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I'm not even sure I should link to it here, but if you check especially the True one, then you will find a lot of material that is very clearly extremely illegal whereas there is content on Jailbait that only likely is illegal. To me, it is unacceptable that truejailbait is hosted here and the nudity, which can also be found on Jailbait, should probably be banned on both subs because there are likely girls younger than 16 on it. Allowing the creepshots of clothed young girls, even though I strongly dislike it, isn't illegal and would still be allowed. All I am asking you to consider is if we want to allow nudity on these subs? The existence of these subverses pose a threat not only to minors, but to the viability of this entire platform for free speech. Speech does not equal the sharing of pictures that dont belong to you, to others on the internet for the sole purpose of masturbating to it. Trying to defend the sharing of pictures of naked 14yo girls under the guise of free speech brings dishonor to all who have fought and died for it and frankly I find it disgusting to know that jailbait has 1500 subscribers, 10% of the amount Askvoat has. For those thinking that I am a Reddit mod for thinking this should be banned: this is not about feefees and I can separate my own opinion with what the community wants, the latter of which determines what I shall and shall not do. Edit: removed the links to the subs. Edit 2: wanted to add a great argument from /u/PM_me_ur_Nudes: Not only do I not like it personally, but if we got rid of it, we would probably stop having hosting problems, pay pal problems etc. Is defending child pornography really worth the thousands of dollars Atko has already lost to PayPal? Even if you have deluded yourself into believing that these naked pictures should be allowed because they are speech, then do you not care about the insane amounts of damage Voat will have to endure in the future because of it? Edit 3: The thumbnails which were in the True sub and showed the naked girls have been removed. Edit 4: The subs have been removed. I'm proud to call myself a Voater again and I am proud of Atko for making this tough decision.
One of the oldest questions on earth is how all this crazy life started. Where did you come from? How about your office plant, or your cat? For a long time, our only working idea was that gods from the heavens had provided the seed of life. We may, at least, have been looking into the correct direction: researchers at UC Berkeley recently added evidence to the idea that life on Earth came from a comet. The idea goes like this: the so-called “building blocks of life” on this planet are called dipeptides. And the real mystery is where these dipeptides came from. The Berkeley scientists’ research suggests that dipeptides could have formed on interplanetary dust and been carried down to earth on a comet. Berkeley writes: Chemists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii, Manoa, showed that conditions in space are capable of creating complex dipeptides – linked pairs of amino acids – that are essential building blocks shared by all living things. The discovery opens the door to the possibility that these molecules were brought to Earth aboard a comet or possibly meteorites, catalyzing the formation of proteins (polypeptides), enzymes and even more complex molecules, such as sugars, that are necessary for life. Or, in the paper itself, the authors put it this way: Our results indicate that the radiation-induced, non-enzymatic formation of proteinogenic dipeptides in interstellar ice analogs is facile. Once synthesized and incorporated into the ”building material” of solar systems, biomolecules at least as complex as dipeptides could have been delivered to habitable planets such as early Earth by meteorites and comets, thus seeding the beginning of life as we know it. They figured this out by making a mini-comet in the lab. Combining carbon dioxide, ammonia and other chemicals like methane at super cold temperatures (space is pretty cold), they created a tiny comet-like thing. Then they added the lab equivalent of cosmic rays, zapping the mini-comet with electrons. What they saw was that the combination of these high energy electrons and the comet they had built created organic molecules like amino acids and dipeptides. The idea is that this reaction happened on its own in space, and those dipeptides were carried down to earth on that icy comet. In other words, the necessary blocks of life might really have descended to Earth from the sky. More from Smithsonian.com: The Origins of Life
About This Game Do you have the talent to face off against other comedians in a live comedy show contest? See how your material holds up in the face of brutal audience members who can vote you off or the relentless smack talk from other performers. Perform Perform in front of a live audience as an individual or go head to head with another performer. If you are an aspiring comedian this is a great sandbox to try out new material and perfect your show. If you can sing, see how a live audience responds in the open mic singing rooms or take other players down in rap battle sessions. Watch Be part of the audience and decide which performers stay or go by voting them off the stage. Heckle players or encourage them as they do their best to entertain you. Create Players have full control over custom avatars as they use different styles and animations to enhance the performance.
Though still in its initial stages of development, Tab Candy is an interesting new Firefox 4.0 feature, which has every potential to get adopted by every single browser out there. Like for example, the tabs itself were invented by Opera, and now it's a default and a must have feature in web browsers. Tab Candy is an interesting new tab management feature from Firefox which is still in its early stages of development. It is refreshingly new and got all the merits to be called as an innovation. Watch this video. Tab Candy is primarily meant for Firefox power users, those who use takes the tab functionality to its extremes. Tab Candy helps you organize your tabs into groups. Then you can go a step further and can keep your tabs grouped by task. Tab Candy is incredibly useful and looks nice as well. Even though Tab Candy is in its alpha stages, it's already looking good and easy to use. You can rearrange your groups using simple drag and drop of tabs, easily create new groups, name them by task, and even create new group by dragging a website out of any existing group. Yes, these are features in an application which is still undergoing rapid development! Tab Candy is not a Firefox extension of sorts. So you will have to download this special version of Firefox build first of all . Simply install latest Firefox 4 beta instead. Extract the downloaded file and double click on the file named 'firefox'(without quotes). Thats it. A new Firefox window with the name 'Minefield' will open up. Hit CTRL + Space to activate Tab Candy. You can also activate Tab Candy using the Tab Candy button on the top right corner of your browser.
Bayern Munich have had a stellar start to life under Carlo Ancelotti. The Italian manager has enjoyed an impressive first few weeks at the club, winning all of his matches across three different competitions, helping the club to the top of the table in the Bundesliga as well as their Champions League group. It wasn’t all easy going for them a few seasons ago, however. In the summer of 2011, German manager Jupp Heynckes took over the club after a rough patch under his predecessor, Louis van Gaal. His impressive start and fine footballing style deteriorated along the way and ended in turmoil. This is the story of their horrible end to the 2011/12 season. Home The penalty shootout was tied at 3-3 in the most nail-biting Champions League final in recent history. Up stepped Chelsea hero Didier Drogba, who had already scored past Manuel Neuer earlier in the night. He smashed his spot-kick into the right-hand corner, getting the better of the goalkeeper. An unfazed, confident figure in front of goal, Drogba had now further cemented his status as a Chelsea legend. The Blues had won the Champions League for the first time. The celebrations and the joy of winning the Champions League on one half of the pitch saw contradicting emotions on the other half. Club legend Bastian Schweinsteiger broke down, with an equally disheartened Phillip Lahm coming up to console him, along with his other distraught team-mates. Bayern Munich had failed Bavaria by losing the Champions League final at their home. Bayern heard a lot of the word “runners-up” that season. The term is rarely mentioned by their side, as history suggests. A juggernaut which has given football the gifts of Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller and Lothar Matthäus over the years was synonymous with the term that season, having finished second in each of the three competitions in which they competed over the course of three weeks. “Football, and life, is sometimes unpredictable and crazy. I don’t think anyone could have predicted this.” – Roberto di matteo, Chelsea caretaker manager, 19th may 2012 The loss in the Champions League final was a particularly woeful one. On a fine starry evening under the bright lights of the Allianz Arena, the setting seemed perfect, but the game wasn’t. Chelsea’s stern defensive back line, which got the better of Napoli, Benfica and famously Barcelona in previous rounds, held on to frustrate Bayern throughout the night. Bayern did get first blood, however. Thomas Müller, one of Bayern’s own, scored a fine headed goal past a baffled Petr Čech in the 83rd minute. Surely they thought this was their night. Wrong. At the other end, just five minutes after Bayern struck, Juan Mata’s fine, curling corner met the powerful head of Didier Drogba. Chelsea were back; extra-time beckoned. If the end to normal time wasn’t heartbreaking enough, extra-time brought more agony. Drogba clipped Franck Ribéry in the area to give Bayern the chance to take the lead again. Arjen Robben stepped up, but missed. A terrible penalty saw the game go to a shootout, which obviously ended in more horror. Drogba’s winning penalty saw the entire squad go down on their knees and kiss the ground in despair. Crestfallen, broken and grievous, this “runner-up” tag failed to let go. Dortmund Dominance On the opening day of the Bundesliga season, Borussia Mönchengladbach overcame the Bayern challenge to set former boss Heynckes off on a sour note. Their form improved drastically since that defeat as they went on to win their next six matches in the league. A dip in form which included one draw and two losses over the next six failed to shrug them off the top of the table before a 3-2 away defeat to Mainz gave Jürgen Klopp‘s Borussia Dortmund side the lead. In the DFB-Pokal, Bayern overcame the task of Eintracht Braunschweig and Ingolstadt 04 in the first two rounds, scoring nine goals in the process and getting an away tie against VfL Bochum. The lead in the Bundesliga failed to stick with Dortmund for long. Bayern’s 4-1 win at home against Werder Bremen, followed by wins against VfB Stuttgart and FC Köln, solidified their spot at the top. They were served a rude awakening in their second game against Borussia Mönchengladbach, with ex-Dortmund protégé Marco Reus running the show. This was preceded by a 1-1 draw at lowly Hamburg to give Borussia Dortmund the advantage and pole position once again. Subsequent inconsistency, which included results like a draw and a loss in four games, followed and Bayern saw Dortmund stretch their lead at the top. The title was slipping away. Unlike the league, their form in the cup was impeccable. A win away at Bochum in the third round was followed by an easy result in the quarter-final against Stuttgart. Borussia Mönchengladbach, their nemesis all season, awaited in the semi-finals. A fairly defensive game saw the tie going to penalties, with Bayern coming out on top after a dreadful list of collective penalties by Gladbach. Bayern were off to Berlin. Collapse Heading into April, Borussia Dortmund were unbeaten in the league since the end of September and into the finals of the DFB Pokal. On the 11th of that month, the decisive game of the Bundesliga was played out at the Westfalenstadion. Dortmund seemed unbreakable on the night with their tough defence holding out through the night. Robert Lewandowski scored in the 77th minute against the run of play to give them the lead and get one hand on the Bundesliga Meisterschale. Bayen were afforded a lifeline eight minutes from time, however. Arjen Robben, who had been probing all evening, won a penalty to give them a glimmer of hope. His spot kick was saved by captain Roman Weidenfeller. Bayern were defeated; Dortmund were almost there. Die Borussen continued their unbeaten run till the end of the season. A run of 18 games saw 16 wins and two draws as they won the league by eight points. Bayern’s inconsistency and defensive frailties meant they had to wait another season to get hold of the elusive Bundesliga shield. In the final of the DFB-Pokal at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Shinji Kagawa, Dortmund’s Japanese sensation, scored early to give Dortmund the lead. It didn’t last long, however. Arjen Robben, who missed against the same opposition in the lead, converted a spot-kick to level the scores. Minutes before the break, Mats Hummels converted a penalty of his own to take Dortmund into the break with the lead. What followed after that was lethal. Robert Lewandowski, a man who has had an astonishing rise, was fairly quiet in the first half. In the second half, however, he showed the world what he was made of. A hat-trick in the most sensational manner put Bayern off their rails and into oblivion. Franck Ribéry got a consolation along the way, but the win was guaranteed long before that. Dortmund won 5-2 and the double was sealed. Recovery Bayern Munich were able to recover from their horrendous showing in 2012. A treble in 2013 of the exact same competitions in which they were runners-up the previous year under the same management. They’ve won every Bundesliga title since then, three DFB-Pokal honours and one Champions League. A large part of their team was also involved in Germany’s World Cup winning side of 2014. Carlo Ancelotti takes control of a side which has won the lot in recent years. His main objective falls on winning the Champions League, an honour which eluded his predecessor Pep Guardiola. His start has been dominant, and he’ll hope he doesn’t collapse like Jupp Heynckes’ side did in 2012. main photo
Victoria's Secret perfume may not attract everyone. Their Bombshell Eau de Parfum may even repel some. Mosquitoes, that is. Researchers from New Mexico State University tested leading brands of bug spray as well as a couple of bath oil and perfume products to see whether they attracted or fended off mosquitoes. For the experiment, they used two common mosquito species: the yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito, both known to transmit dengue fever, chikungunya, yellow fever and other diseases. One of the study authors (who was found to be a strong attractor of mosquitoes during preliminary studies) placed one sprayed hand and one gloved hand into separate ports. The mosquitoes, which were being kept in a holding tube, were then released into the ports. The researchers said the bugs flew toward the bare hand if they were attracted to the scent, but if repelled, they fluttered to the opposite tube or did not move around. The scientists took measurements over time in order to see which repellents lasted the longest, and found that the products containing DEET (chemical name: N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) were the most effective at keeping mosquitoes off. DEET-free repellents containing citronella and geraniol were not as effective. Lead author Stacy Rodriguez, a research assistant in NMSU's Molecular Vector Physiology Lab, also wanted to see what would happen when someone spritzed on a flowery perfume. "There was some previous literature that said fruity, floral scents attracted mosquitoes, and to not wear those," Rodriguez said in a press statement. But it turned out Victoria's Secret Bombshell Eau de Parfum had the opposite effect: it repelled mosquitoes "quite effectively" for two hours after it was applied. "It was interesting to see that the mosquitoes weren't actually attracted to the person that was wearing the Victoria's Secret perfume - they were repelled by it," Rodriguez said. However, the DEET products still won out as the most effective option. The authors said their perfume experiment challenges the notion that flowery fragrances entice mosquitoes and that it's possible some floral scents may actually mask a natural odor that draws the little nuisances to us. They're now in the process of testing mosquito repellent bracelets and clip-on repellent devices and hope to publish their results in time for next mosquito season. The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Insect Science.
A box from Amazon.com is pictured on the porch of a house in Golden, Colorado in this July 23, 2008 file picture. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/Files BERLIN (Reuters) - Amazon.com will invest in three new logistics centers in Poland, creating 6,000 new jobs over the next two years as part of expansion in Europe, a spokesman said on Monday. German media had speculated that the new sites - in Wroclaw and Poznan - would result in closures elsewhere, especially after Amazon was hit by strikes in Germany over pay and conditions and unions this weekend warned more strikes could come ahead of Christmas. The Amazon spokesman said on Monday there were no plans to shut existing logistics centers in Europe and that Amazon was about to open a new site outside Berlin that would create 1,000 permanent jobs. “Amazon is always looking at options to expand capacity,” he said.
Shooting of Korryn Gaines Date August 1, 2016 ( ) Time 3:00 p.m. Location Carriage Hill Circle, Randallstown, Maryland, U.S. Type Shooting Cause Police serving bench warrant, leading to standoff Filmed by Korryn Gaines (filmed portions of the standoff) Participants Korryn Gaines, Kodi Gaines, Baltimore police officers (names withheld) Death(s) Korryn Gaines (age 23) Non-fatal injuries Kodi (Gaines' son, age 5) Publication bans Upon police request, Facebook deactivated Gaines' social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) featuring live coverage of the standoff The shooting of Korryn Gaines occurred on August 1, 2016, in Randallstown, Maryland, near Baltimore,[1] resulting in the death of Gaines, a 23-year-old woman, and the shooting of her son, who survived. According to the Baltimore County Police Department, officers sought to serve Gaines a warrant in relation to an earlier traffic violation. Upon entering her apartment, the police officers were faced with the barrel of a shotgun being pointed at them which prompted them to draw their guns, resulting in a 6 hour long standoff. Gaines' five-year-old son was also grazed by a stray bullet.[2] Portions of the standoff were filmed by Gaines and posted to social-media networking sites where you can see her loading the shotgun, threatening to kill all the police officers outside her house, and attempting to convince her son that the police are there specifically to kill them; however, upon police request, Facebook deactivated Gaines' Facebook and Instagram accounts,[3] leading to criticism of the company's involvement in the incident.[4] In 2018, courts awarded the Gaines family $37 million in damages after finding that the first shot, fired by Royce Ruby and killing Gaines, was not reasonable, and thus violated their civil rights.[5] Background [ edit ] Korryn Shandawn Gaines[6] was a 23-year-old woman from Randallstown, Maryland,[7] with political views as a Sovereign Citizen[8] and was employed as a hairstylist.[9] Her father, Ryan Gaines, had worked as a police dispatcher, according to depositions of Gaines' family in a 2012 civil suit. Her mother, Rhonda Dormeus, aged 49, is a registered nurse.[10] She also has a 32-year-old sister and 26-year-old brother.[11] Gaines was wanted on a bench warrant for failing to appear in court on charges related to previous cases of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest following a March 10 traffic stop and other traffic offenses, according to Baltimore County Police. Gaines was pulled over by a police officer for driving without a license plate.[12] March incident [ edit ] According to police reports, Gaines was stopped for a traffic violation for having a piece of cardboard with writing on it in place of a license plate. The cardboard plate read "Any government official who compromises this pursuit of happiness and right to travel, will be held criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right and freedom." During the traffic stop, an officer threatened Gaines with a Taser, after she refused to comply with his request to leave the vehicle.[13] Later, Gaines reportedly posted videos to Instagram and described the incident and subsequent arrest, stating that the arresting officers threatened to break her limbs and that she spent two days in isolation. Gaines was released with charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and littering. Gaines' failure to appear in court over the traffic violation resulted in a bench warrant being served to her on the day of her death.[14] Other factors [ edit ] Reporting in The Washington Post suggested that lead poisoning may have contributed to Gaines' reported aggressive behavior surrounding her arrest in March.[15] In 2012, Gaines filed a lawsuit in Baltimore alleging lead paint poisoning against the owners of two homes where she lived, which her attorneys said caused her to have elevated lead levels leading to "neurological impairments" and the loss of "significant IQ points." A pediatrician report included in the suit stated that Korryn had "a history of problems with anger and impulsive behavior" and had trouble concentrating. The report also stated that Gaines dropped out of Morgan State University when she became pregnant and was working as a hairdresser to support herself.[11] Shooting [ edit ] Baltimore County Police Department officers arrived at Gaines' apartment at Carriage Hill Apartments on Sulky Court to serve her a warrant. Gaines was in the apartment holding a Mossberg pistol grip shotgun[16] and with her five-year-old son; a standoff between Gaines and police ensued.[17] Police say that after several hours of standoff, Gaines threatened officers with a shotgun. Gaines was subsequently shot and killed by police. Gaines' five-year-old son, Kodi, was shot by police,.[2] Kodi's arm was struck by bullets and suffered an elbow injury and bullet fragments in his face. Gaines' boyfriend, Kareem Kiean Courtney (age 39), who was living with Gaines, was able to leave the apartment with Gaines' 1-year-old daughter, upon which he was briefly detained by police before being released.[18][17][19][20] While the Baltimore County Police Department is equipped with a Mobile Crisis Team that "pairs a mental health clinician with a police officer to provide emergency police response to persons in need of crisis intervention,"[21] this unit was never called in to de-escalate the situation.[22] The shooting was not recorded as officers were not wearing police bodycams;[23] initially police reported they were unsure if that was the case, as their bodycam program had recently begun.[24] However, portions of the standoff were recorded by Gaines and posted to social media.[25] Police later stated that while there is no police footage of inside the apartment, some officers assigned to support roles outside were wearing body cameras.[26] Filming and social media [ edit ] According to news reports, during the standoff with police, Gaines posted videos on Facebook and Instagram during the incident. The videos appear to show Gaines talking with police in the doorway to her apartment and to her son. In one clip, she asks her son what the police are trying to do. He replies "They trying to kill us." She then asks: "Do you want to go out there?" "No," the boy replies. She then asks "What'd you wanna do?" He appears confused and stays silent. Gaines says, "there is no wrong answer." [27] Police contacted Facebook via the company's "law enforcement portal" and requested the account be taken offline. According to a police spokesperson, the account had been suspended but not deleted, adding that the video would be used as evidence.[14] This was the first instance where Baltimore Police requested Facebook to deactivate an account in such a situation.[28][29] In a statement following the incident, Baltimore County police reported that they asked Facebook to suspend Gaines' Facebook and Instagram accounts during the standoff because of comments made by others to her video posts encouraging her to not comply with orders from officers. Facebook complied with the emergency request.[3] In early November, a new video was released from the incident showing Gaines talking into the camera, expressing her exhaustion but concurrent refusal to back down from arriving officers: "I'm at peace. I'm in my home. I ain't trying to hurt nobody. ... They been quiet a while so they plotting to come in here and disturb the peace. ... I am not a criminal."[30] Reactions [ edit ] The death of Gaines, who is of African-American descent, received international news coverage. Activists have called for protests under the "Say Her Name" banner, noting that black women who are killed by police receive less media attention than black males. Gaines was the ninth black female to be killed by police in the United States in 2016 and although in nearly every incident questions were raised as to whether or not the women attacked police, only Gaines' death received nationwide coverage.[31][32] Police allege that Gaines, though not actively affiliated with any specific anti-government group, identified and behaved as a 'free person' who does not recognize governmental authority.[33] Police say there have been multiple threats to police following the incident,[34] and have called for patience while the incident is being investigated.[35] Because of threats against officers, police have opted not to identify the officer who killed Gaines during the incident, though the department's standard procedure is to release the names of officers involved in shootings about 48 hours after such an incident.[34] In a county report, the officer is described as a 46-year-old white male.[26] Some outlets criticised the extensive coverage of the event, and the allegations of racial disparity as a contributing factor, stating that the police officers involved behaved rationally and did not provoke the shootout, and that Gaines unlawfully threatened police.[36][37] In the days following the shooting, local artists in Baltimore gathered to sell works to raise money for Gaines' family.[38] A candlelit vigil was held at sunset at the entrance of Baltimore City College, the school where Gaines graduated from in 2010.[10] In a number of cities across the United States, upon the urging of Black Feminist Future, a number of altars were laid to honor Gaines' and other black women killed by police. A number of the altars used the phrase "defend black womanhood" alongside other slogans.[39] The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund requested information and records from Baltimore police including body camera footage, policies on the execution of arrest warrants and a copy of the department's agreement with the county police union. Police stated there is no body camera footage from inside the apartment, but that some officers assigned to support roles outside were wearing cameras.[26] Following the publicized NAACP request, Baltimore police published their response providing some of the requested details and documents but declined to release certain information, stating that the public would need to wait until after the investigation is complete.[16] Protests [ edit ] According to some reports, Gaines' death was initially protested by supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.[18] In the days following the incident, a protest was held in New York City, approximately 100 people attended, with the involvement of Black Youth Project 100 and a local group named "NYC Shut It Down" as part of a reoccurring protest event titled "People's Monday".[40][41] The Phoenix chapter of the African National Women's Organization held a protest for Gaines and two others recently killed by police.[42] On August 13, 2016, in Portland, Oregon, protesters associated with Black Lives Matter and "Don't Shoot Portland" conducted a sit-in demonstration near Pioneer Courthouse Square and disrupted train services.[43][44] On August 15, 2016, a protest was held outside of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) conference at the Hyatt-Regency hotel.[45] The protest was organized by Baltimore Bloc and the Black Youth Project 100. Twelve protesters were arrested for trespassing on private property.[46] A local police union official was suspended for describing the protesters as "thugs" in a department-wide email.[47][48] A small protest occurred on August 27, 2016, at McKeldin Square in the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore; the group was led by the People's Power Assembly.[49] The protest marched from McKeldin Square to the Randallstown police station.[50] Criticism of police [ edit ] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland condemned the shooting, releasing a statement saying that the police "decided that they needed to use deadly force to execute that warrant, and needed to expose themselves to the known risk of deadly force being used on them, knowing that a five year old child might be in the line of fire"[14] The National Organization for Women called for the United States Department of Justice to investigate Gaines' death, arguing that police were only at Gaines' home to serve warrants (not to arrest her) and were unable to deescalate the standoff.[51] The National LGBTQ Task Force condemned the shooting, calling on state and federal authorities to investigate the incident.[52] Members of Gaines family have voiced skepticism of the police account of the shooting.[53] Civil rights activists cautioned against the authenticity of police reports released following such events.[54] Gaines' mother was reportedly at the scene before the fatal shooting, however, she stated she was not allowed to intervene in the standoff, though she had pleaded to negotiate to end the confrontation.[19][10] Gaines' family members reported being prevented by police from seeing Gaines' son when the boy was in the hospital.[10] Some news outlets have called into question why the Baltimore County Crisis Intervention Team was not deployed. Police say trained negotiators were involved but could not respond as to why the unit was not dispatched.[33] Others suggest there are deficiencies in the way law enforcement attempt to deescalate interactions in minority communities, suggesting that Gaines' interactions with police may have been shaped by attitudes and beliefs regarding police and the justice system in urban black communities.[19][55][56] According to Vox Media reports, legally, the police officers only must reasonably believe that their lives were in immediate danger, but are not required to ascertain whether the shooting victim actually posed a threat,[57] however, activists maintain the police should have sought other means of resolving the conflict.[58] Others have called for the hiring of more female police officers, arguing that policewomen would be less likely to use lethal force to resolve conflicts.[59] The incident is noted as being further evidence of a trend of live-streaming confrontations between citizens (specifically, African Americans) and police in the United States. A senior ACLU attorney questioned the request by Baltimore County police to shut down Gaines' accounts, and Facebook's decision to comply, stating that Facebook must exercise caution when dealing with requests by police to censor content. Artist and journalist, Ferrari Sheppard also criticized Facebook's involvement in the incident on Twitter, saying "Facebook helped Baltimore police kill #KorrynGaines in the dark."[28][4] The corporate watchdog group SumOfUs criticised Facebook for setting a precedent of censorship by orders of police, stating that the move is a threat to civil liberties, owing to the current use of shareable video on social media as an instrument in exposing police violence in the United States.[4] Activists maintain that cutting off an account or otherwise controlling social media access becomes a strike against those fighting police abuse. The police may then have an advantage in controlling the narrative of the incident.[60] Legal proceedings [ edit ] On September 11, 2016, Gaines family lawyers filed a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging officers shot Gaines out of a loss of patience from the prolonged standoff.[61] On September 21, Scott Shellenberger announced the officer who shot Gaines would not receive any charges.[62] On October 11, Gaines family lawyers said that they had filed an amended lawsuit, naming Officers John Dowell and Allen Griffin as defendants; the Gaines family alleged they entered the apartment illegally, though this had previously been dismissed by Shellenberger and police officials.[63] In February 2018, a jury awarded more than $37 million in damages to the Gaines family after finding that the first shot, fired by Royce Ruby and killing Gaines, was not reasonable, and thus violated their civil rights.[5] A statement from Baltimore County government attorney Mike Field said the county was disappointed with the verdict and reviewing its options, including an appeal.[5] On March 19, 2018, Baltimore County filed an appeal.[64] See also [ edit ]
A peculiar operation is underway in Alamogodoro, New Mexico: Microsoft has been digging up a landfill to find copies of Atari’s failed 1982 video game, E.T. to see if the rumored dumping of games there in 1983 really occurred. Picture via Brian Kieffer The company has finally struck gold and has actually found them too, presumably after weeks of hunting for them. The public were invited to the dig today and shared pictures of the finds, packaging and all, on Twitter, finally confirming the myth. Picture via Chris Kohler Picture via Taylor Hatmaker The dig is part of a documentary funded by Microsoft and looks at the history of Atari, focusing on the company’s struggles in the 1980’s with massive financial losses thanks in part to the E.T. game. We knew that Atari had dumped large volumes of the failed game in the desert landfill, but it seemed unlikely that Microsoft would strike gold. The New York Times reported in 1983: “[Atari] has dumped 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the city landfill in Alamogordo, N.M. Guards kept reporters and spectators away from the area as workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise. “ Image via Megan Guess Thousands of unsold copies of games and other hardware were known to have been dumped in New Mexico and this find finally confirms what exactly was buried down there. Snopes places the number at approximately 3.5 Million, so there’s a lot more where that came from. Was it worth it? We’ll have to wait and see how the documentary, which is titled “Atari: Game Over”, turns out. In the meantime, you can actually play the unburied E.T game right in your browser. Read next: Amazon-owned ComiXology ditches in-app purchases on iOS and removes Google Play payments on Android
Often I’ve heard guests at Walt Disney World panic when an attractions stops. Don’t worry, it will be okay. Most times when an attraction stops or slows down it isn’t due to mechanical error. When working an attraction at Walt Disney World you learn that it’s not a matter of if a ride will stop, or slow down, but how many times it will happen. Additionally it is not the cast member’s fault, most of the time when it stops the cast members are actually stopping or slowing the ride on purpose. That’s right, when you are stopped on an attraction it means the cast member is doing their job, and that everything is in control, so no need to panic. Here are the top reasons an attraction will stop in Walt Disney World: 1) Guests Ride To The End of The Conveyer Belt On omnimover attractions that are constantly loading guests there is a conveyer belt, or a loading belt, that allows guest to easily step into their seat. Elderly guests sometimes take a little longer to load into an omnimover attraction, so the conveyer belt will slow. This is done for their safety so that they can step into the omnimover easily. Unfortunately some guests cause the ride to slow or get stopped just because choosing their seat is a game amongst their family. While Walt Disney World is a place to goof off, there are times like this when they need to take their safety a little more seriously. 2) A Guest Got Off In The Middle Of The Attraction You’ve probably heard an announcement at the attractions say, “Keep your hands, arms and feet inside the vehicle.” It says this for a reason because believe it or not, guests try, and do, get off attractions while they are moving. Obviously this is very dangerous, and it is why the ride is stopped immediately. Disney is keeping you and the guest that got off the attraction as safe as possible. On slow moving attractions this actually happens rather frequently. Working on Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress it was something that happened almost daily, and on Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin it happened once or twice a week while I was working. Even slow moving attractions like these could cause serious injury if you try and get off of them. I’ve heard many stories of guests attempting to get off of thrill rides like Space Mountain while the ride was ascending. Clearly this wasn’t something that guest should have done because he could have seriously injured himself. As long as you aren’t the guest that is attempting this stunt then you really have nothing to worry about when the ride stops for this reason. 3) A Guest Dropped Something Heavy Off The Ride When a person steps off an attraction most likely it will be stopped automatically. Many rides have ways to detect that a guest has gotten off the attraction. For this same reason when something heavy is dropped the attraction it might mistakenly believe that their item was a person that had gotten off the ride. This happens pretty frequently and is no reason to panic because the attraction is working perfectly fine. Typically when I thought someone had gotten off the attraction it was just a purse or backpack that had fallen off the ride. 4) Boats Are Backed Up Sometimes known as “cascading” to cast members, this is when the unloading process is acting slower than the loading process on an attraction. There is no reason to panic, this is normal, and it is something you have probably seen happen at Pirates of the Caribbean and on “it’s a small world”. While it is not ideal, it is something that the cast members know how to handle, and you have no reason to worry. 5) Loading A Guest With A Wheelchair Walt Disney World is great at accommodating all guests and the inclusion of guests in wheelchairs is something the Walt Disney Company should be proud of. As a company, the Disney parks go above the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements, as they should. Rides might slow down or stop when guests in wheelchairs are being loaded into an attraction.
THANE: A 20-year-old youth from Kalwa died on Monday after a woman squeezed his testicles until he collapsed. The incident took place following a tiff between the victim and the woman.The victim, Gangaram Narsing Gadge , used to reside in a chawl at Ganesh Nagar. He was sweeping out the water and slush which had flooded his tenement following heavy rain on Monday when Omkar Pawar and his wife Anguri objected to this. The Pawars, who reside in the tenement next to Gadge, complained that the water was coming into their house. A heated argument ensued and things soon turned violent. Anguri is said to have grabbed Gadge’s testicles and squeezed them so hard that he died on the spot. The Kalwa police have arrested Anguri and her husband.
How involved in the traditional trappings of democracy do you have to be to seek the city’s top political job? Because in the race for Seattle mayor, one rising candidate has voted only about a quarter of the time. Recently some of the lesser-known candidates for mayor have been objecting, with cause, that I haven’t highlighted their campaigns for our city’s top office. A libertarian candidate, Casey Carlisle, has been arguing I should cover him because he’s unique — he’s the only one of 10 candidates pledging not to raise taxes. “When you choose to ignore me and the other five candidates that you think don’t exist, you choose to deceive the public,” Carlisle wrote in an email. Most vocal on this point has been Peoples Party candidate Nikkita Oliver. “My viability as a candidate, my experience, the energy + breadth of my base and our equity-led platform is being denied & defiantly ignored,” she wrote after I didn’t mention her campaign in a column. Oliver is right about the energy. At the first mayoral debate on Thursday, she had by far the most amped up crowd. As Crosscut summed up: “If energy equals votes, Nikkita Oliver will be the next Seattle mayor.” Anyone who can summon people and passion to dreary church meeting rooms deserves to be taken seriously in politics, so Oliver is correct about that. But here’s why I remain skeptical of these candidacies. It goes to core beliefs about how politics, especially local politics, works. Carlisle, when I asked him to identify endorsers or supporters to show he was a force in the community, couldn’t. He’s got ideas, but ideas with few people behind them doesn’t cut it. By contrast, Oliver, an attorney and community organizer, clearly has people. She’s fired up the left and has been endorsed by a community heavyweight, King County Councilmember Larry Gossett. But for someone campaigning on a platform that government doesn’t listen to the people, she hasn’t shown up much when the voice of the people literally counts — on Election Day. In backgrounding the candidates, one thing we do is check their voting records. Oliver’s is spotty at best, especially for someone seeking high office. Since 2008, when she first registered to vote here, she has voted in seven of 24 elections, according to King County elections records. Most notably, she skipped all the primary and general elections for the office she’s now seeking — including the most recent one, in 2013, when Mayor Ed Murray was elected. Education funding for youth is key in her candidacy, but she hasn’t voted in any Seattle school-levy elections, including the one last year. She also has been a leader in the protest against a new juvenile-justice center, or youth jail. We voted on that project in 2010 and again in 2012, when it passed. Oliver didn’t vote either time. Oliver said in a statement that her voting record is due to barriers to voting that affect people of color and the cash-poor. She said high rents forced her to move on average once per year, and sometimes more, making it hard for her to get mail-in ballots. “I am a reflection of the underrepresented, vulnerable and marginalized communities who are often disenfranchised from voting by institutional and systemic barriers,” she wrote. “Additionally, the communities from which I come do not vote regularly because ‘downtown’ does not now and has not ever effectively reflected us or our interests.” She said I was casting about to discredit her candidacy. “This sort of degrading character assassination routinely happens to people of color, LGBTQI folx, and womxn, such as myself, as a means of keeping us out of the process,” she wrote. Part of what political journalists do is cast about for things to discredit candidacies — though we like to think of it as vetting backgrounds and records. Nobody can say we haven’t been doing that with the other candidates, especially the incumbent. The other top-tier candidates are consistent voters. Former Mayor Mike McGinn voted in 22 of the past 24 elections, urbanist Cary Moon in 20 of 24. (I did not include some elections in this tally, such as presidential primaries, which are so fluky in this state.) Murray is a perfect voter dating back to 2008: 24 of 24. He voted in even the most boring off-year elections, such as on the funding of a county public-safety radio network. This is the point: Lots of crucial government work is boring. It involves steadily showing up for years, wallowing in excruciating minutiae (President Trump is discovering this as we speak). It was clear from the debate that Oliver has a more protest-focused approach in mind. As she put it: “Every great change that has occurred in this city in the past eight years has been because those communities have risen up and used their voice to ask for that change: shut down chambers, or gone to people’s houses and into their offices, until we got the change that we most needed.” Protest definitely can move the needle. But it doesn’t fill potholes. I’m with Obama: Don’t boo, vote. Or maybe: Boo, and then vote. In fact, Seattle is getting great changes like a citywide preschool program, light rail and eventually a highway-free waterfront, all through old-fashioned political grunt work and the ballot box. We need fresh voices in politics. So maybe these candidates should run for City Council instead. Because if you haven’t been regularly involved (Carlisle), or didn’t participate much in the bedrock democratic process of voting (Oliver), what then is the claim to the top political job, managing a city of 700,000 people?
Stricter drought measures likely by summer Water is a precious resource. Here are 25 ways you can conserve. Water is a precious resource. Here are 25 ways you can conserve. Photo: Getty Images Photo: Getty Images Image 1 of / 150 Caption Close Stricter drought measures likely by summer 1 / 150 Back to Gallery SAN ANTONIO — The Edwards Aquifer Authority is predicting that by summer, the San Antonio region could fall under the toughest level of drought restrictions it's ever seen. Unless the rainfall projections change significantly, the authority will have to go to Stage IV limits for users in the San Antonio pool of the aquifer, which includes Bexar, Medina, Hays, Comal and northern Atascosa counties, officials said. The biggest pumper in that pool is the San Antonio Water System. Terri Herbold, EAA spokeswoman, said the aquifer is currently in Stage II, which means the EAA requires permit holders to reduce pumping by 30 percent. But within 10 days, the aquifer is likely to drop farther, triggering Stage III, or a 35 percent cut in pumping. As of Tuesday, the J-17 index well in Bexar County was at 640.6 feet above sea level, barely above the 640 feet threshold for Stage III. Stage IV starts when the aquifer 10-day average is 630 feet. The EAA projects the region could go into Stage IV, or a 40 percent pumping reduction, for the first time ever, in July. Some cities are likely to have to limit lawn watering with sprinklers to once every two weeks, or ban it altogether, Herbold said. “We don't tell people how to cut back. We just tell them they need to cut back,” she said. SAWS spokesman Greg Flores said the EAA's forecast underscores a possibility that SAWS could, for the first time, implement Stage 3 of its drought plan this summer, limiting sprinkler watering to once every two weeks. The utility now is in Stage 2, or once a week sprinkler watering. Read more about the outlook for the drought this year at ExpressNews.com and in Wednesday's edition of the Express-News. [email protected]
Seven * Eight Rules for Learning Welcome to my student learning website. This site was originally set up for students in my freshman and sophomore biology classes, and it includes a subset of materials that some past students felt was useful to understand or change their own learning. I've written the materials in ways that I hope will be useful to others as well. Questions or comments are welcome --> [email protected] Paul Heideman, College of William and Mary Welcome to my student learning website.This site was originally set up for students in my freshman and sophomore biology classes, and it includes a subset of materials that some past students felt was useful to understand or change their own learning. I've written the materials in ways that I hope will be useful to others as well. Questions or comments are welcome --> Eight rules* for learning that I emphasize for students: 1. The Rule of Understanding. --- Rule 1 ---> 2. The Rule of Importance. --- Rule 2 ---> 3. The Rule of Simplification --- Rule 3 ---> 4. The Rule of Memorization. --- Rule 4 ---> 5. The Rule of Practice. --- Rule 5 ---> 6. The Rule of Transfer. --- Rule 6 ---> 7. The Rule of Sleep. --- Rule 7 ---> 8. The Rule of Skill. --- Rule 8 ---> * There used to be just seven.
2017 A-List Dining Guide CLEVELAND, Ohio – It’s clear that at some imprecise moment, Cleveland became a food town. And a good one at that. Our eighth annual A-List Dining Guide recognizes a smorgasbord of restaurants in Northeast Ohio, covering fine dining to casual spots, that our reviewers think you should check out. Are we missing any of your favorites? We had a tough time whittling this list. New restaurants are grabbing diners’ attention as fast as they pop up. And what makes a great restaurant? Hitting on all culinary cylinders – great food is great food, but it also can be creatively done – or it can simply embrace tried and true dishes with a little spin. Great service cuts across all food genres. And libations must be up to par in this market with our phenomenal beer scene and knowledgeable wine folks. So here’s this year’s A-List of Cleveland's 100 best restaurants, chosen in conjunction with our partners at The Plain Dealer, with input from staffers, reviewers and editors. Bon Appetit!
