect infringement. Rather, the problem arises from the alternative pleading of the facts that are supposed to support those claims. The effect of the two “or” conjunctions means that plaintiff has actually alleged no more than that the named defendants purchased internet access and failed to ensure that others did not use that access to download copyrighted material.
A few courts have noted similar things, but Fight Copyright Trolls and TorrentFreak both recently covered an interesting district court ruling out of Seattle, where Judge Robert Lansik noted that the producers of the movie Elf Man failed to state a claim for relief, since the only evidence they had was an IP address -- which wasn't enough to actually implicate any particular person in copyright infringement.Of course, we've seen plenty of copyright holders directly allege that failure of a internet account holder to stop infringement is somehow a violation of the law itself, but that's not what the law says at all. Here, the judge is correctly noting that make a huge inference from just the IP address to having enough for a lawsuit makes the plaintiff's claim not enough to move forward. This is only a district court ruling, but as a few other courts have made some similar claims, perhaps it can be useful in pushing back on standard copyright trolling, as courts become less willing to entertain fishing expeditions by trolls.
Filed Under: copyright, infringement, ip address |
Master Francke, “Saint Thomas of Canterbury” (c. 1424)
Put Off Your Old Self and Be a Man — Pure and Simple
If you think God is calling you to fatherhood, then have courage and start choosing virtue, especially when it's difficult.
“Most dads accept that part of the job is a willingness to be the unfashionable one.”
— William McGurn
Young man, I’m not your dad. Still, what I’m about to relate is what I tell my own sons, and it’s probably what your own dad told you in one form or another. Think of this as a reminder of his sage advice – or, if he hasn’t gotten to it yet, a stopgap until he does.
It’s Father’s Day weekend, which is a good time to consider your own potential for fatherhood, physiologically and otherwise. The physiological part you know very well – how could you not? Your sexual appetite started surfacing years ago, and now it’s in full voracious swing. And you’re well aware of what that sexual appetite is oriented to: babies! Hopefully, dad was in on your making the connection between sex and babies. Hopefully he also helped you see that the baby part of sex is one of the most important reasons sex is meant for marriage. Maybe the most important reason (CCC 2366).
OK, let’s assume you got all that at some point. Since then, you’ve gotten plenty other messages (from friends, public health officials, the internet) that point in another direction. Those messages tell you, among other things, that (1) sex needn’t be reserved to marriage, (2) you can’t be expected to control your sexual urges, and, consequently, (3) indulging your premarital sexual appetite requires some kind of “protection” – protection from communicable diseases, yes, but most especially protection from…fatherhood. They call it birth control, but it’s really kid avoidance and, for guys, a gutless dad dodge – and that’s only when it works the way it’s supposed to (which it doesn’t always).
I’m guessing the rationale you heard for the dad dodge went along these lines: you’re young; you have your whole life ahead of you; you can’t be burdened with the responsibilities of caring for a child.
The funny thing, though, is that those arguments against youthful fatherhood really strengthen the case for it: It’s good to become a father when you’re young – when your brain is still pliable enough to assimilate all the required knowledge and skills you’ll need, and your robust constitution allows you to keep up with your brood; it’s good that your whole life is ahead of you, because (trust me) you’ll need the extra time to unravel the fatherhood mystique with its seemingly endless cycle of trial and error; it’s good to be burdened with responsibility for others, particularly babies who are helpless, vulnerable, and totally dependent.
And how is it good to be burdened? Because we tend to be lazy without burdens, that’s why. As males grow into adulthood, we trend selfish and self-serving, and the sooner we’re required to care for others, the sooner we grow up – the sooner we become real men, that is. As boys, we dreamt of heroics, sacrifice, and adventure, and we spent a lot of time acting those things out. In my day, it was playing army and astronauts; for you it was probably via video games and apps – or maybe more directly through athletics. Regardless, as boys we can’t help gravitating to archetypes of burdened men, and the pivotal developmental key is the transition from admiration to action – to becoming that which we always dreamt of being.
Let’s take a look, then, at the paternal burden – and, mind you, most dads don’t really think of it as a burden, but rather a privilege, a grace and gift, an organic outgrowth of our self-abandonment in marriage, and a pathway to holiness. But let’s leave aside the churchy language for now and get to the nitty-gritty of fatherhood so you can decide whether it’s for you or not. What’s a father, pure and simple? At least three things in my view:
1. Fathers are deferential: Traditionally we speak of a fathers as the heads of a households while mothers are the hearts – true enough (FC 25). In practical terms, this means that a dad often needs to subordinate his own actualization and personal priorities in favor of serving the needs, immediate and long-range, of his wife and children.
2. Fathers are defensive: No matter what fluctuations our culture experiences with regards to gender roles and parental divisions of labor, dads are called on to take the lead in standing between a hostile world and the family under his care. A man of honor will not shrink from challenges and dangers when the safety and security of his home is at stake.
3. Fathers are dull: This might be the hardest one to stomach. That popular image of fathers being boring and fusty throwbacks? It’s right on the money, the natural corollary to a dad’s defensive posture. While we ourselves might be able to successfully navigate the perils and pitfalls of modernity – a realm saturated with license and libido – our children can’t. Through staid and sober reserve, we become both anchors and rudders for our families: As anchors, we’re a constant drag on a household’s clamoring for whatever’s new and exciting; as rudders, we exert a subtle yet powerful directional momentum, away from eddies of destruction and toward more sanctifying currents.
I’m guessing none of that is particularly enticing, but all of it will hit you like a blast when you have your first child – or at least it should. It’s virtually immediate if it’s to happen at all. The advent of your first baby will change you but quick.
I call it the Becket moment.
Do you know about St. Thomas à Becket? He was a 12th-century courtier and cleric whose talents brought him to the attention of King Henry II. Thomas and Henry became fast friends, and the King eventually had his pal elevated to the position of chancellor – both for Becket’s temporal advantage, but also for the advantage of having someone loyal to the throne in that powerful role.
When the King desired to consolidate those advantages by arranging for his friend to become Archbishop of Canterbury in 1163, Thomas demurred. He knew that accepting the fatherly burden of bishop and shepherd would alter the status quo – that he’d become defensive, deferential to his flock, and dull; that he’d no longer be the steadfast and convivial ally the king wanted him to be. The resulting tension between these friends is accurately reflected in the classic film, Becket (1964): “I beg of you, do not do this,” says the future Archbishop (Richard Burton). “The die is cast, Thomas,” replies the King (Peter O’Toole). “Make the most of it. And if I know you, I'm sure you will.”
In fact, Becket did make the most of his elevation, but clearly not in the manner the King anticipated. Once established in his episcopal office, Becket “changed utterly his style of life into one of regularity, piety, and austerity,” writes M.D. Knowles. He shifted his loyalty and devotion from crown to church, and Thomas “resisted with audacity” all subsequent royal assaults on ecclesial privileges. It was an audacity that cost him his life, for Henry would brook no opposition and Becket suffered martyrdom at the hands of the King’s men.
Now, you might be thinking, “Becket could’ve continued in the same vein as before – he could’ve maintained his primary loyalty to Henry, despite his miter and pectoral cross.” Ah, but there’s the rub: Once the identity changes, once the honorable boy-becoming-a-man takes up the burden of paternal responsibility – at that precise moment! – there’s no going back.
For St. Thomas, an honorable man, it was the moment he was made a bishop – which is why he was frightened by the prospect. Similarly, those of us aspiring to honorable manhood and slated for human fatherhood ought to be cowed by our calling. Is it really something we want to take on? Is it something we can take on?
You’ve got to begin figuring it out now. If you think God is calling you to fatherhood, then start choosing virtue (including chastity), even when it’s tortuous; start choosing courage, even when it’s terribly inconvenient; start choosing continual conversion, even when it’s gets tedious. Do those things – or at least intend to do those things, and seek forgiveness when you fail – and you can celebrate Father’s Day even now in your potential paternal state.
On the other hand, does all that fatherhood stuff make you cringe? Do you find it revolting and offensive? Then, I don’t care how much you love that girl; I don’t care how powerful your sexual urges are. If you’re not ready to be a father (let alone a husband), you’re not ready to have sex.
So knock it off. Be a man. Pure and simple. |
Seoul: Computer systems at South Korea's nuclear plant operator have been hacked, the company said on Monday, sharply raising concerns about safeguards around nuclear facilities in a country that remains technically at war with North Korea.
The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd (KHNP) and the government said only "non-critical" data was stolen by the hackers, and that there was no risk to nuclear installations, including the country's 23 atomic reactors.
On alert ... South Korean employees conduct a simulated drill to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants under cyber attacks, at a training center of the Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant in the southeastern city of Gyeongju on Monday. Credit:AFP
But the hacking was reported as the United States accused North Korea of a devastating cyberattack on Sony Pictures.
Experts voiced alarm that the controls of the nuclear reactors could be at risk. |
Even though a trio of SUNY-Albany students were caught fabricating a racial hate crime — and were criminally charged for doing so — local activists just won’t let the matter die.
Three black females had alleged they were the targets of racial slurs and then were attacked by a group of white men on a bus back in January. But video evidence and 911 audio showed no such thing; in fact, they indicated the women were the instigators.
Even before these and other facts were known, the university president and Hillary Clinton jumped into the fray to support the women.
Two of the three students ended up being expelled from UAlbany with the other suspended, and eventually one confessed to making up the whole story.
Local Black Lives Matter-affiliated activists have stuck by the women throughout the ordeal, and continue to do so.
A Facebook page titled “Indefensible” was established this past week with the sub-headline “The Wrongful Prosecution of the UAlbany Three”:
As news of the incident spread across social media, concerned students and residents rallied behind the women. But that support wavered once University and local law enforcement officials began suggesting the racial element of the attack was entirely fabricated. With the racial component called into question, many members of the community saw the Black women as the instigators of the altercation. News outlets helped further the narrative that race was not a factor, and the incident was quickly labeled a hoax. Eventually, all three women were expelled from school and formally charged for their involvement in the brawl. Additional charges were levied against the women for falsely reporting the incident to 911, causing “public alarm and inconvenience,” and prompting an undue “expenditure of resources.” MORE: Fake hate: SUNY students who alleged racial attack are charged themselves If race did play a significant role in the UAlbany Bus Incident, it can be argued that all charges stemming from falsely reporting the altercation are questionable at best. Additionally, given the well-documented culture of violence at UAlbany, the swift and severe consequences enacted by the University in response to this incident may be deemed inconsistent with their history of tolerating dangerous student misconduct. Indefensible examines the ways both race and racism are viewed through competing lenses in society, and how dismissing the narratives of the most marginalized can perpetuate existing systems of oppression. It attempts to highlight the inherent problems in allowing the benefactors of racism to define and legitimize what constitutes a racially motivated act. Indefensible also looks at the intersections of oppression causing Black women in particular to be regarded as untrustworthy and undeserving of defense.
“… in allowing the benefactors of racism to define and legitimize what constitutes a racially motivated act …”? OK, sure. Hell, even the New York Times is in line with this sort of critical race theory mumbo jumbo, so why not keep the nonsense alive?
After all, earlier this year in an open letter the women’s supporters completely ignored the reality that, as mentioned, the university president and a presidential candidate had spoken out in students’ favor: “When we see city and university officials not offering any neutrality or even support for these young women, for us, that’s totally unacceptable.”
MORE: Albany student jovial on 911 call; BLM chapter supportive despite facts
MORE: ‘New York Times,’ professor turn SUNY-Albany fake hate into ‘teachable moment’
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
IMAGE: Shutterstock |
Following the shooting of 18-year-old man by a police officer in the city of Ferguson, Missouri, an outraged community gathered to demand answers. Michael Brown, a black teen and recent high school graduate, was shot dead in the city north of St. Louis on Saturday. The victim's grandmother said she found her grandson's body in the street, shortly after seeing him walking near her home, the Associated Press reports. A spokesman for the St. Louis County Police Department confirmed that a Ferguson police officer shot the man, but provided no further details on why the shooting occurred. Witnesses said that Brown was unarmed, KMOV reports.
A crowd quickly gathered at the scene, as did 100 police cars from 15 departments, according to KSDK. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that protesters came face-to-face with police at the site of the shooting, raising their arms and saying "Please don't shoot me." A dumpster was reportedly lit on fire. As tempers cooled, mourners participated in a prayer circle and vigil.
A man identified as the victim's stepfather held a sign that said, "Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!!!" Lesley McSpadden, a woman the Post-Dispatch identifies as the victim's mother said, "I know they killed my son," and, "This was wrong and it was cold-hearted."
Images of the crime scene and following demonstrations were posted to social media.
What the hell is going on in Ferguson?! pic.twitter.com/S5Yjnns6bU — Tammie Holland (@TammieHolland) August 9, 2014
People marching to the #Ferguson Police Dept headquarters following the killing of a 17-year-old boy. pic.twitter.com/ROvs3mXYMM — Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 10, 2014
Police have brought out the large gear in #Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/2gxUzOvwfy — Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 9, 2014
A mothers grief, spreading flowers on the street where her son was shot and killed by police in Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/KMxoD87CRV — John Kelly (@JohnKellyKSDK) August 10, 2014
Candles spell MIKE, victims name in today's shooting @ksdknews pic.twitter.com/EJCYbTuhn3 — Elizabeth Matthews (@ElizabethKSDK) August 10, 2014
Protestors outside #Ferguson police department headquarters right now pic.twitter.com/sjHMxSulha — Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 10, 2014
Protest continues in front of #ferguson police dept "the people united, will never be defeated" #FergusonShooting pic.twitter.com/4wXq3z6tDX — Elizabeth Matthews (@ElizabethKSDK) August 10, 2014
More from the Associated Press: |
Heya and welcome to yet another PARPG news update! This is a just a mini update to yesterday’s release announcement.
My permanent departure
I’m sorry to say so but it turned out that I won’t have more free time on my hands in April. There have been changes in real life and I simply don’t have the time and the energy to continue my job in project management. That’s why I’ve decided to ship this first techdemo release of PARPG and retire after that.
The reason why I’m announcing my departure now, is that the increased public interest due the recent release hopefully helps to find a new maintainer for the project. I do still strongly believe in the concept of an old school isometric 2d RPG but unfortunately time for me has run out.
Unfortunately not many of the formerly involved devs are still active at this point. But I’m sure that a new project manager can find a new interested developers for such a project.
Lessons learned articles
In case I got some free time on my hands in the next weeks, I’ll start to post a couple of personal lessons learned articles at a new blog. The articles will cover my experiences working on PARPG: what turned out to be working well, what didn’t work out at all, what could have been done better or tackled from a different angle. Hopefully these articles are useful for everyone who works in a similar field in a software project. They hopefully turn out to be even more useful for everyone who considers to pick up and revive this project.
PARPG infrastructure
To increase the chances that somebody actually picks up the project, I’ll leave the entire infrastructure (blog, forums, wiki, trac, svn, etc.) in place for at least another full year. I’ll pay for the hosting and will be around and do my best to support anyone willing to take over.
Maintainer / project manager tasks
In case you wondered what kind of tasks a maintainer / project manager would have to take care of, take a look at this list at the wiki.
Ways to contact me
In case you want to discuss becoming the new maintainer of the project, feel free to contact me via IRC or email.
That’s all concerning PARPG for today.
Not sure who will post the next update at this blog. In case we can’t find a new maintainer for the project soon, the next update will be prolly the first lessons learned article mentioned above. |
Thank you for stopping by our Quilt Cottage webpage!
"Dimensions" Quilt Block of the Month
by Stephanie Soebbing
Each month during our Quilt U class (details below), Kathie will present the block and give a demonstration (of what NOT to do!). You can pick up your packet then or any time after that evening.
First month $50. Each month after will be $19.99.
MONTHLY
Quilt University
Every 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:00 - 7:30 pm.
Fee: FREE! Level: all.
Love to quilt? Curious to start? Want to meet others who do quilt and have so much information to share? Then Quilt U is where you want to be on the 4th Tuesday of each month from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. Bring your questions, ideas and latest creation. We love to share our work and have fun.
A different technique will be presented each month and the "Dimensions" Block of the Month. See what new fabric has arrived. We always laugh and have fun. Join us!
Instructor: Kathie Conlee
Projects to Sew
LOVE Banner Kit
(while supplies last)
Urban Cottage Infinity Scarf (Fabric by Moda)
Stitch Cats by Clothworks
Panel & Pillowcase
DIY Tote Bag
Tote bags make great gifts to use all year long.
This tote was created with the Fiji Tote pattern, modified to be horizontal.
Hot Stuff Oven Mitt
Includes silicone overlay, instructions and templates.
Placemat Forms & Patterns
Create personalized placemats for friends and family using their favorite theme fabric. They'll think of you every time they sit at the table!
Jelly Roll Rug
It takes only one 42 pc Jelly Roll pack of 2.5" quilting strips to make one rug. These rugs are fun to make and very trendy right now!
Fabric Panel - Bear Kit
The printed instructions have a fabric bear that you can cut out and attach to a shirt so your child matches the teddy bear!
Use Steam-A-Seam to make personalized towels
Steam-A-Seam makes creating themed towels an easy no-sew project!
See how easy it is to use this double stick fusible web! https://youtu.be/4mIGtgX-vfk
Happy Quilts! Book
You'll love making adorable soft toys and quilts using these fun kid-themed patterns from the book "Happy Quilts" by Antonie Alexander. Which ones will your child pick?
Pillowcases
Pillowcases are so easy to make! Use our "Big Splash" fabric collection from Henry Glass & Co for a fun under-the-sea theme.
Sewing Art
Check out this self portrait Kathie, our fabric department manager, made from fabric. Our Frame Shop framed it after creating a custom fabric mat for it.
Sewing Patterns
Aprons, bags, totes, oven mitts, doll clothes and more. What will you Cre8?
Weekend Bags Sewing Patterns
Table Toppers & Wreaths Fold'n Stitch Patterns
Use Poorhouse Fold 'n Stitch Pattern + Bosal Fusible Foam to make a beautiful fabric wreath or table topper! The patterns come with step-by-step instructions. (fabric shown here may vary from our selection). |
Political correctness is a pathological disorder.
You can't say "niggardly" or "black holes" or "chink in the armor" without provoking protests or risking your job. You can't invoke the Constitution or call illegal behavior "illegal" without being accused of hatred. And now, you can't goof around at a high school basketball game in silly costumes without the world accusing you of "racial insensitivity."
Last week, thanks to hyperbolic grievance-mongers and irresponsible reporters, the students of Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, N.J., garnered international headlines and Internet infamy. "Shocking moment students at Catholic school dressed as monkeys and a banana and taunted black basketball players ... and DIDN'T get punished," the U.K. Daily Mail blared last week. "Students who taunted black players at New Jersey basketball game get warning, no punishment," USA Today decried.
Bossip.com, "the premier destination for African-American pop culture and entertainment," exclaimed: "Really?!? White High School Students Taunt Black Basketball Team in Monkey and Banana Costumes."
No, not really.
If any of these media outlets had bothered breathing into paper bags before making abject fools of themselves, they might have actually committed journalism. Holy Spirit is a tight-knit community with a 50-year tradition of excellence in academics, sports and character education. I know more than a little about the school and its student body because I am a proud alumna of H.S.H.S. and have stayed in touch with many of its dedicated teachers and administrators over the years.
Part of Holy Spirit's half-century legacy includes a storied athletic rivalry with nearby Atlantic City High School. The competition between the Holy Spirit Spartans and the Atlantic City Vikings has always been fierce but friendly. At a basketball game two weeks ago, Holy Spirit students decided to show their team spirit by recreating Arizona State University's famous "Curtain of Distraction" during their rivals' foul shots.
Unlike the pot-stirrers who've turned an innocent prank into an international p.c. incident, Holy Spirit's senior class president Pat Shober was actually in the stands on Feb. 18 during the game. He donned a green ballerina tutu for the foul shot skits. Other students scrounged up a bumblebee suit, monkey pajamas, costumes for Dorothy from the "Wizard of Oz," a jack-o'-lantern and a banana.
"The fan section was louder than it had been all season long, and the fans, of both sides I may add, were thoroughly amused and actually complimented many of us on our actions numerous times both at the game itself and throughout the time since then," Shober recounted in an open letter to the public. "Racism was not brought up once by a student, player or spectator that night. We intended no racist connotations during our performances that night."
The Spartans had used the costumes at previous games without controversy. Ray Ellis, a black Holy Spirit alumnus and former football player, had dressed up as the banana at a sports match three years ago. The 19-year-old athlete tweeted a photo of himself in costume after the manufactured brouhaha, which he rightly called "ridiculous." Ellis explained to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Phil Anastasia — one of the few responsible journalists who covered the story — that "we get creative at games, we dress up in costumes, we show a lot of enthusiasm. ... Other people see what they want to see and try to make it into something it's not."
Indeed, race didn't enter the picture until two error-riddled reports from the Press of Atlantic City appeared a week after the game occurred and snowballed into global tabloid hysteria. The paper extensively quoted an Atlantic City high school coach who wasn't even there. The paper failed to mention that the vast majority of the Holy Spirit basketball team is black. The paper neglected to describe the full array of costumes involved. Nor did it quote any of the kids involved in the skits.
Anastasia, who was in attendance, noted: "I was there that night in Absecon. There were black kids along with white kids in that student section, yelling at Atlantic City's players and cheering for Holy Spirit players. And for the record, there were times during that game when Atlantic City had more white players on the floor (two) than Holy Spirit."
Stephen Brown, a Holy Spirit alumnus who graduated last year and has many friends at the school, told me: "It is a classic example of how the race card is so unfairly pulled, and in this case is being used to vilify innocent high school students." Showing more maturity than the Chicken Little instigators in newsrooms around the world who defamed his fellow Spartans, Brown reflected: "This is not only a perfect example of poor journalism, but an example of how members of the biased media like to stir the racial pot."
What we have here is a textbook case of media-manufactured racism. Knee-jerk race-baiters who see bigotry at every turn are an embarrassment to the profession. Shame on the smear merchants and their enablers who go bananas over every last imagined slight and recklessly monkey around with students' lives and reputations.
The cage-rattlers don't care about truth, honor or integrity. Lesson learned: It's a social justice jungle out there, kids. Be prepared.
Michelle Malkin [email her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild and Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies |
Julian Assange just trolled the world's media. After announcing that he would be making a statement on the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been in self-imposed confinement for the last two weeks, speculation began to mount as to whether he would be leaving the embassy for good.
So tortured has the whole saga become that there was even discussion about what the legal status of the embassy's steps were. Are they Ecuadorian land, in which case he would be able to return to the embassy after, or are they technically British, which would leave him open to re-arrest.
In the end, it didn't matter. What we got was a statement, with no chance for follow-up questions, from Susan Benn, one of the board members of the Julian Assange Defence Fund, which largely reiterated what we already know.
The statement opened by revealing that the Met asked Assange to report to Belgravia police station at 11:30 this morning, and that although he decided not to obey the request, "this should not be considered disrespect". What followed was largely the spreading of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
The first half of the statement focused on the moves made against Assange in the United States, as well as the horrendous treatment meted out to Private Manning, the alleged source for Wikileaks' famous dump of diplomatic cables. Although much of what was said, regarding efforts to indict him, the convening of a grand jury, and the desire to charge him with conspiracy to commit espionage, is true – if perhaps overstated – it is also largely irrelevent to the question of whether Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape.
The only tenuous link to the actual matter at hand was that "informal talks between the US and Sweden have been conducted". One would be surprised if they had not, and the existence of "talks" does not reveal anything about their content. Indeed, it would be unlikely if the US had also not had "informal talks" with Ecuador by now, although Assange will be hoping Ecuador's response is curt.
Benn did turn to the Swedish allegations, and although she avoided one common line from Assange's supporters - that of minimising his alleged crimes altogether - there were other exaggerations and misstatements. Benn characterised the last ten days spent in Wandsworth Prison as "solitary confinement", as well as claiming that he has spent the 500+ days he's been avoiding extradition to Sweden as "virtual house arrest" (he was under curfew to be home at 10pm for most of that time, which is rather different from house arrest).
There were also pointed references to the fact that Assange has yet to be charged - which is true, because charging normally comes after arrest - as well as various other facts which are irrelevent to the matter at hand, such as whether or not he left Sweden freely, and whether Swedish prosecutors had refused an offer to interview him in London.
The key defence of his actions was buried deep under all of this: He cannot go to Sweden, he claims, because if the US begins the extradition process while there he will be held on remand, which would prevent him seeking asylum.
It is a rather distasteful defence. He is arguing that he shouldn't face trial over his alleged crimes, because a possible outcome of doing so is that further unjust wrongs may be perpetrated upon him. As an ethical dilemma, there are debates to be made about the desirable approach; but the one thing which is clear is that the person who gets to decide the final course of action should not be Julian Assange. For now, he remains in the embassy, hoping that the Ecuadorian government will grant him asylum. If they do, he's got a whole other set of problems.
Updated: Susan Benn was wrongly called a lawyer. She is a board member of the Julian Assange Defence Fund. She likely meant to refer to Assange's time in prison, not the embassy, when she spoke of solitary confinement. |
Horseman Passing By
I encountered the Horseman in Laguna Beach riding along the Pacific Coast Highway. He was ahead of me moving at horse speed. The traffic, hurried as always, slowed to a pause and then pulled around him. As I pulled past him, I could hear the clip-clop of the hooves of his mount and his pack horse. I glanced into the rear view mirror after I got ahead of him and saw the blinking red and blue lights and heard the short bleep of a siren tapped once. He had been pulled over by the Laguna Beach police for an interview. I pulled in around the corner, walked back, and joined a group of citizens already watching this encounter.
