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— Park officials Friday announced the deaths of three young mountain lions found in the Santa Monica Mountains.
On Sept. 30, P-34 was found by a runner on a trail in Point Mugu State Park, according to the National Park Service.
WARNING: Image Contains Graphic Content
“If you’re a mountain lion in the Santa Monica Mountains, this is just not an easy place to grow up,” said Dr. Seth Riley, wildlife ecologist for the National Park Service. “From our roads to rat poisons to potentially increased interactions with other mountain lions, it is very difficult for young animals to make it to adulthood and establish their own home range to reproduce.”
Preliminary results of the necropsy revealed she died as a result of rodenticide, which is also known as rat poisoning. Wounds found on the mountain lion’s face indicated a fight ensued right before her death.
According to research provided by the National Park Service, there has been widespread exposure to rat poisons among wildlife in and around the Santa Monica Mountains.
Officials said two additional mountain lions and many coyotes have died as a result of the poisoning.
National Park Service Biologist Jeff Sikich found the remains of 3-month-old P-43, along with its unknown 3-month-old sibling, located in a remote eastern area of the mountains in September.
Park officials said the young kittens were consumed by another animal. DNA results from UCLA will determine the species of the animal involved in the attack.
At this time, authorities do not believe someone deliberately poisoned the animals. |
PITTSBURGH -- Jordan Staal wanted a family reunion, and the Pittsburgh Penguins obliged.
The Penguins traded the talented center to the Carolina Hurricanes for two players and Carolina's first-round pick in the NHL draft that was held in Pittsburgh on Friday night.
The 23-year-old Staal helped the Penguins win the Stanley Cup in 2009, but reportedly balked at signing a contract extension. Staal has one season left on his current four-year deal. Rather than continue negotiating, the Penguins shipped him to the Hurricanes, where Staal will join brother Eric Staal. Carolina also has Jared Staal -- currently playing in the American Hockey League.
Pittsburgh received center Brandon Sutter and defenseman Brian Dumoulin in the deal as well as Carolina's eighth-overall pick in the draft, which the Penguins used to select defenseman Derrick Pouliot.
On a day when speculation about the future of Columbus star Rick Nash abounded, it was the Penguins who provided the draft with a jolt by sending the popular Staal packing.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman hinted at the impact moments before announcing the trade.
Penguins general manager Ray Shero thanked Staal for his contributions to the franchise before taking Pouliot as the capacity crowd at Consol Energy Center roared its approval. The move is a stunning end to a hugely successful run in Pittsburgh for Staal, the team's sixth pick in the 2006 draft who is getting married this weekend with most of his former Penguins teammates expected to attend. |
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon said during a recent radio interview that he wakes up “every day” hoping that President Trump suffers from a massive stroke.
Mr. Chabon made the comments Monday on the kann Tarbut radio station during an interview with Israeli host Goel Pinto, who said the novelist was being serious when he unloaded on the U.S. president, Breitbart News reported.
“I would love to hear anything you have to say about how to get rid of Donald Trump,” Mr. Chabon said.
Mr. Pinto deflected the question, saying, “tell me your view about your president.”
Mr. Chabon responded, “Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he’s going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney.
“And every day so far, I have been disappointed in that hope,” he said. “But, you know, hope springs eternal. He’s an old guy, he doesn’t eat well, he’s overweight. He has terrible nutrition. He doesn’t exercise and it’s that not that hard to imagine.”
Pulitzer prize winner Michael Chabon: Every morning I wake up and hope that this is the day that trump is going to have a massive stroke pic.twitter.com/avZSHQfnoa — כאן (@kann) June 19, 2017
Mr. Pinto later told Breitbart Jerusalem that he was surprised by the comments.
“At the beginning, I was sure he was joking,” he said. “But when I realized he was serious, I understood the harshness of his words, and how much America is divided.”
Mr. Chabon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001 for “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” did not respond to Breitbart’s request for comment.
The American novelist and 25 other authors launched a book on Sunday titled, “Kingdom of Olives and Ash,” which criticizes Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Jimmy Nielsen was once dubbed the new Peter Schmeichel, but it was gambling rather than goalkeeping that dominated his early career. This is the story of how a Millwall benchwarmer became an MLS icon
In the second of our Football Weekly presents … documentaries, we bring you the story of Jimmy Nielsen, a goalkeeper who had it all, nearly lost everything, and finally hit the jackpot.
Iain Macintosh, editor of The Set Pieces, tells us how the man once dubbed the new Peter Schmeichel – and not just because they shared the same hairstyle and physique – battled his addictions to achieve cult hero status with a late-career hurrah in MLS.
You can read more about Jimmy here, and please give us your feedback on the blog below. There's another goalkeeping tale next week, and if you missed our episode about Robin Friday, head here.
Football Weekly presents … is a collaboration between the Guardian and Howler Radio, the audio offshoot of football quarterly Howler Magazine. It was written and produced in its original form by Matthew Nelson. This reworked version is brought to you Matthew and Producer Ben.
For a limited time, Football Weekly listeners can get a 10% discount on the most recent issue of Howler Magazine with the offer code footballweekly. |
Accepting the "Defender of Israel" award from the World Values Network at the Third Annual Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala last Thursday night, Senator Ted Cruz said that "The nation of Israel has never been in more jeopardy."
As a presidential candidate, he made his support for Israel crystal-clear, and spoke strongly against the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Among his comments were calls for moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, for defunding the Palestinian Authority because of incitement against Israel and partnering with HAMAS, and for defunding the United Nations if it continued to target Israel.
Regarding the BDS movement, which he called "anti-Semitism, plain and simple," Cruz said that any U.S. University that boycotts Israel will forfeit federal taxpayer dollars.
His 15-minute remarks were interrupted after virtually every sentence with loud whoops and applause from a room that included such notables as Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Elie Wiesel, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the U.S.
H/t Joel Gilbert |
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IoT devices from a Chinese vendor contain a weird backdoor that the vendor is refusing to fix, we're told.
The vulnerability was discovered in almost all devices produced by VoIP specialist dbltek, and appears to have been purposely built in as a debugging aid, according to researchers at TrustWave. The infosec biz says that it followed a responsible disclosure process, but claims the manufacturer responded only with modifications to its firmware that leave access open.
Trustwave claims the vendor then cut off contact with it. The security firm says it has since been able to write exploits that open both the old and new backdoors.
The vulnerable firmware is present in almost all dbltek GSM-to-VoIP devices, a range of equipment mostly used by small to medium size businesses, it claims. Trustwave researchers claimed they had found hundreds of at-risk devices on the internet. According to the researchers:
Trustwave recently reported a remotely exploitable issue in the Telnet administrative interface of numerous DblTek branded devices. The issue permits a remote attacker to gain a shell with root privileges on the affected device due to a vendor backdoor in the authentication procedure. An undocumented user, namely "dbladm", is present which provides root level shell access on the device. Instead of a traditional password, this account is protected by a proprietary challenge-response authentication scheme.
Basically, when you try to telnet into the device as dbladm, the gadget tries to connect to UDP port 11000 on 192.168.2.1 on its local network. If it receives a valid response, it grants access. This is perfect for malware, or some other miscreant, lurking on a corporate or home network.
El Reg asked dbltek to respond to Trustwave's accusations on Wednesday but we've yet to hear back from the manufacturer. We'll update this story as and when we hear more.
Trustwave went public with its findings on Thursday. ® |
While the pot bonus crowdfunding drive for CEO 2014 is set to officially begin tomorrow, organizer Alex Jebailey opened the campaign earlier today as a soft launch. If you missed out on our previous report, here’s the deal: by purchasing one (or more!) of the clothing items available via Teespring, you will be able to either support the entire tournament or directly fund the prize pool for one of the event’s eleven official games.
In addition to t-shirts, they are also offering tanks and hoodies for those of you looking for something outside the normal tops most tournaments offer.
Should you be interested in taking part in this promotion, be sure to do so before it ends on April 14. We’ve included individual images of each item in the gallery below, and more information on pricing and shipping is available through CEO Gaming.
Men’s Heather Gray T-Shirt Men’s Yellow T-Shirt Women’s Heather Gray T-Shirt Women’s Yellow T-Shirt Tank Top Hoodie
Be sure to follow the links below to make certain your purchase goes towards the correct game.
Sources: CEO Gaming, Teespring |
Dutch police have arrested a second suspect in relation to a threat in Rotterdam where a rock concert was canceled after a tip from Spanish authorities, NOS said on Thursday.
The new arrest came around 2 am (0000 GMT) in the town of Nordbrabant, which lies near the Belgian border. A 22-year-old man was arrested in his home, which was searched, reported NOS.
"He is in custody and will be questioned about the threat in Rotterdam," police said in a statement, adding that they conducted a thorough search of his home. Dutch police do not generally release identities or other details of suspects in criminal investigations.
Authorities closed off a venue where the US band Allah-Las was set to play in front of around 1,000 spectators. Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb said at a press conference that night that a van full of gas canisters was found near the concert venue.
"He is in custody and will be questioned about the threat in Rotterdam," police said in a statement, adding that they conducted a thorough search of his home. Dutch police do not generally release identities or other details of suspects in criminal investigations.
Meanwhile, police said the driver of a Spain-registered white van carrying a number of gas canisters that was stopped Wednesday night close to the Maassilo concert venue — where the band Allah-Las had been due to perform — is unlikely to be a suspect in the threat probe.
In a statement, police said the man was possibly drunk and will be questioned later Thursday.
Explosives experts checked his van and found nothing suspicious beyond the gas canisters, according to the police statement.
A search of the man's home "uncovered no link with the terror threat ... at the Maassilo," police said. "The man, a repair man, had an explanation for the gas canisters that will be investigated today."
The performance by the Los Angeles band in Rotterdam was called off Wednesday night after Spanish authorities tipped Dutch police about a possible threat to the concert.
The van driver was detained for questioning two hours after the cancellation.
A Spanish counterterrorism official said Spain's Civil Guard received "an alert indicating the possibility of an attack in a concert that was going to take place in Rotterdam."
The Civil Guard shared the information with Dutch authorities Wednesday and was investigating the threat, said the source, who spoke anonymously because the Civil Guard is still probing the threat.
The Dutch counterterror coordinator has not changed the country's threat level as a result of the scare in Rotterdam. The threat is listed as "substantial," the fourth step of a five-level scale.
Authorities in Spain have said that there was, so far, no link between the Rotterdam incident and last week's terrorist attack in Barcelona, according to a report in El Mundo. |
The 2017 NBA offseason was perhaps the most intense and relentless summer in the league's history. Already in the midst of an era of star movement, a handful of big-name players switched teams again, and much of it happened with surrounding drama. But there was a method to the madness. Here's a look at everything you may have missed (or forgotten) in the offseason and what it may mean.
2017 was really about 2018
Transaction season truly started in February, when DeMarcus Cousins was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans. Many of the star players who were moved in the following months had the same thing in common: They will or can be free agents in 2018. Other moves were about setting up cap space for 2018.
Photo by Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images
Cousins was in position to be traded as the Sacramento Kings tried to get out ahead of a possible contract impasse in 2018. The same situation played out with Paul George, who was traded by the Indiana Pacers to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Isaiah Thomas, who is headed for a potentially complex 2018 free agency because of a hip injury, was moved by the Boston Celtics to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
It's even relevant for Chris Paul. He was involved in a blockbuster trade before he became a free agent and picked up a one-year option as part of his move to Houston. He will be a free agent next summer, too. Of course, LeBron James can be a free agent in 2018, as can Carmelo Anthony and Russell Westbrook, if they choose.
The Lakers have been most aggressive in clearing and protecting cap space for next summer. Before drafting Lonzo Ball, they sent D'Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to Brooklyn for Brook Lopez, who comes off the books next summer. It's a safe bet they will be looking for ways to offload Luol Deng's contract as this season unfolds.
Although there was more huge spending throughout the summer, the money dried up for some free agents. Lower cap projections for the future and concerns about luxury tax spending chilled the market a bit by mid-July as teams started thinking more about their 2018 books.
Warriors win again
One of the major reasons a handful of teams chose to focus more on 2018 is because the Warriors show no signs of slowing. They successfully navigated a bit of a challenging summer but ended up in a clean sweep as they re-signed Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, David West, JaVale McGee and Zaza Pachulia. They also added more shooting in Omri Casspi and Nick Young. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo
This was expensive. Curry landed a $200 million deal, and Iguodala used some leverage to squeeze the Warriors into a three-year, $48 million deal. The Warriors, amazingly, have never paid the luxury tax in team history. Those days are about to end in a big way. But the Warriors saw more than $90 million in profit last season and have a new arena on the way that promises to unlock a treasure chest of revenue, so don't worry about them.
Boston takes some risks
The Celtics had a wonderful 2016-17, enjoying a rebirth as a championship contender and an attractive playing style where the collective was often able to triumph. But the front office saw an overachiever, which is probably accurate, and so they went on a mission to essentially blow it up. They will have four new starters this season. They sacrificed several role players to open cap space to sign Gordon Hayward. They traded their most popular player, Thomas, for Kyrie Irving in a deal that could alter the course of two franchises.
Rebuilding a contender on the fly takes guts and power, which Danny Ainge has. But he stuck his neck out by trading down from the No. 1 overall pick and proudly stating that he'd have taken Jayson Tatum, whom he drafted at No. 3, ahead of No. 1 overall pick Markelle Fultz anyway. That's a choice that could shape Ainge's reputation, either way, in the future.
He also elected to stay on the sidelines for Jimmy Butler and George when they were dealt, although he clearly had the assets to beat the offers the Minnesota Timberwolves put forth to land Butler and the Thunder made to get George. Instead he cashed in some big chips for Irving, who has a ring but doesn't have the same two-way résumé as George or Butler. We'll see how it works out.
Unprecedented coaching stability
Over the past year, the Lakers, New York Knicks, Indiana Pacers, Cavs, Atlanta Hawks, Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Clippers have changed leadership in their front offices. Phil Jackson got fired by the Knicks a few days after making a vital draft pick (Frank Ntilikina), and with $24 million left on his contract.
David Griffin couldn't come to terms with the Cavs despite three historic years as GM, kicking off a wild few weeks in Cleveland. Mike Budenholzer and Doc Rivers were both essentially demoted, losing their personnel control. But the 2017-18 season will open with the same 30 coaches as a year ago. This is unprecedented in league history.
The last coach to be fired was Dave Joerger by the Memphis Grizzlies back in May 2016, and even he immediately got another job in Sacramento. Does this mean the NBA is in a golden era of great coaching? Don't count on it. Yes, many teams are happy with their coaches, but insiders are already sensing a bubble. There could be a rash of warming seats and then changes as the season unfolds. |
Umaru Yar'Adua has only given one radio interview since becoming ill
Nigeria's forthcoming election could be held three months earlier than scheduled if electoral reforms are adopted, officials have announced.
The election is due next April but one reform proposes bringing it forward to allow time for legal challenges before the next president is sworn in.
Rescheduling the poll would also end uncertainty caused by the ill-health of President Umaru Yar'Adua.
Politicians are considering changes proposed after a flawed 2007 vote.
Electoral commission head Maurice Iwu said the presidential poll would either be held on 22 January or 23 April 2011.
Mr Yar'Adua's term of office expires in May but he is not expected to stand again.
He went to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment in November last year and, despite returning to Nigeria recently, he has not been seen in public since.
This has left a political vacuum and various factions are jockeying for power.
In his absence, Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan has been installed as acting leader.
But the ruling People's Democratic Party has said its candidate in the next election will be a northerner - ruling out Mr Jonathan.
The BBC's Caroline Duffield in Lagos says reform is crucial if Nigeria is to avoid another cycle of violence and vote-rigging next year.
But opposition politicians have complained that the government diluted the proposals before they were sent to parliament. |
The FCC has homework to finish – a National Broadband Plan due to the Congress in February – and to help get it written, it is starting a blog, cutely named Blogband.
And it's launching a Twitter feed FCCdotGov.
I can't wait for the late nights and the pressure to show up on the Twitter feed:
"@AT&T - The more we look at the data, the more we are convinced your logo is the Death Star"
"@Comcast - You are suing us re: P2P filtering and then want us to listen to you. Sure we will."
"@Public Knowledge - Yes, we will make sure to invite you to the next meeting. Again."
"@TWC - Bring back the download caps. Best argument ever for public owned fiber"
As for the blog, the new FCC chair Julius Genachowski says it's intended to keep the public apprised and to get feedback.
And we're pleasantly surprised by the first real post, written by Blair Levin – the man in charge of writing the broadband plan, who wrote a post complaining about how hard it is to get food when you are working late at night on an NBP.
So maybe there was some kind of karmic reward in two fortune cookies that staff cracked open at the end of our team’s break for Chinese one night. John Horrigan, a data guy we stole from the Pew Internet Project, pulled out a fortune that read "Statistics are no substitute for judgment." Steve Rosenberg, a former McKinsey analyst who is helping on modeling and mapping, opened one that said "No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking." Both fortunes — unusual topics in my many years of opening such cookies – bode well, I think, for the National Broadband Plan.
Epicenter wishes them luck. They will need it.
See Also:
via blogband – Broadband.GOV blog. |
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Two Hong Kong delegates to China’s parliament are pushing to implement mainland security laws months after pro-democracy protesters shut down major parts of the Chinese-controlled city, broadcaster RTHK said on Sunday.
The last time Hong Kong tried to pass national security legislation was in 2003 when half a million people took to the streets, a key lawmaker withdrew his support and the government was forced to withdraw its proposal.
Stanley Ng, chairman of the pro-Beijing Federation of Trade Unions, said his proposal was triggered by the so-called “Occupy Central” protests, Hong Kong’s failure to pass its own national security laws and its lack of laws addressing foreign intervention and secession.
A second Hong Kong delegate to China’s rubber-stamp National People’s Congress, Peter Wong, said he supported the proposal, RTHK said.
Hong Kong, a vibrant former British colony, returned to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula that gives it more autonomy and freedom than the mainland and a goal of universal suffrage
But Beijing’s refusal to grant a fully democratic election for the city’s leader in 2017 infuriated pro-democracy activists and politicians, prompting the Occupy protests.
Government officials have repeatedly accused foreign forces of instigating the unrest.
The annual NPC meeting is scheduled to begin in Beijing in March. |
Several months after I arrived at Mount Koya, the center of Shingon Buddhism in Japan, eventually, I was assigned to teach some of the young monks English. Needless to say, it was very difficult to maintain the taste of samadhi during the complex activity of teaching, but I would still attempt to do so. During the break periods between the monks’ English lessons, I would go off by myself for ten or fifteen minutes and attempt to reconnect to the concentrated state by doing a short sit. Then I would come back and see if I could maintain the taste of the concentrated state during the class. Usually I was unsuccessful, but just making the effort seemed meaningful.
One day before break time, a monk handed me an envelope, saying, “This letter came to the temple for you.” The letter was from one of my fellow graduate students in the Buddhist studies program at the University of Wisconsin. I went off by myself, opened the letter, and read it.
Its contents shook me to the core. My friend informed me that our mutual idol and my personal role model, Dr. Robinson, had suffered a horrific accident in his home. A fuse had burnt out in his basement, and when he went down to change it, he had struck a match for illumination. He didn’t know that a pipe was leaking and the basement was filled with gas. When he lit the match, the gas ignited, turning him into a fireball. He suffered severe burns over most of his body, including his eyes, which were destroyed. He was hovering between life and death; they didn’t know which way it would go. Even if he lived, he would be horribly disfigured and blind. In the end, he lived for about a month in agonizing pain and then died.
Even if you know a dozen languages and possess an intellect the size of Wisconsin, it won’t help a bit when you’re facing such intensities of pain, terror, and grief.
This turned my life upside down. Up to this point, I had devoted myself to the acquisition of information and the honing of my intellect. But so what if you know a dozen languages and possess an intellect the size of Wisconsin? It won’t help a bit when you’re facing such intensities of pain, terror, and grief. Dukkha, “suffering” — the first noble truth of Buddhism — hit me like a ton of bricks. Being in horrible physical and emotional pain could happen to me, in fact probably will happen to me, if only toward the end of my life. And it can also happen to everyone I love or am invested in. Indeed, it already had happened to Richard.
My earliest memories center around an absolute need to avoid physical discomfort and an inability to deal with negative emotions, such as fear or grief, within myself and especially within others. I imagined what it would have been like had I not been in Japan but back in Madison, dealing with the emotions that my friends and colleagues were going through. I realized that I would simply have had to avoid the whole situation. I wouldn’t have been able to visit Richard in the hospital or be with his significant others because I simply wouldn’t have known what to do with the emotions.
Then I imagined what it would have been like to be in his body, writhing in pain day after day. I would have been in abject hell. Between reading that letter and receiving the news of his death a month later, a deep shift occurred in my value system. My academic study of Buddhism, my transient glimpse of enlightenment in during a time I lived in San Francisco, and the beginnings of tasting samadhi had intellectually convinced me that it was, in theory, possible to experience physical and emotional pain without suffering. My idol’s horrific death convinced me, emotionally, that I must pursue this goal. That’s how I transformed from an armchair academic to a committed monastic.
Richard’s accident and death occurred in the summer. That fall, Abbot Nakagawa approached me with a piece of paper upon which were written two Chinese characters: 真 (shin) and 善 (zen). This shin means “truth,” and zen means “goodness.” The abbot asked me if Shinzen (真善) would be an acceptable monk name for me. I was stunned. He was agreeing to ordain me, and giving me a very heavy name. The name spanned the totality of spiritual practice: shin or truth being the liberating wisdom piece, and zen or goodness being the compassionate service piece. Moreover, the name spanned the history of the temple where I had been living. The temple was founded by Prince Shinnyo over one thousand years ago. Famous in Japanese history, Prince Shinnyo was the first Japanese person to attempt to visit the “Western world,” to study Vajrayana directly under Indian masters as opposed to indirectly through Chinese converts. The Shin of my name is the first kanji (character) in Shinnyo’s name and the Zen is the first kanji in the abbot’s name, Zenkyo. In essence, the abbot was saying, “There’s a lineage of masters who have lived here for a thousand years. Take it back with you when you return to the U.S.” I told the abbot that I didn’t think I could live up to the name. He said, “I know that, but is it acceptable to you?” I stuttered, “Yes.”
Abbot Nakagawa told me that if I wanted to be trained in traditional Shingon practice, he would allow it — but I would have to do it the old-fashioned way. I would have to do a solo retreat of one hundred days in winter, most of the time with no source of heat, in complete silence other than occasional instruction from him, and with no meal after noon.
Several months later, as winter approached, and it was getting cold and uncomfortable, Abbot Nakagawa told me that if I wanted to be trained in traditional Shingon practice, he would allow it — but I would have to do it the old-fashioned way. I would have to do a solo retreat of one hundred days in winter, most of the time with no source of heat, in complete silence other than occasional instruction from him, and with no meal after noon.
With all that had happened, I felt that I was now ready for such an ordeal. My training began on December 22, the day of the winter solstice. The abbot had warned me that part of the old-fashioned way involved certain ascetic practices derived not from Buddhism, but from the shamanic tradition of Shinto, Japan’s pre-Buddhist tribal religion. One of the most common methods that tribal cultures use to obtain visions of gods or spirits is through prolonged exposure to extreme hot or cold. In India, Hindus have the “five fires” practice; in North America, Native Americans have the sweat lodge and the sun dance. These involve heat. The traditional Shinto shamanic practice goes in the other direction. It involves cold — squatting under freezing waterfalls in winter, or standing in cold springs, or dousing your body with ice water, and so forth.
Because Shingon is Vajrayana, the main meditation practice involves working with visualizations, mantras, and mudra gestures. You replace your self-image with that of an archetype, you replace your usual mental talk with the mantra of that archetype, and you take on the physical and emotional body experience of that archetype through making mudras — ritual hand gestures. If your concentration is good enough, your identity briefly shifts. You become that archetype. This gives you insight into the arbitrary nature of self-identity. The technical term for this practice is deity yoga because you experience merging (yoga, i.e., “yoking”) with a mythic archetype.
My current way of teaching mindfulness is, in part, informed by this early Shingon training. I have people observe self in terms of inner mental images, mental talk, and emotional body sensation, the three sensory elements used in the Vajrayana deity yoga practice. I’ve created a hybrid approach. What I have people observe is derived from the Japanese Vajrayana paradigm: self = mental image + mental talk + body. But how I have people observe is derived from mindfulness, which has its origin in Southeast Asian Theravada practice. So, in a sense, I have brought the abbot’s lineage back, although probably not quite in the form that he was expecting.
The visualizations, mantras, and mudras are woven together into the framework of a ritual invocation. The traditional basic training (known as kegyo) involves doing three such invocations daily, with the abbot privately initiating you into how to do the ceremonies. The Shinto shamanic piece comes prior to each of the three ritual invocations, when the practitioner is required to do cold-water purification. You have to go to a cistern filled with half-frozen water, break the ice on top, fill a huge wooden bucket, and then squat and dump the bonechilling liquid over your naked body. It’s so cold that the water freezes the moment it touches the floor, and your towel freezes in your hand, so you are sliding around barefoot on ice, trying to dry your body with a frozen hand towel.
For me, this cold-water purification was a horrific ordeal. Maybe being a thin-skinned Californian had something to do with it. I did notice, however, that if I stayed in a state of high concentration while I did it, my distress was noticeably lessened. On the other hand, as soon as my attention wandered, the suffering became unbearable.
For me, this cold-water purification was a horrific ordeal. Maybe being a thin-skinned Californian had something to do with it. I did notice, however, that if I stayed in a state of high concentration while I did it, my distress was noticeably lessened. On the other hand, as soon as my attention wandered, the suffering became unbearable. I could see that this whole training situation was a giant biofeedback device designed to keep a person in some degree of samadhi at all times.
On the third day of this training, as I was about to pour the water over myself, I had an epiphany. It hit me with crystal clarity. I was faced with a trichotomy; the future forked into three branches. I could spend the next ninety-seven days in a state of high concentration all my waking hours, spend them in abject misery, or give up and fail to complete my commitment. The choice was obvious.
When I completed the hundred-day training, it was the spring of a new year, and I had a new self. I had entered the crucible (or should I say cryostat?) of the traditional Shingon training and had come out a different person. From that time on, I was able to consciously experience the taste of high concentration whenever I wanted to. One hundred days subtracted from my life were really a very small price to pay in order to live a totally different kind of life.
Adapted from The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young, new from Sounds True. Reproduced here with permission. |
While the Charlotte Hornets remain above .500 and fourth in the Eastern Conference, last night’s loss against the Brooklyn Nets was another suggestion the team isn’t quite living up to it’s potential. And sure, the Hornets were never pegged by most as a team full of potential, but they’ve managed to keep their heads slightly above the mud that has sunk seven of the next eight teams below the .500 mark, and above a few teams that were expected to leap over them heading into the season. That said, losses like last night keep them closer to the mess below them, rather than with the likes of Toronto and Boston, who have figured it out, or are starting to.
Along with last night, the Hornets have three bad losses this season. The first was the overtime loss to New Orleans, which would have taken them to 9-3 on the season had they won. The second was the overtime loss at home to Minnesota. Put those two games along with last night’s in the win column, and the Hornets are 20-11 and two games up on Boston for third. And I know the dangers of playing the “what if” game, but the Hornets held double-digit leads in all three games and let the opposition come back and win either in regulation or overtime. Considering these three teams rank 11th, 13th, and 14th in their respective conferences, it’s hard not to consider the what if’s.
The trend, both previously and last night, comes from a lack of defensive stops. The Hornets did what they needed to on offense, outscoring the Nets 52-36 in the paint, while also taking care of the ball, committing just 11 turnovers (for the season, they rank second in the league at 11.9 a game).
But defensively, Charlotte couldn’t make enough stops consistently, particularly from the 3-point line. Brooklyn shot 15-31 from beyond the arc, which isn’t good no matter the opponent, but even worse given the Nets rank 29th in the league in 3-point percentage, shooting just 32.8 percent as a team. Both Bojan Bogdanovic and Sean Kilpatrick made 4-7, and of the nine players that attempted a 3-pointer, Joe Harris was the only player who didn’t make one.
Brooklyn did most of their damage in the second and fourth quarters, making five from beyond the arc in each. In the second quarter, Charlotte went on a 7-0 run to extend their lead to 51-38 with 8:44 remaining, forcing Brooklyn to call timeout. At this point it felt as if Charlotte was on the verge of turning a 13 point lead into one of 20 points or more, but Brooklyn managed to trim the deficit, countering Charlotte’s 2-pointers with 3’s, and eventually getting to within six. While Charlotte went into halftime up nine, it was another wasted opportunity to put away an inferior team.
In the fourth, Charlotte failed on four occasions to make a needed stop. After going down by six with 4:18 remaining, Marvin Williams connected from 3 to cut the score in half, but Kilpatrick answered with a 3 of his own to push it back to six. Forty seconds later, Nicolas Batum put Charlotte right back in it after drawing and converting a four point play. Then, after actually getting a defensive stop, Cody Zeller tied it up. Then, Charlotte gave the lead right back, allowing Kilpatrick to knock down his second of the quarter. Bogdanovic launched a 3-pointer over the semi-outstretched hand of Batum, giving Brooklyn a four point lead with a 1:06 remaining. This one was more frustrating than than the previous two, given that Batum sort of let Bogdanovic shoot over him.
And yet despite all of this, the Hornets found themselves up one with 2.3 seconds remaining, until Randy Foye made his only shot of the game:
Kemba Walker does a good job of defending Foye, but better offense won out to end the game in a fitting way.
Losses like this can expose a team’s flaws, and it’s evident the Hornets are not defending well enough from the 3-point line. While they rank a league average 12th in opponent 3-point percentage at 35.3 percent, teams are making 10.6 3-pointers a game against them, which is third highest in the league. Part of Steve Clifford’s defensive system is to defend the paint which partly examples why teams attempt roughly 30 3-pointers a game against them, but the Hornets have to defend from the perimeter better, or at the very least, not allow a bottom ranking 3-point shooting team to make 15 3’s in one game. Putting teams away starts on the defensive end, and Charlotte must do this more consistently or risk being pulled further back into the standings. |
Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel said he would perform the same emotionally-charged monologues about healthcare and gun violence "again in a heartbeat," despite a drastic reduction in Republican viewership of his show.
"Three years ago, I was equally liked by Republicans and Democrats," Kimmel told CBS' "Sunday Morning" of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" which has aired on ABC since 2003. "And then Republican numbers went way down, like 30 percent, or whatever. And you know, as a talk show host, that's not ideal but I would do it again in a heartbeat."
Kimmel earned high praise and sharp rebukes for his foray into the healthcare debate in September, an issue that became particularly important to the comic after his six-month-old son Billy was born with a rare congenital heart defect.
He also garnered similar reactions when he choked up during a monologue imploring Congress to act on gun control in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre earlier in October.
Critics like conservative commentator Ben Shapiro have slammed Kimmel for parading as a "moral arbiter."
"I'm not. I mean, I agree with him. I'm nobody's moral arbiter," Kimmel told CBS. "You don't have to watch the show. You don't have to listen to what I say."
A defiant Kimmel added that he doesn't say "I don't mind" because he preferred "everyone with a television to watch the show."
"But if they're so turned off by my opinion on healthcare and gun violence then, I don't know, I probably wouldn't want to have a conversation with them anyway," he continued. "Not good riddance, but riddance." |
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) (AP Photo/Molly Riley)
This story has been updated.
KANSAS CITY -- Two long-shot Democratic presidential candidates drew strong applause at a Latino conference here Monday for sharply criticizing another long-shot hopeful, Republican Donald Trump, for his incendiary remarks on Mexican immigrants.
In an address to the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) got a standing ovation for his remarks on Trump and “the stain of racism” in America.
"Let me tell you that no one – not Donald Trump, not anyone else – will be successful if dividing us based on race or our country of origin," Sanders said to thunderous applause. "We say ‘no' to all forms of racism and bigotry.”
Later in the day, former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley spoke of "my disgust" at Trump’s comments. He said if Trump wanted to run for president he "should go back to the 1840s and run for the nomination of the Know Nothing Party," the virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic party that flourished in the 19th century.
[Listening to Donald Trump swear and talk politics on his private plane]
"The real problem isn’t that the Republicans have such a hate-spewing character running for president," O'Malley added. "The problem is that it’s so hard to tell him apart from the other candidates."
Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump is on the offense, slamming his 2016 competition — Republicans and Democrats alike. Here's what he has to say about his rivals. (Julie Percha/The Washington Post)
Trump has been denounced by Hispanics across the country for calling saying Mexico was sending "criminals" and "rapists" into the United States, and for describing Mexicans coming over the border "like water."
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton was slated to speak later Monday in a ballroom that seats 1,500. Because Sanders only confirmed his attendance a few days ago, organizers said they could only secure a room that seated 400, leaving hundreds waiting outside.
After talking about the need for a "responsible path to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants and a higher minimum wage to the very receptive crowd – Sanders was asked by a reporter if he thought Donald Trump was racist.
"I don’t want to psychoanalyze Donald Trump. What he said is an outrage," he said.
Sanders also said he plans to bring his message about the "grotesque inequality" in America to Mississippi, Alabama and other "very, very conservative states."
[4 ways Hillary Clinton distanced herself from Bernie Sanders on Monday]
"I was blown away," said Christina Jasso, 52, one of those in the audience for Sanders.
Like many interviewed in the room, Jasso didn’t know much about Sanders, but loved what she heard, including the fact that his father was a Polish immigrant who was poor. "He doesn’t just talk about immigration reform, but the economy and racism – he is the complete package."
Janet Murguia, the president of the National Council of Raza, said although no Republican candidates showed this year, all the major GOP hopefuls were invited except for Trump -- "who doesn’t deserve the honor." |
Analytics for the Business
On July 5, Microsoft announced that Workplace Analytics is now available as an add-on for any Office 365 enterprise plan. The post says: “Workplace Analytics provides unprecedented behavioral insights that can be used to improve productivity, workforce effectiveness and employee engagement.”
Sounds good, but let’s be clear. Workplace Analytics is not something like Teams or Groups that an organization can deploy reasonably simply. This is a full-blown organizational analytics package that companies usually need some consulting support to plan and deploy and then make sense of the data.
Two Analytics in Office 365
Office 365 boasts two analytics applications. The first, launched initially as “Delve Analytics” and now called MyAnalytics, delivers a personal dashboard to help users understand how they spend their working life (Figure 1). The intention is that people reflect on how much time they spent processing email, in meetings, or outside normal working hours and readjust what they do to become more effective, in whatever way you define that term.
For some, being more effective means achieving a better work-life balance. For others, it means realizing just how much time corporate meetings soak from their schedule and then dropping some meetings or reducing the time assigned to others. And for people like me who are email junkies, it might mean a more sensible cadence to the working day with specific periods set aside to process new messages.
I like MyAnalytics a lot, especially now that the development team has refocused their efforts to deliver more personal insights through the MyAnalytics Outlook add-in. Where this add-on used to focus on reporting how quickly recipients read email, now it looks for potential issues like conflicting meetings or unanswered email and flags them to the user. Of course, it is entirely up to you whether you take any note of this advice.
MyAnalytics is available to anyone with an Office 365 E5 license or those who buy a monthly add-on. Not all organizations will welcome this kind of technology. But those who deploy and use it effectively can gain great benefit by taking simple steps like removing redundant meetings by forcing schedulers to consider whether they still need these gatherings. Or, even better, by reducing the default time assigned to meetings from 1 hour to 30 minutes.
Data Drives Analytics
You cannot analyze much without good data. Both MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics draw from the same well of email and calendar data held inside Exchange Online mailboxes and recorded in the Microsoft Graph. To round things out, Azure Active Directory holds information about the organization structure and reporting relationships.
The interesting point is that most of the data is obvious and available to end users and programs alike. Messages have delivery dates and meetings have start and end times and attendees. You can count the number of messages you receive in a day and time how long you spend reading and answering email. You can track who sends you email and to whom you send email. You can tot up the countless hours of fun meetings and note who was in the conference room or Skype call. In short, there is nothing secret here.
Humans are innovative and resourceful, but counting email or figuring out how many hours we spend dealing with work at the weekend is boring. Computers are better at boring, repetitive tasks and especially good at analyzing data gathered from these tasks. MyAnalytics analyzes email and calendar data to understand the people who are important to you, how you communicate, and where your time goes. The output is what people see in their personal dashboard.
Understanding the Workplace
Workplace Analytics does not combine the collective personal dashboards within a tenant to tell management who is productive and who needs some help sorting out their overpacked calendar. Instead, you should consider Workplace Analytics as a tool to help understand how an organization functions.
For instance, among the examples of how organizations use Workplace Analytics included in Microsoft’s post are:
“…the behaviors of managers were pivotal in determining employee engagement and retention”
“…analyzed the metadata attached to employee calendar items to calculate the travel time associated with meetings.”
Anyone who has ever worked inside a large organization likely understands that how direct-line managers deal with employees directly affects how people work and whether they stay with the company. The same is true for travel time. If you force people to come into central offices to attend meetings, you expect a productivity hit when attendees are traveling to the meetings.
The critical item to understand is that Workplace Analytics generates a set of collaboration metrics that analysts can use to detect inefficiencies and problems within a company. Like anything dealing with people, this is an imperfect science, and context is all-important in understanding why people work the way that they do.
Workplace Analytics is only available to Office 365 enterprise tenants with over 5,000 seats. The cost is $6/user per month unless you have Office 365 E5 licenses, in which case the cost is $2/user per month. The price of Workplace Analytics is enough to pause for thought. In addition, before you deploy, consider that you probably need to do some up-front work such as working with HR to ensure employee privacy is respected, establishing the core population for analysis, setting the goals for the exercise, and so on.
Outside the U.S. or in multi-national companies where worker unions or councils are more common, it is probable that approval is necessary from these bodies before any analysis can go ahead. For these and other reasons, you will likely need help from outside consultants with expertise in similar exercises to help run the project and gain usable results.
Some Data Gaps
Another thing to consider is that MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics both focus in on email and calendar data and do not look at other areas of activity within Office 365. Analysis includes time spent on Skype calls if it is in your calendar but not otherwise. But it ignores the time composing an article like this in Word, even if you store the document in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. Chatting in Teams or Yammer is also outside the current boundary for analysis.
A Good Start, but Lots More to Do
Microsoft is at the start of the analytics journey within Office 365. The Office Graph captures thousands of interactions for an active user monthly. The question is how to mine and analyze this data so that the output is valuable for individuals and the business. MyAnalytics is a good start for personal analysis. We will have to wait to see how Office 365 tenants embrace Workplace Analytics.
Follow Tony on Twitter @12Knocksinna.
Want to know more about how to manage Office 365? Find what you need to know in “Office 365 for IT Pros”, the most comprehensive eBook covering all aspects of Office 365. Available in PDF and EPUB formats (suitable for iBooks) or for Amazon Kindle. |
LAGUNA NIGUEL – Local and federal law enforcement authorities descended on a house in Laguna Niguel Thursday morning to investigate two men suspected as traffickers in counterfeit hair straighteners, which if poorly made can pose significant safety hazards to consumers, including burning and electrocution.
About 10 investigators with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and special ICE Homeland Security Investigations agents combed through the garage and the single-story house in the 29500 block of Pelican Way near Niguel Road and Alicia Parkway.
The home is owned by Seyed Rafizadeh, according to property records. Twin brothers Mohsen and Hosein Rafizadeh, 24, live in the home, according to an affidavit in support of a search warrant that was signed March 19 by Shawn Porter, an investigator with the D.A.’s Major Fraud Unit.
In addition to the Laguna Niguel property, investigators also searched a home and car in Aliso Viejo owned by Masoud “Alex” Ahmadpourbahnamiri in connection with the case, along with a PayPal account registered to the email address [email protected], according to the affidavit.
Investigators believe Ahmadpourbahnamiri is an employee of the Rafizadeh brothers.
The focus of the probe is a business that operates under the name Briskdeals.com, which is owned by the Rafizadeh brothers and is linked to numerous international parcel shipments from China, including one shipment that was seized in July by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and determined to be counterfeit, according to the affidavit.
Mohsen Rafizadeh said Thursday afternoon that he thinks the raid was a misunderstanding. He said he imports some goods from China, such as iPad accessories and folding camping knives, and purchased goods at the International Consumer Electronics Show and from government liquidation websites. He said U.S. Customs officials have examined his products from China to make sure they’re not counterfeit.
Mohsen Rafizaden also said his brother had just come from being in Iran for six months, and investigators “thought he was doing something with the government” and asked him if he was bringing money into the country.
The UCI electrical engineering graduate student said the raid gave his mother an anxiety attack and law enforcement authorities called an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
“They attacked the house like they thought we had guns, like we’re a gang or gun-running or something,” he said.
He said Briskdeals.com is a daily deals site. As of Thursday afternoon, the site primarily offered SilverCut folding knives and Roxanni iPad cases with built-in Bluetooth keyboards. The daily deal was for a black cocktail dress.
The affidavit alleges Briskdeals.com infringes upon trademarks owned by Chi Curling Irons and GHD, as well as lnStyle hair hot irons.
Investigators believe that as of October 2011, Briskdeals had sold through its website about 1,260 counterfeit GHD hair-straightening irons, with an estimated retail value of $237,975, and about 1,307 GHD irons that have an estimated retail value of $210,030, according to the affidavit.
The items were sold through Briskdeals’ website for about $60 each. The genuine products typically can fetch about twice that amount.
On its website, Briskdeals calls itself a “next generation shopping site” and says, “We also find the best product deals for the customers to savor.”
Investigators took Mohsen Rafizaden’s laptop, school research papers, business invoices and bills, and samples of products, he said.
Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, declined to comment on the case because it is ongoing, but she said Homeland Security investigations agents encounter all kinds of illegally imported counterfeit products.
“It runs the gamut from pharmaceuticals and motor oil to designer clothing and car airbags,” Kice said.
“When it comes to counterfeit goods, the expression ‘buyer beware’ has never been more true. Part of what you’re paying for when you buy established brands is quality control. When you purchase counterfeits, you can easily get something you hadn’t bargained for – something that could pose a significant health or safety risk.”
Counterfeit hair stylers can overheat, causing low-quality plastic casing to melt, which presents a high risk of burn injuries to the hair, scalp, face and hands, said Jeffrey Eastman, the lead investigator on the case and a special agent with ICE/Homeland Security Investigations.
A counterfeit styler’s heating plate also can come loose and lead to a potential exposure to live wires and a high risk of electrocution, Eastman said.
Contact the writer: 714-704-3764 or [email protected] |
During a Fox News roundtable today discussing a Colorado bill that would allow women to carry concealed weapons to prevent sexual assault at colleges, The Five co-host Bob Beckel delivered this Twitter-baiting beauty: “When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?”
It’s worth pointing out that Beckel’s fellow Five-ers were quick to counter such a claim. “What are you talking about?” said Eric Bolling, who like Beckel isn’t exactly known as a voice of reason. “It’s rampant.” Less surprising than Beckel’s comment, of course, was that the panel went on to conclude that the best solution to stopping date rape and other sexual assaults on college campuses is by arming students. “If your date is a rapist, you shoot them,” explained Kimberly Guilfoyle, striking a familiar gun-rights talking point that guns make women safer (a claim that researchers have pretty much debunked).
As you watch the clip below, it’s also worth keeping an eye on former Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino who wonders whether maybe not “everybody needs to be armed” before quickly backpedaling in the face of a moment of stunned silence from her fellow co-hosts.
Beckel, who served in Jimmy Carter’s State Department and later ran Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign, often serves as something of the de facto liberal voice on the Fox News program (or at least what counts for it on the conservative-leaning cable channel). Liberals, of course, would probably prefer to be represented by someone who poses more nuanced hypotheticals than ones involving a drunken and gun-toting fraternity wandering on to campus.
