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Ireland has lost 120 nightclubs in the last three years and a major factor is the €410 fee charged to nightclub operators every time they open their doors for business.
Ireland has lost 120 nightclubs in the last three years and a major factor is the €410 fee charged to nightclub operators every time they open their doors for business.
The chief executive of the Irish Nightclub Industry Association Barry O'Sullivan says the fee is killing jobs and damaging Ireland's night-time economy and tourism.
Mr O'Sullivan said reducing the fee for Special Exemption Orders to €200 per order, would be exchequer-neutral, would boost the hospitality industry, save jobs and generate more taxes for Finance Minister Michael Noonan
"Opening a nightclub seven nights a week costs €150,000 a year in fees and that isn't sustainable. A lot of clubs have cut back," he said.
A new report by DCU economist Anthony Foley found that a large nightclub operating 300 nights every year and trading 18 hours every week pays €148,000 annually for Special Exemption Orders (SEOs)
This contrasts with the €3,805 annual fee charged to publicans for trading the maximum 90 hours a week, or the €1,500 annual fee for off-licences trading up to 78.5 hours per week.
"This disproportionate cost is having a major detrimental impact on nightclubs' ability to trade," Mr O Sullivan said.
Between 2007 and 2010 the number of nightclubs dropped from 430 to 300.
"The decline since 2007 of 27,000 nightclub operating nights is associated with the loss of approximately 600 jobs. On this basis it is clear that the SEO fee must be reduced.
"A €200 fee would just about allow nightclubs to break even on a €2,000 turnover. However, the reduced fee would also allow nightclubs to operate additional nights, generating further income and tax flow to the exchequer. This would neutralise any loss to the State from the reduced fee."
A publican's licence allows operators to sell drink up to 12.30am. The Special Exemption Order allows alcohol to be sold until 2.20am.
"It is effectively €410 for just two hours' trading. The SEO fee is made up of a €300 court fee and €110 in excise duty," he added.
Sunday Independent
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Paris: Massive leakage of methane from thawing shoreline in the Arctic would devastate the world`s climate and economy, a trio of scientists warned on Wednesday.
Billions of tonnes of this potent greenhouse gas are locked in the shallow frozen shelf of the Arctic Ocean, which warms when summer sea ice retreats as a result of the greenhouse-gas effect, they said in a contribution to Nature.
The team modelled what would happen if 50 billion tonnes, or gigatonnes (Gt), of methane escaped over a decade from the floor of the East Siberian Sea, covering two million square kilometres (772,200 square miles) of the Arctic Ocean off northeastern Russia.
"The methane release would bring forward the date at which the global mean temperature rise exceeds two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by between 15 and 35 years," said Chris Hope of Cambridge Judge Business School, part of England`s University of Cambridge.
Gail Whiteman, a professor of sustainability, management and climate change at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, described the threat as an "invisible time bomb".
"The mean impacts of just this one effect, $60 trillion, approaches the $70 trillion value of the world economy in 2012."
The high cost is explained by damage to the climate system, reflected in worse floods, droughts, storms and heat stress, she said.
Eighty percent of the effects would occur in poorer economies in Africa, Asia and South America, according to their model, called PAGE09.
The estimates are based on how the added methane would affect two trends -- one for existing greenhouse-gas emissions, which are very high, and the other for lower emissions giving a more than one-in-two chance of meeting the UN`s 2C warming target.
In an email exchange with AFP, Hope said that if the 50 Gt were released over 20 years, from 2015-2035, the cost would be around $64.5 trillion.
If the release were spread over 30 years, from 2015-2045, it would be $66.2 trillion.
"This is because more of the methane remains in the atmosphere in the period when impacts are expected to be higher in the latter half of this century," he said.
If 25 Gt were released, the cost in all scenarios would be roughly halved.
Scientists have long worried about methane locked up in shoreline sediments and also in permafrost on land.
Methane is 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide (CO2) in trapping solar heat.
The big concern is that the methane, if released to the atmosphere, adds to global warming, which thus accelerates the thaw, adding more gas and amplifying the temperature rise -- a "positive feedback," or vicious circle in climate terms.
But evidence for such a threat is sketchy, research into it is meagre and the conclusions often contested. Some experts also say there could be as-yet unknown mechanisms in permafrost thaw that may limit the methane leakage.
In 2008, Russian scientists writing in the journal Geophysical Research said they estimated 540 Gt of methane to be stored in the Siberian Arctic shelf. Of this, up to 50 Gt could be considered as being "highly possible for abrupt release at any time".
In 2010, another Russian team, reporting in Science, said they had found large amounts of leakage from perforated permafrost on the shelf.
In contrast, in 2011, another team, also Russian, said they saw evidence of outgassing in the East Siberian Sea. But they attributed this to a long-delayed consequence of the end of the last Ice Age, not from recent changes in the Arctic Ocean.
AFP
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ADELAIDE United will field at least one team in SA’s NPL state league next year.
Adelaide’s football director/chief executive Michael Petrillo confirmed the Reds have been granted permission from Football Federation SA to play its second side in the local competition.
Petrillo was also hoping FFSA would grant the club a reserves spot and an under 18 spot with that squad perhaps made up from youngsters selected in SA’s national training centre program.
“The state league team has been confirmed and now we’re just waiting for confirmation on the reserve team and how it will look with an under 18 team feeding into a reserves team,’’ Petrillo said.
“We’ve had discussions with the board of FFSA and they’re ongoing and we’re talking to their technical department.
“Hopefully we’ll have acceptance of the reserves teams in the next two or three weeks.
“We’ve also had discussions on how the under 18 team would look, whether that’s our own team or perhaps the NTC team,’’ he said.
“Negotiations still had to be had with FFSA. The clubs and FFSA have been very good.”
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The best Mexican food in Norfolk–far and away, in my opinion–is quite possibly adding a new location in Ghent. Jessy’s is moving forward with plans to take over 328 Tequila on W. 20th Street.
(Luna Maya is the best at some kind of Latin food, but it’s not exactly Mexican. Props to Tortilla West for everything but their 75 cent tacos, which are worth more-or-less what they cost.)
The original Jessy’s in Ocean View is celebrating its 12-year anniversary this month. While they’ve long been worth the trip from anywhere in Hampton Roads, this would be a reason to celebrate for the south side of Norfolk.
“Our focus is simple, made from scratch; recipes from my mom, grandmas, and aunts,” said Jessy’s owner, Jorge Romero Fonseca, a native of Mexico City.
According to the application filed with the Norfolk Planning Commission, the establishment is slated to stay open to 2am, which would immediately make this my go-to late night sober up spot for the greater Downtown Norfolk area. The restaurant would keep the 328 Tequila name to start, eventually, hopefully, transitioning to the Jessy’s name we’ve all come to know and trust.
“It’s the kind of food I’d look for every time I went back to Mexico City,” said Fonseca. “At the heart of it is street food. When we want to add to the menu we go back to family members to see how they would do things.”
If this goes through–the City still needs to approve the plans–it will be a much needed added infusion of genuine culture into Ghent. A place that posts on Facebook in Spanish is a great counter-balance to the chain restaurants that have started to have outsize presence on Colley.
“Very excited about Jessy’s Taco Bistro opening at The Palace Shops in Ghent,” said the property’s co-owner, Claus Ihlemann. “Jorge and his restaurant is well known for serving great quality food at a fair price. This location should prove to be a great asset to our neighborhood.”
We’ll keep you posted as this process plays out. Via Jessy’s! Viva tacos!
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On May 30, 2017, Courtroom JC3 at the Justice Center in downtown Portland looked the same as it always does at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, except for the glaringly out-of-place news cameras in the corner of the gallery. The docket proceeded as scheduled. Various defendants appeared before the Court, one after another, with those in custody escorted into and out of a glass chamber opposite the Judge’s desk. The room grew increasingly tense as the 2:30 docket crept slowly through its agenda. Anxious whispers multiplied with each defendant that came and went; the public was waiting in anticipation for Jeremy Christian to be put on display.
“Here they come,” the victim’s advocate whispered quietly, to no one in particular, as the deputy district attorneys entered the room. They carried themselves with purpose, like soldiers of justice—their pace brisk and purposeful, their presence formidable. Micah Fletcher, the only surviving victim from Friday’s incident on the MAX train, entered shortly after the attorneys with his family by his side. The two other victims of the tragic event, Taliesin Namkai-Meche and Ricky Best, had lost their lives as a result of the incident that now came before the Court.
Jeremy Christian, the defendant accused of committing the two murders was escorted into the glass enclosure. Fletcher sat in the center of the room. His uncompromisable courage could be seen carried in his shoulders—he sat tall and unwavering in the gallery as he faced Jeremy Christian for a second time.
“Free speech or die, Portland!” shouted the defendant from the glass box in the corner, almost immediately upon his arrival. “You ain’t got no safe place! This is America! Get out if you don’t like free speech.”
The courtroom fell silent for one deafening moment before proceedings continued. Christian’s next appearance was scheduled for June 7th, when he will be arraigned for indictment. Sentences were kept short and papers were signed swiftly.
Christian, from the glass box, interrupted: “Death to the enemies of America. Leave this country if you hate our freedom. Death to Antifa. You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism! You hear me? Die.”
The defendant’s last four words were nearly drowned out by a rumbling wave of angry cries from the crowd that had gathered outside the courtroom. The arraignment ended as abruptly as it began, and Jeremy Christian was promptly removed from the glass display case and taken back into custody.
The rising volume of the demonstrator’s agitation caused a hush to fall over the courtroom once again. The docket came to a screeching halt as officers moved to diffuse the situation in the hallway and escort Fletcher and his family out of the courtroom through the back door. Officers sealed the doors to JC3 while debating in low voices about how to handle the state of affairs, taking into consideration the delicate nature of the situation, and the presence of live-streaming broadcasts. Members of the press scribbled frantically on their note pads.
A few minutes later the doors were reopened, and the gallery spilled into the hallway. Solemn expressions and a number of cameras, with large, vacant lenses lined the hall, observing and recording the pensive parade that marched quietly out of the court.
There was a heaviness to the atmosphere that had settled in and around the courtroom that afternoon. Two men had died, and one severely injured, for defending two teenage girls from racist hate-speech and anti-muslim bullying. Accepting the reality of what happened that day—that two people had lost their lives for doing the right thing—is harrowing. The Portland community had just experienced a sobering instance of violent extremism, the torment of which was reflected in the faces of those who had gathered in the courthouse that day. The collective solemnity that saturated the hallway outside of JC3 was foreboding, and ominous. The scene seemed to be emblematic of a larger sentiment: that incidents of violent extremism and political violence can no longer be boxed into any one context—they can occur in any culture, city, or country. There is no populace on earth immune to such tragedy.
Extremism is defined as the holding of fanatical political or religious views. If considered in terms of a political spectrum, the extreme of one ideology lies at the farthest point from center on one side. If one extreme exists, it is almost inevitable that an extreme exists on the opposite side as well. In Western discourse, discussions of violent extremism often have a tendency to include, if not focus on, examples of extremism within a spectrum of beliefs rooted in Islam. This inclusion occurs even to the point where it has made its way into definitions and explanations of extremism, even here. Such a tendency is extraordinarily problematic, because the frequency with which violent extremism and Islam have been associated together has fostered biases that have in turn encouraged a polarization in how people view Islam. Friday’s incident, however, provided a concrete and undeniable example of how violent extremism can occur not only outside of Islam, but can take root in any belief—political, religious or otherwise. Another such example is the terrorist attack executed by a man named Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the attack known as the Oklahoma City bombing. Then there is Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber, who was responsible for injuring 111 people and killing 1 at the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, bombing an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, Atlanta, and an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Another is Clayton Waagner, who, along with Eric Rudolph, was a member of Christian terrorist organization Army of God, and was the perpetrator of the Anthrax Hoaxes. The list goes on, demonstrating that the association of Islam and terrorism is inappropriate, given the laundry list of American non-muslims that have committed acts of terrorism.
It is disconcerting, at this juncture, to consider the consequences of Friday’s MAX train murders and the effects that may have already begun to ripple across the Pacific Northwest. Muslim women and women of color may see reason to be concerned for their safety if they choose to use public transit and could make Muslim women afraid to wear a hijab in public, or to be. Those who witness racist acts, Islamophobic hate-speech, or hate crimes in general may second-guess their desire to directly intervene out of fear that their actions will be met with violence. These consequences could result in an unintentional tolerance of this unacceptable behavior, a tolerance borne from fear. With hate crimes on the rise, the spread of a fear that has the power to discourage people from fighting back could have disastrous consequences.
The effects of not only the incident on the MAX, but also of the reaction to Tuesday’s arraignment, are already being felt throughout the city. Mayor Ted Wheeler called upon the federal government to cancel several right-wing political gatherings, including a “Pro-Trump Free Speech Rally” scheduled for Sunday, June 4th. The ACLU opposed the cancellation, calling Wheeler’s demands unconstitutional, in defense of the right to free speech of the alt-right groups who have organized the rallies.
Murmurs of concern circulated on Wednesday as alt-left groups began to react to the week’s events in pointed retaliation against the alt-right. For example, a group on Facebook with the name “Arms Up Shoot Back” created an event titled “Defend Portland! No Nazis On Our Streets!” The possibility of the alt-right and the alt-left meeting face-to-face on the streets of downtown Portland is quickly becoming a topic of anxious debate.
The First Amendment can seem like a double-edged sword in situations like this. Though the language of the amendment affords the right to peaceful assembly, a peaceful gathering can turn violent at the drop of a hat when extreme political rhetoric makes an appearance. In times of such polarized yet passionate political activism, how can we simultaneously protect the right to freedom of speech and counteract the violence that may be incited when people speak freely from a place of political polarization?
It should be noted that this dilemma is analogous not only to the schism that divided our nation along party lines last November, but also to the antagonism between radical Islamic terrorist organizations and Western nations. Polarization taken to extremes can cause violence locally just as it does globally.
Clearly, it can be tempting to focus on negative consequences and possibilities in the wake of tragedy. Therefore, it is crucially important that we shift our attention to how this incident can catalyze positive growth for our community, our society, our nation, and our world. Now more than ever it will be important for us to challenge ourselves to be fearless—to uphold the example set by Taliesin Namkai-Meche, Ricky Best, and Micah Fletcher—to honor them by standing against hate and violence together, both as a community and a nation.
There will be pitfalls to avoid in this endeavor, such as fighting violence with violence. As stated by Fletcher to a Portland news station: "We must stand hand-in-hand with one another and find a way to start ending the anger and the hatred and to not allow anger and hatred to flood our city streets with violence and with the destruction that can come with it."
The views reflected in this piece do not reflect the views of other Arbitror contributors or of Arbitror itself.
Photo: “Pioneer Courthouse Interior” originally posted to Google Images by Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Use of this photo does not indicate an endorsement from its creator.
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A dossier of files kept secret by the UK government for almost 50 years could be released after June's general election.
The documents will be published by the National Archives and are believed to contain details of sightings of UFOs over almost five decades.
And alien hunters are hoping they will reveal evidence of a cover-up of a number of high profile incidents they believe are related to extra-terrestrials, including in Rendlesham Forest in 1980, dubbed 'Britain's Roswell.'
A dossier of files kept secret by the UK government for almost 50 years could be released after June's general election that shed light on a number of high profile UFO sightings (artist's impression pictured), including in Rendlesham Forest in 1980 (stock image)
THE PAPERS The National Archives has previously released huge swathes of material gathered by the Ministry of Defence. The files still to be published are believed to date from 1971-76, 1996-2000 and 2004. The papers were originally meant to be released in 2013 alongside thousands of others which did see the light of day, but 18 specific documents were withheld. The latest publication date was set for March this year, but this passed by with no news forthcoming. But German paranormal news website Grenzwissenschaft-aktuell reported on Friday this delay was down to Brexit.
The National Archives has previously released huge swathes of material gathered by the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) UFO Desk, thought to number in the thousands.
The files still to be published are believed to date from 1971-76, 1996-2000 and 2004.
The papers were originally meant to be released in 2013 alongside thousands of others which did see the light of day, but 18 specific documents were withheld.
This prompted claims of a conspiracy to cover-up the existence of alien life among some theorists and another delay in publication last year added to this speculation.
The latest publication date was set for March this year, but this delay passed by with no news forthcoming.
But German paranormal news website Grenzwissenschaft-aktuell reported on Friday this was down to Brexit.
A spokesman for National Archives reportedly told the site: 'Due the upcoming election here in the UK and the rules relating to government departments during the pre-election period, the files will not be released until after the election.
'We are working to ensure that the files are ready for release as soon after this period as is possible, hopefully around the middle of June.'
Conspiracy theorists are hoping the files may shed light on the notorious Rendlesham Forest incident in 1980, dubbed Britain's Roswell.
Strange lights were reported by servicemen in the forest near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge.
The disputed sightings, over three nights between December 26-28, occurred when Britain and the West were on high alert during the Cold War.
But not everyone is convinced that the documents will prove to be the smoking gun alien hunters are hoping for.
Strange lights were reported by servicemen in the forest near RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge. Hundreds of people visit the UFO trail at Rendlesham Forest every year after the infamous sightings provoked a flurry of interest (stock image)
In an email to MailOnline Nick Pope, who worked for the MoD investigating UFO sightings until 2009, said: 'There's no smoking gun in these files that will confirm the existence of aliens, but there are plenty of fascinating UFO reports and MoD policy documents, so these really are the real life X-Files.
'The delay has been a comedy of errors though, I think it's more bureaucracy than conspiracy.
'I understand the frustration of people who were expecting these files to be released by now.'
Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, told MailOnline: 'Getting the majority of the documents into the public domain was a slow process, which was mainly due to the efforts of Dr David Clarke, Prinicipal Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.
'I’m reliably informed that these remaining files contain duplicates of documents already made available to the public.
'It seems very unlikely they will contain anything like the type of evidence UFO supporters yearn for, like crashed saucers or interviews with aliens.'
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Robbie Farah's future is again at the crossroads after South Sydney began shopping the veteran hooker with a year still remaining on his contract.
Just a year after his tumultuous exit from Wests Tigers, Farah now finds himself on the outer at Redfern. The 33-year-old signed a two-year deal with Souths after his much-publicised fallout with then-Tigers coach Jason Taylor, but hasn't been able to recapture his best form at the Rabbitohs.
Tim Mannah, Michael Lichaa and Robbie Farah at the Lebanon World Cup media call. Credit:Adrian Proszenko
Farah is one of the highest-paid players in the NRL, although his transfer hasn't yet hit Souths in the hip pocket. In order to make his arrival possible, the Tigers paid $750,000 of his $950,000 contract for this season. However, there won't be any subsidy next season and Souths are questioning his value going forward. While there are likely to be denials at Rabbitohs headquarters, several clubs have told Fairfax Media they have been approached about the prospect of taking Farah for next season.
Rabbitohs co-owner Russell Crowe personally involved himself in the pitch to Farah to ensure he made the transition. However, his presence hasn't been able to help lift South Sydney back into the finals, with the club sitting 11th ahead of Saturday's clash with minor premiers Melbourne. After having a mortgage on the NSW No.9 jersey for the best part of a decade, he was overlooked this year, with Laurie Daley settling on Nathan Peats after injury cruelled Peter Wallace's Origin comeback hopes.
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A strangely addicting game this one, I've been playing it round after round for... waaay too long now! Characters are as fun to circle through as the scriptures are to read, but the game itself is both aggravating and catchy. Aggravating in how easy it is to die and lose your progress, but catchy in how quick it is to replay. I wonder if collecting cheeses adding to a health bar or lives would make it more rewarding, or destroy the arcade-style aspect a bit...
First ten rounds or so were hellish, but once you get used to the motion (and moving left and right to go up, rather than right up) it gets a bit easier.
Medal(s) I'd really like to see here: cheese-based totals. I've been collecting so much cheese whilst trying to get to the higher numbers, but it'd be nice with awards not only for high scores but also perseverance, as there are with replays and bricks (though to get those you can just make sure to die quickly - something the cheese-based medals would differ in). Overall twas an entertaining game! And as for saving those sinner souls, I still haven't really figured out that part. Do you just make them raise their hands (in which case I feel I should've managed more than three in a game, but maybe not)? Or do something more spectacular? Nice work; happy to see that initial bug fixed!
-cd-
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When bottles of
's new Engel Weisse hit shelves in late July, the German-style brew will have the lowest alcohol content of any Colorado beer sold in a liquor store -- 4 percent ABV, or 3.2 percent alcohol by weight.
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And it would have been much lower, between 2.5 and 3.4 percent ABV, if Elevation hadn't received a couple of reminders about a controversial rule that forbids liquor stores from selling low-alcohol beers, those that weigh in at under 4 percent ABV.
See also: - Ten new Colorado craft beers to look for in July - Beer here! John Hickenlooper will sign Senate Bill 60 at 3 p.m. today at Old Chicago - Light beer ban at restaurants to be lifted?: Last chance for Colorado to see the light
"We took a deeper look into the law and talked to some of our distributors and some retail outlets...and decided to change the recipe a little bit," says Elevation spokesman Xandy Bustamante. "The difference in taste is very, very minimal."
The beer is a traditional German-style Berliner weisse, meaning it has crisp, sour notes that make it good for hot-weather drinking. Elevation aged its version in second-use whiskey barrels that have been washed so that they impart more of the oak flavors.
In Germany, these unfiltered wheat-based beers are served with sweet syrups, like raspberry and woodruff; Elevation will do the same in its Poncha Springs taproom.
"We wanted to do something sour for a long time, and we decided that we specifically wanted to make a Berliner weisse because it's an everyday sour, and one that you can have a couple of because it's low in alcohol," Bustamante says.
Originally, Elevation planned to brew the beer at 2.5 percent ABV, which would have made it around the same alcohol content as similar beers in Germany, and then it moved it up to 3.4 percent. The brewery even made a batch of Engel Weisse at that ABV -- before realizing that the alcohol content was still too low to be legally sold in liquor stores.
"We were disappointed when we had to change it," Bustamante says. "But since draft accounts and liquor stores are 100 percent of our business, we adjusted the recipe."
The change was forced by a Colorado Department of Revenue rule that received a lot of attention in 2010 and 2011 amid the ongoing political and legislative dispute between grocery/convenience stores and liquor stores and craft brewers.
Because of Colorado's arcane Prohibition-era laws, the chains aren't allowed to sell beer above 4 percent ABV (or 3.2 percent by weight) at more than one location. Liquor stores and craft brewers like it that way because they believe the existing rules make it easier for these independent, locally-owned businesses to thrive.
The chains try to change the laws every year, however, and in 2010, as part of the sometimes heated political debate, they demanded that the state enforce an often-overlooked rule that forbade restaurants, bars and liquor stores from selling low-alcohol beers.
Although the rule doesn't bother liquor stores, it would have been hard on bars and restaurants that serve low-alcohol standards like Corona Light and Murphy's Irish Stout. So the restaurant industry fought back, passing Senate Bill 60 in the spring of 2011, which gave them the right to serve low-alcohol beers.
There are currently no efforts under way to pass a similar law benefiting liquor stores, says Steve Kurowski, spokesman for the Colorado Brewers Guild, which represents the majority of the state's craft brewers in the legislature.
"We will see how breweries navigate these rules as the session beer trend evolves," he adds. "These are different than anything else they brew in regards to how they are sold."
The lowest-alcohol Colorado craft beers for sale on liquor store shelves right now are Agave Wheat from Breckenridge Brewery and Mexican Logger, from Ska Brewing, which both weigh in at 4.2 percent ABV. Crabtree's Berlinerweiss, Prost's Weissbier, and Dry Dock's Hefeweizen all come in at around 4.3 percent ABV.
Avery and Odell are also experimenting with lines of low-alcohol beers, but how that turns out and how they will be sold remains to be seen.
Elevation will sell its first batch of Engel Weisse, which is around 3.4 percent ABV, to bars and restaurants (and out of its tap room, which is legal). The second batch, at 4 percent ABV, will be bottled for sale in liquor stores.
"It would have been more fun to make an uber-traditional Berliner weisse with an ABV more accurate for that beer, but it still tastes fantastic," Bustamante says. "And as much as I don't like the rule, I'd still rather have liquor stores selling our beers than grocery stores."
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The “truth” about “Quantum Vision System” is not pretty. It’s the name of given to a slick e-mail based advertisement floating around the Net supposedly authored by a Dr. Kemp. The emails send you to an even slicker web site asking for the “low price” of $37 (or $27 if you reject the first offer) for what appears to be three booklets about eye exercises “guaranteed” to improve your eyesight. If it looks familiar, it probably is — it is almost identical to the questionable Restore My Vision Today offering also hawked on the Internet — and it was probably conjured up by the same marketers that have created “Quantum”. There, you are treated to a videomercial that touts the “proven way to perfect your vision”. Is it a scam? Is it a rip-off? Does it work? You’ll never find out, largely because of an increasingly pernicious Internet industry that offers fake product review sites. You’ll also never be able to find out about the credentials of the Dr. Kemp — none apparently exist on the Internet, nor are they provided at his own alleged web site. So, should you spend the $37? We recommend not, for the following reasons:
1. There’s a reason this sales pitch is slick — they spend a lot of marketing money to get it to you. Who is paying for that? You are. And, like many scammers, they are using Clickbank to sell their ebook so don’t assume you’ll get a refund.
2. If you look for a review of the product, you are deluged with lots of fake review or “scam” sites that simply direct you to the main sales site or offer some officious pablum talking about how the product is highly rated or recommended. (such as scamX.com and infoscamreviews.com) The marketers for this service paid to have these fake sites thwart any customer looking for real reviews. It is also a tactic to obscure any customers who have posted complaints or alerts about fraudulent claims.
3. The author is an unknown. If the website fails to feature the credentials of the author and/or if a Google search turns up nothing about this person, you can bet this is a marketer driven product. The fact that the alleged Dr. William Kemp, an articulate and video-trained older-looking gentleman with an announcers voice with almost perfect diction suggests that the so-called Dr. is not what it seems. It turns out “Dr. Kemp” is actually a Portland-based actor named Gary Powell. KATU-TV tracked down the actor and found out that he was hired to play the role. We were unable to find a “Dr. Kemp” who admits to writing this “system”. Nor is there any Dr. William Kemp licensed in Virginia to practice optometry. Thus, Quantum Vision was in violation of FTC rules that require any endorser’s qualifications to be real.
4. Perhaps most importantly, there is an abundance of free or low-cost vision exercise information on the Internet. Amazon offers a number of ebooks that cost nothing and provide the kinds of well-established eye exercises that can help vision. The titles include: “How to Improve Your Vision Naturally”, “Vision for Life”, “Eyesight and Vision Cure” and “Living Without Glasses”. Even easier, you can just click this link and find four eye exercises described by a qualified optometrist.
5. These kinds of offerings generally like to tout that their information is controversial and contains information that Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Brother or some other such authority is trying to keep from you. Sure enough, the Quantum Vision hawkers call their video a “shocking presentation” that the “eye care industry does not want you to see”. And they use all of the marketer-driven catch words: “revolutionary”, “greedy”, “quantum” (medical snake-oil salesman love to use that term even though it is meaningless) “miracle” and other such words. It’s a textbook snake oil pitch! A sloppy one at that….rife with typos and exaggerated claims.
6. The testimonials offered in the video do not offer the full names or backgrounds of the individuals who are touting the product in very terse, well-crafted and well-lit videos.
From what we can tell, this pitch is essentially a variation on the century-old “Bates Method” of eye exercises. These are posted online for free. You don’t have to spend $37 to get information about how to improve your vision. In fact, a New York-based optometrist has posted some very useful and time-proven exercises, some updated versions of the Bates Method, for close-up vision improvement which include:
LETTER READING—for better scanning accuracy and conscious eye control when reading or using a computer. Preparation: Type up a chart with four rows of random letters, just large enough that you can read them while holding the page at a typical reading distance (type size will vary depending on an individual’s vision). Leave space between each row. In row one, type all capitals, one space in between each letter…row two, all lowercase, one space in between each letter…row three, all lowercase, no spaces…row four, wordlike groups of random letters arranged as if in a sentence.
Exercise: Hold the chart with both hands. Looking at row one, read each letter aloud left to right, then right to left. Then read every second letter…then every third letter. If your mind wanders, start over. Over time: When you master row one, try the same techniques with row two…then row three…then row four. If you find that you have memorized parts of the chart, make a new one using different letters.
NEAR AND FAR—for improved focus and focusing speed when switching your gaze from close objects to distant objects (such as when checking gauges on a car as you drive). Preparation: Type a chart with six to eight rows of random capital letters, each letter about one-half inch tall (or as tall as necessary for you to read them from 10 feet away). Tack the chart to a wall and stand back 10 feet.
Exercise: Hold a pencil horizontally, with its embossed letters facing you, about six inches from your nose (or as close as possible without it looking blurry). Read any letter on the pencil, then read any letter on the chart. Keep doing this, switching back and forth as fast as you can without letting the letters blur. Over time: Do this with one eye covered, then the other.
PENCIL PUSHUPS—to promote eye teamwork. All you need is a pencil.
Exercise: Hold a pencil horizontally at eye level 12 inches from your face (or as far as necessary to see the pencil clearly). With both eyes, look at one particular letter on the pencil…keep looking while bringing the pencil closer to your face. If the letter blurs or doubles, it means that one eye is no longer accurately on target—so move the pencil back until the letter is clear once more…then try again to slowly bring the pencil closer while keeping the letter in focus.
THE “HOT DOG”—for improved flexibility of the muscles within the eye that allow the lens to change shape. No props are needed.
Exercise: With your hands at chest height about eight inches in front of you, point your index fingers and touch the tips together, so that your index fingers are horizontal. Gaze at any target in the distance and, without changing your focus, raise your fingers into your line of sight. Notice that a “mini hot dog” has appeared between the tips of your fingers. Still gazing at the distant object, pull your fingertips apart slightly—and observe that the hot dog is now floating in the air. Keep the hot dog there for two breaths…then look directly at your fingers for two breaths, noticing that the hot dog disappears. Look again at the distant object and find the hot dog once again. Continue switching your gaze back and forth every two breaths.
As your close-up vision improves, you may find that you need less-powerful reading glasses—or none at all—for your day-to-day activities.
We recommend that you check out these low-cost or free books or web-based exercises before forking over $37 to the faux doctor. And beware ANY Net-based sales pitch that has uncredentialed, slick video presentations with no independent reviews. It may not be a scam, but it is probably a rip-off because it is offering overpriced information readily available for almost no cost. In this case, there’s lots of good vision exercises in the marketplace offered at a fraction of the cost of “Quantum Vision”. Save your hard-earned money.
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As a follow up to Backups are Important! Here is How I do it! I decided I should let everyone know how I am handling remote backups on my blog. It’s not hard to see that I am obviously a Windows guy, I am also glad to admit that I personally prefer Linux Servers for my blog, it’s a smaller impact, and much much cheaper; although I have considered Azure more than once.
So as I have listed on my last blog post I was bit in the rear on backups and decided to go for overkill. I already have a ton of storage at home so I figured there had to be a way for me to utilize that storage and have a remote backup that isn’t in my Dropbox and isn’t a manual process. So I began researching ways to interface with SFTP, I found out that WinSCP has .NET Assemblys available, and I’ll admit I am far from a programmer and didn’t want to try to hook into that using PowerShell. So I let it sit for a couple of weeks and by god an example of exactly what I wanted to do was posted, and all I had to do was minor tweaks.
I found Session.SynchronizeDirectories method and Session.FileTransferred event example on the WinSCP site and thought by god this will do an rsync using PowerShell! So I downloaded it reviewed the code, added my login information and changed line 72 from
SynchronizationMode.Remote 1 SynchronizationMode . Remote
to
SynchronizationMode.Local 1 SynchronizationMode . Local
along with the directories I was synchronizing. Once that was completed all I had to do was setup a scheduled task to execute after my local backups were completed. Now some of you may think that this is extremely unsafe because it has my logins as plain text that is true, however the account I am using only has read access to these servers and I personally would be a lot more concerned about my local machine having been breached than someone having potentially found a read only login to my servers.
I decided to make modifications to the script for end users not to have to scroll looking for variables to edit, so please feel free to use my very lightly tweaked version.
[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom("WinSCP.dll") | Out-Null # Authentication Information $sessionOptions = New-Object WinSCP.SessionOptions $sessionOptions.Protocol = [WinSCP.Protocol]::Sftp $sessionOptions.HostName = "srv01.contoso.com" $sessionOptions.UserName = "user" $sessionOptions.Password = "P@ssw0rd" $sessionOptions.SshHostKeyFingerprint = "ssh-rsa 2048 0a:a0:0a:a0:00:aa:00:00:aa:aa:a0:a0:aa:0a:a0:00" # Folders to Sync $local = "D:\Backups\srv01" $remote = "/opt/backups" # Session.FileTransferred event handler function FileTransferred { if ($_.Error -eq $null) { Write-Host ("Upload of {0} succeeded" -f $_.FileName) } else { Write-Host ("Upload of {0} failed: {1}" -f $_.FileName, $_.Error) } if ($_.Chmod -ne $null) { if ($_.Chmod.Error -eq $null) { Write-Host ("Permisions of {0} set to {1}" -f $_.Chmod.FileName, $_.Chmod.FilePermissions) } else { Write-Host ("Setting permissions of {0} failed: {1}" -f $_.Chmod.FileName, $_.Chmod.Error) } } else { Write-Host ("Permissions of {0} kept with their defaults" -f $_.Destination) } if ($_.Touch -ne $null) { if ($_.Touch.Error -eq $null) { Write-Host ("Timestamp of {0} set to {1}" -f $_.Touch.FileName, $_.Touch.LastWriteTime) } else { Write-Host ("Setting timestamp of {0} failed: {1}" -f $_.Touch.FileName, $_.Touch.Error) } } else { # This should never happen with Session.SynchronizeDirectories Write-Host ("Timestamp of {0} kept with its default (current time)" -f $_.Destination) } } # Main script try { $session = New-Object WinSCP.Session try { # Will continuously report progress of synchronization $session.add_FileTransferred( { FileTransferred } ) # Connect $session.Open($sessionOptions) $synchronizationResult = $session.SynchronizeDirectories( [WinSCP.SynchronizationMode]::Local, $local, $remote, $false) # Throw on any error $synchronizationResult.Check() } finally { # Disconnect, clean up $session.Dispose() } exit 0 } catch [Exception] { Write-Host $_.Exception.Message exit 1 } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 [ Reflection . Assembly ] :: LoadFrom ( "WinSCP.dll" ) | Out - Null # Authentication Information $ sessionOptions = New - Object WinSCP . SessionOptions $ sessionOptions . Protocol = [ WinSCP . Protocol ] :: Sftp $ sessionOptions . HostName = "srv01.contoso.com" $ sessionOptions . UserName = "user" $ sessionOptions . Password = "P@ssw0rd" $ sessionOptions . SshHostKeyFingerprint = "ssh-rsa 2048 0a:a0:0a:a0:00:aa:00:00:aa:aa:a0:a0:aa:0a:a0:00" # Folders to Sync $ local = "D:\Backups\srv01" $ remote = "/opt/backups" # Session.FileTransferred event handler function FileTransferred { if ( $ _ . Error - eq $ null ) { Write - Host ( "Upload of {0} succeeded" - f $ _ . FileName ) } else { Write - Host ( "Upload of {0} failed: {1}" - f $ _ . FileName , $ _ . Error ) } if ( $ _ . Chmod - ne $ null ) { if ( $ _ . Chmod . Error - eq $ null ) { Write - Host ( "Permisions of {0} set to {1}" - f $ _ . Chmod . FileName , $ _ . Chmod . FilePermissions ) } else { Write - Host ( "Setting permissions of {0} failed: {1}" - f $ _ . Chmod . FileName , $ _ . Chmod . Error ) } } else { Write - Host ( "Permissions of {0} kept with their defaults" - f $ _ . Destination ) } if ( $ _ . Touch - ne $ null ) { if ( $ _ . Touch . Error - eq $ null ) { Write - Host ( "Timestamp of {0} set to {1}" - f $ _ . Touch . FileName , $ _ . Touch . LastWriteTime ) } else { Write - Host ( "Setting timestamp of {0} failed: {1}" - f $ _ . Touch . FileName , $ _ . Touch . Error ) } } else { # This should never happen with Session.SynchronizeDirectories Write - Host ( "Timestamp of {0} kept with its default (current time)" - f $ _ . Destination ) } } # Main script try { $ session = New - Object WinSCP . Session try { # Will continuously report progress of synchronization $ session . add_FileTransferred ( { FileTransferred } ) # Connect $ session . Open ( $ sessionOptions ) $ synchronizationResult = $ session . SynchronizeDirectories ( [ WinSCP . SynchronizationMode ] :: Local , $ local , $ remote , $ false ) # Throw on any error $ synchronizationResult . Check ( ) } finally { # Disconnect, clean up $ session . Dispose ( ) } exit 0 } catch [ Exception ] { Write - Host $ _ . Exception . Message exit 1 }
Currently between my two servers I have over 33 GB of backups on a 5.46 TB Raid 5, eventually I will need to add a scheduled task that removes old backups however that day is far away from now.
NOTE: There is a weird issue that my friend John Gullion helped me discover using this .NET Assembly that requires you use the x86 PowerShell, so when executing it be certain that you have it running under x86.
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The anti-democratic Cultural Marxist Left is looking to a radical kritarch , a judge who thinks she is a political ruler, one Dolly Gee of the United States District Court for the District of Central California, for its next onslaught on America. Gee, the daughter of Chinese immigrants and an Obama nominee, has a long history of mandating benefits for illegal aliens, including ordering free lawyers for illegal aliens , something specifically banned by an Act of Congress . Having already rendered a preliminary decision in favor of illegal aliens who were being detained, Gee is expected to issue a final decision soon that may end all detainment—and create a major issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, assuming the Stupid Party notices [ Court ruling on immigration could rock Obama, 2016 race , by Emily Cadei, Newsweek, May 19, 2015]
The Left has targeted one of the few remnants of immigration law enforcement by campaigning against the detainment of Central American illegal alien minors and their families [Democratic lawmakers tell Obama to stop ‘jailing’ migrant children, moms by Franco Ordoñez, McClatchy DC, May 21, 2015]. Of course, there’s already a campaign against detaining illegals in general, but now we are being told doing anything about the endless flood of Central American “refugees” who continue to rampage across the border isn’t just wrong, but against the law. [Influx of Central American Teen and Family Arrivals Continues, by Jessica Vaughan, Center for Immigration Studies, March 31, 2015]
And, as usual in these cases, the legal basis for the Left’s claims is thin.
The law is quite clear: Congress authorized the detention of illegal aliens without regard to age or parental status in the amended Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 reads :
Section 303: (a) IN GENERAL.-Section 236 (8 U.S.C. 1226) is amended to read as follows: "APPREHENSION AND DETENTION OF ALIENS "SEC. 236. (a) ARREST, DETENTION, AND RELEASE.-On a warrant issued by the Attorney General, an alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States. Except as provided in subsection (c) and pending such decision, the Attorney General- "(1) may continue to detain the arrested alien…; "(3) may not provide the alien with work authorization (including an ' employment authorized' endorsement or other appropriate work permit), unless the alien is lawfully admitted for permanent residence [Emphasis added)
Note that not only are all aliens subject to detention, but they are prohibited from receiving employment authorization.
Yet the Left claims a legal settlement made during the Clinton Administration in the case Flores v. Meese outweighs the law. The case was sparked by a young illegal alien, Jenny Lisette Flores, who was detained by INS after entering the country illegally. In the lawsuit that resulted, the Supreme Court “found that the release procedures did not violate the minors’ substantive or procedural due process rights, and that the Attorney General was acting within his discretion”. [Flores v. Meese Case, Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Accessed June 5, 2015] The case was then remanded to a district court.
However, incredibly, the Clinton Administration settled the case and established a precedent for the treatment of illegal alien minors. As the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law notes:
It requires that juveniles be held in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their age and special needs to ensure their protection and wellbeing. It also requires that juveniles be released from custody without unnecessary delay to a parent, legal guardian, adult relative, individual specifically designated by the parent, licensed program, or, alternatively, an adult who seeks custody who DHS deems appropriate.
Needless to say, the "Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law" is a Leftist group that wants to apply this settlement to all illegal alien minors today. Yet even this interpretation mentions nothing about adults—and it explicitly mandates that juveniles “be held.”
More importantly, the authority to detain illegal aliens is unlimited. Any release of an illegal alien is at the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While there may be many reasons to release a minor illegal alien, that is completely up to the discretion of DHS.
However, the settlement claimed to set out “nationwide policy for the detention, release, and treatment of minors in the custody of the INS and shall supersede all previous INS policies that are inconsistent with the terms of this Agreement [Flores v Meese Agreement, August 12, 1996].
A settlement can’t trump the laws set by Congress, but that’s precisely what the advocates of mass immigration are claiming.
It gets worse. The new campaign is trying to apply this already mistaken settlement not just to illegal alien minors, but to adults. For example, The New York Times Magazine is calling not just for illegal alien minors to be released but parents as well. Specifically, it condemns George W. Bush for denying “Flores protections to refugee children traveling with their parents” [The Shame of America’s Family Detention Camps, by Wil S. Hylton, February 4, 2015].
The NYT seemingly mocks DHS for asking for time to screen the detainees for possible threats to national security. Of course, many of these “minors” are actually teenagers who are known gang members and actually do pose a threat [Known gang members among thousands of illegal immigrant children storming the U.S. border and officials are now trying to silence officers from talking to the media, by Ashley Collman and Ryan Parry, Daily Mail,June 14, 2014]
Yet that’s not the main reason for detention. The main reason for detaining illegals: to ensure appearance at a hearing before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR).