The Horseman was riding to Texas. He said he'd started at the Canadian border. The cop asked him why he wasn't driving. He said he didn't have a truck and a horse trailer, just a horse, a pack horse and a dog. His plan was simply to ride the coast to San Diego and turn left.
He had what he called a "shoulder pass" which he drew from his pocket and presented to the officer. The officer, being confused, was not even sure such a document existed and examined its molecular structure.
Then the Laguna Animal Control officer showed up. That officer informed the cowpoke that he did not have his dog on a leash. Something all good little citizens of California do as willingly as they carry bags of the dog's feces around in their hands.
The Horseman replied sensibly that his dog (named, I swear, "Dog") knew how to follow along, and that if he put a leash on him from the saddle he risked strangling the dog.
"Horse goes one way, Dog goes another. Tough on Dog, officer."
At this point, having been alerted to the Horseman, another police car showed up with another, but more senior, officer. He stood to the side a bit taking in what the situation actually was.
The animal control officer, failing to see the sense of not strangling a dog on a leash tired to a horse, began a hectoring lecture on the very special ordinances of the very special town of Laguna Beach, California. The Horseman stood motionless as the scolding went on. Finally the litany of banal cop-talk was interrupted by the senior officer who evidently had less patience for the Animal Control claptrap than the Horseman. After all, if you are riding a horse from Canada to Texas in the 21st Century, you are probably not in much of a hurry.
In short order, the senior officer informed the others that, regardless of the endless petty ordinances of Laguna Beach, what they were actually going to do was let this man continue on his way. Not only that, they were going to give him a police escort out of town.
I assume the senior officer looked into the near future of any other action. And in that future he saw the issue of providing transport for two horses to some undisclosed location as well as the dog, while they were arraigning the Horseman, was going to be far too much paperwork to contemplate. That and noting about 15 citizens gathered nearby, ready for a sincere chat with the city council probably gave him pause as well.
The Horseman had heard and seen it all before on the long road between Canada and Laguna Beach. He took "The Cowboy Way." He rolled a smoke, nodded, saddled up, whistled to Dog and was escorted out of town.
That was all years ago and on another planet. But I still like to think of the Horseman. I like to think he's still out there making his way from Canada to Texas -- via a left turn in San Diego.
[2009-08-11] |
The Rohingya Muslim crisis of Myanmar is fast becoming a thorn in the back of the Narendra Modi government, especially in the light of PM's recent Myanmar visit, where he refused to entertain the demands of Indian Muslims to raise the issue of alleged genocide of Rohingya Muslims being conducted by Myanmar Army and Buddhist civilians.
Furious with the seeming lack of sympathy in the Union government towards the plight of the Rohingya Muslims, the Muslim community of the Braj region held angry protests against this 'genocide', terming it to be the worst crime against humanity being committed by the government of Myanmar, in which Indian government was playing the role of a complicit partner by deciding to deport the Rohingya Muslim refugees from India.
An effigy of the prime minister of Myanmar was burned at the Madarsa Moin-ul-Islam in Agra by the students and Madarsa teachers, demanding that the Myanmar government stop the genocide of Rohingya Muslims and the Indian government pressurizes the Bangladesh government into accepting the Rohingya refugees coming from Myanmar.
Talking to India Today after the Friday Namaz, Rashtriya Sarvdaleey Muslim Action Committee President Haji Jameeluddin and Secretary Mohd. Shareef Kale said that it was very disappointing that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not raise any concerns over the mistreatment of Rohingya Muslims with the Myanmar government during his visit to that country.
Haji Jameeluddin said that the most surprising statement came from Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, who called these refugees 'illegal immigrants', whereas there is a vast deal of difference between people crossing borders in search of better livelihood and those crossing the border to save the lives of their families.
Irshad Pehelwan of Mathura warned the Myanmar government of dire consequences if the state-sponsored oppression of Rohingya Muslims did not stop there. Offering their prayers for the safety of the innocent Muslims, who were dying in the 'terrorist acts' of Myanmar military and police, the Muslims in Mathura demanded that the Indian government allow the Rohingya Muslims to seek asylum in India till their homeland was not restored to a peaceful state.
Shayeed Patel of Firozabad, along with a large number of Muslims, burned an effigy of the Myanmar prime minister and gave a memorandum to the district administration, addressed to Prime Minister Modi, requesting Indian intervention in this humanitarian crisis.
Muslim leader Mohd. Yaseen Qureshi said that the Indian government should issue a demarche to the Myanmar high commissioner in India, making him aware of the 'displeasure' of Indians at the state of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and demanding that this oppression should stop immediately and the affected Muslims be rehabilitated in peace.
Bhartiya Muslim Vikas Parishad chairman Sami Aghai said that it is not just the Muslims who are being affected by the violence incited by the Buddhists in Myanmar. The ethnic Hindus living there are also being asked to leave. Some of these families have been living in Myanmar since before Indian independence and they will lose their way of life if they are made to leave Myanmar by the extremist Buddhists. The Indian government should come up with a solution to this issue soon otherwise this crisis could very well turn into a global issue.
ALSO READ:
How Rohingyas reached India and why government is not ready to let them stay
Who are Rohingya Muslims and why govt wants to deport 40,000 of them? |
William II (Willem Frederik George Lodewijk, anglicized as William Frederick George Louis; 6 December 1792 – 17 March 1849) was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg.
William II was the son of William I and Wilhelmine of Prussia. When his father, who up to that time ruled as sovereign prince, proclaimed himself king in 1815, he became Prince of Orange as heir apparent of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. With the abdication of his father on 7 October 1840, William II became king. During his reign, the Netherlands became a parliamentary democracy with the new constitution of 1848.
William II was married to Anna Pavlovna of Russia. They had four sons and one daughter. William II died on 17 March 1849 and was succeeded by his son William III.
Early life and education [ edit ]
Willem Frederik George Lodewijk was born on 6 December 1792 in The Hague. He was the eldest son of King William I of the Netherlands and Wilhelmine of Prussia. His maternal grandparents were King Frederick William II of Prussia and his second wife Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt.
When William was two, he and his family fled to England after allied British-Hanoverian troops left the Republic and entering French troops defeated the army of the United Provinces, claiming liberation by joining the anti-Orangist Patriots. William spent his youth in Berlin at the Prussian court, where he followed a military education and served in the Prussian Army. After this, he studied civil law at Christ Church, University of Oxford.[1][2][3] William II had a string of relationships with both men and women which led him to be blackmailed.[4][5][6][7] The homosexual relationships that William II had as crown prince and as king were reported by journalist Eillert Meeter [nl][8]. The king surrounded himself with male servants whom he could not dismiss because of his 'abominable motive' for hiring them in the first place.[9]
Military service [ edit ]
He entered the British Army, and in 1811, as a 19 year old aide-de-camp in the headquarters of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was allowed to observe several of Wellington's campaigns of the Peninsular War. Though not yet 20, the young prince, according to the customs of the time, was made lieutenant colonel on 11 June 1811[10] and Colonel on 21 October that year.[11] On 8 September 1812 he was made an aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent[12] and on 14 December 1813 promoted to major-general.[13] His courage and good nature made him very popular with the British, who nicknamed him "Slender Billy". He returned to the Netherlands in 1813 when his father became sovereign prince, and in May 1814 succeeded Sir Thomas Graham as the highest-ranking officer of the British forces stationed there.[14]
On 8 July 1814, he was promoted to lieutenant-general in the British Army,[15] and on 25 July to general.[16] As such, he was senior officer of the Allied army in the Low Countries when Napoleon I of France escaped from Elba in 1815. He relinquished command on the arrival of the Duke of Wellington, and, though this was his first real battle, fought with the title of "General" I Allied Corps at the Battle of Quatre Bras (16 June 1815) and the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815), where he was wounded.[17] He was 23. As a sign of gratitude for what the Dutch throne styled "his" victory at Waterloo, William was offered Soestdijk Palace by the Dutch people.[18][19]
The British army lieutenant and military historian William Siborne blamed many casualties during the Waterloo Campaign on William's inexperience, incompetence, desperation to save face, and grossly-inflated opinion of his own military abilities.[20] In response, Siborne was accused by Lieutenant-General Willem Jan Knoop of many inaccuracies and contradictions.[21] An inspection of the archives of Siborne by General Francois de Bas in 1897 confirmed the selective use of sources and "numerous miscounts and untruths".[22] The defamation of the Prince of Orange and lack of recognition for his role during the Battle of Quatre Bras is attributed by some to efforts common to the 19th century to over-glorify and exaggerate Britain's military successes.
Marriage [ edit ]
In 1814, William became briefly engaged with Princess Charlotte of Wales, only daughter of the Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom and his estranged wife Caroline of Brunswick. The engagement was arranged by the Prince Regent, but it was broken because Charlotte's mother was against the marriage and because Charlotte did not want to move to the Netherlands. On 21 February 1816 at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, William married Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna of Russia, youngest sister to Czar Alexander I of Russia, who arranged the marriage to seal the good relations between Imperial Russia and the Netherlands.
On 17 February 1817 in Brussels, his first son Willem Alexander was born, the future King William III. Already in 1819, he was blackmailed over what Minister of Justice Van Maanen termed in a letter his "shameful and unnatural lusts": presumably bisexuality. Also his signing the constitutional reform of 1848, enabling a parliamentary democracy, may have been partly influenced by blackmail.[23] He may also have had a relationship with a dandy by the name of Pereira.[24]
Belgian Revolution [ edit ]
The Prince of Orange pressed by the crowd during the 1830 Revolution
William II enjoyed considerable popularity in what is now Belgium (then the Southern Netherlands), as well as in parts of the rest of the Netherlands for his affability and moderation, and in 1830, on the outbreak of the Belgian revolution, he did his utmost in Brussels as a peace broker, to bring about a settlement based on administrative autonomy for the southern provinces, under the House of Orange-Nassau. His father then rejected the terms of accommodation that the son had proposed without further consultation; afterwards, relations with his father were once again tense.
In April 1831, William II was sent by his father to be the military leader of the failed Ten Days' Campaign in order to recover what would become Belgium. They were driven back due to French intervention on the side of the rebels. European mediation established Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on the throne of a new monarchy. Peace was finally established in 1839 when Belgium was recognized by the Netherlands.
Reign [ edit ]
On 7 October 1840, on his father's abdication, he acceded to the throne as William II. Although he shared his father's conservative inclinations, he did not intervene in governmental affairs nearly as much as his father had. There was increased agitation for broad constitutional reform and a wider electoral franchise. Although William was certainly no democrat, he acted with sense and moderation.
The Revolutions of 1848 broke out all over Europe. In Paris the Bourbon-Orléans monarchy that had stolen "his" southern provinces fell. Warned that the revolution might spread to the Netherlands next, William decided to institute a more liberal regime, believing it was better to grant reforms instead of having them imposed on him on less favourable terms later. As he later put it, "I changed from conservative to liberal in one night". He chose a committee headed by the prominent liberal Johan Rudolf Thorbecke to create a new constitution.
The new document provided that the Eerste Kamer (Senate), previously appointed by the King, would be elected indirectly by the Provincial States. The Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives), previously elected by the Provincial States, would be elected directly via census suffrage in electoral districts, with the franchise limited to those who paid a certain amount in taxes. Ministers were now fully responsible to the Tweede Kamer. For all intents and purposes, the real power passed to the Tweede Kamer, and the king was now a servant of government rather than its master. That constitution of 1848, amended numerous times (most notably by the replacement of census suffrage by universal manhood suffrage and districts with nationwide party-list proportional representation, both in 1917) is still in effect today.
He swore in his first and only cabinet under the terms of the new constitution a few months before his sudden death in Tilburg, North Brabant (1849).
In fiction [ edit ]
He is a recurring character in the historical novels of Georgette Heyer, most notably in An Infamous Army.
William appears as a character in the historical fiction novel Sharpe's Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell, and its television adaptation, in which he is portrayed by Paul Bettany.
Titles, styles and honours [ edit ]
Monogram of William II
Titles and styles [ edit ]
1792–1806 : His Highness Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau [25]
: Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau 1806–1815 : His Highness The Hereditary Prince of Orange [26]
: The Hereditary Prince of Orange 1815–1840 : His Royal Highness The Prince of Orange
: The Prince of Orange 1840–1849: His Majesty The King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Duke of Limburg
Honours [ edit ]
Issue [ edit ]
William II and queen Anna Pavlovna had five children:
Ancestry [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
rones are going mainstream: The Federal Aviation Administration anticipates that by the end of 2016, people will own more than 2.5 million in the United States alone. But competitive drone-ing is newer still, and televised drone sports are practically uncharted territory, at least in the U.S. That will change Thursday night when the first of a 10-episode season featuring the Drone Racing League airs on ESPN2 at 11 p.m. Eastern.
But will it be exciting for viewers? After all, this isn’t the first time competitive drone operation will be on TV, and the reviews of a previous effort were not positive. In February, the BBC launched a children’s show called Airmageddon that showed kids flying drones around obstacle courses. My colleague Justin Peters scoped out the show and reflected thusly:
I was not entertained by Airmageddon. The drones go really slow, and—at least in the episode I watched—there aren’t nearly enough crashes. The youthful drone pilots weren’t very good, and the obstacles were not very exciting. The Guardian’s [Joel] Golby characterized Airmageddon’s version of suspense as “picking up magnets and putting them down inside a loop of LED lighting arranged artlessly on a concrete floor.” That said, the show is for kids. I’m trying to put myself into a kid’s shoes right now—it’s hard, my feet are too big—and if I were 12 years old in 2016, I would probably think that Airmageddon was sort of cool.
The DRL drones do go faster—more than 80 mph, but the idea is essentially the same. “DRL races feature six pilots each flying a custom designed, hand built and identical DRL drone, the DRL Racer 2, through complex, thematic, three-dimensional racecourses that have been compared to a real life video game,” the press release said.
Reference: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/09/15/new_drone_racing_league_gets_off_the_ground_with_espn_tv_deal.html |
Standard & Poor’s fired its first shot by downgrading South Africa’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to “junk” status. This may sound like financial mumbo-jumbo to most South Africans, and it is. So, let me explain.
“In our opinion, the executive changes initiated by President Zuma have put at risk fiscal and growth outcomes. We assess that contingent liabilities to the state are rising.”
Standard & Poor’s, 3 April 2017
In a nutshell, we are all poorer today than we were yesterday.
Credit rating agencies are companies that make a living by assigning a “credit rating” to loans raised mostly by governments, municipalities and corporates. That credit rating reflects their assessment of the debtor’s ability to pay back the loan. They evaluate both political and economic risks in making their decision. There are three main credit rating agencies – Moody’s, S&P and Fitch.
All investors and asset managers, domestic and international, rely on these credit ratings to determine whether they will lend the borrower money, and if they do, how much they will ask them to pay in interest.
This is not dissimilar to what banks do to their customers. A good earner with a healthy bank balance, a history of paying off credit card debt and a mortgage-free house can borrow a lot of money at a low interest rate, such as, for instance, 9% per annum. A Sassa grant recipient in a township, as we have recently learnt from the Net1 disaster, pays 164%.
Governments normally have to borrow money as the revenue they collect in taxes is not always sufficient to cover all the expenditure they have to incur. South Africa’s government debt currently stands at R2.2-trillion. The country pays R169-billion in interest every year. We need to borrow R149-billion this year. Government borrows money by issuing “bonds” which investors buy, effectively lending the government money. Government can borrow the money in local currency (rands), or in foreign currency (e.g. US dollars). Foreign currency debt is riskier as it is exposed to the fluctuations of the currency e.g. if South Africa borrows money in US dollars, then the level of debt increases if the rand depreciates. Credit rating agencies then assign a credit rating to such bonds.
Each agency has a slightly different “star” system for assigning credit ratings, hence the AAA, BB+, AA- etc. that you see peppering newsprint. This is irrelevant. In all cases, there are two main categories of risk, investment grade and non-investment grade. Non-investment grade has other names: junk, highly speculative, vulnerable – need I say more? These ratings are applied separately to local-denominated debt and foreign-denominated debt (this will become relevant just now).
Countries with a top-tier credit rating can borrow a lot of money at low interest rates – think USA, Canada, Australia, Switzerland. Think Christo Wiese. Countries with a low credit rating can either not borrow as no one is willing to lend them money, or if they borrow, they pay very high interest rates. Think Phinda Maqubu, who is raising two children in a township and barely getting by.
Junk rating means a higher risk of non-payment or default. Junk means a red flashing light which signals: Stay Away! Most large international investors, such as pension funds, explicitly prohibit their asset managers from investing in any bonds which are rated as junk. Hence we can expect that even with just one agency rating South Africa’s debt as non-investment grade, some investors will disinvest immediately, while others will demand higher interest for the risk of lending money to South Africa. Paying more in interest means there is less money available for infrastructure spend, education, welfare, police and all other services the government is supposed to provide for the taxes that you pay. If the government cannot balance their books through borrowing, the only other source of revenue is taxes.
Hence expect taxes to go up.
So far S&P has downgraded our foreign-denominated debt to junk. They did so because they believe the ANC has lost control over the Presidency and that the National Treasury is likely to embark on a reckless spending spree on projects such as nuclear, which means that they are less likely to have the money to repay debt or channel money into projects that will grow the economy.
S&P fired the first shot. It is a warning shot. Other credit rating agencies are likely to follow. Unless things change, more shots will follow.
The most serious blow will come if the agencies downgrade our rand-denominated debt to junk. South Africa is currently one of the few emerging countries included in the Citi’s World Government Bond Index (WGBI). This means that all investors who track that index have to buy South African bonds automatically. If our rand-denominated debt is rated as junk by S&P and Moody’s, South Africa will be dropped from the index. Immediately on that happening, approximately $10-billion, or R137-billion, will flow out of the country. That is 22% of all foreign investment in South African debt. That will be a catastrophe for the government and the country.
On a personal level, your retirement fund is currently, at least partly, invested in government bonds. Many pensioners and people close to retirement like to invest in low-risk investment products. Low-risk, in investment speak, means more money held in government bonds. If those bonds are dumped by international investors, you will lose a lot of money. The aftershocks of any downgrade are a general negative sentiment of all investors towards South Africa. This means that the value of equities and the rand will fall in sympathy. You will have less in savings and less to retire on, while paying more taxes for fewer government-rendered services.
Honorable Pravin Gordhan performed a Herculean task in persuading credit rating agencies to maintain our rating at investment grade by promising to balance the books carefully and not spend recklessly.
That promise has now evaporated.
It is very difficult to dig your way out of “junk” status. We have a chance to recover. Only one chance. Return Pravin Gordhan to the helm of National Treasury. Do so now.
Join me in marching on 7 April to demand accountability from Jacob Zuma. DM
Are You A South AfriCAN or a South AfriCAN'T?
Maverick Insider is more than a reader revenue scheme. While not quite a "state of mind", it is a mindset: it's about believing that independent journalism makes a genuine difference to our country and it's about having the will to support that endeavour.
From the #GuptaLeaks into State Capture to the Scorpio exposés into SARS, Daily Maverick investigations have made an enormous impact on South Africa and it's political landscape. As we enter an election year, our mission to Defend Truth has never been more important. A free press is one of the essential lines of defence against election fraud; without it, national polls can turn very nasty, very quickly as we have seen recently in the Congo.
If you would like a practical, tangible way to make a difference in South Africa consider signing up to become a Maverick Insider. You choose how much to contribute and how often (monthly or annually) and in exchange, you will receive a host of awesome benefits. The greatest benefit of all (besides inner peace)? Making a real difference to a country that needs your support.
Magda Wierzycka Follow Save More Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka is no stranger to challenging the status quo. The actuary and consumer advocate believes in forcing transparency in the financial services industry, one educated investor at a time. Her outspokenness has earned her a legion of online trolls and is reported to have SA fund managers shaking in their boots. Shes the only female CEO of a fintech company in Africa and loves all things future tech. She tweets from @Magda_Wierzycka.
Comments
Please or create an account to view the comments. To join the conversation, sign up as a Maverick Insider. |
„We are very happy to have secured the long-term commitment of another extraordinarily talented player,“ said BVB sporting director Michael Zorc. „Christian already enjoys a high standing within the team and can become a cornerstone of our sporting future“.
US international Christian Pulisic has played for BVB since February 2015. He won the German championship with the under-17s and under-19s in 2015 and 2016 and has been a member of the first-team squad since January 2016, writing his name in the history books in the process. Pulisic is the youngest player ever to have two Bundesliga goals to his name (current total is four), he is the youngest Borussia Dortmund player to have appeared in the UEFA Champions League, the youngest full international for the USA and their youngest-ever goalscorer in a World Cup qualifier. Although he only celebrated his 18th birthday in September, he has already made 11 international appearances, scoring three goals.
„I still have a lot to learn,“ said Christian Pulisic. „I feel Dortmund offers the best conditions to do that. I have the chance to play in front of over 80,000 fans. We have the best supporters in the world - it does not get any better than that!“ |
Lyons (Photo: Facebook)
A 21-year-old pregnant woman was killed late Wednesday during a shooting on Detroit’s west side.
Bionka Lyons, who was about six months’ pregnant, was shot at approximately 11 p.m. outside her home in the 10000 block of Crocuslawn, west of Griggs.
Lyons was in the front yard when her parents heard about five gunshots, Detroit Police Sgt. Michael Woody said.
“They looked outside the window and saw their daughter on the ground,” Woody said.
It was unclear whether Lyons was talking to someone before the shooting and there are no suspects in custody, Woody said.
“We don’t know why she was outside. We’re still interviewing some folks and looking if there was video available in the area,” Woody said.
Lyons was transported to Henry Ford Hospital, where she and her unborn baby were pronounced dead.
According to her Facebook profile, Lyons graduated from Western International High School in 2013 and studied biomedical sciences at Western Michigan University. She reportedly worked for the United States Postal Service.
Lyons was due to give birth in November, according to an online baby registry, which listed a changing table and a baby thermometer.
Detroit Police are asking anyone with information to call (313) 596-1616.
[email protected]
(313) 222-2486
Twitter: @robertsnellnews
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2bqtfrk |
The Kindness Offensive (TKO) is a group based in London known for orchestrating large-scale random acts of kindness, involving the distribution of industrial quantities of goods to unsuspecting members of the public and charities. The group's stated purpose is to "Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty", a phrase first coined by Anne Herbert.
History [ edit ]
The Kindness Offensive was formed in August 2008, when three of the four founding members (David Goodfellow, Benny Crane and James Hunter) asked members of the public in Hampstead what "random acts of kindness" they would like done for them. They received many requests from the public, and the group attempted to meet some of them by contacting companies and persuading them to donate the required goods for free, a technique developed by fourth founding member Robert Williams[1] and referred to by the group as "phone whispering".
TKO attracted press attention in October 2008 for giving away twenty-five tonnes of non-perishable foods to fourteen soup kitchens and drop-in centres across London England; the event came to be known as 'The Mountain of Food'.[2] This event was the first of many large-scale events centred on distributing industrial quantities of goods in short periods of time to a wide variety of locations and causes; the most notable of these were The Vinspired Kindness Offensive (2008),[3][4] The White Stuff Kindness Offensive,[5] which was widely reported as a record-breaking event (2010),[6] The Barclaycard Kindness Offensive (2011) the Hasbro Kindness Offensive (2013),[7] and the Read Free! Kindness Offensive.[8] The large scale 2014 XL Catlin Kindness Offensive event resulted in the events organiser and group co-founder David Goodfellow being awarded with a Points of Light, [9][10] award by the then UK Prime Minister David Cameron who ackoloeged that it generated "...a record-breaking Christmas toy donation".[11]
As well as large giveaways, TKO has also staged a series of pop-up events, including The Everyday Kindness Awards in 2009. Over the course of a weekend, actors in public places pretended to need help, and when members of the public stepped up to offer a hand, they received a pop-up celebration rewarding their kindness with champagne, flowers and a gold medal.[12]
The Kindness Offensive established their headquarters in Islington in 2013,[13] which includes a bookshop that offers 100,000's of books free of charge to the public.[14][15] and a community space who's grounds have been converted into a sensory garden for special needs students. The building has become something of a local landmark due to installations such as a set of giant brockley[16] and a replica TARDIS from the long running UK TV show Doctor Who.[17][18]
In 2017 Joanna Bevan[19] become the fourth[20][21][22]member of The Kindness Offensive to be awarded a place on The Independent Happy List in recognition of her Kindness Offensive work with special needs children and with providing free language lessons to newcomers to the UK.
See also [ edit ] |
Lenin and the Muslims
Most leftists have no idea what to do with Muslims. Should we be empowered as a disenfranchised minority? Should we be forced to adopt “European values”? It’s complicated, but interestingly, the early Soviet Union was remarkably intelligent about this. Just after the Bolshevik revolution, the state used innovative policies to approach the Russian Empire’s brutally oppressed Muslim minorities. Dave Crouch’s The Bolsheviks and Islam is an excellent primer for understanding Moscow’s “Muslim policy” before the rise of Stalin. For all of Lenin’s failings, he appears to have gotten this right.
Rather than acting like Islam needed to be crushed, the Bolsheviks recognized the social and economic realities affecting Muslims, and attempted to tailor socialist policy towards those realities. As far back as 1909, Lenin was opposed to separating any member of the working-class from their religion, calling leftists who called for such an abolition “infant school materialists.” He personally thought that it was political suicide to ask deeply religious people to abandon those beliefs before joining a revolutionary organization such as his own. This later translated into Soviet policy. The Bolsheviks understood that Islam functioned as a national identity for many Soviet Muslims, and that as a result, it was worthy of its right to self-determination.
