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My Mac Terminal Setup
Sir Muel Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 27, 2017
Okay so quite a number of times, I’ve had several people coming up to me, asking about what I did to my terminal that makes it look and work the way it does. On each of those occasions, I’ve had to mention all the things I used for customizing the terminal over and over and over again. So my solution is to describe my terminal setup in this post. I’ll probably also be updating it with the answers to frequently asked questions that I receive as well. So here goes, below is the list of the tools and plugins I use in my terminal.
A customized terminal
First of all, I use the iTerm terminal instead of the built-in terminal that comes with the Mac. iTerm comes with a number of simple, useful features that just work and that are not available in the default terminal app. The features I use the most are:
the ability to split a window as many times as possible and with easy shortcuts to split vertically or horizontally. This is pretty useful when I need to use different terminal instances while working on a project. It makes more sense to have all the instances in one view rather than having to tab through all of them.
the ability to select to copy. As simple as this is, it’s just one of those things that you are glad you have, and it makes you more productive since you have to use lesser commands. Simply Awesome.
the ability to have a hotkey window. This is basically assigning a terminal window to a hotkey combination. You could be using your code editor and use the hotkey to open the terminal which opens as an overlay on the current screen, so you could quickly use it, press the hotkey combo, and it hides again.
the many more features that it has. If you still need convincing, you can find a list of the features here.
This is an awesome ZSH configuration framework. By simply installing it, your terminal instantly gets these new sets of super powers. It’s just awesome. It works on the ZSH shell though, so you would have to move from bash shell or whatever shell you currently use. Personally, I haven’t ran into any issues with using the ZSH shell as opposed to the bash shell that is enabled by default in the terminal. Generally you should have ZSH shell installed, but if you don’t, you can follow the instructions here to install it. To get a brief idea on just what kind of new powers you get with oh my zsh, you can check out their cheatsheet, however that doesn’t list everything. For the full list, you should look at the plugin list. Basically you get a lot of very useful aliases and autocompletions to virtually every important CLI tooling system there is. You would need to enable the plugins in the ~/.zshrc file however to have the plugin specific features. After installing this, the next thing to do is to select a theme to use.
Usually the first thing anyone would notice about a terminal is it’s theme, the way it looks. There are quite a number of themes that could be used but agnoster just works for me. I think it might even be the most popular of all the themes available. Basically all the information you need about your current directory location, git branch, git status, are displayed in a pretty, unobtrusive and simple manner. Especially as a git user, this theme is very useful. No need to run git status to know the state of your branch.
Installing the theme requires a little extra steps to be taken however (as opposed to other themes) to get the font used to render the various icons used within the theme. This process is detailed on the theme’s homepage. After the font for the theme has been downloaded, the theme can be used by modifying the ZSH_THEME="agnoster" line in the ~/.zshrc file, setting the value to “agnoster”. You should then open a new terminal tab to see the selected theme. You would most likely see the prompt with funny looking characters, because the font hasn’t been set yet. You should then open the “Preferences” window and go to “Profile > Text” then click the “Change font” button. If you have downloaded any of the patched fonts, you should see them in the list of the fonts. Selecting any of them should fix the weird characters in the terminal prompt, and the theme should be properly installed now.
At this point, the terminal would probably have a very terrible look in terms of the colors used. For some reason, none of the default color schemes that come with the terminal appeals to me so I found the dracula color scheme which gives the terminal a nice calm look and feel. Installing the color scheme is a pretty straightforward process. You just need to go to their site, check for the iTerm terminal in the list of terminals, and follow the instructions there.
How many times have you written commands at the terminal and there was some syntax error, and you had to go through the command again in bits to try to find where you made the mistake in the command? These kinds of issues are bound to happen once in a while, and unexpectedly too. It gets a whole lot more problematic when you write long complex commands at the terminal. The ZSH syntax highlighting tool helps to solve this by properly highlighting the various parts of your commands, much like your code editor would. Not only that, it also highlights valid commands and invalid ones so you know if a command is available in the terminal or not even before you run it. This improves productivity while working with the terminal. Installing it involves following the instructions here.