Rod Brock's business card Seattle Computer Products (SCP) was a Seattle, Washington, microcomputer hardware company which was one of the first manufacturers of computer systems based on the 16-bit Intel 8086 processor.[1] SCP began shipping its first S-100 bus 8086 CPU boards to customers in November, 1979,[2] about 21 months before IBM introduced its Personal Computer which was based on the slower 8088 and introduced the 8-bit ISA bus. SCP shipped an operating system for that hardware about a year before the release of the PC, which was modified by Microsoft for the PC and renamed IBM PC DOS. SCP was staffed partly by high-school students from nearby communities who soldered and assembled the computers. Some of them would later work for Microsoft. Corporate history [ edit ] Twenty-two-year-old Tim Paterson was hired in June 1978 by SCP's owner Rod Brock (1930-2018)[3]. At the time, SCP built memory boards for microcomputers, but after attending a local seminar on Intel's just-released 8086 in late summer 1978, Paterson convinced Brock that his company should design a CPU board for the new chip. Paterson had a prototype working by May 1979,[4] and he took his "computer" over to Microsoft, who were working on an 8086 BASIC, which was working before the end of May.[5] When the board began shipping in November, standalone Microsoft BASIC was offered as an option, but no operating system was available for it.[6] Digital Research, whose 8-bit CP/M operating system was the industry standard, was working on an 8086-compatible version called CP/M-86, but the delay in its release was costing SCP sales. In order to fill this void, Paterson wrote QDOS (for Quick and Dirty Operating System)[1] over a four-month period starting in April 1980. QDOS 0.11 was finished in August 1980, and SCP began shipping it in September 1980.[2] The operating system was renamed to 86-DOS in December 1980. Microsoft, having worked with SCP before and seeking an operating system they could modify for the IBM PC, bought the rights to market the 86-DOS operating system to other manufacturers for $25,000 that same month. On July 27, 1981, just prior to the August 12 PC launch, Microsoft bought the full rights to the operating system for an additional $50,000, giving SCP a perpetual royalty-free license to sell 86-DOS (including updated versions) with its computer hardware.[2] Realizing that Microsoft was making significant profit on the 86-DOS operating system, SCP attempted to sell it along with a stand-alone inexpensive CPU (without any other circuitry). This was allowed as per SCP's license with Microsoft, which let SCP sell the operating system with their 8086-based computers; this operating system was marketed as "Seattle DOS", and a CPU was included in the box it shipped in. Thanks to the deal with Microsoft, additional capital allowed Seattle Computer to expand its memory business into providing additional memory for PC products. The company had its best year in 1982, reaping more than a million dollars in profit on about $4 million in sales.[2] By 1985, however, SCP's business was having difficulty trying to compete with offshore products (Brock once said, "they were selling memory boards for less than his cost for parts"), and Brock decided to sell the company. The only major asset SCP had left was the license it received from Microsoft when it signed over ownership rights to 86-DOS. Brock planned to sell (via merger) the license to the highest bidder, with a company such as the Tandy Corporation in mind. After Microsoft objected to Brock's "exaggerated interpretation" of the agreement and informed Brock that his license was nontransferable, Brock sued for $60 million. The ensuing lawsuit was highly technical and grew to fill hundreds of pages in the months leading up to trial. The trial began at the end of 1986 and lasted three weeks. An out-of-court settlement was reached while the jury was deliberating. Microsoft paid SCP $925,000 and reclaimed its license for DOS.[2] SCP went out of business in the late 1980s as the market for Intel 8086 systems became dominated by PC compatible computers.
Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ? This video is part two of how my typical day folds out. I try to explain (in Arabic, with subtitles in English, Arabic and Portuguese) how things go after my 8-9AM spoken lesson. It's a short video, so this very detailed blog post describes the components of my busy day in much greater detail! This is also the last video which will be entirely scripted. The next one will be my one month point and be made up entirely of a spontaneous conversation with a native. There has been a lot of confusion from some people for what I do for a living. I like to joke at times when asked and say “I'm an ostrich farmer” or “I'm a professional assassin, so don't ask too many questions!” but the truth is that I'm a professional language hacker. I explained how I got into that in this post. While I'd love to say that this means that I'm one of those bloggers with an automatic stream of income that lets me do whatever I want all the time and literally spend every single second focused on my language projects, this simply isn't the case. Blog posts like this 8,000 word one can sometimes take me days to write, aspects of redesigning and maintaining the site behind the scenes can be an epic amount of work, and I find it hilarious when people comment on my Youtube channel suggesting that I “don't work” so I have it easier than they do to spend all my time focused entirely on learning a language. You can't imagine the amount of work required to prepare a typical video, pick the right locations, post-recording edit it, add in graphical introductions and previews to other videos, synch the sound, upload subtitles in various languages, and actually record the video itself with my equipment set up the right way. This is very different to sitting in front of my webcam, recording a monologue and then instantly uploading it, which you see a lot of from other Youtubers. That's fine for them, I just prefer to upload more professional looking videos. So much work/emails/blogging to handle And the emails and comments!! Yikes! I get over four hundred emails a day, and another hundred or so comments on my blog posts, Youtube channel, Facebook page, twitter @s. Some of the emails may be for interview requests (here's a recent one I did entirely in Irish on beo.ie for instance), which in themselves will take up a lot of time, and others are sometimes really long emails in various languages that take time just to read. I could ignore all this to focus just on my language learning project, but I love making cool and sharable videos, writing blog posts, engaging with readers, hearing their stories, and hopefully inspiring a few people to learn a new language. As well as this, on a more practical level, I have to make sure that my site and audience continues to grow so that I can keep the site completely 100% advertisement and sponsorship free, which is quite rare for any site. The sheer number of visitors the site gets means that I don't have to make a big fuss about my Speak from day 1 package and people find it eventually if they need to, and at least one person does each day, which covers my expenses, which I don't have a lot of considering I don't own or buy much stuff. Even though sales of that product are handled automatically, I hope you can see that simply being an active blogger in itself is a huge amount of work! This can require up to eight hours of my time per day, including weekends. Yes, I have to work and learn a language at the same time too! This is time that I'm not speaking or learning Arabic, so it would seem that all hope is lost for investing serious time into learning my language intensively, right? Not quite 😉 I can now share 21 hacks I apply every single day, to make sure that I can stay on top of all of this and still have plenty of time to invest entirely into learning the language, as well as have an actual social life! Squeezing more hours out of the day: 1. Get up early If you watch part one of the video of my typical day, you'll see that my day begins at 5:30AM. I have found that the later I get up, the less time I “feel” I have, so I skip important things like eating well, doing exercise, clearing “less essential” tasks and I ultimately end up less focused and work less efficiently. When you get a bunch of things done well before 8AM you have the momentum to keep at it all day long. This is especially important if you have to work based on someone else's schedule. 2. Attempt poly- or biphasic sleep The idea that we “need” eight hours of sleep per night is simply wrong. The reason that we sleep in one large block at night is mostly because of the industrial revolution creating something akin to the 9-5 lifestyle, where you need to be in work mode for the majority of the day and simply can't sleep at any time during this period. What we did before this, was what most animals do, and that's to sleep more than one times a day. When taken to the extreme, the “Überman” sleep pattern can give you a total of twenty two conscious hours per day! Leonardo Da Vinci himself applied something similar, to give him more time to work on his art and experiments. I tried this myself once, but found that it was far too out of synch with society to be useful. Instead, I go for biphasic sleep, better known as siestas, which I wrote about in great detail here. So, in the afternoon I have a 20 minute power-nap, and this doesn't inconvenience my day at all. I even did this while working in full-time jobs, during my one hour lunch break. Those 20 minutes ultimately mean that I can comfortably sleep for about 5 hours every night and feel totally well rested the entire day! So that's immediately about 18.5 hours of conscious time per day to play around with – those extra 2.5 hours a day add up fast! As you can see in today's video, it also means that I get to stay up late, which helps a lot for a good social life! 3. Skip coffee and other drugs and get high on adrenaline instead I don't drink alcohol and this changes everything. It means I can go out on the town and not have my morning consumed by a hang-over the next day. It's also safer, and lets me lucidly recall how much fun I had, and only make a fool out of myself in ways that I won't regret the next day. And I don't need to come up with nonsense logic that I can't have fun or speak a language without beer's permission. And the same goes for coffee. So many Americans drink several cups a day! I've got some friends who actually get jittery if they don't have their morning cup. This dependence means that whenever you don't have access to it your focus is completely shot and you can't work or think straight. Getting more hours in the day isn't just about squeezing them out by doing things more efficiently, but also by taking the hours you are working or studying and making those count more. The highs you get on coffee alcohol, tobacco and other things tend to give you a significant low afterwards too. And this is as well as costing you a LOT of money. I prefer to get my highs from life. When out on the town, I go “social skydiving” and talk to complete strangers as much as I can, in as many ways as I can, with no BS shy excuses. I like to dance, sing and appreciate all the wonderful free things in life without messing with my body's chemistry too much. This means I can stay focused even if the shops are closed and I can't get my fix. 4. Exercise and eat well People are starting to accept that exercise does indeed improve brain activity. As you can see in the video, I have a jog and try to do other exercise every day in the morning if I can. Another benefit is that I find that I'm a lot less distracted and can sit still after dispelling a little energy on the jog. Most of my work on the blog and studying requires sitting down, so using my muscles before that means that I do need to recover and won't be getting up every few minutes to distract myself with something pointless. For some great tips on exercising well, check out Nerd Fitness. The same goes for eating well of course. I didn't eat so well while travelling in China and the states this year, especially since it's hard to rent an affordable place in some countries that even has a kitchen, but luckily in Brazil it's very easy to get access to lots of wholesome affordable vegetarian food and cook at home too. By fueling your body well, you can work and focus better. How I get to Inbox zero twice per day 5. Switch to Gmail and activate filters If you are on any email other than Gmail, then it's no wonder you are dealing with email overload! There are several reasons to switch over and you don't have to tell your friends you've changed your email, since you can have gmail download it from the old address for you. One that I especially like is that Gmail has an option to create complex filters. So out of the 400 emails I get, I can immediately reduce this to just 80 that require my attention, thanks to some filters I've set up, such as the following ones: Any email that is sent in bulk to many people goes to a special folder that I clear about three times a week when I've time. It never makes it to the inbox, which is seen as a bigger priority since people have written to me directly. Exceptions are made for flight details and other essentials or more urgent email lists Obvious spam that is sent just to you not picked up by the system. As a blogger, I get at least five or six a day trying to sell me on some sleazy SEO (Sales Engine Optimization) tactics to get me on “page one of Google”. I have a list of words that I see often that tell me that this is likely going to be spam, and send it to a special filter that I'll check once or twice a week to clear. This very simply includes the term “SEO”, so I don't recommend you have it in your signature if you write an email to me 😉 Note that “seo” is also the Irish word for this, so I've added in exceptions for certain common Irish words too. Sometimes people like arguing with me via email. If I've tried to talk to them a couple of times and I can see they are only interested in wasting my time or sending aggro my way, their email or IP address gets its own filter to be automatically set as read and archived, so I don't get annoyed by it any more. Any email with Fwd or similar in the title tends to be stupid jokes that I don't want to read. These go to another folder to be looked at with low priority. Social media notifications, like messages on Facebook, someone commenting on a Youtube video, each get their own filter, and never go to the inbox. Opening these tends to take me away from the Gmail window which is a huge distraction already, so I have a work session specifically for social media follow-ups. This means that even though I get over 400 emails a day, I'll only actually see about 80-150 each day that make it to the inbox. There are lots of great ways to make sure I can handle these too! 6. Send AND archive button Another cool thing about Gmail is the amount of plugins and extra features that you can add to it to make your job easier. One such option if you go into labs is the “Send and archive” button. After I've replied to an email, then effectively, it should be removed from my inbox, as I've “dealt” with it. This button makes that process automatic. I never use the “send” button, only the “send and archive”, so nothing hangs around the inbox for long. 7. ONE inbox and one inbox only I have done everything I can to make sure that all the messages that I can handle that come from the entire world, end up in that one inbox (or at least a filter) in Gmail. So rather than invite people to message me in a host of ways by following a trillion people on twitter and getting DMs, I only follow five people on twitter, and check @s at a specific time each day. I nuked my far too large amount of “friends” on Facebook, and got rid of people I bumped into once or twice or who I no longer talk to. The only people who can email me such that it gets into my Facebook inbox are my close friends and family – and I only have 70 of them, not 500, not 1000. I don't accept friend requests from anyone I haven't met several times in person because of this, and if a stranger messages me through my personal Facebook, then I will leave it in the “other mail” and simply not reply (I do specifically say on the public description on my Facebook page not to message me via that page). You also can't message me privately on my Facebook brand page, so I can handle wall posts as social media time and not email time. Same with Youtube – private messages have been turned off. And when I set up a new profile anywhere, such as italki this year, the first thing I do is disable private messaging and chat feautres. I don't want to check a dozen inboxes every day, just one. 8. Give people other options on the contact-me form This means that when people want to get in touch with me, they can only 1. Reply to the emails sent after signing up to the Language Hacking League email list or 2. Use this form. Out of all the emails I get, about 15-20 of them are asking me the same questions day in and day out. So when this happens enough, I go back to the form and add in a notice to warn people before they see the form so they don't send that same message. No advertisement requests on the blog, links to posts that have Frequently Asked Questions they are likely to be asking and so on. This precursor immediately reduced the amount of the messages I'd get that I'd be sending the same answer to over and over. I also suggest that they use the forum if it's a “How do I learn a language” style question, since I simply cannot sit down and answer a single email for hours explaining my language learning approach – people are welcome to ask the community or search my site, or watch the TEDx talk to get all my secrets. 9. Canned replies for repeated questions Sometimes it's a question that I can't really warn them in advance with a quick link on the contact-me form, but it's still something that I get day in and day out. The biggest one by far is a specific question that I answer in a specific post, that they may not have found by using the search tool on my site. In this case, I have a template set up to thank them for the question and a space to paste in a link to the relevant post. I was even getting enough of these to merit creating a template one for Spanish and French! This way I only have to activate the canned reply, paste the appropriate link in, and the email is dealt with within seconds. 10. See who's writing to you or if they wrote to you before, with Rapportive Now, the one major catch about using email compared to social media platforms like twitter, Facebook, Youtube and so on, is you don't know anything about that person apart from their name – not even what they look like! When dealing with languages where even saying “you” requires that you know if you are writing to a boy or a girl and I can't really tell that from their name, and just in general to make my email experience much more personal so I feel like I'm writing to real human beings, it's nice to see a nice photo and any other info about that person. With this in mind, I have the plugin Rapportive installed. This searches social media platforms for their email address and returns what it can – usually a Facebook photo, and sometimes even a few status updates. I find this helps me get some context for who I'm writing to. Before this, if I was really confused, I'd take the time to copy and paste their email and enter it into a search in Facebook, but now it's just sitting there for me, saving me some time. It also gives me the context of if this person has emailed me before. I get so many emails, that it's impossible to keep track and if I write to someone like it's the first time they ever emailed me, but they have done so already, then I can be much more helpful in not repeating myself. All their previous emails are linked to in the side. 11. Add the time dimension to your emails with Boomerang and guarantee inbox zero every day My favourite plugin by far for Gmail is boomerang. This allows me to 1. Send an email later 2. Have emails returned to me later and 3. Bring an email back to me if the recipient doesn't reply by a certain time. This has been such a huge help to me! For sending emails later, consider this: Since a lot of emails that I get might be short and require a short answer, if I reply immediately simply to get it out of the inbox, then that person sees me as a little too available. I've found that more often than not they'll reply back again immediately, with yet another question and it turns into a chat, which I really don't have time for, and that person stays fixed in my inbox way too long. Instead, I'll reply immediately, but set the email to be sent in two days time. This shows the person that I'm a bit busy and can't reply to such questions so quickly, but they still get their answer and most importantly, I get their message out of my inbox! Only urgent messages get an instant reply – such as if someone is having trouble downloading the Language Hacking Guide. Generally, you won't hear from me a for a few days. One way this happens is because of the above of me replying instantly, but not sending it until later. Another way is that I see the email is not something that I can handle right now, but don't want it sitting in my inbox nagging me. So I set it to “boomerang” back to my inbox at a time when I can handle it. For example, if someone sends me a monstrously long email, I'm definitely not going to read it as soon as I see it. I'll boomerang it back to Tuesday, when I set aside time specifically to read long emails. Or if someone send me a link (which I prefer they don't – generally I prefer that people tweet me links; it's the best way for me to see it quicker), I'll boomerang it to Wednesday, when I set aside time to look at interesting links sent my way. This is sort of like pressing the Snooze button on your email. The important thing is that it's OUT of my inbox, and will come back to me specifically when I know I can deal with it. Finally, I don't really want to remember to message people back if it's something important, as I'll probably forget it quickly. So in cases where I need a reply for whatever reason, I set the message to boomerang back to me later if they don't reply, so I can follow up. If they do reply before this, that boomerang is cancelled. This means that I can effectively go through each email and either send and archive, reply to be boomeranged later (and archive), archive if it doesn't require my reply, or create a new filter if that email never should have reached my inbox. In this way, no matter what, I'll reach inbox zero in each session, despite the huge amount of emails I get. And I do this twice a day too! Morning and evening 🙂 Working more efficiently 12. Task based day OK, so I've handled my inbox overload and can get to the main tasks of the day. The problem is that I have quite a lot to do! As I said, I might have a long blog post to write (like this one), videos to edit, website maintenance to carry out, an interview to write or Skype, or hundreds of messages on social media to catch up on. Without an effective time management system, these would consume my day and I've no time left to learn the language! I tried a few things to get on top of these, such as timetabling out my day with what I should be doing at each hour, but I found that when I ran into problems at any point, the whole day was thrown off balance. What has worked better for me, has been setting up a to-do list of precisely everything that I need to do that day and deciding approximately how much time it will require. For this, I use Astrid, which is a web-based app and Android/Apple one. I create the timetable on my computer and check it off on my Android phone or iPad as the task is completed, which all synch between one another. It's important to create a plan of action at the start of the day, rather than wing it. This way you don't have anything important getting ignored – the big essential things tend to get prioritised to be done earlier in the day, so it's OK if less essential tasks get pushed to the next day. 13. Timeboxing, pomodoro style! Now, when it's time to do the actual tasks, I will not just sit down and do it until I'm done. If it takes a long time then I'd get bored and distracted after a while and it will ultimately take even longer. One technique that has worked wonders for me is the pomodoro technique. It very simply involves working in 25 minute blocks, followed by a 5 minute break. Simple as that. This simplicity has meant that I don't get distracted and try to do other things at the same time. 25 minutes is a short enough period that something can get 100% of my undivided attention, but still make a serious influence to the task at hand, but not long enough to make you get too bored with it. Once my kitchen timer or digital timer rings/beeps, then even if I'm mid-sentence, I'll stand up from my laptop or put down the book and do something relaxing. Maybe stare out the window at some birds, or turn on some music to listen to a song I like, or do some busy work like tidy up or do the dishes, which can actually be relaxing when you are otherwise focused on something so taxing. And then my five minutes are up and I'm back into it again. That 10 minutes off per hour has meant that the remaining 50 minutes are a magnitude of times more efficient, and I can keep up this efficient work for the majority of the day. I'm absolutely 100% focused because I know the entire time that I'm never far away from a break. Whenever I'm working on something my by own – whether it's writing a blog post like this, studying, doing flashcards or anything else. It always gets timeboxed into a 25 minute segment. Any basic timer can do this for you – you have it on your watches or phones or alarm clocks. I personally like to have a large digital display within my view counting down to remind me of the time pressure. There are also plenty of apps and programs that cater specifically to this particular time segmentation if you search for “pomodoro” for your computer or smartphone system. 14. Non-distracting work environment When there are a million things going on around you, it's really hard to keep that focus. Turn OFF all notifications for text messages, chat messages, new email notifications, tweets and anything else that beeps or vibrates away your attention. As I mentioned above, when I'm in email-mode, I absolutely will not leave the Gmail window and get distracted by random links. I have a separate working session for investigating links. And I never check Facebook unless I am in a dedicated Facebook session, so it gets its own filter in Gmail too, as Facebook has some of the greatest potential for distractions. And in the real world, try to make the physical space you work in way less distracting. When I was in Rio, I did not have a very efficient working week. The apartment I was in had such a nice view that I was constantly distracted by it. Here in Belo Horizonte I'm surrounded by dull buildings and my working space is in a corner in my apartment where I'm only looking at the wall. Boring, but much more ideal to work in. 15. Block the leeches When you work on a computer connected to the Internet, there are so many things happening that your attention can get grabbed in any direction away from your work – especially to sites like Facebook, Reddit or some of your other favourite pages. That's why I highly recommend you install a plugin on your browser that lets you set these websites as inaccessible during work periods. I like Leechblock for Firefox and StayFocusd for Chrome. Of course, having excellent self control is the ideal, but these plugins let you learn that easier. I don't even use them any more because they helped “train” me so well in the past. And sometimes the leeches for your time can be actual people. In my case, one side-effect of getting so much traffic is that I get a decent amount of trolling from 40 year old virgins who live in their parents' basements. I'll almost always engage with people at first and give them the benefit of the doubt, and welcome mature discourse when someone is clearly doing it with an open mind, but some people really do have nothing but a bone to pick. If their first message is filled with insults then they'll immediately get added to my block list, and if they are simply being a little too blunt and disrespectful over time then after three or four attempts, I really can't be giving them my undivided attention so I turn them off. I wasted so much time unnecessarily early this year with people wanting to drag me down when I was learning Chinese. To this day, I still don't get this obsession with trolling. I'd rather focus on making my life go as well as it can, than spend my day trying to tear everyone else down and lecture them from my anonymous Internet cave. This time, most of my hate is coming from backward uneducated middle America with comments about me supporting no-women's-rights and terrorism… because I'm learning Egyptian Arabic. You can guess how much I'm interested in entertaining that dialogue! [Block and forget] Problem solved, and no stress. Think about it seriously – if anything or anyone is dragging you down in life then if there is a possibility of pressing an off switch, or telling the person face to face to go take a long walk off a short pier, or at least peacefully agree to disagree, then do it and move on. 16. Squeeze every spare second out of your day When people tell me they have no time, I have to laugh, because they clearly have the time to complain about it 🙂 There are a host of ways you can kill the time-suckers and use the empty-hours in your day more efficiently. I wrote more about it here. 17. Outsource and get help for things someone else can do Now, out of everything that I might do on a given day, there are actually quite a few things that I don't need to personally be doing myself. Answering emails, actually studying and speaking the language, and writing these blog posts are things I must do myself. But looking at my day and the amount of hours poured into each thing, I found that there were some tasks that didn't require me personally to do them, and that someone else could do, but that were taking up a lot of my time. You may remember a few weeks ago when I announced this project, that I ran a promotion for people to get an extra if they bought the Speak From Day 1 package? These extra earnings weren't so I could go Mitt Romney style and hire a masseuse on a yacht, or buy a Rolex watch, first class flight or anything of the sort. That extra boost was so that I could invest that money into giving me more time. I've hired a PA before for very specific tasks, but this time I hired one for the duration of this project to help me with things that would clear up my time. Luckily what I made during the promotion was enough to hire him for a few hours a week for the entirety of the 3 months. For example, subtitling my videos was always such a chore. I'd have to re-listen several times, make a note of the transcript, translate it, and then start over and get the timing of the captions just right for the subtitles file. It would typically take 20 times longer than the length of the video to get that file – so a three minute video could take an hour to caption in two languages. Some of my videos in this project are already over ten minutes long. So this is work for my PA! He is from Egypt, so he can caption the videos once I start interviewing people too, and he speaks English, so he can also translate those captions! He is also the one making all my Anki decks for me! I wrote a detailed email explaining how it works, and now all I need to do is send him the list of words in English, and he will translate them to Arabic, apply romanized script so I can learn them faster and speak the words aloud as audio, so I can hear these while studying. Even forgetting adding the audio, creating these decks with good translations on a regular basis would take me a lot of time that could be spending actually learning the language. If anything comes up that someone else may be able to do for me, then I consider outsourcing if it's practical and affordable. Unfortunately, the list of ways I can clear up my day like this is very small (so I definitely can't have a four hour workweek like the guy that gave me this idea), but luckily I know that what I do outsource is saving me a LOT of time each week. The resources I use to find these people are odesk and elance [Edit: now they merged and become Upwork] for quality work, and fiverr.com for quick tasks that I'd pay $5 for. I still need to send a lot of emails to explain the task and find the right people, but ultimately it's time and money well spent. Learning a language more efficiently Finally, we're on to what it's all about right now for me! Despite the above five thousand words worth of things trying to grab my attention during the day, I still need to put some serious time into learning Arabic and progressing towards what will ideally be fluency by December 18th. Thanks to working more efficiently, as described above, even though I have a LOT of work to do during the day, I'll still have plenty of time to focus just on the language. I apply a similar approach and treat it just as I would treat any work. As above, I block out distractions, timeblock a study or learning session into a 25 minute block, and focus on doing one thing at a time. 18. Multi-tasking is for people who don't give a sh*t Sorry to be so blunt here, but if you are so lazy as to only invest serious time into “learning” your language, by having it on in the background as noise while you do something else, then you will never get anywhere with the language, and don't deserve to. When studying, give what you are learning your 100% undivided attention. As shown in the video above, I am listening to audio, but I'm taking notes and staying focused to try and make out the words. The only exception would be when doing something that really requires no brain power, such as doing the dishes or going for a leisurely walk somewhere familiar etc. Although even here I wouldn't listen to podcasts myself, as I like to make notes if I can. I know a lot of people get effective study time done while doing chores though. But while driving your car is not quite the same – the attention required to push an iron isn't quite the same as what is required to control a vehicle than can run over puppies. You have to draw the line somewhere – is someone honking their horn at you going to drag you away from your studies every couple of minutes? Certainly, having something on at this time is “better than nothing”, but don't kid yourself that it's making a huge difference. Make real dedicated learning time throughout your day. Don't multitask with anything else that requires any sort of attention. 19. Fill those empty moments with flashcard studying The point a little above about finding more time throughout the day can be taken advantage of in language learning if you have a smartphone or iPod using the Anki app (for iPhone, for Android, and for everyone else). In the elevator, you can review another two words. While stuck in a supermarket line, you can learn those essential phrases, and so on. Anki Flashcarding is a major part of my study day, since vocabulary and phrases (both producing them and recognizing them) are ultimately what will get me into conversations. Rather than use generic ones, I have created decks based specifically on what I am most likely to talk about. Generic word lists are usually based on word frequencies in newspapers, and as such I find them to be incredibly unhelpful for beginner language learners and the kinds of conversations they are more likely to have. I write out the words I'm likely to say, get them translated and spoken aloud by my PA as described above, and study those lists. Then in my spoken sessions, I see what specifically is missing and add those new words to my next list to be studied. And when I get around to grammar, that is also dealt with flashcard style. Grammar needs to be covered at the right time and place, not at the very start. Right now the only grammar I'm concerning myself with, is the kind that without it my conversations are hindered a bit too much. So while it was OK to use any version of a verb before, I've just added a new deck with basic conjugations to be learned. It won't apply to all verbs, but it will get me a little bit further into expressing what I need. I will continue to accept speaking incorrectly as OK for the moment, and will add more grammar only as it is needed. Since I find that I can focus on flashcard studying while walking slowly (since I may put the phone down for a second to think of a good image association for the word and use my environment for inspiration), and I like to walk to get around as much as possible, I actually study while walking! You can even see me apply that in this video because I have an app that shows me where I'm going, by making the screen “transparent” with the back camera, so I won't bump into people. 20. It has to be all building up to actually speaking Speak from day 1, seriously!!! As you'll have seen in the previous video, I have a spoken session first thing in the morning at 8AM to get me into the speaking flow, and remind me what I need to work on, and then another one in the evening to work towards. If your study sessions are for something specific that you can apply in your next spoken session, you will be amazed at how quickly you progress. It's like that last-minute-exam pressure all the time. We all learn the best the hours just before the exam – the same goes with before an upcoming spoken session. I make my “exam” daily, and then I HAVE to keep improving. 21. Stay sane and don't forget to have a life! The last thing and probably the most important one to make sure you stay focused and work well, is to let your hair down and go out and have some fun at least a few times a week. You've earned it! I found that focusing too much on the project was a mistake with Chinese, and the stress from not relaxing more meant that I reached saturation point and couldn't focus at all any more! This time I've corrected that and every single day I meet up with Brazilians for lunch or dinner to hang out and talk about anything but language learning 😉 And once or twice a week I'll go out for the entire evening and dance, flirt with cute girls, make new friends and do whatever else that makes me remember that I'm human and not an Arabic learning and blogging robot. I pick these relaxing times specifically as social occasions, to make sure that they are definitely relaxing. If relaxing is just watching TV, or lounging away the evening on Youtube, then if after it you don't feel energized about life, I'd say it's done more damage than good. An evening out (or in…) with friends and fun people can be just what the doctor ordered and make sure that you've recharged your batteries for another efficient working day. It's not all about work after all – why work so hard if you aren't going to reap the benefits and appreciate that you are a healthy person with friends that want to support you and help you? All of this work with Arabic for me, is so that ultimately I can have the kind of friends in Egypt that I have here in Brazil. For me, it's all about the people. The more efficiently I can work during my day, then the less distractions I have from that work when it's time to socialize! Hopefully these 21 suggestions can help you along to work and have fun more efficiently. Let me know your comments below, and if you liked the post, please do share it on Facebook! Benny Lewis Founder, Fluent in 3 Months Speaks: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Esperanto, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Dutch, Irish Fun-loving Irish guy, full-time globe trotter and international bestselling author. Benny believes the best approach to language learning is to speak from day one View all posts by Benny Lewis
CLOSE 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' star Terry Crews has filed an assault and battery lawsuit against WME and agent Adam Venit, who Crews claims violated him at a party in Hollywood in 2016. USA TODAY Terry Crews poses for a photo during his visit to SiriusXM Studios on Sept. 29, 2017, in New York City. (Photo11: Mike Coppola, Getty Images) Terry Crews is suing the Hollywood agent he accused of groping him last year at an industry event. After filing a complaint with the LAPD last month, Crews has launched a lawsuit against William Morris Endeavor agent Adam Venit for assault, battery and sexual harassment, among other charges. He is also suing the talent agency. After Crews made his allegation public on Twitter in October (though not naming Venit specifically), the former motion picture head was identified in trade publications and suspended from WME. Venit returned to the company in a demoted role about a month later. More: Terry Crews opens up about alleged assault: 'I have never felt more emasculated' The "blatant" groping occurred on Feb. 4, 2016, according to the complaint obtained by USA TODAY, at an industry event hosted by Adam Sandler. Having never met the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor previously, "Venit stared at Crews intently, like a rabid dog, sticking his tongue in and out of his mouth provocatively," according to the suit. What followed was allegedly physical. "Venit, upon his first meeting Crews, viciously grabbed Crews’ penis and testicles so hard that it caused Crews immediate pain." The suit says Crews shoved Venit back "knocking him into several people who were standing nearby" causing the actor to yell out. But Venit "continued to leer at Crews, provocatively wagging his tongue again, and then grabbed and squeezed Crews’ genitals again." Crews states he asked the nearby Sandler, with whom he had appeared in several films, for help. "Sandler shook his head at Venit in disbelief," reads the suit, and later called the actor to see if he was OK. The next day, Venit called Crews to apologize, saying he was not himself. More: Terry Crews shares story of sexual assault, receives praise from fellow celebs Crews, a WME client before he formally left the company in mid-November, says he informed his agent at the company the next day, but the agency took little action "likely because Venit is a significant moneymaker for WME." Venit's client roster includes several Hollywood names who have been accused of harassment, including Sylvester Stallone, Casey Affleck, Brett Ratner and Dustin Hoffman. He also represents Sandler and Eddie Murphy. List: All of the Hollywood power players accused of sexual assault or harassment The suit also alleges that "WME agents are knowingly permitted and encouraged to engage in sexually predatory conduct in the assertion of their power and clout over persons similarly-situated to Crews." Crews says he suffered actual pain as well as psychological issues. He is asking for punitive and exemplary damages. Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2A7PRw2
What do Democrats have to lose? The DNC took a beating last year with the primary process they oversaw and essentially botched, if not rigged. No matter how much Democrats talk about the Russian influence helping Trump win last November, the sad reality is the DNC have themselves to blame and they know it — they just won’t admit it. No amount of house cleaning will help them in 2020 unless they convince the nation they really are more interested in transparency than back room politics. There will be changes the party makes when the next presidential cycle comes around, but I am willing to bet, they will not be as bold as they should if they want to win over a large segment of a dissatisfied voting populace. If I were advising the DNC, or the GOP for that matter had they lost last year, I would suggest they scrap the primary process all together for something far more bold and advantageous. Best of all, it’s a simple plan that when carried out leaves little to question about the party and their candidate. Beginning on the first Tuesday of November 2019, one year before the next presidential election, I would hold the first of eight nationally televised debates among their candidates. Each month, on the first and third Tuesday, a debate would take place in a different part of the country and focus on a different set of topics. The final debate would take place on the third Tuesday of February and then be followed by a national primary vote on the first Tuesday of March. Should no candidate receive more than 50 percent of the national democratic vote, a debate would take place between the top two vote getters on the third Tuesday of March with a runoff vote on the first Tuesday of April. Doing this eliminates the antiquated concept of delegates and the potential impression of corruption for the use of super delegates. It still allows candidates to crisscross the country, something they absolutely dread doing, while others can choose to campaign in a far more cost saving way making them less reliant on big money donors. 2016 proved Americans will tune in and watch debates. I have yet to meet a person who has said they voted for a specific presidential candidate because of their stump speech, but I have known scores who were swayed by the answers they provided to debate questions. Now for those who will say this takes away the influence of the smaller states with early primaries and caucuses, it doesn’t. You’ve been misled by the media. The vote in California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio matter far more to politicians who have eyes on the White House; Iowa and New Hampshire, sorry, but you are just necessary evils to candidates. With a candidate selected no later than early April, Democrats will give themselves at least seven months to plan a strategy to defeat an incumbent Trump. This leaves plenty of time to raise massive amounts of money to run ads in major markets aimed at defeating Trump while still allowing the party nominee to hit the smaller states at a much less hectic pace to meet and chat up close with the people. Not only will this give the party’s candidate time to vet their choice for VP, it can also allow him or her time to introduce their choices of cabinet members who in turn can be unleashed to dissect the performance of Trump’s cabinet. In other words, to use terminology Mr. Trump likes, you would be going nuclear on him and everyone associated with him. Whatever Democrats decide, they must remember half of the nation couldn’t be bothered to vote last year because neither candidate or party excited them and had lost the their trust. Democrats have to prove to the public they not only have learned from the errors of their ways, but they also have no intention of repeating them by selecting a candidate under the system voters question. If Trump proved voters want someone different, then perhaps the DNC needs to show all voters how progressive they can be. Social issues are one way, but that wasn’t enough in 2016 and might not be again in 2020. No matter what he says, Trump does not want a large voter turn out. He thrived on apathy this time and will need it again if he is going to be re elected. However, if voters believe Democrats are the more open and transparent party to Trump and, with what appears with each passing day (his henchmen), they should garner far more independent and new voters, which should put their next candidate in the White House. What do they have to lose?
Every Friday a new piece of artwork from the fanart contest will be posted on this website! NOTE: This is a cropped version of an explicit sexual scene found if the image is clicked on. If you are not over 18 years old, do not click on it! You have been warned! Glad for the Company by Unknown “This will be a missing scene set in Brazil, from between Crucible of Gold and book 8 (tentatively called Luck and Palaces). I feel like possibly I need to rise to the challenge and write an explicit scene, here, but I reserve the right to chicken out. :P ” — Naomi Each of these weekly pieces of art will be a part of a small, Subterranean Press hardcover with a 16-page full color gallery, and it will include a total of 32 pieces, with about 20,000 words total of new fiction included. I will probably end up combining and writing slightly longer stories for more than one piece, but each one will at least get a drabble’s-worth to its name! Sub Press will produce a limited edition of 400 leatherbound copies signed by me (probably around $45), and somewhere between 1000-2000 hardcovers (around $20-25). And I will eventually be putting up the stories themselves online at least once the book sells out, so if these are out of your range, do not fear! You will get to read the stories! The book should hopefully be out before the end of this year, but we’ll see. To be notified when this book goes on sale, join the Sub Press newsletter HERE! Until next week! Share this: Facebook Twitter Tumblr Pinterest Reddit Email
On Monday, the office of the commonwealth of Massachusetts fined Morgan Stanley $5 million dollars for its role in allegedly artificially driving up the share prices before the Facebook IPO last May. While there has been talk of taking legal action against the parties involved in the famously failed IPO, this is the first concrete legal action taken against any parties involved in the Facebook IPO. Massachusetts’ secretary of the commonwealth, William F. Galvin is accusing Morgan Stanley of coaching Facebook on ways to share information with stock analysts covering Facebook’s IPO pre-launch, which is a potential violation of a landmark legal settlement with Wall Street. While the specific Morgan Stanley banker dealing with Facebook is said to have never contacted these analysts directly, his actions, according to Galvin, put the average retail investors at a disadvantage because they lacked access to the same information. “The broader message here is we are going to use any means possible to enforce the strict code in place about giving out information,” Mr. Galvin said in an interview. “We want to get the message across that if Wall Street wants to get confidence back, they can’t disadvantage Main Street.” Since its IPO in May, the share price of Facebook has dropped from $38 to around $26 (as of the time of this posting), and investors who got in early on the Facebook IPO have seen their asset value decline by 31.5% so far. Because the price declined so much, the SEC is investigating whether there was any information knowingly omitted during the initial Facebook IPO process. This recent fine against Morgan Stanley could indicate the first shot over the bow. Since May Facebook IPO Since the IPO in May, Facebook has made a huge effort to begin proving the initially high valuation of their company by making a large showing at their efforts to improve company revenue, as shown in their Q3 earnings report and recent changes to the Facebook platform. According to Zuckerberg’s announcement, most of Facebook’s revenue in the third quarter has come from ad revenue, and that’s where Facebook is trying to continue to show improvements. In October, the social network announced that it would begin charging marketers for posting consumer offers, which are coupon-like ads. Previously, businesses hadn’t been charged for posting offers to users who had clicked “Like” on the businesses’ Facebook pages. The change in this policy has placed pressure on small to medium companies but did help increase Facebook’s revenue. Moreover, Facebook is trying to broaden its mobile advertisement business. In the past 6 months, there have been several changes announced regarding mobile ads and Facebook’s mobile ad delivery network. For example, mobile ads will now be in ‘Sponsored Stories’ on people’s News Feeds. According to its Q3 financial statements recently, mobile advertisement contributes to 14% of revenues from advertisements accumulating to $150 million, almost 333% increase compared with last quarter. The mobile boost helped revenue rise 32% in the quarter that ended on Sept. 30, to $1.26 billion, slightly topping Wall Street’s expectations. This beyond-expectations figure eased worries from investors that Facebook’s mobile business might not be able to gain traction. Secondly, Facebook is considering the option to sell premium services to businesses so that large companies can manage their customer relationships better. Also Facebook is testing a new wish list feature called ‘Collections’ as well as a ‘want’ button. This would help retailers determine what products they should buy in the next season. In total, seven retailers are partnering with Facebook for the test including Victoria’s Secret, Neiman Marcus and Michael Kors. Last but not the least, Facebook acquired some technology from other companies to improve its platform. One example is an acquisition deal with Face.com to bolster its facial recognition technology. This is important to Facebook because people will probably visit Facebook immediately when they get notified that they’ve been tagged in a photo, and since Facebook is in the job of getting users to keep using Facebook, this could be considered a good play. From the above examples, I could conclude that Facebook is trying to improve its revenue, and the effort seems to be paying off. However, it does not mean share price will necessarily go up or back to IPO price again. There are still several difficulties that Facebook needs to surmount in order to prove itself to long-term investors. Facebook’s Challenges Ahead Potential legal troubles aside, the first problem of revenue is where to find more clients. The website has more than 1 billion users, so where to find another 1 billion is the first challenge the company faces. Zuckerberg says he will focus on emerging markets in India and China. In my opinion, it is reasonable to suggest India and China will be the new field to explore since they have large populations, but there is more to the equation than meets the eye. In China, we have already had our Chinese Facebook called ‘Renren.’ It’s similar to Facebook and has attracted many users, mainly those in their 20s. Before I came to the U.S., I only used Renren. Another challenge that Facebook will meet in China is that some foreign websites including Facebook are blocked by the Chinese government. As for India, only 8% of the total population have access to internet and only 9% of them have smart phones. The second challenge comes from Facebook’s competitors. Google is still the mobile advertising giant to beat, taking up 55% of the market, while Facebook only takes up 2.8%. Similar social networks like Twitter are regarded by some to be better positioned for their potential in the mobile advertisement arena. Some analysts say when all these revenue measures have been put into effect, the only reason that Facebook’s share price will rise will be better-than-expected revenue reports. I partially agree with this opinion. And whether the recent legal action taken against Morgan Stanley will affect Facebook’s share price in the short-term remains to be seen. From my point of view, Facebook needs some new features and ideas to attract more users and some interesting games and activities to keep users. All in all, Facebook is trying to prove to their investors that their revenue strategies are effective, but many challenges lie ahead when it comes to growing its market share, including possible investigations into the way that the Facebook IPO was handled. The $5 million fine against Morgan Stanley could be the end of the investigations, or just the beginning.
