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Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America has repeatedly extolled the virtues of politicians having a “healthy fear” of being shot because such fears are a way to make sure that they “behave” and support gun rights.
In yet another appearance alongside extremist right-wing commentator Stan Solomon on October 28, Pratt credited court rulings striking down Washington, D.C., gun laws for a drop in homicides in the city while deriding proponents of such laws as “criminals’ friends” who “hate self-defense.”
Solomon, however, said that politicians who support gun restrictions “really are the criminals, forget the friend,” and the two agreed [then] that “thugs in government” are worse than violent criminals.
“It’s hard to get rid of these politicians,” Pratt said, to which Solomon responded by suggesting that politicians who support gun laws should be shot, telling Pratt, “that’s why we need to have guns, you know what, more than one politician has been dispatched while doing a dance trying to avoid certain, shall we say, metal jackets.”
Pratt replied: “May their number increase.” |
While Pantech launches smartphones in the US from time to time, its main focus remains its home country, South Korea, where the company is always behind Samsung and LG in terms of market share.Like it did in 2013, when it released the Vega Iron Android smartphone to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy S4, now Pantech is seemingly preparing the launch on another high-end handset, this time to take on the rumored Galaxy S5 According to ZDNet Korea, the upcoming smartphone is called Pantech Vega Iron 2, obviously being the successor to last year’s model. Pantech intends to launch it in April, when the Galaxy S5 is also expected to be released. Reportedly, the new Vega Iron 2 will have a metal body and a fingerprint scanner. Pantech is already using the latter feature on some of its Android handsets.The original Vega Iron (pictured above) came with a 5-inch 720p display, so the Vega Iron 2 will probably have a similarly-sized screen. It remains to be seen if Pantech jumps on the Quad HD (1600 x 2560 pixels) bandwagon - it might do it, since it’s believed that the Samsung Galaxy S5 will have a Quad HD screen.The Vega Iron 2 should be launched by Pantech via all three major Korean carriers. There is no word on international availability so far.source: ZDNet (translated) |
Simpson only took charge of the under-20s in February
Paul Simpson praised his England team after they won the Under-20 World Cup, but said it was "too early" to call them the next golden generation.
England beat Venezuela 1-0 in Sunday's final, to win the country's biggest international title since 1966.
It was England's first appearance in the final of a global tournament since their World Cup victory 51 years ago.
"We don't need anymore songs talking about 50 years of hurt," said Simpson, referencing the song Three Lions.
The song, with its signature lyric "30 years of hurt", was first released for England's Euro 96 campaign and fans have changed the lyrics for each subsequent major tournament.
Everton forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin's first-half goal was enough for victory in South Korea, with Newcastle goalkeeper Freddie Woodman making a second-half penalty save to preserve the lead.
Asked if the players were the next golden generation, Simpson told BBC Sport: "It is too early for that, we could sit and make all sorts of bold statements.
"Let's enjoy what we have done, it is a wonderful achievement from them. We are the world champions at under-20 level which isn't easy.
"Let's see what comes next and hope they continue to develop. We hope we can lead them and guide them through these next stages to get the football they need and they can go on to be successful."
He added: "This will be an incredible experience for them to take forward whatever they go on to do. They will remember this for the rest of their lives and get confidence from this and hopefully the whole of the country can enjoy their achievements."
Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, is the president of the Football Association
Sir Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick as England beat Germany in 1966 to win the World Cup
Former Manchester City and Derby winger Simpson paid tribute to Aidy Boothroyd, who had managed the side before his promotion to the under-21s in February.
"There have been years of preparation and planning and I can't believe I have been given the task to be head coach of this group to take through to the World Cup," added Simpson, 50, who also managed Preston, Stockport County, Shrewsbury Town and Northwich Victoria.
"To finish with a gold medal round my neck is a wonderful feeling."
Reaction from Gareth Southgate - 'Starting to see real progress'
England manager Gareth Southgate
We are starting to see some real progress in how we work as national junior team. Ultimately the aim is those players come through to the seniors.
A big part of that now is for them to get opportunities with their clubs. If at under-20s we are world champions, there are enough players there to fulfil careers in the game without clubs looking elsewhere.
The team will come back full of confidence, the clubs will get players that been through a brilliant experience, proved themselves at a very high level in their age group.
There is always the next challenge, and they will come back into pre-season at an age where they have to try and force their way into the first team at their club. |
Clare Daly tells Dáil a District Court judge is ‘causing huge problems with regard to the administration of justice’ pic.twitter.com/2GvochzqdM — RTÉ News (@rtenews) October 26, 2016
Last night.
During a debate on the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2016, Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly recalled her day in Naas District Court yesterday.
Her appearance in court followed a bench warrant being issued by Judge Desmond Zaidan for her arrest on October 13 after she left the court – before her case was called.
Grab a tay.
Clare Daly: “I am absolutely delighted that the Bill has been tabled. People often correctly give out about politicians but at least we have to go before them once in a blue moon and there is some element of accountability and right to recall whereas the Judiciary is completely and utterly a law unto itself. It is great that so many judges perform so well but we are stuck with those who do not. While I am glad Fianna Fáil introduced the Bill, the measures will only go some way to improving the quality of the judges we end up with.”
“The idea that somebody could be in such a position of power because of political connections rather than merit and so on is absolutely reprehensible and I welcome the measures in this regard. However, we need to put the spotlight on this issue. Substantial reform in this area is critical. The lack of training and regulation of judges is a huge problem. When they behave irrationally, nothing can be done. The idea of justice not only being done but being seen to be done cannot happen in our State while the Judiciary is organised in the manner it is currently.”
“I would like tell to story and I assure the Chair that the story, even though it involves a court case, will not go into details of the case in front of the judge but it is a graphic example of what I am talking about. It is incredibly fresh in my mind because it happened today and it involved me and a judge in Naas District Court. The history of this case is that I was summonsed to appear before Naas District Court on a driving offence. I allegedly drove at a speed of 59 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. Three weeks ago, I was called in respect of the case. The case was not listed for a hearing on that date; it was to be the first mention in court.”
“When I arrived in court, the case was No. 188 on the list and the judge is well known in the area, for whatever reason, for not starting judicial proceedings on time. Even though the court is scheduled to begin at 10.30am, he regularly appears much later than that. There is also a tradition of cases being religiously taken in order. In every court sitting I have ever attended as an observer, defendant or plaintiff, the judge normally goes through the list, dispenses with the cases in which a court date is being sought and keeps back the cases that are due for hearing in order to efficiently administer justice and ensure the management of the time of all the people who end up in the court on the day, including those who take time off work to attend because they have been summonsed as witnesses or defendants, solicitors, gardaí, prison officers and so on.”
“My case was listed as No. 188 out of 188. The judge proceeded with the cases for the morning. I watched what was happening in them and then I instructed a solicitor on this minor driving matter and left the court at lunchtime. Later that day, I attended an Oireachtas committee meeting and I was not to know that the judge having reached case No. 175—–
Acting Chairman (Deputy Catherine Connolly): Is the Deputy relating this to the Bill?
Daly: I am. It relates to the fact that judges are not subject to any accountability whatsoever and to the huge costs the State can incur because of their irrational behaviour. When the judge was finishing up for the day, he had reached case No. 175 but decided to jump to the end of the list and call case No. 188. He called the solicitor before the court and asked him where was his client, even though I had instructed the solicitor, and what reason I had for not being there.
“The reason was I had been there in the morning and had watched how this judge had dealt with cases. I witnessed cases being called for which people did not turn up on similar charges or did not have a solicitor. No bench warrants or any other proceedings were dealt with. A judgment was simply given in those cases.”
“Judges are an incredibly powerful position. I respect our court system and I respect the fact that judges have discretion but that discretion has to be exercised proportionately and rationally and when it is not, there has be some body in place to call them to account. The judge could accuse me, without any recourse on my part, of disrespecting the court.”
“By doing that and issuing a bench warrant in those circumstances when I clearly was not a risk of absconding – the case not even listed for a hearing and he dealt with other cases earlier without issuing a bench warrant against those who were not there or who did not have a solicitor – the consequence of his action was that An Garda Síochána, which was an innocent victim, was subject to massive negative publicity that it had orchestrated this.”
“A sergeant had to leave his post in Newbridge, drive in a squad car to Swords and spend the day there vacating the order at enormous expense to the State. I had to return to Naas District Court today to listen to the same judge lecturing me about disrespecting his court without giving me an opportunity to say anything about his irrational decision.”
“Our laws provide that nobody can do anything about that judge but he is causing huge problems with regard to the administration of justice given the inefficiency of the court sittings in his district. This needs to be radically reformed. I am glad that Fianna Fáil opted to introduce the Bill today because it is long overdue. This is only one aspect of judicial oversight and we need to go further.”
“I acknowledge a judicial council is included in the Government’s programme but some outrageous decisions and behaviour are taking place in our courts. In fairness, the presidents of the District Court, Circuit Court and so on can do nothing about it. That cannot be allowed to continue.
“Judges have been appointed to areas or even communities in which they worked as a solicitor and this has led to conflicts of interest. They presided over cases involving people they formerly represented and proceeded to hear the cases, which is completely wrong.
“The option of challenging judges through a judicial review is not sufficient because one is putting oneself in a position of massive expense and accusing a judge of bias, which people do not want to do.”
“Other members have made points about some inconsistent decisions which have been made with far more awful consequences than mine. I wanted to use my case as an example of the utterly ludicrous behaviour of some of the people we have entrusted to manage our courts but no one can do anything about it.”
“The saddest point about the case I referred to is that the judge in question is the sitting judge in Naas District Court. This means he can stay there for as long as he likes. From looking at him today, he has a few years left in him. The court could have him for about 12 more years.”
“The expense to the State of having 100 gardaí, solicitors and people tied up every day while he operates his court place, like I described, is utterly ludicrous and in radical need of change. I support this bill as a first step in that process.”
Transcript: Oireachtas.ie
Video: RTE |
Gay marriage takes centre stage at the Constitutional Convention this weekend, where it will be decided whether to recommend that it be put to a referendum. Christian Daly tells us why he thinks it is time Ireland legislates for same-sex marriage. He writes:
A COUPLE OF days before her birth it was all panic stations. Will she take to me? What if I don’t look after her correctly? Am I suited for this? But then I’ll never forget a certain moment on the day of her birth when she woke and began to cry. I picked her up and held her in my arms and she suddenly stopped and fell back to sleep. It was from that moment the realisation hit me and all those fearful thoughts left my mind. I became sedated with a warm feeling and the notion that everything is going to be okay.
Being a father
I’ve been a father for nearly nine years now. All the ‘firsts’ are my fondest memories – the nappies, the late night feeds, teething, the first steps, potty training, tying her shoe laces, her first day of school, her first stage performance in the Olympia with the National Performing Arts School, the list is endless and still ongoing.
Her fondest memories are of all the foreign holidays we have taken together, but there is not a night going to sleep where she doesn’t want her back scratched or a story told. The way I approach fathering is by constant commitment, love and devotion. The combination of all of these approaches have nurtured my little baby into a healthy, smart and caring young girl.
Did I mention I am gay and have a fiancée? We have been in a committed relationship for the past five years.
Being engaged
He loves her like she is his, and she him, like he is hers. So where is the threat? There are thousands of children all over the world without a home or parent and I am sure not one of them would reject the opportunity of being the subject of a good, solid life in the surroundings of people who love them. It shouldn’t matter whether the parent is male or female. I believe that it is down to what a parent tells a child, and the approach they take on matters, for example, such as a different race, or a different accent being spoken in her school.
These are questions she has asked the obvious “why” to, and my response has always been simple and truthful: “Everyone is equal, people may look or sound different than others, but if you care about somebody you wont even let the thought enter your mind.” She completely agrees with me and understands it.
Being adopted
Being unable to conceive a child is not a ground for annulment. I will add here that I am adopted, and my adoption has not had the slightest effect on my life – all I know is I was raised in a loving and caring family my entire life, which has been my guidance on giving such love and devotion to my daughter. To have a child is not a sole requirement of marriage and the Catholic Church agrees with this.
Times change and we must adapt with them. The time for marriage equality is now upon us. When the question “why are you getting married?” is put to any couple, gay or straight, the same answer is given: “because we love each other.” My fiancé and I do, and we are fortunate enough to have a child in our relationship that can benefit from the limitless amount of love and affection that she so requires, and isn’t that what a marriage and parenting is based on – love and affection?
Christian Daly is currently completing his BA Honours Degree in Film and Television at the National Film School (IADT). The Constitutional Convention is debating marriage equality this weekend. For more information on marriage equality can be found here. |
Do academic journals favor authors who share their institutional affiliation? To answer this question we examine citation counts, as a proxy for paper quality, for articles published in four leading international relations journals during the years 2000–2015. We compare citation counts for articles written by “in-group members” (authors affiliated with the journal’s publishing institution) versus “out-group members” (authors not affiliated with that institution). Articles written by in-group authors received 18% to 49% fewer Web of Science citations when published in their home journal (International Security or World Politics) vs. an unaffiliated journal, compared to out-group authors. These results are mainly driven by authors who received their PhDs from Harvard or MIT. The findings show evidence of a bias within some journals towards publishing papers by faculty from their home institution, at the expense of paper quality. |
BREAKING: DreamWorks’ Ghost In The Shell has been taken off the Disney release schedule and will now be released by Paramount Pictures, who is also co-financing the film which is based on the best-selling Japanese sci-fi franchise. The film, which stars the Lucy team of Scarlett Johansson and Pilou Asbæk, will keep its March 31, 2017 release date. The film moves from Disney after Steven Spielberg left the Disney fold and went to Universal. Rupert Sanders (Snow White And The Huntsman) is directing the story about female special ops cyborg (Johansson) who leads a fictional counter-cyberterrorist organization called Public Security Section 9 for Hanka Robotics. The unit is devoted to stopping the most dangerous criminals and extremists, led by The Laughing Man who will stop at nothing to destroy Hanka’s advancements in cyber technology. |
Some of the brands that have pulled their ads. The scandal caused Google’s stock to be downgraded yesterday
Global brands including Volkswagen, Toyota and Tesco last night joined the more than 250 companies that have suspended advertising deals with Google as the internet giant apologised for failing to crack down on extremism.
ITV, Aviva and Heinz also pulled advertising from YouTube, Google’s video platform, after an investigation by The Times found the companies promoted on videos posted by hate preachers, rape apologists and homophobic extremists banned from entering Britain.
A growing number of brands have blocked Google or YouTube advertising since the revelations last week. They include Marks & Spencer, Lloyds Bank, O2, L’Oréal, RBS, the BBC, Channel 4 and McDonald’s, as well as the British government. Google does not disclose YouTube revenues, but the accounts are thought to be worth more than… |
Morrowind was the first true 3D Elder Scrolls game. As far as I know, one of Morrowind's expansions introduced the ability to play as a werewolf. Oblivion introduced fully voiced NPCs, companions, horses, Radiant AI, and physics based combat. Fallout 3 brought the Bethesda RPG to a more modern setting, and introduced guns, and the V.A.T.S. Skyrim introduced dual-wielding, dragons, and shouts. Skyrim's DLC introduced the ability to become a Vampire Lord, and the ability to customize your own house. Fallout 4 brought a fully voiced player character, dialogue cameras, a companion relationship system, Radiant Quests (I know, I know... another settlement), and a complex system of player-built structures and settlements. Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4 also introduced fully integrated mod support.
Each of these incremental improvements and additions gets refined, and built on in the games that follow to the point that many of them get taken for granted. However, I'd like to discuss one feature in particular, and how I hope to see it implemented in The Elder Scrolls VI. And that is the player-created housing that was introduced in Skyrim's Hearthfire DLC, and greatly improved on with settlements in Fallout 4.
In Hearthfire, the player was given the option to pick a predetermined location from a few options where they could build their own house. The player then interacted with a crafting table to actually build and furnish their house. Players sifted through menus of things they could build, starting with a foundation, then walls, etc. However, when you crafted one of these things, they were placed in a predetermined location, and you only got a chance to see what it looked like after you had built it. Once you got the structure built, you could furnish the inside. This, unfortunately, was still done using the crafting table menu. You had to select the name of the room you wanted an object in, and then select from a list of somewhat vague terms for objects, and hope you picked the right one. I accidentally placed a fire pit right in the middle of the foyer, because the options didn't make sense to me. I couldn't really figure out how to move it, either. It was an interesting concept, but it felt a bit too complicated for me to really bother with it much. It was easier to just use one of the dozen houses I already owned.
Fallout 4 took this rough concept, and really ran with it. While you were still confined to a predetermined location, you could build wherever you wanted within that area. On top of that, you weren't confined to a predetermined structure. By giving you access to modular pieces, Fallout 4 let you build as little or as much as you wanted (within a limit to prevent the game from crashing). Want to build 4 small houses? That's cool. Want to build one huge hotel? Go for it! And instead of building through a system of menus, you could hand place everything to get it just right. And if you decided you didn't like where it was, you were free to pick it up and move it, or destroy it and start from scratch. Fallout 4 also gave you a wealth of options for structures and furniture, so you could really customize your creations. |
Author: “No Bugs” Hare Follow: Job Title: Sarcastic Architect Hobbies: Thinking Aloud, Arguing with Managers, Annoying HRs,
Calling a Spade a Spade, Keeping Tongue in Cheek
[rabbit_ddmog vol=”2″ chap=”Chapter 6(d) from “beta” Volume II”]
After we’ve spent quite a lot of time discussing boring things such as deterministic logic and finite automata, we can go ahead and finally draw the architecture diagram for our MMO game client. Yahoo!
However, as the very last delay before that glorious and long-promised diagram, we need to define one term that we’ll use in this section. Let’s define “tight loop” as an “infinite loop which goes over and over without delays, and is regardless of any input”.1 In other words, tight loop is bound to eat CPU cycles (and lots of them) regardless of doing any useful work.
And now we’re really ready for the diagram 🙂 .
Queues-and-FSMs (QnFSM) Architecture: Generic Diagram
Fig. V.2 shows a diagram which describes a “generic” client-side architecture. It is admittedly more complicated than many of you will want or need to use; on the other hand, it represents quite a generic case, and many simplifications can be obtained right out of it by simple joining some of its elements.
Let’s name this architecture a “Queues-and-FSMs Architecture” for obvious reasons, or “QnFSM” in short. Of course, QnFSM is (by far) not the only possible architecture, and even not the most popular one, but its variations have been seen to produce games with extremely good reliability, extremely good decoupling between parts, and very good maintainability. On the minus side, I can list only a bit of development overhead due to message-based exchange mechanism, but from my experience it is more than covered with better separation between different parts and very-well defined interfaces, which leads to the development speed-ups even in the medium-run (and is even more important in the long-run to avoid spaghetti code). Throw in the ability of “replay debug” and “replay-based post-mortem” in production, and it becomes a solution for lots of real-world pre-deployment and post-deployment problems.
In short – I’m an extremely strong advocate of this architecture (and its variations described below), and don’t know of any practical cases when it is not the best thing you can do. While it might look over-engineered at the first glance, it pays off in the medium- and long-run 2
I hope that the diagram on Fig V.2 should be more or less self-explanatory, but I will elaborate on a few points which might not be too obvious:
each of FSMs is a strictly-deterministic FSM as described in “Event-Driven Programming and Finite State Machines” section above while being strictly-deterministic is not a strict requirement, implementing your FSMs this way will make your debugging and post-mortem much much much easier.
all the exchange between different FSMs is message-based. Here “message” is a close cousin of a network packet; in other words – it is just a bunch of bytes formatted according to some convention between sending thread and receiving thread. “ There can be different ways how to pass these messages around; examples include explicit message posting, or implementing non-blocking RPC calls instead for the messages between Game Logic Thread and Animation&Rendering Thread, format should be along the lines of “Logic-to-Graphics API”, described in “Logic-to-Graphics Layer” section above. In short: it should be all about logical changes in the game world, along the lines of “NPC ID=ZZZ is currently moving along the path defined by the set of points {(X0,Y0),(X1,Y1),…} with speed V” (with coordinates being game world coordinates, not screen coordinates), or “Player at seat #N is in the process of showing his cards to the opponents”. 3
each thread has an associated Queue, which is able to accept messages, and provides a way to wait on it as long as is the Queue is empty
the architecture is “Share-Nothing”. It means that there is no data shared between threads, and the only way to exchange data between threads, is via Queues and messages-passed-via-the-Queues “share-nothing” means no thread synchronization problems (there is no need for mutexes, critical sections, etc. etc. outside of your queues). This is a Really Good Thing™, as trying to handle thread synchronization with any frequently changeable logic (such as the one within at least some of the FSMs) inevitably leads to lots and lots of problems (see, for example, [NoBugs2015]) of course, implementation of the Queues still needs to use inter-thread synchronization, but this is one-time effort and it has been done many times before, so it is not likely to cause too much trouble; see Chapter [[TODO]] for further details on Queues in C++ as a nice side effect, it means that whenever you want it, you can deploy your threads into different processes without changing any code within your FSMs (merely by switching to an inter-process implementation of the Queue). In particular, it can make answering very annoying questions such as “who’s guilty for the memory corruption” much more easily
Queues of Game Logic Thread and Communications Thread, are rather unusual. They’re waiting not only for usual inter-thread messages, but also for some other stuff (namely input messages for Game Logic Thread, and network packets for the Communications Thread). “ In most cases, at least one of these two particular queues will be supported by your platform For those platforms which don’t support such queues – you can always use your-usual-inter-thread-queue (once again, the specifics will be discussed in Chapter [[TODO]]), and have an additional thread which will get user input data (or call select()), and then feed the data into your-usual-inter-thread-queue as a yet another message. This will create a strict functional equivalent (a.k.a. “compliant implementation”) of two specific Queues mentioned above
all the threads on the diagram (with one possible exception being Animation&Rendering Thread, see below) are not tight-looped, and unless there is something in their respective Queue – they just wait on the Queue until some kind of message comes in (or select() event happens) while “no-tight-loops” is not a strict requirement for the client-side, wasting CPU cycles in tight loops without Really Good Reason is rarely a good idea, and might hurt quite a few of your players (those with weaker rigs). Animation&Rendering Thread is a potentially special case, and MAY use tight loop, see “Game Loop” subsection below for details to handle delays in other-than-Animation&Rendering Thread, Queues should allow FSMs to post some kind of “timer message” to the own thread even without tight loops it is possible to write your FSM in an “almost-tight-loop” manner that is closely resembling real-world real-time control systems (and classical Game Loop too), but without CPU overhead. See more on it in [[TODO!! – add subsection on it to “FSM” section]] section above.
tight-looped, and unless there is something in their respective Queue – they just wait on the Queue until some kind of message comes in (or select() event happens)
Migration from Classical 3D Single-Player Game
If you’re coming from single-player development, you may find this whole diagram confusing; this maybe especially true for inter-relation between Game Logic FSM and Animation&Rendering FSM. The idea here is to have 95% of your existing “3D engine as you know it”, with all the 3D stuff, as a part of “Animation&Rendering FSM”. You will just need to cut off game decision logic (which will go to the server-side, and maybe partially duplicated to Game Logic FSM too for client-side prediction purposes), and UI logic (which will go into Game Logic FSM). All the mesh-related stuff should stay within Animation&Rendering FSM (even Game Logic FSM should know absolutely nothing about meshes and triangles).
“If your existing 3D engine is too complicated to fit into single-threaded FSM, it is ok to keep it multi-threaded as long as it looks 'just as an FSM' from the outsideIf your existing 3D engine is too complicated to fit into single-threaded FSM, it is ok to keep it multi-threaded as long as it looks “just as an FSM” from the outside (i.e. all the communications with Animation&Rendering FSM go via messages or non-blocking RPC calls, expressed in terms of Logic-to-Graphics Layer). For details on using FSMs for multi-threaded 3D engines, see “On Additional Threads and Task-Based Multithreading” section below. Note that depending on specifics of your existing 3D rendering engine, you MAY need to resort to Option C; while Option C won’t provide you with FSM goodies for your rendering engine (sorry, my supply of magic powder is quite limited), you will still be able to enjoy all the benefits (such as replay debugging and production post-mortem) for the other parts of your client.
It is worth noting that Game Logic FSM, despite its name, can often be more or less rudimentary, and (unless client-side prediction is used) mostly performs two functions: (a) parsing network messages and translating them into the commands of Logic-to-Graphics Layer, (b) UI handing. However, if client-side prediction is used, Game Logic FSM can become much more elaborated.
Interaction Examples in 3D World: Single-Player vs MMO
Let’s consider three typical interaction examples after migration from single-player game to an MMO diagram shown above.
MMOFPS interaction example (shooting). Let’s consider an MMOFPS example when Player A presses a button to shoot with a laser gun, and game logic needs to perform a raycast to see where it hits and what else happens. In single-player, all this usually happens within a 3D engine. For an MMO, it is more complicated:
Step 1. button press goes to our authoritative server as a message
Step 2. authoritative server receives message, performs a raycast, and calculates where the shot hits.
Step 3. our authoritative server expresses “where it hits” in terms such as “Player B got hit right between his eyes” 4 and sends it as a message to the client (actually, to all the clients).
and sends it as a message to the client (actually, to all the clients). Step 4. this message is received by Game Logic FSM, and translated into the commands of Logic-to-Graphics Layer (still without meshes and triangles, for example, “show laser ray from my gun to the point right-between-the-eyes-of-Player B”, and “show laser hit right between the eyes of Player B”), which commands are sent (as messages) to Animation&Rendering FSM.
Step 5. Animation&Rendering FSM can finally render the whole thing.5
While the process is rather complicated, most of the steps are inherently inevitable for an MMO; the only thing which you could theoretically save compared to the procedure described above, is merging step 4 and step 5 together (by merging Game Logic FSM and Animation&Rendering together), but I advise against it as such merging would introduce too much coupling which will hit you in the long run. Doing such different things as parsing network messages and rendering within one tightly coupled module is rarely a good idea, and it becomes even worse if there is a chance that you will ever want to use some other Animation&Rendering FSM (for example, a newer one, or the one optimized for a different platform).
Ragdoll physics In computer physics engines, ragdoll physics is a type of procedural animation that is often used as a replacement for traditional static death animations in video games and animated films.— Wikipedia —MMORPG interaction example (ragdoll). In a typical MMORPG example, when an NPC is hit for 93th time and dies as a result, ragdoll physics is activated. In a typical single-player game, once again, the whole thing is usually performed within 3D engine. And once again, for a MMO the whole thing will be more complicated:
Step 1. button press (the one which will cause NPC death) goes to authoritative server
Step 2. server checks attack radius, calculates chances to hit, finds that the hit is successful, decreases health, and find that NPC is dead
Step 3. server performs ragdoll simulation in the server-side 3D world. However, it doesn’t need to (neither it really can) send it to clients as a complete triangle-based animation. Instead, the server can usually send to the client only a movement of “center of gravity” of NPC in question (calculated as a result of 3D simulation). This movement of “center of gravity” is sent to the client (either as a single message with the whole animation or as a series of messages with “current position” each) as an interesting side-effect: as the whole thing is quite simple, there may be no real need to calculate the whole limb movement, and it may suffice to calculate just a simple parabolic movement of the “center of gravity”, which MAY save you quite a bit of resources (both CPU and memory-wise) on the server side (!)
Step 4. Game Logic FSM receives the message with “center of gravity” movement and translates it into Logic-to-Graphics commands. This doesn’t necessarily need to be trivial; in particular, it may happen that Game Logic stores larger part of the game world than Animation&Rendering FSM. In this latter case, Game Logic FSM may want to check if this specific ragdoll animation is within the scope of the current 3D world of Animation&Rendering FSM.
Step 5. Animation&Rendering FSM performs some ragdoll simulation (it can be pretty much the same simulation which has already been made on the server side, or something completely different). If ragdoll simulation is the same, then the process of ragdoll simulation on the client-side will be quite close to the one on the server-side; however, if there are any discrepancies due to not-so-perfect determinism – client-side simulation will correct coordinates so that “center of gravity” is adjusted to the position sent by server. In case of non-deterministic behaviour between client and server, the movement of the limbs on the client and the server may be different, but for a typical RPG it doesn’t matter (what is really important is where the NPC eventually lands – here or over the edge of the cliff, but this is guaranteed to be the same for all the clients as “center of gravity” comes from the server side).
UI interaction example. In a typical MMORPG game, a very common task is to show object properties when the object is currently under cursor. For the diagram above, it should be performed as follows:
Step 1. Game Logic FSM sends a request to the Animation&Rendering FSM: “what is the object ID at screen coordinates (X,Y)?” (where (X,Y) are cursor coordinates)
Step 2. Animation&Rendering FSM processes this (trivial) request and returns object ID back
Step 3. Game Logic FSM finds object properties by ID, translates them into text, and instructs Animation&Rendering FSM to display object properties in HUD
While this may seem as an overkill, the overhead (both in terms of developer’s time and run time) is negligible, and good old rule of “the more cleanly separated parts you have – the easy is further development is” will more than compensate for the complexities of such separation.
FSMs and their respective States
The diagram on Fig. V.2 shows four different FSMs; while they all derive from our FiniteStateMachineBase described above, each of them is different, has a different function, and stores a different state. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Game Logic FSM
Game Logic FSM is the one which makes most of decisions about your game world. More strictly, these are not exactly decisions about the game world in general (this one is maintained by our authoritative server), but about client-side copy of the game world. In some cases it can be almost-trivial, in some cases (especially when client-side prediction is involved) it can be very elaborated.
“Game Logic FSM is likely to keep a copy of the game world from the game server, as a part of it's state.In any case, Game Logic FSM is likely to keep a copy of the game world (or of relevant portion of the game world) from the game server, as a part of it’s state. This copy has normally nothing to do with meshes, and describes things in terms such as “there is a PC standing at position (X,Y) in the game world coordinates, facing NNW”, or “There are cards AS and JH on the table”.
Game Logic FSM & Graphics
Probably the most closely related to Game Logic FSM is Animation&Rendering one. Most of the interaction between the two goes in the direction from Game Logic to Animation&Rendering, using Logic-to-Graphics Layer commands as messages. Game Logic FSM should instruct Animation&Rendering FSM to construct a portion of its own game copy as a 3D scene, and to update it as its own copy of the game world changes.
In addition, Game Logic FSM is going to handle (but not render) UI, such as HUDs, and various UI dialogs (including the dialogs leading to purchases, social stuff, etc.); this UI handling should be implemented in a very cross-platform manner, via sending messages to Animation&Rendering Engine. These messages, as usual, should be expressed in very graphics-agnostic terms, such as “show health at 87%”, or “show the dialog described by such-and-such resource”.
To handle UI, Game Logic FSM MAY send a message to Animation&Rendering FSM, requesting information such as “what object (or dialog element) is at such-and-such screen position” (once again, the whole translation between screen coordinates into world objects is made on the Animation&Rendering side, keeping Game Logic FSM free of such information); on receiving reply, Game Logic FSM may decide to update HUD, or to do whatever-else-is-necessary.
Other messages coming from Animation&Rendering FSM to Game Logic FSM, such as “notify me when the bullet hits the NPC”, MAY be necessary for the client-side prediction purposes (see Chapter [[TODO]] for further discussion). On the other hand, it is very important to understand that these messages are non-authoritative by design, and that their results can be easily overridden by the server.
“Having these two FSMs separate will ensure much cleaner separation, facilitating much-better-structured code in the medium- to long-run.As you can see, there can be quite a few interactions between Game Logic FSM and Animation&Rendering FSM. Still, while it may be tempting to combine Game Logic FSM with Animation&Rendering FSM, I would advise against it at least for the games with many platforms to be supported, and for the games with Undefined Life Span; having these two FSMs separate (as shown on Fig V.2) will ensure much cleaner separation, facilitating much-better-structured code in the medium- to long-run. On the other hand, having these two FSM running within the same thread is a very different story, is generally ok and can be done even on a per-platform basis; see “Variations” section below.
Game Logic FSM: Miscellaneous
There are two other things which need to be mentioned with regards to Game Logic FSM:
You MUST keep your Game Logic FSM truly platform-independent. While all the other FSMs MAY be platform-specific (and separation between FSMs along the lines described above, facilitates platform-specific development when/if it becomes necessary), you should make all the possible effort to keep your Game Logic the same across all your platforms. The reason for it has already been mentioned before, and it is all about Game Logic being the most volatile of all your client-side code; it changes so often that you won’t be able to keep several code bases reasonably in sync.
While all the other FSMs MAY be platform-specific (and separation between FSMs along the lines described above, facilitates platform-specific development when/if it becomes necessary), you should make all the possible effort to keep your Game Logic the same across all your platforms. The reason for it has already been mentioned before, and it is all about Game Logic being the most volatile of all your client-side code; it changes so often that you won’t be able to keep several code bases reasonably in sync. If by any chance your Game Logic is that CPU-consuming that one single core won’t cope with it – in most cases it can be addressed without giving up the goodies of FSM-based system, see “Additional Threads and Task-Based Multi-Threading” section below.
Animation&Rendering FSM
Animation&Rendering FSM is more or less similar to the rendering part of your usual single-player game engine. If your game is a 3D one, then in the diagram above,
it is Animations&Rendering FSM which keeps and cares about all the meshes, textures, and animations; as a Big Fat Rule of Thumb, nobody else in the system (including Game Logic FSM) should know about them.
At the heart of the Animation&Rendering FSM there is a more or less traditional Game Loop.
Game Loop
Most of single-player games are based on a so-called Game Loop. Classical game loop looks more or less as follows (see, for example, [GameProgrammingPatterns.GameLoop]):
while(true) { process_input(); update(); render(); }
Usually, Game Loop doesn’t wait for input, but rather polls input and goes ahead regardless of the input being present. This is pretty close to what is often done in real-time control systems.
For our diagram on Fig V.2 above, within our Animation&Rendering Thread we can easily have something very similar to a traditional Game Loop (with a substantial part of it going within our Animation&Rendering FSM). Our Animation&Rendering Thread can be built as follows:
Animation&Rendering Thread (outside of Animation&Rendering FSM) checks if there is anything in its Queue; unlike other Threads, it MAY proceed even if there is nothing in the Queue
it passes whatever-it-received-from-the-Queue (or some kind of NULL if there was nothing) to Animation&Rendering FSM, alongside with any time-related information
within the Animation&Rendering FSM’s process_event(), we can still have process_input(), update() and render(), however: there is no loop within Animation&Rendering FSM; instead, as discussed above, the Game Loop is a part of larger Animation&Rendering Thread “all the decision-making is moved at least to the Game Logic FSM, with most of the decisions actually being made by our authoritative serverprocess_input(), instead of processing user input, processes instructions coming from Game Logic FSM update() updates only 3D scene to be rendered, and not the game logic’s representation of the game world; all the decision-making is moved at least to the Game Logic FSM, with most of the decisions actually being made by our authoritative server render() works exactly as it worked for a single-player game
after Animation&Rendering FSM processes input (or lack thereof) and returns, Animation&Rendering Thread may conclude Game Loop as it sees fit (in particular, it can be done in any classical Game Loop manner mentioned below)
then, Animation&Rendering Thread goes back to the very beginning (back to checking if there is anything in its Queue), which completes the infinite Game Loop.
All the usual variations of Game Loop can be used within the Animation&Rendering Thread – including such things as fixed-time-step with delay at the end if there is time left until the next frame, variable-time-step tight loop (in this case a parameter such as elapsed_time needs to be fed to the Animation&Rendering FSM to keep it deterministic), and fixed-update-time-step-but-variable-render-time-step tight loop. Any further improvements (such as using VSYNC) can be added on top. I don’t want to elaborate further here, and refer for further discussion of game loops and time steps to two excellent sources: [GafferOnGames.FixYourTimestep] and [GameProgrammingPatterns.GameLoop].
One variation of the Game Loop that is not discussed there, is a simple event-driven thing which you would use for your usual Windows programming (and without any tight loops); in this case animation under Windows can be done via WM_TIMER,6 and 2D drawing – via something like BitBlt(). While usually woefully inadequate for any serious frames-per-second-oriented games, it has been seen to work very well for social- and casino-like ones.
“The best thing about our architecture is that the architecture as such doesn't really depend on time step choices; you can even make different time step choices for different platforms and still keep the rest of your code intactHowever, the best thing about our architecture is that the architecture as such doesn’t really depend on time step choices; you can even make different time step choices for different platforms and still keep the rest of your code (beyond Animation&Rendering Thread) intact, though Animation&Rendering FSM may need to be somewhat different depending on the fixed-step vs variable-step choice.7
Animation&Rendering FSM: Running from Game Logic Thread
For some games and/or platforms it might be beneficial to run Animation&Rendering FSM within the same thread as Game Logic FSM. In particular, if your game is a social game running on Windows, there may be no real need to use two separate CPU cores for Game Logic and Animation&Rendering, and the whole thing will be quite ok running within one single thread. In this case, you’ll have one thread, one Queue, but two FSMs, with thread code outside of the FSMs deciding which of the FSMs incoming message belongs to.
However, even in this case I still urge you to keep it as two separate FSMs with a very clean message-based interface between them. First, nobody knows which platform you will need to port your game next year, and second, clean well-separated interfaces at the right places tend to save lots of trouble in the long run.
Communications FSM
Another FSM, which is all-important for your MMOG, is Communications FSM. The idea here is to keep all the communications-related logic in one place. This may include very different things, from plain socket handling to such things as connect/reconnect logic8, connection quality monitoring, encryption logic if applicable, etc. etc. Also implementations of higher-level concepts such as generic publisher/subscriber, generic state synchronization, messages-which-can-be-overridden etc. (see Chapter [[TODO]] for further details) also belong here.
“For most of (if not 'all') the platforms, the code of Communications FSM can be kept the sameFor most of (if not “all”) the platforms, the code of Communications FSM can be kept the same, with the only things being called from within the FSM, being your own wrappers around sockets (for C/C++ – Berkeley sockets). Your own wrappers are nice-to-have just in case if some other platform will have some peculiar ideas about sockets, or to make your system use something like OpenSSL in a straightforward manner. They are also necessary to implement “call interception” on your FSM (see “Implementing Strictly-Deterministic Logic: Strictly-Deteministic Code via Intercepting Calls” section above), allowing you to “replay test” and post-mortem of your Communications FSM.
The diagram of Fig. V.2 shows an implementation of the Communications FSM that uses non-blocking socket calls. For client-side it is perfectly feasible to keep the code of Communications FSM exactly the same, but to deploy it in a different manner, simulating non-blocking sockets via two additional threads (one to handle reading and another to handle writing), with these additional threads communicating with the main Communications Thread via Queues (using Communication Thread’s existing Queue, and one new Queue per new thread).9
One more thing to keep in mind with regards to blocking/non-blocking Berkeley sockets, is that getaddrinfo() function (as well as older gethostbyname() function) used for DNS resolution, is inherently blocking, with many platforms having no non-blocking counterpart. However, for the client side in most cases it is a non-issue unless you decide to run your Communications FSM within the same thread as your Game Logic FSM. In the latter case, calling a function with a potential to block for minutes, can easily freeze not only your game (which is more or less expected in case of connectivity problems), but also game UI (which is not acceptable regardless of network connectivity). To avoid this effect, you can always introduce yet another thread (with its own Queue) with the only thing for this thread to do, being to call getaddrinfo() when requested, and to send result back as a message, when the call is finished.10
Communications FSM: Running from Game Logic Thread
For Communications FSM, running it from Game Logic Thread might be possible. One reason against doing it, would be if your communications are encrypted, and your Game Logic is computationally-intensive.
And again, as with Animation&Rendering FSM, even if you run two FSMs from one single thread, it is much better to keep them separate. One additional reason to keep things separate (with this reason being specific to Communications FSM) is that Communications FSM (or at least large parts of it) is likely to be used on the server-side too.
Sound FSM
Sound FSM handles, well, sound. In a sense, it is somewhat similar to Animation&Rendering FSM, but for sound. Its interface (and as always with QnFSM, interfaces are implemented over messages) needs to be implemented as a kind of “Logic-to-Sound Layer”. This “Logic-to-Sound Layer” message-based API should be conceptually similar to “Logic-to-Graphics Layer” with commands going from the Game Logic expressed in terms of “play this sound at such-and-such volume coming from such-and-such position within the game world”.
Sound FSM: Running from Game Logic Thread
For Sound FSM running it from the same thread as Game Logic FSM makes sense quite often. On the other hand, on some platforms sound APIs (while being non-blocking in a sense that they return before the sound ends) MAY cause substantial delays, effectively blocking while the sound function finds and parses the file header etc.; while this is still obviously shorter than waiting until the sound ends, it might be not short enough depending on your game. Therefore, keeping Sound FSM in a separate thread MAY be useful for fast-paced frame-per-second-oriented games.
“Once again – even if you decide to run two FSMs from the same thread – do yourself a favour and keep the FSMs separateAnd once again – even if you decide to run two FSMs from the same thread – do yourself a favour and keep the FSMs separate; some months down the road you’ll be very happy that you kept your interfaces clean and different modules nicely decoupled.11
Other FSMs
While not shown on the diagram on Fig V.2, there can be other FSMs within your client. For example, these FSMs may run in their own threads, but other variations are also possible.
One practical example of such a client-side FSM (which was implemented in practice) was “update FSM” which handled online download of DLC while making sure that the gameplay delays were within acceptable margins (see more on client updates in general and updates-while-playing in Chapter [[TODO]]).
In general, any kind of entity which performs mostly-independent tasks on the client-side, can be implemented as an additional FSM. While I don’t know of practical examples of extra client-side FSMs other than “update FSM” described above, it doesn’t mean that your specific game won’t allow/require any, so keep your eyes open.
On Additional Threads and Task-Based Multithreading
If your game is very CPU-intensive, and either your Game Logic Thread, or Animation&Rendering Thread become overloaded beyond capabilities of one single CPU core, you might need to introduce an additional thread or five into the picture. This is especially likely for Animation&Rendering Thread/FSM if your game uses serious 3D graphics. While complexities threading model of 3D graphics engines are well beyond the scope of this book, I will try to provide a few hints for those who’re just starting to venture there.
As usually with multi-threading, if you’re not careful, things can easily become ugly, so in this case:
IIRC abbv for If I Recall Correctly — Urban Dictionary — N ) advantage over recursive one 12 ) than to try getting more and more cores working on unnecessary stuff.
) advantage over recursive one ) than to try getting more and more cores working on unnecessary stuff. From this point on, to the best of my knowledge you have about three-and-a-half options: Option A. The first option is to split the whole thing into several FSMs running within several threads, dedicating one thread per one specific task. In 3D rendering world, this is known as “System-on-a-Thread”, and was used by Halo engine (in Halo, they copy the whole game state between threads[GDC.Destiny], which is equivalent to having a queue, so this is a very direct analogy of our QnFSM). Option B. The second option is to “off-load” some of the processing to a different thread, with this new thread being just as all the other threads on Fig V.2; in other words, it should have an input queue and a FSM within. This is known as “Task-Based Multithreading” [GDC.TaskBasedMT]. In this case, after doing its (very isolated) part of the job a.k.a. “task”, the thread may report back to the whichever-thread-has-requested-its-services. This option is really good for several reasons, from keeping all the FSM-based goodies (such as “replay testing” and post-mortem) for all parts of your client, to encouraging multi-threading model with very few context switches (known as “Coarse-grained parallelism”), and context switches are damn expensive on all general-purpose CPUs. 13 The way how “task off-loading” is done, depends on the implementation. In some implementations, we MAY use data-driven pipelines (similar to those described in [GDC.Destiny]) to enable dynamic task balancing, which allows to optimize core utilization on different platforms. Note that in pure “Option B”, we still have shared-nothing model, so each of the FSMs has it’s own exclusive state. On the other hand, for serious rendering engines, due to the sheer size of the game state, pure “shared-nothing” approach MIGHT BE not too feasible. Option B1. That’s the point where “task-off-loading-with-an-immutable-shared-state” emerges. It improves 14 over a basic Option B by allowing for a very-well-controlled use of a shared state – namely, sharing is allowed only when the shared state is guaranteed to be immutable. It means that, in a limited departure from our shared-nothing model, in addition to inter-thread queues in our QnFSM, we MAY have a shared state. However, to avoid those nasty inter-thread problems, we MUST guarantee that while there is more than one thread which can be accessing the shared state, the shared state is constant/immutable (though it may change outside of “shared” windows). At the moment, it is unclear to me whether Destiny engine (as described in [GDC.Destiny]) uses Option B1 (with an immutable game state shared between threads during “visibility” and “extract” phases) – while it looks likely, it is not 100% clear. In any case, both Option B and Option B1 can be described more or less in terms of QnFSM (and most importantly – both eliminate all the non-maintainable and inefficient tinkering with mutexes etc. within your logic). From the point of view of determinism, Option B1 is equivalent to Option B, provided that we consider that immutable-shared-state as one of our inputs (as it is immutable, it is indistinguishable from an input, though delivered in a somewhat different way); while such a game sharing would effectively preclude from applying recording/replay in production (as recording the whole game state on each frame would be too expensive), determinism can still be used for regression testing etc. Option C. To throw away “replay debug” and post-mortem benefits for this specific FSM, and to implement it using multi-thread in-whatever-way-you-like (i.e. using traditional inter-thread synchronization stuff such as mutexes, semaphores, or Dijkstra forbid – memory fences etc. etc.). “ If you need Option C for your Game Logic – think twice, and then twice more. only these cases), when you need to choose Option C. And even in these cases, you might be able to stay away from handling fine-grained thread synchronization, see Chapter [[TODO]] for some hints in this direction. Also, if you need Option C for your Game Logic – think twice, and then twice more. As Game Logic is the one which changes a damn lot, with Option C this has all the chances of becoming unmanageable (see, for example, [NoBugs2015]). It is that bad, that if you run into this situation, I would seriously think whether the Game Logic requirements are feasible to implement (and maintain) at all. On the positive side, it should be noted that even in such an unfortunate case you should be losing FSM-related benefits (such as “replay testing” and post-mortem) only for the FSM which you’re rewriting into Option C; all the other FSMs will still remain deterministic (and therefore, easily testable). In any case, your multi-threaded FSM SHOULD look as a normal FSM from the outside. In other words, multi-threaded implementation SHOULD be just this – implementation detail of this particular FSM, and SHOULD NOT affect the rest of your code. This is useful for two reasons. First, it decouples things and creates a clean well-defined interface, and second, it allows you to change implementation (or add another one, for example, for a different platform) without rewriting the whole thing.
On Latencies
One question which may arise for queue-based architectures and fast-paced games, is about latencies introduced by those additional queues (we do want to show the data to the user as fast as possible). My experience shows that15 then we’re speaking about additional latency16 of the order of single-digit microseconds. Probably it can be lowered further into sub-microsecond range by using less trivial non-blocking queues, but this I’m not 100% sure of because of relatively expensive allocations usually involved in marshalling/unmarshalling; for further details on implementing high-performance low-latency queues in C++, please refer to Chapter [[TODO]]. As this single-digit-microsecond delay is at least 3 orders of magnitude smaller than inter-frame delay of 1/60 sec or so, I am arguing that nobody will ever notice the difference, even for single-player or LAN-based games; for Internet-based MMOs where the absolutely best we can hope for is 10ms delay,17 makes it even less relevant.
In short – I don’t think this additional single-digit-microsecond delay can possibly have any effect which is visible to end-user.
Variations
The diagram on Fig V.2 shows each of the FSMs running within it’s own thread. On the other hand, as noted above, each of the FSMs can be run in the same thread as Game Logic FSM. In the extreme case it results in the system where all the FSMs are running within single thread with a corresponding diagram shown on Fig V.3:
Each and every of FSMs on Fig V.3 is exactly the same as an FSM on Fig V.2; moreover, logically, these two diagrams are exactly equivalent (and “recording” from one can be “replayed” on another one). The only difference on Fig V.3 is that we’re using the same thread (and the same Queue) to run all our FSMs. FSM Selector here is just a very dumb selector, which looks at the destination-FSM field (set by whoever-sent-the-message) and routes the message accordingly.
This kind of threading could be quite practical, for example, for a casino or a social game. However, not all the platforms allow to wait for the select() in the main graphics loop, so you may need to resort to the one on Fig V.4:
Here Sockets Thread is very simple and doesn’t contain any substantial logic; all it does is just pushing whatever-it-got-from-Queue to the socket, and pushing whatever-it-got-from-socket – to the Queue of the Main Thread; all the actual processing will be performed there, within Communications FSM.
Another alternative is shown on Fig V.5:
Both Fig V.4 and Fig V.5 will work for a social or casino-like game on Windows.18
On the other end of the spectrum, lie such heavy-weight implementations as the one shown on Fig V.6:
Here, Animation&Rendering FSM, and Communications FSM run in their own processes. This approach might be useful during testing (in general, you may even run FSMs on different developer’s computers if you prefer this kind of interactive debugging). However, for production it is better to avoid such configurations, as inter-process interfaces may help bot writers.
Overall, an exact thread (and even process) configuration you will deploy is not that important and may easily be system-dependent (or even situation-dependent, as in “for the time being, we’ve decided to separate this FSM to a separate process to debug it on respective developer’s machines”). What really matters is that
as long as you’re keeping your development model FSM-based, you can deploy it in any way you like without any changes to your FSMs.
In practice, this property has been observed to provide quite a bit of help in the long run. While this effect has significantly more benefits on the server-side (and will be discussed in Chapter [[TODO]]), it has been seen to aid client-side development too; for example, different configurations for different platforms do provide quite a bit of help. In addition, situation-dependent configurations have been observed to help a bit during testing.
