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On September 29, United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution denouncing the death penalty on consensual same-sex relationships in Geneva. Out of the 47 members, 27 voted in favour of the resolution, seven abstained from voting and 13 countries voted against the resolution. India was one of the countries that voted against the resolution.
The 13 countries that voted against the abolishing of death penalty were Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United State of America and the United Arab Emirates. Currently, there are six countries that enforce the death penalty for homosexuality – Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, as well as some regions of Nigeria and Somalia. The death penalty is a norm in ISIS-controlled areas in northern Iraq and northern Syria. Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and Brunei are countries that enforce the death penalty on homosexuality on paper, but have not carried out executions (that can be verified at least).
This resolution was passed for the “imposition of the death penalty as a sanction for specific forms of conduct, such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations”. This process was undertaken to ensure that the death penalty is not applied in an arbitrary manner in those countries where the death penalty is still legal. The resolution was also passed to address the application of death penalty in cases of adultery, which disproportionately punishes women, and condemns the use of capital punishment against those with mental and intellectual disabilities, pregnant women and those under 18 years of age at the time when the crime was committed.
In this crucial stage, which could immensely influence the development of human rights and its definition, the Indian state has failed to show responsible leadership on an international platform. To put it simply: it seems to relish its ability to take lives. Given India’s track record with selectively condemning people to the death row, in order to satisfy “collective conscience”; this impunity with which the Indian State thinks queer lives are disposable as well, should not come as a surprise.
Also Read: FII’s Statement On The Death Penalty
Home Secretary Rajnath Singh had promised that, “We will state (at an all-party meeting if it is called) that we support Section 377 because we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported.” According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the year 2014 witnessed 1148 cases and year 2015 witnessed 1347 cases lodged under Section 377 of the India Penal Code. 14% of those arrested under Section 377 in 2015 turned out to be minors. Draconian laws like Section 377 leave the LGBTQIA+ community vulnerable to further arbitrary state sponsored violence.
In a country where religion, caste and sexual orientation determine state violence, the very existence of the death penalty places innocent lives at risk. Consequently, the death penalty is applied selectively and neither does capital punishment deter crime. Prosecutors and witnesses are not immune to biases and making mistakes, which ultimately results in innocent human lives being placed at risk.
the state does not have the right to take lives.
A more fundamental issue that needs to be addressed here is that the state does not have the right to take lives. The human right to life is inalienable. When the state ends up killing someone, as citizens, we too are participants in this process of state sponsored murder. We are the “state” as well. In our haste to assuage the “collective conscience” of the country, we end up forgetting that this retribution called capital punishment is just a sanitised sense of vengeance. The idea of assuaging “collective conscience” becomes a path to sidestep the fair means of acquiring justice and ignoring the politics behind who exactly can access law by fair means.
The state views consensual relationships as such a grievous crime where they ultimately end up endangering the creation of the ideal Indian citizen, who is heterosexual and an upper caste Hindu. A citizen who will marry and reproduce accordingly, in his urge to be the ideal Indian citizen. The death penalty will aid in this process of keeping his bloodline and economic conditions homogeneous. Never mind consent, when the state can aid in a process of cleansing. The question arises then, why call ourselves a democracy that sets store by the constitution? Those of us who don’t fit into the ‘ideal citizen’ parameters, i.e not upper caste Hindu and heterosexual, keep in mind that we’re a rupture in the societal fabric of the state, undermining our very right to live.
Also Read: Supreme Court Upholds Death Sentence For All Four Accused In The Nirbhaya Case, But Is Death Penalty Really The Solution?
Featured Image Credit: The Frisky |
BEREA, Ohio — The dominant feeling around the Cleveland Browns the day after the 2016 season ended? Overwhelming optimism.
To a man, players, coaches and front-office types believe this long and miserable season has laid a foundation. Hue Jackson said that this 1-15 finish is different because it set up the future. The Browns are proud that they did not quit, that they fought to the end in overtime in Pittsburgh. They also believe strength is forged from struggle.
"Nobody likes the record, by any stretch of the imagination," Jackson said. "But I truly believe the foundation is set for some of the things that we want to do as we move forward."
Director of strategy Paul DePodesta called the season painful, like a toothache, but also said he felt positive vibes on Monday.
"I was struck by the tenor of the conversations throughout the building today, especially our players, how optimistic they are, how bright they feel the future is here," DePodesta said. "I share their enthusiasm."
Vice president of football operations Sashi Brown said the positives included the players' "buy-in" of Jackson's programs, and the change in culture brought about by the hiring of Jackson.
The words thrown around pushed the limits of the thesaurus. DePodesta said he's more optimistic than he was a year ago when he joined the Browns. He added that the Browns made "tremendous progress" in 2016.
"There is a belief around the building that we're heading in the right direction," Brown said. "That is extremely important and a cornerstone of the foundation that we needed to lay this year.”
If it sounds counterintuitive, well, it might be.
It's tough to look at any 1-15 season and find positives, but the Browns tore the team down to the nails. They endured a far worse season than they anticipated, but now plan to build it back up.
The leadership structure remains in place. DePodesta worked in baseball until a year ago. Brown was hired by the Browns as general counsel and eventually became the salary-cap guy. Jackson is the traditional football guy. Scouts will work with analytics folks, who will crunch the numbers to find the best options.
"Nobody likes the record, by any stretch of the imagination," Browns coach Hue Jackson said. "But I truly believe the foundation is set for some of the things that we want to do." AP Photo/Gail Burton
DePodesta gave an inkling to how analytics were used in the front office when he pointed out that more than 25 percent of the team's snaps were taken by rookies -- "which was not only the most in the league but the most in the league at any time in the last four years, and by a pretty wide margin," he said. "That is what Hue and his staff were working with every week."
Brown said, "I would not have imagined, if anybody asked me, that we would have the type of results that we had this year. But I also would have had a harder time believing that we would have the ability to establish the type of positive culture and work ethic that we have in light of the losing experience."
The Browns believe intangibles are the type of things that winning teams need. They admit they need to add more talent, and decide if their quarterback is on the roster or elsewhere, but they believe in the intangibles they've forged.
And the players believe as well.
"The path we're on is great," left tackle Joe Thomas said. "We've got the right head coach. We've got the right management team. I think definitely things are looking up for the Cleveland Browns."
And just like that, the memory of the 2016 season was shoved into the back of closet. The focus and the effort turned to 2017.
"This season," Jackson said, "is over." |
Photo: Micah TaylorElly Blue is on a monthlong Dinner & Bikes tour around the western U.S., along with Portland bike filmmaker Joe Biel and traveling vegan chef Joshua Ploeg. This is one of her thrice-weekly dispatches from the road about bicycle culture and economy. Read them all here.
Minneapolis, Minn.: “Portland is just an avenue in Minneapolis” — or so says the sticker on the rear rack of the bike I brought with me on our Dinner & Bikes tour. The words are attributed to R.T. Rybak, mayor of Minneapolis, upon learning in 2010 that his city had stolen the crown of most bike friendly city in America from my hometown, Portland.
There is, in fact, a Portland Ave. in Minneapolis — and it even has a bike lane, albeit an awkward one. (Among other things, it’s on the left side of the street.) But I never understood the City of Lake’s appeal to cyclists.
Finally, this trip, I discovered what I’d been missing.
Laura Kling, the organizer of our Dinner & Bikes event here, showed me around. She runs the Grease Rag Ride & Wrench, a WTF (Women Trans Femme) night at a local bike project, and who calls herself “a radical transportation nerd.”
I met Kling at a sort of freeway interchange of bike paths — the first indication that this city takes cycling seriously. We swooped down to the first trail, which runs below ground level in what used to be the city’s rail system. Our first stop, a short way down the path, required a double-take — a bunch of cafe tables and bike racks, most in use, arranged next to the path, below street level and some distance from the nearest auto access. They belonged to a bike shop that was doing bustling business on a Sunday afternoon and, next door, a coffee shop.
Minneapolis’s Greenway bike trail system was begun in the 1990s, I was told, but has been getting a makeover and an upgrade in the last several years. Here’s a quick flick just released by StreetFilms:
I’ve never been the biggest fan of riding on bike paths, especially ones shared with people walking, but Minneapolis is doing better than most with designing these trails: Most of the paths we rode were marked with lanes for bike travel in two directions, with a separate path for walking. It’s a bold standard, but the paths were so crowded that a passing lane on each side would have been handy. (Build it and they will come!)
King then showed me where the city was rebuilding an intersection where a cyclist had recently been killed, adding a large traffic median, effectively creating one narrow, slow lane in each direction with enough room mid-crossing to shelter a veritable bike fleet. Nearby, a car-free bridge crossed a major arterial road and two sets of railroad tracks.
We paused at the top so Kling could point out the previous crossing. “It wasn’t very fun,” she said. Now, on this arcing suspension bridge, an oasis of calm above the fray, bike traffic was steady that at times it felt almost congested.
There was a dreamlike quality to the whole ride. The paths were clearly marked, the paint was new, signage was thoughtful and useful. I asked Kling if one could get around everywhere without being on the road. “You can get between parts of the city,” she said.
A few people on Nice Ride bike share bikes zoomed past. I was in awe. Kling smiled. “I’m very happy with the progress this city is making,” she said, “but I can’t say I’m satisfied.”
There were some spots that were less idyllic. In Minnehaha Falls, a gorgeous park, the bike lane narrowed, the surface was older, the middle stripe disappeared. Pedestrians, inexperienced riders, and wobbly kids strayed into our lane. Tourists tooted by on four-seat, pedal-powered contraptions. It was the same old bike path experience I learned to hate years ago.
I thought about Portland’s narrow, badly marked bike paths and all the emphasis on educating users to ride safely and “share the path.” It’s a relic of the old way of treating paths as a shared recreation system, a strip of unmarked asphalt meant for poking and wandering along, not for getting anywhere. It’s dangerous.
But the bike freeway we had been on, the new Greenway network across Minneapolis, shows what happens when you treat bike paths as a transportation system. Here, you always know where to ride, what’s coming up, and what to expect from the path and each other.
Minneapolis’s greenways need more work, more space, and more separation between bikers and walkers, but they’re a hopeful sign of what can happen when we take bicycle transportation seriously. |
Donald Duck and Tigger
Is Donald Duck a pervert?
Gawker seems to think so. Yesterday evening, it posted an item asking: “Who are the strange people in the furry costumes at Disney World, and are they pervs? After Donald Duck grabbed her boob, a 27-year-old is suing Disney.” The woman’s complaint, according to Gawker, “includes a helpful list of other Disney character transgressions, like the time Tigger molested a 13-year-old girl. … Moral of the story: Men who wear masks are not to be trusted.”
Readers of the item soon began posting their own allegations. One recalled: “When I was in High School the Shamu at the Sea World in Ohio freaked me out. He kept giving me these big bear hugs that were really hard and rough. He also kept my face covered with his fins while he was doing this. Very creepy. I can understand why this lady was totally offended.” Another agreed: “Similar experience in high school with a crash test dummy at Disney (near the test track). Creepy.” A third added: “When my family visited Magic Mountain in the 70s, a horny person dressed up as a grape pinched my dad’s ass and then scampered away.” A fourth wrote: “UGH! I remember going to Disney with my brother and sister. I was like 16 and they were like 12 and 10—so I was confused that all the characters seemed to want to kiss ME on the cheek and hug ME more than my siblings.”
We’ve seen this pattern before: an allegation of groping, followed by a bunch of other people recalling similar abuse. The initial charge makes the rest of the claims credible. But sometimes the allegations, and even the triggered memories, are false. That’s what happened to Tigger. Don’t let it happen to Donald.
Gawker bases its description of the Tigger case—”the time Tigger molested a 13-year-old girl”—on the complaint against Donald, which was posted yesterday by the Smoking Gun. The complaint alleges:
9. This incident is one of a long line of continuing, long standing, similar prior incidents that have occurred on Defendant’s various resort premises. …
10. Authorities in Florida received 24 more complaints in the week since a Walt Disney World employee was charged with molesting a 13-year-old girl and her mother while dressed as the character ‘Tigger’ in 2004.
11. Numerous of those cases were deemed credible enough to be investigated by the Orange County Sherriff’s office.
12. One of Defendant’s employees, Michael Chartrand, was arrested and charged with one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child and one count of simple battery.
13. In that case the sheriff’s office received a complaint that the costumed character had touched the girl and her mother inappropriately while their pictures were being taken.
14. According to an incident report, Chartrand fondled the breasts of the girl and her mother while posing for pictures at the Magic Kingdom’s Toon Town.
15. Despite knowledge of these continuing, long standing, similar prior incidents, the Defendant failed to act to ensure the incidents would cease. …
Hmmm. Incident reports, charges, investigations—so how did the case turn out? Since the complaint against Donald curiously omits this part, and since Gawker didn’t bother to look it up, let’s check it out ourselves. Answer: Chartrand was acquitted. The case seems to have been a total scam. The girl’s mother planned to sue Disney for money and lied to prosecutors about her plans. The cops conned Chartrand into writing an apology to the girl even though he had no memory of her, much less groping her. The girl’s stepfather testified that nothing untoward had happened. At trial, the defense attorney put on the Tigger outfit to show jurors how severely it limited its occupant’s vision and range of motion, making the alleged groping impossible.
As for the 20-something copycat complaints prompted by the original charge, there’s no record of any of them going anywhere. In fact, Disney reinstated Chartrand with back pay. A month later, he was suspended for allegedly shoving two other Disney workers. (Disney routinely suspends employees while investigating such cases.) His attorney said that he was just “goofing around because he was Goofy” and that the other workers shoved back. After that, there’s no record of Chartrand in Nexis.
The reason I know about the Tigger episode is that I learned about it from Elizabeth Loftus, a scientist who plants and studies false memories. I was writing a series about her (you can read it here) and came across a discussion of the Tigger story in a paper she and her colleagues published two years ago. In their first experiment, they persuaded 16 percent of their subjects that these subjects had met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. This was certainly a false memory, since Bugs wasn’t a Disney character. In their second experiment, Loftus and her collaborators convinced 30 percent of another group of subjects that Pluto had licked their ears at Disneyland. The researchers planted this memory by showing subjects a fake newspaper article about a Pluto character who had “developed a habit of inappropriately licking the ears of many young visitors with his large fabric tongue.”
Based on the Pluto experiment, Loftus and her colleagues speculated that the initial coverage of Tigger’s arrest might have led people “to become more confident that they too had an inappropriate experience with the Tigger character. … Thus unsurprisingly, after the allegation surfaced, 24 additional Disney visitors came forward to say that they too were abused by Tigger.”
So: Bugs, innocent. Pluto, innocent. Tigger, acquitted. What about Donald? And Shamu? And the horny grape?
The complaint against Donald was filed last month, based on an incident that supposedly took place more than two years ago. The document alleges that the 27-year-old complainant, while holding one of her kids, approached Donald and requested an autograph. Donald “proceeded to grab [her] breast and molest her.” She claims “severe physical injury, emotional anguish and distress including, but not limited to post-traumatic stress disorder.” According to the Smoking Gun, she’s “suing Disney for negligence, battery, and infliction of emotional distress, and is seeking in excess of $50,000 in damages.”
Gawker reports her allegations as truth. “Donald Duck grabbed her boob,” it says. And now, as in the Tigger case, the copycat claims are pouring in. But already the story has problems. A Gawker reader has stepped in with a word of caution:
Worked at Disney in various levels of management, so I can tell you:
It was definitely a woman in that costume, as the height range to play Donald is very short. Mickey, Minnie, Chip and Dale are also almost exclusively portrayed by little tiny girls/ladies/Asian women.
Also, the visibility in those costumes is so incredibly poor, you can only see straight ahead basically (not up or down), so it’s very possible that the character brushed her breast by accident and then apologized. Since they get in trouble if they speak out loud, an apologetic motion was all that could have been done.
Followed by this report from another reader:
I worked there a few years ago, and was “friends” with a lot of the shorter characters … and I had my fair share of complaints of wandering hands. The best were always when guests would complain about the “wandering hands” in character[s] that had broom handles for hands (i.e. Monsters)
Sounds a lot like the bum rap on Tigger, doesn’t it?
Moral of the story: Uncorroborated allegations are not to be trusted.
Become a fan of Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Human Nature’s latest short takes on the news, via Twitter: |
Award winning and critically acclaimed electronic duo Infected Mushroom have just released their first plug-in "I Wish".
I Wish is a granular note freezer. When a note is hit, the plugin plays a tiny loop at the wavelength of that note. That loop has the pitch of the note, with the frequency content of the audio input. This allows the creation of an array of highly musical effects, ranging from robotic speech, through glitchy effects, to out of this world synth sounds.
The idea for this plugin idea came from Infected Mushroom's work on their famous track, "I Wish", in which they manually chopped and edited tiny loops for several days in order to achieve the desired special effect. This plugin creates the same effect, but instantly, instead of several days. Now that I-wish has arrived, Infected Mushroom have found numerous more uses for the plugin and have been using it extensively in their latest album "Converting Vegetarians 2".
I Wish is created in collaboration with "Polyverse Music", which also sell and provide technical support for the plugin.
YouTube Tutorial: {See video at top of page}
YouTube short demos:
YouTube.com/watch?v=1bQ38URFzOc
YouTube.com/watch?v=AygqjcVZQGY
YouTube.com/watch?v=vqbh9bzph0o
YouTube.com/watch?v=ii5UUe9eqe0
YouTube.com/watch?v=jmVcYMNsqX4 |
According to droid-life, Verizon will begin throttling 4G LTE customers on unlimited data plans starting on October 1, 2014. Before this change, Verizon only throttled 3G connections of those with unlimited data plans. Verizon likes to dress up this as “Network Optimization” which according to them means that a customer will only be throttled if:
Top 5% of data users (you use 4.7GB of data per month or more)
Enrolled on an unlimited data plan or feature
Have fulfilled their minimum contract term
Are attempting to use data on a cell site that is experiencing high demand
As droid-life points out, as of March 2014, you are in the top 5% if you use 4.7GB of data per month. Not to worry though as Verizon is willing to help those in this top 5%. Just move to their MORE Everything plans! Or stop using the Verizon service and switch to Wi-fi.
Droid-Life
Verizon is therefore making another push to get users off unlimited data plans and onto usage-based pricing plans. Verizon makes more money when a customer is on their MORE Everything plans. Verizon pretty much says that in the FAQ by giving customers the option to move to usage plans with no throttling.
Additionally, Verizon is admitting that unlimited data plans include magic data. If you are on an unlimited data plan and use 10GB, you will be throttled at the halfway point. But, if you are on a MORE Everything plan with 10GB of data, you can use 10GB without any throttling whatsoever. Magic!
Although Verizon would respond to this by claiming that a customer in the top 5% must be by a congested node, there are already a number of people who question whether Verizon is properly throttling people JUST in congested node areas. Also, will Verizon ever let the public in on how many of its cell sites it deems as “congested” and at what times that congestion is most likely to occur?
Dating back to 2010, Verizon has made it clear that they want the ability to find the heaviest users (‘abusers’ as they call them) so that they can throttle them and charge them even more. Will Verizon ever actually show when a certain amount of data slows down their network? Of course not. Remember, data on unlimited plans slow down the network while data on tiered plans have no effect on the network. |
A Kilner jar from no later than 1928
The open jar
A Kilner jar is a rubber-sealed, screw-topped jar used for preserving (bottling) food. It was first produced by John Kilner & Co., Yorkshire, England.[1][2][3]
History [ edit ]
The Kilner Jar was originally made by a firm of glass bottlemakers from Yorkshire called Kilner.[4] The original Kilner bottlemakers operated from 1842, when the company was first founded, until 1937, when the company went into bankruptcy. The Kilner Company was taken to court in 1871 over the coal smoke coming from their Thornhill Lees chimneys and the judge ordered that "no man has the right to interfere with the supply of pure air".[citation needed] The company was forced to close down to convert to gas furnaces and struggled along for a 66 years despite 3,000 people losing their jobs.[citation needed] In 1937, there was a bankruptcy sale, in which the patent rights to the "Kilner Jar" were sold to the United Glass Bottle company along with the rights to the very similar "Mason" jar that had also been made by Kilner.[citation needed]
In 2003,[5] The Rayware Group purchased the design, patent and trademark of the original Kilner jar[dubious – discuss] and continues to produce them today in China.[6] [7]
A more detailed history of the companies by the Society for Historical Archeology.
Other [ edit ]
In an episode of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, the former Top Gear television presenter Jeremy Clarkson found out that he was a great-great-great-great grandson of John Kilner.[8]
Company names [ edit ]
The various names of the Kilner companies were:
John Kilner and Co, Castleford, Yorkshire, 1842–44
John Kilner and Sons, Wakefield, Yorkshire, 1847–57
Kilner Brothers Glass Co, Thornhill Lees, Yorkshire, 1857–73 also at Conisbrough, Yorkshire, 1863–1873
Kilner Brothers Ltd, Thornhill Lees, Yorkshire 1873–1920 also at Conisbrough, Yorkshire, 1873–1937.
See also [ edit ] |
Recently by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: The Fascist Threat
The downgrading of US debt this summer didn't have huge economic consequences, but the psychological ones were truly devastating for the national elites who have run this country for nearly a century. For a State that regards itself as infallible, it was a huge blow that market forces delivered against the government, and it is only one of thousands that have cut against the power elite in recent years.
Another recent example was the vanishing of the much-vaunted Obama jobs bill. He pushed hard for this scheme for a month. He made an FDR-like national speech that attempted to whip up a public frenzy. He promised that if the legislature passed his law, supply and demand for workers would magically come together. We only need to agree to spend a few hundred billion more!
Well, the bully pulpit has become the bull-something pulpit. It seems that hardly anyone even took the speech seriously as a political point. It was reviewed and treated as the theater that it was, but the universal reaction to the specifics was a thumbs down, even from his own party.
No, Obama is not FDR. This is not the New Deal. The public will not be browbeaten as it once was. The polls show a vast lack of even a modicum of confidence in political leadership, the failures of which are all around us.
The longer the depression persists, the more the rebellious spirit grows, and it is not limited to the Wall Street protests. Poverty is growing, incomes are falling, business is being squeezed at every turn, and unemployment is stuck at intolerably high levels. People are angry as never before, and neither political party comes close to offering answers.
The State as we've known it — and that includes its political parties and its redistributionary, military, regulatory, and money-creating bureaucracies — just can't get it together. It's as true now as it has been for some twenty years: the Nation State is in precipitous decline. Once imbued with grandeur and majesty, personified by its Superman powers to accomplish amazing global feats, it is now a wreck and out of ideas.
It doesn't seem that way because the State is more in-your-face than it has been in all of American history. We see the State at the airport with the incompetent bullying ways of the TSA. We see it in the ridiculous dinosaur of the post office, forever begging for more money so it can continue to do things the way it did them in 1950. We see it in the federalized cops in our towns, once seen as public servants but now revealed as what they have always been: armed tax collectors, censors, spies, thugs.
These are themselves marks of decline. The mask of the State is off. And it has been off for such a long time that we can hardly remember what it looked like when it was on.
So let's take a quick tour. If you live in a big metropolitan city, drive to the downtown post office (if it is still standing). There you will find a remarkable piece of architecture, tall and majestic and filled with grandeur. There is a liberal use of Roman-style columns. The ceilings indoors are extremely high and thrilling. It might even be the biggest and most impressive building around.
This is a building of an institution that believed in itself. After all, this was the institution that carried the mail, which was the only way that people had to communicate with each other when most of these places were first erected. The state took great pride in offering this service, which it held up as being superior to anything the market could ever provide (even if market provisions like the Pony Express had to be outlawed). Postmen were legendary (or so we were told) for their willingness to brave the elements to bring us the essential thing we needed in life apart from food, clothing, and shelter.
And today? Look at the thing that we call the post office. It is a complete wreck, a national joke, a hanger-on from a day long gone. They deliver physical spam to our mail boxes, and a few worthwhile things every once in a while, but the only time they are in the news is when we hear another report of their bankruptcy and need for a bailout.
It's the same with all the grand monuments of yesteryear's statism. Think of the Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore, the endless infrastructure projects of the New Deal, the Eisenhower interstate highway system, the moon shot, the sprawling monuments to itself that the State has erected from sea to shining sea. As I've explained elsewhere, these all came about in an age when the only real alternative to socialism was considered to be fascism. This was an age when freedom — as in the old-fashioned sense — was just out of the question.
The State in all times and all places operates by force — and force alone. But the style of rule changes. The fascist style emphasized inspiration, magnificence, industrial progress, grandeur, all headed by a valiant leader making smart decisions about all things. This style of American rule lasted from the New Deal through the end of the Cold War.
But this whole system of inspiration has nearly died out. In the communist tradition of naming the stages of history, we can call this late fascism. The fascist system in the end cannot work because, despite the claims, the State does not have the means to achieve what it promises. It does not possess the capability to outrun private markets in technology, of serving the population in the way markets can, of making things more plentiful or cheaper, or even of providing basic services in a manner that is economically efficient.
Fascism, like socialism, cannot achieve its aims. So there is a way in which it makes sense to speak of a stage of history: We are in the stage of late fascism. The grandeur is gone, and all we are left with is a gun pointed at our heads. The system was created to be great, but it is reduced in our time to being crude. Valor is now violence. Majesty is now malice.
Consider whether there is any national political leader in power today the death of whom would call forth anywhere near the same level of mourning as the death of Steve Jobs. People know in their hearts who serves them, and it is not the guy with jack boots, tasers on his belt, and a federal badge. The time when we looked to this man as a public servant is long gone. And this reality only speeds the inevitable death of the State as the 20th century re-invented it.
The Best of Lew Rockwell
The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. |
Mark Yeates now has two goals for Bradford City this season
Preston suffered a first home league defeat in 2014 after Mark Yeates' late goal sealed victory for Bradford.
City took a first-half lead through Rory McArdle's deflected header.
Joe Garner saw a header cleared off the line with Chris Humphrey's follow up saved by Jordan Pickford while Callum Robinson also went close for Preston.
Garner equalised in the 85th minute after turning in from close range but Yeates won it for Bradford 60 seconds later with a fine curling effort.
Preston's defeat sees them slip to third in the League One table after Swindon climbed above them into second after ending Bristol City's unbeaten league start to the season.
It was the first time Preston have been beaten at home since 5 February when they lost to Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup and was their first league loss at Deepdale since 21 December 2013. |
/ Credit: Dreamstime
The more power a business leader thinks they have, the worse they get at calling the shots, new research shows.
A study by University of Southern California professor Nathanael Fast has determined that in the business world, unconstrained power can hinder decision-making.
"The overall sense of control that comes with power tends to make people feel overconfident in their ability to make good decisions," Fast said, noting the research aimed to make leaders more conscious of the pitfalls that they can fall prey to.
The research points to British Petroleum executives who downplayed potential risks associated with their oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, claiming it was virtually impossible that a major accident would ever occur. The oil well exploded in 2009, killing 11 workers and costing an estimated $100 billion in cleanup costs.
"What we found across the studies is that power leads to overprecision, which is the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of personal knowledge," Fast said.
[3 Steps to Becoming a Better Leader]
To explore this tendency, researchers conducted multiple experiments that manipulated power by randomly assigning participants to high-power or low-power roles. They were then asked to bet money on their ability to answer six trivia questions.
In the study, those who were made to feel powerful actually lost money betting on their knowledge, and those who didn't feel powerful took fewer betting risks and didn't lose their cash.
Top decision-makers find ways to avoid this problem, Fast said.
"The most effective leaders bring people around them who critique them," Fast said. "As a power holder, the smartest thing you might ever do is bring people together who will inspect your thinking and who aren't afraid to challenge your ideas."
The irony: The more powerful leaders become, the less help they think they need, according to the research.
"Power is an elixir, a self-esteem-enhancing drug that surges through the brain telling you how great your ideas are," said Adam Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and one of the study's co-authors. "This leaves the powerful vulnerable to making overconfident decisions that lead them to dead-end alleys."
The research, "Power and Overconfident Decision-Making," was also co-authored by Niro Sivanathan of the London Business School and Nicole Mayer of the University of Illinois, Chicago. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Chad Brooks is a Chicago-based freelance writer who has worked in public relations and spent 10 years working as a newspaper reporter and now works as a freelance business and technology reporter. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @cbrooks76. |
Every year about this time, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, holds an intimate gathering to discuss the company’s vision for the future: just Craig, a handful of Microsoft thinkers and select media convening for a lively show-and-tell discussion called TechForum.
I’ll have more to share here tomorrow about the prototypes shown and topics discussed during the course of the day.
This morning, Craig and Don Mattrick, president, Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), announced plans to release a non-commercial Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit, or SDK, this spring.
The community that has blossomed since the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 in November shows the breadth of invention and depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology. Already, researchers, academics and enthusiasts are thinking through what’s next in natural and intuitive technology. For example, in January I mentioned Craig’s talk at the Cleveland Clinic, where he highlighted students at the University of Washington’s Biorobotics Lab using Kinect with a commercially available PHANTOM Omni Haptic Device to explore how robotic surgery could be enhanced by incorporating the sense of feel.
The Kinect for Windows SDK is being developed and released by Microsoft Research (MSR) in collaboration with IEB. It will be available this spring as a free download, and will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to key pieces of the Kinect system—such as the audio technology, system application programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor itself.
Supporting this community and enabling creativity around natural user interfaces (NUI) is important to us, and our hope is that this SDK will ignite further creativity in an already vibrant ecosystem of enthusiasts. We are very excited by this announcement. Not only does it showcase our investment in this important technology trend, but it ensures that people have the tools they desire to revolutionize how people interact with technology.
The possibilities are endless. Natural and intuitive technologies such as Kinect can be more than just a great platform for gaming and entertainment. They open up enormous opportunities across a wide variety of scenarios, including addressing societal issues in areas such as healthcare and education.
Here’s to spring 2011 and what’s next in natural user interface technologies.
More on NUI from Next at Microsoft
More on Craig Mundie and Rethinking Computing
Posted by Steve Clayton
Editor, Next at Microsoft Blog |
For unaccompanied minors traveling with American Airlines, parents pay an extra $300 on top of the ticket price to cover the additional care staff puts in to make sure a child gets from point A to point B safely. One mom from Charlotte, NC — who paid that extra cost to send her 11-year-old daughter to visit with family in New York — was failed by this system after being lied to about the whereabouts of her daughter, and wants to warn other parents.
Corinne Chausse and her husband were expecting their daughter Maggie to arrive back in Charlotte at 8:50 p.m. on Monday, and although American Airlines confirms that the flight out of New York was delayed due to weather, Corrine didn't hear from Maggie until 1:30 a.m., when she called from Columbia, SC, after the plane was rerouted there. Maggie told her parents that she was being taken off her plane because her flight was canceled. The worried parents lost contact with Maggie for over an hour — they were halfway to Columbia to get her when American Airlines informed them that the flight was going ahead and would be on its way to Charlotte, but then as they got back to Charlotte, they were informed yet again that the flight was canceled.
Frantic at this point, Corrine says an American Airlines employee tried to reassure her that her daughter was in a room for minors at Columbia airport, but five minutes later, Maggie called to say she was still on the plane. "They blatantly lied to me about where she was," Corrine told WSOCTV.
This communication nightmare between Corrine and the airline is enough to make any mother never want to allow her child to ever fly alone, but on top of that, Maggie was on her plane for more than nine hours and none of the employees who were meant to be caring for her gave her anything to eat.
Corrine has tried to contact American Airlines, but she hasn't heard back.
"I don't want another parent to go through this," she said. "They need to look at this system they have in place. They're charging people $300 for it and they need to examine where it failed because it failed drastically." However, she says she's less concerned with a refund at this point because she now has a bigger problem to handle: after this experience, her daughter has said she never wants to fly again. |
An NYT report indicates Donald Trump Jr. tried to collude with the Russian government A bad look for a man already in hot water.
An explosive new report in the New York Times says that Donald Trump Jr. was told in advance of his meeting with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya that she had negative information to offer about Hillary Clinton and that the source of the information was the Russian government.
According to the Times, citing “three people with knowledge of the email,” Rob Goldstone, the British publicist who set up the meeting, contacted Trump and told him he should meet with Veselnitskaya because she could share information sourced to the Russian government. After the Times first reported Saturday on the meeting’s existence, Trump acknowledged that it took place, but made no mention of the Russian government being a source of Veselnitskaya’s alleged information.
It’s not clear at this point that she actually had any such information — from what we can tell, she sought the meeting to discuss with the Trump campaign her longstanding attempt to get a set of sanctions related to human rights abuses lifted. And there’s no indication that the Veselnitskaya meeting had anything to do with the emails pilfered by Russian-backed hackers from the Democratic National Committee or John Podesta.
Still, the fact that the Trump campaign took a high-level meeting — Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner were also present — whose ostensible purpose was for the Trump campaign to work with the Russian government to take down Clinton certainly increases the level of plausibility around the possibility that people from Trumpworld were involved in the anti-Clinton information operation that we do know took place.
Donald Trump Jr. is getting into a lot of trouble
Even before this latest revelation, Donald Trump Jr.’s participation in the meeting was a potential source of legal trouble for him.
That’s because it’s essentially illegal to seek foreign help of any kind in a political campaign. Under 52 USC 30121, 36 USC 510, the law governing foreign contributions to political campaigns, you don’t have to actually get useful help from foreigners, according to this law: The mere fact that Trump Jr. asked for information from a Russian national about Clinton, and heard her out as she attempted to describe it, might have constituted a federal crime.
“If what Donald Trump Jr. said was true ... then they should have never had the meeting in the first place,” Nick Akerman, an assistant special prosecutor during the Watergate investigation who now specializes in data crime, says.
Compounding Trump Jr.’s trouble is the fact that his story about the meeting keeps changing. He had earlier maintained that he’d had no meetings with Russians having anything to do with the campaign. Then when the Veselnitskaya meeting first came to light, he said it was a discussion about adoptions. When it was further revealed in the press that Veselnitskaya came to him with the offer of opposition research on Clinton, he acknowledged it was actually about that but said there’s nothing wrong with seeking some oppo. Now it’s come out that he neglected to mention that the Russian government was the source of the information.
This raises the question — as several other rounds of Trump-adjacent figures meeting with Russians has — of why there’s been the need to lie if nobody did anything wrong.
The specter of collusion
For a long time now the specter of “collusion” has loomed large in the Trump/Russia investigation, with no clear evidence having come to light that the Trump campaign was in any way involved with the hacking of Democratic emails.
Today’s revelations do not exactly change that.
But if the Times’s reporting is accurate, it establishes that the Trump campaign was willing — and even eager — to work with the Russian government to secure political advantage. That makes the leap to Trump involvement in the actual Russia-backed anti-Clinton information campaign that we know happened — the DNC email hack — a lot narrower.
Whether Trump himself knew anything about the meetings his son was setting up is, of course, another matter. But it’s inherently difficult for Trump to put distance between himself and his own son — especially seeing as how the son in question is currently charged with managing the business empire Trump still runs. |
The issue of how the state spends public money is not a new one but we need to consider it far more carefully looking through the lens of State Capture and the #GuptaLeaks.
State Capture has consumed our headlines for many months with the #GuptaLeaks revealing a fascinating web of questionable, illegal, criminal and unethical behaviour from the usual suspects that have featured during the Zuma years but have also highlighted the role that corporate interests often play in corrupt and questionable activities that have undermined the developmental agenda of the state.
There is no doubt that capture and looting in South Africa started long before democracy was negotiated, which has been highlighted in a series of Daily Maverick articles by Open Secrets. The issue of how the state spends public money is not a new one but we need to consider it far more carefully looking through the lens of State Capture and the Gupta Leaks. From 2008 to 2011, the Auditor-General noted with some concern that the South African Government spent more than R102-billion on public money on consultants and over the past two financial years has spent a further R56-billion.
With each passing day, the costs of these lost Zuma years are becoming more apparent, with the extent and scale of the rot revealing an encroaching stranglehold that has often been facilitated and supported by corporate interests and the self-interest of a few at the expense of all South Africans and our collective future. The reaction by various organisations (private and public) against KPMG may be reassuring to some but this is simply reactive conduct that does not deal with the underlying issue that the veneer of respectability of a number of major corporates has been used to launder the machinations of those that have been hell-bent on compromising the developmental agenda that South Africa should be serving.
The ongoing news cycle may continue to reveal the extent of State Capture, corruption and looting, which is estimated by some to already be in the region of more than R100-billion (public money that has been extracted for the benefit of the Gupta and Zuma families). There is no question of legality regarding improper awarding of contracts, corruption and malfeasance, but what should concern us all is whether the other contracts that are not in the public domain are actually serving the interest of the country. The underlying question that South Africans should be asking is whether the billions spent, which appears to be above board, on consultants and corporates each year is actually in the interest of the country.
Through the #GuptaLeaks we have had insight into the inner dealings of State Capture, which has revealed a great level of detail about how a corporate tendency to look the other way has often matched the need and desire of the looters. Sadly, this level of insight is not generally available when South Africans consider how the public purse is being used, especially when that spend is reflected as global line items on an overall expenditure report (that line item is often just referred to as “Consultants: Business and advisory services”).
Early this year, former Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in the 2017 Budget Speech highlighted the importance and critical role that government procurement has to play in the South African economy with public procurement sitting at about R1.5-trillion over the next three years, which is linked to government’s new preferential procurement regulations. At the time, Gordhan remarked that “the law will catch up with you” where there were instances of corruption or unethical behaviour. However, what the #GuptaLeaks have proven is that procurement is often a murky world where R500-billion spent annually by our state on the procurement of goods and services could really be dependent on how well-connected those corporate interests are to those hell-bent on looting the public purse.
During that Budget speech, Gordhan spoke about the need for a single procurement authority. However, the scandals that have engulfed the South African arms of KPMG and McKinsey (and others) simply highlights the fact that a single procurement authority in itself will not be enough to police corporate malfeasance, politicians and corrupt government officials. The calls for stricter control measures by the Auditor-General have largely been ignored despite there being a need for better regulation and oversight over public procurement. In this vacuum, there is a definite need for an authorised watchdog and regulator to be established in order to do the work that the SAPS, the Hawks and the NPA should be doing.
We may have insight into the use of consultants at places like Eskom, Transnet, Prasa, the SABC and SAA. However, the line items and reporting on these issues often don’t allow us to scrutinise the underlying purpose of procuring these goods and services. The Auditor-General’s 2015/2016 report highlighted the fact that local government relies extensively on consultants and found that just 230 consultants had been used in South Africa’s 263 municipalities. The concerns have been well documented and publicised for a number of years where local and provincial governments continue to haphazardly spend public money with very few outcomes. For instance, it was reported in 2015 that the Kwazulu-Natal provincial government had spent close to R1-billion in one financial year on 38 consultants.
The rationale for relying on consultants may often be deeply problematic as it does not deal with the underlying issues of lack of skills, resources or under-capacity within government. The current approach to how we deal with solutions-orientated planning, thinking and implementation cannot be outsourced or contracted to consultants or corporates but rather there should be an approach by our government to be holistic with a focus to up-skill, empower and enable our civil service to deliver on the promises of our elected governments.
Later this year, the African National Congress will wrestle with its elective conference, the outcomes of which are intertwined with the future of our democracy and whether South Africa has a fighting chance to overcome corruption and State Capture. The outcomes of that leadership race within the ANC will be critical for the country especially as we try to navigate the way forward. However, what has become abundantly clear is that we must set our sights beyond the fallout from the work McKinsey and KPMG (and a number of other corporates) have rendered (often at the expense of the public purse) and consider how we can actually do something about the rot that has been allowed to set in.
The procurement of the goods and services from corporate South Africa (and from a number of other multinationals) may have followed a particular procurement process but even then the question should be whether those services and the use of public funds is sustainable and appropriate. Perhaps the only way to hold all the role players accountable is for a new watchdog to protect the public purse and the interest of the republic relentlessly, especially while factionalism, expediency and self-interest reign supreme. DM
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Maverick Insider is more than a reader revenue scheme. While not quite a "state of mind", it is a mindset: it's about believing that independent journalism makes a genuine difference to our country and it's about having the will to support that endeavour.
From the #GuptaLeaks into State Capture to the Scorpio exposés into SARS, Daily Maverick investigations have made an enormous impact on South Africa and it's political landscape. As we enter an election year, our mission to Defend Truth has never been more important. A free press is one of the essential lines of defence against election fraud; without it, national polls can turn very nasty, very quickly as we have seen recently in the Congo.
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Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar Follow Save More Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar was born in Cape Town and raised by his determined mother, grandparents, aunt and the rest of his maternal family. He is an admitted attorney (formerly of the corporate hue), with recent exposure in the public sector, and is currently working on transport and infrastructure projects. He is a Mandela Washington Fellow, a Mandela Rhodes Scholar, and a WEF Global Shaper. He had a brief stint in the contemporary party politic environment working for Mamphela Ramphele as Agang CEO and chief-of-staff; he found the experience a deeply educational one.
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Kim Jong Nam, left, exiled half-brother of North Korea's leader, in Narita, Japan, on May 4, 2001, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on May 9, 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — North Koreans working overseas were told Saturday by North Korean authorities not to watch reports on the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, sources close to North Korea in Southeast Asia and other places told The Yomiuri Shimbun.
