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The men are receiving copies of letters addressed to the local prosecutor’s office and police departments, according to one of the letters obtained by the Kyiv Post.
Kyiv’s Desnyansky District Military Commissar has admitted sending out the threatening letters that warn men they could face up to five years in jail for failing to appear for service.
Vitaliy, a Kyiv resident, was shocked and scared when he received the curious letter.
It was stapled to a utility bill and said he was ordered to attend a local recruitment office at a given date – even though he’d never been sent an official draft notice, and no one from the local recruitment office had ever contacted him.
He would not give his full name out of fear of receiving more pressure from military officials.
Vitaliy is not the only one who has been sent such letters.
They have been a hot topic on social media and forums, with users already sarcastically dubbing them “letters of happiness.” Activists and lawyers say the documents were drawn up incorrectly and are intended to bully the recipients.
Although Vitaliy wasn’t the addressee of the letter, by appearances, a copy of it was sent to him merely because it concerns a legal case being made against him.
In the correspondence, the military commissar asks prosecutors and police to open an investigation into Vitaliy, who “committed a crime, as defined in Article 336 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine: being obliged to perform military service, he is evading it through inaction, and he failed to appear at the times set by the recruitment office without giving a valid excuse.”
The letter also says that Vitaliy must be included on the “single register of citizens who are evading military service.” The document ended with the date on which Vitaliy should come to the recruitment office.
Once the initial shock receded, Vitaliy consulted a lawyer.
“The lawyer examined the document, and came to the unequivocal conclusion that there were, and are, no valid reasons for such accusations to be made,” Vitaliy told the Kyiv Post.
Ihor Godetsky, another lawyer who has been consulted by dozens of men about similar letters, agrees – under current Ukrainian legislation, not a single military commissar has the authority to send out such documents.
“The document that regulates the actions of the military is the Rule on the Military Commissariat, and it doesn’t contain a single word about the military commissar having the right to sign anything,” Godetsky told the Kyiv Post. He said that the resolutions with instructions for recruitment offices are drawn up by the Cabinet of Ministers.
The government’s conscription rules stipulate that the military must gather more than 10 documents, including the counterfoil of a signed draft notice, before it can file a police complaint, Godetsky said.
He also noted that since Ukraine is undergoing only partial troop mobilization, the article of the criminal code mentioned does not apply in this case.
According to Godetsky, there is another sentence in the letter that causes him concern: “The phrase ‘he has committed a crime’ means that the commissar accused (of a crime) a man who hasn’t been convicted yet, and who maybe hasn’t even received a draft notice yet.”
What makes the letter even less accurate is that there is no such thing as a “single register of citizens who are evading military service,” Godetsky added.
“I recommend that the man to go straight to the court with this letter,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Mykola Popelsky from the General Staff of the Ground Forces of Ukraine, to which all the recruitment offices are subordinate, confirmed that military commissars in Kyiv are sending out such letters.
He also admitted that the form of the letter was not set by any law.
The military commissar should do whatever it takes “to conscript the established amount of men liable for military service,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Popelsky noted that the letters were addressed first to the prosecutor’s offices and police departments so that they can open a case against the mentioned person.
Yet prosecutors and the police say they haven’t received the letters.
The press service of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office told the Kyiv Post their local departments have not received any such letters, and have not even heard of them.
Oleksandr Gomon, acting head of the police department in Desnyansky district, where Vitaliy lives, also told the Kyiv Post that his department hasn’t received any of these letters.
According to Godetsky, the commissar who is sending out these letters is taking advantage of “a section of the uneducated population, bringing to the front line not those who want to serve and who are ready for modern work with modern equipment, but those who are scared, and who have no idea what the law means.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected] |
Every Thursday, NHL.com will look ahead to the 2016 NHL Draft with an in-depth profile on one of its top prospects.
Forward Matthew Tkachuk didn't hesitate when asked what he felt stood out most about his U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame father, Keith Tkachuk , during his playing days.
"His leadership and competitiveness for sure," the younger Tkachuk said. "He would have no problem whacking a guy, sticking up for a teammate or just being vocal. Throughout his career it seemed there was never a time he didn't have a letter on his jersey.
"I know [having a letter] doesn't mean everything, but he's just a great leader."
The elder Tkachuk served as a captain or alternate captain in the NHL for 15 of his 18 seasons in the League, making his NHL debut with the Winnipeg Jets as a 19-year-old and being named captain of the team in his second full season in 1993-94. He was also a captain or an alternate on four different occasions while representing the United States in international competition.
Matthew Tkachuk is projected to be a first-round pick in the 2016 NHL Draft. (Photo: London Knights) Matthew Tkachuk is projected to be a first-round pick in the 2016 NHL Draft.
Matthew Tkachuk (6-foot-1, 195 pounds), who plays left wing, appears to be a chip off the old block. Tkachuk, a rookie with the London Knights in the Ontario Hockey League this season, is projected to be a first-round pick in the 2016 NHL Draft at First Niagara Center in Buffalo, N.Y., on June 24, 2016. The St. Louis, Mo., native might even be drafted higher than dad, who was chosen No. 19 by the Jets in the 1990 draft.
Tkachuk is an A-rated skater on NHL Central Scouting's September players to watch list.
"The two biggest aspects to becoming an NHL player are leadership and competitiveness," he said. "You have to be liked by your teammates, have to be a good teammate and have to be the hardest worker. You want to have the will to win more than the other guy and ultimately it comes down to you. What will you do to get to the next level?"
Tkachuk is proving he'll do whatever it takes. His spirited play and dominating effort in front of the opposing net during the United States National Junior Evaluation Camp in Lake Placid, N.Y., in August left a lasting impression on the entire U.S. managerial team.
"He looked like his old man out there," U.S. national junior coach Ron Wilson said. "He has a nose for the net and fights and claws to get there; he's tenacious, just like his dad."
Jim Johannson, who serves as general manager for the U.S. national junior team, agreed.
"He's got a wonderful game down low," Johannson said. "He's an agitator and a guy who's at the net, but who also has a really good stick and good hands as a scorer and playmaker. He also plays well in traffic and knows how to battle below the circles to create offensive opportunities."
Tkachuk had 38 goals, including five game-winners, as well as 95 points and 119 penalty minutes for the United States Under-18 National Team Development Program in 2014-15. As a rookie with the Knights this season, he has three goals and 12 points in seven games.
"He loves the front of the net and believes he can score goals by tips, screens and rebounds; there's not much hesitation," NTDP coach Don Granato said.
Having a chance to possibly represent his country at the 2016 World Junior Championship in Finland from Dec. 26, 2015, through Jan. 5, 2016, is something Tkachuk has been waiting for. He finished with four goals and seven points in five exhibition games at the U.S. evaluation camp in August and hopes to carry that over with the Knights this season.
Tkachuk, who had a scholarship offer to the University of Notre Dame, opted to take his talents to London for coach Dale Hunter instead.
"I talked to a lot of past players that went to London and the track record speaks for itself," Tkachuk said. "I'm a kid who loves hockey and I want to play all the time. I love their game schedule and how much they play. The tradition of winning is great, so to me it was a slam dunk to not only play for the team but knowing one of the best coaches in junior hockey is there."
Tkachuk played a vital role for the gold medal-winning effort by the United States at the 2015 IIHF World Under-18 Championship in Switzerland, scoring two goals and 12 points in seven games. He also ranked second on the team with 40 shots on goal on a line with center Auston Matthews and right wing Jack Roslovic. Matthews is the front-runner to go No. 1 in the 2016 draft, and Roslovic was taken No. 25 by the Winnipeg Jets in the 2015 draft.
"Tkachuk is a smart hockey player," New Jersey Devils head amateur scout Paul Castron said. "He's not the fastest guy out there, but he knows where to go and is willing to go to the net where a lot of guys don't go. He pays the price to score."
Danton Cole, who serves as an associate coach for the U.S. national junior team, likes what he sees in Tkachuk at this stage of his career. He believes the 17-year-old left-handed shot will gradually improve as the level of competition gets even better.
"It took him a few days to get into the flow of things at evaluation camp (in August), and that isn't unusual for the young guys, but he takes the puck to the net, plays with a good edge, skates well and is easy to play with," Cole said. "He's not only a goal scorer but he makes a lot of good passes and does a lot of the small things on the ice. He'll deflect, throw a pick and backcheck really well."
Tkachuk impressed U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame member Jeremy Roenick, who served as his coach at the CCM/USA Hockey All-American Top Prospects Game on Sept. 24 in Buffalo. Tkachuk had one goal and two assists in the game.
"His compete level and intelligence really stood out," Roenick said. "If you watch him, he plays a lot like Keith Tkachuk. He's not the fastest, but because of his hockey sense he puts himself in good position. That's engrained in his blood from dad.
"It's going to be nice to watch him progress in London. He'll get an opportunity to improve as a player and it wouldn't surprise me if he goes early in the draft."
--- |
The Pac-12 has announced its first- and second-team all-conference squads and postseason awards for 2013.
Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Ka'Deem Carey was the only unanimous first-team pick. Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
Arizona running back Ka'Deem Carey has been named the league's offensive player of the year. Arizona State defensive lineman Will Sutton joins an elite fraternity, earning his second straight Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year award. Washington's Steve Emtman is the only other player to win the league's defensive player of the year award in back to back years (1990-1991).
UCLA's Myles Jack earned freshman of the year for both offense and defense with his 70 tackles as a linebacker and seven touchdowns as a running back. This is the first time since the awards were introduced in 2008 that the same player has won both sides.
Arizona State coach Todd Graham is the league's coach of the year for guiding the Sun Devils to a conference record of 8-1 and winning the South Division. The Sun Devils host Stanford this weekend in the Pac-12 championship game.
The team is selected by the Pac-12 head coaches.
Offensive player of the year: Ka'Deem Carey, RB, Arizona
Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year: Will Sutton, DE Arizona State
Freshman Offense and Defensive Player of the Year: Myles Jack, RB/LB, UCLA
Coach of the Year: Todd Graham, Arizona State
First team offense
QB Marcus Mariota, So., Oregon (2)
RB Ka'Deem Carey, Jr., Arizona (2)
RB Bishop Sankey, Jr., Washington
WR Brandin Cooks, Jr., Oregon State
WR Paul Richardson, Jr., Colorado
TE Chris Coyle, Grad., Arizona State
OL Evan Finkenberg, Grad., Arizona State
OL Hroniss Grasu, Jr., Oregon (2)
OL Marcus Martin, Jr., USC
OL Xavier Su'a-Filo, Jr., UCLA (2)
OL David Yankey, Sr, Stanford (2)
First team defense
DL Ben Gardner, Sr., Stanford
DL Trevor Reilly, Sr., Utah
DL Will Sutton, Sr., Arizona State
DL Leonard Williams, So., USC
LB Anthony Barr, Sr., UCLA (2)
LB Trent Murphy, Sr., Stanford (2)
LB Shayne Skov, Sr., Stanford
DB Deone Bucannon, Sr., Washington State
DB Alden Darby, Sr., Arizona State
DB Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, Jr., Oregon
DB Robert Nelson, Sr., Arizona State
DB Ed Reynolds, Sr., Stanford (2)
First team specialists
PK Zane Gonzalez, Fr., Arizona State
P Tom Hackett, So. Utah
RS Ty Montgomery, Jr., Stanford
ST Soma Vainuku, So. USC
Second team offense
QB Taylor Kelly, Jr., Arizona State
RB Tyler Gaffney, Sr., Stanford
RB Marion Grice, Sr. Arizona State
WR Ty Montgomery, Jr., Stanford
WR Jaelen Strong, So., Arizona State
TE Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Jr., Washington
OL Jamil Douglas, Jr., Arizona State
OL Cameron Fleming, Sr., Stanford
OL Andrus Peat, So., Stanford
OL Isaac Seumalo, So., Oregon State
OL Khalil Wilkes, Sr. Stanford
Second team defense
DL Scott Crichton, Jr., Oregon State
DL Taylor Hart, Sr., Oregon
DL Devon Kennard, Sr., USC
DL Hau'oli Kikaha, Jr., Washington
DL Tenny Palepoi, Sr., Utah
LB Carl Bradford, Jr., Arizona State
LB Myles Jack, Fr., UCLA
LB Hayes Pullard, Jr., USC
LB Chris Young, Sr., Arizona State
DB Dion Bailey, Jr., USC
DB Osahon Irabor, Grad., Arizona State
DB Marcus Peters, So., Washington
DB Rashaad Reynolds, Sr., Oregon State
Second team specialists
PK Vincenzo D'Amato, Sr., California
P Travis Coons, Sr., Washington
RS Nelson Agholor, So., USC
ST Erick Dargan, Jr., Oregon
ST Joe Hemschoot, Sr., Stanford
ST Ryan Hofmeister, Jr., UCLA
RS: Return Specialist
ST: special teams player (not a kicker or returner)
(2): Two-time first-team selection
Honorable mention
Arizona: LB Marquis Flowers, Sr.; DL Tevin Hood, Sr.; WR Nate Phillips, Fr.; DB Jared Tevis, Jr.; LB Scooby Wright, Fr.
Arizona State: DL Davon Coleman, Grad.; Gannon Conway, Sr.; ST D.J. Foster, So.; ST De'Marieya Nelson, Jr.
California: DL Deandre Coleman, Sr.; QB Jared Goff, Fr.; WR Bryce Treggs, So.
Colorado: RB Mike Adkins, Fr.; LB Addison Gillam, Fr.; PK Will Oliver, Jr.
Oregon: WR/RS Bralon Addison, So.; WR Josh Huff, Sr.; OL Tyler Johnstone, So.; DL Wade Keliikipi, Sr.; LB Derrick Malone, Jr.; RB Byron Marshall, So.; DL Tony Washington, Jr.
Oregon State: OL Grant Enger, Sr.; TE Connor Hamlett, JR.; QB Sean Mannion, Jr.; DB Ryan Murphy, Jr.; DB Steven Nelson, Jr.; ST Terron Ward, Jr.
Stanford: DL Henry Anderson, Sr.; DB Alex Carter, So.; OL Kevin Danser, Sr.; DL Josh Mauro, Sr.; P Ben Rhyne, Sr.; DB Jordan Richards, Jr.; LB A.J. Tarpley, Sr.
UCLA: OL Jake Brendel, So.; ST Jayon Brown, Fr.; P Sean Covington, Fr.; TE Thomas Duarte, Fr.; WR Shaq Evans, Sr.; WR Devin Fuller, So.; DB Randall Goforth, So.; QB Brett Hundley, So.; DB Anthony Jefferson, Jr.; LB Eric Kendricks, Jr.; DL Cassius Marsh, Sr.; DL Ellis McCarthy, So.; DB Fabian Moreau, So.; OL Alex Redmond, Fr.; DL Eddie Vanderdoes, Fr.; LB Jordan Zumwalt, Sr.
USC: P Kris Albarado, So.; RB Javorius Allen, So.; WR Nelson Agholor, So.; DB Su'a Cravens, Fr.; OL Kevin Graf, Sr.; TE Xavier Grimble, Jr.; QB Cody Kessler, So.; WR Marqise Lee, Jr.; DB Josh Shaw, Jr.; DL J.R. Tavai, Jr.; OL Max Turek, So.; DL George Uko, Jr.
Utah: WR Dres Anderson, Jr.; OL Vyncent Jones, Sr.; DB Keith McGill, Sr.; PK Andy Phillips, Fr.; LB Jason Whittingham, So.
Washington: OL Dexter Charles, So.; PK Travis Coons, Sr.; OL Mike Criste, Jr.; OL Micah Hatchie, Jr.; DB Sean Parker, Sr.; QB Keith Price, Sr.; DL Danny Shelton, Jr.; LB Shaq Thompson, So.
Washington State: OL Elliott Bosch, Sr.; WR River Cracraft, Fr.; PK Andrew Furney, Sr.; DB Damante Horton, Sr.;
Some notes on the teams:
By School: Arizona State and Stanford placed the most players on the first team with six selections each.
By Class: Of the 27 first-team selections, two are graduate students, 11 are seniors, nine are juniors, four are sophomores and one freshman.
Unanimous: Only one player was named on the first-team ballot of all 12 head coaches -- RB Ka'Deem Carey of Arizona.
Two-time Selections: Ten players are repeat first-team selections from last year.
All-Academic: Two first team All-Pac-12 performers also were named to the Pac-12 All Academic second team -- RB Bishop Sankey of Washington and DB Ed Reynolds of Stanford, while Washington defensive lineman Hau'oli Kikaha was named to the All-Pac-12 second team and Pac-12 All-Academic first team. Arizona State QB Taylor Kelly earned second-team honors on both the Pac-12 All-Conference and All-Academic teams. |
Pentagon officials have repeatedly made clear in recent weeks that they are pushing the Obama Administration for further escalations of the ISIS war in Iraq, envisioning a significant increase in ground troops there. Apparently, this doesn’t stop at Iraq.
Officials today confirmed the administration is also considering a massive increase in US ground troops in neighboring Syria as part of the plan, in the form of a large contingent of special forces to be sent to Syria’s northeast.
Exact details are scant, and officials wouldn’t offer any amounts for the number of troops to be sent, beyond saying that there would be “many times” more troops being sent to Syria than are presently there now. Official figures on current numbers are “around 50.”
While the US has had a relatively free hand in sending troops to Iraq, the troops they have in Syria are confined to Kurdish territory, and are not welcomed by the Syrian government. The Kurdish region continues to grow, however, and with the US and Russia talking about a coordinated attack on the ISIS capital of Raqqa, it’s likely these new US troops will be taking part in that.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz |
The Democrats and their media acolytes who are pushing back against a full investigation of the Benghazi scandal are in full circle the wagons mode. They are trying to make investigating this scandal into some sort of late night joke against Republicans, but instead are looking more desperate by the day.
Many Americans do not believe the Obama administration’s account of what happened leading up to and during the September 11, 2012 attack. They smell a cover up. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, 59 percent feel it is unlikely the administration has revealed all of the details surrounding the tragic attack.
“Seventy-two percent continue to believe that it is important to find out exactly what happened in the Benghazi matter, with 46 percent who say it is ‘Very Important.' Twenty-five percent consider more information about the Benghazi case unimportant, up from 19 percent in January, but that includes just 7 percent who say it is ‘Not At All Important,'” said Rasmussen.
Distrust of the Obama administration was stoked by the recent revelation of an e-mail written by then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes showing White House involvement in concocting the bogus anti-Muslim video explanation for the killings. The purpose of this intervention by the White House was to prepare then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for her Sunday TV show appearances on September 16, 2012, with the goal of pushing the video narrative even though senior officials at the State Department and intelligence personnel on the ground knew early on that a pre-meditated terrorist attack was the real cause.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a fool of himself yet again when he tried to claim with a straight face that the Rhodes e-mail had nothing to do with Benghazi. It’s all old news anyway, he intoned.
Bill Clinton has tried to blunt criticism of his wife’s conduct as Secretary of State by saying that the State Department’s own Benghazi investigation, which was led by retired Adm. Mike Mullen and former U.S. diplomat Thomas Pickering, “looked into what was wrong. They gave 29 recommendations. She took 'em and started implementing them."
That may be true, but Bill conveniently left out the fact that Hillary’s hand-picked Accountability Review Board failed to interview her. When she finally appeared before Congress to testify, Hillary responded to questions with a question of her own: “What difference at this point does it make?”
The mother of one of the Americans murdered in Benghazi by the jihadists, Sean Smith, refuses to accept such cold indifference. She wants the truth: “How can Hillary sit up there and say ‘What difference does it make,’ when she is the person that made the difference? She is the one that would not allow any security there; she is the one that was responsible.”
Bill Clinton's defense of his wife’s lack of responsiveness to pleas for more security before the September 11, 2012 attack -- despite repeated prior jihadist attacks on Western facilities and personnel -- was to say that "No one had advance notice that this would happen as nearly as I can tell.” It must all depend in his mind on what the words “advanced notice” mean.
Susan Rice, now serving as President Obama’s National Security Adviser, wants to put her infamous Sunday show appearances behind her for good. When asked at a foreign policy lunch on May 14th whether the House select committee investigation on Benghazi would reveal anything new, she flippantly responded, "Danged if I know." Actually, that’s the answer she should have given on those five Sunday talk shows if she had been asked why a UN ambassador with no knowledge of what happened in Benghazi was shoved in front of the cameras. She was sacrificed so that her boss Hillary Clinton, who had been briefed on what was happening in Benghazi in real time by the number two State Department official in Libya, Gregory Hicks, would not have to do the lying.
Rice also parroted the Democratic line, used by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as justification for his decision not to form a Senate select committee, that 25,000 documents have already been turned over to Congress. “It's hard to imagine what further will come of yet another committee,” she said.
Rice might have had a reasonable point except for one tiny detail she left out – a key e-mail linking the White House to preparation of her misleading statements to the American people on national TV was not among those thousands of e-mails turned over to Congress. It was only turned over very recently after court action. It is not unreasonable to assume that there are other incriminating e-mails lurking in the files of the State Department and White House. They may provide answers to questions that the select committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, in a turn-about, posed to reporters during a press conference when he asked them if they had been doing their jobs:
•Can you tell me why [Ambassador] Chris Stevens was in Benghazi that he was killed? Do you know? Does it bother you whether or not you know why Chris Stevens was in Benghazi? •Do you know why we were the last flag flying in Benghazi, after the British had left and the Red Cross had been bombed? •Do you know why requests for additional security were denied? Do you know why an ambassador asking for more security, days and weeks before he was murdered and those requests went unheeded? Do you know the answer to why those requests went unheeded? •Do you know why no assets were deployed during the siege? And I’ve heard the explanation, which defies logic, frankly, that we could not have gotten there in time. But you know they didn’t know when it was going to end, so how can you possibly cite that as an excuse? •Do you know whether the president called any of our allies and said, can you help, we have men under attack? Can you answer that? •Do any of you know why Susan Rice was picked [to go on five Sunday talk shows after the attacks]? The Secretary of State [Hillary Clinton] did not go. She says she doesn’t like Sunday talk shows. That’s the only media venue she does not like, if that’s true. Why was Susan Rice on the five Sunday talk shows? •Do you know the origin of this mythology, that it was spawned as a spontaneous reaction to a video? Do you know where that started? •Do you know where we got from no evidence on that, to that being the official position of the administration?”
Much of the mainstream media could not care less about the truth. They act like an extension of the Obama White House. And they are auditioning for that same part in helping Hillary Clinton fend off embarrassing questions that might interfere with her quest for the White House in 2016.
Chuck Todd of NBC News, for example, said on May 13th that “all the questions have been answered. There’s just some people that don’t like the answers." Then perhaps NBC News will enlighten us on the answers to Rep. Gowdy’s questions above.
Left-wing commentator Eleanor Clift wins the prize for the most idiotic media criticism of further investigation into what happened in Benghazi. She claimed last Sunday that Ambassador Chris Stevens “was not 'murdered;' he died of smoke inhalation in that safe room in that CIA installation.” She then doubled down on her ludicrous claim during a radio interview on May 13th:
"I was taking issue with the sort of glib use of the word 'murdered.’ My point is that it was a very chaotic event. The CIA was involved, which is why there was a lot of confusion initially, and that all the questions that this special committee is raising have been asked and answered in previous investigations."
The jihadists who set the fire that killed Ambassador Stevens were not out on a lark. They intended to kill. In any case, by committing the felony of arson which resulted in Ambassador Stevens’ death, the jihadists committed what is known in the law as felony murder.
Then there is MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who accused Republicans of using Benghazi to subject poor Hillary Clinton to "voodoo." Maybe he is on to something, given Hillary’s possible health problems:
The enemies of Hillary Clinton, by that I mean the partisan enemies, have got their voodoo doll. It's called Benghazi. Every time they put the pin in, they hope it hurts Hillary. Every time they say the word, they hope it scares her.
The only thing that scares Hillary and the Obama administration is the truth. Their partisan defenders are doing everything possible to keep the American people from knowing the truth about what really happened before, during and after the tragic attack on September 11, 2012 that murdered four brave Americans who were serving their country.
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Sarah Harrison speaks at the re: publica 2014 in Berlin station. May 6, 2014. (Photo: re:publica 2014 / Flickr)
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This interview with Sarah Harrison of the Courage Foundation is based on a radio interview conducted by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese on Clearing The FOG, originally heard on We Act Radio, 1480 AM in Washington, DC, and also available by podcast.
Sarah Harrison is a British journalist, legal researcher and WikiLeaks investigation editor. She works with WikiLeaks and is a close adviser to Julian Assange. Harrison accompanied National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden on a high-profile flight from Hong Kong to Moscow while he was sought by the United States government. She is director of the new Courage Foundation, which seeks to defend whistleblowers as well as our right to know.
Kevin Zeese: Sarah, tell us what the Courage Foundation is and what the goals of the organization are.
Sarah Harrison: The Courage Foundation was born from the idea that whistleblowers need protection from prosecution. When we first started to help Edward Snowden, there were many other NGOs and organizations around the world that should have been able to help him; but, when it comes to high risk people with huge persecution from places like the United States, the reality is that to move quickly and robustly to provide the support they need is actually very difficult. So after we helped Snowden, we realized that there was a need for an organization that was able to do this for future Snowdens as well. So we set up Courage on that basis. In addition, Courage will be fighting for policy and legal changes to give whistleblowers the protections they deserve. I’m very pleased that you accepted to be on our advisory board Kevin.
Kevin Zeese: Thank you for inviting me to be on the board. I also like the way you frame the issue of the public’s right to know as part of the agenda because I think that is essential to having any kind of freedom of speech in the 21st century. It is important to frame it as not just our right to speak, but our right to have information.
Sarah Harrison: In the United States, they are aggressively going after whistleblowers and truth tellers. When you look at the Jeremy Hammond case, he exposed abuses by the private intelligence organization Stratfor that was spying on Bhopal activists. He was aggressively prosecuted by US courts and sentenced to 10 years in prison. You see persecution against individual journalists and publishers as well. Anyone who is speaking truth to power in any real manner is being come down upon by the US government to try and set examples and to stop the truth from being exposed in the future.
Kevin Zeese: That is exactly right. You are a good person to be directing Courage because you have showed a lot of courage. I don’t know if you knew what you were getting into when you escorted Snowden to Russia but I’m sure that it has had a big impact on your security and liberty. Now that you are based in Germany, are you able to go back to the UK? Do you fear prosecution? What are your thoughts on the risks that you took?
Sarah Harrison: I was aware that there were obviously potent risks. I think it was dependent on how far we managed to get in the process. But, I think it was a risk worth taking. I wanted to show that there was another example, other than Chelsea Manning who was put in a cage. Chelsea was the last example of a high-profile whistleblower that the world had seen. I wanted to show that there was another possibility – that you could be in another country with asylum. In addition, I think it was important to show future whistleblowers that if you come forward and expose wrongdoing, that there are people who will stand with you and help you, no matter what the cost.
Previous whistleblowers, Thomas Drake, William Binney and Daniel Ellsberg talk about it and often say it is a process where they feel very alone after they’ve blown the whistle because they miss their job, their families and their whole world. And I think it is very important to show a sense of solidarity around whistleblowers.
The reason that you spoke about me not being able to go home: I’m from the United Kingdom which has a very strange law that is part of the Terrorism Act called Schedule 7. It is what they stopped David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, under and it happens in seaports and airports, essentially, where you are not fully in UK jurisdiction, but you are subject to the will of their officials. If you’re stopped for questioning under Schedule 7, you are compelled to answer their questions. You have no right to silence. And if you do not answer some of their questions, which someone in my position would be unable to do for source protection reasons, you commit a crime upon entry. It’s a very unique situation in the UK that makes it actually quite dangerous for anyone that really has to uphold source protection for their job.
Margaret Flowers: What are some of the legal changes that you see are necessary to protect people who are trying to expose the truth?
“People need to see that these are dangerous precedents that are being set and fight against these secret processes.”
Sarah Harrison: There are a couple of things: first, we really need to understand that precedents are trying to be set around the world that allow prosecution of publishers, editors, journalists and whistleblowers. For example, if you look at the grand jury examining WikiLeaks in the United States, this is a secret court proceeding that is trying in any way possible to convict a publisher. People need to see that these are dangerous precedents that are being set and fight against these secret processes.
When it comes to whistleblower protections, one of the things to fight for going forward is to understand the realities of the situation. It is unrealistic to expect that a country is suddenly going to put in place laws that are really going to protect someone like Snowden who comes forward with such high value classified information. It is better to focus on agreements and conventions between countries that prevent extradition so there is the ability to support a whistleblower from another country somewhere else.
Kevin Zeese: Those are great points. You know in the United States there are a couple of things I would add to answer your question, Margaret. One would be the Espionage Act. It was a World War I law that was rarely used and President Obama has used it more than any other president; in fact, he has used it more than all the presidents combined and doubled. It was the most serious charge of which Chelsea Manning was convicted. The constitutionality of the Espionage Act is an issue that every media outlet, every publisher in the country, should side with Chelsea Manning on because if what happened to Chelsea is allowed, it destroys freedom of the press. Chelsea, who was not a spy, was convicted of espionage and the judge said there was no need to prove that she intended to commit espionage. The fact that no intent to commit espionage needs to be proved means that if a media outlet publishes any document related to national security, it can result in an espionage conviction. It makes it almost impossible to report on national security issues.
The other thing in the United States is most of the whistleblower protections do not apply to national security cases. So that is a gigantic shortcoming. Those are two areas in the United States where we need to take some actions.
Sarah Harrison: When Edward Snowden blew the whistle, he was actually a contractor at that time, so even the supposed protections that are meant to be in place do not apply to contractors.
“The media really has to look at what national security really means.”
It is also important for the media to question the rhetoric that the government uses. For example, when the government comes out and says “Oh well, there were other avenues he could have taken,” this should not be taken as truthful because, in fact, there were not other avenues. Rather than blindly reprinting the quote, the media should be questioning it. When the government throws out concepts like “national security,” which they are really just using as fear mongering words, it needs to be questioned by the media. In fact, what national security risks were created by Snowden’s disclosures or Manning’s disclosures? The media really has to look at what national security really means. It means protecting the security within a nation. It is not an excuse to go invade another country halfway around the world. The media should really be examining the rhetoric the government throws out and looking at what it really means rather than allowing the government to falsely describe the impact of these leaks and allowing Chelsea Manning to be forgotten in jail.
Kevin Zeese: That’s exactly right, and I think a lot of that has to do with the lack of independent media. We have a very corporate-dominated, mass media, and that media works closely with the government. In addition, the media is kept in fear by the government and if the Espionage Act is found to be constitutional without any proof of criminal intent – without the government having to prove any intent to commit espionage – it is just going to make it harder for the media to tell the truth because they will be in even more fear. So it is a gigantic problem. Let me just close with a final question for you Sarah, what’s the first campaign of Courage?
Sarah Harrison: So we are starting with a campaign for our first beneficiary who is Edward Snowden. It is called Stand With Snowden and the point of this campaign is to show solidarity around the world for Snowden. There are a few reasons for this: first, it is important for the whistleblowers themselves to know they will have support. Secondly, we want people to really show their government they support Snowden at this critical time for him, as his temporary asylum period in Russia ends. So we are asking people to upload photos to the Courage Foundation site, CourageFound.org, and you will see the tab there for campaigns and you can upload your own photo saying, “I stand with Snowden” and include your city and country. Trustees of the Courage Foundation will in a few weeks be writing to those governments formally and asking them to act as their public wishes them to and grant Edward Snowden political asylum. There is a high school that did a group photo . . . there are some very nice ones. People should have a browse around.
Kevin Zeese: There are a lot of photos up there from all over the world. It is great to see the movement in support of Snowden growing and we hope to help build that support even more. Sarah, I really appreciate the courage that you have shown and the work that you’ve done for the last few years. It is really good you are heading this new effort and we want to do what we can to help.
Margaret Flowers: You also worked closely with Julian Assange in recent years. He has just finished two years of being held in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has political asylum. Reportedly there continues to be an investigation of Assange in the United States and people have been calling for an end to that investigation and protesting outside the embassy. What are your thoughts on the threat to the publisher and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks?
Sarah Harrison: I think Julian Assange’s situation is yet another precedent being set that we should fight against – his right to take up his asylum is being blocked. His asylum is not related to the Swedish case, but the US threat. Not only that, but there is a lack of due process in the Swedish case. Both Mr. Assange and the Ecuadorian government have asked the Swedes to question him in the embassy (and before that Mr. Assange asked that they question him when he was under house arrest), and yet the Swedes refuse, although this is a normal legal procedure. These are just some of the abuses in the Swedish case – there are many which you can read about at Free Assange Now and Justice For Assange.
To me it is very worrying that even in such a high profile case, there can be these obvious abuses of international law and so few step in to act. With regards to his situation in the embassy – he continues to work hard, but it cannot be easy being in such a small place, with no sun, horizon or much movement for two years. I hope that soon either Sweden or the UK will stop abusing his case; in the meantime he will continue to work, as can be seen by the WikiLeaks publication that we made on TISA on his two-year anniversary in the embassy.
Kevin Zeese: We encourage people to donate to the Courage Foundation and its campaign to defend Edward Snowden. You can donate to Courage here.
Sarah Harrison: Thank you very much for having me.
Margaret Flowers: Thank you for taking the time. |
Outline of my current deck.
In keeping with the meta of my playgroup certain obvious cards have been swapped to my sideboard/maybeboard in order to keep our games fun and relatively balanced.
I use the first couple of turns to get some creatures/artifacts on the board and prepare to "start the engine" by dropping Shirei. Tutors are wonderful for fixing mana and hunting down the various components the deck needs to handle each situation. The deck has a number of ways to win with many revolving around coretapper combos and abuse of the thousand year elixir whenever possible. I run light on lands but still produce massive quantities of mana which make excellent fuel for a large exsanguinate or abusing plaguebreath creatures to tackle opponents. I control opponents with torpor orb, grave pact, and braids/smokestack. The decks creatures are good at creating tokens which make excellent sac fodder for skullclamp, mana alters, and various other attrition effects.
The deck will start to draw hate quickly in most playgroups i have found in a similar fashion to how memnarch does. People enjoy keeping the cards they play out on the board or even in their hand and when i start interrupting the beginning and end of every turn it paints a large target on me in most instances. The other similarity is that it relies on certain pieces remaining uninterrupted to get itself really going. The deck is terribly weak if you cannot get disruptive functions online and start abusing the Commanders ability so i must time my plays carefully around the flow of the board so as to not draw early attention or dictate my strategy too early.
Graveyard Hate - this will hose the deck. Rest in Peace is usually an automatic scoop. |
Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, shocked some conservatives Tuesday when the first vote she cast as a new congresswoman was to keep Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, as House speaker.
Twitter erupted, with several people claiming to be in her district saying they had lost faith in their previous hero, and that she had shown her true self. Remember, this was not a vote on legislation, it was a vote for the speaker of the House.
Love, in an email to the Washington Examiner, provided some insight into why she chose to keep Boehner as GOP leader.
RELATED: New GOP women vote for John Boehner as House Speaker
“There were no qualified or notable campaigns for speaker within the Republican Party other than John Boehner,” Love said. “Casting a vote for a candidate who has not actively campaigned and does not have the support to be speaker is an indirect vote for Nancy Pelosi, and I will not vote for Nancy Pelosi.”
Love also reminded voters that she is playing the long game when it comes to fighting for conservative principles.
RELATED: GOP welcomes 7 women into the ranks
“There will be a time and a place for me to stand as a lone voice of dissension, but the vote for the speaker, is not that place,” Love said. “For me to be an effective congressman over the next two years it is important for me to be on the side of the elected speaker.” |
Indoctrination is a new apocalyptic political thriller comic book series from comic writer and novelist Michael Moreci (Roche Limit, Burning Fields) and SuperPAC operator-turned-comics artist Matt Battaglia, published by Z2, delves into the powerful ideology that drives the terrifying underbelly of America.
Mixing elements of True Detective with Se7en, Indoctrination confronts the very real horror of death cults and sleeper cells, serial killers and apocalyptic nightmares, in the 21st century.
Indoctrination begins in the dusty southwest with a string of murders that portend the sinister designs of an infamous terrorist to bring about the end times. Only the rogue actions of two FBI agents, who must rely on a potentially untrustworthy expatriate with deep ties to the terrorist, can stop the darkness. Indoctrination follows these two FBI agents as they develop a complicated relationship with an infamous terrorist, in an attempt to solve a string of grizzly, seemingly related murders.
Here’s the making of the third issue cover…
And while we’re at it, the retailer incentive covers to issue 1 and 2… with a little indoctrination of Michael Moreci’s own to comic book retailers…
Moreci writes,
Selling comics isn’t easy.
That’s the no-brainer statement of the year, right? We know that all too well. When it comes to comics, we’re looking at a comparatively small group of readers that tend to have very particular, and habitual, tastes. That’s why selling new comics is especially difficult, like squeezing-a-watermelon- through-a-chain-link-fence difficult. You gotta push really hard.
But, new comics are essential to the business of comics. They’re the most effective way to expand sales, whether through getting current readers to adopt a more robust reading list or bringing in new readers altogether with a different genre or offering. But, again, they’re difficult because they involve risk. Risk for the creators to make, retailers to order, and readers to buy.
In my opinion, retailers are risking the most in this equation. You are, and I mean this without an ounce of hyperbole, the lifeblood of this industry. Retailers are on the front line of comics, taking financial risks every single week in order to literally keep the medium alive. Your job isn’t easy but, like creators, you are driven by your passion for comics and your insistence, beyond all reason (also like creators), to stay committed to this amazing medium. For that—for keeping comics alive through your love and dedication—I thank you.
Because I know your job isn’t easy, I’m here to tell you that, for my upcoming series, INDOCTRINATION, I’m doing every single thing I can to make it easier. The entire team behind this book—Z2, Superfan Promotions, and co-creator Matt Battaglia—have been working tirelessly to make Indoctrination the book that you, retailers, want. Let me tell you how:
Let’s start with the basics—first, we’ve been promoting the shit out of this book. Here’s a rundown of press outlets that have already covered Indoctrination in one form or other:
The Hollywood Reporter
Bleeding Cool (twice)
Comics Alliance (twice)
Den of Geek
Multiversity
SKCHTD
Forces of Geek
There’s more I’m sure I’m forgetting. And, believe me, we’re just getting started. Also, because the book is political in nature, Matt and I have cross-promoted with websites like Free the People and Waging Nonviolence, who combined have a social media presence of nearly one million people.
One of the greatest tools we have for promotion is a trailer—an amazingly eerie trailer—that the folks at Z2 cut together. Give it a spin and feel free to embed into your own newsletters and websites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=aBFtcbpI03k
So, what else are we up to? Well, quite a bit. There’s advertising. Matt and I have taken ads on comics websites as well as on Twitter and Facebook. We’ve made a FCBD story, brand new content not in the any issue, that will be seen far and wide come May 7 (a day after orders for issue #1 are due, as luck would have it).
And, as an added bonus, we’re told the book is actually pretty good. Here’s a taste of what’s been said about it so far:
“Intense and atmospheric…INDOCTRINATION is True Detective meets The Master — where the most powerful force in the world is belief, and that power gleefully corrupts.” –Stephen Orlando, Writer, Midnighter, Virgil
“INDOCTRINATION hits that sweet spot where surreal creepiness and very real world horror dance around one another in way that convinces you that something ghastly is unfolding just underneath the skin of the comfortable world you know and love.” –Cullen Bunn, Writer, Harrow County, The Sixth Gun
“Brilliant, cerebral, and deeply philosophical…one of the best first issues I’ve read in a long while. I can’t wait to read more.” –Curt Pires, Writer, The Tomorrows, Pop
“Welcome to your new addiction…It’s a page-turner that will suck you in completely. ” –Spartantown
“Indoctrination is a living, breathing testament to the depth and intelligence of Moreci as a writer…it’s a fascinating, gripping series which comes highly, highly recommended.” –Big Comic Page
Not too bad, right?
One other thing—for all our piece of mind, this book is perfectly on schedule. By the time we send issue #1 to the printers, we’ll be wrapping up issue #3. We’re not disappearing, we’re not delivering late. This book will be on the shelves exactly when we say it will. And speaking of, have you seen the cover to that issue? If you haven’t, well:
BTW, some of you have already gotten our PDF combining issue #1 and the first half of #2; if you didn’t get it but want to, just drop us a line, and we’ll get it right to you.
Here’s what we’re asking of you—meets us halfway. Hell, meet us a quarter of the way. We’re making it so people will know about this book when they walk into your shop. They’ll know what it’s about, they’ll know it’s quality. We’re asking you to stock it, share our confidence, and give it the nudge it needs to put our work over the top. And not only are we diminishing your risk as much as we possibly can, we’re going to reward you for partnering with us. Check this out:
For every 10 copies you order, get a limited edition poster
For every 25 copies you order, we’ll send you two limited edition prints
For 50 copies, you get a t-shirt and five prints
For 100 copies, you get 10 prints and five t-shirts
For 500 copies, we’ll hook you up with 25 prints, 15 t-shirts, and your own variant cover that’s part of a series of covers inspired by serial killer movies
So, you sold yet? Are you Indoctrinated?
Good. Now let’s work together to sell some comics and reap the mutual rewards.
If you want to know more about Indoctrination, contact me via social media or my email (which most of you have), or visit indoctrinationcomic.com.
That you, again, for all your terrific work. I wouldn’t be making comics or even writing this letter without you.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
(Last Updated )
Related Posts
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police lights
The body of a missing California woman was found inside a vehicle authorities said had been in a Walmart parking lot for months before anyone noticed.
(Thinkstock)
MARINA, Calif. -- Investigators say the body of a young woman was left in a Northern California parking lot for three months before it was noticed.
KSBW-TV reports that 22-year-old Lauren Jessie Moss was found dead inside her car in a Wal-Mart store in Salinas on Feb. 3.
She was last seen alive in Seaside on Nov. 13; the same day she left a rehab center.
Salinas police officers said Moss' death was likely a suicide.
Police say Moss's car had dark-tinted windows and a sunshade over the dashboard making it hard to spot anyone inside. Wal-Mart's security cameras only went back to December, but footage showed the car in the same parking spot at that time.
A Wal-Mart spokesman says they do not have personnel patrolling overnight, but they do have 24-hour surveillance cameras. |
A University of Southern Mississippi fraternity pledge was arrested Wednesday night for his role in the scavenger hunt that led to the deaths of two flamingos, the Hattiesburg American reports.
Devin Nottis was pledging the Delta Nu Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha on Tuesday and was supposed to take a photograph with a flamingo for the scavenger hunt.
Instead, police say, Norris took the animal itself — but neither the female Chilean flamingo nor its mate went quietly.