Astonishingly, the NYT claims “Studies have shown that nearly all detainees who are released from custody with some form of monitoring will appear for their court date,” meaning a hearing before EOIR. Yet contrary to Hylton’s claim, more than 91% of the Central American surge of illegal aliens have not appeared for their scheduled hearing. [Contrary to Administration Claims, Only a Tiny Fraction of ‘Surge’ Border-Jumpers Deported, by Jessica Vaughn, Center for Immigration Studies, December 24, 2014]
More importantly, few of the illegal alien family groups have been detained after initial processing, and the few actually detained have been subsequently released. Additionally, the border surge illegal aliens neither reported to the DHS after their release as required, nor appeared at their EOIR hearings. And we can guess this was all part of the Obama Regime plan.
And the way is being prepared by sob stories like the one in the New York Times Magazine. Thus Hylton writes:
A door in the back opened to reveal dozens of young women and children huddled together. Many were gaunt and malnourished, with dark circles under their eyes. “The kids were really sick,” Brown [an immigration lawyer] told me later. “A lot of the moms were holding them in their arms, even the older kids — holding them like babies, and they’re screaming and crying, and some of them are lying there listlessly.”
But actually these Central American “refugees” are receiving $30 million living quarters so outrageously opulent that even the hapless Republican Congress was investigating it . “Detention” consists of luxuriating in de facto hotels filled with murals, education, food, toys, and recreation , a veritable Club-Fed for illegal aliens they can enjoy before eventually being released.
What’s the solution? We can do what the Reagan Administration did in 1988 by swiftly shutting off the flood, holding quick hearings at the border, and deporting illegals. This is not the first Central American “surge,” but if it is handled properly, the GOP Congress could ensure it is the last.
The Republican Congress can also mandate and expand Expedited Removal.
These simple tactics would resolve the problem and force the Democrats into an embarrassing position.
Of course, the Republican Congress also needs to start impeaching some of the judges who think they can simply throw out legislation they don’t like.
And that’s only a first step. The real way to solve the problem is to go to the source—impeach the lawless President who set this disaster in motion.
The blogger Federale (Email him) is a 4th generation Californian and a veteran of federal law enforcement, including service in the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and other federal law enforcement agencies.
Federale's opinions do not represent those of the Department of Homeland Security or the federal government, and are an exercise of rights protected by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
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A portion of Corona del Mar State Beach was evacuated after a swimmer was bitten in a possible shark attack Sunday afternoon, according to the Newport Beach Fire Department.
About 4:10 p.m., a rescue boat picked up the injured female, who had suffered "traumatic injuries," Battalion Chief Brent Jacobsen of the Fire Department said.
She appeared to have an animal bite wound on her torso, according to a statement from Tara Finnigan, the public information manager for Newport Beach.
The beachgoer's wounds were consistent with signs of a shark attack, but authorities are awaiting official confirmation, Jacobsen said.
Her condition was not immediately known, but she was alert and talking when first responders rushed her to an area hospital, Finnigan wrote in the emailed statement.
A stretch of ocean from Corona del Mar to the Newport Beach Pier has been evacuated following the incident. It would remain closed through the night and be reevaluated in the morning.
No additional information was immediately released.
Corona del Mar State Beach is an approximately half-mile long stretch of sandy shores framed by cliffs and rock jetty that form Newport Harbor's east entrance, according to the California Department of Parks and Recreation. It is a popular spot for swimmers, surfers and divers, the department's website stated.
The area has seen a number of shark sightings in the past year.
A stretch of nearby Newport Beach was shut down last October after an 8-foot shark was spotted near the pier.
Multiple videos have also emerged online of various encounters off Dana Point and Huntington Beach between last August and this April.
Even more recently, photos surfaced of a baby shark that was found mutilated in Newport Beach, sparking an investigation earlier this month by the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The El Niño conditions that began last year have been cited as a reason for an increase in the sightings along the Southern California coast.
KTLA's Stephen Acosta contributed to this story.
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The right-wing blog world is erupting again at Wendy Davis.
The state senator first became the focus of conservatives’ burning scorn for her 11-hour filibuster of the bill that is responsible for abortion providers now going out of business across Texas.
Now that she’s declared she is running for governor of the Lone Star State, the Harvard Law-educated Davis has done it again.
“I am pro-life,” she told a University of Texas at Brownsville crowd on Tuesday. “I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s future and their ability to provide for that future. I care about life and I have a record of fighting for people above all else.”
“This isn’t about protecting abortion,” Davis explained in the same appearance. “It’s about protecting women. It’s about trusting women to make good decisions for themselves and empowering them with the tools to do that.”
Well, opponents of abortion rights refuse to have their brand sullied by the woman Red State‘s Erick Erickson called “Abortion Barbie.”
“Newsflash, Sen. Davis,” wrote Townhall’s Christine Rousselle. “Being pro-life means respecting the lives of the unborn as well.”
PJ Tatler wrote, “Wendy Davis declaring ‘I am pro-life’ is simply a lie. There is no other way to describe it.”
Twitchy, the website that challenges the notion that the content of a post should make more sense than the comment section, collected several tweets that challenge the notion that anyone who believes women should be able to make their own reproductive choices could be “pro-life.”
Conservatives believe that title should be strictly given to anti-abortion rights politicians like Governor Rick Perry (R-TX), who has executed more prisoners than any modern American governor, breaking the record of another “pro-lifer” — George W. Bush.
But if Davis is intent on rebranding “pro-life” to actually caring for children once they are born, she could point out that abortion rates are higher in places where the procedure is illegal.
Photo: Alan Kotok via Flickr
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A 25-year-old man is dead after he was shot following an apparent altercation at a downtown bar early Monday morning.
Ottawa Police were called to the area of Rideau and Augusta streets , around 1:15 a.m. Monday for reports of a shooting.
A man was found suffering from gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Family identified Ashton Dickson, 25, as the victim of the shooting. They said Dickson was killed after an altercation over the line-up for the bathroom at the Mingle Room, a bar on Rideau Street.
The family told CTV News that Dickson was a good man who loved football and his family, and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"He was murdered over a bathroom break," the family said. It was Dickson's first time at the Mingle Room, they added.
The shooting was the second in the area of Rideau and Augusta in five days.
On Thursday, Ottawa Police responded to a call for a shooting in the 400 block of Rideau Street. Shell casings were found on the ground.
A 25-year-old man was also found at the scene suffering from stab wounds.
Ashton Dickson was good student, great athlete & wonderful young man. This video reflected his character & spirit. https://t.co/7Og5A9JE1i https://t.co/NWugK9sobL — Kent MacDonald (@kentmacdonald) June 26, 2017
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The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president, Richard Trumka, said on Thursday that the nation’s labor unions would have 128,000 volunteers working on the “final four days” of the 2012 campaign, saying these volunteers would knock on 5.5 million doors and make 5.2 million phone calls.
In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Trumka, who leads a federation of 56 labor unions, said many union members were eager to volunteer to help re-elect President Obama because, he said, Mitt Romney has “the most anti-union, anti-worker platform we’ve seen for any candidate in our history.”
Mr. Trumka said union members would also distribute two million leaflets at unionized work sites between now and Election Day, noting that that would be on top of 12 million fliers mailed to union members’ homes.
Mr. Trumka said the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and its unions would also provide more than 2,000 poll monitors who would work closely with lawyers around the country. “If we see people being denied the vote, people that hassle them, we will have a rapid response team,” he said.
He predicted that Mr. Obama would win Ohio by three to four percentage points, and said that labor’s get-out-the-vote push would help push Mr. Obama over the top there. He said organized labor already has a strong infrastructure in Ohio as a result of its effort last November to repeal a Republican-backed state law that curbed collective bargaining for government employees. After a huge union effort, Ohio residents voted to repeal that law 62 percent to 38 percent.
Mr. Romney’s spokesmen have repeatedly said that Mr. Obama has consistently sided with unions over middle-class workers by supporting government policies that, they say, have killed jobs.
Recently, the Romney campaign has run ads in Ohio asserting that Jeep, a recipient of federal bailout money, will soon outsource American jobs to China. Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, is considering opening a facility in China where it would produce Jeeps for sale locally. But Jeep officials say they are expanding their American work force, not cutting it.
Michael Podhorzer, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s political director, maintained that these misleading ads were backfiring and would hurt Mr. Romney in Ohio and neighboring states.
Mr. Trumka also voiced confidence that labor would win a ballot initiative in Michigan, known as Proposal 2, that would enshrine collective bargaining rights in that state’s Constitution. Political experts estimate that business, which strongly opposes the proposal, and labor will spend more than $30 million in the ballot fight.
“Proposal 2 is very important because it will prevent future attacks on collective bargaining,” Mr. Trumka said. “If it’s successful, we will continue to make efforts like that” in other states to prevent future attacks on collective bargaining, like those in Wisconsin.
Business leaders in Michigan as well as Gov. Rick Snyder have attacked Proposal 2, saying it would hurt the state’s business climate and would be an improper effort to circumvent the legislature and governor.
Mr. Trumka also predicted that labor would defeat a ballot proposal in California, known as Proposition 32, that would bar labor unions from using any union money in political campaign. Mr. Trumka said his side was three points ahead, according to recent polls. He added that if Proposition 32 was approved, unions would likely challenge it as unconstitutional, most likely on the ground that it violates their free speech rights.
In the conference call Mr. Trumka named several Democratic senatorial candidates that labor unions were campaigning for, including Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Michigan’s governor. He is Rick Snyder, not Rob. The article also misstated the name of a senator from Minnesota. She is Amy Klobuchar, not Knoblauch.
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Britain's vote to quit the European Union is likely to occur over a period of two years, during which time the UK and the EU may be able to negotiate treaties to minimize Brexit's effects. But Britain's role in the EU's Galileo and Copernicus programs, and its attractiveness to non-UK companies seeking European space business, may diminish.
PARIS — The British vote June 23 to leave the European Union is likely to occur gradually over two years, but it raises multiple immediate questions about the consequences for Europe's space programs and Britain's role in them.
Not all of these questions can be answered definitively. British and European Union officials have said it will take time to fix a precise schedule for the separation. During this time it may be possible for Britain and the European Commission to negotiate trade and security treaties that would blunt the impact of the withdrawal. Here are some of the issues confronting British and European space policy after the vote:
— More than three-quarters of Britain's space spending is sent to the 22-nation European Space Agency, which is not a European Union organization. ESA Director-General Johann-Dietrich Woerner has said that for ESA programs, Brexit should have little or no impact.
ESA already includes two full members — Norway and Switzerland — that are not in the EU, with Canada as an ESA associate member.
— The European Commission owns Europe's Galileo positioning, navigation and timing network, Galileo, and here things may get complicated.
A British company, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), is prime contractor for Galileo's payload electronics. Twenty-two Galileo satellites have been ordered from OHB SE of Bremen, Germany. Most of them have been built and all were contracted well before the Brexit issue.
The question concerns future Galileo satellites. The European Commission, through ESA, is managing a competition for a fresh set of Galileo spacecraft that, in principle, will look almost identical to those built by OHB and SSTL.
ESA has set a deadline of July 19 for industry to bid on the next Galileo satellite series. OHB Chief Executive Marco R. Fuchs has said his company is bidding the same OHB-SSTL team that won the previous order, although he concedes the consequences of Brexit have been a concern.
Norway is part of the Galileo program after having signed a security treaty with the European Union. Whether such a treaty would suffice to permit a non-EU member from having a role as central as SSTL's in Galileo is unclear.
For the moment, Britain remains in the EU, but the Galileo satellites to be contracted will be delivered and launched toward the end of the decade, presumably after Brexit occurs.
Galileo's PRS access policy
— Britain has been an active participant in the Galileo system's Public Regulated Service, which is similar to the U.S. GPS network's M-code in providing protected, encrypted signals reserved for military and government customers.
Norway's security treaty was not sufficient to allow Norway access to PRS. Like the United States, whose Defense Department wants access to PRS to diversify signal sources and raise system resiliency, Norway is now awaiting an EU decision on whether it can offer PRS to its government and military.
— The European Union also owns the Copernicus environment-monitoring program, which like Galileo is funded through the European Commission's Multi-year Financial Framework.
The current seven-year financial commitment runs to 2020, with a mid-term review scheduled for late this year. With Britain now starting what apparently will be a two-year countdown on exit, what will Britain's role be in the final years of this program?
The industrial side
The British government and the British industrial space sector have set ambitious goals to increase Britain's share of worldwide space commerce to 10 percent by 2023, against 6.5 percent now.
Britain's space sector has been growing much faster than the overall British economy in recent years and in 2013 was estimated at 11.8 billion British pounds, or nearly $19 billion at 2013 exchange rates, with an direct employment base of more than 35,000.
Multiple companies in the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and elsewhere have created British divisions, thereby gaining access to ESA and European Union space project funding.
To the extent that these investments were based on projections of future ESA budgets and Britain's share in them — 325 million euros ($369 million) in 2016 — these decisions remain as valid today as yesterday.
But with the European Union's role in space affairs growing, and with its two flagship infrastructure programs — Galileo and Copernicus —designed as forevermore-type commitments, the industrial calculus will be complicated.
Will the continued ESA membership and whatever UK-EU treaties are negotiated be enough to justify a non-UK company's current UK strategy? That is not clear.
Britain is best known as an economy driven by services, especially financial services. But Airbus UK is mainly a hardware builder and is the dominant corporate space presence in Britain.
If it now becomes more difficult for Airbus to justify funneling European Union work to the company's Stevenage or Portsmouth plants, how much of that work over time will be shifted to Germany or France or Spain?
Questions from a satellite fleet operator
Satellite fleet operators are also raising issues. Paris-based Eutelsat, for example, has made Britain the home of Eutelsat's Quantum flexible-payload satellite program, which is funded from ESA mainly by British money.
Eutelsat's Broadband for Africa project, with Facebook as a partner, is also headquartered in Britain, as is Eutelsat's Global Government division.
Matt Child, Eutelsat's vice president for government services, said in April that the company already had begun thinking about Brexit issues. Among the questions:
The ease of establishing companies and relocating employees?
Monetary policy and the exchange-rate mechanism?
Institutional relationships, i.e. ESA, ESA [the European Defense Agency, part of the EU]?
EU trade and technology transfer?
Attractiveness to international companies who currently see the UK as the gateway to Europe?
Child did not pretend to know the answers.
Originally published on Space News.
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New Delhi: India, China and Pakistan need to find areas to cooperate and collaborate and become strategic partners inside Afghanistan to ensure stability in the region and stave off threats from terrorists, foreign policy experts have averred.
The remarks come even as Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar is in Kabul to hold talks with the Afghan leadership as part of his 'SAARC Yatra' aimed at firming up India's ties with members of the regional grouping.
Stating that China and India were both important for his country, former Afghan ambassador to China, Sultan Ahmed Baheen, said it was imperative for the two countries to hit upon a model similar to that of China and America.
"We in Afghanistan expect more cooperation between the two countries, not only bilaterally but also as strategic partners. Afghanistan can be the ground for cooperation between the two," Baheen said.
Rather than trying to contain it, it is engagement with Afghanistan which would benefit everyone, said Amanullah Saleh, a former chief of Afghan intelligence.
"Based on realities and our histories, Afghanistan will never lose relevance... I think engaging with Afghanistan is far more to the benefit of everyone rather than disengaging and containing it. We are an actor in the region and a factor in the world. We are not a subject," he said.
"Discussions in Washington or in London, or Brazil, about Afghanistan, to be honest, we have zero influence on that. What we have is confidence in our history, in our land, in our people, in our indigenous capability. With that confidence intact, in one way or the other, Washington will engage with us," Saleh said.
Comparing Afghanistan to a little boutique shop in the vicinity of a big shopping mall, Saleh said, "We don't lose locational value by virtue of being surrounded by powerful countries... We remain relevant."
Commenting on the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) between India and Afghanistan, Saleh said, "We heard from government officials yesterday that the provisions of the SPA are implemented and thoroughly observed that there is no change in that."
TCA Rangachari, former ambassador of India to France and Germany, said that the "zero sum game" approach mentality towards security in Afghanistan should change.
"The approach that either India can be in Afghanistan or Pakistan can be in Afghanistan and not both of them together, that approach should change," Rangachari said.
Agriculture, education, security and medicine are various areas of interest that can be looked at as areas for cooperation and collaboration between India, China and Pakistan, he said.
"In terms of trade, if there is land connectivity, it will benefit Pakistan. It will mean a much bigger market for not only Pakistan, but also Afghanistan."
"It becomes important for China's foreign policy, which is talking of integrating markets across Asia, to persuade Pakistan in terms of opening up the process to benefit everyone," he said.
The policy experts from Vivekanda International Foundation, the Royal United Services Institute, London, and the China Institute of Contemporary Relations, Bejing, were participating in a four-day trilateral conference.
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Lance Armstrong had two decades of professional racing and seven Tour de France championships to his credit before he became America’s most disliked athlete. That happened, of course, when he acknowledged that he cheated through much of the ride. For Manti Te’o, it took little more than a day, following the revelation of a fake girlfriend, to join Armstrong at the top of the list.
The latest public surveys from Nielsen/E-Poll show Te’o and Armstrong in a virtual dead heat for the dubious title of America’s most disliked athlete (though we give the nod to Armstrong based on higher name recognition, which gives his score a bit more heft). Each appeals to just 15% of the public, according to Nielsen’s polling, which it conducts on a rolling basis with the help of E-Poll, an Encino, Calif.-based market research firm. Candidates were limited to active athletes with a minimum of 10% awareness (Armstrong is now barred from officially sanctioned events, but still competes as an athlete, hence for all practical purposes he is active).
Despite years of doping whispers and suspicions, Armstrong managed to maintain a surprisingly positive public image through vehement denials, his feel-good comeback from cancer and his charitable work with Livestrong. Then he decided to fess up to Oprah. Good for the soul perhaps, but as for public opinion, not what he’d hoped for. Especially since many viewers didn’t find him all that remorseful.
“The Oprah interview hurt him, he came off as pompous, arrogant and unapologetic,” says Stephen Master, senior vice president of sports at Nielsen.
Then there’s Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman Trophy runner-up who enjoyed immense popularity as he led the Irish to a 12-0 regular-season record and a spot in the BCS National Championship game. Not only was Te’o all over the field every week, he was likable and articulate in post-game interviews. And of course, he did it all while fighting the grief over the deaths of both his grandmother and his girlfriend.
Then after Notre Dame’s title game loss to Alabama, Deadspin revealed that the girlfriend he was grieving for just didn’t exist. She was the product of an online hoax, complete with fake photos and a fake voice on the phone. Te’o claims he was duped, and many believe he was. But they also think the ‘girlfriend with cancer’ angle he’d been playing up since early in the season was too much for someone, it turned out, he’d never even met in person. Teammates commented that that they thought he played up the relationship for attention. Sitting at 88% appeal at the time of the BCS title game, Te’o plummeted to 15% nearly overnight.
“The story was just so creepy,” Master says. “And even when he knew he’d been duped he stuck with the story for awhile, and he’d told people he had met the woman in person.”
Full List: The 10 Most Disliked Athletes
Te'o, who could be a high pick in the 2013 NFL draft, can probably put the bizarre episode behind him, particularly if he goes on to a strong pro career. As for Armstrong, no such luck. By cheating to win all those races, it’s as if he didn’t win them at all. There’s no undoing that (also unfortunate is the fact that the public doesn’t seem moved by the ‘everybody-does-it-so-I-had-to’ rationale).
Armstrong and Te’o are tops among five new members of this year’s edition of our Most Disliked Athletes list. The others: Lakers forward Metta World Peace, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, and Bears’ quarterback Jay Cutler, all of whom have flirted with the list in the past but avoided it in 2012. Michael Vick, No. 1 on this list in the past, can thank the new blood and the passage of another year from his canine troubles -- he moves down to No.7.
Among the most disliked of 2012 who escaped the list this year are Kris Humphries, no doubt a one-shot wonder after his quickie marriage to Kim Kardashian landed him in the tabloids, and LeBron James, who shook off a lot of the negativity surrounding his “decision” thanks to an NBA title and an Olympic gold medal. Also dropping off: Plaxico Burress (gun bust), Ndamkong Suh (dirty play), and Terrell Owens (all-around pot stirrer), memories of whom are fading quickly.
Full List: The 10 Most Disliked Athletes In America
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“We are very respectful to whomever is elected,” the Mexican president said. | AP Photo Mexico's president: 'No way' we'd pay for a wall
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said he will work with whoever is elected president of the United States in November, but he wants to make one thing clear: Mexico will not be paying for a wall.
“There is no way to have Mexico pay the — a wall, but any decisions inside United States is a decision of its government,” Peña Nieto told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday on Zakaria’s program. “There is no way that Mexico can pay [for] a wall like that.”
Story Continued Below
Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has since the start of his presidential campaign called for the construction of a wall along the U.S.' southern border, designed to keep Mexicans from coming across the border illegally.
Peña Nieto also hit Trump for his characterizations of Mexicans, saying he “cannot agree with such a generalization for Mexicans” being rapists, drug dealers and criminals.
“There's no way to agree with comments like these which describe all Mexicans in such a way,” he said. “I believe that in every country, there are individuals who are criminals, that we need to fight and apply the full extent of the law.”
On the election itself, Peña Nieto said he’s “sure that both [Clinton and Trump] would like to build good conditions and better wellness for their people.
“We are very respectful to whomever is elected,” he continued. “We want to build a positive and constructive relation among Mexico and to whomever becomes president of United States.”
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(CNN) -- Researchers are developing a specialized skin "printing" system that could be used in the future to treat soldiers wounded on the battlefield.
Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine were inspired by standard inkjet printers found in many home offices.
"We started out by taking a typical desktop inkjet cartridge. Instead of ink we use cells, which are placed in the cartridge," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the institute.
The device could be used to rebuild damaged or burned skin.
The project is in pre-clinical phases and may take another five years of development before it is ready to be used on human burn victims, he said.
Other universities, including Cornell University and the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, are working on similar projects and will speak on the topic on Sunday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington. These university researchers say organs -- not just skin -- could be printed using similar techniques.
Burn injuries account for 5% to 20% of combat-related injuries, according to the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine. The skin printing project is one of several projects at Wake Forest largely funded by that institute, which is a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Wake Forest will receive approximately $50 million from the Defense Department over the next five years to fund projects, including the skin-creating system.
Researchers developed the skin "bio-printer" by modifying a standard store-bought printer. One modification is the addition of a three-dimensional "elevator" that builds on damaged tissue with fresh layers of healthy skin.
The skin-printing process involves several steps. First, a small piece of skin is taken from the patient. The sample is about half the size of a postage stamp, and it is taken from the patient by using a chemical solution.
Those cells are then separated and replicated on their own in a specialized environment that catalyzes this cell development.
"We expand the cells in large quantities. Once we make those new cells, the next step is to put the cells in the printer, on a cartridge, and print on the patient," Atala said.
The printer is then placed over the wound at a distance so that it doesn't touch the burn victim. "It's like a flat-bed scanner that moves back and forth and put cells on you," said Atala.
Once the new cells have been applied, they mature and form new skin.
Specially designed printer heads in the skin bio-printer use pressurized nozzles -- unlike those found in traditional inkjet printers.
The pressure-based delivery system allows for a safe distance between the printer and the patient and can accommodate a variety of body types, according to a 2010 report from the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine.
The device can fabricate healthy skin in anywhere from minutes to a few hours, depending on the size and type of burn, according to the report.
"You are building up the cells layer after layer after layer," Atala said.
Acquiring an adequate sample can be a challenge in victims with extensive burns, he said, since there is sometimes "not enough (skin) to go around with a patient with large burns," Atala said.
The sample biopsy would be used to grow new cells then placed in the printer cartridge, said Atala.
Researchers said it is difficult to speculate when the skin printer may be brought to the battlefield, because of the stringent regulatory steps for a project of this nature. Once the skin-printing device meets federal regulations, military officials are optimistic it will benefit the general population as well as soldiers.
"We're not making anything military-unique," said Terry Irgens, a program director at the U.S Army Medical Materiel Development Activity.
"We hope it will benefit both soldier and civilian," he said.
In the meantime, researchers said they're pleased with results of preliminary laboratory testing with the skin printer.
Atala said the researchers already have been able to make "healthy skin."
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BlockchainOS, a blockchain technology company in Korea, announced the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) of BOScoin from April 17th, 2017 to May 31st, 2017. BOScoin, the first global cryptocurrency issued in Korea, is a cryptocurrency that utilizes the blockchain, ontology language, and timed automation technologies to solve persistent issues in decentralized systems. BOScoin, Trust Contracts and the Congress Network operate on top of the alternative blockchain called OWLchain. By the OWLchain's integration of ontology language and timed automata into blockchain, the BOScoin and Trust Contracts will serve as digital currency and smart contract with inherent security assurance. And governance through the Congress Network ensures that adequate proposals on blockchain will be discussed and applied within desired time. (Graphic: Business Wire)
BlockchainOS, a blockchain technology company in Korea, announced the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) of BOScoin from April 17th, 2017 to May 31st, 2017. BOScoin, the first global cryptocurrency issued in Korea, is a cryptocurrency that utilizes the blockchain, ontology language, and timed automation technologies to solve persistent issues in decentralized systems. BOScoin, Trust Contracts and the Congress Network operate on top of the alternative blockchain called OWLchain. By the OWLchain's integration of ontology language and timed automata into blockchain, the BOScoin and Trust Contracts will serve as digital currency and smart contract with inherent security assurance. And governance through the Congress Network ensures that adequate proposals on blockchain will be discussed and applied within desired time. (Graphic: Business Wire)
SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BlockchainOS, a blockchain technology company in Korea, announced the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) of BOScoin* from April 17th, 2017 to May 31st, 2017.
BOScoin, the first global cryptocurrency issued in Korea, is a cryptocurrency that utilizes the blockchain, ontology language, and timed automation technologies to solve persistent issues in decentralized systems. BOScoin’s presale in the domestic market already gathered over 2,000BTC (approximately 2 million USD) during a two month period.
*BOScoin - A congressional decentralized cryptocurrency platform for Trust Contracts based on ontology language and timed automation.
Yezune Choi, the BlockchainOS CTO and General Executive Director, outlines the current state of blockchain, "There are two primary issues that need to be solved in the cryptocurrency and blockchain fields. The first issue is the integrity of the Dapps (Decentralized Applications) on the blockchain. The second issue is the consensus mechanism needed for confirming data on the blockchain and the decision making process for revising policies implemented in the core blockchain algorithm. We have been working on these core problems for over 2 years and are now opening our research to the public.”
BOScoin, Trust Contracts and the Congress Network operate on top of the alternative blockchain called OWLchain. By the OWLchain’s integration of ontology language and timed automata into blockchain, the BOScoin and Trust Contracts will serve as digital currency and smart contract with inherent security assurance. And governance through the Congress Network ensures that adequate proposals on blockchain will be discussed and applied within desired time.
The Currency — BOScoin
BOScoin is a fixed supply cryptocurrency that will be issued over the next 141 years. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, BOScoin sends a portion of the coins issued to a public account called the Commons Budget. Coins held in the Commons Budget can be used through the voting system to decide on future BOScoin policies. And since voting right is given to only the node operators who invested in the coin, the funds from the Commons Budget are likely to be used for the betterment of the coin.
The Currency’s Programming Framework — Trust Contracts
Trust Contracts are pre-defined programs or rules that users can create. Similar to Ethereum, the BOScoin team is also aiming to create a general purpose language on top of the blockchain so anyone can write, upload, and execute contracts. However, BOScoin’s approach is technically different from Ethereum. The BOScoin team believes security is the most important principle for smart contracts on the blockchain. As decentralized systems become more complex, these systems are bound to make mistakes and break. The failure of DAO project from Ethereum is the exact case of it.
BOScoin Team believes in importance of being cautious when dealing with digital assets. This is the reason they carefully selected the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and TAL, the timed automata language, for the development of Trust Contracts. By using OWL and TAL for building contracts, due to the nature of the languages, the Trust Contracts can be mathematically proven to be trustworthy and operate without any unintended consequences.
Decision Making System — Congress Network
The Congress is the governance system inside the BOScoin platform. Many decentralized organizations suffer from a poor decision making process. This is why in BOScoin, all node operators are given a vote to decide on how to distribute the Commons Budget. With this vote, node operators can accept or deny proposals brought up from within the community. Anyone can make proposals for using BOScoin. BOScoin believes this kind of democratic system is key to sustaining and growing BOScoin.
Learn more about the BOScoin ICO at https://boscoin.io .
Related Links
Whitepaper :
http://www.boscoin.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/boscoinwhitepaperv20170202.pdf
Bitcointalk : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1759662.msg17777617#msg17777617
Slack : https://boscoin.slack.com
Facebook : https://facebook.com/boscoinio
Twitter : https://twitter.com/boscoin_ico
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/boscoin
Medium : https://medium.com/boscoin
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Prosecutors said they no longer felt they were able to win the case The US has moved to dismiss a case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of conspiring to pass defence secrets to unauthorised persons. Prosecutors had said Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman intended to disclose the details to Israel and to the media. But the government said it was unlikely to win the case and that trial could exposed classified information. Critics said the case had been a bid to criminalise commonplace exchanges between journalists and politicians. Mr Rosen and Mr Weissman, formerly working for the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), were the first lobbyists to be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. Acting US attorney Dana Boente said that when the charges were first filed, "the government believed it could prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt based on the statute". But he said that after the Judge TS Ellis demanded that prosecutors proved the men intended to harm the US with their actions, there was now a "diminished likelihood the government will prevail at trial". In the statement to the court, Mr Boente asked that they dismiss the indictment given the "inevitable disclosure of classified information that would occur at any trial in this matter". 'Hardship' Lawyers for the two men said the decision was "a huge victory for the First Amendment", which constitutionally guarantees the right to free speech in the US. The Associated Press reported Baruch Weiss as saying that a prosecution victory would have set a precedent for journalists seeking sensitive information to face possible prosecution. But Mr Weiss said the four-year process had been a "tremendous hardship" for the two men, who were dismissed by Aipac in 2005. Former defence analyst Lawrence Franklin was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in jail in 2006 for disclosing classified information to Mr Rosen and Mr Weissman.
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Stripe is gaining more financial allies to help it take on the digital payments industry.
The start-up, based in San Francisco, said on Tuesday that it had raised new funding from investors like Visa, American Express and Sequoia Capital, among others, valuing the young company at $5 billion. That is a significant jump for Stripe, coming roughly six months after it garnered $70 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. Stripe declined to disclose the amount of new funding, except to say it was “less than $100 million.”
Founded five years ago, Stripe has quickly gained traction by offering simple software and services for online small and medium-size businesses. Similar to Square and PayPal, Stripe accepts credit and debit cards for merchants who have not taken them previously. Stripe charges a small fee per transaction.
On Tuesday Stripe also announced a partnership with Visa, one of the world’s largest credit card companies, in which the two will work on ways to improve digital transactions. The companies said they expected to collaborate on initiatives like payments security, as well as software like website “buy buttons.”
Stripe said it would rely on Visa’s global footprint to expand its international availability. Stripe is currently available to businesses in more than 25 countries, and hopes to expand further with help from Visa.
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Well, at least it’s better than “Batman v Superman.”
The critics are weighing in on “Suicide Squad,” and based on the initial reactions, it’s a pretty emphatic thumbs down. It’s still early, of course, so it’s possible that other reviewers could look more favorably on the story of a team of villains who are tasked with doing covert missions for the U.S. government.
IndieWire’s David Ehrlich decried “Suicide Squad” as “mundane, milquetoast, and often mind-bogglingly stupid,” the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips branded it a “headache of a movie,” and BuzzFeed’s Alison Willmore dismisses the picture as “frankly disastrous.” Needless to say, these are not the kind of notices you splash across a poster.
There were outliers, to be sure, such as USAToday’s Brian Truitt, who praised it as “excellently quirky,” and fanboy sites have been more positive.
Regardless of the frosty critical reception, “Suicide Squad” will annihilate the competition when it debuts across 4,200 theaters, destroying records for an August release with a $125 million to $140 million launch. No matter where it falls on that spectrum, it will rank as the biggest ever debut for Will Smith, nearly doubling “I Am Legend’s” $77.2 million bow. Pre-sales have been brisk, with “Suicide Squad” already outpacing the likes of “Deadpool” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” according to Fandango. The question is will audiences agree with critics?
Related ‘Suicide Squad’ Fans Petition To Shut Down Rotten Tomatoes Over Negative Reviews ‘Suicide Squad’ Director Apologizes for ‘F— Marvel’ Comment at Premiere
In the case of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” their tastes seemed to align, with moviegoers handing the superhero film a mediocre B CinemaScore rating. The film opened to an enormous $166 million, only to plunge nearly 70% in its second weekend, as poor word-of-mouth dragged on ticket sales and the critical flambéing took its toll.
Whereas “Batman v Superman” was panned for being too dark and self-serious, “Suicide Squad” is intended to be the antidote to all that doom and gloom. Its posters are day-glo, its characters insouciant, and its tone winking. Warner Bros., which has been trying to create its own in-house answer to Disney’s Marvel juggernaut by using DC Comics characters, is betting that the film can reinvigorate its superhero franchises. The studio spent $175 million to make “Suicide Squad,” which is intended to pass the baton to a “Justice League” adventure and a “Wonder Woman” movie, allowing Warner Bros. and corporate parent Time Warner to reap a fortune in t-shirt and toy sales.
“They need to show that their films are must-see events like Marvel’s are,” said Eric Handler, an analyst with MKM Partners. “If audiences don’t like this one, it makes it tougher and tougher for the next films they make. These aren’t cheap, so they can’t afford for these movies to be anything less than successful.”
In addition to Smith, Warner Bros. turned to acclaimed director David Ayer to oversee the mayhem. He is best known for his work on gritty war thrillers such as “Fury” and the cop drama “End of Watch.” They also festooned the cast with other bright talents, bringing on Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn and Jared Leto as the Joker.
“Suicide Squad” isn’t the only new release slated to hit theaters. In a bit of counter-programming, EuropaCorp will go after the family audience with “Nine Lives,” a comedy about a harried executive (Kevin Spacey) who gets transformed into a cat. The $31 million production should open to $9 million. At the very least, that should set a new record for a film with Spacey as a talking feline.
When it comes to “Suicide Squad,” Warner Bros. will have its global promotional team out in force. The film will hit 57 markets, including such major territories as Australia, Russia, France, Korea, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. That should add more than $100 million to its worldwide haul.
These are big numbers, but a lot is riding on the film. For most of the last decade, Warner Bros. was the envy of its big studio rivals. With Harry Potter, the Dark Knight, and the Lord of the Rings in its arsenal, it had largely cornered the market on blockbusters. Alas, all of those series have come to an end. Over the last three years, the studio’s fortunes have changed, and it has endured a bruising period at the box office, with “Jupiter Ascending,””The Legend of Tarzan,” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” among its costlier duds. “Suicide Squad” could mark a return to form for the studio, paving the way for more costumed hits to come and demonstrating that the company has figured out how to create comic book movies that appeal to the masses.
“DC Comics has pieces that have potential, but they haven’t coalesced yet,” said Shawn Robbins, senior box office analyst at BoxOffice.com. “The execution hasn’t been there.”
By tapping a band of crooks and anarchists, DC and Warner Bros. may be able to turn things around.
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A Monsanto employee discusses genetically modified corn at the SXSW booth for the group GMO Answers, an education initiative funded by companies including Dow Agrosciences and Monsanto. (Erich Schlegel/AP)
The Food and Drug Administration will fund a campaign to promote genetically modified organisms in food under a bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded through the end of September.
The deal to avert a government shutdown, which passed the Senate by a vote of 79 to 18 Thursday, allocates $3 million to “consumer outreach and education regarding agricultural biotechnology,” which includes genetic engineering of food and commodity crops. The money is to be used to tout “the environmental, nutritional, food safety, economic, and humanitarian impacts” of biotech crops and their derivative food products.
[We're having the wrong argument about GMOs]
More than 50 agriculture and food industry groups had signed on to an April 18 letter urging the funding to counter “a tremendous amount of misinformation about agricultural biotechnology in the public domain.” But some environmental groups and House Democrats have derided the provision as a government-sponsored public relations tour for the GMO industry.
“It is not the responsibility of the FDA to mount a government-controlled propaganda campaign to convince the American public that genetically modified foods are safe,” said Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), who attempted to get the measure struck from the bill last month. “The FDA has to regulate the safety of our food supply and medical devices. They are not, nor should they be, in the pro-industry advertising business,” Lowey said during a congressional hearing
It’s unclear what the FDA campaign will look like, or when it will launch. The $3 million allocated is little more than a speck in the FDA’s total allocated budget of $2.8 billion.
The budget specifies only that the initiative be developed in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, and include the “publication and distribution of science-based educational information.” An attempt by Democrats to redirect the project’s funding to pediatric medical projects within FDA was unanimously voted down by Republicans.
A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that 39 percent of American adults believe that genetically modified foods are worse for health than their conventional equivalents — an assessment with which the vast majority of scientists disagree. Nearly 90 percent of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believe GMOs are safe to eat, according to another Pew study.
“Clearly, communication of the benefits of biotechnology from the scientific community has not gone well, and this presents an opportunity to engage with the public in a more meaningful dialogue,” said Mark Rieger, the dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, who signed the industry letter. “We see it as a communication issue, not a political one.”
But critics argue the issue is inherently political, given the financial ties between lawmakers and the ag biotech industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, agribusiness interests donated more than $26.3 million to political campaigns, including those of several congressmen who sit on the House agriculture appropriations subcommittee.
Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-Ala.), the chair of that subcommittee and a defender of the GMO education funding, received $10,000 from Monsanto in 2016.
“This is a really clear example of big ag influencing policy,” said Dana Perls, the senior food and technology campaigner for the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “The Trump administration is putting big ag before consumer desire and public health … Consumers do not want this.”
Critics have also wondered whether it’s the government’s job to communicate this particular information — and whether that information, as written in the budget, oversteps what scientists really know. While there’s a widespread consensus that GM crops are safe, there are valid and lingering questions about the environmental and social impacts of GMOs.
Last year, an academic analysis of 14 years of farm data found that an uptick in GM seed plantings goes hand-in-hand with increased herbicide use, for instance. Some herbicides have been found to contribute to health problems in animals and humans.
Many of the touted benefits of GMOs haven’t materialized, either, argues Andy Kimbrell, the executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a D.C. nonprofit that has filed numerous legal challenges against the makers of GM crops.
An October analysis by the New York Times found that the technology does not significantly increase yields. And few GM products with tangible consumer benefits — such as better taste or nutrition — have yet made it onto the U.S. market.
“So yes, that gives them a marketing problem,” Kimbrell said. “But Monsanto has plenty of money to advocate for GMOs ... Why do we need to use taxpayer dollars?”
One possible answer, from industry’s perspective, is that taxpayer dollars are already funding a Department of Agriculture initiative to label GM foods. Last year, Congress passed a bill mandating that food companies disclose the GM ingredients in their products, and USDA has said it is actively working on the standards for those labels.
Patrick Delaney, a spokesman for the American Soybean Association, said it will be important for consumers to understand those labels once they roll out, likely after September 2018.
“We recognize that there is a need for better and more accessible information on what this technology is and what it provides to consumers, he said by email. “We supported (and still support) that $3 million in funding for biotech education ... to better inform the public about the use of biotechnology in food and agricultural production.”
Correction: This story originally said that the Food and Drug Administration was working on an initiative to label GMO foods. The effort to develop those labels is based at the Department of Agriculture. The Post regrets the error.
More from Wonkblog:
Industry is counting on Trump to back off rules that tell you what's in your food
The apple that never browns wants to change your mind about genetically modified foods
Your 'organic' milk may not be organic
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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Five cities ended up bidding for the new Champions Bowl -- New Orleans, Arlington, Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio, according to sources familiar with the process.
ESPN first reported earlier this week that at least five of the 10 cities with bid packages sent in proposals. Phoenix, Nashville, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville also were offered the chance to submit bids, which were due Wednesday.
The SEC and Big 12 will evaluate the proposals over the next several weeks and jointly discuss their pros and cons. New Orleans and Arlington are considered the overwhelming favorites.
The Champions Bowl will be part of the national semifinals four times during a 12-year cycle beginning with the 2014 season. In the other years, the game is supposed to match the SEC and Big 12 champions.
When either champion participates in the playoffs, the conference would provide another team for the Champions Bowl. If the SEC and/or Big 12 champion isn't selected for the playoffs in a year the Champions Bowl hosts a semifinal, those teams would be assigned to another major bowl that's part of the playoff rotation.
A big difference with the Champions Bowl's bidding process is a city could propose the usual lump-sum guaranteed payout to the conferences, or offer a minimum guarantee, a management fee it retains, and a structure to share revenue. Until now, SEC bowls have offered a lump-sum guarantee. The management fee allows bowls to make a controlled amount of revenue.
This process will allow the SEC and Big 12 to gauge how much money the bowls have stockpiled into reserves and what they're willing to spend from those amounts. For example, the Sugar Bowl listed its 2009-10 net assets at $34.2 million and the Chick-fil-A Bowl reported $13.1 million in 2010-11.
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[email protected].
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VIDEO: Palestinians Dox Trump Supporters Over Street Protest Argument in Los Angeles
The scene is a street in Los Angeles on Sunday where a Palestinian-American family is walking to attend Palestinian rally to protest President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The family passes a mix-raced family of Trump supporters who apparently were there to counter-protest. The two sides engage in a debate or argument–the videos don’t start with the beginning of the confrontation. At one point it is claimed by the Palestinians the Trump supporters called a five-year-old Palestinian girl holding a “Dump Trump” sign a “terrorist”.
The male Trump supporter (correctly) says Palestinians dress their children as terrorist bombers, as this Getty Images file photo shows.
Palestinian children dressed as suicide bombers, put fake explosives on a small child December 9, 2001 after… https://t.co/VZe5R09knL — Kristinn Taylor (@KristinnFR) December 11, 2017
(NOTE: Regardless, one shouldn’t verbally attack little children, even if they’re holding a sign you don’t like. But this doesn’t mean you should be doxxed over it either.)
The two sides engaged each other in crude, foul-mouthed angry verbal punches and counter-punches for a few minutes. Normally that’s where the dispute would end. But this being the era of revenge-via Internet, one of the Palestinians posted video of their side of the argument Sunday night with a call for the Trump supporters to be doxxed.