National autonomy was declared, sacred monuments were returned, and Friday was declared the legal day of rest throughout Central Asia. Amazingly, the Bolsheviks even took measures to meet local demands for a Shariah court system. As the Russian Civil War drew to a close in 1922, Islamic courts were opened, and operated alongside Soviet legal institutions. The Soviet Legal Commissariat came to include a Shariah Commission to supervise the dual system, and a number of smaller commissions were also set up to figure out how to make Shariah work alongside the Soviet codes. The balance was uneasy, owing to historical context. Extreme sentences like the removal of limbs were cut out, and “vices” such as alcohol consumption were a bit of a grey area at times. However, the Bolsheviks got the core idea right: Muslims would have the option of a more relevant and culturally accessible legal system, so long as it adapted to the state’s core principles. Similar policies were implemented when it came to education.
These experiments basically ended with Stalin. Stalinists began vicious campaigns against Islam, targeting “crimes against custom,” and veiling in particular. Forced unveiling began at mass meetings starting in the late 1920s, and Islam was attacked as a barrier to progressive transformation. The Bolsheviks’ earlier policies became a memory. Crouch’s work on this should be read critically, since he clearly wishes to redeem Lenin when it comes to religious freedom. There was still much to be desired, and it is entirely possible that Lenin was simply biding his time until the state was strong enough to move against Islam outright.
The case study is still worth noting, though. Whatever the context, the early Soviet Union approached Islam as a state that was non-religious, not anti-religious. It sought to expand itself to accommodate Muslim citizens, rather than demanding that they swear fealty to European progressiveness and cosmopolitanism. The result was an attempted balance, which can be done today if countries like Britain undertake reforms such as allowing the option of Shariah courts when it comes to civil matters like marriage and small contracts. There is no reason that the liberal rule of law can’t be deepened to include Islamic justice, especially if the mixture is constantly being supervised and evaluated. Similar reforms are possible to allow for cultural studies programs, or even optional alternative schools for students of certain minority groups. Recalling Lenin here may not actually be that far-fetched. It would actually push a society that is more inclusive for everyone, Muslims included.
Photograph courtesy of Hossam el-Hamalawy. Published under a Creative Commons License. |
How the Cofound.it Priority Pass™ will work in the next four crowdsales
Jan Isakovic Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 23, 2017
The crowdsales of the next four Cofound.it projects are just around the corner. To help you get ready to contribute in the pre-sale as a Cofound.it Priority Pass™ member, we’re now sharing cap details and the estimated individual contribution limits for all four pre-sales — the limits will be based on the amount of CFI tokens held.
To recap, all four crowdsales will have the following 3 phases:
Phase 1/Day 1 of the crowdsale: limited pre-sale. The goal is to gain distribution of tokens to build an engaged community of supporters and early adopters . Available only to Priority Pass members . The limits will adjust to the funding capitalization goals set by the project.
an engaged community of supporters and early adopters . The limits will adjust to the funding capitalization goals set by the project. Phase 2/Day 2 of the crowdsale: unlimited pre-sale. The goal is to allow especially engaged supporters to send more funds. Available only to Priority Pass members .
. Phase 3/Day 3 of the crowdsale: open to the public, no contribution limitations.
The phases might change for future crowdsales. The driving force for change is you — our community — so do not forget to send us feedback. Please note that the contribution is calculated based on the CFI held in your wallet — the numbers below are just examples at specific CFI holding levels.
Here are all the details and individual contribution limit estimates for all 4 upcoming crowdsales:
Musiconomi — A Global Music Economy That Works for Everyone
Start of pre-sale: August 29th 2017 @ 5 PM CEST |
Say namaste to the first Indian-designed sports car in the history of TIME.
It’s called the DC Avanti, it’s just been unveiled at the Delhi motor show and it’s a comfortable signpost that India’s appetite for cars has just got a bit more discerning.
It’s cheap(ish), too; the pricetag’s expected to hover around 30 lakh rupees (£36,000-odd in Church of England).
Which isn’t at all bad considering how spritely it promises to be. Initially, it’ll get a blown Ford 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine, which makes 261bhp. A 394bhp Honda V6 version will join the fray later, both of which will be attached to a six-speed dual clutch transmission.
The, err, idiosyncratically styled shell’s got a lot of aluminum in it so weight’s kept down to a relatively buoyant 1560kg. This means the (claimed) 0-62mph time’s less than seven seconds, which, admitedly, stretches the definition of supercar a bit, but it’s still fast for the money.
So, who the hell is DC? They’re an Indian tuning house better known for adding big plastic nappies and bling-a-ding rims to everything from Rolls-Royce Phantoms and Porsche Cayennes to Tata Nanos. Then charging punters inordinate amounts of money (its tinkered Nano costs £141,000. ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTY ONE GRAND).
The manufacturer wants to build 200 cars a year at first, but plans to churn out up to 2000 cars a year longer term.
Would you drive India’s first sporty/superyishcar, TopGear.comniverse? |
Now that hackers have sunk their teeth well and truly into the Microsoft Surface RT, loads of things are being probed, including lag. Apparently, with a tiny registry edit, you can speed up the Surface RT no end and eliminate touch lag. Here's how.
Simply put, for some reason Microsoft's built in some lag or latency into the touch experience of the Surface RT, and you can nuke it with two simple registry edits.
As with all things registry and Windows, back up your shit first, OK?
Then bust out the Registry Editor (hit the start screen and type "regedit"), find the key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TouchPredict ion
Change "latency" from 8 to 2, and "sample time" from 8 to 2.
Bob's your speedier tablet-touching uncle, your Surface should be faster. If all that was a bit much for you (why the hell are you messing with the registry, then?) you can download the required changes to inject into the registry automatically with a double click.
If you're a heavy user, you might notice some battery life decrease after the change, as the device is polling the screen a lot more, but considering the Surface RT has pretty decent battery life to start with, it's probably not an issue. Check out the full details of the hack over at the XDA forums. [XDA via TechRadar] |
Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino has preached patience when it comes to DeAndre Yedlin's development.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has stressed to FutbolMLS.com that the club will be handling the development of DeAndre Yedlin with care over the coming months.
Yedlin, 21, sealed a £2.5 million move to Tottenham in August following his impressive World Cup cameos, but remained with the Seattle Sounders for the rest of the MLS season as part of the agreement between the two sides.
After helping his hometown club clinch the US Open Cup and Supporters’ Shield titles, the US international made his permanent switch to north London last month, but is still to get close to a first-team appearance.
Making just one 60-minute run out for the Under-21s so far, the promising right-back was allowed to join up with the US national team for their recent friendlies against Chile and Panama as a result, although his performances in both games came in for some criticism among fans and the media.
Nevertheless, Pochettino remains a huge proponent of Yedlin’s potential, having pushed to bring him over from Seattle this winter rather than next summer, but wants to give him some more time to adapt to life at White Hart Lane before throwing him into the first-team picture.
"We knew he was a player with great potential, who has already done interesting things in the MLS, and has even been in the last World Cup," the Argentine said. "So we decided to advance his arrival time and start working with him for a bit.
"DeAndre is newly arrived in London and, like all young players, requires a process of adaptation, to learn a new way, to know a new culture,"
"We have to go with it carefully, quietly, giving him precious time to settle both on and off the pitch and maybe, from there, to show his qualities.”
Having risen from the US college level to the Premier League in the space of just two seasons, Yedlin looks set for a bright future in the game considering his rapid progress, but it’s also clear that he is far from the finished product.
Perhaps still somewhat too raw for the English top-flight, Pochettino seems to be approaching his development in the right manner thus far and, given the former Southampton boss’s track record in developing emerging talent, fans should rest assured that he is in good hands. |
I already know there’s going to be that one person out there, surrounded in their cluttered room of MMA memorabilia that will comment on this article stating he/she actually knew everything that was disclosed in this 8-part YouTube video series. Well, you’re wrong — and even if you’re right, you’re still wrong. You’re living your life wrong. Go outside and run after a bird. Strike up a conversation with your local convenience store cashier. Use your library card, you know those antiquated government-funded facilities that have things made from paper called ‘books.’ There’s an entire world out there that is separate from this sport known as MMA — you don’t need to be a walking Sherdog Fighter Finder to justify your existence.
Now, if you want to be enlightened by certain esoteric facts in the sport we all love, check out this newly-released 8-part series on a slew of rare MMA facts and secrets. It’s just fantastic general info that can certainly fill in some gaps in your mental MMA timeline.
Even more MMA goodness after the jump.
Volume II
Volume III
Volume IV
Volume V
Volume VI
Volume VII
Volume VIII |
The It Movie is setting itself up for a record-breaking opening weekend at the box-office. The film made $13.5M in Thursday night previews, making it the largest horror pre-show gross ever, the largest R-rated preview, the largest September preview and the largest ever for a movie based on a a Stephen King book. That’s a whole lot of ‘largest‘s.
It beat out the widely popular Deadpool, which was released Feb. 15, 2016 and ended its three-day weekend with $132.4M. But, Deadpool opened during President’s weekend, a holiday. It also had the benefit of 374 Imax and 475 PLF screens, according to Deadline.
It is releasing outside of holiday weekends, isn’t a superhero film and has very little star power. This makes its preview results an impressive feat for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. But, I’m sure they already knew they had a hit on their hands; Stephen King has openly praised and promoted the film, and the It sequel is already in the works.
The film is based off the 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name. It is directed by Andy Muschietti (Mama). It stars Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer make up the Losers’ Club.
The It movie opens in Theatres tonight, September 8th.
Did you catch the film at a preview screening? Spoiler free sound off in the comments below! |
Sassy, who said his first name is Alex, would not provide full real name to BuzzFeed News.
This is Twitter user Sassy Gay Republican, a 21-year-old pizza delivery driver and Donald Trump supporter from Arizona. He says his Twitter account exists "because #Democrats & the #LGBT community fail to recognize a large number of gay conservatives."
He uses his Twitter account to frequently complain about Democrats forcing people to pay for health insurance, likely referring to the " individual mandate " in Obamacare.
In March, he complained that as a "young adult in perfect health" he was being "forced to pay for insurance I don't want and likely won't need."
On Sept. 12, Sassy tweeted a photo of a damaged car, saying that he got into a three-vehicle accident in Mesa, Arizona.
On Sept. 14, Sassy started a fundraising page to pay for his medical expenses, saying that the hospital didn't accept his insurance and that he couldn't afford the bill with his income as a pizza delivery driver.
"The hospital was a given, & the bill will likely be in the thousands (they didn't accept my insurance)," he wrote on the fundraising page.
Sassy told BuzzFeed News over Twitter DM on Thursday that workers' compensation insurance eventually paid for his hospital bill, including X-rays, shots, and his stay. He added his injuries included, "burns on my hips and some bruising on my thighs chest, and chest."
He told BuzzFeed News he would use the crowdsourced funds possible physical therapy — which he said his health insurance company isn't paying for — "any other potential surprise bills," and for future hospital checkups or doctors visits.
"For those of you who follow my story on Twitter, you know how open I am about my life, & whenever I need help, I always ask," he wrote on the fundraising page. "There's always some guilt for me asking, but right now, I really don't have a choice." |
In our post-factual world, history has become another battlefield, with far-flung hostilities over cultural and political differences as well as the imperial adventures abroad. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once remarked, we are entitled to opinions, not to our own facts.
Glenn Beck peddles a notion of the “Progressive Era” — a time when Republicans and Democrats and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson proudly called themselves “progressives” — as the period when all the evils of modern America became manifest. Original, yes. Factual, no.
Then we have Dick Armey, once a leader in proclaiming a “Contract With America” and currently head of Freedom Works, one of the more vocal incarnations of the tea party that provides a ready microphone for well-heeled right-wing backers and their views.
Armey now has given us a classic perversion of history. At a gathering to vent against President Barack Obama’s tax and health policies and alleged socialism, someone in the audience questioned how the movement could use the Federalist Papers, largely written by Alexander Hamilton, as any basis for its beliefs. After all, Hamilton, the questioner contended, was “widely regarded” as a strong nationalist, who advocated life terms for the president and senators, a strong national bank, protective tariffs, the assumption of state debts (to ensure their payment and thereby establish a creditable international standing), state governors appointed by the president, and the diminution of state authority to little more than an administrative role. That is History 101, of course, but a good question for those who insist on Hamilton as a patron saint of American “conservatism.”
Armey was incredulous, even contemptuous, and simply dismissed the questioner, as well as history. “Widely regarded by whom?” he asked suspiciously, and then answered his own question. “Today’s modern ill-informed political science professors … ? I just doubt that was the case, in fact, about Hamilton.” In the great tradition of Henry Ford, Armey simply would dismiss history as “bunk.”
Hamilton certainly is the patron saint of the American state. As George Washington’s secretary of the treasury, he fashioned public policy based on the necessity for strong authority at the center, saying things like “A national debt is a national blessing,” “Every Power Vested in Government is in its nature Sovereign,” and “A Well-Organized Republic can scarcely lose its Liberty from any other Source than that of Anarchy.” Hamilton knew that the nation’s earlier failed experience under its first constitution, the Articles of Confederation (still “fundamental law” for Justice Clarence Thomas), demonstrated that the national government lacked not so much powers as the power to enforce its will. The Constitution without doubt recognized and rectified the defects.
Conservatives historically celebrated Hamilton (and Abraham Lincoln) for pursuing public policies reflecting a strong national government. The first Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), perhaps best known today for his opposition to President Wilson’s League of Nations, wrote a famous biography of Hamilton extolling Hamilton’s virtues, but that was in a time with a different understanding of “conservatism” than today’s. Armey and his sponsors — not his followers — love Hamilton for his famous contempt for democracy: “Your people, sir, is a great beast.” Hamilton surely would welcome the manner in which Armey and his backers manipulate the ignorant, ill-informed masses. Nevertheless, Armey and his patrons’ goals are not what Hamilton envisioned for this nation.
The hoary hoax of applying the Constitution’s “original meaning” to determine the validity of legislative policy is rooted in spurious scholarship — or, more properly, the lack of any. Even a Ouija board cannot give us certainty in this area. The 1787 Constitutional Convention’s proceedings have been extensively studied, and the best we can conclude is that despite an overwhelmingly favorable vote to adopt the new instrument, significant disagreement existed on any number of issues. Then, when we look at the hundreds of delegates to the state ratifying conventions, clearly we know that disagreement was rampant. Pauline Maier’s magisterial new book, “Ratification,” underlines the plethora of contemporary views. Maier’s resurrection of thousands of documents pertaining to ratification leaves no doubt as to the range of differences — and yet, strikingly, the agreement to ratify.
Robert Bork laid down precepts for judicial decision-making based on the “original meaning” of the Constitution. Justice Scalia has been our most visible practitioner of the idea, and he denounces any believer in the notion of a “living constitution” as an idiot. Scalia’s Camp Idiocy would have to enroll John Marshall, our first great chief justice and a prominent participant in the Virginia ratifying convention. Marshall could preside over the company of 100-plus Supreme Court justices, distinguished and undistinguished, Federalists, Whigs, Republicans, Democrats, “liberals” and “conservatives.”
Bork and Scalia’s “judicial philosophy” is based on precious little scholarship. With their ideological compatriots they have manufactured a theory out of whole cloth and foisted it onto the public, unchallenged by the media amplifiers and, sadly, by too few scholars.The chestnut of secession, slavery and the Civil War still divides us, but here, too, the historical presumptions border on the absurd. Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican (certainly there is a historical joke in this label), seems to have a corner on the microphone to proclaim the virtues of his constitutionalism. His television appearances are marked by a backdrop of the flag and the Constitution. DeMint insists he will reject legislation not tied to specific constitutional authorization. Perhaps that means Social Security and Medicare, which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, but instead derive from the proviso of the “power to tax and spend … for the general welfare.” We can only anxiously await his views on the post-Civil War amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th.
DeMint’s congressional and ideological predecessors believed in the right to secession and disunion — of course without constitutional authorization, as Abraham Lincoln steadfastly maintained. It took four years of bloody war to quash that notion.
DeMint’s allies in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Heritage Trust are preparing a sesquicentennial secession ball in Charleston and a 10-day re-enactment at Fort Sumter, apparently with the support of the state. The sponsors insist they merely will honor those who signed the secession ordinances. A spokesman maintained they were not defending slavery, but rather “defending the South’s right to secede, the soldiers’ right to defend their homes, and the right to self-government.” And now, 200 years later, they can celebrate history without acknowledging slavery as the cause of secession. They will not quote what Mississippi said in its secession ordinances, that slavery was “the greatest material interest of the world,” or mention its fear that abolition would undermine “commerce and civilization.” Slavery obviously caused the Civil War, Confederate glorifiers notwithstanding.
The right’s twist of history to please its backers and fuel its agenda is a vigorous enterprise. Serious history, serious scholarship and serious discussion of facts and ideas are dismissed with tunnel vision. In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” Humpty Dumpty scornfully said “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” When Alice protested, Humpty Dumpty replied that the issue was “which is to be master — that’s all.” But take hope — Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings. |
Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt (CNN) -- Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, now under investigation in connection with the deaths of protesters, will be transferred from a hospital here to a military hospital, an Egyptian official told CNN.
Justice Minister Mohamed Abdel Aziz said that when the former leader's health improves, he will be imprisoned.
The country's attorney general has decided to make the transfer and put the former longtime ruler under the surveillance of guards, according to Nile TV. The location of the military hospital was not immediately known.
Despite his health issues, Mubarak has been questioned and been under investigation by the Egyptian prosecutor-general's office since Tuesday.
He is being investigated in connection with the deaths of hundreds of activists during the recent uprising that led to his departure from office February 11. He is also under investigation for allegations of corruption and misuse of state funds.
Mubarak has been treated at the hospital since Tuesday for heart palpitations and blood pressure problems and is listed in stable condition, officials said.
He has been regarded as detained under the criminal investigation during a 15-day period since Tuesday.
Riot police have formed a perimeter around Mubarak's hospital in the Red Sea resort, but a commander said police have not received any orders to transfer him.
Two of his sons are also under investigation; they are in custody in Cairo.
Aziz also said Mubarak's wife, Suzanne, will be questioned by the ministry's Office of Illicit Profiteering.
CNN's Ivan Watson, Mohammed Fadel Fahmy and Salma Abdelaziz contributed to this report. |
JNS.org – Despite ongoing security threats and regional instability, Israelis can expect to live well into their 80s, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) newly released global report on life expectancy.
Japan has the world’s highest average life expectancy—nearly 84 years—followed by Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, and Spain. Israel came in sixth. The shortest life expectancy belongs to Sierra Leone, with women in that country only expected to live to about 51 years and men about 59 years.
Israelis can expect an average lifespan of 82.5 years—80.6 for men and 84.3 for women, according to WHO. This sharply contrasts with some of Israel’s neighbors, including Egypt (71 years) and Jordan (74 years). For those living in conflict-ridden Syria and Iraq, the average life expectancies are about 65 and 69 years, respectively.
In the United States, males have an average lifespan of 77 years and women an average of 81.6 years.
Life expectancies around the world went up an average of five years since the last such report was compiled by WHO in 2000.
“The world has made great strides in reducing the needless suffering and premature deaths that arise from preventable and treatable diseases,” said Margaret Chan, WHO’s director general. “But the gains have been uneven. Supporting countries to move towards universal health coverage based on strong primary care is the best thing we can do to make sure no one is left behind.” |
The Denver Gorilla Run is a charity fun run with a difference. Everyone who takes part wears a full gorilla or banana costume (provided...yours to keep!) and helps raise funds for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund, the international charity working to save the world's last remaining mountain gorillas and keeping Dian Fossey's dream alive for the past 32 years. Have Fun and Help a Good Cause!! Event Highlights: Run or walk a fun 5K in a gorilla suit
Gorilla / banana suits are yours to keep!
Most Creative Costume Contest
Great Silverback After Party
Fun for the entire family
Sponsored by Silverback Pale Ale
Buy extra tickets to the Silverback After Party Receive important Gorilla Run updates! GO BANANAS! Limited quantity of banana suits available for this category...sign up today! |
Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
SECULAR Syria has long been one of the freest places in the Middle East to practise religion. But a recent crackdown on Christians, about a tenth of Syria's people, is causing jitters. Several buildings that hold Christian services have been closed for not being officially sanctioned as churches. Foreigners serving Protestant churches have been told their visas will not be renewed because of a decree banning them from working for injeeli, as Protestant churches are known. In the summer several church camps were cancelled. The measures have been taken solely against the Protestant churches, which cater for refugees from Sudan and Iraq and expatriate workers, as well as for Syrians. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled to Syria since attacks on them following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003; recent massacres have sent others packing.
Syrian officials say the measures have been taken because the offending churches have been proselytising, often with the help of foreigners. The World Council of Churches acknowledges that since the invasion of Iraq an influx of refugees into Syria has encouraged foreign evangelists, mainly Americans and South Koreans, to spread the gospel. American outfits such Reach Global, the missionary arm of the Evangelical Free Church of America, admit to giving cash and theological support to Christians in Syria, to the extent that they are officially allowed to.
But independent local churches, all of them licensed by the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, have been hit, too. Father Nadim Nassar, a priest, says that tension in the region has made life harder for all Protestant groups. “Protestantism has long been viewed as an extension of the West and all Protestant groups have been affected by a backlash against them.”
But the main reason for the clampdown is that Orthodox and Catholic leaders, disgruntled by the success of these new churches, have complained to the government. Converting Muslims to Christianity is illegal, but the churches have also had an understanding that they should not woo each others' members. Enthusiastic Protestants seem to have flouted that unwritten rule. “We have enough churches—but the Protestants are stealing our sheep,” says an Orthodox pastor, who asked not to be named.
The government does not discriminate against Christianity in particular. It wants to keep Syria secular and religiously harmonious. Moreover, it is conscious that the regime is headed by members of the minority Alawite Muslim sect, and is wary of challenges to its rule by any religious group, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. It is therefore quick to clamp down on zealous behaviour. In the past two years Islamic schools have been more tightly regulated. Female university students have been forbidden to wear the niqab, covering the entire body.
Freedom of religion in Syria has its limits, sighs an Orthodox leader. “There is freedom to practise your religion but not yet to choose it. You are what you are born into.” |
Six months into a deepening drought, the weather is killing crops, threatening cattle and sinking lakes to their lowest levels in years across much of the South.
The very worst conditions -- what forecasters call "exceptional drought" -- are in the mountains of northeast Alabama and northwest Georgia, a region known for its thick green forests, waterfalls and red clay soil.
"Here at my farm, April 15 was when the rain cut off," said David Bailey, who had to sell half his cattle, more than 100 animals, for lack of hay in Alabama's scorched northeast corner.
"We've come through some dry years in the '80s, but I never seen it this dry, this long," Bailey added. "There's a bunch of people in a lot of bad shape here."
The drought has spread from these mountains onto the Piedmont plateau, down to the plains and across 13 southern states, from Oklahoma and Texas to Florida and Virginia, putting about 33 million people in drought conditions, according to Thursday's U.S. Drought Monitor.
Wildfires raged Thursday near Birmingham, Alabama. Statewide, the blazes have charred more than 12,000 acres in the past 30 days.
"There are places getting ready to set records for most numbers of days in a row without rain. It's a once-in-100-year kind of thing for this time of year," said John Christy, Alabama's state climatologist.
Why won't it rain? Why Alabama continues to dry out A 'vicious cycle' of warm and dry conditions is not forecast to end anytime soon.
The South has historically enjoyed abundant water, which has been fortunate, because much of its soil is poor at holding onto it. But the region's booming growth has strained this resource. A legal battle between Georgia and Florida over water from rivers and their watersheds goes before a federal court official Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review his recommendations.
The dry weather is only making things worse.
"We're 10 days away from a drought at any given time," Christy explained. "Unlike the Midwest and other places in the country, we are closer to a drought than almost any place else."
Parts of northern Georgia and Alabama have now seen their driest 60 days on record, Thursday's national drought report showed.
If the drought persists, authorities said it could lead to the kinds of water use restrictions that are common out West, but haven't been seen in parts of the South in nearly a decade.
During a major drought in Georgia in 2007, police in Atlanta's suburb of Alpharetta were given the power to criminally cite anyone watering their lawns. In Alabama that year, people were fined for watering on the wrong day and many homes became infested by thirsty ants and cockroaches.
At the height of the 2007 drought, then-Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue prayed for rain with hundreds of residents at the state Capitol. The Georgia Department of Agriculture is reviving the practice: It has announced plans for a Monday "Pray for Rain" gathering with the state agriculture commissioner and Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins in the northeast Georgia town of Lavonia.
At ground zero of Alabama's drought: 'It's an agricultural disaster' "I'm not going to make any money at all this year," one farmer said.
In west Georgia this month, the Tallapoosa River dropped below the intake the Haralson County Water Authority uses to provide water to at least four small towns. Some major cities are spending big to prevent future water shortages: Atlanta has begun a $300 million project to store 2.4 billion gallons of water -- a month's water supply -- and pipe it under the city.
This summer was particularly hot as well as dry, with 90-degree temperatures day after day that evaporated what little moisture the soil had left, said Bill Murphey, Georgia's state climatologist.
This summer was the second-hottest on record in Atlanta, where seasonal rains still haven't arrived: During the past 30 days, just over two-tenths of an inch of rain has fallen in Atlanta, 94 percent below normal, and in Cartersville, about 45 miles northwest of Atlanta, the weather service has recorded no rain at all.