North Koreans overseas involved in trade and other businesses were issued a gag order immediately after the 45-year-old half brother was assassinated in Kuala Lumpur last month, according to sources, suggesting that Kim Jong Un's administration has been extremely alert for any information of the murder flowing into the country.
Kim Jong Nam inherited the so-called "bloodline of Mt. Paektu," which refers to the descendants of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung. It is believed that issuing the order not to watch reports on the murder is aimed at preventing damage to Kim Jong Un's character when it becomes known that he ordered the assassination.
North Korea claimed the murdered person was identified as "Kim Chol with a diplomatic passport."
North Koreans related to trade and other businesses said they were notified of the order by secret police officers and State Security Ministry officials on Saturday morning.
North Korean authorities recently prohibited diplomats, dispatched workers and others living overseas from connecting to the internet using their mobile phones, according to U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia. |
Three former Conservative MPs and six peers have connections to offshore companies, despite PM’s calls for reform
Several of the donors, MPs and financiers who have supported David Cameron’s rise to power have had links to the UK’s network of tax havens, the Panama Papers reveal.
Three former Conservative MPs and six members of the House of Lords are among those with connections to companies on the books of the offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca.
Though it is legal to manage money offshore, the practice has drawn increasing criticism during years of enduring austerity.
The British prime minister has been calling for reforms, recognising – along with other world leaders – that the system is too secret and in need of an overhaul.
In 2012, Cameron criticised complex offshore structures saying it is “not fair and not right”. At a G8 summit in Enniskillen three years ago, he demanded more transparency, saying this would be better for business in the UK.
Last year, he added: “I’ll continue to make the case for transparency with international partners, including the British overseas territories and crown dependencies. And I am willing to go further, and take concrete steps to force the pace.”
However, critics say world leaders are dragging their feet – fears fuelled in the UK before last year’s general election when it emerged that many Tory candidates were receiving donations from offshore tax havens.
Cameron will have a chance to challenge doubters who say he has benefited from an opaque system by pushing for reforms at an “offshore” conference he is hosting in London next month. Under the spotlight will be tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, which are among the biggest providers of offshore secrecy.
There is no evidence the politicians and donors have done anything wrong. But the disclosures raise legitimate questions for an ongoing public debate about the ethics of tax havens, whether there should be more transparency from those go offshore, and whether they will continue to do so following the revelations in the Panama Papers.
The businessmen include:
Tony Buckingham
According to the documents, the energy company Heritage Oil, founded by the Conservative donor Buckingham, “urgently” moved its corporate registration from one tax haven to another, which could have permitted it to avoid hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.
Mossack Fonseca was ordered to transfer the company registration from the Bahamas to Mauritius after Heritage was faced with a large tax bill in Uganda over the sale of an oil field. Records show that at one point, the company’s chief financial officer demanded a junior member of the Mossack Fonseca team be sent to sit in the Bahamas registry office in order to speed up the process, saying the delay was “ridiculous”.
The emails appear to show Heritage Oil’s attempt to use a tax loophole to avoid a huge capital gains tax bill. One employee described changing the company’s domicile as of “primordial importance” to Heritage Oil. Heritage Oil insists this issue has yet to be resolved.
Under a “double taxation” treaty between Uganda and Mauritius, Heritage Oil planned to avoid paying tax in Uganda by paying a much smaller sum to the Indian Ocean island country.
In an email in February 2010, Heritage’s administration office in Guernsey sets out the basis of the transfer. “We are emailing you both because we urgently need to re-domicile HGOL [Heritage Oil] to Mauritius primarily due to the double tax agreement between Uganda and Mauritius,” wrote the employee. He warns that the energy asset in Uganda is due to be sold within “the next 11 days.”
A spokesman for Heritage Oil said it was not able to respond in detail because it touches on issues still before the courts.
“Although only a subsidiary issue in Heritage Oil’s ongoing litigation with the Ugandan government, it is a fact that the process of re-domiciling one of Heritage Oil’s subsidiaries from the from Bahamas to Mauritius had begun long before the completion of the transaction that ultimately gave rise to the tax dispute with the Ugandan government. The process of re-domiciling was commmenced for a variety of reasons.”
Buckingham has given the Conservatives more than £100,000.
The company also pointed out that all the oil and gas licences owned by Heritage were held outside the UK and all its operations were carried out overseas. The company also pays national insurance and other taxes.
Michael Mates
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Mates. Photograph: Michael Stephens/PA
Mates, who stood down in 2010 as member of parliament for East Hampshire, was a shareholder in a company called Haylandale, which leased a large area of land in the Caribbean island of Barbuda. The former Conservative MP said he was invited to become the chairman of the company to help “deal with” the government of Antigua and Barbuda.
Haylandale was established in 2003 to lease and develop a beach resort in Barbuda.
“After it was formed, I was invited to become chairman by a friend who was on the board, as my advice was sought on a number of matters concerning the company’s business,” said Mates. He said his shareholding was “small and uninfluential” and that the company’s attempt to develop a hotel had failed.
“I was to receive no remuneration unless and until the development took place, nor were the shares of any value. The company has never had any real value,” he said.
Mates registered his interest with the appropriate authorities in parliament.
Anthony Bamford
Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Cameron and Lord Bamford at the opening of a JCB factory in Brazil. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
The JCB heir Lord Bamford closed down a company registered in the British Virgin Islands just months before he joined the House of Lords, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
The decision to hand a peerage to the one of the Conservative party’s biggest donors is likely to raise further questions about the prime minister’s commitment to crack down on the use of offshore tax havens.
Bamford, who has given the Conservatives more than £4m personally and through JCB companies, was recommended for a peerage by Cameron shortly after the Conservatives formed a government in 2010. However, the businessman then withdrew his name from consideration.
Documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca seen by the Guardian reveal that Bamford had been the sole shareholder in a British Virgin Islands company called Casper Ltd since 1994. The company was dissolved in 2012. The then Sir Anthony Bamford was granted a peerage in 2013.
A spokesman for Bamford said: “Casper Limited was dissolved in 2012 having been an inactive company for its entire existence. It never owned any assets, held a bank account, formed part of any corporate structure or ever engaged in any activity whatsoever.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Rowland. Photograph: Tony McGrath
The businessman, who has given the Tories almost £3m, is a shareholder in dozens of offshore companies. Along with members of his family, Rowland held shares and property in British Virgin Islands screen entities.
Company names go through the letters of the alphabet – Asherton Ltd, Binbrook Ltd, Coalburn Ltd, Docking Ltd. One of their companies – Blackfish Capital – bought a division of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing in June 2009, with the banking operations being restructured into the Luxembourg-based Banque Havilland, named after Rowland’s Jersey mansion.
Rowland declined to comment.
The Fleming family
The Fleming family, who helped bankroll Cameron’s bid for the leadership of the Conservatives and have given the party millions, used the Panamanian law firm’s network to manage their own fortune.
After selling the merchant bank Flemings in 2000 for $7.7bn, members of the family opened a private office, Fleming Family & Partners, to manage their money. Over the next few years, FF&P gradually expanded, taking on wealth management for other rich families from offices run out of the tax haven of Liechtenstein. Now known as Stonehage Fleming, the family office has registered at least 18 Mossack Fonseca companies from its Liechtenstein office. A spokesman for Stonehage Fleming declined to comment.
Howard Flight
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Howard Flight. Photograph: Rex Features
The Tory peer, a former deputy chair of the party and shadow chief secretary to the Treasury from 2002 to 2004, was also active offshore. His Guinness Flight asset management business included a trust company in Guernsey that used Mossack Fonseca companies to manage investments on behalf of his clients.
Lord Flight said: “I ceased to be a director of the Guernsey Trust Company in 1998 upon its acquisition by the Investec Group. Also, I have had no involvement with the Guernsey Trust Company for 18 years and know nothing of its business during this period.
“Guinness Flight Trustees was not involved in advising either individuals or companies on reducing their UK tax liabilities and, to the best of my belief, had no involvement in harbouring the proceeds of crime, facilitating tax evasion, sanctions evasion, money laundering or bribery and corruption,” said Lord Flight. “Disciplines were in place to check against such involvements.”
Flight said he had continued as a director of Investec Asset Management, but was not involved in the trust company.
Sir Tony Baldry
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sir Tony Baldry. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA Archive/Press Association Ima
Baldry, who stood down as the Tory MP for Banbury at the last election, chaired a British Virgin Islands company called Westminster Oil Ltd, which appears in the Mossack Fonseca data. Westminster Oil, in turn, owns shares in a second BVI company called Westminster Caspian, which operated in Kazakhstan.
Baldry said Westminster Oil had been registered as an interest with the House of Commons, but as a wholly owned subsidiary, Westminster Caspian did not need to be registered.
“The BVI jurisdiction was chosen because the shareholders and directors came from a number of different countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Kazakhstan,” said Baldry.
“Given that the project was based in Kazakhstan, and given that the directors and shareholders came from the United States, the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan, whatever jurisdiction was chosen to register the company would inevitably have been ‘offshore’ to a number of the shareholders and directors.”
He added that all directors’ fees had been reported to HMRC.
Sir Edward du Cann
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Edward du Cann, far right, with Margaret Thatcher at the 1981 Tory party conference. Photograph: Bill Cross / Daily Mail / Rex F
Du Cann, who was instrumental in Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power, retired from parliament in 1987 but he appears in 2007 as a director of a BVI company called Sunshine Technology Group. Du Cann said: “I have had no connection with the companies in question, whose business was entirely legitimate and in the interests of the country where we were working, since 2008.”
Lord Astor of Hever
The former defence minister, whose grandfather owned the Times until 1966, also appears in the files, in relation to a Panamanian company called Vicata. Astor, who left government at the last election, shut down Vicata more than 20 years ago.
Astor said the company was set up while he was working in France. “I think it was set up for a deal we were working on that didn’t come to fruition and the company was never used,” he said. “This was set up when I was a French resident and taxpayer so there were no British tax issues,” he added.
Juniper Equities Trading
The Mossack Fonseca files also shed light on a mysterious company called Juniper Equities Trading, which was set up in the British Virgin Islands in July 2004. In December 2004, months after being created, Juniper lent the Conservative party £250,000.
In 2005, the cash-for-honours scandal broke, when it emerged that businessmen had lent political parties large sums of money before the election. Several of the businessmen were then put up for peerages. At the time, loans to political parties did not have to be declared. Electoral law was changed soon after to ensure full disclosure of loans.
In 2013, the Juniper company was transferred from the British Virgin Islands to Switzerland. In an email between Mossack Fonseca employers in January 2014, they note that the company was set up solely “pour faire des prêts à des entités proposées et choisies par actionnaire de la société” (to make loans to entities proposed and chosen by the shareholder).
After nine years of borrowing the money, the Conservatives repaid the loan in May 2014, without ever disclosing who was behind the company.
The Conservative party refused to comment on Juniper’s ownership and added: “This was an historic loan which has been repaid in full.”
Donors and politicos from other parties also appear in the data.
Lord Bilimoria
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lord Bilimoria. Photograph: Anna Gordon
The crossbench peer, who founded Cobra Beer, appears as one of more than 100 shareholders in a Virgin Islands company called Mulberry Holdings Asset Limited. Cobra collapsed into administration in 2009 after which Lord Bilimoria was criticised for using a “pre-pack” deal to buy back a stake in the firm. He spoke out against claims he abandoned creditors with debts of £71m, and promised to repay them some of the cash.
Lord Bilimoria said that Mulberry was a dormant company formed “for my ex-shareholders in Cobra, many of whom are not resident in the UK”.
Bilimoria said: “I am taxed in the UK on all my global income and all of my interests are declared to the relevant authorities.”
Arron Banks
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Arron Banks in the leave EU call centre in Bristol. Photograph: Gareth Phillips for the Guardian
Banks, who has given Ukip more than £1m and is spearheading the anti-EU referendum campaign, appears as the shareholder of a BVI company called PRI Holdings Limited. Shares from PRI were also transferred to Elizabeth Bilney, the chief executive of Leave.eu. PRI Holdings is in turn the sole shareholder of African Strategic Resources Limited, which is a British Virgin Islands company managed in Gibraltar.
Banks declined to comment.
Panama Papers reporting team: Juliette Garside, Luke Harding, Holly Watt, David Pegg, Helena Bengtsson, Simon Bowers, Owen Gibson and Nick Hopkins |
Jiri Hudler had quite the flight during his recent trip to Europe.
The free-agent NHL forward has been accused by the Delta Airlines staff of behaving belligerently during his flight from New York to Prague, a Czech newspaper reported Wednesday.
According to the report, it all started when Hudler's demand for "coke" was denied by a flight attendant after it was initially presumed that his request was in reference to the beverage. Hudler then threatened to have the woman killed by his friends upon their arrival.
Things only got worse from there. Hudler has also been accused of snorting cocaine in the plane's bathroom and then attempting to urinate on a food cart.
A fellow passenger told the newspaper that Hudler additionally appeared to be under the influence of alcohol during the flight.
Hudler has denied the allegations, saying it was "just such a small incident." The occurrence, however, is serious enough that it's under investigation by police.
Hudler, 33, most recently played with the Stars last season but has yet to find a new team as the league's regular season kicks off this week. Since beginning his NHL career in Detroit during the 2006-07 season, he has logged 164 goals and 264 assists in 708 career games with the Red Wings, Flames, Panthers and Stars. |
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus was originally meant as a one-shot prequel to his 1979 Alien – at least until Damon Lindelof got his hands on the screenplay and butchered the synergy.
Now, Scott is pushing the envelope as far at the edge of the universe, planning as many as three sequels to the Noomi Rapace-starrer that is slowly unveiling the origins of the Xenomorphs and the Engineers behind them.
Funny enough, in an interview with German website FilmFutter, Scott confirms that Prometheus does in fact connect with Alien, only not in the next sequel*.
“It won’t be in the next one,” explained Scott. “It will be in the one after this one or maybe even a fourth film before we get back into the Alien franchise…
“The whole point of it is to explain the Alien franchise and to explain the how and why of the creation of the Alien itself,” he added. “I always thought of the Alien as kind of a piece of bacterial warfare. I always thought that that original ship, which I call the Croissant, was a battleship, holding these biomechanoid creatures that were all about destruction.”
*Now, for those of you who have been on board since day one, you’ll remember that we broke news (via an on-set tipster) that the end of Prometheus was originally set to connect directly to Alien in that the ship that crashes is the exact same ship Ellen Ripley and her crew discover in Scott’s first film. Prometheus was changed to a different planet, thus expanding the universe and pushing the connection to the end of the third of a planned trilogy.
Now, Scott is eluding to plans of a fourth film – but who knows if the Neill Blomkamp Alien sequel is somehow part of this timeline.
Whatever the case may be, could this be too much backstory and information? Does knowing more retroactively hurt Alien? I guess time will tell. Too bad nobody in space will be able to hear me scream in anger if it does… |
I do love a beer after a nice bike ride. Or a paddling session, run or swim, on occasion.
In case you needed another reason to toss back a cold one, check out the newest release from Zilker Brewing Company — a canned version of its Parks & Rec brew, a limited-edition beer that honors Zilker Park’s 100th anniversary. A portion of Parks & Rec sales benefits the Austin Parks Foundation’s Zilker fund, which helps pay for long-term updates and maintenance of the Zilker playscape.
So drink a beer, build a better playscape.
The beer — a crisp, citrusy blend of four hop varieties — debuted on taps around town last month. I sampled it at the Draught House Pub & Brewery last week. It’ll be available starting Wednesday at H-E-B, Central Market, Whole Foods, Spec’s and other local retailers.
"We chose the pale ale style as a foundation, then we added a really unique combination of hops that are bright and citrusy and cleanse and refresh the palate," Zilker Brewing Company founder Patrick Clark says. "It’s definitely meant to be enjoyed outside."
A happy hour to celebrate the release is set for 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Yeti flagship store, 220 S. Congress Ave.
Clark, his brother Forrest Clark and their childhood friend Marco Rodriguez founded Zilker Brewing Company in 2015 as a home-brewing operation in a garage. They named it after old-time local businessman and politician Andrew Zilker, who in 1917 donated more than 350 acres of his private property to be used as public parkland. That Zilker had ties to the beverage industry through an ice-making business and bottling company sealed the deal.
"Now we’re excited to continue Andrew Zilker’s spirit of philanthropy by donating a portion of the proceeds from the Parks & Rec to the Austin Parks Foundation," Clark says.
The Austin Parks Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works to maintain and improve Austin’s parks system through public and private partnerships. Since 2006, it has given more than $2.5 million in community grants to the greater Austin area.
Clark, who grew up going to concerts at Zilker Park and swimming at Barton Springs, knows the perfection of a cold beer after a long run. He used to run with a group from Rogue Running and has a marathon or two under his belt.
"It’s been a year or two, but I just remember that feeling after training on a Saturday. You’d get up at 5:30 a.m. and run 18 or 20 miles and be back by 10 a.m., when most people are just getting started on their day. You really deserve whatever you’re going to do that day," he says.
Parks & Rec beer, he says, quenches the thirst after a good, quality workout. "It kind of goes back to the flavor profile we were looking for — some beers and styles don’t pair well after you’ve had a lot of activity or are outside in warmer temperatures," he says.
This one does. And even the packaging lends itself to outdoor consumption. "It’s very packable. You can hike with them, and they’re more recyclable than glass bottles. They’re more acceptable in outdoor places," Clark says.
For more information about the yearlong Zilker 100 celebration, visit zilker100.org.
Bike Month continues
In other beer news, Bike Month lasts through May, and that means you’ve got two more chances to score free beer at St. Elmo Brewing Co., just by riding your bike there.
Tell your bartender that you arrived on two wheels, and you’ll get a free half-pour of beer between 4 and 11 p.m. every Wednesday during May.
Offerings include the Angus dry stout, tropical Slate American IPA and Evangeline French Saison. Don’t drink alcohol? Opt for the house-made soda. Bring your four-legged friend, too. The patio is dog-friendly.
St. Elmo Brewing Co. is located at 440 E. St. Elmo Road, G-2, in the Yard development off South Congress Avenue.
Paddling for a cause
Tyler’s Dam That Cancer, the Flatwater Foundation’s annual 21-mile stand-up paddle and fundraising party, is set for June 12.
Head to the lawn of the Lower Colorado River Authority offices at 3825 Lake Austin Blvd., adjacent to Hula Hut, to cheer the paddlers on as they come to shore at about 5:30 p.m. The party starts at 6 p.m. and includes raffles, music and food. Those who make a $200 or more donation get VIP status — and free food.
Last year, 160 paddlers raised more than $500,000 at the event. This year’s goal is $600,000.
The Austin-based Flatwater Foundation is dedicated to helping cancer patients and their loved ones get mental health therapy and family support. The nonprofit organization helps provide psychological counseling and encourages people to exercise and get outdoors as a way to cope with a cancer diagnosis.
Besides the annual paddle boarding event, the organization partners with the fitness and health communities and works to break the stigma associated with mental health support. For more information, go to flatwaterfoundation.org. For more information about the event, go to tylersdtc.com. |
Web design has certainly come a long way since the first HTML files were published, and Cascading Style Sheets have given designers lots of freedom to specify typefaces, sizes, and styles for text. But most type on the Web is still limited to the 10 common "Web fonts" commissioned and distributed by Microsoft in the late 90s. Web designers and developers have done their best to work within these constraints, and even developed clever workarounds using images, Flash, and/or JavaScript.
A number of solutions have been proposed which would let developers use their preferred fonts directly, but getting everyone involved on the same page, so to speak, has revealed a morass of competing needs. Web designers want to be able to design websites using just the right typefaces—something that they can do with relative ease when working in print and other non-Web media. Browser vendors want to implement widely adopted standards so webpages render as well in one browser as they do in another. Type designers and font foundries want to make sure their font files aren't trivially easy to download, especially since fonts are already often pirated.
Current tools
Web designers have over a decade of experience using CSS to specify what fonts should be used when displaying a webpage. While a designer can specify any font by name, there's no guarantee that the viewer has that particular font installed. Thankfully, CSS allows designers to specify fallback fonts, and the browser will essentially go through the list specified in the stylesheet until a match is found among the installed fonts. CSS even allows a generic fallback such as "serif" or "fixed-width," and the browser will use whatever fonts are specified in its preferences for each of these generic classes.
Microsoft also decided to help by creating a set of fonts that it hoped would be widely distributed with operating systems. Known as the core "Web fonts," these are included with Windows and Mac OS X, and they are freely downloadable for Linux. These typefaces were specifically designed for screen use, and have since become the most commonly used type on the Web.
The collection includes 10 typefaces: the popular Verdana and Georgia, reworked versions of Times and Courier, Trebuchet MS, Andale Mono, Impact, the Helvetica-esque Arial (the default for Ars text), the Webdings dingbat font, and the generally-reviled Comic Sans. While the collection is certainly serviceable—especially Verdana and Georgia—it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for creativity and variety.
Designers can specify other fonts if the target audience can be reasonably expected to have those fonts installed. For instance, a blog about using Adobe Creative Suite software might reasonably assume that readers have Myriad Pro installed, since it comes with most Adobe design software. A Mac-centric website might specify Lucida Grande, Zapfino, or Helvetica, since those fonts are included with Mac OS X. As long as fallback fonts are defined, the page can be displayed on any computer, though it may lose some of the flair that the designer intended.
Designers have also developed a number of workarounds that allow them to design with whatever fonts they want. The simplest is to simply convert the type into static graphics—though that method can quickly eat up bandwidth, and prevents the type from being scaled. Another involves converting type into small Flash files in a method known as sIFR.
These methods share some drawbacks, however. Usability can be compromised, especially for those that rely on screen reading software. Users that either can't or don't have Flash installed won't be able to view all of the content as intended. As a result, the use of these methods is generally limited to headlines and banners, while the bulk of the text uses one of the common Web fonts.
More recently, a method known as Cuf�n text replacement has been implemented. This uses only HTML and JavaScript, displays type in whatever font a designer desires, and is still accessible to those with visual impairments. It works with most browsers, but it does require fonts to be converted to a special format, and the JavaScript is more complex than simply specifying a typeface. The rendering is also much slower than that of the browser's built-in text handling.
Latest method: @font-face
The most flexible method would be a way for a designer to link to a specific font file, have the browser download it once, and then use it as needed. The great thing is that this capacity already exists: the @font-face rule. This was originally part of the CSS2 spec, and Internet Explorer and Netscape initially supported it. However, both browsers used differing, proprietary font formats, so it was not widely adopted, and ended up being dropped from CSS2.1.
The @font-face rule is still a part of the expanded type specifications for CSS3, and Safari and Firefox have recently added support for @font-face use with standard TrueType and OpenType fonts. It's relatively trivial for designers to take advantage of @font-face—all that's needed is to host the font file on a Web server and add a link to it in a style sheet. Two Tokyo-based designers were commissioned to design a webpage that shows off Firefox 3.5's support for the feature, but you can also see @font-face in action for yourself if you have a recent version of Safari or the latest beta of Opera.
Unfortunately, there are two problems with @font-face. The first is that support for standard font formats isn't included in Internet Explorer, which still command a large percentage of the desktop browser market. Second, fonts are software, and software generally comes with licenses. While some fonts are freely licensed for Web use (for instance, the Open Font Library), many font distributors expressly forbid putting fonts on a Web server. Mozilla had to license the fonts used in its @font-face example specifically for that page alone.
Can't we all just get along?
So, type designers and font foundries don't want their fonts ripped off, browser vendors want a single standard, and designers want to be able to use whatever font best suits the design at hand. So far there isn't one clear solution that reconciles these competing desires.
One proposal involves standardizing Microsoft's EOT format, though you can be sure none of the browser vendors except for Microsoft are too keen on that idea. Another solution from The Font Bureau's David Berlow amounts to including a table of permissions within the metadata of a font file that could control their use on the Web. Font vendor Ascender has even proposed creating yet another format specifically for fonts to be used on the Web.
The latest idea is from a company called Small Batch, which has developed a tool called TypeKit. TypeKit relies on fonts that it hosts itself, and designers use the fonts by adding some JavaScript to their code. It's designed to abstract all the hard stuff away from the developer, and even uses Cuf�n or sIFR as fallbacks for browsers that don't support @font-face. Small Batch is working with foundries to develop a Web-specific license for the fonts it hosts, and the company has recently secured a round of funding from venture capital firms and several new media luminaries.
So far these solutions have generated a lot of debate, but very little consensus. Designers aren't really keen on new font formats. Adding support for @font-face using standard TTF and OTF fonts is appealing to browser vendors, since they can simply tie into an OS's built-in font handling. And type designers and font foundries are left worrying that their creative work will end up being given away. (Although anyone who would go through the trouble of finding a font file in a browser's cache or pulling the URL out of a CSS file isn't likely the sort to care much for a font's EULA in the first place.) TypeKit seems to show the most promise, but designers might not want to rely on a third party's servers to make sure the fonts they specified actually display for an end user.
You can be sure designers will continue to push the envelope by using @font-face for browsers that support it and other solutions like Cuf�n for those that don't. Until there is one solution that everyone can agree on—whatever it is—expect to still see lots of Verdana, Georgia, and Arial on the Web. For now, it seems, we're just left with the promise of better, more varied typography. |
Snapchat Hack Tool Kit
Snapchat is a really common social media app where people can create videos and share photos right after which sometime that video will be self destructed if the receiver sees it. Snapchat was identified out by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. Numerous men and women want to know how to hack someones snapchat but they are not looking in right path, straightforward google search will bring numerous results on snapchat hack topic. Attempt Ahead of You Purchase We are confident that Monitor iPhone spy app is highquality and userfriendly. http://www.artfulchange.org/
Tap and drag it into the Snapchat record button and VOILA, it ought to record a ten second video completely hands-cost-free. We have produced anything which nobody has established ahead of: a Snapchat Hack that works. It is almost certainly the most critical thing to any Snapchat user, as we often uncover that anytime somebody sends us a image, as it automatically gets deleted inside 15 seconds.
As opposed to other Snapchat Spy providers, we never charge you any funds or ask your credit card info. Component of that consists of that we produced our Snapchat hack in such a way that it automatically makes you totally anonymous. Following all, the people at Snapchat claim that sound is a massive element of what makes Snapchat videos so appealing.
Everyone who has worked on this app has had at least 10 years of understanding & expertise in hacking, from working in the specialist field all the way to the dark side of the community. Hackers seem to have posted account information for four.six million customers of quickie social-sharing app Snapchat, generating usernames and at least partial telephone numbers accessible for download.
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If you are going to do that,” Platco told the Every day Dot, why not just upload a entire Photoshop file?” Other people take into account it vital to safeguarding their function while crafting complicated images in a young and buggy app. Enter a email address of your account and then choose choices of the hack for example: Download Photographs etc.
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Amidst widespread criticism, this incident will possibly serve as a push to Snapchat group to patch up their security hole asap giving us a new and improved Snapchat expertise. It was launched with the name ‘Picaboo’ in July 2011, and following two months it was relaunched under the name ‘ Snapchat’ Snapchat is an image messaging and multimedia mobile application.
Even even though boosting your Snapchat score doesn’t give you any extra characteristics as of however. The ultimate way of creating a compelling Snapchat story is exhibiting your brand in an innovative manner. However, a main Snapchat breach reported in October 2014 sooner or later lead to Snapchat shutting down the third-celebration photo-saving apps.
Nicely, the aforementioned tricks are the most faddish and well-known approaches with which you can properly save the Snapchat images, videos and so on. In the finish, there is a lesson to be learned from the Snapchat hack which is that shoppers need to have to comprehend the risks of mobile apps just before agreeing to use them.
Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the problem, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. This implies that nobody sees the messages and that helps in privacy of snapchat. In that attack, somebody posed as the company’s CEO and convinced a Snapchat employee to send more than payroll information The profitable phish ultimately compromised dozens of employees’ identities.
Click this hyperlink on mobile to go directly to Hootsuite’s profile or scan the Snapcode beneath to add Hootsuite as a Buddy on Snapchat. Check out the screenshots of customers who successfully elevated their Snapchat score by boosting their points with our simple to use hack.
You are going to need to spend for a subscription in order to access the energy of mSpy for Snapchat. Finally, I totally realize why folks would want to hack a Snapchat password. Such users are generally banished from use of the app by basically banning their IP address from the Snapchat app servers.
While the Snapchat App doesn’t have a constructed in zoom featured, your mobile device does! Back in the day, Snapchat and your normal phone camera weren’t specifically the ideal of pals. You heard it right now you can enter username of a particular person and can gets his/her password by only one particular click.
As much entertaining as Snapchat can be, sometimes there’s no receiving around the FOMO (fear of missing out) that goes along with watching friends’ Snaps and Stories even though you are stuck at home carrying out practically nothing. If you enable Travel Mode on your Snapchat app, rather of downloading automatically, Snaps and Stories will load only when you tap them. |
Undoubtedly, many of the seasoned public accounting hacks out there have received some variation of the following email:
From: [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:36 PM To: [Everyone at BDO, allegedly] Subject: Available Hello All, I have some free time today so if you would like for me to help out with something feel free to let me know. Thanks, [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] In most instances, an email such as this is only sent to a few senior associates and managers. The recipients talk amongst themselves and figure out what to assign to the poor little buggar so that (s)he can be billable for at least a few hours. Of course when you send a request to the entire firm then, to no one's surprise, assignments can come rolling in because a number of people around the country are certainly busy. In this particular case, a number of requests that were sent to the bored L.A. associate were shared back and forth between some BDO staff (an infrequent acceptable use of "reply-all") and one of the participants was kind enough to share it with us:
From: [Midwest Assurance Senior Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:39 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available I’m thinking [this was sent to] everyone hahah. I’m drafting an email to send him some work. [Midwest Assurance Senior Associate] Three minutes! That's a quick turnaround. Thanks, Michigan! What else is out there?
From: [West Coast Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:41 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available Having second thoughts. Is it a [dick thing] to send the following? Hey [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate], Thanks for volunteering! You must be a new L2? Could you stop by my client in Sunnyvale to pick up some confirms? Regards, [West Coast Assurance Senior]
Not a dick thing at all! If traffic isn't bad (rare), it's only a five hour drive from L.A. to Sunnyvale. What's next?
From: [Texas Senior Assurance Associate] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:45 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available Haha, I sent – Hey [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate], My client has some inventory on consignment w/ a customer in LA. We need to perform a recount of their inventory. Do you think you can take an hour or so to recount for me? We are looking at about 25 items. Thanks! [Texas Senior Assurance Associate]
Just so long as he does the count first. It'd be a real bitch to skip up to NoCal and then turn around to go back. The situation does hinge on what the clients' needs are, of course.
So. That's three assignments in less than ten minutes. Where does that leave us?
From: [Different West Coast Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 1:46 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available So the guy is delivering pizzas in WA [not sure where they came from, but add it to the list!], inventory observation in LA, confirm pick up in Sunnyvale, and Detroit staff work? All star. [Different West Coast Assurance Senior]
Last thing:
From: [Yet another West Coast Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 3:48 PM To: [Other Assurance Professionals] Subject: RE: Available He needs to stop in Oregon too. “Thank you for reaching out [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate]! It would be great if you could stop by my current client in [redacted location] this afternoon and perform some walkthroughs. Also, could you stop at In ‘N Out on the way and pick up 45 cheeseburgers for the BDO audit team and the accounting department?” [Yet another West Coast Assurance Senior]
And make sure half of them are monster animal style. Don't mess that up.
UPDATE:
It turns out that our bored Los Angeles associate pick up some work on the east coast as well. Thanks to another source we are now privy to some work he's been offered on Long Island.
From: [New York Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:46 PM To: [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] Subject: RE: Available Hey [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate] – We ran out of paper at the client location. Can you please fax us approximately 100 pieces of paper to the following fax address [redacted, just in case]? Thanks so much! [New York Assurance Senior] From: [New York Assurance Senior] Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 4:54 PM To: [More Assurance Professionals] Subject: FW: Available Hey Guys – [Bored L.A. Assurance Associate]’s been with the firm since Monday, January 21, 2013. I am sure the pressure is on for him to achieve full utilization so if you can think of anything he can help with please let him know. Thanks for your help. [New York Assurance Senior] Sensing that the fax project might not keep Bored L.A. Assurance Associate busy all day and that he may be under some pressure to get that utilization rate up, our NY Senior was thoughtful enough to reach out to some colleagues:
That's teamwork, people. Bored L.A. Assurance Associate will be on an international assignment in no time. |
Eric Holder named to lead effort to destroy GOP after Hillary wins the presidency
This election is for keeps: plans are being implemented, with President Obama already signed on, staff hired, and money being raised. Perhaps lulled into complacency by the MSM polls, the Democrats have already constructed and staffed their strategy to permanently disable the Republican Party. Eric Holder is the perfect henchman, a man above nothing in his quest for political dominance, unbound by old-fashioned concepts of justice. The GOP will remain in existence as the token opposition, useful for legitimizing the actual one-party regime, the essential element of the election rituals reminding us of the Republic we once enjoyed.
Edward Isaac-Dovere of Politico has the scoop: As Democrats aim to capitalize on this year’s Republican turmoil and start building back their own decimated bench, former Attorney General Eric Holder will chair a new umbrella group focused on redistricting reform—with the aim of taking on the gerrymandering that’s left the party behind in statehouses and made winning a House majority far more difficult. The new group, called the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, was developed in close consultation with the White House. President Barack Obama himself has now identified the group—which will coordinate campaign strategy, direct fundraising, organize ballot initiatives and put together legal challenges to state redistricting maps—as the main focus of his political activity once he leaves office. The group is moving forward in a systematic way, assembling talent and money: Though initial plans to be active in this year’s elections fell short, the group has been incorporated as a 527, with Democratic Governors Association executive director Elizabeth Pearson as its president and House Majority PAC executive director Ali Lapp as its vice president. They’ve been pitching donors and aiming to put together its first phase action plan for December, moving first in the Virginia and New Jersey state elections next year and with an eye toward coordination across gubernatorial, state legislative and House races going into the 2018 midterms. Redistricting, aka Gerrymandering (depending on the eye of the beholder), is now a science, thanks to the data-mining capabilities of all the Silicon Valley Big Money corporatist allies of the Democrats. Assembling masses of data from Google, Facebook, and others, they can put together districts micro-targeted with just enough Democrats to win and shove the GOP voters into 90% majority districts, shut out forever from control of state legislatures and the House of Representatives. As Richard Baehr emailed me, "so long as there is an opposition, it must be destroyed." It will be, if these well designed, politically connected, well financed efforts are implemented under a President Rodham. Combined with a Supreme Court committed to the living Constitution fantasy, the Uniparty will rule us all any way it desires. |
The housing crisis, which was meant to subside four years ago according to statistics, is still continuing, says a housing rights group.
The Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU) used moving season that culminated on Saturday to reiterate their demands for social housing.
Véronique Laflamme, a spokesperson for the organization, said dozens of families didn’t find themselves on the streets on July 1, as was the case in the early 2000s.
Nevertheless, she said the crisis has not abated as salaries aren’t increasing at the same rate as rent prices.
Last year in Quebec, the vacancy rate stayed at 4.4 per cent — a number that should reflect stability in the rental market.
Laflamme argues vacancy rates have decreased at an alarming rate in certain neighbourhoods like St-Leonard and Ahuntsic-Cartierville. She also said there is a shortage of housing appropriate for families.
In an interview with the Presse Canadienne, she said a number of tenants are living in substandard situations, over their budgets, away from their loved ones or without community services.
“The housing crisis has transformed. The extreme shortage is over, but the major problem is now high housing costs,” Laflamme said.
According to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 270,000 tenants are facing essential housing needs in the province. Not including the homeless or those who spend the majority of their income on rent, Laflamme estimates 81,000 Quebeckers lack the funds to move and feed themselves.
“Unfortunately, these statistics don’t incite a reaction,” she said. “It should be a shock.”
FRAPRU estimates the 3,000 social housing units to be constructed in Quebec in the next year will not be enough to address previous budget cuts.
“The Quebec government said they want to do better. We know they have a record (budgetary) surplus) but, unfortunately, in terms of politics and social programs, there’s nothing new — not a cent more,” she said.
Last year, the United Nations reported a shortage of social housing in Canada, while FRAPRU says waiting lists for low-income housing are stagnant, as only 11 per cent of the rental market in Quebec is non-profit.
“People who invest in housing are there to make profits,” Laflamme said. “Without rent control in Quebec, they’ll continue to increase rent significantly while incomes won’t follow.”
Ottawa will present its national housing strategy this fall, while the Quebec minister responsible for housing, Martin Coiteux, will complete his revision of the AccèsLogis program.
FRAPRU argues for the formal recognition of the right to housing — not in having a roof over one’s head, but “a place where one can live safely, in peace and with dignity.”
In 2016, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Quebec was $751, according to the CMHC, compared with $808 in Quebec City and $791 in Montreal. |
I'd like to picture Scott Boras in a room with the shutters drawn, staring at an old rotary phone. Just staring. Projecting his dark energy into the phone, down into the wires, and out into the world. Maybe he focuses on a specific name; maybe the energy just knows where to go.
And while Dan Duquette or Peter Angelos are sitting down for breakfast, they suddenly spit out their scone and say aloud, "By Jove, why aren't we in on this Prince Fielder action?" The hardest part for Boras is acting surprised when he gets the phone call.
That's not how it happens, though. If the Orioles really are interested in Prince Fielder, it's a strategy that's been debated and discussed, reviewed and ruminated on. Of course, this is the Orioles we're talking about, so that doesn't mean that the right decision will be reached, but it's not like Angelos had a a vision that Fielder came unto them on a flaming pie and then ordered the Orioles to pursue the slugger suddenly.
Which brings us to the question posed in the headline: What in the heck do the Orioles want with Prince Fielder?
The answer, and I'm just spitballing here: Probably to get better. Wait, wait. Hear me out.
Fielder takes a lot of guff for being shaped like something out of the Disney Alice in Wonderland cartoon, and it's a legitimate concern. He's … fluffy, to put it diplomatically. There should be concerns over his durability. It's hard to imagine a 40-year-old Fielder scampering out to first base, fit as a fiddle.
But there's a difference between a "legitimate concern" and something that should completely obscure Prince Fielder's long-term potential. He's still just 27 -- because he had immediate success as a young major leaguer, it's easy to forget just how young he is. If Fielder gets a seven-year deal, he'd be 34 by the end of it. When is he supposed to turn into a fiery mess of bone, cartilage, and blubber? When he's 30? 31? 32? Even Mo Vaughn made it to 32, and he didn't necessarily crumble because of his girth -- a rogue dugout was the culprit there.
It's completely reasonable to think that Fielder is the kind of free agent that is good for any team. Win now? Of course Fielder helps. He'd help every team. Win later? The ultimate example of a rags-to-riches team are the 2006 Tigers, who made the World Series three years after losing 119 games -- that's 26 games worse than the 2011 Orioles.
Using the '03 Tigers as a yardstick, it's fair to think that any time, anywhere, no matter how bereft they are of talent and direction, can get from worst to first in a three- or four-year stretch. In three or four years, Fielder should still be very, very good. He could collapse. He could go the way of Adam Dunn for whatever reason. But that's not exceptionally likely. He should be Prince Fielder for a while yet.
And Fielder would represent the Orioles getting better. Substantially better. Fielder by himself isn't going to bring the Orioles over .500, even, but he'd be a substantial upgrade to the roster. He'd be one more piece. Matt Wieters or Adam Jones getting substantially better; Manny Machado erupting on the scene; some of the previously exciting young pitchers reaching their potential -- all of these things can add up to an interesting Orioles team that would have the luxury of Fielder already being around to help. In the meantime, he'd be a gate attraction -- something that would sell tickets, if not jeans.
This isn't to say that the Orioles are a team on the rise, that their future is bright, gotta wear shades, look out world. The counter-argument is just obvious: The Baltimore Orioles. Not going to compete with that one. But the same argument could have been made for the Tigers for most of the '90s and early '00s. And when they signed Magglio Ordonez to a huge deal, a lot of folks asked the same question: why? Why would the Tigers -- a 90-loss team in their good years -- get a win-now player in his 30s? Seemed like a waste of money. Then prospects developed, more productive veterans came on board, and the Tigers weren't the Tigers anymore.
That could happen to the Orioles. I mean, it could. Technically. They still have that minor issue of playing in the same division as the two richest teams in the game and two of the smartest, whereas the Tigers left the AL East at just about the perfect time.
But don't think that it would be totally insane for the Orioles to pursue Fielder. The Orioles are bad because they don't have enough good players. They should acquire more good players. This Fielder fella is a good player, and he should be for a few years yet. The Orioles acquiring Fielder would fit with that whole "acquire good players" strategy.
See? This baseball stuff is easy. |
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Photo by Ninian Reid | CC BY 2.0
It is said that Twitter has been responsible for stirring nascent revolutions in the Middle East, going beyond its initial description as the Seinfeld platform of social media. It has also been targeted by authorities for stirring the pot, lighting fires and generally being a nuisance.
From useless babble and inane navel gazing, users became connected activists, Molotov cocktail throwers and inane spouters of few-line messages. A whole spectrum of connectivity, riddled with messages of varying quality, grew up.