Hattiesburg Zoo officials say that the male flamingo “attempted to defend his mate and was injured.” It was found dead in its holding area the morning after the scavenger hunt with scrapes on its body and severe internal injuries.
The kidnapped female flamingo was recovered Tuesday, but it was also severely injured and had to be euthanized.
On his Twitter account, Nottis wrote:
So far, he has only been charged with grand larceny, though police said that more charges may be forthcoming as the investigation continues.
The University of Southern Mississippi barred Nottis from campus, and ordered Pi Kappa Alpha to cease and desist all fraternity related activities. The national office also placed the fraternity on administrative leave until it determines the Delta Nu chapter’s future. |
Jones
vs.
Cormier Cerrone
vs.
Jury Tavares
vs.
Marquardt Horiguchi
vs.
Gaudinot Lombard
vs.
Burkman Mike Bohn
@MikeBohnMMA
2015 picks: 0-0
2014 Champion
Jones
Cerrone
Marquardt
Horiguchi
Lombard Dann Stupp
@DannStupp
2015 picks: 0-0
Jones
Cerrone
Marquardt
Horiguchi
Lombard John Morgan
@MMAjunkieJohn
2015 picks: 0-0
Jones
Cerrone
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard Ben Fowlkes
@benfowlkesMMA
2015 picks: 0-0
Jones
Cerrone
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard Brian Garcia
@thegoze
2015 picks: 0-0
Cormier
Cerrone
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard Steven Marrocco
@MMAjunkieSteven
2015 picks: 0-0
Jones
Jury
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard Matt Erickson
@MMAjunkieMatt
2015 picks: 0-0
Cormier
Cerrone
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard George Garcia
@MMAjunkieGeorge
2015 picks: 0-0
Cormier
Cerrone
Tavares
Horiguchi
Lombard
With the new year, MMAjunkie’s Mike Bohn is celebrating his 2014 championship after his 172-77 (69.1 percent) finish in our 2014 staff picks. Check out his – and the other staff’s predictions – for Saturday’s UFC 182 event.
The event, which airs on pay-per-view from Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Garden Arena, features the heavily anticipated grudge match between light-heavyweight champion Jon Jones (20-1 MMA, 14-1 UFC) and Daniel Cormier (15-0 MMA, 4-0 UFC).
Bohn and four other staffers chose Jones, while three picked Cormier. He and six others also chose lightweight Donald Cerrone (25-6 MMA, 12-3 UFC) over Myles Jury (15-0 MMA, 6-0 UFC), who got one vote. However, he went against the grain and was one of only two staffers to predict middleweight Nate Marquardt (33-13-2 MMA, 11-6 UFC) to beat Brad Tavares (12-3 MMA, 7-3 UFC).
Elsewhere on the card, Kyoji Horiguchi (14-1 MMA, 3-0 UFC) was the unanimous choice over flyweight Louis Gaudinot (6-3 MMA, 1-2 UFC), and Hector Lombard (34-4-1 MMA, 3-2 UFC) was the consensus pick over welterweight Josh Burkman (27-10 MMA, 5-5 UFC).
Check out all the picks above. Additionally, leave your main-card picks below. As usual, MMAjunkie reader “IAMMA” is organizing the MMAjunkie Member Picks. Like the MMAjunkie staff picks, the readers’ records reset with the new year, so now’s the time to get involved.
For more on UFC 182, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.
* * * * |
None of this is made up. People really did put this stupid crazy shit on their resumes or job applications.
1. I am very detail-oreinted.
2. My intensity and focus are at inordinately high levels, and my ability to complete projects on time is unspeakable.
3. Thank you for your consideration. Hope to hear from you shorty!
4. Enclosed is a ruff draft of my resume.
5. It’s best for employers that I not work with people.
6. Here are my qualifications for you to overlook.
7. I am a quick leaner, dependable, and motivated.
8. If this resume doesn’t blow your hat off, then please return it in the enclosed envelope.
9. My fortune cookie said, “Your next interview will result in a job.” And I like your company in particular.
10. I saw your ad on the information highway, and I came to a screeching halt.
11. Insufficient writing skills, thought processes have slowed down some. If I am not one of the best, I will look for another opportunity.
12. Please disregard the attached resume-it is terribly out of date.
13. Seek challenges that test my mind and body, since the two are usually inseparable.
14. Graduated in the top 66% of my class.
15. Reason for leaving last job: The owner gave new meaning to the word paranoia. I prefer to elaborate privately.
16. Previous experience: Self-employed-a fiasco.
17. Exposure to German for two years, but many words are inappropriate for business.
18. Experience: Watered, groomed, and fed the family dog for years.
19. I am a rabid typist.
20. I have a bachelorette degree in computers.
21. Excellent memory; strong math aptitude; excellent memory; effective management skills; and very good at math.
22. Strengths: Ability to meet deadlines while maintaining composer.
23. I worked as a Corporate Lesion.
24. Reason for leaving last job: Pushed aside so the vice president’s girlfriend could steal my job.
25. Married, eight children. Prefer frequent travel.
26. Objective: To have my skills and ethics challenged on a daily basis.
27. Special skills: Thyping.
28. My ruthlessness terrorized the competition and can sometimes offend.
29. I can play well with others.
30. Personal Goal: To hand-build a classic cottage from the ground up using my father-in-law.
31. Objective: I want a base salary of $50-$60,000 dollars, not including bonus. And some decent benefits. Like a retirement plan, health insurance, personal or sick days.
32. Experience: Provided correct answers to customers’ questions.
33. Education: Graduated from predatory school with honors.
34. Never been fired, although it could happen anytime now.
35. I have happily been a “kept man” for the past 10 years.
36. Have extensive experience in turkey manufactures as well as new product development and implementation.
37. I am accustomed to speaking in front of all kinds of audiences. I make points as well as I can.
38. Personal: Five children. Dog: Jasper. Cat: Morris. Gerbil: Binky.
39. While in military, was instrumental in creation of a treat detection system.
40. My compensation package at my last job included a base salary of $64,500 with excellent benefits including flextime. I am looking for a position in which I can work a more flexible schedule.
41. Hire me and you won’t regret it - I am funny, cute, smart and creative… really.
42. Referees available upon request.
43. Previous rank: Senior instigator.
44. I have recently sold my home and I now live in a large RV so I will be able to relocate quickly.
45. Reason for leaving: They stopped paying me.
46. Cover letter: Desire the chance to showcase my delightful personality, intelligence and superior judgment, which are so hard to find these days.
47. Personal achievements: Successfully played “Chop Sticks” on a toy piano with my big toes.
48. Objective: To obtain a position where I can make a difference, infecting others with my professionalism, enthusiasm and dedication.
49. Strengths: Impersonal skills.
50. Special interests: I like any projects that are fun.
51. Please explain any breaks in your employment career: 15 minute coffee break while working at a home improvement store.
52. Vocational plans: Sea World.
Hey, when you hire stupid people like that, don't be surprised when they come back with a $53,000 stripclub bill like this guy did.
Related: 10 Great Examples How Not To Write A Personal Ad
[Via - Uncommon Business Blog]
10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich
Abandoned Pa. House Yields Piles Of Treasure
Five Drinking Stories That Put Yours To Shame
How To Turn $60 Into $1000 In Three Months With Domain Names
10+ Unusual Ways To Make Easy Money On The Internet If You Love Writing. |
Scotland’s independence bid may have failed, but the affair revealed powerful grass-roots support for a Scottish state. Although Catalonia’s referendum on independence, originally slated for Nov. 9, has been canceled under Madrid’s opposition, Catalonians appear determined to hold some sort of vote on that date to express their sentiments anyway. Further afield, Russian speakers in Ukraine seem to have spoken their mind. Given the chance, perhaps the Basques, the Northern Irish, Flemish, Corsicans, South Tyroleans, Bosnian Serbs and others would give it a shot too. And across Europe, nationalist, anti-EU parties are on the rise, led by politicos who want beefed-up borders, fewer foreigners and more state revenue (or even territory) for their particular volk.
Is 21st century Europe reverting to the destructive, small-minded nationalism that triggered World War I and put the continent on a road to ruin a hundred years ago? And could the European Union’s vision of a united transnational Europe be out of step with the average European burgher? One could be forgiven for concluding as much. But Europe’s not imploding. Nor is the EU’s greater vision out of kilter with the zeitgeist. Rather, the relationship among Europe’s nations, states, regions and shared institutions is in flux, and the rash of secession-minded movements underscores the necessity that it change more profoundly and rapidly.
Two nationalisms
First, let’s take a look at nationalism itself. There are two kinds of nationalism (and nations), namely the civic and the ethnic varieties. Both herald from the time of the French Revolution of 1789, when the people of Europe began to band together with their neighbors as one (nation) to demand rights and sovereignty. At a time when kings and empires ruled the day, the nation was a new form of identity linking people who shared language, a home region and culture. This progressive, liberating nationalism laid the foundation for our modern democracies, most of which are in nation-states. Modern nationalism took two routes. One was the ethnic nation, infused with Romantic notions of seamless racial communities bound by blood, territory and destiny. In the world of ethnic nations, one nation is always superior and destined to rule over territory as well as other peoples. As intellectuals such as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm and German philosopher Hannah Arendt argued, the nativist ethnic nation was at the root of the 20th century’s terrible bloodshed. In power, ethnic nationalists inevitably pursue authoritarian courses at home and aggressive, expansionist policies abroad, like those that paved way for the century’s world wars and the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia. Civic nationalism is another story. Its members are bound by common values and political ideas, not biological or other pseudo-scientific characteristics. Civic nationalists — for example, John Stuart Mill — espouse tolerance, equality and individual rights. The civic nationalist may be proud of his nation, but not at the expense of other nations that have similar legal rights. Civic nationalism, for example, was at the heart of the Founding Fathers’ vision of the United States.
What Europe needs is more civic-minded nation-states with flexible federal systems and self-rule for regions.
In today’s Europe, civic nationalism is, for the most part, the order of the day and the foundation of contemporary nation-state. The EU would be impossible without it; the EU’s supranational essence is the antithesis of the narrow, defensive, ethically defined polity. Our nation-states may have labels and majorities associated with one people (France, the French; Germany, the Germans; and so forth) but this doesn’t automatically manufacture inequality or foster discrimination. One can be proud to be German or French and still be a good, civic-minded democrat and EU enthusiast. Until now, EU membership and the processes of European integration have worked to transform the nature of the European nation-state, making it more civic and less ethnic. In most of Europe, borders that were once impenetrable and militarized are today permeable and peaceful, open to the free flow of goods, people and ideas. By interconnecting Europe’s nation-states through trade, cultural programs, economic policies, political priorities and the euro, individual European countries look altogether different from how they did in the first half of the 20th century. National sovereignty has become more diffuse, with a considerable proportion of policy being set by the EU as well as locally.
New regionalism |
One reason I love doing this particular exchange is seeing a selection of goodies from a foreign country. My Santa this year totally provided! Tim Tam cookies (which I've seen on pretty much every "[nationality] tries Australian snacks" video), Violet Crumble (a chocolate honeycomb bar), a caramel Cadbury snack, a five-pack of Cadbury chocolates (which says "collect all 12 animal friends"...where's the other seven?! ;-), a LARGE box of assorted Cadbury treats, cheese flavored Twisties, burger-flavored rings, and...Vegemite! I've heard so much about this last one and am really curious to try it some time. Thus far, I've had the rings, a Tim Tam, and some of the Violet Crumble, and I loved all of them, ESPECIALLY the VC bar. Going to try more tomorrow.
Thanks again, Santa! |
ESPN's Adam Schefter has solved one of the NFC North's biggest mysteries: The duration of Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz's contract.
As you might remember, the Lions did not announce any terms of the contract extension Schwartz signed last June. According to Schefter, the deal runs through the 2015 season. That means the extension added three years to the four-year contract Schwartz originally signed in 2009.
There have been no indications that Schwartz's job was in jeopardy despite the Lions' performance this season. But according to Schefter, these terms guarantee Schwartz will return in 2013.
Schwartz and Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy have the longest-running contracts in the NFC North. Minnesota Vikings coach Leslie Frazier is due for an extension but is currently signed through 2013. The same goes for Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith.
Next up for our guy Schefter: Finding the Loch Ness monster. |
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a way to swiftly and precisely control electron spins at room temperature.
The technology, described in Nature Communications, offers a possible alternative strategy for building quantum computers that are far faster and more powerful than today's supercomputers.
"What makes electronic devices possible is controlling the movement of electrons from place to place using electric fields that are strong, fast and local," said physics Professor Jesse Berezovsky, leader of the research. "That's hard with magnetic fields, but they're what you need to control spin."
Other researchers have searched for materials where electric fields can mimic the effects of a magnetic field, but finding materials where this effect is strong enough and still works at room temperature has proven difficult.
"Our solution," Berezovsky said, "is to use a magnetic vortex."
Berezovsky worked with physics PhD students Michael S. Wolf and Robert Badea.
The researchers fabricated magnetic micro-disks that have no north and south poles like those on a bar magnet, but magnetize into a vortex. A magnetic field emanates from the vortex core. At the center point, the field is particularly strong and rises perpendicular to the disk.
The vortices are coupled with diamond nanoparticles. In the diamond lattice inside each nanoparticle, several individual spins are trapped inside of defects called nitrogen vacancies.
The scientists use a pulse from a laser to initialize the spin. By applying microwaves and a weak magnetic field, Berezovsky's team can move the vortex in nanoseconds, shifting the central point, which can cause an electron to change its spin.
In what's called a quantum coherent state, the spin can act as a quantum bit, or qubit--the basic unit of information in a quantum computer,
In current computers, bits of information exist in one of two states: zero or one. But in a superposition state, the spin can be up and down at the same time, that is, zero and one simultaneously. That capability would allow for more complex and faster computing.
"The spins are close to each other; you want spins to interact with their neighbors in quantum computing," Berezovsky said. "The power comes from entanglement."
The magnetic field gradient produced by a vortex proved sufficient to manipulate spins just nanometers apart.
In addition to computing, electrons controlled in coherent quantum states might be useful for extremely high-resolution sensors, the researchers say. For example, in an MRI, they could be used to sense magnetic fields in far more detail than with today's technology, perhaps distinguishing atoms.
Controlling the electron spins without destroying the coherent quantum states has proven difficult with other techniques, but a series of experiments by the group has shown the quantum states remain solid. In fact, "the vortex appears to enhance the microwave field we apply," Berezovsky said.
The scientists are continuing to shorten the time it takes to change the spin, which is a key to high-speed computing. They are also investigating the interactions between the vortex, microwave magnetic field and electron spin, and how they evolve together. |
The true history of Iceland’s ‘innovative’ constitutional reform.
One of the recurring issues in news coverage on Iceland is how absolutely rubbish foreign news media is at reporting about Iceland.
We’ve seen how detached from reality economic news on Iceland is, ignoring our burgeoning mortgage crisis and the consequences of the government’s harsh austerity measures.
Their frothy and exuberant reports about Iceland’s proposed new constitution also tend to gloss over the details and ignore domestic discourse in favour of completely fabricated spin.
If you read what foreign language blogs and newspapers wrote about the constitution you’d believe that it was a daring experiment going from success to success and that we were now enjoying a completely new crowd-sourced constitution that had been passed into law with a referendum last autumn. Which is not true.
A complete and total clusterfuck is much closer to the truth.
It started well, with a national forum where a thousand attendees where chosen by lottery. These meetings gathered together a cross-section of society and let them outline what they felt ought to be the priorities in the constitutional process—what issues and matters should be covered.
This worked. It resulted in a predictably vague and wishy-washy list of touchy-feely priorities—little more than ordering a list of pre-selected words in order of importance along with a bunch of meaningless single sentence slogans—but it worked.
The problems began with the election for a constitutional parliament. First, those running weren’t given nearly enough time to promote and canvass, meaning that the list tat voters could choose from consisted mostly of strangers. Second, the ballot itself was extremely confusing, requiring extensive explanations. Thirdly, and most importantly, a lot of people didn’t believe any of it mattered.
Y’see, it was known from the start that whatever the constitutional parliament drafted would be non-binding—that the constitution draft would be rewritten by politicians anyway, rendering the entire exercise somewhat meaningless.
So, voter participation reached record lows in Iceland, where we’re used to voter participation in the 80–90% range.
Fewer than 37% percent voted in the election for the constitutional parliament.
And the clusterfuck continued. One thing that most foreign reporters omit is that there is considerable resistance to constitutional reform by a lot of influential groups in Iceland. Another thing omitted is the fact that the government at the time was a mess and couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the election was challenged in the courts and that Iceland’s High Court declared the election, and its results, null and void because of serious issues with voter privacy—that the secrecy of the individual vote had been compromised. (You can get more details at the Icelandic Wikipedia page on the election which is pretty accurate. Of course, as with most data and references on the subject, it’s in Icelandic.)
The government responded by ignoring the High Court and passed a law establishing a constitutional council composed of the exact same people as those who would have been members of the constitutional parliament.
That council then decided to do what most bloggers do: post their ideas online; listen to feedback on twitter, facebook, and in comments; and make sure that changes, drafts, and edits were noted online as they went along.
This is what the news outlets labelled crowd-sourcing. It’s no more crowd-sourced than boing boing is. Open, sure. Transparent, absolutely. But, crowd-sourced?
No. Not by a long shot. If the draft constitution was crowd-sourced then this blog is crowd-sourced as well and the term is meaningless. The draft constitution was written by a committee using a transparent process. It was a good thing that didn’t need to be spun into something it wasn’t.
Of course, over half the nation still believed that the work of the council was meaningless since anything with a bite to it would be removed by the politicians once they got their hands on it. But the council did its job as well as it could. It published a draft that contained a lot of interesting ideas while still remaining a somewhat conservative evolution of our existing constitution. It was exactly the sort of document that was enough of a compromise to have a chance of passing while still containing the reforms that Iceland badly needs.
A lot of the wording in the draft is vague and open to interpretation, which would be disastrous in a real constitution, but that’s only because it was still just a draft.
The next step should have been to put the draft to a committee that would then have solicited feedback from constitutional scholars, lawyers, and other experts. Parliament should have then spent several months of continuous work hammering out the gaps, loopholes, and wording of the document before presenting it to the nation.
Instead the government put it in a drawer and sat on it for months. Constitutional scholars kept commenting that the draft needed work and that work would take time. Lawyers openly worried about some of the consequences of the wording used in places. Foreign academics picked the draft apart when it was presented to them as a completed proposal.
And time was running out.
Here’s another fact that most foreign outlets leave out of their coverage of Iceland’s constitutional process: it’s very very difficult to change the constitution. Any change to the constitution needs to be passed as a law in two separate parliaments separated by a parliamentary election. Given that the next parliamentary election is going to be in the spring 2013 (this April, in fact) and that Iceland’s parliament today is so dysfunctional that passing even non-contentious laws can take months, the government had a very narrow window of opportunity to pull this off.
Especially because they wanted to hold a referendum on the proposed constitution before they actually passed it as a law.
At first the goal was to put the completed constitution proposal to a referendum alongside the presidential election in June 2012. Then it became clear there wouldn’t be anything concrete for people to vote on by then because little to no work was being done on the draft.
The second idea was to put a constitution proposal to a referendum in the autumn 2012 but, again, because no work was being done on the draft there was nothing to vote on. Instead they decided to hold a referendum asking voters six vague and bland questions on what they wanted from the constitution (and yes, that’s exactly what the national forum was supposed to discover).
Again, the referendum was non-binding and Bjarni Benediktsson, the leader of the country’s largest party, the Independence Party, declared beforehand that he thought the exercise was undemocratic and pretty meaningless.
Voter participation was around 50% and two-thirds voted that they wanted a new constitution that was based on the draft written by the constitutional council.
The Independence Party immediately declared that even though it was clear that voters wanted some kind of constitutional reform, it did not feel bound by the constitutional council’s draft since over two-thirds of voters had either rejected the draft or not shown up to vote. It was obvious from the debate in Icelandic news media that the referendum was going to be a completely ineffective tool for getting the Independence Party to support constitutional reform.
Which meant that the constitutional reform process was dead, because reform won’t get anywhere without the support of Iceland’s largest political party. The Independence Party is guaranteed to be one of the major parties in Iceland’s next government (most polls show a distinct swing to the right among Icelandic voters) and, remember, to change the constitution you need to pass the changes as a law in two separate parliaments with an election between. Even if the government had pulled its thumbs out of its ass, completed the process of turning the draft into a proper proposal and passed the law, the proposal would have died after the election at the hands of the Independence Party in the next government.
The only thing that the autumn 2012 constitutional referendum accomplished was to prove that the new constitution was dead.
But that’s not how foreign media reported it.
The government still had the chance to pull off an ideological victory of sorts. They could have completed work on the draft and passed the law proposing the change to the constitution. That would have forced the next government to address the issue directly and made sure that they would have had to explicitly reject the new constitution at the start of a new parliament.
But, no, they couldn’t even pull that off. The end of the current parliament grew nearer and nearer and the constitutional process didn’t show any life to speak of.
Until, at the last moments before the end of parliament, the government proposed an amendment of the current constitution with the intent of making it a bit easier to change the constitution. This amendment, which was passed in the last hours of the parliament, means that, if passed again by the next parliament, they will be able to change the constitution by ‘just’ passing a law with a super-majority in parliament (two-thirds of MPs have to vote in favour) followed by a referendum where over 40% of registered voters approve of the change. (So, if voter participation reaches 80%, over half of those who show up have to vote in favour.)
This amendment was passed with the slimmest of majorities in parliament, 25 votes out of 48, and would not have qualified as a change to the constitution under the rules it proposes.
It’s up to the next government to pass this amendment after the next election to finally ratify it as a constitutional amendment and then use it to do the reforms the constitution badly needs. They may or may not do this. It depends largely on the attitudes and priorities of whichever party ends up in government with the Independence Party (probably the Progressive Party) but the work of the constitutional council is now completely off the table.
Even if this amendment passes, Iceland’s crowd-sourced constitution is officially dead. |
Recoveries have been getting weaker and weaker because that's how the Fed wants them
(Reuters)
With GDP unexpectedly is different. In other words, has the economy settled into a, well, new normal of slower growth? It's time to talk about everybody's least favorite Davos buzzword -- New Normal.With GDP unexpectedly contracting 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 (though the private sector mostly kept up , despite the obstacles we've thrown in its way), it's enough to make you wonder if this time reallydifferent. In other words, has the economy settled into a, well, new normal of slower growth?
If it has, it's not quite new, at least when it comes to recoveries. As you can see in this Minneapolis Fed chart of job gains following recessions, something changed after 1981. Recoveries went from being V-shaped affairs characterized by rapid bouncebacks in employment to U-shaped ones better described as nasty, brutish, and long.
(Note: I excluded the recovery from the 1980 recession, because the double-dip in 1981 cut it short).
The story of the jobless recovery is one of what the Fed isn't doing. As Paul Krugman points out, recessions have become post -(or perhaps pre -) modern. Through the 1980s, postwar recessions happened when the Fed decided to raise rates to head off inflation, and recoveries happened when the Fed decided things had tamed down enough to lower rates. But now recessions happen when bubbles burst, with financial deregulation and the global savings glut making these more of a recurring feature of our economy, and the Fed hasn't been able to cut interest rates enough to generate strong post-crash recoveries. Or maybe it hasn't wanted to.
Here's a stupid question. Why have interest rates and inflation mostly been falling for the past 30 years? In other words if the Fed has been de facto, and later de jure, targeting inflation for most of this period (and it has), why has inflation been on a down trend (and it has)? As you can see in the chart below, core PCE inflation, which excludes food and energy costs, fell substantially from the Reagan recovery through the bursting tech bubble, and has more or less held steady since, though a bit more on the less side recently.
Say hello to "opportunistic disinflation." Okay, let's translate this from Fed-ese. Remember, the Fed is supposed to target 2 percent inflation, meaning it raises rates when prices rise by more than that much and lowers them once the economy's cooled off enough, but it wasn't always so. Back in the mid-1980s, inflation was hovering around 4 percent, a major achievement following the stagflation of the previous decade, but the Fed wanted it to go lower -- here's the crucial bit -- without taking the blame for it. The Volcker Fed had come in for quite a bit of abuse when it whipped inflation at the expense of the severe 1981-82 downturn, and the Fed seems to have learned it was better not to leave its fingerprints on the business cycle.
In other words, Let recessions do their dirty work for them.
Wall Street Journal leaked an internal Fed memo outlining the policy. It's not hard for central bankers to get what they want without doing anything, as long as what they want is less inflation (and that's almost always what central bankers want). They just have to wait for a recession to come along ... and then keep waiting until inflation falls to where they want it. Then, once prices have declined enough for their taste, they cut rates (or buy bonds) to stabilize inflation at this new, lower level. But it's one thing to stabilize inflation at a lower level; it's another to keep it there. The Fed has to raise rates faster than it otherwise would during the subsequent recovery to keep inflation from going back to where it was before the recession. It's what the Fed calls "opportunistic disinflation," and it's hard to believe this wasn't their strategy looking at falling inflation the previous few decades. Not that we have to guess. Fed president Edward Boehene actually laid out this approach in 1989, and Fed governor Laurence Meyer endorsed the idea of "reducing inflation cycle-to-cycle" in a 1996 speech -- the same year theleaked an internal Fed memo outlining the policy.
But it gets worse. Pushing inflation progressively lower means recoveries get progressively weaker, since the Fed has to choke off inflation, and hence the recovery, at lower and lower levels. Now, to be fair, the Fed, and Ben Bernanke in particular, have awoken to the dangers of this approach. The danger, of course, is that the Fed gets in a situation where short-term rates are stuck at zero, but the economy stays stuck in a slump. Sound familiar? Bernanke In short: Recoveries have been jobless, because that's how the Fed likes them.But it gets worse. Pushing inflation progressively lower means recoveries get progressively weaker, since the Fed has to choke off inflation, and hence the recovery, at lower and lower levels. Now, to be fair, the Fed, and Ben Bernanke in particular, have awoken to the dangers of this approach. The danger, of course, is that the Fed gets in a situation where short-term rates are stuck at zero, but the economy stays stuck in a slump. Sound familiar? Bernanke realized this was a threat in 2002 when the economy was flirting with deflation despite 1.34 interest rates, and vowed not to let it happen here. (Remember, "disinflation" means falling inflation, and "deflation" means negative inflation).
The Fed, of course, did let it happen here. But it didn't let prices actually start to fall, which would make debt and borrowing more expensive at the worst possible moment, due to the Fed's bond-buying and to wages that are sticky downwards. Bernanke got the Fed to accept that opportunistic disinflation had gone too far with QE1 and QE2, but it's not clear that he's gotten them to give up on the idea altogether . Core inflation has settled in below 2 percent, and the Fed's economic projections don't show it rising above that level anytime soon. That's pushed nominal GDP growth -- the growth of the total size of the economy -- down to 4 percent for each of the past three years; a low level the Fed is apparently comfortable with. Bernanke seems to be trying to shift the consensus towards undoing some of this disinflation -- unlike previous rounds of bond-buying, QE3 was aimed at lowering unemployment, and not stopping lower prices, while the Evans rule explicitly says the Fed will tolerate inflation up to 2.5 percent -- but there's been no shift in the data so far. The Fed needs to realize there is no try when it comes to reflation. It has to promise to do whatever it takes.
The new normal doesn't have to be new or normal if the Fed doesn't want it to be.
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Gambling addiction was a contributing factor in nearly 130 suicides in Victoria over the past decade, according to figures released by the Victorian coroner.
The report identified 128 gambling-related suicides between January 2000 and December 2012. Almost all – 126 – were of people with a gambling addiction, while two were of people who were adversely affected by a partner's problem gambling. Men accounted for 84% of the suicide toll, with the figure peaking for those aged between 30 and 39. While the coroner could not identify the type of gambling engaged in by 105 of the people who took their lives, of the remaining 23 deaths, 19 were linked to poker machine addiction. Two deaths were linked to TAB gambling, one to online gambling and one to roulette wheels. In addition to the suicides, the coroner reported two murders linked to problem gambling, in which someone with a gambling addiction killed their partner before committing suicide. A 2010 report suggested that gambling was a factor for one in five suicidal hospital patients in Victoria.
Poker machines have been regularly cited as the leading cause of problem gambling in Victoria. Last year, $2.49bn was spent on Victoria's 26,000 poker machines – down $184m on the previous year. The Victorian government has removed all ATMs from gambling venues. The coroner's report shows that gambling-related suicides may be on a downward trend, with two suicides in 2012 and five in 2011, compared with 17 in 2001 and 16 in both 2002 and 2003. Federally, the new Coalition government has promised to help problem gamblers kick the habit, although it has come under fire for its plans to abolish the national gambling regulator, with a gaming industry-headed advisory body in its stead.
The anti-pokie campaigner Tim Costello, also chief executive of World Vision Australia, told Guardian Australia the figures showed the need to introduce $1 bet limits. "I've known of these suicides for a while because I've taken funerals as a minister," he said. "There are also cases such as babies who died in cars during summer because their mothers have gone in for a quick play of the pokies and forgotten about it. It's clear that gambling can cause the ultimate catastrophe, not just crime or broken marriages. "This is an optional entertainment and it's the state's duty to protect the vulnerable. It's not prohibitionist to have $1 maximum bets – people can have their recreation but at a lower cost. "I think the Victorian government is generally moving in the right direction but that's because the strongest voice is in Victoria. The reason the Andrew Wilkie agreement [to introduce mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines] was torn up was that the government was assaulted by the pokies lobbyists and Tony Abbott let them stew. I think the federal Liberals are moving in the wrong direction due to fear of that same lobby."
• For support and information about suicide prevention contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467. |
This school treats its most troubled students like trailer trash, whistleblowers say.
The principal of William Cullen Bryant HS in Long Island City, Queens, has rounded up more than 20 failing kids with behavior problems — and put them in a trailer where they stay all day.
Principal Namita Dwarka calls the boxy, red trailer housing the confined misfits “the Scholars Academy.”
Teachers come to the trailer for English, math, science, history and other classes. Even lunch is brought in. If kids go into the cafeteria, they are not served, one told The Post. The only break is phys ed in the yard, when a teacher “rolls out the balls.”
“Most of the kids are not happy with the situation,” a staffer said.
Some “act crazy” during class, making it difficult to concentrate on work, one trailer student said. Others defiantly listen to music on headphones.
The trailer empties out as the day goes on. By the last two periods, “everybody leaves, nobody stays there,” the student said.
If he sticks it out, he’s the only one in the trailer besides the teacher. “She just sits there, looks at me, and waits for the bell to ring,” he said. A dean lets him sign in and leave.
The student’s mom was shocked to learn of the cooped-up conditions.
“I thought it was the regular school,” she said. “You might as well send them to Rikers Island.”
Teachers describe the trailer assignment as “challenging.”
“It’s a struggle to teach these kids,” one said. “They are not easy kids to deal with.”
Staffers said the trailer may get laptop computers so students can do online “credit recovery” to make up for failed classes.
Others say the isolation is not conducive to success.
“These are kids with a lot of issues,” said Gus Prentzas, president of the Bryant HS parents association. “To have them locked up in a space like this is unacceptable.”
Prentzas called the trailer — which looks “like a shipping container” — not only jail-like, but a potential health hazard.
Teachers have reported seeing mold in the trailer, which is air-conditioned and has a couple of small windows.
Officials said the trailer was inspected but no mold was found. Two other trailers hold classes that regular students attend for single periods.
The “Scholars Academy” “is designed to provide extra academic support in a safe and structured environment,” a DOE spokesperson said, adding that the program aims to help “over-aged, under-credited students” graduate.
“There is some relief in the building,” a staffer said. “These kids are no longer a problem in the halls or the classes they would have attended.” |
Credit Nitsana Darshan -Leitner of Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) and US co-counsel for today's verdict award by Federal Judge Daniels in a case brought against the Palestinian Authority arising from terrorist funding activities during the Second Intifada fomented by the late Yassir Arafat of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. Newsweek reported:
In the first ruling of its kind, a U.S. court has found the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization liable for damages suffered by 10 American families whose relatives were injured or killed in attacks in Israel.
The six shootings and bomb attacks in question took place between 2002 and 2004, during the second intifada, or uprising, killing 33 and wounding more than 450. The lawsuit was filed in 2004 and was tried in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.
“This historic verdict against the defendants will not bring back these families' loved ones nor heal the physical and psychological wounds inflicted upon them but it truly is an important measure of justice and closure for them after their long years of tragic suffering and pain,” Israel-based law office Shurat HaDin, which worked on the case, said in a statement after the verdict on Monday.
The plaintiffs argued that the two organizations supported the attacks—whether via direct involvement or assistance in the form of material support or training. They also allegedly paid those who carried out the attacks and continue to compensate perpetrators who were imprisoned as well as the families of those who died.
Since the plaintiffs are all U.S. citizens, the case was tried in the country under the Antiterrorism Act signed into law by then President Bill Clinton in 1996, which gives American courts jurisdiction over acts of terrorism that harm U.S. citizens abroad.
“We are truly grateful that an American court has heard the evidence against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO and determined that suicide terrorism was indeed their official policy during the Second Intifada,” said the statement from Shurat HaDin sent in an email to Newsweek. It continued:
We started out more than a decade ago with the intent of making the defendants pay for their terrorist crimes against innocent civilians and letting them know that there will eventually be a price to be paid for sending suicide bombers onto our buses and into our cafes. The defendants have already been boasting that they will appeal the decision and we will never collect on the judgment. We will not allow them to make a mockery of the US court process, however, and we continue to pursue them until it is paid in full. If the PA and PLO have the funds to pay the families of the suicide bombers each month, then they have the money to pay these victims of Palestinian terrorism.
The New York Times Breaking News report places both incumbent President Mahmoud Abbas and the Administration in a quandary, as the Netanyahu government has withheld $100 million in monthly tax revenue remittances used to fund the PA operations because of the latter pursuit of claims of war crimes brought before the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands. Perhaps the award of $218.5 million might be paid as compensation to Israeli and US victims of Palestinian terrorism from those taxation remittances witheld by Israel. Kol Hakavod to Ms. Leitner and the team at Shurat HaDinand US co-counsel. Their motto is: "Bankrupting Terrrorism, One Law Suit at a Time."
Below is the New York Times report: |
I've been playing with a nice way of defining models in a sort of declarative way in CoffeeScript, this is what I have so far:
class Post extends Model @field 'title', default: 'New post!' @field 'body' # the default is supplied as a closure which is evaluated at object creation time @field 'created_at', default: -> new Date() class User extends Model @field 'username' @field 'twitter' @has_many Post, as: 'posts'
Which would be used like this:
# Create a new user user = new User(username: 'tom', twitter: 'almostobsolete') # Bind to the change event for the title property user.bind 'change:username', (value) => alert "Username updated to #{value}" # Print out details of posts when they are created by the user user.bind 'posts:add', (post) => alert "Post titled #{post.get('title')} was written at #{post.get('created_at')}" # Change the user's username (which will trigger the event bound above) user.set('username', 'thomas') # Create a blog post associated with the new user (which will trigger the other event) post = user.posts.create title: 'Declarative Models' body: 'One of the useful additions....'
I'm currently using something like this for an MVC architected iPhone App written in CoffeeScript. I wanted a way of defining fields and relationships in a simple, expressive and DRY way.
It works using class methods on the Model base class (as described at the end of Class section in the CoffeeScript docs). This works because the body of a class in CoffeeScript is executable code and within the body @ refers to the class object itself (elsewhere it refers to the current value of 'this').
For example, a partial implementation of the Model class (just defining @field and not including events, see here for a more complete implementation) would be:
class Model # This is the CoffeeScript syntax to declare a class method @field: (name, options) -> @fields ?= {} @fields[name] = options || {} constructor: (attributes) => @attributes = {} # Copy in attributes passed in or defaults from the fields as appropriate for name, options of @constructor.fields # Defaults can be specified as values or as functions @attributes[name] = attributes?[name] || if (isFunction(options.default)) then options.default() else options.default # Getters and setters get: (name) => @attributes[name] set: (name, value) => field = @constructor.fields[name] throw Error('Trying to set an non-existent property!') if not field # Ignore a re-setting of the same value return if value == @get(name) @attributes[name] = value
A more complete implementation (with support for everything in the example I showed at the top) is in this Gist.
The "field" class method stores information about the field in the class property named 'fields'. The constructor then uses this information to construct model instances.
This is just what I've implemented so far, I'll probably do JSON serialisation and de-serialisation next. I've taken the get/set method style from Backbone (which although I'm not using it here is great, I may write a declarative layer on top of it at some point). A much nicer syntax that would remove the need for the get and set methods could be got by using defineProperty but that would limit compatibility (it wouldn't work on Opera or IE 8, it would be fine for Node.JS though).
Overall I really like this use of CoffeeScript classes. I think it would make a great base for an ORM. I'll probably post something more complete to GitHub soon. I'm sure there are loads of other uses for this style too! |
Jeremy Kyle today staged a dramatic ‘celebrity intervention’ on his chat show with Kenny Sansom, as it was revealed the troubled ex-footballer nearly died after his mother's funeral.
The 57-year-old former England and Arsenal defender appeared on the programme following a long battle with alcoholism that has lasted more than three decades and left him homeless.
Father-of-three Sansom - who won 86 caps for his country - turned up drunk at his mother's funeral last year, before later collapsing and having a fit, his emotional sister Mary revealed on the show.
Jeremy Kyle appearance: Former England and Arsenal defender Kenny Sansom appeared on the ITV chat show following a long battle with alcoholism that has lasted more than three decades and left him homeless
Chat show: Father-of-three Sansom - who won 86 caps for his country - turned up drunk at his mother's funeral last year, before later collapsing and having a fit, his emotional sister Mary (centre) revealed on the show
'I didn't want to be around': Sansom wanted to 'fall asleep forever' but has now been sober for three months
She said: 'Kenny was drunk. [Later at a] hall where we had a few drinks with the family, he collapsed and we had to get an ambulance. We were all grieving and again the focus was all on him.'
And grandfather Sansom told the ITV show: 'I'm here to first of all tell people that I've let down to say sorry. I'm going to try and do something for them, but I'm sorry I've let a lot of people down.'
The London-born footballer, who has also gambled away his fortune, added: 'All I wanted to do was lay down drink as much as I could and fall asleep forever. I didn't want to be around.'
Sansom, who has spent time sleeping on a park bench after drinking seven bottles of wine a day, said: 'I enjoy getting drunk to forget about the problems because I'm a coward and I'm scared of life.'
Later in the show, which also featured his friend Tom, he explained: 'If something in my life happens that hurts me, I get knocked back about 10ft, and to get back about 10ft I need the wine to get back.'
The programme also featured a long discussion involving Kyle trying to persuade Sansom to attend a rehabilitation centre for 12 weeks - but the footballer insisted he was 'scared' and could not go.
Talk: The show involved a long discussion involving Kyle (second right) trying to persuade Sansom (centre) to attend a rehabilitation centre for 12 weeks - but the footballer insisted he was 'scared' and could not go
Relapse: Last August Sansom was spotted swigging wine from a bottle while sitting on a park bench just three weeks after claiming he had gone without alcohol for a month after spending time in a rehab clinic
However Kyle's resident psychotherapist Graham Stanier kept in touch with Sansom and eventually convinced him to attend The Perry Clayman Project in Luton a few days after filming the show.
All I wanted to do was lay down drink as much as I could and fall asleep forever. I didn't want to be around Kenny Sansom
Sansom now claims to have not had a drink in three months, and he tweeted during today's show: 'Thanks for the kind messages and support. Thanks to Jeremy I've had three months' rehab and proud to say I've graduated.
'In a good place. Hopefully I can inspire people suffering from alcoholism to be open about their troubles and battle them. There's always time to turn it round.'
The former sportsman, who also played for Crystal Palace and Newcastle United among others during his career, admits his life spiralled out of control following the divorce from his wife of 29 years, Elaine.
Sansom married his childhood sweetheart when he was 20 and they had three children together, Kate, Natalie and Harry, but parted ways when his alcoholism escalated.
Arsenal star: Sansom, who at his best was earning £1,200 a week and lived in a £1million mansion, is England's second most-capped full-back, but sold most of his caps as he descended into alcoholism
Fall: Sansom, who at his best in the 1980s was earning £1,200 a week and lived in a £1million mansion, is England's second most-capped full-back, but sold most of his caps as he descended into alcoholism
Following their split he moved in with Denise Mullins whom he met on holiday in Marbella, but he was thrown out after failing to overcome his issues and started relying on relatives for a bed.
We had a few drinks with the family, he collapsed and we had to get an ambulance. We were all grieving and again the focus was all on him Mary, sister of Kenny Sansom
In November 2013 he thanked the Professional Footballers' Association for its role in helping him through detox and finding him a home, but he has since suffered relapses.
In June last year, he spent the night in a South London police cell after turning up at Miss Mullins’s door drunk having downed five bottles of wine at a family wedding.
And in August he was seen swigging wine from a bottle while sitting on a park bench just three weeks after claiming he had gone without alcohol for a month after spending time in a rehab clinic.
Sansom, who at his best was earning £1,200 a week and lived in a £1million mansion, is England's second most-capped full-back, but sold most of his caps as he descended into alcoholism.
'It is possible': Former Hull City footballer Dean Windass, who has battled an alcohol addiction and depression, said watching Sansom on the show was 'very upsetting' but added that he hopes 'he can get help like I did'
Downfall: Channel 5 and BT Sport football presenter Adam Virgo admitted it was 'very sad' to watch the show
In his 2008 autobiography 'To Cap It All… My Story', Sansom told how he visited bookmakers most days in his darkest years. He then spent every afternoon in the pub drinking and playing snooker.
He was England's first choice left-back, winning 86 caps between 1979 and 1988, and made over 300 appearances for Arsenal.
I enjoy getting drunk to forget about the problems because I'm a coward and I'm scared of life Kenny Sansom
Having grown up in South London as one of six, Sansom was teetotal until his 21st birthday when he was coaxed into drinking by his father.
Despite ending the night vomiting in a nightclub toilet, he previously told of enjoying being drunk.
Throughout the eighties he often showed up at training having been drinking.
After being dropped by the club aged 29, he descended into alcoholism.
During the show today, ex-Hull City footballer Dean Windass, who has battled an alcohol addiction, said watching Sansom was 'very upsetting' but added that he hopes 'he can get help like I did'.
And Channel 5 and BT Sport football presenter Adam Virgo admitted the show was 'very sad'. |
Anti-Donald Trump protests have cost the British taxpayer a whopping £290,000 in just a few months.
Organised by disgraced and disreputable far-left and so-called “anti-racists” groups, the demos have been attended by MPs and celebrities such as singer Lilly Allen.
The protests included the ‘Stop Trump’ march, held outside the U.S. Embassy in London to oppose the president’s temporary travel ban on people from six terror-linked states.