On Code Bases for Different Platforms
As it was noted above, you MUST keep your Game Logic FSM the same for all the platforms (i.e. as a single code base). Otherwise, given the frequent changes to Game Logic, all-but-one of your code bases will most likely start to fall behind, to the point of being completely useless.
But what about other FSMs? Do you need to keep them as a single code base? The answer here is quite obvious:
while the architecture shown above allows you to make non-Game-Logic FSMs platform-specific, it makes perfect sense to keep them the same as long as possible
“If your game is graphics-intensive, there can be really good reasons to have your Animation&Rendering FSM different for different platformsFor example, if your game is graphics-intensive, there can be really good reasons to have your Animation&Rendering FSM different for different platforms; for example, you may want to use DirectX on some platforms, and OpenGL on some other platforms (granted, it will be quite a chunk of work to implement both of them, but at least it is possible with the architecture above, and it becomes a potentially viable business choice, especially as OpenGL version and DirectX version can be developed in parallel).
On the other hand, chances that you will need the platform-specific Communications FSM, are much lower.19 Even if you’re writing in C/C++, usable implementations of Berkeley sockets exist on most (if not on all) platforms of interest. Moreover, the behavior of sockets on different platforms is quite close from game developer’s point of view (at least with regards to those things which we are able to affect).
So, while all such choices are obviously specific to your specific game, statistically you should have much more Animation&Rendering FSMs than Communications FSMs 🙂 .
QnFSM Architecture Summary
Queues-and-FSMs Architecture shown on Fig V.2 (as well as its variations on Fig V.3-Fig V.6) is quite an interesting beast. In particular, while it does ensure a clean separation between parts (FSMs in our case), it tends to go against commonly used patterns of COM-like components or even usual libraries. The key difference here is that COM-like components are essentially based on blocking RPC, so after you called a COM-like RPC20, you’re blocked until you get a reply. With FSM-based architecture from Fig V.2-V.6, even if you’re requesting something from another FSM, you still can (and usually should) process events coming while you’re waiting for the reply. See in particular [[TODO!! add subsection on callbacks to FSM]] section above.
“Most of developers agree that FSM-based programming is beneficial in the medium- to long-run.From my experience, while developers usually see this kind of FSM-based programming as somewhat more cumbersome than usual procedure-call-based programming, most of them agree that it is beneficial in the medium- to long-run. This is also supported by experiences of people writing in Erlang, which has almost exactly the same approach to concurrency (except for certain QnFSM’s goodies, see also “Relation to Erlang” section below). As advantages of QnFSM architecture, we can list the following:
very good separation between different modules (FSMs in our case). FSMs and their message-oriented APIs tend to be isolated very nicely (sometimes even a bit too nicely, but this is just another side of the “somewhat more cumbersome” negative listed above).
“replay testing“ and post-mortem analysis. See “Strictly-Deterministic Logic: Benefits” section above.
very good performance. While usually it is not that important for client-side, it certainly doesn’t hurt either. The point here is that with such an architecture, context switches are kept to the absolute minimum, and each thread is working without any pauses (and without any overhead associated with these pauses) as long as it has something to do. On the flip side, it doesn’t provide inherent capabilities to scale (so server-side scaling needs to be introduced separately, see Chapter [[TODO]]), but at least it is substantially better than having some state under the mutex, and trying to lock this mutex from different threads to perform something useful.
We will discuss more details on this Queues-and-FSMs architecture as applicable to the server-side, in Chapter [[TODO]], where its performance benefits become significantly more important.
Relation to Actor Concurrency
Actor Concurrency Model The actor model in computer science is a mathematical model of concurrent computation that treats 'actors' as the universal primitives of concurrent computation: in response to a message that it receives, an actor can make local decisions, create more actors, send more messages, and determine how to respond to the next message received.— Wikipedia —NB: this subsection is entirely optional, feel free to skip it if theory is of no interest to you
From theoretical point of view QnFSM architecture can be seen as a system which is pretty close to so-called “Actor Concurrency Model” (that is, until Option C from “Additional Threads and Task-Based Multithreading” is used), with QnFSM’s deterministic FSMs being Actor Concurrency’s ‘Actors’. However, there is a significant difference between the two, at least perceptionally. Traditionally, Actor concurrency is considered as a way to ensure concurrent calculations; that is, the calculation which is considered is originally a “pure” calculation, with all the parameters known in advance. With games, the situation is very different because we don’t know everything in advance (by definition). This has quite a few implications.
Most importantly, system-wide determinism (lack of which is often considered a problem for Actor concurrency when we’re speaking about calculations) is not possible for games.21 In other words, games (more generally, any distributed interactive system which produces results substantially dependent on timing; dependency on timing can be either absolute, like “whether the player pressed the button before 12:00”, or relative such as “whether player A pressed the button before player B”) are inherently non-deterministic when taken as a whole. On the other hand, each of the FSMs/Actors can be made completely deterministic, and this is what I am arguing for in this book.
In other words – while QnFSM is indeed a close cousin of Actor concurrency, quite a few of the analysis made for Actor-concurrency-for-HPC type of tasks, is not exactly applicable to inherently time-dependent systems such as games, so take it with a big pinch of salt.
Relation to Erlang Concurrency and Akka Actors
Akka is... simplifying the construction of concurrent and distributed applications on the JVM. Akka... emphasizes actor-based concurrency, with inspiration drawn from Erlang.— Wikipedia —On the other hand, if looking at Erlang concurrency (more specifically, at ! and receive operators), or at Akka’s Actors, we will see that QnFSM is pretty much the same thing.22 There are no shared states, everything goes via message passing, et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.
The only significant difference is that for QnFSM I am arguing for determinism (which is not guaranteed in Erlang/Akka, at least not without “call interception”; on the other hand, you can write deterministic actors in Erlang or Akka the same way as in QnFSM, it is just an additional restriction you need to keep in mind and enforce). Other than that, and some of those practical goodies in QnFSM (such as recording/replay with all the associated benefits), QnFSM is extremely close to Erlang’s concurrency (as well as to Akka’s Actors which were inspired by Erlang) from developer’s point of view.
Erlang Erlang is a general-purpose, concurrent, garbage-collected programming language and runtime system.— Wikipedia —Which can be roughly translated into the following observation:
to have a good concurrency model, it is not strictly necessary to program in Erlang or to use Akka
Bottom Line for Chapter V
Phew, it was a long chapter. On the other hand, we’ve managed to provide a 50’000-feet (and 20’000-word) view on my favorite MMOG client-side architecture. To summarize and re-iterate my recommendations in this regard:
Think about your graphics, in particular whether you want to use pre-rendered 3D or whether you want/need dual graphics (such as 2D+3D); this is one of the most important questions for your game client; 23 moreover, client-side 3D is not always the best choice, and there are quite a few MMO games out there which have rudimentary graphics if your game is an MMOFPS or an MMORPG, most likely you do need fully-fledged client-side 3D, but even for an MMORTS the answer can be not that obvious
moreover, client-side 3D is not always the best choice, and there are quite a few MMO games out there which have rudimentary graphics “ Write your code in a deterministic event-driven manner, it helps, and helps a lot Usually, C++ is quite a good all-around candidate, but you need to have pretty good developers to work with it
Write your code in a deterministic event-driven manner (as described in “Strictly-Deterministic Logic” and “Event-Driven Programming and Finite State Machines” sections), it helps, and helps a lot This is not the only viable architecture, so you may be able to get away without it, but at the very least you should consider it and understand why you prefer an alternative one The code written this way magically becomes a deterministic FSM, which has lots of useful implications Keep all your FSMs perfectly self-contained, in a “Share-Nothing” model. It will help in quite a few places down the road. Feel free to run multiple FSMs in a single thread if you think that your game and/or current platform is a good fit, but keep those FSMs separate; it can really save your bacon a few months later. Keep one single code base for Game Logic FSM. For other FSMs, you may make different implementations for different platforms, but do it only if it becomes really necessary.
[[To Be Continued…
This concludes beta Chapter 6(d) from the upcoming book “Development and Deployment of Massively Multiplayer Games (from social games to MMOFPS, with social games in between)”. Stay tuned for beta Chapter 9(a), “Server-Side. Naive and Classical Deployment Architectures.]]
Acknowledgement
Cartoons by Sergey Gordeev from Gordeev Animation Graphics, Prague. |
Image copyright Reuters Image caption German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seen here arriving at the EU council headquarters on Friday
The Brussels summit has ended without agreement on the 27-strong union's next seven-year budget.
A BBC correspondent says another meeting will have to be called to sort out the difficulties but it is unclear how differences will be resolved.
European Council chief Herman Van Rompuy said he was confident a deal would be reached early next year.
Hours of talks failed to bridge big gaps between richer countries and those which rely most on EU funding.
The UK said current EU spending levels must be frozen.
Angela Merkel and I both agreed that it would be better to take some time out Francois Hollande, French president
The EU's divisions are very clear and have become even more stark at a time of economic crisis, says the BBC's Chris Morris in Brussels.
Mr Van Rompuy had reshuffled the allocations in his original proposed budget during the summit, but he kept in place a spending ceiling of 973bn euros (£783bn; $1.2tn).
With the eurozone's dominant states, Germany and France, unable to agree on the budget, UK Prime Minister David Cameron had warned against "unaffordable spending".
The failure to decide on a budget came just days after the finance ministers of the 17 eurozone states failed to agree on conditions for releasing a new tranche of bailout money to Greece, raising questions about the union's decision-making process.
'No threats'
Mr Van Rompuy's budget had been unacceptable to a number of other countries, not just Britain, Mr Cameron told reporters.
Analysis The summit laid bare clear divisions between richer northern countries in the EU, and the poorer south and east. It mirrored the divide that has emerged in the eurozone between northern creditors and southern debtors. But the uneasy relationship between France and Germany also played a role - when they don't agree, things tend to move slowly. Germany wanted further cuts in the budget proposal - not as many as Britain and others - but cuts all the same. France on the other hand, supported by Italy and Spain, was keen to defend the EU's biggest spending projects. So striking a deal at a second summit in the New Year won't be at all easy. But there are two reasons to think that it might succeed. One is that failure to reach an agreement would mean the EU falling back on more expensive annual budgets. The other is that many people are keen to avoid a prolonged budget stalemate, which could divert attention from other more important issues - notably the need to take more steps to resolve the crisis in the eurozone.
"Together, we had a very clear message: 'We are not going to be tough on budgets at home just to come here and sign up to big increases in European spending'," he said.
"We haven't got the deal we wanted but we've stopped what would have been an unacceptable deal," he added. "And in European terms I think that goes down as progress."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was sympathetic towards Mr Cameron's view - but no more than she was to all countries involved in the discussion.
"The discussions, both the bilateral discussions and the common discussion, have shown us that there is sufficient potential for an agreement," she added.
French President Francois Hollande said the summit had made "progress".
"There were no threats, no ultimatums," he told reporters. "Angela Merkel and I both agreed that it would be better to take some time out because we want there to be an agreement."
Without naming the UK, he also said it was time the system of budget rebates was reconsidered.
"It is a paradox, because some net contributors [EU countries that pay in more than they get back] get some of the money back even though they are in a situation where they are wealthy enough for them not to get this money back," he said.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite remarked that the atmosphere at the summit had been "surprisingly good because the divergence in opinions was so large that there was nothing to argue about".
European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said the talks had failed owing to "important differences of opinion - especially in overall size of the budget".
Revisions
The Commission, which drafts EU laws, had originally called for a budget of 1.025tn euros.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption UK Prime Minister David Cameron: "We still believe a deal is do-able"
Its position was supported by the European Parliament and many countries which are net beneficiaries, including Poland, Hungary and Spain.
While most EU members supported some increase in the budget, several, mostly the big net contributors, argued it was unacceptable at a time of austerity.
Germany, the UK, France and Italy are the biggest net contributors to the budget, which amounts to about 1% of the EU's overall GDP.
Mr Van Rompuy's revised budget would have softened the blow to the two main areas of spending: development in the EU's poorer regions, and agriculture.
Instead, there would have been greater cuts to energy, transport, broadband and the EU's foreign service.
His proposal, put to leaders on Thursday evening, would have made no change to the level of administrative costs - something the UK might have found unacceptable.
Speaking after the summit, Mr Van Rompuy said: "My feeling is that we can go further... It has to be balanced and well prepared, not in the mood of improvisation, because we are touching upon jobs, we are touching upon sensitive issues."
Failure to agree on the budget by the end of next year would mean rolling over the 2013 budget into 2014 on a month-by-month basis, putting some long-term projects at risk.
Analysts say that could leave the UK in a worse position, because the 2013 budget is bigger than the preceding years of the 2007-2013 multi-year budget. |
UPDATE: ICE Issues Statement on Report About ‘Massive’ Plan to Round Up Illegal Aliens
ICE is denying an exclusive report by NBC News, which stated the department was planning “Operation Mega,” a nationwide effort to round up 8,400 illegal aliens.
ICE statement regarding reported enforcement planning: "No coordinated nationwide operation planned at this time." pic.twitter.com/gQPzU9fty3 — Joshua Dov Caplan (@joshdcaplan) September 8, 2017
“While we generally do not comment on future potential law enforcement actions, operational plans are subject to change based on a variety of factors. Due to the current weather situation in Florida and other potentially impacted areas, along with the ongoing recovery in Texas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had already reviewed all upcoming operations and has adjusted accordingly. There is currently no coordination nationwide operation planned at the time. The priority in the affected areas should remain focused on life-saving and life-sustaining activities.For the safety and security of our communities, ICE fugitive operations teams will continue to target and arrest criminal aliens an other individuals who are in violation of our national’s immigration laws, in non-affected areas of the country, as part of routine operations.”
Original report below.
Donald Trump made a promise to his supporters on the day he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. The time to enforce immigrations laws is long over due and he vowed to not only uphold them, but bolster them. In an exclusive report, NBC News reveals the Department of Homeland Security is planning a massive round up of illegal aliens.
“The largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE.”
The largest in U.S. history!
NBC News reports:
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is planning nationwide raids to target 8,400 undocumented immigrants later this month, according to three law enforcement officials and an internal document that described the plan as “the largest operation of its kind in the history of ICE,” an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The raids, scheduled over five days beginning Sept. 17, are being called “Operation Mega,” according to the document, a memo circulated agency-wide in August. It is not unusual for ICE operations to target immigrants by the hundreds or even low thousands. The higher-than-usual target number may be partially driven by an effort to reach a deportation goal at the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, one of the officials said. Operation Mega is still in the planning stage and its details may change or it may even be cancelled, the officials said, especially as the agency reallocates resources toward rescue operations in Florida ahead of the looming Hurricane Irma. If carried out, it would come on the heels of Trump’s controversial decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, that allows some immigrants who were brought into the United States as children to stay. |
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly visited San Diego on Friday and used part of his time here to accompany immigration agents on predawn arrests and inspected one of the numerous tunnels Mexican smugglers have constructed under the U.S. border fence. He also met with federal border security agencies and local law enforcement officials.
Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who once led the U.S. Southern Command, now leads the department that houses the key border security agencies — Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In remarks to local officials and news reporters, Kelly addressed the Trump administration’s travel ban, the effectiveness of border barriers and stepped-up ICE immigration arrests this week.
In a meeting in a conference room at the San Ysidro Port of Entry with state, local and federal law enforcement officials, he said he had met with similar groups this week in Texas and Arizona and was “trying to get my hands around and better understand the border communities.”
Kelly said he also received feedback from officials on the administration’s proposed border wall. He talked tough on the issue of sanctuary cities and the refusal by many local law enforcement agencies not to cooperate with federal immigration work.
San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman asked for a definition of a sanctuary city, according to a pool report of the meeting. “I have no clue,” Kelly responded.
Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune With cars entering the United States from Mexico as his backdrop, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly spoke about immigration issues at a news conference Friday at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. With cars entering the United States from Mexico as his backdrop, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly spoke about immigration issues at a news conference Friday at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. (Hayne Palmour IV / San Diego Union-Tribune)
Zimmerman’s boss, Mayor Kevin Faulconer, has insisted San Diego is not a sanctuary city and does work with immigration authorities. But it’s not clear if the level of cooperation provided will satisfy President Donald Trump. No city in San Diego County calls itself a sanctuary city.
“It’s inconceivable to me that people who are sworn to protect their communities would not want someone, anyone to remove criminals from their communities and send them somewhere else,” Kelly said. ”I’m stunned when people say, well, we’re not going to cooperate with you even in the event of convicted criminals.
“I understand that every community is different. You are all under different pressures. It would be hard for me to justify giving grant money to cooperate with removal operations and you were not able to help us with that.”
Kelly said, however, that the federal government will “work with you and will make no Draconian moves until I fully understand what a given locale might be doing or not doing.”
Historically, local police don’t assist in federal immigration arrests, contending unauthorized immigrants would be less likely to cooperate with police crime-fighting efforts if they were afraid of being turned over to immigration.
At his news conference, Kelly also addressed the executive order Trump issued that banned entry into the country of people from seven predominantly Muslim nations and refugees for a limited time. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a restraining order issued by a lower court judge in Washington state that halted enforcement of the ban.
Kelly said the order was a “pause” on people from those countries entering the U.S. because information from those nations on individuals entering the country were either unreliable or nonexistent. “The vetting process from citizens of those countries are, at best, loose,” he said.
He acknowledged he was worried about the stay preventing enforcement of the order. “I am concerned that we are unable to vet those folks who are coming here in a more meaningful way,” Kelly said.
Also, on Friday, Mexican authorities reported the discovery of another tunnel, though it did not reach the U.S. Asked about that discovery in light of the goal of the Trump administration to build a wall along the entire Southwest border, Kelly said it was a sign of how effective the barrier that has been built so far is.
“I would argue the fact they (drug cartels) are spending huge amounts of money to tunnel underneath the wall tells you they can’t get through it,” he said. “That tells me the barrier, and the people who patrol it, are very effective today.”
His visit came on a day swirling with rumors and reports of increased immigration enforcement sweeps in Southern California and other areas of the country.
In San Diego, there were reports of sweeps in Vista that ICE denied. In a statement, the agency said that “rumors currently being circulated, primarily on social media, claiming the agency is conducting widespread traffic stops throughout northern San Diego County are completely baseless.”
In addressing the reports, Kelly said, “The people who ICE apprehended are people who are here illegally — and then some.”
He said he got an up-close look at ICE enforcement Friday before 6 a.m.
“I went out this morning on two what they call knock and talks,” he said. That is when officers go to homes of suspects, knock on their doors and ask for consent to enter.
“Went to one house, knocked on the door, and took a particularly bad individual, a male into custody,” Kelly said. A visit to a second home yielded two more arrests, he said.
“ICE is executing the law,” he said.
Twitter: @gregmoran
[email protected] |
Download raw source
MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.25.84.202 with HTTP; Tue, 26 Jan 2016 07:53:27 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 10:53:27 -0500 Delivered-To: [email protected] Message-ID: <CAE6FiQ9jBJqMOH2NZOixxiTp_CDtyWmuob0Dz_uvP98g3RnvkQ@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Fwd: By the way- From: John Podesta <[email protected]> To: Adrienne Elrod <[email protected]> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a114123cab89115052a3eaf44 --001a114123cab89115052a3eaf44 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Blink 182 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Thomas DELONGE* <[email protected]> Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 Subject: By the way- To: John Podesta <[email protected]> I am embarrassed I wrote that last email, ha. Sorry. When you mentioned being turned on by Leslie Kean's book, I wondered if that was really was what started your interest and your only knowledge of the matter- I figured I could fill in some blanks. -But I am an idiot, I forgot for a brief moment who the hell you are. I apologize for my ridiculous moment of grandeur. Lord- I am honored to be able to work on this with important Men like yourself. Get some sleep out there on that campaign trail, by the way- If I can help I am happy to do it. Hillary's office called me twice in the past to help her run for the Senate. I met her while I was campaigning for John Kerry. Always loved her. Always wanted a female leader. Best, Tom DeLonge *TOM DELONGE | FOUNDER* [email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');> | (760) 518-7801 | *TO THE STARS MEDIA <http://www.tothestarsinc.com/>* SAN DIEGO | 1053 S Coast Hwy 101 Encinitas, CA 92024 On Jan 25, 2016, at 10:37 AM, Thomas DELONGE <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: If you want me to give you a summarization of what went on, and what is continuing to go on, let me know. Over a brief phone call I can give you a history, and some of the more amazing aspects of this topic and the US amazing efforts with it. Best, Tom DeLonge *TOM DELONGE | FOUNDER* [email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');> | (760) 518-7801 | *TO THE STARS MEDIA <http://www.tothestarsinc.com/>* SAN DIEGO | 1053 S Coast Hwy 101 Encinitas, CA 92024 --001a114123cab89115052a3eaf44 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Blink 182<br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b>Thomas= DELONGE</b> <<a href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>&g= t;<br>Date: Tuesday, January 26, 2016<br>Subject: By the way-<br>To: John P= odesta <<a href=3D"mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]= </a>><br><br><br><div dir=3D"auto"><div>I am embarrassed I wrote that la= st email, ha. Sorry.=C2=A0</div><div><br></div><div>When you mentioned bein= g turned on by Leslie Kean's book, I wondered if that was really was wh= at started your interest and your only knowledge of the matter- =C2=A0I fig= ured I could fill in some blanks.=C2=A0</div><div><br></div><div>-But I am = an idiot, I forgot for a brief moment who the hell you are. I apologize for= my ridiculous moment of grandeur. Lord-</div><div><br></div><div>I am hono= red to be able to work on this with important Men like yourself.=C2=A0</div= ><div><br></div><div>Get some sleep out there on that campaign trail, by th= e way- If I can help I am happy to do it. Hillary's office called me tw= ice in the past to help her run for the Senate. I met her while I was campa= igning for John Kerry. Always loved her. Always wanted a female leader.=C2= =A0</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>Best,<div>Tom DeLonge</div= ><div><br></div><div><div style=3D"font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family= :UICTFontTextStyleBody;color:rgb(136,136,136)"><b style=3D"color:rgb(68,68,= 68);font-size:x-small"><font face=3D"tahoma, sans-serif">TOM DELONGE | FOUN= DER</font></b><br></div><div style=3D"font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-fam= ily:UICTFontTextStyleBody;color:rgb(136,136,136)"><span style=3D"font-size:= x-small;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font color=3D"#999999"><a href=3D"j= avascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');" targe= t=3D"_blank">[email protected]</a>=C2=A0|=C2=A0<a value=3D"+18668806203= " style=3D"color:rgb(34,34,34)"></a><a href=3D"tel:(760)%20518-7801" target= =3D"_blank">(760) 518-7801</a>=C2=A0|=C2=A0</font></span><span style=3D"fon= t-size:x-small;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><font color=3D"#000000" face=3D"tahoma,= sans-serif"><u><a href=3D"http://www.tothestarsinc.com/" target=3D"_blank"= >TO THE STARS MEDIA</a></u></font></span></div><div style=3D"font-size:12.8= 000001907349px;font-family:UICTFontTextStyleBody"><div><img src=3D"https://= ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif"><font style=3D"font-s= ize:12.8000001907349px;color:rgb(136,136,136)"><span style=3D"font-size:x-s= mall;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">SAN DIEGO |=C2=A0</span></font><font si= ze=3D"1" face=3D"tahoma, sans-serif" color=3D"#999999"><a style=3D"color:rg= b(153,153,153)">1053 S Coast Hwy 101 Encinitas, CA 92024</a></font></div></= div><div style=3D"font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:UICTFontTextStyl= eBody"><span><div style=3D"color:rgb(136,136,136);font-size:12.800000190734= 9px"><br></div></span></div></div></div></div><div><br>On Jan 25, 2016, at = 10:37 AM, Thomas DELONGE <<a href=3D"javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml'= ,'[email protected]');" target=3D"_blank">[email protected]</a>> w= rote:<br><br></div><blockquote type=3D"cite"><div><div>If you want me to gi= ve you a summarization of what went on, and what is continuing to go on, le= t me know. Over a brief phone call I can give you a history, and some of th= e =C2=A0more amazing aspects of this topic and the US amazing efforts with = it.<br><br>Best,<div>Tom DeLonge</div><div><br></div><div><div style=3D"fon= t-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:UICTFontTextStyleBody;color:rgb(136,1= 36,136)"><b style=3D"color:rgb(68,68,68);font-size:x-small"><font face=3D"t= ahoma, sans-serif">TOM DELONGE | FOUNDER</font></b><br></div><div style=3D"= font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:UICTFontTextStyleBody;color:rgb(13= 6,136,136)"><span style=3D"font-size:x-small;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"= ><font color=3D"#999999"><a href=3D"javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml',= 9;[email protected]');" target=3D"_blank">[email protected]</a>= =C2=A0|=C2=A0<a value=3D"+18668806203" style=3D"color:rgb(34,34,34)"></a><a= href=3D"tel:(760)%20518-7801" target=3D"_blank">(760) 518-7801</a>=C2=A0|= =C2=A0</font></span><span style=3D"font-size:x-small;color:rgb(34,34,34)"><= font color=3D"#000000" face=3D"tahoma, sans-serif"><u><a href=3D"http://www= .tothestarsinc.com/" target=3D"_blank">TO THE STARS MEDIA</a></u></font></s= pan></div><div style=3D"font-size:12.8000001907349px;font-family:UICTFontTe= xtStyleBody"><div><img src=3D"https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/imag= es/cleardot.gif"><font style=3D"font-size:12.8000001907349px;color:rgb(136,= 136,136)"><span style=3D"font-size:x-small;font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">S= AN DIEGO |=C2=A0</span></font><font size=3D"1" face=3D"tahoma, sans-serif" = color=3D"#999999"><a style=3D"color:rgb(153,153,153)">1053 S Coast Hwy 101 = Encinitas, CA 92024</a></font></div></div><div style=3D"font-size:12.800000= 1907349px;font-family:UICTFontTextStyleBody"><span><div style=3D"color:rgb(= 136,136,136);font-size:12.8000001907349px"><br></div></span></div></div></d= iv></div></blockquote></div><br> --001a114123cab89115052a3eaf44-- |
Google's open-source program manager has launched an entertaining rant against firms offering mobile security software, accusing them of selling worthless software and of being "charlatans and scammers".
Chris DiBona, Google's open-source programs manager, argues that neither smartphones based on Google's Android nor Apple's iOS need anti-virus protection. Anyone telling you different is a snake-oil salesman, he said.
"Virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you BS protection software for Android, RIM, and, iOS," DiBona said on Google+. "They are charlatans and scammers. If you work for a company selling virus protection for Android, RIM or iOS, you should be ashamed of yourself."
He argues that smartphones are inherently more secure than PCs, while admitting mobile malware is not mythical but rather that it has rarely if ever caused much of a problem.
"No major cell phone has a 'virus' problem in the traditional sense that Windows and some Mac machines have seen," he said. "There have been some little things, but they haven't gotten very far due to the user sandboxing models and the nature of the underlying kernels."
"No Linux desktop has a real virus problem," he added.
It seems a report from Juniper Networks last week noting "exponential growth" in Android malware, blamed on the looser controls in the Android Market than those applied by Apple, provoked the Google guru's splenetic outburst. DiBona doesn't call out any of the mobile security charlatans he castigates so strongly by name but there's no shortage of candidates.
Many anti-virus firms have branched out into offering security software for Android, including commercial products from Kaspersky Lab, F-Secure and Symantec. Lookout Mobile and AVG's DroidSecurity offer basic protection software at no charge to consumers. Some security firms, Lookout and Intego, offer more basic security packages for iOS but without bundled anti-virus protection, which is not supported by iOS. Windows Mobile anti-malware is covered by the likes of F-Secure and others. Hardened Blackberry devices exist but we've never come across a firm offering BlackBerry security software as a stand-alone product as yet. Viruses targeting BlackBerry remain unknown.
Security firms said DiBona has misunderstood both the threat and the capabilities of their products. Kaspersky Lab said that cybercrooks are migrating towards Android as the platform increases in popularity. the main problem is Trojans, malicious applications that pose as something useful to a smartphone user, rather than virus. Kaspersky reckons one Trojan - DroidDream - has already infected infected 100,000 users.
Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer, tweeted, "What @cdibona [Chris DiBona] is missing is that these tools do much more than just antivirus: Antitheft. Remote lock. Backup. Parental control. Web filter."
Talk of exponential malware growth is justified but needs to be put into context, that the huge rise is coming from a base of almost nothing and that the raw figures remain trivial compared to the Windows virus plague. Specialist mobile security firm Lookout, for example, estimates mobile malware instances have more than doubled to nearly 1,000 over the last four months alone. Windows malware estimates routinely exceed 5 million and above. ® |
Two weeks ago, while under a peace bond that banned her from possessing insulin and visiting nursing homes, Elizabeth Wettlaufer sent an ominous series of texts to a longtime acquaintance.
Wettlaufer, who had told the acquaintance she was in a mental care facility, texted she might be going to jail because she killed eight people and she had told police.
“She said, ‘I am responsible for the deaths of eight people,’ ” said the acquaintance, a Woodstock woman who spoke on the condition she not be named. “I didn’t believe her for a minute.”
She knew Wettlaufer, 49, had experienced tough times and had suffered addiction and mental illness . . . but murder?
About a week and a half later, Wettlaufer texted again to say she was being “escorted back to Woodstock” by police, the acquaintance said.
The Woodstock woman assumed Wettlaufer made up the story. She even told a mutual acquaintance, expressing disbelief. It couldn’t be true, she thought. If someone confessed to eight killings, she certainly wouldn’t have access to her cellphone.
A day after news broke this week that police had charged Wettlaufer with eight counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of nursing home residents in Woodstock and London, the Woodstock woman said she’s still rattled.
“When my friend sent me a link to the news (about the charges) I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” she said.
“Why didn’t I say something? I keep thinking I should have gone to police . . . but I really didn’t believe her,” she said. “The whole thing has me so sick.”
“It really rattles me, when I start to think about it,” she said.
She said she had known Wettlaufer, who doted on her dog and her parents, for years.
By Wednesday, as questions continued to swirl around the investigation — with families of the dead asking what led police to conclude their relatives had been killed, some more than eight years ago — reports surfaced that police had been tipped off by staff of a mental health centre in Toronto.
Officials from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) alerted Toronto police that Wettlaufer had shared information with hospital staff that caused them “concern,” a police source familiar with the investigation said Wednesday.
The source said once Toronto police received the information from the hospital, officers interviewed Wettlaufer and found out that the alleged crimes had occurred outside Toronto police’s jurisdiction.
That’s when Toronto police passed the information to the Ontario Provincial Police and police forces in Woodstock and London, said the source, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The investigation into the alleged murders was launched on Sept. 29. Wettlaufer was arrested on Monday and appeared in an Woodstock courthouse on Tuesday where she was remanded into custody.
The nursing home residents have been identified as James Silcox, 84, Maurice Granat, 84, Gladys Millard, 87, Helen Matheson, 95, Mary Zurawinski, 96, Helen Young, 90, Maureen Pickering, 79, Arpad Horvath, 75.
Lawyers for Wettlaufer could not immediately be reached for comment.
CAMH declined to comment, saying they do not disclose information about their clients due to patient confidentiality.
However, a peace bond Wettlaufer entered into earlier in the month required her to “continue any treatment for mental health” with any physician to whom she was referred by her family doctor or “representatives of CAMH.”
Wettlaufer was also not allowed to possess or consume alcohol and had to obey a curfew and reside in either her apartment or with her parents in Woodstock between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., except to attend alcoholics anonymous meetings, according to terms laid out in the peace bond.
Wettlaufer’s friend, Nancy Gilbert, told The Canadian Press that Wettlaufer had told her she recently completed her second stint in rehab in Toronto and seemed to be in good spirits.
A Facebook page for a Bethe Wettlaufer, whose photo, education and employment records match that of Elizabeth Wettlaufer, makes reference to what appears to be a struggle with substance abuse.
“My own voice called to me in the darkness. Others hands lifted me when I chose the light. One year ago today I woke up not dead. 365 days clean and sober,” says a post from September 2015.
While health-care professionals are generally bound by patient confidentiality requirements, they are obliged in some cases to contact police or other authorities without a patient’s consent, such as in cases where they believe a death is suspicious or other important interests are at stake.
Ontario law, for example, mandates that doctors must contact authorities if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a resident of a nursing or retirement home has suffered harm or is at risk of harm due to “improper or incompetent treatment or care, unlawful conduct, abuse or neglect.”
“Physicians have a legal and professional obligation to maintain the confidentiality of patient information,” Ontario’s doctor licensing body says. “There are circumstances, however, where physicians are either required or permitted to report particular events or clinical conditions to the appropriate government or regulatory agency.”
Wettlaufer is scheduled to appear in court by video on Nov. 2. None of the charges have been proven in court.
with files from Canadian Press |
Late last night my boyfriend got called into work which left me to my own devices, which is not always a good thing but last night it was!
I decided to make a treat so that hopefully we would get to relax together for at least part of the weekend. As my cheesecake was such a hit at our dinner party last weekend I wanted to make it again but as our friends are away in the UK this weekend it did not seem worth making a large cheesecake for the 2 of us. So this weekend I have been inventive and have made White Chocolate Cheesecake Cups, mini cheesecakes for us to enjoy. They are a great idea if you do not have the right equipment to make the Triple Chocolate Cheesecake that I shared with you before or if you are looking for small individual treats to enjoy.
This is how I made them;
Ingredients
100g of Chocolate Digestives
20g of Butter
200g of Cream Cheese
1 heaped tbsp of Icing Sugar
200g of White Chocolate
Method
Ground the chocolate digestives until fine Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly Mix the butter and ground biscuits into a bowl and squeeze together with the back of a wooden spoon Tip into 4 individual cups or dishes Push down gently in a flat even surface, do not compact it too tightly as it will be hard to eat Mix the cream cheese and icing sugar together gently (this does not take long) Melt 100g of the white chocolate in a glass bowl Add the cream cheese dollop by dollop into the chocolate, continually stirring until you get an evenly coloured mixture Poor on top of the biscuit base then smooth and flatten Chill for 1 hour When it has cooled melt 75g of the white chocolate in a glass bowl Pour on top of the cheesecake and move the tin around to spread the topping evenly Chill until the chocolate topping is set Before serving grate the remaining 25g of white chocolate and sprinkle evenly over the top
As you can see they look really great and they taste delicious too, once you have this cheesecake recipe you can adapt it and enjoy how you like. I think this may be the last time I will be making them for a while after calculating the calorie content as the ‘diet starts on Monday’.
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Dollar or Less Days Return Dec. 7 & 8, 2013
Participating Downtown museums and attractions offer admission for just $1 or less.
Baltimore Museum of Industry
1415 Key Highway
Saturday & Sunday - $1
Saturday, December 7, 10am to 2pm- shop local craft vendors for the perfect holiday gifts. www.thebmi.org
Christmas Village in Baltimore
Inner Harbor/West Shore Park
Saturday & Sunday, $1
11am-8pm both days
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Geppi’s Entertainment Museum
301 W Camden Street
Saturday & Sunday - $1
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Historic Ships in Baltimore
Pier 1 – 301 E. Pratt Street
Saturday $ Sunday, $1
USS Constellation, USS Torsk, USCGC Tancy, Lightship Chesapeake - $1 per ship. www.historicships.org
The Jewish Museum of Maryland
15 Light Street
Sunday Only, $1
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Lexington Market
400 W. Lexington Street
Saturday & Sunday, Free
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Maryland Science Center
601 Light Street
Saturday & Sunday - $1
Does not include IMAX theater or Mummies of the World Exhibit. www.mdsci.org
National Aquarium Baltimore
501 E. Pratt Street
Saturday & Sunday - $1
Dollar Days tickets must be purchased on-site at the window on the day of the special offer. Because of extremely high demand, tickets are not sold in advance or online. Arrive early to purchase your ticket before they sell out. Timed entry will be in effect for these days. Dollar Days cannot be combined with any other offer. The National Aquarium will be open for normal business hours. www.aqua.org
Port Discovery
35 Market Place
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12-5pm. Expect long lines and dress appropriately as the line extends outside. www.portdiscovery.org
Reginald F. Lewis Museum
830 East Pratt Street
RFLewisMuseum.org
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Saturday: enjoy ornament making and youth filmmakers. Sunday: Filmmaker Byron Hurt examines soul food. www.RFLewisMuseum.org
Sports Legends Museum
301 W Camden Street
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Top of The World Observation Level
World Trade Center, 27th Floor
401 E. Pratt Street
Saturday, 10am-2pm - $1
Sunday, 11am-3pm - $1
Cash only. Under 3 is free.
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All presidential candidates face a core problem. To win their party’s nomination in an age of growing polarization they have to adopt base-pleasing, pseudo-extreme policy positions. But to win a general election and actually govern they have to adopt semi-centrist majority positions.
How can one person do both?
Nobody had figured this out until, brilliantly, Hillary Clinton. She is campaigning on a series of positions that she transparently does not believe in. She’ll say what she needs to say now to become Bernie Sanders in a pantsuit (wait, Bernie Sanders already wears a pantsuit!). Then, nomination in hand and White House won, she will, it appears, transparently flip back and embrace whatever other positions she doesn’t believe in that will help her succeed in her new role.
In other words, one of the causes of polarized gridlock and political dysfunction is that we have too many politicians with ideological convictions. Clinton seems to be eliding this problem.
Her most impressive elision concerns trade, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. When she announced her opposition to Judy Woodruff on the “PBS NewsHour” she was performing a flip-flop of the sort that leaves gymnasts gaping and applauding. As CNN pointed out, she’s praised the deal 45 separate times, at one point calling it “the gold standard in trade agreements.” |
CLOSE Angel Frescas died hours after being shot in the head by a Maricopa County detention officer during a struggle, officials say.
A Maricopa County Sheriff's detention officer was involved in a shooting outside of Maricopa Medical Center on Oct. 28, 2014.Inmate Angel Frescas, 22, died hours after being shot in the head by a Maricopa County detention officer, according to the Sheriff's Office. It was the second time in three weeks that an inmate fled sheriff's custody outside of Maricopa Medical Center. In the the first instance, the inmate was caught in west Phoenix after stealing a vehicle, officials said. (Photo: Photo by: Katie Bieri/ The Republic) Story Highlights Sheriff's deputies are investigating a shooting Tuesday morning involving a detention officer east of downtown Phoenix.
Authorities are investigating the fatal shooting of a Maricopa County inmate who officials say escaped, albeit briefly, from sheriff's custody on the way to a medical appointment Tuesday morning.
Inmate Angel Frescas, 22, died hours after being shot in the head by a Maricopa County detention officer, according to the Sheriff's Office.
It was the second time in three weeks that an inmate fled sheriff's custody outside of Maricopa Medical Center. In the the first instance, the inmate was caught in west Phoenix after stealing a vehicle, officials said.
Maricopa County sheriff's deputies and Phoenix police detectives were investigating the shooting Tuesday.
Sheriff's deputies said detention officers were taking Frescas and two other inmates to Maricopa Medical Center near 24th and Roosevelt streets. Frescas managed to slip out of two restraints and run eastbound on Roosevelt Street, said Deputy Joaquin Enriquez, a sheriff's spokesman.
One of the detention officers secured the other two inmates, and the second detention officer hopped back in the van and took off after Frescas, Enriquez said. Another deputy was called for backup, and the hospital was placed on a brief lockdown.
The officer caught up with Frescas about 500 yards away from the hospital, exited the van and a struggle ensued over the officer's weapon, Enriquez said.
Investigators say Frescas held the gun at one point, but it was unclear whether Frescas was able to fire the weapon, Enriquez said.
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As the detention officer and Frescas struggled over the weapon in the middle of Roosevelt Street, the fight took them into the front cab of the transport van, Enriquez said.
By then, a detention officer had run to the scene from the hospital, Enriquez said, and she fired through the windshield into the van's cab, striking Frescas at least once.
Investigators believe Frescas had planned his escape in advance, Enriquez said.
Frescas had been on trial for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in September and had pleaded guilty to child-abuse charges in February 2013, according to court documents.
Mahamoud Hassan, a resident of a nearby apartment, was watching television when the shooting occurred.
He heard one shot at first and three immediately after.
"I came outside ... and everybody stopped," Hassan said.
Hassan could not tell how many people were involved.
Hundreds of inmates are transported to the Maricopa Medical Center every day, Enriquez said, adding that the Sheriff's Office will look at ways it can improve handling and transporting inmates.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1u38EQb |
Published online 5 October 2011 | Nature 478, 26-28 (2011) | doi:10.1038/478026a
News Feature
A surge in withdrawn papers is highlighting weaknesses in the system for handling them.
This week, some 27,000 freshly published research articles will pour into the Web of Science, Thomson Reuters' vast online database of scientific publications. Almost all of these papers will stay there forever, a fixed contribution to the research literature. But 200 or so will eventually be flagged with a note of alteration such as a correction. And a handful — maybe five or six — will one day receive science's ultimate post-publication punishment: retraction, the official declaration that a paper is so flawed that it must be withdrawn from the literature.
It is reassuring that retractions are so rare, for behind at least half of them lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or faked data — and the other half are admissions of embarrassing mistakes. But retraction notices are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the Web of Science is on track to index more than 400 (see 'Rise of the retractions') — even though the total number of papers published has risen by only 44% over the past decade.
Click for larger image.
Perhaps surprisingly, scientists and editors broadly welcome the trend. "I don't think there's any doubt that we're detecting more fraud, and that systems are more responsive to misconduct. It's become more acceptable for journals to step in," says Nicholas Steneck, a research ethicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But as retractions become more commonplace, stresses that have always existed in the system are starting to show more vividly.
When the UK-based Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) surveyed editors' attitudes to retraction two years ago, it found huge inconsistencies in policies and practices between journals, says Elizabeth Wager, a medical writer in Princes Risborough, UK, who is chair of COPE. That survey led to retraction guidelines that COPE published in 2009. But it's still the case, says Wager, that "editors often have to be pushed to retract".
Other frustrations include opaque retraction notices that don't explain why a paper has been withdrawn, a tendency for authors to keep citing retracted papers long after they've been red-flagged (see 'Withdrawn papers live on') and the fact that many scientists hear 'retraction' and immediately think 'misconduct' — a stigma that may keep researchers from coming forward to admit honest errors.
Perfection may be too much to expect from any system that has to deal with human error in all its messiness. As one journal editor told Wager, each retraction is "painfully unique".
But as more retractions hit the headlines, some researchers are calling for ways to improve their handling. Suggested reforms include better systems for linking papers to their retraction notices or revisions, more responsibility on the part of journal editors and, most of all, greater transparency and clarity about mistakes in research.
The reasons behind the rise in retractions are still unclear. "I don't think that there is suddenly a boom in the production of fraudulent or erroneous work," says John Ioannidis, a professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, who has spent much of his career tracking how medical science produces flawed results.
In surveys, around 1–2% of scientists admit to having fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once (D. Fanelli PLoS ONE 4, e5738; 2009). But over the past decade, retraction notices for published papers have increased from 0.001% of the total to only about 0.02%. And, Ioannidis says, that subset of papers is "the tip of the iceberg" — too small and fragmentary for any useful conclusions to be drawn about the overall rates of sloppiness or misconduct.
Instead, it is more probable that the growth in retractions has come from an increased awareness of research misconduct, says Steneck. That's thanks in part to the setting up of regulatory bodies such as the US Office of Research Integrity in the Department of Health and Human Services. These ensure greater accountability for the research institutions, which, along with researchers, are responsible for detecting mistakes.
The growth also owes a lot to the emergence of software for easily detecting plagiarism and image manipulation, combined with the greater number of readers that the Internet brings to research papers. In the future, wider use of such software could cause the rate of retraction notices to dip as fast as it spiked, simply because more of the problematic papers will be screened out before they reach publication. On the other hand, editors' newfound comfort with talking about retraction may lead to notices coming at an even greater rate.
"Norms are changing all the time," says Steven Shafer, editor-in-chief of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, who has participated in two major misconduct investigations — one of which involved 11 journals and led to the retraction of some 90 papers.
It's none of your damn business!
But willingness to talk about retractions is hardly universal. "There are a lot of publishers and a lot of journal editors who really don't want people to know about what's going on at their publications," says New York City-based writer Ivan Oransky, executive editor at Reuters Health. In August 2010, Oransky co-founded the blog Retraction Watch with Adam Marcus, managing editor at Anesthesiology News. Since its launch, Oransky says, the site has logged 1.1 million page views and has covered more than 200 retractions.
In one memorable post, the reporters describe ringing up one editor, L. Henry Edmunds at the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, to ask about a paper withdrawn from his journal (see go.nature.com/ubv261). "It's none of your damn business!" he told them. Edmunds did not respond to Nature 's request to talk for this article.
The posts on Retraction Watch show how wildly inconsistent retractions practices are from one journal to the next. Notices range from informative and transparent to deeply obscure. A typically unhelpful example of the genre would be: "This article has been withdrawn at the request of the authors in order to eliminate incorrect information." Oransky argues that such obscurity leads readers to assume misconduct, as scientists making an honest retraction would, presumably, try to explain what was at fault.
To Drummond Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, there are two obvious reasons for obscure retraction notices: "fear and work."
The fear factor, says Wager, is because publishers are very frightened of being sued. "They are incredibly twitchy about publishing anything that could be defamatory," she says.
'Work' refers to the phenomenal effort required to sort through authorship disputes, concerns about human or animal subjects, accusations of data fabrication and all the other ways a paper can go wrong. "It takes dozens or hundreds of hours of work to get to the bottom of what's going on and really understand it," says Shafer. Because most journal editors are scientists or physicians working on a voluntary basis, he says, that effort comes out of their research and clinical time.
But the effort has to be made, says Steneck. "If you don't have enough time to do a reasonable job of ensuring the integrity of your journal, do you deserve to be in business as a journal publisher?" he asks. Oransky and Marcus have taken a similar stance. This summer, for example, Retraction Watch criticized the Journal of Neuroscience for a pair of identical retraction notices it published on 8 June: "At the request of the authors, the following manuscript has been retracted."
But the journal's editor-in-chief, neuroscientist John Maunsell of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, argues that such obscurity is often the most responsible course to take. "My feeling is that there are far fewer retractions than there should be," says Maunsell, who adds that he has conducted 79 ethics investigations in more than 3 years at the journal — 1 every 2–3 weeks. But "authors are reluctant to retract papers", he says, "and anything we put up in the way of a barrier or disincentive is a bad thing. If authors are happier posting retractions without extra information, I'd rather see that retraction go through than provide any discouragement."
At the heart of these arguments, says Steneck, lie shifting norms of how responsible journal editors should be for the integrity of the research process. In the past, he says, "they felt that institutions and scientists ought to do it". More and more journal editors today are starting to embrace the gatekeeper role. But even now, Shafer points out, they have only limited authority to challenge institutions that are refusing to cooperate. "I have had institutions, where I felt there was very clear misconduct, come back and tell me there was none," Shafer says. "And I have had a US institution tell me that they would look into allegations of misconduct only if I agreed to keep the results confidential."
The blame game
Discussions on Retraction Watch make it clear that many scientists would like to separate two aspects of retraction that seem to have become tangled together: cleaning up the literature, and signalling misconduct. After all, many retractions are straightforward and honourable. In July, for example, Derek Stein, a physicist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, retracted a paper in Physical Review Letters on DNA in nanofluidic channels when he found that a key part of the analysis had been performed incorrectly. His thoroughness and speed — the retraction came just four months after publication — were singled out for praise on Retraction Watch.
But because almost all of the retractions that hit the headlines are dramatic examples of misconduct, many researchers assume that any retraction indicates that something shady has occurred. And that stigma may dissuade honest scientists from doing the right thing. One American researcher who talked to Nature about his own early-career retraction said he hoped that his decision would be seen as a badge of honour. But, even years later and with his career established, he still did not want Nature to use his name or give any details of the case.
There is no general agreement about how to reduce this stigma. Rennie suggests reserving the retraction mechanism exclusively for misconduct, but that would require the creation of a new term for withdrawals owing to honest mistakes. At the other extreme, Thomas DeCoursey, a biologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, argues for retraction of any paper that publishes results that are not reproducible. "It does not matter whether the error was due to outright fraud, honest mistakes or reasons that simply cannot be determined," he says.
A better vocabulary for talking about retractions is needed, says Steneck — one acknowledging that retractions are just as often due to mistakes as to misconduct. Also useful would be a database for classifying retractions. "The risk for the research community is that if it doesn't take these problems more seriously, then the public — journalists, outsiders — will come in and start to poke at them," he points out.
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The only near-term solution comes back to transparency. "If journals told readers why a paper was retracted, it wouldn't matter if one journal retracted papers for misconduct while another retracted for almost anything," says Zen Faulkes, a biologist at the University of Texas–Pan American in Edinburg, Texas.
Oransky agrees. "I think that what we're advocating is part of a much larger phenomenon in public life and on the Web right now," he says. "What scientists should be doing is saying, 'In the course of what we do are errors, and among us are also people that commit misconduct or fraud. Look how small that number is! And here's what we're doing to root that out.'" |
Parents of students in the Oakland Unified School District will on Wednesday evening protest what they believe is financial mismanagement on the part of district officials. Pete Suratos reports.
Parents of students in the Oakland Unified School District will on Wednesday evening protest what they believe is financial mismanagement on the part of district officials.
The group will gather in Frank Ogawa Plaza from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. to express its frustration at budget cuts that are in the pipeline.
The school district has already made cuts this year to its discretionary spending budget and frozen hiring mid-year. Officials revealed in March, however, that those steps weren’t enough to balance the budget.
The district is facing a $30 million shortfall, former Superintendent Antwan Wilson said in January.