The South's usually temperate forests have turned into tinderboxes, worries Denise Croker, a chief ranger with the Georgia Forestry Commission in northwest Georgia.
In the arid western U.S., cigarettes tossed from cars have been known to start forest fires. In the South, higher humidity generally keeps that from happening, but not this year. Even a spark from a chain dragged from a truck could set the northwest Georgia woods on fire, she said.
"Our dirt is like talcum powder," she said.
Outdoor burning has been banned due to fire risk across parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and burn permits aren't being issued in parts of Georgia.
"This is the worst drought that I've ever experienced and I've been farming for 45 years," said Phillip Thompson, 60, who spent Tuesday night trying to snuff out a smoldering, 150-acre brush fire near Scottsboro, Alabama, where he farms corn and soybeans. "It's just a bleak situation."
Some of the South's best known crops -- cotton, peanuts and sweet potatoes -- have largely escaped damage, because they're mostly produced outside the drought area, and in some cases got rain from Hurricane Matthew and other tropical weather, trade groups said.
Peanut yields will be down due to heat, drought or hurricanes, but that won't likely affect consumer prices, said Dan Koehler, who directs the Georgia Peanut Commission.
As for sweet potatoes, the drought has been both good and bad: Hard ground can damage skin and lead to rot in stored tubers, but they also start curing in the ground when it's really dry, which means "they're really sweet," said Sylvia Clark, secretary of the Mississippi Sweet Potato Association. |
Buy Photo Left to right: In start 5 Cruising B Division 3 Shore Course Cruising, Knot Yours too owned by Glen Drabant of Port Huron Yacht Club, Pirate owned by Jeff Henderson of Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit and Irish Mist owned David Spiers of EBC and Deadman's Flat Yacht Club head out into the open waters of Lake Huron on their way to Mackinac Island during the 2014 Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race on Saturday, July 12, 2014. (Photo: Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
From a tin shanty to the Great Lakes "Shrine to Nautical Culture," a lot of water has passed by Bayview Yacht Club on its way down the Detroit River the past 100 years.
Though not the oldest yacht club in the Detroit area — the Detroit Yacht Club was founded in 1868, for example — Bayview is considered the granddaddy of pure sailing clubs in Michigan.
Standing across from the eastern tip of Belle Isle, its dock entrance off 100 Clairpointe in Detroit, Bayview is celebrating a century of recreational and competitive sailing — and countless drinks at the clubhouse bar overlooking the Detroit River and Canada — this year.
Bayview Yacht Club also will be hosting the 91st Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race, as it has done since 1925, when only 12 boats competed in the inaugural freshwater, long-distance sailboat event from Port Huron to Mackinac Island.
On Saturday, more than 100 crafts from Bayview's fleet, including "Stripes," the Great Lakes 70 yacht owned and sailed by former University of Michigan athletic director Bill Martin, will be among the fleet of more than 250 boats scheduled to leave Port Huron for the straits of Mackinac.
Bayview Commodore Hanson Bratton will sail aboard the 60-foot "Eagle I," although he was to compete on his own yacht "Taz," in the double-handed crew class, until his sailing partner suffered an injured knee.
"The Port Huron-Mackinac race is so very important to the club," said Bratton, 51, a self-employed engineer from Grosse Pointe Woods whose father was a Detroit cop. "But it's only part of what we do. We also compete in open-lake racing and one-design regattas and have a junior sailing program, too. We've come a long way since four gentlemen formed the Bayview Yacht Club in 1915."
They were sailors E. Lloyd Kurtzwarth, P.C. Williamson, Floyd Nixon and Paul Diedrich, who chipped in $14 a piece and founded the yacht club in a two-story tin shanty atop a floored-over boat well at the foot of what was known then as Motor Boat Lane, adjacent to Water Works Park.
Bayview moved to its present location, at the foot of Clairpointe, in 1929-30.
Founded in 1915, the Bayview Yacht Club moved to its present location, at the foot of Clairpointe in Detroit, in 1929-30. (Photo: Photo courtesy of Bayview Yacht Club)
With its sweeping vistas, two harbors, commodore's room filled with photos of men with beards and ties, fine restaurant and long mahogany bar, Bayview could be a snooty establishment for a privileged few.
Instead, says Bratton, it is a private working man's yacht club for "those with a genuine interest in sailing and enjoying the company of good people."
It houses the venerable J.L. Hudson Trophy, presented to the boat with the best corrected time in Division 1 of the Port Huron-Mackinac race.
"The founding members of this club were born out of Detroit," said Bratton, who joined Bayview as a member in 1994. "They came out of tool-and-dye shops related to the early automotive industry. A lot of these guys came from nothing. They grew into the money they had. It was new money, and people remembered where they came from."
With a membership of almost 1,000 when counting junior members (kids), intermediates (young adults aged 25-35) and the senior boating group (over 35), Bayview Yacht Club is robust.
But, if you are an active sailor, or someone with an interest in the sport and seeking an opportunity to join a club, Bayview has an open door.
"We welcome anyone here who has an interest in sailing," Bratton said. "Yes, you need to be nominated and get a sponsor, but if you have an interest in the sport, own a boat or are looking to crew on a boat or assist with the race committee, for example, you are eligible to join us."
For a price, of course, said Bratton.
Bayview Yacht Club a long time ago (not sure year). (Photo: Photo courtesy of Bayview Yacht Club)
"You have to be able to pay your dues but, compared to other clubs around here, they are hugely inexpensive," he said
The cost of joining Bayview, according to Bratton, is a one-time initiation fee of $2,500 per member that can be paid over a year.
"The monthly dues are $145 for active members," Bratton said.
Fred Kreger can attest to that.
He joined Bayview in 1952 and raced in his first Port Huron-to-Mackinac the same year.
At 83, Kreger still spends three or four days a week at the club, racing several times a week and helping with the junior sailors.
He will compete in the Port Huron-Mackinac race this weekend on "Carinthia," a J/120. It will be his 62nd race.
"I was always interested in boats since I was a little kid," said Kreger, who has sailed all over the Great Lakes, East Coast, California, Florida and Europe. "I met a girl whose father owned a sailboat. We got married, and I'm still married, but not to her."
Along with the sailing, Kreger, who has lived all his life in Grosse Pointe Park, said meeting his friends and newcomers at Bayview is what keeps him young.
"Bayview Yacht Club is very much part of me," said Kreger, a former engineer and salesman. "I don't go to the bar as much as I used to, but I still enjoy telling and hearing tall tales over a drink or two.
"On the water — I do everything but cook. You don't want me cooking for you. But I'll fill in anywhere I'm needed. Trim, navigate, steer, just ask me."
Peter Wenzler is the 2015 Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race chairman and member of Bayview Yacht Club since 1990.
He'll sail on the 65-foot "Equation" in this weekend's race.
"I can't wait to go racing," said Wenzler, 49, an investment real estate broker from Grosse Pointe Farms. "The tradition of the race, the friends you make, just being out there and looking across at the blue horizon. It doesn't get better than that."
Wenzler and Bratton have raced Martin, who just finished first in class in the Chicago-to- Mackinac race this week.
"He's a stalwart," Wenzler said of Martin. "He's a straight-up great guy, and his boats are always in the hunt. He's great to be around at Bayview."
Bayview Yacht Club in 1975 (Photo: Bayview Yacht Club)
Wenzler believes Bayview Yacht Club can match any sailboat club in America.
"It's right up there with clubs in the Gulf, Chesapeake and any of the Great Lakes," Wenzler said. "We have won the Canada's Cup four times. It ranks in the upper echelon of competitive sailing clubs in the United States and is recognized worldwide.
"But the beauty of it is," added Wenzler, "we are a humble club, but proud. Bayview Yacht Club is indicative of Detroit."
Bratton tells a story that pretty much sums up Bayview's attitude and character, a club where teamwork and sportsmanship is paramount.
It happened about five years ago, he said, when someone tried to erect reserved parking spot signs outside the Bayview clubhouse for board members.
"They purchased metals posts and set them up," Bratton said. "Within the hour, a number of members had cut the signs off the posts and tossed them in the river."
Kreger had a tale of his own, too.
"There was a fellow here who wasn't using his boat much, just had it tied up," Kreger said. "We sodded the deck with grass and used it for teeing off on. He didn't take it real well."
RACE ON
What: 91st Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race.
Where: Starts at Port Huron and finishes at Mackinac Island.
When: Boats launch between 11:30 a.m. and 1:40 p.m. Saturday. They will finish between Sunday and Tuesday.
Who: More than 250 yachts (more than 100 from the Bayview Yacht Club) are expected to compete.
Courses: Most boats will sail the shore course (204 nautical miles), and some of the faster and bigger boats will sail the Cove Island course (259 nautical miles).
More info: www.bycmack.com. |
A cash-strapped elementary school in Lakeland, FL, has turned to the local church to help out. Steve Comparato, the principal of Combee Elementary School, worried at how he was going to provide essential supplies for his students when his budget was cut by a third this year, was delighted when the First Baptist Church at the Mall “adopted” his school.
The result? The church filled the school’s resource room with $5000 worth of supplies; it also catered spaghetti dinners at evening school events, bought sneakers for needy kids, and provided math and English tutors.
And in exchange? “We have inroads into public schools that we had not had before,” says Pastor Dave McClamma. “By befriending the students, we have the opportunity to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus Christ.”
McClamma added, “At Christmas, the school connected the church with parents who said they wouldn’t mind being visited at home by First Baptist. The church brought gifts, food, and the gospel. Of about 30 families visited over two weekends in December, thirteen ‘came to the Lord.’”
Also according to McClamma, adopting Combee goes far beyond providing resources like school supplies. “The purpose is to show them the church cares, and that there is hope, and hope is found in Jesus Christ.”
“If they want to come in and help, who am I to say no?” asks Steve Comparato, the principal.
As I wrote here last week, there is a budget crisis in education going on right now. Public schools around the nation are desperate to come up with innovative ways to make money: the San Diego Unified School District is considering plastering its middle- and high-school gyms with corporate advertising, and thus bring in $30,000 to $50,000 a year per school; Manatee County, FL, just received a $20,000 check from a local cucumber grower with the idea of sponsoring and naming an elementary school engineering program; bake sales just don’t cut it anymore.
These may be pacts with the devil, but what about a pact with Jesus? There are plenty of people of faith who help those in need because they care about them deeply. There is no problem with churches, or any other faith-based groups, offering to help by donating funds or supplies, as long as that is all they are doing.
But I believe that if religious groups only give that help with the intention of having unimpeded access to the kids and their families, then the school would be better off without them. Conditional charity is not altruism; it’s more like exchange of goods for allegiance.
Many people of faith feel the same way. “I have great concerns about churches who see public schools as, well, what shall I say, church membership,” said Harry Parrott, a retired Baptist minister who runs a local chapter of American United for Separation of Church and State.
It’s not in the interests of either side to allow religious groups open access to public school children. And by the way, whatever happened to separation of church and state?
Creative Commons - robynneblume |
Top 5 Tips for a Successful and Sane Kickstarter
In the coming months we'll be inviting guest blog posts from a variety of people in and around indie development, across a wide range of topics, and we're delighted to present this week's expert insight from the Failbetter Games team. If the name's not familiar, their games certainly will be - Sunless Sea was developed with the aid of a Kickstarter campaign, releasing in early 2015 and emerging as one of the games of the year.
Earlier this year, the team launched a new Kickstarter campaign for the follow-up, called Sunless Skies. At the time of writing, it still has a few hours to go (so go back it!), but if you're reading this after it's done, we'd recommend looking over the campaign all the same to understand how the team structured the page, the assets they used, and so on. If you have specific questions, or would like to see certain topics covered, let us know in the comments section.
1. Prep your page within an inch of its life
Write an introduction to your game, covering all of the most interesting or unique aspects. What will make people want to play it, instead of anything else? What will make people want to back it, with no gameplay to convince them? (Or do you have a demo?)
Then make it as clear as possible. This is easier said than done! Something that makes sense to you, who knows the game backwards, might not be obvious on first reading to someone new. And you only have people’s attention for a short amount of time! Get as much feedback as you can at this stage, perhaps from someone who reviews Kickstarter campaigns professionally.
We released the preview link of our page quite widely when it was almost ready. This meant lots of peoplgot to take a look at it early, which feels quite special. We’re pretty sure this contributed strongly to our campaign being funded in four hours!
2. Give your backers plenty to do
We knew that we had a core of people who have followed our work and backed us before, so we wanted to make sure there was something in the campaign for all of them. Some have the finances to contribute at a high level, so we created some limited backer rewards at a high tier for them. Some aren’t able to back at all, so we created social goals which they could help us fulfill. These included simple things like following us on Twitter and Twitch, and quite intensive things like getting 11 people to dress up as characters from our universe for a group picture (seven teams of people did this!). Having social goals meant we had things to talk about throughout the campaign.
3. The middle-of-campaign slump is inevitable
We had quite a lot going on during our campaign, with various events and social goals to keep people talking, but we still had a long period of low and steady activity for most of the month. Don’t be too disheartened if the middle of your campaign looks like a ghost town! Consider social goals to help the campaign feel like it still has momentum when there isn’t as much funding coming in. Keep communicating with your backers, cross-promoting with other relevant Kickstarters, and doing partnerships where you can (we did a free weekend on Steam for our other game, which definitely helped bring some attention!).
4. Be really careful what you promise
We had a lot of stretch goals in mind for Sunless Skies, and at time of writing it looks like we’ll make all of them (edit: we did it!). This is excellent news, and will really make the game sing!
For Sunless Sea, our previous Kickstarter, we promised a whole expansion to the base game as a (relatively low) stretch goal. Happily it worked out for us: the base game was a success and so was the expansion. But what was a few words on the Kickstarter page ended up being over a year’s work.
This time we’ve been a bit more conservative. Every team worked on the Kickstarter page, so we could spot where we were perhaps promising too much. Our production schedule and budget were consulted constantly so there was no scope creep.
It doesn’t mean we won’t make DLC for Sunless Skies in future, but it does mean we’re not tied to making DLC if the worst happens and the base game isn’t a success.
5. Put your health first
Watching a Kickstarter succeed or fail can be really draining. You’ve put all of your efforts into something and whichever way the campaign goes it represents the beginning of even bigger amounts of work. Update on a schedule, and don’t camp in the community, reading every single comment. It can be quite addictive, but 30 days is a long time, so keep it to your normal work hours. Get plenty of sleep! Don’t be afraid to tell your backers you’re taking a few days off, at the end!
This Kickstarter has been tremendous fun, but it’s also a lot more work than you might expect! Best of luck if you’re planning one! |
Your Minnesota Vikings are the 2015 NFC North Champions. AND IT WAS NEVER IN DOUBT!
OK maybe a little bit in doubt. Like "took ten years off my life and I'm still kind of shaking as I write this" in doubt.
In a way this final game at Lambeau was a perfect microcosm of the 2015 Minnesota Vikings season. The offense would look efficient and dangerous for spurts but then disappear for stretches thanks to poor blocking and inconsistent quarterback play. The defense was the backbone of the team and capitalized on their opportunities. And just when things started looking bleak and you thought it was going to be "the same old Vikings" all over again, they rallied and came away victorious.
Like the rest of the season, it wasn't always pretty. But in the end, the Vikings persevered and won the NFC North.
And that's a really nice thing. Now this really big team gets a home playoff game comin' with no road trip strings to start a quest for some really big rings.
What a time to be alive.
Cause I got a really big team
And they need some really big rings
They need some really nice things
Better be comin' with no strings
Better be comin' with no strings
We need some really nice things
We need some really big rings
I got a really big team
Man what a time to be alive
You and yours vs. me and mine
Are we talkin' teams? Are we talkin' teams?
Oh you switchin' sides? Wanna come with me?
Onto the NFC NORTH CHAMPION stocks!
Blue Chip Stocks
Everson Griffen. Griff was an absolute beast tonight. He was always causing trouble and drawing lots of attention. (And getting held by Josh Sitton on every other play, but I digress.) Griffen racked up six total tackles, two sacks, and was also the catalyst for the game's biggest play, an Aaron Rodgers fumble returned for a touchdown by Captain Munnerlyn.
On a defense full of players that shined bright on Sunday night, Griffen's star outshone them all.
Xaiver Rhodes. Rhodes certainly has a penchant for finishing off seasons in style. After an amazing finish to the 2014 campaign, Rhodes has been up and down for most of this season. On Sunday, the Rhodes were definitely closed. He defended a lot of potential big plays and chose an excellent time for his second career interception.
Eric Kendricks. I lost count of how many important open field tackles Kendricks made tonight. Every time the Vikings defense made a big stop it seemed like #54 was right in the middle of it. The Packers would have had several more first downs if it wasn't for the rookie's sound fundamentals. Thank you, UCLA football, for churning out such amazing linebackers. The future is bright with Kendricks and Anthony Barr flying all over the field.
Mike Zimmer. Throughout the season, Zim has probably been the most important Blue Chipper of them all. In just two seasons he has completely changed the culture in Minnesota. The Vikings head coach has instilled a mindset and will that the Vikings haven't possessed in decades. His tough-love, no-nonsense approach to mixing in savvy, dependable veterans with a bevy of young, impressionable talent has been a master class of how to build a team for both the present and the future. This team has been checking off tasks that haven't been completed in years. Winning on the road. Winning at Chicago. Winning when everything wasn't clicking. Winning with defense. Winning in prime time. And on Sunday night, Zimmer and his troops went into the home state of Making A Murderer and murdered the ruling NFC North dynasty in their own backyard. Thank you, Coach Zimmer. The Vikings wouldn't be here without you.
ON SUNDAY NIGHT, ZIMMER AND HIS TROOPS WENT INTO THE HOME STATE OF MAKING A MURDERER AND MURDERED THE RULING NFC NORTH DYNASTY IN THEIR OWN BACKYARD.
Solid Investments
Adam Thielen. Adrian Peterson won the third rushing title of his career on Sunday night but he had to settle for a tie in the game rushing title. Both AP and Thielen finished with 67 yards rushing and Thielen only needed two attempts to do so. Thielen also chipped in with a 16 yard reception. The 2014 Mr. Mankato is a Swiss Army Knife that the Vikings can use all over the offense and special teams.
Blair Walsh. Walsh didn't miss any of his four kicks and blasted most of his kickoffs for touchbacks. After an incredibly shaky start to the season Walsh has seemed to settle back into his more familiar role of being incredibly reliable. (And if he misses a kick in the postseason, don't yell at me for jinxing him.)
Harrison Smith. The non-Pro Bowler put in another Pro Bowl performance, picking up half a sack and playing his usual role of do-everything stopper for the Vikings defense. Smith is the glue that holds the back end of the D together.
Jerick McKinnon. Jet was the team's leading receiver (albeit with only 3 receptions and 33 yards) and provided an important spark when Peterson went out with a lower back injury. Seattle better see a lot of #31 in the playoffs because he makes the offense much more dynamic every time he's out there.
T.J. Clemmings. You know who we didn't hear a lot from this evening? The Vikings rookie right tackle. You know why? Because he had a pretty damn good game. I have included Clemmings in the Stock Market Report several times this season but usually for all the wrong reasons. Outside of a missed block on a toss play I didn't notice any glaring slip-ups from Clemmings.
And any time you go full Liu Kang on Clay Matthews, that makes you a solid investment.
Junk Bonds
Cordarrelle Patterson. CP has exactly one job on this team: return kickoffs. That shouldn't be hard for a first round pick with a ton of athleticism. Right?
Wrong.
So he made a mistake. A very costly, careless mistake, but it's not like he was trying to sabotage a chance at putting the game away. Maybe Mason Crosby was just in his head after drawing a dumb penalty on Patterson the last time these two teams played.
What irks me the most is that every time the NBC cameras cut to Patterson after the fumble he was smiling and joking around. I'm not saying he needs to sit on the bench and pout the rest of the game, but what the hell Cordarrelle? Acting like it's a blowout or a preseason game should piss your teammates off, not just the fans.
That said, Patterson was the only person to score against the Seahawks last time around, so we might as well keep using his services while he's still around. Which shouldn't be after this season.
Matt Kalil. I'm starting to wonder if injuries are starting to linger with him again because he is starting to look a lot slower protecting around the edge. It's not that he's getting beat--that will happen from time to time even to the best left tackles. It's how he's getting beat--with simple speed rushes around the end. The first matchup with the Seahawks was an abject disaster for the entire offensive line; Kalil will have to play better this time around for the offense to stand a chance.
Teddy Bridgewater. Teddy had a real opportunity to establish himself in the biggest game of the season. Instead he finished the game with 99 yards passing. Bridgewater missed two touchdowns on the first drive by overthrowing wide open receivers on deep passes. But that paled in comparison to what has to be worst play of his young career:
There's no excuse for trying to go full Favre with a ten point lead in the third quarter. But at least Teddy realizes how dumb that left-handed interception was. After tweeting about what a great team win it was for the Vikings, he subtweeted himself with this gem:
Just don't ever do that again Teddy! — Teddy Bridgewater (@teddyb_h2o) January 4, 2016
Amen, Teddy. Bring your A game next week, because your team is going to need it against Seattle.
Terence Newman. Newman has had an excellent season but this game certainly wasn't his best work. He missed a couple big tackles and got caught in coverage by James Jones a handful of times. I hate to sound like a broken record here but he'll need to play a lot better against the Seattle receivers.
Buy/Sell
Buy: That fake punt on the first drive! What a smart call to set the tone and get three important points on the team's first drive.
Buy: Mixing it up a bit more on first down. The Vikings ran the ball 15 times on first down and passed seven times. That might seem a little lopsided until you realize they ran the ball on 41 of 47 first downs over the past two weeks. Being overly predictable will be a death knell for the Vikings offense against the dangerous Seahawks defense next week.
Sell: Clock management at the end of the first half. Again. The Vikings faced 4th and 2 at the Packers 43 with :15 seconds remaining. If you're planning on going for it, calling a timeout is fine. If you're planning on trying a really long field goal or launching a Hail Mary, let the clock run down to a few seconds left. But calling a timeout with :15 left then getting a delay of game penalty? The coaching staff and the players better run through end-of-half/game scenarios a whole bunch this week because they need everyone on the same page pronto.
Buy: The Sharrif Floyd mic drop. I don't need to explain this one do I?
Sell: Losing Rhett Ellison. Learning that he tore his patella tendon and will miss the postseason is big news. Ellison will never light up the box score but he is quietly one of the more crucial players on the Vikings offense. His blocking in both the pass and run game will be hard to make up for.
Buy: The defense holding strong even though they were completely gassed. When the Packers suddenly started moving the ball in the fourth quarter it wasn't because Rodgers and company had finally "figured it out" or were "turning it on late." It was because the defense was exhausted! They spent about 60% of the game on the field, including 8:35 of the last ten minutes of the game. It was truly an amazing effort by a defense that was frankly forced to do too much tonight.
Sell: Ragnar. As you may have heard, a certain entitled former mascot switched allegiances before the game in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. And now the Packers are 0-1 with Ragnar as a fan. Good riddance Benedict Ragnold.
Buy: A home playoff game. Yes, the Seahawks look poised to make a third straight Super Bowl run. Yes, the Vikings were humbled at home by Seattle a month ago. But like I said in my preview on Thursday, this is the playoffs. There aren't going to be any cupcake matchups anymore so you might as well play the tough teams at home. The Redskins are playing really well over the past five games and I don't know if my heart could handle another game like that in Green Bay. Winning a division title and finally shutting up the folks to the east of us is the most satisfying outcome possible, Wild Card opponent be damned. So bring on the Seahawks and let's see what happens next Sunday at noon.
(Besides, who in their right mind wants to go to Lambeau two weeks in a row in January? Even if Teddy Bridgewater has never lost there.)
Gemma Thompson Quote of the Day
I went to a friend's house to watch the game tonight. My family was going to come with but my wife decided that she wanted a quiet night with the girls before returning to work from maternity leave on Monday morning. So before I headed out I put the girls in their Vikings jammies and got ready to leave. Before I left I asked my older daughter a very important question: "Are the Vikings gonna win tonight Gemma?"
"Yep! Skoohhh Vikings, less Gooo!"
And then she blew me a kiss goodbye. Just like the Packers kissed the NFC North title goodbye. |
After news broke Wednesday night that the President may have struck a deal with Democratic congressional leaders to pass DACA legislation, on Thursday morning, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today gushed over how Trump “sounds like a Democrat” when discussing illegal immigration and tax reform.
Continuing their giddy evening newscast coverage of Trump inviting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to the White House for dinner, the ABC and NBC morning shows found sudden respect for the commander-in-chief after spending the entire summer pummeling him.
“Before that bipartisan dinner, the President presided over a bipartisan meeting....Where the Democrat-turned-Republican president sounded a lot more like a Democrat, saying the wealthy may have to pay higher taxes,” correspondent Cecilia Vega proclaimed on Good Morning America.
Following Vega’s report, co-host George Stephanopoulos announced: “This has enraged conservatives. A couple tweets overnight, Steve King, conservative from Iowa, ‘Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.’” Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon hailed:
You know, he seemed conflicted about DACA and the compassion for individuals is one of the things he really tweeted out, “Why would we want to deport people who are here through no fault of their own, who are serving their country in the military in some cases.” Those are more Democratic talking points than conservative.
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
Stephanopoulos followed up: “The President also sounds like a Democrat saying wealthier – the wealthy are gonna have to pay more under his tax plan.” Avlon agreed: “...the President saying he’s going to focus on middle class tax cuts and the wealthy might get a hike, that sounds like a Democrat.”
