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The Alexander Wennberg era has begun!
That doesn’t sound nearly as exciting as maybe…the Brandon Saad era, but it cannot be denied that Wennberg’s performance will have a big impact on the Columbus Blue Jackets success, or failure in 2015-16.
When Columbus General Manager Jarmo Kekalainen traded Artem Anisimov to the Chicago Blackhawks in the Saad deal, it signaled that they were prepared to hand the third-line center job over to Wennberg. Despite a lack of fanfare, and the need to add polish to his game, there are a lot of reasons to be excited about Wennberg.
A Slow Start Leads to a Strong Finish
From the very beginning of his rookie season, Wennberg struggled terribly. Through February 28th, his 5-on-5 Corsi For % was 44 along with a PDO of 92.3. His Relative Corsi was a -5, so his possession numbers reflect just how he struggled for much of the season.
As the month of March came around, Wennberg turned his game around in a big way. His Corsi % jumped to 61.6 over the final seventeen games, while his PDO rose to 105.1. The biggest change was to his Relative Corsi which drastically improved to 14.7. Are any of these numbers sustainable? No, but it does show that there is a ton of talent there that just needs time to develop properly.
@Greg_Thornberry Has a good bit to work on yet has much upside. — Chris Wassel (@ChrisWasselDFS) August 20, 2015
The Potential
“…he is an extremely cerebral player, much like a young Pavel Datsyuk.” Aaron Portzline, Columbus Dispatch
The above quote is from a detailed profile written by Aaron Portzline. The full article can be found here.
There isn’t a much better compliment out there than to be compared to Pavel Datsyuk. As nice as that sounds, nobody should be, or is putting those expectations on Wennberg. His skills are definitely there, but still very raw.
The Need
The good news is that the Blue Jackets don’t need Wennberg to be Datsyuk. They just need him to simply build on his late-season momentum and continue his development, while not being a liability in the defensive zone. As the season progresses and the team finds its chemistry, more can be counted on from Wennberg to produce, but there will be a feeling out process for the entire roster.
That being said, Columbus really needs the Swedish product to play around, or above, the production level that they got from Anisimov with his seven goals and twenty-seven points in fifty-two games. These are hardly insurmountable numbers, but any team that has Stanley Cup aspirations needs solid production from all four lines. Sometimes being a third-line center is a thankless job, but it is a crucial one.
An off-ice reason that Wennberg is important is his salary. His cap-hit is only $925,000 for the next two years. On a team that is in salary-cap trouble, being able to bring up young, talented depth is very important. This is one way that the Chicago Blackhawks have been able to maintain their success, as they utilize assets that are still playing on their entry-level contracts.
The Bottom-Line
If the Blue Jackets end up seeing the Alexander Wennberg that they had for the first three-quarters of last season, then they may be in trouble, but if they can bring out his confidence and allow him to show his talent, their forward-depth may be better than even they expected.
Until next time.
For some more Blue Jackets reading, our Mark Scheig sat down with Rob Mixer for an interview. The Q & A can be found here.
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The single greatest and most ambitious such attempt to order knowledge, however, appeared more than two hundred years earlier: the legendary French Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (it initially appeared in 32 huge folio volumes, and is now available online in French in its entirety, and partially in English through an ongoing collaborative translation project). It was not the first encyclopedia. Predecessors date from even before the invention of printing, and proliferated during the Renaissance, as Harvard historian Ann Blair has recently shown. Like present-day encyclopedias, Diderot and d’Alembert’s used alphabetical organization. But as d’Alembert himself explained, in a “Preliminary Discourse” to the work that became one of the key philosophical texts of the Enlightenment, it also aimed “to set forth … the order and connection of the parts of human knowledge.” It did so in several ways: through the “Preliminary Discourse” itself; through a visual “Map of the System of Human Knowledge”; and through a careful system of cross-references between articles. Diderot himself grandly claimed that the work contained all the knowledge necessary to save mankind from a new dark ages (“What gratitude the next generation following such troubled times would feel for the men who had … taken measures against their ravages by protecting the knowledge of centuries past!”).
As historians know well, the Encyclopédie also had strongly polemical intentions. It attempted not just to order knowledge, but to reorient readers away from earlier, avowedly religious systems. It aimed, quite explicitly, to advance toleration, combat religious fanaticism, and promote a spirit of pragmatic, rational inquiry and experimentation. The “Map of Knowledge” deliberately relegated “Religion” to a tiny outcropping, alongside “Superstition,” “Divination,” and “Black Magic.” The learned article “Cannibals” ended with the mischievous cross-reference: “See Eucharist, Communion, Altar, etc.” Not surprisingly, French royal censors nearly shut the project down altogether. But it arguably did more than any other single work of the Enlightenment to change how educated people in the West understood the world they lived in.
In theory, there is no reason a digital encyclopedia could not have ambitions similar to these. A digital “Propaedia” could of course provide hyperlinks to individual Encyclopedia articles, which would work far more efficiently than printed cross-references. But in practice, to have an encyclopedia even try to provide a systematic overview of knowledge requires a fixed, stable body of articles—a discrete edition. After all, if you have the ambition of linking different articles to each other thematically, then each change you make in one article will require changes to several others. Add a new article, and you have to go back and add many new references elsewhere. It was difficult enough for Diderot and d’Alembert to keep control of this process over the course of producing their one edition, which (thanks in part to the censors) took over twenty years to produce. Diderot lamented on more than one occasion that the project had ruined his life. The Encyclopedia Britannica currently has a staff of roughly a hundred full-time editors, not to mention the 4,400 contributors it uses (thank you again, Wikipedia).
For an online encyclopedia, two of the main selling points are comprehensiveness, and being up-to-date. So even with an enterprise that aspires to scholarly standards of accuracy, the size will eventually dwarf that of even the largest paper encyclopedias, while requiring a huge editorial staff to do the (literally) endless revisions. Can one imagine the editors also trying constantly to revise a “map of knowledge,” and editing dozens of related articles and hyperlinks each time they make a single substantive change? It is hard to imagine any such enterprise making enough money to pay the salaries of the army of editors this would all require. The online Britannica, tellingly enough, has no “Propaedia.” On Wikipedia, contributors do constantly try to update many different related articles to take account of new material they introduce. But Wikipedia, of course, has no plan, no system, no map of human knowledge.
It might be argued that mapping out human knowledge has always, necessarily, been a quixotic project, akin to Casaubon’s “Key to All Mythologies.” It is very likely that few readers ever actually delved very deeply into the “Propaedia,” or made much use of Diderot and d’Alembert’s “map” to navigate the wilds of the 32 individual volumes. The vast majority of people who actually consulted these encyclopedias most likely turned straight to the alphabetical articles, to hunt down specific pieces of information. Today, we use the online resources in the same way.
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Islam is restoring traditional British values such as shared responsibility, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said.
In a speech at the annual Living Islam Festival in Lincolnshire on Friday, Williams said Muslims have brought back "open, honest and difficult public discussion" as one of their "greatest gifts" to the UK, The Times reported.
"In Birmingham we have seen a local parish and a mosque combining together to provide family services and youth activities," Williams said.
"It's really important that we respect and try to understand diversity of conscience and belief and conviction. These are not just about what makes us British – they're about what makes us human."
He also criticised some sections of the media for portraying Muslims as "un-British", and bemoaned the "illiteracy" about religion among government figures.
Williams' comments were praised by Muslim groups such as Islamic charity New Horizons. Dilwar Hussain, chairman of the organisation told The Times: "That is a sentiment we would agree with very much.
"We would also be concerned about any of those values being taken to extremes, whether it's communitarianism or individualism."
However, Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, said that the speech could undermine social cohesion.
"Narratives that promote the view that religious belonging is necessary for social responsibility may be comforting to those for whom the promotion of religion is a profession, but in the UK they are totally unsupported by evidence."
Thousands of people will attend Living Islam over the weekend in celebration of Eid, which was marked by Muslims around the world this week at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The discussion programme includes various topics including sectarianism in the UK, religious extremism and sex and relationships.
Hussain maintained that British Muslims have a broad range of tastes and interests and shouldn't be stereotyped as extreme or non-extreme.
Williams stood down as Archbishop of Canterbury to become master of Magdalene College, Cambridge in 2012. In 2008, he came under fire for saying that it was "unavoidable" to apply some aspects of Islamic law in British courts.
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Johannesburg - "I am stress free", former SABC Chief Operating Officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng told mourners at Mandoza's funeral on Friday.
"I hear people saying Hlaudi is stressed. Hlaudi is stress free. If I was stressed, I wouldn't be able to deliver what I want to deliver. Maybe you are stressed yourself because Hlaudi is delivering."
Motsoeneng has been mum following the dismissal for his application for leave to appeal against a ruling to set aside his appointment as the COO at the public broadcaster.
He said it was not the first time he was forced to leave the SABC promising that he would come back to the public broadcaster stronger.
"When people were saying Hlaudi is out, you can't decide for my future. If I leave the SABC, it will not be the first time I left the SABC, and I became stronger and stronger."
Motsoeneng said he had delivered as the COO of the SABC. He said during his tenure, ordinary workers at the SABC were paid earnestly. He said he was happy to go back to the SABC as an ordinary worker.
"When I was born I was an ordinary. I want to make sure that ordinary delivers. It doesn't matter what position I am occupying. When SABC dismissed me it was because I was empowering workers."
Ordinary employee
On Tuesday, Motsoeneng reported for duty at the public broadcaster an "ordinary employee", after the Supreme Court of Appeal rejected his bid for leave to appeal against a High Court ruling that set aside his permanent appointment.
"He tended to his services this morning," his lawyer Zola Majavu told News24 at the time.
The SABC board then recommend to Communications Minister Faith Muthambi that she appoint former COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng as acting COO until December.
This comes after Public Protector Thuli Madonsela found in a report released in February 2014 that Motsoeneng lied about his qualifications when he applied for the post of COO, that he hiked his salary from R1.5m to R2.4m in one year, and purged senior staff.
Despite these adverse findings, Muthambi confirmed his permanent appointment by the board.
In November 2015, the Western Cape High Court found Motsoeneng's appointment was irrational and unlawful and set it aside. The DA brought the application.
The DA got a court order forcing the SABC to hold a disciplinary hearing against him, but he was cleared of the charges in December 2015.
On May 23 this year, Judge Dennis Davis dismissed his application for leave to appeal. Motsoeneng then approached the SCA.
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Deep Silver, video game publisher responsible for games like Dead Island and the Saints Row series, and Red Thread Games have come together to bring us Dreamfall Chapters, a game that displays cyberpunk/fantasy elements. The game follows a gripping story that revolves around three playable characters that are doing the most to save the fabric of reality from falling apart.
The game will include all five episodes for a total of 13 chapters to play through alongside a plethora of challenging puzzles and diverse worlds. The game takes a much more serious tone than the games that Deep Silver is normally known for, but it definitely looks like an interesting decision-based game. If you’d like more information on the game, check out the trailer below. The game is set to release on consoles on March 24 for $29.99.
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WASHINGTON — Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency have been calling their senators to urge them to vote on Friday against the confirmation of Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump's contentious nominee to run the agency, a remarkable display of activism and defiance that presages turbulent times ahead for the EPA.
Many of the scientists, environmental lawyers and policy experts who work in EPA offices around the country say the calls are a last resort for workers who fear a nominee selected to run an agency he has made a career out of fighting — by a president who has vowed to "get rid of" it.
"Mr. Pruitt's background speaks for itself, and it comes on top of what the president wants to do to EPA," said John O'Grady, a biochemist at the agency since the first Bush administration and president of the union representing the EPA's 15,000 employees nationwide.
Nicole Cantello, an EPA lawyer who heads the union in the Chicago area, said: "It seems like Trump and Pruitt want a complete reversal of what EPA has done. I don't know if there's any other agency that's been so reviled. So it's in our interests to do this."
The union has sent emails and posted Facebook and Twitter messages urging members to make the calls.
"It is rare," said James A. Thurber, the director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. "I can't think of any other time when people in the bureaucracy have done this."
The campaign is not likely to succeed. Before Friday's vote, two Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, announced that they would vote for Pruitt's confirmation, and only one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, has said she will oppose him.
But because Civil Service rules make it difficult to fire federal workers, the show of defiance indicates that Pruitt will face strong internal opposition to many of his promised efforts to curtail EPA activities and influence.
"What it means is that it's going to be a bloodbath when Pruitt gets in there," said Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey and the EPA administrator during the first term of President George W. Bush.
Whitman predicted a standoff between career employees and their politically appointed bosses, noting that Pruitt will be blocked by legal Civil Service protections from immediately firing longtime employees but would likely be able to retaliate against them in other ways, such as shifting them to different jobs.
The showdown could embolden the White House and Congress to change federal Civil Service laws.
"The Civil Service is supposed to be a class of experts implementing policy, regardless of politics," said Myron Ebell, a fellow at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, who led Trump's environmental transition team. "If they have now become a special interest group pleading their own agenda, then it is probably time to look at reforming the Civil Service laws."
The revolt has also angered supporters of Pruitt.
"There clearly has been an organized effort to demonize Pruitt and I think that's unfair and unfortunate," said Jeffrey Holmstead, a senior EPA official in the George W. Bush administration who has been mentioned as a possible deputy to Pruitt. "I don't remember, in my time, anything like this. But I think that anyone Trump nominated would be targeted."
"We know that he'll dismantle Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule, but he's not going to go in there and start firing people," said Holmstead, referring to Obama regulations on climate change and water pollution.
Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has sued the EPA at least 14 times, often in concert with the nation's largest fossil fuel companies, to block major environmental regulations. He has questioned human-caused global warming and is a key architect of the national legal effort to dismantle former President Barack Obama's climate change policies.
He has harshly criticized the role of the federal agency, saying much of its authority should be dissolved and left to the states. Pruitt's legal views on environmental protection broadly, and the role of the EPA specifically, appear to line up with Trump's campaign claim that "environmental protection, what they do is a disgrace."
Within days of Pruitt's swearing-in, Trump is expected to sign one or more executive orders aimed at undoing Obama's climate change regulations, and possibly to begin dismantling some EPA offices and programs, according to people familiar with the White House's plans.
While it will be impossible to undo most major rules or programs that quickly, the presidential signatures would authorize Pruitt to cut existing environmental regulations — and, eventually, the jobs of many of the people who enforce them.
Cantello said most of her career at the EPA has been focused on water protection, particularly on cleaning pollution in the Great Lakes.
"I'm afraid all the work I've done will be abandoned," she said.
Cantello and other longtime agency employees said that while they sometimes chafed under the administration of George W. Bush, who sought to loosen some environmental rules, they did not openly rebel against it — nor, they said, did they fear that Bush and his appointees wanted to eliminate the agency.
"I've been here for 30 years, and I've never called my senator about a nominee before," said an EPA employee in North Carolina who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear losing her job.
The calls to senators come on top of an anti-Pruitt protest last week by Chicago EPA employees, and agency workers say that if Pruitt is confirmed, they intend to amplify their resistance to him, taking their case to the American public.
"At this point, it's just, 'call your senator,'" O'Grady, the union president, said. "We plan on more demonstrations, more rallies. I think you will see the employees' union reaching out to NGOs and having alliances with them," he added, referring to nongovernmental organizations. "We're looking at working with PR firms."
The White House and EPA did not respond to emailed questions about the employees' campaign.
The EPA emerged as a Republican political target during the Obama administration, after Obama turned to the agency to muscle through an environmental agenda that could not get through Congress.
While Trump campaigned on slashing Obama-era rules on climate change and waterways, his efforts might also be thwarted by Congress. But the EPA is likely to be at the center of his anti-regulatory agenda.
Experts say it is not surprising that liberal and environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, have campaigned against Pruitt. More than 700 former EPA employees have signed a letter to senators opposing his confirmation.
The Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning group, successfully sued the Oklahoma attorney general's office to release about 3,000 of Pruitt's emails, which they say could reveal more about his close ties with fossil fuel companies. An Oklahoma judge ruled Thursday afternoon that the emails must be released but gave the attorney general's office until Tuesday to comply, long enough to avoid roiling the confirmation vote unless Democrats can persuade Senate Republicans to hold off.
But former EPA officials said the open rebellion by current employees is extraordinary, especially considering that their resistance could backfire once Pruitt arrives on the job.
"EPA staff are pretty careful. They're risk-averse," said Judith Enck, who left the agency last month. "If people are saying and doing things like this, it's because they're really concerned."
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said Wednesday that after his office had received dozens of calls from people both opposing and supporting Pruitt's nomination, including EPA employees, he had not yet decided whether to vote for him.
"I do have concerns about the Great Lakes," he said.
O'Grady said that he expected the calls to continue through Friday's vote.
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Mini Gamma Ray Camera Offers Handheld Nuclear Medicine
By Suzanne Hodsden
Photo courtesy of University of Leicester / University of Nottingham
A team of researchers in the United Kingdom, working to translate space technology into biomedical applications, has designed a miniaturized gamma ray camera. They claim that, because the device is portable, it could be used to diagnose tumors and lymph nodes in intensive care units or operating rooms. Traditional gamma imaging has relied upon a much larger machine that scans the whole body and often occupies its own room.
John Lees, a research scientist working at the University of Leicester (UL), commented in a podcast that a great deal of technology from space could benefit the public. The handheld gamma ray camera, a collaboration between the University of Leicester and the University of Nottingham, is just one example. Lees believes that making the device portable will grant clinicians more diagnostic options and allow for earlier diagnosis of tumors than was previously possible.
“By significantly reducing the size of gamma cameras available we hope to provide far more flexibility for patients and clinicians — the camera doesn’t need a dedicated room and can be used by a patient’s bedside or even in the operating room,” said Sarah Bugby, a postgraduate researcher on Lees’ team, in a press release.
The camera combines optical and gamma imaging, and it offers a small scan field of view (SFOV). The camera works by superimposing a gamma-ray image on top of a visible image, which could allow a surgeon to more precisely locate and remove all cancerous lymph nodes before an operation concluded. This method, said researchers, “paves the way for less intrusive surgery and ensures all cancer cells are removed.”
Gamma probes currently used during surgical procedures, such as breast cancer sentinel node biopsies (SNB), rely on injected radioactive tracers and cannot provide imaging. This disadvantage, according to Lees, often leads to misdiagnosis.
In a study published last year in Physica Medica, researchers from Stanford University compared traditional gamma probes to the gamma ray camera during SNBs and discovered that the handheld camera located nodes that the probes had missed.
“Our system will improve surgical cancer treatments, reducing mortality and morbidity by enabling surgeons to increase lymph or tumor removal efficiency while minimizing damage to normal tissue,” said Lees in a press release.
The Space Research Center at the University of Leicester and Academic Medical Physics at the University of Nottingham have formed a new company called Gamma Technologies. Their goal is to design a line of portable devices that will bring nuclear medicine to the bedside, and the mini gamma ray camera is the first prototype to be clinically tested. They currently are investigating other applications for the device, including thyroid morphology, lymphatic drainage, and lacrimal drainage.
Alan Perkins, a professor of medicine at the University of Nottingham, commented, “This is an exciting project which is taking novel hybrid imaging technology into new clinical areas. This should expand the remit of nuclear medicine for the benefit of patients. Our preliminary clinical studies look very promising indeed.”
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Teams competing with millions of dollars at stake. Season, playoffs and championship rounds featuring the best of the best in heated tournaments until a winner is crowned. And viewership that trumps the NHL.
Forget any type of athletics you’re thinking about, because what I’m talking about is the world of eSports, and more specifically, the upcoming season of “League of Legends,” in which professional gamers have quit their jobs (yes, you can make that much loot!) in order to pursue the title and split the multimillion-dollar prize pool with teammates.
And your mom told you you’d never accomplish anything playing video games. If anything, you should’ve spent more time practicing.
The “League of Legends” regular-season kicks off with the next patch (should be within a week), and according to Riot Games, the company is taking their cues from the sports world in order to deliver a more competitive product.
“Fans have always wanted eSports to be on the same playing field as traditional sports, but it hasn’t really gotten there,” said Dustin Beck, vice president of eSports for Riot. “One of the reasons for that has been a lack of structure. We looked at what the NFL’s doing, what FIFA’s doing, and we created this league that now has consistent programming four days a week, and we’re giving compensation to these teams so they’re actually making legitimate salaries so they can focus on ‘League of Legends’ as their viable career path.”
Players are now living in gaming houses and practicing for events up to 15 hours per day. If only Riot would provide maid services. I can already envision the bottles of Mountain Dew littering the floor.
“Players and fans love eSports, but this structure is really about building the foundation,” said Riot’s senior eSports manager, Whalen Rozelle. “We’re hoping to build a Monday Night Football-type experience where you can see an exciting, high-production-value show. With this structure we are setting up, fans will be able to tune in Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and see their favorite teams play. We created a studio in Los Angeles and hired producers with backgrounds from the NFL and the Olympics in order to do that type of storytelling that they do so well in pro sports.”
One story Riot will be pushing includes the founder of a team whose parents stopped talking to him when he decided to pursue “League of Legends” as a profession. His franchise is now worth more than a million dollars, according to Riot.
“There are so many stories, and we’re really just scratching the surface,” Beck said. “We’re going to have cameras following these players as they qualify for events and move to the gaming houses in L.A. to pursue this as their career.”
It’s a career that includes not only gaming, but media interviews, production schedules, and a strict regimen of practice and strategy sessions.
Added Beck: “With the league, we’ve been able to mimic a traditional sports structure. The season is going to be 11 weeks, and each team is going to play the other teams four times each for a total of 28 games. And then there’s a playoffs, and even an All-Star break where we’re going to fly out the best players from around the globe. We’re going to have this All-Star game in China, with ramifications similar to MLB’s home-field advantage. Then we’re going to have a world championship, with a big announcement coming soon about the venue.
“There have been eSports events in Korea with over 100,000 attendants, and we see that as something in our near-term horizon. For us, it’s go big or go home.”
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FansUnite Week 1 Recap
FansUnite Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 29, 2017
What a whirlwind week this has been for our team. We kicked it off with the World Blockchain Forum in London, where we were selected to present the FansUnite project.
Darius Eghdami, CEO FansUnite, presenting at World Blockchain Forum in London.
The conference was invaluable for our team and we were thrilled with the contacts and partnerships we were able to forge there. Many thanks to Moe Levin and the great work his team did organizing. The rest of our week was chalk-full of meetings with presale investors and potential partners. We can feel the momentum building for our upcoming token sale. Thanks to you all, we could not be more excited about the potential for our platform and where we’re headed in the coming weeks.
Press:
Huffington Post — 19 States Enter the Fray: The Push for Legal Sports Betting
Medium Post — Q&A with FansUnite Founders
Calvin Ayre — FansUnite partners with iGaming experts Segev LLP
BitcoinTalk — FansUnite Official ANN Thread
BitsOnline — Separating Truth from Lies When it Comes to Bitcoin Gambling Profits
What we’re up to next:
The team and myself are currently in Denver, where we’ll be attending Denver Startup Week. We’re also working on the final details of our Bounty Program, so look for that to be announced on our website, bitcointalk announcement and slack channel in the coming days.
Thanks so much for reading and make sure to join our Slack and Telegram groups to stay up to date on all things FansUnite!
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By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website
Guantanamo Bay has been at the centre of the debate on civil liberties Sir Ken Macdonald, the outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, said in his final speech on 20 October: "We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom's back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security state." But as governments react to the changing threats posed since the 2001 terror attacks on the US, what has been the impact on civil liberties in western societies? Guantanamo Bay, military tribunals, renditions, water-boarding, warrantless surveillance - all these have been part of US policy since 9/11. In the UK, meanwhile, detention without charge for 28 days (and an attempt to extend that to 42 days), control orders and more data collection are now facts of life. These measures demonstrate that the system of protecting civil liberties has creaked and sometimes cracked in two of the countries most at threat from terrorist attacks. "For the first couple of years after 9/11, the Bush administration fought terrorism without regard for human rights," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch in New York. But in the last two years, Mr Roth said, there had been "a reaffirmation of human rights and a scaling back of the worst abuses". Mr Roth said upholding human rights was a better way of improving security "[US President George W] Bush said the secret CIA sites would be closed temporarily and it seems they have not been used since. "Congress has laid down that inhumane treatment should not be used anywhere in the world and the US army produced a good field manual on interrogation which should now be extended to the CIA as well. "The CIA lives in its own world, however. This remains a big issue for the next US president. "So does Guantanamo, which should be closed and the detainees either tried in the US or released." Aiming for balance For many governments, the key issue has been how to balance civil liberties against civil security. British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said earlier this year: "The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 strikes the right balance between safeguarding society and safeguarding the rights of the individual." Britain has been successful in prosecuting cases through the normal courts. There has been no recourse, as there was in Northern Ireland, to abolish jury trials. But there has been controversy. Jacqui Smith says current anti-terror legislation strikes the right balance The balance in the UK recently swung back when, after strong opposition, the government dropped its proposal to extend no-charge detention for up to 42 days. Under the Human Rights Act that incorporates the European Human Rights Convention into British law, UK courts have also held up the deportation of suspects to countries where torture might be used against them. This is currently under appeal. Britain still hopes to develop a huge database of e-mail and telephone traffic, collecting addresses and numbers that could be used to track terrorist contacts - something opponents fear will be used on so-called fishing expeditions by intelligence services. It is also still using control orders (currently imposed on 16 people) though again the courts have set limits, for example to the hours someone can be confined indoors. The Bush approach President Bush, on the other hand, tends to use the word "balance" in a different way. In his State of the Union address in January he said: "This war is more than a clash of arms - it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance." In such a war, he feels, strong methods are required. He can argue that he has stopped any further major attacks since 9/11. George W Bush has made tightening up US borders a priority American tactics often impact externally because that is where the main threats to the US have come from, as on 9/11 itself. There is the additional constraint from the US constitution internally, which requires the normal use of the criminal law. Therefore, tightening up US borders has been a priority. The latest device is to require of EU countries that they send no less than 19 sets of details about air passengers, including details of any special diets requested and credit cards used. The threat to the UK has more often come from internal sources, usually from young Muslim men radicalised by religion and world events. Britain also has a large population with a family background in Pakistani Kashmir, where a tradition of militancy against India can easily be swung into antagonism against the West. Therefore, British anti-terrorism strategy has concentrated more on internal threats. As well as the intelligence and police campaigns against actual perpetrators, this strategy has added political, educational and persuasive tactics to prevent people from turning to terrorism in the first place. A new round of discussions about the direction of this strategy is to begin in January. 'Terrorist narrative' In a major speech about new trends in terrorism on 15 October, Ms Smith said: "This new terrorism actively seeks to recruit people in this country and to subvert our institutions. "It has a detailed public narrative that claims to justify the killing of civilians. But it has more than this - it also has the electronic means to disseminate that narrative very quickly and very widely." While critical of the lengthy no-charge detention period in the UK, Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch also criticised France, which he said has too low a threshold for evidence, including hearsay. This can lead to a lengthy detention under the holding charge of "criminal association". In his opinion, the country which seems to come out best is Spain. "Despite the [Basque separatist group] ETA threat and the Madrid bombings, Spain has in many ways proved to be a model among governments because it has prosecuted in the usual way," said Mr Roth. This, he said, supported his argument that security and human rights are not at opposite ends of the spectrum: Maintenance of human rights is a better way of improving security. "Abuses are a boon to terrorist recruiters," said Mr Roth. "There has been a recognition that the breaking of terrorist conspiracies depends less on interrogation than on the cooperation of the public. "If the public sees itself as complicit in a dirty war, especially if a community identifies itself with the suspects, that makes it harder." Breaking the rules How is this all seen by the Human Rights Commissioner for the Council of Europe (COE), the body that oversees the European Convention on Human Rights, the bedrock of human rights in its 47 member states? The commissioner is Thomas Hammarberg, a Swede who once headed Amnesty International. "I think that governments have tried to stretch and break the rules," he said. "The proposed British 42-day legislation was not in the spirit of the Human Rights convention." I think that governments have tried to stretch and break the rules
Thomas Hammarberg
COE Human Rights Commissioner He added that the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay broke trial procedures. "The defendant should be able to see all evidence," said Mr Hammarberg. "There should be well-founded grounds for any detention. "As for the 'balance' concept, I avoid the word. Human rights and civil liberties should apply in all situations. Rights are most relevant when there is a threat or a crisis. "I am extremely worried about the data protection aspect the moment. The danger is that there will be more trawls through the data bases according to pre-determined profiles. This is already happening. He said he was also concerned by the EU agreeing to supply the US with details about air travellers. Not everyone sees data bases and other intelligence-gathering operations in a dark light. Dr Philip Davies, a security expert and lecturer at the UK's Brunel University in London said a data base for e-mail and phone calls was not a "vacuum cleaner". "It is a microscope," he said. "You have to understand that to get at a few bits of information you have to gather lots if it. The civil liberties argument is certainly overstated. "It is not unreasonable to try to keep track of certain communications. Critics often talk about the fantastically improbable as if going after one intercept is going after them all." Data collection is shaping up to be another battleground. [email protected]
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In 2014, Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues at the University of Montreal published a stunning paper introducing the world to GANs, or generative adversarial networks. Through an innovative combination of computational graphs and game theory they showed that, given enough modeling power, two models fighting against each other would be able to co-train through plain old backpropagation.
The models play two distinct (literally, adversarial) roles. Given some real data set R, G is the generator, trying to create fake data that looks just like the genuine data, while D is the discriminator, getting data from either the real set or G and labeling the difference. Goodfellow’s metaphor (and a fine one it is) was that G was like a team of forgers trying to match real paintings with their output, while D was the team of detectives trying to tell the difference. (Except that in this case, the forgers G never get to see the original data — only the judgments of D. They’re like blind forgers.)
In the ideal case, both D and G would get better over time until G had essentially become a “master forger” of the genuine article and D was at a loss, “unable to differentiate between the two distributions.”
In practice, what Goodfellow had shown was that G would be able to perform a form of unsupervised learning on the original dataset, finding some way of representing that data in a (possibly) much lower-dimensional manner. And as Yann LeCun famously stated, unsupervised learning is the “cake” of true AI.
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An Editorial from Natalia Lozano, a Colombian International Relations Specialist
Will this time be any different?
After reaching a partial agreement on land reform, the Colombian government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) representatives in Havana have jumped to the second point of the Agenda for the End of the Conflict: political participation.
As one might expect, the topic has sparked a verbose and polarized debate. How can the FARC be incorporated into civil society? Who of the FARC leadership should be accepted in a government building, and who should be judged in a courtroom?
Throughout all of this, a bloody chapter of Colombia’s history looms large, silently reminding everyone that the most difficult aspect is not bringing guerillas into government, but rather, making sure the former enemies (from both sides of the conflict) do not continue the battle from the inside.
The Death of the Party
After all, there is precedent for all of this.
The 1980s peace negotiations between the Belisario Betancur government (1982-1986) and the FARC gave birth to the Patriotic Union (UP)—a left-wing alternative to the traditional power structure, intended to be the political vehicle of the FARC; a vehicle that would drive the conflict away from the battlefield.
That never happened, and few members of the UP survived to explain why not.
The new party was initially successful in the 1986 and 1988 elections. From the Communist Party to students to the generally disaffected, the UP received immediate and significant support.
That is when the killing started. Shortly after the electoral victories, members and sympathizers of the UP started to be harassed by right-wing paramilitaries linked to the armed forces. One by one, the assassinations continued until more than 3,500 had died, including two presidential candidates. Many others fled their homes in terror.
The killings blatantly violated initial accords that had paved the way for the UP, as the Colombian government had promised to assure the requisite safety to allow the party to function. Underscoring this obvious failure, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found admissible an allegation presented against Colombia for political genocide against the UP party in 1997.
In spite of the wave of violence, a degree of public support continued. Colombians elected three UP congressmen and one senator in the 1991 legislative elections. But this humble victory could not mask the party’s death march towards extinction. In 2002, the UP failed to win sufficient votes to continue on ballots, and it dissolved as a political party, remaining only as a persuasive argument for guerrillas to refuse to give up their guns.
The Odd Couple
Earlier this month, however, in a move intended to resonate in Havana, the Council of State restored the UP’s legal status, acknowledging that UP’s failure was due to systematic persecution and the assassination of its members. The decision of the court not only recognizes the slaughter that UP members suffered, but it also encourages the reactivation of the political movement.
Nevertheless, the UP denies (at least for now) that it would serve as the political platform for the FARC. The president of the party, Omel Calderón, views this moment as an opportunity to consolidate a coalition of leftist parties, but the UP might well end up competing with the FARC, who have their own organizations poised to participate in politics if an agreement in Havana is struck (at least according to Calderón).
Iván Márquez, a FARC leader and former militant of the UP, describes the resurrection of the UP as a belated act of justice. But he did not say that the FARC would consider the UP as a vehicle to conduct politics. The guerrilla leader believes that their political future lies in “a convergence of forces and sectors that take the reins of the transition to state terrorism to real democracy.”
The FARC acknowledge the rejection they provoke from Colombian society. They need to talk convergence, because without it they have no political future.
Thus, convergence between the UP and the FARC seems natural—except, that is, to themselves. The recently reborn UP is reluctant to assume the heavy political baggage of the FARC.
As for the FARC, they may prefer their own search for a new face without the scars of yesterday’s political failure.
What happened to the UP was the result of an unhealthy union between violence and politics. Refusing to lay down their weapons, the FARC sacrificed the UP. Nonetheless, the annihilation of an entire generation that sought to fight in the congress rather than in the Colombian countryside cannot be explained away that simply.
In the end, the biggest loser has been Colombian democracy.
Natalia Lozano trained in the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and writes for CON-TEXTO TADEISTA in Bogotá. She currently lives in Bogotá, Colombia.
Recently by Natalia
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A Bitter Cup of Coffee
No Se Mancha Covers Colombia
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Colombia Battles for Peace – Maybe this is the Problem (Natalia Lozano)
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We all know health care in the U.S. is too expensive. But is it really that bad? Yes.
This graphic by National Geographic is the best we’ve seen at summarizing the three facets of the problem: Cost, results, and access.
If you haven’t seen this sort of graph before, some explanation is in order. On the left are several countries, arranged on an axis showing annual per capita spending on health care. To the right is average life expectancy.
Thus, the lines between the two axes show a country’s cost of health care, and the health of its citizens. Ideally, you’d like to be sloping up; sloping down, and you’re not getting much for your money.
The U.S.? We don’t even fit on the chart.
Meanwhile, the graphic also gets at the problem of health-care access. The thickness of each line shows how often residents see a doctor. Japan and Czech Republic, for example, seem to make it easy. The U.S., not so much.
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EMBED >More News Videos Caleb Green, 4, of Chicago, read 100 books in one day.
A 4-year-old Chicago boy read 100 books in one day - and now people and organizations are coming forward to donate more books to him. They are also donating books to get other kids reading.Caleb Green is still at it, reading any book he can get his hands on. Books about Ninja Turtles are his favorites, but it's his enthusiasm about reading that has stuck a chord with people who saw his story."Everywhere we go in Chicago, people are like, 'Are you the little boy who read 100 books?' He's like, 'Yeah!'" said Sylus Green, Caleb's father.We first told you about Caleb on Sunday , a day after he read 100 books. His parents decided to stream it on Facebook Live.It got a couple thousand views from people as far away as Florida, and it also caught the eye of local children's book publisher, Albert Whitman and Company."Our whole office was cheering Caleb on. We thought it was a great idea," said Lisa White, of Albert Whitman and Company.So they brought several books Caleb and his 7-year old sister, Jael, can add to their library. Caleb's father says the community response has been overwhelming from people who want to help, and people who need help."People are saying, if you get books, our school library is depleted. Our kids would love books," Caleb's father said.So he called on local author Candace Edwards, who donated 500 copies of her children's book, "I Love My Skin," that Caleb and his family will give to schools throughout the South Side."Not everybody can afford to fill up their child's book shelves even teachers need help filling up their book shelves. So, why not help?" Edwards said.In the meantime, Caleb still reads several books a day.Secretary of State Jesse White was so impressed with Caleb that he invited him and his family to an African American heritage event next month so they can be honored.
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The launch of Bulldozer in October wasn't exactly a success for AMD. In our review, Anand ended up recommending the Intel i5-2500K over AMD FX-8150. One of the reasons behind the poor performance of Bulldozer is its unique design: each Bulldozer module consists of two integer and one floating point core. Todays operating systems don't know how to optimally schedule threads for this design and as a result, the full potential of Bulldozer has not been achieved. Microsoft has released a hotfix for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 that should increase the performance of Bulldozer.
Let's look at the problem to see what happened and how the hotfix helps address it. Before the update, Windows didn't know how to ideally schedule threads on Bulldozer. Essentially, it didn't know when it was good to place threads on single module versus multiple modules.
The picture above explains this pretty well. Before the update, Windows more or less randomly placed the threads which meant many modules were unnecessarily active at the same time. This capped the maximum Turbo speeds because those can only be achieved when some of the modules are inactive (power gated).
VR-Zone is claiming that Windows sees one Bulldozer module as a single multi-threaded core, similar to an Intel Hyper-Threading core. Basically, your 8-core FX-8150 is seen as a quad-core, 8-thread CPU—just like Intel's i7-2600K for instance. This goes against AMD's design and marketing because Bulldozer is closer to an 8-core CPU.
We have not yet tested Bulldozer with the hotfix, but don't expect miracles as Microsoft is suggesting a 2-7% increase. Better scheduling for the Bulldozer CPUs will improve performance a bit, but not enough to close the gap in many scenarios. Windows 8 already has the new thread scheduler, and according to AMD's own and third party tests the performance increase is up to around 10%, but Bulldozer needs a lot more than 10% to surpass Sandy Bridge.
Update: VR-Zone reports (and we can confirm) that the download link for the hotfix is no longer functional. There were apparently unexpected performance drops in some cases after applying the hotfix and Microsoft is investigating the issues. Modifying the scheduler in Windows is not something to be done lightly, as it changes a core element of the OS, so more testing and validation for such updates is always a good idea.
Update 2: Apparently there is a second part to the hotfix that was not pushed live, and this hotfix was pushed live prematurely.
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UHD is dead. Not really, but it would seem that displays bigger than UHD/4K will soon be coming to market. The ability of being able to stitch two regular sized outputs into the same panel is now being exploited even more as Dell has announced during its Modern Workforce livestream about the new ‘5K’ Ultrasharp 27-inch display. The ‘5K’ name comes from the 5120 pixels horizontally, but this panel screams as being two lots of 2560x2880 in a tiled display.
5120x2880 at 27 inches comes out at 218 PPI for a total of 14.7 million pixels. At that number of pixels per inch, we are essentially looking at a larger 15.4-inch Retina MBP or double a WQHD ASUS Zenbook UX301, and seems right for users wanting to upgrade their 13 year old IBM T220 for something a bit more modern.