According to a freedom of information request submitted by the Daily Express, the demo on the February 4th left taxpayers with a bill of £89,000. It was organised by left-wing groups including as Stand up to Racism and Stop the War.
At a separate anti-Trump demo at the U.S. embassy, on the 20th of January, organisers from Stand up to Racism called for “open borders” and promised to help Americans “overthrow” the new President and “send him back” to the U.S. if he comes to the UK.
Stand up to Racism is linked to Britain’s disgraced Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which stands accused of covering up a rape scandal. It is the same group which gate crashed a UKIP policy launch last month and some of its leaders are close to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Stop the War, meanwhile, has been called “abhorrent” and “anti-western, not anti-war” by Labour MPs and has been accused of encouraging violence against British troops. Mr. Corbyn led to the group for several years.
A further £70,000 was spent policing the Women’s March, which held by feminist campaigners on the 21st of January, the day after President Trump’s inauguration.
And another £130,000 was needed keep order at two other protests against the U.S. President’s travel ban of people from terror-linked states.
One of the rallies, held outside Downing Street in January, included high-profile speakers such as ex-Labour Party leader Ed Miliband.
Scotland Yard declined to comment on the protests. However, a spokesman told the Daily Express that the number of police at public events depends on “a range of factors” including the terror threat level.
“The cost of policing each event will vary depending on the type and level of police resources used, as well as the duration of the event”, he added. |
Better broadband is coming as a result of improvements to wholesale plans announced by Chorus this morning, but an analyst says it may be a year before consumers benefit.
Chorus said it would offer faster ultrafast broadband (UFB) plans as well as new copper broadband plans that would offer consumers the guaranteed ability to watch HD video online, without interruption when internet access usually came under strain at peak times.
Telecom and Vodafone welcomed its announcement. Vodafone New Zealand chief executive Russell Stanners said Vodafone had long argued that the ultimate benefit of investing in fibre was speed and Chorus had listened.
Telecom spokesman Andrew Pirie said it was “pleased in principle” with Chorus’ proposals, for example with a speed hike for lower-cost ultrafast broadband services. But he said they would also require investment by service providers such as itself.
Broker Forsyth Barr said in a research note that, because of that, it did not expect internet providers would retail plans based on the new wholesale services until the second quarter of next year.
While Chorus’ improved wholesale products will in many cases cost little or nothing more, the price consumers will ultimately pay will be set by internet providers, which could charge a premium for the copper guarantee or any extra data they chose to provide with the plans.
“Any internet provider needs to bear in mind that every time you get a new ‘input’ like this, there is quite a bit of time and effort required to build the systems to connect to it and sell it to customers,” Pirie said.
For example, when Telecom launched services based on Chorus’ superfast VDSL copper broadband service, it had to spend $7 million, he said.
Chorus will effectively increase the speeds provided by its cheapest “entry-level” UFB plan and announced other new and improved services, though in some cases slightly higher-priced wholesale plans, for both UFB and copper-based broadband.
Chief executive Mark Ratcliffe said the plans offered more choice and better value.
A “commercial” entry-level UFB service, which will wholesale for $40 a month from July, will offer a download speed of 100 megabits-per-second and an upload speed of 20Mbps.
Chorus said that would effectively replace the entry-level UFB service it is contracted to provide under its UFB contract with the Crown, which offers speeds of 30Mbps (down) and 10Mbps (up) for $37.50, just $2.50 less. Spokesman Ian Bonnar said the government-contracted plan would still be available to any internet providers that wanted it, however.
The company will also wholesale a UFB service from July that offers download and upload speeds of 100Mbps for $50 a month, and a 200Mbps symmetric service for $65, as well as some hybrid plans costing between $45 and $60.
Its enhanced copper broadband offerings, available to internet providers from September, will have the biggest impact on the vast majority of consumers who have yet to make the switch to UFB.
Chorus said it would wholesale a “Boost HD” copper service with sufficient bandwidth to guarantee customers would be able to watch an HD video stream at all times for its current standard copper-broadband wholesale price of $44.98 a month. The price for the standard service is due to fall to $34.44 in December as a result of two controversial Commerce Commission rulings which are currently under review.
Boost HD would be available as an option on about 90 per cent of its broadband lines, Chorus said.
It will also offer “Boost VDSL”, available on about 60 per cent lines, which will offer the benefit of a home-wiring upgrade, ensuring customers were ready for UFB when it became available in their street. That will also wholesale for $44.98 from September and $49.98 from December, Chorus said.
Chorus cautioned when it first mooted launching enhanced copper plans last year that it might need to discuss those plans with regulators. A spokesman could not immediately confirm whether it had needed or received approval from the Commerce Commission for the new copper plans.
At issue may be whether Chorus would have to cut the prices of the new services if the commission confirmed price cuts to its standard wholesale rates post-December.
Chorus said the new services had necessitated a “multimillion dollar” investment in a new network switch from supplier Alcatel-Lucent that could route data at speeds of 16 terabits per second.
It appeared to be making headway explaining its move to offer “better value” to beleaguered shareholders this morning. Chorus shares were up 3 cents at $1.71 in lunchtime trading on the NZX. |
Sen. Russ Feingold is reintroducing legislation calling for the abolishment of the practice. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Feingold pushes end to death penalty
Sen. Russ Feingold, carrying the liberal mantle as he so often does, is reintroducing legislation calling for the abolishment of the death penalty.
Feingold’s Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2009 would put an immediate halt to federal executions and forbid the use of the death penalty as a sentence for violations of federal law. The bill follows New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s move this week to abolish the death penalty.
Story Continued Below
“Gov. Bill Richardson and the New Mexico Legislature’s action to abolish the death penalty in that state adds to the growing momentum behind ending the death penalty in this country,” Feingold said. “It is truly unfortunate that we are in a shrinking minority of countries that continue to allow state-sponsored executions.”
The bill is likely to go nowhere outside Feingold’s subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights.
This article tagged under: Congress |
Currently there are seven Trappist monastery breweries authorized to use the “Authentic Trappist Product” label by the International Trappist Association. Six are in Belgium, one is in the Netherlands. It looks like an 8th monastery is applying for authorization to brew beer under the official designation. The monastery of Engelszell Stift has filed an application and expects to be notified of the ITAs decision in 4-5 weeks.
According to Trappist-Beers.com, the Engelszell Stift monastery was “founded in 1293 and needs financial input to recover the old paintings, fresco’s and paintings” and has decided to start a small brewery to raise the necessary funds. It is located a little over 120 miles from Munich in Austria. According to Wikipedia, it’s the only one in Austria and is located in the northwest part of the country known as the Innviertel.
From what I could figure out using Google Translate, they’ve already installed the brewery and have started brewing, making two beers, one light and one dark, from 7-10% a.b.v. Much of the package production will be aimed at the U.S. market, so we should be able to find it once it’s ready. |
John Uher
Each week, Brazilian Specialty Foods in North Bergen, N.J., which I write about this week, makes about 24,000 pão de queijo, Brazilian cheese puffs that are chewy on the inside and lightly crisp on the outside. Mixing, shaping and baking pounds of the gooey dough would require too much time and labor for the 15 Brazilian restaurants in New York City that buy the company’s bread.
But baking a small batch at home is no trouble.
The golden little breads are chewy because they are made with tapioca starch, not flour. What makes them savory is the mix of Parmesan and pecorino Romano cheeses. In Brazil, they are eaten with cafezinho, a tiny cup of coffee, with wine, and as appetizers preceding dinners.
Unless they are eaten warm, they can get too stiff, said Getúlio Santos, the president of Brazilian Specialty Foods, which also sells Ki Delicia brand frozen pão de queijos.
But they won’t last too long once they come out of the oven. |
WikiLeaks may publish further revelations promised by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Julian Assange hinted during a conference call with journalists. He reiterated that his legal team is helping Snowden in his quest for asylum in Iceland.
“I feel a great deal of personal sympathy with Mr. Snowden,” the WikiLeaks founder said, adding that he had been in touch with Snowden’s lawyers.
"We are in touch with Mr. Snowden's legal team and have been, are involved, in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland," he said in a conference call from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he himself has been fighting his extradition to Sweden for nearly a year.
When asked if he had spoken directly with Snowden, the former CIA contractor who fled to Hong Kong before disclosing the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, Assange declined to offer further details.
“As a matter of policy, we don’t speak about investigations or upcoming publications,” Assange repeated several times. At the same time, he hinted that “significant material will be published in coming weeks.”
It was reported Tuesday that Snowden is seeking asylum in the Nordic island-nation. The Icelandic government confirmed they had received Snowden’s request through WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.
Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson confirmed that Snowden’s representative held “informal talks” with government officials to sound out the possibility of the country granting him asylum.
The PM declined to comment further, adding that the asylum request should be filed in Iceland by Snowden himself.
Assange said the US government is likely to charge the NSA leaker with espionage.
“It is clear to me at this stage that Mr. Snowden . . . is being very aggressively pursued by the US national security sector, and there’s an open question as to whether the journalists, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, will be in the same position that I will be in in a year’s time,” he said.
The US has not yet filed a formal request for his extradition from the Chinese territory. |
LOS ANGELES, Calif. - An artist is making it difficult to believe there's actually a copy of Justin Bieber's latest album for sale in Los Angeles.
Paz Dylan, a 25-year-old electronic musician and artist known only as Paz, says he planted 5,000 copies of an album that appears to be Bieber's "Believe" but actually contains a copy of Dylan's own CD.
The fakes appeared at retailers such as Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart on Tuesday, April Fools' Day.
"We were meticulous," said Paz, who fancies the stunt as more of a performance art piece than a gag. "We paid a lot of attention to detail because we wanted these to stay up on shelves as long as possible."
The wrapped CDs resemble "Believe" right down to the bar code and silky Bieber portrait on the cover. However, Paz's artwork is on the inside of the back cover, and the disc itself is slathered with images of cats, pizzas and a dog stuffed inside a taco.
The CD itself contains the 13 tracks from Paz's synth-heavy independent release "From the Bottom of My Heart to the Top of Your Lungs."
The only differentiating factor is that Paz's subversive CD package lacks the kind of sticker that usually covers the top of a CD case, which is found beneath the wrapper of most unopened albums.
The Associated Press independently verified the stunt by purchasing random copies of what looked like Bieber's "Believe" from widely scattered Los Angeles-area locations such as a Wal-Mart in Baldwin Hills, Target in Burbank and Best Buy stores in West Hollywood and Culver City.
In each instance, the CDs were scanned and paid for as if they were Bieber CDs. But when they were opened outside the store, each contained a copy of Paz's album, not Bieber's.
"Although Mr. Dylan is clearly not a Belieber, we know that many of our customers are, and we are taking care of those who didn't get what they intended to purchase," said Best Buy spokeswoman Carly Morris.
Target spokesman Evan Lapiska said the company was aware of the claim and was investigating the matter, while Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah McKinney said customers could return the CD for a full refund or the real version.
"We know that every great artist wants to get on the shelf at Wal-Mart, but there's a right way to do it," said McKinney. "All of our L.A. stores are making an extra effort to ensure this faux Bieber CD is removed."
A message left for Bieber's spokeswoman wasn't immediately returned.
Why did Paz replace Bieber and not some other performer's CD?
"The world won't really miss a Justin Bieber record," said Paz.
Paz said he wanted to use big-box retailers as his artistic canvas by "droplifting" his music into the hands of consumers.
"The general idea is that retail stores make it almost impossible for independent musicians to get their music in there," said Paz. "I've always believed that retail stores can be the best outlets and ambassadors for independent music. They just choose not to be and sell the same recycled (expletive). We thought if they're going to lock their doors to independent musicians, we're just going to knock them down and get our music in there."
Paz, who enlisted fellow artists for the city-wide switcheroo, declined to say how much it cost to produce the mock albums or what he did with the existing Bieber records on store shelves.
"I think legal repercussions are always a possibility when you do performance pieces," said Paz. "Sometimes you have to take risks for your art."
It's not Paz's first music industry prank. Last year, he slipped photos of himself into the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles and hung them on the wall next to the likes of Grammy winners Calle 13 and Maria Rita.
___
Online:
https://www.facebook.com/paz
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .
Also on HuffPost |
The 19-year-old, the product of Mr Wright's relationship with Elizabeth Anne Mead after he divorced three earlier wives, was originally due to receive $3 million in a trust fund triggered by her 30th birthday. Mining magnate and Voyager Estate founder Michael Wright amassed a huge fortune before his death Credit:Erin Jonasson EJZ But the judgement shows that even the smaller windfall was far from guaranteed - with some stringent clauses within the trust. Mr Sanderson notes in the dossier that Ms Mead would have been deemed exempt from the funds if she "had any association or involvemnet whatsoever to illegal drugs" was convicted of any felony within the 10 years prior to his death, of if she had "converted to Buddhism or Islam". In fact the judgment notes that not only did the fund fail to "make adequate provision" for Ms Mead but that the many clauses within the trust meant there was "a real propsect she might get nothing".
It goes on to detail that a drink driving offence or possession of marijuana would exclude her from the money and noted that giving up her freedom of religion was "an extraordinary proposition" which contravened a basic human right. Contrasting with the "poor little rich girl" headlines the case has spawned, Mr Sanderson also noted Ms Mead was "in no sense ... spoilt by her father". "During her childhood the deceased provided little to the plaintiff or her mother in material support," he said. "He did pay childcare as he was obliged to do under the relevant legislation. "He paid for school fees for a private college and he provided the plaintiff with some pocket money. But really that was the extent of his largesse.
"Any gifts he gave the plaintiff were of nominal value. "The deceased never purchased a home in which the plaintiff and her mother could live despite the fact they moved a number of times from one rented premises to another." Mr Sanderson said Ms Mead did not impress him as "a gold digger or in some way a narcissistic greedy individual" - despite some of the extraordinary items she was asked by lawyers and actuaries to list for her claim, specifying her likely expenditure for the rest of her life. Despite having, now infamously, drafted a wishlist that included a $2.5 million house, a $1.5 million piano, an allocation of $40,000 a year for holidays and five pairs of $50,000 shoes a year for life, Mr Sanderson added "that was a big task for a 19-year-old girl." Having a keen interest in music, she had also called for a diamond-encrusted Ritter Royal Flora Aurum bass guitar worth $250,000, which features a nut carved from 10,000-year-old mammoth ivory and a fingerboard decorated with a floral inlay pattern in 24-carat gold.
Each leaf is decorated with a black diamond set in platinum. "No one needs a guitar of that value - particularly a 19-year-old girl who is not now and never will be a professional musician and who has not had guitar lessons for some years," Mr Sanderson said. "Faced with a question about what guitar she might like she let her imagination run wild. "A 19-year-old boy in the same position would probably, when asked about a car, have nominated a Ferrari or a Lamborghini." With AAP |
LPL Financial last month was hit with a $2 million fine, and ordered to pay $820,000 in restitution, for failing to maintain adequate books and records documenting variable annuity exchanges, known as 1035 exchanges, according to the firm's profile on BrokerCheck.
The previously unreported settlement with the Illinois Securities Department contributed to flat second quarter earnings at LPL Financial Holdings Inc., leading the firm's CEO, Mark Casady to tell analysts on a conference call Wednesday morning that “We are not happy with these results.”
According to the BrokerCheck report, LPL Financial “failed to enforce its supervisory system and procedures in connection with the documentation of certain salespersons' variable annuity exchange activities,” according to the BrokerCheck report.
“LPL is pleased to have settled this matter following inquiries in which we cooperated fully with the State of Illinois,” said company spokeswoman Betsy Weinberger in an email.
“With regard to the accuracy of surrender charges incurred in connection with variable annuity exchange transactions, the company is instituting enhanced procedures with a view to ensuring that these charges are accurately reflected in the firm's books and records as well as in any disclosures given to clients, and that advisers are adequately documenting the basis for their variable annuity recommendations,” Ms. Weinberger wrote.
In its quarterly earnings report Wednesday morning, LPL reported that general and administrative expenses for the quarter ended June 30 increased 24% to $106.8 million from $84.5 million in the year-ago quarter.
The increase in general and administrative expense was primarily related to the resolution of regulatory issues, the company said in a statement.
Earnings per share were also flat year over year, at 42 cents.
For the past year and a half, LPL has been dogged by state regulators examining sales of investment products, including nontraded real estate investment trusts. In February 2013, LPL Financial reached a settlement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to pay at least $2 million in restitution and $500,000 in fines over the sale of nontraded REITs.
Last year, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. fined LPL Financial $7.5 million for 35 separate significant e-mail system failures.
LPL also was ordered to create a $1.5 million fund to compensate brokerage customers potentially affected by its failure to produce e-mail.
BEEFING UP OVERSIGHT
With regulators raking LPL over the coals, the company has spent the last year-and-a-half beefing up its oversight of complex products such nontraded REITs and variable annuities, said Dan Arnold, its chief financial officer, in an interview Wednesday after the company's conference call with analysts.
Total expenses for the quarter increased 8.2% year-over-year, to $1.02 billion. LPL, however, “expects to have 8% expense growth fall into the low single digits,” he said.
LPL has increased the number of employees in its legal and risk departments by 41% since the start of 2013 and now has 636 employees in areas that focus on compliance and oversight, said Mr. Arnold, echoing comments made by Mr. Casady on the morning's conference call. Seventy of those employees work in product oversight for complex investments including variable annuities and nontraded REITs, he said.
The company is also continuing to increase its use of technology and automation in the oversight of its advisers, he said.
While not happy with this quarter's earnings, Mr. Arnold said he was sanguine regarding LPL's growth outlook for the second half of the year, particularly recruiting and retention, with expenses to be controlled better in the next six months.
“There are good, sound underlying characteristics driving growth,” he said, pointing to the second quarter's recruiting, which saw LPL gain 114 in net new advisers. LPL now has 13,840 registered reps and advisers, an increase of 3.2% from a year earlier. |
Polizei Düren
POL-DN: Schächtung unterbunden
Düren (ots)
Am Samstagvormittag hat die Polizei im Dürener Stadtgebiet drei Schafe beschlagnahmt und damit vor einer unsachgemäßen, in dieser Form unerlaubten rituellen Schlachtung bewahrt.
Gegen 08:00 Uhr hatte ein Zeugenhinweis die Polizei unmittelbar in den privaten Garten einer Familie mit Migrationshintergrund geführt. Dort trafen Polizeibeamte drei Männer inmitten einer Schlachtung an, die aufgrund der vorgefundenen Umstände und Ermittlungsergebnisse als Schächtung bezeichnet werden kann. Zwei Tiere waren bereits getötet worden. Eine Erlaubnis oder auch erkennbare Sachkunde dafür lag nicht vor.
Durch die Polizei wurde für die drei noch lebenden Tiere eine geeignete anderweitige Unterbringung veranlasst. Gegen die Tatbeteiligten wurde ein Strafverfahren eingeleitet. Die Ermittlungen dazu dauern an.
Rückfragen bitte an:
Polizei Düren
Pressestelle
Telefon: 02421 949-1100
Fax: 02421 949-1199
Original-Content von: Polizei Düren, übermittelt durch news aktuell |
HOW TO ADD THE SKETCHBOOK!
There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding how to go about getting the sketchbook, and for that, I apologize. Allow me to explain the process in better detail :) This is for ALL current and future backers. The 100 page digital sketchbook is now available and can be added to any and all pledge levels by simply increasing your current or future pledge, at any time, by an additional $10. There is no need to message me, because when you do, I am automatically notified that you have done so :) Easy as that!
1st STRETCH GOAL UNLOCKED!
*Both cards will be included in the "BAAKO WORLD WIDE" tier as well!
The characters featured on these 2 new cards will be revealed in the coming days as well!
2nd STRETCH GOAL UNLOCKED!
3RD STRETCH GOAL UNLOCKED!
Buttons will be 1 INCH*
ADD AN ADDITIONAL BOOK FOR $15!
Anyone interested in adding additional copies of the book, may do so by simply adding an extra $15 for each additional copy to their selected tier!
This kickstarter will be a means to dedicate the necessary time and funds needed to finish and print the 1st of 3 books in a series and to make the book available for anyone and everyone via shops and online.
The first book will be a 100+ page, fully-colored graphic novel written and illustrated by me (Joshua Covey.)
WHY KICKSTARTER?:
For the past 2 years, I have been working freelance in comic books. Freelance stuff is fun, don't get me wrong-- I truly appreciate every opportunity I've been given. Kickstarter though, is my chance of doing a book without limitations. It gives me the ability to do the book how I envision it, and it opens up so many other possibilities. For example, being able to have talented people that I have come to know and love, lend their own talents to the project. As well as the incentives, like the "creature creation" pledge. These are things I feel I wouldn't have the ability to do if I were to take the project to a publisher.
The story is complete, but unfortunately, I lack the proper funding to really kick the production into full swing. I have started working on what I can between freelance gigs, but I fear it could be far too long before the book makes it to print unless I try an alternate route. The last thing I want to see it become is something that inevitably gets pushed to the back burner collecting dust. This is a story and vision that I have wanted to share for some time, and I have come too far to give up on it now.
It's not only my chance to do the book how I see it, but it’s also a way to raise enough funding to complete the first book, print it, and get it in your hands. Assuming the first book is a success, I look forward to having the chance to produce the remaining books, via kickstarter, and allowing the fans (YOU!) to be much more involved in the incentives for the next go around.
WHY $12,000?:
After crunching the numbers, this is the necessary amount in order for me to accomplish all that I am offering. The money would fund the printing of 500 full-color 100+ page soft cover copies of the first book. It would also go towards creating and distributing the rewards to all of those who pledge. Last but not least, and I'm not going to lie, a good portion of the funding will enable me to take time away from my full time job and to dedicate my time and efforts into making this book a reality.
Yes, I could do the book in my spare time. But there is no telling how long it would be before I would actually be able to print the book. I feel I owe it to you, and to all who support this project, to get this book done in a reasonable, timely manner. Also, I want to be able to put my heart and soul into every page, making each one something to remember and well worth every penny you pledge: You have my word on that.
The projected completion, printing, and mailing of “BAAKO, Book 1”, along with all pledge rewards, is January, 2014. Layouts are done, and I am in the process of inking and coloring pages, which I will complete no later then the beginning of December 2013, assuming our goal is reached.
If we surpass our goal of $12,000, there will be plenty of stretch goal incentives that I think you will enjoy! These will include faster completion time, buttons, stickers and all sorts of cool little extras, more printed copies of the book, a hard cover versus soft cover, a stand-alone sketchbook, and a plethora of pin-ups done by other artists willing to contribute their talents.
WHAT I WILL ACCOMPLISH WITH YOUR SUPPORT:
I will finish and print the first book of BAAKO, and deliver on all that I am offering you! Most importantly, I want to show that standing up for what you believe in means something; I want to accomplish the goal of staying true to myself. Lastly, I hope to set an example for my children, showing them that, in order to do what you love and to truly be happy, you must take that leap of faith.
BOOK 1 PLOT.
It all began when a great star fell from the heavens, unleashing an evil force known by those who inhabit this world as “the Hatred." From that day onward, it has become a constant struggle for survival. The Hatred continues to grow and to consume everything in it's path, leaving behind nothing but a barren wasteland, distorting anyone caught in its path into grotesque minions whose only purpose is to serve and further its onslaught, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction.
The story begins quite some time after the Hatred has spread, leaving very few civilizations remaining. It will follow a mysterious young girl, unscathed by the Hatred. She is discovered just on the outskirts of its reach and is taken in by a very small tribe preparing for their next battle. Believing the girl is of great importance, the leaders of the tribe decide to send her away to meet with one who they think could clear away the fog that shrouds her past. Wanting to stay and prove herself a true warrior, she agrees. Unfortunately, before she is able to make it to her destination, tragedy strikes, leaving her with no choice but to turn back the way she came. As she sets out to rejoin the tribe, other mysterious figures come into play. They have hidden interests of their own in regards to our young heroine.
As the first book comes to a conclusion, we will find out who (and what) these "mysterious figures" are and what their true intentions are. We’ll also learn our heroine's true potential and her purpose in the fight against the Hatred.
1 of 3 BAAKO TRADING CARDS!
BAAKO is the story of a young girl coming of age in a world full of unimaginable terrors. She must find the courage to set out on a journey full of peril, loss, and betrayal and learn to overcome it all.
The story is inspired heavily on the fact that I have a daughter of my own. To tell a story with a strong female lead without the "physical" attributes that are so commonly attributed to such a role is of huge importance to me.
This is a journey of uncertainty: of knowing what has to be done, getting out of your comfort zone, building up the courage to take that leap of faith, and hoping you land on your feet!
BAAKO is a fantasy tale at heart and a culmination of everything I've ever wanted to do in my own book. The story is a mix of multiple genres and a place for my imagination to run wild and free!
A LOOK AT BAAKO:
Below are a few pages to give you an idea of what the book will look like. The book will be in full color and have dialogue, and as the kickstarter continues on, I will update as often as possible with new pages.
BAAKO leaping into action to help a fellow tribesman!
Character lineup 1
A page from the 100 page BAAKO sketchbook!
BAAKO MONSTER WATERCOLOR!
LAST BUT NOT LEAST:
Much like everything else in this world, you can't do it all by yourself: I need help. I need YOUR help. I want every supporter to see all of my intentions for what they truly are, and I will be as transparent as humanly possible in order to accomplish this goal. So, if any of you have any uncertainties or questions regarding BAAKO, please feel free to contact me directly at any time. I would be more than happy to personally answer any and all questions you may have about this book. Lastly, to all who support this project, “Thank you.” You have no idea the true impact your support has on me. It is greatly appreciated.
If you wish to continue following me and/or the progress of BAAKO, you may do so at these sites: |
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Let's watch Detroit carefully, because today's request to prosecute election violations may help with a rotten elections culture elsewhere in the USA.
Ex-candidate Tom Barrow has filed a formal request for investigation along with stunning documentation of chain of custody breach in the recent Detroit mayoral election. Black Box Voting has been in close contact with Barrow, and we will be reviewing additional documents related to this case. The allegations are fascinating.
Detroit citizens executed watchdog actions brilliantly. One of my favorite tactics: They piled leaves in front of the back door, and went out to check frequently to see if anyone was sneaking in and out. The leaves showed that someone had entered through the back door. A security guard confessed to letting strangers in to the security area.
There's more ... in fact, the full complaint and its accompanying Exhibit provides a pretty good primer for citizens and candidates who want to watchdog elections. Full details of the 79-point complaint, and you can discuss this story at this link:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80797.html
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NEW HAMPSHIRE CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS
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ARIZONA CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS
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OHIO CHAIN OF CUSTODY VIOLATIONS
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Bourbon County 2016 Release
BCS Original: This year’s edition should take you right back to where you started with BCS. Rich and deep with plenty to ponder, it features toffee and molasses, fresh tobacco and a bit of leather to go with the roast and barrel notes you are used to.
BCS Barleywine: Barleywine will be more barrel forward this year as Goose has gone to first use barrels with a similar aging time. This should lend to a rich beer with lots of malt body and depth playing with notes of vanilla and whiskey.
BCS Coffee: Goose migrated to Costa Rica to visit the Coopedota coffee cooperative to hand-pick this year’s roast. After blind-tasting several variants, brewers chose a roast that has a wonderful balance of fruit and cherry, chocolate and nuttiness and a sublime aroma. These characteristics pair nicely with those found in the original Bourbon County Stout.
BCS Proprietor’s: This year’s Chicago-only variant is brewed with dark chocolate and chipotle peppers before aging in maple barrels. The earthy, smoky notes of the chipotle peppers in both the aroma and flavor are perfectly balanced by the rich chocolate aroma and flavor of the selected cocoa nibs. The BCS base aged in maple barrels adds the balancing sweetness and the expected depth and complexity to complement and fill out the final blend.
Track down and check-in to this year’s release or pull any vintage from the cellar to unlock the “Bourbon County Black Friday (2016)” badge. This year’s badge will be live for two months (11/25/16 - 1/25/16), so you can continue to celebrate with friends and family through the holiday season!
Also, be sure to share your #GooseBlackFriday moments with the folks in Chicago on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram! |
BioWare's Mass Effect series' producer Mike Gamble has Tweeted that the studio has made significant progress in the development of the next entry in the franchise saying the project is "really moving forward."
Lots of great @masseffect meetings today. Things are really moving forward! It's great to be involved in the universe again 🙂 — Michael Gamble (@GambleMike) July 17, 2013
His comments were echoed by cinematic designer Ken Thain who also voiced his satisfaction with the game's progress on Twitter commenting:
New #MassEffect story and main character reviews today. This shit's gettin' real! I think the fans will be really excited to play this story — Ken Thain (@KenThain) July 16, 2013
Yesterday, BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy addressed some questions from fans concerning the game noting that it will be "friendly both to old fans and to newcomers."
Mass Effect 4 is being developed by BioWare Montreal, the maker's of Mass Effect 3's co-op multiplayer mode. Assisting in the development of the game is Chris Wynn, formerly of EPIC, who was the producer of Gears of War: Judgment.
Casey Hudson, executive producer of BioWare projects, has said the next Mass Effect will be "fresh and new." The game will not feature Commander Shepard, the protagonist of the original Mass Effect trilogy, and will be created using the Frostbite 3 engine. |
It feels like NeNe Leakes is constantly responding to rumors about a possible return to Real Housewives of Atlanta. No matter what else she gets involved in, NeNe will always be associated with the show and since she pops in now and then, it makes sense that people are wondering.
There were also rumors that Kim Zolciak might step back in as a cast member, but I don’t get why she would do that. Don’t Be Tardy seems like a way easier show to do. Unless of course, the money was better. And then there’s other original RHOA cast member Sheree Whitfield. She did return last season as a part time cast member, but that was not enough for me. I need the original ladies back on my show, but is it going to happen? NeNe shared the latest with her followers on Twitter.
CLICK “CONTINUE READING” FOR MORE!
NeNe shut down the rumors that she was returning as a Housewife when she responded to a fan on Twitter and wrote, “I wasn’t asked 2 b a full time housewife or part time but they got Sheree & I think Kim Z.” I didn’t think that NeNe would want to be a full time cast member. She had a way better deal last season: popping in whenever she wanted, throwing some funny shade, and peacing out before she was really affected by the drama. I can see her doing something similar next season. Because, why not? She gets the best of both worlds if she takes that route!
RELATED: Kroy Biermann Cut By The Buffalo Bills
My interest is also piqued by the last part of the tweet when she mentioned Sheree and Kim. I’m not at all surprised by Sheree getting the promotion to a full time cast member since she did put in that time as a recurring cast member last season. The Kim part throws me off though. Her spin off show seems to be doing pretty well and it seems way less stressful than arguing with Housewives so it’s weird that she would want to leave.
According to Hip Hollywood, NeNe made it clear that she is happy for Kim and Sheree (if the gossip ends up being true) since she reportedly tweeted, “Never bitter! Please support them.” I could not find the tweet myself, but NeNe seems to be cool with both Sheree and Kim so I believe she wrote that.
TELL US – WHICH FORMER CAST MEMBERS DO YOU WANT TO RETURN TO RHOA?
[Photo Credit: Bravo]
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A D.C. school principal made a surprise announcement Wednesday. Pete Cahall told the student body at Wilson High School that he is gay. News4's Tom Sherwood reports on what prompted the Cahall to choose today to come out. (Published Wednesday, June 4, 2014)
A Washington, D.C., principal was met with cheers as he came out to his students as gay during a Pride Day event that drew protest threats from Westboro Baptist Church.
"I turned 50. I'm tired of hiding," Principal Pete Cahall said before praising Wilson High School's students for the supportive environment they've created since Westboro Baptist Church made their plans known.
This is the first time Cahall, who has been the principal at Wilson for six years, has come out publicly. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray was informed of his decision just moments before.
The school held its second annual Pride Day event Wednesday, bringing together over 20 organizations that support the needs of LGBTQ youth.
Principal Comes Out at Wilson High School
In remarks delivered at a lunchtime pride event at Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., Principal Pete Cahall came out as gay. (Published Wednesday, June 4, 2014)
Westboro, known for its public crusade against gay people at military funerals, announced plans to protest the school's Pride celebration on June 9 and called the school's support of gay and lesbian students a "shame." That protest is just one of 12 the church has planned in the D.C. area over the next few days.
After Westboro made its intentions known, students at Wilson began planning a peaceful counter-protest, The Washington Post reported. Around 1,000 students volunteered to participate in the silent protest.
"They can go straight to hell" - Mayor Gray on threat of Westboro Baptist to protest gay issues at Wilson High on Monday. — Tom Sherwood (@tomsherwood) June 4, 2014
Cahall's announcement was also met with support from local politicians, like D.C. Councilmember David Catania, who is also gay.
Congratulations to @Wilsonhsdcps Principal Pete Cahall for his courage in coming out today to his students. Great example of #tigerpride — Mary Cheh (@marycheh) June 4, 2014 |
Photo credit: The Goldwater
His was one of the hardest jobs in the U.S. 2016 presidential election, speaking for the man seen as protagonist by many, antagonist by some; and always the most controversial leading figure in the whole event. From the tumultuous campaign where his man and their team defied all the odds to the amazing victory and until this transition period where they are still being rocked by controversies mainly because of the losers' inability to accept the result, Jason Miller as President-elect Donald Trump's spokesperson hold one of the most challenging jobs there is in the whole Trump team speaking for the man, defending him, clarifying things and generally taking the cudgels for the next U.S. President.
So effective Miller is in his job that days ago he was formally offered to serve as communications director of the White House. He has accepted the logical transition- only to take it back today saying he wants to make family his main priority after he concludes his work in Trump's transition to the Presidency.
Miller shared that he spent the most time with his family the past week, more than at any other time since March last year ever since he began his work for Trump from his campaign all the way to the upset victory and the current transition. Spending time with his loved ones has made Miller realized that he can not afford to take on a job at this point as demanding as what the White House communications director post would entail.
Miller said he will conclude his work in the transition team, after which he is ready to hand over his responsibilities as communications director to Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee Communications Director who was earlier announced to assume the White House press secretary position. With Miller begging off from his supposed role, Spicer is poised to serve both as White House communications director and press secretary.
It was not revealed whether there are any other factors that contributed or affected Miller's decision not to take the crucial White House job, other than family matters, or if there are any conflicts with other members of the Trump team or incoming Cabinet.
Miller started with the Trump campaign as a senior communications adviser, coming off from his communications work with the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz.
Trump's current spokesperson said he will continue to support Trump" from the outside" after his work with the Trump transition team. However, Miller did not specify in what ways and means he plans to accomplish such. |
March 5 Cripple 2:10PM Burmeister leads to Cripple—Could Lindner go Yukon?
Our Insider crew has just arrived Cripple. Noted cooler temperatures under very blue bright sun skies. Temperatures last night bottomed at -30F.
Sonny Lindner and Aaron Burmeister have been hopscotching across the tundra from Ophir and now it appears the Aaron will be first into Cripple. Pundits here in Cripple wonder if Sonny actually intends to stop in Cripple as it seems his rest schedule might suggest a push onto the Yukon, an idea that I think has merit after I walked the outgoing trail.
The trail is perfect, hard, and set. It is not usual to have such a solid fast trail as we are now in the Interior, where temperatures are cold—typical of the Yukon basin—and dry. Disturbed by snow machines, we often find the trail to have a fluffy layer of four inches of snow. At its worst, the trail in and out of Cripple is often unstable and breaks up into a sugar bowl of dry crystals. Therefore, it may be that great opportunity to keep mushing deep into the middle of the race where a 24 hour rest makes more sense.
Cripple is just a place on the map midway between Ophir and Ruby. The only reason Cripple exists is to break up the 150 mile trail to Ruby in an area many regard as one of the most remote in Alaska. The other reason is that a slough exists which can be used for landing Iditarod air craft on skis.
On a practical basis, the collection of tents and elegant plywood shacks used for cooking, housing volunteers, and mushers would only be possible because of the vision of Jim Paulus. Jim has worked to design the quarters here at camp. He hustles building materials from sponsors in Anchorage, then cuts them into lengths and widths that can fit into small aircraft and can be assembled on site in winter conditions.
Photos are included to show the camp, the outgoing trail, and the musher shack with a gravity oil burning stove. Note the black spruce typical of the area. North to the Yukon and east of this location are areas known particularly for marten trapping. I spent several winters east of here trapping in game rich territory off the Yukon. For some reason, however, the area near Cripple is almost barren of tracks—rarely a moose track and a surprising dearth of marten tracks, the main furbearer along the Yukon. At any rate, this is a cold hole, the coldest place on the Iditarod trail, and kind of a no man’s land. This site will not be visited by humans until the Iditarod comes through here again in 2016.
A pilot from the Iditarod air force spotted Aaron on the incoming trail. Although we have internet here, we note that the tracker probably does not accurately—-to the mile—-know where Cripple sits. So, it’s like the old days where we look up at the far end of the slough for the first musher on the trail. Aaron, readers may call, is gimping from a crash and hobbling on one knee, a serious problem in snow. However, his team is smoking and he just cannot contemplate pulling the plug. I hope he can make it.
First in musher to Cripple collects $3000 in gold, a nice incentive for an early arrival.
Race fans should be delighted with an unusual dilemma. No one musher has emerged to dominate or even to suggest an eventual winner. It’s too close to call. Martin Buser, who can never be discounted is also enroute to Cripple. Should be able to maintain race pace, he could be hours, maybe 6 hours, ahead of the pack. The question is the durability of his dog team.
We have been trying to number crunch the trail, factor in the fast trail conditions, and propose that a musher, like Sonny Lindner, continuing to the Yukon could arrive at Ruby about 8am |
An Idaho Republican is considering legislation that would end state-sanctioned marriage to protest the court ruling that overturned a constitutional ban on same-sex unions.
State Sen. Steve Vick (R-Dalton Gardens) said he and other lawmakers are considering several options after officials in Coeur d’Alene told the owners of a for-profit wedding chapel that they must perform same-sex ceremonies or risk violating the city’s non-discrimination ordinance.
A violation carries the risk of a possible misdemeanor citation, according to the city attorney. Similar laws have applied in other states to florists, bakeries, and photographers.
Donald and Evelyn Knapp, the owners of The Hitching Post, have filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order — arguing that the anti-discrimination ordinance would force them to violate their religious beliefs and Idaho’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
“It’s very disappointing to me that they would require a Christian business owner to do something that violates their religious convictions,” Vick told World Net Daily.
The lawmaker said he expects the state legislature to address the issue, and he’s exploring two possible options.
“One is to try to re-establish the standing of those who have deeply held religious convictions,” Vick said. “Another potential avenue that I’m exploring is just eliminating marriage licenses in Idaho.”
He’s discussed the elimination of state sanctioning of marriage with just a few people, Vick said, but so far the response has been very positive.
“I don’t have a bill drafted or anything, (but) I have discussed it at some of the town halls I’ve been at – (and) actually seems to be fairly well-received,” Vick said. “In my opinion, if we’re not allowed to determine the standards for a marriage license, then maybe we should just not issue them.”
He admits that for-profit wedding chapels such as The Hitching Post occupy a different legal terrain than churches, but he fears LGBT rights activists will target them next.
“I believe the next step will be to say that churches themselves cannot discriminate,” he said. “They cannot discriminate, and the church will have to marry same-sex couples and not be allowed to say anything. Clearly they’re going after the freedom of the church’s speech through the hate-speech statutes.” |
Right photo by Diana Davies from the New York Public Library
The Stonewall Rebellion, when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people fought back against police repression at a Greenwich Village bar with a six-day riot in June 1969 is considered the birth of the modern "gay rights" movement. President Barack Obama just declared June LGBT Pride Month in the United States, following an example set by President Bill Clinton during his second term. (This year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued her own proclamation at the State Department.)
Obama then switched his position and let his Justice Department file briefs supporting both the Defense of Marriage Act, prohibiting federal recognition of legal same-sex marriages, and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy excluding open gays from the military -- even though he campaigned against both laws.
The 40th anniversary will be marked by the usual LGBT Pride Parade down Fifth Avenue and by pride marches all around the world from Youngstown, Ohio, which is having its first this year, to Moscow, Russia, where activists get beaten every year by skinheads and police. There now are separate African American pride parades across the U.S. as well.
Stonewall gives New York a certain preeminence in the LGBT movement, but the clash was neither the first public display of gay resistance, nor has the city and state maintained their claim to be the world leader in progress since then. Five states -- from Massachusetts to Iowa -- have already beat us to opening up marriage to gay couples.
Maybe it is New York arrogance, but it was not until this year that New York City launched an ad campaign, euphemistically called "Rainbow Pilgrimage," seeking gay tourism -- something that cities such as London and Amsterdam have been doing for years. (Maybe the rainbow theme is meant to pick up on the 40th anniversary of the death of Judy Garland, whose signature song was "Over the Rainbow.")
With gay issues so much in the forefront this year, it's a good time to look at some examples of where New York has led and where it has followed -- despite its reputation as the birthplace of the modern movement.
Pre-Stonewall History
While the religious right likes to speak about homosexuality as something that was always condemned, plenty of cultures have celebrated it -- the evidence appears on some of the Greek urns in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is even evidence of same-sex union ceremonies in early Christianity, not to mention the Bible's celebration of the love of such pairs as Ruth and Naomi as well as David and Jonathan. These couples may or may not have been gay in the modern sense, but their ardency for each other certainly goes beyond friendship. Indeed, Ruth's words to Naomi ("whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God" -- Ruth 1:1 6) are often used in wedding ceremonies.
In the modern Western world, German physician Magnus Hirshfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to fight for gay rights and overturn Germany's anti-sodomy laws in 1897. He enlisted such supporters as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Martin Buber, Herman Hesse and Richard von Krafft-Ebing. His Institute for Sexual Research was housed in a villa near the Reichstag from 1919 until the Nazis drove him out in the 1930s, famously burning the group's library in 1933.
New York's first gay center was a space the post-Stonewall Gay Liberation Front rented above what was then Gerde's Folk City on West Third Street in 1969. The Gay Activists Alliance worked and played in a space called The Firehouse at 99 Wooster from 1971 until it was destroyed in a suspicious fire in 1974. The current LGBT Community Center opened in 1980.
The first significant American gay group was the Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles by Harry Hay and Rudy Gernreich in 1950 -- and now being dramatized in a new play called The Temperamentals at the Barrow Group Theatre through July 5 with Thomas Jay Ryan as Hay and "Ugly Betty" star Michael Urie as Gernreich, who became a famous designer. New York got a Mattachine chapter in 1951, and it lasted until 1976.
What may well have been the first public gay demonstration in the United States took place here in 1964 when Randy Wicker led the Homosexual League of New York and the League for Sexual Freedom in a protest against the exclusion of gays from the military on Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan at the U.S. Army Induction Center.
