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Police say a cyclist has been charged with careless driving after he posted a stunt video on Instagram that showed him weaving in and out of traffic riding only on his back wheel.
The cyclist, who posted the video on the Instagram account for My Little Bike Shop, was seen heading southbound on Yonge Street, south of Wellesley Street, with his front wheel in the air, swerving in and out of traffic. At one point during the video, the cyclist is seen briefly biking on a busy sidewalk.
Police say the incident occurred on June 17 at around noon.
The video was later posted on the Toronto Police Service’s Instagram account with the caption, “Thanks for the video, great riding skill, but dangerous cycling behaviour… YOU now have our attention.”
The caption went on to say that the video showed “evidence of careless driving under the HTA” in addition to multiple by-law offences.
“This is essentially a perfect example of poor cyclist behavior,” he said. “He could have been killed. He went through a red light between oncoming traffic.”
The cyclist defended his actions in a subsequent Instagram post.
“I never crashed, I never hit anyone, and didn't commit any sort of hit & run. I never even made / make anyone slow down, hit their brakes or cause them to pull last second maneuvers,” the post read.
“Yes, maybe a little dangerous, but I am a expert, have been doing this my entire life and have NEVER had an accident or caused an accident while on the streets of Toronto, while on my bike (one wheel or two).”
On Monday, police announced that the 28-year-old cyclist had been charged.
He is scheduled to appear in court next month. |
Shadow home secretary responds to figures showing more referrals for neo-nazism than Islamic extremism in parts of UK
Prevent strategy failing to rein in rise of UK's far right, says Diane Abbott
The government’s controversial counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, has failed to change the attitudes of those on the far right, the shadow home secretary has said in response to figures showing the number of referrals linked to neo-nazism is overtaking Islamic extremism cases in some parts of the UK.
Diane Abbott said the figures reflected “the alarming rise of far-right activity across the country”. “It also reflects the increasing confidence of far-right groups to air their views publicly,” she said on Monday.
“These figures are useful in proving what we already know, but the Prevent programme has failed to change the attitudes of those on the far right.”
UK's Prevent counter-radicalisation policy 'badly flawed' Read more
Ben Wallace, the security minister and MP for Wyre and Preston North, has highlighted the increase in far-right radicalisation in England and Wales. Figures show that almost 300 under-18s were referred to officials under the Prevent strategy last year. Of these, at least 16 involved children under the age of 10.
“The Prevent strategy is seeing a growth in far-right referrals,” Wallace told the House of Commons recently. “In some areas of the country, these Prevent referrals outnumber those about the other parts we are worried about.”
Data released by the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) under a freedom of information request from the Sunday Times shows that the number of far-right referrals in England and Wales has increased by 74%, from 323 cases in 2014-15 to 561 in 2015-16. About 292 cases, or 52%, involved under-18s.
“The Prevent strategy is misconceived because it limits legitimate safe spaces for discourse, places like classrooms and lecture theatres,” Abbott said. “We urgently need an anti-extremism strategy that addresses the subversive and veiled far-right activity that is allowed to fester in private.”
The NPCC figures come as Merseyside police investigate the appearance of stickers around Liverpool declaring that people were entering “Nazi-controlled zones”.
The stickers, posted by a neo-Nazi youth movement called National Action, were timed to coincide with Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of the neo-Nazi stickers that appeared in Liverpool to coincide with Remembrance Sunday. Photograph: Patrick Hurley/PA
“It’s the politics of hate. We’re seeing the rise of this sort of thing across the country, across the western world and it’s of huge importance that we all stand united against it and make sure there is no place for this sort of thing in Liverpool or anywhere,” Patrick Hurley, a Mossley Hill councillor said.
Britain’s Muslim communities have criticised the Prevent strategy as a toxic brand and a “big brother” security operation, but it was recently revealed that the programme is to be toughened up rather than scaled back as part of the government’s wider reworking of its counter-terrorism strategy.
The chief constable of Leicestershire police, Simon Cole, who is in charge of Prevent, said earlier this year that far-right extremists made up half of all cases in Yorkshire and 30% of the caseload in the east Midlands.
Prevent strategy to be ramped up despite 'big brother' concerns Read more
Nationwide, however, Islamic extremism is still the most common referral, with 2,810 cases making up 70% of those flagged up under Prevent.
The NPCC said it was worth noting that the Prevent duty, which sets out the obligations of public-facing bodies under the strategy, was introduced in July 2015 and has resulted in a significant increase in referrals of all types.
Ibrahim Mohamoud, a spokesman for Cage, an independent advocacy organisation, said on Monday: “What these figures suggest is that Muslims are still far more likely to be referred to Prevent in England and Wales.
“There still seems to be a great deal of dissonance between the way the authorities understand the role of ‘extremist ideology’ or ‘radical fundamentalist thought’ in the case of Muslims, and the subscription to far-right ideology.”
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the home affairs select committee, has said the fallout from the 23 June vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election should serve as a warning about the dangers of whipping up hatred and prejudice in political campaigns, as MPs prepare to examine a spike in hate crime in the UK.
Police recorded 41% more hate crimes in July 2016 than in the same month the previous year, with a peak on 1 July, records show. Several high-profile attacks occurred in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, including the vandalising of the Polish community centre in Hammersmith, west London, and the death of Arkadiusz Jóźwik, a Pole who was attacked in Harlow, Essex.
Rashad Ali, a senior fellow specialising in extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue thinktank, told the Times that in some areas of Wales, the proportion of Prevent referrals from the far right were “well over” 50%.
Ali said the rise in far-right extremism could be linked to the “loss of the centre ground” in today’s politics. “Whether it’s on the left or the right, the fringes are now leading the debate and the discussion,” he said.
Instead of fighting terror, Prevent is creating a climate of fear | Amrit Singh Read more
Ali argued that Trump’s election, with the endorsement of the KKK, and the rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, the Front National presidential candidate in France, were helping to “legitimise the world view” of fascists.
National Action is believed to have fewer than 100 members, but the group has a strong presence on social media, where it has celebrated Trump’s election with images of him captioned “white power”.
Matthew Feldman, the co-director of the centre for fascist, anti-fascist and post-fascist studies at Teesside University, said the radical right was “starting to mainstream its narrative following the decline of the BNP as the main party-political vehicle for radical right ideas”.
“This led to a proliferation of other groups like the Defence Leagues and Britain First – both of which are much more anti-Muslim than the more developed neo-fascist policies advocated by the BNP, including antisemitism and biological racism,” Feldman said.
“So it is a time of change for the far and radical right in the UK, although like the US, 2016 has been a very different year than most. The Brexit vote, like that of Trump’s election, seems to have sparked, at least for some, a kind of ‘celebratory racism’ whereby some hate incidents are apparently legitimated by the ‘trigger’ event of an enormous and unexpected victory.”
Feldman added, however, that the immediate context can obscure longer term developments, which may be driving the increasing far-right Channel referrals and Prevent cases over recent months and years.
“Over the last decade, governmental and media focus has been overwhelmingly concentrated upon the threat from jihadi Islamist extremism and terrorism,” he said. “Given finite resources and time, this has necessarily meant that less attention has been trained upon the radical right, which has increasingly turned to the lowest common denominator of anti-Muslim bigotry since 7/7.
“In this, as the BNP had already recognised in 2005, turning away from racial to religious hatred was a potential issue that could break into the mainstream. Unlike in the past, the lowest common denominator of Islamoprejudice has allowed a number of different types of radical right groups, such as the counter-jihad movement, which are street-based and party political, to work together locally in places like Dover, Swansea and Newcastle.
“The increase in far-right referrals therefore comes as little surprise to those monitoring the radical right during these years of upheaval, both for radical right groups and domestic politics in Britain.” |
Why were dozens of New Orleans residents wandering around the edge of Big Lake in City Park after dark on Sunday (July 10), studying the screens of their iPhones and uttering strange words such as "Pidgey," "Crobat" and "Gyrados?"
They were engaged in a sort of digital-era, imaginary, hunting expedition called Pokemon Go that, since its debut Thursday (July 7), is gaining on Twitter in the number of daily users, according to Forbes Magazine, and has added $11 billion to the value of Nintendo, the company that conceived it, according to the Quartz website. Early on, the avalanche of game users overwhelmed servers, bringing the hunt to a temporary halt.
Pokemon Go player Josh West explained the activity like so: "Basically, Nintendo released an app about a week ago that uses your GPS (the satellite-guided Global Positioning System) in your area to give you a map, and it just places Pokemon all over the map."
Before Nintendo sprinkled Pokemon all over the virtual landscapes of the United States, Australia and New Zealand (with the rest of the globe, too, presumably following) the creatures dwelt on Japanese trading cards, comic books, a long-running animated television adventure series and in video games. According to Wikipedia, the Pokemon game series "is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise."
Harmlessly capturing Pokemon is the goal. The rarer the mythical creature the better. Practically anyone born after Pokemon was invented in 1995, or anyone who has had a child in the Pokemon era, knows all about it.
The big difference between Pokemon Go and past Pokemon products, is that the new game requires players to leave their lairs and traverse the analog terrain.
"It's '90s nerd nostalgia and it's making everybody get off their behinds and go places," player Cameron Hawkins said. Truth be told, Hawkins used a more colorful term than "behinds."
Playing Pokemon Go - Jan Domingue, Nalita Rosales, and Kammie Pom (Photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Several players agreed that getting out of the house was, indeed, a big part of the draw. Michael Flynn, whose face was flecked with sweat, said that he'd walked "14 kilometers" on Saturday (July 9), which, he added, was "pretty far" for him. Mohammad Alkurd said that he and his buddies had become so absorbed in the hunt that they wandered the park from midnight Saturday until 7 the following morning.
The glowing purple Pokemon Go smartphone maps are apparently tailor-made for given environments. One player pointed out that the Roy Lichtenstein sculpture in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art is a gathering spot that drew hundreds of players in the first days of the game.
Players scour the landscape, phones in hand, until they encounter a fluttering on-screen purple bat, a bouncing pink bunny/aardvark, a chattering yellow chipmunk, or some such digital denizen. Then they attempt to capture the crature by tossing virtual magical balls at it. The balls act, more or less like lassos.
Like a baseball coach teaching a pitcher to throw a curve ball, one Sunday night player demonstrated the twist of the fingertip that he applies to the digital balls on his touch screen as he lets them fly. He believed that a proper finger twist can make all the difference.
Israel Parrilla, who speeds up the stalking process by playing Pokemon Go from the seat of his bicycle, earned gasps of admiration from fellow players when he declared that while hunting near Costco, he had snared a prized blue dragon called a Gyrados. Near Lelong Drive in City Park someone caught a smaller, cuter blue dragon called a Dratini.
Everyone agreed that the opportunity to socialize with other creature hunters (aka Pokemon trainers) was a big part of the draw. Some players greeted silhouettes in the distance by shouting "Pokemon Go" in the same way a sailor might shout "Ship ahoy."
A reddit page titled NOLAGo seems to be a trove of New Orleans-elated Pokemon Go info.
As with any new phenomena, there have been downsides. The Guardian website reported that armed robbers in Missouri may have used the game to lure unsuspecting victims. The CBCNews website reports that a Wyoming player stumbled upon a dead body. CBCNews also reports that the benignly besieged occupants of an Australian police station wish the game-maker had not marked their the station as a Pokemon Go player gathering spot.
Pokemon Go - Capturing a Crobat (Photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
"I had a crazy experience the first day," said a Pokemon Go player who asked to use the pseudonym Professor Alex. "I basically ran into an escaped pit bull (in the Lakeview neighborhood). I'm, like, looking for monsters and I'm not looking where I'm going and I passed this really mean dog. The dog actually attacked me."
The professor said he escaped by scrambling up the rock embankment of some nearby railroad tracks, then onto a concrete piling, where he tossed rocks (harmlessly) in the dog's direction, until the animal gave up its pursuit.
"It's this really weird learning curve, trying to figure out how to work the game and then having all this, like, real life intriguing crazy stuff happen," the professor said.
Attention Pokemon Go players, I'd love to make a slideshow of Pokemons in the New Orleans environment. If you spot Pikachu in the French Quarter or a Gyrados at Elmwood Shopping Center, or a Crobat at NOMA, please snap a screen grab and send it to [email protected], or just post it in the comment stream of this story.
Pokemon Go - a Krabby in the Quarter (Photo by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune staff)
Pokemon Go - a Horsea near the Natchez (Photo by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune staff) |
“If we fail on this, just picture Europe,” said Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) of what would happen if Congress failed to permanently repair America’s “broken immigration system” and just passed another amnesty instead.
Brat made his comments on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight in an interview with Breitbart News’s Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour.
America will resemble “France, Sweden, Germany, [or] the Netherlands” in the absence of enacting an immigration system “for the benefit of American citizens and U.S. workers,” said Brat.
Immigration is a top-priority issue, said Brat: “This is not like any other policy issue. This will determine the nature of our country over the next decades in how we settle this. Either we’re going to add to the anxiety and all this hate-filled back and forth, or we find an economic solution for this country moving forward.”
Brat discussed Congress’s considerations to codify the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy into federal law.
Congress must prioritize four repairs for the immigration system before contemplating any DACA-style amnesty negotiation, said Brat: 1. Ending chain migration and the visa lottery; 2. Mandating employer use of E-Verify; 3. Construction of a southern border wall; and 4. Interior enforcement of immigration law.
The four aforementioned “permanent fixes” must precede any DACA negotiation regarding amnesty for illegal immigrants, said Brat: “It shouldn’t be about trusting or hoping, the permanent part has to come first, you see in that place and then you negotiate later.”
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) echoed Brat’s position in an interview with Breitbart News Tonight aired last week, calling for prioritization of border security and interior enforcement of immigration law over any consideration of amnesty for foreigners illegally residing in the homeland.
Promises for border security and interior enforcement of immigration law from politicians supporting broad amnesty for illegal immigrants are always broken, said Brat:
You need permanent fixes to the broken immigration system before any DACA negotiation takes place, because DACA is an automatic and permanent three million increase. So DACA’s 700,000 times three or four, and that gives you the three million, and that’s permanent, so you don’t trust anything. Our side always gets rolled, we get promises for internal enforcement. Obama was all in favor of that, right? He even added spending, more agents, more this, more that, and then he said, “Hey, agents that we just hired? Don’t follow the law of land.” He told them not to enforce the law.
Drawing on the expansion of previous amnesties, Mansour asked how politicians’ promised parameters of a new DACA-style bill could be trusted.
“There’s talk of putting an end to chain migration,” said Mansour. “But that seems to be a little bit like wishful thinking because couldn’t this be litigated in the courts? Even if you try to pass something, how effective is that going to be long-term? It seems as if with each one of these amnesties that are granted, they’re always litigated in the courts and there are always loopholes that people find, and it just ends up being endless. How much can we trust that there’s going to be something in some deal that they strike that [ends] chain migration? How is that going to be enforced?”
Brat said this is precisely why we need “the permanent fixes in policy” as a “starting point.” He explained:
We’re already hearing decay from the original permanent policy, even on [chain migration]. They’re starting to say, “Well, maybe just [chain migration] for these people, and maybe not just DACA, more than DACA.” So, you’re right. It’s just like [the amnesty granted under] Reagan. You really don’t trust. That’s why I emphasize the permanent fixes. You need permanent fixes to the immigration system that’s broken before any DACA negotiation takes places, because the DACA is an automatic three million permanent increase; so DACA’s 700,000 times three or four, and that gives you the three million, and that’s permanent. So you’re right, you don’t trust anything, right?
“Elites” and “the swamp in DC” support DACA-style amnesty legislation, said Brat, because they “want cheap labor.”
“I can’t think of anything worse for Republicans than to vote against that series of policies,” cautioned Brat, referring to the aforementioned “permanent fixes” he proposed toward immigration policy.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), said Brat, had promised not to connect January-scheduled budgetary debates votes to any DACA-style amnesty: “Our leadership promised that DACA would not be attached to any must-pass [continuing resolution], because that is a total a breakdown and usually ends up with chasing Democrat votes. If they keep their word on that, that’s a pretty good sign. They promised it would be a stand-alone bill on DACA, and that’s good news, and that would require a majority of Republican votes to pass.”
Republican focus on amnestying millions of illegal immigrants, said Mansour, is divorced from President Donald Trump’s popular mandate on issues relating to immigration.
“A DACA fix is nowhere near what the American people are most concerned about, nowhere near the top of the list,” said Mansour. “I don’t understand the urgency on this. It seems to me to be a Democrat issue of urgency since this is their next big pool of voters. I’m not sure why the GOP feels such urgency to deal with this.”
“Yeah, I don’t either,” said Brat. “That always amazes me. There’s nothing on DACA policy in the Republican platform. Paul Ryan, to his credit, promised that a DACA fix would not be attached to any must-pass legislation like a budget, [continuing resolution], omnibus, et cetera. It’s coming up January 20th. He said it would be stand alone.”
Noting that President Trump won in 2016 on “a very hard-line immigration platform” that was “wildly successful,” Mansour said that grassroots conservatives found this push for DACA amnesty, instead of the popular Trump immigration agenda, concerning.
“It’s a little bit strange to us that the first bit of immigration legislation that the Republican Party has taken up on Capitol Hill is a DACA fix instead of the RAISE Act that the Trump administration got behind or the wall,” said Mansour. “Why does it have to be DACA? It seems a little bit odd that that’s what we’re going to be taking up on immigration first.”
“Right,” replied Brat. “Well, we do have some bipartisan stuff coming up that’ll be interesting to see how the president puts all of this together. We’ve got infrastructure coming up. The Democrats will likely want to do that.”
Breitbart News Tonight airs Monday through Friday on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 between 9:00 p.m. and midnight Eastern (6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific).
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Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik. |
The other, which included New England-area research institutes only, found that women joining those organizations as new faculty members received lower levels of start-up funding to launch their independent research than male junior faculty — on average, less than half the amount the men received.
These new findings are especially troubling in the context of the traditional academic trajectory of women, said Dr. Gary Gilliland, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center president and director, who was not involved in either study.
Students enrolling in and graduating from medical school and graduate programs in biology are about equally split between men and women, Gilliland said. But women are underrepresented among faculty members at universities and other research institutes — and those are the scientists who generally lead research teams. The study released Tuesday, which was led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, found that women make up 33 percent of academic medical faculty overall but only 17 percent of full professors.
“That’s one of the biggest challenges at any institution. How do you make sure you’re providing adequate support for women?” Gilliland said.
Gilliland is proud that women make up 40 percent of the full members at Fred Hutch (the equivalent of full professors at universities), but recognizes that the Hutch — and academic science overall — still has work to do to reach gender equality. “The thing I’d like to focus on here at the Hutch is how do we get to 50 percent [female faculty]? And what are the issues that constrain that? I’m not sure I know all the answers to that, but there are ways that we can try to understand it,” he said.
The many roads to inequality
It’s not news that there are gender differences across many aspects of science, said Harvard Medical school physician and health economist Dr. Anupam Jena, who led the study on gender disparity among research physicians. Previous studies have identified that women in academic science and medicine have lower salaries, fewer publications and are less likely to hold leadership positions than men.
But the Harvard study captured measures of research productivity such as years of experience, publications, grant funding and participation in clinical trials that could play into women’s career advancement — any measure they could think of other than blanket discrimination — and stripped them away.
When they did, they found that all else being equal, a female academic physician was about 13 percent less likely to be a full professor than her male counterpart, Jena said. That disparity held up across all types of institutes, including those top-ranked as teaching hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, and across nearly all medical specialties.
For their study, Jena and his colleagues drew from a database of nearly 1 million U.S. doctors collected by the medical social media network Doximity. That dataset included more than 90,000 physicians working at universities and other academic organizations.
Like past studies, theirs found that the female academic physicians on average had fewer publications, were less likely to have conducted a clinical trial or to have an NIH grant. This lower overall research productivity could be due to confounding factors like lower start-up funding, lack of mentorship or interruptions to work from having children, Jena said.
But their study did show something new: “Once you equalize the playing field and take men and women who are equally productive in terms of research, it still appears to be the case that men are promoted to full professor more often than women are. So it does definitely suggest that there’s some discrimination going on that needs to be addressed,” Jena told Fred Hutch News Service.
Jena hopes academic leaders will follow suit by looking into their institutes’ own promotion practices.
“When that information is more transparent, I think there’s an opportunity at the higher levels to ensure that this discrimination doesn’t occur,” he said. “Transparency is probably key to all this.”
Disparities in dollars
The other JAMA study on gender disparities was led by Boston-based Health Resources in Action, which helps match private philanthropists with medical research in need of funding. As part of the application process for early-career researchers, the organization asks applicants to list the amount of money received from their home institution to start their research labs, also known as a “start-up package,” said HRiA’s Dr. Robert Sege.
“We began to just notice there was a difference” between the start-up funding levels reported by men and women, said Sege, who led the study and who oversees the grant process at HRiA. So they analyzed 219 applications that came from male and female junior faculty from 55 different New England institutes.
They found that the average male applicant reported start-up funding of $889,000. The average female faculty member’s start-up package: $350,000.
“It was completely a shock to me about how big the difference was,” Sege said. “This is how people get started in their scientific careers. The fact that men have a median over twice as high as women at similar points in their careers was really quite surprising.”
Although their study was small and only included organizations from one area of the country, Sege believes these trends will likely hold true in larger studies. New England is a large biomedical research hub that attracts scientists from all over the world, Sege said: “I couldn’t think of any reason why this would be a big difference in New England if it didn’t represent a national trend.”
In the years between 1999 and 2012 (the most recent year complete data was available), the average start-up funding amount given to the 14 female laboratory-based junior faculty hired at Fred Hutch was 81 percent the average amount the 32 male early-career faculty hired in that period, according to information from the Fred Hutch finance department.
The closest comparison to the Hutch’s faculty in the HRiA study were the basic scientists, Sege said. Female basic science researchers in Sege’s study received on average 60 percent of the start-up package the men were given.
Sege’s study wasn’t able to address the reasons behind the large funding disparity, but Fred Hutch cell biologist Dr. Sue Biggins suspects that negotiation is to blame.
“Start-ups are often negotiated and some women will be less likely to ask for as much,” she said.
Others have proposed similar reasoning behind salary differences between male and female scientists. That’s part of the reason that Fred Hutch’s Basic Sciences Division, for which Biggins serves as associate director, has a different policy for both start-up funding and salaries. In Biggins' division, start-up funding is based simply on a list of necessary resources provided by the incoming faculty, Biggins said, and salary is based solely on title.
“We eliminate a lot of the negotiation issues, which reduces potential disparities,” she said.
Have you experienced gender bias in your career? Tell us about it on Facebook. |
Remedy Games is looking to hire a new game designer, so let’s pick over the job ad and see what we can surmise from it.
Remedy Games, known for Max Payne (1 & 2), Alan Wake, and Quantum Break, is currently in development on a project we don’t know much about. The project, codenamed ‘P7’ (this is their seventh title), is looking for a game designer with experience and knowledge of online systems.
To be more specific, it really sounds like they want the designer to be familiar with Destiny. Part of the job ad reads:
Are you constantly thinking about intriguing ways to excite your players and keep them invested in your game’s world? Are you obsessed with lore and a desire to create rich content that communities will devour? Do you design challenge systems that are so moreish your players plan their week around them? Have you already designed the next Battle Royale? Are you always among the first to find Xûr?
The ‘responsibilities section of the job ad specifically mentions creating “compelling, innovative online game modes” too. They are looking for someone to “share knowledge and keep the team updated on trends and areas for innovation in the connected- gaming space”.
This is interesting, as Remedy has, in the past, worked exclusively on single-player games. A move into large, persistent multiplayer gaming is a huge change for the developer, which is publishing the game under 505 Games (and they have invested in it fairly heavily).
We know (per the link above) that the game will use the same engine as Quantum Break, and that it will come to PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Hopefully we’ll find out more about what they’re working on in 2018.
If this, incidentally, sounds like something you’d be good at, applications are open until January 1. This is a full-time position, and you must live in or be willing to relocate to Espoo, Helsinki. The company offers five weeks of holidays a year, which is pretty nice considering gaming’s crunch culture. |
Our journey into the final frontier is still in its infancy. Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to venture into outer space in 1961. Fast forward to today and we have men and women living aboard a space station orbiting 249 miles above Earth. Private companies such as SpaceX are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with reusable rockets. Probes like New Horizons are studying the distant bodies of our solar system. But, how do we take that next step?
One potential answer is photonic propulsion. Basically, using lasers as propulsion.
Professor Philip Lubin from the University of California Santa Barbara gave a talk at the 2015 NIAC Fall Symposium last October. In it, he tackled the prospects of photonic propulsion and what it could mean for interstellar travel and exploration.
Lubin tells us we can already get to relativistic speeds (a speed that is a sizable proportion of the speed of light) in the laboratory. Think the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. That uses electromagnetic acceleration.
Then we get to things we use to travel in everyday life – cars, airplanes and rockets. And “we are pathetically slow,” according to Lubin. This is where photonic propulsion could come into play.
Now, this isn’t your typical propulsion system. Think about NASA’s Dawn and New Horizons spacecraft. The propulsion systems are attached to the spacecraft. What Lubin is proposing is building a laser array to propel a spacecraft. The array and the spacecraft start in low-Earth orbit. But, then the spacecraft is propelled away while the array stays in Earth orbit. Here’s an image that illustrates what’s going on.
You see how the craft is much further away from the laser array? That simulation was using a 20 m diameter array with power of 272 kW propelling a 1 g payload. What makes this system so intriguing is it’s scalable. You could create a bigger array to power a bigger payload.
When the SLS launches in the next few years, it will rise off the launch pad at between 50 and 100 gW (gigawatts). “Turns out, to get to relativistic speeds with the spacecraft we’re talking about, you basically need the same power level,” says Lubin. “And for about the same amount of time. It takes 10 minutes to get to orbit with the shuttle. It takes us 10 minutes to get to 30% the speed of light with about the same power level, just using different technology.”
This technology could propel a 100 kg spacecraft to Mars in three days. Something the size of a shuttle? About a month.
“There are recent advances which takes this from science fiction to science reality,” says Lubin. “There is no known reason why we cannot do this.”
The potential uses for photonic propulsion are nearly endless. From planetary defense to SETI. You can imagine how handy this technology would be for pushing asteroids or comets on a potential impact course away from us.
How do you stop?
And therein lies the rub. “If you ever watched Spaceballs, you know on the back it says ‘we stop for nobody.’ So we stop for nobody,” Lubin joked at his NIAC Fall Symposium talk. One idea is an Alpha Centauri flyby mission.
Getting to Mars in three days sounds great, but placing an object in Mars orbit is trickier. You would need a second array on the surface or orbiting the red planet to slow down the spacecraft. But, using this propulsion for manned missions is a very long ways off. It would be better suited for flybys of objects outside of our solar system.
Watch the entire talk by Lubin to learn more about the ins and outs of photonic propulsion. |
LONDON (Reuters) - British inflation hit its highest level since September 2013 last month, extending its sharp rise since the vote to leave the European Union and tightening the squeeze on living costs as a national election approaches.
Consumer prices rose by an annual 2.7 percent, data showed, and they look set to rise further due to the fall in the value of the pound and the recent rise in global oil prices.
Britain’s economy was barely ruffled last year by the shock vote to leave the EU. But the steady rise in inflation since then, combined with weak wage growth, has slowed its momentum this year.
The opposition Labour Party on Tuesday sought to highlight rising costs for voters as it launched its policy proposals for the June 8 election, pledging a higher minimum wage and state involvement in the energy sector to keep prices down.
Last week, Bank of England (BoE) Governor Mark Carney warned 2017 will be challenging for consumers, with inflation now almost certain to overtake wage growth.
“The last thing Britain needs is another real wage slump. But rising prices are hammering pay packets,” Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O’Grady said.
Prime Minister Theresa May called the snap election last month to strengthen her mandate to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union. But living standards are a big campaign issue, pushing her party into a promise to cap energy prices that breaks with its usually pro-market agenda.
Despite the rise in inflation, however, the economy is far from overheating, and all but one of the BoE’s eight policymakers voted last week to keep interest rates on hold.
Prices are displayed on a store window in London, Britain May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Neil Hall
AIRFARES SWING IN EASTER
The latest inflation figures were boosted most of all by rising airfares during the Easter holidays which last year took place in March. Rising clothing prices, higher car tax and electricity also pushed up consumer prices.
Many economists see more inflation ahead.
“We remain convinced that the market is underestimating the further upside for inflation from here,” Scotiabank analyst Alan Clarke said. He expects utility bills, food costs and the weak pound to put more pressure on prices in future.
Sterling briefly spiked to its highest in almost a week against the dollar before falling back. GBP=D4
Many economists say the impact of the fall in sterling on consumer prices will be felt more strongly in the coming months, and the central bank expects inflation to peak at nearly 3 percent by the end of this year.
Capital Economics said it expected inflation to exceed 3 percent before the end of the year but saw little sign of domestic inflation pressures becoming entrenched.
Excluding oil prices and other volatile components such as food, core consumer price inflation rose to 2.4 percent, the strongest rate since March 2013 and above economists’ expectations for a 2.2 percent rise.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Services prices - which the BoE uses as a guide to domestic inflation pressures - rose by 3 percent, also the biggest jump since September 2013, pushed up by the higher air fares.
The ONS said house prices in March rose at their weakest rate since October 2013, up 4.1 percent on the year. Prices in London rose 1.5 percent, the weakest since March 2012. |
Most expensive Senate race in U.S. history - and balance of Senate along with it - may be determined by 100% unverifiable votes...
Brad Friedman Byon 11/3/2014, 3:45pm PT
So far, in the run-up to Tuesday's mid-term election, we've covered 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes reportedly flipping on screen in Texas (D to R), in Illinois (R to D), in Tennessee (NO to YES on anti-choice initiative), in Maryland (R to D) and in Arkansas (unclear which direction the votes were flipping in several different counties.)
Now, votes are reportedly flipping from Democratic to Republican in the "toss up" U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, a crucial contest if Democrats have any chance of hanging on to the majority in that chamber. The "down to the wire" contest is also reportedly turning out to be the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history.
So can supporters of either candidate actually have any confidence at all in results to be reported after the close of polls on Tuesday in the Tar Heel State?...
As the News-Record reports:
GREENSBORO - Another Guilford County voter has reported having problems casting a vote for a U.S. Senate candidate. Percy Bostick, 69, of Greensboro said he tried casting a vote for Democrat Kay Hagan at the Old Guilford County Courthouse, only to have the machine register Republican Thom Tillis as his choice. "I called one of the poll workers over," Bostick said. "She said do it again. And again, I touched the screen at the proper place for Kay Hagan, and it again reported it for Thom Tillis." On his fourth attempt, the machine registered the vote for Hagan.
...
Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County elections director, said his office has received 14 reports of voting problems since early voting started Oct. 23, including seven from people who became concerned after they got home.
Should voters be worried about votes flipping on touch-screen systems? What should you do if it happens to you or someone else at the polls?
See our first report of the 2014 election season on this issue for answers to those questions, as well as several of our subsequent reports (all listed below). Unfortunately, we have to file similar reports election-cycle after election-cycle after election-cycle, since, despite the by now very-well-known shortcomings of these systems, so many elected officials simply don't give a damn about whether their voters are able to cast overseeable, verifiable votes.
More than a quarter of U.S. voters this year will cast 100% unverifiable votes on such e-voting systems which may, or may not, record and register any votes the way that voters intended. There is no way for voters to ever know one way or another.
Whenever a "winner" is finally announced in the North Carolina race, based on the completely unverifiable computer tallies from the state's ES&S-manufactured touch-screen voting systems, supporters of the "losing" candidate are likely to yell foul if the margin of reported victory is smaller than the number of votes cast on the oft-failed, easily-manipulated touch-screen voting systems. Given that so many NC votes are still, shamefully, completely unverifiable touch-screen votes in 2014, those partisans (from either party) will have every right to do so.
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Dwarf seahorses swim slowly. That doesn’t seem to hurt their ability to catch prey, however. What they lack in speed they make up for in stealth. Their jaws approach their prey, undetected, until they’re closer than the thickness of a penny. Then the fish strike before their snack can escape. Scientists recently reported they’ve found the secret to this seahorse’s sneak attack: the unusual shape of its head.
Seahorses often eat copepods, tiny shrimplike crustaceans that share the same watery neighborhoods as the fish. But copepods will swim away quickly when they sense a predator nearby. They need only two or three milliseconds of warning, says Brad Gemmell. He’s a marine biologist at the University of Texas at Austin. That amount of time is about as long as it takes a fly to flap its wings.
A dwarf seahorse (Hippocampus zosterae) can strike in less than half that time. But to succeed, the fish has to practically swim right up to the copepod without scaring it away. That’s where the head trick comes in, says Gemmell. He and his coworkers found that as a seahorse swims, a small zone of water in front of its head barely moves. And that calm water is key, they reported November 26 in Nature Communications.
Copepods use antenna hairs to sense danger, like the whoosh of water that precedes an attacking predator. But because of the shape of its head, a dwarf seahorse won’t stir up the water. So the copepods never know what’s coming.
Gemmell notes that dwarf seahorses are some of the slowest-swimming fish in the sea. And because their snouts are shorter than that of other seahorses, they must strike from a closer distance. But thanks to their head shape, they can still catch “one of the most capable escape artists on the planet,” he told Science News.
Dwarf seahorses and some copepods inhabit underwater meadows of sea grass in the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the Caribbean. The meadow’s slow water flow makes nearby movements —like a watery whoosh — easier for copepods to detect. But dwarf seahorses use their heads to sneak around.
This could be a running contest between prey and attacker. The copepods evolve, or develop over a long period of time, better escapes. Then seahorses evolve better stealth, explains Sam Van Wassenbergh. A biologist at Ghent University in Belgium, he did not work on the new study.
To investigate the seahorse’s secret, Gemmell and his coworkers shined lasers through water in a tank containing dwarf seahorses and copepods. Particles suspended in the water bumped the laser light and caused tiny changes in its direction. By studying these changes, the scientists could tell how the fluid moved. When they studied the laser’s path around the head of attacking seahorses, the scientists observed a little spot near the top of the snout where the water stayed calm.
Getting close is key, Gemmell says. Other fish other succeed at catching copepods in calm water about 33 percent of the time. But when a dwarf seahorse gets within striking range, he notes that it will catch a copepod an impressive 94 percent of the time.
Power Words
copepod A large class of small crustaceans found in the ocean and in freshwater habitats.
crustaceans Hard-shelled, water-dwelling animals including lobsters, crabs and shrimp.
evolve To change gradually over generations, or a long period of time. In living organisms, the evolution usually involves random changes to genes that will then be passed along to an individual’s offspring. These can lead to new traits, such as altered coloration, new susceptibility to disease or protection from it, or different shaped features (such as legs, antennae, toes or internal organs).
millisecond One-thousandth of a second
predator (adjective: predatory) A creature that preys on other animals for most or all of its food.
prey Animal species eaten by others. |
An Ontario university is the latest to bump the salaries of its female faculty members after discovering they were being paid thousands of dollars less than their male coworkers, but one professor says steps must be taken to prevent — not just rectify — such biases in academia.
In a memo emailed to faculty Wednesday and obtained by The Canadian Press, the University of Waterloo said a working group tasked with analyzing faculty salaries uncovered a "systemic gender anomaly" that was "consistent across the university."
As a result, it said an adjustment of $2,905 will be made on Sept. 1 to the salaries of all female faculty members who were in the faculty association’s bargaining unit as of April 30 of last year.
However, the working group said in its report that the increases will not be applied retroactively.
Aimee Morrison, an associate professor at the university and associate chair of graduate studies, says this type of inequity is a problem across academia "and probably all fields."
While it’s great that the university is willing to address the problem, "I don’t see a bigger conversation happening in really pointed ways about how does this keep happening," she said.
"It’s not an anomaly if it’s a pattern."
Several other Canadian universities, including Hamilton’s McMaster University and the University of British Columbia, have given raises to female faculty members in recent years so that they earn as much as their male peers.
The University of Waterloo itself has conducted salary reviews in the past, including one in 2008 that made "several recommended salary adjustments for individual women faculty" but did not lead to university-wide increases.
The working group recommends that the university examine salaries every five years on top of conducting annual reviews within each department.
It also stresses that since starting salaries and merit increases are the key factors affecting pay, "care should be taken to ensure that starting salaries are equitable, as inequity at this point can quickly compound."
Morrison, who has sat on faculty evaluation committees, said there could be checklists or other tools to help people take note of their internalized biases when determining salaries.
"The reason that we have to keep doing these reviews is that the underlying inequities in how faculty members are assessed or in how they are supported in their initial salary negotiations is still going to be prey to bias," she said.
"If we could fix the bias, the anomaly, once fixed, would not reproduce itself, but it keeps reproducing itself."
Lynne Taylor, co-chair of the working group, said the review’s mandate was simply to identify any discrepancies, not the underlying causes.
"We still don’t have a clear sense of why it happens. I would love that to be fixed and I think there are people in the upper reaches of the administration who would like to see this rectified as well," she said.
"Until we have a sense of where that’s coming from, though, I think it is smart to have a regular review," she said. "All of us would just wish it wasn’t necessary but if it is, at least it’s getting fixed."
Jean Andrey, dean of the faculty of environment, said the anomalous salaries were spread across all faculties and ranks, adding that the university has been "doing a lot of thinking" about how the discrepencies didn’t get noticed before.
Andrey suggested the differences in salaries could be the result of a "legacy effect" due to there not being as much equity in the past, or that starting salaries for some employees could have been lower due to a "different approach in negotiating terms of employment" when they were hired.
"The really good news about the work we’ve done is that by looking at annual performance reviews we’ve been able to conclude that there’s no evidence of a systematic gender bias in the way that we do annual merit evaluations," she said. "We believe that there is fairness in our assessment processes."
Waterloo’s latest review was part of a salary settlement between the university and the faculty association that was reached May 1 of last year.
Other faculty members’ salaries were also flagged as "anomalous" and the review recommended that a one-time adjustment be made to make up for the discrepancy.
Salaries were evaluated using a regression model that took several variables into account, including annual performance evaluations and outstanding performance awards.
The report says that 71 of roughly 1,170 faculty members were identified as "potential anomalies," and of those, 59 were confirmed anomalies, meaning "there was nothing in their career path that could account for the aberration in their actual salaries and the fitted/predicted salary outputted from the regression model."
The remaining 12 will be investigated further. |
Fourteen-year-old Yusef a-Shawamreh, who the IDF killed one week ago in the southern West Bank, was not vandalizing the separation barrier when he was killed, but was crossing it to pick plants on his family’s agricultural land, B’Tselem reported Wednesday following its own investigation.
According to the report, a-Shawamreh was shot when he and two friends, Zahi a-Shawamreh, 13, and al-Muntaser Beallah a-Dardun, 18, were going through a wide gap in the fence that has existed for at least two years; it is safe to say the IDF has known about the gap in the fence. The two surviving youths told B’Tselem field researcher Musa Abu Hashhash that they heard three or four shots as they got off the road, fired with no advance warning.
This contradicts the IDF’s version of the story, which claims that soldiers saw the youths vandalizing the fence, began procedures to arrest a suspect — which means shouting warnings and then firing in the air – and then shot a-Shawamreh after he and his friends allegedly did not heed the warnings. B’Tselem also reported that although the soldiers provided first aid to a-Shawamreh, a military ambulance took 30 minutes to reach the site of the shooting, despite the fact that there is a military base only two kilometers away. What’s worse, the soldiers were apparently on a proactive ambush mission in broad daylight and should have been aware that Palestinians regularly cross that part of the fence to pick gundelia, a thistle-like edible plant annually harvested at this time of year.
This section of the barrier is located well within the West Bank, some 200 meters east of the Green Line, not far from the a-Shawamreh’s home in the south Hebron Hills village of Deir al-‘Asal al-Foqa. The a-Shawamrehs own farmland that is now located on the other side the barrier, and that land is where the three youths were heading to gather plants.
In a statement, B’Tselem said: “By justifying the use of lethal fire in broad daylight at youths who posed no danger to any other persons, the above [IDF] statement conveys a cynical lack of concern for the life of a Palestinian teenager.” The Military Police Criminal Investigations Department (MPCID) has launched an investigation into the incident.
Including a-Shawamreh, the IDF has killed 19 Palestinians in the first 81 days of 2014 — an average of one every 4.26 days.
Eleven were killed in Gaza, about half of them civilians who posed no threat whatsoever, except that they were close to the border fence; others were targeted by Israeli airstrikes in response to fire into Israel. The eight killed in the West Bank include the Jordanian-Palestinian judge shot and killed at the Allenby Crossing, the circumstances of which remain obscure and conflicting. (It certainly doesn’t help that the security cameras were peculiarly not working that day.)
While the circumstances of each killing vary to a degree, the numbers are startling. They tell the story of a military framework all too capable of taking lives all too often.
Correction:
The sixth paragraph of this article has been corrected to reflect that on average, one Palestinian was killed every 4.26 days in the first 81 days of the year, and not, as it mistakenly stated due to a typo, 4.26 Palestinians each day.
Related:
IDF kills Palestinian suspected of vandalism
2013 was a deadly year in Israel-Palestine |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Monday that “diehard” independence supporters in Taiwan and Hong Kong were seeking to link up to hatch separatist plots, but that they would never succeed.
Pro-independence protesters carry placard and flags during a pro-democracy march on the day marking the 19th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to Chinese sovereignty from British rule, in Hong Kong in this file photo dated July 1, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip
Dozens of pro-Beijing lawmakers walked out of the Hong Kong legislature last Wednesday to prevent the swearing-in of two pro-independence activists, setting the scene for a new constitutional crisis in the Chinese-controlled city.
Asked about the case the following day, Chiu Chui-Cheng, spokesman for Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, said the two had been directly elected and called on China and Hong Kong to respect the will of the public.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said on Monday the “one country, two systems” model for Hong Kong had been fully implemented since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997, receiving widespread support in Hong Kong and internationally.
“We resolutely oppose the Taiwan authority meddling in and interfering with Hong Kong’s implementation of ‘one country, two systems’ and words and actions that damage Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” it said in a statement.
“Diehard Taiwan independence elements on the island and Hong Kong independence elements are colluding with each other, making futile attempts to split the country.
“This will certainly be opposed by compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and in Hong Kong and cannot succeed.”
Ray Wong of the “localist” group Hong Kong Indigenous also visited Taiwan last week. The topic of independence has long been taboo in Hong Kong.
China considers self-ruled Taiwan a wayward province and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control after defeated Nationalist forces fled there at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949.
Relations between China and Taiwan have worsened since the election of Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party as Taiwan president in January. |
Likely Candidates To Become The Lions Head Coach If Jim Caldwell Is Fired On Black Monday.
Whether you believe Detroit Lions head coach Jim Caldwell should be fired or not is not going to matter on Monday. He will be fired or he will not be fired. There have been rumors that the Miami Dolphins, Oakland Raiders, Denver Broncos, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants, Arizona Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Tennesee Titans, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers could be looking for head coaches. Some of those have been confirmed and some denied, but we will not really know until Monday.
The NFL advisory committee gives teams a list of up and coming head coaching candidates every year. Just to help you form an opinion rapidly, I am going to profile the ten that have not been the Lions head coach (Jim Schwartz), or current Lions offensive coordinators (Jim Bob Cooter). I’ll start with the obvious candidates, and move to the more obscure as I go down the list.
Josh McDaniels
Josh McDaniels, the New England Patriots offensive coordinator has been rumored to be Bob Quinn‘s first choice since the Lions GM took the job. McDaniels was the son of a high school football coach, his father won the USA Today award for High School coach of the year in 1997. McDaniels was a high school quarterback but moved to wide receiver in college at John Carrol University. His coaching career began in 1999 as a graduate assistant with Nick Saban’s Michigan State Spartans. After a single season, he moved to Cleveland for two years and sold industrial plastics.
In 2001 McDaniels joined the Patriots as a personnel assistant, one season after Bob Quinn joined the team. While Quinn stayed in personnel, McDaniels moved on to coaching. In 2002 he became a defensive coaching assistant. He was promoted to quarterback coach in 2004. In 2005 he called the offensive plays for the team, but was not given the title of offensive coordinator. McDaniels got that promotion in 2006, and in 2007 he called the plays for an offense that scored 75 touchdowns and scored 589 points. For scale, only two teams are within 200 points of that total going into week 17 of the 2017 season. Leading the way are McDaniels’ Patriots with 432.
In 2009 McDaniels became the head coach of the Denver Broncos. He immediately alienated the team’s promising franchise quarterback, young (and still good) Jay Cutler, by trying to get him traded for Matt Cassel. McDaniels took over an 8-8 team, and destroyed it, the team was 3-9 when McDaniels was fired partway through his second season as a head coach. The team returned to mediocrity immediately after McDaniels was gone, going 8-8 in 2011.
McDaniels spent one season in St. Louis with the Rams before Steve Spagnuolo was fired, and McDaniels was allowed to leave. The Patriots immediately hired McDaniels back, their new offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien was leaving to take the head coaching position at Penn State. McDaniels helped the team win Super Bowls in 2012 and 2016 as their offensive coordinator. Ironically, with the Patriots, McDaniels has shown the ability to get the job done with any and all players he has been given. It is only his insistence on meddling with the personnel that did him in as a head coach. Rumors say that he would like to be active in that area again if he were hired. Bob Quinn would likely have to give up some authority to bring McDaniels in. McDaniels is widely regarded to be the top candidate for a vacancy as the Lions head coach.
The Patriots defensive coordinator was an interior offensive lineman at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute from 1992-95. He graduated with a bachelor of science in Aeronautical Engineering. In 1996 he remained at RPI as a grad assistant before taking a job at Hoffman Air and Filtration systems as an applications engineer. He turned down a six-figure salary with another firm in 1999 and instead took the defensive line coach job at Amhurst College.
In 2001 he became a grad assistant at Syracuse. It was 2004 when he joined the Patriots as an offensive coaching assistant. In 2005 he became an assistant offensive line coach. It was in 2005 that Patricia switched to the defensive side, serving as the linebackers coach. He began calling the Patriots defensive plays in 2010 but was not promoted to defensive coordinator until 2012. Detroit Lions Podcast contributor Jeff Risdon said on the podcast that people he has spoken to have told him that Patricia is the type of person who sees his players as game pieces.
Patricia would be the polar opposite of Jim Caldwell, who relies on his personal leadership to unite the team in times of trouble, and keep them humble when times are easy. Patricia is undoubtedly smart and capable enough tactically, the question is whether he can lead a team. His Roger Goodell clown shirt stepping off the team plane returning from the Superbowl in January of 2017 will cool his prospects with a lot of teams. His personal relationship with Bob Quinn will likely detyermin whether he becomes the next Lions head coach.
Mike Vrabel
Mike Vrabel was an Ohio State All American defensive end, who went in the third round of the 1997 draft. He was drafted by the Steelers, recorded seven sacks in four years before he found his way to the Patriots in 2001. He won super bowls with the Patriots in 2002, 2004, and 2005. Vrabel was a 3-4 linebacker with inside/outside versatility. He had a career-high of 12.5 sacks and recorded multiple touchdowns as a goal-line tight end. in 2009 he was traded to the Chiefs along with Matt Cassel for the number 32 pick in the draft. He retired as a player in 2011.
Vrabel immediately started coaching linebackers at Ohio State. When Meyer took over the Buckeyes he moved Vrabel to the defensive line coach role. Vrabel got spectacular reviews at the collegiate level as a coach. He moved up to the NFL as the Houston Texans Linebacker coach under defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel. In 2017 Crennel moved to an assistant head coach position with the Texans, and Vrabel became the team’s defensive coordinator.
The Texans were decimated with injuries this season, and their defensive performance regressed significantly. The 2016 Texans, largely without J. J. Watt, allowed the fewest yards per game in the NFL. In 2017 they were number 23. The Texans have 20 players on IR going into week 17. That regression, however, does give some analysts, including last week’s podcast co-host Dan Orlovsky, a reason to pause and take a beat. Vrabel may need some more seasoning before taking the next step in his career. He is a long shot to be the Lions head coach in 2018.
Pat Shurmur
Pat Shurmur was a center at Michigan State. He was a co-captain of the Spartans team that defeated the USC Trojans in the 1988 Rose Bowl. Shurmur joined the NFL coaching ranks in 1999 after nine years coaching at lower levels. He was the Eagles tight ends and offensive line coach. In 2002 he became the quarterback coach in Philadelphia and oversaw the best years of Donovan McNabb’s career. He left the Eagles in 2009, for the Rams offensive coordinator job under head coach Steve Spagnuolo.
Two years later Shurmur hopped on board the perpetual train wreck that is the Cleveland Browns. Shurmur was given the task of making Colt McCoy a franchise quarterback. Despite that handicap, Shurmur won nine games in two seasons, a miracle in Cleveland. The Jimmy Haslam era began with the first of his almost yearly housecleanings. GM Tom Heckert was fired and Shurmur went with him.
He landed as Chip Kelly’s offensive coordinator in 2013. He was made the Eagles interim head coach after Kelly was fired. The 2014 illusion that Nick Foles was actually a good quarterback was the work of Mr. Pat Shurmur. The only game Shurmur coached for the Eagles as their head coach was a 35-30 win over the Giants, for second place in the NFC East. Shurmur was narrowly beaten out for the Eagles head coaching job by Doug Pederson.