Displays Sorted by PPI Product Size / in Resolution PPI Pixels LG G3 5.5 2560x1440 534 3,686,400 Samsung Galaxy S5 5.1 1920x1080 432 2,073,600 HTC One Max 5.9 1920x1080 373 2,073,600 Apple iPhone 5S 4 640x1136 326 727,040 Apple iPad mini Retina 7.9 2048x1536 324 2,777,088 Google Nexus 4 4.7 1280x768 318 983,040 Google Nexus 10 10 2560x1600 300 4,096,000 Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro 13.3 3200x1800 276 5,760,000 ASUS Zenbook UX301A 13.3 2560x1440 221 3,686,400 Apple Retina MBP 15" 15.4 2880x1800 221 5,184,000 Dell Ultrasharp 27" 5K 27 5120x2880 218 14,745,600 Nokia Lumia 820 4.3 800x480 217 384,000 IBM T220/T221 22.2 3840x2400 204 9,216,000 Dell UP2414Q 24 3840x2160 184 8,294,400 Dell P2815Q 28 3840x2160 157 8,294,400 Samsung U28D590D 28 3840x2160 157 8,294,400 ASUS PQ321Q 31.5 3840x2160 140 8,294,400 Apple 11.6" MacBook Air 11.6 1366x768 135 1,049,088 LG 34UM95 34 3440x1440 110 4,953,600 Korean 27" WQHD 27 2560x1440 109 3,686,400 Sharp 8K Prototype 85 7680x4320 104 33,177,600
Dell has been pretty quiet on the specifications, such as HDMI or DisplayPort support, though PC Perspective is reporting 16W integrated speakers. If the display is using tiling to divide up the transport workload over two outputs, that puts the emphasis squarely on two DP 1.2 connections. There is no mention of frame rates as of yet, nor intended color goals.
Clearly this panel is aimed more at workflow than gaming. This is almost double 4K resolution in terms of pixels, and 4K can already bring down the majority of graphics cards to their knees, but we would imagine that the content producer and prosumer would be the intended market. Word is that this monitor will hit the shelves by Christmas, with a $2500 price tag.
Source: Dell
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In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. The results were astounding: Everyone in the vaccine group acquired immunity to malaria; everyone in a non-vaccinated comparison group did not, and developed malaria when exposed to the parasites later. The study was only a small proof-of-principle test, and its approach is not practical on a large scale. However, it shows that scientists may finally be on the right track to developing an effective vaccine against one of mankind's top killers. A vaccine that uses modified live parasites just entered human testing."Malaria vaccines are moving from the laboratory into the real world," Dr. Carlos Campbell wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. He works for PATH, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health, a Seattle-based global health foundation.The new study "reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing" agent, even though it is harder to develop a vaccine this way and other leading candidates take a different approach, he wrote.Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa. Infected mosquitoes inject immature malaria parasites into the skin when they bite; these travel to the liver where they mature and multiply. From there, they enter the bloodstream and attack red blood cells — the phase that makes people sick.People can develop immunity to malaria if exposed to it many times. The drug chloroquine can kill parasites in the final bloodstream phase, when they are most dangerous. Scientists tried to take advantage of these two factors, by using chloroquine to protect people while gradually exposing them to malaria parasites and letting immunity develop.They assigned 10 volunteers to a "vaccine" group and five others to a comparison group. All were given chloroquine for three months, and exposed once a month to about a dozen mosquitoes — malaria-infected ones in the vaccine group and non-infected mosquitoes in the comparison group.That was to allow the "vaccine" effect to develop. Next came a test to see if it was working.All 15 stopped taking chloroquine. Two months later, all were bitten by malaria-infected mosquitoes. None of the 10 in the vaccine group developed parasites in their bloodstreams; all five in the comparison group did.The study was done in a lab at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and was funded by two foundations and a French government grant."This is not a vaccine" as in a commercial product, but a way to show how whole parasites can be used like a vaccine to protect against disease, said one of the Dutch researchers, Dr. Robert Sauerwein."It's more of an in-depth study of the immune factors that might be able to generate a very protective type of response," said Dr. John Treanor, a vaccine specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who had no role in the study.The concept already is in commercial development. A company in Rockville, Md. — Sanaria Inc. — is testing a vaccine using whole parasites that have been irradiated to weaken them, hopefully keeping them in an immature stage in the liver to generate immunity but not cause illness.Two other reports in the New England Journal show that resistance is growing to artemisinin, the main drug used against malaria in the many areas where chloroquine is no longer effective. Studies in Thailand and Cambodia found the malaria parasite is less susceptible to artemisinin, underscoring the urgent need to develop a vaccine.
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Animal feces, if handled irresponsibly, can and does make people sick. Millions of children in Africa and other parts of the developing world die each year from diarrhea caused by poor sanitation and water contaminated by animal waste. These are serious issues that need to be addressed in responsible ways so that children do not die avoidable deaths. I am not condoning that we we live in a world where crap runs down sidewalks and flows untreated into our rivers. What I’m hoping for is that humans can develop a healthier understanding about both the benefits and shortcomings of animal waste and as a result promote rational and sustainable techniques, policies and ideas that allow us to relate with poop in ways that maximize its advantages and minimize its risks.
At Rancho Mastatal we think and talk a lot about our impact. We look for ways to build using local and natural resources, produce our own energy, improve our community’s health, save money and ameliorate the fertility of our soils. The sustainable solutions to all of these goals are in part hidden in the dark, rich world of animal poop, and when handled responsibly and intelligently provide answers to how humans can start shifting, and shitting, towards a more healthy relationship with our bodies and our planet.
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Aivars Lembergs, mayor of the Latvian port city of Ventspils, has proposed a ban on American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros. According to RIA News, Lembergs’ proposal will extend beyond preventing Soros himself from stepping foot in the Baltic state, to include a ban on all Soros-related organizations in the country.
The prominent Latvian politician’s ire was incited by Soros’ “anti-state activity”—specifically, Soros’ encouragement of refugee acceptance in the small Baltic country of two million people.
Lembergs stated there is plenty of evidence on the Internet suggesting Soros has spent hundreds of thousands of euros to popularize the notion of receiving refugees.
“Soros finances propaganda of the acceptance of refugees,” Lembergs explained. “In Latvia, he has Delna and Providus, which I have always said are absolutely anti-state organizations. Propaganda of the acceptance of the refugees—which eventually will lead to social, economic problems and to the security threats—is anti-sate activity.”
Latvian-based Delna positions itself as an organization fighting for government “transparency,” and Providus a “center for public policy.”
“I think that, in Latvia, it is necessary to prohibit the spending of Soros’ money, prohibiting organizations that participate in such campaigns—because it threatens national security. George Soros must be outlawed in Latvia. He must be banned from entering the country, the same way we banned the Russian singers. He should be equated to the Russian singers,” the Latvian politician said.
(Certain Russian singers are banned in Latvia for their “support of Russian imperialism.”)
In an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Soros said that, in the near future, the European Union will face new tests and shocks associated with migrants. According to Soros, although the migration crisis is winding down, the relief is only temporary. Soon, the number of migrants coming to Europe will increase, he said, and the European attitude toward them will deteriorate.
In his outburst against the billionaire, Lembergs pointed out that, not long ago, the campaign to promote refugee acceptance was held in Latvia.
“A year and a half ago, in Latvia, the acceptance of refugees was actively promoted. This propaganda was pushed by the organizations controlled by Soros and by ‘Sorosists’ in different political parties. The largest number of ‘Sorosists’ exist in the Unity party,” Lembergs said. “I call on the government of Latvia—and first of all on the Minister for Foreign Affairs—to declare George Soros persona non grata in the interests of the national security in Latvia.”
Lembergs belongs to the “Union of Greens and Peasants” party of Latvia, and is one of the richest men of the country.
Earlier this year, the BBC reported that the Latvian refugee quota, as established by the EU, was 531 people—but, still, 78.3 percent of Latvian citizens opposed their arrival. When the first two refugee families from Eretria and Syria arrived in Latvia at the beginning of the year, 300 people flooded the streets in protest.
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“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” HL Mencken
And so it is that the rigged conference has taken place, the leadership has secured its victory (though it may well be a Pyrrhic victory) and the opposition has been crushed. Rage and despair will be the natural reactions; however, it’s a good time to pause a moment and take stock.
The leadership is morally bankrupt
Let’s be blunt. The most pressing issue facing the SWP is simply this – is it a safe place? On the face of things, no; on the face of things, the majority of delegates today don’t think that is at all important.
To recap, this starts off with the allegation of sexual harassment made against “Delta”, the then national secretary of the party, in 2010. Comrade W took her complaint to the Central Committee, the result of which was Delta having to accept a demotion. Although the SWP grapevine is quite efficient, this was all that most comrades knew – that Delta had had an affair which ended badly, and he had behaved inappropriately. At the time the talk wasn’t of rape; at the time, people outside the district didn’t know just how young Comrade W was – that this case involved someone who was effectively a schoolgirl. However, the very fact that Delta – basically the leader of the party at that point – was forced to take a demotion indicated that those people in the leadership who knew the details knew that things weren’t right. They knew Delta had misbehaved badly. They can hardly deny it now, though that won’t stop them trying.
And then there was the 2011 conference. Where Delta – demoted, but still on the CC – gave a cringeworthy ten-minute speech in his own justification, followed by a (highly orchestrated) standing ovation, complete with clapping and chanting. A lot of comrades didn’t like that. Equally, and even without knowing all the details, they didn’t like the hectoring of Comrade W’s supporters that took place that year. This is important background – things were bad before we knew this was a rape complaint.
Which brings us to the Disputes Committee. With the best will in the world, and even assuming that DC members could put aside any unconscious bias (not necessarily an assumption that outsiders would be willing to make), the DC is simply not competent to hold a quasi-criminal hearing into an allegation of rape. It doesn’t dispose of any forensic resources, isn’t composed of legal professionals… and, perhaps more importantly, can’t impose any sanctions beyond expulsion. The Chinese Communist Party can lock up Bo Xilai; the SWP Disputes Committee doesn’t have any such powers at its disposal, thankfully. If a woman comrade makes an allegation of rape, the DC should gently explain that they aren’t in a position to hold a rape investigation, and should encourage her to go to a rape crisis centre and/or the police. The DC, as something analogous to a professional ethics body, is only competent to rule on whether or not an individual is fit to be a member of the party, or at least to hold a leading role in it.
One further point: it isn’t a punishment to not be a member of the leadership. The party chooses who is an appropriate individual to represent it. This needs restating for the benefit of those comrades who seem to believe in a Divine Right of Delta.
Well, the DC made its decision, and this was accepted (just) by conference. Two things, though, are important. The first is that Comrade W, who had expressed a desire to speak to conference, not only was not allowed to do so, but was not even allowed to enter the hall and listen. This is a pretty appalling way to treat a vulnerable young woman who has already been bullied for making a complaint against a leader of the party. The second point is that the vote was incredibly close – roughly 51% yes to 45% no, with 4% indicating an abstention and many delegates simply sitting on their hands in shock. The “majority” for accepting the DC report was actually one of less than two in five delegates. And this was in a context where no amendments or supplementary motions were accepted – delegates were simply allowed a straight up-and-down vote where they could either accept or reject the DC report in its entirety. Not very impressive.
And that’s before taking into account this weekend’s revelations about a further case involving a woman comrade who was beaten and raped by her district organiser. If anything, the news report understates how bad that case was. What is true is that the organiser, having been found guilty by the DC, was expelled for two years. Two years. That’s the same penalty that was handed out to the Facebook Four for an online discussion about how inadequately the party was handling the Delta case; a discussion where they decided not to form a faction and, in a Kafkaesque twist, were expelled for “factionalism”. Hell, Andy Wilson was expelled for life for proposing to set up a cultural magazine. What sort of organisation has such skewed priorities?
The obvious answer is, an organisation which feels that the ends justify the means absolutely; that in the cause of the socialist revolution (or at least maintaining the current leadership in their positions of power; the CC doesn’t distinguish the two) the only thing that matters is the preservation of authority. If Delta is a good organiser who is crucial to the perspective, he must be protected – nay, even restored to the CC as soon as they can get away with it. Most of the doubts about his behaviour – say, whether it is appropriate for the leader of the party to use his position to try it on with teenage girls – are ruled out of court as “bourgeois morality”. And the victims in all this are simply collateral damage.
It’s the logical end of a process of dehumanisation, of chewing people up and spitting them out. I once remonstrated – quite mildly in retrospect – with a senior CC member about the party’s habit of losing good people by way of the apparat’s casual use of bullying and slander to get their way. “You have to understand,” he explained, “it’s unfortunate, but some people just couldn’t carry the perspective.” I wish I’d had the nerve at the time to tell him what an utter [redacted] he was. But then, we didn’t know then what we know now.
The leadership is politically weak
This is the context for the rebellion in the ranks, and it’s been heartening to see so many comrades saying that this is something they can’t possibly defend. Indeed, the fact that the mishandling of the rape complaint is indefensible is itself demonstrated by the fact that the leadership and their proxies haven’t even tried to defend it. The most “substantial” justification from the CC is Professor Callinicos’ Socialist Review article, which merely refers, opaquely and in passing, to a “difficult disciplinary case”, before going on to discuss how the SWP’s Leninism is being threatened by reformist and movementist currents, the former represented by TV’s Owen Jones (here Alex reveals the little-known fact that young master Jones is a member of the Labour Party) and the latter by former SWP CC member “Donny Mayo”, who has since thrown in his lot with Counterfire and is therefore a proxy target for John Rees, the party’s current numero uno Emmanuel Goldstein figure. (Paul D’Amato has a good response here, perhaps a better one than the article deserves.)
None of this is particularly germane to the issue in hand – the party’s disastrous mishandling of the disciplinary case Alex wants to gloss over – but it has provided a useful script for the CC’s supporters. If you read through the monstrous pre-conference bulletin, the contributions of CC supporters are notable for completely avoiding the issue and banging on instead about Leninism!!!, and how the opposition have deviated from it. This is our 1903 moment, they declare, when the Bolsheviks have to split with the Mensheviks. Quite what the Delta case has to do with Leninism is anyone’s guess, but the obvious conclusion is that this is a way of dignifying a fairly insubstantial argument. There’s also the unintentionally hilarious argument that the opposition want to exchange the SWP’s tried-and-tested way of doing things for the model of Syriza, which of course is so much less successful than the SWP.
Indeed, there is a pronounced tone of brittle defensiveness all the way through the discussion. The same has been true in party meetings. The 1980s generation, the backbone of the CC’s support, have dusted off their polemics about building our ideological defences to keep us from sinking into the swamp. In particular, this means acting as if thirty-year-old arguments over Women’s Voice are the last word on feminism; the idea that if you don’t agree with Sharon Smith’s articles it’s at least worth engaging with them seems to have completely passed them by. Better to deploy the bell, book and candle.
But actually, most of this is really sub-political. It amounts to the CC yelling “Respect our authoritah!” and then deploying every trick in the book to win the vote.
It begins with CC members – Callinicos, Kimber, Bradley et al – touring the branches and lying through their teeth to the members. This, sad to say, is not unexpected. We’ve also seen Party Notes turned into a factional publication, without of course offering any sort of right of reply.
There has been the punishment of party workers – Hannah Dee, one of the few leading members to command genuine respect and affection from the rank and file, was unceremoniously dumped from the CC purely for disagreeing with how the rape allegation was handled, and then found that her employment with the party had been terminated. There have been reports of bullying at the centre; the student office either is not communicating with SWSS groups or has ceased to function altogether.[1]
We’ve seen, in the pre-conference discussion, CC supporters openly referring to the opposition as scabs and narks. As for Donny Gluckstein’s ramblings about MI5, it pains me to get Yiddish on his ass, but he’s a shonda to his father.
There’s been the practice of winner-takes-all delegate selection, where if the CC loyalists had a bare majority in a district, they scooped 100% of the delegates from that district. Particular Stakhanovite exertions were observed in Glasgow and Sheffield, and one hopes the CC appreciates the efforts of Dave “The Hatchet” Sherry and Mad Maxine Bowler. Dave and Maxine, incidentally, sit on the Disputes Committee, which is supposed to protect party members from the arbitrary use of power by leading comrades.
And then there was that little stunt at the faction caucus, when a posse of CC members and hangers-on appeared to demand entrance. It was, apparently, unheard of for a faction to have a closed meeting. Let’s leave aside the fact that at the January conference, the CC held a “supporters’ meeting” which excluded oppositionists, and even one member of the CC’s own election slate. Let’s leave aside the likelihood that they intended to disrupt the caucus. The shocking thing was the appearance of Chanie Rosenberg and Anna Gluckstein, the founder of the party’s nonagenarian widow and his daughter:
It’s hard to think of a tactic more apolitical than this. The only possible reason for bringing Chanie along was to dare the opposition to close the door on the Mother of the Party. One is inevitably driven to think of Stalin wheeling out the elderly Krupskaya to lend himself moral authority; and it does a tremendous disservice to the memory of Cliff, who really despised the whole idea of personality cults, let alone a cult of his family.
A leadership that deploys tactics like this is a leadership that has no confidence in its ability to win an actual argument. It is hard to disagree with Ian B’s assessment that:
I have the impression of a very weak leadership panicking but unable to break out of a purely defensive stance… The CC fought like cats at conference to retain the leadership, but do not seem to be offering any way forward.
Eppur si muove
If there’s been one thing that’s characterised the CC’s response over recent weeks, it’s been the reversion to technophobia. From Callinicos talking about the “dark side of the internet” – as if socialists who disagree with Alex Callinicos are on a moral level with 411 scammers – to the repeated insistence in pre-conference aggregates that “the blog” was the source of the party crisis. The latter is a clear case of shooting the messenger, and is more than a little reminiscent of Cardinal Law declaring a fatwa against the Boston Globe. It’s also rather funny in that the opposition have been very disciplined online in the pre-conference period, while CC loyalists have been extremely prolific (if not very convincing) in their online appearances.
It strikes me, again, that the SWP leadership don’t get the digital revolution at all. They still have a commandist model based on a not very accurate apprehension of what the Bolsheviks were doing a century ago, with an omniscient Central Committee and a paper that pronounces “the line”. On the contrary, the internet is corrosive of all hierarchies; it points the way towards a style of organising that is much less vertical and much more horizontal (and not in the Skegness rally sense); that we now live in a world where activists are both hyperconnected and can share information instantaneously. Above all, it means the party can’t keep its dirty little secrets to itself the way it used to.
The positive side of this – and the thing that drove the CC absolutely nuts – was that a very large element of the party membership (a) exercised its critical faculties and (b) self-organised. The comrades of the IDOOP faction didn’t wait for the CC to graciously grant them permission to organise; they did it. This is still a way of thinking that is alien to the SWP leadership, and probably has been since the late Pete Sedgwick departed.
It’s also true that the rape case – awful as that has been – has become a lightning rod for all sorts of other submerged issues. There are many people in the SWP who are sick of being lied to, being bullied, being treated as cannon fodder for the permanent leadership’s Ponzi schemes. The older ones remember when the party was better – hell, they remember that the IS of forty years ago was a good deal larger and more influential than the SWP of today. They also realise how toxic this situation is, and how it’s tarnishing Cliff’s legacy. The younger ones are of a generation that doesn’t accept authority without question.
What next? I certainly don’t have any quick and easy answers. If the good comrades aren’t to be lost to politics entirely, we will need to go through a long process of thinking, writing and discussing. What is clear, though, is that the SWP’s discredited leadership has no way forward. Even if it maintains control of the apparatus, its future will be that of Sheila Torrance’s rump WRP, which inherited enough assets from Healy to still have a sort of zombie existence nearly thirty years later. But Alex – remember your glory days, for you will never fly so high again.
You foolish lackeys, your order is built on sand…
[1] To be scrupulously fair, Mark Bergfeld’s resignation may have caused some disruption to the student office, and someone will have to be co-opted to the CC to take his place. Perhaps Martin Smith would be available.
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The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians may have played in the most-watched baseball game of the 21st Century. Game 7 between Chicago and Cleveland drew a 25.2 rating as many, many people tuned in to watch the Cubs win their first World Series since 1908.
If you’re into this kind of thing, here are the numbers from Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals between the Cavaliers and Warriors. Via Sports Illustrated:
ESPN said viewership peaked with 44,511,000 viewers and a 22.5 U.S. rating from 10:30 p.m.–10:40 p.m. ET. The series averaged 20,166,000 viewers and an 11.3 U.S. rating for its seven games, the most-watched NBA Finals series since 1998.
Yes, baseball beat basketball.
#WorldSeriesGame7 on Fox estimates to a 13.1-13.6 adults 18-49 rating. Cavs-Warriors #NBAFinals Game 7 ABC 6/19/16: 11.3 — Douglas Pucci (@SonOfTheBronx) November 3, 2016
Some people will say that the great ratings have to do with compelling storylines and exciting close games, but the truth is people just love Cleveland sports. That’s why the NFL will never really struggle as long as the Browns exist.
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3. But this doesn't tell us the whole story about redistribution and growth. That's because redistribution doesn't keep inequality constant; it reduces inequality. So what we really want to do is add these two together, to see the combined effects of less inequality and more redistribution on growth. Since the former helps growth and the latter doesn't hurt it that means that redistribution overall tends to increase growth.
4. How long an economy grows, though, can be more important than how much it does. As the researchers point out, growth isn't some linear process. It comes in fits and starts, and it can be hard to restart after a fit. The question then is what inequality and redistribution do to how long a "growth spell" lasts. The answer: pretty much the same thing they do to how much growth there is.
5. The more inequality there is, the greater the chance that a growth spell will end the next year. The researchers found that every point the Gini index goes up makes growth six percent more likely to stop soon.
6. Redistribution has a more complicated relationship with growth spells. It doesn't affect how long the economy grows when it's low. But it does make the economy less likely to keep growing when it's high, in the top 25 percent. You can see just how high is high in the blue dots below. The countries with the most post-tax equality—and redistribution—tend to be the most unequal pre-tax. In other words inequality is always and everywhere a political phenomenon. It's a choice.
7. But, as I said before, it's a choice we don't have to make. Redistribution overall helps, and at least doesn't harm, growth spells. That's because the positive effects of less inequality add to or offset the negligible, or negative, effects of redistribution itself. When redistribution is in the bottom 75 percent, these positive effects are the only ones, and growth lasts longer. And when redistribution is in the top 25 percent, these positive effects make up for the negative ones from taxing-and-transferring so much—it's a statistically insignificant wash.
So countries that spread the wealth around more seem to grow more and grow longer than countries that don't.
***
Before we rush to raise tax rates to 90 percent, it's important to remember that these are only correlations. They don't tell us that redistribution is what's causing better growth. Maybe governments that redistribute are also the kind that protect property rights, enforce contracts, and invest in infrastructure—and that's what's boosting growth. Then again, maybe it is the redistribution. Maybe giving everyone healthcare and an education makes them so much more productive that it overwhelms any disincentives. Or, as Ryan Avent points out, maybe redistribution makes it so people don't need to take out risky loans, and that keeps growth from faltering.
There are plenty of plausible stories, but in a way, it doesn't matter which one you believe. What does matter is there isn't much evidence that we have to choose between a fair society and a dynamic one, that redistribution doesn't preclude growth. And that our new Gilded Age doesn't have to be one—if we choose.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected].
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Brazil's lawyers have been shocked to find that a boy aged eight has managed to pass the entrance exam to law school.
The Bar Association said the achievement of Joao Victor Portellinha should be taken as a warning about the low standards of some of Brazil's law schools.
"If this is confirmed, the Education Ministry should immediately intervene ... to investigate the circumstances of this case," said the association's president in Goias state, Miguel Angelo Cancado.
Joao Victor is still in fifth grade, two levels ahead of normal for his age, but his mother says he is not a cloistered genius. "He is a regular boy," she told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. "He is very dedicated, likes to read and study, but he has fun and makes friends."
The Universidade Paulista, a multi-campus private university, said yesterday that the boy would not be enrolling any time soon: he still has to graduate from high school.
Still, the school said the "student's performance, considering his age and level of education, was good, especially in the essay test, which revealed his good capacity to express himself and handle the language."
"My dream is to be a federal judge," the boy said, according to Globo TV's Web site. "So I decided to take the test to see how I would do ... it was easy. I studied a week before the test."
Brazil requires every student to take an entrance exam before being admitted to college. Each university administers its own test, and the exams from private institutions are usually considered to be easier than those of public universities, which are free and attract many more candidates.
University officials said they could not release figures on the number of people who pass and fail the law school entrance exam.
As a former colony, Brazilian civil law is largely based on that of Portugal with statutes derived from the Romano-Germanic legal tradition, but has been amended to include some precedent-based common law.
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Americans support Donald Trump’s Jan. 25 comprehensive immigration reform by three to one, according to a new poll by Rasmussen Reports.
Sixty-one percent of Americans agree with the immigration priorities described in Trump’s Jan. 25 Executive Order, which seeks to exclude migrants who oppose Americans’ values. Only 19 percent of Americans — and only 28 percent of Democrats — disapprove of Trump’s decision to align immigration policy with Americans’ civic and cultural values.
Here’s the critical passage from Trump’s reform:
In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.
The new Rasmussen poll asked respondents if they favor a proposal that would keep out “those who do not support the U.S. Constitution or who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States would not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred for reasons of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.”
Sixty-one percent approved the policy, 19 percent opposed, and 21 percent declined to answer the question.
Fifty-one percent of African-Americans supported the policy, as did 49 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of independents.
Trump’s popular policy was largely ignored by the establishment media, which instead focussed on his popular exclusion of Islamic migrants and refugees from several majority Muslim countries. That subordinate part of his plan is being opposed by pro-diversity Islamist groups, progressives, and judges in the Ninth Circuit of Appeals.
Curiously, even though 28 percent of Democrats oppose Trump’s reform of immigration policy to match American values, 65 percent of Democrats also wish to impose tougher penalties on fellow Americans who commit crimes that violate progressives’ political values.
When asked “Should criminals be prosecuted more severely if it can be proven that their crime was motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation?” 65 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 57 percent of Republicans.
The survey of 1,000 American adults was conducted on Feb. 20-21, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports.
Other polls show that Americans want legal immigrants to integrate into the U.S. culture, and they oppose Americans’ integration into foreign cultures.
In June 2016, for example, a poll showed that 56 percent of Americans want to exclude migrants who believe in Islam’s sharia law, which requires that democracy and civic norms be subordinated to the Islamic scriptures. In contrast, only about 20 percent of Americans told the pollster that they did not oppose the immigration of people who believe in sharia law.
Through his tenure, President Barack Obama boosted the progressive claim that Americans should not put their culture first but instead should subordinate their free-wheeling society into a diverse globalist mix of conflicting foreign cultures and governments.
Obama described his pro-diversity policy in a Nov. 2014 speech to Democratic supporters in Chicago:
Sometimes we get attached to our particular tribe, our particular race, our particular religion, and then we start treating other folks differently. And that, sometimes, has been a bottleneck to how we think about immigration. If you look at the history of immigration in this country, each successive wave, there have been periods where the folks who were already here suddenly say, ‘Well, I don’t want those folks’ — even though the only people who have the right to say that are some Native Americans.
Obama made the same diversity-first claim in September 2015:
When I hear folks talking as if somehow these [foreign] kids are different than my kids or less worthy in the eyes of God, that somehow that they are less worthy of our respect and consideration and care, I think that’s un-American. I don’t believe that, I think it is wrong and I think we should do better, because that’s how America was made.
Alongside Americans’ support for their culture, Americans also want fellow Americans to get jobs and opportunities prior to foreigners. Polls show that roughly 80 percent of Americans say companies should hire young Americans before hiring migrants.
A July 2016 poll shows that roughly three out of four voters — including nearly three out of four Democrat voters — believe that “instead of giving jobs and healthcare to millions of refugees from around the world, we should rebuild our inner cities and put Americans back to work.” The view was shared by almost 90 percent of African-Americans and almost 70 percent of Hispanics.
Under current policy, the federal government annually provide new work permits to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and to roughly 1 million temporary contract workers. That policy adds roughly 2 million new workers to the labor supply each year, just as 4 million young Americans begin looking for work, and it shifts roughly $500 billion per year from employees to employers and investors, according to an analysis provided in a September report by the National Academy of Sciences.
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Loki is a great place to start , because he’s a perfect example of a villain who isn’t really all that impressive on paper. Oh sure, he’s got some nifty tricks up his sleeve – notably his talents as an illusionist – but on his home turf of Asgard, a world populated entirely with godlike denizens, Loki’s powers barely set him apart from the pack. As a warrior, he’s no Thor; heck, he can’t even compete with his brother’s merry band of cookie-cutter sidekicks. His schemes aren’t all that subtle, either. He does manage to manipulate his brother pretty effectively, but let’s face it – that takes about as much cunning as convincing your golden retriever to chase the stick you didn’t really throw.
This month, we’re looking at Loki, as represented in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (who differs a little from Comic Book Loki, and a lot from Norse Mythology Loki).
Add to that a host of daddy issues and a nigh-on Oedipal obsession with his mother, and we don’t exactly have a thoroughbred villain here.
And yet, Loki manages to steal pretty much every scene he’s in – first in Thor, then in The Avengers.
Why is that?
A good chunk of the credit certainly goes to Tom Hiddleston. His wry, smirking portrayal is by turns sexy, creepy, and downright maniacal. And let’s face it, not every man can pull off a bike helmet with antelope horns.
I’d almost be tempted to stop right there and say that a charismatic actor can make or break an on-screen villain. Certainly, Michael Shannon’s General Zod can’t hold a candle to Terence Stamp’s, and while we’re on the Superman subject, Kevin Spacey wasn’t a bad Lex Luthor, but he was no Gene Hackman. (Miss TessmachERRRR!)
But there’s more to Loki’s appeal than the charisma of the actor who plays him. In fact, I think there’s more to it than the character himself. A big part of what makes Loki work is context.
For starters, when we first meet Loki, he’s one of the good guys – or so we’re led to believe. Though he’s a bit mopey and obviously jealous of his big bro, his manipulation of Thor comes across more as sibling rivalry than Evil Scheming. Also – and I think this is crucial – we meet him at a point where his brother, the putative hero of the tale, is acting like a smug frat boy: drinking, fighting, and overturning banquet tables in fits of pique. Soft-spoken, sharp-witted Loki can’t help but look good in comparison.
He’s playing us, of course, and that’s part of his brilliance. By the time we know what he’s up to, he’s wormed his way into our hearts. Poor Thor, meanwhile, starts out with a credibility gap, and for some of us, I think he never completely overcomes it. (I know I was rooting at least as much for Loki as for Thor by the end.) It also helps that we witness firsthand where Loki’s baggage comes from. We’re a fly on the wall when Odin, in a bid for Father of the Year, tells his sons, “Only one of you can ascend to the throne, but both of you were born to be kings”. We watch through Loki’s eyes as his knuckle-dragging dudebro of a sibling is groomed to be king. And we witness his anguish when he discovers the truth about his heritage. We’re sympathizing with his pain before he becomes the villain, not after; we are, in a very real sense, present for the genesis of the villain, which gives us a stake in his redemption. (Which redemption, incidentally, both the Thor and Avengers franchises cleverly flirt with, just to keep us hanging on.)
All this being said, I might be overthinking it. Because when you get right down to it, Loki is just a whole lot of fun. From his maniacal grin in the opening scene of The Avengers to his smouldering sulk in the dungeons of The Dark World to his elegant glide down the steps of the opera house in a slim cut, three piece suit*, Loki works every angle. Like Hannibal Lecter, he slips into whatever skin suits him, wears it for a scene, then sloughs it off for something new. He delivers some excellent snark (“are you ever not going to fall for that?”) and goes toe-to-toe with some of the MCU’s baddest baddies without batting an eye. And yes, it helps that he looks very pretty doing it.
But I digress. I promised I’d be running each villain through a common analytical framework, so let’s get to it. Without further ado, I give you The Machine.
Strengths: Like all Asgardians, Loki is nigh-on indestructible on Earth, which you have to count as an advantage. He can also create illusions at will, and he’s pretty clever too – although fooling father-and-son-genius-team Thor and Odin probably doesn’t qualify you for Mensa.
Weaknesses: Daddy issues. Mommy issues. Brother issues. Delusions of grandeur. Oh, and a really, really bad outfit.
Best Quote: “I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose.”
VILLAIN POINTS
Lair: Does he have one? Asgard? 0 points.
Toys: A sceptre that vaporises people, or possesses them (aka “the glow stick of Destiny”). Contains an Infinity Stone, one of six ingots of raw power that predate the universe. Top that, Q. 8 points.
Henchmen: Does Thor count? After all, Loki can manipulate him into doing just about anything. No? OK, one point each for glow stick-enchanted Hawkeye and Erik Selvig.
Intimidation factor: With or without the bike helmet? Without, 5 points. With, -10 points.
Schemes - Scope: Ruling the world is a pretty lofty goal – unless you’re Asgardian, in which case, where is your ambition, dude? There’s a whole universe out there! 5 points.
Schemes - Complexity: Loki’s schemes are about as subtle as Thor’s hammer. 2 points for tricking Thor that first time (0 points for subsequent tricking; that’s on Thor).
Overall Badass Rating: 22
Can’t wait to see how that score stacks up against our next villain? Me neither! And remember, if there’s a villain you’d like to see put through The Machine, let us know in the comments!
Next month: Cersei Lannister
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*And let’s face it, there isn’t a man alive who wears a slim cut suit better than Tom Hiddleston.
Art by Caspian Whistler.
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Angelique from Atlanta, GA asks:
Why is it, family feel like they can say anything to you? Yes I’m 36. Yes I’m single. No I don’t want kids. But they don’t believe me. They just dismiss me. I mean I have a master’s degree, a great job, my own home and a healthy savings and yet my mother and my aunts still look at me with pity. And my “barrenness” somehow always becomes the topic of discussion. It’s infuriating. How do I make them stand down once and for all?
Get pregnant?
Listen how do you make any family member stand down on anything? Apparently, when I was a baby I was all hair and eyes and my then 10 year old, highly impressionable uncle who had just seen the Gremlins (it debuted in theaters that year) immediately nicknamed me after the main Gremlin, Mogwai.
That’s my name now.
And to my family that will always be my name.
So I answer to it because nothing I could’ve done over the years would’ve made a bit of difference.
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And until you get pregnant, your barrenness will always be a topic of conversation.
So fall into it.
A fundamental fact of our biology is the propagation of the species, so why do you think Aunt Claudia is going to believe you when you tell her you don’t want kids?
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Angela. You need more people because I’m at the kitchen table with your mama and ‘em talking shit about you too.
I mean maybe your only defense is to be honest with your family and yourself (but especially yourself). I mean, do you really not want kids—or have you just given up on the idea of kids because you feel like time has run out? Or do you say you don’t want kids because you don’t want to face the idea that it might not happen? So you feel like if you don’t say you want it, not getting it won’t break your heart?
Maybe because my own clocking is ticking so loudly do I find it hard to believe your clock has no batteries.
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Honestly, the only time I believe another woman when she says she doesn’t want kids is when she’s very young and what she really means is “I don’t want kids now” or when she already has kids or when she has everything in place to make a home for a child and still doesn’t want one.
So Angela, are you really saying, if you had a significant other to complete the perfect picture of all the things you do have, a career, a house, a savings, that you still wouldn’t want kids? So if you met the right person, you wouldn’t want a child with them?
And don’t just answer “no” to prove your point. Really think about it. Because if the answer isn’t “no” then I’d stop telling your family that you don’t want kids and start telling them the truth. That you do.
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And that’s the great thing about being a woman in this society. You get to be soft and pink. You get to be vulnerable and raw without censure. You get to ask for help in order to get the things you want and need. All this time you’re blocking your blessings because you’re too proud to tell the truth—that you want it all—and have you mama and those same aunts fan out to help you get it. And maybe eventually have a baby.
Yuma from Baltimore, MD asks:
What do you think is the best television series of all time?
There’s no way to answer that and not look like an ass 10 years from now. So I’ll tell you what shows are definitely out of the running instead.
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Friends…with the new normal being more diverse casts, Friends is going to look painfully outdated 10 years from now. Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, Lost, The West Wing, Oz, Dexter, House of Cards, Homeland or any other show that took itself too seriously and that required a lot of emotional investment because those series are all one-offs. You watch them once and never again and that doesn’t speak to a show’s longevity. Scandal, ER, Downton Abbey and any other show following a soap opera formula. The entire NBC line up past and present. So 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, Will & Grace, Seinfeld, The Office, etc. Either because their jokes are too topical as opposed to timeless or their material has been or is riffed on so much that all humor is lost when it’s re-watched. Everything in black & white because I’m hard pressed now to even watch SD far less black & white. I might as well watch a silent film.
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Neal from Philadelphia, PA asks:
What’s the best conversation opener when trying to pick up a girl?
Always go with shared real-time observations (even before you introduce yourself). But try to make it about something more than the weather and make it funny. So if you’re out at a lounge, feel free to make a snarky comment about someone in the vicinity who may be a little too turnt. Have a follow up comment ready because she might not do more than laugh at first. Basically, just speak to her like you’re old friends.
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(And make sure you’re as attractive as you can be. So showered and shaved.)
(Bearing in mind that this might just be how to pick me up.)
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ST. PAUL, Minn. - In recent weeks, the city has cut down nearly 500 trees to combat Emerald Ash Borer, which is an ongoing problem.
The invasive beetle kills ash trees and it's a costly issue that has forced the city to remove about 8,700 trees since 2010.
Along a few streets in St. Paul, green ribbons now wrap around ash trees signaling they could be infested with Emerald Ash Borer, or could eventually be infested. To combat the invasive bug, the city plans to eventually cut them down and replace them with a variety of species.
Marina Shimelfarb doesn't want to see the trees go. She said that she loves the view from her boutique on Grand Ave.
"I'm afraid that Grand Avenue will lose the charm and it'll be different," she said.
City Council member Chris Tolbert calls the infestation "expensive" and "devastating."
"In St. Paul we've been spending about a million dollars a year since 2011 taking down and replanting trees and it's not even enough," said Tolbert.
Clare Cloyd, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Parks and Recreation, says the city is taking down about 1,300 total ash trees this year, whether they're infected or not.
"If we didn't do that we'd eventually have dead trees across the entire city and then we'd have a huge cost and a huge problem on our hand with trees potentially falling down," said Tolbert.
At Highland National Golf Course crews recently cut down hundreds of trees this winter, which is a dormant season for the bug.
Cloyd said since 2011, the city has used an injectable treatment to prolong the life of some trees. That allows the city more time to manage the infestation.
For a look at which streets the are affected, click here.
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Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond by Sonia Shah Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 271 pp., $26.00
Pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of highly contagious diseases across countries and continents—are a modern phenomenon. The word itself, a neologism from Greek words for “all” and “people,” has been used only since the mid-nineteenth century. Epidemics—localized outbreaks of diseases—have always been part of human history, but pandemics require a minimum density of population and an effective means of transport. Since “Spanish” flu burst from the trenches of World War I in 1918, infecting 20 percent of the world’s population and killing upward of 50 million people, fears of a similar pandemic have preoccupied public health practitioners, politicians, and philanthropists. World War II, in which the German army deliberately caused malaria epidemics and the Japanese experimented with anthrax and plague as biological weapons, created new fears.
In response, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), founded in 1946 to control malaria domestically, launched its Epidemic Intelligence Service in 1951 to defend against possible biological warfare, an odd emphasis given the uncontrolled polio epidemics raging in the 1940s and 1950s in the United States and Europe. But in the world of public health, the latest threat often takes precedence over the most prevalent.
According to the doctor, writer, and philanthropist Larry Brilliant, “outbreaks are inevitable, pandemics are optional.” Brilliant, a well-known expert on global health, ought to know, since he has had much to do with smallpox eradication. Smallpox, arguably the worst disease in human history, caused half a billion deaths during the twentieth century alone. The strain called Variola major—the most lethal cause—killed one third of all infected and permanently scarred all survivors. In 1975, Rahima Banu, a two-year-old Bangladeshi girl, became the last case of V. major smallpox. Two years later, Ali, a twenty-three-year-old hospital cook in Somalia, became the last case of V. minor. Rahima and Ali survived. Smallpox did not.
Forty years later, smallpox is still the only disease affecting humans ever to have been eradicated. (Rinderpest, a virus affecting cows—literally “cattle plague”—was eradicated in 2011.) There is optimism that polio and guinea worm may soon follow. Meanwhile, dozens of new infectious diseases have emerged, including the pathogens behind the twenty-first-century “pan-epidemics”—a term coined by Dr. Daniel Lucey to describe SARS, avian flu, swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and now Zika.