“Twitter do your thing. Identify these people they were calling my 5 year old cousin a terrorist. Thanks”
As of Monday afternoon the tweet had about 25,000 retweets and about 25,000 likes. The thread below the video includes posts by people who took up the request and doxxed the Trump supporters. Their alleged names, work and school information were posted along with copies of contacts made to ruin them over a nasty political debate.
https://twitter.com/ryasinn/status/940035114985127937
Video taken by the Trump supporters shows the male Trump supporter repeatedly telling the Palestinian women to “(perform oral sex on him”).
https://twitter.com/ryasinn/status/940234332471402496
Author’s note: Speaking as someone who has organized, led and participated in close to a thousand conservative protests, demonstrations and rallies, the behavior on both sides was wrong and hurts both their causes. However, it is not a cause for doxxing. But this is what the Left does these days. They ruin your life because they don’t like what you say or if you don’t share their doctrinaire belief system.
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[+]Enlarge ATTACHMENT THERAPY Researchers mixed HeLa cancer cells expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) (top left) with Escherichia coli engineered to express a synthetic adhesin that binds to GFP. The bacteria, stained red, adhere to the human cells (top right). Bacteria without the adhesin did not colonize them (bottom right). The HeLa cells are typically about 20 µm in diameter. Credit: ACS Synth. Biol.
It’s usually bad news when a swarm of foreign bacteria pursues cells in the body. But some scientists want to deploy engineered microbes to specific parts of the body to kill tumor cells or deliver drugs. Researchers have now designed a way to target bacteria to particular surfaces and tissues by modifying sticky proteins on the microbes’ surfaces (ACS Synth. Biol. 2014, DOI: 10.1021/sb500252a).
Scientists can develop antibodies to target virtually any antigen. So a few years ago, Luis Ángel Fernández of the Spanish National Center for Biotechnology and his group explored the idea of making bacteria seek out certain other cells by engineering the microbes to display antibodies on their surface. Unfortunately, getting the cells to deliver antibodies to their surfaces proved difficult. Fernández then learned about adhesins, proteins that naturally coat the surface of bacteria. The adhesins contain an antibody-like moiety that targets antigens on other cells, facilitating biofilm formation, cell invasion, and other pathogenic activities. Fernández realized that he could potentially swap out the natural antibody-like domain for another that is specific to a molecule of choice, allowing him to target bacteria to particular biological surfaces.
In a series of proof-of-principle experiments, Fernández’s team tested whether they could make Escherichia coli target human cancer cells. The researchers built a synthetic adhesin with an antibody that binds to green fluorescent protein (GFP). They incorporated the new adhesin’s gene into the chromosome of E. coli, along with a gene for a bioluminescent protein to help detect the bacteria. The team also deleted the genes for three natural adhesins to reduce nonspecific binding.
[+]Enlarge STICKY STUFF A synthetic adhesin, embedded in a bacterial outer membrane, consists of a β-barrel region (blue cylinder) and an immunoglobulin-like domain (blue oval) attached to a domain that can bind a target molecule on another cell (pink oval). Credit: ACS Synth. Biol.
The bacteria’s targets were human cancer cells that the researchers modified to express GFP on their surfaces. After mixing the human and bacterial cells together, the team inspected the cells with fluorescence imaging and found that the bacteria colonized the cancer cells. Bacteria without the synthetic adhesin did not adhere to the human cells.
To test their approach in live animals, the researchers used the same GFP-bearing human cancer cells to grow tumors in the abdomens of nine hairless mice. Then, they injected approximately 100,000 bacteria with the synthetic adhesin into the tails of the mice. Four days later, eight of the nine tumors glowed from the bioluminescence signals of the bacteria. They repeated the experiment using bacteria that expressed the bioluminescent protein but not the adhesin. Only two out of nine tumors were colonized.
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The Lost Art of Structure Packing Eric S. Raymond <[email protected]>
1. Who should read this This page is about a technique for reducing the memory footprint of programs in compiled languages with C-like structures - manually repacking these declarations for reduced size. To read it, you will require basic knowledge of the C programming language. You need to know this technique if you intend to write code for memory-constrained embedded systems, or operating-system kernels. It is useful if you are working with application data sets so large that your programs routinely hit memory limits. It is good to know in any application where you really, really care about optimizing your use of memory bandwidth and minimizing cache-line misses. Finally, knowing this technique is a gateway to other esoteric C topics. You are not an advanced C programmer until you have grasped these rules. You are not a master of C until you could have written this document yourself and can criticize it intelligently. This document originated with "C" in the title, but many of the techniques discussed here also apply to the Go language - and should generalize to any compiled language with C-like structures. There is a note discussing Go and Rust towards the end.
2. Why I wrote it This webpage exists because in late 2013 I found myself heavily applying an optimization technique that I had learned more than two decades previously and not used much since. I needed to reduce the memory footprint of a program that used thousands - sometimes hundreds of thousands - of C struct instances. The program was cvs-fast-export and the problem was that it was dying with out-of-memory errors on large repositories. There are ways to reduce memory usage significantly in situations like this, by rearranging the order of structure members in careful ways. This can lead to dramatic gains - in my case I was able to cut the working-set size by around 40%, enabling the program to handle much larger repositories without dying. But as I worked, and thought about what I was doing, it began to dawn on me that the technique I was using has been more than half forgotten in these latter days. A little web research confirmed that programmers don’t seem to talk about it much any more, at least not where a search engine can see them. A couple of Wikipedia entries touch the topic, but I found nobody who covered it comprehensively. There are actually reasons for this that aren’t stupid. CS courses (rightly) steer people away from micro-optimization towards finding better algorithms. The plunging price of machine resources has made squeezing memory usage less necessary. And the way hackers used to learn how to do it back in the day was by bumping their noses on strange hardware architectures - a less common experience now. But the technique still has value in important situations, and will as long as memory is finite. This document is intended to save programmers from having to rediscover the technique, so they can concentrate effort on more important things.
3. Alignment requirements The first thing to understand is that, on modern processors, the way your compiler lays out basic datatypes in memory is constrained in order to make memory accesses faster. Our examples are in C, but any compiled language generates code under the same constraints. Storage for the basic C datatypes on an x86 or ARM processor doesn’t normally start at arbitrary byte addresses in memory. Rather, each type except char has an alignment requirement; chars can start on any byte address, but 2-byte shorts must start on an even address, 4-byte ints or floats must start on an address divisible by 4, and 8-byte longs or doubles must start on an address divisible by 8. Signed or unsigned makes no difference. The jargon for this is that basic C types on x86 and ARM are self-aligned. Pointers, whether 32-bit (4-byte) or 64-bit (8-byte) are self-aligned too. Self-alignment makes access faster because it facilitates generating single-instruction fetches and puts of the typed data. Without alignment constraints, on the other hand, the code might end up having to do two or more accesses spanning machine-word boundaries. Characters are a special case; they’re equally expensive from anywhere they live inside a single machine word. That’s why they don’t have a preferred alignment. I said "on modern processors" because on some older ones forcing your C program to violate alignment rules (say, by casting an odd address into an int pointer and trying to use it) didn’t just slow your code down, it caused an illegal instruction fault. This was the behavior, for example, on Sun SPARC chips. In fact, with sufficient determination and the right (e18) hardware flag set on the processor, you can still trigger this on x86. Also, self-alignment is not the only possible rule. Historically, some processors (especially those lacking barrel shifters) have had more restrictive ones. If you do embedded systems, you might trip over one of these lurking in the underbrush. Be aware this is possible. From when it was first written at the beginning of 2014 until late 2016, this section ended with the last paragraph. During that period I’ve learned something rather reassuring from working with the source code for the reference implementation of NTP. It does packet analysis by reading packets off the wire directly into memory that the rest of the code sees as a struct, relying on the assumption of minimal self-aligned padding. The interesting news is that NTP has apparently being getting away with this for decades across a very wide span of hardware, operating systems, and compilers, including not just Unixes but under Windows variants as well. This suggests that platforms with padding rules other than self-alignment are either nonexistent or confined to such specialized niches that they’re never either NTP servers or clients.
4. Padding Now we’ll look at a simple example of variable layout in memory. Consider the following series of variable declarations in the top level of a C module: char *p; char c; int x; If you didn’t know anything about data alignment, you might assume that these three variables would occupy a continuous span of bytes in memory. That is, on a 32-bit machine 4 bytes of pointer would be immediately followed by 1 byte of char and that immediately followed by 4 bytes of int. And a 64-bit machine would be different only in that the pointer would be 8 bytes. In fact, the hidden assumption that the allocated order of static variables is their source order is not necessarily valid; the C standards don’t mandate it. I’m going to ignore this detail because (a) that hidden assumption is usually correct anyway, and (b) the actual purpose of talking about padding and packing outside structures is to prepare you for what happens inside them. Here’s what actually happens (on an x86 or ARM or anything else with self-aligned types). The storage for p starts on a self-aligned 4- or 8-byte boundary depending on the machine word size. This is pointer alignment - the strictest possible. The storage for c follows immediately. But the 4-byte alignment requirement of x forces a gap in the layout; it comes out as though there were a fourth intervening variable, like this: char *p; /* 4 or 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[3]; /* 3 bytes */ int x; /* 4 bytes */ The pad[3] character array represents the fact that there are three bytes of waste space in the structure. The old-school term for this was "slop". The value of the padding bits is undefined; in particular it is not guaranteed that they will be zeroed. Compare what happens if x is a 2-byte short: char *p; char c; short x; In that case, the actual layout will be this: char *p; /* 4 or 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[1]; /* 1 byte */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ On the other hand, if x is a long on a 64-bit machine char *p; char c; long x; we end up with this: char *p; /* 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte char pad[7]; /* 7 bytes */ long x; /* 8 bytes */ If you have been following carefully, you are probably now wondering about the case where the shorter variable declaration comes first: char c; char *p; int x; If the actual memory layout were written like this char c; char pad1[M]; char *p; char pad2[N]; int x; what can we say about M and N ? First, in this case N will be zero. The address of x , coming right after p , is guaranteed to be pointer-aligned, which is never less strict than int-aligned. The value of M is less predictable. If the compiler happened to map c to the last byte of a machine word, the next byte (the first of p ) would be the first byte of the next one and properly pointer-aligned. M would be zero. It is more likely that c will be mapped to the first byte of a machine word. In that case M will be whatever padding is needed to ensure that p has pointer alignment - 3 on a 32-bit machine, 7 on a 64-bit machine. Intermediate cases are possible. M can be anything from 0 to 7 (0 to 3 on 32-bit) because a char can start on any byte boundary in a machine word. If you wanted to make those variables take up less space, you could get that effect by swapping x with c in the original sequence. char *p; /* 8 bytes */ long x; /* 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte Usually, for the small number of scalar variables in your C programs, bumming out the few bytes you can get by changing the order of declaration won’t save you enough to be significant. The technique becomes more interesting when applied to nonscalar variables - especially structs. Before we get to those, let’s dispose of arrays of scalars. On a platform with self-aligned types, arrays of char/short/int/long/pointer have no internal padding; each member is automatically self-aligned at the end of the next one. All these rules and examples map over to Go with only syntactic changes. In the next section we will see that the same is not necessarily true of structure arrays.
5. Structure alignment and padding In general, a struct instance will have the alignment of its widest scalar member. Compilers do this as the easiest way to ensure that all the members are self-aligned for fast access. Also, in C (and Go, and Rust) the address of a struct is the same as the address of its first member - there is no leading padding. Beware: in C++, classes that look like structs may break this rule! (Whether they do or not depends on how base classes and virtual member functions are implemented, and varies by compiler.) (When you’re in doubt about this sort of thing, ANSI C provides an offsetof() macro which can be used to read out structure member offsets.) Consider this struct: struct foo1 { char *p; char c; long x; }; Assuming a 64-bit machine, any instance of struct foo1 will have 8-byte alignment. The memory layout of one of these looks unsurprising, like this: struct foo1 { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte char pad[7]; /* 7 bytes */ long x; /* 8 bytes */ }; It’s laid out exactly as though variables of these types has been separately declared. But if we put c first, that’s no longer true. struct foo2 { char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[7]; /* 7 bytes */ char *p; /* 8 bytes */ long x; /* 8 bytes */ }; If the members were separate variables, c could start at any byte boundary and the size of pad might vary. Because struct foo2 has the pointer alignment of its widest member, that’s no longer possible. Now c has to be pointer-aligned, and following padding of 7 bytes is locked in. Now let’s talk about trailing padding on structures. To explain this, I need to introduce a basic concept which I’ll call the stride address of a structure. It is the first address following the structure data that has the same alignment as the structure. The general rule of trailing structure padding is this: the compiler will behave as though the structure has trailing padding out to its stride address. This rule controls what sizeof() will return. Consider this example on a 64-bit x86 or ARM machine: struct foo3 { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ }; struct foo3 singleton; struct foo3 quad[4]; You might think that sizeof(struct foo3) should be 9, but it’s actually 16. The stride address is that of (&p)[2] . Thus, in the quad array, each member has 7 bytes of trailing padding, because the first member of each following struct wants to be self-aligned on an 8-byte boundary. The memory layout is as though the structure had been declared like this: struct foo3 { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[7]; }; For contrast, consider the following example: struct foo4 { short s; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ }; Because s only needs to be 2-byte aligned, the stride address is just one byte after c , and struct foo4 as a whole only needs one byte of trailing padding. It will be laid out like this: struct foo4 { short s; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[1]; }; and sizeof(struct foo4) will return 4. Here’s a last important detail: If your structure has structure members, the inner structs want to have the alignment of longest scalar too. Suppose you write this: struct foo5 { char c; struct foo5_inner { char *p; short x; } inner; }; The char *p member in the inner struct forces the outer struct to be pointer-aligned as well as the inner. Actual layout will be like this on a 64-bit machine: struct foo5 { char c; /* 1 byte*/ char pad1[7]; /* 7 bytes */ struct foo5_inner { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ char pad2[6]; /* 6 bytes */ } inner; }; This structure gives us a hint of the savings that might be possible from repacking structures. Of 24 bytes, 13 of them are padding. That’s more than 50% waste space!
6. Bitfields Now let’s consider C bitfields. What they give you the ability to do is declare structure fields of smaller than character width, down to 1 bit, like this: struct foo6 { short s; char c; int flip:1; int nybble:4; int septet:7; }; The thing to know about bitfields is that they are implemented with word- and byte-level mask and rotate instructions operating on machine words, and cannot cross word boundaries. C99 guarentees that bit-fields will be packed as tightly as possible, provided they don’t cross storage unit boundaries (6.7.2.1 #10). This restriction is relaxed in C11 (6.7.2.1p11) and C++14 ([class.bit]p1); these revisions do not actually require struct foo9 to be 64 bits instead of 32; a bit-field can span multiple allocation units instead of starting a new one. It’s up to the implementation to decide; GCC leaves it up to the ABI, which for x64 does prevent them from sharing an allocation unit. Assuming we’re on a 32-bit machine, the C99 rules imply that the layout may look like this: struct foo6 { short s; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ int flip:1; /* total 1 bit */ int nybble:4; /* total 5 bits */ int pad1:3; /* pad to an 8-bit boundary */ int septet:7; /* 7 bits */ int pad2:25; /* pad to 32 bits */ }; But this isn’t the only possibility, because the C standard does not specify that bits are allocated low-to-high. So the layout could look like this: struct foo6 { short s; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ int pad1:3; /* pad to an 8-bit boundary */ int flip:1; /* total 1 bit */ int nybble:4; /* total 5 bits */ int pad2:25; /* pad to 32 bits */ int septet:7; /* 7 bits */ }; That is, the padding could precede rather than following the payload bits. Note also that, as with normal structure padding, the padding bits are not guaranteed to be zero; C99 mentions this. Note that the base type of a bit field is interpreted for signedness but not necessarily for size. It is up to implementors whether "short flip:1" or "long flip:1" are supported, and whether those base types change the size of the storage unit the field is packed into. Proceed with caution and check with -Wpadded if you have it available (e.g. under clang). Compilers on exotic hardware might interpret the C99 rules in surprising ways; older compilers might not quite follow them. The restriction that bitfields cannot cross machine word boundaries means that, while the first two of the following structures pack into one and two 32-bit words as you’d expect, the third ( struct foo9 ) takes up three 32-bit words in C99, in the last of which only one bit is used. struct foo7 { int bigfield:31; /* 32-bit word 1 begins */ int littlefield:1; }; struct foo8 { int bigfield1:31; /* 32-bit word 1 begins /* int littlefield1:1; int bigfield2:31; /* 32-bit word 2 begins */ int littlefield2:1; }; struct foo9 { int bigfield1:31; /* 32-bit word 1 begins */ int bigfield2:31; /* 32-bit word 2 begins */ int littlefield1:1; int littlefield2:1; /* 32-bit word 3 begins */ }; Again, C11 and C++14 may pack foo9 tighter, but it would perhaps be unwise to count on this. On the other hand, struct foo8 would fit into a single 64-bit word if the machine has those.
7. Structure reordering Now that you know how and why compilers insert padding in and after your structures we’ll examine what you can do to squeeze out the slop. This is the art of structure packing. The first thing to notice is that slop only happens in two places. One is where storage bound to a larger data type (with stricter alignment requirements) follows storage bound to a smaller one. The other is where a struct naturally ends before its stride address, requiring padding so the next one will be properly aligned. The simplest way to eliminate slop is to reorder the structure members by decreasing alignment. That is: make all the pointer-aligned subfields come first, because on a 64-bit machine they will be 8 bytes. Then the 4-byte ints; then the 2-byte shorts; then the character fields. So, for example, consider this simple linked-list structure: struct foo10 { char c; struct foo10 *p; short x; }; With the implied slop made explicit, here it is: struct foo10 { char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad1[7]; /* 7 bytes */ struct foo10 *p; /* 8 bytes */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ char pad2[6]; /* 6 bytes */ }; That’s 24 bytes. If we reorder by size, we get this: struct foo11 { struct foo11 *p; short x; char c; }; Considering self-alignment, we see that none of the data fields need padding. This is because the stride address for a (longer) field with stricter alignment is always a validly-aligned start address for a (shorter) field with less strict requirements. All the repacked struct actually requires is trailing padding: struct foo11 { struct foo11 *p; /* 8 bytes */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ char pad[5]; /* 5 bytes */ }; Our repack transformation drops the size from 24 to 16 bytes. This might not seem like a lot, but suppose you have a linked list of 200K of these? The savings add up fast - especially on memory-constrained embedded systems or in the core part of an OS kernel that has to stay resident. Note that reordering is not guaranteed to produce savings. Applying this technique to an earlier example, struct foo5 , we get this: struct foo12 { struct foo5 { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ } inner; char c; /* 1 byte*/ }; With padding written out, this is struct foo12 { struct foo5 { char *p; /* 8 bytes */ short x; /* 2 bytes */ char pad[6]; /* 6 bytes */ } inner; char c; /* 1 byte*/ char pad[7]; /* 7 bytes */ }; It’s still 24 bytes because c cannot back into the inner struct’s trailing padding. To collect that gain you would need to redesign your data structures. Curiously, strictly ordering your structure fields by increasing size also works to mimimize padding. You can minimize padding with any order in which (a) all fields of any one size are in a continuous span (completely eliminating padding between them), and (b) the gaps between those spans are such that the sizes on either side have as few doubling steps of difference from each other as possible. Usually this means no padding at all on one side. Even more general minimal-padding orders are possible. Example: struct foo13 { int32_t i; int32_t i2; char octet[8]; int32_t i3; int32_t i4; int64_t l; int32_t i5; int32_t i6; }; This struct has zero padding under self-alignment rules. Working out why is a useful exercise to develop your understanding. Since shipping the first version of this guide I have been asked why, if reordering for minimal slop is so simple, C compilers don’t do it automatically. The answer: C is a language originally designed for writing operating systems and other code close to the hardware. Automatic reordering would interfere with a systems programmer’s ability to lay out structures that exactly match the byte and bit-level layout of memory-mapped device control blocks. Go hews to the C philosophy and does not reorder fields. Rust makes the opposite choice; by default, its compiler may reorder structure fields.
8. Awkward scalar cases Using enumerated types instead of #defines is a good idea, if only because symbolic debuggers have those symbols available and can show them rather than raw integers. But, while enums are guaranteed to be compatible with an integral type, the C standard does not specify which underlying integral type is to be used for them. Be aware when repacking your structs that while enumerated-type variables are usually ints, this is compiler-dependent; they could be shorts, longs, or even chars by default. Your compiler may have a pragma or command-line option to force the size. The long double type is a similar trouble spot. Some C platforms implement this in 80 bits, some in 128, and some of the 80-bit platforms pad it to 96 or 128 bits. In both cases it’s best to use sizeof() to check the storage size. Finally, under x86 Linux doubles are sometimes an exception to the self-alignment rule; an 8-byte double may require only 4-byte alignment within a struct even though standalone doubles variables have 8-byte self-alignment. This depends on compiler and options.
9. Readability and cache locality While reordering by size is the simplest way to eliminate slop, it’s not necessarily the right thing. There are two more issues: readability and cache locality. Programs are not just communications to a computer, they are communications to other human beings. Code readability is important even (or especially!) when the audience of the communication is only your future self. A clumsy, mechanical reordering of your structure can harm readability. When possible, it is better to reorder fields so they remain in coherent groups with semantically related pieces of data kept close together. Ideally, the design of your structure should communicate the design of your program. When your program frequently accesses a structure, or parts of a structure, it is helpful for performance if the accesses tend to fit within a cache line - the memory block fetched by your processor when it is told to get any single address within the block. On 64-bit x86 a cache line is 64 bytes beginning on a self-aligned address; on other platforms it is often 32 bytes. The things you should do to preserve readability - grouping related and co-accessed data in adjacent fields - also improve cache-line locality. These are both reasons to reorder intelligently, with awareness of your code’s data-access patterns. If your code does concurrent access to a structure from multiple threads, there’s a third issue: cache line bouncing. To minimize expensive bus traffic, you should arrange your data so that reads come from one cache line and writes go to another in your tighter loops. And yes, this sometimes contradicts the previous guidance about grouping related data in the same cache-line-sized block. Multithreading is hard. Cache-line bouncing and other multithread optimization issues are very advanced topics which deserve an entire tutorial of their own. The best I can do here is make you aware that these issues exist.
10. Other packing techniques Reordering works best when combined with other techniques for slimming your structures. If you have several boolean flags in a struct, for example, consider reducing them to 1-bit bitfields and packing them into a place in the structure that would otherwise be slop. You’ll take a small access-time penalty for this - but if it squeezes the working set enough smaller, that penalty will be swamped by your gains from avoided cache misses. More generally, look for ways to shorten data field sizes. In cvs-fast-export, for example, one squeeze I applied was to use the knowledge that RCS and CVS repositories didn’t exist before 1982. I dropped a 64-bit Unix time_t (zero date at the beginning of 1970) for a 32-bit time offset from 1982-01-01T00:00:00; this will cover dates to 2118. (Note: if you pull a trick like this, do a bounds check whenever you set the field to prevent nasty bugs!) Each such field shortening not only decreases the explicit size of your structure, it may remove slop and/or create additional opportunities for gains from field reordering. Virtuous cascades of such effects are not very hard to trigger. The riskiest form of packing is to use unions. If you know that certain fields in your structure are never used in combination with certain other fields, consider using a union to make them share storage. But be extra careful and verify your work with regression testing, because if your lifetime analysis is even slightly wrong you will get bugs ranging from crashes to (much worse) subtle data corruption.
11. Overriding alignment rules Sometimes you can coerce your compiler into not using the processor’s normal alignment rules by using a pragma, usually #pragma pack . GCC and clang have an attributepacked you can attach to individual structure declarations; GCC has an -fpack-struct option for entire compilations. Do not do this casually, as it forces the generation of more expensive and slower code. Usually you can save as much memory, or almost as much, with the techniques I describe here. The only good reason for #pragma pack is if you have to exactly match your C data layout to some kind of bit-level hardware or protocol requirement, like a memory-mapped hardware port, and violating normal alignment is required for that to work. If you’re in that situation, and you don’t already know everything else I’m writing about here, you’re in deep trouble and I wish you luck.
12. Tools The clang compiler has a -Wpadded option that causes it to generate messages about alignment holes and padding. Some versions also have an undocumented -fdump-record-layouts option that yields more information. If you’re using C11, you can deploy static_assert to check your assumptions about type and structure sizes. Example: #include <assert.h> struct foo4 { short s; /* 2 bytes */ char c; /* 1 byte */ }; static_assert(sizeof(struct foo4) == 4, “Check your assumptions"); I have not used it myself, but several respondents speak well of a program called pahole . This tool cooperates with a compiler to produce reports on your structures that describe padding, alignment, and cache line boundaries. This was at one time a standalone C program, but that is now unmaintained; s script with the name pahole now ships with gdb and that is what you should use. I’ve received a report that a proprietary code auditing tool called "PVS Studio" can detect structure-packing opportunities.
13. Proof and exceptional cases You can download sourcecode for a little program that demonstrates the assertions about scalar and structure sizes made above. It is packtest.c. If you look through enough strange combinations of compilers, options, and unusual hardware, you will find exceptions to some of the rules I have described. They get more common as you go back in time to older processor designs. The next level beyond knowing these rules is knowing how and when to expect that they will be broken. In the years when I learned them (the early 1980s) we spoke of people who didn’t get this as victims of "all-the-world’s-a-VAX syndrome". Remember that not all the world is a PC.
14. Go and Rust The Go language is in many respects similar to C. It has structures and arrays, though not bitfields or unions. Go compilers have the same optimization and alignment issues as C compilers. One important difference is that the Go specification requires structure fields to be self-aligned. As in C, array elements are padded up to the following stride address. Therefore, if you know the implications of self-aligment in C, you can apply them directly to calculating sizes and offsets in Go and to space-optimizing Go structures. The obvious correspondence mostly works. I say "mostly" because Go has one odd quirk. Since Go 1.5, a zero-length field at the end of a struct (that is, a zero-length array or empty struct) is sized and aligned as though it is one byte. The reasons for this are discussed in an essay Padding is Hard by one of the Go developers. Rust follows C-like field alignment rules if a structure is annotated with "repr(C)". Otherwise (by default) all bets are off: padding rules are (deliberately) unspecified and the compiler may even reorder structure members. It is probably best to let the Rust compiler do space optimization rather than forcing it.
15. Supporting this work If you were educated or entertained by this document, please sign up for my Patreon feed. The time needed to write and maintain documents like this one is not free, and while I enjoying giving them to the world my bills won’t pay themselves. Even a few dollars a month - from enough of you - helps a lot.
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Irritated, I chucked off the covers and shuffled into the kitchen, where my phone was shaking across the table. I didn’t recognize the number.
It was 9 a.m. Easter morning. I was lying in bed, trying to sleep in, when my cellphone started to ring. I grimaced. No one but my dad would be calling so early on a holiday.
“I need to meet with you,” said a deep voice I’d never heard before.
“You need to give me some sense of what we’re talking about before I meet with you,” I said.
On March 26, 2013 — six days earlier — Kevin Donovan and I had written an explosive story about Mayor Rob Ford’s alcohol problem. Five sources, including current and former members of Ford’s staff, had told the Star that they’d been trying to get the mayor into a treatment facility for a substance abuse issue for the last year. We’d also reported that the mayor had been asked to leave the Garrison military ball after showing up impaired.
I’d been getting a few of these calls over the last week.
“I have some information I think you’d like to see,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
Odds are this was a bad tip. Then again, there was something about his voice. He sounded nervous.
He told me he had incriminating video of “a prominent Toronto politician,” but wouldn’t say who was in it or what they were doing.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. It’s Easter Monday and I’m off, so I don’t have access to a work car. If you want to meet today we can meet at a coffee shop in the west end. Or we can wait until tomorrow and I can drive out to you.”
“It’s no problem,” he said immediately. “I’ll come to you.”
The fact that he was willing to make the trip was encouraging.
Three hours later, I was standing outside a Starbucks on Queen Street West.
“Robyn?”
I turned around and came face to face with clean-cut guy, who looked about my age — somewhere in his late twenties. He was big, like a college football player, and well dressed. Sort of business casual meets street style, if that’s at all possible. He was carrying an iPad.
“Nice to meet you,” I said as we shook hands.
We decided to walk to a nearby park for some privacy.
“So?” I said. “What did you want to tell me?”
As we walked up a leafy street towards the park, he asked if I could protect him. He worked with youth in his community in Rexdale. He was coming to me on someone else’s behalf, a young drug dealer. I promised to protect his identity.
He wanted to know if I was required to hand over evidence of a crime to police. I told him that morally, if someone was in danger, I would feel compelled to try to prevent someone from being harmed. He told me it was nothing like that. It was about drug use. I told him I would not turn over evidence of drug use to police.
He seemed satisfied.
“What I’m about to tell you,” he began, “will sound unbelievable.” He told me he’d read the story about the Garrison ball and Ford’s drinking.
“It’s much worse than that,” he said. He went on to tell me that there was a video of the mayor smoking crack cocaine and he had it.
“I can’t let you see it yet,” he said. “But I brought this.”
He pulled out his iPad and swiped open the screen. At this point we’d reached the park. We took a seat on a bench at the south end of a small soccer field. He thumbed around for a minute and then passed me the screen.
An after-hours photo of Ford
There was a photo of the mayor, grinning in a dark grey sweatshirt and baggy pants, linked arm in arm with three young men in front of a yellow brick bungalow. One of the guys was giving the camera the finger and holding a beer bottle. Another was flashing a “west-side” gesture. There was snow on the ground and all three men were in coats. Ford was just wearing his sweater.
The mayor takes lots of photos with people, but he’s never in casual clothing. It was clearly taken after work hours at night.
“That one” — he pointed to the hooded man with the beer bottle — “is Anthony Smith. He was killed outside Loki night club last week.”
He told me the young man on the far right side of the photo had been shot in the same incident. But he wouldn’t give me anyone else’s name and he wouldn’t say where the photo was taken.
“What about the video?” The photo had nothing to do with the video, except that it was shot in the house. And that the house is a crack house.
He told me the footage was about a minute and a half long, that it was well lit, with perfect resolution and that it clearly showed the mayor inhaling from a crack pipe. He told me Ford could also be heard calling Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau “a fag,” and that at one point, during a conversation about his Don Bosco football team, the mayor mumbles something like “f---ing minorities.”
The man told me he didn’t shoot the video. A dealer in Rexdale, one of the youths he’d been mentoring, had taken it. The footage was shot in the last six months. He alleged the dealer was still selling to the mayor.
“Can I see the video?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, but only if the Star would pay for it. “It’s worth $100,000.”
I nearly laughed.
“Are you serious?”
He was dead serious.
I asked him to sit tight for a moment. I called Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke.
I told Cooke exactly what the man had told me.
“Can you bring him to the newsroom?” Cooke asked.
The man agreed to go to 1 Yonge St. He offered to drive me. I wanted to see his car and his licence plate so we could run a check, but I also didn’t want to put myself in an unsafe situation. Decisions, decisions.
“Sure, that’d be great if you could drive,” I said.
He was parked in an alley. When he pointed to the four-door sedan, I fired Cooke a text message with a description of the car and his plate.
We made small talk on the way to the Star newsroom. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He told me he had gotten to know a lot of the “kids” — these guys were really in their late teens to mid-twenties — up in the Dixon Road and Kipling Avenue area. They were good guys, he said, but they’d made mistakes. Now they wanted out. Anthony Smith’s death had them scared. Ford was exploiting them, he told me.
“I just really want the story out there. It has to get out there. People need to know about this.”
“If you really want the story out there, why not just give us the video?” I asked.
We parked in the front lot at the Star, then took the elevator to the fifth floor newsroom in silence. City editor Irene Gentle and Cooke were in the north-west boardroom. We didn’t waste any time.
He told them the same story he’d told me. He showed them the photo. And he made the pitch for his ransom one more time.
“Well, let’s get one thing straight right now,” Cooke said. “You’re not going to get $100,000. Not even close. Now, there might be some price, but before we even talk about what it’s worth, we need to see the video.”
The man, who from then on became known as the broker, promised to talk to his guys and get back to us.
I walked him to his car.
We filled in Donovan, who was away on vacation.
Later that night, reporter Jesse McLean and I met with the broker. It would be one of half a dozen meetings over the next month. We started looking into the group of guys trying to sell the video and the area we believed the footage was filmed. Meanwhile, Star editors began holding nearly daily meetings in the northwest boardroom about what to do if it was real.
If this video was real — and that was a big if — it was a matter of immense public interest. If the mayor of Toronto, the man in charge of the fourth largest city in North America, one of the largest governments in Canada, and a $10-billion budget, was in fact using crack cocaine, the implications were endless. He opened himself up to blackmail. It called into question his judgment, his state of mind, his health. How can a man mixed up in crack cocaine and the underworld of Toronto have partial control over the police budget?
Ford himself has spoken out harshly about drug dealers, gang culture and crack use as both a councillor and a mayor.
In 2005, when the city was considering handing out clean “crack kits” to addicts in order to help prevent the spread of disease, Ford declared that “tough love” was the only way to deal with drug users. Then, in July 2012, Ford said it was time “to declare war” on “thugs.” He vowed to run them out of the city.
If Rob Ford was using crack, Toronto needed to know. Maybe it was worth paying something for the good of the city.
On the other hand, the people trying to sell us the video seemed to be thugs. How could we ethically hand over $100,000 in cash to men who admitted to being crack cocaine dealers? As managing editor Jane Davenport said in one meeting, “What if they buy a gun and kill someone with it?”
Everyone at the Star agreed: it was impossible to know what we should do until we saw the footage and confirmed it was real. So that became the goal. The problem was that the broker didn’t want to show us the video until we promised to buy it. In that sense, it was a Catch 22.
As the weeks went by, and as McLean and I spent more and more time in Rexdale, I started to believe there was a video. We’d been subtly grilling the broker for weeks on both his personal life, the brick house, the men trying to sell the footage and Ford’s involvement in all of it. The answers never changed. It seemed like he was going to a lot of trouble meeting with us if it was made up. We met some of his friends. We asked them about the video, the house, the players involved. The answers all lined up.
But we never seemed to be getting any closer to seeing the footage. The conversation always came back around to money. Twice, the broker arranged for us to watch the video, but the dealer always cancelled at the last minute. While McLean and I did this, investigative editor Kevin Donovan began digging from the other side, building a profile of the many suspicious characters in the mayor’s life.
Back at the Star, we discussed our options. Maybe there was some sort of scholarship fund we could create for them? Everything seemed too complicated.
By the end of April, the broker was frustrated. The Star was still refusing to even discuss money until we saw the footage. I felt they were about to disappear.
I talked to Cooke about it: “They’re never going to let us see it if we don’t at least say we might buy it.”
We’d tried to avoid uttering those words. But the situation was getting desperate.
It became clear we couldn’t see the video without discussing what it was worth.
“Do it,” said Cooke.
I phoned the broker.
In that case, he said, we could watch the footage that week.
On May 3, nearly a month to the day after the broker first called, Donovan and I were sitting in a car in front of the Royal Bank in a grungy plaza on Dixon Road around 10:30 p.m.
The broker was late and we were beginning to think this was another false alarm.
“God, he better show up this time,” I said to Donovan.
Just as I was becoming convinced we were being stood up — again — a black sedan pulled up by our car. My phone rang. It was him.
“Leave your cellphones. No bags. No purses. And get in.”
He drove us to a parking lot behind the six Dixon towers. We parked behind 320 Dixon, which a little more than a month later would be ground zero in Project Traveller’s massive guns and gangs raid.
The broker left and a few minutes later returned. The dealer was coming. The man who got in the car, who the Star has since identified as Mohamed Siad, looked nervous. He looked over his shoulder. He didn’t want to talk.
He pulled out a black iPhone. At first, he didn’t want to play the sound — it was “extra,” he said — but we convinced him we needed to hear the sound in order to assess the value of the footage.
Siad relented.
He hit play. There was no question. There was Mayor Rob Ford, rambling, slurring, stuttering, jerking around on his chair, smoking from a crack pipe.
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Digital Signatures on Email Now a DoD Requirement
By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class(SW) Christopher Koons, Naval Network Warfare Command Public Affairs
NORFOLK (NNS) -- The Department of Defense has implemented a policy requiring employees to digitally sign all e-mails containing a link or an attachment Feb. 12.
A digital signature is also required for any e-mail that provides direction or tasking, requests or responds to requests for resources, promulgates organization position, discusses any operational matter, discusses contract or finance matters, or discusses personnel management matters. The need exists to ensure that the originator is the actual author and that the e-mail was not tampered with in transit.
The policy, which was updated for the Navy in September 2008, applies to all unclassified e-mail sent from a DoD-owned, operated or controlled system or account to include desktops, laptops, and personal electronic devices such as BlackBerrys.
"It ensures that the information from links and attachments comes from a trustworthy source," said Lt. Cmdr. Damen Hofheinz, U.S. Fleet Forces deputy for Information Assurance. "For example, if an e-mail contains a link, you need to know that it leads you to a valid web site."
A digital signature is a "stamp" on an e-mail, which is unique to the user and provides an accurate means of identifying the originator of a message. Its toolbar icon is an envelope with a red seal on top. A digital signature assures the recipient that the original content of the message or document is unchanged. It also provides the sender with proof of delivery and the recipient with proof of the sender's identity and reassurance that the e-mail's originator is its actual author.
Some e-mails require added protection in the form of the encryption key, which, like the digital signature key, has an envelope icon but has a blue lock rather than red seal on it. Navy policy requires encryption of all e-mails that contain Privacy Act Information (PII), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Information, contract information, classified as 'for official use only' (FOUO) or that may serve as an OPSEC indicator.
"If you send an e-mail which contains Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as your social security number or if the message is for official use only (FOUO), you need to encrypt as well as digitally sign it," Hofheinz said. "Encryption provides an extra level of protection."
Encrypting e-mail is made much easier when personnel publish their certificates to the global address list (GAL). This can be accomplished in Outlook by opening the "Tools" menu then selecting "Options." On the "Security" tab there is a "Publish to GAL" button. Clicking on this button will ensure that other users on the network can send encrypted e-mail back to the originator.
OCONUS Navy Enterprise Network (ONE-NET) has already implemented a network policy for all e-mails to be digitally signed and NMCI started implementation on 12FEB09. Users will have to deselect the digitally signed button in Outlook to send unsigned e-mails. "It is one part of our overall Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) implementation, which is designed to prevent bad guys from accessing information we send over the Internet," said Hofheinz.
For more information on the military's digital signature/encryption policy, visit https://www.infosec.navy.mil/PKI.
For more news from Naval Network Warfare Command, visit www.navy.mil/local/nnwc/.
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Following up on a recent order by the US State Department dramatically restricting the movements of Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations, the Obama Administration has closed Syria’s embassy outright.
In practical terms, this means that all personnel for Syria’s embassy and its consulates in Houston, TX and Troy, MI will be forced to leave the country. The administration said it was “unacceptable” for officials appointed by the Assad government to provide consular services to Syrians inside the US.
US Special Envoy to Syria Daniel Rubenstein insisted that the US will continue “diplomatic relations” with Syria, but is primarily focused on assisting rebels looking to impose regime change.
Pro-rebel Syrian-Americans had been complaining that officials from the embassy, as well as from the office at the United Nations, had been giving pro-Assad speeches around the US, which prompted the travel limits, and apparently now the outright expulsions, ensuring that no Syrian officials will be able to criticize the al-Qaeda dominated rebellion inside US territory.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz
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The Avalanche hasn’t played its first preseason game yet, and new coach Patrick Roy already has decided to change his top lines.
Roy elected to swap Steve Downie and P.A. Parenteau from different lines starting with Tuesday’s practice at the Family Sports Center.
Instead of skating on a line with Matt Duchene and Ryan O’Reilly, Parenteau will play with rookie Nathan MacKinnon and Jamie McGinn, starting with Wednesday’s preseason game against the Anaheim Ducks at the Pepsi Center.
Downie will skate at right wing with Duchene and O’Reilly. In explaining the decision, Roy said the new lines balance each other.
“(Duchene) and O’Reilly, I think they love to have the puck, and P.A. loves to have the puck as well. At some point, someone’s going to have to go get that puck,” Roy said. “I think Downie brings that, and brings a lot of grit to that line. I think it’s a good mix. P.A. is a very experienced guy, and I think he will help Nathan a lot.”
Duchene and Parenteau clicked well on a line together last season, but just because aren’t on the same one going now doesn’t mean they won’t play together again at times. Roy is likely to mix his lines again, and the two figure to be on the ice together plenty on the Avs’ first power-play unit.
The other top Avs line of Paul Stastny, Gabe Landeskog and Alex Tanguay remains intact.
Wilson injured.
Avalanche defenseman Ryan Wilson, who figures to see plenty of ice time on the top four this season, will miss about two weeks with a knee injury, Roy said.
Wilson suffered the injury in Sunday’s Burgundy-White scrimmage at the Air Force Academy. Roy said the team is optimistic Wilson won’t miss any more than two weeks.
Wilson missed much of last season with ankle injuries.
Footnotes.
Goalie Semyon Varlamov will start Wednesday’s exhibition debut against Anaheim. Colorado opens the regular season against the Ducks on Oct. 2. Rookie Spencer Martin will serve as Varlamov’s backup and likely play half the game. While Duchene, O’Reilly and Downie will get the night off Wednesday, the line of Stastny, Landeskog and Tanguay will play against Anaheim.
… The Pepsi Center will unveil a new scoreboard and sound system at the game.
… Roy put players through a grueling skate at the end of practice Tuesday. He was not happy with some of his team’s play in the Burgundy-White scrimmage Sunday, saying “the decision-making wasn’t very good at times.” Overall, though, Roy said he has liked his team’s effort through. “We were 29th last year, so I guess we have to be different,” he said. “But I’ve liked what I’ve (seen) out there. We’re going to work hard. That’s the way it’s going to be every day.”
… The Avs signed defenseman Chris Bigras to a three-year, entry-level contract.