Science News covers a revealing new study on the Hadza people of Tanzania that has the potential shake up some of the rusty thinking in evolutionary psychology. A common line of argument in this field is to suggest that sexual preferences for certain body types exist because we’ve evolved these desires to maximise our chances of mating with the most fertile or healthiest partner. For example, studies have interpreted the fact that taller men are more likely to attract mates and reproduce in terms of evolutionary pressures on sexual desire. But most of these and similar studies have been completed on Western samples, while the authors draw conclusions about the ‘universal’ nature of these ‘evolutionary’ pressures. To test how universal these body preferences really are, anthropologists Rebecca Sear and Frank Marlowe looked at whether similar preferences existed in the Hadza people, a hunter-gather tribe from Tanzania. It turns out, these supposedly ‘universal preferences’ don’t exist in the Hadza. You can read the full text of the paper online as a pdf, but this is taken from the Science News write-up: Hadza marriages don’t tend to consist of individuals with similar heights, weights, body mass indexes, body-fat percentages or grip strengths… Neither do Hadza couples feature a disproportionate percentage of husbands taller than their wives, as has been documented in some Western nations, the researchers report in the Oct. 23 Biology Letters. Almost no Hadza individuals mention height or size when asked to explain what makes for an attractive mate, Sear and Marlowe add. People everywhere seek healthy, fertile marriage partners, Sear proposes. “But I suspect there may not be a preference for one particular signal of health in mates across every population,” she says…. Sear and Marlowe criticize evolutionary psychologists who have argued that physical size influences mating decisions in all societies. That argument rests largely on self-reports of Western college students and analyses of personal advertisements in U.S. newspapers for dating partners, they say. The problems with relying on Western college students as participants in psychology studies is also addressed by a new paper just released by Behavioural and Brain Sciences which you can read online as a pdf. The article reviews data from psychology experiments and argues that not only are college students a very restricted subset of society, but they are actually wildly atypical in comparison to the rest of the world’s population. In fact, the authors state that “The findings suggest that members of WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic] societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans”. Link to Science News on Hadza study. pdf of scientific paper on mating selection in the Hadza. pdf of BBS article on WEIRD people and selection bias (thanks Tom!)
Scientists are developing new materials which could one day allow people to print out custom-designed personal electronics such as games controllers which perfectly fit their hand shape. The University of Warwick researchers have created a simple and inexpensive conductive plastic composite that can be used to produce electronic devices using the latest generation of low-cost 3D printers designed for use by hobbyists and even in the home. The material, nicknamed ‘carbomorph’, enables users to lay down electronic tracks and sensors as part of a 3D printed structure – allowing the printer to create touch-sensitive areas for example, which can then be connected to a simple electronic circuit board. So far the team has used the material to print objects with embedded flex sensors or with touch-sensitive buttons such as computer game controllers or a mug which can tell how full it is. The next step is to work on printing much more complex structures and electronic components including the wires and cables required to connect the devices to computers. The research was led by Dr Simon Leigh in the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick. Dr Leigh said: “It’s always great seeing the complex and intricate models of devices such as mobile phones or television remote controls that can be produced with 3D printing, but that’s it, they are invariably models that don’t really function. “We set about trying to find a way in which we could actually print out a functioning electronic device from a 3D printer. “In the long term, this technology could revolutionalise the way we produce the world around us, making products such as personal electronics a lot more individualised and unique and in the process reducing electronic waste. “Designers could also use it to understand better how people tactilely interact with products by monitoring sensors embedded into objects. “However, in the short term I can see this technology having a major impact in the educational sector for example, allowing the next generation of young engineers to get hands-on experience of using advanced manufacturing technology to design fairly high-tech devices and products right there in the classroom.” The printed sensors can be monitored using existing open-source electronics and freely available programming libraries. A major advantage of using 3D printing is that sockets for connection to equipment such as interface electronics can be printed out instead of connected using conductive glues or paints. This research is detailed in the study, A simple, low-cost conductive composite material for 3D printing of electronic sensors, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. The research was funded by the EPSRC project: Novel 3D Printing Technologies for Maximising Industrial Impact (Subproject # 30821) and by the EPSRC UK Research Centre In Nondestructive Evaluation. ENDS Further Information Contacts Simon Leigh is available on +44 (0)24 761 51357 or [email protected] Or you can contact University of Warwick press officer Anna Blackaby on [email protected] or +44(0)2476 575910 or +44 (0)7785 433155 The open-access paper is available here Facilities for broadcast media We have an ISDN line and a Globelynx TVReady Network camera installed in our Broadcast Studio on campus for interviews with our academics. ISDN - The number for the ISDN line is 02476 471287. To book time in the Broadcast Studio on campus, please call 02476 524668 or 02476 575601. Globelynx TVReady - To connect with our camera you need to book a slot through the Globelynx website: Visit the Globelynx site and register or log-in. On the Globelynx site you can view some of our listed experts and areas of expertise. If the academic you wish to interview is listed there on the drop-down menu, select them and then follow the online booking procedure. If you would like to set up an interview with an academic who is not listed on the Globelynx database, please select 'The Studio at the University of Warwick' option from the drop-down menu and follow the online booking procedure. If you need assistance, please call Globelynx on +44 (0)20 7963 7061. If you have any problems, please call 02476 575601 or 02476 150868. Alternatively you can contact any member of our press team for assistance. Crucial pieces of equipment used in this research were funded through the Science City Research Alliance (SCRA) Advanced Materials project. SCRA is a strategic research partnership between the University of Warwick and the University of Birmingham with a specific remit to work with businesses across the region. It has benefited from a multi-million pound investment in equipment and research infrastructure across both institutions via Birmingham Science City and the European Regional Development Fund.
News in Science Antibiotic resistance predates medicine Ancient arsenal Bacteria had the means to resist antibiotic attack even in prehistoric times, say Canadian researchers. Their results are based on genetic analysis of bacterial DNA found in 30,000 year-old permafrost samples and raise further questions about the role of antibiotic resistance genes in evolution. "It turns out that low doses of molecules that we call antibiotics don't necessarily kill bacteria, but trigger all kinds of fascinating reactions from gene expression to changing cell shape and maybe communication," says Dr Gerard Wright of McMaster University and lead author of the study that is published today in Nature. According to Wright, the discovery overturns current dogma that resistance stems from clinical use because antibiotics have only been used in modern medicine for less than one hundred years. "We were very curious to know where antibiotic resistance comes from because we could find it relatively easily in microorganisms, particularly in the soil," he says. Wright says that this led them to turn to an area in the Yukon province where they could extract and analyse ancient soil samples preserved in a permanently frozen state. The team showed that the samples contained DNA from plant and animal species that also existed 30, 000 years ago. They focussed their attention on a class of bacteria called Actinobacteria. "They [actinobacteria] are remarkable machines that make most of our antibiotics and other molecules, which we turn into drugs including anticancer agents," says Wright. Reservoir of drug resistance The researchers used a technique called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, to look for genes that could confer resistance to several major classes of antibiotics. They found a number of so-called 'resistance elements,' some of which are groups of genes. "My guess would be that all the resistance elements we see today, we would probably find if we had the right tools," says Wright. "Most pathogenic organisms are not terribly drug resistant ... in comparison to environmental bacteria we study; yet with use of antibiotics they have been able to acquire these genes that are out there." "The environment seems to be this great reservoir of resistance genes that can eventually end up in the clinic." Wright says their research emphasises the need for caution around how we use antibiotics. "They need to be treated with tremendous respect," he says. Microbiologist Professor Ruth Hall of the The University of Sydney, says the need to use antibiotics judiciously is already widely acknowledged and that we already know a lot more about where resistance genes comes from than what is described in the Canadian study. "This research doesn't tell us anything new," says Hall. "Hundreds of microorganisms have genes related to antibiotic-resistant genes. The only resistant genes that matter are the ones that are circulating today ... bacteria are oblivious to the fact that we have developed antibiotics for clinical use." She says there are a few notable examples of where researchers have documented exactly how particular antibiotic resistance genes have evolved, and where they have been transferred into pathogenic bacteria. "It's more important to look at where the next resistant genes may come from - to have a good surveillance system in place," she says.
CLANCY OVERELL \| Editor \| CONTACT Maverick North Queensland MP Bob Katter has flown down to Sydney today to support his beloved NRL Side. First stop, Bondi Beach. The sunkissed boys from the North Queensland Cowboys are living out yet another fairytale finals dash, but history shows they a late round match against Sydney Roosters is a curveball for any club. Since their inception in 1995, the Cowboys have struggled to get one over the boys from Bondi this late in the season. It is for this reason that Bob Katter MP has been standing in the main drag of Bondi Beach’s Campbell parade firing a legally-grey lever-action shotgun into the local businesses. “It’s just a bit of mind games” he said to both police and the media. “Sometimes, with a team like the Roosters you need to show them that we mean business up north” Katter says that the reputation held towards North Queenslanders as being polite and gentle salt of the earth types doesn’t help when it comes to the pre-match intimidation factor. “Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy getting this thing through Kingsford Smith. These bloody nanny state airport security were acting like I’m of Arabic descent or something” he says before firing a round into the glass facade of a nearby juice bar. “This’ll get into their heads” Of the two sides’ 35 meetings, North Queensland have won just 10 — the Roosters second best strike-rate against any rival and the Cowboys worst against any team (equal with the Melbourne Storm).
Are you a drug dealer? A spy? Or perhaps just having an affair while traveling overseas? Whatever the case, the new Hushed app for Android lets you create disposable phone numbers that you can use in 40 countries. It's similar to the Burner app for iPhones, except that Hushed transmits calls over data connections rather than over regular phone lines. Hence, Hushed's creators say the app works in most of western and central Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Africa, instead of just the U.S. and Canada. (It also apparently works in Bahrain, where the government has spied on dissidents.) "Hushed is perfect for dating, job searches, short-term projects, Craigslist, Twitter, Tumblr and other social media, and for whenever else you want to be in touch and want to keep it on a private line, or don't want to give out your real number," says the official app description in Google Play. The Hushed app itself is free, but a U.S. or Canadian number costs starts at 99 cents, and an overseas one starts at $1.99. You'll pay a bit for incoming and outgoing calls as well. Each number has its own voicemail and, in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, SMS account as well. When the disposable numbers are deleted, so are all voicemails and text messages. AffinityClick, the Canadian company that makes Hushed, says it's working on a version for iOS. The company also says Hushed is "private, safe and secure," but doesn't explain how. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy If you're looking for serious encryption for phone calls and text messages, rather than just a burner number, it's probably best to try RedPhone or TextSecure for Android, or Silent Phone and its sibling Silent Text for iOS. Copyright 2013 TechNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans GTE-Pro class-winning Aston Martin has received a weight break and power increase, in the first Balance of Performance adjustment utilizing the FIA and ACO’s new automated system. The revised BoP has been confirmed for next weekend’s Six Hours of Nürburgring, which sees the Aston Martin Vantage GTE receive a 20kg decrease in minimum weight and 0.1 mm larger air restrictor compared to the last regular-season WEC round at Spa. Data from last month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans was not taken into account for the new BoP system, which utilizes a proprietary algorithm developed in conjunction with GTE-Pro manufacturers. Compared to its configuration at Le Mans, which had an event-specific BoP, the Aston will run 5 kg lighter (1193kg to 1188kg) and also with a larger air restrictor (29.5 mm to 29.7 mm), while both the Porsche 911 RSR and Ford GT will be heavier since last month’s twice-around-the-clock enduro. While the Porsche’s BoP remains unchanged from its Spa configuration, the computer has given the Ford a 20kg weight increase, although turbo boost levels for both the Blue Oval and the Ferrari 488 GTE remain the same compared to the Belgian round. Additional BoP changes can be computed on a per-race basis, taking into account the performance from the previous two regular-season WEC races. The GTE-Am class, which does not utilize the auto BoP system, meanwhile, sees only a change to the 2016-spec Aston Martin, which gets a 0.2 mm smaller air restrictor.
TOKYO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - The head of Sony Computer Entertainment, the Japanese electronic group’s video gaming division, said holiday sales of its PlayStation 4 gaming console in Europe were so strong that it was fighting to keep up with demand. “If I look at Europe I think it is potentially, for the second year running, going to be quite inventory challenged,” Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House told Reuters on Friday. He did not give specific numbers, and said the company was doing its best to bolster production and logistics to deal with the strong demand. “I’m not going to say you won’t be able to find a PlayStation 4,” he said. “I think it’s going to be kind of hand to mouth in terms of that market.” House said December sales in the United States had been in line with the company’s earlier expectations, but conditions had been “tougher” in the previous month due to aggressive pricing by its competition. Rival Microsoft offered big discounts in the U.S. market for its XBox One consoles in November. The Japanese market was “challenged,” he said, as more consumers were playing games on their mobile phones rather than on videogame consoles. The PlayStation 4, launched in the United States and Europe in November last year, sold over 13 million units globally as of September, making it the fastest selling PlayStation model since the console’s launch in 1994. Sony is counting on its gaming business to partially offset weakness in its mobile division. (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando and Reiji Murai; Editing by Chris Gallagher)
In December we published an historic 'isochronic' map that showed how long it would take someone to travel from London to various corners of the British Empire in 1914. Today, a new heat map has been created in the same style, showing how the world has become an awful lot smaller. Isochronic maps shows how far you can travel in a certain time Photo: Rome2Rio.com Charting how long it takes to reach even the most remote parts of the world, the 2016 map put together by Rome2Rio shows that very few places cannot be reached within 36 hours. In 1914 it took the best part of 20 days to reach America's west coast, or India, but today it takes just over 12 hours. • 78 things we learned about travel in 2015 The map shows that the whole of Europe can be accessed within half a day, and that only isolated parts of Greenland, Siberia, Africa and Australia cannot be reached within 36 hours. • 42 changes that would make travel better in 2016 In1914, the boundaries of Europe were some five days away. So, while we love to complain about air travel, spare a thought for our brethren a century ago, spending weeks on ships to reach somewhere we can get to in a day. Of course, spending 40 nights reaching Australia is still possible, however, you'd be travelling on a luxury cruise liner, stopping off in the Canary Islands, and maybe a jaunt to South Africa. The website behind the 2016 map analyses hundreds of thousands of bus, rail, ferry and flight routes to estimate the journey time between any two places in the world. 1914 "Are we there yet?" Photo: RGS/Intelligent Life Isochronic maps have been used for transportation planning from around the 1880s. Some of the earliest include the works of Britain’s Sir Francis Galton in 1881 and of Albrecht Penck, the German geographer who created isochronic maps for smaller areas of land as well as maps for different modes of transportation such as for railway travel.
Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum are artists, journalists, dissidents, polymaths — and targets. Their respective governments, China and the United States, monitor their every move. They have been detained and interrogated. Ai cannot leave China, and Appelbaum is advised not to return to the United States. They are separated from their families. Ai has been imprisoned and beaten by the police. Yet each continues his work and speaks out against government wrongdoing. In April, Ai and Appelbaum met in Beijing to collaborate on an art project commissioned by Rhizome and the New Museum in New York. As a filmmaker, and as a target of state surveillance myself, I am deeply interested in the way being watched and recorded affects how we act, and how watching the watchers, or counter-surveillance, can shift power. I was asked to film their project. During the encounter, Ai and Appelbaum continually filmed and photographed each other. Between their cameras and mine, we created a zone of hyper-surveillance. Almost everything was documented. Just outside Ai’s studio hung surveillance cameras installed by the Chinese government. The art project the pair made, “Panda to Panda,” was not about surveillance. It was about secrets. They stuffed cuddly toy panda bears with public, shredded N.S.A. documents that were originally given to me and Glenn Greenwald two years ago in Hong Kong by the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Inside each panda, Ai and Appelbaum placed a micro SD memory card containing a digital backup of the previously published documents.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- New England Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo has returned to practice Monday after missing all of last week for undisclosed reasons. Mayo's return for a full-pads practice isn't the only good news for the Patriots on the health front, as rookie center Bryan Stork (out since July 29) and tight end Michael Hoomanawanui (out since July 27) are back on the field after being sidelined by undisclosed injuries. Meanwhile, as previously noted, rookie receiver Jeremy Gallon (off physically unable to perform list) and defensive linemen Jerel Worthy and Ben Bass are practicing for the first time. In his Monday afternoon news conference, Bill Belichick was asked about the 6-foot-2, 308-pound Worthy, a 2012 second-round draft pick of the Packers. "He didn't play very much last year [but] played quite a bit his rookie year. He was a good player coming out of Michigan State, played well in a good conference against good people," Belichick said. "He has some athleticism and he has some size. We'll see how it all fits together for us. I'm happy to be working with him and we'll see how it goes." While the returns of Mayo, Stork, Hoomanawanui and Gallon, as well as the additions of Worthy and Bass to bolster numbers, two notable absences at practice are starting right tackle Sebastian Vollmer and starting defensive tackle/end Tommy Kelly.
The key to a new cellular therapy for diabetes may lie in the stomach, according to the results of a new study; researchers have used stomach cells to create "mini-organs" that produce insulin when transplanted in mice. This image shows a section of the mini-stomach, with insulin-producing cells highlighted in red. Image credit: Chaiyaboot Ariyachet This image shows a section of the mini-stomach, with insulin-producing cells highlighted in red.Image credit: Chaiyaboot Ariyachet In the US, around 29.1 million people have diabetes. Of these, around 1.25 million have type 1 diabetes, where the destruction of beta cells in the pancreas halts insulin production, leading to inadequate regulation of blood glucose levels. In an attempt to find a cure for the condition, researchers have spent years searching for ways to replace these insulin-producing beta cells. Last October, for example, Medical News Today reported on a study in which researchers reprogrammed pancreatic duct-derived cells (HDDCs) to behave like beta cells and produce and secrete insulin. But this latest study - published in the journal Cell Stem Cell - suggests that cells from the lower section of the stomach, known as the pylorus region, show the greatest potential to be reprogrammed to act like beta cells. Reprogrammed stomach cells normalized glucose levels in mice Senior study author Qiao Zhou, of the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University in Boston, MA, and colleagues genetically engineered mice to express three genes that have the ability to convert cells into beta cells. This enabled the team to pinpoint which cells in the mice were most likely to have insulin-producing potential. Fast facts about diabetes Of the 29.1 million people believed to have diabetes in the US, around 8.1 million are undiagnosed Around 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes every year Type 2 diabetes is the most common form, accounting for around 90-95% of all cases. Learn more about diabetes "We looked all over, from the nose to the tail of the mouse," says Zhou. "We discovered, surprisingly, that some of the cells in the pylorus region of the stomach are most amenable to conversion to beta cells. This tissue appears to be the best starting material." The pylorus region is the area that joins the stomach to the small intestine. The researchers explain that when they reprogrammed various cells to behave like beta cells, the pylorus cells had the strongest response to high blood glucose levels in the mice, producing insulin in order to bring their glucose levels back to normal. To test the effectiveness of these cells, the researchers destroyed the beta cells of two groups of diabetes mouse models. One group had their pylorus cells reprogrammed to act like beta cells, while a control group did not undergo pylorus cell reprogramming. While the mice in the control group died within 8 weeks, those that had their pylorus cells reprogrammed maintained their insulin and glucose levels for the entire monitoring period, which was up to 6 months. This suggests that the reprogrammed pylorus cells compensated for the lack of beta cells. Asked why pylorus cells appear to be the best cells to convert for insulin production, Zhou told MNT: "From our molecular and physiological studies, pylorus derived beta-cells appear to most closely resemble native beta cells in the pancreas and therefore can do a better job at regulating blood glucose." The team notes that there is another benefit to using cells from the pylorus region: stem cells in this area renew themselves regularly. They explain that when the first set of reprogrammed cells were destroyed in the mice, pylorus stem cells regenerated them. "In various disease states, you have a constant loss of beta cells," says Zhou. "We provide, in principle, an advantage to replenish those." Mini-stomachs compensated for lack of beta cells Zhou explains that in the study, mice were engineered to express three genes that have the ability to reprogram cells to beta cells, but this technique would not be feasible in humans. In order to address this problem and pave the way for a potential clinical therapy, the researchers extracted some stomach tissue from mice and engineered the tissue cells in a lab to express factors that would lead to the conversion of stomach cells to beta cells. Next, the team coaxed the reprogrammed cells to form a mini-stomach measuring around 0.5-1 cm in diameter, before transplanting these tiny organs in the membranes of the abdominal cavities of the mice. The researchers then destroyed the beta cells of the mice in order to see whether the mini-stomach would take over their job. They found that for five of the 22 mice who were transplanted with the mini-stomachs, their blood glucose levels remained normal. The team says this is the success rate they expected to see. "When you put this together, you are basically asking the harvested stem cells to self-organize into an organ on a matrix," explains Zhou. "The limitation is all about whether the tissue you transplanted can successfully reorganize with the right layers." Mini-stomachs: a feasible treatment for diabetes patients? While there is a long way to go before mini-stomach transplantation becomes an option for diabetes patients, Zhou believes their study suggests it is feasible: "What is potentially really great about this approach is that one can biopsy from an individual person, grow the cells in vitro and reprogram them to beta cells, and then transplant them to create a patient-specific therapy. That's what we're working on now. We're very excited." In fact, Zhou told MNT that the team has already developed human mini-stomachs that can produce insulin. "We are now testing them in mouse models," he said. "Our aim is to generate patient-specific beta-cells from these samples and transplant them back." But will these mini-stomachs ever yield a cure for diabetes? "I think our method paves the way for a new approach of cellular therapy to treat diabetes for sure," Zhou told us. "A cure for diabetes will require a more multi-pronged approach. No single treatment, in my opinion, can completely cure diabetes." Last month, MNT reported on the development of a promising treatment strategy for patients with type 1 diabetes in the form of encapsulated pancreas cells.
Popular wisdom has it that tablets are great for consuming content but aren’t that useful for creating it. Don’t tell that to Josh Leong, though. His Y Combinator-backed startup, Grid, is based around the idea that a tablet should be a great place for spreadsheets. Indeed, as Leong told me earlier this week, his idea is to reinvent the spreadsheet around touch, all the tools and sensors available on mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, and the way normal people (as opposed to Excel power users) actually use them. Grid is launching in beta for iPhone and iPad today and you can sign up for an invite here. There are still some features missing in this beta, but you can already use Grid’s collaboration tools and get a feel for its ingenious “Maestro” user interface. From Excel To Grid The fact that Leong, Grid’s CEO and designer, is interested in spreadsheets and knows a lot about how people use them is no coincidence. He was the designer of Microsoft’s upcoming Excel 2013, after all. Most people, Leong told me, use spreadsheets like Excel for just about everything, whether that’s to keep track of their investment accounts or their wedding plans. The tools in Excel are built around power users, however, who write their own VBA scripts and juggle massive spreadsheets. The fact that people can do all of these different things using the same tool, Leong said, is a testament to the flexibility of the original idea of the spreadsheet. Once you get to a mobile device, spreadsheets can be about a lot more than just numbers. By using a mobile device, after all, you now have access to location data, can add photos and movies and access contacts from your phone (or Facebook) with just a few clicks. This allows you, as the company puts it, “to organize and work with them in a whole new intuitive way.” By giving Grid local access to your contacts, for example, you can add so-called “people tiles” to your spreadsheets (useful when you’re using it to organize your wedding party, for example) and using its location feature allows you to quickly add an annotated map to your spreadsheets. Grid also allows you to draw sketches and put them into a cell. In addition, you can also invite others to work on a project with you in real time. One feature that’s still missing, though, is actually running spreadsheet-style calculations on your numbers in Grid. The Grid team promises that this feature is coming in one of the next versions. For a spreadsheet app, by the way, Grid is surprisingly visual, so to get a good idea for what it’s all about, take a look at the company’s demo video below: One feature that really stands out here is Grid’s Maestro input system (“simply the best way to put things into the Grid”). Just touch a square and swipe left to bring up Grid’s input options and right to bring up more advanced options. While Microsoft is moving toward radial menus for its new Office apps, Leong believes that using his system based on swipe gestures makes you feel more connected with your data and is a more natural way to interact with the app. This system also scales very well and, for example, allows you to select multiple cells at the same time. Here is what this looks like in practice: As Leong told me, his vision is for Grid to “build something that gets more awesome because of the things that people are creating with it.” The current version of the app is still very basic, but it already shows a clear vision of what a modern spreadsheet app can look like on a mobile device.
Previous research shows that the hormone oxytocin stimulates social behavior in humans, but a study published Thursday in the journal Cell suggests the hormone plays an especially strong role in regulating female sexual behavior. Scientists at The Rockefeller University in New York City genetically modified female mice so that they no longer had an oxytocin response in the prefrontal cortex. As a result, the females no longer approached male mice for mating during the sexually receptive stage of their estrous cycle. In fact, with reduced oxytocin, the female mice showed about as much interest in males as they did in a LEGO block. The researchers manipulated only a small amount of the neurons— less than 1 percent in the prefrontal cortex, an area known to trigger behavior in mammals, lead author Miho Nakajima, a graduate student at The Rockefeller University, told FoxNews.com. Senior study author Nathaniel Heintz, a James and Marilyn Simons professor at The Rockefeller University, said the female mice were still interested in males and other females when oxytocin was reduced, but they didn’t show sexual interest. “When [female] mice are sexually active, this small population [of neurons] is required for female mice to show interest in the male mice,” Heintz, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, told FoxNews.com. Researchers found that the change in interest among the male mice was less pronounced than the females’ response when researchers manipulated their oxytocin levels. “There’s a functional difference in how male mice and female mice responded,” Heintz said. Past research has shown that oxytocin plays a strong role in partner and mother-child bonding. A study previously published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology showed that oxytocin levels skyrocket when people fall in love, and that a higher amount of oxytocin is correlated with longer relationships. Another study, in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, suggested that oxytocin improved communication and lowered cortisol, a stress hormone, in both men and women. Many scientists have consequently nicknamed oxytocin the “love” or “pro-social” hormone. The study authors said further research should explore what oxytocin does at a molecular level, and which brain areas and what types of cells respond to the hormone. Their study explores how oxytocin behaves in just one context. Other studies have examined whether oxytocin levels can be modified to enhance the social behaviors of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The mental condition impacts 1 in 68 children, and its hallmark is impaired social interaction. Heintz said his team's findings could help advance treatment development for ASD. A study published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that a single dose of oxytocin can increase brain functions responsible for social interaction in children and adolescents with autism. In their research, Yale University scientists found that brain centers associated with reward and emotional cognition responded more during social tasks when the study participants were giving an oxytocin nasal spray rather than a placebo nasal spray. “Each study gives us more insight into how this [oxytocin] might be acting in humans,” Heintz said.
A group of self-professed cough syrup addicts who were raided by the Pennsylvania State Police the first time the Beaver Countian wrote about them have asked to be written about again. “Shout out to Beaver Countian, nigga,” says one amateur hardcore cough syrup rapper at the start of his latest music video. “Ya’ll got niggas hot boy. You might as well put my shit on your website nigga… Niggas snitchin’ and shit.” The group of men from Center Township and Beaver Falls then begin rapping about street things for several minutes as they waive around a “little lady” baby bottle, flash a stack of $20 bills, and gyrate in front of a Hook Fish & Chicken. Missing from the video are all of the assault weapons and patrol cars which appeared in their previous performance. Twitter feeds for the group have consistently talked about “purple drank” over the past several months. Cough syrup should only be taken as directed. According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, side effects of abuse may include: lack of coordination, impaired judgement, sweating, hyperactivity, rapid eye movement, paranoia, and slurred speech. Werd. Per their request, the Beaver Countian has placed their shit on our website, which can be viewed below:
SETT TV Profile Joined January 2011 77 Posts Last Edited: 2013-07-26 17:53:09 #1 ASUS ROG releases the rules, map pool and the groups which start off the ASUS ROG Summer 2013 StarCraft II tournament in Helsinki August 1-3. It is less than a week until the first matches of ASUS ROG Summer 2013 go live. The players have now been placed in the groups for the first group stage which will be played on the first day of the tournament, Thursday 1st August 13:00--22:30 CEST. The 32 players are divided into groups of four, which will be played in dual tournament format with best-of-5 matches. The top two players of each group advance to the second group stage, which is played in a similar fashion on Friday 2nd August. It is less than a week until the first matches of ASUS ROG Summer 2013 go live. The players have now been placed in the groups for the first group stage which will be played on the first day of the tournament, Thursday 1st August 13:00--22:30 CEST. The 32 players are divided into groups of four, which will be played in dual tournament format with best-of-5 matches. The top two players of each group advance to the second group stage, which is played in a similar fashion on Friday 2nd August. Replacements It is very unfortunate, but there have been more cancellations this week as Evil Geniuses.Jaedong, Evil Geniuses.Suppy, Millenium.ForGG, and are unable to attend the event. However, despite the proximity of the event, we were able to get noteworthy replacements: Dignitas.TargA, NaVi.BabyKnight, prOperty.RunA, and will take the vacant spots. We are very grateful to these players and teams who heeded our call and made the arrangements in a short time so that the tournament could retain its high standards. It is very unfortunate, but there have been more cancellations this week as Alliance.NaNiwa and Fnatic.NightEnD are unable to attend the event.However, despite the proximity of the event, we were able to get noteworthy replacements: Fnatic.Naama and Bischu will take the vacant spots. We are very grateful to these players and teams who heeded our call and made the arrangements in a short time so that the tournament could retain its high standards. Group Stage 1 The first round is player 1 vs player 2, and player 3 vs player 4. Group 1 ( The first round is player 1 vs player 2, and player 3 vs player 4. 11:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. Quantic.HyuN 2. coL.viPro 3. Newrosoft.Welmu 4. Dignitas.TargA Group 2 ( 1.2.3.4. 11:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. SK.MC 2. Bischu 3. Empire.Happy 4. prOperty.SjoW Group 3 ( 1.2.3.4. 11:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. MVP.DRG 2. Fnatic.Naama 3. RoX.KiS.TitaN 4. Millenium.Goswser Group 4 ( 1.2.3.4. 11:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. mYinsanity.StarDust 2. RoX.KiS.Pro7ecT 3. NaVi.BabyKnight 4. exile5.PiG Group 5 ( 1.2.3.4. 16:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. Liquid.TLO 2. prOperty.RunA 3. mousesports.VortiX 4. CPHW.Bunny Group 6 ( 1.2.3.4. 16:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. Liquid.TaeJa 2. RoX.KiS.LiveZerg 3. Millenium.Dayshi 4. Fnatic.Harstem Group 7 ( 1.2.3.4. 16:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. AZUBU.San 2. Revolver 3. Ence.elfi 4. ALTERNATE.Socke Group 8 ( 1.2.3.4. 16:00 GMT (+00:00) ) 1. Axiom.Alicia 2. Millenium.DieStar 3. mousesports.LucifroN 4. Alliance.SortOf 1.2.3.4. Maps Akilon Wastes (Blizzard) Bel'Shir Vestige LE (Blizzard) Derelict Watcher TE (Blizzard) Neo Planet S LE (Blizzard) Newkirk Precinct TE (Blizzard) Star Station (Blizzard) Whirlwind LE (Blizzard) Read the details of the map picks and the rest of the rules from the tournament rules ( ASUS ROG Republic of Gamers is a gaming sub brand of ASUS that is comprised of cutting edge hardware tailored for serious gamers. The product branches include; Motherboards, Graphics Cards, LCD Monitors, Gaming Peripherals, Desktops and Notebooks. This ASUS ROG Tournament will be solely powered by ASUS and ROG hardware. ASUS ROG Nordic on Twitter: About ASUS ASUS, the world´s top 3 consumer notebook vendor and the maker of the world´s best-selling and most award winning motherboards, is a leading enterprise in the new digital era. ASUS designs and manufactures products that perfectly meet the needs of today´s digital home, office and person, with a broad portfolio that includes motherboards, graphics cards, optical drives, displays, desktops, Eee Box and all-in-one PCs, notebooks, netbooks, tablet devices, servers, multimedia and wireless solutions, networking devices, and mobile phones. With a global staff of more than 10,000 and a world-class R&D team of 3,000 engineers. Akilon Wastes (Blizzard)Bel'Shir Vestige LE (Blizzard)Derelict Watcher TE (Blizzard)Neo Planet S LE (Blizzard)Newkirk Precinct TE (Blizzard)Star Station (Blizzard)Whirlwind LE (Blizzard)Read the details of the map picks and the rest of the rules from the tournament rules ( pdf ).Republic of Gamers is a gaming sub brand of ASUS that is comprised of cutting edge hardware tailored for serious gamers. The product branches include; Motherboards, Graphics Cards, LCD Monitors, Gaming Peripherals, Desktops and Notebooks. This ASUS ROG Tournament will be solely powered by ASUS and ROG hardware.ASUS ROG Nordic on Twitter: @ROGNordic ASUS, the world´s top 3 consumer notebook vendor and the maker of the world´s best-selling and most award winning motherboards, is a leading enterprise in the new digital era. ASUS designs and manufactures products that perfectly meet the needs of today´s digital home, office and person, with a broad portfolio that includes motherboards, graphics cards, optical drives, displays, desktops, Eee Box and all-in-one PCs, notebooks, netbooks, tablet devices, servers, multimedia and wireless solutions, networking devices, and mobile phones. With a global staff of more than 10,000 and a world-class R&D team of 3,000 engineers.
Barry Urban being bullied over medal lie and doubts about past, Mark McGowan says Updated WA Premier Mark McGowan has accused the Liberal Party of bullying a Labor backbencher who admitted falsely claiming that a medal he wore was given to him for overseas policing service, when it was actually purchased online. Darling Range MP Barry Urban's absence from State Parliament has continued for a second week, following the revelations surrounding the medal and other aspects of his past. Mr Urban's absence since the controversy emerged has been blamed on his poor mental health. But he is under mounting pressure to return to Parliament this week to explain himself, amid further doubts about the legitimacy of a degree he says he earned from Leeds University and additional aspects of his overseas policing service. The WA Liberals are expected to renew their attacks on the Government over Mr Urban's situation — but Mr McGowan urged the opposition to back off. "They're acting a little bit like bullies, to be honest," Mr McGowan said. "If someone has got mental health issues they should give him a little bit of respect and a little bit of room. "Let him make his statement and be respectful that it's another human being they're dealing with." But Opposition Leader Mike Nahan dismissed the bullying claim as a "smokescreen" designed to help the Premier and Mr Urban avoid accountability. "I am sure [Mr Urban] is under some pressure, but he is a member of Parliament and we're all under pressure," he said. "There is still responsibility for Mr McGowan to come clean about the suitability of one of his members to represent the people of Darling Range in Parliament." Better to front up, McGowan tells Urban Mr McGowan did step up his calls for Mr Urban to explain himself to the Legislative Assembly this week, saying the first-term MP would need a very good reason to not do so. "If he's not physically and mentally ready to do that this week, then perhaps it would be next year," Mr McGowan said. "But I think it would be better for everyone — including him — if he does it as soon as possible." Mr Urban has laid low since admitting the medal he claimed he was given by British authorities for his overseas policing service was actually purchased online. While he publicly apologised for the medal slip, he is yet to publicly comment on the doubts raised about his other claims regarding his past. Topics: government-and-politics, wa First posted
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Masked police rushed to a district near Paris to arrest suspected jihadists A French policeman has been stabbed during an operation to arrest three women over a suspect car containing gas canisters, which was found near Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Sunday. Police shot and wounded one of the women during the operation in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, south-east of the city. One of the three women, aged 19, reportedly swore allegiance to so-called Islamic State. In November, 130 people died in Paris in attacks by the group. A state of emergency has been in place in France since then. French media report that a man was arrested on Friday - the boyfriend of a 39-year-old woman among the three arrested in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, which is 30km (19 miles) from Paris. Her phone was being monitored because her boyfriend's brother was already in custody. Speaking on Friday, President Francois Hollande urged vigilance: "An attack was derailed... a group has been disbanded, but there are others and we must be able to act each time before it is too late and that's what we're doing." A Peugeot 607 containing gas canisters was found early on Sunday on the Quai de Montebello, just metres (yards) from the cathedral, which attracts millions of tourists every year. Image copyright AFP Image caption Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Paris Image copyright Reuters Image caption Police searched an apartment in Boussy-Saint-Antoine which the arrested women had been seen leaving The suspicious car had its hazard warning lights flashing and no number plates, police say. One of the canisters, on the front passenger seat, was empty, and there were no detonators inside. Documents with writing in Arabic were also found in the car, police say. Suspects 'stressed' Boussy-Saint-Antoine resident Joachim Fortes Sanchez, 21, said he had seen the three women - aged 39, 23 and 19 - before they were arrested during Thursday night's operation. They "appeared stressed, they were looking all around", he told AFP news agency. When they were arrested, "a young woman pulled out a knife and struck a policeman... It happened very quickly". The French interior ministry tweeted that the police officer had been stabbed in the shoulder. It said his injuries were not life-threatening. Police went on to search an apartment the three women had been seen leaving. The 19-year-old woman, said to be a daughter of the car's owner, is the main suspect in the suspected plot. 'Race against time' A source close to the investigation told RTL radio (in French) a letter had been found in which she pledged allegiance to IS. The letter said the three women wanted to avenge the death of the group's chief strategist, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, in Syria in August, the station reported. The suspects "had been radicalised, were fanatics and were in all likelihood preparing an imminent, violent act", said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. Investigators, he said, had been in a "race against time". According to French media, the car owner was on an intelligence watch-list. He has already been questioned. A man on the terrorism watch list was arrested on Wednesday as well as an associate of the car's owner.