The fear, fascination, and financial incentives that these new diseases create divert attention and resources from ancient diseases like cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis, which infect and kill far more people. Ebola has caused relatively few deaths, while TB infects 9.6 million people each year and kills 1.5 million, and malaria infects more than 200 million, killing nearly half a million. (Ali, smallpox’s last survivor, later succumbed to malaria.)
Zika virus was…
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How exactly is America figuring its way through this Presidential election? I’d say they’re asleep at the wheel with a lead foot on the throttle.
The real reason that the Trump campaign is polling so well is that he has obliterated the artificial distinction between American pop culture and politics that has precariously held up before now. There has been a monumental vulgarisation of American society in the last 30 years: everything from talk radio shock jocks to toilet humour cartoons, from the rhythmic jibbering of music non-artists to the pestilent omnipresence of reality television. The masses are now bringing the guardians of good taste in politics and academia to their knees and demanding that coarseness, under the guise of plain talking, be a prerequisite for political office. This is a social shift that has little to do with disquietude about neoliberalism and the decline of social mobility. It is what happens to a society that has given up on educating its children to be their better selves, to cultivate 'sweetness and light' in their lives and instead to focus on achievement and self-promotion.
What purpose, in such a society of duelling alpha dogs, do niceties about politeness and considerate behaviour serve? None that I can see. America was built on the effective exploitation of massive resources. So was Britain via the Empire. There was a nod to democracy but mostly it was monopolies, gangsters, corruption and organised exploitation of the poor that got cities, stately homes and farms built. It's also how the developing world is being built today. The American dream is an unsustainable myth. It requires constant growth to feed it. Someone needs to take a look at what a real sustainable life looks like when applied equally to 7 Billion people globally. It won’t be pretty and I doubt anyone is going to vote for it.
Maybe this is the only way to explain why swathes of the American public are voting for extremes in this Presidential election.
The American Dream was dead when voters put in Ronald Reagan who began the destruction. Then the Bush boys, first the father than the son. The voters are to blame and then they sit and whine and now want a racist, bigoted hateful embarrassment to humanity to fix it
There is only one: total global institutional reform. I figured this out long ago, and I can assure you, I did not go to Harvard. Sanders would back such an endeavour. Trump? I'll be polite and just say no, he wouldn't.
But Sanders has the same problem every socialist minded, left leaning liberal will face in today’s age: compromising in the face of right wing adversity.Sander’s ability to get legislation through a Republican controlled House of Representatives would be somewhere between zero and infinitesimal.
Ditto for his chances of appointing liberal judges to the Supreme Court when the Republicans would, at the very least, have sufficient Senate votes to block anyone they don't like.
He'd be a busted flush before he ever took the oath of office and that’s coming from someone who would vote for him.
But it’s positive that America is willing to bet on the outsider. Why? Perhaps the greatest failure of the present US government was its unwillingness to ensure that vast amounts of money make its way into the hands of consumers, instead of the banking elite on Wall Street who used it primarily to gamble on commodities, real estate, and the stock market. An endless supply of money given to the very rich to make themselves even richer.
No real thought here to improve the real physical economy and create jobs for the middle class. It's so strikingly clear by this example how our present financial system is so lopsided to favour the rich as opposed to the rest of us. And our government and both Parties over the last 30 years have been complicit with this. Thus the appeal of the outsiders, Trump and Sanders.
There is an implicit belief in humans that the future must inherently be better, but the experience of the last 30+ years of neo-liberalism has destroyed that faith. It is really starting to look like the post-war boom in the West was a once-off historical blip, never to be repeated and social relations will return to the historical norm - a fixed hierarchy between a rich minority oligarchy and permanently-supplicant masses. This is a scary prospect and rightfully scares those staring into their futures which look ever worse.
If we get angry enough quickly enough we may just be able to stop this descent. That is why it’s so satisfying watching Americans flock to Sanders and Trump; its looking like the people are waking from their slumber. However one of the most confounding reasons for the triumph of the right has been the shift of loyalty by the working classes away from their Labourite roots. How did the oligarchy lure the people to support them? Was it the promise of aspiration? The lure of joining the middle class as property investors/speculators? Were they abandoned by the elites of the Left who swamped them with political correctness and socially engineered diversity (rubbed into their noses?).
The reaction we're witnessing is not just against the Right/Corporatism - it is also against the Establishment Left. It appears that the money train from Wall Street to the White House has only one rider, Clinton. Bernie is getting his in small unmarked bills from the ordinary citizens and Trump is probably going to spend his own money. The supporters of both have been and will continue voting with their middle fingers. And one can hardily blame them. Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and Christie both have/had millions to spend and to the chagrin of their money lenders, none is able to keep up with Trump in motivating voters to move to his camp.
Money ain't everything, and for those who decry the amount in this election cycle, look no further than the burning Bush that fell by the wayside. Hillary will continue to get the black vote and Wall Street money, but that isn't going to get her to the White House. Those young voters recognize a false goddess when they hear one, and I suspect they will either switch to Trump or stay home when push comes to shove.
Does Jean-Marie Le Pen feel left out the American Dream? There is no excuse for supporting Trump, if you support Trump find a mirror, take a good look at yourself, and say "How did my life get to this? I must and will try harder to be a better human being." and then go out and vote Sanders, it's not too late.
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Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press)
Milwaukee County auditors have run into a wall with their investigation into whether Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. abused taxpayer resources after his run-in with a 24-year-old Riverwest man on a Milwaukee flight earlier this year.
Clarke, specifically, is not letting auditors interview Milwaukee County deputies or other staffers as part of the probe.
So county audit director Jerry Heer — without identifying which investigation he is talking about — is asking the Milwaukee County Board to allow him to spend up to $35,000 to hire an outside attorney to take Clarke to court to force the issue.
On a 4-0 vote, the Judiciary, Safety and General Services Committee endorsed the request Thursday. The matter now goes to the finance committee next week and then the full County Board on April 20.
Supervisor Willie Johnson Jr., chairman of the judiciary committee, said no one is above the law, which allows auditors to look into possible wrongdoing anywhere in county government. "It's a problem inasmuch as what he is doing or people in his office are doing is ignoring the ordinance," Johnson said of the sheriff.
BICE:Major League Baseball official plans to challenge Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke
Clarke responded to the committee's actions in a cryptic email statement: "##MakeAmericaGreatAgain. #MakeAmericaSafeAgain."
Heer would not confirm whether his request for outside legal help had to do with his agency's investigation into Clarke's dispute with Dan Black on a flight from Dallas to Milwaukee in mid-January — though others said that was the case.
"The sheriff has given us documents, he's allowed us talk to his command staff but he won't let us interview members of his rank-and-file staff," Heer said. "When I say we've talked to command staff, that's been more about contacts and process. We have not been able to interview anyone with direct knowledge of the subject of our investigation."
Black alleged in his complaint that he was harassed by Clarke on Jan. 15.
In the complaint, Black says he saw Clarke — decked out in a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat and shirt — on the American Airlines flight but wasn't sure it was the sheriff because he wasn't wearing his signature Stetson.
"As I passed him," Black wrote. "I asked if he was Sheriff Clarke, and he responded in the affirmative. I shook my head as I was moving on to my seat near the back of the plane. From behind, he asked if I had a problem. I shook my head 'no' again and continued to my seat."
When he got off the plane, Black said, he was met by a group of six uniformed deputies and two dogs, all of whom were accompanied by the sheriff. Black said he was then escorted to the waiting area and questioned by two deputies for 15 minutes and escorted from the airport.
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Clarke later taunted and threatened Black in posts on his county Facebook page and on Twitter. In one post, the sheriff said Black might get "knocked out" if he "pulls this stunt" again. A Facebook meme with a picture of Black read: "Cheer up, Snowflake. If Sheriff Clarke were to really harass you, you wouldn't be around to whine about it."
Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. posted this meme about Dan Black. (Photo: Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office)
Black has since filed a federal lawsuit against Clarke and the county.
In late January, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele referred Black's complaint to Heer's office to see if the sheriff was guilty of fraud, waste or abuse.
But Clarke dismissed the matter, calling it a "political witch hunt" and a "fake investigation" driven by politics. The sheriff also said he would refuse to cooperate in the matter.
In his note to the judiciary committee, Heer said his staff needed to interview staffers in the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office as part of its unspecified probe. But he said Clarke's agency had responded in writing that county auditors do not have "the authority to conduct interviews of MCSO law enforcement personnel related to their LE (law enforcement) duties."
The two sides and county lawyers have debated that issue, but Heer wrote that they have been unable to resolve the impasse. "All parties concur that court action is necessary," he wrote.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.
Read or Share this story: https://jsonl.in/2oF74ag
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CLEVELAND, Ohio - A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit filed by a Case Western Reserve University law school professor who alleged that when he reported former Law School Dean Lawrence Mitchell had potentially sexually harassed women, he suffered retaliation.
The joint announcement, published online by the Chandra Law Firm, which represented Raymond Ku, does not reveal any terms of the settlement.
When asked to comment, all Subodh Chandra would say was: "The matter has been resolved to the parties' satisfaction."
The joint statement does announce that Ku will become director of the law school's newly created Center for Cyberspace Law & Policy.
The center had previously been an office, created in 2008, as a joint entity of other law school centers, according to CWRU's website.
According to the joint statement:
"In my opinion, Professor Ku acted in the best interests of students, staff, and faculty," said mediator Michael N. Ungar, a former Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association president and chair of the Ulmer & Berne law firm's litigation department. "Likewise, in my opinion, the University has also acted in the best interests of the law school and all members of the school community."
Ungar added: "This has been a hard case, but everyone involved focused on finding a solution that would further the success and momentum of the law school. While the university and Professor Ku had significant differences regarding this matter, their sincere desire to act in the school's best interests prevailed. I commend them all for their diligence, integrity, and willingness to look beyond individual disagreements and embrace collaboration toward a common goal. As is typical in these types of situations, the details of the resolution are confidential."
According to his lawsuit, filed against CWRU and Mitchell, Ku said he made reports about Mitchell's actions and comments to the university's provost, vice president for diversity and faculty diversity officer.
The university had said there was no retaliation and the lawsuit included inaccuracies.
Mitchell, who was hired as dean in 2011, was placed on paid administrative leave in November.
Mitchell resigned in March and will remain on the faculty but is will be off campus this school year on sabbatical, which is the practice of deans who step down, school officials said.
Mitchell is currently living in New York, according to his blog.
The law school is currently searching for a new dean as faculty members Jessica Berg and Michael Scharf serve as interim-co-deans.
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Reporter Douglas Robson and his mother Margaret Robson at the U.S. Open. (Photo11: Courtesy: Douglas Robson)
NEW YORK – For once, I'm rooting at the U.S. Open.
As a reporter, we are schooled to maintain objectivity, and for good reason. Praise and criticism must flow equally for the subjects we cover, and snuggling too close can skew the facts, or at least the propensity to dig for them.
I've covered professional tennis for a dozen years and have my go-to interviewees. I have players I prefer to watch for aesthetic or personal reasons. But I honestly don't have favorites. My mantra: If it's not going to be a great match, make it quick.
This year is different. I'm pulling for Roger Federer. Not for all the obvious reasons – the class, the flowing game, the agelessness, the authentic joie de vivre for everything tennis. I'm backing the 33-year-old Swiss because my mother, Margaret, adored him.
My parents met and wed in Chicago, where they started a family. Despite their peripatetic lives, it remained home. We weren't a tennis family in either passion or success like the McEnroes, Austins or Williamses, yet the sport resonated throughout our lives. We hosted lower-ranked pros with names like Trey Waltke and Rolf Thung and even Tracy Austin's older brother, John Austin, at our home in Washington DC, and Chicago when they were in town to play local tournaments. We all played, too, and one of my more excruciating childhood memories was enforced "family doubles" with my parents and older brother. Mixed doesn't begin to describe the complex feelings on the court.
My mother and I spent more than our fair share of time together. When I was a junior tennis player, she drove me to more tournaments than I dare to recall. In the summertime, we trudged around the Chicago area and other flat, muggy Midwest cities, sometimes with other kids in tow, sometimes just the two of us. We bonded. We battled. There were times when I refused to let her watch my matches, so she would hide behind trees to get a glimpse of what was going on. If I spotted her, I'd wave her away. Other times, I wanted her there to witness the triumph or the tragedy of the day's result so we could talk it out later.
To cheer me up after a loss, she would sometimes allow a stop at Wendy's for a chocolate Frosty. Ice cream in all its forms has remained a comfort food ever since. They weren't always easy times. I was a rambunctious kid on the way to adolescence and we were more or less stuck with each other. I remember the liberty – and the odd lonesomeness – when I got my driver's license and could travel to tournaments on my own.
On occasion, we'd travel to watch the Open. By dint of my father's corporate connections, we scored some fantastic seats for the penultimate day in 1984 when every match went the distance – the day that more or less gave birth to the U.S. Open's now defunct "Super Saturday." I remember stumbling out with my parents and two college friends at what seemed like the middle of the night – it wouldn't register by today's wee-hour standards – and finding our way to Midtown Manhattan's Carnegie Deli for giant corned beef sandwiches. My mother, father and I rehashed the experience for years.
Both of my parents enjoyed playing for much of their married lives. At some point my mother quit playing. My father continued into his late sixties. My brother preferred to ski and skateboard, and for better or worse, I was impacted most. A late bloomer, I split my time between tennis and hockey but eventually became competent enough to reach national-level events. I went on to play Division I college tennis. Later, but not by design, I began covering the sport for a living.
In some of the last few years when I was working, my mother returned to the Open for a day or two. We rode the #7 subway out together. I would pop out for a quick lunch and she would head back up to the stands. She was thrilled when I once brought her into the press center, where she mingled with other journalists, viewed the main interview room and got an up-close look at how we live and work during the long days and nights at Flushing Meadows. She spoke about it for years and some of my colleagues even remember her brief visit. She left that kind of impression.
I've felt her presence everywhere these last few days. The conversations we might have had about results. Who was playing well or looked vulnerable. What I was writing about. And Federer, her beloved Federer, or his arch-nemesis Rafael Nadal. Her interest was a welcome white noise during what I consider the toughest Grand Slam to cover.
I never delved deeply into my mother's affection for Federer, who on Tuesday reached another quarterfinal in New York with a clinical defeat of Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut. I know she liked his comportment, his grace, his controlled aura of excellence. For whatever other reasons, he was her man. As in most of her life, my mother was nothing if not loyal -- often to a fault. If he was on TV, she often tried to catch him, especially during big tournaments. Especially during the U.S. Open.
My mother's life, of course, was hardly defined by tennis. She was a devoted wife and mother, and through her ample energies contributed to many civic activities, primarily in the fields of health, art, and historic preservation. She collected self-taught art. She loved a vodka straight up, with ice. She derived a ridiculous amount of pride in my work and my writing (apologies to everyone she badgered with my bylines.) She would have hated the idea of interrupting my reporting, but there was no getting around it when her health took a sudden turn for the worse.
She died on Aug. 24, the day before the U.S. Open began. She was 82.
Tennis is an individual sport. But it is also a game you cannot play alone. I was reminded of this again and again by the generous outpouring of love and support I received from family and friends during the past week, as well as many members of the "tennis family" I now inhabit. It would have put my mother, rest her soul, at ease.
What can I say? Go Federer.
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Ministers have been accused of repeatedly misleading MPs about the impact of their £26,000 cap on welfare payments after it emerged that Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, secretly warned the plan would cost more money than it saved and increase homelessness by 20,000.
Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, insisted that Pickles's comments, set out in a letter from his private secretary to No 10 that was leaked to the Observer, showed that a succession of ministers "haven't been straight with the House of Commons". They have either dismissed claims that the cap would increase homelessness, or insisted its likely impact was impossible to quantify.
The benefit cap, announced by George Osborne, the chancellor, to the delight of the Tory right at the Conservative party conference last autumn, is one of the most high-profile and controversial of the government's myriad welfare reforms. The welfare bill still has to go through the Lords and Pickles's letter will embolden peers seeking to amend it so the cap is less punitive.
The letter, sent on Pickles's behalf by Nico Heslop, his private secretary, explicitly says welfare cuts could make 40,000 families homeless. "Our modelling indicates that we could see an additional 20,000 homelessness acceptances as a result of the total benefit cap. This on top of the 20,000 additional acceptances already anticipated as a result of other changes to housing benefit," Heslop wrote.
The letter was sent in January. Since then, ministers and officials have made a series of Commons statements that Labour believes are hard to square with what Pickles was telling No 10 in private. Those highlighted by Labour include:
• The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) publishing an impact assessment in February saying that it was "not possible to quantify" the cost to local councils generated by the welfare cap and the likelihood that it will require councils to house some families made homeless.
• Grant Shapps, the housing minister, citing the DWP's impact assessment when specifically asked by a Labour MP if he had an estimate of the number of households that would be made homeless as a result of the benefit cap.
• Maria Miller, a welfare minister, telling Karen Buck, a Labour MP, to "get real" when asked about the impact of the benefit cap on homelessness. "I do not accept that the policies we are advocating will have the impact on homelessness that she talked about," Miller said.
• Chris Grayling, another welfare minister, saying: "I do not deny that the benefit cap may result in individual cases of housing mobility [ie, people having to move], but I do not believe that the measure will exacerbate [the problem]."
Byrne said on Sunday night: "The idea that you can go out and say that there is no further evidence that you are aware of, four months after the Department for Communities wrote to the prime minister saying there was different evidence, is breathtaking.
"We want answers from Iain Duncan Smith [the work and pensions secretary] in the House of Commons about why his department hid official government evidence that his policy would make 40,000 families homeless."
Byrne's colleague Caroline Flint, the shadow communities secretary, said: "It has become clear that while Eric Pickles defends his government housing policies in public, in truth he doesn't believe in them. The public and parliament have a right to know why time and again his department dismissed the very same housing concerns he secretly raised with the prime minister."
It is understood that Labour will try to force Pickles and Duncan Smith to respond to an urgent question on this in the Commons chamber on Monday. But it is up to the Speaker, John Bercow, to decide whether to accept the move.
In the letter, the Department for Communities and Local Government suggested that the impact of the policy could by ameliorated by ensuring child benefit is not included in those benefits that count towards the cap. But on Sunday , the DWP, which is in charge of the plan to impose a £26,000 cap on the total amount of benefits than can be claimed in any year by an unemployed family, confirmed that Pickles's proposal had been rejected and that child benefit would be taken into account when the cap comes into force in 2013.
In the letter, Heslop also claimed the benefit cap would cost the exchequer money. Although it was projected to save £270m, that sum "does not take account of the additional costs to local authorities (through homelessness and temporary accommodation)," he said. "In fact, we think it is likely that the policy as it stands will generate a net cost."
He also said that up to 23,000 affordable rental units could be lost because the benefit cap would stop developers charging the rents they wanted, giving them less incentive to build property.
The DWP said it did not recognise the figures in the letter, and did not accept the cap would increase homelessness.
"You know what councils are like – when they have concerns, they are very vocal about it," one source said.
"The cap only comes in at £26,000 and that's equivalent to a gross income of £35,000 for a family that's working. And the minute someone enters into part-time work, they are exempted from the cap," the source went on. "There might be some people who have to move to a less expensive area. But that doesn't mean they won't have anywhere to live. We are very optimistic about the behavioural change that this will bring about. We have already started to change housing benefit. And have you seen droves of homeless people? No, you have not."
The Department for Communities said Pickles was "fully supportive of the government's policies on benefits". A source said Pickles had not personally raised the issues set out in the letter with cabinet colleagues, either formally or informally.
A spokesperson for the DWP said: We cannot carry on with a situation where people on benefits can receive more in welfare payments than hard-working families and where a life on benefits robs people of achieving their potential. No one needs to be homeless because of these reforms. Many working families live on this amount of money."
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Ground deicing of aircraft is commonly performed in both commercial and general aviation. The fluids used in this operation are called deicing or anti-icing fluids. The abbreviations ADF (Aircraft Deicing Fluid) or AAF (Aircraft Anti-icing Fluid) are commonly used.[1]
Types [ edit ]
Deicing an aircraft during a snow event.
Deicing fluids come in a variety of types, and are typically composed of ethylene glycol (EG) or propylene glycol (PG), along with other ingredients such as thickening agents, surfactants (wetting agents), corrosion inhibitors, and colored, UV-sensitive dye. Propylene glycol-based fluid is more common due to the fact that it is less toxic than ethylene glycol.
SAE International (formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers) publishes standards (SAE AMS 1428 and AMS 1424) for four different types of aviation deicing fluids:
Type I fluids have a low viscosity, and are considered "unthickened". They provide only short term protection because they quickly flow off surfaces after use. They are typically sprayed on hot (130–180 °F, 55–80 °C) at high pressure to remove snow, ice, and frost. Usually they are dyed orange to aid in identification and application. Type II fluids are pseudoplastic, which means they contain a polymeric thickening agent to prevent their immediate flow off aircraft surfaces. Typically the fluid film will remain in place until the aircraft attains 100 knots (190 km/h) or so, at which point the viscosity breaks down due to shear stress. The high speeds required for viscosity breakdown means that this type of fluid is useful only for larger aircraft. The use of Type II fluids is diminishing in favour of Type IV. Type II fluids are generally light yellow in color. Type III fluids can be thought of as a compromise between Type I and Type II fluids. They are intended for use on slower aircraft, with a rotation speed of less than 100 knots. Type III fluids are generally light yellow in color. Type IV fluids meet the same AMS standards as Type II fluids, but they provide a longer holdover time. They are typically dyed green to aid in the application of a consistent layer of fluid.
The International Organization for Standardization publishes equivalent standards (ISO 11074 and ISO 11078), defining the same four types.
Deicing fluids containing thickeners (Types II, III, and IV) are also known as anti-icing fluids, because they are used primarily to prevent icing from re-occurring after an initial deicing with a Type I fluid.
Chemical composition [ edit ]
The main component of deicing fluid is a freezing point depressant (FPD), usually propylene glycol or ethylene glycol. Other ingredients vary depending on the manufacturer, but the exact composition of a particular brand of fluid is generally held as confidential proprietary information.
Based on chemical analysis, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified five main classes of additives widely used among manufacturers:
Usage statistics [ edit ]
The amount of fluid necessary to deice an aircraft depends on a wide variety of factors. Deicing a large commercial aircraft typically consumes between 500 US gallons (1,900 L) and 1,000 US gallons (3,800 L) of diluted fluid.
The cost of fluid varies widely due to market conditions. The amount deicing service companies charge end users is generally in the range of US$8 to US$12 per diluted gallon (US$2.10 to US$3.20 per liter).
The total annual usage of deicing fluids in the U.S. is estimated to be approximately 25 million US gallons (95,000,000 L), broken down as follows (figures from 2008, adjusted to show totals for undiluted fluid):[2]:43
Fluid type Annual amount Fraction Type I Propylene Glycol 19,305,000 US gal (73,080,000 L) 77.1% Type IV Propylene Glycol 2,856,000 US gal (10,810,000 L) 11.4% Type I Ethylene Glycol 2,575,000 US gal (9,750,000 L) 10.3% Type IV Ethylene Glycol 306,000 US gal (1,160,000 L) 1.2%
Measurement of performance [ edit ]
Deicing fluid performance is primarily measured by Holdover Time (HOT), and Lowest Operational Use Temperature (LOUT).
Holdover Time (HOT) is the length of time an aircraft can wait after being treated prior to takeoff. Holdover time is influenced by the fluid dilution, ambient temperature, wind, precipitation, humidity, aircraft skin material, aircraft skin temperature, and other factors. If the Holdover Time is exceeded the aircraft must be re-treated before takeoff.
Lowest Operational Use Temperature (LOUT) is the lowest temperature at which a de/anti-icing fluid will adequately flow off aircraft critical surfaces and maintain the required anti-icing freezing point buffer which is 7 °C (13 °F) below outside air temperature (OAT).
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) publishes official Holdover Time and Lowest Operational Use Temperature tables for all approved deicing fluids, and revises them annually.[3]
For Type I fluids, the Holdover Time listed in the FAA tables ranges from 1 to 22 minutes, depending on the above-mentioned situational factors. For Type IV fluids the Holdover Time ranges from 9 minutes to 160 minutes.
Dilution [ edit ]
Deicing fluids work best when they are diluted with water. For example, undiluted Dow UCAR Deicing Fluid[4] (Type I ethylene glycol), has a freezing point of −28 °C. Water, of course, freezes at 0 °C. However, a mixture of 70 percent deicing fluid and 30 percent water freezes below −55 °C. This is known as the eutectic concentration, where the freezing point of the mixture is at its lowest point, and lower than either of the component substances.
Depending on the manufacturer, deicing fluids may be sold in concentrated or pre-diluted formulations. Dilution, where necessary, must be done according to ambient weather condition and the manufacturer's instructions in order to minimize costs while maintaining safety.
The dilution of a particular sample of fluid (and hence its freezing point) can be easily confirmed by measuring its refractive index with a refractometer, and looking up the result in the deicing fluid manufacturer's tables.
Standards Compliance [ edit ]
Manufacturers of aviation deicing fluids must certify that their products conform to the AMS 1424 and 1428 standards using the defined High Speed Ramp Test, Low Speed Ramp Test, and Water Spray Endurance Test.[5]
The objective of these standards is to ensure acceptable aerodynamic characteristics of the deicing/anti-icing fluids as they flow off aircraft lifting and control surfaces during the takeoff ground acceleration and climb.
With the development of non-glycol deicing fluids these standards are evolving to address additional factors such as corrosion, foaming, thickening, residue formation, slipperiness, and mold formation.[6]
Cautions [ edit ]
The repeated application of Type II, Type III or Type IV anti-icing fluid may cause residues to collect in aerodynamic quiet areas, cavities and gaps. These residues may rehydrate and freeze under certain temperature changes, in high humidity and/or rain conditions. In addition, they may block or impede critical flight control systems.
An appropriate inspection and cleaning program should be established when using these types of fluids.[7]
Environmental impacts [ edit ]
Ethylene glycol and propylene glycol are known to exert high levels of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) during degradation in surface waters. Large quantities of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the water column are consumed when microbial populations decompose propylene glycol.[8]:2–23 This process can adversely affect other aquatic life by consuming oxygen needed for their survival.
Thickened fluids typically use alkylphenol ethoxylate (APE) surfactants, the biodegradation products of which have been shown to be endocrine disruptors, and as such these are banned in Europe and are under EPA scrutiny in the U.S. A number of fluids also use benzyltriazole or tolytriazole corrosion inhibitors, which are toxic and non-biodegradable and thus persist in the environment.[9]
Because of this environmental impact research is ongoing to find less problematic alternatives.[10] This is proving to be challenging due to the many performance and safety factors that need to be considered.[6]
At least one FAA approved deicing fluid (Kilfrost DF Sustain) is now using 1,3-propanediol (a fermentation product of corn) as a freezing point depressant instead of ethylene glycol or propylene glycol.[11]
Other strategies can be used to minimize the environmental impact of deicing fluids such as collecting used fluid and using the maximum dilution consistent with safety.[2]:81–100
See also [ edit ]
De-ice (other de-icing chemicals and methods)
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Ever since American Horror Story’s 2011 beginnings, Evan Peters has been an indispensable part of the action. As Tate Langdon in Murder House, Kit Walker in Asylum, Kyle Spencer in Coven, Jimmy Darling in Freak Show and James Patrick March in Hotel, Peters held his own alongside such veteran actors as Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy and Kathy Bates. Peters, for his part, is grateful to AHS’ creator Ryan Murphy for bringing him back again and again. “Ryan has always just been very giving to me when it comes to the show,” Peters says, “and has always given me amazing roles that I love.”
AHS has also brought Peters plenty of notice elsewhere–he was cast as Quicksilver in X-Men: Apocalypse after director Bryan Singer saw him on AHS, and is now set to appear in the Bryan Buckley-directed Where The White Man Runs Away, co-starring Al Pacino and Melanie Griffith.
What do you think has made you a mainstay of the show? And now you’re coming back for Season 6.
I don’t know. I really like the show. I really want to do a great job and I don’t take for granted the characters that they give me. It is a very out-there show, so I try to make it as real as I can, but all the while having a fun time with it. They’ve been very nice to me and I hope they keep inviting me back to play with their writing. I’d do it forever. I love working on the show and I love working with their writing and also with the other actors as well.
Can you hint at all about Season 6?
I don’t know what’s coming next, so no I can’t. I would love to know. When you know, let me know.
What have been your favorite roles so far in AHS?
Mr. March has been my favorite so far. I like Tate a lot and I like Mr. March. Playing the villain is really fun–especially a character as colorful as Mr. March–and just that 1930s art deco craziness that he had going on, with the whiskey drinking, smoking, suit-wearing kind of guy. It was a very fun role to play. Then also Tate was a very complex role as well. I like playing the villain, but I like trying to figure out why they are that way and trying to sympathize with them a little bit in some way. Maybe some people are innately evil, but then there’s always something that sort of pushes them over the edge and makes them act on those thoughts or feelings, so I always try to figure out what that was and try to give it some sort of justification so that I’m not just playing evil for evil’s sake.
Pictured with American Horror Story: Coven co-stars (L-R): Lily Rabe; Taissa Farmiga, Sarah Paulson and Emma Roberts
Another constant on the show is Sarah Paulson and now she’s back again too for Season 6. How has it been working with her?
She is amazing. First of all to me, Sarah’s hilarious. She’s very funny and very quick-witted and just a lovely person. I love working with her. I love knowing her and talking to her, laughing with her. And then you get into the fact that she’s more than talented. Last year she was working on Marcia Clark (American Crime Story) and on Horror Story and I don’t know how she was doing that. That was crazy to me. But she was so professional and seasoned almost. She knows how to do it and how to get it done and just does it. It’s not always easy and she fights that and fights through that and makes it look really easy.
What’s been the most challenging thing that you could’ve pushed yourself to do as part of the series?
Well, last year was pretty difficult when I first got the role. I originally was going to play Tristan and then sort of last minute, Ryan was like, “Will you play this Mr. March guy?” And I was like, “Oh s—. I don’t know if I can do that.” He’s like, “And I want you to talk like you’re from the 1930s.” Okay. I didn’t quite know how to do that either, so I just watched a lot of My Man Godfrey and William Powell and just tried to research it to come up with a backstory that would justify me being this role. Originally I think it was written as a 40-something year-old man. I don’t look like I’m 40, and to try to play that is ridiculous, so I just tried to make it as this really young successful man, similar to a young oil tycoon or something like that, where he’s got all this money and power and he’s a total monster inside. I had a blast doing it.
How about some of those awkward scenes?
I blocked them out. I’m like, “I can’t even think about it.” There’s a scene where I’m having sex and cutting this girl up. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I was in my trailer trying to work it out. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. And then to top it all off, you have to drop your drawers and be naked while you’re doing it. It was weird. Very, very weird. At one point, they had to have me tape… never mind. I don’t even want to go there. I talked to makeup and I said, “I want to be like a shark with all those scars on them,” so they gave me some really cool back scars and that sort of helped me get out of myself and get into Mr. March. God love her, the poor girl who was on the receiving end was very gracious and made it very easy to do.
How was working with Lady Gaga? She’s relatively new to acting.
Well, I mean to me, it was exciting because she is new to acting, but she is very good at it and was willing to get into it more than a lot of veteran actors, so it was very refreshing and cool to see her dive into it. Each take was very different and sometimes a little scary because you didn’t know what you were going to get. You didn’t know if she was going to be actually hitting you or freaking out or whatnot. It was all very instinctual, which was very cool to work with and sort of get you out of your head and sort of back into the instinct of acting. It was awesome to work with her. I learned a lot.
What can you say about the film Where the White Man Runs Away?
It’s about a journalist named Jay Bahadur. It’s based on a true story about a guy who goes to Somalia by himself at age 24 to write about the Somali pirates to get a book deal. It’s sort of his trials and tribulations but also, you know, growing to love the Somali culture and learning about them and about himself. It’s a big-fish-out-of-water story. It’s also very funny.
How did you prep for the part?
I read Jay’s book and it is very interesting and very informative about the whole Somali culture. Most of the cast are Somali refugees. It was kind of amazing to work with them and learn a lot about them and integrate into their mindset.
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Des Moines, Iowa — A bill dealing with a wide range of gun-related issues was the subject of a sometimes emotional hearing at the Iowa statehouse this past week.
Representative Matt Windschitl, a Republican from Missouri Valley, is a leading gun rights advocate in the House. Windschitl says his aim is to “protect Iowans at all costs.”
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill2.mp3
David Walker, the retired dean of Drake University’s law school, says the “stand your ground” provisions in the bill will give “psychological encouragement” to “vigilantes.”
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill3.mp3
Laural Clinton of Des Moines is a gun owner with a concealed weapons permit, but she opposes the bill. Clinton, who is African American, says she’s worried her sons will be targeted if Iowa gun owners get new “stand your ground” permission to fire in self-defense.
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill4.mp3
The far-reaching bill would grant lifetime permits to carry a concealed weapon. Iowans for Gun Safety president Carletta Knox-Seymour of Cedar Rapids called it an “idiot bill.”
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill7.mp3
The bill has backers, like the National Rife Association. Scott Rausch is state director for the N-R-A.
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill9.mp3
Iowa Firearms Coalition executive director Barry Snell also touted the bill during the hour-long forum.
http://kiwaradio.com/files/RIkaygunbill1.mp3
On the Iowa Senate side of the capitol, Senator David Johnson of Ocheyedan is one of the sponsors of a so-called “Stand Your Ground” law that would remove the requirement to retreat from a location before force could be used in self-defense. At this point Johnson says he is unsure if “Stand Your Ground” will be a stand-alone bill in the Senate, or become part of a bigger omnibus bill, as it has in the House.
http://kiwaradio.com/files/JohnsonStandYourGround-1.mp3
Johnson says he supports not only “Stand Your Ground”, but also “Constitutional Carry”, which would allow residents of Iowa to carry a concealed firearm without a permit.
The Iowa Gun Owners, Iowa Firearms Coalition, and National Rifle Association have been lobbying the Iowa legislature for such a law for the past several years.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn said on CNBC on Tuesday that Donald Trump is “right on about the economy” and said “the Archie Bunker of the world” will vote for the Republican presidential candidate.
Billionaire activist-investor Carl Icahn gives an interview on FOX Business Network's Neil Cavuto show in New York February 11, 2014. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Archie Bunker, a fictional conservative blue-collar worker from the New York City borough of Queens, was the main character in the 1970s television comedy “All in the Family.”
Icahn praised Trump’s economic plan a day after the New York real estate developer unveiled it in a speech in Detroit. Trump proposed sweeping tax breaks, cuts to federal regulations and a revival of the stalled Keystone XL project.
Bunker has been described as the show’s “lovable bigot,” but Icahn said there was no bad intention in comparing middle-class voters to the character.
“Any middle-class worker, you know, ‘the Archie Bunker of the world’ - that was a great show, I used to watch it - those guys are going to vote for him because those are smart guys,” Icahn said.
“They know they are getting screwed, and that is what I think will happen,” Icahn said in an apparent reference to the decline in U.S. manufacturing, a theme of Trump’s.
“Archie Bunker is a middle-class guy, somewhat educated even, that doesn’t know where his next check is coming to send his son or daughter to school, doesn’t know if he’s going to keep his job. ... Why the hell should he vote for a system that is not giving him a good-paying job?” Icahn said.
Icahn echoed his remarks on CNBC on Twitter, saying, “Trump is right on about our economy. A capitalistic system cannot exist if government is at war with business. CEOs rightly so are afraid to invest in new equipment, etc. to make our manufacturing competitive.
“It is no surprise that today it was announced growth in productivity was down for the 3rd straight quarter and is at an all-time low. Our workers cannot be productive with ‘worn out tools’.”
The Labor Department reported that U.S. nonfarm productivity unexpectedly fell in the second quarter, pointing to sustained weakness in the economy.
Trump’s speech came after a week of falls in opinion polls and clashes with the family of a fallen U.S. Muslim soldier and fellow Republican leaders. Icahn said he did not defend Trump’s remarks about the family of soldier Humayun Khan, calling them a “mistake. People make mistakes.”
Asked by CNBC why Icahn was not named to Trump’s group of economic advisers, Icahn said he wanted to focus on a new Super PAC.
Last week, Icahn’s general counsel, Jesse Lynn, told Reuters that Icahn turned down an invitation to join the group because the investor is considering funding a Super PAC focused on regulatory reform. It would be Icahn’s second Super PAC.
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Tennessee has targeted Louisiana Tech's Michael White to replace Cuonzo Martin.
Sources confirmed to ESPN.com that the 37-year-old White, who has led the Bulldogs to a 74-31 mark over the last three seasons, is the choice of Vols athletic director Dave Hart.
Michael White has a 74-31 record in three seasons as Louisiana Tech's coach. AP Photo/David Zalubowski
CBSSports.com earlier reported that Tennessee's coaching search is now focused on White.
However, sources told ESPN.com that White is mulling over the decision whether to take the job and that it's not a given that he will head to Knoxville.
White is a former Ole Miss player and assistant coach who was hired by the Bulldogs in 2011. He won a share of the regular-season title in both the WAC and Conference USA in each of the last two seasons. White is considered one of the rising young coaches in the industry, and is also the son of Duke athletic director Kevin White.
If White takes the job, he would replace Martin, who left Knoxville last week after three seasons and a 64-31 mark to go to California. The Vols made a surprising Sweet 16 run this past season, but will lose their three top players -- Jordan McRae, Jarnell Stokes and Jeronne Maymon -- and likely face a rebuilding situation this season.
Martin went to the NIT in his first two seasons in Knoxville after replacing Bruce Pearl.
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By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
US draft legislation is being re-visited to take account of coal interests
The US will announce a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions before next month's UN climate summit, according to a White House official. The target is expected to be in line with figures contained in legislation before the Senate - a reduction of about 17-20% from 2005 levels by 2020. The absence of a US target has widely been seen as the single biggest obstacle to agreement at the summit. President Barack Obama has not yet decided whether to attend the talks. At the weekend, the hosts of the Copenhagen conference announced that more than 60 heads of state and government had pledged to take part in the two-week negotiating session. Hopefully, the negotiations will see everyone coming up with more ambitious targets - otherwise there's no point in going to Copenhagen
Saleemul Huq, IIED
What's your Copenhagen solution? Mr Obama will join them if it appears that his presence would increase chances of the 192 parties reaching agreement, the official indicated. "There's been recognition that if we want to keep momentum going, numbers have to be put on the table," said Peter Bahouth, executive director of the US Climate Action Network, a network of organisations lobbying for action on the issue. "There's been pressure for the US to come (to Copenhagen) with its hands full rather than empty, and I think what we're seeing are the results of that." In the last week, Mr Obama has discussed climate change with a number of other world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Hu Jintao of China and Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Domestic delays Although Mr Obama campaigned on a promise to cut emissions, and pledged global leadership on climate change on assuming office, the US position has been constrained by delays in putting legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions through Congress. COPENHAGEN SUMMIT Planning to attend: Leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Australia, Japan, Indonesia and Brazil Yet to commit: Leaders of the United States, China and India
Where countries stand on summit Climate: A defining issue Send us your comments The House of Representatives passed a bill in June that would cap emissions and establish a national carbon trading scheme. But progress of a similar bill through the Senate is not likely before March at the earliest. Administration officials have indicated that the targets are being discussed with senior senators in an attempt to ensure that the Senate will back whatever target Mr Obama takes to Copenhagen. It is not clear when the target will emerge, but there are now less than two weeks before the summit opens on 7 December. There will also be pressure internationally for the US to say how much money it is prepared to transfer to poorer countries to help them fight climate change, as it is bound to do under the UN climate convention. Cutting edge In the UN climate process, targets are conventionally given in comparison with 1990 levels of emissions. On that basis, the likely US figure amounts to a cut of just a few percent, as emissions have risen by about 15% since 1990. This is much less than the EU's pledge of a 20% cut over the same period, or a 30% cut if there is a global deal; and much less than the 25-40% figure that developing countries are demanding. CLIMATE CHANGE GLOSSARY Glossary in full EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said at the weekend that the EU should pledge 30% now as a way of showing commitment. But Saleemul Huq, a climate change specialist with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) who works closely with a number of developing country governments, suggested the target would be well received as a worthy first step. "I think it's an extremely good signal that the Obama administration is willing to put a target forward and not wait for Congress," he told BBC News. "The targets that everyone is taking to Copenhagen are the bases for negotiation; and hopefully, the negotiations will see everyone coming up with more ambitious targets - otherwise there's no point in going to Copenhagen, we could leave it all up to the US Congress. "The other important factor is whether President Obama is willing to go to the summit - if he does, that would be a very good sign." The list of confirmed attendees includes UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. But neither Mr Obama nor Chinese President Hu Jintao - leaders of the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters - are yet among them. [email protected] What deal would you like to see at Copenhagen? Who should cut their emissions? By how much? And how should they make these cuts? Send us your own Copenhagen message. You can send a video message to [email protected] or SMS/text it to +44 7725 100 100. If you have a large file you can upload here. Read the
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Newly promoted yokozuna Kisenosato sustained a cut above his left eye during a training session on Monday, though he made clear it was not serious after returning from the hospital with stitches.