Adrian Dater: [email protected] or twitter.com/adater
DUCKS at AVALANCHE
Time: 7 p.m., Wednesday
Location: Pepsi Center
2012-13 records: Anaheim 30-12-6 (Second in Pacific Division); Colorado 16-25-7 (Fifth in Northwest Division)
TV: None
Radio: 950 AM
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Timo Glock scored his first win of the year in Race 2 held at the Red Bull Ring, host of the second round of the 2016 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters season. For the BMW Motorsport driver, it was also his first win with new squad Team RMG.
Temperatures kept rising leading up to the start, with teams and drivers concerned as to how the grip would be affected.
At the start, Audi’s Jamie Green made the most of his pole position to take the lead, with BMW’s Timo Glock overtaking team-mate António Félix Da Costa for second place, with the Portuguese already defending from the attacks from Edoardo Mortara.
The DRS was activated on lap 2, creating the perfect opportunity for Timo Glock to line up Jamie Green and execute an overtaking manoeuvre at Remus.
Further back in the field, Mercedes’ Robert Wickens tried to overtake Audi’s Nico Müller, tagging the Swiss driver from Team Abt and sending him across the gravel trap and against the barriers. The safety car was deployed for three laps, and Wickens was given a drive-through penalty as a result.
Glock started to build an advantage over Jamie Green, whilst Da Costa attacked the Team Rosberg driver. The Portuguese driver was on the wrong foot after one of his attempts, and was overtaken by the following pair of Edoardo Mortara and Augusto Farfus. Da Costa exercised some caution to not collide with the Brazilian, and was then overtaken by fellow BMW driver Maxime Martin.
The pit stop window was opened, with drivers heading in to complete their obligatory tyre change. Mattias Ekström, however, was on a different strategy and making good lap times, and delayed the stop as much as he could.
Edoardo Mortara and António Félix Da Costa battled for fourth place in the race, with the Italian having more straight-line speed than the Portuguese, who was extracting the maximum from his DRS use. Da Costa managed to get ahead, only to be tagged by Mortara at Würth Kurve, with both cars going off on the gravel trap. Da Costa managed to rejoin, but further at the back of the pack. The incident will be investigated by the stewards after the race.
Mattias Ekström came in for his pit stop at the last possible moment, emerging in third place of the race and proving his strategy. Timo Glock had a four-second lead over Jamie Green, and the Swede soon caught up with his fellow Audi driver, who didn’t pose any resistance to being overtaken, conscious that Ekström was faster.
The last laps of the race were action-packed for Gary Paffett, the leading driver of the struggling Mercedes contingent, who, from 12th position, was faster than the cars ahead of him. The Briton soon caught and overtook Audi’s Adrien Tambay, starting a battle with Timo Scheider for the last points-scoring position. Paffett tried to overtake several times, but the German driver from Team Phoenix defended.
On the last lap, Paffett went side-by-side with Scheider after Remus, with the Audi driver edging the Briton out onto the grass, causing Paffett to lose two positions. The incident was also investigated by the stewards, resulting in a warning for Timo Scheider.
At the chequered flag, Timo Glock took the win, with a recovering Mattias Ekström in second place and Jamie Green completing the podium.
BMW Motorsport completed a strong result taking the next four positions with Augusto Farfus, Maxime Martin, Tom Blomqvist and Marco Wittmann. Mike Rockenfeller was eighth for Audi, with BMW’s Bruno Spengler in ninth. Timo Scheider took the last remaining points in tenth.
Just as the qualifying session before, the race proved disastrous for Mercedes AMG, with Daniel Juncadella the best-placed man for the Stuttgart manufacturer in 12th position.
The next DTM race is at the Lausitzring, from the 3rd to the 5th of June.
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Mark-Viverito. | William Alatriste for the New York City Council Mark-Viverito joins Latino lawmakers to knock Sanders on immigration
City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito joined some of the country's top Latino lawmakers on Monday to charge that Sen. Bernie Sanders wasn’t there for the Latino community when they needed him most.
Speaking to reporters on a conference call coordinated by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, with the calendar pushing toward New York State's April 19 primary, Mark-Viverito and U.S. Reps. Nydia Velázquez, Luis Gutiérrez and Ruben Gallego knocked Sanders for his “terrible, miserable record” on immigration and accused him of only wanting to curry favor with Latinos now that he’s running for president.
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“The question Latinos have to ask themselves is — ‘where was Senator Sanders when we needed him the most?’ — He has not been there for us," Velázquez said. "The truth is, at the moment when immigrants were being demonized, Sanders was playing for the wrong team and being with us today does not make up for the years of absence."
The crux of the lawmakers’ argument centers on Sanders’ opposition to a 2007 immigration reform bill which intended to put millions on a path to legalized status.
Sanders at the time said he voted against the measure because he believed it would have ultimately driven down wages for low income workers — echoing the arguments of some Republicans at the time. The AFL-CIO was opposed to the bill, while the SEIU supported it.
“Senator Sanders has consistently been on the wrong side — in 2007 he voted with the anti-immigrant right wing,” Mark-Viverito said. “It really is a consistent record of not being familiar or standing with our community and now today, from one month to the next he cannot make up for those years of absence.”
Sanders has recently argued that he voted against the bill because of guest worker program provisions which he believed would have created vulnerabilities for workers and exploitation.
Mark-Viverito, stressing Clinton’s long-established record in the Latino community, said the former Secretary of State is the better candidate to meet the needs of Latinos and millions of undocumented people across the country.
“It’s very clear that this election matters and our votes as Latinos in this election is critical,” Mark-Viverito said. “Clinton is not new to our community, she has a long-standing relationship that goes over 20 years with the Latino community. She represented us here in New York State for eight, and we know the great diversity that exists in this state.”
Recent polls, which still have Clinton ahead of Sanders by over ten percent, show a tightening race.
Thousands of Sanders supporters have flocked to rallies around the state, including in the Bronx last week. Amid those supporters are large groups of young Latino voters who the lawmakers said need to be better educated about Sanders' record.
“The challenge for us is to set the record straight regarding Senator Sanders, which I think is something that young people should be concerned about, the fact that their parents and their relatives, especially Latinos and immigrants, have been impacted by the lack of commitment coming out of Senator Sanders throughout the years,” Velázquez said. “When we were fighting, having meetings when we were reaching out, he fell silent, he did not show up and people need to know that, especially the younger voters."
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Loose meat sandwiches are sort of a "grown up" version of Sloppy Joes. These are delicious, savory, ground meat (can be beef, lamb, turkey, or chicken) sandwiches that aren't loaded down in sauce and glop. They are fantastic to serve at a football or any other sort of sports day get together!
I am such a dork that I didn't realize that yesterday was the Super Bowl until Saturday afternoon.
I knew it was coming, but in my head I thought there were still a few weeks to go. Because of this, I didn't plan any Super Bowl food---
in fact, on Friday when I woke up feeling kind of sluggish and I'm-coming-down-with-a-cold like, I decided that I was going to eat raw for the next three days.
And when I watched my DVR'd Oprah, and it was on "going vegan" for a week, it seemed like A SIGN that I should really do it.
So I plopped the baby in the stroller and we walked to the local produce market and bought pretty much everything in sight
(at least we must have, according to my receipt. DUDE. eating that way costs bank.)
Anyway. I came home and made a delightful smoothie of pear, mango, clementine oranges, apple, banana, and kale (and then a bit of water to get it to smoothie-cize).
It was actually pretty good.
and I was all geared up to eat/drink nothing but this concoction for the next three days.
You see where I'm going with all this.... right?
yeah.
I lasted until about 1/4 through the game and then succumbed to Adam's "Super Nachos" (essentially a few chips loaded with 8 million pounds of cheese, guacamole, and sour cream).
oh well.
I don't really have a segue from that story to this recipe.
The first time I heard of Loose Meat Sandwiches was on the Roseanne television show back in the 90s.
I forgot all about them until our family friend, Harvey, asked if I had ever made them in the crockpot.
When I said I hadn't he told me that they'd work great.
Harvey was right!
The Ingredients.
serves 8
1 pound extra lean ground beef or turkey (the lean is more imp. than the type)
1 onion, finely diced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 cups beef broth
8 hamburger buns (I used gluten free bread, toasted)
traditional hamburger fixen's (pickles, tomatoes, lettuce, mustard, etc)
The Directions.
Use a 6-quart slow cooker.
Crumble in the ground meat (it needs to be thawed, or it'll cook in a big clump).
Add onion, sugar, spices, mustard, and vinegar.
Pour in the beef broth.
Mix well until everything is fully incorporated---you may want to use your hands. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.
Stir well before serving by scooping with a slotted spoons onto hamburger buns.
Top with your desired fixings.
The Verdict.
The meat is juicy and tender with a slight tang from the pickle and mustard.
It doesn't taste salty as much as savory---which I was worried about. I've had hamburger-with-gravy sandwiches before and didn't really care for them, but this is not that.
The kids loved their dinner, and Adam ate 1 1/2 sandwiches.
I served the leftover meat over mashed potatoes with frozen peas the next night.
Thank you for picking out a winner, Harvey!
2008 flashback:
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Lotus introduced a system they simply designated 'The Device' during Free Practice sessions in 2012 as a response to the FIA continuing to allow Mercedes the use of their DDRS (Double Drag Reduction System).
The mainstream media I believe have caused confusion amongst fans as they continue to call the Lotus style system DDRS when the systems are very different. The term DDRS should be used when the DRS mechanism is used for a secondary purpose just as Mercedes and Red Bull did in 2012 when stalling the Front Wing and Beam Wing on their cars respectively. This secondary function of DRS was utilised by these two teams by means of holes placed in the Rear Wing being exposed when DRS was deployed moving airflow to other regions of the car.
DRD however is a passive system and requires no interaction from another system or the driver to reduce drag at the rear of the car. As Lotus were the first team to utilise the device I will use theirs as my example.
DRD is made up of several additional components with different teams having tried different configurations along the way in order to both assess it's capabilities and fit within their own aero configuration. In the case of Lotus we have 5 main parts:
1. Airbox Ear's - Starting at the Front these little ducts move air down the internal tubing (2) toward the periscope.
So now we understand the sum of the devices parts lets look at how it works and how much of a benefit it could offer.
Air travels through the airbox ears out through the engine cover to the engine cover exhaust (depicted in blue), at a pre-determined speed threshold (measured by the team) the exit of the cover exhaust cannot extract the airflow it's being presented with. This allows the air to move up the Periscope and is ejected from the narrow slits placed on the sides of the periscope. The orientation of the slits means the airflow blows tangentially across the mainplane disrupting the regular airflow pattern sending the wing into a stall. (In order to adjust the speed threshold at which the device stalls the rear wing you must adjust the size of the outlet)
The problem the teams have faced whilst testing DRD is the ever changing conditions (climate) and car changes ie ride height etc. Furthermore this season will represent a different challenge for the devices as unlimited DRS usage is now unavailable for qualifying. This puts the onus on all the teams to use DRD and reduce the drag wherever possible but the time required to calibrate the device for it's passive switch eats into valuable setup time elsewhere on the cars setup.
The speed differential created by reducing drag via DRD will of course differ for the given application and as we have seen throughout 2012 and 2013's Testing different approaches have ensued. The other way to look at is how much downforce are you willing to give up? Teams with more downforce to trade off could start their stall earlier resulting in a higher top speed. So in summary although the innovation behind DRD is fantastic to see, it's adoption due it's passive nature remains to be seen. In terms of gains I'd speculate based on the gains seen by teams using the F Duct that a speed boost upwards of 5/8KMH could be seen on the straights.
DRD is perfectly legal as it requires no moving parts or interaction from the driver, it's activation is passive and relys on fluidic switching. The periscope lies within the central 15cm of the rear wing making it dimensionally legal and so unless the FIA deem the usage to be un-safe I don't see this being banned for 2013. In order to prohibit it's use the FIA would need to amend:
3.9.2 - No bodywork situated between 50mm forward of the rear wheel centre line and 150mm behind the rear wheel centre line, and which is between 75mm and 355mm from the car centre line, may be located between 400mm and 730mm above the reference plane.
Here's what we have seen in terms of DRD thus far:
Above: Lotus' application of blue flo-viz here helps us see the effects of DRD, the V formation on the mainplane indicates that the airflow in this region has separated causing the wing to stall allowing for a higher top speed.
Above: Mercedes version trialled from Spa onwards in 2012 featured a periscope that fell short of the underside of the rear wing. This would increase the distance at which the periscope could blow over the mainplane but would reduce it's targeting effect.
Above: Although this isn't DRD it seems Toro Rosso were evaluating running a centralised device when they tested at Abu Dhabi. Their appendage however featured two periscopes rather than one which could enable even more drag reduction.
Above: Last day of testing at Jerez (2013) and both Lotus and Mercedes placed their DRD's on the car to test but as we can see both have switched their design format effectively trying out each others designs.
As an aside we all know I don't have CFD in order to ascertain the credibility of my theories however as I have put forward in the past a way overcoming the switching effect required for DRD to work may be to introduce another flow construction enabling DRD's speed threshold to be lowered. To do this I'd look at the plausibilty of running DRD in conjunction with a mainplane hole like we have seen many teams utilise in the past. This may make tuning DRD easier as you now have another way of regulating the airflow in the central portion of the mainplane.
Lastly DRD has thus far been seen to be targeted at the Rear Wings Mainplane in order to reduce drag but just as Red Bull did from Singapore onwards with the use of DDRS I see no real reason why the Beam Wing couldn't be stalled through the use of DRD instead or aswell as. I look forward to seeing if/what teams decide to implement in regard to DRD throughout the 2013 season.
If you prefer to listen to what I'm explaining in this post then I have also compiled the information in the following video:
- The airbox and ears have separate outlets(Seen in the image below) with the top one most likely the pipe from the Airbox Ear's that feeds to the periscope and the lower regulating the release of airflow from the engine as usual.Usually the engine cover stops much more abruptly at the rear of the car that when the 'device' is fitted. The additional exhaust section serves a few purposes: It allows the addition of the periscope that extends upto the rear wing but also acts as an exhaust for the airflow which exits into the beam wing Monkey Seat / Mini Diffuser.This is most important aspect of the whole system as it's how the air is transported to the underside of the Rear Wing in order to create the additional downforce at low speed and 'Stall' the rear wing over the speed threshold. In the picture below Lotus had the ejector holes taped over in order to stop the device operating (due to bad weather conditions)is placed / being used in order to take advantage of the situation presented by the device in general. By adding this Diffuser shaped Monkey Seat the airflow will be pulled through the exhaust as Downforce is generated on top.
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Funko, home of the most adorable and collectible figures has unveiled a (not final) Pop! Television line for Preacher, the new AMC TV series based on the classic comic. We get TV versions of Jesse, Cassidy and Arseface, but….no Tulip? I guess even cute figurine collectors don’t like girls.
Seriously, Preacher is about Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy. Not Jesse, Cassidy and Arseface. I guess you can make an argument that this is the first series and they needed to save someone for the second and blah blah…but it’s always the girl who gets left behind. In case you missed it, previous female characters who were missing in plastic include Rey from Star Wars and the Black Widow.
The set hits this summer, and no Tulip aside, it’s adorable. Too bad you won’t have the whole cast to put on top of your monitor.
Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.
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In its ongoing battle with Apple over privacy rights , the United States Justice Department has asked a higher judge in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) to revisit its request to have a drug-dealer's iPhone unlocked under the All Writs Act. The previous judge sided strongly with Apple, who provided iMore with the following comment:
"Judge Orenstein ruled the FBI's request would 'thoroughly undermine fundamental principles of the Constitution' and we agree," said Apple. "We share the Judge's concern that misuse of the All Writs Act would start us down a slippery slope that threatens everyone's safety and privacy."
"Meanwhile, in the Central District Court of California on February 16, 2016, the government obtained an All Writs Act order requiring Apple to assist law enforcement in accessing the phone of one of the shooters involved in the mass murders in San Bernardino, California," lawyers for the Justice Department said in the filing.
In its filing on Monday, the Justice Department cited the California decision as evidence that the All Writs Act has been used to compel Apple to unlock the phones.
All of this to show that, despite what the FBI keeps saying, it's not at all about "one iPhone" but about law enforcement using the courts instead of the legislature to gain access to encrypted data.
That Apple — now with the support of many other major technology companies — rather than legislatures are the ones fighting this on our behalf is something that should not be lost on anyone.
Even the world's largest company can be an underdog, and one in a fight that everyone who believes in security and privacy desperately needs them to win.
Do you believe the original judge was correct in his ruling? Let me know!
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The talk show clip that is making the rounds this morning comes from Rachel Maddow, who was more than happy to give Rand Paul a full 20 minutes to continuously dodge one question about a business owner's right to discriminate. In previous interviews, Paul had noted his concerns about the Civil Rights Act requiring businesses to serve people regardless of race.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The most telling line in the piece is the video from the editorial interview where Paul nervously says, "You had to ask me the but …" Paul should have stated clearly that he supports a business' right to discriminate, but that he would not personally support that business and he would hope the free market would make it impossible for the business to survive. He said as much in a newspaper editorial interview. He would loose votes, for sure, but the maze he tries to pull Maddow through in the interview just makes things worse. He essentially blames her for sticking to the question, but he's really to blame for not answering it.
As Tea Party kingmaker, Sen. Jim DeMint is facing fresh criticism from South Carolina Democrats for his last-minute endorsement for Rand Paul. Democratic candidate Vic Rawl has called on DeMint to withdraw his Paul endorsement and the state party has called on him to clarify his own beliefs regarding the Civil Rights Act.
"Jim DeMint needs to stand up now and make clear that he does not stand with his pal on the Civil Rights Act, unless he actually agrees with such a divisive and discredited ideology," says state Democratic Party chair Carol Fowler. "With a key political ally essentially seeking to relegate 28 percent of his constituents to second-class citizen status, it's abhorrent that Jim DeMint is remaining silent."
This campaign season, DeMint isn't the only one who's going to be tied to Paul. Support or opposition to the the Civil Rights Act in its entirety is going to be a question every Republican is going to have to answer. The problem for most of them is that they're going to want to pivot right for the next three to five weeks before the primary and run-offs, and then swing back to the middle this summer. They should spend a little time today trying to figure out how to perform the landing better than Paul did last night.
Does this change the math in November? Not likely. The margins were already closing in the Kentucky race and they'll keep narrowing, but Paul is still the likely winner. And Vic Rawl is still facing a multi-million campaign with little more than a pee-shooter. But it takes another layer of sheen off the Tea Party and the 2010 conservative ascension.
It's interesting that DeMint would be in the thick of this because he's been in the same hole. Back in 2004, DeMint got in trouble on the campaign trail for saying that gays and unwed mothers shouldn't be able to teach in public schools. It led to a strikingly similar uncomfortable exchange with Tim Russert, where Demint tried desperately to stand by his comments, while also not repeating them.
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Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said that based on the ruling issued by the court, the agent has been given a death sentence for relaying information to Mossad.
“The agent had relayed information about some 30 significant Iranian figures to the Israeli service,” the judiciary’s news website Mizan Online quoted him as saying.
He said the 30 Iranians were involved in research, military and nuclear projects, including two nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Masoud Ali Mohammadi who were martyred in bomb attacks in 2010.
Dolatabadi went on saying that the agent, who claimed to have a guilty conscience about the martyrdom of the Iranian scientists, has held numerous meetings with more than eight members of the Israeli spy agency providing them with information related to the activity of Iranian military sites, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and many other secret information in return for money and obtaining residency in Sweden.
Four Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated between 2010 and 2012. Iran says those involved in the killings had been supported by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
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The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Region 6 said the camp of presumptive president Rodrigo Duterte has already asked them to submit a list of drug personalities in Western Visayas.
According to PDEA-6 Regional Director Paul Ledesma, the request came from a retired Armed Forces of the Philippines general who could become part of Duterte's cabinet.
The Western Visayas Region, located in Central Philippines, is composed of six provinces: Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Guimaras and Negros Occidental.
PDEA, as the lead government agency in combating illegal drugs, is mandated to "arrest and apprehend as well as search all violators and seize or confiscate the effects or proceeds of the crimes as provided by law; take charge and have custody of all dangerous drugs and/or controlled precursors and essential chemicals seized, confiscated or surrendered to any national, provincial or local law enforcement agency," among others.
During his campaign, Duterte vowed to wipe out crime in three to six months if elected president. Duterte's crusade is also centered on the eradication of illegal drugs, vowing to kill drug pushers, even his his own children if proven they are into narcotics.
Fast talk: Duterte on drugs, martial law
Earlier this week, Duterte's camp also said the president-elect is planning to implement a nationwide liquor ban, which prohibits buying and selling of alcoholic beverages during 1:00 am-6:00 am, to help curb criminality.
"The reason he has this liquor ban (in Davao) is because we have to work the next day, all the (restaurant) staff have to work, as well as the customers," Duterte's spokesman, Peter Lavina had said.
"This has nothing to do with denying us of our freedoms," he said, adding people were not prohibited from drinking in their homes.
WATCH: Duterte vows end to streetside drinking sessions
The proposed ordinance was welcomed by some but was frowned upon by some businessmen.
--Reports from Nony Basco, Mornings @ ANC, May 13, 2016
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Prime Minister Petr Necas of the Czech Republic said Thursday that he had no intention of resigning after the authorities from an organized crime unit raided government offices in Prague and arrested several officials, including one of his senior aides.
Several hundred officers took part in the nationwide raid that included the Defense Ministry, government headquarters and City Hall in Prague, the capital, the Czech news media reported. The reports said the police had also searched safe deposit boxes at a branch of Komercni bank in Prague and conducted a sweep of the offices of influential lobbyists.
Interior Minister Jan Kubice told Parliament on Thursday that Mr. Necas had been visited by the head of the organized crime unit and two state attorneys. He said the visit was “in connection with a step in the criminal proceedings,” but did not elaborate.
According to the online version of Mlada fronta DNES, a leading Czech newspaper, those arrested included Jana Nagyova, the prime minister’s chief of staff and a close and influential aide. Czech news media reports said she had come under scrutiny in the past for receiving large bonuses from the state.
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Last Thursday at 1:11 a.m., a Florida Highway Patrol trooper spotted a blue 2012 Ford Focus going 87 mph in a 70 mph zone on a stretch of I-75 near Naples, according to an arrest affidavit provided by Collier County Sheriff's Office.
As the driver, later identified as Leyla Denise Aykin, slowed down to 83 mph, the trooper wrote that she had her left foot and arm sticking out the window.
Then, upon slowing down to 27 mph, Aykin took off a scarf and held it out the window before letting go of it, the arrest report stated.
As the 27-year-old Orlando woman exited her car, she did a "wide stretch of her arms" and "appeared high" with a "lights on nobody home" look in her eyes, the trooper noted in his report.
When the trooper then asked Aykin to place her hands on the rear of her car, she instead allegedly knelt down and said a Muslim prayer.
The trooper also wrote in the report that Aykin told him that she "wanted to taste me and gaze through me."
When asked where she was heading, Aykin reportedly replied "to taste the ocean" before beginning to sing and chant a short time later.
Finally the trooper inquired if there was anyone that she wanted authorities to contact on her bahalf.
Her answer: "Jesus," he wrote.
Investigators found a green leafy substance in her car which field tested negative for marijuana. Aykin indicated it was "sting nettle," which she uses to make tea.
Two BAL tests registered 0.000 but a law enforcement drug recognition expert deemed her to be impaired -- on something.
More FloriDUH
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Comcast said yesterday that it purposely slows down some traffic on its network, including some music and movie downloads, an admission that sparked more controversy in the debate over how much control network operators should have over the Internet.
In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast said such measures -- which can slow the transfer of music or video between subscribers sharing files, for example -- are necessary to ensure better flow of traffic over its network.
In defending its actions, Comcast stepped into one of the technology industry's most divisive battles. Comcast argues that it should be able to direct traffic so networks don't get clogged; consumer groups and some Internet companies argue that the networks should not be permitted to block or slow users' access to the Web.
Comcast's FCC filing yesterday was in response to petitions to the agency by the consumer group Free Press and the online video provider Vuze, which claimed that the cable company was abusing its control over its network to impede video competition.
Separately, the FCC began an investigation of Comcast's network practices after receiving those complaints. That review is ongoing, according to Comcast, which said it hasn't received any specific orders based on the complaints.
The FCC prohibits network operators from blocking applications but opens the door to interpretation with a footnote in a policy statement that provides for an exemption for "reasonable management."
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, plans to introduce a bill today calling for an Internet policy that would prohibit network operators from unreasonably interfering with consumers' right to access and use content over broadband networks. The bill also calls for the FCC to hold eight meetings around the nation to assess whether there is enough competition among network providers and whether consumers' rights are being upheld.
"Our goal is to ensure that the next generation of Internet innovators will have the same opportunity, the same unfettered access to Internet content, services and applications that fostered the developers of Yahoo, Netscape and Google," Markey said in a written statement yesterday.
The case with Comcast illustrates the high-stakes battle between those who argue that the Internet should remain open to all traffic, and the companies who argue that some governance of their networks is in the best interest of their customers.
In its comments, Comcast said network controls are necessary, especially for heavy Web users. Specifically, the company imposes "temporary delays" of video, music and other files shared between computers using such technologies as BitTorrent.
Comcast compared its practices to a traffic-ramp control light that regulates the entry of additional vehicles onto a freeway during rush hour. "One would not claim that the car is 'blocked' or 'prevented from entering the freeway; rather it is briefly delayed," the company's statement said.
Marvin Ammori, the general counsel for Free Press, said Comcast's behavior is the second major example of an service provider overstepping its authority in an attempt to quash competition. In March 2005, the FCC fined Madison River Communications for blocking calls by competitor Vonage, which provided free calls over the Internet.
Ammori said that by interfering with video transfers, Comcast is trying to protect its television and On Demand video services.
BitTorrent said Comcast should respond by increasing bandwidth on its networks and upgrading its systems rather than limiting how customers use its service.
"It's like putting a Band-Aid on the problem to achieve a short-term fix," said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and president of San Francisco-based BitTorrent.
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New Delhi: A 22-year-old man, Yakub Ali, died in police firing in Assam’s Goalpara district on June 30 during a public rally to protest against the alleged inclusion of several Indian citizens in the D (doubtful)-voters list in the state by police and foreigners’ tribunals.
The rally was organised by a local advocate Nazrul Islam, who has been out on bail, along with two other advocates. The four were charged in a case of assault on a foreigners’ tribunal judge and ransacking of his office in February to protest against a verdict he delivered which turned eight suspected undocumented immigrants as foreigners.
Presently, as many as 100 foreigners’ tribunals, set up as per a Supreme Court directive, are reviewing the list of D-voters, who were put in that list by the state government stating lack of proper citizenship credentials and thereby, disenfranchised. Many such voters, mostly Bengali speaking Muslims and Hindus of Bangladeshi origin, have been lodged in detention centres across the state.
Based on the verdicts of the tribunals, the 1951 National Register of Citizens (NRC) is soon going to be updated in the state. This has been done as per a clause of the Assam Accord signed between All Assam Students Union and Asom Jatiotabadi Yuva Chatra Parishad with the state and central government in 1985.
On June 30, the protesters, belonging to Khutamari village of the district, came out in response to a call by Nazrul Islam who stated in a leaflet written in Assamese that the rally would end the “injustice meted out to Assam’s Muslims and Bengali Hindus.” Urging the protesters to be non-violent, the leaflet said, “The national highway would be blocked on June 30 from Makori to Sulmara and Pancharatna and Naranarayan Setu against the injustice.”
Hussain Ahmed Madani, an eyewitness of the police firing, told The Wire on July 1, “About hundred people raising slogans demanding inclusion of genuine citizens in the NRC were stopped close to Naranarayan setu (a bridge over river Brahmaputra) by the police asking them for the permission letter to hold the protest. CRPF personnel were also present. The aim of the protesters was to block the National Highway 37 which connects Goalpara to the neighbouring Bongaingaon district (and thereafter to West Bengal). Though the protesters had applied for permission, it was not granted by the police.”
Videos of protesters arguing with personnel from Assam Police and the CRPF have been circulating on social media, which also showed police tearing off their banner and then resorting to lathi charge without much provocation. The police action dispersed the crowd. However, some local youth, angry at the police action, began to hurl stones at them after sometime.
গোৱালপাৰা জিলাৰ খাৰবুজাত উত্তপ্ত পৰিস্থিতি ৷ প্ৰতিবাদ কাৰী আৰু আৰক্ষীৰ মাজত খণ্ডযুদ্ধ, আৰক্ষীৰ গুলীত নিহত এজন আহত এজন। Posted by Hussain Ahmed Madani on Thursday, 29 June 2017
“A railway line passes by the area. The youth picked stones from the railway line and began throwing at the police and CRPF personnel, who also threw back stones at them. It went on for about half an hour. After that, the OC of the Goalpara Sadar police station, present at the site, ordered an Assam Police man to fire at the youth, which killed 22-year-old Yakub Ali on the spot,” said another eyewitness who didn’t want to be named here.
He said, “Neither the policemen nor the CRPF personnel had tear gas or rubber bullets to control the crowd, something that should have been done. They straightaway shot at them, which led to the death of the young man.”
Later, speaking to local media, Goalpara superintendent of police Amitabh Sinha said the incident happened near Kharubosa area of the district. He said, “The police had dispersed the crowd by cane-charge. However, the agitators re-grouped and began pelting stones at the vehicles passing by the national highway which led police to open fire at them. It led to the killing of the youth.”
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RESTON, VA, February 15, 2016 – Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) today released its monthly Comscore qSearch™ analysis of the U.S. desktop search marketplace. Google Sites led the explicit core search market in January with 63.8 percent of search queries conducted.
U.S. Explicit Core Search
Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in January with 63.8 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 21.3 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Yahoo Sites with 12.4 percent. Ask Network accounted for 1.7 percent of explicit core searches (up 0.1 percentage points), followed by AOL, Inc. with 0.9 percent.
Comscore Explicit Core Search Share Report* (Desktop Only)
January 2016 vs. December 2015
Total U.S. – Desktop Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Share (%) Dec-15 Jan-16 Point Change Total Explicit Core Search 100.0% 100.0% N/A Google Sites 63.8% 63.8% 0.0 Microsoft Sites 21.1% 21.3% 0.2 Yahoo Sites 12.4% 12.4% 0.0 Ask Network 1.6% 1.7% 0.1 AOL, Inc. 1.0% 0.9% -0.1
*“Explicit Core Search” excludes contextually driven searches that do not reflect specific user intent to interact with the search results.
17.5 billion explicit core searches were conducted in January, with Google Sites ranking first with 11.2 billion (up 1 percent). Microsoft Sites ranked second with 3.7 billion searches (up 1 percent), followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.2 billion, Ask Network with 289 million (up 3 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 154 million.
Comscore Explicit Core Search Query Report (Desktop Only)
January 2016 vs. December 2015
Total U.S. – Desktop Home & Work Locations
Source: Comscore qSearch Core Search Entity Explicit Core Search Queries (MM) Dec-15 Jan-16 Percent Change Total Explicit Core Search 17,378 17,482 1% Google Sites 11,095 11,156 1% Microsoft Sites 3,667 3,717 1% Yahoo Sites 2,159 2,165 0% Ask Network 279 289 3% AOL, Inc. 178 154 -13%
“Powered By” Reporting
In January, 63.9 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while 32.2 percent of searches were powered by Bing (up 0.8 percentage points).
For more information:
About Comscore
Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is the cross-platform measurement company that precisely measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. Comscore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016 to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, our unmatched data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers’ multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and global footprint in more than 75 countries, Comscore is delivering the future of measurement. For more information on Comscore, please visit comscore.com.
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The Korean economy is highly dependent on international trade (exports account for 55% of GDP) and thus remains vulnerable to external shocks, such as the slowdown of activity in China and other trading partners, and the weakness of the yen. Therefore, upturn in growth seen in 2014 (GDP rose 3.3%, after 2.9% in 2013) will not continue in 2015.
The marked slowdown in Korea's engines of growth is likely to prevent real GDP growth from exceeding 3% in 2015 and 2016, states BNP Paribas. Similar to the external sector, the domestic economic activities are also weak to boost the GDP growth. Korean domestic demand is depressed by the rising unemployment rate and households' indebtedness, while global economic prospects remain uncertain.
Data for the first quarter of 2015 showed, Korean GDP growth slowing for the fourth consecutive quarter, to 2.4% y/y from 2.7% in the fourth quarter of 2014. The poor performance of exports (both in value and volume) and lower-than-expected public spending, the traditional engines of Korean growth, contributed to this slower growth. Recently, the persistent weakness of exports (down nearly 6% y/y since January) and fears of a prolongation of the MERS coronavirus epidemic have pushed the authorities into bringing forward a new set of stimulus measures, says BNP Paribas.
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This article is about the hunter who fell in love with his own reflection. For the plant genus (Daffodils), see Narcissus (plant)
Narcissus by by Caravaggio depicts Narcissus gazing at his own reflection.
In Greek mythology, Narcissus (; Ancient Greek: Νάρκισσος Nárkissos) was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty. According to Tzetzes, he was a Laconian hunter who loved everything beautiful.[1] Narcissus was proud, in that he disdained those who loved him, causing some to commit suicide to prove their unrelenting devotion to his striking beauty. Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself and one's physical appearance or public perception.
Etymology [ edit ]
The name is of uncertain etymology. According to R. S. P. Beekes, "[t]he suffix [-ισσος] clearly points to a Pre-Greek word."[2] The word narcissus has come to be used for the daffodil, but there is no clarity on whether the flower is named for the myth, or the myth for the flower, or if there is any true connection at all. Pliny the Elder wrote that the plant was named for its fragrance (ναρκάω narkao, "I grow numb") not the youth.
Family [ edit ]
Narcissus was the son of the river god Cephissus and nymph Liriope.[3]
Mythology [ edit ]
Several versions of the myth have survived from ancient sources. The classic version is by Ovid, found in book 3 of his Metamorphoses (completed 8 AD); this is the story of Echo and Narcissus. One day Narcissus was walking in the woods when Echo, an Oread (mountain nymph) saw him, fell deeply in love, and followed him. Narcissus sensed he was being followed and shouted "Who's there?". Echo repeated "Who's there?" She eventually revealed her identity and attempted to embrace him. He stepped away and told her to leave him alone. She was heartbroken and spent the rest of her life in lonely glens until nothing but an echo sound remained of her. Nemesis (as an aspect of Aphrodite[4]), the goddess of revenge, noticed this behaviour after learning the story and decided to punish Narcissus. Once, during the summer, he was getting thirsty after hunting, and the goddess lured him to a pool where he leaned upon the water and saw himself in the bloom of youth. Narcissus did not realize it was merely his own reflection and fell deeply in love with it, as if it was somebody else. Unable to leave the allure of his image, he eventually realized that his love could not be reciprocated and he melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually turning into a gold and white flower.[5][6]
An earlier version ascribed to the poet Parthenius of Nicaea, composed around 50 BC, was recently rediscovered among the Oxyrhynchus papyri at Oxford.[7] Unlike Ovid's version, it ended with Narcissus who lost his will to live had committed suicide. A version by Conon, a contemporary of Ovid, also ends in suicide (Narrations, 24). In it, a young man named Ameinias fell in love with Narcissus, who had already spurned his male suitors. Narcissus also spurned him and gave him a sword. Ameinias committed suicide at Narcissus's doorstep. He had prayed to the gods to give Narcissus a lesson for all the pain he provoked. Narcissus walked by a pool of water and decided to drink some. He saw his reflection, became entranced by it, and killed himself because he could not have his object of desire.[5] A century later the travel writer Pausanias recorded a novel variant of the story, in which Narcissus falls in love with his twin sister rather than himself (Guide to Greece, 9.31.7).[8] In all versions, his body disappears and all that is left is a narcissus flower.
Psychology [ edit ]
In 1898 Havelock Ellis, an English sexologist, used the term "narcissus-like" in reference to excessive masturbation, whereby the person becomes his or her own sex object.[9]
In 1899, Paul Näche was the first person to use the term "narcissism" in a study of sexual perversions.
Otto Rank, in 1911, published the first psychoanalytical paper specifically concerned with narcissism, linking it to vanity and self-admiration.[9]
Sigmund Freud only published a paper exclusively devoted to narcissism in 1914, called "On Narcissism: An Introduction".[10]
One of the personality disorders is called narcissistic personality disorder.
Influence on culture [ edit ]
The myth of Narcissus has inspired artists for at least two thousand years, even before the Roman poet Ovid featured a version in book III of his Metamorphoses. This was followed in more recent centuries by other poets (e.g. Keats and Alfred Edward Housman) and painters (Caravaggio, Poussin, Turner, Dalí (see Metamorphosis of Narcissus), and Waterhouse).
Literature [ edit ]
In Stendhal's novel Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), there is a classic narcissist in the character of Mathilde. Says Prince Korasoff to Julien Sorel, the protagonist, with respect to his beloved girl:
She looks at herself instead of looking at you, and so doesn't know you. During the two or three little outbursts of passion she has allowed herself in your favor, she has, by a great effort of imagination, seen in you the hero of her dreams, and not yourself as you really are.
(Page 401, 1953 Penguin Edition, trans. Margaret R.B. Shaw).
The myth had a decided influence on English Victorian homoerotic culture, via André Gide's study of the myth, Le Traité du Narcisse ('The Treatise of the Narcissus', 1891), and the only novel by Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist also starts with a story about Narcissus, found (we are told) by the alchemist in a book brought by someone in the caravan. The alchemist's (and Coelho's) source was very probably Hesketh Pearson's The Life of Oscar Wilde (1946) in which this story is recorded (Penguin edition, p. 217) as one of Wilde's inspired inventions. This version of the Narcissus story is based on Wilde's "The Disciple" from his "Poems in Prose (Wilde) ".
Author and poet Rainer Maria Rilke visits the character and symbolism of Narcissus in several of his poems.
Seamus Heaney references Narcissus in his poem "Personal Helicon"[11] from his first collection "Death of a Naturalist":
"To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity."
In Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series, Narcissus appears as a minor antagonist in the third book The Mark of Athena.
In the fantasy series Harry Potter, Narcissa Malfoy, a minor antagonist, is named for Narcissus.
William Faulkner's character "Narcissa" in Sanctuary, sister of Horace Benbow, was also named after Narcissus. Throughout the novel, she allows the arrogant, pompous pressures of high-class society to overrule the unconditional love that she should have for her brother.
Hermann Hesse's character "Narcissus" in "Narcissus and Goldmund" shares several of mythical Narcissus' traits, although his narcissism is based on his intellect rather than his physical beauty.
A. E. Housman refers to the 'Greek Lad', Narcissus, in his poem Look not in my Eyes from A Shropshire Lad set to music by several English composers including George Butterworth. At the end of the poem stands a jonquil, a variety of daffodil, Narcissus Jonquilla, which like Narcissus looks sadly down into the water.
Herman Melville references the myth of Narcissus in his novel Moby-Dick, in which Ishmael explains the myth as "the key to it all," referring to the greater theme of finding the essence of Truth through the physical world.
On Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen's A Fada Oriana, the eponymous protagonist is punished with mortality for abandoning her duties in order to stare at herself in the surface of a river.
Joseph Conrad's novel The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' features a merchant ship named Narcissus. An incident involving the ship, and the difficult decisions made by the crew, explore themes involving self-interest vs. altruism and humanitarianism.
Film and television [ edit ]
In the TV series Boardwalk Empire, a Dr. Narcisse (Valentin Narcisse) is introduced as a condescending intellectual.
Scottish-Canadian animator Norman McLaren finished his career with a short film named Narcissus, re-telling the Greek legend through ballet.
Narcissus appears in the Disney adaptation of Hercules. In the film, he is portrayed as an Olympian god with purple skin.
In the film Bab'Aziz, directed by Nacer Khemir, a Narcissus like character was portrayed by an ancient prince who sat by a pond for days after days and looked at the reflection of his own soul. He was referred to as 'The prince who contemplated his soul'.
Pink Narcissus is an artistic film by James Bidgood about the fantasies of a hustler.
The escape craft Ripley boards in the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien is called the Narcissus.
Narcissus is the name of Laurel and Hardy's goat in their 1940 film Saps At Sea.
The Neon Demon, a 2016 psychological horror film by Nicolas Winding Refn, is loosely based on the story of Narcissus.
Narcissus is the name of the host club in the 2018 Japanese drama Todome no Kiss. The lead character, Otaro Dojima (Kento Yamazaki), works in the nightclub as a sought-after host under the stage name Eight and just like Narcissus, he is narcissist and disregards the feelings of others; he uses women for money and power.
Music [ edit ]
National Medal Of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen wrote a choral work entitled "Dirait-on" based on the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.
"Narcissus" is a popular melody from "Water Scenes" by American composer Ethelbert Nevin.
"Supper's Ready" by Genesis (ca. 1972), a near-23-minute epic song laden with religious and mythological imagery, refers to the myth of Narcissus as follows: A young figure sits still by the pool / He's been stamped "Human Bacon" by some butchery tool / (He is you) / Social Security took care of this lad. / We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower. / A flower?. The movement is titled "How Dare I Be So Beautiful?".
Progressive metal band Threshold referenced the myth with an 11-minute epic titled "Narcissus", the closing track on their album Hypothetical. Greek metal band Septic Flesh recorded a song about Narcissus (called "Narcissus") on their album Communion.
The cerebral rock band "Glass Wave" retells the Narcissus story from the perspective of the nymph Echo in their song "Echo," from their self-titled album "Glass Wave" (2010).
"Narcissus in a Red Dress" by The Like was released on The Like EP and their album Release Me. The Canadian band Hedley has written a song about Narcissus (called "Narcissist"). One line goes He falls in love with his reflection in the glass / He can't resist who's staring back
Composer Nikolai Tcherepnin wrote his ballet "Narcisse et Echo, Op. 40 in 1911 for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and was danced by Nijinski. Uruguayan band El Cuarteto de Nos wrote the song "Me Amo" (I Love Myself) in which the chorus sings "como Narciso soy" (I am like Narcissus). In 2010, Swedish electronic artist pacific! released "Narcissus" an album and ballet staged in Gothenburg.[12] In 1994, composer Mark Applebaum composed Narcissus: Strata/Panacea for marimba solo. This work comprised one movement of the larger Janus Cycle, for mixed instrumentation.[13] In 1987, Thea Musgrave was commissioned by a consortium of four flutists for a solo work. She composed Narcissus for flute and digital delay.[14]
German composer Matthias Pintscher composed his first cello concerto based on this mythology figure, titled "Reflections on Narcissus".