On January 25, 2016, Pat Shurmur became the Vikings tight end coach. On November 2, 2016, he was named the Vikings offensive coordinator in the wake of Norv Turner’s bizarre midseason resignation. The Vikings finished the year 8-8 despite a season that included their best player missing 13 games, and averaging 1.9 yards per carry in the three he did play, playing their fourth and fifth option at offensive tackle, and having their starting quarterback go down with a career-threatening non-contact injury.
Shurmur was confirmed as the permanent choice as the team’s offensive coordinator after the 2016 season ended. He has cobbled together a perfectly functional offense despite losing his starting quarterback, running back, and a patchwork offensive line from week to week. The offense has not been the defining quality of the Vikings in 2016, but Shurmur’s ability to use the pieces he is given will likely make him an attractive head coaching candidate in the 2018 hiring cycle. Schurmur has the pedigree to become the Lions head coach in 2018.
Dan Campbell
Dan Campbell was a high School tailback that moved to tight end at Texas A&M. He went to the Giants in round three of the 2000 draft and started immediately. He primarily served as a blocker and he appeared in Superbowl XXXV. In 2003 he moved on to the Cowboys under Bill Parcells and offensive coordinator Sean Payton. He ended up the number two tight end behind Jason Whitten, and the highlight of his time in Dallas was missing a mere ten days of practice after an appendectomy in 2005. He joined the Lions in 2006 and put up career-high receiving numbers with 308 yards and four touchdowns. In 2007 and 2008 Campbell was on IR before the month of September ended. He was released in February of 2009.
Campbell was immediately signed by Payton in New Orleans. It always speaks well of a player’s leadership qualities when a former coach brings them back late in their career. Campbell’s body didn’t even make it through August with the Saints and he retired shortly after receiving his Superbowl ring, despite not playing a down for the Saints during the regular season.
Campbell became the Dolphins tight ends coach in 2011 after a year as a coaching intern with the team. Charles Clay developed as a player under Campbell’s tutelage. In 2015, when Joe Philbin was fired early in the season, Campbell took over a locker room that was fractured, and a roster that was terrible. He took the 1-3 Dolphins to a 6-10 record, moderately improving the team’s performance. Campbell was immediately hired by his former coach Sean Payton when the Dolphins let Campbell go. He has been the Saints assistant head coach and tight end coach since 2016.
The 2015 Dolphins started with two impressive victories under Campbell, blowing out the Titans and Texans with a combined score of 82-36. The success, however, was not sustainable. The Dolphins told the press that Campbell was their second choice after the man they hired, Adam Gase, but they were concerned that he had never been more than a tight ends coach. Campbell requested his release rather than serving under head coach Adam Gase.
That was not an unreasonable concern, and it is still true. The assistant head coach title Campbell holds in New Orleans is not a substitute for in-game authority and experience. There have been coaches that have seen success without serving as a coordinator, the San Diego Chargers rookie head coach Anthony Lynn was a running backs coach and has led his team to an 8-7 record going into week 17. Campbell’s chances at a head coaching job have likely been served well by Lynn’s success. Campbell is not a front-runner to be the Lions head coach in 2018.
Matt Nagy
Matt Nagy was a quarterback for the University of Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens. After his graduation, he joined the New York Dragons of the AFL. He also spent time with the Carolina Cobras, the Georgia Force, and the Columbus Destroyers. He won an Arena Bowl in 2005 with the Force and lost one in 2007 with the Destroyers.
Nagy joined the Eagles on a coaching internship in 2009. After injuries to their roster, the team tried to sign him as a player, but the NFL disapproved the contract, presumably because they do not want teams stashing players as coaching interns. In 2010 he was promoted to a coaching assistant position, and in 2011 to a quality control coaching spot. The 2013 season saw Nagy in Kansas City as the Chief’s quarterbacks coach. he oversaw the revitalization of Alex Smith’s career. He became the Chiefs offensive coordinator but did not take over playcalling duties until December of this season.
Nagy seems like a long shot to grab a head coaching job, with his limited experience as a play-caller. The Chiefs would also certainly like to keep the coach who has been shepherding Patrick Mahomes through his rookie campaign. It is not inconceivable that the Chiefs will give Nagy a sizable raise in order to hold on to him for at least another season. I do not believe Nagy will be the Lions head coach in 2018.
Steve Wilks
Steve Wilks was a defensive back at Appalachian State from 1987-1991. His playing career consisted of a single season with the Charlotte Rage of the AFL as a wide receiver, defensive back, and kick returner. he pops up on the documented coaching radar as the defensive coordinator at Johnson C Smith University in 1995. In 1997 he moved on to the defensive coordinator at Savannah State and took over the head coaching position in 1999. One year later he was the defensive backs coach at Illinois State, and he followed that with a one year stint in the same position back at Appalachian State. He followed that with a two-year stint as the defensive coordinator at East Tennessee State. In 2004 he became the defensive backs coach at Notre Dame. He took the same position at Washington in 2005.
Wilks entered the NFL in 2006 as the Bears defensive backs coach. He joined the Chargers staff at the same position in 2009 and the Panthers in 2012. in 2015 he was promoted to assistant head coach in addition to his defensive back coach responsibilities. In 2016 he took over the defensive coordinator duties for the Panthers. After a tumultuous 2016 campaign, the Panthers defense has returned to form. The Panthers defense ranks seventh in yards allowed and eleventh in points allowed going into the final week of the 2017 season. Wilks would be a solid choice to be the Lions head coach in 2018.
George Edwards
George Edwards played linebacker for Duke. He was a two-year special teams captain and earned All ACC recognition. He began his career on the sideline at Florida as a coaching assistant in 1991. The 1992 season saw Edwards make his way to Appalachian State in the same role. In 1996 he joined Duke as a coaching assistant, and in 1997 he was a tutor for Richard Seymour and Marcus Stroud among other duties at Georgia.
In 1998 Edwards became the linebacker coach in Dallas, a role he held until joining Washington as the assistant defensive coordinator and linebacker coach in 2002. He took over the defensive coordinator role full time in 2003. Washington cleaned house in 2004 and Edwards took a job as the linebacker coach in Cleveland. The Browns cleaned house in 2005 and Edwards found his stride as the linebacker coach in Miami under Nick Saban. When Saban bolted for Alabama after the 2006 season, Edwards kept his job under new head coach Cam Cameron, and then again the next year under new head coach Tony Sparano.
In 2010 Edwards became the defensive coordinator of the Buffalo Bills under head coach Chan Gailey, but two years later he was back in Miami as the linebackers coach. in 2014 he got the defensive coordinator job in Minnesota but does not call plays, a duty that is held by head coach Mike Zimmer, one of the NFL’s keenest defensive minds. Edwards will undoubtedly get a lot of interviews, but his inclusion on this list is a bit baffling.
That he has remained employed in the NFL consistently for two decades is impressive, but that is not the greatest accomplishment a head coach should have. The Vikings defense is incredible, but it is also clearly Mike Zimmer’s baby. It would not be the first time a Vikings Defensive coordinator nobody expected to actually be hired got a job as a team’s head coach. Nobody thought Mike Tomlin had a prayer in 2007 either. George Edwards would be a surprising choice to be the Lions head coach in 2018.
Dave Toub
Dave Toub was an offensive lineman for Springfield college in 1980 and 81. He moved on to the University of Texas-El Paso for the 1983 and 84 seasons. He earned all WAC honors twice. Toub was drafted by the Eagles in the ninth round of the draft but never made an NFL roster. He attended one training camp with the Eagles, and two with the Rams. His coaching career began as a graduate assistant at UTEP in 1986.
In 1987 Toub became the strength and conditioning coach at UTEP. He then moved on to the University of Missouri where he served as the strength and conditioning coach for nine seasons. Andy Reid was the offensive line coach there from 1989 to 1991. Toub finished his time with Missouri as the defensive line coach for three seasons. In 2001 he entered the NFL as a special teams and quality control coach with the Eagles. In 2004 he became the Chicago Bears special teams coordinator. He was voted special teams coach of the year by the NFL’s coaches in 2007, a season where he sent a returner, gunner, and punter to the pro bowl.
Toub interviewed for the Miami Dolphins head coach position in 2011, and then for the 2013 Bears opening after Lovie Smith was fired, but was never hired. The Bears wanted to retain Toub but he moved on when they chose Mark Trestman as their head coach. Toub reunited with Andy Reid in Kansas City and the Chiefs special teams units have been among the league’s best. It is rare but not unheard of for a special teams coordinator to become a head coach. John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens is among the league’s best head coaches and came up in the league as a special teams coach. Toub is a long shot candidate to be the Lions head coach in 2018, but crazier things have happened.
John DeFilippo
John DeFilippo was a quarterback at James Madison University from 1996 to 1999. he did coaching internships in the summers of 1997 and 1998 with the Panthers and Colts respectively. In the year 2000, immediately following his playing career, DeFilippo landed the quarterback coach job at Fordham. DeFilippo took a grad assistant spot at Notre Dame in 2001. He moved on to the quarterback coach job at Columbia 2003.
In 2005 DeFilippo joined Tom Coughlin’s Giants staff as a quality control coach. In 2007 he joined the Lane Kiffin coached Raiders staff as quarterbacks coach. DeFilippo was retained after Kiffin was under new head coach Tom Cable. Defillipo joined Rex Ryan’s Jets staff in 2009 in the same role but lasted only one year. In 2010 He took a job as the San Jose State quarterback coach and was promoted to the offensive coordinator position in 2011.
DeFilippo got back into the NFL in 2012 as the Raiders quarterbacks coach. He got his first and only coordinator job at the NFL level under head coach Mike Pettine. The entire management and coaching staff were fired after that season by owner Jimmy Haslam, but Defilippo was brought on board in Philadelphia to work with rookie quarterback Carson Wentz. The play of Wentz is the primary reason that DeFilippo is a candidate for head coaching jobs, and it is likely that he will find a position with a team that is looking to bring a young quarterback into the fold. Defilippo does not seem to be a likely candidate for the Detroit Lions head coach position if it becomes available.
Bill O’Brien
Bill O’Brien is the best head coach that might be fired in 2018. He played linebacker and defensive end for the Brown Bears from 1990-1992. in 1993 he coached tight ends at his alma-matter. He moved to coaching inside linebackers a year later before moving on to Georgia Tech as a graduate assistant from 1995-1997. In 1998 he became the Yellowjackets running backs coach. He took on the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach role in 2001 and added assistant head coaching duties in 2002. in 2003 he left Georgia Tech for a role as the running backs coach at the University of Maryland. in 2005 O’Brien became the offensive coordinator at Duke, where he coached former Detroit Lions Thad Lewis.
In 2007 O’Brien made the jump to the NFL, taking a job with the Patriots as an offensive assistant. In 2008 he took on playcalling and quarterback coach duties after Josh McDaniels left to take the Denver Broncos head coaching position. O’Brien claimed the offensive coordinator title in 2011 and helped the Patriots make it to Superbowl XLVI. O
O’Brien took the Penn State head coaching job in 2012, replacing legendary head coach Joe Paterno. In July of that year, we all learned of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and Penn State was harshly punished. O’Brien interviewed for head coaching positions with the Eagles and Browns in 2013 but decided to remain at Penn State. He Took the Texans head coaching job in 2014.
O’Brien took over a 2-14 Texans team and took them to a 9-7 record in his first season despite a lack of contribution from first-round pick Jadeveon Clowney. He repeated a 9-7 record in 2015 and 2016. O’Brien was able to string together three winning seasons with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Case Keenum, Ryan Mallett, Bryan Hoyer, T. J. Yates, Brandon Weeden, Brock Osweiler, and Tom Savage at quarterback.
In 2017, however, the Texans ended the year with 20 players on injured reserve, including rookie phenom Deshaun Watson, and 2/3 of the team’s elite pass rushers J. J. Watt and Whitney Mercilus. The Texans are 4-11 and the relationship between O’Brien and Texans general manager Rick Smith has become toxic according to Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. If O’Brien were to come available, he would be an ideal candidate to become the Lions head coach in 2018. |
Piracy websites can be targeted by the US and UK regardless of where they're hosted or which domain they use, according to legal experts.
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has been taking down sites with illegal content and targeted one UK student with extradition, despite the content not being hosted in the US.
Erick Barnett, assistant deputy director for (ICE), told The Guardian that any site that uses a .com or .net domain name is fair game, as those are registered through US company Verisign.
"By definition, almost all copyright infringement and trademark violation is transnational," he told the newspaper. "There's very little purely domestic intellectual property theft."
People do not understand the extra-jurisdictional nature of the internet
Iain Connor, a partner in the intellectual property division at law firm Pinsent Masons, said the situation was similar in the UK - but a site need not even use a .uk address to be taken to court, despite a general belief to the contrary.
“You look to where the website’s directed,” Connor told PC Pro. While a web address can be one part of that, courts will also look at what language it's written in, what currency it takes payments in, and who advertising is directed at.
“It’s a myriad of factors which will determine whether a UK court feels it has jurisdiction, because the test for jurisdiction is where the damage is occurring.
“People do not understand the extra-jurisdictional nature of the internet,” he added. “They think, 'I can do it here so it’s okay everywhere'. People need to be aware is that of course the nature of the internet means they can be conducting an illegal act overseas even when the act may or may not be illegal in the country they are based.”
Extradition questions
The issue affects 23-year-old student Richard O’Dwyer, who faces extradition to the US because his site TVShack.net allegedly linked to pirated content.
O’Dwyer’s family and defence have questioned why the US is targeting him when a similar case, over website TV-Links, was dismissed from UK courts. However, Connor suggests the comparison isn’t valid.
“That was a Crown Court criminal prosecution, where the burden of proof was unreasonable doubt. Most copyright cases are done on the balance of probability,” he said, adding that criminal burden of proof is an "incredible" level to satisfy.
"And, criminal cases are not in any way precedent forming… people point to that case, but so what? If I got off shoplifting in the past, does that mean shoplifting is now legal? No.”
And because O'Dwyer's site used the US-based .net domain, US authorities can take action, and will choose to do so in their own courts because they're more likely to win.
There’s a diminishing global sympathy for people who are aggregating other people’s content unless they’ve got a license to do it
"If you’re looking globally and forum shopping for a court that is likely to give you a better result, the simple fact of the matter is, as a US company, dealing with US content, in front of a US court under US copyright law, you’ll stand a better chance of securing the result you want," Connor said. |
It has been some time (almost 2 years?) since we started using React.js at Arkency. It quickly propagated to all of our projects. Along the way, we’ve been blogging a lot about what we learnt.
So far we’ve released:
28 blogposts
5 open repositories
React.js koans
7 YT videos
2 books (with repos)
dozens of emails to our React Kung Fu mailing list
This blogpost is an attempt to put all the resources in one place.
Blogposts
React.js koans
React.js koans
YouTube videos
Repositories
Books
Rails meets React.js
The book will teach you:
How to install and configure React.js in your Rails project.
Working with dynamic React based forms.
How to transform your view to React-managed components.
What you can use React.js for in your projects and how.
Detailed knowledge about how to use it and best practices to work with React.js, with examples.
How to test React components.
You will also get Ruby and CoffeeScript code for the examples.
And it begins with a tutorial so that you start with practical skills.
Animations with React.js is such a great topic that we decided to record and include 2 videos on this topic.
Buy Rails meets React.js
React.js by example
We love working with React.js so much, that we also published another book on this topic - “React.js by Example”.
This book doesn’t focus on the Rails integration. We wanted to share with you how to setup a separated (from Rails) React.js-based frontend.
This book is directed to people who are total React.js newbies. There are 12 typical examples implemented in React.js. Each of the examples is another chapter. Each example contains a narration on how one of us (from Arkency) approaches the development of a React.js component.
What’s more - you receive all the repositories for this book! You can browse the code, you can run the examples, you can tweak them.
After reading this book, you will be fully ready to approach a typical React.js component.
The examples are written in EcmaScript2015 and use webpack.
Buy React.js by Example
Which of our React.js books to choose?
Those books are very different. They teach you React.js in different ways. While the “Rails meets React.js” book is more Rails focused, it focuses on developing one component from a small one to a very complex widget.
The “React.js by Example” is focused on the starting point. It shows 12 examples, which are typical things you will start with.
Many of our readers bought both of the books and are happy with that.
If you need to choose just one - if you want to use React.js within an existing Rails ecosystem, then go for “Rails meets React.js”. If you are allowed to develop the frontend separately to Rails, then choose “React.js by Example”. |
Militants in Afghanistan have launched an attack on a government delegation visiting the site where a US soldier killed 16 civilians.
Two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brothers and several top security officials were in the delegation in Panjwai in Kandahar province.
One Afghan soldier and three of the militants were killed, police said. The delegation is heading back to Kandahar.
The US soldier said to have carried out Sunday's attacks is under arrest.
A US military official said that "probable cause" had been found, meaning they could continue to hold the soldier. The unnamed 38-year-old staff sergeant is being held at an undisclosed location.
'No rush to exits'
A senior Afghan official confirmed to the BBC that an attack "from several directions" had taken place on the delegation, which was there to meet villagers and tribal elders. Afghan forces returned fire.
The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says officials reported a 10-minute gun battle during which Taliban fighters fired from a distance at a mosque where the delegation and civilians were taking part in a prayer service.
Analysis President Karzai is personally involved in Kandahar - it is his home province and he has close relations with tribal elders. He, his friends and his brothers have all been working around the clock to say the soldier will be brought to justice and that taking to the streets in violent protest is not in the interests of the Afghan people or the Afghan government. Afghanistan will push for a US trial of the soldier which one aide said should be "in open court, in the presence of the media in weeks or months, but not years". If guilty, Kabul would demand the death penalty. It also wants those in charge at the base to be held responsible for not preventing the soldier's attack. On the issue of Nato, senior members of the Afghan government say any premature withdrawal will undermine the entire mission and the only people to benefit would be the Taliban.
Panjwai police said that in addition to the soldier killed, two other people, including an intelligence officer, were wounded.
One of Mr Karzai's brothers, Qayum, told the Associated Press news agency it appeared initially that the attack was not serious and the delegation "assumed that it was the national army that started to fire in the air".
He said the delegation, which included Kandahar's governor and the minister of border and tribal affairs, was safe and returning to Kandahar city.
A member of the delegation, Abdul Rahim Ayubi, told AP the governor was trying to explain to locals that the shooting was an isolated incident.
"But the people were just shouting and they were very angry. They didn't listen to the governor. They accused him of defending the Americans instead of defending the Kandahari people," Mr Ayubi said.
Anti-US sentiment is already high in Afghanistan after soldiers burned some copies of the Koran at a Nato base in Kabul last month, sparking deadly riots across the country.
On Tuesday morning, some 600 students took part in a rally in the eastern city of Jalalabad, condemning the Kandahar attack and chanting "Death to America! Death to Obama!".
In Washington, US President Barack Obama said America was "heartbroken over the loss of innocent life", and promised no effort would be spared in investigating the shooting and bringing the culprit to justice.
"We will follow the facts wherever they lead us," he said, "and we will make sure that anybody who was involved is held fully accountable with the full force of law."
He also insisted that the US will "responsibly" withdraw its forces between now and the end of 2014, the date he set with allies to close out the war, dismissing media speculation that he might speed up the process.
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the soldier who has been detained in connection with the Kandahar shootings could face the death penalty if found guilty.
The Taliban has renewed threats of revenge attacks, saying it would behead "sadistic" American soldiers.
'Cowered in fear'
Details about Sunday's shootings are still unclear. The American soldier left his base in Kandahar in the early hours and went on a rampage in nearby villages.
Previous tension points February 2012: Deadly protests after US troops inadvertently burn Koran
Deadly protests after US troops inadvertently burn Koran January 2012: Video shows US marines urinating on dead Afghans
Video shows US marines urinating on dead Afghans March 2011: Radical US pastor burns Koran, triggering deadly protests
Radical US pastor burns Koran, triggering deadly protests April 2008:Protests against cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers
Locals told reporters how they cowered in fear as the man made his way from door to door, trying to get into their houses.
"I saw a man, he dragged a woman by her hair and banged her head repeatedly against the wall. She didn't say a word," one witness said.
He broke into three houses and killed 16 people, most of them women and children. He then burned their bodies, according to reports.
The US defence secretary said the soldier "came back to the forward operating base and basically turned himself in, told individuals what had happened".
Pentagon officials said they would not release his name while the investigation was going on.
Reports said the soldier, who has three children, had been deployed to Afghanistan in December for his first tour of duty there after serving three times in Iraq. |
March 1, 2012
TENS OF millions of workers took part in a one-day general strike in India on February 28 in the country's largest industrial action since its independence in 1947.
This is the first time that India's main trade union federations, which are all affiliated to one or another political party, have come together to protest "neoliberal economic and labor policies" pursued by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the governing coalition led by the Congress Party. The action was also supported by more than 5,000 independent unions.
This reveals two important things about India that are usually forgotten by the Western media.
First, India is not merely a seething mass of desperation, composed of peasants and the abject poor. It has a massive working class with organizations that are capable of bringing out large forces. Second, the economic realities of neoliberal growth do not go unchallenged indefinitely. Even in the places where the vice grip on workers has been tightened to extreme levels, people find a way to fight back.
Participants in India's largest-ever general strike march in Hyderabad
Among the demands that the unions made were the establishment of a national minimum wage, the end of temporary employment (what are called "contract laborers" in India) in favor of permanent jobs, more efforts to curb runaway inflation (the official rate is hovering at around 7.5 percent), guaranteed pensions, and an end to the privatization of publicly owned companies.
The banking and insurance sectors were hit hardest by the strike, but other workers, including dockworkers, postal workers and transportation workers, were heavily involved. The coordination of a national strike on this scale marks the beginning of a new stage in the confrontation between labor and capital in India, as the benefits of India's boom has produced an economy in which the benefits accrue to the few at the top.
Despite threats from the central government and a last-minute offer to negotiate, the strike took place and brought out millions.
In Kerala, the state government threatened workers with a "dies non" order (no work, no pay), while in other places like New Delhi, the government attempted to enforce the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to force workers in industries like power generation back to work. In West Bengal, members of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) party also attacked and injured strikers.
FOR THE past decade, India has been the darling of the economic pundits globally, with massive growth rates and a burgeoning middle class whose consumptive powers have fuelled the national mythology of "India Shining." According to current estimates, the Indian economy grew at around 7 percent last year and is projected to grow again at a similar rate in 2012.
At the same time, the benefits of that growth have been massively skewed. As Katherine Boo's new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, demonstrates, the growth of the Indian economy has happened at the same time as the growth of its underclass.
Mumbai, the symbol of India's new economic power and famous for its massive film industry, is now commonly referred to as "Slumbai"--more people live in slums in Mumbai than don't. Many of these slum dwellers work in the hyper-exploitative informal economy--if they work at all.
Agricultural reforms implemented in the past 20 years have immiserated people in the countryside. Last year alone, there were more than 15,000 farmer suicides as a result of indebtedness and bad harvests. Desperate farmers then migrate to the larger cities and towns where they form the massive reserve army of the unemployed, which drives down wages.
The national strike was a response to these conditions and the pinch that workers are feeling throughout the country. Last year, there were some spectacular job actions at places like the Maruti Suzuki auto plant in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, where workers fought a pitched battle for wages and occupied the factory for almost two weeks.
At the same time, the official line of the Congress Party-led government and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that neoliberal economic policies are going to continue. At the heart of the fight with the unions is the controversial pensions bill now before parliament, which would tie workers' retirement benefits to market-driven financial instruments and put employee retirements in jeopardy.
But also at issue are Singh's plans to sell off major state holdings in order to finance repayments on international loans and budget deficits. Singh did, after all, cut his teeth as the economic architect of India's neoliberal reforms, which began to be implemented when he was the finance minister under former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
All this puts twin pressures on unionized workers in India. On one side is the threat of being pushed into the growing underclass, which labor is trying desperately to unionize. The other peril comes from neoliberalism and the attack on union rights. This has produced the conditions for greater worker militancy in India.
However, this confrontation between labor and capital in India will not be decisive. To start with, the unions have only put forward a tentative one-day strike, with a long and vague list of demands. Moreover, the official trade unions are all connected to various political parties, and these massive days of protest are usually connected to political gamesmanship that the parties play against one another.
The unions at the head of the strike were led by the official left in India, which is still dominated by Stalinist and Maoist political organizations. So in India, there is the All-India Federation of Trade Unions (run by the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) Janashakti faction), All India Central Council of Trade Unions (dominated by the CPI-ML Liberation faction), All India United Trade Union Center (run by the Socialist Unity Center), the All India Trade Union Congress (run by the Communist Party), the Center of Indian Trade Unions (controlled by the Communist Party of India-Marxist) and the United Trade Union Congress (run by the Revolutionary Socialist Party).
Since many of these parties are no longer revolutionary, they tend to play a dampening role on the class struggle, rather than developing it.
This isn't to say that workers don't fight back. They do, but the unions do their best to limit their struggles. In 2006, there was an attempt to form a federation of Independent Trade Unions called the New Trade Union Initiative, which holds out some of the best possibilities for an independent trade union movement in India. Many of these unions also participated in the recent one-day action.
Second, there are also reactionary trade unions, like the Hindustan Mazdoor Sabha run by the right-wing Bharatiya Janati Party (BJP), and the Bhartiya Kamgar Sena, run by the ultra-right-wing Shiv Sena. Both of these unions also participated in the strike, largely because the leftist unions kept the slogans vague enough that the right wing could use the one-day strike as cover for purported populist politics.
Part of the reason that the right and the left were able to come together (as they have in the past, under the Janata Party government in the 1970s) is because they are both now in the opposition to the Congress Party's UPA coalition that runs the central government.
In fact, despite agreeing early on to support the strike, the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC, run by the Congress Party) withdrew after the party leadership put substantial pressure on it. "The strike is politically motivated and illegal. We will oppose it on Tuesday," said Ashok Chaudhary, the national president of the INTUC.
But this alliance between left and right can only be temporary and opportunistic, as the BJP and Shiv Sena are both pursuing neoliberal policies in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra respectively, where both play much larger regional roles. The left-right labor alliance is also dangerous, since the right wing has not been shy about stoking up ethnic and communal hatred in times of economic contraction.
PART OF the reason that the strike took place in as spectacular a way as it did was because the traditional left was routed at the polls in the last elections.
During the time that the left was in power in places like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, they were able to play a dampening role on industrial actions. But once they were removed from office, they found it possible to allow the discontent of their members to be expressed in order to embarrass the current government. But only to a point: Too much worker militancy threatens their own ability to contain mass anger. Indeed, these parties have, in the past, used their ability to keep a lid on struggle to lure capital investment to their economically impoverished states.
Thus, in those traditional leftist strongholds, the strike was strongest, and it went beyond industrial work stoppages to actually disrupt traffic and business in major cities. In other places, such as Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Karnataka, the effects of the strike were not as strongly felt.
But the most significant showdown was clearly in West Bengal, where Chief Minister Banerjee attempted to flex her muscle against what she called "the politics of bandhs" (protests that shut downs entire cities). Having recently beaten the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the polls, Banerjee is now in the position of having to do the bidding of large capital, despite having organized strikes and bandhs herself in the past.
In Kolkata, the police were out in droves, attempting to get people back to work, while Banerjee's TMC party sent many of its members to break up rallies and pickets throughout the city.
Ironically, Banerjee came to power on the basis of an electoral backlash against the CPM when it tried to raze entire villages in order to make way for a manufacturing campus in the countryside for industrial giants like Tata Motors. Now, Banerjee is doing the work of the same capitalists she claimed to oppose--an opportunistic about-face that will only expose her to greater challenges.
What the general strike reveals is that although working-class anger at the economic and political system in India is growing, the major left parties have been unable to deliver anything but symbolic and token changes in their lives.
The general strike revealed that the working class in India is quite large and has muscle. But to take the struggle forward, workers will need new forms of political and union organization. |
It’s not what you think
I was happy to learn that Professor Steven Salaita reached a $600,000 settlement (plus $275,000 in attorney fees) yesterday in his lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). As others, including Steven Salaita, himself, have said, universities may now think twice before violating freedom of speech rights of faculty in order to satisfy wealthy Jewish donors. Here is a statement about the settlement by Salaita recently published on The Nation website.
In the article titled, “I Will Always Condemn Injustice, No Matter What The State Of My Employment,” Salaita wrote:
We can claim meaningful victory against UIUC. The most decisive of those victories is the knowledge that upper administrators will think twice—and ideally not at all—about wrecking academic freedom and faculty governance by kowtowing to Zionist hysteria.
However, Salaita will not be reinstated at UIUC, which was one of his initial demands and the university will not admit to any wrong doing. If Dr. Salaita would obtain a teaching appointment similar or better than the one he lost, I would view the settlement as a personal victory for him. But if pressure from the lobby will block such a job offer, as was the case with Norman Finkelstein, the monetary award would not even come close to compensating him for the subsequent loss of income.
I could think of no better person to ask about the Salaita settlement than Dr. Norman Finkelstein, who himself was a victim of Jewish lobby pressure when he lost his tenure battle at DePaul University in 2007. Like Salaita, Finkelstein was denied a position by the school administration who overruled the decision of a departmental faculty committee. Unlike Salaita, Finkelstein chose not to initiate litigation for what appeared to be a clear violation of his rights by the university administration. He was subsequently unable to obtain academic employment despite a stellar publishing history, extremely favorable student evaluations and a doctorate from Princeton University.
What follows is my complete and unedited correspondence with Dr. Finkelstein:
On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:04 PM, Ira Glunts wrote: Dear Dr. Finkelstein, I was one of the people who hosted your appearance in Cazenovia, NY about four years ago.
I was wondering what your reaction is to the Salaita settlement with UIUC.
Do you think he will be able to get an academic position in the US?
Can I quote your thoughts on this?
I would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter.
I hope you are well and are enjoying the fall in NYC. Best,
Ira Glunts
Norman Finkelstein is known for views which surprise and sometimes dismay pro-Palestinian activists. His response definitely surprised this reporter who believes that Salaita is a gifted writer and speaker, and that he is well-qualified to hold an academic position such as the one he obtained at UIUC.
Dr. Finkelstein is known for his decades long history of sharp and incisive criticism of Israeli government policy. However, he has taken a number of positions which many understand as incompatible with pro-Palestinian activism and solidarity. Among these are his characterization of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) advocates as cultists, his view that the pro-Israel lobby does not influence U.S foreign policy, and his deriding of advocates of a one-state solution for Israel/Palestine, as hopelessly politically naïve.
In arguing the above positions, Finkelstein has maintained that he has been consistent in his thinking and that his views are in no way inimical to the Palestinian cause.
I chose to publish this correspondence with Dr. Finkelstein’s permission because there is a general interest in what Finkelstein thinks and because his statement may help shed some light on the kind of thought processes that inform his other views.
What follows is the complete and unedited response from Finkelstein to my message:
I don’t think you want to hear my reaction. I am not a party-liner. I gave that up when Chairman Mao passed from the scene: I’ve read Salaita–or, let’s say, I’ve endeavored to read him. Even Google has yet to invent a translation program that makes coherent sense of his prose. As of now, Salaita hasn’t lost a day of work (he spent the current academic year occupying the prestigious Edward Said chair at American University in Beirut), and he reportedly walks away from University of Illinois with nearly a million dollars. That’s not bad for someone with a PhD from the University of Oklahoma who, before being hired to teach Native American Studies at an excellent second-tier university, last taught English composition at Virginia Tech. He did not deserve to get fired, but in a rational world it would be cause for wonder how he got hired in the first place. It’s a telling commentary on the state of the humanities that his tweets got greater scrutiny than his (so-called) scholarship. You are free to quote this in full, but not to excerpt it. [Underlining in the original.]
There are two factual errors in the statement above. First, it is not true that Salaita “hasn’t lost a day of work.” Salaita did not teach in the fall semester of 2014 or in the spring semester of 2015. Secondly, Salaita received $600,000 in the settlement, not “nearly a million dollars,” as stated by Finkelstein.
Dr. Salaita, when asked by this writer to respond via email to Finkelstein’s statement wrote, “No comment.”
UPDATE #1: After publication, I was emailed this article, titled, “Dershowitz and Finkelstein: comrades at heart?,” by Steven Salaita which was written in 2013. I was unaware of the article’s existence when writing the above post.
UPDATE #2: Dr. Norman Finkelstein has informed me via email that at the time of my interview with him he believed that the settlement awarded Salaita was $875,000. This is due to the fact the some reports incorrectly stated that amount, neglecting to acknowledge that $275,000 was awarded to Salaita’s attorneys. |
Russian officials say four suspected members of an illegal armed group were killed by security forces in an operation at an apartment building in St. Petersburg.
Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said the members of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) went to the apartment on August 17 to apprehend people recently added to a federal wanted list.
The individuals were added to the list for alleged participation with militant groups in the volatile North Caucasus region, Markin said.
He said the suspects posed resistance to the FSB agents and opened fire but were killed in a shoot-out.
Witnesses said gunshots and explosions were heard at the scene.
Markin said no civilians or security forces were injured in the incident.
People who were evacuated from the apartment building have been allowed back into their homes.
Based on reporting by TASS, Interfax, and Meduza |
Cost of gold in 1983: $424/troy ounce
2008 inflation adj. cost: $914/troy ounce
Actual 2008 cost: $923/troy ounce
When Mr. T hit the TV scene on "The A-Team," he wore a swath of gold chains around his neck, both on-screen and off.
If T decided to cash in the raw material today, he'd make a tidy sum of $923 an ounce, which is more than double the price of gold in 1983, according to Catherine Gignac, precious metals analyst for Wellington West.
But when you adjust it for inflation, the value is about the same as it was 25 years ago, she said. So you should pity the fool who told T he'd make real money with a long-term investment.
Incidentally, Mr. T stopped wearing the gold after Hurricane Katrina, because he considered it an insult to the impoverished victims.
NEXT: Ocean's Eleven - 1960 vs. 2001 |
Mutmut: a Python mutation testing system
Anders Hovmöller Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 1, 2016
Skip to “How hard can it be?” if you don’t care about the background.
What is mutation testing?
Mutation testing is a way to be reasonably certain your code actually tests the full behavior of your code. Not just touches all lines like a coverage report will tell you, but actually tests all behavior, and all weird edge cases. It does this by changing the code in one place at a time, as subtly as possible, and running the test suite. If the test suite succeeds it counts as a failure, because it could change the code and your tests are blissfully unaware that anything is amiss.
Examples of mutations are changing “<” to “<=”. If you haven’t checked the exact boundary condition in your tests, you might have 100% code coverage but you won’t survive mutation testing.
Background
I wanted to try out mutation testing for libraries I build in Python so I looked at what was available. I had some ideas for ways of radically speeding up mutation testing based on what pytest-testmon does and adding some ideas of my own on top.
Googling showed me two alternatives:
Mutpy: a simple system developed as a thesis. Not maintained anymore.
Cosmic Ray: actively developed.
Both these are Python 3 only which is a bit sad because I’m still on Python 2 for work at least for a year more. But I could live with that since the libs are Python 2 and 3.
Cosmic Ray seemed the more promising so I tried installing it but after struggling just to get the dependencies installed I decided that if it’s this hard just to install it probably won’t be practical. I looked into the code a bit to see if I could use just the mutation parts as a library but it looked to me like a big monolithic system so I gave up on that.
Next I looked at mutpy. This code is radically smaller and simpler but after struggling to refactor it in some ways to make it even simpler I thought to myself:
How hard can it be?
Turns out, not that bad! Mostly the building blocks are already available.
I decided that I absolutely wanted a feature both Cosmic Ray and mutpy lacked: being able to apply a mutation on a source file and not screw up the entire file. Cosmic Ray and mutpy use Pythons built in AST library but it has the unfortunate property of not representing formatting in the AST, making it impossible to just dump the AST back out and get the original file. So if I can’t use Pythons own AST, what then? Enter baron, an independently developed Python->AST library specifically created to be able to round trip without changing your source files. Baron doesn’t support all of Python 3 syntax yet unfortunately, but it looks like people are working on it.
[EDIT: Since this article I’ve replaced Baron with Parso and now I fully support Python 3!]
My battle plan was this:
Make a mutate function that receives source code and can mutate everything relevant (so you can get a count of available mutations) or a specific mutation specified by an index. Make an import hook so that the file you want to mutate is mutated in memory on the way from disk. This will enable parallelization. Pytest plugin that sets up the import hook and enables you to specify what mutation you want. Make a small command line program that runs through the mutations and checks the output from tests. It should also be able to apply a specific mutation on disk, so when you find an interesting one you can see very easily what the mutant was.
Point 1 was fairly easy: basically I needed to make sure all AST node types were either not mutated (because it doesn’t make sense) or mutated in the most nasty way I could think of. In this step I ran through the code of lots of big open source projects (e.g. django and numpy). I found some parse bugs in baron at this step, but nothing that impacted the code I wanted to run mutation testing on. I just reported the bugs and moved on.
Point 2 was nasty. It turns out the import hook system in python is pretty shit. The default behavior to load from the filesystem isn’t in the list of hooks because it’s in C code somewhere, so you can’t base an importer on it. That would be ok if the design was ok, but unfortunately the import hook system works like this: Python asks one import hook at a time to import the module. That sounds simple and simple is often good, but importing actually contains these steps:
Find the source file Read the source file Convert the source file from text to a runnable module
And all importers must do ALL of the steps. So the zip file importer must do the steps that are the same as the default and it can’t just call into the default loader because it doesn’t exist as python code. And it also means that if I want to intercept between step 2 and 3 on ALL importers I have to reimplement all importers.
This obviously sucks (and might not even be possible, for systems with their own custom importers), but even worse is that implementing an import hook correctly at all is a lot of nontrivial code that is a bloody beast to get right. Supposedly this is somewhat better in python 3 with importlib, so I found a backport of it to python 2 but it was broken. I managed to hack around the crashes but in the end I didn’t get my import hook working with that either. I asked for help on reddit too, to no avail.
After several hours of fighting this fight I gave up (for now) and just went with disk based mutation. It’s not great because it can’t be run in parallel but at least it works and it’s super simple. It’s also very flexible with regards to which test runner you use, since you don’t need any plugins that would have to be made for pytest, nose, unittest, etc, one by one. Giving up on this means Point 3 becomes moot, so that’s great.
Basically I should have made this thing first anyway, because it’s very good to have :P
Point 4 was pretty easy. The hardest was finding out how to nicely output continual progress updates on the console :P
So where do I stand now?
We’ve run mutmut on tri.declarative and tri.struct at work and it found several things we didn’t test as thoroughly as we thought, even though we had 100% coverage on our tests. For tri.declarative it also found a piece of dead code and an error in correctly creating a plural in an error message. It clearly improved our test suite, even though it didn’t find any bugs.
You can probably just run mutmut right now. It’s a pretty simple piece of code and for it to work with your test runner it just requires that it has an exit code of zero for success and anything else for failure. It’s pretty slow obviously since it’s not parallelized at all and it has to run the entirety of whatever test suite you specify for every mutation (and there are many!).
What’s next?
I still have some work to do. Using pytest-testmon is still on my list, as is solving the import hook system to enable parallelization. Those things alone should be able to give me orders of magnitude faster tests. The goal is to keep the super simple system I have now so that there’s always a simple to debug and adapt system that you can use for weird scenarios or debugging.
I also have some ideas for pytest-testmon like being able to keep a central database shared between developers, which could also be used for mutmut so if someone has already tried running a specific mutation for a specific version of a file, you don’t have to.
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Written by Anna Rubin ’15
We are pleased to announce another newly digitized collection: the Woodrow Wilson Correspondence in the Office of the President Records. Wilson was president of Princeton University from 1902-1910, Governor of New Jersey 1911-1913, and U.S. President 1913-1921. This collection contains correspondence between Wilson and University faculty, administrators, alumni, and parents, as well as departmental records and information on University projects that were taking place during his term, such as the construction of the Graduate College. Wilson’s Princeton presidency presented him with many challenges, the most ultimately significant of which was conflict over campus social life. In the first of a two-part series, we take a look at Wilson’s battle with the eating clubs.
Wilson was no great fan of the eating club system, which had begun in the mid-nineteenth century. He felt it drew energy, attention, and interest away from academics toward the social life of the college, and had a certain “snobbish” character about it. The clubs, then numbering 14, were the hub of the upperclassman’s life, providing a place for their members to eat, drink, and be merry in houses just off campus. Current members of clubs selected new members from the sophomore class, a process that would eventually become known as “bicker.” Wilson felt that the clubs’ allure overshadowed the college experience, as “it absorbs the attention and all the planning faculties of the undergraduate because all social ambitions turn upon it…His thought is constantly fixed upon that object throughout the first two years of his university course with a great intensity and uneasiness whenever he thinks either of his social standing, his comradeships or his general social consideration among his fellows.“ About a third of each class would not obtain membership to a club. As Wilson saw it, “their lot is little less than deplorable” because they were then, for their remaining two years, excluded from the central social life of campus. (Office of the President Records (AC117), Box 63, Folder 13)
In December 1906, Wilson presented a report to the Board of Trustees on the school’s current social conditions, expressing his hope to divide Princeton into residential quads, with members of all four classes in each quad and a faculty advisor overseeing each. Students would live and eat in their quads all four years, eliminating the necessity of the eating clubs entirely. Wilson thought this plan was “an indispensable accompaniment and completion of the preceptorial system,” another of Wilson’s innovations, reports of which can also be found in the records. (Office of the President Records (AC117), Box 63, Folder 13)
While the report claimed to be focused positively towards the intellectual growth of the University, rather than negatively towards the eating clubs, Wilson did make his feelings clear:
But, in spite of their admirable spirit and of every watchful effort they have made to the contrary, and by a process which neither they nor we could successfully control, a system of social life has grown up in the University by reason of their existence which divides classes, creates artificial groups for social purposes, and renders a wholesome university spirit impossible. Circumstances created, not by design, but by the inevitable operation of human nature, render a radical reorganization of our life imperative, if the main ends for which that life is meant to be attained.
The report was published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, June 12, 1907, a copy of which is in Wilson’s files.
A sub-committee of the Board of Trustees responded in a report on social conditions on March 3, 1908. The committee agreed with Wilson’s assessment of the “evils” of the social life at Princeton:
Without attempting to detail these evils, or to emphasize them by citation of individual instances, it seems that the most important can be classified and summarized under the following heads: 1. The segregation of sophomores from other undergraduates; 2. The unfortunate position of upper classmen failing election to any club; 3. The distraction of undergraduates from their academic pursuits at times of, and incident to club elections, and because of the social demands upon their time; 4. The under classmen’s temptation to seek social advancement by choice of associates, tending toward snobbishness and incident extravagance. (Office of the President Records (AC117), Box 63, Folder 1)
But they diverged from Wilson here and did not propose to begin a residential quad or college system. Instead they moved to reform the club system, suggesting that no more clubs be created, that a small number of sophomores be admitted to the clubs at the beginning and middle of the year, and that faculty and the clubs “encourage closer relations and a better understanding.” Additionally, they suggested creating a University Club with open membership. They felt their proposed reforms would have the sufficient effect of mitigating the social evils of the university as they outlined, without revolutionizing campus culture or getting rid of “a system which contains much that is good and around which centre (sic) traditions and, to many, fondly cherished associations which should not lightly be done away with.”
Wilson’s reforms were not put in place to any lasting effect, but he remained interested in the issue long after his time at Princeton. He wrote to V. Lansing Collins, Secretary in the Office of the President at Princeton, in November 1923: “The subject matter of the report still interests me if for no other reason than because it led to the Trustees in their sagacity to kick me upstairs into the Governorship and Presidency.” (Office of the President Records (AC117), Box 63, Folder 13)
Concern for maintaining proper balance of social and academic life was a strain that ran throughout Wilson’s tenure as president. The debate also arose during discussions surrounding the construction of the new Graduate College. In the next installment in this series, we will take a look at Wilson’s loss in that fight over its location. Look for the second installment in this series in March.
Anna Rubin ’15 worked as an archives assistant at the front desk here at Mudd while completing her senior year at Princeton. She was heavily involved in the digitization of this collection.
Thanks to Julian Dean, a graduate student in Politics, who alerted us to an error in the caption for the photo of Colonial Club. We believe this photo was taken in 1905, not in 1906 as was originally stated.
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- If you place a Relentless Raider turn 1 and follow it with any of Greystone Ravager or Orc Clan Captain turn 2, you can fool your opponent you're a plain aggro deck. That can cause him to focus on Raider, rather than Ravager, letting you keep that precious orc on board.
- If you place just a Greystone Ravager on board, you can trick your opponent you're a prophecy battlemage. Especially if your next card is Morkul Gatekeeper.
- And, finally, placing Wardcrafter can make him think you're a midrange battlemage with plenty of wards. Morkul in next turn also won't break the illusion.
Wh-where do I start. This deck changed my life. And I didn't mean to!Currently I'm 10-1 with this deck. After getting 10-1 with midrange orc warrior I decided to change things up a bit and make an orc battlemage. The idea was around my head for a while, ever since I saw now private/deleted Faylash's midrange assassin list with dark rebirths and dragons.So... let's talk about advantages and disadvantages.+ BURST. You can close the gaps like nothing else in this game. Between lightning bolts, ancano, dark rebirth (with charge creatures or ancano) and charge creatures you can go face really hard and not worry.+ Pretty easy to pick up. At its core it's an aggro list. It's not Time to Fight, but it's still relatively easy to just get up and play. Barring the cards' cost in dust that is.+ So many favorable matchups. I've beaten 3 rage archers on my way there. I've smashed ramp spellsword and scout. If you recognize these - good. That's probably how a ladder looks for you now lol.- If the ladder is full of control mages (specifically mages, you couldn't care less if you're facing spellswords) or token crusaders or literally anything faster, you probably shouldn't play this deck. It can race, but not that well. And as a passive player you can't do much due to all the breakthrough.- No healing. To be expected from a Battlemage.And probably something else. I don't know. I love this deck, but at the same time I'm scared because I can close a gap as large as 10 damage on turn 8.Your acceptable starting hand is at least 1 card that is a 3-or-less drop and preferably neither Stoneshard Orc nor Stronghold Patrol. Not really hard. Keep Rapid Shot if you're facing a Battlemage (1 hp creatures a plenty) and optionally Assassin if you feel like you're against goblins, I guess. Then start pressuring. Depending on your starting hand you can seriously fool your opponent. Now let's talk about that.If you keep that in mind, you can potentially make your opponent play however you want him to.Your general plan is to go face. If your opponent drops a card, think what will he do with it and play accordingly. Trade with breakthrough against stuff that can kill something on your side. Keep Stoneshard Orc s in your pocket for problematic creatures, same with Earthbone Spinner s for guards or, for example, Murkwater Shamans.I'd talk about budget replacements here, but there's one little issue. Wood Orc Headhunter is a huuuge part of this deck. The 5 cost 5 attack charge creature is HUGE. You can't just replace it. Not even Vigilante, which I still pack 1 of, can do the job this thing can. The closest thing with that much impact would be Royal Sage . You can even Dark Rebirth the sage for double the impact, but trust me when I say that these two are not even close to be compared, unless your Sage gets charge twice. Alternatively, to keep the deck mostly red, you can play Triumphant Jarl , but I personally really don't like this card. It doesn't feel right, that's all.Other than that your replacements are the usual. Relentless Raider into Fiery Imp Earthbone Spinner and Belligerent Giant into 3 copies of Cast Out and 1 Bone Bow Stoneshard Orc , despite being a rare, are a part of Madhouse Collection. With Twitch drops you should buy that collection eventually, but for the sake of just bringing the gem cost down for everything, try Skaven Pyromancer Garnag, Dark Adherent and (though you should probably have his deck bought) Ancano for... I have no clue what you could bring here. Maybe Fate Weaver , although there ain't that many prophecies in the deck.Finally, Underworld Vigilante 's closest available replacement is Battlefield Scrounger In the end, just focus in having 3 Underworld Vigilante s in deck. As a matter of fact, either Time to Fight battlemage by flex or prophecy battlemage will probably be a better thing to run. Wood Orcs are, seriously, too important. Unless you really love orcs and want to play them, don't craft them first. |
In regard to directing another Star Trek movie, J.J. Abrams said, “I don’t know. The idea of working with these people again would be a thrill and a privilege. One of the reasons I wanted to do the second one was so I had a chance to work with this cast and crew again.”
J.J. Abrams added, “It really would depend if there’s a third movie that the studio wants to make. It would depend what the schedule was. Would I be open to it? Of course I would.”
Most are assuming that Paramount will want to release Star Trek 3 in 2016 to coordinate with the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. With Star Wars Episode VII set to hit theaters in 2015, a 2016 date would probably be a challenge to work for J.J. Abrams' schedule, but it still might be possible if the release date is late in 2016. |
Wintzell's Oyster House is shuttering its Huntsville store today after six years in business.
The Mobile seafood chain announced the closure Sunday on Facebook.
No one at the Sanderson Street restaurant was available this morning for an interview about the closure. Wintzell's continues to operate restaurants in Guntersville, Mobile, Saraland, Fairhope, Orange Beach, Greenville, Montgomery and Fultondale.
After careful consideration, Wintzell's in Huntsville has made the very difficult decision to close it's doors effective... Posted by Wintzell's Oyster House-Huntsville on Sunday, February 19, 2017
The closure comes three years after Wintzell's shut down its Decatur eatery on Beltline Road Southwest in the Plum Tree Shopping Center. Thirty-five Wintzell's employees were left jobless less than two weeks before Christmas.
Sam's Sports Grill now operates in the former Wintzell's space.