Kisenosato, who became the first Japanese-born yokozuna in 19 years when he reached sumo’s highest rank in late January, received treatment for the gash at the Tagonoura stable after an apparent training bout head clash with Yoshikaze.
“I’m all right. This doesn’t count as an injury. There’s no pain whatsoever,” said Kisenosato, who injured the same area four years ago in a training session with yokozuna Harumafuji.
“I’m in good shape and almost in top form. My (physical) impacts are getting stronger,” he said.
Rank-and-file wrestler Yoshikaze, along with sekiwake Kotoshogiku, were having a degeiko, where wrestlers visit rival stables for training bouts.
In the March 12-26 Spring Grand Sumo Tournament At Edion Arena in Osaka, Kisenosato occupies the yokozuna slot on the west side and four grand champions will compete in the elite makuuchi division for the first time since the spring meet in 2000.
After winning the New Year Basho with a 14-1 mark in January, Kisenosato became the first Japanese-born wrestler to be promoted to yokozuna since Wakanohana in 1998.
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Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Bashi Twersky, the widow of Rabbi Mosheh Twersky – who was killed in the Har Nof terrorist attack last week – said the internal divisions within the ultra-Orthodox community that have developed over the last two years were the reason why her husband and three other members of the community died in the brutal incident.
Speaking at the mass prayer rally and ceremony held in the Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday night for the end of the shiva mourning period for the victims, Twersky said the dispute had become increasingly acrimonious over the last year in particular.
She was alluding to the establishment of a new political movement and party that is in competition with the traditional Degel Hatorah non-hassidic haredi party.She said that the attack had been particularly brutal, and asked how such a death could befall those praying in synagogue, “how did the sanctity of the synagogue and prayer not defend us,” she asked.“The fire of dispute has been burning among us for a year now, and this dispute became terrible, and every day it gets worse.”“Someone who listens to a great rabbi different from the one I listen to, someone who belongs to a different camp from me is commanded to be cruel to them, is commanded to humiliate and disgrace them, to harass them with terrible brutality.“When we behave with cruelty to our brothers, God sends a punishment with cruelty, measure for measure.“In synagogues and study halls they persecuted, disgraced and humiliated those who think differently from me, and therefore we were struck by the attribute of strict justice in a synagogue at the time of prayer,” the rabbi’s wife said.She added that strengthening religious observance, as has been advised by many rabbis, was not a good enough reaction, and that rather a “drastic change” was required.Addressing the hundreds of women who had gathered to listen to the bereaved women speak, Twersky pleaded tearfully for such change.“Beloved daughters, I implore you from a broken and tearful heart and from the depths of my soul: Let us accept upon ourselves to live with love and fraternity with all Jews who tremble before God.... Maybe then these sacrifices will not be for nothing and if we act with love to each other, God will reply to us with love,” she said.Since the late Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv died in July 2012, the non-hassidic haredi world has been riven by an internal dispute over who should inherit the mantle of leadership.It was the elderly and frail Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman who was acknowledged as the new leader by the majority of the community, but supporters and loyalists of the more hard line Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach refused to accept Shteinman as the spiritual leader.The Bnei Torah party, established by Auerbach loyalists, contested local municipal elections in October 2013 and won several seats on municipal councils in the ultra-Orthodox strongholds of Jerusalem, Modi’in Illit and Bnei Brak.The resultant factional strife has been extremely rancorous with mutual recriminations from either side.It is this division that Bashi Twersky was referring to in her emotional and heartfelt speech Tuesday night.
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E-commerce market is all about driving traffic, conversion rate and sales revenue. Every year there is a new approach to enhance e-commerce selling and improve customer experience.
Few years back, we hadn’t heard about Website Optimization and now, this word has become the hallmark to strengthen the online presence of any website.
It’s generally said by the SEO professionals;
If you don’t optimize your website, there are chances, your competitors may outrank you from the search access and potential users may ignore your presence on the web.
The recent buzzword getting high ranks is Conversion Rate. Today, e-tailers are using various tactics to get more conversion rate for their stores and increase sales.
Why is conversion rate so important in the e-commerce world?
According to Google, E-commerce conversion rate is the percentage of visits that resulted in an e-commerce transaction.
Therefore:
E-commerce Conversion Rate = (# of e-commerce transactions / visits) * 100
Or even easier:
Source: www.quora.com
It means conversion rate is the key which can help retailers to plan future sales. Plus, retailers can get deep insights of what is pulling them behind from sustaining their position on the web.
Often, it’s been noticed that retailers avoid the true and tested methods to improve their website performance and drive relevant traffic to gain better conversion rates. Still, it’s advisable to use those methods to outsmart the competition.
Orderhive has prepared an ultimate guiding tool on “Effective Ways to Increase E-commerce Conversion Rates Immediately.” which will help retailers in optimizing their stores and increase sales.
This eBook covers;
– The importance of website analysis
– How retailers can understand consumers’ behaviour
– Why branding is important to target the right audience
– SEO and its benefits
– Recent innovations related to CTA, Suggestions, Videos, etc.
Ready to get started? Click here to download your free copy!
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Wayne Barnes combines his refereeing duties with his job as a criminal barrister
Wayne Barnes will break the record for the most Premiership games refereed when he takes charge of Worcester's match against London Irish on Friday.
The 38-year-old Englishman will surpass Chris White, who officiated 190 league games between 1997 and 2011, on the all-time list.
Barnes turned professional in 2005 and has overseen seven Premiership finals since 2008.
He has refereed at three World Cups and been in the middle for 77 Tests.
"In the last 15 years Wayne has arguably become the number one referee in world rugby," Premiership Rugby rugby director Phil Winstanley said.
"We're fortunate to have Wayne plying his trade in the Premiership each week and the quality of his performance rarely waivers.
"He is held in high regard by players and coaches alike."
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Outgoing head of peak medical body calls past two years ‘a period of lost opportunity in health policy’, characterised by lack of consultation
The outgoing president of the Australian Medical Association, Associate Professor Brian Owler, has delivered a scathing attack on the Coalition government, describing the past two years as “a period of lost opportunity in health policy”.
Speaking at the peak medical body’s national conference on Friday, Owler said his presidency, which began in 2014, coincided with “a turbulent time in Australian politics” including the government’s budget announcement of a patient co-payment for GP visits.
The government refused to consult with the AMA on the issue, Owler said.
Public hospitals to be ‘biggest financial challenge’ faced by state governments Read more
“In my first meeting as AMA president, I met with the [then] health minister, Peter Dutton, who delivered an ultimatum: ‘As I see it,’ he said, ‘the AMA can either support the government’s co-payment plans or you can be on the outside’,” Owler said.
“It was an easy choice. I was not going to sell out our members, and I certainly wasn’t going to abandon our patients.”
Owler said he worked with the AMA to come up with an alternative policy which included a minimum co-payment charge that would not alter the Medicare rebate and built-in protections for the elderly, the young and the vulnerable.
But when he presented this plan to Dutton, Owler said he was met with hostility.
“In return, the minister ignored the plan and, when we finally released it publicly, he called a news conference to describe our plan as a ‘cash grab by greedy doctors’.
“So much for working closely with minister Dutton.”
Ultimately, the Coalition failed to gather the Senate support needed to introduce the measure, and it was scrapped.
Big pathology firms could reap millions from Coalition bulk bill deal – analyst Read more
After the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, avoided a leadership spill in February last year, Owler said Abbott told him there would be no further proposed changes to health policy without consultation with the medical profession.
But Owler told the conference that the promise went out the door with Abbott after he was ousted by Malcolm Turnbull in a second leadership spill in September, after which Scott Morrison became treasurer and Sussan Ley was promoted to the health portfolio.
“Since that time, we had more cuts in Myefo [the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook] late last year, with pathology and diagnostic imaging the new targets,” Owler said.
“Again, no consultation and no warning. We supported the pathologists and radiologists. We campaigned against the cuts to the bulk-billing incentives. We supported the pathologists and radiologists. We campaigned against the cuts to the bulk-billing incentives.”
“As we recently discovered, they have struck a deal, but sadly I don’t think it’s something that pathologists will be celebrating.” Turnbull announced the agreement during his first election campaign debate with the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, on 13 May, declaring “the concern that has been expressed about patients who go to have their blood tests done and so forth being charged extra, not being bulk billed … that concern is gone; the pathologists have agreed to continue bulk billing”.
But the AMA is concerned the cut to bulk-billing incentives for pathology have merely been deferred, with $650m still to be take out of health over the next four years. The government will still cut the bulk-billing incentives, but has agreed to reduce the rents that pathologists pay to doctors for co-locating their collection centres in surgeries.
“Then, in the recent budget, we had more cuts, with an extension of the freeze on patients’ Medicare rebates for another two years until 2020,” Owler said.
“Again, no warning and no discussion. The freeze is affecting not only the viability of general practice, especially in those low-income and disadvantaged areas, it punished all those people who already pay a fee, as their rebate is frozen too.
“It is bad for Indigenous health provision, including the Aboriginal health services that are dependent on the rebate from bulk billing. It affects immunisation rates for children, as parents with multiple children defer seeing their GP.
“This is not sensible policy.”
Shorten has vowed to lift the freeze from 1 January if elected.
Owler also accused the health portfolio of being run by treasury and finance rather than by health. He spoke of his concerns about public hospital funding cuts, saying Turnbull’s recent announcement of an extra $2.9bn in funding was not enough to sustain the system long-term. The Greens are also the only party that has committed to reinstating the funding to hospitals which was torn out after the last election.
He then attacked the government’s medical treatment of asylum seekers in detention, saying he was proud that the AMA had taken a strong stance on the issue, calling for asylum seekers to be treated humanely granted access to appropriate medical care.
“We believe there should be independent oversight of that care, and that doctors, nurses, psychologists, and all others should be free to speak out about poor care without fear of legal threat.”
However, he said he “applauded” the government’s efforts to remove children from detention. Meanwhile the shadow health minister, Catherine King, has committed to re-establishing a panel of independent medical experts to provide advice to the immigration department’s chief medical officer, and to report quarterly on the state of health among detainees.
'I'm too young to die': the disease of disadvantage forcing Indigenous children to have open-heart surgery Read more
A new AMA president will be elected by the membership this weekend. Owler, who is a neurosurgeon, said the new president should be “courageous and exceptional,” and continue to visit and work with Indigenous communities and advocate for their health.
“I wish that every Australian could experience the personal growth in understanding and knowledge that comes by frequently speaking with Indigenous people,” he said.
The Greens leader, Senator Richard Di Natale, who is a former GP, used the AMA conference to announce his party’s health policy on Friday morning. He applauded Owler’s work, describing him as someone with “a relentless commitment to health advocacy”.
The Greens will commit an additional $1.4bn in funding to the mental health sector, place a greater emphasis on health promotion, prevention and early diagnosis, and reform end-of-life care including developing a framework to introduce voluntary euthanasia.
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Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
By March 1865, it was obvious to all but the most die-hard Confederates that the South was going to lose the war. Whether that loss was inevitable is an unanswerable question, but considering various “what if” scenarios has long been a popular exercise among historians, novelists and Civil War buffs.
To explore that question, historians often use a concept known as contingency: During the war, one action led to a particular outcome, but if a different action had been taken it would have led to a different outcome. The problem with each scenario, though, is that although superficially persuasive, it collapses under the weight of contradictory facts.
Perhaps the most common scenario centers on the actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee. Some modern historians have attributed the Confederate defeat to Lee’s aggressiveness, implying that, if he had adopted a more defensive strategy, or even carried out guerrilla warfare after Appomattox, perhaps Lee could have held the North at bay until it tired of the conflict and sought a negotiated settlement.
But was this really possible considering the expectations of the Confederate people? Southerners were convinced they were superior soldiers and expected their armies to defeat the enemy on the battlefield. Politically, Lee could not have adopted a purely defensive strategy because the people would not have stood for it. Nor was guerrilla warfare an option. Events in Missouri, Tennessee and other areas where guerrillas operated during the war clearly showed how such brutal warfare devastated entire regions and broke down morale. There simply would not have been enough popular support to sustain such a strategy for long.
Some argue that the Confederates could have won if they had held Atlanta, Mobile, Ala., and the Shenandoah Valley beyond the 1864 election. Northern voters, dispirited by the stalemate, would have elected George B. McClellan president, and he would have bowed to the Democratic Party’s peace faction and opened negotiations with the Confederates.
Such speculation, however, is not supported by historical fact. In his letter accepting the Democratic nomination, McClellan clearly rejected the peace plank. There seems little doubt McClellan would have continued to fight if he became president, and the Union would still have eventually won. Also, a defeated Lincoln would have had four months left in office to achieve victory by launching winter campaigns. As it turned out, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant forced Lee to surrender just over one month after the inauguration. If a lame-duck Lincoln had adopted a more aggressive policy, Grant probably would have forced an Appomattox-like surrender before McClellan ever took office.
Photo
Confederate defeat has also been blamed on King Cotton diplomacy. If the Confederates had sent as much cotton as possible to Europe before the blockade became effective instead of hording it to create a shortage, they could have established lines of credit to purchase war material. This argument is true, but it misses the point. While the Confederates did suffer severe shortages by mid-war, they never lost a battle because of a lack of guns, ammunition or other supplies. They did lose battles because of a lack of men, and a broken-down railway system made it difficult to move troops and materials to critical points. Cotton diplomacy would not have increased the size of the rebel armies, and an increasingly effective Union blockade would have prevented the importation of railroad iron and other supplies no matter how much credit the Confederates accumulated overseas.
Another diplomatic “what if” concerns European intervention. In the fall of 1862, Britain and France were prepared to extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy and offer to mediate a peace, but they backed away when the Union won the Battle of Antietam. In this scenario, if Lee had won the battle, Britain and France would have recognized the Confederacy and secured a peace ensuring Southern independence.
In reality, there is little likelihood the Europeans would have become involved in the war. They had already extended belligerent status to the Confederacy, which allowed it to purchase supplies and use European ports. Diplomatic recognition would have enhanced the Southerners’ prestige — but it would not have materially affected their ability to wage war.
And if the British had offered to mediate a peace, Lincoln certainly would have rebuffed them. Then what? It’s unlikely Britain would have rushed to the Confederates’ aid by breaking the blockade and provoking a war with the Union. By late 1862, emancipation had become a Union goal, and the abolitionist British people would never have supported their government becoming militarily involved to defend slavery. British officials also had not forgotten that American privateers devastated their merchant fleet in the War of 1812. And there was no economic incentive for Britain to become a Confederate ally, because the cotton shortage created by the blockade was soon alleviated by cotton from Egypt and India — and the trade Britain conducted with the Union far outweighed the value of Southern cotton.
Some historians have blamed the Confederate defeat on its strict adherence to states’ rights and a failure to develop a strong sense of nationalism. If the Southern people had been more successful in forming a national identity, Jefferson Davis could have nationalized the railroads and industry, and the governors would have cooperated more with Richmond. A powerful central government and a stronger sense of national identity would also have helped sustain morale when the war began to go badly. Instead, the Southerners’ belief in states’ rights kept the governors at odds with the central government, and the breakdown in civilian morale weakened the army by causing more soldiers to desert.
But that assessment underestimates what the South managed to accomplish. Rather than blaming the Confederates’ defeat on a lack of nationalism, one should marvel that they maintained their government as long as they did. From scratch, Southerners created a functioning constitutional government and a formidable military that included 80 percent of the eligible white males. The Confederates quickly developed a sense of nationalism in the first year of war because they believed they had no choice but either to form a separate nation or to face complete ruin. The string of victories in Virginia in 1861 and 1862 only increased this national pride. Even when the war began to go badly and the enemy occupied large sections of the Confederacy, most Southern whites were determined to fight on because they knew their homes would be the next to feel the invaders’ wrath if they did not.
Slavery and racial views also played an important role in Confederate nationalism. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Southern whites’ resolve strengthened because they realized if they lost the war, the very cornerstone of their society would be destroyed. The sight of black soldiers deep in the Confederate heartland outraged Southern whites, but in the war’s last year those same Southerners were willing to enlist slaves to fight on their side. Confederate emancipation would have been unthinkable earlier in the conflict, but by 1865 many Southerners supported recruiting slaves as a way to strengthen the army and win European recognition. To achieve independence, they were willing to sacrifice the very thing they went to war to protect.
Related Disunion Highlights Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive. See the Highlights »
There are notable examples in history where a weaker people defeated a stronger one. The American Revolution and the Vietnam War immediately come to mind, but the Americans and North Vietnamese had the military backing of the superpowers France and the Soviet Union, respectively. In virtually all cases where a weaker people have prevailed, they had a greater determination to win and were willing to fight for years and suffer horrendous casualties to wear down the enemy.
The Confederacy had no such backing, and a credible argument can be made that its defeat was inevitable from the beginning. What many fail to recognize is that Northerners were just as committed to winning as the Southerners. Some saw it as a war to free the slaves, while others fought to ensure that their republican form of government survived. Northerners believed that America was the world’s last great hope for democracy, and if the South destroyed the Union by force, that light of liberty might be extinguished forever. Lincoln once said the North must prove “that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.”
The South may have been fighting to preserve a way of life and to protect its perceived constitutional rights, but so was the North. If the Southern people kept fighting even after the devastating defeats at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, why should we not believe the North would have kept on fighting even if the Confederates had won Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga? The fact is that both sides were equally brave and equally dedicated to their cause. Commitment and morale being the same, the stronger side prevailed.
Sources: Terry L. Jones, “The American Civil War.”
Terry L. Jones is a professor of history at the University of Louisiana, Monroe and the author of several books on the Civil War.
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Agriculture 2.0 San Francisco was a great event. So much knowledge, so many smart people...
Here are the points that stuck with me most on the State of Ag Investing:
1. The big stat that was most consistently repeated: The global population will be 9 billion by 2050.
2. There was a bit of a disconnect here, the sustainable farming faction bumping up against the fact that if the world went to all-organic farming overnight, half of humanity would starve to death immediately.
3. There are some amazing startups working on things like bio-pesticides (naturally-occurring agents to fight pests instead of chemicals) and nutrient imput technology (not all areas of a field require the same amounts of fertilizers, 2/3rds of all used fertilizer is wasted).
4. The water guys were here, they view water as the most unappreciated and undervalued ag commodity of all. They look at water as the software of agriculture, the land being the hardware. They point to the fact that Bill Gates couldn't convince IBM of the importance of software - water investors and owners view themselves as being overlooked in much the same way - for now.
5. Everyone speaks to being aware of geopolitical risk when making international farmland investments, but there are no real concrete solutions. The guy from TIAA-Cref, a huge farmland investor, acknowledged that there is a real risk of land being confiscated in a true geopolitical crisis scenario. At least the ag guys acknowledge worst-case scenario risks.
6. Emily French is a Rockstar. She trades both ag property and agricultural commodities and makes many appearances on CNBC. She also dropped a few curse words on stage before I had the chance to, so that helps. You'll have to watch for her, she knows her stuff.
7. It is very early, farmland-wise. Less than 1% of US farmland is held by investing institutions. Most importantly, there is almost no leverage in the system...so far.
8. The threat of China becoming a big importer of corn is very real - they're expected to buy 1.6 million tons this year and there are estimates of up to 15 million tons being imported into China by 2015. This against the backdrop of 15 year supply lows.
9. Aquaculture could get hot. There is a real thing called Peak Fish - the amount of ocean-caught fish is flat over the last decade. Peak Fish, who knew?
10. This is most important: There is an Agriculture Put according to many of the hedge fund guys here. This means that yes, ag commodities will be susceptible to a rise in interest rates in the short-term - but they must be bought furiously if and when they come down because nothing the Fed does can change the demographics and population realities. Ultimately, the improving and increasingly diverse diets of 7 billion people will trump the end of QE2 and there is one direction for consumption to go.
I'm glad I came out here to be a part of the conference, the most important thing I learned is how much more I still have to learn about ag, it is relentlessly fascinating and essential to understand.
Add/view comments on this post.
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CLEVELAND, Ohio --A Florida man was arrested in the Cleveland suburb of Westlake last week and charged with promoting prostitution.
Kenneth Chester, 31, of Tampa, Florida was indicted Wednesday by a Cuyahoga County grad jury on prostitution charges.
Westlake police arrested him April 14 after he advertised one of his prostitutes on the website backpage.com, a classified website that is a common site for ads related to the sex trade.
Chester and 20-year-old Maria Guillermi Rosario, also of Tampa were arrested at a local hotel. The pair had traveled to the Cleveland area after spending time in Buffalo, New York, Westlake Police Cpt. Guy Turner said.
Rosario was charged in Rocky River Municipial Court with possessing criminal tools, resisting arrest and loitering to solicit prostitution.
Chester is free from jail on a $10,000 bond and is scheduled for arraignment May 18.
Out-of-state prostitution busts aren't uncommon, Turner said, but the arrest comes three months before the Republican National Convention when local police anticipate a bloom in prostitution activity in the Cleveland area.
"It's like any big event, a Super Bowl, an NBA Championship," Turner said. "It brings commercialized vice elements out of the woodwork. These women and their pimps will descend on Cleveland like a biblical plague."
Several local police departments, including Westlake, are tightening their relationships with local hotels in hopes of stemming prostitution.
A task force made up of at least 50 community service and law enforcement agencies in Northeast Ohio is focusing efforts to curtail human trafficking during the convention.
Previously: Advocates plan anti-human trafficking campaign
Political conventions and major national media events have played host to major busts in recent years.
Ahead of the 2012 RNC in Tampa, Florida there were at least 16 women arrested at strip clubs in that region, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
At least 30 men were arrested in Santa Clara County in the weeks before this year's Super Bowl, according to CBS, while 42 human trafficking victims were found.
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This article is by Rowan Wilken, Research Fellow & Senior Lecturer in Media & Communications at Swinburne University of Technology. It first appeared on The Conversation and is replicated here with permission.
analysis The NBN is emerging as one of the key issues in the lead-up to this year’s federal election. But the project has been fraught with challenges: planning issues and a shortage of skilled labour have delayed the rollout process. Today it was reported that NBN Co is now set to downgrade rollout targets by up to half of those initially forecast.
Given the scale and costs of the project, and the intense debate it has generated, there is strong interest in how it is being experienced and received by end consumers.
Our study of households in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick provides some early insight into household take-up and adoption of the NBN. The research was undertaken by the University of Melbourne and Swinburne University, with financial support from a research grant from independent consumer advocacy group, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).
The study, conducted between 2011-12, consisted of surveys with 282 households, and follow-up interviews with and surveying of a smaller subset of these. It examined which households adopted the NBN and why; how people understand broadband services; and how people view the NBN. It also asked whether the adoption of the NBN impacted on household communications costs, use of the internet, and devices in the home. Our findings reveal that there is significant householder interest in and support for the NBN, but there are ongoing challenges facing roll-out and adoption.
Between 2011 and 2012, the number of households in the Brunswick site that had an active NBN connection rose from 20% to 36% – less than half of those who agreed or strongly agreed that the NBN was a good idea. We found that this relatively low rate of connection was a consequence of several factors at play. It was influenced by households’ lack of awareness of the NBN and its availability; households having to deal with an unfamiliar broadband technology; households waiting for retail service plans to be made available, and an often confusing “opt-in” installation process – no longer used by NBN Co – that required landlords, not residents, to sign off on the agreement.
It is no surprise then that those taking up the NBN were much more likely to be home-owners (63%) rather than tenants, who in shared households also had a preference for individual wireless broadband services for reasons of individual billing, housing mobility and flexibility. The longitudinal data did, however, reveal an increase in household adoption of the NBN, suggesting many of these earlier awareness and installation issues had been worked through.
Perception of Internet service value was a significant factor in decision-making about the NBN across all household connection types, with 24% NBN households and 29% of non-NBN households nominating value as the main reason.
For non-NBN connected households, the value proposition of their current internet service was based on perceived cost, satisfaction with ADSL performance, or satisfaction with their current bundled plan. Meanwhile, for NBN connected households, value was related to personal benefits in terms of data volume and speed, as well as broader community and economic benefits such as productivity and inclusion.
Despite the concerns of non-NBN households, the data suggests that adopting high-speed broadband services on the NBN does not necessarily increase the cost of household internet. Instead, for 49% of the households in this study, the NBN was perceived to have no real impact on internet cost. For those whose costs did increase somewhat (26%), this was often accompanied by increased internet speeds, and sense of value. For those whose costs decreased somewhat (11%), this was often associated with a substitution of landline telephone for a VoIP telephone service, in which the cost of data and voice were bundled in a single service plan.
Of the households that had taken up NBN plans, 62% reported that the volume of home internet use had either increased somewhat or a lot. NBN-connected homes are more likely to make greater use of the internet, and are more likely to engage in more sophisticated online activities, but the association is not necessarily causal. NBN-connected households are almost twice as likely to be used as places of work (30%) than other households (15%).
The personal value proposition of the NBN as revealed by this study is its speed and its data capacity, which is perceived to be associated with increased participation in the digital economy for both work and leisure. While varying factors shaped specific household adoption of the NBN for those living in Brunswick, most agreed that the NBN is of national value and can help to play an important role in building the productivity and competitiveness of the national economy, and in providing for universal digital inclusion.
Overall, 82% of surveyed households either agreed or strongly agreed that the NBN is a good idea, seeing it as important infrastructure for all Australians (14%), beneficial for the future (11%), improve national productivity (8%), helping us to maintain global competitiveness (6%), and connecting rural Australia (5%). In contrast, only a small fraction thought it was too costly and a misdirected use of government funding (6%), or too complicated and suffering delays (2%).
Even so, there is still much work to be done in explaining to consumers fundamental technical aspects of and retail pricing structures for the NBN. For instance, while many households are aware of their monthly ISP data allowance (72% know their data amount), they tend to be much less knowledgeable about the data speed possible or advertised as part of their service plan (68% unsure of Internet speed).
It appears that consumer knowledge about internet plans remains dominated by past retail pricing options and measures based on volume rather than speed. Given that upload and download speed is the NBN’s chief reason for being, this is something that both the NBN Co and ISPs will need to address as the rollout proceeds.
Rowan Wilken receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study location-based media services and the NBN.This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.
Image credit: NBN Co
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CALGARY — With oil and gas companies in the process of firming up capital spending plans for next year, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney urged them to open their wallets and invest in the “massive opportunities” offered by Asia’s growing demand for commodities rather squirrel away cash to protect themselves against a decelerating global economy.
In a speech Friday attended by many senior leaders of the largely cash-rich oil and gas industry, Mr. Carney suggested they have little to worry about because oil prices will remain elevated, the Canadian economy is working, the financial system is working, but their cash reserves are swelling to “excessive” levels, re-enforcing controversial comments he made last month that too much “dead money” is sitting on company balance sheets.
“We can’t save the Euro, fix America’s fiscal cliff or restart their housing market,” Mr. Carney told the Spruce Meadows Roundtable, an annual economic summit organized by ATCO Ltd. founder Ron Southern.
Should we lower our expectations? Or should we control our destiny by building on our strengths in the new global environment?
“Should we just wait out a decade-long deleveraging process in the crisis economies? Should we lower our expectations? Or should we control our destiny by building on our strengths in the new global environment?”
Mr. Carney said Canada’s resource sectors are in a unique position because they can take advantage of rising demand for commodities in Asia, which will keep commodity prices high due to rapid urbanization, a secular process that can be expected to continue for decades.
The trend is reflected in growing Canadian supplies. Oil has become Canada’s most important commodity by value, with its share of total Canadian commodity production rising from 18% to 46% in the past 15 years.
“I am not dictating to companies what they need to do,” he told reporters. “But no one should over-represent the investment performance in Canada. It’s been solid, but it hasn’t been spectacular. And we are in an environment where we have got a strong currency, imported manufacturing equipment is cheaper than it ever was, we have got fierce competition internationally, we have a productivity deficit versus virtually every other advanced economy — our productivity is 70% of the U.S., and we have massive opportunities.
“Many … are being developed and realized in the resource sector, so we would expect that there would be sustained business investment and a lot of the CEOs and senior management … are doing it and we are seeing it, but the facts are the fact, there is a lot of work to be done.”
Bruce March, CEO of Imperial Oil Ltd., said oil companies are doing their part — but noted capital spending takes a long time and some of it has to do with lengthy regulatory processes.
“Our projects that we typically build in the oil sands are seven to 12 years in the making, and they have ramp ups in spending and then peaks and then falling off,” he said on the sidelines of the event south of Calgary.
“We like the opportunities,” he added. “But also, our memories are quite good about what happened in 2008 and 2009.”
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Image copyright EPA Image caption The malware has been taken apart by researchers seeking its creators
As organisations around the world clean up after being caught out by the WannaCry ransomware, attention has now turned to the people behind the devastating attack.
The malware uses a vulnerability identified by the US National Security Agency, but it has been "weaponised" and unleashed by someone entirely different.
So far, nobody seems to know who did it nor where they are.
Mikko Hypponen, head of research at security company F-Secure, said its analysis of the malware had not revealed any smoking gun.
"We're tracking over 100 different ransom Trojan gangs, but we have no info on where WannaCry is coming from," he told the BBC.
The clues that might reveal who is behind it are few and far between.
No Russians
The first version of the malware turned up on 10 February and was used in a short ransomware campaign that began on 25 March.
Spam email and booby-trapped websites were used to distribute WannaCry 1.0, but almost no-one was caught out by it.
Version 2.0, which wrought havoc over the weekend, was the same as the original apart from the addition of the module that turned it into a worm capable of spreading by itself.
Analysis of the code inside WannaCry had revealed little, said Lawrence Abrams, editor of the Bleeping Computer security news website, which tracks these malicious threats.
"Sometimes with ransomware we can get a clue based on strings in the executables or if they upload it to Virus Total to check for detections before distribution," he said.
Those clues could point to it being the work of an established group, he said, but there was little sign of any tell-tale text in the version currently circulating.
"This launch has been pretty clean," said Mr Abrams.
Image caption The malware infects machines in Russia - a location lots of viruses avoid
Other researchers have noticed some other aspects of the malware that suggest it might be the work of a new group.
Many have pointed out that it is happy to infect machines running Cyrillic script.
By contrast, much of the malware emerging from Russia actively tries to avoid infecting people in its home nation.
Plus, the time stamp on the code suggests it was put together on a machine that is nine hours ahead of GMT - suggesting its creators are in Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines or the parts of China and Russia that are a long way east.
There are other hints in the curious ways that WannaCry operates that suggest it is the work of people new to the trade.
To begin with, the worm has been almost too successful, having hit more than 200,000 victims - many times more than are usually caught out by ransomware aimed at large organisations.
Administering that huge number of victims will be very difficult.
Whoever was behind it unwittingly crippled the malware by not registering the domain written in its core code.
Registering and taking over this domain made it possible for security researcher Marcus Hutchins to limit its spread.
There are other methods used to administer infected machines, notably via the Tor dark web network, and these addresses are being scrutinised for activity.
There are other artefacts in the code of the malware that might prove useful to investigators, said cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey.
In particular, he said, law enforcement might be probing use of the kill-switch domain to see if it was queried before the malware was sent out.
Other signifiers might be in the code for an entirely different purpose.
"It's often the case that many criminals put deliberate false flags in there to confuse and obfuscate," he said.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tracking the movement of ransom payments might lead police to the attackers
Money talks
Also, most large-scale ransomware campaigns typically generate a unique bitcoin address for each infection.
This makes it straightforward for the thieves behind the malware to make sure they restore the files only of people who have paid.
WannaCry uses three hard-coded bitcoin addresses to gather ransom payments, and that is likely to make it challenging to work out who has paid, assuming the gang behind it does intend to restore locked files.
The bitcoin payments might offer the best bet for tracking the perpetrators, said Dr James Smith, chief executive of Elliptic, which analyses transactions on the blockchain - the key part of bitcoin that logs who spent what.
Bitcoin was not as anonymous as many thieves would like it to be, he said, because every transaction was publicly recorded in the blockchain.
This can help investigators build up a picture of where the money is flowing to and from.
"Ultimately criminals are motivated by money," he said, "so eventually that money is going to be collected and moved.
"The timing of that movement is going to be the big question, and we expect that will be down to how much gets paid in ransoms over the next few days."
Currently, the total paid to those bitcoin addresses is more than $50,000 (£39,000).
"Everyone is watching those addresses very carefully," said Dr Smith.
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Image copyright Reuters Image caption Protests have been held across Colombia this week to demand the release of the two Dutch journalists
Two Dutch journalists seized in Colombia last weekend by ELN rebels have not been released yet, the left-wing group told the BBC.
The ELN earlier said Derk Bolt and Eugenio Follender had been "freed in perfect condition".
The Dutch embassy in Colombia told the BBC it had no information about the reported release.
It is feared the kidnappings could disrupt peace talks the left-wing ELN is holding with the government.
The ELN (National Liberation Army) said earlier on Friday that the journalists had been freed, but it later added that it "couldn't properly corroborate" this.
Mr Bolt and Mr Follender were near El Tarra in the Catatumbo region, near the border with Venezuela, searching for the mother of a Colombian child adopted in the Netherlands.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The ELN is the second most important guerrilla group in Colombia after the Farc (16 June 2013)
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Colombia army sent specialist forces to search for the missing pair
Last year the ELN kidnapped a Spanish journalist and several Colombians in the same area. All were later released.
The ELN is the second largest left-wing guerrilla group in Colombia, behind the Farc.
The Farc signed a peace deal with the government last November, are coming to the end of a disarmament process and are preparing to enter civilian life. The ELN only started peace talks in February this year.
Analysis: Natalio Cosoy, BBC, Bogota
The fact that the ELN has held these two journalists captive in Catatumbo and insists it would do it again if the same situation arose means the area is effectively out of bounds for reporters and non-locals.
It is not the only Colombian region where an armed group has a level of control that makes it unsafe to visit. The situation is the same in the province of Guaviare, where the dissident 1st Front of the Farc operates. In early March it kidnapped, and has still not released, an official working for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
These situations put into question the ability of the Colombian state to control territories around the country, even after the Farc guerrillas have retreated into 26 transition zones, where they are completing their disarmament, as agreed in the peace deal they have signed with the government in November 2016.
Without the Farc the huge Colombian security forces apparatus, with around half a million men and women, has more room to control other insurgencies and criminal organisations.
As the Colombian government's High Commissioner for Peace, Sergio Jaramillo, told me a few days ago, referring to all areas like Catatumbo: "They have to improve. There would be no excuse for them not to."
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Has Chelsea become so trendy even Martians are scouting for co-ops?
A silvery vision of a dozen balloon-like dots hovering in yesterday’s clear-blue sky over West 23rd Street had thousands speculating the mysterious objects might be UFOs.
Callers began phoning the NYPD and Federal Aviation Administration at 1:30 p.m. with reports of the strange, silver objects high in the sky.
“Some people saw something described as yellow with blue lights surrounding it,” said FAA spokesman Jim Peters. He added that if the objects were weather balloons — as some suggested — his agency had no prior notification they’d be launched.
Witness Daniel Calhoun, 52, admitted, “Common sense says it wasn’t a UFO.
“Common sense says it was a plane or a balloon, but this thing stopped everyone in the street for two blocks. Any New Yorker will tell you, that alone is extraordinary.”
Pete Bryant, 32, said, “I saw five or six lights shining in the sky. There was no way that thing was a balloon.
“There was something weird about it. Light just doesn’t reflect off balloons like that. “If Martians were to land anywhere, New York is a much better location than some backwoods town in the Midwest.”
Tim Powell, 28 , described the objects as “the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It looked like a jellyfish made of lights that just hovered in the sky like it wanted to be seen,” he said. “I was half expecting the aliens to beam down and introduce themselves.”
And Richard Molina, 42, compared what he saw to the “creatures from ‘Predator.’ ”
“It freaked me out. It was a real Superman moment, too,” he said.
“Everyone looked up in the sky. It really was an event.”
Additional reporting by Doug Auer and John Doyle
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AIG needs even more money. Bloomberg is reporting that the company that once was the largest insurer in the world plans to use the new commercial paper subsidy program to borrow $10 billion. Keep in mind that AIG has already borrowed $80 billion or so of the $122.8 billion credit facility from the Fed.
From Bloomberg:
AIG would probably tap less than $10 billion through the new commercial paper program, said the person, who declined to be identified because no agreement had been reached. AIG, once the world's largest insurer, may seek the additional funding after the Federal Reserve expanded its $85 billion lifeline to the company last week by making another $37.8 billion available.
Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy is selling units including U.S. life insurance, plane leasing and consumer finance to repay the government loan. New York-based AIG has already tapped two-thirds of the $122.8 billion made available through the two credit lines.
``We've got a plan that will allow us to repay the Fed loan and emerge as a strong international property-casualty insurer with a presence in international life insurance,'' said AIG spokesman Nicholas Ashooh.
The Fed said last week it will create a special fund to buy commercial paper, seeking to unblock the financing that drives everyday commerce for American businesses. A spokesman for the New York Fed declined to comment on individual companies that may seek cash through the fund.
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Gun owners flying through N.Y and N.J. shouldn’t be arrested when they check their guns.
We are all miserably accustomed to being informed that our rights must be curtailed because the Founders “couldn’t have imagined” the way in which they would eventually be exercised. “Well, sure it made sense to have an armed population back when the people only had muskets,” this argument tends to go. “But now that four-year-old children can buy semi-automatic nuclear death-rays with their Happy Meals, it’s just anachronistic.”
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Silly as this approach ultimately is — basic individual rights do not rely upon the date for their integrity — it is one that can at least be earnestly entertained. 1789 was, after all, a different world. But what about 1986? Can laws written this recently really be said to have had a meaning then that we cannot apply reasonably now? The Third Circuit certainly thinks so, and a decision it issued last year has led to a significant number of people’s being arrested, charged, and thrown in jail. It is high time that this came to a stop. The problem is this: Because America has a federal system of government, the majority of the gun laws are set at the local level. Thus “assault weapons” that are banned in Connecticut and New York are readily attainable in Texas and Idaho; thus permissive concealed-carry regimes are available to the citizens of Vermont and Arizona but not to those in New Jersey and Illinois; and, thus, as one might expect, the transportation, brandishing, sale, and storage rules differ wildly by location. What is good for one set of people is anathema to another. Up to a certain point, this is all well and good. Indeed, within constitutional bounds, local variation is a good thing. It allows individuals to run their communities as they see fit, and it keeps an out-of-touch central government from imposing a single set of rules upon a big and diverse country. Nevertheless, however fractured the political system becomes, a question remains: What happens to people who are merely traveling through? What, for example, does one do if one wishes to drive across the country with a firearm — to and from places where one has a legal right to possess a gun, but through places where one does not?