Lest we lose track of what’s clearly much more important than the chattering of the chattering class, a few key stats: The Centers for Disease Control estimate that as many as 1 in 4 women in college have reported being the target of an attempted or completed rape while in school; Violence Policy Center research showed that in 1998, the year they studied, “for every time a woman used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in self-defense, 83 woman were murdered by an intimate acquaintance with a handgun.” More relevant stats here.
This post was updated at 3:21 p.m. with additional information and analysis. The last graph was also tweaked for the sake of clarity.
***Follow @JoshVoorhees and the rest of the @slatest team on Twitter.*** |
Three football fans said they were "furious and humiliated" after being detained at a rugby league match for using their mobile telephones in a manner an onlooker deemed suspicious.
Dozens of people who claim they were unfairly swept up by authorities in the past few weeks are pursuing legal action, as the terrorism climate heats up in Australia.
Three rugby fans of Middle Eastern appearance were singled out by a spectator for allegedly using their mobile phones in a suspicious manner during the game. Credit:Andrew Quilty
Three men of Middle Eastern appearance were pointed out by a spectator at the Roosters-Cowboys game on Friday night because they were using their mobile phones in a way that did not match what was happening on the field, Fairfax Media understands.
They were removed by police in the 60th minute and questioned for about half an hour. The three men were so incensed they contacted lawyer Adam Houda, who will demand an apology or take civil action on the men's behalf. |
Bridesmaids director Paul Feig has emerged as the surprise frontrunner to direct Ghostbusters 3, the long-gestating second sequel to the iconic 1984 supernatural comedy. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures is now planning a revamp focusing on female Ghostbusters.
Feig also directed last year's hit buddy cop comedy The Heat, starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as a pair of odd couple detectives. His appointment would take a project that has suffered due to the disinterest so far shown by the original Ghostbusters star Bill Murray in a headline-grabbing new direction. However, the Hollywood Reporter stresses that Feig has simply shown interest at this stage and is not yet in active negotiations. He is now Sony's first choice to direct.
Ghostbusters 3 suffered a setback in March when Ivan Reitman, who oversaw both the original Ghostbusters and its less well received 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters 2, made the decision to walk away as director following the death of original star Harold Ramis in February.
The film's screenplay has been rewritten a number of times over the past few years by a succession of writers. The most recent version, from Bad Teacher producer-writer team Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, had focused on a new generation of Ghostbusters with previous stars in cameo roles. However, that approach now appears to have foundered following Ramis's death and Murray's continued reluctance to join the project. Ramis and Murray played Egon Spengler and Peter Venkman, alongside Dan Aykroyd as Ray Stantz and Ernie Hudson as Winston Zeddemore, in the original Ghostbusters.
• Full coverage: Ghostbusters |
Share. Look for it this fall. Look for it this fall.
Today, IGN can confirm that Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN is coming to North America, and will be available this fall for both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. The game will be localized and published by Aksys, a publisher with a proud lineage of bringing niche Japanese titles to western players. The status of its release in other western territories, including Europe, is still unknown.
Since Guilty Gear first launched in 1998, the series has been developed by fighting game studio Arc System Works, and Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN is no different. It's set a year after Guilty Gear 2: Overture, in the year 2187, and includes both familiar and all-new playable characters, including a brand new antagonist, Ramlethal Valentine.
According to Aksys, Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN will retain some of the franchise's signature systems, such as Roman Cancels, but that many of these systems have been "significantly expanded and improved." Arc System Work's beautiful 2D art and animations will again be a focal point of the game, and Daisuke Ishiwatari, long-time Guilty Gear composer, is again in charge of the soundtrack.
Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN will be playable at E3, and we'll have more information about the game at that time. In the meantime, check out our Guilty Gear Xrd SIGN image gallery for the very first batch of screens.
Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter. |
On yesterday’s edition of “Washington Watch,” the Family Research Council’s Craig James and Travis Weber discussed a federal judge’s decision to strike down Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage, warning that the decision will have dangerous and unforeseen consequences.
After James denounced the judge for “overriding and striking down the will of the people,” Weber lamented that the judge’s “inability to comprehend any moral components or any moral insight into marriage” is “very dangerous” as it could pave the way for Big Government tyranny.
“People need to be alarmed,” Weber continued. “We kind of need to step back from this issue — the issue of marriage. Mention it and people get all uptight and they come at it with their preconceived opinions.”
“If we just kind of step back and take a quick history lesson, we can look throughout history at many governments that viewed moral authority as simply ending with the state and there is nothing above that, there is no insight into law beyond what the state itself said it was. Do we want that? No, all we need to do is look at the horror which that view has wrought upon humanity.” |
Some senior GOP women are fleeing the House, opting for retirement or deciding that they have better prospects running for higher office in 2018 than a spot in GOP leadership.
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, is expected to jump into the race against Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill Claire Conner McCaskillPoll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell McCaskill: Lindsey Graham 'has lost his mind' Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor MORE. GOP Rep. Kristi Noem is the front-runner in the race for South Dakota governor. And Republican Rep. Diane Black Diane Lynn BlackLamar Alexander's exit marks end of an era in evolving Tennessee Juan Williams: The GOP's worsening problem with women How to reform the federal electric vehicle tax credit MORE, the new Budget Committee chairwoman, is eyeing the Tennessee governor’s mansion, GOP sources said.
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Meanwhile, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a former Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman and the first Latina elected to Congress, and Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), who formerly served in leadership as GOP conference vice chairwoman, both are retiring at the end of this Congress.
In interviews with The Hill, some female GOP lawmakers and their aides suggested that subtle sexism in the male-dominated House Republican Conference has blocked talented, experienced women from climbing the leadership ladder. Women comprise just 21 of the 238 Republicans in the House, or less than 10 percent.
Of the 193 House Democrats with full voting privileges, there are 62 women — 32 percent of the caucus.
“You think it would be helpful to be a female, but it’s sort of a detraction. I can’t believe I would say that, but it shows,” Ros-Lehtinen told The Hill. “Some of these guys, they just see themselves in those [top leadership] positions and they want it for themselves. And they think if it goes to a woman they will never be able to grab it again.
“There are better staircases to use which will get you further than being in the House. That’s the reason they are running for other offices.”
Democrats can point to Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE, who was the first woman nominated for president by a major party, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the first woman elected Speaker.
No woman has ever climbed higher than House Republican Conference chair, the No. 4 post in leadership. That means there has never been a female GOP Speaker, majority leader or majority whip.
Current Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers Cathy McMorris RodgersHillicon Valley: Republicans demand answers from mobile carriers on data practices | Top carriers to stop selling location data | DOJ probing Huawei | T-Mobile execs stayed at Trump hotel as merger awaited approval House Republicans question mobile carriers on data practices Washington governor announces killer whale recovery plan MORE (R-Wash.) is the only woman on Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE’s (R-Wis.) current leadership team, but she’s been unable to advance any further.
Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE’s (R-Ohio) forced resignation in 2015 set off a leadership scramble. McMorris Rodgers, Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and then-Rep, Tom Price (R-Ga.) vied for majority leader, but McMorris Rodgers quickly dropped out of the race once it became clear she didn’t have enough support. That race was called off after Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) abruptly abandoned his bid for Speaker and decided to remain in the No. 2 post.
But the episode proved once again that the GOP conference was not going to promote a woman to any of the “Big Three” leadership jobs. Earlier this year, several media outlets reported that President Trump had picked McMorris Rodgers to be his Interior secretary, but he changed his mind and instead gave the job to Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.).
“You won’t see a woman in a leadership spot besides conference chair for many years. The House GOP isn’t built for it,” fumed a top aide to a female GOP lawmaker. “There are too many well-meaning Southern men who wouldn’t vote for a strong assertive women when the other choice is another Southern man.”
“I don’t think there is a concerted effort to keep women out of leadership,” the staffer said. “But given a choice, this conference will always go the other way.”
In an interview Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers downplayed the idea of a House GOP glass ceiling, calling the lower chamber “a farm team where people always come to get experience to run for higher office.” But she acknowledged the challenges women face in Congress are similar to those in other workplaces.
“I think what’s happening in Congress is not that much different than the national conversation that we’re having as a society about women who are filling these roles that have traditionally been held by men,” McMorris Rodgers told The Hill.
House Republicans have been criticized in the past for not being more cognizant on gender matters. For example, Democrats in 2012 cried foul when a GOP-led panel heard from an all-male panel about an Obama-era policy on contraception.
In March, a photograph from a healthcare meeting at the White House attended by Trump, Vice President Pence and the all-male House Freedom Caucus did not include a single woman. A photo-op of Trump and House Republicans celebrating their healthcare victory in the Rose Garden also was similarly panned.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) attracted criticism by assembling a 13-member, all-male panel to work on a Senate version of the repeal-and-replace legislation. McConnell has since added GOP women to the working group. The top GOP leaders in the Senate are also all men.
“Those photos with President Trump and the White House, it’s a bunch of guys and then the healthcare [Senate] group. ... Photo after photo, they just don’t get it,” Ros-Lehtinen said.
Ros-Lehtinen, who is one of only two Republican women on the Foreign Affairs Committee and served two years as that panel’s chairwoman, has been a vocal critic of Trump and said he’s “not my cup of tea.” But it’s not “disillusionment or discomfort with the current political climate” that’s driving her into retirement, she said.
The dean of the Florida delegation also said quitting Congress has nothing to do with fears she could be defeated in 2018, though Clinton beat Trump by about 20 points in her Miami-area district.
Ros-Lehtinen, 64, said she’s simply ready for something different after nearly three decades in the House.
Other House GOP women have chosen a similar path. Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis Cynthia Marie LummisTrump picks ex-oil lobbyist David Bernhardt for Interior secretary Trump’s shifting Cabinet to introduce new faces The Hill's Morning Report — What a shutdown would mean for the government MORE’s retirement in 2016 left the 30-member Freedom Caucus without a single female member. And the recent retirement of House Administration Chairwoman Candice Miller (R-Mich.), the sole woman among the 22 GOP committee chairmen, sent Ryan and his team scrambling to find more chairwomen.
Rep. Virginia Foxx Virginia Ann FoxxBlack Caucus sees power grow with new Democratic majority A 2 billion challenge: Transforming US grant reporting Trump calls North Carolina redistricting ruling ‘unfair’ MORE (R-N.C.), who served on Ryan’s leadership team as GOP conference secretary, was elected chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Ryan also named Rep. Susan Brooks Susan Wiant BrooksThe Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race House Dems release 2020 GOP 'retirements to watch' for House Dems unveil initial GOP targets in 2020 MORE (R-Ind.) as chair of the House Ethics Committee, an appointed post.
Republicans got a third committee chairwoman in February when the Ryan-aligned Steering Committee picked Black to succeed Price as head of the Budget panel after Trump tapped him to be his Health and Human Services secretary.
But she may not stay for long. Her spokeswoman, Hillary Lassiter, said Black is completely focused on her work on the Budget panel. But other sources close to the four-term lawmaker and former nurse said she is likely to announce a Tennessee gubernatorial bid later this year.
“I think it is very likely that she runs. I would be surprised if she didn’t,” said a GOP source close to Black.
House GOP women are leading in other ways as well, McMorris Rodgers said. Reps. Marsha Blackburn Marsha BlackburnTrump’s new Syria timetable raises concern among key anti-ISIS allies Dem lawmaker invites Parkland survivor to attend State of the Union Bipartisan senators press Trump for strategy to protect Syrian Kurds MORE (Tenn.), Vicky Hartzler (Mo.) and Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) all hold influential subcommittee gavels, and Stefanik is the first woman to head up 2018 recruitment efforts for the House GOP’s campaign arm. During the last Congress, Blackburn led a committee charged with investigating Planned Parenthood.
“We still have a lot of work to do as a party. Unfortunately we lose women at the same rate as we’re gaining women,” McMorris Rodgers said. “We need to continue to work to recruit more women to run, help them run a successful campaign, and help them win their races so they can serve in the House.” |
In May, we wrote about 13-year-old Ali Chaney of Texas, who was reprimanded by school officials for proudly wearing a T-shirt that read, “Some people are gay. Get over it!” While the school deemed the message “disruptive,” Chaney’s mom vocally supported her lesbian daughter’s right to express herself, as did a slew of commenters on social media, as well as Lambda Legal.
And now comes this twisted update: an antigay Facebook message sent to Chaney’s mom, Cassie Watson, apparently from the account of a local elementary school teacher, warning that the teen could be the next victim of an Orlando-style massacre.
“In light of the Orlando incident wear all gay people were openly slaughtered, I wonder if you’d still let your daughter wear the t-shirt to school that caused public controversy and may have subjected her to possible harm by others?” read the message, which was sent to Watson at 4:53 a.m. on Monday. “Being gay isn’t a crime but publicly forcing your opinion upon others, and to do it through your child at school, will always be offensive to others.”
View photos
The message — which referenced the tragic June 12 massacre in which a gunman killed 49 revelers at the LGBT nightclub Pulse — came from the account of Janice Williams, an elementary teacher in the neighboring Killeen, Texas, school district, about 10 miles away from Chaney’s middle school in Copperas Cove. After the message was reported by KCEN, however, Williams provided a statement to the news station claiming that her Facebook account had been hacked.
“My FB account was hacked yesterday and I was not responsible for the message sent to the lady causing her to believe that her child would be harmed. It took several attempts to delete the account after notifying FB that my account had been hacked. I have lived my life protecting the rights of others and being an advocate for ALL children. I’m saddened that a hacker can cause such negativity and division among so many people. Please give my sincerest apology to this woman and her child. Thank you.”
Williams did not return an email request for comment from Yahoo Style.
A Facebook spokesperson told Yahoo Style that the company does not comment on individual accounts — nor would he comment on any general characteristics of what a hacked account would look like.
Watson, who posted a screenshot of the message on her own Facebook page on Monday, did so along with the caption “Interesting to wake up to.” Then KCEN reported Williams’s claim that her account had been hacked, which Watson posted, inspiring commenters to chime in with thoughts including “Total BS,” “You have got to be kidding,” “… she realized she messed up and is now scared as hell,” and “She is just trying to save her job!!” As for Watson’s take? She told KCEN the following: “I would hate to ruin somebody’s career over a simple message. But if this is how she truly feels, and there is a possibility that she could be teaching our young kids these lessons, then I absolutely believe that she may need to find a new profession.”
Read this next: How the Orlando Shootings Affect the LGBT Community
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Sprouts Explained
Article by Jennifer Piggott and Jo Scholten
The game
This article invites you to get familiar with a strategic game called "sprouts" which appears here on the NRICH site. The game is simple enough for younger children to understand, and has also provided experienced mathematicians with significant food for thought. After a description of the basic game, this article will suggest a few ways to explore it.
The game of Sprouts was invented in 1967 by two mathematicians John H. Conway and Michael S. Paterson, when they were both at the University of Cambridge in the UK. The game was popularised by one of Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" columns in Scientific American. Here is a quote from Conway:
"The day after sprouts sprouted, it seemed that everyone was playing it, at coffee or tea times, there were little groups of people peering over ridiculous to fantastic sprout positions."
Sprouts is a game for two players. All you really need is paper and a pencil.. The game starts by drawing any number of spots. In this example we are going to look at 3 spots.
The first player has a turn by joining two of the spots and marking a new spot in the middle of the line. Or the line may start and end on the same spot.
Rules:
You are not allowed to draw a line which crosses another line. This is important to remember!
A spot cannot have more than three lines leading to or from it. For example, in the game below, spots A and B cannot be used any more because they already have three lines.
The idea is to make it impossible for the other player to draw a line.
So the last person to draw a line is the winner.
Over to you!
Find a friend to play the game with. We suggest that you limit the number of spots to 3. Try playing several games to get the hang of it. Here are a few questions to focus your mind, but don?t try to answer them until you have played the game a few times, and feel confident with the rules.
Does the person who goes first or second tend to win?
Can you explain any winning tactics?
The game must end after a limited number of moves. Explain why. (Hint: you might find it useful to explain this in terms of "liberties". The liberties of a spot equals 3 minus the number of lines drawn from that spot.)
Conway notation:
How did you explain the winning tactics? In discussing this game, several enthusists have found it helpful to adopt a form of notation to communicate their ideas and strategies. We often use notation to explain our ideas in mathematics, and you might find it interesting to learn a little about Conway notation, the official notation of the WGOSA (The World Game of Sprouts Association). It began to evolve in 1999 in a discussion on the mathforum website.
Extending the game to different numbers of spots:
The strategy becomes more complex as you increase the number of spots, although WGOSA suggests that live spots at the end of the game are the key to making the game fun to play. (A "live" spot is a spot that is not "dead". A "dead" spot has 3 lines attached to it and is therefore out of the game.) These live spots at game's end are called "survivors".
Suppose a normal sprouts game begins with an even number of spots. Which player is likely to win and what can you say about the number of survivors (1)? If the game started with an odd number of spots what would you expect to happen and what could you say about the number of survivors (2)?
Proofs to be explored:
There is quite a lot of nice mathematics that can be gleaned from the game. What follows is a look at a few proofs. Stephan Duerr has summarised some of these, and added his own at the web site given below.
Enthusiasts have come up with a terminology that is useful to the proofs. These are all given below:
The "liberties" of a spot equal three minus the number of lines emerging from the spot.
A spot is "dead" if it has no liberties.
A "survivor" is a live spot at game's end.
A "guard" is a dead spot that is one of the two nearest neighbours of a survivor (see more details below).
A "pharisee" is a dead spot that is not a guard.
A "region" is an area of white space on the paper bounded by lines. The region extending off to the horizon is called "outer region", all other regions are "inner regions". At game's start, there is one region.
A "cluster" (or "clump") consists of all spots that are directly or indirectly connected by lines. An "indirect" connection means that there are other spots along the connection. The smallest possible cluster consists of just one unattached spot. At the beginning of a game with n spots there are n clusters.
The lines emerging from a spot divide the area around the spot into "sites". Spots have as many sites as lines, except for no lines, where there is one site.
Let:
$n=$ number of spots at the beginning of the game
$d=$ number of dead spots
$m=$ number of moves
$s=$ number of survivors
$p=$ number of pharisees
$c=$ number of clusters
$r=$ number of regions
$L=$ number of liberties
A few to get your teeth into?
All of these proofs have been taken from work by contributors to the maths forum.
Prove that the number of liberties at any time can be expressed as $L=3n-m$
Each spot has $3$ liberties at the beginning of the game. There are $n$ spots. Hence at the beginning of the game there are $3n$ liberties.
Each move reduces the number of liberties by $1$. This is because the two spots that are joined result in $2$ liberties being lost, whilst the spot that is added results in $1$ liberty being added.
Hence $L=3n-m$.
Prove that the maximum number of moves can be expressed as $m\leq 3n-1$.
At the game's end, each survivor has exactly $1$ liberty (otherwise you could connect the survivor to itself), hence $s=3n-m$.
$s\geq 1$ hence $3n-m\geq 1$.
Rearranging this gives $3n-1\geq m$ or $m\leq 3n-1$.
Prove that the minimum number of moves can be expressed as $m\geq2n$.
At the end of a game, each survivor is surrounded by $2$ guards.
These guards are spots that are dead in one of two ways:
If any guard were live, the game could be continued by connecting the guard to the survivor. Each guard has at least two of its sites accessing a region that is also accessible to the survivor. Since no two survivors can access the same region (otherwise we could connect the survivors), no spot can be a guard for two different survivors.
A pharisee is a dead spot that is not a guard.
The number of pharisees is the total number of spots minus the number of survivors and minus the number of guards. Written algebraically:
$$p=n+m-s-2s$$ $$p=n+m-3s$$ $$p=n+m-3(3n-m)$$ $$p=n+m-9n+3m$$
Hence $p=4m-8n$
Rearranging this equation gives us $m=p/4 + 2n$.
If the game is played so that there are no Pharisees, that is a game is played with the minimum number of moves, then $m=2n$.
So we can say that $m\geq 2n$.
Prove that the maximum number of regions can be expressed as $r\leq 2n+1$
There are exactly two types of moves in sprouts. One type merges two clusters, the other type creates a new region.
Because the number of regions either increases by $1$ or the number of clusters decreases by $1$, we can deduce that each move increases $r-c$ by $1$, or that $r-c-m$ must be constant throughout the game.
At the beginning of a game, $r=1$, $c=n$ and $m=0$.
From this we can deduce that $r-c-m=1-n-0$ which can be rearranged to give: $$r=1-n+c+m$$
At the end of the game, as we have already seen, $s=3n-m$, or $m=3n-s$.
Substituting this equation into the above we have: $$r=1-n+c+3n-s$$ which simplifies to: $$r=2n+1+c-s$$ Every cluster must contain at least one live spot, namely the spot of the cluster that was last to be placed on the paper. From this we can say $c\leq s$.
As $c\leq s$, then $c-s\leq 0$. We can substitute this into $r=2n+1+c-s$ to give: $$r\leq 2n+1$$.
In conclusion
Sprouts is an intriguing game which contains some interesting mathematics. Have fun with the game, and may sprouts continue sprouting!
References
http://www.madras.fife.sch.uk/departments/Mathematics/activities/games/sprouts.html
Some answers: |
Mississippi Democrat Brandon Presley
While Sen. Roger Wicker may need to watch his back in the GOP primary if state Sen. Chris McDaniel runs, Mississippi Republicans rarely have much to worry about from Team Blue here anymore. Still, one interesting Democrat is making noises about running. The Daily Journal's Bobby Harrison writes that Brandon Presley, who chairs the three-member state Public Service Commissioner, has not ruled out getting in, and has only said he enjoys his current gig. For his part, Presley tweeted a link to the article and wrote, "A Presley in the Senate? You can bet that lazy DC bunch needs to be 'All Shook Up'!" And yes, he is related to Elvis.
Presley, who represents northern Mississippi on the commission, has been mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for higher office for a while. In late 2014, Presley raised some eyebrows when he held a Washington fundraiser hosted by some big names. There was speculation that Presley could run for lieutenant governor or even challenge Republican Gov. Phil Bryant in 2015, and he didn't do anything to dispel the rumors for months. However, Presley ended up running for re-election, and he won 61-39.
The next year, Presley's district backed Trump 61-37, a little to the right of his statewide 58-40 win. There aren't too many Mississippi Democrats left who have won territory this red with a D next to their name (public service commission races are partisan), and if Presley actually is interested, he could have the name-recognition and connections to make things interesting. Still, this is an incredibly tough state under the very best of circumstances, and even the prospect of McDaniel as the GOP nominee may not be enough to put it in play.
There may also be more unpredictability in store this cycle in Mississippi. Sen. Thad Cochran, who narrowly beat McDaniel in the 2014 primary runoff, isn't up until 2020. However, Politico reports that 79-year old incumbent "appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday." Cochran insists he's not going anywhere, but political observers are speculating whom Bryant could appoint to the seat if Cochran doesn't complete his term. |
For the last few years, as the South Carolina Gamecocks football team rose to heights that the program hadn't experienced in more than a century of history, there was one specter that haunted the dreams of Gamecock fans: When would Steve Spurrier retire?
After all, no one else has ever been able to do what Spurrier has done in Columbia. And the track record of programs that hire head coaches to replace legends has been mixed at best. It seemed inevitable that the end of Spurrier's tenure would be a negative for South Carolina, something that the Gamecocks should try to push as far into the future as possible.
But as Kentucky won in Columbia on Saturday night for the first time in 16 years -- the first time since South Carolina went 0-11 during Lou Holtz's first season -- it became clear that Steve Spurrier leaving his position as head coach of the Gamecocks would not be the worst thing that could happen to the program. It became clear, at least to this me, that it is time for Steve Spurrier to retire.
I don't type those words with any joy or even any anger, though there was certainly some of the latter as I watched South Carolina once again fall victim to the kinds of mistakes that have led a program that went 42-11 over a four-year span from 2010-13 to slump to 8-7 since the beginning of last season. I have always thought I would be one of the last South Carolina fans to abandon Spurrier or even suggest that he should go, because I have such a deep appreciation for what he has done in Columbia and because I like his attitude and outlook on college football. I love the fact that he's able to keep football in perspective and have fun both with the game and his comments about it.
At this point, though, the only way for Spurrier to preserve his legacy and allow someone else to build on what he leaves behind is for him to quietly tell Athletics Director Ray Tanner that he will retire at the end of the season. Otherwise, he risks doing the kind of damage to South Carolina's program that Jackie Sherrill did to Mississippi State in his last few seasons, or that Bobby Bowden did to Florida State before finally giving way to Jimbo Fisher. And given the lack of a head-coach-in-waiting and the similarities between their places in the recruiting world, a messy denouement for Spurrier is more likely to lead to the decade-plus of recovery that Mississippi State faced after Sherrill's tenure than the relatively quick bounce-back we've seen in Tallahassee since Bowden's departure.
Recruiting is one of the major reasons that it is best if Spurrier retires now. Given his infamous two-or-three-years comments and how those remarks have wreaked havoc on the Gamecocks' recruiting class in 2015 and are likely to do the same in 2016, there is no longer any way that the Head Ball Coach can undertake the rebuilding process that is needed in Columbia. I am not one of those who believes that recruiting is destiny; if it were, then Missouri would not be the two-time defending champions of the SEC East and Ron Zook could start working on his remarks for his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame. But it is vital to the success of any program, and if you can't recruit well in the SEC, you're losing ground.
And losing ground is the thing that worries me the most about Saturday's loss. Isn't it possible that Kentucky is just a better team than it used to be, one person tweeted at me during the game. But even if that's true, it's part of the point. If Kentucky starts to consistently beat South Carolina and the Wildcats pass up the Gamecocks in the SEC East, Spurrier's program will be falling behind where it once was. Kentucky has now defeated South Carolina in back-to-back years for the first time since 1998-99, when the program went 1-21. South Carolina has come too far to return to that level.
The only plausible case that could be made for Spurrier staying around is the notion that, despite all appearances to the contrary, the Kentucky loss was a fluke or that Spurrier can find some MacGyver-esque way to squeeze seven or eight or even nine wins out of this team. Even if he can do that, though, it seems more like a way for him to exit gracefully than a reason for him to stick around. Because this team as it is currently constructed cannot consistently win 10 games, or get to the SEC Championship Game, or achieve any of the other goals that have come to define success at South Carolina over the last few years.
The choice for South Carolina now is between two or three lost recruiting classes for no purpose other than seeing if Spurrier has another magical season in him, or taking a risk on hiring a new coach and giving him two or three season to try to rebuild the program. Steve Spurrier will not stick around Columbia for a five-year rebuilding plan, or likely even a three-year renovation. A new coach would. Lorenzo Nunez could be a quarterback of the future for a team that has a future; but he will need a team around him, and it's increasingly unlikely that Spurrier can recruit the players needed to build that team.
Who could take over for Spurrier? There are candidates out there. South Carolina alumnus Mark Dantonio will turn 60 before the next football season and has a nice set-up at Michigan State -- but despite his health issues, Dantonio might be able to coach another eight or ten years, and as Bear Bryant famously put it, coaches react differently when mama calls. Tanner could use the influx of cash from the conference's new media deals and play on Dantonio's sentiment for his alma mater and perhaps make a compelling pitch.
And there are others, I'm sure; young coordinators or head coaches at mid-major programs that deserve a chance to prove what they can do at an SEC program. Those hires aren't sure things, but no hire is a sure thing. And at this point, sticking with Spurrier might be the biggest gamble of all.
If Spurrier leaves now, the next coach will not have to deal with the kind of issues that Spurrier faced when he came into Columbia. Lou Holtz built a program on the cheap, then let it decay over the last few years of his tenure, culminating in an on-field fight with Clemson and players stealing things from the athletics department. Spurrier had to institute a nutrition plan at the program because players saw nothing wrong with walking across the street to a fast-food restaurant after practice. Having put in a decade at South Carolina, Spurrier has gone a different route than Holtz. He's actually built a modern SEC program. He should leave before he squanders that achievement in an increasingly hopeless pursuit of glory.
Spurrier is still a great coach. But he is no longer the coach that South Carolina needs. The greatest remaining service he can perform for South Carolina is to retire at the right time.
That time is now. |
Last July, shortly after the outbreak of war in Gaza, President Barack Obama declared that “Israel has the right to defend itself against what I consider to be inexcusable attacks from Hamas.” To demonstrate the general moral applicability of this position, he said that “no country can accept rocket [sic] fired indiscriminately at citizens.” Obama’s claims provided ideological cover for Israel to carry out wholesale slaughter over the next six weeks in which nearly 2,200 Palestinians were killed.
Obama also conveniently turned reality on its head by ignoring the fact that it wasIsrael that was responsible for nearly three times as many cease fire violations as Hamas since December 2012. Israel’s violations of the 2012 cease fire caused the deaths of 18 people, while Palestinian violations caused none. Since the end of the 51-day war in August 2014, Israel predictably has gone on violating the most recent cease fire even more brazenly and with complete impunity.
The latest cease fire agreement stipulated that Hamas and other groups in Gaza would stop rocket attacks, while Israel would stop all military action. As with past truces, Hamas has observed the conditions. On the rare occasions that individuals or groups have fired rockets from Gaza, Hamas has arrested them. (See also here and here.)
Israel, on the other hand, has failed to live up to its end of the bargain. This is consistent with past practice. Israel has continued its illegal siege on the Gaza strip, while indiscriminately harassing and shooting at the local population. Fishermen and farmers, who are trying to subsist amid dire economic conditions, have born the brunt of the aggression.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights documented 18 instances of Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinian fishermen operating within internationally recognized Palestinian waters in September 2014 alone.
By December, Humanity for Palestine reported 94 total cease fire violations since the August truce. In addition to the many attacks on fishermen, Israeli border guards targeted “protesters;” “fired sporadically at Palestinian homes and agricultural property with machine guns and ‘flashbang’ grenades;” and “seriously injured” a teenager who was shot near the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The first months of 2015 have seen more of the same. According to International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC):
On February 25, “Israeli forces opened fire at farmers in the central Gaza Strip.” The previous day, farmers near Khan Younis had been fired on. Two days prior farmers near Rafah were fired on.
On February 27, Israeli forces “opened gunfire on Palestinian houses in the Central Gaza strip.”
On March 2, “Israeli gunboats again opened fire … towards fishermen’s boats in the Gaza strip.” The Israeli forces reportedly “chased some fishing boats off the coast.”
On March 7, fisherman Tawfiq Abu Ryala, 34, was killed when he was shot in the abdomen by Israeli navy ships. Several attacks in previous days were reported in which Palestinian fishermen were injured. “All took place while the boats were in Palestinian territorial waters.”
On March 11, “several armored military vehicles and bulldozers carried out … a limited invasion into an area east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp, in central Gaza, and bulldozed farmlands.”
On March 13, Palestine News Network reported that “Israeli Soldiers Open Fire on Palestinian Lands and Farmers East of Khan Younis Again.” The articles states that “witnesses reported that the Israeli soldiers in the borders towers opened their guns [sic] fire on the the [sic] shepherds and farmers near the security line east of Al Tuffah neighborhood east of Khan Younis.”
The vast majority of the rampant Israeli cease fire violations are not reported by the American and the Western press. When they are, the Israeli military is given the opportunity to provide self-serving rationalizations which serve as the authoritative account of what transpired.
When a fisherman was killed on March 7, a Reuters article cites an Israeli military spokesperson claiming that “four vessels had strayed from the fishing zone and that the Israeli army opened fire after the boats did not heed calls to halt.” Of course, the fishermen is not able to tell his side of the story because the organization Reuters quotes killed him.
There is no mention in the article of any of the multiple attacks on Palestinian fishermen that happen routinely in Gaza. In many similar shootings, surviving victims and witnesses can attest that fishermen are within the agreed-upon six-mile nautical limit, and certainly well within the 20-mile limit guaranteed by the Oslo accords.
In a December article in the New York Times, Isabel Kershner writes that “Retaliating for a rocket fired into Israel on Friday, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike on a Hamas site in southern Gaza.” She begins the sentence by stating it is Israel retaliating against Palestinian actions. Whoever fired the rocket presumably was not “retaliating” for the dozens of Israeli military cease fire violations over the previous months, but was implicitly initiating aggression.
More importantly than this biased framing of the narrative, Kershner buries the lead at the bottom of the story: “Also on Friday, six Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire near the border fence in northern Gaza.” She obsequiously follows this statement with Israeli military rationalizations that “soldiers first fired into the air to try to disperse protesters approaching the fence then fired at the legs of some of them.”
Someone who commits a violent action is obviously not a partial source for an honest account of the facts. Would a journalist report on a shooting by only repeating the side of the suspect who claims self-defense?
Six months after repeated, documented Israeli breaches of the cease fire agreement – without any by Hamas – New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof claimed in an Op-Ed that “Hamas provokes Israel.” He provides no evidence for this assertion. As the record clearly shows, Kristof has it backwards.
If no country can accept rockets fired at its population, then surely neither can they accept M16s fired at them. Or tanks and bulldozers invading their land. But perhaps Obama was deliberate in choosing his words. He stated that no country can accept rockets “fired indiscriminately at citizens (italics mine).”
Since Palestinians live under Israeli sovereignty but are denied citizenship, they are not technically covered by Obama’s moral truism. But assuming what he says should apply to all people – even those who are politically subjugated by racist regimes – Obama’s words would apply equally to Palestinians.
But when asked by a reporter whether Palestinians in Gaza have the right to defend themselves, an Obama administration spokesperson denied Palestinians this right. She did not explicitly say so, but by evading and refusing to respond to a simple yes or no question, she gave the equivalent of a direct denial. “I think – I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” she said. After the reporter restated his crystal-clear question, she replied “What are you specifically referring to? Is there a specific even or a specific occurrence?”
In the same way that omission of material facts may constitute fraud, refusing to answer a question about whether a person enjoys a right constitutes a direct refusal to recognize that right.
Obama did not only pervert the issue of the right to self-defense by falsely pretending it was a moral truism that he clearly and demonstrably does not extend to Palestinians, he also misrepresents the applicability of self-defense to Israel in the first place.
As Noura Erakat explained in her July 2014 article “No, Israel Does Not Have the Right to Self-Defense in International Law Against Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Israel is “distorting/reinterpreting international law to justify its use of militarized force in order to protect its colonial authority.” Obama willingly enables Israel’s lawless actions by accepting their rewriting of international law to justify their aggression.
What Obama is really saying when he talks about self-defense is that as the leader of one rogue nation, he supports the right of his rogue client state to violate the rule of law and make fraudulent claims that are neither morally nor legally justified.
As John Quigley explains in The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense, failing to challenge Israel’s bogus claims of self-defense in the 1967 war – as the United States has done by providing a diplomatic shield, vetoing more than 40 U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Israel – has had disastrous consequences for Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the system of international law in general.
“The flawed perception of the June 1967 war serves to perpetuate conflict in the Middle East. It also serves to promote the expansion of the concept of self-defense and thereby to erode the prohibition against the use of force,” Quigley writes.
The United States government under the Obama administration continues to carry this even further. Undoubtedly the situation will only get worse in the future. Last month in Haaretz, Gideon Levy wrote that there will inevitably be another war in Gaza.
“Israel knows this war will break out, it also knows why – and it’s galloping toward it blindfolded, as though it were a cyclical ritual, a periodical ceremony or a natural disaster that cannot be avoided. Here and there one even perceives enthusiasm,” Levy writes.
This will mean more death, more destruction, and more Palestinian lives destroyed as the world looks on and does nothing. Sadly Levy is right. When the next war comes and Israel succeeds in baiting Hamas to start firing rockets into Israel, all the talk will be about Israel’s right to defend itself. Obama (or the next American President) will repeat the same charade. He will frame the narrative in terms of Israel’s victimization and Israel’s rights, while denying this treatment to the Palestinians.
The media and the public will uncritically support the position of American and Israeli power. Thousands of Palestinians will be indiscriminately killed, but not because Israel is defending itself. Palestinians will be killed because the U.S. government refuses to protect them from a belligerent and aggressive regime, and refuses even to recognize their right to protect themselves.
Matt Peppe writes about politics, U.S. foreign policy and Latin America on his blog. You can follow him on twitter. |
India-Uzbekistan relations: Important facts you need to know about it
Feature
oi-Jagriti
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Uzbekistan, which is the most populous country in Central Asia. India and Uzbekistan enjoy a close strategic partnership. PM Modi will hold talks with President Islam Karimov and ink key agreements to strengthen cooperation between both the nations. There are over 3000 Indians in living in Uzbekistan.
Here are some important facts need to know about India and Uzbekistan
The founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babur, came from Uzbekistan.
Indian movies have traditionally been popular in Uzbekistan.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Uzbekistan in 1955 and 1961 (then USSR).
Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri visited Uzbekistan (then USSR) in January 1966 and died in Tashkent.
His name has been commemorated in Tashkent - a street and school are named after him and there is also a statue and a bust in his memory in the city.
Consulate General of India in Tashkent was formally inaugurated on 7th April 1987.
Prime Minister Narasimha Rao visited Uzbekistan in 1993 and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on 25-26 April, 2006.
President Karimov paid State visits to India in 1994, 2000, 2005, he paid his last to India in May 2011.
Uzbekistan and India have signed agreements, MOUs, protocols and Joint Statements in areas such as trade, investment, education, civil aviation, science & technology, telecommunications, agriculture and IT.
Uzbekistan supported India's candidature for the non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council for 2011-2012, and has been publicly supporting India's inclusion as permanent member of the UNSC.
Trade relations between India and Uzbekistan are governed by the Agreement on Trade and Economic Cooperation signed in May 1993.
India's main mainly exports drugs, other pharmaceutical products, paper, wood products, machinery, garments & fabrics, tea, plastic items, chemicals, surgical items and consumer goods to Uzbekistan.
Beans, chemicals and non-ferrous metals constitute the largest item of Indian imports from Uzbekistan apart from machinery, silver, raw cotton & silk, pulses & services.
Six Uzbek educational institutions, nationwide, promote studies of Indian languages, particularly Hindi, from primary to post-graduate level.
Uzbek Radio has completed 50 years of Hindi broadcasting in 2012. Uzbek TV channels have more than once telecast the Ramayan and Mahabharat serials. |
The power of a brand is that it can instantly give consumers the impression of quality and consistency. A great brand is an assurance that a product or service is worth the asking price and more.
However, when a brand goes bad, it can be caught in a negative feedback loop that the company, despite its best efforts, can't escape. The five household names below are in this predicament, and it may only be a matter of time before they disappear.
Kmart
While the whole structure of Sears Holdings (NASDAQOTH:SHLDQ) looks like it's teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Kmart may be the division of the company that succumbs first -- the lamb that's sacrificed in an effort to save the Sears brand.
Although Kmart is actually performing slightly better than Sears, relatively speaking, the Kmart chain has endured the largest number of store closures over the past year. At the end of the second quarter in July, there were 273 fewer Kmart stores operating than there were in the year-ago period, while Sears had 69 fewer stores.
Sears chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert swore last year he wasn't shuttering the Kmart chain despite all appearances to the contrary, saying that as long as one store remained profitable, there would always be one open. Though the chain still shows an operating profit at the moment and its sales aren't declining as quickly as Sears', it's still being dramatically downsized, and it may ultimately shrink to the point of disappearing.
The Limited
The Limited was once a popular working woman's clothing brand owned by Limited Brands, which also owns Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works. But the parent company must have seen the writing on the wall when it sold The Limited to private-equity firm Sun Capital Partners. The Limited ended up closing every single one of its 250 brick-and-mortar stores and firing 4,000 employees, with the intent to move all its inventory online.
It's not an unprecedented move. Kenneth Cole shut down its physical operations and went all in as an online-only store, as did women's fashion outlet bebe. Filene's Basement, after declaring bankruptcy, was revived by Macy's (NYSE:M) in 2015 as an online-only discount site.
In mid-January, however, The Limited declared bankruptcy and was subsequently purchased by private-equity firm Sycamore Partners. Just last month, The Limited products were made available for purchase once again on its own website, but whether it can remain viable is anybody's guess.
Mattel
Toymaker Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) is reeling from the poor retail environment that caused Toys R Us to go bankrupt, as well as Hollywood's bust of a summer blockbuster season. So bad was its third-quarter earnings report that it ended up suspending its dividend, a step few companies take unless they're in truly dire straits.
Mattel just can't sell its dolls anymore. Worldwide sales of Barbie were down 7%, American Girl dolls were down 30%, and other girl dolls like Monster High and Polly Pocket were down 42%. Things haven't gone well for Mattel since Disney stripped it of the Frozen and Princess line of dolls and gave them to archrival Hasbro (NASDAQ:HAS) last year.
Hasbro may now be able to acquire its competitor at a low price. Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily mean the Mattel name would live on; it's the toys and the games that have value, while the Mattel brand could be allowed to expire.
J.C. Penney
The once venerable department store chain J.C. Penney (NYSE:JCP) is circling the drain right along with Sears. The retailer had briefly shown signs of a comeback, but its recently released third-quarter earnings report fueled speculation that all of the changes it made may have been for naught.
After being upended by efforts to drag the aged department store into the 21st century, J.C. Penney undid virtually all the new-era improvements that had been made, and the chain's finances appeared to have stabilized. However, amid a severe slump in sales, the company recently decided to "reset" its women's apparel department by liquidating much of the inventory. Given that this segment accounts for a quarter of J.C. Penney's revenue, that inventory dump did little to inspire confidence in the company's turnaround efforts.
Unlike Sears, which can dip into the deep pockets of its hedge fund chairman to stay afloat, J.C. Penney is bereft of benefactors. As Amazon.com positions itself to become the biggest apparel retailer in the market, the outcome for this shopping-mall mainstay looks bleak.
Bed Bath & Beyond
It was expected that when Linens n Things went bankrupt, Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY) would pick up the ball and keep running downfield. Instead, Amazon suddenly became a viable competitor to home goods retailers, even as mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Target expanded their selections.
Bed Bath & Beyond also made a major mistake in almost completely ignoring the online space. It wasn't until late in the game that it made a concerted effort to build up its e-commerce presence, and even then it got distracted, creating failed "flash sale" site One King's Lane and branching out into more categories that are far afield from its core competency.
In addition to buybuy Baby, Christmas Tree Shops, Harmon Face Value, and Cost Plus World Market, it also owns Of a Kind, PersonalizationMall.com, Chef Central, Decorist, and Linen Holdings. And now there are more competitors encroaching on its territory, such as At Home, a sprawling home decor supercenter.
In the wake of its niche's upheaval, Bed Bath & Beyond may have made itself superfluous. |
Anzac biscuits, originally from Australia and New Zeland, are oat-based biscuits made with desiccated coconut. Best big and chewy, these simple to make biscuits are a great addition to any picnic basket!
Print Chewy Anzac Biscuits Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 10 minutes Total Time: 20 minutes Serves: 16 biscuits Ingredients 120g butter
40ml golden syrup
90g rolled oats
80g dessicated coconut
150g plain flour
110g caster sugar
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
40ml boiling water Method Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius/320 degrees Fahrenheit/Gas mark 3. Heat a pan on medium heat and add in the butter and golden syrup, stirring regularly until the butter has melted. Once the butter has melted, pour in your boiling water and stir. In a large bowl, mix your oats, sugar, flour, desiccated coconut and baking powder together. Then slowly pour in you butter mixture, stirring the mixture as you go. Once all of the butter mixture has been incorporated and your biscuit mixture is moist, You need to roll the mixture into 12-16 balls. Put a sheet of baking paper down on your baking tray and add half of the balls to your tray. Flatten the balls slightly with the back of the spoon, and then place the tray in the oven. Cook the biscuits for 8-10 minutes; remove from the oven and leave to cool. Whilst they are cooling you can add your second batch to the oven. 3.1 https://pescetarian.kitchen/chewy-anzac-biscuits-recipe/ Copyright Pescetarian.Kitchen
A word of warning before you bake these – they’re incredibly morish. It’s not a strange sight to see me and Matt scoffing down several of these in one sitting. You’ve been warned!