Parents to Protest Oakland Unified School District's Proposed Budget Cuts
Parents of students in the Oakland Unified School District will on Wednesday evening protest what they believe is financial mismanagement on the part of district officials. Pete Suratos reports. (Published Wednesday, April 12, 2017)
Monalisa Trevino, the mother of a fourth-grader, says classrooms are already feeling the effects of the current cuts.
Like her, other unhappy parents plan also to speak at a school board meeting.
Check back for updates. |
Former Ukraine striker Andriy Shevchenko has joined the national team's coaching staff ahead of Euro 2016, replacing assistant coach Olexandr Zavarov.
Shevchenko is Ukraine's record scorer with 48 goals in 111 games and won the Ballon d'Or in 2004 at AC Milan. He retired after Euro 2012 which Ukraine co-hosted with Poland.
The Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU) decided not to extend assistant coach Zavarov's contract, head coach Mykhaylo Fomenko said while presenting Shevchenko to the press.
Former Ukraine striker Andriy Shevchenko has joined the national team's coaching staff
SHEVCHENKO'S PLAYING CAREER 1994–1999: Dynamo Kiev 1999–2006: Milan 2006–2009: Chelsea 2008–2009: Milan (loan) 2009–2012: Dynamo Kiev 1995-2012: Ukraine
'We made our choice in favour of Shevchenko who will be working with the Ukraine's coaching stuff,' Fomenko told reporters.
Shevchenko was approached by the FFU to take over as head coach in November 2012 but declined the offer because he did not have the required coaching qualifications.
That obstacle was removed in March 2015 when Shevchenko, who also played for Dynamo Kiev and Chelsea as well as Milan at club level, completed a two-year programme for a UEFA Pro Licence.
The 39-year-old Shevchenko said it was both an honour and responsibility for him.
'After almost four years on vacation, I am coming back to big football, as a coach,' the former Ukraine captain said. 'I worked with great coaches like Valery Lobanovskyi, Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho and got a huge experience.
'Coaching courses helped me to shape up my ideas and determine my own vision of football. Hope, this will help me in the future.' |
The technology giant that’s synonymous with photocopied documents has set its sights on highly efficient solar panels.
Researchers at PARC, an R&D-focused subsidiary of Xerox, say they’re developing a new digital printing process that could make it much cheaper to mass-produce concentrated solar photovoltaic systems. Such systems can dramatically increase the efficiency of solar cells by using lenses to concentrate and focus the sunlight onto small cells.
Increasing efficiency could be an effective way to bring down the cost of solar modules, whose price has already fallen dramatically during the past several years. Much of the cost of conventional silicon systems is now due to things like wiring, installation, and permitting. More efficient panels would mean we need fewer of them to produce the same amount of power—which in turn cuts the costs of hardware and installation. But concentrated photovoltaic technology has so far failed to gain traction because it’s still too expensive and bulky to compete with conventional silicon solar panels.
PARC hopes to make the technology more competitive by shrinking the components and designing a new flat-panel form factor, and by developing a relatively inexpensive manufacturing process. The new process will build on a larger effort by PARC researchers to invent a new kind of printer that can precisely deposit “inks” made of tiny semiconductor chips, called “chiplets,” by using assembly principles similar to those behind Xerox photocopiers.
So far, they have demonstrated only the ability to make small-scale devices by wiring together a few printed chiplets. But eventually the technique could allow people to design and print very large arrangements of small electrical and optical components similar to the way they would design and print a document using a Xerox printer, say the PARC researchers. They say this should make it possible to develop a new class of electronic devices made of printed arrangements of various kinds of chiplets.
The first real application could be new kind of solar power system. In August, the PARC group, along with collaborators at Sandia National Laboratories, won a grant from ARPA-E to apply the innovative printing process to build microscale arrays of photovoltaic cells on a flat panel, and the group has three years to do it (see “DOE Attempts to Jump-Start Concentrated Solar”).
In recent years, engineers have developed ways to shrink the components needed for concentrating and focusing sunlight down to the millimeter scale. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed microscale solar cells that can be paired with those concentrating elements in a flat-panel design. But the smaller the components, the more individual parts there are to assemble for a given area, and they must be arranged with extreme precision, says Patrick Maeda, a principal engineer at PARC.
The existing method for doing this, which relies on an automated system that picks up individual components and places them in target spots, is much too expensive to achieve ARPA-E’s ambitious cost objective, says Maeda. The PARC researchers say the new printing approach could lead to a high-speed manufacturing process that is orders of magnitude cheaper for building these microscale systems over large areas.
The big challenge now is to design and build a system with hundreds of chiplets wired together, says Eugene Chow, a PARC principal scientist. In three years the group must deliver an electrically functional array of solar cell chiplets. Such a “backplane” could then be combined with miniature optical components that can be made using methods commonly used to manufacture large-area optical films used in flat-panel displays.
The ARPA-E funding has pushed the group to “get more serious about industrial applications” for the chiplet printing process, says Chow. “But we still have a long way to go.” |
Author's notes: Sorry for the really long wait everyone :) I have edited this story, so there should be much fewer typos. I've also written the last 2 parts (chapter 4 part 4 and epilogue.) These parts have a lot of sasuga in them, but it only makes sense if you remember this story. Since it's been a long time since you've read it, I suggest skimming through it, or better yet, reading it over, before reading the new parts.
Updated on: 7/12/2018, the scenes with the biggest changes are paladins fight and Rigrit & PDL's conversation.
Check out my profile for more news about this and upcoming follow up fanfictions :)
Thank you all for reading, and for your reviews. Happy reading!
Prologue
The throne room of Nazarick was brightly lit by the magical chandeliers. Ainz Ooal Gown had gathered most of the floor guardians and Sebas for two reasons. One was to hear about and commend them on their progress. And the other…
"The. Lizardmen. Are. Very. Great. Full. For. The. Gifts. Bestowed. On. Them. By Ainz-sama," wrapped up his report Cocytus.
According to him the 3 adamantite armors crafted by the dwarfs were given to Zenberu, Zaryusu, and Shiryusu. Leaving the other lizardmen in awe of the armor's craftsmanship and of their lord Ainz Ooal Gown's generosity.
"Very good. The armor will protect Zaryusu from harm..." an image of the albino lizardmen with many albino children flashed in Ainz's mind. "Zenberu deserved a reward for being our guide to the dwarfs, and Shasryu getting the armor as the leader of the lizardmen is also good."
"You have done an excellent job Cocytus!" Ainz commended while nodding his head. "I know you have requested armor and weapons for the lizardmen in the past. Now that we have the dwarf runesmiths working for us, your lizardmen will be amongst the first to receive rune crafted equipment."
"Your. Servant. Is. Most. Great. Full."
"Now, Albedo. I understand your visit to the Capital had gone quite well as well?"
"Yes, Ainz-sama!" Replied Albedo, turning to face Ainz. "With the help of Eight Fingers, we were able to prop up a worthless human, to create a third faction in the kingdom. Princess Renner is also proving to be a useful puppet. Although, if she can open the box she was given, she might even be worth welcoming as a servant of the great tomb of Nazzarick."
I still don't know what Albedo's and Demiurge's plan for this Princess is. But is letting someone so smart near me a good idea? Suzuki Satoru thought full of worry. His skull face betrayed no emotion, of course.
"I'll leave it to you then!" Ainz said as he waved his hand gracefully. The many hours spent practicing such movements in front of the mirror had begun to pay off, as he was able to execute such a move with a regal appearance befit of a true ruler.
"I will do my best to please Ainz-sama," replied Albedo, blushing a little as she bowed.
Purging his mind of any thoughts about the reason for her blushing, he looked at Demiurge, the only one who hasn't yet given a report.
"Demiurge, can you share your progress in the Holy Kingdom with the other guardians?"
"As you command," replied Demiurge with a bow. "My preparation in the Holy kingdom is complete. We can move forward with the plan to use a doppelganger."
While Ainz was wondering why Demiurge would require a doppelganger, Shalltear spoke.
"Doppelganger? I thought the plan was to use Jaldabaoth to throw the Holy Kingdom into despair, forcing them to ask the Sorcerer Kingdom for help. Much like we did in the Kingdom's Capital."
Thankful that not all of his subordinates possessed genius level intelligence Ainz awaited Demiurge's reply.
"Kuku," Demiurge laughed. "Do you really think someone as unfathomable as Ainz-sama, the leader of all the Supreme Beings would play the same hand twice?"
"What is he talking about?!" Thought Suzuki Satoru as he felt his none existent stomach ache. "Wasn't that exactly the plan?" Thankful for his undead emotional suppression and even more for his skull face, he listened on.
"Do you really know our master so little? Ainz-sama is a truly unimaginable being, whose plans go far beyond what any of us can comprehend." Demiurge said smiling.
Shalltear had a puzzled look on her face, as did the other guardians except for Albedo, who nodded approvingly during Demiurge speech.
"But.. wasn't subjugating the Holy Kingdom.. the next step in our... conquest?" Asked Mare, in his panicky voice.
"Please. Explain. It. To. This. Ungrateful. One." Said Cocytus while looking at Ainz. Aura's eyes were on him too, eager to learn about his incomparable plan.
"Explain what?! I know just as much as you!" Suzuki wanted to scream. Naturally, he did not do that, having anticipated this turn of events. In fact, the other reason for gathering all the guardians was to avoid being alone with Demiurge and Albedo while discussing the plans for the future.
"What was it that happened the last time." Ainz thought about his last meeting with Demiurge. It was after the dwarfs allied with them. In a conversation with Demiurge, he got distracted and said something out loud at the most unfortunate time. "Ten thousand years" was it? He tried to play it off as a joke, but it was obvious Demiurge didn't take it as such.
"It seems Demiurge had seen through my plans once again," Ainz said with a chuckle.
"Not at all Ainz-sama. I could never have imagined how far your plans go. If it wasn't for the light you shone, I would still be in complete darkness as to your true plans," replied Demiurge, bowing to Ainz.
"What are you talking about?" Ainz thought. "Why does he always make things so difficult for me?" Truly Suzuki was full of regrets. In the beginning, he could have easily told Demiurge and Albedo that they need to tell him their plans in order not to interfere with his brilliant schemes. However, he didn't do that. Doing so now would make them both feel like they've failed, that he could not trust them and that they needed his supervision. It could also reflect badly on his own image as an all-knowing ruler – since the guardians were convinced that Ainz already knew their plans.
Ainz sighed, and used a new variation of his usual escape tool: "It seems that not all the guardians are as perceptive as you are. Do explain to them our plans for the Holy Kingdom," he told Demiurge.
After bowing to Ainz, Demiurge began.
"Like you, I thought Ainz-sama's goal was to conquer the world and rule it as a Supreme Being should. However, I began to doubt it after observing Ainz-sama's deeds in the Empire and the Dwarven Kingdom. World conquest seemed too simple of a goal for the leader of the Supreme Beings. And then in a recent conversation with Ainz-sama, he confirmed it. 10,000 years!" Demiurge proclaimed loudly.
"10,000 years! That's how far ahead our master had predicted the future of The Sorcerer Kingdom."
The throne room went silent before words of awe and admiration filled the air. Albedo's wings had opened and closed from excitement and her body shuddered.
"I told him it was a joke, didn't I?" Ainz thought desperately, his none existent stomach churning. "Why did he have to bring it up here? Now everyone thinks it's true too."
"It is as Demiurge says," Ainz stated betraying none of his emotions. Still, even with his undead body and face, pulling off such a thing took most of his energy. "Please proceed Demiurge."
"Yes, Ainz-sama! It finally made sense. If all Ainz-sama wanted was to conquer the world, he would need but to give a command to the legions of undead which have been created. They would overrun and conquer everything in their way. And allow us to observe anyone who could stop them, such as the party responsible for mind controlling Shalltear. We could then gather information on any such entities and eliminate them."
"However, such a plan is short-sighted. It would bring immediate results but would cause many problems in the long term. On the other hand, Ainz-sama's plan sacrifices some immediate results for the long-term advantages. His actions in the Empire and the Dwarven Kingdom had allowed me to peek at his true plans. Although I could never fully comprehend them."
"What the hell is he talking about?" Wondered Ainz. "All I did in Empire was duel the Arena Lord. And while recruiting runesmiths and reclaiming dwarven capital was a good achievement, I don't think that's what Demiurge is speaking of."
"I still don't understand," said Shalltear, looking like a student who just can't grasp the lesson.
"Me too," added Aura, "doesn't Ainz-sama want to conquer the world?"
"There is a difference between doing so, and doing so in a way that will result in Sorcerer Kingdom reigning supreme for 10,000 years." Said Albedo. All eyes were on her as she continued.
"From our research into this world's history we know that every two hundred years or so, powerful beings appear in this world. Similar to how Nazarick had been transported here. By all accounts, those beings might be on the same level as us."
There was a commotion in the throne room as gasps of surprise and exclamations of protest were heard.
"Naturally, no one can challenge the might of Nazarick!" Exclaimed Albedo, her wings opening and closing in excitement. "But if we use force to conquer this world, its inhabitants would be chomping at the bit to join forces with anyone who'll oppose us. Be it some newly transferred beings, or those already in this world."
Understanding dawned on all of the guardians.
"I see. Ainz-sama seeks to conquer the world in a way that would make The Sorcerer Kingdom not an enemy, but a hero to the people of this world. Preventing them from allying with our enemies in the future and even helping us find any of the ones already here," Sebas said.
"Indeed. If you look at AInz-sama's accomplishments it's clear that he has been pursuing this goal from the start. Carne village, lizardmen, Baharuth Empire, the Dwarven Kingdom, even his reorganization of the Adventurer's Guild. He had not simply achieved victory over them by force, but inspired the kind of admiration and worship that such a Supreme Being deserves."
"However, there are still obstacles – some fools just don't know their place," Demiurge said, a scowl on his face. "That fool, Jircniv of the Baharuth Empire. It seems he had given up on opposing us openly but is still looking for a way out"
"Which bring us to the Holy Kingdom. We will use this country to make the legend of Ainz Ooal Gown, making him a hero to the people of this world. While flushing out those who oppose us and inspiring even greater loyalty
from those loyal to The Sorcerer Kingdom."
"Demiurge has explained my goals quite well. Now that you know of my true plans, I hope you will work hard to fulfill them"
All of the guardians bowed to acknowledge their master's words.
"Still your intelligence knows no limits Ainz-sama. To think that you have already predicted this course of action back when you've created Pandora's Actor," Demiurge threw cold water on Ainz who had begun to relax.
"What?!" Suzuki thought, thankful for his skull face which could not betray any emotions. "Why is he mentioning Pandora's Actor now? I truly don't understand his plans"
"You give me too much credit Demiurge, it is just a coincidence."
"I should be safe saying this, right?" Suzuki wondered.
"Still, the whole plan would be impossible if it wasn't for Pandora's Actor's doppelganger ability. As the only one in Nazarick proficient enough to fully resemble anyone, could it truly be a coincidence since he is the one being created by Ainz-sama?" Demiurge asked with a smile.
"How should I answer him? I am not even sure what he needs Pandora's Actor for, or why he's such a key to the plan." Ainz agonized for a few seconds, before going with what he thought was his safest option.
"I had considered several possibilities at the time. Although, even I cannot see so far into the future. Now Demiurge, explain our exact plan of action for the Holy Kingdom so that everyone present here can understand it" Ainz ordered Demiurge. |
Rip currents — powerful, channeled currents of water flowing away from the shore — represent a danger to human life and property. Rip currents are responsible for more than one hundred deaths on our nation's beaches each year, according to the United States Lifesaving Association, and if rip currents persist long enough they can cause beach erosion.
Henry Bokuniewicz, Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Ph.D. candidate Michael Slattery found that rip currents at East Hampton Village Beach lasted on average a little over one minute, not long enough to substantially alter the shoreline. They will present their findings October 14th at the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association's 2009 National Coastal Conference, "Integrating Coastal Science & Policy."
With funding from the East Hampton Beach Preservation Society and the Halpern Foundation, Dr. Bokuniewicz and graduate student Michael Slattery set up a video camera to record an image of a half mile stretch of the East Hampton Village Beach every 20 seconds. In the images, rip currents can be detected as a gap in the line of incoming waves. They collected over 500 hours of video images and observed hundreds of rip currents in this short stretch of coast.
The monitoring showed that the rip currents were not associated with man-made structures and they were short lived, with the most persistent rip currents lasting no more than a few minutes. "Most rip currents we observed did not last long enough to change the character of the shoreline, although they could pose a risk to swimmers unfortunate enough to encounter them," said Dr. Bokuniewicz.
Besides gathering statistics on the occurrence of rip currents, Dr. Bokuniewicz and Michael Slattery are studying the wave patterns that lead to rip currents. Rip currents are generated by a combination of waves, including, long, low, barely perceptible waves that appear along the ocean shoreline, called "infragravity waves." Infragravity waves cannot be measured directly and computer models are inadequate for predicting them. Bokuniewicz and Slattery are using a novel approach to study these waves; they deploy seismometers to measure the noise created by breaking waves.
"It appears that very slow, long-period changes in the amount of wave noise are precursors to the generation of rip currents," said Dr. Bokuniewicz. "We are hopeful that seismometers can be used to measure wave patterns that we can't easily observe in any other way. In the future, we hope to utilize this method to monitor and ultimately forecast wave conditions that cause rip currents." |
WOW Cafe & Wingery in St. Bernard Parish, LA, has decided to take a stand against the NFL’s kneel.
Owner Brook Songy Anastasiadis posted on WOW’s Facebook page that the restaurant would not be airing Sunday’s Saints vs. Panthers game. In her post, she cited the team’s decision to kneel as the reasoning.
“I apologize to all of our guests but we will not be viewing the Saints game today in house. Some of our local players chose to sit during the National Anthem, which will not be supported or praised at WOW. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you,” Anastasiadis wrote.
CANADIAN CHICKEN CROSSES THE ROAD DAILY TO GET TO DOUGHNUT SHOP
Her decision sparked a wave of backlash and praise on social media.
One person offended by the restaurant’s choice wrote on Facebook, “You fail to understand the real issue. It's not about the military or the flags. Don't you think these very men have military members in their families that they honor and respect. Shame on you for avoiding the real issues. You will never get my business.”
While another felt the eatery should not be participating either way, “WOW and you have the right to do so but as a restaurant you shouldn't be making political statements people pay you to eat and watch sports not be subjected to your political opinions.”
Though there were many supporters.
One wrote on Facebook, “No Apologies needed I’m very disappointed in the New Orleans Saints that you would take part in sitting down for the national anthem you are totally disrespectful.”
Another said, “We chose to no longer spend our money on anything related to the NFL again, ever. However, we will be frequenting your restaurant. BRAVO.”
Following the responses the restaurant received, Anastasiadis issued a follow-up statement through WOW Cafe, defending her decisions to not display the game.
“I stand behind my decision and I want to make this clear, the sole reason that I didn’t air the game is because I feel the players disrespected the National Anthem and that is something I hold dear to my heart. That’s how I was raised, I have family members who served our great country in the military and I was taught to respect the National Anthem, the flag, the military and people in general,” she said.
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A spokesman for Anastasiadis, Ray Sutherlin, said it was not her intention to “start a firestorm, she simply did what she felt was right.”
The spokesman furthered defended the franchise owner, saying “the players exercised their right not to stand for the National Anthem and she exercised her right not to air the game because of their actions. The freedom goes both ways.”
“We won’t ever all agree on these sensitive topics and I understand that,” Anastasiadis said before concluding, “I strongly believe in the support of our country, our flag, the military, the National Anthem and I always will.”
Anastasiadis is not the only restaurant owner choosing not to show the game. Borio’s Restaurant in New York has reportedly also refused to show NFL games because of the kneeling controversy. |
The leads of The Time We Were Not In Love took a break from filming and came together for an afternoon press conference for the drama on June 23rd. The event was held at the SBS building in Seoul’s Yangcheon District.
The fashion color scheme was black and white. Ha Ji Won and Yoon Kyun Sang wore black while Lee Jin Wook and Choo Soo Hyun were in white. So, I guess it’s opposites attract, then.
Ha Ji Won was noticeably in good spirits even before she and her co-stars stepped through the doors of the venue, and it doesn’t seem like she dropped her smile at any time during the conference, so, there really was no bad shot of her. In fact, there were millions from which to choose! To me, she seemed to beam the most when interacting with her leading man, Lee Jin Wook, who hammed it up a bit for the cameras. The chemistry between these two is killing me! And the way he was looking at her is making me ship so hard that I won’t even care if this drama ends up being crap … but I’m still hoping it won’t, so, I’m thinking positive things only!
Meanwhile, more stills of Ha Ji Won’s Oh Ha Na were released earlier. Ha Ji Won is truly a chameleon. It seems her range as an actress is being pushed through the role of Oh Ha Na as she transforms herself physically and as she turns on several different expressions, including aegyo.
Sources | Credit as tagged | stoo.asiae.co.kr |
Which will be the first rave back inside the L.A. Memorial Coliseum??
Massive news for all those in Southern California, EDC fanatics…or just ravers in general! We have our first hero in power: future mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti. Mr. Garcetti was posed the question on Reddit’s AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) last night: “Would he allow music festivals to happen in LA again, especially at the coliseum. Huge festivals like electric daisy carnival bring in a huge inflow of cash to the city and surrounding neighborhoods…” Eric responded to the question in no uncertain or waffling terms, “YES! I want some signature festivals here in LA, the music capital of the world. If you like electronic music, then L.A. is where the DJ scene is at.” Loaded, extremely concrete words coming from the future incumbent. However if you follow the future mayor at all, his statement doesn’t come as a surprise. Eric previously held a fundraiser at a massive club (Avalon Hollywood) with Steve Aoki himself DJ’ing the event. How progressive can you get? Yes, electronic music family…we have our new champion in the political world: EDMayor Eric Garcetti.
What a breath of fresh air this is to those who have faced early shutdowns of electronic music events in the SoCal area as of late, and especially after EDC’s 10-year run in L.A. ended after the unfortunate illegal entry and death on the premises of an underage girl which forced EDC’s departure from the City of Angels. Then the city watched the festivals’ epic explosion to a 3-day celebration in 2011 along with its relocation to Las Vegas Motor Speedway via a 10-year contract. After missing out on that massive moneymaker (speaking from a political point of view, of course…clearly Eric understands the genre and what it is about, unlike some media personalities *cough*Wendy Williams*cough*), it makes you wonder what kind of massive raves Eric has in mind for the Coliseum’s “signature festivals” in the near future!
Whats your bet on the first rave to hit the Coliseum next?! |
The GOP Vision: X-America.
Well, X would have to be a society without all of those things.
To be clear, what we're talking about here is a society which does not have a safety net for the elderly, does not provide medical attention for any of those in need, without equal rights for minorities of race, gender, sexuality, or creed. A nation without separation of Church and State. A nation lacking fair wages and safe working conditions, lacking a safety program for economic downturns, or a means for preventing economic crashes. A nation which makes no effort to help it's citizens cope with, or escape from poverty.
What kind of nation would this be?
It would be the sort of place with no care for the needy, or you and me, run by people who care only for the greedy. It would be a place with poisoned air, poisoned water, and poisoned soil. A place where even the airwaves are poisoned, and "free" speech is a luxury only a few can afford. And of those who could, most would have their interest vested in drowning out the voices of any who would speak against this mess.
In this sad place, children would go uneducated, and grow up ignorant. But their ignorance would not be bliss. They would lead lives of thankless toil, and retire not to golden years, but to black and desperate years. They would endure years suffering the pains and infirmities of old age, without the benefit of the the medical care that should be available in the modern age. Unable to work anymore, they'd be reduced to the depths of poverty, and have no hope of ever working their way out of it.
It would be a place with no democracy, where if you can't pay your way to having your say, you'll have no say at all. And having no say of your own, you'll do what they say. You'll live where they say, eat whatever GMO they say, worship whatever God they say, love only the kind of people they say, and be a second class citizen because they say.
I mean, this dysfunctional, dystopian dump wouldn't even have mail!
Remember, this is a subtraction problem, and I think we're starting to see the problem with this kind of subtraction. Because if we take away our protections for our elderly, and our young, for our workers, and those who can't work or can't find work, take away the rights of the minorities among us, and the majority of our rights... And, by the way, with all this amending of rights don't think any Amendment on the Bill of Rights is safe. For with the first Amendment fallen, the second and those that follow can't be far behind. Take away the right to speak our minds and think and believe according to our conscience, our traditions, or our reason, take away the air that's safe to breath, the water that's safe to drink, the food that's safe to eat, and our access to health care, take away our freedom to love who we like in the only life we have to live... Then I have to ask, is that any way to live?
And that brings us back to our equation. It's clear by now that all this subtraction doesn't lead to a solution, but instead to a bigger problem. But we still have the question, if what we have now is America, what will we have left when we've taken all this away? It turns out the answer really is X.
X-America.
And that sort of math just doesn't add up. But that's the way today's radically regressive Republican party figures it. As of now, we've already seen some of this begin to add up, and if we let them keep on subtracting, all that will be left over will be the sum of all our fears. |
FX has ordered a 10-episode third season of drama series Tyrant for premiere in 2016.
Season 2 of Tyrant, executive produced by Howard Gordon, along with Glenn Gordon Caron, Chris Keyser, David Fury, Gideon Raff, Avi Nir and Hugh Fitzpatrick, has been better received creatively and has done well in delayed viewing, averaging 2.47 million total viewers and 1.05 million adults 18-49 in Live+7. Its June Season 2 premiere posted the highest Live+ Same Day to Live+3 lift of any FX original season premiere in total viewers and adults 18-49,. It grew +149% in the demo (376,000 to 935,000) and +121% in total viewers (1.06M to 2.35M).
The series revolves around an unassuming American family drawn into the inner workings of a turbulent fictional Middle Eastern nation. Bassam “Barry” Al-Fayeed, the younger son of the war-torn country’s dictator, ends a self-imposed 20-year exile to return to his homeland. His reluctant homecoming leads to a dramatic clash of cultures as he is thrown back into the familial and national politics of his youth.
Tyrant is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions. |
Our friends at Creative Market announced last week that all themes sold on their marketplace are now 100% GPL. We couldn’t be more thrilled about this and send hearty kudos to the gang at CM for doing the right thing.
To show our support, we’ve jumped into the fray by offering for the first time ever a WordPress.com premium theme for self-hosted WordPress blogs. Further was designed and developed by our very own Takashi Irie. He put his heart and soul into the work, and oh boy does it ever show.
For everyone who’s been asking when Further, which really shines with Jetpack, will be available for self-hosted blogs, you now have your answer. We hope you’ll love Further as much as our beloved users on WordPress.com do and can’t wait to see the amazing blogs that you build with it.
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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Heavyweight Evgeny Tishchenko's gold-medal victory over Vassiliy Levit in a widely criticized decision is likely to be a catalyst for change during the International Boxing Association's next evaluation of its judging.
AIBA executive board member Tom Virgets told The Associated Press on Tuesday that while he wouldn't offer a personal opinion on the decision, he expects the sport's judging criteria to evolve before the 2020 Olympics.
"Every fight will be analyzed, some with a stronger eye than others," Virgets said.
Tishchenko won heavyweight gold Monday night even though the Russian backed up and appeared to struggle throughout his bout with the smothering Levit, a relentless Kazakh power puncher with a thrilling style.
All three judges favored Tishchenko 29-28, drawing gasps and boos from the loudly pro-Levit crowd in Rio. The fans lustily booed the decision and jeered Tishchenko as he accepted his gold medal.
While Virgets outlined the reasons why the three randomly selected judges from Ireland, Colombia and Algeria likely scored the bout for Tishchenko under the current scoring criteria, the veteran boxing coach and executive also made it clear AIBA had taken note of the worldwide reaction to the result.
"We're not through with our changes," Virgets said. "We're going to continuously improve the sport of boxing, and over the next four years, I think you will see things that are going to make it clearer for everyone to understand what our criteria is, and to be able to more clearly define the boxer who wins."
Virgets' interview with the AP was AIBA's only public comment Tuesday on the decision, which outraged boxing figures and vocal fans on social media. Irish bookmaker Paddy Power even agreed to pay bettors as if Levit had won.
In examining Tishchenko's victory through the lens of AIBA's four main judging criteria, Virgets described why the judges likely arrived at a decision that didn't reward Levit's superior aggression and power.
"Obviously, our judges, they were pretty consistent in the scoring," he said. "They obviously followed this. Now is that the best way? We'll evaluate and get better."
Virgets felt Tishchenko threw more scoring blows to the proper target areas and did more quality punching on the inside, which he claimed is easier to see when watching from the judges' seats at ringside. He claimed many of Levit's big, exciting punches "didn't count" because they landed "across the side of the head" and weren't proper scoring blows.
Virgets also said Levit initiated "the majority of the infringement of the rules during the bout," including holding and head contact. Levit repeatedly got inside on Tishchenko, smothering the towering Russian before he could even throw a punch.
"So those combined, obviously in the judges' mind, it was more important than the physical dominance that (Levit) was showing through infringement woes and lack of quality blows," Virgets said.
But Virgets also said Levit clearly trounced Tishchenko in the judging criteria of competitiveness, the most visible area to fans.
"No doubt about it, the Kazakh boxer showed he wanted to win more than the Russian boxer," Virgets said.
The heavyweight result was even more dismaying to fans because AIBA has made significant changes over the past Olympic cycle to make its sport more exciting. The governing body removed headgear from the male boxers and moved from a punch-counting scoring system to a professional-style, 10-point system. Both changes have been well received in Rio.
The first nine days of the Olympics had been remarkably quiet for AIBA, which never holds a major tournament without a number of outraged losing fighters claiming they were robbed of a clear victory in their three-round bouts.
But Tishchenko's victory was the biggest in a string of potentially infuriating decisions as the tournament hits bigger fights this week.
Irish bantamweight world champion Michael Conlan ripped off his vest and made obscene gestures at the ringside judges after his loss to Russia's Vladimir Nikitin on Tuesday. He later denounced AIBA as corrupt and claimed judges had been paid off by Russia, which had several fighters eliminated in close decisions earlier in the tournament.
U.S. light welterweight Gary Antuanne Russell's decision loss to Uzbekistan's Fazliddin Gaibnazarov was also booed by the Rio crowd, but none of the reactions compared to the outrage after Tishchenko's awkward, defensive victory over the ferocious Levit.
"(After) 213 bouts, everyone felt pretty good about everything," Virgets said. "This was one of those bouts that just by the nature of the physicality of the Kazakh boxer, it made it more difficult for a decision to be made. And we have to figure out, how much weight do you put to one criteria over another?"
___
Follow Greg Beacham on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/gregbeacham |
2 I Kept Silent For Decades Because I Was Taught Being Raped Was Worse Than Death
For a very long time, Rhonda didn't tell anyone. She talks about it now, obviously -- she's even published a book about the attack and her subsequent battle with PTSD. But she didn't say a word about any of this for decades. "The first thing I thought [was] 'No one can ever know' ... everyone would think it was my fault. Why would I get in the car with a stranger?"
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Only about a third of rape victims ever report the crime to police. And that's today. "I was raised very conservative [Mormon], and actually what church leaders would say to young women was, 'The most important thing a young woman can have is your virtue. You're probably better off if you lose your life.' And I had lived. So I had that guilt also."
Rhonda kept quiet and went on with her life. But over the next few months, other young women went missing around Utah. "I thought [it] was an isolated incident ... and then ... another girl turned up missing. And her father was on the police force ... and he was on the news because he was [the] sheriff, to get publicity for his daughter. And he was asking the public for help ... and when I saw that, I recognized things ..."
There were no pictures of Bundy circulating yet, so Rhonda didn't know for certain that it was the same guy. But women kept disappearing, and on November 8, Bundy botched a double kidnapping. He was in the news now. "And that's when I knew ... it had to be the same guy. And that's when I really started feeling guilt. If I had come forward earlier, maybe those other girls wouldn't have gotten ..."
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Well, no, it's not Rhonda's fault that she grew up believing some deeply fucked up things about "virtue." And it's definitely not her fault that Ted Bundy was a goddamn serial killer. What's important is that survivors survive. |
1. Isaac Van Amburgh—“The Great Lion Tamer”
From his humble origins as an assistant at a menagerie called the Zoological Institute of New York, the flamboyant Isaac Van Amburgh grew into the most famous lion tamer of the 19th century. His act was renowned for its extreme daring. After entering the cage clad in ancient Roman garb, Van Amburgh would taunt his collection of lions, tigers and leopards and force them to stand on his shoulders and let him ride on their backs. He would also act out scenes from the Bible by introducing a lamb and a young child into the mix and having them sit alongside his big cats as though they were its own cubs. For his big finish, the great tamer would soak his arm or his head in blood and fearlessly thrust it between a lion’s gaping jaws. Most of Van Amburgh’s tricks were achieved through sheer brutality—he subdued his animals by beating them with whips and crowbars—but they won him widespread acclaim in the United States and Europe. His most famous admirer was the British Queen Victoria, who attended his London show seven times in 1839 and later commissioned a painting of him reclining with his cats.
2. Dan Rice—“The King of American Clowns”
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Dan Rice’s name isn’t well known today, but in the mid-19th century he was a world famous performer who counted the likes of Mark Twain and President Zachary Taylor as acquaintances and admirers. The New York native first stepped into the spotlight in the 1840s with a clowning act that mixed physical comedy and trick riding with homespun witticisms and musical numbers. Audiences ate it up, and he was soon raking in $1,000 a week as the star and owner of his own traveling circus. Part of Rice’s appeal lay in his ability to mix topical humor and political satire with feats of strength and other traditional circus stunts. He was one of Abraham Lincoln’s most outspoken critics during the Civil War, and he later launched a short-lived bid for the presidency in 1868. Rice’s popularity waned in the years before he finally hung up his clown shoes in the 1890s, but he’s since been hailed as one of the fathers of the modern circus.
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3. Annie Oakley—“The Peerless Lady Wing-Shot”
Advertisement for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, featuring Annie Oakley. (Credit: Fotosearch/Getty Images).
Phoebe Anne Moses first honed her rifle skills while hunting wild game during her childhood in Ohio. After marrying vaudeville performer Frank Butler in the 1870s, she took the name “Annie Oakley” and toured with circuses as a professional sharpshooter. By the 1880s, the young deadeye had joined the frontier extravaganza “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” and become its highest paid performer. Her arsenal of tricks including hitting the edge of a playing card from 30 paces, snuffing out a candle with a bullet, blasting targets while riding a bike and even shooting a lit cigarette from her husband’s lips. Crowds were entranced by Oakley’s superhuman marksmanship and folksy personality, and she eventually spent some three decades touring the world with the Wild West and other shows. Before retiring in 1913, she performed for the likes of Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Thomas Edison, who once filmed one of her shooting exhibitions with a newly invented kinetoscope camera.
4. Jules Leotard—“The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”
Photo of the French acrobat Jules Léotard, 1865. (Credit: SSPL/Getty Images)
French-born acrobat Jules Leotard is remembered as the first man in history to attempt a flying trapeze act. The son of a gymnasium owner, he first practiced the high-flying stunt over his family’s swimming pool before unveiling it in 1859 at the Cirque Napoleon in Paris. He later took his act to London, where he captivated audiences by somersaulting between five different trapezes with only a pile of old mattresses to break his fall. Leotard’s death-defying deeds made him into something of a sensation during the 1860s, but his career was tragically cut short after he died of disease at the age of 28. By then, the intrepid aerialist had already been immortalized in the popular song “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” He also became the namesake for the “leotard,” the snug, one-piece garment that he had designed to show off his physique during performances.
5. Zazel—“The Human Projectile”
Rosa Maria Richter, billed as ‘”Zazel,” at the start of her act at London’s Royal Aquarium, 1877. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
In 1877, the world’s first recorded human cannonball took flight when teenaged acrobat Rosa Richter—better known by her stage name “Zazel”—was shot into the air at the Royal Aquarium in London. The “cannon” that sent her airborne was invented by tightrope walker William Leonard Hunt and consisted of coiled springs attached to a foot platform. When the springs propelled Zazel out of the barrel and into a waiting safety net, a worker would set off a gunpowder charge to recreate the look and sound of a cannon shot. Word of Zazel’s death-defying stunt quickly spread, and it wasn’t long before crowds of up to 15,000 people were gathering to watch her soar over their heads. The young daredevil later toured with P.T. Barnum’s circus in the United States, but her luck finally ran out in 1891, when she overshot the net during a performance in New Mexico. While Zazel survived, a broken back forced her to retire from the circus for good.
6. Charles Blondin—“The Great Blondin”
Charles Blondin crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope. (Credit: William England/Getty Images)
French daredevil Charles Blondin made his first circus appearance as a young boy, when he performed somersaults and wire dancing under the name “The Little Wonder.” He was a skilled acrobat and athlete—he once leapt over two lines of soldiers holding fixed bayonets—but he was most famous for his heart-pounding exploits as a tightrope walker. In June 1859, a 35-year-old Blondin made history when he strung a 1,300-foot hemp rope between the American and Canadian sides of Niagara Falls and strolled across the chasm, pausing along the way to enjoy a few swigs from a bottle of wine. He later repeated the stunt on multiple occasions, each time with a new and seemingly suicidal twist. He conquered the falls on stilts, with a sack over his head, wearing chains, pushing a wheelbarrow and even while carrying his terrified manager on his back. Most famous of all was the time he crossed with a cooking stove and stopped halfway to prepare an omelet—all while balancing on a 2-inch-wide rope suspended some 160 feet above the water. “The Great Blondin” would later make a fortune displaying his high wire heroics across the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. He became world famous, so much so that several imposters and imitators used his name to get publicity for their own tightrope stunts.
7. May Wirth—“The World’s Greatest Bareback Rider”
May Wirth and her horse, circa 1920. (Credit: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Trick riding and equestrian stunts were a fixture under the big top from its early days in the 18th century, but few riders ever became as famous as Australia native May Wirth. Born into a circus family in 1894, she got her start as a child wirewalker and contortionist before hopping on horseback at age 10. She later joined Barnum and Bailey’s circus in America, where she dazzled audiences with an act that combined acrobatics with expert bareback riding. Wirth could perform a forward flip on horseback from a kneeling position—the first woman to do so—and perfected a trick where she did somersaults from one moving horse to another. The dainty, 4-foot-11-inch rider also showed off her physical strength by leaping from the ground onto the back of a galloping stallion, sometimes while blindfolded and wearing heavy baskets on her feet. Wirth’s good looks and daring stunts won her legions of admirers and frequent mentions in the gossip pages of newspapers. By the time she finally retired in 1937, she had spent 25 years as one of the circus’s top female performers.
8. Lillian Leitzel—“The Queen of Aerial Gymnasts”
Lillian Leitzel (Credit: ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
During the golden age of the circus in the early 20th century, no star shone brighter than that of German-born aerialist Lillian Leitzel. She captivated audiences with an act that consisted of acrobatic tricks and poses performed while hanging from Roman rings suspended 50 feet above the ground—always without a safety net below. For her grand finale, she would grasp the ring with one hand and flip head over heels so rapidly that her arm would dislocate and then snap back into place with each turn. The spellbinding routine made Leitzel into an international diva. She was voted “the most beautiful and attractive woman in all the world” by American soldiers during World War I, and she became the first Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey star to receive a private train car while on tour. Leitzel continued her physically demanding act well into her 30s, but her career ended in tragedy in 1931, when a piece of metal on her rigging snapped during a performance in Copenhagen and sent her plummeting to the floor. She died from her injuries just two days later. |
After the Holy Knights stage a coup and kill her father, Princess Elizabeth sets out to find the Seven Deadly Sins, an outlaw band of tough knights.
1. The Seven Deadly Sins 25m A princess finds a former knight at a pub and joins a quest to reunite his group of cavaliers in order to overthrow tyrants and restore the kingdom.
2. The Sword of the Holy Knight 25m When Gilthunder plants his sword in the center of the town and stops the village from making ale, only Meliodas can remove it, making him town savior.
3. The Sin in the Sleeping Forest 25m Meliodas, Hawk and Elizabeth travel to the daunting Forest of White Dreams, where Meliodas goes to dangerous extremes to obtain information.
4. A Little Girl's Dream 25m Diane joins the mission to free Ban from the Baste Dungeon, but the group is assailed by an enemy set on crushing the whole town and the Deadly Sins.
5. Even if You Should Die 25m Golgius tries to seize the sword from Elizabeth and Meliodas; the sound of a mysterious bell drives the group to fight each other.
6. The Poem of Beginnings 25m Elizabeth and Meliodas must fight Holy Knights Friesia and Ruin to proceed to the dungeon. An omen foretells of disaster on its way to Britannia.
7. A Touching Reunion 25m Ban, Meliodas and company have finally reunited. Seeking a clue to the location of the Grizzly's Sin of Sloth, they head to the Capital of the Dead.
8. The Fearsome Pursuer 25m King and Ban have a final showdown; Holy Knight Guila battles Meliodas, Diane and Elizabeth; Ban remembers Elaine and the Fountain of Youth.
9. Dark Pulse 25m Elaine finally persuades King to rescue Meliodas and the others. Back in the capital, malcontent starts to stir among some of the Holy Knights.
10. The Vaizel Fighting Festival 25m Upon learning the fighting festival's grand prize, Gideon, Meliodas, Ban and King decide to participate, as do Holy Knights Howzer and Griamore.
11. Pent-up Feelings 25m In the final match of the festival's first round, Ban reflects on the first time he met Meliodas. Veronica and Griamore search for Elizabeth.
12. Bloodcurdling Canon 25m During the last match of the festival, the venue breaks out in pandemonium when a group of Holy Knights attacks. What have they come for?
13. The Angel of Destruction 25m Enclosed inside the Goddess Amber, Meliodas breaks free and reappears. Not his true self, he begins attacking his allies as well as his enemies.
14. A Reader of Books 25m Meliodas and his pals begin a new search for the remaining Seven Deadly Sins. The Holy Knight Helbram dispatches assassins to crush the Armor Giant.
15. Unholy Knight 25m Just as the attack overtakes the Armor Giant, Gowther appears, taking unexpected action. Elizabeth learns of Meliodas's past and the existence of Liz.
16. The Legends, Provoked 25m Elizabeth's words convince Meliodas to fight, and it becomes clear who stole his consciousness. Hendrickson begins to resurrect the Demon Clan.
17. The First Sacrifice 25m When Elizabeth is kidnapped, Meliodas, Ban and Gowther launch an attack on the capital. Meanwhile, King Arthur of Camelot confronts Hendrickson.
18. Even If It Costs Me My Life 25m Diane has a brush with death while protecting Zeal. Howzer and Guila are forced into a struggle against formidable magical powers.
19. The Fairy King Waits In Vain 25m King recalls how he met Diane 700 years ago and the sad event that occurred between him and Helbram. What promise did these once good friends make?
20. The Courage Charm 25m In order to take Elizabeth back, Meliodas teams up with Arthur to fight a fierce battle against Hendrickson and Gilthunder.
21. The Looming Threat 25m Merlin's appearance crushes Vivian's ambitions, and Meliodas is reunited with Elizabeth. Ban learns he must kill someone in order to resurrect Elaine.
22. What I Can Do For You 25m Meliodas loses Elizabeth again. Ban confronts the person he must kill in order to save Elaine. Diane and company battle against the New Generation.
23. Despair Descends 25m Pursued by the Seven Deadly Sins, Hendrickson makes two finds that give him the ultimate Demon power. |
San Francisco – Robert Moses is 92, an African American and a World War II Navy veteran.
Don Baird is a couple of weeks shy of his 90th birthday, is scheduled for heart surgery next week, and is also a World War II veteran.
Aside from being former servicemen, both men also share one other thing: they are about to lose the homes they owned, each for more than four decades, to foreclosure.
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“We were granted loans we should not have been given because we were not financially capable,” asserted Baird’s wife, Tina, 81, a former teacher.
Chase has set the foreclosure date on their ranch-style home in Redwood City, Calif., for September 24.
Homeward Residential, the current loan servicer for Deutsche Bank, has temporarily suspended the foreclosure on Moses’s two-story town house.
Neither institution returned calls seeking comment for this story.
Yesterday, Sept. 17, members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), activists from Occupy Noe and Occupy Bernal and about 40 other activists gathered outside the War Memorial Veterans Building to protest bank foreclosures on veterans and seniors.
“Seniors have been set upon by these banks in a very, very vicious manner,” asserted Archbishop Franzo King of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who said he was himself a senior and lost his home to foreclosure recently. “We have to shake off that cloak of shame and put on our war clothes and fight these gangsters.”
Redlined black and Hispanics
King pointed out that there was a time when banks “redlined” blacks and Hispanics and routinely rejected their loan applications. Then, during the housing boom of the mid-2000s, mortgage brokers steered minority borrowers into expensive sub-prime mortgages with financial institutions that often charged them higher fees and rates than their white counterparts who posed the same credit risk.
“These brokers are just like Satan,” King said.
According to a recent AARP study titled, “Nightmare on Main Street: Older Americans and the Mortgage Market Crisis,” while the mortgage crisis has hit every age group, Americans who are 75-plus have been disproportionately hurt, especially those in the African-American and Hispanic communities.
Moses said he refinanced his nearly paid-off loan with Deutsche in 2006 so he could bring his home up to city code. He had purchased the home in 1972 for $79,000. With the $520,000 new adjustable rate mortgage loan he took out, he was able to give the house a complete makeover, he said.
He said Deutsche set a 7.75 percent rate on the loan and remembers the bank telling him that the rate would adjust to less in a few years. At the time, Moses figured that he could comfortably make the $1,700 monthly payments with his monthly income of a little over $3,000, which includes his veteran’s pension of $1,300, his union pension of $450, and his Social Security of about $1,300.
Last December, he was shocked to see that his interest rate had gone up to 12.95 percent, which translated to payments of $3,400 a month.
“They lulled him into a false sense of security and then lowered the boom on him,” said his niece, Nealie Yarbrough who, along with her 13-year-old daughter, is living with Moses.
Moses let the loan provider know that he couldn’t afford the new rate and asked if he could modify the loan. (A loan modification is an adjustment to the terms of the existing loan, often for a short period of time to allow the borrower to get back on his financial feet.) In the meantime, to avoid being delinquent, Moses said he sent Homeward Residential a check for $2,300, saying that was all he could afford.
Moses said Homeward told him they couldn’t accept a “partial payment.”
“But they didn’t return the money I sent them,” Moses said, adding that since then, he has not paid his mortgage, while trying unsuccessfully to modify his loan “three or four times.”
Don’t make enough for loan modification
The cost of applying for a loan modification is about $1,000 per application, pointed out Benjamin Reed Jr., who was speaking at yesterday’s protest on behalf of his father, a Tuskegee Air Force veteran, who retired from the military in the 1970s.
Reed said his parents, both in their 80s, have so far spent $3,000 on loan modification applications with Wells Fargo, but have not succeeded in their efforts. The Reeds have been living in their Twin Peaks home for 27 years. The home is currently facing foreclosure.
“This fight must have taken 10 years off their lives,” Reed said.
The Bairds are also weary of fighting to get their loan modified with Chase. They said that since 1989, they refinanced multiple times to pay off their medical bills and credit card bills, and the last time in 1999 to help their daughter and her family out.
The Bairds current combined income is around $3,550 a month. The amount they owe Chase is approximately $750,000, and at the current interest rate the bank is charging them, their monthly mortgage payment is about $2,500.
“Donald and Tina are beating themselves [up] about having taken out all those loans,” observed Grace Martinez, an organizer with ACCE.
Between 2008 and 2011, more than one million homes were lost to foreclosure, with an additional 700,000 currently in the foreclosure pipeline. Seven of the nation’s 10 hardest hit cities by foreclosure rate last year were in California. Martinez said that 84 percent of the foreclosures that happened in San Francisco between 2009 and 2011 were “illegal.”
Like the Bairds and Moses did, many older people, most of them on a fixed income, tapped their home equity before the recession struck for fixing their homes or paying their medical bills, the AARP study points out.
“The banks’ pitch line to seniors is: ‘You are sitting on a pile of equity; why can’t you take out money to clear your debts,'” noted Martinez.
This past July, California passed the Homeowners Bill of Rights to protect homeowners and borrowers during the mortgage and foreclosure process by prohibiting unfair bank practices. The bill goes into effect next January.
Over the last three years, the Bairds have tried unsuccessfully four times to get their loan modified, but Chase has told them each time it couldn’t because they make too little money.
Tina Baird asserted that as bad as the situation she and her husband are in, what Moses is facing is even worse.
“What the bank has done to him is outrageous,” she said, noting that perhaps their “white skin” has helped them in some way.
Moses is hoping that Homeward Residential will give him a break and let him pay the 7.75 percent he was originally charged, else his 82-year-old wife, Stella, who is currently in a rehab facility in the city recovering from leg surgery, won’t have a home to come back to when she is discharged.
“They keep telling me my income is too low to have my loan modified,” Moses said. “What do they want me to do – take up a part-time job? |
In this photo distributed on Tuesday by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is shown visiting his military forces. Photo: KOREA NEWS SERVICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS .
But concrete progress is less certain. Pyongyang is expert at rapidly escalating and de-escalating tensions, and the next cycle could begin as early as next week, when American forces begin annual joint exercises with South Korea.
North Korea’s turnaround also does little to address the Trump administration’s longer-term challenge: stopping the country’s quest for an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reliably delivering a nuclear warhead to the U.S. mainland.