AL.com will update this story as more details are available. |
PCMag's Fastest Mobile Networks story tested eight networks in 30 cities. Unfortunately, after the tests were completed, AT&T decided to dispute one element of our results. In the interest of fairness, here is AT&T's statement and our response.
AT&T's Statement:
The PC Magazine speed tests show the incredible 4G LTE download speeds we provide our customers and validate that AT&T offers the best iPhone data experience. We have given PC Magazine independent data establishing that their testing app has a technical flaw that understates our 4G LTE upload speeds when a particular version of the Android software is used. This flaw disparately affected AT&T’s upload and overall results. It’s disappointing and a disservice to the public that the editors chose to publish results we have demonstrated are inaccurate.
We Respond:
We were surprised to get this response, as AT&T's network did extremely well in our tests. AT&T's LTE network won 10 of the 16 cities where it was both available and not spectrum-limited. (For more on that, see Why Spectrum Matters.)
AT&T was highly involved with our testing from the start. We used devices supplied by AT&T, and AT&T engineers spent several days helping to fine-tune our testing software before we got on the road. We used well-established testing software, which was also the basis of our 2011 network tests.
It also is worth noting that the Android devices supplied to us by AT&T were loaded with the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system, and it appears that consumers may see faster upload speeds with different versions of the Android operating system.
The upload speeds we got were exactly in the range promised by AT&T network architecture chief Kris Rinne when the network launched in 2011, as she told the AP.
All speed tests give different results, as you can see in our tests of Sprint's new LTE network. The most important thing to do in a story like this is to use the same test across all carriers and to let everyone have their say, and we feel we've done this.
For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag. |
A recent BDN article regarding the religious liberty bill I am sponsoring is full of misperceptions, paranoia and inaccuracies. The article suggests that this bill is somehow designed to undermine gay marriage.
This is not about gay marriage. The bill, LD 1428, is about assuring the religious liberties spelled out in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution are protected for all Maine citizens. The goal is to prohibit Maine from burdening Mainers’ free exercise of religion without strong justification.
Those quoted in the article imply that this legislation is unnecessary because the First Amendment already guarantees religious freedom. A U.S. Supreme Court decision and recent actions by other states, however, suggest otherwise.
In 1993, the U.S. Congress passed the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which stated the government cannot place burdens on the free exercise of religion unless doing so serves a compelling state interest or is accomplished by the least restrictive means possible.
That law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, however, in 1997. The court ruled that while the law’s application to the federal government was constitutional, its extension to individual states was not.
Eighteen U.S. states have since adopted their own religious liberty laws as a result of that ruling.
In recent years, there has been a flurry of attacks on religious liberties around the U.S., such as demands that Christmas trees not be placed on public property and school plays make no reference to religion. Here in Maine, an elementary school was forced to drop the “Blessing of the Fleet” portion of its annual boat launching ceremony after being threatened with a lawsuit by a Washington special interest group. In Bar Harbor, the town council recently voted to remove a memorial to World War II veterans from a public park. Why? Because the memorial consisted of lights on a Christmas tree.
The common thread in all of these cases is an unprecedented attack on religious liberties in which those affected have no legal recourse.
The aim of my religious liberty bill is to join those other states in adopting religious freedom guidelines to prevent the government from being able to easily infringe on citizens’ rights to freely exercise their religion.
More specifically it would:
— Restore the compelling interest test and guarantee its application to all cases where the exercise of religion is burdened by state action;
— Provide a claim or defense to a person or persons whose exercise of religion is burdened by state action.
Religious rights are not for a specific group of people or individuals. They are for all of us. My bill would ensure those rights are protected by Maine law.
Senator David Burns, R-Whiting, serves on the Maine Legislature’s Judiciary, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and Government Oversight committees. |
Advertisement Massachusetts Army vet using music to help kids around globe Justin D'Addario founder of "Rock 'N Roll Uganda" Share Shares Copy Link Copy
Many people dream of one day becoming a rock star and gaining international fame.A retired Army veteran from North Andover has actually done it, but you probably don't know him.Justin D'Addario is the founder of "Rock 'N Roll Uganda," a school that teaches impoverished young people to play the guitar for free.D'Addario is a retired Army combat engineer whose tour in Iraq and Afghanistan was cut short by a roadside bomb on Thanksgiving Day in 2009. When D'Addario recovered, he found he still had a desire to serve.His new mission became finding a place in the world where he could help young people.D'Addario landed in the Ugandan Capital of Kampala, at a little school called the Rainbow House of Hope.He said when the school asked what his talents were, he said he could teach English and play the guitar. "There were three of them there, and they said, 'you can play guitar?'"It turned out the school had a number of guitars in storage, and no one knew how to fix them.D'Addario taught the kids what he knew: Rock 'n Roll."The only full songs that I knew were by bands like Green Day, Bad Religion and Blink 182, D'Addario said. "They totally loved it!"A short time later, several of the students became teachers too, and would-be rockers were coming from all over.Three years later, the program has ten guitars and over 100 students D'Addario is now trying to raise the money to build an actual school.. through a GoFundMe page.He estimates it would take approximately $15,000 in U.S. currency to accomplish his goal. For more informationhttps://www.gofundme.com/yf2u2khttps://www.facebook.com/PunkRockKampala/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hiCbt2nlqUhttp://crowdsurfcentral.com/articles/2016/6/2/rock-and-roll-ugandaGet the WCVB News App |
Notes: Hey, Jokemaster here just wanted to say that this is my second "story" ever and this is actually going to be a multi-piece story. So if there's anything y'all think I could improve or change, please don't be afraid to leave a review to let me know.
Yang is a playful spontaneous big sister, not to mention she is one of the best fighters in the entirety of her school and to top it all she has the best teammates anyone could ask for. She has one problem however
She wanted to fuck all of them and perhaps the biggest problem was that she meant it, especially the "all of them" part, which included her sister.
Blake caught her eye was when they first met in the emerald forest when she took down an ursa and smirked at Yang almost tackling her then and there.
Ever since she met Weiss, Yang wanted to make that perfect princess her submissive bitch.
Last, but certainly not least, Yang wanted Ruby, her own sister, to become her personal sex slave and allow Yang to use her mouth whenever she Yang knew just how unlikely all that was and one fateful day decided to take a walk to clear her mind of all her dark and lustful thoughts.
While Yang was walking in the emerald forest to clear her head, she ended up walking a rather far distance from beacon. The sun was setting and Yang decided it was time to head back, the problem was she felt rather lost in the large forest and on top of that she could feel eyes watching her. She readied herself for an attack from any angle when she heard rustling all around her.
Out of the bushes jumped a horde of grimm in the form of a dozen beowulfs, a dozen ursas and even, four goliaths with their massive tusks pointed at her. All of the beast surrounded her. Yang knew on her best day she couldn't handle these many grimm and began to look for a way out.
To her surprise she heard someone call out from behind the grimm, "Don't be afraid dear child, my pets and I are not here to hurt you." she couldn't put a face to the voice until the grimm encircling her parted like an opening gate to show a tall woman with snow white skin, black veins, in a dark dress, and seemingly literal darkness emanating off of her.
The woman approached the Yang and stared at her for a moment, smiling. Yang had no idea who she was but realized she was screwed if the grimm suddenly attacked and played along with this mystery woman and asked, "Who are you and if you don't want to hurt me then what do you want?"
The woman's smile grew and replied "My name is Salem and I'm here to help you dear child, I sense the dark desires you have and I am here to give you the power to make your dreams reality" Yang was baffled she had no idea how much Salem knew about her and responded with a stutter, "I-I have no idea what you're talking about" Salem gave a sinister laugh and spoke again, " You lust for all of your teammates, even your younger sister" Yang was completely awestruck, blushing heavily and couldn't even formulate a response.
"How delicious, don't worry girl I am here to help you dominate all of them and all you have to do is be willing to let me test a new spell on you"
Yang still awestruck but able to form a response this time responded, "I don't really have a choice do I?"
Salem, all too eager to respond, "oh my dear of course you do, my new spell is meant to affect willing subjects only, a type of reward for those smart enough to join me rather than foolishly opposing me, so you could choose to join me and live in pleasure or deny me and the other option is death" she said that final bit while staring into Yang with her own glowing red eyes.
Yang realizing her situation thought on her very limited options and decided that possibly being able to live out her sexual fantasies with her teammates sounded much better than being grimm food and agreed to be Salem's subject. Salem approached Yang put her hand on the young huntress's chest and told her to take a deep breath.
Yang felt a burst of what could only be described as pure darkness leave Salem's hand and enter her chest, it stung for just a second. Yang fell forward into Salem who happily caught her newest test subject."What did you do to me?" Yang asked unable to stand on her own yet,
"I gave you a miniaturized version of my own power, you will have increased strength, endurance, and even create and control your own grimm, not to mention a fun new tool for yourself, though in truth not all powers may manifest right away and you will have to use your dark-lustful thoughts to master them. Initially you will need to transform into a form like mine to use them, but eventually you will have access to all of your powers in your human form. Let's start with transforming, you must visualize yourself dominating someone you want"
Yang regaining her balance focused on what Salem said and thought about Ruby and fingering her while she was tied down and gagged, unable to stop Yang from fingering her to orgasm again and again.
That thought did the trick all right, by the time Yang came back to reality from her sexual daydream, she realized that she had transformed into a near copy of the woman before excluding their own physical differences such as height, she looked just like the woman before with both of them having snow-white skin, dark veins, Yang's hair having turned pure white.
Yang felt stronger than before and was even able to order some of the grimm to come closer and back off by just waving her hand. It all would have been crazy enough on its own but then Yang looked down for her biggest surprise. A new addition to her lower body in the form of a 12 inch dick with a fair amount of girth to it.
While Yang found herself yet again unable to form words from shock, Salem took the time to explain what the hypothesized abilities were of her experimental spell, "when you cum inside anyone in any whole with your new tool a darkness will spread within them into their brain and slowly, but permanently, turn them into obedient slaves with their bodies and minds unable and un-wanting to resist you."
"Allow me to demonstrate what it would taste like for your lucky victims" with that Salem approached Yang from behind and began to stroke Yang's cock. Yang had never experienced pleasure in this way and her legs quickly turned into jelly under Salem's amazing touch and found herself on her sitting on the forest floor with Salem sitting right behind her still stroking her.
After a few moments Yang's breathing was rugged and she could feel she was close and then Salem whispered in her ear "get a good look and sniff of your new equipment" Yang did as she was told, to lost in her pleasure as she found herself intoxicated with the amazing smell. After she got over her initial high of the smell she noticed her cock was oozing clear liquid out of the tip, she wondered what it was.
Salem whispered in her ear yet again saying, "bend down and taste it" Yang complied yet again and was able to bend down easy enough to take a small and hesitant lick of her new cock and its Yang was in love with the flavor and wanted more as she was about to bend down to start sucking herself off Salem stopped her
"Now you understand why you will be irresistible, but suck yourself off on your own time this is merely a demonstration of what it will be like for those you dominate, now let me finish you off, but do keep your mouth open we wouldn't want to waste anything~"
Not a moment later Yang was thrown over the edge screaming, "oh yes, oh YES!, OH YES!" then she came full force with her face still looking down and mouth happily still open ready to receive her own gifts that she would eventually give to the rest of her team.
Yang's cock shot the delicious liquid directly into her own awaiting mouth and combined with the fact that Salem was enjoying the sight so much that she didn't feel like stopping
Salem kept up her stroking which caused Yang to shoot multiple ropes of her cum into her mouth swallowing as much as she could. One more orgasm directly into her mouth again.
By the time Salem was satisfied with her subject, Yang was a scrambled mess on the forest floor
Salem stood to leave and ordered one of her grimm to give Yang a ride back to just outside the school limits so in the morning Yang could begin her dream of dominating her team which even in Yang's mind scrambled state new would be an incredibly pleasurable experience. |
So let’s get the lede out of the way: John Scott scored a hockey goal with his hockey stick by shooting the hockey puck past an unscreened goaltender - a good goaltender, no less - into the hockey net.
It was his third NHL goal (the second one involved the type of crazy bounce you’d expect) after six in the AHL and seven in 126 NCAA games, so y’know ... this is noteworthy.
So how does a 6-foot-8 pure fighter with almost twice as many penalty minutes as games played come to score a goal, let alone one against a pretty decent Washington Capitals team with some pretty decent defensemen on the ice?
Well, there are a few reasons, including the fact he played some legitimately good hockey.
****
The NHL.com video at the bottom of this post has a few more angles if you can’t believe this really happened, and need more proof.
The puck starts from the bench-side boards, with Joel Ward passing the puck through a forechecker to Brooks Orpik in front of the Caps net. It’s a bit of a broken play, as his partner John Carlson is nowhere to be found. But that shouldn’t be an issue.
The puck is moved to Orpik.
Evgeny Kuznetsov sees this, and fans out to take the pass. The Sharks’ Adam Burish starts to read that, and wants to stay overtop of him while Andrew Desjardins backchecks.
But as you can see, he’s more than a step behind, so Kuznetsov opens up for the pass, and receives it.
Or more accurately, tries to receive it. Instead it's an “Oh man, whoops” from Kuznetsov. I don’t know if the puck bounces or not, but either way, it goes on through to Sharks defenseman Brent Burns, who wastes 0.0 seconds getting the puck up to Burish. Seriously, he one-times it.
This systems post isn’t really even about a system as much as it is about the play Burish made to make this incredible goal happen.
Look at Burish see Scott in the middle and angle the puck with his skate into his linemate's lane. I believe a soccer announcer would call this a “cheeky touch.”
(Courtesy: Comcast Sportsnet)
And there goes John Scott, sort of.
Orpik’s biggest problem (at the top of the GIF below) is that once the pass is missed and returned to Burish, he sees that, and pivots to face an attack from the near side, thinking Burish may corral it. It was a completely fine thought to have, but look at the terrible position his unfortunate pivot puts him in to defend.
(Courtesy: Comcast Sportsnet)
Burish’s clever skate pass left Scott with the puck and “speed,” while Orpik is just stopping and just starting to back up.
Here’s the thing: it’s really, really weird he doesn’t just get into Scott, and influence his shot, no?
Well, no. It looks weird at first glance, but if you can see, just as he pivots, Desjardins (No. 10) is filling in the lane on the other side of him, and it seems like his body angle limits him from seeing Carlson coming to help him and make it a 2-on-2.
I think it’s possible that he saw Carlson, but he definitely didn’t know if he was defending an even-man rush or a 2-on-1.
That thought process would explain why he seems to be taking the cross-crease pass away. I mean, with all due respect, it’s John Scott, so he’s probably more worried about giving up some back-door tap-in than the clean shot on Braden Holtby.
In the end, Scott was on the defensive side of the puck, picked it up with speed through the neutral zone, and made a great shot to score. A lot had to go right for it to happen, but hey, sometimes NFL linebackers score touchdowns. This stuff happens.
If you can’t believe it ever did (even the goal scorer himself looks surprised above), have one last look. It’s a great play by Burish, and a nice snipe from Scott.
(Courtesy: NHL.com) |
Santa Barbara County officials confirmed Monday afternoon that an estimated 10-foot-long shark was seen early Sunday morning offshore of Goleta Beach, the county’s most popular park.
According to Herman Parker, county community services director, a fisherman working the waters off of Goleta Beach spotted the shark “swimming out to sea” and subsequently reported it to authorities at the Santa Barbara Harbor. Upon learning of the sighting, harbor officials contacted the county, and, by the early afternoon, “swim at your own risk” warning signs had been posted at the beach.
As per county policy, the signs will remain up for at least 72 hours, after which time, as long as there are no additional sightings, they will be removed.
The Goleta encounter comes on the heels of multiple shark sightings in Santa Barbara and Carpinteria. |
Memphis Depay may have stolen all the headlines as Manchester United returned to European competition against Club Bruges on Tuesday night, but there was further cause for optimism at Old Trafford.
Summer singing Bastian Schweinsteiger, a half-time substitute for Michael Carrick, showed United fans what they could expect from the World Cup-winning midfielder this season.
In his 45-minute cameo the former Bayern Munich star made more passes than any of the Bruges players made in the entire 90 minutes.
Bastian Schweinsteiger was introduced at half-time against Club Bruges on Tuesday night
The Germany midfielder attempted more passes in 45 minutes than any Bruges player did in 90 minutes
The 31-year-old Germany international even put his own team-mates to shame during the 3-1 first-leg victory over the Belgians as United bid to return to the Champions League group stage.
Schweinsteiger attempted a total of 54 passes - more than Wayne Rooney managed in 84 minutes, Memphis Depay in 90 minutes and Adnan Januzaj in 72 minutes.
Only fellow new signing Morgan Schneiderlin came close to matching Schweinsteiger's impressive figures. The France midfielder attempted 90 passes in the whole game, which averaged out per half still falls nine short of the German.
For Bruges, Oscar Duarte made the highest number of passes. The Costa Rican defender, who helped shut out England at the 2014 World Cup, tried to find team-mates on 44 occasions.
Carrick made way for Schweinsteiger as Louis van Gaal admitted he wanted to build up German's fitness
PASSES ATTEMPTED Manchester United Morgan Schneiderlin (90 mins) - 90 Daley Blind (90 mins) - 69 Juan Mata (90 mins) - 68 Bastian Schweinsteiger (45 mins) - 54
United fans have been waiting patiently to see more of marquee signing Schweinsteiger, who has been eased in gently over the first weeks of the season by manager Louis van Gaal.
The Dutchman revealed after Tuesday's win in their Champions League qualifier that he brought Schweinsteiger on to build up his fitness.
'It was a tactical substitute but also I have to build up the games of Bastian Schweinsteiger because we need him in our team. He came to the USA (on the pre-season tour) out of a holiday. I'm sorry but then you are not fit.'
United scored in the final few seconds against Bruges when Marouane Fellaini met Depay's superb cross after the Holland forward announced himself to the Old Trafford crowd with two superb strikes. |
Workers in the United States know they are losing ground in the current Depression, as they are watching the rich going in the opposite direction.
A decline in real wages comes on top of stagnation of wages in the three previous decades.
A new report issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) says: “The recent recovery in the United States appears unusual from a historical perspective … with a much stronger rebound in profits relative to labor income.
“One explanation is that workers’ fear of long-term unemployment has led to more subdued wages relative the labor productivity growth during the recent recovery.”
How can we be speaking of a “Depression” and a “recovery” happening at the same time in the US (and world) capitalist economy?
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman compares the situation with the Great Depression of the 1930s. After the initial crash, there was a period of recovery which led to another downturn around 1937. But the whole decade was marked by stagnation and high unemployment.
This is the kind of period we are in now.
The IMF report found Americans are lagging far behind their counterparts in Europe. Only workers in two advanced economies in Europe have fared worse during the recent recovery: Spain and Greece.
The IMF also says that while profits are up everywhere, total labour compensation has risen in every leading economy except four: the US, Greece, Ireland and Spain.
The change in the relative share of total income going to labour has fallen sharply in the US since the trough of the downturn. It has risen slightly in Europe as a whole.
Should workers in the US be looking to Europe for guidance? That’s not the way it looks from here, peering across the Atlantic.
What we see is a Europe in deep economic turmoil and trouble, with some countries, including Britain, already teetering on a new downturn, high unemployment, and “austerity” for workers.
We can be envious of the fact that many European workers still have a higher social wage, government benefits won in struggle in the past, than US workers have. But the austerity drive in Europe is attacking those benefits.
And, in much of Europe the electoral system, while geared to maintaining capitalist rule, is more democratic than in the US. The voice of working class resistance to the capitalist offensive can peek through, even if it is muffled.
Or not so muffled, as in the case of the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) in Greece which came second in the May 6 elections and is polling way ahead for the June 17 follow-up election.
In the US, we are in the midst of an electoral farce to beat all electoral farces. The Democrats and Republicans are really two wings of a single capitalist party, whose major “difference” is over how much to cut the social wage and how fast, and how much to privatise everything from jails, education and even the postal system.
The grotesque spectacle of billions of dollars being spent on vacuous advertisements for the candidates of both parties makes the 2012 elections not only farce but buffoonery.
One thing we can identify with in Europe is mass mobilisations against the capitalist offensive. The Occupy movement is part of that.
The situation for US workers is even worse than it appears in the IMF report. The IMF includes in the workers’ share of national income wages, salaries, interest, capital gains and stock compensation and compares this to business profits.
Workers do get some interest on their savings, some stock income and capital gains, but the bulk of these incomes go to the rich. The salaries of the top officers of JPMorgan Chase are not exactly in the same category as the salaries of the bank tellers they lord over.
The IMF also doesn’t include cuts to the social wage. The attack on the social wage in the US is picking up steam.
One example is unemployment benefits. A recent article in the NYT said: “Hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans are receiving their final unemployment cheques sooner than they expected, even though Congress renewed extended benefits until the end of the year.
“The cheques are stopping for the people who have the most difficulty finding work: the long-term unemployed. More than five million people have been out of work for longer than half a year.
“Federal benefit extentions, which supplemented state funds for payments up to 99 weeks, were intended to tide over the unemployed until the job market improved.
“In February, when the program was set to expire, Congress renewed it, but also phased in a reduction in the number of weeks of extended aid and effectively made it more difficult for states to qualify for the maximum aid.”
As a result, hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed won’t even get their cheques through the end of the year when the program expires.
[Barry Sheppard was a long-time leader of the US Socialist Workers Party and the Fourth International. He recounts his experience in the SWP in a two-volume book, The Party -- the Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988, available from Resistance Books.] |
"My cats are my family. They make our home so enjoyable that no words can describe how much they mean to all of us," said Wei Wang from Taiwan.
Melon, one of Wei's cats, has a huge appetite. Unlike other cats in the house, he cleans everybody's dishes and makes sure that there is no leftover on the plates. Melon is therefore bigger than Aniki who is at the same age as him.
Melon loves snacks and can go crazy for them. "No matter what he is doing at the time, as soon as he hears the snack bottle, he will run over and try to grab the treat off my fingers with all he's got."
No matter how you cuddle or hold him, Melon never gets annoyed. He likes to be petted and given a lot of attention to. He is always sweet and never throws a fist at people.
Melon likes to wrestle with Aniki, but they always end up snuggling together in a nap. "It gives all of us a fuzzy feeling inside every time."
"I watch them grow and take care of them along the way. The experience has been extremely precious. We have built a strong bond with each other. They are more than just pets, they are my children."
Photos courtesy of ©Wei Wang. (See Wei Wang's other cats: Sushi & Aniki) |
Last week, ICICI bank started blocking UPI transactions from the @ybl virtual payment address (VPA) that is used by the PhonePe app from Flipkart, powered by Yes Bank. This of course runs contrary to the whole idea behind the UPI - it's supposed to be an interoperable layer that works between all banks, allowing for easy digital payments. Having banks block legitimate VPAs undermines the concept, and what's worse, ICICI did not offer any substantiative statement about the block either.
This might finally have been resolved, with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) having asked both ICICI and Yes Bank to take steps to open transactions again. As we had speculated, the move to block @ybl VPAs does appear to have been related to Flipkart's implementation of UPI payments, which tried to funnel all users to sign up to PhonePe, instead of allowing customers to use any VPA. In the app, it was possible to enter your own VPA, but that was only through a non-intuitive process that involved multiple menus; while using PhonePe was easily done on the first screen itself. This was definitely problematic, but ICICI's decision to block all @ybl VPAs was even more of an issue; the former is opportunistic, but the latter entirely undermines the UPI.
The NPCI's statement addresses this, and stresses on interoperability. In it's statement, the NPCI says that ICICI Bank has been advised to open UPI transactions immediately, and that it has advised Yes Bank to adhere to "merchant on-boarding guidelines meticulously" - a key phrase to take note of.
How UPI Works - the Apps, Charges, and Everything Else You Should Know
On Friday, people started complaining about not being able to use their ICICI accounts with PhonePe, and that's when the payments company's founder Sameer Nigam tweeted about what was going on. We independently verified this, by trying to use our ICICI accounts on PhonePe - the transactions were denied. ICICI was not, however, stopping UPI transactions on other VPAs; we tested it with the BHIM app and it worked just fine.
At the time, ICICI issued a statement mentioning security related concerns, an restrictive practices. However, it had not gone into any details. Now too, it stresses on interoperability, and not merchant on-boarding, as mentioned by the NPCI, but it is easy to read between the lines.
Here's ICICI's statement in full: "A certain non-banking application is following a restrictive practice of allowing only users of its own UPI handle to make payments on its App. This is a clear violation of UPI guidelines which mandate interoperability, wherein users enjoy the freedom to choose any UPI handle to make payments."
"NPCI has assured us in writing that this will get corrected very soon and the concerned App will allow interoperability. As soon as this is corrected, ICICI Bank will start allowing UPI transactions to resume on this App."
More about the ICICI-PhonePe block in this week's episode of Orbital, which you can subscribe to via iTunes or RSS, or just hit the play button below. |
8 September, 2016. 11:15
CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With the NRL finals starting this week, clubs across the country have switched on damage control – with many clubs bringing in a flat out alcohol ban on all players – to avoid any off-field controversies in the most important fixtures of the year.
However, in the deep north, Townsville city council have reinstated their annual amnesty for all North Queensland Cowboy footballers who find themselves on the wrong side of either the law or public opinion.
“The last thing we want is to lose a player for six rounds like the Roosters lost Pearce,” said Townsville mayor, Jenny Hill.
“So we’ve asked all local media, police and pub-owners to please not report anything that might hinder our boys in their quest for back-to-back premierships,”
“It worked for us last year, and fingers crossed it will work again. We could have lost most of the side to that southern-centric Integrity Unit in if the NRL got a whiff of half the shit our boys got up to in 2015,”
With the news that five North Queensland Cowboys players have been charged after allegedly egging cars in Townsville – it appears that the police involved have been stood down indefinitely without pay.
The players were in a car stopped by police for a random breath test before midnight on Wednesday when an unknown person accused them of throwing eggs.
After the footballers were officially charged in a disgusting display of disrespect and flat out idiocy – both the local police, local council and North Queensland club executives have ask QLD Police to relocate the police officer in question as soon as possible.
“It’s disgusting,” Jenny Hill says.
“He must be new up here. We have an amnesty for our boys and he should have known that”.
The only exception to the amnesty is in regards to southern-born footballers who are likely to represent NSW in the State Of Origin series.
“In the case of Tamou getting pinched for drink driving a few years back, we can all agree that was a fair exception,”
“We spoke to the club beforehand and came to the conclusion that they would be able to continue the season without him. While we do have the support of the local cops, journalists should consult council before reporting on anything that could affect the line up,” said Hill, while dressed head-to-toe in Cowboys merchandise.
With the NRL season back in full swing, it is a matter of time until young rugby league players from low socio-economic backgrounds begin making headlines for doing things that might be considered a “bit grubby” in public places.
“Yeah, anything short of domestic violence is gonna be overlooked,” said local police chief, Ben Katter. His comments were met with a roaring reception from the local residents in attendance.
“If they don’t like it down south, they can get fucked. For too long our club was overlooked due to dodgy refs and we aren’t going to end this streak any time soon,”
“Fuck the Southerners. The North will rise again,”
The council meeting was called to end shortly after the amnesty was re-voted in by a vast majority of the citizens that were present, this was followed by a stirring a-cappella rendition of Lee Kernaghan’s Boys From The Bush by lord mayor, Hill.
SEE ALSO: Townsville Man Accused Of Being A Cop After Wearing Closed-In Shoes To The Pub |
Insulin that can be inhaled was briefly available to diabetics a few years ago -- but weak sales drove drugmakers to shut down their sales.
Now, a new inhalable insulin powder that's more effective than injected and oral treatments could be available as early as next year. Businessweek reports.
In a late-stage clinical trial, Afrezza showed positive results for controlling diabetes. Taken with a small inhaler (called Dreamboat), the powder helps insulin reach peak levels within 14 minutes -- matching the insulin release in non-diabetics when they eat.
According to the drug’s maker, California-based MannKind, in this latest study -- involving 518 patients with Type 2 diabetes (where cells fail to use insulin properly) -- Afrezza helped reduce long-term blood sugar levels. It’s also expected to be used by patients with Type 1 diabetes (where the body produces no insulin).
Pharmaceutical companies have been working on inhalable insulin for a long time -- on the theory that diabetics would rather puff on an inhaler than give themselves a shot. They’ve faced high profile commercial failures in the past:
In 2007, Pfizer stopped selling its Exubera insulin powder because of weak sales after less than two years on the market. Exubera never gained traction, largely because insurers wouldn’t pay for it, saying it was too expensive and didn’t work for many patients. Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk both ended inhaled insulin research programs in 2008.
According to MannKind last week, Afrezza is more effective than the prior drugs and could cost about the same as the current injectable insulin "pens" (about $2,000 annually).
The market for diabetes treatment is "so immense and it’s growing so rapidly," says MannKind’s Matthew Pfeffer. More than 8 percent of Americans have Type 2 diabetes. "While we think of our country as having an obesity and diabetes epidemic, we’re not even in the top 10 of incidence of diabetes."
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected Afrezza in 2011. The company plans to file these latest results with the FDA this fall and expect a decision in 2014.
[Via Businessweek, Reuters]
Image: MannKind
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com |
I can’t wait for Thursday evening.
Today I was granted an unexpected tour of The Ice @ Canalside after I ran into Kaitlin McGee Chmura, Assistant Project Manager of the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation.
As we walked around the site we could see all of the last minute details being worked out before the big day. The speakers were installed, as were the lights. The skate rental shipping crate (upcycled) was in place, as was the concierge hut. There was a food and beverage kiosk that looked like it was ready to go to. Tomorrow the hut will be serving up hot cocoa to people as they enter the site. There were pine boughs and garlands hanging all over the bridges, which will all be lit up tomorrow night. A large Christmas tree was decorated from trunk to top – that too will be lit up tomorrow.
As we walked, we noticed that the first skater to ever skate on The Ice @ Canalside took to the ice to test it out. Then another skater joined him. It was a spectacle to watch the skater as he glided underneath the bridge that we were standing on. I thought about my own skates that hadn’t seen the light of day in years. Finally, they will be broken out and used this winter.
There are some pretty cool features at Canalside that I was not aware of. On one side of the rink’s perimeter, the surface is rubber, which means that skaters can walk from the storage lockers to the Adirondack chairs to the food and beverage hut, without ever taking their skates off. On the opposite side of the rink, the aggregate stone walkways are heated, which means that snow will never accumulate. Brilliant! There will also be a large heated tent for anyone who wants to warm up.
The public areas under the bridges protect people from the wind and falling snow (it’s all lit up too). On top of the bridges there are bistro tables and chairs set up, and propane heaters are being assembled to keep people warm. This will eventually be a “beer bridge” where people will be able to sit and order a frosty brew. Food trucks will be able to pull right up to the bridge, creating an instant food court.
I also learned that there is a graphic that has been added to the ice surface of the canal rink. The graphic bares the emblem of The Aud that once stood at the site. “That spot,” Kaitlin told me. “Marks the exact spot where center ice was at The Aud. It’s a tribute to the auditorium and the history of the Sabres.”
I also discovered that the ice surface had the markings for the sport of curling. Not only can you rent skates at Canalside (600 pairs of sharpened skates), you can also rent the equipment for recreational curling. The house Zamboni will make sure that the surface is slick enough for games at any given time.
The Larkinville huts are all set up and waiting for vendors. The place is coming together quick now. Everywhere you look there are signs of life about to be infused into the site. Tomorrow is going to be a great day for Buffalo. Look at the photos and insert people! |
A 19-month-old toddler is in a medically-induced coma after a SWAT team threw a flash bang grenade in his crib during a no-knock raid. Local news stations report the child is also paralyzed. However, police state that the incident isn’t their fault – the baby is, sadly, a casualty of domestic terrorism.
The boy’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, had brought her husband and children to visit her sister-in-law in Georgia after their own Wisconsin home burned down. Habersham County, Georgia, deputies allegedly bought drugs from a man in the home earlier that week and returned with a no-knock warrant on May 28th. The raid occurred around 3 a.m. A Special Response Team (SRT) accompanied by narcotics agents breached the door and, finding the doorway blocked, threw the flash bang. The object blocking the doorway just happened to be little Bou Jr’s playpen, and the device landed on his pillow.
Sheriff Joey Terrell, the district attorney, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) have all stated that law enforcement did not engage in any wrong doing, as they did not know there would be children in the home. Terrell told press that because their informant did not mention seeing any children on the premises, the event could not have been prevented or avoided. He additionally stated that they had had prior information on the suspect, who had been involved in an altercation involving a “possible AK-47.” He added that the altercation was “supposedly about drugs.”
He also reports that the child’s parents “knew something was going on” and tried to keep themselves and their children separated from the dealings while searching for another place to live.
However, Terrell also shows little remorse or sympathy for the innocent child caught in the crossfire and takes none of the blame. “The person I blame in this whole thing is the person selling the drugs,” he told the local news. “All they care about is making money… They don’t care about what it does to families. It’s domestic terrorism, and I think we should treat them as such.” He went on to talk about how angry it makes him that these “terrorists” have destroyed another family.
Wanis Thonetheva, 30, was arrested on drugs and weapons charges during the raid; however, police have not been clear as to whether or not drugs or weapons were actually found in the home.
By Terrell’s logic, it is Wanis Thonetheva who is responsible for the maiming of a baby, because he committed the terrorist act of voluntarily exchanging a desired product for money. Thonetheva is guilty because Regardless of one’s belief as to whether or not this is a heinous crime, does such an exchange warrant a violent response that endangers not only the seller, but his or her family, friends, or neighbors? Terrell states that his department started the team because “children are getting involved in situations they don’t need to be.” However, one could argue that children also do not need to be innocent victims during no-knock raids.
A charity to help little Bou can be found here. Contact information for the county police can be found here. |
BANGKOK/JAKARTA -- For automakers, Southeast Asia means Indonesia and Thailand.
Impending Thai auto subsidies have manufacturers from across the globe scrambling to set up shop. Indonesia, meanwhile, is a huge market with plenty of room to grow.
The entire region has promise. But capturing a piece of these two markets could allow an automaker to lay the foundations for future regional expansion.
"Since the Mazda 2 [called the Demio in some markets] is a highly competitive model globally," said Yuji Nakamine on Nov. 6, "it will make a big contribution to the growth of the Thai automobile industry as an export model." Nakamine, senior managing executive officer of Mazda Motor, was at a ceremony in Thailand marking the beginning of production of the car there.
Initial production of cars for export to Australia began in mid-September at Auto Alliance (Thailand), a 50-50 joint venture with U.S. automaker Ford Motor in the southeastern province of Rayong.
To begin mass production, Mazda took over passenger car production lines from Ford with a view to raising annual output capacity to 120,000 units, up from 50,000. Sales in Thailand and neighboring countries are due to begin early next year. Total investment costs in the Mazda 2 factory were 12.6 billion baht ($383 million). "We are investing so big because we aim to build Thailand into our global export hub," Nakamine said.
Helping hand
The Mazda 2 will be eligible for tax benefits under Thailand's program to promote fuel-efficient, low-cost small cars. The companies that benefited from the first phase of the government program, which began in 2007 and ran through 2012, were Toyota Motor, Honda Motor, Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Suzuki Motor -- all Japanese. Nine models, including Nissan's March, which in March 2010 began rolling off production lines, achieved combined sales of 500,000 units. The cumulative total of cars that were built, including exported vehicles, came to more than 1 million.
Nissan shifted production of the March from Japan to Thailand during the subsidy program. It has remained there since, and the car is exported from the Southeast Asian nation to the rest of the world, including Nissan's home market of Japan. It was the first time for Nissan to produce a major model overseas for export back home. Critics worried whether Thai workers could turn out quality cars. But no longer. The export base has been a success.
Among Japanese automakers with production bases in Thailand, Mazda was the only one to miss out on the first round of subsidies. So when the government unveiled Phase 2 of its program for eco-friendly cars, Mazda was determined to be the first to get preferential treatment.
Japanese automakers have company this time round. General Motors and Ford Motor of the U.S., Gremany's Volkswagen and SAIC Motor-CP, a joint venture between Shanghai Automotive Industry and Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group, are all expected to apply for tax breaks.
Subsidies will be available for cars with gas engines of 1.3 liters or less, and those with diesel engines of up to 1.5 liters. The cars also have to get a fuel efficiency of at least 23km per liter of fuel to qualify.
Manufacturers are expected to invest at least 6.5 billion baht in facilities for subsidy-compliant cars. They must also ramp up output to at least 100,000 units annually within four years. If all conditions are met, the government will reduce or eliminate such charges as corporate tax, import tariffs on facilities and components, and excise tax.
The five Japanese automakers that qualified for the first round of benefits positioned Thailand as a launchpad for exporting low-priced small vehicles worldwide.
Ford and GM are expected to do the same when the next phase kicks in. GM has a Thai plant, built in 2000, that is capable of turning out 130,000 vehicles a year. Outside of its joint venture with Mazda, Ford has a plant that began operations in 2012 and can build 150,000 vehicles a year. SAIC Motor-CP opened a factory in June with an annual capacity of 50,000 vehicles. It aims to build one more facility, which will add another 200,000 vehicles to capacity. Volkswagen does not have factories in Thailand but is considering setting up a plant to produce eco-friendly cars there.
Glut feeling
Thailand's auto market may soon have an overproduction problem. Still, manufacturers are undeterred; Southeast Asia is one of the world's most promising growth markets.
Six major Southeast Asian nations -- Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore -- saw combined new car sales rise 70% over the five years through 2013, to 3.56 million vehicles. The combined market is larger than that of Russia, which in 2013 had sales of 3.04 million vehicles, India's 3.24 million, and close to Brazil's 3.77 million.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations "has a population of 600 million people and a growing middle class, and very low vehicle density," said Matt Bradley, president of Ford Asean. "That will make Asean one of the largest buying populations in the world." Sometime in the next five years, he added, Asean will hit 5 million sales annually.
Two characteristics define the Southeast Asian auto market: its importance for meeting demand at home and abroad, and the dominance of Japanese companies.
Thailand is home not only to automakers, but also to a number of parts and materials suppliers, reflecting its growing importance as an export hub. Indonesia, meanwhile, with a population of 250 million, has a great deal of domestic demand to satisfy. The two nations make up more than 70% of the regional market.
Japanese vehicle sales in Asean have outstripped regional market growth. Japanese producers have a combined 89% share of Thailand's auto market and 95% of Indonesia's. European, U.S. and other automakers need to figure out how to take share from Japanese manufacturers.
Non-Japanese companies are working on doing just that. In Indonesia, which is set to overtake Thailand to become Southeast Asia's top auto market this year, GM has constructed a plant with an output capacity of 40,000 vehicles a year at a cost of $150 million. Production at this plant, in Bekasi, on the outskirts of Jakarta, commenced in mid-2013. It turns out a family-friendly, small crossover utility vehicle, the Chevrolet Spin. The price of the seven-seat vehicle starts at 150 million rupiah ($12,300), about the same price as the mainstay model of Toyota's Avanza, Indonesia's top-seller.
Ford earlier this year launched a small SUV, the EcoSport, in addition to its popular compact Fiesta in Indonesia. The EcoSport is designed to appeal to young consumers and sells for 200 million rupiah to 300 million rupiah.
Tata Motors, which in 2012 formed a subsidiary in Indonesia, last year released the small hatchback Vista, SUV Safari Storme and crossover Aria. At the Indonesia International Motor Show in Jakarta in September, the Indian company displayed its Zest sedan, which had just hit the Indian market. Tata is considering selling the car in Indonesia.
"We will continue to introduce new models and create a new market," said Biswadev Sengupta, president director of Tata Motors Distribusi Indonesia.
Extra space
Statistics on car ownership highlight the growth potential of the Thai and Indonesian markets. In Thailand, one out of five people owns a car; in Indonesia, one in 60. By contrast, there is one car per 1.3 people in the U.S. and one per 1.7 in Japan.
Moreover, Asean plans to create a single market in late 2015. This should add further impetus to auto and auto parts exports within the region, and facilitate production and marketing. The Asean Economic Community is expected to simplify procedures for foreign companies wanting to set up shop in countries in the region.
Despite the promise, automakers face significant challenges. Volkswagen, which had planned to break ground on a plant in Indonesia earlier this year, put off the move until 2015 or later as the rupiah depreciated. Non-Japanese companies have also yet to create robust sales and service networks, which will likely limit their reach for potential customers. |
For a while now, the Ruby community has become enamored in the latest new hotness, evented programming and Node.js. It's gone so far that I've heard a number of prominent Rubyists saying that JavaScript and Node.js are the only sane way to handle a number of concurrent users.
I should start by saying that I personally love writing evented JavaScript in the browser, and have been giving talks (for years) about using evented JavaScript to sanely organize client-side code. I think that for the browser environment, events are where it's at. Further, I don't have any major problem with Node.js or other ways of writing server-side evented code. For instance, if I needed to write a chat server, I would almost certainly write it using Node.js or EventMachine.
However, I'm pretty tired of hearing that threads (and especially Ruby threads) are completely useless, and if you don't use evented code, you may as well be using a single process per concurrent user. To be fair, this has somewhat been the party line of the Rails team years ago, but Rails has been threadsafe since Rails 2.2, and Rails users have been taking advantage of it for some time.
Before I start, I should be clear that this post is talking about requests that spent a non-tiny amount of their time utilizing the CPU (normal web requests), even if they do spend a fair amount of time in blocking operations (disk IO, database). I am decidedly not talking about situations, like chat servers where requests sit idle for huge amounts of time with tiny amounts of intermittent CPU usage.
Threads and IO Blocking
I've heard a common misperception that Ruby inherently "blocks" when doing disk IO or making database queries. In reality, Ruby switches to another thread whenever it needs to block for IO. In other words, if a thread needs to wait, but isn't using any CPU, Ruby's built-in methods allow another waiting thread to use the CPU while the original thread waits.
If every one of your web requests uses the CPU for 30% of the time, and waits for IO for the rest of the time, you should be able to serve three requests in parallel, coming close to maxing out your CPU.
Here's a couple of diagrams. The first shows how people imagine requests work in Ruby, even in threadsafe mode. The second is how an optimal Ruby environment will actually operate. This example is extremely simplified, showing only a few parts of the request, and assuming equal time spent in areas that are not necessarily equal.
I should be clear that Ruby 1.8 spends too much time context-switching between its green threads. However, if you're not switching between threads extremely often, even Ruby 1.8's overhead will amount to a small fraction of the total time needed to serve a request. A lot of the threading benchmarks you'll see are testing pathological cases involve huge amounts of threads, not very similar to the profile of a web server.
(if you're thinking that there are caveats to my "optimal Ruby environment", keep reading)
"Threads are just HARD"
Another common gripe that pushes people to evented programming is that working with threads is just too hard. Working hard to avoid sharing state and using locks where necessary is just too tricky for the average web developer, the argument goes.
I agree with this argument in the general case. Web development, on the other hand, has an extremely clean concurrency primitive: the request. In a threadsafe Rails application, the framework manages threads and uses an environment hash (one per request) to store state. When you work inside a Rails controller, you're working inside an object that is inherently unshared. When you instantiate a new instance of an ActiveRecord model inside the controller, it is rooted to that controller, and is therefore not used between live threads.
It is, of course, possible to use global state, but the vast majority of normal, day-to-day Rails programming (and for that matter, programming in any web framework in any language with a request model) is inherently threadsafe. This means that Ruby will transparently handle switching back and forth between active requests when you do something blocking (file, database, or memcache access, for instance), and you don't need to personally manage the problems the arise when doing concurrent programming.
This is significantly less true about applications, like chat servers, that keep open a huge number of requests. In those cases, a lot of the application logic happens outside the individual request, so you need to personally manage shared state.
Historical Ruby Issues
What I've been talking about so far is how stock Ruby ought to operate. Unfortunately, a group of things have historically conspired to make Ruby's concurrency story look much worse than it actually ought to be.
Most obviously, early versions of Rails were not threadsafe. As a result, all Rails users were operating with a mutex around the entire request, forcing Rails to behave like the first "Imagined" diagram above. Annoyingly, Mongrel, the most common Ruby web server for a few years, hardcoded this mutex into its Rails handler. As a result, if you spun up Rails in "threadsafe" mode a year ago using Mongrel, you would have gotten exactly zero concurrency. Also, even in threadsafe mode (when not using the built-in Rails support) Mongrel spins up a new thread for every request, not exactly optimal.
Second, the most common database driver, mysql is a very poorly behaved C extension. While built-in I/O (file or pipe access) correctly alerts Ruby to switch to another thread when it hits a blocking region, other C extensions don't always do so. For safety, Ruby does not allow a context switch while in C code unless the C code explicitly tells the VM that it's ok to do so.
All of the Data Objects drivers, which we built for DataMapper, correctly cause a context switch when entering a blocking area of their C code. The mysqlplus gem, released in March 2009, was designed to be a drop-in replacement for the mysql gem, but fix this problem. The new mysql2 gem, written by Brian Lopez, is a drop-in replacement for the old gem, also correctly handles encodings in Ruby 1.9, and is the new default MySQL driver in Rails.
Because Rails shipped with the (broken) mysql gem by default, even people running on working web servers (i.e. not mongrel) in threadsafe mode would have seen a large amount of their potential concurrency eaten away because their database driver wasn't alerting Ruby that concurrent operation was possible. With mysql2 as the default, people should see real gains on threadsafe Rails applications.
A lot of people talk about the GIL (global interpreter lock) in Ruby 1.9 as a death knell for concurrency. For the uninitiated, the GIL disallows multiple CPU cores from running Ruby code simultaneously. That does mean that you'll need one Ruby process (or thereabouts) per CPU core, but it also means that if your multithreaded code is running correctly, you should need only one process per CPU core. I've heard tales of six or more processes per core. Since it's possible to fully utilize a CPU with a single process (even in Ruby 1.8), these applications could get a 4-6x improvement in RAM usage (depending on context-switching overhead) by switching to threadsafe mode and using modern drivers for blocking operations.
JRuby, Ruby 1.9 and Rubinius, and the Future
Finally, JRuby already runs without a global interpreter lock, allowing your code to run in true parallel, and to fully utilize all available CPUs with a single JRuby process. A future version of Rubinius will likely ship without a GIL (the work has already begun), also opening the door to utilizing all CPUs with a single Ruby process.
And all modern Ruby VMs that run Rails (Ruby 1.9's YARV, Rubinius, and JRuby) use native threads, eliminating the annoying tax that you need to pay for using threads in Ruby 1.8. Again, though, since that tax is small relative to the time for your requests, you'd likely see a non-trivial improvement in latency in applications that spend time in the database layer.
To be honest, a big part of the reason for the poor practical concurrency story in Ruby has been that the Rails project didn't take it seriously, which it difficult to get traction for efforts to fix a part of the problem (like the mysql driver).
We took concurrency very seriously in the Merb project, leading to the development of proper database drivers for DataMapper (Merb's ORM), and a top-to-bottom understanding of parts of the stack that could run in parallel (even on Ruby 1.8), but which weren't. Rails 3 doesn't bring anything new to the threadsafety of Rails itself (Rails 2.3 was threadsafe too), but by making the mysql2 driver the default, we have eliminated a large barrier to Rails applications performing well in threadsafe mode without any additional research.
UPDATE: It's worth pointing to Charlie Nutter's 2008 threadsafety post, where he talked about how he expected threadsafe Rails would impact the landscape. Unfortunately, the blocking MySQL driver held back some of the promise of the improvement for the vast majority of Rails users. |
MINNEAPOLIS -- Since the beginning of this year, 22 states and the District of Columbia have introduced bills that would assess an excise tax on electronic cigarettes and nicotine liquid solutions used in e-cigarettes. With some state legislatures already adjourned and other states moving closer to adjournment for the year, the picture on e-cigarette taxes is becoming clearer.
What is interesting is not just the fact that so many states are considering e-cigarette taxes, but also the different methods being proposed to tax e-cigarettes. So far, bills in eight states to tax e-cigarettes have either been defeated or died due to adjournment of the legislature.
These eight states and the proposed tax rates that failed include the following:
Arizona: 18 cents per milliliter of nicotine solution.
Arkansas: 7.5 cents per milliliter of nicotine solution.
Indiana: 24% of the wholesale price.
Kentucky: 40% of the wholesale price.
Montana: 1.73 cents per milligram of nicotine solution.
Nevada: 30% of the wholesale price.
New Mexico: 4 cents per milligram of nicotine solution.
Virginia: 18 cents and 40 cents per milliliter of nicotine solution.
The other legislatures with tax bills still pending include the following states:
Alabama: 25 cents-per-milliliter of nicotine solution.
Hawaii: 70% of the wholesale price.
Maine: Cigarette tax rate of $2.00.
Massachusetts: Cigarette tax rate of $3.51.
Minnesota: 30 cents per milliliter of nicotine solution.
New Hampshire: 73.94% of the wholesale price.
New Jersey: 75% of the wholesale price.
New York: 75% of the wholesale price.
North Carolina: 3 cents per milliliter of nicotine solution.
Ohio: 60% of the wholesale price.
Oregon: 81.25% of the wholesale price.
Rhode Island: 80% of the wholesale price.
Vermont: 46% of the wholesale price.
Washington: 60% of the retail price.
Washington D.C.: 70% of the wholesale price.
For those state legislatures that have not passed an e-cigarette tax bill, there are several key reasons for not enacting such a tax. First, there is uncertainty as to how e-cigarettes and nicotine liquid should be taxed. That uncertainty is reflected in the five different tax methods proposed under these bills including an OTP rate, a per-milliliter rate, a per-milligram rate, a cigarette tax rate, and a percent of the retail price. Second, e-cigarette taxes will not generate a significant amount of tax revenue. Third, some lawmakers do not want to use tax policy that would discourage people from transitioning to e-cigarettes.