The Danish journalist who ignited violent Muslim protest when he published cartoons of Islamic prophet Mohammad over a decade ago, still ignites a crowd when he speaks. The College Fix reports that free speech advocate Flemming Rose was at Franklin & Marshall College this month to talk about his new book, “Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech” and had to face down some angry students. Rose was demonized by Muslims in 2005 when, as the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, he published cartoon depictions of Mohammad. That decision resulted in global riots by Muslims who took their anger onto the streets over what they considered Rose’s blasphemy for reproducing their prophet’s image. Several dozen protesters appeared on cue when Rose arrived at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania college on March 2 to talk to students not only didn’t want to hear the lecture, they didn’t think Rose should speak at all. The Judaic studies professor who invited Rose wrote about being harassed by students who said they were “feeling threatened and unsafe” by the visit and accused him of inviting a journalist who imparts “ever-increasing feelings of vulnerability, marginalization, and fear for our safety.” Matthew Hoffman wrote a long letter of explanation to Franklin & Marshall’s newspaper, The College Reporter. Rose told The College Fix that he faced a very angry crowd at his lecture. “There was a loud protest outside the auditorium before my talk, around 30 people,” Rose recounted. “They held posters and one of them showed Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon of the prophet with a bomb in his turban on her smartphone, which to me seems a little bizarre. Why show the cartoon if you find it so offensive?” Other signs demanded, “Do not use my prophet as a tool to gain fame,” and others told Rose to “check his privilege at the door.” Rose described the question and answer session that followed the speech as “tense” but said the protesters did not get out of hand. Even before Rose’s arrival, Hoffman was warned by faculty colleague that it was a “bad idea” to invite Rose to the college. Hoffman was having none of that. “I think many of the student protesters themselves would distinguish between his right to publish the cartoons and the moral wisdom of doing so,” Hoffman said. “My commitment to free speech is similar to Rose’s. I see a fundamental separation between words and deeds, though one can at times influence the other. As someone from the libertarian left, I believe fully in the universal right to free speech, free expression, and the free exchange of ideas.” Follow David on Twitter
Researchers at American University have demonstrated the first use of commercial 3D printers to create a structure with active chemistry — in this case, a structure that acts to mitigate pollution. The researchers added titanium dioxide nanoparticles to standard ABS filament material (used in 3D printers) and extruded a filament that they then used to print a small, sponge-like plastic object on a low-cost Flashforge Creator Pro 3D Printer. To test whether or not the nanoparticles would remain active after printing, they placed the object in water and added an organic molecule (a pollutant), which was then destroyed. In another test, the titanium dioxide nanoparticles photocatalyzed the degradation of rhodamine 6G (a flourescent tracer dye) in solution. The researchers next plan to 3D-print a variety of different geometries to determine an optimal printed shape for applications that involve photocatalytic removal of environmental pollutants. The study, led by chemistry professor Matthew Hartings, was described in an online, open-access paper April 1 in Science and Technology of Advanced Materials. Abstract of The chemical, mechanical, and physical properties of 3D printed materials composed of TiO 2 -ABS nanocomposites
Earlier this week I sent some questions out to Benjamin Klum about his Playtime plugin for REAPER and I just got the answers back. Click here to read our previous story on Playtime. A live style session view for REAPER has been requested for years, what made you want to be the guy that made it? I’m a REAPER user since 2009. Before that I used Cakewalk, Cubase and EnergyXT. I love REAPER. It’s an amazing piece of software and I greatly respect Cockos for pulling off something like that. As many others, I occasionally was missing a feature that enables me to make music in a non-linear fashion, something like the Session View in Ableton Live. What options did I have? Switching the DAW? Not an option for me. I’ve several solid reasons why I prefer REAPER over the other DAWs out there. Using Ableton Live and REAPER in combination? That sucks in usability. Waiting until this gets implemented in REAPER natively? I would not bet on it. The idea of making Playtime came to me when I was experimenting with the REAPER extension API in C++. I found out that it is possible to position an item (MIDI or audio) on the timeline in realtime. Intrigued by that discovery, I tried to hack something together that would allow me to reposition an item triggered by pressing a key on my MIDI keyboard. It worked! That’s where it all started. Being able to trigger a loop on the REAPER timeline by pressing a key… that’s the essence of Playtime. To put it simply, the rest is just some nice logic and a fancy user interface 🙂 Being able to trigger a loop on the REAPER timeline by pressing a key… that’s the essence of Playtime. I personally think there’s no need for another DAW. Switching to another DAW always has two sides. On the one hand, you get the feature you need. On the other hand, much of your existing know-how gets useless and you have to say good bye to other beloved features. Why not build upon an already mature existing DAW and make it more versatile? I consider that approach as much more user-friendly. Of course, the core developers cannot implement all of the users’ wishes. But Cockos opened up REAPER so much that other developers can help them with that. I have been looking for an “open” DAW for many years and found it. I think REAPER has the potential of becoming the Firefox of the DAW world – in terms of extensibility 🙂 Concerning my coding background: Usually, I write data-heavy server software such as web applications but in the last 2 years I really started enjoying developing software for music creation. Especially because it is one way of combining both of my passions, software and music. Pretend I don’t know Playtime or Ableton Live’s session view, Can you explain what Playtime can do? Playtime offers 64 buttons into which you can put loops. If you press one of these buttons, the corresponding loop starts to play. If you press a second button, a second loop will start to play, perfectly tempo-aligned with the first loop. Thus, you can create musical arrangements just by pressing buttons. If you want, Playtime lets you record your arrangement by writing the loops to REAPER’s timeline. That’s the basic concept. Playtime also lets you trigger loops by pressing keys on your MIDI keyboard. That’s very useful and makes Playtime basically a musical instrument. There are MIDI controllers with visual feedback made for exactly this kind of usage, for example the Novation Launchpad. This is just a start. There are many more features such as scenes and groups which can come in very handy when making a song. You can get the full picture by trying the free evaluation version and/or browsing the user guide (http://www.helgoboss.org/ projects/playtime/user-guide). Can we use one-shots and MIDI or just WAV loops? You can use audio, MIDI, even videos and images… whatever works in REAPER as media item also works in Playtime. You can set for each clip whether you want it to behave like a one-shot or like a loop. Why did you decide to make a VST rather than a JS effect or an extension like SWS/S&M? Making it a JS effect was not an option because one cannot access the REAPER extension API from JS effects. Even if it would be possible, JS would be a poor choice for a rather complex piece of software like Playtime. For audio and especially MIDI processing JS is perfect though, I use it extensively! Playtime is actually kind of both a VST instrument (VSTi) and a REAPER extension. It’s not a REAPER extension in the traditional sense: Unlike SWS/S&M, it’s not loaded on REAPER start. But Cockos had the very good idea to allow VST plugins to access exactly the same functions that are available to REAPER extensions. Thanks to this, Playtime can use the complete REAPER extension functions plus the functions offered by the VST interface. I chose VSTi over a normal REAPER extension because I think of Playtime as a musical instrument – exactly what VSTi was made for. Having it as a VSTi has a bunch of advantages that might not be obvious at a first glance. First and foremost, you can control exactly which MIDI devices control Playtime by using REAPER onboard routing. You can preprocess the incoming MIDI in any way possible – the complete REAPER power is at your disposal here. You can record a Playtime performance on a MIDI track and change it by using the piano roll. You can even use multiple Playtime instances simultaneously and control one instance by another one. That leaves much room for experimentation. All of that wouldn’t be possible with a pure REAPER extension. the complete REAPER power is at your disposal here Besides that, it’s difficult to access incoming MIDI in pure REAPER extensions. That’s much more straight-forward in VST plugins. Are there any limitations to the VST format that will prohibit certain features? Compared to implementing it as a REAPER extension, there’s absolutely no limitation as I explained above. Compared to implementing Playtime as part of REAPER itself, there naturally are limitations – as with every extension system. But in practice I never stumbled upon such a limitation. Until now, REAPER’s extension API helped me to achieve everything what I wanted. It goes very deep and is extremely versatile, I would say. As far as I know, no other major DAW offers an extension API that allows plugins to intervene so deeply. A major advantage is also that developers can go all the way down to developing in C/C++, not just in a scripting language. That opens up virtually endless possibilities and allows developers to squeeze out the last bit of performance. The API is constantly growing. I think Cockos does a great job here. For me a unique selling point of REAPER 🙂 Aside from an OSX version, what features can we look forward to? Short-term (but after OS X support of course), I’m planning a bunch of small improvements that make Playtime instantly more usable. An action to create an empty MIDI clip in a slot, an action to build a scene from currently playing clips, a CC-mappable action to record the currently selected slot, an option to switch the exclusive mode per group … such things. Mid-term, I’m planning for example a Launchpad mode that further improves the already existing support of Launchpad-like controllers. There are a lot of ideas buzzing in my head how to make Playtime more useful. Of course, the feature planning also depends on user feedback and discussion. Users are welcome to propose and vote on the issue tracker (https://bitbucket.org/ helgoboss/playtime/issues). Big thanks to Ben for taking the time to give us such detailed answers. I’m hoping this will be the start of something really good for REAPER users as we start getting more and more developers taking advantage of the REAPER extension API, and creating more powerful tools, instruments and effects exclusively for REAPER. Share this: Share Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest Pocket
Tension is brewing in the Republican Party as the federal government shutdown enters its seventh day and far-right members of the GOP show no sign of letting up. The shutdown -- which has already affected hundreds of thousands of federal employees and hit critical government programs -- is bringing the Republican Party to a boiling point, angering GOP fundraisers and throwing a wrench in the works for the upcoming 2014 elections. “People are totally annoyed,” one GOP fundraiser told the Washington Post. Backers of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS -- two influential Republican fundraising groups -- attended a conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend. According to the Post, many attendees had similar concerns: they wanted to see the end of Obamacare just as much as the next conservative, but not at the cost of a government shutdown. “It appears that we’ve got a bunch of crazies running around — one from Texas and some from other places,” Al Hoffman Jr., former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, told the Post. “I love the idea of defunding Obamacare. However, I don’t think it’s going to happen until we have a majority in the Senate and in the House.” “I oppose Obamacare as much as anyone else does, but this is not the way to repeal it,” Bobbie Kilberg, a Republican operative who has worked for Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, said to the Post. Members of the Republican party have voiced concerns over the "Ted Cruz wing of the party": Tea party-backed members who have relentlessly pushed defunding Obamacare at the cost of a government shutdown. Now, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and their colleagues are jeopardizing the party's funding. “There are a lot of major donors who feel that until the Republican Party can field people who have a vested opinion of what to do and to do it in a prompt and efficient way, we’re going to withhold giving money,” Hoffman told the Post, saying the freeze could affect “a lot of current far-right Republicans.” The shutdown fallout could also clear the way for more center-right candidates. Tea party-backed candidates are losing the support they once had at home. Their backers are disappointed in their unwillingness to compromise and refusal to collaborate. “The traditional governing wing of the Republican Party is fed up with this dysfunction, this ‘no’ to everything, this refusal to engage the other side to find solutions," Steven C. LaTourette, a former Republican congressman from Ohio, told the Post. The glory days for the tea party could be coming to an end.
Share Thereport highlights how global risks are not only interconnected but also have systemic impacts. To manage global risks effectively and build resilience to their impacts, better efforts are needed to understand, measure and foresee the evolution of interdependencies between risks, supplementing traditional risk-management tools with new concepts designed for uncertain environments. If global risks are not effectively addressed, their social, economic and political fallouts could be far-reaching, as exemplified by the continuing impacts of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The systemic nature of our most significant risks calls for procedures and institutions that are globally coordinated yet locally flexible. As international systems of finance, supply chains, health, energy, the Internet and the environment become more complex and interdependent, their level of resilience determines whether they become bulwarks of global stability or amplifiers of cascading shocks. Strengthening resilience requires overcoming collective action challenges through international cooperation among business, government and civil society. Box 1: Objectives of the Global Risks 2014 Report The world faces risks that can be addressed only by long-term thinking and collaboration among business, governments and civil society. The Global Risks 2014 report aims to support this process by: exploring the nature of systemic risks mapping 31 global risks according to the level of concern they arouse, their likelihood and potential impact, as well as the strength of the interconnections between them looking in-depth at the ways in which three constellations of global risk – centred on youth, cyberspace and geopolitics – could interplay and have systemic impact Mapping Global Risks in 2014 Based on a survey of the World Economic Forum’s multistakeholder communities, the report maps 31 global risks according to level of concern, likelihood and impact and interconnections among them. The risks of highest concern to respondents are fiscal crises in key economies, structurally high unemployment and underemployment, and water crises (Table 1). Table 1: Ten Global Risks of Highest Concern in 2014 No. Global Risk 1 Fiscal crises in key economies 2 Structurally high unemployment/underemployment 3 Water crises 4 Severe income disparity 5 Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation 6 Greater incidence of extreme weather events (e.g. floods, storms, fires) 7 Global governance failure 8 Food crises 9 Failure of a major financial mechanism/institution 10 Profound political and social instability Source: Global Risks Perception Survey 2013-2014. Note: From a list of 31 risks, survey respondents were asked to identify the five they are most concerned about. The risks considered high impact and high likelihood are mostly environmental and economic in nature: greater incidence of extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, water crises, severe income disparity, structurally high unemployment and underemployment and fiscal crises in key economies. Female respondents perceived almost all global risks as both more likely and more impactful than did males, especially in the environmental category. Younger individuals gave higher scores for the impact of almost all of the risks, particularly environmental risks, such as water crises, greater incidence of natural catastrophes, the loss of biodiversity and greater incidence of extreme weather events. are mostly environmental and economic in nature: greater incidence of extreme weather events, failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation, water crises, severe income disparity, structurally high unemployment and underemployment and fiscal crises in key economies. Female respondents perceived almost all global risks as both more likely and more impactful than did males, especially in the environmental category. Younger individuals gave higher scores for the impact of almost all of the risks, particularly environmental risks, such as water crises, greater incidence of natural catastrophes, the loss of biodiversity and greater incidence of extreme weather events. The risks perceived to be most interconnected with other risks are macroeconomic – fiscal crises, and structural unemployment and underemployment – with strong links between this macroeconomic risk nexus and social issues, such as rising income inequality and political and social instability. The failure of global governance emerges as a central risk that is connected to many different issues. Mapping perceived interconnections between risks helps to understand the potential transmission channels between them. are macroeconomic – fiscal crises, and structural unemployment and underemployment – with strong links between this macroeconomic risk nexus and social issues, such as rising income inequality and political and social instability. The failure of global governance emerges as a central risk that is connected to many different issues. Mapping perceived interconnections between risks helps to understand the potential transmission channels between them. The decline of trust in institutions, lack of leadership, persisting gender inequalities and data mismanagement were among trends to watch, according to survey respondents. Experts added further concerns including various forms of pollution, and accidents or abuse involving new technologies, such as synthetic biology, automated vehicles and 3-D printing. Three Risks in Focus Of the many conceivable ways in which possible interconnections and interdependencies between global risks could play out systemically over the 10-year horizon considered by this report, three are explored in depth: Instabilities in an increasingly multipolar world : Changing demographics, growing middle classes and fiscal constraints will place increasing domestic demands on governments, deepening requirements for internal reform and shaping international relations. Set against the rise of regional powers, an era of greater economic pragmatism and national self-protection might increase inter-state friction and aggravate a global governance vacuum. This may hinder progress on cross-cutting, long-term challenges, and lead to increased inefficiencies and friction costs in strategically important sectors, such as healthcare, financial services and energy. Managing this risk will require flexibility, fresh thinking and multistakeholder communication. : Changing demographics, growing middle classes and fiscal constraints will place increasing domestic demands on governments, deepening requirements for internal reform and shaping international relations. Set against the rise of regional powers, an era of greater economic pragmatism and national self-protection might increase inter-state friction and aggravate a global governance vacuum. This may hinder progress on cross-cutting, long-term challenges, and lead to increased inefficiencies and friction costs in strategically important sectors, such as healthcare, financial services and energy. Managing this risk will require flexibility, fresh thinking and multistakeholder communication. Generation lost? The generation coming of age in the 2010s faces high unemployment and precarious job situations, hampering their efforts to build a future and raising the risk of social unrest. In advanced economies, the large number of graduates from expensive and outmoded educational systems – graduating with high debts and mismatched skills – points to a need to adapt and integrate professional and academic education. In developing countries, an estimated two-thirds of the youth are not fulfilling their economic potential. The generation of digital natives is full of ambition to improve the world but feels disconnected from traditional politics; their ambition needs to be harnessed if systemic risks are to be addressed. The generation coming of age in the 2010s faces high unemployment and precarious job situations, hampering their efforts to build a future and raising the risk of social unrest. In advanced economies, the large number of graduates from expensive and outmoded educational systems – graduating with high debts and mismatched skills – points to a need to adapt and integrate professional and academic education. In developing countries, an estimated two-thirds of the youth are not fulfilling their economic potential. The generation of digital natives is full of ambition to improve the world but feels disconnected from traditional politics; their ambition needs to be harnessed if systemic risks are to be addressed. Digital disintegration: So far, cyberspace has proved resilient to attacks, but the underlying dynamic of the online world has always been that it is easier to attack than defend. The world may be only one disruptive technology away from attackers gaining a runaway advantage, meaning the Internet would cease to be a trusted medium for communication or commerce. Fresh thinking at all levels on how to preserve, protect and govern the common good of a trusted cyberspace must be developed. Collaborative multistakeholder action is needed. Wide variance in how risks are identified and managed still exists. Businesses, governments and civil society alike can improve how they approach risk by taking steps such as opening lines of communication with each other to build trust, systematically learning from others’ experiences, and finding ways to incentivize long-term thinking. By offering a framework for decision-makers to look at risks in a holistic manner, the Global Risks 2014 report aims to provide a platform for dialogue and to stimulate action.
Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson has said he will talk to want-away playmaker Philippe Coutinho over the coming weeks, but does not believe he can affect his team-mate's future. Amid interest from Barcelona, Coutinho handed in a transfer request last Friday after Liverpool issued a club statement insisting he would not be sold this summer. In 2013, Steven Gerrard’s interventions as Liverpool captain persuaded want-away striker Luis Suarez spurn Arsenal’s advances and to stay at the club for one more season. Gerrard’s successor now finds himself in a similar position, but Henderson insists his main focus will be the Champions League play-off first leg against Hoffenheim on Tuesday night. “As players, when windows are open, things like this happen. Players come and go,” Henderson said. “You’ve got to expect things like this and focus on what’s important. For us the biggest focus is tomorrow. We’ll stay together and make sure we take a good result back.” “I don’t think I can influence the situation if I’m totally honest with you. That’s down to Phil and the club. But at the same time I’m good friends with Phil and I have a lot of respect for him. Of course I’m going to talk to him but those conversations will remain private. Asked whether he would need to focus his team-mates amid the off-field distractions, Henderson said: “I wouldn’t need to. The focus won’t be affected at all, I can tell you that now. The most important thing is tomorrow.” “It’s a big game, a big two games for us really. One of the aims last year was to qualify for the Champions League and these two games give us the opportunity. It’s a great opportunity for us and one we look forward to. It’ll be a tough test.”
When ABC News published doctored emails about the development of Benghazi “talking points,” and the White House countered by releasing the originals, which told a very different story, the two versions agreed on at least one fact: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had nothing to do with the controversial description of the Benghazi attack that she shared in her five fateful Sunday show appearances last Sept. 17. I thought at the time that Rice deserved an apology from Republicans who savaged her, once the truth about the talking points came out, but of course one never came. (Sen. Lindsey Graham countered by saying she "deserved to be subpoenaed" instead.) Now she’s gotten the next best thing: a promotion to National Security Adviser, once Tom Donilon leaves the job in July. The position needs no confirmation by the Senate, so Rice’s GOP critics have nothing to say about her new role. Advertisement: Well, nothing to say that makes a difference, anyway. That didn’t stop them from talking. Sen. John McCain was slightly conciliatory, tweeting that while “obviously I disagree w/ POTUS appointment of Susan Rice as Nat'l Security Adviser…I'll make every effort to work w/ her on imp't issues.” On the other hand, Sen. Rand Paul insisted it undermined Obama’s “moral authority…to promote basically the person who is guilty of misleading us over the Benghazi tragedy.” By lying about Rice’s role – she played no part in the behind-the-scenes controversy between the CIA and the State Department over how much and what to say about the attacks – Paul undermines his own moral authority. But lately that’s no impediment to influence within his party. (It’s possible that Paul isn’t smart enough to understand the details of what the Benghazi emails revealed, but that’s not a problem in his party either.) Coming within 24 hours of the president’s announcing that he’s nominating three people to fill three long-vacant U.S. Court of Appeals Washington D.C. Circuit seats, it’s inevitable that Rice’s promotion is being described as representing a new “in your face” approach to his opponents (in the words of James Carville on MSNBC). The timing may just be coincidence: It’s long been assumed that Rice would succeed Donilon, and the outgoing security adviser always planned to leave early in the second term. On the other hand, the fact that Obama didn’t hesitate to announce his appointment of Rice on the day after he defied Republican obstructionists with his three judicial nominees is a good sign. I’m among the observers who saw disturbing racial and gender subtexts in the right’s attacks on Rice. McCain accused her of “not being very bright,” while Lindsey Graham said Rice either “misled the country” or is “incompetent.” It's one thing to say she did something wrong; it's another to dismiss her as not up to her job. Even as evidence mounted that Rice had nothing to do with the development of the talking points, and the real blame ought to go to former CIA director David Petraeus, she remained the right’s target. When news of her impending appointment broke, the right-wing Townhall site sampled the old “Jeffersons” theme song for Katie Pavlich’s Rice-bashing column, “Moving on Up: Obama to Appoint Susan Rice as Top Advisor.” If you’re young to remember “The Jeffersons,” on this week that the great Jean Stapleton died, it was a spinoff from “All in the Family” featuring the Bunkers’ black neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson, leaving their working-class Queens neighborhood for the Upper East Side. Norman Lear fans of a certain age can probably still sing the theme song: “Movin’ on up, to the East Side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky …” That’s an interesting association to have when a black woman gets a promotion. Advertisement: Rand Paul will likely continue to run his mouth, cementing his reputation as a guy who’s clueless when it comes to the rights of African-Americans and women. Remember when he told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that if he were president, he’d have fired her? If he were president, no one with the stature of Rice or Clinton would be found anywhere near his administration. Obama did the right thing defying the Rice-hating obstructionists to appoint it. She deserved better, and now she’s gotten it.
Last week, amid the non-stop news about Donald Trump’s outrageous actions and comments, it almost went unnoticed that Justice Samuel Alito sent a stern warning to those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender: You’re waging a war on religious freedom―and you must be stopped. Alito, giving a speech to a Catholic group in New Jersey, even bragged that he had predicted this supposed persecution by LGBTQ people of religious people, referencing his blistering dissent in the landmark marriage equality ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, in 2015, in which he wrote that the decision would be used to “vilify those who disagree, and treat them as bigots.” “We are seeing this come to pass,” he said, proclaiming that “a wind is picking up that is hostile to those with traditional moral beliefs.” Alito further predicted there would be “pitched battles in courts and Congress, state legislatures and town halls,” and he commanded the faithful to “evangelize” about the “issue of religious freedom.” Taken together with the beliefs about religious liberty of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch―whose confirmation hearings began this week―it’s not wrong to become alarmed about the Supreme Court carving out religious exemptions on LGBT rights and allowing for broad-based discrimination. To get an understanding about that―and the influence that Gorsuch will have if he’s confirmed―we need to go back to the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed the arts and crafts chain to opt-out of certain kinds of contraception based on the owners’ religious beliefs. The decision spurred much outrage by progressives and a scathing dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. There were and are fears that the ruling would open the door to broader discrimination against women and other groups. Some have hoped, however, that statements in Alito’s majority decision, and in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s concurrence, would prevent that. While very concerned about the ruling’s implications for women, and the possible implications for LGBTQ people, Jennifer Pizer, Senior Counsel and Law and Public Policy Director at the LGBT legal group Lambda Legal, noted that Alito appeared to be clear in stating that the decision couldn’t be used to allow for racial discrimination: Justice Alito’s opinion repeatedly assures that his analysis does not sanction discrimination. He says, Justice Ginsburg’s dissent “raises the possibility that discrimination in hiring, for example on the basis of race, might be cloaked as religious practice to escape legal sanction. Our decision today provides no such shield.” He then explains that there is “a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.” And, while Alito might only have been referring to racial discrimination, Justice Kennedy’s concurring decision was much more broad in that regard, as Pizer notes his bottom line: “no person may... in exercising his or her religion... unduly restrict other persons.” While none of this excused the horrendous ruling for women’s access for contraception, and while not a great reassurance by any means, the hope was that these statements show there are some limits the court would keep in place. And that brings us to Gorsuch ― who wrote a concurring opinion in Hobby Lobby on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case the Supreme Court affirmed. Gorsuch provided no such limits. In its analysis of Gorsuch as “unacceptable” and “dangerous” to LGBTQ rights, Lambda Legal underscores how much more extreme he is than Alito and certainly Kennedy on this issue: Judge Gorsuch has supported religious exemptions from laws based on “complicity”—the belief that adhering to the law makes the objector complicit in the allegedly sinful conduct of others...Whereas the Supreme Court decision in Hobby Lobby made concerns about the impact on real people central, Judge Gorsuch did not address the harmful effects of denying access to reproductive healthcare on female employees and dependents. Instead, his sole concern was for the religious objectors who alleged that “ordering their companies to provide insurance coverage for drugs or devices whose use is inconsistent with their faith itself violates their faith, representing a degree of complicity their religion disallows.” The group concludes that, “his is a vision of a society where religion prevails over law, and where the concerns of religious parties override the concerns of other citizens,” and for that reason places Gorsuch and his idea of religious liberty far to the right of most of the current Supreme Court justices. Last month, I explained in two pieces that Gorsuch, like the late Justice Scalia, who Gorsuch revered, adheres to the judicial philosophy of originalism, and for that reason likely believes sodomy laws in the states are allowable and that marriage, too, should be left to the states. (And he wrote that issues such as gay marriage should be left to the voters and legislatures, rather than the courts, while he was a practicing lawyer in 2005). Gorsuch also joined an opinion barring a transgender prison inmate from receiving medically necessary hormone treatment. His stated philosophy, his decisions and his writings render gay sex ― and LGBTQ people ― as not protected by the U.S. Constitution, no matter that he reportedly has gay friends who speak highly of him. The issues of marriage equality and sodomy laws may not be opened up again, since some have argued they’re settled law (but keep in mind anything can be revisited by the court over and over again, as we’ve seen, from abortion to affirmative action). But it’s the impact of “religious liberty,” and many cases which will head to the high court, that could deem LGBTQ Americans second class citizens. If Justice Alito was indeed including LGBT people in his caveats that Hobby Lobby could not be used to discriminate beyond the specific issue of certain forms of contraception ― and that’s a big if, since he wrote only of racial discrimination ― his dissenting opinion a year later in Obergefell may show a shift. Indeed, his speech last week, using that decision, warned that LGBTQ rights have gone too far, somehow infringing on religious liberty ― and he’s clearly speaking of the bakers, the florists, the photographers and perhaps even the Kim Davis’s who claimed their rights were threatened ― and that LGBTQ rights have to be reined in. And Alito has argued that it should be illegal to compel pharmacies to dispense emergency contraception, so his view on this is much broader. With Gorsuch on the court it seems certain Alito would get more help in making the case that their should be religious exemptions when it comes to public accommodations ― businesses ― and perhaps even government employees in the area of service to LGBTQ people and others. That’s why Gorsuch’s idea of religious liberty is dangerous. When we add what Republicans did to Merrick Garland, not even allowing hearings and a vote on President Obama’s nominee to the court, it’s absolutely incumbent on the Senate ― and Democrats, using the filibuster ― to vote down Gorsuch’s nomination.
Image of a slide presented at the IEEE's International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai. A Chinese official kicked off an international robotics conference in Shanghai this week by confirming China plans to send a robot to the moon within two years and aims to bring a lunar sample home by 2017. The ultimate goal is a manned landing and lunar outpost, which China will start building after the sample-return mission, according to Ziyuan Ouyang, the chief scientist ofChina's lunar exploration program. Dates are still pretty tenuous, but last month another Chinese space official said the country would send a man to the moon by 2025. So far, things have been going just as planned for China's nascent moon program, which launched a second orbiter last October. The Chang'e 2 mission saw several improvements over Chang'e 1, including a more powerful rocket that delivered the probe to the moon more quickly. Chang'e 3 is supposed to launch sometime in 2013 and land in Sinus Iridium, where it will deploy an autonomous rover. The robot, pictured above, will be able to "choose its own routes, avoid obstacles, and perform science experiments with a suite of sensors, including cameras, x-ray and infrared spectrometers, and a ground-penetrating radar," reports IEEE Spectrum, which is covering the IEEE conference. It will have solar panels and a supplementary power source in the form of a plutonium-238 nuclear battery, the same type installed on the forthcoming Mars Science Laboratory rover. After the rover mission, China will launch a temporary lunar drill, which will alight on the surface, take a sample and take off again. It will probably be easier to do this on the moon than on an asteroid. Finally, sometime after 2017 China plans a manned lunar landing, Ouyang told the crowd. Japan wants a moon base by 2020, and some members of Congress want us to have one by 2022, so if China is able to pull this off it sounds like it could start getting pretty crowded up there. IEEE Spectrum
Abbot Kinney Pier The material is copyrighted © 1998 by Jeffrey Stanton. Revised April 6, 1998 Since a pleasure or fishing pier was an important attraction for every seaside resort built at the turn of the century, Abbot Kinney gave it a high priority in his design specifications. It was one of the first of two construction contracts awarded once the Boston landscape architect's designs arrived in Southern California. Venice of America's initial plans in 1904 called for a 900 foot long, 30 foot wide pleasure pier at the foot of Windward Avenue. The pier would feature a Casino and Bandstand Tower at the inland end of the pier, a Ship's Hotel that would resemble an ocean liner permanently docked beside the pier and an 3500 seat Auditorium to be used for the Venice Assembly. Construction began on the pier in September 1904 and the contractor completed the main deck in November. He then began driving the pilings for the Casino and Auditorium. The buildings were nearly completed when two fierce winter storms in February and March 1905 destroyed the pier and its buildings. The beach was one vast pile of driftwood. Damage was $50,000. Kinney gave the task of completing the pier and its buildings in time for the July 4th opening his highest priority. He purchased all 600 available piles in San Pedro, brought in four pile drivers, and put his men to work on day and night shifts. He also decided to lengthen the pier several hundred feet to the site of his $100,000 stone breakwater that he hoped would protect his pier from further storm damage. Construction of the Abbot Kinney Pier at the foot of Windward Avenue. - June 1905 Pier construction reached the site of his breakwater the first week of May. By the time they began framing the pier's Auditorium on May 30th, they had only a month to complete the structure. Carpenters worked quickly and had the framework to the height of a three story building in only three days. It was important that the building, which contained 500,000 board feet of lumber, would be finished on time for the sixty day Venice Assembly. In fact, it was completed on time and worker's used it on Saturday July 1st to celebrate their feat of building the resort on time. View of Auditorium & Ship Cafe - 1906 After the end of summer, when the Venice Assembly ended with a loss of $16,000, Kinney decided instead to concentrate on the tastes of day-trip and summer holiday guests who preferred less intellectual pursuits. His plan was to expand the Frolic Pier which he began building on the north side of his pier and use it to house the shows and amusements from the Portland's Lewis and Clark Exposition. But in October 1905 he abandoned the idea for a much more roomy site at the Venice lagoon. Kinney found an alternative use for his pier auditorium during the off-season and converted it into the Venetian Gardens. It served refreshments to patrons seated at tables while Ellery's 52 member Royal Italian Band entertained from the stage. Since ballroom dancing was an important social activity at all seaside resorts at the turn of the century, Kinney decided to built at a cost of $40,000, the finest and largest dance hall on the coast. He choose a site on the pier between the auditorium and the pavilion. Building material arrived on June 17, 1906 and an army of 125 carpenters and electricians attempted the herculean task of building it in just 17 days, in time for its July 4th dedication. While they didn't actually finish the building 190 x 210 foot building until the end of July, they managed to put up its walls, roof and complete its hardwood dance floor (14,560 square feet) in time for the celebration. The Dance Hall's spacious floor could accommodate 800 couples. - 1906 Kinney's decision to turn the pier into a full scale amusement zone was made in 1909 when Kinney abandoned the lagoon midway concept entirely. Unfortunately there was no place to put the amusements on the beach since they were deeded to the city with the provision that they could never be commercialized. With all the ocean front lots sold or built upon, Kinney had no choice but to expand on the Atlantic City pier concept in a much bigger way. The Aquarium, when it opened in January 1909, was the first of Kinney's new amusement pier attractions. It exhibited the finest collection of marine specimens on the Pacific Coast in 48 glass tanks surrounding a sunken seal tank. Sea Lion shows were performed near the entrance. In January 1910 the L.A. Thompson Company announced that they would construct a one and one half mile scenic railroad behind the dance hall and pavilion on the north side of the pier. Kinney added several small concessions on the pier's south side. These included a Dentzel Carousel, a Hades attraction, a Japanese Tea House and the Ocean Inn restaurant. These attractions supplemented the bowling alleys located in the Pavilion. The pier was also widened to eliminate congestion. The scenic railroad had two lift hills and a brakeman to slow down the cars on turns. - 1911 The following year a Ferris Wheel arrived from Seattle's Yukon-Pacific Exposition and was placed seaward of the Ship Cafe. A ride called the Automobile Races opened next to it. The Rapids, an old mill style ride with 14 foot long boats, opened in March adjacent to Ocean Front Walk on the pier's south side. Later that year work was begun on the Johnson Captive Airplane ride. Plans were for a ten passenger airplane to travel along a cable track from a 114 foot high tower on the inland end to three other smaller towers further out on the pier. The problem was that the ride was poorly engineered. The heavy cars riding slack cables sometimes dipped down into the water. The builders solved the problem and the ride opened the following summer. However, when another aerial ride called the Dippy Dips opened shortly afterward on the opposite side of the pier, the Captive Airplanes couldn't compete and closed after only one year. The Kinney Company procured a Virginia Reel ride in 1913 and placed directly across from the Ship Cafe. Passengers rode in tub shaped cars that freely rotated as it followed a serpentine track downhill. Near the end of the ride, the tubs would spiral inward then plunge down a steep drop at high speed into a darkened tunnel. The Virginia Reel's cars spun riders around as they serpentined down to the bottom. - 1913 In 1914 the Kinney Company spent $100,000 in improvements to the Abbot Kinney Pier. They added a free parking lot for 700 automobiles on the south side of the pier. Concessionaires, spending freely that year, added an Ostrich Farm across from the Dance Hall, a Zoological Garden at the end of the pier, an Underground Chinatown exhibit in the bandstand tower, and a skating rink on the site of the circular Automobile Races. They kept the hole in the center so that visiting sailors could watch the surf while they skated around the oval rink. The docks at the end of the pier serviced a 350 passenger boat that took passengers on a five mile excursion around Santa Monica Bay. Improvements took a break during World War I, but the summer before it ended in 1918, Tom Prior moved his Great American Racing Derby horse race carousel from Ocean Park to Venice's pier. Actually it wasn't the same ride, but a slightly larger one operated under a canvas tent. The Whip also opened that season just above the Virginia Reel. Once the Armistice was signed in November 1918, the Kinney Company enlarged the outer tee on their pier. They added an indoor tunnel of love ride called Over the Falls neat to the Oriental Gardens. There was a new fun house next to it called Hellarity Hall and a new Cafeteria situated between the Dance Hall and bowling alleys. What turned out to be the last improvements on the Venice Pier were made in 1920. Crandall razed his Venice Scenic Railroad and Prior and Church razed the Rapids to make room for a new thrilling roller coaster. The innovative Big Dipper featured dips on curves as well as straight-aways. It opened on May 8, 1920. They also opened a Mill Chutes next to it that combined the old mill style tunnel of love with a water toboggan slide at the end. The 1500 seat California Theater was built on the site of the old coaster next to the pier. Others added a Noah's Ark fun house near the pier's entrance, and a Bug House and Pig Slide at the seaward end of the pier. The night of December 20th was a cool night on the pier, where at 9:30 P.M. people were huddled around a gas heater in one of the upstairs loges of the Dance Pavilion. Suddenly the heater burst open and flames leaped to the nearby curtains, then to the roof timbers. There was no panic and the dancers downstairs left quickly. Ten minutes later the roof collapsed. Arthur Ranse, a volunteer fire fighter, was on the roof when it caved in. He was hurled into the seething furnace, but was rescued by some of the dancers and lay dying in a nearby hospital. Flames spread quickly to the adjoining Virginia Reel, then to the Racing Derby and Auditorium. Fire fighters dipped their hoses into the nearby Plunge and Venice Lagoon. By 10 P.M. with the wind blowing towards shore, fire fighters conceded that the fire was out of control. Warnings were sent to all the merchants across Ocean Front Walk and the hotels along Windward Avenue to evacuate. The Abbot Kinney Pier burned in just a few hours on the night of December 20, 1920. Firemen used dynamite in a futile attempt to stop the fire at the pier's outer boundary. When this failed, Venice firemen, reinforced by fire companies from Santa Monica and Los Angeles, set up a mighty barrage of water to save the Ocean Front buildings. All seemed lost when suddenly the wind shifted and blew offshore at 11:30 P.M. The next morning the pier was a smoldering ruin. All the pier's structures except the newly built roller coaster and the bandstand tower adjacent to Ocean Front Walk survived. Damages ran to a million dollars, with little of it insured. It was a bleak Christmas.
One of the country's worst sex offenders, Stewart Murray Wilson, is living in limbo on the grounds of Whanganui Prison, as it emerges he's being investigated once again by police for historic rape allegations. But the ageing Wilson still denies all of his offending, and is demanding more freedom. Harrison Christian meets the "Beast of Blenheim". Stewart Murray Wilson never goes anywhere without two pairs of eyes on him. "See I've come away from the bloody idiots?" he says on my arrival, looking cagily over my shoulder. He's fishing on the pier – a windswept jumble of rocks where the dirty waters of the Whanganui River meet the ocean swell. READ MORE: * Beast of Blenheim under police inquiry in two more rapes * Corrections backs off Beast of Blenheim monitoring plan Two men are observing us from a car at the pier's base. "They watch all the bloody time," he says. "That's why I come out here." The minders accompany him whenever he leaves his cottage on the grounds of Whanganui Prison. He also wears a GPS ankle bracelet. He lifts up his jean leg to show me the lump in his woollen sock. Then he casts a line out into the swell, not far from a line-up of surfers. The 70-year-old could be mistaken for any old fisherman. He's a small man, and looks quite harmless. Greasy locks of mullet spill out the back of his black beanie. His face is drooping, his mouth sunken. He says "hello" to a man passing us on the pier, but they don't appear to know each other. Wilson would not be a resident of Whanganui if he had his way. But the area has been his home for five years, since he was released from Rolleston Prison under the strictest parole conditions ever imposed on a New Zealander. He spent two of those years back behind bars, after phoning a woman he'd been warned not to contact. Whanganui was one of few places in the country where, as far as the Department of Corrections could tell, he had no victims. Aside from escorted trips off the prison grounds, he lives in relative isolation, sticking to a timetable laid down by probation. DAVID UNWIN/STUFF Wilson speaks to journalist Harrison Christian at the Whanganui River mouth. Monday is fishing. Tuesday is grocery shopping, then Catholic Mass, which he attends twice a month. Wednesday is more fishing. Thursday is a trip to the garden centre and a visit by his probation officers. Friday is fish and chips. If his schedule seems heavily skewed towards catching and eating fish, that's because those are his favourite pastimes. He spends a total of eight-and-a-half hours a week at the river mouth. Aside from growing vegetables, there's little else he can do. He is still catching up with the technological advances of the 21st century, as you'd expect of someone whose 20-year incarceration saddled the turn of the Millenium. He has two cellphones, and enjoys watching The Chase and Home and Away on TV. But he's never used the Internet and doesn't have a computer. "I'm still a prisoner," he tells me. "I've done all my time and I've got a supervision order for reintegration, but the probation officers think that they've got to keep control and keep on saying 'no' to anything I ask for." CRIMES THAT SHOCKED THE COUNTRY It's not an accident that Wilson finds himself stuck in a kind of institutional limbo, neither fully imprisoned nor free. His criminal history is so horrific it's difficult to condense into a couple of paragraphs, and harder still to read. The son of an alcoholic couple that later divorced, Stewart Murray Wilson was born in in 1946. He was the eldest of four, with two brothers (one who died in a car crash) and a sister. Wilson's mother, Win Wilson, said in an interview in 1996 that her son was a "dear wee boy" who "started to go a bit wayward" when he hit puberty. Wilson tells me he has fond memories of his childhood. "I had a job as a sweet and ice cream boy in a picture theatre," he remembers. "And I learnt how to use a projector and all sorts of other things like that. I used to go up to this fish and chip shop for my tea, and they used to say, 'here comes sixpence'." He fell in with the wrong crowd and started stealing. "Because I was the smallest I could climb in windows and I could do all sorts of weird and wonderful kid things." He was sent off to live in a children's home and a psychiatric hospital. His mother has claimed that in his early teens, her son suffered brain damage which caused him to lose control occasionally. "It's possible," he says. Was he physically abused when he was young? Wilson at the time of his trial in 1996. "Only when I was in Child Welfare. That's when they sent me out to a farm at Methven and the farmer there beat the living Christ out of me. And other actions were done to me." Win Wilson also said her ex-husband, a staunch army veteran, refused their son affection and disowned him because he was short. But Stewart Murray Wilson maintains his father was a decent man, who showed love in his own way. Prior to the 1990s, his offending intensified from simple burglaries to assault on a child, assault on females and living off the earnings of a prostitute. In 1996 he was jailed for 21 years for crimes that shocked the country. His offending involved at least 42 women and girls. Among the charges covering rape, stupefying, bestiality, ill treatment of children and indecent assault were revelations he made his daughter eat from a bowl with the cats. He forced his de facto partner to have sex with other women and the family dog. A mother of three told the court in 1996 that Wilson kept her a virtual prisoner for two years and forced her to have sex with him on a table in front of her three children while they ate dinner. Another victim spoke of beatings, forced hair-cutting and being forbidden to wear underwear. A doctor likened her to a concentration camp victim. A beneficiary who never amounted to much, Wilson's modus operandi was to groom vulnerable women at a low ebb in their lives. He invited them into his house under the pretense of friendship, using a home pharmacy of sedatives and hypnotics to keep them numb and compliant. Alongside this stash of drugs, authorities also discovered 20 years' worth of pornographic Polaroid photos and samples of head and pubic hair. "Here comes one of the bloody minders," he says on the pier, again looking over my shoulder. I'm surprised he can see that far. His eyeballs have almost totally receded into puckered flesh. I can barely make out his pupils. I see a man in black clothes walking towards us. "You're just a visitor. Stopping for a fish," Wilson instructs. The minder walks past, doing a trip to the end of the pier and back. KEVIN STENT/FAIRFAX NZ Wilson's cottage on the grounds of Whanganui Prison. "You didn't see if he took a photo of you did you? I bet he took a bloody photo. And I bet he'll give it to probation." LIVING IN DENIAL His voice has the raspy, slightly whiny quality of a lifelong dropout. He talks about his living conditions with unrestrained bitterness. Indeed, Wilson feels he should never have even gone to jail. To this day he maintains his innocence, viewing himself as the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice à la Arthur Allan Thomas or "that Bain boy". He denies every offence he was convicted of, bar a single assault charge against his long-term partner, known only as Lorraine. And his police file has been opened once again. Wilson confirms he's under investigation for "a couple of [alleged] rapes." There are two historic rape allegations against him, one from Auckland 38 years ago, and one from Hamilton 42 years ago. He seems unfazed, and denies both of them. I ask him why he pleaded "not guilty" to his raft of charges in 1996. "Well hold on. Um, I'm not trying to be difficult here. But, isn't it my right to plead not guilty? For them to prove the case?" Bizarrely, Wilson claims he was framed for his crimes, as part of a conspiracy by Lorraine and the lesbian lovers he alleges she had. "You see, the wife, she was, what do they call it? Into females as well, and it was most of her gay girlfriends that were the people that were putting the charges against me." He's made this claim before; decades ago, before his trial, he told a reporter for the Dominion that Lorraine and his mistress, who lived with them for two years, had set him up. It's unsettling to hear him repeat the same story, but he seems intent on dredging up all his old excuses. Without prompting, Wilson mentions the death of his son, Mervyn, lamenting that nobody's ever talked to him about it or offered him counselling. Mervyn was a brain-damaged baby, born prematurely on the day his father gave his mother such a severe beating she lost consciousness. The infant later died of brain damage. DAVID UNWIN/FAIRFAX NZ Wilson has two cellphones, but no computer or Internet access. The death ultimately led to Wilson's undoing, and its recollection was the only time he showed any emotion during his trial, the horrible details causing him to weep in the court dock. Five years after his son died, he approached the Holmes show claiming the death was a result of drugs that doctors administered to a pregnant Lorraine. A researcher for the show visited his house to assess the family's suitability for an interview, and was concerned about the welfare of Wilson's daughter. It led to a complaint that would eventually spark a nationwide inquiry. If Wilson was ever upset about Mervyn's death, his behaviour would often seem to suggest otherwise. The court heard in 1995 how at the boy's funeral, his father was seen putting his hand up a woman's skirt in full view of the funeral guests and street. He still stands by his claim that Mervyn's death was the result of a medical misadventure. "Mervyn died in hospital and Lorraine nearly died as well. It's still raw after all this time." Perhaps just as disturbing as the far-fetched explanations he offers for his convictions and the death of his only son, is that he's never appeared to show any remorse for his many victims. I ask him whether he believes he has any. "Well you can call them victims if you like. I just don't really think that nymphomaniacs and lesbians are victims." I let him know that readers will likely perceive him as deluded or insane. "Maybe I've said too much," he admits. A CHAINED ELEPHANT Wilson wants to live in the community and visit his 90-year-old mother in the South Island (something the Parole Board has previously suggested, but Corrections won't allow). He wants real freedom, and he's worried the story I'm writing won't be in his best interests. "By keeping me locked up like this, and the ankle bracelet, and the two minders and the two probation officers that see me at a time, it's like putting a chain around an elephant's leg, and around a tree and saying well, that's your lot, y'know?" DAVID UNWIN/FAIRFAX NZ Stewart Murray Wilson is sentenced for breaching his parole conditions in the Whanganui District Court. He pauses, then says quickly: "But you know about that don't ya?" Wilson could be right in saying the conditions in his 10-year extended supervision order, which he has unsuccessfully challenged in court, can hardly constitute a release from prison. And there is some support for the idea he should be able to get on with life after serving his time. "He probably has less freedom now than when he was in prison," says Victoria University professor John Pratt, one of the country's eminent criminologists. In the past, Western societies usually had no power to detain prisoners likely to commit further crime on their release. Now, the risk of someone committing a crime is sufficient to limit their movements or keep them in prison indefinitely. "Wilson did some bad things, and he paid the penalty. He, like anybody else, should be allowed to get on with his life, if he's not doing any harm to anyone else." But what about Wilson's refusal to acknowledge his offending? Pratt is resolute: "You can't continually punish someone just because they're maintaining their innocence, however unfounded that belief might be." 'NOBODY IS BORN BAD' Wilson has caught 84 fish against his minders' eight in the running tally he keeps. He says he's been sending clothes, money and letters to a female prisoner who "wants to come and see" him, not seeming aware this could be perceived as grooming behaviour and compromise what little freedom he has. DAVID UNWIN/STUFF Wilson fishes on the pier while his minders watch from a car. Listening to all this bravado, it's clear Wilson has trouble filtering himself. I wonder whether his 20-year incarceration has interfered with his ability to interact with people from the outside. But his crimes suggest his mind was warped long before he was locked up. In my experience, dinner-table talk about crime and punishment in New Zealand usually arrives at the idea that some people are just "born criminals" and should be "locked up forever". There's a weird satisfaction in talking this way. Maybe, short of picking up pitchforks, it helps us feel buttressed against elements in society we can't comprehend. Wilson has been diagnosed as a psychopath. Traits on the checklist include superficial charm, a parasitic lifestyle and a lack of guilt or remorse. One of New Zealand's leading experts on psychopathy, Waikato University professor Devon Polaschek, tells me no one is "born bad". "The more we know about genes, the more we know that people's inherited genetics are turned on and off by the environment." Polaschek says meeting these criteria doesn't necessarily dash a prisoner's chances of being released. However, reducing the risk they pose is only possible if they're willing to participate. "If someone refuses to be engaged in the best methods we've developed for helping them, whether they're a psychopath or not, there's nothing much we can do. They're going to be in the small category of people who we will perhaps never want to let out to society." I ask Wilson if he agrees with his diagnosis. "What the hell d'ya call a bloody psychopath?" he responds. "People like putting labels on things, and they basically don't even know what the hell they're talking about." He offers me a cigarette, which I decline. He still gets through half a pack of 20s a day. We watch a wild cat slinking around on the pier, pulling its black belly over the rocks. "That little cat there, he came down the other day," Wilson puffs. "And it just sat there and stared at me, so I ended up giving it some bloody steak. Is that what a psychopath would do?" I tell Wilson it's time for me to go. I leave him alone on a rock, pulling bits of seaweed off his line. We haven't caught anything. STEWART MURRAY WILSON TIMELINE: 1996 - Jailed for crimes against at least 42 women and girls 2012 - Paroled to a cottage on Whanganui Prison grounds 2013 - Recalled to prison for phoning a woman he'd been warned not to contact 2015 - Re-released to a cottage on Whanganui Prison grounds 2017 - Under investigation for historic rape allegations 2026 - Wilson's extended supervision order is due to end
GUELPH — Cooperator's Hall at the River Run Centre was packed Thursday evening with supporters of Green Party leader Elizabeth May and local candidate Gord Miller. It was May's third stop in Guelph on the election trail and she was eager to promote her star candidate. Miller was quick to address allegations made by the Liberal Party that he was appointed Environmental Commissioner of Ontario by the Mike Harris government and that he ran as a Progressive Conservative in 1995, although he didn't win. While these are true statements, Miller said he was also reappointed as Environmental Commissioner of Ontario by two Liberal premiers. And time has proven that the Conservative's austerity measures were not the best thing for the country. "Things change in 20 years," Miller said. "Now we know that austerity is not the solution. That's why the Green Party has a new vision that doesn't include austerity." Miller said the race in Guelph is between the Liberals and the Greens and that he can win the seat. "The Conservatives aren't going to win in Guelph. Mr. Harper is not going to be Prime Minister after Monday. This is between the Liberals and the Greens, and the Greens are closing the gap. We've got them on the run in this riding," he said. He said preparing for the Paris climate change summit in December will be the first order of business for the Greens after the election and they intend to convince the new government this should be a priority. "People recognize how urgent this is. Canadians need to pull together and re-establish our role as world leaders on the environment. We've got to walk the talk. We can make this happen," he said. May said the Greens would also work to repeal Bill C51, the anti-terrorism act, and would demand an inquiry into the missing and murdered indigenous women.