What then, of the terms of use? Given the nature of the platform, community guidelines, of a sort, are supposedly meant to be followed. This hardly means that they are enforced with any zeal. It means that an individual such as minor celebrity Tila Tequila, whose social media rants were often richly anti-Semitic, will only be banned after taking a bridge too far. That bridge was crossed in posting a picture of herself in the company of two men luxuriating with the Nazi salute.[1]
The suspensions share a thread of inconsistency, though they veer from aspects of bullying (such as New Zealander Hanna, known on Twitter as “Poison Ivy” or then 19-year-old Jane Oranika on racial suggestiveness in an online make-up video on how to make a White Face. “Barack Obama? Is that some kind of sauce?”[2] Trump supporters didn’t see the humour in that.
Various, even more venal figures have made it to the ban list. George Zimmerman, who gunned down an unarmed Trayvon Martin in 2012, was suspended in 2015. But it was the now oft used term “revenge porn” that ultimately sank his social media bliss, despite previously posting a picture of his murderous handiwork: Martin, lingering lifelessly in the grass.
The knotted realm of bitchiness and abuse is one thing; but removing political activists from the platform for violating various forms of claimed conduct is an onerous, and in some cases dangerous task. One of the discordant voices of the alt-right movement, and Breitbart’s former tech editor, Milo Yiannopoulos, provides such a case. When does free speech, notably of the insensitive sort, transmute into pure hate speech?
Where Yiannopoulos ran foul was leading a social media strike on actress Leslie Jones of Ghostbusters fame, a form of character assassination in text. This got him booted off the platform in 2016. Since then, he has been doing a merry dance on the controversial plank, suggesting the possibility that 13-year-olds might have learning sexual relationships with older pedagogues.[3] Such inspirations of antiquity have not gone down well in a social media world less attuned to manuscripts than bleeps.
Which brings us, at last, to the President himself. Donald Trump has conjured, confected and suggested as few others on Twitter. He has made the social media platform a direct link to the voter in unprecedented ways.
He has also, according to the creator of House of Cards, Beau Willimon, done enough to be blackballed by the Twitter party. His suggestions go further than most. He argues that the Trump tweet fest poses a “national security threat” which emboldens “our enemies to take advantage of his flagrant shortcomings.”
Willimon’s views are traditionally contractarian, though he notes that Trump is different from any user. “Only one person on @Twitter is President of the United States. That comes with a supreme and unique responsibility.”[4]
Twitter may well connect the globe, but, “That comes with its own responsibility: to do your part in protecting the world.” In accusing former President Barack Obama of having “wire tapped” Trump Tower, with no evidence, the Trump show had generated the grounds for deletion.[5]
Much of the argument on banning Trump from Twitter is precisely because of his effect. He may be the first instance in history of a verifiable, causally effective figure on the platform. Not all of his less than 140 character notes have been atrocious, let alone distasteful. Amidst the slime lurk bits of Schadenfreude everybody can enjoy. Where will the wrecking ball strike next?
Lockheed Martin, to take one example, felt the shareholder pinch at various Trump tweets, most notably on the “tremendous cost and cost overruns” of the F-35 fighter program.[6] Shares in December fell by 2 per cent, surely a joy for anybody against the Military Industrial Complex. Since then, the President has withdrawn that wrecking ball, changing his tune on the F-35 to embrace it for its sudden efficiency on costing.
Other arguments suggest that Twitter, being a private platform, generates its own rules. Free speech can never morph into hate speech; and so on. Going into a bar may well see you served a drink. The publican, however, reserves the right to ignore your custom at any one point for drunkenness or any other number of reasons, not all of them reasonable.
As shown previously, the puppeteers of the platform are not always predictable. Nor, perhaps, can they be. Besides, shutting off the Trump reality show from a crucial feature of his communications apparatus would be to deprive Planet Earth, not merely of a hysterical show, but a first hand, unvarnished view of what the current President of the United States thinks. That would be even more dangerous.
Notes.
[1] https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/tila-tequila-suspended-from-twitter/
[2] http://rollingout.com/2016/11/23/alabama-teen-suspended-from-twitter-for-whiteface/
[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/milo-yiannopoulos-latest-news-paedophilia-breitbart-video-child-abuse-right-wing-sexual-relationship-a7589656.html
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/house-of-cards-beau-willimon-trump-twitter_us_58bc2c08e4b0b99894182ed0
[5] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837989835818287106
[6] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/812061677160202240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw |
Image caption The Srebrenica victims' remains were found in mass graves years after the war
Serbia's new president, Tomislav Nikolic, has said the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 was not genocide.
"There was no genocide in Srebrenica," he told Montenegrin state television, but said that "grave war crimes" were committed.
He took office in Serbia on Thursday.
The massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 has been recognised as genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague and the International Court of Justice.
"In Srebrenica, grave war crimes were committed by some Serbs, who should be found, prosecuted and punished," said Mr Nikolic, widely seen as a nationalist.
The Srebrenica crime figures in the genocide charges levelled against Gen Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime commander, and his wartime political chief Radovan Karadzic, both on trial at the war crimes court in The Hague.
"It is very difficult to indict someone and to prove before a court that an event qualifies as a genocide," Mr Nikolic said, without referring to the international court rulings.
The massacre happened just days after Bosnian Serb troops led by Gen Mladic overran the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica.
Mr Nikolic's predecessor as president, Boris Tadic, apologised to relatives of Srebrenica's victims in 2005 and attended memorial ceremonies there. |
A Broadway actress has taken the rare step of publicly challenging the tone of anonymous online comment boards where theater lovers exchange news, gossip and opinions, often with a heavy dose of snark.
Patti Murin, who was to star in a Broadway musical called “Nerds” this spring, on Thursday posted a lengthy cri de coeur objecting to some of the comments on a chat board run by BroadwayWorld in the hours after the show, about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, was canceled. One commenter said of an actor, “I hope he’s not playing either Jobs or Gates because neither of them are mentally retarded.” Another described the show, which had not yet begun previews (although it had been staged elsewhere in previous years) as “terrible,” and yet another said that Ms. Murin was not capable of hitting a high C (which Ms. Murin denies in colorful language that cannot be reprinted here).
Ms. Murin, who starred in the Broadway production of “Lysistrata Jones,” wrote that she appreciated the role chat boards play in allowing theater fans to talk to one another, but objected to what she called “a cesspool of ignorance and negativity”:
But then there’s also a nasty faction of “fans” who take our hard work and turn it into gossip, and pissing contests over who can come up with the snarkiest insult or meme or GIF, and bragging rights over who is the most insider-y when it comes to Broadway and theater secrets. It’s snarky. And you know, I like some light snark. But it’s nasty snark. Immature and uninformed people are hiding behind screen names and posting incorrect information, passing on rumors as facts.
The theater community is small, and the BroadwayWorld chat board, which has had six million messages since it was started in 2003, claims to be the largest for theater fans. The website, which is independently owned by its founder, Robert Diamond, has news, features and listings about theater in multiple cities. Mr. Diamond said that the chat board participants are “a wide variety of people that range from Tony-winning performers to 14-year-olds in Kansas City,” and said the forum was established to “create a place for those of us that didn’t grow up with theater-loving friends to chat about the things we were obsessing about.” |
(Reuters) - Novartis AG said its cancer drug, Zykadia, was twice as effective as chemotherapy in slowing the progression of a rare form of lung cancer in a late-stage study.
Swiss drugmaker Novartis' logo is seen behind scaffolding at the company's plant in the northern Swiss town of Stein in this January 27, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/Files
Patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+)advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with Zykadia had a median progression-free survival of 16.6 months, compared to 8.1 months for those on chemotherapy.
Overall survival data is still immature, but a positive trend in favor of Zykadia was observed, the Swiss drugmaker said on Tuesday.
Zykadia has already won accelerated approval in the United States as an alternative or second-line treatment in patients who have progressed on or cannot tolerate Pfizer’s Xalkori - considered the standard-of-care initial therapy.
Novartis’ drug also has conditional approval as a second-line treatment in Europe.
The drug competes with Roche Holding AG’s Alecensa, which is widely seen to have a leg up in the race to secure regulatory approval as a first-line treatment.
Alecensa has already demonstrated a 66 percent reduction in the risk of cancer progression, compared with Xalkori, in previously untreated Japanese patients in a late-stage trial, Roche said in May. bit.ly/1Tp4FqD
Novartis had said in September that Zykadia had outperformed chemotherapy, but received a muted response from analysts and investors since Alecensa had already shown to be more effective than Xalkori.
Novartis said on Tuesday that it was initiating discussions with regulators to expand Zykadia’s use.
ALK+ non-small cell lung cancer affects between 2 and 7 percent of roughly 1.8 million new lung cancer cases reported annually. |
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Jay Heaps was conflicted as he watched New England Revolution striker Jerry Bengtson score the game-winning goal on Wednesday afternoon, lifting Honduras to a 2-1 win over the United States as both countries kicked off the final round of World Cup Qualifying.
Bengtson was quickest to react when teammate Boniek Garcia slid a pass across the box, poking the ball into an empty net and showing the predatory instincts the Revs hope to see upon his return to Foxborough.
“It’s a great goal from Jerry and you’re very happy because he’s your teammate and we’re in the trenches with him,” said Heaps. “But it’s tough to see the U.S. go and have a performance and a result like that.”
Heaps’ concern wasn’t with the United States in the 85th minute, however, as he watched Bengtson get stretchered off the field – and replaced by a substitute – following an apparent injury. Luckily his apprehension quickly turned to relief as Bengtson confirmed he was fine during a postgame conversation with the Revs’ staff.
“There was a good moment of pause there because the feed I saw didn’t show what happened on the injury,” Heaps said. “When you see a guy down, you don’t know. But we spoke with him last night and everyone felt good.”
Bengtson is scheduled to arrive in New England on Thursday night and join the Revolution for his first preseason training session on Friday morning. Fitness shouldn’t be an issue after spending the past three weeks with Honduras, so Bengtson can focus solely on settling back into his club side.
“I think now, from his standpoint, he has to compartmentalize,” said Heaps. “He had a lot of work to do with the national team, he did that work, and now he joins us and we want to get him up to speed with our guys. It shows that Jerry has a knack for the goal and we have to get him the chances to score like his team in Honduras does.”
Nguyen likely to be cleared for participation in the Desert Diamond Cup
Lee Nguyen was held out of the Revolution’s first two preseason matches in Casa Grande as a precaution following shoulder surgery last September. Although he’s been a full participant in training sessions, Nguyen has yet to be cleared for full contact and his teammates have been instructed to be cautious around the midfielder.
“Guys know where Lee is and they can’t bump him too much; if they’re grabbing him, they try to stop,” said Heaps. “We’ve been monitoring that, but he’s [just about] ready to go.”
Heaps estimated Nguyen is currently “90 percent full” in training and he believes last year’s team MVP will be available to play in the upcoming Desert Diamond Cup in Tucson.
Sene on track for March/April return from ACL surgery
The original timetable for Saer Sene’s recovery from ACL surgery called for a return in March or April and the French striker appears to be on course with that schedule. Sene has worked tirelessly during rehab and currently spends training sessions running and working on strength exercises with the athletic training staff.
Although Sene will almost certainly miss the beginning of the season, the Revs are preaching patience in his recovery in the hopes he’ll be available for the majority of the campaign.
“With a guy like Saer, you’re glad he has a good personality,” said Heaps. “We just have to make sure we’re patient and that his progress is being handled the right way.” |
Photo
If you watch the Champions League quarterfinals Tuesday and Wednesday, you will hear soccer fans in their full-throated glory. Here is a look at popular chants among supporters of Tuesday’s home teams.
APOEL NICOSIA vs. REAL MADRID
Stadium
GSP Stadium, Nicosia, Cyprus
Capacity
22,859
Song
“Even If I Looked Everywhere”
(sung in Greek)
And even if I looked everywhere on earth /And even if I’ve been in trouble and done jail time /
I never strayed / and remained here / a crazy orange fan / oooo I live for you
Meaning
Dedicated to the most passionate Apoel fans, including those who have been jailed because of their show of support for the club. Members of the main supporter group, the PAN.SY.FI, wear orange jackets.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
History
Was introduced in January 2011 in response to a high incidence of arrest among Apoel fans. PAN.SY.FI stands for Panellinios (Covering all Greece) Syndesmos (Group) Filathlon (Supporters) of Apoel, and was founded in 1979. In addition to its organized support for the club, PAN.SY.FI is politically motivated and advocates Greek rule for Cyprus. |
November 3, 2015 – After about a year of work, Stefano Ghisolfi, 22, has redpointed a 70-move route that’s likely now Italy’s hardest sport climb. Ghisolfi, who has completed three 5.15a routes, called his new route Lapsus (9b or 5.15b).
Lapsus is a marathon link-up of three climbs at Andonno in northwestern Italy, south of Turin, where Ghisolfi lives. The route links Noi (8b+), Cobra (8b), and Anaconda (8c), with the crux near the very end. Noi and Cobra were first linked in 1993 to create Noia (8c+), and last year Ghisolfi linked Cobra and Anaconda to make Cobra Reale (8c+/9a), according to Planet Mountain.
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Ghisolfi redpointed the route November 2, writing at his Instagram page: “Finally, after long time and a lot of tries, I sent the hardest project I ever tried. I spent many days on it, falling many times at the last section. Today the conditions were perfect, we came in Andonno just in the afternoon, and after a quick warm-up I climbed the route on the second go of today. I propose a new grade for me and for Italy. I think this is much harder than Biographie and Demencia."
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Ghisolfi repeated Biographie (9a+) at Ceüse, France, in June, and Demencia Senil (9a+) at Margalef, Spain, in March. Last summer he climbed his first 9a+/5.15a with Le Moustache qui Fâche at Engraygues, France. Ghisolfi is ranked seventh in the world in competition lead climbing, and he won a World Cup event in China in 2014.
Ghisolfi said the hardest route in Italy until now likely was Adam Ondra’s Marina Superstar (9a+/b, 2009) in Sardinia. “I'm going to invite Adam to try Lapsus so he can compare the routes,” he said. |
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Imagine if American troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan were formally charged with raping 3,374 local women a year in places like Fallujah, Baghdad, and Kabul.The international outcry would make the one that followed Abu Ghraib look like the mewling of a kitten. Scandal and dishonor would follow the perpetrators to the end of their days and be written tens of pages deep into Google, as well as the history books. The secretary of defense and the president would take abrupt and decisive action to restore order in the ranks and reassert a demand for moral conduct and respect for the rights of women. The courts martial would flow.Instead, because Americans troops stationed around the world are charged with sexually assaulting fellow Americans who are also members of the Armed Forces, rather than civilians, their crimes have for too long been swept under the rug of national security and chain of command.Of 3,374 reported cases of sexual assault in 2012, only 238 convictions were handed down, according to the annual Department of Defense report to Congress released Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's anonymous surveys of members of the military led it to estimate that more than 26,000 women and men were sexually assaulted in the U.S. Armed Forces last year. That number represents a sharp jump from the previous year's estimate of 19,000 assaults. (In the wake of the growing attention to the problem of military sexual assault, thanks in part to the release of the documentary Invisible War last year, some of that increase may be due to greater willingness of assault survivors to speak up about what they've experienced -- something the Pentagon says it wants them to do.)The basic problem with the military justice system in cases of sexual assault -- as outlined in horrific detail by the military women and experts featured inand by members of Congress during hearings -- is that it combines the dynamics of the workplace with the problem of crime investigation. A woman who is assaulted and wants redress has to report the crime to her commanding officer -- her boss -- and press charges against one of her colleagues in the military, often someone who also works for her boss, all the while continuing to live near her attacker in a thick soup of overlapping interpersonal and professional relationships between her and his friends. The commanding officer, in turn, is held responsible for crimes committed in his unit, and penalized if a flood of reports and convictions come in, as they are seen as a negative reflection on his leadership. And it's entirely up to him whether or not to push forward with taking a complaint to trail; he also has power to overturn convictions without explanation. Adding insult to injury, women seeking to bring charges may fall afoul of military codes punishing adultery and can face court martial themselves. In short, the system is a mess, resulting in what critics call a culture of impunity in which serial rapists are allowed to flourish I say serial rapists advisedly, because there's a great deal of research showing that far from being a mistake perpetrated by basically decent guys who fall afoul of the consent line one time, most rapists are serial predators who commit a large number of offenses before being convicted for one of them. Studies of civilians convicted of rape show that the average convicted rapist is responsible for seven to 11 sexual assaults, and that undetected rapists who prey on people they know also tend to be serial predators and approach their victims with a great deal of premeditation. The more we have learned about the nature of sexual predation, the more it becomes clear that it is pattern behavior by a small minority of men that if not caught and prosecuted too often is repeated. And women in the military are like women in college -- in the age range at which sexual predation against them is highest, housed in close proximity to men too young or clever to have been previously convicted, and forced by their environment to seek redress within a system of justice that bears little resemblance to the regular legal system. No wonder 62 percent of military women report experiencing social, professional, or administrative retaliation after reporting a sexual assault.More than a year afterbegan the conversation, and days after the Pentagon report was released, there is new high-level attention on how to address the problem."For those who areuniform who have experienced sexual assault,-i-chief that've gotbacks.will support," President Obama said Tuesday. "And we're not goingtolerate this stuff and there will be accountability." On Thursday, senior White House aides Valerie Jarrett and Tina Tchen held a meeting with a bipartisan group of 16 members of Congress to begin what will be "an ongoing dialog, for sure," according to a White House official."At the meeting, the White House reiterated the president and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's statements from earlier this week that sexual assault is a crime and will not be tolerated in the U.S. military," according to the official read-out. "Overall, the White House has made the health of the force a top priority, and will be working with the Department of Defense on results and accountability on efforts to eliminate sexual assault in the military. The group discussed various legislative proposals as well as actions that the Administration could take to hold offenders accountable, improve the reporting process, support victims, and work towards the prevention of sexual assault."There are three main legislative proposals on the table -- or about to be on the table -- about how to address the problem.* Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand , who was at the White House meeting today, plans to formally introduce legislation next week. Her bill, which she's working in with Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, will take the most aggressive approach to reforming the system of adjudicating sexual assaults within the military. It's also likely to be the most controversial of the bunch, in that it proposes taking commanding officers out of the picture when it comes to the decision about whether to take serious assault cases to trial -- something Hagel has said he opposes -- replacing their judgment with that of experienced trial prosecutors. The bill would also codify a change Hagel already has proposed, amending the Uniform Code of Military Justice, according to a Gillibrand aide, "so that the convening authority may not (a) set aside a guilty finding or (b) change a finding of guilty to a lesser included offense."* New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington on Tuesday introduced the Combating Military Sexual Assault (MSA) Act of 2013. This proposal would strengthen assault-prevention efforts, create Special Victims' Counsels to help survivors navigate the legal process, and automatically trigger referral of sexual-assault cases to the court-martial level or "next superior competent authority when there is a conflict of interest in the immediate chain of command." Rep. Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, plans to introduce a companion bill in the House.* Also in the House, Republican Mike Turner of Ohio and Democrat Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts, the chairs of the Military Sexual Assault Prevention Caucus, have introduced "the Better Enforcement for Sexual Assault Free Environments Act of 2013 (BE SAFE) Act." The act "requires that a person found guilty of an offense of rape, sexual assault, forcible sodomy, or an attempt to commit any of those offenses receive a punishment that includes, at a minimum, a dismissal or dishonorable discharge" and reforms the Uniform Code of Military Justice so that it's no longer possible to lessen sentences or set aside convictions of those convicted of serious sex crimes. |
As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt’s “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney’s campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal.
As reported by ThinkProgress, Solamere Capital Partner’s subsidiary Solamere Advisors is a investment advisory group, providing advice to Solamere clients and boosting sales. Would-be corporate pugilist Tagg Romney is a director. According to the New York Times, all but one of its 11 employees came from the Charlotte office of the Stanford Financial Group, the US investment arm of convicted felon R. Allen Stanford’s offshore banking and fraud network that comprised a host of companies including the Stanford International Bank, Stanford Capital Management, The Bank of Antigua, Stanford Trust and Stanford Gold and Bullion. Three of these employees, Tim Bambauer, Deems May, and Brandon Phillips, received incentive compensation related to their direct sales of securities linked to a fraud that brought down this banking network.
Tim Bambauer has left his position as managing partner at Solamere Advisors. May and Phillips remain employed as partner and chief compliance officer respectively.
Allen Stanford is currently serving a 110-year prison sentence for convictions on 13 counts of fraud. His companies were placed in receivership. $8 billion of Stanford’s stolen money has yet to be recovered and the victims are in court to recover those funds and incentive pay bonuses to Stanford employees (including Bambauer, May and Phillips) for fraudulently getting people to invest in an operation that later bilked many of them out of their life’s savings.
Stanford’s shady history and criminality did not begin with the fraudulent investments that lead to his downfall, nor was it unknown at the highest level of United State’s Government. In a 2006 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, the US Ambassador to Antigua advised “Embassy officers do not reach out to Stanford because of the allegations of bribery and money laundering. The Ambassador managed to stay out of any one-on-one photos with Stanford during the breakfast. For his part, Stanford said he preferred to conduct his business without contacting the Embassy, resolving any investment disputes directly with local governments. It is whispered in the region that Stanford facilitates resolution with significant cash contributions.”
Similarly investigations by the SEC, FBI and Scotland Yard into Stanford’s empire stalled or failed all the way back to the 1980s. The Independent Newspaper in the UK alleges that Stanford’s network was on the FBI’s radar for more than 20 years. Stanford set up his first offshore bank in 1986, just as Eugene Hausenfaus, shot down while gun running for the CIA in Nicaragua, was being connected to another company named Stanford, in this case the “Stanford Technology Trading Group” owned by Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and 4 unknown other persons, perhaps including Allen Stanford. According to Iran-Contra Whistleblower Al Martin (Lt. Cmdr. USNR ret.) “Anything with the name Stanford on it belonged to Secord”. When finally brought to trial, Stanford employed the same defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, as Iran-Contra defendant Oliver North.
As the Iran-Contra explosion crippled the CIA’s Caribbean bank of choice, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Stanford’s offshore banking empire was using the same techniques and embracing the same moral category of clients. Stanford’s banks were known to have laundered money from the Juarez Cartel and alleged to have done so earlier for the Medellin Cartel, and one of his private planes has been seized by the Mexican government in a drug case.
On top of legal woes in the United States and Mexico, the London Daily Telegraph reported that Stanford’s Venezuelan offices were raided by Venezuela’s military intelligence over claims that its employees were paid by the CIA to spy on the South American country. When asked about this in a CNBC interview which was cited in a story by independent journalist Tom Burghardt, Stanford declined to comment on any involvement with the CIA rather than outright deny it.
All of the these dealings by Stanford, and the complicity of his employees in facilitating them, was public information before January 2010, when Mitt Romney addressed the first full meeting of Solamere’s investors. Yet his son Tagg chose to hire into his family these alleged white collar criminals as soon as Stanford’s criminal empire collapsed. The Romney family stands by the new employees associated with their secret bank, as evidenced by Tagg’s response to interview questions from ThinkProgress regarding Solamere’s ability to reign them in: “Hey guys, We’re done here”. |
Major League Soccer's All-Star Game against Real Madrid is Wednesday, but no Minnesota United players made the trip to Chicago.
The Loons were one of nine MLS teams left without an All-Star rep. Coach Adrian Heath said three of his players were on "standby" in consideration for selection: midfielders Ibson and Kevin Molino as well as forward Christian Ramirez.
"I'm not sure it's as by as much voting as people think," Heath said of the All-Star roster, which is comprised of fan vote choices and picks from All-Star and Chicago Fire coach Veljko Paunovic and league commissioner Don Garber. "Obviously, it would have been nice to have had some representative. But as I say, I'm not sure there's been too many better players than Ibson this year. In fact, I guarantee you there hasn't been."
At least the Loons won't be missing any key pieces heading into a 7 p.m. Saturday matchup with defending MLS champions the Seattle Sounders FC. (Except Heath wasn't too impressed with his team's intensity level at training Tuesday at the National Sports Center.)
Midfielder Rasmus Schuller (thigh), defender Marc Burch (groin), defender Thomas de Villardi (Achilles) and Ramirez (hamstring) all trained separately. Ramirez is "day-to-day," according to Heath. Midfielder Sam Cronin was also absent, away on "league business," but will return Wednesday.
Defender Joe Greenspan returned to practice after recovering from a concussion. He had surgery on his broken nose and is wearing a mask, a la Bobby Shuttleworth.
The team also had three new college players in training with the squad: Rafael Andrade Santos, a senior midfielder from VCU; Ricky Lopez-Espin, a senior forward from Creighton and also a Shattuck St. Mary's product under United academy director Tim Carter, and Elvir Ibisevic, a sophomore forward from Nebraska-Omaha.
Also, Molino made the league's Team of the Week on Monday for his two-assist performance in a 4-0 victory against D.C. United on Saturday. Right-back Jerome Thiesson was an honorable mention on the bench.
And as far as a transfer window update, Heath said there has been a lot of phone calls going around the league.
"The problem you have at this time is, nearly everybody wants your best players. Like we want somebody else's best player," Heath said. "But sometimes if people are bringing somebody in from outside ... then that sometimes opens up people that you might think normally might not be available."
Heath mentioned moves from one or two bigger clubs, like the Los Angeles Galaxy signing Jonathan dos Santos, and if those will make one or two other players more attainable.
But it looks like the Loons might not be after a goalkeeper before the end of the transfer window on Aug. 9. With the team declining to extend John Alvbage's loan, United has just Shuttleworth and Patrick McLain on the roster.
"We'll probably stay as we are at this moment in time," Heath said. "But we'll look at the situation over the next few months." |
This graph shows the relative number of people who have completed each exact number of challenges.
Out of people who have completed any challenges: 31.58% of players have completed 12 challenges and have earned the Perandus Footprints Effect.
9.53% of players have completed 24 challenges and have earned the Perandus Weapon Effect.
2.66% of players have completed 36 challenges and have earned the Perandus Portal Effect.
There are just less than six weeks left in the Perandus leagues, which is plenty of time for you to push for the next reward tier!
This graph shows the relative number of people who have completed each exact number of challenges.There are just less than six weeks left in the Perandus leagues, which is plenty of time for you to push for the next reward tier! Last bumped on Apr 27, 2016, 5:47:31 PM
Posted by Bex_GGG
on Grinding Gear Games on |
BEIJING (Reuters) - Communist Party officials must not smoke in public places or buy cigarettes using public funds, and should encourage their colleagues to quit smoking, a top Chinese government body said in a circular on Sunday evening.
A man smokes as he stretches beside a half-frozen lake in Shenyang, Liaoning province, December 4, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer
China is the world’s largest tobacco consumer. Smoking is deeply entrenched in Chinese social life, particularly for men, and luxury cigarettes are frequently given as gifts.
Beijing pledged in 2008 to ban smoking in most public venues, including government offices, but enforcement has remained lax and no-smoking signs are frequently ignored.
“The phenomenon of smoking in public places remains prevalent, especially for a small number of leading cadres, who not only endanger the public health and environment, but also harm the image of the Communist Party and the government,” says the circular issued by the State Council, China’s cabinet.
Party cadres must not buy tobacco using public funds, and those who break rules on cigarettes should be “criticized and educated about their evil influence,” the circular says. Leaders at all levels should deal with rule-breakers severely, it added, without detailing specific punishments.
Communist Party cadres should to “take the lead” in kicking their smoking habits to set an example for the public and party bosses should encourage colleagues to quit smoking, it said.
It was also forbidden for government and party organs to provide tobacco or advertise cigarettes internally, and smoking should be prohibited in offices, meeting rooms, restrooms and cafeterias.
An official in the tobacco control office for the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said at a press conference earlier this month that lawmakers will weigh a nationwide ban on smoking in public places next year.
Several major cities have implemented smoking bans in public places, but anti-smoking advocates both inside and outside the country say those bans have not been well enforced.
In a separate announcement, the State Council said those who smoke on high-speed trains can be fined up to 2000 yuan ($329.80), starting in January. |
A horizontal section of a rat brain. Image: ZEISS Microscopy/Flickr
In the heady, optimistic days of 2004, it seemed all but certain that airline pilots were soon to be replaced by none other than lab-grown rat brains.
Okay, not exactly. But it's hard not to laugh over a decade later at a University of Florida press release announcing the dawn of "living computers." A team at the university had cultured some rat neurons, and the culture had managed to fly a virtual plane. A lab-grown rat brain flew a simulated plane!
"They may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments," the release continued, and our rat-brain filled future seemed nigh.
The 2000s saw a bevy of this sort of research into so-called animats—electronic systems that were controlled, not by traditional silicon chips, but organic, lab-grown neuronal networks, or rudimentary brains. The University of Reading, University of Florida, and Georgia Tech all had (and still have) animat teams. But then, and even now, real-world applications for this sort of research remain a very basic, and a long ways off.
Thomas DeMarse, a professor at the University of Florida, did indeed succeed at growing a culture of rat-neurons that could fly a simulated plane in 2004 (and by fly, I mean travel straight and level), building on earlier research at Georgia Tech. And in 2008, the University of Reading grew a similar culture that prevented a wheeled robot from running into walls. But to think of these cultures as "brains" is the way that you or I might think of brains is disingenuous at best.
"These are not sentient beings. I wouldn't want to equate it even to an ant," said Slawomir Nasuto, a professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading.
Nasuto was part of a team at the university that worked on an animat project from 2006 to 2009. Like other universities, they employed a process in which cells were seeded onto a dish lined with electrodes. As the cells grew and formed connections with one another, neural activity began to take place. The electrodes can read this activity, as well as deliver stimulus back to the cells—effectively creating an input and output mechanism for the lab-grown brain to process information about its environment when connected to something like, say, a rudimentary robot.
However, "I wouldn't call it learning in a way that probably most people would understand, even for such simple systems," Nasuto said. "The animats that have been constructed so far—and that includes all the groups that I'm aware of—are effectively constructed in a very mechanistic way. So I wouldn't like to say that they are understanding or anything."
According to Nasuto, animats are actually more akin to Braitenberg vehicles. First proposed by the neuroscientist Valentino Braitenberg, these were dumb mechanical vehicles that were designed in such a way that otherwise simple stimuli would cause the vehicles to respond in unexpectedly complex ways—so much so that their behaviour could be mistaken for actual intelligence. (For example, a Braitenberg machine fitted with two light sensors connected directly to each of a vehicle's wheels can be configured to essentially follow, or drive, in the direction of a light source, but entirely mechanically.)
Animats, said Nasuto, are essentially hardwired to work in similar ways. Though some attempts have been made at rudimentary conditioning—essentially, applying repeated stimuli until the neurons respond in a way that meets a researcher's needs—it wouldn't be fair to say these robots possessed the capacity to learn. Rather, they can be programmed to respond to their environment in a very primitive, simply-defined way.
That may not bring us any closer to rat-brain pilots and rescue robots, but it's an important step in understanding the thing researchers are actually trying to model—the mind.
Animats "[are] considered to be often a platform," Nasuto said. "It's an interesting platform in its own right, but it's also a platform that enables [researchers] to investigate other questions related to neuroscience and related to, say, finding out the mechanisms of brain information processing, both in health and in disease."
In other words, no one has set out with the sole intent to build a robot controlled by living neurons on lab-grown brains just yet—but research being done in other areas, as a by-product, could get us there one day. |
Eagles outside linebacker and former first-round pick Brandon Graham wants to start for Philadelphia or somewhere else next season, according to CSN Philly's Reuben Frank. Graham was the victim of a scheme change brought on by the hire of head coach Chip Kelly and defensive coordinator Billy Davis.
Graham has been considered a bust since being drafted in the first-round of the 2010 NFL Draft. It seems that every time the pass rusher accomplishes success, he suffers a setback. He had a solid rookie season but it was cut short by an ACL tear in Week 14. He then spent the entire 2011 season trying to recover from the injury. He bounced back with a solid end to the 2012 season after starting the last six games. However, Andy Reid was fired shortly after the season and a new regime changed the landscape of the defense.
Philadelphia switched from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4 front this season, which caused Graham to learn a new position. With the signing of linebacker Connor Barwin and having former Pro Bowl player Trent Cole already on the roster, Graham was forced into a backup role. He finished with just 19 tackles, three sacks and one forced fumble in 16 games at outside linebacker. The Michigan alum only saw the field on 27-percent of the Eagles total defensive snaps.
Graham was not expected to be on the team this season and was considered a possible trade option for the Eagles. Instead, the Eagles kept him around and tried to transform him into a linebacker. With the limited success this season, Philadelphia may look to deal Graham with two years left on his contract. He would most likely be the target of a 4-3 defense that badly needs to fill a starting defensive end spot like the Vikings or Buccaneers. It is unclear what Graham would fetch for the Eagles in return.
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This organization in Montana is helping meet the needs of underprivileged students discreetly and respectfully.
My Student In Need, a nonprofit that services schools across the state, runs an online program where teachers request necessities and other items their underserved students need, while others can offer to fulfill them. What’s more, the students’ identities are kept anonymous in the process.
Since the organization’s launch back in 2013, donors have filled more than 1,500 requests for students in need. The group’s goal is to help students get adequate resources without making them feel uncomfortable, Kim Wombolt, the organization’s executive director, told The Huffington Post.
“No person ― whether it’s a student or an adult ― likes to be in a position where they have to ask for help,” Wombolt said. “By providing a forum for students to get assistance without having to publish that they are, they can ask for help with dignity.”
The issue of not being able to afford basic items or school supplies is far-reaching across the U.S. Almost half of the children in the country are living near the poverty line, according to data from the National Center for Children in Poverty. And in the 2013-2014 school year, a staggering 1.36 million public school students were homeless, the Department of Education reported.
Wombolt says that through her organization, students from low-income families or those that have difficulty covering certain expenses, can get help.
She explained that for a district to participate in the program, its superintendent must submit a signed letter to the organization. Afterwards, any teacher from that district can put in requests on the website to help their students and in most cases, they consult parents before doing so to figure out exactly what the kids’ needs are.
In the past, requests have typically been for necessities like winter jackets and boots, or school-related items like a band instrument or basic sports equipment.
“It has to be a need and it has to be reasonable,” Wombolt explained, adding that a cell phone, for example, would not be accepted as a request.
A donor can identify a request they want to fulfill on the website and either donate the actual item or submit a monetary donation through My Student In Need. With the submitted funds, the nonprofit then purchases a gift card and sends it to the teacher to use towards buying the necessary item for the student.
Wombolt explained that by involving teachers in their nonprofit’s mission, they’re able to more easily verify kids’ needs. She also said that often times teachers are very aware of their students’ home and financial situations and understand what’s necessary for the children to succeed.
“They have a feel for what the family situation is or what different kinds of barriers are popping up in this child’s life that are causing these needs,” Wombolt noted. |
Sunset Foods makes big investment in Libertyville
hello
Bursts from power tools pepper the conversation, but John Cortesi is unfazed by what he considers the sounds of progress.
"We're going to really improve and enhance the shopping experience here," says Cortesi, president and CEO of Sunset Foods, a 76-year-old family-owned chain of groceries with five locations. This one has anchored the Butterfield Square shopping center on Libertyville's northwest side since 1998.
Seated at a table in the grill area, just steps from where a small bar that will serve craft beer, boutique wine and appetizers is taking shape, Cortesi highlights various aspects of the most extensive store renovation at this location since it opened.
"It's due," he says.
The improvements will include a full-service floral section with trained designers, revamped liquor department with a separate entrance, outdoor seating for 75 beneath a cedar trellis, expanded offerings for a variety of foods, and prototype elements, such as the beer and wine bar, and "build a burger" feature.
"We're trying to improve the experience in all our locations," Cortesi said. "We want our store to be a place for people to meet their friends, have dinner, an appetizer."
The estimated $1 million renovation in Libertyville could serve as a template for future improvements at the other Sunset locations. There is no specific plan or schedule set, although the Northbrook location is being evaluated, he said.
Periodic changes are part of any business model. However, the landscape in Libertyville would appear to warrant some urgency, given the pending arrival of Trader Joe's on the south end of town and the continued success of Mariano's Fresh Market across the street from that site in Vernon Hills.
"Most supermarkets find they need to refresh their stores about every seven years. The degree of the refresh often depends on the competitive environment," said Jon Hauptman, a partner with Willard Bishop Ltd., an industry analyst firm in Barrington.
Planning and approvals for the Libertyville store, as well as for the landscaping and signage of the shopping center, were in progress well before the Trader Joe's announcement last February.
"Improvements are necessary to compete in today's marketplace," Cortesi said without directly addressing the competition, which also includes a Jewel-Osco store. He described Sunset as a "very niched" business noted for its high-end service, such as online shopping with curbside pickup and quality products.
Sunset shoppers can expect several changes as part of a three-month program scheduled to be completed by mid-August. The 52,000-square-foot store will remain open during the renovation.
The Liberty Tap craft beer and wine bar will complement the grill area on the west side of the store, according to Cortesi, and changes involving food display, service and offerings are coming.
"We see a lot of growth in the perishable (food) side of our business," he said. "People are looking for gathering places."
Build your own cold sandwiches, a gourmet burger bar, a Graeter's ice cream shop, 12-kettle hot and cold soup self-service bar, and a custom cheese cutting station manned by a full-time cheese monger are among the additions.
"It's, I think, a big deal for Libertyville, if not unexpected," Hauptman said. "Looking at it from an industry perspective, we see a lot of retailers doing what Sunset is doing."
The reason is clear, he added.
"If they don't do it, there are too many options for shoppers in an around Libertyville," Hauptman said.
One of them will be the California-based chain Trader Joe's, which is known for its eclectic atmosphere and varied selection of store brands and inexpensive wines. It is being built as part of a two-building retail development on the site of the former Frank's Nursery & Crafts, 1600 S. Milwaukee Ave. The construction value of the shell of the building and interior work for Trader Joe's is estimated at about $1.8 million.
The Libertyville location would be the second in Lake County, following Lake Zurich. There is no official date, but the company is on target to open this year, according to Alison Mochizuki, director of public relations. At 12,500 square feet, the Libertyville store is less than a quarter the size of Sunset.
"We consider ourselves a neighborhood grocery store," she said.
The big gun has been Mariano's, which twice has expanded parking since it opened two years ago because of continued demand.
"They are a major competitor in this market now for any traditional grocery store that exists," said John Kalmar, Vernon Hills' assistant village manager and point man for development. For example, the demise of the nearby Dominick's store, which closed in April 2012, was thought to have been hastened by the arrival of the 70,000-square-foot Mariano's.
"Trader Joe's has its niche, but we feel Mariano's will serve a larger population better. Plain and simple," Kalmar added.
And what of the Jewel store, about half a mile north on Milwaukee Avenue, that was purchased this past January?
"A refreshed Sunset and a Trader Joe's will pull sales from somebody and typically those sales get pulled from the most vulnerable retailer in the market, and on the surface it looks like Jewel," Hauptman said. |
If you’re among those who have shied away from eggs despite their taste, value, and nutrition, for fear of dietary cholesterol , you must know that eggs are the handiest foods to have in your fridge.
Jumpstart your day:
Hit the gym?
Don’t skip the yolk:
Looking to please picky eaters?
Store it right
Let’s get EGG-Ceptional!
Japanese Egg & Garlic Fried Rice
Ingredients:
Method:
South Indian egg curry
Ingredients:
Method:
Egg & celery salad
Ingredients:
Method:
Sweet cours
Caramel custard
Ingredients:
Method:
Get egg-ed!
Gobble them without regret!
Egg Play
Allergic to eggs?