5/5
2 rates 2 rates X Yuk! Not great Tastes okay Yum 🙂 Delicious! 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 5 / 5 2 |
When the WBC vacated the welterweight and junior middleweight world titles held by recently retired Floyd Mayweather at its annual convention earlier this month in China, it announced that it would hold tournaments involving its top-rated fighters in each weight class to crown new titleholders in both divisions.
Demetrius Andrade, who was recently stripped of another organization’s 154-pound belt due to inactivity, said he wants to participate in the WBC’s tournament.
Andrade (22-0, 15 KOs), whom the organizations ranks No. 3, came off a 16-month layoff on Oct. 17 and knocked out Argentina’s Dario Fabian Pucheta in the second round. Now he’s ready to fight top-tier opponents and hopes to win another world title.
"I'm happy to be rated No. 3 by the WBC and will be honored to participate in its tournament," Andrade said. "Hopefully, [No. 1 Jermell] Charlo and [No. 5 Austin] Trout will agree to fight in the tournament, so everyone will finally know who No. 1 in the 154-pound division is,” said Andrade, a 27-year-old southpaw from Providence, Rhode Island. “I'm ready to prove myself again and I hope they step up to the challenge, too.”
The WBC did not explain the specifics of the tournaments it hopes to set up, including the number of participants. |
A railway station in Glasgow has been given a hilarious makeover - inspired by the fictional setting of Scots comedy classic Still Game.
The Exhibition Centre station has been renamed Craiglang, and billboards with references to the sitcom have popped up as well.
Craiglang is the home of pensioners Jack Jarvis, portrayed by Ford Kiernan and Victor McDaid, played by Greg Hemphill in the classic Glasgow comedy.
The Exhibition Centre train station in Glasgow is only a short walk from the SSE Hydro where the live show is being performed.
When getting off at that stop, people will step into the world of Jack and Victor as two massive “Welcome to Craiglang” signs greet passengers.
The station has undergone a heavy rebrand with even the advertising posters switched to pay tribute to the show.
A fake poster for Fusilier that features in Still Game.
One poster is an ad for Henderson’s Bakery, the in-show parody of Gregg’s, while another reminds beer fans that ‘it’s never too early for a Fusilier.’
But despite the fictional beer ad, a special notice, written in Glaswegian slang, warned people to not get too carried away with the alcohol ahead of the show.
It said: “Aff tae Craiglang fur Still Game Live2 at the Hydro the day?
“Don’t git legless at The Clansman, you’ll need tae watch yer footin’ later and buy yer tickets before ye git on the train.”
'Welcome to Craiglang' signs greet passengers.
A fan visiting the city to see the show said: “I think it’s a brilliant touch. It gets you even more excited to see the show when you see that.”
The live show has eight more nights (from Wednesday) to run at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro arena. |
One of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to tiling is - "Can you tile over existing tiles?". There are two sides to this question. Technically - it can be done but in practice it is avoided. This method of tiling depends on the condition of tiles which are already installed. Since these tiles are already worn-out and damaged by humidity or have uneven areas, the tiling over existing tiles is not advisable. There are other factors such as weight and moist absorption which can also make you re-think your plan.
First - inspect the current state of the tiles which you already have. This is important as they are going to be the foundation of your tiling. Your tiling needs to be well-sealed and bond with the base. If your current tiles are well-laid and there are no cavities between them and the base flooring you can lay the new tiles. To check for cavities you can just tap and for a search for hollow sounds. These cavities are usually caused by the lack of adhesive between the tiles and the sub-flooring but can also be a result of an earthquake or a construction site nearby.
If the base is plasterboard, consider the additional weight of the two layers of tiles. Plasterboard has a maximum weight limit per square centimeter and exceeding this limit may cause structural damage.
Not every type of adhesive is right for tiling over tiles. Since a tile is made to endure humidity and to absorb the least amount of water possible most adhesives won't work.
When laying the tiles, bear in mind that your floor will be raised between one and three centimeters. This means that any door frames, kitchen appliances, and furniture and bathroom storage units should be fitted accordingly. You can use a door threshold to level or transition between two types of flooring. If you have to tile only half of the room it is more aesthetically pleasing to remove the old tiles first.
If you have put these requirements into consideration and there are no hollow sounds you can proceed to lay the tiles. Before you do that, you should clean spotless your existing ceramic tiles. This step is very necessary and often overlooked. In fact, it is done not because it will look good but because any grease or dust will make it harder for the tile adhesive to bond. So make sure you degrease everything and the grout is perfect too.
If your existing tiles don't meet the requirements and it has cavities or uneven parts, or are too heavy, then removing them is the better option. Depending on the sub-flooring there are different methods of doing so. Generally, the easiest way is to remove the backer board, if one is used. Of course, removing the tiles is more expensive, that's why many people decide to choose this method in the first place.
Can you tile over tiles? Yes.
Should You? Most of the times - no.
When can you do it? |
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If you didn't catch Ubisoft's E3 press conference a couple weeks ago, it showed off a new installment in the Rainbow Six franchise, Rainbow Six: Siege. And while the demo Ubisoft presented was visually impressive, it incited controversy because of the use of a woman as a hostage.
Now, Ubisoft technical artist Olivier Couture has attempted to end some of the debate by confirming that, in fact, there will be male hostages in Siege as well. In an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Couture says, "We're also gonna have male hostages. That's part of the plan.”
Why did Ubisoft choose to use a female hostage in the stage demo? Couture explains that the developer wanted the audience to sympathize with the hostage and want to protect her. "I know some people asked about the hostage in the demo," he says. "I mean, when we did that design we felt a lot of empathy with the hostage. We wanted people to want to protect her. If the hostage gets killed a team loses the game, so we wanted players to care about the hostage so that's the design we chose."
The team is focusing on realism with the hostages, as well. It wants each civilian to act as naturally and predictably as possible for a person in such a situation, while keeping the game fair for the player. Couture explains, "We're trying to define next-gen with the hostage. We call that a 'living hostage.' So she'll react to explosions and things like that. It's pretty cool. She'll cough because of the dirt in the air, she covers herself when there's shooting – those sorts of things. We want the player to be able to move her into different positions, for there to be fluid controls. It's a balance between player comfort and reality."
Rainbow Six: Siege comes out in 2015 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. We were impressed with what we got to play of Siege at E3. Keep an eye on GameSpot for more news of the game as it becomes available. |
Can an employer ban your beard, or is the right to unfettered facial hair protected by law? Allan Stokell says he feels his human rights were violated when courier giant UPS told him he’d have to shave his whiskers if he wanted to work for them.
Allan Stokell says he applied for a job at UPS and was told he would have to shave the beard he's had for 50 years if he wanted to work there. ( Steve Russell / Toronto Star )
“Although not as serious as some (violations), I don’t believe large multi-national corporations should be able to get away with this,” Stokell, who is 68, said. “I’ve had a beard since I was 18 and I identify as being a bearded person. “It’s something I live by, I’m very proud of my beard and I’m not really interested in shaving it off.” Stokell, a retired City of Toronto worker, applied to UPS for a seasonal job as a walker — an employee who helps UPS drivers pick up and deliver packages. UPS replied to him with a questionnaire asking, among other things, whether he accepts the company’s “strict appearance guidelines” requiring employees “to be clean shaven and hide visible piercings and tattoos.”
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Stokell responded that he has a short, well-trimmed beard and short hair. In a brief email exchange, a UPS representative told Stokell that “unless one is keeping their facial hair for religious or medical reasons, all employees need to be clean shaven at UPS as part of UPS’s appearance policy.” Employees seeking beard accommodation on religious or medical grounds must supply “proper documentation,” Stokell was told. UPS Canada told the Star that it “is confident in the legality of its employment practices.” “UPS does have appearance and grooming guidelines in place,” company spokesperson Nirali Raval said in an email. “Through the interview process the appearance and grooming policy is explained to all applicants.” Raval said the specific appearance policies “are internal policies and are not shared externally.”
Stokell is not the first Ontarian to chafe under a company’s clean-shaven mandate. In 2014, nickel smelting worker Christopher Browne filed a human rights complaint against his employer, Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, after he was ordered to shave his goatee. In January 2016, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled against Browne, noting that his goatee was not affiliated with religious beliefs and could not be defended as an expression of gender.
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“Wearing a beard or other facial hair is a matter of style or grooming, and is not a matter of sufficient social significance to warrant protection under human rights legislation … absent any connection to a matter of religious observance,” said adjudicator Mark Hart, in his decision. Janina Fogels, senior counsel at Ontario’s Human Rights Legal Support Centre, said Hart’s ruling set the precedent for beard-related human rights complaints in the province. “The adjudicator is making the point there that the person who wants to wear the beard has to establish that wearing facial hair is protected by the (Ontario Human Rights) Code,” said Fogels, who advises and represents complainants on their human rights claims. That, she added, would require proving that the beard is linked to one of the areas protected by the Code, such as race, creed, skin colour, age, sex, disability. In 2015, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit against UPS, alleging the company discriminated against current and prospective staff whose religious beliefs required them to wear beards or long hair. The suit is yet to be resolved. Stokell said he considers his beard to be a kind of creed. “My son has a beard, my father and grandfather all had beards… It’s something you live by.” The Ontario Human Rights Commission’s guidelines say creed can include non-religious belief systems that “substantially influence a person’s identity, worldview and way of life.” To determine whether an element of one’s lifestyle is a creed, the Commission considers whether it “addresses ultimate questions of human existence,” and has some connection to an organization or community that professes to have shared beliefs. Stokell has not officially been turned down for the job at UPS, but has not heard anything further from the company. He says he is no longer interested in working for UPS. “Work has got to be a welcoming environment,” Stokell said. “If I’m going to force them to employ me because of a labour standard it’s not going to be a good working relationship.” He still hopes UPS softens its stance on beards for future applicants, he said. “They (should) change the policy so that other people don’t have to go through this.” |
Uruguay’s leader José Mujica must be one of the world’s most unusual presidents – he gives away 90% of his salary to charity and chooses to live a very basic lifestyle. Courtesy Dateline.
World's 'poorest president' gives most of salary to charity 1:52
HE lives in a rundown one-bedroom house he has shared with his wife of more than 30 years and his lifestyle is a far cry from other world leaders.
So it’s little wonder Uruguay President Jose Mujica, who reportedly earns around $12,000 a year and donates 90 per cent of it to charity, has been nicknamed the world’s poorest president.
Compared to US President Barack Obama who earns $400,000 in his role, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott, $500,000, Mujica is far from wealthy, but he is rich in many other ways.
The popular leader not only legalised gay marriage, abortion and marijuana, but unlike most politicians seems widely liked by his own people and many others.
#JoséMujica, President of #Uruguay waiting for his turn in a public hospital... That's how a leader should be pic.twitter.com/eD7e4OJy1g — Raheel Rao (@Rahealrao) September 14, 2014
Today my most inspiration comes from Jose Mujica. Salute El Presidente! — Murtaza Solangi (@murtazasolangi) September 18, 2014
Here’s seven other reasons why this ex-revolutionary is much more popular than our pollies.
1. Money isn’t important to Mujica
His salary pales in comparison to other world leaders. Earning around $12,000 a year, he gives around 90 per cent to charity, the BBC reported.
His wage is way below the $400,000 earned by US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron who earns around a paltry $235,000 in comparison.
And it’s definitely well below the $500,000 salary our own Prime Minister Tony Abbott earned this year.
2. He’s not big on security or flash cars
The Uruguayan leader is guarded by two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, the BBC reported.
Mujica also drives around in an old VW Beetle ditching opulence in favour of what works.
3. Mujica has served time in jail
He was a former guerilla leader in the 1960s and robbed banks to pay for uprisings across the country. The crime earned him a 13-year prison stint and torture, Dateline reported. He was released in 1985 under an amnesty at the end of the country’s dictatorship.
4. He doesn’t think highly of Australia’s asylum seeker policy
“It’s not very generous to humans. We should be aware there is a kind of racial selfishness [that is] growing, or an ultranationalism, that says ‘this is for us’”, he told Dateline.
“It’s not a very good image of Australia in the world.”
5. The leader is a YouTube sensation
His reputation for public speaking is as well known as his modest lifestyle.
His speeches criticising blatant consumerism at the Rio+20 conference in 2012, and at the United Nations in New York the following year, smashed three million YouTube views, according to The Guardian.
6. He regards legalising marijuana as an experiment
According to the President, his country’s war on drugs has failed and is prepared to ditch the experiment if it doesn’t work.
By putting the government in charge of the marijuana industry, which is estimated to be worth $US30million- $US40 million ($33 million — $45 million) a year, the bill aims to curtail illegal trafficking and the violence that comes with it.
7. Mujica isn’t afraid to tell it like it is
Last year, he was caught making disparaging remarks aimed at Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner, when talking about the close links between the two countries, after emphasising that no event or person “can uproot our common history”.
“This old hag is worse than the one-eyed guy,” Mr Mujica was caught saying, without realising that the microphones were on in reference to Mrs Kirchner and her late husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, who had a lazy eye and was nicknamed “El Tuerto” (the one-eyed guy). |
I would have never, ever expected to be able to write a The Next Web blog post that involves my local library, but this story is just too crazy to not bring to your attention. It’s not really related to tech, though, so bear with me.
People with a healthy interest in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard about SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one of the global poster children for how outrageously out of touch with reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be.
In the past, SABAM has sought to require Internet and hosting service providers to install filters that would prevent the illegal downloading of files. They lost that battle.
Then, they wanted social networking companies to install monitoring, filtering or blocking systems to prevent illegal trading of digital music and other copyrighted material. They lost that battle. Don’t expect those setbacks to make them back down in their quest to display a stunning amount of stupidity to the world, though.
If you questioned the sanity of the folks over at SABAM before, now I hope you’ll realize just how plain evil they really are.
This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids.
Volunteers. Who – again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.
Don’t bother looking at the date: it’s not April Fools Day just yet.
Newspaper De Morgen reported this morning that the local library in Dilbeek (my hometown), as well as a handful of other libraries across Belgium, have already been contacted by SABAM about the ridiculous claim.
Twice a month, the library in Dilbeek welcomes about 10 children to introduce them to the magical world of books. A representative of the library in question is quoted in the De Morgen report as saying there’s no budget to compensate people who read to the kids, relying instead on volunteers (bless them).
Obligatory feel-good photo of children reading a book – story continues below.
SABAM got in touch with the library to let them know that it thinks this is unacceptable, however, and that they should start coughing up cash for the audacity to read stories from copyrighted books out loud. The library rep calculates that it could cost them roughly 250 euros (which is about $328) per year to pay SABAM for the right to – again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.
Schools are apparently exempt from SABAM’s wacky rule. Imagine that.
The De Morgen reporter then contacted SABAM (probably to check if this wasn’t an elaborate hoax or some grave error in judgment) and received a formal statement from the organization asserting that, indeed, public libraries need to pay up for the right to – once again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.
Kafkaian as this whole ordeal may seem, in a way, I’m really happy that SABAM is doing this. Maybe this story is just crazy enough for the world to pay even more attention to their wicked ways.
In my view, it’s not enough for people to call out the morons at SABAM for losing touch with reality. It’s not enough to make funny jokes about it. It’s not enough to bitch and moan about their behavior on Twitter and Facebook.
SABAM is already facing court after accusations of falsifying accounts to cover up bribe payments, abuse of trust, copyright fraud and embezzlement.
Maybe there’s more we can do. I’ve asked the Twitter community what Belgians (and possibly people outside the country) can do to nail SABAM to the cross in a way that will actually do some good, and I’m doing it here. This is an organization that is desperate for a thorough clean-up and maniacal regulatory oversight.
Contacting the government to speak up seems to be the right thing to do. It would be super helpful if someone could point out in the comments if this is indeed the best place to file complaints, or if there are other ways to get the right government representatives to realize SABAM is crossing the line.
Follow the latest tech media news at TNW Media.
Read next: iPad Inflation: UK starts tracking tablet sales to monitor the nation's spending |
A leading congressional advocate for pulling the plug on the Export-Import Bank today said he “regrets” that a nine-month reauthorization of the federal agency is part of a Republican-sponsored measure to keep the government running.
“I do not believe that Ex-Im should be part of the CR [continuing resolution]. I regret that the Republican conference is putting it there,” House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said in response to a question from The Daily Signal.
The charter of the Export-Import Bank is slated to expire Sept. 30, but a continuing resolution being considered in the House would extend the life of the bank until June 30 next year.
“I am not enamored with this particular continuing resolution,” Hensarling said after a speech at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington. He added:
If I had my druthers, this would not be what would be before me, but I learned very early on in my congressional career that I don’t get to vote on what I want to vote on. I have to vote on what’s in front of me.
The continuing resolution including the short-term extension for the 80-year-old federal agency was introduced yesterday by House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky.
>>> The Government Program Republicans Keep Extending: 5 Export-Import Bank Myths, Debunked
“I do not believe that Ex-Im should be part of the [continuing resolution]. I regret that the Republican conference is putting it there,” says @RepHensarling.
The resolution has yet to be brought to the House floor, and a vote on the resolution expected tomorrow has been postponed.
The Export-Import Bank provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies to purchase U.S. products.
Hensarling is leading the fight in the House against reauthorizing the bank, which he has called a poster child for cronyism and corporate welfare. But today the Texas Republican said he views the short-term reauthorization as a chance to “decouple” Ex-Im’s expiration date from legislation to fund the government.
“I believe the fate of the Export-Import Bank — it should stand or fall on its own,” he said.
Hensarling originally said he would prefer Congress not act on legislation regarding the agency’s future, and simply allow the charter to expire Sept. 30. His strategy was said to have the blessings of House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders.
However, with so many lawmakers hoping to avoid controversy before this fall’s midterm elections, Hensarling said the delay would allow members to better understand and debate the bank’s future.
“Ultimately, the CR will serve that purpose,” he said. “It’s not the first time I’ve swallowed hard in my congressional career.”
>>> Export-Import Bank’s Nationwide Tour Raises Questions of Lobbying, Propaganda
Reports surfaced last week suggesting Boehner and Hensarling were in talks for a deal reauthorizing Ex-Im for a short time. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, confirmed the negotiations in an interview with The Daily Signal.
Jordan, though, said today he believes the bank’s charter should expire at the end of the month despite the current terms of the continuing resolution. He told The Daily Signal:
“The House should pass a clean bill to fund the government at current levels while allowing the authority for the Export-Import Bank to expire now. Most of the Ex-Im Bank’s benefits go to big corporations that can afford their own financing without taxpayer help. The bank’s time has come and gone, and now is the perfect time for Congress to end it.”
”The House should pass a clean bill to fund the government … while allowing the authority for the Export-Import Bank to expire now,” says @Jim_Jordan.
Earlier this summer, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., bolstered support for ending Ex-Im when he told Fox News he didn’t support reauthorization of the bank. The move was billed as a win for opponents of the bank, since Eric Cantor, McCarthy’s predecessor as No. 2 House Republican, orchestrated the deal extending Ex-Im’s life in 2012.
>>> Commentary: It’s Time to End Cronyism in Washington. Let’s Begin with the Export-Import Bank.
Despite the nine-month reauthorization, aides for McCarthy told Politico the majority leader wants to end the bank and plans to work with Hensarling to do so.
Among those supporting Hensarling’s efforts to stop Ex-Im’s reauthorization are outside groups such as Americans for Prosperity and Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of The Heritage Foundation. Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action, told The Daily Signal:
Conservatives are understandably wary when Washington promises to fight another day. If leadership is serious about working with conservatives to end Ex-Im, they should make a public, ironclad promise that this is the last reauthorization ever. Absent that promise, it is difficult to imagine this is anything other than a gambit to save Ex-Im and keep the K Street lobbying dollars rolling in from Boeing, GE and the Chamber of Commerce.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers launched a campaign this summer to support reauthorization of the bank.
Requests for comment from the chamber went unanswered. |
The state agency created to keep watch over the state’s health care costs has seen its own budget skyrocket by ?160 percent over the past decade in a “very troubling and ironic” trend that has too long gone unchecked, a nonprofit group representing Bay State hospitals charged.
Administrative costs at the Center of Health Information and Analysis have grown to $32 million after spikes of ?21 percent and 6 percent in its appropriations the last two years, according to a letter the Massachusetts Hospital Association sent to CHIA last month.
In this fiscal year alone, hospitals are being asked to pay ?45 percent more than they did in fiscal 2014, not including any “credit” left over from last year, according to the hospital group.
“This trend is unsustainable and directly contradicts the cost growth expectations of the commonwealth’s 2012 health care reform law,” Timothy F. Gens, the executive vice president and general counsel for MHA, wrote in a Nov. 17 letter obtained by the Herald that was sent to CHIA executive director Aron Boros.
“While the agency has the requirement to study cost growth per the law, we find it very troubling and ironic that its own costs — which are billed to the same entities it is charged with measuring — greatly exceed the commonwealth’s benchmark,” Gens wrote.
Andrew Jackmauh, a CHIA spokesman, defended the spikes in the center’s budget, arguing that it took on a range of added responsibilities that its predecessor, the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, never had and that “increase reflects investments necessary to meet CHIA’s increased obligations.”
Jackmauh also said CHIA didn’t request a budget increase in 2012, its first year under the new law, and that its next budget request is for a 2 percent increase targeted to match inflation.
“We have now moved from a growth mode to maintenance mode,” Jackmauh said.
But in raising the red flag, MHA officials say lawmakers need to step in to change the funding formula, which makes hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers responsible for backing at least one-third of CHIA’s budget.
But as CHIA’s directives have “evolved” under the landmark legislation, Gens said the hospitals’ share has risen to ?50 percent of the center’s administrative costs, straining them as they try to rein in their own costs.
“We don’t propose that they don’t get support,” Gens said of the center. “But what’s turned out in practice since (the law) has been passed, we have a contribution that is not capped and is really not tied to the hospitals and the mission and the services that CHIA provides.”
Not so, said Jackmauh, who argued that CHIA’s range of research — including monitoring overall health care spending growth and analyzing physician groups and others — all still stands to benefit its core funders.
“Hospitals and health plans are among the biggest beneficiaries of CHIA resources,” he said.
The state has leaned on CHIA to closely watch what it’s spending on health care since its creation. |
London: A Florida-based man, who had sex with Dolly the dolphin in a year-long "relationship" in 1971, has revealed that it only happened because she " seduce d" him.
In a new 15 minute documentary, the 63-year-old Malcolm Brenner, from Punta Garda, said that he started rubbing her along her back, working her way to her flukes, her tail and as he was rubbing her and moving her hand towards her tail, Dolly was slowly rolling around her long axis, the Mirror reported. In the film, ' Dolphin Lover,' an animation of what it's like to have sex with a dolphin is played to viewers to help them with their imaginations.
Brenner, who was given free access to the dolphins at the former theme park in Sarasota Florida, where he lived, and became friends with her by going swimming with her, said in an interview that there's something quite transcendental about making love with a dolphin as she was very special.
Brenner, who was a photographer at that time, mentioned that she announced her intentions to him by positioning herself so he was rubbing against her, adding at first he discouraged her as he wasn't interested, but after some time he thought "if this was a woman would I come up with these rationalisations and excuses?"
He added that it was when the park was closing that they successfully eluded the male dolphin so we could spend some time alone. He said that he called it a relationship because that's what it was and when she died it made him feel terrible and so he fell into a depression which lasted five years.
Dolly was moved away when the park closed nine months after they had first met and Brenner says that he believes her death, a short time later, was a case of suicide and that she voluntarily stopped breathing. |
HXQ: A Compiler from XQuery to Haskell Download HXQ-0.19.0.tar.gz
Description
HXQ is a fast and space-efficient translator from XQuery (the standard query language for XML) to embedded Haskell code. The translation is based on Template Haskell. HXQ takes full advantage of Haskell's lazy evaluation to keep in memory only those parts of XML data needed at each point of evaluation, thus performing stream-based evaluation for forward queries (queries that do not contain backward steps). This results to an implementation that is as fast and space-efficient as any stream-based implementation based on SAX filters or finite state machines. Furthermore, the coding is far simpler and extensible since it is based on XML trees, rather than SAX events. Since HXQ uses lazy evaluation, you get the first results of non-blocking queries immediately, while the non-streaming XQuery processors must first parse the entire input file and construct the whole XML tree in memory before they produce any output.
Finally, HXQ can store XML documents in a relational database (currently MySQL or SQLite), by shredding XML into relational tuples, and by translating XQueries over the shredded documents into optimized SQL queries. The mapping to relational tables is based on the document's structural summary, which is derived from the document data rather than from a schema. It uses hybrid inlining to inline attributes and non-repeating elements into a single table, thus resulting to a compact relational schema. For each such mapping, HXQ synthesizes an XQuery that reconstructs the original XML document from the shredded data. This XQuery is fused with the user queries using partial evaluation techniques and parts of the resulting query are mapped to SQL queries using code folding rules so that all relevant predicates are promoted to SQL. This pushes most evaluation to the database query engine, thus resulting to a fast execution over large data sets.
Performance
HXQ shines best when used for data intensive applications. For example, the XQuery in tests/Test2.hs, which is against the DBLP XML document (420MB), runs in 36 seconds on my laptop PC and uses a maximum of 3.2MB of heap space (using the runtime options +RTS -H2m -M3.2m ). (All results are taken on an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz 2GB running ghc-6.8.3 on a 32-bit Linux 2.6.27 kernel.) To contrast this, Qexo, which compiles XQueries to Java bytecode, takes 1 minute 17 seconds and uses 1400MB of heap space for the same query, while XQilla, which is written in C++, takes 1 minute and 10 secs and uses 1150MB of heap space. For simple XPath queries, the fastest implementation I have ever tried is using SAX pipelines, which runs in 17secs and needs 3MB heap. Unfortunately, it is very hard to implement complex XQuery constructs using SAX, and one may end up simulating lazy evaluation using ad-hoc techniques.
For better performance in data intensive applications, one may use the database capabilities of HXQ. For example, when the DBLP file is shredded into a MySQL database and the appropriate index is created, the above query runs in 90 milliseconds.
HXQ uses the HXML parser for XML (developed by Joe English), which is included in the source. I have also tried hexpat, tagsoup, HXT, and HaXML Xtract, but they all have space leaks.
HXQ has two XML parsers: one that generates simple rose trees from XML documents, which can be processed by forward queries without space leaks, and another parser where each tree node has a reference to its parent. Some, but not all, backward axis steps (such as the parent axis /..) are removed from a query using optimization rules. If there are backward axis steps left in the query, then HXQ uses the latter parser, which may result to a performance penalty due to space leaks.
Installation Instructions (HXQ without Database Connectivity)
HXQ can be installed on most platforms but I have only tested it on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP. The simplest installation is without database connectivity (ie, it can only process XQueries against XML text documents). If you want database connectivity (over MySQL or sqlite relational databases), look at the installation instructions for database connectivity.
First, you need to install the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, ghc. Optionally, if you want to modify the XQuery parser, you need to install the parser generator for Haskell, happy. If you are new to Haskell, please read How to install a Cabal package. The easiest way to install packages in Haskell is using cabal. On Linux, you can install Haskell and cabal using yum install ghc happy cabal-install . You must then update the list of known packages using cabal update .
The simplest way to install the HXQ library is by using the cabal command:
cabal install HXQ
(If you use the old base-3 ghc library, use the option -fbase3 in cabal). Then, to compile the xquery command line interpreter, you download xquery.hs and you do:
ghc --make xquery.hs -o xquery
tar xfz
runhaskell Setup.lhs configure --user runhaskell Setup.lhs build runhaskell Setup.lhs install
HXQ consists of the executable xquery , which is the XQuery command line interpreter, and the HXQ library.
To use the HXQ library in a Haskell program, simply import Text.XML.HXQ.XQuery .
Current Status
HXQ supports most essential XQuery features, although some system functions are missing (but are easy to add). Note that HXQ is a proof-of-concept (prototype) implementation; it's not fully compliant with the W3C specs. One may use HXQ as a basis for a fully compliant XQuery implementation (conforming to W3C test suits), but currently I do not have the time to do so. To see the list of supported system functions, run xquery -help . Here are some important differences between HXQ and the W3C specs:
Currently, all namespaces in HXQ XQueries must be defined using import schema or declare namespace . Although HXQ recognizes xmlns: attributes in XML files and XQuery constructions, these namespaces are not imported.
or . Although HXQ recognizes attributes in XML files and XQuery constructions, these namespaces are not imported. The XQuery semantics requires duplicate elimination and sorting by document order for every XPath step, which is very expensive and unnecessary in most cases. This is not currently supported by HXQ but will be addressed in the future (needs a static analysis to determine when duplicate elimination is necessary). For example, e//*//* may return duplicate elements in HXQ.
may return duplicate elements in HXQ. Attributes in constructed elements must be either embedded in the start-tag, and/or, if the element content is a sequence, they must appear at the beginning of the sequence as constructed attributes.
XQuery Documentation
The complete XQuery syntax in HXQ is described in hxq-manual.pdf. I have also written a paper that describes some of the database related methods used in the implementation. Here some tutorials on XPath and XQuery. Here are two relevant courses on XML and databases at Stanford and ETH.
Using the Compiler
The main functions for embedding XQueries in Haskell are:
$(xe query) :: XSeq
$(xq query) :: IO XSeq
query
XSeq
[XTree]
(IO XSeq)
v
$v
v
XSeq
(XSeq,...,XSeq) -> IO XSeq
Here is an example of a main program:
f(x,y) = $(xq "<article><first>{$x}</first><second>{$y}</second></article>") main = do a <- $(xq "<result>{ / / for $x at $i in doc('data/dblp.xml')//inproceedings / / where $x/author = 'Leonidas Fegaras' / / order by $x/year descending / / return <paper>{ $i, ') ', $x/booktitle/text(), / / ': ', $x/title/text() / / }</paper> / / }</result> ") putXSeq a b <- $(xq " f( $a/paper[10], $a/paper[8] ) ") putXSeq b
ghc -O2 --make tests/Test1.hs -o a.out
You can compile an XQuery file into a Haskell program ( Temp.hs ) using xquery -c file . Or better, you can use the script compile (on Unix/Mac or Windows) to compile the XQuery file to an executable. For example:
compile data/q1.xq
a.out
Using the Interpreter
The HXQ interpreter is far more slower than the compiler; use it only if you need to evaluate ad-hoc XQueries read from input or from files. The only function is:
xquery :: String -> IO XSeq
xquery
xquery data/q1.xq
xquery -p xpath-query xml-file
xquery -p "//inproceedings[100]" data/dblp.xml
xquery -help
XML Schema Validation and Type Inference
Currently, HXQ supports type testing and casting using the XQuery expressions: typeswitch, instance-of, cast-as, etc. The validation and type inference systems are still a work in progress. To use type inference, use the option -tp in xquery . To associate an XML document with an XML Schema, use the XQuery import schema statement. For example:
import schema default element namespace "dept" at "data/department.xsd"; validate {doc("data/cs.xml")//gradstudent}; (doc("data/cs.xml")//gradstudent[.//lastname='Galanis']//address) instance of element(address)*
validateFile
validateFile "data/dblp.xml" "data/dblp.xsd"
Last modified: 01/08/10 by Leonidas Fegaras |
So a couple of months ago Douglas Atkin, head of Community and E-staff Member at AirBnB, took to the stage of the Le Web conference in London (video) to announce the formation of Peers: “a grassroots organization that supports the sharing economy movement.” I like grassroots organizations and I like the co-operative impulse, but this… Well here is his speech in its entirety (in italics) with comments from yours truly.
I joined AirBnB about four months ago, but I’m going to talk about a different organization.
He means Peers.
In fact I’d like to talk about a movement for the sharing economy. By “a movement” I mean exactly that. I mean huge numbers of people, with a shared identity, mobilized to take action to do two things: to grow the peer sharing economy, and to fight for their collective interests against unfair and unreasonable obstacles.
A grassroots organization with 40 corporate “partners”, with unspecified but significant funding, formed with guidance from a set of high-profile “thought leaders”, without local chapters, and with nothing much for the grassroots to do, but with an Executive Director on day one.
Andrew Leonard from Salon has been following the story, and tells us that funding comes from “mission-aligned independent donors”. So that’s wealthy backers with a financial interest in the sharing economy. This is not grassroots, it’s astroturf.
If there is one thing that makes me angry, it is people appropriating the language of collective and progressive politics for financial gain. And that’s one thread of what’s going on here. As we shall see. It does seem that Executive Director Natalie Foster’s heart is in the right place, but that’s one of the tragedies of the sharing economy: well-intentioned people end up contributing to immiseration and injustice when they think they are doing the opposite.
So what we’re talking about here is not just people sharing their skills, or their apartment, or their car, but also their collective power to expand the sharing economy together, and to stand up against entrenched interests who stand unfairly in their way. So “people power” if you like, or more accurately “peer power”.
And what we’re not talking about here is venture capital. Going through Crunchbase tells me that the total funding for the 40 partners is over $600M. AirBnB has received $120M, including funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kucher. You know, people standing up against entrenched interests.
At the end of this post I’ve added a table of what I could find. It tells us that almost all the funding is going to the Bay Area or New York. The non-profits in this organization are being taken for a ride by the appealing anti-establishment language of Silicon Valley . They need to take a look at who their bedfellows are and what the real agenda is.
Venture Capital funds are not interested in people power, they are interested in an investment with a good return. The fact that Douglas Atkin doesn’t once mention the financial motivations of the forces behind the sharing economy is either dishonest or unbelievably self-deceiving.
Now why would there be a need for such a thing? The sharing economy seems to be barrelling along pretty happily. Why do we need another organization? Well, firstly the opportunity. This was brought home to me a week ago in San Francisco where I attended a meeting of sharing economy participants. So there were drivers, passengers, hosts, guests, and tour guides from RelayRides, Lyft, AirBnB, Vayable and Sidecar, and they were literally bouncing up and down with enthusiasm about the opportunity to collaborate together — with each other. So they were developing ideas — brilliant ideas actually — to share customers with each other, across verticals. One person even suggested that there could be a peer economy currency — maybe Bitcoin. Or even points to encourage people to cross verticals and recruit new people into this new economy.
The language changes, the mask slips. Participants become customers, sharing becomes buying. The phrase “across verticals” reminds us that Douglas Atkin is an advertising executive. Now the sharing economy is about loyalty programs and cross marketing? Not the kind of sharing I want to be part of. I don’t have a problem with commerce, but what I do object to is commerce wrapped up in, and appropriating, the language of solidarity.
These people were incredibly impressive, with their passion and their eagerness and creativity to work together locally to expand the sharing economy. So that was the opportunity. It was incredibly exciting to see that. And I did a couple more of these types of meetings, with people from different verticals in the sharing economy in New York, where the same thing happened. So there’s the opportunity.
The Peers organization came together, then, in San Francisco and New York – the well-heeled, well-funded districts of the sharing economy movement.
Secondly, though, there’s the challenges. It’s unlikely, I believe — and I believe this because I used to work for them — that the entrenched interests of the old economy are going to stand idly by as their business model of the past seventy years is challenged by the new economy.
Billion-dollar venture capital funds are out to undercut people who run licensed bed and breakfasts, and he’d have me believe that it’s the B&B owners who are the “entrenched interests”. If this is your idea of a revolution (and it is, unbelievably enough: that comes later) then brother don’t you know, you can count me out.
What’s more, outdated laws and new laws which have been badly conceived, with unintended consequences, really threaten the growth of this nascent new world economy.
The laws that he is talking about are licensing laws and other laws put in place to protect employees, customers, and neighbourhoods. These laws are not all perfect. But the sharing economy has nothing to replace them beyond magical thinking about “trust” (with little accountability).
How much better would it be if citizens banded together to grow and protect their interests in the sharing economy rather than companies wielding their power?
How about banding together to protest when a TaskRabbit customer posts a job to do four loads of laundry and it’s actually 10 or 15 loads covered in cat diarrhea? No: if you do that, you’re fired. The company (a partner of Peers.org, natch) also takes steps to prevent its TaskRabbits from meeting because “They don’t want us unionizing”. I’m sorry, what was that about citizens banding together against companies?
So I’m here to tell you about some plans which will enable people to create a member-driven movement for the sharing economy. If you like, a new kind of union for a new kind of economy. And I’m also here to ask for your support. So if you’re a platform: help your users create this organization and join it. If you’re a thought-leader, blogger, or conference speaker: champion it. And if you’ve got some ready cash, please help fund it.
A new kind of union? What, me and Peter Thiel, billionaire investor in TaskRabbit? Sorry, I won’t be handing over my cash any time soon.
Now why should you do this? Well it’s the right thing to do. We literally stand on the brink of a new, better kind of economic system, that delivers social as well as economic benefits. In fact, social and economic benefits that the old economy promised but failed to deliver. As Julia, an AirBnB host, told me just last night, “the sharing economy saved my arse”.
The sharing economy is not an alternative to capitalism, it’s the ultimate end point of capitalism in which we are all reduced to temporary labourers and expected to smile about it because we are interested in the experience not the money. Jobs become “extra money” just like women’s jobs used to be “extra money”, and like those jobs they don’t come with things like insurance protection, job security, benefits – none of that old economy stuff. But hey, you’re not an employee, you’re a micro-entrepreneur. And you’re not doing it for the money, you’re doing it for the experience. We just assume you’re making a living some other way.
The old economy has largely failed us. Most people are not experiencing the economic independence and the happiness that mass production and consumerism promised. Partly, in a way, because the old system centralizes production, wealth and control. That’s just the way it works. And in a sense, that’s largely to blame. The peer sharing economy is a new model, which distributes power, wealth, and control to everyone else. Best of all, the very things that have become the casualties of the old economy — things like economic independence, entrepreneurialism, community, individuality, happiness — are actually built in to the very structure of this new economy. You can’t do sharing without building community, without creating individualized experiences.
The sharing economy is the centralization of global casual labour. Investors invest because individual sharing economy companies have the potential for global reach, collecting a little from each of millions of transactions around the world, and funnelling it to California.
We’ve had this ridiculous debate for the past thirty years ago in this old economy about a work/life balance, because the honest truth is life gets squeezed out because of work. As Rachel says: doing jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need. But in this sharing economy, life is built in. So Etsy producers get to know their consumers and sell individualized goods. Whenever I take a Lyft or a Sidecar — which are ride-sharing organizations in San Francisco — I always ask them “So why are you doing this?” And their first response is “To interact and meet with new and interesting people”. And then secondly, the flexible hours and a bit of extra cash. It’s the community they are most interested in experiencing.
Trashing consumerism appeals to many environmentally-minded, social-justice oriented people. But if you displace taxi drivers and replace them with casual labour, you’re not improving the work/life balance of drivers, you’re making them poorer.
Fred Mazella was a genius when he named blablacar blablacar, because he’s actually naming what happens in the car. He named his organization not after the transaction, which is ridesharing, but because people communicate and go “bla bla bla” to each other in the car. He correctly identified what the real benefit of the sharing economy is, which is these other social and economic rewards.
You know, I talk to taxi drivers too. Some of them are interesting people. You should try it sometime.
So there’s a nascent organization which is about to bloom. It’s independent, it’s member-driven, it’s global, it’s not a trade association, it’s not a lobbying group. It will use peer power and collective action to grow the sharing economy and overcome unfair obstacles.
I don’t know if he’s lying or if he believes this stuff, but take a look at the website of Peers.org and tell me you believe it.
I personally want to see the sharing economy grow to become the dominant global economic model in the world, because of the social and economic benefits which are built-in, because of the distributed wealth, control, and power which it represents. It has the possibility of transforming the world for the better. So if you want that too, especially if you’d like to see members champion it for themselves, rather than the usual suspects, come and see me afterwards and I can tell you how you can help. Or talk to Leah, who is the founder of TaskRabbit and Fred from blablacar or Lisa Gansky. We can all tell you a little more about it. So Vive La Revolution, and thank you very much.
When all jobs are Taskrabbit jobs, how does anyone earn a living?
Appendix Here’s that table of Peers.org partners. Company Funding ($US) Location Investors include… AirBnB 120M San Francisco Andreessen Horowitz, a $2.5B fund Airtasker — Sydney, AUS Bay Share — — Blablacar 10M Paris Car Next Door — — Carpooling.com 10M Munich Daimler City Car Share non-profit San Francisco Chegg 195M San Francisco (many) Collaborative Fund (VC) New York Collaborative Lab — — — co:NYC — New York Members include AirBnB etc Cookening — Paris Divvy — Australia — Farmigo 10M Palo Alto Sherbrooke Capital General Assembly 14.3M New York Maveron, a $780M fund Getaround 19M San Francisco Marissa Mayer Green Spaces New York The Hub — Vienna ioby — New York LiquidSpace 12.2M Palo Alto Greylock Partners, a $1.73B fund Lyft 82.5M San Francisco Andreessen Horowitz, a $2.5B fund Maker Media — San Francisco Meetup 18.3M New York Omidyar Network Mesh (book) Mosaic 22M Oakland Spring Ventures Open Shed — Australia OuiShare non-profit France? ParkAtMyHouse — UK BMW RelayRides 13M San Francisco General Motors, Google Ventures Scoot Networks 1.65M San Francisco Lisa Gansky Shareable (magazine) San Francisco Side.Cr (Sidecar) 10M San Francisco Lisa Gansky, Google Ventures Skillshare 4.65M New York Union Square Ventures, a $200M fund TaskRabbit 37.7M San Francisco Lightspeed Ventures, a $2B fund TimeRepublik — South Africa? Vayable — San Francisco SV Angel, an $89M fund Yerdle — San Francisco WeWork 6.85M New York Zaarly 15.2M San Francisco Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Zookal 1.46M Sydney Filtro Private Equity |
A Hermosa Beach woman who lost most of her sight in one eye after she was struck by a flying golf disc in Polliwog Park has sued the city of Manhattan Beach.
Noreen Goodbody accuses the city of negligence and allowing a dangerous condition to exist on public property in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit.
She is seeking unspecified but “serious compensation,” said attorney David Ring of the Los Angeles law firm of Taylor & Ring.
“She’s probably lost 95 percent of her sight in her left eye,” he said. “She’s probably had three or four procedures on her eye to try to remedy the problem, but none have been successful.”
Manhattan Beach officials, including the city attorney, did not respond to several voice mail messages on Friday seeking comment.
Goodbody was watching her high school-age daughter practice track at the park in August 2012 when she was struck by the “flying disc with a sharp edge,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in July.
“She doesn’t even see it coming,” Ring said. “All she knows is something slams into her eye.”
Once called Frisbee Golf, these days the sport is known by enthusiasts as disc golf.
In the early days of the sport, players used plastic Frisbees. Now specialized discs are used that can weigh up to about 6 ounces, said Zach Hall, disc golf director at Burbank’s DeBell Disc Golf Course.
Burbank’s nine-hole course, which opened in 2012, is used by disc golfers and regular golfers alike at the same time and designed “very carefully to make sure it wouldn’t be dangerous.”
“It could hurt,” Hall said if someone were hit by one. “It’s pretty hard plastic and they’re thrown at a pretty hard velocity.
“You always have to think about (disc golfers) are going to miss. It can be dangerous if folks are unaware of disc golfers around them. … The smaller the space, the worse it’s going to be.”
Polliwog Park, which sits at the corner of Redondo Avenue and Manhattan Beach Boulevard, is 18 acres.
“The course … runs throughout the park avoiding walkways and play areas,” according to the park’s website. “Players are asked not to throw in areas where people have congregated.”
But Ring contends players do anyway.
Goodbody was standing near the park’s amphitheater near the fourth hole of the disc golf course when she was struck, Ring said.
“They’re throwing through crowds of people,” he said. “The absurdity of it seems obvious and I can’t think of one good reason that a disc golf course is there.