Two years later, New York Mattachine leader Dick Leitsch, John Timmons and Craig Rodwell, who went on to establish the recently departed Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in the Village, successfully challenged the law banning bars from serving gay people with a 1966 "sip in" at Julius' bar, which is still operating on the corner of Waverly and West 10th Street.
Post-Stonewall History
Photo from Wiki Commons Herstory Archives
Stonewall had immediate repercussions in the movement. Soon after, a group of gay activists formed the Gay Liberation Front, which was of a piece with the radical liberation activism of the day and made alliances with other left movements, including the Black Panthers and the Young Lords. Its members were confrontational and unapologetic, and their intense group splintered and ultimately burned out in April 1971. (Some veterans of the group are having a reunion panel on June 25 at 6 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, which I'll be moderating.)
The Gay Activists Alliance broke with the front to focus on single-issue gay activism in 1970. The alliance lasted about 10 years, spawning splinters of its own such as Lesbian Feminist Liberation, part of a lesbian separatist movement.
On the first anniversary of Stonewall -- in June 1970 -- New York City saw the world's first big gay march. Craig Rodwell played a key role just by posting a sign in the window of his gay bookstore calling on people to mark the first anniversary of the rebellion, but he was aided by both Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance.
The Legislative Battles
During the 1960s, states around the country began repealing anti-sodomy laws as part of the effort to rid legal codes of archaic laws. New York's legislature, however, would not act on repeal despite the urgings of a young member of the State Assembly named Ed Koch. The New York Court of Appeals ruled the state law was unconstitutional in 1980. It took until 2003 for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the nation's 13 remaining state sodomy laws.
New York City was the first municipality in the world to propose amending its human rights law to ban discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation," a legal phrase coined by the Gay Activists Alliance in 1971. The City Council, though, refused to pass the law for years, while many other major U.S. cities moved ahead and passed gay rights bills. New York did not join them until 1986.
Village Assemblymember Bill Passanante introduced New York State's gay rights bill -- the first such state bill in the nation -- in 1971, but that didn't pass until 2002, long after states such as Wisconsin led the way in offering statewide protections in 1985. New York State still has not added protections on the basis of gender identity and expression covering people of transgender experience, but the city did in 2002.
New York State's hate crimes law was held up by a Republican-controlled Senate until 2000 -- more than 13 years after it was first proposed following the Howard Beach racial killing in 1986. The sticking point was including "sexual orientation." Most states had passed hate crimes laws in some form by the time New York did.
A school anti-bullying bill, the Dignity for All Students Act, has also been held up in the State Senate for more than a decade despite almost unanimous support in the Democrat-led Assembly. The barrier is, again, the category of "sexual orientation," as well as "gender identity and expression."
Two members of Congress from New York, Bella Abzug and Ed Koch, introduced the first federal gay and lesbian rights bill in 1973, then an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965. The bill was eventually watered down to just provide some job protections through the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and passed the House last year but not the Senate.
Gays in Office
In the 1970s, out gays began running for -- and getting elected to -- public office. Here, too, New York lagged.
The first out gay officials anywhere in the U.S. were such pioneers as Kathy Kozachenko in January 1974 to the Ann Arbor City Council, Allan Spear, a state senator in Minnesota who came out in 1974, and Elaine Noble, elected that same year to the Massachusetts legislature as an out lesbian. Harvey Milk wasn't elected a supervisor in San Francisco until 1977, only to be murdered by former Supervisor Dan White the following year -- and immortalized by Oscar-winning Sean Penn in the movie "Milk" just last year.
In 1991, Passanante was succeeded in the Assembly by Deborah Glick, the first out gay or lesbian person ever to be elected to a legislative office in New York.
Significantly, New York now has an out lesbian City Council speaker in Christine Quinn, one of the highest ranking out gay or lesbian officials in the United States.
Marriage Matters
The big gay news these days concerns the fate of same-sex marriage in New York. With the Republicans taking over the State Senate in a coup with dissident Democrats, the prospects for the bill letting gay couples marry here is up in the air, even though new Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican and opponent of same-sex marriage, has said his members can vote their consciences on the bill. The dissidents Democratic senators, Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate, are for the marriage equality bill. However, it apparently had nothing to do with their coup, which observers have attributed to billionaire Tom Golisano's desire for lower taxes and the landlord lobby's fear the Senate Democrat majority would strengthen rent regulations.
Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell, a Democrat from Manhattan's West Side, who got the marriage bill passed in his house, remains hopeful it will pass the Senate. Prior to the coup, Sen. Tom Duane, also a Manhattan Democrat was insisting it had the votes to pass.
While the Republican-led majority can block action on the bill, it does not now nor has it ever had the votes to block New York State from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other place. Legislation that would have denied legal recognition to those marriages was introduced in the 1990s in Albany and never even received a hearing in the Senate.
As a result, New York is alone among states in that it recognizes legal same-sex marriages performed elsewhere but does not perform them itself. All New York gay couples have to do to be married is travel to such neighboring jurisdictions as Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts or Canada and wed legally. When they come home, they will be married in the eyes of the state -- just as if they had been able to legally marry here.
This has been true since same sex couples in New York began legally marrying in Canada in 2003. Gov. David Paterson drew much more attention to this quirk in New York law last year, though, when he ordered state departments and agencies to report on how they were complying with it.
Like all other same-sex married couples, New Yorkers lack federal rights associated with marriage due to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Sen. Charles Schumer, who voted for that anti-gay bill, this year became the last statewide official to come out in favor of same-sex marriage, joining Paterson, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who announced her support the day the governor picked her to succeed Sen. Clinton, who does not support same-sex marriage.
Serving a Community
Beyond the political arena, New York has played central roles in the development of the LGBT community, especially in the arts (a whole other column) but also in the provision of services.
Lambda Legal Defense, founded in 1973 in New York as the first legal group devoted to defending gay rights, now has offices around the country.
The New York LGBT movement, which I was very much a part of, was tragically rather weak when the syndrome that came to be called AIDS was first noticed in 1981. AIDS devastated the gay community but also led to development of a vast gay social services establishment starting with the Gay Men's Health Crisis co-founded by Larry Kramer and five others. Kramer went on to give a speech in 1987 that sparked the creation of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP, a group dominated by dying gay men and supportive lesbians who radicalized activism again and changed forever the way people with diseases advocate for what they need to survive. ACT UP chapters spread around the world, and the New York contingent still has a few stalwarts carrying the torch of AIDS activism.
New York City had the first predominately gay, lesbian and transgendered high school with Harvey Milk High School founded by the Hetrick-Martin Institute for LGBT youth in 1985. Its continued existence is testimony to the fact that many mainstream city schools are still not safe places for such students. The institute itself, where I once worked as director of education, was founded to advocate for these youth in 1979 by the late Damien Martin and Emery Hetrick.
New York's SAGE -- for Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders -- was the first U.S. group for older gays and lesbians in 1978.
Gay journalists founded the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in 1985 to fight anti-gay defamation in the media, especially at the New York Post. Originally a fierce watchdog, it has gone on to become a largely West Coast operation famous for big annual dinners honoring positive LGBT portrayals in the media. Such has been the arc of the movement.
Joining the Establishment
For better or worse, the political movement has become much more institutionalized, too. None of the early activists, from the Gay Liberation Front in 1969 to the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, with which I worked in the 1970s and '80s, had paid staff. The National Gay Task Force (now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force) began to change that in 1973. Its executive director, Bruce Voeller, received a (modest) salary, and it favored the suits of lobbyists over jeans, t-shirts and the "zap" actions of the Gay Activist Alliance. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force now has offices all over the country with a major presence in New York.
In New York, the Empire State Pride Agenda with paid lobbyists in New York and Albany and organizers around the state, dominates the movement in New York politics. The city also has lots of LGBT political clubs, mostly Democratic but also the Log Cabin Republicans.
Diverse New York has also had a wealth of racial and ethnic LGBT groups, including the defunct Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization whose exclusion from the St. Patrick's Parade sparked international campaigns for LGBT Irish people seeking to participate in mainstream. (Now gay Irish can march in the parade in Dublin and Queens but still not Manhattan's.) There are also groups for people of color such as the Audre Lorde Project, named for the late lesbian poet laureate of the state. Virtually every major religious sect has an LGBT caucus of some kind.
Beyond the City
Stonewall, while a spontaneous reaction to police abuse, resulted from the liberationist and anti-war activism that was in the air in 1969 along with the actions of individual LGBT folk at the bar and in the street that night who collectively reacted with anger to the latest indignity to which they were subjected.
Forty years later, New York City still beckons as somewhat of a Mecca for people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, though it has become too expensive for many young people just starting out and less than hospitable when you look at the recent false arrests of gay men for prostitution. At the very least, New York and its gay and lesbian residents sparked a nascent movement that spread across the country and around the globe. Their effort made it easier for millions of people to live open and satisfying LGBT lives -- without moving to New York. |
DIY Funerals: Rite at Home is a five-part radio series exploring home funerals. The series ran from July 4 to July 8 on CBC Radio One's afternoon shows in B.C.
Taking care of dead loved ones at home can be an affordable and intimate alternative to paying a funeral provider and for those interested in doing so, there are important things to know before undertaking such a task.
Home funerals can be done safely and legally in British Columbia if the proper steps are followed. This includes filing the proper paperwork, gathering practical supplies, and adhering to the Cremation, Interment and Funeral Services Act.
Navigating the paperwork
Some people hire a death doula, someone who specializes in home funerals, to help them navigate the paperwork.
If a home death is expected, a physician can prepare a notification of expected death in the home form. This allows the family to have time with their deceased loved one without immediately contacting a physician to pronounce death.
Ngaio Davis, owner of Classical Cremations, in her Vancouver office where she assists clients with custom funeral preparations, including for home funerals. (Bridgette Watson/CBC)
The death will need to be registered with The British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency, where a disposition permit will be issued to confirm where the body will be buried, or cremated.
If a funeral home is not moving the body, then a private transport permit must be applied for through Consumer Protection BC. Without this form, transporting a body violates the Funeral Services Act.
A death doula can also teach people how to care for a dead body. They are not registered funeral providers and cannot be paid to wash a body, but they can provide instruction and support.
You can never have too much ice
Dead bodies need to be kept cool. It is essential to have ice packs on hand to place around the vital organs of a person after they pass.
Pashta MaryMoon is a death doula who helps families prepare for home funerals. She said people need to be prepared for the effects of rigor mortis.
"You often see in movies somebody dies and their eyes are open and then they just pass their hands over top of the eyelids and they shut," said MaryMoon, who explained this is not normally the case in real life.
MaryMoon's DIY tips include using sandwich bags of rice to weigh down eyelids. She also recommends using a headscarf to secure the corpse's jaw closed before rigor mortis sets in.
The body can be washed with essential oils that kill bacteria, but Charlotte Poncelet, executive director of the BC Funeral Association said it is important to disclose medical history if you are planning a home funeral.
This will protect body handlers from being unknowingly exposed to hepatitis or other health risks.
Blending traditions
Not everyone wants to wash their own dead.
Ngaio Davis is an independent Vancouver funeral director. She suggests talking to your loved ones well in advance and planning according to personal comfort levels.
"I would like to see things really open up and just be a blending," said Davis. "It doesn't have to be flaky, it doesn't have to be stiff and funeral direct-y, it can be just what you need."
With files from CBC Radio One's On The Coast |
It’s not their fault. Miles from it. Yet, as always, they stand before the microphones, lights and cameras and own it.
Daniel and Henrik Sedin, aged 36 and ticking, bear the weight of a franchise misguided.
The four shutouts in five games, the seven-game losing skid, the league-worst offence, the pucks that bounce along the opposing goal-lines but refuse to trickle Vancouver’s way — they carry it all. They spin it positive, they dig for a bright side, and they play through the pain.
“It’s heavily on our minds. It’s been that way throughout our careers. We think about it before every game: We know we’re going to have to score goals,” says Henrik. “It’s something you think about all day, every day.
“When you’re away from the rink you try to think of other things, but… we take a lot pride in scoring. If we’re not scoring, we don’t want to put pressure on anyone else to score.”
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The Canucks captain and 2010 Hart and Art Ross Trophy winner leads the club in points (five), and brother Daniel is one behind. But when ownership is dreaming playoffs and you’re the franchise players with the offensive-zone starts and cushy power-play time, the pressure hits you hardest.
“Our line needs to step up. Me and Hank. That’s what we’re here to do. That’s on us,” says Daniel. “Look nowhere else. It’s up to us to get things going.”
It’s admirable, the Sedins’ proprietorship of Vancouver’s ineptitude, especially when they say all of this sincerely without a trace of woe-is-me.
Certainly it’s not the twins’ fault that their employer failed to fill out the rest of the top six with finishers, that marquee free-agent signing Loui Eriksson is goal-free in 11 games, or that ownership is reluctant to embrace the type of rebuild that has fans buzzing about the future of Canada’s other sub-par rosters, the ones in Winnipeg, Calgary and Toronto.
“That’s a fun team to follow,” Daniel says of the Maple Leafs, whose kids get the Canucks at the visitors’ low point on Hockey Night in Canada Saturday.
How anti-fun is Vancouver’s offence right now? There is a bigger discrepancy between the Canucks’ 1.45 goals per game and the second-worst NHL offence (Los Angeles) than between any other two adjacent teams on the list.
Vancouver ranks 29th in shots on net with 26.7 per game, is converting an NHL-worst 5.4 per cent of those shots, and its version of a power play converts just 8.6 per cent of the time (only Boston, the team Eriksson left, is as ineffective).
Here’s the silver lining, of which the Sedins are well aware. Vancouver sits middle of the pack in save percentage (.910) and its team defence (2.45 goals per game, eighth best) has improved dramatically from last season (2.91, 23rd best).
“Honestly, I’d rather be in these tight, low-scoring games than us losing 5-2 or just going out there looking for offence,” Daniel explains. “Usually when you go through these [losing] stretches, you’re not playing well. But I think we are playing well and creating enough to score some goals.
“That’s the frustrating part. We could’ve easily won a few of these games.”
Henrik would hate to see the bottom six try to open up offensively in order to bust the slump. “If we’re to lose,” he says, “this is the way to lose.”
Statistically, the Canucks have the second-worst luck in the league. Their .965 PDO mark, which combines shooting percentage with save percentage, places them better than only the bad-break Kings.
Coach Willie Desjardins — unfairly the subject of early hot-seat chatter — says he counted 35 quality scoring chances in the last two blank sheets in Montreal and Ottawa. Typically, one of out every five chances finds its way in. Now Vancouver is dealing with injuries to two of its best defencemen: Alex Edler (day to day) and Chris Tanev (longer than that).
“It’s never just bad luck,” Desjardins says. “You’ve got to take ownership of the game. We talk about making it happen; don’t hope it happens. We’re not scoring, so we’ve got to make that happen.”
Eriksson, hired for six years and $36 million, needs to make it happen — but he’s traditionally a slow starter in a new setting. First year in Dallas: six goals. Third year in Dallas: 36 goals. First year in Boston: 10 goals. Third year in Boston: 30 goals.
Busy at home, Eriksson tells me his four children (all under eight years old) are navigating a new school and trying to make new friends. He admits there’s been a tough adjustment coming to Vancouver. Is the hefty contract weighing on him?
“There’s always pressure. It doesn’t matter what you do,” Eriksson says. “I need to step it up here. Be more hungry in front of the net and score goals.
“I just need more patience and try to hit the net better. I know it’s going to come. I’ve scored goals before.”
Yep. Thirty just last year. Still, the Sedins have the back of their teammate and countryman because of course they do.
“You can’t tell [he’s frustrated],” Henrik says. “I’m sure he is deep inside, but he comes in positive. He’s a quiet guy, but he’s positive around the room. There’s no pouting.”
Even as the numbers dip, the big-money signing struggles, the losses mount, and attendance in Vancouver has dropped since a disappointing 2015-16 season (by roughly 200 fans a night), the Sedins advertise optimism.
“We’re putting more and more pressure on ourselves, and that’s probably not doing us any favours. This is a league where you’ve got to perform,” says Jannik Hansen, who has replaced Eriksson on the Sedins’ top line.
“We need something to shake the ketchup bottle. Hopefully it’ll come.” |
Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban declared Friday they will target the weddings and funerals of anyone involved in pro-government activity against them.
The threat came as the Taliban claimed responsibility for Thursday's suicide blast targeting a funeral procession for a member of an anti-Taliban militia.
"Anyone who supports the U.S. and Pakistani military will face the same fate," Taliban spokesman Siraj-ud Din said. "We will target funeral processions and wedding ceremonies of those who support the U.S."
Din said Friday that the deceased and his attendants were enemies of Taliban because of their pro-government activity.
Police say a suicide bomber blew himself up standing in a funeral procession in the northwestern Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Saleem Murrawat, the police chief of the province's Lower Dir district, told CNN that the explosion killed 40 people and injured 67 others. |
Hours after a crushing defeat to the Knicks, Sacramento Kings forward Matt Barnes choked a woman at a Manhattan night spot early Monday, law-enforcement sources said.
Police were called to the club Avenue in Chelsea at around 3:20 a.m. following Barnes’ alleged 3:20 a.m. attack on the 26-year-old victim, the sources said.
The woman, who was not identified, may be Barnes’ girlfriend — but his rep later suggested she was a stranger.
The NBA player — who has not been arrested — also allegedly “physically assaulted” another woman, 27, and a man, 35, from a table next to Barnes’ crew as they attempted to intervene.
They were both hit with a bottle, but it was not chucked by Barnes, the sources said.
Barnes’ initial beef was with people within his own crew of five to 10 pals at a club table before the fight escalated, the sources said.
“So they get into a fight amongst each other and it spills over to another group in close proximity,” a source said, adding that it’s unclear what sparked the dispute.
“Don’t know what sparked the dispute. This was a wild melee. This was a real good old fashioned barroom brawl.”
By the time officers arrived at the 10th Avenue club, Barnes and his buddies, including teammate DeMarcus Cousins, had left, sources said.
Barnes defend himself on Instagram Monday, posting, “There’s always two sides to a story.”
“The side the media consistently tries to paint of me . . . And what actually happened! Don’t believe everything you read,” Barnes posted to his more than 430,000 followers.
A rep for Barnes told TMZ that a woman, who was not identified as his girlfriend, had slapped him in the face after Barnes accidentally “butt bumped” her in the VIP section of the club and acted in self-defense when several men intervened.
Barnes was knocked to the ground and choked by one of the men, the rep said, according to TMZ. Cousins even jumped in to defend Barnes, the rep said.
Barnes’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, told The Post, “We believe no crime was committed and will continue to cooperate with the authorities.”
A video obtained by TMZ appears to show Barnes and Cousins outside of the club talking about the brawl. Cousins can be heard saying that Barnes “hit the sh-t out of this n—a.”
The fight came hours after Barnes stunk up Madison Square Garden, in the Kings’ 106-98 loss to the Knicks.
Barnes made just one of his 11 shots, and Sacramento was outscored by a whopping 21 points in the mere 17 minutes he was on the floor.
The 6-foot-7 Barnes is best known for a weird feud he had with former Knicks coach Derek Fisher – who once dated the player’s estranged wife, Gloria Govan, back in 2015. Barnes reportedly drove 95 miles to confront Fisher in Los Angeles for romancing Govan.
“We have clear standards of conduct and behavior expected of the entire Kings organization – on and off the court. We are working with all parties involved to gather information in order to take any appropriate next steps,” the Kings said in a statement.
The Kings are off until Wednesday, when they play at the Dallas Mavericks.
Additional reporting by David K. Li and Natalie Musumeci |
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Otomatik kollu bariyer sistemleri endüstriyel alanlarda sıkça kullanılan sistemlerdir. Yabancı araç girişini kontrol eden kollu bariyer sistemi tek ve çift taraflı olarak ta kullanılabilir. Özellikle iş yerleri ve otoparklar için sıkça kullanılan bu otomatik bariyer şeklindeki ürünleri firmalar tercih etmektedirler. Uzaktan kumanda ve kartlı geçiş sistemleri de bulunmaktadır. Araçların büyüklüğüne göre bariyer sistemi de buna göre büyüklükte yapılır.
Kollu bariyer sistemleri estetik görünümü sağlam yapısı ile kötü hava koşullarında çalışabilmektedir. Yağmurda, karda, fırtınada, aşırı sıcaklarda ve dolu yağmurlarında çalışabilmektedir. Geceleri ise üzerindeki ledler sayesinde kolayca fark edilebilirler. Araç geçtikten sonra bariyer otomatik kapanma sistemi ile zaman ayarlı olarak kapatılabilmektedir. Ayrıca elektrik kesintilerinde otomatik bariyer kolunun manuel kullanımı mekanik olarak ta kullanılabilir. Güvenliğin her şeyden önemli olduğu bilinciyle emniyet fotoseli ve manyetik loop dedektörü bağlantısı mümkün olmaktadır.
Bariyer sistemleri toplu alanlarda özellikle de çevre düzenleme alanlarında geniş girişlerin sağlanması ve araç kontrollerinin yapılması için yaygın olarak kullanılan bariyer sistemi yoğun kullanımlar için birebirdir. Bariyerlerin üzerindeki fotoseller sayesinde araç geçişi tespit edilip araç geçene kadar bariyer kolunun indirilmesi önlenir. Böylece olası kazalar önlenmiş olur ve kazalara sebebiyet vermez.
Egebeta otomatik kollu bariyer sistemlerinde rakiplerinden bir adım önde olmayı kendisine ilke edinmiş ve sizlere bu şekilde hizmetler sunmaktadır. |
Akula (Shark) is a serious hunting/fishing knife. Dramatic look, finesse craftsmanship, great Damascus, detailed silverwork. Gills and contour of a real shark, choil at the front bolster.
If you boss is a business shark: quick decisions, no remorse, sharp mind, physical and mental strength, can go for a mileage “next birthday“ make a gift to remember, because there are no knifes like this one. Very limited series, almost extinct.
This knife with Akulas head and ornamental front bolster will make a great gift, which will be appreciated on a hunting journey, fishing travel or camping adventure.
This is a Big Hunting or Fishing Knife; please review the sizing chart below.
False blade from tip to almost half of the blade.
Carved ebony handle will fit ideally for medium or large hand.
Blade composition proprietary Damascus by Nord Crown.
Made in Russia, serves the owner!
Akula (Shark) comes with natural leather sheath. |
Didn’t you think Mark Zuckerberg is tall? According to a 2010 New Yorker profile, he’s “only around five feet eight, but he seems taller, because he stands with his chest out and his back straight, as if held up by a string.” Wired writer Graham Starr thinks Zuck seems tall for another reason: He stages his photos to exaggerate his height.
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Zuckerberg doesn’t wear vertical stripes or platform shoes (or Timberlands). But in publicity photos from his “I’m not running for president” tour of the U.S., he often stands closer to the camera, or holds himself higher as others walk or lean around him. Check out his shoes in the truck photo above, next to the shoes of the man behind him. Either Zuckerberg has gigantic feet, or he’s a lot closer to the camera than he first seems.
Props to him, really. Looking taller next to other people is a lot harder than looking taller in solo photos. And while it shouldn’t matter to anyone, Zuckerberg has an image to maintain. 58% of Fortune 500 CEOs are over six feet tall, and the last president shorter than Zuckerberg was William McKinley. But Zuckerberg comes across as much taller, even towering over 5' 10" Bill Gates on a sofa.
Most internet sources, including the murky world of celebrity height forums, list Zuckerberg as just 5' 7". IMDb splits the difference at 5' 7.5". Either way, I feel a kinship, as I’m 5' 6" on a good day. So I went out with my colleague Patrick Austin to see if we could use Zuckerberg’s tricks to make me look taller.
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First we started easy, with a subject who was already shorter than me. As I inched toward the camera, I easily doubled our height difference.
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But that was easy mode. All I accomplished here was to make someone else look short. Could I look taller than someone my height, or even someone taller?
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I couldn’t even get my arm up over our next volunteer’s shoulders. So instead I just beelined for the camera.
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I believe we achieved some parity in that last shot, even if I had to wave my hat above my head in a desperate bid to confuse the viewer. Without a pair of $200 elevator shoes, I clung to that hat, hoping it would give me an extra optical inch. It was time for a tougher test: group shots.
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These two men were not just taller than me, they were fit enough to highlight my skinny little torso. I did something desperate: I stood on my tiptoes.
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Patrick figured out that the “stand closer” trick sometimes hits a limit. Without a super-low angle, our volunteers’ downward eyelines were enough to give away our height difference. Plus I was forgetting to cheat to the camera (more on that below), the way Zuckerberg did with his cattle rancher friends.
Lastly we tried a varied group shot, with a whole range of heights. Our volunteers kindly ignored my blatant toe-stand and even leaned in to give me a comparative advantage. I’m pretty sure the “move toward the camera” trick paid off, until our volunteers turned it right back around on me. Again, the hat was essential.
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We found three basic tricks for looking tall next to other people:
Get closer to the camera, but “cheat out” by turning a bit toward the camera, to imply you’re as far away as your companion.
Maintain excellent posture. Shoulders back, chin up, legs straight. But like Zuckerberg, look casual, not like you’re standing at attention.
Wear a hat, and wear it high.
Find the shortest person in the group, and stand next to them.
Looking taller can’t repair the longterm psychological damage of being short, but it can trick the public, at least until they google you. |
The goal is without question the most exciting aspect in soccer. It is often such a rare feat that it is celebrated with all the gusto of winning a championship.
RELATED: NCAA Regional rankings | United Soccer Coaches poll
It is also an art form for those talented enough to be masters of the goal. They come in many forms, sometimes off a head, other times the bicycle kick mesmerizes us, while others are simply golden. Here's a look at five of the more exciting goal scorers in DII soccer this season.
WATCH: Julian Stewart's bicycle kick may be DII goal of the year
The record setter
California Baptist has yet to lose this season. Sitting at a perfect 12-0-2, the Lancers are fueled by one of DII soccer's best offenses, scoring 3.15 goals per match. That mark is in large part due to their record-setting senior forward Aidan Apodaca.
Spoke to Aidan Apodaca, the NCAA leader in goals scored. (video cred: California Baptist Athletics) pic.twitter.com/Ou0Ik3EM0K — Wayne Cavadi (@UofDWayne) October 25, 2017
Apodaca leads the nation in goals with 25, averaging nearly two a match. It is a breakout for the senior, who had 19 total goals in his three years with the Lancers prior to this season.
"I believe what makes someone a prolific goal scorer is the ability to have short term memory," Apodaca said. "What I feel is different this year than ones previous is not dwelling on the misses and mistakes, taking every opportunity. If the ball doesn't go the way you want it to, so what. It also helps to have an amazing group of guys that believe in you and lift you up, none of this would be possible without any of them."
His remarkable season sees him shatter program records seemingly on a weekly basis. His 25 goals and 42 points are program single-season records. Earlier this season Apodaca set the single-game record with a five-goal performance against Northwest Nazarene. The Lancers won that match 5-0. It was just another day at the office, scoring thrilling goal after thrilling goal.
"Scoring a goal will never get old," Apodaca said. "I always get eager and excited to score and when it happens I feel like a kid again. My favorite goal this year would have to be my second against Fresno Pacific. Scoring the first and then coming back to the half line ready to grind it out for the last few minutes. Fifty seconds go by and I score again to lock in the win. I was so happy I slid about 10 yards to celebrate with the whole team, who was just as happy as I was."
California Baptist sat atop the West in the first release of the NCAA regional rankings. With four regular season games remaining and an all but certain birth in the NCAA postseason, you can be sure to see more records fall at the hands, or feet, of Apodaca.
The leader
Charleston (WV) is a regular atop the DII soccer rankings the past few seasons. Last year, the Golden Eagles made it to the national championship game, where they wound up falling to Wingate 2-0. This year, they have been on a clear mission to get back to Kansas City, a perfect 15-0 and the No. 1 team in DII.
Will Roberts is a big reason why.
Will Roberts is the MEC Men's Soccer Offensive Player of the Week! #FlyUChttps://t.co/fZTEwgDonR pic.twitter.com/a37pkiboLD — Golden Eagles (@ucwv_athletics) October 9, 2017
The senior forward is arguably the best all-around player in DII. He's at the very least one of the most consistent. Roberts scored 21 goals in both his sophomore and junior seasons, and currently has 11 with two regular season games and the postseason left on the slate. His 71 career goals are second most amongst active goal scorers across every division of NCAA play, and tops in DII. He's been on fire of late, with seven goals in his last six games.
"As an attacking player, you thrive on game-winning goals and helping your team," Roberts told NCAA.com. "So, if my teammates look towards me in times of need, then I'll give everything I can to not let them down."
Roberts' list of accolades will be endless by the time he leaves Charleston. The Mountain East Conference 2014 freshman of the year and 2015 player of the year hopes to add one more before it's all over and raise the national championship in 2017.
The game winners
Cal Poly Pomona finds itself in the middle of a tightly-contested West Region. The Broncos already have 13 wins this season. Eight of those wins have come off the foot of Sergi Monso.
Congrats to Sergi Monso for earning his third CCAA Player of the Week award this season! #wearecpp pic.twitter.com/Jyv59w3CJ6 — CPP Bronco Athletics (@cppbroncos) October 17, 2017
That's pretty darn impressive. Monso is responsible for over 60 percent of the Broncos wins, and they are hoping he has some more left in the tank. The 2016 All-American leads the California Collegiate Athletic Accosiation in goals and assists, while his eight-game winners are tied for the most in all of NCAA soccer. While he is clearly a menace to opposing goal keepers at all times, when the game is on the line, there may be no one else you want firing the ball on net.
Colorado School of Mines and Colorado Mesa are in a close battle at the top of Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. With just two games left to decide a regular season champion before the RMAC tournament begins, junior forward John Haist picked the right time to go on a hot streak. Haist is third in DII with 17 goals, leading the RMAC in both goals and points. His last two goals have been game-winners, the most recent coming in double-overtime.
RECAP: Haist's 2OT winner powers #MinesMSOC past Fort Lewis and onto the verge of the RMAC title https://t.co/uvly0RqlW3 pic.twitter.com/Qbj6JdibPs — Mines Athletics (@MinesAthletics) October 22, 2017
That gives Haist seven game winning goals on the season, in a log-jam for second-best in DII. Currently 15th in the United Soccer Coaches poll, the Orediggers will look to Haist and his clutch foot come the postseason.
The sophomore sensation
The District of Columbia Firebirds are having one of the best seasons in program's history. They clinched their first East Coast Conference tournament spot, recently finding themselves in their first-ever regional rankings, placing seventh in the stacked East region.
Sophomore Gabriel Torres is the reason why.
The midfielder/defenseman is one of the best all-around players in the division. He leads the East Coast Conference in nearly every offensive category, earning three ECC Player of the Week Awards already on the season.
In his freshman debut, Torres registered 19 points. That's how many goals he's already scored this season. That's good for second in DII, but he is also one of the more well-rounded players. His nine assists place him in the Top 5. Only Apodaca's 49 points trump his 47 atop the DII leaderboard.
The Firebirds don't want to see this historic run end. They will need to improve their regional ranking to lock up a spot in the NCAA postseason. You can be sure that Torres' magic touch will have to be the one to get them there.
Honorable mentions: Dylan Armstong of St. Edwards has nine goals this season; seven have been winners. Juwon Akintunde of West Virginia Wesleyan has been a goal scoring machine with 16, tying himself with Marek Weber of Le Moyne for fifth-best in DII. |
A Bronx woman has been arrested in connection with the theft of more than $2,000 worth of clothing from a West Nyack department store, according to Clarkstown police.
Vanessa Fiallos, 33, of the Bronx, was arrested after a 3 p.m. incident on Saturday at the Lord and Taylor store at Palisades Center mall. Police said Fiallos was seen by store security staff taking merchandise including sunglasses, jeans, shirts, jackets and a handbag from displays racks and hiding the items in a bag she was carrying.
Fiallos was stopped by store security after she left Lord and Taylor, police said. The merchandise was valued at a total of $2,083.
Fiallos is charged with fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony, and possession of burglar's tools, a misdemeanor. She was released pending an Oct. 15 hearing in Clarkstown Town Court. |
I'm interested in the weather. Who isn't? We groom for the atmosphere. Daily we apply our mothers' prognostics to the sky. We select our garments accordingly; like flags or vanes we signify. But I'm interested in weather also because cultural displacement has shown me that weather is a rhetoric. Furthermore, it is the rhetoric of sincerity, falling in a soothing, familial vernacular. It's expressed between friendly strangers. I speak it to you. A beautiful morning. You speak it back. The fog has lifted. We are now a society. To say insincerity is foreign to weather is precise. Weather is the mythic equilibrium of the social, rising and falling in the numbly intimate metres of the commonplace. For a long time the rhythm's opaque to the stranger. Haltingly you begin to sing, during the long cab ride from the airport, the long chorus of place. You enter a new weather, an unfamiliar system of sincerity. You learn it by example. You begin to adjust, to settle; put in order; regulate. But you are a spy in sincerity. The real knowledge of weather is indigenous.
Should it come as a surprise that Britain's most profitable television export is not costume drama but weatherporn? Weatherporn. An atmospheric condition dallies with some lives and we drink its lusty spectacle from the screen. Description pries up, frees itself, briefly phatic, expresses a gestural plenitude, framed by but untied to the sociality of objects. This loosening is diction as rhythm. It crosses borders. The weather becomes a flickering social prosody. As it abstracts into rhythm it becomes commodified, universal. Really. It was a fireball, right through the front door, and out the back.
It's real. It's mythic. It's wild. It's a vernacular. It's didactic. It's boredom. It's ceaseless. It's a delusional space.
Stacy Doris says "In terms of geographies and nationalities, the best bet for poetry is delusional space. . . Any poetry that doesn't somehow begin in a realm of wild fantasy is not worth the writing." This weather's the wild fantasy. It seizes us. Together our faces tilt upwards. A wild dream of parity must have its own weather and that weather will always have as its structure an incommensurability. If each forecast is a fiction I prefer to add to that fiction alternate delusions-- a delusionary politics that describes current conditions as it poses futurities. I mean it.
Here is want I want to say. Sincerity has a rhetorical history. The history of the description of weather parallels the history of sincerity as a rhetorical value. The delimitation or purification of diction is common to both. Part of this delimitation is idiomatic; part derives from a tradition of quotation, of genre. When Virgil described the weather prognosticatons in The Georgics, he quoted Lucretius and Aratus' Diosemia, which in turn referred to Hesiod's Works and Days. James Thomson, in The Seasons, quoted Virgil, both structurally and substantially. John Clare learned an ideology of directly observed description from Thomson, as did Wordworth. Etcetera. But parallel to the literary and idiomatic geneology of the atmosphere, was the standardization of scientific rhetoric, the language of natural philosophy and early meteorology.
Here is a small history of that sincerity. In 1667 Thomas Sprat, the historian of the Royal Society, included in his account of the principal body of the new sciences a substantial manifesto on style. "The Purity of speech, and greatness of Empire have, in all Countries, still met together" he says, calling for "a close, naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness: bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness, as they can: and perferring the language of Artisans, countrymen and merchants, before that, of wits, and scholars." The purification of English diction was integral to the institutionalization of scientific discourse, but also to the normalization of national conduct, distinguishing English, and the English, from the rhetorical eloquence, the corrupt and feminine arts of pleasure and ornament that Sprat sees spread throughout neighbouring latinate languages and nations. He describes "The general constitution of the Minds of the English": "They have commonly an unaffected sincerity; that they love to deliver their minds with a sound simplicity. . . a universal modesty posseses them." For Sprat, sincerity, reason and plain speech are natural to the English people by blood, and by weather:
"By position of our climate, the air, the influence of the heaven, the composition of the English
blood, as well as the embraces of the ocean, seem to join with the labours of the Royal Society, to
render our country a land of Experimental Knowledge. And it is a good sign that Nature
will reveal more of its secrets to the English than to others because it has already furnished them
with a genius so well proportioned for the receiving and retaining its mysteries."
So climate is blood. The stylistic sign of sincerity, apart from the plain diction of common people, showed itself in a rhetorical economy: the experimental philospher must maintain "A constant Resolution to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style; to return back to the primitive purity and shortness, when men delivered so many Things, almost in an equal number of Words." Nor was this economy merely metaphorical. One of the pragmatic purposes of the Royal Society was the improvement of manufacture; experimental philosophers were to propose better use of the new materials originating in America and elsewhere. Says Spratt "it has been the constant error of men's labours in all Ages, that they have still directed them to improve those of Pleasure, more than those of profit. . .what prodigious expense has been thrown away about the fashions of clothes? But how little endeavours have there been, to invent new materials for clothing, or to perfect those we have?" English inventiveness, plainess, reason, and sincerity made an efficient structure for the economical administration of manufacture, trade, and colonies. A formal Academy would not prove necessary. The 18th century blossoming of the sciences extended through all aspects of the political economy of the nation and its colonies, the new scientific rhetoric proving the ground for the radical nationalist literatures of the late 18th century. The public for the purified diction of Wordworth and Coleridge was already established in the late 17th century. Sincerity is a market, a decisive method, a nationalist politics, and an ethnic signifier. Lyrical Ballads are ethnic weather. They wear a blue bonnet. They read the weather signs for bombers.
The best parts of manifestoes are their lapses and practical failures. Wordsworth, in the Second Preface to Lyrical Ballads says "The language of these rustic men has been adopted. . .because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because. . . being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions." Wordsworth was applying the Royal Society's notion of plain speech to poetry. The transposition of the rhetoric of sincerity from prose style to poetry wasn't entirely elided; Wordsworth stressed that good poetry and good prose have a common diction. He claimed as well that all knowledge, including the sciences, belongs in poetry. He wasn't the first to make this claim; he was reiterating an important theme in literary criticism. In the 18th century Thomas Aikens and Joseph Trapp wrote and lectured on the advisability of bringing the discourses of the new natural sciences into poetry. For these critics, the natural sciences would supply poetry with newness, variability and change-- the concern was pointed towards content. For Aikens and Trapp, the traditional form of the georgic would provide a structural ground on which descriptions of specifically english nature could unfold. The new style of descriptive rhetoric in the sciences didn't immediately replace poetic diction, but it did supplement the poem's content, previously a non-contentious iteration of classical formulations and phraseologies, with new values of authenticity and regional truth and specificity. In constituting this separation between content and form, Aiken and Trapp attributed to the poet a new agency, the potential of subjective choice. No longer genre-driven, the composition of poetry now included in its compass the possibility that content was a matter of individual choice, and the measure of the poem was no longer tradition, but authenticity. Wordsworth extended the trope from content to diction-- now the lexical choices and phrase formations enacted by the poet reflected the poets own subjective status rather than the learned apprehension of a tradition-based rhetorical economy. But Coleridge later pointed out how Wordsworth's poetry consistently exceeds its own claims for a pure diction, and accompanying proprieties of sentiment and structure, and that the poetry's value lies in the particular textures of Wordsworths transgressions of his own theory. Early 19 century scientific description also overflows its own rhetorical programme and stylistic norm. I've been monitering this overflow, specifically within the meteorological literature pertaining to clouds.
Clouds presented a specific formal difficulty to description and nomenclature-- if, as Sprat advised, the relation between objects and words should be equivalent, economical, the cloud challenged the propriety of this equivalence since its appearance as a thing was so ephemeral. In fact for a long time a cloud was not a thing. Clouds couldn't be seen for the sky. Robert Hooke, who reported to the Royal Society on A Method for Making a History of the Weather, proposed a lexicon for the sky. "But as for the faces of the sky, they are so many, that many of them want proper names. . . Let Clear signify a very clear sky. . . Checquered a clear sky with many great white round clouds. . .Hazy, a sky that looks whitish. . . Thicke, a sky more whitened. . . Overcast, when the vapours so whiten and thicken the air that the sun cannot break through" and so on, through the terms Hairy, Watered, Waved, and Lowring. The trouble with Hookes proposed diction was that it could not perceive clouds structurally, but looked at the sky as a face, a single figure to which the meteorologist could apply an interpretive phenomenology. The struggle was to see a cloud as particular, so that it could be enumerated, measured and described.
Then in 1796 Luke Howard invented clouds. A young Quaker man who was a chemist by trade and training, he belonged to a society of amature natural philosphers who would weekly meet to make reports on their observations. In a biographical letter to Goethe, he said of himself "My pretensions as a man of science are . . . but slender: being born, however, with observant faculties, I began even here to make use of them, as well as I could without a guide." His observations of clouds occured on his daily walks between his home and his chemical laboratory and were presented to the society, published in Tilloch's philosophical magazine, and later in the book Essay on the Modifications of Clouds. The names cumulus, cirrus and stratus resulted from his observations.
This is what dignified Howards observations: he was able to invent a structural typology which could account for change. The face of the sky was revisioned as "certain distinct modifications." The basic three cloud types corresponded to zones or depths of the sky as well as to structural types-- cirrus, to the high, fibrous wisps, Cumulus to the conical heaps of the middle ground, and stratus to the horizontal sheets of mist which hug the earth. Clouds were translated from figurations, to-- not quite objects, but objective modifications. Weather became a system. These distinctions have become so very normalized that I think we can't really understand the absolute novelty of understanding clouds in terms of structural typology. After Howard, clouds were seen for the first time. Howard's nomenclature provided a lens. It entered the public knowledge quite quickly-- and the importance of his system can be somewhat gauged by its immediate use, not only by other meteorologists, but within the literary and visual arts. After Howard, Shelley, Coleridge and Goethe wrote cloud poems. Goethe gave the cloud treatise to the German, and Danish, romantic painters. In Modern Painters, Ruskin wrote long treatises on the perspectival representation of clouds. Constable completely reassessed his representation of skies, spending a full year doing little other than outdoor cloud studies, often 3 or more in an hour, with meteorological notations scrawled on the backs. People spend their lives researching and annotating these influences. I won't. What I want to notice here, though, is how the propriety and economy of Howard's system was almost immediately bloated with a descriptive and identificatory excess, which nevertheless managed to respect his proposed typology and structure.
After Howard, individual meteorologists gravitated towards specializations in the accounts of specific cloud types-- with some this is a stated objective, with others, a discernable inflation in descriptive balance. Rev Leonard Blomefield, for example, spent 30 years in Cambridgeshire observing the stratus formation. . . His accounts are not so much remarkable for the cloud descriptions in themselves, as they are for his strangely methodical obsession with low and creeping mists. Rev. Blomefield identified with fog. He observed its formation on a large grass meadow in front of his vicarage, and when as he described "circumstances were likely to favour the formation of fogs and creeping mists," he would place, at the far end of the field, a chair and a small table supplied with thermometres, hygrometer and notebook (kept always ready in the vicarage for this use). He would sit in the meadow and observe, taking account of all that occured relating to the fogs and creeping mists, from their first appearance to their dissappearance, if they did not continue all night. He explained, in his characteristically precise yet underdetermined manner "The way in which stratus gradually spreads itself sheetlike over a meadow, or at other times extends in lines and bands from one meadow to another, is very striking." He was inspired in these observations by his colleague Mr Wells, who wrote the "Essay on Dew". Wells also observed his chosen phenomena almost every night of his adult life. He described his method-- "Upon one serene and still night I placed fresh parcels of wool upon grass every hour, and by weighing each of them found that they had attracted dew." And so on. I can't help but read into these accounts a marvelous identificatory excess-- an identification which aligns itself with a method, in all its excessiveness, and which subsequently bleeds into a rhetorical economy of description.