Pyongyang’s exact motivations for dialing down tensions are as opaque and subject to debate as its motivation for having threatened Guam in the first place. In addition to concerns about further escalation, they appear to have been influenced by Beijing’s announcement Monday that it would enforce new trade sanctions and diplomatic statements by senior U.S. officials.
Officials in China, Japan, South Korea and many other nations had been alarmed last week when Mr. Trump threatened to unleash “fire and fury” in response to threats from North Korea, and declared that U.S. military solutions were “locked and loaded.”
In many ways, North Korea’s announcement on Tuesday that it would hold off—for now—on threats to surround Guam with an “enveloping fire” of intermediate-range ballistic missiles follows a familiar pattern in Pyongyang’s playbook.
Beachgoers enjoy Ypao Beach Park in Tamuning, Guam on Tuesday. North Korea threatened an attack near the American territory before backing down this week. Photo: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES .
Two years ago, during another August standoff, North Korea issued a 48-hour ultimatum to South Korea to switch off loudspeakers blaring propaganda critical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un across the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries, following the explosion of a land mine there that maimed two South Korean soldiers. North Korea threatened to use force to stop the broadcasts.
South Korea ignored the deadline, and days later, North Korea expressed regret for the land mine, dismissed several senior officials and put inter-Korean relations back on what it called a “track of reconciliation and trust.” South Korea shut off its loudspeakers
In March last year, also during U.S.-South Korea military exercises, Pyongyang threatened to attack Seoul’s presidential palace unless it received an apology from then South Korean President Park Geun-hye. No apology was forthcoming, and the threat never materialized.
North Korea’s threat to Guam was consistent with its record of using strategic brinkmanship to compensate for its relative weakness, said Yang Xiyu, a former Chinese diplomat who has taken part in multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear program.
“They try to create a situation where North Korea and the U.S. are at the brink of war and if you want to save the whole world, then you have to return to negotiations,” he said.
.
However, Mr. Yang said Pyongyang’s climbdown this time came faster than expected. He gave some of the credit for North Korea’s apparent reversal to China’s rapid implementation on Monday of new United Nations sanctions banning North Korean exports of goods including coal, iron, lead and seafood.
“The significance is that if China can stop major imports like these, then it can do something further too,” he said.
China has resisted U.S. pressure to take bolder measures, such as cutting oil exports to Pyongyang, fearing that might cause the regime to collapse, trigger a flood of refugees into northeastern China and bring U.S. forces closer to its border.
China almost certainly sent back-channel messages to the North Koreans in the past few days warning them against firing missiles toward Guam, said Dennis Wilder, a former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
“Kim [Jong Un] has to worry that the newly imposed U.N. sanctions will be combined with unannounced unilateral sanctions from Beijing on such commodities as jet and diesel fuel,” Mr. Wilder said.
Beijing also appeared to indicate displeasure with Pyongyang by proceeding with a long-planned visit to China this week by Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added.
Gen. Dunford signed an agreement with his Chinese counterpart on Tuesday to formalize and increase the level of communication between the U.S. and Chinese militaries. On Wednesday, Gen. Dunford is due to visit China’s Northern Theater Command, which oversees Chinese forces on the North Korean border, according to Chinese and U.S. military officials.
On a visit to Seoul before arriving in Beijing on Tuesday, Gen. Dunford said the U.S. military was supporting efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis, even as it prepared other options.
His comments echoed remarks from other senior administration officials, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson , who in recent days have sought to moderate Mr. Trump’s threats toward North Korea.
Some longtime North Korea watchers say that North Korea had likely never intended to launch four missiles toward Guam. The leadership in Pyongyang may also have been encouraged that, while President Trump raised the rhetorical temperature last week , the U.S. refrained from taking any actions that would signal more of a war footing.
North Korea was particularly sensitive about the dispatching of B-1B bombers from the U.S. Air Force base on Guam, the initial stated impetus for the North’s most recent threat, said Euan Graham, director of the international security program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an Australian think tank. The U.S. hasn’t conducted any further B-1B flyovers since the threat against Guam.
Mr. Trump’s tough talk could also have spooked the North Koreans into fearing that the regime was truly in danger of unleashing a war against the U.S., said Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo.
“Maybe North Korea felt that they had pushed it a little too far, at least for now,” said Mr. Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel. “Now you’ve got a president who is certainly a different kind of president, and when Kim starts talking big, Trump says ‘I see you and raise you one.’ ”
But any lull in tensions could prove ephemeral.
“I don’t think they’ve taken the threat off the table,” said Adam Mount, senior fellow with the left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank in Washington.
The North’s statement now appears to tie a Guam launch to the coming military exercises, Mr. Mount said.
Much could depend on whether the U.S. sends major assets, such as aircraft carriers, to participate, or stages lower-key drills.
Ahead of those exercises, Gen. Vincent Brooks, the top American military commander in South Korea, on Monday played down questions about whether the U.S. was planning to deploy more “strategic assets” to the Korean Peninsula. The phrase “strategic assets” typically refers to nuclear weapons, stealth bombers or aircraft carriers—all of which tend to trigger complaints from Pyongyang.
—Lucy Craymer in Hagatna, Guam contributed to this article. |
Former TD Conor Lenihan is considering standing for Fianna Fáil in the next general election after he was approached by senior party members in Roscommon.
Former TD Conor Lenihan is considering standing for Fianna Fáil in the next general election after he was approached by senior party members in Roscommon.
The brother of the late Brian Lenihan has not ruled out standing in the Roscommon-Galway constituency, saying it was “a matter for local party members to decided who would be best to win a seat for them.”
“I would emphasis (at this stage) I’m not pushing myself on the constituency… members from the Roscommon party organisation contacted me over the past weeks, and at the weekend I took the opportunity to meet with some of them,” he told Shannonside FM.
The former Dublin South West TD added: “Of course I’m flattered and honoured that they approach me to stand for them [but] it is a matter for local party members to decide.”
The former Fianna Fáil energy minister has been working for a number of Eastern European energy firms since he left politics.
Currently on the board of San Leon Energy, one of Europe's leading shale gas companies, Mr Lenihan carved out a key role in the development of an €8 billion plan to create Russia's own 'Silicon Valley' on the outskirts of Moscow in 2011.
His team helped raise €1.2bn in funding for Skolkovo Foundation over a three year period with the venture capital firm.
A spokesperson for Fianna Fáil said the party did not comment on such matters ahead of the official closing date for nominations.
So far, Roscommon County Councillors Eugene Murphy and Paschal Fitzmaurice are the only two contenders who have officially declared their intention to run for the area's Fianna Fáil nomination.
Online Editors |
More than 400 young people from across the country will descend on Capitol Hill Tuesday to hear how Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, actress Ashley Judd and other lawmakers will address issues relating to the so-called millennial generation.
"We wanted to send a strong message that bipartisanship for millennials is not reserved for the centrists or for the moderates ... [It] also includes those on the far left and the far right," Steven Olikara, president of the Millennial Action Project, said in a phone interview. "And it also reflects the strength of this movement to bring unlikely partners together in service of future generations."
The Millennial Action Project is hosting the Congressional Summit on Next Generation Leadership, along with Nexus, a network of young philanthropists, and Children Uniting Nations, a nonprofit in Los Angeles. The hundreds of students, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs will pack into the Capitol Visitor Center's Congressional Auditorium Tuesday morning for the first half of the day-long summit. They will discuss issues related to the media, human trafficking and forming youth movements. The morning will also include a question and answer session with Cruz, who will likely be asked about similar issues as well as immigration, education and climate change.
"Sen. Ted Cruz, although being a symbol in the national media for conflict, has sponsored bipartisan legislation with [Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.] on military sexual assault issues," Olikara noted. "The core value that this generation can bring is pragmatism. … If there are good ideas that Sen. Cruz or others are bringing, we ought to bring them to the table."
Olikara also said some may view Cruz as a surprising choice for a summit focused on forging bipartisan bonds, but bringing people from all sides of the political spectrum together was one of the summit's goals.
“I think most people would think Sen. Ted Cruz is the last speaker you’d expect at our conference and that is exactly the point," said Olikara. "That we can bring such an ideologically disparate group to the table.”
Cruz will not be the only lawmaker addressing the millennials Tuesday. Reps. John Delaney, D-Md., and Todd Young, R-Ind., will discuss public-private partnerships. Congressional Future Caucus Co-Chairs, Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and Aaron Schock, R-Ill., will discuss "Congress and the Millennial Generation."
After lunch, roughly 200 of the participants will remain on the Hill to participate in breakout sessions in the Cannon and Longworth House Office Buildings. The sessions will be focused on issues including social impact investing, human trafficking, gun safety, women in philanthropy, energy policy and education reform. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., will participate in a discussion titled End Slavery Now: Bridging the Divide Between Government and Civil Society.
After the breakout sessions, participants will come together to learn the results of Giving Tuesday , a global philanthropy day. Then Judd, who at one time was mentioned as a 2014 opponent against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will address the participants about women's role as future leaders.
"What conference has everyone from Sen. Ted Cruz to the actress Ashley Judd coming to speak?" Olikara asked. "I just think that’s unique and speaks to the strength of our work.”
Related: Congressional Future Caucus Promotes 'Giving Tuesday' Roll Call Results Map: Results and District Profiles for Every Seat Get breaking news alerts and more from Roll Call in your inbox or on your iPhone. |
San Jose firefighter Eric Diaz does not want to talk about the video he shot five years ago when he worked for a private ambulance company under contract to Santa Clara County. In it, he and his partner can be seen cruising for dates when they should be working.
Even though it was recorded years ago, the DVD is now a major issue in a child custody case. It is also raising new questions for those who oversee emergency services in Santa Clara County.
At the time the video was made, Diaz was on the job as an EMT for American Medical Response. But on a busy Saturday night, he was also on the prowl. If the DVD is an accurate depiction of their shift, Diaz and his partner spend the vast majority of their time trying to pick up women. Diaz used a video camera to document his finds.
Diaz and his partner stop women on the street, shout at them from the ambulance and try to get them to take off their clothes. Even though the ambulance crew is on the clock, there appears to be plenty of time for socializing.
When a group of young women ask for a picture, Diaz obliges them. But when Diaz loads the back of the ambulance with women, his partner gets worried.
Mike: "Eric, bro, you know what, I don't want to do this today."
Eric: "For real?"
Mike: "We're going to get in big f***ing trouble, dude."
Eric: "Alright, sorry."
Mike: "There's just too many, man."
Still, Diaz keeps going. He was 27 years old the night the video was made, and he never got tired of looking for a date, even at 3 a.m. at a Jack in the Box.
The I-Team showed the video to Brian Smart, program director for WestMed College, one of the major paramedic schools in the South Bay. He says Diaz acted so unprofessionally, it is difficult to watch.
"Patients call 911 because they're at their worst moment in their lives and they need us to be at our best and if we're delaying responding to someone, that's potentially going to have a negative outcome," Smart said.
A spokesperson for the Santa Clara County EMS Agency that oversees ambulance service says that it isis a personnel issue for the independent contractor, AMR. They would only get involved if response times were being affected.
Ambulance crews are judged by their response times -- seconds count. On the video, Diaz is chatting up yet another woman when a call comes over the radio, but he takes the time to close the deal.
Officials for the ambulance company declined to be interviewed for this story, but issued a statement that reads in part, "The actions of the individuals depicted...not only violated AMR policies, but also the trust of the citizens we serve. Their behavior was unacceptable and in no way representative of the hundreds of men and women who honorably and faithfully serve this community every day."
But the ambulance company cannot do anything about Diaz because he now works for the San Jose Fire Department. San Jose Fire now has a copy of the video. They will not say where they got it and they will not comment directly because it is a personnel issue, but they want to get a message out.
"The trust and confidence of this community is very important to the fire department and we're continuing to do everything that we can to uphold that privilege," Captain Chuck Rangel said.
There are several sexually explicit scenes on the DVD, one when Diaz was on the job, others when he was off.
The DVD is part of a child custody case. Diaz and his former girlfriend have also filed for restraining orders against each other. The matter will be decided in court next week. |
(CNN) Did a skinny-dipper who broke into a Nevada wildlife refuge kill one of the world's rarest fish?
The National Park Service and the sheriff's office in Nye County sure think so.
Here's what they said happened: During a night of drinking, three men broke into Devils Hole, a protected area that's part of the Death Valley National Park.
One of them went skinny dipping in the only habitat for one of the world's rarest fish -- the Devils Hole pupfish.
National Park Service released this image of the suspects involved in the April 30th incident.
That person clumsily plodded through the shallow end of the pool, stomping on the algae and kicking up dirt. His naked adventure was caught on camera. He also left behind a pair of dirty underwear.
Authorities suspect the April 30 intrusion left one of the critically endangered pupfish dead. The exact cause of the fish's death is unclear. But at the last count in April, there were only 115 Devils Hole pupfish left in the world, the National Park Service said.
"Video footage recorded this man walking on the shallow shelf, potentially stressing and crushing pupfish, which are slow-moving, docile, and as they have no natural predators, curious by nature," the National Park Service said.
These blue, inch-long pupfish are unique. They are believed to have survived in the same location in the Mojave Desert for tens of thousands of years in a harsh environment that's usually not compatible for fish.
The National Park Service suspects the intruder extensively damaged the pupfish habitat by disturbing the algae and its food supply. The agency is also concerned that the skinny dipper crushed pupfish eggs, as April and May are spawning season.
How it unfolded
Footage released by the National Park Service showed three men riding off-road before arriving at the tall black fences that protect Devils Hole.
Police say the three men came to the area after a night of shooting rabbits and drinking. They were armed with a shotgun, authorities say.
They jumped over the fence and fired at least 10 shots into two gates' locks, two surveillance cameras and electric sensors, according to authorities. They removed cables from security cameras and damaged scientific equipment, according to the park service.
They left behind the dirty boxers, three beer cans and some vomit. A dead pupfish was found nearby.
Police say they've contacted three suspects -- all Nevada residents. Federal charges are expected to be filed against the trio, with possible counts including conspiracy to commit a crime, killing of an endangered species, destruction of property, trespassing and destruction of habitat, the Nye County sheriff's office said.
Uniqueness of Devils Hole pupfish
Scientists closely monitor the Devils Hole pupfish and its habitat. The species is believed to have been isolated for 10,000 to 20,000 years because they've adapted to 93-degree water and an oxygen concentration that's usually deadly for fish. |
Be prepared … for controversy. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
“Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?” President Trump asked the 40,000 people gathered in Glen Jean, West Virginia, on Monday for the Boy Scout Jamboree.
The answer is President Trump. The event, which occurs every four years, was attended by about 24,000 boys, ages 12 to 18, but Trump treated it like a raucous campaign rally. During a rambling, 35-minute speech, he playfully threatened a member of his cabinet about getting the votes to repeal Obamacare, recounted his election win in great detail, and attacked President Obama.
A post on the Jamboree’s blog had warned troops to be “courteous” and refrain from chanting phrases like “lock her up” as they are “considered divisive by many members of our audience, and may cause unnecessary friction between individuals and units.” That did not prevent the audience from applauding Trump’s partisan attacks and even booing when he mentioned Hillary Clinton.
It seems the president had prepared a speech about letting “your scouting oath guide your path,” but his trademark asides and non sequiturs dominated the address. Here are Trump’s weird comments to his largely underage audience.
1. Trump starts off by marveling at the size of the crowd and attacking the press.
“Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it’s about 200 people. [Laughter.] It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today. [Applause.] You set a record. That’s a great honor, believe me. Tonight we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C. — you’ve been hearing about that with the fake news and all of that. [Applause.] We’re going to put that aside. And instead we’re going to talk about success, about how all of you amazing young Scouts can achieve your dreams … I said, who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts, right?”
2. Trump calls our nation’s capital a “cesspool.”
“You know, I go to Washington and I see all these politicians, and I see the swamp. And it’s not a good place. In fact, today, I said we ought to change it from the word swamp to the word cesspool, or perhaps, to the word sewer. But it’s not good. Not good.” [Applause.]
3. Trump boasts that ten members of his cabinet were Boy Scouts, then threatens to fire one of them.
“Secretary Tom Price is also here. Today Dr. Price still lives the Scout Oath, helping to keep millions of Americans strong and healthy as our Secretary of Health and Human Services. And he’s doing a great job. And hopefully, he’s going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that’s really hurting us, folks.”
[Applause. Crowd chants “USA! USA! USA!”]
“He better get them. He better get them. Oh, he better — otherwise, I’ll say ‘Tom, you’re fired!’ I’ll get somebody. [Applause.] He better get Senator Capito to vote for it. You got to get the other senators to vote for it. It’s time. After seven years of saying repeal and replace Obamacare, we have a chance to now do it. They better do it. Hopefully they’ll do it.”
4. Trump says we need more “loyalty,” doesn’t explain what he’s referring to.
“As the Scout Law says: ‘A Scout is trustworthy, loyal’ — we could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that.”
5. Trump marvels at the size of the crowd and attacks the “fake media” for refusing to show it (though CNN aired the speech).
“I’m waving to people back there so small I can’t even see them. Man, this is a lot of people. Turn those cameras back there, please. That is so incredible. By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero? [Applause.] The fake media will say: President Trump — and you know what this is — President Trump spoke before a small crowd of Boy Scouts today. That’s some — that is some crowd. [Applause.] Fake media. Fake news. Thank you.”
6. Trump attacks his predecessor for failing to address the Boy Scouts (Obama sent a video message in 2010).
[Audience chants, “We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!”]
“By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?”
[Audience shouts, “No!”]
“And we’ll be back. We’ll be back. The answer is no, but we’ll be back.”
7. Trump tells a long, meandering story about the real-estate developer William Levitt and alludes to “interesting” activities he engaged in on his yacht.
“[Levitt] he sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. At the time especially — this was a long time ago — [he] sold his company for a tremendous amount of money. And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go on any more than that because you’re Boy Scouts, so I’m not going to tell you what he did.”
[Audience boos.]
“Should I tell you? Should I tell you?”
[Audience shouts, “Yes!”]
“Oh, you’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life. So — look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right?”
“So, he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate …” [Trump explains that years later Levitt bought his company back.]
“He so badly wanted it, he got bored with this life of yachts and sailing and all of the things he did in the south of France and other places. You won’t get bored, right? You know, truthfully, you’re workers. You’ll get bored, too. Believe me. Of course, having a few good years like that isn’t so bad.”
8. Trump recalls meeting Levitt at a hot New York party.
“In the end he failed, and he failed badly. Lost all of his money. He went personally bankrupt, and he was now much older. And I saw him at a cocktail party, and it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party. It was the party of Steve Ross who was one of the great people — he came up and discovered — really founded — Time Warner and he was a great guy.”
“He had a lot of successful people at the party. And I was doing well so I got invited to the party. I was very young, and I go in — but I’m in the real-estate business — and I see 100 people, some of whom I recognize and they’re big in the entertainment business …”
[Trump recognizes Levitt.] “So I went over and talked to him, and I said, Mr. Levitt, ‘I’m Donald Trump.’ He said ‘I know.’”
9. Trump tells the boys the lesson to take from Levitt’s life is not to lose “momentum” — but if you do, that’s okay, too.
“But I’ll tell you, it was very sad, and I never forgot that moment. And I thought about it, and it’s exactly true. He lost his momentum. Meaning, he took this period of time off long — years — and then when he got back, he didn’t have the same momentum. In life, I always tell this to people, you have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum, and if you don’t have it that’s okay. Because you’re going to go on and you’re going to learn and you’re going to do things that are great. But you have to know about the word momentum.”
10. Trump recalls his victory on November 8, and attacks the “dishonest people” for doubting that he could win.
“Now with that, I have to tell you our economy is doing great. Our stock market has picked up — since the election November 8. Do we remember that date? [Applause.] Was that a beautiful date? [Applause.] What a date. Do you remember that famous night on television, November 8, where they said — these dishonest people — where they said there is no path to victory for Donald Trump? They forgot about the forgotten people. By the way, they’re not forgetting about the forgotten people anymore. They’re going crazy trying to figure it out. But I told them, far too late. It’s far too late.”
“But do you remember that incredible night with the maps and the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue, and that map was so red, it was unbelievable, and they didn’t know what to say?” [Applause.]
11. Trump goes through his victories state by state and criticizes Hillary Clinton.
And you know we have a tremendous disadvantage in the Electoral College — popular vote is much easier. Because New York, California, Illinois — you have to practically run the East Coast. And we did. We won Florida. We won South Carolina. We won North Carolina. We won Pennsylvania. [Applause.] We won and won. So when they said there is no way to victory, there is no way to 270, I went to Maine four times because it’s one vote, and we won. But we won — one vote. I went there because I kept hearing we’re at 269. But then Wisconsin came in. Many, many years — Michigan came in. And we worked hard there. My opponent didn’t work hard there because she was told —”
[Audience boos.]
12. Trump thanks his audience — which again, consisted largely of children — for voting for him in November.
“[Clinton] was told she was going to win Michigan, and I said, well, wait a minute, the car industry is moving to Mexico. Why is she going to move — she’s there. Why are they allowing it to move? And by the way, do you see those car industry — do you see what’s happening, how they’re coming back to Michigan? They’re coming back to Ohio. They’re starting to peel back in.” [Applause.]
“And we go to Wisconsin — now, Wisconsin hadn’t been won in many, many years by a Republican. But we go to Wisconsin, and we had tremendous crowds. And I’d leave these massive crowds. I’d say, why are we going to lose this state? The polls — that’s also fake news. They’re fake polls. But the polls are saying — but we won Wisconsin.” [Applause.]
“So I have to tell you what we did, in all fairness, this is an unbelievable tribute to you and all of the other millions and millions of people that came out and voted for Make America Great Again.”
[Audience chants “USA! USA! USA!”]
13. Trump makes a false claim about the latest jobs reports, and updates the kids on his tax-repatriation plan.
“We had the best jobs report in 16 years. The stock market on a daily basis is hitting an all-time high. We’re going to be bringing back very soon trillions of dollars from companies that can’t get their money back into this country, and that money is going to be used to help rebuild America.”
14. Trump assures the Scouts, out of nowhere, that they can finally say “Merry Christmas” again.
“In the Scout Oath, you pledge on your honor to do your best and to do your duty to God and your country. [Applause.] And by the way, under the Trump administration, you’ll be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again when you go shopping. Believe me. Merry Christmas. [Applause.] They’ve been downplaying that little, beautiful phrase. You’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again, folks.” [Applause.] |
Homes Left Vacant in Slump Mar Neighborhoods
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ted Robbins, NPR Ted Robbins, NPR
A vacant home in a decent neighborhood used to be a rarity.
But in cities around the country, homeowners and investors — unable to afford the homes they bought — are abandoning their properties, marring the neighborhoods they leave behind.
In Phoenix, once one of the nation's hottest markets, tens of thousands of homes are vacant. The bulk of the homes were owned by investors who hoped to profit from booming housing prices.
Keevin Simpson bought a 20-year-old home in North Phoenix last year hoping to fix it up and sell it at a big profit. He spent $40,000 gutting the house, putting in new walls, ceilings and appliances. But he's now putting it on the market for less than he'd planned. His home is competing with a record 55,000 homes for sale in the Phoenix area. Of those, nearly 40 percent are vacant. Foreclosures, which are not on the market, are not included in those vacancies.
Simpson hired Donna Butera, a home "stager" who fills vacant homes with furniture to make them looked lived-in — but not too lived-in.
"The basics are no kids, no pets, no laundry, no dishes. That's the perfect house," Butera says. "Everybody has those items, or most people do, but when you're house hunting — for that brief experience — they don't exist."
Butera — herself an investor with six homes for sale — says there is fear in the market because of the crisis in subprime lending, combined with falling home prices.
"What you have now is a house that's worth $270,000 that you paid $350,000 for and your loan is due ... nobody is going to pay that," she says. "And that's where you're getting into this problem with foreclosure. You cannot sell it."
When they are forced into foreclosure, Butera says some owners trash their homes before they are repossessed.
"They are selling everything inside — their kitchen cabinets, their toilets, their AC units ... and it's hurting the neighborhood," Butera said. "The house now looks like a crack house — it's missing all its windows."
Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University, says many homes could be saved if owners would just talk to their lenders — assuming their lender is still in business.
"The homeowner is embarrassed," Butler said. "They can't make the payments. Maybe they don't want to tell their spouse or others in the family that they can't do it, so they simply walk away from the home." |
An RTI application from a citizen helped National Highway Authority of India to detect overcharging of toll on a Bangalore toll plaza resulting in recovery of Rs 1.87 crore.
The applicant PA Burge, in his application, stated that he wants to know the reasons for which the user fee was being charged at Rs 20 and Rs 40 whereas it should have been Rs 15 and Rs 35 respectively. Soon after his RTI application landed in the NHAI offices, a surprise check was carried out Hattargi user fee plaza which showed the commuters were indeed charged extra. "The respondent stated that the issue of imposing penalty for excess collection toll fee by toll collecting agency has been taken up with NHAI Headquarters and an amount of Rs 1.827 crore has been recovered for the same. The excess amount of toll fee collected by the agency has also been refunded to NHAI by the toll collecting agency," Information Commissioner Yashovardhan Azad noted in his order.
He said the fact that the appellant's RTI application made the officials of the NHAI to investigate into the matter and to stop the excess collection of user fee from passengers, is commendable. "This not only led to the recovery of the amount of 1.827 crore along with interest to the NHAI but notice boards came up on all toll booths, displaying that the excess user fee of Rs 5 can be collected by the passengers, after producing proof of identification and excess fee charged," he said.
Azad said the Commission, therefore, appreciates the fact that the complainant has raised a very pertinent and an important issue involving public interest through his RTI application, which has been promptly redressed by the public authority. |
Moon Jellyfish-Facts and Photographs
FACTS ABOUT MOON JELLYFISH
Moon Jellyfish are recognizable by the pattern on the top of the jelly fish created by its gonads which are visible through the transparent bell.
They are single sex organisms being either male or female.
They consist mainly of water.
Their food is Plankton, including small shrimps, fish eggs and other floating larvae.
They are found across the world and have a wide range of temperature tolerance from 6 to 31 °C.
They feed on plankton and grow up to 40 centimeters in width.
The adult and larvae of Aurelia have nematocysts or stinging cells to capture prey and also to protect themselves from predators.
The animal lacks any respiratory, excretory, and circulatory systems.
Respiration occurs by diffusion across the cell wall of the organism.
As the oxygen rate in the ambient water drops so the jelly drops its rate of respiration.
They have a subumbrellar nerve net within the structure that is responsible for controlling contractions in the coronal muscle in the bell that allow it to swim.
The moon jelly has rhopalial centers, which allow it to control the pulsations of the coronal muscle.
They swim horizontally and tend to stay near the surface.
The adult has a has an umbrella margin membrane and tentacles that are attached to the bottom of the membrane.
A wide variety of predators eat the moon jelly, ranging from fishes, turtles and birds.
They probably live for about six months in the wild but in captivity under ideal conditions can live for several years.
The eggs are fertilized in the female when she ingests floating sperm given out by a male.
The eggs develop into larvae that free float until they anchor onto a substrate.
The larvae grow into an organism that resembles an anemone which splits up into organisms that grow into the adult.
PHOTOS
VIDEOS
See the moon jellyfish in action:
AQUARIUMS
Moon Jellyfish are mainly kept in large commercial aquariums, but as the knowledge base on these jellyfish has expanded it has become possible to keep them in a home aquarium. It is a fairly complex technical task and depending on the ambient temperature of the specific residence, a water chiller will almost certainly be needed to keep the temperature within their preferred range. A good filtration system and carefully designed water flow are necessary. A well lit tank full of Moon Jellies can make a very attractive addition to a home.
MOON JELLYFISH BLOOMS
Occasionally when conditions are right moon jellyfish congregate in large numbers, a so called bloom. One of these blooms can be seen in the video below which was filmed in Dar es Salaam , Tanzania.
MOON JELLYFISH CLASSIFICATION
Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Cnidaria.
Class: Scyphozoa
Order: Semaestomeae,
Family: Ulmaridae
Genus: Aurelia |
Today we bring you the final installment of our in-depth, three-part interview with “Hannibal” writer/producer Don Mancini, which took place prior to the show’s recent cancellation by NBC. Sadly, “Hannibal” had been on the edge for renewal since its debut, but after it returned for Season 3 to dire ratings, this is indeed “the last supper.”
The network will still air all the remaining episodes of the current season, which is running on Thursdays at 10 p.m., so make sure you tune in and, if you’re so inclined, express your opinion about the show on social media to help #SaveHannibal.
Now, back to Don… in this final portion of our interview (catch up on Parts 1 and 2 here if you missed them), Mancini told us about how sex and death go hand-in-hand for Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy).
Dread Central: What’s going on between Hannibal and Will? There’s a lot of homoerotic subtext.
Don Mancini: Totally. And their relationship is sensual because Hannibal’s world is so sensual. But there are times that they’re physical with one another. Hannibal caresses Will’s hair. And when he touches Will’s face lovingly [in Season 2] before gutting him, it’s just… well, as a gay man I find it pretty fucking titillating. I know there are others, gay and straight, who pick up on that and feel similarly. But I’m sure it goes over other people’s heads!
DC: Which is hard to imagine. I mean, to me it’s pretty obvious.
DM: Well, you know, some people are just not [that sophisticated]. I mean, these characters are not having sex. It’s not that overt. But they love each other. There’s definitely something going on between them. And I think that part of what’s so interesting about the show is that relationship — but also the riddle of Hannibal’s humanity. I know Bryan is very fond of thinking of Hannibal as the devil, literally the devil and this fallen angel. And that is a really interesting perspective through which to view the character. But I also think Hannibal is so complicated. I mean, he does these horrible things, and yet, you care about him. I think that’s why the show — I mean, that’s why I love it. That’s something that Bryan has really amplified with the show. It became there increasingly in the books, and from Silence of the Lambs and then Hannibal – Thomas Harris was sort of making Hannibal an increasingly likable character.
In Red Dragon, he was kind of more simply a sadist, I think. And in Silence of the Lambs, he was so fascinated by Clarice Starling’s innocence and her civility, you know, because Hannibal is so offended by the rude. But that got underlined in the book Hannibal, that ethos to “I prefer to eat the rude.” That was something that Thomas Harris created in the book Hannibal, and Bryan Fuller has run with that.
In the show we’ve seen that Hannibal is lonely. The show has explored Hannibal wants to have a friend. And they’ve done episodes that were specifically about that. I loved in the first season he has that patient Franklyn Froideveux, who is really kind of into Hannibal and wants to be his friend. And Hannibal is like, “Well, that’s not appropriate,” and winds up killing him.
But in that same episode, when he’s with his own therapist, we see this other side of Hannibal; and she asks him, “Do you want a friend?” And that’s because he sees in Will this possibility because Will has this empathic ability. Hannibal knows that Will has this door in him that if he could just nudge it open, Will could embrace this darkness that Hannibal knows Will has in him and that they could just connect in a way that Hannibal’s never been able to with anyone before. And so that’s really fascinating, and disturbing, but it makes you kind of feel bad for Hannibal because he’s lonely, basically. I think that it’s that loneliness and that need for connection that Hannibal has that makes him such an interesting character rather than just being a serial killer who loves to fuck with people. It’s not that simple.
DC: Mads Mikkelsen is so great. And very, very different from how Anthony Hopkins portrayed him.
DM: Another innovation that Bryan Fuller brought to it was he made him sexy and young. Anthony Hopkins and Brian Cox were both amazing as the character, but they were middle-aged men by the time they played him. That was a real innovation just to make him fuckable, frankly. I think that adds this whole other dimension to the show as well.
DC: We know he’s attracted to Will for whatever reason, but what about the inverse of that?
DM: In Seasons 1 and 2, they very deliberately contrasted Will. But to see then the evolution of Will’s costume and hair… Where Hannibal has the impeccable three-piece suits and the ties and the perfectly folded pocket handkerchiefs. And Will is a flannel and t-shirt guy. But late in Season 2, when Will finally got out of jail and he shows up at Hannibal’s office and knocks on the door – I don’t know if you noticed, but he’s wearing a button-down shirt. And his hair is combed in a new way because Hannibal’s influence on him was starting to be felt in these tangible ways.
DC: The show doesn’t really follow the books to the letter, right?
DM: I can’t say too much, but it’s interesting now to see all of these characters in this whole new world, in Europe and Italy, mostly in Florence. Basically, in the mash-up, or what Bryan always has referred to as being a mash-up of DJ’s, we take different pieces of the mythology and mix it all together and come up with new stuff. Which is, as a fan, what I’d always loved about watching it. Bryan always takes into account our knowledge of the mythology and then throws these twists, which I always loved. It’s just something that I find particularly interesting because as a creator of a franchise and someone who’s made a lot of sequels myself, it’s something that I have some experience with. You’re having to serve up something the same, but new. And it’s just an interesting challenge, and I think it’s something that Bryan does really well.
So, his original plan was that Season 3 was just going to be the European manhunt. And the basis of it was going to be the novel Hannibal. But he then decided that he thought it would give everything a much faster narrative thrust if he just did the first half of Season 3 as the Hannibal book and then the latter half as Red Dragon, which is what we’re doing, because we all know that Hannibal is destined to be caught and destined to be behind bars. And of course, Bryan and all the marketing materials have already let this slip. Everyone knows that the Red Dragon is coming later in the season. So, we skip ahead in Episode 3.08 – skip ahead three years. And Hannibal’s been behind bars for three years. And then we get into the Red Dragon stuff, but again, in ways that are new. It’s not merely what you’ve seen. There’s new stuff mixed up with it.
DC: How do the directors factor in? I mean, on a movie set the director is the go-to guy. But not on a TV show, and especially one like this which has so much mythology.
DM: In television the showrunner is really God, in a way that whereas in features the director is God. And it’s certainly very much the case on “Hannibal,” although I know that Bryan hires these guys for specific reason because they’re very talented and Bryan knows that they’re going to bring their own stuff to it. Vincenzo Natali did some very specific stuff with a love scene, for example, in the visuals.
There are directors assigned, like the writers. And I knew that 3.06 [the first episode Mancini wrote] was Vincenzo Natali, and 3.10 [Mancini’s second episode] was Guillermo Navarro. I didn’t have any interaction with Vincenzo, and generally, the writers don’t. I think that’s generally true on TV in general, you know; when you’re a writer in the trenches in the room, you don’t always have interaction with the directors. For 3.10 I was up in Toronto for the prep and was able to attend a couple of the meetings and got to meet Guillermo, who was really nice.
I didn’t have very much interaction [during the shooting] other than being able to attend these meetings for 3.10. For example, 3.06 – and this isn’t giving anything away because Bryan has already talked about it in interviews – has this big sex scene in it, which was really fun to write, and then really interesting to see Bryan rewrite and then to see how Vincenzo Natali shot it because it really is beautiful and amazing. It was one of the things I was really excited about getting to write and just to see the process through which it got refined. First of all, on that one, 3.06, I shared credit with both Steve Lightfoot and Bryan Fuller. So to see it get refined by both of those writers and then to see how Vincenzo visualized it, it’s really amazing. It’s incredible. And so I know that Bryan challenged Vincenzo to surpass himself with this love scene that is in 3.06. And I think he really did. I mean, it’s really cool.
DC: Okay, last question. It’s a silly one! Chucky vs. Hannibal death-match… who’d win?
DM: I think Hannibal would probably make short work of Chucky. Chucky is many things, but I don’t know how smart he is. You know, one of the things that was in 3.06, and through much of Season 3 is the character Mason Verger. We saw him in Season 2, and he comes back. I particularly enjoyed writing him. I mean, I love writing for all the characters, but Mason is one I had particular fun with. And in retrospect I wondered, ‘Is it because he’s kind of like Chucky in a certain way?’ And I even thought, in the movie Hannibal, Gary Oldman looked- to me – and a couple of critics even mentioned this – that he looked sort of like Chucky because of his facial deformity. But he’s like Chucky in the sense that he’s kind of impish and like the spoiled child that we know is going to have what he wants no matter what. He throws tantrums and stuff. So, I wondered if that accounted for my affinity for Mason Verger, just because he was the most Chucky-like character in “Hannibal.”
Well, we certainly have an affinity for “Hannibal” as a whole and can’t wait to see what Don’s cooked up for us in his Episodes 3.06 (“Dolce”) and 3.10 (“…And the Woman Clothed with the Sun”). In the meantime we have Episode 3.05, “Contorno,” on Thursday to tickle our taste buds.
Big thanks to Don for taking the time to chat with us!
“Hannibal” Episode 3.05 – “Contorno” (7/2/15; 10-11 PM)
THE SEARCH FOR HANNIBAL INTENSIFIES — Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and Inspector Pazzi (guest star Fortunato Cerlino) search for clues that will lead them closer to Hannibal Lecter’s (Mads Mikkelsen) location in Florence, but the promise of riches offered by Mason Verger (guest star Joe Anderson) threatens to corrupt Pazzi’s quest for redemption.
Meanwhile, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and Chiyoh (Tao Okamoto) travel to Florence, both on a mission to find Hannibal but at odds over the desired outcome. Elsewhere, as Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) continues to work with Mason Verger, she grows concerned for the safety of all involved. Gillian Anderson also stars, and Mia Maestro guest stars.
For more info be sure to visit “Hannibal” on NBC.com, “like” “Hannibal” on Facebook, and follow “Hannibal” on Twitter. |
Atlanta once was stained by a scandal for underreporting crimes. Now, DeKalb County has fallen under scrutiny for vastly overreporting crimes to win millions of dollars in federal grants. It counted 39 too many rapes; 102 too many robberies, 113 too many burglaries, 326 too many larcenies and a staggering 10,624 too many aggravated assaults in 2008, says a new report by a government watchdog agency. How'd that happen? The agency wanted to know, because the county wouldn't have won the grants if it had provided accurate data.
So the agency asked the DeKalb County police department. And the round robin began:
It couldn't explain the differences, had no documentation, and pointed investigators to the former police department grant manager. She said the statistics came from the police department's grants coordinator, who used documentation from a police department file. The coordinator said she didn't know of any such file and pointed to the department's crime analysis unit as the source of the information. The police department researched again and told the agency it had no more documentation.
By the way, the millions in unjustified grant money DeKalb got should have gone to Memphis and Chattanooga, the watchdog agency reports. |
Image copyright PA Image caption Seema Malhotra is among critics of Jeremy Corbyn to have resigned from the shadow cabinet
A Labour MP's claim that her office was entered without her permission does not amount to a possible breach of Commons rules, says Speaker John Bercow.
Seema Malhotra had complained to Mr Bercow that aides to leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell gained "unauthorised entry".
Mr Bercow said this did not suggest any breach of MPs' parliamentary privilege.
Ms Malhotra said she "regretted the distress" caused on both sides but said the episode "should not have happened".
Mr McDonnell has called on her to apologise.
The shadow chancellor said at the time of Ms Malhotra's complaint that his office manager thought the premises were no longer occupied, and he accused Mr Corbyn's critics of picking on members of staff.
Privacy and confidentiality
He said the member of staff, who was worried about losing her job, had apologised to Ms Malhotra's team and that he had not been told about the incident before the formal complaint was lodged.
Ms Malhotra, who resigned as shadow chief secretary to the Treasury last month in protest at Mr Corbyn's leadership, had complained about two officials - one working for Mr Corbyn and another who works for Mr McDonnell.
Image copyright House of Commons Image caption A copy of John Bercow's letter to Seema Malhotra released by the MP's office
She said there had been unauthorised access to her office "on more than one occasion", which she claimed had interfered with her ability to fulfil her role as an MP in terms of compromising privacy and confidentiality.
The MP wrote to Mr Bercow calling for an official Commons investigation, saying her staff had felt "harassed, intimidated and insecure".
Replying to her request, the Speaker said: "Having taken advice, I am satisfied that there is nothing in your letter or in the information subsequently elicited by the deputy Serjeant at Arms which would justify regarding these events as a possible breach."
'Without my knowledge'
Reacting to the news, Mr McDonnell said: "It's only right and fair that Seema now apologises for the stress she has caused to my staff over the last few days.
"As I said on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday the Labour Party needs to unite and actions like this which are only being used to try to undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership must stop."
Ms Malhotra said she recognised the Speaker did not have "sufficient evidence" to determine whether the rules on parliamentary privilege - under which MPs are guaranteed certain immunities and rights to enable them to perform their duties - had been broken.
But she said there remained a number of "unanswered questions" about who was allowed entry into MPs' offices.
"I welcome the Speaker's statement that 'nobody should enter a Member of Parliament's office or the office of their staff, locked or unlocked, without their permission'. This vindicates my view that what happened should not have happened.
"My staff have been distressed by what has happened. I regret the distress that has been caused on both sides. But I come back to what this is all about: our office was entered without our knowledge and without my permission.
"And the Speaker has ruled today that should not happen." |
This is a "real" Ratchet and Clank game.
The last two Ratchet and Clank titles were hardly worth calling entries in the Ratchet and Clank franchise because they lacked any sort of meaningful game-play mechanics. Fortunately, this game is true to form and it a genuine Ratchet and Clank game - there is a meaningful, although painfully short and stripped down single player campaign (no online multiplayer).
The positives - This game looks absolutely fantastic on the PS3, this is Insomniac's best work artistically on this console. The weapons are fantastic, some are recreations of past classics whereas others are brand new - to the "ironically named Peacemaker" to the "Zircon Family", the weapons are fun and easy to use. To that point, excluding the jet boots, the controls are fantastic. There is mild exploration, and there is good reward for finding everything because there are powerful, powerful weapons to be unlocked. Arena combat returns, some item collection missions return (huge open area where you look for things), and there is a challenge mode as in previous titles. There is also a difficulty setting, which is nice (easy, medium, hard).
Unfortunately, however, there are some problems with this game that don't bring it to the caliber of "Crack in Time". First, flying between planets is not the really cool "oh, wow, you're flying your ship in space" that was introduced in "Crack in Time", rather, it is a meaningless "move your ship icon to the planet you want to go to". I was sorely disappointed. Level design is mostly okay, except for one particular level: in certain situations on Planet Sixon doors would be open allowing me to explore regions I shouldn't, doors would be closed when they should be open preventing me from exploring regions, and it was difficult to figure out how to re-explore past areas on that particular world. Also, diversity is limited. There are no grind boot challenge, no vehicle piloting - it is get your gun and fire (and there is little to no strategy for weapon selection either).
The price tag is what you get: a quickly made extremely short romp that is entertaining enough to have a second play through. The game comes with a download code for a previous Ratchet and Clank title - that isn't a half bad game makes up for what I feel is the high price point for this game (this should really be a $15.00 title, not a $30.00 title). The game is fun, but the fun is short lived. |
If funded, Buck will be available on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and XBO!
In this Metroidvania-style game you play as Buck, a motorcycle garage mechanic who decides to leave everything behind to find the truth behind the disappearance of a girl. Buck struggles to adjust himself to a world he doesn't fully understand. Traverse the wasteland while fighting and talking your way though junkyards, mountain passes, ghost towns and survivor outposts. As the game progresses, Buck gradually pieces together the reasons that brought this world, and its rugged inhabitants, to their knees...
It's hard to describe the immense impact that Buck has had on our lives. We've been working on the game for over three years now, spending thousands of dollars from our own pockets to get the game up to its current pre-alpha status. You can try the current build for Buck to see for yourself how our passion for this project has taken us this far and how, with your support, we can make Buck the best game it can be. We have poured our heart and soul into building the basic mechanics and gameplay features for the game, and we now need your help so that we can secure the funds needed for the final push to complete Buck.
We have several reward tiers to thank you for your support. Depending on the reward tier you select, you will receive wallpapers, digital copies of Buck, the soundtrack and the art book, a limited edition physical copy of Buck on disc, signed items, access to the Alpha and Beta versions of Buck and more! Check the reward tiers on the right or the images below to see what you can get for backing Buck!
As you can see above, we've budgeted for the funds that, with your support, will help us finish the development of Buck. There are Kickstarter fees to cover, taxes, marketing costs, the cost of creating the rewards you as our backers will be receiving, but the largest chunk of it all will be going to completing the game thanks to your support! |
China lashes out at US after claims Beijing is deploying ‘covert agents’
China has lashed out at the United States for its “uncooperative” attitude and suggested it is becoming a haven for Chinese criminals, after Washington accused Beijing of deploying “covert agents” on American soil in a bid to snare fugitives wanted as part of president Xi Jinping’s war on corruption.
With just weeks to go until Xi makes his first state visit to the US, American officials have reportedly demanded Beijing stop sending undercover Chinese law enforcement agents there to take part in what Beijing calls “Operation Fox Hunt”.
The campaign to bring fugitives back to China is a key element of Xi’s high-profile offensive against corruption in the ruling Communist party.
Politburo, army, casinos: China’s corruption crackdown spreads Read more
China is understood to have handed lists of targets to countries including the US, Australia, France, Canada and the UK.
However, there is “escalating anger” in Washington over the “strong-arm tactics” – including intimidation and threats – allegedly being used by Chinese agents to bring fugitives home, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
US officials said they had solid evidence the agents were not in the US “on acknowledged government business” and were likely coming into the country on tourist or business visas.
The issue has added to tensions between the two countries ahead of Xi Jinping’s trip to the US in September.
Already this year, the countries have locked horns over issues including the alleged hacking of millions of US government personnel files and China’s artificial island building campaign in the South China Sea.
Among those whose return Beijing is demanding is Ling Wancheng, a rich and well-connected businessman who had reportedly been living in California. Ling’s brother – a former presidential chief-of-staff called Ling Jihua – was arrested and expelled from the Communist party last month and his whereabouts are currently unknown.
China’s state-controlled media reacted angrily to US claims that its agents were operating outside the law.
“The ‘Chinese secret agents’ are nothing but a fantasy,” the Global Times, a pro-Beijing tabloid, complained in an editorial on Tuesday. “The Chinese police officers set foot on the US soil by legal means and they take actions that are fair and square.
“The US government is becoming more uncooperative with China in its anti-corruption endeavors [and] the US media falsely accused China of using Operation Fox Hunt to deploy secret agents on US soil,” added the newspaper, whose stridently nationalist views sometimes reflect those of the central government.
“The US is providing shelter to those on the run. We have reason to suspect that the US wants to divert attention and regain the moral high ground.”
Xinhua, Beijing’s official news wire, said US attempts “to force China’s law enforcement staff to leave the country obviously reveals that Washington lacks sincerity”.
“The United States, as a country that often stresses the rule of law, should clarify the issue and by no means become a safe haven for Chinese criminal suspects,” it added.
Chinese hack of US national security details revealed days after Russian hack Read more
In a front-page story, the China Daily cited a source in China’s Ministry of Public Security who admitted its agents had travelled abroad in an attempt to “persuade” suspects “to come back to confess their crimes”. However, the source insisted such agents were strict about doing so on “official visas”.
The Global Times’ editorial claimed that apart from the US, “no other countries have issued complaints about the operation or conspired tales of ‘secret agents’ to hinder the process”.
However, officials from other countries targeted by Operation Fox Hunt, while publicly supportive of the campaign, privately express deep unease at its modus operandi.
Some worry about the tactics being used by Xi Jinping’s corruption-busting teams and suspect some targets are the victims of political vendettas rather than genuine corruption investigations.
Others believe Beijing is exaggerating the scale of its “fox hunt” in an attempt to convince the Chinese public that it is winning the war on corruption.
“In principle, foreign governments will say: ‘Yes, of course we will support clamping down on corruption because it does impact on foreign interests in China.’ But in practice I am sure that they will have lots of questions about the methods being used and the people being pursued,” said Kerry Brown, the director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a former British diplomat in China.
“If they are aware that there is a political agenda – and there probably is in most of these cases – then they have to be very, very careful.”
During a visit last year to the Beijing headquarters of China’s anti-corruption agency, Brown said officials had talked about the “innovative investigative methods” being used by its agents.
“Part of that is making up the rules as you go along, part of it is ends justifying means and part of it is making sure that you have always got the upper hand and you are concealing your intentions. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors stuff.”
Brown said Beijing boasting that it was sending agents abroad was most likely intended to impress Chinese citizens but it had not played well with foreign governments.
“China certainly doesn’t like foreign agents operating on Chinese territory, so why on earth should the rest of the world embrace Chinese foreign agents operating on their territory?” he said. |
LUDINGTON, MI — Startling reports of government surveillance inside public bathrooms has been revealed through the use of hidden cameras. Now attorneys and city managers grapple over the definition of “reasonable expectation of privacy,” and whether a person has it while standing at a urinal, washing their face in a mirror, or even sitting on a toilet.
The independent news blog called the Ludington Torch helped break the story by identifying fourteen cameras in Ludington public restrooms. Twelve were hidden cameras.
Tom Rotta, who posted the story on the Torch, exposed cameras that were planted inside air ducts and inside specially-designed smoke detectors that had built in cameras. These cameras, once identified, were in position to look down inside the bathroom stalls, and effectively “watch you poo,” as Rotta called it on the blog.
Rotta even went as far as to track down the receipts for the cameras through the Ludington Town Maintenance Department. It turns out, at least some of the cameras were purchased by the town as early as August 2000. When Fox 17 looked into it, they found that the cameras had been in use as far back as the late 1990s.
Rotta appealed to the Town Council to honor his FOIA request, which he says the council has violated at will. He stated before the council in an August 26 meeting:
“In the Michigan Penal Code, section 750.539(J) it says: ‘A person shall not… Surveil, Photograph, or otherwise capture or record another individual… under circumstances in which the individual would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.’ As far as definitions, ‘person’ can refer to a body corporate, such as the City of Ludington, and ‘reasonable expectation of privacy‘ has historically covered bathrooms, even public bathrooms. When one steps up to a urinal, or one sits on a toilet, he expects to do so with privacy, and should not be able to look up and see a recording camera pointed at his private parts. This is a felony violation.”