Quick Tip
“Your kids come home hungry? Make them an egg sandwich in less than five minutes or poach an egg and top it with stir fried vegetables - a perfect protein snack with all the essential vitamins and minerals of the veggies,” says chef Sanjeev Kapoor. “Guests have dropped in without a prior intimation? You can go in for easy-to-cook dishes like egg curry or egg biryani. It surely won’t make them wait for long,” he adds.Eggs are universally popular for an umpteen number of reasons. “They are valued the most for their nutritional content,” says chef Suresh Thampy. Available readily, eggs suit every household budget. And yes, they are easy to cook, so much so that egg preparations are a favorite among bachelors and young working couples. Your day can begin and end with an egg. It’s so very versatile! Be it a traditional breakfast, a mid-day salad, a soup for supper or even a dessert to pamper your sweet tooth. Even though eggs are of animal origin, there is an appreciable number of eggetarians among vegetarians.A study published in the journal of American College of Nutrition states that people who eat eggs for breakfast feel more satisfied and ate fewer calories at the following meal, thus helping over-weight dieters to lose more weight.Now crack the egg: High-quality egg proteins provide the building blocks your body needs to grow and perform properly. The amount and quality of protein you eat directly affects your muscle mass, strength and function. Eat eggs after exercise to encourage muscle tissue repair and growth.When eating eggs, don’t skip the yolk. One egg provides six grams of all natural high quality protein. While many think that egg white has all the protein, the yolk actually provides half of it.Eggs are a great choice for everyone as they can be cooked in a 100 ways to please one’s tastebuds.- Mark eggs to use up first with a pencil before filling the fridge tray with fresh eggs.- Egg dishes do not store well. Consume them within a day.- Store eggs in a carton in the refrigerator to prevent them from losing moisture.- Do not store eggs with onions, cheese or other strong smelling foods, as the eggshell is porous.- Store eggs with the pointed end down. If they stick to cartons, wet the points of contact and eggs won’t crack on removal.2 tbsp chopped garlic, 2 eggs, 2 tbsp chopped spring onion, salt to taste, 2 tbsp oilHeat oil and sauté garlic till golden brown. Break the eggs and medium cook. Add cooked rice and sauté. Garnish with spring onion and egg yolk.8 eggs, 3 tbsp oil, 2 onions, 2 black mustard seeds, 3 tomatoes, 2 tsp garlic paste, 1 tsp turmeric powder, 20 curry leaves, 1 tsp chilli powder, 1 tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp cumin powder, 1 tbsp garam masala, 2 tbsp tamarind, 1 cup coconut milkHard-boil the eggs. Soak tamarind in warm water. Heat oil in a saucepan, add chopped onions and fry until golden brown. Add garlic paste and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add black mustard, wait for 3 minutes, then add finely chopped tomatoes and curry leaves. Sauté for 10-15 minutes, until the oil separates. Add turmeric, chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder and salt. Cook over medium heat. Extract juice from soaked tamarind, add it to the saucepan. Stir in coconut milk and garam masala. Add boiled eggs to the curry and leave to simmer for 10 minutes. Garnish with green coriander and serve it piping hot, accompanied by steamed rice.1 tbsp honey, 1 tbsp vinegar, 3 tbsp olive oil , 1 teaspoon dried minced onion, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 6 hard boiled eggs, chopped, 1/2 cup finely chopped celeryCombine honey, lemon juice and olive oil to make a salad dressing. Add all the ingredients to the dressing and mix them well. Serve it chilled.3/4 cup sugar, 2 1/2 cups milk, 4 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla essenceFor four servings, take quarter cup of sugar in a thick-bottomed pan. Add a few drops of water and heat till the sugar caramelizes. Pour the caramel into a mould and let it settle by cooling. Heat milk either in a microwave oven or on gas flame. Place a metallic ring in the pressure cooker. Add four cups of water and heat. Break eggs into a bowl. Add half cup of sugar, vanilla essence and mix gently with a whisk. Add warm milk and mix. Strain the mixture. Pour the egg-milk mixture into the mould with the caramel. Cover with aluminium foil and place it in the cooker. Cover with lid and steam for 25-30 minutes. Do not use the whistle. Remove when done. Serve, turned out with caramel side up, either hot or cold. The combination of caramalized sugar and egg custard is irresistible1. In which festival around the world are hard boiled eggs used for decoration?2. Chicken eggs contain a fatty substance. What is it called?3. An airy foam cake made with egg yolks or with whole eggs. This cake requires neither shortening nor baking powder.4. A rack holds cups, sized to fit one egg each, over simmering water. What is it called?5. Which technique is used to blend uncooked eggs into hot mixtures?- The high-quality protein in eggs helps you to feel fuller and stay energized.- Egg yolks are an excellent source of choline, recommended for pregnant and breastfeeding women.- For easy digestibility, go for soft boiled and poached eggs. Cooked this way, the yolk is easily digested even by a nine-month old infant!- Eggs will help you shed a few kilos as they lack carbohydrates and have plenty of protein, vitamins and minerals.- Glaze your sugar cookies: Beat an egg white until just frothy and brush over the unbaked cookies. Sprinkle with sugar and bake. This will give your cookies a shiny, sweet crust.- For frosted grapes: Beat an egg white until it becomes foamy. Dip small bunches of green or black grapes first in the egg white and then in granulated sugar. Dry on a wire rack.- In case you’ve stopped eating eggs due to an allergy, avoid all food items that contain eggs - biscuits, cakes, soufflés, sauces and puddings. Scan all the ingredients before picking up any packaged food.- Raw eggs can also be carriers of salmonella (a food-borne illness). Hence, consume cooked eggs.- Over consumption of eggs can lead to constipation. So pair them with fibrous foods. Egg has a limiting factor: it does not contain vitamin C.- Acids help proteins coagulate, so add vinegar or lemon juice to water used for poaching eggs.- Beat egg yolk and egg white separately for fluffy omelettes. It is easiest to separate eggs when they are cold and the yolk is firm. |
Sacramento, California (WiredPRNews.com) — California is the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of trans fats in chain restaurants as these fats are connected to coronary heart disease.
The Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has asserted that the new legislation will take effect in 2010 and will represent a concrete step in the direction of creating a healthy future.
It has also been ruled that violators of the new legislation will be charged with a fine. This is owing to the fact that trans-fats are chemically tainted vegetable oils used to give processed foods a greater shelf life. In several other U.S. cities such as in Philadelphia and Seattle, the use of trans-fats in restaurants has already been banned. As a result, many restaurant chains and food makers have started experimenting with the replacement of oils and the food products which contain them.
Since trans-fats are produced artificially through a process known as hydrogenation meant to turn liquid oil into solid fats, these oils are bad for health and are closely associated with coronary heart disease. They are put to use in baking or frying, and added to processed foods including ready made mixtures used for drinks and cakes. Trans-fats are mainly used in food since they are cheap, can add mass to food products, possess a neutral taste and provide food products a longer shelf-life. Trans-fats are said to have no dietary value and so the new legislation banning its use has brought out remarkable benefits to the general health of the public.
A review said that the elimination of trans-fats from food products could prevent approximately nineteen percent of heart attack risks and deaths related to it every year. |
Remember July, 2012? The NBA Players’ Union had just won an arbitration case against the league that redefined whether players retained their “Bird” rights through the waiver process. It was a relatively trivial ruling for most of the league, but a coup for the New York Knicks, whose top two free agents, Jeremy Lin and Steve Novak, had both been claimed off waivers to start the season (and both had played their way into significant salary raises). Lin, of course, was coming off his meteoric rise to international fame, and the New York fan-base exhaled in a collective sigh that they weren’t going to lose their newest folk-hero to the draconian salary cap (since Lin was a restricted free-agent, the team could now match any offer without salary cap restraints).
Well, as it turned out, even with the ability to exceed the cap and match any offer, the Knicks opted to only sign one of their two free agents: the sweet-shooting, sour-everything-else Steve Novak.
The Knicks never stated an official reason for not matching Lin. The transaction was relayed to the press by a spokesman who stated “I can confirm we are not matching”.
And that was that. The unceremonious end of Linsantiy.
Of course, though it wasn’t stated publicly, there was obviously a reason the Knicks opted to let Lin walk to Houston, and many sought to understand how Lin, a virtual lock to return to the Knicks in the wake of the arbitration victory, was suddenly gone. Certainly the ultimate decision rested with team owner and MSG chairman James Dolan, through whom all major transactions had to pass. Stories came out that Dolan felt “betrayed” by Lin. Others reported that Carmelo Anthony, Dolan’s most prized-player, had called Lin’s contract “ridiculous”. Statements made by the neoteric JR Smith, a CAA client to whom the Knicks possibly had a silent agreement with to re-sign on the cheap side in exchange for future considerations, indicated that Lin’s contract would create jealousy amongst the other Knicks.
But the MSG spin eventually repainted it, not as a personal vendetta, but as a shrewd business move in the changing face of NBA economics. The contract, it was estimated, could cost the Knicks upwards of $28 million in taxes alone it’s final year, due to the new Collective Bargaining Agreement’s escalating luxury tax on high spending teams.
Effectively, a line had been drawn in the sand. James Dolan, who over a previous six year span had forked over $190,089,121 in luxury tax payments (all for an average of 31 wins/year (yes, that’s $1,016,519.64 in taxes per win!)), had reached his breaking point. The thought of paying an extra $28 million for a player was simply too painful to swallow, and, in the name of born-again fiscal responsibility, Dolan cried “uncle!”
It served to quite the hysterics. Who among the critics would personally feel good about writing a gratuitous $28 million dollar check to David Stern? And for those of us that spent years pleading for fiscal responsibility in the face of Isiah-nomics, it was impossible to argue against. Had Dolan changed? Would there be no more gross overpays for middling talent? No more Malik Roses, Antonio Davises, Mo Taylors, Jerome Jameses, Jalen Roses, Shandon Andersons, Jamal Crawfords, Stephon Marburies, Howard Eisleys, Eddy Currys, Steve Francises, or Jared Jeffries. Jeremy Lin, it seemed, was a small price to pay for a long-term commitment to franchise building.
Then, almost a year to the day that Jeremy Lin was poached by the Rockets, along came Andrea Bargnani.
$23,362,500 over the next two years for a player that’s been the poster-boy for under-performance. Yes, that is more than Jeremy Lin stood to make over the same amount of time (both contracts expire on July 1st, 2015). And, just as was the case with the Lin offer, the Bargnani contract had no salary cap impact and wouldn’t have any bearing on future flexibility. The only negative rested in the tax it would levy on just one man: James Dolan.
Which brings us to the titular question: is James Dolan a hypocrite?
There is a simple way to determine this. Add up the numbers and see if Dolan truly was thinking with his wallet, or if there were ulterior motives at play. If he is paying less tax on Bargnani’s contract than he would have for Lin, then the Knicks’ highroad fiscal preparedness position should not be questioned. If, however, the taxes for Bargnani add up to more than what Lin was estimated to have cost, then it would appear that James Dolan, in typical James Dolan fashion, cut off the nose of the franchise to spite it’s face.
So, let’s look at the numbers:
Entering free agency in 2012, the Knicks had four long-term contracts in place: the big-three of Anthony, Stoudemire, and Chandler, along with Iman Shumpert’s rookie deal, for a 2015 total of just under $64,000,000. By the time of the Lin decision Jason Kidd had already been added, adding another $3,090,000, and the Marcus Camby trade had been agreed to and a contract was being worked out that would eventually extend to 2015, but of that, only $646,609 was guaranteed, effectively making it, for tax purposes, a minimum contract slot hold. Also, during the Lin deliberations, the Knicks allowed Landry Fields to leave for Toronto, but agreed to a long-term contract with Steve Novak that would add another $3,445,947 toward the 2015 pot. And, of course, in the frantic days that surrounded Lin’s departure, replacement Ray Felton was added for four years, including $3,793,693 to the all-important 2015 figure. The rest of the roster was then fleshed out with short-term minimum salaries (with the lone exception of JR Smith’s more complicated 1 year deal), bringing the 2015 total to $74,287,896. If Dolan had decided to match on Lin, and had kept all other moves the same (including bringing in Felton for linsurance), the 2015 projected total would have been $89,087,896, significantly above the tax threshold.
Jump forward one year and the 2015 outlook has changed. Off the books are Jason Kidd (retired) and Steve Novak (traded), clearing $6,535,957. At the same time, marginal raises were given to two of last year’s minimum slots (Prigioni and World Peace) totaling $1,800,121. Also, the team added the guaranteed $1,250,640 of first-round draft pick Tim Hardaway, as well as the (as-promised) raise to JR Smith of $5,982,385, totaling $78,066,964. Add to that the big addition of the summer, the aforementioned Andrea Bargnani, and the $11.5 million committed to him in 2015, bringing the current 2015 projection to $89,566,964.
So, is the Bargnani tax going to cost as much as the Lin levy was estimated to have been?
Because of the “poison pill” structure of the contract Lin signed with Houston, Lin would have been owed $14.8 million by the Knicks in 2015 (or, $3.3 million more than Bargnani stands to make that year). Because the new luxury tax has an tiered system, the higher a contract goes over the threshold, the higher the tax rate. So that extra $3.3 million would have been taxed $2.50 for every dollar paid to Lin. Doing the math, Bargnani’s tax bill in 2015 will be $19,999,997, whereas Lin’s, as stated, would have been $28,000,000.
So, is James Dolan a hypocrite?
The answer, it seems, is no. Dolan will save $8 million dollars in 2015 by paying Bargnani instead of Lin. He has not crossed the line in the sand that was drawn during the Lin saga. He still has a foot solidly placed on the high road. Instead of the irresponsible $43 million Lin would have cost him in 2015, Bargnani will only cost him a healthy $31.5 million. By this standard, Dolan is not a hypocrite.
However, what isn’t represented in this total is the amount that Bargnani will cost the Knicks in 2014. Lin only stood to earn $5,225,000 this coming season–a season in which Bargnani will be paid $11,862,500 ($6,637,500 more than Lin). 2014 is the first year of the incremental tax structure, so Bargnani’s taxes will cost Dolan $12,843,748 more than Lin would have, which evens out the 2015 poison pill. Andrea Bargnani will ultimately cost the Knicks more over the next two years than Lin would have, had the Knicks matched.
But the line in the sand wasn’t drawn around 2014. It was 2015 that the argument against Lin was based on, and in 2015 James Dolan will, technically, save $8 million dollars.
The question then becomes: what will Dolan do with the $8 million that will be burning a hole in his pocket in 2015? Only time will tell. But one thing we do know is that $8 million doesn’t go very far in the world Dolan lives in. It comes up a few million short of buying a sexual harassment settlement. And it’s not even half the way towards paying Larry Brown not to coach the Knicks again. |
The uncertainty over Delhi's status as a host left the travel plans of fans in limbo © BCCI
Fans travelling from abroad for the World T20 in India have expressed anger and disappointment over the delay in announcing the tournament's schedule and the ambiguity surrounding the ticketing process. While the fixtures were announced on December 11 - about three months before the event - the first phase of ticket sales, for matches in Bangalore, Chennai, Dharamsala, Kolkata and Mohali, began only on February 24. The second phase of ticket sales, for matches in Mumbai, Delhi and Nagpur, had begun at 12 pm IST on February 26, less than two weeks before the tournament. Tickets for seven "high-priority" games - four India matches, the semi-finals and final - have been put up online through a lottery system, though the results of that process won't be known for a while yet.
There were sharp reactions from overseas fans on social media; for many, the uncertainty over the fixtures was the starting point of a series of problems. "The fixtures were announced on December 11 but there was no lead in," Paul Smith, 58, from Weymouth in England, wrote in an email to ESPNcricinfo. "We didn't know when the fixtures would be announced so right back in September we were checking daily. [For] six months we have had to check if there have been updates or changes, our plans all in limbo."
For fans like Smith, the lack of clarity in the ticketing process has hampered plans for the semi-finals and finals. "Now we know that tickets are going to be in high demand for the big seven [games], but because we didn't know what the system was going to be some have booked [flight tickets] to go to semi[finals] and final.
"Obviously we have to get some kind of assurances that we can get to see the games after spending two-three thousand pounds on flights and hotels. But no one can understand why Delhi was chosen when issues [in DDCA] go back months, even years. To put such a large travelling country such as England there [England play two games], and even worse a semi-final was hard to comprehend."
It wasn't until February 9 that the decks were cleared for Delhi to host matches in the World T20; the BCCI had earlier given DDCA a deadline of January 31 to get its affairs in order before it was extended to February 8. The organising committee official admitted the uncertainty over Delhi's status as a host had resulted in "considerable time" being lost, and that it could have been avoided. A top BCCI official had earlier told ESPNcricinfo that matches had to be staged in Delhi because it "is our national capital."
Shamim Syed, a Pakistani citizen, said his plans to watch the India- Pakistan match in Dharamsala were upset as much by the issues in procuring a visa as the delayed announcement. "Watching a cricket match between India and Pakistan at the most picturesque ground in the world would have been dream come true," he wrote in an email. "But, with this late availability of tickets even if I applied for the visa, by the time it's processed the World Cup will be long done and dusted."
What complicated matters further is that the ICC website's FAQ guide on the ticketing process initially stated that the lottery system for the high-priority games would not be open to overseas customers and that a portion of tickets would be allocated to them on a first-come, first-serve basis. But, a member of the tournament organising committee admitted it was a mistake on the ICC site, and that fans from overseas could access the lottery system. He also said there was no specific number of tickets allocated for them for the high-priority games.
"The lottery system is open for both Indian and overseas fans," the official told ESPNcricinfo on Thursday. "The confusion was in the initial one hour. When it was corrected we put out in the [FAQ] PDF also. There was a small mistake in the document ICC put up but that has been corrected and put up. So there is access for everyone, and if the foreign fans have registered they also stand to win the random lottery."
However, when ESPNcricinfo verified the PDF on the ICC site on February 25 the mistake had not been rectified. When contacted the ICC's response was that the FAQ on the website "clarifies the sales process." It was subsequently corrected only on February 26, two days after the sale of tickets had begun. The ICC refused to be drawn into any discussion on the ticketing process, and said it was under the purview of the BCCI.
Chirag Thakkar, a London-based fan, said the registration window for the lottery was too long, and that tickets could have been sold in batches. "Why there is no transparency in terms of number of tickets available for each match under this draw?" he asked. "You can always release tickets in phases: if 5000 tickets are available for a match then release 2000 in phase one of sale, then another 2000 and 1000 in last phase. If this practice was started in November 2015 with the last phase in January 16 then overseas fans and Indian public both would have got a fair chance to buy.
"While BCCI and ICC have policies and code of conduct, isn't there a policy of ticket timelines for any international event. I have never seen such delays, lack of transparency [and] huge chunk of tickets reserved for sponsors."
Are you facing difficulties in planning your travel for the World T20 in India?
Tell us about your experience at [email protected] or WhatsApp us on +919900590636.
Arun Venugopal is a correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd. |
A Texas school police officer has been placed on paid leave after video surfaced of him slamming a middle school girl to the ground.
A video uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday shows a San Antonio Independent School District uniformed officer lifting a struggling 12-year-old girl in the air. He then appears to fling the girl, identified as Janissa Valdez by the Washington Post, face-down onto a brick walkway.
"She landed on her face," a student can be heard saying.
The officer responded after two students began arguing outside Rhodes Middle School on March 29, school district spokeswoman Leslie Price said.
"The video is very disturbing," Price said, adding that the department has launched a formal investigation into the incident. "The officer was placed on leave this morning."
Price confirmed that the officer in the video is Joshua Kehm, who has been with the department since February 2015. According to his LinkedIn profile, Kehm was previously in the Air Force.
LinkedIn Officer Joshua Kehm has been placed on paid leave after video surfaced of him slamming a middle schooler to the ground.
After slamming the student to the pavement, Kehm can be seen pulling the dazed girl to her feet and leading her away.
"We want to make sure we understand what happened, and we’re not going to tolerate any excessive force," Price said. "We're waiting to have all the information before taking appropriate action."
The girls mother, Gloria Valdez, told the San Antonio Express-News that she was "shocked" at the video.
"We still can't believe it happened," Valdez said. |
Eminem is still angry with President Donald Trump, but this time, it’s personal. In an interview on Shade45, the rapper says he anticipated an angry response the president to his freestyle cypher “The Storm,” but nothing has happened yet.
Eminem delivered an angry verse about the president on October 6 at the BET Hip Hop Awards, calling him a “racist grandpa”. Though the video went viral, racking up 34 million views as of this writing, the president never responded to Eminem, a fact that seems to have angered him more.
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"I was and still am extremely angry,” Eminem said on his XM radio station. “I can’t stand that motherf**ker. I feel like he’s not paying attention to me. I was kind of waiting for him to say something and for some reason, he didn’t say anything.”
Trump tends to tweet angrily after watching Fox News programs including Fox & Friends, specifically about any subjects the talk show hosts bring up. He has also attacked several late night talk show hosts for criticizing him, a fact which has excited The Late Show ’s Stephen Colbert. For whatever reason, it appears the president was not watching the BET Hip Hop Awards.
eminem More
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If the president does decide to watch Eminem’s freestyle, he’ll be treated to lyrics like “Racism's the only thing he's fantastic for” and “This is for Colin [Kaepernick], ball up a fist! / And keep that s**t balled like Donald the b**ch!”
Eminem has begun chants at his live performances insulting the president, in the weeks since October 6, as BET reports. But these, too, have fallen on deaf ears. Fox News is, unsurprisingly, less surprised that Trump hasn’t responded to the video it calls a “five-minute freestyle rap bashing.”
Eminem actually shares a geographical fanbase with the president. Both of their most devoted fans tend to live “in whiter and more rural places: West Virginia; southern Ohio; eastern Kentucky; deep north Maine; the Ozarks in Missouri; across the Great Plains,” The New York Times pointed out in October. That means Eminem’s anti-Trump verse probably caused the most controversy in those states.
Although Eminem’s anger at the president is probably authentic, it’s worth pointing out that he may have been hoping for a high-profile beef with Trump in order to promote his new album, “Revival.” While the album was originally scheduled for 2018, new reports hint that it may be released in December. XXL suggests it could hit December 8, based on an analysis of typical release dates from Eminem’s label, Interscope Records.
This article was first written by Newsweek
More from Newsweek |
“We need a real change in this country,” Mr. Sanders said to a cheering crowd at the restaurant, Hamburger Mary’s, in West Hollywood, “and we need a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent.”
During a news conference on Saturday in Los Angeles, Mr. Sanders said it would be wrong for Mrs. Clinton to claim victory on Tuesday based on her total delegate count. News media outlets should not call the race, he said, unless she reaches the threshold with only pledged delegates.
“It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, I have heard reports that Secretary Clinton has said it’s all going to be over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the New Jersey results come in, are going to declare that it is all over. That simply is not accurate.”
Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Sanders in both pledged and total delegates.
In a sign of his campaign’s urgency to win in California, Mr. Sanders criticized the Clinton Foundation during an interview on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“If you ask me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, governments which are dictatorships?” Mr. Sanders said.
“You don’t have a lot of civil liberties or democratic rights in Saudi Arabia,” he told the interviewer, Jake Tapper. “You don’t have a lot of respect there for opposition points of view for gay rights, for women’s rights. Yes, do I have a problem with that? Yes, I do.”
Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton spent Sunday campaigning in California, where polls indicated a tight race. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clinton visited black churches, appealing to a demographic that had given her important support in past nominating contests. |
In 2008, I thought John McCain deserved to lose, but this did not mean I believed Barack Obama deserved to win. What McCain represented was four more years of George W. Bush-style "conservatism," and that meant an increase in the size of government and more spending. Voters rightly saw McCain as an extension of Bush and rejected his brand of Republicanism.
In 2012, I believe Barack Obama deserves to lose. Everything I detested about Bush, Obama has expanded upon. Today, the debt is even larger, the federal government is even bigger, the executive branch is even more powerful, and both the entitlement and "national security" states have grown.
Despite having an edge in the polls, Obama's actual approval rating is not high. Many, perhaps a majority, of Americans would like to reject Obama. However, they are just not sure Mitt Romney deserves to win. I share their concerns.
In their first debate, Romney kicked Obama's ass. This is not debatable. After all, when liberals like MSNBC's Chris Matthews are angrily frothing at the mouth over Obama's lackluster showing, the winner is clear. The winner of a debate is generally the person who sounded better, looked better, spoke with more authority, and commanded more respect. In essence, the winner is the candidate who comes across as more presidential. And that was Romney.
But there was one thing that Romney and his winning personality promised on Wednesday night that the hard numbers indicate he cannot deliver: he cannot reduce the deficit with his plan. If Obama said anything that was true, it was this: "When you add up all the loopholes and deductions that upper-income individuals are currently taking advantage of, you don't come close to paying for $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in additional military spending." He later added, "It's math, arithmetic."
Romney protested that he was not asking for $5 trillion in tax cuts — which I think is too bad. And in the governor's defense, Obama's relentless rhetoric about "loopholes" and "deductions" for "upper-income individuals" could be true — or it could be the same, tired, class warfare drivel the Democrats have been peddling for as long as I've been alive. But that "$2 trillion in additional military spending" is something Romney did not even attempt to protest.
For me, whatever hope I had that Romney would be a dramatic improvement over Obama was not dashed during the debate. It was dashed last May, when CNN reported that although Romney "is campaigning on a platform that emphasizes less spending, smaller deficits, and renewed fiscal responsibility ... in one budget area, Romney is running the opposite direction. The former Massachusetts governor wants to increase defense spending by leaps and bounds. By one estimate, additional spending would exceed $2 trillion over the next decade."
The need to cut military spending is something I have emphasized in columns for so long and so often that at least one of my editors has asked me to stop talking about it. Indeed, if there's an issue I could be accused of being fanatical about, the dire need for cutting "defense" spending is it.
But Romney's platform proves my point. If our annual deficit is between $1-1.5 trillion, and neither candidate is really serious about cutting entitlement costs which are far, far greater, how can anyone even pretend they'll reduce the deficit while increasing spending on our military by $2 trillion?
We currently spend more on our military than we ever have, and most of that money goes to fund a massive bureaucracy that has little to do with our actual defense. The result: our soldiers are not paid enough, do not receive the proper benefits, and do not have the necessary weapons or essentials.
Let's consider the sorry state of education in the United States. The reason America's youth aren't better educated has nothing to do with a failure to spend enough money on education. We spend plenty, if not too much. Conservatives rightly understand this. But while the GOP recognizes the spending failures of the Department of Education, they fail to see how this very situation is happening with the Department of Defense.
Romney won the presidential debate, but what do we win if he becomes president? The last time a smooth-talking, charismatic, debate-winning candidate became president, he promised he would cut the deficit in half. At the time, anyone with a calculator knew Obama was lying. Romney's proposal to add $2 trillion in military spending makes it impossible to cut the deficit. Period. It's math. It's arithmetic.
Barack Obama deserves to lose this election, but Mitt Romney does not deserve to win it.
Jack Hunter assisted Sen. Jim DeMint with his latest book, Now or Never: Saving America From Economic Collapse. He also co-wrote Rand Paul's The Tea Party Goes to Washington. |
Abstract Early retirement appears to have a significant negative impact on the cognitive ability of people in their early 60s that is both quantitatively important and causal. We obtain this finding using cross-nationally comparable survey data from the United States, England, and Europe that allow us to relate cognition and labor force status. We argue that the effect is causal by making use of a substantial body of research showing that variation in pension, tax, and disability policies explain most variation across countries in average retirement rates. (In an informal manner, we are arguing that public policies that affect the age of retirement may be used as instrumental variables to generate cross-country variation in retirement behavior in order to identify the causal effect of retirement on cognition.)
Citation Rohwedder, Susann, and Robert J. Willis. 2010. "Mental Retirement." Journal of Economic Perspectives , 24 (1): 119-38 . DOI: 10.1257/jep.24.1.119 Choose Format: BibTeX EndNote Refer/BibIX RIS Tab-Delimited |
A Florida man who was denied a room at a hotel drove his vehicle into the hotel and a law enforcement vehicle.
Walter Chuck Christie, 55, of Carmel, told employee at a Holiday Inn Express that he was sent to the hotel by President Donald Trump and Gen. John Kelly and demanded a room, according to the Gainesville Sun.
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The hotel manager refused his demand, asked him to leave and called authorities. When deputies arrived, they noticed that Christie was stumbling, and he refused to cooperate when they asked for his license.
After trying and failing to start his car multiple times, Christie eventually got his vehicle running and drove it over a curb, into hedges and into the hotel’s hot water air vent.
His vehicle also struck a deputies’ vehicle. When Christie refused to exit his vehicle, deputies used a Taser on him twice, according to the Gainesville Sun.
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He was arrested, charged with driving under the influence, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and trespassing and taken to Alachua County Jail, where he was held on $70,000 bond.
Read more at the Gainesville Sun. |
Starting today UK citizens are free to copy MP3s, CDs and DVDs for personal use. After an unexpected delay, UK copyright law was amended to legalize this common form of copying. In addition, the changes also broaden other forms of fair use, including parody and quotation rights.
Earlier this year the UK Intellectual Property Office announced that the changes would go into effect in June. However, when June came around the most crucial changes were still pending Parliamentary approval.
These final issues were resolved this summer and after a brief delay private copying is now legal.
This means that people are now free to make copies of DVDs, CDs and other types of media, as long as they’re for personal use and without copyright protection. In addition, it’s no longer copyright-infringing to store copies of legally purchased media to the cloud.
“These changes are going to bring our IP laws into the 21st century,” IP Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe says commenting on the changes. “They will mean that the UK IP regime will now be responsive to the modern business environment and more flexible for consumers.”
The changes aim to fix the mismatch between the law and public opinion. A Government-commissioned survey previously found that 85% of consumers believed that DVD and CD ripping was legal already, while more than one-third of all consumers admitted that they’d made copies of media they purchased.
Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized.
For the public the amendments are certainly a welcome change from the more restrictive copyright laws that were previously in place. For those who are interested, a full overview of the upcoming changes is available here.
Update: The time-shifting reference was removed from this article, as that was already allowed under a previous amendment. Apologies for the confusion. |
And yet what those elections really meant for my father was a chance to fight his sense of invisibility. My father understood, long before I did, that in the minds of the bourgeoisie — people like the publisher who would turn down my book a few years later — our existence didn’t count and wasn’t real.
My father had felt abandoned by the political left since the 1980s, when it began adopting the language and thinking of the free market. Across Europe, left-wing parties no longer spoke of social class, injustice and poverty, of suffering, pain and exhaustion. They talked about modernization, growth and harmony in diversity, about communication, social dialogue and calming tensions.
My father understood that this technocratic vocabulary was meant to shut up workers and spread neoliberalism. The left wasn’t fighting for the working class, against the laws of the marketplace; it was trying to manage the lives of the working class from within those laws. The unions had undergone the same transformation: My grandfather was a union man. My father was not.
When he was watching TV and a socialist or a union representative appeared on the screen, my father would complain, “Whatever — left, right, now, they’re all the same.” That “whatever” distilled all of his disappointment in those who, in his mind, should have been standing up for him but weren’t.
By contrast, the National Front railed against poor working conditions and unemployment, laying all the blame on immigration or the European Union. In the absence of any attempt by the left to discuss his suffering, my father latched on to the false explanations offered by the far right. Unlike the ruling class, he didn’t have the privilege of voting for a political program. Voting, for him, was a desperate attempt to exist in the eyes of others.
I don’t know for sure how he voted last month, in the first round of the presidential election, and I don’t know for sure how he will vote on Sunday, in the runoff. He and I almost never speak. Our lives have grown too far apart, and whenever we try to talk on the phone, we are reduced to silence by the pain of having become strangers to each other. Usually we hang up after a minute or two, embarrassed that neither of us can think of anything to say.
But even if I can’t ask him directly, I’m confident he is still voting for the National Front. In his village, Marine Le Pen came out way ahead in the first round of the election.
Today, writers, journalists and liberals bear the weight of responsibility for the future. To persuade my family not to vote for Marine Le Pen, it’s not enough to show that she is racist and dangerous: Everyone knows that already. It’s not enough to fight against hate or against her. We have to fight for the powerless, for a language that gives a place to the most invisible people — people like my father. |
Speaking to a room full of veterans Monday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seemed to suggest soldiers who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) aren't strong.
"When people come back from war and combat and they see maybe what the people in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it," Trump said, via Buzzfeed News.
The comments, which reportedly were greeted by a silence over the room, came during a question-and-answer session with the Retired American Warriors Pac. Some on social media were quick to criticize the GOP nominee for the comments
Trump reportedly made the PTSD comments just after saying 22 veterans commit suicide every day, using an often-cited, but outdated figure from the Department of Veteran Affairs. The department updated that figure this year, saying it was closer to 20 suicides per day. Trump mentioned Monday that his plan for the VA would allow veterans to receive care at any hospital and not just at VA clinics, which he said are overwhelmed with long lines.
"People are killing themselves what are waiting on line because they have days and days before what could be a simple procedure, a simple prescription, and the wait is so long, they can’t take it," Trump said, according to Buzzfeed.
Trump previously stumbled talking with veterans when he criticized in July 2015 the service of Arizona Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. "He's not a war hero," Trump said. "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured." Trump received a number of deferments from serving in the Vietnam War.
The GOP nominee has registered a fair amount of support among the military. A September survey from the Military Times and Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families found Trump registered 37.6 percent among the entire military force, followed by Libertarian Gary Johnson at 36.5 percent and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at 16.3 percent. |
There is not a sysadmin in the world who has not had to deal with a botched software rollout; for most, it is a coming-of-age experience.
But few are likely to have made quite as many mistakes as the people behind the Alameda court system's new software. They have managed a rollout so inept that it should serve as a case study for what not to do for future generations.
Of course, most disastrous rollouts tend to be dealt with internally, shared only occasionally as war stories with other admins. Not so the Odyssey system, for the simple reason that it caused people to be wrongly arrested, saw drug offenders labeled as sex offenders, and introduced delays that literally saw people spend more time in jail as a result.
How did it happen? See if this sounds familiar:
A management rush, complete with budget.
A software company that seduced the higher-ups on how great the system was.
Wide-open configuration with a large number of people given input.
Inadequate consultation with the people using the current system.
Lack of training for those expected to use the new system.
A bureaucracy that won't admit failure.
The old system used by Alameda County in California – which covers the east side of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the island of Alameda but most significantly Oakland – was 40 years old, largely based on paper, and needed updating or replacing.
Some bright spark thought it would be a great idea to have a single system working across the whole of California and its 50+ courts. One miserable $500m failure later, and Texas-based Tyler Technologies saw an opportunity to fill the vacuum with its Odyssey system.
Money, money, money
It turned out during a postmortem of that failure that many local courts were stockpiling cash. And that, naturally enough, led to the state legislature deciding it would rather have the money. So it passed a law that placed limits on the money courts could set aside, complete with a requirement to give all the current reserves back to the state.
The courts accepted the logic of this approach but took the opportunity to enact clear, careful planning decisions before returning all the money without so much as a whisper of complaint.
No, of course they didn't: they went on a massive spending splurge in an effort to allocate every last cent so the money-grubbers in Sacramento wouldn't get a thing. And Odyssey was there with its arms wide open. Alameda County spent $4.5m on the system.
"It's truly the Wild West here in California," one anonymous software executive told the Courthouse News Service, "it's a land grab."
Not that the software is inherently bad. It is very capable and expandable. It is highly configurable. It is secure. And it is designed precisely with court systems in mind. But the rollout... well, that's where the system's flexibility became less an asset and more an enormous liability.
It didn't take long for the problems to start. According to one user of the system, interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle: "With the old system, it took maybe one or two clicks to complete a process. Now it takes 25..."
Yes, that opportunity to add dropdown boxes resulted in a user interface so convoluted that – guess what? – people stopped using it. Court clerks were neither sufficiently consulted nor were they adequately trained on the system, and so they stopped entering the data in the actual courtroom and simply passed the files down the chain for others to input.
Incredible as it may seem, the gap in time and handing off of a specialist task to general office workers did not produce the best results. Public defender Brendon Woods decided to go public with his frustrations with the system and revealed that the system has created a backlog of 12,000 files; a number that is growing by 300 each day.
The system was not optimized, so everyday inputs are not given priority over far less frequent data entry needs. The result? A slow input system in a fast-moving ecosystem. The backlog added pressure and – guess what? – the pressure led to mistakes.
Knock-on impacts
And those mistakes impacted lives. A number of arrest warrants were issued because the judges' orders to vacate them were not input in time. The wrong charges were input. In some cases people were given felony convictions rather than misdemeanors: a situation that has far-reaching impacts on someone's life. People convicted of felonies often find it difficult to get jobs and are treated differently by law in many states.
Woods told the Chronicle he also knew of a situation where two drug defendants were tagged as sex offenders. In California, that means your home address and the fact you are a sex offender is made publicly available. And you are required to inform the authorities of your movements.
The East Bay Times reported that sheriff's deputies are now going through records manually because their trust in the system has collapsed. In some cases, inmates themselves have informed sheriff's deputies that their release date had already passed.
And so, those using the system are doing what every line manager since the dawn of time has asked management to do when they botch a software rollout: take it offline until the bugs are sorted out.
And you'll never guess what the response has been. Yep – "no."
The same guy that green-lighted the Odyssey system in the first place back in 2013 – Robert Oyung, who was then the Chief Information Officer for Santa Clara – is now the CIO for the Judicial Council of California.
At a Judicial Council Technology Committee meeting earlier this month, Oyung argued that it was inevitable that there would be "growing pains" with the new system. "I think if people's expectations are set appropriately – that there will be gaps and they're not going to get exactly what they had before – I think that people can go in with open eyes," he said.
He went on: "There definitely will be gaps in a functionality that a court has experienced over the past 10 or 15 years compared to the new product ... I think that we can work together as a community and work very closely with Tyler to resolve those issues."
And so the case study continues to grow. ® |
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Graduates, ready the popcorn: renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg will speak at Harvard’s 365th Commencement on May 26, the University announced Thursday.
Cameras will be rolling when Spielberg, a two-time Oscar winner for Best Director, addresses graduates and their families during the Afternoon Exercises of Commencement, which will take place in Harvard Yard’s Tercentenary Theatre.
Steven Spielberg, pictured at Harvard in 2014.
Spielberg’s name is synonymous with American cinema. He has worked on a host of award-winning and box office hits, including Jaws, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan. His latest film, a cold war spy drama called Bridge of Spies, came out in the fall and was nominated for several Oscars.
“Through his art, Mr. Spielberg has challenged us to dream and to see the world anew, and I am very much looking forward to welcoming him back to Harvard and to honoring him during our 365th Commencement exercises,” University President Drew G. Faust said in a press release Thursday.
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Spielberg spoke at Harvard in 2014, when he discussed his sources of inspiration and the future of cinema with humanities professor Homi K. Bhabha; in 2013, he was awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois medal for his contributions to African and African American culture. Spielberg was named the Hasty Pudding Man of the Year in 1983, one accolade among a litany.
Spielberg’s career in film has spanned from the summer blockbuster to the serious period drama. Many of his early works, like E.T. the Extra-terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, became ingrained in popular culture and achieved immense financial success. His later movies, including Schindler’s List and Lincoln, earned widespread critical acclaim and engaged with difficult historical moments.
“An extraordinary storyteller, he has given voice to the silenced and brought history to life,” Faust said.
Spielberg’s selection is a departure from a recent set of politically-inclined Harvard Commencement speakers. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick spoke at the Afternoon Exercises in 2015, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed graduates in 2014.
—Staff writer Andrew M. Duehren can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aduehren.
—Staff writer Daphne C. Thompson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @daphnectho. |
The San Jose City Council approved a measure by a one-vote margin Tuesday that requires gun owners to secure their firearms when they are not at home.
The measure passed 6-5 and requires firearm owners to store their guns either in a locked container or disable them with a trigger lock before leaving their residence. Supporters contend that 286 firearms were reported stolen out of 9,270 residential burglaries reported in the city of one million in the past three years, making the ordinance a matter of public safety.
“We want to reduce the opportunities and possibilities of those who should not have access to guns and ensure that guns are properly stored at all times to prevent unnecessary and indefensible access and use,” said Councilmembers Raul Peralez and Chappie Jones in a memo to the Council.
The move, proposed last year, sets up those who have an unsecured gun stolen for fines of $1,000 and as much as six months in jail. Going past homeowners and renters, the requirements also apply to those in condos, hotels, time shares, and recreational vehicles inside the city.
In 51-pages of letters to the Council concerning the proposal, most who wrote in opposed the measure, contending it would have little impact on crime and would penalize victims of burglaries while putting residents at risk in a self-defense encounter. In contrast, local media described Tuesday’s meeting as emotional, with vocal advocates on both sides of the issue.
City Councilmember Lan Diep voiced his concerns, saying the Council was micromanaging the actions of law-abiding citizens and cautioned against a one-size-fits-all mandate for a municipality with varied gun owners.
“A person who lives in a single-family home is probably more susceptible to burglary than one who lives in a high-rise with onsite security,” said Diep, providing examples to place his argument in context. “Leaving a handgun in a bedside drawer may be acceptable in a house with an immobile newborn, but unacceptable in a house with teenagers. Yet if those teenagers are taught to respect and handle guns from a young age so that they view guns as a tool rather than a shiny toy, then perhaps less precaution is required in that specific household.”
The ordinance was opposed by the National Rifle Association and its state affiliate, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, but the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence argued that safe storage ordinances are a preventative measure that can save lives.
“Studies have demonstrated that the risk of suicide—particularly amongst children and teens—is significantly higher in homes where a firearm is kept loaded and/or unlocked,” said the gun control group. “Additionally, a study of mass shootings demonstrated that in over half of shootings perpetrated by minors in elementary or secondary schools, the shooter used guns obtained from home that were likely unsecured.”
Proponents of the measure also pointed to the fact that San Fransisco’s mandate to lock up firearms, enacted in 2007, has withstood legal challenges and at least seven other cities– to include Los Angeles— have adopted similar measures in the past decade. |
BY: Follow @DavidRutz
The longtime game show "Jeopardy!" trolled Hillary Clinton on Monday night with its category entitled "Baskets of Adorables."
The category depicted answers with pictures of cute animals like cats and sloths in baskets.
Host Alex Trebek drew laughter when he read out the category name. He added "uh-oh" after stating the title.
The category was a reference to Clinton's infamous remark last September that half of Donald Trump's supporters belonged in a "basket of deplorables."
"To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," she said. "Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it … But that other basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down. Nobody cares about them."
Clinton later said she was "wrong" to make those remarks. |
James Brightman Editor, North America Tuesday 9th June 2015 Share this article Share
If you haven't heard of ARK: Survival Evolved, that's about to change. The game has been available on Steam Early Access for just under a week, and it's off to a red-hot start. Studio Wildcard has shared exclusive data with GamesIndustry.biz, revealing that over 400,000 units have already been sold at $25 apiece, yielding over $10 million in revenues. The game has also seen peak concurrent users of 64,411 so far.
While big budget projects in the traditional AAA space can have a hard time recouping costs, smaller indie teams can often fare better with smaller investments. At this rate, it seems likely that ARK will yield a nice return for Studio Wildcard.