“What if a 2-year-old gets hit? You’ll see so many huge divots in the trees from the discs … that shows how dangerous they are.”
Indeed, Ring forwarded emails from Manhattan Beach parks officials showing they have repeatedly dealt with concerns from park users and motorists over disc golfers hitting people and vehicles and have discussed moving holes as a precaution.
In one 2011 incident, for instance, a woman complained that “my husband was hit in the back by a Frisbee, which really hurt and was two feet from hitting our 1-year-old son.”
In another, a parks official warned a disc golfer in 2006 that more incidents “may result in the closure of the course.” |
Charges against a former Uber driver charged with sexually assaulting a passenger in north Houston in December were dropped Friday, his lawyer said.
Qahtan Ghassan Talib, 35, was accused of groping an intoxicated woman as he took her home. A Harris County grand jury declined to indict him.
A grand jury's refusal to indict is a procedural safeguard that means there was not enough evidence to proceed on a criminal case.
Talib's attorney, Brent Mayr, said it showed that the driver was falsely accused.
"We're very pleased as we have maintained all along that he is innocent," Mayr said. "One-hundred percent innocent, and we're glad that the grand jury saw it that way."
Mayr said Talib has not been able to work while out on bail, and has no plans to drive again for the popular ride-sharing app.
"He's kind of devastated by all this," he said. "He's pretty shaken up." |
Hey guys, Welcome to the Official IW Avatar Design Contest!
How does it work?
How long do I have?
How do I submit my masterpiece?
What do we get for rewards?
Grand Prize
Runner up
Official voting:
Submissions
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10
#11
#12
#13
#14
#15
#16
#17
#1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8#9#10#11#12#13#14#15#16#17
The Infinity Wars community has always been a place of creativity and inspiration, whether it's card design, artwork, videos or guides and lore.Should you have an unquenchable desire to make artwork that is your own personal representation of something, here's your way to do it for IW.This is my way of letting you express that and get rewarded for it.You'll create an Avatar of your own, based on Infinity Wars themes. Doesn't have to be an existing character, doesn't have to be anything in-game if you don't want it to be. It just has to be Infinity Wars themed images.Players can submit multiple images, I will create a list of all the submissions for us to vote on without revealing the artist until a winner is chosen to keep complete anonymity.Submissions will close on March 19th. So make sure you post your submission on or before that date. Through this Google Form . Submissions must be presented in ain any size.When the winners are selected I'll contact you to export your image in a 512x512 resolution, the resolution that our Avatars use.*Dimensions for submissions aren't important so long as it's a square, just remember that you're creating an Avatar, and you'll have to keep in mind that your image will have to look good as a smaller 512x512Please remember to use a simple link to your image such as Imgur or something of that nature., this will be more of a creativity and vision contest rather than skill with a drawing pad.Your avatar will be given to your account for you to show off to the world. On top of that, you have the option of telling us what you'd like done with your Avatar. Do you want it put in the store to be sold? Do you want it given to you and your friends? You tell us. You will also receive 5000 Lightmare Points!Your avatar will be credited to your account for you to show off to the world, and you'll get 2500 Lightmare Points for your awesome effort!I'll be monitoring the submissions every day and compiling them to show off to the community once March 19th rolls around. Once submissions are closed I'll make another post for all of you to vote on who you think deserves to win!Every user may vote for their Top 2 submissions, that means you have 2 votes to use. Vote wisely.For the record, I will not be disclosing the username of the artist that submitted the content until after the winners have been chosen. This is done for both the sake of fairness in popularity, as well as promoting an open discussion for all of you.If you are someone who submitted artwork, please do not take credit for your piece until after voting has closed.The Voting Polls will be locked March 27 at 00:00 IWT. |
If you pay attention to the tabloid media in the US and the UK, you’ll be familiar with the idea that immigration is a terrible problem that must be stemmed at all cost, with hordes of desperate foreigners waiting beyond our borders to steal away scraps of our hard-earned prosperity and run our public services into the ground. [image by mockstar]
According to Fred Pearce of New Scientist, however, there’s another way of looking at the present system which doesn’t portray those of us in the richest nations as the victims: it’s a form of legitimised apartheid.
It has always struck me as odd that we are so keen to allow the flow of cash and goods across borders without let or hindrance, but try so hard to deny the same rights to people. That is both unfair and a denial of the free-market theories on which much of the world’s economy is built. Surely if free trade and the free movement of capital is so good for an efficient global economy, then the same should apply to the free movement of labour? I can’t see the fault in that logic. And for the apostles of the free market to deny it reeks to me of racism and xenophobia. Worse, the stench is disguised by a cheap perfume of do-gooding development theory and environmental hand-wringing.
Pearce goes on to suggest that strict border controls actually give us what we really want – economic disparity, and an easily cowed pool of illegal immigrant labour to do the jobs that no citizen will take for the money we’re willing to pay.
There are definitely some big holes in Pearce’s theory behind the rhetoric, but he’s also pointing at some rather uncomfortable truths. So here’s your challenge for the comments: argue against Pearce without falling back on arguments such as “why not make your own country as great as the one you want to move to”, and without making sweeping generalisations about people based on their race or nationality. Go! |
Director: Victor Flemming, George Cukor, King Vidor
Writers: L. Frank Baum (novel), Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf (screenplay)
Producers: Mervyn LeRoy, Arthur Freed (MGM)
Photography: Harold Rosson
Music: Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, Terry the Dog, Clara Blandick, Charley Grapewin
The Rundown
Introduction
There may be no greater testament to The Wizard of Oz than the vast demographics it covers, from theater types who adore Broadway’s Wicked to stoners who watch the film in sync with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. After nearly 75 years, the film has transformed itself from mild box office showing to must-see annual TV event to timeless pop culture legend. It’s hard to think that the movie started as just that — a movie.
It’s almost impossible to look objectively at a film that’s so burned into our collective conscious that every song seems our own, every word feels part of our vocabulary and every touch appears as if fate intended it to be there. The film has become so mythical that many fans can no longer separate fact from fiction. Didn’t a Munchkin hang himself on screen? Aren’t there hidden metaphors for government policies? Wasn’t there some on-screen accident? Some off-screen illness? Some of these myths have been busted; others embraced. But one thing is for certain — a film that spawns so many legends must indeed be a legend itself.
Plot Summary
The story originated with the beloved children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum, who came up with the title by looking at the two letters printed on the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet (O – Z). (B) It’s a story we all know well.
Restless teen Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) lives a dull life on a Kansas farm with her Auntie Em (Clara Blandick) and Uncle Henry (Charley Grapewin). For entertainment, she looks to dog Toto (Terry the Wire Terrier) and three farm hands, Hunk (Ray Bolger), Hickory (Jack Haley) and Zeke (Bert Lahr). Still, she feels underappreciated on the farm, and when a mean old neighbor, Elmira Gulch (Margaret Hamilton), threatens to take Toto to the pound, she decides it’s time to run away from home.
After a brief run-in with fortune-teller hack Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan), Dorothy decides to return home — just as a massive tornado strikes — “It’s a twister! It’s a twister!” Dorothy is knocked unconscious by a broken window, sparking her crazy dream that the house has been lifted inside the cyclone (with she and Toto inside) and dropped inside the magical Land of Oz. Destination: Munchkinland. Address: The head of the Wicked Witch of the East.
Naturally, the witch’s sister, the Wicked Witch of the West (Hamilton), is mighty pissed off. She confronts Dorothy — and her little dog, too — but Glinda the Good Witch of the North (Billie Burke) steps in to protect her. She gives Dorothy the magical Ruby Slippers off the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East. Seeing as the shoes won’t come off as long as their owner is alive, the Wicked Witch of the West vows murderous revenge on Dorothy.
Meanwhile, Dorothy asks how she can possibly get back to Kansas. Glinda — with the help of singing Munchkins — tells her she must head to Emerald City and seek out the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. To get there, she must follow the Yellow Brick Road, where she encounters three instant companions, who agree to tag along so they, too, can ask the Wizard for various necessities. The Scarecrow (Bolger) desires nothing more than a brain, the Tin Man (Haley) wants to know what it feels like to have a heart, and the Cowardly Lion (Lahr) desperately seeks some courage.
When they arrive at Emerald City, they find the Wizard of Oz (Morgan) to be an intimidating force — a giant talking head, surrounded by pyrotechnics. The powerful Oz agrees to grant their requests, but says they must first bring him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. The foursome takes up the seemingly impossible challenge, but when the Witch captures Dorothy, it’s up to her brainless, heartless and spineless friends to storm the castle and save the day. After the Witch is undone by a bucket of water and the Wizard is revealed to be a fraud, Dorothy wakes up from her dream to decide, “There’s no place like home.”
History’s Greatest Remake?
Okay, so you could have recited that entire plot summary by heart. We all could have. It’s hard to imagine anyone imagining Oz any other way, but there was a time they did. In fact, the 1939 version was preceeded by many incarnations, starting with a live stage musical that toured the country for over 290 performances from 1902-1919, making it the longest running show of the decade. (B)
As for the silver screen, the first attempt was The Wizard of Oz (1908), followed by three renditions from the Selig Polyscope Company — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910), Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910) and The Land of Oz (1910). Three more followed by Baum’s own short-lived Oz Film Manufacturing Company — The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914), The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914) and His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914). (B) This was followed by Chadwich Pictures’ silent The Wizard of Oz (1925), the first full-length feature, starring Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodsman; a Technicolor animated short by Ted Eshbaugh in 1933; and another animated short by Kenneth McLellan 1938. (B) Cracked.com featured the film in its “surprise remakes” countdown.
Still, when it comes to MGM’s 1939 classic, I can only dock so many points for Originality. After all, this was both the very first musical version and the first live-action feature talkie version. It was also the first to do so many other things, like going from sepia to color and launching the era of Arthur Freed MGM musicals.
Screenplay: Yellow Brick Road Map
Of all these versions, it’s the 1939 film, written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf — with uncredited help by Arthur Freed, Herman Mankiewicz, Sid Silvers, and Ogden Nash — that the AFI named the #1 Fantasy of All Time and the #10 Greatest Film of All Time. Much of this has to do with its brilliantly executed script, voted by the Writers Guilds in the Top 25 Screenplays of All Time, ahead of gems like Double Indemnity (1944) and Groundhog Day (1993).
It may be one of the best examples of classic story structure. Is there a better Break into Act Two than a tornado dropping the heroine in a faraway land? What better “Fun and Games” than meeting Munchkins and a trio of friends down a Yellow Brick Road? And what better All is Lost moment than being trapped in a witch’s castle with the hourglass running out?
The script cleverly features the dual worlds of Oz and Kansas, allowing for dual characters and plenty of foreshadowing — Hunk’s “You’d think you didn’t have any brains at all,” Zeke’s “Have a little courage, that’s all” and Hickory’s “Some day they’re going to erect a statue of me in this town.” (B)
Such dialogue was an asset unavailable to the silent versions, and the writers didn’t disappoint. While most movies would kill to have even one quote nominated for the AFI’s 100 Movie Quotes, The Wizard of Oz had six, including, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” “I’m melting! Melting! What a world! What a world,” and “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!“
Three made the final list. At #99: “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!“ At #23: “There’s no place like home.” And all the way at #4: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” The lattermost has been referenced too many times to count, from Swingers (1996) to Avatar (2009):
Still, critic Kim Newman has a different pick for the best line in the film: “Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.” (D)
The Best Friends Anybody Ever Had
Ironically, it could have just as easily been Ray Bolger who became ill, because it was he who was originally cast as the Tin Man. Luckily, he changed his mind and opted to play the Scarecrow instead. Of the three friends, his Scarecrow may very well be the popular favorite, thanks to his clumsy stumbles down the Yellow Brick Road and Dorothy’s ultimate admission, “ I think I’ll miss you most of all .”
The above line of course belongs to the Tin Man, the role that caused the most problems for the production. The original choice was Buddy Ebsen (The Beverly Hillbillies), who had already shot a chunk of the film, including the Tin Man’s musical number, when he had an allergic reaction to his skin make-up, made from actual silver dust. He had to be replaced by Jack Haley, whose son later married Garland’s daughter, Liza Minnelli. Haley’s flirtatious eyes to an apple-holding Garland are steamy foreshadowing.
As for the Cowardly Lion (and Zeke), MGM cast comic stage actor Bert Lahr. His performance is instantly immitable, lending that signature New York accent to lines like, “I’ll fight you with one hand tied behind my back! I’ll fight on you one foot! I’ll fight you with my eyes closed!” He’s the ultimate scaredy cat, best on display in his hallway sprint and dive through an Emerald City window.
As for the wholesome Glinda, you couldn’t find a better actress than Billie Burke. Burke was a giant in showbuisness, named after her internationally-known clown father Billy Burke and husband of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. of “Ziegfeld Follies” fame. Her Broadway career was portrayed by Myrna Loy in the film The Great Ziegfeld (1936), where Morgan and Bolger co-starred, and she earned an Oscar nomination for Merrily We Live (1938). At age 54, her ageless beauty lent the necessary feel of magic.
Still, the greatest performance in the entire film is that of Margaret Hamilton, who turned the Wicked Witch of the West into the AFI’s #4 Villain of All Time, behind only Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates and Darth Vader. I don’t know who’s scarier, Hamilton’s Witch or Miss Gulch, whose circular bike theme is the epitome of evil. Tragically, Hamilton was sidelined with severe burns for a month after the fire came too early in one take of her trapdoor exit from Munchkinland.
Nothing arouses the deep fear within us like the Wicked Witch of the West. My grandfather teased me forever about how I used to say, “Fast forward it!” every time she came on screen. The great irony is that Hamilton started out as a kindergarten teacher. Perhaps to kids, she represents the most terrifying of authority figures, which is exactly what she played to Garland in Babes in Arms (1939). For years, Hamilton had a hard time convincing kids she wasn’t mean in real life, including an appearance on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to explain that she was only acting. (C)
While Hamilton, Burke, Lahr, Bolger and Haley all had solid careers in their day, they now belong completely to Oz. None of these five are featured in David Thomson’s New Biographical Dictionary of Film (2003).
The exception is Frank Morgan, who delivered back-to-back gems as The Wizard and Mr. Matuschek in The Shop Around the Corner (1940). Morgan reportedly showed up on the MGM lot every day carrying a black briefcase with just the right amount of alcohol. Surely behind the curtain, Oz was a drinker. (L) The eternally cranky W.C. Fields was considered for the part, but watching Morgan on screen, we can’t help but feel the generous man he was off it, until a fatal heart attack took him just 10 years after Oz.
Judy Garland: A Star is Born
Still, all of these casting pieces are built with but one purpose: to surround Judy Garland, the most famous and infamous star to come from the film. Unlike the others, she was at once synonymous with The Wizard of Oz and had the ability to transcend it. The daughter of a pair of vaudevillian performers, Garland was dancing on stage as soon as she could walk, and at age 13, she made her big screen debut in the MGM short Every Sunday (1936).
MGM had found their female counterpart to Mickey Rooney’s all-American boy, and the two teens were paired multiple times: Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (1937), Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), Babes in Arms (1939), Strike up the Band (1940), Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941), Babes on Broadway (1941) and Girl Crazy (1943). The Rooney roles primed her for the role of a lifetime. So when 20th Century Fox refused to loan out Shirley Temple to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Garland’s opportunity had arrived. (B)
The Wizard of Oz made her a household name. As Dorothy, she is timeless — innocent eyes, brown hair pulled into curly pigtails and breasts taped down under that checkered blue dress to make her look younger. At the 1940 Oscars, she received a special award “for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year,” an honor previously awarded to Temple. It was the only “win” Garland ever had on Oscar night.
“Judy Garland touched audiences with her vulnerability, with her humanity, unlike any other star in Hollywood,” film historian Tony Maietta said. “She reached out to people and wrapped them up in her arms.” (K)
After Oz, her career was carried by two people — Busby Berkeley, who choreographed her in Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway and For Me and My Gal (1942), and husband Vincente Minnelli, who directed her in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Clock (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946) and The Pirate (1947). In 1946, Garland and Minnelli gave birth to Liza, who said she couldn’t watch Oz as a kid: “It frightened me. It was like my mother was a little girl and these monkeys flew away with her. I didn’t like it, it was spooky. Then I saw it years later and I was amazed by it.” (J)
Unfortunately for the idolizing Liza, Garland also became one of Hollywood’s original test cases in a child star leading a tragic adult life. She divorced Minnelli in 1951, and went on to have three more husbands, though she spent much of her time married to drugs, severe diets and mental breakdowns. It just about ruined her career, until a worthy comeback in A Star is Born (1954). Garland should have won the Oscar that year, but lost to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954). Her only other nomination was for Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), which some consider one of her worst performances. In her twilight, Garland would make several memorable talk show appearances, telling Jack Parr hillarious lies about the production of Oz. Then, in 1969, exactly three decades after Dorothy, she would be dead at the young age of 45. Decades later, Garland was voted the AFI’s #8 Greatest Actress of All Time.
Over the Rainbow
Plug Garland’s name into IMDB and you’ll find listings for both “actress” and “soundtrack.” For while Garland was a most charming actress, her greatest contribution to movie history was lending that beautiful vibrato to the signature song first performed here in Oz: “Over the Rainbow.” Composed by Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics), the Oscar-winning song is the ultimate dreamer’s ballad, assuring each of us that “the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”
“‘Over the Rainbow’ has become part of my life,” Garland wrote to Arlen. “It’s so symbolic of everybody’s dreams and wishes that I’m sure that’s why some people get tears in their eyes when they hear it. I’ve sung it thousands of times and it’s still the song that’s closest to my heart.”
The song was one of many standards featured on Garland’s 1961 record “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall,” which garnered five Grammy Awards and remained at the top of Billboard charts for two months. (G) It will without question stand the test of time, having already spanned Chet Atkins and Les Paul’s 1976 duet, which I want played at my funeral; Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s 2004 medley with Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” Katharine McPhee’s performance in the 2006 finale of American Idol and Beyonce’s rendition during the 2007 CBS special Movies Rock:
Not only was it voted the AFI’s #1 Movie Song of All Time — above “As Time Goes By,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Moon River” — it was voted #1 on the Recording Industry Association of America’s “Songs of the Century.” That means it beat every song ever made. Period. It’s the standard by which all other standards are judged. Insanely, it was almost cut from the film for being “too sophisticated” for the young Garland.
Oz: The Musical
While “Over the Rainbow” won the Oscar for Best Original Song, composer Herbert Stothart won for Best Original Score. Stothart nails the instrumental segments of the film, from the commanding title suite (below), to the chilling looping tune of Miss Gulch’s bicycle; from the angelic wonder as Dorothy first steps into Oz, to the alarming sound as she watches the fleeting sands of the Witch’s hour glass.
How fitting that the film’s only Oscars came in musical categories, for Oz has to be the most famous musical ever done. Wait, you say, The Wizard of Oz is a musical? It seems we know the songs so well that we often forget its genre. In fact, it was the first musical ever produced by Arthur Freed, who would do more than 30 from 1939-1960 in MGM’s Golden Age, including classics like Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
The numbers in Oz rival all of those, and “Over the Rainbow” is only the beginning. The opening Munchkinland sequence includes a medley of “Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are,” “The House Began to Pitch,” “As Mayor of the Munchkin City, “As Coroner, I Must Aver,” “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” (#82 AFI Movie Songs), “The Lullabye League,” “The Lollipop Guild” and “We Welcome You to Munchkinland.”
From there, it’s “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” “You’re Off to See the Wizard,” “If I Only Had a Brain” (below), “If I Only Had a Heart,” “If I Only Had the Nerve,” “The Merry Old Land of Oz,” “If I Were the King of the Forest,” and the oft-immitated “Winkie March” (“Oh-ee-oh, oh-um”). Harburg and Arlen wrote them all, earning The Wizard of Oz a #3 spot on the AFI’s 25 Greatest Musicals of All Time, behind only Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and West Side Story (1961).
A Film of a Different Color
Like all the great musicals of MGM’s Golden Age, The Wizard of Oz was a triumph of glorious Technicolor. For many in the public, The Wizard of Oz is believed (inaccurately) to be the moment movies first transitioned from black-and-white to color. In reality, color had existed from the very beginning of cinema, initially hand-painted one frame at a time. Even in the years right before Oz, the industry saw the muted palette of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the vibrant colors of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and the lavish display of Gone With the Wind (1939).
Even if Oz wasn’t the starting point, it remains the most symbolic because of its breathtaking transition from Kansas to Oz, where Dorothy opens the door from a sepia world to a wonderful world of color. Imagine how magical it must have been for Depression-era audiences to start off watching a dreary, sepia Kansas, and then suddenly have Dorothy open the door to a world of color? Imagine all those folks decades later who watched annual broadcasts on black-and-white televisions, only to get their first color set and be knocked out by the change from sepia to color?
The transition back to sepia at the film’s conclusion only reminds us how much we’ve enjoyed the colors all along. Let’s face it. This film was made for color — ruby red slippers, Yellow Brick Roads, an Emerald City, and a “horse of a different color” (animal rights activists wouldn’t allow painting the horse, so the filmmakers applied a paste of water mixed with fruit-flavored jello powders). (F)
Creating the Wonderful World of Oz
While beautiful, the three-strip Technicolor film required massive lighting, creating temperatures that topped 100 degrees. This was all the more brutal because so many in the cast were cloaked in extravagant costumes. The hottest was no doubt Lahr, whose layered lion suit, perm mane and visible mask forced him to take frequent water breaks to avoid dehydration. (F)
The costumes were designed by Hollywood’s famous one-name designer, Adrian, who that same year also designed the garb for Lubitsch’s Ninotchka (1939) and Cukor’s The Women (1939). An Academy Award surely was surely deserved, but the category did not exist until 1948! Costumes like this were for the stage, not the movies. Adrian changed all that with a pointy-hatted witch, extravagant munchkins, a straw-stuffed scarecrow, funnel-capped tin man, talking trees and flying monkeys.
Oscar nominations did go to Cedric Gibbons and William A. Horning for Art Direction, and deservedly so. The Wizard of Oz features a number of magnificent sets, from Munchkinland to Emerald City, from the witch’s forest to her intimidating castle fortress.
Some may knock the sets for their clear “stagecraft,” but I believe this “phoniness” is completely intentional. The artificial sets allow for a stark contrast between the gritty, spaces of Kansas and the wondrous, dream world of Oz.
“It starts out as a semi-realistic film … [but] when it goes to Oz, it’s like a stage musical,” says director Harold Ramis (Animal House). “The floors are polished everywhere in Munchkinland. You’re clearly on stages, there’s no question. The sets and props, everything looks like it’s cardboard. It’s very flat and two-dimensional, the trees look phony. But it really doesn’t matter at all. … You just go with it.”
Another Oscar nomination came for special effects, a nomination shared by A. Arnold “Buddy” Gillespie (effects photography) and Douglas Shearer (sound effects). For Gillespie, the man who made MGM’s “Leo the Lion” roar, it was his first of 12 nominations for special effects, including three wins for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and Ben-Hur (1959). In 1964, the Academy awarded him a special Technical Achievement Award for “engineering an improved Background Process Projection System.” Still, The Wizard of Oz remains his greatest achievement. (H) When you have a chance to see the film again, stop and marvel at the amazing quality of effects being executed for 1939.
Most impressive is the tornado ripping through Kansas, achieved by a funnel made of muslin, the top attached to a gantry that moved the full length of the stage, and the bottom attached to an “s”-path in the floor. This leads into yet another effect as the farm house is lifted up into the cyclone. This was achieved by dropping a miniature house away from the camera, shooting it in slow motion, then playing it backwards, so that it looked like it was falling toward the camera.
Other examples include Glinda floating in on a pink bubble; the Witch coming and going in a great ball of fire; the legs of the Witch of the East shriveling away under the house; a superimposed Glinda making it snow amongst deadly poppies; and the Wizard’s holographic talking head amidst fireballs and smoke.
There’s also the flying monkeys taking flight; the Witch’s aerial smoke message aboard a broomstick; the Tin Man lifting straight out of the screen; the Scarecrow being ripped to pieces in the Witch’s forest; the magic of the Witch’s crystal ball; the melting witch (via trapdoor); and the “ring” effect of Dorothy clicking her heels back to Kansas.
Four Directors: The Men Behind the Curtain
“People come and go so quickly here.” Effects guru Gillespie was one of the few constants throughout the production, as The Wizard of Oz went through a total of four directors. For almost two weeks, the project was helmed by Richard Thorpe, whom producer Mervyn LeRoy canned because he didn’t capture the proper “childlike quality.” In the interim, director George Cukor stepped in, as he had a few days open before he started work on Gone With the Wind (1939). It was Cukor who told Garland to take off half her makeup and to lose her blonde wig in favor of her natural brunette. (H) When Cukor left for Gone With the Wind, LeRoy made a surprise turn to the macho Victor Fleming, who directed most of the picture.
“Of course, some people do go both ways.” With just weeks left of shooting, Fleming got an emergency call from producer David O. Selznick asking him to take over Gone With the Wind, due to a fallout between he, Cukor and Clark Gable. Fleming agreed, handing the Oz reigns over to King Vidor, who had directed such silent classics as The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928). (H)
“They had just taken George Cukor off Gone With the Wind, and Selznick gave me this stack of scripts to take home over the weekend,” said Vidor. “I spent from about Friday afternoon to Monday morning reading and studying and worrying about them. … Monday morning I got up and I thought, ‘God, I don’t want to take this on.’ I wanted about three months or six months to adapt [Gone With the Wind] and get used to it, at least a month or so, so I went in saying I didn’t think I wanted to do it. In the meantime, Clark Gable had worked with Victor Fleming, who … said he would do Gone With the Wind if someone would take The Wizard of Oz. I was so damn glad to get out of doing Gone With the Wind that I said, ‘Sure, I’ll take over The Wizard of Oz.'” (I)
In ten days, Vidor shot all of the sepia Kansas sequences, including “Over the Rainbow,” but refused to take a director’s credit. “Fleming had been in there on all the casting and designing sets and locations and all this sort of stuff, so I thought for somebody to come in for two weeks when most of the sets were up and the picture was all cast, he shouldn’t get credit, and neither did the Directors Guild,” Vidor said. “My name isn’t on The Wizard of Oz — I wouldn’t permit it.” (I)
And just like that, Fleming received sole director’s credit on both The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind in the same year. Together, they remain the greatest one-two punch by a single director in the same year in the history of movies. It’s hard to imagine it ever being topped, if only because so much work goes into just one project. Of course, Fleming was no auteur genius. Call him solid, reliable, capable, but “master” does not quite fit. Even so, he was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes and the film ranked #41 on Sight & Sound‘s Directors Poll with 5 votes.
The Great and Powerful Mervyn LeRoy
Aside from sharing Cukor and Fleming, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind also stand as triumphs of hands-on producers. Just as Selznick commanded Gone With the Wind, it was Mervyn LeRoy who gave The Wizard of Oz its consistent vision throughout the upheaval of four directors. A famous director in his own right — Little Caesar (1930), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) — LeRoy was handpicked by MGM head Louis B. Mayer to head up the project from the start. It was LeRoy who cast Judy Garland. And it was LeRoy who had to facilitate one of history’s grandest production spectacles.
In addition to the sets, costumes, make-up, effects and Technicolor lighting, LeRoy had to organize a cast of literally hundreds of little people. Billed as “The Singer Midgets,” the Munchkins were mostly vaudeville and circus freelancers, most famously the green-wearing Jerry Maren, whom Fleming liked so much he placed him in multiple shots, continuity break or no continuity break. Undoubtedly, the Munchkins are one of the film’s most famous elements, and their voices were made to sound even more high-pitched in post-production for an even jollier romp through Munchkinland.
Which brings us to the question of the munchkin committing suicide. It’s all a fabrication. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s the flap of a bird’s wing, not the hanging of a body.
Children’s Movie / Adult Themes
Throughout the process, LeRoy heard complaints that the film was for children and no one would want to see it. His response? “I want to see it. I’ve wanted to see it since I was a kid.” (I) Fleming agreed: “I made the film because I wanted my two little girls to see a picture that searched for beauty and decency and sweetness and love in the world.” (H) You can see LeRoy and Fleming’s mission in the prologue, dedicating the film to the “Young in Heart.”
While the film may be geared toward youth, adults should reconsider The Wizard of Oz for its layers upon layers of deeper meanings. Parents can sit back and enjoy The Wizard of Oz anew, realizing a depth of theme they never knew existed as kids.
“I think it is so much about God and faith, and good and evil, and what you need to go through in order to grow and in order to come home to yourself,” said Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing). “My daughter Stella is three years old, and she discovered The Wizard of Oz about a month ago, and she is in full-on obsession with Dorothy, all day every day. I’m enjoying it so much more again now.” (E)
In 1967, Henry M. Littlefield theorized in American Quarterly that the entire story is an allegory for U.S. populism and monetary policy in the Gilded Age, namely the 1896 presidential election between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. Indeed, this was Topic #1 around the time Baum wrote his book.
Littlefield claims every element is symbolic — The Scarecrow (naive farmers of the west); the Tin Man (dehumanized factory workers of the east); the Wicked Witch of the East (Eastern industrialists and bankers who control the people); the Good Witch of the North (populist New England); the Good Witch of the South (the populist South); Dorothy (a young Mary Lease, or simply the good-natured American people); Dorothy’s shoes (silver in the book, as the Populists wanted “the free and unlimited coinage of silver”); the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard, paved with gold, but leading nowhere); the Land of Oz (“oz” abbreviating “ounce,” i.e. silver and gold); Emerald City (Washington D.C. with its U.S. Treasury greenbacks); the Wizard (President Grover Cleveland or Republican Presidential candidate William McKinley); and the Cowardly Lion (Democratic-Populist candidate William Jennings Bryan, famous for his “cross of gold” speech). (B)
Such a reading adds new weight to “the man behind the curtain,” calling the Republican William McKinley a phony, and “cowardly lion,” saying Democrat William Jennings Bryan doesn’t have what it takes to sell his populist message. Some even find warnings against religion in Professor Marvel’s “psychic” abilities, a commentary on drug culture in “poppies will put them to sleep,” and a warning against runaway technology in the Wizard’s uncontrollable weather balloon.
Pop Culture
The “munchkin hanging” and “cross of gold” political commentary are just two of the countless legends in a film that may be the most referenced film of all time. The pop culture references began almost immediately, with Jimmy Stewart singing a drunken “Over the Rainbow” to Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940). They continued with “The Oz Kids” animated series in the ’60s, and by the early ’70s, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971) was echoing the film with its own little people (Oompa Loompas) and its own door opening to a candy-colored reveal (the Chocolate Room).
As the ’70s continued, Oz references began to become more bizarre, from the lost Oz “Jitterbug” dance showing up in That’s Entertainment! (1974), to the film syncing up perfectly with Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Here are a few of the clever connections between the album and the movie:
The same year as Pink Floyd’s album, Elton John released his 1973 album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” which went all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
In the late ’70s, George Lucas payed homage with Obi Wan’s “melting” death in Star Wars (1977); Sidney Lumet directed Diana Ross and Michael Jackson in the African American spin-off The Wiz (1978) (see below); and Jim Henson copied entire plot elements in The Muppet Movie (1979), including Kermit’s voyage to Hollywood (Oz). (B)
The ’80s brought the pop band Toto; the Chevy Chase/Carrie Fischer movie Under the Rainbow (1981); the Japanese animated version, Ozu no Mahotsukai (1982); E.T. trying to phone his own “no place like home” (1982); Ralphie encountering an Oz-obsessed kid in A Christmas Story (1983); Disney’s live-action sequel Return to Oz (1985); references by TV’s Ninja Turtles (1987); and Robin Williams chanting, “Follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail” in Good Morning Vietnam (1987).
Robert Zemckis spoofed “I’m melting” during Judge Doom’s death in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). The same line was spoofed by the ghosts disappearing into corn in Field of Dreams (1989).
The ’90s brought multiple references in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (1990); a Saturday morning cartoon The Wizard of Oz (1990); a tornado-tracking device named “Dorothy” in the blockbuster Twister (1996) (see below); an “Over the Rainbow” radio signal and the words “THIS WAY TO OZ” on a hot air balloon in Contact (1997); the playing of “Over the Rainbow” in the bloody finale of Face/Off (1997); the hit HBO prison series Oz (1997); and a “not in Kansas” line to Neo in The Matrix (1999).
The new millennium brought Oprah regular Dr. Oz.; Harry Potter (2001) flying on broomsticks; rapper Techn9ne spoofing the “Winkie March” in his song “Einstein;” Eminem’s autobiographical song “Yellow Brick Road;” and Stephen Schwartz’s 2002 Broadway smash Wicked, based off Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
In case you missed it in the “screenplay” category, here’s a second look at the countless times Dorothy’s “we’re not in Kansas” line has been referenced, from Swingers (1996) to Avatar (2009):
Legacy
For all this popularity, The Wizard of Oz was far from a box office success. Despite enthusiastic reviews and a powerful premiere, it grossed just $3 million and didn’t turn a profit until its 1949 re-release. (B) This was in part because the film had been MGM’s most expensive film to date. (H) Oz was completely overshadowed by Gone With the Wind, the highest grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation) and winner of eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Still, over the long hull, I’d venture to say more people have seen The Wizard of Oz than Gone With the Wind, thanks to its shorter runtime and appeal to kids. Dare I say it’s the most watched movie in the history of the world?
Television first brought it into our households on November 3, 1956, airing on CBS the Sunday before Thanksgiving with an introduction by Bert Lahr and Liza Minnelli. It aired again in December, 1959, at which point it became a yearly event. With so few channels to choose from, families anxiously waited each year to see the annual prime-time broadcast. (A) This helps explain why TV Guide voted it the #4 Greatest Film of All Time. Unfortunately, that luster has faded since the advent of: (a) cable, allowing stations to air the film multiple times a year; (b) VHS, allowing parents to tape it for their kids; and (c) DVD, allowing fans to watch it whenever they want.
Even so, its association with “family time” endures. It’s a safe bet that all of our grandmothers have a sign or decorative pillow somewhere in the house that reads, “There’s no place like home.” This is how much the film is a part of us, how much it has infiltrated our households, from books to board games to dolls.
It is adored by families because it affirms their importance. As Dorothy says at the end of the film, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard.” Critic Kim Newman called the ending a “cop-out,” arguing that Garland would never prefer the dreary Kansas over the wonders of Oz. While this may be true, it makes you wonder — why is it that The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life are two of the most beloved movies in American history? Can it be that deep down we all desire what’s closest to us, yet can’t realize it until we’ve gone away? Is it the classic “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” or is Dorothy’s homecoming less literal, saying we all must “come home to ourselves” and make peace with our past?
Like the film’s message, its own legacy is grounded in our roots. After all these years, the ruby slippers remain one of the biggest attractions at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, so much that the museum had to replace the carpet in front of the display case. (A) If what the Wizard says is true, that “a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others,” The Wizard of Oz has the biggest heart of any film ever made.
Citations
CITE A: The Legacy of Oz, DVD Special Feature
CITE B: Tim Dirks, filmsite.org
CITE C: Margaret Hamilton’s IMDB Bio
CITE D: Kim Newman, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
CITE E: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes
CITE F: Glorious Technicolor, Turner Classic Movies documentary
CITE G: Judy Garland’s IMDB Bio
CITE H: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The Making of a Movie Classic (DVD Special Features)
CITE I: George Stevens J.r, The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age
CITE J: Splash News via MetroLyrics.com. URL: http://www.metrolyrics.com/2010-liza-minnelli-the-wizard-of-oz-was-frightening-news.html
CITE K: Turner Classic Movies documentary, Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood — “Brother Can You Spare a Dream?”
CITE L: David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film |
The 787 Dreamliner was supposed to be a big jump forward for Boeing — notably, the first plane to be made entirely of composites rather than aluminum. It consumes 20% less fuel than an equivalent 767; which, given today’s increasing fuel prices and airlines’ diminishing profit margins, should make it an extremely desirable aircraft.
Unfortunately, things haven’t quite worked out as planned.
While the first 787 was originally scheduled to be delivered back in 2008, a string of delays and cost overruns meant that deliveries didn’t start until 2011. Boeing looked to have turned the corner with the 787 once deliveries had started, but since launch it has been plagued with a number of high-profile problems — fuel leaks, smoke in the cabin, and fires. The troubled plane has been grounded as global regulators investigate whether it’s safe to fly.
Now, it is true that problems like these are always a feature of new plane launches. But the extent to which the 787 has been troubled both in gestation and post-launch suggests that something more is at work. Boeing undertook one of the most extensive outsourcing campaigns that it has ever attempted in its history. That decision has received a lot of press coverage, and the common wisdom is coalescing around this as a cause of the problems.
But Boeing is no stranger to subcontracting. And while outsourcing can certainly lead to problems, I’m not convinced it’s the cause of these problems. Outsourcing leads to business model risk — you open the door to outsourcing your profits (in fact, a 2001 Boeing paper that is incredibly prescient and worth the time to read identified exactly this problem). But this isn’t the problem that the 787 is suffering from. At least not yet.
Rather, the issues the plane has been facing have much more to do with Boeing’s decision to treat the design and production of such a radically new and different aircraft as a modular system so early in its development.
In the creation of any truly new product or product category, it is almost invariably a big advantage to start out as integrated as possible. Why? Well, put simply, the more elements of the design that are under your control, the more effectively you’re able to radically change the design of a product — you give your engineers more degrees of freedom. Similarly, being integrated means you don’t have to understand what all the interdependencies are going to be between the components in a product that you haven’t created yet (which, obviously, is pretty hard to do). And, as a result of that, you don’t need to ask suppliers to contract over interconnects that haven’t been created yet, either. Instead, you can put employees together of different disciplines and tell them to solve the problems together. Many of the problems they will encounter would not have been possible to anticipate; but that’s ok, because they’re not under contract to build a component — they’ve been employed to solve a problem. Their primary focus is on what the optimal solution is, and if that means changing multiple elements of the design, then they’re not fighting a whole set of organizational incentives that discourage them from doing it.
Conversely, if you’re trying to modularize something — particularly if you’re trying to do it across organizational boundaries — you want to be absolutely sure that you know how all the pieces optimally work together, so everyone can just focus on their piece of the puzzle. If you’ve done it too soon and tried to modularize parts of an unsolved puzzle across suppliers, then each time one of those unanticipated problems or interdependencies arises, you have to cross corporate boundaries to make the necessary changes — changes which could dramatically impact the P&L of a supplier. Lawyers will probably need to get involved. So too might the other suppliers, who could quite possibly be required to change the design of their component, also (chances are, you’ve already contracted with them, too). The whole thing snowballs.
Historically, Boeing understood that, and had worked with its subcontractors on that basis. If it was going to rely on them, it would provide them with detailed blueprints of the parts that were required — after Boeing had already created them. That, in turn, meant that Boeing had to design all the relevant pieces of the puzzle itself, first. But with the 787, it appears that Boeing tried a very different approach: rather than having the puzzle solved and asking the suppliers to provide a defined puzzle piece, they asked suppliers to create their own blueprints for parts. The puzzle hadn’t been properly solved when Boeing asked suppliers for the pieces. It should come as little surprise then, that as the components came back from far-flung suppliers, for the first plane ever made of composite materials… those parts didn’t all fit together. Time and cost blew out accordingly.
It’s easy to blame the outsourcing. But, in this instance, it wasn’t so much the outsourcing, as it was the decision to modularize a complicated problem too soon.
Boeing’s experience bears comparing to another company, one which has mastered the art of managing design as an integrated process, while still utilizing outsourcing — Apple. Apple doesn’t manufacture their own products; but anyone who has used an Apple device can tell you that having someone else doing the manufacturing hasn’t compromised the quality of the product at all. But Apple treats both the design process and its suppliers very differently to the way that Boeing does — or at least did, in the case of the 787.
Two key questions remain:
Has Boeing learned from the mistake? Recent comments from their leadership suggest that they may have: Jim Albaugh, who only just retired as the company’s commercial aviation chief after a 35 year career with Boeing, noted that “in hindsight, we spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we tried to keep many of the key technologies closer to Boeing. The pendulum swung too far.” The company’s Chief Executive, Jim McNerney, said that he “would draw the lines in a different place” — but don’t mistake that for ditching the outsourcing, because he also said that he “would still have the same supplier/partner concept.”
And why did Boeing decide to do this in the first place? The New Yorker provides some context on this question — and it relates to McDonnell Douglas. While ostensibly Boeing took over McDonnell Douglas, what really happened was more akin to a reverse takeover — McDonnell Douglas took over Boeing. Several of the top positions in the merged Boeing were assigned to executives who had previously worked in St. Louis, where the heritage of McDonnell Aircraft had been one of fighter and attack aircraft for the military. The thing about these Government contracts is that they are paid as development proceeds. This is entirely different — and a lot less risky — than the development model for a traditional commercial airliner, where an aerospace company needs to find all the capital. My hypothesis is that McDonnell’s mindset from its defense work — minimizing the amount of capital put at risk during R&D — was applied to the 787.
They didn’t want to pay full price for the Dreamliner’s development, so, they didn’t — or at least, that’s what they thought. But as Henry Ford warned almost a century earlier: if you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it. |
By ProPublica
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
A microbiologist who supervised the work of accused anthrax killer Bruce E. Ivins explained to a National Academy of Sciences panel Thursday why the arithmetic of growing anthrax didn't add up to Ivins' mailing deadly spores in fall 2001.
"Impossible," said Dr. Henry S. Heine of a scenario in which Ivins, another civilian microbiologist working for the Army, allegedly prepared the anthrax spores at an Army lab at Fort Detrick. Heine told the 16-member panel that Ivins would have had to grow as many as 10 trillion spores, an astronomical amount that couldn't have gone unnoticed by his colleagues.
According to FBI calculations, Ivins accomplished this working after-hours in a special suite for handling lethal agents designated B3, for Biohazard Level 3. A bar chart released by the bureau (PDF) when it closed its nearly 9-year-old Amerithrax case in February showed that in August and September 2001, the months immediately before the first anthrax letters were mailed, Ivins logged 34 more hours in the B3 suite than his combined total for the previous seven months.
"That's more than 8,000 hours (close to a year) short of what he would have needed to grow the anthrax," Heine told ProPublica in an interview after his NAS presentation.
Heine, one of the few scientists at the Army lab with the skills to grow large batches of anthrax, told ProPublica it would have taken around "100 liters of liquid anthrax culture," or more than 26 gallons, to grow all the dried spores that killed five Americans and infected 17 others.
Story continues below...
"He couldn't have done that without us knowing it," said Heine.
Other biodefense scientists who didn't work with Ivins have done the same calculations and reached the same conclusion as Heine.
The FBI declined to comment on this latest challenge to its decision to end one of the most expensive manhunts in the bureau's 102-year history. In closing the case, the agency said Ivins alone was responsible for the anthrax letters. Ivins committed suicide in 2008.
Many of Ivins' colleagues and some federal lawmakers protested that the FBI was premature in closing the books on Ivins before the academy had completed its review of the science undergirding the bureau's case. "To this day, it is still far from clear that Mr. Ivins had either the know-how or access to the equipment needed to produce the material," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., in written remarks published in March.
The day Heine and his Fort Detrick colleagues learned of Ivins' suicide in July 2008, Heine said they conferred and feared the F.B.I. would then blame the attacks on someone who could no longer speak in his own defense. "And the very next day, the bureau named Bruce the mailer," Heine recalled.
Because of an FBI gag order, Heine said he was unable to discuss these details until he left his job at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, at Fort Detrick, where Ivins also worked developing anthrax vaccines. Heine left in February and is now senior scientist at the Ordway Research Institute, Inc. Center for Biodefense and Emerging Infections in Albany, N.Y.