Thomas Ignatius Forster, writing immediately after Howard, focussed at length on the Cirrus formation. His attempts to precisely describe the cirrus cloud reflect the need to extend descriptive grammar towards a rhythmically paratactic prolixity, when the object of description itself is in a state of constant transformation. Cirrus is the most formally variable of the modifications, and in traditional weather lore tends to be referred to using various animal and plant analogies-- Mare's tail, Mackeral back, the sea tree. Forster's cirrus description, rather than carrying out Sprat's economy of a word for each thing, refers to folkloric likeness, proceeding by a figurative logic of analogy and accretion, interleaved with a discordantly geometrical diction. Here is one sentence of his cirrus: "Comoid tufts, like bushes of hair, or sometimes like erected feathers; angular flexure; streaks; recticular intersections of them. . .which look like nets thrown over the firmament; forms of arrows; stars with long fibrous tails, cyphen shaped curves, and lines with pendulous or with erect fringes, ornament the sky; still different appearances of stars and waves again appear, as these clouds change to cirrocumulus or cirrostratus, which modifications also seem to form and subside spontaneously, in different planes, and with the varied and dissimilar appearances of flocks at rest, fleeces of wool, or myriads of small specks; of long tapering columns like the tail of the great manis, or of mackeral back skies, or of striae, like the grains of wood." Forster's cloud-sentence proceeds by a series of phrasal modifications, miming the process of transmutation in the clouds themselves, even discernably within the real time of those observed fluctuations. In this instance sincerity accrues by ornament, expansion, its rhetoric stretched to the point of contusion, within the authenticating timeframe of the plein air descriptive sketch.
This book of Forsters was in the personal library of the East Anglian John Constable, a painter with a lifelong engagement with the representation of weather conditions within landscape. In 1820, shortly after the second edition of the Forster book, and the publication of Howards Climate of London, which included his theory of cloud modification and nomenclature, Constable began a two year detailed study of clouds. He produced a huge body of oil sketches on paper, executed out doors, representing cloud types in relation to larger weather patterns. This sketches, sometimes produced in 15 minute intervals throughout a series of days, serve as a sort of real time filmic meteorological sequence. On the back of each, Constable scrawled a notation of accompanying weather conditions-- for example "Sept. 10, 1821 Eleven o'clock sultry with warm gentle rain falling large heavy clouds a heavy downpour and thunder". Then, half an hour later-- "Noon, Gentle wind at west. Very sultry after a heavy shower with thunder. Accumulated thunder clouds passing slowly away to the south east. Very Bright and Hot. All the foliage sparkling." But similarily to the way these small scale sky sketches served as reference for the later representation of skies in his fullsize canvases, the brief weather annotations sometimes extended to full length descriptions with stylistic parallels to the prolix meteorological literature he perferred:
"It may, perhaps give some idea of one of these bright and silver days in spring, when at noon large
garish clouds surcharged with hail or sleet sweep with their broad shadows the fields, woods, and
hills; and by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens and yellows so peculiar to the
season. The natural history, if the expression may be used, of the skies, which are so particularily
marked in the hail squalls at this time of year is this: The clouds accumulate in very large masses, and
from their loftiness seem to move but slowly; immediately upon these large clouds appear numerous
opaque patches, which are only small clouds passing rapidly before them, and consisting of
isolated portions detached probably from the larger cloud. These, floating much nearer the earth
may perhaps fall in with a stronger current of wind, which as well as thir comparitive lightness
causes them to move with greater rapidity; hence they are called by wind-millers and sailors,
messangers, and always portend bad weather. They float midway in what may be termed the lanes of
the clouds; and from being so situated are almost uniformly in shadow, receiving a reflected
light only, from the clear blue sky imediately above them. In passing over the bright of the large
clouds, they appear as darks; but in passing the shadowed parts, they assume a grey, a pale, or
lurid hue."
This is a note written for the painting Spring. It is remarkable, to me, for its nuanced description of movement, the specific movements of clouds and light, coming from a painter whose primary medium could only be static, planar representation. Constables concern was to find a method of representing skies and weather as temporal phenomena, as metred fluctuation. His life long project was a natural history of the skies. Observational methodologies of natural history, and the descriptive rhetoric of modifications, were translated to a chiarascuro rendering of cause and effect. Constable's was a pictured prosody of weather.
What these natural histories of the sky share, in spite of stylistic modifications and developements in the rhetoric of descriptive sincerity-- and the dogmas and transgressions of that rhetoric--, is a participation in a broad cultural project, the enlightement project, to collectively describe and test the parametres of Truth. Even in the early Wordsworth, the methodological project, the experiments in diction and address, the romance of the perceiving subject, are aligned with a sceptical conservatism concerned with the description and promotion of static, enduring values. We see, in the history of clouds, the shift from description as ontological figuration, to description as notation of situational modification and change-- the delimitation or formalization of cloud nomenclature permitted perception to begin to annotate patterns of temporality, rather than properties of objects. Clouds, in a sense were invented at the point when sincerity ceased being a rhetoric, as in Sprat, and submerged itself in the cultural ontology of Romanticism.
Yet in the small, named, quantified world of the description, temporal improprieties can be observed. Like a little weather demonstrating formal inexhaustibility, the empirical description is the site of its own transgression. So it is sincere, and it is a model of uninterpretability.
What I want to do is to infiltrate sincerity-- not to dissolve it in sceptical critique, but to lift it from its maudlin imprisonment, return to it the rhetorical play of idiom, of scale, enjoy its identificatory intensities and climates as conditions or modifications that pass over the face. I am a spy.
The history of meteorology shows that the idea of "the weather" has consistantly been appropriated to a dominant status quo. In the enclopediac empire of taxonomies weather gained a scientific nomenclature. In the culture of warfare, forcasting was absorbed into governmental budgets. In the incipience of the nation state, as governments gained economic interests in aviation and agribusiness, the weather became a department of government. At the same time weather's everyday rhetorical status as commonplace, as phatic utterance, assured that the sociology of weather appears as nature.
Part of what I want to ask of the rhetoric of weather, is what other ideologies may it absorb? May I cause the weather to absorb the wrong ideologies? The issue is not to defamiliarize the language of weather, but to appropriate its naturalizing function to a history, an utterance, which is delusional insofar as it is gendered. A wild dream of parity must have its own weather and that weather will always have as its structure an inexhaustible incommensurability. |
“We continue to expand the industry’s most unparalleled and scalable festival platform, all while driving strong revenue and growth for Live Nation on a global basis,” Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Bonnaroo is another crown jewel in this festival channel strategy.”
Neither the price of the transaction, nor the size of Live Nation’s stake in Bonnaroo, was disclosed.
Once a marginal part of the music scene in North America, festivals now play an increasingly central role in the business. The biggest events, like Coachella and Electric Daisy Carnival, have built powerful identities, luring huge crowds as well as sponsorship dollars. And for the promoters who not only sell tickets but also control a range of other sales, like food and V.I.P. packages that can include amenities such as special viewing areas and luxury tents, they can be highly profitable.
“Festivals are the one area of the business where there is consistent growth,” said Steve Martin, a longtime talent agent now with the APA agency in New York. “Profit margins on a good festival are vastly better than a regular night at Jones Beach.”
Bonnaroo, held on more than 700 acres of farmland about 60 miles south of Nashville, started in 2002 and has become one of the country’s premier festivals, with a hug-your-neighbors culture and an immersive environment that includes its own post office and newspaper. This year’s event, to be held June 11-14, will feature Billy Joel, Mumford & Sons, Kendrick Lamar, My Morning Jacket, Alabama Shakes and Deadmau5. |
Bob Chapman | February 23, 2011
Public debt has become a problem worldwide. What is becoming more and more evident is that it is unsustainable and simply unpayable. It could be compared to a giant Ponzi scheme. We see no meaningful debt reductions thus, government will have to raise taxes, which will further suppress the economy, or people and companies will be forced to buy such bonds, or perhaps pension and retirement funds will be seized to continue the game for a while longer.
The whole concept of government debt in the US, whether it’s federal, state, municipal, corporate or personal stands on very shaky ground. Debt is serviced with revenues and income and when both are falling it is difficult to service. We have begun to enter a period of slowly rising interest rates. In the US the Fed has managed interest rates to be as low as possible to both aid in a recovery and to keep the financial edifice from collapsing. Over the past six months the bench mark 10-year Treasury note yield has risen from a yield of 2.20% to 2.74% and presently stands at about 3.60%. That 1.4% rise in rates has been offset by GDP growth of 3%. The problem is that such GDP growth has been maintained by growth in debt. The two sources of debt are the Fed and government. The Fed has been buying the government debt by creating money out of thin air. That is called monetization and it causes inflation. The government demand comes from revenues that have fallen and continue to fall, and as a result government issues more debt. The lenders, the bond buyers, sell dilution in the value of debt and in the dollar and as a result demand a higher yield. At this stage you can see how important QE1 and 2 and fiscal stimulus have been over the past 2-1/2 years. Had they not been implemented the economic and financial system would have collapsed. The next question to be asked is will we have to have quantitative easing and stimulus indefinitely? The answer is yes, but unfortunately if that path is followed lenders will demand ever-higher interest rates and the dollar will continue to fall in value versus gold and silver and other currencies. We estimate GDP growth to be 2% to 2-1/4% in 2010, down from 3%, all of which were aided by quantitative easing, the creation of money and credit and fiscal stimulus the result of debt. Without these props there would have been little or no growth, and fairly quickly the economy would have faltered. That would have brought about a classical purge accompanied by a deflationary depression. There will soon come a time the creation of money and credit and fiscal stimulus will no longer work and the system will finally fail. That is inevitable. That will begin to happen when interest rates are rising faster than growth rates. Once that condition exists there is no further hope of servicing debt or creating more debt, because there will be no natural buyers and inflation will be raging if not hyperinflation. The US is not the only country staring into this abyss; most countries around the world have the same problem.
As you probably have already figured out such fiscal and monetary policies of many countries cannot continue. The issuance of new debt has to be curtailed, as well as the growth of future liabilities. On its present course the US is headed toward a deficit in excess of 100% of GDP in just 1-1/2 years.
These countries have experienced and most still do, profligate government spending, little fiscal restraint and outright criminal behavior. Such action in time cause markets to put pressure on governments to mend their ways. That is where the higher yields come into play and as we pointed out we are already witnessing that. In 1 to 1-1/2 years the cost of carrying debt will begin to reduce GDP, because government debt demands will crowd out private investment. Except for AAA corporations we have already seen that over the past two years, as lenders retain cash and generally refuse to lend to medium and small companies and individuals as well.
A product of these conditions is a perpetuation of unemployment, which we believe is 22.6% presently, for years into the future. In addition, we have had 20 years of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing that has lost America 8.5 million good paying jobs and the loss of 42,400 businesses. We have extended unemployment, but every month millions fall off leaving them on their own and food stamps. These transfer payments make up 20% of household income, which is also unsustainable. Our guess is that the current extended benefits will be extended further in spite of a projected $1.6 trillion deficit. Political types prefer an extension to revolution, but the cost is more debt, a falling dollar and rising gold and silver prices. In addition, an end to extended benefits will sap consumption that must be maintained at 70% of GDP in order to keep the economy from failure. Do not forget the US is not the only country with debt problems. In the same league are Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Italy, England and above all Japan, which is more than 200% and growing exponentially. None of these countries are capable of growing out of their debt problems and thus, eventually we see a multilateral default of debt, which will probably entail a 2/3’s write off of debt. A jubilee of sorts.
If stabilization and growth have to be based on continued creation of money and credit and monetization then the system has to eventually collapse. It is no more a solution than extended unemployment benefits, federal government spending and hiring and food stamps. It throws the problems into the future at a terrible cost. In spite of this largess unemployment won’t improve and the monetary and fiscal effect on the economy will lesson. We call it the law of diminishing returns. Last year we saw 3% growth, or so we are officially told, and this year we believe it will be about 1% less at 2% to 2-1/4%. The effectiveness of the policy is losing momentum and strength. The next question is will a $1.7 trillion QE3 with $850 billion in additional fiscal spending be able to maintain 1% growth. Our answer is we do not think so. This fading monetary and fiscal policy will be accompanied by ever falling government revenues, unless ever more debt is created. Are you getting the feeling that governments are running around in circles with no solution in sight? If you are you are correct. The only answer is to purge the system and the sooner the better. The longer the problems are extended and individuals will be faced with unemployment and under employment and that means borrowing and the use of credit cannot be extended and that means the economy cannot grow. Even if spending cuts and higher taxes were implemented the economic and financial affects would not be felt for 6 months to a year. Government has waited too long.
Projections for the future are very difficult if for no other reason than we do not know where interest rates will be. We assume they will be higher, but how much higher? We just do not know. We can tell you that in 1980 official inflation was 14-3/8% and the long bond yield was over 20%. Will that be repeated, we do not know, but we can say we could see something close to that. If we have hyperinflation we could see 30% inflation. Who knows – we won’t know until we approach getting there. Are we going to look like the German Weimar Republic of the early 1920s or today’s Zimbabwe? We don’t know but it is certainly possible and near the edge of probability.
What really gets our attention is that elitists that control all this really believe they can retain control. If they cannot they figure they will just have another major war, like they always have had. They know what we now. They know deficits are going to further rise precipitously, unless there are major policy changes, spending cuts and higher taxes. Even if the proper steps were taken we are probably looking at 30 or more years of depression. Debt cannot be kept within bounds, just look at what is going on today. The elitists have no intention of radically changing their ways. There will be more of the same until the system ceases to function.
We have written about rising interest rates in the whole spectrum of government and corporate bonds. The average has been 100% to 150%. Official rates have been raised in Brazil, India and China. In the US, bond buyers have already been pricing in yield increases, which they feel are necessary to offset inflation losses. Unfortunately for buyers they have not gotten nearly enough yield to compensate and are losing money on return and currency depreciation versus other currencies, but particularly versus gold and silver. In order to offset real losses, real yields will have to rise and they will. The first stop for the US 10-year note should be a move upward from 3.60% to 4% to 4.25%. That should happen this year. The next move in 2012 should be to 5% to 5.60% and the second move from 5.60% to about 7%. Mind you these are very conservative estimates. Any recovery in housing will be impossible with prices falling another 15% to 20%. Anyone with an ARM will be a dead duck. That means about a 60% plus failure rate. Bumping along the bottom could take 8 to 30 years and as we mentioned before government could end up with most of the housing eventually causing a process of nationalization.
These higher rates, which are inevitable, will raise havoc on the Federal budget and its debt service. Average maturities are 4.5 years – a very foolish move that began some 15 years ago. This means even if taxes are raised and the budget deficit cut, they will only serve as a damper on costs, which would lead to dollar depreciation and default. Worse yet, who will want to buy bonds and in particular US dollar denominated bonds as gold and silver are soaring and profits are falling along with the stock market? The Fed is buying and monetizing at least 80% of treasuries now. That means they will have to buy them all, including some from nations such as China, Japan and Middle Eastern owners. Long-term bond holders will be looking at 30% losses and the stock market 50% plus losses. The monetization process at this point will produce inflation from 14% to 40%, which could well be accompanied by hyperinflation. That hyperinflation could come quickly once inflation passes 14-3/8%, which it officially hit in 1980. At that time 30-year T-bond rates were more than 20%. We do not know exactly what the numbers will be, but we do know they will be terrible. Some time along the way the US will be forced to default and then China will own a goodly part of the US. We also believe that a major world war will be in progress. Again as a diversion from the massive economic and financial problems plus revolutions worldwide, which could short circuit having another world war. We do not know how these events will roll out, but we do know they are probable.
Higher interest rates will cause major problems for banks, private equity funds and hedge funds. The cost of borrowing and using leverage will be prohibitive. Many banks and funds will go under. Defaults will abound and cash flow to bond holders will diminish making outflows greater than inflows. This process of losses will in part mirror what we saw in the early 1930s, not only in reduced value but also in the doubling of gold prices and the increase in gold and silver shares of more than 500%. This also will be accompanied by a complete collapse in living standards.
At this stage we depart from the crowd of economists. We think these conditions will persist for some time. Wall Street and banking will still exist but in an abbreviated form. The stars of Wall Street will be gold and silver shares free to trade freely without government manipulation. Tariffs on goods and services will be erected and money will start to flow to redevelop industry. Savings rates will rise and capital formation will take place. The illegal aliens will be forced to return to their homes and people will start to get on with their lives. The world will go on having been taught a good lesson. |
Supporters of convicted journalist Barrett Brown may sue the FBI for demanding the identities of individuals who donated to his legal defense fund, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria-Elena James wrote in a 26-page order published Tuesday that individuals tied to the “Free Barrett Brown” defense fund may pursue claims against the government in connection with its use of a subpoena targeting the journalist’s supporters.
Mr. Brown, 36, was arrested in 2012 and charged in relation to a data breach involving Strategic Forecasting, or “Stratfor,” a Texas-based private intelligence company. The U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas said he conspired with the computer hacker who breached Stratfor in 2011 and then threatened an FBI agent investigating the matter. He ultimately entered a plea deal and was released from prison last November after spending more than four years behind bars.
Kevin Gallagher, the creator of “Free Barrett Brown,” sued the government in San Francisco federal court this past February after learning that the Dallas prosecutor’s office used a subpoena to quietly obtain the names and other personal information of individuals who made seemingly anonymous donations to the writer’s defense fund. Prosecutors investigating the criminal case against Mr. Brown said the subpoena was necessary to determine if the accused could afford to hire an attorney, but lawyers representing Mr. Gallagher and an anonymous donor argued that the government sought “completely irrelevant” information that was meant to intimidate and silence the journalist’s supporters.
Judge James ruled Tuesday that attorneys for Mr. Gallagher and the anonymous donor may sue the government for allegedly violating the Stored Communications Act, a federal statute that requires investigators to obtain a search warrant before seizing electronic messages.
“Defendants’ proffered purpose for serving the subpoena— that they needed to determine whether Mr. Brown could afford his own attorney— was pretextual,” the judge wrote Tuesday, adding that WePay, the website that processed the donations, made the total amount of contributions to the fund publicly available.
“Defendants have failed to articulate any facially reasonable explanation for requesting donors’ identities,” she added “This defeats Defendants’ arguments that the [plaintiff’s complaint] did not plausibly allege a retaliatory motive and that the Government’s legitimate purpose in issuing the subpoena outweighs potential First Amendment concerns.”
The judge said plaintiffs can sue the government for allegedly violating the federal communications statue but dismissed a claim brought under the California Constitutional Right to Privacy Act.
She also dismissed First Amendment claims brought against two Dallas prosecutors in their official capacities, U.S. Attorney Candina Heath and FBI agent Robert Smith, but gave the plaintiffs permission to amend their initial complaint.
Mr. Gallagher said he was “extremely pleased pleased about this legal victory and happy that the judge agrees with our point of view.”
“It’s rare that you get to see an action like this proceed in court against the FBI,” Mr. Gallagher said Wednesday.
Plaintiffs plan to revise their initial complaint in order to sue the U.S. government rather than Ms. Heath and Mr. Smith in their individual capacities, he added. The court has set an Oct. 24 deadline for the filing of that document.
A Justice Department official said the government was pleased with judge’s decision to dismiss the individual defendants and would review the rest of her order.
Mr. Brown referred The Washington Times to his Twitter account when reached for comment.
“Finally seeing a federal judge call out my prosecutor’s flailing bull[expletive] is fun. [Expletive] you, Candina Heath,” Mr. Brown tweeted Wednesday.
Mr. Brown was published in outlets including Vanity Fair and Huffington Post prior to being incarcerated, and in 2016 he was awarded a National Magazine Award for a series of columns penned from federal prison.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
The principal of St Hilda's High School (a school affiliated with the Anglican Church) revoked the appointment of its head girl. The reason given is that the student is a Jehovah's Witness, and based on her religious beliefs, she would be unwilling to fulfil the responsibilities required by a head girl. This Christian denomination believes that world power and political parties are the unwitting allies of Satan. They refuse to salute flags of nations and perform military service. The head girl would be in breach of her religion if she participated in any civic duties required by the school. Would she forsake her religion? Highly unlikely. Jehovah's Witnesses don't take kindly to apostates. If she refuses, the school has every right to rescind her appointment. This is not religious discrimination. It is simply the school's rational attempt to appoint someone best equipped and qualified to fulfil the normal functions of a head girl. If the religion of the appointee prohibits these functions, the appointee automatically disqualifies herself.
serious questions
Shouldn't children have the right to choose their own religion, or not choosing a religion? Are children indoctrinated by their parents or society, or even victimised by their ignorance? Children of Jehovah's Witness parents, or any other faith or denomination, never volunteered to be of that faith. They were born into it. They had no choice. Furthermore, is the faith of their birth, the one true faith, all the others being false, or was it an accident of birth? Shouldn't they decide if they wish to revoke all religious faiths? Tragically, religion and, particularly, the Jehovah's Witness, may close the door to future opportunities, not only for self improvement of the believer, but also to make valuable contributions to other people's lives. The Jehovah's Witness prohibits blood transfusions. How would you feel if your loved one might possibly be alive had a blood transfusion been given?
Which brings me to the subject of religious upbringing and education of young children. Parents do have the right to raise their children the way they see fit. That's the core of family values. At the same time, parents don't literally own their children (like slave owners once owned slaves), but are more like their guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders. Outsiders have a right to interfere if the parents do harm to their children. Similarly, some might say no prospective parent has the right to terminate a pregnancy (except if the mother's life is in jeopardy). On the other hand, many of the same people declare that once born, the child loses its right not to be indoctrinated and brainwashed. Spread the value of freedom throughout the world, but not to children, apparently.
How do we teach children until they are informed enough and mature enough to decide for themselves? We should teach them all the world's religions, historically and biologically, the same way we teach them about geography and history. Read the Bible devotionally if you must, but at the same time, study its history and how it was written. We should include both the positive aspects of the Church - the role of the Church in the civil rights movement in the United States and charitable organisations and the negatives - the inquisition and the role of the Catholic Church in the spreading of AIDS in Africa through its opposition to condoms, etc. No religion should be favoured and none ignored.
Parents should not teach them anything that is likely to close their minds through fear or disabling them from enquiry. They should not be blindfolded or fooled to ensure that they conform to a particular faith when they are adults. They should be taught not so much what to think as how to think. If they grow up and decide that the Bible is literally true, or not true, that is their privilege. It is their privilege to decide what they shall think, and not their parents' privilege to impose it upon them.
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Ramzan Kadyrov, the governor of Chechnya, inspecting his 'personal army' assembled at the Grozny stadium, 2015 (Image: versia.ru)
In the 1990s, Chechnya sought independence from Moscow, and Vladimir Putin has made the suppression of that regional insurgency a centerpiece of his claims for public support. But now, in 2017, Nezavisimaya gazeta suggests, that North Caucasus republic may be on its way to becoming a greater threat than it was to Russia as a whole.
To put it more succinctly than the Moscow paper does, Chechnya’s drive for independence in the 1990s and 2000s threatened the territorial integrity of the country in one small part of it. Chechnya’s independent actions now call into question the arrangements within and among all of Russia’s component parts as well as its centralized political system.
In a lead article today entitled “Will Our Federation Withstand Chechen Customs?” the editors say that Grozny’s decision to permit pupils to wear the hijab “poses serious questions about the federal arrangement of Russia” because the Chechens have essentially gone their own way without regard to Moscow.
The Kremlin has played down these implications, the editors say, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggesting that Putin has not taken a position on this conflict between the actions of a republic government and the decisions of the all-Russian Duma and federal courts – despite the fact that Putin earlier had declared that the hijab was a religious and not a national custom.
Grozny’s position is exactly the opposite, the paper continues. “Formally, the decision of the Chechen parliamentarians corresponds to the constitutional principle of federalism. In this, the Chechen elite is right,” and in many countries decisions on such matters are made below the federal level.
But if one goes “beyond this limit,” Nezavisimaya gazeta says, “there is a threat to the unity of the state.”
This is not the first time the Chechen Republic “has demonstrated a special attitude toward the norms of public morality.” In December 2016, for example, Grozny closed all alcohol stores, and over the last three years, Ramzan Kadyrov has unilaterally banned fortune tellers and the like.
“All this allows one to speak about the special status of Chechnya, when the principle of federalism is realized only toward selected subjects,” the editors continue. If other federal subjects were to try to assert the same right, Moscow would clearly have a different response – and that difference in itself represents a danger to the country.
No one should imagine that this is just about Muslim republics. “In Russia, there are three enormous Buddhist republics and Buddhist districts in mixed oblasts, [and] there are registered extra-territorial national cultural autonomies” for them elsewhere as well.
And then is a more profound question: should the federal rights that have been given to Chechnya be extended only to non-Russian republics or should they apply to predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays as well. To ask that question is to raise an issue that challenges the existing system.
Many talk about how unique Chechnya is, the editors conclude, but “reacting to the challenges of federalism by necessity rather than by rules, the state guarantees its effective functioning only if it has a strong leader. If Russia loses a Yezhov-type administration, his system of personal administration will soon enter a fatal crisis.”
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Tags: Chechens, Chechnya, international, Kadyrov, Putin's regime, Russia, Russian disintegration, Russian-Chechen wars |
Everybody likes free and with Bitrix24 you get a lot of free stuff – free private social network, free crm and invoices, free project management, free document management, free calendar and 30+ other free business tools that come handy when you run a busy web studio. Intrigued? Let’s take a closer look.
Essentially Bitrix24 is social intranet for businesses (sometimes called enterprise social network or private social network) – meaning it’s a social network used for business.
You use it to discuss ideas with your coworker and clients, share documents and send messages to each other. Kind of like Facebook, but your own. Because Bitrix24 comes with free 5GB worth of storage, it’s perfect for discussing designs, sketches and drafts. The difference between Bitrix24 and Behance or other social tools for designers is that it’s more business oriented. Rather than collaborating on designs, you collaborate on projects.
CRM module is where you store you clients and prospects. You can either enter them manually, import from Excel or import automatically from your web form (like quote request from on your website). You can communicate with your clients via e-mail directly from the CRM thanks to Send’n’Save feature in order to convert your prospects to paying clients. Invoices are available for free in CRM, so you can bill your clients directly from the CRM as well.
Project management module allows you to create a separate workgroup for each project you are currently working on. Importantly, you can invite people outside you company (like clients, for example) into workgroups via extranet feature. The instruments for project management in Bitrix24 are fairly standard – Gantt charts, tasks, check lists, task reports and so on. As with CRM, all this is available for free.
If you’ve ever worked with Dropbox, you’ll see that file sharing and Bitrix24.Drive work pretty much exactly as in Dropbox – you can store files, share them, including providing external links outside your intranet so others can download your files, if you want, you can edit documents together and revert to older version, if you’ve made a mistake and so on. You can map a single document library or all of your document libraries to a network drive on your local machine literally in 2 clicks using WebDav. Good stuff.
Calendars are another cool Bitrix24 feature. You can share calendars, subscribe to your coworkers calendars, in order to know they schedule and appointments, you can sync your Bitrix24 calendar with Google Calendar or Outlook or any iOS or Android calendar that you are currently using. Conveniently, any appointments or events created in CRM or PM are automatically imported to your calendar
Over all, Bitrix24 comes with 30+ free business tools. The ones that are worth your attention are mobile app that doubles as mobile CRM, desktop app that lets you start video chat or a groupchat, searchable employee directory and interactive organization chart, workflow management tools, wikis and knowledge base.
As already mentioned, Bitrix24 is free for 12 users and comes with 5 GB of free space. There are two paid editions that come with unlimited users – for $99/mo you get 50 GB worth of storage and for $199/mo you get 100 GB (you also get time management module and ability to insert your company logo in paid editions).
Limited Offer: Free Upgrade to Professional account
But don’t pull your credit card out quite yet!
iCanBeCreative readers get a special treatment. If you tweet about this post or mention in in your Facebook and send an e-mail to DID (at) Bitrix24.Com with your Bitrix24 ID (subdomain) and a link to your tweet or Facebook post, your free account will be upgraded to include all the features that come with $199/mo Professional account. The deadline for this is September 13th. Please put iCanBeCreative in the subject line of your e-mail.
Happy collaboration to you and your studio! |
Excavations being conducted at the ancient city of Göbeklitepe in Turkey have uncovered an ancient pictograph on an obelisk which researchers say could be the earliest known pictograph ever discovered.
A pictograph is an image that conveys meaning through its resemblance to a physical object. Such images are most commonly found in pictographic writing, such as hieroglyphics or other characters used by ancient Sumerian and Chinese civilizations. Some non-literate cultures in parts of Africa, South America and Oceania still use them.
“The scene on the obelisk unearthed in Göbeklitepe could be construed as the first pictograph because it depicts an event thematically” explained Director of the Şanlıurfa Museum, Müslüm Ercan, to the Hurriyet Daily News . Ercan is leading the excavation at Göbeklitepe. “It depicts a human head in the wing of a vulture and a headless human body under the stela. There are various figures like cranes and scorpions around this figure. This is the portrayal of a moment; it could be the first example of pictograph. They are not random figures. We see this type of thing portrayal on the walls in 6,000-5,000 B.C. in Çatalhöyük [in modern-day western Turkey].”
The ‘Vulture-Stone’. Credit: Alistair Coombs
The artifacts discovered in the ancient city have provided information about ancient burial traditions in the area in which bodies were left in the open for raptors such as vultures to consume. According to Mr Ercan, this enabled the soul of the deceased to be carried into the sky. It was called “burial in the sky” and was depicted on the obelisks in Göbeklitepe. Such rituals were conducted in and around the city around 12,000 years ago.
Many of the items discovered on the site have not been seen before anywhere else in the world and thus are the first of their kind to be discovered.
Göbeklitepe is situated on the top of a hill about 15 kilometres away from Sanliurfa in South-eastern Turkey. The city can be dated back to 10,000 BC and consists of a series of circular and oval shaped structures that were first excavated by Professor Klaus Schmidt supported by the German Archaeological Institute. Schmidt travelled to the site having heard about it from accounts of other previous visits by anthropologists from the University of Chicago and Istanbul University in the 1960’s. Both institutions ignored the site, believing it to be nothing more than a medieval graveyard.
Artifacts found on the site indicate that the city was intended for ritual use only and not as a domain for human occupation. Each of the 20 structures consists of a ring of walls surrounding two T-shaped monumental pillars between 3 metres (9 feet) and 6 metres high (19 feet) and weighing between 40 and 60 tons.
Enormous T-shaped pillars at Göbeklitepe. Credit: Alistair Coombs
Archaeologists believe these pillars are stylised representations of human beings because of the human appendages carved into the stone. These images are accompanied by those of animals including foxes, snakes, wild boars, cranes and ducks.
The archaeologists believe Göbeklitepe was used as a religious centre. Geo-radar work has revealed evidence of 23 temple structures in the area. Two of the obelisks in the city were constructed in the form of a letter T and are positioned opposite each other within a circle of smaller, round obelisks.
Ercan said that the museum at Şanlıurfa contains a small sculpture of a pig that was discovered in front of the central stelas in the ‘C’ temple at Göbeklitepe. Such statues may have depicted sacred beings.
Work on the basic infrastructure of a roof to cover the site and help preserve its structures and artefacts has just been completed, ready for the construction of the roof itself. This is an EU project and the archaeologists aim to complete it in eight months’ time.
Featured image: Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest known temple in the world. Photo source: Wikimedia
By Robin Whitlock |
The ‘non-religious’ are the largest group in the State after Catholics, according to the last census. They range from active atheists lobbying for a secular Ireland to guilty non-believers who still observe religious rituals, writes RÓISÍN INGLE
A FEW WEEKS ago Brian Whiteside of the Humanist Association of Ireland addressed a gathering that included Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter as well as various religious leaders. He used the opportunity to raise the issue of our religious presidential oath, which he says is just one example of State discrimination against the growing godless community.
The oath, the wording of which is enshrined in the Constitution, is taken in “the presence of Almighty God” and is a non-negotiable promise that must be given by whoever is elected president. It concludes, “May God direct and sustain me.”
“I talked about how embarrassing it would be for this country if a successful candidate decided that in all conscience they couldn’t give that oath because they didn’t believe in God,” says Whiteside. He was gratified to observe Kenny requesting that Shatter make a note of this potentially awkward eventuality.
It’s a possibility worth reflecting on, given that there is more chance of a non-believer being elected president now than any other time in the history of the State. In the 2006 census, more than 186,000 people ticked the No Religion box, an increase of 34.6 per cent on 2002. That makes it is the second-largest census grouping after Roman Catholic. There are more agnostics, humanists, atheists and non-religious in Ireland than there are Church of Ireland members, Presbyterians, Orthodox Christians and Methodists combined. A further 70,000 opted not to answer the religion question. Coming in the wake of the Murphy and Ryan reports, the 2011 census results are expected to record a further increase in this disparate but essentially non-religious group.
This weekend in Dublin about 350 atheists have gathered for the first World Atheist Convention to be held in this country. Speakers include the prolific British professor Richard Dawkins and the chairman of Atheist Ireland, Michael Nugent. “Twenty years ago the atheist campaign would have been around trying to change public opinion, and now it is much more about getting politicians and institutions of the State to recognise that public opinion has changed,” says Nugent.
While some people who wear their atheism on their sleeves still risk clashing with more religious family members or friends, declining to have your children baptised or choosing a civil ceremony instead of a church marriage is a less controversial choice than ever before.
There is also wide acceptance that religious involvement in education in this country needs to be addressed. One of Ruairí Quinn’s first acts on becoming Minister for Education was setting up a forum on patronage and management of schools, a move supported by leaders of the Catholic Church, which has a role in more than 90 per cent of Irish primary schools.
These days, says Nugent, it’s the layer of “background religious noise” lobbyists such as him are fighting. The group has 450 fully paid-up members and 2,000 registered members. “We have two aims: to promote atheism and reason over superstition and supernaturalism, and to promote an ethical and secular Ireland where the State does not give special treatment to any religion.”
Humanists and atheist advocates are concerned with a range of legal, cultural and constitutional areas where religion is imposed on citizens in ways they say discriminates against non-believers. This includes the preamble to the Constitution, which begins, “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from whom is all authority and to whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred”, and says “the State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God”. Then there are all the God-infused oaths that must be taken to become a judge or a member of the Council of State.
A referendum would be required to remove these religious references from the Constitution, which Whiteside believes “are not appropriate in a 21st-century modern democratic republic”.
Lobbyists also object to our blasphemy legislation, the Christian prayers offered before Dáil and Seanad sessions, the angelus on RTÉ and the display of religious iconography in hospitals.
According to Whiteside, the 1,000-member Humanist Association of Ireland gives a voice to the growing number of what he calls “people who choose to lead an ethical life outside of religion”. Each year the association provides about 100 secular ceremonies for births, weddings and funerals. Whiteside and Nugent are members of both Atheist Ireland and the Humanist Association, but Whiteside prefers to call himself a humanist, because it’s a “positive” definition.
“I don’t like saying I definitely don’t believe in God. It sounds fundamentalist, and the point is that I don’t really care if there is a God or not. I care about humanity and living a decent life.” He adds that while their strategy may differ from Atheist Ireland’s, the “endgame” of a more secular country is the same.
“I would say that atheism provides a better model of reality and a better foundation for morality than religion,” says Nugent, who was completing a project on the Gospels in primary school when he started to question the “comic book” nature of the Bible. “Faith in anything, whether that is religious faith or even faith in secular objectives, corrupts your sense of truth and stops you thinking critically about issues.” He says most non-believers he knows would be open to examining any new evidence that challenges their views. “We might be mistaken, but on the basis of the information we have on hand at the moment, there is no evidence to suggest God exists.”
ALTHOUGH WHITESIDE and Nugent could be described as card-carrying atheists actively pursuing a more secular society, non-believers come in many guises.
Karen Dervan, a 29-year-old musician from Galway, describes herself as an atheist “with guilt”. Even though she rejects religion from a rational, scientific viewpoint, she still ticked Roman Catholic on the census form and went to Mass on Good Friday. She felt compelled to mark the occasion, she says, because she knew her mother would ask her later that day whether she had attended a service.
“I was sitting in the church, thinking, ‘What am I doing here? I don’t believe in the hierarchy of this, I don’t believe the words.’ I do like the sense of community, and the peace and serenity it offers, though.”
Dervan says there are “so many little ways that the guilt creeps in. I don’t have children, but I have spoken at length about this with people and have come to the conclusion that if I had a child I would get it baptised. I probably would simply because it would kill my parents if I didn’t. I would do it for them to maintain that sense of tradition.”
Elayne Devlin, a television producer in her 30s who is originally from the west but now lives in Dublin, began questioning the Catholic faith in which she was raised when she was at college. There was no “light-bulb moment”, but she came to the view that religions offered little more than a “good morality tale”.
When she was getting married, it made sense not to have a religious service. “My mother had a very adverse reaction, which surprised me. It took many months for her to come around to it,” she says. She has since had two children and chose not to baptise them, although for practical reasons her eldest will start at the local Catholic school in September. Her daughter will not, however, be receiving the sacraments of Communion or Confirmation. “We went to the school to discuss this and were told, ‘Well, that’s okay: God loves her anyway,’ ” she says with a smile. “I do anticipate further challenges as our children get older, but I don’t think we will be backtracking.”
FR PADDY BYRNE, a curate in Bagenalstown, Co Carlow, and one of the few Irish priests who can be found holding forth about matters spiritual on Twitter, says that in the 10 years since he was ordained he has observed an increase in people expressing a “very secular perspective”.
At Easter, when he brings the ashes to schools, there are often students who say they don’t want them because they are atheist, and he occasionally meets terminally ill people who don’t wish to have religious services at their funerals. “I respect that totally. In order for growth to happen there has to be a time when we disconnect and experience the angst of doubt. I greatly respect people who make a choice like this fuelled by integrity,” he says.
He is less comfortable when parents make the decision not to baptise their children. “People have said to me, ‘We don’t want them baptised: we want them to decide for themselves.’ But God doesn’t just pop out of the sky. There are very few Damascus moments. I just question whether, if there is no engagement with God from an early age, anyone would opt for religion.”
He also questions this “carry-on” where children receive their first Communion but the vast majority are not brought back to the church to receive their second Communion, the following week. “It saddens me and it raises big questions as to why we go ahead with it.”
Fr Byrne says he is disillusioned about the leadership of the Catholic Church. “The scandal and abuse created a real consciousness that we need to strip away a lot of the baggage that came with the institutional church. We must remember that at the core of our church is Jesus Christ.”
At the World Atheist Convention this weekend, one of the issues being discussed is whether delegates should accommodate or confront religion. Some commentators have warned that the “new atheism” espoused by “God bashers” such as Richard Dawkins can be as hectoring and dogmatic as anything in the religious orders they denounce.
Michael Nugent says the Atheist Ireland perspective is pro-secularisation rather than anti-religious. “There will always be religion, and people should always have a right to practise, but we just hope that in the future religion will interfere less and less with the rights of other people who don’t share those beliefs.” |
Jimmy McMillan is right. The candidate of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party may have lost the New York mayoral election to Bill DeBlasio. But it’s true — in New York and much of the United States, the rent really is too damn high.
This graph, based on 2012 data by the consumer expenditure survey of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, breaks down consumer expenditures by pre-tax income:
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As a percentage of income, many expenditures are the same across income groups — in part because social programs for the poor like Medicaid and food stamps limit out-of-pocket costs on food and health care for low-income Americans. But spending on housing as a share of income increases as income declines — only 29.9 percent for the highest 20 percent, housing costs are 37.6 percent for the second 20 percent and 39.9 percent for the lowest 20 percent.
The classic rule is that you should not spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing, whether in the form of rent or a mortgage on a house or condo. But the polarization of income in the U.S., accompanied by the creation of mostly low-paying jobs, has made that prudent standard impossible for a growing number of Americans to meet.
The problem was worsened, but not caused, by the Great Recession. Even before the economic downturn, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the share of “cost-burdened” renters shelling out more than 30 percent of their pre-tax income to landlords was rising until nearly half of all renters were cost-burdened. The ratio of renters who pay more than 30 percent of their incomes in housing costs has risen from 1 in 4 in 1960 to 1 in 3 in 1980 to 1 in 2 today.
Neither private supply nor public subsidies have compensated for rising renter stress. Let’s start with the supply side. To spend 30 percent or less of a $15,000 income, a renter would have to spend no more than $375 a month on shelter. But in 2011, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies, the median monthly rent was more than $1,000. Fewer than 5 percent of rental units rented for less than $400 and fewer than 34 percent for less than $800.
Nor has social policy kept up. Low-income renters in the U.S. are helped by a patchwork of programs. These include the oldest program, public housing, and the more recent fashion of housing-choice vouchers. There are even USDA subsidies for some renters. Meanwhile, the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) subsidizes landlords to maintain and develop low-income housing.
But it is clear from the statistics that these programs are falling far short of ensuring affordable housing for Americans in the proliferating low-wage economy. In 2011, only 4.6 million renters benefited from rental assistance, while 19.3 million households were eligible.
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And then there was the bipartisan policy in the 1990s and 2000s of encouraging home ownership rather than renting — including efforts to peddle mortgages to those known as NINJAs — no incomes, no jobs and no assets. While that wasn’t the sole cause of the financial crisis, its contributing role should force us to reconsider the American conviction that homeowners are more virtuous and make better citizens than renters. Other countries, including Germany, prosper with far more renters rather than homeowners — or rather “homedebtors.”
If housing expenditures for the bottom three quintiles were reduced to the classic standard of 30 percent — roughly what the richest two quintiles spend — then the discretionary incomes of low-income renters that could be spent on other things like food, transportation, health care and recreation could be increased — by nearly 10 percent of their incomes, in the case of the poorest Americans.
If we are serious about having a national conversation about inequality, the issue of housing affordability must be part of it. While incentives to build more affordable units may be part of the solution, some degree of government assistance may always be necessary, given the proliferation of jobs that would pay low wages even with a somewhat higher minimum wage.