"It's too early to talk about profit since we still have a game to make and there are plenty of costs associated with all of that, but the revenue from sales has already paid for the $1.5 million cost of development over the past seven months," Jesse Rapczak, co-founder, co-creative director, Studio Wildcard explained to GamesIndustry.biz.
"My personal view is that Early Access should be for games that could be considered nearly complete or where the end is in sight"
The project has a long way to go still, as the official release is planned for June 2016 on Xbox One, PS4 and Steam, but Rapczak noted that the core aspects of the game are all in place. "80 percent of the main game is done, with hundreds of hours of gameplay there already. It's just down to balancing and feedback from the players. If all goes well we may even add more content once the community gets their hands on the mod tools. More on that later," he teased.
Rapczak was a technical art director on Microsoft's HoloLens for a couple of years, and you can bet that VR/AR has rubbed off on his studio and ARK. "We already have an early implementation of VR support in the game today with Oculus Rift. Considering my background with HoloLens I am very excited about this and it is one of the areas we will be improving on throughout Early Access. Our plan is to ship VR on PC and PS4 with Project Morpheus," he noted.
Early Access has been a mixed bag for both consumers and developers, with varying level of success for indies and varying levels of enjoyment for players buying products that are still in development. For Studio Wildcard, despite being only a team of eight, the response to community feedback and the speed of patches delivered has been remarkably efficient. It's no doubt helped ARK's positive reception thus far on Early Access.
"I think a lot of Early Access games get into trouble by over-promising and under-delivering in terms of gameplay features, timelines, and community involvement. My personal view is that Early Access should be for games that could be considered nearly complete or where the end is in sight," Rapczak said.
"This makes iteration with the community both valuable and productive. I also believe that Early Access titles should have a plan to be finished without any actual revenue from Early Access. My pet peeve is the 'when it's done' mentality. This is usually a result of bad planning, lack of vision, or both. If you don't know when your project is going to ship you have problems. Conversely, if you're going out of business in 1 month without income but need 4 months to finish the game that is a huge red flag."
He continued, "Regarding player feedback and how we patch issues so quickly, it is critically important to take this responsibility seriously as an Early Access developer. It is our goal above all else to never leave people with a broken game! We employ a full-time Community Manager and separate QA Manager who are always available to interact with our customers and identify fires that the development team needs to put out. All of our developers are encouraged to engage with users and personally help them solve problems once the Community Manager and QA team has triaged and sorted issues. During our launch weekend members of our team were present around the clock, sending files back and forth, sharing screens, and working on direct repro cases with the community."
Ultimately, Rapczak believes developers just need to be upfront and transparent with the community. "It's like a relationship. We're going to make mistakes," he said. "Some things will turn out like we thought, other things won't, and that's OK."
Pricing is often a sensitive issue for games. On mobile, anything over a dollar can incite riots, while on Early Access, developers have to essentially justify selling a game that's unfinished at a certain price. Every project is different and what's "fair" is completely subjective, but Rapczak looked at it this way: "We looked at the amount of content we had and the enjoyment we thought players would get out of the game, compared it to AAA titles, and cut it in half because nobody knows who we are yet. Then we discounted it by 17 percent for launch."
Being a dino-themed game with Pokemon and MMORPG elements, ARK also benefitted from the dino mania taking over popular culture this week thanks to Jurassic World. This is no coincidence. While ARK isn't specifically tied to Jurassic World in any official capacity, Studio Wildcard didn't hide the fact that they looked to capitalize on the movie's popularity.
"It's important to have a milestone to shoot for and the release of Jurassic World is a great one! We knew dino fever would be at an all-time high right now for us to take advantage of, and we wanted to be the first truly great dino survival game on the market. Both things had a huge influence on our timing, and I think we achieved both goals," Rapczak said.
Another important aspect that other developers should take note of is how much live streams and Twitch broadcasts have helped spread awareness of ARK.
"We spent the entire week on the top row of Twitch's main page, and the streamers and viewers are loving the game. Watching people stream the game is better than the best focus group money could buy," Rapczak stressed.
"We catch bugs, hear concerns, check our assumptions, and collect gameplay notes at an insane pace. I have never experienced anything like this on another project, and this is a huge benefit of releasing the game to Early Access with so much content and still a year to go before our final launch on PC and Consoles." |
The following passages are excerpts from Last Superman Standing: The Al Plastino Story, a forthcoming biography of the artist written by Ed Zeno.
(Excerpt from)
Chapter 2: Harry “A”
Branching Out
In the early days of the comic-book industry most people knew each other, and news traveled fast. Soon after he started working at the [Harry A.] Chesler studio, Alfred “Al” Plastino heard about other publishers needing help. He took samples of his output to a competitor and was taken aback when that company’s art editor informed him that the work was not his. “What do you mean? I should know. I’m the one who drew them,” said Plastino, to which the editor responded, “The actual artist who drew those pages was in here not long ago, showing me the same ones.”
Creators mostly chose not to sign their artwork during the comic-book field’s first three-decades-plus, because bosses might consider it “stealing” if their employees and freelancers decided to moonlight. Nevertheless, Plastino learned the importance of marking his pages since others were taking credit for the work. He and his cohorts sneaked initials — and sometimes even their last names — into splash panels, end pages and elsewhere. An example can be found on the splash page to the Rocketman story published in Scoop Comics #3 (March 1942). At bottom left is a hunchbacked person holding a strap. On the strap is written “AL PLA.”
Plastino remembered: “I jumped around, inking for Fawcett and Funnies Incorporated.” Those weren’t the only companies he moonlighted at. Because he had been published so early in the burgeoning comic-book trade, Plastino rarely had to go looking for additional work. Extra jobs usually found him. He became known as someone who didn’t need coaching and could get the task done reliably. Chesler never knew about Plastino’s side projects, or he’d have been furious. Different studios paid different wages, but $9 per page was probably the most the freelancing young man made during this period.
Art editor Jack Binder left Chesler’s studio in 1940. Before long, he was running his own operation. Plastino noted that he only drew one story for the Jack Binder studio. It was tough to survive in the early comic-book business, and Binder developed a reputation as a bit of a hustler. Plastino remembered how Binder had taken advantage of him when he was at Chesler’s; Binder had the 18-year-old pencil side jobs at little or no pay. Now a bit older and wiser, when Plastino delivered an eight-page story he had both penciled and inked to Binder’s home, he was prepared for what lay ahead. When Plastino requested payment before handing over the art, Binder balked at the idea. That’s when Plastino positioned his hands to show that he was fully prepared to rip the pages apart. Since he had made it clear that if he wasn’t going to be paid for his work no one would have it, Binder acquiesced: he needed the job quickly for publication. Plastino demonstrated early on that, for the rest of his life, few would be able to take advantage of him.
Some of the titles that Plastino worked on during the early 1940s included Dynamic Comics, Blue Bolt Comics, 4 Most, Target Comics, Scoop Comics and Punch Comics, with stories featuring Dynamic Man, Rocketman and Johnny on the Spot. “Dynamic Man is when I first started really catching on with Chesler.” Other assignments during 1942 and 1943 starred Captain America, Sub-Mariner, the Vision and Patriot.
Plastino recalled that he only inked the Captain America stories. The underlying pencils were very loose, but very good; they may have been by Jack Kirby or by Joe Simon. Though he was uncertain who drew them, they taught him a good deal about page layout and action. Without firm deadlines, Plastino took time to work at a slower pace, tightening up the pencils before he embellished. When he was around 20 years old, he did his side jobs at home in the Upper Bronx before he brought them into the city.
The Next Frontier
For the publisher MLJ, Chesler’s shop produced the early Pep Comics, which featured the first truly patriotic comic-book superhero: the Shield. Plastino likely saw the underwater airplanes that appeared in Pep Comics #3 (April 1940). The Shield called these ships that went under the sea — then emerged from the water and flew—“submaplanes.” One of Plastino’s moonlighting jobs included inking some of the exploits of antihero Namor, the Sub-Mariner, over creator Bill Everett’s pencils. Everett’s recurring “aerial-submarine” first appeared in Funnies Incorporated’s Marvel Mystery Comics #4 (February 1940). Plastino remembered inking one of the stories in which the intriguing device appeared: “In Sub-Mariner there was a machine that would come out of the water and the wings would come out and take off.” This may have inspired Plastino to design a possible secret weapon for the U.S. military.
(Excerpt from)
Chapter 5: The Big Three
The Post-Joe Shuster Big Three: Wayne Boring, Al Plastino, and Curt Swan
Al Plastino was impressed with Wayne Boring’s art: “They gave me some of his pencils to ink early on. This helped give me a feeling of how Wayne drew Superman.” He occasionally saw the older man (born in 1905) in the art room at DC, though not too often, since most of the guys worked from home. The two artists got along fine. “Wayne had really tight pencils.”
Nevertheless, Plastino had mixed feelings while under his senior’s shadow. When he looked at “The Three Supermen from Krypton!” from Superman #65 (July–August 1950) from today’s perspective, Plastino noted: “That is crap, because I was still influenced by [him]. But at least you can follow the story. My faces were lousy, but they were consistent.” When asked why he broke from following Boring’s lead, Plastino said, “No one said change it. Wayne’s work was really clean cut and professional, though the characters were a little stiff. It almost hurt me to draw like him. I tried to keep the look consistent, but it gradually did change.”
Because Jack Schiff was handling Wayne Boring’s work, he was also Plastino’s first boss at DC Comics. The goal was to maintain Superman’s artistic continuity. “Jack was one of the editors for Superman. He was a mild guy, very shy and gentle, nothing like Mort Weisinger. Jack was not a good idea man, unlike Mort, who was a great idea man. He would just say, ‘Here is the story, Al.’ He wouldn’t give directions, per se. I started working with Mort a little later.”
Though he could not remember when their working relationship began in earnest, there exists a note for Plastino to call Weisinger regarding his preliminary cover for Superman #60. With an indicia dated September–October 1949, this means the artist and editor had dealings with each other no later than spring of that year.
In approximately 1951, fellow illustrator Curt Swan was getting terrible migraines from Weisinger’s frequent demands to correct the art by adding more detail. Weisinger also bullied the artists when he thought they weren’t giving him his money’s worth. Swan’s headaches went away when he began standing up to the editor. In the book Superman at Fifty! The Persistence of a Legend! (edited by Dennis Dooley and Gary Engle, Octavia Press, 1987), Swan is quoted: “I did speak briefly to Wayne Boring about it when I took over drawing the syndicated Superman strip in the late ’50s or early ’60s, a couple of years before they killed it. He knew how difficult Weisinger could be on the subject of Superman’s looks. ‘Just hang in there,’ Wayne told me, ‘and don’t take any s---.’”
Plastino had his own perspective when dealing with Weisinger, but the results were the same: “My attitude was, they’re not bosses, they’re editors. Wayne was on the way out; they were feeding him less and less work. He had the newspaper strip. Then Curt Swan took over [the dailies, but not the Sundays, for a few years]. There wasn’t as much of a difference between Curt Swan’s style and mine as there was between mine and Wayne Boring’s. Curt’s style was more realistic and calm. I added more jazz, where Curt’s was more kind and a little monotonous because he would have no big changes between panels. But he was a good artist.”
Plastino added that Swan was a nice guy he enjoyed conversing with when they happened to be visiting the DC offices at the same time. He felt that Swan doing only pencils — and not inking himself — helped lead to his early demise (Swan passed away in 1996). Plastino said that controlling both tasks kept him from working himself to death. One time, when Mort Weisinger asked him to let someone else embellish his pages, Plastino turned in such sketchy work that no one could find the line to ink. The idea was quickly dropped.
With much of Swan’s time monopolized by the syndicated dailies, and Boring’s by the Sundays, Plastino became Weisinger’s main artist on both Superman and Action Comics in the later 1950s. Superman’s writer-father, Jerry Siegel, found his way back to DC in 1959 to script the character’s exploits. About Siegel’s reappearance, Plastino said, “It was a terrible time. That Mort was a tough customer. He yelled at Siegel; he had him shaking in his boots. I said to Mort, ‘You wouldn’t have a job if not for him.’ When Weisinger had [Kurt] Schaffenberger redraw the heads on my Lois Lane a couple of times, he would tell me about it. He even wanted some of the money back that he paid me. I said, ‘Find somebody else.’ He started sputtering. I didn’t give a damn; you had to have that attitude. I got along with him after a while when I got huffy with him.”
Text ©Ed Zeno. |
Obama did not mention any specific law or measure but said he would work with both parties in Congress to try to achieve a "consensus around violence reduction" in the wake of last Friday's massacre at a cinema in Colorado.
"I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms," he told the National Urban League Convention in New Orleans, referring to part of the US Constitution.
"I think we recognise the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation – that hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage.
"But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals – that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities," he said.
Calls for a re-examination of America's gun laws mounted in the aftermath of the tragedy in Aurora as it emerged that suspect James Holmes bought four weapons legally.
Over eight weeks, Holmes stocked up on the internet on 6,300 rounds of ammunition: 3,000 for his .233 semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, another 3,000 for his two Glock pistols, and 300 cartridges for his pump-action shotgun.
Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student, also bought a special magazine for his AR-15 military-style assault rifle that enabled him to fire up to 50 to 60 rounds per minute.
Obama said he had already stepped up background checks on those who buy weapons in the wake of last year's shooting in Tucson, Arizona that left six people dead and Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords fighting for her life.
"But even though we have taken these actions, they're not enough. Other steps to reduce violence have been met with opposition in Congress. This has been true for some time, particularly when it touches on the issue of guns," he said.
"I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons. And we should check someone's criminal record before they can check out a gun seller.
"A mentally unbalanced individual should not be able to get his hands on a gun so easily. These steps shouldn't be controversial. They should be common-sense."
A group of Democratic lawmakers pushed to ban assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines Tuesday in the wake of the Colorado massacre, but congressional leaders are unwilling to touch the volatile issue.
Advocates of stricter gun control measures argue that America is more prone to mass shootings than other countries because the law in many states is too lenient.
They have been disappointed by Obama, but political pragmatists see that he could be committing electoral suicide if he took up such an explosive issue at the current time.
The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is well-funded and a powerful player in Washington. It argues that crazy people do crazy things and says that clamping down on fundamental American liberties will achieve nothing.
Several key battlegrounds in November's elections – Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, for example – have gun-friendly populations that remain wedded to their right to bear arms.
Source: agencies |
Anti-Koch signage in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis.—The standoff over the Budget Repair Act is about the portions of the legislation that scale back union rights. That’s how it started. That’s why the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFT, and every other union with a bus is at the capitol. But many of the protesters think it’s about something more insidious. On the walk into the capitol today, I saw these six signs in the space of 10 minutes:
Scott, How Much KOCH Have You Done?
Scott Walker is a KOCH Whore
CONFIRMED: Walker and Koch, Brothers With Bats
KOCH-SUCKERS
Drunk With Power—High on Koch
Recall Koch Bro’s “Puppets”—”Scott Walker” & “Republicans”
None of the protesters knew the other, but some of them bonded over their obsession: the influence of David and Charles Koch, two of the wealthiest men in America, donors to a bouquet of libertarian and Tea Party causes. Amy Janczy, from Lake Mills, Wis., carried the “Drunk With Power” sign; David Wend, from Madison, carried the “Puppets” sign. They stopped to talk.
“I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Kochs,” explained Wend.
“I read the legislative summary of the Budget Repair Act,” explained Janczy, “and saw the stuff in there about the giveaways for the power plants. I saw the Kochs’ fingerprints on that.”
She was talking about Section 16.896 of the bill, which empowers Gov. Scott Walker to “sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids.” That section started to get attention on Monday; by this morning, Democrats in the state Assembly were using the floor time allotted to them in their quasi-filibuster to ask whether the Kochs were behind it, or interested in buying the plants.
Madison’s liberal Capital Times newspaper got a flat denial of that claim. “We have no interest,” said Philip Ellender, Koch Companies’ president of government and public affairs, “in purchasing any of the state-owned power plants in Wisconsin and any allegations to the contrary are completely false.”
I pointed this out to Janczy. “Well,” she said, “they may say that, but I don’t believe it.”
When it comes to the Kochs, progressives in Wisconsin are ready to believe the absolute worst. Inside the capitol there are dozens of agitprop signs accusing the brothers of buying the election for Walker. There are detailed lists of Koch companies and which products to boycott in order to starve them. There are articles taped to the walls from Forbes magazine (“Texas Koch Brothers Behind Wisconsin Effort To Kill Public Unions”) and the New York Times (“Koch Brothers’ Money Fuels Wisconsin Fight“). On Wednesday, a new sign started appearing around the halls, informing protesters of a picket outside the stately office building, not far from the capitol, where Koch Companies have hired seven lobbyists.
In sum: They have found the enemy, and it is Koch.
But how big a role are the Kochs actually playing in Wisconsin? A popular argument on the streets here is that Walker got $43,000 from Koch’s PAC, and that the PAC gave $1 million to the Republican Governor’s Association—a fact dug up first by Andy Kroll of Mother Jones. One protester pointed out to me that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had spoken at one of the Kochs’ annual conferences. Thanks to the no-cameras-please PR strategy of the Kochs (none of their Madison lobbyists responded to my interview requests today), these mid-sized donations have taken on mythic proportions.
How can we judge how deep the Kochs’ influence runs? That New York Times story points out that all Koch-affiliated companies and employees gave about $1.84 million to Republicans, nationwide, in the 2010 election cycle. Americans for Prosperity, the nonprofit Tea Party-organizing group co-founded by David Koch—he’s still on the board—had a $40 million budget in 2010. (On Tuesday AFP announced a $342,000 ad buy supporting Walker.) Nationally, the labor movement spent far, far more than this. To take one example, AFSCME, whose green-shirted members have made their presence known in Madison, spent $87.5 million on the election.
Many protesters, and some Democratic politicians, are blunt enough to say that the labor movement is essential because of its financial generosity. (One sign I saw listed the 10 biggest sources of money in politics to make the point that unions were the only thing keeping Democrats in the game.) Liberals here and elsewhere were infinitely more critical of the Citizens United decision than conservatives were, but that decision gave unions the same get-out-of-disclosure-free card it gave to corporations.
I asked one protester, Jeanne Duffy, what the difference was between the benefits unions get when Democrats are in power, and the benefits the Kochs get when Republicans win.
“Did the unions, when they were in ‘power’ “—she made scare quotes with her fingers— “pass bills to abolish the Heritage Foundation? Or did they use it to expand BadgerCare? The point of what the unions are doing is to make this a more democratic nation, where more people get more access to what they need. I mean, could you or I call Gov. Walker and get 20 minutes with him?”
Ah, yes, the phone call: That’s why the Koch drama dominated Madison today. On Tuesday, Buffalo Beast writer Ian Murphy had called Scott Walker’s office, posing as David Koch (and sounding very little like him) and talked his way into a 20-minute conversation. The transcript of the call was embarrassing, with the governor saying more about his strategy and peeves than he’d done in a week of media interviews. He thought he might nail the 14 Senate Democrats who’d fled the state on an ethics violation, if their lodging was paid for by unions. He was dismissive about their demands.
But the details of the conversation hardly mattered to the protesters. To them, the call was a game-changer simply because it existed. Walker took the call; he knew who Koch was; he talked for 20 minutes. Democrats in the state Assembly, who had been mentioning the Koch-Walker connections or the no-bid-power-plant theory throughout their debate, took to the floor on Wednesday to ask what Walker knew about Koch and when he knew him.
“These Koch brothers!” said a worried-sounding Rep. Gary Hebl. “These Koch brothers are talking to Gov. Walker!”
After Walker participated in a tense press conference dominated by questions about the Koch tapes, Democratic Rep. Brett Hulsey took questions and explained why the Koch conversation rattled Democrats while confirming their suspicions. The call was evidence of “pay for play.”
“It was shocking to us,” he said. “We now understand why [Walker] killed the train money, why he killed the wind development, why he killed $46 million of transit money. He’s in the pocket of big oil interests.”
I asked why this proved that these were things David Koch wanted.
“I’m not going to talk about a vast right-wing conspiracy like Mrs. Clinton,” he said, laughing. “But I’ve seen this movie before.”
How did the Kochs become the villains of Madison? They have, for decades, bankrolled libertarian think tanks and programs, and they help put on conferences where conservative ideas are spread. Among the ideas they end up spreading are drug legalization and opposition to the Patriot Act. The Tea Party was the first movement funded in part by the Kochs that really took off.
So why credit everything that Republicans are trying to do now to Kochs’ influence? Partly because they do have some influence, and partly, as the Assembly Democrats kept goading Republicans, because they are shadowy “New York billionaires.” A complicated fight over public-sector unions can be broadened into a stand against secretive malefactors of wealth, who can be connected somehow to every conservative victory or idea. And the fear and paranoia grows, because, theoretically, they could be spending more than anyone knows. If Citizens United lets conservatives spend more money secretly, it has a hell of a side effect.
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While the examples of Common Core insanity have typically involved simple math, since they are the most blatant example, the mutation of standards as they apply to reading have been most insidious.
How insidious? A wholesale condemnation of books. That is how insidious it has been.
What is Common Core, has shown rather explicit examples of books being condemned as “dangerous,” as well as being inferior with their chronological tyranny that “under-stimulates” the senses that are “barren strings of words on a page.”
This exactly the warning that Ray Bradbury gave in Farhenheit 451. His book was not about censorship, but about mindless new methods of communication crushing the ability of individuals to think.
“Bradbury imagined a democratic society whose diverse population turns against books: Whites reject Uncle Tom’s Cabin and blacks disapprove of Little Black Sambo. He imagined not just political correctness, but a society so diverse that all groups were “minorities.” He wrote that at first they condensed the books, stripping out more and more offending passages until ultimately all that remained were footnotes, which hardly anyone read. Only after people stopped reading did the state employ firemen to burn books.”
The assignment in question:
The future is now…
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The stage is set for another showdown in Texas over a controversial bill aimed at preventing transgender students from using restrooms according to their gender identity. On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott called for a 30-day special session, partly to revive the fight over Texas' bathroom bill that critics say would sanction discrimination against transgender students.
The bill, put forth by Republican legislators with a great deal of support from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, would require individuals to use school bathrooms that accord with the gender identity assigned to them at birth. "At a minimum, we need a law that protects the privacy of our children in our public schools," Abbott told reporters at the Capitol in Austin, according to The New York Times.
The governor also called state lawmakers back to Austin to consider so-called "sunset bills," or legislation that must be passed in order to keep some state agencies afloat in terms of funding. Abbott, in an attempt to make those funding bills a priority, stated that agency-related legislation will be considered prior to the bathroom bill.
Critics say the Texas bathroom bill is harmful to transgender men, women, and children. “Gov. Abbott has called a special session partly dedicated to discriminating against transgender Texans,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement. "In doing so, he has caved to the demands of the fringe politicians who are using LGBTQ people as pawns to win cheap political points."
Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images News/Getty Images
Chuck Smith, who heads the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, expressed a similar sentiment, telling The New York Times that if passed during the special session, the Texas bathroom bill would amount to discrimination. "This is a 100 percent political issue, and the only reason for it is to target, demonize and stigmatize transgender people," Smith said.
The Texas legislation is not unlike the 2016 North Carolina bathroom law that sparked widespread backlash and a boycott that could cost up to $3.6 billion in lost business. Texas' bill, however, is more specific. It limits the bathroom restrictions to municipal and school building restrooms.
Nonetheless, LGBTQ rights advocates opposing the bill say they have been heartened by the support their cause has received. “I never thought I’d see that many people show up in Texas on a topic specifically related to trans people,” Lou Weaver, transgender programs coordinator for Equality Texas, told the Texas Tribune. “It continued to happen over and over again… These people are continuing to show up.” |
I knew I was in for treat just by looking at the box :) Each side had some doodles pertaining to one of the interests I listed on my redditgifts profile! Except for the "Christmas funtime lizard dude," which I'm assuming was of LittleRedRidingHoody's own creation haha Inside was a very sweet, handwritten card attached to an impressive paper snowflake. Then the first thing I opened I was pretty sure I recognized the shape of, and I was right! A Pickachu Amiibo for Super Smash Bros. :) Then I found the kick-ass Zelda keychain, which looks too cool to get destroyed being attached to my keys, so I'll have to find somewhere with my other game stuff to display it. And lastly was a sweet Walking Dead pint glass! Which is perfect, seeing as how I just turned 21 ;) haha All in all, this was one of my favorite exchanges, so thank you very much miss LittleRedRidingHoody, and happy holidays :) |
The Senate Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) would make significant changes to the amounts that people pay for nongroup coverage and for the care they receive under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The tables below provide estimates of how premiums after taking into account tax credits would change for people currently enrolled in the federal and state marketplaces.
Under current law, people with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for premium tax credits to help them pay the premium for nongroup coverage purchased through the federal or a state marketplace if they do not have access to other affordable coverage. People are responsible for paying a specified percent of their income (“required income percentage”) toward the cost of the benchmark plan (the second-lowest cost silver plan in their area), and the federal government pays the remainder of the premium to their insurer; this amount is the person’s premium tax credit. The required income percentages people are responsible to pay vary with income: In 2017, people with incomes between 100 percent and 133 percent of poverty contribute 2.04 percent of income, while people with incomes between 300 percent and 400 percent of poverty contribute 9.69 percent of their income. Because premiums vary with age but the share of income people are responsible to pay does not, older people receive larger premium tax credits than younger people with the same income but pay the same amount for the benchmark plan.
Beginning in 2020, the BCRA would make several significant revisions that affect the premium tax credits that people receive when they purchase nongroup coverage. First, the bill would revise income eligibility for premium tax credits, extending eligibility to people with incomes below poverty but capping eligibility at 350 percent of poverty. Second, the bill amends the way that premium tax credits are calculated so that the required income percentages vary with age and with income. Our estimates of the required income percentages under current law and the BCRA for 2020 are shown in the Appendix. The result is that on average people at younger ages would pay a lower share of their income to purchase a benchmark plan than they today while people at older ages would pay a higher share. Third, the bill reduces the value of the benchmark plans that are used to determine premium tax credits. The result is that a person who used their premium tax credit to purchase a benchmark plan would get a plan that on average would pay 58 percent of expected covered costs (a bronze plan), compared to 70 percent (a silver plan) under current law. A plan paying 58 percent of expected covered costs would have much higher cost sharing (e.g., deductibles) than a plan covering 70 percent of costs. This change is particularly important because the BCRA also would eliminate the cost sharing subsidies available under current law that reduce cost sharing and out-of-pocket limits for marketplace enrollees with incomes at or below 250 of poverty.
The bill also authorizes states to change the amount that premiums for adults can vary due to age, from 3:1 under current law to 5:1 (or a different ratio at state discretion). This would lower premiums for younger adults and raise them for older adults in states that made the change.
Results
We estimated the average premiums that current marketplace enrollees would pay, after receiving any premium tax credit, for a benchmark silver plan in 2020 under current law and under the BCRA. Most current marketplace enrollees purchase silver plans, so we used those as the basis for a comparison of how much people would pay for equivalent coverage under the ACA versus the BCRA. The methods we used in making our estimates are described in more detail below.
Overall, marketplace enrollees would pay on average 74 percent more towards the premium for a benchmark silver plan in 2020 under the BCRA than under current law (Table 1). Younger enrollees would see modest increases on average (10 percent for those under age 18; 17 percent for those ages 18 to 34), while average premiums would more than double for enrollees ages 55 to 64. State-level results are in Appendix Table 2.
Table 1: Monthly Premium for a Silver Plan Among Exchange Enrollees (By Age), 2020 Age ACA Premium After Tax Credit BCRA Premium After Tax Credit % Change Under 18 $110 $120 10% 18-34 $145 $169 17% 35-44 $194 $271 39% 45-54 $208 $403 94% 55-64 $271 $583 115% 65 and Older $310 $660 113% Overall (All Ages) $197 $342 74% Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
These results vary significantly by income as well (Table 2). Marketplace enrollees with incomes below 200 percent of poverty would see an average increase in their premium costs of 177 percent, while higher income enrollees would see an increase of 57 percent.
Table 2: Monthly Premium for a Silver Plan Among Exchange Enrollees (By Income and Age), 2020 Income Below 200% of Poverty Income 200% of Poverty or Above Age ACA Premium After Tax Credit BCRA Premium After Tax Credit % Change ACA Premium After Tax Credit BCRA Premium After Tax Credit % Change < 18 $26 $58 121% $176 $170 -4% 18-34 $57 $103 82% $247 $247 0% 35-44 $69 $149 117% $296 $369 25% 45-54 $67 $215 223% $323 $556 72% 55-64 $69 $272 294% $399 $782 96% 65 + $76 $296 288% $439 $862 96% Overall $61 $168 177% $311 $489 57% Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
There are important differences by age within these income groups: among enrollees with incomes below 200 percent of poverty, those in 18 to 34 age group would see an average increase of 82 percent while those in the 55 to 64 age group would see an average increase of 288 percent. Among enrollees with incomes 200 percent of poverty and above, enrollees in the 18 to 34 age group would not see an increase while those age 55 to 64 would see their premium costs almost double.
Discussion
The vast majority of marketplace enrollees would pay higher premiums in 2020 for a silver plan. Older and lower income enrollees see the biggest increases. These results are driven by several provisions in the BCRA. First, the BCRA reduces the value of the benchmark plan used to calculate the premium tax credits (from a plan that, on average, pays 70 percent of expected costs to a plan that pays 58 percent of expected costs). Lowering the benchmark means that marketplace enrollees could enroll in what is roughly a bronze plan by paying their required income percentage, but that they would need to pay the entire difference in premium to enroll in the silver level plans that are most prevalent today. The second factor is the change in the required income percentages under the BCRA, which generally would reduce what younger adults would be required to pay but increases the amounts paid by older adults, particularly those at higher incomes. Among people with higher incomes, reducing the maximum income eligibility for premium tax credits from 400 percent of poverty to 350 percent of poverty increases costs for some marketplace enrollees, particularly people at higher ages who face relatively high premiums. Increasing the permitted premium variation due to age also would increase premiums for older adults not eligible for premium tax credits.
These significant increases in the costs for silver plans may cause some or many marketplace enrollees to look to lower-value bronze-level plans, which they could purchase by paying their required income percentage. For younger marketplace enrollees, they generally would pay less under the BCRA to purchase a bronze level plan than they would pay for a silver plan under current law; older enrollees, however, generally would pay more for a bronze level plan under the BCRA than they would pay for a silver plan under current law. Moving down to bronze level plans, however, would expose enrollees to much higher cost sharing than in silver plans, and for many enrollees who now receive cost-sharing subsidies, the increases would be very large. The BCRA would eliminate the cost sharing subsidies provided under current law beginning in 2020.
The reduction in the value of the benchmark plan, along with the elimination of cost sharing subsidies, raises questions about whether lower income people would continue their coverage under the BCRA. While premiums after premium tax credits might be somewhat lower for younger enrollees purchasing bronze plans, their cost sharing would likely be thousands of dollars higher; the average deductible for bronze plans in 2017 with a combined deductible for medical and prescription expenses is $6,105; this compares to an average deductible of $809 for plans with cost sharing reductions for people with incomes between 150 and 200 percent of poverty and $255 for people with incomes between 100 and 150 percent of poverty. Many people with low incomes would have a difficult time paying the cost sharing under the benchmark plans in the BCRA, and may decide they do not want to pay even a relatively small premium for a plan that they would struggle to use.
Because of the short time between the release of the discussion draft and the planned debate and vote in the Senate, we were unable to address all of the provisions that might affect premiums under the BCRA. Our analysis assumes that unsubsidized premiums for a 40-year-old would ultimately be the same under the ACA and BCRA. In the score released today (June 26), the Congressional Budget Office expects the difference in unsubsidized premiums for a 40-year-old between the ACA and BCRA to be quite small in 2026, which is consistent with our assumption; however, they expect BCRA premiums to be relatively lower in 2020, due in part to larger federal funding available in 2020 to reduce premiums. While these changes would have some impact on our results, the impact would be muted because we have focused on the amount that people pay after tax credits, and for most marketplace enrollees, those amounts are determined by their required income percentage and not the actual plan premium. For these people, the actual premium affects the amount of their tax credit, but not what they would pay for a benchmark plan. Generally lower premiums would affect our results primarily for those marketplace enrollees who would pay the full premium with no premium tax credit under the BCRA. These generally would be people with higher incomes or younger people facing very low premiums such that the full premium would be less than their required income percentage.
Methods
We used data from the March 2016 Current Population Survey, the 2016 National Health Interview Survey and administrative data about the income and demographic distribution of the population enrolled in the federal and state marketplaces to construct a model of nongroup enrollees.
To impute marketplace enrollment status for each individual reporting directly purchased private health insurance to the March 2016 Current Population Survey, we applied a series of modeling techniques to the health insurance units (HIUs) described here in order to model the division of individuals holding nongroup coverage between those enrolled in a marketplace and those enrolled outside of a marketplace. Using the same multiply-imputed technique described here, we repeated our draw of each state’s nongroup population ten times to accurately account for sampling error.
We revised our Uninsured Calibration described in here to more closely align with the insurance coverage movements shown by the recent CDC publication of full-year 2016 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) estimates. This CDC document shows continued gains in public coverage during the year and a leveling-off of private insurance coverage gains after the early 2016 Marketplace enrollment surge that mirrors administrative data sources. Our previous publications on this topic were calibrated to NHIS 2016 first quarter estimates; however, both HHS-published effectuated enrollment in the Exchanges at the end of March 2016 and also the insurer rate filings used to estimate the size of the off-marketplace population more closely align with the trends exhibited by NHIS 2016 full-year statistics. Calibrating to national CDC estimates allowed for on- and off-marketplace sampling targets consistent with administrative enrollment at the state level.
For each state’s on-marketplace and off-marketpace nongroup population, we drew purchasing units across five strata, each informed by federal data. For each state and the District of Columbia, we sampled subsidy-eligible marketplace enrollees both above and below 250% FPL, followed by a small group of ACA subsidy-eligibles forgoing help in the off-exchange market. Consistent with this administrative data, we also sampled a small group of wealthier nongroup enrollees (those not eligible for subsidies) into the Exchanges, and moved the remaining nongroup individuals into the off-exchange market. For non-immigrants with incomes below 100% of poverty, we calculate the amount of their required premium contribution as though their income were 138% of poverty. To most accurately reflect the age and income distribution of the Exchanges, each marketplace-purchasing unit received a sampling probability proportional to the average monthly subsidy per person within the state. At the conclusion of these ten repeated state sample draws, our average advanced premium tax credit (APTC) per month landed at $284 nationwide (compared to the $291 reported by HHS) and within $30 of the actual amounts displayed on table two of the HHS effectuated enrollment report for every geography except for the state of Connecticut. This close match of estimated APTC dollars for forty-nine states and the District of Columbia reflected a high degree of accuracy of the demographic (primarily age and income) distribution of our sampled exchange population.
To compare the effect of the Senate’s proposed Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) against current law under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we attached both the second lowest cost silver and the lowest cost bronze plan premiums to each individual in each local market. These 2017 premiums from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Subsidy Calculator matched CPS respondents at the state and metropolitan area-level, with smaller areas not disclosed by the U.S. Census Bureau computed using a population-weighted average premium across the aggregation of non-metro areas. Matching our prior eligibility analyses, we computed ACA eligibility and subsidy receipt using the second lowest cost silver plan available to the HIU as the benchmark plan. To reflect the 58% Actuarial Value (AV) level stated by the BCRA, we used each geographic area’s lowest cost bronze plan as the benchmark plan for each HIU. In a small number of geographies without a bronze plan option for purchase on the 2017 exchanges, we used 85% of the silver plan as that local area’s benchmark plan premium. For each individual’s premium calculations under the BCRA, we relaxed the ACA’s 3:1 age rating to a 5:1 age band in all states that did not have community rating requirements in place prior to 2014. We followed CBO and HHS inflation factors to project all dollar values and thresholds to calendar year 2020. Using CBO’s economic projections, we inflated the 2015 income amounts in the 2016 CPS for each HIU to 2020 dollars. We increased premium dollars from 2017 to 2020 and both ACA and BCRA premium caps from 2014 to 2020 using Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary projections. Our analysis assumes that states do not take up a waiver under the BCRA. |
After a five-county-wide gonorrhea outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, public health officials have taken on the messy task of calling everyone’s exes. Public health departments have organized an anonymous notification system to get in contact with former sexual partners and inform them that they might have been exposed to the disease.
Yes, civil servants are taking one of the most awkward phone calls imaginable off your hands. Government workers, like Anna Holloran at the Spokane Regional Health District, are calling ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, randos, flings, hook-ups, steadies, side projects, slampieces, friends with benefits, one-time things, and even current partners:
Some people cry, some people get really angry, some people don’t want to talk to me at all. A lot of people are really anxious to know who it was [who gave them the infection]. Of course, I can’t say anything whatsoever that would identify that.
Because of the way these things get around, Holloran is speaking to all sorts of people:
You know, I wait for the time when our numbers go down. But I have to keep thinking of what the case rates would be like if we weren’t doing this work.
Public health officials: they’re like a best friend and a personal assistant in one. You’re a little squeamish about owning up to your actions? They’ll make that phone call, no problem. They’ve got your back. You do you.
A gold star to all of them, a toast in their honor, a gold-plated plaque for their offices. |
While Merrick Garland failed to make it to the Supreme Court, he will still wield significant authority over the Trump agenda from his current post as chief judge of the D.C. Circuit. | Getty How Merrick Garland could torment Trump The spurned Supreme Court nominee has had a lot to say about deregulatory initiatives like the one the president's pushing.
As Neil Gorsuch is sworn in to the Supreme Court, liberals are still teeming with anger over Merrick Garland being denied that same seat at the hands of Senate Republicans.
However, many on the legal left are hoping the jilted Obama nominee can still play a role in thwarting one of the central thrusts of President Donald Trump’s policy agenda: what top Trump adviser Steven Bannon famously called “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
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As Trump presses to roll back regulations across the federal government — formally vowing to dismantle two rules for every new one issued — an article Garland wrote more than three decades ago has emerged as a kind of playbook for those plotting the legal resistance to Trump’s campaign to unwind regulations aimed at protecting the environment, workers’ rights and more.
The 1985 article in the Harvard Law Review, penned as the Reagan administration's deregulation initiative was gathering steam, emphasized the duties of courts to take a "hard look" at attempts to revoke federal rules. Garland argued that agencies revoking regulations must have at least as good a basis for killing a rule as they did for issuing it — and that the action be consistent with congressional intent.
“The hard look demands that the agency show that the course it chose was reasonable in light of the relevant policies, alternatives, and facts,” Garland wrote.
Another legal expert said there are unmistakable parallels between the Reagan-era deregulation effort Garland helped resist in the courts and the one Trump is embarking upon.
“This is the world we are about to enter,” said Paul Verkuil, a leading authority on the federal rulemaking process. “You have to be able to justify your decision to end a regulation. ... [Garland] pretty much knew what he was talking about. It was a dramatic and important article which got a lot of play.”
While Garland failed to make it to the Supreme Court, he will still wield significant authority over the Trump agenda from his current post as chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, a position he’s slated to hold until 2020. Indeed, news stories from the Reagan era described the Washington-based federal appeals court as a key obstacle to that administration’s regulatory agenda.
Colleagues said they expect Garland to be highly engaged when challenges to Trump’s deregulatory moves begin to come before the court.
“What I can say about it, is he would give it exacting and careful scrutiny,” said Jack Quinn, a White House counsel under President Bill Clinton. "I’d be willing to say there’s nobody who’s more knowledgeable about this area of the law."
While the Supreme Court sets the broad rules for the deregulatory process and takes up some of the most high-profile cases, the nitty-gritty of applying those rules to individual agency actions is done by the D.C. Circuit. Often, it’s the only court to review what agencies have done.
“That’s why the D.C. Circuit is commonly referred to as the second most important court in the country,” Quinn noted. “It’s where the vast bulk of cases involving agency action are taken up.”
Garland declined several requests to comment for this article.
However, during an argument he presided over late last month in a campaign finance case, the D.C. Circuit chief made clear he was concerned about the slippery slope of dismantling Federal Election Commission rules.
“The question is how much of the entire structure collapses if we accept your position,” Garland told an attorney pressing to loosen donation limits. “The rule of law requires me to apply the same logic in the next case that I apply in this case.”
Garland’s 1985 article, one of just two full-length law review articles Garland wrote before being confirmed to the bench in 1997, stemmed from his personal involvement in a high-profile Supreme Court case on deregulation that is still routinely cited in courts, including his.
In that high court showdown, Garland was one of the key lawyers for State Farm insurance company in its challenge to the Reagan administration’s revocation of a Carter-era requirement that new cars have air bags or automatic seat belts.
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Garland “was the intellectual center of gravity in that case on the plaintiff's side,” recalled Quinn, who was on the same litigation team. “He really did have an incredibly important role.”
In its 1983 ruling, the justices unanimously held that agency deregulatory actions were subject to substantive scrutiny by the courts, just as new regulations are. The court also took another important step, emphasizing that while agencies could change their minds about the value of a particular regulation, they could not ignore evidence they considered when putting the rule on the books in the first place.