On NBC’s Today, correspondent Peter Alexander enthused:
All of it a strategic shift for the President. Just last week, shocking the capital by making a deal with Democrats on a debt ceiling extension, pulling the rug out from under the GOP....Not long ago, Mr. Trump mocked Schumer as the “head clown,” Pelosi as a “loser”....Now he’s cozying up to the Democratic duo....Even sounding a lot like a Democrat on taxes, signaling that the rich might pay more.
Reporting for Wednesday’s CBS This Morning, Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes touted: “I think what it says is that the President likes to be able to not just cut deals, but cut quick deals and he's able to do that with Democrats....These deals with Democrats in comparison are relatively clean, and clearly the President likes that.”
The biased segments on ABC and NBC were brought to viewers by Tropicana, IHOP, and Carmax.
Here are excerpts of the September 14 coverage on both networks: |
A jury unanimously found former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland guilty on all seven counts in a campaign finance conspiracy scheme in New Haven federal court Friday. (Published Friday, Sept. 19, 2014)
A jury unanimously found former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland guilty on all seven counts in a campaign finance conspiracy scheme in New Haven federal court Friday.
Rowland, 57, was convicted of conspiring with Brian Foley, the husband of 2012 congressional candidate Lisa Wilson-Foley, to hide $35,000 in payments for work he did on her campaign.
He offered to do the same for Fifth-District Republican candidate Mark Greenberg, who took the stand as the prosecution's first witness. Greenberg said Rowland offered to serve as a consultant during his 2010 congressional run but asked to be paid through Greenberg's animal rescue group.
Rowland Trial Goes to Jury
Prosecutors and Defense attorneys lay out their final cases for the jury (Published Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014)
Rowland could serve up to 57 years in prison, but his lead attorney said Friday afternoon that the former governor plans to appeal the verdict.
"We think there were many, many interesting, very serious legal issues litigated in this case and we're very much looking forward to litigating them further," said lead defense attorney Reid Weingarten.
"Of course we're extremely disappointed with the verdict," said Weingarten. "We always believed that the prosecutors made a very large mountain out of a very small molehill all triggered by an all-too-mundane political dust-up in a congressional campaign."
After the verdict was read, Rowland reached his hand back to a family member sitting behind him. Weingarten slumped in his chair and looked down, and another attorney put his head in his hands.
Rowland's family cried as the jury exited the courtroom. Jurors also seemed emotional and took deep breaths as they left.
Prosecutors did not visibly react.
"I heard it suggested cynically during the trial, both in the courtroom and outside the courtroom, that this case was simply politics as usual. This was far from that," said Asst. U.S. Attorney Mark Gustafson. "Our electoral system is founded on several vital principles, one of which is transparency."
Rowland Does Not Testify at Trial
Rowland's defense team rested on Wednesday after calling just one witness. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2014)
The conviction comes 10 years after Rowland, a Republican who also served in the House of Representatives, stepped down as governor amid an earlier corruption investigation that sent him to federal prison for 10 months.
On Friday, he was convicted in New Haven federal court of one count of conspiracy, two counts of falsification of records, one count of false statements, one count of false statements, two counts of illegal campaign contributions.
Rowland's attorneys argued that the former governor volunteered on Wilson-Foley's campaign and was paid for the consulting work he did for Apple Health Care Inc., Foley's nursing home chain.
Deliberations, which began Thursday, lasted about seven hours between Thursday and Friday.
As a repeat offender, Rowland could face a much stiffer sentence. In the earlier case, he was convicted of taking illegal gifts while in office.
"If you're in a situation where you ask yourself, 'Is this what we should do, or maybe not?' you're pretty close to getting the answer for yourselves," Gustafson said.
A pre-sentence report will be served Oct. 31. The defense counsel must respond by Nov. 14 and the final pre-sentence report will come Nov. 24. A sentencing memorandum will be filed by Dec. 1 and responses are due by Dec. 6.
Foley and Wilson-Foley each pleaded guilty to conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions on March 31. They have not yet been sentenced.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC Connecticut |
In breaking news, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul just won the CPAC straw poll, which indicates that he is one of the front candidates for the 2016 presidential bid on the Republican side and it has the establishment in a tizzy.
The Hill reports,
In one of CPAC 2013's best-received speeches, Paul on Thursday told conservative activists the Republican Party had grown "stale and moss covered" and said the GOP needs a more libertarian approach that makes freedom the movement's defining principle. take our poll - story continues below Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story?
Will the media learn anything from their biased reporting of the Jussie Smollett story? * Yes, they've gotten so much wrong recently that they're bound to be on their best behavior. No, they suffer from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Jussie who?
Email *
Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to Freedom Outpost updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Trending: Ex-CNN Reporter Amber Lyon Explains How They Fake The News The poll, conducted over the course of CPAC, included 2,930 participants and skewed heavily towards young attendees, with respondents between 18 and 25 years of age making up more than half of the vote. Young voters helped propel Paul’s father, former GOP presidential contender Ron Paul (R-Texas), to national prominence, and make up a core of the libertarian party for which the younger Paul now carries the torch.
“It sounds like this thing is off and running for 2016,” said Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, as he introduced the results.
Paul was the favorite of attendees getting 25% of the vote, just ahead of Marco Rubio with 23%, who is ineligible for the presidency anyway due to not being a natural born citizen. Senator Ted Cruz ranked seventh with 4%.
In CPAC’s 40 year history, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush are the only presidents who won its straw poll. |
Judge Orders Woman To Delete Her Facebook Page For Typing LOL About Her DUI
from the extreme-measures dept
"My dumb bass got a DUI and I hit a car...LOL"
This one is from a week ago, and a bunch of you submitted it (though Tim K gets the hat tip for being first), but just getting around to it now. Apparently, a woman named Paula Asher, who hit a car while driving under the influence, was ordered by the judge in the case to delete her Facebook account , after she typed the following status message on her Facebook page:The judge seemed to take the "LOL" statement literally -- that she was "laughing out loud" at her drunk driving accident -- and ordered her to delete her Facebook account. She then ignored that order, leading to a contempt of court charge and jail time. I have no problem with her facing punishment for the drunk driving, but being told to delete her Facebook page seems extreme on a variety of levels. First, the literal interpretation of "LOL" is a bit unfair, considering in context how many people use the term today. Rather than literally meaning that they're "laughing out loud," it's often an expression of exasperation at a situation people find themselves in. Many people seem to use it more asto a statement they make, rather than as an accurate description of what they're doing.But, even beyond that, it seems wrong to order the deletion of an entire Facebook account over one off-hand statement like that. Facebook had nothing to do with this woman's drunk driving -- which, again, she should be punished for. I could even see reason to up the level of punishment for potentially showing a lack of remorse or recognition of the seriousness of her crime. But forcing someone to delete their entire Facebook account, when it's a key way that many people communicate today, seems extreme. Facebook didn't make Asher drive drunk. Nor did it make her not show remorse afterward. Forcing her to shut it down completely seems to go beyond reasonable.
Filed Under: dui, lol, social networking
Companies: facebook |
Bikes like the new Yeti SB5c pack a ton of technology, and usually carry a price tag to match. Lots of folks write to us criticizing the crop of new bikes that are, admittedly, pushing the price envelope at five, seven, even ten thousand dollars. Is that a bad thing for consumers? Not at all, I say.
Every time we feature an expensive bike, component or widget, some portion of readers complain vehemently about the asking price of that wonder-product. In fact, some of you even get downright angry and spiteful. Not only is that negativity unwarranted, the position of the complaint is incredibly shortsighted. Here’s why:
These bold, expensive, technologically innovative products are the bicycle industry equivalent of Ferrari or Lamborghini from the automotive world. Do people complain about how expensive those cars are? No. If they can afford to buy them, they do. Those of us who can’t afford to plunk down for a 918 Spyder lust to experience the mind-bending performance.
But, most of us will not have that opportunity, so we live vicariously through the media that affords us those opportunities; words, photos and video. That’s part of the job here at Dirt Rag. More importantly, these super-bikes and über-products are driving technology that will eventually trickle down for all of us to enjoy.
Look at products like Shimano’s 10-speed Deore group and SRAM’s X7 group. Ridden one of these groups lately? Both the brakes and drivetrain work better than they have any right. All of the technologies in this group trickled down from XX1 and XTR. If these companies would have listened to the peanut gallery about those groups being too expensive, we wouldn’t have such damn good budget parts.
And it’s not just parts. Walk into a bike shop today and a $1,500 bike is far more advanced and capable than a $1,500 bike from 10 or even five years ago, even when adjusting for inflation. From handlebar tips to tires on the ground, each piece has improved significantly. Not to mention the consumer’s ever-expanding choices. Shopping in that price range today? You have a wider selection than ever.
Everyone loves to hate on the price of SRAM’s 11-speed one-by drivetrains. But when this one-by technology trickles down to the X7 pricepoint in some unknown number of years, the same folks who complained about the price of the XX1 group will buy and enjoy the 11-speed awesomeness. When that happens, I hope they appreciate the irony of their original position.
Not only do these expensive goods drive innovation, the data shows that people are buying these products. Santa Cruz tells me the carbon Bronson bikes outsell the aluminum models three to one. Yeti has said it won’t even bother developing an aluminum version of the SB5c model. Despite hoards of complaints about a fancy carbon bikes being too expensive, people are voting with their wallet to enjoy this technology.
The point is, none of us need this expensive tech to experience the joy of riding a bicycle in the dirt. But, ripping the latest wonder-bike down a ribbon of singletrack is a pretty sweet experience. Whether or not you can afford to buy one of those envelope-pushing products right now, you should appreciate the advancements these products bring to the table. In a couple of years, you’ll benefit directly from the technological trickledown.
So, dear readers, let’s all try to elevate the level of dialogue in the comments sections of our social media outlets. Together, we can make this space a little more positive by seeing the positives in progress.
What do you think?
Are bikes too expensive these days? Have you benefited from the technology they develop? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
--------------------
Like what you see? Please support independent publishing by Subscribing To Dirt Rag Magazine today. |
Gorillaz accidentally reveal upcoming tour plans on new website
Yesterday brought along the launch of Gorillaz’ new website and Instagram: a clear cut signal that the legendary animated group will be dropping a big announcement on us soon.
In the meantime, fans have been hard at work scouring the new website for any revelatory information. It appears that diligence has paid off. A member on the Gorillaz Unofficial forum named Eskido has discovered some particularly exciting news upon scanning the website’s source code: a subdirectory of the website titled “Live.” Essentially this means Gorillaz’ have built out a new wing of their site specifically for live dates. View it below:
While no dates have been confirmed by the band at present time, this provides some pretty convincing evidence that we’ll be receiving some Gorillaz live dates in the near future surrounding the new album.
Further fueling the fire, Gorillaz have been uploading an ongoing stream of photos to their social media accounts. Fans on Reddit have astutely observed that each day is highlighting a different phase of their career, with Friday projected to reveal their new Phase Four.
Categories: News |
My Santa was outstanding! She hit the nail on the head with each and every gift, and I was elated to see the outstanding items she picked out for me. I was definitely spoiled this year!
She seemed to pick up on some of my stress of being a single parent, a full time student, and a full time employee, so every gift seemed to be catered to helping me relax, which I definitely need! I'm a candle and beauty-care junkie, so everything was perfect. The soap smells outstanding (and there's a long standing joke between a friend and I about me loving hand soap more than the average person), and the body wash was something I definitely would have picked out for myself. I can't wait to crack open the bubble bath and just relax- that will definitely be happening in the next week!
Thank you so much for thinking about my son, Santa. He absolutely loves cars and was really tickled that you sent him something so thoughtful. We read a ton during the holidays, so that really allowed us to slow down and enjoy some of our favorite stories.
From my family to yours, thank you so much for such a thoughtful, kind, and perfect gift. |
The great-grandchildren of Anna Short Harrington, the woman whose likeness was used for the “Aunt Jemima” logo, are seeking what they say are their just desserts, along with at least $2 billion, in a class action lawsuit brought recently against a group of companies, led by PepsiCo and its subsidiary The Quaker Oats Company, in federal court in Illinois.
The suit, which also names as defendants Pinnacle Foods and its former suitor Hillshire Brands, accuses the companies of failing to pay Harrington and her heirs an “equitable fair share of royalties” from the pancake mix and syrup brand that uses her likeness and recipes. According to the lawsuit, Quaker Oats took control of “64 of [Harrington’s] recipes and 22 complete menus” and marketed them to the public.
Filed last week by Harrington’s great-grandson, D.W. Hunter, who is representing himself, the lawsuit alleges that Chicago-based Quaker Oats hired Harrington to take over the pre-existing Aunt Jemima role in 1935—a role she continued to serve when the company first registered the brand’s trademark two years later—and that the company also reproduced Harrington’s own pancake recipe on a mass scale. The suit claims that Harrington had entered into a “written contractual agreement to play the actress role of Aunt Jemima” that entitled her to royalties, including a percentage of the proceeds, accumulated by the brand over the years.
Hunter’s lawsuit accuses the companies of lying to cover up Quaker Oats’ employment of Harrington, adding that the heirs determined they were owed royalties when they say they discovered last October that the company had trademarked the image of their great-grandmother with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 1937 and after they found a death certificate for Harrington that named the company as her employer. Hunter has accused the companies of breach of contract, conspiracy, and fraud, among other charges, while alleging that Quaker Oats engaged in “industrial espionage” to procure Harrington’s trade secrets before failing to compensate her estate on an annual basis following her death.
The lawsuit estimates that Pinnacle has sold roughly $300 million worth of frozen pancakes, waffles, and other products from the Aunt Jemima line without providing Harrington’s family with any royalties. Hillshire (HSH) had agreed to buy Pinnacle earlier this year in a $4.2 billion deal that was later called off to free up the former to be bought by Tyson Foods for $8.6 billion.
Hunter’s 108-page complaint also alleges that PepsiCo (PEP), Pinnacle (PF), and Quaker Oats engaged in a pattern “of racial discrimination towards Anna S. Harrington’s heirs … reflecting an innate form of disrespect towards African American people,” which the lawsuit claims is evidenced in its treatment of Harrington and other women who stepped into the Aunt Jemima role over the years.
A Quaker Oats spokeswoman declined to discuss details of pending litigation, but added that the company feels the lawsuit is without merit. “People associate the Aunt Jemima brand with warmth, hospitality, and comfort, and we stand by this heritage as well as the ways in which we do business,” the company said. |
It’s easy to imprint hard on the covers of the books you read as a child. And correspondingly, it’s easy to resent the covers of new editions, no matter how high-quality they may be, simply for being new. For example, Scholastic’s new Harry Potter covers are gorgeous, but they are not the ones I grew up on, and hence they are incorrect.
But the most recent cover of Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, a 2014 edition, is enough to make even the most partisan of ’80s cover apologists consider buying a new copy.
I've never seen an update to a book's cover executed so perfectly:https://t.co/WD7dtBELpF pic.twitter.com/hh3zAJnmfW — Ryan North (@ryanqnorth) May 8, 2017
It’s a smart, graceful update to the book’s teenage voice, one that preserves Margaret’s search for meaning and identity — through God, through friends, through boobs and periods — while bringing her neatly into today’s universe of smartphones and texting. The Margaret cover is part of an entire line of Judy Blume covers at Simon & Schuster’s Atheneum Books for Young Readers, which prioritize encapsulating Blume’s deathless topics (parental divorce, sex, bullying), while taking them out of the pastel-hued photorealistic covers of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s and into the color-saturated, boldly graphic world of today’s teen trends.
To find out just how the transformation worked, I spoke to Debbie Ohi, who illustrated the Margaret cover along with three others in the new line, as well as editor Justin Chanda and art director and cover designer Lauren Rille. Our conversation covered the immortal legacy of Judy Blume, changing trends in kid-lit covers, and how the idea of a texting Margaret came to life.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Constance Grady
What’s your relationship with Judy Blume? Did you grow up with her books, or were they new to you?
Debbie Ohi
I’ve been a Judy Blume fangirl as long as I can remember. Her books were a reassurance to my younger, angsty self that I wasn’t alone in having all these bizarre thoughts. I was way too insecure and introverted to talk frankly about some of these taboo topics (at least they were taboo back then) with anyone I knew. Books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret comforted me and helped me not feel so much like a freak.
Working on the reissued middle grade and chapter books for Atheneum/S&S gave me the excuse to reread old favorites, but I also discovered some new titles I had never read, like Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and It’s Not the End of the World.
When Justin Chanda, my editor at S&S, invited me to audition to be the illustrator of the reissued books, I immediately said yes even though it meant working through the Christmas holidays and New Year’s. I knew there was no guarantee that Judy would pick me as the illustrator, but even the chance to be rejected by the Judy Blume was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
Constance Grady
How do you go about reimagining the cover for books that have been so iconic for so many people? What does that process look like?
Debbie Ohi
The cover revamp process was very much a group effort at Simon & Schuster Children’s. Even before I got involved, there had already been a lot of brainstorming and discussion behind the scenes. Justin wanted me involved on the middle-grade editions because he knew I’d be passionate about them but could also offer S&S a fresh style that hadn’t been on the covers before.
Justin Chanda
Judy was very specific about one thing: These should be books that kids today would pick up. She was not looking for nostalgia, but rather books that middle grade kids today would be drawn to.
Debbie Ohi
Justin encouraged me to also feel free to come up with my own ideas. Throughout the Christmas holidays, including New Year’s Day, he and I exchanged many emails. I would send him sketch ideas and he’d give me feedback on what was working and what wasn’t, and I’d send him more. Because the books were coming out in April and they had not yet found the right illustrator (I wasn’t the first illustrator they approached), timing was super-tight. I panicked when an ice storm in Toronto shut down our power for a few days, but a friend offered to let me work in her apartment and my husband moved all my equipment over so I could keep sketching. I owe them big time!
When everyone else at S&S got back after the holidays, I continued the brainstorming and sketching process with Justin, Dan Potash, Namrata Tripathi, and Lauren Rille.
When Justin called to let me know that I had the job, he only got a few words in before I started screaming. I don’t remember that conversation too well except that at one point, Justin said, “Yes, this is really happening.” S&S also asked if I would do the interior illustrations for three Judy Blume chapter book versions: Freckle Juice, The Pain and the Great One, and The One In The Middle Is the Green Kangaroo.
Once I was told I had the job, the real work began. Some of the cover sketches I sent in, like for Blubber and Deenie, came together pretty easily. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was the biggest challenge.
I worked 12-14 hours a day during that time. [Art director Lauren Rille] and I were joking during the process that if we turned our keyboards upside-down, crumbs would fall out because of all the meals we ate while sitting at our desks. Any time my energy started flagging, though, I’d think “OMG, I’M ILLUSTRATING JUDY BLUME BOOKS” and pow, I’d be back.
Lauren Rille
As an avid reader of her books when I was young, I pretty much had to forget everything I knew and held dear about the books I had as a kid, and try to approach these as “just another book we are making a cover for” — which is pretty much impossible! But truly, trying to separate my childhood love for the books from designing for today’s market was the trick with these. I think the graphic approach came to us relatively early in the process, but refining that, as you know, Debbie, was a challenge.
Debbie Ohi
Later that year, I was thrilled to meet Judy Blume in person. I had vowed to myself that I wouldn’t be too fan-girly, but of course when I finally met her, I burst into tears. So embarrassing. But Judy was so gracious and easygoing, so down-to-earth. Later, I was told that my reaction is pretty common for women my age who grew up with Judy’s books.
Constance Grady
Specifically for Margaret, how did the text chat log concept evolve?
Debbie Ohi
We went through many, many iterations of the Margaret cover. The team at Simon & Schuster Children’s did a lot of brainstorming and I also did some with Justin via many sketches and emailing. We kept coming back to a bra image and a locket image, but none of it really felt right.
Justin Chanda
I think it was Judy who said in an email at one point, “Margaret is more than a bra!”
The text idea was just one of those moments. It was quick, all of a sudden. We were thinking that this was the most iconic book for kids this age, so what is the most iconic thing we can think of? Texting emerged. It’s funny, of course, because there are no cell phones in the book, but Judy has also said that if it was written today, Margaret would be a texter!
We then asked “What should she text?” and it was simple: The title.
Constance Grady
This whole line of covers is very figurative and symbolic and minimalist, whereas when I was growing up all of my Judy Blume covers were just illustrations of sad girls in their bedrooms. Do you see that shift as part of a wider trend in YA book covers, or was it a choice that was specific to this line of editions?
Justin Chanda
I think iconic, spare, brightly colored covers are working well in the middle grade market. Look at the series by Stu Gibbs for a solid example. But the idea was not only be true to the market, but true to the books. To have icons that really summed up the story and the feeling of the books themselves. |
Lars is the Real Deal? by Brian Bannan August 20, 2015, 10:36 PM ET [1150 Comments] Habs Talk
Montreal Canadiens Blogger • Archive • CONTACT Montreal Canadiens Blogger • RSS
In part 2 of our series Andrew and I will look at Lars Eller. Specifically, is Eller a top 2 centre on this team?
Lars Eller has all the tools to be a prototypical top 2 centre in the NHL. He is big (6’2 215 pounds), he can skate, he can play at both ends of the ice and he has shown some high end skill. Eller’s 4 goal and 1 assist night in January 2012 was a glimpse into his potential; an effort capped by a beautiful spin-o-rama finish on a penalty shot. Eller also had a stellar run in the ’14 playoffs and was probably the Habs best forward heading into the 2013 playoff series against Ottawa. Unfortunately a crushing hit by player #62 ended his season and the Habs limped out shortly after.
Last season Eller ranked 97th in points among centres and was tied for 60th in goals scored. His snipes put him right in the range of what we would expect a top 2 centre to produce in 2015. His point total however, leaves him 30 points shy of being part of this elite group. Now Eller’s usage is certainly a factor. Eller starts close to 40% of his shifts in the Habs zone. His line mates have included Dale Weise, Brandon Prust, Jacob De la Rose and Devante Smith-Pelly. This is not exactly a who’s who of NHL snipers and set up men.
In fact, when playing with players with higher skill sets, Eller has produced nicely. His 5 point night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0kOxHEq2V0 came with Andrei Kostitsyn on his flank. Say what you will about AK46, but he made some sublime plays on this night and was a major reason Eller was able to take a 7 minute bow as first star. Take a look at Lars here: http://video.canadiens.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=147725 No one has commanded the stage at a hockey game like this since Ned Braden of the old Charlestown Chiefs. Thankfully Lars stopped short of the striptease.
Eller has shown flashes of brilliance and put up points in bunches when paired with Brendan Gallagher and Alex Galchenyuk as well. Eller does get see a ton of powerplay time to pad his stats. He does not often paired with the Habs best offensive forwards and he starts most of his shifts in the defensive end. Andrew Berkshire did a study: http://sportlogiq.com/2015/07/20/lars-eller-controlled-exit-analysis-montreal-canadiens/ that showed that Eller is actually the best Canadiens forward at controlled zone exits from the Habs end. I have watched Eller enough to take note of his ability to skate the puck out of harm’s way and weave through the neutral zone.
The main reason lars Eller is not a top 2 centre on the Canadiens is that it does not serve the team’s best interests. Eller role is to do the heavy lifting in the Habs zone and on the PK. He has slowly lessened the burden on Tomas Plekanec; a burden that often wore #14 down over the grueling length of the NHL season. The Canadiens under Coach Therrien employ their centres as a collective. Without a true ace, the Habs match their centres to roles and situations where they can succeed.
David Desharnais has exceptional vision and is a deft creative passer. However, he struggles in the face-off circle and can be over-matched in his own end by bigger centres down low. He scores at an impressive clip though, so there is a role for him. He is designated for most of the offensive zone starts in the opposition’s end. Starting in his opponent’s end means #51 is not as liable to get burned defensively and he can focus on the skills he brings to the table; namely setting up goals.
Torrey Mitchell is a tenacious checker and a solid member of the PK unit. He is also right handed. He will take the key draws on his strong side to Price’s right and help share the load with Plekanec and Eller in the Habs’ zone.
Tomas Plekanec centred the Habs top line in the ’15 playoffs. Plekanec, Pacioretty and Gallagher absolutely eviscerated the Kyle Turris line in the Ottawa series. Turris was shut down to the point of being a complete non-factor thanks to the Habs #14. Against Tampa, the Plekanec line went head to head against the Triplets. Save for the heartbreaker in the dying seconds of game 3, they were very solid and gave the Triplets almost nothing at even strength. Plekanec can play the PP and the Pk and chip in defensively. He is, at least for one more season, the Habs main man down the middle.
This brings us back to Eller. Part of the reason #81 gets the majority of the defensive zone starts is that he excels in this role. Eller is a big body who can skate. He is strong on the draws and can handle the oppositions toughest match ups in the cauldron of his own end. Eller does not get the opportunity to play with the best players or pad his stats because in Coach Therrien’s mind, that is not what is best for his hockey club. The goal is to win every night and Eller is ideally suited to chip in when he can offensively and handle the opposition’s best in his own end.
I believe Eller lacks the vision to be a top flight point producer. He is able to control the puck for long stretches on the cycle in the opponents’ end. But typically, his possession is limited to the perimeter and he lacks either the offensive repertoire to make the play himself or the vision and hockey sense to find an open teammate. Eller has all the tools to be an offensive force, but some part of his game whether it is skills or confidence does not allow him to make the impact he should.