#ad#It was this problem that an amendment to the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act set out to address. In that year, Congress decided that the federal government would preempt states with strict gun-control laws and prevent them from applying these laws to Americans who were just passing through. The text of that provision holds that
notwithstanding any other provision of any law or any rule or regulation of a State or any political subdivision thereof, any person who is not otherwise prohibited by this chapter from transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm shall be entitled to transport a firearm for any lawful purpose from any place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm to any other place where he may lawfully possess and carry such firearm if, during such transportation the firearm is unloaded, and neither the firearm nor any ammunition being transported is readily accessible or is directly accessible from the passenger compartment of such transporting vehicle: Provided, that in the case of a vehicle without a compartment separate from the driver’s compartment the firearm or ammunition shall be contained in a locked container other than the glove compartment or console.
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In almost every state, the law has been followed as it is written: that is, as a protection that covers Americans who utilize all forms of transportation. Thus, gun owners across the country have been allowed to drive through all states with impunity, providing that their origin and destination states allow them to carry; they have been afforded the opportunity to check guns at one airport and pick them up at another; and they have been permitted to make short stops in unwelcoming jurisdictions on their way to happier climes. “Almost,” however, is an important word: True to form, both New York and New Jersey have recently decided that their own rules should trump federal law. And the results have been disastrous.
Much to their surprise, many gun owners have been arrested when trying to check in with firearms for flights out of New York and New Jersey airports, when trying to collect their firearms at airports in those states, and even when diverted from other flight paths and given back their bags prematurely. The New York Times reported on the results:
There were 42 arrests for gun possession in the two airports [La Guardia and Kennedy] in 2012, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. Some charges of criminal possession of a weapon bring minimum sentences of three and a half years in prison. Like many arrested in New York, the gun owners can wait a day or more behind bars for a hearing before a judge.
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In all cases, the guns were subsequently confiscated and destroyed, sending a clear message to anybody who lives in the most populated area of the country: If you try to fly with your guns, we will arrest you and smash your property.
#page#Unhappily, New York and New Jersey have been helped on their nasty little way by the Third Circuit, which ruled somewhat bizarrely in 2013 that a provision in FOPA that refers only to “vehicles” could not conceivably be held to apply to commercial aircraft. The case was brought by a man named Gregg Revell, a resident of Utah who was arrested by the New Jersey police while on his way to Allentown, Penn. At Newark Airport, Revell missed his connecting flight, necessitating a night’s stay in a hotel. As is standard procedure, he was given back his luggage for the evening and instructed to recheck it the next day. When he attempted to do precisely this, he was arrested — and charged with illegal possession of a firearm.
Revell sued, claiming indignantly that he was protected by FOPA and that the state’s law did not therefore apply. Alas, the courts disagreed. The Third District acknowledged that Section 926A “amended a far more expansive entitlement to ‘transport an unloaded, not readily accessible firearm in interstate commerce,’ which was passed just two months earlier as part of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act” but it ruled anyway that the amendment “benefits only those who wish to transport firearms in vehicles — and not, therefore, any of the kinds of ‘transportation’ that, by necessity, would be involved should a person#…#wish to transport a firearm by foot through an airport terminal or Port Authority site.”
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#ad#All told, this was a peculiar decision. For a start, it is very difficult to comprehend why airplanes don’t count as “vehicles” when nowhere in the statute is it defined what a “vehicle” is or is not; when 48 of the 50 states consider airplanes to be protected; and when one is, in fact, less able to access firearms put into cargo from the “passenger compartment” of an aircraft than one is from the passengers’ area of a car. Sure, one has to walk “by foot” with a firearm when embarking or disembarking a plane, and this distinguishes the transaction from, say, walking to and from a car, with the gun remaining in the trunk, when one has stopped to gas up or buy food. Still, it’s peculiar that a federal government that sought to make it easy for Americans to move firearms around the country and that explicitly refrained from defining what “vehicle,” “transporting,” or “transporting vehicle” was supposed to mean would have intended to exempt aircraft from the law. It’s even more peculiar that a court would side with an interpretation that sends an innocent man to prison.
In 2012, a Republican congressman named Morgan Griffith attempted to clear up the confusion with H.R. 4269, a bill that, among other effects, would have made it clear that FOPA protected Americans who were “staying in temporary lodging overnight, stopping for food, fuel, vehicle maintenance, an emergency, medical treatment, and any other activity incidental.” The bill died in committee — and, given the terminal vagueness of its language, this was probably a good thing. Certainly, one can award a good grade to Griffith for his attempt to “more comprehensively address the interstate transportation of firearms or ammunition,” but one cannot give many points for execution. As well as the above definition of “transport,” there was one vague reference to “transportation . . . by other means.” And that was about it: no mention of airplanes; no mention of airports; no firmly worded instruction that New Jersey and New York were henceforth to consider themselves warned. Nothing, in other words, to prevent a future court from making the same mistake.
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This is an election year, and Republicans are likely to face a host of wedge issues that have been concocted solely to score political points. They will need some of their own with which to fight back. Enthusiastic as the likes of Michael Bloomberg might be about spending their money in quixotic pursuit of a great gun-control regime, it remains the case that Democrats do not enjoy discussing firearms law, and they most certainly do not wish to go on the record as opposing popular bills. Now is an excellent time for the GOP to introduce a measure that protects everybody who travels with guns, and for their candidates to sell it on the reasonable (dare I say “commonsense”) grounds that innocent Americans should not be sent to prison because they miss their connecting flights or because the weather changes in the skies of the Northeast. If we are to be told that Congress couldn’t have imagined airplanes as long ago as 1986, then we might counter the claim with our own: Well, it can sure as hell imagine them now.
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— Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.
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Over the last 10 months, Donald Trump has turned the political landscape on its side and introduced countless numbers to hate speech and racist conspiracy theories. But until now, the idea has been largely anecdotal.
With the help of the Google AdWords, Hatewatch worked to see just how heavily Trump's continued embrace of racist and extremist ideas have influenced his supporters.
When Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015, he made waves announcing an immigration plan that infamously called for the building of a wall along the southern U.S. border and he described Mexican immigrants as rapists.
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
That month, the average number of Google searches for the term “Mexican rapists” jumped almost forty-fold compared to May. In July, the searches almost doubled again, rising from 390 searches to 1,000.
In November, Trump retweeted a picture of fake crime statistics claiming that 81 percent of white murders were committed by African-Americans in 2015. The idea that African-Americans are prone to statistically higher rates of violent crime, and that the victims of that criminality are more often white, is an idea that has increasingly found footing in racist circles. A racist Twitter account, @cheesedbrit, originally posted the racist graphic that Trump used, according to Little Green Footballs.
But following Trump’s tweet of the graphic, and the uproar that surrounded it, the average number of Google searches for the phrase “black on white crime” jumped from 2,900 searches in October to 8,100 in November.
This is the highest number of searches for the terms since the aftermath of the Charleston shooting in June 2015, when Dylann Roof killed nine people following a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roof searched Google for the phrase “black on white crime” and discovered the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) the white nationalist group that has pushed the black-on-white crime narrative heavily. Roof credited in his manifesto as his gateway into the white nationalist world.
Trump’s influence continued to play out in the numbers through last December, when he called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. In his announcement, Trump relied heavily on information from the the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy (CSP). Then, as happens whenever Trump embraces an extremist message, searches on Google for “Center for Security Policy” skyrocketed from 2,900 searches in November to 22,900 searches in December. When you search “Center for Security Policy” in Google, the first two results are for the CSP website, which houses a wealth of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories as well as a call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S.
In 2016, the trend has continued.
Trump retweeted posts from multiple racist Twitter accounts that used the term “white genocide”— an idea that advancements in multicultural policies will in the short term lead to whites becoming an ethnic minority in the United States, and ultimately lead to a complete destruction of “white culture.”
In recent years, the idea has spread through something known as the “The Mantra,” a 221-word attack on multiculturalism written by Robert Whitaker, a cantankerous segregationist running for president on the racist American Freedom Party ticket. The Mantra ends with the phrase, "anti-racist is code word for anti-white”— one that has been displayed on highway billboards nationwide. Craig Cobb, a white supremacist who tried to take over a town in North Dakota in 2013, painted the phrase on his home.
White nationalists nationwide praised Trump and his campaign for both his call for a ban on Muslim immigration as well as his retweeting of racist accounts. The numbers continued to reflect his influence. After Trump tweeted the “white genocide” messages, the average number of Google searches for “white genocide” nearly doubled, climbing from 9,900 in December to 18,100 in January.
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Image copyright AFP Image caption The president likened top-earning officials to "angels residing in heaven"
Tanzanian President John Magufuli has promised to slash the salaries of senior civil servants, cutting the top wage threshold by almost two-thirds.
He told supporters that it was shameful that some top officials were earning $18,000 (£13,000) a month, while others were paid as little as $140.
Officials not ready to accept the new $7,000 monthly wage limit should "start looking for alternative jobs", he said.
Mr Magufuli has promised to cut wasteful public expenditure in office.
The changes would come into effect in time for the start of the next financial year, which starts on 1 July, the president said.
He likened the gulf in wages to a few "angels residing in heaven", while the majority "languished as if they were in hell", Tanzania's The Citizen newspaper quotes him as saying.
Junior civil servants would see their salaries increase as part of the new policy, Mr Magufuli added.
The president was speaking from his home town of Chato in north-western Tanzania in his first visit since taking office last October.
He also used his speech to announce a drop in the current income tax rate from 11% to 9%.
"It's true we want to collect tax, but we must also understand what the working class takes home," he said.
Image caption President Magufuli (pictured) has won praise for his attempts to clean up corruption
On Tuesday, a US government aid agency withdrew $472m (£331m) of funding for a Tanzanian electricity project after criticising the government's handling of elections in Zanzibar.
The president appeared to react to the move in his speech by criticising over-reliance on foreign aid:
"We need to stand on our own. Work hard so that Tanzanians can get rid of donor dependence."
Nicknamed the bulldozer, Mr Magufulil has announced a range of cost-cutting measures since coming to power including cancelling official celebrations for independence day.
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The World Championship is about to commence its 27th Grand Prix in the US, with the first one dating all the way back to Daytona in 1964.
On 2 February it was the 51st anniversary of the first time that the World Championships visited a US circuit. The very first US Grand Prix was held in 1964 at Daytona and was followed by a second a year later in 1965, when it was the legendary Mike Hailwood who took the 500cc win, with Alan Shepherd taking the 250cc victory. It would prove to be the last time the World Championships would visit the US for over two decades.
In 1988 the World Championship returned to US soil at another iconic circuit, Laguna Seca in California. In an era that was dominated by two stroke machines ridden by American and Australian riders, it was local hero Eddie Lawson who took the win on the way to the third of his four world titles in the 500cc class.
As an example of how hard many European riders found it to adjust to the new circuit, the 250cc victory was taken by a US wild card Jim Filice on a Honda NSR250 HRC provided by the respected coach Erv Kanemoto.
Local riders such as Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski dominated the next few editions of the US Grand Prix, as their local knowledge of the track gave them an advantage, and it took until 1994 for a European rider to stop this run in the 500cc class when Luca Cadalora won at Laguna Seca.
It would then be over a decade before the US Grand Prix made a return to the World Championship calendar, and when it did, it was all change. The MotoGP™ era had begun 4 years earlier, replacing the old 500cc class, and Loris Capirossi was the only rider on the grid that had raced at the circuit previously when the World Championships last visited 11 years earlier.
Once again, local knowledge would prove to be essential at the circuit, as the “Kentucky Kid” Nicky Hayden went on to claim back-to-back wins in 2005 & 2006 in front of his home fans, the latter victory coming on his way to the MotoGP™ title that year.
Casey Stoner became the first Australian to win in the premier class at Laguna Seca when he took the victory in 2007, as he claimed the title that year with Ducati. Valentino Rossi would go on to win in 2008, after an epic battle with Stoner over the course of the race. Rossi would also go on to take the win in Indianapolis two weeks later, which had been added to the MotoGP™ calendar that year, meaning there were now two races held in the US each season.
Laguna Seca and Indianapolis would be a staple of the MotoGP™ calendar for the next few years, and in fact in 2013 an extra date was added in the US, with the addition of the race at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. In 2013, it was Marc Marquez the new MotoGP™ superstar that took victory in them all, on the way to the title in his rookie season.
Last year it was more of the same, despite Laguna Seca being dropped from the schedule, as Marquez went on to win at COTA and Indianapolis as he claimed victory in the first ten races of the season on the way to defending his title. Therefore it is once again the young Spaniard Marquez who will start the race as favourite, despite having not had the ideal start to his 2015 season in Qatar.
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FREMONT, OH - A Sandusky county grand jury has issued 43 indictments - of which 38 are felonies - against Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer.
The indictments come following an investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation that began in September of 2015.
The investigation started when a number of local police chiefs in Sandusky County expressed concerns about Overmyer's behavior in connection with prescription drug disposal drop box collections.
The indictments charge that Overmyer improperly used and tampered with department funding records and that he deceived doctors and pharmacists to get prescription pain medicine. Theft charges against him relate to allegations that he improperly took medications from the drop boxes.
Overmyer was indicted on the following:
12 counts of tampering with records, felonies of the third degree
12 counts of deception to obtain a dangerous drug, felonies of the fourth degree
Three counts of deception to obtain a dangerous drug, felonies of the fifth degree
Six counts of theft in office, felonies of the fourth degree
Four counts of theft, felonies of the fourth degree
One count of theft, a felony of the fifth degree
Five counts of filing false financial disclosure reports, misdemeanors of the first degree
Overmyer is expected to be arraigned Wednesday, August 24th.
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The Parramatta Eels and South Sydney Rabbitohs have finalised their teams for Friday night's Round 26 clash.
Beau Scott returns for the Eels with David Gower making way. Kaysa Pritchard misses out on a return to this week. Siosaia Vave starts in the front row with Daniel Alvaro joining Scott on the interchange.
Sam Burgess, Angus Crichton, Adam Reynolds and Aaron Gray are out for the Rabbitohs. Damien Cook shifts to fullback, Bryson Goodwin to the centres, Luke Kelly starts at halfback while Robbie Farah, Kyle Turner and George Burgess have been promoted to the starting pack. Jason Clark, David Tyrrell and Siosifa Talakai join the final bench.
Match Draw Widget
[2017] Telstra Premiership - Round 26: Eels vs Rabbitohs
Eels
1 Will Smith
2 Semi Radradra
3 Michael Jennings
4 Brad Takairangi
5 Kirisome Auva'a
6 Corey Norman
7 Mitchell Moses
16 Siosaia Vave
9 Cameron King
10 Tim Mannah (C)
11 Manu Ma'u
12 Tepai Moeroa
13 Nathan Brown
Interchange
8 Daniel Alvaro
15 Kenny Edwards
17 Suaia Matagi
20 Beau Scott
Rabbitohs
9 Damien Cook
2 Campbell Graham
1 Bryson Goodwin
4 Tyrell Fuimaono
5 Robert Jennings
6 Cody Walker
21 Luke Kelly
8 Thomas Burgess
14 Robbie Farah
15 George Burgess
11 John Sutton (c)
16 Kyle Turner
13 Cameron Murray
Interchange
17 Dean Britt
18 Jason Clark
19 David Tyrrell
20 Siosifa Talakai
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Join us for an evening curated by one of our Associate Composers Freya Waley-Cohen with performances by viola da gamba player Liam Byrne and contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment.
We will explore the idea of intimacy in chamber music. From the more extroverted opening (music by Meredith Monk), the night will bring the listener into the delicate and complex world of the soloist. A song cycle by Freya Waley-Cohen explores intimate relationships from a female perspective.
Programme
SET 1: THE HERMES EXPERIMENT
Meredith Monk - Double Fiesta (arr. Anne Denholm)
Josephine Stephenson - ...after George
William Croft - Sarabande and Ground
Aperghis - Recitation N.9
SET 2: LIAM BYRNE
Alex Mills - Suspensions and Solutions
Saint Colombe
Freya Waley-Cohen - Unbridling
SET 3: THE HERMES EXPERIMENT
Donatoni - Clair - mvt 1
Darren Bloom - Second fig (world premiere)
Freya Waley-Cohen & Octavia Bright - We Phoenician Sailors
As well as live sets from amazing musicians, we welcome Gabriel Prokofiev and Eleanor Ward as our DJs for the night, starting the event with a half-hour set.
Tickets £5 (students) / £8 (advanced) / £10 (on the door)
Doors open 8pm, live music from 8.30pm. Arrive early to make the most of happy hour before 8pm!
RSVP on Facebook
More info
Freya Waley-Cohen's music has been performed by the Manson Ensemble at the Royal Academy of Music, conducted by Oliver Knussen, the Orchestra of the Swan, conducted by David Curtis, CHROMA ensemble, The Hermes Experiment, Reverie Choir, Richard Watkins, Huw Watkins and others. She holds an Open Space residency at Aldeburgh Music where she was a Britten-Pears Young Artist in both 2014 & 2015.
The Hermes Experiment is a British contemporary quartet made up of harp, clarinet, voice and double bass, and were the winners of our Battle of the Bands 2014.
Liam Byrne divides his time between playing very old and very new music on the viol. He has been praised in The Times for his “nuanced and expressive, stylish virtuosity” and by The Guardian for his “glittering performance”.
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Social network’s decision comes as privacy watchdogs express serious concerns over its use of messaging app’s data
Following its pausing of the use of WhatsApp data in the UK, Facebook has stopped using data taken from its messaging service for advertising across Europe.
The social network had come under pressure from the pan-European data protection agency group, the Article 29 Working Party in October. The group of privacy watchdogs said it had serious concerns over Facebook’s use of the data, including user phone numbers. It asked the social network to pause its WhatsApp data collection.
Facebook has now halted the use of the collected data for advertising and product improvement purposes, which would enable it to link Facebook and WhatsApp accounts for users who have both.
Why we should worry about WhatsApp accessing our personal information | Elizabeth Denham Read more
Facebook’s European operations are based in Ireland, where it is regulated by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s office.
A spokesperson for the Irish privacy watchdog told the Irish Times: “During our engagements with Facebook, it was confirmed that, for the moment, Facebook Ireland is not proceeding to process European user data from WhatsApp for the purposes of serving ads and enhancing the Facebook service.”
The Irish data protection authority said that it was investigating Facebook’s data practices regarding the sharing of WhatsApp data.
Facebook has also seen investigations launched into its data-sharing practices by Germany, France, Italy and soon Spain. The UK’s information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, said that she had concerns that customers weren’t being properly protected by Facebook.
Denham said: “I don’t think users have been given enough information about what Facebook plans to do with their information, and I don’t think WhatsApp has got valid consent from users to share the information.”
WhatsApp originally gave users of the messaging service a notice to allow them to opt out of the use of the data shared with Facebook for advertising purposes, but not to block its sharing.
That condition remains the same: Facebook will not halt the sharing of data between its main social network and WhatsApp, which is used for purposes other than advertising.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - An ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor was found guilty of sexually abusing a young female patient in the insular Brooklyn community where they lived, prosecutors said on Monday.
A jury in New York State Supreme Court convicted Nechemya Weberman, 54, of sexual conduct against a child, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, and endangering the welfare of a child. He faces 117 years behind bars when sentenced on January 9.
The trial centered on a three-year period starting in 2007 when the victim’s parents hired Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, to counsel their 12-year-old daughter. Prosecutors have said that over the next several years, Weberman sexually abused the girl, mostly in his office.
“The victim showed great courage to come forward in a very difficult time,” Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes said in a statement announcing the verdict. “Hopefully, this verdict will lead to the understanding for other women that they can come forward as well.”
The trial was marred by accusations of witness intimidation. At one point, four men were accused of photographing the victim in court, then posting her image on Twitter. The identity of victims in sex abuse cases is typically protected.
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Lincoln Motor Co.
Car dealers have long been fond of saying "There's a butt for every seat," but for auto makers, finding a seat for every butt has often proven far more elusive.
Over the years, car industry ergonomists have developed seating innovations like variable-density foams and dynamically inflating lumbar supports that expand to hug you in corners. But up until these Lincoln Continental thrones, we've never seen seats that allow the cushion under each leg to be manipulated independently, let alone for both length and height.
While these seats are technically those of a concept car, CNET has been assured that they are extremely close to the production model's units, with the brand going so far as to hold a New York press event this week just to let journalists inspect them more closely. The forthcoming production sedan from Ford's luxury brand will boast 30-way power, which sounds like more adjustability than one of those indulgent $4,000 massage recliners from Brookstone (only these seats are a lot better-looking).
Dan Ferretti, Lincoln's global seat technical leader, tells CNET the reason the Continental's seats allow for individual leg articulation is because drivers use their legs differently: "There was a recognition early on that each of your legs is doing something different. One is, for the most part, continuously connected to the accelerator or brake pedal. The other leg is free to move about, sometimes you tuck it up under you, or stretch it out... you want to have different functionality and different support."
On long drives, I've found that it doesn't take a Costanza wallet in one's back pocket to create spinal and posterior discomfort, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the Continental's high-tech chairs may be able to alleviate side-to-side variances that can trigger pain.
What's more, it's likely that it won't be just the driver and passenger who will enjoy all that adjustability. The Continental concept features four individually articulating seats, and when the vehicle was revealed at the New York Auto Show in April, company officials insisted that the show car's interior was nearly production ready. CNET expects the bucket seat and center console setup to be a cost option, with a traditional three-across bench as standard.
This oddly hypnotic video shows many of the various ways these seats can be adjusted:
In its search for the perfect chair, Lincoln designers studied first-class and private jet cabins, and unsurprisingly, the resulting Venetian-leather-clad perches not only feature heating and cooling, but also a rolling-pattern massage to reduce muscle fatigue by keeping leg- and lower-back muscles and blood vessels stimulated. Indeed, Jonathan Line, Lincoln's advanced seat innovation supervisor, says, "We're really taking it from a health and wellness angle... [delivering] a holistic approach for comfort and relaxation - stress relief - to the customer in ways they can't get it today."
Lincoln boasts that the seats themselves have accounted for over 50 disclosures to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and over 100 more are being disclosed or reviewed. That's largely because their novel modular construction is unlike any seat the company has made before, with greater adjustability and 40 percent less foam by volume than a typical seat.
The full-size Lincoln Continental and its ultra-comfy seats will be built in Flat Rock, MI. It heads into battle against the Cadillac CT6 and Lexus LS beginning next year.
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It's not a good day for LinkedIn. After reports that its iOS app potentially violates user privacy by sending detailed calendar entries to its servers, comes a report that 6.46 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords have leaked online.
A Russian forum user claims he has hacked LinkedIn, uploading 6,458,020 encrypted passwords (without usernames) as proof.
The passwords are encrypted with the SHA-1 cryptographic hash function, used in SSL and TLS and generally considered to be relatively secure, but not foolproof. Unfortunately, it also seems that passwords are stored as unsalted hashes, which it makes it much easier to decipher them using pre-computed rainbow tables.
In simple terms, this means an attacker might be able to crack many of the passwords using very cheap resources in a relatively short amount of time.
SEE ALSO: How to Change Your LinkedIn Password
While there's a possibility that the password collection is not genuine, some reports on Twitter add credibility to the story. LinkedIn said on Twitter it's looking into the issue.
Our team is currently looking into reports of stolen passwords. Stay tuned for more. — LinkedIn (@LinkedIn) June 6, 2012
Finnish security company Cert-Fi has posted a warning about the incident, saying it is "likely" that whoever hacked LinkedIn possesses the accompanying user names as well.
If you're a LinkedIn user, we recommend you change your password right now. Furthermore, if you used that password on any other online service, we recommend you change those passwords as well.
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Posted by: John Kirk on May 9th, 2014
As some friends know I am part of a group that seeks Mokele-mbembe in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo. These are dangerous places. Last month Congolese troops crossed the border at Lobeke where we know the head ecoguard and kidnapped two soldiers and two ecoguards. They were held for ransom, but the threat of unleashing 600 Rapid Response Field Force troops, induced the Congolese to release the Cameroonians. Wenoperate in this area and our work is fraught with danger.
My colleague and fellow Scot Bill Gibbons has made a fundraiser video showing what we have to contend with and what we have discovered in our travels in search of Mokele-mbembe in Africa. It is a perilous business and you can see what I have to contend with when I am there. In 2012, I was sitting on the banks of the Dja river 100 kilometres from the last outpost. We had seen two herds of aggressive elephants, a 16 foot crocodile and heard the angry cries of a troop of mean chimpanzees. I thought to myself that I must be nuts being out there in the middle of nowhere seeking something so elusive. I still think I am nuts for not being able to resist the allure of an animal I have heard, but not seen and wanting to go back for more even though it might kill me.
I can be seen briefly at the front of a dugout as we navigate the Dja.
New findings concerning Mokele-mbembe have prompted us to launch a major expedition set for late 2014. Watch out for our crowd funding event with some great concessions, coming soon. Thanks for watching!
Our friend and fellow explorer Michel Ballot is risking life and limb to go back to Cameroon in July. Michel was rendered serioysly ill in 2012 with a horrendous case of salmonella and we had to take him to hospital. He barely survived, but is back to good health. There may be another expedition later this year, but I have other cryptozoological events to go to so I will not participate. There’s always next year for putting my life at risk again.
This is Michel. He holds the record at 15 expeditions. Next is Bill Gibbons with 7.
And without our guides Noel and Blaise, wevwould be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. These guys would die for you if they had to. Truly, two great men.
About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.
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It was a banner year in 2016 for creative writing teacher Precious Symonette. But if you ask her, she’s just getting started.
The Miami Norland Senior High teacher has for the past four years overseen the Viking Freedom Writers, a traveling creative writing and performance troupe inspired by the nonfiction book, “The Freedom Writers Diary,” written by The Freedom Writers and their teacher, Erin Gruwell. In the program, student of hers from at-risk neighborhoods write instead of fight, using pens and their voices rather than drugs and guns.
During the summer, Symonette launched the next step of her vision. At the urging of Gruwell, she brought her program to the college level with the Florida Freedom Writers Foundation. Joining her were former students now in college, some of whom—Joyce Morin, Jazzline Vergara, Andrew Ruby, Adonis Valdez, Alexandre Sparks, William Gordon and Anthony Miley—remained together at Barry University to continue working with her as teaching artists.
“They told me, ‘We want to stay and help other students to do what we’ve been doing in the Viking Freedom Writers, because it’s empowering; it changed our lives,’” said Symonette. “The fact that they wanted to stay local to help me with the foundation spoke volumes of them. It’s amazing.”
The Florida Freedom Writers have worked with United States Attorneys Office, the Juvenile Justice System and several other entities to hold performances and workshops for schools, colleges and various educational and charitable organizations throughout Florida and in parts of Georgia and Chicago. They regularly perform and volunteer in their community. Recently, the group appeared before approximately 3,000 people at the Florida Education Association Delegate Assembly.
“We show students that you don’t have to turn to negativity, guns, gangs—those types of things—to bring significance to your life,” she said. “You can do something positive and productive and use your stories as opportunities to motivate and empower yourself to do better things.”
One of five finalists from close to 200,000 entrants last year in the running for Florida Teacher of the Year, the 12-year educator was bestowed the Miami-Dade County 2017 Francisco R. Walker Teacher of the Year Award, the National Education Association Superhero Educator Award and has twice won Teacher of the Year at Miami Norland Senior High. Recently, she was named a Top Black Educator by Legacy South Florida.
“It was a blessing for me to be named teacher of the year for my district, state and to have a national award,” she said. “But at the end of the day, I do it for the testimonies. The fact that I get to teach how I want to teach because I studied and have the experience—not to mention the support of my great principal, Reginald Lee—is breathtaking. Being able to stand back in the crowd and see my students blossom on stage, in workshops or just in conversation is truly fulfilling for me. I have awards that are tangible and ones that aren’t, which are the ones I seek.”
Symonette, who grew up in a single-parent household in Hallandale, Florida, always wanted to be a teacher. Some of her earliest memories involve dressing up in her mother’s clothes and playing teacher to a classroom of stuffed animals. She previously taught at Charles R. Drew Middle School. Before that, she worked as a travel writer while pursuing her writing degree.
To date, more than 450 students have gone through the Vikings Freedom Writers program and have gone on to published their work and performed spoken word poetry. Most plan to give back to their community and inspire others to live by her motto: “Write yourself into existence.”
“I’m a firm believer that students need empowerment, to know that people want to hear what they have to say on a never-ending basis,” she said. “They need someone to show them how to be positive and productive when they’re telling their story, because if they get to the point where they are not able to voice their opinions, unfortunately, they’ll feel that the only way they can get attention is by being violent, unproductive and disrespectful, and I never want that for them.”
For more information, visit www.FloridaFreedomWriters.com.
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Almost Everyone Involved in Developing Tor was (or is) Funded by the US Government
“The United States government can’t simply run an anonymity system for everybody and then use it themselves only. Because then every time a connection came from it people would say, “Oh, it’s another CIA agent.” If those are the only people using the network.”
—Roger Dingledine, co-founder of the Tor Network, 2004
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In early July, hacker Jacob Appelbaum and two other security experts published a blockbuster story in conjunction with the German press. They had obtained leaked top secret NSA documents and source code showing that the surveillance agency had targeted and potentially penetrated the Tor Network, a widely used privacy tool considered to be the holy grail of online anonymity.
Internet privacy activists and organizations reacted to the news with shock. For the past decade, they had been promoting Tor as a scrappy but extremely effective grassroots technology that can protect journalists, dissidents and whistleblowers from powerful government forces that want to track their every move online. It was supposed to be the best tool out there. Tor’s been an integral part of EFF’s “Surveillance Self-Defense” privacy toolkit. Edward Snowden is apparently a big fan, and so is Glenn Greenwald, who says it “allows people to surf without governments or secret services being able to monitor them.”
But the German exposé showed Tor providing the opposite of anonymity: it singled out users for total NSA surveillance, potentially sucking up and recording everything they did online.
To many in the privacy community, the NSA’s attack on Tor was tantamount to high treason: a fascist violation of a fundamental and sacred human right to privacy and free speech.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes Tor to be “essential to freedom of expression.” Appelbaum — a Wikileaks volunteer and Tor developer — considers volunteering for Tor to be a valiant act on par with Hemingway or Orwell “going to Spain to fight the Franco fascists” on the side of anarchist revolutionaries.
It’s a nice story, pitting scrappy techno-anarchists against the all-powerful US Imperial machine. But the facts about Tor are not as clear cut or simple as these folks make them out to be...
Let’s start with the basics: Tor was developed, built and financed by the US military-surveillance complex. Tor’s original — and current — purpose is to cloak the online identity of government agents and informants while they are in the field: gathering intelligence, setting up sting operations, giving human intelligence assets a way to report back to their handlers — that kind of thing. This information is out there, but it's not very well known, and it's certainly not emphasized by those who promote it.
Peek under Tor’s hood, and you quickly realize that just everybody involved in developing Tor technology has been and/or still is funded by the Pentagon or related arm of the US empire. That includes Roger Dingledine, who brought the technology to life under a series of military and federal government contracts. Dingledine even spent a summer working at the NSA.
If you read the fine print on Tor’s website, you’ll see that Tor is still very much in active use by the US government:
“A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.”
NSA? DoD? U.S. Navy? Police surveillance? What the hell is going on? How is it possible that a privacy tool was created by the same military and intelligence agencies that it’s supposed to guard us against? Is it a ruse? A sham? A honeytrap? Maybe I’m just being too paranoid…
Unfortunately, this is not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It is cold hard fact.
Brief history of Tor
The origins of Tor go back to 1995, when military scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory began developing cloaking technology that would prevent someone’s activity on the Internet from being traced back to them. They called it “onion routing” — a method redirecting traffic into a parallel peer-to-peer network and bouncing it around randomly before sending it off to its final destination. The idea was to move it around so as to confuse and disconnect its origin and destination, and make it impossible for someone to observe who you are or where you're going on the Internet.
Onion routing was like a hustler playing the three-card monte with your traffic: the guy trying to spy on you could watch it going under one card, but he never knew where it would come out.
The technology was funded by the Office of Naval Research and DARPA. Early development was spearheaded by Paul Syverson, Michael Reed and David Goldschlag — all military mathematicians and computer systems researchers working for the Naval Research Laboratory, sitting inside the massive Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling military base in Southeast Washington, D.C.
The original goal of onion routing wasn’t to protect privacy — or at least not in the way most people think of “privacy.” The goal was to allow intelligence and military personnel to work online undercover without fear of being unmasked by someone monitoring their Internet activity.
“As military grade communication devices increasingly depend on the public communications infrastructure, it is important to use that infrastructure in ways that are resistant to traffic analysis. It may also be useful to communicate anonymously, for example when gathering intelligence from public databases,” explained a 1997 paper outlining an early version of onion routing that was published in the Naval Research Labs Review.
In the 90s, as public Internet use and infrastructure grew and multiplied, spooks needed to figure out a way to hide their identity in plain sight online. An undercover spook sitting in a hotel room in a hostile country somewhere couldn’t simply dial up CIA.gov on his browser and log in — anyone sniffing his connection would know who he was. Nor could a military intel agent infiltrate a potential terrorist group masquerading as an online animal rights forum if he had to create an account and log in from an army base IP address.
That’s where onion routing came in. As Michael Reed, one of the inventors of onion routing, explained: providing cover for military and intelligence operations online was their primary objective; everything else was secondary:
The original *QUESTION* posed that led to the invention of Onion Routing was, "Can we build a system that allows for bi-directional communications over the Internet where the source and destination cannot be determined by a mid-point?" The *PURPOSE* was for DoD / Intelligence usage (open source intelligence gathering, covering of forward deployed assets, whatever). Not helping dissidents in repressive countries. Not assisting criminals in covering their electronic tracks. Not helping bit-torrent users avoid MPAA/RIAA prosecution. Not giving a 10 year old a way to bypass an anti-porn filter. Of course, we knew those would be other unavoidable uses for the technology, but that was immaterial to the problem at hand we were trying to solve (and if those uses were going to give us more cover traffic to better hide what we wanted to use the network for, all the better...I once told a flag officer that much to his chagrin).
Apparently solving this problem wasn’t very easy. Onion router research progressed slowly, with several versions developed and discarded. But in 2002, seven years after it began, the project moved into a different and more active phase. Paul Syverson from the Naval Research Laboratory stayed on the project, but two new guys fresh outta MIT grad school came on board: Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson. They were not formally employed by Naval Labs, but were on contract from DARPA and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s Center for High Assurance Computer Systems. For the next several years, the three of them worked on a newer version of onion routing that would later become known as Tor.
Very early on, researchers understood that just designing a system that only technically anonymizes traffic is not enough — not if the system is used exclusively by military and intelligence. In order to cloak spooks better, Tor needed to be used by a diverse group of people: Activists, students, corporate researchers, soccer moms, journalists, drug dealers, hackers, child pornographers, foreign agents, terrorists — the more diverse the group that spooks could hide in the crowd in plain sight.
Tor also needed to be moved off site and disassociated from Naval research. As Syverson told Bloomberg in January 2014: “If you have a system that’s only a Navy system, anything popping out of it is obviously from the Navy. You need to have a network that carries traffic for other people as well.”
Dingledine said the same thing a decade earlier at the 2004 Wizards of OS conference in Germany:
“The United States government can’t simply run an anonymity system for everybody and then use it themselves only. Because then every time a connection came from it people would say, ‘Oh, it’s another CIA agent.’ If those are the only people using the network.”
The consumer version of Tor would be marketed to everyone and — equally important — would eventually allow anyone to run a Tor node/relay, even from their desktop computer. The idea was to create a massive crowdsourced torrent-style network made up from thousands of volunteers all across the world.
At the very end of 2004, with Tor technology finally ready for deployment, the US Navy cut most of its Tor funding, released it under an open source license and, oddly, the project was handed over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"We funded Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson to work on Tor for a single year from November 2004 through October 2005 for $180,000. We then served as a fiscal sponsor for the project until they got their 501(c)(3) status over the next year or two. During that time, we took in less than $50,000 for the project," EFF's Dave Maass told me by email.
In a December 2004 press release announcing its support for Tor, EFF curiously failed to mention that this anonymity tool was developed primarily for military and intelligence use. Instead, it focused purely on Tor’s ability to protect free speech from oppressive regimes in the Internet age.
"The Tor project is a perfect fit for EFF, because one of our primary goals is to protect the privacy and anonymity of Internet users. Tor can help people exercise their First Amendment right to free, anonymous speech online,” said EFF’s Technology Manager Chris Palmer.
Later on, EFF’s online materials began mentioning that Tor had been developed by the Naval Research Lab, but played down the connection, explaining that it was “in the past.” Meanwhile the organization kept boosting and promoting Tor as a powerful privacy tool:
“Your traffic is safer when you use Tor.”
Playing down Tor’s ties to the military…
The people at EFF weren’t the only ones minimizing Tor’s ties to the military.
In 2005, Wired published what might have been the first major profile of Tor technology. The article was written by Kim Zetter, and headlined: “Tor Torches Online Tracking.” Although Zetter was a bit critical of Tor, she made it seem like the anonymity technology had been handed over by the military with no strings attached to “two Boston-based programmers” — Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, who had completely rebuilt the product and ran it independently.
Dingledine and Mathewson might have been based in Boston, but they — and Tor — were hardly independent.
At the time that the Wired article went to press in 2005, both had been on the Pentagon payroll for at least three years. And they would continue to be on the federal government’s payroll for at least another seven years.
In fact, in 2004, at the Wizards of OS conference in Germany, Dingledine proudly announced that he was building spy craft tech on the government payroll:
“I forgot to mention earlier something that will make you look at me in a new light. I contract for the United States Government to built anonymity technology for them and deploy it. They don’t think of it as anonymity technology, although we use that term. They think of it as security technology. They need these technologies so they can research people they are interested in, so they can have anonymous tip lines, so that they can buy things from people without other countries knowing what they are buying, how much they are buying and where it is going, that sort of thing.”
Government support kept rolling in well after that.
In 2006, Tor research was funded was through a no-bid federal contract awarded to Dingledine’s consulting company, Moria Labs. And starting in 2007, the Pentagon cash came directly through the Tor Project itself — thanks to the fact that Team Tor finally left EFF and registered its own independent 501(c)(3) non-profit.
How dependent was — and is — Tor on support from federal government agencies like the Pentagon?
In 2007, it appears that all of Tor’s funding came from the federal government via two grants. A quarter million came from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), a CIA spinoff that now operates under the Broadcasting Board of Governors. IBB runs Voice of America and Radio Marti, a propaganda outfit aimed at subverting Cuba’s communist regime. The CIA supposedly cut IBB financing in the 1970s after its ties to Cold War propaganda arms like Radio Free Europe were exposed.
The second chunk of cash — just under $100,000 — came from Internews, an NGO aimed at funding and training dissident and activists abroad. Tor’s subsequent tax filings show that grants from Internews were in fact conduits for “pass through” grants from the US State Department.
In 2008, Tor got $527,000 again from IBB and Internews, which meant that 90% of its funding came U.S. government sources that year.