The tax landscape on e-cigarette taxes will become clearer as additional states wind up their 2015 state legislative sessions in the next several months.
During January of this year, bills have been introduced in eight state legislatures to assess a tax on electronic cigarettes or the nicotine liquid solution used in e-cigarettes. These proposed tax bills include the following:
Arkansas: House Bill 1156 would assess a tax of 7.5 cents per milliliter of nicotine liquid solution.
Indiana: Senate Bill 384 would tax e-cigarette vapor products at a rate of .83 cents per milligram of nicotine in each milliliter of nicotine liquid solution.
Nevada: Senate Bill 79 assesses a tax on nicotine liquid solution at the rate of 30% of the wholesale price.
New Mexico: Senate Bill 65 taxes a tax of four cents per milligram of liquid nicotine liquid solution in an electronic cigarette.
New York: Assembly Bill 296 and Senate Bill 722 tax electronic cigarettes and electronic cigarette cartridges at a rate of 75% of the wholesale price.
Oregon: Two bills, D1037 and D2268, would expand the definition of tobacco product for purposes of taxation to include electronic cigarettes and nicotine liquid solution in order to
apply the state’s tobacco tax rate of 65% of the wholesale price.
Virginia: House Bill 1310 imposes a tax on electronic cigarettes and other vapor products at a rate of 40 cents per milliliter of nicotine liquid solution.
Washington: House Bill 1645 and Senate Bill 5573 would impose a tax on electronic vapor products at a rate of 95% of the taxable sales price.
With many state legislative sessions just beginning this month, plus four state legislatures that open their 2015 legislative sessions in the next month or two, there could be bills introduced in other states to propose a tax on electronic cigarettes or the nicotine liquid solution used in e-cigarettes.
Currently, only Minnesota and North Carolina tax the sale of e-cigarettes with Minnesota assessing a tax rate of 95% of the wholesale price and North Carolina assessing a tax rate of five cents per milliliter of liquid nicotine solution. |
Miami police shut down roads, sealed off an area and cleared the site near an art show after security dogs reacted to a suspicious crate on Saturday morning.
But when police opened the crate outside the Art Miami tent at the Art Basel festival, they found it contained a “punk” style picture of Hillary Clinton, with pink hair, an eyebrow piercing and a studded jacket covered with pins and buttons.
Police ran the artwork through the X-ray scanners and it was deemed free from any suspicious material, the Miami Herald reported.
Fair director Nick Korniloff said that the two dogs reacted to the crate during a pre-show check shortly after 8 a.m., prompting organizers to clear the site. Both the Art Miami tent and a tent for Context, connected by a tunnel, were closed off. The package was then searched and the painting of the former Democratic presidential candidate was found inside. ... “We had to err on the side of caution,” Korniloff said. Both tents eventually reopened around 10 a.m. The painting — titled “Punk Hillary” — had been shipped with a similar portrait of President Donald Trump (called “Trump Pimp”), depicting him in a zebra-printed hat with a gold dollar-sign chain around his neck. The Trump portrait had already been removed from the crate before the security check. The false alarm delayed the opening of the tent located at One Herald Plaza for dozens of people, including event staff and attendees. After police blocked off a section of Biscayne Boulevard with their cruisers and caution tape, many lingering outside were blocked from entering the area. As a gray sky threatened rain on those waiting outside, joggers and other passersby were told to cross to the north side of 15th Street around the blocked-off area Saturday morning. Miami-Dade Transit also redirected its routes, temporarily closing the Arsht Performing Arts Center Metrobus terminal.
Gallery owner Ken Hashimoto said police still don't know why the police dogs hit on the gaudy portrait.
“They have no idea,” he said. “My thought is a Republican bomb dog.” |
Photo
Good Tuesday morning from Washington, where immigration remains the No. 1 topic of discussion while President Obama also keeps an eye on Iran talks and the situation in Ferguson, Mo. Senator Mary L. Landrieu bets her career on the Keystone XL pipeline, and the city continues to feel the repercussions of David H. Petraeus’s extramarital affair. In the Senate, an overhaul of domestic spying operations is on the line.
While the issue has been overshadowed by the immigration debate, an overhaul of domestic spying operations is set for a test this evening in a Senate vote spurred by disclosures about National Security Agency operations by Edward J. Snowden.
Senators will decide whether to open debate on the U.S.A. Freedom Act, a bipartisan proposal backed by both progressives and conservatives in an attempt to end the intelligence agency’s once-secret program, which systematically collects data in bulk about Americans’ phone calls.
The bill’s supporters, led by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, say they are close to assembling the 60 votes needed to bring it to the floor. Supporters have highlighted support for the bill from Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech companies.
The bill would allow the phone data to remain in the custody with the phone companies. It would also give phone and Internet companies more freedom to disclose orders they have received from the government.
The measure faces serious opposition. Some believe it could harm national security, and others argue it does not go far enough in protecting individuals and consumers. The White House warned yesterday that if the bill is blocked, major surveillance programs due to expire next summer may be in jeopardy.
— Carl Hulse
President Obama had been back less than a day from a weeklong trip to Asia but he wasted no time yesterday in sounding out Democratic senators on immigration.
The discussions were broad, congressional officials said, and Mr. Obama did not provide a timetable for executive actions that could protect as many as five million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
But the conversations were a clear signal that the president was preparing to move soon, and came as top Senate Democrats sent a letter urging the president to do so. Immigration activists speculated that an announcement could come before week’s end.
But that’s not the only item on his agenda. Today, Mr. Obama faces a Senate vote on a measure that would force him to approve, or veto, the Keystone XL pipeline.
In St. Louis, officials are bracing for possible unrest when the grand jury in the Michael Brown case makes its decision public. That could draw Mr. Obama, and the Justice Department, back into that volatile situation.
And overseas, the president’s team is probably in the final week of negotiations with Iran over the fate of its nuclear program.
For a so-called lame duck, it promises to be a busy week.
— Michael D. Shear
Last week, Senator Mary L. Landrieu got her colleagues to agree to hold a vote that would expedite approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Then yesterday she found protesters laying down an inflatable pipeline on the lawn of her home a few blocks from the Capitol. But the question remains: Will the vote help her hold her seat in a runoff next month in petroleum-producing Louisiana?
Ms. Landrieu, a Democrat, received significant publicity in demanding a pipeline vote as soon as Congress returned. It’s scheduled for today, and win or lose, she can argue that she was able to force the Senate to be decisive — even if the vote was allowed mainly to try to rescue her.
But even if Ms. Landrieu were to weld the pipeline together herself, it might not be enough.
She is being significantly outspent by Republicans and is at a disadvantage in a head-to-head race against Representative Bill Cassidy, her Republican opponent. Fellow Democrats increasingly see her position as precarious.
— Carl Hulse
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who is expected to be re-elected today as the House Democratic leader, moved yesterday to put her stamp on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by installing Representative Ben Ray Luján as its chairman.
Mr. Luján, from a prominent New Mexico political family, puts a younger lawmaker — he’s 42 — with appeal to Hispanic groups at the head of the committee. (He replaces Representative Steve Israel, who is 56 and from reliably blue New York.)
As House minority leader, Ms. Pelosi gets to pick the congressional campaign chairman. But she is having to fight to get another of her allies installed as the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Ms. Pelosi wants a close friend, Representative Anna G. Eshoo of California, rather than Representative Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, who has the advantage of seniority.
It’s a test of whether Ms. Pelosi still has clout with her colleagues after the electoral pounding her party took two weeks ago.
— Carl Hulse
President Obama will receive a briefing on the Ebola response at the White House and participate in an ambassadorial credentialing ceremony.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden meets with Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Republic before leaving for a trip to Morocco.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, holds a news conference on the Affordable Care Act in Houston.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about Ebola at 1 p.m.
Freshman House members gather for their class photo at 8:15 a.m.
The list is an all-star lineup of the Obama administration’s national security team.
There are cabinet members, current and former; intelligence chiefs; a constellation of generals; and former F.B.I. and C.I.A. directors. They are all potential witnesses in a lawsuit filed by the Florida socialite Jill Kelley. Her lawyers have told the Justice Department they want to depose each person on the list or subpoena documents from them.
Ms. Kelley and her husband are suing the federal government for disclosing her identity in connection with the scandal that led David H. Petraeus to resign as the C.I.A.’s director in November 2012.
Alan Raul, a lawyer for Ms. Kelley, and a spokesman for the Justice Department refused to comment. The names have not been made public, but a person affiliated with the litigation provided them, and the biggest are:
Gen. John R. Allen.
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
Jeh C. Johnson, secretary of homeland security.
Robert S. Mueller III, former director of the F.B.I.
Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Former Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta.
General Petraeus, former C.I.A. director
If the suit goes to trial, and they are all called to testify, the witness list would rival the star power at the Scooter Libby trial in 2007.
— Michael S. Schmidt
The National Journal lists the reasons why an executive order to defer deportations of some illegal immigrants may hurt both parties.
At National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy lays out the case for President Obama’s impeachment.
Uber’s chief executive gave a big thumbs-up to the Affordable Care Act over the weekend, and Republicans aren’t happy, according to New York magazine.
What will the “Duck Dynasty” family say? House Republicans have passed a $120 million increase in an annual levy on duck hunters, Politico reports.
The ad wars continue in the Louisiana runoff, with Senator Landrieu saying the latest commercial from her Republican opponentis sexist, according to The Times-Picayune.
Pope Francis has been invited to address Congress, The National Catholic Reporter says. He would be the first pope to do so. |
A few months ago we showed you how to make beautiful fractals in polymer clay.
Take that idea, run with it, and where do you end up? In the kitchen, making Sierpinski cookies! These cookies, made from contrasting colors of butter cookie dough, are a tasty realization of the Sierpinski carpet, producing lovely, edible fractals.
As with our earlier project involving clay, you can make these by using a simple iterative algorithmic process of stretching out the dough and folding it over onto itself in a specific pattern.
For choice of materials, we found the pixel cookies on Instructables to be inspiring. ( You can, of course, make a representation of a fractal using pixels, like these Sierpinski triangles. However, there is a big logical difference between generating a fractal algorithmically versus just making a picture of one with pixels!)
Our method starts with an initial pattern. Once that is made, it is stretched out to make it small enough to form the basis of the next iteration, which is in turn stretched out and folded to make the next iteration. Again, we’ve used this method before with fimo fractals, but the time for cookie fractals has come!
The pixel cookie advice to use the butter cookie recipe from Cook’s Illustrated is excellent (they even posted the recipe). You’ll need dough of contrasting colors. You can use food coloring if you like, but we suggest chocolate.
To make a batch of chocolate dough, reduce the flour by 1/4 cup and substitute 1/4 cup of cocoa powder. Also reduce the butter by a tablespoon and mix about a tablespoon of melted bittersweet chocolate into the cream cheese before adding it to the dough. Chilling the dough isn’t necessary, as you want it to be soft enough to be workable.
For the first block, you’ll need to roll out eight strips of one color and one of the contrasting color. After rolling them out, form each one into a square, then stack them to form a larger block with the contrasting color in the center. You’ll want to slice off the end of the stack to even it up. Use a sharp knife and cut carefully so you don’t squish the pattern.
To draw the block out longer and thinner without disturbing the pattern, turn it over frequently. You can either squeeze the sides, then rotate, or press the top, then rotate. It helps to pull it out twice as long as it was, then cut in half, and repeat until you have eight equal pieces, each about as long as the original block. Parchment paper is a good work surface for this. Keep an extra sheet handy for when the one you’re working on gets too sticky.
Roll out another length of the contrasting color, using the same amount of dough you used for the original pieces. Form it into a square, and stack the pieces up with the contrasting piece in the center again.
As you draw out the block, the edges of the individual sections will merge. If you want to cut samples of the different iterations, this is the time to do it – just after the edges have merged sufficiently. Again, lengthen it until it is twice as long, cut, and lengthen those pieces, cut again and repeat.
When you add another piece of contrasting color and stack everything up, the pieces will again be somewhat separate. You will want to draw it out a little smaller to merge the blocks before slicing.
With three iterations, it’s now ready to slice. (If brave, feel free to try more iterations.) Chilling it would probably be a good idea, but if you’re impatient, be sure to rotate between slices to keep the pattern from getting too squished in any one direction. Slice carefully with a very sharp knife or a cheese wire.
One final (but optional) step is to gently roll each cookie out to smooth the surface texture out.
Before…
and after baking.
Admire them while you can as they disappear quickly.
Fractal foods are not particularly common, but they are a lot of fun, like this fantastic fractal pizza. So, what fractal foods can you come up with? We’d love to see pictures of your fractal food in our flickr pool. |
It’s been a long time since the Calgary Flames have had a goaltender they can confidently call their number one.
After Miikka Kiprusoff retired in 2013, a strenuous search for his replacement between the pipes began. Jonas Hiller, Joni Ortio, Karri Ramo, Brian Elliott, and Chad Johnson were among the goalies given the opportunity, but all failed to permanently grab the reins.
Enter Mike Smith.
The 35-year-old was brought in to be the undisputed starting net minder, and he’s already proving to be the real deal.
“He’s been unbelievable for us so far, huge for us,” said Flames forward Michael Frolik in a CTV News article. “We’ve got to clean up and not give up too many shots, but it’s nice to know we have a really solid goaltender back there who will stop a lot of pucks.”
Related: Coyotes Trade Mike Smith to Flames
The Key Numbers
Although it’s only been three games, Smith’s 1.68 goals-against average (GAA) and .957 save percentage has come against the Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, and Anaheim Ducks, with the Oilers and Jets both finishing in the top ten in scoring last season.
The veteran completes a well-rounded roster that, with the off-season addition of defenseman Travis Hamonic, boasts arguably the best defensive corps in the NHL.
In their two most recent trips to the post-season in 2014-15 and 2016-17, the Flames finished ranked 14 of 16 and 15 of 16 respectively in goals-against per game. Not exactly the recipe for a deep playoff run.
Although Smith’s playoff experience is limited, he proved he has the tools to perform at a high level, deep in the playoffs.
In the 2011-12 season, he took the Arizona (Phoenix) Coyotes all the way to the conference finals, where they came up just short of the Stanley Cup Final, falling to the Los Angeles Kings.
Throughout that playoff run, Smith was nearly unbeatable. In 16 games, he boasted a 1.99 GAA to go along with a .944 save percentage, knocking out the Chicago Blackhawks and Nashville Predators in the process.
Even though he was playing behind one of the more solid Coyotes blue lines to date, including Keith Yandle, Derek Morris, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Michal Rozsival, he’ll have an even more concrete unit in front of him in Calgary.
Battle in the Desert
Other than the 2011-12 season, he was left out to dry for the entirety of his Coyotes tenure. In his last five seasons with the club, they ranked in the bottom half of the league in goals-against each year. Not because of poor goaltending, but because of an immense amount of shots allowed.
In that same time span, the Coyotes finished in the bottom ten in the league for shots allowed per game, including a 29 out of 30 ranking in 2016-17.
After continually facing a high volume of shots year after year in Arizona, Smith now joins a team that has finished in the top half of the league in shots allowed per game for the last four seasons, a change that is sure to only make him better.
In the 2016-17 season, Smith faced a whopping 1,819 shots with the Coyotes, posting a 2.92 GAA and .914 save percentage. In comparison, the Flames’ goaltender at the time, Brian Elliot, faced only 1338 shots and posted a slightly better GAA of 2.55, but a worse save percentage of .910.
When facing nearly 500 more shots than Elliott, it’s expected he would have a higher GAA. But the save percentage is what speaks volumes.
With the potential of facing up to 500 less shots this season, the new Flames net minder could be on track for a career year. If he were to achieve that feat, he and his new club will be in for a special season.
“I was told by a very smart guy who has won a lot of games that I can have the best penalty kill meeting, I can have the best practice the day before the game, and I can have the best power play meeting, but if my goalie is no good, you’re not going to win,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan in a Calgary Herald article. “Smitty coming in is going to be a workhorse for us. I watched him play in big games, and he thrives in those things.”
Outside of the Pipes
Not only is Smith going to be a major upgrade between the pipes, he’s also going to have an impact on the offensive front.
He’s well-known for his ability to play the puck, and is arguably the best goalie in the NHL at doing so.
Having a goalie that can handle the puck the way he can opens up a whole new playbook for the Flames. It will allow for more threatening transitions, especially with the likes of Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan, and offer many different looks, making it harder on opposing defenses to try and control.
His ability will make it harder for other teams on the forecheck, forcing them to dump the puck into certain areas, which Flames defenders will be able to key in on.
Related: The Calgary Flames Sixth Defenseman
“Our transition game is going to change a lot, where he can move it up and then we’re going the other way on the rush right away,” said Flames goaltending coach Jordan Sigalet in a Calgary Herald article. “He always says that a lot of guys get the wrong message when he’s with a team that now they think they don’t have to come back for the puck because he’s going to move it up. But he says it’s the opposite. He wants our guys coming back. It gives him more options. Sometimes, he can suck in the forecheck that way and open up our forwards up front.”
With the addition of Smith, as well as Hamonic and even Jagr, the Flames have completed the puzzle that is their roster.
They have all the pieces needed to make a deep playoff run, and barring multiple long-term injuries, they will do just that. |
Not to be confused with dwarf star
In astronomy, the term "compact star" (or "compact object") refers collectively to white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. It would grow to include exotic stars if such hypothetical dense bodies are confirmed.
Most compact stars are the endpoints of stellar evolution, and thus often referred to as stellar remnants, the form of the remnant depending primarily on the mass of the star when it formed. All of these objects have a high mass relative to their radius, giving them a very high density. The term compact star is often used when the exact nature of the star is not known, but evidence suggests that it is very massive and has a small radius, thus implying one of the above-mentioned categories. A compact star that is not a black hole may be called a degenerate star.
Formation [ edit ]
The usual endpoint of stellar evolution is the formation of a compact star.
Most stars will eventually come to a point in their evolution when the outward radiation pressure from the nuclear fusions in its interior can no longer resist the ever-present gravitational forces. When this happens, the star collapses under its own weight and undergoes the process of stellar death. For most stars, this will result in the formation of a very dense and compact stellar remnant, also known as a compact star.
Compact stars have no internal energy production, but will—with the exception of black holes—usually radiate for millions of years with excess heat left from the collapse itself.[1]
According to the most recent understanding, compact stars could also form during the phase separations of the early Universe following the Big Bang.[citation needed] Primordial origins of known compact objects have not been determined with certainty.
Lifetime [ edit ]
Although compact stars may radiate, and thus cool off and lose energy, they do not depend on high temperatures to maintain their structure, as ordinary stars do. Barring external disturbances and proton decay, they can persist virtually forever. Black holes are however generally believed to finally evaporate from Hawking radiation after trillions of years. According to our current standard models of physical cosmology, all stars will eventually evolve into cool and dark compact stars, by the time the Universe enters the so-called degenerate era in a very distant future.
The somewhat wider definition of compact objects often includes smaller solid objects such as planets, asteroids, and comets. There is a remarkable variety of stars and other clumps of hot matter, but all matter in the Universe must eventually end as some form of compact stellar or substellar object, according to the theory of thermodynamics.
White dwarfs [ edit ]
The Eskimo Nebula is illuminated by the white dwarf at its center.
The stars called white or degenerate dwarfs are made up mainly of degenerate matter; typically carbon and oxygen nuclei in a sea of degenerate electrons. White dwarfs arise from the cores of main-sequence stars and are therefore very hot when they are formed. As they cool they will redden and dim until they eventually become dark black dwarfs. White dwarfs were observed in the 19th century, but the extremely high densities and pressures they contain were not explained until the 1920s.
The equation of state for degenerate matter is "soft", meaning that adding more mass will result in a smaller object. Continuing to add mass to what is now a white dwarf, the object shrinks and the central density becomes even larger, with higher degenerate-electron energies. The star's radius has now shrunk to only a few thousand kilometers, and the mass is approaching the theoretical upper limit of the mass of a white dwarf, the Chandrasekhar limit, about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun ( M ☉ ).
If we were to take matter from the center of our white dwarf and slowly start to compress it, we would first see electrons forced to combine with nuclei, changing their protons to neutrons by inverse beta decay. The equilibrium would shift towards heavier, neutron-richer nuclei that are not stable at everyday densities. As the density increases, these nuclei become still larger and less well-bound. At a critical density of about 4×1014 kg/m3), called the neutron drip line, the atomic nucleus would tend to fall apart into protons and neutrons. Eventually we would reach a point where the matter is on the order of the density (c. 2×1017 kg/m3) of an atomic nucleus. At this point the matter is chiefly free neutrons, with a small amount of protons and electrons.
Neutron stars [ edit ]
In certain binary stars containing a white dwarf, mass is transferred from the companion star onto the white dwarf, eventually pushing it over the Chandrasekhar limit. Electrons react with protons to form neutrons and thus no longer supply the necessary pressure to resist gravity, causing the star to collapse. If the center of the star is composed mostly of carbon and oxygen then such a gravitational collapse will ignite runaway fusion of the carbon and oxygen, resulting in a Type Ia supernova that entirely blows apart the star before the collapse can become irreversible. If the center is composed mostly of magnesium or heavier elements, the collapse continues.[2][3][4] As the density further increases, the remaining electrons react with the protons to form more neutrons. The collapse continues until (at higher density) the neutrons become degenerate. A new equilibrium is possible after the star shrinks by three orders of magnitude, to a radius between 10 and 20 km. This is a neutron star.
Although the first neutron star was not observed until 1967 when the first radio pulsar was discovered, neutron stars were proposed by Baade and Zwicky in 1933, only one year after the neutron was discovered in 1932. They realized that because neutron stars are so dense, the collapse of an ordinary star to a neutron star would liberate a large amount of gravitational potential energy, providing a possible explanation for supernovae.[5][6][7] This is the explanation for supernovae of types Ib, Ic, and II. Such supernovae occur when the iron core of a massive star exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit and collapses to a neutron star.
Like electrons, neutrons are fermions. They therefore provide neutron degeneracy pressure to support a neutron star against collapse. In addition, repulsive neutron-neutron interactions[citation needed] provide additional pressure. Like the Chandrasekhar limit for white dwarfs, there is a limiting mass for neutron stars: the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit, where these forces are no longer sufficient to hold up the star. As the forces in dense hadronic matter are not well understood, this limit is not known exactly but is thought to be between 2 and 3 M ☉ . If more mass accretes onto a neutron star, eventually this mass limit will be reached. What happens next is not completely clear.
Black holes [ edit ]
A simulated black hole of ten solar masses, at a distance of 600km.
As more mass is accumulated, equilibrium against gravitational collapse reaches its breaking point. The star's pressure is insufficient to counterbalance gravity and a catastrophic gravitational collapse occurs in milliseconds. The escape velocity at the surface, already at least 1/3 light speed, quickly reaches the velocity of light. No energy nor matter can escape: a black hole has formed. All light will be trapped within an event horizon, and so a black hole appears truly black, except for the possibility of Hawking radiation. It is presumed that the collapse will continue.
In the classical theory of general relativity, a gravitational singularity occupying no more than a point will form. There may be a new halt of the catastrophic gravitational collapse at a size comparable to the Planck length, but at these lengths there is no known theory of gravity to predict what will happen. Adding any extra mass to the black hole will cause the radius of the event horizon to increase linearly with the mass of the central singularity. This will induce certain changes in the properties of the black hole, such as reducing the tidal stress near the event horizon, and reducing the gravitational field strength at the horizon. However, there will not be any further qualitative changes in the structure associated with any mass increase.
Alternative black hole models [ edit ]
Exotic stars [ edit ]
An exotic star is a hypothetical compact star composed of something other than electrons, protons, and neutrons balanced against gravitational collapse by degeneracy pressure or other quantum properties. These include strange stars (composed of strange matter) and the more speculative preon stars (composed of preons).
Exotic stars are hypothetical, but observations released by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on April 10, 2002 detected two candidate strange stars, designated RX J1856.5-3754 and 3C58, which had previously been thought to be neutron stars. Based on the known laws of physics, the former appeared much smaller and the latter much colder than they should, suggesting that they are composed of material denser than neutronium. However, these observations are met with skepticism by researchers who say the results were not conclusive.[citation needed]
Quark stars and strange stars [ edit ]
If neutrons are squeezed enough at a high temperature, they will decompose into their component quarks, forming what is known as a quark matter. In this case, the star will shrink further and become denser, but instead of a total collapse into a black hole, it is possible, that the star may stabilize itself and survive in this state indefinitely, as long as no extra mass is added. It has, to some extent, become a very large nucleon. A-type star in this hypothetical state is called a quark star or more specifically a strange star. The pulsars RX J1856.5-3754 and 3C58 have been suggested as possible quark stars. Most neutron stars are thought to hold a core of quark matter, but it has proven hard to determine observationally.
Preon stars [ edit ]
A preon star is a proposed type of compact star made of preons, a group of hypothetical subatomic particles. Preon stars would be expected to have huge densities, exceeding 1023 kilogram per cubic meter – intermediate between quark stars and black holes. Preon stars could originate from supernova explosions or the Big Bang; however, current observations from particle accelerators speak against the existence of preons.[citation needed]
Q stars [ edit ]
Q stars are hypothetical compact, heavier neutron stars with an exotic state of matter where particle numbers are preserved with radii less than 1.5 times the corresponding Schwarzschild radius. Q stars are also called "gray holes".
Electroweak stars [ edit ]
An electroweak star is a theoretical type of exotic star, whereby the gravitational collapse of the star is prevented by radiation pressure resulting from electroweak burning, that is, the energy released by conversion of quarks to leptons through the electroweak force. This process occurs in a volume at the star's core approximately the size of an apple, containing about two Earth masses.[9]
Boson star [ edit ]
A boson star is a hypothetical astronomical object that is formed out of particles called bosons (conventional stars are formed out of fermions). For this type of star to exist, there must be a stable type of boson with repulsive self-interaction. As of 2016 there is no significant evidence that such a star exists. However, it may become possible to detect them by the gravitational radiation emitted by a pair of co-orbiting boson stars.[10][11]
Compact relativistic objects and the generalized uncertainty principle [ edit ]
Based on the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP), proposed by some approaches to quantum gravity such as string theory and doubly special relativity, the effect of GUP on the thermodynamic properties of compact stars with two different components has been studied, recently.[12] Tawfik et al. noted that the existence of quantum gravity correction tends to resist the collapse of stars if the GUP parameter is taking values between Planck scale and electroweak scale. Comparing with other approaches, it was found that the radii of compact stars should be smaller and increasing energy decreases the radii of the compact stars.
References [ edit ] |
Billions of dollars are said to be missing in the 1MDB scandal, nearly $700 million of which was deposited into Najib's bank account alone
Singapore's central bank on Tuesday said it was kicking out Switzerland's BSI Bank, which has been linked to a global money-laundering scandal that has embroiled neighbouring Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak.
In the toughest legal action so far in the crisis rocking Malaysian state fund 1MDB, Switzerland also disclosed it had launched criminal proceedings against the parent firm BSI SA for "deficiencies" in its internal organisation.
“BSI Bank is the worst case of control lapses and gross misconduct that we have seen in the Singapore financial sector," Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said in a statement.
MAS said it had asked state prosecutors to investigate six senior executives of BSI Bank for possible criminal offences and fined it Sg$ 13.3 million ($9.6 million) for 41 breaches of Singapore's laws against money laundering.
Among those facing investigation is former chief executive Hans Peter Brunner.
Two Singaporean executives of the bank are already facing criminal proceedings in the city-state, which is Southeast Asia's financial hub and hosts more than 200 banks.
BSI has been operating as a merchant bank in Singapore since November 2005, offering private banking services to wealthy individuals.
The last time Singapore stripped a merchant bank of its status was in 1984, when the local branch of Jardine Fleming was shut down for "serious lapses" in its advisory work.
Najib, who founded 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in 2009, has battled allegations that billions were looted from the investment vehicle in a vast campaign of fraud and embezzlement stretching from the Middle East to the Caymans.
- Denials -
The fund, which ran up more than $11 billion in debt in a series of much-questioned investments, has steadfastly denied money was stolen or that it was in financial trouble.
Najib also faced questions after the Wall Street Journal revealed $681 million in transfers to his personal bank accounts.
But since the scandal erupted last year, Najib has weathered the allegations by curbing scrutiny by authorities, purging officials demanding accountability, and stifling media reporting.
He insists the $681 million was a gift from the Saudi royal family, most of which he returned. A Saudi official in April said that was true, but only after weeks of silence that cast doubt on the claim.
In a series of more recent reports, however, the newspaper said Malaysian investigation documents indicated more than $1 billion in 1MDB-linked money had been funnelled to Najib.
Najib and 1MDB vehemently deny that claim.
Najib has faced calls to resign but has tightened his grip on the ruling party and thwarted domestic investigations. His position is not seen as under imminent threat.
Singapore's MAS said it was "working closely" with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), which has already approved the sale of the BSI parent firm to another Swiss-based bank, EFG International.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland said Tuesday that it had opened criminal proceedings against BSI SA "based on information revealed by the criminal proceedings in the 1MDB case".
In Singapore, former BSI Bank relationship manager Yak Yew Chee is undergoing a criminal investigation for his dealings with a unit of 1MDB. His bank deposits have been frozen.
Separately, former BSI Bank wealth planner Yeo Jiawei, also a Singaporean, faces seven charges including forgery, money laundering, cheating and perverting the course of justice. He is in police custody and scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. |
“We’re excited to announce this new agreement and continue our partnership with the Mallards,” said Wild Assistant General Manager Brent Flahr. “Quad City offers a great organization that will provide our players an excellent opportunity to continue their development.”
Under the affiliation agreement, the Mallards will serve as a resource for the development efforts and personnel needs of both the Iowa and Minnesota Wild. The agreement allows for Wild prospects to be assigned to the Mallards for developmental purposes throughout the season. Minnesota’s primary development affiliate is the Iowa Wild in the American Hockey League (AHL). Quad City served as a CHL affiliate for the Wild in 2013-14 and were a secondary ECHL affiliate in 2014-15. Minnesota’s primary ECHL affiliate last season was the Alaska Aces.
“We’re very excited about not only extending our affiliation agreement with the Minnesota and Iowa Wild but also serving as the Wild’s exclusive ECHL affiliate,” said Mallards President Bob McNamara. “Continuing our affiliation will give the fans of the Quad Cities the chance to watch some very exciting Wild prospects at the iWireless Center and give our players a great opportunity to take the next step in their careers.”
About the Quad City Mallards |
(WSB photo from March 2016, looking east from west of 30th SW)
Back in February, we brought you first word of King County’s plan to build a sidewalk and replace road panels along the south side of SW Roxbury between 28th and 30th SW (right side of our file photo above). Today, the county is saying the work will start in “late May,” and will go like this:
·Work scheduled from late May-July, if weather cooperates ·Area is SW Roxbury Street between 28th Avenue SW and 30th Avenue SW ·One lane of road will be closed from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., each day ·Flaggers will direct two-way vehicle traffic ·Pedestrians will be detoured ·Roxhill Elementary bus loading areas will be moved to west edge of the school property ·Businesses along this section of SW Roxbury Street will remain open and access provided at all times. Access points will be provided for the gas station, the auto parts store/latte stand and auto repair shop.
Our February report has more details on that; the county also has sent out this mailer: |
When Wolfenstein: The New Order released in 2014, it was just another shooting game. A bloody excellent shooting game, yes, but in terms of its reception in the greater, non-gaming world: a non-event.
Fast forward to 2017, and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus is attracting a fair bit more attention than its predecessor did pre-release—especially off the back of last week's "Make America Nazi-Free Again" trailer. It's doing so because, at a time when racist intolerance and bigotry is alarmingly foregrounded in American life, "embracing an anti-Nazi stance" can, in some quarters—unaccountably, scarily—appear quite brave.
Bethesda's Pete Hines made his company's vehemently anti-Nazi stance explicit last week, while also adding that Wolfenstein 2's depiction of a United States ruled by a fascist regime is a "pure coincidence". But it's still a timely game, disturbingly enough, and I sat down with its creative director Jens Matthies to talk about this stuff, as well as a bunch more.
JENS MATTHIES Jens is the creative director of Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, as well as its predecessor The New Order. He's also a co-founder of Machine Games.
PC Gamer: You might not have the figures on hand, but a lot of Nazis die in this game. How many roughly? Can you give us a figure?
Jens Matthies: I can probably give you a figure but I have to think about that.
[Jens picks up his phone and, after a minute of complete silence, continues.]
I would say, close to a thousand. That’s what I think. That’s a little bit speculative, but in the neighbourhood of one thousand. Let me revise that: I mean about a thousand personal kills, but then there are a few thousand impersonal kills as well.
I’m happy with that figure. When The New Order came out it wasn’t such a big deal that you were mowing down Nazis in a video game en masse. But in 2017 it is. Pete Hines even addressed it directly last week. What’s your personal response to Wolfenstein suddenly being a cathartic and timely game, given the current political environment?
JM: Well, it is quite a coincidence because that’s actually the theme of the game: catharsis, in terms of the narrative. While I don’t think it’s ever a good thing to have Nazis marching anywhere in the real world, if a feeling of catharsis is what you’re after, then this game is for you.
Nazis have come to be a kind of generic comic evil in games, in the same vein as zombies. Until recently we’ve felt so remote from that history that we can just mindlessly kill them. But I was wondering, speculatively, if you were to make a third instalment, would you address the depiction of Nazis or go about the narrative any differently?
JM: No. We feel very strongly about the stories that we’re telling. This game is painted on a very grand canvas: it’s over the top and it’s bombastic and it’s pulpy. But it’s also... we never wanted to undermine or make light of what Nazi ideology is actually about. So even though we’re sort of representing it in this larger-than-life canvas, it’s not a cartoon in that sense.
We feel like that’s something we established with the first game and continue in this game. If we get the privilege of making the third entry in the trilogy, that’s what we’d continue to do. If you’re all the time worrying about the world and what other people are thinking and saying, then you stop being a good creative.
The tone is pulpy, but one of the things that elevated The New Order, and made it easier to engage with, is the fact that the characters had humanity about them—particularly, surprisingly, BJ. Are there any film makers that inspire MachineGames?
JM: Oh yeah. That’s always what we’re going for, that juxtaposition of things that are very over the top with things that are incredibly intimate and domestic and normal. And we love those authentic feeling relationships—that’s what we want the game to be about. Examples of that are the original RoboCop, which has that vibe. More than anything else, I think that’s an inspiration to me personally because seeing that as a kid was a formative experience. There are other examples: District 9 straddles that line as well, maybe Guardians of the Galaxy, though that’s extremely humorous in a way that we’re not really. Our humor is a lot darker, but it’s still on that spectrum. And of course some Tarantino movies are like that too.
One of the interesting things about Wolfenstein is that it’s marketed as this heavy duty cathartic shooting game, but it’s actually quite tough. It’s a really challenging game.
JM: Of course it is, depending on your difficulty settings. I mean, if you just want to experience the story you can just dial down the difficulty and more or less walk through it. But it’s always more fun, we feel, especially in a game with real old school merits, if it’s a real challenge. It also leads to players needing to think creatively, in ways that many games don’t allow you to do nowadays. If you run into a challenge that’s tricky to overcome, that means you need to re-examine the situation. Maybe if I try it in this order, and use these weapons, and maybe even sneak for a bit and then do this… this is the kind of game where you have a lot of those tools and options, and the combat areas are open to a lot of exploration and approaches. You can observe and figure them out, and most have a certain logic to them. So in order to encourage that kind of gameplay it has to be a little hard, and you have to die a few times just to probe the problem and figure it out.
I’m put in mind of Hotline Miami—you have to figure out a wise sequence, it has a puzzle dynamic.
JM: Yeah, and if that’s not for you you can turn down the difficulty and be more straightforward in your approach. But for the standard experience, you want that cerebral dimension of it, where it’s not just about going through the paces but actually figuring the problem out.
You’re using a new engine, and it seems to me it’d take a lot of effort to basically create the game afresh.
JM: Oh yeah. Oooh yeah.
But you’ve still retained the feel of the weaponry. There’s a certain quality that has carried over.
JM: We were extremely happy with what we accomplished in The New Order. We felt that was a good, really strong feeling of Wolfenstein. So for sure we wanted to preserve that, but also kick it up to the next level. We really wanted to get back to having a full body model, because in New Order you were basically a disembodied arm / gun / first-person model. So if you look down you have no legs. But in this game it’s a full body model, which in itself is incredibly much more work, but we have a dedicated team who is super passionate about the first-person experience.
Were there any overarching philosophies regarding the shooting approach? Obviously it feels different to anything else, but in subtle ways. What were the guiding values?
JM: It’s interesting because I don’t think I’ve ever put words to it before, but we always wanted to be just, I guess, meatier, and just fucking… more heavy metal than anything else. So our stated goal was that we wanted to reach the level where this was the best first-person experience you can have in terms of combat and movement. I’m very happy with how it came out because it’s very noticeable that if you play The New Colossus for a few hours and then you start playing something else, everything feels a lot different. So yeah, I think we’re evolving with what we did with The New Order to a new level.
Do you think it helps your gunplay that multiplayer isn’t a factor? Could it work in multiplayer?
JM: I’m sure it could, but I’m sure there would be problems as well. But for sure, having everyone focused on the same problem is what historically has always resulted in our best work. So that’s always what we’ve tried to do and that’s why we don’t do multiplayer. But I think if we did do multiplayer, I’m sure we could get to something of that same level.
I like that The New Colossus feels like a filmic sequel—it’s not about just adding stuff, like so many game sequels are, it’s a new story. Has there been any desire to do stuff like that, add an open world, add more stuff?
JM: I don’t know, we constantly think about stuff that we want to do and I wouldn’t at all be opposed to doing different formats. But of course, we have this… I wouldn’t say that we have this story that we want to tell—we do of course—but it’s more than that. We have an experience that we want to create. We always envisioned it as a trilogy, and so if we get to do one more, if the game does well enough to motivate that, then I can guarantee that it will be a worthy sequel. How that shapes out and what its form is, we’d have to see.
What’s your relationship with the first Wolfenstein 3D? Do you resort to it as a primary, kind of bibilcal text? Or have things moved on so much that it barely factors in?
JM: No way, to us that’s the foundation with our approach to Wolfenstein. It’s not biblical in the sense that we’re being literalist about it, but the ethos that propelled and created Wolfenstein 3D is what we’re literal about. Analysing what went on there, this was id Software coming into their own, having broken away from wherever they were before and barely in their teens, sitting in some apartment somewhere making these things that no one else is making. That people don’t even think is possible. That’s what they’re doing and they’re just forcing their totally unrestricted creativity into that project, and that’s what we wanted to go for: if we think it’s a cool idea and it belongs in the game, it goes into the game. We don’t try to censor ourselves and say “would that really fit with blah blah”. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to make it credible in the game world, we care about that stuff, but we don’t put any boundaries on ourselves. So that’s what we’re trying to carry on. |
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Authorities said a Virginia Beach man is being kicked out of the country after his mother was convicted of creating a fake family.
It’s been a dramatic fall for Natallia Liapina. A year ago, the woman from Belarus was married to a doctor, living in Virginia Beach with her teenage son.
She landed a job as a Russian teacher at Tallwood High School, where her colleagues adored her.But then came the prosecutors. They said all this was a hoax, an elaborate fraud to get Natallia a green card.
Previous: Man fighting deportation due to accusations of marriage fraud against family
Prosecutors said Natallia’s husband, Armando, was actually in love with Natallia’s oldest son. The two men carried on a romantic relationship, the prosecutors said. And to please Danil, prosecutors claimed Armando agreed to marry Danil’s mother so she could live in America.
Natallia and her sons deny all of this.
Danil said there was no romantic relationship with Armando. He was already married to an American woman named Victoria. And Ivan, Natallia’s youngest, said this was a real family.
No one who worked with Natallia at Tallwood believes any part of the government’s case. Teachers stepped forward to tell NewsChannel 3 Natallia was not only a good teacher, but a good person.
“It’s so upsetting because it is the opposite of who she is. They are telling her that you are dishonest in all that you did here, and she was the epitome of honesty and integrity in everything that she did,” says one of the teachers.
All of this happened, Ivan says, because his sister-in-law got jealous. Danil and Victoria split up. According to court records and interviews, when Victoria found out there was another woman, she went to the authorities and declared the marriage a fraud. She essentially turned herself in, and said her marriage to Danil was fake.
Danil told us that even after his wife reported him, they got back together and remarried. But that didn’t end the investigation. In fact, it broadened to include Natallia. Danil’s family says jailhouse phone calls between Danil and Victoria reveal a real marriage.
The dozens of calls show they fought, a lot, about money mostly. They talked about sex. And Victoria revealed she was angry Danil had left her for someone else.
None of this was allowed in court. According to court testimony, Victoria helped prosecutors after they promised not to charge her. She would not agree to an interview for this story. Prosecutors said there were at least three other Americans involved in this conspiracy, but no one else was arrested.
In the end, these teachers say the school system has lost an excellent instructor to a prosecution that, in their eyes, was way off the mark. They are hoping Natallia can appeal and one day return to teaching.
“It’s unfair because I know all my family, including me, including Vanya, including Danil, worked hard in this country,” says Natallia.
As for Ivan, whom his mother calls Vanya, he worries he’ll be forced from the country. The government says if his mother’s immigration paperwork is fake, then his isn’t valid either.
The Liapin family has set up a fund to pay for an appeal.
Facebook page for the Liapin Family Defense Fund
Statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, on why none of the four accused Americans were prosecuted in this case:
“Over the past five years, the Eastern District of Virginia has charged more than 120 people with marriage fraud, including both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. Decisions on whether to bring charges in a criminal case are guided by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution. While we do not disclose the reasons why a person associated with a case may not be charged, these principles state that we must consider the evidence at hand, the person’s culpability in connection with the offense, their previous criminal activity, and their willingness to cooperate, among several other factors.”
I’d also point you to what we stated in our sentencing position paper for Mr. Lyapin:
Danil Lyapin tried no less than four times with fraudulent marriages to get permanent residence in the United States. Mr. Lyapin deliberately broke down his spouses through repeated mental attacks which from time to time had a physical component. During these “green-card” marriages, Mr. Lyapin continued to date other women and carry on other relationships that further caused mental damage to some of his “wives” and girlfriends. One of these relationships was with Armando Figueroa. Mr. Lyapin and Mr. Figueroa, who was several decades his elder, carried on a romantic relationship for a period of years to allow Mr. Lyapin to use Mr. Figueroa resources to bank roll his lifestyle. Mr. Figueroa bought Mr. Lyapin cars and a restaurant. Still, as the evidence showed, this was not enough. Mr. Lyapin caused Mr. Figueroa to marry the defendant Ms. Liapina so she could also obtain a green-card. Ms. Liapina never had a bonafide marriage with Mr. Figueroa. Mr. Lyapin admitted to agents that Mr. Figueroa only married his mother as a favor to Mr. Lyapin.
The defendant’s conduct during the investigation far exceeded most of the other approximately 120 offenders the government has prosecuted over the past five years. This defendant was the only one to enter into three distinct marriage frauds. This defendant was particularly hard on his spouses and his girlfriends who were smart enough not to marry him. This defendant made fraudulent filings and set up at least fraudulent marriage with his mother.
Statement from Danil Lyapin’s wife, Victoria, (Natallia Liapina’s daughter-in-law), in declining to participate in this story:
I think it is highly inappropriate to air any story concerning me and my life, you know nothing about me and my life. However I respect freedom of speech do whatever you chose, those who know me and care for me know what the truth is, those who don’t, I’m unconcerned what they think they know about me. Until they have walked a mile in my shoes they cannot begin to know anything about me and my life. Do what you feel is best. I have certainly in my life, in every aspect of it.
Written by Mike Mather, WTKR. |
What does it mean to be “evangelical”?
What must you believe?
What must you reject?
Can you be an evangelical Christian and believe…
…in evolution?
…that Hell is only temporary?
…that people from other religions can be saved without even knowing it?
…that the atonement is not about God’s wrath being poured out on Jesus in our place?
…that Scripture is errant?
Many evangelicals would say “no” to most—maybe even all—of these. That’s why, in an attempt to protect the name of evangelicalism, some prominent leaders within evangelicalism have made it their responsibility to publicly denounce those with whom they disagree on issues like these.
To be clear, there is no problem with publicly denouncing ideologies (that is, after all, what this article is doing right now). It is, at times, necessary to publicly call out false teachers. However, one must fully consider whether they promote a different gospel before coming forward with such a bold claim.
But we’re not talking about denouncing ideas or exposing real false teachers. We’re talking about needless schisms and inconsistent, prideful exclusivism.
Self-appointed gatekeepers of evangelicalism tear apart what could be a noble, diverse movement of the Spirit. These gatekeepers take it upon themselves to pronounce who is “in” and who is “out” of orthodox Christianity.
By the standards of these gatekeepers, the definition of “evangelical” is becoming increasingly narrow, so much so that very few fit inside the definition.
So, if we are going to be consistent, it’s time to weed out all of the heretics—especially those who have the most influence—not just Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans or other Christian thinkers who have said something controversial recently.
Let’s start with these six:
1. C.S. Lewis: Guilty Of Inclusivism and Rejecting the Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory
Perhaps the most celebrated Christian writer of the last century, C.S. Lewis is respected by most Christians, no matter what theological corner they occupy. And that’s what confuses me. Lewis was no evangelical by the standards of modern evangelical spokespersons. Lewis’ seven-volume, fictional masterpiece, The Chronicles of Narnia, reveals his belief that it is possible for people in other religions to inherit the Kingdom of God without knowing it.
Lewis also rejects the Penal Substitutionary theory of the atonement, which states that Christ “diverted” God’s wrath toward us and took it upon Himself. Instead, in part three of Chronicles, Lewis describes what is called the “Christus Victor” view of the atonement, which holds that the Cross is not an image of God’s wrath against us, diverted to His son, but it was the defeat of evil through an act of selfless love. (Here is a video of Greg Boyd giving a good description of that view using Lewis’ imagery.)
2. Martin Luther: Guilty of Rejecting Biblical Inerrancy
Where would evangelicalism be without Martin Luther? He is the father of the Reformation and the champion of Sola Scriptura.
But to the dismay of every evangelical Calvinist, I fear I must be the bearer of bad news that Martin Luther apparently didn’t believe the Bible is fully inspired, true or trustworthy.
Speaking of inaccuracies in the books of Chronicles, he states, “When one often reads that great numbers of people were slain—for example, eighty thousand—I believe that hardly one thousand were actually killed.”
3. St. Augustine: Guilty of Rejecting a Literally Reading of the Creation Story
In his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine (to put it bluntly) thought Christians who took the Creation Story literally were a laughingstock and looked like idiots among non-Christians because they denied science and reason. This is Augustine, the one to whom we can give credit for the doctrines of original sin and Hell as eternal conscious torment (which are at the core of reformed theology).
Here is his statement:
“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth…may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.”
Few are the pulpits he would be allowed to fill among conservative churches in our day.
4. William Barclay: Guilty of Universalism
William Barclay’s iconic little blue commentaries are on the shelves of many pastors. So it’s odd that Rob Bell has been so roundly rejected for holding essentially the same belief as this celebrated theologian.
Barclay writes, “I am a convinced universalist. I believe that in the end all men will be gathered into the love of God…the choice is whether we accept God’s offer and invitation willingly, or take the long and terrible way round through ages of purification.”
In that work, Barclay also lists early church fathers, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, as two other Christian Universalists.
5. John Stott: Guilty of Annihilationism
John Stott is one of the great evangelical Christian thinkers of the last generation. Stott rejected the view that Hell is eternal conscious torment of the wicked and suggested, instead, that the unrepentant cease to exist after enduring the penalty for their sins.
He wrote, “I believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment.”
6. Billy Graham: Guilty of Inclusivism
Billy Graham is, perhaps, the epitome of the evangelical identity.
Or, so we thought…
Like C.S. Lewis, Graham believes that those who do not hear of Christ may, indeed, be saved without explicitly confessing Him as Lord.
In a 1997 interview with Robert Schuller, Graham said:
“[God] is calling people out of the world for His name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the Christian world, or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not even know the name of Jesus, but they know in their hearts that they need something that they don’t have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven.”
There are plenty of other examples: George Whitefield’s lobbying for slavery, Martin Luther’s hatred of Jews, John Calvin’s approval of burning heretics at the stake, etc. etc.
Now, you hopefully find it ridiculous to reject these great and godly people. Which is why it’s amazing to me what we ignore in order to protect ourselves from the truth. We want our “heroes of the faith” to be perfect in theology and conduct, so we ignore or justify the parts we don’t like.
We all do it.
So, maybe it’s time to extend a bit more loving kindness to the evolutionists, to those who reject inerrancy, to those who take the Bible literally when it says that God will redeem all people to Himself, to the Rob Bells and the World Visions.
And for those of us on the moderate-progressive side: maybe we can find it in ourselves to turn the other cheek and forgive those who wish us gone. Then, when we find someone who will accept us—“heresy” and all, let’s embrace and learn from them.
This article was originally posted at AndyGill.org. |
Economically and environmentally, it would be far better for the future of the planet to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and provide more incentives for clean energy.
Economically and environmentally, it would be far better for the future of the planet to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and provide more incentives for clean energy. Photo: Union of Concerned Scientists
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt recently proposed eliminating federal tax credits for wind and solar power, arguing that they should “stand on their own and compete against coal and natural gas and other sources” as opposed to “being propped up by tax incentives and other types of credits….”