Rotta investigated the women’s restrooms as well, and found cameras above the stalls there too. He says his only guess as to why they are there is for “lewd and lascivious purposes.”
The Ludington Police Department says they’ve only looked at the video twice in the past 12 years, and another when Rotta filed for a copy. Not only is there no way to verify that, Rotta says he’s worried the videos are being sold.
According to Fox 17, Rotta says he’s considering a class action lawsuit against the City of Ludington for invasion of privacy.
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If you would like to contact the Ludington City Government, please make use of the sources below.
Mayor John Henderson: (231) 843-8409
Email: [email protected]
Ludington Police Department: (231) 843-3425
City Manager John Shay
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Dick Rathsack: (231) 845-8402
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Wally Taranko: (231) 843-8418
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Les Johnson: (231) 843-6383
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Wanda Marrison: (231) 845-6744
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Nick Tykoski: (231) 758-0269
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Gary Castonia: (231) 845-0027
Email: [email protected]
Councilman Kaye Ferguson Holman: (231) 590-2259
Email: [email protected] |
Narrative Science View Profile We are hiring Located in the heart of the loop, our office provides easy access to public transportation and some of Chicago's favorite destinations. announced a new collaboration with Microsoft today, bringing the Chicago company’s natural language generation (NLG) capabilities to Microsoft’s Power BI data analytics tool.
Narrative Science’s Power BI extension will draw insights from user data sets from a range of data sources — including Salesforce, Github and Adobe Analytics — and automatically generate written narratives to accompany data visualizations and tables.
“Microsoft’s vision and leadership is reflected in Power BI. The platform embodies making analytics more accessible to a wider audience and helping organizations to maximize the value of their business intelligence efforts,” said Stuart Frankel, CEO of Narrative Science, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to a join such a high caliber community dedicated to innovating BI.”
Founded in 2010, Narrative Science is the maker of the AI-powered Quill platform, which specializes in translating data sets into human-readable narratives. Featured in an Economist special report on artificial intelligence last year, the company’s technology has already been used by Forbes to cover financial stories, with a number of additional companies also using the platform to generate financial reports and other data-driven documents.
The Narratives for Power BI extension can be customized in a number of ways, including vocabulary adjustments and verbosity.
“Our vision of modern business intelligence includes making powerful analytics and data visualization easily accessible to everyone,” said Nick Caldwell, General Manager of Microsoft Power BI in a statement. “Our collaboration with Narrative Science aligns very well to this goal. Integrating Advanced NLG into Microsoft Power BI enables our customers to automatically turn complex data into insightful stories.”
The extension is already available for download.
Images via Narrative Science.
Do you know of any Chicago tech companies we should be covering? Send us an email at [email protected]. |
David Cameron has insisted Britain can only impact Europe’s approach to Israel by remaining inside the EU as he called on the community to roundly reject the “divisive and intolerant” campaign of Nigel Farage.
The prime minister used his only address to Anglo-Jewry of the referendum to insist that the country’s influence is “enhanced” rather than diminished by being part of the Union on issues from the economy to climate change to preventing Iran getting the bomb.
Speaking at Jewish Care’s annual dinner – which raised £5.1m – he said: “When we’re fighting terrorism and Islamist extremism are we better doing that out on our own or fighting together with our European partners. When Europe is discussing its attitude towards Israel do you want Britain – Israel’s greatest friends – in there opposing boycotts or do you want us outside the room, powerless to affect the conversation.”
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Cameron spoke of his “love” of the country and described Jewish function as some of the most patriotic he’d attended. Invoking his predecessor Winston Churchill, he said the wartime leader chose to fight Hitler alongside allies, rather than operate alone, when he took the “greatest decision in our history”.
He also launched a blistering attack on the UKIP leader over the ‘Breaking point’ poster he unveiled last week as part of the campaign to leave the EU. It featured a line of immigrants passing through Europe and was condemned as having echoes of 1930s imagery of George Osborne.
“When I look at that poster which Nigel Farage stood in front of for the leave campaign I see the opposite of everything that makes our country great,” Cameron told the more than 1,000 guests at the Grosvenor House Hotel. “I’m proud that Britain is home to people who fled persecution – including those who fled the Nazis and from Russians pogroms. We should say to Farage and his campaign of division and intolerance ‘we don’t want your vision of Britain, we don’t want you’re selling, you’re not selling the kind of country we want for ourselves or our grandchildren – and I say we should vote decisively to reject it on Thursday.”
While his diary was in a state of flux during the final build up to the referendum, Cameron drew huge applause for saying the dinner was one engagement he was “always going to keep”.
On the day the House Of Commons was recalled to pay tribute to murdered MP Jo Cox, the prime minister reflected on her husband Brendan’s call to oppose hate in her memory.
“Wherever we find hatred we should drive it out of our politics and drive it out of our communities. No one understands this better than our Jewish community.”
Reflecting on the rise of anti-Semitism, he said: “I hate that this scourge has returned to this world and specifically to our country. I promise wherever we see antisemitism – from politicians who should know better to abusive graffiti daubed on synagogues and homes – I will do everything I can to drive it out of this country. For as long as I’m prime
Minister you’ve got that extra £10m I promised to CST every year for as long as necessary.”
In a wide-ranging speech to an audience that included new Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, he also hailed Israel’s transformation from “dessert to city” as “One of most remarkable stories of the modern democratic world” and reiterated that his commitment to her security is “non-negotiable”.
“I will always stand up for right and obligation of Israel to defend its citizens – a right enshrined in international law, in natural justice and in fundamental morality. I’ll never stand by when people talk about boycotts or Israel comes under attack from rockets or terror tunnels.”
Cameron heaped praise on the staff and volunteers of Jewish Care as the ‘best of Jewish and the best of British.
‘I love you. All of you individually as I have a referendum to win. But I love Jewish Care and all you do. You don’t leave things to government. You help communities . You bring people together to play their part. That is the big society in action.”
The event included a campaign video featuring three service users including 99-year-old Millie – who said a Jewish care club had given her a lifeline to get out and socialise. Cameron described her as a “complete inspiration” after a meeting ahead of his speech.
.@Number10gov to @Jewish_Care dinner: 'You are the best of Jewish and the best of British' pic.twitter.com/aT4NTYTWtL — Justin Cohen (@CohenJust) June 20, 2016
Former X factor winner Leona Lewis, who donated her time to perform at the event, said she felt “honoured and privileged to be part of such a special eveing and meet some of the inspirational people that are assisted by Jewish Care”. She dedicated a song he composed for her parents to the charity.
Chairman Stephen Lewis announced plans to submit an application for a new care campus in Redbridge. He stressed that £15m must be raised annually to continue its work, with an additional £4m required by 2020.
Jewish Care President and Labour peer Lord Levy – who hailed the PM as “a true friend to our community and our beloved state of Israel” – said: It was a truly special evening. A night that showcased the vital work of Jewish Care and celebrated the way we as a community come together to provide care and support to those who need it.” |
Image copyright AFP Image caption Many electronic companies are now sourcing their minerals from "conflict-free" mines
More than two-thirds of mines in eastern Democratic Republic Congo which produced "conflict minerals" four years ago are no longer run by warlords, a report by US-based Enough Project says.
It follows a US law implemented in 2010 which required firms to determine the origin of minerals used in products.
Tin, tantalum and tungsten, used to make computers and mobile phones, used to generate $185m (£110m) a year for armed groups, the report said.
This fuelled decades of conflict.
The US law was brought in under the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act that requires any company that might be using conflict minerals register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and then disclose its supply chain.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Many miners are now benefitting from better wages
This, together with other reforms and the recent defeat by UN troops of two powerful rebel groups, has helped significantly in reducing the number of mines run by militias, the Enough Project said.
However, artisanal mining of gold was still funding army commanders, its report said.
Analysis
BBC international development correspondent Mark Doyle
This rare good news from DR Congo illustrates how a consumer campaign in the rich world can impact positively in an under-developed country. The hi-tech US companies making laptops and smart phones simply did not want to be associated with warlords committing atrocities - and more to the point, perhaps, knew that campaigners in the US would expose them if they did.
So pressure from US consumers, working with the new US law which required companies to guarantee a "clean" supply chain, has forced change.
Of course, a more robust military campaign by the UN's Intervention Brigade against some of the armed groups has also helped.
The next stop for the campaigners, after the computer companies, will be jewellers. It will be interesting to see if they can pull off the same effect in DR Congo's gold mines. Many of these are still controlled by warlords operating with impunity.
The Enough Project said its report was based on five months of field research which showed that 67% of tin, tantalum (refined from coltan) and tungsten in North Kivu, South Kivu and Maniema provinces were no longer in the hands of the armed groups or the Congolese army.
It said this contrasted with a 2010 UN group of experts report which stated that "In the Kivu provinces, almost every mining deposit [was] controlled by a military group".
For the first time in DR Congo's history there is now a validation process to evaluate whether mines are conflict-free, the Enough Project said.
The reforms have also meant that wages have gone up for miners - in some areas threefold - and more workers now receive safety equipment, it said. |
Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption There are 500,000 cars with VW engines registered in London, 80,000 of which were fitted with the "defeat devices"
Car firm Volkswagen (VW) has said it will not pay the £2.5m the mayor of London claims it owes in missed congestion charge payments, following the 2015 emissions-rigging scandal.
Sadiq Khan said 80,000 VW engines fitted with "defeat devices" were registered in London.
The devices, which detected when an engine was being tested, changed performance to improve results.
VW said the cars had "validly" qualified for a low emissions discount.
'No basis'
The world's largest car manufacturer admitted about 11 million cars worldwide were fitted with the device.
However, a spokesperson for VW said all of its vehicles which benefitted from the Congestion Charge Greener Vehicle Discount "did so validly throughout the relevant period".
There is "no basis on which it can be said that Transport for London has lost any sums as a result of the NOx issue."
"No sums are therefore due in compensation," the spokesperson added.
Volkswagen scandal 11 million Vehicles affected worldwide €6.5bn Set aside by VW
$18bn Potential fines
No. 1 Global carmaker in sales
Mr Khan said the actions of VW were "nothing short of a disgrace".
Last year a US court ordered VW pay a $14.7bn (£12bn) settlement over the scandal. |
Yes, I am Jason Zimmerman, creator of this SSBM statistics data, and yes that is my website. I also did some for Metroid Prime and Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker as you can see, and well, to be honest after a certain point, I continued doing this becuase I am bored and have no humans to play with where I live(except smores, who's busy so I won't bother him), and still have a tiny tad bit over 10,582 matches in Vs. Mode, and easily over 1000 hrs. total in this game (At VERY VERY LEAST 90% of my matches are on those lv. 9 computers[that suck] and gets reeeeeeeeeallllly boring). Also, it's not really a webpage, it's my homepage, and the sad part is, ALMOST everyone in my school thinks that I'm a nerd that has no life. I wish someone would actually like video games (a few do, but not NEARLY like I do) and want to play me(particularry if they're good), but with me, I doubt that will happen. Maybe I'm talking to soon, as according to some poll here the average ago of the people here are approx. 17.31 years old, and since I'm only 14.51, I guess it'll be better in High School(which I'm going to for the 1st time on Sept. 4), but I don't think I'll get this lucky. Anyway, I'm getting off subject, and so to answer the question of how I did this, it's like this...
It's an extremely long process, so I'm just gonna try and explain it in short and simple form. I DRAW the short speed moves(like Mew2's aerial forward A, at 5 frames BTW) and find the speed of short moves by doing them a zillion times so I can see (by drawing to remember it) the speed of it. For moves that are VERY close in speed, but not exactly, I do them RIGHT NEXT TO each other, and if they hit at the same time, they have the same frame-speed, and if not, I find the speed of the unknown move by comparing it the the other move. I do this by (if the other unknown move speed is slower) soing the slower move and then THE VERY VERY INSTANT AFTER THAT I pause the game. That way only the FIRST frame of the move will be done. Then I unpause it. If they THEN hit at the same time, then they're only 1 frame apart. Then I know that since Mew2's shadow scratch is 5 frames, the other move's speed must be 6 frames. I then made "the frames list"(if you remember that extremely old topic)so I have at least 1 move of every frame speed. I can then compare them to other things(i'll know if it's fast enough or not by using blocking and stuff like that) to find their frame speeds.
For example, I found Fox/Falco's stopping speed while running by using various characters moves(i'll use ganondorf just for the sake of chosing someone so I can try and explain my precess quickly) to compare their speeds. If Falco/Fox blocked, then it's not fast enough(since the block starts the EXACT frame AFTER a move ends, and starts right away afterwords.) Simply put, Ganondorf(and C. Falcon's) Down smash's 1st kick hits at 19 frames. When I dashed with Falco/Fox I dashed towards Ganondorf and then INSTANTLY paused the game. I then released the analog stick(to stop the dash) and then held C-stick down to do Ganondorf's down smash for the instant the game unpauses. Then, I VERY VERY quickly hold block with falco/fox right after I unpaused the game(VERY VERY quickly, so the move wouldn't hit and Falco/Fox wouldn't yet come to a complete stop.) When you do a dash and stop and THEN block, you still have to go through the animation of stopping before you're sheild goes up, which I found out after much testing. Anyway, after holding block, if Ganondorf's attack hit the shield, then Falco/Fox's stopping speed would be LESS than that 19 frames(since a block comes after the attack). If it hit Falco/Fox, that means that it comes at EITHER 19 frames OR LESS(since that last frame you're not blocking and it still obviously counts as one of the frames of the move.) Well, in this case, it hit Falco/Fox's shield. That means that it is NOT 19 frames. I then did the same process with Mew2's forward smash(18 frames, unlike his down smash which is 20 frames), and it hit Falco/Fox, so that means, that since I tested Ganondorf's 19 frame move and it's not that, and they got hit on Mew2's 18 frame forward smash, then the stopping speed of Falco/Fox is 18 frames. I did this test multiple times(at LEAST 5, but mostly an average of like 20). This is one of the EASIER LESS COMPLICATED TESTS, and I REALLY don't feel like explaining the longer ones, because I'd be typing for endless hours and you probably won't understand it anyway. I hope this helped you understand how(or, one of the many ways) I test frame speed.
BTW, when I feel like posting it(will be soon, but I just got back from WildWood after sleeping a whopping like 3-4 hrs. before rushing out of the hotel towards home), I will post my throwing power list(measured ALL throws by measuring the lowest damage of their "crowd-screaming" damages, if you know what I'm talking about, and it you don't, it's basically the lowest damage in which an opponent needs to have for the crowd to cheer noticably louder after usually being thrown a certain distance. However, unlike normal attacks in which the weight[and possible falling speed] affect the damage inwhich the crowd-screaming damages occur, GRABS HAVE THE SAME SCREAMING PERCENTAGES FOR ALL DAMAGES[except mew2's forward throw, because of the shadow balls which are obviouly not considered by the game to be part of the throw, at least not for this.) |
The College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (CFOS), UP Visayas celebrated another year of academic excellence being at the forefront of fisheries education in the country on February 23, 2017.
Faculty members, researchers, staff, and students of the College gathered at the Pidlaoan Hall of CFOS, UPV Miagao campus to participate and enjoy the 37th year of the College as part of UPV in Miagao, Iloilo.
The day started with the opening of poster exhibit and viewing led by College Dean, Dr. Crispino A. Saclauso. The posters displayed the researches done by the outstanding faculty and the Research and Extension Professional Staff (REPS) of the College.
Welcoming everyone in his opening message, Saclauso talked about the early days of the College. He outlined the significant and major events in the history of CFOS in UPV and how far it has gone to become the 'Center of Excellence in Fisheries Education' in the country.
Saclauso expressed his desire for the CFOS to continue in contributing significantly in enhancing regional, national, and international development in fisheries as well as in generating globally competitive human resource.
The College was named Center of Excellence in Fisheries Education by the Commission on Higher Education from 2016-2018 and as a National University / College of Agriculture / Fisheries (NUCAF) under the Philippine National Agriculture and Fisheries (NUCAF) for 2016. It has been a consistent top performing school in the Fisheries Technologists Licensure Exam in the country.
Dr. Augusto E. Serrano, Jr. delivered the Agustin F. Umali Distinguished Lecture. Serrano is a faculty member of the Institute of Aquaculture, CFOS and a UP Scientist III. His lecture was on “RNA Sequencing Using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in Aquaculture Research.” According to him, “RNA sequencing using NGS is a powerful tool for aquaculture to gain better understanding of the roles of functional elements in the aquaculture organism’s genome that directly or indirectly affect the developmental, growth, metabolism, immunity, behavior, reproduction and various other processes of an organism.”
Another important activity held in the foundation day celebration was the “Parade of Achievements” which recognized the achievements of the CFOS faculty, REPS, staff, and students. These achievements include the honorific scholars among undergraduate and graduate students, the paper and poster awardees in the national and international conferences, the top 10 passers in the Fisheries Board exam (2015-2016), One UP Professorial Chair and One UP Faculty Grant awardees, and the UP Scientists.
This was followed by a solidarity lunch and other student activities in the afternoon, which include a contest for the College’s logo with five entries and “Your Face Sounds Familiar.” The students also participated in various games that took place the following day.
The CFOS’ foundation day is part of the 70th Year Anniversary of the UP Presence in Iloilo, which is being celebrated from February 20-24, 2017 with the theme, “Enhancing Service Learning through Community Partnership.” |
When it comes to the Power Rankings, there's Seattle, and then there's everyone else.
I know I've talked about it before, but there's a common misconception about the Chargers this year, one I think stems from the period of time the Chargers were oscillating between wins and losses. See, there's this perception that the Chargers are very inconsistent this year. In fact, however, they're one of the, if not the most consistent team this year.
"How can this be?" you ask? Well, it's all about match-ups. The Chargers have a had a consistently-excellent offense, ranking in the top-3 of nearly all the objective ratings sites in Offense all season long. They've had an average Special Teams, so that's been a non-factor. Bringing the team down has been their historically-bad Defense. How bad is the defense? Remember the disastrous 2010 Chargers Special Teams? Yeah, they're that bad. The defense is worse (23.6%) than the offense is good (22.0%).
So how does a team with a top-flight offense and a historically bad defense seem so inconsistent? It's all about match-ups. The Chargers have won 5 games this year. 4 of those 5 wins have come against teams with defenses ranked in the bottom-3rd according to Football Outsiders (20th, 25th, 27th and 29th). As soon as they played teams with average or better defenses and a competent offense, they lose. (I can't explain the Oakland loss, however.)
This is a very consistent team, let's put all this inconsistency talk behind us, k?
Notable Quotes
The team with the best chance to finish with an all-time worst rating is now San Diego, although the Chargers' defense did improve a little bit this week. - Football Outsiders
Even after a shaky 23-of-37 showing versus Cincinnati, Philip Rivers remains within striking distance of Drew Brees' single-season record for completion percentage -- Rivers sits at an even 70 percent; Brees finished at 71.2. Of course, Brees' Saints also hung 547 points on the board that season (2011). The Chargers are on pace for just 372. - Sports Illustrated
Dropping four of their last five, the Chargers fall two spots but find themselves still just on the outside edge of the wild card race. With three home games to come, all is not lost. - Pro Football Focus
Division Averages
Division Week 14 Average Week 13 Average Difference NFC West 8.8571 8.5119 -0.3452 AFC West 13.7262 13.4524 -0.2738 NFC South 14.7500 14.7381 -0.0119 AFC North 17.6548 17.5000 -0.1548 AFC East 17.9286 18.0476 0.119 NFC East 17.9643 18.2262 0.2619 NFC North 18.6548 18.5952 -0.0596 AFC South 22.4643 22.9286 0.4643
Stock Rising
Team Week 13 Average Week 14 Average Difference MIA 19.181 15.359 3.822 DET 14.042 11.464 2.578 BAL 18.889 16.409 2.480 MIN 28.431 26.168 2.263 NYG 21.708 20.132 1.576
Stock Falling
Team Week 13 Average Week 14 Average Difference GB 16.611 20.373 -3.762 NYJ 24.361 26.645 -2.284 NO 2.792 4.809 -2.017 ARI 9.056 10.695 -1.639 CLE 25.639 27.118 -1.479
Teams just don't move as much as they used to in the early weeks of the season. #HipsterGrandpaTweet #IronicHashtags
Subjective Average
Subjective Seahawks 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.000 0.000 Broncos 2 3 3 2 4 4 2 2 2 2 2 2.546 0.871 Panthers 3 2 5 4 2 2 3 3 3 4 5 3.273 0.894 Patriots 4 4 2 5 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 3.546 0.621 Saints 5 5 4 3 6 5 5 6 5 5 4 4.818 -2.568 49ers 6 7 8 6 5 7 7 5 7 6 6 6.364 1.136 Chiefs 7 8 6 7 9 8 6 9 6 7 7 7.273 -0.940 Bengals 8 6 7 8 8 6 8 7 8 8 8 7.455 -0.205 Eagles 10 9 10 11 7 10 13 12 10 10 10 10.182 1.318 Colts 9 11 9 12 12 12 11 11 9 9 11 10.546 0.204 Lions 12 10 12 9 13 13 10 8 11 11 9 10.727 1.690 Cowboys 11 12 11 10 10 9 12 14 13 12 13 11.546 0.287 Cardinals 13 13 13 13 14 11 9 10 12 13 12 12.091 -2.758 Ravens 14 14 14 14 11 14 16 13 14 14 14 13.818 3.182 Dolphins 17 15 16 16 15 19 14 15 15 15 17 15.818 4.099 Bears 15 20 17 15 18 18 15 18 16 16 15 16.636 -1.553 Chargers 16 17 15 18 20 16 18 16 17 17 18 17.091 -1.258 Steelers 18 16 21 19 19 21 20 20 19 18 19 19.091 -1.258 Giants 22 18 20 17 16 22 21 17 20 20 20 19.364 3.053 Rams 20 21 22 20 17 17 22 19 18 19 21 19.636 -1.553 Packers 19 24 19 21 23 15 17 30 21 21 16 20.546 -3.879 Titans 21 19 18 22 21 20 19 21 22 22 22 20.636 -1.219 Jets 23 22 23 24 30 23 23 28 23 23 23 24.091 -1.258 Bills 24 25 30 23 27 24 26 27 24 24 24 25.273 -0.940 Vikings 28 23 25 25 22 27 27 24 28 25 28 25.636 2.781 Raiders 25 27 24 26 29 29 25 23 25 28 27 26.182 0.401 Buccaneers 26 26 28 27 24 28 28 25 26 26 25 26.273 -1.023 Browns 27 31 27 28 28 26 24 22 27 27 26 26.636 -1.469 Jaguars 31 30 26 31 25 25 30 31 29 29 30 28.818 1.682 Falcons 29 28 29 29 26 30 31 26 30 30 29 28.818 1.515 Redskins 30 29 31 30 31 31 29 29 31 31 31 30.273 -1.856 Texans 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32.000 0.000
Observations:
I'm sure if Seattle could have moved up even more, they would have. Instead, they'll have to settle for being the unanimous number-1 for another week.
Beating the Chiefs again was far less impressive for Denver than it was the first time around.
Another loss, another slip in the rankings for the Chiefs.
Chargers, Steelers and Jets all fell the same amount this week; neat.
Bears and Rams fell the same amount as well.
Subjective Standard Deviation
Subjective Texans 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 0.000 0.000 Seahawks 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.000 0.000 Broncos 2 3 3 2 4 4 2 2 2 2 2 0.782 -0.333 Bengals 8 6 7 8 8 6 8 7 8 8 8 0.782 -0.047 Patriots 4 4 2 5 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 0.782 -0.017 Saints 5 5 4 3 6 5 5 6 5 5 4 0.833 0.400 Redskins 30 29 31 30 31 31 29 29 31 31 31 0.862 0.222 49ers 6 7 8 6 5 7 7 5 7 6 6 0.881 0.117 Chiefs 7 8 6 7 9 8 6 9 6 7 7 1.052 0.581 Panthers 3 2 5 4 2 2 3 3 3 4 5 1.052 0.365 Ravens 14 14 14 14 11 14 16 13 14 14 14 1.113 -0.928 Colts 9 11 9 12 12 12 11 11 9 9 11 1.233 0.223 Buccaneers 26 26 28 27 24 28 28 25 26 26 25 1.286 -0.353 Chargers 16 17 15 18 20 16 18 16 17 17 18 1.311 -0.207 Dolphins 17 15 16 16 15 19 14 15 15 15 17 1.336 -1.129 Titans 21 19 18 22 21 20 19 21 22 22 22 1.367 -0.015 Steelers 18 16 21 19 19 21 20 20 19 18 19 1.379 -0.851 Cowboys 11 12 11 10 10 9 12 14 13 12 13 1.437 0.157 Cardinals 13 13 13 13 14 11 9 10 12 13 12 1.443 0.500 Eagles 10 9 10 11 7 10 13 12 10 10 10 1.466 -0.034 Falcons 29 28 29 29 26 30 31 26 30 30 29 1.527 0.903 Lions 12 10 12 9 13 13 10 8 11 11 9 1.601 -0.459 Bears 15 20 17 15 18 18 15 18 16 16 15 1.611 0.059 Rams 20 21 22 20 17 17 22 19 18 19 21 1.720 -0.711 Raiders 25 27 24 26 29 29 25 23 25 28 27 1.898 1.258 Bills 24 25 30 23 27 24 26 27 24 24 24 1.958 1.015 Giants 22 18 20 17 16 22 21 17 20 20 20 1.967 1.474 Vikings 28 23 25 25 22 27 27 24 28 25 28 2.012 1.150 Browns 27 31 27 28 28 26 24 22 27 27 26 2.186 0.235 Jaguars 31 30 26 31 25 25 30 31 29 29 30 2.249 1.603 Jets 23 22 23 24 30 23 23 28 23 23 23 2.391 0.573 Packers 19 24 19 21 23 15 17 30 21 21 16 4.008 1.229
Observations:
Another week, another consensus at the top and bottom of the lists.
More than half of the teams saw their Standard Deviation go up this week, so teams are moving and not consistently.
When it comes to "inconsistency" in the rankings, there's Green Bay, then there's everyone else.
Chargers actually in the top-half of the league in ranking consistency.
Objective Average
Objective Seahawks 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1.100 0.344 Panthers 3 9 2 3 2 1 2 2 3 2 2.900 1.100 Broncos 2 3 3 2 5 3 3 8 2 3 3.400 -0.067 Saints 4 2 5 5 6 8 5 3 5 5 4.800 -1.467 49ers 6 6 4 4 11 5 4 6 4 4 5.400 0.711 Patriots 5 10 6 8 4 9 7 7 7 6 6.900 -0.678 Bengals 7 4 10 9 3 6 9 5 12 8 7.300 0.478 Chiefs 8 22 15 6 7 7 6 4 6 7 8.800 -0.022 Cardinals 11 8 7 7 10 11 8 13 9 9 9.300 -0.522 Eagles 9 5 8 13 8 10 14 10 11 13 10.100 1.011 Colts 15 18 11 11 9 12 11 14 8 10 11.900 -0.122 Lions 13 7 17 15 17 4 13 9 15 12 12.200 3.467 Cowboys 14 23 9 10 16 18 12 16 10 11 13.900 -2.011 Dolphins 17 12 13 14 14 17 15 17 16 14 14.900 3.544 Rams 12 29 12 12 18 16 10 19 13 15 15.600 -0.378 Bears 10 14 23 20 19 14 19 11 20 17 16.700 -0.589 Titans 22 21 21 18 13 13 17 12 18 19 17.400 0.822 Chargers 18 16 18 16 15 20 16 21 17 18 17.500 -1.389 Ravens 23 25 20 17 22 15 18 15 19 16 19.000 1.778 Packers 21 11 26 23 21 21 20 18 21 20 20.200 -3.644 Steelers 16 17 19 21 26 22 22 20 22 22 20.700 -1.700 Giants 25 15 16 19 20 26 25 28 14 21 20.900 0.100 Buccaneers 19 28 14 22 12 24 21 23 23 24 21.000 0.333 Bills 20 19 28 24 32 19 24 22 29 23 24.000 -1.111 Falcons 24 24 22 25 29 31 23 29 25 25 25.700 0.522 Vikings 26 26 25 27 23 30 28 30 26 26 26.700 1.744 Raiders 31 31 29 26 25 25 26 27 24 28 27.200 0.578 Redskins 28 27 30 29 24 23 30 26 28 30 27.500 -0.278 Browns 29 13 31 30 30 28 29 25 32 29 27.600 -1.489 Texans 30 20 32 28 31 27 27 24 31 31 28.100 1.011 Jets 27 30 27 32 28 29 31 31 30 27 29.200 -3.311 Jaguars 32 32 24 31 27 32 32 32 27 32 30.100 1.233
Observations:
Again, the Seahawks are firmly planted at the top of rankings.
Carolina is now the second-best team in the objective lists, passing the Broncos.
Despite beating the Chiefs, Denver dropped.
Chargers dropped more than the Bengals climbed.
Jets in free-fall. At this rate they'll be the worst team in the league by next week.
Objective Standard Deviation
Objective Seahawks 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 0.300 -0.656 Saints 4 2 5 5 6 8 5 3 5 5 1.536 0.122 Dolphins 17 12 13 14 14 17 15 17 16 14 1.700 -0.709 Patriots 5 10 6 8 4 9 7 7 7 6 1.700 -0.112 Broncos 2 3 3 2 5 3 3 8 2 3 1.744 0.589 Jets 27 30 27 32 28 29 31 31 30 27 1.778 -2.122 Chargers 18 16 18 16 15 20 16 21 17 18 1.803 -1.444 Cardinals 11 8 7 7 10 11 8 13 9 9 1.847 0.097 Vikings 26 26 25 27 23 30 28 30 26 26 2.052 0.411 49ers 6 6 4 4 11 5 4 6 4 4 2.059 0.689 Panthers 3 9 2 3 2 1 2 2 3 2 2.119 -0.420 Raiders 31 31 29 26 25 25 26 27 24 28 2.358 -0.171 Redskins 28 27 30 29 24 23 30 26 28 30 2.377 0.903 Eagles 9 5 8 13 8 10 14 10 11 13 2.625 -0.410 Bengals 7 4 10 9 3 6 9 5 12 8 2.685 -0.641 Steelers 16 17 19 21 26 22 22 20 22 22 2.722 -0.184 Falcons 24 24 22 25 29 31 23 29 25 25 2.795 0.310 Jaguars 32 32 24 31 27 32 32 32 27 32 2.809 1.245 Colts 15 18 11 11 9 12 11 14 8 10 2.844 -1.419 Ravens 23 25 20 17 22 15 18 15 19 16 3.286 -1.131 Titans 22 21 21 18 13 13 17 12 18 19 3.441 -0.016 Texans 30 20 32 28 31 27 27 24 31 31 3.590 -0.194 Packers 21 11 26 23 21 21 20 18 21 20 3.655 -1.722 Bears 10 14 23 20 19 14 19 11 20 17 4.051 0.180 Lions 13 7 17 15 17 4 13 9 15 12 4.094 1.386 Cowboys 14 23 9 10 16 18 12 16 10 11 4.182 -0.226 Bills 20 19 28 24 32 19 24 22 29 23 4.195 1.469 Buccaneers 19 28 14 22 12 24 21 23 23 24 4.583 0.500 Giants 25 15 16 19 20 26 25 28 14 21 4.700 -0.267 Browns 29 13 31 30 30 28 29 25 32 29 5.181 0.624 Chiefs 8 22 15 6 7 7 6 4 6 7 5.192 0.483 Rams 12 29 12 12 18 16 10 19 13 15 5.238 -0.608
Observations:
The consistency ranking here is much more linear than the Subjective list was.
More than half the teams saw their Standard Deviation go down.
Chargers are once again one of the more consistently-ranked teams.
Overall Average
Subj vs Obj Seahawks 1.000 1.100 1.050 0.172 Broncos 2.546 3.400 2.973 0.402 Panthers 3.273 2.900 3.086 0.997 Saints 4.818 4.800 4.809 -2.017 Patriots 3.546 6.900 5.223 -0.029 49ers 6.364 5.400 5.882 0.924 Bengals 7.455 7.300 7.377 0.137 Chiefs 7.273 8.800 8.036 -0.480 Eagles 10.182 10.100 10.141 1.165 Cardinals 12.091 9.300 10.695 -1.639 Colts 10.546 11.900 11.223 0.041 Lions 10.727 12.200 11.464 2.578 Cowboys 11.546 13.900 12.723 -0.862 Dolphins 15.818 14.900 15.359 3.822 Ravens 13.818 19.000 16.409 2.480 Bears 16.636 16.700 16.668 -1.071 Chargers 17.091 17.500 17.295 -1.323 Rams 19.636 15.600 17.618 -0.965 Titans 20.636 17.400 19.018 -0.199 Steelers 19.091 20.700 19.895 -1.478 Giants 19.364 20.900 20.132 1.576 Packers 20.546 20.200 20.373 -3.762 Buccaneers 26.273 21.000 23.636 -0.344 Bills 25.273 24.000 24.636 -1.025 Vikings 25.636 26.700 26.168 2.263 Jets 24.091 29.200 26.645 -2.284 Raiders 26.182 27.200 26.691 0.490 Browns 26.636 27.600 27.118 -1.479 Falcons 28.818 25.700 27.259 1.019 Redskins 30.273 27.500 28.886 -1.067 Jaguars 28.818 30.100 29.459 1.458 Texans 32.000 28.100 30.050 0.506
Observations:
The Broncos are nearly two full spots behind the Seahawks.
Jacksonville is finally out of the cellar!
Despite being the unanimous 32nd choice in the Subjective list, the Texans saw their overall ranking climb.
Vikings and Jets just passed each other, going opposite directions.
Giants quietly climbing back up the board.
Overall Standard Deviation
Subj vs Obj Seahawks 1.000 1.100 0.213 -0.450 Saints 4.818 4.800 1.220 0.101 Broncos 2.546 3.400 1.397 0.264 Chargers 17.091 17.500 1.578 -0.842 Dolphins 15.818 14.900 1.588 -0.960 49ers 6.364 5.400 1.630 0.361 Panthers 3.273 2.900 1.659 -0.084 Bengals 7.455 7.300 1.939 -0.342 Eagles 10.182 10.100 2.100 -0.196 Vikings 25.636 26.700 2.100 0.844 Patriots 3.546 6.900 2.122 0.446 Cardinals 12.091 9.300 2.158 0.781 Raiders 26.182 27.200 2.189 0.366 Redskins 30.273 27.500 2.236 1.005 Colts 10.546 11.900 2.260 -0.678 Steelers 19.091 20.700 2.274 -0.333 Jaguars 28.818 30.100 2.611 1.404 Falcons 28.818 25.700 2.714 0.067 Bears 16.636 16.700 3.029 0.190 Titans 20.636 17.400 3.038 0.476 Lions 10.727 12.200 3.141 0.285 Texans 32.000 28.100 3.152 0.292 Bills 25.273 24.000 3.285 1.235 Cowboys 11.546 13.900 3.285 0.241 Jets 24.091 29.200 3.318 0.048 Ravens 13.818 19.000 3.534 -0.239 Giants 19.364 20.900 3.624 0.277 Chiefs 7.273 8.800 3.742 0.411 Packers 20.546 20.200 3.848 -0.252 Browns 26.636 27.600 3.939 0.579 Buccaneers 26.273 21.000 4.219 0.693 Rams 19.636 15.600 4.322 -0.153
Observations:
Not really much more to add here ...
Difference in Averages
Subj vs Obj Ravens 13.818 19.000 5.182 1.404 Jets 24.091 29.200 5.109 2.053 Patriots 3.546 6.900 3.355 1.299 Cowboys 11.546 13.900 2.355 2.299 Steelers 19.091 20.700 1.609 0.442 Giants 19.364 20.900 1.536 2.953 Chiefs 7.273 8.800 1.527 -0.918 Lions 10.727 12.200 1.473 -1.777 Colts 10.546 11.900 1.355 0.327 Jaguars 28.818 30.100 1.282 0.449 Vikings 25.636 26.700 1.064 1.036 Raiders 26.182 27.200 1.018 -0.177 Browns 26.636 27.600 0.964 0.020 Broncos 2.546 3.400 0.855 0.938 Chargers 17.091 17.500 0.409 0.131 Seahawks 1.000 1.100 0.100 -0.344 Bears 16.636 16.700 0.064 -0.964 Saints 4.818 4.800 -0.018 -1.101 Eagles 10.182 10.100 -0.082 0.307 Bengals 7.455 7.300 -0.155 -0.683 Packers 20.546 20.200 -0.346 -0.235 Panthers 3.273 2.900 -0.373 -0.206 Dolphins 15.818 14.900 -0.918 0.554 49ers 6.364 5.400 -0.964 0.425 Bills 25.273 24.000 -1.273 0.171 Redskins 30.273 27.500 -2.773 -1.578 Cardinals 12.091 9.300 -2.791 -2.235 Falcons 28.818 25.700 -3.118 0.993 Titans 20.636 17.400 -3.236 -2.041 Texans 32.000 28.100 -3.900 -1.011 Rams 19.636 15.600 -4.036 -1.175 Buccaneers 26.273 21.000 -5.273 -1.356
Observations:
Oh, Baltimore. We so desperately want you to be good!
A team from New York is overrated? Say it ain't so!
12 teams have their rankings within 1 spot of each other. That's pretty good (Chargers are in that group).
Chicago gets the crown this week of "Closest to the Pin"
11 of 16 AFC teams are some varying degree of "over-ranked".
Tampa Bay continues to be the favorite whipping boy of the NFL.
Sources |
Essaouira is a port city located 2.5 hours away from Marrakech, Morocco. It is the perfect day trip as a colorful small city with an unique vibe. On the way to Essaouira from Marrakech you can spot the famous goats who stand on tree. If you have not seen pictures before, look the goats up right now!
As you walk along the port of Essaouira head on up the Citadel for the best views over the port and city. Behind the Essaouira Citadel you find fishermen with their catch of the day for sale. We also found a small pop up restaurant that had the freshest fish around with more food in the meal than we could handle.
Follow along on with our complete daily itinerary with more behind the scenes photos and videos on our TraveLibro account.
The best way to experience Essaouira is by walking through the historic walled city of the port. With its relaxed feel, there is no rush to explore the colorful stores around every corner. Take your time talking with the local artisans and find the most interesting gifts for yourself or family back at home.
We hope that these pictures have inspired you to start planning your next trip to Morocco. If you have any questions, comments or just want to let us know which photo is your favorite please let us know in the comments below.
Follow along on with our complete daily itinerary with more behind the scenes photos and videos on our TraveLibro account. |
The Real Estate Council of B.C. is investigating a marketing video which advertises "future redevelopment opportunities" that aren't possible under current city zoning and policies.
The Real Estate Council of B.C. is investigating a marketing video which advertises “future redevelopment opportunities” that aren’t possible under current city zoning and policies.
However, the real estate agents behind the ad maintain they’ve done their due diligence, noting that the concern at City Hall over the video is just a distraction from the issues surrounding the city’s rental stock, in a highly politicized discussion on real estate.
“We’ve been writing about this issue for the last decade and City Hall does not like us because we’ve basically outed them,” said Mark Goodman of the Goodman Report, a Vancouver-based group specializing in commercial real estate which has been publishing regular reports on the real estate industry since the 1980s.
The news of the investigation came just days after Carolyn Rogers, the superintendent of real estate with the Financial Institutions Commission (FICOM) presented a report on behalf of the Independent Advisory Group on Real Estate Regulation in B.C. (IAG) to Vancouver City Council, where the topic of whose duty it is to regulate aggressive and misleading real estate advertising was discussed during question period. Rogers is the former chair of the IAG.
Rogers said the FICOM “recognizes the public’s concern about aggressive real estate marketing practices, and the Real Estate Council is increasing its focus on industry practices following the Report of the Independent Advisory Group.”
“We are making arrangements to meet with the City of Vancouver to discuss the marketing practices being observed in the city,” she said in a statement. “We look forward to working with them on ways to better inform and protect the public.”
The video released by the Goodman Report showcases an assembly known as Southview Gardens, located at 3240 East 58th Avenue. The 6.58-acre property is the site of a rental complex, housing 140 townhouse and apartment units across 16 buildings. Many of those rental suites are three- and four-bedroom family units. Advertising material accompanying the video boasts an annual holding income of approximately $1,420,000, and invites interested buyers to “capitalize on extreme demand for new market and rental housing in an established neighbourhood.”
In the video block renderings of “future redevelopment opportunities,” resembling condo towers and large buildings, are superimposed onto an aerial view of the property. The video notes that the area’s zoning allows for apartments, townhouses, seniors’ and public housing, retail, service and entertainment establishments, gas stations, public parks, as well as church and related schools.
The site featured in the video, which was posted to YouTube earlier this year, has been designated and protected for rental housing according to land-use policy developed by the city in the 1970s. It is also part of a group of sites, which includes the nearby Champlain Mall, all of which are under a single CD-1 zoning, which has no remaining capacity for further development.
“We have screened the marketing video submitted to our offices, and the Real Estate Council has opened an investigation,” said Rogers.
However, a lawyer representing the Goodman Report forwarded a statement from the Goodmans Tuesday, noting that no complaint was received.
“The information we have from the Real Estate Council of B.C. is that no formal complaint has been received by them with respect to the marketing or advertising of the subject property,” the statement read.
According to the City of Vancouver, there had been inquiries about the listing, but officials have put out the same information each time.
“It’s the speculation that’s associated with it that is inconsistent with our policies and bylaws,” said Susan Haid, the city’s assistant director of planning for Vancouver South, noting the redevelopment suggested in the video isn’t in line with the area’s community vision plan or the city’s rental housing stock development plan. The only development permitted under current zoning bylaws would be a “1:1 requisite replacement of rental housing along with tenant relocation strategies.”
“We would not entertain a rezoning of the site. It’s absolutely in contradiction to our policy and bylaws.”
Haid said if any changes were to occur, it would require “a major community initiative” and planning process be undertaken, something the city has no intention of pursuing at this time. She also said the city was happy to communicate with real estate agents and interested buyers seeking information about property and assemblies for sale in Vancouver.
“We really encourage and promote getting very accurate information from the city,” she said.
Mark Goodman says his firm has been in communication with the city and that there have never been any concerns expressed about the handling of the listing, which was sold about three weeks ago and is slated to close in the fall. The buyer plans to keep Southview Gardens as rental property for the foreseeable future.
“We’re not suggesting you can demolish anything now — we’re suggesting, in the future, it will make a very nice redevelopment opportunity for market housing, assisted social housing, affordable rental housing — all the initiatives that the city wants to see — and that’s what the developer is buying,” he said.
David Goodman, who founded the Goodman Report, said they were upfront with every interested party who inquired about the property, and directed them to the city for more information on applicable zoning policies.
“We have not represented this as a development site, it is a future redevelopment site and frankly, half of Vancouver is a future redevelopment site,” he said.
Of the city’s concerns over the Southview Gardens advertising, he called it a “witch hunt,” noting the Goodman Report has been “critical over the past six or seven years of the city’s housing policies.”
“We believe the city’s policies have been regressive and not pro-rental,” he said, noting the 140 rental units at Southview Gardens could be 500 or 600 rental units instead, if regulations were loosened by the city. “I think the city doesn’t like the fact that we’re tweaking their nose.”
Jon Stovell of Reliance Properties said his company was interested in the Southview Gardens listing but eventually decided it was not for them.
He said he understands how the video might alarm residents currently living in Southview Gardens, but that anyone in the discussion to purchase a multi-million dollar property would make no mistakes over something like zoning, and would obviously work with the city on any future development.
“We certainly never felt that we were presented with something that was a promise that would lead to an erroneous conclusion,” he said, noting that future redevelopment is not beyond the realm of possibility, as the city has rezoned large sites in recent years, to keep up with growing populations.
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Each year, I put together a list of dates for the most popular festivals in the Chorlton area of Manchester alongside a short summary of what you can expect there.
This is my 2015 Chorlton Festival Calendar.
Chorlton Arts Festival 2015
15-24 May 2015
is by far Chorlton’s biggest festival, offering everything from music and dance to theatre and comedy.
This year’s festival boasts more than 100 events in over 30 Chorlton venues across ten days – 80 per cent of which are free. Far too much to mention everything here then, but 2015 highlights include a series of site-specific theatre performances in unusual places (such as a tram) called Theatre Exterior, novelist Olivia Piekarski’s live Q&A with The Fall’s former bass player Steve Hanley, and an audio-visual performance by folktronic singer-songwriter Minute Taker and visual artist Ana Stefaniak.
There’s also a return for the Chorlton Weekender, a mini music festival within the festival proper. This year it features O’Hooley & Tidow on Friday, 22 May (tickets £12 or £10 concessions), The Travelling Band (tickets £10 or £8 concessions) and Young Knives (tickets £10 or £8 concessions). You can also see the whole lot by buying a Chorlton Weekender Wristband (£25).
Manchester Vegan Fair 2015
Saturday, 16 May 2015 (11am – 5pm)
Chorlton is full of vegetarians and vegans so it’s no surprise to find that theis returning to the suburb for a second year running.
Organised by Chorlton-based charity Vegan Organic Network, the 2015 Manchester Vegan Fair has 70 stalls, live music and poetry, short films, talks and complementary therapies. There are also lots of quirky goings-on including a performance by bicycle dance troupe The Spokes, a circus-skills workshop, solar rickshaw rides, vegan speed dating and even a ‘roving stilt pirate’ (whatever that is).
Tickets for the fair, which takes place at Chorlton Irish Club on High Lane, are £2 or free for kids.
Chorlton Beer & Cider Festival 2015
2-4 July 2015
Otherwise known as the 2015or simply, theis back for its 11th year.
Run by Trafford & Hulme CAMRA and St Clement’s Church in association with Outstanding Beers, this time around there’ll be 90 real ales split over two bars – the first focusing on the ever-growing number of Greater Manchester breweries and the second offering beers from further afield.
We’re also promised an outdoor cider bar with more than 50 ciders and perries, the return of the New World Beers bar selling bottled beers from across the globe, and a few street-food stalls. Thursday (6pm-1030pm) will be a quieter preview event with limited advance tickets, while Friday (6pm-1030pm) and Saturday (1pm-930pm) are bigger affairs with live music.
Thursday tickets are £10 including £5 of beer tokens, while Friday and Saturday tickets are £10 including £4 of beer tokens.
Beech Road Family Fun Day 2015
Sunday, 5 July 2015 (Midday-5pm)
The successor to the, theis all about family entertainment.
There’ll be a host of stalls in Beech Road Park, along Beech Road and into Chorlton Green as well as fairground attractions, performances, music, dancing demos, hula-hoop workshops, circus skills and other child-friendly activities.
The businesses along Beech Road each make a contribution towards the running costs of this free festival, and any profits are given to the Friends of Beech Road Park to improve the facilities for everyone.
Manchester Food & Drink Festival 2015: Chorlton Fringe
10-21 September 2015
continues to get bigger and bigger so here’s hoping for more events under the Chorlton Fringe banner this year.
Previous fringes have included free and paid-for events such as cooking workshops, tastings, forages and meet-the-producer days at a variety of venues.
Admittedly there’s no word yet on what’s planned for the Chorlton Fringe of the 2015 Manchester Food & Drink Festival but hopefully tie-ins will start to be announced soon.
Chorlton Bonfire Night 2015
Thursday, 5 November 2015
The biggest bonfire night in Chorlton takes place on Chorlton Green.
Organised by the Horse & Jockey pub, the free Chorlton Bonfire Night 2015 traditionally features two fireworks displays (one for kids at around 7pm and one for adults at around 9pm) although both are fun regardless of age to be honest.
Bootleg Brewing Company, the microbrewery run from inside the Horse & Jockey, usually gets in on the act too by selling its seasonal treacle stout Treason & Plot.
Chorlton Book Festival 2015
20-28 November 2015
will take place once again at the end of November.
It’s still a fair way off, mind, so details are thin on the ground. Typically, though, you can expect a range of mostly free events including poetry slams, literature talks, author readings, writing workshops and (my personal favourite) a literary pub quiz.
Chorlton Christmas Lights 2015
Christmas 2015
There are usually two separate Chorlton Christmas Lights events.
The Beech Road Christmas Lights Switch-On, run by the Beech Road Traders’ Association, sees a lantern parade start at Beech Road Park at 545pm on Thursday, 26 November 2015 and make its way over to Chorlton Green for the big switch-on at 615pm. Not to be confused with the nearby Central Chorlton Christmas Lights Switch-On, run by Chorlton Traders, in the precinct.
Both are free events designed to get you into the festive spirit and typically feature stuff like carol singing, mince pies, mulled wine and guest appearances by one Father Christmas.
Chorlton New Year’s Eve Party 2015
Thursday, 31 December 2015
Loads of places put on paid-for events for New Year’s Eve but in terms of free fireworks displays the most popular one takes place on Chorlton Green.
Organised by the Horse & Jockey pub, the Chorlton New Year’s Eve Party draws people from all over the area to see in the new year.
Chorlton Big Green Happening 2015
Deferred for 2015
made a comeback last April under a new name,but the organisers seem to be having a year off in 2015.
The inaugural Chorlton Big Green Happening in 2014 included stalls specialising in food and drink, recycling, art, clothing and politics as well as performances and ethical fashion shows. The main festival took place during the day in and around St Clement’s Church on High Lane and was free to attend, while an accompanying gig inside the church later on cost £7 on the door.
Here’s hoping it returns again in 2016.