In 2009, the federal government provided just over $900,000, or about 90% of the funding. Part of that cash came through a $632,189 federal grant from the State Department, described in tax filings as a “Pass-Through from Internews Network International.” Another $270,000 came via the CIA-spinoff IBB. The Swedish government gave $38,000, while Google gave a minuscule $29,000.
Most of that government cash went out in the form of salaries to Tor administrators and developers. Tor co-founders Dingledine and Mathewson made $120,000. Jacob Appelbaum, the rock star hacker, Wikileaks volunteer and Tor developer, made $96,000.
In 2010, the State Department upped its grant to $913,000 and IBB gave $180,000 — which added up to nearly $1 million out of a total of $1.3 million total funds listed on tax filings that year. Again, a good chunk of that went out as salaries to Tor developers and managers.
In 2011, IBB gave $150,00, while another $730,000 came via Pentagon and State Department grants, which represented more than 70% of the grants that year. (Although based on tax filings, government contracts added up to nearly 100% of Tor’s funding.)
The DoD grant was passed through the Stanford Research Institute, a cutting edge Cold War military-intel outfit. The Pentagon-SRI grant to Tor was given this description: “Basic and Applied Research and Development in Areas Relating to the Navy Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.”
That year, a new government funder came the scene: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), Sweden’s version of USAID, gave Tor $279,000.
In 2012, Tor nearly doubled its budget, taking in $2.2 million from Pentagon and intel-connected grants: $876,099 came from the DoD, $353,000 from the State Department, $387,800 from IBB.
That same year, Tor lined up an unknown amount funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors to finance fast exit nodes.
Tor at the NSA?
In 2013, the Washington Post revealed that the NSA had figured out various ways of unmasking and penetrating the anonymity of the Tor Network.
Since 2006, according to a 49-page research paper titled simply “Tor,” the agency has worked on several methods that, if successful, would allow the NSA to uncloak anonymous traffic on a “wide scale” — effectively by watching communications as they enter and exit the Tor system, rather than trying to follow them inside. One type of attack, for example, would identify users by minute differences in the clock times on their computers.
The evidence came out of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. It appeared that the surveillance agency had developed several techniques to get at Tor. One of the documents explained that the NSA “pretty much guaranteed to succeed.” Snowden’s leaks revealed another interesting detail: In 2007, Dingledine gave at a talk at the NSA’s HQ explaining Tor, and how it worked.
The Washington Post published the NSA’s notes from their meeting with Dingledine. They showed that Dingledine and the NSA mostly talked about the technical details of Tor — how the network works and some of its security/usability tradeoffs. The NSA was curious about “Tor’s customers,” and Dingledine ran down some of the types of people who could benefit from Tor: Blogger Alice, 8 yr. old Alice, Sick Alice, Consumer Alice, Oppressed Alice, Business Alice, Law Enforcement Alice…
Interestingly, Dingledine told the NSA that “the way TOR is spun is dependent on who the ‘spinee’ is” — meaning that he markets Tor technology in different ways to different people?
Interestingly, the Washington Post article described Dingledine’s trip to the NSA as “a wary encounter, akin to mutual intelligence gathering, between a spy agency and a man who built tools to ward off electronic surveillance.” Dingledine told the paper that he came away from that meeting with the feeling that the NSA was trying to hack the Tor network:
“As he spoke to the NSA, Dingledine said in an interview Friday, he suspected the agency was attempting to break into Tor, which is used by millions of people around the world to shield their identities.”
Dingledine may very well have been antagonistic during his meeting with the NSA. Perhaps he was protective over his Tor baby, and didn't want its original inventors and sponsors in the US government taking it back. But whatever the reason, the antagonism was not likely borne out of some sort of innate ideological hostility towards the US national security state.
Aside from being on the DoD payroll, Dingledine has spends a considerable amount of his time meeting and consulting with military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to explain why Tor’s so great, and instructing them on how to use it. What kind of agencies does he meet with? The FBI, CIA and DOJ are just a few… And if you listen to Dingledine explain these encounters in some of his public appearances, one does not detect so much as a whiff of antagonism towards intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
In 2013, during a talk at UC San Diego, Dingledine cheerfully recalled how an exuberant FBI agent rushed up to thank him during his recent trip to the FBI:
“So I’ve been doing a lot of talks lately for law enforcement. And pretty much every talk I do these days, sone FBI person comes up to me afterwards and says, ‘I use Tor everyday for my job. Thank you.’ Another example is anonymous tips — I was talking to the folks who run the CIA anonymous tip line. It’s called the Iraqi Rewards Program…”
Dingledine’s close collaboration with law enforcement aside, there’s the strangely glib manner in which he dismissed news about the NSA hacking into Tor. He seemed totally unconcerned by the evidence revealed by Snowden’s leaks, and played down the NSA’s capabilities in his comments to the Washington Post:
“If those documents actually represent what they can do, they are not as big an adversary as I thought.”
I reached out to Dingledine to ask him about his trip to the NSA and whether he warned the Tor community back in 2007 that he suspected the NSA was targeting Tor users. He didn't respond.
How safe is Tor, really?
If Dingledine didn’t appear to be fazed by evidence of the NSA’s attack on Tor anonymity, it's strange considering that an attack by a powerful government entity has been known to be one Tor’s principle weaknesses for quite some time.
In a 2011 discussion on Tor’s official listserv, Tor developer Mike Perry admitted that Tor might not be very effective against powerful, organized “adversaries” (aka governments) that are capable monitoring huge swaths of the Internet.
“Extremely well funded adversaries that are able to observe large portions of the Internet can probably break aspects of Tor and may be able to deanonymize users. This is why the core tor program currently has a version number of 0.2.x and comes with a warning that it is not to be used for "strong anonymity". (Though I personally don't believe any adversary can reliably deanonymize *all* tor users . . . but attacks on anonymity are subtle and cumulative in nature).
Indeed, just last year, Syverson was part of a research team that pretty much proved that Tor can no longer be expected to protect users over the long term.
“Tor is known to be insecure against an adversary that can observe a user’s traffic entering and exiting the anonymity network. Quite simple and efficient techniques can correlate traffic at these separate locations by taking advantage of identifying traffic patterns. As a result, the user and his destination may be identified, completely subverting the protocol’s security goals.”
The researchers concluded: “These results are somewhat gloomy for the current security of the Tor network.”
While Syverson indicated that some of the security issues identified by this research have been addressed in recent Tor versions, the findings only added to a growing list of other research and anecdotal evidence showing Tor’s not as safe as its boosters want you to think — especially when pitted against determined intelligence agencies.
Case-in-point: In December 2013, a 20-year-old Harvard panicked overachiever named Edlo Kim learned just how little protection Tor offered for would be terrorists.
To avoid taking a final exam he wasn’t prepared for, Kim hit up on the idea of sending in a fake bomb threat. То cover his tracks, he used Tor, supposedly the best anonymity service the web had to offer. But it did little mask his identity from a determined Uncle Sam. A joint investigation, which involved the FBI, the Secret Service and local police, was able to track the fake bomb threat right back to Kim — in less than 24 hours.
As the FBI complaint explained, “Harvard University was able to determine that, in the several hours leading up to the receipt of the e-mail messages described above, ELDO KIM accessed TOR using Harvard’s wireless network.” All that Tor did was make the cops jump a few extra steps. But it wasn’t hard, nothing that a bit of manpower with full legal authority to access network records couldn’t solve. It helped that Harvard’s network logging all metadata access on the network — sorta like the NSA.
Over the past few years, U.S. law enforcement has taken control and shutdown a series of illegal child porn and drug marketplaces operating on what should have been untraceable, hyper-anonymous servers running in the Tor cloud.
In 2013, they took down Freedom Hosting, which was accused of being a massive child porn hosting operation — but not before taking control of its servers and intercepting all of its communication with customers. The FBI did the same thing that same year with the online drug superstore Silkroad, which also ran its services in the Tor cloud. Although, rookie mistakes helped FBI unmask the identity of Dred Pirate Roberts, it is still a mystery how they were able to totally take over and control, and even copy, a server run in the Tor cloud — something that is supposed to be impossible.
Back in 2007, a Swedish hacker/researcher named Dan Egerstad showed that just by running a Tor node, he could siphon and read all the unencrypted traffic that went through his chunk of the Tor network. He was able to access logins and passwords to accounts of NGOs, companies, and the embassies of India and Iran. Egerstad thought at first that embassy staff were just being careless with their info, but quickly realized that he had actually stumbled on a hack/surveillance operation in which Tor was being used to covertly access these accounts.
Although Egerstad was a big fan of Tor and still believes that Tor can provide anonymity if used correctly, the experience made him highly suspicious.
He told Sydney Morning Herald that he thinks many of the major Tor nodes are being run by intelligence agencies or other parties interested in listening in on Tor communication.
“I don’t like speculating about it, but I’m telling people that it is possible. And if you actually look in to where these Tor nodes are hosted and how big they are, some of these nodes cost thousands of dollars each month just to host because they're using lots of bandwidth, they're heavy-duty servers and so on. Who would pay for this and be anonymous? For example, five of six of them are in Washington D.C.…”
Tor stinks?
Tor supporters point to a cache of NSA documents leaked by Snowden to prove that the agency fears and hates Tor. A 2013 Guardian story based on these docs — written by James Ball, Bruce Schneier and Glenn Greenwald — argues that agency is all but powerless against the anonymity tool.
...the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.
Another top-secret presentation calls "the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity". But the NSA docs are far from conclusive and offer conflicting bits of evidence, allowing for multiple interpretations. But the fact is that the NSA and GCHQ clearly have the capability to compromise Tor, but it might take a bit of targeted effort.
One thing is clear: the NSA most certainly does not hate or fear Tor. And some aspects about Tor are definitely welcomed by the NSA, in part because it helps concentrate potential "targets" in one convenient location.
Tor Stinks... But it Could be Worse
Critical mass of targets use Tor. Scaring them away might be counterproductive.
We can increase our success rate and provide more client IPs for individual Tor users.
We will never get 100% but we don't need to provide true IPs for every target every time they use Tor.
Tor network is not as difficult to capture as it may seem…
In 2012, Tor co-founder Roger Dingledine revealed that the Tor Network is configured to prioritize speed and route traffic through through the fastest servers/nodes available. As a result, the vast bulk of Tor traffic runs through several dozen of the fastest and most dependable servers: “on today's network, clients choose one of the fastest 5 exit relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their choices come from a pool of 40-50 relays.”
Dingledine was criticized by Tor community for the obvious reason that funneling traffic through a handful of fast nodes made surveilling and subverting Tor much easier. Anyone can run a Tor node — a research student in Germany, a guy with FIOS connection in Victorville (which is what I did for a few months), an NSA front out of Hawaii or a guy working for China’s Internet Police.
There’s no way of knowing if the people running the fastest most stable nodes are doing it out of goodwill or because it’s the best way to listen in and subvert the Tor network. Particularly troubling was that Snowden's leaks clearly showed the NSA and GCHQ run Tor nodes, and are interested in running more.
And running 50 Tor nodes doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult for any of the world’s intelligence agencies — whether American, German, British, Russian, Chinese or Iranian. Hell, if you’re an intelligence agency, there’s no reason not to run a Tor node.
Back in 2005, Dingledine admitted to Wired that this was a “tricky design question” but couldn’t provide a good answer to how they’d handle it. In 2012, he dismissed his critics altogether, explaining that he was perfectly willing to sacrifice security for speed — whatever it took to take get more people to use Tor:
This choice goes back to the original discussion that Mike Perry and I were wrestling with a few years ago… if we want to end up with a fast safe network, do we get there by having a slow safe network and hoping it'll get faster, or by having a fast less-safe network and hoping it'll get safer? We opted for the "if we don't stay relevant to the world, Tor will never grow enough" route.
Speaking of spooks running Tor nodes…
If you thought the Tor story couldn’t get any weirder, it can and does. Probably the strangest part of this whole saga is the fact that Edward Snowden ran multiple high-bandwidth Tor nodes while working as an NSA contractor in Hawaii.
This only became publicly known last May, when Tor developer Runa Sandvik (who also drew her salary from Pentagon/State Department sources at Tor) told Wired's Kevin Poulsen that just two weeks before he would try to get in touch with Glenn Greenwald, Snowden emailed her, explaining that he ran a major Tor node and wanted to get some Tor stickers.
Stickers? Yes, stickers.
Here’s Wired:
In his e-mail, Snowden wrote that he personally ran one of the “major tor exits”–a 2 gbps server named “TheSignal”–and was trying to persuade some unnamed coworkers at his office to set up additional servers. He didn’t say where he worked. But he wanted to know if Sandvik could send him a stack of official Tor stickers. (In some post-leak photos of Snowden you can see the Tor sticker on the back of his laptop, next to the EFF sticker).
Snowden’s request for Tor stickers turned into something a bit more intimate. Turned out that Sandvik was already planning to go to Hawaii for vacation, so she suggested they meet up to talk about communication security and encryption.
She wrote Snowden back and offered to give a presentation about Tor to a local audience. Snowden was enthusiastic and offered to set up a crypto party for the occasion.
So the two of them threw a “crypto party” at a local coffee shop in Honolulu, teaching twenty or so locals how to use Tor and encrypt their hard drives. “He introduced himself as Ed. We talked for a bit before everything started. And I remember asking where he worked or what he did, and he didn’t really want to tell,” Sandvik told Wired.
But she did learn that Snowden was running more than one Tor exit node, and that he was trying to get some of his buddies at “work”to set up additional Tor nodes…
H'mmm....So Snowden running powerful Tor nodes and trying to get his NSA colleagues to run them, too?
I reached out to Sandvik for comment. She didn't reply. But Wired's Poulsen suggested that running Tor nodes and throwing a crypto party was a pet privacy project for Snowden. "Even as he was thinking globally, he was acting locally."
But it’s hard to imagine a guy with top secret security clearance in the midst of planning to steal a huge cache of secrets would risk running a Tor node to help out the privacy cause. But then, who hell knows what any of this means.
I guess it's fitting that Tor’s logo is an onion — because the more layers you peel and the deeper you get, the less things make sense and the more you realize that there is no end or bottom to it. It's hard to get any straight answers — or even know what questions you should be asking.
In that way, the Tor Project more resembles a spook project than a tool designed by a culture that values accountability or transparency.
[illustration by Brad Jonas for Pando]
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DevOps is a great concept -- but many enterprises are still struggling to get out the starting gate with it.
Photo: CERN Press Office
That's the key takeaway from a recent survey of 2,045 IT managers and professionals, released by Quali, an IT automation solutions provider. While most people in enterprises would say at this point that they have DevOps underway in some shape or form, achieving agility is another story.
For example, the majority of IT managers, 59%, say it takes more than a week to make needed changes or to get employees and other end-users on board with infrastructure. While it's not exactly clear what is meant by infrastructure in this context, let's assume it means delivery of a functioning client front end that connects to all needed services on the back end. More than one-fourth, 26%, admit it takes more than a month. Twenty-three percent say it can be done in less than a day, while another 18% percent said it takes less than one week.
Self-service access to infrastructure is another hallmark of DevOps, since both development and operations teams need to be able to view the same online environments. However, more than half, 54%, of respondents indicated they had no access to self-service infrastructure. "This meant that more than half of respondents took a ticket-based approach to infrastructure delivery, impacting productivity and increasing time to market," the Quali survey's authors suggest.
Corporate culture is seen as the single top barrier to DevOps, IT managers say. Test automation and dealing with legacy systems round out the top three roadblocks. Application complexity also makes things tougher for DevOps participants -- a majority, 52%, say most of their applications are extremely complex.
"Where it breaks down is in practice," comments Shashi Kiran, chief marketing officer at Quali, in a related post. "Greenfield deployments remain innocent. Starting out with a clean slate is always relatively easy. Preserving or integrating legacy in brownfield environments is where it becomes both challenging and interesting. For the next several years that's where the action is. Enterprises that have invested in technology over the past few decades suddenly find that they can now actually create tremendous legacy inertia to move forward. So, while many have adopted DevOps practices, it has begun in pockets across the organization."
What can be done to smooth the path to DevOps? As noted in the Quali survey, DevOps is as much a cultural issue as it is an technology undertaking. Teams need to be brought together, and encouraged to work together. In a recent post at Forbes, Chris Cancialosi, Ph.D., a partner and founder at gothamCulture, recently provided some tips on how to accelerate DevOps adoption within enterprises.
"Many leaders, though they understand the immense impact DevOps can have on their businesses, don't quite understand where to start with a transformation of this magnitude.This is largely due to the fact that DevOps is not entirely a technology solution. It is also a fundamental shift in the way organizations structure themselves to get work done in a completely new way -- a culture shift that challenges the beliefs and assumptions that people hold true about each other, themselves, and their work."
Cancialosi says successful DevOps is all about measurement -- of both the process and the outcomes. That's how it can be sold to organizations. "First, measuring and understanding your current state baseline is critical," he states. "A valid and reliable assessment ensures you are in a position to change, assists in helping leaders understand the potential obstacles that currently exist in the system, and helps organize and prioritize the change activities that must happen in order to embed these new ways of working into the cultural fabric of your company."
Cancialosi also urges DevOps proponents to understand "what levers to pull to drive improvements in performance outcomes," and prioritize those improvements.
The Quali survey also examined solutions in place for DevOps management. The most popular tools for the DevOps process, cited by respondents included Jenkins (21%), Docker (16%), Puppet (14%) and Chef (13%).
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Copyright Strikes Again: 'Real Calvin And Hobbes' Shut Down By Copyright Claim
from the but-copyright-isn't-about-censorship? dept
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your inquiry.
I'm sorry to say that it is our view that what you're doing is in violation of the copyright of Calvin & Hobbes. This is no reflection on the artistic merit of what you've done and certainly not a personal condemnation of the pieces you've created.
We're protective of the copyright for a variety of reasons, most importantly it is the express and unwavering wish of the creator that any use of Calvin and Hobbes was limited to work he'd created and in very specific formats.
Because that is the case, we would politely request that you take down the works you've created that contain any Calvin and Hobbes images.
You look to be an outstanding artist and we wish you the best in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
John Glynn
Universal Uclick Andrews McMeel Universal
It's early in the week, but it seems like there have been a whole bunch of stories already about copyright being used (and abused) to take down content. The latest victim, tragically, is the blog that was Real Calvin and Hobbes by Michael Den Beste, in which he would take scenes from the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes and place them in "real photographs."Like many people of my generation, I grew up completely addicted to Calvin & Hobbes. I bought all the books, and even now, decades later, I keepon my night table, and I enjoy reading it with my son. While I know that Watterson always fought back against attempts to license out the work, it still seems fairly ridiculous that his publisher, Andrews McMeel Universal, has told Den Beste that he needs to take down the works because they are infringing, in their view.For what it's worth, this (at least) was not a legal nastygram, but rather a response to Den Beste himself asking if what he was doing was okay. John Glynn at Andrews McMeel Universal was at least somewhat friendly about it, but told him the images needed to go Of course, it's not just the copyright holder who gets to determine copyright infringement. It seems like Den Beste should have a fairly reasonable fair use argument. The images are quite transformative. He's only using a portion of the works. He's certainly not taking away any value from the original works (he's probably adding to it). And, while he did put up a "donate" button on the site, this is hardly a big for-profit venture (he claims he made about $85).The problem, of course, is that fighting for fair use means being willing to spend on a lawyer and go to court. And that's just not worth it for someone doing something fun.The real issue here, however, is that there iswhy John Glynn and Andrews McMeel Universal needed to go down this path. Hell, we even have a near perfect parallel example that shows why this is a really dumb move. Five years ago, we wrote about a similar blog concerning Garfield minus Garfield , in which someone else posted Garfield comics with the comic's namesake deleted from every scene. In that case, everyone was actually cool with it. The creator of the comic talked about how awesome it was, and eventually Garfield's publisher, Ballantine Books, worked out a simple agreement to even allow the creator of Garfield Minus Garfield to publish his own book of the strips.Instead, in this case, a site that was energizing fans about the original comic, and was clearly made lovingly by a huge fan of the original, gets shut down. While there are still some of the images floating around the internet, we're now all worse off for not having these images widely available, and assured that Dan Beste won't be creating any more for the world. That's what we mean when we talk about copyright killing off culture and being used to stomp out creation, rather than encourage it.
Filed Under: bill watterson, calvin and hobbes, censorship, copyright, fan art, john glynn, michael den beste
Companies: andrews mcmeel universal
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SEMINOLE, Okla. - The meeting was so packed people had to spill out into the hallway outside the State Department of Education board room.
Almost 100 people wearing blue t-shirts that said Academy of Seminole showed up in support of a yes vote.
They were appealing to the state school board after the local Seminole school board turned them down two times.
Several parents appealed to the state school board.
“Another choice in the educational field that would allow parents to find the perfect fit for their individual child,” said parent Stephanie Taylor.
“Having alternate ways of learning, and allowing parents to make decisions for their kids seem normal,” said parent Daniel Wyatt.
The charter school idea started in part with local businessman Paul Campbell.
The CEO of an aerospace company in Seminole, he said he can’t recruit employees because of the education system there.
“They’re having a hard time justifying putting their kids in a school system that averages a 19 and a half on the ACT,” Campbell said.
Campbell had no trouble garnering support from parents and other business leaders in the community in a school district that has had problems.
Their high school had to move into an old grocery story, because their building was deemed unfit.
Two different bond issues to try and build a new high school have failed.
But, the superintendent of Seminole schools said the local board denied their application, in part because they didn’t have enough community support.
“It’s a fact that 1.4 percent is their gathering point, is how much support they’ve been able to gather. And, we in Seminole do not feel, the Seminole Public Schools, that that is enough to force a charter school on our community,” said superintendent Alfred Gaches.
In the end, the state board unanimously approved the charter school plan, meaning they will now be the sponsor for the Academy of Seminole.
“This is a well thought through plan that came from the local community to be able to provide immediate opportunities for students to have their needs met,” said state superintendent Joy Hofmeister.
“We are more than excited to get started on this journey,” Daniel said.
Daniel and his wife cried tears of joy as the vote passed.
They had already pulled their two kids from Seminole schools and were educating them at home.
“As a parent, having that option and being able to choose what education my kids get is just extremely important to me,” said Stacie Wyatt.
Gaches said he feels this sets a dangerous precedent that won’t allow local school boards to deny charter applications.
“The law is very clear in that there needs to be a clear definition of demonstration of public support,” Gaches said.
Other Seminole residents were concerned how this would affect the public school.
“I would rather we put our time, energy and resources in building up the public school system,” said Marilyn Rainwater.
The Academy of Seminole will now have to work on a contract for their agreement with the state.
They plan to start next year with 11th and 12th grades.
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Congress president Sonia Gandhi is greeted by the oldest candidate, S R Patil, while former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan and state party president Manikrao Thakre stand beside her during an election rally in Kolhapur on Thursday. (PTI Photo)
Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray tops the popularity chart as the CM candidate.
NEW DELHI: A survey carried out in Maharashtra ahead of the October 15 assembly elections has given BJP and allies 154 of the 288 seats, but Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray tops the popularity chart as chief ministerial candidate.Incumbent Prithviraj Chavan is the second choice for chief minister though his party Congress is predicted to get an abysmally low 25 seats.Percentage wise, BJP has been placed way ahead of its rivals by 36.50 per cent votes followed by 17.10 per cent of Shiv Sena and 11.97 per cent of Congress.The survey conducted by 'The Week' and Hansa Research , paints a gloomy picture for Sharad Pawar's NCP, which is projected to get only 17 seats and 5.85 per cent votes.Pawar is the fifth choice for the chief minister's post and stands behind MNS leader Raj Thackeray and BJP's Devendra Fadnavis.Shiv Sena is predicted to be the second largest party after BJP with 47 seats, while Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, according to the survey, is likely to get 10 seats. MNS is predicted to get 5.11 per cent votes.The survey has given 20 seats to Independents with 4.71 per cent votes and 15 to other parties with 6.79 per cent votes.After 15 years of running coalition government in Maharashtra, Congress and NCP have parted ways and BJP-Shiv Sena's old alliance has also fallen apart paving the way for a five-cornered contest, with MNS being the fifth player which has recently made noises favourable to Shiv Sena.BJP is going to polls with smaller "Mahayuti" allies. It has worked out a seat-sharing deal with Mahadeo Jankar's Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, Raju Shetty's Swabhimani Shetkari Paksha, Shiv Sangram and RPI.
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The Korean Business Research Institute has announced the girl group brand reputation rankings for December!
Taking data starting from November 7, 2017 to December 8, 2017, the Institute analyzed 59,743,092 sources of data and measured the indexes of participation, media coverage, communication, and community awareness.
TWICE came in first place this month with a total score of 9,022,091. Red Velvet was second place with a total score of 8,987,227, while Lovelyz came in third place with a total score of 3,783,329.
A source from the Institute stated that “Jeongyeon,” “Heart Shaker,” and “YouTube,” were the keywords that were associated with TWICE as they came in first place this month.
Check out the top 20 below:
1. TWICE
2. Red Velvet
3. Lovelyz
4. BLACKPINK
5. EXID
6. Apink
7. MAMAMOO
8. LABOUM
9. T-ara
10. PRISTIN
11. Girl’s Day
12. Rainbow
13. GFRIEND
14. MOMOLAND
15. Girls’ Generation
16. APRIL
17. Berry Good
18. FIESTAR
19. Cosmic Girls
20. AOA
Source (1)
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A battle of interplanetary proportions is brewing on Capitol Hill.
It’s not “Star Wars,” but partisan lines are quickly being drawn in a budget battle over the future of NASA, which could have a long-term impact on the space agency’s ability to explore the deepest corners of space as well as the ground beneath our feet.
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On one side are Republicans who accuse the Obama administration of taking its eye off the ball by funneling too much money into research about the planet Earth, rather than focusing on distant worlds and stars.
On the other, Democrats argue that the administration’s plan is critical to harness the best of NASA’s talents, protect our planet and consistent with the agency’s wide-ranging mission.
Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress for the first time in years, the fight is spilling into the open.
“In the past six years, too much of NASA’s focus has been driven by the political agenda of politicians in Washington rather than the core mission of focusing on space exploration,” said Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE (R-Texas), who leads the Senate subcommittee on Space, after a hearing on the agency’s budget this week.
“That’s what NASA was created to do and it’s where its energy should be focused.”
Cruz pledged to flex Capitol Hill’s muscle by passing a NASA authorization bill that “continue[s] this discussion of getting back to the core priorities of NASA.”
But Democrats are likely to push back.
Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the top Democrat on Cruz’s panel, warned against “false choices” between exploring distant worlds and studying our own planet.
“Rather, we should seek a set of complementary initiatives that will pay returns to our civilization for centuries to come,” he said.
“Earth science directly relates to everything that we’re doing in exploration,” echoed Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
In its budget request for fiscal 2016, NASA asked for a total of $18.5 billion, a 3 percent increase from last year.
Of that, more than $1.9 billion is slated to go to earth science programs, which will pay for high-quality mapping and the development of a slew of satellites for monitoring the planet, among other issues.
About $4.5 billion is requested for exploration, meanwhile, including development of rockets to be launched into deep space. Another $4 billion is slated for space operations, including support of the International Space Station.
According to Cruz, that represents a 41 percent increase in earth science funding since 2009, compared to a 7 percent decrease in funding for exploration and operations.
“Are we focusing on the heavens in NASA or are we focusing on dirt in Texas?” asked Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.).
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the head of the Commerce Committee and the Senate’s No. 3 Republican, is similarly concerned that some research may be “redundant with activities being undertaken at other federal agencies and may actually reduce the availability of funds for research related to the traditional sciences, aeronautics and space exploration,” his spokesman said.
NASA has pushed back against Cruz’s number, claiming that the analysis did not include stimulus funding or account for inflation. By that account, earth science funding has actually gone down by 1 percent, the agency says.
In all, the agency has devoted $49 billion to manned spaceflight during the Obama administration and $11 billion for earth science.
“With this funding, America has maintained its world leadership in space exploration and scientific discovery,” NASA spokesman David Weaver said in a statement.
The GOP effort also might meet some resistance from the nation’s scientists who say that rebalancing could hinder critical research.
“Earth science within NASA provides a broad array of benefits and applications across the public and private sectors,” Christine W. McEntee, the head of the American Geophysical Union wrote to Cruz on Friday.
For instance, NASA projects helped respond to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, she noted, and also track algae blooms and monitor severe storms.
While other federal agencies may perform similar work, none have the technical expertise found at NASA, supporters say.
“NASA has the space capability and it’s important that that capability be used,” said George Abbey, the senior fellow in space policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the former director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Over the next few years, the Obama administration wants to spend more money to both push humans deeper into space and expand our knowledge about our own planet, with the ultimate goal of sending a manned mission to Mars by the mid-2030s.
Ironically enough, that’s a goal that Cruz shares.
But before it gets to Mars, NASA is going to need to go through Congress.
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He may have what he’s described as only “the Reader’s Digest knowledge of Buddhism,” but famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is a fascinating thinker in just about any capacity.
So: what does he think about how Buddhist thought and science may or may not intersect? Can they learn from each other? That’s what author Jerome Freedman wanted to know when he sat down with Tyson in 2011. The outspoken Tyson, unsurprisingly, offered skeptical and thoughtful insights into Buddhist philosophy and the nature of the universe, and you’ll find a number of these distilled here in excerpts adapted from the full conversation (which you can read or order a copy of on Freedman’s website, here). Read on for Tyson’s thoughts on the Buddhist ideas of interconnectedness and impermanence, and how a Buddhist outlook might be more conducive to science.
Interconnectedness
There is a risk inherent in exploring overlap and resonance between science and spirituality. It’s very easy to ignore that which doesn’t resonate and sift through what does, and come to the misleading conclusion that Buddhism is perfectly aligned with modern cosmology.
In modern times, we have come to learn about ecology, the interdependence of life, animal life, plant life, water supply, and the atmosphere as a system. Systems engineering is all about interconnectivity and parts that create one functioning whole.
You could say that Buddha knew this from the beginning. However, before the 20th century, what a human did had very little consequence outside of their system. People were far enough apart that their behavior would not necessarily affect others. Back then, interconnectedness had very little meaningful consequence to anything.
Today, we fly airplanes from continent to continent; insects and vermin ride ships from one place to another; we change gases in the atmosphere here that circulate around the globe. To say that we are interconnected today with the same fervor as we were interconnected a thousand years ago is just misusing the word. If you don’t distinguish those two cases, it’s hard to have a conversation about what it means to be interconnected.
In our galaxy, we feel the gravity of another galaxy. We are going to collide with the Andromeda galaxy. That’s scheduled to happen after the sun dies. So, you can say we’re still all connected. But it’s kind of irrelevant because we’ll be vaporized.
Furthermore, there’s a horizon of the universe that’s expanding. Beyond that horizon, we don’t even feel each others’ gravity. It’s beyond any accessibility to us. So everything is not connected in the same way as ecosystems around the world.
Your carbon atoms are not affecting the carbon atoms across the universe. They are not connected in the way we speak of connectivity in the global ecology for example. Cosmologically speaking, the fact that we share the same ingredients doesn’t mean we’re causally connected in any fundamental way.
There’s a huge spectrum of connectivity, some of which is just simply irrelevant to anything that matters to anybody at any time, at any place. On that spectrum, the word rapidly loses its utility. If you were going to put all of this variation of cause and effect under the same word, then there’s no way to test the concept if anything works for it. It’s the old saying, if it explains everything, then it explains nothing.
It becomes metaphysics at that level. And metaphysics has never been accused of being useful. But it provides great conversation with a beer at a pub.
In my concluding words from The Universe series, when I say “we’re connected,” what I mean is that the carbon that is in your body is the same carbon that is across the universe. And it has similar points of origin — origin in the centers of stars. That shared identity is what I call the connectivity.
For me, that shared genetic, atomic, and molecular heritage allows me to feel a part of the universe in a way that might not have otherwise empowered me to do so.
Impermanence
I have something to say about impermanence. I love comparing time scales of things. That’s a favorite past time of the astrophysicist. There is the time scale that is the mother of all time scales, and that’s the decay of the proton, if it decays at all. 1030 years is the latest calculation. Or 1032. That is 20 orders of magnitude longer than the current age of the universe.
So even a proton decays. That’s the most stable known particle. So you can say Buddha had it, even there. But then, once again, it explains everything. And therefore leaves us with nothing. So it’s not really a scientifically useful concept.
If you want to assume everything decays, you’ve got the proton — one sextillion times the age of the current universe — the current theories say that it will decay and then you’ve got everything. Chock it up as Buddhistic if you like!
Rationality
It’s not science if you can’t make a testable prediction. It’s metaphysics. There are tremendous metaphysics traditions in the Far East, but none of it leads to scientific discovery. But, let’s not distract ourselves with the absence of quantitative value to these teachings. There are statements about the physical world in Buddhism that are less conflicting with what science has revealed about the natural world than other religious philosophies. In Buddhism, there’s not a challenge to reconcile with science, because the spirituality doesn’t really prevent Buddhists from having those thoughts.
Science was invented in the west. But, had it been invented in the east, had it been invented in both places at the same time, I bet you it would have risen faster in the east then it did in the west. That’s my hypothesis.
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Allison Lee Pillinger Choi, who worked at Goldman Sachs GS, +0.13% and the fitness company Equinox before becoming a full-time mom, says she took a while to “warm up” to now-president Donald Trump.
Because of her friends’ strong feelings about Trump, she still won’t reveal whether or not she voted for him. But Choi, who lives on New York City’s Upper West Side, identifies as a Republican (she is the author of a book, “Bleeding Heart Conservatives: Why It’s Good to Be Right”) and serves on the board of directors for New York-based Women’s National Republican Club, said when Trump was elected she began to feel “cautiously optimistic” about the new president because of his campaign promises about jobs.
“The media likes to talk about ‘women’s issues,’” Choi said. “I think jobs are also a women’s issue.”
Many of Choi’s fellow Republicans are also feeling bolstered by the fact that their candidate of choice, Donald Trump, has been elected, a recent survey showed.
Some 77% of Republicans feel that Americans’ personal finances will improve in the next four years, compared with 44% of Independents and 19% of Democrats. That’s according to the credit reporting firm Experian, which surveyed about 1,000 U.S. adults from Nov. 10 to Nov. 21, just after Republican Donald Trump was elected president. Those surveyed included about 28% who identify as Republicans, 32% Democrats and 37% Independents.
Republicans were also most likely to feel their personal financial status will improve in the next four years, with 70% saying it would. About 51% of Independents and 36% of Democrats said they thought their own personal finances would improve.
Sheila Duffy-Lehrman, the owner of advertising and marketing firm Tropic Survival, based in Miami, is another optimistic Republican; she voted for Trump and is now “absolutely bullish” in her thoughts on the economy.
One reason: As a result of the Affordable Care Act, (which was signed into law in 2010 and which Trump has vowed to repeal), health care costs for her 20 employees doubled, she says.
“As a business owner, I’m thrilled to have somebody who’s actually been in business and understands what entrepreneurship is and the importance of the free market,” she said.
In contrast with Republicans, 32% of Democrats feel their own personal finances will decline in the next four years, compared with 15% of Independents and 8% of Republicans. (Experian also included answers from those who said they believe their personal finances will stay the same; 32% of Democrats, 34% of Independents and 22% of Republicans responded that way.)
Brian Dorsey Studios Allison Lee Pillinger Choi says she took a while to “warm up” to President Trump.
When asked which factors were influencing their opinion on the country’s economic future going forward, 49% of those surveyed (across Democrats, Republicans and Independents) said the national unemployment rate, which is 4.7% according to the December jobs report, was a key factor in their assessment, followed by their cost of living (36%), inflation rates (29%) and their own financial statuses (24%).
Experts have said although it remains unclear exactly what moves Trump will make as president, it is likely that his election, combined with Republican control of the House and Senate, will mean a major tax cut as early as 2017 that will apply broadly to households of differing incomes. He has also said he may cap federal student loan payments at 12.5% of borrowers’ income for a maximum of 15 years, which some student loan experts have said is more generous than the current federal student loan repayment systems available.
However, other potential moves by Trump may impact some consumers negatively, including potentially leaving some without health insurance depending on whether he repeals the Affordable Care Act and what its replacement would be.
Trump’s skepticism about globalization and some trade deals, in favor of nationalistic policies, may also mean the price of some foreign goods could increase.
John Egan is a Democrat who lives in Austin, Texas, where he directs content strategy for an e-commerce company. He voted for Hillary Clinton and says that although before the election he felt “pretty good” about his finances, now “there’s a lot of uncertainty.”
Courtesy of Southern New Hampshire University, used with permission John Egan said the election results have made him feel uncertain.
“I keep looking at my retirement portfolio and thinking, ‘How is this new administration going to affect my investments? How will it affect my eventual retirement?’” he said, noting he is worried about the future of social security benefits under Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress.
“There are just a lot of questions I have, and they’re not easily answered at this point because we’re barely into the new administration.”
Many Americans could use a boost for their finances (although whether or not Trump’s administration can deliver it remains to be seen).
About half of U.S. adults could not cover an emergency expense of $400 without selling something or borrowing money, according to the Federal Reserve.
About 31% of non-retired adults have no retirement savings or pension at all. And the country collectively has about $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. (Members of the class of 2016 had $37,172 each on average.)
And Americans’ total debt has surpassed the amounts owed at the beginning of the Great Recession, mostly due to high mortgages and student and auto loans.
Although this election has been particularly polarizing, it’s common for Americans to be happier and more optimistic about topics such as their personal finances when their preferred candidate wins, despite the fact that many aspects of their financial standings (the decision to save instead of spend, for example) are out of a president’s control, said Aaron Weinschenk, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, who has studied American voters and their financial behaviors.
(Republicans reported feeling personally satisfied about their financial situations in greater numbers than Independents and Democrats every year from 1987 to 2003; that gap was especially wide during the early 2000’s, when Republican George W. Bush was president, according to Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.)
Republicans and Democrats even changed their opinions on whether the economy was getting better or worse in just a matter of days, before and after the election, research firm Gallup found. Gallup polled about 2,500 adults.
Before Trump’s election, from Nov. 1 to Nov. 7, 16% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats said they believed the economy was getting better.
Just after, from Nov. 9 to Nov. 13, 49% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats said they believed that.
The U.S. consumer confidence index also hit 113.7 in December, its highest level since 2001.
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Feeling anxious, depressed, fearful, or unable to focus? Is your memory getting fuzzy? Medication might help. Therapy might help. And someday soon–according to neuroscientists, game designers, and drug makers–you might be prescribed a videogame that helps as much as (or more than) either. Here are a few of the innovative companies that are fusing game mechanics with principles of cognitive psychology to create a new paradigm for digital healing.