Stand on their own? Pruitt surely must be aware that fossil fuels have been feasting at the government trough for at least 100 years. Renewables, by comparison, have received support only since the mid-1990s and, until recently, have had to subsist on scraps.
Perhaps a review of the facts can set administrator Pruitt straight. There’s a strong case to be made that Congress should terminate subsidies for fossil fuels and extend them for renewables, not the other way around.
A century (or two) of subsidies
To promote domestic energy production, the federal government has been serving the oil and gas industry a smorgasbord of subsidies since the early days of the 20th century. Companies can deduct the cost of drilling wells, for example, as well as the cost of exploring for and developing oil shale deposits. They even get a domestic manufacturing deduction, which is intended to keep US industries from moving abroad, even though—by the very nature of their business—they can’t move overseas.
All told, from 1918 through 2009, the industry’s tax breaks and other subsidies amounted to an average of $4.86 billion annually (in 2010 dollars), according to a 2011 study by DBL Investors, a venture capital firm. Accounting for inflation, that would be $5.53 billion a year today.
The DBL study didn’t include coal due to the lack of data for subsidies going back to the early 1800s, but the federal government has lavished considerably more on the coal industry than on renewables. In 2008 alone, coal received between $3.2 billion and $5.4 billion in subsidies, according to a 2011 Harvard Medical School study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Meanwhile, wind and other renewable energy technologies, DBL found, averaged only $370 million a year in subsidies between 1994 and 2009, the equivalent of $421 million a year today. The 2009 economic stimulus package did provide $21 billion for renewables, but that support barely began to level the playing field that has tilted in favor of oil and gas for 100 years and coal for more than 200.
A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute looked at US energy subsidies since the turn of this century. It found that between 2002 and 2008, the federal government gave fossil fuels six times more than what it gave solar, wind, and other renewables. Coal, natural gas, and oil benefited from $72.5 billion in subsidies (in 2007 dollars) over that seven-year period, while “traditional” renewable energy sources—mainly wind and solar—received only $12.2 billion. A pie chart from the report shows that 71 percent of federal subsidies went to coal, natural gas and oil, 17 percent—$16.8 billion—went to corn ethanol, and the remaining 12 percent went to traditional renewables.
A new study by Oil Change International brings us up to date. Published earlier this month, it found that federal subsidies in 2015 and 2016 averaged $10.9 billion a year for the oil and gas industry and $3.8 billion for the coal industry. By contrast, the wind industry’s so-called production tax credit, renewed by Congress in December 2015, amounted to $3.3 billion last year, according to a Congress Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate.
Unlike the fossil fuel industry’s permanent subsidies, Congress has allowed the wind tax credit to expire six times in the last 20 years, and it is now set to decline incrementally until ending in 2020. Similarly, Congress fixed the solar industry’s investment tax credit at 30 percent of a project’s cost through 2019, but reduced it to 10 percent for commercial projects and zeroed it out for residences by the end of 2021. The JCT estimates that the solar credit amounted to a $2.4-billion tax break last year. Totaling it up, fossil fuels—at $14.7 billion—still received two-and-a-half times more in federal support than solar and wind in 2016.
The costs of pollution
Subsidy numbers tell only part of the story. Besides a century or two of support, the federal government has allowed fossil fuel companies and electric utilities to “externalize” their costs of production and foist them on the public.
Although coal now only generates 30 percent of US electricity, down from 50 percent in 2008, it is still responsible for two-thirds of the electric utility sector’s carbon emissions and is a leading source of toxic pollutants linked to cancer; cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological diseases; and premature death. The 2011 Harvard Medical School study cited above estimated coal’s “life cycle” cost to the country—including its impact on miners, public health, the environment and the climate—at $345 billion a year.
In July 2016, the federal government finally began regulating the more than 1,400 coal ash ponds across the country containing billions of gallons of heavy metals and other byproducts from burning coal. Coal ash, which has been leaching and spilling into local groundwater, wetlands, creeks, and rivers, can cause cancer, heart, and lung disease, birth defects and neurological damage in humans, and can devastate bird, fish, and frog populations.
But that was last year. Since taking office, the Trump administration has been working overtime to bolster coal, which can no longer compete economically with natural gas or renewables. Earlier this year, it rescinded a rule that would have protected waterways from mining waste, and a few months ago it filed a repeal of another Obama-era measure that would have increased mineral royalties on federal lands. More recently, Energy Secretary Rick Perry asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure that coal plants can recover all of their costs, whether those plants are needed or not.
Natural gas burns more cleanly than coal, but its drilling sites, processing plants, and pipelines leak methane, and its production technique—hydraulic fracturing—can contaminate water supplies and trigger earthquakes. Currently the fuel is responsible for nearly a third of the electric utility sector’s carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the US transportation sector—whose oil-powered engine exhaust exacerbates asthma and likely causes other respiratory problems and heart disease—is now the nation’s largest carbon polluter, edging out the electric utility sector last year for the first time since the late 1970s.
Like the coal industry, the oil and gas industry has friends in high places. Thanks to friendly lawmakers and administrations, natural gas developers are exempt from key provisions of seven major environmental laws that protect air and water from toxic chemicals. Permitting them to flout these critical safeguards forces taxpayers to shoulder the cost of monitoring, remediation, and cleanup—if they happen at all.
The benefits of clean energy
Unlike fossil fuels, wind and solar energy do not emit toxic pollutants or greenhouse gases. They also are not subject to price volatility: wind gusts and solar rays are free, so more renewables would help stabilize energy prices. And they are becoming less expensive, more productive, and more reliable every year. According to a recent Department of Energy (DOE) report, power from new wind farms last year cost a third of wind’s price in 2010 and was cheaper than electricity from natural gas plants.
Perhaps the biggest bonus of transitioning to a clean energy system, however, is the fact that the benefits of improved air quality and climate change mitigation far outweigh the cost of implementation, according to a January 2016 DOE study. Conducted by researchers at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the study assessed the impact of standards in 29 states and the District of Columbia that require utilities to increase their use of renewables by a certain percentage by a specific year. Called renewable electricity (or portfolio) standards, they range from California and New York’s ambitious goals of 50 percent by 2030 to Wisconsin’s modest target of 10 percent by 2015.
It turns out that it cost utilities nationwide approximately $1 billion a year between 2010 and 2013—generally the equivalent of less than 2 percent of average statewide retail electricity rates—to comply with the state standards. On the benefit side of the equation, however, standards-spawned renewable technologies in 2013 alone generated $7.4 billion in public health and other societal benefits by reducing carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulate matter emissions. They also saved consumers as much as $1.2 billion by lowering wholesale electricity prices and as much as $3.7 billion by reducing natural gas prices, because more renewable energy on the grid cuts demand—and lowers the price—of natural gas and other power sources that have higher operating costs.
Take fossil fuels off the dole
If the initial rationale for subsidizing fossil fuels was to encourage their growth, that time has long since passed. The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, published a fact sheet in May 2016 identifying nine unnecessary oil and gas tax breaks that should be terminated. Repealing the subsidies, according to CAP, would save the US Treasury a minimum of $37.7 billion over the next 10 years.
An August 2016 report for the Council on Foreign Relations by Gilbert Metcalf, an economics professor at Tufts University, concluded that eliminating the three major federal tax incentives for oil and gas production would have a relatively small impact on production and consumption. The three provisions—deductions for “intangible” drilling costs, deductions for oil and gas deposit depletion, and deductions for domestic manufacturing—account for 90 percent of the cost of the subsidies. Ending these tax breaks, Metcalf says, would save the Treasury roughly $4 billion a year and would not appreciably raise oil and gas prices.
At the same time, the relatively new, burgeoning clean energy sector deserves federal support as it gains a foothold in the marketplace. Steve Clemmer, energy research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, made the case in testimony before a House subcommittee last March that Congress should preserve wind and solar tax incentives beyond 2020.
“Until we can transition to national policies that provide more stable, long-term support for clean, low-carbon energy,” he said, “Congress should extend federal tax credits by at least five more years to maintain the sustained orderly growth of the industry and provide more parity and predictability for renewables in the tax code.” Clemmer also recommended new tax credits for investments in low- and zero-carbon technologies and energy storage technologies.
Despite the steady barrage of through-the-looking-glass statements by Trump administration officials, scientific and economic facts still matter. Administrator Pruitt would do well to examine them. Congress should, too, when it considers its tax overhaul bill, which is now being drafted behind closed doors. If they did, perhaps they would recognize that—economically and environmentally—it would be far better for the future of the planet to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and provide more incentives for clean energy.
Posted in: Energy, Uncategorized Tags: Administrator Scott Pruitt, EPA, Scott Pruitt, Trump Administration
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An Atlanta judge has granted Gucci Mane credit for nearly a year of time served in a gun possession charge stemming from a September arrest last year according to TMZ.
Gucci Mane was sentenced to serve 39 months at a hearing in August after reaching a plea deal on the weapons charges, avoiding a potential decade-long sentence in the process. Despite his being arrested in September 2013, Mane’s sentence was scheduled to begin at the time of the sentencing hearing itself. As a result of the latest court ruling, the eleven months Gucci served between September and his sentencing hearing last month will now be subtracted from the 39 month punishment. TMZ reports that Gucci is now slated for release in December of 2016.
As a part of the plea deal executed in August, Gucci Mane’s lawyer requested the rapper to be entered into a drug rehabilitation program and to be held on the West Coast, away from his hometown affiliates. “He understands he has some work ahead of him and his goal is to bring resolution to this case and get back to performing,” Gucci Mane’s lawyer, Drew Findling, said according to Rolling Stone. “He doesn’t want anything to distract him. He wants to do anything to get back to the work place and the work place is the stage.”
In September of last year, Gucci Mane was arrested after police found the 34-year old rapper with a 45-caliber pistol and eight bullets. At the time of his arrest, Mane was already serving probation for a previous felony charge.
Gucci Mane released his I Am Trap mixtape on August 31. HipHopDX gave the release three out of five stars, noting, “the best moments on I Am Trap would sound like welcome additions to his most critically acclaimed tapes, like Trap Back, Writing’s On The Wall, or The Cold War mixtape trilogy. With a guest spot from Wale on one of the tape’s standout tracks, ‘Used To It,’ Gucci states in the chorus ‘Imma keep doin’ what I’ve been doing.’ Looks like Guwop will be releasing much more ‘free Gucci’ in the foreseeable future.”
RELATED: Gucci Mane “I Am Trap” Release Date, Cover Art, Tracklist, Download & Mixtape Stream |
An Athens court on Wednesday acquitted anarchist Costas Sakkas, 30, over charges of violating his restricted-residence order. Sakkas, who is accused of being a member of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire urban guerilla group, was arrested on Tuesday.
Police said that Sakkas had spent the night at a house in Neo Psychico, northern Athens, where he was arrested, effectively violating an order that restricted him to spending the night at his family's residence in Piraeus.
Sakkas had been arrested on December 4, 2010, outside an apartment in Nea Smyrni, southern Athens, where arms were being hidden.
He was granted conditional release in July after going on hunger strike to protest the fact that he was being held in detention for two-and-a-half years, when the maximum period for pretrial custody was 18 months.
He denies being a member of Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire. |
What do you feel like when you buy a Kit-Kat, take a bite and discover there is no wafer? Do you scream and shout about the deviance of said chocolate bar? Do you throw it to the floor in disgust? Do you write to Nestle demanding they send you the missing wafer? No?
But why don’t you do that? – after all you bought the blinking thing in the first place because it has a wafer, surely? You actively desired the wafer! Otherwise you’d have plumped for a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk or maybe selected a Yorkie (only if you’re a boy, of course).
But no, you have a little smile to yourself, you enjoy the extra chocolate, and some of you might even feel the need to post on Facebook. “Just had a KitKat with no wafer – RESULT!” By the way, if this is you, please do not do this. I am happy for you really, but you’re cluttering up my feed.
So why is it that we feel just a little bit blessed when we encounter the Kit-Kat with no wafer? I guess it’s because we can enjoy quite a relaxed state of mind around snacks and can see the experience as serendipity. Sure, maybe we wanted the wafer, but actually the sweet surprise of solid chocolate makes up for all that.
So what if we took this reaction and applied it to the rest of our lives? To relationships and business? Can you imagine how happy you’d be if when things didn’t go according to plan you were even happier with the results?
It’s all about attitude, and having an open mind and not focussing so intently on getting things precisely as we want them when certain factors are outside of our control.
You must be prepared to look for opportunities in adversity and to look upon the most favourable aspects of what might otherwise be deemed a negative experience to achieve serendipity more often.
This attitude gives us the freedom to commit to undertakings without being blind to all the other opportunities that might come our way. And it gives us the valuable skill of always finding the positives in life.
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny…'” – Isaac Asimov
http://www.wiseism.com/like-kit-kat-no-wafer-serendipity/http://www.wiseism.com/wp-content/uploads/serendipity.jpg http://www.wiseism.com/wp-content/uploads/serendipity.jpg Wise LivingWise Mindattitude,choices,life,living wisely,luck,opportunities,positive thinking,relationships,serendipity,wisdom,wise philosophy,wise ways of livingWhat do you feel like when you buy a Kit-Kat, take a bite and discover there is no wafer? Do you scream and shout about the deviance of said chocolate bar? Do you throw it to the floor in disgust? Do you write to Nestle demanding they send you...The WiseistBeth [email protected] name is Beth Burgess. I don't claim to be the wisest, but I am 'The Wiseist' - someone dedicated to collecting and sharing wisdom that can help people live their lives more happily and successfully. I'm also the bestselling author of "Instant Wisdom: 10 Easy Ways to Get Smart Fast",, a therapist,, coach, freelance writer, speaker, trainer, and workshop leader. And I'm still learning too.Wiseism |
Dunedin police are calling for action to prevent potentially deadly overcrowding at city bars.
Alcohol harm reduction officer Sergeant Ian Paulin said last week's district licensing committee hearing for Dunedin's Carousel bar highlighted the problems with the current system.
Carousel operator John Devereux admitted regularly breaching the second-storey bar's maximum occupancy of 50 people - in place because of risks of having only one exit - since the bar was established in 2006, but police did not find out about the limit until late last year.
Sgt Paulin said police did not know the occupancy limit of each of the city's bars and relied on what the duty manager told them at each visit.
''We haven't got the time to follow up on every licensed premises visit the troops do and find out if that number is accurate,'' Sgt Paulin said.
If bars were breaching their maximum occupancy, which was not always obvious, there was a chance of things going ''hugely'' wrong in the event of a fire or other disaster.
''There is massive potential for serious death and that has been well-documented overseas.''
This was why part of the police submission to Dunedin City Council's local alcohol policy (LAP) was for each bar to have to display its maximum occupancy next to the liquor licence.
The change would help both licence holders and enforcement agencies ensure bars were not overcrowded and had the potential to save a life.
Sgt Paulin was ''very'' hopeful it would be included in the LAP, which was to be voted on by the council soon.
At last week's hearing, Sgt Paulin said Southern District commander Superintendent Andrew Coster had called for an increased focus on overcrowding after being ''astounded'' after last year's All Blacks test match at the number of duty managers who had ''no idea'' of the maximum occupancy of their bars. |
Here are my instructions for creating a FreeNAS Jail with Serviio 1.1 running inside it. This uses no FreeNAS plugins whatsoever and takes full advantage of all the power that comes with having a FreeBSD core running at the heart of FreeNAS 8.3.
Install a plugin Jail as per the instructions available on the FreeNAS wiki here and start the Jail running. Create a user on your FreeNAS for yourself, e.g. MYUSER Enable SSH on your FreeNAS and SSH into your FreeNAS install using your client of choice. Execute the following commands: SU root jexec 1 csh mkdir /home adduser When prompted by adduser follow the instructions on-screen to create a user that matches the user you created in Step 2. Make sure that the Uid matches the user you created in Step 2. If you are not sure what the Uid number is then look it up in the FreeNAS control panel. Here’s the example: Username: MYUSER
Full name: MYUSER
Uid (Leave empty for default): 1111
Login group [MYUSER]:
Login group is MYUSER. Invite MYUSER into other groups? []: wheel
Login class [default]:
Shell (sh csh tcsh nologin) [sh]: csh
Home directory [/home/MYUSER]:
Home directory permissions (Leave empty for default):
Use password-based authentication? [yes]:
Use an empty password? (yes/no) [no]:
Use a random password? (yes/no) [no]:
Enter password:
Enter password again:
Lock out the account after creation? [no]:Username : MYUSER
Password : *****
Full Name : MYUSER
Uid : 1111
Class :
Groups : MYUSER wheel
Home : /home/MYUSER
Home Mode :
Shell : /bin/csh
Locked : no
OK? (yes/no): yes
adduser: INFO: Successfully added (MYUSER) to the user database.
Add another user? (yes/no): no
Goodbye! Now we need to leave the jail and create a bridge between the FreeNAS internals and the jail. So logout of your SSH client and then turn off the jail in FreeNAS control panel. Then navigate to Services -> Plugins -> Management -> Mount Points and add a new mount point. Map a directory you can access regularly through FreeNAS as the directory /home/MYUSER within the jail. Turn the jail back on and restart your FreeNAS. SSH into your FreeNAS install using your client of choice. Execute the following commands [NB: This section will take some time to complete so set aside a couple of hours]: SU root jexec 1 csh portsnap fetch extract update Update 02 February 2013 To ensure that you have the new pkg program installed run: pkg -v If you don’t get a response of 1.0.7 or higher then run: cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/pkg/ && make install clean cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster/ && make install clean
Be sure to use the appropriate options for your system. If you’re not sure, check all the boxes.
echo ‘WITH_PKGNG=yes’ >> /etc/make.conf rehash pkg2ng portmaster -G editors/nano rehash cd /usr/ports/multimedia/ffmpeg1 make config Set the options so that they match the information shown in the Serviio wiki for building ffmpeg. This is complicated so follow the screenshots below: press ok cd /usr/ports/graphics/frei0r/ make config check Enable MMX CPU instructions then press ok portmaster -G multimedia/ffmpeg1 portmaster -G net/serviio nano /etc/hosts and add line [replacing Jailed with the name of your jail from the FreeNAS control panel]:
127.0.0.1 Jailed nano /etc/rc.conf and add lines:
serviio_enable=”YES”
serviio_args=”-Dserviio.remoteHost=192.168.0.100″ service serviio start You’re done. Serviio will now start-up on every boot. Login to it remotely and set up the directories you need as necessary! I heartily recommend using ServiiDroid for Android which is available here. |
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Jesse, 26, and Jackson George, 23, pleaded guilty to planning to sell the pygmy marmosets taken from Symbio wildlife park
Two Sydney brothers charged over the theft of three rare miniature monkeys have pleaded guilty to transporting and intending to sell them.
Jackson George, 23, and his brother Jesse, 26, were charged on Sunday with dealing with proceeds of crime after three pygmy marmosets were stolen from the Symbio wildlife park in Helensburgh, south of Sydney, on Friday night.
Acting on a tip-off, police found one monkey after stopping the brothers in a car at the Appin Hotel on Sunday afternoon. Despite attempts by Jesse to hide the four-week old, police seized the animal and charged the brothers.
While both men are not deemed to be responsible for the theft, police have accused Jackson of obtaining the monkey from the alleged thief or thieves and planning to sell it.
Police and zookeepers had been desperate to find the suckling infant after experts warned it was likely to die if it spent more than 24 hours without its mother. A second monkey, 10-month old sister Sofia, was uncovered in the Campbelltown area on Sunday night but Gomez, the father of the two, is still missing.
Baby monkey stolen from NSW zoo found by police Read more
Police opposed Jackson’s bail appeal in Campbelltown court on Monday, saying they believed he had further information about Gomez’s whereabouts.
“He has shown complete contempt for police and their desperate attempts to reunite the animals with their family unit,” prosecutor Peter Robinson told the court. “He has laughed and stated, ‘you have my phone, you’ll work it out’.”
However, police say they have not been able to glean any further information about the missing monkey’s location from Jackson’s phone.
Court documents show Jackson was communicating with a third person, Ryan, who offered to sell the baby monkey to the 23-year-old.
“Ay, check out my monkey”, Ryan said in a text message with a picture of the animal, which was tendered in court.
“That’s mad bro. Wanna sell it bruh?” Jackson responded.
Ryan told Jackson he “paid nothing” for the monkey, but “got it from the zoo last night”.
Later on in the conversation, when Ryan asked how much they could sell the pygmy marmoset for, Jackson suggested “500”.
“But [I] haven’t been offered any in ages bro,” he texted.
There was also evidence from the texts that the pair had been, or planned to be, involved in the selling of a snake and a joey.
Magistrate Clare Farnan said the situation was a rare one for the courts.
“It’s certainly not a common thing to see a proceeds of crime as a pygmy marmoset monkey,” she said.
Farnan sentenced Jesse to a two-year good behaviour bond and fined him $1,500 for being an accomplice to the crime.
Jackson was granted bail until his sentencing on January 10 while a full pre-sentence report was ordered. |
Anthony Joshua has won all 16 of his professional fights by knockout
Great Britain's IBF world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua could make a defence of his title at Beijing's National Stadium, according to promoter Barry Hearn.
The National Stadium - or Bird's Nest - was used at the 2008 Olympics.
"When you plan someone's career like Joshua you tend to plan in advance," said Hearn, who saw Joshua stop Charles Martin last month to win the title.
"I think we're two years from saying we can sell out the Bird's Nest in China."
Hearn is the father of Joshua's promoter Eddie, and chairman of the fighter's Matchroom stable.
He identified China's 2008 Olympic silver medallist Zhang Zhilei, who has built an unbeaten professional record of eight fights since basing himself in Las Vegas, as a potential opponent for 26-year-old undefeated Joshua.
"Sometimes these things don't happen because people get beaten, but our job is about creating these kinds of moments," he added.
Joshua will make the first defence of his title against American Dominic Breazeale in London next month. |
With two weeks left before a potentially significant status update in the Comcast SportsNet Houston bankruptcy case, Astros owner Jim Crane said negotiations continue with carriers and potential investors in the financially strapped network and that he is, as always, hopeful of progress.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur earlier this month granted attorneys for the network an additional 30 days to submit a plan of reorganization and set a CSN Houston status conference for July 2.
In the meantime, Crane said this week the network “is in negotiations with pretty much everybody and hopeful of getting something done.”
“We’ve been in contact with everybody that’s in the game, and there’s some activity,” Crane said. “There’s been some interest from some private equity firms.”
The CSN Houston bankruptcy case, now in its ninth month, has unfolded slowly during a period of rapid changes in the television landscape. Recent developments have included Comcast’s plan to purchase Time Warner Cable, which has systems in several major Texas cities, and the proposed purchase of DirecTV by AT&T, which owns the U-verse video service.
“You’ve got two things coming down, and I think that’s going to create some tension,” Crane said. “It could be a positive for us.”
However, carriers ranging from DirecTV to Comcast and Suddenlink also must be concerned with the approaching launch of ESPN’s SEC Network.
ESPN and the Southeastern Conference reportedly are seeking monthly subscription fees of $1.30 per month in the conference footprint, which includes the entire state of Texas, at the same time that attorneys for CSN Houston are trying to fashion a reorganization plan that will lift the Astros-Rockets-Comcast network toward profitability.
CSN Houston’s rate structure remains sealed under a court order, but similar networks generally charge in excess of $4 per month for their core territory and less than a dollar in outlying areas.
Crane’s said the Astros’ recent improvement has sparked viewers’ interest in the team.
“We’ve gotten lots of calls the last couple of weeks,” he said. “People want to watch the games. We’ve got to get them on.”
There has been no movement in more than two months on the Astros’ motion to dismiss Judge Isgur’s Chapter 11 order, which was issued last February.
Also still pending in federal court is a civil lawsuit filed by Crane’s ownership group against former Astros owner Drayton McLane and Comcast, which stems from the valuation set on CSN Houston when Crane bought the team and McLane’s 46.5 percent share in CSN Houston in 2012. |
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks at the University of Warsaw Library in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, July 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Mitt Romney made an unfortunate slip of the tongue during a fundraiser Tuesday, when he mistakenly said "sheik" instead of "Sikh" while commenting on the tragic shooting in Wisconsin.
According to a media pool report, the Republican presidential hopeful used the Arabic term, which typically refers to an elder or religious leader, to discuss Sikhism, a religion that originated in the Punjab region of South Asia.
"I was in Chicago earlier today," Romney said to about 280 supporters at a fundraiser in West Des Moines, Iowa. "We had a moment of silence in honor of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple. I noted that it was a tragedy for many, many reasons. Among them are the fact that people, the sheik people are among the most peaceable and loving individuals you can imagine, as is their faith. And of course, the person who carried out this heinous act was a person motivated by racial hatred and religious intolerance."
When asked about the comments, Romney spokesman Rick Gorka insisted that the mix-up was a mispronunciation.
"He misspoke," Gorka said, according to the pool report. "He mispronounced similar sounding words. He was clearly referring to the tragedy in Wisconsin."
Earlier Tuesday, Romney offered his condolences to the victims of the tragic shooting that left six worshippers dead over the weekend at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc. The former governor said the suspected shooter, Wade Michael Page, was "motivated by hate," and called for prayers for the victims. |
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Back toward the end of 2015, light field camera company Lytro announced a major turn toward the VR market with the introduction of ‘Immerge’, a light field camera made for capturing data which can be played back as VR video with positional tracking. Now the company is showing the first footage shot with the camera.
Lytro has made point-and-shoot consumer light field cameras since 2012. And while the company has had some success in the static photo market, the potential market for the application of light field capture has pulled the company into VR in a big way.
Immerge, a 360 degree light field camera in the works by Lytro, captures incoming light from all directions. With not only the color of the light, but also its direction, the camera is capable of capturing data representing a stitch-free snippet of the real world, and (uniquely compared to other 360 degree cameras) the data which is captured allows for positional tracking from the user’s head (the ability to move your head through 3D space {‘parallax’} and have the scene react accurately).
This ability is one of the major advantages over standard film capture, and is seen as critical for immersion and comfort in VR experience. Now, Lytro is showing off the first light field footage shot by their Immerge camera; they say it’s the “first piece of 6DOF 360 live action VR content ever produced.”
Light field captures from Lytro’s camera also have a few other tricks, like the ability to change the IPD (distance between the stereo images, to align with each user’s eyes) and focus as needed in post-production.
The company says that Immerge’s light field data captures scenes not only with parallax, but also with view-dependent lighting (reflections that move correctly based on your head position), and truly correct stereo which works no matter the orientation of your head. Traditional 360 degree camera systems have issues showing stereoscopic content when the viewer tilts their head in certain directions, while Immerge’s light field captures retain proper stereo no matter the orientation of the head, Lytro says.
According to Lytro’s VP of Engineering, Tim Milliron, Immerge can render up to 8k per eye resolution, synthesizing the view from hundreds of constituent sub-cameras. Milliron says the company expects content creators to use Immerge’s light field captures like a high quality master file, from which a high-end 6DOF-capable experience could be distributed in app-form to desktop VR headsets, or other more basic 360 video files could be rendered for uploading and playback through traditional means.
Last year, Lytro raised a $50 million investment to pursue their VR interests. While the company initially expected to have Immerge ready in the first half of 2016, it’s just now in Q3 that we’re seeing the first test footage shot with the device. Felix & Paul Studios, Within (formerly ‘Vrse)’, and Wevr were initially said to be among the first companies outside of Lytro to get access to the camera to begin prototyping content. The company is also accepting applications for access to the prototype camera on the official Immerge website. |
The 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to UK novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.
Born in Japan in 1954, the author's family moved to England when he was five years old.
The writer, "in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world", the Nobel Prize committee said in a statement on Thursday.
He is best known for the dystopian work Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a book Ishiguro has said he wrote in just four weeks.
The 62-year-old also writes screenplays.
Ishiguro studied at the University of Kent, receiving an undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy and later receiving a Master's degree from the University of East Anglia in Creative Writing.
His latest book, The Buried Giant, was published in 2015.
Social media users took to Twitter to congratulate Ishiguro on the high acclaim.
"Congrats to Kazuo Ishiguro on the Nobel! REMAINS OF THE DAY was perfect, emotionally, politically, structurally. Makes me burn with envy," tweeted author Raj Balasubramanyam.
"Kazuo Ishiguro! The Nobel committee somewhat begins to redeem itself after last year's blooper," said writer and journalist Abubakar A Ibrahim, in an apparent dig at the 2016 decision to award the prestigious prize to Bob Dylan. |
It was, at times, puzzling — a three-ring circus without the tent — for players wearing the Double Blue in 2016.
For some members of the Toronto Argos, the puzzles turned into chaos early in 2017. First, GM Jim Barker was shoved out the door on Jan. 24. Three days later, head coach Scott Milanovich quit to become the quarterbacks coach with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars.
With plenty of moving parts and not much certainty in either the football ops department or in the coaching staff, potential free agents lined up to get out the door. Three Argos – defensive back A.J. Jefferson, along with receivers Kenny Shaw and Diontae Spencer — landed with the Ottawa Redblacks.
“I would have loved to stay in Toronto, but our coach left, our GM left … I didn’t know what was going on,” explained Jefferson on Thursday. “I decided I should see what was going on in free agency. It was one of those things where it was just time for a change.”
It was a weird 2016 season for the Argos. In early October, after a 38-11 thumping at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes, the Argos dumped their three best receivers – Kevin Elliott, Vidal Hazelton and Tori Gurley. A couple of weeks before that, the Argos dealt for quarterback Drew Willy – but they paid dearly, giving up popular defensive back T.J. Heath along with first- and third-round draft picks.
“We lost some guys during the season, that was kind of upsetting to me,” said Jefferson. “It was surprising. It was the last thing I would have expected them to do. When they traded T.J., everybody was kind of, ‘It’s OK, they have a plan, they have a plan.’ In the end, I just wondered, ‘Where is this all going?’ ”
So when it came time to test the free-agent waters, on Feb. 14, Jefferson got a good feeling about the Redblacks after talking to the team’s coaches. He signed a one-year contract and is excited to be part of RNation.
“They play my kind of football,” he said. “I wanted to go to the best place where I could have success. I think I excel in man (to man pass coverage) and press man, we kind of got away from that last year in Toronto. My first year, that’s pretty much all I did. (The Redblacks) said they would give me an opportunity to showcase my talent.”
It’s been a learning curve for Jefferson since he joined the Argos in 2015 after spending time on the NFL rosters of the Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks. In his two CFL seasons, the 28-year-old from Bakersfield, Calif. has 91 tackles, five sacks and six interceptions.
One of those interceptions came last July 31 (in a 23-20 Argos win over Ottawa) on a gimmick play by the Redblacks, who initially lined up for a field goal attempt, but instead had quarterback Henry Burris run up behind centre Jon Gott and lob a pass intended for Zack Evans. Even with a defensive lineman as the intended target, the Argos weren’t tricked.
“They lined up in a field goal formation, then everybody split,” said Jefferson. “So they left me on the backside. I knew I had to watch the guy. But it was kind of 2-on-1. My teammate and I had the guy dealt with. He went out for a pass, it wasn’t a nice pass. It was fairly easy to get underneath it.”
A multi-sport athlete – soccer, basketball, running track, football and T-ball (“I think I played it one year — I was bored, kicking the grass”) – Jefferson said he puts plenty of work into improving what he does.
“Football was one of those things that kind of translated over from every other sport I played – catch the ball and run with it,” he said. “I look at my film from last year. Typically, I watch the games I don’t think I played well in – try to see what I can improve on. Everybody’s different. People learn differently. The things I do well, I don’t tend to work on those. The things I don’t do well, I want to get to the point where I can do everything pretty good. Then I can start working on things that I’m really good at. I’m like my own biggest critic. So I’d rather see what I’m doing wrong and correct it.”
He believes his arrow is still pointing up as he drives himself to get better.
“I’ve always been wanting to be the best at whatever I’m doing,” said Jefferson. “It’s kind of the way I grew up around my family and friends – being very competitive. Being a professional, it’s one of those things you have to do to keep your job.
Redblacks could be done spending
While there’s still a pretty impressive list of CFL free agents looking for work, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that the Ottawa Redblacks have closed their wallet.
Free-agent season, for them, may already be over.
Defensive linemen like Alan-Michael Cash, Bryan Hall, Justin Hickman, Euclid Cummings and both Moton Hopkins and Cleyon Laing from Ottawa’s Grey Cup team of 2016 are still looking for work.
Another former Redblack, offensive lineman J’Michael Deane, is still a free agent. Then there are defensive backs like Patrick Watkins, John Ojo and Cauchy Muamba.
Some of the players mentioned are looking for an NFL opportunity, for others it’ll be a matter of time. But when asked if Ottawa might get back into the free-agent fray, Redblacks GM Marcel Desjardins said: “I don’t anticipate us doing anything.”
As they say, it is what it is. |
It was less than six months ago that Dallas owner Jerry Jones put himself on notice as GM of the Cowboys, saying he would have fired himself. Well, based on the early returns from this year's NFL draft, Jones once again has cause for self-dismissal.
The Cowboys were the only team to earn a failing grade for their performance in the draft, an effort that included a trade down and the subsequent selection of a player they could have gotten rounds later.
For the most part, the NFC performed well, led by teams such as San Francisco, Minnesota, Atlanta and, yes, Tampa Bay.
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Here's an early assessment of how the NFC teams fared:
[Related: AFC draft grades]
NFC EAST
Dallas Cowboys
Picks: C Travis Frederick, TE Gavin Escobar, WR Terrance Williams, FS J.J. Wilcox, CB B.W. Webb, RB Joseph Randle, OLB DeVonte Holloman.
Analysis: Last year, the Cowboys received a B after an aggressive move up the board to get cornerback Morris Claiborne. This year they traded down, and the grade bottomed out with it. Three of their first four picks are guys who might not play significantly this year. The consensus around the league is that Frederick was a reach. Escobar was a fine pick, but then Williams and Wilcox are two guys who might not play for two years. Considering the Cowboys have Miles Austin, Dez Bryant and Jason Witten, Williams was an unnecessary luxury (particularly after the Escobar pick). Wilcox can be an in-the-box safety, but he’s so woefully inexperienced that it’s going to take awhile.
Grade: F
New York Giants
Picks: OT Justin Pugh, DT Johnathan Hankins, DE Damontre Moore, QB Ryan Nassib, S Cooper Taylor, G Eric Herman, RB Michael Cox.
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Analysis: Syracuse fans who love Pugh and Nassib are probably going to be up-in-arms with me, but don’t take this grade the wrong way. It’s a perfectly acceptable draft by a team that understands where it is. The Giants addressed some important needs, but didn’t exactly get anyone spectacular with this draft. Pugh is a really nice offensive tackle, but clearly a step down from some of the top guys in this draft. Same goes for Hankins and Moore, who figure to be good rotation players, if not starters some day (the Giants are very good at picking defensive linemen). Nassib is the interesting pick because so many people thought he was worthy of a second-round selection. Like so many quarterbacks, the Giants could develop him for a year or two and then flip him for a higher pick.
Grade: C+
[More: Secrecy helped the Bills land QB E.J. Manuel]
Philadelphia Eagles
Picks: OT Lane Johnson, TE Zach Ertz, DT Bennie Logan, QB Matt Barkley, SS Earl Wolff, DE Joe Kruger, CB Jordan Poyer, DE David King.
Analysis: The start of this draft was much stronger than the end of it. Johnson comes in as a starter to immediately help an offensive line that was a mess last season because of injury and inexperience. Ertz is a great weapon in the mold of Jason Witten who will pair with Brent Celek to provide the Eagles with ample opportunity for an explosive two-tight end set. The combo of Ertz, Celek, DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, LeSean McCoy and Michael Vick could be really fun in Chip Kelly’s offense. Where things went sideways was in the middle of the draft with Logan, who is an underachiever, and Barkley, who was overrated and not altogether necessary. The fact that Philly traded up to get Barkley when it already had second-year passer Nick Foles is perplexing.
Grade: B
Washington Redskins
Picks: CB David Amerson, TE Jordan Reed, SS Phillip Thomas, RB Chris Thompson, DE Brandon Jenkins, SS Bacarri Rambo, RB Jawan Jamison.
Analysis: This grade gets a pretty good boost from the fact that the Redskins used their first-round pick as part of the deal to get Robert Griffin III. That’s the excellent, but sort of unseen, part to this draft. As for the picks the Redskins made this year, they are pretty questionable. Amerson is a guy who suffers from DeAngelo Hall Disease, which is the inordinate tendency to get beat deep despite having good speed. Reed is very athletic, but is a bit of reach in the third round (most people projected him in the fourth or even the fifth). The one nugget pick in this group might be Thomas, who is a pretty good hitter and might provide some presence on defense.
Grade: B+
NFC NORTH
Chicago Bears
Picks: OT Kyle Long, ILB Jon Bostic, OLB Khaseem Greene, OT Jordan Mills, OLB Cornelius Washington, WR Marquess Wilson.
Analysis: There are vastly different opinions on Long, who is far more athletic than he plays. The problem is that Long took awhile to get back to football after a dalliance with baseball. Where some people see a guy who is stiff, others see a guy who is learning to react and project that once he gets it, he could even become a left tackle. Likewise, some people don’t see Bostic as very athletic, while others see him as way more explosive and talented than more highly regarded players such as Manti Te’o. The bottom line is the Bears got a couple of guys who figure to start right away and could be, at the least, steady players for a long time.
Grade: C+
Detroit Lions
Picks: DE Ezekiel Ansah, CB Darius Slay, G Larry Warford, DE Devin Taylor, P Sam Martin, WR Corey Fuller, RB Theo Riddick, TE Michael Williams, LB Brandon Hepburn.
Analysis: Three years from now, this grade has the best chance to look completely foolish because of Ansah. He is likely to either be an amazing pro or a complete bust because of his limited background in the game. He has basically played only one year and didn’t grow up with the game in Africa. Aside from Ansah, the Lions came into this draft with a lot of serious needs, including both defensive end spots and left tackle. With little ability to work a trade, the Lions at least got Ansah and picked up solid values in Slay and Warford. The other guy to pay close attention to is Taylor, who has extraordinary size.
Grade: B
[More: Complete 2013 NFL draft breakdown]
Green Bay Packers
Picks: DE Datone Jones, RB Eddie Lacy, OT David Bakhtiari, C J.C. Tretter, RB Johnathan Franklin, CB Micah Hyde, DE Josh Boyd, LB Nate Palmer, WR C.J. Johnson, WR Kevin Dorsey, LB Sam Barrington.
Analysis: Packers fans are going to rave about the steal the team got in Lacy at the end of the second round. OK, maybe. But there’s some pretty good money to be bet on Lacy being a guy with little or no long-term future because he’s so beaten up. In fact, Franklin could end up being the better player in a couple of year. Jones is an interesting player who some people feel is going to be a great pass rusher. Maybe, but he also could get stuck playing inside too much as a 3-4 end. One GM said he thought Jones would struggle to get more than four sacks a year, which seemed really odd to say. The real key to this draft could be the two offensive linemen Green Bay picked up in round 4 (Bakhtiari and Tretter). Both are classic Ted Thompson picks.
Grade: B
Minnesota Vikings
Picks: DT Sharrif Floyd, CB Xavier Rhodes, WR Cordarrelle Patterson, OLB Gerald Hodges, P Jeff Locke, G Jeff Baca, OLB Michael Mauti, G Travis Bond, DT Everett Dawkins.
Analysis: If you like aggressive drafting, this is it at it’s finest. Through the process of two trades (giving up Percy Harvin in March and then giving up four picks on Thursday), the Vikings ended up with three first-round picks. They used them on three great examples of the "falling value" concept. Starting with Floyd, who was projected as a possible top-four pick, all three were guys who have star ability to go with some factor that drags them down the draft board. If the Vikings hit on two of the three, they could have two superstars. If they hit on all three, they have the makings of a title team. If they hit on only one, somebody is probably going to get fired. Also, picking a punter in the fifth round when you have Chris Kluwe around is a bit odd.
Grade: A-
NFC SOUTH
Atlanta Falcons
Picks: CB Desmond Trufant, CB Robert Alford, DE Malliciah Goodman, TE Levine Toilolo, DE Stansly Maponga, DB Kemal Ishmael, SS Zeke Motta, QB Sean Renfree.
Analysis: If GM Thomas Dimitroff is one thing above all else, it’s realistic. He saw how the Falcons' defense got torched in the playoffs and dumped his aging cornerbacks and defensive end. He then used four of his top five picks on critical positions. He traded up to get Trufant, followed that with another corner and then picked up two defensive ends with projectable pass-rush ability. He also made a nice move to get Toilolo, who probably would have been a second-round pick next year if he had returned to Stanford. Instead, Toilolo, who has excellent athletic ability but not a lot of experience, will get to watch Tony Gonzalez. Hopefully, Toilolo will be inspired.
Grade: A-
Carolina Panthers
Picks: DT Star Lotulelei, DT Kawann Short, G Edmund Kugbila, ILB A.J. Klein, RB Kenjon Barner.
Analysis: Given my own size and shape, I should probably like this draft a whole lot more than I do. If you like big men and trench warfare, this is your prototype draft. Really, if you know new Panthers GM Dave Gettleman and his background from with the Giants, this makes perfect sense. It’s not sexy, but it’s functional and necessary. There are still concerns long-term about health maintenance for Lotulelei, but he’s a big-time space-eater. Combine him with Short, and the Panthers will have no problems getting MLB Luke Kuechly free to run all over the field and make tackles. The Panthers' run defense, which has been awful the last two seasons, is now at least respectable. Finally, Barner could be really interesting in open offensive sets.
Grade: C+
[More: Winners, losers from 2013 NFL draft]
New Orleans Saints
Picks: SS Kenny Vaccaro, OT Terron Armstead, DT John Jenkins, WR Kenny Stills, DE Rufus Johnson.
Analysis: Vaccaro was clearly the best safety available in a strong group for that position (three went in the first round and another went with the top pick of the second round). Vaccaro has a certain confidence and edginess that coach Sean Payton loves. More importantly, he can play either strong, free or even cornerback in a pinch. Armstead walks in as a likely starter on a team that historically has gotten by with lesser offensive tackles. Likewise, Jenkins is a likely starter in New Orleans’ new 3-4 defense and is a terrific space eater … as long as he doesn't eat his way out of the league.
Grade: B+
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Picks: CB Johnthan Banks, QB Mike Glennon, DT Akeem Spence, DE William Gholston, DE Steven Means, RB Mike James.
Analysis: Much of this grade depends upon how you view the Darrelle Revis trade. If you think it’s a good risk, you give the Buccaneers high marks. If you think it was a bad risk, you probably give them a C, at best. My opinion is pretty obvious, and I give Tampa Bay a bit more credit for taking Banks to add even more to a secondary that has to deal with some talented offenses in the NFC South. While Glennon is a questionable pick in the third round, Spence and Gholston have an immediate chance to play right away because of the free-agent departures of Roy Miller and Michael Bennett.
Grade: A-
NFC WEST
Arizona Cardinals
Picks: G Jonathan Cooper, ILB Kevin Minter, CB Tyrann Mathieu, DE Alex Okafor, G Earl Watford, RB Stepfan Taylor, WR Ryan Swope, RB Andre Ellington, TE D.C. Jefferson.
Analysis: No matter what happens with Mathieu – and all outcomes are on the table – this is probably going to end up being a strong draft because of Cooper and Minter. Cooper is an extraordinary guard, the rare type that is worth not only taking in the first round, but in the top 10. You’re talking about a potential all-time great at that position. As for Minter, he’s a very good player who will likely start from Day 1. Moreover, Minter and CB Patrick Peterson are part of the plan to get the most out of Mathieu, an extremely talented and sadly undisciplined player. If that weren’t enough, the beauty of this draft could be in the combination of Okafor, Taylor and Swope, who all have a chance to be serious contributors.
Grade: A
St. Louis Rams
Picks: WR Tavon Austin, ILB Alec Ogletree, FS T.J. McDonald, WR Stedman Bailey, C Barrett Jones, CB Brandon McGee, RB Zac Stacy.
Analysis: It’s very unusual for such a small wide receiver (Austin is all of 5-foot-8) to go in the top 10 of a draft, but the Rams were selecting as much for need as for value. St. Louis jumped eight spots to get the speedy Austin, who has a chance to turn the Rams into the second coming of the Greatest Show on Turf. Yeah, I said it, but that’s what Jeff Fisher and Les Snead are obviously building. That said, it wouldn’t be a Fisher draft if there weren’t a problem child in the group. Ogletree is that guy who fell all the way to No. 30 despite top-10 athletic ability. Then again, if Ogletree gets too far out of line, Fisher can have Jones put him in his place. Jones is one tough dude.
Grade: B
San Francisco 49ers
Picks: FS Eric Reid, DE Cornellius Carradine, TE Vance McDonald, OLB Corey Lemonier, WR Quinton Patton, RB Marcus Lattimore, DE Quinton Dial, OLB Nick Moody, QB B.J. Daniels, OT Carter Bykowski, DB Marcus Cooper.
Analysis: The 49ers came into this draft with four pretty obvious needs: Safety, defensive end/line, second tight end and the eventual replacement for Frank Gore. Check, check, check and check. Sure, Reid, Carradine, McDonald and Lattimore might not all hit in the long run, but the 49ers got four strong candidates. The 49ers showed aggression by trading up for Reid, a guy who coach Jim Harbaugh tried to recruit to Stanford, and still got Carradine, a guy who some people thought San Francisco was going to take in the first round. Lattimore is the truly intriguing prospect as he tries to come back from a horrific knee injury. If he returns to form, the 49ers might have nabbed the best back in the draft.
Grade: A+
[More: Who were the best players not selected in the 2013 NFL draft?]
Seattle Seahawks
Picks: RB Christine Michael, DT Jordan Hill, WR Chris Harper, DT Jesse Williams, CB Tharold Simon, TE Luke Wilson, RB Spencer Ware, G Ryan Seymour, LB Ty Powell, DT Jared Smith, OT Michael Bowie.
Analysis: As with Tampa Bay and Darrelle Revis, a lot of this grade depends on how people perceive WR Percy Harvin, who Seattle got in a trade that included its first-round pick. Harvin is a serious talent who can also be a serious malcontent. If the Seahawks get three good years out of Harvin, it will be a great trade. Even two good years might be enough. As for the rest, GM John Schneider did his usual work of finding good value along the way, particularly with guys like Michael, who has a nice blend of speed and power, and Williams, who was predicted to go much higher by some.
Grade: B
NFL.com on the Giants' draft class:
More NFL draft coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• New Cardinals DB Tyrann Mathieu continues to raise red flags
• Eagles nab Matt Barkley early on Day 3
• Watch: Is Manti Te'o a good fit for the Chargers? |
LSE foreign academics told they will not be asked to advise UK on Brexit
Leading foreign academics from the LSE acting as expert advisers to the UK government were told they would not be asked to contribute to government work and analysis on Brexit because they are not British nationals.
The news was met with outrage by many academics, while legal experts questioned whether it could be legal under anti-discrimination laws and senior politicians criticised it as bewildering.
“It is utterly baffling that the government is turning down expert, independent advice on Brexit simply because someone is from another country,” said Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ EU spokesman.
“This is yet more evidence of the Conservatives’ alarming embrace of petty chauvinism over rational policymaking.”
Sara Hagemann, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics who specialises in EU policymaking processes, EU treaty matters, the role of national parliaments and the consequences of EU enlargements, said she had been told her services would not be required. Hagemann tweeted on Thursday:
Sara Hagemann (@sarahagemann) UK govt previously sought work& advice from best experts. Just told I & many colleagues no longer qualify as not UKcitizens #Brexit @LSEnews
Asked to clarify whether she was responding to speeches at the Conservative party conference pledging tough new immigration controls, Hagemann, who is Danish, said she had been informed specifically that she would not be contributing to any further government Brexit work.
It is understood up to nine LSE academics specialising in EU affairs have been briefing the Foreign Office on Brexit issues, but the school was informed by a senior FCO official that submissions from non-UK citizens would no longer be accepted.
The staff concerned were then made aware of the instruction in an email from the head of the LSE’s European Institute, Kevin Featherstone, which said the Foreign Office planned to approach academics to contract staff for a Brexit advisory panel – but that those to be contracted “must be UK passport-holders.”
Amber Rudd faces backlash from businesses over foreign workers Read more
One of the group is understood to be a dual national, with citizenship of both the UK and another EU member state.
The Foreign Office was said to be concerned about the risk of sensitive material being exposed as article 50 negotiations over Britain’s exit from the EU – and subsequent talks on its future trade and other relations with the bloc – start to get under way.
The LSE said in statement that the government regularly called on its academics for advice, adding: “We believe our academics, including non-UK nationals, have hugely valuable expertise which will be vital in this time of uncertainty around the UK’s relationship with Europe and the rest of the world. Any changes to security measures are a matter for the UK government.”
The Foreign Office denied non-British nationals had been barred from the work, saying it had been misunderstood. “The FCO regularly works with academic institutions to assist in its policy research and nothing has changed as a result of the referendum,” a spokesman said.
“It has always been the case that anyone working in the FCO may require security clearance depending on the nature and duration of their work. Britain is an outward-looking nation and we will continue to take advice from the best and brightest minds, regardless of nationality.”
LSE interim director Prof Julia Black said in an internal school update memo on the matter that the world-renowned university stood by its academic principles of independence.