The pieces are coming together for NASA's newest spaceship Orion, with its first unmanned launch test scheduled for September 2014. The Orion space capsule is designed to carry humans farther into the solar system than they've ever been by taking trips to the moon, asteroids and Mars. It will be the first new spaceship built by NASA since the space shuttle was developed in the 1970s. The space agency is planning to outsource travel to low-Earth orbit, including the International Space Station, to the private space sector, allowing NASA itself to focus on traveling beyond. "I think having a test flight in '14 is huge — people can see it right there," Orion program manager Mark Geyer told SPACE.com in September. "It's a really important goal." Orion was originally conceived as a next-generation spacecraft, called the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, under NASA's now-defunct Constellation program. When that program was cancelled by the Obama administration, the Orion design was carried forward as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. The engineering team behind the capsule has weathered political ups and downs, but say they are glad to be approaching flight time for the craft. [Photos: NASA's Orion Spaceship Test Explained] "It's hard to put in 80 hours a week and then have somebody go, 'I don’t want to do that anymore,'" Geyer said. "We kind of went through that two years ago, but fortunately we came out on the other side." Orion first test flight will be called the Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT 1), and will include a test of more than half the systems that will appear in the ultimate finished Orion. These include its heat shield, which is a totally novel design made of a special composite material and an ablative coating deigned to burn off as the capsule re-enters Earth's searing atmosphere for the trip home. EFT 1 will also test the capsule's primary structure design and put its avionics and computer systems through their paces. However, for this first flight test Orion will ride to space aboard a Delta 4 heavy rocket — a proven flight vehicle from ULA (United launch Alliance) that won't be its ultimate booster. Eventually, Orion is planned to launch toward the moon and beyond on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket still under development. The first flight test for Orion and SLS together, called Exploration Mission 1, is slated for 2017. Orion and SLS are set to carry humans onboard for the first time in 2021. On the surface, Orion looks like a modernized Apollo capsule. Both vehicles are cone-shaped and launch vertically atop heavy-lift rockets. However, the similarities are only skin deep. Where Apollo could carry three astronauts to the moon, Orion is bigger and can take four. The 1960s-era Apollo capsule featured computer technology inferior to that of a smart phone, while Orion is controlled by state-of-the-art technology. Its heat shield is composed of entirely new materials, and many other features are wholly novel. "It's kind of like an automobile in 1905 had four tires and a steering wheel, and they still do now," Geyer said. "But none of the stuff inside is the same." Between now and EFT 1, the NASA teams are working with the capsule's prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, to finish construction of Orion's systems and assemble them together. The primary body for that test vehicle is finished, while the heat shield still needs about six months more. Its avionics computers are undergoing testing now. Eventually, the whole vehicle will be put together in Florida at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. "I think we have a great design and we have a great plan to fly it," Geyer said. "It's time to do it, to actually put it to use and put it in the missions that are going to let us discover new things." Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Washington had “hypothetical plots” for worst-case plume dispersal within hours of the start of the crisis, a senior official said Sunday. The aim, the official added, was “more to help Japan” than the United States, since few experts foresaw high levels of radiation reaching the West Coast. For now, the prevailing winds over Japan were blowing eastward across the Pacific. If they continue to do so, international stations for radioactive tracking at Wake or Midway Islands might detect radiation later this week, said Annika Thunborg, a spokeswoman for an arm of the United Nations in Vienna that monitors the planet for spikes in radioactivity. “At this point, we have not picked up anything” in detectors midway between Japan and Hawaii, Ms. Thunborg said in an interview on Sunday. “We’re talking a couple of days — nothing before Tuesday — in terms of picking something up.” Agencies involved in the tracking efforts include the World Meteorological Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, which runs a global network of more than 60 stations that sniff the air for radiation spikes. In the United States, the Departments of Defense and Energy maintain large facilities and cadres of specialists for tracking airborne releases of radiation, both civilian and military. On Sunday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it expected no “harmful levels of radioactivity” to move on the winds to Hawaii, Alaska or the West Coast from the reactors in Japan, “given the thousands of miles between the two countries.” In interviews, some private nuclear experts called a windborne threat unlikely. Others urged caution. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “We’re all worrying about it,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear expert who, from 1993 to 1999, was a policy adviser to the secretary of energy, who runs the nation’s nuclear complex. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s going to be very important,” he added, “for the Japanese and U.S. authorities to inform the public about the nature of the plumes and any need for precautionary measures.” The plume issue has arisen before. In 1986, radiation spewing from the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine was spread around the globe on winds and reached the West Coast in 10 days. It was judged more of a curiosity than a threat. Since then, scientists have refined their abilities to monitor such atmospheric releases. The advances are rooted in the development of new networks of radiation detectors, flotillas of imaging satellites and the advent of supercomputers that can model the subtle complexities of the wind to draw up advanced forecasts. With the Japanese crisis, popular apprehension has also soared. “Concern has been raised about a massive radioactive cloud escaping and sweeping over the West Coast,” said a recent blog, recommending whole grains and health foods for fighting radiation poisoning. On another blog, someone asked, “Should I take iodine now?” That referred to pills that can prevent poisoning from the atmospheric release of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear plants that the Japanese authorities have identified as escaping into the atmosphere. While federal officials expected little danger in the United States from Japanese plumes, they were taking no chances. On Sunday, Energy Department officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the agency was working on three fronts. One main player is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Officials said they had activated its National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, which draws on meteorologists, nuclear scientists and computer scientists to forecast plume dispersal. Separately, energy officials said the agency was readying plans to deploy two-person monitoring and sampling teams, if necessary. The teams would travel to consulates, military installations and Navy ships to sample the air in a coordinated effort to improve plume tracking. Finally, the department was preparing what it calls its Aerial Measuring System. Its detectors and analytical equipment can be mounted on a variety of aircraft. Officials said the equipment and monitoring team are staged out of the department’s Remote Sensing Laboratory at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and are on two-hour call. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “We’re on top of this,” a department official said.
New cover of Effective Cycling (MIT Press) A book by the man who coined the termed “vehicular cycling” is set to be re-published by MIT Press on May 18th (which is Bike to Work Day). In 1993, John Forester’s Effective Cycling aimed to explain his perspective on how people should operate bicycles. That book, and Forester himself, had a profound impact on cycling in the 1990s and the new edition of the book will hit shelves as cities across America clamor to install the type of separated, protected bike infrastructure Forester abhors. On his personal website, Forester urges visitors to, “Fight for Your Right to Cycle Properly!” telling them, “The right of cyclists to cycle properly and safely is disappearing. If you don’t fight to preserve it, it will disappear.” Portland author Jeff Mapes wrote about Forester in his excellent book Pedaling Revolution. After visiting Forester in his Lemon Grove, California home, Mapes wrote that Forester, “fought bike lanes, European-style cycletracks, and just about any form of traffic calming”, and “saw nothing wrong with sprawl and an auto-dependent lifestyle.” Others in the bike world have been far less kind in their characterizations of Forester. Here’s an excerpt about the new edition from the PR department at MIT Press (emphasis mine): “… John Forester emphasizes that cyclists should consider themselves drivers of vehicles in traffic. That means obeying the rules of the road, because when all drivers obey the same rules, they don’t have collisions. Forester explains why cyclists should not be afraid to cycle in traffic, and he urges them to resist being shunted off into government-sponsored bike paths as if they were incompetent children. Cyclists fare best, he says, when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.” As it seems the vast majority of today’s bike planners and advocates are moving toward a vision completely different than the one Forester espouses, it’ll be interesting to see how a new edition of this book is received. While “green lanes” and cycle tracks are the buzzwords these days in bike planning circles, I suppose Forester would like the widespread adoption of shared-lane markings (a.k.a. “sharrows”). Interestingly, MIT Press is also coming out with City Cycling, a new book by noted researcher John Pucher who argues via academic research and other writing for separated bike infrastructure. In fact, Pucher and Forester have had some interesting public debates about this issue in the past. I’ve got a copy of Forester’s new book in the mail. Perhaps I’ll wait for the Pucher book and then do a dual review. Front Page Books
Since 1998, according to the Council’s report, 82 percent of individual landmarks were considered within one year, while 86 percent of historic districts were voted on in two years. There is presently no deadline, and dozens of properties had been under consideration for decades before the commission cleared the backlog this year. “What I’ve discovered, calling around to my colleagues around the country, is that lots of historic commissions have some kind of deadlines,” said Peg Breen, president of the Landmarks Conservancy, an advocacy group. Others still worry. “This bill remains ill advised,” Tara Kelly, the director of preservation and design at the Municipal Art Society of New York, said in an email. “The timeline for historic districts is too short; MAS holds fast to our position that three years is more appropriate.” In a concession to preservationists, the bill includes the elimination of a previously proposed five-year moratorium on the ability to reconsider properties that do not receive landmark status. Councilman Greenfield said the timeline bill had 30 co-sponsors, giving it a good chance of passing the 51-member body. And while Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration previously opposed the stricter rules, it has now given the bill its tacit support. “This administration shares the goals set out by this legislation, and under Mayor de Blasio, the Landmarks Commission is already doing a commendable job of meeting the deadlines proposed,” Natalie Grybauskas, a spokeswoman, said in a statement on Thursday.
A Chinese man has been jailed for three years after selling his 18-day-old baby daughter online so he could buy an iPhone. The man, known only as “A Duan”, from Tong’an, Fujian province, south eastern China, found a buyer for his infant daughter on the social media site QQ, who paid £2,500 (23,000 Yuan) for the baby, according to the People’s Daily Online. The man allegedly intended to buy an iPhone and a motorbike with the funds. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. The mother, called “Xiao Mei” in reports, reportedly worked many part-time jobs while the father spent his most of time in internet cafes. Both parents were 19 when they went through with the unplanned pregnancy. The baby was purchased for the un-named buyer’s sister. As the parents are not in a financial position to raise the child it is understood the infant is still with the buyer’s sister, the Epoch Times reports. The buyer allegedly turned himself into police after acquiring the infant. Mei had fled from Tong’an after the baby was sold, but was tracked down by police investigating the illegal sale. Mei reportedly told police: “I myself was adopted, and may people in my hometown send their kids to other people to raise them. I really didn’t know that it was illegal.” According to the Epoch Times, Mei has received a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence and A Duan was given three years in jail. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe now
Four games into his college career, Brad Kaaya is not just showing signs he might be the next great quarterback at the University of Miami — he’s putting up numbers to back it up. Bernie Kosar, who led Miami to its first national championship in 1983, finished his college career by completing a school-record 62.3percent of his passes. A month in, Kaaya is completing 62.3percent of his passes. Steve Walsh, who led Miami to a national title in 1987, set a school record a year later with 29 touchdown passes in a season. Kaaya is on pace to throw 30. In Gino Torretta’s Heisman-winning season in 1992, he threw for 3,060 yards. Kaaya is on pace to throw for 3,156, which would be the seventh-most in UM history. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald But it’s not just the numbers that are impressing analysts, former players, coaches and teammates. It’s things such as Kaaya’s football IQ, the fact he wasn’t nervous playing in front of 92,000 fans at Nebraska and that he couldn’t sleep much for two days after the game because the mistakes he made against the Cornhuskers kept him up late at night watching film. “[The records] would be a cool thing to have — that’s something to talk about in 20 to 30 years,” Kaaya said Tuesday after practice. “But for me, it’s just about winning the [Atlantic Coast Conference].” Kaaya, who leads the ACC in passing yards and touchdowns, will try to get the Hurricanes (2-2) on track for that when they play host to defending Coastal Division champion Duke (4-0) on Saturday night at Sun Life Stadium. ESPN analyst Brock Huard, who called the game at Nebraska and will be here to see Kaaya’s next start Saturday, said that “what Brad is doing as a true freshman, just removed from senior prom in May, is pretty impressive.” Huard said Kaaya’s arm strength, size, decision-making and football IQ are all above average and remind him of five-time Pro Bowl quarterback Phillip Rivers of the San Diego Chargers. Huard said what UM coaches are throwing at Kaaya in terms of responsibility at the line of scrimmage is stuff Huard, a former third-round pick and five-year pro, didn’t do until he was in the NFL. “I go back to what [offensive coordinator James] Coley was saying — that they’ll give him at times a three-play ‘check with me,’” Huard said. “That means a run to the left, a run to the right or check to a pass when appropriate. For a true freshman to handle that — that’s something we were doing with Peyton [Manning] and the Colts. “We tracked a couple of [Kaaya’s] throws in the games that led up to the Nebraska game. He put one of those touchdown throws to [Phillip] Dorsett about 60 yards in the air, just a single hitch and throw. That’s pretty plus arm strength and [high] caliber stuff.” Against Nebraska, when Kaaya targeted nine different receivers and threw for 359 yards and three touchdowns on 28-of-42 passing, Coley had Kaaya in the shotgun for 87 percent of the plays, according to InsideTheU.com. The shotgun might be something UM does more of as the season progresses because Kaaya showed he could handle it well and because, as Coley noted, “Duke [Johnson] runs the ball really well in the gun, as well.” “Growth happens when you start getting comfortable with the guys around you,” Coley said. “I think [Kaaya] has done a great job. To this point, he’s like, ‘I want more [of the playbook]’ — and he can handle it.” Torretta, who is one of three former UM quarterbacks whom Kaaya said he speaks with frequently — Vinny Testaverde and Stephen Morris are the others — said he has been impressed by the poise Kaaya has shown in two tough road games. Torretta said Kaaya “throws a pretty ball” and that “his footwork from his first week to his fourth week is a lot better.” Torretta said that whenever he needs to give Kaaya a tip or share an observation, he sends him a direct message on Twitter. Their relationship began to blossom this summer when Torretta said he would jog out onto the practice field and watch Kaaya throw passes to his receivers. “The kid was a sponge,” Torretta said. “He seems to be absorbing everything he can.” Torretta knows how starved Hurricanes fans are to have the next great quarterback at Miami, a savior to lead the program back to prominence. But he doesn’t believe Kaaya should have that much pressure on him to be that guy — not just yet. “Physically, he has the skills, and, mentally, he’s on the right trajectory,” Torretta said. “But to anoint him a 38-2 starter like [Ken] Dorsey already, it’s premature. “Whether it was my winning record, Dorsey’s or Walsh’s, we had a lot of [quality] teammates around us to help us perform like that. “But [Kaaya’s] a big piece to the puzzle.”
- The operator of the Port of Oakland's second-largest terminal filed for bankruptcy on Monday less than two weeks after it suddenly announced ceasing operations about seven years into a 50-year lease. Ports America announced on Jan. 19 it would wind down operations at the port's Outer Harbor terminal over the next 90 days, saying it wanted to concentrate on other West Coast ports. But in court filings today as Ports America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company said it has been operating at a loss for years in Oakland and is expecting to have difficulty immediately paying its utility bills as it winds down its operations, estimated to be about $221,500 per month. For now, Ports America remains in the facility, still owes rent to the port and there is cleanup that needs to be done before it leaves Outer Harbor for good on March 31, Zampa said. The Port of Oakland has been left suddenly redirecting cargo from Outer Harbor to the port's other four terminals. While they have the capacity to absorb the excess cargo they will need to make some efficiency improvements to avoid backups, port spokesman Michael Zampa said today. "We're still moving very aggressively to redirect all the ships and containers to other terminals in the port," Zampa said. "The goal as we've said all along is that no ships and no cargo leave Oakland." Whether Ports America's bankruptcy petition would negatively impact that process was not immediately clear, but port officials said they were "disappointed" and that it indicates a lack of cooperation in the transition on the part of Ports America. "We've been negotiating with them in good faith for a smooth orderly transition that protects the interests of shipping lines, cargo owners and others who depend on the terminal," port executive director Chris Lytle said in a statement. "It's a shame they've taken this step." Ports America had signed a 50-year lease to operate on the 208-acre facility early in 2009. Most leases at the Port of Oakland last for only 10 or 15 years, but Ports America signed the exceptionally long lease while promising to make improvements to the terminal's infrastructure. Zampa said the port is now actively looking for a partner who would help modernize equipment at the terminal. "There was not investment to the degree required to keep that facility up to date or as modern as it could be," Zampa said. "Work needs to be done there and we're looking for a partner who's willing to participate in that." Zampa said the port has been making good progress in negotiations with potential partners and is open to a wide variety of uses for the land beyond cargo container shipping. The port hopes to announce a new tenant soon, though future tenants may rent only part of the large property.
Origami has never looked so good. These blocks of art can really spice up your man cave this Christmas, a company from Europe can send you DIY packs of paper that you can build into beautiful sculptures yourself with ease. In the kit you get pre-cut and pre-folded pieces of ecofriendly paper that allow you to craft it into some kind of animal or dinosaur without any tools. The company known as PaperTrophy has a wide selection of pre-cuts, ranging from giant gorillas to small adorable squirrels, this is minimalistic design at its finest and it will really grab visitors attention in your beloved crib. The T-Rex paper figure in the low poly design is absolutely harmless, does not exhale bad breath and you don’t need to feed him. You can easily assemble your wall trophy made of high-quality, FSC-certified paper by yourself.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Motors Co has dismissed speculation its ties with China’s SAIC Motor Corp are fraying, saying the partnership is thriving and the two car makers are discussing further collaboration in Indonesia. A man walks in front of the gate of Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. in Shanghai November 18, 2010. REUTERS/Aly Song Recent independent moves by SAIC outside China had been seen by some industry insiders and experts as signaling the two companies might be drifting apart, but GM’s top China executive said it was merely a consequence of its state-owned partner’s growing maturity as an automaker. “The relationship between SAIC and GM has never been better,” GM China Chairman Tim Lee said in an interview. Within China, Lee and GM China President Bob Socia said sales by GM’s joint ventures with SAIC and others were likely to grow this year by 300,000 to 3 million vehicles. Roughly half of the volume would come from no-frills microvans GM produces with SAIC and another partner. According to the two executives, GM plans to launch more new or significantly redesigned models in China next year, including a key small car update next year. It also plans to further grow exports of jointly designed and produced cars out of China. To keep up with demand, GM China and SAIC are rushing to open four new plants - two along the country’s prosperous east coast and another two in the middle western region of China to add an additional 1 million cars a year to capacity by 2015. “It’s a big bet” with SAIC, Lee said. Lee, who is also GM’s global manufacturing chief, recently agreed to give up his broader responsibility as head of GM’s international operations to focus just on China. “The conclusion that (GM Chief Executive) Dan Akerson and the board came to was China is so important to us and the relationships within China are so important” that GM needed to have Lee focus on China, he said. SOUTHEAST ASIA MARKETS Despite the expansion in China, some industry experts have suggested a cooling of ties between GM and SAIC elsewhere. In 2010, SAIC became a 50-50 partner in GM’s operations in India, jointly selling Wuling microvans under the Chevrolet badge. At the time, officials at the U.S. firm described the alliance as an ideal way to break into other emerging markets, pointing to Southeast Asia as a possible second target. Last year, however, SAIC passed on an opportunity to inject more capital into the struggling operation, letting its stake decline to 9 percent. Moreover, SAIC also announced plans to start making cars in Thailand with local firm CP Group Co Ltd, in a deal that did not involve GM. GM’s Socia said SAIC’s move in Thailand showed that the Shanghai-based company was feeling more confident as a standalone automaker to compete with GM and others in some areas. “I don’t think it’s fair to expect everything we do outside of China, we have to do with SAIC and vice versa,” Socia said. Lee said GM and SAIC had never discussed cooperating in Thailand but noted the two companies were still in discussions over Indonesia, a key emerging market with a population of more than 240 million people. “We’ve always said we’re looking at options and alternatives in Indonesia with SAIC, but we’ve never (disclosed) what the business model is,” Lee said. Options include a deal for GM to do contract assembly for SAIC or a more full-fledged GM-SAIC joint venture. “Those are ... under discussion,” he said. SAIC spokeswoman Judy Zhu agreed the relationship between GM and SAIC was healthy. On Indonesia, Zhu said SAIC was “still learning the Southeast Asia market and exploring possible business opportunities”. She declined to elaborate. NO CHANGE IN CHINA GM’s move to invest in a 7 percent stake in France’s PSA Peugeot Citroen and to cooperate on joint projects has been seen by some analysts as a further chill in the GM-SAIC relationship. GM has said its ties with Peugeot were mainly for Europe, where GM is trying to fix its troubled Opel unit, but the two firms have also talked of exploring opportunities to cooperate in Russia and Latin America. Before, top GM executives had indicated it would use SAIC as its preferred partner to expand into emerging markets worldwide. GM’s Lee did not elaborate in the interview on GM and Peugeot’s effort to cooperate in Russia and South America. “It’s basically a western and central European plan,” he said. Whatever happens outside China, Lee said GM’s alliance with SAIC remained key to GM globally, as it tries to tap more demand in the world’s biggest market with plenty of gas left in the tank for growth. Despite recent talk of change, Lee said he thought it unlikely that China would abolish its long-standing policy requiring all foreign automakers to operate in a 50-50 joint venture with a Chinese partner in the foreseeable future. That would be “a huge, huge sea change move for China Inc. to undertake”, Lee said. “It would be years and years before they get to that point.” In the meantime, SAIC will remain “a great partner of ours,” Lee said.
I buried my father a few days ago in a Muslim cemetery outside of Phoenix, Arizona. He passed away unexpectedly in his sleep in the last few days of Ramadan. My mother, sisters and I were devastated. My father was a gentle man who never raised his voice much less his hand against anyone, and lived his life according to one essential truth - Islam is about loving your neighbor. And so when I read about the townsfolk of Sidney, New York trying to force their Muslim neighbors to dig up their local cemetery, I knew I had to say something. A local Sufi group in Sidney received permission from the town to bury Muslim dead on their private property in 2005. This tiny cemetery has stood for years without incident. But with the recent onslaught of Islamophobia gripping the country, local politicians have decided to ride the wave of bigotry. Town supervisor Bob McCarthy has led a movement to get the Muslims to dig up their "unauthorized" cemetery. When asked what law prohibited the Muslims from having a burial site on their own land, his response was: "I don't know what the exact law is." In fact, there is no law in New York prohibiting grave sites on private property. So the town leaders have gotten their attorneys to parse through law books to find something they could use to unearth the Muslim graves. The closest they have come is an obscure regulation that prohibits cemeteries on mortgaged land. The Muslim group is now trying to either subdivide their property to exclude the graves, or pay off their remaining mortgage (under $200,000) to prevent their loved ones from being torn from their final resting places. Among those calling for the removal of the Muslim cemetery are "Tea Party" supporters who have suggested that the Muslim group is a "for profit" venture and should be denied First Amendment religious protection. Property rights don't seem to matter much to these alleged champions of liberty when Muslims are involved. The hatred evident in this small-town drama is so clear and shocking that it truly gives me pause as to where the people of this great country are going. I have been saddened by the rising anti-Muslim mania in the past few months because this isn't the America I grew up in, nor the one the Founders fought and died for. It is not the country my father immigrated to in 1976 - exactly two hundred years after the American Revolution. An America that he loved because it provided him economic opportunities and freedoms that he couldn't find in his native country of Pakistan. An America that didn't care what his religion or ethnicity was and gave him the chance to follow his dreams. An America that allowed his son to rise from poverty to become a successful Hollywood filmmaker and novelist. As my fellow Americans turn more and more away from their principles and embrace the passions of a xenophobic mob, I question whether that country is gone forever. Whether "government of the people, by the people, for the people" has failed Lincoln's hopes and has indeed perished from the Earth. This cemetery incident is just the latest in the "summer of hate" that reached its zenith with the shrill cries against the Park 51 Muslim community center in Manhattan. A center built by liberal Muslims to promote an Islam of peace and brotherhood became re-imagined in the delusional eyes of bigots as a "victory mosque" built by Muslim extremists in honor of Al-Qaeda. What is fascinating and telling about both incidents is that those who have been targeted by the fear mongers are Sufi Muslims, mystics who celebrate God as the spirit of Love. The Sufis are the polar opposites of Al-Qaeda and its band of murderers, promoting a progressive Islam that embraces other religions warmly and seeks human reconciliation rather than conflict. Muslim fundamentalists have been attacking Sufis for centuries, as their brand of progressive Islam outshines the ugly corruption of religion that the fundamentalists want to promote. And now the Muslim fundamentalists' war against Sufism has been joined by fanatics of other religions and communities. Anyone who has read the beautiful Sufi poetry of Rumi (ironically, the best selling poet in America today) will find an Islam of humility, of compassion, of love for women and reverence for the divine feminine, of not just tolerance, but joyful embrace of other religions. It is an Islam of music, of smiling faces, of laughter and companionship, not a dour Islam of anger and cruelty. This is the true heart of Islam that allowed the religion to succeed and become a global civilization, despite the best efforts of fundamentalists to poison the faith with violence and stupidity. This Islam of love, not the Islam of hate, is what is being rejected by people like the town leaders of Sidney and the opponents of Park 51. It is this very Islam that is the greatest threat, because it is like clear water. It reflects back the truth of those who look upon it. And the bigots only see their own ugliness mirrored back to them. In demanding that Muslims dig up their graves, the leaders of Sidney have only unearthed the graves of their own hearts and revealed all the rot and decay within their own souls. For Muslims, respect for the graves of every community is central to our faith. Prophet Muhammad once was seated with his followers when he saw a Jewish funeral procession pass by. The Prophet immediately stood up out of respect. His followers were startled - the dead man was a Jew, and there were political tensions between the Muslim and Jewish communities of Arabia at the time. But the Prophet simply turned to them and said: "Was he not a human being?" Indeed, today the ancient Jewish cemetery of Medina remains intact and preserved, despite the harsh fundamentalism of the current Saudi government and its discriminatory practices toward non-Muslims. But respect for graves is not just a Muslim value. It is a universal human belief that how we treat the dead reveals the character of our community. When an ancient Muslim graveyard was demolished in Jerusalem to build the ironically named "Museum of Tolerance," Jews and Christians joined with their Muslim neighbors to protest this lack of respect for the dead. As I have learned in recent days, death is an unveiling. Truths are revealed at the end that were hidden at the beginning. And how we choose to close the door on the past defines what awaits us in the future. When my father passed away, I was asked to perform a central Muslim burial ritual. I bathed his body with my hands before we lowered him into the earth. It was one of the most intimate and powerful experiences of my life. As I cleaned his corpse with loving attention, I remembered all the times that he would bathe me with such love when I was a child. It was a final act of love, of farewell, that I will carry with me to my own grave. America now has a choice as to which path will define its character. If we retain our sense of honor and common decency, we will continue to be the men and women that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would have embraced. But if we choose hatred for both the living and the dead, then I can only say this. In digging up the graves of our neighbors, we dig one for our own civilization.
‘There is no boy at this age that is cute enough or interesting enough to stop you from getting your education,” Michelle Obama told an audience of girls at the Apollo Theater in Harlem last week. In an event sponsored by Glamour magazine, the first lady explained that the key to solving world poverty and improving “the plight of our country” is to educate girls. As is the tendency with people who speak on behalf of Girl Power, Mrs. Obama seems to be confusing the problems of girls like, say Malala, with those in America’s inner cities. In the developing world it is true that girls are prevented from getting an education. They are too poor, their families need them to carry water to and from their homes, they have no sanitary facilities at school or there are Islamist lunatics trying to kill them or kidnap them when they go to school. But the girls in America are in an entirely different situation. In 2013, according to the Current Population Survey, 25- to 34-year-old women were 21 percent more likely to have a college degree than men and 48 percent more likely to have finished graduate school. While liberals love to talk about the War on Women, it clearly has not affected their educational prospects. Indeed, it’s not just middle- and upper-class women who seem to be ahead of their male counterparts. Even the most disadvantaged girls are more likely to get an education here than boys from similar circumstances. Richard Whitmire, author of “Why Boys Fail,” has argued that our discussions about the racial achievement gap and even the effects of poverty on educational attainment have masked the biggest disparities, which are between girls and boys. In an interview in the magazine Education Next, Whitmire cites a 2009 study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University that tracked the students who graduated from Boston public schools. For every 167 women in four-year colleges, there were only 100 men. But poverty wasn’t the problem — all the kids were coming from the same neighborhoods. “The study found that black females were five percentage points more likely to pursue further study after high school, including community colleges, four-year colleges and technical or vocational schools, than white males,” notes Whitmire. All of which is to say that girls in America don’t need a pep talk from the first lady anymore than, say, boys do. But there’s nothing wrong with her message. It’s true that if disadvantaged girls in the United States do drop out of school, drama with boys is among the chief distractions. It’s not just teen pregnancy, which has been falling in recent years. It’s also the fact that teen girls are regularly subject to cultural messages that suggest being smart is not the goal. And we’re not just talking about silly T-shirts that say “I’m not good at math” or bimbo Barbie dolls. No. We are forever reaching new levels of the sexualization of girls. And sadly Mrs. Obama has only celebrated the pop icons who are a big part of the problem. When asked this summer what she would be if she could have a different profession, the first lady said, “I would be Beyoncé . . . Every time I see her, she inspires me, she empowers me, she encourages me to live a healthy lifestyle . . . I’m proud to have my daughter grow up in a world where she has people like [her] to look up to.” Oh yes, because the real problem is that young girls don’t have enough role models who take off their clothes in front of millions of people and dance in sexually suggestive ways. If the first lady is really concerned about empowering young women in this country, she would realize that what undercuts their ability to focus on school is a culture that wants to make them grow up too quickly. In speaking to the girls at Glamour, Mrs. Obama explained, “If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the president of the United States.” Right. Apparently she would have been married to Jay-Z. Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress." As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party. These concerns about "covert propaganda" were also the basis for the GAO's strong standard for determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal: The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual -- the essential fact of attribution is missing. In a related analysis, the GAO explained that "The publicity or propaganda restriction helps to mark the boundary between an agency making information available to the public and agencies creating news reports unbeknownst to the receiving audience." In case anyone disagrees with the GAO on this point, here's what the White House's own Office of Legal Council had to say, in a memorandum written in 2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal (when it was discovered that the Bush administration had actually paid him to publicly endorse its No Child Left Behind Law): Over the years, GAO has interpreted "publicity or propaganda" restrictions to preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called "covert propaganda." ... Consistent with that view, OLC determined in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for "publicity or propaganda" precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by third-party groups. We stated that "covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties" would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for "propaganda." (emphasis added) The key passage here is the phrase, "covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties." As the Times report documented in detail, the Pentagon's military analyst program did exactly that. It was covert. As Barstow's piece states, the 75 retired military officers who were recruited by Donald Rumsfeld and given talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC were given extraordinary access to White House and Pentagon officials. However, "The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon." It was an attempt to mold opinion. According to the Pentagon's own internal documents (which can be downloaded and viewed from the New York Times website), the military analysts were considered "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who would deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in the form of their own opinions." According to one participating military analyst, it was "psyops on steroids." It was done "through the undisclosed use of third parties." In their television appearances, the military analysts did not disclose their ties to the White House, let alone that they were its surrogates. The military analysts were used as puppets for the Pentagon. In the words of Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and for Fox News military analyst, "It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you." Additional evidence of the illegality of the Pentagon pundits operation can be found in the February 1, 1988 memorandum mentioned above by the White House Office of Legal Council. That memorandum, titled "Legal Constraints on Lobbying Efforts in Support of Contra Aid and Ratification of the INF Treaty," was written for the Reagan administration by the well-known conservative lawyer Charles Cooper (then head of the OLC), explaining the limits of what the White House was allowed to do in its campaign to win support for the Contra War in Nicaragua. Cooper (clearly not some liberal naysayer with an anti-war ax to grind), wrote that the Reagan Administration "can make available to private groups, upon request, printed materials that explain and justify the Administration's position on Contra aid. These materials must be items that were created in the normal course of business and not specifically produced for use by these private groups." Cooper continues: It would be unwise, however, for the Administration to solicit the media to print articles by or interviews with anyone not serving in the government. And, of course, the Administration cannot assist in the preparation of any articles or statements by private sector supporters, other than through the provision of informational materials as described in the preceding paragraph. In the case of the current Pentagon pundit scandal, however, the Pentagon clearly was assisting in the preparation both of articles and statements by private sector supporters. It did not simply provide "informational materials" that had been "created in the normal course of business." Rather, it sat down with the retired military analysts, worked closely with them on drafting talking points, and in some cases scripted language for them to write in written commentaries, and deployed them as message amplifiers and surrogates without disclosure. The target is you A tantalizing window into Donald Rumsfeld's motives for creating the military analysts program can be find in a transcript that the Times obtained of one of his meetings with them. In it, he complains that he has been warned that his "information operations" are "illegal or immoral": This is the first war that's ever been run in the 21sth Century in a time of 24-hour news and bloggers and internets and emails and digital cameras and Sony cams and God knows all this stuff. ... We're not very skillful at it in terms of the media part of the new realities we're living in. Every time we try to do something someone says it's illegal or immoral, there's nothing the press would rather do than write about the press, we all know that. They fall in love with it. So every time someone tries to do some information operations for some public diplomacy or something, they say oh my goodness, it's multiple audiences and if you're talking to them, they're hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing or something. This comment shows that Rumsfeld knows about the law against information operations that propagandize U.S. audiences. Although it is illegal to target propaganda at the America people, the law does not forbid propaganda -- even covert propaganda -- aimed at foreign audiences. Rumsfeld has been warned, however, that in today's world with "bloggers and internets and emails," even information operations overseas reach "multiple audiences" including U.S. citizens who are "hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing." The irony, of course, is that Rumsfeld made these comments in a meeting with military analysts whom he had recruited specifically for information operations targeting U.S. audiences. If Rumsfeld knew that there were legal concerns even about operations targeted at foreign audiences, he certainly knew that it was illegal to target the American public. Yet he went ahead and did it anyway, and in another part of the transcript, he explained why. In fighting the war on terror, Rumsfeld said, the "center of gravity's here in Washington and in the United States." The term "center of gravity" in this context refers to a concept in military theory. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, it means "those characteristics, capabilities, or locations from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight." What Rumsfeld is saying, therefore, is that the most important battle in his war is not the struggle to control Iraq or defeat foreign terrorists. The most important battle, he's saying, is the fight to control the hearts and minds of the American people. And that's why he's willing to break the law to do it. What is to be done? Of course, the mere fact that a practice is illegal does not mean that anyone is going to be punished for breaking the law. For that to happen, someone with the power to act needs to enforce the law, which is why Congress needs to hold hearings and create enforcement mechanisms that will ensure compliance in the future. Currently, no such mechanisms exist. As the Congressional Research Service noted in its 2005 report, "No federal entity is required to monitor agency compliance with the publicity and propaganda statutes. At present, the federal government has what has been termed 'fire alarm oversight' of agency expenditures on communications. Scrutiny typically occurs when a Member of Congress is alerted by the media or some other source that an agency’s spending on communications may be cause for concern. A Member then sends a written request to the Government Accountability Office asking for a legal opinion on the activities in question." Congress should certainly seek such a legal opinion from the GAO and the White House Office of Legal Council regarding the Pentagon's military analyst program, but this time it shouldn't stop at simply seeking an opinion. When the GAO has rendered such legal opinions previously, the government agencies caught violating the law have announced that they would comply in the future. No one was punished, however, and in practice they knew that they could continue doing what they want. That is what happened after the Reagan administration was caught using third-party surrogates to promote the Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s (which is how Charles Cooper ended up writing the memo I quoted above). It's what happened after the Armstrong Williams scandal broke in 2004. And without something more than mere publication of a GAO opinion, it's probably all that will happen as a result of this latest Pentagon pundits scandal. It doesn't have to be this way. If the U.S. Congress had the will to take action, it could create real mechanisms for enforcing the law and ensuring compliance. This is important for reasons that go beyond the issue of whether anyone supports or opposes the current war in Iraq. So long as government agencies are allowed to continue getting away with covert domestic propaganda, the public is left unable to know whether the opinions of "independent" analysts are truly independent. During the Vietnam War, official Pentagon statements became so mistrusted that the term "credibility gap" was coined to describe the distance between official statements and public perceptions. The government's use of "surrogates" posing as independent experts extends the credibility gap not just to public officials but also to seemingly independent, private citizens and the news media. Until accountability exists to prevent abuses like Pentagon analyst program from continuing with impunity, the public will have to assume that anyone who appears on camera espousing views sympathetic to the White House (or, for that matter, to other government agencies) has been secretly trained, recruited and given financial incentives to do so.