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EVO In September 2013, a group led by Adam Gazzaley, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at UCSF, published a landmark paper in the prestigious scientific journal Nature. A study they had conducted showed that playing a specially designed driving game called Neuroracer arrested age-related cognitive decline in senior citizens, improving memory, attention, and the ability to multitask. Boston-based game maker Akili Interactive Labs–with Gazzaley as an advisor and funding from drug maker Shire–is developing a tablet-based game based on the Neuroracer platform, called EVO. Rather than driving and noticing road signs, in EVO players explore foreign worlds, collecting stars, gems, and alien specimens. The game is currently being deployed in about a half dozen clinical trials, testing its effectiveness for improving function in kids with ADHD (in collaboration with Shire) and autism, treating depression (with the National Institutes of Health), and detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease (with Pfizer). Imagine picking up your medication and finding a software code on the package that directs you to a complementary game. On the surface, these conditions may seem to have little connection. But there is a common thread, says Eddie Martucci, Akili’s vice president of research and development: “All of these populations have strong deficits in executive function and the processing of cognitive interference, or ‘noise.’” While Akili’s prototype game is designed for universal appeal–“ADHD kids love it, and compliance in the 70-plus depression group is also sky high,” Martucci says–future iterations will update visuals and other game elements to appeal to specific groups of users. Akili’s creative team includes veterans of Lucas Digital Arts and Electronic Arts. Unlike consumer “brain fitness” games such as Lumosity’s, which make vague claims about “training” memory and attention but don’t need to prove they’re actually doing anything, Akili wants full FDA approval and acceptance by the medical mainstream. “We’re building medical devices, going after very deep neurological or psychological disorders that have multimillion-dollar drug models,” says Martucci. “Doctors are willing and open-minded, but at the end of the day, if they’re going to recommend games to patients, they need more clinical validation. Over the next few years, you’ll see lots of studies coming out, and we’ll see disease solutions that include prescriptions for pills as well as highly engaging games.” Plan-It Commander According to a 2013 CDC report, 11% of all school-age children in the U.S.–or more than 6 million kids between ages 4 and 17–have been diagnosed with ADHD. About 66% of those with an ADHD diagnosis have prescriptions for stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin. CDC director Thomas Frieden has called the situation “disturbing,” and the “overmedicated kids” meme poses a public-relations problem for drug companies. Given kids’ natural affinity for videogames, using them as a component of ADHD therapy–alone, or in combination with medication–is a no-brainer for forward-thinking drug companies. One of the first extensive studies of games for this population took place in Holland last year, a collaboration between Rotterdam-based game developer Ranj and Janssen Pharmaceutica, a Dutch subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. The game, called Plan-It Commander, provides 40 hours of play in an adventure-game format. A series of mini games target specific behaviors to change–planning and organization, time management, and social interactions. The game becomes more complex and difficult as the player accomplishes development goals.
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Doctors are willing and open-minded, but at the end of the day, if they’re going to recommend games to patients, they need more clinical validation. “Drug-based therapy for ADHD is focused on primary symptoms like concentration and impulsivity,” says Tom Aelbrecht, director of Janssen’s venture and incubation center. “Secondary issues like time management and social interactions aren’t targeted by medication. We needed something to tackle those issues–not to replace medication but to have another tool. Children are very susceptible to the idea of a serious game.” Results of the study have recently been submitted for publication, and a Dutch version of the game became commercially available in June 2013. Although ADHD isn’t an area of strategic priority for Janssen, Greg Panico, a spokesperson for the company’s neurological drugs group, says the game project “is illustrative of our group’s R&D work, focusing on integrated solutions that combine drugs with other therapies,” for conditions such as Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia. Pear Therapeutics Rather than developing its own games, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Pear Therapeutics has a different business model: pairing game developers with drug makers and marketing the resulting drug-software “eFormulations.” Imagine picking up your medication and finding a software code on the package that directs you to a complementary game. “There are at least 30 conditions where drug-plus-software apps have a chance to make the drugs more effective,” says Corey McCann, Pear’s founder and CEO. “For some patients, the game may be a proxy for drugs. For most, they’ll be part of a multimodal treatment.” From a business perspective, eFormulations could also be a boon for drug maker’s bottom lines, because they would likely qualify as new formulations and extend patent protection–and profitability. Corey McCann Pear’s lead product will be aimed at managing general anxiety disorder through a game that encourages the player to breathe in a rhythmic pattern to stimulate the vagus nerve in the brain. “The standard of care today is to take a benzodiazepine,” says McCann. “But a big component of the treatment for anxiety is deep breathing and meditation. Now, you’ll be able first to pull out an app, and if you don’t get relief, to take a benzo and record your symptoms. You can use a smartphone app component to record your anxious symptoms and have a data-centric follow-up conversation with your doctor or therapist.” Treating depression in teens–who are generally more resistant to traditional therapy, and at greater risk for suicide than adults–is another opportunity for using games to improve outcomes, McCann says. Studies of a role-playing game called SPARX, being commercialized in the U.S. by LinkedWellness, have found it to be as effective as in-person cognitive behavioral therapy for this group. McCann envisions an eFormulation that would pair a similar game with antidepressant medication.
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With affordable consumer VR headsets, at-home immersive game-therapy sessions could become commonplace. “One of the real opportunities for depression and anxiety is to tailor pieces of content to be very specific for different stages of therapy,” he says. “You can have different content for the first several weeks, where the medication is less effective, and then change it later. In anxiety, that’s true even to the minute. Anxiety is a very acute event. Even rapidly acting drugs are going to take tens of minutes before you feel relief. Deep breathing produces relief within seconds.” Pear Process | Click to expand Pear is working with branded and generic drug makers as well as nutritional-supplement companies, and hopes to launch an FDA-approved product with a pharma partner in 2015. “With effectively every new drug for the brain, the traditional path to market is 12 to 15 years and two to three billion dollars,” says McCann. “From concept to launch for us, it’s a couple of millions and 18 to 20 months. And there’s a similar opportunity in terms of magnitude for helping patients.” While all these companies are focusing primarily on mobile or PC platforms, new gaming interfaces–most notably, virtual reality (VR) headsets by Oculus Rift and Sony–could enable much deeper immersion in virtual environments, with profound therapeutic benefits. “If you’re dealing with something where the brain doesn’t want to go–like PTSD, or an anxiety disorder such as fear of heights, flying, or crowds–a more three-dimensional experience that stimulates more sensory systems can have more cognitive benefits,” says Walter Greenleaf, Pear’s chief science officer and former head of the Center on Aging at Stanford. VR is already being used clinically for pain management. A team led by Hunter Hoffman at University of Washington, for example, has developed an immersive game called Snow World, where the player is a snowman throwing snowballs in a virtual winter-scape. When burn victims are allowed to play the game while undergoing painful bandage changes, they experience significantly less pain than when taking opiate painkillers alone. Since 2005, Albert “Skip” Rizzo, a clinical psychologist at the University of Southern California, has been using a virtual reality program called Virtual Iraq as a form of exposure therapy for veterans struggling with PTSD. Until now, though, virtual simulations have been limited to clinical environments with special equipment. With affordable consumer VR headsets, at-home immersive game-therapy sessions could become commonplace. Add to that the rapid emergence of consumer-priced, user-friendly neuro-hardware–such as EEG headsets, made by Emotiv and others, which “read” a user’s brainwaves to interact with software–and you can imagine any number of “sci-fi” scenarios for digital neuro-tuneups. Beyond just “reading” brainwaves, some avid gamers are already using headbands that zap their brain with low doses of current to boost game performance. Imagine waking up, playing a quick game to assess your mental state, and fixing any imbalances with targeted brain stimulation. There are still substantial technological hurdles to overcome before we can seamlessly wire together our brains, Xbox, VR goggles, and the EEG sensors. But simpler games-as-drugs will be here much sooner. To be sure, the current model for delivering mental-health services–where demand outstrips supply, and the cost of care can be prohibitive–is ripe for disruption. “If we show this works and saves money in the real world,” says McCann, “it will be great way to scale the field of psychology.”
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As a Western expat, Singapore affords many modern luxuries that, on paper, are hard to turn down. Its access to exotic locales, new condos, safety and stellar transportation systems make it an ideal spot to settle down. The tropical setting allows winter-weather dwellers across the world to bathe themselves in sunlight all year long. Easing into the comfort Singapore provides, people end up staying longer than initially expected. One can benefit from a faster career trajectory in Asia, while enjoying the familiarity of their former Western life. Travel to Thailand or Bali, a trip some people plan years in advance, is only a short flight away on a week’s notice. Couples can hire live-in helpers to take care of their children and chores, while enjoying romance without responsibility again. Why would someone ever leave this paradise?
Having lived in Singapore for 2.5 years, I am often asked about my experience. For people I run into from high school or family friends that inquire about my time abroad, my response is always the same. If I were an email system, this would be my template out-of-office reply:
“Singapore is a really easy place to live. It’s great for travel. I went to destinations I never thought I would ever explore. I booked beach getaways the week I wanted to leave. I’ve been able to go to Bali four times. Singapore itself is super safe and has a great transportation system. There are so many cultures and food options. You can explore various cultures just by going to different parts of the city. The weather is consistent as well — 85 degrees all year round: humid, but not as hot as Texas in the summer. There are a lot of expats, but all the locals are really nice as well.”
My description above duly illustrates the “on paper” life I had in Singapore. However, to my friends and the people that know me well, I share the reality:
“Singapore is a small island. I traveled once or twice a month because if I didn’t, I would die from boredom. Singapore is so safe, it made me stupid. When I travelled to other places, I had to remind myself to keep my guard up. When I first arrived, I explored various cuisines often, only to realize the huge amounts of MSG, hormone-filled meat upset my digestive tract quite regularly. I switched to eating at only a handful of restaurants that guarantee organic ingredients. The weather never changes — hot, humid all year round. Rains everyday for two hours. It’s a nightmare for a naturally curly-haired girl trying to control her frizz. [Spoiler alert: I never won the battle]. All the expat guys are looking to get laid. And do. A lot. People are really honest. My male co-workers tell me “you look tired” quite often. It’s their nice way of telling me I need more makeup.”
Singapore is ideal for new couples, families and men. It’s hard being a single, white, female expat. At work, management is dominated by men and women are generally soft-spoken. The climate causes incessant sweating. As soon as you walk outside your air-conditioned bubble, your makeup falls off your face. You find yourself perpetually stuck in a bad hair day. It’s impossible to feel attractive.
Walking through the financial district, the streets are brimming with 30-year-old, professional expats. At first glance, Singapore looks like a prime dating scene. However, you quickly learn a new set of dynamics are at play….
Imagine you are a single, 27-year-old man from Europe, America or Australia. Your company has sent you to Singapore on a two-year assignment, fully paid apartment and you have no other major expense, aside from food and alcohol. You know two years in Asia will grant you any job you want back home. While you are here, you might as well experience all that Singapore has to offer. After all, who doesn’t love a good story for your mates back home?
You become more adventurous. You decide to hike a volcano in Indonesia or run a marathon at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Naturally, your tastes begin to change. You choose to explore more exotic cuisines. Why go for some simple mac and cheese, when Pad Thai is on the menu? Sure, the mac and cheese is great, a taste of home, but you are only in Asia for a limited time. Instead, you want try all the local flavors. Chili crab, Korean barbecue, pho, sushi — whatever you want, it’s all in Singapore for your tasting. There is so much to try, even the best cuts of white meat aren’t on your radar.
On the other hand, single white males are the hottest, rarest item on the menu. Suddenly, the guys who weren’t considered attractive in their home countries have women of all cultures vying for their attention. The white male transplant, a cunning species, plays this truth to his advantage. He doesn’t have to try — he can let the women come to him. One night, I remember standing at a bar with a friend waiting for a drink. I look over my shoulder and spot a relatively attractive man ten feet away from me. He smiles. I suggest to my friend that we go chat with him and his buddy after we get our drinks. No more than three minutes later, I turn around and this man has five girls swarming him. I didn’t even have a chance.
Dating in Singapore is like dating on the The Bachelor
All the time.
Twenty-five girls competing for one white guy, even if he is a jerk. Ladies with pristine makeup, hair, outfits and nails surround the viable candidate. They giggle at his jokes, touch his arms and try to pull him to a corner to have a “deep conversation.” Only one lucky girl will get the Fantasy Suite invite. Who will it be?
This situation did not bode well for me in Singapore: frizzy hair tied into a bun on top of my head, sweat dripping down my face from the humidity and wearing normal, everyday clothes because…it’s a Tuesday.
Personally, I have never been fond of The Bachelor franchise. I watch a lot of reality TV, but this show has never appealed to me. Give me Flavor Flav or Bret Michaels on VH1 any day. At least the of Love girls have enough respect for the viewers to put on an entertaining show.
A few years ago, my old roommate made me begrudgingly watch the series with her. While someone was clearly faking their tears, I came to a glaringly obvious conclusion….I will never win The Bachelor. A few reasons:
I bite my nails.
I am not bubbly. I lead with sarcasm and insults.
I don’t think a first date should require a prom dress. Or a tight-fitting cocktail dress and 5-inch heels.
I can’t hide my disdain for people. No matter how cute someone is, if he is uninteresting or I get a douchebag vibe, I move on.
I don’t have a good poker face when it comes to annoying conversations. I choose not to be apart of superficial conversations for more than 6 minutes. It reads all over my face.
Saying all of this makes it sound like I never dated in Singapore, which is not true. While there was a shallow, crowded pool, I jumped in anyway. Dating in Singapore was one of the best and the worst experiences. I learned early on that I either had to woo a guy who had just moved to Asia (and didn’t realize his commodity status) or date a guy who’s been in Asia a while (and just wants some mac and cheese).
More importantly, I learned:
It’s okay to make the first move.
Who cares if he rejects you or picks someone else.
If a guy is a jerk, don’t be with him — even if the available options are slim.
Although I’ve moved away from the country, I take these lessons with me. No matter where I live, dating will be hard and, at sometimes, humiliating. Two and half years of bad dates and would-be romances, Singapore gave me a crash course in how to get over it and get out there.
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Fired Up Inc., the operator of the casual dining chain Johnny Carino’s Italian, filed for its second bankruptcy in three years this week and is looking for a buyer.
In a filing with federal bankruptcy court in Texas, the CEO of the Austin-based casual dining Italian chain blamed a host of influences for its renewed struggles — including the weak casual dining environment, low oil prices and higher-than-expected costs associated with the Affordable Care Act.
“The company’s best-laid plans in its first [bankruptcy] case have been thwarted largely by the economy and negative change in the casual dining market place,” Fired Up CEO and Chairman Creed Ford said in a bankruptcy filing. That made projections from the first bankruptcy, filed in 2014 and closed only this year, “overly optimistic.”
Carino’s has been closing locations in recent years, including some that it had planned to turn around following its previous bankruptcy, and currently owns 36 company stores and franchises another 48, according to filings. At its peak, in 2006, the chain had 173 company-owned and franchised locations in 30 states.
Ford, who owns controlling interest in the company, said that Fired Up began looking for ways to sell most or all of the company’s locations earlier this year and “liquidate assets that are not being used” to maximize repayment of the company’s creditors.
Ford wrote the company has been negotiating with various groups interested in purchasing “some or all of our assets” and the filing was done to “promote an orderly liquidation with a possible reorganization of a very few locations.”
“I anticipate that most of Fired Up’s current locations will ultimately be sold to one or two groups and we anticipate establishing sales procedures shortly after we file,” Ford wrote.
Fired Up has its roots in 1997, when Ford and Norman Abdallah formed the company to acquire the Kona Restaurant Group from Brinker International. After reaching its peak, however, the casual dining decline and the recession led to a steady decline in sales. The company closed unprofitable stores, but its heavy debt load ultimately led to the 2014 bankruptcy.
Various “exogenous factors” affecting the economy after the company’s first bankruptcy plan was confirmed hurt revenues, according to bankruptcy filings. Fired Up said the decline in the price of oil and gas and closings in the gas industry also hurt the company’s sales.
Costs related to the Affordable Care Act were also higher than the company expected when it had filed for bankruptcy. Marketing expenses were also higher than anticipated because the company had to spend more money to attract customers.
The company had a steep loss in revenue. In its 2014 fiscal year, which ended June 25 that year, according to the bankruptcy filing, Fired Up had $110 million in revenues and a net loss of $5.6 million, and 7 million in guest counts. By its 2015 fiscal year — ending Dec. 30 — revenues had fallen to $86 million and the company had a net loss of $5.5 million. Yet guest counts had actually increased to 7.6 million.
Fired Up has $19 million in secured debt, including nearly $12.6 million to FRG Capital and $5.1 million to Prosperity Bank and a small amount to Independent Bank of Waco. Ford’s family owns FRG Capital.
The company has no real property assets as its locations are leased.
Contact Jonathan Maze at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter at @jonathanmaze
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A RAPIDLY growing number of retailers are threatening to charge "fitting fees" to stop shoppers trying items in store - only to buy them online for less later.
Fed-up sellers of everything from cameras to wetsuits, ski boots and wedding gowns say they have been forced to consider charges to protect themselves from what they consider to be exploitation, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The move comes as a survey by The Daily Telegraph of more than 1000 people revealed that 61 per cent had tried a product in a store, then later bought it on the internet. Nearly half of them said they had done so at least five times.
Hanna Kossowska, who owns Hanna Couture, is contemplating charging brides-to-be $300 for a six-hour dress fitting, which is refundable if they buy from her."I'm now lucky to get one job from 10 fittings because girls tell me they can get either the same dress or a similar dress on the web for less," she said.
Camera House Caringbah owner Craig Mackenzie charges a $30 "explanation fee" to customers looking to test out his high-end cameras."I've got to pick the people who won't screw me over," Mr Mackenzie said.
"If I pick the wrong one, he'll waste half an hour of my time and will then ask me to write it all down."
Heritage Surf manager Steve Collinson said "online cannibalisation" was a major factor in the decision to close the Manly store in two weeks."People can just now get on their iPhone to actually look up prices in comparison - all while they stand right in front of you," he said.
"Surf stores have had big meetings with RipCurl recently to decide whether or not to start charging people for testing wetsuits in store," he added.Earlier this year Sydney ski store InSki made global headlines after announcing a $50 boot fitting charge, refundable on purchase.
Nearly two-thirds of all respondents to The Daily Telegraph survey said they bought more goods and services online in the past year.
The findings are backed by a recent study by Macquarie Equities Research, which found 18 per cent of visitors to shopping centres preferred to window shop before buying on the internet.
Survey respondent Carlie Arnot, 22, said she shopped on the web more than ever.
Ms Arnot said that while she could understand the logic behind stores charging people for trying items, it was going to be a tough sell.
"I think that it will just push more people to buy online," she said.
Choice spokeswoman Ingrid Just said that while she sympathised with retailers, they were playing a dangerous game in charging people to try on items in-store."Historically, people have always shopped around to find a better deal, but it's just now that they've got the internet as the ultimate tool of price comparison," she said.
Results of our shoppers' survey:
In the past 12 months would you say you have bought:
More goods and services online: 63.9%
Fewer goods and services online: 6.9%
About the same amount of goods and services online: 22.5%
I don’t buy goods and services online: 6.7%
What is the most appealing aspect of shopping online?
It's cheaper: 49.1%
It's quicker: 8.6%
I can shop when I want: 24.9%
Better variety: 11%
Shopping online does not appeal to me: 6.4%
Have you ever tried a product in a retail store only to then buy it online for less?
Yes: 61.7%
No: 38.3%
If you answered yes to the previous question, how often have you done it?
Once 10.7%
Twice 16.2%
Three times 16.8%
Four times 9.5%
5-10 times 29.2%
11-20 times 6.4%
More than 20 times 11.3%
What is your opinion of the GST exemption for goods bought via the internet from overseas?
It saves shoppers money and should remain in place: 69.2%
It's bad for local retailers and should be removed: 11.2%
I don't have an opinion on this: 19.5%
Do you subscribe to any 'deal-a-day' websites?
Yes: 57.5%
No: 42.5%
If you answered yes to the previous question, how satisfied were you with the deal?
Extremely satisfied: 23.3%
Very satisfied: 26.7%
Quite satisfied: 37.3%
Quite unsatisfied: 8.4%
Very unsatisfied: 1.8%
Extremely unsatisfied: 2.5%
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Elphinstone Station Stampede: The stampede took place when four trains arrived at the same time.
Elphinstone Station Stampede: There were more than the usual people on the bridge at the time.
A Mumbai commuter who survived the stampede that killed 22 this morning, describes how she kept herself calm amid "panic and chaos and an insane crowd" on a railway bridge at Elphinstone station after just a 20-minute rain. When she somehow managed to come out, she saw bodies.Shruti Lokre was on the overbridge and saw the crowd suddenly increasing until she couldn't breathe properly. "It was just a 20-minute rainfall that made people halt. It is a British-era construction that shakes every time a train passes. There was no exit for us, the crowd was carrying you," she told NDTV on the phone."The crowd was increasing, there was no help...We couldn't breathe, we were falling on each other, there was panic. When a mob panics, you can't think. I am discounting all the groping because I had to survive. We were trying to get out. There was lack of information and lack of crowd management, then a rumour that the bridge is falling, the bridge is breaking," she shared.In tweets, Ms Lokre said: "Before I realised, I was a part of that stampede. Saw bodies being taken out."The stampede took place around 10.30 am, when four trains arrived at the same time and a crowd surged over the narrow bridge connecting the Elphinstone Road and Parel stations. Sudden heavy rain made a bad situation worse, as a few slipped, leading to the tragedy.Ms Lokre tweeted: "The only way to not give up on hope was to give hope to someone else. It's gonna be alright, we will make it. Breathe, keep breathing, look that guy is helping us. Don't worry, I am here. We are in it together. Just few more minutes. This!"She also commented: "You don't realise when the mob turns into a stampede. It happens in front of you, you become a part of it. Panic and chaos and insane crowd." Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has ordered an inquiry. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has announced Rs 5 lakh compensation to the families of deceased and all the medical expenses of the injured will be borne by government.
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Microsoft is now in the final stages of development of its upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Microsoft has been very tight lipped on when exactly we’ll see the Anniversary Update launch to the public, with official comments extending no further than “sometime this Summer.” But now, as Microsoft begins finalizing the Anniversary Update, “Version 1607” is official as internal Windows 10 builds are now being referenced as such. Surprise! The Anniversary Update is arriving around the anniversary of Windows 10!
Sources familiar with the matter have told me that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (Redstone 1) is now “feature-locked”, and has been for a little while now meaning work on new features has stopped and a focus on bug fixing and stabilization has begun. We may still see a few small changes and features make their way down the line before RS1 launches officially, but any major new features are now being pushed back for Redstone 2, which is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2017.
I’ve also heard that the latest internal builds of Windows 10 include more improvements to the Settings app, and all round general UI improvements and tweaks on the lead up to official release in July. This is it folks, the final descent has begun. We’ve got a bit over a month left of development before Microsoft signs off on a “final” build of the Anniversary Update, which will likely be flighted through Insiders first before reaching the public sometime in July.
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Further reading: Microsoft
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MONROVIA (Web Desk) – More than seven weeks after Liberia was declared free of Ebola, a young man was found dead of the disease, according to Liberia’s deputy health minister. Authorities are trying to determine how many people the 17-year-old
MONROVIA (Web Desk) – More than seven weeks after Liberia was declared free of Ebola, a young man was found dead of the disease, according to Liberia’s deputy health minister.
Authorities are trying to determine how many people the 17-year-old boy had contact with during the week he was sick and potentially infectious with Ebola. His mother, father and siblings are already under quarantine in their home, said Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads up Liberia’s Ebola response.
Nyenswah said there was no need for panic and fear, reported CNN.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has a rapid response team on the ground “investigating the circumstances around the case,” said CDC spokesman.
It’s not clear how the teenager contracted the disease, given that the World Health Organization declared Liberia free of Ebola on May 9.
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If Congress fails to pass cyber information sharing reforms, the Homeland Security Department could offer all critical industries entry into a little-known facility that circulates classified warnings about threats, similar to the way an exclusive Pentagon initiative works, said a former DHS official who started the operation. The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, or NCCIC, is a 24-hour crisis center that has been investigating and responding to breaches since 2009.
“On that watch floor right now you have representatives with full security clearances, up to the Top Secret level, from energy companies, financial services companies, water companies, telecommunications companies, sitting there next to intelligence analysts, sitting next to government cyber analysts, sitting next to Secret Service agents and FBI agents,” said former NCCIC director Seán McGurk, at a talk sponsored by Government Executive Media Group and National Journal.
McGurk became managing principal for industrial control systems cybersecurity at Verizon in May. The telecom firm is one of the critical sector companies stationed at the NCCIC (pronounced N-kick). “They are all sharing the information in near real-time, machine-to-machine speed, not necessarily just human to human, so they can get that overall operational picture to identify cyber risk,” he said.
There also has been discussion of allowing all vital sectors into a more high-profile program that today exchanges classified threat data only within the defense industrial base. The Pentagon recently announced plans for renewing a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton to beef up capacity of the initiative, which currently supports about 15,000 individuals from more than 2,650 defense suppliers.
McGurk acknowledged that NCCIC must ramp up if it is tasked with providing nondefense critical sectors the same services available from the defense industrial base program.
We started the capability -- and now we need to advance that capability and we need to extend it” beyond the currently six or seven active industries, he said. “We need to ensure that the public is aware that this is a resource.”
NCCIC is an outgrowth of a Bush administration presidential directive commonly known as the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Under the initiative, data sharing activities must comply with federal privacy policies for personal information and other protected information.
By “collaborating and sharing classified information, unclassified information, proprietary information, we have a better idea of what the activity is and how the activity propagates through these various sectors,” McGurk said. For example, an oil company executive may spot a danger that could disrupt energy industrial control systems, while a water plant employee may look at the same information and see separate ramifications for that utility.
“And then it becomes actionable because the energy sector person sits there and says that’s important to me in this way and I need that information to protect my sector, which may be different from what the water person sees,” he said. The center is “something that can be enhanced, it’s something that can be expanded but it’s something that currently exists.”
Mark Weatherford, the top cyber official at DHS, increasingly is promoting NCCIC during speeches. “The NCCIC is going to be the nexus of information,” he said this summer. Weatherford, who previously served as chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which enforces reliability standards for the bulk power system, predicts that eventually businesses in all critical industries “will have NCCIC on speed dial.”
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Facebook wants to prove it drives brick-and-mortar foot traffic with its latest feature test. TechCrunch has discovered a previously unreported Facebook feature where users can scan a personalized QR code to score discounts or bonuses when they buy something in-person at certain shops. Some users see the Rewards feature listed in the More tab of their Facebook mobile app.
When asked, Facebook told us it has been running the test over the past few months, and provided this statement: “To help businesses continue to connect with customers where they are, we’re running a small test that enables people to use the Facebook app to collect and redeem rewards when they make a purchase at a participating store.”
Facebook Rewards could benefit users, merchants and the social network. People could earn free discounts just for being Facebook users. Merchants could lure people to their stores, earning a higher margin than the Rewards they give while fostering repeat customers and word-of-mouth promotion. Facebook could become more appealing to users while earning ad revenue from businesses looking to promote their Rewards giveaways via ads. The feature could also give Facebook more data on who buys what where, which it can use to improve the relevance of ad targeting and News Feed content.
Snap Inc. has been pushing its own way to drive people to brick-and-mortar stores and track their visits. Brands can buy Sponsored Geofilters ads that let Snapchat users overlay special graphics related to a business over their photos and videos when they’re nearby. Snap then shares this info with the business through its “Snap to Store” program.
Facebook has been toying with in-store discounts since 2012 when it launched Offers. It revamped the feature last year, and now Offers can be redeemed both online and offline. They use a special barcode and promo code that’s either scanned at the shop or entered in the online checkout flow. Facebook once said that viral sharing of Offers was a big hit.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been working on a wide variety of ways to “close the loop,” proving how its online ads lead to offline purchases. Facebook works with data providers like Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom and BlueKai to index people’s offline purchases. It also has forged partnerships with point of sale software systems Square and Marketo to track which ads lead to purchases, or even just to store visits by matching GPS, Wi-Fi, radio signals, cell towers and beacons with a store’s location coordinates.
Rewards seems more positioned as a loyalty program. Instead of the offer having a code to scan, Rewards assigns the user a single personal QR code they can scan everywhere. People could potentially scan their code every time they come to a shop, like building up stamps for a free sandwich on a loyalty program card.
Because Facebook Rewards lives in your phone in an app everyone already has rather than a loseable card or a new app you must download, it could compete with Belly, LevelUp, Punchcard and other apps. We’ll see if Facebook gets good enough results from this test to more widely roll-out and promote Rewards. But it’s another unsettling moment where loyalty startups might suddenly find themselves in the path of the big blue steamroller.
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ISE-SHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Group of Seven (G7) leaders agreed on Thursday on the need to send a strong message on maritime claims in the western Pacific, where an increasingly assertive China is locked in territorial disputes with Japan and several Southeast Asian nations.
The agreement prompted a sharp rejoinder from China, which is not in the G7 club but whose rise as a power has put it at the heart of some discussions at the advanced nations’ summit in Ise-Shima, central Japan.
“Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe led discussion on the current situation in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Other G7 leaders said it is necessary for G7 to issue a clear signal,” Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko told reporters after a session on foreign policy affairs.
At a news conference late on Wednesday, Abe said Japan welcomed China’s peaceful rise while repeating Tokyo’s opposition to acts that try to change the status quo by force. He also urged respect for the rule of law. Both principles are expected to be mentioned in a statement after the summit.
The United States is also increasingly concerned about China’s action in the region.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying retorted in Beijing that the South China Sea issue had “nothing to do” with the G7 or any of its members.
“China is resolutely opposed to individual countries hyping up the South China Sea for personal gain,” she said.
U.S. President Barack Obama called on China on Wednesday to resolve maritime disputes peacefully and he reiterated that the United States was simply concerned about freedom of navigation and overflight in the region.
Obama on Thursday pointed to the risks from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, saying the isolated state was “hell bent” on getting atomic weapons.
But he said there had been improved responses from countries in the region like China that could reduce the risk of North Korea selling weapons or nuclear material.
“It’s something that we’ve put at the center of discussions and negotiations with China,” Obama told reporters.
Seko, speaking the first of two days of the summit in central Japan, said Abe told G7 counterparts that Pyongyang’s development of nuclear technology and ballistic missiles poses a threat to international peace, including in Europe.
“It is necessary to make North Korea realize that it would not be able have a bright future unless such issues as abduction, nuclear and missile development are resolved,” Abe told the group, according to Seko.
The G7 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Participants of the G7 summit meetings (from front in clockwise) Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, French President Francois Hollande, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk, Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama attend session 1 working lunch meeting at the Shima Kanko Hotel in Shima, Mie Prefecture, Japan May 26, 2016. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan/Handout via Reuters
GLOBAL HEALTH CHECK
The global economy topped the agenda earlier in the day, when G7 leaders voiced concern about emerging economies and Abe made a pointed comparison to the 2008 global financial crisis. Not all his G7 partners appeared to agree.
The G7 leaders did agree on the need for flexible spending to spur world growth but the timing and amount depended on each country, Seko told reporters, adding that some countries saw no need for such spending. Britain and Germany have been resisting calls for fiscal stimulus.
“G7 leaders voiced the view that emerging economies are in a severe situation, although there were views that the current economic situation is not a crisis,” Seko said.
Abe presented data showing global commodities prices fell 55 percent from June 2014 to January 2016, the same margin as from July 2008 to February 2009, after the Lehman collapse.
Lehman had been Wall Street’s fourth-largest investment bank when it filed for Chapter 11 protection on Sept. 15, 2008, making its bankruptcy by far the biggest in U.S. history. Its failure triggered the global financial crisis.
Abe hopes, some political insiders say, to use a G7 statement on the global economy as cover for a domestic fiscal package including the possible delay of a rise in the nation’s sales tax to 10 percent from 8 percent planned for next April.
Obama ripped into Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying the billionaire had rattled other G7 leaders and that his statements were aimed at getting headlines, not what was needed to keep America safe and the world on an even keel.
Slideshow (19 Images)
Trump has been accused of racism, misogyny and bigotry for saying he would build a giant wall to keep out illegal Mexican immigrants, would temporarily ban Muslims from the United States and issued a series of comments considered demeaning to women.
Summit pageantry began when Abe escorted G7 leaders to the Shinto religion’s holiest site, the Ise Grand Shrine in central Japan, dedicated to sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, mythical ancestress of the emperor.
On Wednesday night, Abe met Obama for talks dominated by the arrest of a U.S. military base civilian worker in connection with the killing of a young woman on Japan’s Okinawa island, reluctant host to the bulk of the U.S. military in Japan.
The attack dimmed Obama’s hopes of keeping his Japan trip strictly focused on his visit on Friday to Hiroshima, site of the world’s first atomic bombing, to highlight reconciliation between the two former World War Two enemies as well as his nuclear anti-proliferation agenda.
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From left: Founding countries signed articles of agreement for the creation of the AIIB in Beijing, June 2015. The opening ceremony of AIIB launched in Beijing on Jan. 16, 2016. MOU signing day between the AIIB Vice President Danny Alexander, left, and then-First Vice Minister of Finance Choi Sang-mok in Seoul in February. [XINHUA, MINISTRY OF STRATEGY AND FINANCE]
Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will hold the bank’s second annual meeting on Jeju Island from today through Sunday.According to the Finance Ministry, about 2,000 people will attend the meeting, including AIIB President Jin Liqun and representatives from 77 member states, heads of international organizations and financial institutions, along with the media.The AIIB is seen as a new financial institution to rival the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which are dominated by western countries and Japan, with the aim to create a financial order centered on Asia and developing countries.“Korea is a very important member of AIIB and its economic development achieved in the past 50 years is a good model to the region,” Danny Alexander, Vice President at the AIIB, was quoted as saying to a local media outlet earlier this year. “Korea has the second most number of employees working for AIIB, following China, and I believe Korea is taking an important role at the bank just by looking at the country hosting the second annual event.”China has a 32.33 percent stake in the bank, followed by India (9.08 percent) and Russia (7.09 percent). Korea has a 4.06 percent stake.This year’s main theme is Sustainable Infrastructure and governors and officials at the AIIB will discuss ways to efficiently run banks.“This will be the first international event that Korea will hold after the new administration was launched,” said Lee Joon-bum, a director at the Finance Ministry. “We believe the event will be an opportunity for us to present our economic policies to the world, while strengthening economic and development ties with major countries.”Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon, who will be chair of the second annual event, will give opening remarks on Friday. This will be his debut as Korea’s economic chief for the global event.The Korean ministry is hoping that the annual event will be a chance for Korean companies to expand their businesses in Asia.“We have planned various events to help Korean companies enter the Asian infrastructure market such as forums on investments, one on one business meetings and seminars where companies can take the time to introduce their businesses,” said Lee. “We expect the event will allow Korean companies to have time to network and share information with AIIB and member states.”Korea Land & Housing Corp. will showcase a Korean version of a smart city and Korea Expressway Corporation and Korea Railroad Corporation will introduce technologies on highways and high-speed railways. K-water will present its water management technologies and Jeju government plans to share its efforts to develop carbon-free and green energy sectors. KT said that it will present its 5G network technologies at the annual event.Samsung C&T, which will unveil its high-end technologies on infrastructure including high rises, has been involved in many projects in several countries. Last year the Samsung affiliate won a $610 million contract to build the Thomson Line T313 subway station in Singapore, the latest in a long line of projects the company has undertaken in the island nation.Hyundai E&C, which has taken on foreign construction projects since 1965, also will share its experiences and its renowned technologies. Hyundai has landed more than 800 construction projects in over 60 countries, and the company was first to win a contract worth $11 billion in 2010 among local construction firms.Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction also has been participating in the projects in over 40 countries over 50 years. Doosan said it has the best technologies on seawater desalination in the world and has become a global leader in the power plant field.Hyundai Motor also will provide 110 vehicles, including 100 Ioniq EVs, for use by VIPs and senior officials. The automaker said it will be meaningful to introduce its environmentally friendly model as green energy will be one of the topics discussed at the event.“We think it is very meaningful to provide vehicles for the event that will discuss sustainable infrastructure and help emerging countries to develop further,” Hyundai Motor Vice President Park Kwang-sik said. “We will give full support to have the event become successful.”Meanwhile, the Korean government will take the opportunity of hosting the event to educate visitors on Korean culture, including K-pop and Korean traditional foods.According to the Finance Ministry, girl group AOA, which is popular across Asia, will perform at the welcoming dinner hosted by Deputy Prime Minister Kim Dong-yeon on Friday. On the second night, Lyn who sang the official soundtrack of popular dramas such as “Descendants of the Sun” and “My Love From the Star” will perform at the dinner.“There were many people who showed interest in attending the annual event from Asian countries, especially from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, after we announced the K-pop stars’ scheduled performances,” said Cho Yoon-ku, a director at the Finance Ministry.The ministry has designated Saturday as Korean Food Day and will offer traditional foods to attendees. On Sunday, the Korean government will give free tours of Jeju island.In late April Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-water) was awarded an $8.7 million loan from the AIIB to build a hydropower plant construction project in the Caucasus region of Georgia. The $1 billion project will build a 280-megawatt hydroelectric plant along the Nenskra river.It is the first case in which the China-led infrastructure bank approved a Korean project.Other Korean firms reportedly have applied for financing for major projects from the AIIB.BY KIM YOUNG-NAM [[email protected]]
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Philosophy in Russia
Tolstoy’s Theory of Nonviolence
Academician Abdusalam A. Guseinov on pacificism and the perspective of the infinite beginning.
The idea of nonviolence entered into the cycle of Russian ethics on the wave of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika. It struck a chord among society at large. Since that period, the attitude to pacifist ideas has changed considerably. This attitude can now be expressed by two words: doubt and disappointment. I would like to comment on one common opinion, namely that nonviolence can be considered only as a wonderful dream. It has moral attractiveness but there is no compelling force of logic to it. This is a widely held view, but I will attempt to demonstrate its falseness by discussing Leo Tolstoy, who more than anyone else is reproached for having an inclination to utopianism.
The teaching of Tolstoy which he called ‘nonresistance to evil’, is one of the most valuable and deeply developed versions of the nonviolence idea. It springs from a life position that has been named tolstovstvo and it had a great influence upon the nonviolence movement of the Twentieth Century.
Humans ask the question “What is the Meaning of Life?” For philosophers like Schopenhauer, the answer to this question is that there is no ultimate meaning. But the fact that a person asks this question at all means that life itself cannot be the answer. Therefore the question about life’s meaning, reduced logically to the justification of the question itself, comes to the postulating of some infinite source of life, to God.
Tolstoy gave his own specific meaning to the concept of God. For him, it signified the unknown beginning of life, its endless foundation. It is the absolute limit of reasonable knowledge, the limit established by reason itself. We cannot utter any positive statement about God. We know that he is, but do not know what he is. In the same way that we know what a infinite number is through the summing up of simple numbers, but cannot say what kind of number (even or odd) it is, so a man comes to the notion of God in searching for answers to where he comes from and for what is he, but he has no clue as to what God really is.
We live but do not know what is the beginning of life. The existence of God gives each of us the choice of how to live: for ourself or for God; within the boundary of a finite life or from the perspective of the infinite beginning. This question is the main content of any religion. Life lived either for oneself in an individual sense (for Ivan, Peter and so on) or in the creativity belonging to a particular group (or population, or class, or even humankind) comes face-to-face meaninglessness, a goalless existence that is the source of the question concerning the sense of life. According to Tolstoy, the adequate answer of life’s essence is in God. In Tolstoy’s opinion the question about life’s sense was most accurately formulated by Jesus Christ, who was not God himself (at least, not in the sense described above). “Who believes in God”, wrote Tolstoy, “cannot consider Christ as God.”
We ought to live for God. This was the decision suggested by Jesus. He expressed it in the phrase: “Not as I want, but as You” (Matthew 26, 39). Following Jesus, Tolstoy considered the relation to God in terms of the relation between a son and his father. Tolstoy supposed that Jesus called himself the Son of God in the same way that any man can do so. At the same time, the relation of a man to God is the formula of love. Love in any of its variations and appearances is a relation in which one situates oneself in the position of servant, and sacrifices oneself for the benefit of the other. A woman loves a man and cannot live without him; a subject loves his sovereign and protects him; a friend loves a friend and struggles for him. But God is different from all others, as he is the Other that absolutely merits to be loved. Love as the normative foundation of conduct is represented in all religions, but according to Tolstoy only Jesus elevated it to the height of a law of consciousness.
But how can one practically apply love in this highest sense? That is, how can one follow God’s will if we do not know God and consequently do not know what he wants us to do?