In Marilyn Manson's song Deep Six, the first verse mentions Zeus in conversation with Narcissus.[15]
As a part of SM Station, Kim Hee-chul, Kim Jungmo (M&D) and Wheein made a song called "Narcissus".[16]
South Korean girl group, Gugudan released an EP on the 27th February, 2017 named, "Act. 2 Narcissus".[17]
BTS, a South Korean group, under BigHit, released a comeback trailer titled "Singularity" for their album "Love Yourself: Tear", featuring V (Kim Taehyung) with references to the myth in both lyrics and visual aspects of the video.
Visual art [ edit ]
Narcissus has been a subject for many painters including: Caravaggio, Poussin, Turner, Dalí, Waterhouse, Carpioni, Lagrenée, and Roos.
Echo And Narcissus , John William Waterhouse
Liriope Bringing Narcissus before Tiresias , Giulio Carpioni
Echo and Narcissus , Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Narcissus at the Spring , Jan Roos
Narcissus, follower of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Sculptors such as Paul Dubois, John Gibson, Henri-Léon Gréber and Hubert Netzer have sculpted Narcissus.[18]
Narcisse , Paul Dubois
Narcissus , John Gibson
Narziss , Hubert Netzer
Narcissus , possibly Valerio Cioli
Narcisse, Henri-Léon Gréber
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
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Labour MEPs voted today to keep public services out of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and to ensure workers’ rights and environmental standards are protected.
Labour MEPs also voted to rule out ISDS, Investor-State Dispute Settlement, which enables companies to sue governments, from TTIP, though this did not get the support of a majority of MEPs.
TTIP, the proposed EU-US trade deal, is in its early stages, and now that the European Parliament has agreed a position, the European Commission negotiators and EU Member States will have to take it seriously if they want MEPs to accept a final deal.
Jude Kirton-Darling MEP, Labour's European Parliament spokesperson on TTIP, said:
"If done right, this deal between Europe and America has huge potential to grow our economy by several billion pounds a year. However, global trade has to be properly regulated and must not lead to a race to the bottom on standards.
"We have worked hard to ensure public concerns are reflected and that our public services - especially the NHS - and our environmental, food and labour standards, and workers' rights, are protected.
"Labour MEPs have worked to ensure TTIP can have a positive impact on people’s lives. We have been able to secure notable victories in this process and will keep up the pressure to get the right kind of trade deal."
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FILE - In this April 17, 2017, file photo, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., answers a question during a town hall at the Reno Sparks Convention Center in Reno, Nev. (Andy Barron /The Reno Gazette-Journal via AP, File)
With the health care debate again heating up, incumbent U.S. Sen. Dean Heller has become the central target of a major ad blitz in Nevada.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a 30-second ad last week playing on cable news networks across Nevada that urges Heller, R-Nev., to oppose the revived push to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The group plans to have the ad air through early this week.
The ad features a woman named Micah from Lavalette, West Virginia, who relies on Medicaid to treat her cerebral palsy and seizures.
“Because of her cerebral palsy, she’s needed constant care for the last 38 years. When I hear that President Trump and Senate Republicans want to cut her Medicaid, I just want to cry,” Micah’s mother, Priscilla says in the ad. “I can’t afford Micah’s care if this bill passes. Without it, my daughter could die from seizures.”
Heller, who opposed an earlier repeal bill because of cuts to Medicaid, is helping push the latest repeal effort with fellow Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bill Cassidy, R-La. Heller says the bill would put Medicaid funding into block grants that would lead to increased federal spending for Nevada.
But the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that under the Republican effort Nevada would see a reduction of $870 million in federal funds between 2020 and 2026.
Dem newcomer joins CD-3 race
Political newcomer and Las Vegas resident Michael Weiss last week kicked off his campaign for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District.
Weiss, a 35-year-old Democrat who works in information technologies, says he supports Medicare for all and net neutrality, wants to end the federal prohibition on marijuana and protect Social Security.
Weiss said he was a Nevada state delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and worked on President Barack Obama’s campaign 2008 campaign in Florida. He has a bachelor’s degree from UNLV and a master’s in sociology from the University of Miami.
Weiss was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome in his late 20s, and said he’s “very aware of what it’s like to be stigmatized.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there. There’s a lack of understanding about what the spectrum encompasses,” he said. “I don’t meet what is the stereotype of what autism is.”
Weiss joins Richard Hart, Susie Lee and Jack Love in a crowded Democratic CD3 primary.
Who’s in this week? Nelson Araujo, a Democratic Assemblyman from Las Vegas, launched his campaign for secretary of state.
Who’s Out? State Sen. Pat Spearman, D-North Las Vegas, bowed out of running for secretary of state and endorsed Araujo.
Three-term Assemblyman Paul Anderson, R-Las Vegas, resigned his District 13 seat on Friday to take a position with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
Rumors
Former Assemblyman Andrew Martin, D-Las Vegas, is mulling a run for treasurer. But Martin last week told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he’s also considering running for state Senate in District 8. Independent Patricia Farley has said she will not run for re-election. Martin, a certified public accountant by trade, most recently ran for Nevada controller in 2014, but lost to Republican Ron Knecht.
Contact Colton Lochhead at [email protected] or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.
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Kyle O'Quinn and Victor Oladipo are close friends. So when O'Quinn offered Oladipo a suggestion on what to do during All-Star Weekend's dunk contest, O'Quinn meant it sincerely, thinking it could help Oladipo win the event.
O'Quinn thinks Oladipo should borrow from the beloved Eddie Murphy movie "Coming to America."
"He wants me to come out as Prince Akeem and have rose bearers and the whole nine," Oladipo said Thursday. "I was like, 'That's not happening.' "
O'Quinn, a native of Queens, where "Coming to America" was supposed to take place, insists the idea would work.
"It's perfect," O'Quinn said. "The All-Star Game is in New York. Prince Akeem came to New York looking for a queen. So it's the perfect setting, you know what I'm saying? He's African. He could bring Semmi with him. He could jump over a Kia. It's perfect! It's a perfect set-up."
O'Quinn even would like to see someone sing "She's Your Queen," which actor Paul Bates sang in the movie in a high falsetto.
Oladipo dislikes O'Quinn's idea.
In fact, Oladipo said he thinks O'Quinn's idea is "probably one of the worst" suggestions he's received.
O'Quinn shakes his head when he hears that.
He won't provide any additional ideas.
"That's my No. 1, and that's my only one," O'Quinn insists. "I'm not a dunker. But I set the scene perfect for him. And if he doesn't accept that, then I have nothing else to do.
"The only thing I could say is, 'I told you so.' "
Elfrid Payton, the Magic's starting point guard, will be in New York to participate in the Rising Stars Challenge with Oladipo the night before the dunk contest.
Payton might serve as a designated passer during the dunk contest if Oladipo needs someone to pass him the ball.
"If he asks me to do that, I'll definitely be available," Payton said. "I'll make myself available."
On Thursday night, Oladipo had another up-close look at one of his dunk contest competitors, Giannis Antetokounmpo, when the Magic faced Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks.
Antetokounmpo, dubbed "The Greek Freak" for his combination of size and athleticism, insists he won't start thinking about the contest until the All-Star Break arrives and he travels to New York.
"I'll be there Thursday and will have two days to think about what I'm going to do," Antetokounmpo said.
Vaughn's perspective
Magic coach Jacque Vaughn was asked about how he ignores the "noise" about his job security before tipoff.
"I think overall as a coach you have to know that's part of what you signed up for," Vaughn said. "If I made a cranberry muffin today, someone would complain about the cranberries are not organic, maybe. Or they came from somewhere where they shouldn't have come from. They're going to complain about everything in today's world. That's just a part of it, and I understand that. But what I do is I come to work every day, and my job is to try to get the most out of these guys, and that's what I'm going to continue to try to do."
Layups
• Vaughn employed a starting lineup of Payton, Oladipo, Aaron Gordon, Channing Frye and Nikola Vucevic.
• The Bucks blocked four shots in the game's first eight minutes.
[email protected]. Read his blog at OrlandoSentinel.com/magicblog and follow him on Twitter at @JoshuaBRobbins.
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Vanguard is a titan in the fund management industry, but the vast majority of its $4 trillion assets are in the US. As its chief investment officer Tim Buckley prepares to become CEO next year, the company is eyeing global expansion. It’s off to a strong start in the UK, taking in almost £2 million ($2.71 million) a day from British customers since it launched there in May.
Vanguard became the second-biggest global asset manager, after BlackRock, thanks to its ultra-low fees. It’s bringing a similar approach to Europe, threatening to spark a price war among asset managers. Vanguard’s direct-to-customer UK service will charge 0.15% per year, which is about a third of the fee at Hargreaves Lansdown, Britain’s biggest provider, according to The Times (paywall). Vanguard’s fees for customers are capped at £375 per year.
The Malvern, Pennsylvania-based company has been one of the biggest winners from the shift to low-cost passive investments, but its European push also features actively managed funds that are prevalent in the region.
Brokerage Liberum has projected that Vanguard will take in £5 billion per year within three years through its online offering, according to the Financial Times (paywall). That would be about 25% of the new money invested by UK retail customers every year.
At least one British institution may welcome Vanguard’s advance into the UK’s £6.9 trillion asset management industry. In June, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said the sector suffered from a worrying lack of competition and inflated margins. If its US record is any indication, Vanguard’s arrival in Britain could provide the shakeup the regulator is looking for.
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ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A chance to revive a wrecked peace process with Kurdish rebels has been missed as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan taps nationalist sentiment to consolidate his support after a failed military coup, the head of the pro-Kurdish opposition said.
A Turkish flag hangs on the historical city walls at one of the entrance of Sur district in Diyarbakir, Turkey July 11, 2016. REUTERS/Sertac Kayar
Decrees during a state of emergency, including purges of tens of thousands of suspected coup plotters, may threaten the wider opposition, Selahattin Demirtas, co-chairman of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), also said in an interview.
The failed intervention by a faction of the military to overthrow the government on July 15 killed more than 240 people and posed the gravest threat yet to Erdogan’s 13 years in power before it was quickly put down by loyalist forces.
The government says the coup’s mastermind is the reclusive Fethullah Gulen, 75, an Islamic preacher living in Pennsylvania, whose followers in the bureaucracy and security forces conspired to topple Erdogan and abolish parliament. He has denied any involvement in the coup attempt and has denounced it.
The coup’s aftermath saw a short-lived lull in violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where thousands have been killed since a peace process, once spearheaded by Erdogan, collapsed in 2015. Neither the state nor the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) appears ready to parlay that into peace, Demirtas said.
“We have not seen any positive signals from either side ... that this will be an opportunity for resolution,” Demirtas said.
“We could have used the coup as an opportunity for the peace process ...but Erdogan does not see this crisis as a way to democratise,” said Demirtas, who also blames the Gulen movement for the coup attempt, as do other party leaders in parliament.
PROSECUTION OF KURDISH LAWMAKERS
Erdogan did put aside acrimony with other party leaders for talks in a sign of national unity after the coup, but excluded Demirtas because of the HDP’s alleged links to the outlawed PKK. The snub was aimed at stoking nationalism, Demirtas said.
The HDP, parliament’s third-biggest party, denies direct links with the autonomy-seeking PKK and promotes a negotiated end to the 32-year insurgency that has killed 40,000 people.
Prosecutors are pressing on with cases against HDP lawmakers for remarks they made after Erdogan successfully lobbied for them to be stripped of their parliamentary immunity in May. Demirtas received 12 new summons last week alone.
“The lifting of immunity needs to be examined after we faced the threat of a coup and parliament was bombed,” said Demirtas, who sees the prosecutions as a strategy to push the HDP out of parliament and win the ruling AK Party more seats.
Also key to peace is permitting the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to relay messages indirectly to guerrillas, as he did in 2013 and 2014, Demirtas said. Ocalan, serving a life sentence in an island prison, has not had contact with family, lawyers or politicians since April 2015.
The post-coup crackdown has caused concern among Turkey’s Western allies, who worry innocent people are among the 60,000 fired or detained for suspected links with Gulen. The state of emergency imposed on July 21 allows Erdogan to rule by decree.
“We have concerns emergency rule may increasingly be used against the true opposition in Turkey, those outside the Gulen movement,” he said, adding it was “extremely suspect” the 100 or so journalists in detention or awaiting arrest were involved.
Some 10,000 soldiers have also been detained, which has raised concerns about a security vacuum as NATO member Turkey battles the PKK as well as Islamic State in Syria next door.
Among them are generals who commanded anti-PKK operations. Their removal does not indicate a dovish turn, Demirtas said.
“Erdogan...consistently provided political support to the generals who fuelled this war,” he said.
Demirtas echoed other critics who point to Erdogan’s previous alliance with Gulen, with whom he once shared compatible Islamist visions for Turkey.
On Saturday, violence flared again when 35 PKK rebels were killed trying to storm a base in Hakkari province after clashes nearby killed eight soldiers, officials said.
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By Helen Healey
BERLIN -- Daniel Plash, 31-year-old manager of Stattbad Wedding in Berlin, appeared in the front entrance of the former nightclub wearing a black leather jacket and skinny jeans and, at a volume much too loud and a tone much too energetic for a German, described our surroundings as a “ghost house.”
Only two weeks prior to my visit, the lobby in which we stood was the entrance to one of Berlin’s weirdest, most awesome nightclubs. Today, it’s a massive, empty building with two swimming pools and an old boiler room in a neighborhood with next to no nightlife. According to local media, Stattbad may be closing for good.
The displays of creativity at Stattbad were dramatic and plentiful: An unusual music venue idea; an artistic space and gallery; a re-use of a city pool and its boiler rooms; an injection of international cool and economic development into an immigrant neighborhood that needed it.
The lessons in strategy and leadership at Stattbad are sobering: The industrial chic clubs also eventually face building and health inspectors; a club with longevity requires alignment with longer-term business and finance plans; sometimes creative spaces and cultures don't last forever.
Stattbad was one the first and one of the few existing nightclubs in the Western Berlin neighborhood of Wedding, a former worker’s district and now a hub for immigrants, a place which Daniel described as “underprivileged, more or less.” Authorities, due to city code violations, have recently shut down the facility. The new situation of the club provides a leadership dilemma to Daniel and the team of 20-something creative entrepreneurs who turned an abandoned city pool into one of the most innovative techno clubs and art spaces in the world.
Built in 1905 and finished in 1907, it incurred damage during World War II and was remodeled in the 1960s, whereafter it served as a public pool. In 2001 - after closing as a pool, trading hands in real estate deals and being considered as a site of loft apartments or grocery stores - the building reopened as a non-profit nightclub: Stattbad Wedding. It’s two giant empty swimming pools hosted DJs, classical symphonies and art exhibitions.
Between the nightlife, symphonic, and artistic uses of the building, Stattbad brought in a healthy cash flow, but not enough to bring the building (especially the decrepit boiler room) up to code. The facility does not have a fire detection system, an emergency power supply, a sprinkler system or emergency lighting in place. Daniel also remarked that heating the building comes at an enormous financial cost.
The nightclub is famous among the Berlin’s clubbing scene for Stattnacht, a monthly all-out techno fest and Boiler Room, a YouTube broadcast of top DJ sets in the boiler rooms at Stattbad, which drew thousands of viewers worldwide. Customers dance in the pool, in the boiler room, in the basement, in the dressing rooms, etc. The club hosts guest DJs such as George Fitzgerald and Acid Pauli.
For the past few weeks, Stattbad has been using other venues to host its DJs and customers. Daniel made it very clear that he is trying to create an “experience” in his club. He has turned down offers from poppy DJs, including Avicii, who’d bring tons of customers to the club on any given night. Stattbad is very exclusive when it comes to the DJs they host, focusing on a more hard-edged house or techno music found in Detroit, Chicago and Berlin rather than the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) which is more popular in Las Vegas and other parts of the US. However, Stattbad doesn’t seem too concerned with exclusivity among its paying customers—almost everyone gets in.
Daniel wants to attract real techno geeks, it seems. He thinks that those who aren’t part of the underground techno scene don’t show up to clubs and concerts for the music (which explains their no-cell phone policy). He says, “People are here for the music, not for partying. [Stattbad’s] not about sex. You really have to want it.” Daniel wants to shut out all possible distractions from the pure techno experience he’s trying to create—including EDM freaks and iPhones.
To see if this is really the case, I went to a Stattbad party (moved to a temporary location in Friedrichshain) on a Friday in June. My friends and I arrived at a garage-like venue called RAW that stood among five other similar venues on a side-street. At the door, a man with what looked like tribal tattoos on his face told us that we were on the list as “Extra Americans.”
Daniel wasn’t kidding—it was clear why someone like Avicii wouldn’t be received well by the Stattbad crowd. DJs Ron Morelli and Will Bankhead’s music was far more technical than EDM, which is more about Molly, weird neon bras and chew toys than it is about music. Even if Stattbad’s customers’ trances were drug-induced, drugs were clearly not the objects of the occasion—music was. The crowd followed the club’s “no phone” policy: they were not Instagramming and tweeting about their night, but rather enjoying the music they actually love.
Here is the problem, though: Stattbad will have a hard time separating itself from the rest of the underground techno scene if it isn’t in Wedding, a predominantly Turkish district with very few nightclubs. Daniel described the Stattbad project as a “lighthouse” primarily because it’s the only nightclub in Wedding. There are plenty of other clubs that focus on bringing in the best of the best techno (akin to underground Detroit techno artists).
If Stattbad continues holding events in small (unspecial) venues in neighborhoods with already rich nightlives like Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, it risks losing the distinctive venue that shapes the “experience” Daniel is pushing for. Without the historical building’s enormous swimming pool(s) in an unlikely neighborhood to host its following, Stattbad runs the risk of becoming comparatively average.
"It's a real shame," said Matthias Schütze, a real estate lawyer in Berlin who has advised the young people running Stattbad and has been a fixture at the club over the years, attending many of the artistic events and planning some classical music concerts at the venue. Walking his pug dog, Dolly, around Stattbad's massive halls, pools and boiler rooms, he reminisced. "There was a lot of innovation happening here."
Not only does the location of the club contribute to its uniqueness, but the acoustics provided in the swimming pool area are equivalent to a classical symphony hall in quality. Daniel says that the acoustics provide for a synesthetic experience, as if the techno is “going to touch you.” Daniel mentioned that he is in talks with an Austrian PA company and upgrading from Stattbad’s current Function 1 sound system. The big question is whether any investors will emerge to make the necessary infrastructure improvements into the building in time to save Stattbad as a club.
Daniel considers techno a serious art, and is taking it upon himself to create the proper home for techno. Techno isn’t about music alone, it seems. He left off this way: “It’s not about getting f***** up and hitting on girls. It’s about the ‘moment’—where I’m standing. It’s about pure passion.”
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On June 25, a federal judge approved a subpoena, to be served by Chevron to Microsoft, granting the oil company private Internet and phone data related to 30 email addresses, including those related to environmental nonprofits, activists, journalists and lawyers.
This information forms part of a larger fishing expedition by Chevron to go after those who won an $18 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador in February 2011 for dumping 18.5 billion gallons of highly toxic waste into the streams and rivers in the rainforests of eastern Ecuador.
In its retaliatory lawsuit, Chevron claims that "this judgment is the product of fraud." And it is seeking the IP addresses of individuals involved in the suit over a nine-year period.
In particular, the subpoena calls for the production of all documents related to "the identity of the users of the email addresses, including 'all names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, billing information, date of account creation, account information and all other identifying information."
Like the NSA, Chevron claims that "the subpoena does not call for contents of emails sent or received by any of the thirty email addresses." It does however request Microsoft to "produce documents identifying the account holders and their available personal information" and "the IP address connected with every subsequent login to each account over a nine-year period."
As the subpoena itself states, it would allow Chevron to determine the countries, states, cities and even building addresses from which accounts were used.
Chevron also served subpoenas around September 18, 2012,to Google and Yahoo, demanding IP logs and identifying information for approximately 71 email accounts. Earth Rights International and the Electronic Front Foundation filed a motion to quash these subpoenas on First Amendment grounds in northern California on November 28, 2012.
According to Marissa Vahlsing, attorney, Earth Rights International (ERI), working on the case, "Chevron lost in Ecuador. Now, they have gone on the offensive in the U.S."
"Chevron fought particularly hard," she continued, "to enforce two extremely broad and invasive subpoenas against Amazon Watch, which has been running the Clean Up Ecuador Campaign for a decade."
In November 2012, Chevron served Amazon Watch a 28-page subpoena, demanding almost all internal documents and communications, memos, Facebook postings and emails related to Chevron campaigns and litigation.
The request included "all documents concerning any protests, rallies, marches, demonstrations, petitions or other similar events concerning Chevron or the Chevron litigations."
It included "all documents concerning any activities organized, created, or held on social media including, but not limited to, Facebook and Twitter, concerning Chevron or the Chevron litigations."
The subpoena was quashed on April 5, 2013, on First Amendment grounds. The document quashing it stated that "Amazon Watch has made a prima facie showing that the subpoenas seek information protected by the First Amendment."
With the latest subpoena, Vahlsing says activists are being "harassed and chilled" and "that Chevron seeks to establish a blueprint to go on the offensive."
Tina Gerhardt is an independent journalist and academic who covers energy policy, climate negotiations and related direct actions. Her work has appeared in Alternet, Climate Progress, Grist, The Nation, The Progressive and the Washington Monthly.
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Long have I hated Microsoft . For decades their bloated mediocrity infuriated every fiber of my being. Like Adam Sandler and leaf-blowers, for a very long time, they represented everything that was wrong with today’s world. But just as Adam Sandler went and made Punch Drunk Love, over the last few years, Microsoft has released a body of work that even I must grudgingly admit is interesting, innovative, and sometimes downright visionary.
Take Kinect. It began life as “merely” a cool game interface, but it’s steadily becoming Quite A Big Deal. It’s being used for 3D modelling, within web browsers, and in a whole panoply of third-party applications.
And that’s just one of the genuinely fascinating innovations — including bioprogramming, a universal translator, and virtual reality — bubbling up from what our own Natasha Lomas called Microsoft’s “cauldron of ideas,” Microsoft Research.
Not long ago Microsoft security was a joke; it seemed like every non-techie I knew had had their Wintel machine hacked or compromised, and you hardly dared to type a password in an Internet cafe. Now, though, not a single Microsoft project features among Kaspersky’s Top 10 list of vulnerabilities.
The Surface is getting, at best, mixed reviews (of note, MG is downright contemptuous, while Jeff Atwood really likes it), but even its staunchest critics have to admit that Microsoft’s tablet/laptop crossover is, at least, somewhat interesting and innovative — if ultimately unsuccessful.
This raises a larger point: Microsoft is now further along than Apple and Google at integrating their mobile and desktop OSes. Windows 8 is a giant step ahead on that journey, while the other two are still stuck with their iOS/OS X and Android/Chrome OS bifurcations. (Though I expect both forks to merge in the next couple of years.) And whatever you think of Windows 8’s “Metro” interface, you have to admit, at least it’s new and not boring.
What happened to the staid, colorless, bland, third-rate Microsoft that we used to know? Why is even the mighty Woz worried that Microsoft has become more innovative than Apple? Well, here’s the answer for you in a single graph, courtesy of Horace Dediu of Asymco:
The graph clearly shows that the Wintel monopoly that dominated personal computing for so long is now well and truly dead. (And this graph is almost a year old.) Microsoft has to innovate now. It’s that or die.
Trouble is, even if they do innovate, that doesn’t mean that Microsoft will live, because “new” and “interesting” are completely orthogonal to “successful.” Out of everything I mentioned above, only the Kinect is a hit. Of course they’re not in any immediate danger — they’re still a massively profitable behemoth — but as Paul Graham points out, revenue is a lagging indicator in the tech world.
Are we witnessing Microsoft’s long-awaited phoenix-like reinvention or the first stirrings of its death spasms? I don’t know, but either way, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be interesting to watch.
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Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is continuing his attacks on the rights of gun owners. In a recent interview, he declared that “guns are the new cigarettes,” suggesting that supporters of gun control have a long fight ahead of them in their goal of imposing new restrictions.
Murphy’s position on guns has been clear for a while now, and his latest statement is nothing new. Attempts at comparing guns to tobacco products have been around for some time, illustrated by the Talking Points Memo article by Michael Maiello, titled, “What If We Made Gun Culture Uncool Like We Did Cigarettes?” And gun control arguments are rarely ever new. Perhaps this is merely a desperate effort at finding an argument that will work, but it’s not one that we can allow to pass without comment.
I’ve addressed the idea of false analogies before. Guns and cars are not the same, and calls for regulating the two in the same manner lead us into the weeds of claim and counter claims about how cars are registered, but driver’s licenses are honored in all states. But at least with cars there are some points of comparison.
By contrast, tobacco and guns have fewer similarities. The basic fact is that there is no safe dose of tobacco. Filters or not, ready made or roll your own, cigarettes or pipes or chew—it’s all bad for you. And yet, I won’t advocate banning tobacco. As long as you will generally keep the by-products in your own personal (and air) space, enjoy all you like. I take the same stance on other substances. Refrain from harming innocents, and you should be free to do as you please.
But the fact remains that unlike guns, cars, and alcohol, tobacco is always harmful. Guns are in fact quite safe. In a country with some 100 million gun owners and approaching a half a billion guns, the number of accidental deaths in a given year run around 600. And that number is much lower now than it was in years gone by. The difference between guns and tobacco on this point should be obvious, even to advocates of control. A gun is used almost always in an intentional manner—homicide or suicide—whereas I’ve never heard of anyone taking up smoking for the purpose of developing lung cancer.
Another try at linking firearms with cigarettes is the assertion that gun manufacturers have lied to the American people in a way similar to tobacco companies did when they concealed the addictive nature and other health concerns of their products. But while Maiello, for example, accuses a company like Smith & Wesson of lying by claiming that guns are useful for self-defense, there’s good reason to believe that firearms are used in the hundreds of thousands of times per annum by Americans to stop a violent attack. And unlike the long list of ingredients in cigarettes, what’s in a firearm or ammunition has never been a mystery.
Murphy’s intention here is easy to figure out. He wants gun owners to be viewed in the same way as smokers—treated as pariahs in the case of most of us, while the elites enjoy high-end product at their exclusive clubs. It’s up to those of us in the gun community to remind the senator and his fellow advocates of control that rights are not only for the rich and famous and that guns are not cigarettes.
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the position of Guns.com.
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About 50 protestors seeking justice for Mike Brown delayed the start of the second act of Brahms requiem on Saturday night at the St. Louis Symphony in a brilliantly executed creative protest captured by Rebecca Rivas of the St. Louis American.
(read more: http://www.popularresistance.org/demo…)
Including video by Rebecca Rivas
Reporter/video editor
St. Louis American newspaper, who writes:
Demonstrators ‘disrupt’ STL symphony singing a ‘Requiem for Mike Brown’
Just after intermission, about 50 people disrupted the St. Louis Symphony’s performance of Brahms Requiem on Saturday night, singing “Justice for Mike Brown.”
As symphony conductor Markus Stenz stepped to the podium to begin the second act of German Requiem, one middle-aged African-American man stood up in the middle of the theater and sang, “What side are you on friend, what side are you on?”
In an operatic voice, another woman located a few rows away stood up and joined him singing, “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all.” Several more audience members sprinkled throughout the theater and in the balcony rose up and joined in the singing.
Those in the balcony lowered white banners about 15 feet long with black spray-painted letters that said, “ Requiem for Mike Brown 1996-2014” and “Racism lives here,” with an arrow pointed to a picture of the St. Louis Arch. Another banner said, “Rise up and join the movement.”
Stenz stood stoically and listened to the demonstrators’ performance. Some onlookers were outraged and start spewing expletives. Others stood up and started clapping. Most seemed stunned and simply watched.
The singing only went on for about two minutes before the demonstrators started chanting, “Black lives matter.” They pulled up their banners and dropped red paper hearts over the edge of the balcony onto the main floor orchestra seats, which stated “Requiem for Mike Brown.” Then they all voluntarily marched out together and left the theater. While they marched out, they received a round of applause from many of the audience members – as well as the musicians on stage.
Outside, symphony administrators huddled together discussing the demonstration, expressing dismay. When asked if they wanted to comment, they said no. The demonstrators had purchased tickets to the concert.
The St. Louis American tracked down and interviewed the organizer of the event – Sarah Griesbach, 42, a white woman who lives in the Central West End. She said that the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed teen who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, has opened her eyes to the inequalities that exist in St. Louis. She has been protesting since Brown was shot on Aug. 9.
“It is my duty and desire to try to reach out and raise that awareness peacefully but also to disrupt the blind state of white St. Louis, particularly among the people who are secure in their blindness,” Griesbach said.
Two weeks ago, she and another “middle-aged woman who wear our mom jeans pulled up way too high” held up a sign at a Cardinals game that said, “Racism lives here.” A pivotal moment for her was when people around them started chanting in response, “Hands up, don’t loot.”
She and her fellow protester Elizabeth Vega decided to try again at the symphony, which received a much warmer response. She believes that is because the audience was fairly diverse in ethnicity and age.
“There is an inclusivity that comes with that intellectual culture,” she said.
The group of demonstrators was also a mix of African Americans, Latino and white residents – from college kids to college professors, she said. There were “representatives” from Clayton, Webster Groves, South St. Louis, Central West End and Ferguson. Although she lives in the Central West End, her children attend school in Clayton. As a mother, she has been deeply affected by Brown’s death.
“This cannot be just a Ferguson issue,” she said.
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Higuain is understood to have agreed personal terms of around £130,000 a week and is on the verge of leaving Real Madrid to become the first high-profile recruit of the summer at the Emirates Stadium.
Wenger has been notoriously cautious in recent years but is determined to strengthen his squad after clinching a place in next season's Champions League and is ready to revise Arsenal's wage structure in a bid to attract the world's elite players.
Arsenal's board have made £70 million available for the Frenchman to spend and the fee for Higuain will smash the club's previous transfer record of £15 million for Andrey Arshavin in 2009.
The Argentina international, who was a target for Manchester City last year, has met with Wenger and is now waiting for Arsenal to conclude negotiations with Madrid before his new club fly out to the Far East for a pre-season tour next month.
Juventus had also registered their interest in the 25-year-old forward but Arsenal are growing increasingly confident of reaching an agreement in the next few days.
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Hitler (Shutterstock)
A decision to fly a rainbow flag flag symbolizing gay pride over the Asheville, North Carolina city hall has drawn criticism two local GOP functionaries, comparing it to something that Adolph Hitler would have done.
According the Citizen-Times, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer said that she didn’t have a discussion with City Manager over flying the flag commemorating a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. striking down North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriages on Friday.
“I recognize that people have different views on these issues, and I’m sensitive to that,” Manheimer said, stating that the City Council had unanimously approved the decision.
Former City Councilman Carl Mumpower and former chairman of the Buncombe County GOP Chad Nesbitt, claim council violated state open meetings law by not holding vote during an official meeting in public, and compared it to the rise of Nazism.
“There is a reason that North Carolina instructs local elected bodies to handle their affairs in an open and deliberative way,” Nesbitt and Mumpower said in a statement. “Otherwise, they would be free, such as in this case, to indulge their personal feelings and conduct business behind closed doors and over private phone lines.”
“I am equating their methods with the Nazi movement,” Mumpower said. “They are indifferent to the rule of law and indifferent to the vote of the people. And that’s Adolph Hitler all over again in a different disguise.”
City Council member Gordon Smith said council informally approved the gesture to hang the flag in recognition of “a momentous time in our history.”
Mumpower and a handful of protestors appeared at city hall on Friday holding up a Christian flag.
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Image caption The crowd outside the British embassy in Madrid wore Guy Fawkes masks for their protest
Protests have taken place across Spain calling for the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is facing extradition from the UK to Sweden for alleged sexual offences.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the British embassy in Madrid calling for him to be freed.
Wikileaks is publishing insights from hundreds of thousands of sensitive US diplomatic and military documents.
The demonstrators believe Mr Assange's detention is politically motivated.
The whistle-blowing website has angered and embarrassed governments around the world through its publication in recent weeks of classified US diplomatic cables.
Mr Assange was detained in London on Tuesday after Sweden secured an international warrant for his arrest.
Prosecutors in Sweden say they want to question him in connection with the sexual offence allegations. He was refused bail by a British court and has said he will fight extradition.
There have also been calls from some in the US for his arrest and prosecution on charges related directly to Wikileaks' activity.
Sensitive issue
While supporters online have mounted cyber-protests against Mr Assange's detention, Saturday's protests were some of the first street demonstrations in support of Wikileaks.
Wearing face masks associated with the "Anonymous" group of hackers - which launched cyber attacks after Mr Assange's arrest in the UK - the crowd in Madrid shouted for his freedom, outside the vast glass tower that houses the British embassy
Many of the demonstrators were angry at some of the revelations in the cables, says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Madrid.
These include the suggestion Spain came under pressure to stop a criminal investigation into the killing of Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman who died when American soldiers fired a tank round into his hotel in Baghdad.
The Free Wikileaks website, which organised the demonstrations, said protests were also planned for other Spanish cities, including Barcelona, Valencia and Seville.
It called for the full restoration of Wikileaks' website, which was denied hosting services by Amazon after the first of the leaked cables were published two weeks ago.
The protest organisers also demanded that Visa and MasterCard restore credit card services because, it said, no one had proven Mr Assange's guilt.
Our correspondent says the issue of freedom of speech is sensitive for Spaniards, who only emerged from four decades of authoritarian rule in the 1970s.
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The Turnbull government is pushing ahead with Tony Abbott’s controversial “lawfare’ changes to remove the legal standing of conservation groups to mount environmental court cases, with a Senate committee dominated by Coalition members recommending they proceed without holding any public hearings.
Farm groups furious at Coalition move to restrict environmental challenges Read more
Labor accused the government of using its numbers to cancel public hearings and bring forward the report, and said it proved the “radical right” of the Liberal party still called the shots, despite the change of prime minister to Malcolm Turnbull.
After Turnbull took over, the government’s rhetoric against the alleged legal “sabotage” by green groups appeared to cool, and the committee considering the proposed legislation deferred its reporting date until February.
But on Wednesday it unexpectedly issued a report, with Coalition senators recommending the bill be passed. Both Labor and Green senators said the bill should be rejected, leaving its fate in the hands of the crossbench.
The government announced in August it would remove the right of most environmental organisations to challenge developments under federal laws unless they could show they were “directly affected” – in response to a federal court decision that environment minister Greg Hunt had not properly considered all advice in his approval of Adani’s $16.6bn Carmichael coalmine.
Former prime minister Abbott accused environmental groups of engaging in “sabotage” of investment and jobs and the government dubbed the use of the courts to challenge mining projects as “lawfare”.
In October, Hunt approved the Carmichael mine for a second time, but then in November the Australian Conservation Foundation launched more legal action – this time on the grounds that Hunt failed to consider its impact on climate change and therefore on the Great Barrier Reef.
Hunt insists the project has been approved in accordance with the law, and that 36 strict conditions have been imposed, including on groundwater monitoring, protecting local fauna and funding research for conservation in the Galilee Basin.
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act requires the minister to consider the principles of ecologically sustainable development when assessing projects of national environmental significance, but it is not clear whether this could include the consideration of the climate change impact on the reef of the emissions from the coal when exported and burnt.
The chances of the government getting the bill through the Senate suffered a setback last month when the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) confirmed its opposition – because of fears it would also deny farm groups the ability to mount legal challenges.
“The NFF ... cannot support the proposed amendment to remove s487 from the EPBC Act due to the risk of denying farming groups and individual farmers the right to appeal against government decisions that they believe are going to adversely affect farming communities or individual operations,” it said in a submission to the Senate committee.
Tasmanian Labor senator Anne Urquhart said the government used its voting numbers in the committee to cancel public hearings and change the reporting date to a non-parliamentary sitting day to avoid scrutiny.
“The government has shown absolute contempt for due process and for the more than 20,000 individuals, organisations and academic experts who took the time to raise their very legitimate concerns about the EPBC bill,” Urquhart said.
“The Turnbull government has wantonly trampled on key democratic principles by trying to dodge accountability and remove fundamental rights of appeal, and then shutting down a legitimate inquiry before a single hearing has been held.
“While we might have a new prime minister, this debacle shows the Abbott-era anti-environment policy continues unabated with the radical right of the Liberal party still calling the shots.”
Greens senator Larissa Waters said the government was ignoring community opposition, scientific evidence and legal advice.
“Traditional owners, farmers, lawyers, environmentalists and ordinary Australians are standing up for their rights to enforce our national environment law and the Turnbull government is ignoring them in favour of its big mining buddies,” she said.
Coalition to restrict green groups' right to challenge after Carmichael setback Read more
The chief executive of the ACF, Kelly O’Shanassy, said: “The vast majority of the 292 submissions to this inquiry – submissions from lawyers, scientists, health professionals, unions, environment groups and plenty of individual Australians – opposed any change to the law.
“The few submissions that advocated changing the law to restrict environment groups’ rights were unsurprisingly from groups that have a vested interest in profit-making from new coalmines, like the Business Council and the Minerals Council.
“Once again our government is doing the bidding of the big polluters, serving their interests over the interests of Australians who depend on a healthy environment.”
The Lock the Gate Alliance said it was “disappointed” the government appeared to be “pressing ahead with its agenda to take away access to the courts for farmers whose livelihoods depend on a healthy environment.”
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Thanksgiving is rarely too far removed from politics. Whether it's the holiday's origins in a 1621 alliance, its first presidential commemoration by Abraham Lincoln at the height of the Civil War, or the contentious arguments many families have over their dinner tables today, political controversy often manages to intrude on a day that celebrates gratitude.
All of those pale, however, compared with the uproar that swept the nation in 1939, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to move the holiday's date. States split on whether to abide by his decree, and for three years many celebrated the holiday on separate dates — with FDR's new chosen date being derisively dubbed "Franksgiving" by Republicans.
An economic stimulus attempt
Since the late 19th century, Thanksgiving had traditionally been celebrated on the final Thursday in November. But in 1939, Roosevelt's seventh year in office, that last Thursday fell on November 30. And that left a mere 24 days of shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Retailers believed this would lead to less money spent on holiday gifts, and would therefore hurt the economy (and, of course, their own bottom lines). The solution seemed obvious — the date should be moved one week earlier, to Thursday, November 23. Roosevelt agreed, and announced on August 15, 1939, that he would do just that, with an executive proclamation.
The partisan uproar, from Hitler comparisons to sardine cans
What may have seemed like a wonkish, technocratic, good-government policy clashed with what turned out to be deeply ingrained feelings among many Americans about when Thanksgiving should be celebrated. The Associated Press story announcing the move said Roosevelt "was shattering another precedent," and quoted a town official of Plymouth, Massachusetts, saying the traditional date was "sacred."
In addition, it's unclear that the president anticipated how much of a problem his big-government solution would pose to an active, and prescheduled, day of football. The New York Times reported that on the day of the announcement, "most football managers were too dumbfounded for any comment other than expressions of amazement." Frightening projections were thrown around that game attendance could fall by as much as half.
Landon said FDR announced his decision "with the omnipotence of a Hitler"
Republicans pounced, and used the move to portray Roosevelt as a power-mad tyrant. In an early example of Godwin's Law, FDR's recent presidential opponent Alf Landon said Roosevelt sprung his decision on "an unprepared country with the omnipotence of a Hitler." Sen. Styles Bridges of New Hampshire suggested that while Roosevelt was at it, he should abolish winter.
Accordingly, many GOP governors announced they would refuse to move Thanksgiving's date. Kansas Gov. Payne Ratner said that in his state, "we do not destroy tradition merely to gain newspaper headlines." And Time reported that Maine's Republican governor, Lewis Barrows, refused to carve a turkey at a banquet on the earlier date, and "whipped from his pocket a can of sardines instead."
But it was the Republican mayor of Atlantic City, Charles D. White, who would bestow an enduring name on the controversy. When New Jersey's Democratic governor, Harry Moore, agreed to move the date, White announced, tongue in cheek, that Atlantic City would celebrate the earlier date only "as 'Franksgiving,' in honor of our President."
In the end, only 23 out of 48 states ended up moving the holiday to FDR's preferred date — with a few others, including Texas and Colorado, celebrating on both Thursdays.
Our long national nightmare ends
As 1941 began, the controversy still raged, with FDR setting that year's date for the particularly early November 20. That year, two-thirds of states opted to go along. An animated sequence in the film Holiday Inn — which starred Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and premiered the song "White Christmas" by Irving Berlin — portrayed a confused turkey jumping back and forth between those two dates on the calendar, as you can see above.
But in May of that year, Roosevelt changed his mind again, and announced he'd move the date back in 1942. The Times reported that FDR "conceded frankly that the Commerce Department had found that expected expansion of retail sales had not occurred" — and he had concluded it was an "experiment" that "had not worked." (Interestingly enough, though, more recent research indicates this judgment may have been mistaken. A study by professor Robert Urbatsch of Iowa State found that "an earlier Thanksgiving appears to serve as economic stimulus in the labor market.")
However, things didn't go back entirely to the way they were before. At the end of 1941, Congress passed, and Roosevelt signed, a joint resolution setting Thanksgiving as not the final but the fourth Thursday in November. Essentially, that means that Thanksgiving will fall between November 22 and 28 — never on the month's last two days. The new law struck a sensible balance between the business interests of retailers and Americans' beliefs that Thanksgiving shouldn't be too early, and it has lasted ever since.
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Today’s question comes from Rob:
“Peter, I have way too many clothes. How can I put together a minimal wardrobe that’s versatile for a bunch of situations? What’s the least amount of clothes I can get away with?”