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email FIFA career mode has taken a back seat in recent years as the EA franchise has grown with the introduction of all new aspects to the game. FIFA 17 players will remember the confusion when their star striker would express his desires to leave the club despite starting every games and finishing as the league top goalscorer. Now players will be able to put a virtual arm around their star player and talk them down from leaving the club with FIFA 18's brand new transfer negotiations feature. Buying players in FIFA 18 will be a little more complicated than users are used to and rather than just agreeing a fee players will now need to meet wage demands, personal terms and even the figure of a release clause! The above COPA90 video captures a negotiation between a digital Unai Emery and Kylian Mbappe as the Paris Saint-Germain boss attempts to bring the France international to the capital. And we think FIFA fans will agree that it's pretty impressive. Transfer fees Very much like before you will have to remain within your budget, but the face-to-face negotiations really bring the world of football tranfers to your living room. Extra contract terms You will now be able to entice a player with a more personal experience. Career mode users will be able to pull the strings and offer their target an excessive bonus structure to sweeten the deal. If the club decides the deal is not good enough for them players can stop representatives leaving the room with a second offer to make sure they get the deal over the line. Personal Terms As we've seen in the real world, being a millionaire and playing football all over the world isn't enough anymore. As a direct result of this EA have decided that players must now negotiate personal terms before a deal can be complete. Release clause As we know, loyalty is a lost cause in the beautiful game which is why career mode users will now be able to negotiate a release clause to protect the club financially.
Chinese diplomats and military officials smuggled ivory out of Tanzania in President Xi Jinping’s jet, report says Chinese diplomatic and military staff went on buying sprees for illegal ivory while on official visits to East Africa, sending prices soaring, an environmental activist group said Thursday.Tens of thousands of elephants are estimated to be slaughtered in Africa each year to feed rising Asian demand for ivory products, mostly from China, the continent's biggest trading partner. When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania in March 2013, members of his government and business delegation bought so much ivory that local prices doubled to $700 per kilogram, the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report, citing ivory traders in the city of Dar es Salaam. "When the guest come, the whole delegation, that's then time when the business goes up," the EIA quoted a vendor named Suleiman as saying. SEE ALSO :Belgium agrees to host Ivory Coast ex-president Gbagbo The traders alleged that the buyers took advantage of a lack of security checks for diplomatic visitors to smuggle their purchases back to China on Xi's plane. Similar sales were made on a previous trip by China's former President Hu Jintao, the report said, adding that Chinese embassy staff have been "major buyers", since at least 2006. A Chinese navy visit to Tanzania last year by vessels returning from anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden "prompted a surge in business for Dar es Salaam-based ivory traders", it said. A Chinese national named Yu Bo was arrested during the naval visit as he attempted to enter the city's port in a lorry containing 81 elephant tusks -- hidden under wooden carvings -- which he planned to deliver to two mid-ranking Chinese naval officers, the EIA said. Yu was convicted by a local court in March and sentenced to 20 years in jail, it added. SEE ALSO :Africa Protected Area Congress unveiled at scenic Nairobi National Park Tanzania, which has large reserves of natural gas, is a key ally of China in East Africa, and its President Jakaya Kikwete reportedly signed deals with the Asian giant worth $1.7 billion while on a visit to Beijing last month. Tanzania had about 142,000 elephants when Kikwete took office in 2005, the EIA said, adding that by 2015 the population is likely to have plummeted to about 55,000 as a result of poaching. Almost all ivory sales were banned in 1989 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), to which both China and Tanzania are signatories. Politicians from Tanzania's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and well-connected business people are also involved in the ivory trade, with most demand coming from China, the EIA said. SEE ALSO :Tanzania charges Chinese 'Ivory Queen' smuggling suspect The EIA report did say that enforcement of the ban on ivory sales had slightly improved last year, with smuggling syndicates growing "more cautious", after Yu's conviction, as well as a high-profile raid. Police found 706 ivory tusks weighing over 1.8 tonnes at a house in Dar es Salaam last November, along with three Chinese nationals who were detained at the scene after trying to pay a $50,000 bribe, the EIA said. Meng Xianlin, a Chinese forestry administration official who oversees Beijing's commitments under CITES told AFP that the claims made in the EIA's report were "baloney". "I have not heard of such a matter," he said, adding: "Do not hype this up." China often says that it pays "great attention", to the protection of endangered wildlife, and in recent years has carried out several high-profile arrests of smugglers caught in its territory, along with a televised incineration of seized ivory. SEE ALSO :Chinese "Ivory Queen" smuggler sentenced to 15 years jail in Tanzania Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei described the report as "groundless" at a regular briefing in Beijing Thursday, adding that China was "strongly dissatisfied" with it. "We attach importance to the protection of wild animals like elephants," he said. "Recently, in light of the illegal actions of poaching and smuggling of elephant tusks, the Chinese government enacted a series of laws and regulations." The environmental group WWF estimated that around 25,000 African elephants were hunted for ivory in 2011, predicting that the toll would rise. There could be as few as 470,000 left, according to the group.
A gravastar is an object hypothesized in astrophysics as an alternative to the black hole theory by Pawel O. Mazur and Emil Mottola. It has usual black hole metric outside of the horizon, but de Sitter metric inside. On the horizon there is a thin shell of matter. The term "gravastar" is a portmanteau of the words "gravitational vacuum star".[1] Structure [ edit ] The notion of gravastars builds on Einstein's theory of general relativity and imposes a universal "smallest size" that is known to exist according to well-accepted quantum theory. This size is known as the Planck length, and is derived using the speed of light, Planck's constant and the gravitational constant. Quantum theory says that any scale smaller than the Planck length is unobservable and meaningless to physics and physicists[citation needed]. This limit can be imposed on the wavelength of a beam of light so as to obtain a limit of blue shift that the light can undergo. However, in the presence of an event horizon the blue shift diverges. In the original formulation by Mazur and Mottola, gravastars contain a central region featuring a p=-ρ false vacuum or "dark energy", a thin shell of p=ρ perfect fluid, and a true vacuum p=ρ=0 exterior. The dark energy like behavior of the inner region prevents collapse to a singularity and the presence of the thin shell prevents the formation of an event horizon, avoiding the infinite blue shift. The inner region has thermodynamically no entropy and may be thought of as a gravitational Bose–Einstein condensate. Severe red-shifting of photons as they climb out of the gravity well would make the fluid shell also seem very cold, almost absolute zero. In addition to the original thin shell formulation, gravastars with continuous pressure have been proposed. These objects must contain anisotropic stress.[2] Externally, a gravastar appears similar to a black hole: it is visible by the high-energy radiation it emits while consuming matter, and by the Hawking radiation it creates[citation needed]. Astronomers observe the sky for X-rays emitted by infalling matter to detect black holes. A gravastar would produce an identical signature. It is also possible, if the thin shell is transparent to radiation, that gravastars may be distinguished from ordinary black holes by different gravitational lensing properties as null geodesics may pass through.[3] Mazur and Mottola suggest that the violent creation of a gravastar might be an explanation for the origin of our universe and many other universes, because all the matter from a collapsing star would implode "through" the central hole and explode into a new dimension and expand forever, which would be consistent with the current theories regarding the Big Bang.[4] This "new dimension" exerts an outward pressure on the Bose–Einstein condensate layer and prevents it from collapsing further. Gravastars also could provide a mechanism for describing how dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe. One possible hypothesis uses Hawking radiation as a means to exchange energy between the "parent" universe and the "child" universe, and so cause the rate of expansion to accelerate, but this area is under much speculation.[citation needed] Gravastar formation may provide an alternate explanation for sudden and intense gamma-ray bursts throughout space.[citation needed] LIGO's observations of gravitational waves from colliding objects have been found either to not be consistent with the gravastar concept,[5][6][7] or to leave the question unanswered.[8][9] In comparison with black holes [ edit ] By taking quantum physics into account, the gravastar hypothesis attempts to resolve contradictions caused by conventional black hole theories.[10] Event horizons [ edit ] In a gravastar, the event horizon is not present. The layer of positive pressure fluid would lie just outside the 'event horizon', being prevented from complete collapse by the inner false vacuum.[1] Due to the absence of an event horizon the time coordinate of the exterior vacuum geometry is everywhere valid. Dynamic stability of gravastars [ edit ] In 2007, theoretical work indicated that under certain conditions gravastars as well as other alternative black hole models are not stable when they rotate.[11] Theoretical work has also shown that certain rotating gravastars are stable assuming certain angular velocities, shell thicknesses, and compactnesses. It is also possible that some gravastars which are mathematically unstable may be physically stable over cosmological timescales.[12] Theoretical support for the feasibility of gravastars does not exclude the existence of black holes as shown in other theoretical studies.[13] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ]
The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group. The Maoists pride themselves on their ideology of an equal society, but a surrendered woman Maoist has revealed the brutal acts committed on the women who joined the group.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Former Iraqi Transport Minister Salam al-Maliki underlined that Washington is on the same side with the ISIL, and urged his country’s popular forces to expedite uprooting the terrorists in Al-Anbar province. “There are compelling evidence which prove that the US has supplied the ISIL with weapons and intelligence,” Al-Maliki told FNA on Wednesday. He noted that the recent statements of the US officials indicate that they are willing to prolong the battle for winning back Anbar province. Al-Maliki, however, said that the Iraqi forces are preparing for fresh operations in Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province. Last month, a senior Iraqi intelligence official revealed that the US helicopters drop weapons and other aids for the ISIL terrorists in the Western province of al-Anbar. “The fighters present at the forefront of fighting against the ISIL always see US helicopters flying over the ISIL-controlled areas and dropping weapons and urgent aids for them,” the official who called for anonymity told FNA. Yet, he said the helicopters could have also been sent from Turkey or Israel. He added that in addition to dropping aids, the helicopters transfer the ISIL ringleaders and wounded members from the battleground to some hospitals in Syria or other countries which support the terrorist group. The official cautioned that such assistance further prolongs the conflicts in Anbar, adding that when the Iraqi army and popular forces purge the terrorists from Anbar province, the US helicopters will transfer the ISIL ringleaders to other regions to prevent the Iraqi forces’ access to ISIL secrets. Scores of Iraqi soldiers were killed by the ISIL in two deadly ambushes in Anbar province on Friday. The restive region has long been a flashpoint of fighting, where the terrorists are largely in control. Forces stationed in the province continue to be on alert, and were instructed in a visit by Defense Minister Khalid al-Obaidi to proceed with “caution and precision,” so as to avoid “unjustified losses.” In a relevant development in March, a group of Iraqi popular forces known as Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi shot down the US Army helicopter that was carrying weapons for the ISIL in the Western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province. Also in February, a senior lawmaker disclosed that Iraq’s army had shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province. “The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said.
File photo: Experts believe that most illegal ivory is sold in China - where products made from the material are seen as status symbols - with some estimating the country accounts for as much as 70 percent of global demand. Beijing - China destroyed more than six hundred kilograms of ivory in front of media and diplomats on Friday, as it seeks to shed its image as a global trading hub for illegal elephant tusks. Engraved tusks and carved ivory chopsticks were fed into a crushing machine which spewed powder and clouds of dust into the air on the outskirts of Beijing. Surging demand for ivory in Asia is behind an increasing death toll of African elephants, conservationists say, as authorities fail to control international smuggling networks. Experts believe that most illegal ivory is sold in China - where products made from the material are seen as status symbols - with some estimating the country accounts for as much as 70 percent of global demand. Beijing has made efforts to curb the trade, stepping up prosecutions of smugglers and seizures of ivory at border posts, but campaigners say the measures have not gone far enough. Officials said 660 kilograms of ivory were crushed on Friday, as the machine gave off a loud crunching noise. Larger items were sliced up by a circular saw and placed on a conveyor belt leading to the machine. “We will strictly control ivory processing and trade until the commercial processing and sale of ivory and its products are eventually halted,” Zhao Shucong, head of China's State Forestry Administration said at the event. Diplomats from the United States, Britain and several African nations were watching, along with foreign media who were provided free food and transport. The event followed China's first public destruction of ivory, reportedly weighing six tonnes, in the southern city of Dongguan last year. A joint report in December from Save the Elephants and The Aspinall Foundation campaign groups found that more than 100 000 wild elephants were killed from 2010 to 2012, with the slaughter largely fuelled by the “out of control” illegal ivory trade in China. Beijing is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which in 2013 identified China as one of eight nations failing to do enough to tackle the illegal ivory trade. China in February announced a one-year ban on imports of ivory carvings, but activists described the move as symbolic as legal imports are minor and most seizures of illegal items are of raw ivory. AFP
Obama campaign alumni Mitch Stewart, the Battleground States Director for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and Lydia Tran, the former National Press Secretary for Organizing for America, just launched a new astroturf campaign to promote the fast-track authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Their efforts will focus on Oregon and Washington at first because they are both export-heavy states--and because Ron Wyden (D-OR) is the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. Their firm, 270 Strategies, is the Democratic-aligned PR firm behind Democrat-in-name-only Ro Khanna's congressional campaign against Mike Honda (CA-17) and Educators for Excellence, a Gates-funded front group that advocates against teacher tenure and for teacher evaluation systems that rely on the use of standardized test scores. Here is their press release, written in Newspeak: Congress set to debate concrete measures for strengthening the American economy this year, the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs (PCAJ) is launching today to pave the way to trade promotion authority for President Obama and to help pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership. PCAJ is kicking things off with a significant digital advertising effort in Oregon and Washington State and will expand to other key states in weeks to come. PCAJ will bring together progressive voices across the activist, advocacy, and business communities to share information about the benefits of this groundbreaking trade agreement—which is expected to support hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States. Mitch Stewart, Battleground States Director for the 2012 Obama for America Campaign, and his fellow partner at 270 Strategies Lydia Tran, are coordinating the public launch and will provide strategic counsel for the coalition. “Put simply, this is about ensuring America is competitive in the global economy, about expanding the market for ‘Made in America’ goods, about leveling the playing field to protect American workers and jobs,’ said Stewart. “We know that 95 percent of the world’s markets are beyond our borders—and that every $1 billion in exports supports between 5,200 and 7,000 jobs here at home. The Trans-Pacific Partnership will strengthen our economy while allowing us to determine the rules for engagement, instead of letting China and others set weaker policies in the fastest-growing markets in the world.” “It’s time for a modern take on the global economy—we absolutely can have trade that is both free and fair,” said Tran. Giving trade promotion authority to the President and enacting the Trans-Pacific Partnership has the potential to do more to advance progressive ideals and values around the world than any other trade agreement in history. The TPP will move us forward while setting incredibly tough rules on wages, workplace safety, and the environment.” PCAJ is the first major effort by Democrats to shore up support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and will employ digital, grassroots, and grasstops organizing—as well as comprehensive communications strategies—to make the progressive case for free and fair trade. The Progressive Coalition for American Jobs wants to progressively outsource American jobs.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve announced Monday it will offer an unlimited amount of dollars to three other central banks in an unprecedented move to provide liquidity to the global banking system. The U.S. central bank will lend dollars at a fixed interest rate to the central banks of England, Switzerland and the European Union, according to a joint statement from the banks. The other central banks will be able to borrow "any amount they wish" in exchange for collateral. The goal is to flood the financial system with much-needed dollars. After they borrow dollars from the Fed, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank will provide private financial institutions with one-week, 28-day and 84-day U.S. dollar loans in the latest attempt to unfreeze credit. "The plan allows the central banks to exchange assets on their books for more liquid assets," said John Silvia, chief economist for Wachovia. "It will then allow institutions that need dollars to conduct the business they need to conduct." The new plan will continue through April 30, and the Bank of Japan will consider introducing similar measures. "Central banks will continue to work together and are prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to provide sufficient liquidity in short-term funding markets," the Federal Reserve said in a statement on its Web site. With inter-bank lending frozen, and financial institutions unable to acquire short-term money to fund daily operations, central banks have searched for methods to boost liquidity and restore the credit markets to normal operations. "People have become extremely risk-averse because of the legacy of Lehman Brothers," said Silvia. "If a bank like Lehman can turn over and die in a matter of days, it would be hard to convince banks to lend to other institutions for any given time period." The latest move follows last week's global coordinated interest rate cuts, as well as Sunday's announcements that European governments will guarantee new bank loans and the British government will invest $63 billion in three major banks. Monday's plan is the first time in which central banks have issued uncapped loans to other financial institutions. Previously, the Fed had allotted $620 billion in swap arrangements with nine other central banks. That number has ballooned since December, when the Fed announced a $24 billion swap cap only with the ECB and the SNB. The huge increase in swap funds has been especially necessary during the recent crisis, as banks have become more and more reliant on central banks to provide them with essential loans. "Before the crisis, central banks were dealing in much smaller numbers, and banks accepted a wide array of collateral and exchanged many different currencies," Silvia said. "Now, the dollar and collateral from central banks is much more highly favored." In a separate move, the Fed last week doubled the size of its lending facility to private banks - its so-called term auction facility - to $300 billion.
Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords holds a strange place in the Star Wars video game canon. KOTOR II was critically acclaimed on its 2004 release, with weird and morally ambiguous characters who felt more at home in a Fallout game than the George Lucas-verse. But it didn't receive the same universal praise as its predecessor. Firm deadlines led to many bugs, and complaints that the story felt “unfinished.” Its plot wrapped up very quickly and ended on a mysterious cliffhanger; modders later discovered entire storylines that were included on the disc but had not been implemented. Most players assumed that KOTOR II would remain an unpolished gem unless Obsidian was able to revisit it and fill in some of the gaps. Then on July 22nd, all of that changed. Publisher Aspyr Media, responsible for porting games to non-Windows platforms including OSX, Linux, iOS and Android, updated KOTOR II on Steam for the first time in 10 years, and with it came a crucial patch note: support for Steam Workshop mods, and with that, The Sith Lords Restored content mod. Now any KOTOR II player can install this fabled mod with a simple button push, and play the storylines that were previously abandoned. The work of one dedicated modder community has fleshed out a flawed masterpiece, and their work is sure to bring newfound attention to this game. (It's already drawing praise from KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone.) "I don’t feel like I ever ‘own’ a game I work on. It’s something to be shared, improved upon, and whenever possible, seen from a new perspective that gives the title new life. - Chris Avellone" The mod includes numerous bug fixes, new areas, and dialogue options that flesh out the story in the main game. It was actually in development since before 2009, when it was first released in open beta by modder Zbigniew Staniewicz, aka Zbyl, with his modding partner Darth Stoney. Staniewicz was a big fan of the KOTOR series, and wanted to play the cut content as soon as he heard about it. “I also thought ‘finishing up’ the game would make me super famous, but I may have overestimated the size and reach of the KOTOR community,” he jokes. Staniewicz and Stoney’s first versions of The Sith Lords Restored, built on the back of research and work done by other modders, added what they believed to be part of a known list of cut content found on the disc. “It turned out our list didn’t include even half of the trivial stuff left out of the game," he says. "It was always exciting and at times surprising to realize how much more there was buried in there.” More than just fixing bugs Staniewicz was joined by modder Hassat Hunter as development on The Sith Lords Restored continued. Hunter started out in the mod community bug testing and teaching himself the dialogue editing tools for KOTOR before signing on to work on The Sith Lords Restored. Hunter’s passion for fixing KOTOR II's bugs grew into a desire to dig out all the unknown story content and present a “true” version of KOTOR II to the players. “We didn’t just want people to experience the cut content, we wanted to give people the KOTOR 2 that should have been," Hunter says. "I don’t think anyone expected to still work on it five years later, or that eventually we’d take up a greater scope, albeit in steps.” Doing this kind of restorative mod work isn’t just a process of cleaning up bugs and extracting unused models though. As Staniewicz and Hunter describe their process, it becomes clear that they wound up doing plenty of design work too, building on Obsidian’s work from a decade prior. Doing this kind of restorative mod work isn’t just a process of cleaning up bugs and extracting unused models. “For example in the very first closed beta of [the mod], you could finish the HK assassin droid factory without firing a single shot," says Hunter. "That just didn’t fit the story of the HK droids though, not to mention that it was extremely boring. The factory went through a lot of transitions, but I think the current version works very well.” Much of the restored content reflects the core of what made KOTOR II so unusual as a Star Wars game. HK-47, a murderous assassin droid from the first KOTOR, began his life as a fan-favorite character in the context of a more traditional hero’s story (or villain’s story depending on the player’s choice), but like many other plot points from the first KOTOR he and other characters evolved under the moral lenses Obsidian took to the Star Wars universe. KOTOR II spends a large amount of its cut and uncut content examining how droids shape the world of Star Wars, and how the way most species treat them leaves them in a perfect position to perform acts of villainy or heroism overlooked by most. KOTOR II’s lead narrative designer, Chris Avellone, has loosely kept up with modder’s progress over the years, with the HK Droid Factory being one of the biggest pieces of content he’s glad players can experience. “While we had HK-50 and HK-51 droids in the game, I always...intended the player and even HK-47 itself to feel offended by their presence,” he says "This was intended to make the final confrontation with them all the sweeter when HK-47 gets to turn the tables on its upstart “successors” by using their programming that they inherited from him as a weakness," he adds. "There’s a ‘panicked’ sequence in the excised content where the HK-50s figure this out, and I always meant it as a scene to make the player grin." Elsewhere, Kreia’s cut lines reinforce her as a character who possesses traits of both the Jedi and the Sith, constantly judging the player no matter which side of the Force they give in to, and the Sith are shown more to be a complicated, nuanced political group rather than an embodiment of raw evil. All of these ideas are far removed from their film incarnations, and are not even the kind of storytelling that Disney has endorsed in its video game tie-ins realesed after the Lucasfilm acquisition. The Home Stretch Hunter says that Aspyr approached them a month before it planned to push out KOTOR II on Steam (mostly to open up ports for Mac and Linux), but wasn’t able at first to properly say why they were interested in talking to the KOTOR II modders. When they learned of Aspyr’s plans though, Hunter and Stanwiecz dove in to patch the mod to be Steam Workshop ready. “They pretty much laid down for us what we had to do to make [the mod] work for the Steam Workshop so everything could go as smooth as possible at release," says Hunter. "And now hopefully we can get rid of all the remaining bugs and annoyances still in this version, and be in the unique position to fix things we couldn’t as modders. I can’t say that we or anyone else expected this to happen at this time or date, so that was a pretty nice surprise.” For its part, Aspyr Media's primary goal was to include Steam Workshop among a large batch of featured updates, including controller support, Steam Achievements, and playability on Linux and other platforms. Product manager Michael Blair explains that they knew the mod would be a huge feature to have on launch, which was why they reached out to Staniewicz and Hunter to get them on board. "In order for our QA team to test 'live' content from months of working on this update, we moved our Steam branches from beta to live 2 days before launch," Blair says. "During that time, we allowed the mod team access and instructions on how to get their mod up in the Workshop, and ensured it remained hidden from public view. Our team then tested it before we hit 'go' on the launch.'" Obsidian’s only involvement in the game’s update seems to be unofficial. Hunter says Obsidian lead programmer Adam Brennecke voices a character on the planet M4-78EP, but that connection came from chatting with him during a Pillars of Eternity (Obsidian's latest RPG) promotional stream, not any official endorsement. Regardless, Hunter and Staniewicz both are floored by the positive feedback that they’ve received for their work, and are glad more players can make their mod a core part of playing KOTOR II. For his part, Avellone remains thrilled by the collaborative spirit of the modders pulling his old work out of the shadows. “I love it, and I have much respect for the Total Restoration mod and any modders willing to experiment with gameplay and narrative aspects to our titles,” he says. “I don’t feel like I ever ‘own’ a game I work on, it’s something to be shared, improved upon, and whenever possible, seen from a new perspective that gives the title new life.”
Image copyright AP Image caption Mass murderer Martin Bryant killed 35 people and injured 23 during Australia's deadliest shooting Twenty years ago a young, blonde-haired man who drove a yellow Volvo with a surfboard strapped to the top killed 35 people at Port Arthur, a historic tourist town in Tasmania. It was the worst mass shooting in Australia's history and for many years it has defined the town, although among locals it is a sensitive, almost taboo topic. The gunman, Martin Bryant, is one of the country's most notorious villains, but his name is rarely spoken in Port Arthur. So people were surprised and dismayed in March this year when an actor drove a yellow Volvo around the massacre site at the behest of a major Australian television network. "To hire a yellow Volvo with a surfboard on the roof and a have a blonde, long-haired man drive around the site so they could film it was an extraordinarily horrible thing to do," said local mayor Roseanne Heyward. The media rehashing of Australia's Port Arthur shooting massacre in the lead-up to Thursday's 20th anniversary has been upsetting for the community, leaving many people keen for the day to be done. Since March there has been an outpouring of reports on the massacre, boasting of never-before-seen material, first-time accounts, graphic retellings and television re-enactments. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A simple wooden cross bearing the names of victims is the main memorial at the Port Arthur site Capping that was news this week of a graphic movie of the massacre, playing to conspiracy theories Bryant wasn't the killer, that is due to start filming this year. Stephen Large is chief executive of the Port Arthur Historic Site, the former penal colony and world heritage-listed site where Bryant shot most of his victims. Mr Large said the television re-enactments and rehashing of the massacre were disappointing, particularly the Volvo drive-by re-creation. "That rocked quite a few people here and certainly upset a lot of people in the local community, and I'm sure a lot of people that were directly affected by 1996," Mr Large said, adding that any requests to film a movie at the site would be assessed on their merits. 'How could you refuse?' Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull heads the dignitaries attending a Thursday ceremony marking 20 years since the massacre. The two-hour ceremony, the first at the site since the 10th anniversary, will be broadcast live on two of the country's television networks. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The remains of the Broad Arrow Cafe and gift shop, where Bryant killed 20 people Former prime minister John Howard, who moved swiftly and decisively to ban the possession, use and importation of semi-automatic and automatic rifles following the shootings, will also be among those at the ceremony. Despite the reluctance of some locals to mark the tragedy, many victims' relatives were determined to hold a milestone ceremony. Some survivors will return to the site for the first time since that Sunday in 1996. Mayor Heyward said compassion for these people made the service a necessity. "How could you refuse them?" she asked. "But we have moved on, we'll never forget, but we have to get up every morning and get on with our lives and that is what this community has done." Better forgotten Martin Bryant, now aged 48, is serving 35 consecutive life sentences. Many people object even to the use of Bryant's name, with local media often bombarded with complaints if he is mentioned in reports. Tasmania Times news website editor Lindsay Tuffin said Tasmanians wanted Bryant excised from memory. "There is no doubt that they do not want to even ponder it," he said. "They just wish he never existed." Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Bryant's first victims were shot at a guesthouse not far from the remains of the Port Arthur convict settlement The feeling is so strong that visitors to the Port Arthur Historic Site are usually urged not to ask questions about the massacre. "Rather than ask a guide, please read the plaque at the Memorial Garden or pick up a brochure at the Visitor Centre," an instruction reads. Hobart Mercury editor Matt Deighton said local media approached the topic in a completely different way to mainland publications. "It's as sensitive an issue as I've experienced in 26 years of journalism," he said. Image copyright Hobart Mercury Image caption Just days after the Port Arthur massacre occurred, the Hobart Mercury newspaper was already focusing on stories of renewal "Our coverage will be subtle and respectful, focusing on the anniversary and how the community has tried, at varying levels of success, to move on." Thursday's ceremony may be unsettling for those who would rather forget the senseless violence in 1996. But Stephen Large from the Port Arthur Historic Site is hopeful that it will be a positive experience for victims and the community. "There are some people coming who we know haven't been back to the site for 20 years so it will be particularly poignant for them and we hope it's worthwhile for them," Mr Large said.
Chapter 1 "Eddy, wait up!" It had been a couple of days, and Eddy still didn't talk to him. Double D knew that he took the forced Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation hard, but it was all a joke among friends. Why, Eddy himself had forcefully kissed Double D back in the summer just to hide the knowledge of his middle name. "I'm not talking to you, Sockhead!" "Come now, Eddy! It's been 2 days since the incident. Surely you understand Ed's performance of a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was done with good intentions at heart!" "Whales need air to breathe or they drown, Double D!" said Ed, who was oblivious to everything as always. "What? You could've at least stopped him instead of giving him directions! How can you be so cruel!" retorted the shorter Ed. "Now, now, let's not forget the times in which your schemes inflict harm upon us for your own gain…" Double D kindly scolded his friend. "Aarrgh! Whatever…" yelled Eddy, unable to counterattack. At least now he was talking to his brainy friend. "It's all this stupid Valentine's day fault." Eddy concluded, then closed his locker to head for class. "Eddy, why must you go and blame such a glorious celebration?" said Double D as he followed Eddy. With those words, Eddy stopped in his tracks. It didn't take much longer for him to process the information. "You're right, it wasn't the Valentine's fault… it was yours! If you hadn't gone and fallen head over heels over a Kanker-and over that beaver tooth no less- none of this would've happened!" Double D knew who Eddy was referring to and, while he shared the same aversion his best friends had for the three sisters, he couldn't help but to come out in her defense out of the goodness of his heart. "Please, Eddy. It is not nice of you to express yourself in such a way about May Kanker." Said Double D as they entered their first period class. The bell ring was due to sound in a couple of minutes. Still, about half the students hadn't shown up yet. Nazz sat next to the window, reading a cosmetics magazine. Kevin sat next to her, trying to impress her about a certain feat he pulled with his bike, but she was none the wiser. Rolf was pestering and intimidating some random classmates over the atrocity that was the English language, seating by the other end of the classroom. Ed, Double D and Eddy sat down by the center on the first row, as that was the only place Double D wanted to sit down on to take better advantage of the lectures. "Wow. Are you serious, Double D? You're protecting her?! So, you like her!" "I do not, Eddy. I just cannot help but attempt to see the good in people, is all. Your calling of names towards her persona was simply uncalled for, nothing else." Double D defended himself. "Oh really, then why is it you kept that piece of paper she gave you huh?" said Eddy, referring to the card May gave to him while they were in trance. Of all the people Double D had to fall for, Eddy could not possibly stomach the fact that it was a stupid Kanker, even under special circumstances. "You don't think I haven't noticed, do you?" "…That has nothing to do with me liking her. I wanted to keep her card as a memento of the occasion. You must admit, it was rather cute of her to give me such a love note, it's something I have never received from someone of the opposite sex, and—" This time, Eddy laughed out loud, interrupting Double D's soliloquy. "Mwa ha ha! You should listen to yourself, Sockhead!" But then, as suddenly as his laughter escaped his throat, his face became as serious as the situation demanded. "You're going soft on me, that girl's got a hold on you." The bell rang almost after Eddy finished talking. Some students started to head into the classroom. "I am not being controlled at all, Eddy", said Double D, a little annoyed. "And could you please cease with the teasing? I've already told you I appreciate the gesture, I don't like her in any way." When it came to make others feel small, nothing escaped the sight of the short con artist. "That so? Why're you getting mad then? Looks to me you wanted to spend a little more time brainwashed!" "I didn't. It really doesn't matter to me—" "Then why are you getting mad? I've teased you about Sarah before, but you never got defensive before." Double D stuttered a bit before replying. "That's because-because Sarah's way younger than me, nothing will ever happen." Eddy decided to tangle Double D some more. "So you're saying that because May is older there could be a chance between you and her? Ed, get a load of this!" Eddy elbowed the big oaf sitting next to him, his mind wandering over a movie he saw the day before. "Double D wants to move in on your woman!" "No Kanker for Ed, Eddy. I'm too young to die!" said Ed, more afraid for his own well-being at that moment. Double D was starting to anger. No amount of teasing was worth raising false accusations on him. "I'm. not. moving in on anyone, Eddy…" "Whoa, chill dude! You wanna be with her that badly I won't get in the—" "I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH MAY KANKER, I NEVER EVEN LIKED HER!" That was the last straw. Double D became so furious that he spilled his emotions in the form of a scream. At last, he thought, I have shut Eddy up. Unfortunately for him, his sudden raising of voice affected more than just his best friend. Ed stared dopily at him. Rolf and his friends stopped their conversation to look at what caused the commotion. Kevin made a face of disgust as he looked at Double Dork. Nazz stared at Double D wide eyed. But she was not the only one wide-eyed. Eddy's smugness disappeared as soon as he put his eyes on the door and was replaced by worry and fear. As if summoned, the Kankers stood towards the entrance. They were walking in right at the moment Double D decided to speak his mind. If Lee's eyes were not covered, she could have been seen raising and eyebrow. Marie only huffed, still annoyed at the memory of her dumb-as-a-brick sister stealing her man. May, unlike her sisters, did not react indifferently. Her eyes were open wide, but she had no words to say. Her eyes met those of Double D. Sockhead couldn't help but stare back. May Kanker heard him say his mind. She heard him express his dislike for her. He expressed his dislike for her right in front of her! As if awaiting punishment, the three guys flinched and brought their arms to their respective faces. Yet, as if nothing had happened, the three bullies most feared by the cul de sac passed the Eds by, not even saying anything to them. Eddy sighed in relief, and whispered to Double D "Your big mouth almost got us killed, Sockhead! See what I tell you? Kankers are nothing but trouble." While Eddy's initial plan was to tease and keep teasing Double D about May to get him to express his dislike for the Kankers, it backfired. Double D didn't get mad enough to the point of discarding May's letter. Now, the only thing he thought he would get out of talking about the sisters would be black eyes and disgusting kisses. "You gotta get rid of that poorly drawn paper before something bad happens, you hear me?" Eddy whispered again, but Double D barely listened. His mind was now a mix of emotions, from fear to guilt. He couldn't understand why May stared at him so surprised.
WASHINGTON — Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed his meeting with President Trump in a press conference shortly after they spoke on Wednesday. Lavrov told reporters at the Russian Embassy that he did not talk with Trump about the accusations Moscow meddled in last year’s U.S. presidential election. He also praised the Trump administration’s “businesslike” approach to Russia, in contrast to what he described as the more ideological position of former President Barack Obama. Lavrov expressed optimism that the Trump administration and Russia can “contribute jointly to the settlement of the most urgent issues in international affairs,” including the war in Syria. U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia of obtaining and publicizing (by way of Wikileaks) hacked emails from Democrats to hurt Trump’s rival Hillary Clinton. Trump has called the accusations a “total hoax.” Yahoo News asked Lavrov whether Trump assured him that he does not believe the intelligence community’s belief that Russia intervened in the presidential race. Lavrov, who spoke through a translator, laughed and explained why he didn’t talk about the issue with Trump. “We seem to be all grownups. I never thought that I would have to answer such questions, particularly here in the U.S., taking into account your highly developed democratic political system,” Lavrov said, adding, “President Trump publicly stated on a number of occasions what he thinks about accusations and allegations regarding Russia’s meddling into your domestic affairs, and that is why there is no need for him to tell us anything or to give us assurance behind closed doors.” Lavrov, who called the allegations “absurd” and “false news,” went on to argue there is insufficient evidence to prove Russia worked to sway the outcome of the election. “There is not a single fact. There is no compelling evidence given to anyone regarding Russia’s intervention, and that’s it,” he said. The press conference took place in a small auditorium, opulently decorated with chandeliers and fabric-covered walls, inside Russia’s large embassy campus. Reporters heard an English translation of Lavrov’s remarks on headphones at each of the seats, which before the conference began played a soundtrack of pop hits, including the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” The vibrations were less welcoming once Lavrov took his seat at a table on the stage and curtly admonished photographers who crowded in to snap pictures. “Not very polite,” Lavrov said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrives for a news conference at the Russian Embassy in Washington, May 10, 2017. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP) More Lavrov came to the press conference straight from the White House, where he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and met with President Trump in the Oval Office. The Russian diplomat is visiting the United States to attend the Arctic Council meeting in Alaska. During his meeting with Tillerson, Lavrov mocked reporters who asked him about Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, which was announced on Tuesday evening. “Was he fired?” Lavrov asked. “You’re kidding! You’re kidding!” Comey’s removal has generated criticism since the FBI is investigating contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian officials. At the press conference after Lavrov left the White House, Yahoo News asked the Russian foreign minister if he was happy to see Comey go (the FBI was one of the agencies that concluded Moscow intervened in the election and the bureau has continued to probe the question). Lavrov suggested it is a routine matter for officials to be removed from their posts. “This is a question that has nothing to do with my authority,” Lavrov said of Comey. “I can give you lots of examples when, in Russia, in France, in Great Britain, people are appointed, then dismissed. That is your internal issue.” President Obama levied sanctions against Russia in December as a response to what the U.S. intelligence community concluded was Moscow’s meddling in the presidential race. These sanctions included Russian diplomats being ordered to leave the country and the seizure of some diplomatic facilities. Lavrov said he did not discuss these sanctions at the White House, though he described the issue of Russia’s “diplomatic property” as a “priority” and said he is confident Trump views the sanctions as “illegal.”
In January, the Federal Reserve released its latest survey on the current state of the U.S. banking system. The survey Ã¢â‚¬â€œ titled Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices Ã¢â‚¬â€œ contains a review of bank lending practices for the previous three months. The survey is based on input from 53 domestic banks and 23 U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks. By reviewing this document, it is possible to review how effective the injection of billions of dollars has been with regards to convincing the commercial banks to free up credit. To read the complete survey results, go to the federal reserve website and search for “Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey”. Commercial Real Estate Lending According to the survey, about 80 percent of the domestic banks questioned reveal that during the survey period, they have tightened their lending standards for commercial real estate (CRE) Ã¢â‚¬â€œ this is down slightly from the 85 percent that claimed to have tightened requirements for the three-month survey released in October of 2008. At the same time, commercial lenders report that demand for CRE loans weakened by about 55 percent. In addition, the survey also found that 95 percent of domestic banks surveyed increased loan-rate spreads compared to foreign banks reporting a 75 percent increase in loan-rate spreads. Residential and Household Lending One of the key areas for household lending remains the need for mortgages and 45 percent of the institutions reported a tightening of lending standards compared to nearly 70 percent for the previous period. This is a notable decrease but also noteworthy is the 10 percent overall drop in demand for residential mortgages. In addition, only four banks continued to offer subprime mortgages during the survey period. The availability of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) appears to have increased slightly with over 60 percent of domestic lenders reporting they have tightened lending standards. This is down from the 75 percent reported in the previous survey but still indicates an overall lack of credit available for consumer lines of credit within the banking system for many consumers. Finally, nearly half of the banks surveyed have raised the minimum credit scores required to obtain consumer loans and credit cards. This is in conjunction with reduced credit limits as 45 percent of the institutions claim they have lowered the credit limits on both existing credit card holders as well as new credit card accounts. So, what conclusions can we draw from this? Overall, the survey shows that there has been Ã¢â‚¬â€œ at best Ã¢â‚¬â€œ a slight increase in the availability of credit for some types of corporate and consumer loans. Given that the commercial banks have received several hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars already and will soon receive even more, many are questioning if the banks are doing enough to ease the credit crunch. President Obama and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner have made it clear that they expect the banks to make more money available for lending and the possibility of nationalizing the banking system Ã¢â‚¬â€œ at least in the short-term Ã¢â‚¬â€œ may yet be one option the Obama administration employs to meet this goal. In fairness, this survey contains information for the final quarter of 2008 only but the next survey expected for the end of April will coincide with the release of another $US 2 trillion by the Treasury Department. You can bet that Obama and Geithner will be paying close attention to the results of this survey Ã¢â‚¬â€œ a fact that will not be lost on the banks. This article is for general information purposes only. It is not investment advice or a solution to buy or sell securities. Opinions are the authors; not necessarily that of OANDA Corporation or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers or directors. Leveraged trading is high risk and not suitable for all. You could lose all of your deposited funds.