Heine said his expertise in growing anthrax made him a suspect like Ivins. He said FBI agents gave him a polygraph exam and took statements from him several times between 2001 and 2003. The FBI was never far away, he said. A former scoutmaster, Heine said that on campouts his Boy Scout troop used to keep a "black Suburban watch," looking for the vehicles driven by the agents keeping Heine under surveillance.
"The FBI went after our weakest link," Heine said, referring to Ivins and other scientists at Fort Detrick, in Maryland. He called Ivins "fragile" and especially vulnerable to bureau attempts to extract a confession from him.
"If Bruce did it, we would've turned him in for a million dollars in a heartbeat," said Heine, referring to the government reward for information leading to the capture of the anthrax mailer. "Seriously, though, reward or no reward, we would've stopped him because that would've been the right thing to do."
The FBI linked Ivins to the crime, in part, because of a genetic match between the anthrax spores kept by Ivins and those in the letters. Documents released by the bureau said that samples of the same anthrax strain were shipped by Ivins to at least four different U.S. laboratories before the attacks.
That doesn't exonerate Ivins, Heine conceded, but he said Ivins' guilt is also far from certain. The spores in the anthrax letters were in a dry powder form that spread easily.
"When you dry spores, they fly everywhere and you can't see 'em," said Heine. "Had Bruce made it during all those late nights in the hot suite, we would've been his first victims."
Full Story Here: http://www.propublica.org/article/colleague-says-anthrax-numbers-add-up-to-unsolved-case
Also here: http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0423/colleague-anthrax-numbers-add-unsolved-case/ |
The city of Berkeley, taking no chances with prospective violence from leftists who oppose the very idea of Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro speaking at the University of California, Berkeley on Thursday night, is erecting concrete barriers around town to prevent protesters from running amok.
The barriers may only be a partial impediment:
The city of Berkeley is permitting police to use pepper spray if protesters get violent; AP reported police chief Andrew Greenwood vowed to make “very strong, rapid arrests” if any demonstrators carry weapons or wear masks.
The city of Berkeley announced on Wednesday that it would temporarily ban billy clubs, torches, flags, baseball bats, and pipes at public parks and the areas around campus, according to the Daily Californian. Three of Berkeley’s public parks will not permit people to wear masks and bandannas.
On Wednesday, Shapiro himself told NBC Bay Area, “I’m just coming to campus to give a speech about the uselessness of violence in political discourse. And now half the city is being shut down. I have to admit I’m sort of confused at what I’ve done to cause this. Everyone’s treating it like Godzilla is coming to town.” |
The Nature of Lisp
When I first stumbled into Lisp advocacy on various corners of the web I was already an experienced programmer. At that point I had grokked what seemed at the time a wide range of programming languages. I was proud to have the usual suspects (C++, Java, C#, etc.) on my service record and was under impression that I knew everything there is to know about programming languages. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong.
My initial attempt to learn Lisp came to a crashing halt as soon as I saw some sample code. I suppose the same thought ran through my mind that ran through thousands of other minds who were ever in my shoes: "Why on Earth would anyone want to use a language with such horrific syntax?!" I couldn't be bothered to learn a language if its creators couldn't be bothered to give it a pleasant syntax. After all, I was almost blinded by the infamous Lisp parentheses!
The moment I regained my sight I communicated my frustrations to some members of the Lisp sect. Almost immediately I was bombarded by a standard set of responses: Lisp's parentheses are only a superficial matter, Lisp has a huge benefit of code and data being expressed in the same manner (which, obviously, is a huge improvement over XML), Lisp has tremendously powerful metaprogramming facilities that allow programs to write code and modify themselves, Lisp allows for creation of mini-languages specific to the problem at hand, Lisp blurs the distinction between run time and compile time, Lisp, Lisp, Lisp... The list was very impressive. Needless to say none of it made sense. Nobody could illustrate the usefulness of these features with specific examples because these techniques are supposedly only useful in large software systems. After many hours of debating that conventional programming languages do the job just fine, I gave up. I wasn't about to invest months into learning a language with a terrible syntax in order to understand obscure features that had no useful examples. My time has not yet come.
For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. I was baffled. Many extremely intelligent people I knew and had much respect for were praising Lisp with almost religious dedication. There had to be something there, something I couldn't afford not to get my hands on! Eventually my thirst for knowledge won me over. I took the plunge, bit the bullet, got my hands dirty, and began months of mind bending exercises. It was a journey on an endless lake of frustration. I turned my mind inside out, rinsed it, and put it back in place. I went through seven rings of hell and came back. And then I got it.
The enlightenment came instantaneously. One moment I understood nothing, and the next moment everything clicked into place. I've achieved nirvana. Dozens of times I heard Eric Raymond's statement quoted by different people: "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." I never understood this statement. I never believed it could be true. And finally, after all the pain, it made sense! There was more truth to it than I ever could have imagined. I've achieved an almost divine state of mind, an instantaneous enlightenment experience that turned my view of computer science on its head in less than a single second.
That very second I became a member of the Lisp cult. I felt something a ninjitsu master must feel: I had to spread my newfound knowledge to at least ten lost souls in the course of my lifetime. I took the usual path. I was rehashing the same arguments that were given to me for years (only now they actually made sense!), hoping to convert unsuspecting bystanders. It didn't work. My persistence sparked a few people's interest but their curiosity dwindled at the mere sight of sample Lisp code. Perhaps years of advocacy would forge a few new Lispers, but I wasn't satisfied. There had to be a better way.
I gave the matter careful thought. Is there something inherently hard about Lisp that prevents very intelligent, experienced programmers from understanding it? No, there isn't. After all, I got it, and if I can do it, anybody can. Then what is it that makes Lisp so hard to understand? The answer, as such things usually do, came unexpectedly. Of course! Teaching anybody anything involves building advanced concepts on top of concepts they already understand! If the process is made interesting and the matter is explained properly the new concepts become as intuitive as the original building blocks that aided their understanding. That was the problem! Metaprogramming, code and data in one representation, self-modifying programs, domain specific mini-languages, none of the explanations for these concepts referenced familiar territory. How could I expect anyone to understand them! No wonder people wanted specific examples. I could as well have been speaking in Martian!
I shared my ideas with fellow Lispers. "Well, of course these concepts aren't explained in terms of familiar territory", they said. "They are so different, they're unlike anything these people have learned before." This was a poor excuse. "I do not believe this to be true", I said. The response was unanimous: "Why don't you give it a try?" So I did. This article is a product of my efforts. It is my attempt to explain Lisp in familiar, intuitive concepts. I urge brave souls to read on. Grab your favorite drink. Take a deep breath. Prepare to be blown away. Oh, and may the Force be with you.
A thousand mile journey starts with a single step. A journey to enlightenment is no exception and our first step just happens to be XML. What more could possibly be said about XML that hasn't already been said? It turns out, quite a bit. While there's nothing particularly interesting about XML itself, its relationship to Lisp is fascinating. XML is the all too familiar concept that Lisp advocates need so much. It is our bridge to conveying understanding to regular programmers. So let's revive the dead horse, take out the stick, and venture into XML wilderness that no one dared venture into before us. It's time to see the all too familiar moon from the other side.
Superficially XML is nothing more than a standardized syntax used to express arbitrary hierarchical data in human readable form. To-do lists, web pages, medical records, auto insurance claims, configuration files are all examples of potential XML use. Let's use a simple to-do list as an example (in a couple of sections you'll see it in a whole new light):
<todo name="housework"> <item priority="high">Clean the house.</item> <item priority="medium">Wash the dishes.</item> <item priority="medium">Buy more soap.</item> </todo>
What happens if we unleash our favorite XML parser on this to-do list? Once the data is parsed, how is it represented in memory? The most natural representation is, of course, a tree - a perfect data structure for hierarchical data. After all is said and done, XML is really just a tree serialized to a human readable form. Anything that can be represented in a tree can be represented in XML and vice versa. I hope you understand this idea. It's very important for what's coming next.
Let's take this a little further. What other type of data is often represented as a tree? At this point the list is as good as infinite so I'll give you a hint at what I'm getting at - try to remember your old compiler course. If you have a vague recollection that source code is stored in a tree after it's parsed, you're on the right track. Any compiler inevitably parses the source code into an abstract syntax tree. This isn't surprising since source code is hierarchical: functions contain arguments and blocks of code. Blocks of code contain expressions and statements. Expressions contain variables and operators. And so it goes.
Let's apply our corollary that any tree can easily be serialized into XML to this idea. If all source code is eventually represented as a tree, and any tree can be serialized into XML, then all source code can be converted to XML, right? Let's illustrate this interesting property by a simple example. Consider the function below:
int add(int arg1, int arg2) { return arg1 + arg2; }
Can you convert this function definition to its XML equivalent? Turns out, it's reasonably simple. Naturally there are many ways to do this. Here is one way the resulting XML can look like:
<define-function return-type="int" name="add"> <arguments> <argument type="int">arg1</argument> <argument type="int">arg2</argument> </arguments> <body> <return> <add value1="arg1" value2="arg2" /> </return> </body> </define>
We can go through this relatively simple exercise with any language. We can turn any source code into XML, and we can transform the resulting XML back to original source code. We can write a converter that turns Java into XML and a converter that turns XML back to Java. We could do the same for C++. (In case you're wondering if anyone is crazy enough to do it, take a look at GCC-XML). Furthermore, for languages that share common features but use different syntax (which to some extent is true about most mainstream languages) we could convert source code from one language to another using XML as an intermediary representation. We could use our Java2XML converter to convert a Java program to XML. We could then run an XML2CPP converter on the resulting XML and turn it into C++ code. With any luck (if we avoid using features of Java that don't exist in C++) we'll get a working C++ program. Neat, eh?
All this effectively means that we can use XML for generic storage of source code. We'd be able to create a whole class of programming languages that use uniform syntax, as well as write transformers that convert existing source code to XML. If we were to actually adopt this idea, compilers for different languages wouldn't need to implement parsers for their specific grammars - they'd simply use an XML parser to turn XML directly into an abstract syntax tree.
By now you're probably wondering why I've embarked on the XML crusade and what it has to do with Lisp (after all, Lisp was created about thirty years before XML). I promise that everything will become clear soon enough. But before we take our second step, let's go through a small philosophical exercise. Take a good look at the XML version of our "add" function above. How would you classify it? Is it data or code? If you think about it for a moment you'll realize that there are good reasons to put this XML snippet into both categories. It's XML and it's just information encoded in a standardized format. We've already determined that it can be generated from a tree data structure in memory (that's effectively what GCC-XML does). It's lying around in a file with no apparent way to execute it. We can parse it into a tree of XML nodes and do various transformations on it. It's data. But wait a moment! When all is said and done it's the same "add" function written with a different syntax, right? Once parsed, its tree could be fed into a compiler and we could execute it. We could easily write a small interpreter for this XML code and we could execute it directly. Alternatively, we could transform it into Java or C++ code, compile it, and run it. It's code.
So, where are we? Looks like we've just arrived to an interesting point. A concept that has traditionally been so hard to understand is now amazingly simple and intuitive. Code is also always data! Does it mean that data is also always code? As crazy as this sounds this very well might be the case. Remember how I promised that you'll see our to-do list in a whole new light? Let me reiterate on that promise. But we aren't ready to discuss this just yet. For now let's continue walking down our path.
A little earlier I mentioned that we could easily write an interpreter to execute our XML snippet of the add function. Of course this sounds like a purely theoretical exercise. Who in their right mind would want to do that for practical purposes? Well, it turns out quite a few people would disagree. You've likely encountered and used their work at least once in your career, too. Do I have you out on the edge of your seat? If so, let's move on!
Now that we've made the trip to the dark side of the moon, let's not leave quite yet. We may still learn something by exploring it a little more, so let's take another step. We begin by closing our eyes and remembering a cold rainy night in the winter of 2000. A prominent developer by the name of James Duncan Davidson1 was hacking his way through Tomcat servlet container. As the time came to build the changes he carefully saved all his files and ran make. Errors. Lots of errors. Something was wrong. After careful examination James exclaimed: "Is my command not executing because I have a space in front of my tab?!" Indeed, this was the problem. Again. James has had enough. He could sense the full moon through the clouds and it made him adventurous. He created a fresh Java project and quickly hacked together a simple but surprisingly useful utility. This spark of genius used Java property files for information on how to build the project. James could now write the equivalent of the makefile in a nice format without worrying about the damned spaces ever again. His utility did all the hard work by interpreting the property file and taking appropriate actions to build the project. It was neat. Another Neat Tool. Ant.
After using Ant to build Tomcat for a few months it became clear that Java property files are not sufficient to express complicated build instructions. Files needed to be checked out, copied, compiled, sent to another machine, and unit tested. In case of failure e-mails needed to be sent out to appropriate people. In case of success "Bad to the Bone" needed to be played at the highest possible volume. At the end of the track volume had to be restored to its original level. Yes, Java property files didn't cut it anymore. James needed a more flexible solution. He didn't feel like writing his own parser (especially since he wanted an industry standard solution). XML seemed like a reasonable alternative. In a couple of days Ant was ported to XML. It was the best thing since sliced bread.
So how does Ant work? It's pretty simple. It takes an XML file with specific build instructions (you decide if they're data or code) and interprets them by running specialized Java code for each XML element. It's actually much simpler than it sounds. A simple XML instruction like the one below causes a Java class with an equivalent name to be loaded and its code to be executed.
<copy todir="../new/dir"> <fileset dir="src_dir"/> </copy>
The snippet above copies a source directory to a destination directory. Ant locates a "copy" task (a Java class, really), sets appropriate parameters (todir and fileset) by calling appropriate Java methods and then executes the task. Ant comes with a set of core tasks and anyone can extend it with tasks of their own simply by writing Java classes that follow certain conventions. Ant finds these classes and executes them whenever XML elements with appropriate names are encountered. Pretty simple. Effectively Ant accomplishes what we were talking about in the previous section: it acts as an interpreter for a language that uses XML as its syntax by translating XML elements to appropriate Java instructions. We could write an "add" task and have Ant execute it when it encounters the XML snippet for addition presented in the previous section! Considering that Ant is an extremely popular project, the ideas presented in the previous section start looking more sane. After all, they're being used every day in what probably amounts to thousands of companies!
So far I've said nothing about why Ant actually goes through all the trouble of interpreting XML. Don't try to look for the answer on its website either - you'll find nothing of value. Nothing relevant to our discussion, anyway. Let's take another step. It's time to find out why.
Sometimes right decisions are made without full conscious understanding of all the issues involved. I'm not sure if James knew why he chose XML - it was likely a subconscious decision. At the very least, the reasons I saw on Ant's website for using XML are all the wrong reasons. It appears that the main concerns revolved around portability and extensibility. I fail to see how XML helps advance these goals in Ant's case. What is the advantage of using interpreted XML over simple Java source code? Why not create a set of classes with a nice API for commonly used tasks (copying directories, compiling, etc.) and using those directly from Java source code? This would run on every platform that runs Java (which Ant requires anyway), it's infinitely extensible, and it has the benefit of having a more pleasant, familiar syntax. So why XML? Can we find a good reason for using it?
It turns out that we can (although as I mentioned earlier I'm not sure if James was consciously aware of it). XML has the property of being far more flexible in terms of introduction of semantic constructs than Java could ever hope to be. Don't worry, I'm not falling into the trap of using big words to describe incomprehensible concepts. This is actually a relatively simple idea, though it may take some effort to explain. Buckle your seat-belt. We're about to make a giant leap towards achieving nirvana.
How can we represent 'copy' example above in Java code? Here's one way to do it:
CopyTask copy = new CopyTask(); Fileset fileset = new Fileset(); fileset.setDir("src_dir"); copy.setToDir("../new/dir"); copy.setFileset(fileset); copy.execute();
The code is almost the same, albeit a little longer than the original XML. So what's different? The answer is that the XML snippet introduces a special semantic construct for copying. If we could do it in Java it would look like this:
copy("../new/dir") { fileset("src_dir"); }
Can you see the difference? The code above (if it were possible in Java) is a special operator for copying files - similar to a for loop or a new foreach construct introduced in Java 5. If we had an automatic converter from XML to Java it would likely produce the above gibberish. The reason for this is that Java's accepted syntax tree grammar is fixed by the language specification - we have no way of modifying it. We can add packages, classes, methods, but we cannot extend Java to make addition of new operators possible. Yet we can do it to our heart's content in XML - its syntax tree isn't restricted by anything except our interpreter! If the idea is still unclear, consider introducing a special operator 'unless' to Java:
unless(someObject.canFly()) { someObject.transportByGround(); }
In the previous two examples we extend the Java language to introduce an operator for copying files and a conditional operator unless. We would do this by modifying the abstract syntax tree grammar that Java compiler accepts. Naturally we cannot do it with standard Java facilities, but we can easily do it in XML. Because our XML interpreter parses the abstract syntax tree that results from it, we can extend it to include any operator we like.
For complex operators this ability provides tremendous benefits. Can you imagine writing special operators for checking out source code, compiling files, running unit testing, sending email? Try to come up with some. If you're dealing with a specialized problem (in our case it's building projects) these operators can do wonders to decrease the amount of code you have to type and to increase clarity and code reuse. Interpreted XML makes this extremely easy to accomplish because it's a simple data file that stores hierarchical data. We do not have this option in Java because it's hierarchical structure is fixed (as you will soon find out, we do have this option in Lisp). Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Ant is so successful?
I urge you to take a look at recent evolution of Java and C# (especially the recently released specification for C# 3.0). The languages are being evolved by abstracting away commonly used functionality and adding it in the form of operators. New C# operators for built-in queries is one example. This is accomplished by relatively traditional means: language creators modify the accepted abstract syntax tree and add implementations of certain features. Imagine the possibilities if the programmer could modify the abstract syntax tree himself! Whole new sub-languages could be built for specialized domains (for example a language for building projects, like Ant). Can you come up with other examples? Think about these concepts for a bit, but don't worry about them too much. We'll come back to these issues after introducing a few more ideas. By then things will be a little more clear.
Let's forget about the operator business for the moment and try to expand our horizons beyond the constraints of Ant's design. I mentioned earlier that Ant can be extended by writing conventional Java classes. Ant interpreter then attempts to match XML elements to appropriately named Java classes and if the match is found the task is executed. An interesting question begs to be asked. Why not extend Ant in Ant itself? After all, core tasks contain a lot of conventional programming language constructs ('if' being a perfect example). If Ant provided constructs to develop tasks in Ant itself we'd reach a higher degree of portability. We'd be dependent on a core set of tasks (a standard library, if you will) and we wouldn't care if Java runtime is present: the core set could be implemented in anything. The rest of the tasks would be built on top of the core using Ant-XML itself. Ant would then become a generic, extensible, XML-based programming language. Consider the possibilities:
<task name="Test"> <echo message="Hello World!"/> </task> <Test />
If ant supported the "task" construct, the example above would print "Hello World!". In fact, we could write a "task" task in Java and make Ant able to extend itself using Ant-XML! Ant would then be able to build more complicated primitives on top of simple ones, just like any other programming language! This is an example of "XML" based programming language we were talking about in the beginning of this tutorial. Not very useful (can you tell why?) but pretty damn cool.
By the way, take a look at our 'Test' task once again. Congratulations. You're looking at Lisp code. What on Earth am I talking about? It doesn't look anything like Lisp? Don't worry, we'll fix that in a bit. Confused? Good. Let's clear it all up!
I mentioned in the previous section that self-extending Ant wouldn't be very useful. The reason for that is XML's verbosity. It's not too bad for data files but the moment you try writing reasonably complex code the amount of typing you have to do quickly starts to get in the way and progresses to becoming unusable for any real project. Have you ever tried writing Ant build scripts? I have, and once they get complex enough having to do it in XML becomes really annoying. Imagine having to type almost everything in Java twice because you have to close every element. Wouldn't that drive you nuts?
The solution to this problem involves using a less verbose alternative to XML. Remember, XML is just a format for representing hierarchical data. We don't have to use XML's angle brackets to serialize trees. We could come up with many other formats. One such format (incidentally, the one Lisp uses) is called an s-expression. S-expressions accomplish the same goals as XML. They're just a lot less verbose, which makes them much better suited for typing code. I will explain s-expressions in a little while, but before I do I have to clear up a few things about XML. Let's consider our XML example for copying files:
<copy todir="../new/dir"> <fileset dir="src_dir"/> </copy>
Think of what the parse tree of this snippet would look like in memory. We'd have a 'copy' node that contains a fileset node. But what about attributes? How do they fit into our picture? If you've ever used XML to describe data and wondered whether you should use an element or an attribute, you're not alone. Nobody can really figure this out and doing it right tends to be black magic rather than science. The reason for that is that attributes are really subsets of elements. Anything attributes can do, elements can do as well. The reason attributes were introduced is to curb XML's verbosity. Take a look at another version of our 'copy' snippet:
<copy> <todir>../new/dir</todir> <fileset> <dir>src_dir</dir> </fileset> </copy>
The two snippets hold exactly the same information. However, we use attributes to avoid typing the same thing more than once. Imagine if attributes weren't part of XML specification. Writing anything in XML would drive us nuts!
Now that we got attributes out of the way, let's look at s-expressions. The reason we took this detour is that s-expressions do not have attributes. Because they're a lot less verbose, attributes are simply unnecessary. This is one thing we need to keep in mind when transforming XML to s-expressions. Let's take a look at an example. We could translate above snippet to s-expressions like this:
(copy (todir "../new/dir") (fileset (dir "src_dir")))
Take a good look at this representation. What's different? Angle brackets seem to be replaced by parentheses. Instead of enclosing each element into a pair of parentheses and then closing each element with a "(/element)" we simply skip the second parenthesis in "(element" and proceed. The element is then closed like this: ")". That's it! The translation is natural and very simple. It's also a lot easier to type. Do parentheses blind first time users? Maybe, but now that we're understand the reasoning behind them they're a lot easier to handle. At the very least they're better than arthritis inducing verbosity of XML. After you get used to s-expressions writing code in them is not only doable but very pleasant. And they provide all the benefits of writing code in XML (many of which we're yet to explore). Let's take a look at our 'task' code in something that looks a lot more like lisp:
(task (name "Test") (echo (message "Hello World!"))) (Test)
S-expressions are called lists in Lisp lingo. Consider our 'task' element above. If we rewrite it without a line break and with comas instead of spaces it's starting to look surprisingly like a list of elements and other lists (the formatting is added to make it easier to see nested lists):
(task, (name, "test") , (echo, (message, "Hello World!") ) )
We could do the same with XML. Of course the line above isn't really a list, it's a tree, just like its XML-alternative. Don't let references to lists confuse you, it's just that lists that contain other lists and trees are effectively the same thing. Lisp may stand for List Processing, but it's really tree processing - no different than processing XML nodes.
Whew. After much rambling we finally got to something that looks like Lisp (and is Lisp, really). By now the mysterious Lisp parentheses as well as some claims made by Lisp advocates should become more clear. But we still have a lot of ground to cover. Ready? Let's move on!
By now you must be tired of all the XML talk. I'm tired of it as well. It's time to take a break from all the trees, s-expressions, and Ant business. Instead, let's go back to every programmer's roots. It's time to talk about C preprocessor. What's C got to do with anything, I hear you ask? Well, we now know enough to get into metaprogramming and discuss code that writes other code. Understanding this tends to be hard since all tutorials discuss it in terms of languages that you don't know. But there is nothing hard about the concept. I believe that a metaprogramming discussion based on C will make the whole thing much easier to understand. So, let's see (pun intended).
Why would anyone want to write a program that writes programs? How can we use something like this in the real world? What on Earth is metaprogramming, anyway? You already know all the answers, you just don't know it yet. In order to unlock the hidden vault of divine knowledge let's consider a rather mundane task of simple database access from code. We've all been there. Writing SQL queries all over the code to modify data within tables turns into repetitive hell soon enough. Even with the new C# 3.0 LINQ stuff this is a huge pain. Writing a full SQL query (albeit with a nice built in syntax) to get someone's name or to modify someone's address isn't exactly a programmer's idea of comfort. What do we do to solve these problems? Enter data access layers.
The idea is simple enough. You abstract database access (at least trivial queries, anyway) by creating a set of classes that mirror the tables in the database and use accessor methods to execute actual queries. This simplifies development tremendously - instead of writing SQL queries we make simple method calls (or property assignments, depending on your language of choice). Anyone who has ever used even the simplest of data access layers knows how much time it can save. Of course anyone who has ever written one knows how much time it can kill - writing a set of classes that mirror tables and convert accessors to SQL queries takes a considerable chunk of time. This seems especially silly since most of the work is manual: once you figure out the design and develop a template for your typical data access class you don't need to do any thinking. You just write code based on the same template over and over and over and over again. Many people figured out that there is a better way - there are plenty of tools that connect to the database, grab the schema, and write code for you based on a predefined (or a custom) template.
Anyone who has ever used such a tool knows what an amazing time saver it can be. In a few clicks you connect the tool to the database, get it to generate the data access layer source code, add the files to your project and voilà - ten minutes worth of work do a better job than hundreds of man-hours that were required previously. What happens if your database schema changes? Well, you just have to go through this short process again. Of course some of the best tools let you automate this - you simply add them as a part of your build step and every time you compile your project everything is done for you automatically. This is perfect! You barely have to do anything at all. If the schema ever changes your data access layer code updates automatically at compile time and any obsolete access in your code will result in compiler errors!
Data access layers are one good example, but there are plenty of others. From boilerplate GUI code, to web code, to COM and CORBA stubs, to MFC and ATL, - there are plenty of examples where the same code is written over and over again. Since writing this code is a task that can be automated completely and a programmer's time is far more expensive than CPU time, plenty of tools have been created that generate this boilerplate code automatically. What are these tools, exactly? Well, they are programs that write programs. They perform a simple task that has a mysterious name of metaprogramming. That's all there is to it.
We could create and use such tools in millions of scenarios but more often than not we don't. What it boils down to is a subconscious calculation - is it worth it for me to create a separate project, write a whole tool to generate something, and then use it, if I only have to write these very similar pieces about seven times? Of course not. Data access layers and COM stubs are written hundreds, thousands of times. This is why there are tools for them. For similar pieces of code that repeat only a few times, or even a few dozen times, writing code generation tools isn't even considered. The trouble to create such a tool more often than not far outweighs the benefit of using one. If only creating such tools was much easier, we could use them more often, and perhaps save many hours of our time. Let's see if we can accomplish this in a reasonable manner.
Surprisingly C preprocessor comes to the rescue. We've all used it in C and C++. On occasion we all wish Java had it. We use it to execute simple instructions at compile time to make small changes to our code (like selectively removing debug statements). Let's look at a quick example:
#define triple(X) X + X + X
What does this line do? It's a simple instruction written in the preprocessor language that instructs it to replace all instances of triple(X) with X + X + X. For example all instances of 'triple(5)' will be replaced with '5 + 5 + 5' and the resulting code will be compiled by the C compiler. We're really doing a very primitive version of code generation here. If only C preprocessor was a little more powerful and included ways to connect to the database and a few more simple constructs, we could use it to develop our data access layer right there, from within our program! Consider the following example that uses an imaginary extension of the C preprocessor:
#get-db-schema("127.0.0.1, un, pwd"); #iterate-through-tables #for-each-table class #table-name { }; #end-for-each
We've just connected to the database schema, iterated through all the tables, and created an empty class for each. All in a couple of lines right within our source code! Now every time we recompile the file where above code appears we'll get a freshly built set of classes that automatically update based on the schema. With a little imagination you can see how we could build a full data access layer straight from within our program, without the use of any external tools! Of course this has a certain disadvantage (aside from the fact that such an advanced version of C preprocessor doesn't exist) - we'd have to learn a whole new "compile-time language" to do this sort of work. For complex code generation this language would have to be very complex as well, it would have to support many libraries and language constructs. For example, if our generated code depended on some file located at some ftp server the preprocessor would have to be able to connect to ftp. It's a shame to create and learn a new language just to do this. Especially since there are so many nice languages already out there. Of course if we add a little creativity we can easily avoid this pitfall.
Why not replace the preprocessor language with C/C++ itself? We'd have full power of the language at compile time and we'd only need to learn a few simple directives to differentiate between compile time and runtime code!
<% cout << "Enter a number: "; cin >> n; %> for(int i = 0; i < <%= n %>; i++) { cout << "hello" << endl; }
Can you see what happens here? Everything that's between <% and %> tags runs when the program is compiled. Anything outside of these tags is normal code. In the example above you'd start compiling your program in the development environment. The code between the tags would be compiled and then ran. You'd get a prompt to enter a number. You'd enter one and it would be placed inside the for loop. The for loop would then be compiled as usual and you'd be able to execute it. For example, if you'd enter 5 during the compilation of your program, the resulting code would look like this:
for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) { cout << "hello" << endl; }
Simple and effective. No need for a special preprocessor language. We get full power of our host language (in this case C/C++) at compile time. We could easily connect to a database and generate our data access layer source code at compile time in the same way JSP or ASP generate HTML! Creating such tools would also be tremendously quick and simple. We'd never have to create new projects with specialized GUIs. We could inline our tools right into our programs. We wouldn't have to worry about whether writing such tools is worth it because writing them would be so fast - we could save tremendous amounts of time by creating simple bits of code that do mundane code generation for us!
Everything we've learned about Lisp so far can be summarized by a single statement: Lisp is executable XML with a friendlier syntax. We haven't said a single word about how Lisp actually operates. It's time to fill this gap2.
Lisp has a number of built in data types. Integers and strings, for example, aren't much different from what you're used to. The meaning of 71 or "hello" is roughly the same in Lisp as in C++ or Java. What is of more interest to us are symbols, lists, and functions. I will spend the rest of this section describing these data types as well as how a Lisp environment compiles and executes the source code you type into it (this is called evaluation in Lisp lingo). Getting through this section in one piece is important for understanding true potential of Lisp's metaprogramming, the unity of code and data, and the notion of domain specific languages. Don't think of this section as a chore though, I'll try to make it fun and accessible. Hopefully you can pick up a few interesting ideas on the way. Ok. Let's start with Lisp's symbols.
A symbol in Lisp is roughly equivalent to C++ or Java's notion of an identifier. It's a name you can use to access a variable (like currentTime, arrayCount, n, etc.) The difference is that a symbol in Lisp is a lot more liberal than its mainstream identifier alternative. In C++ or Java you're limited to alphanumeric characters and an underscore. In Lisp, you are not. For example + is a valid symbol. So is -, =, hello-world, hello+world, *, etc. (you can find the exact definition of valid Lisp symbols online). You can assign to these symbols any data-type you like. Let's ignore Lisp syntax and use pseudo-code for now. Assume that a function set assigns some value to a symbol (like = does in Java or C++). The following are all valid examples:
set(test, 5) // symbol 'test' will equal an integer 5 set(=, 5) // symbol '=' will equal an integer 5 set(test, "hello") // symbol 'test' will equal a string "hello" set(test, =) // at this point symbol '=' is equal to 5 // therefore symbol 'test' will equal to 5 set(*, "hello") // symbol '*' will equal a string "hello"
At this point something must smell wrong. If we can assign strings and integers to symbols like *, how does Lisp do multiplication? After all, * means multiply, right? The answer is pretty simple. Functions in Lisp aren't special. There is a data-type, function, just like integer and string, that you assign to symbols. A multiplication function is built into Lisp and is assigned to a symbol *. You can reassign a different value to * and you'd lose the multiplication function. Or you can store the value of the function in some other variable. Again, using pseudo-code:
*(3, 4) // multiplies 3 by 4, resulting in 12 set(temp, *) // symbol '*' is equal to the multiply function // so temp will equal to the multiply function set(*, 3) // sets symbol '*' to equal to 3 *(3, 4) // error, symbol '*' no longer equals to a function // it's equal to 3 temp(3, 4) // temp equals to a multiply function // so Lisp multiplies 3 by 4 resulting in 12 set(*, temp) // symbol '*' equals multiply function again *(3, 4) // multiplies 3 by 4, resulting in 12
You can even do wacky stuff like reassigning plus to minus:
set(+, -) // the value of '-' is a built in minus function // so now symbol '+' equals to a minus function +(5, 4) // since symbol '+' is equal to the minus function // this results in 1
I've used functions quite liberally in these examples but I didn't describe them yet. A function in Lisp is just a data-type like an integer, a string, or a symbol. A function doesn't have a notion of a name like in Java or C++. Instead, it stands on its own. Effectively it is a pointer to a block of code along with some information (like a number of parameters it accepts). You only give the function a name by assigning it to a symbol, just like you assign an integer or a string. You can create a function by using a built in function for creating functions, assigned to a symbol 'fn'. Using pseudo-code:
fn [a] { return *(a, 2); }
This returns a function that takes a single parameter named 'a' and doubles it. Note that the function has no name but you can assign it to a symbol:
set(times-two, fn [a] { return *(a, 2); })
We can now call this function:
times-two(5) // returns 10
Now that we went over symbols and functions, what about lists? Well, you already know a lot about them. Lists are simply pieces of XML written in s-expression form. A list is specified by parentheses and contains Lisp data-types (including other lists) separated by a space. For example (this is real Lisp, note that we use semicolons for comments now):
() ; an empty list (1) ; a list with a single element, 1 (1 "test") ; a list with two elements ; an integer 1 and a string "test" (test "hello") ; a list with two elements ; a symbol test and a string "hello" (test (1 2) "hello") ; a list with three elements, a symbol test ; a list of two integers 1 and 2 ; and a string "hello"
When a Lisp system encounters lists in the source code it acts exactly like Ant does when it encounters XML - it attempts to execute them. In fact, Lisp source code is only specified using lists, just like Ant source code is only specified using XML. Lisp executes lists in the following manner. The first element of the list is treated as the name of a function. The rest of the elements are treated as functions parameters. If one of the parameters is another list it is executed using the same principles and the result is passed as a parameter to the original function. That's it. We can write real code now:
(* 3 4) ; equivalent to pseudo-code *(3, 4). ; Symbol '*' is a function ; 3 and 4 are its parameters. ; Returns 12. (times-two 5) ; returns 10 (3 4) ; error: 3 is not a function (times-two) ; error, times-two expects one parameter (times-two 3 4) ; error, times-two expects one parameter (set + -) ; sets symbol '+' to be equal to whatever symbol '-' ; equals to, which is a minus function (+ 5 4) ; returns 1 since symbol '+' is now equal ; to the minus function (* 3 (* 2 2)) ; multiplies 3 by the second parameter ; (which is a function call that returns 4). ; Returns 12.
Note that so far every list we've specified was treated by a Lisp system as code. But how can we treat a list as data? Again, imagine an Ant task that accepts XML as one of its parameters. In Lisp we do this using a quote operator ' like so:
(set test '(1 2)) ; test is equal to a list of two integers, 1 and 2 (set test (1 2)) ; error, 1 is not a function (set test '(* 3 4)) ; sets test to a list of three elements, ; a symbol *, an integer 3, and an integer 4
We can use a built in function head to return the first element of the list, and a built in function tail to return the rest of the list's elements:
(head '(* 3 4)) ; returns a symbol '*' (tail '(* 3 4)) ; returns a list (3 4) (head (tail '( * 3 4))) ; (tail '(* 3 4)) returns a list (3 4) ; and (head '(3 4)) returns 3. (head test) ; test was set to a list in previous example ; returns a symbol '*'
You can think of built in Lisp functions as you think of Ant tasks. The difference is that we don't have to extend Lisp in another language (although we can), we can extend it in Lisp itself as we did with the times-two example. Lisp comes with a very compact set of built in functions - the necessary minimum. The rest of the language is implemented as a standard library in Lisp itself.
So far we've looked at metaprogramming in terms of a simple templating engine similar to JSP. We've done code generation using simple string manipulations. This is generally how most code generation tools go about doing this task. But we can do much better. To get on the right track, let's start off with a question. How would we write a tool that automatically generates Ant build scripts by looking at source files in the directory structure?
We could take the easy way out and generate Ant XML by manipulating strings. Of course a much more abstract, expressive and extensible way is to work with XML processing libraries to generate XML nodes directly in memory. The nodes can then be serialized to strings automatically. Furthermore, our tool would be able to analyze and transform existing Ant build scripts by loading them and dealing with the XML nodes directly. We would abstract ourselves from strings and deal with higher level concepts which let us get the job done faster and easier.
Of course we could write Ant tasks that allow dealing with XML transformations and write our generation tool in Ant itself. Or we could just use Lisp. As we saw earlier, a list is a built in Lisp data structure and Lisp has a number of facilities for processing lists quickly and effectively (head and tail being the simplest ones). Additionally Lisp has no semantic constraints - you can have your code (and data) have any structure you want.
Metaprogramming in Lisp is done using a construct called a "macro". Let's try to develop a set of macros that transform data like, say, a to-do list (surprised?), into a language for dealing with to-do lists.
Let's recall our to-do list example. The XML looks like this:
<todo name="housework"> <item priority="high">Clean the house.</item> <item priority="medium">Wash the dishes.</item> <item priority="medium">Buy more soap.</item> </todo>
The corresponding s-expression version looks like this:
(todo "housework" (item (priority high) "Clean the house.") (item (priority medium) "Wash the dishes.") (item (priority medium) "Buy more soap."))
Suppose we're writing a to-do manager application. We keep our to-do items serialized in a set of files and when the program starts up we want to read them and display them to the user. How would we do this with XML and some other language (say, Java)? We'd parse our XML files with the to-do lists using some XML parser, write the code that walks the XML tree and converts it to a Java data structure (because frankly, processing DOM in Java is a pain in the neck), and then use this data structure to display the data. Now, how would we do the same thing in Lisp?
If we were to adopt the same approach we'd parse the files using Lisp libraries responsible for parsing XML. The XML would then be presented to us as a Lisp list (an s-expression) and we'd walk the list and present relevant data to the user. Of course if we used Lisp it would make sense to persist the data as s-expressions directly as there's no reason to do an XML conversion. We wouldn't need special parsing libraries since data persisted as a set of s-expressions is valid Lisp and we could use Lisp compiler to parse it and store it in memory as a Lisp list. Note that Lisp compiler (much like .NET compiler) is available to a Lisp program at runtime.
But we can do better. Instead of writing code to walk the s-expression that stores our data we could write a macro that allows us to treat data as code! How do macros work? Pretty simple, really. Recall that a Lisp function is called like this:
(function-name arg1 arg2 arg3)
Where each argument is a valid Lisp expression that's evaluated and passed to the function. For example if we replace arg1 above with (+ 4 5), it will be evaluated and 9 would be passed to the function. A macro works the same way as a function, except its arguments are not evaluated.
(macro-name (+ 4 5))
In this case, (+ 4 5) is not evaluated and is passed to the macro as a list. The macro is then free to do what it likes with it, including evaluating it. The return value of a macro is a Lisp list that's treated as code. The original place with the macro is replaced with this code. For example, we could define a macro plus that takes two arguments and puts in the code that adds them.
What does it have to do with metaprogramming and our to-do list problem? Well, for one, macros are little bits of code that generate code using a list abstraction. Also, we could create macros named to-do and item that replace our data with whatever code we like, for instance code that displays the item to the user.
What benefits does this approach offer? We don't have to walk the list. The compiler will do it for us and will invoke appropriate macros. All we need to do is create the macros that convert our data to appropriate code!
For example, a macro similar to our triple C macro we showed earlier looks like this:
(defmacro triple (x) '(+ ~x ~x ~x))
The quote prevents evaluation while the tilde allows it. Now every time triple is encountered in lisp code:
(triple 4)
it is replaced with the following code:
(+ 4 4 4)
We can create macros for our to-do list items that will get called by lisp compiler and will transform the to-do list into code. Now our to-do list will be treated as code and will be executed. Suppose all we want to do is print it to standard output for the user to read:
(defmacro item (priority note) '(block (print stdout tab "Priority: " ~(head (tail priority)) endl) (print stdout tab "Note: " ~note endl endl)))
We've just created a very small and limited language for managing to-do lists embedded in Lisp. Such languages are very specific to a particular problem domain and are often referred to as domain specific languages or DSLs.
In this article we've already encountered two domain specific languages: Ant (specific to dealing with project builds) and our unnamed mini-language for dealing with to-do lists. The difference is that Ant was written from scratch using XML, an XML parser, and Java while our language is embedded into Lisp and is easily created within a couple of minutes.
We've already discussed the benefits of DSLs, mainly why Ant is using XML, not Java source code. Lisp lets us create as many DSLs as we need for our problem. We can create domain specific languages for creating web applications, writing massively multiplayer games, doing fixed income trading, solving the protein folding problem, dealing with transactions, etc. We can layer these languages on top of each other and create a language for writing web-based trading applications by taking advantage of our web application language and bond trading language. Every day we'd reap the benefits of this approach, much like we reap the benefits of Ant.
Using DSLs to solve problems results in much more compact, maintainable, flexible programs. In a way we create them in Java by creating classes that help us solve the problem. The difference is that Lisp allows us to take this abstraction to the next level: we're not limited by Java's parser. Think of writing build scripts in Java itself using some supporting library. Compare it to using Ant. Now apply this same comparison to every single problem you've ever worked on and you'll begin to glimpse a small share of the benefits offered by Lisp.
Learning Lisp is an uphill battle. Even though in Computer Science terms Lisp is an ancient language, few people to date figured out how to teach it well enough to make it accessible. Despite great efforts by many Lisp advocates, learning Lisp today is still hard. The good news is that this won't remain the case forever since the amount of Lisp-related resources is rapidly increasing. Time is on Lisp's side.
Lisp is a way to escape mediocrity and to get ahead of the pack. Learning Lisp means you can get a better job today, because you can impress any reasonably intelligent interviewer with fresh insight into most aspects of software engineering. It also means you're likely to get fired tomorrow because everyone is tired of you constantly mentioning how much better the company could be doing if only its software was written in Lisp. Is it worth the effort? Everyone who has ever learned Lisp says yes. The choice, of course, remains yours.
Whew. That's enough. I've been writing this article, on and off, for months. If you find it interesting, have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please drop a note at [email protected]. I'll be glad to hear your feedback. |
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Sergio Romero loves Louis van Gaal so much that he was once quite literally prepared to smash through a brick wall for the man he regards as his second father.
Romero, the Argentine keeper who has replaced David De Gea in Manchester United’s team for the first two games of the Premier League season, became so enraged after making the mistake that saw Van Gaal’s AZ Alkmaar team knocked out of the Dutch Cup that he punched a dressing-room wall.
His anger left him with a hand so badly broken that he missed the climax of his club’s incredible 2009 Eredivisie title triumph.
Van Gaal branded Romero a fool. But that didn’t prevent the United boss from asking the 28-year-old if he was interested in a mutual rescue mission when De Gea’s refusal to sign a new contract began to give United a problem earlier this summer.
“I am back with my old manager and I am so happy,” said Romero.
(Image: AFP/Getty)
“I owe Louis van Gaal so much. I will tell you what I told the boss the first time we worked together: that when you have an Argentine in your team, you get a never-give-up mentality.
“I find it incredible that I am now at this club after the year that I have had. I wasn’t wanted anywhere else, but I am coming towards the strongest and best part of my football life.”
When Van Gaal took Romero to Alkmaar in 2007, he had a rule at the club that the players could only talk Dutch. It was then that the keeper discovered a side to the disciplinarian Dutchman that will surprise many.
(Image: Michael Regan)
Romero recalled: “I was told that Van Gaal only allowed the players to speak Dutch – and that the rule was not broken for anyone.
“I felt as if I had arrived in a complete new world in Holland. I’d spent my entire youth with my first club, Racing Club in Argentina.
“But then I found out that the coach was not as hard as everyone had said.
“He helped me by speaking to me in Spanish every day, talking in a very quiet voice so that the other players could not hear him and know that he had broken his own rule. That was a warm, human touch.
(Image: John Peters)
“He helped me through the difficult days in my new life.”
Eight years on and the pair teamed up again. Van Gaal’s search for a keeper made him realise that Romero was a free agent after having played just a handful of games in the previous two seasons with Sampdoria and Monaco.