Horse & Jockey festivals
Throughout 2015
The Horse & Jockey pub runs so many events nowadays that it probably deserves a special mention in the 2015 Chorlton Festival Calendar.
These include:
The Horse & Jockey Summer Solstice 2015 (12pm-6pm Sunday, 21 June 2015)
Joktoberfest Beer Festival 2015 (September 2015 presumably)
The Horse & Jockey Winter Solstice 2015 (December 2015), and maybe even
Chorlton Green Food & Drink Festival 2015: Sup-Up & Eat (date unknown)
Keep an eye on their website or sign up to their newsletter for more details as and when they’re confirmed.
Important note: If there’s anything that needs changing or updating in the Chorlton Festival Calendar 2015, or you’ve heard of another festival that’s happening soon, message me in the comments section (below) and I’ll get it sorted. Thanks!
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When we escape into the thrilling, surreal worlds of our favorite TV shows and movies, we often gain temporary sanctuary from real world worries like money. Of course, the beloved swashbucklers upon our screen don't always have that luxury. This infographic assigns monetary values to the lifestyles and actions that these characters take. The numbers are entirely theoretical, and we challenge you to calculate your own conclusions.
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Rules to restrict nutrient pollution in North Carolina waterways are under attack.
By Catherine Clabby
Language tucked into the Senate’s budget alarms people who want North Carolina to aggressively reduce pollution in rivers, lakes, and estuaries to protect drinking water and fish.
The budget provision orders the Department of Environmental Quality to review and revise, in unspecified ways, the state’s nutrient-pollution management rules. The same goes for rules requiring natural buffers along waterways to reduce that pollution.
Existing rules would be repealed by 2020.
“This is probably the most significant effort to roll back water quality regulations that I’ve ever seen,” said Robin Smith, who for 12 years, until 2013, was Assistant Secretary of what is now DEQ.
If kept in budget negotiations between the Senate and the House, the language would block activation of nutrient-reduction rules upstream of Jordan and Falls Lake. All current strategies for the four locations with nutrient-management plans would be repealed by 2020 as would be protections planned for the Catawba River basin and the Randleman reservoir.
Regulations requiring riparian buffers to assist nutrient management could go away as well.
Too much nutrition?
Nitrogen and phosphorus are natural food sources for aquatic plants and animals. But human and animal waste, fertilizer runoff from farms and tainted storm water have dumped disruptive amounts of the nutrients into streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries around the world.
Excessive amounts of nutrients can produce large algae blooms, which can alter the taste and scent of water and, more seriously, deplete oxygen in the water. Low oxygen can sicken and kill fish. Some algal blooms can boost production of toxic compounds and bacteria, posing risks to people who consume tainted fish, including shellfish, and water.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects states to reduce nutrient pollution of rivers, lakes and estuaries. North Carolina requires likely polluters upstream of impaired estuaries and lakes to reduce nutrient releases into the Neuse River basin, the Tar-Pamlico River basin estuary, the Falls Lake watershed, and Jordan Lake watershed.
Municipalities in North Carolina have spent tens of millions of dollars to upgrade wastewater treatment operations to comply. Builders and farmers have installed stormwater controls and created riparian buffers, natural strips along the edges of streams and river banks that can’t be developed or planted, to slow and clean tainted runoff.
Each step been shown to reduce the amount of nutrient-laced runoff that can reach a waterway. But they don’t always rapidly reduce the amount of nutrients detected in impaired waters. The Senate budget language describes that as failure.
“Existing nutrient management strategies in many cases have shown little to no improvement in water quality, have created an increased regulatory and economic burden in the billions of dollars to the State, its municipalities, and its citizens, and have limited, and in some cases significantly limited, land use options for thousands of public and private properties,” the budget text reads.
Delayed implementation
The General Assembly has already delayed the most stringent provisions of the Jordan Lake rules, passed in 2009, multiple times. That’s been caused in part by opposition by politicians, builders and others from upstream communities such as Greensboro and Burlington that pay the price, but don’t always see the downstream benefits.
During a debate on proposed amendments to the Senate budget last week, Sen. Trudy Wade (R-Jamestown) said change in nutrient management is needed because costly efforts made voluntarily upstream have not reduced algae levels in places such as Jordan Lake.
“People upstream have done their part. Greensboro has already spent $61 million on a treatment plant. Burlington has spent $31 million on a treatment plant. Greensboro plans to spend $55 million more and make other improvements long before these rules come into effect,” Wade said. “They are way ahead of the game. And guess what, it hasn’t made a dent in the algae in Jordan Lake.”
But Sen. Mike Woodard (D-Durham) said it’s impossible to judge the effects of pollution controls that are not yet in place. They inevitably take time to work, Woodard said.
That said, nutrient-release regulation has improved water quality in the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico estuaries, he stressed.
“The current nutrient-manage strategies have reduced nitrogen and phosphorous pollution where they have been implemented,” Woodard argued. “Already conditions are not as bad as they were. While estuaries have stabilized, they are still in a very fragile place.”
Steve Tedder, a retired state environmental water quality section chief and a member of state’s Environmental Management Commission, agreed. It’s quite likely the existing nutrient–management rules could be improved, in part by making them more flexible and less costly for some, he said. Also, previously unaccounted-for sources, possibly polluted groundwater and nutrients emitted by poultry farms, could be better understood.
But discarding an approach to pollution control developed with many participants in and out of government over decades would be a mistake, he said.
“Anytime you take 30 to 40 years of collective work on multiple basins where they’ve had nutrient problems and basically thrown those out the door without being very informed of the facts, I think that is not a good way of doing business,” Tedder said.
“When people say that the strategies in place are not working, I disagree with them. Remember that in the Neuse we did something in mid-90s, Tar-Pamlico in the 80s. A lot of factors have changed since then, including population. You have a lot of ways nutrients can get into the system. This can be improved,” Tedder said, stressing that existing controls have produced concrete benefits.
“If you look at fish kill records you see substantial changes. That tells you that things are improving. I just hate to see all of that lost,” Tedder said, referring to headline-grabbing kills that contributed to the drive to restrict nutrient pollution.
DEQ records dating back to 1997 show a four-fold decrease in the number of fish kill deaths between 1997 and 2015.
Even more analysis
The Senate move would also commit $2 million to the chancellor’s office of UNC-Chapel Hill to launch a study of nutrient control strategies in North Carolina and elsewhere, including those focused on cleaning impaired waters. It would examine costs and benefits.
In addition, the budget allocates $500,000 to study the feasibility of using freshwater mussels to help clean up nutrient-polluted waters, even though those same mussels are imperiled, due in part to pollution, including excessive nutrients in the water.
The shellfish do dine on algae, which can grow profusely after ingesting nutrients in impaired waters. Researchers in New York, Washington state and Sweden, for example, have launched projects investigating whether they have promise as bio-extractors, or living cleaners. But it remains unknown whether mussels could help clean large bodies of waters such as Jordan Lake, Falls Lake or the state’s estuaries.
A previous effort by state officials to test a novel means of reducing algae in a North Carolina waterway did not fare well. With more than $1 million investment from legislators, DEQ officials installed solar-powered water mixers called SolarBees in Jordan Lake to try to reduce algae growth.
When DEQ staff members produced a report concluding they did not work, department officials yanked it from an Environmental Management Commission website and rewrote it to include a more positive assessment. The EMC water quality committee, which Tedder previously chaired, rejected the revised document and endorsed the first. The committee endorsed a report favoring the use of buffers too, not a DEQ version lacking the endorsement.
The Senate budget language would terminate the SolarBee project too.
North Carolina town and city officials will be watching carefully for what nutrient-management language ends up in the final budget. Municipalities have stakes in both protecting and cleaning up waterways, said Scott Mooneyham, director of Public Affairs for the NC League of Municipalities.
“No one has been held accountable to the extent of municipalities because it is far easier to hold point-source contributors accountable.” Mooneyham said. “Yet municipalities also must pay treatment costs for drinking water when streams are nonetheless impaired by a combination of contributors.”
Making plans to repeal existing rules when what will follow them is not known is what particularly concerns Smith, the former DEQ assistant secretary.
“This would completely roll back the existing nutrient standards to be replaced by some unknown,” she said.
This story was corrected to identify Steve Tedder’s membership on the Environmental Management Commission. |
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t watched this week’s episode of Justified, “Starvation” written by Chris Provenzano and directed by Michael Pressman, stop reading now. As he’ll do throughout the season, showrunner Graham Yost takes us inside the writers room. And bonus, he offers a few teases for the April 8 season finale.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Last episode had a physical bomb; this one had emotional ones. Let’s start at the beginning. The episode opened with Wynn lying to cartel muscle Alberto and claiming he’d killed Boyd.
Three things: When we get toward the end of the season, we can sort of end up gang-writing a script, to a certain degree, because we’ve got to get it done in two or three days. Provenzano wrote the bulk of the script, but there were a few scenes by other people. This, however, was pure Provenzano, and it was his idea to have Duffy say, “Oh, Boyd Crowder, yeah, I killed him.” When we read it, it was just like, oh that’s fantastic: It gives us someplace to go, and it ended up being a really important part of the episode because it created the tension later on when Boyd sees Alberto and Alberto sees Boyd and it’s like uh-ohhhh. Another thing about it was Michael Pressman, who directed the episode: This was the first time we’ve worked with him. [Justified exec producer/director] Michael Dinner knows him from back in the day, but you never entirely know how a new director is gonna work on the show. You know he’s good because he’s done great work in the past on other shows, but is he gonna get it? I remember when we saw the first cut, and the whole notion of starting over black, and just hearing Duffy speaking, and then coming in and hanging on Duffy before you reveal Alberto sitting there — it was, “Okay, we’re in. This is a great director, and he totally gets the show, and he’s doing fun stuff.” And then the last thing is just Jere Burns’ performance: We play Wynn Duffy being kinda above things and in-charge, or at least in control and having a sardonic take on things. And in this scene, you can just see he’s terrified that he’s gonna be skinned alive.
Alberto gave Wynn till sundown the next day to deliver Darryl, so Wynn called Boyd to his RV to ask for help finding him. Was it scripted for Wynn to put his arm around Boyd like that? You can never quite tell how to read his affection for Boyd.
I’m sure that’s something they just found on set. You don’t know with him, and that’s one of the fun things we have in writing him and Jere has in performing him. I think it’s an appreciation of Boyd, more than anything. It all comes off of the scene at the end of last season where he says, “We’re survivors.” There’s something about that in Boyd that he appreciated.
Raylan, Tim, and Rachel interrupted that meeting to start squeezing Wynn and Boyd in their own search for Darryl.
Tim [Olyphant] was looking for various examples that we could show of them putting the squeeze on both Boyd and Wynn, and we’re doing a basic cable show in seven days, and I said, “Tim, we’re probably gonna be able to just shoot one.” (Laughs) We heard about all these other things that Marshals will do. If they know that a restaurant is owned by bad guys, well, they’ll just start eating there and have cops eating there all the time to dry up the bad-guy business. Obviously pulling licenses and doing anything that they can in terms of the legal status of an operation and taking it down. We thought, let’s just tow the RV.
Are we going to see the RV again? Fans are attached to it.
We will see the RV again. Look, there’s your spoiler for this phone call.
We’ve talked a lot in these postmortems over the years about the fact that you can’t have Raylan and Boyd together a ton because after all that’s gone down, Raylan should bring him in. Now we’re seeing Raylan play that card, threatening to use Boyd’s file. Were you saving that for this point in the series, leading into the final season?
We headed in that direction, and you’ll see in the finale why. But yeah, it’s reigniting, restating, re-presenting the central relationship of the series and the conflict between the two of them…. It’s funny how things change, and yet they don’t. From the very beginning of the season, we liked the idea that Boyd would get into bed with the Crowes and realize it was a huge mistake, and that Raylan would be after the Crowes and Boyd would try to help Raylan get the Crowes — boiling down to Darryl specifically. What we originally thought might be a couple of episodes turned out to be one. Then the other change that happened was that it doesn’t work out for Boyd. That’s just where we got to by the end of the season.
Darryl came looking for “Pecker” at the hotel room and beat Mikey until he revealed that Boyd’s guys had hidden the dope. First, let’s talk about Wynn sweetly giving Mikey water.
Yeah. That’s not how it was scripted. The way Provenzano scripted it, he actually had Wynn Duffy sitting on the couch cradling Mikey’s head in his lap. And it was just like, yeah, that’s too far. But the same intent was there, that he cares very much for Mike.
Boyd came up with the idea to lead Darryl, the Marshals, and the cartel all to the dope. He walked into the Marshals office like, “Your savior has arrived,” and told Raylan that he wanted a clean slate in exchange for helping them catch Darryl with the heroin. The first step was getting Carl and Caleb to tell Darryl where the dope was but not make it seem too easy. Caleb taking a bullet in the knee and yelling, “This is the worst job in the world!” — so great.
That was a pitch early on in the break of the episode. We thought that would be an act out [leading into a commercial break], and it turned out to be.
Knowing everyone was looking for him, Darryl guilted a distraught Wendy into going to pick up the dope. She came to her senses and decided not to touch the drugs, but even though she walked out empty-handed, the Marshals grabbed her on suspicion. Plan B was Boyd wearing a wire and trying to get Darryl to admit he shot Art on tape. Boyd was against it — “I look good wearin’ a lot of things, but a wire ain’t one of ’em” — but he agreed once he saw Albert cruise by and spot him.
That evolved. In the first draft, Raylan was pushing for Boyd to wear a wire right from the beginning, and Boyd said no and came up with this alternate plan: get him for drugs and maybe you can squeeze him with that. And then the decision was made to save the wire for that scene. It worked fine, but the notion of seeing Alberto being the thing that gets Boyd onboard came fairly late in the game, and it was a combination of Tim, Walton, and Chris.
Boyd arranged to take the dope to Darryl at Audrey’s, where Dewey had returned to say goodbye to his whore friends — again. Let’s back up to him stealing gas from that woman to get there and his line, “If you’re just gonna be a minute, you mind if I run in and take a s—?”
[Executive producer] Fred Golan really thought it was too crude, and I kinda sided with him, but on the other hand, we give the writer, and the director, and the actors a lot of leeway. They thought it would work and it would be funny, and it ended up being really funny.
So often, the things fans think of as “so Justified” are the things you guys have debated about.
Oh yeah, that’s been the way right from the beginning. You’re just afraid of making him too ridiculous, or of any moment being too ludicrous. That’s part of the little razor’s edge that we have to walk. |
Stephen Hawking’s Productive Laziness
January 11th, 2017 · 28 comments
Hawking’s Fixed Schedule Productivity
In the 1980s, at the height of his intellectual productivity, Stephen Hawking used to head home from his office between five and six. He rarely worked later.
Here’s how he explained his behavior to his PhD student Bruce Allen (now a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics):
“Bruce, here’s some advice: The problem with physics is that most of the days we don’t make any major headway (on our projects). That’s why you should do other stuff: listen to music, meet good friends. There’s one exception to this rule: If you find a solution for a given problem, you work 24 hours a day and forget everything else. Until the problem is solved in its entirety.”
I’ve seen this behavior before from other elite level creatives. For them, deep, audacious results are the only currency that matters. The idea of being busy for the sake of being busy in between those big swings seems superfluous.
To be sure, they constantly seek inspiration in reading and daydreams and conversation with other elite producers, but this is a pleasurable background hum that precedes the cacophony instigated by the eventual epiphany.
(For a great study in the reality of “24 hours a day and forget everything else” technical work at the highest level, I recommend Birth of a Theorem.)
Most of us are not Stephen Hawking and never will be. I wonder, however, if there’s not a more general lesson lurking for anyone who wants to produce valuable things: go big when the work demands it, but outside those situations leave plenty of time for music and good friends.
(Photo by Bryan Alexander. The above quote was translated to English from a German newspaper article. Hat tip: David.) |
Michelangelo often surreptitiously inserted pagan symbols into his works of art, many of them possibly associated with anatomical representations. A new analysis suggests that Michelangelo may have concealed symbols associated with female anatomy within his famous work in the Medici Chapel.
For example, the sides of tombs in the chapel depict bull/ram skulls and horns with similarity to the uterus and fallopian tubes, respectively.
Numerous studies have offered interpretations of the link between anatomical figures and hidden symbols in works of art not only by Michelangelo but also by other Renaissance artists.
"This study provides a previously unavailable interpretation of one of Michelangelo's major works, and will certainly interest those who are passionate about the history of anatomy," said Dr. Deivis de Campos, lead author of the Clinical Anatomy article. Another recent analysis by Dr. de Campos and his colleagues revealed similar hidden symbols in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. |
Tajikistan legislators passed a law that effectively bans hijabs, joining a long list of countries that limit or ban Islamic dress.
The new law requires citizens to “stick to traditional and national clothes,” which means either uncovered hair or a scarf tied behind the head, along with long dresses for women, according to Radio Free Europe. The law does not specifically outlaw the hijab, or variations of Islamic veils for women, but enforces a traditional Tajik dress code that a hijab would violate.
“It’s really dangerous,” Tajik Minister of Culture Shamsiddin Orumbekzoda told RFE. “Everyone looks at them with concern, like they could be hiding something under their hijab.”
The law may be the final nail on the coffin for hijabs in Tajikistan, as it joins restrictions already in place against the Islamic dress. Women wearing hijabs are forbidden from entering government offices. Tajik authorities removed hijabs from 1,700 women, shaved the beards of 13,000 men, shut down 162 stores that sold hijabs, and arrested 89 “hijab wearing prostitutes” in January 2016, according to the Daily Mail.
Tajik police cracked down on hijabs yet again in August 2017, when they approached 8,000 women and demanded that they either wear their head scarves in the traditional Tajik fashion or remove them, according to the Independent.
While Tajik authorities and some citizens support the new law for reasons of security and preserving cultural identity, citizens are divided over the law’s implications for personal liberties.
“I have to decide for myself what to wear. No one has the right to tell me ‘you have to wear this,'” human rights activist Oinikhol Bobonazarova told RFE.
The law does not define any penalties for breaking the mandate to wear traditional Tajik clothing, though legislators said they could add penalties at a later date.
Tajikistan joins a long list of countries that have banned face and head concealing Islamic dress to varying degrees. Belgium, France, and the Netherlands have bans on full-face Islamic veils, and Bulgaria, Austria, Germany, Latvia, and Kosovo also banned face-concealing Islamic veils. Four African countries — Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, and Gabon — also banned face-concealing Islamic headwear.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British and European Union negotiators exchanged recriminations on Wednesday over a lack of progress in the latest round of talks on Britain’s withdrawal, with both sides demanding change to meet looming deadlines.
Director General at the Department for Exiting the European Union Sarah Healey, Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis, Britain's Permanent Representative to the European Union Tim Barrow meet in Brussels, Belgium August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Vidal
Ahead of a planned Thursday morning news conference with his British counterpart David Davis, chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier rejected complaints that his team was too rigidly tied by laboriously agreed guidelines from the member states to find compromises with Britain’s demands for close new relations.
For their part, British officials hotly denied accusations they were too short on ideas and preparation to make progress the EU wants to see on the divorce settlement before the other 27 leaders will agree to launch talks on a future trade pact.
“It’s quite difficult to negotiate with people who don’t seem to have the flexibility that would allow them to negotiate,” one said, echoing Davis’s call for more “flexibility and imagination” from Brussels.
In a pointed tweet, Barnier rejected the suggestion that the guidelines handed to him by the other governments — themselves the product of months of negotiation — were tying his hands. He renewed EU calls for Britain to give more detail on its wishes.
“Guidelines are designed for serious and constructive negotiations but we need clear UK positions on all issues,” the former French foreign minister said. If potential compromises can be identified by the technicians, EU officials say, they can go back to political leaders for approval to cut deals.
With little more than a year left to agree the withdrawal terms and transitional arrangements to avoid disruption to lives and business across the continent when Britain leaves in March 2019, both sides hope an EU summit on Oct. 19-20 can agree that “sufficient progress” has been made to launch free trade talks.
Officials said differences had narrowed on some issues in a divorce settlement that must determine the rights of expatriate citizens, border arrangements, especially on the island of Ireland, and disparate technicalities including legal relations and Britain’s ties with the Euratom nuclear materials treaty.
Related Coverage Tactics rather than policy shift? Labour surprises on Brexit
MONEY TROUBLES
However, a gulf remains over EU demands that Britain pay possibly 60 billion euros ($70 billion) on departure. British negotiators presented on Tuesday their legal analysis of what London accepts will be some post-Brexit obligations to the EU.
Though neither side is advancing hard figures yet, the British rejected what they called a sweeping “top down” approach from the EU and argued for a more detailed, “bottom up” review based on diverse legal arrangements across many budget areas.
Britain would like to see the pace of direct talks stepped up, beyond the roughly monthly schedule agreed in July. Two more week-long rounds are scheduled before the October summit. Davis also wants Barnier’s team to loosen their refusal yet to discuss future trade arrangements, arguing that this hampers progress on agreeing some divorce elements, such as the Irish land border.
A source close to Barnier stressed that the EU was willing to discuss the future relationship once “sufficient progress” — a deliberately vague concept — is made. That could, the source said, help resolve complaints from Britain, such as about an EU refusal to agree now that British tourists could keep EU cards that give them easy access to medical care across the Union.
Several officials offered downbeat assessments of progress — “awful” was the verdict of one EU diplomat. However, others cautioned that results this week were never expected to be great and said both sides are still figuring out exactly what the other wants and where potential areas for trade-offs will lie.
While many doubt a breakthrough by October — some senior EU officials see Prime Minister Theresa May spoiling for a bust-up with her counterparts — some EU diplomats close to the process cautioned against too deep a pessimism.
The EU executive has a track record of creative deal-making and the 27, while demanding much from Britain, also do not want to see it depart in chaos.
Slideshow (2 Images)
And while Barnier’s boss, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, blasted as inadequate a series of British proposals over the summer, one senior official said they showed signs May was trying to prepare public opinion for compromises that may disappoint many Britons who voted for Brexit last year.
“We need to be careful not to be too negative about these papers,” he said. “You can say a lot of things about the Brits, but they ain’t dumb ... Even if we are very disappointed with where we are ... maybe it’s about creating a haze, under the cover of which you can turn the ship around.”
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit point man, told fellow EU lawmakers on Wednesday that while he dismissed many British proposals — a call for an “invisible” border in Ireland was “surrealist”, he said — he believed that May’s threat of walking out without any deal had now firmly receded. |
Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Courtesy of Warner Bros.
This question originally appeared on Quora.
Answer by Sandhya Ramesh:
My first instinct was to laugh at this question, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how very valid this question is. It begs us to explore into Voldemort’s character.
Did Voldemort ever have sex? We don’t explicitly know, but it’s easy to guess. Voldemort is a very unifaceted, one-dimensional character. He’s evil, and that’s about all. There are no layers of complexity to his persona, unlike Dumbledore or even Draco Malfoy. We know that Voldemort was incapable of love. He did not love anyone, and did not care to be loved. He felt nothing for his family, and only wanted his friends in school to rally around him because he wanted to hold power over them. Bellatrix Lestrange was obviously in love with him and worshiped him, but he only cared for her servitude, not her. We know that he did not date anyone, even when at Hogwarts.
But sex is different from love. While love often accompanies sexual desires, it’s perfectly possible for a person to have sex independent of emotions, or to use it as a weapon to exert power and machismo. We see it around us in the media all the time: a prime example being James Bond. Sex is instinctive and offers one of the highest forms of pleasure. To most people, that is. Voldemort, in my opinion, was above that. He would have looked at sexual desire as a weakness—something that could be exploited and used against him, something that would distract him from his goal of immortality. Sex is a basic human need, and Voldemort wanted to distance himself from being human as much as possible. He would abhor the physical union of a man and a woman’s body (or a man and a man’s). In fact, I believe he was too consumed by megalomania to share his body with anyone else at all. To him, his body was his own, and was made to experiment with.
Voldemort was also a psychopath, and psychopaths have a very deviant sexuality (in most cases of real life examples). If anything at all got Voldemort sexually excited, it was the prospect of power—power to kill, not power to rape. Anywhere we find sexual undertones to his character, it has been just before a display of power and has also been homoerotic—when Harry and Riddle meet at the Chamber of Secrets, when Voldemort is about to get his body back in the graveyard, when he and Harry are in the cage, etc. J.K. Rowling’s language is very vivid when she describes these scenes. The words are soft, slippery, dangerous, and filled with sexual connotations. She especially describes Voldemort’s long fingers, his silky voice, his nostrils flaring up in excitement, his heavy breathing, his gently caressing his wand. She uses words like penetrate, forcibly taken, and many other euphemisms for rape. However, in my opinion, these lines of text written with the sole purpose of making the reader aware of Lord Voldemort’s perversion (and for us to be disgusted by him), and to possibly hint that power to kill is the only thing that got him sexually excited. Whether Rowling really intended for her words to have erotic connotations is almost irrelevant as she achieved the sole purpose of using them—to make our skin crawl, to make us understand that Voldemort is perverse, loves danger, and is to be feared.
Sex also has a evolutionary purpose, but Voldemort didn’t care for his bloodline. He never expressed any kind of desire to have progeny, because, I’m sure, he didn’t think there was any woman who was worth carrying his child. Voldemort is very dismissive of women in general. I’m not equating my previous homoeroticism point with misogyny here, but his dealings with female characters have been very indicative of how less he accepts and values members of the female gender. He finds Ginny boring, he demeans Lily Potter’s love (including his infamous “Stand aside, girl!” line—he doesn’t want to bother with her), he uses disturbingly casual language when talking about how he violated Bertha Jorkins, he is disinterestedly sadistic about the female teacher he tortures in Malfoy’s house. Reiterating, I don’t think he was misogynistic. He just didn’t bother to think women important and didn’t find them interesting, even as victims. The sole exception was Bellatrix Lestrange, and again, for her unwavering loyalty. When he talked about one of the characters being pregnant, he uses the word mated. That’s how impersonal fornication and reproduction with women is to him.
However, despite his own views about himself engaging in a sexual act, I do believe he knew exactly how much other people valued sex, attraction, and love. He is often described as being irresistibly handsome as Tom Riddle, and he is sure to have known that. With people like Hepzibah Smith, he played her attraction toward him to achieve his means. When he became Lord Voldemort, he had reached a stage where he had a faithful base and didn’t need to charm anyone to get his way. Even more so because he had lost so much of humanity in his transformations, he had only the basic human need for survival: food. By the time he was Lord Voldemort (despite what I said earlier about the graveyard scene), Tom Riddle had become fully and completely asexual.
So my answer to the question is yes, Lord Voldemort was a virgin.
More questions on Quora: |
The Eighth District Court of Appeals in Cleveland rejected the use of Ohio’s constitutional same-sex marriage ban to prevent a lesbian mother from sharing custody of her children with her former partner.
According to Lambda Legal:
Rita Goodman and her former partner Siobhan LaPiana were in a committed relationship for 10 years. During that time the women planned and had two children. LaPiana gave birth to the children, but both women equally parented the boys, who love and rely on both of them as their mothers. Before the birth of the first child, Goodman and LaPiana drafted and signed a parenting agreement detailing their intent to share all responsibilities of parenthood. After the couple split, LaPiana began restricting Goodman’s time with the boys. In February 2007, Goodman filed a lawsuit, and in August, 2008, the trial court ordered visitation for Goodman. LaPiana appealed, arguing Ohio’s anti-gay constitutional amendment prevents courts from permitting former lesbian partners to share custody, and the court’s order unconstitutionally infringed on her right to autonomy as a parent. Those arguments were rejected by the court.
Ohio has three marriage bans, but the constitutional ban, as decided by voters, banned not only gay marriage but it also barred the state and local governments from recognizing anything resembling gay marriage, like domestic partnerships.
“When a [custody] dispute arises, as it did in here, courts must do what they have always done — decide what is in the best interest of the children. This is exactly what the trial court did in this case,” Judge Mary Boyle wrote in the ruling.
This decision indicates that this Ohio constitutional amendment does not come into play when deciding child custody between former same-sex partners. Both parties in this case legally agreed to parent these children from birth, and this court protected parent’s rights as well as the children’s relationships with each parent. |
Leslie Dewan, cofounder and chief executive officer of Transatomic Power.
Nuclear energy startup Transatomic Power has backed away from bold claims for its advanced reactor technology after an informal review by MIT professors highlighted serious errors in the company’s calculations, MIT Technology Review has learned.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, founded in 2011 by a pair of MIT students in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, asserted that its molten-salt reactor design could run on spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors and generate energy far more efficiently than they do. In a white paper published in March 2014, the company proclaimed its reactor “can generate up to 75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor.”
Those lofty claims helped it raise millions in venture capital, secure a series of glowing media profiles (including one in this publication), and draw a rock-star lineup of technical advisors. But in a paper on its site dated November 2016, the company downgraded “75 times” to “more than twice.” In addition, it now specifies that the design “does not reduce existing stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel” or use them as its fuel source. The promise of recycling nuclear waste, which poses tricky storage and proliferation challenges, was a key initial attraction of the company and captured considerable attention.
“In early 2016, we realized there was a problem with our initial analysis and started working to correct the error,” cofounder Leslie Dewan said in an e-mail response to an inquiry from MIT Technology Review.
The dramatic revisions followed an analysis in late 2015 by Kord Smith, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT and an expert in the physics of nuclear reactors.
At that point, there were growing doubts in the field about the company’s claims and at least some worries that any inflated claims could tarnish the reputation of MIT’s nuclear department, which has been closely associated with the company. Transatomic also has a three-year research agreement with the department, according to earlier press releases.
In reviewing the company’s white paper, Smith noticed immediate red flags. He relayed his concerns to his department head and the company, and he subsequently conducted an informal review with two other professors.
“I said this is obviously incorrect based on basic physics,” Smith says. He asked the company to run a test, which ended up confirming that “their claims were completely untrue,” Smith says.
He notes that promising to increase the reactor’s fuel efficiency by 75 times is the rough equivalent of saying that, in a single step, you'd developed a car that could get 2,500 miles per gallon.
Ultimately, the company redid its analysis and produced and posted a new white paper.
To be sure, it would still be a notable accomplishment if the company could build a reactor that improved fuel energy efficiency over conventional reactors by a factor more than two. In addition, the new white paper notes the reactor could reduce waste by 53 percent compared to light-water reactors. The viability of the latter finding was recently verified by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
But the analysis found that the reactor couldn’t sustain a fission chain reaction using spent fuel long enough for it to be a feasible option, as previously hoped, Dewan said in a subsequent phone interview.
Related Story Leslie Dewan | Innovators Under 35 What if we could build a nuclear reactor that costs half as much, consumes nuclear waste, and will never melt down?
“I’m very glad that we have this robust technical analysis in place, confirmed by Oak Ridge, and we’re committed to moving ahead with our plans for low-cost, safe nuclear power,” Dewan said in her e-mail response.
“We decided to open-publish our analysis and the results, because we wanted people to be able to repeat the calculations and examine it directly themselves. Also, we’ve talked before about how the nuclear industry should increase transparency to build public trust, and wanted to practice what we preached.”
The company has previously said it intends to build a demonstration reactor by 2020, but that timeline has slipped to 2021, Dewan said during the phone interview.
“We certainly have a long road ahead of us,” she said, noting technical, engineering, supply-chain, and regulatory challenges. “But I think that momentum is on our side.”
Nuclear experts say that approval and construction of any advanced-reactor prototype requires a minimum of 10 years, given the extensive regulatory requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Smith stresses that the founders weren’t acting in bad faith, but he did note they didn’t subject their claims to the peer-review process early on.
“They didn’t do any of this intentionally,” Smith says. “It was just a lack of experience and perhaps an overconfidence in their own ability. And then not listening carefully enough when people were questioning the conclusions they were coming to.”
The company has raised at least $4.5 million from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Acadia Woods Partners, and Daniel Aegerter of Armada Investment AG. Venture capital veteran Ray Rothrock serves as chairman of the company.
“We invested in Transatomic because of their reactor’s passively safe design and dramatically reduced costs and waste,” Scott Nolan, partner at Founders Fund, said in a statement. “Together, these unlock the viability of grid-scale, carbon-free energy production. These aspects of their design are stronger than ever and we’re extremely excited about the company’s execution and future potential.”
Rothrock said in an e-mail response: “I remain committed to Transatomic’s mission and plan. The world needs more nuclear power. And while we are still early days for [Transatomic Power], I’m encouraged [by the] results so far.”
Dewan says the company retains the faith of its investors, but she acknowledges it should have sought peer review or other forms of hard feedback earlier.
“In retrospect, that was a mistake of mine,” she said during the phone interview. “We should have open-published more of our information at a far earlier stage.”
Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to include a response from Founders Fund. |
By Michelle Malkin • October 7, 2015 08:23 AM
Gitmo Extended Stay America Suites in Colorado? Hell No!
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2015
Liberal readers have scoffed at my repeated warnings about the dangerous prospect of an enemy combatant dump on American soil. Over the years, I’ve flagged the Obama administration’s scouting forays in Illinois, Kansas and South Carolina. Now, the White House is considering my adopted home, Colorado, as the new digs for the dregs of Gitmo.
If there was ever a time for Coloradans of all political stripes to unite under the “Not in My Backyard” banner, this is it.
The feds have already polluted our waters in the name of protecting us. Nobody at the EPA has paid any price for the disastrous Gold King Mine spill that turned the Animas River brighter than a Halloween pumpkin. The last thing we need is an influx of feckless Obama bureaucrats flooding our state’s correctional facilities with jihadists in orange jumpsuits (in the name of national security, of course).
What part of “Leave us the hell alone!” don’t they understand?
On Friday, White House officials disclosed to the press that a U.S. Defense Department fishing expedition will take place over the next two weeks at both state and federal prisons here in the Rocky Mountain State.
One of the potential Gitmo Extended Stay America sites is a medium-security area of supermax — home of convicted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, shoe bomber Richard Reid, 1993 World Trade Center plotter Ramzi Yousef, millennium bomb plotter Ahmed Ressam, “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla and 1998 African U.S. embassy bomb plotter Wadih el-Hage. President Obama has bragged repeatedly about his administration’s ability to ensure public safety inside and outside any jihadist hotels in our own backyards.
But despite the supposedly strictest security measures imposed of them, the pre-existing stateside supermax terrorist population has caused numerous headaches from day one — sending jailhouse letters to terror cell correspondents around the world; communicating by tapping on the pipes; organizing hunger strikes to force Bureau of Prisons officials to transfer them away from high-security detention; and suing successfully for the right to spread Islam behind bars to other inmates.
(That last victory came at the hands of shoe bomber Reid, himself a Muslim convert by an extremist imam he met in a British prison before his failed attempt to bring down American Airlines Flight 63 in 2001.)
Let’s not forget that convicted WTC mastermind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, aided by terrorists’ little helper Lynne Stewart, smuggled coded messages of Islamic violence while behind bars to violent outside followers despite a judicial isolation order. After serving less than half of her 10-year sentence for aiding terrorism, Stewart walked free in January 2014 thanks to President Obama’s “compassion” order. Amid persistent concerns that he could be similarly released, the 76-year-old Abdel-Rahman was reportedly transferred from Colorado’s supermax to the Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina sometime in the last year for health reasons.
Most recently, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was forced in August to order what reporters called “a near total clampdown” on another jailed Muslim menace because of the “high probability” that he would order a terrorist attack from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. Prosecutors have tied Muhanad Mahmoud Al-Farekh to al-Qaida terror plots in Pakistan and New York City.
Everywhere jihadists are housed in civilian prisons, trouble follows. In Australia, jihad militants financed and organized a massive escape plot inside the walls of its most secure supermax facility. Ringleader Bassam Hamzy, a devotee of Osama bin Laden, converted inmates to Islam in droves. The jailbreak scheme was busted, but Hamzy continues to make a mockery of the prison — from which he ran a major drug ring and masterminded a kidnapping on a cellphone smuggled into the facility.
If President Obama is so confident he can contain the jihad virus and prevent homicidal soldiers of Allah from wreaking more havoc in the U.S. prison system, I suggest importing the bottom-of-the-barrel Gitmo goons to an institution near one of the commander in chief’s favorite vacation spots in Martha’s Vineyard or Kailua.
Or perhaps as a neighboring annex of his presidential library on the south side of Chicago. Legacy! |
(Here is Comcast's ex parte to the FCC. The footnotes have been omitted for formatting reasons. To find the full text of the letter plus the footnotes, please visit this link: http://www.comcast.com/MediaLibrary/1/1/About/PressRoom/Documents/Comcastexparte1130.pdf)
Comcast Corporation
300 New Jersey Avenue, NW
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20001
November 30, 2010
Sharon Gillett
Chief
Wireline Competition Bureau
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20554
Re: Preserving the Open Internet, GN Docket No. 09-191
Dear Sharon:
This letter summarizes our call yesterday concerning the press release Level 3 issued yesterday afternoon, and follows up on questions you posed to us during that call.
As we explained yesterday, despite Level 3's effort to portray its dispute with Comcast as being about an "open Internet," it is nothing but a good old-fashioned commercial peering dispute, the kind that Level 3 has found itself in before. Notwithstanding Level 3's claims, this is not about online video, it is not about "paid prioritization," it does not involve putting "toll booths" on the Internet, and it is not about net neutrality. Indeed, if anything, it is Level 3 that is seeking "non-neutral" treatment that would favor its network traffic over those of all its competitors.
Taking a step back from this dispute, it is important to start with how the Internet works today. As you know, when Network A (an Internet backbone provider) wants to connect with Network B (another Internet backbone provider), it can either ask Network B for free "peering" (i.e., the direct exchange of traffic between the two networks), or purchase services from Network B. Networks like Comcast maintain peering policies (www.comcast.com/peering) that set forth the business and technical criteria for defining another network as a peer. Settlement-free peering is typically appropriate when each carrier sends a roughly balanced level of traffic to the other's network.
In a circumstance where Network B sends traffic to Network A that is significantly out of balance with the traffic it receives from Network A, however, Network B is expected either to remedy the situation or to pay something to Network A to compensate for that imbalance (that "something" is known as "settlements").
Content delivery networks ("CDNs"), such as Akamai, Limelight, and Amazon CloudFront, are not Internet backbone providers. Their business involves sending significantly more traffic than they receive. For that reason they typically purchase services ("paid interconnection") from Internet backbone providers. This description is not just relevant to how Comcast operates -- rather, it is a characterization of the way the Internet market works, here and around the world.
The dispute between Comcast and Level 3 relates to how Level 3 wants Comcast (and
presumably other networks) to treat their new influx of CDN traffic, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with any content, application, or service that Level 3 is transmitting. This concerns only the vast increase in the amount of traffic Level 3 told Comcast that it wants to send to Comcast's network on a "peering" basis. Given that this will throw traffic between the two networks grossly out of balance, and in keeping with long-established settlement practices on the Internet backbone, Comcast has asked Level 3 to enter into commercial negotiations to achieve a solution that accounts for this new and significant traffic imbalance.
Despite Level 3's complaints, Comcast is neither resisting carrying Internet video traffic nor imposing new "tolls" on Internet video traffic. The simple fact is that Comcast terminates huge amounts of online video traffic to our high-speed Internet customers, most of it pursuant to longstanding, mutually acceptable commercial arrangements we have in place with the leading CDN companies. Our customers get access to all the online video they want, along with any other Internet content, application, or service they choose -- regardless of its source. And, regardless of how this dispute turns out, that will continue to be the case.
But Level 3 is trying to game the process of peering -- one that has worked well and
consensually, without government interference, for over a decade -- in order to gain a unique and unfair advantage for its own expanding CDN service. Level 3's problem apparently arises out of the fact that it recently won a bid to become one of Netflix's primary CDN providers -- in competition with the major national CDNs that already send Netflix and other traffic to Comcast's network. In order to undercut its CDN competitors, Level 3 wants to avoid the commercial arrangements other CDN companies use to terminate traffic onto Comcast's and other providers' networks, and instead force Comcast to accept its CDN traffic for free, under a "peering" relationship. This is not how peering works, here or anywhere in the world. What Level 3 is suddenly pushing -- a "new theory" of peering -- would throw the traditional, "balanced traffic" peering rulebook out the window, give Level 3 an unfair cost advantage over its competitors, and shift all of the costs from Level 3 and its content customers onto Comcast and its high-speed Internet customers.
Until Level 3 fomented this dispute, Comcast and Level 3 exchanged Internet traffic as part of a commercial interconnection agreement, under which Comcast paid Level 3 for interconnection facilities. Although the parties exchanged traffic at a ratio of about 2:1, with Comcast terminating more of Level 3's traffic, this was well within the industry's established bounds for "roughly balanced" traffic, and they exchanged their on-net traffic on a settlement-free basis. At some point, we are told, some of the traffic sent by Level 3 to Comcast came from CDN services operated by Level 3. Because this traffic was within the traditional industry criteria for "roughly balanced," this did not raise any issues for Comcast.
Now, Level 3 has decided to reinvent itself as a major CDN, in competition with other
commercial CDN players, all of whom pay for transmission of their traffic on Comcast's and others' networks. And in so doing, Level 3 would more than double the amount of traffic it sends to Comcast -- which would result in a traffic imbalance that could be in the range of about 5:1.
The parties' current interconnection facilities could not begin to support that type of traffic flow. As a result, Level 3 approached Comcast approximately two weeks ago (shortly after reaching their Netflix agreement, we later learned, although they made no mention of it at the time) and demanded 27 to 30 new interconnection ports, which would allow them to send a much greater amount of traffic onto Comcast's network. To that request, Level 3 added the following twist: it insisted that Comcast should provide it with all those new facilities -- and support this vast new influx of traffic -- for free.
Comcast was able to scramble and provide Level 3 with six ports (at no charge) that were, by chance, available and not budgeted and forecasted for Comcast's wholesale commercial customers. The amount of traffic that would be exchanged over these six ports (and the parties' preexisting ports) was just barely within the generally accepted bounds of a roughly balanced traffic exchange between the parties. Level 3 accepted those ports, and they are using them right now to send traffic to Comcast's network.
The additional ports Level 3 requested -- and the traffic to be exchanged over that large number of ports -- would put the traffic ratio between the parties far out of balance. As a result, Comcast explained to Level 3 that it would be willing to provide additional ports on a commercial wholesale basis (just as it does with Level 3's CDN competitors). Comcast offered Level 3 twenty ports under a commercial arrangement, but it informed Level 3 that it had to commit quickly if it wanted to ensure that these ports were committed to its business, before another commercial customer submitted a competing order. This makes Level 3's statement that Comcast's offer was "take it or leave it" patently absurd. In fact, Comcast tried to help Level 3 secure as much capacity as possible, as quickly as possible, given time and business constraints. The agreement Comcast offered Level 3 would also facilitate Level 3's ordering additional ports as soon as those become available in the new calendar year.
As Level 3 reports, it has in fact entered into a commercial ports agreement with Comcast (in addition to receiving the six free ports). Level 3's statement that it has done so "under protest" is entirely disingenuous. To be sure, Level 3 would prefer to force Comcast into arrangements that give it all the ports it wants for free. That's a great strategy for Level 3 to undermine all of its CDN competitors, which have long done business based on commercial wholesale arrangements, not just with Comcast but also with other network providers. Level 3's preferred arrangement would also allow it to enter into its new CDN venture at little cost to Level 3 or its customers, while shifting its costs to Comcast and its broadband customers. Most importantly, as noted above, this would do nothing to increase the amount of online video traffic on the network or affect the accessibility of online video to Comcast's customers, who already have robust access to CDN delivery of the precise same content. It would simply produce improved margins for Level 3.
Level 3 has been on the opposite end of exactly such a dispute repeatedly over the past several years, including as recently as a few months ago. It has been quick to decry an arrangement such as the one it wants with Comcast as an unfair "subsidy" that is unsuitable for the type of settlement-free peering it demands here. When Level 3 realized that Cogent was "sending far more traffic to the Level 3 network than Level 3 was sending to Cogent's network," it revised the parties' relationship and insisted on negotiating a more balanced arrangement. In Level 3's own words,
"To be lasting, business relationships should be mutually beneficial. In cases where the benefit we receive is in line with the benefit we deliver, we will exchange traffic on a settlement-free basis. Contrary to [other ISPs] public statements, reasonable, balanced, and mutually beneficial agreements for the exchange of traffic do not represent a threat to the Internet. They don't represent a threat to anyone other than those trying to get a free ride on someone else's network."
In Comcast's case, Level 3 has low-balled its way into a new business deal that will significantly increase the amount of Level 3's traffic Comcast would carry, and suddenly wants to seriously disrupt the settled economics of Internet traffic to meet its new business plan. Its position is not based on any principles of fair-play on the Internet, but instead is merely the result of its rash bid to carry Netflix traffic at radically low rates, based on the flawed assumption that it could use its Tier 1 Internet backbone status to cram its CDN traffic onto others' networks on a settlement-free basis.
All that said, we have not given up hope that Level 3 will make a reasonable business decision in the context of the parties' overall commercial relationship. To that end, and in that spirit, we have continued to have discussions with Level 3 as recently as this morning. Commercial resolution is the appropriate path forward here: Level 3 itself has expressly stated that "regulatory scrutiny" should not apply to these types of arrangements. As Level 3 has explained, Internet backbone facilities and "high capacity connections to facilities of content and application providers...are robustly competitive, service elements are unbundled and purchases are generally made by enterprises with substantial buying power."
Nevertheless, if we are unable to resolve the issues satisfactorily in these conversations, we would be pleased to participate in a meeting between the parties overseen by and with the participation of Commission staff if that will facilitate a better understanding of the matters at issue.
Please let me know if you have further questions.
Sincerely,
/s/ Joseph W. Waz, Jr.
Joseph W. Waz, Jr.
Senior Vice President, External Affairs
and Public Policy Counsel
/s/ Lynn R. Charytan
Lynn R. Charytan
Vice President, Legal Regulatory Affairs |
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Rookie cornerback Eli Apple is willing to chalk up Sunday’s sub-par performance against the Philadelphia Eagles as a rookie learning experience. So are the New York Giants.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said Apple’s role “won’t change” on Monday night against the Cincinnati Bengals. That means Apple probably will be back outside as the starting cornerback opposite Janoris Jenkins. He started last week in the Giants base defense against the Eagles before being replaced for the most of the second half after struggling badly.
Veteran Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie was primarily the slot cornerback.
“I will tell you this, I’m a big Eli Apple fan. I said that from the beginning,” Spagnuolo said. “He’s going to help us win football games. He has.”
Rookie Eli Apple didn't blink over last week's mid-game benching and apparently will be back in the lineup on Sunday. Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
The Giants are heavily invested in Apple. And for good reason. He was the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft.
As they try to get him back on track, Spagnuolo chose his words carefully when describing what happened Sunday against the Eagles.
“I wouldn’t even call it a benching,” Spanguolo said. “He was struggling a little bit. We went over and said, ‘Look, let’s just take a series off and see what happens.' Then our guys kind of got in a groove and we just left it like that. ... Nobody has lost confidence in Eli. He’s a good football player. He’ll bounce back.”
The Giants insist Apple has rebounded with a strong week of practice. The first-round pick was thrown right back into the mix and hasn’t shown signs that being taken out of Sunday's game will affect him moving forward.
“Honestly, I don’t see anything different with Eli,” coach Ben McAdoo said. “He’s come out, gone about his business and been productive on the practice field.”
In the NFL, these kinds of games happen, especially for rookies and with cornerbacks. It’s a position where it’s difficult to succeed early. Tampa Bay's Vernon Hargreaves III has struggled at times his rookie season after being the 11th overall pick, especially against the Raiders.
Apple's trouble may be attributable to his health problems. He has been trying to get back in the groove. He missed time first with a hamstring injury then with a groin problem. He was finally close to 100 percent against the Los Angeles Rams in London but then came the bye week.
Spagnuolo thinks this might have affected his performance.
“He hasn’t built the callouses to get through a season like this,” Spagnuolo said. “He’s struggled a little bit with that. He’s going to be fine.”
Apple is a smooth and unassuming personality. He generally doesn't seem to allow criticism or praise to affect him much either way. Apple handled last week’s controversy involving his mother’s criticism of his employer with impressive poise.
The benching has been similar.
“You want to get back to the basics, to the fundamentals that got you here,” Apple said of how he has handled the poor performance. “You want to lean on your teammates because they’re going to give you the real talk that you need. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
“Pick my head up a little bit and play with the confidence I played with in college. Be more comfortable. That is the main thing.”
Apple insists the comfort isn’t there because his rookie season hasn’t gone smoothly because of injuries. He’s learning to play in the NFL in staccato style.
“You have to be in your groove,” Apple said.
He’ll have another chance to get there on Monday night. |
Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick, and Paula Jones are three skeletons in the Clintons’ closet, and they all want a front row seat to this year’s first presidential debate.
“Gennifer Flowers,” Donald Trump tweeted in response to Hillary Clinton inviting Mark Cuban to the first presidential debate, where he’ll be sitting smack dab in the first row.
The presidential debate, which is set for Monday night, is causing mass speculation over who each candidate will try and get to sit in the front row in order to cause as much preoccupation and discomfort as possible to their fellow running mate. Hillary Clinton has given that job to Mark Cuban, a former reality TV star and owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Cuban pledged his support to Clinton earlier this year, and according to Business Insider he believes Donald Trump would be perilous to the United States if elected president. The two have engaged in combative Twitter conversations, and not long ago Cuban challenged Trump to a “policy debate,” offering the presidential nominee $10 million to do it, which Trump obviously declined.
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In response to learning of Mark Cuban’s first row presence during the presidential debate, Trump retaliated, saying he’d like Gennifer Flowers, who used to work as a news anchor in Arkansas during the time Bill Clinton was governor, to sit up front as well.