I believe Eller to be a player that can get you through the playoffs. I believe Eller to be a key component of the team fabric and identity that leads this Canadiens team to wins. I do not believe however, that Eller is suited for top 6 duty on Montreal. |
FENTON, Mo. – Standout Saint Louis FC forward Irvin Herrera has been named in El Salvador’s squad for the country’s two upcoming games of CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying early in September. Herrera is currently tied for third in the USL with 11 goals this season for STLFC.
El Salvador will host Mexico on Friday, Sept. 2, and then visit Canada on Tuesday, Sept. 6 as it looks to reach the final stage of qualification. El Salvador is currently two points behind both Honduras and Canada for second place in the group, with Mexico already having secured first place.
“We're very excited for this opportunity that Irvin has earned, said STLFC general manager Jeremy Alumbaugh. “When we signed him we told him that playing in the USL would give him every opportunity to continue and represent the El Salvador National Team. It's a testament to the quality of the league and quality of his teammates.
“While we will miss him while he is gone, this is something that happens all over the world when players get called in, and we wish him the best of luck." |
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday said he will appoint a senior officer to be a liaison between himself and the service secretaries and service chiefs to tackle an increasing number of ethical lapses and scandals across the services.
Hagel has not selected the official yet, but promised it would be a senior ranking general, and one with experience ranging from the combat theater to curriculum and training.
The move follows recent revelations of exam cheating among Air Force and Navy personnel working with nuclear weapons and reactors. These scandals followed a report by the Washington Post exposing a host of investigations that included generals accused of sexual assault, drinking on the job and corruption.
"Ethics and character are absolute values we can't take for granted but have to be constantly reinforced," Hagel told an afternoon press conference at the Pentagon. "An uncompromising culture of accountability must exist at every level of command. That must be practiced and emphasized by leadership at every level. Like at all institutions, it starts at the top."
Hagel called the effort "a top priority," and said the officer he appoints will work daily with the service secretaries and brass, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, to assess and fix the problem.
He said he will meet with the officer weekly to hear reports on what is being done.
Currently, both the Air Force and Navy have investigations into allegations of widespread cheating by airmen and sailors on proficiency exams. The Air Force has suspended 92 Air Force nuclear missile officers suspended at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., where they are accused of cheating on monthly proficiency tests or not reporting knowledge of the scam.
In the Navy, 32 senior noncommissioned officers training to be instructors on nuclear reactors have been accused of cheating on their own tests, according to officials.
Meanwhile, court documents in a federal case allege a federal contractor bribed multiple Navy officers in exchange for information on ship schedules and cooperation in steering Navy ships to ports where the company could reap higher fees.
The increased reports of sexual assault have been a recurring embarrassment to the services in recent year. Congress is now looking at different pieces of legislation intended to change the way sexual assault cases are handled in the military.
In one of the most recent cases, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus forced the resignation of a senior civilian because of alleged sexual misconduct with a subordinate.
Mabus asked for the resignation of Robert Martinage, a Navy undersecretary, "following a loss of confidence in Martinage's abilities to effectively perform his duties," the Navy said in a statement in January.
Hagel would not speculate on whether the problems could be a fallout from the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I don't think there is one simple answer to the issue of ethics, values lapses in some of these areas," he said. "That's why were taking a hard look at this. I think we need to find out if there is a deep, wide problem. If there is, then what is the scope of the problem, how did it occur? Was it a constant focus on 12 years of two long land wars, taking our emphasis off some of these other areas?"
"It's not as simple as one or two things," he said. "But we intend to find out." |
It has been one year since three Al Jazeera journalists were arrested in Egypt in a case that has sparked international outrage.
Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste were arrested in Cairo on Dec. 29, 2013, under false charges of aiding the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and spreading false news. In June, Greste, an Australian, and Fahmy, an Egyptian-Canadian, received seven-year prison terms, and Mohamed, an Egyptian, was sentenced to 10 years.
Mohamed's wife, Jehan Rashed, told Al Jazeera that the day her husband was arrested had been the worst of her life. "The sentiment of injustice is overwhelming," she said. "Baher was arrested on this day a year ago. It was the worst day Baher, our children and I have ever lived.
"It was a dark day. I wonder if the [Egyptian] army and police are protecting the people. They came to arrest a journalist, while realizing deep within he is a respectable professional, but they acted as if he was a felon," she said.
On Thursday an appeal for the three journalists will be heard at Egypt’s Court of Cassation. The court will look at the process behind the original trial, which Al Jazeera has always maintained was flawed. The court can dismiss the cases, uphold the verdicts and sentences or order a new trial.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi may issue a presidential pardon, but he maintains that he will not interfere in the judicial process. The Egyptian government has defended the incarceration of the journalists, arguing that it was not a political decision and that it is now up to the appeals process to determine what should happen next.
Despite Sisi's stated reluctance to interfere with the judicial process, statements he made in recent months signaled a possible softening of that stance. In July local media reported that Sisi said he wished that the journalists had been deported rather than jailed, in the first signal that he disagreed with sentences handed down the previous month.
In a November interview with France 24, Sisi said that when the three were arrested, he "did not have the power to make decisions about their situation. If I had been president at that time, I would have decided, for the good and security of Egypt, that the journalists would have to be expelled, to put an end to this issue once and for all."
He also told France 24 that the possibility of a presidential pardon was "under discussion."
The White House, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the European Union, the Australian government and more than 150 rights groups — including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute — have called for the release of the Al Jazeera staffers.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Durban, South Africa, on Monday, former U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay said she is extremely concerned about the harassment of journalists and rights activists in Egypt. With a number of journalists detained in Egypt, she considers freedom of expression the real target.
Mohamed, Fahmy and Greste were arrested in Cairo as they covered the aftermath of the army's removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency in July. The prosecution said Greste, Al Jazeera's East Africa correspondent, and his Egypt bureau colleagues aided the Brotherhood and produced false news reports on the turmoil in Egypt.
The interim Egyptian government listed the Brotherhood, which supported Morsi, as a terrorist organization shortly before the three men were arrested. Among the evidence that prosecution presented were a BBC podcast, a news report made while none of the accused were in Egypt, a pop music video by the Australian singer Gotye and several recordings on non-Egyptian issues.
The Court of Cassation will examine how the country's law has been applied so far in the journalists' cases, but it will not assess the evidence or the charges. It is mostly procedural, with arrest warrants, the trial and the verdict to be reviewed. The judges meet for a week every month, but there is no time frame for them to issue a decision.
Al Jazeera |
430 at cu-boulder a guest Apr 16th, 2010 1,385 Never a guest1,385Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up , it unlocks many cool features!
rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 3.00 KB TO: CU-Boulder Students FROM: Office of the Chancellor SENDER: Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano DATE: April 15, 2010 SUBJECT: The 420 gathering at CU-Boulder on April 20, 2010 Dear CU student: As another April 20 approaches, we again are faced with concerns from students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, regents and community members about the 420 gathering on the CU-Boulder campus. As we said last year, we share these concerns. An unsponsored gathering of thousands in the heart of our campus for the sole purpose of engaging in what is still unlawful activity is not only contrary to what we stand for as a university, it is a public safety challenge of the first order. With this in mind, on April 20, 2010, please do not participate in unlawful activity that devalues the reputation of your university and degree. At the same time, encourage your fellow Buffs to act with pride and remember who they really are - part of a dynamic environment of teaching, research, learning, and service composed of outstanding faculty and proud students and alumni. Be advised that on April 20 the following safety parameters will be enforced: -Obey the instructions of public safety officials at all times in entering and leaving campus, and act with concern for those around you, discouraging dangerous behavior of any kind. -Parking limitations similar to those during CU home football games will be enforced. Parking on campus will be greatly limited, available only at meters or for those holding CU parking permits. Traffic barricades will be set up at Colorado Avenue and Folsom Street and on 18th Street to limit traffic in the heart of campus. Please observe all parking regulations within the City of Boulder. -While police will be present on the Norlin Quad to support crowd safety, individuals found using marijuana on their way to or from the 420 gathering, or in other locations on campus, face a citation from CUPD. Likewise, no alcohol will be permitted on the Norlin Quad or elsewhere on campus, and intoxicated persons could be taken into custody or escorted to an alcohol recovery center, or both. -CU students who violate the alcohol or drug provisions of the CU Code of Conduct in the ways described above, or in other ways, are also subject to penalties from CU-Boulder's Office of Judicial Affairs. At the Norlin Quad, no vending of any merchandise or food will be permitted. No buying and selling of marijuana will be allowed. No barbecue grills, structures, slacklines, sporting or game apparatus, or large signs may be erected. We want to re-emphasize that our intention in this communication is safety. This is an unsanctioned event on our campus, but regardless, we all desire it be carried out with no injuries to individuals and no damage to property. We ask for, and expect, your full cooperation in achieving this important goal. Sincerely, Philip P. DiStefano, Chancellor Julie Wong, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Deb Coffin, Dean of Students
RAW Paste Data
TO: CU-Boulder Students FROM: Office of the Chancellor SENDER: Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano DATE: April 15, 2010 SUBJECT: The 420 gathering at CU-Boulder on April 20, 2010 Dear CU student: As another April 20 approaches, we again are faced with concerns from students, faculty, staff, parents, alumni, regents and community members about the 420 gathering on the CU-Boulder campus. As we said last year, we share these concerns. An unsponsored gathering of thousands in the heart of our campus for the sole purpose of engaging in what is still unlawful activity is not only contrary to what we stand for as a university, it is a public safety challenge of the first order. With this in mind, on April 20, 2010, please do not participate in unlawful activity that devalues the reputation of your university and degree. At the same time, encourage your fellow Buffs to act with pride and remember who they really are - part of a dynamic environment of teaching, research, learning, and service composed of outstanding faculty and proud students and alumni. Be advised that on April 20 the following safety parameters will be enforced: -Obey the instructions of public safety officials at all times in entering and leaving campus, and act with concern for those around you, discouraging dangerous behavior of any kind. -Parking limitations similar to those during CU home football games will be enforced. Parking on campus will be greatly limited, available only at meters or for those holding CU parking permits. Traffic barricades will be set up at Colorado Avenue and Folsom Street and on 18th Street to limit traffic in the heart of campus. Please observe all parking regulations within the City of Boulder. -While police will be present on the Norlin Quad to support crowd safety, individuals found using marijuana on their way to or from the 420 gathering, or in other locations on campus, face a citation from CUPD. Likewise, no alcohol will be permitted on the Norlin Quad or elsewhere on campus, and intoxicated persons could be taken into custody or escorted to an alcohol recovery center, or both. -CU students who violate the alcohol or drug provisions of the CU Code of Conduct in the ways described above, or in other ways, are also subject to penalties from CU-Boulder's Office of Judicial Affairs. At the Norlin Quad, no vending of any merchandise or food will be permitted. No buying and selling of marijuana will be allowed. No barbecue grills, structures, slacklines, sporting or game apparatus, or large signs may be erected. We want to re-emphasize that our intention in this communication is safety. This is an unsanctioned event on our campus, but regardless, we all desire it be carried out with no injuries to individuals and no damage to property. We ask for, and expect, your full cooperation in achieving this important goal. Sincerely, Philip P. DiStefano, Chancellor Julie Wong, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Deb Coffin, Dean of Students |
A new staffer faces disciplinary action after a tweet from the Atlanta City Council’s verified account created a political firestorm early Wednesday.
The erroneous tweet, which indicated Mayor Kasim Reed vetoed a measure intended to reduce penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana, was pushed out to thousands of the council’s followers just after 6 a.m. — nearly 12 hours after he signed the legislation.
Good morning #Atlanta. We received an email overnight that the Mayor VETOED our marijuana legislation for less than one ounce. More to come — Atlanta City Council (@ATLCouncil) October 11, 2017
The city recalled the tweet about 47 minutes later, but by then, nearly every major outlet in Atlanta had published the news.
RECALL: Mayor did not veto marijuana legislation — Atlanta City Council (@ATLCouncil) October 11, 2017
And while city officials could not be reached for comment, Reed quickly responded online.
In a string of tweets, he blasted journalists and blamed the mix-up on City Council President Ceasar Mitchell, who hopes to succeed Reed as mayor.
Look at the source folks. It's just another political stunt by the Ceaser Mitchell & the AJC. Here my response on @V103Atlanta at 8AM. https://t.co/3M5mfQADwr — Kasim Reed (@KasimReed) October 11, 2017
He later went on The Ryan Cameron Morning Show with Wanda Smith on radio station V-103.
“I’ve been interviewed by journalism students at Grady High School that know to call the source,” Reed said.
Council spokesman Dexter Chambers called into the program to set the record straight. The error, he said, was made when the unidentified staffer read an email from the mayor’s office. The staffer, however, did not read which bill was vetoed by the mayor, according to Chambers.
“Ryan, we have policies and procedures in place that were not followed,” he said. “She assumed it was the marijuana legislation. That was not the case.”
The mayor actually vetoed the sale of a portion of land to Hapeville, according to the council.
CORRECTION: Mayor's veto was regarding the sale of a portion of land to Hapeville, GA — Atlanta City Council (@ATLCouncil) October 11, 2017
“President Mitchell did not have anything to do with this,” said Chambers, who did not specify how the new staffer would be discplined.
Reed didn’t buy the explanation and said he questioned if Chambers should remain in his post as the head of communications.
“This was intentional,” he said. “This was a political stunt. Y’all were trying to score political points. Go tell your folks you fell on the sword.”
Reed, who makes regular appearances on Cameron’s show, said he planned to tout the signing of the legislation and a related ceremony on Wednesday’s program — before the social media firestorm.
He said he signed the measure, which will reduce the penalty for possessing an ounce or less of pot in the city from $1,000 to $75 and eliminate jail time under those circumstances, at 6:24 p.m. Tuesday.
After the show, he tweeted a picture of that moment. |
Swiping on Bumble won't just land you with a date. You can also find a new BFF, and now—with the launch of a new feature—a new job.
Bumble has just launched Bumble Bizz, a new business networking mode which lets users professionally network, connect, and mentor as they swipe through the app's 20 million-strong community.
SEE ALSO: I tried to find a new BFF on Bumble and found something better
The company says this is the first time a swiping, geo-targeted approach has been used to facilitate professional networking. Bumble says the move adds to the company's vision of "becoming the ultimate social network for people you don't yet know," be it a lover, friend, or business connection.
Bizz users can build a LinkedIn-esque digital resume for themselves on the app, detailing their experience, education, location, bio and what kind of opportunities they seek. There's a skills section, in which users can showcase their talents and awards. And, users wishing to include examples of their work can add additional profile cards.
Image: bumble
But, unlike LinkedIn, Bumble Bizz will share the app's "women first" approach which requires female users to make the first move in an effort to "eliminate abuse and inappropriate behaviour."
"By empowering women to make the first move in Bizz, Bumble expects to see the same significant uptick in positive behaviour and dramatically reduced abuse rates that it has seen in its dating and friendship platforms," reads an official Bumble statement.
Image: bumble
Much like Bumble's BFF feature, users can access Bumble Bizz by updating to the most recent version of the app, and switching modes using the drop-down at the top of the screen. Brands looking to recruit will also be able to use Bizz to attract candidates for certain roles.
Bizz will feature a photo verification tool which aims to ensure "people are who they say they are."
Using the recently-launched mode switching tool, you'll be able to hop out of Bizz and head back to Bumble's dating function, or Bumble BFF mode.
Image: rachel thompson / mashable
"Love, friendship, networking – these are all critical connections and the foundation of a healthy, happy life. We want to bring you closer to all of these connections, in an empowered way," says Whitney Wolfe Herd, Founder and CEO of Bumble.
Better get swiping for that dream job, then! |
Forget tax breaks or middle-class welfare. Rightwing political parties’ best chance of rapidly winning over voters could be via the lottery, according to new research.
A joint Australian and British study has found that lottery winners tend to switch their political allegiances to rightwing parties after their windfalls. They also appear to become less egalitarian and less concerned by the challenges faced by people on low incomes.
The research analysed more than 4,000 British citizens who won up to £200,000 ($365,000) on the country’s national lottery. Most of these wins were of relatively small amounts, with only 541 people winning over £500 ($910). In all, there were around 11,000 observations of winners, due to the fact that many people won money more than once.
Even among those who won small amounts of money, researchers found a clear trend of lottery winners switching support from the Labour party, traditionally a leftwing party, to the rightwing Conservatives.
Existing Conservative voters who won lottery money said their support for the party had strengthened after the lucky break, while winners from all political persuasions were more likely to say that ordinary people already had a fair share of wealth, compared with before their win.
Nearly 18% of winners immediately switched support to the Conservatives after their wins over the course of the study, which was based on household panel surveys taken each year from 1996 to 2009.
Overall, 45% of people who won more than £500 on the lottery said they supported rightwing parties, compared with 38% of non-winners throughout the course of the studies.
The lurch to the right was more pronounced for those who won large amounts of money and was more common among men than women.
Researchers – from the University of Melbourne and the University of Warwick – said that studying lottery winners “isn’t perfect” due to unknown biases such as the personality traits of people who play the lottery in the first place.
But they point out that more than 50% of the British population plays the lottery on a regular basis. Data on how lottery wins correlate with political views has yet to be gathered in Australia.
Professor Nattavudh Powdthavee, a report co-author at the University of Melbourne, told Guardian Australia that the researchers were studying whether political ideologies are driven by deeply held ethical views or self-interest.
“The amount won in the lottery is completely randomised but we saw that the more you win, the more right-leaning you become,” he said. “You are more likely to favour rightwing ideas, such as lower taxation, and are less favourable to redistributive policies.
“The change was instant following the lottery win. We could track it from year to year and saw there was almost no lag time, particularly if there was a large win over £500.”
The study claims to be the first of its type but it cites a US study that shows a high degree of hostility among lottery winners towards certain taxes.
A separate American paper from 2012, conducted by researchers at Berkeley University, found that the wealthier people become, the less compassionate they are. Researchers found luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other drivers rather than wait for them at an intersection, while rich people cared less than people on lower incomes about a person who had to build a patio while suffering from cancer. |
Donald Trump. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters In an abrupt reversal Tuesday afternoon, House Republicans dropped a proposal to gut an ethics office overseeing them, after coming under intense criticism from President-elect Donald Trump and others.
The reversal came just hours after Trump criticized the House GOP for making the ethics rules change an initial priority of the new Congress.
"With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority," Trump posted in two tweets. "Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS"
Incoming White House press secretary and communications director Sean Spicer later added in a conference call with reporters that Trump's tweets were a "question of priorities."
"He says their focus should be on tax reform and healthcare," he said. "It's not a question of strengthening or weakening — it's a question of priorities."
House Republicans had voted Monday night to weaken the Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan ethics watchdog, in a closed-door meeting. The lawmakers voted to place the office under the oversight of the House Ethics Committee, which gives them more control over the independent body tasked with investigating their behavior. It was a measure that was added to a larger rules package expected to pass on Tuesday.
The proposal to gut the ethics office was withdrawn Tuesday afternoon by unanimous consent.
The new rules would have eliminated the office's spokesperson, its ability to investigate anonymous tips, its ability to alert law enforcement if has identified a crime, and its authority to publicly release allegations of wrongdoing, a mandate that the formal House Ethics Committee does not have.
House Republicans said this was because the public releases had undermined their own due process in investigations.
OCE was created in 2008 after a series of House corruption scandals.
"The OCE has a serious and important role in the House, and this amendment does nothing to impede their work," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, who sponsored the measure.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who created the office, expressed dismay with the decision.
"Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress," the California Democrat said in a statement.
House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy were reportedly against the measure.
"After eight years of operation, many members believe the Office of Congressional Ethics is in need of reform to protect due process and ensure it is operating according to its stated mission," Ryan said in a Tuesday statement. "I want to make clear that this House will hold its members to the highest ethical standards and the Office will continue to operate independently to provide public accountability to Congress. The Office will continue to be governed by a bipartisan independent outside board with ultimate decision-making authority."
"I have made clear to the new chair of the House Ethics Committee that it is not to interfere with the Office's investigations or prevent it from doing its job," he later added. "All members of Congress are required to earn the public's trust every single day, and this House will hold members accountable to the people."
MSNBC host and former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough on Tuesday also lashed out at the Republican lawmakers who voted to gut the office.
"Dudes, dudettes, what's wrong with you?" Scarborough asked on "Morning Joe."
He suggested Trump should oppose the measure, with which he later expressed dismay.
"This seems like a great opportunity for the incoming president to show his independence, show he wants to drain the swamp, and immediately start hammering them on this," Scarborough said. "This is ridiculous. This is what happens. Time and time again, a party takes control of power, and Republicans have complete power, and their first act out of the gate — it's just complete arrogance. It's a horrific misstep."
"This needs to be reversed," he later added. "Paul Ryan needs to take charge, and say 'You guys are looking like idiots and like you have something to hide. This is not how we're supposed to start our new Republican era.'"
Maxwell Tani and Reuters contributed to this story. |
The state of Rond�nia in western Brazil is one of the most deforested parts of the Amazon. In the past three decades, clearing and degradation of the state�s original 51.4 million acres, an area slightly smaller than the state of Kansas has been deforested:
4,200 square kilometers cleared by 1978; 30,000 by 1988; and 53,300 by 1998. By 2003, an estimated 67,764 square kilometers of rainforest�an area larger than the state of West Virginia�had been cleared.
By the beginning of this decade, the frontier had reached the remote northwest corner of Rond�nia. Intact forest is deep green, while cleared areas are tan (bare ground) or light green (crops, pasture, or occasionally, second-growth forest). Over the span of eight years, roads and clearings pushed west-northwest from Buritis toward the Jaciparan� River. The deforested area along the road into Nova Mamor� expanded north-northeast all the way to the BR-346 highway.
The estimated change in forested area between 2000 and 2008 is shown in images (above) based on vegetation index data from MODIS.
All major tropical forests�including those in the Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia are disappearing. Although tropical deforestation meets some human needs, it also has profound, sometimes devastating, consequences, including social conflict and human rights abuses, extinction of plants and animals, and climate change�challenges that affect the whole world.
References Lindsey, R. (2007). Tropical Deforestation. NASA�s Earth Observatory. |
ASSEMBLY set to host $9500 ASUS ROG Summer 2017 tournament
ASUS ROG have announced ASUS ROG Summer 2017, sporting a $9500 USD prize-pool which teams will compete for on LAN at the Helsinki Exhibition and Convention Centre.
Announcing ASUS ROG Summer 2017 Overwatch Tournament. Join the watch on August 3-4 in Helsinki! https://t.co/sZcl8aOa1h #overwatch #asusrog — ASUS ROG Tournaments (@ROGtournament) July 3, 2017
The eight teams attending the tournament will be decided by invite, with the attendence of Finnish teams Rest in Pyjamas and ENCE eSports already confirmed.
Matches will take place on the third and fourth of August. A double elimination group stage will decide the four teams who will compete in the single elimination playoffs. All matches will be a best-of-three maps besides the final which will be a best-of-five.
Schedule
The fixture for the tournament and the streamed matches are featured below:
Thursday, August 3, 2017
14:00 EEST Group A - Group opening match #1 (On stream)
14:00 EEST Group A - Group opening match #2
15:30 EEST Group A - Winners
15:30 EEST Group A - Losers (On stream)
17:00 EEST Group A - Decider (On stream)
20:00 EEST Group B - Group opening match #1 (On stream)
20:00 EEST Group B - Group opening match #2
21:30 EEST Group B - Winners
21:30 EEST Group B - Losers (On stream)
23:00 EEST Group B - Decider (On stream)
Friday, August 4, 2017
21:00 EEST Semifinal A (On stream)
22:30 EEST Semifinal B (On stream)
00:00 EEST Final (On stream)
Prize Distribution
The $9500 USD prize pool will be distributed as shown below:
1st: $5000 USD
$5000 USD 2nd: $2500 USD
$2500 USD 3rd-4th: $1000
The English cast for the tournament can be found at twitch.tv/rogtournament whilst the Finnish can be found at twitch.tv/assemblyow. You can stay up to date on the match scores at the event page. |
St. Charles, Naperville soldiers earn Silver Stars
hello
U.S. Army Spc. Richard Bennett of St. Charles patrols in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. Photo provided by the Bennett family
U.S. Army Spc. Richard Bennett of St. Charles patrols an area in the Pech River Valley in the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. Photo provided by the Bennett family
U.S. Army Spc. Richard Bennett of St. Charles, who earned a prestigious Silver Star medal Tuesday, patrols mountains in northeastern Afghanistan near his combat post. He was honored for his bravery in saving a wounded comrade while under heavy gunfire during a mission this summer. Photo provided by the Bennett family
U.S. Army 1st Lt. Stephen Tangen greets retired Col. Haji Muhamed Arrif during a key leader engagement in Sarkani district, Kunar province, Afghanistan. The goal of the June meeting was to discuss the security and development of the district. Photo by Spc. Victor Egorov
Defense Secretary Robert Gates awards 1st Lt. Stephen Tangen of Naperville the Silver Star Tuesday at Forward Operating Base Joyce in the Kunar province, Afghanistan. Gates arrived unannounced during a tour of the region. Associated Press
St. Charles native and U.S. Army Spc. Richard Bennett thought only of his fallen comrade's peril when he bolted through heavy gunfire to aid the injured medic during a mission in eastern Afghanistan.
Bennett remained focused on his "brothers" Tuesday after he and Army 1st Lt. Stephen R. Tangen of Naperville each collected a Silver Star medal for their separate actions under fire there this summer. The pair was among six Army soldiers earning the third-highest award for bravery in combat given by the military. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates presented the honors in person to the soldiers for their actions during various Operation Strong Eagle missions in the Kunar province.