Great question. But before I answer it, let’s address why you can have a hard time finding something to wear even if you have a closet packed with clothes.
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HOW MOST MEN’S WARDROBES END UP A MESS
Does this sound familiar?
You wake up and need to get ready for work. You jump in the shower, then head to your bedroom and open your closet.
It’s full of clothes. You got wire, wooden and felt hangers tangled together. Shirts are mixed in-between jackets. Pants are on the floor.
“Fuck, I have nothing to wear.”
You pull out a bunch of outfits. Everything sucks. You try on a shirt. You hate it, so you take it off and try another one on.
Clothes are piling on your bed and now you’re running late. So you just put on the last thing you tried on and head to work.
“I just need new clothes.” you tell yourself.
After work, you head to the mall.
You’re stuck in a store for what seems to be hours, you decide on a couple of shirts so you can get out of there.
The next day, you wake up to the same cramped closet of clothes you hate.
You’re Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Stuck in your own personal hell of shitty clothes.
MORE CLOTHES ISN’T THE SOLUTION TO BAD STYLE
Two things are happening here:
There’s a good reason why you can stare at your closet full of clothes and not find anything to wear. It’s called the paradox of choice . That is, the more options you have, the less likely you are to make a choice . Have you ever gone to a restaurant with a huge menu and it took you FOREVER to decide what to eat? That’s the paradox of choice working against you Shopping for clothes out of frustration is a huge mistake. I see it so often that I’ve even given it a name. I call it “Panic Mode Shopping”. When you shop out of frustration, you’re going to make some poor choices . When you’re starving and have nothing to eat at home, what do you do? Are you heading over to Whole Foods and buying some lean chicken breasts and kale? Hell no, you’re pulling up to that McDonald’s drive thru and getting that Big Mac meal. (And a McChicken too, please)
In fact, buying more bad clothes is just going to make the Paradox of Choice problem WORSE.
WHY GREAT STYLE ALWAYS STARTS WITH FEWER CLOTHES, NOT MORE
When I work with my 1-on-1 clients, the first thing I always do is purge their closets in order to rebuild it.
It’s like a nutritionist going through your fridge and cupboards and tossing out all the junk food.
We want to make room for the RIGHT stuff. And just like proper nutrition, there are certain guidelines a great minimalist wardrobe needs to adhere to:
Versatility Pieces will need to do double or triple duty. We can’t have special use items (like a tuxedo) in a minimalist wardrobe.
Pieces will need to do double or triple duty. We can’t have special use items (like a tuxedo) in a minimalist wardrobe. Solid, neutral colors As I mentioned previously, the foundation of an amazing wardrobe are solid neutral colors like black, navy, white, and khaki. No graphics, no logos, no unique patterns. It’s easier to get away with wearing similar outfits if people think you have 5 solid white t-shirts. Even if you decide to buy 5 of the same graphic t-shirt, people are going to start wondering if you shower.
As I mentioned previously, the foundation of an amazing wardrobe are solid neutral colors like black, navy, white, and khaki. No graphics, no logos, no unique patterns. It’s easier to get away with wearing similar outfits if people think you have 5 solid white t-shirts. Even if you decide to buy 5 of the same graphic t-shirt, people are going to start wondering if you shower. Appropriateness Minimalist wardrobes still need to be appropriate for your lifestyle. You can’t decide to be a minimalist and only wear a white t-shirt and shorts if your job requires a blazer.
Minimalist wardrobes still need to be appropriate for your lifestyle. You can’t decide to be a minimalist and only wear a white t-shirt and shorts if your job requires a blazer. Quality When you build a minimalist wardrobe, it pays to invest more in higher quality clothes, especially items that you’ll be wearing back-to-back like jackets and shoes.
With these rules in mind, here’s an example of a solid minimalist wardrobe:
THE MINIMALIST WARDROBE
The secret to planning your minimalist wardrobe isn’t how many pieces you’ll have, it’s how often you’d like to do laundry.
I’ve designed wardrobes that could fit in a backpack for my clients who are digital nomads. This requires them to wash their clothes every 1-2 days. While this is ideal for someone hopping from city to city every week, it’s not realistic for most guys who find themselves planted in one location.
Assuming you do laundry once a week, here’s what I recommend for a starting minimalist wardrobe:
14 pieces (not counting the socks and underwear)
2 Jackets (1 blazer, 1 casual)
8 tops (a mixture of t-shirts, polos, button-ups and henleys)
2 pants (1 pair of chinos, 1 pair of dark wash denim)
8 pairs of underwear
8 pairs of socks
1 pair of boots
1 pair of classic white sneakers
Here’s a breakdown of the wardrobe:
We want multiples of items we shouldn’t wear twice in a row You know, the stuff that gets funky fast, like shirts, underwear, and socks. 1 for each day, plus a buffer.
You know, the stuff that gets funky fast, like shirts, underwear, and socks. 1 for each day, plus a buffer. Plan for our laziness In a perfect world, we do laundry every 7 days on schedule. But some weeks I get lazy, and I’m sure I’m not alone. That’s why instead of 7 days worth of clothes (6 days + what you wear on laundry day), we’re stocking 8 days as a “laziness buffer”.
In a perfect world, we do laundry every 7 days on schedule. But some weeks I get lazy, and I’m sure I’m not alone. That’s why instead of 7 days worth of clothes (6 days + what you wear on laundry day), we’re stocking 8 days as a “laziness buffer”. Not counting accessories Accessories, like bags, pocket squares, and sunglasses, are purely optional but offer an easy way to add an interesting element to your outfit without taking a lot of closet space.
Let’s take a look at this wardrobe in action. Here’s one week worth of outfits using these 14 pieces:
As you can see, it’s not about having a TON of clothes to have great style, it’s about stocking your closet with the few, select, right ones.
A blazer is a great versatile jacket as it can be dressed up with a collared shirt and chinos for business casual environments, and dressed down with a t-shirt and jeans.
If you work in a more casual environment, a leather jacket is a great casual jacket option. Err on the conservative side and go for a café racer style jacket, which is a bit more versatile than something like a double rider.
The rest of the minimal wardrobe is rounded out with neutral colored classics, like a solid blue pair of jeans, white t-shirts, and my favorite button-up shirt of all time, the chambray shirt.
Depending on your lifestyle and needs, your minimalist wardrobe might lean more casual or more formal. Whatever the case, if you follow the basic recommendations for the 14-piece wardrobe above, you’ll have a closet that’s 10x more stylish with 10x fewer clothes.
THE PROS AND CONS OF A MINIMALIST WARDROBE
Before you start getting rid of everything in your closet, it’s important to note that a minimalist wardrobe isn’t without its faults. Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of going minimal:
GET STARTED TODAY BY PURGING YOUR CLOSET OF CLOTHES YOU NEVER WEAR
Here’s the amazing thing, there’s a good chance you can create your starter minimalist wardrobe without having to buy a single new piece of clothing. You probably wear the same few outfits and pieces on most occasions without even realizing it.
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CALGARY — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau launched an impassioned defence for balancing the environment and economy at a raucous town hall in the heart of oil country Tuesday.
A man wearing a shirt with “I Love Oil Sands” written on it and a hat emblazoned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan took Trudeau to task for earlier oilsands comments.
At a town hall in Ontario earlier this month, Trudeau was criticized for saying the oilsands would need to be phased out eventually. At the close of a Calgary cabinet retreat earlier Tuesday, he said he misspoke.
The questioner at Tuesday night’s gathering accused the prime minister of making inconsistent statements depending on whether he was in eastern or western Canada.
“You’re in Alberta right now, sir. You’re not in Ottawa,” the man shouted. “Yet when you come to Calgary, you tell people you’re sorry.
“You are either a liar or you’re confused. And I’m beginning to think it’s both.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trudeau said he should have chosen different words when he talked about phasing out the oilsands earlier this month and unleashed anger in economically ailing Alberta.
“I misspoke,” he said Tuesday at the end of a two-day cabinet retreat in downtown Calgary, where the prolonged downturn in oil prices has emptied out floors and floors of office space.
“I said something the way I shouldn’t have said it.”
At the townhall, the man asked Trudeau whether he would take back the remark, prompting cheers from some in the crowd of more than 1,700.
Trudeau replied that he has been consistent in his oilsands message.
“I have repeatedly said that yes, the responsibility of any Canadian prime minister is to get our resources to market and yes, that includes our oilsands fossil fuels,” he said.
“I’ve also said that we need to do that in a responsible, sustainable way — that you cannot separate what’s good for the environment and what’s good for the economy.”
Trudeau said even former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper recognized the world would have to get off fossil fuels eventually.
He asked the crowd of mostly students to put up their hands if they think climate change is real and virtually everyone did.
A few other questions at the town hall touched on the economic pain Alberta has been going through in recent years as a result of low oil prices.
The unemployment rate in Alberta, where the economy largely centres on the oil and gas sector, was at 8.5 per cent in December, higher than the national rate of 6.9 per cent. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs over the past few years.
Trudeau was also grilled on Canada’s future peacekeeping role, trade, violence against indigenous women and strategies to tackle poverty.
A handful of hecklers interrupted Trudeau throughout the event at the University of Calgary. Trudeau responded by drawing on his past life as a teacher, telling one man he didn’t want to reward bad behaviour by giving it too much attention.
The unemployment rate in Alberta, where the economy largely centres on the oil and gas sector, was at 8.5 per cent in December, higher than the national rate of 6.9 per cent. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs over the last few years.
Trudeau said he knows Alberta is going through tough times.
“I have said many, many times that I will not run against Alberta, that I understand the jobs here are essential to the families who live here but also essential to our Canadian economy,” he said earlier Tuesday.
“People are happy to jump on words and try to make political hay out of it. I understand that and I certainly have accepted that this is the way this political world works.”
He said petrochemicals from the oilsands will always be valuable — even though the world is moving away from fossil fuels. And he touted energy companies’ emissions-curbing technological innovations.
Trudeau noted that he recently approved two major oil export pipelines: Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain line to the Vancouver area and Enbridge’s (TSX:ENB) expanded Line 3 pipeline to the U.S. Midwest.
The Liberal government is also hopeful the cross-border Keystone XL pipeline, killed by former U.S. president Barack Obama in 2015, will soon be revived under the newly installed Trump administration. Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to push Keystone forward, although it was short of details.
Greenpeace campaigner Keith Stewart said Trudeau should admit the oilsands do need to be phased out — sooner rather than later.
“I understand that the prime minister is under enormous pressure to pretend that the oil boom will last forever, but a leader should be honest about what it will take to avoid dangerous levels of global warming,” he said.
“That means starting to phase out fossil fuels now and getting it done by the time my kids are my age. If we don’t manage that change, the world market will force it on us and the oil-price drop gave us a preview of what that looks like.”
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Kakhaber Kaladze (Georgian: კახაბერ (კახა) კალაძე [kʼaxabɛr kʼalad͡zɛ]; born 27 February 1978) is a Georgian politician and retired footballer. He has served as a Mayor of Tbilisi since November 2017. A versatile player, he was capable of playing both as a centre-back and as a left-back,[2] or even as a wide midfielder.[3] He played for the Georgia national team from 1996 to 2011. He was voted Georgian Footballer of the Year in 2001–2003, and 2006[4] and was considered as one of Georgia's most important players.[5][6]
Kaladze started his football career in 1993 at Umaglesi Liga club Dinamo Tbilisi and made 82 appearances in a five-year spell. In 1998, he moved to the Ukrainian club Dynamo Kyiv and made 71 appearances until 2001, when he was signed by the Italian Serie A club Milan. He has won one Serie A, three Ukrainian Premier League and five Umaglesi Liga titles. With Milan, he won the Champions League on two occasions, the UEFA Super Cup once and the FIFA Club World Cup once. After captaining his country 50 times in 84 appearances, Kaladze announced his retirement from the Georgian national team on 11 December 2011.[7][8]
Born in Samtredia, a town in Imereti Province, Kaladze comes from a footballing family as his father played for Lokomotiv Samtredia and was also president of the team for some time. His brother was kidnapped in a high-profile case in 2001 and officially declared dead in 2006, resulting in two men being sentenced to prison for a combined total of 30 years. Outside of football, he owns a company called Kala Capital and an organisation called Kala Foundation, as well as being an ambassador for SOS Children's Villages. He is married to Anouki Areshidze, with whom he has three children.
Kaladze became involved in the politics of Georgia as a member of the opposition Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia party, founded by Bidzina Ivanishvili in February 2012. He was elected to the Parliament of Georgia on 1 October 2012 and approved as Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister of Energy in Ivanishvili's cabinet on 25 October 2012.[9] He continued to occupy both of these position under the succeeding cabinet of Giorgi Kvirikashvili until July 2017, when he resigned to run for the Mayor of Tbilisi as a Georgian Dream candidate in the October 2017 election,[10] which he won with 51.13%.
Club career [ edit ]
Early career [ edit ]
Kaladze started his career playing as a striker for his local club Lokomotiv Samtredia, where his father was president, until former Georgia international footballer David Kipiani requested Kakha to join Dinamo Tbilisi.[11] At Dinamo, he played in 82 domestic league games and scored one goal.[12] He made his top-flight debut as a 16-year-old with Dinamo during the 1993–94 campaign.[14] Kaladze claims that a good performance against Italy while playing for Georgia in a match that ended 0–0 brought him to the attention of Dynamo Kyiv; he later said, "In that game I was up against Christian Vieri and I marked him well."[11]
A fee equivalent to €280,000 was enough to take him to the Ukrainian Premier League and Dynamo Kiev in January 1998,[15] where he signed a four-year deal.[16] Here he scored six goals in 71 league games over the two-and-a-half seasons he spent there.[12] The Ukrainian club had been under the ownership of Hryhoriy Surkis and the late Valeriy Lobanovskyi had just been installed as manager; they would go on to win eight consecutive league titles.[17] Kaladze also appeared in both legs of the semi-final of the 1998–99 Champions League against Bayern Munich, which Dynamo Kyiv lost 4–3 on aggregate.[18][19] En route to the semi-finals, they beat teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Arsenal.[17] He won eight league titles in a row during his time at both Dinamo Tbilisi and Dynamo Kyiv.[20]
A.C. Milan [ edit ]
In 2001, Kaladze became the most expensive Georgian footballer in history when Milan paid €16 million to bring him to Italy.[21] He cited an injury to Aleksei Gerasimenko as his reason for leaving.[11] At first, Kaladze was tried in different positions and faced competition for places in defense from players such as Jaap Stam and Cafu.[14] In the 2002–03 season, however, he made 46 appearances in all competitions, including 27 Serie A appearances.[1] That year, Milan won the Champions League, where they beat Juventus on penalties in the final (despite Kaladze missing his penalty)[22] and the Coppa Italia, where they beat Roma 6–3 on aggregate in the final.[23] After Kaladze's double success, the Georgian postal service issued a special stamp bearing the player's image.[24] He is the first Georgian player to win a Champions League title.[25]
"I've always dreamed of playing for a top club abroad, but I could have stayed at Kyiv, picked up an injury and it would all have been over for me. That's why I asked Dynamo president Hryhorii Surkis to put me on the transfer list." Kakha Kaladze, upon leaving Dynamo Kyiv in relation to Gerasimenko's injury.[11]
Kaladze was limited to just six league appearances and 11 total appearances in the 2003–04 season.[1] In the next season, Kaladze played just 19 Serie A matches and five in the Champions League as Milan finished as runners-up in both competitions.[12] He was an unused substitute in that season's Champions League final, where Milan lost on penalties to Liverpool after a 3–3 draw.[26] He was said to be frustrated with his lack of first-team options and a move to Chelsea, in exchange for Hernán Crespo or for £4 million,[27] was widely reported.[28][29] Kaladze himself said, "I have agreed everything with the Chelsea management. Now it is necessary to wait for them to reach an agreement with Milan and I think I could become a Chelsea player next week."[30] Chelsea opted to sign Asier del Horno instead and Kaladze later declared himself "glad" that the deal fell through.[31] On 30 June 2005, he extended his contract with Milan until 2010[32] and again on 4 September 2006, this time until 2011.[33][34] In 2005–06, an injury to Paolo Maldini meant that Kaladze was moved back into the centre of defence, his favoured position.[20] Milan finished third that season, although they would have finished second if there were no 2006 Italian football scandal which resulted in a 30-point deduction.[35]
In the 2006–07 Serie A campaign, Kaladze scored a goal against Sampdoria which turned out to be his only goal of the season. Milan finished in fourth place with an eight-point deduction relating to the previous season's scandal.[36] Kaladze won his second Champions League title on 23 May 2007 after Milan beat Liverpool 2–1 in the final; he came on as a 79th-minute substitute in that match.[37] He later picked up the FIFA Club World Cup in December that year where Milan beat Boca Juniors 4–2 in the final, though Kaladze was one of two players to be sent off in that match.[38] He had established himself as a first-team regular in the 2007–08 season, making 32 appearances,[1] but had only featured sparingly in the 2008–09 season due to a knee ligament injury sustained in a UEFA Cup match against Zürich.[39][40] Kaladze's performance in the 15 February 2009 Milan derby was described as a "horror show" on the Channel 4 website which started a dispute over an alleged smear campaign between Kaladze and the Georgian newspaper Lelo, who used the quote, "Milan really does need a new centre-back after Kakha Kaladze’s horror show in the derby."[41][42] Milan finished third in the league that season, ten points behind Serie A champions Inter Milan; Kaladze believed this was caused by the many injuries suffered by the Milan squad.[40]
Genoa [ edit ]
On 31 August 2010, Kaladze signed with Genoa;[43] Milan later revealed that it was a free transfer.[44] In the 2010–11 season, he played 26 matches and scored one goal, which came against Parma on 30 January 2011.[45] He was named as second-best defender of the 2010–11 Serie A by La Gazzetta dello Sport, being surpassed only by his former teammate, Milan's Thiago Silva.[46] On 12 May 2012, Kaladze announced his retirement from football.[47]
International career [ edit ]
Kaladze won his first cap against Cyprus in a friendly match on 27 March 1996,[48] coming on as a 72nd-minute substitute for Mikhail Kavelashvili.[49] Later that year, he was sent off for the first time in his international career against Lebanon in a friendly match.[49] He subsequently featured in his country's qualifying campaigns for the 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010 FIFA World Cups, and the 2000, 2004 and 2008 UEFA European Championships. Georgia, however, have never qualified for the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA European Championship since they split from the Soviet Union.[50] His competitive debut was against Poland on 14 June 1997 in a 1998 World Cup qualifier; Georgia lost the match 4–1.[49] Just two matches later, Kaladze was sent off for the second time playing for Georgia, along with Georgi Kinkladze, against Moldova in another 1998 World Cup qualifier.[49] Georgia finished in fourth place in the group and failed to qualify.[51] In qualifying for Euro 2000, Georgia finished at the bottom of the group (Group 2) in sixth place, with just one win.[52] Kaladze occasionally captained the side during these qualifiers in the absence of Georgi Nemsadze.[49]
The qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup ended with Georgia finishing in third place, ahead of Hungary and Lithuania.[53] Kaladze played in all of the matches and often missed the friendlies in between.[49] Kaladze only played in three matches during the Euro 2004 qualifiers, where Georgia finished in last place in the group.[54] He did, however, feature in a 1–0 victory over neighbouring Russia, a victory considered to be one of Georgia's greatest successes.[5][49] Kaladze played in all but one of the 2006 World Cup qualifying matches,[49] where Georgia finished sixth in the group, with Kazakhstan being the only team to finish below them.[55] He played fewer matches during the qualification for Euro 2008 and once again Georgia failed to qualify as they finished in sixth place despite starting their campaign with a 6–0 win over the Faroe Islands.[49][56]
He scored his first ever international goal against Latvia on 6 February 2008 in a friendly which Georgia lost 3–1.[57] On 5 September 2009, Kaladze scored two own goals in a 2010 World Cup qualifying match against Italy within the space of 11 minutes. The match ended 2–0 to Italy.[58] Kaladze was the captain of the national team,[59][60] until 11 December 2011, when he announced his retirement.[61] The La Gazzetta dello Sport reporter and the president of International Sports Press Association, AIPS [Italian], Gianni Merlo said: "Kakha Kaladze is a man of the history of football in Georgia. In AC Milan he was a pillar of the defense and also a nice and polite man." [62]
International goal [ edit ]
Scores and results list Georgia's goal tally first.
# Date Venue Opponent Score Result Competition 1. 6 February 2008 Boris Paichadze Stadium, Tbilisi Latvia 1–3 1–3 Friendly
Personal life [ edit ]
In 2001, Kakha Kaladze's brother Levan, a medical student, was kidnapped in Georgia, with a ransom of $600,000 demanded.[21] Georgia's president at the time, Eduard Shevardnadze, promised that "everything is being done to locate him".[63] Despite this assurance, the only time that Levan was ever seen was in a video where he was shown blindfolded and begging for help.[64] Following the kidnapping, Kaladze threatened to take up Ukrainian citizenship,[20] but reverted his decision, stating, "There was a time when I thought about quitting the national side completely, but I couldn't do it out of respect for the Georgian people and the fans who come and give us such support."[65] Roughly four years later, on 6 May 2005, Georgian police officers found eight dead bodies in the Svaneti region and it was speculated that Levan was among the dead.[66][67] On 21 February 2006, Levan was officially identified among the deceased,[21] after tests from FBI experts.[68] The local media claimed that the ransom was paid by Kaladze's family,[68] although another source says that Kaladze's father attempted to meet the kidnappers, who fled as they believed he was followed by the police.[14] Two men were sentenced to prison for the murder: David Asatiani for 25 years and Merab Amisulashvili for five years.[68] On 14 July 2009, Kaladze's wife Anouki gave birth to their first-born son in Milan. The couple named their son Levan, in memory of Kaladze's brother.[69]
Kaladze has also been active in charitable causes and is a FIFA ambassador for the SOS Children's Villages.[60] Through his Kala Foundation,[70] a charitable organisation established in 2008, Kaladze raised €50,000 to benefit South Ossetian refugees during the Russian invasion of Georgia.[14] Kaladze also plans to release an autobiography with the proceeds going to the Kala Foundation.[71]
Political career [ edit ]
Business ventures [ edit ]
Along with his football career, Kaladze is an investor in Georgia, Italy, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.[72] Kaladze owns Kala Capital, an investment company established in 2008 in Georgia with a focus on energy businesses,[73] and whose chief executive is former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Noghaideli.[74]
Kaladze's other businesses include the Buddha Bar in Kiev that opened in 2008.[75][76] Kaladze is also the owner of a restaurant called Giannino, founded in 1899 by Giannino Bindi, which is based in Milan.[77][78] The restaurant has had a Michelin star under Davide Oldani and the chef in charge was Roberto Molinari.[79] [80] [81]
Kala Capital owned 45 percent of the Georgia Hydropower Construction Company company SakHidroEnergoMsheni, a joint stock company incorporated in Georgia in 1998.[citation needed] His candidacy as Minister of Energy and Natural Resources in October 2012 was therefore overshadowed by concerns about a serious risk that a conflict of interests might arise.[82] Reports on the same day indicated that Kaladze might refuse the energy portfolio or sell off his shares in Georgia Hydropower Construction Company within 10 days of his appointment.[83]
Political office and conflict of interests [ edit ]
Kaladze became involved in the politics of Georgia as a member of the opposition Georgian Dream–Democratic Georgia party founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in February 2012. He was elected to the Parliament of Georgia on 1 October 2012. He was approved as Deputy Prime Minister as well as Minister of Energy in the cabinet of Bidzina Ivanishvili on 25 October 2012.[9] The appointment was met with skepticism in professional energy circles.[84][85] More importantly, it stirred an intense debate on a conflict of interest arising from Kaladze's business interests in the Georgia Hydropower Construction Company, in which Kala Capital owned 45 percent.[86] Kala Capital sold the shares to GMC Group in November 2012 but concerns whether his indirect commercial interests had been abandoned remain.[87]
Mayor of Tbilisi [ edit ]
In July 2017, Kaladze resigned as Energy minister in order to run for Tbilisi mayor in the upcoming local elections. On 22 October, he was elected mayor as a candidate of Georgian Dream, winning the elections with 51℅ of the votes. He was sworn in on 13 November 2017.[88]
Career statistics [ edit ]
Club [ edit ]
[1][89]
Team Season Domestic
League Domestic
Cup European
Competition1 Other
Tournaments2 Total Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Apps Goals Dinamo Tbilisi 1993–94 9 1 – – – – – – 9 1 1994–95 23 0 – – – – – – 23 0 1995–96 23 0 – – 1 0 – – 24 0 1996–97 12 0 – – 4 0 – – 16 0 1997–98 15 0 – – 7 0 – – 22 0 Total 82 1 – – 12 0 – – 94 1 Dynamo Kyiv 1998 13 2 – – – – – – 13 2 1998–99 25 3 – – 12 1 – – 37 4 1999–2000 25 1 – – 14 1 – – 39 2 2000–01 8 0 – – 7 1 – – 15 1 Total 71 6 – – 33 3 – – 104 9 Milan 2000–01 17 3 1 0 – – – – 18 3 2001–02 30 4 5 0 11 0 – – 46 4 2002–03 27 0 4 1 15 0 – – 46 1 2003–04 6 0 3 0 1 0 1 0 11 0 2004–05 19 2 2 0 5 0 – – 26 2 2005–06 28 2 4 0 11 0 – – 43 2 2006–07 18 1 1 0 7 0 – – 26 1 2007–08 32 0 – – 8 0 2 0 42 0 2008–09 11 0 1 0 4 0 – – 16 0 2009–10 6 0 2 0 2 0 – – 10 0 Total 194 12 23 1 64 0 3 0 284 13 Genoa 2010–11 26 1 2 0 0 0 – – 28 1 2011–12 27 0 1 1 0 0 – – 28 1 Total 53 1 3 1 0 0 - - 56 2 Career Total 370 20 26 2 109 3 3 0 538 27
1 European competitions include the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Cup, and UEFA Super Cup
2 Other tournaments include the Supercoppa Italiana and FIFA Club World Cup
International [ edit ]
[90]
Georgia national team Year Apps Goals 1996 3 0 1997 3 0 1998 8 0 1999 7 0 2000 3 0 2001 7 0 2002 2 0 2003 2 0 2004 5 0 2005 10 0 2006 4 0 2007 6 0 2008 4 1 2009 4 0 2010 7 0 2011 8 0 Total 83 1
Honours [ edit ]
Player [ edit ]
Club [ edit ]
Dinamo Tbilisi
Dynamo Kyiv
Milan
Individual [ edit ]
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This morning, my colleague Fran Fraschilla listed his five under-the-radar teams ready to break out in 2012-13. So today's Top 10 Thursday feature is a quick look at a batch of players who could enjoy a similar trajectory -- players who haven't broken out quite yet (for various reasons), but who could become key components in the national college basketball conversation next season.
By no means is this a comprehensive list, so if you feel like your favorite team has a prime breakout candidate, let us know in the comments section.
That said, let's jump right in, shall we? (listed in alphabetical order)
Michigan State's Keith Appling will have a chance to develop into a star this coming season. Marilyn Indahl/US PRESSWIRE
Keith Appling, Michigan State: Fans of college hoops already know Appling as Tom Izzo's defensively stalwart, fast-breaking point guard, and for good reason: The sophomore was a key contributor in Michigan State winning a share of the Big Ten title and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. But with the team's do-everything leader Draymond Green gone, and a batch of younger, less-experienced players rounding out the rotation, Appling has a chance to evolve from a nice complementary piece into one of the Big Ten's bona fide stars.
Wayne Blackshear, Louisville: Blackshear arrived at Louisville as a highly touted recruit, but was rarely heard from during his freshman season, when he was derailed by injuries. But Blackshear returned in time to make a major impact in the Cardinals' Final Four swing at the inimitable Kentucky Wildcats. UK prevailed, but the Chicago native was excellent in his 14 minutes on the floor. With injuries behind him and playing alongside defender-drawing forward Chane Behanan, the shooting guard will have ample opportunity to show his quality.
Michael Carter-Williams, Syracuse: How deep were the 2012 Syracuse Orange? Carter-Williams, a McDonald's All-American ranked No. 4 at the shooting guard position in the Class of 2012 (behind only Duke's Austin Rivers, Florida's Bradley Beal and UNC's P.J. Hairston) played just 18.1 percent of his team's available minutes, per KenPom.com, and couldn't register even a minute of floor time in Syracuse's four NCAA tournament games. The departures of Scoop Jardine and Dion Waiters will make way for Carter-Williams to shine, and shine he will.
Sam Dower, Gonzaga: On New Year's Eve 2011, I was in Cincinnati for Gonzaga's big-time road win at Xavier, and while much of the conversation focused on X's ongoing post-brawl struggles, it was impossible not to be impressed by Dower's line: 20 points, 10 rebounds, 7-of-11 from the field. Dower was like a mini-Chris Bosh -- a smooth-shooting left-handed forward at his best in spot-up 15-foot situations. The only problem? Because center Robert Sacre and power forward Elias Harris dominated the Zags' interior, Dower struggled to find minutes as a sophomore. Sacre graduated this spring, which means Dower will get much more time. If I'm a Gonzaga fan, that prospect excites me greatly.
Cory Jefferson, Baylor: When you have Quincy Acy, Perry Jones and Quincy Miller (not to mention lanky sub Anthony Jones) in your frontcourt, there's little leftover playing time. When Jefferson did see minutes on the court as a sophomore, he made them count. That was especially true on the defensive end, where he posted a 12.4 percent block rate and a 20.7 percent defensive rebounding percentage in just 23.4 percent of his team's available minutes. Acy, Jones, Miller and Jones (which sounds like an awesome law firm) have graduated or departed for the NBA draft, and Jefferson should have much more opportunity to ply his impressive defensive trade. He will have to hold off challenges from Scott Drew's latest batch of talented recruits (center Isiah Austin should be an immediate starter, while power forward Ricardo Gathers might take more time) but if he does, he could emerge as one of the nation's best rim protectors.
Le'Bryan Nash, Oklahoma State: Wait a second: How does a player ranked No. 10 overall in his draft class, who averages 30.1 minutes per game as a freshman, fly under the radar? It doesn't happen often, but it did for Nash, who entered Oklahoma State with massive hype and only occasionally lived up to his billing. It didn't help that the Cowboys were, you know, not very good. It also didn't help that Nash shot just 39.4 percent from the field, and posted an offensive rating of 89.2, despite leading OSU in usage rate by a rather wide margin. This is simple stuff: Nash has to become more efficient. If he doesn't, he might be destined to disappoint. But if he does? Yeah. Look out.
Dezmine Wells, Xavier: Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons dominated the ball for the Musketeers in 2011-12. Until Xavier's late-season run to the NCAA tournament, the Dec. 10 brawl with Cincinnati dominated the season storylines. All the while, freshman guard Wells was quietly having a very solid freshman campaign. He is a massively athletic, built-like-a-truck guard who plays much bigger than his 6-foot-4 size -- he might have missed his calling as a linebacker, but don't tell him I said that -- and few players in college basketball can attack the rim with a LeBron-esque head of steam quite like this. Wells will have ample touches in 2012-13. The sky is the limit.
Kyle Wiltjer, Kentucky: I'm not sure it's possible, in 2012, to be a Kentucky Wildcat and also be under the radar. But if it is possible, Wiltjer fits the bill. The lanky forward was the seventh man in UK's championship rotation last season, and he made timely contributions throughout the season. But as the Cats marched to the national title, and Anthony Davis, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and super-sub Darius Miller and the rest of the top six garnered 100 percent of the attention, Wiltjer largely became an afterthought. Don't make the same mistake in 2012-13. Kentucky will be loaded again, no doubt, but Wiltjer -- a former top-20 prospect in the Class of 2011, lest we forget -- will play starter's minutes, and should emerge as much more than a stretch forward with a sweet jump shot. If he combines a low-post game with that spot shooting, Wiltjer could morph into one of the nation's most complete scoring threats -- a Doug McDermott lookalike with national title talent at his side.
Nate Wolters, South Dakota State: Every year college hoops seems to give us at least one player who plies his trade in an overlooked league, but who plays so well he becomes impossible to ignore. Despite his averages of 21.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game (fun fact: Wolters was the only player in Division I hoops to average 20, 5 and 5), despite a 34-point shredding of Washington in Seattle, and despite a near-upset of Baylor in the first round of the tournament, Wolters' profile never quite expanded beyond the die-hard college hoops nerd circle. The 2012-13 season is his last chance to become something resembling a household name.
BJ Young, Arkansas: File Young in the Keith Appling category. After all, the Arkansas guard didn't go entirely unnoticed in 2011-12, when he earned second-team All-SEC honors as a freshman. But he has a chance to become a real star in 2012-13. Young shot the ball efficiently (57.5 effective field goal percentage), and found teammates at a sterling clip (22.0 percent assist rate), but turned the ball over on 18.5 percent of his possessions. If he can cut down on the giveaways, continue to mesh with fellow emerging freshman Hunter Mickelson (who probably also deserves inclusion on this list), and enlist a mastery of Mike Anderson's 40 Minutes of Hell system, Young could be an All-American candidate by the end of the season. The talent is clearly there.
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When it comes to wearing a wristwatch with either white tie or black tie, I honestly have to say I struggle to find any real substance in the most often raised objections to the practice. The notion of not giving offense to one's host by appearing to disdain time is superficially plausible, but factually absurd. These days, the practice of staring at one's phone has become so ubiquitous, and is so much more genuinely rude, that looking at a wristwatch can't seem anything more than innocuous, or so it seems to me.
The idea that one should not do it because it is against the rules ignores the fact that the rules have been mutable over time in any event, and that in the case of the dinner jacket, one is dealing with a semi-formal, rather than formal code, which is by definition more elastic. The idea that you shouldn't do it because it looks bad is disposed of with one glance at Mr. Fred Astaire up above, who is wearing full-on white tie with top hat – and I challenge anyone reading this to look as good without a wristwatch as he does with one on. (The aforementioned Benedict Cumberbatch, by the way, was photographed wearing a pocket watch with white tie at the Met Costume Institute gala, and some people think that isn't correct – that it's much more an interruption of the suspension of time you're meant to be experiencing at the ball to pull out a pocket watch than it is to discreetly check your wristwatch).
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The green, scaly Pleo – a robotic dinosaur – has taken its last breath as its maker Ugobe filed for bankruptcy Monday. But the Pleo's death is just the beginning of a tough battle for the fledgling U.S. consumer robotics industry's survival.
Pleo joins at least three other consumer robots that have been shelved this year. Robot makers have been hit by a double whammy: A recession-inflicted downturn in consumer spending and a lack of mainstream acceptance of robots by American consumers. Those factors combined put the industry in a zone of pain.
"This situation is truly historical and unprecedented," says Robert Oschler, who runs the robot-enthusiast site Robots Rule. "We have a brand new high-tech market in consumer robots that was finally poised to take off broadly done in by a socioeconomic event," he says.
Consumer robots fall into two broad categories: Toys (like the Pleo or the popular WowWee Robosapien) and practical, utilitarian robots (like the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner or telepresence robots ConnectR and Spykee).
For now, the robotics toy market is near death, says Faysal Sohail, managing director of CMEA Ventures, which has invested in a few robotics startups.
"Anything that feels like a toy and does not provide any real value proposition beyond entertainment is getting cut dramatically by consumers," says Sohail. "There's just not enough consumer demand for it."
Instead, says Sohail, robot makers that offer more practical products will have a better shot at success.
But there's a hitch there too. Although robots have played starring roles in popular culture (think R2D2 and Wall-E), mainstream U.S. consumers are not yet entirely comfortable buying and using robots, compared to their peers in Japan. Most users see robots as less practical or utilitarian objects and more as exotic tech creatures.
"Japanese consumers are a lot more comfortable with having robots around and integrating them into their lives," says Sohail. "And they are willing to put in that extra effort to make these robots work for them better, which is not what we have seen in the U.S."
Take iRobot's Roomba robotic vaccum cleaner. The company has sold more than 3 million of its most successful consumer Roomba robot to date. But that's a small percentage of the 10 million vacuum cleaners analysts estimate are sold in the country every year. A big reason? Users don't have the patience or the tolerance for a robotic vacumm cleaner that isn't entirely trouble-free.
Worse, robots targeted at consumers currently fall short, both in terms of the promises they make and the value they deliver, Sohail says.
"Our consumers are very finicky," says Sohail. "You have to hit a lot of things right in terms of technology, price point and usability before the product can go beyond just early adopters and into the mainstream."
So far, consumer robotics companies have failed to deliver on that trifecta. The Ugobe Pleo was launched for $350 two years ago and now retails for $245 through Amazon. Even with the price cut, that's still a lot to pay for a pet that is not even alive, says Dan Kara, President of Robotics Trends, a consultancy firm focusing on the robotics industry.
"Sony, Ugobe, and others have jumped in too far into a marketplace that doesn't exist and into an industry that is very cutthroat," says Kara. "The amount that they want consumers to pay and the features that they are offering ultimately don't match up."
As for the telepresence robots ConnectR and Spyball, they are products that could be resurrected with a revival in the economy, he says.
Amy Weltman, Vice President of Marketing for WowWee, hints that Spyball could definitely make a comeback. "It isn’t unusual for a company to announce a product and then decide to delay it based on the fact that it isn’t the right product to introduce at that time," she says. As for whether U.S. consumers will have the appetite for robots, Weltman remains confident. "Absolutely," she says.
Oschler is similarly optimistic. "If we go to hoarding guns and gold all bets are off," says Oschler. "But my firm belief is that it won't happen, but this period of pain will last for some time."
For robot makers targeting consumers, the next two years will pose the ultimate test of survival.
Photo: (Baboon/Flickr)
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Red Hat Training and Certification is pleased to announce Ansible has been added to the our curriculum portfolio.
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Ansible is a simple, powerful, and agentless IT automation engine that automates application deployment, provisioning, configuration management, and workflow orchestration, as well as many other IT needs.
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USE CASES
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Configuration Management
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Orchestration INTEGRATIONS
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Networks
Containers
Cloud
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Convicted Norwegian far-right mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has threatened to go on hunger strike “until death” over his “deteriorating” living conditions, in what many would consider something of a resort in terms of prison life.
Breivik was sentenced to 21 years in prison for unleashing in a series of attacks against Norwegian civilians on July 22 2011, mostly teenagers. Initially he killed eight people by setting off a van bomb in the government quarter in Oslo, and then shot dead 69 participants of a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp on the island of Utoya.
Murders 77 people, sentenced to a meager 21 years, and still has the tenacity to hunger strike for better treatment http://t.co/Vr1TjAEqqB — Adam Janofsky (@AdamJanofsky) October 1, 2015
During his sentencing Breivik claimed that he did not recognize the legitimacy of the court, refusing to accept its decision. He is currently confined at a maximum security Skien prison, south of Oslo, conditions of which he continues to detest.
In an open letter, the mass murderer complained, that since beginning of September, he had been kept in a single cell, isolated from the rest of the inmates. In addition he was only allowed to leave for one hour each day. Breivik also wrote that he was being given less time with prison staff, with communication often taking place only through a small gap in the door.
“Unless the 02/09/15 escalation [sic] is reversed, I will eventually continue the hunger strike until death. I can not stand any more,” he wrote to Norwegian and Swedish media.
The convict, who is studying political science at University of Oslo says that his living conditions undermine his attempt to pursue his courses.
READ MORE: Norway mass killer Breivik admitted to Oslo University political science program
“The decision about the drastic deterioration of prison conditions forced me to drop out of my studies, which in turn means that I will lose my place at the University. The studies, which were made possible for only thirteen full days before the Minister of Justice put an end to them, were the only thing I had,” Breivik wrote.
The inmate’s lawyer, Oystein Storrvik, who is now engaged in legal action against the state over Breivik’s living conditions, told the media that Breivik’s conditions were indeed deteriorating, and that the defendant will go on hunger strike.
READ MORE: Norwegian mass murderer Breivik to sue Norway, calls isolation ‘torture’
“I can confirm that there is less of the little that was,” Storrvik told Norway's Dagbladet. “Total isolation from other people has been maintained, while his movements are confined to a smaller space. He also has less time with officers.”
This is not the first time the mass murderer has complained about his prison conditions. Back in November 2012, Breivik wrote a 27-page letter to the prison authorities outlining his security restrictions and claiming that the director personally wanted to punish him. Among the complains listed were that he is not given candy or served hot coffee, describing his prison conditions as a “mini Abu Ghraib,” the notorious prison in Iraq.
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Many hockey players tie their ability to do their jobs with the performance of ritualistic activities, or superstitions, prior to or during a game. They engage in these rituals habitually throughout their careers to the wonderment of those of us who watch.
Here are some of the more interesting habits of the past and present when it comes to superstitions…
Wayne Gretzky (HOF Forward): The Great One had an extensive list of rituals and superstitions.
– First, Gretzky refused to get his hair cut on the road (he did once and the team lost).
– Second, he always put his equipment on in the following order: left shin pad, left sock, right shin pad, right sock, pants, left skate, right skate, shoulder pads, left elbow pad, right elbow pad, then the jersey, with the right side tucked into his pants. – Third, his first shot during warm-up was always to the extreme right of the goal.
– Fourth, after warm-up he would return to the dressing room and proceed to drink a Diet Coke, a glass of ice water then a Gatorade…followed by another Diet Coke.
– Fifth, he always put baby powder on the blade of his stick.
Joe Nieuwendyk (Former NHL Forward): He ate two pieces of toast and peanut butter before every game.
Sidney Crosby (Penguins Forward): What is it with the really great players and their laundry lists of superstitions? Here’s what Sid gets up to.
– First, he won’t call his mother on a game day because the last three times he did he got injured (busted teeth, dislocated shoulder and a broken foot).
– Second, once he has taped up his sticks before the game no one can touch them or make like they’re going to. If they do Sid will remove the tape and re-tape the stick.
– Third, if the team is travelling on the bus he will lift his feet and touch glass if they have to cross railroad tracks.
– Fourth, if playing on the road he will only use tape supplied by the home team for his sticks.