“You may have seen reports in the media that the Foreign Office have advised us that they will be issuing tenders to contract for advisory work, but that only UK nationals will be eligible to apply,” she said in the memo, which was posted on Twitter.
“Whilst the Foreign Office has long had a rule restricting the nationality of employees or secondees, the extension of the bar to advisory work seems to be new. However, it is for the Foreign Office to determine what its national security arrangements are, and their legality, not for us.
“We are standing firm to our principles of academic independence and valuing our truly international community of scholars. We will continue to stand by our colleagues and we strongly value the work that you all do.”
Steve Peers, a professor of EU law at the University of Essex who has advised the government, said it should be “perfectly possible to get useful input from some of the best-qualified people in the country” without anything sensitive being revealed.
“I don’t really get the security or sensitivity argument,” he said. “Whatever the reasons, this will come across as hostile, narrow and xenophobic.” He tweeted:
Steve Peers (@StevePeers) One of the best EU political scientists in the country
What kind of know-nothing nativist govt rejects the expertise of all non-citizens? https://t.co/Dm6N0x51Lp
Legal experts questioned whether the FCO could be in breach of UK public procurement law by requiring the work be carried out by British nationals. Albert Sanchez Graells, a senior law lecturer at Bristol university, said it “definitely” would be if the work was in the context of a services contract.
AlbertSánchezGraells (@asanchezgraells) @DavidAllenGreen if this was in context of a services contract, most definitely. I am happy to provide free legal opinion on this @LSEnews
Simon Cox, a migration lawyer at the Open Society Justice Initiative, said it might be possible for the government to legally restrict high-level advisers to British citizens, but added that the way the situation had been handled was “beyond disrespectful, and in a worryingly xenophobic context”.
UK in a Changing Europe, a thinktank on UK-EU relations of which Hagemann is a senior fellow, said it believed there was “a more pressing need than ever before for academic expertise to inform the multitude of difficult decisions to be taken in connection with Brexit” and that it would continue to publish research “whatever the nationality of the author”.
Separately, the Guardian has learned that another EU national – a migration specialist who asked not to be identified – was approached by a private recruitment firm for a Foreign Office post for which she was well qualified, but informed after several conversations that only British citizens would be eligible.
European academics, who make up about 15% of research and teaching staff at British universities, responded with dismay. Jan Eichhorn, a fellow in social policy at Edinburgh university, tweeted: “For the first time this makes me question whether it makes sense to continue working at a UK university as an EU policy-focussed academic.”
The government has come under sustained fire over immigration since the Conservative conference when the home secretary, Amber Rudd, said it was considering requiring companies to declare the proportion of international staff in their workforce.
Ministers were said to want to see lists of companies published and those employers with the highest proportions of foreign staff “named and shamed” for not employing British people when they could.
Rudd, who was forced to defend herself on radio against allegations of xenophobia, also announced a crackdown on overseas students and work visas, and pledged to prevent migrants “taking jobs British people could do”.
Theresa May was also accused after her conference speech of stoking anti-immigrant sentiment in the country by playing to fears about the impact of foreign workers on jobs and wages.
The prime minister said the EU referendum result legitimised a tougher line on immigration and some people did not like to admit that British workers could “find themselves out of work or on lower wages because of low-skilled immigration”. |
Peru Football Federation (FPF) president Edwin Oviedo has said there is no danger of the national team losing their World Cup spot.
Oviedo's reassurance comes after newspaper Libero reported that Peru's place could be in jeopardy following a bill presented by congresswoman Paloma Noceda that would see the FPF lose its autonomy.
Libero said Noceda's proposal would see the Institute of Sport control the federation, but any government intervention could see Peru excluded by FIFA.
Peru reached their first World Cup for 36 years by beating New Zealand 2-0 on aggregate in a play-off earlier this month.
And Oviedo told Peruvian radio station RPP that they would be playing in Russia.
¡Buen Día!
"TODOS CON PERÚ", hinchas alzaron su voz de protesta contra el proyecto que podría dejarnos sin Mundial, fujimorismo dio marcha atrás ➡https://t.co/1yKzLnjvP4 pic.twitter.com/FkahDjuZVd — Libero.pe (@liberope) November 22, 2017
He said: "Congress listened to our suggestions in order not to take this risk.
"We at the FPF are calm. It's impossible that we risk Peru's participation. Our national team will be in Russia 2018."
Noceda, the president of Peru's Education, Youth and Sport Commission, also sought to dispel fears that the bill would put Peru in danger.
She said it only states that the Peruvian Institute of Sport, affiliated to the Ministry of Education, can oversee the federation as the current law stipulates but cannot control it.
Speaking to the EFE news agency, she said: "It would not endanger, in any way, the World Cup participation.
"We are happy to have qualified for the World Cup. It's been three decades that we have waited for this.
"Everyone celebrated because of it and my bill has nothing to do with football. It's only directed at matters regarding sport centres."
However, if Peru were to be excluded, it would open up the door for another nation to take their place, with FIFA rules saying the governing body's "organising committee can, in particular, decide to replace the association in question with another association."
The highest-ranked side to have missed out on the World Cup are 10th-placed Chile, who finished sixth in their South American qualifying round behind Peru on goal difference.
Italy, who failed to reach a World Cup for the first time since 1958 after losing a playoff to Sweden, are ranked 14th.
Under FIFA regulations only 13 European teams can play at a World Cup and that quota is already filled.
In the 1992 European Championship, Denmark -- who went on to win the event -- qualified only after Yugoslavia, who had finished top of them in their group, were disqualified.
That could mean New Zealand, as Peru's beaten playoff opponents, stepping up to take their place in the event of expulsion.
Meanwhile, Oviedo said the federation was working on extending the contract of national coach Ricardo Gareca, a reported target for several other federations.
Gareca, who has been in charge since February 2015, is out of contract after the World Cup.
"The aim of the FPF is to offer him a contract extension for the next [2022 World Cup] qualifiers," Oviedo said.
"It will happen before the World Cup, that is our desire, but it will depend on what he wants."
Adriana Garcia is a Valencia-based football writer who covers La Liga for ESPN FC. |
Microsoft is making a special exception in the way it retires Windows XP in China, and will continue offering security support for the OS to users in the nation.
To do so, the U.S. software giant is partnering with China’s leading Internet security vendors, Microsoft said in a Sunday posting on its official account with Sina Weibo, a top social networking site in the country.
Outside of China, Microsoft is dropping support of Windows XP on April 8, meaning that users of the OS will no longer receive security patches meant to fix vulnerabilities in the software.
To stay protected, Microsoft has urged users of the old OS to upgrade their PCs to the latest version of Windows. In markets such as the U.S., Windows XP is gradually being phased out by PC users. But in China, the software remains one of the top operating systems.
Among China’s Internet users, about 57 percent rely on Windows XP systems to go online, according to analytics site CNZZ.com. The OS can still be found in use at Internet cafes, businesses and schools.
A major reason why the 12-year-old OS is so popular in China is because it has been widely pirated. For years, Microsoft has tried repeatedly to convince consumers and businesses in the nation to buy official copies, pointing to the rampant security vulnerabilities found in bootleg versions. But the operating system’s high price has been one factor that’s turned potential buyers away.
The retiring of Windows XP, however, is giving China’s security vendors a chance to fill the void with their own security products. Among the Chinese security vendors helping Microsoft provide support to the OS is Tencent, one of China’s largest Internet firms.
It’s unclear how the protection will be delivered, but the security support may not even matter to most Windows XP users in the country.
In its Sunday post, Microsoft noted that 70 percent of China’s Windows XP users had in the last 13 years never chosen to install the company’s security updates. |
The PlayStation Network outage has had a silver lining for Sony's sales.
Having your customer's data stolen through a cyberattack, and subsequently bringing down your proprietary gaming network for almost a month is never a good thing. But Sony tried to make good with gamers by offering four older titles for free through its Welcome Back Program and may have accidentally hit upon a new way to increase game sales. Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR), a market research firm, released a report that claims sales of Sony titles such as Infamous 2 and Little Big Planet 2 actually increased due to offering the original games for free. The report recommends other publishers experiment with offering older games in its catalog for free, especially when a new sequel is on the shelves.
"While the Welcome Back program was designed to rekindle the activity and consumer trust of PlayStation Network users, the data suggests it may have highlighted a new profitable sequence for video game," EEDAR's report read.
By offering games for free, the increased awareness, excitement and purchasing intent for a franchise more than makes up for any decreased sales profits, as EEDAR's data proves:
When broken down mathematically, the results make a sound financial argument. If a game that once sold 2 million units in the market is currently available digitally and physically, it is likely producing gross receipts of about $500,000 a month. Assuming that gross receipts reduce to $0 during a 30 day period where a title is free (-$500,000), as long as the free offering boost sales of the next iteration by 8,500 units (at $59 ASP), then it would produce a net/net benefit to the publisher. EEDAR believes that the publicity generated from the free offering, in addition to new consumers being introduced to the series, would make the 8,500 unit mark easily achievable.
There are a few downsides, though. Games which have a strong narrative element, such as the Mass Effect series, often see huge spikes in sales of previous titles for gamers that want to "catch up" with the story. Offering narrative games for free may not offset the potential profits. The other problem is that physical retailers - as opposed to digital marketplaces - will likely frown on offering product for free that they can typically charge rental or used prices.
Unlike movies, there is no clear sequence of sales for games and the industry could seriously use one. "For instance, a movie is first released in theatres where it generates the most revenue, then moves to the Pay-Per-View market, followed by the rental market and lastly, broadcast for free on network television," the EEDAR report points out. "Within the video game industry, however, these sequences typically occur simultaneously with games being available physically, digitally and for rental concurrently and rarely made available for free."
The plan that EEDAR recommends sounds similar to the free-to-play revolution going on in MMOs right now. Exposure to more content often loosens the purse strings more than a $60 paywall.
While it certainly seems counter-intuitive to offer product for free, I'm sure that gamers would welcome playing older games without emptying their wallets. |
PARIS (Reuters) - A panel created by President Francois Hollande to cut red tape for French business announced 50 measures on Monday aimed at saving billions of euros a year, as his government seeks to revive a struggling economy.
French President Francois Hollande addresses the audience at the National Aeronautic University of Queretaro in Queretaro April 11, 2014. REUTERS/Henry Romero
The measures will untangle a thicket of rules - including, for example, a requirement that bakers inform local police of their holiday plans - which are seen as preventing small and big business from flourishing in France.
The so-called “simplification blitz” is part of Hollande’s wider moves to cut payroll charges on French companies by 30 billion euros ($42 billion) during his mandate. Corporate tax cuts were announced earlier this month.
“We’ve revved up the simplification machine and it’s going to run for the next three years,” said Thierry Mandon, a Socialist lawmaker who co-authored the list of proposals. “This policy aims to save our companies time and money by cutting administrative costs that are excessive or useless.”
French corporate margins are the lowest in the euro zone. Hollande, who is fighting to bring joblessness down from above 10 percent, hopes the measures will stimulate hiring by saving companies billions of euros (dollars), following similar initiatives in Britain and Germany.
The two countries saved companies 1.5 and 2 billion euros per year, respectively, over a decade by lowering paperwork costs by about 25 percent, Mandon told Reuters. The aim is for the French measures to be in place by the end of this year.
SELF-IMPOSED HURDLES
Some measures proposed by Mandon aim to scrap antiquated or arcane rules, such as the one requiring bakers to declare their summer holiday plans.
“That dates back to the 1930s when we were afraid of lacking for bread!” Mandon said.
Others aim to simplify business life by standardising the use of terms - depending on context, there are no fewer than four meanings for the word “day” - or cutting the number of lines on payslips down to six from 25 to 30 currently.
That measure alone would entail reducing the number of agencies in charge of collecting social charges - currently above 200 - to about 20, a massive undertaking which Mandon estimates could take 24 months to complete.
Entrepreneurs will have an easier time registering new companies, while smaller firms will no longer have to submit dozens of documents in duplicate to several administrative centres in order to join a public call for tenders.
“France is a masochistic athlete that sets up hurdles for itself when its competitors are knocking them down,” Guillaume Cairou, head of the Club des Entrepreneurs, said in a statement. “The pileup of regulation is just as intolerable for our companies as it is for foreign investors whose money ends up fleeing our country.”
In a first phase of simplification, the government did away with the Bank of France’s practice of stamping the number “040” on the file of anyone who had a business bankruptcy in the past, making it very difficult for them to regain access to credit.
Now all companies will be covered by a so-called “zero new cost” pledge by which the government vows not to impose extra charges on firms as a result of new rules or laws.
“Any new cost will be offset by a reduction that is at least equivalent to the cost,” said Mandon’s report, which sums up the conclusions of an expert commission.
The measures will also prevent tax authorities from seeking retroactive payments on levies that have been imposed during the year, a major bugbear of companies at a time of frequent changes to tax rules.
Mandon added that the commission aims to propose new simplification measures every six months, with a next batch due in September, until the end of Hollande’s term in 2017. ($1 = 0.7201 Euros) |
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Nawaz Sharif has survived one court ruling but now faces a fresh investigation
The leak of 11 million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca identified links between many political and business leaders around the world and offshore companies and accounts. Among them was the Pakistani prime minister's family.
The Pakistani Supreme Court has now ordered an investigation into their affairs by a joint team of civil and military investigation agencies, as the BBC's M Ilyas Khan explains.
What did the Panama Papers reveal?
The leaks in April 2016 revealed that three of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's children owned offshore companies and assets not shown on his family's wealth statement.
The companies identified so far include three British Virgin Islands-based companies Nescoll Ltd, Nielsen Enterprises Ltd and Hangon Property Holdings Ltd, incorporated in 1993, 1994 and 2007 respectively.
These companies have been used to channel funds to acquire foreign assets, including some apartments along Park Lane in London's Mayfair area.
The insinuation that the companies were meant to hide or launder ill-gotten wealth or to avoid taxes called his credentials into question.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The Panama revelations led to protests around the world - and, here in Iceland, the resignation of the prime minister
What does Mr Sharif say?
Mr Sharif and his family have denied wrongdoing. In November, they told the Supreme Court that their London property was bought through investments in companies owned by the Qatari ruling family.
The prime minister has called the leaks the work of people "targeting me and my family for their political aims". In an address to the nation on 5 April 2016, he said those "who use ill-gotten wealth don't keep assets in their own names".
Initially, however, the leaks appeared to trigger panic in the top circles of the ruling PML-N party. The pressure was believed to be the reason behind Mr Sharif's unscheduled departure for London on 13 April 2016 to keep a rare appointment with his doctors.
This week, the sudden emergence of billboards supporting the prime minister and his government in parts of Punjab and Sindh provinces was seen by many as an attempt to whip up public support in case of an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court.
The prime minister has not yet commented on the Supreme Court's decision, but his top aides have called it a victory for the ruling party, which had proposed a judiciary-led investigation at the start.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Supporters of Nawaz Sharif welcomed the court's decision not to remove him from office
How did the Supreme Court ruling come about?
The ruling came at the end of a year-long process in which the court examined thousands of pages of evidence and heard lengthy arguments by lawyers from both sides.
The Panama Papers leaks came at a time when Mr Sharif's government was still recovering from the 2014 siege of Islamabad by opposition politician Imran Khan which kept the federal capital paralysed for four months.
Back then it was believed that some elements in the security establishment were backing the protests to prevent Mr Sharif from taking domestic and foreign policy initiatives independently of the military.
With the Panama leaks hitting the headlines, the government again come under pressure from Mr Khan and smaller groups who demanded his resignation and threatened another lockdown of Islamabad.
They filed petitions at the Supreme Court for the prime minister to be disqualified.
After initially rejecting the petitions on the grounds that they were based more on hearsay than facts, the Supreme Court constituted a five-member bench in October 2016 to start hearings in the case.
Image copyright AP Image caption Opposition politician Imran Khan wants Mr Sharif to resign
What did the Supreme Court say and what happens next?
In its ruling the court stopped short of removing Mr Sharif from public office. Instead, it has ordered investigators drawn from civilian investigation agencies and military intelligence services to examine the money trail, look at records where available and obtain testimony from key players.
The team - in front of whom the prime minister and his children have been ordered to appear - will submit its report to the court in two months' time.
Critics believe two months is too short for the team to conduct an investigation that takes in Pakistan, the UAE, Qatar and the UK, not to mention Panama. They also point out that two judges out of five, including the chief justice of Pakistan, suggested that the prime minister be disqualified.
Many opposition leaders, including former President Asif Zardari and Imran Khan, have suggested the prime minister should resign as a fair investigation is not possible if he remains in power.
Has the episode weakened Mr Sharif?
Speculation that a ruling in the case could put Mr Sharif in immediate trouble and bring forward elections due in 2018 has eased for now.
But the verdict has not eased the air of acrimony that has marred Pakistani politics since 2014.
The fact that the court has not cleared the prime minister's name and has directed him to appear before investigators will be used by the opposition to chip away at his legitimacy and personal integrity.
Allegations of corruption have chased Mr Sharif since the 1980s. And much of what the Panama Papers have revealed now was the subject of a federal inquiry in the mid-1990s.
Mr Sharif ordered that inquiry closed when he came into power in 1997, calling it "politically motivated". But this time he and his family have had to acknowledge they used offshore companies to acquire foreign assets.
The petitioners, meanwhile, led by Mr Khan, have not fared much better. They will continue to be taunted by the prime minister's camp that they entertained politically motivated charges that they could not prove in court.
As of now, the air of acrimony is likely to continue and even worsen when the investigators begin their work. And all this is happening at a time when the government has lost much of its territory to the military and elections are approaching. |
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A DIRTY tenant turned his home into a rubbish tip by cramming it with more than 1000 burger and Kentucky Fried Chicken cartons.
Landlord Chris Dowling couldn't believe his eyes, or nose, when confronted with the squalor the man had left behind.
The mountain of burger cartons, bags and other rubbish in the living room of the £100,000 flat was so huge that Chris struggled to force his way through it.
More McDonald's and KFC cartons were piled high around the bed.
It's thought the tenant had eaten his way through £5000 worth of fast-food.
And when Chris made it to the bathroom, he found that the tenant had left a giant heap of cigarette ends on the sink.
Chris, 57, said: "In 15 years of running properties I've never come across anything like this - and we see all sorts.
"The tenant had also been smoking without opening windows and there were nicotine stains dripping from the walls.
"It smelled like a giant ashtray. I can't imagine how anyone can live like that."
Chris's tenant, a mechanic, moved into the flat in Slough, Berkshire, in 2005 and always paid his £450-a-month rent.
His filthy lifestyle was exposed when bailiffs turned up at the flat to chase him for unpaid council tax. They alerted Chris, who went to inspect the flat but found the locks had been changed.
He wrote to the tenant telling him to get out and spoke to him on the phone last week.
Chris said: "He told me he had quit the flat. I told him the council were after him and he said he would sort that out."
Chris had to hire specialist cleaners who took a full vanload of rubbish from the studio flat. He has also had to pay to have the property redecorated.
But he insisted: "It hasn't put me off renting places out. I'll just take the hit."
Don Gorske, of Wisconsin, says he has eaten 23,000 of Big Macs burgers in 36 years. He has also kept every receipt. |
Image: Shutterstock
Brian Krebs is a popular reporter on the cybersecurity beat. He regularly exposes cybercriminals and their tactics, and consequently is regularly a target of their ire. Last month, he wrote about an online attack-for-hire service that resulted in the arrest of the two proprietors. In the aftermath, his site was taken down by a massive DDoS attack.
In many ways, this is nothing new. Distributed denial-of-service attacks are a family of attacks that cause websites and other internet-connected systems to crash by overloading them with traffic. The "distributed" part means that other insecure computers on the internet—sometimes in the millions—are recruited to a botnet to unwittingly participate in the attack. The tactics are decades old; DDoS attacks are perpetrated by lone hackers trying to be annoying, criminals trying to extort money, and governments testing their tactics. There are defenses, and there are companies that offer DDoS mitigation services for hire.
Basically, it's a size vs. size game. If the attackers can cobble together a fire hose of data bigger than the defender's capability to cope with, they win. If the defenders can increase their capability in the face of attack, they win.
What was new about the Krebs attack was both the massive scale and the particular devices the attackers recruited. Instead of using traditional computers for their botnet, they used CCTV cameras, digital video recorders, home routers, and other embedded computers attached to the internet as part of the Internet of Things.
Much has been written about how the IoT is wildly insecure. In fact, the software used to attack Krebs was simple and amateurish. What this attack demonstrates is that the economics of the IoT mean that it will remain insecure unless government steps in to fix the problem. This is a market failure that can't get fixed on its own.
The IoT will remain insecure unless government steps in and fixes the problem.
Our computers and smartphones are as secure as they are because there are teams of security engineers working on the problem. Companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google spend a lot of time testing their code before it's released, and quickly patch vulnerabilities when they're discovered. Those companies can support such teams because those companies make a huge amount of money, either directly or indirectly, from their software—and, in part, compete on its security. This isn't true of embedded systems like digital video recorders or home routers. Those systems are sold at a much lower margin, and are often built by offshore third parties. The companies involved simply don't have the expertise to make them secure.
Even worse, most of these devices don't have any way to be patched. Even though the source code to the botnet that attacked Krebs has been made public, we can't update the affected devices. Microsoft delivers security patches to your computer once a month. Apple does it just as regularly, but not on a fixed schedule. But the only way for you to update the firmware in your home router is to throw it away and buy a new one.
The security of our computers and phones also comes from the fact that we replace them regularly. We buy new laptops every few years. We get new phones even more frequently. This isn't true for all of the embedded IoT systems. They last for years, even decades. We might buy a new DVR every five or ten years. We replace our refrigerator every 25 years. We replace our thermostat approximately never. Already the banking industry is dealing with the security problems of Windows 95 embedded in ATMs. This same problem is going to occur all over the Internet of Things.
The market can't fix this because neither the buyer nor the seller cares. Think of all the CCTV cameras and DVRs used in the attack against Brian Krebs. The owners of those devices don't care. Their devices were cheap to buy, they still work, and they don't even know Brian. The sellers of those devices don't care: they're now selling newer and better models, and the original buyers only cared about price and features. There is no market solution because the insecurity is what economists call an externality: it's an effect of the purchasing decision that affects other people. Think of it kind of like invisible pollution.
What this all means is that the IoT will remain insecure unless government steps in and fixes the problem. When we have market failures, government is the only solution. The government could impose security regulations on IoT manufacturers, forcing them to make their devices secure even though their customers don't care. They could impose liabilities on manufacturers, allowing people like Brian Krebs to sue them. Any of these would raise the cost of insecurity and give companies incentives to spend money making their devices secure.
Of course, this would only be a domestic solution to an international problem. The internet is global, and attackers can just as easily build a botnet out of IoT devices from Asia as from the United States. Long term, we need to build an internet that is resilient against attacks like this. But that's a long time coming. In the meantime, you can expect more attacks that leverage insecure IoT devices. |
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I’m going to channel my inner @alanbleiweiss and rant for a minute about some things I saw over the last few days in the SEO world. I also want to apologize for any spelling mistakes from the start, as my right arm is in a cast and I’m typing this entirely left-handed until I can find an intern. (If you’re curious as to how I broke my arm, it was with a softball. there’s a video here. )
There’s been lots of SEO chatter lately about a recent SEL post called More Proof Google Counts Press Release Links. and I want to address a couple of issues that came up both in this thread and on Twitter.
First point: what works for one small made-up keyword may not scale or be indicative of search as a whole. Scientists see this in the real world when they notice that Newton’s laws don’t really work at the subatomic level. In SEO algorithms, we have the same phenomenon – and it’s covered in depth by many computer science classes. (Note: I have a computer science degree and used to be a software engineer, but I haven’t studied too much in the information retrieval field. There’s more in depth and profound techniques than the examples I am about to provide.)
A long time ago the Google algorithm was probably just a couple of orders more complex than an SQL statement that says something like “Select * from sites where content like ‘%term’ order by pagerank desc.”
It’s not that simple anymore. Most people think of the algorithm like a static equation. Something like Pagerank + KeywordInTitle – ExactMatchDomain – Penguin – Panda + linkDiversity-Loadtime. I’m pretty sure it’s not.
When I think of the Google Algorithm, (especially with things like Panda and Penguin) I instantly think of a neural network where the algorithm is fed a training set of data and it builds connections to constantly learn and improve what good results are. I’ll refrain from talking more about neural nets because that’s not my main point.
I also want to talk about the branch of information retrieval within computer science. Most of the basic theories (on which, the more complicated ones are built) in IR talk about dynamic weighting based on the corpus. (Corpus, being latin for body and referring here to all of the sites that Google could possible return for a query.)
Here’s an example that talks about one such theory (which uses’s everybody’s favorite @mattcutts over-reaction from 2 years ago: inverse document frequency)
Basically, what this says is that if every document in the result set has the same term on it, that term becomes less important. That makes sense. The real learning here though, is that the weighting of terms is dynamic based on the result set. If term weights can be dynamic for each result set, why can’t anchor text, links, page speed, social signals, or whatever other crazy thing is correlated to rankings? They Can Be!
So let’s look at the made up keyword example. In the case of a made up term, the corpus is very very small. In the SEL example, it’s also very very small.
Now, in this instance, what should Google do? It has pages that contain that word, but they don’t have any traditionally heavily weighted ranking signals. Rather than return no results, the ranking factor weights are changed and the page is returned. That one link actually helps when there’s no other factors to consider. get it?
Think of it as kind of a breadth first search for ranking factors. Given a tree of all factors Google knows about, it first looks at the main ones. If they aren’t present, it goes further down the tree to the less important ones and keeps traversing the tree until it finds something it can use to sort the documents.
It’s like choosing a car. First you decide SUV or Car. Then Brand, Then manual or automatic. Then maybe the color, and finally it’s down to the interface of the radio. But what if the entire car lot only had Red Automatic SUVs? That radio interface would be a LOT more important now wouldn’t it? Google is doing the same thing.
OK, point number 2. Still with me?
We need to stop analyzing every word @mattcutts says like it’s some lost scripture and start paying attention to the meaning of what he says. In this example, Matt was right. Press releases aren’t helping your site – because your site is probably going after keywords that exist on other sites, and since there’s other sites that means the press release link factor is so far down the tree of factors that it’s probably not being used.
Remember when Matt said that Page Speed was a “all else being equal we’ll return the faster site” type of factor? That fits perfectly with the tree and dynamic weights I just talked about.
Instead of looking at the big picture, the meaning, and the reasoning behind what Matt says, we get too caught up on the literal definitions. It’s the equivalent of thinking David and Goliath is a story about how there are giants in the world rather than a story about how man’s use of technology helps him overcome challenges and sets him apart from beasts. We keep taking the wrong message because we’re too literal.
That’s all I want to say. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments. |
When Edgar Rice Burroughs first published Tarzan of the Apes back in 1912 film adaptations would have probably been the farthest thing from his mind, but one hundred years later movies are still being made about his most popular creation – only the likes of Dracula, Godzilla and Sherlock Holmes are in Tarzan’s league when it comes to filmographies – and many notable actors have appeared in his films.
In 1918 Elmo Lincoln was the first to play the iconic ape man, but it was in 1932 – when MGM released Tarzan the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan – that Tarzan became a true box office star. Over the past year I’ve been reviewing Tarzan movies for this site – a labour of love if ever there was one – and I welcome all fans of the character to journey across time, as we look back at the cinematic tales of Tarzan the Ape Man. Click on the links or posters below to check out all my reviews of the world’s most cinematic ape man.
In Tarzan the Ape Man Jane visits her father in Africa as they hunt for the mythical elephant graveyard, when Tarzan enters the mix things get ugly. Johnny Weissmuller begins his long run as the titular ape man.
In Tarzan and His Mate another safari to the Elephant’s Graveyard finds Tarzan and Jane at odds with her English friends. Jane’s naked underwater swim makes this a fan favorite.
In Tarzan Escapes Jane’s cousins show up to take her back to civilization. Tarzan is not too keen on the idea. Hi-jinks ensue. They do get the really sweet tree-house in this outing.
In Tarzan’s Revenge a group of rich Americans come to Africa to get some animals for their zoo, gold medalist Eleanor Holm must fend off an idiot fiancé and an evil sultan until Tarzan eventually shows up.
In Tarzan Finds a Son! Jane and Tarzan adopt a baby that survived a plane crash, when relatives come looking for the kid five years later things get a bit tense.
In Tarzan’s Secret Treasure it’s not ivory that the villains of this entry are after this time out, now its gold they want and Boy’s innocence could spell disaster. Can Tarzan save Jane and Boy from white man’s insatiable greed?
In Tarzan’s New York Adventure we meet a group of unscrupulous circus people who kidnap Boy and take him to New York City to make him work the Big Top. Jane and Tarzan track them down through this new concrete jungle.
In Tarzan Triumphs Nazis invade the Lost City of Palandria, and only Tarzan and Boy can thwart their evil plans to enslave and exploit the populace. Cheeta’s Hitler impression a stand-out moment for the series.
In Tarzan’s Desert Mystery our favorite Lord of the Jungle brings Boy along on a mercy mission that takes them into dangerous lands, facing off against Nazi spies, dinosaurs, and giant spiders.
In Tarzan and the Amazons white intruders find a hidden city full of Amazons, Tarzan and Boy fight over whether to help these idiots or just call it a bad day and go home.
In Tarzan and the Leopard Woman the Ape Man and Boy must do battle with a leopard cult, and rescue some pretty school teachers from their evil clutches.
In Tarzan and the Huntress white invaders cross into Tarzan’s territory to hunt for animals to replenish a great animal shortage that zoos have been facing since the war ended.
In Tarzan and the Mermaids a girl flees from her people to escape being forced into a marriage with a conman posing as a god. Tarzan and Jane step into help foil this evil plot. This would be Johnny Weissmuller last outing as Tarzan.
In Tarzan’s Magic Fountain a missing aviatrix walks out of the jungle after being missing for twenty years and hasn’t aged a day. Tarzan must help her keep the secret of her youth. This is the first Lex Barker Tarzan.
In Tarzan and the Slave Girl members of a lost civilization are raiding African villages for women and only Tarzan can stop them. Meanwhile Jane gets into a nasty cat-fight with a girl hot for Tarzan’s jungle action.
In Tarzan’s Peril the Ape Man must stop a notorious slaver and gunrunner from arming an evil African warlord. Dorothy Dandridge and a man-eating plan provide great entertainment.
In Tarzan’s Savage Fury Jane and Tarzan are duped by a pair of criminals, one posing as his cousin Oliver Greystoke, all in the hopes of finding the Waziri and their fabled diamonds.
In Tarzan and the She-Devil ivory hunters enslave friends of Tarzan and try and kidnap Jane. The Lord of the Apes tries to stop this but spends most his time captured. This was Lex Barker’s last outing as Tarzan.
In Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle we find two hunters, posing as photographers, who actually plan to slaughter countless animals for their fat, hides, and tusks and only Tarzan stands in their way. Gordon Scott begins his run as Tarzan.
In Tarzan and the Lost Safari Tarzan must escort a group of plane crash survivors through hostile jungle while dealing with a possible traitor in their midst. Tarzan seen for the first time in glorious colour.
In Tarzan and the Trappers we find poor Tarzan caught up in “The Most Dangerous Game” in this failed attempt at Tarzan television series.
In Tarzan’s Fight for Life the jungle man must prevent an evil witch doctor from turning the jungle into a warzone between science and superstition. This was the final feature for producer Sol Lesser.
In Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure a group of bad men have murdered their way to find a diamond mine and only Tarzan the Lord of the Jungle can stop them. Watch out for a pre-James Bond Sean Connery as one of the villains.
In Tarzan the Magnificent Tarzan must bring in a wanted killer while being hunted by the man’s villainous family. John Carradine gives an excellent turn as the evil patriarch of this rotten group. Also the last Gordon Scott Tarzan.
In Tarzan Goes to India we find Tarzan hired to stop a herd of elephants from being drowned by a hydroelectric dam project in India. Can the ape and a rogue elephant save the day? Jock Mahoney dons the loin cloth for the first time.
In Tarzan’s Three Challenges Tarzan must guide “The Chosen One” through the jungles of Thailand while being hunted by the evil Khan. Woody Strode does double duty as the dead Khan and his evil brother. Jock Mahoney’s last Tarzan film.
In Tarzan and the Valley of Gold Tarzan must rescue a small boy from nefarious villains who want to get the location to a lost city of gold from the poor kid. Mike Henry picks up the Tarzan torch after Jock Mahoney’s departure.
In Tarzan and the Great River Tarzan heads into the jungles of Brazil to track down the evil Jaguar Death Cult. He teams up with annoying boy sidekick and a hot blonde doctor.
In Tarzan and the Jungle Boy Tarzan must locate a boy who has been lost in the jungle for six years while also trying to referee two heirs to a jungle throne. This would be Mike Henry’s last outing as Tarzan.
In this Jane centric version of Tarzan the Ape Man we find Bo Derek cavorting naked with the apes while beefcake Miles O’Keefe says nothing as Tarzan. Richard Harris, who portrays Jane’s father, was most likely paid in Scotch.
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a serious and realistic attempt of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs tale of a man raised by apes and the girl he fell in love with.
In Tarzan and the Lost City we have Tarzan returning to Africa to help some old friends prevent villainous white men from discovering the lost city of Opar. As this postpones his wedding to Jane things get ugly.
Disney’s Tarzan is an animated version that pits Tarzan against a cruel hunter and a few misplaced Phil Collins songs. It gets even more things wrong from the book but still manages to be an excellent Tarzan flick.
In The Legend of Tarzan a reluctant John Clayton returns to Africa to stop a group of mercenaries from enslaving the population of the Congo. Director David Yates removes much of the pulp adventure aspect of the Burroughs’ books but at least Jane is given more to do this time out.
It is truly astonishing that we had about one Tarzan film a year for about four decades, and now with the David Yates The Legend of Tarzan we have almost a hundred years of Tarzan movies. That’s impressive by anyone’s standards. I do hope you have enjoyed my lighthearted trip through the cinematic history of the world’s most famous jungle adventurer, and please join me for any further adventures of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. |
Sixteen years ago, David Bohnett founded GeoCities, a homepage-hosting website which presaged today’s blogs and social networks. Now his Baroda Ventures is backing Fabulis, a recently launched social network for gay men.
Jason Goldberg, Fabulis’s cofounder and CEO, told me that Bohnett recently agreed to invest $250,000 in Fabulis, bringing the New York-based company’s seed funding to $825,000.
Bohnett, an openly gay entrepreneur like Goldberg, has been an active venture investor since he sold GeoCities to Yahoo in 1999 for $3.6 billion. (Yahoo shut down GeoCities a year ago, after failing to capitalize on its early lead in giving ordinary Web users an online presence.) He got interested in Fabulis after using the site, according to Goldberg.
Fabulis is betting heavily on its virtual currency of “bits” as a business model. It’s currently running travel-related contests for trips to Fire Island, a popular summer destination outside New York City, and Atlantis Cruises, a gay cruise line.
Originally, Goldberg said he thought users would use bits for messaging, with users setting their own price in bits for access to their inbox. But he rapidly realized that wasn’t working, because “Facebook messaging is free.”
Instead, he’s running a massive popularity contest, where users vote each other up and bits, which sell for 1,500 a dollar and up, supercharge those votes. Prizes are awarded to people who enter a particular contest, but you can’t quite buy your way to the top. Instead, you need to make friends who then use their bits to give their votes more weight. Some are spending hundreds of dollars on bits, according to Goldberg.
Fabulis has given away $30,000 in prizes so far, Goldberg said, and users’ total spending has exceeded that amount. It’s also offering bits to users who sign up for marketing offers from advertisers like American Airlines.
Those dual revenue sources may help distinguish it from competitors like GayCities, a more established startup which recently relaunched its gay travel directory as a social network and may prove to be Fabulis’s most direct competition.
“If you can get paid on both ends, that’s a very good business,” said Goldberg. |
by Larry Lee
UNDATED (WSAU) - Fifteen people have been arrested in central and eastern Wisconsin after a coordinated effort to crack down on child sex trafficking. Another Wausau man was arrested for trying to solicit an adult prostitute.
The arrests were made as part of Operation Black Veil II, and involved Marathon, Shawano, and Outagamie county sheriff’s departments, and police from Wausau, Shawano, and Oshkosh between last Wednesday and Saturday.
Marathon County Sheriff Scott Parks says the operation targeted online predators who solicit children for sexually explicit conduct by using online advertising in places like Craigs List. “It’s not necessarily just Craig’s List, actually, it’s just a number of different sites and various computer access that is conducted and the efforts are made to locate individuals who are preying on our children.”
Parks says this type of operation shows there are still many people who would take advantage of children, which makes him both frustrated and sad. “It’s actually frustrating and sad at the same time. Frustrating about the fact that there are these persons out there. It’s the third time that the operation has been run, but yet we still see a number of people that are involved with these type of activities. Sad, because once again, it’s up to parents and law enforcement to protect our children with the onus on both of us.”
The Sheriff says this is another example of how important it is for parents to watch what their children are doing on the Internet to help keep them safe. “It’s up to parents to monitor what their children are involved in, their Internet access and the persons that they are basically conversing with online, because there are a lot of predators out there who would like to prey on these people.”
21-year-old Pravong Colin Thongdara was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with child enticement and use of a computer to facilitate a sex crime. 39-year-old Brian A. Uttecht was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with soliciting for an adult prostitute. 23-year-old Shayd C. Mitchell was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with child enticement and use of a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Marathon County deputies arrested 28-year-old Robert L. Spreeman, who is charged with child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Outagamie County deputies arrested 18-year-old Maynard M. Dakota and have referred him for charges of child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
34-year-old Richard E. Denty was arrested by Shawano city and county law enforcement. He’s been charged with using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.Oshkosh Police apprehended 42-year-old Michael A. Fischer. He’s charged with child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Nine of the arrests were in Door County. 50-year-old Frederick Fischer, 28-year-old Albert D. Ruleford, 48-year-old Randal A. Bunkelman from Allouez, 34-year-old Victor V. Iakimenko from Bellevue, 38-year-old Aaron D. Dobberfuhl from Bellevue, 38-year-old Jason S. Gehrke of Bellevue, 36-year-old Bryan J. Bathke from Ashwaubenon, 30-year-old Daniel R. Roggow from Bellevue, and 38-year-old James E. McHugh from Ashwaubenon all face similar charges. Bunkelman and Dobberfuhl also have charges of exposing their genitals to a child.
ARREST LIST:
21-year-old Pravong Colin Thongdara was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with child enticement and use of a computer to facilitate a sex crime. 39-year-old Brian A. Uttecht was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with soliciting for an adult prostitute. 23-year-old Shayd C. Mitchell was arrested by Wausau Police and charged with child enticement and use of a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Marathon County deputies arrested 28-year-old Robert L. Spreeman, who is charged with child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Outagamie County deputies arrested 18-year-old Maynard M. Dakota and have referred him for charges of child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
34-year-old Richard E. Denty was arrested by Shawano city and county law enforcement. He’s been charged with using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.Oshkosh Police apprehended 42-year-old Michael A. Fischer. He’s charged with child enticement and using a computer to facilitate a sex crime.
Nine of the arrests were in Door County. 50-year-old Frederick Fischer, 28-year-old Albert D. Ruleford, 48-year-old Randal A. Bunkelman from Allouez, 34-year-old Victor V. Iakimenko from Bellevue, 38-year-old Aaron D. Dobberfuhl from Bellevue, 38-year-old Jason S. Gehrke of Bellevue, 36-year-old Bryan J. Bathke from Ashwaubenon, 30-year-old Daniel R. Roggow from Bellevue, and 38-year-old James E. McHugh from Ashwaubenon all face similar charges. Bunkelman and Dobberfuhl also have charges of exposing their genitals to a child.
(The attached PDF has the Marathon County Sheriff's Department press release and the booking photos of all 16 suspects.) |
The number of Americans using public transportation rose to the highest level in more than 5 decades, as higher gas prices caused commuters to turn in their cars in favor of buses and subways.
There were 10.7 billion trips taken on public transit in 2008, a 4 percent increase over 2007, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
“Now, more than ever, the value of public transportation is evident, and the public has clearly demonstrated that they want and need more public transit services,” said APTA President William W. Millar.
What is particularly surprising, is the fact that after gas prices dropped back below a national average of $2 a gallon, the the new riders didn’t fall back to their old habits.
“You would normally have expected with lower gas prices, a declining economy and rapidly growing unemployment that transit ridership would have been down,” said William W. Millar, the transportation association’s president. “It appears that many of those people, once they tried public transit, found that it suited their needs.”
Advocates hope to use the recent upsurge in public transport to push for federal funding beyond the $8.4 billion in stimulus money set aside for transit.
“These are investments that pay off for decades and decades to come,” Millar said.
Ridership was up on all modes of public transportation in 2008.
Subways saw an increase of 3.5 percent, while buses gained by 3.9 percent and commuter rail ridership enjoyed a jump of 4.7 percent in 2008.
The survey also found that bus ridership in areas with a population under 100,000 rose 9.3 percent. Those areas routinely have to wait an hour for their scheduled bus to arrive, which shows a dedication of the riders to use public transport.
As public transport increased by 4 percent compared to the year before, Americans also took many fewer trips by car, according to the Department of Transportation. |
Beer Reps Unite!
This story is for all of my brothers in craft beer arms, the road warriors who are out and about in their patches of turf spreading the word of the craft beer gospel.
I bet many of theses guys and girls, maybe all of them, at some stage have walked into a local bottle-o with a fresh new product they are very excited about, and before they can run through their pitch, the manager says “Is it in Dan’s?”…instant deflation.
I have heard this story so many times before, but in talking to a few friends still in the business, it got me thinking about the issue from both sides, and compelled me to write this article. I know that in writing this, I may frustrate and piss of a few people, but it may also open up some good debate on the topic, which I think is good for the beer community.
Before I go on, I am writing this from an Australian point of view, talking about the Australian beer market. I am sure that some of my readers involved in the business in the Northern Hemisphere will have similar challenges, but I don’t have any real knowledge of your market conditions and don’t have any insights to share. However, if you read this and have similar stories to tell, please shoot me an email, leave a comment, or hit me up on Twitter…I would love to hear from you.
The issue that I want to talk about it Big vs Small, David vs Goliath, and the attitudes of some (not all) in the business of letting the big guy win, instead of finding another way to compete with him. History is littered with accounts of the little guys finding a way to succeed…in the NBA today, we have Steph Curry, who won the MVP of the league last year at just 6” 3’, the smallest player to do so in 10+ years. What about a challenger brand such as Uber taking on the decades old tradition of Taxi transport services, or back in the day when Napster forced an archaic music industry to change it’s ways. These little guys have taken it up the big fella and won, which isn’t easy and there will be more losers than winners…but for the few that are strong and give a big “F##k you” to the man, victory is sweet!
Where am I going with all of this, you say? Well the liquor industry in this country is dominated in the off premise world (bottle-o’s, take away’s, retail outlets…not bars) by two of the country’s largest corporations…Woolworths and Wesfarmers (Coles). Yep, those guys that run departments stores, petrol stations, hardware stores, banking & insurance services and supermarkets filled to the brim with their own private label products also control 60%+ of the off premise liquor market between them.
Look I am not here to bash the big guys, I am sure that they make their shareholders very happy, and obviously run a very good business model. What I am here to do is to challenge the mindset of the other guys, the small independent guys battling against the Goliaths to make an honest living. The bottle shop Manager who, when presented with a new beer from one of the independent breweries, is very quick to ask THAT question “Is it in <insert large liquor store name here>?”. Not only do they ask that question, the answer is usually the determinate of the decisions to give the new product a run…and not the quality of the product, or the potential interest their customers may have in it.
In this situation, if the answer to the above question is a “yes”, they can turn quite negative and start to complain about the help the big guys get with discounts and how they always undercut the little guys prices, how the small guy can never win, and how we may as well just be dead. Well okay, that’s going a little bit too far, but it is fair to say that this conversation is shut down fairly quickly if the answer to that poignant question is a yes.
For the brewery, this is a really delicate balancing act. The larger chains have a big footprint in the market, and the brutal truth is that if you have aspirations as a brewery of being a national brand, at some stage you probably need to get into the mix with them. However, the smaller local bottle shops are where the real engagement between brand and consumer, facilitated by the staff, happens. Somewhere there is a balance between the two, ranging in the small guy and driving distribution in the big guy,
I understand that the local Bottleshop Managers don’t really care about the aspirations of a small brewery, at the end of the day they have their own business to keep afloat, which is only fair, but do the aspirations of both have to be mutually exclusive? I get it, the little guys don’t want to play the price war, and small businesses that run on skinny margins can’t afford to take risks with new products if they are going to see their customers head up the road to buy it next time it’s on special. But is that what really happens? I would like to challenge the mindset of the small business owner here and open up the conversation about working together, small brewery and small business, to take on the big guys.
Now, I am going to let you in on some secrets of the trade (that probably aren’t that secret) that I was exposed to in my previous working life. There are actually some other things that consumers take into consideration when making a purchase decisions, and it’s not just the price
Convenience
Humans are inherently lazy, this writer included. I am forever thinking of easier ways to do things & faster ways to get stuff done, it means I have more time to myself! Sometimes the plans I come up with take longer to come to fruition than actually doing the task, but I love challenging myself to find a better way!
Think about it…do I want to stop in at my local on the way home on a Friday night and pick up that six pack of craft beer at normal price, or do I want to drive 10 minutes out of my way and save $2 on that same six pack?
You are damn right that I will go to my local, it will cost me more than 2 bucks to make the detour! Plus, if I go to the local I will have my strides off, sitting on the couch in my undies, ready for Friday night footy 20 minutes earlier than if I went to the the big box option! Remember, its 10 minutes both ways, and you probably will have to navigate a busy car park and stand in line as well!
We love places that are close to home, where we can park easily, and get in and out with our purchases quickly!
Tips for making it more convenient for your customers
We are Lazy! Play up to that and make sure that everything you do in store is about convenience! Clear pricing, neat displays, products in the right places etc. Use social media to your advantage. When are we thinking about our beer purchases for the night (all day I hear some say!)? Around the mid-afternoon, when we hit that slump and slurp a cup of dodgy instant coffee while checking out Facebook. Tell us that you are open, tell us that you are convenient and tell us about something new in store. Shit…tell us that we can jump the line if we show you your post on our phone, if that’s what it takes! Help us! Be active, be eager to help, share your knowledge of the products, make us appreciate your help and we will be back.
Availability & Range
You know what pisses me off the most…when I go to the big box and can get a great range of beer, but then decide to support the local guy in the scenario above and find a fridge full of me-too lagers, some uninteresting international premium beers and a few token craft beers.
What about adding a few items that are a little different…the cool stuff like the local brews, or the beers that scream out “try me, I’m different!” If you want me to stop shopping at the big guy, you have to give me a compelling reason to switch.
The Tips
You don’t have to stock all and sundry, but at least have something that is a little bit different. Take small, calculated, risks with the new products…just trial it. One carton of a new brew won’t break the bank…we all know that if you sell two six packs out of it, you will have covered your cost! Talk to your customers that might be interested in that small independent brewery’s new product and ask them what they think. Give them one of those samples that your beer rep will be only too happy to supply, and ask them for their feedback. If they feel part of the decision, that drives loyalty, and they may even spread the word! Tell people about the new and different stuff you have…either via social media, face to face, or on external signage. Break through the clutter and stand out from the crowd. Keep an eye on stock…consumers hate it when their favourite beer at their local is in stock one week, and then not the next. Keep an eye on best before dates too…no one likes buying an out of date beer.
Staff
I love it when I walk into my local and can have a chat with the guy behind the counter, and he actually knows what he is talking about! There is nothing worse than asking for assistance and getting a blank look, or a generic “the beer is over there” response from the person behind the counter. Or, even worse, you get some young kid who is more interested in hooking up with a girl on Tinder, or posting their latest “bored at work” selfie on Snapchat.
When I walk into the bottle-o, I want to be treated like a local, be engaged with, maybe have a conversation about what my choices are, and feel good about my purchase decisions. To facilitate this, you must have good, knowledgeable staff that are enthusiastic and helpful.
The Tips
Sounds stupid, but get good staff! Train your staff, make sure they know what’s going on. That beer rep that you just told to shove his new product where the sun don’t shine, he is probably a wealth of knowledge and only too willing to help. Ask him to help train your staff…he will only ask for a regular pallet display in return, but hey, give and take! Get your friends to mystery shop your store to find out what’s really going on. Ban staff phones at the counter! Get your staff out from behind the counter to have conversations at the point of purchase. If they are really good, they may even help drive the sales of full margin products!
So there you have it, my gripe, and some tips to help open the conversation with the naysayers that are only too quick to roll over and play dead when the big boys flex their pricing muscles. If you are reading this and work in a bottle shop, next time you have a beer rep come in to your store that represents one of the companies that don’t have massive budgets, at least give them the time to explain their new product and what it might provide your customers, instead of leading with “Is it Dan’s?”.
At least make sure they give you some decent samples before you say no to them…you have to be sure that the beer tastes good, don’t you…a six pack should do the trick!
If you think about it, smaller operators and smaller breweries are kind of in this together. You are both trying to survive in a very crowded business world dominated by a few big players, so why not try and help each other out? I am tipping that your local and loyal customers will thank you for it, and may even think twice about jumping in the car to visit the beer supermarket next time. Instead of spending those few extra dollars on petrol to get to the beer supermarket, they will put it in your till!