"It was an incredible honor that the secretary of defense would come. It was a little overwhelming," said Tangen, according to a Department of Defense news account. "Forward Operating Base Joyce gets attacked almost every day, so just the fact that he would come to a remote FOB like this and put his life on the line it doesn't happen every day."
Noted recipients of the honor include Lt. Col. Oliver North, Gens. George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, as well as Sens. John Kerry and John McCain. More recently, former Arizona Cardinals football player Pat Tillman, who died in friendly fire in Afghanistan, was given the award posthumously.
Heroic actions must be "performed with marked distinction" to earn a Silver Star, an honor bestowed for acts that do not rise to the level deserving of a Medal of Honor or Distinguished Service Cross.
"As far as the award, it is for my platoon. I may have gotten it, but we were all there that day and all of us went through that," Bennett wrote in e-mail from Afghanistan.
Bennett and his 101st Airborne platoon were on a mission on foot in a valley along a mountainside when they came under heavy fire. During the skirmish, the platoon medic was shot in the neck and he was lying face down on a porch.
"My stomach dropped out," Bennett wrote. "There are literally no words I can use to fully understand the feeling you get when you see that. … I've been working with Doc as our platoon medic for a long time and he's a good friend of mine. The first thing I thought when I saw him was that I needed to help him right away."
Seeing the fellow soldier was pinned down by enemy bullets, Bennett left his cover provided by a tree and ran to provide aid and protection for his comrade.
"He ran 35 meters under a hail of gunfire," said his mom, Lisa Bennett.
Bennett dropped down atop the injured man using his own body to shield the medic while he assessed his injuries, he recalled.
He then pulled the man into the vacant house as gunfire continued. Bullets "peppered" the building, and as he waited for the gunfire to subside, he looked at the bullet-ridden wall and was reminded of a scene from the movie "Pulp Fiction." In the scene, two characters survive a hail of gunfire unscathed, much like Bennett.
"It was one of the single craziest moments I've ever experienced," he wrote.
The man Bennett saved, and another soldier who was nearby and wounded by a bullet to the hand, survived and are recovering from their wounds.
The award-winning soldiers' parents were thrilled for their sons.
"I'm incredibly proud of him, but I always have been," said Bennett's mom, Lisa Bennett, of Geneva. "He's always been a person with courage in his convictions … and unafraid."
She continued, "He's with an impressive group of soldiers over there too. He really sees those guys in his platoon as brothers. He knows they would do the same for him. They're all heroes."
Bennett's father, South Elgin Police Sgt. Richard Bennett, said it was the second-best news he could get about his son.
"The Silver Star … wow. I'm on the verge of tears now," said his father, who lives in Elgin. "It doesn't surprise me. He's been a heck of a kid his whole life. I don't think he even thought about it. He just reacted. The only better news is if he was coming home."
Likewise, Andrew Tangen was impressed but not surprised by his 24-year-old son's heroic actions.
"They're like his family," said Tangen, whose three sons are all Eagle Scouts. His eldest son, Andrew, is a lieutenant in the Navy and also deployed in Afghanistan. "It's just who they are. They're doing what needs to be done."
Tangen suspects his son, who didn't share details in a weekend call home, was honored for his efforts to save his staff sergeant and close friend during one of the mission's firefights. Staff Sgt. Eric Shaw of Massachusetts died in Stephen Tangen's arms as he tried to move him to safety, Tangen wrote to his family.
"He's a very humble young man," Andrew Tangen said of his son.
Bennett, 29, graduated in 2000 from St. Charles High School. He attended Aurora University and Northern Illinois University, and then worked as a personal trainer for a few years before enlisting just after President Barack Obama's election to office.
Bennett and Tangen, who are in the 101st Airborne based out of Fort Campbell in Kentucky, arrived in Afghanistan in May for a one-year deployment.
Bennett plans to return to college for an education degree. Tangen, who is a 2004 Naperville North High School and 2008 West Point graduate, plans to attend medical school and become a doctor. |
We're excited to announce that the latest Pixel Perfect Precision Handbook is available to download now (PDF, iBook). With over 40 pages of fresh content, as well as updates to what was already there, we've made the third generation of the handbook bigger, better, and more beautiful. So, what's new?
Branding and Retina Images
At first glance the most obvious change is our new branding — with bold typography and lively colours it's so much more us…two. We've also updated everything to Retina resolution, meaning even crisper detail in the imagery.
Design and Development
We're all too aware that some projects get designed up front and then "thrown over the fence" to a development team, the two sides unaware of each other's existence for the most part — a classic waterfall way of working. Here at ustwo though, our developers are as much a part of a product's formation as the designers – accordingly, they are brought in right from the start and their input is desired throughout all phases of the project. This completely new chapter includes much of what we've learned in bridging this gap between the two disciplines, including advice on how to get both sides working together more effectively, plus design techniques to ease the transition from pixels to code.
More Pixel Perfect Principles
There are now more of the fundamental Pixel Perfect Principles, including Users, Motion, and Prototyping.
More Accessibility
We've added guidance on Error Prevention, particularly relevant to mobile due to the size restrictions placed on the input methods. Some of the content for this chapter has also been reorganised to fit together more logically: for example there is now a section on Copy, pulling in some previous advice from other sections and highlighting its vital role in usability.
And of course, more Photoshop
Since the last release of the handbook we've seen Adobe bring out their Creative Cloud update, which includes some major new features for interface designers: Live Shape Properties, Linked Smart Objects, and the super-useful Generator have all found a place in the latest handbook.
Don't forget to follow @pppustwo for the latest design tips and tricks as well. Enjoy!
One last thing…
There's also now a Japanese version of PPP 2 available. The translation was handled by our friends over at Concent, and it looks fantastic — we're so pleased to see the content in another language, opening up the world of pixel precision to even more designers out there. Head on over to the Labs section of the Concent site to download. |
Movies cannot be complete without visual effects. Just think about The Jungle Book or The Guardians of the Galaxy. Most of the movies these days are visual effects heavy and require a team of great seasoned VFX artists to collaborate together and work hard to create those stunning visuals.
In order to become a great VFX artist and be a part of a team like that, you really need to be committed and passionate about your work as it takes years of practice to be able to achieve the quality you see on these movies.
In case you already have some experience or even if you're just starting out as a VFX artist, here are 5 great tips that will help you succeed in this field:
#1: Observe The World Around You:
The first step you need to take in order to become a great visual effects artist is actually to observe. Just look around you and pay attention to the closest details. The more attention you pay, the more real the effects will be. For example, just take a fire. Is the smoke always the same color? What makes it change? Is it always that dense? and how does it reacts when in front of a bright sky?
Understanding how the lighting works is very significant in visual effects. You'll be able to create more correct shadows / highlights and reflections and learn how to create a more realistic contrast between different objects in the scene,
Movement can also be tricky sometimes. You need to look at the leafs of the trees, for example. How do they act? And the branches? And the colors change in case if it’s a sunny day? What about the shadows? All these minute details add up and can sell the realism to the audience.
#2: Recreate Photographs:
One of the things that will help you be a great VFX artist is to recreate photographs. Just pick some that have different shadows and lights and try to reproduce them. This will help you to see the difference between real things and fake ones. Despite the fact that the first ones won't be that good, it's a matter of practicing and experimenting.
It’s working on making CG look realistic and looking at real world references will teach you that what are those differences in the render you have in front of you compared to a photograph that captured the same object.
#3: Establish Clear Goals:
“Practice makes Perfect.”
So you think you are committed to becoming a great VFX artist, right? You already know you need to look at what's around you as well as practice a lot. However, you also need to have the commitment to keep doing these things. On your job, for example, you usually have deadlines. And this is what makes you deliver the work done. So, it's time to create some deadlines for yourself as well in what comes to visual effects.
If you're like most people, you should only be practicing at night and during weekends. After all, you either work or study and just don't have more time. So, just establish a goal to meet every single week like, for example, producing one finished render every week. Despite you might feel it's going to be a lot of work, you are making yourself learn by practicing more. And by the end of 2 or 3 months after doing this, you should already see some differences between your first renders and the last ones.
#4: Watching Tutorials:
Tutorials are a great way to learn and develop new techniques and skills. Watching video tutorials is much easier to understand as since you're watching someone create something from scratch step by step, it’s usually a lot more intuitive than simply reading a book.
However, there's a catch. If you're just like most people, you'll watch it and eventually forget what you learned from it. You can only learn by watching and practicing at the same time so you should apply what you have learned to the same project / your own project as you are watching, which will make everything that you learned more concrete and once you have practiced it once, you will have a reference for future projects.
#5: Look At Your Work:
You can keep practicing everything, establishing deadlines for your work, but if you fail on looking closely at your work, this will all be lost. The fact is that is very easy to lose yourself with so many details. VFX artists tend to be perfectionists and they just look at everything in detail.
However, at the end, they tend to forget to see the whole picture, the forest instead of the tree. So, what you need to do is to step back a little and just look closely at the photo. Do the shadows match in angle, density, and color? Did you check the alignment of the key elements? Analyze your work in detail. You’re not looking for flaws; you’re looking to become a great VFX artist.
So, you need to understand what you’re doing well, and what you’re doing not so well so that you can improve and focus in the right areas as you can keep working on an image forever but it’s the balance between focusing on all the elements to get it to a level where everything combined can sell the final image.
If you have any feedback or any tip or advice that you would like to share, please do comment and do share this article with your friends and colleagues if you found any of this information valuable.
School of Pixels
www.schoolofpixels.com |
After the success of the K0, thanks to Dick Mann’s efforts at the Daytona 200 on the Honda CR750 racebike, Honda released the K1 in 1970. Between 1970 and 1971 Honda rolled a staggering 77,000 K1s out of their factory to meet demand. Thanks to a lack of worthy competitors they had market share and took full advantage of it. he K1 varied little from the K0 aside from a new throttle cable setup (push/pull 2 cable configuration) and smaller side covers.
This ’71 Honda CB750 K1 cafe racer is currently available for purchase at New York’s ‘Northeast Sportscar‘. It is to me the embodiment of what a true cafe racer should be. Stripped of anything unnecessary, unashamedly raw and visceral and created for the sole purpose of good times on two wheels. At the heart of the build sits a re-tuned inline four built for speed and reliability. Not wanting to veer too far from the engines original configuration the carbs are original, cleaned and tuned to suit the increased airflow from the Lynx filter cages and their red Uni-filter innards.
Although it’s a mystery what internal modifications have been made we’d suspect an increase in capacity and compression due to the addition of an oil cooler and the externally mounted Cycle X oil filter. The electrics have also been suitably upgraded thanks to a Dyna S ignition conversion and spark comes via a Cycle X power arc coil. Managing the transfer of power to the rear wheel is an EBC clutch with performance springs, and the noise coming from the back bike can be attributed to a custom made 4-into-1 exhaust that’s been coated in sinister matte black.
Other performance improvements include rebuilt forks, drilled brake rotors and Avon rubber. Koni shocks keep the rear end in check while a steering damper ensures that the front end runs true. For a classic cafe racer riding position, clip-on bars have been perched on the fork legs and the top clamps been shaved clean. Dime City Cycles rear set footpegs position the rider’s feet accordingly and the dash has been reduced to a single speedometer.
After shortening, bracing and de-tabbing the frame it’s been fit with custom Dunstall style bodywork. The 2 filler, fibreglass fuel tank doubles as an oil tank thanks to some clever fabrication. Pillion passengers are a no go on the bike’s suede saddle and the duck bill tail sports a Lucas style, LED tail lamp. Up front sits a Hella 500 Black Magic head light and the whole bikes been rewired since 48-year-old electrics are anything but reliable.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the whole build is the CB’s battleship grey paint scheme. Splashes of red details pop against the grey like warning signs and the frames been clear coated to further enhance the CB’s raw aesthetic. On the Northeast Sportscar website, where you can find the K1 for sale, they’ve described the bike as a “badass cafe racer” which I think you will all agree is a fitting designation. P.O.A |
Part of the Carta Marina of 1539 by Olaus Magnus , depicting the location of magnetic north vaguely conceived as "Insula Magnetu[m]" (Latin for "Island of Magnets") off modern day Murmansk
c. 1620 edition), showing the Rupes Nigra at the North Pole, surrounded by four large islands. Detail from Mercator's map of the Arctic (edition), showing the Rupes Nigra at the North Pole, surrounded by four large islands.
The Rupes Nigra ("Black Rock"), a phantom island, was believed to be a 33-mile-wide black rock (Mercator actually describes the rock's circumference as 33 "French" miles) located at the Magnetic North Pole or at the North Pole itself. It purportedly explained why all compasses point to this location. The idea came from a lost work titled Inventio Fortunata, and the island features on maps from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including those of Gerardus Mercator and his successors. Mercator describes the island in a 1577 letter to John Dee:
In the midst of the four countries is a Whirl-pool, into which there empty these four indrawing Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the Earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is four degrees wide on every side of the Pole, that is to say eight degrees altogether. Except that right under the Pole there lies a bare Rock in the midst of the Sea. Its circumference is almost 33 French miles, and it is all of magnetic Stone (...) This is word for word everything that I copied out of this author [Jacobus Cnoyen] years ago.[1]
In fiction [ edit ]
In Jules Verne's The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1866), the North Pole is occupied by Queen Island, created by a volcano (Mount Hatteras) in the middle of an Open Polar Sea.
See also [ edit ]
Mount Purgatory, a location in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy
Mount Qaf, a similar mountain in Persian and Arab mythology
References [ edit ] |
It used to be that the only people who could officiate your wedding ceremony in Washington, D.C. were representatives of religious groups:
The officiant is any District of Columbia Judge or anyone who is authorized by a religious organization to officiate marriages, such as a minister, priest, rabbi or imam, so long as he or she is registered with the Marriage Bureau to officiate marriages.
Humanist and Secular Celebrants did not count, so atheists were pretty much left in the dark. They could fake it and get a religious person to solemnize their vows… or they could just have a court wedding.
Back in February, D.C. City Council member (and candidate for Mayor) Tommy Wells tried to change that when he introduced a bill that would create “one-day officiant permit[s]” that didn’t require a religious organization to sponsor you.
Today, Mayor Vincent Gray signed that bill, the Marriage Officiant Amendment Act Of 2013, into law.
The act will grant bestow temporary “Civil celebrant” status on secular Americans who perform marriage ceremonies. The registration fee to obtain that status would be $25 or less and would expire after the couple filed for a marriage license.
“The tide of history is turning in the direction of marriage equality, and not just in regard to who may get married to whom, but also to who is empowered to perform the marriage itself,” said Ronald A. Lindsay, the group’s president and CEO. “CFI has long championed the rights of nonreligious couples to have the choice of a wedding officiant that reflects their values and worldview, without being forced to compromise those principles with a church-affiliated ceremony or a pro forma act by a government functionary. Secular Celebrants, officially empowered to solemnize marriages, offer that choice, and give atheist, agnostic, and humanist couples the chance to have a truly meaningful ceremony.”
The Center For Inquiry sees this as a “key milestone in the march toward full social equality for America’s fasted-growing belief group: the nonreligious.”
Because the license is only temporary, though, some have argued that this bill doesn’t really offer the equality it suggests:
“It still treats secular, nonreligious persons as second class,” [Steven Lowe, a board member of the Washington Area Secular Humanists], who previously presented testimony to the Council about the bill, said. “We would prefer that D.C. treat secular marriage officiants equally to religious ones and grant them the option of being certified to perform as a marriage officiant without limit.”
It’s a good first step. But it’s not the last one, in D.C. or elsewhere. This issue is far from being settled.
As I’ve written before, CFI sued the state of Indiana in 2012 over not allowing Secular Celebrants to officiate weddings and their lawsuit was thrown out. Such a shame… |
Corsicana diaries The art of the small town
The town Creative types are finding a haven in Corsicana, but can its charm survive?
The visionary 100W founder saw potential in derelict building
The concept Artist residency programs and the art of making art
The town An artists’ haven is born Creative types are finding a haven in Corsicana, but can its charm survive? An artist from southwestern England walks into an all-American diner in Corsicana. He sits at a table near the back with his guide, a 28-year-old Dallas artist named Kyle Hobratschk. Eva makes prints with a vintage ink plotter and is in town to study American patterns. The place is called Across the Street Diner, because the owner, Jimmy Hale, bought the building after opening a salon across the street. For years, it was the oldest continuously operating soda fountain west of the Mississippi, Hobratschk says. “Soda fountain?” Eva asks.
This is his first visit to the U.S., and so far he’s only had a brief visit to Dallas and two weeks in Corsicana. He has lots to learn about Americana, and where better than a retro diner dripping with nostalgia and greasy patty melts? Patrons at the Across the Street Diner in downtown Corsicana. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor)
Eva is one of about two dozen national and international artists who have passed through Corsicana in the last few months as part of 100W, Hobratschk’s new residency program. From Iceland and Scotland, Chicago and Baltimore, they’ve come to this conservative corner of old-time Texas to get away from the big city, slow down and create art. What they find here, just 50 minutes from bustling Dallas, is a place with plenty of space and few interruptions. It started with a handful of Dallas artists and writers coming to visit but has turned into a full-blown happening here in Corsicana, and it’s got some people asking — and only partly in jest: Is this becoming the new Marfa? “When we were trying to do something, everybody agreed it starts with artists,” said Hale, who helped build up downtown’s economic core. “That’s just part of the evolution of Corsicana.” Corsicana was once a dusty downtown with empty storefronts, but is now coming to life again with new and revitalized work spaces. Leave the historic downtown district and there’s still widespread poverty. Newcomers are still learning to coexist with lifelong residents. Slowly but surely, though, Corsicana is becoming — to everyone’s surprise — cool. Clearing the weeds On the ground floor of one of Hale’s buildings downtown are two prints from historic Corsicana. One shows a rig spouting thick black oil in the middle of a cotton field. It shows where Corsicana has been. Hale leans in close to point out the workers picking cotton in the hot Southern sun. He’s been there, too. He was born a sharecropper in northern Mississippi, and his job as a child was to carry buckets of water to the middle of the field for break time. One day, when looking out over the cotton crop, he pointed out to another worker how picturesque it all was. The rolling fields, the black dirt punctuated with green crop and tufts of white. Those will all become beautiful shirts one day, he said. His friend, however, pointed to a nearby field full of weeds they had to clear. What would be beautiful, he said, is if someone could discover a way to make shirts from those weeds instead, so they wouldn’t have to work. “I never looked at anything the same after that,” Hale said. “That has changed how I see the world.” Just a few years ago, downtown Corsicana was like that field of weeds. “You could fire a cannon down the street and not hit anybody,” Hale said. The other print on the ground floor of Hale’s newly remodeled building is a panoramic shot of downtown Corsicana in 1923. Every parking spot is filled. The sidewalks are full of shoppers, the streets bustling with traffic. It shows what Corsicana could be again.
Hale and a few other investors have begun to buy up buildings and refurbish them into desirable work and retail space. There’s Hale’s multiple office buildings, salon and Across the Street Diner and Bistro. There’s Mita’s Coffee Lab, a cafe straight out of Brooklyn with reclaimed wood and filament-bulb lighting. And there’s the artists, congregating on the north end of downtown in a new smattering of studio spaces. Patrons place their orders at the Brooklyn-esque Mita’s Coffee Lab in downtown Corsicana. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor)
Sara Beth Wilson, tourism and Main Street director for the city, said she regularly gets calls about people wanting to buy real estate downtown, but lately she’s had to turn them away. Nothing is available. “The [open] buildings down here are few and far between,” Wilson said. “In the past two years I’ve been here, it’s grown tremendously.” Art in odd places Outside just about every storefront downtown sits a yellow A-frame sign with a black chalkboard and white lettering: “SHOP CORSICANA.” Some advertise daily specials, others sit unused. Hobratschk and one of his friends from Dallas made the signs for business owners when they first moved to Corsicana. The project allowed the artists to meet their new neighbors and get to know the downtown community, Hobratschk said. “We’re not invasive,” he said. “Going to the grocery is easy, going to the post office is easy, so we can just concentrate on our work.”
Hobratschk’s main project in town — and his largest investment in the city’s future — is 100W, an artist- and writer-residency program that conveniently sits at 100 W. Third Ave. The program operates out of the old Independent Order of Odd Fellows building. A classic car parks outside 100W, an artist residency program housed in the former Independent Order of the Odd Fellows building in downtown Corsicana. (Photograph courtesy Kyle Hobratschk)
“I was super intimidated by it, I still am. This place is a monster,” Hobratschk said. “It already has and will continue to inform my work.” The cavernous building is mostly quiet during the day. Artists and writers move in and out, usually spending only about six weeks in Corsicana, making Pinto Bean, Hobratschk’s feisty Chihuahua, the building’s longest resident. Across the street is the studio of Nancy Rebal and her husband, David Searcy, an artist-and-writer pair from Dallas. Before Hobratschk opened the IOOF building to short-term artists, Rebal rented the third floor. When she first visited the city years ago, Rebal hated it. Too Podunk, too rural, not enough was happening. But today, she says, she finds Corsicana a perfect getaway from the metropolitan tempo of Dallas. Yet part of Corsicana’s appeal for most of the creative people moving there is its proximity to the big city. Only about 50 minutes down I-45, international artists are able to easily commute to downtown to show their work in Dallas galleries. “This is one NPR program away from the city,” Rebal said. “I can stay four or five days before I have to go back.” The soda fountain and painted pianos found dotted through downtown are just a few examples of Corsicana's legacy of americana and quirky, small town charm. (Photographs by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) The changes in Corsicana come as a double-edged sword, however. Everyone here knows that they need attention and money to outgrow the traditional, tired facade of small-town Texas. But change the city too much and it will lose its charm. “We’re here just to be here and make things, not to offend anybody or confront anybody,” Rebal said. “That’s something I don’t want to have happen to Corsicana is to have Dallas imposed on it.” Constant change Corsicana owes its name to José Antonio Navarro, Tejano leader of the Texas Revolution. He was behind Navarro County, which was created by the newly admitted state’s Legislature in 1846. Its county seat was established two years later, with a name that Navarro suggested to honor his father’s homeland of Corsica. Wolf Brand Chili started here in the 1890s, when Lyman T. Davis sold bowls for 5 cents apiece out of the back of a wagon on the corner where Across the Street Diner sits. A German immigrant began making fruitcakes around the same time and founded Collin Street Bakery — today nationally famous, and the subject of a 2015 Texas Monthly story following an embezzlement scandal at the bakery. Corsicana was largely insulated from the worst effects of the Great Depression by its investment in oil. (Photo via the Edward L. Williams historical postcard collection) In 1894, a company drilling artesian wells accidentally struck oil. It was the first large-scale oil deposit discovered west of the Mississippi. By 1898, when Hobratschk’s IOOF building was built, the Corsicana oil field had 287 wells producing 544,620 barrels annually. The boom brought overwhelming prosperity to the town. Electric streetlights and streetcars were installed. The Texas Electric Railroad added hourly service to Dallas in 1913. Huge homes were built. Saloons and other businesses prospered. But the old guard still tried to hold on to the sleepy-town image as best as possible. In 1919, Magnolia Petroleum Co. wanted to build two 29-story towers in downtown Corsicana with a skybridge connection. City leaders said no. Downtown Dallas would later say yes. Oil did protect Corsicana from the worst effects of the Great Depression, but the city began to dry up in the 1960s. Bethlehem Steel left town when the city denied the company tax breaks, and the middle class left with it. Population has steadily grown, but the downtown core wasted away for decades. Downtown Corsicana consists of a main business district along Beaton Street, where 100W and the other new businesses have begun to pop up on brick-lined streets. Around every corner is an antique shop and a church. The city is by no means idyllic. Last year, Corsicana was the scene of large protests against mass deportation arrests, and the town remains radically segregated by race and income. Drive into town from the east and you’ll see run-down trailers and black residents. Drive west of downtown and you’ll see two- and three-story plantation-style homes with Mercedes in the driveway in the mostly white neighborhood.