“An agency changing its course by rescinding a rule is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency does not act in the first instance,” Justice Byron White wrote.
Trump has several ways available to him to counter or elude efforts in the courts to block his deregulation plans. And he’s already using some of them.
First, Trump is signing targeted pieces of legislation that knock out regulations the Obama administration put on the books in its final months in office. He’s already signed 11 of these Congressional Review Act resolutions and has two more sitting on his desk.
With health care legislation stalled, Trump aides are billing this as the president’s most significant legislative achievement in his early days in office.
“I think that this is a huge accomplishment in the first quarter,” White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told reporters last week, claiming that the repealed Obama-era regulations will save the U.S. economy $10 billion over the next 20 years.
“It’s fulfilling a campaign promise,” Short added. “We said this is something that is crippling the American economy and we’re going to address it, and this is one of the vehicles through which we’re addressing it.”
Another way to roll back existing regulations is through a tactic known as “sue and settle.” Some Obama rules and policies are already under challenge in the courts by business groups and conservative organizations. The Trump administration could acquiesce in the litigation, essentially allowing the courts to tie the government’s hands.
A third way is to simply ease up on enforcing the regulations. This kind of laxity is harder for liberal public interest groups to respond to, but it also has its limits. As long as rules are on the books, most reputable businesses are going to try to follow them. So, taking a more casual approach to enforcement won’t give the same kind of relief for business that the Trump administration is seeking.
However, lawyers say the centerpiece of Trump’s executive order on deregulation — the two-for-one requirement — gives plenty of fuel to legal challenges to any moves agencies make to roll back environmental, worker safety or other rules. It allows plaintiffs to claim that the revocation was done primarily to satisfy Trump’s numerical quota.
“That order is unconstitutional, illegal and stupid,” said Georgetown law professor and former top Federal Trade Commission official David Vladeck. “If you really want to reduce the regulatory load, you can’t use a shotgun, you have to use a scalpel.”
Garland’s 1985 article notes that one court was suspicious about the seat-belt-related order in part because the White House press office issued a statement saying it was intended to help the auto industry. But auto regulators claimed the detachable automatic belts would be ineffective.
One lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order, and citing the case Garland was involved in, is already working its way through the courts, and more are expected. As those cases head to Garland’s court, some lawyers expect rough sledding that will, at a minimum, slow down Trump’s deregulatory drive.
“That actually is a hard road,” said Wake Forest University law professor Sidney Shapiro. “If you hit a hostile court, they’re going to find holes.” |
O'Sheas Merchant pub on Merchants Quay
The decision to turn accommodation above a popular GAA pub into a shelter for homeless families has been described as inappropriate.
The city council will turn the current emergency accommodation at O'Shea's Merchant pub on busy Merchants Quay into a family hub.
The move is part of drastic plans by Housing Minister Simon Coveney to ensure no families will be living in hotels or B&B accommodation by the start of next month.
The emergency accommodation above the pub will be turned into one of 15 family hubs across the city planned by the council's Homeless Executive.
None of the hubs will be run by the Homeless Executive. All will be taken over by housing services.
No details have yet been released about the opening date of the hub at O'Shea's Merchant or the number of families who will stay there.
However, it is understood that the families currently using the emergency accommodation are expected to remain when the property is transformed.
O'Shea's Merchant is a popular Dublin pub, especially among Kerry supporters.
Those living in the hubs will be allowed visitors but will not be permitted to have anyone stay overnight.
Clubs
Meals will be provided on-site and each family will have their own en-suite washing facilities.
Homework clubs for children will be included.
Last month, city councillors backed a motion calling for a change in the way family hubs are chosen. Previously, councillors had been left in the dark about hubs until plans were finalised.
Cllr Mannix Flynn - who tabled this emergency motion - has hit out at a lack of information for families and councillors and said the hub above O'Shea's Merchant was in a "highly inappropriate" location.
"[The council] is not telling us what buildings it is looking at or where the money is going," he said.
"It's highly inappropriate - a really busy corner of a main street. It's also a stones throw away from Merchants Quay Ireland [Homeless and Drug Service] which is an issue of constant complaint from the public over anti-social issues."
News of the latest hub comes just two weeks after it was revealed that a hub would be located in a Bargaintown furniture store site on the Malahide Industrial Estate in Coolock.
Two more will be located in Lynam's Hotel on O'Connell Street and Mater Dei on Cloniffe Road. Others will be located in Ballyfermot and Dundrum.
Ridiculous
Meanwhile, the purchase by the Housing Association of two properties in Clontarf for €2m has been slammed by a leading homeless campaigner.
"The price they bought the properties for is absolutely ridiculous," said Anthony Flynn, of Inner City Helping Homeless.
"The money could have been reinvested into purchasing apartments that could have housed a lot more families.
"There is no long-term prospect in it. A lot of these families are going to be left in these units for a long time even though they're told they're not going to be."
The two redbrick homes in St Lawrence Road, which formerly operated as a B&B, will house 13 homeless families, the first of whom will move in next month.
Mr Flynn is not the only person to object to the move. It has angered local residents, many of whom complained they were not consulted about the project. They suggested the property was unsuitable and that individual apartments should have been bought instead.
All, however, said they were not opposed to the idea of rehousing homeless families.
The Clontarf Residents' Association said six apartments were on sale in the area for €1.52m.
The Dublin Region Homeless Executive, which is part of the city council, said it was committed to developing community relations with local residents. |
#1
*Note, when referring to the Vezina Trophy from the time frame of 1927-1981, the criteria for winning was that it went to the goalie on the team with the fewest goals scored against it in the regular season.*
Honorable Mention: Glenn Hall (Mr. Goalie), Turk Broda, Harry “Apple Cheeks” Lumley, Gump Worsley, Ed Giacomin (Fast Eddie)
#3 – Johnny Bower
Nickname: “The China Wall”
Position – Goalie
When he wore #1 –His entire career: 1954-57 with New York Rangers, 1959-70 with Toronto
Regular Season Stats – 552 GP – 250 W – 195 L – 90 T – 37 SO – 2.52 GAA
Known primarily for – His Hall of Fame Induction, four Stanley Cups and two Vezina trophys
Background – Born 11/8/24; 5-ft-9, 170 lb
Johnny Bower was not always known as a legendary NHL netminder. From 1945-58 he played in just one NHL campaign (1953-54) and was unable to convince teams that he was capable of playing at the highest level. It wasn’t until the 1958-59 season that he was finally able to lock down a job with the big club. Toronto claimed him in the Inter-League draft of 1958, and he would go on to play in 12 seasons with the team.
He came into the league at 33 and was able to lead his team to the Stanley Cup Finals six out of nine years. Out of those six times, the Leafs emerged victorious four times, winning the Stanley Cup in 1962, 1963, 1964, and 1967. In the 1966-67 season, Bower and #1 (see below, he wore #30 this year) teamed up in the crease. Bower went 12-9-3 while #1 went 15-5-4 in the regular season. By this time he was 42 years old.
In 552 NHL games played, he won 250 games, including 37 shutouts. His career GAA was 2.51. In 592 AHL games he won 359, including 45 shutouts.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976. His number has been honored (but not retired) by the Maple Leafs since 1995 (March 11th, the same day they honored Turk Broda’s #1.)
#2 – Jacques Plante
Nickname: “Jake the Snake”
Position – Goalie
When he wore #1 – 1953-1963 (Montreal), 1964-65 (With New York Rangers), and 1971-73 (With Toronto)
Note: He wore #30 in the 1969-70 campaign (With St. Louis) and #31 in 1973 (With Boston)
Regular Season Stats – 971 GP – 437 W – 246 L – 145 T – 82 SO – 2.38 GAA
Known primarily for – His Hall of Fame Induction, six Stanley Cups, seven Vezina trophies, and 83 shutouts.
Background – Born 1/17/29. Died 2/27/86; 6-ft-0, 175 lb
One thing probably comes to mind before all else when the name Jacques Plante is mentioned. He was the first goalie in NHL history to wear a mask regularly. He was also the first goalie to leave the crease to play the puck.
Plante led the league in wins five different seasons and also in shutouts four different seasons. He led the league in goals against average in eight different campaigns.
In his first year, Plante and Gerry McNeil combined efforts in net to win the Cup, with Plante winning three of four playoff games. In 1955-56 the reins were handed to him, and he led the Habs to five straight Cup victories. The first three playoff runs saw Plante lose just two games per. The fifth Cup run saw Plante go 8-0 with a GAA of just 1.35!
In 112 career playoff games he won 71 of them with an astounding 2.14 GAA.
In addition to his seven Vezina trophies, he also won the Hart Trophy in 1961-62. That season saw him win 42 games and lose just 14.
Plante played in eight All-Star Games, was named to the 1st All-Star Team three times, and the 2nd All-Star Team four times.
The QMJHL awards annually the Jacques Plante Memorial Trophy to the top goalie in the league.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1978. His jersey was retired by Montreal in 1995.
#1 – Terry Sawchuk
Position – Goalie
When he wore #1 – 1951-1967 (With Detroit, Boston and Toronto)
Note: He wore #30 from 1966-68 and 1970. He wore #29 with Detroit in 1969
Regular Season Stats – 971 GP – 447 W – 330 L – 172 T – 103 SO – 2.52 GAA
Known primarily for – His Hall of Fame Induction, four Stanley Cups, four Vezina trophys, and 103 shutouts.
Background – Born 12/28/29 – Died 5/31/70; 5-ft-11, 190 lb
Before the 1950-51 campaign began, Detroit coach Jack Adams pulled off a large trade. Al Dewsbury, Don Morrison, Pete Babando, Jack Stewart, and goalie Harry Lumley were traded to the Chicago Blackhawks in return for Bob Goldham, Gaye Stewart, Metro Prystai, and goalie Jim Henry. In giving away one extra player than he received, Adams cleared a space for 20 year old rookie Terry Sawchuk to take the starting role in net.
In that rookie season he posted a goals-against average of 1.98 and 11 shutouts (led the league). He also won the Calder Trophy and was named to the first All-Star team.
Before the 1955-56 season, Adams traded him to the Boston Bruins along with three other players. He never quite found his game in Boston, and would return to Detroit in 1957. Toronto was able to acquire Sawchuk after claiming him in the 1964 Draft.
Injuries he sustained and overcame in his playing days included a collapsed lung, ruptured discs in his back, severed tendons in his hand, an appendectomy (which I can only imagine was more painful back then), three operations on his right elbow (from chips in the bone), a fractured, mononucleosis, instep, and of course wear-and-tear from the game itself manifesting in cuts and bruises as a result of the smaller goalie equipment and absence of masks.
Throughout his career Sawchuk recorded 447 wins in 971 regular season games, as well as 54 wins in 106 playoff games. His all-time GAA is 2.51. He led the league in wins each of his first five seasons in the league (44, 44, 32, 35, 40). In those five seasons, his GAA never rose above 2.00. In 1951-52 and 1952-53, his 1.90 GAA topped all netminders. In three different season with Detroit, he started all 70 games.
He didn’t just have regular season success either. In his second season (1951-52) he won every playoff game he started (all eight) to win the Stanley Cup. More impressive than that was his GAA of 0.62. He allowed just five goals in the playoffs. He would lead his team to victory in two of the next three seasons as well. Later in his career, he would help Toronto win a Cup as well.
He played in 11 All-Star Games (7 consecutive times from 1950-56). He was a four-time Vezina Trophy winner.
Sawchuk was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971, the year after he died (he died while he was still playing, but not as a result of his laundry list of ailments), and his #1 jersey has hung from the rafters of Joe Louis Arena since 1994.
The Hockey Hall of Fame waived the five-year waiting period criteria for induction, thus allowing him to be inducted the year after he died.
He is still regarded by many to be the greatest goaltender of all-time, having played in an era with much less equipment for protection and with no butterfly style. It wasn’t until Jacques Plante (see above) ushered in the era of facial protection that goalies were willing to drop to the ice to block a shot (although Plante himself didn’t prefer the new style).
References:
On-Line Sources
Hockey-Reference.com
Hockeydb.com
Legendsofhockey.net
Off-Line Sources
Total Hockey (Book)
Hockey Chronicle (Book)
The Hockey News Hockey Almanac 2000 (Book)
Who’s Who in Hockey (Book – Stan and Shirley Fischler)
Follow me on Twitter @yungspork |
Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching, which means that men (and women) all over the U.S. are performing courtship rituals to woo a companion. But while we humans often have trouble figuring out the right moves to attract a potential mate, fruit flies have it down to a science. And incredibly, researchers can study fruit fly courtship to gain a better understanding of our own brains.
The fruit fly courtship ritual has a set of specific steps. Image modified from The fruit fly courtship ritual has a set of specific steps. Image modified from Greenspan and Ferveur, 2000.
In polite fruit fly society, males have the responsibility of wooing a female. The mating behavior is composed of several specific steps (see figure), which the males perform in repetition until the female responds (or until the male gives up trying). This courtship behavior is very well understood by researchers, due in part because the courtship ritual is so stereotyped and predictable. Courtship is a complex innate behavior, which means that all flies are born with the knowledge of how to do it. Successful mating means passing your genes on to the next generation, so the networks of neurons responsible for this behavior are critical for survival and therefore consistent among flies. This consistency provides a perfect system for studying how neurons interact to give rise to a behavior.
Fly researchers have made great progress in unraveling the anatomy underlying courtship, and found that the behavior arises from the integration of multiple sensory cues, including smell (is the female releasing “come and get me” pheromones?), vision (does the female look interested?), and touch (am I in the right spot?). The fruit fly brain has to combine all of this information to influence the fly’s decision making. Should he start the next step of the courtship ritual, or try this one again? Can he approach the female and try to mate?
“But who cares about fruit fly sex?” you might ask. The fly researchers studying courtship aren’t necessarily interested in exactly how flies get it on. They’re more interested in a general understanding of how the brain integrates multiple sensory cues to influence decisions. The fact that the “courtship circuit” is critical for survival suggests that it is also used by other important behaviors, and is shared by other species. Think about how much information needs to be integrated for you to hunt for food, drive a car, or even court another human. The complexity is amazing… how does our brain manage that?! By first studying it in the simpler brains of fruit flies, we can gain a basic understanding that we can apply to our complex mammalian brains.
Studying courtship behavior can provide us with an understanding for how neurons communicate and integrate information to make decisions, but researchers can do even more with it. As our understanding of courtship increases, we can use it to investigate other behaviors that seem more directly related to human health, such as learning and memory, sleep, and addiction.
For example, the courtship ritual is most commonly used to study memory. Researchers have noticed that male flies tend to “give up” after too many rejections, so they’ve developed a learning experiment that exposes males to uninterested females. Normal males quickly learn to give up on trying to mate with them, but what happens if a scientist mutates a particular gene or “turns off” a certain molecule? Now researchers can use courtship to investigate the genes and molecules involved in learning and memory. If a mutant male never learns to stop courting, the gene might be involved in learning. If the mutant male initially learns to give up, but then quickly forgets the experience and tries again, the gene might be involved in long-term memory.
The predictable steps of courtship also allows researchers to easily recognize when a male is impaired in this innate behavior, providing a system for studying brain development. Last year, the Seghal lab published a study in which they used courtship behavior to show that sleep is necessary for normal brain development. They deprived young flies of sleep and found that, as adults, the flies were impaired in courtship. The impairment was due to lack of growth in a brain region important for the behavior, suggesting that sleep deprivation stunts brain development.
Drawing by Drawing by the Heberlein Lab
As a final example (and one of my favorites), in 2012 the Heberlein lab produced a paper showing that sexual rejection makes male flies turn to booze. Natural rewards such as sex activate the brain’s reward system, which is also activated by abused drugs and alcohol (did you know that flies can be alcoholics too?). Understanding how natural rewards, drugs, and rejections affect the reward system is important for treating or preventing addiction. From this study, the researchers in the Heberlein lab found that levels of neuropeptide F (NPF), a signaling chemical, rose and fell with reward and rejection. Low levels of NPF drove flies to drink, and artificially raising NPF levels prevented this behavior. Their finding that the same chemical is involved in both natural and artificial rewards directly helps research aimed at understanding a similar chemical in mammals called NPY.
In these research examples, the goal of studying courtship wasn’t to learn about fruit fly sex, it was to use what we know to answer more important questions. Because of these studies, researchers have identified dozens of genes and molecules involved in learning and memory, uncovered more reasons for why sleep is important, and progressed our understanding of how alcohol affects the brain. All of these findings have direct implications for human health because we also share those memory genes, need sleep, and use drugs and alcohol.
So the next time you see some flies getting it on near your bananas… swat them, because they’ll make hundreds of new nuisances for you to deal with. But afterward, you can smile knowingly to yourself and remember that scientists are studying the act to answer long-standing questions in neuroscience.
General references: |
New York City firefighters have reportedly been banned from hanging photos of President-elect Donald Trump in firehouses, on fire trucks and on the T-shirts they wear to work.
Following Trump's surprising election victory, FDNY commanders sent out a directive this week urging firefighters to 'remain out of the political scene,' officials told the New York Post.
It was reportedly triggered by complaints the department received after a fire truck from Engine 276 in Brooklyn was driving around with a Trump mask on its grille.
New York City firefighters have been banned from hanging photos of President-elect Donald Trump in firehouses, on fire trucks and on the T-shirts they wear to work. File photo of a fire truck leaving a fire house in New York above
The department had also received a complaint about material posted in a firehouse, a source said.
'Posting of these materials is not in compliance with Regs,' the message read. 'Please make sure apparatus and quarters are clear of this material.'
The department maintains the directive was not aimed at any particular candidate and was just restating longstanding FDNY policy of keeping politics out of the workplace.
'The message, specifically to its time, was to remain out of the political scene and out of the political field,' FDNY spokesman Jim Long told the New York Post.
However, fighters who spoke off camera to NY1 told the station the message they received was that photos of Trump are not permitted.
The move has angered some members of the department who noted that photos of past presidents hang in firehouses.
Trump was elected America's 45th president in an astonishing victory last week
FDNY TELLS FIREFIGHTERS TO STAY OUT OF POLITICS To: All Units. Today I received a call from Boro and Division in regards to material posted about the election. One Unit was driving around with mask of Trump on front of rig and they had another complaint about material posted in Firehouse. Posting of these materials is not in compliance with Regs. Please make sure apparatus and quarters are clear of this material. We do not want to see anyone get in trouble for this.
'They have pictures of George Bush standing on the World Trade Center pile with a megaphone,' an FDNY source told the post.
The source added that the department posts pictures all the time, including when President Barack Obama visits firehouses.
'The firehouse is supposed to be a symbol of America. That's hard to believe when you can't post a picture of the president,' one firefighter, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Post.
Jim Slevin, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, said honoring and respecting the office of the president is an 'American tradition.'
'What is quite ironic, is that the president-elect’s photo will soon hang in every federal building, on military bases and U.S. Embassies across the globe,' he told NY1. |
News in Science
Heartbeat key for blood growth in embryos
For blood cells to grow in an embryo, they need the pressure of a beating heart, say US researchers.
The finding explains why an embryo's heart starts beating just weeks after conception, and it points the way to new stem cell-based treatments for a host of blood disorders such as leukaemia.
"In learning how the heartbeat stimulates formation of embryos, we've taken a leap forward in understanding how to direct blood formation from embryonic stem cells in the petri dish," says Dr George Daley of Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
"These observations reveal an unexpected role for biomechanical forces in embryonic development," says Guillermo Garcia-Cardena of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who also worked on the study.
Stem cells are the body's master cells, providing a renewable source of brain, bone, muscle, blood and other cells.
An embryo in the first days after conception is made up entirely of these cells, each of which can give rise to all of the cells and tissues in the body.
Daley's team looked at how the stress of friction and the flow of fluid affected the formation of blood cells from mouse embryonic stem cells.
Promoting blood
The study showed that these forces promote blood formation and increase the production of colonies of cells that give rise to specific types of blood cells.
Mouse embryos with a mutation that kept the developing heart from beating had far fewer of these so-called progenitor blood cell colonies.
In a separate study, a team led by Dr Leonard Zon of Harvard and Children's Hospital Boston, looked at the effects of the embryonic heartbeat in zebrafish, which have transparent embryos.
"We were looking in real aortas in real vertebrate embryos to see the actual stem cells," says Zon.
The study published in journal Cell found that levels of nitric oxide, which is known to play a key role in blood vessel formation, increase when blood is flowing.
Mutant embryos that had no heart beat or circulation were found to have far lower levels of blood-forming stem cells known as hematopoietic progenitor cells.
Researchers think nitric oxide may work as a type of signal to start the process of blood stem cell production.
"This finding connects the change in blood flow with the production of new blood cells," says Zon.
The findings may lead to new ways to coax iPS cells - which look and act like embryonic stem cells - into producing blood-forming cells that could be used by people with leukaemia who need bone marrow transplants, he says. |
The Cardinals injury bug is slowly leaving as both Jhonny Peralta and Tommy Pham have commenced playing baseball at some level, but how will this affect the Cards’ current setup?
Club GM John Mozeliak recently told 101ESPN what changes will most likely take place and what Peralta’s return means for Aledmys Diaz, currently tending to shortstop.
Mo also touched Kolten Wong’s slump, Yadier Molina’s fatigue, and Matt Adams and Stephen Piscotty’s lively plate performances.
The latest on Jhonny Peralta:
“He will head to Florida and play with the Jupiter club for the next three to four days…If all goes well, we’ll try and activate him Tuesday in Cincinnati.”
On if Peralta’s return will shake up the infield defense’s look:
“I think right now we’re going to try and keep (Aledmys) Diaz at short and then move some pieces around accordingly…We have had Jhonny taking some balls at third base and he’s done fine there. He’s obviously more comfortable playing short, but feels he can do it.”
“And (Matt Carpenter) said he’s happy to go on the right side of the infield if need be. So I think we had that flexibility and you’re looking at Diaz and clearly, from an offensive standpoint, he’s come back to Earth a little bit, but we still want to keep building him up and you could see him move from time to time too.”
On if Kolten Wong could be sent to Memphis to work out his hitting slump:
“I don’t want to talk about a given person especially when you’re talking about a downward assignment, but overall this game is about performance. Ultimately, we’ve got to try to put together our best 13 from an offensive standpoint to give us a chance to win.”
“As this picture becomes more clear and we have a better understanding about when some of these injured players are coming back and what to expect…Everything has to be on the table when considering how to improve.”
On Matt Adams’ offensive resurgence and relying on defense to help pitching:
“I think from a confidence level he’s really feeling good about himself, and he should. The results are there…Right now, when you have the competition going on for playing time, guys are stepping up and certainly answering the vow.”
“When you look at the overall landscape of our infield, specifically when you talk about first base…We were pretty bullish internally that these guys would come back and give us some upside. Now I think the key thing for us when you look at the overall club is just defense.”
“When you’re trying to find that right combination of going with the hot bat and balancing it with defense, I think is sort of the critical point because you look at our rotation and really, with the exception of somebody like a Carlos Martinez, most of our staff if not high strikeouts.”
“They’re putting the ball in play. So if you’re not playing clean defense it’s certainly putting a lot more stress on our pitching. I think when I look at this club today, from an offensive standpoint we’re definitely pleased…From a starting rotation standpoint, we had higher expectations.”
“But I do feel like this last turn they’ve certainly pitched better and given us a chance to win those games and that’s encouraging. And then overall, our bullpen has been pretty solid.”
On if Tommy Pham is going to enter the picture with Randal Grichuk and Jeremy Hazelbaker struggling:
“He’s certainly a viable option. For me, the key was getting him on that rehab assignment and then once he started to show he was healthy then he just needed to go down and play. When you think about a player with less than two or three years of service time, they need to get their at-bats in.”
“The one thing we didn’t want to have happen is we activate him and he’s playing two or three times a week. So he’s playing down in Memphis. I would say he’s doing just ok. I’m sure there’s a level of disappointment being in Memphis, but the key is he’s playing every day.”
“As some point do I think he could come up and help us? Yes. I will say the one benefit of Hazelbaker versus anybody else is he’s left handed because we’re a very right handed outfield and I do think the speed and defensive component is nice to have in Matheny’s back pocket late in the game.”
On if Alex Reyes is ready for the Major League if the Cardinals needed him:
“I don’t want to have to call on that unless we’re desperate. I think from a talent standpoint he could pitch in the big leagues, but I think he’s got to learn to: A) be more efficient and B) understand how to go deeper in a game, which is a direct correlation of efficiency.”
“Having that one pitch out is important. And getting 11 strikeouts is nice, but that usually means you’re out of the game in the fifth…He has to find a way to balance that out. Secondary pitches are impressive, but fastball command and understanding how to get those “get ahead” strikes and put a hitter away fast is critical.”
“All of those things I think he’s capable of doing. He’s very young…Obviously, we’re very excited about him, but when you look at that finished product and where you want them to be, there’s still some work there. But he’s amazingly talented.”
On if he could be aggressive at the July trade deadline:
“I don’t really know how to answer that and I don’t actually know what aggressive means. I think that when you look at our club and say, ‘well, what could you do to improve?’ a lot of it has to do with just playing better. Sometimes that happens. It could mean bringing up Reyes at some point to where you have that dynamic arm to the picture.”
“You look at where most of our contracts are and what we have, I just don’t see the trading deadline as something that necessarily going to change the look of our club.”
“Now, that’s still eight weeks away and things change…The easiest way to approach it is as we enter July and see where our club is, we’ll assess it then.”
On if Yadier Molina being fatigued is a concern:
“The way we thought about our offseason strategy was trying to create depth. Not only at catcher, but also in the middle infield and also in the outfield so players like a (Matt) Holliday, like a Carpenter, a Peralta prior to injury, even a Kolten Wong…and Molina, so we wouldn’t see the fatigue factor hit them like it did the second half of last year.”
That what the offseason strategy, and unfortunately (Bryan) Pena got injured the last week of Spring Training…Just dealing with these injuries hasn’t allowed us to execute the plan we had hoped, but…Pena should be back at some point prior to July and when you look at trying to create those days off or allowing a player to regain their strength, I think is critical.”
“I hope we can go back to trying to execute that plan moving forward, but time will tell.”
On if Stephen Piscotty’s play has eased losing Jason Heyward:
“Stephen’s having an incredible year and you’re watching him just mature in front of your eyes…You think about how he was going through the minor leagues…He’s kind of gone from boy to man…Really a five tool player in the sense that he can do a little bit of everything.”
“I think power will continue to develop with him as he gets a little older, but overall just a very complete player and we’re obviously very pleased to have him. When you look at the dynamics of what happened this offseason, certainly ending up in the place that we did is not a place to be.” |
Sporting News put together a fun list of the top 40 most hated players in the NFL. The list included players from today along with guys from the past. Surprisingly enough, five players with Tennessee ties made the cut. Take a look at their rankings.
#25: Cortland Finnegan
Finnegan remains one of my favorite all time Titans to this day, but I can certainly see why an outsider would hate him. The guy ran his mouth non-stop, but typically backed it up. The former seventh round pick earned time as a rookie, carving out a role as a nickel corner and eventually becoming a starter on the outside. The defense took on his personality, playing with a chip on their shoulder and even a little dirty at times. Unfortunately his career will always be overshadowed for catching Andre Johnson's fist with his skull in the now infamous scuffle in Houston. You had to admire how the guy never backed down from anyone, though.
#24: Chuck Cecil
Cecil's playing days were before my time, but I had the pleasure of watching him as an assistant coach and defensive coordinator. He didn't last long running the Titans' defense, but he did give us this gem of a video. Cecil led the defense for two years in Nashville before getting fired. In hindsight, the guy was probably too much of a loose cannon to be given responsibility over an entire defense. Now he works for Jeff Fisher as a defensive assistant in Los Angeles, because of course he does.
#18: Randy Moss
Randy Moss had nothing more than a cup of coffee with Tennessee, but he's the third former Titan on this list. Moss will go down as one of the most fascinating guys to ever play in the league. The tantalizing God-given talents were undeniable, but there seems to always be a cloud that lingered over Moss. He knew how to punch people's buttons and stay in the spotlight, even in the twilight of his career.
#13: Albert Haynesworth
The Haynesworth hate mostly stems from his head stop on Cowboy's center Andre Gurode. Albert was still finding his way in the NFL when that happened, which would cloud the rest of his career. Haynesworth may have been the best defender in the league in 2008, anchoring a defense that led to a 13-3 record. He then bolted for money that off-season, becoming the latest Dan Snyder free agent bust. Albert was a guy that could be special in 2008, but he cashed it in as a Redskin. Would things have been different had he stayed in Nashville? We are left to wonder, which is part of the reason why he lands so highly on this list.
#9: Pacman Jones
Ahhh, the Pacman years. If nothing else, the dude kept you on your toes as a fan. Pacman has been arrested eight different times since entering the league. EIGHT!!! He was over-drafted in 2005, but filled an immediate need. He made his biggest impact with the Titans in the return game, taking back three punts in 2006. He's stuck with the Bengals after making his return to the league in 2010. He just signed on for three more seasons in Cincinnati this off-season. The guy literally has nine lives.
Who is your most hated NFL player? |
Father of slain man thanks community for support
OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY OF AURORA
FROM THE TEVES FAMILY. ALEX TEVES DIED IN THE JULY 20 SHOOTINGS
Chief Oates
Aurora Police Department
15001 E. Alameda Parkway
Aurora, CO 80012
Attn: Chief Oaks
Chief Oates,
I wanted to take a moment out of your busy day to send a letter to you, your team, and the citizens of the great City of Aurora, as well as the great State of Colorado. I lost my son in the theatre shootings on July 20th, it was, and continues to be, the most horrific time of my life. It is difficult to put into words how awful Caren, Tommy, Nick and I have felt since that fateful call but I be remiss if I didn’t take time out to thank you, and each and everyone of your team. The wonderful hospitality that you showed my family, relatives and friends over those terrible initial days was a God send. This has been an extremely difficult time for us as you can imagine and though we are completely grief-stricken and heartsick, most of which will not heal until we are able to join Alex with Jesus and our Lord in Heaven, the kindness and compassion that everyone has shown has surpassed any expectation that I may have had.
From the moment we arrived we were treated with dignity, respect, and kindness that was overly gracious and generous. I would like to specifically thank two angels on earth, our victim’s advocates, Sarah Graber and Autumn Shields. Without their guidance and love we would have never gotten through this period. Additionally, all of the team members led by Carole O’Shea were helpful and attentive. Steve and Nancy Travino from Ponderosa Valley Funeral Services were instrumental in helping guide us through the process so that we were able to have a very private and proper funeral for Alex. The hotel that we stayed in, Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott Aurora Southlands, helped us with all of our needs and allowed us to take over their conference room for five days, as well as never letting the press know we were staying there. Somehow though, they did let all of the surrounding restaurants know that we were there and each one in turn sent us dinner without asking for anything in return. We are also in the debt of Alex’s favorite brewery, The Copper Kettle Brewing Company on Valencia St., Denver, Colorado. The owners Kristen Kozik and Jeremy Gobien were kind enough to open their doors on the following Tuesday for our immediate family and close friends so we could have a private repast after we held his funeral. They were so diligent that we were able to share stories and fond memories of Alex for hours in a semi-public setting without the press ever knowing we were there.
In spite of all this help, we would not have made it through any of it without the guidance and love of Monseigneur Edward L. Buelt of Our Lady of Loreto Catholic Church in Foxfield, Colorado. Father Ed was a gift straight from God exactly when we needed him to be there. Father Ed helped us gain perspective and held (and continues to hold) our spiritual hand throughout this whole ordeal. The entire state of Colorado should be proud that this man is in their midst.
Everyone in your city and surrounding areas was respectful and helpful, as well as generous. Though this is the worst possible trauma any parent can hope to endure, the help and generosity made it much more bearable. I truly wish that none of this had happened but if it had to happen I can’t think of a more loving place than Aurora and the surrounding towns.
Please know that you will all hold a special place in our hearts.
Caren, Tommy, Nick and Tom Teves –
Family of Alex Teves, God rest his soul |
Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party sure knows how to remain in news. Always. Decibel levels in the already chaotic capital have risen manifold since the advent of AAP into power.
Not a day passes without its Supremo hurling foul invective and abuse at the Prime Minister or other central leaders. Playing victim, Kejriwal pretends as if the world is out to get him, a good man fallen among crooks.
The truth, however, is quite contrary to his pretensions. He is as adept in playing the politics of deceit and hoodwinking as the best among the traditional politicians. Promises of new politics, a new beginning, were completely bogus. AAP is in the single-minded pursuit of power for its own sake.
And to attain power it is willing to do whatever older practitioners of party politics have been doing for decades. In sum, it is a mistake to trust AAP to play normative politics. Whether it is the use of black money, or the abuse of government funds for self-promotion, in a short span of time AAP has proved that it can outsmart the older players by most brazenly cutting moral and legal corners.
AAP is no different from, say, the Congress or the BJP. Period. Take the latest controversy in which it has embroiled itself but, typically, holds everyone else and not itself responsible. Appointment of 21 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries in a House of mere 70 members was in itself a constitutional atrocity.
Full-fledged States with the strength of the bicameral legislature running in several multiples of the total strength of the Delhi Assembly have not had as many parliamentary secretaries. Besides, there is a specific constitutional bar on the Delhi Government, a B-category State, having more than ten percent of its MLAs as ministers. In other words, Delhi can have seven ministers, including chief minister. And the same law also stipulates that Delhi can have only one parliamentary secretary and no more.
Now, why did Kejriwal appoint 21 when there was a specific prohibition against more than one parliamentary secretary? The truthful answer is that he feared that a number of AAP MLAs would join hands with the Prashant Bhushan-Yogendra Yadav duo whom he had expelled from the party last year for no particular reason than the fact that the two did not endorse his opportunistic, power-hungry politics.
In order to prevent a split in the AAP legislature party, Kejriwal dangled the carrot of parliamentary secretaries’ posts. Initially, he offered them monetary and other perquisites as well, but upon a public-spirited citizen challenging these appointments the said order was rescinded, though they were still provided office space in the Delhi Secretariat and a transport allowance.
Further, to avoid disqualification of the 21 parliamentary secretaries, Kejriwal had the Delhi Assembly amend the Delhi MLA (Removal of Disqualification) Act, 1997, exempting the office of parliamentary secretary from the ambit of ‘office of profit’ with retrospective effect. A few days ago, the President denied assent to the amendment Bill passed by the Delhi Assembly. The matter was now with the Election Commission which alone will decide whether the 21 parliamentary secretaries are in violation of the law and thus have forfeited their seats.
Disqualification for holding an office of profit now seems unavoidable for the 21 AAP MLAs appointed parliamentary secretaries in March last year soon after the co-founders of the party, Bhushan and Yadav and few others, were mercilessly ejected from AAP by the super-boss Kejriwal.
However, since the denial of assent by President Pranab Mukherjee, Kejriwal and other AAP megaphones have only blamed Modi, most laughably arguing that the PM does not want the Delhi Government to `work’, to allow parliamentary secretaries to ‘ensure that hospitals are running well, water and electricity supply is uninterrupted,’ etc.
Other such crude excuses have been touted to justify the profusion of official posts to the party legislators. Though such appointments in a number of other States too have proved controversial, but no other State has been so brazen and so unmindful of the constitutional provisions as to appoint nearly one-third of the party MLAs as parliamentary secretaries. Imposters of AAP swearing by the Constitution only open themselves to ridicule.
To blame the PM for its own failures and follies has now become second nature to Kejriwal and Co. The fate of parliamentary secretaries is in the hands of the Election Commission and, maybe, subsequently the higher courts. But the mendacity of Kejriwal prevents him to appreciate this simple point. He is bent on bending every institution to his arbitrary and selfish designs. This cannot be acceptable to the well-informed citizenry. |
The Surprising Story Of 'Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an'
Enlarge this image toggle caption University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf
Thomas Jefferson had a vast personal library reflecting his enormous curiosity about the world. Among his volumes: a Quran purchased in 1765 that informed his ideas about plurality and religious freedom in the founding of America.
In her book Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders, author Denise Spellberg draws parallels between the beliefs of the founding father and religious tolerance in the United States today.
"I think that there is anxiety about what Muslims believe, largely because people don't understand Islam very well. I think that was also true in the 18th century," Spellberg says. "It strikes me that Jefferson was theorizing for a future that included Muslims — not in spite of their religion, but because of it and because of his notion of universal civil rights."
She sat down with All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss Jefferson's Qur'an and the lasting impact of the third U.S. president's views on religious freedom.
On how Jefferson came to have a Quran:
"He actually was a bibliophile from the beginning. He ordered this Quran in 1765, eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a law student at the time, and he had the book shipped from England to Williamsburg, Va. ... There's an entry in the local newspaper because they were the booksellers for the time.
...
"Europeans, and Americans after them, in this period tended to be quite hostile toward Islam. And yet Jefferson was curious about the religion and law of Muslims, and that's probably why he bought the Quran."
On his views of religious freedom:
"Jefferson was unique in many ways. He criticized Islam as he did Christianity and Judaism. He talked about Islam as a religion that repressed scientific inquiry — a strange idea he got from Voltaire that wasn't right — but ... was able to separate his principles about Muslim religious liberty and civil rights from these inherited European prejudices about Islam.
"He did the same thing when arguing for the inclusion of Catholics and Jews, actually. He had not very good things to say about either Catholicism or Judaism, but he insisted that these individual practitioners should have equal civil rights. ... [Jefferson] resisted the notion, for example, that Catholics were a threat to the United States because of their allegiance to the pope as a foreign power. There were many Protestants who would have disagreed with him about Catholics, and many who would have disagreed with him about Muslims.
"They were the outsiders, whose inclusion represented the furthest reach of toleration and rights. So for Jefferson and others — and he was not alone in this, although it was a minority — for him to include Muslims meant to include everyone of every faith: Jews, Catholics and all others. And to exclude Muslims meant that there would be no universal principle of civil rights for all believers in America."
On the Muslim population in America during the 1770s:
"Jefferson and [George] Washington and others were theorizing about a future American population when, ironically and tragically, they never knew that real Muslims were already in America. But they were slaves, brought from west Africa against their will.
"We don't know how many were the first American Muslims; we think they numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands. And it's not impossible that Jefferson actually owned Muslim slaves from Africa, but there's no direct evidence of it. That's not the case for George Washington, his neighbor in Virginia.
"Washington, among his taxable items ... someone on his plantation listed the names of Fatimer and Little Fatimer. And despite being spelled with an 'er' at the end, this is clearly the name of the prophet's daughter Fatima. So there were Muslim women working on Washington's plantation at the same time he was inviting people of all faiths to a protected religious liberty and rights in the United States." |
The Internal Revenue Service took a bold step for a government agency and released a smartphone application. Titled IRS2Go, the app lets users check their tax return status. But IRS2Go’s relatively limited functionality signals a future challenge for federal agencies releasing iPhone/Android applications: how do you give people the functionality they want while still complying with a variety of outdated rules that govern agencies’ interactions with the public.IRS2Go is a handsome piece of work that lets users check the status of their federal income tax refund, receive daily tax tips and follow the Twitter feed of the IRS, @IRSNews. That is, however, nothing that cannot be accomplished on the IRS’ website — but the application does help give a handy public relations boost to a sometimes beleaguered government agency.
One thing the application does not do is to allow users to enter tax information via their smartphones or to access tax law information on their handsets. While the wisdom of anyone attempting to enter their taxes on an iPhone is debatable, it is important to note that the IRS was constrained in their options by a series of agreements and government regulations. Software developers working on tax preparation software are subject to a byzantine series of regulations that effect everything from credit card processing to file specifications and XML schemas. The best known of these, the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, last had its protocol specifications updated in 2005 — well before the rise of smartphones.
Questions submitted to the national media relations office of the IRS by Talking Points Memo about the development process behind the software and whether coding was done in-house or through an external vendor were not answered by press time. However, the IRS offered a prepared statement touting the functionality of the “first release of the IRS2Go app,” implying future functionality would be added to the application.
While IRS2Go is not a game-changer, its functionality is a step in the right direction. Paul Caron, a prominent tax scholar and D. & L. Straus Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Pepperdine University, said “I think the IRS is to be commended for being at the forefront of government agencies in employing new social media to communicate with its customers (taxpayers) [and] not just the new iPhone/Android app, but also its use of Twitter, iTunes and YouTube. The IRS was wise not to go the Facebook route – easy fodder for comedians to poke fun of anyone wanting to be the IRS’s ‘friend.'”
Several other government agencies have also developed smartphone applications. The United States government’s portal, USA.gov, features an app store with 18 different iPhone/Android applications available at press time. These include MyTSA and an Alternative Fueling Station Locator provided by the Department of Energy. |
<<< NEWS FROM THE LAB - Friday, April 25, 2008 >>> ARCHIVES | SEARCH Fly Phishing Posted by Sean @ 18:12 GMT Some phishing gangs have a new technique. They're using trojan-spy applications.
Last week we received the following e-mail message:
Notice that the message doesn't mention anything about providing an account-name or password.
Instead, it attempts to convince the recipient that they need to install a Digital Certificate for enhanced safety.
(Anybody want to buy a bridge?)
The message links to a site with the following:
It's basically a page full of jargon designed to overwhelm the potential victim. What happens if the victim falls for the bait and installs the "certificate"? A trojan-spy will be installed.
So now the phishers don't need to ask for passwords anymore, they can just take them.