Kyle McLaren (Former NHL Defenseman): One game, as a practical joke, McLaren’s teammates switched his normal visor with a yellow tinted one. He didn’t notice the switch as he is color blind! Since he scored the winning goal that game he decided to keep the visor on after being told about it.
Patrick Roy (HOF Goalie): Roy had a number of superstitions during his career.
– First, he would have long conversations with goal posts.
– Second, before each game he would carefully lay out each piece of his equipment on the floor of the locker room and dress himself in a specific order.
– Third, during intermissions he would both juggle a puck and bounce it off the ground.
– Fourth, he would not skate over any line on the ice, stepping over them instead.
– Fifth, before each game he would skates to his blue line, crouch down and stares at his goal in an attempt to visualize the net shrinking.
Ken Dryden (HOF Goalie): Dryden wouldn’t leave the net during warmup until he had made one last save. Teammate Larry Robinson figured this out and started making sure Dryden had an “easy one” if he was having problems making that last save (remember the Habs of the ‘70s were stacked with snipers).
Daniél Briére (Avalanche Forward): Briére rotates between three sticks. When he has a good game with a certain one he “rewards” it with a rest and uses a different one.
Pelle Lindbergh (Former NHL Goalie): Wore the same orange t-shirt under his equipment each game. If it started to fall apart he would have it sewn up, and it was never washed. Ever. In addition, the only thing he would drink during intermissions was a Swedish beverage called ‘Pripps’. Not only did it have to be that drink but he could also only drink it if it had exactly two ice cubes in it, if it was given to him by a specific trainer, and would only take it from the trainer with his right hand.
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When some comics are first starting out, they are already looking at what movie roles to take and the theaters they are going to play. It seems like you can just get up there like you are at a cookout with your friends and just blast funny (some can do that), but when they get up there they realize they have to do more than that. Writing material is the most important part of being a comic and no matter if you keep it in your head or write it into a moleskin, The first five minutes seems to be the toughest, but with a little encouragement you may be able to get there very soon.
The first five minutes are important because it will get you in the habit of how your brain works to get material into the mic. It’s also important because a great five minutes can help with your confidence and it can help you get more stage time in front of paying crowds. When you first start out though, this may seem tough. What do you write about? What’s funny? That should not really be the thing on your mind. What you should be thinking is: What do I find funny? Write about the things that you think are funny. Are you one that observes things and wonder why that is? Start there! You got funny stories (more on that in a future article)? Then go there! You have to go where you would naturally go. If you’re a down to earth person that follows politics then the absurd might not be your natural train of thought to getting something funny out.
Ok, so you got material scribbled down all over the place. Here is where the heavy lifting comes in. You have to take it somewhere to ensure it is funny. If you know someone that will let you on stage and try them then try them, but remember: Not every joke will be a killer. That is the nature of comedy. Not everything YOU think is funny will make EVERYONE laugh. That doesn’t mean you’re stupid or anything. That means it might not work on a level that a group of people would get. If you are in a larger city then I suggest getting on a site like badslava and getting all the open mic times and going through them all. This is a great thing because you will encounter many different types of audiences and get a feel on what it takes to make all of them laugh. Most importantly it will let you know what jokes work for the most amount of people.
Depending on how much you write this could be very easy or an endless sea of bombing at open mics. Either way you will have to get that first five under your belt. There are some things to remember about your first five though. It has to hit HARD. You can’t be up there chilling like you are Louis C.K. working on a new special. If people see you up there with a 4 minute story with a weak ass punchline to top it off they will see through that. They think you are just padding your one worthwhile joke between 4 minutes of filler. because it is your first five, try to shave all the extra words out. Instead of talking about sitting on the porch on a Sunday afternoon after eating just talk about being on the porch (unless Sunday, afternoon or eating is important to the joke).
I had to learn all this stuff the hard way. No one would tell me this stuff because most comics are trying to advance and so some treat advice like proprietary information. I hope this helps new comics with getting together what I think can be the hardest of all material. For instance: you will be judged based on how a lot of comics first see you. If they think you suck that means less chances to perform in front of more and more audiences. Thanks and check back in next week where we talk about that tight 15!
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The Saudi Prince who was photoshopped in an image with Megyn Kelly dissed Donald Trump for retweeting the picture.
In a tweet Thursday, Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz al Saud reminded Trump that he had “bailed out” the presidential frontrunner multiple times in the past.
Trump:You base your statements on photoshopped pics?I bailed you out twice;a 3rd time,maybe?
https://t.co/Raco0mvusp https://t.co/jStBl7Ghia — الوليد بن طلال (@Alwaleed_Talal) January 28, 2016
Thursday morning, amidst his beef with Fox News, Trump retweeted the picture of Prince Al-Waleed and his sister — supposedly posing with Kelly — that bore the claim that Al-Waleed was a Fox News co-owner. The image was quickly debunked as obviously fake, and Politifact concluded that while Alwaleed owns a major stake in Fox News’ parent company News Corp, he is “more of a passive major shareholder” than an active owner.
In his tweet Thursday, Al-Waleed included a link to a Business Insider article debunking the image as well as Buzzfeed and Mic stories from last year recounting how Alwaleed “bailed out” Trump financially in the 1990s.
The stories recounted the pieces of the then-struggling Trump empire that the New York businessman had to sell to the Saudi prince in order to stay afloat, including his 282-foot yacht, stakes in hotels he owned and portions of his other businesses.
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With a job waiting for her, a woman from the Chicago suburbs drove to Texas to start a new chapter of her life on July 9. Three days later, Sandra Bland was arrested for “assault of a public servant,” during a routine traffic stop in Waller County. And on July 13, police found her dead in her jail cell.
The 28-year-old’s death has been classified as a suicide “with the cause of death (listed as) hanging,” or “self-inflicted asphyxiation,” Tricia Bentley, a spokeswoman for the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences in Houston told the Chicago Tribune. But friends and family aren’t convinced, telling ABC 7 Chicago they suspect foul play.
“I do suspect foul play,” says Cheryl Nanton. “I believe that we are all 100 percent in belief that she did not do harm to herself.” “We’re very suspicious and we’re a very tight community and we’re very upset that this has happened and it seems like there’s nothing really being done about it,” says LaVaughn Mosley. Longtime friend LaNitra Dean tells the I-Team that Bland “was a warm, affectionate, outspoken woman” who spoke out about police brutality often on her Facebook page and was critical of injustice against African Americans. “Each one of us feels like we lost a part of ourselves and it’s hard, it’s going to be hard for a very long time,” said her sister Sharon Cooper. “Sandy was strong. Strong mentally and spiritually.”
Bland was set to start her new job at her alma mater, Texas Prairie View A&M, this month. The young woman, described by her friends as “strong mentally and spiritually,” was to work in student outreach. “The Waller County Jail is trying to rule her death a suicide and Sandy would not have taken her own life,” Dean told ABC 7.
Video of her arrest, obtained by the I-Team, shows several police officers restraining Bland on the side of the road while she questions their use of force. A bystander captured the video Friday morning. Bland’s family members point to the altercation, but Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith maintains the young woman was “combative” during her arrest.
In the video he shot, Bland is heard saying, “You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that? I can’t even hear!” Then, as she is taken into custody, she repeats, “You slammed me into the ground and everything.”
Bland was taken to jail and was expected to be released Monday on $5,000 bail. But when a jailer came to her cell to see if she wanted recreation time, Bland was dead. According to ABC, jailers say they saw Bland at 7 a.m. to give her breakfast and again an hour later when they spoke to her over the jail intercom. When jailers came to Bland’s cell and discovered her lifeless body, they applied CPR. She was pronounced dead a short while later.
“I do not have any information that would make me think it was anything other than just a suicide,” says Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis.
In recent days, Bland’s death has set social media ablaze, prompting many to ask #WhatHappenedToSandyBland?
Didn’t know that the punishment for a mere traffic violation is Death!!!! #SandraBland #JusticeForSandy #WhatHappenedToSandyBland — Sofia (@SofJalil) July 16, 2015
Another black life, another hashtag. #WhatHappenedtoSandyBland? People are being slaughtered. Please, stand against injustice — Ashante (@simplyashante) July 16, 2015
The investigation has been turned over to the Texas Rangers.
SOURCE: ABC 7, Chicago Tribune | PHOTO CREDIT: Twitter
Illinois Woman Who Drove To Texas For New Job Found Dead In Jail Cell Days Later was originally published on newsone.com
Also On Global Grind:
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With the A-League fixtures for next season set to be released tomorrow, featuring a live Friday night free-to-air fixture on SBS2 for the first time, it’s pertinent to ask what type of fixture should kick-off each weekend?
Should the Friday night FTA game be used to showcase the competition through a blockbuster clash, such as the Sydney or Melbourne Derby?
Is it an opportunity for the FFA to expand the interest in the competition by kicking off each weekend with one of the matches of the round, a strategy used by other codes?
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Given the success of the competition last season with growing crowds, ratings and club membership, does the Friday fixture present a strategic opportunity to expand the reach of the competition even further?
Or should the fixturing be commensurate with what SBS paid as part of the new TV deal, reported at the time to have been no more than $10m?
With Foxsports having coughed up the lion’s share of the new $160m four-year deal and having done a great job of covering the league over its initial eight seasons, should they be rewarded with the blockbusters?
Is it enough, simply, that fans are getting a taste of the A-League on FTA?
Based on what I’ve been hearing, it looks likely that the FFA have taken the latter option.
When the draw is announced tomorrow, it’s unlikely that the Friday night fixtures will feature too many of the blockbusters, such as the derbies, the Big Blue, and the grand final replay.
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Certainly it appears that Sydney FC may launch the season, and with Alessandro Del Piero on board, that would be a big way to launch the return of FTA football.
But beyond that there may be less to get excited about for FTA fans.
Indeed, it appears that one or two of the weaker clubs, such as the Melbourne Heart, will feature in a few Friday night games.
This may be a way to help some clubs on the road to sustainability.
Yet, give some of the Heart’s crowds at AAMI Park over the past couple of seasons, what sort of image will showcasing them reflect on the competition?
And, indeed, could putting the Heart at home live on a Friday night further erode AAMI crowds, with wavering fans tempted to sit in front of the couch?
Will empty seats at AAMI Park or a less active support at say Bluetongue be the type of image that we want to remit on FTA?
To those getting their first taste of the A-League next season, is it best to showcase some of the bigger active support spectacles and atmospheres to them?
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There was speculation in one report last week that the FFA might feature up to five Western Sydney Wanderers games on Friday, tapping into a strength area for the code.
This appears unlikely, with fans of the club strong in their opposition to having too many Friday night games when the club was launched.
More likely is that a few of the Wanderers away games might be beamed back into the lounges of fans watching on FTA in western Sydney.
If that’s the case, it would certainly help Friday night ratings, with Sydney and Melbourne still considered the best-rating markets.
It’s a fine balancing act for the FFA. On the one hand they would want to reward Fox for their loyalty and support so far, yet on the other they need to be strategic and try and build on the success of the past two seasons, particularly last season.
When the draw is announced tomorrow we will know a little more, but I’m keen to hear your thoughts on what the best way forward is with Friday night football?
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Vegan prisoners will be able to buy food and toiletries that are in keeping with their beliefs and contain no animal products, a Vegan support group said today.
In a key concession to vegan inmates, the prison service will now allow prisoners to order toiletries from two specialist outlets, according to the Vegan Prisoners Support Group.
Products that will be available include vegan soap, shampoo, conditioner, moisturiser and toothpaste, as well as foodstuffs such as chocolate bars, biscuits, nuts and seeds, after prison authorities agreed to allow vegans to place mail order requests from Holland and Barrett and Honesty Cosmetics. The move comes after a 15-year-campaign by the lobby group, who will continue you push for vegan prisoners to be allowed to wear boots which are not made from animal skin.
Strict vegans avoid any foods derived from living or dead animals, including red meat, poultry, white meat and fish, and avoid animal milks, eggs, honey, and any other animal products such as gelatin.
A spokesman for the Vegan Prisoners Support Group said: "Vegan prisoners have had very limited access to vegan products through prison shops. Our recommendations were for basic vegan hygiene/bodycare products – ie a vegan bar soap, shampoo, conditioner, moisturiser, deodorant and toothpaste. In addition we recommended a vegan chocolate bar, sweet and savoury vegan biscuit, protein source such as Nuttolene or braised tofu, vegan spread, cheese alternative, soya yoghurt, flavoured soya drink and fortified soya milk."
It is the latest in a series of rulings to protect the rights of inmates. In May pagan prisoners were told they could keep twigs in their cells to use as wands, as part of a prisons policy that gives pagan prisoners the same rights as inmates of other faiths.
A prison service spokesman said vegan, vegetarian and other dietary requirements were met by the prison service, and that prisoners could purchase additional items from approved suppliers, at their own expense.
"They have limited access to their own money, based on good behaviour," he said. "If prisoners don't behave, their privileges are withdrawn. Purchased items are subject to rigorous security procedures, including hand searches and X-raying."
There are an estimated 500 vegan prisoners, who, the VPSG argue, currently struggle to obtain products they find acceptable. The VPSG website states: "Veganism is not a religion but a philosophy whereby the use of an animal for food, clothing or any other purpose is regarded as wholly unacceptable.
"The majority of vegans reject entirely anything which has its origins in the exploitation, suffering or death of any creature."
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The stories of the Uighurs in Guantánamo Muslims from the oppressed Xinjiang province of China, formerly known as East Turkistan have long demonstrated chronic injustice on the part of the U.S. authorities to those who know of them, although they have only sporadically registered on the media’s radar.
Numbering 22 men in total, three were picked up randomly in Afghanistan, another was caught crossing the Pakistani border disguised in a burqa, while the other 18 were seized together by opportunistic Pakistani villagers after fleeing Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001, and sold to U.S. forces for a bounty, as was common at the time. A leaflet dropped by U.S. planes offered enterprising villagers and soldiers "millions of dollars for helping the anti-Taliban force catch al-Qaeda and Taliban murderers."
These 18 men, who had fled their homeland because of persecution, in search of a new life, or in the hope of gaining some sort of training to enable them to fight back against their oppressors, had been living together in a small, run-down hamlet in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, mending the settlement’s ruined buildings, and occasionally training on their only weapon, an aging AK-47.
After the U.S.-led invasion, they were targeted in a U.S. bombing raid, in which several men died. The survivors then made their way across the mountains to the Pakistani border, where they were first welcomed by the villagers, then betrayed by them. In U.S. custody, they attracted attention because of their supposed insights into the workings of the Chinese government, but it was apparent from early on that they had not been involved with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, and that there was no reason to hold them.
Unfortunately for the Uighurs, however, the declaration of their innocence only prefaced further problems, as they joined one of Guantánamo’s least enviable groups: cleared prisoners who, because of international treaties, cannot be returned to their home countries for fear that they will be subjected to torture, or worse. The U.S. government had obligingly declared those opposed to Chinese rule in Xinjiang province as "terrorists," in order to secure support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and had even allowed or invited Chinese interrogators to question the men in Guantánamo, but when it came to returning them to China they refused to do so.
Attempts to persuade other countries to accept the Uighurs and other cleared prisoners who faced similar problems with repatriation were both long and largely futile. Despite the fact that some of these men had been regarded as wrongly detained while they were in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and many had been cleared after military tribunals in Guantánamo in 2004, it was not until May 2006 that one country Albania, one of Europe’s poorest nations could be prevailed upon to accept five of the men, who were joined, in December 2006, by another three cleared prisoners from Algeria, Egypt, and the former Soviet Union.
Living in a UN refugee camp in Tirana has not been without its problems there is no Uighur community in Albania, no prospect of work, and no opportunity for the men to have contact with their families but it is at least better than being in Guantánamo, where their compatriots, who have, for the most part, also been cleared for release (the exact details are, like much else at Guantánamo, difficult to gauge with absolute confidence), remain in a limbo that seems, literally, to be without end.
Compounding their suffering, the Uighurs, like the majority of the dozens of other cleared prisoners, are held not in comfort in Camp 4 (Guantánamo’s only block with communal dorms) but in Camp 6, a maximum security prison in which they are held in complete isolation, in metal cells without windows, for 22 to 23 hours a day.
One of these men is Abdulghappar, who is now 35 years old. In 2004, he explained to his military tribunal that he had traveled to Afghanistan to "get some training to fight back against the Chinese government," and added that he had nothing against the United States. He said that his own people "and my own family are being tortured under the Chinese government," and when asked, "Was it your intention when you were training to fight against the U.S. or its allies?" came up with an answer that summed up the feelings of all his imprisoned compatriots: "I have one point: a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me. Why would I get more enemies?"
Abdulghappar recently wrote a letter to his lawyers, which was declassified by the military censors who review all correspondence between lawyers and their clients. It was then passed to the Associated Press, who quoted parts of the letter in an article last week, which was then picked up by other media outlets.
In the hope of providing Abdulghappar with more of his own voice, however, I asked his lawyers for a copy of the letter, which I reproduce in its entirety below. As it is a translation, I have taken the liberty of editing the language to convey his message more fully.
Abdulghappar’s Letter From Guantánamo
How are you, Mr. J. Wells Dixon and Ms. Seema Saifee? I hope that this letter reaches you before you come over, and I hope that it will be a little beneficial for our Turkistani brothers’ situation here.
We, the Turkistani brothers, left our homeland in order to escape from the brutal suppression and unfair treatment from the Chinese government towards our people. The Uighur youth back home were either incarcerated because of false accusations or prosecuted and executed because of bogus allegations. It was extremely difficult for any Uighur to see a future for themselves within our homeland, and both young and middle-aged Uighurs started to leave East Turkistan and try to find survival abroad, if anyone could find a way to get out. We, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, are also like those Uighurs. We left our homeland for the same cause and sought solace in our neighboring countries.
As you know, for some specific reasons we ended up in Afghanistan. When we arrived in Afghanistan, the U.S. army invaded. We had to depart for Pakistan, since we could not stay in Afghanistan. As we did not know anyone who could help us there, we had no other choice but to leave. The Pakistani people then arrested us and turned us over to the Pakistani government. Subsequently, the Pakistani government sold us to the U.S. Army for bounties. The U.S. Army then brought us to Guantánamo.
Since the very beginning of the interrogations, we have been saying this. Our circumstances are very clear to the U.S. government, the U.S. Army and related agencies. Thus, the East Turkistani people and we, the Uighurs in Guantánamo, have never had any revulsion against the U.S. at any time, and this would never be possible, because our homeland is being occupied and we need the help of others.
We were very pleased at the beginning when the Pakistanis turned us over to American custody. We sincerely hoped that America would be sympathetic to us and help us. Unfortunately, the facts were different. Although in 2004 and 2005 we were told that we were innocent, we have been incarcerated in jail for the past six years until the present day. We fail to know why we are still in jail here.
We still hope that the U.S. government will free us soon and send us to a safe place. Being away from family, away from our homeland, and also away from the outside world and losing any contact with anyone is not suitable for a human being, as, also, is being forbidden from experiencing natural sunlight and natural air, and being surrounded by a metal box on all sides.
I was very healthy in the past. However, since I was brought to Camp 6, I got rheumatism. My joints started to hurt all the time and are getting worse. My kidneys started to hurt ten days ago.
My countryman Abdulrazaq used to have rheumatism for a while, and since he came to Camp 6 it got worse. Sometime in early August, the U.S. Army told Abdulrazaq that he was cleared to be released, and also issued the release form to him in writing. As a result, Abdulrazaq requested to move to a camp that had better conditions, for health reasons. When his request was ignored he embarked on a hunger strike, which has lasted for over a month now.
Currently, he is on punishment and his situation is even worse. He is shackled to the restraint chair and force-fed twice a day by the guards, who wear glass shields on their faces. This has taken place for the past 20 days. For someone who has not eaten for a long time, such treatment is not humane. Abdulrazaq would never want to go on hunger strike. However, the circumstances here forced him to do so, as he had no other choice. If the oppression was not unbearable, who would want to throw himself on a burning fire? In the U.S. Constitution, is it a crime for someone to ask to protect his health and to ask for his rights? If it does count as a crime, then what is the difference between the U.S. Constitution and the Communist constitution? What is the difference between this and Hitler’s policies during the Second World War?
I have heard that an Egyptian man broke his back and became handicapped while he was being handled by a team in Camp 1 or 2, and then he was sent home as a crippled person for the rest of his life [Sami el-Leithi, released in October 2005]. Another Libyan broke his arm also. I worry that Abdulrazaq will face a similar or worse situation while being force-fed twice a day for a long time, and I am also concerned for his psychological condition as it is extremely difficult for him to keep his mental state normal under such circumstances.
Recently, I started to wonder, "Why are we staying in this jail for so long?" I wonder if we will be released after we damage our internal and external organs and our arms and legs. Or is it necessary for a few Turkistanis to die, as happened in the past here in this jail, in order to gain others’ attention and their concern towards our matter? Such thoughts are in my mind all the time. The reason I am writing this letter to you is that I sincerely hope that you and others related to law and enforcement can solve this issue quickly and help us in a practical manner.
Abdulghappar Turkistani (281)
December 12, 2007
Guantánamo Bay jail, Camp 6
[For more on the Uighurs in Guantánamo, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.]
Read more by Andy Worthington
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Ableton today released version 9.2 of Live. The free update brings improvements and additions to both Live and Push and is available now as a free download for Live 9 users.
Here’s what’s new:
Latency compensation – Live 9.2 introduces a number of latency-related improvements. Sets that contain Max for Live devices or third-party plug-ins now have lower latency and automation is now fully latency compensated.
– Live 9.2 introduces a number of latency-related improvements. Sets that contain Max for Live devices or third-party plug-ins now have lower latency and automation is now fully latency compensated. Improved warping – Live 9.2 brings further refinements to Live’s audio warping engine. Transients are punchier in Complex and Complex Pro modes, downbeat detection has been improved and warping is now even more accurate. The new Warp Selection command lets you warp a selected portion of a sample to a precise bar length.
– Live 9.2 brings further refinements to Live’s audio warping engine. Transients are punchier in Complex and Complex Pro modes, downbeat detection has been improved and warping is now even more accurate. The new Warp Selection command lets you warp a selected portion of a sample to a precise bar length. Tuner – Live 9.2 comes with a new Tuner device
– Live 9.2 comes with a new Tuner device Max for Live – now includes Max 7, the latest, most powerful version of Max.
– now includes Max 7, the latest, most powerful version of Max. 64 pad mode – Live 9.2 introduces the ability to use all 64 Push pads to play drums and quickly flip back to 16 pads for step sequencing. To help you jump right in, a new free Pack is available that makes use of the extra real estate offered by 64 pad mode and brings you five Racks’ worth of drums, percussion, loops, and one shot samples.
– Live 9.2 introduces the ability to use all 64 Push pads to play drums and quickly flip back to 16 pads for step sequencing. To help you jump right in, a new free Pack is available that makes use of the extra real estate offered by 64 pad mode and brings you five Racks’ worth of drums, percussion, loops, and one shot samples. Further Push refinements – Live 9.2 also brings improved aftertouch implementation to Push’s pads and the addition of aftertouch to many of Live’s core library sounds. In addition, Push’s touchstrip can now also be used for modulation wheel control and pitch bending.
Here’s Mad Zach demoing the free 64 Pad Lab Pack:
In the video, Mad Zach shares his strategies for playing with the 64 pad layout, tweaking individual sounds, and some useful production tips for getting punchy drums.
Ableton Live 9.2 is available for download now (Ableton account required).
Here’s a detailed look at what’s new in Ableton Live 9.2:
Added the Tuner Device to the Live audio effects.
Added a “Start Playback with Tap Tempo” preference to determine if Tap Tempo is going to activate playback.
Improved tempo detection for warped audio files where the tempo appears to be constant.
Improved warp downbeat detection.
The first warp marker (1.1.1) is now placed closer to the beginning of an audio Clip, even if the that portion of audio does not contain loud transients.
Improved the sound of Complex and Complex Pro Warp modes.
Added the option “Warp Selection as x-Bar Loop” in the context menu when right clicking on a time selection inside an audio clip.
Live Sets that contain Max for Live devices or third-party plug-ins now have lower latency.
The latency introduced by a device is now displayed in the status bar, when hovering over the title bar with the mouse. No latencies are shown when latency compensation is turned off.
Automation and Modulation are now fully latency compensated.
Modifying the Arrangement loop brace with mouse or keys will not affect the current track selection, while previously all tracks were selected as soon as the braces where adjusted with the mouse.
The Serato bridge is now compatible with Live 9.2
Scrub and Ram Mode are now exposed in the python API
Added support for the Roland A-PRO keyboard series
Most presets in “Sounds” and all presets in Operator have been updated to react to Aftertouch and/or Modwheel data.
Updated 808 and 909 Kits with better sounding Kicks and Snares.
New 606 & 808 Impulse presets have been added to the Core Library.
Core Library Audio Clips now load with HiQ enabled and Fade disabled.
The preferences setting “Start Transport with Record” has been renamed to “Start Playback with Record”
Updated lessons and info texts.
Dropped compatibility for Windows XP and Vista, OS X 10.5 and 10.6.
Bugfixes:
When switching between Note and Scene mode with the APC20, the pad LEDs would occasionally not update correctly.
The Session Ring would not be entirely displayed on screen anymore when navigating through tracks if the Live Set contained folded Group tracks.
Fixed a bug in the Axiom Air 25, 49 and 61 Control Surface remote script, where the Send mix mode controlled the available Sends for the currently selected channel, instead of controlling Send A for the first 8 channels.
Fixed a bug in the MPK Control Surface remote script, where the Record Arm button had to be pressed twice to be toggled, and Exclusive Arm would not work.
Fixed a bug in the Vestax VCM600 Control Surface remote script, where the Punch In and Punch Out controls would work only as momentary toggles.
Fixed a bug which caused artefacts in the waveform visualisation when increasing the Gain on low amplitude audio clips.
Live would not display bluetooth audio devices in the Input and Output device menu under Preferences–>Audio
When controlling a number of mixer or device parameters via Aftertouch, crackles could be noticed in the audio stream.
The Live browser “All Results” label would not remember the settings for the optional second column.
Fixed a rare crash which might happen on OS X with certain input sources.
Fixed a crash which might occur when deleting several Max for Live devices from a Live Set at once.
Live would crash when quitting the application while renaming a Groove in the Groove Pool.
Peak Levels in External Instrument and External Audio Effect devices would only be updated if these were displayed in Device View.
A Live Set might become corrupt when saved after a crash recovery, if the original Live Set had meanwhile been modified by a different Live instance.
Notes at the beginning of Clips would not be triggered when rendering or freezing tracks containing Max for Live devices or third party plugins.
Remote mappings via a Max for Live device would not work for toggle parameters anymore.
The mouse would behave erratically when controlling encoders and faders on OSX, if the Live GUI was zoomed-in either via OS or via the native Live zoom preference setting.
Minor adjustments to the translations of Clip context menus.
Overdrive would report a wrong latency value, thus would not correctly be compensated.
Saturator and Dynamic Tube would report a wrong latency value when operating in High Quality / Oversampling mode, thus would not correctly be compensated.
Redux would report a wrong latency value when in Soft mode, thus would not correctly be compensated.
Minor GUI bugfixes for high resolution displays.
Fixed a bug which could cause graphics glitches and crashes on OSX when using high resolution displays.
Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor would stay in stopwatch or beachball mode until the user physically moved the mouse. This would happen after loading devices, live sets, or anything else which would necessitate the use of the stopwatch cursor.
Updated the pixel font (used primarily in device LCDs like Operator) for retina displays. Also improved the aspect of envelope curves drawn in the device’s LCD displays.
Fixed a glitch where the modulated value would become visible as an orange dot while dragging a slider, even if no modulation exists.
Changes for Push:
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JAIPUR: A man was booked in Kota town on Friday for selling his 13-year-old daughter for Rs 1 lakh and trying to force her to marry the buyer, police said.
The man's estranged wife and daughter recently approached the senior police officers in Kota, following which a police case was registered against him, officials said.
According to police, Devi Lal is a resident of Dhulet area in Kota, some 300 km from Jaipur."His estranged wife Shyama Devi and their daughter Krishna came to lodge the complaint with the district superintendent of police, Vikas Pathak. In a statement to the officer, the girl alleged that her father sold her for Rs1 lakh and was now forcing her to stay with her buyer. Devi Lal had even taken the money from the buyer," a police officer said.The officer said that Devi Lal separated from his wife a couple of years ago."The woman then married a man living in nearby Bundi district. The woman said that Devi Lal visited her house and tried to take the girl forcibly with him," said the officer.He added that police have lodged a first information report (FIR) on the basis of the complaint of the woman and her daughter and launched a search for Devi Lal. agencies
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The UN has been promised half the amount requested for its humanitarian appeal for Yemen, secretary general António Guterres has said, as activists on the ground said relief was being prevented from reaching its recipients.
Donors at a fundraising conference in Geneva pledged sums to take the total promised to $1.1bn (£860m), in a $2.1bn appeal that was only 15% funded previously.
The UN launched its appeal to prevent famine in the Arab world’s poorest nation two months ago.
Yemen's food crisis: 'We are broken, we die either from bombing or hunger' Read more
Guterres said the country was facing “a tragedy of immense proportions”. “On average, a child under the age of five dies of preventable causes in Yemen every 10 minutes,” he said. “This means 50 children in Yemen will die during today’s conference, and all of those deaths could have been prevented.”
The conference came as two dozen Yemenis ended a week-long protest march from the capital Sana’a to the port city of Hudaydah. The 140-mile “march for bread” aimed to call on the international community to protect Hudaydah, which is the main entry point for aid.
Initial pledges at the conference included $150m from Saudi Arabia, $100m from Kuwait, $55m from Germany and $94m from the US. The UK pledged £139m in aid for Yemen in 2017-18, up 24% from last year.
The food crisis in Yemen has been made worse by the ongoing conflict between Houthi rebels controlling Sana’a allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, and forces loyal to ousted president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has led US-backed military intervention in Yemen aimed at reinstating Hadi, who lives in exile in Riyadh, and countering advances of the Houthi forces, which are backed by Iran.
Hisham Al-Omeisy, a political analyst based in Sana’a, said people in Yemen were not optimistic about the prospects of international aid. “Without putting an end to the war, ending the Saudi-led coalition’s blockade and corruption of factions in the ground, I’m afraid there will be many more aid conferences to come and no supply will ever be enough to meet demand,” he said.
Omeisy said previous UN appeals were only partially funded and even if the current level of 15% rises to just above 50%, as similar to the previous years, “it still falls short of addressing all the needs, and with the still rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation with the continuation of the war”.
He said: “The current conditions on the ground [are] hindering delivery and distribution [of aid] – little is trickling in and reaching the actual deserving recipients.
“On the one end, the Saudi-led coalition is enforcing a commercial blockade and restrictions on relief supplies. Ninety percent of imports are food, fuel, and drugs: the blockade is choking the country that is heavily reliant on imports, and unreasonable delays in inspection as well as rejections of letting aid through.
“On the other hand, local groups and warlords are also hindering delivery of aid, and at times [there is] outright looting and selling on the black market. While Houthis block access to besieged cities like Taiz, others from both sides of the conflict, including the Saudi-backed Yemen government, are making huge profits creating shortages and spiking prices of certain items such as fuel and gas.”
Who's fighting who in Yemen? The conflict in Yemen is between Houthi rebels allied with the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who led the country from 1990 to 2012, and forces loyal to Saleh's successor, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi-led coalition air power. Houthi fighters control the capital city Sana’a and have spread out across the country. They are engaged in heavy street fighting in a number of other major cities. Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies view Houthi fighters - who belong to the Zaydi sect of Shia Islam - as Iranian proxies and have accused Tehran of militarily backing them, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, a Yemen expert and research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, said she was very disappointed at the lack of recognition for the role of Yemeni people and civil society at the Geneva conference.
“I’ve read the statements coming from the UK, Sweden and others,” she said. “The supposition is that governments in the west and the Gulf will decide how aid is delivered, but organisations like ICRC and the Red Cross have very little capacity on the ground without local actors.”
She and others in the aid community called for more attention to be given for a political settlement and for both parties to be held accountable to international humanitarian law.
There was a disconnect between Saudi Arabia’s pledge of $150m and the “impunity of their actions in international law” she said. “It is the responsibility of the international community to ensure that disparity should not be taken lightly.”
The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said ahead of the conference, co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland, that more than 18 million people were in need of humanitarian or protection assistance, and that severe food insecurity was affecting more than 6 million. According to the World Food Programme, nearly 2.2 million children are malnourished, of whom half a million need urgent care to prevent imminent risk of death.
“We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation,” Guterres said, insisting that “a famine can be prevented if we act quickly and commit to funding crucial life-saving assistance … We must act now to save lives. We are here today to turn the tide of suffering and create hope.”
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There's a reason why Wall Street is so "beloved" by 99% of the people, and that reason is today best summarized by Jamie Dimon's 'witty' retort to Mike Mayo, perhaps the most hated banking analyst, who asked the JPM CEO a simple question - why affluent customers would not pick UBS over JPM due to a mismatch in capital ratios, to which Dimon's response is even simpler: "that's why I'm richer than you." No logic, no rationale: all about the bottom line, which to Jamie at least is all that matters. As for Mr. Dimon's pending application to purchase a Micronesian private island, we would surmise that the wealth mismatch is far more due to the too big fail banking system which means every time Mr. Dimon uses hundreds of billions in excess deposits to corner the IG9 market or to pursue any other uber-levered venture which blows up in his face even as the firm's highly accurate VaR.xls spreadsheet outputs the RAND() function, the government, also known as JPM's OpCo 1, will rapidly rush to bail him, and his riches, out.
Clip below:
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Today we’re glad to let you know that the third PyCharm 4 EAP build 139.354 is ready for your evaluation. Please download it from our EAP page.
Just as always, this EAP build can be used for 30 days after its release date and it doesn’t require any license.
Comparing to the previous EAP builds, this one mostly includes a consolidation of fixes for various bugs and problems, and improvements for recently added features. For the detailed list of notable changes and improvements, please check the Release Notes.
The most notable brand-new feature in this build is the NumPy array viewer which is available from the debugger and the integrated Python console:
To view a NumPy array, run your project in a debug mode and find the NumPy array in the variables list shown in the PyCharm`s graphical debugger. Right-click it and select “View as Array”.
To follow the scientific mood of this PyCharm 4 EAP build, we also added the support for matplotlib in the integrated python console.
This build also brings a lot of improvements to the recently announced IPython Notebook integration:
PyCharm now works better with cells of different types. We’ve fixed issues with cell rendering and some bugs related to wrong PyCharm behavior inside ipynb cells. Now PyCharm starts the IPython notebook automatically when running a ipynb file or separate cells in it.
When working with IPython notebook files, PyCharm now provides well-known shortcuts: for example you can press Shift+Enter to run a cell or Ctrl+Shift+Down to move a cell down. See the list of IPython notebook shortcuts here and try them in PyCharm.
The full list of IPython notebook improvements can be found in our issue tracker.
The new “Attach to process” feature introduced with the previous build is now available under the Mac OS platform!
Please take PyCharm 4 EAP build 139.354 for a spin! We hope that there will be no major issues, however, should you encounter any problems, please report them to our public tracker.
No patch update for this EAP build will be available from within the IDE. Please download the full installation source for your platform and install it along the previous installations of PyCharm.
Stay tuned for PyCharm 4 release announcements, follow us on twitter, and develop with pleasure!
-PyCharm team
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From the ages of 15-27, I was what you could call a conservative evangelical Christian — young earth creationist, being gay is a pysch disorder, miracles are real, the works. Or the faith, I should say.
I'm an extrovert processor and I do stand-up comedy, so my lack of faith is bound to come up in public and private discussions. I never bring it up to pick a fight, but more because it's a part of my story and thus a part of me and the way I view the world.
I'll never forget working at a church and staying up late Googling evolution, or homosexuality, or the effects of pornography. All the things I believed became harder and harder to defend and it was incredibly stressful. My type of Christianity had everything tied together in a too big to fail system. If one thing went, they all went.
Then, when I was 27, my brother, who was the light of my world and the best Christian I knew died of a heart attack while playing basketball. In the aftermath of his death, several members of my family stopped talking to me. Six months later, I realized that my wife didn't want to be married to me anymore.
Ironically, it wasn't even these big things that changed me, it was the small injustices around them. It was the neck pain I had on the flight back home, the bank account mix-ups, etc.. that made me rethink the world.
There is a dark lottery running through life that no one can predict or control. My faith, earnest as it was, was my best guess at how to manage the stress of unlimited choices and circumstances. That anything can happen to you. Your life is a number that can be called up for good or ill.
Through the loss, through the worldview collapse, I found something else out.
There is an absurdity to life. There is a constant joke hiding in everything. It's the best relief to what ails you. I'll never forget the day I had "the talk" with my ex-wife. I was devastated. I felt like I was nothing, I had nothing, and I was going to go back home a 27-year-old loser while she kept living with all her cool friends in Copenhagen having a ball.
I don't really need any type of reaction. I'm not mad at anybody (anymore). I didn't lose my faith because someone was mean to me. I stopped believing because my worldview imploded after personal tragedies. But even that isn't fair, the C4 had been planted in the building all along.
All I wanted was to walk around Copenhagen listening to Springsteen on an iPod mini and feel sorry for myself.
But what I didn't know was that the same weekend I split with my wife was the same weekend of the Copenhagen International Gay Pride Parade. Every street I turned on had a slow moving tractor trailer with gay guys throwing candy and dancing for enthusiastic crowds.
That is so funny to me now.
I don't really know what I believe today. Most of my prayers are sent up for people I need to let go of or at the West Ashley location of Any Lab Test Now. Whenever I talk about this to people who are currently church-going, there is a very predictable call tree of reactions:
The judge: These are the people who assume you walked away from the faith flippantly/you never were a real Christian to begin with, etc. These are the people who invite you to their church with the same grim reach as me when I give friends with bad breath an Altoid. No I insist, no please. Do this so I can find you less distasteful.
The savior: These are the people with decidedly more empathy from the first who make a mental decision to CD of the month club you back to God. They totally understand why you may have walked away, but they are going to chip away at you with kindness and keep inviting you to their trunk or treat church party despite the fact that you're a single 33-year-old man with no kids. They're like, "For real, think this through."
The equal: These are the types that I love the most. They realize that my experience with something they value is different from theirs.
They may have some long-term plan to bring me back to the fold, but they never show disrespect for my story. To this day, I have friends like this. I'm amazed how with no faith in common, we can enrich each other's lives despite the divide on something they hold as most important.
I can be your friend no matter what you believe. And that's all I expect and hope for from other people.
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If you ever played 2005 Mortal Kombat spin-off Shaolin Monks, you'll remember it was a co-op focused beat-em-up with four playable characters: Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Sub-Zero and Scorpion. It looked like this:
Well, Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks didn't always look like that. To celebrate the series' 25-year anniversary, Mortal Kombat development chief Ed Boon took to Twitter to release an image of Shaolin Monks before it became a co-op adventure and featured only one character: Raiden.
Rare image: Mortal Kombat SHAOLIN MONKS, before it became a co-op adventure game & featured only 1 character: Raiden.#MK25 pic.twitter.com/rD0stay5Nx — Ed Boon (@noobde) October 3, 2017
The image shows Mortal Kombat's famous Thunder God at the bottom of the screen facing a waterfall. I played Shaolin Monks on my original Xbox and thought it was pretty good for a fighting game spin-off. At the time, the main Mortal Kombat series wasn't in a great place, so Shaolin Monks did well to keep me interested in the series. And so Boon's tweet serves as a cool glimpse at an early version of the game, which ended up selling over a million copies across the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox.
As it's the 25-year anniversary of Mortal Kombat, NetherRealm is reviving interest in the series with a few promotional events. We've already reported on Raiden being available in DC fighting game Injustice 2. Mortal Kombat X now has Living Tower challenges themed to previous Mortal Kombat releases: Mortal Kombat 1-4, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and Mortal Kombat (2011).
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Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has denied he is misleading the public about the amount they will save on water charges if the party gets into government.
Mr Adams insisted he was correct in asserting that the saving per household would be €260 and not the €160 figure others had claimed when conservation assistance grants were taken into account.
Speaking to Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio he also accepted that in October 2014 he had indicated he would be paying the water charges for his holiday home in Co Donegal but said he had changed his mind to show solidarity with the people of his constituency in Louth.
Labour Minister Ged Nash described Mr Adams’s radio performance as “embarrassing”. “Over the course of the interview he tied himself in knots on the most basic details of his own tax policy,” he said.
Speaking after the interview Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty defended the leadership of Mr Adams and rejected claims he was becoming a “liability” to the party’s election candidates.
Mr Doherty said: “Gerry Adams has led this party for many, many years and Sinn Féin has nearly doubled our support in the last five years and that is down to the leadership of Gerry Adams and the collective leadership of members right across this island.”
Leadership questions
Mr Doherty also dismissed suggestions it was time for Mr Adams to stand down as leader.
Asked if he was interested in the leadership in the future he said it was “not something I have any personal ambition to but it’s something that if the party so decided at a later stage that it was something they wanted me to do then I’d be willing to step up to the challenge.
But he said it was not about leadership. “This is about making sure that we provide a different type of society.
“We work as a collective leadership. It’s about making sure we deliver change. It’s not about being hungry for power. It’s about being hungry for change. It’s not about individuals. It’s not about personalities.”
He added that “who’s at the helm is a secondary issue. It’s about the type of policies we’re introducing.”
He said: “It’s not about who’s in the position of leadership. I’ve been involved for many many years in the leadership of Sinn Féin, working hand in hand with Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Mary Lou McDonald and we have very clearly given the Irish people a very clear alternative.”
He said before the election it was “tweedledee or tweedledum. It was one party replacing the other with no real change in people’s lives. For the first time in many years the electorate have a clear choice.”
Mr Doherty was speaking at a press conference outlining the party’s policy on long-term economic growth.
Tax relief on health insurance
Mr Adams also clarified that Sinn Féin would maintain a tax relief on private health insurance if in government.
On taxation, Mr Adams said an individual earning €100,000 a year would pay a marginal rate of tax of 59 cents in the euro.