The Dutchman was shocked – just 12 months earlier, key Romero’s saves had taken Argentina to the World Cup Final at the expense of LVG’s own Holland side. Romero, who helped his country reach the Copa America Final in Chile last month, said: “It’s perfect that I am back with my old manager. It makes me emotional.
(Image: Alex Livesey - FIFA)
“It was Van Gaal who made me an international player.
“I will never forget the morning he told me that he had been speaking on the telephone to a certain Mr Maradona and that the coach of Argentina wanted to select me.
“I now want to make him proud again after the crisis of what happened to my hand in Alkmaar.
“I am so proud of where I stand today. My wife and my two kids are so proud. And I know for sure that my father, who is in heaven, is also proud.”
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108 dead in Bangladesh flash floods
Updated
The death toll from a series of deadly flash floods and landslides in southeast Bangladesh has risen to 108.
The region's chief administrator, Sirajul Haq Khan, says the victims bodies were pulled from the mud and debris of destroyed homes in the districts of Chittagong, Cox's Bazar and Bandarban.
Mr Khan says the rescue operation has been called off as nobody else has been reported missing.
He says the flood waters have finally receded.
The landslides were triggered by three days of monsoon rains.
More than 60,000 people have been displaced.
Rain-triggered landslides are common in Chittagong and the government has sought to tighten rules restricting development in danger areas.
Meanwhile, heavy rain has swamped large areas of neighbouring north eastern India, killing at least 27 people.
Almost one million others have been displaced since flash flooding began in the area last weekend.
Most of the people who have fled their homes are being forced to live on raised platforms or under tarpaulin tents.
A government spokesman says 1500 temporary shelters have been set up in the state of Assam to accommodate those who have lost their homes.
Topics: storm-disaster, bangladesh, asia
First posted |
When Sergeant Clay Hunt left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2010 after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, he was lonely, depressed and battling Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). He was working as an advocate for other soldiers struck by this debilitating condition, lobbying Congress on their behalf, cycling with wounded warriors, and even appearing in PSAs discussing the issues surrounding veteran reintegration. But just months after separating from the Corps, he committed suicide, unable to handle the isolation that came with adjusting to civilian life.
At his memorial service, Jake Wood, a soldier who he’d served alongside on both tours, discovered that three other Marines from their unit lived within 15 miles of Hunt’s Houston, Texas, apartment, but no one knew he had moved there. Wood couldn’t help but think that if they had connected, their presence might have saved Hunt’s life. So he joined forces with fellow vets Anthony Allman (Chief Executive Officer) and William McNulty (Chief Expeditionary Officer) to create POS REP, a proximity-based app that uses GPS to connect veterans to each other and to resources that can help them adjust to–and thrive in–life after service. It couldn’t have come a moment too soon; the VA estimates that 22 veterans take their lives every single day.
This screenshot shows an AMVETS Career Center where veterans can find employment assistance
“We’re now in our 13th year of combat operations in the global war on terrorism that has been executed with an All-Volunteer Force–there hasn’t been a draft–and the burden of war has fallen on a small segment of American society. This makes transitioning out of the military and returning to civilian life particularly challenging,” Allman, 31, explains. “POS REP allows veterans to discover and communicate with a network of peers who can relate to those unique situations. Think of it as a sacred digital space where veterans can discuss issues pertaining to reintegration without judgment.”
The app, which went live at the end of 2012, takes its name straight from the frontlines. “POS REP” is military slang for “Position Report,” which means to provide your location. The fact that it’s an app goes beyond the mobile-only trend. “Mobile is ideal for the type of user behavior we’d like to encourage. We don’t want veterans sitting behind their computers posting cat GIFs all day. We want veterans engaging with each other online, but more importantly offline,” says Allman, who previously founded Cloud Corpsman, a direct import tool for Veteran’s Affairs “Blue Button” medical data. “There’s also a battle taking place in the way we consume content. Search works well if you know exactly what you’re looking for (say, for a pair of shoes), but when you get out of the military, often times you don’t know what you want or need in terms of services. POS REP uses a discovery approach to push curated information that we believe is relevant or useful based on our collective experience as veterans.”
When a veteran enters a user’s perimeter, they receive a push notification alerting them to new peers in the area.
After verifying their veteran status, users can find other registered veterans nearby and group chat with their unit on the go. The app also connects users with local resources, which, Allman says, isn’t part of the current military discharge process. “When someone chooses to leave the military, they are required to attend a battery of transition classes sponsored by various government agencies. But for transition programs to be effective, I argue they must take place in the community where you choose to reside after service,” Allman says. “With POS REP, veterans tap one button and we present options based on location. We allow transitioning veterans to tap into the local knowledge of those who are already there, and we give veteran service organizations a free mobile capability.” The result: Organizations that aren’t financially or technically equipped to go mobile are connected directly to the people they seek to serve.
I recently received an email from someone detailing how POS REP was instrumental in a suicide intervention.
And it’s working. Active users are up 64% from last year, with vets from all over the country downloading the app to their iPhones. But perhaps the best way to measure the app’s impact is anecdotally. “I recently received an email from someone detailing how POS REP was instrumental in a suicide intervention. Knowing that we were involved in preventing another loss of life is the reason I get up in the morning. It really doesn’t get any better than that, considering our inspiration,” Allman says.
Next on deck is an Android version of the app, and then they will expand beyond the U.S. “We’re taking our platform to allies across the globe; think POS REP for NATO,” Allman says. “Many of these nations are seeing a rise in mental health conditions and suicide in their veteran populations. I think it’s a moral imperative to assist our allies who came to our defense in the wake of 9/11.” |
This article is about the John Carpenter film. For other uses, see In the Mouth of Madness (disambiguation)
"Sutter Cane" redirects here. For the rapper, see Sutter Kain
In the Mouth of Madness is a 1994 American horror film directed and scored by John Carpenter written by Michael De Luca. It stars Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, David Warner and Charlton Heston. Informally, the film is the third installment in Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness.[2]
Plot [ edit ]
In the midst of an unspecified disaster, Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) visits John Trent (Sam Neill), a patient in a psychiatric hospital, and Trent recounts his story:
Trent, a freelance insurance investigator, has lunch with a colleague, an owner of an insurance company, who asks Trent to work on his largest insured: investigating a claim by New York-based Arcane Publishing. During their conversation, Trent is attacked by a man wielding an axe who, after asking him if he reads Sutter Cane, is shot dead by a police officer before he can harm Trent. The man was Cane's agent, who went insane and killed his family after reading one of Cane's books.
Trent meets with Arcane Publishing director Jackson Harglow (Charlton Heston), who tasks him with investigating the disappearance of popular horror novelist Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), and recovering the manuscript for Cane's final novel. He assigns Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), to accompany him. Linda explains that Cane's stories have been known to cause disorientation, memory loss and paranoia in "less stable readers". Trent is skeptical, convinced that the disappearance is a publicity stunt. Trent notices red lines on Cane's book's covers which, when aligned properly, form the outline of New Hampshire and mark a location alluded to be Hobb's End, the fictional setting for many of Cane's works.
They set out to find the town. Linda experiences bizarre phenomena during the late-night drive, and they inexplicably arrive at Hobb's End in daylight. Trent and Linda search the small town, encountering people and landmarks described as fictional in Cane's novels. Trent believes it all to be staged, but Linda disagrees. She admits to Trent that Arcane Publishing's claim was a stunt to promote Cane's book, but the time distortion and exact replica of Hobb's End were not part of the plan.
Linda enters a church to confront Cane, who exposes her to his final novel, In the Mouth of Madness, which drives her insane; she begins embracing and kissing Cane passionately. A man (Wilhelm von Homburg) approaches Trent in a bar and warns him to leave, then commits suicide. Outside the bar, a mob of monstrous-looking townspeople descend upon him. Trent drives away from Hobb's End, but is repeatedly teleported back to the center of town. After crashing his car, Trent awakens inside the church with Linda, where Cane explains that the public's belief in his stories freed an ancient race of monstrous beings which will reclaim the Earth. Cane reveals that Trent is merely one of his characters, who must follow Cane's plot and return the manuscript of In The Mouth of Madness to Arcane Publishing, furthering the end of humanity.
After giving Trent the manuscript, Cane tears his face open, creating a portal to the dimension of Cane's monstrous masters. Trent sees a long tunnel that Cane said would take him back to his world, and urges Linda to come with him. She tells him she can't, because she has already read the entire book. Trent races down the hall, with Cane's monsters close on his heels. He trips and falls, then suddenly finds himself lying on a country road, apparently back in reality. During his return to New York, Trent destroys the manuscript. Back at Arcane Publishing, Trent relates his experience to Harglow. Harglow claims ignorance of Linda; Trent was sent alone to find Cane, and the manuscript was delivered months earlier. In the Mouth of Madness has been on sale for weeks, with a film adaptation in post production. Trent encounters a reader of the newly released novel, who is bleeding from his altered eyes. Trent asks if he is enjoying the book, and when the dazed reader nods, Trent tells him he should not be surprised before swinging the axe. Trent is arrested for the murder.
After Trent finishes telling his story, Dr. Wrenn judges it a meaningless hallucination. Trent wakes the following day to find the asylum abandoned. He departs as a radio announces that the world has been overrun with monstrous creatures, including mutating humans, and that outbreaks of suicide and mass murder are commonplace. Trent goes to see the In the Mouth of Madness film and discovers that he is the main character. As he watches his previous actions play out on screen, including a scene where he insisted to Linda "This is reality!", Trent begins laughing hysterically before breaking down crying; finally realizing he was a character in the book all along.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Michael De Luca wrote the script in the late 1980s and one of the first directors he offered it to was John Carpenter,[3] who initially passed on the project. New Line Cinema later announced production in 1989 with director Tony Randel attached to direct.[3] Later Mary Lambert was also attached to direct.[3] A few years later, Carpenter signed on as director in December 1992 and filming took place from August to October 1993.[3]
The town scenes in Hobb's End were filmed on Main Street Unionville, and the exterior of the Black Church is actually the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Both are located in Markham, Ontario.[4]
Influences [ edit ]
The film pays tribute to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on Lovecraft's novella, At the Mountains of Madness, and insanity plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft's fiction. The opening scene depicts Trent's confinement to an asylum, with the bulk of the story told in flashback, a common technique of Lovecraft's. Reference is made to Lovecraftian settings and details (such as a character that shares the name of Lovecraft's Pickman family). Sutter Cane's novels have similar titles to H.P. Lovecraft stories : The Whisperer of the Dark (The Whisperer in Darkness), The Thing in the Basement (The Thing on the Doorstep), Haunter out of Time (The Haunter of the Dark/The Shadow Out of Time), etc.
The film can also be seen as a reference to Stephen King, who, like Lovecraft, writes horror fiction set in New England hamlets.[5][6]
Release [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
In the Mouth of Madness was released in December 1994 in Italy, and on February 3, 1995 in the U.S. In the U.S., it grossed $3,441,807 in its first weekend, and $8,946,600 total during its run.[1]
Home media [ edit ]
A Blu-ray Disc of the film by New Line Cinema was released on October 15, 2013.[7] In 2016, the film was re-released on DVD by Warner Archive Collection.[8] Shout! Factory re-released the film on Blu Ray in a collector's edition form on July 24, 2018.[9]
Reception [ edit ]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on 45 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 5.7/10.[10] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[11]
French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma listed the film as #10 on their 1995 Top 10 List.[12]
Awards [ edit ]
Award Category Nominee(s) Result 22nd Saturn Awards Best Horror Film In the Mouth of Madness Nominated Best Make-Up (K.N.B. EFX Group Inc.) Nominated Fantasporto Critics' Award John Carpenter Won Best Film Nominated |
How much water does a camel's hump hold? None. A camel's hump does not hold water at all - it actually stores fat. The camel uses it as nourishment when food is scarce. If a camel uses the fat inside the hump, the hump will become limp and droop down. With proper food and rest the hump will return to normal. The hump is not used for water storage, but camels can go for long periods of time without water. They drink large amounts of water - up to 20 gallons at a time. This water is stored in the animal's bloodstream. Related Web Sites The A-Z of Camels - This Web site is sponsored by ArabNet. It provides an A - Z fact sheet of the camel.
Camels: Of Service and Survival by Susan Lumpkin - This article appeared in the September/October 1999 issue of Zoogoer.
Further Reading Arnold, Caroline. Camel . New York, Morrow Junior Books, 1992.48 p. (Juvenile).
. New York, Morrow Junior Books, 1992.48 p. (Juvenile). Camels. In Magill's encyclopedia of science: animal life . Carl W. Hoagstrom, ed. Pasadena, CA Salem Press, 2002. v. 1, p. 156-158.
. Carl W. Hoagstrom, ed. Pasadena, CA Salem Press, 2002. v. 1, p. 156-158. Gauthier-Pilters, Hilde and Anne Innis Dagg. The camel, its evolution, ecology, behavior, and relationship to man . Chicago, University Press, 1981. 208 p.
. Chicago, University Press, 1981. 208 p. Market, Jenny. Camels. Mankato, MN, Child's World, c.1991. 1 v. (unpaged). For more print resources...
Search on "camel" or "dromedary" in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. |
The nightmare scenario for Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos is seeing Manny Machado in pinstripes in 2018.
The New York Yankees are in need of third base help and have one of the best farm systems in baseball. They would match up well with the Orioles in trade talks for Machado, but Angelos reportedly doesn't want to send his prized star to the Bronx. The hatred is so bad that Angelos doesn't even want to deal Machado to a team that could eventually flip him to New York, according to Bob Nightengale of USA TODAY Sports.
It came as a surprise Wednesday when it was reported the White Sox were heavily interested in Machado. It was believed Chicago's thought process behind a move was that they could hopefully sign Machado to an extension, but if they couldn't, they would deal him to the Yankees in exchange for top prospects.
The White Sox have reportedly told the Orioles they would not trade for Machado and immediately flip him, though Baltimore apparently doesn't believe it.
In order to potentially combat a team from flipping Machado, the Orioles could grant them a window to see if they could work out an extension, though Orioles executive VP of baseball operations Dan Duquette said he doesn't see that as a "viable option," according to Eduardo Encina of the Baltimore Sun.
Duquette said earlier this week that the club is open to dealing Machado within the division, but that doesn't mean Angelos would sign off on any deal. |
“It’s incredible, the volume of stuff coming out” from Iran, said Matthew Weaver, who sounded exhausted Thursday evening after blogging for more than 10 days for The Guardian newspaper’s Web site.
When rallies and conflicts occur “first the tweets come, then the pictures, then the YouTube videos, then the wires,” he said. “It’s extraordinary.”
Most important, he said, what people are saying “at one point in the day is then confirmed by more conventional sources four or five hours later.”
Photo
CNN encourages viewers to upload pictures and observations to iReport.com, its Web site for citizen journalism. Every upload is posted automatically on iReport.com, but each is studied before being shown on television.
In the vetting process, CNN contacts the person who posted the material, asks questions about the content and tries to confirm its veracity. Lila King, the executive in charge of iReport, said the staff members try to “triangulate the details” of an event by corroborating stories with multiple iReport contributors in a given area. Farsi speakers at CNN sometimes listened intently to the sound from the protest videos, discerning the accents of Iranian cities and transcribing the chants and screams.
Because the videos and images are not taken by a CNN employee, the network cannot completely vouch for their authenticity. But without professionals at the scene — CNN’s remaining correspondent was pulled out last week after the government imposed prohibitive restrictions — they provide the all-important pictures to tell the story.
In an indication of how difficult the process can be, CNN had received 5,200 Iran-related submissions and had approved about 180 of them for use on television.
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Iran is now the third biggest traffic driver to iReport.com, behind the United States and Canada. One month ago, Iran ranked No. 63 on the list of countries. Ms. King called Iran a “watershed moment” for citizen dispatches, and for the first time an iReport producer sits at the main CNN newsgathering desk.
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Bill Mitchell, a senior leader at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists, said the extent of user involvement shown in the Iran coverage seems to be a new way of thinking about journalism.
“Instead of limiting ourselves to full-blown articles to be written by a journalist (professional or otherwise), the idea is to look closely at stories as they unfold and ask: is there a piece of this story I’m in a particularly good position to enhance or advance?” he said in an e-mail message.
“And it’s not just a question for journalists,” he added.
Nico Pitney, the senior news editor at The Huffington Post, started to aggregate Iran news on June 13, the day after the election. By the middle of last week, the blog — with several updates an hour during the day — had received more than 100,000 comments and five million page views.
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Mr. Pitney said blogs like his produce a synthesis of professional reporting and reliable amateur material. Essentially, the news tips that reporters have always relied upon are now being aired in public.
In a recognition of the Web’s role in covering the protests, Mr. Pitney was invited by the White House to ask a question at a presidential press conference last week. He forwarded to President Obama an e-mailed question from an Iranian. “We’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran,” the president said.
Even anonymous Internet users develop a reputation over time, said Robert Mackey, the editor of a blog called The Lede for The New York Times’s Web site, who tracked the election and protest for almost two weeks. Although there have been some erroneous claims on sites like Twitter, in general “there seems to be very little mischief-making,” Mr. Mackey said. “People generally want to help solve the puzzle.”
Readers repeatedly drew Mr. Mackey’s attention to tweets and photos of protests in the comments thread of the blog. Some even shared their memories of the geography of Tehran in an attempt to verify scenes in videos.
Over time, the impromptu Iranian reporters have honed their skills. Some put the date of a skirmish in the file descriptions they send. Others film street signs and landmarks. But the user uploads can sometimes be misleading. Last Wednesday, Mr. Mackey put a call out to readers to determine whether a video was actually new. A commenter pointed to a two-day-old YouTube version.
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Cases like this show why the publication of tweets and Flickr photos can be awkward. Echoing others, Mr. Weaver of The Guardian’s blog said his manner of reporting had made some of his colleagues uncomfortable; he recalled one colleague who remarked, “Twitter? I won’t touch it. It’s all garbage.”
On a couple of occasions, The Guardian’s blog featured video clips that were later discovered to be days old. Mr. Weaver said readers of live blogs are “a bit more forgiving” of those incidents, in part because bloggers are transparent about what they do and do not know.
Television anchors were frequently put in the same position while covering Iran. Last Wednesday, the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith showed a YouTube video of police officials beating and dragging people.
“We do not know when or where this video was from,” Mr. Smith told viewers. “We do not even know if it was staged, although we have no reason to believe that.” All he knew for sure was that it was “recently uploaded to YouTube.” For news organizations that face reporting constraints, that has become a good enough starting point. |
The Army has filed desertion charges against Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released in Afghanistan last spring after five years in captivity, Bergdahl's lawyer said Wednesday.
Bergdahl, 28, will be charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy under Articles 85 and 95 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, said Eugene Fidell, a military law specialist who has represented Bergdahl since his release.
Fidell said an Article 32 proceeding on the Bergdahl case, comparable to a grand jury investigation in civilian law, was scheduled to begin at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., on April 22. Fidell declined initial comment on whether he was surprised that the Army decided to proceed with the charges.
Bergdahl's release in the controversial case came in a deal that resulted in the transfer of five Taliban prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay to the Gulf state of Qatar.
Others in Bergdahl's unit have charged in Congressional hearings and told news outlets that they believe Bergdahl willingly left his post in Afghanistan and that soldiers were killed or wounded in subsequent searches for Bergdahl.
Bergdahl went missing on June 30, 2009, in Afghanistan's Paktika province and was believed to have been held in Pakistan and elsewhere by the Haqqani network, an insurgent group allied with the Taliban.
Following Bergdahl's return to the U.S., the Army began an investigation on whether he should be charged. The investigation was completed last October and was sent to the Pentagon. The case was later forwarded to Gen. Mark Milley, commander of Army Forces Command, to determine whether Bergdahl should be charged. |
Image caption Police are uncertain whether it was a random robbery
A Pablo Picasso drawing, thought to be worth £100,000 has been stolen from an art gallery in San Francisco.
Police are looking for a man who walked into the Weinstein Gallery and took the valuable pencil drawing off the wall and then fled in a taxi.
A gallery spokeswoman told the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper that the work was an "original and unique" artwork.
It is thought Picasso created Tete de Femme in 1965.
Speaking to the newspaper, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said: "We're hoping someone in the public might recognise this piece, if they see someone walking around with it or trying to sell it.
"We don't know if the place was targeted or whether this was a random opportunity that this guy took advantage of."
Other artists whose works are still on display at the gallery include Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro.
Last year five paintings by Picasso, Matisse and other great artists were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. |
Gallup
July 11, 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993.
The findings are from Gallup’s annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions, conducted June 7-10 this year. As such, the findings preceded the erroneous initial reports by cable-news networks CNN and Fox News regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 28 decision about the constitutionality of the U.S. healthcare law.
Among 16 U.S. institutions tested, television news ranks 11th, following newspapers in 10th place. The 25% of adults who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers is down slightly from 28% last year. Confidence in newspapers is now half of what it was at its peak of 51% in 1979.
Full story here. |
In the near future, ads will just be part of the conversation.
Bots, and the AI technologies that drive them, are taking huge leaps forward in sophistication and reach. Facebook and Telegram recently added bot APIs to their platforms, and Apple Messages will soon allow third-parties to plug in, too. While bots had previously been limited to very specific requests, such as checking a balance or flight status, next-generation AI, like the recently unveiled Viv, will better understand context and integrate with a host of services — including programmatic advertising.
Classic interface, new channel
Conversational commerce represents a step forward from both traditional websites and mobile apps, using one of the simplest interfaces possible: text. Bots currently allow users to carry out a host of tasks entirely via messaging: transfer money, ask questions, make purchases, book travel and check the weather. Of course, bots also send promotional messages, and soon they may serve third-party conversational ads through programmatic exchanges.
As with any new technology, bots need to build trust first. The more AI seeks to impersonate humans, the more the technology will be judged by human standards of etiquette and emotional intelligence. Relevance will be critical. Overwhelming consumers with promotional messages before bots have proven their worth risks alienating them. No one likes to start a new relationship only to find they’ve been tricked into a sales pitch.
Better than banners
Conversational advertising stands to offer several potential advantages while solving many of the current problems with display ads. For example, programmatic RTB auctions can slow down web pages and hog precious mobile data, but this won’t be an issue with bots. Because bots aren’t expected to respond in milliseconds, short pauses are fine. And text conversations use only a trickle of bandwidth.
No one likes to start a new relationship only to find they’ve been tricked into a sales pitch.
Another key differentiator is that, like human contacts, bot relationships can persist across touch points and outside of the walled garden of messaging networks.
The information a bot learns through interactions on Facebook can carry over seamlessly to WhatsApp or to a chat interface in a brand’s mobile app. Facebook specifically forbids what it classifies as promotional messaging, but any programmatic auction would likely occur outside of the messaging platform. And, as dialog becomes more natural, these mentions would simply appear organically as part of a larger conversation.
Native speakers
Until now, native advertising has been difficult to deliver programmatically. However, as the messaging interface is just text, bots can be programmed with a wide range of contextual responses, or conversational ad units. When an advertiser defines a promotion, the bot can surface that information organically in the conversation using natural language. In fact, IBM is already using Watson to experiment with “cognitive ads” on its Weather Co. property.
It might be helpful to think of future bots less as automated text interfaces and more as digital influencers programmed with their own personalities for different audiences. For instance, take two different personal finance bots — one aimed at retirees, the other designed to interact with college students. Both bots might answer a question about reducing debt by mentioning a sponsored balance transfer offer with a low APR, but the exact language would differ: clear and reassuring for retirees versus snarky humor and emojis for the students.
This approach has the benefit of being both dynamic in its presentation and completely native to the chat medium — as if a friend were suggesting a product. Moreover, it removes the burden of generating the countless variations of creative elements that would be required for a similarly tailored display ad campaign.
Deep learners
With the help of machine learning, bots will begin to understand and remember consumer preferences, allowing for even more personalized experiences. For instance, a traveler planning a trip might inquire about a hotel’s proximity to a city’s landmarks, the local airport and other relevant locations. From these interactions, the bot can understand intent (the user intends to fly to the destination and also wants to do some sightseeing). Then it can use that information to match potential advertisers programmatically, mentioning relevant offers as part of the larger conversation.
Deep learning and predictive analytics will allow the relationship to evolve.
But the relevance doesn’t need to stop with a single interaction. That same traveler might request a better hotel than last time. Not only can the bot understand “last time,” but also it can learn to filter based on the patterns that emerge throughout the customer relationship. Perhaps the user tends to upgrade to a larger rental car, but only when traveling with family, or frequently asks about the availability of Wi-Fi in the hotel room, but only on weekday trips.
Deep learning and predictive analytics will allow the relationship to evolve as the bot begins to understand what each user values, then makes recommendations based on others exhibiting similar behavior.
Bots that talk to bots
The idea of managing interactions with hundreds of bots might add more complexity than it solves for consumers, but bots talk to other bots, too. Your travel bot will act more like an intelligent agent than a website — potentially coordinating between the JetBlue bot, the Uber bot and the Marriott bot behind the scenes if your plans change. On a rainy day, a weather bot might offer a ride via a conversational ad unit from Lyft or Uber without the user interacting with either of those companies directly.
In fact, consumers could choose to interact with numerous services through just a few trusted bots. So don’t be surprised if an arms race ensues as companies compete to build “one bot to rule them all.” That could end up being Siri, Alexa, Cortana or another as-yet-unknown personal assistant.
We haven’t defined standards for conversational ad units, but one thing is clear: they have the potential to solve many of the issues that have plagued digital advertising for the last two decades. What won’t change is the need to strike a balance between delivering value and surfacing advertising. Conversational ads will need to be relevant, contextual and unobtrusive if we want consumers to embrace them. |
On November 1, 1959, Montreal Canadien Jacques Plante becomes the first NHL goaltender to wear a full facemask. Montreal Maroon Clint Benedict had worn a leather half-mask for a brief time in 1930, after an errant puck smashed his nose and cheekbone—but it blocked his vision, he said, and he took it off after only a few games. By contrast, Plante wore his mask from then on. A few seasons later, his idea began to catch on, and soon almost every keeper in the league wore a mask.
Plante had been practicing in his white fiberglass mask all season, but the Canadiens’ coach, the legendarily difficult Toe Blake, wouldn’t allow him to wear it during games. But on November 1, Plante simply put his foot down. Barely three minutes into that night’s game against the Rangers at Madison Square Garden, ace right winger Andy Bathgate wound up and fired a backhand shot from only a few feet away. It cracked Plante across the face, splitting his lip from the corner of his mouth up into his nostril. Blood was everywhere. He kept playing for a few minutes, and then went into the locker room to get stitches from the Garden’s Dr. Kazuo Yanagisawa (who, reporters said, could “stitch a wound, smoke a cigar, and play gin rummy all at the same time”). He was gone for about 20 minutes—an unusually long time for locker-room stitches at a hockey game—and when he returned to the ice he was carrying his cream-colored mask. Blake had pitched a fit about it, the newspapers reported, but Plante insisted. “If I don’t wear the mask,” he said, “I’m not playing.”
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Teammates, opponents, fans and reporters mocked Plante mercilessly about it, but Plante didn’t care. “I already had four broken noses, a broken jaw, two broken cheekbones and almost 200 stitches in my head,” he pointed out. “I didn’t care how the mask looked.” And the truth is that Plante was such a good goalie that it almost didn’t matter what he did. (Case in point: Plante always knitted his own underwear and stocking caps, saying that knitting was the only thing that truly soothed him. “Someday,” he said wistfully, “I’m going to learn to knit with my feet.”) He won the Vezina Trophy, the NHL’s goaltending prize, seven times, and he won it every year from 1956 to 1960. He was the NHL MVP in 1962. He was named to the All-Star Team seven times, and his team won six Stanley Cups.
Once it caught on, most goaltenders wore Plante-designed masks until the end of the 1960s, when Soviet goalies introduced cage-style masks that made it easier to see. And his insistence on protecting his face probably extended Plante’s career—he played in the NHL until 1975. |
In the field of theoretical morphology of biological shapes, coiling shells have drawn considerable interest for many years. Rice [16] provided a theoretical model based on the idea that the animal must keep a constant gradient of shell growth rate between the outer and inner edge (the gradient) to produce a coiling shell. This idea has been incorporated in many recent models for shell growth (for example, Hammer et al.[17]. Urdy et al. [18]. By contrast, the molecular basis of shell coiling is poorly understood to date. Probably a morphogen-like gradient substance exists, but no candidate for such a concentration gradient has yet been identified. Our results suggest that the left–right gradient of the Dpp protein (caused by a left–right asymmetric expression of the dpp gene) could be the most likely candidate for the gradient in shell coiling, as discussed for some previous mathematical models [16–18].
2 3 2 3 4 19 20 8 3 . Therefore, if cells rapidly proliferate, more cells can secrete shell-matrix proteins in any one unit of time. We thus propose that during coiled-shell development, Dpp acts as a trigger for an asymmetric cell proliferation, by producing a concentration gradient in the mantle from one spot of expression, and diffuses to the other side of the mantle (Figure 5 5 5 5 2 3 4 5 In this study, we found that in the coiled-shell snail L. stagnalis, dpp is expressed in the local spot of the left or right side mantle edge that corresponds with the shell-coiling direction at the veliger stage, and continues being expressed asymmetrically until the adult stage (FigureA-H; Figure). By contrast, in the limpets, dpp continues to be expressed symmetrically from the late trochophore stage to the adult stage (FigureI,K,L; Figure). Furthermore, we found by western blotting using anti-phosphorylated SMAD1/5/8 antibodies that Dpp signals are indeed distributed asymmetrically in the mantle edge in the coiled-shell snail and symmetrically in the non-coiled-shell limpet (Figure). In the fruit fly, Dpp works as a morphogen during wing development, spreading through the target point and forming a concentration gradient that provides positional information []. Rogulja et al. [] further showed that Dpp triggers cell division, and the division activity correlates positively with the concentration of Dpp gradient. Hashimoto et al. [] suggested that in gastropods, Dpp might function by triggering the regulation of cell division in the mantle during shell formation. The cells of the mantle edge secrete shell-matrix proteins, and these proteins are transferred to the outer edge of the shell and mineralized with CaCO. Therefore, if cells rapidly proliferate, more cells can secrete shell-matrix proteins in any one unit of time. We thus propose that during coiled-shell development, Dpp acts as a trigger for an asymmetric cell proliferation, by producing a concentration gradient in the mantle from one spot of expression, and diffuses to the other side of the mantle (FigureA). The Dpp gradient might then cause several different reaction thresholds, which in turn induce different levels of cell proliferation along the aperture (FigureB). These different levels of cell division might then cause an asymmetric aperture expansion, causing a non-uniform shell growth (FigureC) and resulting in a coiled shell (FigureD). Constant asymmetric expression of dpp, and thus a constant presence of the gradient until the veliger and adult stage of the snail, ensures the constant coiling during shell growth. Meanwhile, in the non-coiled-shelled limpets, symmetric aperture expansion and shell growth occurs because dpp is expressed symmetrically in the shell gland and the mantle edge, causing uniform cell division (Figure, Figure, Figure, Figure).
A recent report [11] of functional analysis of Dpp in L. stagnalis supports this hypothetical mechanism of shell coiling. When the embryos were treated with a Dpp signal inhibitor (dorsomorphin) at the trochophore and veliger stages, the juvenile shells showed a cone-like form rather than a normal coiled form [11]. These results indicated that Dpp signals induce differences in shell growth rates around the aperture by their gradient. The molecular results presented here support this mathematical models for shell growth [16–18].
1 6 1 1 6 1 2 The molecular developmental insights into shell coiling reported here also explain how shell coiling was lost several times during the evolution of gastropods. Although it is difficult to infer the ancestral shell shape (coiled or non-coiled shell), previous phylogenetic studies showed that the non-coiled-shelled gastropod Patellogastropoda is placed as the sister group to the rest of extant gastropods (Figure; Figure). However, considering the fossil record, Paragastropoda that have coiled shells are possibly the most recent common ancestor of gastropods [], hence suggesting that the coiled-shell feature is probably synplesiomorphy and the non-coiled shell shape has evolved independently several times in gastropods (Figure; Figure) []. Our current results suggest that the loss of coiling might have happened relatively easily, by losing the asymmetric expression of dpp (or its upstream regulators) in the shell gland at the trochophore stage, and leading to symmetric dpp expression n the veliger and adult stages. Further investigations are needed to understand the molecular mechanisms of shell formation and evolution, because the process of shell development is very complex. However, the new insight provided by the current study into dpp expression patterns in the mantle edge, not only in the early developmental stages but also in later stages, is the key basis for understanding how various shell shapes evolved and are formed in gastropods.
In this study, we found that continuous expression of dpp in the mantle edge until the adult stage might explain the mechanism of these two variations in gastropod shell shapes, that is, the coiled and the non-coiled shapes. However, because in this study we used only patellogastropod species (P. vulgata and N. fuscoviridis), further molecular studies of the species other than those of the Patellogastropoda, such as those from other non-coiled-shell snails are needed in order to be able to infer a decisive conclusion about the evolution of shell-coiling loss in gastropods (Figure 1). |
Here one can find interesting information about OpenVZ management and maintenance. OpenVZ control panels information also goes here
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Reply with quote vzubc utility - human-readable user beancounters output by lik » Wed Jul 04, 2012 2:46 pm
Code: Select all # vzubc -h
Usage: vzubc [option ...] [<ctid> ...]
-w, --watch:
Run itself under watch(1) (a la top mode, Ctrl-C to exit).
-wd: show differences between runs
-wn <time>: refresh every <time> seconds
-q, --quiet:
Quiet mode (only show beancounters with fails and close to limits).
-qh <ratio>: quiet threshold for held/limit ratio (default: 0.5)
-qm <ratio>: quiet threshold for maxheld/limit ratio (default: 0.8)
-r, --relative:
Relative mode, show fail counters delta compared to previous run.
-rc: clear all saved fail counter data for relative mode
-rd <dir>: directory for storing data (default: /tmp/vzubc.store)
-i, --incremental:
Incremental mode, add held value delta compared to previous run.
If used together with -q, beancounters with changed values are also shown.
-ic: clear all saved held data for incremental mode
-id <dir>: synonym for -rd
-c, --color:
Enable color highlighting (using same thresholds as for --quiet).
Color mode is not compatible with --watch.
-f, --file <file>:
File to read UBC values from. Defaults are /proc/bc/resources or
/proc/user_beancounters. Use - to read from stdin.
<ctid>: container name/ID to show info about (can be used multiple times)
Example outputs:
vzubc - default output vzubc_o.png (10.3 KiB) Viewed 5246 times
vzubc - color output in quite mode vzubc_oqc.png (5.73 KiB) Viewed 5246 times
vzubc - color output in quite and incremental modes vzubc_oqci.png (7.61 KiB) Viewed 5246 times
Original source
Code: Select all http://git.openvz.org/?p=vzctl;a=blob_plain;f=bin/vzubc.in vzubc − CLI utilitu to show user beancounters (UBC) in a human-readable format. It is a part of vzctl since 3.0.27 version.Example outputs: lik Founder
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CTVNews.ca Staff
She may not be strategizing offensive plays or coaching players on their tackles, but Catherine Raiche is an integral part of the team.
The 28-year-old former corporate and tax lawyer has spent the past six months working as the Assistant General Manager for the Montreal Alouettes. She is also the only woman in football operations for the Canadian Football League.
As part of her new position, Raiche handles players’ contracts, manages the salary cap and helps out with scouting new talent.
“She is a task master,” the team’s General Manager Kavis Reed told CTV News. “You give her a task… she is going to get it done. She is a no-excuses person and I love that.”
Although much of the attention has been focused on her gender, Raiche keeps her sights set on winning.
“I think I bring a different work ethic, the way I do things,” she said. “I kind of put a little bit of my women's touch in this which is very different. Sometimes guys don't see things we do and just to put those two things together, two visions together, I think that's what makes it more complete.”
As for her long-term goal in the business, Raiche is determined to follow in Reed’s footsteps and become a general manager herself one day. |
En bloggläsare skriver till mig, men tycker att innan jag läser hans mail, bör jag läsa en artikel i finska Huvudstadsbladet. Så då gör jag det. Artikeln består av en lång intervju med den ryske essäisten och poeten Lev Rubinstein, gjord och skriven av Anna-Lena Laurén. Det som gör att bloggläsaren vill att jag ska läsa artikeln är förmodligen det som Rubinstein säger om frihet och dubbeltänk:
– Både frihet och lycka är relativa begrepp. Under sovjettiden var frihet för många lika med att inte sitta i fängelse. Två, tre år efter att Stalin hade dött kände man frihet i jämförelse med stalinismen. I dag är Ryssland mindre fritt än för tio år sedan, men ni och jag kan trots detta sitta och prata fritt på ett kafé, det hade vi inte kunnat göra år 1978. Jag jobbade på ett bibliotek under sovjettiden och det var min sociala tillflykt. Jag omgav mig med människor som tänkte som jag. Att inte behöva tvinga sig själv till dubbeltänk var frihet. /…/
Dubbeltänk, enligt Rubinstein, kan gå ut på två saker: att säga en sak och tänka en annan eller att tvinga sig själv att tro på något som man egentligen inte håller för sanning.
– Det kunde jämföras med att strypa sig själv. Och det är inte samma sak som att anpassa sig socialt. Jag svär gärna, men jag gör det aldrig inför barn eller äldre kvinnor, helt enkelt därför att det inte passar sig. Det kallas för civiliserat beteende. En helt annan sak är att undervisa studenter i Brezjnevs storhet om dagarna och dra vitsar om Brezjnev hemma i köket om kvällarna. Att uppträda i officiella sammanhang och hålla tal som till punkt och pricka följer den officiella liturgin för att sedan åka hem och klaga för sin fru hur man hatar dessa möten.
Bloggläsaren skriver:
Jag är svensk och jag känner igen mig och det skrämmer mig. Välutbildad. Arbetat i nästan två decennier inom mitt yrkesområde. Det gick bra för mig och jag avancerade, men jag underskattade faran som ligger i att inte passa in. Att tänka annorlunda. Jag höll låg profil kring hur jag tänkte. Det hade mycket lite med den immigrationsfråga du ofta skriver om, men det finns även andra saker som är minerade i Sverige idag. Tyvärr var det inte en tillräckligt säker strategi att ligga lågt med egna åsikter och gömma sig i en neutral tjänstemannaroll. Nej, det märks om du inte skriker med, som i 1984.
Det märks om du inte är entusiastisk över alla ideologiska påfund som ska implementeras, alla värdegrunder som ska ”processas fram”, alla normkritiska arbetssätt som du förväntas omfamna. Kort sagt: de mobbade ut mig. Facket ”hjälpte mig” till ett litet avgångsvederlag och så var det med det. Tyvärr gick det inte att få något nytt arbete igen (det såg de till) och jag har familj att försörja så det blev till att köra budbil och ta liknande påhugg för mig, som ändå trots allt har en licentiatexamen. I dessa enkla jobb fann jag frihet, även om det innebar katastrof för familjeekonomin. Svårt också att inte längre kunna planera framåt, eftersom jag inte vet om jag har jobb efter sommaren. Från välavlönad medelklass rätt ner i prekariatet.
Jag såg dessutom detta hända fler och fler i bekantskapskretsen. Jag skulle kunna räkna upp mer än tio personer på rak arm bara i min bekantskapskrets. Skola, journalistik, förvaltning, kyrka, bibliotek, socialtjänst, universitet. Svåra sektorer att arbeta i och hålla sig kvar i, om du inte helt lirar med i det spel som påbjuds. Jag skulle våga påstå att problemet är allvarligt och att det är särskilt allvarligt inom de påverkanssektorer jag listat ovan.
Mobbningskulturen inom dessa sektorer är stark gentemot den som tänker annorlunda. Anställningstrygghet finns inte. Inte heller skyddsnät i form av a-kassa eller sjukpenning kan du räkna med. Socialbidrag ges inte till den som har en bil eller ett litet radhus, men inga hyresalternativ på bostadsmarknaden. Kort sagt: har du gjort allt rätt från början så faller du igenom. Sparpengar och ett eventuellt avgångsvederlag räcker ett tag men inte för evigt.
Friheten då? Jo, den finns där. Och ju mer jag tänker på det, desto mindre vill jag tillbaka. Jag kan läsa vad jag vill nu, tänka vad jag vill. De arbetsgivare jag har nu skiter fullständigt i mina tankar, bara jag gör det jag ska. De pysslar inte med normkritiska bekännelseseminarier på arbetstid och de avkräver inte av mig att jag ska göra genusanalyser eller leverera mångfaldsplaner. De vill inte stöpa om mig till Den Nya Certifierade Människan.
Samtidigt dras mitt studielån från kontot varje månad som en deprimerande påminnelse om den felinvestering jag gjorde för ett kvarts sekel sedan. Och jag ser bekanta i samma situation gå under. Grubbla. Bli lämnade av vänner och till och med livskamrater. Gå från hus och hem. Jag lider när ungarna vant sig vid att vi är fattiga nu och jag har mardrömmar varje gång räkningsdags närmar sig. Det här händer fler och fler och i Sverige är det alldeles tyst om det. Människors liv slås i spillror av de goda och självrättfärdiga. Av dem som aldrig tvivlar. Av de följsamma. De entusiastiska. De socialt smarta.
När man befunnit sig utanför bubblan en tid gror nya tankar. Finns det fler saker att ifrågasätta? Varför är mina gamla kollegor – de jag fortfarande har viss kontakt med – så resistenta mot alla sprickor i världsbilden? Så övertygade om sin egen godhet? Köln. Varför tiger de gamla feministerna? Id-kontroller. Varför måste de alla manifestera att de står på ”rätt” sida genom att dela samma länkar, skriva på samma upprop och gråta samma tårar? Är det för att de fortfarande helhjärtat är troende eller är det för att de är livrädda för att gå samma öde till mötes, som de där kollegorna som bara försvann från en dag till en annan och förvandlades till icke-personer?
Jag behöver inte ägna mig åt det dubbeltänk jag gjorde tidigare, men nu framträder smärtan över diskrepansen mellan vad jag uppfattar som verkligheten och den ideologi som styr så mycket av det offentliga samtalet och de offentliga institutionerna än mer tydligt än tidigare, när jag trots allt befann mig innanför bubblan. Håller jag på att förlora förståndet? Är det jag som är bitter och galen? Hjälp mig att förstå.
Hälsningar en människa.
KOA: Jag försöker förstå själv. Det är grunden för mitt skrivande på bloggen. Jag har till och med börjat undra om det är så, att förståndet inte är rätt verktyg för den som vill begripa varför de som har makten inte vill tänka rationellt och heller inte låter sig påverkas av rationella argument? Vad finns det för förklaringar när förnuftet inte räcker till?
Nordkorea påstår sig ha genomfört ett vätebombsprov och bilder på hjärntvättade koreaner flimrar förbi på teveskärmen (dubbeltänk?). Jag tror att så gott som alla i Sverige skräms och inser att detta är resultatet av en propaganda som pågått i generationer. I Sverige har propagandan intensifierats bara under de senaste två åren. De flesta märker den inte, lika lite som den som cyklar i medvind bekymrar sig om hur mycket det blåser, så länge vinden inte är alltför stark. Det är bara lätt och behagligt att cykla. Är Sverige på väg mot en skandinavisk version av den nordkoreanska verkligheten?