20 Facts You Should Know About Norway Here’s a list of twenty significant facts you should know about Norway: 20. Norway is a Scandinavian country located in Northern Europe. It has a total area of 385,178 square kilometres, making it the 61st largest state in the world. Outside of Scandinavia proper, Norway also has overseas territorial possessions (similar to the British crown dependencies, thus not officially part of the Kingdom of Norway) such as the Svalbard Islands (in the Arctic Ocean), Jan Mayen (a volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean) as well as Bouvet and Peter I (both being uninhabited islands that are located close to Antarctica). Furthermore, the country also claims a strip of land in Antarctica known as the Queen Maud territory. Previously, both the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland were constituent parts of the Kingdom of Norway until the beginning of the 19th century when they were ceded to Denmark through the Treaty of Kiel (after the end of the Napoleonic Wars) in 1814. 19. The city of Tromsø is the largest populated human settlement in northern Norway and the third largest one north of the Arctic circle, being surpassed only by Murmansk (located in the Kola peninsula) and Norilsk (located in northern Siberia), both in Russia. According to the 2012 Norwegian census, there are 72,066 permanent residents living in the city. There are more than 100 different ethnicities that live there together, making it a very diverse cultural melting pot. The surrounding area is known from Ancient times to have been inhabited by the Sámis. Tromsø is also reputed for the local football club Tromsø IL. 18. Oslo, the capital of Norway, is the fastest growing major city in Europe according to demographic data. It is also a popular destination for modern immigrants. As a matter of fact, roughly 25% of the city’s population is composed of immigrants to this date. 17. In 2008, a penguin received Norwegian knighthood. 16. In Norway, each prisoner has a personal computer. Moreover, prisoners are also granted Internet access in their cells. 15. In Norway there are several Viking reenactment festivals that are held each year. One of the events of this kind is the Lofotr Viking Festival. 14. A village called ‘Hell’ is located in the central part of the country. Very much unlike the meaning in English, ‘hell’ in Norwegian means ‘luck’ or ‘success’ (depending on the context in which it is used). 13. During the early Middle Ages, the Norwegian Vikings were famous explorers. Along with their well prepared longships and thanks to their genuine seafaring talent, they managed to discover and subsequently settle the Faroe Islands Greenland , and even Newfoundland in Canada . They set foot on American soil long before Columbus and also founded significant settlements in Ireland during the Viking Age that will grow to be present-day day Dublin, Cork, or Limerick. 12. In 2017, Norway will be the first country in the world to shut down FM radio and go digital instead. Norway plans to switch to DAB (which stands for ‘Digital Audio Broadcasting’), since FM is eight times more expensive. 11. Salmon sushi was introduced to Japan during the 1980s by Norway. 10. The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo preserves a near-intact Viking Age longboat. The Viking longboat was excavated from the largest known Norse burial mound, on the site of the Oseberg farm, in the proximity of the Tønsberg municipality pertaining to the Vestfold county, south-eastern Norway. 9. Norway is a unitary constitutional monarchy, with the power equally divided between the Norwegian Parliament, the King and last but not least, the Supreme Court (according to the 1814 Norwegian constitution). 8. As of 2014, the population of Norway is 5.1 million. Ethnically, Norwegians account for as much as 86% of the total population, whereas the remainder is composed by minority groups (such as the Sami in Lapland which make up to 1.3%) or modern immigrants. 7. Thanks to its geographic location, Norway has access to several main bodies of water from Northern European, namely the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean. 6. The only near intact Viking Age helmet was discovered in Norway. The discovery took place during World War II, specifically in 1943, when it was excavated on the site of a farm called Gjermundbu, in the proximity of the village of Haugsbygd pertaining to the Ringerike municipality in Buskerud county (south-eastern Norway). 5. Norway’s flag is a Dannebrog-based one (similar to that of Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Åland Islands, Orkneys or Shetlands). It was designed by Fredrik Meltzer and was officially adopted in 1821. From the point of view of its design, the flag is red with an indigo blue cross outlined in white that extends to the edges of the flag. Its colours evoke the country’s history, namely its unions with both Denmark (symbolized by the red and white colours) and Sweden (symbolized by the blue colour). 4. The country’s official language is Norwegian, a North Germanic language derived from Old Norse that is spoken by roughly 5 million people worldwide. The Norwegian language has two official written forms: Norwegian Bokmål (that could be literarily translated as ‘book tongue’) which is the standardized version preferred by the majority of the Norwegians, and Norwegian Nynorsk (or ‘Neo-Norwegian’ in translation), that is preferred by a small percent of the Norwegians. There are two additional unofficial written forms of Norwegian, specifically Høgnorsk (‘High Norwegian’, similar to the usage of High German) and Riksmål (‘National language’, a conservative standard of the Norwegian language in regards of spelling and orthography). 3. For the periods 2001-2006 and 2009-2014, Norway had the highest Human Development Index in the world. 2. Economically, Norway is the second nation in the world regarding monetary value. Additionally, the country is the fifth-largest exporter of oil and the third-largest exporter of gas worldwide. In spite of the predominant mountainous landscape, agriculture had gradually developed into a very significant economic sector. 1. Norway is a reputed touristic attraction for its marvelous landscapes. Among the well known natural wonders of Norway is the fjord (a narrow long inlet formed after glacial erosion). It is estimated that Norway is home to approximately 1,190 fjords, both in Scandinavia proper and in the Svalbard archipelago.
Anti-hacker defenses have long focused mainly on protecting personal computers and servers in homes and offices. However, as microchips grow smaller and more powerful, new targets for hackers are becoming widespread—embedded computers such as the electronics handling car engines, brakes and door locks; the routers that form the Internet's backbone; the machines running power plants, rail lines and prison cell doors; and even implantable medical devices such as defibrillators and insulin pumps. Many of these embedded devices can now link with other computers, putting them equally at risk to intruders. Indeed, in October, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. faced the threat of a "cyber Pearl Harbor" if it failed to adequately protect these systems, echoing a warning CIA Director John Deutsch gave to Congress in 1996 about an electronic Pearl Harbor (pdf). Now computer scientists are devising guardians they call symbiotes that could run on embedded computers regardless of the underlying operating systems. In doing so, they may not only help protect the critical infrastructure of nations and corporations but reveal that warfare against these devices may have been going on unseen for years, researchers say. The problem is worse than you might think. Already research has shown that a vast number of machines lie completely open to attack. For instance, in 2011, after scanning large sections of the Internet, computer scientists Ang Cui and Sal Stolfo at Columbia University identified more than 1.4 million publicly accessible embedded computers in 144 countries that still had factory default passwords that would give anyone with online access total control over the machines. These devices, which make up about one in five of the embedded computers they found (pdf), included routers, video-conferencing units, cable TV boxes and firewalls used to defend computer networks. These vulnerabilities pose a host of dangers. In 2011 Cui and Stolfo revealed they could hack into printers (pdf) made by Hewlett–Packard with infected documents or by connecting to them online, allowing them to spy on everything printed with those machines and to break into every computer linked to the printers. (HP has since fixed this vulnerability.) Cui also explains it could be easy to develop malicious software or malware that would allow hackers to shut down infected routers just by pinging them an innocuous data packet. Attacks against embedded system aren't the kind "where criminals are trying to get credit card data," Cui says. "They're more stealthy. More sophisticated. This is corporate espionage–level stuff. Cyber war–level stuff. The people looking to target these systems aren't out to make a big splash, but might aim to take down a country's critical infrastructure." One problem researchers face in designing safeguards for these vulnerabilities is the incredible diversity found in the programs running embedded computers. For instance, Cui notes that routers made only by Cisco possess about 300,000 different firmware images—the operating systems of embedded computers and their accompanying programs. Now Cui and his colleagues have developed anti-malware systems they say can work on swathes of embedded computers regardless of what systems they run. "Ang has identified a serious problem that hasn't been thought about seriously and has provided concrete solutions to try to solve this problem," says security researcher Charlie Miller at Twitter, a former analyst for the National Security Agency well known for publicly revealing vulnerabilities in Apple products such as the iPhone and MacBook Air. Instead of running within an embedded computer's firmware image, these defenses run outside it, directly on the computer's central processing unit (CPU). A symbiote (pdf)—continuing the biological analogy suggested by computer viruses—continuously scans a large number of random chunks of the firmware image's code to check for anomalies that might suggest an intrusion has occurred. "It took a lot of engineering to make sure the symbiote doesn't crash the CPU by taking too much of its processing power," Cui says. The fact that a symbiote runs independently of the programs it protects means a symbiote designed for one type of CPU—say, ARM, found in many smart phones, or MIPS, found in many routers—can work on any operating system that might run on those CPUs. "It doesn't need to know how the programs it monitors work, only whether they have been modified," Cui says. They plan to deliver a prototype for U.S. government testing by the end of 2012 and to commercialize their work with a company they founded, Red Balloon Security. Whereas Stolfo and Cui's approach is "very promising," says Scott Borg, director of the nonprofit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, he cautions it remains difficult to tell how readily intruders might circumvent these defenses. For instance, there might be ways to prevent the symbiotes from recognizing destructive programs as malware. "Too many destructive acts can be made to look like normal acts from the vantage point of a computer," Borg says. "A cyber-security measure needs to be kicked around for awhile, conceptually and physically, before it is possible to say with any confidence how effective it will be." Marc Dacier, a senior director at Symantec Research Labs, called the symbiote "a very beautiful piece of work," but notes a major obstacle it faces is getting companies to actually upgrade all their devices with it. The Pentagon is now pushing for legislation that would require baseline cyber-security standards for critical private sector infrastructure, such as power plants, water treatment centers and gas pipelines. Without such legislation, said Panetta in his October speech, "we are and we will be vulnerable." These symbiotes may not only serve as immune systems for their devices, but also help reveal the potentially huge ecosystem of malware in embedded computers that no one had any way of noticing until now. "We'd be surprised if these vulnerabilities weren't already exploited in the wild for years and years," Cui says. "We could shed light on an untold chapter of the history of Internet warfare."
In modern politics, the “extremists” are usually those labeling others with that word A key Democratic Party tactic being used against incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Coffman (R.-Colo.) is to brand him an “extremist.” So what else is new? Politics is fully of incongruities, and the use of the term “extremist” by the Left to tar more conservative opponents is one of the richest. For example, the Left’s current political leader, President Obama, says he wants to “fundamentally transform[] the United States of America”—that is, to change America fundamentally or radically. By definition, that makes Obama and his supporters “extremists,” and it renders Coffman who opposes such radical change, a “moderate.” As far as I can tell, the first widespread use of the “extremist” label was in the 1964 presidential election campaign, when liberals so tagged Senator Barry Goldwater. Yet Goldwater’s Senate voting record was well within the American mainstream. His domestic platform rested largely on following the Constitution, and his foreign policy was drawn from traditional principles later used effectively by President Reagan. By contrast, his opponent, Lyndon Johnson, was advocating extreme positions: massive expansions in the role of the government in American life and untested foreign policy principles. But Johnson, the extremist, managed to claim the mantle as a moderate and to tag Goldwater, the moderate, as an extremist! America’s rise from 13 tiny coastal states to the world’s greatest nation occurred over the period from ratification of the Constitution in 1788-89 until about 1930—a period of about 140 years. During this period, America was a magnet for people from around the world and the center of global innovation. Annual economic growth far exceeded the record of subsequent years. During this period, the quality and length of life improved hugely for the overwhelming majority of Americans, even those in the lowest classes. There were two central reasons for American success—two elements key to the American experience: * A mostly-shared cultural heritage: dominant patterns of religion, work, ideals, and education; and * Freedom: very limited government constrained by state and federal constitutions. During this period, total state-local peacetime government spending generally was less than 8% of GDP—less than 1/5 of what it is now. Other factors sometimes cited as crucial to American success—vast territories, natural resources, and public education—were helpful, but not central. Public education was not universal until late in the 19th century. Nations like Russia, China, and Brazil also had vast territories, frontiers, and resources, but were nowhere near as successful. And the other outstanding success story of the era, Great Britain, was small and resource-poor, but did share the American devotion to freedom and the western cultural heritage. The modern “progressive” project has centered on changing the key factors of cultural and freedom: attacking the culture, undermining constitutional restraints on government, and expanding the public sector until it dominates American life. A group seeks to topple the central pillars of a system is by definition “extremist,” no matter what they call their opponents. Be aware that how politicos use the epithet “extremist” has nothing to do with substantive reality and a lot to do with electoral reality. Polls and focus groups tell us it’s an effective word for smearing your opponent, especially among certain demographic groups of voters. That’s why it is used so often, and, unfortunately, without much regard for facts.
The manhunt for Univision and Netflix’s “El Chapo” is over: Marco de la O will step into the lead role of infamous drug lord and prison escapee Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán for the upcoming original series about Guzmán. “El Chapo” will premiere in the U.S. on Univision on April 23; the network has also released a teaser, which you can watch above. Based on the life story of one of the world’s most notorious criminals, the series will cover the three-decade span of El Chapo’s drug trafficking career, from 1985, when he was a low level member of the Guadalajara Cartel, to his ultimate downfall. Rounding out the cast are Humberto Busto as Attorney Conrado Sol, a.k.a. “Don Sol” (an important political party figure); Juan Carlos Olivas as El Güero (Joaquín’s main partner); Alejandro Aguilar as Toño (Joaquín’s main assassin); Tete Espinoza as Chío (Joaquín’s lover); Rodrigo Abed as Amado (Mexican capo); Luis Rábago as General Blanco (National Security Advisor); Cristina Michaus as Doña Esperanza (Joaquín’s mother); Valentina Acosta as Alejandra (Joaquín’s first wife); and Juliette Pardau as Graciela (Joaquín’s second wife). “El Chapo” is created by Silvana Aguirre Zegarra and produced by Daniel Posada. The first season is directed by Jose Manuel Cravioto and Ernesto Contreras. The series, which is currently in production, will air in three separate cycles. The series marks the first co-production between Univision Communication’s Story House Entertainment and Netflix; episodes will air in the U.S. first on Univision before being made available on Netflix, with Netflix holding the first-run rights for the rest of the world.
UN resolution condemns third nuclear test 'in the strongest possible terms' and warns the North against further provocations The United Nations security council has voted unanimously to punish North Korea for last month's nuclear test with a toughened sanctions regime, hours after Pyongyang threatened to unleash a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. Secretary general Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, said the resolution "sent an unequivocal message to [the North] that the international community will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons". The decision by the 15-member council followed lengthy negotiations between the United States and China, the North's main ally. Measures range from tightened financial restrictions to cargo inspections and an explicit ban on exports of yachts and racing cars to the North, but experts say the real issue is enforcement. North Korea immediately rounded on the UN with more threats, saying it would cancel a non-aggression pact with the South and end other bilateral measures such as a hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul. China's UN ambassador Li Baodong said Beijing, Pyongyang's main trading partner, wanted to see "full implementation" of the resolution. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told reporters that the measures would "bite hard". She added: "North Korea will achieve nothing by continued threats and provocations." A foreign ministry spokesman in Pyongyang had threatened to launch "pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the headquarters of the aggressors" because Washington was pushing to start a nuclear war against it, in a statement hours before the UN vote. Experts do not believe the North has managed to produce a warhead small enough to be mounted on a missile that could reach the US. They also pointed out that the original Korean language version referred to "invaders" rather than merely the "aggressors" of the English translation. Jennifer Lind, associate professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, said that while the statement was disturbing, "North Korea has a long history of bluster and issuing threats that of course it does not carry out, [such as] its long term threats of turning Seoul into a sea of fire." Earlier this week the North threatened to cancel the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War. Thursday's resolution condemns the North's third nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms" as a flagrant breach of previous resolutions, which bar it from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and importing or exporting material for the programmes. It aims to hinder those programmes but also targets the ruling elite. A ban on luxury exports was introduced in 2006, but countries could decide what fell under that rubric; this time, specific items are identified. The resolution warns the North against further provocations and demands its return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But it also stresses the council's commitment "to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution" and urges a resumption of six-party talks. All countries are required to freeze financial transactions or services that could contribute to the North's nuclear or missile programmes. Public financial support for trade deals that could assist the programmes is outlawed. Countries must expel agents working for blacklisted companies from the North. They must inspect aircraft or vessels with suspect cargo and deny entry to those that refuse inspection. Hazel Smith, an expert on the North at Cranfield University, said the key question was how rigorously the US implemented financial sanctions, citing tough measures taken by Washington towards the end of the Bush administration. "They did have a major effect; they also paralysed diplomacy. But there is no diplomacy happening now," she said. Analysts suggest the immediate reaction of the North is likely to be further angry rhetoric and possibly another nuclear test, as Pyongyang hinted earlier. South Korean government sources cited by Seoul news agency Yonhap said on Wednesday that the North had imposed no-fly and no-sail zones off its coasts, apparently preparing for military drills. "North Korea will throw their usual histrionics about the resolution," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul in an interview prior to the latest threat. "Every time there's an escalation the risk of confrontation increases. But neither side wants anything to happen." At a Senate foreign relations committee hearing on North Korea, chairman Robert Menendez described the nuclear strike threat as "absurd and suicidal". Menendez, a Democrat, was holding the hearing as the UN security council voted for the resolution. He welcomed the new sanctions but said the US needed to do more to combine sanctions and military countermeasures with strong and realistic diplomacy aimed at North Korea and China. "There should be no doubt about our determination, willingness, and capability to neutralise and counter any threat that North Korea may present," Menendez said. "I do not think the regime in Pyongyang wants to commit suicide, but that, as they must surely know, would be the result of any attack on the United States." Glyn Davies, the State Department's special representative on North Korea, warned of "costly consequences" for the country. Its 12 February nuclear test, he said, represented "an even bolder threat to US national security, the stability of the region and the global non-proliferation regime". Davies told the committee the Pentagon was working with its counterparts in Japan and South Korea to ensure protection against an attack. The US would continue to look at unilateral sanctions against banks and other North Korean-linked bodies and seek to harmonise existing sanctions with other countries, he added. The US will not engage in negotiations unless there is a fundamental change in attitudes in North Korea. "The DPRK leadership must choose between provocation or peace, isolation or integration," Davies said.
My sister Kimberly Allison went missing Sept 1. Her husband Brent Bogseth was the last person who was seen with her that morning. After a few short days of her missing he filed for divorce. Her family notified the police within 24 hours of her missing. It was not like her not to call or have any contact with her sister and friends, which she did everyday. The police then went to Brent and Kim's home to talk to Brent, to see if he had heard from her. He then told the police that he had picked her up in the morning to take her to work, on the car ride there they began fighting the whole way, he then said that she got out of the car about a block away from her job, but never showed up to work. He also told the police that she abandoned their 18 month old son Gage. He said that was the last he seen of her. Within hours he had people bashing her all over social media. Him and his friends decided to post the story to reddit.com, which proceded to turn into a social media frenzy across the world. The day after she went missing mysterious posts were being posted via Kims phone on facebook. Her friends and family knew that wasn't her by the way the posts were being written. They then notified the police and brought this to their attention. When Brent was asked to hand over his cell phone to the police he refused. Almost a week later Kims phone and purse were found near Brent's home on his property. Two days later as the police were searching for her body, Brent fled to Chicago with his 18 month old son Gage. My sisters body was found on Sept 9th about a block and a half away from their home in the woods. She was murdered by blunt force trauma to the head. A construction hammer was found in Brent's truck. Brent was arrested in Chicago on a open warrant for being the main suspect for his wifes murder. He is now in Van Buren County Police custody, facing Homicide Open Murder charges. Kim's family is trying to raise money for custody of Gage. The money will also go to any court fees, attorney's, her cremation, anything Gage needs and any other legal issues we may come across. Any donation would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for allowing me to share my story with you. Kimberly was not only a mother, but a daughter, a sister and a friend to many. She will be greatly missed.
How Lobbyists Turned Big US Education Reform Bill Into The 'No Copyright Propaganda Left Behind' Act from the yeah,-that'll-work dept You may have heard that, in early December, amid great fanfare, President Obama replaced the terrible No Child Left Behind law and replaced it with the "Every Student Succeeds Act" which, among other things, gave more power to the states when it came to educational standards, moving them away from the federal government. There's actually a lot of good things in ESSA (mainly getting away from the really horrible parts of NCLB), but there were plenty of little "gifts" to various lobbyists. And, apparently, that includes Hollywood's lobbyists.Honestly, I wouldn't have ever spotted this if the MPAA front-group Creative Future hadn't blasted out a "thank Congress for ESSA" campaign page, which talked about the important "copyright education" parts included in ESSA. Hollywood lobbyists are somewhat famous for having their fingers in, so is it really a surprise that they got some bogus propaganda buried in a childhood education bill? But, indeed, search through ESSA and you'll find ridiculous copyright propaganda requirements for no reason other than because the MPAA lobbied heavily on it So what did the MPAA lobbying get? Well, basically it says that anywhere where the bill talks about providing better training and understanding of, itmust include some one-sided propaganda about copyright law. Really. Over and over again you see it:If you can't read those, basically, each one says that any time there's a mention of integrating technology or getting better technology training, the law includes a silly misleading parenthetical "(including education about the harm of copyright piracy)." Of course, it's hard to see what that has to do with education standards, or better educating people about the role of technology.But, most importantly, it's the latest in a long and increasingly sad and desperate attempt by Hollywood to inject copyright propaganda into public schools -- an effort that, even when it's been successful tends to result in kids mocking the hamfisted attempts that not only appear totally out of touch with reality, but tend to actually make students respect copyright. Trying to jam in one-sided propaganda that ignores things like fair use, or the abuses of the copyright system, is so blatantly and obviously ridiculous to kids these days that this will be laughed away as propaganda, as with each of their previous "educational" campaigns. Filed Under: copyright, copyright propaganda, education, essa, no child left behind, president obama Companies: mpaa
So, you’ve recently decided to make the switch to a vegan lifestyle and you are having an ethical dilemma about where to work. Should you get a full vegan job with a vegan company or work at a non-vegan job which may conflict with your values from time to time? Both of these options have their pros and cons. I will walk through each possibility and tell you a little about my personal experience with both! Vegan Jobs Pros Getting a vegan job is probably one of the most satisfying things in the world. Imagine being able to walk into a workplace that corresponds to your set of morals and values each day! In a world that is constantly against and mistreating your values, this is like a safe haven. You are likely to feel at peace with yourself each time you walk through the doors to work. The people you work with will probably be on the same page as you, and you will vibe with them well. Furthermore, this setting will be welcoming and accepting towards you. If you are against working for someone else, you could start your own vegan related business (the possibilities are endless!). It will be hard work in the beginning, but this will pay off eventually and be satisfying beyond belief! Cons There are some cons to getting vegan job (I know, hard to believe right?). First of all, vegan jobs can be difficult to find. If you do not live in a major city it may be difficult to find a vegan place that is hiring. Going off of this, it may be hard to find a job that will support you financially in the long run. Many vegan places are small businesses or restaurants, and if you are not a head chef or the owner of the business it may be difficult to support yourself solely on this pay. Finally, because you are a vegan working in a vegan environment, you will not interact with as many non-vegans. This greatly reduces the number of people that you can influence and talk to into becoming vegan themselves! Non-Vegan Jobs Pros Obviously, the biggest pro of a non-vegan job is that there are so many more options and chances of finding a job. The options are almost endless. In addition, working in a non-vegan place teaches you to be able to be a functional vegan in society. I know society sometimes sucks, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t be there. People tend to live their lives differently, and vegan or not, we need to accept this. With this in mind, by working at a non-vegan job, you will be spreading the vegan message. Some people have heard of veganism but have no idea what it actually is. By being a vegan in a predominately non-vegan establishment, you will spread the message of veganism through yourself. If you are a positive, healthy, upbeat individual, you will most likely attract someone to look into the lifestyle themselves, which is so awesome and rewarding! Cons Now onto the cons of a non-vegan job. First, people you work with/customers you interact with probably won’t be as accepting. This will all boil down to the type of person you are. If you can stand being different and have a strong sense of yourself, you will be fine in this situation. However, if people’s thoughts of your lifestyle take a toll on your mental health then this is not a good environment for you to be in! Next, you will probably encounter tasks that directly conflict with your morals and lifestyle choices. This comes down to your own thoughts on whether or not this is okay or not for you. Finally, if working at a restaurant or food establishment, you will have less options when it comes to food. Again, all a personal choice in whether you would be able to cope with this. My Experience With Vegan Jobs and Non-Vegan Jobs For most of my life I have worked in the restaurant business as a waitress. For about the first 4 years that I did this I was working in non-vegan restaurants. It wasn’t the most enjoyable experience having to serve people steaks, burgers, pizza, and mozzarella sticks, but it made me a good sum of money each night. My managers were very accommodating towards me as well, and would even make me vegan meals during my breaks which was awesome! I think the most positive thing that came out of working in non-vegan restaurants was that I got many questions about my vegan lifestyle from coworkers and customers. I was able to share parts of my lifestyle choices with these people, and some of them even began to eat more vegan meals! So the ability for me to influence others was definitely worthwhile :). This past summer, I was given the opportunity to work at a newly established smoothie/juice bar near my apartment in Erie, Pennsylvania. While here, I made smoothies and juices from only whole fruits and vegetables. They also sold grab and go food and hot brunch specials, which a majority was vegan. I have to say that this was probably the most enjoyable job I had ever worked at. It aligned with my values and morals, and I was able to eat almost anything that was sold here! Overall, I would say that I found the most enjoyment and fulfillment from being employed in a vegan establishment. I felt excited to work and I never felt like I was being hypocritical by contributing to something that I didn’t believe in. However, it’s all a personal decision based on how you feel and can handle situations in this environment! Vegan Careers Choosing a career path as a vegan is a much harder task to do then just the black and white question of “should I work for a vegan business or not?”. If you choose to go to college, there are millions of career options to choose, and sometimes being vegan doesn’t even come into play. My best advice for someone looking to pursue a career that aligns with vegan values is this: 1. Act as if veganism wasn’t in part of your career equation. 2. Choose the career that you are most passionate about. 3. Tailor the way you carry out your career to align with your values, even if that is not the norm. For an example to go off of, I will give you insight into my career choice. I wanted to get involved in the medical field long before I ever changed to a vegan lifestyle. I chose to go to school to become a physician assistant about a year before I went vegan. You can imagine all of the moral issues I ran into when I decided to switch my lifestyle. I no longer knew if I wanted to become involved in the medical field because I felt as if no emphasis was placed on diet and lifestyle choices in this field. I felt as if the medical field was corrupt and that the only thing they did was prescribe medications to mask problems that arose from poor lifestyle choices. Which is about 99.9999% accurate. I have recently come to terms with this however. I have decided to embrace becoming a physician assistant and use my knowledge about lifestyle changes to guide my patients in the right direction. I am passionate about helping people with their health. I may not agree 100% with the medical systems ways, but I can tailor my medical practices to a holistic approach that aligns with my morals and values. So as you can see, it is not so hard to tailor a career choice that you are passionate about to align with your morals and values in life! Take this into consideration, and I wish you the very best of luck in choosing a job or career path! 🙂
Roles turned down by David Duchovny: David Duchovny was considered to play Ollie Powers. Actor who got the part: Matthew Modine Duchovny tried out for the role of Batman to replace Val Kilmer. Actor who got the part: George Clooney Duchovny was supposedly considered to play Batman. Actor who got the part: Christian Bale Tested for the role of Bruce Banner. David Duchovny was considered for the role of Bruce Banner. Actor who got the part: Edward Norton Duchovny was friends with Kevin Smith and had read the script for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After reading the script, Duchovny told Smith that he wanted to play the role of Cock-Knocker because he thought it was hysterical. However, reshoots on Evolution & filming the X-Files made it impossible for Duchovny to play the role. Actor who got the part: Mark Hamill Duchovny was reportedly considered for the part of Neo but opted to do X-Files: Fight the Future instead. Actor who got the part: Keanu Reeves David Duchovny auditioned for the role of Graham. Actor who got the part: James Spader
MAYWOOD, Ill. (Dec. 26, 2014) – Binge drinking in young, healthy adults significantly disrupts the immune system, according to a study led by a researcher now at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Depending on their weight, study participants drank four or five shots of vodka. Twenty minutes after reaching peak intoxication, their immune systems revved up. But when measured again, at two hours and five hours after peak intoxication, their immune systems had become less active than when sober. The study by Majid Afshar, MD, MSCR, and colleagues is published online ahead of print in Alcohol, an international, peer-reviewed journal. Binge drinking increases the risk of falls, burns, gunshot wounds, car accidents and other traumatic injuries. One-third of trauma patients have alcohol in their systems. In addition to increasing the risk of traumatic injuries, binge drinking impairs the body’s ability to recover from such injuries. Previous studies have found, for example, that binge drinking delays wound healing, increases blood loss and makes patients more prone to pneumonia and infections from catheters. Binge drinkers also are more likely to die from traumatic injuries. The study led by Dr. Afshar illustrates another potentially harmful effect of binge drinking. Drinkers generally understand how binge drinking alters behavior. “But there is less awareness of alcohol’s harmful effects in other areas, such as the immune system,” said Elizabeth Kovacs, PhD, a co-author of the study and director of Loyola’s Alcohol Research Program. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as drinking enough to reach or exceed a blood alcohol content of .08, the legal limit for driving. This typically occurs after four drinks for women or five drinks for men, consumed in two hours. One in six U.S. adults binge drinks about four times a month, and binge drinking is more common in young adults aged 18 to 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Afshar led the study while at the University of Maryland, where he completed a fellowship before joining Loyola. The study included eight women and seven men with a median age of 27. Each volunteer drank enough shots of vodka – generally four or five – to meet the definition of binge drinking. (A 1.5 oz. shot of vodka is the alcohol equivalent of a five-ounce glass of wine or 12-ounce can of beer.) Dr. Afshar and colleagues took blood samples at 20 minutes, two hours and five hours after peak intoxication because these are times when intoxicated patients typically arrive at trauma centers for treatment of alcohol-related injuries. The blood samples showed that 20 minutes after peak intoxication, there was increased immune system activity. There were higher levels of three types of white blood cells that are key components of the immune system: leukocytes, monocytes and natural killer cells. There also were increased levels of proteins called cytokines that signal the immune system to ramp up. Two hours and five hours after peak intoxication, researchers found the opposite effect: fewer circulating monocytes and natural killer cells and higher levels of different types of cytokines that signal the immune system to become less active. Dr. Afshar is planning a follow-up study of burn unit patients. He will compare patients who had alcohol in their system when they arrived with patients who were alcohol-free. He will measure immune system markers from each group, and compare their outcomes, including lung injury, organ failure and death. Dr. Afshar is a pulmonologist, critical care physician and epidemiologist. He is an assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and in the Department of Public Health Sciences of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Loyola’s nationally recognized Alcohol Research Program investigates such issues as how heavy drinking hinders the body's ability to recover from burns and trauma, how alcohol abuse damages bones, and whether teen binge drinking can increase the risk of mood disorders later in life. Dr. Afshar’s study is titled “Acute immunomodulatory effects of binge alcohol ingestion.” In addition to Drs. Afshar and Kovacs, co-authors are Stephanie Richards; Dean Mann, MD; Alan Cross, MD; Gordon Smith, MPH; Giora Netzer, MD; and Jeffrey Hasday, MD, all of the University of Maryland. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and University of Maryland.
It doesn't really feel like velvet, or really look like velvet. It's pretty subtle. I thought it was pretty easy to do, and I'm having fun petting my fuzzy nails. But I guess it looks a little bit gross. BuzzFeed Cultural Director Jamie Urso said it looked like "scraping your nails against something while they were still wet." "It looks like you put a thumbprint on your nail," Senior Editor Katie Notopoulos reasoned. BuzzFeed Shift Intern Jessica Testa put it this way: "I think it'd be enjoyable for a night out, but that's it." Even a few hours later, the fuzz has started to wear off considerably. Look, if you have a half hour to spare, $20 laying around, a space you don't mind getting a little messy, a fondness for fuzzy textures, and a desire to be on the cutting edge of manicure trends, well then by all means, go for it. Otherwise, you've been warned.
The Indian side is expected have a difficult time in the Asian Championship, as they have to play against more experienced opponents. A good performance by the Indian wheelchair basketball team will set a precedent for all other para-sport athletes in the country. (Photo: WBFI/ Facebook) Mumbai: The Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India (WBFI) is set to send its team for an international tournament for the first time, after having struggled for a few months to procure funds to cover the costs that participation in such big events entail. Deccan Chronicle had reported in November, that the WBFI were looking for financial help to send their team to Bangkok for the u-23 Asian qualifiers. Now, WBFI president Madhavi Latha has confirmed exclusively to this paper that the federation has been able to procure just enough funds to send its team for the tournament. “It was a very big challenge for us. Getting these funds was not so easy,” said Madhavi. “We struggled a lot. We raised some amount through crowdfunding, and then we also tried through our contacts. However, she also said that the WBFI has only been able to procure just enough funds to send its team to the u-23 Asian qualifiers, and that more would be required for the upliftment of the sport in the country. “We are sending a team (outside India) for the first time since we started this federation,” she said. “It is a great achievement, not only for our federation, but also for the entire country.” The Indian u-23 side, which is currently training at the Sathyabama University in Chennai, is set to leave for Bangkok later this month. India are set to kick off the six-nation tournament against Australia on January 29. The Indian side is expected have a difficult time in the Asian Championship, as they have to play against more experienced opponents like Iran, Thailand, Japan, and China. However, procuring the funds is not the end of WBFI’s problems. The federation is now waiting to get clearance from the airline to carry a large number of wheelchairs to Bangkok. “We could not purchase the tickets immediately, because we are waiting for approval to carry so many wheelchairs,” said Madhavi. “Because of this delay, the rate may go up again," she said, adding that a drastic increase in flight rates may result the WBFI not being able to afford the tickets. “We have so many wheelchairs. We need to take both the sports wheelchairs and the other wheelchairs as well, which will be for regular use.” The Indian Paralympians (4) procured double the amount of medals than the Olympics athletes (2) in Rio last year. However, the Indian para-team sports still does not have proper representation in international tournaments. “In Paralympics, there is no representation in team games from India. It is only in individual games, like athletics or swimming,” Madhavi had told this paper in an earlier interview. While the WBFI is directly affiliated to the Paralympics Committee of India (PCI), any government funding they get has to come from the Sports Authority of India. (SAI). PCI has still pitched the case of the para-cagers to the government. While Madhavi remained hopeful about receiving more help from the government, she revealed that the federation is yet to receive word from SAI. “The PCI discussed our issue with SAI in their previous meeting. We are now waiting for their response,” she said. This may be a small step for Indian wheelchair basketball, but a good performance could put the country on the international map, setting a precedent for not only the future para-cagers, but also for the future para-team sports athletes from the nation.
In this guest post from tech enthusiast Anthony Eales, he explores the latest in TV series tracking services. In this age of must watch TV keeping up which episode of a TV show you are up to can be a challenge. With Netflix, Stan, Presto, Foxtel and the Free To Air channels all on different episodes of your favourite TV shows keeping track of them can come in handy. The promise of TV episode trackers Trakt (www.trakt.tv) and Followmy.tv (www.followmy.tv) is to track the episode you are up to in your favourite TV shows. Trakt has been around since 2009 and followmy.tv a little later than that. Trakt is the more polished of the two and uses the APIs of TheTVDB (www.thetvdb.com) to keep the episodes and shows up to date. It also has an extensive movie database so you can add movies to your history as well. It also has a calendar showing when your shows are on. On the subject of adding movies to your history it should be mentioned that there are some great movie tracking websites out there too such as IMDb (www.imdb.com) and iCheckMovies (www.icheckmovies.com). Both are free and worthy of trying out. Trakt and followmy.tv are both free services supported by advertising. There is a premium option on Trakt that gets you some great features like no advertising and a great graphics intensive year in review feature that is rewarding once you’ve been using Trakt for a while. It can also displays stats on your TV watching habits. The Australian selection of both services isn’t perfect but most major shows are on there. I would say the focus is more on US and UK TV shows. With Netflix, Stan. & Presto keeping the episode you are up to these services may not be as relevant but Trakt has auto tracking features for home theatre media centre solutions like Kodi & Plex. There are also great social features in both Trakt and followmy.tv. If you can manage to convince your friends to track their TV there will be great benefits. Trakt recently hit 1,000,000 users. While followmy.tv is more of niche service in the low tens of thousands. There are third party apps that you can use Trakt from but I personally like the web interface just fine. Followmy.tv was affected by the closure of TVRage, which was a TV database. It meant that a lot of their episodes weren’t being updated. But recently they have made attempts to fix that. So in my opinion if you were to choose between the two I would definitely recommend Trakt as their database is more extensive and updated more frequently. There are also some great discovery features on both websites. For instance on followmy.tv you can find out the most popular shows with it’s user base. And Trakt recommends you shows and movies based on what you’ve watched. I find that if you track the episodes of TV show you watch you don’t have to be as tied to the schedule of FTA TV or Foxtel. The fact that you know what episode you are up to helps you create your own TV schedule of sorts. This no longer lets the TV networks dictate when and how you hate to watch. Anything that helps you do that is a winner in my books. The benefits of using services like these include always knowing what episode you are up to. So you can not have watched a TV show for quite a long time and still come back to it possibly years later and pick up right where you left off. You can also rate each episode and view how many other people have watched which for buzzy shows like The Walking Dead can be a lot of people but for Australian shows not so much. At this stage there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of Australians using these services from the looks of the website stats for certain Australian TV shows but that could be because most don’t know about them. The Australian FTA TV networks will have to put a lot more detail into their EPG listings or TV guide listings to facilitate use of services like these. I’m talking about season and episode numbers. Eg. 1x03, S03E04. These match up with the TV trackers to make it much easier to keep track of what you’ve watched. If you are a fan of traditional scripted fare than the TV tracking services mentioned will be suited to you as these types of shows are more likely to be on these websites. If there are any other TV or even movie tracking websites you know about please feel free to let me know in the comments section below as I would love another option. Disclaimer: This is not a paid advertisement for Trakt or Followmy.tv. I just dig using these services.
A research lab at Michigan State University, trying to show how easily our devices can be hacked into, has been using printed fingerprints to spoof mobile-phone sensors. Then the police got involved. After becoming aware of their research, the digital forensics and cyber-crime unit at Michigan State University’s police department approached the lab last month for the very opposite purpose: using this technology to try to solve a case. Working on behalf of another investigating agency, police wanted to access the phone of a homicide victim, and asked the research team to 3D print a replica of the victim’s fingerprints in the hope of unlocking the device—a Samsung Galaxy S6. Detective Andrew Rathbun told Quartz he was “wracking” his brain trying to think of ways to unlock the device. He said: I Googled ‘spoof fingerprint’ or something like that and came across [the research (pdf)] as one of the results. I read the research and noticed it was based out of MSU, much to my surprise. I simply emailed those who did the study and set up a meeting. Sunpreet Arora, a PhD student at MSU’s department of computer science and engineering, told Quartz that the police had scans of the victim’s fingerprints from a previous arrest, which they gave to the research lab. The team turned those flat, 2D prints into a digital 3D model using an algorithm, then printed it off using a 3D printer and a rubber-like material. This was coated with a thin layer of metallic particles to make it more conductive. Arora confirmed that the 3D-printed replica fingerprints required more testing before they could be handed back to police to unlock the device—so it’s unclear yet whether the method works. The initial results, he says, “have been promising.” “The hope is that information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator exists on the phone,” Rathbun said. “That won’t be known until we get into the phone, which we currently have not been able to do yet.” Rathbun added: ”It’s pretty amazing that this capability is right down the street from my office. Here’s hoping it works!” This may well be the first case of law enforcement using such technology as part of an ongoing investigation—though it harks back to the questions of privacy and security raised by the dispute between Apple and the FBI earlier this year, in which investigators demanded the company develop software to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple fiercely resisted the request, calling it an “overreach” by the US government. Investigators were eventually able to break into the device without Apple’s help. Quartz has reached out to Samsung for comment.