“Up until €100,000 people will pay a tax rate of some 50 per cent. The additional tax will come in on earnings over €100,000, will be around 59 per cent in the round. This is about getting those who can pay most to pay most.”
Asked if he wants to take away tax relief from someone using private health insurance, Mr Adams said: “What we want to do is to ensure that all tax reliefs are standardised. At the moment 80 per cent of tax reliefs are availed of by 20 per cent. In the course of a government we would want to reduce all tax reliefs to a level playing field of 20 per cent.”
He said the Sinn Féin plan was to transform a two-tier health system that was not working into a system based on equality and the citizen’s right to have services free at the point of entry and on the basis of your health needs.
Asked how much longer he intended to remain leader of Sinn Féin, considering he has been in the position for 33 years, Mr Adams said he would remain for as long as his family, his health and his party, wanted him to be.
Noonan ‘conning electorate’
Mr Doherty attacked Minister for Finance Michael Noonan who he claimed was trying to “con the electorate” and he accused him of lying.
“In week one he got it wrong by €2 billion,” Mr Doherty said about the “fiscal space” or money available for tax cuts and increases in funding of public services.
“In week two he got it wrong by over €1 billion and today he got it wrong by up to €500 million.
Mr Doherty said the Minister stated that the abolition of the Universal Social Charge (USC) would cost €3.7 billion but it would in fact cost €4.2 billion because the abolition was incremental over the term of an administration in which some €500 million more in USC would be collected.
“The reality is that Michael Noonan’s figures don’t add up and his policies will mean more chaos in health, in housing and more chaos in rural Ireland.”
He claimed Fine Gael’s policies were anti-family because “they increased charges on everything families really need – your home, your water, your prescriptions, your education – leaving many very little to live on”.
He reaffirmed Sinn Féin’s commitment to abolish water charges and the property tax and to replace the funding with an extra tax on incomes of 7 cent on every euro above €100,000 earned.
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From the April 16th keynote presentation at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Palm Beach, Florida.
By Mickey D. Levy
Emerging nations truly have emerged—in the last handful of years, emerging markets such as China, India, Brazil, and other Latin American nations as well as Russia have generated well over half of all global growth, and their total share of global output has increased significantly, with large and vibrant economies. Since before the financial crisis and deep recession, these nations have been growing three to four times faster than the richer advanced nations. Their sustained rapid growth has literally lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty—largely through adopting a managed capitalism and entrepreneurship and emphasizing exports—and their middle classes are growing rapidly. They contribute significantly to world trade, not just exporting goods to the U.S., but expanding the amount of U.S. goods and services imported.
How do you compete in this rapidly evolving world? Consider different levels. For governments, competing means establishing sound policies, including healthy and sustainable finances and open channels of international trade that are conducive to innovation and expansion, healthy long-run growth, and permanent job creation. For businesses, it means implementing technological advances and forward-looking strategies and improving internal processes that make you the most efficient low cost producer with a keen understanding of global trends and cutting-edge distribution networks. For individuals, it means constantly building human capital and maintaining skills during this period of rapid innovation, and using those skills to your advantage—that’s the key to creating demand for your services and getting ahead.
Here’s my current scorecard. The U.S. has the advantage of being the world’s biggest economy and is also the leader in innovations and technological advances in a wide array of industries, supported by its entrepreneurship and capital system. But it is damaging itself and undercutting its future through unsound economic policies and the failure of its government to address the largest critical issues of this generation: fiscal policy, health care, energy, and education. These are not new issues. In the near term, the U.S. economy will experience improved economic growth and performance, but reforms are desperately needed to maintain competitiveness.
The U.S. economic expansion, although slow to recover, is starting to gain traction. Consumption is growing moderately and housing activity has turned the corner, despite the distressed mortgage mess. Exports continue to grow, despite the financial crisis and recession in Europe. Businesses are responding to the pickup in product demand by hiring more. However, business investment spending remains tentative. I anticipate stronger growth for the rest of 2012, but the unemployment rate will remain high.
Europe’s current financial crisis is the cumulative consequence of failed fiscal, labor and regulatory, and banking policies. Many European nations have been living beyond their means for decades, and the adjustments and reforms they must undertake to improve economic performance and restore competitiveness and fiscal soundness. Thosewill involve lower real wages and lower standards of living and will be painful. While Germany and other northern European nations are enjoying healthy economic performance, having benefited from earlier economic and fiscal reforms, many European nations are in recession. This exacerbates the financial problems faced by their governments and banks, and increases the difficulty of implementing needed reforms. Global financial markets will continue to test the resolve of European policymakers.
The story for each emerging nation is unique, but some, like China, that have grown largely through policies promoting exports must modernize their financial systems, improve governance and implement policies that shift reliance from exports to domestic demand. For others, education and skills are critical for addressing performance and income inequalities. This is very important to global economic performance but will take time.
For most key nations and regions, there are large imbalances both internally and externally.
The U.S. has been running persistently large trade and current account deficits—it imports much more than it exports and has insufficient national saving relative to investment, so it relies on foreign capital inflows to fill the gap. Japan has a large current account surplus, but its demographics (declining population, even faster decline in labor force, and failed immigration policy) and fiscal and other economic policies paint a bleak picture for future potential growth. China also runs a large trade surplus and has accumulated over $3 trillion in hard currency reserves, about one-third of which is loaned to the highly indebted U.S. government.
Europe is mixed. Some nations, like Germany and Austria, that have enhanced their international competitiveness through productivity and constraints on unit labor costs of production, enjoy trade and current account surpluses, while most southern European nations that have high unit labor costs and lack competitiveness have large deficits.
Beneath each internal and external imbalance are skewed or misguided government policies, varying degrees of private sector competitiveness—and a challenge. How do you promote more balanced global growth—with an eye toward improving every nation’s long-run economic performance?
Let’s begin with the U.S. For several decades, through 2007, the U.S. consumed too much and households borrowed too much. Debt rose to unsustainable levels, and consumption of goods and services, and investment in residential real estate rose way too high relative to GDP, while business fixed investment net of depreciation declined. A lot of this economic and financial behavior was fueled by government policies. The government’s long-run deficit gap is huge—measured in the tens of trillions of dollars—and the current composition of government spending is skewed heavily toward supporting current income and consumption. Government spending and tax policies deter investment. The government’s housing policies—still based on the flawed government sponsored entities—Fannie, Freddie—encourage debt leverage and poor credit quality mortgages. So it’s not just the magnitude of the U.S. government’s budget gap, but how specific spending and taxing programs are allocating resources and incentivizing household and business behavior that is the foundation for the U.S.’s imbalances. U.S. policymakers are too quick to blame others—like China—for U.S. problems. Instead, they should look inward: U.S. policies are largely to blame.
Clearly, the U.S. must consume less and save, produce and export more. Since the financial crisis, that has begun to unfold, U.S. households have slowed spending, saved a bit more, and deleveraged. U.S. businesses have generated significant productivity gains and have reduced their unit labor costs relative to most overseas nations, supporting export growth. Technological innovations are creating new products and enhancing commerce at an exciting pace. But the government’s policies are the biggest obstacle to healthy, sustained balanced growth and finances. The U.S. current account imbalance has narrowed, but primarily because the government’s dissaving (budget deficits) is partially offset by record-breaking business saving. We want just the opposite—for businesses to spend more and invest, and government to reduce its deficit!
The inability to address the nation’s long-run fiscal imbalance—which by allocating more and more national resources often in very inefficient ways toward debt service, pensions, and health care, reduces productive capacity—reflects the appalling lack of leadership in Washington. Economic rationale and what’s right for the nation is subjugated to short-sighted politics and selfish opportunism.
Make no mistake—even though the unsustainable fiscal debt and wrong-headed economic policies are not pushing up inflation or interest rates,they are eroding the U.S.’s ability to compete, harming businesses, and are dampening our long-run potential. That the Federal Reserve is pursuing unprecedented monetary easing in an effort to stimulate demand when fiscal and regulatory policies would more effectively address current problems—and elevating the Fed to the largest holder of U.S. Treasuries, is unhealthy, unsustainable, and very risky.
The political stalemate on energy policy is also very costly. Education reform shouldn’t be a political issue, but it is. Meanwhile, while educational attainment in the U.S. improves only modestly—over half of all working age citizens have a high school education or less—educational attainment is zooming ahead in many emerging nations. Amid the global demand for skills and knowledge-based workers, this is also eroding the U.S.’s ability to compete, and a primary source of undesired income and wage differentials. Currently, the unemployment rate for those with at least a college degree is near 4 percent, while the unemployment rate for those with a high school education or less is over 12 percent. It is a sad commentary that for several decades, public teachers unions have been the largest obstacle to education reform.
European problems are far more complex than the U.S.’s. Whereas most European nations are far ahead of the U.S. in reforming government fiscal policies, most are far behind in recapitalizing banks, implementing labor reforms, and forcing declining real wages in order to restore global competitiveness. Their labor laws and regulations virtually lock in slow growth. The financial situation facing European governments and banks is severe, and recessionary conditions make achieving necessary reforms very difficult.
Overall, European economic growth and performance will languish during a lengthy adjustment period. However, even in this very difficult environment, there will be excellent investment and export-related opportunities in European businesses and sectors that push ahead with reforms and productivity.
China has pursued an export-oriented economic policy, through government policies that have maintained an artificially low currency, and invested very heavily in production and export-related projects. It allows for a “managed” style of free enterprise and capitalism. This has produced sustained, rapid economic expansion and a dramatic increase in standards of living. But at the same time, China’s financial system represses its citizens through backward financial markets with limited investment opportunities and its dominant and self-serving state-owned banks. Facing limited investment opportunities, including an “unreliable” stock market, increased Chinese wealth has been funneled into real estate, generating a housing boom.
China has faced an inflation problem, and its robust economic growth and labor demand have generated rapid increases in wages. While China’s unit labor costs remain well below global standards, as they rise, China’s potential growth will slow. My hunch is China’s leaders will be sufficiently flexible and manage gradually slower growth and avoid a hard landing. But in the context of today’s conference, China must modernize and liberalize its financial system, and alter government policies to provide a broader social safety net and encourage consumption. A rebalancing of China’s economic growth would sustain China’s outstanding economic performance, contribute to improved global balances, and enhance U.S. export opportunities.
It’s not a zero-sum world that imposes a loser for every winner. Nevertheless, we will be competing in an expanding and highly competitive world. With the exception of Europe, economic outlooks are improving, particularly for the U.S.
But risks abound, and economic policies matter a lot, and here, I am sad to admit the U.S. policies are distinctly harmful. We must get beyond the rancorous politics and short-termism. To end on a positive note, the U.S.’s entrepreneurship, innovations, technological advances, and capitalism put the U.S. in such a position of strength, my urge and hope is that we can address our fiscal and economic policies with foresight and fairness in a way that will allow strong growth and healthy increases in standards of living in the future.
*****
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Mickey D. Levy is the chief economist for Bank of America.
(photo courtesy of shutterstock)
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"Double flower" redirects here. For the football club from Hong Kong, see Double Flower FA
"Double-flowered" describes varieties of flowers with extra petals, often containing flowers within flowers.[1][2] The double-flowered trait is often noted alongside the scientific name with the abbreviation fl. pl. (flore pleno, a Latin ablative form meaning "with full flower").[3] The first abnormality to be documented in flowers, double flowers are popular varieties of many commercial flower types, including roses, camellias and carnations. In some double-flowered varieties all of the reproductive organs are converted to petals — as a result, they are sexually sterile and must be propagated through cuttings. Many double-flowered plants have little wildlife value as access to the nectaries is typically blocked by the mutation.[4]
History [ edit ]
Double flowers are the earliest documented form of floral abnormality, first recognized more than two thousand years ago.[2] Theophrastus mentioned double roses in his Enquiry into Plants, written before 286 BC. Pliny also described double roses in 1st century BC. In China, double peonies were known and selected by around 750 AD, and around 1000 AD double varieties of roses were cultivated to form the China rose (one of the ancestors of modern hybrid tea roses).[5] Today, most cultivated rose varieties bear this double-flower trait.
Arabidopsis Double-flowered
Herbalists of the Renaissance recognized double flowers and began to cultivate them in their gardens—Rembert Dodoens published a description of double flowers in 1568, and John Gerard created illustrations of many double flowers beside their wild-type counterparts in 1597. A double-flowered variety of Marsh Marigold was discovered and cultivated in Austria in the late 16th century, becoming a valued garden plant.[6]
The first documented double-flowered mutant of Arabidopsis, a model organism for plant development and genetics, was recorded in 1873.[7] The mutated gene likely responsible for the phenotype, AGAMOUS, was cloned and characterized in 1990 in Elliot Meyerowitz's lab as part of his study of molecular mechanisms of pattern formation in flowers.[8]
Genetics of double-flower mutations [ edit ]
ABC model of flower development. Double flower varieties often arise from mutations affecting C class genes.
Double-flower forms often arise when some or all of the stamens in a flower are replaced by petals. These types of mutations, where one organ in a developing organism is replaced with another, are known as homeotic mutations. They are usually recessive, although the double flower mutation in carnations exhibits incomplete dominance.[9]
In Arabidopsis, which has been used as a model for understanding flower development, the double-flower gene AGAMOUS encodes a protein responsible for tissue specification of stamen and carpel flower segments. When both copies of the gene are deleted or otherwise damaged, developing flowers lack the signals to form stamen and carpel segments. Regions which would have formed stamens instead default to petals and the carpel region develops into a new flower, resulting in a recursive sepal-petal-petal pattern. Because no stamens and carpels form, the plants have no reproductive organs and are sexually sterile.
Mutations affecting flower morphology in Arabidopsis can be described by the ABC model of flower development. In this model, genes involved in flower formation belong to one of three classes of genes: A class genes which affect sepal and petal formation, B class genes which affect petal and stamen formation, and C class genes which affect stamen and carpel formation. These genes are expressed in certain regions of the developing flower and are responsible for development of organs in those regions. Agamous is a C class gene, a transcription factor responsible for activating genes involved in stamen and carpel development.
Gallery [ edit ]
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Vallejo is geographically close but economically far from more affluent San Francisco Bay Area cities to the south. In 2008 the city of Vallejo filed for bankruptcy. Yesterday, May 18, the Bernie Sanders campaign came to Vallejo.
The gathering was held in a huge grassy area alongside the water estuary. The area was enclosed with security fencing so that audience members all had to pass through metal detectors. One and half hours before Sanders’ speech, the line to go through the security screening was half a mile long. Yet spirits were high with a buzz in the air.
The audience of 8 to 10 thousand was mostly young, students or working class and ethnically diverse. Many had only learned Bernie was coming via Facebook that day or the day before. I chatted with people patiently waiting as the line slowly advanced. I asked two young African American women why they supported Bernie. The answer: “He seems real; he seems consistent; and because the others will take us to hell!” I asked three Latino young adults why they support Bernie. The answer: “Bernie will help the working class. Because we need affordable education.” I noticed he said “working class” not “middle class”. A young Hispanic couple responded simply “Why support Bernie? The future.” Other answers were “climate change”, “criminal justice” , “education” and “he’s got vision”.
As the event began, an African American organizer from Oakland spoke, then the Filipina President of California Nurses Association, then San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim followed by organizers from the Bernie team advising the audience about voting in June 7 California primary. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks revved up the crowd then Bernie took the stage.
Toward the front, the crowd was packed together with shorter people unable to see beyond their neighbors let alone the stage. The sun was starting to set and a breeze came off the water. It had been an unusually hot day. Bernie spoke for nearly an hour. He recalled how the pundits had dismissed his campaign from the start, saying his ideas were “too bold and radical”. Bernie said he has won 46% of the pledged delegates to date, with six states remaining including the largest in the country.
Sanders delivered his speech saying:
* the campaign finance system is corrupt and undermining democracy
* the economy is “rigged” with the rich taking it all
* the infrastructure is collapsing with school children in Flint Michigan poisoned by tap water
* corporations have taken away good jobs by moving manufacturing outside the USA
* the criminal justice system is broken, with the government spending $80 billion locking up 2.2 million people
* police departments have been militarized
* graduating students are saddled with monstrous debts
* why does the government always have money for wars but not to rebuild inner cities?
* we are destroying the planet – what kind of legacy is that?
* healthcare should be a right not a privilege – we need medicare for all
* workers need a living wage which is $15 per hour minimum
* we need immigration reform and end to deportations
Sanders spoke of the need to “Stand up and fight back…. With unity of black, brown, gay, straight, male, female …. There is nothing we cannot accomplish…. We are going to the convention to win the nomination.”
It did not sound like a conciliation or ‘let’s make up’ speech to the Democratic Party establishment. Bernie said his message to the Democratic Convention is “We are the campaign to defeat Donald Trump”.
Six months ago I was skeptical of Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Not any more. He has been tremendously successful in showing the world there are huge numbers of Americans, especially youth, who want major changes in society and government policy. He has raised the consciousness of millions, sharply contrasting Wall Street’s wealth at the expense of working people. He does not speak much on foreign policy, but what he does say indicates a significant improvement. In Vallejo, his only foreign policy comments were asking why we are rebuilding Afghanistan when we should be rebuilding inner cities at home. It’s a good point, which matches his overall position of stopping a foreign policy of aggression and ‘regime change’.
Will Bernie Sanders fold up his campaign, corral his supporters and cheer for the Democratic Establishment after they have made some token changes in their platform? It’s possible, but I doubt it. Why? Because I think what some of the young people said yesterday is likely true: He is consistent and he does have integrity. His campaign has been based around the needs of working people versus a corrupt Establishment which the Democratic Party is part of. Sanders has highlighted the class nature of our economic system and media. He has focused a bright light on Wall Street and Clinton’s complicity. These lessons are not going to be forgotten or easily retracted.
For those on the Left who disparage Sanders, I say take another look. Listen to his words and more importantly talk with his crowds of supporters. They are the future and we should be working with them. Not preaching dogmatically, but listening. The thousands in Vallejo shouting “Bernie! Bernie!” seem to be doing so because they want the ‘bold and radical change’ previously dismissed by pundits. That sounds good to me.
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A novel by a former journalist broke the all-time book sales record for thrillers in the United Kingdom last week, surpassing even Dan Brown's gangbusters seller The Lost Symbol.
The title of this book, The Girl on the Train, is innocuous, and doesn't tell you much. The cover of the book is a smeared color palette of blues, greens, and blacks — presumably the whirl of the world outside the viewpoint of the girl on the train — and at first glance it looks like it could be just another literary novel.
But Paula Hawkins' novel is an intriguing, fast-paced thriller. Built around the story of a woman who watches a group of houses through the window of the train every day on her morning commute, Paula Hawkins’s tale is at turns horrifying, brilliant, and completely surprising.
Here are 7 reasons why The Girl on the Train is worth your time:
1. Everyone else is reading it
Though popularity isn’t always a good reason to take part in the consumption of art, it certainly says something about a book: word-of-mouth recommendations. Fifty Shades of Grey owes its success to women telling other women to read it — either for erotic pleasure or laughs. The Girl on the Train has buzz because it's just that good. I would spend the 13 dollars I paid for my copy three more times to re-read this story for the first time again.
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2. The story is told by women
Hawkins uses three main characters to tell her story. Each chapter is titled with the name of the character who narrates the scene, often overlapping with another character’s already-told experience. Though the book has several central male characters who are essential to the story, Hawkins doesn’t give us a single chapter told through their perspective.
At times, the missing voices of the men could be used to further humanize them and extend the story, but Hawkins seems to have made an conscious choice to have this story be by and about the women who are the most affected. In a literary world where stories about men are canonized and stories about women are seen as trivial, it’s incredibly refreshing to read a novel where women are placed front and center; their perspectives are important.
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3. The main characters are deeply flawed
Sometimes women are written as gender stereotypes — weak, sweet, and docile. Hawkins' characters are not stereotypes, which is what makes the story compelling. The main character is an alcoholic who can’t seem to get her life back together after leaving her husband. The second woman was a mistress who hates the first. And the third female character, well, she’s missing.
They are all incredibly difficult women, and because of that they’re great characters.
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4. There aren’t too many characters
A recent trend in literary fiction is to pack novels full of secondary, kind of unnecessary characters who make a single observation or point that is important to the author’s perception of what the story should be. I have read so many books lately that have seven or eight main characters plus secondary characters and, even as someone who reads a lot, it's overwhelming and slightly off-putting.
Hawkins gives you three main characters who are all connected to one another, and two or three secondary characters for each of them. All of these characters exist in the same space and interact with one another, making it easier to remember who was married to who — and who maybe killed who.
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5. It’s difficult to put down
Hawkins is a smart story teller; she has crafted a tale that hurtles along like a train. It's hard to slow down while reading. Each sentence flows seamlessly into the next, spurring you to turn the page to find out what happens next.
Novel writers and editors often talk about how the “hook” — the first part of the first chapter — must be strong and unforgettable, to convince readers to continue. Books are competing for your attention — not just against other books, but with television, music, movies, dinner, the internet and your cell phone.
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I usually read several books at a time and generally finish books within the month I start them. I do not typically read books in a weekend — much less in two days — and that is how fast I finished The Girl on the Train. It’s unstoppable.
6. The plot twists are brilliant
Spoilers can be great. Reading spoilers about how a book ends allows readers to critically analyze the way the book is constructed and the techniques used by the author. But Girl on the Train is a book about plot. Part of why it is labeled as a “thriller” instead of just a “novel” is that the author’s plotting is impeccable.
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There are twists and turns that readers can see coming, and there are some that flip everything you know about the story on its head. Hawkins is brilliant at both. This novel is constructed smartly and subtly, to surprise and shock readers.
7. You need to read it and then get excited about the movie
Dream Works optioned the film rights to this story before the book was published, and you should definitely read the book before it goes Hollywood and hits theaters.
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Americans, on average, only read a little more than one book per year. Not a shame if you choose this one.
Kelsey McKinney is a culture staff writer for Fusion.
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3 years ago
As some of you may have heard, a group from our community has suffered an incredible tragedy. Five friends were on a road trip from Virginia to Texas when their car was struck by another vehicle traveling in the wrong direction on the freeway. Three of the passengers died as a result of the collision while two others, Kevin DiCicco and Hannah Galbraith, were taken to a local hospital for treatment. Kevin has been released from the hospital but Hannah is still in intensive care recovering from her injuries. Both of them and all of their families will need whatever love, prayer and support you can offer. This is an unbelievable tragedy for so many people. Our hearts go out to all of them.
If you would like to support Kevin & Hannah's recovery, please visit: http://www.gofundme.com/helphannah-kevin
A fund has also been established for the funeral expenses of Kyle Mathers, Dale Neibaur and Holly Novak. You can find more information about that here: http://bit.ly/1gYwyrc
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North Korea : Radiation Leak Fears, International Double Standards and Trump’s Sudden Change of Plans
Tumblr Linkedin Pinterest StumbleUpon Reddit Digg 3rd November 2017 / Global
By Felicity Arbuthnot – Global Research: Urgent warnings of a radiation leak have been issued after the collapse of a tunnel under North Korea’s 7,200 foot high Mount Mantap, under which the country tests their weapons systems.
The accident, believed to have happened on 10th October – though it only came to light on 31st October – is a disaster which is reported to have killed two hundred people. Were it anywhere else on earth it would surely be a headline tragedy, with Heads of State sending their condolences and offering assistance.
Apparently, however, the parents, sons, daughters which are the workforce of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are children of a lesser God and the ‘phone lines, emails are seemingly silent; the Eifel Tower and Brandenburg Gate have not been lit with the nation’s colours in memory of those lost and mourned.
Dangers of radiation are the only headlines, assistance to attempt to assess and curtail it by the world’s expert bodies and institutions; hands held out in the light of a major disaster, have not been forthcoming.
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Business Insider’s Alex Lockie reports that according to North Korean sources, the tunnel initially “collapsed on 100 workers, and an additional 100 went in to rescue them, only to die themselves under the unstable mountain.” (1)
Not only is there no help from the “international community”, but: “If the debris from the test reaches China, Beijing would see that as an attack on its country, Jenny Town, the Assistant Director of the U.S.-Korea Institute and a Managing Editor at 38 North, previously told Business Insider.”
Conveniently forgotten is America’s fecklessness in testing in Nevada, where the mushroom clouds could be seen a hundred miles away and: “Las Vegas experienced noticeable seismic effects” (“Nevada Test Site”, Wikipedia) and the fate of the so called “down-winders” who suffered radiation related diseases from the nuclear fallout.
“No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea …” Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly in September. He is clearly ignorant of the criminal nuclear history of his own country.
Also apparently forgotten are the US and UK atomic testing in the Pacific (1946-1962) for which servicemen – unwarned of the dangers – who survived, fought for compensation for cancers and deformities of their children until the end of their lives. A few, now very elderly, still fight on.
The population of Bikini Island of course, was evacuated and still remains so radioactive that families or descendants have not been able to return. Another of America’s disposable populations.
Whilst it is still not certain whether North Korea has developed nuclear weapons, they have been testing the possibilities in response to over sixty years of US threats. However, unlike the US, their tests have been undertaken under a vast mountain and: “Successive tests have so far not caused any radiation leaks in nearby regions”, analysts said recently. (2)
However, in the week of the collapse there was a stark warning that:
“Continued nuclear testing by North Korean could trigger a radioactive leak, South Korea’s chief meteorologist warned this week. Nam Jae-Cheol, the head of the Korea Meteorological Administration, said the hollow space in the bottom of the mountain where the tests are conducted could implode, leading to radioactive material seeping through.”
Moreover: “Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics last month also warned about the possibility of a catastrophic implosion in the mountains …”
Meanwhile the same report states that North Korea, surely in the light of Trump’s apocalyptic threats to the nation of just 25.4 million, “was reportedly conducting mass evacuation drills and blackout exercises in recent days amid increased threats of nuclear war.” Poignant and shaming.
But if there is, rightly, such fear of radiation leakage, what, as he has threatened, if Donald Trump unleashes his threat of “fire and fury like the world has never seen”?
On 22nd October, Trump decided that he was preparing to put the US fleet of B-52 fully nuclear capable bombers on 24-hour alert. “This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared”, Gen. David Goldfein, US Air Force Chief of Staff, told Defense One.
The first targets, as Trump has made clear, would be the DPRK’s weapons facilities, which would make the horror of the current leak fears pale in to insignificance. And as said before, the region, indeed the planet could be rendered incinerated history.
The US President, now in a tight corner, with impeachment an approaching possibility and with seemingly increasingly fading grasp on reality, might just resort to such insanity as a diversionary tactic.
Time for neighbouring countries and US allies to use this disaster to put out the hand of friendship, offer help, diplomacy and normality to a country which has literally built itself up from the ashes, of every town, city and village destroyed by America little over sixty years ago.
And the time to act is now. Next week might be too late.
Incidentally, Donald Trump is to leave for the region and for South Korea on Sunday. He was to visit the border area, a must-do photo-op for visiting warmongers. The day the possible radiation leak was announced, he cancelled the visit.
Trump has a phobia. In his 1997 book “The Art of the Comeback”, he wrote of how he hated shaking hands because of the risk of germs: “One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get.
“I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.”
There are reports alleging that he prefers to drink with a straw incase the vessel he drinks out of carries the germs of others.
When Theresa May visited him a week after his taking office, there was speculation that the reason he gripped her hand so tightly ascending stairs was because of his fear of germs on handrails grasped by others before him.
For all his “fire and fury” perhaps he has just realized that no amount of washing can flush off radiation. Any chance that is why he has so suddenly cancelled his visit to the border? Just wondering.
1. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/10/31/fears-radiation-leak-soar-after-north-korea-nuclear-site-collapse-kills-200
2. http://www.ibtimes.com/south-korean-scientists-warn-north-koreas-nuclear-tests-could-trigger-radioactive-2608031?utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=right&utm_medium=related1
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The Sacramento Kings are entering an extremely important offseason this year and need to make a move or two. They are hoping to get back into playoff contention during the 2016-17 season, but an improvement of their roster will have to happen. Dave Joerger is, without question, an upgrade over George Karl as the Kings’ head coach, which is a big step in the right direction in and of itself.
Rajon Rondo is set to hit the open free agency market and the Kings have made it clear that they won’t get into a bidding war with other teams to re-sign him. That brings up the question of who the Kings could target as a replacement for Rondo at the point guard position.
Ryan Davis of the Sports Cheat Sheet opined that the Kings could look to acquire Derrick Rose from the Chicago Bulls. Could they look to make that kind of a move to replace Rondo?
Last season with the Bulls, Rose ended up averaging 16.4 points, 4.7 assists, and 3.4 rebounds per game. He shot 42.7 percent from the field overall and knocked down 29.3 percent from behind the three-point arc. Those numbers may not look impressive, but he was playing in a system that didn’t fit his style and he certainly didn’t get along well with Jimmy Butler on the court.
[AP Photo/David Zalubowski] At just 27-years-old, there is still plenty of time for Rose to get his career back on track. Injuries have been a huge problem for him throughout his career, and Rose has not played more than 66 games in the regular season over the last four years. That is definitely a concern for any team considering acquiring Rose, although he still has star-caliber game when he is on the court.
Rose would fit perfectly into the type of system that Joerger is expected to run. Mike Conley was the Memphis Grizzlies’ point guard throughout the entire tenure that Joerger had in Memphis. While the two players are not that similar, they are both capable of creating their own shots, pushing the ball up the court and can create for teammates.
Sacramento hasn’t been a playoff contender in a long time, but adding Rose’s experience can help the Kings as well. He is a former MVP and has had a lot of playoff experience.
Having the opportunity to play with DeMarcus Cousins would be intriguing to say the least for Rose. His issues with Butler were well-documented this past season, but it wasn’t all Rose’s fault. Butler was a great player, but he hadn’t shown leadership and played a bit selfish at times.
[AP Photo/David Zalubowski] That isn’t saying that Rose wasn’t involved in the problems at all, but he cannot be blamed completely. Sacramento just made things work with Rondo, who has had a long history of having issues both on and off the court.
What would the Kings have to give up in return to bring Rose on board this offseason?
Trading a first-round pick would likely be a required part of the trade package. Other pieces like Ben McLemore or Willie Cauley-Stein could be involved as well. Cauley-Stein would be a much less likely trade candidate than McLemore, but the Bulls would likely have interest in both players.
All of that being said, the Bulls will seriously listen to trade offers for Rose this coming offseason. Sacramento could be a team to watch when it comes to a trade for Rose, although they may not end up engaging in trade talks with the Bulls.
Do you think that the Sacramento Kings should try to acquire Derrick Rose from the Chicago Bulls? Would he be the missing piece that can help get the Kings back into the postseason? Let us know in the comment box below!
[AP Photo/David Zalubowski]
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I’ve spent the past four nights sitting in the darkened cockpit of a fictional but mostly plausible spaceship. For an hour or two at a time, I busily turn knobs, flip switches, and watch gauges. Every once in a great while, I’ll very slowly fly a few hundred meters out from the station where the ship spends most of its time moored, then turn around and very slowly fly back—and then I’ll stop and go back to the switches and gauges.
Welcome to Rogue System. It’s a little different from the kinds of combat-focused space sims we’ve had our hands on lately, like Elite: Dangerous—this is much more a module for the realism-oriented DCS World simulation package, crossed with a bit of Kerbal Space Program just for grits and shins. It’s also not actually much of a game yet—there are six tutorial missions you can "play" through, and you can also kind-of-sort-of fly around in free flight mode (by selecting one of the tutorial missions and turning the "tutorial" part off), but the actual game itself is still in early development.
Well—sort of. Rogue System has actually been busy being born for more than two years, and developer Michael Juliano ran an unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign in 2013 to try to assist in funding development of the game. After that didn’t work out, Juliano put development on hold and returned to his day job; now, after a considerable hiatus, Juliano has brought on publisher Image Space Inc and has released a completely redone version of the game as an early access title.
"While content is currently minimal at best, it is based now on a foundation that allows me to confidently start layering on the true gameplay that will make up the bulk of Rogue System’s Core Module," explained Juliano in his June 11 developer update. As explained in the update, development on more content is proceeding, with Juliano using the proceeds from early access sales to fund things as development goes on.
Oddly addicting
Rogue System right now is very minimal, but it’s also oddly addicting. Players can fly (though "fly" is probably more accurate) the fictional FireArc spacecraft through six tutorial simulations, most of which involve walking the player through complex operational procedures that seem very similar to the kinds of procedures required to operate actual aircraft—something that will no doubt appeal greatly to the sim-heads who think Elite: Dangerous is far too arcade-like.
To prepare your FireArc for undocking from the station, for example, you have to start up its electrical systems from external power, connect its batteries, charge them, adjust the power distribution busses, bring the two fuel cells online, bring the comms system online, enable your cooling systems, preheat the onboard low-energy nuclear reactor, talk to traffic control about your departure (and note down the appropriate departure frequencies, including a localizer), start the reactor, disconnect from external power, activate your maneuvering system, and then actually undock.
I wrote the individual steps down on paper while walking through them so I could practice outside of the tutorial. The resulting procedural checklist looks... impressive:
Maneuvering in Rogue System is an all-inertial affair, though the FireArc has some autopilot capabilities (including the ability to null its rotational rates). Rendezvousing with a station requires keeping a careful eye on your orbital parameters (altitude, apoapsis, periapsis, and inclination), though I haven’t yet put in enough time with it to see if the more truly counterintuitive bits of orbital mechanics have been implemented (like slowing down in order to catch up with an object ahead of you). Further, the FireArc spacecraft has multiple maneuvering modes of varying speed—from venting tiny puffs of cold argon gas for extremely fine close-in maneuvering, all the way up to using superheated plasma from the reactor as a booster for major delta V changes.
Head tracking is supported with a TrackIR, which we were able to use to great effect. Full VR support with the Oculus Rift is planned, but not yet implemented—Juliano gave us some suggestions for config file tweaking to try to make it work with our Rift DK2, but it doesn’t yet function properly.
We’ve got an interview scheduled later this week with Juliano to talk a lot more about his plans for Rogue System and when the game might be exiting early access. In the meanwhile, you can pick it up here if you’d like to give it a shot. At least for now, Rogue System is for Windows only.
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Manatee County Court Judge Doug Henderson recently issued an order suppressing all evidence that the police obtained at a sobriety checkpoint in 2008.
According to an article that appeared at BradentonHerald.com, Judge Henderson ruled that because the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office did not follow their own written guidelines regarding the operation of DUI checkpoints, any evidence gathered by the police as a result of implementing that particular checkpoint may not be presented in court by the prosecutor’s office. Judge Henderson’s ruling may well result in the Manatee County State Attorney’s Office having to drop some, if not most, of those DUI cases.
In the case of Campbell v. State of Florida, the Florida Supreme Court decided the issue of whether advance written guidelines are required before the police may conduct a roadblock. In deciding that such guidelines are indeed required, the Court was particularly troubled by the fact that the police worksheets in that case failed to specify "whether the officers were to stop all motorists, or only one in three or one in five vehicles, or were to use some other selection criteria." That failure, along with several others, rendered Mr. Campbell’s stop by the police unconstitutional pursuant to both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 12 of the Florida Constitution.
The Campbell Court concluded with this pertinent observation:
"The requirement of written guidelines is not merely a formality. Rather, it is the method this court and others have chosen to ensure that the police do not act with unbridled discretion in exercising the power to stop and restrain citizens who have manifested no conduct that would otherwise justify an intrusion on a citizen’s liberty. In this country the police are not vested with the general authority to set up "routine" roadblocks at any time or place. Rather, law enforcement was placed on notice by our holding in [State of Florida v.] Jones that the stopping and detaining of a citizen is a serious matter that requires particularized advance planning and direction and strict compliance thereafter."
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Daylight, Unreal Engine 4 Game Gets First Screenshots By William Usher Random Article Blend Daylight. The atmospheric horror-survival title makes use of Epic's latest, new-generation game engine and the team was happy to show off the progress they've made on the title so far.
The new screenshots for Daylight come just on the heels of Daylight over to the PS4, it'll be a hop, skip and a jump.
According to Daylight will be a Steam exclusive...PC Master Race for the win.
The game is being designed in a similar vein to the likes of Amnesia and Slender: The 8 Pages. Players will be trapped in a structure that procedurally changes and generates new experiences every time you play the game, so no playthrough will ever be the same the second time through. The real trick is that players will only be armed with a camera to provide light and a way out of the place.
Zombie Studios is using the latest tricks and tech from the Unreal Engine 4 to help bring their lo-fi game to life. You can check out the new screenshots of the game below or pay a kind visit to Zombie Studios' Zombie Studios has released screenshots for the first Unreal Engine 4 developed title,. The atmospheric horror-survival title makes use of Epic's latest, new-generation game engine and the team was happy to show off the progress they've made on the title so far.The new screenshots forcome just on the heels of Epic Games announcing full support for the PlayStation 4 . This means that if Zombie Studios wants to portover to the PS4, it'll be a hop, skip and a jump.According to STFU And Play , Zombie Studios recently mentioned in a Q&A that they would love to bring the game to home consoles, but for nowwill be a Steam exclusive...PC Master Race for the win.The game is being designed in a similar vein to the likes ofand. Players will be trapped in a structure that procedurally changes and generates new experiences every time you play the game, so no playthrough will ever be the same the second time through. The real trick is that players will only be armed with a camera to provide light and a way out of the place.Zombie Studios is using the latest tricks and tech from the Unreal Engine 4 to help bring their lo-fi game to life. You can check out the new screenshots of the game below or pay a kind visit to Zombie Studios' Official Website to learn more. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
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The Aviation Herald Last Update: Wednesday, Feb 27th 2019 00:05Z
23848 Articles available
Events from Jun 19th 1999 to Feb 26th 2019 www.avherald.com Incidents and News in Aviation List by: Filter: Incident: Lufthansa A346 at Toronto on Dec 1st 2013 , landed without clearance
By Simon Hradecky, created Tuesday, Dec 17th 2013 19:48Z, last updated Tuesday, Dec 17th 2013 19:49Z A Lufthansa Airbus A340-600, registration D-AIHF performing flight LH-470 from Frankfurt/Main (Germany) to Toronto,ON (Canada) with 307 people on board, was on approach to Toronto's runway 23 but did not switch from approach to tower frequency and consequently did not receive landing clearance, but continued for a safe landing on runway 23.
Canada's TSB reported that the aircraft continued to taxi off the runway for several thousand feet northbound on taxiway H before air traffic control was able to raise the crew on the approach frequency and instruct the crew to stop the aircraft.
NAV Canada reported the aircraft landed on runway 23 without establishing contact with tower, vacated the runway via taxiway H and continued taxi. Tower was able to contact the aircraft via approach frequency and instruct the aircraft to stop, then contact ground. The aircraft stopped just prior to crossing runway 33L and contacted ground.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH470/history/20131201/1240Z/EDDF/CYYZ
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The NFL's opening weekend will attract bets from the average Joe to professional bettors for some of the biggest games.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are nearly favored by double digits on the road against the division rival Cleveland Browns. And the Dallas Cowboys, who will have RB Ezekiel Elliott available, are four-point home favorites against the New York Giants on Sunday Night Football in a game that's already had plenty of line movement.
With so many eye-popping games and so many NFL odds on the move, you'll want to know to what SportsLine's advanced computer model is picking.
SportsLine's Projection Model went an amazing 174-80-2 on straight-up NFL picks last season -- better than all 98 experts tracked by NFLPickWatch.
Every single one.
SportsLine computer picks would have also won over 96 percent of CBS Sports Office Pool Manager pools that made straight up picks last season.
With Week 1 already here, the computer simulated every matchup 10,000 times and came up with some surprising results.
One team the model loves in Week 1: the Atlanta Falcons, who are 6.5-point favorites over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field.
The Bears' defense held the Tennessee Titans' first-string offense scoreless in the first half of the Week 3 preseason game, but SportsLine's model is calling for a 29-19 blowout, with the Falcons winning 72 percent of simulations. Confidently take the defending NFC champions to cover on the road and ignore talk of a Super Bowl hangover.
Another team SportsLine's model loves: the Buffalo Bills. They're 8-point favorites at home against the New York Jets, but SportsLine's advanced computer model has the Bills winning 71 percent of simulations with a projected final score of 27-18. Take the Bills -8, even with WR Jordan Matthews' health in question. SportsLine's simulations say Bills RB LeSean McCoy has over 100 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown in this game.
A shocker: SportsLine's computers say the Washington Redskins defeat the division-rival Philadelphia Eagles 27-23. Why is that shocking? Despite playing at home, the Redskins are one-point underdogs, and the line has moved all the way from Washington -2.5. SportsLine's model calls for TE Jordan Reed to have the best chance to score among Redskins pass-catchers, while Eagles RB LeGarrette Blount rushes for just 34 yards in his debut.
The model is also calling for a home favorite to get absolutely stunned in Week 1, meaning a big payday for anyone who bets on the big-time road underdog.
What NFL picks can you make with confidence in Week 1? Check out the NFL odds below and then visit SportsLine to see which NFL teams are winning more than 50 percent of simulations, plus see which side of Cowboys-Giants is a virtual lock, all from the model that would have won 96 percent of football pools last season, as well as picks from 16 experts.
New York Jets at Buffalo Bills (-8, 40)
Atlanta Falcons at Chicago Bears (+6, 49)
Philadelphia Eagles at Washington Redskins (+1, 48)
Arizona Cardinals at Detroit Lions (+2.5, 48)
Oakland Raiders at Tennessee Titans (-3, 50.5)
Jacksonville Jaguars at Houston Texans (-5.5, 39.5)
Pittsburgh Steelers at Cleveland Browns (+9, 46.5)
Baltimore Ravens at Cincinnati Bengals (-3, 41)
Indianapolis Colts at Los Angeles Rams (-4.5, 41.5)
Seattle Seahawks at Green Bay Packers (-3, 51)
Carolina Panthers at San Francisco 49ers (+4.5, 47.5)
New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys (-4, 47.5)
New Orleans Saints at Minnesota Vikings (-3, 48)
Los Angeles Chargers at Denver Broncos (-3, 43)
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