This technique keeps the classic element of phishing by mimicking the trusted institution — the bank. What they've adjusted is the part that people have become skeptical of, which is giving away their password when requested by e-mail.
Update: Here's a brief video that we captured last week when the site was online. You'll find it on the Lab's YouTube Channel. |
The ACC does not have its own standalone cable sports network, but that does not appear to be getting in the way of spreading the ACC brand across the country. On the eve of the ACC Football Kickoff, the ACC released a statement claiming the conference will have football games airing in an estimated 90 million homes this fall.
Part of this is having fun with numbers to make things sound better than they really are. For instance, not all 90 million home sin the country are going to be plugged into ACC football for the entire season. This is just more about the potential reach of the conference through various partnerships with broadcast outlets and more. But it sure sounds like a nice, juicy number when the SEC is getting pumped about reaching an estimated 45 million customers on the brand new SEC Network launching next month.
Do not take away from the growth of the syndicated ACC Network, because there has been some great progress made in a short period of time. According to the press release numbers, the ACC Network has increased the number of households it can reach from 27 million in 201 to 90 million in 2014.
“Our goal is to continue delivering ACC content to as many fans as possible,” said ACC Commissioner John Swofford in a released statement. “We are proud of our partnership with ESPN, Raycom and the Fox regional networks. It’s these relationships that allow us to maximize the exposure for our schools and conference.”
With the growth being shown by these numbers and with the Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC dabbling to various degrees of success with their own respective networks, could an actual, standalone ACC Network still be on the way? The idea has been out there for a while now, and the model and framework is now in place with ESPN launching the SEC Network, assuming ESPN would be the broadcast partner for an actual ACC Network. Having a network would likely lead to a financial boost to the ACC, helping it catch up with other power conferences, and if a Division IV split comes of age, then having its own network may be in the ACC’s best interests for years to come.
Swofford may be asked about the idea when he opens the ACC Football Kickoff in Greensboro, North Carolina on Sunday, especially with the buzz surrounding the launch of the SEC Network. The question is whether the demand for 24-hour coverage of the ACC is there the way it is for the SEC. It may not be, but if the ACC were to launch its own network it would likely be able to boast some quality television markets at launch, including New York, Boston and Atlanta.
If you are an ACC fan, would you want to see an ACC Network made available, or is the syndicated coverage enough to satisfy your ACC football needs?
Image courtesy of ACC.
Follow @KevinOnCFB |
Four players have retained the Premier League Golden Boot award: Alan Shearer, Thierry Henry, and Robin van Persie are the first three. They've got 602 English top flight goals between them and are regarded among the best to ever play in this country. Last Sunday, Harry Kane became the latest.
This season Kane (29) scored more goals than Middlesbrough (27). There were six hat tricks scored in the Premier League this season and Kane scored four of them. His goals were scored in 30 games, at a ratio of one every 87 minutes.
What's even more remarkable about Kane's feats this term (four against Leicester and three at Hull in the final two games eventually getting him over the line) is that he reached these remarkable heights despite missing two chunks of the season with separate ankle injuries.
These ailments forced him to miss eight league games, but what's incredible isn't just that he missed those two spells, but more the speed of his recovery. In September it was predicted he'd miss two months, but he was back in a little over six weeks; there were similar fears in March, but ultimately he returned after a month. And he scored in his first game back both times, too.
There is often a tendency in England to overhype players, but in Kane's case there's a sense he's underrated. By any rational standard, Kane is world-class, even if that is a nebulous term without clear definition. We are, after all, perfectly prepared to place players like Alexis Sanchez, Gonzalo Higuain and Sergio Aguero into that bracket, but Kane isn't routinely classed among the finest in the world.
With the caveat that goals aren't the sole marker of players' class, Kane has scored more than all of those players this season. In the last three seasons, he has scored 75 in the Premier League, ahead of Aguero, on 70. Throw in another three the season before, plus 21 in other competitions, and his career total for Tottenham is 99, from 131 starts. There's enough evidence to confirm his status now.
At first glance, he still doesn't look particularly special -- despite being a fine athlete he doesn't have a single "eye-catching" physical quality, like pace, rippling power or a bullet header -- but something intangible marks him out, specifically that he thinks in a different way to many footballers.
When he's in the box, his brain appears to work in a way that can calculate the best and quickest way to score a goal, a common element of elite strikers, as is his sense of positioning, awareness of space and anticipation that another Tottenham No. 10, Gary Lineker, was famous for. But Kane also seems to think laterally, to figure out what the defence hasn't anticipated, weighing up all the options and making a decision, all in a flash of a second. It's a dazzling form of intelligence that is comparable to any intellectual.
Perhaps "thinking" isn't the right word. "It's instinct, natural," he said in February. "When that ball drops to me my body takes over and my mind is just blank, really. I couldn't tell you what is in my head at that moment because, really, there is nothing, only focus."
It's a speed of comprehension and logic that most can't even contemplate -- so quick that it barely seems conscious.
"How does it happen? We don't really know..." he said.
If he doesn't know what he's about to do, then defenders certainly won't.
Take his goal against Chelsea in the FA Cup semifinal. A cross was delivered from the right to about waist-level, with Kane running away from goal at the near post. He knew the angle and height of the ball would make a shot unlikely to threaten the goal, even if he caught it perfectly. So instead Kane stooped and flicked his neck muscles at just the right time for the ball to divert off his head, directly over him and into the bottom corner.
The speed at which he assessed the situation, the delivery and the best way to score was astonishing. It wasn't that the Chelsea defence weren't expecting it, more that they probably hadn't comprehended scoring like that was even possible.
Think also of his goal against Liverpool last season, or the one for England against Germany. They were brilliant finishes; ones most players wouldn't even have thought of. The best players have this mentality: what looks unusual or outrageous to us, in their heads is usually just the easiest way of beating a man, or picking a pass, or scoring a goal.
Harry Kane has secured back-to-back golden boots for Tottenham. Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
His goals in Tottenham's 7-1 win at Hull in the final game of the season provide another example. Kane, a natural right-footer, scored all three with his left, in situations where he could easily have shifted his body, or taken another touch to shoot with his stronger foot. But in the case of his first, that shift would have taken an extra half-second and potentially given defenders a better chance of stopping him.
That's a lesson he learned from a predecessor at Tottenham, Jermain Defoe. "One of the very best," Kane said. "Shoot early. One touch. Through a defender's legs ... Anyone can miss a chance but it's how you react. Are you ready for the next one and the one after that? That's the mindset I try to have."
That mindset is one thing, but having the ability to carry it off is another. That's why Kane scores goals.
It's also worth remembering the pressure Kane must be under. For the last three seasons, he's basically been Tottenham's only striker -- or at least, only reliable source of goals from centre-forward. Vincent Janssen has become something of a cult hero but there's a reason Mauricio Pochettino has frequently improvised with Son Heung-Min up front rather than use the Dutchman.
Last season, Kane started every league game. The season before that, Roberto Soldado and Emmanuel Adebayor chipped in with three goals from 37 appearances between them. But pressure is something he thrives upon, because he's improving all the time. In his first season he scored 21 league goals. The next, 25. The next, 29.
"I prefer that next season he challenges again, to score 30 goals," Pochettino said after the Hull game. "He's still improving and learning. His will to improve and learn is the most important thing in a player. Already he's one of the best strikers in the world. It's difficult to say who is the best, but he's one of the best sure, already."
He certainly is. Perhaps more than most think. |
HAPPY DAY!
*****We've reached our initial goal of $25,000 which means everyone who pledges at the $35 level or higher receives DOUBLE the number of listed limited edition signed and numbered hardcover copies of the Quantum Roleplaying Game! So right now if you pledge $42 for U.S. addresses or $47 for International addresses (which now includes shipping) you will receive TWO COPIES of the game! What a deal!*****
HAPPY DAY AGAIN!
*****We've reached our final goal of $36,000 which means (1) one 24" x 36" full color folded poster world map of Quantum will be shipped with every single pledge order $35 and above. While there will be a map of the world inside the Quantum RPG hardcover, it will be a black & white map and obviously won't be bigger than a single page. This 24" x 36" poster world map will not only give you the world in amazing full color, but it will be large enough to include a wide variety of extra map tags to add both a little mystery to the world and ensuring that all locations generated during design show up on the poster map.*****
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The Quantum Roleplaying Game™ is Infinite X Studio™'s first game. The game is a reflection of more than 30 years of RPG gaming and nearly 10 years of writing and game design on the part of Infinite X Studio's founder and President, Joshua J. Frost. Josh's passion for gaming and RPGs in particular is hard to explain in words (and much easier to explain by watching his hyper exuberance during a game session) but know that he wants Infinite X Studio to produce only the highest quality, best-designed, and most enjoyable RPGs possible. It is our dream that we can reach out to both seasoned and new gamers with this project and help us raise enough money to bring the Quantum Roleplaying Game to hundreds of game tables around the globe.
Our Kickstarter goal is only set at $13,000 and this covers the barest minimum of costs to write, design, layout, produce art, edit, develop, print, and ship the game. The total funding goal is comprised of 10% Kickstarter fees and Amazon fees, 50% artist, layout, design, editing, and development costs, 10% promotional costs, and 30% printing costs. Should we raise money beyond the $13,000 target, several things will happen:
At $15,000, we give most of the freelancers a nice raise (Infinite X Studio President Joshua Frost doesn't get paid at all unless the game is a success). *****GOAL ACHIEVED!*****
At $25,000, we double the number of limited, signed and numbered hardcover copies of the Quantum Roleplaying Game that are sent out to the backers at the $35 Journeyman level or higher. So if you back the QRPG project at $35 and the project raises $25,000 or more, you receive two copies instead of one. This will not increase any associated shipping costs, even for non-U.S.A. addresses. Also at $25,000, we're able to print a small quantity of regular edition hardcover books that we plan to sell into hobby distribution so the game can be available at hobby stores in the United States and beyond. *****GOAL ACHIEVED!*****
At $36,000, we will ship (1) one 24" x 36" full color folded poster world map of Quantum with every single pledge $35 and above. While there will be a map of the world inside the Quantum RPG hardcover, it will be a black & white map and obviously won't be bigger than a single page. This 24" x 36" poster world map will not only give you the world in amazing full color, but it will be large enough to include a wide variety of extra map tags to add both a little mystery to the world and ensuring that all locations generated during design show up on the poster map.
ABOUT THE GAME
An innovative, highly-technological society in Earth's distant future built a robotic Dyson Shell world where science was king, where reason was law, and where all the complexities of day-to-day living were made easy by a level of gadgets that would make modern humanity believe they were witnessing the true works of gods. Their cutting-edge world expanded rapidly and disconnected from the rest of humanity, rocketed out to the edge of the universe, and hurtled into the very fabric of space-time in order to discover new sources of untapped power to expand their knowledge of the universe itself.
Then it happened: they found an energy source so powerful they were convinced it had to be the very glue that held the universe together. They tapped it deep, plunging into the distant beating heart of this new spark, causing their robotic world to nearly burst with inscrutable power. Feats of unimaginable prowess were discovered, manifesting objects and energy with only one's thoughts became a reality—even the control over life and death became as trivial as breathing.
What they didn't know—couldn't know—was that their newly discovered source came with a dreadful price. At its heart was darkness, vast unfathomable evil from beyond the edge of reason and space-time—shadowy, slithering horrors of such sinister potency that they infested the entire society from the inside out and not only tore it to pieces, but nearly sundered the world, sending every living thing spinning into a shattered, morose millennium of bedlam and anarchy.
It's been 1,000 years since the fall of the great society known as Quantum and the civilized species of the world are finally rediscovering a semblance of what they lost. Quantum is a Dyson shell, an inside-out planet roughly the size of Mars but with a sun-like ball of fiery plasma at the center, providing both heat and light to the flora and fauna around it. Though civilization is clambering from the ruins, it still has a long way to go before achieving the greatness of the Time Before. Today's Quantum civilization is equivalent to medieval Earth with castles, walled towns, large farming communities, kings, queens, serfdom, chivalry, open warfare, political intrigue, and vast swaths of uncontrolled territory. Ancient experiments in reanimating extinct creatures from their DNA, animal and human cloning, whole-cloth invention of beasts both great and terrible, and self-replicating artificial intelligences have left the wild places of Quantum filled with terrifying monstrosities from myth, legend, and earth's extensive fossil record as well as new races of living machines and swarms of metallic insects.
Quantum is broken into twelve nations, some with loose associations, some with iron clad pacts, and some engaged in open war. At the heart of these nations is an organization called The Progenancy. They control all that remains of Quantum's lost technological knowledge, wielding their control of it in order to maintain as much of a peace as possible. The Progenancy is not a good nor charitable organization, though. They exact a terrible price from those who refuse to acknowledge their mastery of the world, going so far as to cut off one nation from every power source Quantum possesses, plunging those people into an eternal darkness from which no one has returned. Opposing the Progenancy is a loose affiliation of shamanistic tribal societies and underground resistance movements from the remaining eleven nations. This affiliation does all that it can to sabotage the Progenancy's control of technology, but it is a war they are losing very badly.
In the Quantum Roleplaying Game, you can choose to play one of four races:
Humans
Humanity is more than half the population of the civilized races of Quantum and controls nearly all of the nations. Most of the Progenancy is human and they are often associated with power and greed in the eyes of the other races. Humanity spreads quickly, decisively, and has an uncanny knack for resiliency in the face of adversity.
Azi
The azi are a race of snake people, human in appearance from the waist up, but possessing all of the qualities of a snake from the waist down. Azi are humanoid reptiles—they have no hair, hatch their young from eggs, and their genders are quite difficult to determine by non-azi. Azi are comprised of dozens of sub-species that vary by color, shape, and size and their skin is scaled, soft, and very often comprised of mesmerizing color patterns.
Mutants
Mutants are the offspring of humans who ventured too closely to the source of Quantum's power (called Prime). As such, they are often called Primespawn. Mutants come in a variety of shapes and sizes and their mutations range from the useful to the patently grotesque. When two mutants pair and have children, their children are always mutants, though they rarely possess the same mutations as their parents. Mutants are reviled in both human and azi cultures and those who choose to stay are often cast out to the fringes, scraping by as criminals or beggars. Those who flee bond together as tribes and wander the wild places of Quantum, avoiding human and azi cities.
Automatons
Automatons are genderless, hyper-intelligent, living machines. They are a remnant of the Time Before—a remnant even the Progenancy doesn't understand. Automatons awaken in hidden-away places possessing the reasoning capacity of a 15-year-old human and a wide-eyed obsession with learning everything about the world around them. Automatons have no single society and typically wander into whatever civilization is nearby where they are often accepted and put to work. Automatons are weak structurally and no single automaton has lived longer than 40 years, but during their time on Quantum they are relentless in their pursuit of scholarship and wisdom.
The first choice you make in the Quantum Roleplaying Game is your race—the second is your “paradigm.” Paradigms are the worldview of your character, not only how they perceive everything around them, but also what path they choose to follow in life. Quantum has 17 paradigms, 16 of which are rather specific in their focus and one called the Generalist that is more customizable to suit the unique desires of any player. Example paradigms include Archer, Warrior, Warlock, Progenitor, Shaman, Immortal, Reaver, Hunter, and Crusader. The rest will be revealed once play-testing of the Quantum Roleplaying Game begins!
THE INFINITE ROLEPLAYING ENGINE
The Quantum Roleplaying Game is powered by the Infinite Roleplaying Engine™, a customizable game system built on a strong mathematical foundation from which nearly any genre of RPG can be created. The game uses the same polyhedral dice that many of you are probably used to (d20, d12, d10, etc.) but dice-rolling facilitates two primary objectives: it rewards knowledge and advancement by decreasing the chance of failure as the level of skill increases and it allows for a more open system between the players and the Guide (also called the game master) so that both parties can easily work together to create a cinematic storyline filled with intrigue, conflict, combat, death, warfare, and triumph and do so without bogging down in complicated dice checks and endless rolling. The Infinite Roleplaying Engine is exactly that: a “role”-playing engine. The dice, though used and needed, are secondary to the experience of playing.
A FEW WORDS ON GENDER EQUALITY
It is the promise of Infinite X Studio that we will always strive to present a world that in many ways reflects what our world should be. Specifically, the stereotypical portrayals of women in RPGs as either barely-clothed, subservient slaves or obnoxiously under-dressed warrior queens have no place in any of our product lines. Civilizations in our games will rarely explore gender differences unless that exploration is central to the story or theme of a location. We assume, as we believe everyone should on Earth, that there is no difference between men and women other than some basic biological designs and we strongly believe that hobby gaming is for everyone regardless of gender, age, skin color, sexual preference or identity, or religious belief (including a lack thereof). We want our products and our art to reflect this promise and hope that our community of friends will keep us honest should we ever seem to stray from it.
WHO IS INFINITE X STUDIO?
Joshua J. Frost, President
Josh started writing in junior high school, majored in Creative Writing and Publishing in college, and started working in the hobby games industry in 2005. He has 38 writing and design credits for roleplaying games, co-designed one card game with Mike Selinker (Yetisburg), and designed a game for the board game Stonehenge called “Any Given Run Play” that appeared in the October 2007 issue of Games Magazine. He designed and wrote games and game supplements for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying Game and was nominated for two Origins Awards and won six ENnie Awards for fantasy RPG writing and design. Josh lives in a Seattle suburb with his wife, daughter, cat, dog, and iMac.
Hugo Solis, Artist & Cartographer
Hugo Solis, also known as Butterfrog, found his love of RPGs in 1990 when he miraculously stumbled upon the Dark Sun boxed set at his local game store—no mean feat in a comic shop in México. Hugo resides in Guadalajara, Mexico with his patient wife (who is his toughest art critic) and their two Schnauzers. Hugo began illustrating character artwork for Pathfinder fans on the paizo.com messageboards in 2008. Shortly thereafter, he co-created the award winning Wayfinder fanzine with Liz Courts as a way to bring the Paizo fan community to a whole new level. Hugo now does freelance illustration and cartography for many companies including 4 Winds Fantasy, Legendary Games, Paizo Publishing, Open Design, Rite Publishing, and SKR Games among others.
Blake Davis, Developer
Blake Davis is a passionate table-top gamer and has worked in several aspects of the gaming industry. Besides running various RPGs for over 9 years, including D&D and the Pathfinder RPG, Blake is the mastermind behind Archives of Nethys (www.archivesofnethys.com), an extensive reference guide for the Pathfinder RPG. He has a degree in Integrated Studies and an uncanny knack for memorizing rules and spotting rules issues and flaws.
Reid Schmadeka, Editor
Reid Schmadeka has worked in the gaming industry for more than a dozen years, starting with White Wolf Publishing as an editor and then Wizards of the Coast as a contributor and editor for the Wizards Play Network website. He was the author of Transylvania Chronicles III: Ill Omens and a contributor to Castles and Covenants, both for White Wolf. His story "Faces" was published in the Satiated Sunrise Word Speak Network anthology, and his stories "The Barn" and "Avarice" in the magazine Line Zero. He currently lives in Seattle with his wife, son, and daughter.
Colleen Hutchings, Graphic Design/Layout
Colleen Hutchings' whereabouts have been a secret for more than 400 years. It is whispered in conspiracy circles that it was she who founded the Illuminati and that any conspiracy theories about who runs the world are complete fabrications invented by Hutchings as an effort to throw everyone off the truth. It is known that she acquired a Bachelor's Degree in Graphic Design from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods sometime in the last decade, but even finding out that much cost us 13 interns.
Kyle Hepworth, Art & Design
Kyle Hepworth is a rogue Seattle artist responsible for dozens of random acts of art. He once decorated his neighbor's broken down truck as M. Truckington III complete with a windshield monocle, a bumper mustache, and an enormous top hat. In his spare time he creates miniature piñatas and Super Mario Brothers coins and hangs them in places for people to destroy and/or jump up and try to get 100 of them. Beyond that, Hepworth's life is a mystery known only to him, Joshua Frost, and 43,567 of their closest friends.
OUR PLEDGE TO YOU
Without Kickstarter Backers, it would not be possible for Infinite X Studio to design and produce quality RPGs for the hobby market. To show our undying respect for those of you taking a chance on us, we promise that all PDF and hard copies guaranteed to Backers will be mailed before copies are available for purchase at retailers, conventions, or even online at InfiniteXStudio.com. We also promise that all products declared “limited edition” will never be offered for sale in stores by Infinite X Studio and that all “bonus” materials will not be released for ONE FULL YEAR after the official release date of the game. Our gratitude for your support should come with a hug for every single one of you—given the challenge that presents both in travel fees and bird flu, please accept our pledge instead. Thank you! |
Chocolate can be addictive, and eating it is fattening – which is why a Harvard professor has helped create a cigarette-like chocolate inhaler that allows users to take a puff of their favorite treat whenever they want.
The product, called Le Whif, is a way to get chocolate without the calories, says David Edwards, a professor at Harvard University and the lead inventor of the product. And it is an experiment and adventure in gastronomy.
"The idea here is to move beyond the fork and the knife and think about inhaling food," he says. "Each whiff here fills your your mouth but has less than a calorie and is yet almost all pure chocolate. It tastes good."
Until recently, food particles could not be made small enough to get airborne and not offer the risk of choking, says Edwards. But his team claims to have found a way to offer super-tiny particles of chocolate through an inhaler. "The typical particle size for us is 80 to 300 microns," he says.
But the technology means that Le Whif doesn't come cheap. A pack of 24 Whifs is currently available for about $52 and is available through online orders only. Le Whif will have a launch party in Paris for the product on April 29.
The chocolate inhalers will come in four flavors: mint chocolate, raspberry chocolate, mango chocolate, and milk chocolate.
The goal isn't to replace the average Lindt chocolate bar but to enhance the chocolate experience, says Edwards. "It's a great diet thing or wonderful with coffee or it can be handed out as a gift at parties," he says.
Consider us sold for a snort from this chocolate pipe.
Photo: Le Whif |
Winning a dream home in a lottery was not enough to rescue a tumultuous marriage and instead the fancy digs became the focus of a messy divorce case.
In a decision published this week to an online legal database, a Saskatoon judge has determined how the home, valued at $710,000, should be divided.
Justice Geoffrey Dufour said the husband will get to buy-out the wife's interest in the home, move her out and move himself and their sons in.
The judge noted the couple had been married for 19 years but "it was stormy and punctuated by not infrequent periods of separation."
During one separation period the husband, Michael, bought a lottery ticket and won a fully furnished dream home.
The couple tried getting back together in the new place, but that did not last more than a few months.
Justice Dufour noted that the wife, Rhonda, wound up living in the 2,500 square-foot home by herself.
"Michael testified that he was forced out of the family home without warning and in a startling fashion," Dufour wrote. According to the decision, Rhonda made a complaint to police that she had been physically assaulted. That led to charges against Michael and an interim order that he stay 200 metres away from Rhonda.
When that case went to trial, Michael was acquitted.
"I can only conclude that Rhonda gave a false statement to the police," Dufour said in his decision on the divorce. "This was a very effective way to have the family home all to herself: make a false allegation of assault and have Michael charged with a criminal offence so that he would have to stay away. Neat trick. A model of efficiency."
The judge noted that while Rhonda enjoyed living in the large home, Michael and the sons slept, for a time, in sleeping bags on the family room floor at his mother's house.
"Rhonda chose to live in luxury while Michael lived in cramped quarters with two and sometimes three of their sons," the judge said.
Husband gets the house
Based on that, and Michael's offer to buy-out Rhonda, the judge said Michael should get the house and Rhonda would have to pay "occupation rent" and vacate by the end of September.
In order to equalize the division, the judgment said Michael should pay Rhonda $247,370. He is also obligated to pay monthly spousal support.
The judge said the equalization amount takes into account a number of other debts, assets and personal property the couple had. |
Most of the couples who turn up in my office asking to be married in the Catholic Church are already living together. A large number of Catholics who come to Mass are in second or third marriages. Some of them have received nullity decrees, many have not. Soon same sex couples will come to Catholic churches and schools expecting full membership. Some who attend Mass are living openly with another man or woman with no intention of seeking marriage. Others are promiscuous yet exercise full membership in the Church.
To put it bluntly, our marriage and family discipline in the church is all over the place. The situation is complicated in that our marriage disciplines, while derived from natural law and the Sacred Scriptures, have also been understood within the social context (for most people) of a supportive small local community which was comprised of a few extended families. That kind of community has its own bedroom police. For the most part everybody knew what everybody else was up to. If Johnny started having sex with Ginny, Ginny’s dad and brothers would go around to pay Johnny and his folks a visit. If a girl was “loose” her reputation would be spoiled and she wouldn’t get a good husband. Taboos were in place which helped form adolescents in a Christian morality. The Church was the centerpiece of such local communities and Christian teaching from the Church, supported by the extended family and without the ease of artificial contraception, kept sexuality within acceptable boundaries.
Sure people misbehaved. All the old sins that break marriage were available, but there was condemnation, exclusion and punishment by society for sexual wrongdoing.
I’m not suggesting we go back to those days because we can’t. However, I can express my frustration as a Catholic priest in trying to grapple with the laws of the Church on marriage and the reality of modern day society. In the area of sexual behavior so many are so far from the Catholic ideal, and so far from even understanding the Catholic ideal that I feel like I am paddling upstream all the time. I am therefore hopeful that the bishops’ synod on the family may help us find some way through the morass–maybe they’ll establish C.L.A.S.P–Catholic Liason and Sex Police….squads of former nuns in jackboots who respond at a moment’s notice and invade divorced people’s homes to make sure they’re living as brother and sister…
Seriously, it gets worse: the Catholic priests themselves are not united in what to do. First there is Father Hardline–who upholds Catholic law to the letter. If a person is divorced and remarried they have to live together as brother and sister until the decree of nullity comes through. “You bet we have bedroom police haven’t you heard of C.L.A.S.P??” Same sex couples? There’s the door. Couples co-habiting and asking for a church wedding? “Come and see me once you’ve been living separately for six months. Inner forum? What the heck is that?? ”
Then, on the other end of the spectrum is Father Luvme. “The Church needs to be welcoming! We accept everyone! Waiting for your annulment before you are received into the church? Nah, we’ll do that this week. We welcome all! Living together before marriage? That’s okay. Praise the Lord that you now want to affirm your love before him! Divorced and remarried? Mistakes happen. We can live with your pain and walk with you! Divorced and re-married again? No problem. You are clearly the victim…” You get the idea.
What Father Hardline and Father Luvme don’t see is the pain, anger, confusion and frustration they are causing. Father Hardline drives people away from the church with his harsh legalism and probably doesn’t give two hoots. He likes Benedict XVI’s idea that the church will be smaller and more pure, and if he can help bring that about all the better.
The real sneak is Father Luvme. In his utter conviction that he is probably one of the world’s nicest people he surrounds himself with his adoring fan club of people he’s been kind to, and why has he been so lax with them? Was it really to be nice to them or because he needs the love baby?
What he doesn’t see are all the other people who are scandalized, confused and angry with his behavior. He doesn’t see (or perhaps doesn’t care) about the feelings of the couple who have waited for two years before being received into the church because they respected the marriage discipline of the church–in fact the marriage discipline of the church is one of the things that made them want to be Catholic. Fr Luvme doesn’t even know people like that exist–much less that he has slapped them in the face.
What he doesn’t see is that for every person who thinks he’s Mr Wonderful for cutting them some slack and bending the rules for them there are five other people who think he’s a hypocrite, a false teacher and his own little pope who thinks he can make up the rules as he goes along. He doesn’t see the people who think his lax attitude is causing scandal by teaching their children that the marriage discipline of the church doesn’t matter and more than that–the authority of the church doesn’t matter. In being nice to a few people Fr Luvme is damaging many more in ways he can’t see.
I don’t pretend to have the solution. I’m a fairly young priest and a convert to the Catholic faith. However, it seems to me that there can be a middle way. It is possible to explain the marriage discipline of the church to people and “walk with them in their pain” through the nullity process. A fellow priest told me about his conversation with a woman who was divorced and re-married and wanted him to be Father Luvme and admit him to communion:
He said, “I’m sorry for your situation, and to tell you the truth, I wish I could just wave a magic wand and make it different. I also wish that I was given the authority to decide whether you should come to communion or not, but I don’t have that authority. All I can do is offer you the teaching of the Catholic Church. I know the teaching is hard to live up to. I realize it will be a challenge to you and your husband, but let’s aim for the best! If you explain to your children why you are not going to communion and that you are living with the discipline of the church, let me tell you that they will respect you enormously and they will probably keep the faith. If you do not, then eventually they will learn that you are a hypocrite and they will not respect you or the Catholic faith. So why don’t we work together to bring the best out of this messy situation?”
He explained that he it was possible to be both pastoral and to uphold the disciplines of the church. Let’s face it, we might be able to tinker with pastoral approaches and make suggestions on how to improve the Marriage Tribunal process, but there’s not much wiggle room. The Church’s teaching on marriage and family life are rooted in the order of creation, the Sacred Scriptures, and the teaching of the Lord himself.
It’s not something the church has the authority to change. |
More than 500,000 homeless in the US
By Kate Randall
21 November 2015
More than a half million people were homeless in the United States this year, nearly a quarter of them children, according to a new report. The homelessness crisis is a stark indicator of the social reality in 2015 America and corresponds to a scarcity of affordable housing and dwindling wages for low-income workers and their families.
The report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released Thursday counted 564,708 people homeless, both sheltered and unsheltered. These figures, gathered by volunteers on a given night in January 2015, are undoubtedly an undercount. Many of those living in motels, doubling up with relatives and friends or living on the streets are likely not represented in the tally.
Twenty-three percent, or 127,787, of the nation’s homeless are children under the age of 18, according to HUD. However, this figure is at odds with statistics from another branch of the federal government. According to the Department of Education, there are 1.36 million homeless students in the nation’s K-12 public schools, double the number in 2006, before the onset of the financial collapse.
According to HUD, 206,286 people were in homeless families with children, or 36.5 percent of the HUD total. Six percent of these homeless families are chronically homeless, in which the head of household has a disability and has been homeless for a year, or has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness over the past three years.
The HUD figures show homelessness declining by 2 percent between 2014 and 2015. But even if these numbers are taken as good coin, this represents a minuscule decline that hardly makes a dent in the homeless population.
A homeless woman in Chicago—the number of unsheltered people with chronic patterns of homelessness increased in the past year for the first time since 2011
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, there is a shortage of 7 million units of affordable housing throughout the US, creating a desperate situation for workers and their families as they search for decent and affordable accommodations.
As the majority of working people feel the housing squeeze, they face declining real wages. According to a recent National Employment Law Projet report, workers’ wages have declined by 4 percent, after adjusting for inflation, between 2009 and 2014.
The vast majority of the US population has not experienced the benefits of the “economic recovery,” proclaimed by the Obama administration in mid-2009. Homelessness is one of the brutal consequences of these conditions.
Of the 564,708 people counted as homeless by HUD in January 2015, 69 percent were staying in sheltered locations, and 31 percent were unsheltered, living in places unfit for human habitation, such as under bridges, in cars or in abandoned buildings.
More than half of the homeless population is concentrated in five states:
· California: 21 percent or 115,738 people
· New York: 16 percent or 88,250 people
· Florida: 6 percent or 35,900 people
· Texas: 4 percent or 23,678 people
· Massachusetts: 4 percent or 21,135 people
While homelessness declined in 33 states and the District of Columbia between 2014 and 2015, according to the report, 17 states experienced an increase. New York State experienced an explosion of homelessness, rising by 7,660 people, or by 9.5 percent in one year. Since 2007, New York has seen a staggering 41 percent rise, with 25,649 people added to the homeless ranks.
More than one in five homeless people are located in the nation’s two largest urban areas: New York City, with 75,323 (14 percent of US total); Los Angeles (city and county), with 41,174 (7 percent). These are followed by Seattle/King County, Washington with 10,122; San Diego (city and county), 8,742; Las Vegas/Clark County, Nevada, 7,509; and the District of Columbia, 7,298.
Sixty-three percent of the homeless population are individuals without children. Of these 358,422 people, 57 percent were in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or safe havens. The remaining 43 percent were living rough—on the streets, in parks, abandoned buildings and vehicles. Most homeless individuals are men (72 percent).
Nine of every 10 homeless individuals are over 24 years of age. Fifty-four percent are white, while African Americans are disproportionately represented, accounting for 36 percent of the total. About 17 percent of homeless individuals are Hispanic or Latino.
HUD defines unaccompanied youths as persons under age 25 who are not accompanied by a parent or guardian and do not reside with their children. There were 36,907 unaccompanied homeless youth in January 2015, including 87 percent ages 18-24 and 13 percent under age 18. More than half of unaccompanied youth under age 18 were counted in unsheltered locations.
A quarter of all unaccompanied youth, 8,964, live in five major US cities: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco and San Jose, California.
HUD added a new category for 2015—parenting youth—defined as an individual under age 25 who is the parent or legal guardian of one or more children who sleep in the same place with him/her. There were 9,901 parenting youth in January 2015.
Homeless unaccompanied youth and parenting youth are those hardest hit by unemployment, low wages and student loan debt. This segment of the population, with or without children, is the most likely to live with relatives or friends and go uncounted by HUD and other surveys.
2015 estimates of homeless people by state SOURCE: US Department of Housing and Urban Development
More than one in ten homeless adults are veterans. There were 47,725 homeless veterans on a single night in January 2015, or 11 percent of the 436,921 homeless adults. Veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea and the countless US imperialist exploits are included in this total.
Returning veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, brain injuries, substance abuse and other maladies struggle to find housing. Twenty-four percent of homeless veterans (11,311) live in California. Three other states had at least 2,000 homeless veterans: Florida (3,926), New York (2,399), and Texas (2,393).
In January 2015, 83,170 individuals were chronically homeless in the US. Two-thirds of these individuals, or 54,815 people, were staying in unsheltered locations, more than twice the national rate for all homeless people.
The number of unsheltered people with chronic patterns of homelessness increased by 4 percent over the past year, the first such rise since 2011. The number of unsheltered chronically homeless rose by 4,409 in Los Angeles alone.
Despite the massive increase in homelessness since the beginning of the financial crisis, funding for public housing has been repeatedly slashed in the post-2009 period. A report by the San Francisco-based Western Regional Advocacy Project noted that “HUD funding for new public housing units...has been zero since 1996,” while “Capital available to perform maintenance in 2012 [was] $1,875 billion,” representing a fall of $625 million over three years.
Mass homelessness is only the most acute manifestation of America’s housing crisis. According to a study published by Harvard University’s Joint Center For Housing Studies in June, the homeownership rate for 35-44 year-olds, which has been plunging for decades, has hit the lowest levels since the 1960s. Only slightly more than one-third of households headed by those aged 25-35 own their own homes.
The persistence of mass homelessness in the United States, despite six years of “economic recovery,” is an expression of the persistence of mass unemployment, falling wages, the slashing of social services, and the increasingly unaffordable living costs in America’s major cities, including Los Angeles and New York, that are home to a disproportionate share of America’s billionaires.
According to a poll released earlier this month, half of New Yorkers are “either just getting by or finding it difficult to manage financially.” More than one in five said they did not have enough money to buy food over the past year, and 17 percent said that they “have had times over the last year when they lacked the money to provide adequate shelter for their family.”
In the New York borough of Manhattan, median rent prices have grown by 9.5 percent over the past year. To afford a typical Manhattan apartment, one would have to pay over $40,000 a year in rent alone, 30 percent higher than the median wage in the United States. Not surprisingly, one recent study found that it is impossible for any worker making the minimum wage of $8.75 per hour to afford an apartment in any part of New York City—defined as spending no more than 30 percent of monthly income on rent.
The response of the “progressive” administration of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio to the deepening housing crisis in New York has been to further privatize public housing and drive up costs for low-income residents. De Blasio’s public housing plan, dubbed NextGen NYCHA, would jack up housing fees, such as parking, by up to several thousand dollars a year for low-income residents, while turning over more than 10,000 apartments and 11 acres of prime real estate to private developers.
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The army on Thursday announced it has filed an indictment against a soldier for illegally sharing classified military information regarding IDF operations on the Golan border with another Israeli citizen who passed the information on to the Syrian government.
The soldier, a corporal whose name is under gag order and was referred to as “H.H.” serves in a combat unit and was charged with exposing secrets and aiding the enemy.
According to the indictment filed in the Central Military District Court, H.H. provided information around February 16-17 “that could harm state security.”The Israeli citizen middleman to whom H.H. allegedly provided the information, Sudi al-Makat, 48, from Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights, was indicted last week by the Nazareth District Court for a wide range of security offenses.H.H., Makat and associates were arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the police on and around February 25. According to investigators, Makat and other residents of Majdal Shams documented IDF movements along the border with Syria and transferred the information to officials in the Syrian government and intelligence community. Information was sent over the Internet, through a Syrian television station, and by a direct line that Makat had with Syrian officials.Makat admitted that he was in touch with Medhat Saleh, a Syrian government official well known for his links with officials in Syrian intelligence. Makat had served a full 27-year prison sentence up until 2012 for violent security crimes.The Central District Military Court ordered H.H. remanded to military police custody until the end of the trial and, until now, had imposed a gag order on the entire affair.On Thursday night, the High Court of Justice rejected a petition by Makat to appoint a defense lawyer for him who does not have approved credentials for representing defendants in cases dealing with classified information.Makat had argued that having a lawyer “approved” by the state, even if the state gave him some choice, was a policy made to muzzle defendants such as him.Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.
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YONHAP / EPA South Korean swimmers are headed to the islets known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, and which are claimed by both countries, on Aug. 14, 2012
* UPDATE: South Korean media report that the team of swimmers reached the islands at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday — six and a half hours ahead of schedule. The entire relay reportedly took 48 hours and 30 minutes.
Tensions are rising once again over the tiny islands, known as Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, and claimed by both countries, with the latest spat coming at a bizarre intersection of pop culture, sports and politics. This week dozens of South Koreans are holding a relay swim of 220 km from the South Korean coast to the islands in order to reassert the nation’s sovereignty over the disputed territory. The swimmers, led by pop singer Kim Jang-hoon, are scheduled to arrive in the early afternoon of Aug. 15 — a day that marks the 67th anniversary of South Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule. Their swim follows a visit last Friday by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak — the first ever by the country’s top leader — which prompted Japan to summon the South Korean ambassador in Tokyo and to recall its top diplomat from Seoul. Japan also suggested that it might take the territorial dispute to the International Court of Justice.
(MORE: Why South Korea Is in an Uproar over Intelligence Sharing with Japan)
The islands are located in the gulf between the two countries — known as the Sea of Japan by Japanese and the East Sea by South Koreans — and are about the same distance from each. Seoul and Tokyo have been playing tug-of-war over the ownership of the islets for decades; South Korea stationed a coast-guard detachment on the islands in 1954 and has administered the islets since then. Despite their size, ownership of the islands is important for more than just national pride; they lie in rich fishing grounds and are near a seabed that could contain vast natural-gas deposits.
The latest dispute flared up late last week at the Olympics, when Korean soccer player Park Jong-woo displayed a political sign saying “Dokdo Is Our Territory” after the country won the bronze-medal match against Japan. The International Olympic Committee, which prohibits political statements by athletes, withheld his medal, barred him from participating in the medal ceremony and asked the football-governing body, FIFA, to discipline him.
MORE: Unlikely Contenders: What Explains the Koreas’ Olympic Strength? |
Senator Bob Corker, Republican from Tennessee, has criticized Donald Trump on some issues and said he would not run for a third term.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Bob Corker is always one to speak his mind, and the Tennessee Republican’s new free agent status should make President Donald Trump and the party even more nervous.
The two-term lawmaker isn’t seeking re-election. That gives him even more elbow room to say what he wants and to vote how he pleases over the next 15 months as Trump and the party’s leaders on Capitol Hill struggle to get their agenda on track.
Corker, a fiscal hawk, is holding the GOP’s feet to the fire on tax legislation, declaring that he’ll oppose any measure that increases the national debt by a single cent. Republicans hold a narrow, 52-seat majority in the Senate, and just three defections would torpedo the top priority in their partisan push.
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Corker delivered a stinging rebuke of the Trump White House after the president’s provocative tweets undermined Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis with North Korea. Corker said Tillerson, along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly, are ‘‘those people that help separate our country from chaos.’’
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And Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, will be at the center of what may be a stormy debate over the future of the Iran nuclear agreement. Trump’s hostility toward the deal, forged during the Obama administration, has stoked concerns he’s aiming to dismantle the international accord despite Europe’s objections. While Corker considers the deal badly flawed, he’s opposed to scrapping the agreement outright.
‘‘You can only tear these things up one time,’’ Corker said. ‘‘It might feel good for a second. But one of the things that’s important for us is to keep our allies with us, especially our Western allies.’’
On Sunday morning, Trump went on a Twitter offensive against Corker, saying that he was “largely responsible for the horrendous Iran” deal and that he “didn’t have the guts to run” for reelection.
Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017
...Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017
...Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017
Corker, 65, announced last month that his second, six-year term in the Senate would be his last. The self-described ‘‘citizen legislator’’ and former Tennessee finance commissioner now stands as a throwback to the fiscally diligent Republicans of yesteryear as his GOP colleagues embrace tax cuts that, they contend, will pay for themselves by spurring economic growth.