Many academic economists believe that means-tested programs targeted to the poor are more efficient than universal social programs that chiefly benefit the middle class but incidentally (and disproportionately) benefit the poor. But most academic economists are fools. They live in a fantasy world without selfish voters. In the real world, middle-class voters — not only here but in the social democracies of Europe — often resent and oppose means-tested programs that benefit others without helping them. As the saying goes, “Programs for the poor are poor programs.”
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For this reason, a serious policy to address the housing-cost issue should be universal, helping the middle class as well as the poor.
A good national housing program would be universal, helping the middle class and the poor at the same time. It would be an entitlement, so that it couldn’t be slashed during recessions, when public spending should not be cut at all but be temporarily increased to offset lost private demand. It would be purely federal, to prevent wide geographic variations among the ability to pay by state or local taxes. And it would not discriminate among renters and homeowners.
Something like a universal federal housing tax credit could meet all of these criteria. It could be used either to pay the rent or to pay a mortgage. It would be federal and universal. And because most of the beneficiaries would be middle class, it would thwart the cynical divide-and-rule strategy of conservatives who seek to pit the middle class against the poor on behalf of the rich.
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If the universal housing credit were refundable, like the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit, then people too poor to pay federal income taxes could get checks from the IRS. This and other credits could take the form of payroll tax credits rather than income tax credits, of the kind that tax expert Michael Graetz and I have independently proposed. (Any scheme of payroll tax credits would require additional, non-payroll tax revenues for Social Security, to compensate for reduced payroll tax revenues — a good idea on its own, in my view).
Critics could raise objections to such a system. One might be geographic inequality. A federal housing credit in a fixed amount would go further in Wyoming than in New York City. And the program would need to be designed to prevent landlords or home sellers from using their market power to raise rents or house prices by the amount of the subsidy.
The good news is that the idea of a flat or progressive housing tax credit is not new. Commissions on tax reform often propose replacing our present system of tax subsidies for housing, which chiefly benefit the rich and the upper-middle class, with some sort of simple, flat or flattish credit. To date all such proposals have failed. But no policy is ever adopted — until it is actually adopted. Let the debate begin. |
Samir Hussein/Getty After naked photos of about 20 celebrities leaked online last night, the internet scrambled to try and figure out exactly how the images became public. In the original 4chan thread where the hacker first posted the images, the consensus was that Apple's iCloud service was to blame. But how likely is it that Apple's encrypted cloud service led to the mass hack, and what are the other ways that the nude photos could have emerged?
The original leaker behind the celebrity photos claimed that they accessed the images using the iCloud accounts of various celebrities. It's unlikely that someone has broken into Apple's iCloud service. Instead the photos most likely emerged due to a type of hacking known as "social engineering." This exploit works by learning which online services your target uses, and then compiling as much data on them as possible before using that data to either spoof access, or to simply use their email address and a guessed password to log in to their account.
Jennifer Lawrence is known to use iCloud after she let slip in a red carpet interview with MTV this year that she frequently has trouble with the service, remarking "My iCloud keeps telling me to back it up, and I'm like, I don't know how to back you up. Do it yourself."
After discovering the iCloud account of a celebrity, it's trivially easy to access their online photo backup through Apple's Photo Stream utility and iCloud photo backups. Analysis of the embedded EXIF data (information about where and how the picture was taken that is frequently appended to digital photo images) included in one of the leaked images shows it was taken a few weeks ago, well within Photo Stream's limit of 30 days before images are deleted. However, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead claimed on Twitter that the leaked photos of her included in the hack were taken "years ago."
Dropbox or Google Drive
Despite the original leaker claiming to have accessed the trove of photos thanks to an iCloud exploit, the range of devices showcased suggests that another service may have been to blame. Various naked celebrities are photographed taking selfies with Android devices and webcams. Leaked videos could not have originated from the iCloud photo backup service. The range of devices and media may mean that another backup service like Dropbox or Google Drive could be the originator of the leaked photos, with both services offering automatic backup tools for photos and videos imported from cellphones.
Snapchat
Several of the leaked celebrity photos had text overlaid, which indicates that at least some of the photographs were first sent through Snapchat. While Snapchat has struggled with security issues in the past, it's unlikely that the app was the source of all the nude photos. Rather, it may be that it was either accessed as part of a larger hack, or screenshots of images received through the app were discovered after hacking into a backup service.
A hacked insider
Many celebrities don't manage their devices themselves, instead they hand them over to an assistant to do all the boring things like backing up photos or managing iCloud accounts. The sheer number of photos involved in this hack suggests that someone has been saving up naked photos for a while. Other than the celebrities themselves, the only other people with access to these photos would be the "insiders" who help celebrities get around from day to day, such as personal assistants and bodyguards. If a well-connected and scheming personal assistant had their personal backup account hacked, it could result in a trove of photos similar to what we've seen posted online.
A stolen laptop or phone
The leaked photos seemingly originate from a variety of different devices, and two of the videos of British actress Jessica Brown Findlay were made to send to a friend. Could the leaked photos come not from an online hack, but from the physical theft of a phone or laptop belonging to a well-connected celebrity who had been hording naked photos of their friends? While it may seem unlikely, there's actually precedent for unfortunate celebrities losing their devices.
In early 2014 it was reported that Lindsay Lohan and her management were doing "whatever it takes" to try and retrieve a stolen laptop that had gone missing during a trip to China. The laptop's hard drive was reported to contain naked photos of the star, as well as private correspondence with other celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Woody Allen. It's unclear whether Lohan's team were successful in reclaiming the laptop, but no leaked photos of the actress have emerged this year.
A hacker collective
The original 4chan thread where the leaked photos surfaced included two different users posting new leaks. It's possible, then, that the trove of leaked celebrity photos came from not a single hack, but a group of enterprising hackers pooling their resources to try and earn the biggest reward.
The 4chan user who posted the majority of the photos was soliciting for Bitcoin donations in order to publish more leaked snaps. While one figure of $40,000 was claimed as the total value of donations, Bitcoin transaction records show that he received only 0.25 bitcoin (around $120).
Could the leaked photos result from a collective gang of hackers sharing their photos in one giant leak in order to maximize the amount of money gained? It's certainly possible, many of the photos in the batch were proven as fake, meaning that they likely came from a variety of sources with varying levels of access and credibility.
The Emmy Awards
One of the strangest theories surrounding the hack is that a group of celebrities who attended the recent Emmy Awards were somehow hacked using the venue's Wi-Fi connection. The Def Con conference is often touted as an example of the dangers of using venue Wi-Fi for awards or conferences, with the conference operating a "Wall of Sheep" to showcase the various attendees who have been hacked. |
A loud boom rattled windows and nerves in Orange County Tuesday. What was it? Investigators spent the day combing for clues.
The noise woke people up in Foothill Ranch at about 12:15 a.m. Around the same time, a security camera captured a bright light, and with the flash came a huge boom.
"Like a bomb or an explosion. I was freaking out, I was shaking," said Caitlin Heinly of Foothill Ranch.
The explosion set off car alarms and rattled windows.
"I thought maybe a meth lab blew up, but then I started thinking maybe it was a meteor or something like that," said Serena Abid.
The Orange County Sheriff's Department said it received several calls. Officers responded, but after investigating from the ground and air, authorities say nothing was located.
The boom remains a mystery, leading to more speculation. Could it be a meteorite that landed in the nearby canyon?
Bomb experts scoured the neighborhood in the morning after getting a call from Nick Krueger's parents, who found pieces of what looked like cardboard in their backyard.
The sheriff's department says the evidence points less to a meteorite and more to illegal fireworks. |
The Uruguayan joined the rest of the squad in Asia having spent some extra time away from football following the World Cup.
Chelsea are weighing up a move for Paris Saint-Germain striker Edinson Cavani, sources have told ESPN FC.
- Lythell: Chelsea' ex files
- Mourinho questions Lukaku mentality
- Worrall: Chelsea youths need strong preseason
A long-term link to Stamford Bridge, the 27-year-old Uruguay international joining Jose Mourinho's side would be dependent on a number of factors, not least Chelsea's need to comply with UEFA regulations.
Apart from already having exceeded the quota for foreign players over the age of 21 by one -- with Didier Drogba taking them to 18 -- the London club are also increasingly conscious of financial fair play.
It is expected that Czech goalkeeper Petr Cech could move on, however, and that any purchase of Cavani would finally see the long-mooted sale of Fernando Torres. Furthermore, the departure of Romelu Lukaku to Everton brought in 28 million pounds, freeing up more funds.
ALL-TIME HIGHEST TRANSFER FEES 1) £85m Gareth Bale -- Tottenham to Real Madrid, Sept. 2013 2) £80m Cristiano Ronaldo -- Man Utd to R. Madrid, June 2009 3) £75m Luis Suarez -- Liverpool to Barcelona, July 2014 4) £71m James Rodriguez -- Monaco to Real Madrid, July 2014 5) £59.7m Angel Di Maria -- Real Madrid to Man Utd, Aug. 2014 6) £56m Kaka -- AC Milan to Real Madrid, June 2009
Sources told ESPN FC that Chelsea have been quoted a price of 40 million pounds by PSG for Cavani, and that the player is eager to move to Stamford Bridge -- despite a public declaration that he would prefer to stay in France. There has already been preliminary contact between the London club and the player's camp, although Chelsea are still assessing the best course of action.
With Mourinho having regularly complained about his forward line's lack of goals last season, signing Cavani and selling Torres would mean his attack has been completely overhauled, after the purchases of Diego Costa and Didier Drogba as well as the departures of Demba Ba and Samuel Eto'o.
From a tactical point of view, Cavani would also provide the type of pace on the break that Mourinho favours in his teams, and that was sorely missing over the 2013-14 campaign.
Edinson Cavani moved to Paris Saint-Germain from Napoli in July 2013.
The Uruguayan has endured a largely disappointing time in Ligue 1, with that reflected in the apparent drop in price. The 40 million pound fee believed to have been quoted to Chelsea would be 15 million pounds lower than the 55 million pounds he went to the French champions for last summer. Ironically, one of Cavani's worst performances came in the Champions League quarterfinal second leg away to Chelsea, but that has not deterred either club or player -- particularly since he has often been played away from his best role.
Sources close to Cavani say that, in private, he is very eager for the move. Although he seemed to publicly play down any departure on Thursday, the very same comments also left the possibility of a move open.
"I am certain to stay, why wouldn't I be? I feel great in Paris," Cavani said. "I have a contract to respect with PSG. I'm calm. I prefer to be here. I feel good here. But as I have said before, it doesn't only depend on the player, but also on certain things that can happen at the club."
In that regard, the player's sale would also allow Paris Saint-Germain to conform to FFP themselves, while still signing transfer target Angel Di Maria from Real Madrid. The French club effectively have to sell big before they can buy again, so Cavani's transfer may actually set a number of moves in motion.
Manchester United have also been mooted as a possible destination but sources told ESPN FC that, so far, that is no more than the player's camp floating possible destinations. |
"We hope this association will go a long way in getting Amna to compete ultimately at the highest level of this sport," he told UAE daily The National.
Amna al-Qubaisi won the UAE's Rotax Max Challenge karting championship last month, and now will move on to the Formula 4 championship with the Prema team next season.Ultimately, the young Emirati driver is setting her sights on the top prize in motor sports - a seat in Formula 1."It feels really amazing to be the first female driver of the UAE to be racing in Formula 4," Amna said, according to website 360 Sport."I feel very confident that I can do well there and this is the first step to Formula 1... I hope I can live up to the expectations of Daman Speed Academy - where I have trained - and of course Abu Dhabi Racing who have placed so much trust in me."If she did make it all the way to Formula 1, Qubaisi would be one of only of six women to compete at the sport's highest levels. Only two women have ever qualified to begin a Grand Prix race.Given her young age and obvious skill on the track, motorsports journalists believe there is no reason Qubaisi can't make it.She has already taken to Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina racetrack to try out her single-seater, Kaspersky Lab-sponsored racing car and hopes it will take her to victory next season."I've tested the car at Yas Marina Circuit and in Dubai and hope to get good results. My karting experience will help me - Formula 4 is a different strategy but I was within the pace when I tested," she told the UAE-based website."Prema are a great team who have delivered champions. Moreover, Kaspersky Lab has come on board to sponsor the first ever female Emirati driver at this level of racing, which is fantastic."Qubaisi will compete in 12 races around the world during the championship, including in her native UAE - where she is guaranteed to have strong support from the local crowd.Nicknamed "The Flying Girl", Qubaisi has the backing of her father, Khaled al-Qubaisi, who is the founder of Daman Speed Academy and managing director at Abu Dhabi Racing He has high hopes for his daughter and is confident she will progress to the most competitive grades of motorsport. |
The energy and engagement generated by the Yes campaign was unprecedented and the subsequent growth of the three parties shows there is an enormous appetite for continuing with our united action to hold the Labour Party to their “Vow”.
I believe the Labour Party could be defeated in several seats in Scotland if we field a single Independence candidate. This can best be advanced by fielding single candidates on an alliance ticket as it were in those areas that voted Yes on September 18.
This could break the stranglehold Labour has had in such areas for generations and challenge its austerity policies. Allowing voters a choice which goes beyond narrow party interest is bound to be more attractive.
Such an approach has the best prospect of maximising the numbers of MPs supporting the fullest transfer of powers to Edinburgh. And it is supported well beyond the SSP’s ranks. Many Yes campaigners back the alliance idea and the suggestion was endorsed recently for example by Highland MSP John Finnie in a recent article in the Scottish Socialist Voice.
I urge the SNP and the Greens to join with the SSP in standing “Independence Alliance” candidates in 2015, put our own individual interests to one side, and break the Labour Party’ historic stranglehold on Scottish politics. Let’s not lose what we have built. |
Though some claim that Apple's mobile devices are losing their cool, the iPhone is actually gaining popularity among teenagers, according to a new study released by Piper Jaffray.
The survey covered the spending behavior across several industries (fashion, food, electronics, etc.) of 1,600 teens from upper-income households and 3,600 teens from average-income households. On the electronics front, Piper Jaffray found that iPhone ownership has ratcheted up in recent months. At this point, 48 percent of teens own an iPhone, compared to 40 percent last fall. Moreover, 62 percent of teens plan on making the iPhone their next mobile device, while 23 percent expect to go with Android.
According to the study, an overwhelming 91 percent of teens said they plan on buying a smartphone for their next mobile device as opposed to a feature phone, up from 86 percent last spring and 90 percent last fall. Apple's iOS took the crown as the most desired mobile operating system among teens. Fifty-nine percent said iOS will likely run on their next phone, while 21 percent said Android, 5 percent said Windows Phone, and 2 percent said BlackBerry.
Meanwhile, tablet ownership also continues to grow, with many teens now using or planning to purchase an iPad. Overall, a little over half (51 percent) of teens now own a tablet computer, up from 44 percent in fall 2012. Of those, 68 percent have an iPad.
It also sounds like many teens have been saving their money, because 17 percent said they plan on buying a tablet in the next six months, and 68 percent have their sights set on an iPad. Of those planning to purchase an iPad, 58 percent are planning to get the full-size model while 14 percent want an iPad mini.
Not surprisingly, the survey also found that Facebook is the most important social network to teens, followed closely by Twitter. |
After Downing Street | Someone just pointed this out to me. FBI claims to be continuing anthrax investigation. They’ve narrowed it to “about four” suspects and “at least three” of them are from Fort Detrick.
FBI Focusing on ‘About Four’ Suspects in 2001 Anthrax Attacks
By Catherine Herridge and Ian McCaleb, Fox News
Friday , March 28, 2008
WASHINGTON – The FBI has narrowed its focus to “about four” suspects in the 6 1/2-year investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks of 2001, and at least three of those suspects are linked to the Army’s bioweapons research facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland, FOX News has learned.
Among the pool of suspects are three scientists – a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist – linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.
The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed.
The anthrax attacks began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, further alarming a nation already reeling from the deaths of 3,000 Americans. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others were infected by the deadly spores in the fall of 2001.
A leading theory is that the anthrax was stolen from Fort Detrick and then sealed inside the letters. A law enforcement source said the FBI is essentially engaged in a process of elimination.
Much of the early public focus fell on a Fort Detrick scientist named Steven Hatfill, who is suing federal authorities for identifying him as a person of interest. Now the FBI is focusing on other scientists at the facility.
“Fort Detrick is run by the United States Army. It’s the most secure biological warfare research center in the United States,” a bioterrorism expert told FOX News.
Asked to comment on the likelihood that the anthrax originated at the facility, the expert said:
“It’s not suprising, except that it would underscore that there was serious security deficiencies that existed at one time at Fort Detrick – the ability of researchers to smuggle out some type of very sophisticated anthrax weapon and in some quantity. And, nevertheless, it was possible.”
In December 2001, an Army commander tried to dispel the possibility of a connection to Fort Detrick by taking the media on a rare tour of the base. The commander said the Army used only liquid anthrax, not powder, for its experiments.
“I would say that it does not come from our stocks, because we do not use that dry material,” Maj. Gen. John Parker said. The letters that were mailed to the media and Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy all contained powdered anthrax.
But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.
“Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared … to duplicate the letter material,” the e-mail reads. “Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, ‘But I told the General we didn’t make spore powder!'”
Asked for comment, an Army spokeswoman referred all calls to the FBI. The FBI would not comment about the pool of suspects, but a spokeswoman said the investigation clearly remains a priority. |
A suspect was killed in an officer-involved shooting in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles, and video shows the deadly confrontation.Authorities say officers responded to a robbery call around noon Sunday in the 500 block of San Pedro Street. When the officers came in contact with the suspect, an altercation occurred."The preliminary investigation revealed that during that altercation, at least one less than lethal device, a Taser, was deployed. However, at this time, we still do not know if that Taser did strike the suspect," said LAPD Sgt. Barry Montgomery.Officers continued to struggle with the suspect, and then an officer-involved shooting happened. In the video shot by Anthony Blackburn, someone yells "drop the gun" just before shots were fired.The suspect, who was identified by witnesses as "Africa", was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead."Instead of handcuffing the guy, they straight out shot him," said eyewitness Larry Jackson.Yolanda Young said she was in the area visiting a friend when she saw the confrontation near the Union Rescue Mission."Three cops tased him. He went down to the ground. Next thing I know, he got up, he's swinging on the police," Young said. "They (were) fighting with him, wrestling with him ... They pulled out their guns and they shot him five times."Three officers, one of whom is a sergeant, shot the man as they struggled on the ground for control of one of the police officer's weapons, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith said."Anytime we have an officer-involved shooting and there's a loss of life, people are upset and justifiably so," Smith said. "Nobody out there, no police officer out there, wants to be involved in a situation like this where you have to take someone else's life."The three officers who opened fire have since been placed on leave pending the outcome of the investigation.People in the crowd were heard on the video saying the man was not armed, but police say they have not yet determined if the suspect was armed.People on Skid Row who knew Africa say he wasn't violent."What did he do? He wasn't an aggravated person. He wasn't mad all the time. He just had mental problems," said Steven Tugmon.L.A. Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson and other city civil rights leaders called the L.A. Police Commission to hold a special hearing on the use of force by officers in Skid Row encounters Sunday."The killing of a homeless man identified as 'Africa' underscores the need for the police commission to hold a special hearing to fully examine police tactics and training in the use of deadly force by LAPD officers involving Skid Row residents many of whom have major mental challenges," said Hutchinson. "The special hearing would be an unprecedented effort by the commission to set a firm protocol and standard LAPD officers use to minimize the use of deadly force in encounters on skid row."Smith said at least one of the officers was also wearing a body camera. A local homeless shelter may have also captured the incident on surveillance video.Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said the independent inspector general and the district attorney have begun investigating. Anyone who witnessed the incident was urged to call the LAPD. |
Twitter
Imagine the last place on Earth Louis C.K. would ever feel comfortable.
If you’re picturing a beach stuffed with old-money billionaires and children named "Kyler," you’ve not only hit the nail on the head, you have divined the location of the comedian’s newest home.
Yes, the creator of FX’s hit show Louie has purchased property in the Hamptons. Jennifer Gould Keil of the New York Post (h/t Aaron Gleeman of Hardball Talk) reports C.K. purchased an East End mansion that Babe Ruth spent time at.
Keil reports the comedian shelled out $2.49 million for the 4,957-square foot "Primrose Cottage" formerly visited by the New York Yankees legend. The home is a three-story Tudor originally constructed in 1901 with six bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths and five fireplaces. Yes, there are more fireplaces than bathrooms in this home, which is probably a zoning requirement in the Hamptons (or one of Ruth’s eccentricities).
Keil writes that C.K. has plans to renovate the house, which sits on two acres.
"C.K. was on Shelter Island this weekend with his boat. Our spies say he is excited about renovating the house."
C.K. is probably excited about making some changes, considering his new house has "Primrose" in the name and he’s a guy who can’t stand those who call people from Phoenix "Phoenicians."
One question remains: How did the comedian go about paying for Babe Ruth’s cottage? Did he throw the realtor a sack of coins? Just some general amount of money?
Babe Ruth would probably approve of C.K.’s purchase. A rotund man with a skewed world outlook and zero cares to give should always live in the slugger’s old place.
On the Twitters.
Follow @Dr_Carson_ |
Feb 2, 2016; Brooklyn, NY, USA; New York Islanders center Anders Lee (27) celebrates his goal against the Minnesota Wild with teammates during the second period at Barclays Center. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The Islanders offense explodes in the second and third periods to help secure their first victory of a pivotal second half stretch run.
Five different Islanders scored goals in Brooklyn to overpower the Minnesota Wild. The Islanders took control with 3 second period goals and then sealed the victory with 2 quick goals in the third. While the offense led the way, Jean-Francois Berube notched 40 saves in his first career NHL victory.
After a first period goal from Charlie Coyle, Mikhail Grabovski answered early in the second period. They didn’t want to waste any time and less than two minutes later Anders Lee scored a redirect on a Travis Hamonic slapshot.
With less than 2 minutes left in the period Pominville leveled the score and it looked like the Isles and Wild would be heading into the 3rd period all square. But just like that the Isles top goal scorer, Brock Nelson, took the lead back with a wrister from the slot.
The Islanders wasted no time in the third with an early powerplay goal from Frans Nielsen and a goal from Captain John Tavares minutes later. A Minnesota Wild powerplay goal midway through the period from Nino Niederreiter made anyone who bet the Islanders -1.5 nervous, but the Wild never seemed to really be a threat to come back and win.
A downside for Islanders fans was the play of Nino Niederreiter. He had a goal and an assist in Brooklyn and it makes me think what could have been if his time with the Islanders had gone differently.
The most intriguing story line of this game for most fans will be the play of third string goaltender JF Berube. While many will praise Jack Capuano’s decision to play Berube, the move it is still puzzling. Capuano and GM Garth Snow want Berube to get some NHL action in order to increase his trade value.
Despite making 40 saves, Berube let in a couple very soft goals. He let a first period Charlie Coyle shot squirt by him that had no business going in. Later in the second period he let a rebound go straight back to Jason Pominville who buried his second opportunity.
Berube let in a couple soft ones but the Islanders offense was right there every time a goal was needed.
It was a nice way to start off a second half stretch that will make or break this Islanders season. |
Seline Ayala, 23, has been arrested for carrying $2 million worth of liquid meth
A woman has been arrested for carrying $2 million worth of liquid meth in jugs labelled 'Purple Power'.
Seline Ayala, 23, was driving in Austin, Texas, when a K-9 dog sniffed out 75 pounds of liquid crystal methamphetamine.
Police officers had stopped her for speeding but then proceeded to search her car because she changed her story several times about who she was and where she was going.
She became 'verbally aggressive' when the officers questioned her before they found the drugs in her trunk.
Ayala had been driving in a 2013 Dodge Avenger with her four-year-old daughter and her babysitter on July 12 at about 11pm when police stopped her.
She told the officers she was a doctor and was headed to Dallas for a meeting, police say, although that story changed as police asked for details about who she was meeting and the name of her employer.
A K-9 dog sniffed out 75 pounds of liquid crystal methamphetamine found in three large jugs labelled Purple Power (pictured)
Ayala then refused to let police officers search her car. They brought in their K-9 dog who sniffed out the drugs which were in three large jugs which once contained cleaning products.
She later told investigators she was delivering the drugs for a second time for an unidentified man. Her text messages supported her story, police say.
The first time this unidentified liaison had arranged for her to send the drugs to Carrollton, about a half hour drive from Dallas.
The young mother has been charged with drug trafficking and is currently being held without bond before her pre-trial detention hearing.
Because she was carrying drugs that weighed significantly more than 300g, she could face up to life in prison, according to Texas law. |
Voter satisfaction: the past 6 prime ministerships in one chart
See how the trajectory of voter satisfaction with Tony Abbott as PM compared to his predecessors.
This chart shows Newspoll net satisfaction ratings for each prime minister since Paul Keating over their terms in power.
Step through the chart to assess how public perceptions of each PM changed over time.
This article includes an interactive component which is not supported on this platform. For the full interactive experience in this article, you will need a modern web browser with JavaScript enabled. Find out more about browser support at ABC News Online.
Note: John Howard's prime ministership continued well beyond the approximately 1,500 days shown here; he served 4,284 days as PM.
Topics: federal-government, federal-parliament, liberals, government-and-politics, abbott-tony, gillard-julia, rudd-kevin |
Reds manager Bryan Price (left) looks at relief pitcher Ross Ohlendorf after Ohlendorf was ejected in the ninth inning of Wednesday's game against the Pirates. (Photo: Kareem Elgazzar)
PHILADELPHIA - Cincinnati Reds manager Bryan Price and reliever Ross Ohlendorf arrived in the visiting clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park on Friday only to get some bad news. After both were ejected on Wednesday after Ohlendorf hit a batter with a pitch, Major League Baseball had levied suspensions against them.
Price was banned for one game, and spent Friday’s series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies in the luxury box reserved for the visiting team’s general manager. Ohlendorf was hit with a three-game ban, which he chose to appeal.
Neither saw it coming.
“I haven’t been involved with this hit-by-pitch-ejection thing yet,” Price said. “I understood the ejection from the game but not the suspension. But I do know now, after being informed, that it is standard protocol that a pitcher will get three games and can appeal and a manager gets one and can’t.”
Their ejections came in the top of the ninth against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Great American Ball Park after Ohlendorf hit David Freese with a fastball. Since both benches had been warned earlier in the game after two other hit batters, ejections of the pitcher and his manager were a foregone conclusion.
It was the suspensions that caught them off guard, although they have become standard operating procedure for how MLB deals with beanball ejections. That fact has seemingly not filtered its way down to many.
“I didn’t know, so I don’t think (many guys know),” Ohlendorf said. “It doesn’t happen all that often. I was surprised.”
Ohlendorf maintained after his ejection that hitting Freese was unintentional, but said he understood he had to be removed from the game by rule in order to ease tensions. He doesn’t think a suspension is fair, though.
“Whether I’ll win or not, I don’t know, but I thought the right thing to do was to appeal it,” he said. “Hopefully I do win, but we’ll see what happens.”
Even if Ohlendorf does win, Price doesn’t expect the league to wipe his slate clean. It’s more likely, Price said, that the suspension will be reduced by a game or two when Ohlendorf’s case is heard. A date for his appeal has not been set.
Managers are not given the recourse to appeal, which Price said he understands. Bench coach Jim Riggleman will manage in his place.
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Of the several hit batters in the game, he thinks only the Juan Nicasio beaning of Brandon Phillips earlier in the game was intentional, and that triggered the warnings. Most hit batters across the league are an accident, he said, and he doesn’t think the threat of automatic suspensions will do much to stem them.
“We won’t change our philosophy,” he said. |
This November, San Franciscans will likely be asked to vote on a measure criminalizing circumcision and imposing thousand-dollar fines and even jail time for violators. With petitions for ballot initiatives due in April, the Committee Opposing Forced Male Circumcision expects to have well over the 7,168 signatures that it needs to get on the ballot. Thus the Bay Area, already a hotbed of anti-circumcision activism, is about to become roiled in a debate over foreskins. “Once we qualify for the ballot, I’m hoping we can enlist people from across the world to come to San Francisco and help us do the legwork,” says Tina Kimmel, one of the activists behind the initiative. Even if they lose, they’re relishing the attention. “It’s wonderful that we’re getting so much press,” she says. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
In a way, it’s odd that San Francisco, of all places, would be the site of such a challenge to multiculturalism. Male circumcision, after all, is a hugely significant rite in both Judaism and Islam—indeed, one salutary result of San Francisco’s ballot initiative is the way it has momentarily united Jews and Muslims in their opposition. But while the removal of the foreskin has long signaled a Jewish boy’s entry into the community, for circumcision opponents, it signals the intolerable toll that custom and clan take on the individual. A complex debate about individual versus community rights hinges on that single primal cut.
That complexity, though, is often eclipsed by hysteria. Anti-circumcision activists—or “intactivists,” as they rather cringingly call themselves—are a lot like Free Mumia people. They have a point, but their self-righteous intensity does little for the credibility of their cause. They regularly compare male circumcision to the clitoridectomies performed on girls in parts of Africa. Male and female circumcision are “hands down exactly the same thing,” says Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America. Marilyn Milos, founder of the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, compares a boy’s dawning realization of his foreskinless state to a girl whose parents tell her that “one in eight girls is going to develop breast cancer, so we decided to cut yours off.” Kimmel insists that circumcision is on the way out, just as “stoning adulteresses to death has gone by the wayside as people become enlightened.”
There’s something at once poignant and unsettling about the amount of pain and rage men in the movement express over their own circumcisions. On one forum devoted to foreskin restoration, a man describes how, only a week earlier, the scope of his loss had hit him, waylaying him with “resentment, grief and anger” that leaves him in tears. His post was titled, “Will I ever feel complete?”
Mark Reiss, a retired physician in San Francisco who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in New York, had an epiphany about the horror of circumcision when his first grandchild was born. “When I realized what I had lost and will never get back,” he says, it was traumatic. He’s convinced that having sex with a foreskin is inconceivably exquisite. “I will have never experienced a full sexual experience,” he says. “To talk to circumcised men about the intact state and what the full blown sexual experience is like, is like talking to a blind person about seeing.”
It’s hard not to suspect that such grief is about something more than a missing foreskin. Circumcision, after all, is a potent metaphor for parental betrayal and emasculation. The anti-circumcision movement gives men a powerful explanation for the sense of loss and declining potency that usually attend aging. Milos says she most often hears from men in their 40s, who begin having trouble with sexual performance and ask, “What’s happened to my penis?” One explanation may be that they’re suffering the effects of their circumcision. Another is that they’re getting older.
Scientifically, the results of research about circumcision and sex are mixed. There have been numerous studies of men who have been circumcised as adults. In some, the majority report that sex improved afterward. In others, the majority said sex got worse. The “decrease in penile sensitivity that resulted from circumcision bordered on statistical significance,” reported a 2002 study in the Journal of Urology. But a 2005 study in Urologia Internationalis found that 38 percent of men found “[p]enile sensation improved after circumcision,” while 18 percent said it diminished, with the majority reporting no change.
Yet even if circumcision is not usually experienced as the life-destroying mutilation critics describe, there is something strange about the custom’s persistence, particularly among pork-eating, Sabbath-ignoring secular Jews. “Circumcision has always been a procedure in search of a justification,” says Chapin, and she’s not wrong. In the Jewish tradition, of course, the brit milah lies at the very core of God’s covenant with his people. But as Jews grew more secular, ancillary reasons for circumcision emerged. In the Victorian era, it was said to prevent masturbation, which is one reason that gentiles in both the United States and England adopted it. For modern liberals, the idea of circumcision as an impediment to onanism is, if anything, a strike against the practice, evidence that it really does impede sexual pleasure. But as early reasons for circumcision have been eclipsed, new ones have emerged, particularly the procedure’s role in protecting men against sexually transmitted diseases.
Still, the medical evidence is ambiguous enough that the American Academy of Pediatrics makes no recommendation in either direction. Reason alone does not explain circumcision’s survival. There are still vestiges of religion involved, things that don’t quite make sense in secular terms.
It’s absurd to compare male circumcision to female clitoridectomy. Yet when doctors, in an attempt to mitigate the harm of female circumcision, have proposed introducing forms of female genital cutting that are less severe than male circumcision, they’ve been attacked for capitulating to barbarism. Last year, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics proposed allowing doctors to perform “ritual nicks” on baby girls to satisfy their parents’ demands for circumcision, but the outcry was so great that the AAP had to withdraw the policy. If merely pricking a baby girl’s genitalia is wildly controversial, but cutting a boy’s genitalia is routine, it’s because of the very different civilization meaning we ascribe to the two acts.
And in that sense, circumcision contravenes some essential liberal values. It is evidence of a sexual double standard. It’s a painful and bloody rite whose purpose doesn’t lie in any immediate medical need. It marks a boy as a member of a group in a way that precedes his own decision-making, challenging the individualistic belief in a self-created identity.
Indeed, in the future, circumcision will likely once again become a mark of Jewish—and Muslim—difference. Non-Jews seem to be moving away from it—last year, a researcher from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2009, only 32.5 percent of newborn boys were circumcised in the hospital, down from 56 percent in 2006. In 2002, Sweden passed a law regulating circumcision, mandating, among other things, that a doctor or nurse administer anesthesia. Most Swedish doctors refuse to perform the cut, seeing it as a violation of a child’s rights, and some politicians want to ban it for children under 18. Last year, the Royal Dutch Medical Association put out a statement calling for a “powerful policy of deterrence,” arguing, “Non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors conflicts with the child’s right to autonomy and physical integrity.”
Some progressive Jews are turning their backs on it as well, embracing an alternative ceremony known as a brit shalom. Reiss runs a website that lists rabbis and cantors nationwide who will preside over the ritual, and he is about to officiate at one for the first time. “It’s happening more frequently as the generic population in the United States circumcises less,” he says. Nor is this an entirely new phenomenon. As he points out, “Jews have been rebelling against ritual circumcision for centuries. In Germany in the mid-19th century, there was a group of reform rabbis who wrote papers on it.”
As the practice falls out of favor in the secular world, the circumcision wars will probably only get more heated, because they’ll be about a minority religious custom, not an American norm. If male circumcision comes to be seen as harmful, after all, it will be hard to justify it on religious grounds alone without also justifying less-invasive variants of female genital cutting. At that point, proposals like the one in San Francisco might seem less preposterous and more, well, cutting edge.
Michelle Goldberg is a senior contributing writer at The Nation. She is the author, most recently, of The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West. Her Twitter feed is @michelleinbklyn. |
Sneezing between every other sentence? Eyes watering every time you open a window? It must be Spring allergy season! Here are 10 things only people with Spring allergies understand:
1. The phrase, “No, I’m not crying, it’s just my allergies!” practically comes out of your mouth before the person asks if you’re crying.
2. A pack of Puffs To Go will forever have a permanent place in your bag.
3. You’re fairly certain lawn mowing was used as a torture device at some point in time.
4. You’ve tried all the home remedies for Spring allergies without success.
5. A trip to the park always requires preventative measures (curse you relentless pollen allergy!)
6. Your typical date night consists of you, your Neti Pot, and a Rom Com (tear jerkers need not apply).
7. You’ve pulled up all the carpeting in your house.
8. You’ve passed the point of shame in bringing a tissue box into every business meeting. Hey, it’s either that or unrestricted sniffling this whole hour- your choice!
9. You’ve spent more on dehumidifiers than you have cars in your lifetime. (Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it sure feels like it.)
10. That moment of panic when you use the last tissue.
Did we miss something? What allergy struggles do you face? |
In March of 2007, former FBI agent and freelance investigator Robert Levinson traveled to the Iranian island of Kish, a resort hangout for smugglers and various dubious characters as well as tourists – and promptly vanished. For years, the US government stoutly maintained Levinson was on a private business trip, but now it turns out he was on a mission launched by a "rogue" CIA unit to gather intelligence about the "corruption" of moderate Iranian leader and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The Associated Press, which broke the story, has apparently known the real facts – or some version of them – for years, along with the New York Times, which ran a similar story the day after, but held back from publishing it at Washington’s request. The ostensible reason for the embargo: the hope that Levinson, presumably being held by the Iranians, would be returned to his family. Now that doesn’t seem to be in the cards: indeed, there’s some question about whether the Iranians – who deny all knowledge of his whereabouts – are holding him, or whether he’s in Pakistan or some other part of the Middle East.
Wherever he is, the real story here is Levinson’s murky "mission" and how he came to be on the CIA payroll. Our story begins with Levinson’s friendship with one Anne Jablonski, who worked for the CIA’s Illicit Finance Group: Jablonski, like Levinson, is an expert on Russian organized crime, and the two spent a lot of time together with their respective families. Jablonski eventually managed to get her friend a CIA contract dealing with various murky doings in South America, and Levinson established a relationship with the Illicit Finance Group unusual by CIA standards. Analysts, such as those in the Illicit Finance Group, and covert agents are separate: analysts don’t send out undercover agents on missions – they are supposed to simply receive information and, as their title suggests, analyze it. Not so in this case: Jablonski and her colleagues, including unit chief Tim Sampson, regularly sent Levinson out on missions to Panama, Canada, and Turkey without the knowledge of their superiors, collecting intelligence and in effect running their own mini-CIA. Instead of sending his "product" to the CIA, Levinson sent it to Jablonski’s home. As the AP reports:
"The whole arrangement was so peculiar that CIA investigators conducting an internal probe would later conclude it was an effort to keep top CIA officials from figuring out that the analysts were running a spying operation. Jablonski adamantly denies that.
"The internal investigation renewed some longtime tensions between the CIA’s operatives and analysts. The investigators felt the analysts had been running their own amateur spy operation, with disastrous results. Worse, they said the analysts withheld what they knew, allowing senior managers to testify falsely on Capitol Hill."
When the Levinson family tried to find out what had happened to him, and made efforts to secure his release, members of Congress became involved and demanded an explanation: CIA officials testified they had no knowledge of Levinson’s connection to the CIA, and denied he was on a US government-approved mission. Now that the truth about Levinson’s relationship with the Illicit Finance Group has come out, the family – and Congress – are asking questions and demanding Washington make efforts to free him part of its diplomatic outreach to Tehran.
Yet the question everyone should be asking is: how did a sub-group within the CIA come to exercise such freewheeling autonomy? If CIA officials really didn’t know Levinson was on a mission for the Illicit Finance Group, then the question arises: why the heck not? The CIA was paying him, and reimbursing him for his outlay of funds: how did Jablonski and her colleagues as the Illicit Finance Group get away with running what appeared to be their own private CIA?
The murk gets even murkier as we look at the details of Levinson’s alleged investigation into Iranian "corruption." Levinson was tasked by the Illicit Finance Group with finding information that might embarrass top Iranian officials, and he believed he had a lead when he was contacted by Ira Silverman, a retired NBC newsman, who offered to put him in touch with one Dawud Salahuddin, who supposedly had information on Rafsanjani’s money-laundering activities.
Silverman authored a 2002 New Yorker piece about Salahuddin, a.k.a. David Theodore Belfield, a then 29-year-old African-American convert to Islam, who purportedly assassinated an Iranian diplomat, Ali Akbar Tabatabai, former press attaché to the Iranian embassy: Tabatabai had become a vocal opponent of the Islamist regime in Tehran. Although the FBI put out an all-points bulletin on Salahuddin/Belfield, the assassin managed to make it to Geneva, where he had to wait a week to get an Iranian visa so he could travel to Tehran.
Ask yourself: how often does it happen that an FBI all-points bulletin fails to stop an accused murderer at the border?
In any case, Salahuddin/Belfield made it to Tehran, where he has been ever since – and where Silverman, for some reason, was given extensive access to him.
So here we have the following elements: a "rogue" CIA effort to discredit the moderate Rafsanjani; an American refugee from justice who is touted as a link to "moderate" elements in Iran but seems more interested in discrediting them; and a campaign to get Levinson released by the Iranian authorities in the midst of sensitive negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program that has hard-liners in both the US and Iran in an uproar.
Where have we seen this "rogue" intelligence apparatus in action before? Why, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, when the "Office of Special Plans" and the "Counter Terrorism Policy Evaluation Group," among others, did an end run around the CIA and "stove-piped" erroneous cherry-picked "intelligence" about Iraq’s alleged "weapons of mass destruction" right up to the highest levels of the US government, where it was turned into talking points.
In the case of the Illicit Finance Group, the same pattern occurs: within the larger intelligence community, an obscure sub-agency with a mind of its own pursues its own agenda – with productive results for the War Party. A CIA investigation shows Jablonski and her colleagues did their best to cover up Levinson’s activities on their behalf. Jablonski was fired, along with several of her co-workers, and a good number of others were "disciplined."
I don’t know who the Illicit Finance Group was working for, but it wasn’t the US government. And I would just add this: the efforts of Levinson’s family and friends to discover his whereabouts and secure his release have employed the assistance of some of the world’s most dubious characters, whose dubiousness is all of the same color. The New York Times reports they enlisted Boris J. Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and then on to Canada. In 1995, Birshstein reportedly set up a week-long "summit" for big time Russian Mafia chiefs in Tel Aviv. Another major player in this campaign: Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States – except for two visits in 2009, which the FBI allowed in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson. Deripaska wanted a deal whereby he would aid the effort on Levinson’s behalf in exchange for being allowed to enter the US. During his 2009 visit, Deripaska took the opportunity to meet with Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, but in the end the State Department prevailed over the Justice Department and Deripaska remains persona non grata in the US.
The Deipaska-Birshstein-Mafia connection failed to bring any results: no one knew whether Levinson was dead or alive. However, in 2010, Silverman received an email with a video of Levinson, and another one later with a picture of Levinson dressed in the orange garb of a prisoner.
So what’s the significance of this remarkably opaque story?
The Levinson-Jablonski Illicit Finance Group clearly represented a major security breach for the CIA. It seems beyond dispute that this "rogue" unit inside the CIA wasn’t working on behalf of the US government, but rather in the interests of some other government or private entity eager to discredit the Iranian government, and particularly interested in tarring Iranian moderates such as Rafsanjani.
What country or interest group has an interest in discrediting and otherwise spying on Iran’s alleged perfidious activities? What country has shielded Russian Mafia figures such as Michael Cheney, granting them asylum and immunity from prosecution by Russian and Western law enforcement? What country’s intelligence agency has a record of aggressive spying in the US and wouldn’t hesitate to infiltrate the CIA itself if it served their purposes?
There’s something illicit about the Illicit Finance Group: I invite my readers to figure out what it is.
If you peruse Silverman’s New Yorker piece on Salahuddin/Belfield, it reads like a typical anti-Iranian propaganda piece, depicting Tehran as the epicenter of terrorism and its rulers as ruthless murderers who wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter their opponents even on US soil: in this it resembles the recent cock-and-bull story about an alleged Iranian attempt to bomb a popular Washington DC restaurant in order to kill the Saudi ambassador.