Karl-Olov Arnstberg
Utskriftsvänlig PDF-version
Alla texter är © på denna blogg. Det är tillåtet att sprida texterna under förutsättning att ni alltid länkar till källan här på bloggen. |
CLOSE The once quiet city of Flint, Michigan is facing a drinking water crisis that is drawing concern from around the nation. Here's what you need to know about how the public health crisis has evolved. VPC
"We are tired and frustrated," says Angela Hickmon of Flint, right during a rally where about 100 people demanded not to have to pay for water that is not fit for human consumption downtown Flint on Monday, January 25, 2016. "The water is breaking me out. We are paying for something we can't use," says Margie Scott, 71 of Flint, center. (Photo11: Romain Blanquart/ Detroit Free Press)
DETROIT — Flint residents paid the highest water rates in America even as their water was tainted with lead, according to a national study released Tuesday by the public interest group Food and Water Watch.
A survey of the 500 largest water systems in the country, conducted last year, found that on average, Flint residents paid about $864 a year for water service, nearly double the national average and about three-and-a-half times as much as Detroiters pay. The figure is based on an annual household consumption of 60,000 gallons.
"It far exceeds what the United Nations designates as affordable for water and sewer service," said Mary Grant, one of the study's authors. The United Nations recommends that water and sewer service shouldn't exceed 3% of a household income. In Flint, the charges totaled about 7%, Grant said.
A Flint lawyer who sued to reduce the rates says they are high in part because city officials and state-appointed emergency managers have tapped water and sewer money for other needs.
"They've been using that money improperly for years to fund the general operations of the city," said Valdemar L. Washington, who has been battling the rate increases in court since 2012. The city's sewer fund had a balance of $36 million in 2006 but was running a $23 million deficit by 2012, Washington said.
The city didn't respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit claims.
The high rates were a reason Flint joined the new Karegnondi Water Authority, which was pitched as a means to control rate increases. The 2013 decision to leave the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department for Karegnondi prompted the temporary switch to the Flint River as a water source in 2014.
The city, which was under a series of emergency managers appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder, never added corrosion controls to the river water. As a result, lead began to leach out of pipes and fixtures, poisoning water users and creating a state of emergency that has brought international attention to Flint's troubles.
Washington sued twice to reduce the rates, which he says were raised in violation of city ordinances. Last year, a judge agreed with him and ordered the city to reduce the rates 35%, though Washington disputes how much they've been lowered.
The city charges customers for the water they use and for a separate connection fee to be on the water system. Washington said the ruling was meant to apply to both, but the city has reduced only the water charge.
The water rates used in the Food and Water Watch study were calculated in January 2015, before the judge ordered the reduction.
Washington said he lives in Flint with his wife, and his water and sewer bills average $180 a month with just two people in the house. His lawsuit, filed on behalf of some Flint residents, is on hold while the Michigan Court of Appeals decides whether governmental immunity protects the city in the suit.
Flint has complained for years that the Detroit system charged too much for the water. But the city of Flint marks up the price Detroit charges before billing residents and business owners.
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There’s something about secrecy and superheroes — even when it’s a local father and son caped crusader duo and their photo has gone viral after a recent Reddit posting. They don’t want to be identified. Not only would it interfere with ongoing caped crusading, but it would hurt the privacy of the superheroes’ respective wife and mom and the baby sister in the family. The latter also is occasionally seen draped with her own wee cape, courtesy of her 3-year-old big brother.
The father and son caped-crusaders also wear matching Star Wars shirts and superhero underwear. ( Supplied )
Tiny capes, made from washcloths, have even been known to appear on shampoo bottles in the family bathtub, courtesy of the smallest superhero in the Toronto family whose name starts with an “F,” as emblazoned on the back of his cape. Her son “adores superheroes and capes’’ and puts capes “on everything,’’ says his mom, an amateur photographer who took the photo of him and his dad at a local hardware store, while walking behind, holding the baby. She thought the photo was cute and posted it on Reddit.
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“I was just looking to provide a few people with a laugh. Then we went tobogganing and to a friend’s house for dinner. When I came home I checked my computer and saw that there were thousands of hits and comments.’’ A number of media outlets have also reported on the photo and its popularity. Because her son likes to play superhero with his pals, as well as his dad, his mom also made a slew of small capes for friends, with their initials sewn on back. Since the baby was born last October and has kept mom busy, father and son have been spending a lot of time together. After his mom made him a cape for his third birthday, “F’’ asked where his dad’s cape was. So his mom whipped up an adult-sized one, which is worn at home and sometimes on outside excursions, like the one to the hardware store. Father and son also wear matching Star Wars shirts and superhero underwear.
The superhero’s mom is happy about the photo “going viral because it seems to have provided so many people with a smile.’’ She’s decided to donate the now-famous photo to SickKids hospital to be used for charity purposes or wall decoration. In addition, friends and family are making and donating items for SickKids for use in child patient dress-up, including tutus, knitted black batman masks, crowns, and a “superhero’’ quilt from Twice By Lightning. Mastermind Toys is donating some capes. |
(CNN) -- What was the name of that guy with that stuff in that place with those things? Don't you remember?
Scientists have found mechanisms for how the brain creates short-term and long-term memories.
We all suffer occasional lapses in memory. Some people suffer severe neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's, that rob them of their ability to form memories or remember recent events.
Three new studies shed light on the way the brain forms, stores and retrieves memories. Experts say they could have implications for people with certain mental disorders.
When did it happen?
Newly born brain cells, thousands of which are generated each day, help "time stamp" memories, according to a computer simulation by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and the University of Queensland in Australia. The research was published in the journal Neuron.
These cells do not record an exact, absolute date -- such as January 28, 2009 -- but instead encode memories that occur around the same time similarly. In this way, the mind knows whether a memory happened before, after or alongside something else.
Neuroscientists believe that if the same neurons are active during two events, a memory linking the two may be formed.
For example, you might remember that, on a day a few years ago, you went to a restaurant and then went to a baseball game. Researchers think the same neurons are active during both events, which results in an association with each other when you remember them.
In fact, the same young neurons respond to everything that happens for several weeks, said two of the study's co-authors, professor Fred Gage and graduate student Brad Aimone from the Salk Institute. While associations are known to form based on sight, smell, and other senses -- you may remember last year's baseball game through the taste of a hot dog today, for example -- their computer model shows that the young brain cells also link through time.
"Even though these young cells are only a small percentage of the overall circuit, we believe that their effect may be enough to give people the sense of "this happened around the same time as" something else, Gage and Aimone wrote in an e-mail.
The findings could have promising implications for diseases that involve a neurogenesis deficit -- in other words, a lack of new brain cells being born -- which happens in conditions such as depression, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, the authors said.
A therapy that boosts the creation of neurons may alleviate some memory problems. Potential therapies include medications, a special diet or even running, since previous research has shown that running increases the creation of neurons, Aimone said.
The computer simulation showing the time-stamp effect in the study is novel and original, said Joe Manns, assistant professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It also explains why, for example, you recognize your car both when it's very dirty and very clean, and why you can remember where you parked your car today even though you had a different space yesterday.
Storing in the short-term
You may remember reading this exact sentence in a few minutes, but not in a few days. That's because our brains handle both long-term memory, which enables us to recall events from the distant past, and short-term memory, also called working memory, which encompasses the most transient, fleeting memories.
Research in mice published in the February issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience found that an individual nerve cell in the front part of the brain can hold traces of memories on its own for as long as a minute, possibly even longer, said senior author Don Cooper, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
This idea, that an individual nerve cell can hold a trace memory, is also related to drug addiction, the study found. By giving cocaine to mice in the laboratory, the researchers explained why the drug impairs short term memory: Cocaine causes a buildup of dopamine, a brain chemical that decreases the individual nerve cells' ability to hold moment-to-moment information.
The study is an important contribution to the field of working memory because it shows the molecular mechanisms involved in the process, said Michael Kuhar, professor of neuropharmacology at Emory University, who was not involved with the research.
One distant but possible implication is that medication focusing on the neuron receptors investigated in this study would help someone who has serious problems with attention and executive decisions, he said.
Although the study was conducted on mice, when speaking about individual nerve cells, it's reasonable to say that an isolated mouse nerve cell is the same as a human one, Kuhar said. The two differ more markedly in complicated neural pathways and circuits, he said.
Holding for the long term
So, what about remembering things in the long run?
Research in the Journal of Neuroscience this week supports the idea that different brain structures are involved in forming short-term and long-term memories.
The authors took brain images of participants as they answered questions about events that happened in the last 30 years. The hippocampus, a brain region known to be involved in short-term memory, and related structures were most active when participants recalled recent events. Activity in these regions declined for events older than one year, and remained low for events 13 to 30 years old.
Meanwhile, as memories got older activity increased in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices, located on the surface of the brain, researchers found. That means these regions may serve as long-term memory storage.
This model of memory structures make sense in the context of Alzheimer's disease, said study co-author Larry Squire, professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. Alzheimer's patients often have trouble forming short-term memories, but less difficulty recalling older memories.
"It helps us understand that Alzheimer's disease begins with memory problems because the very same structures we're talking about here [the hippocampus and related structures] are the ones affected in the disease," he said.
All About Psychology • Alzheimer's Disease |
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A boy of two has become the youngest person in the world to have weight loss surgery.
The family of the obese toddler begged for help after his weight soared to five stone and he began suffering sleep apnoea which caused him to stop breathing while asleep.
Doctors who carried out a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy to shrink his stomach to the size of a banana said two bids to slim him down through diet had failed.
The “gastric sleeve” LSG op is only performed when a gastric band or a gastric bypass would be unsafe.
Obesity expert Professor Paul Zimmett, of the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, branded the case “shocking” and “very unusual”.
He added: “It is going into unknown territory. We have no idea what effect this may have on the child’s growth.
“Unless he has proper follow up he may suffer vitamin deficiencies.”
The boy weighed 3st 3lb when he was first seen by a hormone specialist.
But four months after his family were ordered to put him on a strict diet his weight had increased by 1st 2lb.
Medics could not verify whether his parents had enforced the diet.
By the time he was referred to an obesity clinic he was officially “morbidly obese” and had begun to suffer sleep apnoea and problems with his legs.
A second attempt at dieting also failed and when he reached 5st 2lb doctors decided to operate on him at Prince Sultan Military Medical City, in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia.
The boy was of a normal weight until he reached six months old. But as he became heavier, his parents sought the advice of doctors.
He had no family history of morbid obesity or genetic abnormalities and a CT scan of his brain showed no other possible causes of obesity.
Surgeons decided to perform the LSG, which involved removing the outer layer of his stomach to make it a quarter of its previous size.
In the UK, only obese girls aged at least 13 and boys aged 15 would be considered for the surgery.
The boy lost about 15% of his body weight and was a “normal” 3st 7lb two years after the 2010 surgery.
The surgeons wrote in the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports: “To our knowledge LSG has never been tried in very young age children.
“We present probably the first case of the successful management of a two-year-old morbidly obese boy.”
Doctor's view: GP Dr Roger Henderson on toddler's obesity surgery
Weight-loss surgery on children is considered only in extreme cases and after a healthy diet and exercise has been encouraged.
In this very rare case it appears all attempts at diet failed and the boy’s life was at immediate risk.
He may need further surgery in the future and will need to have strict meals and remain under specialist care in the long term. |
According to new data, the beer industry in North Carolina has a $3.8 billion impact on the state's economy, and contributes to more than 26,000 jobs.The news comes from a Beer Serves America study conducted by the Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association.The study breaks down "direct economic impact" jobs into three areas: Brewing, which accounts for 1,347 jobs; distributing, which totals 4,070 jobs; and retail sales at 21,063.With 130 breweries and counting, the industry also generates more than $2 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue for the Tar Heel state.On a national level, the U.S. beer industry contributes $252.6 billion in economic output which is equal to about 1.5 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. Federal, state and local taxes amounted to more than $48.5 billion in 2014, according to the North Carolina Beer Wine Wholesalers Association.Brewers and beer importers directly employ 49,576 Americans. More than 70 percent of brewing jobs are linked to large and mid-sized brewers and beer importers. The number of distributor jobs has increased by more than 20 percent in the last decade, to more than 131,000, the U.S. Department of Labor reports.The largest North Carolina brewery is the MillerCoors plant in Eden which employs 522 people. |
Here’s a question for you: Why would a high school football team’s Twitter feed include a picture of a mass baptism… followed by someone thanking the team’s coach for his faith and leadership?
And why would that same coach lead his team in a rally that ends with, “Let’s thank the big guy in the sky”?
Answer: Because Coach Hal Capps of Mooresville High School in North Carolina doesn’t seem to know the difference between church and the workplace.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent Capps’ district a letter this past fall informing them that allowing such proselytizing on the football field was prohibited — and it may have done the trick, according to an article published Thursday in the Charlotte Observer:
Superintendent Mark Edwards said Thursday that he met with Capps after the football season and ordered him not to lead students in prayers and baptisms. “He said he understood,” Edwards told the Observer. … The foundation wrote the district after it said it received a complaint from a parent of a Mooresville High School student “who objects to religious endorsements” by Capps. “Students have reported that Coach Capps frequently prays with football players at team events and encourages them to go to church and to become baptized,” the letter says.
Edwards added that the baptism picture in the Twitter feed just happened to involve some of the players and Capps was there at their request, but it wasn’t an official team event. Still, the fact that it appeared on the Twitter feed at all suggests that someone felt it was a team activity. (FFRF’s letter was sent after someone from Capps’ school contacted them.)
What is it about football that always seems to bring out the Christians who don’t know how to keep their faith to themselves…?
Commenters online are quick to point out that Capps is well-respected, but you get the feeling that if he were promoting any faith other than Christianity, they would be getting out the pitchforks right about now. |
Baroness Taylor, the minister for defence procurement, will meet representatives from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) this week to discuss the idea of having the 18-inch helmets, worn by Guards regiments on ceremonial duty at the royal residence, made from synthetical materials.
The Ministry of Defence is said to be open to the idea, provided any alternative can be worn in all weathers. Peta has now enlisted a host of anti-fur fashion designers, including Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood, to create a new helmet.
An MoD spokesman said the meeting would be taking place but refused to confirm what would be discussed.
He said: “The MoD is not opposed to the use of synthetic materials as an alternative to bearskins, provided such materials meet the requirement for a high quality product that performs adequately in all weather conditions. Regrettably, a suitable alternative continues to prove elusive.”
The bearskins have long been a target of animal rights groups, as a highly visible garment made from the fur of Canadian black bears, whose numbers are falling in the wild.
The iconic headgear is worn by regiments of the Grenadier, Welsh, Scots, Irish and Coldstream Guards who make up the Foot Guards in the Army’s Household Division, responsible for guarding the Queen.
They have been worn since the Battle of Waterloo, where they were taken as a badge of honour by the Grenadier Guards when they defeated Napoleon’s bearskin-wearing Imperial Guard.
Robbie LeBlanc, director of Peta, said: “This meeting is hugely significant for our campaign to save North American bears.
“If she (Baroness Taylor) has a heart and can see the PR nightmare of the MoD continuing to support the Canadian bear slaughter, she can wield her influence and push the MoD to scrap the bearskin caps sooner rather than later.”
Ricky Gervais, the comedian, has also written to Gordon Brown on behalf of Peta, demanding that the MoD stop using Canadian black bear fur for the helmets. |
This book should be read after the "The hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", due to the fact that "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" starts where the previously mentioned book ends. That is, with the two survivors to the Earth's destruction, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, traveling along Trillian, Marvin the robot and Zaphod Beeblebrox in the "Heart of gold", a stolen Improbability Drive ship.
If you read this book, you will go along with our friends in their adventures, for example when they visit Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, or when they escape certain destruction in a stuntship used by rockstars. You will also learn the real meaning of "dying for a cup of tea", and have a chance to eat meat that wants to be eaten. Of course, Marvin will continue giving you lessons in pessimism, and Zaphod will go on being "so weird that he should be in movies".
I liked this book, but I didn't love it nearly as much as "The hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". What is more, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" doesn't have a clear ending, and I find some fault in that. Of course, I am more than ready to read the next book in the series, but that is not the point.
On the whole, I don't recommend "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" to those that haven't read "The hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", due to the fact that they won't enjoy it so much. Notwithstanding that, I do recommend this book as entertaining reading material for those already addicted to Douglas Adams quirky sense of humour. It is not perfect, but it is more than good enough to enjoy :)
Belen Alcat |
8weirdsisters8-deactivated20150 asked: Hi! Can I ask you how many days 'till Clarke's 18th birthday? At the beginning of the show wasn't just a month left before she turned 18?
Sad news for Clarke. We all missed her birthday this year.
See, in the pilot, Clarke mentions that her 18th birthday is not for another month.
Per our amazing researchers, Season 1 takes place over 29 days. Up to where we are now (say ep 2x14), another 20 days have passed in Season 2. That means, her birthday must have already happened somewhere in there. And nobody, (not even Monroe, the Arker in charge of the ‘Birthday Chart’) remembered.
Clarke didn’t get a fluffy cake or presents or anything.
Happy Belated 18th Birthday, Clarke.
Blow out a flaming arrow and make a wish… |
*EDIT* Stable 86 is taken! Stable is now 150! Why 150?... I don't know. Sounds better. Added a new bio/story too/Art by Well well! Its been awhile! Got a new picture for you guys! A nice Fallout Equestria picture. Some what of a continuation of some other FoE pics I got from before. A bit of a spoiler from my FoE story that I might not maybe ever do. But eh, whatever right!This is Sunset Shimmer using her phoenix like magic but mixed with a Balefire Phoenix. She is from Stable 150.Fallout Equestria: SunriseIn the FoE Universe. Sunset Shimmer managed to survive the war by staying in a Stable bought out by her company, Sunrise Industries. Unfortunately the Stable was unfinished with a failing reactor. Sunset contained the explosion and radiation while everypony escaped the Stable. She however, didn't make it out.The Stable is now a highly radiated area. Balefire Phoenix are always sighted near the Stable. But recent reports say something else is living with the Balefire Phoenix. Could it be the ghost of Sunset Shimmer? Or something new entirely?For those who don't know. This look is based of Sunset's Phoenix like look in the MLP MV! Also what a Balefire Phoenix is!Other pictures that are related to the story! Also if someone wants to write a story to this or the other pictures, then please feel free to do so! |
Hollywood nasty guy Joe Pesci got himself in a sticky situation when he came to the rescue of a damsel in distress in Los Angeles recently. The tiny Casino star was driving through Hollywood when he spotted a tall blonde woman being assaulted by a man. Enraged, the actor - who made his name as the psychotic Tommy DeVito in mafia movie Goodfellas - pulled over and reprimanded the attacker yelling, "Hey, hey, hey - whaddaya think you're doing? Get the hell outta here!" Recognising Pesci, the man fled. The grateful blonde then flung her arms around the diminutive star, showering him with kisses. Joe looked pleased with himself until the woman said "Thank you" in a deep raspy voice, and - he realised, the woman was a man, a drag queen. According to pals, though, the actor saw the funny side of it and enjoyed sharing the joke with friends. |
by Michelle Fox
It’s been a wild ride in indie publishing the last few days. A media attack on erotica quickly spun out of control, shutting down book stores and wiping some indie authors off the face of the internet. Below, we recount the sequence of events wreaking havoc across the publishing industry.
How the Book Banning Started
On Wednesday October 9th, an article in UK ‘news publication’ Kernel Mag triggered a widespread banning and blocking of self-pubbed books. Action was taken across multiple booksellers, and, while the initial focus was on erotica, the problem soon spread to other genres.
Authors quickly discovered that the Kernel Mag piece misrepresented several individual authors, as well as the erotica genre as a whole. However, it was too late to stop other media outlets from spreading the misinformation, which caused Amazon, Kobo and WH Smith (who carries Kobo’s catalog of books) to react without a full understanding of the situation.
Internet Marketers Use Erotica as a Cash Machine
The first flaw in Kernel Mag’s anti-porn campaign? The article portrayed the problem as (mostly self-pubbed) erotica and then featured books published primarily by internet marketers, not authors. Authors can easily spot these ‘marketeers’ because they study the erotica book listings in the course of their market research, an expertise that no media outlet has developed.
Internet marketers routinely outsource story production to third world countries and are known to publish hundreds of stories at a time. The quality is low, the covers are in-your-face graphic and the titles are keyword stuffed to the point that even Google gags on all the search terms. It’s not an issue of genre, but a business model used by some marketers to extract profit with no concern for quality.
This isn’t the first time internet marketers have caused problems for booksellers and indie authors. Before they hit erotica, they slammed the non-fiction category. In 2011, Amazon struck back by deleting the mass produced non-fiction. Now that erotica is under attack, the profiteers will either move on to another genre or become more savvy about how to stay under the radar.
Media Accuses Legitimate Authors of Illegal ‘Fiction’
Other indie books originally targeted by Kernel Mag, ones written by actual authors, were wrongfully accused of bestiality and rape. Two examples:
Dog Gone It by Chelsea Fox was singled out because of a dog on the book cover, not because ‘journalists’ read the content to verify their assumptions. When asked for a quote, Miss Fox said, “This is crazy. There is barely any sex at all in Dog Gone It. It’s amazing how they’re trying to destroy and control what we read or write. Pretty scary if you ask me.”
One of Tawny Black’s books was cited as “rape porn” by Kernel Mag. Miss Black spoke with Indiereader exclusively, and said of the situation, “Imagine my surprise, as the woman in the story is of legal age and participated in consensual relations with three men she is not related to in any way. To single out this story was not only irresponsible journalism, it amounts to libel since it is in no way “rape porn”.”
Clearly, the Kernel did not fact check the titles they publicly defamed, but that did not prevent Amazon from banning all the books in question. Apparently, Amazon doesn’t fact check either.
Amazon Ramps Up Book Banning, Authors Scramble to Respond
Amazon didn’t stop with the Kernel Mag’s list of books, either. They went on to ban other indie books, almost without logic. One author’s book was banned because the cover was deemed offensive. Where did they get the cover? From Amazon.com’s own graphic design program, which is made available to authors free of charge and consists of images that Amazon selects and supplies.
Multiple self-pubbed authors had books blocked because of the word ‘virgin’ in the blurb or title. Books that were unblocked on appeal were immediately blocked again. Covers featuring only faces were deemed to be offensive and blocked. Fully clothed people on covers, alone, not touching anyone, were blocked. Author Alexx Andria resorted to creating ‘brown paper wrapping’ covers for her books, which were eventually reinstated.
Other Booksellers Shut Down, Books Removed in All Genres
UK news outlet BBC then picked up Kernel Mag’s rallying cry. They called out Amazon’s failure to filter content as well as examined some of the potential legal ramifications of not properly shielding the public from erotica. British law is such that Amazon’s lack of an adult filter may cause them legal problems in the future.
By Sunday October 13th, bookseller WH Smith, also in the UK, shut down their website, leaving up a notice that they would return once all “self-published” books had been removed from their site. This action was criticized by econsultancy.com, which took WH Smith to task for not anticipating the problem. Adult Filters and search engine coding can eliminate any shock factor of books available for sale. However, to date, the only online book retailer in the world with a functioning adult filter is Smashwords.com.
The chain reaction continued to Kobo, who supplies WH Smith with ebooks. On Monday morning (October 14th) Kobo began wiping indie published books off their website. Not just erotica, but all indie ebooks, including David Gaughan, who is well known for his how-to guides Let’s Get Visible and Let’s Get Digital.
The UK Legal Climate Facilitates Book Banning
It’s important to note that this latest round of self-pubbed book banning (there have been two previous large scale attempts to control fiction in the past three years) stems from the United Kingdom, which has some very controversial anti-porn and criminal laws up for vote. Police now have expanded powers to arrest anyone suspected of the potential of being a sex offender–no crime necessary.
The government also plans to block access to what they deem pornographic material from ever reaching individual internet connections. Essentially, the UK’s current paranoia about the evils of sex is traveling across the pond and forcing US and Canadian companies to conform to their agenda without any due process.
Some Books Remain Despite Questionable Content
Meanwhile, traditionally published fiction continues to be freely available without constraint or criticism. Consider these books:
Fifty Shades of Grey, which has titillated audiences worldwide with the submission of the virginal Anastasia to the dominant Christian Grey.
Tampa, a novel that covers, in explicit detail, sexual relations between a teacher and their minor student.
Flowers in the Attic, the incest classic, which was recently re-launched and categorized as Romance on Amazon.com.
Lolita which celebrates an older man’s sexual interest in a young girl.
The Virgin Suicides also flourishes across bookseller platforms despite using the word “virgin”, the same word that causes indie authors to have books blocked and removed from sale.
The intent is not to cause any bookseller to ban the books listed above, but rather to illustrate the double standard and hypocrisy at play when it comes to indies. While it’s easy to say graphic covers and salacious descriptions or titles should be banned, it’s impossible to explain why books such as Chelsea Fox’s Dog Gone It are run off bookseller sites. There is no incest, taboo, or in-your-face erotic content. Also, when did the word virgin and the topics of incest and BDSM become the sole provenance of traditional publishing?
Further, Amazon.com still sells a wide variety of sex toys with no inhibitions. It seems, the only thing they won’t sell are books that the media–particularly British media–tells them not to.
Where Things Stand Now
Kobo sent an email out to indie authors on Monday night explaining they were quarantining and going through content on their website. They stated, “Our goal at Kobo is not to censor material; we support freedom of expression. Further, we want to protect the reputation of self-publishing as a whole. You have our promise that we will do all we can to ensure the exceptions that have caused this current situation will not have a lasting effect on what is an exciting new channel that connects Readers to a wealth of books.”
Some authors report their books have been reinstated, but many are still unable to find their work for sale on Kobo. The “I Read Fantasy” Facebook page tracked fantasy authors whose accounts were suspended most of the day Monday and urged readers to contact Kobo to encourage them to reinstate those accounts.
WH Smith’s website remains closed for business with no information as to when they may reopen.
Amazon continues to erratically ban self-pubbed books, put them back up for sale only to ban them again, and generally act without any coherence.
By late Monday afternoon, Change.org had a petition up urging Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo to stop removing erotica. Over 7000 readers signed within hours.
Selena Kitt, owner of Excessica Publishing (which published Miss Fox’s book), and renowned erotica writer with over a million books sold said, “I’d just like to point out that erotica writers aren’t perverts. What we are writing is fantasy. Words, not actions. This is fiction, folks. It doesn’t hurt anyone. And the “but it might make someone DO those horrible things!” argument has been debunked again and again.
Books about serial killers don’t make people become serial killers. Books about rapists don’t make people become rapists. Books about incest (or pseudo-incest) don’t make people go have sex with family members. In fact, research shows that most people who do read incest erotica don’t, in fact, fantasize about actual family members. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. But telling other people they can’t write or read it crosses the line of personal and intellectual freedom. And that’s not okay.”
This is a fast moving story, with news breaking almost hourly, and this article represents what we know as of 7pm EST on October 14th 2013.
Important Note: Kernel Mag has changed the books on their site and their website no longer reflects the content published on 10/9/13. Some of the books originally targeted are still showing on the Daily Mail site.
************************************************************************* |
The search for the Holy Grail in aging has long been a focus in regenerative medicine, which poses the question: why do some of us age better than others?
Now growing evidence in Genomic Studies shows that there are key genetic players in the Aging game…
Ever since the Human Genome Project, which began 25 years ago, the tools available to researchers have transformed our understanding of population genetics and the complex nuances which lie within our own individual genomes.
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In a recent paper published in PLOS Genetics, teams from several European research centres have revealed there is indeed a tangible molecular mechanism behind the complex phenotype of ‘super longevity’ (long-life). And this has been roughly linked to certain single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs – simple mutations in the code) at particular genetic locii…
In the study led by Stuart Kim at Stanford University (US), researchers looked to pool data from the other research centres also studying aging, to expand the sample group size (800 people over 100 and about 5000 over 90). This meant a large enough sample size was able to identify several key genes as a link to the ‘longevity phenotype’.
Such Genome-Wide Association studies (GWAS) also offer an unbiased means to understand the genetic basis of certain traits…
The New England Centenarian Study (NECS) led by Boston University identified 4 key genetic influences in Long-life:
1. ABO Locus
Controls blood type. The study results showed that centenarians are more likely to have the O blood group than controls. People with blood type O have been reported to be protected from coronary heart disease, cancer, and have lower cholesterol levels.
2. CDKN2B/ANRIL
Implicated in the regulation of the cell life cycle, SNPs from this region have previously been found to be associated with a surprising diversity of age-related diseases. These include cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, intracranial aneurisms, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and several cancers in the case of Anril (through a study at the Paris Descartes University).
For cardiovascular disease, this locus shows the strongest association of any locus in the genome, with each copy of the risk allele increasing one’s risk of disease by 20–30%.
3. APOE/TOMM40
APOE was initially investigated because its ɛ4 allele was known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s and coronary artery disease, and in the study the disease-allele was shown to be depleted in long-lived populations.
There was also a relationship between the locus and incidence of age-related macular degeneration (vision loss) and total cholesterol levels.
4. SH2B3/ATXN2
Variation in this locus has been associated with a wide variety of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
iGWAS analysis also showed a protective SNP against lung and pancreatic cancers and promoting good bone mineral density. SH2B3 specifically encodes a signaling protein, and loss-of-function mutations in the invertebrate equivalent gene (Lnk) in fruit flies (Drosophila) was also shown to result in an extended lifespan.
Generally though, the study showed that one of the genetic mechanisms for extreme longevity involves the avoidance of certain risk alleles that predisposes carriers to common diseases, including coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s, high cholesterol and chronic kidney pathologies.
Timothy Cash of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid went on to explain that although no concrete evidence for predicting who will live to 100 has been pinned down, these findings still represent huge progress in the field of Aging.
“It’s the first time someone has shown that particular disease [variants] are depleted in centenarian populations“
However, the barrier to such GWAS studies for Longevity is that centenarians are obviously quite rare, and in the US only account for around 17 per 100,000 in the population (never mind those that reach 110+!).
Nonetheless, as medical and wellness continues to improve across the world, the numbers of such super-agers is also swelling to heights we’ve never seen before. Therefore studies of the mechanisms behind aging could go on to reveal great therapeutic angles of attack for chronic diseases, which plague the aging population. |
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(CNN) -- All 24 hostages held captive by a hangun-toting student in northeast Wisconsin were freed Monday night, after several hours of being confined inside a high school classroom, police said.
Marinette Police Chief Jeffrey Skorik told reporters just before 8:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. ET) that the hostages -- 23 students and a female teacher -- were safe and would soon be reunited with their families.
The chief did not immediately divulge the condition or whereabouts of the suspect, whose name has not been released.
The young male took over the classroom about 3 p.m. Monday, as classes were ending at Marinette High School. He prevented anyone from leaving the room and eventually communicated with police through a teacher, Skorik said.
The chief announced shortly before 8 p.m. (9 p.m. ET) Monday that five hostages -- all students -- had been released.
The hostage-taking student had no previous run-ins with the law, according to Skorik, adding that he had "no idea" about the suspect's motive.
A Marinette school administrator called police at 3:48 p.m. (4:48 p.m. ET) Monday, after most students had left for the day, reporting that an armed student had gone into a classroom and taken those inside hostage.
Bradley Behrendt, a city councilor, told CNN that he was two blocks from the school when about 15 police squad cars pull up and several officers come out, with their vests on and holding guns as they entered the school.
"They were just going like crazy," Behrendt said of the police response.
By about 7 p.m., about 40 law enforcement personnel had converged on the scene, according to Skorik, with more coming in as the night went on.
They included hostage negotiators who set up inside the school, according to Skorik. They had not talked directly with the student some three hours into the incident, but did get regular updates from the teacher.
Skorik said that the hostage-taker is a student at Marinette High, and that he believed -- though he could not confirm -- the student was assigned to the class that he took over.
Police know the identity of the student, though they haven't name him publicly, and have talked with his family members. Skorik said law enforcement believe the the young male, armed with a single handgun, acted alone.
The incident riled residents of the Wisconsin city of about 11,600 residents, which borders Lake Michigan. Several hundred people gathered about a half-mile from the school, said Behrendt, but they were restricted by police from going any closer.
Prior to word of the hostages' release, law enforcement urged parents who didn't know where their children were to go to the Marinette County Courthouse, where they could see those on the affected class's roster, talk with police and get help from mental-health counselors.
CNN's Greg Botelho contributed to this report. |
people with disabilities empowered through mind-generated art
people with disabilities empowered through mind-generated art
all images courtesy of jody xiong
chinese artist jody xiong has collaborated with 16 handicapped people — recruited via social media — in the artistic and technological realization of the ‘mind art’ installation. the project participants were asked to choose a winsor & newton paint color, which was placed in balloons equipped with tiny detonators. large canvas panels surrounded the balloons on all sides.
through deep concentration, electronic signals from their brains were captured and sent to a neurosky processing unit that triggered the detonators, which resulted in the formation of abstract paintings. 800,000 renminbi (about USD 130, 700) from the painting auction was donated to various charities. the results were, quite literally, mind blowing, as the team describe, ‘we showed that although the bodies of disabled people are handicapped, their minds aren’t.’
the disabled man wears a technological headpiece which allows him to paint with his mind
black acrylic paint explodes from the balloon onto the canvas
the disabled youth and his finished work
white acrylic paint bursts onto the four sides of a black canvas
the child stands in front of her work
four canvasses are assembled together into a rectangle
a diagram describes the use of mind-generated power in the creation of art
project info:
client: winsor & newton china
agency: ogilvy & mather shanghai
chief creative officer: graham fink
group creative director: jody xiong
creative directors: rocky hao
art director: jody xiong
designers: jody xiong, allen wang
copywriter: rocky hao, sean sim, martin latham
director: hyden
producer: charlie macpherson
editors: judy luo, mark ng
designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here. |
By virtue of synthesizing a stable B 3 ring, a team of inorganic chemists has prepared the lightest aromatic species that is experimentally possible. In addition to helping researchers better understand chemical structure and bonding, the sandwich molecule the team made containing two B 3 rings connected by sodium ions could serve a practical purpose as the first of a family of precursor compounds for preparing semiconducting, superconducting, and magnetic materials.
Thomas Kupfer, Holger Braunschweig, and Krzysztof Radacki of Julius Maximilian University Würzburg made the triboracyclopropenyl dianion by treating cyclohexyl-substituted dichloroaminoborane with sodium metal in dimethoxyethane solvent (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201508670). The Würzburg team has shown through computational, spectroscopic, and electrochemical studies that the B 3 ring has an electronic structure consistent with classical aromatic carbon compounds such as the cyclopropenyl cation and benzene.
The announcement “is certainly a great breakthrough and opens a new direction in boron chemistry,” comments Alexander I. Boldyrev of Utah State University, whose group has done much of the computational work on planar all-boron rings during the past 15 years.
Aromaticity as defined by the Hückel Rule has typically been the domain of carbon compounds, with only a few noncarbon analogs made from elements heavier than carbon. Chemists have long predicted that planar boron rings from B 3 up to B 15 or greater might also be aromatic. Researchers have been hot on the trail of making the boron rings, but the rings are challenging to stabilize in isolable compounds. The greatest success has come in generating the molecules with laser beams and studying them in the gas phase. |
"Do you, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, also known as Strider, from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, take Shelob, a huge terrifying man-eating spider, as your wedded wife?" I do. I did . I married a giant spider! And that's just one of the many bizarre fan-fiction adventures you can have with The Middle Earth Project mod for Crusader Kings II. If marrying a spider sounds weird, it'll make more sense when I explain that I began the game playing as Aragorn's liege: a Balrog.
Before I get into my weird, sick adventure, a little info about the mod. It fully converts Crusader Kings II into Middle Earth. The map is gorgeous and detailed, and there's no shortage of characters and cultures and events imported from The Lord of the Rings. Want to play as Sauron himself? You can. Treebeard of Fangorn? He's there. Saurman the White? Ironfoot of the Dwarves? Elrond of Rivendell? One of those crazy looking masked dudes from Rhun? A Nazgul? An Uruk-Hai? A Goblin? Or something lame, like a Hobbit? They're all there.
So, using the Crusader Kings II Ruler Designer, I whipped up a Balrog to play with. Rather than sticking him in that old dwarf dump Moria, I install him in Dunedain territory, and am quite pleased to see Aragorn himself arrive and become my courtier and heir.
As a Balrog, I have a couple ambitions. I'd like to have a daughter. I want to research some new technology. I want to hire a capable council. And, of course, I want to kill Gandalf, that bearded prick who trespassed in my house and then had the gall to smash my bridge -- while I was on it! -- when I came up from the basement to politely ask him to keep the noise down. So, I send an assassin after him.
Yeah, fighting with firewhips while falling though the center of the earth looks cool, but poison is so much more civilized. I know Gandalf's pal, Radagast the Brown, agrees with me, because he immediately poisons me back, and I die. Damn Radagast, you vengeful hippie wizard. Chief Balrog is dead! And just a couple weeks after taking office. I take over as my heir, Aragorn, and quickly swear fealty to Sauron. Because, you know, with Gandalf out of the game, you can forget about marshaling the eagles, or scaring off the Nazgul, or de-witching Theoden, or any of that stuff, so it's pretty clear how this whole war is going to shake out.
I quickly learn that prior to Gandalf's death, he'd already identified the One Ring and sent Frodo off to Bree. Being Aragorn, I naturally meet Frodo there, but the story takes a turn and without getting into too much detail about who did what, let's just say Frodo winds up not having the One Ring anymore and instead it finds its way onto my finger.
The bearer of the One Ring gets quite a few stat effects, like enhanced cunning, faster movement, extended lifespan, and apparently a wee bit of a hit on fertility. Still, I should get married and at least give babymaking a shot. I scour the realm for a suitable wife, though most of my own kind are fairly appalled that I've taken Sauron's side in the war.
I do find Shelob, however, living in some sort of Goblin realm, and since the goblin chief approves of my support of Sauron, and since Shelob has a positive opinion of me, I figure, hey, why not? Why not marry a giant blood-sucking spider? I figure the mod won't let me, but the mod lets me. And then I figure it's a goof, and the mod simply doesn't know that Shelob is a giant spider, but the mod knows she's a giant spider. The mod is well aware.
Sadly, the only option I'm given is to destroy my spider bride with fire, which sort of stinks. I honestly wanted to be married to a giant spider. Who the hell would ever mess with me? You don't invade the lands of a guy who marries an enormous spider. Dude's crazy .
With Shelob dead, I try to marry an Ent, but can't find one that will agree to marry me. I try to marry Arwen, like I'm supposed to, but her guardian Elrond doesn't like me -- for some reason -- and won't agree to the marriage. I have him assassinated, hoping to have more luck with his heir, Elladan, but he doesn't like me either, so I have him assassinated as well, and so on and so on, killing the next four or five successors, in a desperate attempt to find one who will agree to let me wed Arwen. I'm just a romantic that way.
I try the same with Eowyn, killing a bunch of her family members, hoping to eventually find one who likes me, but somehow their opinion of me only grows worse and worse. As it turns out, even I don't like me much. I'm not sure what the source of Aragorn's misery is. Is it the crushing weight of the One Ring? Is it that I married and then destroyed a giant spider? Is it that I killed Elrond and a bunch of other elves in an effort to woo Arwen? Is it my crippling impotence?
Anyway, I notice in my Intrigue panel that I have the option to commit suicide. Considering all the enemies that I've made, and that the One Ring means fathering an heir is almost impossible, and that I attempted to marry a talking tree at one point, killing myself suddenly seems to be the most reasonable option.
Accomplished nothing of note? I assassinated Gandalf and Elrond. I stole the One Ring from Frodo. I MARRIED A GIANT SPIDER. We have a very different definition of "accomplished," video game. Very different .
Installation: I will give you instructions, if you do not know the way. Download the mod. Extract it to your CKII mod directory (even with a Steam copy, look in My Documents > Paradox Interactive > Crusader Kings II > mod). When you start up CKII, just tick the box that says Middle Earth Project, and start playing! |
The strong scent of barbecue floats in the air as Big 12 officials and members socialize in a courtyard. A stage stands in the center, and a "Welcome Members" banner hangs over it, while red and white balloons are scattered all over. Stevie Ray Vaughn music plays in the background...
Commissioner Bob Bowlsby walks up to the center of the stage, picks up his microphone, and begins addressing the crowd...
Bowlsby: Good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here amongst such esteemed institutions. This past year was a great year for the conference, and I'd like to take a couple of minutes to recognize a few of the major achievements we witnessed this past year.
But, first, I need to thank one of our newest members, West Virginia, for agreeing to cater this event. Everyone give a warm, "Thank you," to our friend from Morgantown.
West Virginia: Thank you, everybody. I hope you enjoy it. Everything should be ready in about ten minutes.
Bowlsby: Excellent. Thank you, sir. Now, back to recognitions. First, to Kansas State, I'd like to congratulate you on winning three conference championships in the past year. It's not every day one of the small budget schools, that shares a small state with a non-existent recruiting base, Gumps their way into a "Triple Crown". So, kudos.
To everyone else, I'd like for you to take a good, long hard look at yourselves because this guy is now your gold standard, which means that unless you'd like to start playing your games on CBS College Sports with the rest of Conference U.S.Who Gives a Shit?, stop being a bunch of ass-hats and start winning something.
Kansas: Hey, I won a women's track title!
Oklahoma: Uh, softball, bro.
Bowlsby: Point taken. Let me rephrase. Stop being a bunch of ass-hats and win something people give a shit about.
Kansas: Not cool.
Bowlsby: Not cool is blowing a #1 seed for the eighty billionth time. Tragic is bragging about women's track, dork.
Oklahoma makes a gesture to respond and Bowlsby looks him right in the eye...
Bowlsby: Cotton Bowl. Johnny Football. Shut the fuck up.
Oklahoma starts to get red faced and his eyes begin to water...
Bowlsby: You know, I had a really nice speech prepared for you guys, and it only took me thirty seconds before you pissed me off enough to let "Bad Bob" out. I can totally understand why you all drove Beebe to the nut house after dealing with your shit for the past year. I'm a serious administrator for Christ sakes, and I'm stuck here making you guys money you don't deserve. I mean...what in the hell is he doing?
Bowlsby points to Texas Tech adjusting his hair using an empty serving tray, humming, and slightly gyrating...
Texas: Well, ever since he hired Kliff Kingsbury, he started acting...strange.
Bowlsby: I see that. You didn't answer my question. What is he doing?
Texas: He's "Getting his swag on".
Bowlsby: I don't understand what that means.
Kansas State: Well, it means that he only speaks using hash tag language and, for the past few months, he's responded to every question with a line from Robin Thicke's song Blurred Lines.
Bowlsby: Every question?
Texas: Every question.
Bowlsby: Tech, what are you doing?
Tech: MAYBE I'M GOING DEAF. MAYBE I'M GOING BLIND. MAYBE I'M OUT OF MY MIND.
Bowlsby: What do you plan on doing today?
Tech: TALK ABOUT GETTING BLASTED
Oklahoma: What were you thinking when Tommy Tubberville dumped you guys right around signing day?
Tech: WHAT RHYMES WITH HUG ME?
Bowlsby: Jesus, I've seen enough.
Tech: #comeatmebro
Bowlsby: Alright, well, speaking of Robin Thicke, Texas has been kind enough to get Robin to come perform for us this afternoon and...
Texas: Eh hem.
Bowlsby: Yes?
Texas walks up to the stage and whispers in Bowlsby's ear. Bowlsby looks pissed and covers the mic with his hand but can be heard...
Bowlsby: What do you mean he's not coming? Why in the Hell would you book Alan Thicke? What's he going to do? A monologue from Growing Pains? You know this is just like that Notre Dame shit all over again...
Bowlsby uncovers the mic...
Bowlsby: Alright, guys. We're apparently not getting Robin Thicke. You'll get Alan Thicke later after he gets done, I don't know, being Canadian. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to hop on the private jet and head to Birmingham. As a part of the Sugar Bowl agreement, I'm to bring Slive three sacrificial virgins before the start of each season so he can bathe in their blood and steal their essence or whatever freaky ass voodoo shit he does. Try not to embarrass yourselves, or me, any more than normal today.
Bowlsby walks off the stage and heads to the car...