The formula of love has two parts: negative (not as I want), and positive (as you want). The love of God in its positive expression is not possible, as we do not know what God wants. Therefore the adequate relation to God appears not as a positive service but as a voluntary restriction of activity. This negation, this restriction, is the only possible way in which a man can directly and responsibly express his love to God.
In relation to judging questions of good and evil, the restriction of one’s activity is nothing other than nonviolence. According to Tolstoy, to act in a violent way means to do what is not wanted by the object of the violence. It is not difficult to see that his definition of violence is the direct opposite of love. Consequently, the negative part of one’s expression of love is the negation of violence, that is, nonviolence.
Nonviolence (nonresistance to evil), in the accurate sense of the word, means only that a person does not agree to be judge in questions of life and death, does not agree to accuse other people because this is not within his or her competence. It is necessary to stress that this doesn’t suppose that we ought to completely abandon any kind of judgment concerning people’s actions. It only supposes that we have no right to judge them as people. A brother cannot judge his brother in the same way their father can do. The crime of Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was in the fact that he crossed over the boundary put before him as a brother. He acted as if he was not a brother.
The essence of Religion for Tolstoy is that it considers the life of a man from an endless perspective which recognizes the equality of all people. Their relation to infinity is equal for everybody. Therefore the recognition of the equality of all people (in the Christian variant, through their brotherhood in relation to God) is the most important moral imperative. Tolstoy supposed that religions of all kind demand us to act by the model of the Golden Rule (i.e. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”). The main consequence of applying this rule is nonviolence.
Tolstoy’s position on this question shows the difference that he sets between the violence of a robber and the violence of people acting as representatives of the state (kings, presidents, military commanders and so on). The second is worse than the first. No violence has any justification: it is always bad. But if the violence of a robber can to some degree be understood, the violence of a state representative can not. It is much worse because it pretends to be moral, and is conducted in a ‘legal’ form. A robber does not flaunt his violent acts, but the robber on the throne is proud of his violence.
The main statements of Tolstoy’s teaching have an analytical nature. They can be derived from his reasoning about God as an absolute, infinite, immortal source of life. Tolstoy in his methodical way proves that violence cannot be the conclusion from the syllogism the main premise of which is the initial equality of all people. Thus his teaching has a philosophical status in the sense that it is rationally founded. And it has ethical status in the sense that it is established by the boundaries of responsible behavior for each individual.
© A.A. Guseinov 2006
Professor Abdusalam A. Guseinov is an Academician of the Russian Academy of Science, and is Chair of the Ethics Department at Moscow State University.
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This story reflects the views of these authors, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company. These are fast-changing times. Old certainties are collapsing around us and people are scrambling for new ways of being in the world. As we pointed out in a recent article, 51% of young people in the United States no longer support the system of capitalism. And a solid 55% of Americans of all ages believe that capitalism is fundamentally unfair.
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But question capitalism in public and you’re likely to get some angry responses. People immediately assume that you want to see socialism or communism instead. They tell you to go and live in Venezuela, the current flogging-horse for socialism, or they hit you with dreary images of Soviet Russia with all its violence, dysfunction, and grey conformity. They don’t consider that you might want something beyond caricatures and old dogmas. These old ‘isms’ lurk in the shadows of any discussion on capitalism. The cyber-punk author William Gibson has a term for this effect: “semiotic ghosts”; one concept that haunts another, regardless of any useful or intended connection. There’s no good reason to remain captive to these old ghosts. All they do is stop us having a clear-headed conversation about the future. Soviet Russia was an unmitigated social and economic disaster; that’s easy to dispel. But, of course, not all experiments with socialist principles have gone so horribly wrong. Take the social democracies of Sweden and Finland, for example, or even post-war Britain and the New Deal in the U.S. There are many systems that have effectively harnessed the economy to deliver shared prosperity. But here’s the thing. While these systems clearly produce more positive social outcomes than laissez-faire systems do (think about the record high levels of health, education and well-being in Scandinavian countries, for example), even the best of them don’t offer the solutions we so urgently need right now, in an era of climate change and ecological collapse. Right now we are overshooting Earth’s carrying capacity by a crushing 64% each year, in terms of our resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. The socialism that exists in the world today, on its own, has nothing much to say about this. Just like capitalism, it relies on endless, indeed exponential GDP growth, ever-increasing levels of extraction and production and consumption. The two systems may disagree about how best to distribute the yields of a plundered earth, but they do not question the process of plunder itself. Fortunately, there is already a wealth of language and ideas out there that stretch well beyond these dusty old binaries. They are driven by a hugely diverse community of thinkers, innovators, and practitioners. There are organizations like the P2P (Peer to Peer) Foundation, Evonomics, The Next System Project, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking reimagining the global economy. The proposed models are even more varied: from complexity, to post-growth, de-growth, land-based, regenerative, circular, and even the deliciously named donut economics.
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Then, there are the many communities of practice, from the Zapatistas in Mexico to the barter economies of Detroit, from the global Transition Network, to Bhutan, with its Gross National Happiness index. There are even serious economists and writers, from Jeremy Rifkin to David Fleming to Paul Mason, making a spirited case that the evolution beyond capitalism is well underway and unstoppable, thanks to already active ecological feedback loops and/or the arrival of the near zero-marginal cost products and services.This list barely scratches the surface. The thinking is rich and varied, but all of these approaches share the virtue of being informed by up-to-date science and the reality of today’s big problems. They move beyond the reductionist dogmas of orthodox economics and embrace complexity; they focus on regenerating rather than simply using-up our planet’s resources; they think more holistically about how to live well within ecological boundaries; some of them draw on indigenous knowledge and lore about how to stay in balance with nature; others confront the contradictions of endless growth head on. Not all would necessarily describe themselves as anti- or even post-capitalist, but they are all, in one way or another, breaking through the dry seals of neoclassical economic theory upon which capitalism rests.
Still, resistance to innovation is strong. One reason is surely that our culture has been stewed in capitalist logic for so long that it feels impregnable. Our instinct is now to see it as natural; some even go so far as to deem it divine. The notion that we should prioritize the production of capital over all other things has become a kind of common sense; the way humans must organize. Another reason, clearly linked, is the blindness of much of the academic world. Take, for example, the University of Manchester, where a group of economics students asked for their syllabus to be upgraded to account for the realities of a post-crash world. Joe Earle, one of the organizers of what The Guardian described as a “quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching” told the newspaper: “[Neoclassical economics] is given such a dominant position in our modules that many students aren’t even aware that there are other distinct theories out there that question the assumptions, methodologies and conclusions of the economics we are taught.” In much the same way as House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, rebuffed college student Trevor Hill when he asked whether the Democratic Party would consider any alternatives to capitalism, Manchester University’s response was a flat no. Their economics course, they said, “focuses on mainstream approaches, reflecting the current state of the discipline”. Mainstream, current, anything but fresh. Such attitudes have spawned a global student movement, Rethinking Economics, with chapters as far afield as Ecuador, Uganda, and China. Capitalism has become a dogma, and dogmas die very slowly and very reluctantly. It is a system that has co-evolved with modernity, so it has the full force of social and institutional norms behind it. Its essential logic is even woven into most of our worldviews, which is to say, our brains. To question it can trigger a visceral reaction; it can feel like an attack not just on common sense but on our personal identities.
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But even if you believe it was once the best system ever, you can still see that today it has become necrotic and dangerous. This is demonstrated most starkly by two facts: The first is that the system is doing little now to improve the lives of the majority of humans: by some estimates, 4.3 billion of us are living in poverty, and that number has risen significantly over the past few decades. The ghostly responses to this tend to be either unimaginative–“If you think it’s bad, try living in Zimbabwe”–or zealous: “Well, that’s because there’s not enough capitalism. Let it loose with more deregulation, or give it time and it will raise their incomes too.” One of the many problems with this last argument is the second fact: with just half of us living above the poverty line, capitalism’s endless need for resources is already driving us over the cliff-edge of climate change and ecological collapse. This ranges from those that are both finite and dangerous to use, like fossil fuels, to those that are being used so fast that they don’t have time to regenerate, like fish stocks and the soil in which we grow our food. Those 4.3 billion more people living ‘successful’ hyper-consumption lifestyles? The laws of physics would need to change. Even Elon Musk can’t do that. It would be a sad and defeated world that simply accepted the prebaked assumption that capitalism (or socialism, or communism) represents the last stage of human thought; our ingenuity exhausted. Capitalism’s fundamental rules–like the necessity for endless GDP growth, which requires treating our planet as an infinite pit of value and damage to it as an “externality”– can be upgraded. Of course they can. There are plenty of options on the table. When have we humans ever accepted the idea that change for the better is a thing of the past? Of course, transcending capitalism might feel impossible right now. The political mainstream has its feet firmly planted and deeply rooted in that soil. But with the pace of events today, the unimaginable can become the possible, and even the inevitable with remarkable speed. The path to a better future will be cut by regular people being curious and open enough to challenge the wisdom received from our schools, our parents, and our governments, and look at the world with fresh eyes. We can let the ghosts go. We can allow ourselves the freedom to do what humans do best: innovate.
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VegNews News News Animal Sanctuaries Sue Over Abandoned Hens in CA Three rescue groups are suing the owners of a Northern California farm after they allegedly left their hens to die. Share this
Nearly two months after authorities found 50,000 hens abandoned on a Northern California egg farm, animal-welfare groups are suing the farm’s owners, alleging they left the birds there to starve. The plaintiffs, Animal Place, Farm Sanctuary, and Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary, were involved with rescue operations following the grisly discovery, which left one third of the birds dead, and thousands suffering from starvation and infection. Since all three organizations provided care to the 4,500 remaining birds, they are demanding that the owners, Andy Keung Cheung and Lien Diep, compensate them for the food and veterinary services required during the birds’ rehabilitation. Currently, the sanctuaries are trying to find homes for the surviving hens. Want more of today’s best plant-based news, recipes, and lifestyle?
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How Reddit ranking algorithms work
Amir Salihefendic Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 8, 2015
This is a follow up post to How Hacker News ranking algorithm works. This time around I will examine how Reddit’s story and comment rankings work.
The first part of this post will focus on how are Reddit stories ranked? The second part of this post will focus on comment ranking, which does not use the same ranking as stories (unlike Hacker News). Reddit’s comment ranking algorithm is quite interesting and the idea guy behind it is Randall Munroe (the author of xkcd!)
Digging into the story ranking code
Reddit is open sourced and the code is freely available. Reddit is implemented in Python and their code is located here. Their sorting algorithms are implemented in Pyrex, which is a language to write Python C extensions. They have used Pyrex for speed reasons. I have rewritten their Pyrex implementation into pure Python since it’s easier to read.
The default story algorithm called the hot ranking is implemented like this:
# Rewritten code from /r2/r2/lib/db/_sorts.pyx
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from math import log
epoch = datetime(1970, 1, 1)
def epoch_seconds(date):
td = date - epoch
return td.days * 86400 + td.seconds + (float(td.microseconds) / 1000000)
def score(ups, downs):
return ups - downs
def hot(ups, downs, date):
s = score(ups, downs)
order = log(max(abs(s), 1), 10)
sign = 1 if s > 0 else -1 if s < 0 else 0
seconds = epoch_seconds(date) - 1134028003
return round(sign * order + seconds / 45000, 7)
In mathematical notation the hot algorithm looks like this:
Effects of submission time
Following things can be said about submission time related to story ranking:
Submission time has a big impact on the ranking and the algorithm will rank newer stories higher than older
The score won’t decrease as time goes by, but newer stories will get a higher score than older. This is a different approach than the Hacker News’s algorithm which decreases the score as time goes by
Here is a visualization of the score for a story that has same amount of up and downvotes, but different submission time:
The logarithm scale
Reddit’s hot ranking uses the logarithm function to weight the first votes higher than the rest. Generally this applies:
The first 10 upvotes have the same weight as the next 100 upvotes which have the same weight as the next 1000 etc…
Here is a visualization:
Without using the logarithm scale the score would look like this:
Effects of downvotes
Reddit is one of the few sites that has downvotes. As you can read in the code a story’s “score” is defined to be:
The meaning of this can be visualized like this:
This has a big impact for stories that get a lot of upvotes and downvotes (e.g. controversial stories) as they will get a lower ranking than stories that just get upvotes. This could explain why kittens (and other non-controversial stories) rank so high :)
Conclusion of Reddit’s story ranking
Submission time is a very important parameter, generally newer stories will rank higher than older
The first 10 upvotes count as high as the next 100. E.g. a story that has 10 upvotes and a story that has 50 upvotes will have a similar ranking
Controversial stories that get similar amounts of upvotes and downvotes will get a low ranking compared to stories that mainly get upvotes
How Reddit’s comment ranking works
Randall Munroe of xkcd is the idea guy behind Reddit’s best ranking. He has written a great blog post about it:
You should read his blog post as it explains the algorithm in a very understandable way. The outline of his blog post is following:
Using the hot algorithm for comments isn’t that smart since it seems to be heavily biased toward comments posted early
In a comment system you want to rank the best comments highest regardless of their submission time
A solution for this has been found in 1927 by Edwin B. Wilson and it’s called “Wilson score interval”, Wilson’s score interval can be made into “the confidence sort”
The confidence sort treats the vote count as a statistical sampling of a hypothetical full vote by everyone — like in an opinion poll
How Not To Sort By Average Rating outlines the confidence ranking in higher detail, definitely recommended reading!
Digging into the comment ranking code
The confidence sort algorithm is implemented in _sorts.pyx, I have rewritten their Pyrex implementation into pure Python (do also note that I have removed their caching optimization):
The confidence sort uses Wilson score interval and the mathematical notation looks like this:
In the above formula the parameters are defined in a following way:
p is the observed fraction of positive ratings
n is the total number of ratings
zα/2 is the (1-α/2) quantile of the standard normal distribution
Let’s summarize the above in a following manner:
The confidence sort treats the vote count as a statistical sampling of a hypothetical full vote by everyone
The confidence sort gives a comment a provisional ranking that it is 85% sure it will get to
The more votes, the closer the 85% confidence score gets to the actual score
Wilson’s interval has good properties for a small number of trials and/or an extreme probability
Randall has a great example of how the confidence sort ranks comments in his blog post:
If a comment has one upvote and zero downvotes, it has a 100% upvote rate, but since there’s not very much data, the system will keep it near the bottom. But if it has 10 upvotes and only 1 downvote, the system might have enough confidence to place it above something with 40 upvotes and 20 downvotes — figuring that by the time it’s also gotten 40 upvotes, it’s almost certain it will have fewer than 20 downvotes. And the best part is that if it’s wrong (which it is 15% of the time), it will quickly get more data, since the comment with less data is near the top.
Effects of submission time: there are none!
The great thing about the confidence sort is that submission time is irrelevant (much unlike the hot sort or Hacker News’s ranking algorithm). Comments are ranked by confidence and by data sampling — — i.e. the more votes a comment gets the more accurate its score will become.
Visualization
Let’s visualize the confidence sort and see how it ranks comments. We can use Randall’s example:
As you can see the confidence sort does not care about how many votes a comment have received, but about how many upvotes it has compared to the total number of votes and to the sampling size!
Application outside of ranking
Like Evan Miller notes Wilson’s score interval has applications outside of ranking. He lists 3 examples:
Detect spam/abuse: What percentage of people who see this item will mark it as spam?
Create a “best of” list: What percentage of people who see this item will mark it as “best of”?
Create a “Most emailed” list: What percentage of people who see this page will click “Email”?
To use it you only need two things:
the total number of ratings/samplings
the positive number of ratings/samplings
Given how powerful and simple this is, it’s amazing that most sites today use the naive ways to rank their content. This includes billion dollar companies like Amazon.com, which define Average rating = (Positive ratings) / (Total ratings).
Conclusion
I hope you have found this useful and leave comments if you have any questions or remarks.
Happy hacking as always!
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Arsenal have completed the signing of Swedish striker Jamaal Raage from IF Brommapojkarna, according to the player’s agency.
Raage, who turned 16 in January and has scored two goals in four appearances for the Sweden U15 side, was one of several players who trialled with the club midway through last season and, after making a strong initial impression, was invited back to London Colney for further assessment.
He has now secured his move to North London and will form part of the club’s scholarship intake for the forthcoming campaign, acting as a direct replacement for Jordan Brown, whose move to West Ham United was officially confirmed today.
Raage is already familiar to many of Arsenal’s youngsters following his trial and is close friends with his compatriot Kristoffer Olsson, who made the move from Sweden to England two years ago and is now one of the club’s key players at U21 level.
Raage is Arsenal’s second signing at youth level following the high-profile acquisition of Dan Crowley from Aston Villa earlier this month, and is likely to be joined at the club next season by Barcelona defender Julio Pleguezuelo Selva, who is close to finalising his move.
With Chuba Akpom already firmly installed as part of the U21 set-up, Raage will provide competition for Austin Lipman in the U18s next season, whilst schoolboy strikers Kaylen Hinds, Olufela Olomola and Stephy Mavididi may also receive run-outs on occasion.
*News via @GoonRambler
Raage can be seen scoring a goal from around 1:02 in the video below:
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Here are some simply delicious homemade protein shake recipes that you can whisk up in a jiffy.
The Reason for Homemade Protein Shakes:
Just about anybody who is into bodybuilding or body-sculpting ? and there are legions of them these days ? is well aware of the importance of including protein shakes as a diet supplement. This is because, whether the goal is to lose weight and body fat, or increase the size of your muscles and get stronger and bigger, protein is the vitally important ingredient in your diet. The building block of the muscles in our body is protein; hence, without adequate amounts of it, enough muscle simply will not be built by your body.
Although it is always best to get your protein from natural foods, however, it can often be an overwhelming task to prepare the amounts of protein foods necessary, and also to consume them in such large quantities. This is what has created a great demand for protein shakes, and there are a plethora of them available commercially. But these are expensive, and many simply find them too bland, or get bored by them. Therefore, more and more people are opting for homemade protein shakes. So, here are a few easy-to-make and yummy, high protein shake recipes that you can whip up in a jiff at home.
Peanut Butter n? Banana Protein Shake Recipe
8 oz skim milk
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 banana
2 scoops of whey protein powder
Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. And there you have it, a delicious homemade power protein shake drink.
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Fruit n? Yogurt Protein Shake Recipe
1 cup strawberries
½ cup of orange juice
1 cup low fat yogurt, vanilla flavor
1½ cups skim milk
2 scoops whey protein powder
1 tbsp honey
Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
Lemon Cheese Cake N? Strawberry Protein Shake Recipe
3 scoops lemon cheese cake ice cream
1 cup strawberries, frozen
3 tbsp evaporated milk
2½ cups milk
4 eggs
Put the milk and eggs first in a blender and blend them together. Then add the lemon cheesecake ice cream and continue blending. Lastly, add the evaporated milk and strawberries and blend.
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Strawberry n? Pineapple n? Apricot Protein Shake Recipe
6 strawberries
¼ cup pineapple, crushed
1 apricot, fresh and diced
1 tbsp skim milk powder
1 tbsp protein powder
1 tsp flax seed oil
1½ cups water
Process the fruit along with the rest of the ingredients in a blender until smooth.
Fruit n? Bran Protein Shake Recipe
1 cup apple juice
½ banana, fresh
1/3 cup peaches or blueberries
1 tsp bran
1-3 tbsp protein powder, made out of milk and egg
Some ice cubes
Combine all the ingredients in a blender and blend until thick and smooth.
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Tropical Protein Shake Recipe
4 strawberries, frozen
½ a banana, frozen
½ a mango
2 tbsp pina colada mix, frozen
1 tbsp protein powder
1 tsp flax oil
1¼ cup water
6 cubes of ice
Blend all of the above ingredients in a blender until mixed thoroughly and serve in a tall glass.
Chocolaty n? Minty Protein Shake Recipe
2 scoops chocolate protein powder
1 cup vanilla ice cream, sugar free
2 cups milk, non-fat
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup water
a dash of peppermint extract
Blend all the ingredients together until smooth.
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A Tibetan protester was warmly greeted by relatives and friends following his release from a Chinese prison this week, with area residents lining the roads and offering ceremonial scarves to welcome his return, according to local sources.
Dondrub, 30, had been jailed for taking part in a March 18, 2012 demonstration challenging Chinese rule in Qinghai province’s Gepasumdo (in Chinese, Tongde) county, and was released this year on May 20, a Tibetan living in the area told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Wednesday.
“Local Tibetans lined up along the roads to warmly welcome him,” the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Some embraced him with tears of joy, and others offered him scarves as a sign of respect and good wishes.”
“Dondrub’s relatives arranged a simple welcome reception at his house, where many more Tibetans came together to greet and welcome him,” he said.
“Dondrub briefed the Tibetans who were gathered there on the details of his ordeal in prison,” he said, adding that Dondrub’s hands are now “unwell” following long periods of restraint in handcuffs.
Dondrub’s father’s name is Rigdor and his mother’s name is Khandro Gyal, the source said.
Taken into custody with Dondrub following the protest in March last year were Gyarig Thar, Dorje Tsebe, and Pathar Gyal, RFA’s source said.
“Gyarig Thar died of injuries a few months after he was detained, and the last two were released, also after a few months. But Dondrub was held until the end of his full term in prison,” he said.
Police attack protesters
Described as initially peaceful, last year’s protest turned violent when Chinese police assaulted the crowd, wounding an unknown number in an apparent grenade attack, Tibetan sources told RFA at the time.
“On March 18, Chinese security forces threw explosives into a crowd of Tibetan protesters in Gepasumdo county in the Tsolho [in Chinese, Hainan] prefecture,” a Tibetan living in South India said, citing sources in the region.
“Seven who were severely injured were taken to hospital, but some of those who were hurt could not be taken for treatment,” the source said.
Details of the police assault, and the nature of the “explosives” used in the attack, could not be independently confirmed.
The incident followed three days of local protests calling for the release of 50 monks from nearby Ba Shingtri monastery who were detained three days before for raising the banned Tibetan national flag and shouting political slogans, sources said.
One month later, Chinese authorities seized land from three Tibetan nomad villages in Gepasumdo for distribution to Han Chinese migrating to the area, a Tibetan resident told RFA.
The new wave of migration will result in the growth of a Chinese town fueled by construction of two hydroelectric projects, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Chinese officials told local Tibetans that their animals would not be allowed to remain on the land taken over by the government, and villagers were advised to reduce the number of their animals by selling them to slaughterhouses, RFA’s source said.
Reported by Lumbum Tashi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.
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OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM , Nov. 7 2013 (IPS) As Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and nuclear talks on Iran’s disputed nuclear program continue, a unique international conference, “A Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)”, was held in Jerusalem.
The topic is taboo because Israel maintains a veil of “studied ambiguity” on its alleged nuclear arsenal.
At the Notre Dame hotel in Jerusalem, the singular get-together took place: Ziad Abu Zayyad, former head of the Palestinian delegation to the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) multilateral talks; Dan Kurtzer, former peace mediator and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt; and young and veteran activists against the proliferation of WMDs.
Mordechai Vanunu, also present, is forbidden to speak to foreigners or leave Israel.
Invoking his opposition to WMDs, the former nuclear technician revealed in 1986 details of his country’s alleged nuclear weapons program to the British Sunday Times. Abducted by Mossad intelligence agents, the Israeli whistleblower spent 18 years in an Israeli jail, including more than 11 in solitary confinement.
“Ten years ago, we couldn’t even have a conference disembodied from reality,” notes an enthused Kurtzer.
This is no longer pie in the sky, but a very public event on an issue forcibly kept out of the public eye in Israel.
The conference was organized by the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ), a joint civil society publication dedicated to the quest for peace in the region.
“Track-Two diplomacy will have an effect on Track One, formal diplomacy,” explains the diplomat who is now a professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University. “If not this year – next year or the year after.”
The conference was held just a few days prior to the start of Round Two on Thursday Nov. 7 between Iran and the P5+1 group of six major powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United State, plus and Germany). Round One ended on a positive note.
Notwithstanding the persistent suspicion that Iran is racing towards nuclear arms, the only major player in the Middle East which, allegedly, possesses a nuclear arsenal is Israel.
Allegedly, because reports on the issue – all from foreign sources – have neither been confirmed nor denied by Israel. Maintaining its veil of “studied ambiguity”, Israel hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel’s nuclear policy is defined in one sentence: ‘Israel won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.’
“If Israel won’t be the first, it won’t be the second either,” quips Israeli non-conventional weapons expert Reuven Pedatzur.
Vanunu knows well the consequences of breaking the strict censorship code on the issue. Public debate is nonexistent. “The nuclear issue is Israel’s last taboo,” says Pedatzur.
A presentation on “Fissile Material Controls in the Middle East” by Princeton University’s Senior Research Physicist Frank von Hippel proposes a ban on plutonium separation and use; an end to the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel; an end to enrichment of uranium above six percent; and no additional enrichment plants.
It’s only natural that Israel’s nuclear program would take center stage. The Dimona nuclear plant is scrutinized.“Freeze, declare, and then step-by-step reduction of Israel’s stocks of plutonium and HEU,” is what Israel must give in return for von Hippel’s global proposal.
Yet despite across-the-board harmony on the need to free the world’s most volatile region from the most volatile weapon, the speakers failed to reach a consensus on the practicality of focusing on the region’s one and only country believed to have nuclear arms.
“This excellent proposal is premature,” comments Pedatzur. “Dealing with Israel’s nuclear program is a nonstarter. If the US will exert pressure on Israel, maybe; unfortunately, I don’t see any US incentive.”
Kurtzer chimes in: “The US is specifically interested in stopping nuclear weapons proliferation. Regarding Israel, we’re back to the question of non-declared status, and the US’ strong bilateral relationship, a fact of life.”
Following the Madrid Peace Conference (1991), Israel participated in the ACRS multilateral talks.
Israel focused on the regional security component; Arab states (led by Egypt) on the arms control component – that is, on controlling Israel’s suspected nukes. The talks collapsed in 1995.
Secure in its don’t-talk-about-it comfort zone, Israel is ready to discuss a WMD-free zone and thus forgo the ultimate deterrent against its so-called eternal enemies, but only within a comprehensive peace settlement with all of its neighbors, including Palestine, Syria and Iran.
That’s a state of affairs as hypothetical as it is improbable.
“Israel wants the international community to agree de facto to its nuclear status,” bemoans Abu Zayyad. “Assuming it’s out of it, Israel isn’t against a nuclear-free Middle East. That’s ridiculous.”
Abu Zayyad reflects the traditional Palestinian position. Both the nuclear weapons issue and the peace vision must be approached “correlatively, not sequentially.”
Is there a linkage between or amongst these issues?
“The formal answer of diplomats is ‘No’,” says Kurtzer. “But surely, as the debate takes place in a civil society forum like this one without being cut off – here’s the linkage.”
Israel rejects any linkage between its nuclear program and the nascent regional détente.
“A Russian-American agreement to move the chemical weapons from Syria; Iranian and US presidents speaking for the first time since 1979; Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” enumerates Hillel Schenker, PIJ co-editor with Abu Zayyad. “This creates a constructive background for moving forward toward a WMD-free Middle East,” he concludes.
Eager to pour cold water on the conference’s optimism, Pedatzur enumerates inversely: “Chemical weapons use in Syria’s civil war; failure till now to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis; Israel’s continued possession of nuclear weapons and occupation of Palestine. A WMD-free Middle East can’t be established any time soon.”
Kurtzer says “To the extent the US is ready to exercise its influence and power, a regional security breakthrough can occur which will ease the way for us not only to have a discussion on the possibility of a WMD-free Middle East, but to actually start engaging on these issues.”
Abu Zayyad advocates a global arrangement. “When you speak about Israel, Israel speaks about Iran; Iran about Pakistan; Pakistan about India, etc.” – the nuclear chain.
The conference may have succeeded in breaking through the censorship surrounding Israel’s assumed nuclear weapons, but not the taboo on Israel effectively creating a WMD-free Middle East.
Inter Press Service
Read more by Pierre Klochendler
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Asus just wrapped up its pre-Computex press conference in Taipei, Taiwan. Chairman Johnny Shih unveiled a stack of new products, some of which we'll probably cover in more detail later this week. Right now, I'm itching to talk about the new Transformer Book T300 Chi.
Shih claimed the Chi is the thinnest detachable 2-in-1 around. It's just 14.3 mm thick with the keyboard dock attached, making the clamshell slimmer than the MacBook Air. The tablet alone is only 7.3 mm thick, which is slightly thinner than the iPad Air. There's no word on weight, though.
The Transformer Book Chi is based on a 12.5" IPS screen with a 2560x1440 display resolution. A "next-gen" Intel Core processor powers the machine, and it's passively cooled. We don't know anything else about the chip, though. Odds are the CPU is a low-power Broadwell derivative, which means we could be waiting a little while before the Chi hits shelves.
Apart from the inclusion of LTE connectivity, Shih didn't reveal much else about the Chi. However, he did uncork another new convertible. The Transformer Book V is really two separate devices: a 5" Android smartphone and a 12.5" Windows tablet. These components can be used separately or combined together. The smartphone docks in the back of the tablet, allowing folks to switch the slate between Android and Windows at the touch of a button.
As far as I can tell, the two operating systems share the screen but not the rest of the underlying hardware. The smartphone is based on a 64-bit Atom quad, while the tablet runs a next-gen Core CPU. The tablet also has a detachable keyboard dock that provides notebook-like functionality for both Android and Windows.
Shih described the Transformer Book V as the "ultimate convergence" device. It sounds intriguing, but I'm more interested in the Chi, in part because it could be a good candidate to replace my aging ultraportable. Too bad we don't have any details yet on pricing or availability just yet.
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I finally got hangout with amazing * os-cordis cosplay group. And this time we decide to do a very special cosplay shot for the last Agni Kai which both of us wanted to do for long.All the bending effect here is generated/created by LED light, which is ~ Shura103 's brilliant idea. so NO PHOTOSHOP at all. we running back and forwards, making random lighting paint, that was so much fun. I was too exited, my heart is still pumping fast now!!FANTASTIC WORK!! Just can't wait to see the rest!!~and Thank to ~ Dispozition , amazing photographer, the out come looks just Gorgeous!!!also thanks to ~ Shura103 who booked a great studio and equipment for us!!please check out * os-cordis 's website to see more !!and here is your "ticket"---------------------------------------------credit:production by Azula--- Zuko--- photographer producer and lighting makeup and lighting
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Multi-million-dollar advertising money has long been suspected as an unspoken filter for Western news media coverage. If the news conflicts with advertising interests then it is simply dropped.
Western complicity in Yemen's conflict is a case study. Add to that the celebrity sheen of Hollywood stars Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman. What we then have is an illustration of how ugly realities of killing and war crimes are cosmetically air brushed from public awareness.
Let's take three major Western media outlets — BBC, CNN, France 24. All are notable for their dearth of news coverage on the bloody conflict in Yemen. On any given day over the past nine months, these channels have rarely given any reports on the daily violence in the Arabian Peninsula country.
Yemen is heading into peace talks in Geneva this week, so there might follow some desultory reports on the said channels. But over the past nine months when the country was being pummelled in an appalling onslaught by foreign powers, the same channels gave negligible reportage.
It also turns out — not coincidently — that major advertisers on these same news channels include Qatar Airways, Emirates Airlines and Etihad. The latter two advertisers feature screen celebrities Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman, posing as satisfied customers of these Gulf state-owned companies.
Other prominent advertisers on BBC, CNN and France 24 are Turkish Airlines and Business Friendly Bahrain.
This advertising complex has, undoubtedly, a direct bearing on why the three mentioned Western news channels do not give any meaningful coverage of the disturbing events in Yemen.
Notwithstanding there is much that deserves telling about Yemen — if your purpose was journalism and public information.
The poorest country in the Arab region is being bombed by a coalition of states that include the US, Britain and Saudi Arabia, as well as a handful of other Persian Gulf oil-rich kingdoms. The latter include Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
© AP Photo / Abdulnasser Alseddik Saudi-Led Coalition Airstrikes Destroy Yemen School System - Rights Group
Thousands of Yemeni civilians — women and children — have been killed in air strikes by warplanes from this foreign military coalition, which claims to have intervened in Yemen to reinstall a regime headed up by a discredited president who was forced into exile in March this year by a popular uprising. The uprising was led by the Yemeni national army allied with guerrilla known as the Houthis.
Out of Yemen's 24 million population, nearly half are in dire humanitarian conditions from lack of food, water and medicine, according to the United Nations. The suffering is aggravated by a sea and air blockade of Yemen by the Western-Arab military coalition.
Due to Western involvement in a humanitarian disaster unfolding in Yemen, one might think that Western media would be at least giving some coverage. Well, not if you watch BBC, CNN or France 24.
Moreover, there are reliable reports that ground forces fighting against the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni national army are comprised of Western mercenaries — in addition to troops from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.
According to Lebanon's Al Manar news outlet, foreign mercenaries killed so far in Yemen include French, British and Australian, as well as Colombian and others from Latin America. They have been enlisted by the notorious US-based private security firm, Blackwater, also known as Academi.
The mercenaries are first sent to the United Arab Emirates for training before dispatch to Yemen, reported the New York Times.
© AFP 2018 / Tauseef MUSTAFA Poisonous Propaganda: ISIL Needs Only 6-8 Weeks to Radicalize Youths
What's more — and this is explosive from a journalistic point of view — the mercenaries being sent to Yemen also comprise Islamist brigades aligned with the self-styled Islamic State (IS) terror network out of Syria. This has been confirmed by senior Yemeni army sources and several Arab region news outlets, such as Yemen's Masirah TV and Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper.
In Syria, the IS terror group and other jihadist brigades are suspected of being deployed covertly by a US-led coalition for the purpose of regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The US-led coalition includes Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Illicit oil smuggling is one stream of income to fund the terror brigades, as Russian intelligence has uncovered.
Washington and its allies claim to be bombing Syria to "degrade and defeat" IS, in the words of President Barack Obama. But, according to the Syrian and Russian militaries, the Western-led coalition is not serious in its stated aims. Indeed, on the contrary, evidence points to the US-led bombing of Syria as being inordinately ineffectual compared with the parallel Russian aerial campaign against the terror groups.
The conclusion is that the West's "ineffectiveness" in defeating IS is a deliberate policy because IS is actually a covert regime-change asset in Syria.
That conclusion is consistent with how IS and other jihadist mercenaries are being relocated out of Syria to take up military assignment in Yemen in a configuration that sees Washington and London provide air power, along with warplanes from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states; and the same Arab states providing on-the-ground US-trained mercenaries in addition to their own regular armies.
The IS terror brigades are thus integrated with the Western-Arab coalition fighting in Yemen.
According to Brigadier General Ali Mayhoub, of the Syrian Arab Army, hundreds of jihadist mercenaries have been secretly flown out of Syria to Yemen onboard civilian airliners belonging to Turkish Airlines, Emirates Airlines and Qatar Airways.
The IS-affiliated mercenaries were flown into Yemen's southern port city of Aden at the end of October, about three weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian fighter jets to begin their blistering anti-terror operations in Syria.
It seems more than a coincidence that major commercial companies belonging to Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are lucrative sources of advertising revenue for the three Western news channels, BBC, CNN and France 24. Actresses Jennifer Aniston and Nicole Kidman leverage the advertising budget stakes by multiple millions of dollars.
The companies belong to countries — all or partially state-owned — that are involved in sponsoring military campaigns in Yemen and Syria. The more overt military intervention in Yemen has seen a catalogue of war crimes, including the bombing of civilian centres with cluster bombs, such as hospitals and schools.
Amnesty International last week documented "war crimes" carried out by the aerial bombing coalition attacking Yemen, comprising the US, Britain, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states.
Yet, scarcely any of these gross violations committed in Yemen by the Western-Arab coalition and their connections to terrorist groups in Syria are covered by the three major Western news channels, BBC, CNN and France 24.
Patently, the censorship is correlated with specific sources of commercial advertising income, which is over-riding the Western public interest in knowing what is really going on in Yemen and how their governments are involved in violations of international law, including state-sponsored terrorism.
Ironically, the same Western channels never stop blowing trumpets to their "consumers" of how courageous and ethical they are in "bringing you the stories". Evidently, as far as Yemen is concerned, the "journalistic commitment" is determined not by truth and much more by advertising money flowing from states complicit in war crimes.
Western news media's self-declarations of "independence" and "integrity" are like the celebrity adverts that sponsor them. Cosmetic and illusory.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
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Several months ago my colleague streiff covered the story of a single mother from New Jersey who made the mistake of carrying her legally purchased, registered, and permitted gun from Pennsylvania into New Jersey, believing that her Pennsylvania concealed carry permit was valid in NJ. Anyone who has ever been through a concealed carry permit class knows that they tell you if you get pulled over to immediately notify the officer in question that you have a gun in the car, and show them your concealed carry permit. As streiff noted at the time, this woman followed that advice, and as a result, faces three years in prison, despite the fact that she has no criminal history whatsoever, and did not use the gun in the commission of a crime of any kind.
The unfortunate truth is that concealed carry laws are a patchwork mess in this country. I recently went through my concealed carry class here in Tennessee and was informed that my concealed carry permit would be valid in something like 30 states as of this moment, but that this number was subject to flux as other states constantly reformed and revised their gun laws. As a result, carrying a gun that you legally own, have registered in your name, and have a concealed carry permit for in your car across state lines can be a game of Russian Roulette depending upon what jurisdiction you happen into and how politically motivated the prosecutor in question is.
As a result, with Republicans in control of the Congress, gun groups are pushing to pass legislation that would allow for nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry permits. Under this legislation, each state could continue to set their own regulations for permits pertaining to their own residents, but if you have a valid concealed carry permit from your home state it would automatically be valid in any of the other 50 states if you are traveling. There’s only one thing standing in the way of this common sense legislation: Democrats.
Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said the bill is needed to clarify a “patchwork of state and local laws” that is “confusing for even the most conscientious and well-informed concealed carry permit holders.” “The constitutional right to self-defense does not stop at a state’s borders. Law-abiding citizens should be able to exercise this fundamental right while traveling across state lines,” Cox said last week. [mc_name name=’Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’C001056′ ] (R-Texas) is the chief sponsor of the concealed-carry bill in the upper chamber, while [mc_name name=’Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’S001188′ ] (R-Ind.) is spearheading the push in the House. * * * Cornyn’s concealed-carry bill came just three votes shy of passing in 2013, when Democrats still controlled the Senate. Seven of the Democrats who voted for the bill remain in Congress, potentially giving Republicans a shot at a 60-vote majority. The Republican House has passed the concealed-carry bill before, and by a comfortable margin. Supporters of the legislation are casting the bill as common sense, arguing it would preserve states’ rights by requiring gun owners to follow the concealed-carry laws in the places they are visiting. “This operates more or less like a driver’s license,” Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the upper chamber, told The Hill last week. “So, for example, if you have a driver’s license in Texas, you can drive in New York, in Utah and other places, subject to the laws of those states.” Cornyn said the bill would “eliminate some of the ‘gotcha moments,’ where people inadvertently cross state lines” with guns and are arrested.
It is by no means certain that all the Democrats who voted for this bill last time around will vote for it now that Republicans are in control and they don’t have political cover of the majority anymore. Thus far into the last two years of Obama’s term, all he has had to do is snap his fingers and Democrats jump to block whatever legislation he doesn’t like from reaching his desk. But even in the unlikely event that this legislation escapes the Senate, where less than 20% of Democrats support it, it will undoubtedly get vetoed by President Obama, who like most Democrats has barely-disguised contempt for guns and their owners.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrxUBMlCyiE[/youtube]
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxXUufI3jA[/youtube]
Remember – regardless of what a Democrat says or promises, they will always stand against guns and their owners.
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