CLOSE Pope Francis told reporters Tuesday that the Roman Catholic Church’s restriction on women entering the priesthood is likely to remain in place forever. Time Pope Francis (Photo: Tiziana Fabi, AFP/Getty Images) The Catholic Church's ban on female priests will stand forever, Pope Francis said Tuesday. The pontiff made the declaration in response to a female reporter asking whether he thought women would one day serve as Catholic priests and bishops, noting the head of Sweden's Lutheran Church whom Francis met on his trip there is a woman. "St. Pope John Paul II had the last clear word on this and it stands," Francis said during a news conference aboard the papal plane on the flight back to Rome, according to Reuters. The reporter then asked "Forever, forever? Never, never?" "If we read carefully the declaration by St. John Paul II, it is going in that direction," the pope responded. Pope John Paul II, in an Apostolic letter written in 1994, wrote that despite the church's long history of male-only priests, "in some places it is nonetheless considered open to debate." Not so, wrote the pope who died in 2005 and was canonized a saint in 2014. "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren, I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful," John Paul II wrote. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2faaAlG
CHENNAI: All central government funded technical institutions (CFTIs) in the country, including the IITs, IIMs and NITs, have been advised to set aside Rs 50 lakh a year to provide counselling services and conduct activities to ensure the mental health of their students.A task force, constituted by the ministry of human resource development to study the increasing occurrences of suicides among students enrolled at the IITs and other such campuses in the country, made the recommendation to Union human resources development minister Pallam Raju and minister of state Shashi Tharoor earlier this week.The task force, headed by professor M Anandakrishnan, designed a questionnaire for the CFTIs to assess the existing mental health needs, understand the magnitude of the problem and ascertain the resources. Of the 86 CFTIs asked to fill the questionnaire, only 26 responded. Of this, more than half do not have a full time counsellor and only 10 have scope for students to self-declare mental health problems.Pallam Raju suggested that the counselling services could be made a component in the accreditation process and that special weightage be given to the provision.The task force has suggested that the government set up an empowered committee on the lines of the Raghavan committee on ragging “as it cannot be assumed that they will be followed by all CFTIs with the same degree of rigour and seriousness”.The survey revealed that over the last two years 12 students committed suicide and 18 others attempted it. As many as 872 students have been referred for counselling in these institutions. Relationship issues, personal problems, mental stress and family problems were reported as reasons for the suicides.
Remember a few years ago when Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady asked people to turn off the lights during Earth Hour? Well, Matt Damon is doing something of the sort, but with a sense of humor. In a tongue-in-cheek video launching on YouTube on Tuesday, Damon announces that he won’t use a restroom until everyone on Earth has clean water and sanitation. The video, the first in a series that will feature familiar faces from film and TV is intended to raise awareness about the global water crisis, a cause near and dear to Damon, who’s one of the co-founders of Water.org. We’re told it was Damon’s idea to use humor in the videos, hoping it works better than earnestness in attracting attention. Consider this: Damon’s funny video with Sarah Silverman has been viewed over 3.4 million times on YouTube, while some of his thoughtful vids on behalf of Water.org have been clicked only a few thousand times.
Quote EricMusco Quote: Originally Posted by Hey folks! We have figured out what the issue is and we have a few options on how to proceed. What we are going to do is we are going to move tomorrow's maintenance up to right now, meaning there will no longer be a maintenance tomorrow morning. Within the next 15-30 minutes we will be bringing all servers down as we deploy Game Update 4.7 and Chapter 16. This means that as the servers come back up 4.7 will be live and you will have access to Chapter 16 Early Access if you qualified. We do apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, but with this solution you will be getting Chapter 16 and GU 4.7 even sooner than planned. This means that starting soon SWTOR servers will be unavailable for approximately 4 hours (hopefully less). We will be keeping SWTOR.com available during this period. Thank you for your understanding. -eric Eric please answer me, I am still reorganizing data at the moment. Should I stop this? or should I continue? Really need an answer on this!
Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 12:17:28 +0400 From: Solar Designer <[email protected]> To: [email protected], [email protected] Subject: [openwall-announce] John the Ripper 1.8.0 Hi, I've just released John the Ripper 1.8.0, available from the usual place: http://www.openwall.com/john/ Available are a source code tarball (compressed with gzip or xz) and an extra charset files tarball (xz only). Besides the source code, included in the main tarball are 3 .chr files that are arguably most essential, whereas the extras tarball contains 7 additional .chr files. The default john.conf provides pre-defined incremental modes for all 10 of these files. Although only JtR 1.8.0 source code and .chr files are available at this time (to be used mostly on Unix-like systems, where building from source is customary and convenient), we do intend to release Windows build(s) of JtR 1.8.x, a jumbo based on 1.8.x, and a Pro based on 1.8.x at a later time. Meanwhile, magnum is regularly sync'ing the bleeding-jumbo branch on GitHub to be based on the latest core tree (which means 1.8.0 at the moment). Much of the work towards this release was sponsored under Rapid7's Magnificent7 program as previously announced here: http://www.openwall.com/lists/announce/2012/10/17/1 Here are the Magnificent7 sponsored changes, with their short descriptions as extracted from doc/CHANGES: * Revised the incremental mode to let the current character counts grow for each character position independently, with the aim to improve efficiency in terms of successful guesses per candidate passwords tested. Here are some test results of the old (1.7.9's) vs. new incremental mode, using the same training and test sets for both versions: http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2013/05/18/26 http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2013/05/19/1 http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2013/05/21/7 These show an improvement in the number of passwords cracked (for the same number of candidate passwords tested) ranging from 1% to 91% (that is, up to almost twice more passwords cracked) for different points in time. Greater improvements are seen at 10 thousand to 100 million candidates tested. Then the old version slowly catches up and by 1e12 candidates tested the new version's advantage decreases to only 1%, which is nevertheless significant. Tests on other samples show somewhat different results, but the new version generally does stay ahead. I'd like to thank magnum and bartavelle for running additional tests, which first helped spot a problem and then confirmed that, after my fix, the new incremental mode consistently outperformed the old one in their tests as well. * Revised the pre-defined incremental modes, as well as external mode filters that are used to generate .chr files. * Added makechr, a script to (re-)generate .chr files. As of version 1.8.0, pre-defined incremental modes are "ASCII" (all 95 printable ASCII characters), "LM_ASCII" (for use on LM hashes), "Alnum" (all 62 alphanumeric characters), "Alpha" (all 52 letters), "LowerNum" (lowercase letters plus digits, for 36 total), "UpperNum" (uppercase letters plus digits, for 36 total), "LowerSpace" (lowercase letters plus space, for 27 total), "Lower" (lowercase letters), "Upper" (uppercase letters), and "Digits" (digits only). The supplied .chr files include data for lengths up to 13 for all of these modes except for "LM_ASCII" (where password portions input to the LM hash halves are assumed to be truncated at length 7) and "Digits" (where the supplied .chr file and pre-defined incremental mode work for lengths up to 20). The charset files for "ASCII", "LM_ASCII", and "Digits" are included in the main tarball. The remaining 7 are available in the extras tarball. The new compile-time defaults for JtR permit for incremental mode lengths of up to 24, and for the entire 8-bit character set (excluding only the NUL character). In other words, you may generate additional .chr files with data for longer passwords and/or non-ASCII characters while using the normal JtR build that is compatible with the supplied .chr files. (The suggested limit of 13, except for digits, is based on our testing, though. It usually does not make sense to go for higher lengths with incremental mode.) You may also use "Extra = ..." in the configuration file to add more characters manually, including non-ASCII characters. * Enhanced the status reporting to include four distinct speed metrics (g/s, p/s, c/s, and C/s). The new status reporting is illustrated in this posting: http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-dev/2013/04/28/1 The new status line may include: successful guess count ("g"), session duration (in the D:HH:MM:SS format for days, hours, minutes, and seconds), progress indicator (percent done and optionally pass number out of the total number of passes), up to four speed metrics ("g/s", "p/s", "c/s", and "C/s"), and the current (range of) candidate password(s) being tested (John is often able to test multiple candidate passwords in parallel for better performance, hence a range). The four speed metrics are as follows: g/s is successful guesses per second (so it'll stay at 0 until at least one password is cracked), p/s is candidate passwords tested per second, c/s is "crypts" (password hash or cipher computations) per second, and C/s is combinations of candidate password and target hash per second. Versions of John prior to 1.8.0 displayed only the C/s rate (calling it c/s). When you restore a pre-1.8.0 session with version 1.8.0 or newer, only the g/s and C/s rates will be displayed, because the older .rec file format lacked information needed to compute p/s and c/s. * Added the "--fork=N" and "--node=MIN[-MAX]/TOTAL" options for trivial parallel and distributed processing. Naturally, these are documented in doc/OPTIONS. "--fork=N" is only available on Unix-like systems. It is an easy way to make use of multiple CPUs or CPU cores - you simply specify the number of John processes that you'd like to run. You may use "--fork" as an alternative to OpenMP, for formats currently lacking OpenMP support, or/and along with OpenMP (e.g., on a machine with 64 logical CPUs you might choose to run with "--fork=8" for 8 processes and use OpenMP to run 8 threads per process). You may use "--fork" along with "--node" to use multiple machines while also running multiple John processes per machine. For example, to use two similar 8-core machines you may run "--fork=8 --node=1-8/16" on one of the machines and "--fork=8 --node=9-16/16" on the other. You may also use "--node" separately from "--fork". Please refer to doc/OPTIONS for a lot more detail on these new options: http://www.openwall.com/john/doc/OPTIONS.shtml * In the external mode compiler, treat character literals as unsigned. This is to make 8-bit character literals specified in external modes always behave as expected. Previously, they were problematic if naively put e.g. into a revision of the Keyboard external mode: http://www.openwall.com/lists/john-users/2012/02/26/2 Now this problem has been addressed both in John itself and in the revised Keyboard external mode (in case it is used on an older version of John, and 8-bit characters are introduced into it). * Renamed many of the formats. John the Ripper 1.8.0's valid format names are descrypt, bsdicrypt, md5crypt, bcrypt, LM, AFS, tripcode, dummy, and crypt (and many more are added in jumbo). We no longer misuse just "des" or just "md5" to refer to the crypt(3) flavors; this made some sense in 1990s, before raw MD5 started to be misused for password hashing in web apps. However, with today's (still) widespread use of raw MD5 in web apps (and especially in leaked password hash dumps) our use of "md5" to refer to md5crypt was causing confusion. * Updated the documentation. Naturally. :-) Other recent changes unrelated to Magnificent7 are: * Relaxed the license for many source files to cut-down BSD. * Relaxed the license for John the Ripper as a whole from GPLv2 (exact version) to GPLv2 or newer with optional OpenSSL and unRAR exceptions. 80% of John the Ripper 1.8.0 source files (in the src/ directory) are now available under a cut-down BSD license (which is obviously compatible with the GNU GPL, letting me release the entire thing under GNU GPL v2 or newer). Other/older changes (also unrelated to Magnificent7) that I made since version 1.7.9 are as follows: * Enhanced the support for DES-based tripcodes by making use of the bitslice DES implementation and supporting OpenMP parallelization. An equivalent change, providing for much faster tripcode cracking than JtR's earlier proof-of-concept implementation did, has been in jumbo for a while, although it originated from the core tree - and is now properly released "officially". * Implemented bitmaps for fast initial comparison of computed hashes against those loaded for cracking. This is applied before hash table lookups, and it allows for the use of smaller hash tables (thereby saving memory) while achieving the same or greater speed that larger hash tables previously did. The speed increase is due to improved locality of reference (where only the smaller bitmap is accessed all the time, whereas the larger hash table behind it is only accessed for a percentage of comparisons and additionally it is smaller than it would otherwise need to be). * Tuned the bitmap and hash table sizes and thresholds based on testing on saltless hashes on a Core 2'ish CPU. This provides a substantial performance improvement when cracking large numbers of fast hashes. This change is a reason why in the incremental mode tests referenced above the new version achieved the same number of candidate passwords tested much sooner than the old version did. (To remove this effect on our incremental modes' comparison, we compared their successful guess counts at the same numbers of candidates tested, not at the same wall clock time.) * When cracking LM hashes, don't store the ASCII encodings of the hashes in memory, but instead reconstruct them from the binary hashes for writing into john.pot when a password gets cracked. This saves some memory, and the same functionality is also usable for other saltless hashes in jumbo. * With 32-bit x86 builds and at least MMX enabled, the "two hashes at a time" code for bcrypt is now enabled for GCC 4.2 and newer. This change is made based on benchmark results for different builds made with different versions of GCC on CPUs ranging from Pentium 3 to Core i7. Unfortunately, there's a known performance regression with this change on Atom. Previously, this code was only enabled for x86-64 and/or OpenMP-enabled builds. This is faster bcrypt cracking on some old and new computers running 32-bit operating systems or VMs for whatever reason. * The formats interface has been enhanced to better support GPU implementations (in jumbo), as well as fast hashes on multi-CPU systems (not yet made use of). 1.8.0 was a good time for revising the formats interface, which we'll make use of in jumbo shortly. * Assorted minor corrections to Cygwin builds were made. These are essentially the same corrections that were included in Windows builds of 1.7.9 (but were not yet included in 1.7.9 proper). * Fixed a bug in the Keyboard external mode (uninitialized variables on "--restore" or when minlength is greater than 1). * Enhanced the generic crypt(3) format to handle possible NULL returns from crypt() and crypt_r(). Oops. These are fixed now. * Assorted other changes have been made. OK, that was enough for an announcement. Feedback is welcome on the john-users list, as usual. I'd like to thank Rapid7 and their Magnificent7 program for enabling me to dedicate more time to implementing many of these changes and bringing them to release quality. Alexander Powered by blists - more mailing lists Your e-mail address: Confused about mailing lists and their use? Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia and check out these guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.
Everyone who is into backpacking has been asked about going solo, and if you know of people who do solo backpacking, you must have wondered how they do it. Let me start by saying that I spend most of my time outdoors by myself, completely. Rarely do I hike with any company and all my adventures are solo backpacking trips. The idea of going solo was born partially by accident and continued out of necessity and to get some of the “me time” effect. The first time I went solo backpacking was while traveling in South America, specifically Chile, with a friend of mine. I had dragged him up and down a few mountains and we ended up in a small town called Pucon after a few days of backpacking in the Villarica national reserve. My friend was tired but I was so invigorated with my newly found hobby (backpacking, that is) and the size of the natural world, I wanted to go out again. After a couple of days of attempted persuasion, I was told a clear “NO,” so a decision was made – I would be going by myself. All this happened back in 2007, and the year before I had been in New Zealand where I did some solo hiking (day hikes), but nothing like I was planning now: I would be backpacking the Villarica Traverse from the Villarica volcano to the Lannin volcano – some 100km, passing 3 volcanoes (I only summited Lannin). That trip along the Villarica Traverse, which took me great 4 days (I was a heavy and slow mover back then), introduced to something amazing: the freedom of solo backpacking with full control on time, pace, camping spots and breaks – a total sense of freedom. After that, I got the taste for it and continued backpacking most of the trails I could find along the Andes in Peru and Bolivia by myself (my friend had returned home by then). Since that trip to South America I have gotten married, had a child and built a career, another child and a company, but the sentiment has not changed: solo backpacking is still total freedom, but now it is also a necessity as I hike faster, for longer days and for less time. I require more flexibility around my trips, so I’m unable to go with another person as the logistics of planning for other people complicates things. I do enjoy the company of others from time to time, but solo backpacking is the best solution for my outdoor “needs”. Why solo backpacking? I think I have made it pretty clear why I do solo backpacking, but why should you? The ultimate freedom – from where to camp to pace, breaks or even where to go, it is all up to you. It does mean that you need to know all the camping skills, know how to hike responsibly, take care of your health and safety and most importantly know when to stop and when to avoid dangers. You might get the freedom, but it is also your responsibility. No one makes stupid navigation errors and argues about it with you (unless it is you…), or looks over your shoulder or makes broad claims about where to go. On the other hand, your navigation skills need to be sufficient for your solo backpacking trip. It doesn’t mean you need to be a high-level orienteer or tracker, but you need to be able to deal with the trail ahead. Every time you’ll climb a peak, source water, make food, navigate or accomplish anything else is because you have done it, and I don’t know of a better way to boost self esteem. When you are camping, you can just read a book, look at the sunset or just lay down; there is no need to entertain anyone else. The need to upkeep a conversation with someone in your company means that you usually don’t get just quiet time to use at your own discretion. Solo backpacking gives you all the time to do as you wish. I usually read, write, think (I like doing that) or just meditate, mostly while looking at the view. Other walkers and locals will be happy to chat and share a good story or a cup of coffee with you, as you are less intimidating when you are solo. There is something that seems vulnerable and open to people when they see a solo backpacker, so conversation starts easily and warmly. You must get your skills up to scratch and you then get to practice them, all the time! As you have no one to fall back on if you are not sure/too tired/hate doing that, well, you have to do it yourself. This is a great opportunity to learn new skills, practice them and be just out of your comfort zone. The physical and mental challenge is all yours to deal with, but solely yours to enjoy conquering, as you finish the day and find the perfect camping spot. Walking day in day out is hard, there is no question there, but there is a real satisfaction in getting to a perfect spot (or just one with great views), pitching your tent, getting your gear spread out and making a brew. That sitting at the end of a long day is almost meditative, especially when solo backpacking, allowing for a great time to clear the head and have a silent tap on one’s back. A great character building tool: from self-esteem and sense of accomplishment to facing fears and real dangers, everything you do is thanks to you, you have done it. Every time you climb a peak, source water, make food, navigate or accomplish anything else is because you have done it, and I don’t know of a better way to boost self-esteem. The constant satisfaction and feedback from succeeding and the ability to pull yourself out when failing (it will happen every trip) are the best ways to feel really good about yourself. You will have to deal with your fears (from dark to spiders to wet feet) and conquer them because it is all up to you. If dealing with your fears sounds daunting, don’t worry, they will come up along the way and you will barely notice them until the day ends. When solo backpacking you easily fall into the routine of being outside and all those less than great aspects of it just happen and you move on, you won’t even notice that your feet are wet….. And now the downsides As much as I like to tell myself otherwise, solo backpacking is not all roses and rainbows; there are some tough, frustrating and outright dangerous parts of it, but all those can be solved if you keep your cool and use the skills you have gathered. To name some downsides and how to address them: The most obvious are the potential of injury and no rescue. When you are solo backpacking you are, well, alone – if something happens: a fall, a broken limb, fallen tree, animal attack etc, you will have no one to help or call for help if needed. This is probably the biggest problem with solo backpacking but can be solved easily with a variety of methods: Plan ahead and know your route, potential camping spots, and time frame. Leave a copy of those details with a couple of trusted people who will call for help if they haven’t heard from you in the time frame you have set. Be prepared for any potential animal threats such as bears, large cats etc with the right gear and skills for the area you are visiting. Check if there are any dangers and be ready for them. if there are any dangers and be ready for them. Carry a Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) device such as SPOT, DeLorme, etc. Be careful – this is probably the simplest but least used one: watch your step, know when to stop when you are too tired and prone to accidents, avoid unnecessary climbs and traverses, don’t confront animals and other people – you get the point. Just think before you do something and do a constant risk assessment. The next downside is loneliness, which is the by-product of being alone for a while. I personally am not a people person (hence the solo backpacking) but when going out for 2, 3 or more days I miss my family, I miss talking to my wife and sharing my experiences. I have found a couple of ways to deal with this: Write a trip journal – take a pencil (better than a pen) and a small notebook and write notes, tell the story, share the adventure – the journal won’t answer back. Try and communicate – find a place with signal and call, it is simple. I know we are going outdoors to disconnect, leave the over-technological world behind, but if you have the means (phone with service or a landline), just call, you will all feel better. This is my secret and it is a little strange – talk. Talk with your pack, your walking poles, your shoes, all your gear. When you have had enough of them, just have a conversation with a person you know; you can probably predict their answers, just make the whole thing up. Just keep in mind that it only happened in your head, so don’t expect them to remember…. Low morale and physical difficulty are the also a big problem. The reason I put them both in the same category is because they are the same problem: not being “able” to do something is because you just can’t be bothered to. Low morale on the trail (or off trail) is a major problem and hits all hikers at some point, the problem is that you have no one to help you or kick you in the buns – you have to do it yourself. I find that just constantly challenging myself and giving myself small goals is the best way: reach that cliff in 50 minutes, etc. If I make it, I earn some brownie points with myself and boost my morale a little. Break your day into short and simple tasks to get on with it. There are also fears, lack of skills, navigation errors and many more hurdles of solo backpacking, but I think those are all easily solved with more hiking, you just need to practice being outside and they are much less challenging. Is it for you? I know that solo backpacking is not for everyone – all I need to do is talk to my wife and I get it, she is happy to go with me but sees no point of going solo. That’s fine, but you need to try it. Solo backpacking is challenging and a little formidable, but it is a great experience (or not?) that you need to try before you say no to it. To get into solo backpacking I recommend building up to it: Start by hiking solo – spending time with yourself all day long is the biggest part of solo backpacking. Spend a whole day outside, until it gets dark. Find an easy camping place (not an organized campground) to spend the night at; it can be 100 feet from your car, but you need to sleep in the tent…. Camp in a place that is an inconvenient distance from your car, that distance that is just too far to turn back if things go off. Do a 2-day hike and spend the night in a place nearby with someone who you enjoy going outside with. Repeat the trip from before, but solo. Go on a 2-day backpacking trip solo in a new place. If you have made it to this point, you are ready for solo backpacking – just pick a route and go! If you are a seasoned backpacker, thru-hiker, long distance hiker or anything in between, making the move to solo adventures is easy, just forget to call your hiking partner and you are set!
This game is very good, some people say that is a rip-off of dayz and minecraft, but no, it's like saying, there is a book with a blue cover, This game is very good, some people say that is a rip-off of dayz and minecraft, but no, it's like saying, there is a book with a blue cover, there is other and is a rip-off, dayZ is focused more in real horror and is more realistic, unturned mixes fun and realism + horror, one of the most funny things is that a random booster skill can make anything fly like he was punched by 300 THIS IS SPARTA people, seriously the zombies even go trough walls, both, 3.0 and 2.0 versions are great, but in the 3.0 it have pros and cons Pros of 3.0 against 2.0 -It's better optimized -Workshop Support -Better Graphics -Custom Maps -More zombies -More Drops -Better crafting (it now shows what you can do with the things you have and what you need) -Constant updates with a low quantity of MB used -Better Backpack -More ways to make your character fancy Cons of 3.0 against 2.0: -Some items are removed -Poor drops -Underpriced skills -Constant updates, making almost impossible to play without updating every day (this is a con and a pro, pro because adds minimum 5 things, con because they days) -Sometimes Unstable So yeah, this game is underrated in the user scores, i mean, the guy who made this game is a 16 year old canadian, Can this guy make a AAA 10/10 100% Optimized game? I bet those who give a low score to make a game you alone and have the lead of it, the canadian guy doesn't have a special team, if he had it would be better, but still is good, so, try to make a AAA 10/10 game you alone, yes, those who have a negative score, stupids 9/10 Would Play again …
Authors of a new study on American Jews argue that the community is more attached to Israel than many pundits assume. Based on a survey conducted in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, the study finds "overall stability in American Jewish attachment to Israel over the past quarter-century." Yet some Jewish sociologists counter that the research clearly showed young American Jews are increasingly disenchanted with the Jewish state. A Star of David engraved in stone in Jerusalem. According to the new study, 63 percent of respondents felt "very much" or "somewhat" connected to Israel. Three quarters said caring about Israel is "an important part of their Jewish identities." While respondents under the age of 45 are "less likely to feel connected to Israel," they "regard Israel as important to their Jewish identities," the study's authors state. Younger Jews are "somewhat less attached in the current survey, but not consistently so," according to the study - entitled "Still Connected: American Jewish Attitudes about Israel" - which was published last week by Brandeis University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. The study's authors - Theodore Sasson, Benjamin Phillips, Charles Kadushin and Leonard Saxe - explain that while attachment to Israel is lower among younger age groups, this could be attributed to one of two phenomena. "Some researchers," they write, "attribute this tendency to the increasing temporal distance of succeeding cohorts from the Holocaust, founding of the state, and Six Day War." However, the researchers favor an "alternative explanation which views attachment as increasing over the course of life." The researchers thus suggest "a need to reconsider the popular narrative of declining American Jewish attachment to Israel." While the situation remains "volatile," predictions of a schism between American Jews and Israel "are unfounded based on the current state of American Jewish opinion," they conclude. They survey critically refers to an essay by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books that sparked a recent debate over a perceived growing schism between American Jewry and Israel. Beinart posited that the children of secular Zionists who supported Israel in its first decades no longer share their parents' attachment to the state. "Instead," he writes, "they are more conscious than their parents of the degree to which Israeli behavior violates liberal ideals, and less willing to grant Israel an exemption because its survival seems in peril." Beinart told Anglo File this week that while there is still an American Jewish attachment to Israel, he sticks to his point that among non-Orthodox Jews, is it declining from one generation to the next. The study's authors "believe younger people will become more attached as they get older. I think that's a dubious conclusion. Even their own study shows that Jews between 30 and 40 are less attached even than those between at the ages of 18 and 29, which suggest that as people are moving into middle age they're not becoming more connected to Israel." Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close Beinart stressed his essay's focus on non-Orthodox Jews. "There are many more Orthodox Jews in the younger generation than there are in the old generation - 12 percent of American Jews over the age of 60 are Orthodox, but 34 percent between 18-24 are [Orthodox]." The Brandeis study doesn't break its findings into categories of religious affiliation, he said, adding an isolated look at non-Orthodox young Jews would show the generation gap in terms of attachment to Israel to be even larger. Steven M. Cohen, a preeminent sociologist of American Jewry who lives in the U.S. and Israel, also stated that "liberal Jews and younger Jews are more alienated from supporting Israel." The authors of the Brandeis study "are correct for the average, but they are not correct for the growing number of unattached," he told Anglo File. "It's very possible that we're seeing, as I suggested years ago, a tale of two Jewries, where one part of Jewry - the in-married - are becoming more Jewishly engaged and the other part are becoming less Jewishly engaged, so that the average is the same but the number of detached is increasing." Chaim Waxman, who taught sociology at Rutgers before moving to Jerusalem, said Beinart's description is accurate, but that he disagrees with his analysis. "I do think there is a distancing but I don't think it's limited to distancing from Israel, and I don't think the distancing is a result of, like Beinart says, Israeli actions and policies," Waxman told Anglo File. "It's a distancing from Jewish peoplehood and Jewish collectivity in general, and it not limited to Israel." Examples of such a distancing can be seen in various areas unrelated to the Jewish state, such as a lesser feeling of responsibility for Jews in other parts of the world and the decline in American-Jewish philanthropy, Waxman said. "That there is a declining attachment to Israel is empirically true."
Two men have been found guilty of robbing a Malaysian student as they pretended to help him during last summer's riots in London. Ashraf Rossli, 20, had been in the UK for just a month when he was attacked on 8 August in Barking. As he lay injured, John Kafunda, 22, of Ilford, and Reece Donovan, 24, of Romford, stole items from his bag. Both were found guilty of robbery and violent disorder at Wood Green Crown Court. Donovan was also found guilty of theft and burglary. The judge told the men they should expect lengthy custodial sentences when they are sentenced on 13 March. 'Blood pouring' Footage of the incident, which was recorded on a mobile phone and posted on YouTube, caused widespread anger. Image caption Kafunda and Donovan will be sentenced on 13 March A portable Sony PlayStation games console and 10 games were taken, valued at £500, Mr Rossli told the court. "I knew they were stealing from me but I could do nothing," he said. "I was sat on the pavement with blood pouring from my mouth. "I remember being approached by a male who asked if I was OK. I remember being pulled to my feet, then I felt someone again tugging at my rucksack. "I was not in a position to defend myself and was still suffering from the effects of being hit. Once they had taken what they wanted they left." 'Worldwide derision' The accountancy student from Kuala Lumpur was on his way to a friend's house when his bicycle was stolen and he was punched, breaking his jaw in two places. Image caption Ashraf Rossli had arrived in the UK a month before the attack Doctors had to fit two metal plates to repair the damage. On 16 February Beau Isagba, 17, was found guilty of assaulting Mr Rossli and stealing his bike. He will be sentenced on 9 March. Ch Supt Gary Buttercase, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "I have met Mr Rossli and he is a man of humility and dignity and a tremendous credit to his country. "I am particularly pleased that we have managed to get justice for the appalling attack he suffered and the subsequent theft that has attracted derision from across the world." Widespread looting and violence spread from London across England over four nights last summer.
Behind the hype and glamour of Champagne there are a few annoying things when you look closer at this thriving wine region.One of them is the fact that Champagne is the first wine region in France in terms of use of pesticides. You can read in this article (in French, originally published in Est Eclair) that the reason lies in the difficult climate of Champagne, but there are other untold reasons in this article, like the monoculture approach along the years, which certainly eased the spreading of pests, and the love of this region for high yields.A grower who was interviewed for the linked article said under the condition of anonymity that Champagne was the champion region on this matter (high yields), and possibly of the world. The linked article points to another highly-used vineyard additive in Champagne, Nitrogen.Here is my translation of one of the related sentences :The Champagne winegrowers are also the only ones (with the ones of the Charentes region - a region in Western France) to make systematic sprayings of mineral nitrogen. Nearly 80 % of the vineyard surface in Champagne gets nitrogen every year, the goal being higher yields. And when you get higher yields you get vines that are more fragile and subject to disease.So it becomes clear that greed, higher yields, are directly connected with the heavy-handed chemical sprayings witnessed on this victimized Champagne vineyard...Unlike most of the other wine regions (and along Bordeaux), Champagne is largely resisting the move toward a vineyard farming preserving the life of the soil, mainly because business keeps getting better and because most growers are paid by the weight and not by the organic quality of their grapes. Worker spraying in Champagne hectoliters Agriculture raisonnée mural Art Grounded garbage strange red dots along the rows Crime scene Walking along a typical Champagne vineyard Shades of green It often just takes a random drive and walk in the vineyard of Champagne to see the disconnect between the luxury front window of Champagne and its less-glamorous backyard. There's nothing like a walk in the vineyard anyway to see the work ethics of a grower, and, to some extent, have a feel of the end wines, because everything starts here. Of course, some of these sprayings we see in the region may be organic ones, like sulfur and Bordeaux mix, but in Champagne the overwhelming majority of vineyards are sprayed with chemicals that are turning the ground into a desert. Try to grab some earth there and beyond the strange medicine smell, you will be suprised by the lack of life, as no insect or earthworm can live and feed themselves in there anymore. According to this government survey (in French) about viticultural sprayings in Champagne, 97% of the vineyards are sprayed with herbicides and the wine region has the highhest rate of fungicide sprayings in France, with an average of 18,6 sprayings per hectare and per year, Bordeaux being behind with 14,7 sprayings...Pesticides (including herbicides and fungicides) have been singled out for a recent study by the French Health Institute (INSERM) about their harmful consequences, and in the linked study you learn everything from their introduction on the French agriculture to their different molecule types and risks. The report is at the same time long and detailed but gives a few welcome informations, like the enormous increase in yields after WW2, mainly thanks to these new products used in agriculture : tender wheat for example went from 15quintals per hectare to 70 today (page 6)... France is among the top buyers of pesticides, with 80 000 to 100 000 quintals a year. And the French vineyards which represent only 3% of the active agricultural surface uses 20 % of the pesticides.In this december 2006 article [this is only the 1st paragraph, the whole article is not online anymore] you can even learn more worrisome things : In this article, the local newspaper L'Union said that traces from 70 different pesticides had been found in the air in Champagne, and that these air counts had even found traces of forbidden pesticides.....The growers in Champagne are still in denial regarding the harmful side of pesticides and herbicides for the people (workers and residents), the soils, the water tables and the end consumers of the wines.On this odd mural found in Reuil (Champagne) you can read the strange sentence "Nous revivons grâce à la viticulture raisonnée" which means "We revive thanks to reasonned viticulture". Agriculture raisonnée is sometimes mistakenly translated by sustanaible agriculture, which is wrong (not that I consider this "sustainable" concept as of any value to begin with), as raisonnée just means that this viticulture keeps using all sort of chemical products, but supposedly in moderate (reasonable) amounts. We all know that anyway the chemical industry created new products that can be dosed in smaller amounts for a more efficient impact on the target, and the soils aren't better off with them I'm afraid.In this context, such a mural looks more than soviet-style propaganda to keep the local crowds loyal the conventional creed than a spontaneous adhesion in the "business as usual" approach.To drive the nail further in regard to the health impact of pesticides and herbicides, read this survey (Pdf, in French) made by Générations Futures, a non-profit group, where pesticides residues were found in hair samples taken from 25 people in the Medoc region, 15 being winery workers and the rest residents of the area. The good thing with hair is that it behaves like an open book on past exposures to chemicals, and the study was interesting in that regard : the vineyard workers had 11 times more residues than residents living far from the vineyards, and there was 5 times more residues in non-professional residents living in the area than in residents living far from the vineyards (page 4). And so on.The study also says that France is the 1st European country for the use of pesticides and the 3rd in the world, with a total of 62 000 tons of active chemical purchased in 2011.Now, this is about viticulture in general, but let's remind that in this field Champagne is the champion compared to the other French regions.Not that I'm out for a disparaging post on Champagne, but this story is about what you see and learn while walking through the vineyards there, something we should always do in person and not be content with what the glossy magazines tell you about such or such wine region, and the view more often than not, was grounded garbage..Now here is again this issue of garbage dumping on the Champagne vineyards to enrich their soil. I know many of you know already about that but not that many when you dig a bit (so to say), including in France. And this is an old thing if untold in France. I even found in an American newspaper a 1969 story about this issue by Philip Wagner who was then a syndicated columnist, editor at the Baltimore Sun, author of American Wines and Winemaking (reprinted several times and known today as Grapes into Wine ) and who set up hiw own winery ( Boordy Vineyards ) in Maryland in 1945...Here is what Mr Philip Wagner wrote then in 1969 ( read it all ) : half-rotten grapefruit rinds, egg shells, pieces of bone, remains of chicken, cabbage leaves in decay, torn cigarettes packets, all this for a higher grades of phosphate, nitrogen and humus.The odd soil-enrichment method was discontinued in 1997, as found on this key-dates page of Champagne (click to enter, then browse to the 1990s' (excerpt from 1997): [Opening of Champagne Bureau in Japan. The CIVC forbids the spreading of urban waste in the vineyards.] ), but until today you still see all sorts of plastic remains waiting for their longer decay.In this Swiss TV report (in French), you'll review this garbage issue, the pesticides sprayings (sometimes made by helicopter) and the issue of heavily-polluted water tables sitting exactly on the viticulture zones (in red on the map). The Swiss TV selected Vincent Laval to ask him questions about these issues (thanks to Oliv of lapassionduvin).But there was another thing that took my attention that day during our walk along the vineyards of the region, this was these brownish scars in the soil between the rows, like every meter and with a hole as if some machine had punctured the vineyard all along and injected some sort of chemical (or was it the bleeding of the soil ?). I first thought that it was just to aerate the compact soil and bring some oxygen in it, but I learned that this was caused by a very common practice in the area : the injection of iron chelate (also known as FeEDTA or Ferric Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid) with the aim to boost the foliage push at the beginning of the season (right when we were there).Always keep a check on the vineyards at all seasons, I tell you, and after my bewildered discoveries in Muscadet and Beaujolais it seems defintely that april/may is the best season to discover the hidden sides of the vineyard fate. Our poor Champagne vineyards are really never let a chance to live a normal vineyard life. In the name of productivism, they're put on IV, get sprayings, fertilizers, artificial respiration and now massive injection of liquid iron....I learn that the region has been familiar with iron-chelate injection for many years, it's been done for 30 years in the Côte des Blancs on the other side of Epernay but here on Cumières it started timidly 10 years ago and now they do it almost everywhere here too. This article (in French) says that indeed the method is common in Champagne and that the doses vary from 20 to 50 kg per hectare but go sometimes up to 100 kg per hectare because it is really "efficient" then. I did not find images about this injection on the Internet (do most growers keep a low profile on these practices ?) but I ended up finding this image which shows the special tool for these iron injections, fixed at the back of a tractor. In this case the machine would drive two sharp tools at a time, for a 15- to 20-centimeter deep injection. You can see on the left that the black-plastic part has been splashed with this same redish-brownish substance, the iron chelate. I'm just trying to visualize this poor soil, already no more insect life or bacteria after years of herbicides and other pesticides sprayings, and now this flood of liquid iron coming out of nowhere...It was quite strange to walk along the rows and see all these brownish scars, it's like if these soils had exhausted all their natural reserves and the growers were relying on some sort of desperate major surgery or emergency life support to keep them working.The chemical industry offers a range of iron chelates , you choose, and some of them are even compatible with organic farming . Notice that on their "Qui sommes nous" page or "who are we"), the company says that their solutions are in line with the Grenelle de L'Environnement [which is a State-sponsored inter-professional circus where everyone turns to be promoting what they call sustanaible this or that].On this video you can see the punctured ground and the tiny pieces of plastic and grounded garbage.The official reason behind the iron chelate injections may be the iron deficiency noticed in certain calcaireous (limestone) soils, but as this scientific article (in English) underlines it, the consequence of iron deficiency is a drop in yields, and that's the real issue here in Champagne where yields of 92 hectoliters/hectare are routine. We also learn in this piece focusing on different crops that the agriculture bio industry also designed sulphuric injections as well as urea phosphate injections to correct soil deficiencies. Agriculture has really many faces that I'm not familiar with... When you read this article you discover that like the wines are being routinely corrected in the cellar , the conventional-agriculture soils are being tampered with in order to keep getting the desired yields.Notice that you can even add other products in the iron injection ;-) :The composition of the invention can also comprise one or several additives, such as a nutrient, crop health improving agent and/or formulating agent. The nutrient can be one or several of the following: primary nutrient (N,P, K), secondary nutrient (Ca, Mg, S) and/or micro-nutrient (Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Mo, B, CI). The crop health improving agent can for example be a pesticide, growth regulator or pH regulator. The formulating agent can for example be a dispersing and/or stabilizing agent.Anyone for another glass of Champagne ?And here is a trial they made in France, obviously in Champagne (Pinot Meunier) :Effect of Fe-EDDHSA + UP in a vineyard in FranceThe effect of the injection of a solution of 50 kg ha urea phosphate and 40 kg/ha Fe- EDDHSA in 2500 liter water, 20 cm from the vines at a depth of 30 cm was compared with the standard fertilization practice on vines without iron addition. The trial consisted of 4 replicates. Each replicate consisted of 4 rows of vines, which were treated with the novel solution and 4 rows of vines, which were treated according to the traditional practice. The traditional practice does not include the application of iron chelates. From each replicate the two middle rows of the 4 treated and the 4 control rows were harvested. The results show the average of the 4 replicates.The trial was carried out on the grape variety Meunier. The total area where the trial took place covered 1.2 ha. [...] During the various growth stages the effect of the soil injection with the combination of urea phosphate and Fe-EDDHSA was followed and compared with the traditional treatment.The yield of grapes was found to be significantly higher in the treated rows. Furthermore it seems that the treatment increases the natural sugar content of the grapes, a very important factor in wine making. [Wow !... you inject iron and you not only get higher yields in return, but you get also more sugar, I love these chemicals !] Retired but still at work And to finish on a more positive note, here are a few words about this man whom I spotted working in a small parcel near a village of Champagne : I exchanged a few words with him and he was debudding his own vineyard, actually his son was now in charge but he said he always kept tending his vineyard to keep the contact with his life's work, even though he was retired. He lamented that nowadays winery owners and growers don't set a foot in their vineyard, they send specialized teams of workers and lost the connection with their vineyards and land. He also said that in the past the growers would always hire some old person or a village guy with disabilities for the vineyard tasks, just to help him/her make a living, even though the person was not as efficient as other workers. Now, he said, there's no room for this sort of sharing with less-priviledged neighbors because the job is usually made by professional teams. I enjoyed speaking with him, because whatever the farming he had on his vineyard today, he had kept the real connection with his work and kept doing the basic manual work on his vines.
That's what it's about...about this shit...long time...it's as big of time as it gets...hard thought...warrior thought...hard thought...in any given shituation, there's always going to be more dumb people than smart people. favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite I agree with last reviewer, at least for this show. I didn't get all that excited about the SB for some reason, but this Matrix is awesome! This is a great show and great recording from start to finish. I really love this first set: HSF is of course a good medley anytime (even if Welnick got a bit loud for a moment)... very good Red Rooster with great slide and feel altogether, Lesh sounds fantastic on T Thumb's blues, and what a great LOSER, especially! There's nothing wrong with the Let it Grow, by the way. Set 2--Scarlet/Fire is average (I love an average Scarlet/Fire)...everything is good in the whole show really, but whoa, the --- DS/Kesey/D/S/DS! Kesey really made this night as special as any night could be. Also, Gary Duncan adds a unique touch to the 2nd set jams. Sentimentally--this was as respectable of a farewell to Bill Graham as could have been performed. Well done! - May 23, 2012One of my favorite shows

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