Oklahoma State: He was cranky, yo.
Oklahoma: Eh, last year didn't end well. Bad bowl season, bad NCAA tournament, and no teams in the College World Series.
Kansas State: And it doesn't help that the new guys didn't have very good years, either.
TCU: Hey, it's not my fault. I was very up front about the atrocious basketball program.
Kansas State: (Looks at Kansas...) Well, not THAT atrocious...
Kansas: Screw you. We won the Big 12!
Kansas State: Kiss the ring, bitch.
Texas: Guys, I thought we were past all of this bickering. We're still healing, remember?
TCU: Yeah, this makes me uncomfortable...
Oklahoma: Listen, noob, go sit in the corner, with your argyle sweater, and read a Restoration Hardware catalog while the big boys talk.
TCU: That's really insensitive. Plus, the lamps are cool. Fun story. I got this end table there once made out of...
Texas slaps TCU in the face...
Texas: You deserved every bit of that. Now go sit down.
TCU: Alright, alright!
Tech: #harshbro
Texas slaps Tech in the face...
Tech: CAUSE NOW YOU WINNING
Oklahoma slaps Tech in the face...
Oklahoma: Goddammit, stop it.
Tech: #ouch
Oklahoma State: Man, everyone just calm down!
Texas: You're right. I'm sorry. Maybe we're all just hungry. West Virginia, how is that food coming along?
West Virginia: Good. It should be ready. I hope you all enjoy it.
West Virginia puts on heaping amounts of barbecue onto everyone's plates, and it all looks great...
Oklahoma State: This is sweet, man. This is really choice.
Oklahoma: I have to say that I'm really impressed. We have outstanding barbecue in Big 12 country, but this is some of the best I've ever had. What is your secret?
West Virginia: Well, I don't want to give away all of my secrets, but I'm really generous with brown sugar. And I have a rub to die for. Also, the tires I used to cook it on were really, really high quality. And the squirrels and opossum were really great cuts of meat this year.
Kansas State: (Stops eating and looks at West Virginia...) Squirrel and opossum?
West Virginia: Oh, yeah. There were so many of them running across the highways this year, we didn't even have to go hunting. We just got the shovels out and...
A mass spitting sound is heard across the courtyard...
West Virginia: What? You're telling me that you guys don't eat squirrel and opossum? Next thing you know, you'll be telling me that you don't cook over used furniture, auto parts, and other forms of scrap metal.
Texas: Of course we don't cook over used furniture! What is wrong with you?
West Virginia: I just don't get you Midwesterners...
Kansas State: The gap between us isn't just geography, is it, bro?
West Virginia: (Sigh) I guess not. I guess the janitor over there will go get it.
Iowa State: For the last fucking time, I'm not the Goddamn janitor! I'm a member of this conference!
Iowa State storms out...
Texas: Hey, has anyone seen Baylor?
Oklahoma: I talked to him last week. He said that he was gaining funds to build his new mega-church.
Texas: I thought it was a football stadium?
Oklahoma: He said that was a ploy to get money to build the church. He said it's real purpose is to host Michael W. Smith concerts and Promise Keepers rallies. He also hopes to, and I quote, "Make a place so nice Joel Osteen will ask you for your money there."
Tech: THAT MAN IS NOT YOUR MAKER
Texas: I really wish you'd stop that.
Tech: GO AHEAD, GET AT ME
All of a sudden, an audible gasp is heard from the dispersed crowd as a man walks towards the group...
Texas A&M: Hi.
Texas: What are you doing here? How did you get in here? Where are your pants?
Texas A&M is wearing a nice maroon Adidas polo shirt, Adidas shoes, and no pants...
Texas A&M: I was invited to the members party. I brought my member.
Oklahoma: I'm so glad you're gone.
Texas A&M: I beat you at football.
Oklahoma State: Oh, snap.
Oklahoma: YOU SON OF A BITCH!
Oklahoma charges A&M, Texas and Oklahoma State go to restrain him...
Kansas State: You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
TCU: All of this still makes me really uncomfortable.
Kansas: Buck up, pansy. This is nothing. A few years ago, I tried stabbing Missouri with a fork.
TCU: Why would you try stabbing him with a fork!?!
Kansas: Because they handed out plastic knives.
A group of guys wearing jean shorts walk into the party...
Florida: There he is!
Alabama: Someone go get him!
Ole Miss: Hell, no. H. E. L. L. N. O. The last time I chased him, he put his dick all over me.
Georgia: Stop being such a prude. You guys act like you've never enjoyed the company of a naked man before.
The group stops to look at him...
Georgia: Don't judge. You go out camping, rafting, or whatever. You set up camp. You sing ABBA songs. You drink some Wild Turkey...
Alabama: I don't want to know where this is going.
Georgia: All I'm saying is that this is all normal where I come from.
BANG!! A loud musket shot rings out in the air and everyone looks to the source of the noise...
West Virginia: Enough! I didn't fly halfway across the Goddamn continent, cook perfectly nice roadkill barbecue, and then sit here and watch you jackasses fight all day long. You know, where I come from, we settle our disputes amicably and with respect for fellow schools.
Texas: Tell me again how that worked out for you.
West Virginia: I ended up here.
Auburn: Roadkill barbecue? What kind, specifically?
West Virginia: Squirrel and opossum.
Auburn: That's what I'm taking about! Hook me up with some of that.
Texas: Speaking of hooking up, look over there...
Texas Tech is doing his best Robin Thicke impression while Texas A&M twerks violently in front of him...
Tech: TALKIN' BOUT THEM BLURRED LINES
Georgia: Well, that's just the cutest thing I ever saw...
Alan Thicke: This is what I call a party! |
CLOSE While deep NCAA tournament runs are often driven off great guard play, this year's Sweet 16 will feature big men as difference-makers. USA TODAY Sports
Kentucky Wildcats guard Aaron Harrison (2) high fives fans after the game against the Cincinnati Bearcats in the third round of the 2015 NCAA Tournament at KFC Yum! Center. (Photo11: Brian Spurlock, USA TODAY Sports)
After a six-day extravaganza of college hoops, we have our Sweet 16 for the 2015 NCAA tournament.
The madness came early, with two upsets of No. 3 seeds on Thursday — Georgia State shocking Baylor and UAB stunning Iowa State — and kept on coming — with No. 1 Villanova falling to N.C. State and No. 2 Virginia getting ousted by Michigan State in the round of 32.
After Sunday, there are 16 teams still with a chance to cut down the nets on April 6. How they rank:
1. Kentucky: The Wildcats are one of deepest and most talented teams we've ever seen in college basketball. If they don't finish the season undefeated and win the national championship, it will surely be a surprise. But this team has shown signs of vulnerability that lead us to believe they're beatable. If the tournament were a best-of-seven series like the NBA playoffs, Kentucky's net-cutting would be inevitable. But Iowa State and Villanova both lost to teams they would have crushed in a playoff series. Forget Xs and Os here. All it takes is one game with Kentucky playing a little off and a determined, hot-shooting effort from its opponent. Easier said than done, but certainly feasible.
VIDEO: Analysis of the opening weekend
2. Arizona: The Wildcats were deserving of a No. 1 seed and are playing like one in the tournament. Arizona boasts four future NBA players — Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Brandon Ashley, Stanley Johnson and Kaleb Tarczewski — but the team's most important player is veteran point guard T.J. McConnell (19 points, six assists and six rebounds in Arizona's win against Ohio State), who makes all four of those players better. Last year's Arizona team was one possession away from the Final Four. And this year's team is better.
BRACKET HUB: Everything March Madness
3. Wisconsin: The Badgers got a scare in a close battle with Oregon in the round of 32, but there's no mistaking Wisconsin as a contender to win it all based on its roster. The Badgers have perhaps the toughest route to the Final Four — first facing North Carolina and then likely Arizona. If they make it to Indianapolis, they'll get a rematch with Kentucky. This is a veteran group that plays well together and has a great camaraderie. Frank Kaminsky (27 points, 12 rebounds vs. Coastal Carolina) dictates all the scouting reports because of outside shooting and ability to stretch the floor, but both Sam Dekker (17 points vs. Oregon) and Nigel Hayes (15 points and eight rebounds vs. Coastal Carolina) are key cogs in making this team so good. If Traevon Jackson returns as expected, it will be important for Bo Ryan to make sure his insertion doesn't jar the team's chemistry.
4. Duke: The Blue Devils have what they haven't had in more than a decade: A dominant big man. Freshman standout Jahlil Okafor (26 points in a third-round victory against San Diego State) gives Duke a unique edge against every opponent. Okafor's footwork is that of a 30-year-old NBA center and his finesse ability on the block draw double teams to get Quinn Cook and Tyus Jones open shots. Freshman Justise Winslow is an X-Factor; his energy and athleticism on both ends help the Blue Devils control the game's tempo. Offense is not a problem here. Defense is, with the Blue Devils allowing more than 64 points a game. The loss of Rasheed Sulaimon actually brought this team closer together. But the lack of the departed guard's perimeter defense could be an issue.
Michigan State coach Tom Izzo talks with veteran guard Travis Trice. (Photo11: Bob Donnan, USA TODAY Sports)
5. Michigan State: The seventh-seeded Spartans are following a script similar to last year's UConn team, also a No. 7 seed, that went on to win the national championship. Both teams have had the pieces and ability all season but didn't put it together until it mattered most in March. The Spartans took an extremely good Wisconsin team to the brink in the Big Ten Conference tournament title and is looking the part of a sleeper title winner following an impressive defensive performance in upsetting No. 2 Virginia in the round of 32. Travis Trice (23 points vs. Virginia) will be the key to Michigan State's success.
6. Wichita State: The seventh-seeded Shockers looked like the better seed in a clash with in-state foe Kansas, the second No. 2 seed to go down in the tournament. Much of that is a product of the selection committee overseeding the Shockers (the were worthy of a No. 5 or No. 6 seed). It was also a tough draw for Kansas. But that's unfortunate side of March Madness, as Wichita State experienced last season in the third round against Kentucky. Perhaps this year's Wichita State team isn't as good as last year's, but remember, Gregg Marshall's Final Four team in 2013 was hardly his best. The winning recipe, stirred heavily by toughness, is why this mid-major is so scary in March. One win against Notre Dame and the Shockers could get a rematch with the undefeated Wildcats in the Elite Eight. A win then would be the biggest shocker in tournament history. Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker make for a fearsome backcourt and they're even more potent when Evan Wessel and Tekele Contton are draining outside jumpers.
7. Gonzaga: The 'Zags got over the proverbial Sweet 16 hump (they hadn't been since 2009 despite a few high seeds) and now they have a favorable matchup against UCLA to reach the Elite Eight. But can Gonzaga go to the Final Four? Or win it all? It might seem like a long shot, but this is arguably coach Mark Few's best Bulldogs team based on depth, talent and how well the veteran group plays together. They looked rusty in an opening-round game against North Dakota State but hit their stride vs. Iowa. Kyle Wiltjer's versatility, Domantas Sabonis' raw skillset in the post and the veteran backcourt of Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell Jr. make this team a title contender on paper.
8. Oklahoma: For all the talk about how great the Big 12 was, the Sooners are one of two teams remaining of the orignal seven NCAA entrants. But the Big 12 gauntlet still helps make a team like Oklahoma become battle-tested. The Sooners won against Albany and Dayton without Buddy Hield shooting well (he was 4-for-13 vs. the Flyers). If Hield, the Big 12 player of the year, starts producing more, there's no reason this team can't come out of a wide-open East Region. And going even further isn't out of the question, either.
Utah Utes guard Delon Wright (back) and guard Brandon Taylor make for a fearsome backcourt tandem. (Photo11: Godofredo Vasquez, USA TODAY Sports)
9. Utah: The Utes weren't playing well toward the end of the season, having lost three of their last five to finish behind Oregon in the Pac-12. But their overall body of work got them a No. 5 seed and ideal path to the Sweet 16 — where Utah held off Stephen F. Austin's upset bid and outplayed No. 4 seed Georgetown. Few could have projected Utah as a Final Four team, but the tournament is all about matchups. Every potential matchup in the South Region is winnable for this team. Do-everything Delon Wright is the Utes' driving force, but others — Jakob Poeltl (18 points, five blocks vs. Stephen F. Austin) and Brandon Taylor (14 points, five assists vs. Georgetown) have given Utah an extra gear.
10. UCLA: The Bruins are a prime example of a team that grows up over the course of the season and peaks at the perfect time. UCLA can thank the committee for getting its chance to reach its potential on the grandest stage in March, but this team's Sweet 16 appearance is a product of a matured team that's fully capable of doing more than busting brackets. The Bruins feature five players averaging double figures, and all have the ability to take over games. That's what makes this team so dangerous. In a win against SMU, Bryce Alford led the way with 27 points (nine three-pointers). In their win against UAB, big man Tony Parker had 28 points. And in a March 12 victory against USC, Isaac Hamilton broke out for 36 points. And the other two, Norman Powell and Kevon Looney, are considered UCLA's best players.
11. North Carolina: All season long, the Tar Heels looked like a potentially great team that never fully put things together. But they're clicking when it matters most in March, playing better defense and showing more discipline than they did throughout a season riddled with inconsistent play. Marcus Paige didn't have the All-American type of season he was expected to have, but if he's able to produce like he did in the second round against Arkansas, North Carolina is a tough out. UNC can be dominant on the glass (ranking seventh nationally with an 8.1 rebounding margin), but that's up to Brice Johnson and Kennedy Meeks. If the Tar Heels play to their potential, they could win it all. But it's tough to decipher whether this is just a late-season surge or a title run.
12. Notre Dame: The Irish are a potent offensive team, but it was a defensive play — Pat Connaughton's block to force overtime — that helped Notre Dame edge a pesky Butler team to get here. Notre Dame is playing with confidence and has momentum from winning the ACC tournament title. Coach Mike Brey has five players who can erupt offensively, starting with unselfish guard Jerian Grant (16.8 ppg, 6.6 apg).
North Carolina State pulled of the tournament's biggest shocker so far, beating No. 1 seed Villanova. (Photo11: Charles LeClaire, USA TODAY Sports)
13. N.C. State: The Wolfpack shocked No. 1 Villanova for perhaps the biggest upset of this year's tournament. That came after a last-second victory against LSU in the opening round. N.C. State, a bubble team in February, won't dominate any opponent but it's played the role of giant killer several times now, including regular-season victories against fellow Sweet 16 teams North Carolina and Duke. The formula for this team's success is no secret: Great guard play. That's spearheaded by Trevor Lacey and complemented by Anthony Barber. The duo had a combined 30 points in the win against 'Nova.
14. Louisville: Coach Rick Pitino has been blunt in interviews, saying this is far from his best team and that this group has been tough to coach based on diverse personalities. Factor in starting point guard Chris Jones being dismissed from the team late in the season and it was difficult to fathom Louisville, even as a No. 4 seed, reaching the Sweet 16. They struggled to put away UC Irvine in the opening round. Credit Terry Rozier, who's as good if not better in the shooting guard role than shot-happy Russ Smith. His 25 points and seven assists catapulted the Cardinals past a Northern Iowa team that was arguably better.
15. West Virginia: Juwan Staten is the team's best player, and it showed in a victory against potential giant-killer Buffalo in an opening round game that many picked as an upset. But the Mountaineers showed how good their other key players are in a victory against Maryland. Devin Williams led the way with 16 points, while Gary Browne had 14 points and five steals. Coach Bob Huggins always has his teams playing with a smothering defense. That's why they lead the nation in steals per game (10.8) and rank second in turnover margin (6.5).
16. Xavier: The Musketeers had perhaps the easiest path to the Sweet 16, handling a tired Ole Miss squad in the second round and ending Cinderella Georgia State's season in the third. But if Xavier gets a boost like it did against Georgia State, such as the 21 points off the bench from Jalen Reynolds, there's no reason this team can't continue to surprise. Matt Stainbrook is an underrated big man. If he's double-teamed, he's a great passer. If he's not, he's well polished on the block. Dee Davis is another guy who doesn't get enough credit. He's a pass-first point guard, but he's averaged 16 points in the tournament.
ALL THE SWEET 16 TEAMS |
SEVENTY years have passed but the emotion remains for Australian veterans of World War II Bomber Command.
During a special Australian service at an Air Forces memorial on the outskirts of London yesterday tears flowed among an aged gathering as thoughts turned to thousands of fallen comrades.
About 10,000 Australians served with Bomber Command, with 3486 killed in battle, while a further 650 died in training accidents in the United Kingdom.
"In lonely cockpits at dizzy altitudes ... in fog, in deadly cold, in storms, on fire, in prison camps, in skin grafting hospitals, there are none deserving more honour. Today we remember their selfless sacrifice," Major General Mark Kelly told the gathering of about 100 veterans.
The veterans from across Australia are in London for the dedication of a memorial to Bomber Command by the Queen tomorrow. It commemorates the 55,573 Bomber Command aircrew killed during the war.
"This is a very emotional day," Adelaide veteran David Leicester, 88, said.
"It really gets to me and I will find I have tears in my eyes for the whole week of celebrations. The playing of the Last Post and the national anthem of both countries gets right into my heart.
"When the Queen unveils the memorial on Thursday, I can't even begin to think how I will react, with so much emotion."
Mr Leicester flew 68 missions with Bomber Command, mostly night-time bombing operations over German cities in aircraft including the Halifax, and Pathfinder Lancasters.
"One of the worst nights for me was March 30/31, 1944 when 96 aircraft were shot down and a further number crash landed," Mr Leicester said.
"It was the worst night for Bomber Command casualties and we had a particularly bad time, returning on three engines and severe damage to the aircraft.
"It was a very rough landing, but we were the lucky ones."
Steve Flood, 88, from Stanthorpe in Queensland, flew as a air gunner in 30 Bomber Command operations for 467 Squadron over enemy territory in 1944.
"One was a raid to Revigny (France) which was only a small raid of 106 aircraft and altogether 24 were lost. (Squadron) 467 had six aircraft on the raid that night and only four came back."
While Mr Flood is looking forward to the Bomber Command memorial dedication as a "fitting" tribute, the highlight of his trip to England will be a war museum visit where he will be reunited with the Lancaster aircraft affectionately called S Is For Sugar.
"It will be the first time since 1945 that I've seen her," Mr Flood said of the Lancaster.
"I was on board her one night when she lost 120 rivets out of her wing. I remember the pilot saying 'we've been hit', but we still got back okay."
Originally published as Emotional UK visit for Aussie vets |
PHNOM PENH—Wiping blood from his hands as he spoke with reporters Monday, U.S. ambassador to Cambodia William E. Todd said that if memory served, the thing he just did is almost certainly covered under the provisions of diplomatic immunity. “While I would need to consult the exact wording of the 1961 Vienna Convention again to confirm, I’m fairly confident that if you examine sovereign treaty law you’ll find that what I just did a few minutes ago cannot be defined as a prosecutable action,” said the disheveled diplomat before changing his soiled shirt, washing his face and torso, and hoisting a full garbage bag into the trunk of his car. “Of course, in the rare event of a civil suit, the State Department may waive immunity, but persecution isn’t taken in the vast majority of cases. That is my understanding, at least.” The ambassador went on to tell reporters that, as far as he knew, even if they wanted to stop him, they couldn’t.
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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The removal of the world's tree cover remains a concern but deforestation rates are slowing, according to the United Nations
Although progress is being made, up to US $906bn of company turnover is still tied to global deforestation, an assessment has concluded.
A study by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) suggests almost a quarter of company revenues depend on deforestation-linked commodities.
These commodities are cattle products, soy, palm oil and timber products.
The findings are based on disclosure requests to 365 investors worth US $22 trillion (£17 trillion).
"We found this year that a substantial share of corporate income depends upon commodities that are linked to deforestation risk," explained Katie McCoy, CDP's head of forests.
"When we carried out our analysis, we found that - on average - about a quarter of companies' revenue are dependent on commodities that have been linked to deforestation."
She said there was a clear message for companies to take the issue of deforestation in their supply chain very seriously.
"It is having an impact on their potential to generate revenue."
Deforestation concerns
Ms McCoy added: "Another key message that is coming though is that while companies are confident that they have a secure and sustainable supply of these commodities, our analysis suggests that companies are overlooking how deforestation impacts are going to affect their growth.
"In this era of increased scrutiny, we are asking companies in order to capitalise on opportunity and minimise risk, they really need to engage more meaningfully with their supply chain and, in some cases, move deforestation risk into the boardroom."
She said that taking "deforestation into the boardroom" would help shift the paradigm into a long-term issue, making it more sustainable."
At present, a third of companies that responded to CDP's request for information said that the issue of deforestation was not being discussed at boardroom level.
"[It] affects the way risk assessments in the company are conducted, making sure that this issue is part of the mix."
She added that that by increasing levels of transparency and disclosure from their suppliers would be beneficial.
"This means recognising that the biggest risks and opportunities are to be found in the supply chain, and we would ask companies to disclose the relevant information, and also to collaborate with those suppliers to implement change," she told BBC News.
"Finally, we are asking companies to work sectorally. This is where the boardroom level and working with the supply chain comes in.
"So they are working with "peer companies" across the sector. We are also asking them to also work with customers, governments and civil society as well, because there needs to be an enabling environment in order for companies to deliver."
The assessment by the CDP found that regulatory signals in landmark agreements such as the Paris Agreement placed decarbonisation of economic and financial activity, and that a sustainable post 2020 economy relied on the shift away from deforestation.
"Companies are moving forward, the manufacturers and retailers that have reported that they are working with their suppliers and that they have far greater levels of traceability and they are more significantly more like to identify supply chain related opportunities,"
Ms McCoy added that she was hopeful that the corporate world was heading in the right direction.
She said: "On a more positive note, we have never seen transparency be more important and have companies actively asking for transparency, and we are pleased that more investors are signing up to our programme.
"Since last year, we have had 20% more investors interested in this issue. I am encouraged about how many companies are seeing the value in being transparent about how they tackle this issue." |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court, two days after hearing a major abortion case from Texas, on Friday temporarily blocked a Louisiana law imposing regulations on doctors who perform abortions in a move that would allow two recently closed clinics to reopen.
People stand outside the Supreme Court building at Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., in this February 13, 2016 photo. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
In a brief order, the court granted a request by abortion providers seeking to reinstate a lower-court injunction that blocked the Republican-backed 2014 law, which required doctors to obtain a formal affiliation with a local hospital.
The abortion providers contend the law was designed to shut down abortion clinics by requiring hospital “admitting privileges” that are difficult for their doctors to secure.
Louisiana will now have four clinics in total.
The order noted that one of the eight justices, conservative Clarence Thomas, said he would have denied the application.
The order said the court’s action was in line with its decision in June to temporarily block part of a Texas abortion law that was challenged by abortion providers in a high-profile case. The justices heard oral arguments in that case on Wednesday.
The Louisiana law mandates that physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the abortion clinic. The regulation matches one in the Texas law.
U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in January granted a preliminary injunction sought by abortion providers, finding the law violated the constitutional right to an abortion established by the Supreme Court in 1973. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision on Feb. 24, allowing the law to go into effect.
The high court’s action sent mixed signals on how it might rule in the Texas case, in part because the justices previously allowed the Texas admitting privileges provision to go into effect.
The action could suggest the court has greater concerns about admitting privileges requirements than were indicated during Wednesday’s argument in the Texas case. Friday’s move effectively put Louisiana’s law on hold while the justices prepare a ruling, expected by the end of June, in the Texas case.
Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents abortion providers in both cases, welcomed the court’s action.
“These underhanded tactics to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion simply cannot stand,” Northup said.
The Texas case also involves a separate provision that requires clinics to have costly, hospital-grade facilities.
The Louisiana law was signed by Republican then-Governor Bobby Jindal in 2014. |
Get out of my way you bastards — A groggy Thank You note to Hunter S. Thompson
Matthew Pike Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 13, 2017
Was it Mencken, or Faulkner? The fuck if I know… Hunter S. Thompson keeps bringing up this “high white noise” thing. To be honest, I never read the original piece, nor do I really intend to go find it — but it’s a king-hell bastard of a line. A truth chasing us from all directions.
It’s that beautiful feeling you get when you’re lost in somebody’s words and you aren’t really aware you’re reading words at all — that rarefied feeling of perfect immersion. You’re so involved — their syntax, vocab, style — all that bullshit… it doesn’t matter. The time between you and the writer is gone. You’re there with them.
Then, if you’re an ambitious little fuck like me, you read back over their words a dozen times, trying to figure out the flow — the how of why they felt so damn good to read. What transition phrases did they use? Any sentence fragments in there? How did they start their sentences? By the time I’ve broken something down into its tiniest pieces and rebuilt it, I’m convinced that even I could write like that — but I won’t.
What gibberish am I going on about here? Well… to steal another sliver of HST’s style, let’s put it this way: It’s 12:55am in a suburb of Saigon. I have a wall of empty 333 cans next to me, and I’ve spent the last half hour arguing with a Facebook troll for the mere enjoyment of it — no scores to settle, just for a laugh. There’s a dog barking outside, and a crowd of drunks just roared by on motorbikes with exhausts ten times louder than they need to be. I’ve been writing and editing all day… but what the hell?
Stealing has to be a shitty way to live, and I don’t intend to start now. I tried… 12 years old… stood in front of a wall of Lego boxes for 45 minutes before shoving the cheapest one inside my jacket and hightailing it out of that little shop near Lake Ontario. Put it together in the basement, hiding away from Mom. She knew I couldn’t afford that Lego set. So I broke it into pieces and hid them with the rest…
It’s actually really fucking hard to not explicitly write like somebody you’ve read so thoroughly. But it has to be this way. I mean… sure, I could fool many people — but if I’m going to carve some space out for myself, it needs to be me.
But sometimes it’s fun…
The swine… the cocksuckers… the dealers and hustlers and greedheads… this atavistic endeavor… the fat is in the fire… the sharks have come home to roost…
Ahhh… that felt good.
I’ll be honest, spilling those words felt right. They flow freely in my mind — a language I’ve adopted in the privacy of my head. It’s the language of a madman pounding keys at ungodly hours, hopped up on various chemicals — mescaline, LSD, and gallons of whiskey. Thompson wrote at hours when normal people were waking up — except he’d been up all night. He wasn’t normal, and that’s why I continue to find him more interesting as the years go by… as I become less normal myself. I’ve delved deeper and deeper, getting more respect for him as I get underneath the image of Raoul Duke. He made his own way in the ruthless world of writing, and he got away with it.
There’s a common theme: “Getting away with it.”
That line reappears often in biographies and articles written about him. People couldn’t believe how he was allowed to exist. Across the world, people get years in jail — or worse — for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet here was a writer who told the world about just how often he’d been in the right places at the right times, doing what the Silent Majority would consider to be monstrously wrong — the drugs, the flagrant anarchy, the fuck-off attitude…
And so what? Well… here’s the thing: being a writer is both amazing and terrifying. It’s amazing to spill my thoughts and memories into words and know that they exist outside of me — but it’s terrifying to think of the effects my words have in the minds of others. Is anything I write giving somebody out there that “high white noise” feeling? Do these words even sound like me? Is my voice something people even want to read?
I’ve made negligible money from my writing, and there’s no real hope of that changing anytime soon. Editors tell me they like what I write, but in the next line they ask me to write to their style—be boring, please… stuff that won’t scare advertisers. But I’ve looked into the depths of my motivations, and I know writing is only my passion because it’s a place where I can be myself. Scrolling up after a writing session and knowing those words didn’t exist before, that’s why I do it. They’re a mark I’ll leave behind — my finger-painting on the walls of a cave.
Reading through The Proud Highway and Fear and Loathing in America, collections of HST’s private correspondence, has changed my perspective on writing. It’s difficult to imagine that somebody who has left such an indelible mark on literature, art, society, etc… that there were long stretches when all the evidence told him to give it up — to get a job in a newsroom and pump out copy. But he knew he had to be a writer on his own (fucking hilarious) terms. He wasn’t cut out for anything else. And frankly, I’m thinking more and more every day that I’m damaged goods when it comes to normal work — sitting in traffic to go to a job I fucking hate. I’d rather be a failure than crawl back into that depression. Selah.
Thompson has also helped me realize that my weirdness — the awkwardness and introversion that I struggled with for many years — is me. Seeing what nobody else sees used to make me feel like a paranoid lunatic, but now I realize it’s my gift. I’ve gotten used to being the only person laughing at my jokes. Those absurd stories that play out in my mind are a thread of reality that is mine alone — and it’s through them that I have developed my voice.
This article began with the voice I once tried to emulate: Thompson’s brash prose, full of vitriol and barbs flung in every sacred direction. It’s the voice I tried to write in for a long time. I tried to be the drug-addled outlaw sending in telegraphs from the fringes of society — binging on substances on the dirty streets of Saigon… the wild man, forever eluding the sun. But if you know me, then you know I’m anything but an outlaw. Sure, I’ve dabbled in the illegal — but I’m not the kind of person to make a scene. I’d rather watch. I listen much more than I speak, and I read much more than I write.
I love being in wild scenes as a background player, goading on the actors so I can see them at their best — and worst. That’s who I am. Retracing Thompson’s steps — the years it took him to find his voice — has been something special. Before he could go out to The Edge of writing, he had to lay the scaffolding down. He had to put in the work. Only then could he say: “Get out of my way you bastards,” and have everyone listen.
Thanks, HST. |
A drug used to treat conditions such as epilepsy has been shown in lab tests to significantly improve bone growth impaired by a form of dwarfism. The research team, which includes scientists at Newcastle University, discovered in lab and mouse studies that the drug carbamazepine, already approved for treating conditions such as epilepsy and bi-polar disease, can significantly reduce the effects of MCDS - a genetic condition which affects bone growth.
Carbamazepine. Credit: Newcastle University
MCDS leads to skeletal dysplasia, commonly referred to as dwarfism, where patients are often short in stature with unusual limb proportions. There is no current treatment. Newcastle University said that human trials will take place by the end of the year
Human trials will be the next step. Credit: ITV News
The team which has made the breakthrough are from Newcastle University’s Institute of Genetic Medicine, The University of Manchester and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia. Their findings have been published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Scientists at Newcastle University worked with counterparts in Manchester. Credit: ITV News
"The concept of going so quickly from pre-clinical data to orphan drug designation to a clinical trial is incredible. “It exemplifies the power of drug repurposing for rare disease: there has been no involvement of big pharma and this inexpensive drug has had a great safety record since the 1950s.” – Michael Briggs, Professor of Skeletal Genetics, Newcastle University |
Apple’s Flyover feature in the new iOS 6 Maps app gives users are really cool way to explore their favorite cities by looking at 3D renderings of major metropolitan areas. You can zoom in and out to view buildings in greater detail kind of like you’re really there. Right now there are a limited number of cities that Apple has created 3D renders of, but here’s a look at all the cities currently supporting Flyover in the new Maps app.
Apple HQ in Cupertino
Chicago
Copenhagen
Las Vegas
Los Angeles
Miami
Montreal
Sacramento
San Francisco
Seattle
Sydney
The current number of cities Apple has rendered in 3D is pretty paltry and we’re hoping they get a lot more completed before iOS 6 launches. Is there a city we’re missing in the gallery? Let us know in the comments and we’ll add it to the gallery. |
Driver: install the common fastboot driver in FlashTool first. CMD easy Flash Tool: I translated it into English. recovery: unknown purposes. fitwear: v1.0, can be upgraded to v1.2 via OTA. (Build 20170118) Android Wear (unknown version): I did not roll back to AW and I haven't check the version. Orignial Chinese tutorial and flash_chs.bat: Read it if you can.
Install Flashtool driver from FLASHTOOL and the driver provided. Extract the zip and run flash.bat (admin not needed). Unlock your watch using the cmd if you haven't. Flash Fitwear. Reboot to fitwear. Download the fitwear app onto your phone and connect to watch.
Hi all,Today, I installed fitwear onto my SW3. For those of you who don't know, fitwear is an alternative system designed and made by a Chinese company called Lianluo, here is their website: http://fitwear.lianluo.com/ . In this version (Android v5.1.1) I found, it supports English, in addition, it supports OTA upgrade. However, this system seems to be free from google services.I have attached the files that I used. It contains: (I DID NOT made any of these tools, I only did translation.)Installation Steps:Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9O...ew?usp=sharing Link for v1.2 (by hardy272): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3t...ew?usp=sharing Note: OTA upgrade needs the watch to be connected to some WIFI.Disclaimer: By doing this you void your warrenty and I don't take any responsibility if your brick your device.Do not distruibute!!! This is not thoroughly tested. |
Starting out as a TV show in 1995 and gaining popularity through the Rebuild film series, Evangelion has captured the hearts of countless fans.
The iconic Spear of Longinus from the series is now available in tweezer form!
Although tweezers are quite common and often used in everyday life, it is rather difficult to come across one of high-quality. It is an item where cost does not necessarily equate to quality.
However, we were able to mass produce the Spear of Longinus in the form of high-quality tweezers with the technology the human race has built up.
Plucking even the deepest ingrown hair will become an easy task with the Tweezers of Longinus.
We are confident that the Tweezers of Longinus will offer performance and quality that truly lives up to the Longinus name.
■But why tweezers?“But why make the Spear of Longinus in the form of tweezers?” This may be a question that a lot of you have in mind. The reason is simple; the Spear was the perfect shape for tweezers!Normal tweezers are only approximately 8 centimeters long, and can only be handled with your fingertips. In comparison, the Tweezers of Longinus are longer. They are approximately 11 centimeters long and will fit perfectly in your hands.■Functional designAn incredible amount of thinking and planning was put into the design of the Tweezers of Longinus.While recreating the form of the Spear of Longinus, the design prevents deformation and damage even when the tips are bent outwards.■What are they capable of?The tips of the tweezers are constructed to clamp together with precision.They can hold on tightly to normal hairs, short hairs, fine and downy hairs and thorns.■The tweezers will be shipped inside sliding cases that allow users to carry them safely and withdraw them easily for use.■High quality tweezers made in JapanThe tweezers are crafted using wire electrical discharge machining, a technique which is rarely used for mass produced items. This technique allows for precise machining in 0.001 mm intervals, which is far more precise than even the most skilled tweezer craftspeople. We were able to create an extremely precise grip using these techniques on stainless steel.The preciseness of the tweezers allows them to pick individual fibers from tissue paper (approx. 15μm). Say goodbye to dull tweezers and those that accidentally cut hairs instead of plucking them. Each piece is crafted in a small-scale workshop in Kanagawa, Japan by wire cut craftsmen who have polished their skills for a long time.■Limited titanium versionsThe Titanium Tweezers of Longinus will only be available through pre-orders in limited quantities.Titanium is a rare metal that is durable, light, and resistant to rusting, and these titanium tweezers are only available now.The Titanium Tweezers come in two colors: red and blue. Only 300 pieces of each version are available, and no plans of further production have been made yet. This may be the only chance to purchase them!■Core-shaped standTransparent acrylic stands shaped like the Angel’s cores are also available and perfect for the tweezers.Product name: Tweezers of LonginusSeries name: EvangelionPrice:・Tweezers of Longinus (Stainless version) + Core stand set: 3600 Yen (Excluding Tax)・Tweezers of Longinus (Titanium version) + Core stand set: 9259 Yen (Excluding Tax)Release date: Planned for September 2017Materials:・Tweezers: stainless steel / titanium・Stand: acrylicDistributor: Tokyo Otaku Mode Inc. and wāqwāq Inc.Manufacturer: wāqwāq Inc.
Normal sales (for all products except for the Titanium versions*) will begin after pre-ordered items have been shipped at the following prices.
・Tweezers of Longinus (Stainless version): 3600 Yen (Excluding Tax)
・Core stand: 1800 Yen (Excluding Tax)
Pre-order the Tweezers of Longinus to receive a free core stand! This deal will not be available during normal sales!
＊The Titanium version will not be available for normal sale
Evangelion, which started with the TV series “Neon Genesis Evangelion” that began broadcasting in 1995, is one of the most popular anime worldwide. Set after the global cataclysm Second Impact, the series depicts the young boys and girls who pilot humanoid battle weapons called Evangelion and their fight against mysterious invaders called Angels. In 2007 a new movie tetralogy titled “Rebuild of Evangelion” began, capturing the hearts of fans of all ages. Three movies in the tetralogy have been released to date.
■Project owners:wāqwāq Inc. and Tokyo Otaku Mode Inc.
©khara
■Manufacturer: wāqwāq Inc.The Tweezers of Longinus will be crafted and distributed by wāqwāq Inc., a company with the motto of ”Bringing your wants to reality”.wāqwāq Inc. offers intriguing miscellaneous products, as well “cosme play”, a character themed cosmetics brand.Producers manufactured by wāqwāq Inc. are not just cute; they are carefully crafted in Japan and are guaranteed to be of high quality.Q: When will rewards be shipped out?A: Rewards are scheduled to be shipped out in September 2017.Q: Where will rewards be shipped from?A: Rewards will be shipped directly from Tokyo Otaku Mode in Japan.Q: I noticed that all prices are displayed in Japanese Yen. If I am paying with foreign currency, how will exchange rates affect my payment?A: Rates may differ between credit card companies. Please contact your credit card company for further information.Q: Will I need to pay any additional import duties, VAT, customs taxes, or local handling fees when receiving my reward?A: Depending on your country’s customs laws, you may be required to pay a tax before obtaining your package. In some areas, such as the United Kingdom and France, the local postal service may charge an extra handling fee for processing packages affected by customs taxes. Payment of customs taxes and any possible handling fees is the responsibility of the purchaser.Q: Why can’t I click the “Reserve” button?A: Please ensure that you have filled out your payment method and shipping information and try again. Instructions are available here.Q: Are the rewards that ship to Japan and ship internationally different?A: No. The rewards are the same. The only difference is the shipping cost.Q: When will normal sales begin?A: They will be available after all shipments for the pre-orders are complete. |
DW: Mr Pöttering, you'll be leaving the European Parliament soon - after 35 consecutive years. Is Europe in a condition where you'd say "Yes, I'm happy with what I'm leaving behind?"
Hans-Gert Pöttering: Politically speaking, I'd have to say, there's no finish line for Europe, but we have certainly achieved a lot. In 1979, when the European Parliament was elected the first time, Europe was divided, Germany was divided. Today, Germany is a united country.
Back then, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania formed part of the Soviet Union and today they're parts of the EU's community of values. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia have gone through similar developments. That's been a wonderful evolution which we didn't necessarily foresee or dare hope for back in 1979. And it shows that the EU is more than a randomly selected geographical and political union. It's a community of values based on human dignity, human rights, freedom, peace and democracy.
The European Parliament had no legislative powers whatsoever back in 1979. Today it's strong and influential. That's also a good development, but many challenges remain. Acceptance of the EU by our citizens is not on par with the EU's significance. We have to keep working on that. I'm leaving the European Parliament with a big feeling of gratitude, because it allowed me to experience all kinds of things, and above all, it allowed me to help shape and improve many things.
Approval rates by European citizens for their institutions here in Brussels and in Strasbourg are at a historic low. Does that sadden you?
It ought to distress us, and should serve as a clear call to keep striving for European integration. But approval rates for politics are not just low at the EU level, they're also low at national levels across EU countries. Voter turnout has been on the decline at all levels. It's a sign that we have to get even more in touch with our citizens.
But citizens also have to know that the EU is a tremendous value for them. Never before have people lived with as much freedom, in such democratic systems, and above all, in as much peace as today. But the financial and economic challenges, together with the worrying level of youth unemployment in the south of Europe, have meant that people have a bad image of Europe. We have to change that. Every generation has its own new challenge to master as far as European integration is concerned.
The European Parliament has considerably more powers and more influence than back in the days when you, Mr Pöttering, first joined it. And still, Germany's Constitutional Court recently said that it's not a "real" parliament, because the weighing of votes works differently from how the constitutional judges would think is right. Does that make you angry or sad in any way after all these years?
I have a background in law myself, and I've been a member of the European Parliament since 1979. I will therefore take the liberty of saying that the decision by the five judges of the Second Senate who abandoned the three-percent-hurdle claiming the European Parliament was not so important was based on misconceptions.
I am a little sad about the fact that our top court passed such a ruling. And I'm happy about the fact that we have a European Court of Justice in Luxembourg which has the last say. European law surpasses individual national law of the 28 EU member states.
When you first started as an MEP in 1979, the EU was small, and Europe was a divided continent. We've reached a point where some worry that Europe could face a new internal split. Would you have thought that the ghosts of the past could return, and that we'd ever face a similar external challenge again as we're facing now?
First of all, we should be glad that the 28 countries of the EU, with their more than 500 million people, are living peacefully together in freedom, democracy and with a common rule of law. That's huge progress for European history.
But I wouldn't have expected Russia to take quite the approach towards Ukraine which we are currently having to witness. That shows how important it is for us to stand together as EU citizens and to tell Russia what we expect from it. Russia is a big nation and it does have tremendous significance for peace on our continent in the 21st century, but Moscow also has to adhere to international law. We have to support the people of Ukraine.
We're in your office here in the Parliament. You keep collection here of people you've met in your long career as a member of the European Parliament: Queen Elizabeth II, the queen of the Netherlands, the Dalai Lama and many others. Can you even say what your most important encounters were in all these years?
For me, encounters with so-called simple people have always had a big significance. Whenever I've had discussions with normal citizens, I've learned that they actually support my ideas. The idea of European integration, and the fact that we can live together in peace in a liberal system, where we respect the rule of law. And those statements have always encouraged me that the path I chose was the right one.
My encounters with heads of state and government or the popes or representatives of monarchy were also, of course, always special moments. But the so-called normal people were always the ones who had a lasting impact on my political life.
Hans-Gert Pöttering (68) was the chairman of the conservative group of the European Parliament for many years. He was President of the European Parliament between 2007 and 2009. After leaving the European stage on July 1st, 2014, Pöttering, who has a degree in law, will become the chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, associated with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), yet independent of it. |
One version of the new Celtics logo the team will begin using this season.
A couple of years ago, the Celtics turned their office on Causeway Street, near TD Garden, into a pseudo museum detailing the franchise’s history, with pictures and memorabilia covering nearly every square inch of space.
And down one hallway, all the Celtics logos dating to the team’s founding in 1946 were splashed on the wall, each carrying the story behind its origin.
Those stories sparked an idea for something new with a touch of the past, and after 18 months of work, that idea will debut this week: a new alternate logo.
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Created in-house, the logo, which is known as the “Lucky Alternate,” pays homage to the early 1960s illustration created by Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach’s brother, Zang, a former editorial and sports artist for newspapers in Washington.
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It features the classic image of Lucky the leprechaun spinning the ball on his finger, only in white silhouette against a green backdrop, encircled by the words “BOSTON” and “CELTICS” in white.
“It’s such an iconic silhouette that people, when they see it, they’ll know exactly what it is,” said Shawn Sullivan, the team’s chief marketing officer.
The logo will first be used on adidas team apparel and merchandise on sale through the team’s online store beginning this month.
Celtics season ticket-holders and corporate partners can also buy apparel featuring the new alternate logo two days before products are released to the general public.
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Keith Sliney, the Celtics’ creative director and the logo’s designer, stressed that it won’t be replacing their main logo, nor are there immediate plans to place it on game jerseys.
“We think of it more as extending the Celtics brand,” Sliney said. “Our existing logos are not changing. This alternate is an additional emblem for us to use on everything from print to web to fabric. It’s very flexible.”
One of the reasons the Celtics decided to create a new logo was, Sliney said, it had been 16 years since the team had debuted its last new logo, a secondary shamrock.
“We thought it was a good time to create a mark, something new, something fresh, yet with a lot of history behind it,” he said.
They settled on re-creating the 1960s logo — Zang’s creation, featuring the leprechaun wearing a bowler, smoking a pipe, holding a shillelagh — only with a contemporary spin on a classic image.
Baxter Holmes can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @BaxterHolmes |
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