And of course it’s just a coincidence that the issue of Levinson’s disappearance – and the fact that the CIA paid an agent to discredit Rafsanjani and other Iranian moderates – has been revealed just as sensitive negotiations between Washington and Tehran have reached a critical juncture.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
Read more by Justin Raimondo |
As the Daily Wire reported Tuesday, the Hollywood trade Variety released its latest issue, a special Inaugural edition that features five left-wingers opposed to Donald Trump, the man who will be sworn in as our 45th president Friday. The cover features CNN's Van Jones, Chelsea Handler, rape-hoaxer Lena Dunham, Michael Moore, and Hamilton's Brandon Victor Dixon. All five stand together holding a large American flag… A flag that, in full-violation of United States Code, is dragging on the ground.
Take a look at this brazen disrespect for yourself.
There is no gray area on this matter.
Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Code ("Respect for flag") states clearly in paragraph (b) that: The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
No, it is not against the law to allow the flag to drag on the ground. There is no civil or legal penalty. Also, contrary to the myth, you do not have to burn the flag if it touches the ground.
Out here in the Flyover Hinterlands, it is common knowledge that, out of respect for our country and those who sacrificed for it, you do not allow Old Glory to hit the ground. Ever.
Nevertheless, being careful to keep the flag from touching the ground is something we were all (well, most of us) taught as children. Out here in the Flyover Hinterlands, it is common knowledge that, out of respect for our country and those who sacrificed for it, you do not allow Old Glory to hit the ground. Ever.
Moreover, when handling the flag, again out of respect, this is something you are supposed to be highly conscious of -- and anyone who esteems the flag, certainly is.
If the flag touches the ground in error, no harm done. It happens. But that is not what happened in this Variety cover….
What you have here are four celebrities and one CNN (naturally) anchor posing as patriots. And yet, not a single one of them had the presence of mind, or enough regard for our flag, to say, Whoa, hey, wait a minute! Get the flag off the floor! First off, it's not okay and I'm not doing it. Secondly, America already sees us as clueless, America-hating, commie elites.
Yes, we do, and this Variety cover is just more proof of that.
Some of you might not remember this, but the Left wasn't always so big on flag-waving and patriotism. That all changed after they lost the presidential election to George W. Bush 12 years ago, in 2004. It was only after that upset that the Left's political language changed. Instead of being honest about their contempt for America, they began to present their anti-American ideas as patriotism. High tax rates are patriotism. Losing a won war in Iraq is patriotism. Freeing America-hating terrorists from Gitmo is patriotism. Forcing everyone to buy an overpriced product they don't need from an insurance company is patriotism.
Of course, that is all nonsense. Propaganda usually is. The idea, though, is to change the very meaning of patriotism from "personal liberty" to "worship central government." Michael Moore, an Oscar-winning propagandist, has been one of the leaders on this front. However…
As you can see, when it comes to learning the basics of pretending to be a patriot, Patriotism 101, so to speak, our Celebrity and Media Betters just didn't have the time … it just wasn't on the schedule to learn a very simple moral lesson. One most of us learned as small children from our parents or grandparents or teachers or neighbors.
The symbol of our country is something bigger than a photo-shoot prop to be dragged on the ground -- in front of the whole world! -- by a bunch of pampered, preening, spoiled, narcissistic celebrities and CNN anchors.
It comes down to this: The symbol of our country is something bigger than a photo-shoot prop to be dragged on the ground -- in front of the whole world! -- by a bunch of pampered, preening, spoiled, narcissistic celebrities and CNN anchors.
Shame on all of them.
P.S. A few years ago, out here in the unsophisticated wilds of North Carolina, and on a cold, windy and rainy afternoon, I was out driving when traffic suddenly came to a stop. A few cars up, a young woman had pulled over and turned on her blinkers so she could rescue a flag that had been blown from its perch to the ground.
No one honked their horn.
A few of us rolled down our windows to wave our gratitude.
When it comes to Old Glory, even in the rain, that's how we rubes roll.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC |
click to enlarge American Immigration Council.
I got kicked out of a public, federal immigration court hearing yesterday because I’m a newspaper reporter. And it wasn't the judge who wanted me to leave. It was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney. Here's what happened.For several months, I've been observing the immigration court in San Francisco. Mostly I've sat in on bond hearings and "removals," more commonly known as deportations. The entire time, ICE attorneys and private security guards have been attempting to limit my access.Yesterday was the worst.At 1 p.m., I walked into Courtroom 18, inside the 100 Montgomery Street offices of the Department of Homeland Security, to observe several deportation cases on Judge Joren Lyons' calendar. I quietly sat down in the second row to the back. Eight other people, family members of two individuals whose cases were on the calendar, were also present.When the judge entered, he asked those of us sitting in the public seats if we were there for a particular case. The others all replied affirmatively, but none of them was made to identify their profession, state their name, or produce any identification.The judge then asked me. "I'm here to observe," I answered. And the judge had no problem with that.According to the official rules of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs the immigration courts, hearings are generally open to the public unless a specific case involves an asylum request or an abused child or spouse, or where a sealed protective order has been filed. Parties to a case can also submit motions to the court in advance of a hearing to request it be closed. And judges have discretion to close hearings to protect parties, witnesses, and the public interest. But, generally, immigration courts are supposed to operate transparently. Open hearings that are accessible to everyone, including reporters who let the public know what their government is doing, are in the public interest.But before Judge Lyons could begin, the ICE attorney seated in the front of the courtroom turned around and looked straight at me. "Who are you?" he asked.I responded with a question of my own: "Why do you want to know?""Are you a member of the press?" he questioned me.I didn't answer his question. Instead, I asked again why he wanted to know if I was a reporter."I have a right to know if you are media," he said. "We have procedures."At that point, I politely said I wasn't aware of any rules requiring observers in the courtroom to identify themselves, on demand, to the prosecuting attorney.The ICE attorney, Michael Alster, then asked the judge for a delay. "I want to take care of this situation with this gentleman first," he said while walking out of the courtroom. I told Alster on his way out I'd like to speak with his supervisor, as well.While the ICE attorney was gone, Judge Lyons allowed the family members of one of the men on trial to talk to him through the teleconferencing system. They gathered in front of the camera, laughing and smiling, and asked the man, who was appearing via video stream from a distant jail, how he was doing. The judge also accepted from the family some documents they had brought to support his case.At this point, it's worth noting that I didn't know anything about the man's case. I didn't go into the courtroom to report on his hearing, nor the seven other people whose cases were on the judge's calendar. I was there, in fact, working on a story about how the immigration courts operate.One thing I did note while sitting there: The man whose hearing was underway had no attorney. His family hadn't hired one, either.Lots of people facing deportation can't afford counsel, and are therefore deprived of professional legal advice. It's a common problem in immigration courts. They go up against ICE attorneys on their own. In San Francisco's immigration courts, only 15 percent of people in detention are represented by an attorney.State and local officials recognize this problem and are currently considering legislation that would provide legal representation to Californians in immigration courts. But under existing federal rules, even indigent children are left to represent themselves, or hire their own attorneys.About ten minutes later, Alster returned. He paused at the bench where I was sitting and informed me that his supervisor, Leslie Ungerman, has an office on the second floor.With that, I figured Alster had dropped his demand that I identify myself, but I was wrong. He took his seat at the front of the courtroom, and as the judge was filling him in about the new documents, Alster shifted gears."The Department [of Homeland Security] wishes to express concern that he did not identify himself," said Alster, referring to me. He then claimed that the "respondent," the man he was trying to deport, should be concerned about his privacy because I was in the courtroom.Judge Lyons' response to the ICE attorney was that, while the courts are considered "generally open to the public," he would inform the man whose hearing was supposed to be underway about the government’s "concerns." Lyons asked the man on the screen whether he was concerned about my presence."I don't see anything wrong with it," the man answered.Yet Alster persisted. He told the judge that information, including the man's criminal record, could end up in the newspapers. The judge relayed this claim. That prompted the man to say he was, in fact, concerned. Who wouldn't be?Judge Lyons then, reluctantly it seemed, asked everyone except family members to leave the court.I initially ignored the request from the judge, due to the fact that it wasn't an order. There hadn't been motions submitted to the court to hold a closed hearing. If the ICE attorney was genuinely concerned about anyone's privacy in that particular case, he could have submitted a motion well in advance.Judge Lyons then basically admitted he couldn't bar me from staying, but he explained that he’d have to consider canceling and rescheduling.At that point, I asked the judge to inform the man on the screen that I wasn't going to put anything about him in any newspaper, but that I would probably write about "the behavior of the ICE attorney." I then requested the judge to ask the man again if he'd be OK with me staying on those terms. The man seemed OK with this, but I got up and left the courtroom, anyway. I didn't want to be inconsiderate to him, and his family, or further delay his case.I took the elevator down to the second floor and asked for Leslie Ungerman, the chief counsel of ICE's San Francisco Field Office — and Alster's boss.Ungerman walked me into her office and heard my complaint. I told her what you read above, and also this:Earlier that morning, I had been in a different courtroom, located on the fourth floor of the DHS building on Sansome Street. Immediately when I walked into the courtroom, the ICE attorney turned and scowled at me. I took a seat and flipped open my notebook. I was the only person there besides the ICE attorney and the translator. The judge was in chambers. The image of a man in custody appeared on a screen, head down, waiting. The ICE attorney then asked me, "Are you here for a case?""No," I said. That was the truth; I was there to observe the operations of the court, not report on specific cases.The ICE attorney turned away, but seconds later he swung back around in his chair and questioned me: "Are you with anyone?"I knew what he was getting at, so I came right out and said, "I'm news media." Then I asked him, "Who are you?""Assistant chief counsel," he said in an unfriendly tone.Over the past couple months, I've experienced similar behavior from ICE attorneys, some of who seem to think it's strange that anyone would want to observe the inner workings of San Francisco's immigration courts, and who seem to be hostile to the presence of a journalist.After listening to my concerns about the conduct of two of her ICE attorneys, Ungerman told me that court proceedings are open to the public and that the Department of Homeland Security wants to be transparent. She said, however, that Alster's effort to have me removed from court was likely her fault.Ungerman explained how, last week, she held a meeting with her attorneys to go over what she said were recently raised concerns involving privacy, the news media, and potential safety issues in the courts. She said that, in some cases, there is sensitive information discussed during hearings, including criminal histories. In the past, she added, some people have complained that information about them was made public, and that a judge never asked them if they wanted a closed hearing.Ungerman basically said her office is trying to protect the privacy of the people they're simultaneously prosecuting, people who tend to not have an attorney of their own.I've covered many different state and federal courts as a reporter. I've followed cases involving closed hearings, sealed documents, and complex privacy issues. But I have never before had a prosecuting attorney demand that I identify myself in a court hearing that was open to the public. And I've never seen a prosecutor offer legal advice about privacy to the person he's prosecuting in an attempt to expel a suspected reporter from the courtroom.But to be honest, I've never seen anything like San Francisco's immigration courts.Last year, the first time I tried to attend court at the DHS building at 630 Sansome Street, a private guard with Paragon Systems, which contracts with the government to secure the building, told me I wasn't allowed inside unless I had "an appointment" or "official business" of some kind. I informed him I was a newspaper reporter and that I wanted to observe court hearings. That was my official business, I said. He claimed this wasn't permitted and then directed me out of the building.The first time I tried entering the immigration courts in the DHS offices at 100 Montgomery Street, another security guard told me I could only pass through security if I was there for a specific court hearing involving myself or a family member.Needless to say, I kept going back. But it's clear that San Francisco's immigration courts have a problem with transparency. |
The gravity of how difficult it will be to fully repeal and replace Obamacare is settling in on Capitol Hill.
Republican senators who spent years railing against the president’s signature health care law are now trying to find consensus on how they want to make good on their years-long campaign promise to dismantle it – and the growing consensus is that it is going to take time to find a replacement.
“Its gonna take us awhile to make that transition from the repeal to actually replacing it with more affordable health coverage, which provides people better access,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Senate majority whip, told reporters Tuesday. “There is a lot to do so it’s not going to happen overnight.”
Republicans’ inability to coalesce around a replacement plan in the six years after Obamacare was passed means they have no easy alternative to queue up with a repeal, which they have vowed to make the top of their agenda next year. Their current inability to settle on a clear repeal and replace plan also reflects the trade-offs that have been dogging the GOP in last half-decade. Within the Republican caucus are deep, philosophical rifts over basic questions about health care policy and the government’s role in providing access to coverage.
Lobbing critiques at rising premiums while on the campaign trail was far easier than what comes next as Republican confront the reality that along with their much bemoaned individual mandate, fully repealing Obamacare also would mean unraveling popular provisions and benefits that have become available under the law and expanded health care coverage.
Rank and file Republicans Tuesday voiced an array of concerns about what moving too fast could mean for millions of individuals who had attained health care coverage through expanded Medicaid programs in the states and about what would happen to individuals with pre-existing conditions, who under the ACA were able to obtain health insurance. Instead of repealing and replacing Obamacare suddenly, Republicans in the Senate are now discussing a way to “transition” from Obamacare to their alternative, which is still to be determined.
Senators stressed Tuesday that they were leaning toward a process that gave Republicans the opportunity to repeal Obamacare now and then spend an undefined amount of time working on a replacement.
“I’m from a state that has an expanded Medicaid population that I am very concerned about,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). “I don’t want to throw them off into the cold, and I don’t think that’s a strategy that I want to see. It’s too many people. That’s over 200,000 people in my state. So we need a transition. I think we’ll repeal and then we’ll work during the transition period for the replacement vehicle.”
Capito said she would support a plan to that would leave a two- to three-year transition period.
Slowly replacing Obamacare is likely to irritate conservatives who had hoped Republicans would act fast to gut Obamacare, but it echoes what Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, signaled before the Thanksgiving break when he told reporters it might take years to fully repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
“There are contracts out there that insurers have so I think we all know on Day 1 it’s not going to be repeal and replace,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told reporters Tuesday.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the outgoing chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was among the Republicans floating a repeal-and-delay plan, which health policy experts warn could still cause major chaos in the insurance market.
“We can use reconciliation,” Wicker told TPM, referring to the legislative maneuver that would allow Republicans to dismantle some ACA provisions with only a majority vote. “I do think there will be two- or three-year phase in about the replacement.”
Not only are Republicans recognizing that fully repealing Obamacare presents a host of legislative and policy hurdles, there are provisions in the law – such as protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions – that are so popular that Republicans could pay a political cost for repealing them.
President-elect Trump has signaled that he wants those components intact, but that also presents a challenge. If Republicans want to make good on their promise to repeal the individual mandate as well as maintain their vows to to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions, then how can they guarantee insurers won’t hike premiums drastically or drop out of the individual market altogether if they’re forced to cover a sicker, more costly risk pool. The answer is Republicans aren’t entirely sure yet.
“Once you say that everybody should be covered, can’t be denied coverage because they are sick – which most Americans would agree with that – you put yourself in a box. Insurance is about young people who are healthy buying insurance like you all to pay for me and him,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, pointing to the oldest reporter in the scrum. “If you don’t have to buy insurance until you get sick, most people won’t. That’s where the mandate becomes important.”
Graham added: “Somebody’s got to work through this problem. If we’re going to accept the proposition that you can never be denied coverage because you’ve been sick, then somebody’s got to create a system where people participate.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remained vague at his press conference on Tuesday about the order and timing for the plan.
“What we intend to do is go forward with a process after the first of the year and begin the opportunity to repeal and replace, so that will start shortly after we reconvene, after the swearing in,” McConnell said.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), a member of the GOP Senate leadership team, told reporters that Republicans plan on replacing the law in a “piece by piece way.”
“We’ll be starting in January with budget reconciliation to get something on then-President Trump’s desk,” Barrasso said, while arguing Republicans would be wary of pushing any major bills to replace it right off the bat.
“[Democrats] messed it up thoroughly over six years and there’s not a quick 2,000-page replacement,” Barrasso said. “It’s an ongoing process. It’s going to transition and take a number of years to do that.” |
Tell Canada It Has No Excuses Left For Seal Cull
by: Judith B.
recipient: Prime Minister Stephen Harper
The various justifications put forth to support the brutal cull of hundreds of thousands of harp seals in Canada have always been shaky. Now the argument that it is necessary "to protect fish stocks," always scientifically dubious, holds no water at all.
Climate change means seals are struggling to breed anyway. This year, it is predicted that thinning ice sheets over the Artic will lead to a very tough year for seals, with many if not most of the pups not surviving at all.
Last year, an estimated 80 percent of the pups died simply because of a lack of sea ice.
Too many seals is not going to be a problem, if indeed it ever was. The problem is now protecting them and their fragile habitat. The last thing in the world the seals needed is another brutal cull.
Tell the Canadian Government to stop the commercial seal hunt when the species is struggling to survive anyway.
read petition letter ▾
In 2011, an estimated 80% of that year's seal pups failed to survive simply because of decreasing sea ice. With harp seals now struggling to cope with new threats, a cull is completely unnecessary and could tip the populations of a once common species over the edge.
We ask that the Canadian Government finally face reality and recognise that the commercial seal hunt is not in any way beneficial. It does not help Canada’s wildlife, environment, reputation or even its fish stocks. We ask that the commercial harp seal hunt ends in 2012. We the undersigned ask that the Canadian Government cease the commercial harp seal hunt. Whether or not seals did once pose a threat to fish stocks, the species is now suffering the effects of climate change and overpopulation is certainly not an issue.In 2011, an estimated 80% of that year's seal pups failed to survive simply because of decreasing sea ice. With harp seals now struggling to cope with new threats, a cull is completely unnecessary and could tip the populations of a once common species over the edge.We ask that the Canadian Government finally face reality and recognise that the commercial seal hunt is not in any way beneficial. It does not help Canada’s wildlife, environment, reputation or even its fish stocks. We ask that the commercial harp seal hunt ends in 2012. |
By
It’s been a busy day so far and here’s what happened in Europe over the last few hours with a few of the LA Kings players…
– Kopitar in Sweden: Mora IK defeated Troja 4-2, with the first goal of the game coming off the stick of Anze Kopitar. Younger brother Gasper was on the ice at the time, however he wasn’t credited with an assist. He did finish the night with three shots on goal though. Anze had just the single shot and also won 10-of-19 in the faceoff circle.
– Martinez in Finland: HC TPS also won their game 4-2, it was the third game for Alec Martinez in Finland and his first at the home arena in Turku. Two former members of the Kings’ organization were involved in the final goal of the contest. With Justin Azevedo in the box serving a five-minute penalty, Brian Wilsie scored for TPS with less than two minutes remaining in the third period. Martinez knows Azevedo well, they played together for parts of three seasons in Manchester. The Kings’ defenseman finished the night with a plus-1 rating, four shots on goal and he led all players in the game with 26:19 of ice time.
– Bernier in Germany: It was tied 2-2 entering the third period, with Jonathan Bernier making his debut in net for Heilbronner Falken. However the Penguins (from Fischtown, not Pittsburgh) scored twice in the final 20 minutes – including into an empty net at 19:27 after Bernier was pulled for the extra attacker – and to the surprise of nobody in Sweden or Finland the game ended 4-2. Michel Leveille, one of Bernier’s former teammates in Manchester, scored the first Falken goal.
Stateside, we’ve also posted a lot of content since sunrise. Here’s a quick recap of a few things you might have missed…
On what should be opening night, Drew Doughty says he’s bored
FULL GAME VIDEO – watch Anze Kopitar and Mora vs Djurgarden
Bernier on Germany – ‘I’m not good enough for the first league’
Want to see what Dustin Brown has been doing during the lockout?
MayorsManor Live Radio with Justin Kemp, Ontario Reign President
We also did a 3am phone interview earlier today with Bernier from Germany. Expect to see that up on the site over the weekend.
Follow @mayorNHL |
Please Take Note: This is a review of the game’s final prototype. The art, game bits, and the rules discussed are all subject to change. The game is being reviewed on the components and the rules provided with the understanding that “what you see is not what you might get” when the game is published. If you like what you read and want to learn more, we encourage you to visit the game’s web page or the Kickstarter campaign. Now that we have all that disclaimer junk out of the way, on with the review!
The Basics:
For ages 21 and up
For 2 to 6 players
Approximately 60 minutes to complete
Geek Skills:
Counting & Math
Logical & Critical Decision Making
Reading
Pattern/Color Matching
Strategy & Tactics
Hand/Resource Management
Learning Curve:
Child – Untested (but presumed Easy)
Adult – Easy
Theme & Narrative:
Collect the necessary ingredients to create a craft beers to grow your brewery
Endorsements:
Gamer Geek approved!
Parent Geek rejected!
Child Geek N/A
Overview
Micro breweries are all the rage, and after trying your hand at making a few of your own craft brews, you’ve decided to create your own business. But making beer for yourself to enjoy is one thing and creating a brewing company is something altogether different. To be successful, you must craft beers using the best ingredients available, come up with new and interesting recipes, and then sell your product. In the end, it won’t matter how good your craft beers are if no one is drinking them.
Pint Craft, by Macrospectra Games, is comprised of 112 cards (83 Brewery cards, 25 Recipe cards, and 4 Season cards) and 107 Ingredient tokens (45 Basic Malt, 20 Specialty Malt, 26 Hops, and 16 Adjunct). As this is a review of a prepublished game, we will not comment on the game component quality, but the proposed card layout and art direction is easy on the eyes and to use during the game.
Brewery Set Up
To set up the game, first separate the cards into three decks. These will be the Brewery deck, the Recipe deck, and the Season deck. The three different card types have different card backs making this process an easy one to complete. Shuffle all but the Season deck thoroughly.
Second, deal out 5 Brewery cards to each player, face-down. Players are welcome to look at their cards but should keep them hidden from their opponents at all times. Place the remaining cards in the deck in the middle of the playing area. Leave room next to the deck for a discard pile.
Third, deal out the Recipe cards, face-up, into card piles in the center of the playing area. The number of piles will be one more than the total number of players. For example, if playing a game with four players, there will be five Recipe piles.
Fourth, take the Season cards and put them in their proper order (Spring, Summer, Fall, and then Winter). Select a season to start with and place this card face-up. The Season deck should remain face-down next to the Season card in play. The cards in this deck need not be in proper seasonal order, but the seasons themselves will always be played in the proper order. The deck is kept face down to ensure everyone is clear about what season is currently active.
Fifth, place the Ingredient tokens in a central spot where they are easily accessible to all the other players. We suggest putting them in a bowl of some kind to make it easy to pass around and for keeping the playing area tidy.
That’s it for set up! Time to make some craft beers! Decide who will go first and begin.
Brewing Up Some Fun
The game is played in rounds with each player taking a single turn per round. On a player’s turn, they will complete the following steps in sequential order.
Step 1: Play Brewery Cards
A player can play up to 3 Brewery cards in their hand, but for every Brewery card they play, their total number of Brewery cards they can draw at the end of their turn is reduced. Brewery cards come in two different types. These are Immediate and Persistent. Immediate Brewery cards have an immediate effect on the game once played and are discarded once revealed. The effects of these cards range from affecting the player who played the card, the other players, or all the players. The Persistent Brewery cards might have a one time effect of persistent game effect, but are not discarded once revealed. Instead, these cards remain in front of the player for the duration of the game.
The Brewery cards have detailed instructions and sometimes require the player to make choices based on what they want the card to do. For example, the “Blind Taste Test” Brewery card allows the player to either flip over the top Brewery card in the Brewery deck that will automatically take effect or draw one Adjunct ingredient of their choice. The primary goal is to collect ingredients so craft beers can be made, but the Brewery cards also allow for the player to improve their breweries, acquire clientele, and influence events in the game.
When a Brewery card is played that allows the player to collect Ingredient tokens, they take the number and type of ingredients noted from the Ingredient token pile. More times than not, the ingredients to be collected will be the basic and specialty malts as well as hops. Some Recipe cards require adjunct ingredients. Adjunct ingredients are special additions that make an ordering beer into something extraordinary. However, they are also harder to come by. As a general rule, a player can always substitute 4 Ingredient tokens they would claim from the Ingredient token pile for one adjunct ingredient of their choice. This is a one time offer, however, and can only take place during the very moment the player is taking ingredients. Additionally, any bonus ingredients earned during certain seasons cannot be used to create adjunct ingredients.
Note: If a player ever runs out of Brewery cards (i.e. plays their last card), their turn automatically ends and they cannot continue to step 2 or 3. Instead, they draw 4 Brewery cards and their turns is completed.
Step 2: Use Ingredients
Throughout the game, players will be collecting Ingredient tokens. These tokens represent base malts, specialty malts, hops, and adjunct ingredients. These tokens are used to complete the visible Recipes in the playing area. All ingredients, once collected, are placed in front of their owning player. During this step, the player uses the tokens to satisfy the Recipe card’s requirements For example, the Oatmeal Stout Recipe card requires 4 base malts, 4 specialty malts, 3 hops, and an oat as an adjunct ingredient. If the player had these essential ingredients, they would place them back in the Ingredient token pile and place the Recipe card they completed in front of them. Each Recipe card is worth Victory Pints (i.e “victory points”…isn’t that clever?) and is automatically scored. The number of points each Recipe is worth is noted by one or more icons of a pint glass. There are no limits to the number of Recipe cards a player can earn during their turn. If they have the ingredients, they can claim matching Recipe cards. However, only the Recipe cards showing can be taken.
Step 3: Draw Brewery Cards
The last step the player takes on their turn is dependent on what they did on the first step. As noted in step 1, a player can play up to 3 Brewery cards in their hand, but for every Brewery card they play, their total number of Brewery cards they can draw is reduced. The number of Brewery cards a player can draw is based on the simple formula noted below.
Play 3 Brewery cards = Draw zero cards
Play 2 Brewery cards = Draw 1 card
Play 1 Brewery card = Draw 2 cards
Play zero Brewery cards = Draw 3 cards
There is no hand size limit, meaning more cards results in more possible actions.
Seasonal Specials
At the end of each round, the current Season card will be replaced with the next Season. Players should simply find the next Season card and put it face-up in the playing area and place the last Season card in the deck, face-down. Each season brings a special bonus for the round that players might be able to take advantage of. Bonuses are available via completed Recipe cards the player has acquired, but are only possible to use if the Recipe has already been completed in a prior round. In other words, completing a Recipe during a season that would have offered a bonus does not provide the bonus.
Endgame
Depending on the number of players, a game will have a predefined Victory Pint threshold. Once the threshold has been met or surpassed by one or more players, the Challenge round beings on the next player’s turn. The Challenge round gives all the players one more chance to surpass the player who triggered the endgame Challenge round. The player who triggered the endgame gets to sit back and enjoy the show because they are done for the game. Once the other players have had their final turn, all the Victory Pints from claimed Recipe cards and any acquired through Persistent Brewery cards are added together.
The player with the most Victory Pints is automatically the winner. If two or more players tie, the game goes into something like “Sudden Death” and a face off is started. Only those players who tied play this part of the game. During the face off, the Seasonal card is replaced with the next season and any benefits are awarded to the active players. Then each active player plays 1 Brewery card in an attempt to make as many Victory Pints as possible. This continues until one player has the lead or the players in the face off agree to call the game a draw.
Predict
Based on the rules, this is not a complicated game to teach or to learn. A player’s turn sequence is pretty straight forward and the choices the player needs to make is limited to what is on the table and in their hand. Players are not directly in conflict with each other and the game is pretty much focused on completing recipes as quickly and as efficiently as possible. In some ways, this card game has a very Euro-game feel to it, but none of the long game turns or multiple choices that weigh down inexperienced players. This should automatically appeal to the Gamer Geeks as a light game worth playing at their table. For the Parent Geeks, the game play would appear to be very casual and the length of a game is dependent on how well players do versus set number of rounds. And don’t even get me started on how well this game is going to be received by gamers who are also beer enthusiasts.
For the Child Geeks? While I do think the game will be easy for them to learn, I have some reservations about putting this game in front of them. The game is all about creating beer, but some of it is also about drinking it. I have reviewed other games in the past (recently, Viticulture) where alcohol or production of alcohol was the theme. But those games never included the drinking of alcohol. I don’t want alcohol and fun associated with each other with very impressionable, not to mention young, little geeks. There will be a time and a place for such things, but not now. After doing a lot of thinking and discussion with others, I decided that the best course of action was to go with my gut and not put Pint Craft in front of the Child Geeks. I will let you, the Parent Geeks, decide for yourself if the game is appropriate. For the record, none of the other Parent Geeks we tested the game with wanted to play it with their children, either.
For those who did get a chance to play the game (all 21 and over), teaching it to them was very straight forward and simple. More time was spent with the non-gamers, of course, but the game is based on the actions the cards suggest and collecting ingredients to use for recipes. The recipes are out in the open and all the player needs to do is collect those before the other players do. As far as choices go, the player need only look at their hand and make the best choice based on what hey have available. Broken down and pitched in this fashion, no one was confused or stressed about what the game was about or how it was to be played. And so, while I set the game up for our first play session, I asked the table their thoughts on the game so far.
“A neat and easy looking card game that will teach me about beer at the same time.” ~ Parent Geek “This looks like a Euro-game, but with a distinct American feel.” ~ Parent Geek “Reads light and looks light, but I can already see how I’m going to be interested in the game play.” ~ Gamer Geek
Let’s open this game up and see if it quenches our thirst or if it leaves a bitter taste of regret in our mouths.
Final Word
Not playing this game with the Child Geeks was the right call, but the game would be easy enough for them to play. I don’t think my 8-year-old would have a problem with the game on any level, as he has played much more complicated games in the past. The heavy alcohol theme, however, would make me feel uncomfortable playing it with him or any Child Geek. We’ll have to wait a number of years to play this one as a family.
For the Parent Geeks and non-gamers, the game was enjoyed and learned quickly. The game presents the player with a number of choices, but never to a point where any of our players felt overwhelmed or confused. The cards drive most of the action for those who do not have a lot of experience with games, but this did not reduce their level of entertainment or ability to play the game on any level. In fact, the Parent Geeks who had the most fun with the game were those who were also beer enthusiasts. The conversations around the table quickly shifted from the game to craft beers tried and loved. For those who were not craft beer followers, they enjoyed the game, but clearly not on the same level as those who knew about micro breweries and how to craft their own beer.
Gamer Geeks enjoyed the game, as well. Again, I observed that those players who knew their beer enjoyed the game on a more intimate level than those who did not. This only served to make a stronger connection to the theme of the game, however. A person who enjoyed a good craft beer or knew how to brew their own didn’t have a game advantage over someone who didn’t. The game did provide the Gamer Geeks enough of a challenge to keep them engaged and served as an excellent casual game for them to enjoy around the gaming table before or after the big game for the evening.
Gamer Geeks, this is a casual game from your perspective, but it has enough choices and pitfalls to make it a game worth your attention. Your peer group, regardless of their preference for wine, beer, or coffee, enjoyed the game. The most interesting aspect that your peer group enjoyed was the mixing and matching of ingredients and creating the necessary adjunct ingredients for recipes that would award the most points. This made the Gamer Geeks really take note of what ingredients were in front of other players and what Recipe cards were available to claim. The only objection to the game was the final round. Your peer group felt the game should just end as soon as a player reaches the threshold, instead of allowing one last round that could steal the player’s victory. Other than that, no serious complaints and everyone was happy to order another round of the game.
Parent Geeks, this is a game that can be played casually and socially. It is not what I would consider appropriate for family play due to the game theme and the majority of Parent Geeks agreed. Your peer group considered the game challenging, as each play had to be smarter than your opponents’. The game itself didn’t trip any player up and the most complicated thing to consider at times was how many cards to play and where to spend ingredients. In the end, the Parent Geeks enjoyed the game, doubly so if they were also beer enthusiasts, but could not give it their endorsement because it wasn’t family friendly.
Pint Craft is a game I would gladly recommend to other Gamer Geeks and to Parent Geeks who I knew were micro brew followers or created their own beers. If I knew the Parent Geek wasn’t, I wouldn’t bother to mention it. This is because the game is somewhat dependent on the audience knowing about the crafting of beers. Not the actual act or science, mind you, but the industry. For those who do not, the game might come across as a drinking game that used alcohol as its base. An unfortunate assumption, but it’s already happened to me three times while playing this game. For the Gamer Geeks, they didn’t care one bit. In fact, when I told them it was a game about creating a brewery, collecting as many recipes as possible, and gathering distributors and consumers, they automatically asked if it was a Euro-game. They were surprised when it was presented to them as a card game and even more so when they saw how well the game was designed. Yes, they all thought it was a rather light game, but the game play was sufficiently intriguing enough to keep them interested.
As for me, I rather enjoy the game. It scratches a hard to reach itch that so many games cannot touch. Specifically, that feeling of a Euro-game with heavy resource gathering and management, but with none of the Euro-game bulk. The end result is a rather enjoyable game that doesn’t need or ask you to like beer on any level. A player need not even know what beer is and can still play the game competitively against an opponent who brews beer for a living.
The only downside to Pint Craft is its theme. It made most of the Parent Geeks uncomfortable, which means it is highly unlikely the game will be shared with the Child Geeks in the near future. This is a genuine shame as the game is a good one, but also completely unavoidable. The game designer has put some serious thought into the game cards and removing any of them would be criminal. The game is about crafting beers and then selling them to become a successful micro brew company. Thematically and mechanically, the game and cards all work together brilliantly. This is clearly not a game designed for Child Geeks, but then again, not every game should be. It is perfectly acceptable to create games for an older audience in the same way it is perfectly acceptable to create drinks only for those who are 21 and over.
If you are looking for a light Euro-game played with cards where the focus is on gathering ingredients to make craft beers, building a brewery operation that will stand the test of time, and pitching your product to distributors and consumers, then make room in your game fridge for Pint Craft. We think you’ll find its smooth game play and enjoyable aftertaste worth your time.
This game was given to Father Geek as a review copy. Father Geek was not paid, bribed, wined, dined, or threatened in vain hopes of influencing this review. Such is the statuesque and legendary integrity of Father Geek. |
It's true that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has called himself a "democratic socialist" (3:10 in the video); however, he's clearly stated, "No, I do not believe government should control everything." While his attempts at breaking up the banks will be attacked as socialism from Republicans and even Hillary Clinton supporters, Sanders is closer to President Theodore Roosevelt than the fabricated meaning socialism has become in our political climate. When Republicans call Sanders a socialist, what they really mean is a man courageous enough to act like Presidents Roosevelt and Taft.
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When Republicans call Sanders a socialist, they’re ignoring then-Gov. Jan Brewer's (R) expansion of Medicaid in Arizona, President George W. Bush's $400 billion Medicare bill and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) enrolling in ObamaCare. The word "socialist" is both a political insult and a way of life for conservatives throughout the United States. According to Pew Research, 52 percent of Republicans "say they have benefited from a major entitlement program at some point in their lives" and 85 percent of Republicans believe that Medicare "has been very good/good for the country." CBS News finds that 89 percent of Tea Party advocates disagree with President Obama's expansion of government, but 62 percent of the Tea Party believes that "Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs to taxpayers." In terms of poverty, Forbes writes that Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia and Mississippi (staunchly conservative states that went for GOP nominee MittRomney in 2012) are the poorest states in the nation with "the highest percentages of households earning less than $24,999 annually."
As a result, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia and Mississippi have the highest number of food stamp recipients in the nation. In terms of the poorest region of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal states that one recent study "points to the South — where a majority (59%) of counties now struggle with both high poverty and inequality." Although the GOP consistently works to cut government assistance programs, most Southern states have voted for a Republican presidential candidate consistently since 1972. Any expansion of government assistance programs is derided as "socialism" by Republicans, yet many conservatives fail to see the irony in a sign that reads, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!"
With Sanders against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has made an issue of America's shrinking manufacturing sector, President Reagan's policies mirrored the concerns of Vermont's junior senator. When the auto industry needed government intervention, Reagan stated, "I have proposed an acceleration in the rate of government purchases of motor vehicles." As for the belief that Reagan kept government away from industry, the Gipper also stated: "The U.S. Government will spend about $100 million more on government vehicles this fiscal year, which, while helping the industry, will also lower the government's operating costs." In addition, a New York Times article highlights that Reagan was always willing to utilize government's influence in order to help business:
Reagan often broke with free-trade dogma. He arranged for voluntary restraint agreements to limit imports of automobiles and steel. He provided temporary import relief for Harley-Davidson. He limited imports of sugar and textiles.
In addition to protectionism, Reagan's administration bailed out Chrysler and the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, effectively controlling "over 80 percent of the common stock," according a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) report.
You'll never hear the word "socialist" directed at Reagan, but some of his policies, if advocated by a Democrat, would be viewed as "socialist" by Fox News. Reagan was willing to address many of the negative aspects of free trade publicized by Sanders. Speaking in 1981 to auto workers in Detroit, Reagan said: "And this is where I think government has a role that it has shirked so far, that is, to convince the Japanese that, in one way or another and in their own best interest, the deluge of their cars into the United States must be slowed while our industry gets back on its feet."
Long before George W. Bush's $700 billion financial bailout that "would effectively nationalize an array of mortgages and securities backed by them" as described by The Wall Street Journal, another Republican used government to address the shortcomings of capitalism. Theodore Roosevelt stood up to banks, Standard Oil and powerful business interests. If Fox News were around during TR's tenure in office, he'd be called a "socialist," primarily because, as the Heritage Foundation states, Roosevelt strengthened government control of business:
As [p]resident, he pushed executive powers to new limits, arguing that the rise of industrial capitalism had rendered limited government obsolete.
He took on the captains of industry and argued for greater government control over the economy, pursuing a two-pronged strategy of antitrust prosecutions and regulatory control.
Is Sanders the reincarnation of Roosevelt? Sanders has championed environmental causes, stands up to Wall Street and today's "captains of industry," and wants to break up the banks. Similar to Standard Oil and other monopolies during Roosevelt's era, the top six banks today control 60 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, which is why Sanders feels the need to ensure that no bank is too big to fail anymore. Even Bill O’Reilly had a difficult time in one segment disagreeing with Sanders, and O’Reilly even admitted to Sanders (2:50 in the video), "You know Teddy Roosevelt, did a little bit of what you're suggesting."
Roosevelt presided over 45 antitrust actions, while William Howard Taft presided over 90 Sherman Antitrust Act lawsuits, and both Republican presidents weren't afraid to utilize government power in order to regulate industries. There are many other examples in U.S. history of government intervention in the economy, from President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to President Nixon's price controls. As for Nixon, few people would ever call him a socialist, but he stated the following in an address to the nation:
Therefore, I have decided that a new system for export controls on food products is needed — a system designed to hold the price of animal feedstuffs and other grains in the American market to levels that will make it possible to produce meat and eggs and milk at prices you can afford.
In contrast, Sanders doesn't want to implement price controls like Nixon, or nationalize a bank like Reagan or engage in a wide-ranging series of antitrust lawsuits like Roosevelt and Taft.
Vermont's junior senator isn't a socialist in the manner that the word is used to demean politicians in America. His economic goals are rational ones: ensuring we don't end up with yet another financial collapse and decreasing rampant wealth inequality. However, if anyone ever hurls the word as an epithet at Sanders, the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, Reagan and other GOP presidents should instantly come to mind.
Yes, Sanders has called himself a "democratic socialist"; however, this label is entirely different from the term most people ascribe to nationalizing banks or putting government in control of the economy. In reality, it only means an emphasis primarily on reducing wealth inequality, limiting corporate excesses and ensuring people have rights like healthcare. As a senator and representative in Congress, he's put the philosophy to use within the parameters of America's economic system, not some imaginary economic world that will eventually be created by his detractors. This philosophy is more in line with Theodore Roosevelt and other GOP icons than Karl Marx — so when Fox News and others refer to his reference of being a democratic socialist, they'll most likely completely misuse the term.
Goodman is an author and a journalist. |
A grand jury indicted a Prince George's County police officer on assault and misconduct in office charges. Prosecutors say the officer used excessive force when he hit a suspect with his squad car during a chase. Prince George's County Bureau Chief Tracee Wilkins reports. (Published Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016)
A grand jury indicted a Maryland police officer for hitting a suspect with his police cruiser in June, the Prince George’s County state’s attorney said.
Officer Juan Hernandez was one of two officers who responded to a report of an armed person June 13. The other officer chased the suspect on foot while Hernandez followed him in his car onto an open field where he struck the suspect, police said.
Prosecutors believe the action, which was caught on the camera in the police cruiser, was unnecessary, and a grand jury decided it was criminal.
“While it is never a good day when we have to prosecute one of our own, it is important that those we serve understand that we will hold law enforcement accountable when their actions go above and beyond what is necessary,” State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said in a news release.
Police suspended Hernandez the day of the incident.
"The Prince George’s County Police Department presented this case to the State’s Attorney’s Office for consideration of criminal charges," Chief Hank Stawinski said in a news release. "I expect our officers to serve this community in a professional manner at all times."
Hernandez is charged with second-degree assault and misconduct.
The suspect did not need medical treatment.
No weapon was found.
Hernandez has been with the department for 11 years. |
The rise of Facebook as a news source
News bias on the social network could have dramatic consequences for the news consumed across the world. Recent research from the Pew Center showed that 63 per cent of Americans that are on Facebook accessed news through the social site in 2015, up from 47 per cent in 2013.
In fact, the research found that politics was particularly important to Facebook users - 32 per cent of Facebook users post about politics and government, while 61 per cent of Americans between 20-35 years old got their political news from Facebook every week.
It's clear news is a priority: the company has rolled out a range of tools designed to make news consumption on Facebook even easier, including Instant Articles, Live Video, and Save for Later, and an updated newsfeed algorithm that prioritises the quality of articles and length of time spent reading them.
How the Trending list works
The Trending topics are surfaced by algorithms that identify recently spiking keywords, and are also personalised for each user by a different algorithm - location and interests all play a role in what you see.
Although the Trending review team doesn't manually select sources or content, they do write topic descriptions and double-check each trending topic.
According to ex-Facebook workers, the Trending team would also allegedly "inject" stories that the team deemed important, even if they weren't actually trending on the site, it has been alleged.
Both the disappearance of flight MH370, the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US were said to have been "injected" into the Trending side bar.
"We would get yelled at if it was all over Twitter and not on Facebook," said a former curator.
Another ex-curator said: "If a story looked like it had enough news sites covering it, we could inject it - even if it wasn't naturally trending."
Facebook allegedly made sure its employees were very careful about over-promoting stories related to the social network itself in the Trending box. The company has denied claims that it uses its influence to manipulate the democratic process.
News curators working for the social network have access to a list of stories trending on the site, according to employees that worked at the company until the end of 2015. They choose the stories that they think are most interesting, summarise them, write a headline, and then post them to the Trending module.
Another former curator said: "It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is."