According to Mediaite, Flowers was thrust into the national public eye in 1992, when she admitted to being romantically involved with the married Mr. Clinton, a claim the former president denied at first and later confirmed to be true.
Bill Clinton and Juanita Broaddrick (far right) at nursing home. Date is unknown. [Image by Handout/Hulton Archive/Getty Images]
Gennifer Flowers, like many women, was betrayed by the Clintons, so why would she want them to get away with it?
At first, word was that she accepted the invitation and confirmed to Trump that she’d be there, but since then it’s been reported that not only will she not be attending, but she was never invited by Trump’s campaign in the first place.
Luckily for Trump, if he really wants to have a former flame of Bill Clinton sitting front and center, Gennifer Flowers is not the only one. There are plenty to choose from, and if Trump really wants to get nasty he could invite one (or two or three) of Bill’s rape accusers. There’s more than one of them as well, and a couple have expressed interest in being there Monday night.
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The American Mirror reported that Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who claims former President Clinton raped her in a hotel room back in 1978, expressed interest in attending the presidential debate once she got word of Flowers’ possible attendance.
“‘Sure I would like to be at such an epic event just to look Hillary in the face,’ Broaddrick exclusively tells The American Mirror. “When asked what she would say to Clinton, Broaddrick responded, ‘Remember me? I’m the one your husband raped and you threatened. I’m still here telling the truth and you are a liar.'”
In November of 2015, The Washington Times reported that Broaddrick had lashed out at Hillary Clinton for tweeting, “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.”
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According to Broaddrick, shortly after the rape, Hillary approached her when it was just the two of them and told Juanita, “I just want you to know that Bill and I appreciate all the things you do for him.” She says after that Mrs. Clinton tried to grab her, but she was able to flee without further incident.
From that point on Juanita Broaddrick was, and still is, convinced that Hillary knew Bill had raped her, and thanking her had been Mrs. Clinton’s way of asking her, or telling her, to keep silent about it.
Paula Jones, like Gennifer Flowers and Juanita Broaddrick, has also expressed her desire to sit in the front row during the presidential debate.
Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers talk to reporters with Clinton Presidential Library in the background in 2008. [Image by Danny Johnston/AP Images]
Jones, who once worked for the state of Arkansas, sparked yet another Clinton scandal in the mid-1990’s when she sued the then American president for sexual harassment. Most recently, Paula has spoken out against Hillary, saying the former First Lady is not presidential material, as reported by Politico.
“‘She should not be running with the terrible history they have,’ Jones said, warning that the former president should not be allowed back in the White House. “Jones said that both Clintons would do anything ‘to get to the top,’ adding that it is ‘all about political status.’ “‘He does not have a right to be in the White House to serve the people the way he treated women, sexually harassing women,’ she said.”
In regards to the democratic presidential nominee, Paula Jones insists that Mrs. Clinton had been well aware of Bill’s sexual liaisons and predatory behavior towards women, and she’d played an active role in covering it all up.
Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones all want to confront Hillary Clinton. All three of these women feel she has done them wrong by lying to them and about them. She surely has gone out of her way to snub them, and she never once reached out to them when they needed it, so how could it be that Hillary Clinton cares about women?
[Featured Image by Darren McCollester/Getty Images] |
Those who feel that Pluto has always been a planet and jolly well ought to be one again have received a boost - this time from a top NASA boffin, albeit a slightly biased one.
"It's very hard not to call an object with this level of complexity in its geology, and such complex seasons, a planet," said Alan Stern, New Horizons' principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute, during a press conference about the probe's latest update.
"Astronomers and planetary scientists differ on this question but that's how science works – scientists make individual decisions and consensus is reached. I think we're going through a period of transition at the moment."
Data from the New Horizons space probe has shown Pluto to be geologically active, with new glacier plains of nitrogen ice carving out new surface features and eroding away impact craters from meteor strikes.
It has a large, hazy atmosphere extending 100 miles from the surface, and the New Horizons data has revealed a lot about the dwarf planet's history.
We heard during the briefing that Pluto is almost perfectly spherical, which was unexpected considering what we think happened during its formation.
It's likely that way back in its history, Pluto was hit by a massive object that tore away a huge chunk of its mass, which went on to form into the freezeworld's five moons.
But no remnant of that impact can be seen on the surface or in its current clean, spherical form.
That means that Pluto must have been spinning very rapidly after the impact, William McKinnon, New Horizons co-investigator at Washington University said, before reaching equilibrium with its relatively massive moon Charon. |
There a bright future in store for a clinic serving people who once had little hope of a future. AIDS Project of the Ozarks, which now brands itself as APO, is excited about it's brand new clinic that'll soon be under construction.
The 1980s represent the old days, but not the 'good ole days' for AIDS Project of the Ozarks. The agency began serving the region during the start of the AIDS crisis.
"AIDS Project of the Ozarks (APO) began in 1983 when a group of concerned folks began meeting at a local church to discuss how to help those with AIDS who were returning home to the Springfield area to die," states the agency's website.
Executive Director Lynne Meyerkord, who has been with the agency from the beginning, says their first location was a very discreetly-located office in downtown.
"They did not want our name in the office directory because they were concerned their other tenants may move out." Meyerkord added, "We had had different threats. So, we were just fine not being on the office directory."
They moved to their current location, an office complex on Bennett St., in 1994.
Times have certainly changed since the 1980s. The newest home for APO, under construction now, will be on a very visible piece of property on one of the busiest streets in town.
"I think the community is much more accepting of people with HIV now and more compassionate, and I think that comes along with education," said Genevieve Chavez, a Case Manager at APO.
The new clinic, to include 14,000 square feet of space, is much larger than the current 8,500 sq. ft. facility on Bennett. It's being constructed on property that was home to the old Penny Power office building until it was demolished in recent days.
Chavez laughed, "Yes, we absolutely need more space. We are kind of a mixed hodgepodge, pieced together because we have continued to grow."
These days, APO is serving more clients than ever. Meyerkord explained it's not so much because more people are getting HIV. In fact, infection rates have stayed steady in recent years.
"In the old days, folks died within two years of being diagnosed with full blown AIDS. So, there was a lot of turnover in the population we served by definition."
With medications, HIV- the virus that leads to AIDS- is no longer quite the death sentence. That means clients are needing long term care.
"Still no cure, that's very important to note," Meyerkord said. "But, they can keep the virus under control so people live longer."
The new modern facility will have medical treatment and testing offices, outreach and educational programs, and a branch of Grove Pharmacy
Chavez stated, "We are jam packed into this office right now and having a new update office will be really great for clients to feel valued.
The construction of the new facility also coincides with an expansion of the agency's mission. In addition to it's HIV care and prevention services, APO is also offering primary care for people not comfortable with traditional care settings, more outreach to the LGBT community, and services for at-risk youth.
"Medical care can be kind of scary," Meyerkord explained. "And, I am not going to say we are going to make it fun, but certainly a more comfortable setting."
Meyerkord says the latest developments have been a big surprise and major blessing for the agency. Since APO doesn't have it's own funding available for such a project, the architect- Buxton Kubik Dodd Creative; the construction firm- BUILD; and development adviser Mike Fusek of SVN Rankin Company, are all working together to make the clinic a reality. Once completed, APO will not own the building, but will enter a long-term lease agreement for the property.
"If you would have told me even five years ago that we were going to have a major developer and a major architectural firm that wants to work with us, I might have chuckled at you, Meyerkord said"
The new clinic is set to be open this coming summer. |
July has not been a good month for naval missile launches. On July 18, during an exercise off the coast of Virginia, the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans launched a Raytheon Standard Missile 2 Block IIIA anti-aircraft missile. The missile, an older model of SM-2 originally delivered to the Navy in 1991, exploded shortly after launch, just barely clear of the ship's superstructure—showering the ship with debris and starting a fire on its flight deck.
Then, on July 26—during a naval parade at Sevestapol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea—the Russian Navy's guided missile frigate Ladny attempted to launch an RPK-3 Metel anti-submarine missile. The RPK-3 Metel is a torpedo-carrying missile called the SS-N-14 Silex by NATO, and it has a range of about 55 kilometers. The RPK-3 was launched at a simulated target from within Sevestapol's harbor. But the boost stage of the missile spectacularly exploded at launch, sending its rocket engines spinning wildly away while the body of the Metel splashed into the harbor. Amazingly, no one aboard the ship or watching from the shoreline was injured. The Metel weapons system was first introduced into the Soviet Navy in 1969.
In the wake (so to speak) of the explosion of the missile launched from The Sullivans, the US Navy has restricted use of some older SM-2 missiles to "Wartime Use Only" while a review board determines the cause of that failure. The Sullivans is in Mayport, Florida undergoing repairs to damage caused by the explosion.
There's no word on what, if anything, the Russian Navy is doing about its stockpile of Metel missiles after the Sevestapol incident. |
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OKLAHOMA - It's money never paid to the state of Oklahoma.
"You start piling these straws on the camel's back and, pretty soon, Oklahoma's camel is broken, and they can't carry all this anymore," said Rep. Mike Brown said.
Brown's talking about the millions in taxpayer money that goes to companies in Oklahoma.
The quality jobs act has been around since 1993.
It was meant to attract manufacturing and service jobs.
But, the list of companies has ballooned in the past few years, to even include the Oklahoma City Thunder.
$4 million of your tax money goes to the Thunder and its 168 jobs.
"I love Kevin Durant, and I love the players on the team, but we shouldn't be subsidizing their payroll," Brown said.
Almost every oil company and subsidiary is on this list.
The state pays up to 5 percent of their payroll.
Last year, Continental got $3,089,179.
Devon got $3,376,531.
Chesapeake got $4,562,476 from the state.
Cutting any of these incentives is not on Governor Mary Fallin's budget proposal she rolled out Wednesday.
She said those are key in keeping companies in Oklahoma.
"We certainly have incentives on the books that helps us attract investment and attract jobs, which we've been very successful at," Fallin said.
The total amount of state money paid out through the program right now is nearly $100 million.
That's about the same amount of money that's been cut to public education this year.
"Everyone is triple, quadruple dipping. And, the ones that are being hurt the most is my schools, my roads and bridges. My correctional officers are eligible for food stamps," Brown said.
Most of the companies can stay on the "quality jobs" list for 10 years.
State leaders made an exception for the Thunder, who will get more than $4 million for 15 years. |
Here is another thought-provoking account that ought to be checked for sure. The alleged crash took place in 1974 and was announced two times by a tv station in Detroit, once in prime time news: a UFO with four aliens aboard had been intercepted by the United States Air Force and had crashed in the area. My check with Kevin Randle's "A History Of UFO Crashes" established that the incident might be confirmed by an entry in Len Stringfield's "Crash/Retrievals", but I haven't been able to compare with the latter. More on that presently.
In her book about the life with her ex-husband (Backstage Passes, Life On the Wild Side with David Bowie, Orion Books, London, 1993, p. 203ff.) Angela Bowie says that it was nice to leave the hectic life of New York once in a while, whether it was for a concert tour or a mystery one. This quote concerns a tour in 1974:
The open road, for instance, was most refreshing. Yes...the limo purring along at a steady twenty-five, good old Brooklyn Tony Macia's bodyguarding bulk behind the wheel, Detroit back down the interstate unraveling behind us, Minneapolis-St Paul up ahead somewhere, the moonroof open, the powerful telescope surveying the summer night sky from its tripod mount, the aliens up there perhaps recognizing that we meant them no harm, that we were the ones who could be trusted...
They had been having a bad time, after all. One of their craft had been intercepted somewhere north of Detroit, engaged by the United States Air Force and - well, we never found out what happened after that. We didn’t know if the saucer had been forced to crash-land on earth, or blasted out of the sky so that it fell to earth, or what. We didn’t know if its occupants - its crew? - were dead or alive or somewhere in between, although we did know that there were four of them.
We knew all this because while we were in our hotel room in Detroit, we saw an afternoon TV news flash to the effect that a UFO had crashed in the area with four aliens aboard...more news at six.
We tuned in again at six - of course we did, along with everybody in the state - and learned more, but not much more. The news crew confirmed the landing, yet avoided being specific about its location and presented what little information they had with great caution, as if doing their best to downplay the sensational and possibly panic-causing information they were supplying, straight-faced and soberly, to their public. These were the station's regular newscasters, reputable and popular, with everything to lose by creating a hoax and nothing but brief notoriety to gain.
That, however, is what we were told when the eleven-o'clock news came around: The prime-time news crew had perpetrated an irresponsible and inexcusable hoax, and had therefore been dismissed from their jobs. No UFOs had landed; no aliens were in custody, dead or alive; the United States Air Force had positively not engaged or intercepted any craft whatsoever in the skies above Michigan; and that, officially and absolutely, was that.
It was difficult to know what to make of this incident. At one extreme, it could have been just an overblown cosmic-hippie-cocaine dream, an instance of too much weirdness for too long crashing through into the perceived reality continuum. On the other hand, we had the videotape.
Yes, even in 1974. It so happened that the documentary filmmaker Alan Yentob was along with us on the trip, making the film that would become "Cracked Actor", and he had his VCR hooked up to the television set in our hotel room when the afternoon news flash first caught our attention. So we'd taped the whole six-o'clock and eleven-o'clock news shows. There was no denying that the broadcasts had happened.
The broadcasts at least. In David's opinion, and mine too, what had just occurred was indeed a warp in the usual business of business-as-usual.
David believed very strongly that aliens were active above our planet, and so did (do) I. That's why we were so alert in the limo on the way to Minneapolis, watching intently for signs of further UFO activity in the bright night sky. It was mostly David who had his eye pressed to the telescope (purchased by Corinne Schwab, his personal assistant, during a lightning shopping spree in Detroit). He'd talked about the six-o'clock newscast during his show at Cobo Arena in Detroit, and he believed that the energy thus created might well have communicated itself to the beings monitoring from above our human reaction to their fallen (slain/captured/atomized?) fellows.
I don't know quite what David expected, because by now he'd moved beyond his manic-monologue mode into his silent, non-communication state, but I suspect he wouldn’t have been surprised at all if the aliens had come right down to the limo and tractor-beamed him up for an exchange of ideas. He was feeling pretty much like the center of things here on earth at the time, after all, and it probably seemed obvious to him that some right-thinking human should take on the job of Man's ambassador...
No aliens heeded the call, though, and after a while he disappeared into his coke, sheltered by Corinne, and I lost interest. I left the tour, and them, the next day.
Evaluating the story I must admit the logic of Angela's views. It seems unlikely that a well-respected and popular newsstaff should risk its standing as well as its existence for the short mention, which reports like that might give.
Add to this that her account might be confirmed by Len Stringfield's "Crash/ Retrievals." |
6 opposition lawmakers visiting China to oppose THAAD. August. 06, 2016 07:03. by 한기흥기자 [email protected].
Six first-term lawmakers with the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, who are opposed to the deployment of the terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, are visiting Beijing from Monday, saying that they will check situation in China. They are Kim Yeong-ho, Kim Byeong-ok, Park Jeong, Shin Dong-geun, and Sohn Hye-won. They are scheduled to hold a forum with Beijing University professors, but will reportedly not meet with senior officials with the Chinese Communist Party. Rep. Kim Yeong-ho studied international politics at Beijing University, and is serving as secretary for the party’s THAAD response committee, but other lawmakers are not specializing in foreign affairs and diplomacy. Rep. Sohn has uploaded a Twitter post urging people to join a campaign to make an appeal to the U.S. White House in against THAAD deployment.
The intention of lawmakers who are seeking to find a solution amid Seoul-Beijing conflict over THAAD is understandable. Rep. Kim Yeong-ho said, “I want to ask the Chinese government to take more aggressive acts to deter Pyongyang from pursuing nuclear development going forward.’” However, there is virtually zero chance for Beijing to pay attention to and accept his demand. On the contrary, chances are high that Beijing will use the lawmakers in its propaganda from the moment they arrive at the Beijing airport, saying that lawmakers opposed to THAAD deployment have come to China. China is screening and editing articles by Koreans protesting THAAD deployment, and only publishing messages that it likes on its media outlets.
It is for this reason that Kim Jong-in, chairman of the party’s emergency committee, expressed a negative view on such moves, saying, “I have no idea what kind of diplomacy they will pursue.” Despite this, the fact Rep. Sohn is refuting him by saying, “Are we going to China to sell our country?” is an act that she apparently has taken due to her lack of understanding about ramifications that the visit will bring about and its seriousness. Some critics say that in the Minjoo Party, real activists-turned lawmakers are keeping silence since they are mindful of ramifications, and only certain lawmakers who are confused with politics and civic movement are taking the lead in protesting THAAD deployment. Even if they take such acts in order to increase their public visibility, they will be easily criticized as engaging in "toadyish diplomacy" and taking "acts of betrayal."
Through an editorial in the People’s Daily on Friday, China clearly expressed its intention to retaliate South Korea. As the South Korean government is highly wary of neighboring countries and people opposed to THAAD deployment, while not only opposition parties but also ruling Saenuri Parity lawmakers representing the Daegu-North Gyeongsang region are opposing the measure, China might misjudge that it would be possible to withdraw THADD deployment if it pushes further. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will also feel thrilled to see nonsensical South Korean politics that continue internal dispute over THAAD. Even though ruling and opposition parties lock horns without reservation, they would pool wisdom and seek unity for the public’s sake in the face of a national crisis if they are in a well-functioning country. It is rational and reasonable that the first-term lawmakers with the Minjoo Party suspend their visit to China, and instead discuss issues over THAAD at the National Assembly. |
poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201610/457/1155968404_5190231744001_5190217748001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Man with menacing stare says he was actually protesting Trump
PHOENIX — Security guards removed a man perceived to be staring menacingly at the press from a Donald Trump campaign rally on Saturday.
A television reporter notified a security guard that the rally attendee was holding an object in his hand and described him as a “very dangerous man” after noticing the man facing away from Trump and staring at length directly at members of the press. Minutes later, security guards removed the man from the Phoenix Convention Center.
Story Continued Below
But following the publication of this article, the man, Anton Weber, reached out to POLITICO to report that in fact he had turned his back on Trump in protest of the businessman’s claims that the election is “rigged” against him.
“I am 6-foot-4 and did not want to stare at the floor any longer so I was staring at the floor of the press platform,” Weber explained. “I fully support the press.”
The incident comes as Trump’s attacks on the press have grown more extreme in recent weeks, with the Republican nominee accusing journalists and bankers of colluding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to destroy him as part of a vast globalist conspiracy.
Earlier this month, in response to that rhetoric, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, warned, "Whether Intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today."
It was not the only press-related incident at Saturday's rally. Minutes before the man was removed, two other men began shouting at the press pen. One of them, wearing a hat with a mushroom cloud and the words “bombislam.com” as well as a shirt with former President Bill Clinton’s face and the word “rape” began shouting, “Bill Clinton’s a rapist.” His companion, wearing a “Hillary for Prison” shirt, shouted at the press, “You are rapists” and “you need to pay for Bill Clinton’s rape,” adding, “You are responsible.”
That same man, when the crowd broke into a chant of “U-S-A” stood at the metal barrier separating the press from the crowd and shouted at members of the press, “Jew-S-A.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said: "The campaign strongly condemns this kind of rhetoric and behavior. It is not acceptable at our rallies or elsewhere."
Toward the end of Trump’s speech, as the travelling press filed out of the pen to wait by Trump’s motorcade backstage, the Republican nominee called reporters “terrible people” and said the media won’t tell the public that the national murder rate is at a 45-year high, a false claim that Trump regularly repeats at his rallies. |
Lindzen & Douglass slam media for 'completely misrepresenting Climategate': Scandal revealed 'explicit evidence of the manipulation of proxy records used in paleoclimate reconstructions, suppression of other viewpoints, manipulation of IPCC process, and intimidation of journal editors were all evidence of serious breaches of ethics. Muller's findings hardly alters these findings'
Richard Lindzen has given Climate Depot permission to publish this analysis.
The below commentary was written by MIT’s Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, an Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and and Dr. David H. Douglass, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester
By Richard Lindzen & David Douglass – October 23, 2011
The [October 21, 2011 Christian Science Monitor] article “Koch brothers accidentally fund study that proves global warming” is innocent enough.
Existing land based records of temperature, showing a small net warming since 1950, are probably correct (at least within the unreported uncertainty limits). As to whether estimates over the oceans (which cover 70% of the earth) are reliable is left open.
While Muller carefully avoided any claims concerning attribution, even attribution is not the main issue. What was left unsaid was that the observed warming is entirely consistent with there being very little problem. Concerns focus on climate sensitivity. Some current models predict much more warming than the modest warming that increasing CO2 would result in. This is because water vapor and clouds (both far more important greenhouse substances than CO2) in these models act as powerful positive feedbacks. Such models can be brought into agreement with past behavior by invoking aerosols. But, as the IPCC acknowledges, these are essentially unknown, and, indeed, each modeling group chooses a different value according to the amount of warming they need to cancel.
Unfortunately, although the article is innocent enough, the title of the article and the one sentence summary seem designed to mislead the reader. Part of the problem stems from a semantic issue: ‘warming’ is ambiguous in that it can be passive or active. If one is simply referring to whether the global mean temperature anomaly has been increasing a bit since 1950, as Muller is showing, there is nothing remarkable; if it refers to the active version wherein something is causing warming, it could be somewhat more serious (especially with the claim of ‘proof’), but the title leaves matters ambiguous.
Similarly, the reference to the Koch brothers suggests that their support was contingent on expectations of a different result. In point of fact, there is not the least evidence that this was the case. The Koch brothers support many things ranging from the restoration of the Lincoln Center Theater, to an exhibit on evolution, to a major cancer center at MIT. They also give some support to libertarian think tanks whose views are frequently different from what are commonly claimed to be right wing views. To be sure, the Koch brothers are frequently demonized by the left as a counterpoint to the right wing demonization of George Soros. It is only the fact that the Koch brothers are relatively unknown that allows such demonization to gain traction.
The summary sentence completely misrepresents ‘climategate.’ This refers to the release of thousands of emails, commented code, etc. from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The land based instrumental temperature record was not the primary focus of the problems revealed in these documents. Rather, the explicit evidence of the manipulation of proxy records used in paleoclimate reconstructions, suppression of other viewpoints, manipulation of the IPCC process, and intimidation of journal editors were all evidence of serious breaches of ethics. Muller’s findings hardly alters these findings.
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
MIT
Cambridge, Mass
David H. Douglass (PhD MIT)
Professor of Physics
University of Rochester
[Climate Depot note: For more on Muller see here and here.] |
If you think all differences between the way males and females act are socially conditioned, how come male spatial superiority is evident in infants as young as 5 months?
ravefromthegrave:
fantastic-nonsense: ravefromthegrave: If you knew shit all about spatial superiority, you’d also know that that’s only true in patriarchal societies and that it’s been tested in matriarchies, where the result is 100% equal. At least don’t waste my time with stuff you don’t know anything about, greyface. …except there has never been a matriarchy? There has literally never been a society in all of history that has been a matriarchy? And even if there had been, they would have existed/did exist before things like spatial testing and neuroscientific testing existed. You’re going to tell me they’ve “tested” spacial superiority in matriarchal societies when no such societies exist? Yeah, don’t waste my time with stuff you don’t know anything about. Also…[CITATION NEEDED]. except ding dong you are wrong educate yourself: http://metro.co.uk/2013/03/05/where-women-rule-the-world-matriarchal-communities-from-albania-to-china-3525234/ http://utopianist.com/2011/06/5-societies-run-by-women-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them/ and by the way, how did i “waste your time” when you apparently read my blog voluntarily? it’s not like i sent you a pm, get over yourself
You don’t seem to understand what “Matriarchy” means. A country simply ruled by a woman is not a matriarchy. Otherwise the UK and Germany would be matriarchies, and we all know that’s not true. A matriarchy is a social system in which females are the primary authority figures central to social organization, occupying primary roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property, and where mothers hold authority over fathers and children.
The first link seems to confuse the terms “matrilineal” with “matriarchy.” They are not the same thing. The Jewish people are matrilineal, but they are not a matriarchy. The Mosuo are matrilineal, not matriarchal. Information on the Mosuo indicate that while women are often the head of house and inheritance is through the female line, political and social power is often in the hands of male. Therefore…matrilineal, not matriarchal. The description of the Aka does not describe them as matriarchal at all; they just have a general reversal of gender roles when it comes to hunting vs. childcare. It mentions nothing about their system of government.
Iceland is far from matriarchal. It’s more egalitarian than anything. I don’t think the author of that article knows what a matriarchy is either, since he’s trying to present Iceland as one.
…also if the study you talked about is from the Albania example, it must be a shitty study considering there’s only 13 women that live there and most of them are lesbians. You need a large and diverse population for a good study. Also did you not see the part where some girls are forced into the role of living there? And the fact that they literally spend the rest of their lives after they leave as men? That’s not exactly matriarchy, dear. And again, the India example is not an example of matriarchy, but of matrilineality.
Women don’t “rule” in ANY of the societies mentioned in the first article. In most of them, the power is divided evenly between women and men, making the societies more egalitarian than anything.
The only society in both of the links you provided me that you could make a case for would be the Hopi Tribe, but seeing as how they operate under a “neither sex is inferior” code and are highly egalitarian, they do not make the list either.
The vast majority of anthropologists agree that there are no known unambiguous matriarchies. There are several societies in which women enjoy political and sexual freedom on par with men, which are called egalitarian societies, but there are no known societies (ever) in which matriarchy is a thing. The hypothesis that pre-history was littered with matriarchies was a popular thesis in the 20th century, particularly with 2nd wave feminism, but that hypothesis has been widely discredited today based on lack of proof and lots and lots of research.
Also, please link me to the studies you say have been done on matriarchal societies that show that “100% equal” number. Spatial superiority in males has been detected as early as three days old, and newer studies present the hypothesis that this is a side effect of testosterone (previous studies have shown that women who take testosterone often show improvement in their spatial navigational skills). However, this relationship is complex, and as it is a relatively new field of study, future studies may be more forthcoming about this. Science has shown that male and female brains show significant biological differences; for example, women often have better language skills, both written and aural, than men, while men often have better spatial skills.
You cannot simply say that there is “no difference” in spatial abilities because the tests are highly complex. Women often score higher on spatial MEMORY but men often score higher on spatial NAVIGATION. We are still learning about the various complexities of the mind and the differences that gender creates (or rather, the different chemical makeups of the brain because of gender differences).
So actually, no, you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. Please refrain from spouting off bullshit pseudoscience. It’s not helpful. |
For religious community representatives gathered at a national faith forum in support of LGBTI rights, the spirit is willing • Tiernan Brady: Religious faith is no obstacle to support for marriage equality
“We celebrate all rites except one: we can’t celebrate the love of two people with a wedding ceremony,” Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio of the Emanuel synagogue, says.
Ninio says that despite wanting to celebrate same-sex marriages, she is limited to calling them them commitment ceremonies or covenants of love.
Based in Sydney’s east, Emanuel was founded as a progressive synagogue, and already has celebrations for anniversaries of gay relationships, and rituals for coming out and gender affirmation.
Ninio is just one of the faith leaders who have been proselytising the message that advocacy for LGBTI rights and religion don’t sit uneasily together, but go hand in hand.
Legalising same-sex marriage is needed to inject faith back into what could become a secular institution, to transform the secular into the sacred, she says.
“I feel my religious freedom is being infringed by not being able to perform a [same-sex] marriage.”
Ninio was just one of the representatives of faith communities who gathered in Canberra this week for Australia’s first inter-faith forum on marriage equality.
Dr Gavriel Ansara, a researcher and human rights advocate from an Orthodox Jewish network that affirms LGBTI people, believes that religious freedom is harmed not by same-sex marriage, but by its denial.
Without civil marriage equality, LGBTI people of faith had to choose between a holy life and recognition of their relationships, he says.
Ansara says that when he came to Australia and tried to find a place in the Orthodox Jewish community, he found some rabbis would only accept same-sex attracted people in the manner of others who had erred, such as failing to observe the Sabbath.
He rejected what he called the “lesser Jew trope” that same-sex attraction diminished his faith or status as a religious person.
Ansara says that because Australia does not recognise civil same-sex marriage, the status of his relationship changes between jurisdiction – whereas religious and spiritual experience is universal.
This conviction of the universality of love regardless of sexuality is represented across denominations.
The Anglican dean of Brisbane, Peter Catt, says marriage equality is needed for “human flourishing and good order in society”.
Kylie Minogue says she will not marry in Australia until there is marriage equality Read more
If good order in the reinvigoration of spirituality in society isn’t argument enough for religious leaders, the Baptist reverend Carolyn Francis has another argument in favour of same-sex marriage: self-interest.
Although men over 50 who lead the church tend to oppose same-sex marriage, younger leaders understand sexual diversity and that exclusion harms spiritual wellbeing, Francis says.
“Young evangelicals leaders are not at all keen to be relegated to a cultural ghetto defined by bigotry,” she says. It’s a “strategic” argument that comes on top of the basic demand of justice.
“To put it very crudely: they don’t want to be irrelevant, and they want bums on seats in their churches. To put it a little more elegantly: they want to be relevant and welcoming.”
Francis says she had encountered people of faith who were “terrified” of same-sex marriage, because they had seen communication from “scurrilous groups that shall not be named” that led them to believe churches would be forced to conduct same-sex marriages.
The same-sex marriage bills before parliament contain no such requirement, and as such do not threaten religious freedom, the religious attendees concluded.
“I won’t let my faith be defined by those obsessed with exclusion … For Australia the Good News would be that same-sex couples will not be excluded from marriage [when the law is changed],” Francis says.
Shiffa Samad, from Muslims for Progressive Values, says intolerance of LGBTI people by a faith community was not the only fear she had growing up. Sneaking into gay clubs as a teenager, she found herself ostracised by white queer people and had great difficulty “coming out as Muslim to gay people”.
Reading a diary entry, she recalls “different faces told me the same story: that I needed to come out to my family, that I need to leave them if they don’t accept me”.
“There are correct ways to be gay, and Muslim isn’t it,” she says.
Australia's Anglican hierarchy divided over marriage equality plebiscite Read more
“It’s better to tell them you’re Hindu or Buddhist, talk about Krishna and Kama Sutra – then suddenly you’re mystical and they want to sleep with you.”
Samad says she “couldn’t stand” mosques for the same reason, of not feeling accepted. Gay Muslims have bigger problems than marriage equality, she says, including the pain of being kicked out of home, being told to pray out the gay, living a lie or being told celibacy is the only answer.
She says she found an interpretation of Islam that did not pit her religion against her sexuality, and a support network that made her feel safe and secure.
Imam Nur Warsame knows the difficulties of being a gay Muslim. He founded the Marhaba (meaning “welcome”) congregation in Melbourne, as a means to improve the welfare of LGBTI Muslims. He is Australia’s first gay imam, and one of only eight or nine in the world. “But I guarantee you there are many, many more,” he quips.
Nur Warsame says the violent rejection of homosexuality in some interpretations of Islam did not exist at the time of Muhammad or in the 400 years after, but was a more recent development, emerging in the last 500 years.
He recounts attempting self-harm and the marginalisation and despair of gay Muslim youth, and people living double lives. “Marriage equality will give hope to a lot of Muslim youth,” he concludes.
Australians for Equality organised the forum as part of a push to create a wide political coalition to legalise same-sex marriage, particularly necessary after the plebiscite bill was voted down in the Senate, leaving a free vote in parliament and cross-party cooperation as the best way forward.
The Australians for Equality director, Tiernan Brady, told the forum: “When someone says they’re a person of faith and for marriage equality, it causes surprise.
“It should be the opposite,” he says, noting that the majority of religious people are in favour of same-sex marriage.
Marriage equality plebiscite bill voted down in Senate Read more
The human rights commissioner, Ed Santow, who gave the keynote address at the forum, says LGBTI people of faith have “largely been missing” from the national debate.
“It’s vital that those voices and concerns of those people are heard in this debate, not least because ... LGBTI people of faith fall into some of the highest risk categories of poorer mental health outcomes as a consequence of their lived experience.”
Santow says the perception of a division of interests between LGBTI and religious people needs to be broken down.
“The experience of civil marriage equality in countries with much larger faith-based communities than Australia challenges the idea that a country cannot value simultaneously both the faith-based background of its citizens as well as an important representation of equality of LGBTI people,” he says.
And in that lies the point of the national faith forum and the same-sex marriage campaign: to prepare Australia for a time when marriage equality and freedom of religion are both respected, and both identities lie together inseparably entwined. |
Tail recursion in REBOL
REBOL 1.0 is properly tail recursive. Proper tail recursion is usually easy to achieve in most languages, but in REBOL it surprisingly difficult. Here is a short description of the problem and solution.
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A quick intro to the language
REBOL has been characterized as `like Lisp but without the parenthesis' or `the result of Ousterhout meeting Sussman in a dark alley'. Like Lisp, REBOL uses prefix notation; however, REBOL's notation is unbracketed, making it much closer to the `Polish notation' developed by Jan Lukasiewicz in the 1920's.
In order to provide an unbracketed notation, REBOL requires that all functions have fixed `arity'. No function takes optional or unlimited numbers of arguments (there are mechanisms available to work around this limitation). When REBOL encounters a function during evaluation, it assumes that the function will be applied to subsequent arguments. A special quoting mechanism indicates that a function is to be passed as an argument rather than invoked.
REBOL supports a `pseudo-infix notation' for mathematical operators. Infix operators are binary, and there is a simple syntactic translation that converts infix to prefix. REBOL's infix notation is evaluated left-to-right; there are no standard `rules of precedence'.
Because REBOL supports infix notation, order of evaluation for infix operators may be controlled by parenthesis. Parenthesis are not specific to the infix operators, they can be used anywhere else as well, but the prefix notation of REBOL makes them superfluous (to the interpreter, at least. The user may want to parenthesize some expressions in order to make them more readable.)
A typical REBOL expression may look like this:
floor random expt 2 x length foo
Which would be roughly equivalent to the lisp form:
(floor (random (expt 2 x)) (length foo))
Evaluation would proceed as follows:
FLOOR takes two arguments, recursively find the first argument... RANDOM takes one argument, recursively find it ... EXPT takes two arguments, recursively find the first ... 2 is atomic, return it Get second arg for EXPT x is a variable, (assume for this example x equals 16) Apply EXPT to 2 and 16 yielding 65536, return this.... Apply RANDOM to 65536 getting back ???? Get second argument to FLOOR... LENGTH takes one argument.... FOO is not a function, return it.... Apply LENGTH to value of FOO..... Apply FLOOR to the random number and result of length.
Expressions may be concatenated in order to execute them sequentially. Again, no special syntax is necessary.
A function that is the result of a computation will not automatically be applied. To illustrate this, suppose `make-adder' is a function that takes an integer and returns a function that adds that integer to an argument. The REBOL expression
MAKE-ADDER 3
would evaluate to a function, but the expression
MAKE-ADDER 3 4
would NOT apply that function. Rather, this expression would be treated as a sequence of two expressions: The call to make-adder (the result of which would be discarded) and the self-evaluating expression `4'. The primitive function `DO' may be used to invoke a computed function on an argument.
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Blocks
A `block' in REBOL is indicated by square brackets around an expression or series of expressions. A block is a delayed evaluation (a thunk). It is lexically scoped, and not memoized. Because blocks delay evaluation, there is no need for special forms within the language. For instance, a `when' function could be written as
my-when: func [pred consequences] [if pred do consequences]
The DO primitive, when applied to a block, forces execution of the block.
Why tail recursion is important in REBOL
Since blocks are thunks, all user-defined control constructs are written in continuation-passing style. Without proper tail-recursion, user-defined control constructs will blow out the stack. One possible solution is to have a plethora of primitive control constructs (if, when, while, until, loop, repeat, etc.) The drawback of this method is that each new control construct must be written in C, and care must be taken to preserve the language semantics (for instance, one must be careful to ensure lexical scoping). A properly tail-recursive implementation is more flexible for the user.
Unfortunately, making REBOL properly tail recursive is quite difficult. Let us explore the problem by writing a toy rebol interpreter in Scheme.
(define (eval-sequence block env) (if (empty-block? block) block (multiple-value-bind (value remainder) (eval-1 block env) ;; **** (if (null? remainder) value (eval-sequence remainder env))))) (define (eval-1 block env) (let ((token (car block))) (cond ((quoted? token) (values (unquote token) (cdr block))) ((assignment? token) (eval-assignment token (cdr block) env)) ((block? token) (values (make-closure token env) (cdr block)) (else (let ((value (lookup token env))) (if (or (fquoted? token) (not (procedure? value))) (values value (cdr block)) (eval-arguments value (cdr block) env)))))))) (define (eval-arguments function block env) (eval-arguments-1 function block env (arity function) '())) (define (eval-arguments-1 function block env arity arglist) (cond ((zero? arity) (values (apply function (reverse arglist)) block)) ((empty-block? block) (error "Too few arguments.")) ;;; fexpr processing would go here (else (multiple-value-bind (value remainder) (eval-1 block env) (eval-arguments-1 function remainder env (-1+ arity) (cons value arglist))))))
Note the line with asterisks. When evaluating a sequence of expressions in a block, we recursively evaluate the first expression in the sequence obtaining its value and the `remaining' part of the block. We don't know how much of the block will remain because we will `eat' arguments from the block incrementally. We only know that if there are any elements left, then we should continue evaluation of the block rather than return the value.
If this were a scheme interpreter, we would have a simple solution:
(define (eval-sequence sequence env) ;; scheme version (cond ((empty-sequence? sequence) nil) ((at-last-element? sequence) (eval (car sequence) env)) ;; tail recurse (t (eval (car sequence) env) (eval-sequence (cdr sequence) env))))
We would tail-recurse onto eval when we reach the last element. Again, we cannot do this in REBOL because we cannot write an `at-last-element?' function.
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The solution
The solution seems obvious in retrospect, but it took several weeks before I could convince myself that I wasn't just missing something trivial. I tried reorganizing the code, passing back flags, etc. Finally I pulled out the big guns and considered the denotational semantics of the language.
Tail recursion comes down to this: when recursively invoking the interpreter, do not create `trivial' continuations. A trivial continuation is the `identity' function, i.e., it simply returns the value handed to it.
How does one find the trivial continuations? Convert the function to `continuation-passing style' to make the continuations explicit, then eta-reduce any continuation that you can. So a properly tail-recursive program is one in which the continuation-passing-style has been eta-reduced.
Here's the cps version of a Rebol interpreter in Scheme:
(define (eval-sequence block env k) (if (empty-block? block) block (eval-1 block env (lambda (value more) (eval-sequence more env k)) (lambda (value) (k value)) ; ***** ))) (define (eval-1 block env k-more k-last) (define (return value) (if (null? (cdr block)) (k-last value) (k-more value (cdr block)))) (let ((token (car block))) (cond ((quoted? token) (return (unquote token))) ((assignment? token) (eval-assignment token (cdr block) env k-more k-last)) ((block? token) (return (make-closure token env))) (else (let ((value (lookup token env))) (if (or (fquoted? token) (not (procedure? value))) (return value) (eval-arguments value (cdr block) env k-more k-last))))))) (define (eval-arguments function block env k-more k-last) (eval-arguments-1 function block env (arity function) '() k-more k-last)) (define (eval-arguments-1 function block env arity arglist k-more k-last) (cond ((zero? arity) (apply function (reverse arglist) (if (empty-block? block) k-last k-more))) ((empty-block? block) (error "Too few arguments.")) ;;; fexpr processing would go here (else (eval-1 block env (lambda (last-arg) (eval-arguments-1 function NIL NIL (1- arity) (cons last-arg arglist) NIL k-last)) (lambda (arg more) (eval-arguments-1 function more env (1- arity) (cons arg arglist) k-more k-last))))))
Again, note the line with asterisks. This is the problematic continuation. It is trivial in that it simply passes its argument back to its caller, so it could be written as:
(define (eval-sequence block env k) (if (empty-block? block) block (eval-1 block env (lambda (value more) (eval-sequence more env k)) k ; eta-reduction of (lambda (value) (k value)) )))
This version of the interpreter will be properly tail recursive.
There is a surprise here. Notice that EVAL-1 (what would correspond to EVAL in a Lisp or Scheme interpreter) takes two continuations rather than the usual one. One continuation is invoked in the case where `more' of the sequence needs to be processed, the other in the case that the sequence is `all used up'. Furthemore, note that APPLY does not need an extra continuation.
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Implementation in C
It is often the case when you are implementing a language in terms of another that you wish to find a mapping between the host language's continuations and the target language's continuations. This allows you to use the function call and return mechanism in the host language (C) to implement the same in the target language (REBOL). Having two continuations for EVAL poses a problem. In C, there is a single continuation for each function. (Never mind the fact that C does not eta-reduce its continuations, i.e. it isn't tail recursive anyway).
It is here that Henry Baker's Cheney on the MTA trick comes in real handy. With `Cheney on the MTA', we write our C code in CPS and never return from a C function. This creates the mapping between the function calls of the host language and GOTOs (which will become calls, tail-calls, and returns) in the target language.
void eval_sequence (BLOCK b, int offset, ENVIRONMENT env, CONTINUATION_1 k) { struct continuation_2 kmore = malloc (sizeof (struct continuation_2)); kmore->function = & eval_sequence_continue; kmore->env = env; kmore->parent = k; eval_1 (b, offset, env, &kmore, k); } void eval_sequence_continue (CONTINUATION_2 self, VALUE val, BLOCK b, int offset) { eval_sequence (b, offset, self->env, self->parent); } void eval_1 (BLOCK b, int offset, ENVIRONMENT env, CONTINUATION_2 k_more, CONTINUATION_1 k_last) { OBJECT token = fetch_token (b, offset++); if (token_is (token, QUOTED)) { if (offset == length (block)) invoke_continuation_1 (k_last, unquote (token)); invoke_continuation_2 (k_more, unquote (token), b, offset); } .... else eval_arguments (value, b, offset, env, k_more, k_last); }
This code never returns a value, but proceeds by explicitly creating continuation objects and passing them along to the next procedure. So what happens when we blow off the top of the stack? Well, there is nothing on the stack of interest other than the topmost frame. So we'll check for stack overflow in eval_1, and if we are nearing the end, we'll squirrel away the arguments to eval_1 in some globals, longjmp to clear the stack, and call eval_1 with the saved arguments.
This code CONSes continuations like they are going out of style. Every time we evaluate an argument, we create two continuations. Every time we return a value, we discard one continuation. To avoid interlocking with the GC for every argument evaluation, we can allocate our continuations on the stack. Essentially, we use the machine's `stack pointer' as the `heap frontier' pointer.
void eval_sequence (BLOCK b, int offset, ENVIRONMENT env, CONTINUATION_1 k) { struct continuation_2 kmore; kmore.function = & eval_sequence_continue; kmore.env = env; kmore.parent = k; eval_1 (b, offset, env, &kmore, k); }
This solves the consing problem, but now when we blow off the top of the stack, we have to evacuate the current continuation chain to the heap. We could tag every continuation on the stack so that a stack evacuator can parse the continuation chain, but there is a niftier way:
In each continuation, we place a slot that holds a pointer to a function that knows how to evacuate that particular kind of continuation. When we approach the end of the stack, we jump to the evacuation function of the topmost continuation. It will evacuate itself from the stack and recurse on its parent, etc. etc. When all continuations are off the stack, we can then do a longjmp and restart the eval.
void eval_sequence (BLOCK b, int offset, ENVIRONMENT env, CONTINUATION_1 k) { struct continuation_2 kmore; kmore.evacuate = & eval_sequence_continue_evacuate; kmore.function = & eval_sequence_continue; kmore.env = env; kmore.parent = k; eval_1 (b, offset, env, &kmore, k); }
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Issues of implementation
PROS
This is *very* portable. The code ran identically on Windows, Unix, Mac and Amiga.
CONS |
1. Become expert on something
"I became an expert by accident. I happened to be playing with Nginx, a web server with a funny name. I decided I would figure out how to write my toy programs as extensions to Nginx rather than as standalone programs. I poked around the code and jotted down observations in a notebook. My first Nginx extension, a culmination of weeks of effort, was around 100 lines of code so I decided to put my notes onto an Nginx mailing list. My guide was an instant hit in Russia and all of the sudden I was an expert in this limited domain. I got an email a few days after later asking if I wanted to write an Nginx module for an Internet start-up."
Evan Miller, open source contractor
2. The more esoteric, the better
"I started working on x264, the only open source H.264 video encoder. I knew basically nothing and was experimenting with the simplest things. Slowly but surely, I learnt the codebase and eventually got my first major patch in. I taught myself x86 assembly, and then SIMD assembly. and finally, the subtleties of C pointers. I finally realised that the best way to learn how things work is to identify some way to improve them, and then go and do it--the process of doing it will eventually teach you how it works. When Adobe released the latest version of Flash 9, which supported H.264 video, suddenly, thousands of websites were interested in switching. As a developer of x264, I was in demand!"
DarkShikari, Hacking News
3. Take part in a code sprint
"Open source consultancies or companies rate code sprints, or competitions, as a great way to recruit contractors and find the right people to hire. You see how people work in an intense coding session, over the course of a few days, and you see how they interact with others. More than 70% of those I’ve recruited are people who participated in a sprint."
Nate Aune Jazzkarta
4. Be an active community member
"Traditionally, advice about marketing emphasises networking and word-of-mouth referrals. That is true for open source developers too, of course, because recommendations from happy customers are always the best way to get new ones. However, there are a few marketing resources that are peculiar to the open source community, or at least emphasized in open source circles: the community itself. Because open source communities encourage conversation and collaboration, your presence as an authoritative, helpful, and knowledgeable resource can drive business your way. "
Esther Schindler, JavaWorld
5. Ignore proprietary software at your peril
"You may be flying the flag for open source, but that doesn't mean you should ignore what's happening in proprietary software circles. In other words, it could benefit you to interact with the ‘Kool-Aid drinking Microsofties’. Staying in touch with the proprietary crowd will also help you understand where their pain points and frustrations are. You can use those competitor frustrations in your own marketing. Drop them in a conversation with clients."
Brian Jamison, Opensourcery
6. Give talks for free
"Talks can generate interest in what you're doing. I gave several talks on ‘How to use Plone for nonprofits’ that led to plenty of work. But, the leads don't necessarily come from people at the talk or from those to whom you handed out business cards. What you spend time on is what will come back to you. This method of getting business by sharing knowledge isn't unique to open source, of course. But it is even more meaningful for a start-up open source consultant who has to demonstrate expertise."
Nate Aune Jazzkarta
7. Learn how to defend open source
"A unique attribute of being an open source consultant is that you are often asked by potential customers to defend open source choices. Don't argue technical merits - that's a useless effort with customers who may not understand the technical niceties. Instead, ask them very same question of the closed alternative that they're considering. So, your potential customer might ask, ‘How can you use an open source content management system; don't you worry about security?’ Suggest to the customer that they ask the other vendor, ‘How do you know that the products you're using are secure, when nobody else but the vendor is looking at it?’ "
Brian Jamison, Opensourcery
9. Be a well-behaved open source citizen
"Your best marketing strategy as an open source contractor is to be visibly part of the larger ecosystem even when this means competing with other open source. We work together but we each have to do our part to keep the community healthy and alive. So write documentation, serve on the board for your project, organise user groups, and above all, contribute code."
Nate Aune Jazzkarta
10. Don't go it totally alone
Organisations such as the Open Source Consortium in the UK are good places to meet and mingle with other open source enthusiasts and professionals, while the chartered institute for computing, the BCS, has an open source special interest group. But it doesn't have to be specific to open source. Membership organisations are good places to learn lessons from other, more experienced open source professionals and can make a huge difference.
11. Learn to say no
"Every new consultant is offered opportunities that should be turned down, Jamison points out. It might be because that early consulting gig would lead to specialization you don't care for; if you write one iPhone app, you'll forever be branded as the iPhone app guy. You have to learn to Say No, no matter how hard it is to do so, Jamison says. Say No to offers to work for sweat equity, to scope creep from customers, to lowering your price. "
Brian Jamison, Opensourcery
With thanks to Esther Schindler, JavaWorld
Browse our IT contact jobs. |
The Heirs mostly civilized family contest to become the next publisher of A three-way,family contestnext publisher
From left: Sam Dolnick, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, and David Perpich.
Paintings by Roberto Parada
The issue of succession is a difficult matter not just for family-run businesses but for the families that run them. Take the Murdochs, for instance. Or the Binghams, the Kentucky newspaper clan that imploded in the 1980s. Historically speaking, transitions in the Sulzberger family, which has run the New York Times for 119 years, have not gone all that smoothly. During the paper’s early days, patriarch Adolph Ochs agonized over which heir should follow him: his nephew Julius Ochs Adler or his son-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. (His daughter, Iphigene, was never considered.) The competition took a toll on all involved. In 1932, Sulzberger suffered a stress-induced heart attack, which crippled his left hand; a year later, Adler had a nervous breakdown and spent six weeks in a mental institution. Ochs clung to the notion that maybe they could share the crown. “There can be only one head to a business,” Sulzberger replied. Ultimately, Ochs punted on the decision. When he died in 1935, his will essentially left it to Arthur, Julius, and Iphigene to work it out among themselves. Iphigene, being the deciding vote, supported her husband, thus cleaving a fault line in the family that was never repaired. The Adlers and Sulzbergers stopped speaking. In 1959, the final Adler was forced out of the paper.