Even the newcomers have to face unpleasant inequity. Hobratschk said that once, while jogging in the black neighborhood near downtown, people shouted at him to “remember what side of the tracks you’re on.” Drone view of a train passing through Corsicana. (Footage courtesy Benjamin Hines)
The IOOF building that is now used to house artists was briefly a Ku Klux Klan meeting space, Hobratschk said, and the group’s banners were still in the building when he bought it in 2012. “You don’t go where things are fine, you go where you can make things better,” Rebal said. “I really think there’s redemption.” Banners left behind by the Odd Fellows in what is now 100W, an artist- and writer-in-residency community. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) ‘Father Corsicana’ One of the first nights Edmund Eva, the Englishman, stayed in Corsicana, Hobratschk took the 100W artists to the home of one of their biggest supporters, Joe Brooks. The menu: chicken with green beans, potato salad and homemade peach cobbler. “Peach cobbler?” Eva asked. “I’ve only heard of it on television.” Joe B. Brooks, also called “Father Corsicana,” photographed at home with his dog, Frasier. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) Hobratschk calls Brooks “Father Corsicana.” In the 1970s, he was involved with the first efforts to boost arts in the city. He founded the Navarro Council for the Arts and helped raise money to refurbish The Palace, a 1921 vaudeville theater that brings in B-list country and Opry acts today. Brooks just celebrated his 81st birthday, and the retired school principal now splits his time between Corsicana and Santa Fe. He regularly hosts dinners for the 100W guests and others in town, where he’s able to foster connections between locals and the visiting artists. He takes an active role in supporting the newcomers at 100W, even as the arts council hasn’t embraced Hobratschk and company in the same way. The arts council is more focused on arts education in Navarro County schools than producing or displaying art these days, Brooks said. “It makes no sense,” he said. “I’m an old educator, so I get doing it for the kids, but there are adults with artistic talent that need to be nurtured.” In his study at home, Brooks keeps a caricature someone made of him back when he was helping start the arts council. The character is pulling a wagon full of statues and art and historic buildings that Brooks tried to save. He directed plays, made costumes, designed set pieces, raised money, planned parks, organized, inspired and kept pushing Corsicana forward. “It was really an outreach in those early days. I think it’s sad we don’t do that now,” Brooks said. “The marriage is available; people just have to look beyond the immediate.” Jimmy Hale helped change the cultural landscape of downtown Corsicana, with investments in several businesses, including the Across the Street Diner. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) That’s not to say the new artists have ignored local art, however. One of the 100W artists worked with a local theater group to paint backdrops for their performances. David Searcy and Nancy Rebal have worked with a local undiscovered artist, Wayne Hall, to show his work and profile him in The Paris Review. “A seed that’s planted but not nurtured is not going to blossom,” Brooks said. “That’s the kind of commitment you want. You’re not doing it for the money. You’re doing it for growth, not personal reward.” Yes, things are changing in Corsicana. Hollywood movie crews are coming in to capture its bucolic charm. For every dusty antique store that still sits on Beaton Street, there’s a storefront under construction for a new business or studio moving in. Brooks calls it a “renaissance.” That makes people like Jimmy Hale excited, but nervous. Standing on a corner downtown, just a block from his diner and bistro, he looks around. Out-of-towners are walking the street, browsing from shop to shop. A steady stream of vehicles passes down Beaton; all kinds of people are coming and going. It’s starting to look like that 1923 panorama again. “My biggest fear is we’re going to have so many people in five to 10 years that it won’t be a sleepy old town anymore,” he said, his voice starting to shake. “It’s like I’m killing the thing I love.” Hale turns suddenly and crosses the street, making sure to look both ways for the oncoming traffic moving down Beaton.
Advertisement
The visionary Room, with a muse For artist Kyle Hobratschk, a derelict building in a quiet town was the perfect place to find creative inspiration. Now he’s sharing it with other artists Something began vibrating inside of him the moment he walked inside. He studied the patina of the walls, the way the plaster had eroded over time with its stubborn, clinging bits of paint. He felt excitement and a kind of loneliness. Only it wasn’t the sad kind, but rather the promise of being alone with one’s thoughts and the work at hand. Yes, it was just an old building — ornate, three stories tall, regal even in its neglect with brick cornices and cast-stone arched windows. Its vast, decrepit rooms washed in slanting beams of sunlight welcomed him like an embrace. Kyle Hobratschk transformed a decrepit old building into sundrenched studio spaces and sumply furnished living quarters for his artists-in-residence at 100W. (LEFT: Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor, RIGHT: Photograph courtesy Kyle Hobratschk) Kyle Hobratschk knew this was a place he could make art. He was 23, a year out of Southern Methodist University art school. He had lingered like a stray dog at the campus studio and workshop as long as he could that summer. He needed his own space. By chance, an artist who had signed up for the printmaking class he taught in north Oak Cliff, Nancy Rebal, told him about this vacant building in Corsicana where her friends once lived. He had never heard of the town and had to consult a map. Appy to be a 100W resident 100 West grants artists and writers residencies to create work in this historic building repurposed for studio space. Large scale, light filled rooms are provided alongside complete living accommodations and wood shop access to produce work in two or three dimension, installation, or writing. The 2017 residency application deadline is Sept. 15, 2016.
More information about 100W Soon afterward, he stood on the sleepy downtown corner of West Third Avenue and Beaton Street and saw his future. That was 2012. He did not know the building would make him a better artist. He did not know it would teach him about the best and worst people are capable of. It would change him, though. It would help change a town. “Derelict,” was how Hobratschk’s friend, Kiernan Lofland, described the building when Hobratschk showed it to him. The two had met via SMU’s art program; another friend of theirs, Travis LaMothe, understood right away when he saw the iPhone photos: “As sculptors, space is a material.” By the time LaMothe finally made the trip down to see it, Hobratschk revealed on the front sidewalk that he had bought the building. He had never owned property before. Hobratschk had cobbled together a bank loan and promises from his artist friends to either invest sweat equity into making the cavernous place usable or rent space there. He had only the vaguest idea about creating a kind of art haven at this point. Rebal, the artist who first told him about the building, and her husband, writer David Searcy, later became the first tenants. (The building had belonged to their friend, the late Texas artist Doug MacWithey.) They set up camp essentially on the third floor. Searcy wrote an essay featuring Corsicana for his recent book, Shame and Wonder. Artist-writer couple Nancy Rebal and David Searcy, the first occupants of 100W. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) The following are excerpts from David Searcy’s essay “Nameless”, part of his most current work, Shame and Wonder, which describes Doug McWhithey, his late friend, who at one time owned the old Odd Fellows lodge, the silent magic of Corsicana and the building that is now 100W. How can I make this mean what it should? I will insist at least on meaning of some broad, unspecified sort. To get it started. I read somewhere – and I’m sure it came from some exalted source – that the study of Torah is so virtuous beyond all other virtues, that a gentile, even a gentile, who applies himself brings immeasurable joy to God. So here we go. My friend, the artist Doug MacWithey, owned a huge, historic, three-story former Odd Fellows hall in Corsicana, Texas. Though the scale of his work was usually rather small, he was inspired by these immense old spaces, loved, as much as anything, the sense of grand necessity, the fitting out, in this case, of the upper floors – their great high windows looking, from the corner, east and south along the main street – with these massively timbered ten-foot working tables of the kind that might, a hundred years before in similar vast, unheated rooms, have supported ranks of grim industrial sewing machines or grommet punches or something manned, as it were, by ghostly, sad-faced women. And although the big ideas that might have needed ten-foot tables never quite got into gear, and as his work, in fact, reduced to narrowing views of a very narrow field of interest, he required, all the more I think, all that expansiveness for reasons I was unable to appreciate (we had a running joke about the Disney character Goofy carving a toothpick from a tree), or fully appreciate at least, until after his death. I think such spaces meant to him a kind of endlessness. Historical and physical. Whatever concentrated, pared-away-to-almost-nothing bit of art he did, he wanted to be endless. As if nothingness and endlessness depended on each other. Even some isolated scribble would, in principle, in his heart, belong to an endless series endlessly elucidating endless variations on its faint, essential self. And when, as toward the end of his life, a single thought took hold, he’d go with it, he’d crank it out (most times with a little xerographic help) with no intention of ever shutting down until some practicality, like death of course, intruded. This is why he loved the xerox machine as well, I am convinced – less for the time saved copying patterns, than for the endlessness implied. How it suggested art might be cranked out forever automatically, might heap right up to the ceiling, spill from the windows, fill the street with blowing handbills bearing glimpses, advertisements, of the truth. Some sort of truth. You can’t escape it, can’t ignore it in a little town like that. All of a sudden here it comes, the blessed truth, right down the middle of the street. - - - The Odd Fellows hall is sold to a bright young artist friend of Nancy’s. And pretty soon he’s got this sort of atelier, this sort of residency going – weavers, painters, sculptors coming from Dallas, renting space, a communal kitchen. Ground floor woodshop. Nancy rents the whole third floor. At last a place removed from practical constraints where she can set her giant canvases like sails. I come to visit when I can. Her bright young artist friend, Kyle Hobratschk, comes and goes, as do the others. In the mornings it’s just me and Nancy usually. Making coffee in the kitchen on the second floor. Doug’s kitchen. Karan’s kitchen. Coffee and donuts in what used to be Doug’s studio, windows open, propped with 2X4’s, the sounds of trains and voices. And this little stapled pamphlet Kyle picked up from the Visitor Center. “Walking Tour of Historic Downtown Corsicana.” On page four, the tale of the wandering Jewish rope walker. Good Lord, Nancy, listen to this. At dusk, if no one’s down there working, I’ll descend to the second floor and stand for a while in the southeast corner where Doug usually spent his spare time. With windows open on two sides. There is a Main Street, but the real main street is Beaton Street which runs along the east side of the building. From the south side’s east-most window – right behind Doug as he worked – you get the best view straight down Beaton. If it weren’t for the trees, not here of course in 1884, you’d see to the Collin Street intersection, which the rope walker tried to cross. From the southeast corner at Collin and Beaton to the northwest, I believe. Doug, at his table, would have been facing away. But were the windows open, as they probably would have been, he would have turned at the sudden silence, then the cries. What had he missed? A vision, surely. Nothing real. But something meaningful, I think. I have decided. continue reading The couple would later buy the former Mombassa nightclub building across the street, dismantle its garish front sign with glee and remake it into their studio and residence. Hobratschk would leave them a bottle of champagne and glasses on closing day. Hobratschk vastly underestimated how much work the building needed. “It was borderline haunted, very damp. There were leaks in the roof,” he recalls. It was also magical. The 1898 structure was an original Odd Fellows lodge, meaning it has a specific, mystically inspired floorplan. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows building, which used to host Ku Klux Klan meetings and has been transformed into an artist residency program, pictued in downtown Corsicana in 1910. (Photograph courtesy Kyle Hobratschk) “There’s a lot of theory and special ritualistic reasons for why certain rooms are the way they are,” Hobratschk says. “So the third floor has a sacred sense to it because that’s where the Odd Fellows fraternity met.” The artists are drawn to this space, too. Sculptural chairs crafted by artist and 100W founder Kyle Hobratschk. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) The building had, at times, previously hosted Ku Klux Klan meetings and the Jewish Community Center. The ground level, with its storefront windows and cement floors, was typically rented out for income. The first tenant ran a meat market there. The last one before Hobratschk bought the place was a survivalist who sold Vietnam War memorabilia online. He kept an inoperable vintage Porsche painted in camouflage colors parked in the window. Hobratschk and the collective of founding artists for this project — whatever it would become — turned the ground floor into a wood shop to service the building. They used it then, as they do now, to make whatever they needed, from missing trim pieces to functional tables. Hobratschk also makes sculptural chairs, something he’d done in Dallas along with printmaking and painting. The artists’ first big triumph was buying a vintage three-quarter-ton industrial table saw that was trucked in on a flatbed trailer. It was so heavy that Hobratschk and his friends couldn’t figure out how to unload it. A guy named Danny watching from the NAPA Auto Parts store across the street walked over and told them what to do. While restoring the old, decrepit Odd Fellows lodge building, Kyle Hobratschk and his artist friends forged lasting friendships with the townspeople of Corsicana. LEFT: Corsicana florist Tom Adams in the living space above his downtown shop. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor); RIGHT: Kiernan Lofland directs his friend and 100W founder Kyle Hobratschk (pictured driving) as they unload a vintage industrial table saw. (Photo courtesy Kyle Hobratschk) The group began making other connections, then friendships, in the town. Tom Adams owns the flower shop in the quaint brick building on the opposite corner. He loves to host cocktail parties for the artists in his extravagantly decorated living quarters above his shop. Hobratschk especially loved the night they had piña coladas and Bugles corn snacks served in crystal goblets paired with red onion dipping sauce. Hobratschk made the ultimate friend around this time. A stray brown Chihuahua who refused to leave his side. He was annoyed at first, then relented. He named her Pinto Bean. Kyle Hobratschk with his Chihuahua Pinto Bean. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) Grandiose ideas soon softened with harsh realities. The building isn’t air-conditioned and the days can be long, dusty and hot. On the third floor, Hobratschk built a narrow, wooden spiral staircase to the attic. Pop open a square hatch in the roof and you can climb the ladder to the flat roof and have a sprawling view of downtown Corsicana. The artists have come to love this roof. They will often sleep up there at night because it’s cooler than the stifling rooms below in late summer. Plus, there are the stars. Or inky storm clouds. In the mornings, Hobratschk brings his breakfast up here. He will watch the sunrise. He will marvel at the colors in the sky and think about how to paint them accurately.
Hobratschk started a detailed journal of the transformation of what they now call 100 West, logging everything: the meals they ate, the construction jobs or art projects completed, his occasional irritations and frustrations with others. Artist- and writer-in-residence Edmund Eva enjoys the sunset and expansive rooftop views of Corsicana. (Photograph courtesy Kyle Hobratschk)
A local man named Timothy Lusk began hanging around the building asking for work. This happens a lot to Hobratschk. He is the kid from Dallas with the kind smile and the Mercedes-Benz whom everyone is curious about. (The car was handed down from his mother, Celeste, a retired architect living with his father in Scottsdale, Ariz. He also drives his grandfather’s Ford pickup still permeated with West Texas red dust.) Lusk was resourceful. He could locate a leveling jack or a 35-foot ladder quickly and for nearly nothing. His truck didn’t run, so Hobratschk often drove him to his family’s house across the railroad tracks in the rougher, predominantly black part of town. Lusk worked hard. He also asked for more money a lot for various — and often outlandish — emergencies. Sometimes it felt like a betrayal to Hobratschk, like he was being taken advantage of. Regardless, the men formed an unlikely bond, a friendship. But then Lusk stopped showing up for work and eventually disappeared. Hobratschk later got a call from Lusk; he was in jail. It has taken almost four years to turn 100 West into what it is today, and it’s still a work in progress. In January, the first official artist residents arrived. They departed just last month, new works in tow. A philosophy is developing. Hobratschk recalled one early contributing artist, Randell Morgan, who stood on the second-floor landing and offered a pronouncement to him and Pinto Bean below. Morgan urged them to keep 100 West rule-less. “There are too many rules out there,” he said, motioning toward the window. That stuck with Hobratschk. He is also spreading his influence beyond the old Odd Fellows building. On a long walk awhile back, Hobratschk fell in love with a pared-down 1888 Queen Anne Victorian on a corner lot. “It feels like an Edward Hopper painting,” he said. Soon after purchasing 100W, Kyle Hobratschk bought and restored a white house near downtown as a less rustic alternative for guests and artists to stay. (Photograph by Nan Coulter/Special Contributor) He bought it and made it a joint labor of love with his mother, Celeste, who quickly took over the project. She had flown down many times to help with his first building. Now she was back to help restore the house, obsessing over finishes, procuring elegant linens. In his journal, Hobratschk noted that her presence lifts the place. She always opens the blinds to flood the house with light, whereas the workers never bother. The white house is now a comfortable place to stay for guests and artists (compared with the more rustic building downtown). Hobratschk crafted the bed frames by hand. Art from the 100 West group is displayed throughout. The detached carriage house out back will be finished by summer. The transient nature of what Hobratschk and his fellow artists have made is both by design and bittersweet. People and artwork will come and go. Living and working at 100W At 100W, residents live, work and play as a creative community. (Photos courtesy Nancy Rebal, Kyle Hobratschk and Benjamin Hines) On the day that LaMothe moved out of the building after his own residency of sorts, Hobratschk found the sudden absence strangely difficult. Even the ordinary objects now gone — an old tool chest, the turquoise Makita coffeemaker — felt like a palpable loss. This is the process of the building. It is not about permanence. He made a note about this in his journal: “It’s designed to accept artists transitionally,” he wrote. “It’s a place to make connections. “To make something and leave something.”
Advertisement |
Two of the country's most-acclaimed fine-dining restaurants will trade cities and spaces for one week this fall.
New York's Eleven Madison Park and Chicago's Alinea — three Michelin-starred restaurants both — will swap chefs, kitchens and dining rooms, opening in essence pop-up restaurants in each other’s space. Alinea will occupy Eleven Madison Park in New York beginning Sept. 26 for five consecutive nights. Eleven Madison Park will do the same in Chicago starting Oct. 10. Tickets go on sale in coming weeks via its Facebook page.
A collaboration was first hinted at through a YouTube video released Friday. In it, both restaurants dismantle their kitchen and dining rooms, packing everything up in boxes (including chef Grant Achatz).
In layman's terms, at least to non-foodies who don't recognize Thomas, Heston and Ferran by a first-name-only basis (respectively chefs Keller, Blumenthal, Adria), it's the culinary equivalent of the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra trading concert halls for one-week residences.
Experiencing this will come at a premium. For Chicagoans hoping to score one of several hundred tickets for Eleven Madison Park, the exclusiveness of a five-night stand and hefty price tag means casual diners might sit this one out ($495 in both cities, not including tax and service). But for devotees of high gastronomy, the band of Michelin guide-clutching food tourists, it's a chance to sample one of the most-lauded New York restaurants in recent memory.
The James Beard Foundation Awards — the Oscars of the restaurant world — has awarded Eleven Madison Park its two highest honors in consecutive years: Outstanding restaurant in 2011, and outstanding chef this past May for its 36-year-old Swiss-born chef, Daniel Humm. In the most recent "World's 50 Best Restaurant" rankings, a survey of 800 international restaurateurs and food journalists, Eleven Madison Park was voted the 10th best restaurant in the world, jumping from 24th place last year, and from 50th place in 2010. Alinea was No. 7 in the rankings.
Those who previously dined at Eleven Madison Park will likely not recognize the iteration it plans on bringing to Chicago. Jeff Gordinier in The New York Times wrote the restaurant will soon reinvent its concept, "treating diners to flashes of Broadway dazzle: card tricks, a glass dome full of smoke, a blast of sea mist from a tabletop clambake and a cheese course that emerges from a picnic basket ... a risky move to convert the Eleven Madison Park experience into an extravagant, participatory, close-to-four-hour ode to the romance and history of New York."
For Achatz, who with partner Nick Kokonas have rebuffed numerous offers to open an Alinea outside Chicago, it's a chance to present their cooking in the world’s most discerning food city without the full-time commitment.
"I can't tell you how many chefs have said to me, 'Yeah, you're a big fish in a small pond. The only reason you're so popular is because you're in the Midwest.’ In a way, we're amped up," Achatz said. "I want to introduce Alinea food to the jaded New Yorker. We're going to show New Yorkers what Chicago food is all about.”
The collaboration is being called "21st Century Limited," a reference to the "20th Century Limited," a luxury passenger train that ran between Chicago and New York during the first half of the last century. The idea was born last November at The Aviary, the cocktail lounge owned by Achatz and Kokonas, which played host to Eleven Madison Park’s cookbook party.
It was after hours in the lounge, with everyone full on pizza and wine. Achatz recalled the night: "Daniel said, 'Why don't we take this a step further? You come to New York, we come to Chicago.' It was a handshake deal. Don't get me wrong, it's gonna hurt. It's a tremendous amount of work. But we don't want to be the rock band that plays the same song over and over. There are very few people in any given industry that have the opportunity to have that carte blanche."
Logistically, they say, the collaboration is a headache in waiting, as both restaurants will continue operating in their home cities during their week on the road. The challenge will be running two restaurants simultaneously in two time zones while maintaining some semblance of consistency. Both say they view this as a challenge to both fear and relish.
"Really for us, it's about giving our staff something difficult and interesting," Kokonas said. "We don't want to get too comfortable."
Three days before the Sept. 26 opening night, Alinea chef Grant Achatz and chef de cuisine Matt Chasseur will fly their team of a dozen staffers to New York, and in a 72-hour crash course, effectively train the Eleven Madison Park staff to replicate Alinea. The process repeats when Humm, general manager Will Guidara and team arrives in Chicago Oct. 7. Recipe cards have already arrived in both kitchens in preparation.
Despite the expensive cover charge, both restaurants insist the cost of purchasing serviceware, shipping custom equipment, plus flying and housing a dozen staffers means they’ll lose money from the project.
"People sometimes don't understand why we're doing this when there isn't an economic benefit," Guidara said. "Sometimes we do what we do because we love doing it."
[email protected]
Twitter @kevinthepang |
http://gty.im/856366694
The Detroit Lions defense had a lot of question marks going into the season. They have answered all of them. Their stars were coming off down years in 2016. Their surprise role players from seasons past were gone, suspended, or injured.
They were expected to be the anchor that might drag the team down in a storm. They were the one phase of the team that the experts said could not be relied upon, the heel that undid mighty Achilles. Their response to those questions and comments can best be summed up in a quote from Cornelius Washington before week one. “I just try my best to stick it up y’all’s behinds” Washington said at a scrum.
Well Mr. Washington, consider my behind sore, and consider these questions answered.
Who Is Going To Rush The Passer?
Anthony Zettel is going to rush the passer. Zettel has recorded a sack in three out of four games, and put up two against the Vikings. Ezekiel Ansah is also going to rush the passer. In the only game that Zettel did not record a sack, Ansah recorded three. Haloti Ngata, Jeremiah Voloaga, and Jarrad Davis have each added a sack to the team’s total. Akeem Spence has not finished the job, but his intense pressure in the middle has led to more than one quarterback being unable to step up in the pocket to avoid the outside pass rushers.
The Lions defense is 14th in the NFL in sacks. That’s not spectacular, but it is a massive step up from 2016, and a better performance than anyone gave the defensive line credit for.
Who Is Going To Cover Tight Ends?
The Lions have given up 15, 108, 9, and 46 yards to tight ends in their first four games of the season. They gave up a few long plays and an ugly touchdown against the Giants. Other than that they have handled their business in exemplary fashion.
According to Pro Football Focus, the primary defender the Lions have deployed against tight ends is Tahir Whitehead, and the Lions are an above average play for tight ends. I guess 44 yards and a 25% chance of getting a touchdown constitutes a good fantasy play? Whitehead’s move to the outside has gone incredibly well. Miles Killebrew’s usage as the big nickel safety has also been a huge deterrent for any team looking at their tight end.
Jarrad Davis has had mixed results when pressed in to that duty, he has been far more successful limiting the run after catch from running backs. Players like Paul Worrilow, Nick Bellore, and Miles Killebrew have contributed as well. While Worrilow and Bellore are not coverage specialists, they have been present, and an effective deterrent. That is about as good as could ever be expected from those players. That the defense has not fallen apart in Davis’ absence is indicative of how great a job Bob Quinn did in rebuilding the linebacker corps.
http://gty.im/853372136
Can This Secondary Get The Job Done?
I was tempted to just put a picture of the Joker laughing here. I was among those who asked the question of whether it was age or his poor supporting cast that caused Quin’s downturn. He has emphatically answered that question.
Glover Quin is having the best season of his career. He is on pace for 92 tackles, and has two interceptions. He even returned one of them for a touchdown. In addition to that he has had the Lions secondary locked in and ready to do their jobs all season. There is so little confusion in that defensive backfield, that a player not knowing exactly what his responsibility looks incredibly out of place. That was not the case in 2016.
Quandre Diggs in particular seemed to be out of position far too often last year. This year nothing could be further from the truth. His performance has been exemplary. Nevin Lawson has hardly shown up on the stat sheet, and that is perfect for a second corner. Lawson is not a ball hawk, but teams have not been picking on him.
Their need to move to second and third reads is a large part of the Lions incredible interception pace early in the season. Miles Killebrew has made Tavon Wilson‘s future with the team questionable, and that has nothing to do with Wilson. Wilson has created multiple turnovers as well.
Is Teryl Austin A Great Defensive Coordinator?
The Lions defenses in the last few seasons have not fared well in relation to the rest of the league. It was natural for many to question how much of that was coaching. The answer is none. Not a single bit. The Lions defense in the last two seasons was gutted by injuries. It had started in a fairly average place, and went downhill before week one. The Lions stars were missing, or unreliable in the front seven. Austin used an incredible number of different blitz concepts to try and confuse offenses.
As the quality of competition rose on the other side of the ball, the severe deficiencies of the roster that composed the Lions defense were exposed. Good coaches and quarterbacks are going to eat Devin Taylor alive in coverage, but Taylor to his credit, is no worse an option than Thurston Armbrister. A well polished rock is still just a rock. When you have a list of catastrophically bad options in front of you, the one you choose doesn’t really matter.
This off-season Bob Quinn gave Austin a massive talent infusion. The defensive line group was revamped, as was the linebacker group. A drastic increase in the quality of the depth over the entire defense occurred. Proven NFL veterans, high draft picks looking for a new start, and even the Lions own rookies are clearly better fits for Austin’s scheme. Most importantly they are better athletes than their 2016 counterparts. The Lions’ return to defensive prominence is a combination of better talent, and a keen mind wielding that talent.
http://gty.im/845380048
So Can They Keep It Up?
The answer to this question is a bit tricky. What “it” means must be defined. Will the Lions defense finish the year with 28 interceptions? To be frank that’s not likely. The 2016 NFL leader managed only 18. The opposition have done the Lions defense some favors, tipping balls up in the air in the middle of the field.
Being in the right place at the right time is a product of solid defensive play. Perfectly thrown balls do not result in interceptions as often as they have for the Lions, however. Whereas last year the Lions could not buy a break in this regard, they have been incredibly fortunate in 2017.
The rest of what the defense is doing is absolutely sustainable. There is no reason to believe that the Lions can not push the pocket in to quarterbacks faces. There is no reason to believe that the edge rushers are not going to be able to exploit bad left tackles, and they will see plenty of those.
The Lions defense is right in the middle of the NFL in their adjusted sack rate. Their defense matches up well with virtually any offense in the league when healthy. According to the football outsiders, the Lions are the fifth best defense in the NFL in relative performance of opposing offenses. The relative health of the roster really is the only factor that could derail them. If they stay healthy they are going to keep rolling.
The Detroit Lions defense had a lot of question marks going in to the season. They have answered all of them. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.