In doing some research for this article, I contacted a bunch of like minded craft beer lovers around Australia to find out some of their favourite smaller bottle shops that tick all the boxes mentioned above, or are at least taking it up to the big guys. The response was overwhelming, so it seems there are some great smaller businesses out there doing the right thing for the greater good of both the industry and the consumer. I encourage you to seek out these places below if you want great service, great knowledge, great beer and above all, a great shopping experience. Oh yeah, and if you have other places you like to visit, why not leave a comment about them.
Victoria
Carwyn Cellars & Slow Beer
Tasmania
Cool Wine & Crown Cellars
Queensland
Craft, Grand Central Cellars & Archive Beer
New South Wales
Beer Cartel, Camperdown Cellars & Oak Barrel
South Australia
Belair Fine Wines & Parade Cellars
Western Australia
Mane Liquor & International Beer Shop
Thanks for reading my rant this week, it was done so with the best of intentions.
As usual, would love you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook pages, check out my YoutTube channel or Instagram feed, and also sign up for email notifications here….but only if you want to!
If you have any feedback for me, I would love to hear it, please leave me a comment or shoot me an email.
BTW, did you see my review of Willie The Boatman Corn Ale, or check out my 8 Beers I Wish I Had Brewed from last week?
Until Wednesday, when I share my new video beer review format!
Cheers to Great Beer Reps! |
An open letter to the new Work and Pensions Secretary.
Anthony Painter Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 19, 2016
Dear Stephen,
Congratulations on your appointment. You have the most important job in the Government after the Chancellor. In your hands is the future of work and the basic relationship between the state and us citizens. In a time of anticipated change in our economy, society and the state institutions that relate to these, you are in a pivotal role.
Too often on the Conservative side of politics, changes are made that display a failure to understand or empathise with the lives that people actually lead. This is often interpreted as cruelty but that is wrong in my view. It’s more often a lack of direct experience. That is not a handicap you have. You understand how poverty can be a struggle; how despair can set in but also how, with the right support, things can be turned around. That insight is your most powerful weapon as you seek to address serious flaws in the policies of the department you inherit.
Let’s be generous to your predecessor. I don’t doubt that his reforms were embarked upon with the most compassionate of intentions. But he’s left a mess.
He tried to simplify welfare but made it even more complex and bureaucratic. He saw work as the pathway out of poverty but then created a capricious system of conditionality and sanctions, the impact of which has yet to be fully understood. When we do have the full analysis at our disposal – beyond the simple measure of the employment rate – the impacts will be fairly shocking (foodbanks are the tip of the iceberg). Officials will tell you that the Universal Credit is working. Pilots almost always do. But it really isn’t- it is a costly mistake that is very little improvement on an already highly flawed and perverse tax credits system. Nowhere is the bureaucracy more intrusive, arbitrary and error-prone than in support for those who are disabled. These ‘errors’ cause misery and even cost lives. That can’t be right in any decent and compassionate society.
The big mistake your predecessor made was in designing a state bureaucracy around the small minority of people who abuse the system. That’s why we’ve ended up with this complex, unjust and costly nightmare.
I really hope you use the next few months to take a pause and then a big step back on the entire direction of these policies. The Prime Minister and your colleague at the Ministry of Justice have done so with prisons policy. Your colleague, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is introducing a much higher minimum wage and the apprenticeship levy. These are all radical and encouraging policy initiatives. So there is space to chart a different course. Yes, welfare policy has supported higher employment. No, this is not sufficient in and of itself- families need stability, the ability to improve their skills and networks, and a sense of agency and control over their lives too. The current system too often undermines these wider policy goals.
You wouldn’t expect me to finish any letter to a Secretary of State for Work and Pensions without mentioning Basic Income. I hope you find some time to glance at the idea (our work at the RSA on this is summarised in a short blog). I know it may seem a little far out but it’s doable. If you really want a compassionate and simple system then Basic Income warrants some serious consideration. There’s still more work to do on putting together an implementable system but that can be done in the form of a major pilot – ‘experimental government’ as it’s called. Canada, the Netherlands and Finland are all looking at this.
I honestly believe that Basic Income is entirely compatible with Conservative principles – it supports work, provides support to families, and helps improve social mobility more than any other comparable system. It is invested in responsible freedom. It may seem counter-intuitive but it is worth giving some thought. Many great Conservative social reformers from Peel to MacMillan to one or two of your colleagues have done the counter-intuitive to meet the needs of the time. The future of work and social support needs a similar effort.
Good luck with it all. You have a chance to make history. Don’t throw that chance away on perpetuating the current failing system.
Yours,
Anthony |
Here’s a take I think readers of MSP will appreciate on the latest round of controversy over the church’s practice of proxy baptism of holocaust victims with no LDS progeny. (That supposedly is one of the criteria that makes a proxy baptism OK: someone has Mormon descendents who want to offer their ancestor is ordinance.) This writer, Stephen Frug, doesn’t think that baptism for the dead matters–and he doesn’t “understand why anyone else does think it matters.”
The point is, a non-Mormon should no more believe that the Mormon baptism of the dead does anything (save please those among the living involved in it) than I believe that my son’s frequent announcement that he and I are both Buzz Lightyear does anything. Personally I think that they’re pretty equivalent — save that my son, of course, is three years old, and therefore the fact that he speaks like a child, thinks like a child and understands like a child is perfectly appropriate…. To object to the Mormon baptism of the dead is ultimately to subscribe to a small slice of Mormon doctrine, namely, that part that says the baptism of the dead actually has some effect (if only to offer souls in the afterlife an option). Those of us who are not Mormons should be able to recognize that this Mormon belief like all the others is simply false: that the baptism of the dead does nothing. Who cares what games others play?
Stephen characterizes the nature of the insult done to the “recipients” of proxy baptism, as one of disrespect. And certainly I think it is disrespectful. But I think it’s more than that. It’s also profound condescension and religious chauvinism.
Don’t know about anyone else, but I got in a conversation about this on Facebook, with a friend who is also an atheist Jew. She was outraged, and I pretty much understood her outrage. I explained as well as I could the doctrine behind proxy baptism, adding,
I can’t defend this. I can only explain how Mormons see it. I just wish Mormons were more willing to see how it appears to others. This to me is a perfect example of religion making real empathy and kindness all but impossible. Mormons are so caught up in their doctrinal imperatives that in some ways they simply *CANNOT CARE* as they should about what this means to the people they honestly believe they are helping.
To reconcile somewhat what Stephen writes and what I myself feel, I think he’s right that
To the extent that anything’s disrespectful, it’s not the posthumous baptism, which is a mere instantiation of a larger phenomenon, it’s that Mormon doctrine is disrespectful. And not just Mormon doctrine: any non-universalist religious belief that requires adherence for salvation is basically disrespectful of the entire rest of humanity.
The Mormon doctrine IS disrespectful. The Mormon doctrine is what makes Mormons fundamentally incapable of realizing their stated goal of showing genuine respect for other faiths, because the doctrine ultimately wins out in any contest Mormons envision: “OK,” they think, “we won’t perform proxy baptisms for these people now; we’ll wait and do it after the second coming. Because we know it has to be done someday, because we know that EVERYONE must be baptized into God’s one and only true church.”
So yeah, ultimately, proxy baptism does nothing for the one baptized by proxy because it’s clear enough that the whole “you can’t get into heaven unless you have this and that preparatory ordinance and learn the secret handshakes and passwords” business is nonsense. But it does something to the minds and spirits of those who advocate and practice it: it makes them less empathetic, compassionate, and kind, which are supposed to the be the highest ideals of christianity, and what we’re really here to learn. |
_ ** Editor’s note: ** Today’s guest blog is from Dave Allston, an Ottawa writer and researcher. Dave is a history buff who runs a service called House Story Co. , providing research about old homes and businesses in the Kitchissippi area. He also recently launched The Kitchissippi Museum , the blog where this post originally appeared. _ [
](https://www.flickr.com/photos/rdb466/4554549631) _ The Bagelshop, Wellington St., Ottawa by Ross Dunn, on Flickr _ ** The Ottawa Bagelshop on Wellington Street is a Wellington Village institution. ** Growing up in the area (on Gilchrist Avenue), this was one of my family’s main shopping spots during the 1980s, when Wellington West was not at all what it is today. I particularly remember Sunday mornings, when it was the only place that would be open east of Westboro and west of Holland Avenue. It was perfect for a kid who wanted to get a newspaper to view the hockey statistics and scores from Saturday night’s games (the newspaper used to be the only way to do this, pre-internet!), or when my parents wanted hot bagels for Sunday breakfast. The Bagelshop was (and still is) the place to go.
It opened in April of 1984 when Vince Piazza opened the shop selling “Montreal style bagels” after learning the trade at his brother-in-law’s St. Viateur Street store in Montreal. It was in 1996 that the shop expanded to the neighbouring building, which previously had been the Ottawa Church of God and (along with the Peace Finders Gift Shop inside the front lobby). The two buildings had actually been completely separate before, and the renovation connected the two buildings, making it appear as one complete structure.
So the eerie past life of the Bagelshop resides in this “new” part of the Bagelshop (the restaurant portion). You might be surprised to know that for 45 years, this building was a funeral home!
** The Radmore Stewart Funeral Home opened in 1930 in the main floor of a large home built in 1922. ** It was around this time that the way funerals were organized changed. Prior to the 1920s, it was common practice that when a family member passed away, the post-death care, funeral and wake services were all performed within the family home. It wasn’t until after WWI, when the process of embalming was popularized for soldiers being returned home for burial, that the bodies of the recently deceased were moved into funeral homes shortly after death.
George Radmore Stewart saw a need for a funeral home in the west end, and opened his small business in a converted house at what was then 1323 Wellington Street.
The photo below shows the building as it was in 1943. If you take a good look from across the street, you can still see the loft windows looking quite the same.
The original Radmore Stewart Funeral Home as it looked from 1930 until 1947
Aerial photo May 1933
The aerial photo above shows Wellington Street between Ross (at left) and Grange (at right) from May 1933. The funeral home is at the corner of Grange, and you can see the original addition as well (now the Strawberry Blonde bakery), which was an auto garage at the time. The main Bagelshop building would later be built in the adjoining vacant space, and the next building to the west is the Gastropub building (built 1923). Across the street, where the Parma Ravioli now exists is a big “V” which was likely a large-sized advertising billboard.
[
](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oqTZq6f4qew/VL8cvEwM55I/AAAAAAAAALo/yPDVEvLH5aY/s1600/Citizen%2B1943-05-22%2Bphoto%2Bcrop%2B24perc.jpg) A view of the family reception room in the original funeral home
[
](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XTQ5pijT8WE/VL8d0S6kCfI/AAAAAAAAAL0/ULGTDcyVlqQ/s1600/Citizen%2B1944-04-01%2Bonline%2Bphoto%2Bcrop.jpg) The original funeral home chapel 1930-1947. (My apologies on the quality of some of these photos, they are taken from old photocopies and/or newspapers. I did the best I could with them).
Ottawa Journal, February 10, 1940
A vintage ad from the Ottawa Journal promotes the range of affordability a Radmore Stewart funeral could offer. “$48 and less” sounds like quite a bargain, though I can’t imagine what a less-than-$48 funeral would have gotten you!
For 17 years, the Radmore Stewart parlor operated in the small converted home (one of the sons and his wife even resided upstairs), before demand led to the construction of a new chapel addition, which opened in the summer of 1947.
The new Radmore Stewart chapel, on July 18th, 1947 (D00658 Sproul Collection - City of Ottawa Archives)
A view of the interior of the Radmore Stewart chapel in 1947.
Radmore Stewart closed in late 1975 or early 1976. The location briefly became a Lebanese community centre, before the Sahara Dining Lounge opened in 1978. The restaurant did not last long, and it was taken over by the Church of God by 1981. Meanwhile, next door at 1321 Wellington (the Bagelshop store portion) was built in 1945, and opened in April of that year as the new location of Armand Cloutier's local gift and variety shop (specializing in greeting cards, school textbooks and even radio repairs), having moved from 1244 Wellington (where Nectar Tea is now located). This shop would become a landmark of its own in West Wellington, remaining as Cloutier's until 1980. It briefly became the Wellington Travel Agency and Home Fashion Centre, before the Bagelshop opened in 1984.
And now you know the unique past life of part of the Bagelshop building! |
Sooner or later, climate change will consume our economy. If we are wise, we will let this happen sooner, and make massive preemptive investments into green energy and sustainable infrastructure; this will cost a lot up front, but it will mitigate even greater costs down the road. More likely, we’ll kick the can down the road, and then we’ll find ourselves paying for disaster relief, mass migrations, civil unrest, plague, famine, and everything else that comes with global warming. One way or the other, we’ll pay. Estimates vary, but the more plausible ones hover around a third of GDP.
In developing countries experiencing significant economic growth, this will be manageable. In developed countries that have already made big investments in infrastructure and green energy, this will be manageable. But in the United States, where growth will probably slow and where our investments are low, this is going to hit our economy hard.
Couple this with so many other trends of late capitalism — outsourcing, inequality, wage stagnation — and the prospects for your average American over the next fifty years look pretty grim. Liberalism will have no answer for this. It will offer the same useless panaceas it always has — vocational training, targeted tax cuts, business subsidies, and so on – but it will offer them to generations who’ve only seen their living standards fall and their futures disappear.
Did I mention mass migration?
A discredited ruling ideology, declining standards of living, the memory of lived prosperity and absolute despair for the future: this is as toxic a society as you can imagine. Now add to that waves of immigrants fleeing the storms and heat waves of South and Central America; an increasingly violent, militarized border, paired with an increasingly aggressive ICE; the continued decline of white Americans into a national minority; and a wealthy elite, controlling the most powerful propaganda apparatus in history, desperate to find a scapegoat for the country’s ongoing deterioration.
This is fascism’s pincer: economic pathology on one side, ethnonationalism on the other, and a middle class driven by radical resentment. You can already see the first glimmer of this in the polo shirt neoconfederates who spilled blood in Charlottesville — a frustrated, revanchist mob of white suburbanites who see in their falling monuments the end of their power and prestige. Their rage is already scary enough, but it is only going to get worse.
There is only one way out of this: redistribute to the rest of society the vast wealth hoarded by our (largely white, first-world) ruling class. Redistribute the wealth, guarantee everyone a decent standard of living with all of the necessities that entails, and you can undercut the tribal wars for survival and domination that capitalism constantly threatens to inflame. Redistribute the wealth — particularly to the developing world — and maybe you can buy some time in the fight against climate change, or even soften the blow when it eventually hits.
You are not going to solve all of society’s problems by redistributing the wealth. Racism will still be with us. The political and cultural legacy of white supremacy will still be with us. Our planet will still be poisoned and depleted from centuries of industrialized destruction. Fifty years from now, the Left will still have plenty of work to do — but if we try to fight these battles when we’re caught in fascism’s pincer, our chances for survival are slim. |
Remember why unions were formed in the first place — to protect workers from being taken advantage of?
Nowadays, the rank-and-file mostly need protection from their own leadership.
Daniel Hughes, former head of the Field Supervisor Association representing Port Authority workers, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court this week to looting $300,000 in members’ dues over five years.
The union heavyweight allegedly used the money for Queens hotel trysts with hookers, casino getaways and high-priced dinners.
A rare occurrence? Hardly.
Last May, ex-Central Labor Council boss and former Queens Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin was sentenced to 10 years for embezzlement — including from the electricians union he once ran.
Other examples abound. A not-exhaustive rap sheet — partly tracked by the DC-based National Legal and Policy Center — includes:
* Aug. 5, 2009: Michael Forde, ex-head of the city’s District Council of Carpenters, was hit with a 29-count indictment for taking bribes from members — in exchange for allowing them to avoid mandatory contributions to their pension funds. Forde beat similar charges several years before.
* Feb. 11, 2010: Anthony Rumore, ex-president of Scarsdale’s Teamsters Local 812, pleaded guilty in federal court to making false statements related to extorting free labor out of his membership.
* Feb. 16, 2010: Thomas Pokrywczynski, former secretary-treasurer of Buffalo-area Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1342, pleaded guilty in federal court to theft of $254,000 in union funds.
* Feb. 17, 2010: Melissa King, former benefits administrator of the “Sandhogs” tunnel-digging union, was indicted for embezzling some $40 million from three benefit funds she oversaw.
* April 21, 2010: Wayne Mitchell, ex-president of Communications Workers of America Local 14170 (representing mailroom workers), pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to embezzling $200,000.
* April 23, 2010: Mitchell’s immediate successor, Larry DeAngelis, pleaded guilty to stealing $60,000 from the union.
* May 11, 2010: Peter Thomassen, assistant supervisor of the above-mentioned carpenters union, resigned after a report showed huge amounts of spending on lavish parties, junkets and steak dinners. An indictment is anticipated.
An epidemic?
So it would seem.
Rank-and-file members can be forgiven for suspecting that there’s something about organized labor that attracts leadership of a criminal bent. |
thumb|150px|link=Aladdin is a 1992 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, and is based on the Arab folktale of Aladdin and the magic lamp from One Thousand and One Nights.
The Merchant is the Genie
This is the most widely accepted version of the theory. It describes how the Merchant from the first scene is actually the genie in human form. This makes sense because Robin Williams voices both characters and the Merchant has the same lamp as the genie. Another variation of this same theory says the man made the entire story up just to sell the lamp.
Post-Apocalyptic Aladdin
In one scene of Disney's Aladdin, Genie calls Al's clothes "so last century". Genie was trapped in the lamp for 10,000 years, so there is no way he could have known about the fashion trends which could have happened whilst he was in the lamp. This means the latest Genie could have been trapped in the lamp during the third century. If he spent 10,000 years in the lamp, it is then at least 10,300 AD when he gets out.
Aladdin takes place in the future, or more exact, a post-apocalyptic world where only Arabic (and some Greek) survived. Its been so long that the name "Arabia" has been corrupted into "Agrabah". The Islamic religion has atrophied to the point where there are no mosques, Imams or prayer mats, but people still give praise to Allah in moments of happiness. Amazing technological marvels left behind by the previous civilization, like flying carpets or genetically engineered parrots which can comprehend human speech instead of just mimicking it, are taken for granted by locals or considered “magic”. The Genie proves this by making impressions of ancient, long-dead celebrities such as Groucho Marx and Jack Nicholson.
In addition to this, in the Aladdin genesis video game there is a modern-day stop sign buried in the sand, as well as a number of bones and skeletons. (http://youtu.be/bfLyK_msMTY?t=9m17s)
Arguments Against This Theory
Because Genie is a genie, he is an omnipotent being with a different perception on time and reality, similar to a time lord from Doctor Who. Genie did not have to be alive back then to have infinite knowledge of a certain culture - rather, he is just making a quick joke. Some may argue "well why would he do that if Aladdin wouldn't get the jokes?" Leading theorists argue that Aladdin wouldn't have understood the jokes the Genie was referencing, but after 8000 years Aladdin would not even know who Groucho Marx was. Agrabah, magic and the Islamic religion could just as easily have evolved over thousands of years, instead of devolving. Lastly, Genie says "indoor plumbing is going to be huge", using future tense and showing that he knows what will happen in the future.
As the video game is not directly canon, it may not be that much of a support for this theory. |
(Adds details from court records in paragraphs 2-5)
By Tom Hals
Jan 17 (Reuters) - Specialty chemicals maker Freedom Industries Inc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, eight days after a leak from one of the company's storage tanks contaminated drinking water for hundreds of thousands of West Virginia residents.
A chemical used to process coal spilled into the Elk River in Charleston last week, prompting the state's governor to declare a state of emergency and ban the use of drinking water. More than 200 people have visited emergency rooms with nausea.
As a result of the leak, vendors have demanded Freedom pay in cash, draining the company of financing and prompting it to seek bankruptcy, according to documents filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Charleston, West Virginia.
"Likewise, the defense of the numerous suits filed against the debtor will exhaust the debtor's liquidity," Freedom said in a court filing. The bankruptcy filing will put a stay on more than 20 lawsuits filed against the company over the spill.
The company filed an emergency motion seeking court authority to borrow an initial $4 million from WV Funding LLC.
The company estimated it had up to $10 million in both assets and liabilities, according to the filings.
The case is In re Freedom Industries Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of West Virginia, No. 14-20017 (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. |
Google's video-sharing unit accused of playing copycat
By Lee Min-hyung
"One sows and another reaps" seems to be a perfect match for YouTube's long-term business tactics.
The U.S.-based video streaming giant unveiled last month its plan to start Super Chat, a platform where creators and the company share profits raised from fans who watch live videos from YouTube "stars."
The arrival of the new revenue stream reflects the ever-growing influence of talented online posters, with multi-channel networks ― such as YouTube ― growing in size and importance as a core venue for advertisers and other business operators in almost all industries.
But the YouTube business model is not the first of its kind, looking almost identical to AfreecaTV's "star balloon" system.
The Seoul-based live video streaming site adopted the platform in November 2007, allowing users to buy balloon items, which cost 110 won (10 cents) apiece. Fans of AfreecaTV hosts then send the balloons to their favorite broadcasting jockeys ― BJs as they are called here ― via a live chat. In return for the monetary support, BJs communicate with their supporters in real-time by reading out their IDs and having brief talks with them via video.
On average, AfreecaTV gets 40 percent of its revenue from the balloons, with BJs pocketing the rest. YouTube has yet to make public its specific profit-sharing portion for Super Chat.
"For YouTube, the decision (to adopt the similar business model) must have been an unavoidable choice to diversify its revenues. We do not view this as a serious threat," an AfreecaTV spokesman said.
"YouTube is not the first firm to copy such a business model as our star balloons. There have been so many late movers in our industry but almost all of them failed to make enough of an impact and stopped their businesses."
The top priority for those who want to start their own live video channels is a platform where the so-called "gift ecosystem" between users and creators is deeply-rooted, according to the official.
"In this context, we believe Super Chat will not be a serious threat to our decade-long ecosystem, at least in the Korean market," he said. "For example, Kakao failed to draw enough response with its live video streaming service, Kakao TV, falling short of extending its mobile influence."
Kakao is the operator of the nation's most popular messenger app Kakao Talk and No. 2 web portal Daum.
Level playground?
Although AfreecaTV shows confidence that it will beat YouTube, the latter has a track record of having dethroned a Korean powerhouse in the video market to hold a dominant 80 percent share in the online video-sharing industry here.
In 2004, Pandora TV, the Seoul-based online broadcasting firm, started the video-sharing business for the first time in the world. The following year, YouTube was founded and began to steal the limelight from Pandora TV.
Pandora TV founding CEO Peter Kim attributed its downfall to a weak social environment where the government did not encourage fair and transparent competition.
"It is not a matter of who copied what," he said. "Much more important is to keep the No. 1 title in any given industry. For startups or venture firms in Korea, it is extremely tough to compete with global IT giants."
"One underlying reason behind this is the unfair competition landscape in Korea, as the government does not adopt the same regulation standards toward local companies and their overseas counterparts," he said.
"Under the current legal structures, Korean companies will continue to fall prey to overseas business titans. The playground is not level and does not favor us. All firms should be treated equally under local restrictions regardless of the locations of their headquarters."
The remarks reflect that renowned IT firms ― including Apple, Google or YouTube ― have generated billions of won in profits each year here, but the Korean government has failed to collect enough taxes from their business operations, due to a different taxation system imposed on multinational firms.
This is in contrast to hard-line protectionist policies from the Chinese government, which has in recent years imposed strict regulations on Western IT titans. This has resulted in creating such influential Chinese firms and services as Baidu and TenCent's WeChat. |
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L.A. Confidential arrived in theaters on this day in 1997. The 50s-set potboiler received almost unprecedented universal acclaim, and if you were of a certain age then, it very likely introduced you to film noir.
Film noir was a genre that, like the Western, used to be the most popular style of film for the early movie studios but fell out of favor by the 60s. Like Westerns, film noir was frequently considered a lower class of cinema in comparison to the sweeping adaptations of epic popular fiction. And the immense regard that many of the older films now have, most of that came later as film criticism grew to become more respected and international film embraced the shadowy works of detective fiction.
Film noir itself was an important genre for legitimizing cinema as an artform — the use of shadows for terror, the seductive placement of limbs, glances, and the way someone smoked a cigarette substituted for dialogue. The Hayes Production Code made it harder to convey sex, but film noir coded it by using characters that work just outside the respectability of the police force, but instead are hired in private to unravel mysteries that the people hiring would also like to keep private and out of the police dossiers and headlines. And that distance from societal order opened up narratives to include other perceived lessers: gamblers, alcoholics, burlesque dancers, prostitutes, and desperate men and women. As such, the femme fatale was born to counterpart the brooding and mysterious private detective. Acclaimed film director Jean-Luc Godard famously began his career as a film critic writing for France’s Cahiers du cinema, where he frequently championed this post-WWII cinematic movement for portraying a level of unease and disbelief that the rest of popular cinema was avoiding. Godard famously quipped that all you need to make a movie is a gun and a girl. And that’s partly what made noir so popular at movie studios: it was cheap to make and it could create a movie star out of an actor/actress who was on contract.
Film criticism also shifted in the 40s and 50s to include more artful analysis of movies (suggestion: read some of the early 1940s film criticism from novelist James Agee when he started at Time in 1942; Agee was hugely influential to our big American critics of the 60s onward—like the Cahiers writers, and Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert.) Agee himself was excited by noir and pulp films, and he often fought to include them in Time which boosted their profile in intellectual circles and was extremely formative for elevating many genres decades later, such as horror. Agee also later went on to write the seminal, noir-inspired Night of the Hunter script that attacked the potential for hypocrisy in religion. Attacking convention and the open embrace of the status quo is precisely what intrigued Agee. That and the camera angles and use of lighting that conveyed much more than good vs. evil in it’s heightened black and white status. |
I♥Halloween > Haunted Houses > California Haunted Houses for Halloween 2018
Here in the Golden State, the Halloween Season offers an endless amount of fun. A popular tradition that many enjoy during the spooky season is Haunted Houses, of course! There are a ton happening all throughout California, whether you reside in San Diego, Los Angeles or up by Sacramento, there’s plenty of Haunted Houses in your area that are opening their doors for your dark pleasure. Many will start their season before October even arrives, and won’t close up shop until right after Halloween, giving you more than enough time to get your Haunted House fix!
Some haunts will feature a theme that they stick to all throughout, while others switch things up depending on the room you’re in. In this case, you won’t know what is awaiting you in the next room – it could be a killer clown, a hungry zombie or a psychotic doctor and his patients – you’ll never know until you enter! If you’re interested in taking the kiddies with you, but want less scares, some haunts feature “Not-So-Scary” days where the entire family can attend together. These usually take place on the weekends, so be sure to check the particular Haunt’s schedule ahead of time to assure you head there on the correct days. Add to the fun by checking out a haunt that offers additional Halloween activities such as Pumpkin Picking, Hay Rides, Spook Walks and Corn Mazes!
Haunted Houses Near California
I♥Halloween hopes that you have found the ideal Haunted House attractions to feed your appetite for fright this Halloween season!
Nearby Haunted Attractions
More Haunted Events & Attractions in California
Fall Farm Fun / Things To Do California
Experienced a Haunted House in California? Tell us about your experience so we can let visitors know what they can expect. If you own or operate a Haunted House and want to be published in this directory please use this contact form to get in touch.
All information on this page was believed to be accurate at the time it was posted. Always call before you go and please report any inaccuracies.
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If there's one surefire way to add a sense of importance and artistic integrity to your band, it's to name your band after something you read in a book. Here are ten bands who took their names from literary works.
1. Steely Dan
One of my favorite things to do to classic rock fans is to explain where the name "Steely Dan" actually comes from. "Steely Dan" is a reference to William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel Naked Lunch, a book I'll admit to reading but not actually understanding. In Naked Lunch, "Steely Dan III from Yokohama" is a steam-powered dildo, which is not really something that comes to mind when listening to "Reelin' In The Years."
2. The Feelies
New Jersey jangle-pop band the Feelies took its name from Aldous Huxley's dystopian classic Brave New World, where "feelies" are movies that manipulate all of the senses, including touch. They're basically extreme versions of 3D movies.
3. The Doors
Just like the Feelies, the Doors also took its name from the work of writer Aldous Huxley, though the name actually originated with writer William Blake. Huxley's novel The Doors of Perception took its name from a quote in Blake's poem "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."
4. Josef K
Though "Josef K" would imply the name of a solo artist, Josef K was actually an underappreciated post-punk band from Scotland during the late '70s and early '80s. The band's name comes from the main character of Franz Kafka's The Trial, whose last name is never revealed.
5. Gregor Samsa
Another band to take its name from the work of Franz Kafka is Virginia post-rock outfit Gregor Samsa, named for the protagonist in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, about a man who inexplicably turns into a beetle.
6. Modest Mouse
Modest Mouse may write intense and occasionally aggressive music, but the band's name often sounds like something a cute twee pop band would adopt. The term "modest mouse" actually derives from a Virginia Woolf passage from "The Mark On the Wall," about "modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises."
7. The Magnetic Fields
The music of indie pop band the Magnetic Fields may not delve into surrealism, but the band's name comes from the 1920 novel Les Champs Magnetiques, or The Magnetic Fields, written by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, which is considered to be the first work of surrealism in literature.
8. The Velvet Underground
"The Velvet Underground" has always been one of my favorite band names, but the band members didn't come up with the name themselves. The Velvet Underground is actually the title of a non-fiction book about bizarre sexual practices in the United States, published in 1963. This wasn't the only time the band would reference a sex-themed novel: the song "Venus is Furs" is named after a novel about sadomasochism.
9. The Fall
Though Mark E. Smith is generally considered to be the leader of the Fall, he wasn't responsible for the band's name. "The Fall" originated with original bassist Tony Friel, who took the name from Albert Camus' philosophical novel The Fall.
10. Burzum
Though countless metal bands have taken their names from the work of J.R.R. Tolkien (including Amon Amarth and Gorgoroth), the most notorious is Varg Vikernes' Burzum, whose name is taken from the Black Speech word for "darkness," as is revealed in The Lord of the Rings.
I know there are more, so what other bands have done this? Let us know in the comments section! |
CLOSE ALBANY -- New York movie theaters are hoping to rewrite the ending in the push to legalize alcohol sales. Joseph Spector, Albany Bureau
Ari Benmosche, the owner of the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, Rockland County, discusses an effort to allow for alcohol sales at theaters in New York on Monday, June 12, 2017, near the state Capitol in Albany. (Photo: Joseph Spector, Albany Bureau)
ALBANY - New York movie theaters are hoping to rewrite the ending in their push to legalize alcohol sales.
After the measure was rejected in the state budget in April, theater owners and their legislative allies on Monday renewed their effort to let patrons buy alcohol during the movies.
Supporters billed it as a way to help independent theaters and bring visitors to small downtowns across New York.
"This would create such a huge revenue source for us," said Ari Benmosche, owner of the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, Rockland County.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the issue one of his priorities for the legislative session that started in January, but the bill wasn't included in the state budget approved by the state Legislature on April 9.
Some lawmakers raised concerns about mixing movies and booze, and so they left the bill on the cutting room floor.
But the National Association of Theater Owners of New York State joined with beer producers, elected officials and business groups on Monday to urge the Legislature to reconsider, saying the bill would be a boon for their theaters and includes safety precautions.
“This legislation, at its core, will support job creation, drive millions of dollars back into New York’s economy, and by promoting and serving local beers, ciders, spirits, and wines, support New York agriculture,” said Joe Masher, the association's president.
The clock is ticking: The legislative session ends June 21 for the year.
Currently, movie theaters can serve alcohol in their lobby if they are a tavern license holder or have a full kitchen.
Cuomo's bill would let theaters apply for a permit to serve alcoholic beverages, regardless of whether they serve food or have tables.
The proposal would allow moviegoers to purchase one drink at a time, and drinks could only be served at PG-13 or R-rated movies.
A similar measure passed the Republican-led Senate last year, but it stalled in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.
The governor is hopeful the measure will get legislative approval, said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.
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"It is a common sense issue that we absolutely support," he said.
There has been a push around the nation to let alcohol into the movies — including in New York.
For example, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain opened a theater in Yonkers in 2013, and it sells alcohol because it serves food and has table settings.
The Little Theatre in Rochester also has a cafe that serves alcoholic beverages, but patrons aren't allowed to bring the drinks into the movies.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/2tdGpQ6 |
The hangover from the 1995 sovereignty referendum was not pretty for Montreal. Half a year after a vote that brought Canada to within a sliver of possible breakup, Quebec’s biggest city was left badly shredded.
Its 11% unemployment rate was the highest in urban North America. Residential real estate prices were falling. The vacancy rate for downtown office towers topped 20%. Companies like Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. continued their slow head-office exodus. One Toronto property broker trying to drum up business ran ads in Montreal newspapers that read: “When the road leads you away from Montreal to Toronto, we’ll be at the other end to make you feel right at home.”
There were larger pan-Canadian consequences too, of course. Amid the constitutional crisis, lenders demanded higher interest rates to hold Canada’s debt. That November the dollar fell a cent and a half as post-referendum optimism vanished amid a realization that Canada’s unity problem remained unsolved.
Today, nine years of Liberal Party rule have restored a certain level of stability to the city and to the province as the federalist party wooed private enterprise and buried unity disagreements with Ottawa. But as Quebecers get set to vote again Sept. 4, the corporate world is bracing for change.
There is a lot of worry that the climate for reinvestment won’t be the same
“It’s the first time in my life that I sense from the business community a concern this large about the result of an election and the aftermath,” said Yves-Thomas Dorval, head of the Conseil du Patronat, Quebec’s largest business lobby. “There is a lot of worry that the climate for reinvestment won’t be the same.”
Association representatives like Mr. Dorval, 55, are non-partisan. They can’t take a position for or against a specific political party.
But other business leaders are articulating privately what trade groups won’t — that the election of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois would bring political instability at the very time the world economy is slowing and when Quebec and Canada can least afford it.
[np-related]
A PQ victory in 2012 probably wouldn’t lead to the kind of mass corporate decamping that occurred in the late 1970s after then PQ premier René Lévesque took power, experts say. A more likely scenario would see companies, especially global multinationals with operations in several countries, maintain their presence in Quebec but reduce their investment.
Says Mr. Dorval: “You won’t have the desire to invest in an unstable place. That’s the reality.”
The PQ is leading in the latest Léger Marketing poll with 33% of voting intentions, five percentage points ahead of the Liberals and six points clear of François Legault’s upstart Coalition Avenir Québec. From the moment it takes office, the sovereigntist party is vowing to repatriate to Quebec a series of federally controlled powers over things like employment insurance. It is counting on fights. The thinking is that every time Ottawa says no strengthens the argument for separation.
“Quebecers will judge for themselves Ottawa’s response to our demands,” said PQ finance critic Nicolas Marceau, an economist who teaches at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
The party is also the most interventionist of the three. It would mandate provincial pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec to protect Quebec companies from takeovers, politicizing an institution that has remained staunchly independent under chief executive Michael Sabia.
“We’re not talking about the PQ putting its hands in the Caisse. That’s out of the question,” Mr. Marceau said. “There has to be a distance between the government and the Caisse that lets the Caisse take its decisions based on business considerations. But at the same time, we can give it certain orientations to favour economic decisions which we think would be completely legitimate.”
How seriously Premier Jean Charest’s Liberals are taking the threat of a PQ government was made abundantly clear before the campaign started.
Raymond Bachand, the finance minister, uncharacteristically waded into the private markets by vowing to use all means necessary to block a takeover by U.S. home improvement retailer Lowe’s Cos. of local champion Rona Inc. Many observers believe Mr. Bachand’s move was pure political strategy — a way for the Liberals to connect with Quebecers who are instinctively nationalist and claim some of that ground as their own.
It remains to be seen whether the Liberals would maintain that interventionist stance if returned to power. But one thing is certain: Their opponents are even bigger meddlers, vowing to shield Quebec’s corporate jewels like Astral Media Inc. from being bought and the resulting head-office loss than might entail.
That’s great for all the local suppliers and lawyers and accountants whose livelihood feeds from the money flowing out from corporate Quebec’s headquarters. But it’s a bad outlook for investors looking to make money from a change of control.
“As soon as you start intervening in the fluidity of the market, there is a discount” that gets applied on the company being traded, said Adrien Pouliot, president of Montreal investment firm Draco Capital. “There is a general chill.”
Quebecers have a higher tolerance for government intervention than other Canadians, Mr. Pouliot says. He gives the example of the Quebec Stock Savings Plan, a scheme created by former PQ premier Jacques Parizeau that offered investors generous tax breaks if they put money in new public share offerings for Quebec-based companies. He benefitted from the plan as his company was able to raise more money than it otherwise would have.
The government in Quebec is so involved in the economy that eventually almost everybody gets something
“The government in Quebec is so involved in the economy that eventually almost everybody gets something,” Mr. Pouliot said. “It’s a system that’s very difficult to break.”
Quebec’s small and medium-sized businesses, which make up 50% of gross domestic product and represent the heart of many communities, are equally apprehensive about the future. Dealing with an 8% tax on profits, double the rest of Canada, and payroll taxes that are 45% higher on average than in other provinces, their hurdles to expansion are immense.
“[We] don’t have a climate where you’re encouraging people to grow their business,” said Martine Hébert of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “I go see members in Quebec. They’re telling me ‘I made the choice to stay small because the more I grow, the more problems I get.’ ”
Using the Caisse to shield Quebec companies is a bad strategy, says Martin Coiteux, an economist at Montreal’s HEC business school. First, it presumes that a foreign takeover is automatically a bad thing when in fact a new owner might innovate and create jobs. Second, it’s using pensioner money, not public money, to pursue the government’s agenda.
“It’s like we’re back 20, 30, maybe 40 years ago,” Mr. Coiteux said in an interview. “It projects to the outer world the image of a Quebec which is resolutely looking at its own past.”
There was a time when the Quebec government used the Caisse more actively. If that kind of economic nationalism had produced clear improvements in the lives of ordinary Quebecers, it might be worth pursuing. Trouble is, Mr. Coiteux says, it hasn’t.
“What happened is that the gap between the richest province and our own economy has increased. And provinces such as New Brunswick are catching up. So something is going on. And nobody is really questioning the overall strategy. [It’s] more economic nationalism for no other purpose than to perpetuate a winning speech at election time.”
In theory, the average Quebecer wouldn’t get huffy in the least about the PQ’s plan to repatriate employment insurance. And the party still might find it a tough slog to build support for outright separation.
But the mood among the Quebec electorate now is unpredictable, Mr. Coiteux says. It can get massively behind a cause, as the NDP’s crushing victory in Quebec and this past spring’s student protests demonstrated. It also has little love for the Harper Conservatives.
The argument is that anything can happen in these volatile conditions.