Facebook isn't the only Silicon Valley giant that has developed a news curation team. Twitter now has a team of journalists working behind its Moments section, and Apple has hired journalists to put together Apple News. |
New Delhi: Women in combat roles is all set to become a reality with the Ministry of Defence on Saturday giving its nod to induction of women into the combat stream of the Indian Air Force.
The decision means women would soon be flying fighter jets of the Indian Air Force.
As per a Defence Ministry statement, the first women pilots in the fighter stream of IAF will be selected from the current batch at the Air Force Academy.
Also Read: IAF to induct women pilots in fighter stream, says Air Chief Arup Raha
"This progressive step is in keeping with the aspirations of Indian women and is in line with contemporary trends in armed forces of developed nations," the ministry said.
It said that the performance of women, inducted into transport and helicopter streams of the IAF, has been "praiseworthy" and at par with their male colleagues.
Earlier this week, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had directed the three Service Chiefs to come out with a detailed report encapsulating the ways in which role of women can be increased in armed forces besides the challenges and the infrastructural changes needed in this regard.
Also Read: Navy pitches for women pilots but no combat role yet
Parrikar, who has been batting for enhanced role of women even in combat positions, had also met the three Service Chiefs recently to discuss the issue.
Just days ago, Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha had announced that his force had moved a proposal for recruiting women as fighter pilots.
Shortly after, Navy Chief Admiral RK Dhowan had also said that the Navy is looking at the possibility of recruiting women as pilots for its surveillance aircraft. However, he had ruled out combat role for women in the force for the time being due to government rules.
Till recently, the three Services had been cold to the idea of having women in combat roles and cited a number of reasons ranging from deployment issues to lodging and physical parameters. |
Doug Jones made an appeal for "decency" to prevail over partisanship. Deeply conservative Alabama apparently listened, overturning a quarter-century of voting habits to elect him on Tuesday night in a stunning rebuff of the president, of an anti-establishment insurgency and of sexual harassment in Congress, Alabama politicos said.
Jones, a former prosecutor, became the first Democrat in 25 years from the deeply red state to be elected to the U.S. Senate seat, edging out his Republican rival Roy Moore, an accused child molester and Bible-quoting former judge, in a test of the limits of political tribalism.
Jones's upset victory on reliably red soil suggested Moore's alleged sexual predation of teen girls when the ex-jurist was in his thirties may have been too much for Republican voters to stomach.
Moore denies the allegations.
'Voters will only be pushed so far'
"Turnout didn't decide the election," tweeted Republican Alabama strategist Blake Harris, noting that some 22,000 votes were recorded as write-ins for alternative candidates. "Republicans who showed up but who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Moore decided it."
"This shows there are limitations to partisanship. Even in a Republican state," Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster, said from Jones's Birmingham victory party. "Voters will only be pushed so far. And then they push back. That's what happened tonight."
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore pauses as he addresses supporters at his election night party in Montgomery, Ala. Moore's loss spells trouble for the so-called Trump effect. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
He said Alabamians were tired of being "embarrassed" by politicians.
For U.S. President Donald Trump, the upset victory by Jones throws into doubt the value of his political capital, with the commander-in-chief now 0-2 in Alabama Senate races. Trump supported Republican candidate Luther Strange in the primary before Strange lost to Moore. Trump then endorsed Moore, to no avail.
The result spells trouble for the so-called Trump effect, said Joseph Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Alabama.
"Donald Trump is not a kingmaker," he said. "He does not have enough influence over voters to change races."
'Earth-shaking for Alabama'
Establishment Republican lawmakers who felt pressured for the sake of their seats to abide by the president's agenda might now feel more emboldened to buck some of his policies, as well as the populist movement within the party, Smith said.
"This changes the calculus for current Republican senators," he said, "because I think they'll be less fearful of primary challenges" being boosted by Breitbart Media rabble rouser Steve Bannon.
The Democratic party has been "dead" in Alabama state-wide elections for a quarter of a century, Smith noted. "So to win this state-wide race is earth-shaking for Alabama."
Political strategist Stephen Bannon speaks at a Moore campaign rally in Midland City, Ala., on Monday. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
"If Steve Bannon and Donald Trump couldn't produce a winner in Alabama, you have to wonder if they can produce a winner anywhere."
Republican Alabama strategist Jonathan Gray sees a clear opportunity for Democrats.
Republicans now have an even slimmer margin for error, with 51 seats to the Democrats' 49. Losing two votes could doom their legislative efforts, including their top legislative priority: Tax reform.
'Realistic path' to victory for Democrats
Meanwhile, Democratic prospects for reclaiming a Senate majority now appear brighter for next year's midterm elections.
To his chagrin, Gray said, Democrats can "absolutely" retake the Senate in November 2018. Republican-held seats in Arizona, Tennessee and Nevada could be in play for Democrats next year.
Supporters celebrate at Jones's election night party. (Marvin Gentry/Reuters)
McCrary, the pollster, said Democrats have at minimum a "realistic path" to a Senate majority, "which, six months ago, was very much in question."
Trump congratulated Jones in a tweet. However, Moore refused to concede defeat in the down-to-the-wire election, even though the numbers required to trigger a recount were "highly unlikely," in the words of Alabama's secretary of state.
Roy Moore is waiting until all votes are counted before admitting Jones win 0:33 |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Bethany Bell says that shots were heard from the farmhouse earlier
Austrian special forces have stormed a farmhouse where a man suspected of killing three policemen and an emergency worker is holed up.
A government spokesman said the house near Melk in Lower Austria was being searched but there is no word on the condition of the suspect.
The man is heavily armed, reported state broadcaster ORF quoting police.
The suspect, who has not been named, had earlier been arrested for poaching but escaped in a stolen police car.
He then fled to his house where he is believed to have a large number of weapons and ammunition.
Around 100 special forces officers had been surrounding the property on the outskirts of Melk, about 90km (55 miles) west of the capital Vienna, ORF reported.
Sporadic shots were earlier fired at officers, who described the situation as "terrible and very explosive".
Police have so far failed to make contact with the gunman, ORF reported, adding that relatives of the suspect have been brought in to help.
As darkness fell, officers from Austria's elite "Cobra" police unit started a search of the farmhouse and surrounding buildings, the Austria Press Agency reported.
Paramedic shot
Police had tried to apprehend the suspect late on Monday after receiving information that he had been poaching.
However, the man - said to be in his mid-50s - reportedly opened fire after driving into a ditch near the town of Annaberg, injuring a police officer who later died in hospital.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Armed police quickly sealed off the area
A paramedic was shot dead as he tried to help the officer, and a second policeman was injured, reports said.
The gunman then fled on foot, killing a second police officer and taking a third hostage.
He stole their police car and drove, with his captive, some 60km to his farmhouse.
Officials later reported that they had discovered the body of the third policeman at the farm.
A large section of the surrounding area has been cordoned off, with police in body armour and carrying machine-guns manning road-blocks.
Armoured police vehicles have also been deployed.
An earlier information blackout was lifted after information was leaked by the media. |
OFFICIAL: DONNARUMMA WON'T RENEW
By Football Italia staff
Gianluigi Donnarumma will not renew his contract, announced Milan after a crunch meeting with agent Mino Raiola, so Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain step forward.
The 18-year-old came up through their youth academy and was launched into the first team at the age of 16.
“I preferred rather than to release a statement, considering the focus on the so-called Donnarumma case, that I would update you immediately on the meeting I just had a few minutes ago with Mino Raiola,” said CEO Marco Fassone in a hastily-arranged Press conference.
“Raiola informed us that Donnarumma has made a definitive decision not to renew the contract with Milan. It is a definitive decision, made by the player.
“I want to remind you all that 10 days ago (director Massimiliano) Mirabelli made a very important proposal to the player, one even stronger than the reports that appeared in the various papers.
“The player evaluated it and made some evaluations that were not just economic, but also technical and professional, and he told us that he does not wish to renew the contract, so his time with Milan will therefore conclude by June 30, 2018.
“We were taken by surprise, as we had confidently hoped Donnarumma would be the goalkeeper taking Milan into the future that we could build the team around.
“We trust that we can do our best. Naturally, the decision leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, but now we have to go forward and Milan go forward.”
The contract extension on offer was reported to be worth €4.5m per year plus bonuses, but Raiola wanted to introduce a release clause for as little as €10m if Milan failed to qualify for the Champions League.
There are now already reports that Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid are offering €6m salaries. |
HEX Update – Warriors Got Talent
This week, we’re getting a double hit from Director of Game Theory, Ben Stoll.
Hi HEXers! As you saw yesterday, we’re patching next week Tuesday. Patching starts at 3 AM Pacific, so new tournament registration will close at 11 PM Pacific on Monday, August 24th.
Now that that’s out of the way let’s take a look at the second spoiler that players were able to see at Gen Con: the Warrior talent tree.
CLASS TALENTS
As you may or may not have caught wind of, we recently revealed the new talent system for the PvE campaign and we also spoiled one of our talent trees: the Warrior! I want to talk to you a little about the Class Talent system, which is a very important feature of the big campaign launch. Before we begin though, I want to throw out the warning that everything is still in development and subject to change. So, please keep that in mind as you read through this article.
MIGHT
As you may have heard on one of our streams last year, we were tinkering with a leveling system where you would start each dungeon at level 1 and would be more session-based using a mechanic we called “Might”. Well, the Might system is gone.
Not only is our current class talent system better for the game, it was clear from player responses that a traditional leveling system was what players expected.
PHILOSOPHY
It’s very important to us that the campaign feels like an RPG. As you’ll find when you finally get your hands on it, we generally want systems that blend everything you love about TCGs and everything you love about RPGs into something that is simultaneously excitingly new and comfortably familiar. Class Talents are no exception.
Part of feeling like an RPG is creating your own character, watching them grow and level up progressively over an entire campaign, and making impactful decisions that determine your character’s development.
Of course, the first impactful decision is which race and class you choose. Each race and class has many strengths and weaknesses, and while I want any player to be able to enjoy any class, each class plays very differently from the others. This should be apparent even before looking at the talent grids, just by virtue of the extreme differences in starting hand and health totals!
CREATING A CHARACTER
When you create a character, you will choose from one of 8 races (Coyotle, Human, Orc, Elf, Necrotic, Vennen, Dwarf, Shin’hare) and one of 6 classes (Warrior, Mage, Cleric, Ranger, Warlock, Rogue). From there you will embark on the campaign, where your specific race and class will color moments of the campaign, as the denizens of Entrath sometimes have very different attitudes towards one another based on these affiliations. There will even be certain adventures that will be exclusive to Ardent or Underworld characters.
(Right-mouse-click, Save Link As…)
Every race has six unique racial traits. You’ll get these at the very start, as these are defined by your heritage and upbringing, not by becoming a progressively more experienced adventurer!
Every class has its own talent tree (you’ll see the Warrior tree by right-mouse-clicking the image above and selecting “save link as…”). Note that this isn’t how the Warrior talents will appear in game. This was just how the talents were presented at Gen Con and best fit onto the display. You’ll unlock more of these as you level up, as they represent your character learning new skills, experiencing new things, and commanding a stronger presence.
Beyond that, every race-class combination (48) has two or three powerful unique starting traits that are specific only to them.
Creative ownership and combinatorial decision making has always been at the core of HEX, and pairing a given race with a given class is a decision that I want to be as fun as it is important. Some of these pairings, like our Orc Warrior here, will be simply pairing two powerful and complimentary ability sets together, while other pairings might more fundamentally change the way your class plays. You’ll absolutely feel the difference between an Orc and Elf Cleric.
HOW YOUR CLASS TALENTS WORK
After you start the campaign, you’ll shortly gain enough EXP to hit level 2. At that point, and at every level your character gains through level 20, you’ll earn one talent point that you can spend in your talent grid. For levels 21 through 25 your character will earn a permanent +1 Health buff.
The top two rows of your talent tree will be immediately visible and accessible. You’ll start with your Charge Power, and you can always spend a talent point on any talent in your top row to select that talent. From there, you can only select talents if they are:
Adjacent to another talent you’ve already selected.
Connected to that talent with a pathway.
Carving your own journey through your talent tree is a highly customizable experience; we’ve strived and are still striving to make sure the talents are balanced, with the exception of your capstones which are very powerful.
Like I said, at first only your top two rows of talents will be visible and accessible—when you hit level 8 you’ll unlock the next two rows, and at level 15 you’ll unlock the final two rows.
WHAT WILL MY CLASS TALENTS GIVE ME?
Special Class Cards that are shardless so they can be put into any deck.
“Affinity Powers” that support building your deck around a certain theme.
“Passive” Action Bar Powers
“Active” Action Bar Powers
Passive Increases to attributes like Hand Size, Starting Health, and even loot-farm increase.
Really, it could be nearly anything
JUICY TIDBITS ABOUT CHARACTER LEVELING AND CLASS TALENTS:
Level Cap is currently 25
You will be able to have multiple characters, of course
You will be given limited ability to re-spec as your character levels (we want your decisions to have weight, but we don’t you to be stuck from a single decision you regret).
It will be possible to achieve at-will respeccing with max level characters
There are four types of talents: One Point Talents Two Point Talents Free Talents (many of these will offer you a double-edged sword, since they are free) Capstone Talents (they cost multiple points, but they are well worth it—you can also only select ONE capstone talent)
You will automatically unlock Class Gems at Level 8 that are shardless threshold and unique to your class.
You will automatically unlock two other powers as a result of leveling your character that pertain to PvE systems outside of the main campaign.
SO TALENTED
I hope you are as excited to read about class talents as we are to show them to you! I have put all of my heart and soul into them, and the team and I have spent a ton of time to make them as awesome as the rest of the campaign experience is!
BECOMING A GAME DESIGNER: PART 2
I know it’s been a while since our last Game Design article, so if you want a refresher you can check it out here. The goal of that article was largely to get us oriented and give us a little perspective on game design.
This article, like the last one, is more crafted to set you up to be a great game designer, not to give you a bunch of text book information about how to design great games. That said, read carefully between the lines for game design principles that you should take to heart, and allow yourself the openness to be shown new worlds of intellectual perspective. You can learn so much about games just by feeling the ring of truth in a single sentence.
Our next article will finally turn more towards good ‘ol applicable information, featuring broad game design principles as explored through HEX, as well as design principles that make their home specifically in the realm of TCGs.
THREE MAIN INGREDIENTS
Personally, there are three main ingredients that I see determining the quality of game designers. The first ingredient by itself I see frequently in novice game designers, the addition of the second ingredient I see in game designers that are capable of professional work, while the third ingredient is the most subtle and what I see as the key towards mastery of the craft.
So, let’s talk just about the capacity for making art, doing science, and being your best self:
ART: IMAGINATION AND CREATIVITY
Dreaming up cool ideas, telling a story that’s never been told before, and innovating new mechanics are all a big part of game design— unless you’re strictly involved in some of the specifically scientific aspects of game design, such as power level balancing, it is important that you cultivate your creativity.
I’m not going to talk too much about this ingredient here. Partially because it’s the hardest to talk about, the hardest to give advice on, and because I suspect you already have the foundation for this piece if you’re still reading. This first piece, the desire to create art, seems to be the most common primary impulse that first calls us towards game design.
A lot of the creative piece of the puzzle is simply imagination and the exercising of your creative muscles, which you likely already do if you’re a creative person. To exercise your creative muscles, you must create. Consume art. Consume games. Draw pictures. Write. Think up ideas. Write them down. Ask “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Most importantly, start mocking up your games!
You’re creating art, and you want players to have an emotional connection to your work. Think of the affection you have for every deck you build. That’s creative ownership and a way we build the art of expression in HEX. Players can make decisions that feel significantly different than other players. For an example, let’s take a game I have deep affection for and believe is a complete masterpiece: Settlers of Catan. In other words, where you place your road in Settlers of Catan might have some degree of stylistic choice to it, but not enough to really capture the feeling of Creative Ownership. Consider the difference between a control deck and an aggro deck in Hex, however. Creative ownership is also experienced more when the player feels he or she created the interaction instead of having it given to them by the game designers.
Though this first ingredient is where most of us start, it’s also where many get stuck.
Many game designers start with a “cool idea” for a game, and they sort of just fumble out an execution. And I’m not knocking this—it’s a good way to get started, and you may actually have a sound concept for a game; that piece is frequently not out of reach for a fledgling game designer.
The key is that you decide to realize that there are a ton of factors you likely aren’t considering; that your “complete picture” for your game isn’t really complete. And that has nothing to do with the awesomeness of your idea.
Maybe the world really HAS just been waiting for your new deck-builder that also features a roll-&-go style board, or your worker-placement game that finally introduces a thrilling combat element, or your MMORPG that offers a completely original thematic experience by blending fantasy, westerns, and kittens into a world that is profoundly spiritual in tone, yet surprisingly dark in aesthetic, or your party game that’s even MORE shockingly offensive than everything anyone has ever seen before, even in the most shockingly offensive corners of known art and media (!!!).
The ability to dream up cool ideas is not going to be enough to create a great game if the game designer can’t apply scientific principles to ensure that his or her vision actually manifests and is experienced by others the way he or she imagines it optimally in his or her own head.
SCIENCE: THE APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND ANALYSIS OF WORK
“In game design we craft a number of different parts, the sum total of which is our game. Understanding each part, what its function is, what the strengths and weaknesses of its implementation might be, and how it interlocks with the other pieces, is crucial.”
While the next article will give you a bunch of specific knowledge that can be applied towards effectively crafting a game, what’s much more important is actually that you understand how to apply this knowledge, how to work with it effectively.
The bulk of this work sort of goes as follows:
Develop an ever-growing vocabulary of perspectives to consider, both for the entire game and its individual parts. There is you, the player. But, then there are we, the players. People play games for different reasons and two people can experience the same thing but draw contrasting experiences from it. Think about who’s playing your game and what his or her perspective is. Which pieces of your game is each person drawn to?
Learn the relationships of these perspectives—could your six hour game be a party game instead of a strategy game? That intuitively sounds wrong, but let’s understand why: Fans of strategy games are more likely to be core gamers, more likely to be willing to spend more of their free time gaming. Strategy games tend to facilitate opportunities for a sense of an evolving progression across the whole session, whereas many party games feature essentially playing the same game over and over across a number of turns, with the total game’s progression offering very little additional context to those turns to keep them dynamic. This fights against total tolerable playtime.
Ruthlessly consider, implement, and analyze alternatives to any of your design decisions by accessing your vocabulary of perspectives.
And make sure that along the way you get a strong internal feeling (not intellectualized) for these principles—we’ll talk about how to do this later.
Remember, the key is keeping yourself open-minded—there is always a false ceiling to the level of comprehension you can have over a thing. If someone asks us why the usage of dice rolling in Settlers of Catan is effective, we could answer with any of the following three things, completely oblivious to the relevance of the other two—
There is a major moment of tension because the ramifications of each outcome of the die are vastly better or worse for each player. To deepen: There are all sorts of other emotional/social opportunities available because of the unique feeling of two of the four of us benefiting from a roll, three of the four of us benefiting, just one person benefiting—just think of the subtle differences in each of those outcomes. This range gives the game texture, artfulness, makes it more replayable and more nuanced in its penetration of your emotional life.
Rolling dice in and of itself is a fun method of randomization: It’s obvious if you’ve ever rolled dice—but ask yourself why? I can think of a litany of reasons that contribute to the magic of dice rolling. If you just train your mind to probe and plumb these things, you will too!
The luck element allows weaker players to win, ensuring that less skilled players don’t become disenfranchised. The less skilled player must have incentives to play the game a second time against the more skilled player or else there’s no game played at all.
We must always be sleuthing around, looking for more subtle factors, more subtle perspectives, to consider our decisions from:
While it may be fine for us to sort of just put a bunch of moving pieces together initially and see how it ends up, we ultimately must propose multiple possible executions of every given part and intelligently think through the ramifications of each option on the player’s experience.
The first thing we have to do for our foundation is also one of the things that’s easiest for the fledgling designer to miss, and skipping over it, he or she builds the whole house wrong. We have to figure out what questions we should be asking. When you first start doing game design, you likely won’t know all the questions to ask, but there is a lot of rhetoric out there to help you. Who is your intended audience? What sort of experiences do they like, does it line up with the experience you envision? What is an optimal number of players, of game duration to facilitate that experience? What sort of intellectual property or thematics pair well with this experience, or are appealing to the intended audience? What are the component costs of your game? If you’re trying to make a game a commercial entity make sure you consider stuff like production costs.
Once you’ve asked the right questions and come up with the right goals, you’ll have to play-test and analyze your testing to determine if your goals are being met. Then you’ll have to make changes to your rules to get closer to fulfilling your goals. That has a lot to do with game development, which is highly scientific, but we won’t cover it here due to the fact that it would be an entire article onto itself. Another time.
But one of the reasons to mock up and play-test your game is that you may find that what actually makes it fun isn’t what you anticipated; or maybe you thought that the thing to emphasize was the creative satisfaction of building a deck, but it turned out that what people are really latching onto and finding unique in your game is the relatively high variance of the hand you draw. Maybe you center the card file more around celebrating explosive moments and less around crafting a strategy.
One final tidbit: I find that Excel in particular is a great tool for mocking up board games and for learning to think structurally. Also, at least a little bit of math is inevitable for much of the realm of game design. In fact, Excel is the only piece of software that I have sentimental feelings for <3.
SELF: KNOWING YOURSELF, KNOWING OTHERS, ALWAYS GROWING
You cannot simply try to make great art and to do great science; you must strive to become a great artist and to become a great scientist. What this means is that there is more to game design than turning thoughts into ideas and game components. The parts of your mind that drive these core actions of game design must be nurtured independently in order to optimally carry out their function for game design.
Let me talk about a few of the attributes that prime your mind for good game design:
Open Mind, Open Heart
Even the most able-minded and scientifically skilled individual must come to realize that game design is a craft that deals with the application of intellectually constructed concepts that are learnable. Like with any other craft, you don’t know all of these concepts and perspectives (whether they’re widely known, commonly accepted, uncommonly accepted, specific to a given genre of game or applicable across all gaming experiences) when you first start making games. Just the realization that there is surely a ton of useful stuff for you to learn will propel you ahead of most amateur game designers. Following up and actually trying to learn it will take you even further. There is so much good rhetoric, much of it freely available online, by master level game designers from popular games or game companies.
Of course, even just “learning” or “reading about” these game design principles, and understanding them on an intellectual level, doesn’t necessarily cement them as an able tool in your tool kit. You have to apply the principle, work with it, and understand it at its essence so you can see the ways in which it is pliable. You have to feel the truth of the concept on an empathic level; every principle applies ultimately in some way to the experience of the player, and you have to strive to cultivate not just an intellectual, but a feeling sense of empathy with the way the principle impacts the player. To do this itself requires an open mind. To see that you have to do this is the first step and requires an extraordinarily open mind. Many people take it as a given that they are doing this implicitly, but unless you thoroughly check and inspect all of your assumptions, you may be following an instinct to serve the experience that is better for you as a player, and you don’t necessarily comprehensively represent the intended audience. And so when you start play-testing your games, be a social scientist, and make your play-test session about understanding your game better and understanding people better, not about getting a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on your game. Don’t go into a play-test session unconsciously seeking the comfort of “good feedback.” Even more dangerous than the unconditionally positive reviews from friends, is the feedback from your “pretty smart friends who are avid gamers and think they understand game design, but don’t have a clue.” Again, it sounds harsh—but the gaming world is filled to the brim with very intelligent people who actively think they understand enough about how games work to give feedback about their experience but don’t, and they will confidently give you misinformation.
Self Understanding
All game designers can be described in terms of strengths and weaknesses in various areas of the craft. Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, and why you’re strong and weak in those areas, is an invaluable asset in optimizing your game design work. Many new or merely decent game designers aren’t yet seasoned and mature enough to effectively gauge their confidence level in their various opinions—they are always all in on championing their opinion. But nearly every great game designer I know will tell you they’re anywhere from nearly certain, to very confident, to somewhat confident, to really not sure, or whatever. And further, they’ll be able to tell you why they feel that way. Where exactly their uncertainty lies, and why. That is the sort of person you can collaborate with.
You will have an easier time understanding your own strengths and weaknesses if you come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of those you collaborate with. Don’t make the mistake of lazily assuming every game designer you work with is equally skilled in all areas; don’t contribute to turning your collaborative game design into a haphazard democracy that yields mediocre results by ignoring the benefits of a team that is specialized in different areas. And don’t forget the part about humility from the first article! Always be humble and you’ll be amazed at the things you can learn for free.
Empathy
In addition to reading game design theory and making games on their own, the third thing I always tell game designers to do to work on their game design career is to pay attention to their own experience while they’re gaming. Remember, the game designer is crafting a specific experience for you, but they’re not necessarily trying to have that experience describe its inner workings to you. Your job as a game designer is to step outside of the immersion of the experience and observe yourself having the experience. Actually getting in touch with the experience you yourself are having is the best way to really understand it on a deep level. Normally, you get to the boss of a stage in some video game, and you’re focused on one goal: dealing enough damage to that sucker before he envelops you in fireballs. By default, you don’t have enough mental bandwidth to devote to self-examination. You’ve got a full mental plate of timing jumps and aiming your weapon. But you need to play with a new attitude. First thing is to notice your enjoyment, that you’re making a conscious choice to play this game. You may notice that you enjoy this boss fight. Then to go a little deeper, you note that you’re excited, maybe you feel some tension, and that’s why you’re having fun. Then you figure out why you feel that way, it’s because if you die you’ll have to start over, which would suck, so it’s creating a tension and an excitement. You also remember that if you win you’ll progress, maybe get a reward, a new story beat, and that is also contributing to the excitement. Then you realize that you just learned that tension is probably the single most important emotional component to many different types of game, and that a situation with two highly polarized outcomes both seeming possible in a given moment is the best surefire way to create tension, which means you just learned something really important about game design!
Once you understand how games affect you, you’ll be able to start to see how they affect others. Some experiences found in games are for a very narrow audience, but many experiences are experienced similarly by players everywhere, and so understanding yourself will do a huge service to you understanding others.
PASSION
Well, that’s a lot of summary info about what I think it takes to do game design, but how does one know if game design is really something they should pursue?
I think that sometimes our passions are love at first sight—we have an experience or an unshakable intuition that we are called to something. But for me and game design, it wasn’t like this until multiple years after I started working as a game designer, until I made significant progress and really got my bearings.
Game Design is an unbelievably deep, unbelievably complex, unbelievably demanding and infinitely masterable discipline.
The deeper you throw yourself into it, the more you can come to appreciate the sheer scope, the unexplored depths, the powerful ramifications of game design—all of this is what causes me to hold game design in a sort of reverence, what makes me so passionate about it. That, and the pure bliss of being right in the flow of design with a sense that you know where you’re going. But I’m getting carried away. None of that was apparent to me when I excitedly set out to “make some TCG cards for a LIVING!?” and it likely won’t be to many fledgling game designers.
I think that the only certain prerequisite for being a game designer is a love of games, not necessarily a love of game design. The love of game design will reveal itself to you or it won’t, but first you may have to do a little exploration.
Which is why I would say the second prerequisite for being a game designer is at least a curiosity to try it out. You don’t have yearn passionately all your life to be a game designer (although if you have, great!), but you probably have to at least genuinely be curious to find out if you like it.
NOW WHAT DO I DO?
That’s all for now! For those of you who that are still hungry for technical and applicable knowledge, we’ll be giving away tons of info about how to craft trading card games in our next article. But I can’t emphasize how much more important it is to prepare your mind for the work than it is to read a bunch of knowledge. No matter what, I hope you got something out of the article!
Thanks for reading!
VIP NEXT WEEKEND
August VIP weekend is happening August 28th through the 30th. Since last month’s event was flipped to Sealed Deck, this month’s is Constructed. This is the last month to earn Carnasaurus AA and Valiant Escort AA, so make sure to get yours!
Friday: 10:00 AM, 7:00 PM
Saturday: 3:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 6:00 PM
Sunday: 9:00 AM
Players: 16 minimum – 256 maximum
Format: 4 rounds of Swiss
Entry fee: VIP ticket + 500 plat
Prizes:
4 wins: 10 packs / 2 Carnasaurus AA / 2 Valiant Escort AA
3 wins: 6 packs / 1 Carnasaurus AA / 1 Valiant Escort AA
2 wins: 3 packs / 1 Carnasaurus AA / 1 Valiant Escort AA
1 win: 2 packs
0 wins: 1 pack
That’s all for this week. Please leave any questions or comments in the forums, and don’t forget to Follow us on Twitter, Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitch, and register on our forums.
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THE tough-talking president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, boasts of killing people, ordering executions or wanting to kill someone about as often as Donald Trump boasts of being rich. But as with Mr Trump, it is hard to know how much to trust Mr Duterte’s boasts. At best, that makes the boss of the Philippines’ police and prosecutors not only a liar, but a cheerleader for extra-judicial killings. At worst, it makes him a criminal who should be in prison, not the presidential palace.
During the many years Mr Duterte was mayor of Davao, the biggest city in the southern part of the country, a vigilante group known as the Davao Death Squad gunned down drug suspects and others whom the gunmen thought were criminals. Mr Duterte has at times seemed to admit involvement in the group and at others denied its existence. In September a former member of the outfit testified to a congressional committee that, as mayor of Davao, Mr Duterte had ordered him and others to kill. Mr Duterte, through a spokesman, denied the accusation.
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As a candidate, Mr Duterte promised to “end crime” within six months of taking office by tossing the bodies of criminals into Manila Bay to fatten the fish—a vow so swaggering that it seemed comical at the time. Yet since he became president in June, around 6,000 suspected drug dealers and users have in fact been killed without the benefit of a trial. He has also threatened to kill suspects’ lawyers and human-rights advocates who oppose his bloody but popular war on drugs.
This week he crossed a new Rubicon: he admitted to having killed people himself. “In Davao I used to do it personally,” he told a group of businessmen, “just to show the guys if I can do it, why can’t you?...I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”
Did he really kill anyone? Who can say? Just a few hours before this admission, he protested, “I am not a killer.” Mr Duterte’s spokesman has grown adept at walking back or reinterpreting his Grand Guignol statements.
Even if Mr Duterte has killed suspected criminals, would anyone dare bring charges against him? It is unlikely. No prosecutor wants to find himself suddenly out of office, missing or bobbing lifelessly in Manila Bay. |
The Kings released Mathieu Garon from his training camp tryout, which opens the door for Ben Scrivens to serve as Jonathan Quick’s backup in 2013-14.
Though evaluations aren’t based on small sample sizes, Scrivens appeared to solidify his status as Quick’s understudy with a strong performance in just over 32 minutes of action last night, stopping 17 of 18 shots in a 3-2 loss to the Colorado Avalanche. The Kings led 2-1 when he gave way to Garon.
Though Scrivens is under contract at a palatable $550,000 and was acquired from Toronto as part of the Jonathan Bernier trade that also netted Matt Frattin and a second round draft pick, he still had to prove himself through competition in order to earn a spot on the team’s roster. There was a line of thought that Garon, a 35-year-old veteran who tended goal in Los Angeles from 2005-07, was more comfortable in a backup role and earning minimal starts, while Scrivens, a 27-year-old goaltender who split time with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Marlies over the last two seasons, would be more comfortable in a role in which he drew more minutes. Ultimately, the Kings decided on forging ahead with the goaltender who appeared sturdier in his preseason action and will provide the team higher quality minutes in games in which Jonathan Quick needs a night off.
Last season, Scrivens was 7-9-2 with a 2.69 goals against average and a .915 save percentage over 20 games with the Maple Leafs. He has appeared in 1,696 minutes through his NHL career. |
Charles Hurt: Chicago Is So Bad Obama Can’t Move Back There WIth His Daughters (VIDEO)
The Obama legacy… Poverty, Riots, Food Stamps, ISIS and Rising Homicide Rates
Conservative Charles Hurt blasted Obama as he attempts to take a victory lap in his final days in office.
Oblivious Obama pens farewell as world burns down around him
The former community organizer has been a dismal failure – probably the worst US president of the last century.
Obama is planning a farewell address next week in Chicago – a place he has decided to move away from after he leaves office on January 19th.
Chicago records 762 homicides in 2016, up 57 percent from previous year https://t.co/TDXzzikKZW pic.twitter.com/4m2tHaXgSb — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 3, 2017
Charles Hurt: Imagine what it must be like to be him and all he’s tried to accomplish over the last 8 years has been completely, totally rejected by the voters but he’s being replaced by a guy who aims to come in and piecemeal and undo it all… If you look around the world, find me one place either in America or in the world where things are better off today than they were 8 years ago? I mean Chicago is so bad he can’t even go back and live there with his daughter, with his family.
Via Varney and Co.: |
GRINNELL, Iowa (CNN) -- The college student who was told what question to ask at one of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign events said "voters have the right to know what happened" and she wasn't the only one who was planted.
Student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff said a staffer told her what to ask at a campaign event for Sen. Hillary Clinton.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old sophomore at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, said giving anyone specific questions to ask is "dishonest," and the whole incident has given her a negative outlook on politics.
Gallo-Chasanoff, whose story was first reported in the campus newspaper, said what happened was simple: She said a senior Clinton staffer asked if she'd like to ask the senator a question after an energy speech the Democratic presidential hopeful gave in Newton, Iowa, on November 6.
"I sort of thought about it, and I said 'Yeah, can I ask how her energy plan compares to the other candidates' energy plans?'" Gallo-Chasanoff said Monday night.
According to Gallo-Chasanoff, the staffer said, " 'I don't think that's a good idea, because I don't know how familiar she is with their plans.' " Watch the student speak out about question »
He then opened a binder to a page that, according to Gallo-Chasanoff, had about eight questions on it.
"The top one was planned specifically for a college student," she added. "It said 'college student' in brackets and then the question."
Topping that sheet of paper was the following: "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?" Watch the student ask the planted question »
And while she said she would have rather used her own question, Gallo-Chasanoff said she didn't have a problem asking the campaign's because she "likes to be agreeable," adding that since she told the staffer she'd ask their pre-typed question she "didn't want to go back on my word."
Clinton campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee said, "This is not acceptable campaign process moving forward. We've taken steps to ensure that it never happens again." Elleithee said Clinton had "no idea who she was calling on."
Gallo-Chasanoff wasn't so sure.
"I don't know whether Hillary knew what my question was going to be, but it seemed like she knew to call on me because there were so many people, and ... I was the only college student in that area," she said. Watch the full interview »
In a separate statement in response to the campus article, the campaign said, "On this occasion a member of our staff did discuss a possible question about Sen. Clinton's energy plan at a forum. ... This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again."
Gallo-Chasanoff said she wasn't the only person given a question.
"After the event," she said, "I heard another man ... talking about the question he asked, and he said that the campaign had asked him to ask that question."
The man she referenced prefaced his question by saying that it probably didn't have anything to do with energy, and then posed the following: "I wonder what you propose to do to create jobs for the middle-class person, such as here in Newton where we lost Maytag."
A Maytag factory in Newton recently closed, forcing hundreds of people out of their jobs.
During the course of the late-night interview on Grinnell's campus, Gallo-Chasanoff also said that the day before the school's newspaper, Scarlet and Black, printed the story, she wanted the reporter to inform the campaign out of courtesy to let them know it would be published.
She said the "head of publicity for the campaign," a man whose name she could not recall, had no factual disputes with the story. But, she added, a Clinton intern spoke to her to say the campaign requested she not talk about the story to any more media outlets and that if she did she should inform a staffer.
"I'm not under any real obligation to do that, and I haven't talked to [the campaign] anymore," Gallo-Chasanoff said, adding that she doesn't plan to.
"If what I do is come and just be totally truthful, then that's all anyone can ask of me, and that's all I can ask of myself. So I'll feel good with what I've done. I'll feel like I've done the right thing."
The Clinton campaign's acknowledgment that it planted a question reinforces a widely held criticism of the senator -- that she is not entirely honest, said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst.
"It's the same criticism often made of her husband," Schneider said. "Most Americans never felt Bill Clinton was honest and trustworthy, even when he got elected in 1992 -- with only 43 percent of the vote. His critics called him 'Slick Willy.' ... Will her critics start referring to the New York senator as 'Slick Hillary?' "
Asked if this experience makes her less likely to support Clinton's presidential bid, Gallo-Chasanoff, an undecided voter, said, "I think she has a lot to offer, but I -- this experience makes me look at her campaign a little bit differently."
"The question and answer sessions -- especially in Iowa -- are really important. That's where the voters get to ... have like a real genuine conversation with this politician who could be representing them."
While she acknowledged "it's possible that all campaigns do these kind of tactics," she said that doesn't make it right.
"Personally I want to know that I have someone who's honest representing me."
A second person has a story similar to Gallo-Chasanoff's. Geoffrey Mitchell of Hamilton, Illinois, on the Iowa border, said the Clinton campaign wanted him to ask a certain question at an Iowa event in April.
"He asked me if I would ask Sen. Clinton about ways she was going to confront the president on the war in Iraq, specifically war funding," said Geoffrey Mitchell, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. "I told him it was not a question I felt comfortable with."
No questions were taken at the event. Elleithee said this incident was different from what happened with Gallo-Chasanoff in Newton. Elleithee said the staffer "bumped into someone he marginally knew" and during a conversation with Mitchell, "Iraq came up." Elleithee denied the campaign tried to plant him as a friendly questioner in the audience.
Mitchell said he had never met the staffer before the event.
Former presidential adviser David Gergen said the front-runner's campaign could take a hit from the incident.
"When a campaign plants a question, it's a pretty minor infraction of the rules -- like a parking ticket," Gergen said. "The problem here is it feeds a damaging perception of Hillary Clinton that she can't quite be trusted." E-mail to a friend
All About Iowa • Hillary Clinton |
Steve Cohen writes:
We have been developing a suite of programs in C++ which allow us to do Bayesian hierarchical regression and logit/probit models on marketing data. These efforts have included the use of high performance computing tools like nVidia’s CUDA and the new OpenCL standard, which allow parallel processing of Bayesian models. Our software is very, very fast – even on databases that are ½ terabyte in size. The software still needs many additions and improvements and a person with the right skill set will have the chance to make a significant contribution.
My [Cohen’s] firm is looking for strong candidates to help us in developing software and analyzing data using Bayesian methods.
Here’s the job description he sent:
Bayesian statistician and C++ programmer
The company
In4mation Insights is a marketing research, analytics, and consulting firm which operates on the leading-edge of our industry. Our clients are Fortune 500 companies and major management consulting firms.
We solve tough business problems with quantitative creativity, results-oriented and powerful models, robust response tools and techniques, and uncommon know-how.
We need talented, creative, superior thinkers and leaders to join us and to help create an organization that will become the one that clients will want to work with and that people will want to work for.
We are located in Needham, Massachusetts, just 20 minutes from downtown Boston. We offer competitive salary, health/dental care, and a 401K program.
The position
We are searching for an experienced statistician/developer who knows both Bayesian statistics AND programming in C++.
For Bayesian statistics, the candidate MUST have experience with:
• MCMC methods, including Gibbs sampling, Metropolis-Hastings sampling, and slice sampling
• Econometrics and/or mathematical statistics, with strong knowledge of regression and choice models (e.g. logit, probit, tobit)
As a developer, you MUST know:
• C++ exceptionally well
• R and/or S-Plus
• Knowledge of SAS is helpful, but not required
In addition to statistical software development, the position involves aiding in statistical modeling of large transactional databases. Consultation with other staff and clients on interpretation and analysis of advanced models is also part of this job.
Next steps
If you are interested in this position, please send an updated resume with salary requirements to [email protected]. See our website www.in4ins.com for additional details about the company.
Please highlight for us:
• Your statistical experience
• Experience with Bayesian estimation methods
• Experience with C++
• Experience in developing production-level software |
Newly surfaced photo of FBI spy-plane N326PS
Follow Sam on Twitter.
The FBI flew 48 surveillance aircraft over American cities for a total of 143 flights from September 1st – 7th. We wrote last week that the then current total was a “high benchmark.” It looks as though the first week of September out did that sentiment.
Burke, Virginia was concentrated on so heavily that not a single day went by without surveillance aircraft overhead. Communities to the southwest of Washington D.C. frequently are overflown and circled by these aircraft.
The states of Texas, New Jersey and New York saw surveillance aircraft overhead each day from the 1st through the 7th.
The only day when there was no aerial surveillance by the FBI over California, according to this audit, was Sunday the 6th. It is possible that tracking data was missing from this day.
Such an active aerial surveillance operation, when concentrated in smaller areas (such as Burke Virginia last week), is called persistent surveillance. It is a most invasive type of surveillance, such that it is said to monitor the very “pattern of life,” of areas underneath.
Readers are more than likely aware of National Security Agency spying and how simple metadata from cellphone activity can be used to determine a great deal about an individual or network of people.
Coupling this level of aerial surveillance with cellphone data provided by StingRays (which are on-board these spy-planes) yields tremendously intrusive information on those targeted, and those who happened to have their data vacuumed up by these aircraft. Residents of Burke should be alarmed.
Dearborn a community of Detroit, Michigan home to a large Arab American population, is targeted quite frequently by the FBI spy-planes as it was during the last seven day period.
The North Star Post is the only news organization to continue the reporting on this important issue. We are preparing to publicly release new features that will further explain this program to our readers and raise awareness of this surveillance program. Stay tuned.
Follow Sam on Twitter. |
Kaiwan Lewis, a University of South Carolina linebacker transfer and New New Jersey native, has committed to Rutgers following an official visit to campus this past weekend.
"It was the right fit after going over everything from the weekend and things like that," said Lewis, a 6-1, 230-pound soon-to-be senior. "It just felt like it was the best decision for me where I could excel and become a better player and with the opportunities outside of football things like that and a good media market."
Lewis will compete for the opportunity to be in the man in the middle in Rutgers' 4-3 defense.
"I'll be playing Mike linebacker," said Lewis. "I'm gonna go in there and do my best to get the starting spot."
The main thing that stood out to Lewis was the proactive approach of the Rutgers staff in formulating an academic and athletic plan.
"I like the plan that they have for me and how they plan to try to help me the best they can before I even get on campus, so that way I can be ahead of the game and ready to go," he said.
Lewis believes his ability to get to what he sees is what separates him from other collegiate linebackers.
"It's my eyes. I see things and I react very well," he said. "My eyes are definitely a great asset that gets me to the ball."
Lewis held upwards of 20 offers from schools, including Florida State, Florida, Auburn and Arkansas, when he left New Jersey to play for Steve Spurrier at USC in 2012.
He is set to graduate from South Carolina in May and will transfer out for his final year of eligibility.
Lewis played for the Gamecocks as a true freshman and started throughout his sophomore year before succumbing to a knee injury which required surgery. Upon his return his junior year, Lewis played sparingly, and now it appears will move on to life's next challenge on the banks.
"Let's go get this Big Ten championship," he said.
Todderick Hunt may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TodderickHunt. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook. |
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