Now, three generations and 80 years later, Ochs’s descendants are confronting a similar dilemma: Multiple capable family members from different branches want the top job. The House of Sulzberger is made up of four families, all descendants of Ochs’s daughter, and each harbors its own ambitions and grievances. The central rivalry is between the two most powerful wings: the Goldens and the Sulzbergers. But the outcome is not just a matter of family politics; the next publisher of the New York Times will be responsible for preserving the independence of the country’s greatest newspaper in an increasingly challenging media environment.
In recent months, I spoke with more than 65 current and former Times executives and journalists, plus Sulzberger-family members, advisers, and friends, to learn how the company is grooming its short list of potential successors. Three finalists have emerged: There’s the current chairman and publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.’s 35-year-old son, Arthur Gregg “A. G.” Sulzberger, best known for leading the committee that produced the digital wake-up call known as the “Innovation Report”; Sulzberger’s nephew David Perpich, 38, a Harvard M.B.A. who successfully launched the paper’s digital subscriptions; and Sam Dolnick, 34, the son of Sulzberger’s cousin Lynn Golden Dolnick, an influential and outspoken fourth-generation family member. A.G. and Sam have ascended through the newsroom ranks as Perpich climbed the business side. A.G. was promoted to senior editor for strategy in July 2014; two months later, Dolnick was named senior editor for mobile. Then, on July 23, Dolnick was appointed associate editor. A week later, a press release went out announcing A.G. had the same title. Meanwhile, to boost his newsroom experience, Perpich, named senior vice-president in March, has started attending news masthead meetings. “David, Arthur, and Sam were put in jobs that were perceived as essential to the paper when they might be running it,” a former senior editor says.
And this does not mean running it in the far-off future. Sulzberger has joked that “there’s a mandatory retirement age for everyone except for me.” But it’s not true. According to the company’s guidelines, Sulzberger, who turns 64 this September, may remain chairman of the board until 70. However, he is already three years older than his father, Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger, was when, in January 1987, he named Sulzberger assistant publisher, designating him heir apparent. When Punch turned 65, he gave his son the full title of publisher. Under this precedent, the family is behind schedule.
What’s different this time around is that there are three candidates with a legitimate shot at the top job. “I have to say this in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a PR guy,” says executive editor Dean Baquet, “but they’re all really good.”
Inside the competitive newsroom of the Times, job appointments are forensically dissected by Times journalists to determine their institutional significance. So it’s not surprising that handicapping the race between the Sulzberger cousins is a popular pastime at the paper. “Perpich is data-driven. If I had to sum him up in one word, it’d be M.B.A.,” a former executive says. Dolnick has written award-winning stories but lacks management experience. “Sam is kind of junior and young and has primarily an editorial background,” a source who worked on the business side says. That means A.G. — with management and newsroom experience, not to mention the Sulzberger name — is generally considered to be the front-runner.
The cousins rarely, if ever, acknowledge any suggestion of a rivalry. “They hate the idea of a horse race,” a Times staffer says. And they mostly refrain from expressing any outward entitlement or ambition. “It’s a testament to their personal style and values that you wouldn’t know they are part of the family,” says Kinsey Wilson, the Times’ new digital chief. A veteran staffer wonders: “Do they even want it? I have no fucking clue.”
But it’s hard to think that they wouldn’t. All three cousins grew up steeped in Times mythology, gathering at Hillandale, the onetime Sulzberger Connecticut estate, where copies of the Times were placed on benches in the gardens, and imbibing the belief that the family are stewards of a public trust. This indoctrination is how the Sulzbergers keep each new generation attached to the institution. (A good thing, considering that Michael Bloomberg, long considered the Times’ white-knight-in-waiting in the event that the Sulzbergers decided to sell, recently told me through a spokesperson that he was not interested in buying.) A total of six (out of 27) fifth-generation cousins currently hold positions at the Times. “Our promise to members of the Ochs-Sulzberger family who want to work at the New York Times and have the skill set to do so is to give them careers,” Sulzberger recently said.
It creates turbulence in the family when one cousin gets attention over another. A couple of years ago, after Adweek published a gushing profile of Perpich — headlined “The Heir to the Times’ Throne?” — Michael Greenspon, another fifth-generation cousin, who has worked at the Times since 2007, was said to have walked into the Times’ public-relations office. “Whose idea was this?” he said. “How could Perpich do this?” An executive responded that Perpich never talked to the reporter. “If the press focuses on certain people and says they’ve been anointed as the possible successor, that can be very painful for anyone not on the list,” a fourth-generation family member told me. (The cousins declined to be interviewed on the record for this story.)
The selection of the next publisher is perhaps the most critical challenge facing the Times. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. steered the paper into the digital age and protected its journalism, but the next publisher can’t afford to just be a competent steward; he (and it’s almost certain to be a he) must navigate what Wilson called “one of the most turbulent, convulsive periods that media has gone through since Gutenberg.” This year, digital subscriptions plateaued at 1 million, a respectable number, certainly, but far below what the paper needs to fund its $300 million news-gathering budget. Meanwhile, print advertising continues a seemingly inexorable decline, down 13 percent in the last quarter alone. This past winter, the paper suffered a brain drain in a wrenching round of buyouts and layoffs, losing a cadre of top editors and marquee bylines. And there is a widely held view that more layoffs are coming.
The last time power was transferred at the Times, “Punch” Sulzberger only had to convince his three sisters before naming his son publisher. Now the decision will involve balancing a complex set of competing interests, including a family that has grown to 40 cousins, who must get along without the benefit of the once-lucrative dividend generated by their Times stock. “We’ve created a very well-thought-through process such that when the time comes for me to announce a successor,” Sulzberger told me in June during a public event at Hunter College, “it involves the board of directors, because obviously they have a stake in this; the family, because obviously they have a stake in this; and management, because they have a stake in this.”
Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY (A.S. Ochs); Nancy R. Schiff/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (Bertha Ochs); Bettman/Corbis (A.H. Sulzberger); Robin Platzer/Twin Images (M. Sulzberger); Courtesy Of The University Of Tennessee At Chattanooga (R. Sulzberger); Marina Garnier (J. Sulzberger); Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times/Redux (“Punch” Sulzberger); Gregory Partanio/Manhattansociety.Com (C.J. Sulzberger); Larry Busacca/Getty Images For The New York Times (A.O. Sulzberger Jr.); Todd Heisler/The New York Times (Dolnick, A.G. Sulzberger); Earl Wilson/The New York Times (Perpich)
Like earlier generations of Sulzbergers, the fifth-generation contenders were encouraged by their parents to cut their teeth outside the Times. A.G.’s first job after graduating from Brown was at the Providence Journal. “He wanted to be treated like everyone else. He may have grown up in a famous family, but he truly did not feel confident,” recalled former deputy executive editor Carol Young, who was in charge of hiring. “A.G. did not plant his name at all,” she said. “If you called his voice-mail, all it said was, ‘You’ve reached Arthur,’ not ‘This is Arthur Sulzberger.’ ”
A.G. quickly made friends with a group of junior reporters and even dated one of them, a Harvard grad named Elizabeth Gudrais, who covered state politics. He was eager to become a political writer himself, and, in August 2006, after two years in Rhode Island, he got his break to do that at the Portland Oregonian. The paper’s then–managing editor, Stephen Engelberg, a Times veteran, took him under his wing. “I knew his father, and I wanted to keep an eye on him,” Engelberg, now the editor of ProPublica, told me. After a few months, Engelberg teamed A.G. with Les Zaitz, the paper’s most senior investigative reporter, to dig into accusations that a corrupt county sheriff had had an affair with the then-governor’s wife. A.G. didn’t always seem comfortable in the Woodward-and-Bernstein role. After interviewing one particularly chatty woman, he blanched at printing her revelations. “We walked out, and he said he felt bad because the lady was so nice,” Zaitz recalled. He told A.G. to toughen up. “She’s old enough to handle talking to the press,” he said. A.G.’s articles created a splash in Oregon political circles. In May 2008, the sheriff resigned.
At the Times, senior editors had been monitoring A.G.’s career, feeding progress reports to his father. That summer, then–managing editor Jill Abramson told Sulzberger it was time for his son to come home. Sulzberger was thrilled. There was, however, one problem: A.G. didn’t agree. “He didn’t think he was talented enough,” a high-placed Times source told me. Abramson had to persuade him to take the job.
With his stubble and dark plastic glasses, A.G. looked like any serious young Timesman. “We had some curiosity when he first came,” says Metro editor Wendell Jamieson, “but he just turned out to be sort of, I don’t want to say ‘unassuming,’ but just a regular guy.” That’s not the full story, though. “He’s not a patsy at all. Underneath that very affable exterior is a certain amount of ambition,” a prominent Times writer says. He is also extremely reserved. “He’s almost willfully not his father,” a former Times executive says. “I’ve never heard him crack a joke or laugh. You want him to loosen up.” In private moments, A.G. explains his reserve as a coping strategy. “When they’ve been writing about you since you were 5, you learn to be private,” he told a friend. But it’s a difficult stance from which to run an organization, particularly one so public as the Times. “It’s hard to know what he believes,” a former senior executive says. “It’s like if you go see a spiritual guru. He’ll tell you, ‘The answer is within yourself.’ ”
A.G.’s arrival, in February 2009, inevitably ignited speculation about succession. To many, it seemed that Sulzberger was handing his son a head start — just as his father, Punch, had done a generation earlier. The unintended casualties of Punch’s favoritism were the four children of his sister Ruth Golden, some of whom harbored hopes of one day running the paper themselves. Their disadvantages began with their birthplace, Tennessee, where the family patriarch, Adolph Ochs, got his start in newspapers as the owner of the Chattanooga Times. The Golden kids — Michael, Stephen, Lynn, and Arthur — grew up in a turbulent home rife with resentment toward their New York relatives. Their father, Ben Hale Golden, was a hard drinker prone to bouts of verbal and physical violence. As publisher of the Chattanooga Times, he felt inadequate and indebted to the Sulzbergers for employment and social position. One drunken evening, he slashed a Sulzberger family portrait with a knife. Another time, he threatened Ruth with a gun. They divorced in 1965, and Ruth took over as publisher of the Chattanooga Times.
When the Golden boys went knocking on the door of the New York Times in the 1970s, Punch opened it but sidelined them with second-tier jobs. Stephen started in the regional-newspaper group before transferring to the Times’ purchasing department and, later, the forest-products division. Michael was more credentialed: He spoke French, had a journalism degree and an M.B.A., and had helped his mother run the Chattanooga Times. But in 1987, when Punch gave Arthur the newly created job of assistant publisher, Michael was stuck in the magazine marketing division. “The race had started with Michael on second base and Arthur on third,” a former senior editor close to the family said. “The Goldens felt slighted by that.”
What kept the Sulzberger-Golden rivalry from boiling over was the firm hand of the family matriarch, Iphigene. “Iphigene had four children. They all agreed,” the family’s longtime trust lawyer, Ted Wagner, told me. Michael may have complained to his mother, Ruth, about not getting equal opportunities, but she wasn’t going to question her mother. “It’s all family dynamics,” Wagner said. But when Iphigene died in 1990, it was suddenly every cousin for himself.
So, for the Goldens, A.G.’s arrival at the Times was a call to action. Sam, the oldest son of Lynn Golden Dolnick, was the same age as A.G. and also a talented journalist. “Lynn is ambitious for her son,” says a former senior Times editor who knows the family well. In order to prevent history from repeating itself, Lynn embarked on a behind-the-scenes campaign to make sure there would be a competition, not a coronation.
Before A.G. arrived at the Times, Lynn Dolnick lobbied her cousins to formalize the process by which succession would be decided. As a result of these conversations, the board created the “Family Career Development Committee,” a quasi-secret group that included Sulzberger Jr., vice-chairman Michael Golden, the Times’ CEO, and the head of HR. Their official mandate was to ensure that family members working for the company received “fair” evaluations and an equal shot at promotion, according to a family member. “There were memos written in the beginning. They wanted the newsroom to be invested in making sure that all members of the family were being exposed to different things,” says a former high-ranking editor. Unofficially, the group was also tasked with making sure A.G. didn’t get too far ahead.
The cousins were inclined to listen to Lynn. By this time, she was a power center in family matters. Like her mother, Ruth, Lynn was forthright and very smart. She attended Brandeis in the ’70s, earning an undergraduate degree and a Ph.D. in biology. There, she met her husband, the journalist and author Edward Dolnick. In 1996, she became the first member of her generation to be named a trustee of the Ochs-Sulzberger Trust, the vehicle through which the family controls the Times. In 2005, she joined the Times’ board of directors.
She also had well-positioned allies. In January 2008, her brother Michael returned to headquarters from Paris, where he’d been publisher of the International Herald Tribune. Michael became a gatekeeper to securing employment for the fifth generation. “If you’re in the family and you want to work at the company, you have to talk to Michael,” a former senior executive says. Michael hosts annual family reunions at his Columbia County home, like the ones that used to take place at Hillandale.*
After graduating from Columbia, Sam interned for The Village Voice’s hard-nosed investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, then moved to the night shift at the Staten Island Advance. Like A.G., he worked hard not to flaunt his connections, an effort made easier by the fact that hardly anyone knew that the Dolnick name was Times royalty. In fact, colleagues hazed him by dumping the worst assignments on his desk. “When the editor would yell out, ‘Who’s going to take a community-meeting notice?,’ we gave him Sam’s extension,” recalled Glenn Nyback, a former reporter. Like A.G., Sam also found love in the newsroom. He started dating a reporter named Heidi Shrager, whom he later married.
But whereas A.G. wanted to be a political reporter, Sam’s ambitions were more literary. His father was a successful author; Ben, his younger brother, was a novelist. At the Advance, editors didn’t particularly embrace his writerly sensibility. “Get the fucking information in the lead!” one told him after he read his first story, which began with a four-line sentence. It was a sensitive point. Months later, the editor regaled staffers about it over drinks at the local watering hole. Sam pulled him aside afterward. “I wish you would have talked to me about this and not to my colleagues,” he said.
In 2004, Sam joined the Associated Press. He spent three years as a metro reporter, covering everything from the GOP convention to Bill Clinton’s quadruple bypass. Then he left for New Delhi to be a foreign correspondent. Editors were keenly aware that they were grooming a potential Times publisher and made sure he secured plum assignments. “It was always understood that we needed to give him a wide range of experience,” a former senior AP editor said.
In August 2009, seven months after A.G. joined the Metro desk, Sam came aboard as a Metro reporter. Having two cousins working so closely together could have presented challenges. But A.G. soon shipped out to Kansas City to open a Midwest bureau. There, he wrote human-interest stories about a retired postman who built a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge over a creek behind his home, and got breaking-news experience covering the catastrophic tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri.
Shortly before A.G. left for the Midwest, David Perpich, the son of Sulzberger’s half-sister Cathy, joined the paper’s business staff. His recruitment was another plank in the Goldens’ plan to position challengers to A.G. “Michael Golden brought Perpich back,” with Sulzberger’s blessing, said a former senior executive.
It wasn’t easy convincing Perpich to come. For years, he resisted the gravitational pull of the family business. After graduating from Duke during the dot-com bubble, he dived into the start-up world. In the spring of 2002, he bumped into a Duke alumnus named Rob Principe, who mentioned he was starting a company called Scratch DJ Academy with Jam Master Jay of Run-DMC that would teach spinning records to the masses. “That is so simple. And I love it,” Perpich told Principe. The business soon grew to several million dollars in revenue. “Dave was proud of his family, but he also wanted to build his own experience, initially, independent of his family,” Principe told me. After three years at Scratch, Perpich went to Harvard Business School, then landed at the consulting firm Booz Allen.
When Perpich finally did come to the Times, he got an assignment with tremendous visibility: launching the paper’s digital subscriptions, an attempt to get readers to pay for Times content online. “The risk was so high; if we stumbled in the execution, it would have been unforgivable,” a former senior executive told me. Perpich’s confidence and competence, combined with the success of the so-called paywall, rapidly raised his profile. He was eventually put in charge of NYT Beta, an in-house incubator with its own investment budget to finance new product launches. In the summer of 2012, Perpich was part of a team that persuaded the board to back a new series of Times apps like NYT Now and Cooking, designed to bring in new subscribers at lower price points.
Around this time, according to a high-level source, then–deputy managing editor Bill Schmidt presented a memo to Jill Abramson outlining how A.G. and Sam would rotate through various departments on the business side, following the path Sulzberger had traveled in the early 1980s. But A.G. and Sam wanted to be journalists — not suits — and they rejected the proposal.
Instead, they got promotions that elevated their profiles in the newsroom. In March 2012, A.G. was named an editor on the Metro desk — a job that gave him crucial management experience. Meanwhile, Sam spent more than a year reporting an award-winning investigative project about privatized halfway houses in New Jersey. Lynn often advocated for Sam with Times leadership. “She’d come in and say, ‘What are you doing about Sam? Is he being treated unfairly because of Arthur Gregg?’ ” recalls an executive involved in the career-development conversations. “There’s nothing subtle about it.” Less than a year after A.G. joined the editorial ranks, Sam was named deputy sports editor.
Keenly aware of history, the fourth generation undertook elaborate measures to bring the three contenders closer together. To foster better relations between them, Abramson and Baquet organized monthly lunches at which they walked them through newsroom decisions, such as publishing the Snowden NSA documents or investigating the vast wealth of China’s Communist leadership. The families also hired a family-business consultant and psychologist named Katherine Grady, who met regularly with the cousins and interviewed their colleagues, reporting back to their parents on their progress.
In 2013, Abramson put A.G. in charge of a committee tasked with dreaming up products that could bolster the Times’ bottom line. It could have been a make-work assignment, like any number of committees the Times has convened that have produced earnest reports and memos that collect dust. But the hope was that A.G., who had very little digital experience at that point, might learn a thing or two. A.G. and his team set up shop in a conference room off the third-floor newsroom. They brought in a design expert who had worked for Ideo, the San Francisco design firm, and filled whiteboards with concepts. But after two months, according to a committee member, A.G. reached a startling conclusion: The paper’s digital problems ran much, much deeper than the leadership suspected. The Graham family had just sold the Washington Post, which lent an additional sense of urgency to the project. If A.G.’s family wanted to avoid the fate of the Grahams, the Times would need a lot more than an app.
So A.G. changed his committee’s mission to critiquing the Times’ 164-year-old culture. In clinical detail, the 96-page “Innovation Report” the committee eventually produced documented how the Times found itself bogged down by outmoded processes, beset by baroque turf battles, and ultimately in danger of falling behind nimbler competitors like BuzzFeed, Vox, and Vice News. The report called for revolutionary changes, none more extreme than ending the division between the newsroom and business departments that had been all but a religion to an earlier generation of Times journalists. “It was a slap in the head,” Baquet told me.
By this point, the publisher’s relationship with executive editor Abramson had frayed. Sulzberger had been hearing troubling dispatches from A.G. and Sam about her management style. “A.G. and Sam were the publisher’s eyes and ears in meetings and did report back it wasn’t going well,” a former senior Times editor says. On Friday, May 9, Sulzberger fired Abramson and promoted Baquet to executive editor. (Abramson declined to comment.)
The week after Abramson’s dismissal, the “Innovation Report” was leaked to BuzzFeed. A.G. was exposed to the judgment of the 1,300 Times journalists he hoped to one day lead. Here’s the publisher’s kid, who doesn’t even have a Facebook page or an active Twitter account, telling us to figure out the internet? “Think about the optics,” one Times staffer grumbled.
Whether he wanted to or not, the leak pushed A.G. into the public role he’d been avoiding his entire career. In what amounted to a full-fledged political campaign, he barnstormed the paper and defended the report’s findings to employees in meeting after meeting. At first, he faced skepticism and disbelief. In one session, senior editors audibly gasped when A.G. displayed a chart that showed traffic to the Times homepage had plummeted from 160 million readers per month to 80 million in just two years. “News people were in a state of shock,” a veteran Times journalist says. But A.G.’s salesmanship was, by all accounts, a success. “He was humble about what he doesn’t know,” an attendee recalls. After one session, Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter David Barstow gushed: “That was a holy-shit piece of reporting.”
On June 19 last year, A.G. presented the report to the board of directors. It was his first audience with the 14 men and women who would help decide whether he would follow his father as publisher.
One senior editor told me that the next publisher of the New York Times will likely be decided in the next couple of years. And a Times spokesperson confirmed that Sulzberger will step down before he turns 70. In some ways, A.G. seems to be the most likely to be chosen. After all, his “Innovation Report” is actually changing the way the Times operates. His core insight is essentially a matter of distribution: He’s fond of telling colleagues that the company historically invested millions of dollars in getting print papers from the plant to people’s homes and needs to do the same in a digital context. This push to get Times content in front of as many readers as possible has fallen under the rubric of “Audience Development,” a goal to which 35 jobs are now dedicated.
Meanwhile, the apps developed by Perpich’s product team, while successful with users, have not generated revenue. And Dolnick has struggled to gain the stature A.G. was afforded by the “Innovation Report.” Last summer, editors approached him about leading a committee that would study how to improve the print newspaper. According to a senior Times source, the Golden family felt the print project was “looking backwards.” So instead Sam was named senior editor for mobile, assigned to work on NYT Now and the relaunch of the Times app. (In June, the team Sam worked on persuaded Times editors to temporarily shut off desktop access to the homepage so employees could read it only on their phones, a move some felt was a stunt.)
That said, right now, the eight trustees of the Ochs-Sulzberger trust, which elects 70 percent of the company’s board of directors, are not automatically lined up in A.G.’s favor, a senior executive with knowledge of the family dynamics told me. The Golden wing has the most votes, with three trustees (Sam’s uncle Michael, aunt Trudy, and cousin Hays). Arthur and his brother-in-law Steven Green represent the Sulzbergers. Perpich can count on his father, Joe. The swing votes include Carolyn Greenspon, who’s said to back Dolnick or Perpich; and James Cohen, who’s said to be undecided. (A Times spokesperson said: “Any idea that specific trustees would be voting for their children, nieces, or nephews would be wrong.”)
One possible path to avert a family rupture would be to divide the top jobs among the three contenders. “I heard they were intrigued by the all-three deal,” a former editor says of the cousins. In this scenario, A.G. could become publisher and chairman, Perpich could eventually become CEO, and Dolnick could eventually take over the running of the newsroom. Such a plan would play to each cousin’s respective strengths. And it would bind the family ever tighter to the paper during an era when investing in serious public-spirited journalism requires a long-term view. “I believe, and the board of the company believes, that it’s a strategic strength for the company to have family control,” CEO Mark Thompson told me.
But there are risks involved in carving up fiefdoms for the three cousins, no matter their talents. If this scenario came to pass, it would be the first time that the positions of CEO and executive editor were held by family members. One senior editor told me it was essential for the Times’ stature as the paper of record that the newsroom be run by a nonfamily member. Others wonder whether the Times would be able to retain top talent if the biggest jobs were monopolized by family members.
In the end, the “all-three deal” is probably less realistic than it is mollifying, another way to soothe anxieties and quiet the talk of horse races. After all, as A.G.’s great-grandfather Arthur Hays Sulzberger told Adolph Ochs some 80 years ago, “There can be only one head to a business.”
*This article appears in the August 24, 2015 issue of New York Magazine.
*This article has been corrected to show that Michael Golden’s house is in Columbia County, not Orange County. |
If you can judge a man by the company he keeps, David Cameron is a pinball machine. Look at the random bunch of advisers he hangs – or in one case hung – around with. Just look at them.
First, Andy Coulson, the Essex-boy "man of the people" who rose to become editor of the nation's foremost grieving-relative surveillance unit. At the other end of the spectrum, George Gideon Oliver King Rameses Osborne, 14-year-old novelty chancellor and future baron of Ballentaylor and Ballylemon – a man so posh he probably weeps champagne. And finally, at the opposing end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum – thereby hopelessly triangulating the spectrum – we have "blue-sky" policy guru Steve Hilton, who apparently wanders around Downing Street barefoot, "thinking outside the box" like some groovy CEO.
Imagine sitting in a meeting room trying to make sense of that lot. Imagine them collectively giving you policy advice over a tea urn and a platter of sandwiches. Andy darkly gruffing and grumping and breaking off every few minutes to check the Guardian homepage on his iPhone. Gideon wondering how many coins there are in a pound then snorting through his nose as he draws a penis murdering a tramp on his satchel. Steve idly tossing a Hacky Sack around and suggesting the next cabinet meeting should be held in a birthing pool. Talk about conflicting approaches. The cognitive dissonance would grow so loud you'd turn olive and giddy. And then you wouldn't know which one to vomit over first. (Although since you're David Cameron, the correct answer is "yourself".)
Andy and Gideon we're familiar with, of course. Andy is the sinister man in the slow-mo shots on the news, and Gideon is the naughty boy who's broken the economy. But Steve is more of a mystery. I've only ever glimpsed him in still photographs and a bit of news archive of him sitting on a bench somewhere.
Last week, the aura of mystery was punctured somewhat after the Financial Times printed a leaked list of some of his bluer "blue-sky" ideas, such as the abolition of maternity leave and the closure of Job Centres. Ministers were quick to point out none of this was going to become official policy – rather, this was all a bit of amusing crazy talk designed to kick-start internal discussions. You know, an icebreaker – like opening a meeting by suggesting everyone follows you down to the local duck pond to watch you chop the head off a swan with some shears. It gets people talking. The swan's head stays on – the swan was never in danger – but some truly ground-breaking concepts might spin out of the ensuing debate. Only by thinking the unthinkable can we define what's thinkable. The swan has to die in our heads to survive in our hearts. Or something.
Previously, such out-there thought-riffing led Hilton to suggest the use of nascent "cloudbusting" technology to create longer summers – no, really – and more famously, to dream up the "big society". Frustratingly for Hilton's critics, who like to paint him as a sort of misguided guff engine, the big society has been a resounding, concrete success. From the weeniest village to the hugest metropolis, there's a solar-powered big society community hugspace on every corner, staffed by volunteers in unicorn costumes. I can't recall the last time an authentic grassroots movement captured the public imagination on such a grand scale, apart perhaps from T-Mobile's 2009 "Josh's band" advertising campaign, which culminated in a feelgood hit single that stayed at number one for 79 consecutive weeks IN T-MOBILE'S MAD MIND.
Anyway, most of the focus thus far has been on Hilton's laid-back dress sense and the Professor Branestawm wackiness of his ideas, which started out funny but seem less tittersome the more extreme they become. But what sticks in my craw is the sheer stinking, blunted crapness of them.
"Nudge unit". "Big society". "Hug a hoodie". They sound like the titles of nauseating business-psychobabble books: the sort of timewasting Who Moved My Cheese? groovy CEO bullshit routinely found cluttering the shelves of every airport bookshop in the world. As well as being a pallid substitute for actual creativity – a device for making grey business wonks mistake themselves for David Bowie at his experimental peak – these books are the direct suit-and-tie office-dick equivalent of those embarrassing motivational self-help tomes that prey on the insecure, promising to turn their life around before dissolving into a blancmange of "strategies" and "systems" and above all excruciating metaphors.
Be honest. We've all read at least one of these personal empowerment classics. Or at least riffled through it in a bookshop. Any idiot could churn one out. In fact, let's write one now.
We'll call it Break in Your Lifehorse. Chapter 1: imagine your hopes and dreams are a galloping stallion, wild and untamed. Chapter 2: now picture yourself throwing a glowing lasso of light around its neck. Chapter 3: the dream stallion tries to jerk away from you, but if you dig in your heels and whisper at it, it will eventually calm down. Chapter 4: while it grazes, unsuspecting – leap on and saddle up! Chapter 5: ride it through the canyons of doubt and over the horizon of fear. Congratulations! You're achieve-anating! That'll be £10.99 thanks. Don't forget to visit our website to buy the official Lifehorse Grooming Kit containing exclusive workcharts and a guide to customising your saddle. Coming soon: Break in Your Lovehorse (relationship healage for the recently bewildered), and Break in Your Lifepony (successanising strategies for the under-12s.)
There you go. Beam an e-copy of that to Hilton's Kindle, and I guarantee there'll be a Lifehorse in every nudge unit by 2013. Unless he's imagineered his way to having us all diced up and fed to the swans by big society shock troopers as part of some Rainbownomics initiative by then. Which is inevitable. Inevitable. |
This sad saga of abuse of authority by an unethical and highly partisan prosecutor may finally be at an end.
By way of background, the Milwaukee County prosecutor, John Chisholm, decided to harness his office to Wisconsin’s misnamed ‘Government Accountability Board’ in order to harass Governor Scott Walker and jail, bankrupt or terrify as many of his allies as possible. To this end, innocent people had their doors kicked in, their homes rifled, possessions confiscated and then were forbidden to talk about it. Had Chisholm, whose interest in the case seems to be directly related to his wife being a teacher’s union official, picked on people unable to fight we might not even know of the abuses he perpetrated. As it turned out, some of the targets had the wherewithal to fight him.
When Governor Walker commented on this lawless investigation in Iowa, back in April, he said:
I said even if you’re a liberal Democrat, you should look at (the raids) and be frightened to think that if the government can do that against people of one political persuasion, they can do it against anybody, and more often than not we need protection against the government itself…. As (the National Review) pointed out, there were real questions about the constitutionality of much of what they did, but it was really about people trying to intimidate people…. They were looking for just about anything. As I pointed out at the time, it was largely a political witch hunt….
Chisholm responded like a petulant little child and seemed to threaten Walker with prosecution:
As to defamatory remarks, I strongly suspect the Iowa criminal code, like Wisconsin’s, has provisions for intentionally making false statements intended to harm the reputation of others. The truth is always a defense, so let’s get the truth out in a legal manner, not through lies, distortions and misrepresentations.
The case has been in several courts with Chisholm being rebuked at nearly every turn. Today the Wisconsin Supreme Court released its ruling:
Dealing Gov. Scott Walker a victory just as his presidential camapaign gets underway, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday the governor’s campaign and conservative groups had not violated campaign finance laws in recall elections in 2011 and 2012. The ruling means the likely end of the investigation, which has been stalled for 18 months after a lower court judge determined no laws were violated even if Walker’s campaign and the groups had worked together as prosecutors believe.
It wasn’t just a technical victory. The court ruled that even if everything the prosecutor alleged happened, there was no violation of the law:
To be clear, this conclusion ends the John Doe investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law. Consequently, the investigation is closed.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court expressed amazement at the scope of the investigation:
The breadth of the documents gathered pursuant to subpoenas and seized pursuant to search warrants is amazing. Millions of documents, both in digital and paper copy, were subpoenaed and/or seized. Deputies seized business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys. The special prosecutor obtained virtually every document possessed by the Unnamed Movants relating to every aspect of their lives, both personal and professional, over a five-year span (from 2009 to 2013). Such documents were subpoenaed and/or seized without regard to content or relevance to the alleged violations of Ch. 11. As part of this dragnet, the special prosecutor also had seized wholly irrelevant information, such as retirement income statements, personal financial account information, personal letters, and family photos.
The court went on to rebuke the prosecutor for how the investigation had been handled:
Our lengthy discussion of these three cases can be distilled into a few simple, but important, points. It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. In other words, the special prosecutor was the instigator of a “perfect storm” of wrongs that was visited upon the innocent Unnamed Movants and those who dared to associate with them. It is fortunate, indeed, for every other citizen of this great State who is interested in the protection of fundamental liberties that the special prosecutor chose as his targets innocent citizens who had both the will and the means to fight the unlimited resources of an unjust prosecution. Further, these brave individuals played a crucial role in presenting this court with an opportunity to re-endorse its commitment to upholding the fundamental right of each and every citizen to engage in lawful political activity and to do so free from the fear of the tyrannical retribution of arbitrary or capricious governmental prosecution. Let one point be clear: our conclusion today ends this unconstitutional John Doe investigation.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court essentially agreed with Walker’s April statement and Chisholm was revealed to be a liar and a cretin. This is a vindication that can be used in campaign materials. |
For most kids, the static electricity that builds up as they go down playground slides does little more than make their hair stand on end. But for thousands of hearing-impaired children, static can shut down their cochlear implants in an instant.
To try to help kids with implants enjoy slides, a group of Missouri researchers is studying just how much static electricity can build up on plastic playground slides as part of an attempt to find a solution to the cochlear conundrum.
It won't come too soon for Mary McGinnis, director of teacher education at the John Tracy Clinic, which serves hearing-impaired children in Los Angeles. "This has been the bane of my existence," said McGinnis, who's seen several cases of implants fried by static electricity.
An estimated 15,000 American children have cochlear implants, which convert sound into electrical impulses that the brain can detect.
Static electricity has been a problem for the implants since they first became available in the mid-1980s, McGinnis said. One of the first children to have an implant, she said, erased its memory by simply pulling a sweater over her head, and had to have the device replaced.
New generations of implants are less susceptible to static and typically don't need to be re-implanted after getting zapped. But playground slides and other sources of heavy static (like balloons) can still zap an implant and require it to be reprogrammed, which costs up to $1,000. The child, meanwhile, must go hours or days without being able to hear.
Armed with a $25,000 federal grant, researchers launched a study of exactly how much static electricity is created when a child goes down a slide. They filed their report with the United States Access Board in March.
By hooking sensors to children as they slid down slides in St. Louis and Tucson, Arizona, the scientists found that children easily built up 25,000 volts of electricity, the limit of the measuring devices.
"That's a pretty good lightning bolt," said study lead author Bob Morley, an associate professor of electrical and systems engineering at Washington University.
Plastic slides are such a strong generator of static because large parts of the body come in contact with the surface area, causing electrons to be rubbed free and cling to the kids, Morley said.
What to do? One idea is to coat the slides with an antistatic material. A St. Louis company called Crosslink is developing an antistatic coating for the canopies of Navy planes and has offered to look into whether its product might work for slides, too.
The coating contains polymers that conduct electricity and dissipate any charge, "never really generating the potential for a spark," said Patrick Kinlen, Crosslink's chief technology officer, who thinks the product could be used on slides at an affordable cost.
For the time being, however, children with cochlear implants should stay away from plastic playground slides. (Metal slides don't pose a great risk – at least one playground designed for the disabled has installed them to protect implant-wearing kids – but they get hotter in the summer.)
Staying away from slides is "very hard for a child," said McGinnis, the trainer of teachers for hard-of-hearing kids. "But it's probably even harder for a parent. All the parents I know want their children to look and be like all the other children." |
The great bulk of the economic commentary you read in the papers is focused on the short run: the effects of the “fiscal cliff” on U.S. recovery, the stresses on the euro, Japan ’s latest attempt to break out of deflation. This focus is understandable, since one global depression can ruin your whole day. But our current travails will eventually end. What do we know about the prospects for long-run prosperity?
The answer is: less than we think.
The long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office , generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity — the key driver of growth — is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality , which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.
It’s not hard to understand why agencies make these assumptions. Given how little we know about long-run growth, simply assuming that the future will resemble the past is a natural guess. On the other hand, if income inequality continues to soar, we’re looking at a dystopian, class-warfare future — not the kind of thing government agencies want to contemplate.
Yet this conventional wisdom is very likely to be wrong on one or both dimensions.
Recently, Robert Gordon of Northwestern University created a stir by arguing that economic growth is likely to slow sharply — indeed, that the age of growth that began in the 18th century may well be drawing to an end.
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Mr. Gordon points out that long-term economic growth hasn’t been a steady process; it has been driven by several discrete “industrial revolutions,” each based on a particular set of technologies. The first industrial revolution, based largely on the steam engine, drove growth in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The second, made possible, in large part, by the application of science to technologies such as electrification, internal combustion and chemical engineering, began circa 1870 and drove growth into the 1960s. The third, centered around information technology, defines our current era.
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And, as Mr. Gordon correctly notes, the payoffs so far to the third industrial revolution, while real, have been far smaller than those to the second. Electrification, for example, was a much bigger deal than the Internet. |
Just days after North Carolina environmental regulators began looking into a potentially hazardous pollutant in one of the state’s biggest rivers, state lawmakers cut their funding.
In the new budget they passed June 22, legislators ordered the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to cut $1.8 million over the next two years.
It was just the latest in a decade of cuts to state regulators. While exact budget comparisons are difficult because of shifting agency responsibilities, money directed to environmental regulation has dropped by millions of dollars over the last decade, even as the state budget has grown significantly.
Dozens of environmental protection jobs have disappeared, in specialties ranging from the coast to rivers and air pollution. And a months-long backlog of paperwork mean more companies are able to operate under outdated permits, without recent oversight.
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The cuts have led to real consequences, said Grady McCallie, policy director for the environmental group N.C. Conservation Network, including a weakened ability for the state to respond to issues like the pollution in the Cape Fear River that came to light this summer.
“I think we’ve seen a real erosion in the capacity of the state to deal with emerging issues,” McCallie said.
When the Republican-controlled General Assembly returned to Raleigh in August, lawmakers voted to provide some funding to look into GenX, the chemical that has been dumped into the Cape Fear River for years without permission.
But that bill gave no extra money to DEQ, and on Thursday Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill.
Cooper’s DEQ Secretary Michael Regan says the state can deal with short-term – but not long-term – issues surrounding the GenX pollution.
“We have deployed our experts to address the immediate concerns in the Lower Cape Fear region, but because of cuts over the last few years, long-term solutions will take more resources than our department currently has,” Regan wrote to legislators in August.
Response to GenX
The state has accused a Chemours Co. plant near Fayetteville of improperly dumping GenX into the river that provides the drinking water for much of southeastern North Carolina.
GenX is used in the production of Teflon, the nonstick substance that Chemours makes at its Fayetteville Works plant. It’s a replacement for a chemical linked to cancer and other illnesses. The state says the company and its predecessor, DuPont, never informed regulators that they were releasing GenX into the river.
Earlier this month the state sued Chemours over the discharges. The plant then agreed to stop putting GenX and two other chemicals into the river.
Under the bill Cooper vetoed, lawmakers would give $435,000 to the Cape Fear utility authority and UNC Wilmington to begin addressing the pollution. Cooper and many fellow Democrats, however, said the money was inadequate and directed to the wrong places.
Cooper had requested $2.5 million for DEQ – asking the legislature to bring back a dozen jobs for scientists, medical researchers, permit reviewers and engineers that have been cut in recent years, plus pay for water testing.
Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, said Cooper’s objective is “growing a bureaucracy that has thus far failed to resolve this crisis.” Berger called on the legislature to override the veto.
A decade of cuts
Water quality regulation shed 70 positions in just the last four years, Cooper has said.
And when he vetoed the bill, he cited other cuts to the division that inspects permits that companies apply for before they can discharge chemicals into waterways.
“These cuts are particularly glaring when comparing North Carolina to other states,” Cooper wrote in a Medium post explaining his veto. “North Carolina has nine permit writers for 220 water discharge facilities. Meanwhile, South Carolina has almost twice as many officials overseeing far fewer facilities.”
When permits are backlogged, companies are allowed to continue operating under their old, outdated permit.
The permit for Chemours, the company at the center of the GenX controversy, expired last October.
“Something like 40 percent of the permits (in the state) are expired and on backlog right now,” said McCallie, the environmental lobbyist. “And what that means is they just continue on whatever permit they had previously.”
Republicans have said DEQ just needs to shift resources from other projects to the GenX investigation and cleanup.
“I’m not sure there is a more important, pressing issue going on,” Rep. Scott Stone, a Charlotte Republican, said during the August debate over funding.
Over the last decade, the budget of the agency formerly known as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, now DEQ, has shrunk 62 percent. Some of that has been cuts; some has been from responsibilities transferred to other agencies.
In 2007, the Democrat-led legislature gave the agency a $205 million budget. After the recession hit, Democrats cut that budget by $10 million before losing power in 2010. Since then, Republican legislators have cut or transferred another $110 million.
In that same period, the state budget has grown 13 percent, from $20.4 billion in 2007 to $23 billion in 2017.
Cuts to environmental watchdogs came in many forms. The legislature consolidated multiple agency divisions, eliminating managers and giving more duties to those who remained.
McCallie said the agency has also cut spending in more subtle ways, like replacing experienced employees with cheaper labor.
“In the last few years you’ve had more and more people coming in who are really junior in their careers,” he said. “And that’s a challenge.”
Of the $120 million that’s gone missing from DEQ’s budget since 2007, not all has truly been cut. Roughly half of that came when the state moved the state parks, zoo and aquariums to a different agency. But the cuts to environmental protections have nevertheless added up.
Between 2009 and 2016, both the Water Supply Protection division of DEQ and the agency’s seven regional offices have lost about a third of their employees.
Water Supply Protection’s staffing dropped from 92 to 65 full-time equivalents, and the field offices’ staffing dropped from 73 to 50.
DEQ has also suffered from some cuts that never showed up on its budget.
In 2016, for example, the legislature cut the jobs of nine lawyers and legal assistants who worked for DEQ, although the cuts were technically to the attorney general’s budget. Cooper was attorney general at the time.
A poor watchdog?
Republican legislators have defended the paring down of DEQ, as well as the decision in August not to give DEQ more money to specifically look into GenX.
DEQ has long been caught between environmentalists calling for tougher action against polluters and business interests complaining that regulation drives up their costs. Former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory led an effort to try to make the agency more business-friendly. Cooper placed the agency in the hands of Regan, a veteran of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the international advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, who has promised lawmakers he would make sure all interests are represented in DEQ decisions.
During the August GenX funding debate, Republican Rep. Holly Grange of Wilmington said that even decades ago, when the agency’s budget was much larger, it still missed pollution coming out of the plant that dumped the GenX.
She said the plant’s water permits have “been rubber-stamped for the last 30 years.”
And in a letter to Cooper and Regan, several Republican legislators asked why DEQ would need the extra funding.
The letter, which was sent in the lead-up to the vote on the new spending, indicated that DEQ had made a series of mistakes or oversights, questioning public confidence in the agency.
“We are hopeful that you intend to target resources to make a difference rather than simply improve public relations,” the letter read.
Cooper said in his Medium post that state officials “moved swiftly” to deal with GenX.
Unless something changes when legislators return to Raleigh in October – or between then and next year’s budget discussions – DEQ will be in for even more cuts.
This year Cooper suggested a DEQ budget of $85 million, which would’ve been an increase of a few million dollars. Instead, legislators gave DEQ another round of cuts, down to $78 million this fiscal year and $77 million next year. |
Good Grief… O-Care Website Was Re-Coding Family Relationships – Turning Child into Spouse
Medicare announced today the Obamacare website was re-coding family relationships. As an example, a child might show up as a spouse.
And, sometimes the family pet was involved.
A Colorado man found out his dog had successfully signed up for Obamacare.
The Obama administration has no idea how many times this has happened.
The Washington Post reported:
Medicare thinks it has fixed the biggest 834 bug. Medicare spokeswoman Julie Bataille spent most of this call focused on 834 transmissions — partly because of new information, and partly because reporters kept asking about it (a bit more on that later). The 834 transmissions are the files that HealthCare.gov fires off to insurance companies when someone signs up for their plans. The companies say that some of these files have come in with inaccurate information. Bataille announced Monday that about 80 percent of those errors stemmed from “one bug that prevented a Social Security number from being included. That caused the system not to generate an 834.” “That bug has now been fixed and [that part] is now working properly,” Bataille said, adding that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has also addressed smaller bugs, including one that caused family relationships to be coded inaccurately (a child, for example, might show up as a spouse.). We don’t know how many inaccurate 834 transmissions went out. Three reporters — one from the Los Angeles Times, one from The Wall Street Journal and I — asked Bataille for information on how many of the 834s sent out so far have had an error. This is a question that I’ve asked on three previous calls, a point made by the Los Angeles Times’s Noam Levey as he asked for his second time. |
Early hockey memories for me are really just my early memories. Watching games with my grandparents, cheering on my Senators with my dad, and watching my younger brother grow to love the game.
As I grew older, I knew I liked hockey. What I couldn’t have imagined throughout my childhood is how much it would touch the rest of my life. I applied hockey to soccer when I played it. I lived and died by my team, gave them my all, and fought for them- sometimes literally. It shaped my relationships, my friends became family, something I had struggled with early on. I learned that you protect what you love at any cost.
Even later still, I got into it a little more. Some of my friends were big fans and talked about it constantly. I wanted to be able to talk players, stats, and the results of the previous night’s game. From there, it grew to the point where I felt comfortable dropping the “casual” from my self-applied title of casual fan.
After I left high school, I went through a hard time personally. I was riddled with depression, but most of all I was unmotivated, lonely, and losing sight of the beauty of the world. I don’t know how I got it back, but in large part it was thanks to my amazing family, friends, teachers, and… yeah, hockey. I threw myself even more into the world that is the National Hockey League. I could tell you names of every Ottawa player, including their number and details of their contract. I could name almost every player in the league. And now? Well, you’re reading this. I guess I’m on my way to being the expert! Since beginning writing for The Ocho (huge thanks go to Aaron Lieberman and Riley Nicklaus Evans at The Ocho for helping me get started), I’ve only fallen more in love with the fastest game on earth. As for the next chapter, you’ll have to wait and see! One thing’s for sure, though; I’m thinking hockey.
“I’m a fan of hockey to a much higher degree than I am a Sens fan.”
Today, I do my best to stay non-partisan. I’m a fan of hockey to a much higher degree than I am a Sens fan. I am a Sens fan because of my family, the distant connections to the town I was born in, and my address.
That doesn’t mean I don’t give them my all when I’m sitting in the stands. That doesn’t mean that I think of myself as a lesser fan. Just the opposite. In sports, just as in politics, sometimes it’s important to take off the rose-coloured visor and realize that the man in the red sweater deserves a penalty, a suspension, or credit for a great play!
Hockey is my passion, my outlet, the only thing that keeps me sane sometimes. Life’s hard, that’s not unique. I pride myself on my appreciation for the greatest sport in the world, and my ability to forget about the crest on the front of that jersey.
Sports are supposed to unite us. I’m as big a fan of a good rivalry as the next person, but there’s no place for hatred in the sport. If you fight other fans, to rip on another team because of the letterhead on their contract, you’re no true hockey fan in my opinion.
I say it often, you can be an Ottawa Senators fan, a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, anything you want to be, but that doesn’t make you a fan of hockey.
Let me tell you, fans don’t like that one.
To be a true fan, all you need to do is open your eyes. Whether you watch one game a year or 100 , set aside your loyalty for just a moment, and appreciate the small things. A quick dangle, a beauty pass, or a celebration.
Hockey is more than your team. It’s more than a player, more than a championship.
It’s a community, a family, and for me? It’s a life.
Quentin Young is a sports writer for theocho.ca and a Public Relations student at Algonquin College. Follow him on Twitter at @young_quentin, and check out his weekly Sens news recap every Thursday. |
Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: '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' MORE (I-Vt.) ripped President Trump on Wednesday for defending torture, asking if he wants to "lead this country into shame and barbarity."
"Whatever Trump may or may not want, Congress and the American people must defend American values. No torture," Sanders said.
The Vermont senator, who is a member of Democratic leadership, questioned if Trump is willing to break international law and warned that restarting torture could have negative consequences for U.S. troops.
"Does Trump really want to lead this country into shame and barbarity, and undermine the values that have made us a great and respected nation?" Sanders asked. "Does Trump really want to tell our military adversaries that, if America does it, they also have the right to torture captured American soldiers?"
Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to bring back waterboarding and a "hell of a lot worse" and defended torture on Wednesday, telling ABC that it "works."
Trump added that he would consider reinstating currently outlawed "enhanced interrogation" techniques depending on the advice of his national security team, but stressed that "we have to fight fire with fire."
Democrats have pounced on a draft executive order that would revoke a series of Obama administration rules that closed CIA "black sites," granted Red Cross access to all detainees and limited interrogators to techniques approved in the Army Field Manual.
Sen. Patrick Leahy Patrick Joseph LeahySenate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl Booker wins 2020 endorsement of every New Jersey Democrat in Congress The Hill's Morning Report - Can Bernie recapture 2016 magic? MORE (D-Vt.) said Trump should "put this draft executive order in the trash where it belongs."
The reported draft also earned pushback from GOP Sens. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (Ariz.) and John Thune John Randolph ThunePolls: Hiking estate tax less popular than taxing mega wealth, income Will Trump sign the border deal? Here's what we know Key GOP senator pitches Trump: Funding deal a 'down payment' on wall MORE (S.D.) who both predicted pushback if the administration tried to revert to the now-outlawed interrogation methods.
The Senate voted in 2015 to formally ban torture, though 21 GOP senators voted against the amendment from McCain.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday that the document wasn't from the White House, adding “I have no idea where it came from."
But he refused to answer questions about whether Trump was weighing the basic policy recommendations contained in the draft order.
Leahy argued Spicer's comments didn't go far enough and that "alternative facts" wouldn't change his and other lawmakers opinion on torture.
“It is not enough for Trump administration aides to deny this draft came from the White House," he said. "The administration should denounce it.” |
Lindelle Ulfsvitr
Her father a tanner and craftsman, her mother a wolfborn in Hoelbrak, and her younger brother a skaald who has recently begun his journey as a revenant; Lindelle was raised by a long line of Wolf's followers in Cragstead, and a hunter since childhood. She was named after a human she bears resemblance to who was a friend of the norn long ago, and holds some resentment towards this as she is not particularly trusting of humans. Her surname, "Wolf's wisdom", was given to her upon her recent training in Druidism.
A typical norn, her favorite pastimes are drinking and hunting with her wolf companions, Hvitr and Svartr. A nomadic woman and somewhat introverted while sober, she is quite loud and boastful when drunk; it isn't a party or moot if she isn't present while getting herself sloshed! Very faithful to the Spirits of the Wild, Lindelle will not tolerate their enemies and can be particularly unforgiving to the Sons of Svanir, sometimes even torturous and cruel. |
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