“Given the polls that we’ve seen so far, I don’t think that anybody is really betting on the re-election of the Liberals,” Mr. Coiteux said. “[Quebecers] are dividing their votes. They’re splitting their votes across various parties. And the PQ might strike a win just because of the divisions between the others.” |
hey everyone and welcome back to the my
girls happy fun hour I remain your host
Mike morals franchise creative director
on Dungeons & Dragons and this week we
are going to continue looking at the
Sion character class we’ve spent a few
weeks on this and before we dive in I
have a quick question for everyone
hello chat the question for you why
you’re all typing in your greetings
consider this so we’ve been doing the
Sion for a while
and I kind of feel like this is probably
the light I think last week I said I’d
maybe spend two more weeks on it but I
think this might be it might make sense
for this week to tackle the the shaper
you can see I have the phrase at whale
summoning and that’s gonna be our first
can trip we’re gonna tackle what I
thought we would do today is go through
and look at some of the canned trips for
summoning what those can look at
essentially well summoning that’s not
really the shippers doing but that’s
mechanically what is the best match and
then talk about what that subclass looks
like and then I think from there it’s
gonna be a lot of just boring desk work
for me so what I like to do what I like
to do is I’m gonna like bring in some
enlightened self-interest I like to
think that as I’m working on my campaign
I’m running a campaign set in an
interval on Fridays if you know that
into your veil it was the world the
fourth edition D&D and I’m adapting what
do you call it the keep on the shadow
fell but I’m making a higher level so I
have some undead monsters I want to
design for it so I thought would it be
fun if after we work on this because
I’ve kind of shown you how to design a
class a very rough way if I did some
monster design so chiming to chat me
think monster designs sounds good as
kind of our next topic so we’ve been
doing character stuff since we started
so the who we got here so let’s see what
monster design however Simoes design
okay I’m seeing all yeses and what I
will do is what I want to do is take a
few of those undead creatures and throw
some stuff around them because I thought
it will be fine yeah
yeah okay so it’ll be fun and I think
will be fun too is I could take I kind
of share the entire process from start
to finish and not just the mechanics but
also how the story works and in this
case I think it would be fun a game
phantom diem but itching for the
artificer you might not well hey I can
spell anything we’ll see we’ll see the
but the one of the nice things about
monster designed as I can kind of show
you what it really looks like in terms
of how we often reproach monster design
having a piece of art working at the
story stuff and then it’s just kind of
walk through some of the mechanical
elements alright so I’m seeing a lot I’m
seeing people like seem to think that’s
cool okay cool um cool nice really
spoiler part of his earner first the
artificer might be uh we’ll see we’ll
see
there might be an artifice or design
somewhere on our network drives that
might be due for you soon I don’t want
to say anything okay I’ll just come on
say it well no I won’t come and say yeah
I’ll come on say it’s an artifice of
design there isn’t it there was a
revision we have made it revision the
challenge now is and this is something
which you look at the process we’re
going through the silent building a
class is a lot to it so where we are
right now at that is it’s got a revision
based on feedback from a lot of sources
from the play test feedback and then
from a few back from other designers and
then now it has to go through a
refinement phase and this is important
at this stage especially it’s something
as big as the artificer if there’s just
some obvious mistakes in the class we
get everything revved up we throw it up
for you a we could ever in prime to play
test and if there’s just obvious broken
stuff that means the play test feedback
is going to be just more right it’s not
gonna go anywhere the they call me Tomo
no spoilers and what the actual casting
thing is I’m not gonna say yeah because
I want Crawford to have a chance to look
through it
I want Kate to have a chance to review
it and really dig into it so I’m not
gonna those some of the things I changed
still stuff might still change but I
have done another draft for the
artificer the so the anyways let’s get
the sign on dunya’s exactly okay so next
we could be monsters
we’ll start doing some monsters I’ll
show you that process but let’s here
talk about the taeyeon so we talked
about the shaper being the subclass that
essentially now mechanically we’re going
to think of it like summoning but what
we want the flavor to be is that I am
plucking things out of my imagination or
your imagination and making them real
and making them do stuff now this is the
important thing I think when we think
summoning it’s very easy to get caught
in I summon a thing and it beats people
up I mean that’s definitely a very
useful version of summoning believe me
but there’s also space for more utility
I summon something that can’t fly so it
picks me up and carries me somewhere so
I want to make sure we’re capturing that
too especially for class that’s gonna be
really a sub classes can be really
focused on this ability putting some
flexibility and they’ll be really good
because then we just don’t have I just
things are doing my fighting for me and
also it gets us maybes we’ll see maybe
some flexibility and how we’re actually
limiting these things so first things I
want to do yeah the are changed Eric
we’re making Foster’s Home for Imaginary
Friends it’s exactly these are this is
your imaginary friend that comes to life
and that’s what I see the at-will
summoning doing oh no don’t I don’t need
a ch3 any core body usually you’re
better behaved than that alright so yeah
that’s basically what any we write you
summon your imaginary friend now if
you’re familiar with our process here
the first thing we need to do we start
designing maybe just a let’s go to new
stuff let’s take a look at what exists
in the game already right there are a
number of summoning spells out there so
we turn to a handy-dandy D&D Beyond
which is and I gotta say I you know a
total commercial mode right now but I
love using the adeney beyond for design
because it does make just searching
yourself easier
the it’s nice being let’s go through all
spells and we are just going to go
through and do our filter up spell
targets right there I always forget and
we’re just gonna go down to
pretty sure summon spinning is a filter
now let’s filter all our spells so this
is a good starting point we want to
check out we want to do is you know if
you’re familiar with the show you get to
hear me say this again what we want to
do is look at what levels do certain
things come in so checking these things
out now we have fine steed find
familiars I’m not I’m gonna ignore that
one because it’s a bit of a outlier in
terms of its utility infestation is
using the summoning key word but it’s
really it’s not actually summoning
things it’s really the flavor and it’s
just driving home that flavor so we’re
gonna skip fine steed well we’ll go back
to it but what I want to focus on is
conjure animals third-level so what
we’re saying here is that with a
third-level spell now uh let’s see I’m
gonna go so my head doesn’t get in the
way I’m gonna do this so I want to take
some notes here just to get us a sense
here of what we have what’s going on and
what we’re saying here with this spell
is it a third level I can get one cr2
creature so I’m just gonna do a very
quick and dirty table here just so we
can I don’t want h3h3 is just like
busting in today I wants to be
everywhere let’s just go core body easy
let’s go still know this a spell level
and then see our so whatever establishes
and I’m not gonna care too much about
the other ones for right now what I want
to do is just focus on the one for one I
just burned a third level spell I get
one cr2 creature the other two I’ll get
back to those in a sec but we’re not yet
I want to take a look at the other
spells here now whatever you want to do
here I’m gonna skip summon lesser demon
because these are these come with
drawbacks but at fourth we go to mana
elemental and what’s interesting here is
we’re saying at four we’re still seeing
CR two now what’s happening here is
something that I’m gonna say is like a
little it’s soft design what this is
assuming is that elementals by nature of
being the creature type elemental are
going to have more interesting things at
CR two than beasts beasts by design are
very boring they’re generally adjusted
buckets of hit points with some basic
melee attacks
attached to them if there’s any special
abilities they’re pretty minor maybe a
rider on an attack like knocking someone
prone or maybe some sort of sensory
ability so I’m gonna note this right
here that’s CRT that’s a beast and what
I really want here is that you know
what’s just the raw CR so I’m seeing
here before that will spell an elemental
it’s CR 2 so okay it’s not now here’s
the one thing though is it’s not a huge
upgrade going from elephant jarick
elemental to generic beast or vice versa
is not like wow you just doubled its
power it’s more usually what happens is
with summoning one of the things that
will trip you up in D&D is those utility
spells the future might be coming with
and we’ll see that because I think Fay
now phase also at 4th I know this is a
very common problem least I’ve heard
people complained about that some of
these Fei you can bring in you know
you’re dragging in like 8 CR 1/4 faith
at all say can cast cure wounds or
something like that the chat might know
the specific issue people are saying but
and kittens and mittens beets are boring
Merle’s on why wats he hates
Beastmasters range here following that
beast it was the Fae master then we’d be
all we’d be all in so again we’re gating
it here we’re saying a little for spell
that’s worth getting some magic find
greater than greater Steve it’s like the
king of the horses I don’t know what the
spell does oh ok so this is kind of
intro can’t see you know this is gonna
be hilarious because I forgot the spell
exists xanthus got everything on it’s at
Zenith IRAs book they added it’s at
aftermarket like year 3 expansion the so
this is kind of interesting so we’re
getting a kindest thing fight I forget
let’s see 10 is 5 total combat I get
telepathically uber blah drops to
dismiss it okay doesn’t seem to see
anything here that it says I can’t make
this tell us into fight so this is we’re
gonna kind of backdoor this in what’s
the Griffin the CR see ours too great
they’re all gonna be to watch this is
gonna be like every summoning spell just
gets er to the okay yeah they come we’ll
take it can fight okay yeah
last thing I need is Jeremy busting Kyle
just gimme yeah this is a flood well
this is a flying but these are flying
creatures though but that doesn’t why
wouldn’t I just summon these things and
fly them look I’m complaining up my own
game this is classy but wait a sec okay
wait a sec see these conjure and all
does it have a restriction see are two
giant boar and Asura Sabretooth oh these
guys are monstrosity czar they I might
be completely whipping on that is a
Griffin what Strasse monstrosity or is
it a beast
this is gonna be this yeah it’s a
monstrosity okay there we go so again
we’re getting this segregated here so
basically we’re putting a lot of a lot
of weight on that creature type a lot
more than I didn’t I care for personally
not personally professionally saying
like has a dungeon has a game designer
that’s probably more going here so good
ok now we’re up to see our six well
that’s a big jump so we went from so
elemental level 5 up to see our six Wow
okay that’s a big jump this is gonna be
interesting to try to balance well look
at the duration of fine good oh is one
of those things that’s like buried the
durations much longer because I think
I’m just gonna snore m’l eyes my oh this
is a minute
Wow okay this is this is something that
irritate I got it okay so these are all
this is why we have one minute one hour
find greater seat is 10 minutes
instantaneous conjurer’s one minute this
is one action this is it’s a little all
over the place okay so here’s the thing
this is not not a berry this as an
opportunity opportunity for us to make
something work a bit better
yeah Conger Fay a minute I get why it’s
a minute it’s really so you don’t do in
the middle of a fight but it’s
concentration so that’s all really gonna
kind of throttle what else you can do
alright opportunities there’s lots of
opportunities here there is lots of
opportunities here we can do a lot of
stuff here that will make something a
lot more fun because there’s a lot of
like how it takes a minute oh I want to
I want to get a foul on a summon a
Tyrannosaurus Rex hello this is conjure
face
[Laughter]
so yeah it is it is a t-rex okay cool so
anyways this okay okay this is me gender
sputtering on stream right like okay so
you can up gun the spell that’s why the
t-rex shows up okay so let’s go see our
6:00 at 6:00 okay but that’s six there
all right opportunity keep saying that
it’s an opportunity for us to make
something you know this is really funny
because I know people on Twitter
especially it says oh I want to play a
good summoner I’d be like aren’t there
summoning spells in the game but I
personally don’t play a lot of summoners
and this is a corner of the game it’s
like you can imagine if the game is a
house I have I gone into those back
corner room and I’m like it’s really
dusty and like with what’s in here oh
there’s summoning and it takes a minute
I had no idea
I literally last night was cleaning our
garages looking for some miniatures and
this is because I’ve been married for a
while so I’m getting better at this
there was a check my wife did some
photography works someone sent her a
check for it
and I did not know I read I did not
realize I had put the check out in the
garage with some of my miniatures I
accidentally picked it up and put in a
box and so much here’s looking for it
and so when I said I found it and she
said where was it and I said oh it was
behind the fridge I’m not gonna tell her
I took your check and just put it out in
the garage with a bunch of my my rail
parth of miniatures I was sorting
because I’m a goofball like this okay
alright my new this happened it was this
summer I knew I meant to make it this
way and this is here okay it’s a
celestial force in cr4 okay so this is
all over the place this is really
interesting case again opportunity right
what we’re seeing here though is I am
going to just be blunt I’m gonna ignore
these spells beyond getting a sense of
where the CR is because what’s happening
here and this is something that I am not
necessarily a fan of InDesign for old
playing games and I know why we did this
here right and this is a case of you
know we did this five years ago
essentially there would have been some
adjustment in two and fourteen before
the game released but this is something
where don’t be afraid to look back at
something you didn’t go I don’t really
like how I did that that’s okay that
means you’re learning hey I’m learning
right and it’s I’m not I’m not trying to
be lame and be like that’s my excuse for
doing it this way this is something
where somebody was a real Bears
specially in third edition that’s a pun
by the way so you can look him laughs
the COS needs someone to bear the actual
eat someone a whale it’s a whale of a
good time the sum in the whale and you’d
block off a hallway with a huge creature
even bigger and then it would just flop
around and die but still a barrier but
anyway so this is pride era where we’re
very very cautious because in designing
the entire game system the there’s a lot
of questions you have to ask spells in
in particular you know when you look at
the game where we are now in 2018 you’ve
seen a lot more sub classes come out in
terms of you a you have not seen as many
spells in terms of our focus and the
challenge being a single spell can
really disturb the balance of the game
but it’s very tricky to get play test
feedback on say 50 new spells as opposed
to two new subclasses or one new
subclass whatever it is that we’re doing
so with spells in fifth we were probably
a lot not probably I know this because I
worked on the game we were a lot more
cautious about pushing things and
summoning this was a great example of we
decided to throttle back a bit on it to
make it more situational what these like
we know casting times of a minute to
really make it something that you had to
plan on rather than something that you
could just do and I can see here okay so
Kandra woodland being is an action that
that’s what’s going on here
yeah the tricky thing is as a player I
can admit as a player I don’t like
having multiple axes I have to use two
meant to measure things I also don’t
like the surprise factor I like hey if
I’m a player scrolling through
oh hey fine see that looks cool and you
forget it’s got a ten minute casting
time so this is like a warrant warrant
moment in the game you’re like oh hey
the guys are chasing us condors fine
steed i’ll cast will get it warmer so no
it actually takes ten minutes and it’s
got all this stuff what’s going on so
what I want this guy to do is is instant
summons like I want I want this to just
be instantly summon you friend or
servant
that’s what we want now here’s the trick
to this Oh once I regard you – I’m
putting suggest as an H case 2011 action
spider accrual 4080 xx oh yeah so here’s
something I threw about 12 in fighting
on Twitter if you don’t follow me on
Twitter
oh and there’s a question tridents from
black ace 13 and I actually wanna get to
that one the okay so do two things
I suggest don’t weapon fighting that on
Twitter that instead of costing a bonus
action because as I’ve hammered home
many times if you’ve watched the stream
to weapon the bonus action economy can
get kind of messy with two up and
fighting often class features require a
bonus action to activate it something
that can be defining like rage which
means a great weapon fighting character
you feel bad I would like you know how
would that work without a bonus action
so the idea is if you’re – I’ve been
fighting in place of an attack you make
two attacks but your damage gets
decremented down in a well elegant
simple way and the elegant simple way is
what’s kind of struggling here but there
are cases where that could probably lead
to lot of attacks quick question about
the Trident so I’ve seen them a few
people ask well that why is the Trident
such a crappy weapon the Trident is in
the game not because we strive to make
the Trident a an interesting weapon that
sits alongside the spear and the sword
the Trident in the game something
because our aquatic creatures wield it
and it’s really a flavor thing we felt
that putting a lot yeah I felt and
people seem to agree that if we’re gonna
show arts abus to you again or Triton or
merfolk who has a trident
but then call it a spear and thus taplok
that might be a little bit disconnect so
that’s all that weapon is literally in
the game because we have aquatic
creatures that use trident
we actually didn’t want you to make it
feel like he was a great weapon that
would be a natural thing that would use
now you could argue that maybe that
wasn’t a great case but like in some
ways the weapon list serves two purposes
it serves characters basically I like
that what weapon I want to use it and
then it also always serves the monsters
so anyway while that’s going on here’s
we want favor for at will summoning want
clear utility things have a clear use
have a function beyond combat the can
fight instantly summon a friend or
servant I’m probably gonna say you know
restrict this to one creature as default
I think a lot of the shenanigans that
come in or one like I can get multiple
creatures twelve or is it gonna be a non
creature summoning option yeah I think
that’s something which would be cool cuz
essentially these are gonna be
constructs can be almost anything and
that frees up a lot of design space for
us so you could say I’m gonna summon a
dancing sword I’m gonna summon a giant
you know rolling Boulder to crash
through people and move around the got
like a big bees hands say ciao Mart so
gets a good comparison so the this is
essentially what we want to do and when
I think of at will summoning this is
where and this is where I think this
sort of this sort of benefit I get as I
put spell slots into this what I think
at will summoning does is it a costs to
your action that’s like yeah cost your
action action on an ongoing basis higher
level summoning lets you stack things on
top of your actions so what I mean by
that is this I have an apples someone
have this imaginary friend I want to
call into being and make them do
something I think if you think of the
unseen servant spell yeah had her feign
unseen servant being something along
those lines except I wanted to be able
to fight um you know otherwise I don’t
really feel like a summoner if we’re
they what I’m doing is just I can move
stuff around but I can do that with
mange hand so I have this creature I can
bring it into existence like I sculpt it
I can make it fight it’s gonna cost me
my action to make it fight the benefit I
get benefit I get that was that creature
is gonna occupy a space so if I’m you if
you’re miniatures player if you use
miniatures in your game you probably
instantly need to know that benefit as a
party we can control an extra square we
probably have to put a tax on that
though
so I’m going to throw this other thing
in here at will summoning comes with
some damage feedback what does that mean
you might ask well I think what that
what that means is that if I summon a
creature and it’s at will I haven’t
invested any magic into it my name our
resources that could you gets killed I
need to take a drawback that could be
damage it could be something like I lose
concentration for a time I’m in favor of
damage that’s fast and easy as a player
to assess I’m not looking for this to be
a lot of damage what I just want to do
is stop you from infinitely blocking a
doorway the size limit northland Cal
that’ll be something that we’ll play
with as we go to higher levels so that’s
something where we don’t want you to
just round up to round him to keep
blocking the doorway and essentially
have a damaged sponge because that’s the
other benefit and let’s actually take a
quick step back so I realized I’m doing
all this stuff thinking of the benefits
of summoning this is why summoning is so
tricky because it’s got a lot of
follow-on benefits you know a fireball
just does damage that’s it’s doing
damage if you want it to do something
else like set a building on fire or
something the DMS to kind of start
adjudicating this but summoning comes
there’s a lot of things baked in it’s
extra hit points for the party so a
summoning a summon creature comes with
having hit points so I can attack it I’m
essentially creating a buffer for the
party
if so think of this scenario the party
is in a dungeon they open a door there’s
five goblins the shaper goes first they
throw a summon creature into the doorway
the goblins rush up with their swords
one or more of the goblins has to spend
their actions essentially dealing with
that summoned creature again it’s very
powerful a can trap and lets me cancel
essentially it’s letting you cancel an
attack at no cost is very good canceling
an attack at a cost so in this case
damage means I can use that but I have
to use it judiciously and if I’m using
it a lot it’s going to drain other party
resources so what we want to make sure
is we’re just not giving you a very big
benefit and denying attacks is a big
benefit if you can put your enemy in a
position where they cannot attack you
that’s and you can attack them back
that’s fantastic that something you’ll
do all day
so we’ve got to make sure that we take
an account into that it’s more area
control so again it’s if think of if
you’re using grid grid in a minute and
miniatures
it’s another miniature on the table for
the party the so that’s not as big but
it still can be pretty useful and it’s
extra actions just do more stuff right
if you have your adding essentially
member to the party it just gives you
more flexibility if you think of the
party has it’s a group that has X number
of actions to use each round adding more
actions that’s always just a good thing
there is vanishingly few cases that
aren’t contrived we’re having those
extra actions is actually drawback I
mean at worst it’s neutral example you
need to open a door that’s one action
okay I could have 50 actions or five
actions or one as long as I have one I
can open the door so but typically
scaling those up I have more actions
means I can open that door we can go
through and I can do something else so
now there are some limits to it but
we’re not those limits look more like
adding eight to twelve extractions not
one one is always always beneficial so
we have to account for that too and
that’s why you see often you know the
actually here’s something really we
should look at let’s say and someone
mentioned it because of the fae in the
beasting let’s take a look at everyone’s
favorite character class the Ranger
everyone for definitions of people who
like Rangers you see a lot of the
discontent people who don’t like the
Beastmaster almost all the things that
they don’t like about this design and go
back to that list that I just rattled
off so let’s take a look at our
companion though a third level you gain
a beast companion that accompanies you
on your adventures and is trained to
fight alongside you choose a beast that
is no larger than medium so that’s an
important thing we don’t want you
getting a large beast large creatures
especially use miniatures are super
useful to have in your party because
they just they command four spaces party
of four that’s essentially I’ve doubled
the number of spaces I can control an a
grid it makes it very easy to clean
clothes off passages things like that
challenge one quarter or lower oh that’s
something I’m gonna write down there too
that’s going to be kind of our
I’m trying to put Ranger here to note
that and set 1/4 that’s a little 3
there’s gonna do note that I’ll remember
or chat you’ll remind me ok so so you
get some bonuses ok we’re adding your
your proficiency bonus just because we
want to make sure it doesn’t go you know
sideways so we’re giving it some hit
point cushioning here but our base thing
is 1/4 so this is essentially the hit
points and the proficiency are just
there to let this thing’s scale up so
it’s not you do have to recycle it or
you don’t have to worry about it it’s
becoming useless the lot of people to
argue this is just not very useful to
start with it can understand you sure it
can spend hit dice so it takes its turns
on your initiative though it doesn’t
take an action less you command it to on
your turn you can verbally command the
beast or to move no action required by
you you can use your action to verbally
command it to attack – whatever take
much of actions the and that’s using
your action and so it’s getting back
this idea of adding extra actions to the
party pool the thinking here and you can
see that same reluctance to really
embrace this idea of summoning that we
saw in the spells with like the 10
minute casting times and cr2 being kind
of our ceiling and once we hit CR 2 we
just started changing other things in
the spells to make them better
casting time or type of creature you’re
seeing this play out here in the Ranger
and you’re seeing based on what we saw
in the reaction to this design a lot of
people just not happy with this they
just didn’t feel like they were getting
a creature that was their companion they
felt like they were getting a robot with
a remote control attached to it and you
were remote controlling a robot I think
that for me that’s kind of
metaphorically where I feel it is and
yeah it’s and that share DVI this is a
great point all right the problem is
this is made for people who want a pet I
want to pet and then I get a pet and I
get a kind of a pet that sort of lame
and I was just having the discussion
with someone today about a character
race someone was working on and
realizing that the way the design was
configured if you rarely played that
race like maybe you played that race
once it was work fine but if you’re the
type of player who said oh this is my
favorite type of character to play oh
I’m gonna play these guys and connect
year I’m gonna play four different
characters and all them will be this
type of character ooh the way it was
designed is like oh that’s actually
feels kind of lame like it feels fun the
first time but the second when you make
I feels a little to say me so that is
definitely something that is designed
you need to think about that in terms of
the player that you’re aiming to act not
just in terms of what they like but in
terms of over the course of several
campaigns how will this stand up so he’s
0 cuz spiritual basically spiritual
weapon is a streamline but pseudo
version of summoning there might be
something there the well I want to take
a look that actually bring in creatures
I want to make this work because I think
we can make this work that’s a win I
think there are players up there who if
we can make this work would say finally
I can play the character I always want
to play I get to play the character who
has pets and as someone who has two dogs
and four cats I can understand that you
like I mean pets around unless they wake
up at both like 3:00 a.m. and 5:30 a.m.
to be let out so much but that might be
them kind of trying to tell you
something and that might be our older
dog and happy that we have a puppy in
the house so used to getting older but
still a puppy so yeah so this is really
where you’re seeing the tension come in
and I feel pretty confident that we we
were cautious here and I think that
caution was warranted I would stand by
that decision I think if we went back to
2013 and whatever revised this we would
revise it because we learn things since
then not because there’s really any
insight that we just flat-out missed
when this sort of thing goes wrong it
goes wrong in a way that makes the DM at
least really irritated because I have
played in the campaign with the broken
summoning with somebody something that
felt broken and in this specific case
Elvis find it has something that just
felt like ridiculous and it was doing
things that felt far beyond what you’d
expect from the character to do I had a
friend of mine who would use multiple
summonings to like summon just hoards of
low CR creatures and just have them all
use the help action and third edition if
I remember right the help action stacked
or it was like the hinder action stacked
so there’s just ridiculous you know but
it was a good example like a low-level
spell that was producing like +10 attack
bonuses which
third edition were great because then
your your iterative attacks we’ve got
multiple attacks in third edition your
attack bonus went down dramatically so
getting a big bonus was huge it meant
you were going from hitting one and a
half times per round to like hitting all
three times with your attacks so it
could be really big the all right so
yeah I know a frog wheeler a Wyson a
character to scout when you have
disposable NPCs another good example
right that comes into the action sort of
thing I have more actions I have actions
I don’t mind sending out to die I were
playing a game with a druid who was
summoning animals and sending them down
to trigger traps and a tumor in which
was just sort of hilarious I am the
guardian of nature animals I love you
plants come to me I will I will take
care of you protect you accept you fight
Oh run down that hallway and let me know
if anything jumps out and stabs you so
again that gets back to this idea of
putting the bet penalty on it you know
this idea that if it’s free summoning I
want to throw a some sort of I wanted in
your resources in some way because I
want to avoid hey I have this guy get
some time at well someone him and have
him run down the hallway to trigger
traps we have them open doors we have
them you know there’s a switch maybe we
should pull it well let’s have a summon
creature do it right and then you don’t
want to deal with coming up all these
weird rules like this creature can
attack but it can’t pull a lever and
they can’t walk down a hall and whatever
right it when you when the restrictions
on an ability start to be the bulk of
its rules that to me is like you’re
doing something very wrong you either
you’re doing something just by its
nature just isn’t gonna work it’s gonna
be disrupting the game or you’re doing
something in a way that really what you
want to do is just penalize people in
some way for abusing it so just make
that as simple and direct and obvious as
possible
because players will always find ways to
get around like very specific drawbacks
but it’s harder to get around like look
II just taking damage if you can get it
you’ve been getting around taking damage
then that’s great you’re gonna win you
know in a lot of fights the so John
Herzog artists are their penalties for
letting the imaginary-friend die then
read something later I don’t I’m not
crazy about X I do like the idea that
this is something that’s here for me and
what I think I might do is this all
right so are at will summoning
here’s the mean version so I’m gonna do
like I’ll do like version one but it
takes damage you take that damage now I
don’t want to do this because we have a
d6 class then I mean like well I need to
give you more hit points well now I have
you the entire dat separate pool eight
points maybe you’re tracking where so I
don’t wanna deal with that it’s that
what I wanted what I would like to say
is when it is destroyed you take some
damage and lose maybe your focus for
around I think I want I kind of do both
so it’s not just gonna come back so
you’re gonna yeah I think actually yeah
so I want to lose your focus which means
in your concentration in focus so you’re
not gonna be cavalier about it if you’re
in a situation though where you do want
to look I’m mission to sacrifice my
summon character and this is at will not
the other ones we’ll get to those in a
sec I think that it’s open what I like
about this is that you can decide
tactically okay I’m gonna take this hit
because I do need to keep the goblins in
the room where I want to block the door
and you know I’m gonna take a drawback
here but it is gonna be useful to keep
these guys out um let’s see Oh Morey I
think it’s what you the greens a little
hard to read what it was xx damage I
like the overkill it feels a little
fiddly to me I think I’d rather just
make it a flat number so I don’t have in
a situation where well they’re goblins
only doing like say 1 d6 + 3 damage and
I’m like the higher level I don’t care
if these guys keep killing my summon as
opposed to I’m really worried if the
dragon kills it I’d rather just know
that there’s just a flat a flat thing so
we’re not like this weird scaling thing
taking effect where some things are
really nervous about attacking your
summons and others you’re not so I just
specify that the and I think looking at
its benefits I’m probably gonna go say
that you’re at will summon as a baseline
is that the app will summon is a Buddist
is a CR at 1/4 creature
now what I mean by that is we’re gonna
figure out either pull staff locks I’m
not gonna go to any step locks today I’m
just gonna use I’m just knees challenge
as our as our baseline so the so that’s
basically our entire thing here you know
a CR 1/4 creature you and you have to
spend your action to make it it’s been
it’s action essentially what we’ve done
is we’ve created a can trip what I
imagine using this can trip will be a
bonus action so I can summon it in and
then have it attack somebody or I can
have it do something well also gonna do
is try to restrict range she’s gonna say
10 feet or even adjacent I don’t want
this to be like hey there’s a chasm and
there’s something on the side we need I
will summon and my guy shows up and does
something know again I want you to spend
a resource for that I have to spend a
spell slot or spell points or whatever
it is because again if it’s at will at
will things DMS have a higher high
allergy to real good utility net will
because it just distorts the entire
design process of your adventures so so
yeah so I think we want to restrict
range I’m sure this is a great example
playtesting will start revealing other
things that’ll come up all right so then
let’s just do a very simple thing here
I’m gonna delete this because I don’t
really care not that I don’t care but
it’s just yeah and what I want to do is
look at what my level so if I know level
0 is see our 1/4 essentially can’t rip
I’m just gonna this is like this is
where we start getting into like rough
justice right we have a spell system
here that is trying to do summoning but
is maybe not pulling its full weight in
terms of what people want I am pretty
much committed to saying I don’t want
you to summon multiple creatures unless
I want to handcraft that I don’t want to
make it as a look at the spells what
they’re doing is they’re giving you this
sort of progression that here
let me I’ll show it to you we’ll take a
look at one right this progression of
the number of creatures is going to end
up with things that you’re unhappy with
as a DM because there’s no way that
under conjure animals or any of them
like okay
be really fast contra elementals that we
can really consistently say that hey
eight one-quarter challenge rating
things are equivalent to one two yeah
they’re tax and damage might be but as
soon as I have a spell on her ability
resting here eight of those is just
better than one and I’m sure right now
if I just did a search for monsters I
can find an example here so let’s go to
elementals there might not even be a one
eighth LCR elemental how do we got some
right here yes let’s get the mud method
and then Mitch it’s got some sort of
special ability a mud breath so it can
restrain creatures now eight guys who
can show up and restrain you so
basically means every round I’m
restraining a lot of creatures for a
long time so this just really kind of
breaks down that idea of like the swarm
summoning because we’re not gonna say
our elementals don’t get abilities and
this is what kind of makes them fun so
I’m gonna be pretty focused on just
doing this a one-for-one the so so let’s
go through and now going to assist do
some rough justice here so this is gonna
be spell level so I’m just gonna go
through and add my to hear three four
five six seven eight nine and I’m just
gonna sort of back the envelope what I
think oh my god my computer froze this
has been my thing today my my outlook
just was like weirdly frozen I thought I
broke it and an email is trying to
respond to and oh no there we go
I’m not in trouble 99 oh well that’s
that’s now the new feature here right we
did d-104 like the commoner so now the
the the shaper gets how it’s getting
really slow okay check in and just send
all my data to the NSA make sure they
have it all right so we send a level
let’s see it’s never forgotten what does
the
let’s go back here it’s back in again to
our spells so we set here under conjure
animals cr2 is a third little spell
should make sure had that right so I’m
just gonna arbitrarily say that that’s
gonna be one and arbitrarily say that’s
half and I’m just gonna again equally
arbitrarily just increase this by one no
I don’t think this is actually going to
work but it’s it’s a handy enough
starting point this is also case now
what I would probably do in play test is
just come up with some generic stat
blocks they’ll just get across this
damage armor class and hit points I can
finesse this later but this is what I’m
basically going to look at use if you
spend a spell slot of this level you get
this step this corresponding stop lock
to give you it now let’s take let’s do a
quick reality check here to give you a
sense let’s take a look at some CRE
creatures and what I want is a CR eight
beast because as I mentioned before
beasts tend to be very simple so let’s
go to monsters official and let’s go to
beasts you know let’s just look at all
the challenge unless is the Billy know
there should be a lot of cluttered so
let’s just do challenge rating eight
like a look all right so we’re saying a
t-rex with a knight the whole spell 136
hit points a C’s pretty lame it’s gonna
get hit pretty quickly it’s got one bite
in one tail this is I don’t know if its
restriction carries any real bite but
we’ll see +10 433 you can grapple +10
420 so seven hinges to the seventeenth
level getting this that feels probably
weak so I probably need to boost that up
a bit
let’s take a look at what did I am I
sort of totally fake math give a game of
CR for for a level 5 spell so that’s a
9th bubble so let’s take a look what
that creature looks like
let’s see how what the damage is there
and I just can I just want a bruiser
whoa okay yeah okay elephant okay it
doesn’t get any more comp case guy is AC
1276 hitpoints yeah I don’t think I
think this actually feels pretty for a
fifth level caster this is my big
creature I get getting seventy six extra
hip points it’s nice and that’s nice
durability +8 419 it’s got this
traveling charge ability DC 12 though so
I’m not too worried most creatures in
let’s take a look at uh there’s a giant
subterranean lizard simpler
it’s the AC 1466 hitpoints one bite in
one tail okay Gordon one of my kids oh
it’s so so plus 7 for 16 + plus 7 for 12
one target not crapple by the lizard
that’s kind of funny it’s very specific
lizard grab me grapple me now you can
hit me with the tail oh that you can
swallow me in that pain alright so that
that this feels reasonable so let’s take
a quick thing here a very rough estimate
of what this matches up if this is a
fighter say typical fighters probably to
have + 2 hit points per hit die and
beginning about 8 hit points per level
so this is actually pretty good
avian +3 so let’s say 9 so level you
know if the fighter the party probably
has 80 to 90 to make a point so I’m not
overshadowing the fighter but that’s
still pretty good the cleric and the
party probably has about let’s say again
this is 9th level so 60 something sacred
cleric and roguish hit points the art
class is really the hard thing here most
beats up pretty lame armor classes
oh it’s also huge my phone is ringing I
thought it told it – wow that’s pretty
funny sorry but it’s the first time
that’s happened but it is four months
it’s the first time someone’s actually
tried calling me I put on do not disturb
the this is an easy thing to overlook
this is huge so ok that’s not actually
this is really good at locking down a
big air of the battlefield ok so I feel
actually that’s pretty good this guy’s
gonna really tank up and he’s gonna dish
out some ok hits I mean here’s his other
main thing he’s only a plus 7 to hit our
party members at 9th level are probably
to be around probably I think nine or
ten maybe ish around there depending up
the up magic items and stuff but this is
yeah someone’s trying to summon you
through your phone true enough of our
serious the this is a good example of
I’m getting a text to my wife can’t find
her computer I have no idea where it is
the so she’s texting me now to the can
this wait 17 minutes actually it can’t
chat I can talk while I do this because
I’m gonna tell her I think it’s on the
couch so but what we’re seeing here is
what we’re getting for summoning is a
really big huge creatures great that’s a
three by three grid that’s like nine
size medium creatures so I feel pretty
good you know so I want to pay attention
to like the the opto level ten beyond
that I think we just need to get the
numbers right but this feels pretty good
for a fifth level spell slot to get a
challenge for creature
yeah I’m not offended by it the I’m just
gonna put a little like – they’re here
just let me know that I need to verify
below oh and even Kyle and I’m gonna
tell her because she probably needs it
for work
anyway I’m probably be getting other
things I am gonna have to go silent you
guys get to watch me texts okay anyway
it’s very it’s like this week we have a
holiday here and if you’re not if not in
the States
12th of July is tomorrow it’s a
Wednesday it basically it’s like two
working weekends back to it’s very
strange
this entire week feels very splintered
all right so hey I have to be mortified
if she knew she was on stream okay so
here’s our basic thing now this may
sound like we haven’t got a lot done we
got actually had a ton done because
here’s what we’ve done all I want to get
to say is I can add will summon we’ve
got some basic parameters for that then
if I put a spell slot into this I up gun
my summon creature and then I can drop
these restrictions right so I’m not
gonna say like you know I’m just gonna
say lose these with a spell slide I
think we’re gonna put the note here is
uh stays where so that’s it this is like
our first big step forward so then
because I was thinking about this in
terms of what the SONA CR to bard the
seven bards ever just runs away in
horror the so the main thing here is
that we kind of have a rough outline for
our creatures are gonna look like what I
think I will do is rather than say hey
go into the monster menu I’ll put a snap
lock I think because this thing is
constructed I’m we’re gonna give you
stat blocks that you will use I think
it’ll be faster to reference plus when
we go to the next thing because I think
some names gonna really show off the
basically the idea of augmenting
abilities the what I want to do is I
want to know if I have and we know about
some right here cause fear increase
image extra actions like they’re just
you know buffs in general we can give
these things I want to know the
destination and that’s one of the
trickiest things in role-playing game
design with a system that is allowing
for more character customization is if
you take something you want to know
where is it going
as an example imagine
have an ability that says whenever I
roll my damage dice if I roll the
highest damage die I get to roll another
die whatever it could do that once it’s
very simple stuff but but you thinking
okay that usually means one extra die oh
wait what about if someone has a 2d six
damage sword yeah the great sort how
does that work you know and if you’re
gonna say well we treat each die
separately that ability is much more
useful for someone with a great sword
than it is for someone let’s say a great
axe where the great axe is gonna get an
extra die of one and twelve yeah
exploding die Zack may right whereas
there’s a one in three chance for you
know I have one in six chance normally
of that happening in a six signer but
I’m willing to
so roughly I’m getting twice as many
chances
one out of three top rounds I’m doing an
extra d6 and then there’s you know one
out of 36 issue runs that I’m getting
extra to d6 right so it’s just that’s an
area where knowing the destination
really gives me a real sense of the the
power this thing’s going to be so that’s
why rather than have you go to the
Monster Manual I want you going to these
kind of pre-built stat blocks it makes
it clear what’s gonna happen these these
stab blocks can be kept very simple and
utilitarian and then we can kind of get
a sense of what does it mean like to
increase your AC things like that I kind
of know what AC is a great example a +5
bonus to AC if your AC is like 11 and 12
and that’s good but for AC is already 20
you know you might be shifting your
bonus up your AC up to the point where
monsters need to start rolling just 20s
to hit you right look the elephant or
whatever was it was a +7 so I mean it’s
obviously a bonus Tacey is always great
but you don’t want to end up with
frustration of just like the creatures
just can’t hit this guy because we push
the AC too high that’s kind of why we
have the sort of this idea of keeping
hackers seeing bonuses narrow so then
let’s do a quick thing what I want to do
is cause fear and other emotions I want
to be let’s say hey I’m gonna give this
creature an aspect that makes it scary
Oh a dead in seconds shape your class
features I’m gonna get to that next
actually so what I wanted to do is bang
out what I wanted the spells to do
increase damage indeed this is just
general buffs either
do that extra actions I think that’s
another thing you could say I burned a
spell slot I could you gets to go again
or it’s a spell whatever it is and that
could even scale up so we have some
pretty obvious things we want to do oh
and then we could offset up augment and
other ways no utility comes to mount
flies skills or detection abilities this
is a lot of stuff we can give it here by
essentially having targeted buff spells
that augment my guy so what do we want
to do for the shapers clients features
well what I thought would be kind of
interesting was the I’m just gonna copy
and paste the Nomad here because this is
fully new just you know we’re gonna do
here right everyone’s favorite word
that’s it bonus disciplines that’s just
become a basic thing so we can give you
two extra shaper disciplines and so what
I like to do think between the Scion who
focuses on shaping and the creature they
actually shape or the thing they
actually shape so I thought about like
maybe like like someone mentioned doing
sane you get some like some spell slots
just for augments only the abhorson I’m
a little worried about that because
that’s just a very clear power up over
what other characters are getting a way
to think of it is what that what that
was that you do is I can use my spell
slots to augment my thing and I’m gonna
use my other spells on top of it even if
you’re specific about those bonus spell
slots it’s still just opening up your
bandwidth overall so what I want to try
to do is give you things that improve
the relationship between you and the
creature so and again things that
wouldn’t just be spells so a very simple
thing to do
Chicanos augment and shaping and I like
things that are simple indirect so at
first level your summon features gain
advantage on attacks against pictures
within this might not be the best thing
but this is kind of direction where I
want to go because what I’d like to do
here and work on here is this idea that
I can kind of combo up with Mike and my
creature especially by summon one that’s
doing its own thing now 10-feet might be
too close so an alternate might be pick
a target how can they say get them and
my guy is really good at getting that
guy well that might be need a cool-down
a another thing we could do is this sort
of free buff the rather than say hey
like here’s some extra small slots
cheese’s you want which but I think
maybe we can do basically when you
summon it
you just get a free benefit so so maybe
you can like increase max HP grants some
extra game I don’t wanna do get some
extra damage because that’s just makes
your firepower better yeah so I think
you can increase max HP you could also
like share your skill proficiencies so
if you can do something you can do
something so that might be kind of
useful to I can actually kind of like
that the the divination spells load
though those degrade that is a good
point the important the I think what
were you’re seeing there is since
they’re degrading what it’s saying is
these spells might not have the impact
that say a fireball would have we’re
incentivizing you to use really
high-level spells for what’s really in
character for you knowing that he was a
player don’t and aren’t necessarily
losing out on firepower that you could
use later on the but I can’t remember if
well I’ll live it up later cantide it
doesn’t it says only when you use the
divination spell you get as a lower
level slot back right you don’t have to
it doesn’t say then you’re locked into
using it the rest but anyways the but
yeah it’s definitely a it’s a tricky
thing I’d rather just do it by giving
you just the benefit because again you
also now you want you know what’s going
on you know that
donation you know the benefit you know
where it’s going so I think it’s
augmenting your summons in some simple
ways let’s see
another thing we could let you do is at
six level you get additional reaction
you know I’m gonna throw this because I
think this is interesting
let’s say you can grant oh no I have
seen additional actions as a spell
ability you know what I don’t know if it
that’s actually works and here’s why if
you were last week I talked about how
like in in games that like magic be an
example or any game where the hey I put
a creature into play at a cost there is
invariably a Kevin effect that says I
get to kill any creature for a much
lower cost a potentially much lower cost
they might only cost two or three
resources opposed to like up to like
infinite for a creature the tree thing
with saying hey my creature gets an
extra action is that skills kind of it
does not necessary scale well because we
think of the haste spell and use the hey
spells an example I thought he’s from a
character he’s very specifically says
you get one extra attack there because
we know a lot of the melee characters
they’re getting their benefits for
making multiple attacks now the Rogues
an exception that was my design though
we kind of felt like haste would be
something which throwing it on the rope
oh I’m sorry because that’s only during
your turn sorry did this so even the
rogue falls victim to that then I seen
what the rogue is if they’re getting an
extra attack if they missed and didn’t
get a chance to use sneak attack they
get to attack again and potentially
amount put it on so I think I’m gonna
strike the the spell effect of granting
extra attacks extra actions I’m gonna
strike that make that a class feature
because I think that’s something that I
don’t think scales well and class
features are a good place to put things
that don’t scale well because because of
this follow usually about the seed we’re
an extra action to a summing feature we
gain on long rest
so it’s pretty cool it’s very dramatic
but I can just say look you get it take
a long rest get this back you can’t just
say keep spamming it it’s a good way to
think of an ability that scaling
abilities often have to be balanced at
they’re their mightiest form which might
push something like this I copy to the
seventh level where you only get one of
those per day this lets me go you know
this is gonna scale so I can give it to
you low levels to I just need to make
sure you can only use it once per day
because it needs to behave like those
level 6 plus pills excuse me pardon me
all right let’s ping we got 5 minutes
but you know what it’s a weird holiday
weekend two days on one day off two days
on we’ll go a little late I don’t think
anyone something I’ll bust down the door
and yell at me if I’m going to late um
let’s see oh yeah this is so let’s see
so we’ve got that I’m just gonna just
put it on this action just be very
utilitarian here as I can remember it um
let’s see we’ve got our no man is
getting getting resistance weapon
attacks until the start of your next
turn after you teleport yeah let’s do
this let’s do another let’s do a reverse
reverse damage transference the 10th
level I’m gonna say when you take damage
reaction to have summon feature take all
or some and that’ll that’ll come out in
the wash so bonus extra bonus X Joe what
is it it’s tip bonus in its texture it’s
just double plus more good I don’t know
what it is could be a barrel of toxic
waste but there it is it’s more so I
kind of like the idea giving you a
little more durability you can do this
idea of these as your helpers this might
be one that gets swallowed up by spell
but I don’t think so I like this idea
that it’s there it’s constantly reaction
and especially if it’s a spell sloughing
if I use it to dump the damage back in
my aunt wheel guy then I have damaged
plane back to me again so it might have
to be but we’ll see I’m gonna put a
custom work there alright we have like
four minutes Pelham just step back in
you may have seen a walk behind me I
think about to get kicked off line so
let’s do a fourteenth double thing you
can Joe and this is oh let’s do
something here where well right now you
could summon two creatures because I’m
letting you concentrate twice oh how
would that work because we don’t let you
concentrate twice so it’s never in a
case we have to figure out what happens
my cast of concentration spell again so
you know what I think oh this is the
case oh this is easy well put it a
simple restriction but then we’ll lift
it double summons
so I think we’re gonna have to clear up
that and my impulsive to say you can’t
concentrate in the same spell twice
because I think that it’s going to lead
to shenanigans I can probably prove that
later if I have time but you can now
this and I’m gonna put a big note to
myself because that’s just one of the
things that I really thought about which
would be a big mess we didn’t consider
it that’s why we work this way to make
sure we consider these things can’t
concentrate on same spell points
question mark but I think that’d be a
very simple thing you’d feel very great
at that 14th you know you’ve got your
entire career now I can summon two guys
awesome so then I feel pretty good power
wise it is actually really good so I
think it probably has to sit at 14th I
think we want to say you can’t double
concentrate because flooding the board
with so many guys that’s really good too
huge creatures again if using nature’s
you’re locking down a ton of the board
space so and the rope I mean that for
the actual class feature which I don’t
know if I wrote let me take a quick look
at that did we put your sonic focus
today actually try to write that or did
I just put in the table okay so we are
saying sonic spells they’re not the same
one just throw it in there it’s probably
okay good so I don’t have to worry about
the other summoning spells coming in and
playing poorly with this I can wall
those off all right so we’re at two
o’clock this is a something that I
really doesn’t need some more deep
thinking now that rather than just die I
don’t want to end up on stream just
doing a lot of flailing around and I
felt like I was flailing around a little
more than I wanted want to when I’m
doing something live because there’s a
lot of like moving parts here so I think
it just needs some time to just kind of
kind of come bring everything together
really bake it for a while and then roll
it back out so let’s do neck next week
let’s do some monsters cause monsters I
think will be fun
and I think that it’ll be a bit more
coherent as we go across and I’ll give
me some time to really think about all
the implications because there’s
actually a lot of stuff that’s bubbling
up here this is a great example of a
design that seems reasonable and the
first play test may show that none of
works at all right because there’s a lot
of moving parts here so I think this
needs to go in the oven for a bit it’s
kind of like the Great British Bake Off
this is the part of the show where we
just show the bakers like nervously
waiting for like you know the 40 minutes
for their cake the so yeah maybe we’ll
wait like maybe give it a month or so
and I got a bunch of monsters I need to
design at mine interval campaign so
let’s let’s tackle those over a couple
weeks that can show you some nice range
of critters so fail are we’re getting
next you a next Monday I think we are
getting it next Monday because I know
we’re actually working on it now spoiler
that’s I was talking about a
player-character race so there might be
a player-character race and that you a
so don’t don’t don’t
be sure to race over to our website to
get you way the puns they’re painful
aren’t they they are or is it Tuesday a
camera what day you a is I just work on
it and it wanders off and then a bunch
of things to work on so anyways work two
o’clock thanks for tuning in ahh
next week we’ll do some monsters and I’m
gonna start working on this and let’s
see if we get a bit more of a stable
design here because we’re doing a lot
we’re juggling a lot of things at once
let’s let’s take a break and put get
everything lined up nice and neat and
then come back and look at this in
August
okay well take care everyone and I’ll
see you next week |
(CNN) — Bangkok is no stranger to the Michelin Guide halo -- in fact, visiting chefs touting their overseas star credentials are a regular sight in culinary establishments across the city.
Now it finally has a Michelin Guide of its own.
On December 6, 2017, the Bangkok culinary landscape became brighter overnight -- 20 stars brighter to be exact -- with Michelin accolades dished out to 17 establishments.
Among them is Jay Fai (named after the chef-owner of the street food shophouse restaurant who presides over her open kitchen wearing signature oversized goggles) who was awarded one Michelin star.
The highest accolade was two stars, which went to three establishments -- the progressive Indian restaurant Gaggan, whose inclusion in any best-of Bangkok dining list should come as no surprise to anyone, Le Normandie which opened at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Bangkok in 1958, and Mezzaluna at Lebua Hotel.
Already renowned as a street food destination, Bangkok -- the seventh Asian territory to be rated by Michelin -- has now risen up the culinary ranks to join the likes of Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong/Macau -- even if the Tourism Authority of Thailand did have to dangle a reported 144 million Thai baht ($4.4 million) partnership to get them there.
Related content 40 great dishes you can get in Shanghai
"Michelin Guide elevates everything"
Le Normandie was one of only three establishments to be awarded two stars at Michelin Guide Bangkok 2018. Le Normandie
The winners of Michelin Guide Bangkok 2018 were announced in a gala dinner at Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok.
Following in the footsteps of Singapore, who was the first country globally to do so, the awards ceremony was complemented with a gala dinner open to the public.
Those who weren't lucky enough to be invited to the Bangkok event had to shell out 20,000 Thai baht ($614) per ticket, which included a six-course gala dinner prepared in part by three chefs from overseas Michelin-starred restaurants.
Chef Chan Yan Tak from the three-starred Lung King Heen at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, Thierry Marx from the two-starred Sur Mesure at Mandarin Oriental Paris, and Henrik Yde Andersen of one-starred Kiin Kiin in Copenhagen, the latter who "conceptualized" Siam Kempinski's Sra Bua restaurant, all took part.
Other guest chefs included Thaninthorn Chantrawan of Chim by Siam Wisdom, Yannis J. Janssens of L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon Bangkok , Chayawee Sutcharitchan of Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin and Bee Satongun of Paste, each of which went on to receive one Michelin star.
The arrival of the Red Guide is considered a positive for the city by restaurateurs and chefs.
"The Michelin Guide elevates everything in one day," said Gaggan's chef Gaggan Anand, who earlier this year announced plans to close his restaurant in 2020 to focus on new projects.
"It changes Bangkok from the street food capital to the gourmet capital of the world."
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Melting pot of flavors
Chef David Thompson's Nahm at Como Metropolitan Bangkok received one star. Nahm
A variety of cuisines were represented on the night, including Thai, French, Indian, European, Japanese, German and American.
"Locals are having street food for lunch and fine dining for dinner, and depending on the mood you have a wide choice of cuisines," said chef Thomas Sühring, one half of the duo behind contemporary German restaurant Sühring. "It is with this culinary scene that Bangkok is becoming one that can compete with other great cities in Asia."
Over 15 years ago, Nahm at the Halkin Hotel in London put Thai food on the Michelin map when it was awarded one star not long after it opened in 2001.
The original Nahm has since closed, but proving the star-worthiness of its food, chef David Thompson's second -- and now only -- Nahm at Como Metropolitan Bangkok, was also awarded one Michelin star.
Thai restaurants with Michelin stars are still a bit of a rare breed -- Kin Khao in San Francisco comes to mind, as does Kiin Kiin in Copenhagen.
Considering the country's tourism board partnership with the Michelin Guide, it's perhaps not surprising that Thai food was well represented, with seven of the total 17 Michelin-starred restaurants serving Thai cuisine.
"I'm very pleased that Thai cuisine is represented in the guide, because if you talk about flavors, Thai food has flavors," says chef Norbert Kostner, the former executive chef and later culinary director at Mandarin Oriental Bangkok where for nearly 40 years he helped shaped the fine dining scene of the Thai capital.
Perfectly timed with the arrival of the Michelin Guide, local food has been a core tourism product identified by the Thai tourist board for 2018.
"The Michelin Guide will be a boon for the Michelin star and Gourmand Bib winners, especially for Thai restaurants, as it will provide foreign visitors to Thailand with a trusted resource of recommendations," said Thanaruek "Eh" Laoraowirodge, owner of Supanniga Eating Room, whose three branches in Bangkok plus a dinner cruise serves some of his grandmother's traditional Thai recipes (amongst other things he also co-owner of Somtum Der , whose New York outpost was awarded one Michelin star in 2016.)
Stars on the streets
Bangkok street food vendor Jay Fai was awarded one Michelin star. Jay Fai
If the Michelin stars are categorized as "very good in its category" (one star), "excellence worthy of a detour" (two stars), and "exceptionally worth a long journey" (three stars), then surely there are plenty of street vendors across the city worthy of a two star -- just ask any of the hungry locals who drive across town for their favorite food cart or hole-in-the-wall joint.
A total of 28 street food stalls were included in the Michelin Guide 2018, but only one made it to the Michelin star list -- the one-starred Jay Fai.
The remaining were listed in the Bib Gourmand list, which included a total of 35 restaurants noted for their good value for money with a quality menu not exceeding 1,000 Thai baht ($31). This included Guay Tiew Kua Gai Suanmali, Baannai and Soul Food Mahanakorn
Taste of success
For the winners, the Michelin stars may be the start of a bittersweet journey.
Earlier in the year, chef André Chiang made headlines when he said he wanted to "give back" Restaurant André 's two Michelin stars in Singapore, following a trickle of chefs over the years who have asked to be dropped out of the guide for reasons ranging from the cost, both creative and financial, to maintain the prestige.
Other winners take the accolade with a pinch of salt.
"I am judged for everything I do. But my food is the same on December 5, December 6, or December 7," says Anand, whose restaurant has already topped rival guide Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list three years in a row from 2015-2017.
Any awards, culinary or not, are not without its naysayers, but in the end the diner always wins.
"There's a lot of competition in Bangkok already, but the Michelin Guide will bring it up a bit more, which is good," says Kostner.
The long term Thai resident adds that, when compared to other awards including Asia's 50 Best Restaurants and BK Top Tables , Michelin Guide has the most prestige, but he suspects that coming up with this year's selection would have been a difficult task for the inspectors.
So will Thailand follow in the footsteps of Japan and China, countries with Michelin Guides covering two different territories?
The tourism board has been dropping hints that "other major destinations" may be covered by the guide in following years, but some have their doubts whether other Thai cities are ready for the Red Guide.
"At the moment we believe that the dining scenes in other cities are not strong and developed enough, such as Chiang Mai and Phuket which are considered too much as tourist destinations," says Mathias Sühring.
"However it's just a question of time -- Bangkok has changed so much in only 10 years that anything is possible for the other big cities in Thailand."
Two stars
Gaggan (progressive Indian)
Le Normandie (French)
Mezzaluna (European)
One star
Chim by Siam Wisdom (Thai)
Bo.lan (Thai)
Saneh Jaan (Thai)
Sra Bua by KiinKiin (Thai)
Jay Fai (Thai)
Ginza Sushi ichi (Japanese sushi)
Sühring (contemporary German)
L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon (contemporary French)
J'AIME by Jean Michel Lorrain (contemporary French)
Elements (contemporary French)
Savelberg (contemporary French)
Paste (Thai)
Nahm (Thai) |
Runaway real estate speculation has been filling global capitals with vacant homes, creating artificial shortages in the world’s most sought after cities. The “shortage” has made local home owners wealthy overnight, but it comes at the cost of turning lively cities into empty shells. The city of Paris has decided it’s had enough, and implemented a tax in 2015. They didn’t quite get the results they wanted, so they’re now tripling the tax to 60%.
Paris’ Empty Home Problem
Paris has been trying to deal with vacant property owners for some time. Despite warnings that the city will have to take action, the number of vacant homes is growing. There’s now 107,000 vacant homes, representing 7.5% of all residential dwellings in the city according to France’s INSEE. Deputy Mayor Ian Brossat told Le Monde that 40,000 of those vacant homes aren’t even connected to the electrical grid.
Local developers have argued that more new construction is the solution. However Brossat argues “In a city as dense as Paris, where it is very difficult to build, controlling the occupancy of housing is strategic.” It appears the city believes they have 107,000 reasons more construction is not the solution.
Vacant Home Count
Total number of vacant homes, as reported by local governments.
Paris’ Vacant Tax Increase
Paris implemented a tax recently, but it didn’t quite produce the desired outcome. Starting in 2015 the city elected to tax vacant homes the equivalent of 20% of the fair market value of rent. On January 30 this year, they decided to triple that amount to 60%. The idea isn’t to punish those fortunate enough to own a second (or twelfth) home. They’re trying to discourage speculation and promote a healthy rental market.
Vacancy As A Percentage
Percent of homes vacant as a percentage of total homes as counted by local governments.
Empty Homes Across The World
Paris’ 107,000 empty homes might seem like a lot, but it’s becoming strangely normal around the world. New York City had a whopping 318,831 vacant units in 2015. It’s a hot topic in Sydney, where 118,499 vacant units were counted in 2013. Heck, London considers it a critical issue, and they “only” have 22,000 empty homes. There’s a massive numbers of vacant homes across the globe, but only Paris has decided to take aggressive action to tackle it.
Growing populations have barely put a dent in the vacant homes in global real estate capitals. The amount of speculation has been scaling with demand, which is a curious paradox. This signifies an issue that’s more complex than just a basic supply and demand problem.
Is the Paris’ tax going too far, or not enough? Tweet us your thoughts. Over the next few weeks we’ll be exploring the issue of vacancies around the world. Want to keep up to date? Like us on Facebook for the next post right in your feed. |
New Handheld Game Console Capable Of Running All PC Games
Author: Jeff Taylor
With the rise of tablets, mobile phones, and notebooks, the desktop market is being kept alive in large part due to PC gaming enthusiasts (and grandparents). PC gaming allows you to experience the fastest frame rates, the best graphics, and the largest and least expensive library of games – the downside is that it’s not exactly portable. Good luck enjoying the latest PC games while you’re stuck in layover at the airport or waiting for a bus, and have fun hauling your entire rig back and forth to a buddy’s house every weekend.
There’s got to be a better way…
PC gaming is amazing, but we’ve always had to make sacrifices when it comes to the convenience of portability. Dumb little mobile games are popular as hell because you’ve always got your phone on you. But now there’s a portable device that’s small enough to fit in your pocket, but that packs a real punch graphically.
The PGS is a new handheld that’s capable of playing PC games at 1440p. It comes loaded with Windows 10, supports Steam games, has 8 gigs of ram, and a 128 gb hard drive. The battery can last for up to 5 hours with very demanding games, and even longer for less graphically-demanding games. There are two versions available, Hardcore and Lite. The lite version has half the ram, half the storage, and runs at 720p. Still, on a 5.5 inch screen, that’s really not the end of the world.
Along with Windows 10, this device promises to allow players to dualboot into Android 6 as well, on the 2nd screen.
Depending on which model you want, it will cost around $220-$260, which actually seems unbelievable – so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt while remaining cautiously optimistic. Here’s a video from a Kickstarter that they apparently decided not to launch after all:
Disclaimer: This is a prototype video, and when somebody in the comments called them out on simply disassembling a Linx 7″ Tablet PC, the creators of the PGS said this video isn’t complete yet and responded as follows:
We did not plan to show an early prototype of the public. Before starting the assembly of more complex solutions, we had to ensure the consistency of decisions. It is normal practice for small companies.
So far the general reaction to this device has been skepticism, for numerous reasons. A lot of doubts come to mind, like how hot would this little thing get? There can’t be a lot of room in there for fans or ventilation, plus it’s pushing out some real power, with a big battery to boot. How are they including a full version of Windows, all of this hardware, two HD screens, and selling it for a couple hundred bucks?
The PGS is set to be available near the end of this year. You can visit their website here. Let us know your initial reactions, impressions, and thoughts about this device. Are you getting your hopes up, or do you plan on waiting until you can actually hold it before getting too excited? Just because it sounds too good to be true, doesn’t mean it isn’t… That’s how the saying goes, right?
*Update*
We reached out to the PGS Team for a follow up, and this is their response: |
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