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‘‘Done properly, pro-growth tax reform will encourage the expansion of the productive capacity of the American economy-leading to higher wages, a better standard of living, and ultimately resulting in reduced federal budget deficits,’’ said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., a member of the Senate Budget Committee.
But ahead of the Republican push on taxes, Corker stewed over his party’s inattention to the country’s ever-increasing national debt, now at $20 trillion-plus. Since the election, too many Republicans have acted like it’s ‘‘party time’’ and ‘‘a light switch has gone off’’ on fiscal issues, according to Corker.
He voted against the annual defense policy bill, a typically popular piece of legislation, because the measure exceeded congressionally mandated spending caps by more than $80 billion.
Corker also refused to back the Harvey storm disaster aid package, which also extended America’s borrowing authority and funded the government through Dec. 8. The package contained no offsetting budget cuts. Corker derided it as another example of Washington ‘‘kicking the can down the road.’’
All that was prelude to his dismay over the current direction of the GOP’s tax overhaul. The tax system rewrite is a priority for Trump and his GOP allies in Congress. But Corker, a member of the Senate Budget Committee and the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, has said the plan’s hefty tax cuts could balloon the public debt by several trillion more dollars. He considers the government’s financial shortfalls to be more of a threat than North Korea or the Islamic State militants.
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‘‘There’s been a lot of sugar talked about the last couple of weeks,’’ Corker said. ‘‘There hasn’t been a lot of spinach talked about.’’
Corker in August delivered a blistering assessment of Trump in the wake of the president’s contentious remarks about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Corker said Trump hasn’t ‘‘demonstrated that he understands the character of this nation.’’
Trump fired back, tweeting that Corker’s comments were strange ‘‘considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in ‘18. Tennessee not happy!’’ Trump later encouraged Corker to run for a third term.
The senator decided not to.
Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report. |
OTTAWA – Parents of Canadian transgender youth are pleading with senators to back the Liberal government’s legislation on gender identity and gender expression.
Some members of the Senate, including Conservative Sen. Don Plett, have expressed misgivings about the bill, including the notion that “gender expression” is not an identifiable group.
Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says the government is following discussions and debates in the Senate around the legislation, adding it is important to speak loudly about the purpose of the bill.
READ MORE: Canada’s special adviser on LGBTQ2 issues urges people to communicate with senators on Bill C-16
She says it will fill gaps that currently exist in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, and ensure individuals who express their identity can do without fear of discrimination.
Wilson-Raybould says human rights are not conditional and it is important to dispel myths and stereotypes that exist about transgender and gender-diverse people.
Melissa Schaettgen, the mother of a nine-year-old transgender girl from Carp, Ont., says parents advocating for the legislation are fighting for their children’s lives and futures. |
The restaurant had been particularly busy that night, and I was starving. At the time, I was working as a server to put myself through grad school in a whimsical little eatery where the joke was that “in order to be hired, you have to at least be a little curious.” As the night slowed, I wandered downstairs to the kitchen in search of some abandoned nosh, and as I stood in the hallway munching on some chips, one of my coworkers walked by, ran his hand seductively across my waist, and instructed me to remember that “straight skinny is gay fat” with a judgmental glance at my deep-fried snack.
Such is the body conscious world of gay men. Our subculture teems with adages like this one that declare our allegiance to the gods of Youth, Physique, and Sex. “Straight skinny is gay fat.” “No fat, no fem.” “Twenty-five is the new forty-five.” These phrases represent the pervasive undercurrent of unrealistic body norms and expectations that runs rampant and unchecked in the gay community, surfacing with every shirtless bartender’s chiseled pecs, every headless six-pack flaunting itself on Grindr, and every media portrayal of a gay man as the modern-day Adonis. Physical appearance has indeed become a central factor to the contemporary gay man’s sense of self, and we are beginning to crack beneath the burden of its expectations.
According to the research literature, gay men display significant rates of body dissatisfaction, body image disturbances, and disordered eating behavior to a degree that closely aligns with those of straight women. Gay men are more likely to diet, fast, vomit, and over-exercise to alter their physique, and a gay sexual orientation has been identified as a specific risk factor for eating disorders in men.
And, to be fair, we come by our physical preoccupation naturally. Historically, appearance cues have always been the medium gay men have used to identify each other, and as a minority group, gay men face the challenge of being socialized into the majority culture’s masculine muscle ideologies, while also balancing the expectation of thinness within the subculture. Individuals who are sexually involved with men, furthermore, tend to be more focused on appearance due to the common belief that men place higher priority on a partner’s physical form than women.
What this seems to have developed into, however, is a hyper-image-focused culture that organizes and defines each of its members according to body type and preferred sexual position.
As a therapist, I have heard countless stories of the ways in which the body image pressures of gay culture influence men’s relationships with their bodies, and I have labored under the weight of them myself. The perception that one must look a specific way in order to be accepted into the gay community drives some so far as to even delay coming out until they are in better shape, and for others, it is felt even more acutely if they happen to be out and single.
A recent study explored the relationship between gay men’s perceptions of partner body image preferences and symptoms of disordered eating by comparing the discrepancies between participants’ current and ideal body types and the discrepancies between participants’ current body type and the body type they believed was needed to attract a partner. For the gay men in the study, the differences between their actual body and the body they believed was needed to attract a partner was far greater than the difference between their current body and ideal body. In addition, such perceptions regarding partner body image preferences were related to several types of disordered eating practices. It seems that we, as a group, believe that the way our bodies must look in order to attract a partner far exceeds the bodies we would even want for ourselves, and beyond that, we will go to dangerous lengths to achieve them.
In the past few years, we have begun to see a shifting in our culture toward body positivity movements and increased resistance to the societal expectations placed upon women’s bodies. In everything from Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign to the release of Taryn Brumfitt’s documentary “Embrace,” we are seeing women fight back against unrealistic body expectations and begin to redefine society’s standards of beauty and health. The harmful effects of societal beauty standards on women have acted as a catalyst for activists to come forward and advocate that the body may be loved and celebrated at every size. However, the gay community seems to be absent from this conversation in regard to their own body image pressures, and although we have started to see isolated tricklings of attentiveness to the adverse effects, these have often been met with harsh criticism.
We have already witnessed the devastating effects many of our sisters have suffered at the hands of unrealistic body image standards, and it is time we acknowledge that gay men, too, are often trapped beneath the weight of our own. As a community, we must start recognizing and owning our worth as something deeper and more profound than the count of our protruding abs, and we must stop holding each other hostage with our judgmental glances and cutting remarks. We already face an existence where a multitude of people are quick to tell us that we are not good enough, and we must stop reinforcing this message in the way we treat our bodies. We, too, can expand our definition of what is healthy, and we too, can reject the images that drive us toward stricter diets and heavier dumbbells. And I believe that the first step we must take is to talk about it. |
Earlier today, the Department of Commerce announced new sanctions against Russian products and companies operating in the United States. Previous sanctions only tangentially impacted the import of cheap and reliable firearms from Russia into the United States, but now the Obama administration is specifically targeting the makers of Saiga rifles and shotguns, as well as other companies. From the Executive Order. . .
The following entities have been added to OFAC’s SDN List: […] KALASHNIKOV CONCERN (a.k.a. CONCERN KALASHNIKOV; a.k.a. IZHEVSKIY MASHINOSTROITEL’NYI ZAVOD OAO; f.k.a. IZHMASH R&D CENTER; f.k.a. JSC NPO IZHMASH; f.k.a. NPO IZHMASH OAO; a.k.a. OJSC CONCERN KALASHNIKOV; f.k.a. OJSC IZHMASH; f.k.a. SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION ASSOCIATION IZHMASH JOINT STOCK COMPANY), 3, Derjabin Pr., Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic 426006, Russia; Registration ID 1111832003018 [UKRAINE2].
So the importation of new Izmash-produced firearms is now banned indefinitely in the United States. But that executive order definitely raises some questions for those currently in possession of a firearm manufactured by the now-sanctioned firearms companies. For example, can a gun dealer sell their existing stock? From the FAQ regarding the legality of items already in the United States:
374. If I own a Kalashnikov product, is that product blocked by sanctions? Am I able to resell a Kalashnikov product at a gun show or other secondary market? If a U.S. person is in possession of a Kalashnikov Concern product that was bought and fully paid for prior to the date of designation (i.e., no payment remains due to Kalashnikov Concern), then that product is not blocked and OFAC sanctions would not prohibit the U.S. person from keeping or selling the product in the secondary market, so long as Kalashnikov Concern has no interest in the transaction. New transactions by U.S. persons with Kalashnikov Concern are prohibited, however, and any property in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest is blocked pursuant to OFAC’s designation of Kalashnikov Concern on July 16, 2014. If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014] 375. If I have Kalashnikov products in my inventory, can I sell them? If a U.S. person has an inventory of Kalashnikov Concern products in which Kalashnikov Concern has an interest (for example, the products are not fully paid for or are being sold on consignment), we advise that U.S. person to contact OFAC for further guidance on handling of the inventory. [7-16-2014]
We all saw this coming, but the reality is always more confusing and distasteful than the perception. There is no word at this time whether additional Russian firearms related manufacturers will get the same treatment. |
Pot Brownie Incident Shines Spotlight On Legitimacy Debate
Legitimacy.
It’s the big looming cookie jar stashed high above ultimate’s reach. Just about every player and group related to ultimate wants it on some level.
Who hasn’t imagined the day when you’ll no longer have to defend the act of simply referring to ultimate as a “sport”?
Especially considering that, if we’re honest about it, there’s a pretty good chance that day will never come.
If you’ve stayed with it long enough to learn how to throw a flick, though, chances are you’ve at least somewhat come to terms with playing a sport where mass media exposure is much less common than SPF 45 and spirit circles.
But even if you’re someone who’s just as happy playing in the national title game broadcasted on a livestream to the rest of the country as you are playing an impromptu pickup game in a city park, you’re probably still intrigued by the great effort the ultimate community has been making over the past few years in an attempt to pull that cookie jar of legitimacy down off that high shelf.
Which is why Saturday evening at Club Nationals this year must have been especially frustrating for those who subscribe to certain ideas of how the sport might best be taken “seriously.”
Long story short: Two Seattle Mixed players took some pot brownies after their semis upset over Boston Wild Card, experience adverse reactions, and have to be taken to the hospital. Seattle Mixed would then go on to be crushed by Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust in the final the next day 15-9, leaving many to wonder, especially with the myriad of rumors swirling around, what might be the cause of the blowout and what implications could be drawn from it.
That’s pretty understandable and pretty fair.
What’s questionable, however, is when those discussions about what happened that evening were contorted to the point of using the occurrence to act as some sort of reflection or symbolic representation of Seattle Mixed, the mixed division, or ultimate as a whole.
Walking around the fields Saturday night and Sunday and listening to the conversations, or taking a look around various online discussions shortly after, one might get the impression that this was just another piece thrown onto the mountain of evidence that the mixed division is a joke, or that ultimate will never be taken seriously.
Sure, the mixed division has always been looked at as something of a joke. Talk to high-level men’s and women’s players and a good lot of them will admit to viewing it as anything from the place you go when you’re not ready to accept playing Masters to nothing more than pick-up league fodder. It’s unlikely anything will ever change that.
Despite the fact that players like James Hron or Sarah Carnahan would be just as much of a headache to guard in their respective single-gender divisions, this thinking remains. Despite the fact that ultimate is maybe the only sport in the world to be played at an elite level in co-ed and should thus perhaps be viewed with pride, this thinking remains.
I’m not saying there isn’t a case to be made that men’s or women’s is more competitive, or elite, or something along those lines. All I’m saying is that two people getting high does not ratify the illegitimacy of a division any more than it does the sport as a whole.
And as for the question of how it reflects on ultimate in general, perhaps that can best be answered by Seattle Mixed coach Jamie Arambula.
“In the NFL, you have people getting shitfaced all the time,” he said. “Guys shoot someone or fight someone. Guys beat up their wives. Does that un-legitimize their sport?”
As a veteran who’s played for top clubs like Santa Barbara Condors and Seattle Sockeye and done crazy things like attend 30 tournaments in a single year, for two years in a row, Arambula has been around the ultimate scene.
He said that every ultimate team he’s known, even the elite ones, has at least one player that does drugs, including at premier tournaments. But, Arambula was quick to note, that doesn’t mean they don’t take their team or the game seriously.
If anything it just makes them adults and humans, some with different preferences than others.
Though he doesn’t condone drug use, Arambula said that the matter comes down to personal responsibility more than anything else.
“From my perspective as a coach, I don’t want anyone doing anything to affect their performance,” Arambula said. “But if someone is gonna do something, they’re adults. That’s on them. You’re an adult, you can make those choices.”
This idea seems especially important.
In contrast to leagues like the NFL or NBA, where players are under multi-million dollar contracts, agree to act as representatives of the organization and the sport, and have hordes of analysts scrutinizing everything they do, the issue of a small drug incident might have a little more weight.
Yet, even those flare-ups usually fall by the wayside in the wake of larger issues like weapons charges and domestic abuse, or even the next day’s news cycle.
But ultimate is different.
Not just because there’s no big money or lofty prestige in it. Or because there’s thankfully much less assault and drug offenses. Ultimate is different because players and organizers still have a great deal of say in how we define our sport and what we want it to be.
So when ordeals like what happened on Saturday evening of Nationals occur, we can decide our own reaction to it and decide what it might actually mean and say about our community as a whole, rather than falling back on pre-scripted responses dictated by vague social norms or sensationalist pundits performing for ratings and fake respect.
We can look at two people getting wrecked by pot brownies as a disgrace if we really want to look at it that way. That’s not entirely crazy. We can also look at it as unfortunate mistakes made by two of our friends. Adults that made poor choices and suffered the consequences for it.
Perhaps we could go even further and think about elements of the larger context. For instance, unlike just about every other sport, in ultimate if you come out of nowhere and qualify for the national championship game, you really only have a few hours to (modestly) celebrate it.
You don’t get the chance to get ripped with your teammates that night, then come back the next day (or more likely the day after next) and get back to training for the big show.
In this way, when we look at the choices of a few Seattle Mixed players—and when we keep in mind that this was the first time that all but two of their players had made the trip to Club Nationals—and their decision to celebrate as hard as they played, maybe it’s not so crazy.
Yes, most of us would probably have done different. Maybe just a beer or two. Or maybe just a shared joint rather than the unpredictable grenades that are edibles.
But does that mean we should demonize these young people or take their actions as a sign that what we all love, regardless of team or division or broadcasting schedules or whatever, is a joke?
As people that pretty much constantly have to defend their love of the sport to the rest of the world, their family and friends, and sometimes even themselves about why they bother in the first place, do ultimate players and the community at large really need to be taking the act of two people getting too high as evidence that we’re all fooling ourselves into thinking we’re doing anything but playing around on a field?
Which brings us back to the question of legitimacy and what we mean when we say we want ultimate to be taken “seriously.”
Our initial reaction might be to scoff, as if we all know what it means. But when you try to pin it down, what constitutes “legitimate” and “serious” isn’t so easy to identify.
I don’t have any easy answers for those problems. I’m not sure there are any.
Here’s one attempt at an answer from Arambula that seems pretty solid, though: “I think we’ve got more of a chance for legitimacy being on ESPN making big plays than some Reddit thread about some girl passing out.”
It’s pretty hard to argue with that one. |
The treadmill doesn't work like the one at your gym, mind you. There aren't actually any moving parts. Instead, the user wears special, $60 super-slippery soled shoes adorned with accelerometers that track their movement as the user slide-steps atop the unit's floor. The user is also strapped into a lower body harness to keep them centered above the unit, which also allows them to shuffle their feet faster. All this physical movement translates into in game movement -- walk forward, to move forward in the game; back pedal to reverse course. Easy, right?
I had a chance to strap myself into the Omni for a brief demo on the CES 2016 showfloor and, holy poop on a stick, this thing is freakin' awesome. I've been playing first person shooters since the days of Doom on the PC and have always longed for a more immersive experience. Spamming my keyboard's Up arrow and swiping my mouse to look around never really did it for me -- it was always too stiff to really get me into the game. Same with modern console FPS's like Call of Duty -- ot being able to look around independently from where my weapon was aimed not only was unrealistic, it put me at a tactical disadvantage. Not so with the Omni. The generic "base defense" shooter game that I tried blew me away. Having to actually move, turn, look around and aim was incredibly immersive and added a completely new level of gameplay. There's no more sprint button. If you want to run faster, then you really have to run faster. I was sweating by the end of my session -- and grinning harder than I have in years.
Even the easy mode that I tried, wherein you fire where you look rather than where the gun is pointing -- had my heart pounding. There's a more advanced option that I wasn't able to try but reportedly allows you to look, run and aim in completely different directions -- that is run forward, look left and shoot right. And with the optional dual pistol controllers, rather than the rifle I used, I'm sure I could muster some straight John Woo Hard Boiled-level gunplay. |
Rebel Without a Country
TOKYO — On June 24, Chinese political cartoonist Wang Liming, better known as Rebel Pepper, tweeted about the scariest nightmare he ever had. He found himself surrounded by seven or eight people, secret agents sent by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to arrest him. Their leader, Colonel Light, demanded that Rebel Pepper leave Japan with them; when he refused, they threatened to push him off a balcony. Soon, Japanese police arrived and surrounded the building, but Colonel Light and his men floated away ominously. Rebel woke up that morning, afraid for his life. Having left China for Japan, Rebel had thought that his nightmares would end. But they only grew more absurd, more crazed, more intense.
Rebel started drawing political cartoons in 2009, and chose the pen name biantai lajiao, or Perverse Pepper in Chinese; Rebel Pepper came from the recommendation of a Taiwanese friend, who thought it sounded good in English. Often, Rebel draws himself into the cartoon, as the Pepper — a sometimes sad, sometimes oblivious, sometimes lascivious chili, with large, intense eyes. One cartoon, from February 2012, features a smiling Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator, standing on a heap of skeletons and hiding behind two doors featuring a menacing polar bear (Russia) and panda (China.) In the upper right-hand corner, the Pepper smiles — a blithe and uncaring bystander — and flashes a thumbs-up.
Over the last few years, his cartoons — of China’s blighting air pollution filling the sky, of an obese man bloodily smothering dissent while smoking a cigar, of Mao Zedong boasting of his victim count to Islamic State leaders — have become steadily more subversive. Despite his polite, almost deferential demeanor, the moniker “Rebel” fits him well. He’s probably China’s best-known political cartoonist, and certainly the one most critical of the ruling Communist Party. In China, Rebel had grown notorious for satirizing China’s increasingly authoritarian President Xi Jinping — Rebel has drawn Xi as a steamed dumpling and as a shirtless post-coital smoker in bed with a young man — and, Rebel told me, he realized that he had to leave Beijing or risk facing a long spell in prison.
Originally, Rebel had planned to make his way to New York City after returning from a long holiday in Japan in mid-2014. But in late July 2014, two major Chinese media companies, Sina and Tencent, deleted Rebel’s microblog accounts on their sites, on which he had close to 1 million followers. His page on Baidu Encyclopedia, which resembles a Chinese version of Wikipedia, was also removed, as was a store he had opened on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao. Most ominously, a pseudonymous article calling for the “relevant authorities” to “investigate and deal with” Rebel had been gaining traction on the Chinese Internet. Having spent a night in detention in October 2013, the 42-year-old Rebel was disinclined to repeat the experience. Rebel, who looks like a cross between a punk skater and an accountant, changed his vacation to Japan into a self-imposed exile. In October 2014, he held a wedding ceremony with his girlfriend at a church in Osaka recommended by another Chinese activist. (Rebel and his girlfriend had been officially married several months before in Tokyo.) He found a position as a visiting scholar at Saitama University, north of Tokyo.
But Rebel says the Japanese government has refused to grant him political asylum — and, in fact, seems to prefer that he just quietly move to another country. His visa, for “cultural exchange,” expires in December. Rebel, who prefers shorts to pants, speaks carefully and passionately, and smiles surprisingly easily, is unsure whether it will be renewed. Although the university offered him free Japanese classes and subsidized rent, Rebel told me, there was no stipend or salary. Money soon ran short, and in May, Rebel abashedly tweeted to his more than 110,000 followers asking for donations to help him get over what he described to me as his “economic crisis.”
“I started to feel very disappointed,” Rebel told me one night in June over dinner at a nearly deserted noodle shop in central Tokyo. “I looked for work, but it was hard, because I don’t speak Japanese.” He wore a white dress shirt and old-fashioned glasses oddly reminiscent of the clunky style favored by older Chinese leaders, and appeared endearingly grateful for his situation. “I might have been in jail,” he said.
And yet, although Sino-Japanese tensions remain high — on Sept. 3rd, Beijing is hosting a military parade celebrating Japanese defeat in World War II, which has angered Tokyo — Rebel’s adapted home hasn’t offered him the protection he feels he needs. In his June 24 tweet, Rebel expressed surprise that, after living in exile in Japan for more than a year, party “special operatives would still murder me in my dreams. Words can’t describe the helplessness I felt.” At the end of the post he affixed an emoticon with tears gushing out of its eyes.
* * *
In Japan, Rebel joins a minuscule community of Chinese dissidents. Zhao Nan, a formerly prominent democracy activist, guesses just a few dozen people — of the roughly 1 million Chinese in Japan at any given time — are involved in pro-democracy groups, with some others are working on the rights of Chinese minorities like the Uighurs.
But Zhao’s numbers are probably too optimistic. “We’re a guerrilla force,” Liu Yanzi, a 45-year-old translator and lecturer in Chinese at Kwansei Gakuin University in Osaka, and the friend who helped arrange Rebel and his wife’s wedding, told me. “And we’re probably fewer than the number of pandas in zoos.”
In many ways, Japan seems like it should be the perfect host for Chinese dissidents. In a Pew Research Center opinion survey released in late June, 89 percent of Japanese polled said they have an unfavorable view of China, by far the highest percentage of any of the dozens of countries surveyed. Some Japanese politicians speak openly about democratizing China, while others call for destabilizing it. And the two countries’ economic entanglement — China is Japan’s largest trading partner — makes travel between them relatively easy. There are roughly a dozen daily direct flights from Tokyo, clocking in at under four hours. While Japan is more expensive than China, its cities rank among the world’s most livable.
Besides, Rebel and his fellow Chinese activists are far safer in Japan. “There’s no way I would go back to China,” Duan Yuezhong, who runs a publishing house that puts out a wide variety of Chinese books translated into Japanese, but who doesn’t consider himself a dissident, told me. “We don’t have a propaganda department here. I can publish whatever I want.”
Yet for Rebel and others, they cannot help but think that Japan doesn’t want them there, it just feels too embarrassed to tell them so. Japanese citizenship is extremely difficult for foreigners to get; Zhao only received a passport in 2008. Wang Jinzhong, a freelance journalist and democracy activist who is unrelated to Rebel and who has lived in Japan since 1987, is effectively stateless. “I don’t have a Chinese passport or a Japanese passport,” he tells me. Instead, he has a Japanese ID card, which allows him to function domestically. When he travels overseas, which he says he does on average a few times a year, a government department provides him with a travel document that allows safe transit.
The lack of a community of like-minded brethren, coupled with official coldness, can be disheartening. “I did the Tiananmen thing here, but there were very few other people,” Rebel said, referring to a recent commemoration, outside the Chinese embassy in Japan, of the Chinese government’s 1989 slaughter of protesters. The police far outnumbered protesters, and Rebel left, feeling a bit silly.
“Japan doesn’t welcome foreigners,” Zhao tells me. “And foreigners can’t be political activists. When we do democracy promotion activities, we run into trouble.” Zhao claims that the Chinese listen to his cell-phone calls and that the Japanese have tapped his landline. He knows this, he says, because the line makes a sound when he discusses sensitive topics and because Chinese and Japanese interlocutors have referenced things he has said in private telephone conversations. (The Chinese embassy in Japan and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
That’s not to say that the isolation and the new environment don’t have their benefits. “I have a friend who got political asylum in Los Angeles and then realized to his dismay that there were so many patriotic Chinese there!” Rebel told me. “He said, ‘I left China to get away from these people, and now here they are!’” Rebel feels like he’s growing as a cartoonist and as a thinker — “raising his level,” as he put it, as he continues the slow process of sloughing off what he describes as the unavoidable self-censorship that came from his life in China. “The advice people have given me, and I feel really bad saying this, is get away from a Chinese circle.”
* * *
On June 13, I accompanied Rebel on a protest at the Japanese Diet, the country’s national legislature. Thousands of people were marching against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s moves to expand the scope of Japan’s military activity. Rebel had drawn a cartoon featuring a cowered Abe surrounded by protesters. Xi — wearing a machine gun belt, his waist festooned with bullets, his hand brandishing a missile — looms in the background, as does his squinting sidekick, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In a way, he was protesting the protesters. “I have a problem with [the Japanese] right wing — and the left wing,” he told me.
As the Japanese protesters walked by Rebel, who proudly and somewhat shyly held up his cartoon, some took photos and some flashed him the thumbs-up sign. Several other political cartoonists were in attendance. An aged hippie, carrying a cartoon depicting Abe as a vampire, offered a friendly grunt to Rebel. “Hey, look, Abe drawn as Hitler,” Rebel said, gesturing to another cartoon, which depicted the Japanese leader with that trademark mustache. “I heard that a Chinese student was recently arrested for depicting Xi as Hitler,” Rebel said, shaking his head.
Soon after we arrived at the protest, a Chinese IT professional and peace activist introduced himself, giving his surname as Wang (also unrelated to Rebel). We all expressed surprise at the gentleness with which the police handled the demonstration. It was a calm and well-regulated affair. The police loudspeakers were telling the crowd of mostly older protesters that if they felt ill, they should find a seat where they might rest or let the police know, so that they could offer assistance. “Japan is a fairly quiet country, and I guess the protests are like that as well,” Rebel said. Wang, who moved to Japan not long after the 1989 Tiananmen protests, agreed. “It’s not like there are going to be tanks,” he said.
Still, Wang opposed the cartoonist’s criticism of Xi, and of China. “I think your view is too basic,” Wang told Rebel. A former party member, Wang said that those outside the political system don’t have the ability to speak intelligently about politics. “That guy, although he’s been out of China for decades, he still defends it,” Rebel wrote me in an email after the protest. “It’s lamentable.”
* * *
China is the biggest country of origin for foreigners in Japan. According to Ippei Torii, the secretary-general of the NGO Solidarity Network With Migrants Japan, 648,000 registered Chinese are living in Japan, though the actual number is almost certainly higher. In general, it’s difficult for Chinese not working in the IT sector to get visas, he told me. And for political dissidents — Chinese or otherwise — it’s nearly impossible. Out of 5,000 applicants for political asylum in 2014, he told me, only 11 were recognized. None were Chinese. “As far as I know, the Japanese policy on asylum and refugee seekers is a really harsh one,” Kanae Doi, Japan director for Human Rights Watch, told me. “And the treatment of Chinese dissidents has been particularly harsh.”
Ask why, and one gets a variation of answers that highlight Japan’s differences from the United States. Keisuke Suzuki, a Diet member from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, said that while Japan should accept Chinese dissidents, it needs to “be wise enough” to consider the long view. “China will be a neighbor country to Japan forever,” he said. And a senior government official, who asked to speak on background so that he could speak freely, said, “Japan has no tendency to embarrass China just for the sake of embarrassing them.”
Indeed, the United States is probably the only country with both the willingness and the ability to provoke the ruling Chinese Communist Party by enabling dissidents, both inside and outside China. From the CIA’s clandestine support of Tibetan freedom fighters in the 1950s and 1960s, to its rescuing of blind activist Chen Guangcheng in May 2012, the United States has a long history of supporting the cause of freedom and democracy — or meddling in China’s internal affairs, depending on whom one asks. Takashi Oshima, an associate editor on the foreign news desk of the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest and most influential newspapers, said that the Chen story was a big one in Japan, but was not played up in the same way it was in the United States. Japanese media “wants to know more about a variety of issues,” he said rather blandly.
Far from being celebrated, Chinese dissidents in Japan often find themselves scrambling for consistent work. To earn money, the Tiananmen-era dissident Zhao buys and sells old Chinese books in and around Tokyo. I asked whether he earns enough to make a living. “It’s enough to keep going,” he told me, sounding only a little bitter. After more than a year of struggling to get by, in August, Rebel emailed to tell me that his economic situation has improved. Besides donations, he has a contract to draw cartoons for the Japanese edition of Newsweek and for Shincho 45, a magazine affiliated with one of Japan’s oldest publishing houses. He draws on a freelance basis for several other media outlets and is contemplating a book of satirical portraits of top Chinese party officials.
But Junko Oikawa, a visiting scholar at Hosei University in Tokyo and a friend of the cartoonist, tells me she worries about the intellectual sacrifices Rebel has had to make for money. Japanese right-wing publications want his cartoons to be virulently against the Chinese Communist Party, and against Xi, because they think that sells papers. “If those are what he actually wants to draw, that’s fine,” said Oikawa, who has translated the works of some prominent Chinese dissidents, including imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, into Japanese. But she worries that Rebel is being used.
Japan’s inhospitality is all the more striking because of the role it used to play sheltering Chinese dissidents and exiles. Perhaps the first Chinese to live in exile in Japan — though the story is possibly apocryphal — was Xu Fu, the court sorcerer of Qin Shihuang, the man who first unified China, in 221 B.C. Qin tasked Xu with scouring the world in search of an elixir that would give the emperor eternal life. Failing to find it and fearing the wrath of Qin, Xu took refuge in Japan instead.
Most famously, Sun Yat-sen, seen in mainland China as the father of the Chinese Revolution, spent 16 years in exile in Japan before assuming the presidency of the first republic of China in 1912. Joining Sun was a who’s who of important turn-of-the-20th-century Chinese: The radical historian Liang Qichao, whom Chinese Communist strongman Mao Zedong said he “worshipped,” fled to Japan in 1898. A co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, Chen Duxiu, lived there too, as did Gen. Chiang Kai-shek, who in 1949 lost a bloody civil war to the Communists and took the remnants of his army and government to Taiwan. By weakening Chiang’s Nationalist Army with a devastating war, Tokyo served as an (inadvertent) kingmaker, paving the way for Mao and his People’s Liberation Army to seize control of China. “Japan was the home of the Chinese revolution,” Akio Takahara, a China expert at the University of Tokyo, told me.
With regional tensions high these days, Tokyo is cautious about the perception that it interferes in Chinese domestic affairs. Still uneasy about its wartime aggression, Japan “doesn’t foster anti-government movements, especially when it comes to China,” the senior Japanese government official said. “Japan has a bad history of intervening in continental affairs, and I think there’s consensus to not do it again,” he said.
* * *
Since Rebel left China, he has tried to reason out his views on Beijing and its future. He told me that street protests are the only thing that can force change in China, though he is not planning to organize them himself. “Insulting the party, too many people are doing that!” he said. “The people they attack the hardest are those who form organizations, form parties.”
Rebel said his contacts have told his name is on an official Chinese blacklist, ranked from A to H. The Dalai Lama and the spiritual leader of the Uighurs in exile, Rebiya Kadeer, are ranked A. Rebel thinks that satirizing Xi earned him a spot on the list. He’s curious where he ranks, and people have told him that he has a high spot, but he doesn’t know where. “This cartoonist, once he grows bigger and bigger,” the senior government official said, “it’ll be interesting” to see what Tokyo does. “I don’t think Tokyo sees another Sun Yat-sen coming in. If we do, that’s the moment of truth. But until then, we don’t give anyone the Sun Yat-sen treatment.”
Before Rebel left China, he’d find himself waking up with the same familiar Stalinist nightmare: the police knocking on his door in the middle of the night, coming to take him away. Rebel had always been interested in China’s wide varieties of prisons — its detention centers, its jails, its “reform through labor” farms — and he says he has read “a huge amount” of prison memoirs. This intimate knowledge of the dark side of the party, he said, is one of the reasons he was so “deeply fearful” of being arrested and why the nightmare would occur with frequency. And yet, he seemed shocked that in Tokyo the nightmares haven’t gone away.
On June 24, the same day he wrote about his Japan nightmare, Rebel tweeted a cartoon he drew in support of Atena Farghadani, an Iranian artist sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, in part for a cartoon she drew depicting members of Iranian parliament as animals. In Rebel’s cartoon, Farghadani balefully stares out from a prison cell. Below the cell hangs a drawing of one of the Iranian parliamentarians that Farghadani satirized as an animal, with the word “Evidence.” In a nearby prison cell, Rebel’s avatar, that mischievous pepper, grasps the prison bars and looks fearfully in her direction. His cell also features a drawing and the word “Evidence” below it: a brutal Xi, drawn with a face that looks like it would fit on a torturer in a medieval European prison — the type who would shiver with ecstasy at the sound of a broken bone.
At a dinner party this year, Hosei University’s Junko Oikawa listened to Rebel describe one of his frequent China dreams: about police asking him to “drink tea,” a euphemism for being invited to one’s own interrogation, and about them knocking on the door late in the night to take him away. “Although his body is free, his spirit is still trapped in this state of dread,” she told me. “At least he’s safe here,” Oikawa remembers thinking to herself. “At least he’s safe.”
Travel for this article was supported by the nonprofit Japan Center for International Exchange.
Image credit: Wang Liming |
Remember that movie from the early 2000s, ‘I Heart Huckabees’? The main character, played by Jason Schwartzman, is curious about the constant coincidences in his life, so he hires a unorthodox duo of detectives help him figure out what they could mean.
At the time, I found the premise pretentious and confusing, but right about now, I totally get it. For my own life has begun to resemble a Wes Anderson movie, albeit without the helpful existential investigators and dreamy pastel hues. So in the spirit of attempting to make sense of them myself, here are some examples of the synchcronicities Ive experienced lately.
NUMBERS
At work, I’m a busy person. I’m rarely idle and I don’t clock-watch, but still, almost every single day, I find myself looking at time at 11.11, 1.11 and 3.33. Usually, those times are the ONLY three times I’ve checked my watch. In fact it’s so common that if I happen to miss one, like the other day when I checked my phone at precisely 11.12, it feels like something is off.
RUMI POEM
A few months back, I was listening to a psychology podcast on my 45min commute to work, as I am apt to do. The topic was mindfulness, a concept I’m reasonably familiar with, and the segment closed with the guest speaker providing a quote by the poet Rumi, who’s work I am also reasonably familiar with. This, however, was a poem I had never heard, called ‘The Guest House’. For those unacquainted with this particular piece, here it is:
It is a lovely poem and I enjoyed hearing it, although to be honest I didn’t give it much more thought once my drive was over.
One of my daily work duties is selecting the store’s music playlist, and that day I had randomly put the latest Coldplay album into the rotation. Now it is important to note that I have never heard this album, nor had much inclination to as I’m not a huge fan of the band (although I did admittedly enjoy a few of their earlier songs). I don’t know what inspired me to choose it that day, but I did, and around 1pm it started playing in the store. A few songs in, while performing duties out on the floor, I was stopped in my tracks. The music had ceased for a spoken word interlude, which in itself is not remarkable, but the words themselves gave me goosebumps. “This being human is a guest house,” a booming, authoritive voice declared. “Each day a new arrival.” Its recited in its entirety, and I later found out that Chris Martin discovered the poem while going through his divorce and loved it so much he decided to feature it on his album.
ENTROPY IS UNAVOIDABLE
Earlier this week, after finishing work for the day, I was sitting on the couch scrolling through Facebook. I came across this meme:
Like most memes, it provided a feeble chuckle and I swiftly moved on. The only line that stood out was ‘entropy is unavoidable’ as I didn’t really know what that meant but didn’t care enough to look into it further.
About an hour later my boyfriend and I settled in to watch an episode of ‘Animals’, an absurd but hilarious cartoon on the comedy channel we’d just gotten into. In this particular episode, the band 311 guest star, and in one scene the main character is singing one of their songs lyrics back to them: “You can’t stop entropy so why even try, observe the conscious flow and don’t mystify.” So the message I’m getting is that you entropy is unavoidable and you can’t stop entropy. Now I just need to figure out what ‘entropy’ means.
SPECK OF DUST
Two nights ago, my boyfriend wanted to watch the aforementioned Sarah Silverman stand-up on Netflix. One of the bits in her routine included a monologue on the insignificance of individual human life in the grand scheme of the universe, likening us to a mere ‘speck of dust’.
After the special was over, we retired to bed with an old episode of ‘The Office’. Just as I was drifting off, I heard Michael Scott’s character justifying calling a staff meeting to talk about the planets. “Because it’s a big universe,” he says to Jim. “And we’re all just tiny little specks of dust.”
So there we have it- numbers, a 16th century poem, an unusual phrase and a common quote. Some patterns I can see from listing these are that every time, the synchronicity has occurred within the same day, sometimes within hours. It’s always delivered via seperate and unrelated mediums, i.e.: educational podcast and music cd, Facebook and cartoon, stand up comedy and scripted television. Beyond that, I’m not sure. I’ll guess I’ll just continue to list them as they occur and see if more patterns emerge.
Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Is my higher self attempting to communicate through various mediums? Am I reading too much into it? Are they all just stupid coincidences and I maybe smoke too much weed? Who knows. I wish I had Jason Schwartzman’s number. |
The Group B winners’ match went the way of Virtus.pro, as the Polish team were able to take Mirage, 16-10, to clinch the first spot in the semifinals.
Virtus.pro started the match taking an early 3-0 lead after winning the pistol on the terrorist side and taking the following anti-ecos, but the Poles were unable to follow it up in the first gun round, giving the first buy to Liquid.
From there on out the North American squad took control of the half, winning six rounds in a row. Finally, after trading rounds, Virtus.pro were able to get a streak of their own. Finally, Liquid were able to take the tie-breaker before the half-time for an 8-7 partial score.
Snax & co. will be in the playoffs in Mykonos
The second half started with Virtus.pro taking the second pistol round, meaning Liquid have won none of the four pistol rounds they have played so far in Mykonos. After 20 rounds, the match settled at 10-10, but the Polish team put up a wall on defense and plowed over the finish line, 16-10, for a spot in the semifinals.
ESG Tour Mykonos 2017 Best of 1 Liquid Matchpage 10 16 Virtus.pro 10 Mirage 16 |
Over the last 24 hours on Twitter there was a perfect example of how mainstream fake news happens. Of course, it’s an old story – on Wednesday, a lazy article claimed Corbyn had asked no questions on Brexit in PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions) even though the reporter knew that Theresa May was making her Article 50 statement after PMQs, to which Corbyn asked many pointed questions – but the fake news stuck in the minds of some, perhaps many.
Similarly, the nonsense about Corbyn ‘failing’ to declare part of his income in his tax return was thoroughly debunked immediately after it was claimed – but just a couple of days ago, mainstream publications like the Evening Standard were repeating it as fact. Lazy journalism or malicious – either way it’s inexcusable.
Today’s example started with an ill-phrased Twitter comment yesterday by Buzzfeed journalist Marie Le Conte in which she complained about slow responses by Labour to requests for quotes from the leadership:
Others jumped in, ready (or keen) to reinforce the apparent point that Corbyn’s comms team is slow and, presumably, ill-organised:
Within half an hour, Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘LOTO’ (Leader of the Opposition) head of communications, Matt Zarb-Cousin, responded quickly to make the point that he, well, always responds within half an hour:
To her credit, Ms Le Conte was quick to backtrack and clarify:
However, in the interim, a host of ‘journalists’, no doubt happy to have a ready-to-eat Corbyn-kicking/Labour-bashing story on hand, had already started to spread the original, misleading comment as ‘news’. Sam Coates of the Times appears to have been fastest:
Quickly followed by a ‘Who’s Who’ of anti-Corbyn/pro-LibDem journalists and hacks:
That vital ingredient in the anti-Corbyn fake-news soufflé – the self-serving blairite malcontent(s) keen to stir the excrement – wasn’t absent for long. In this case, it was one of the worst, Neil Coyle, who was quick to capitalise:
Once word got around about Matt Zarb-Cousin’s response and Ms Le Conte’s subsequent correction, other journalists, including right-wingers such as Guido Fawkes – plus one or two of those who’d jumped on the wrong bandwagon, to be fair to them – acknowledged it:
Not the odious Coyle, of course.
But the narrative of incompetent/inefficient comms at Jeremy Corbyn’s office was already set – and anyone who didn’t catch the later corrections or who only followed those who failed to correct will still be carrying the fake-news around with them as if factual.
Ms Le Conte did make one serious point, of course. The official Labour press and social media teams are very poor – but according to Labour insiders, that’s by design – and we’ve already seen the evidence, such as last year’s ‘#TeamGlitterballs’ fiasco.
A senior Labour source told the SKWAWKBOX:
The Labour Press team has been dire, but that’s not by accident, and some people are all too happy to portray performance as poor to try to make Jeremy look weak. That’s why he had to set up his own comms team on Twitter – and they’ve done brilliantly.
Indeed. So well, it seems, that some are more than happy to exploit any opportunity to undermine them – even while some of Labour’s natural enemies acknowledge the job they’re doing.
This case study will, I hope, make it all too clear how the mainstream is often responsible for either generating or propagating fake-news, whether it starts by accident or design – and how important it is for us not only to be awake to how it happens, but to take responsibility for getting real news and truer perspectives out into general circulation.
Jeremy’s own team is clearly doing well – but they can’t do it all on their own. Over to you, dear reader.
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