This is an awesome little script. It is a definite productivity booster while working in the terminal. It enables you move between directories really quickly, even more quickly than the commands that come with oh-my-zsh would enable you to. What it does is that, after installing it, it tracks your directory usage and learns which directories you use frequently. After a while of using the terminal as you would, the script would have learnt enough to be used for navigation. Using it is also very simple. You just need to pass z a part of the directory name you’re going to and it handles the rest. Next thing you know, you’re in the right directory! So for example, if I regularly use ~/projects/myapp , I could always go to that directory from anywhere by simply entering z my for instance, and it would take me there. Note that this is based on all the directories you use regularly. If there happens to be another directory which you use more frequently that also has my in it’s name/path, that is where z would take you. To install it, you just need to download the z.sh file from the repo into a directory on your system, like the home directory ~ and add the command: . ~/z.sh to source it in your ~/.zshrc file, and that’s it! Open a new tab or source your ~/.zshrc file and the script should be enabled.
And that’s it! All the things I use in my terminal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do I do if I have some stuffs, like aliases, in my .bash_profile file which I regularly use?
You can always source your .bash_profile file into the .zshrc file, and all your scripts and aliases would be available in zsh as well. Simply adding source ~/.bash_profile into your ~/.zshrc file should fix this.
I have oh-my-zsh installed already, but I re-enabled the bash shell sometime ago. How do I enable the zsh shell?
Simply run chsh -s $(which zsh) which would prompt you for your password and set your default shell to zsh.
Hope this was useful for you guys. Let me know if you have any relevant questions to this. Cheers! |
Shape and flow Form
Drag Skin
friction 0% 100% ~10% ~90% ~90% ~10% 100% 0%
In fluid dynamics, drag (sometimes called air resistance, a type of friction, or fluid resistance, another type of friction or fluid friction) is a force acting opposite to the relative motion of any object moving with respect to a surrounding fluid.[1] This can exist between two fluid layers (or surfaces) or a fluid and a solid surface. Unlike other resistive forces, such as dry friction, which are nearly independent of velocity, drag forces depend on velocity.[2][3] Drag force is proportional to the velocity for a laminar flow and the squared velocity for a turbulent flow. Even though the ultimate cause of a drag is viscous friction, the turbulent drag is independent of viscosity.[4]
Drag forces always decrease fluid velocity relative to the solid object in the fluid's path.
Examples of drag [ edit ]
Examples of drag include the component of the net aerodynamic or hydrodynamic force acting opposite to the direction of movement of a solid object such as cars, aircraft[3] and boat hulls; or acting in the same geographical direction of motion as the solid, as for sails attached to a down wind sail boat, or in intermediate directions on a sail depending on points of sail.[5][6][7] In the case of viscous drag of fluid in a pipe, drag force on the immobile pipe decreases fluid velocity relative to the pipe.[8][9]
In the physics of sports, the drag force is necessary to explain the performance of runners, particularly of sprinters.[10]
Types of drag [ edit ]
Types of drag are generally divided into the following categories:
The phrase parasitic drag is mainly used in aerodynamics, since for lifting wings drag it is in general small compared to lift. For flow around bluff bodies, form and interference drags often dominate, and then the qualifier "parasitic" is meaningless.[citation needed]
Further, lift-induced drag is only relevant when wings or a lifting body are present, and is therefore usually discussed either in aviation or in the design of semi-planing or planing hulls. Wave drag occurs either when a solid object is moving through a fluid at or near the speed of sound or when a solid object is moving along a fluid boundary, as in surface waves.
C d for a sphere as a function of Re, as obtained from laboratory experiments. The dark line is for a sphere with a smooth surface, while the lighter line is for the case of a rough surface. Drag coefficientfor a sphere as a function of Reynolds number , as obtained from laboratory experiments. The dark line is for a sphere with a smooth surface, while the lighter line is for the case of a rough surface.
Drag depends on the properties of the fluid and on the size, shape, and speed of the object. One way to express this is by means of the drag equation:
F D = 1 2 ρ v 2 C D A {\displaystyle F_{D}\,=\,{\tfrac {1}{2}}\,\rho \,v^{2}\,C_{D}\,A}
where
F D {\displaystyle F_{D}} is the drag force, ρ {\displaystyle \rho } density of the fluid,[11] v {\displaystyle v} is the speed of the object relative to the fluid, A {\displaystyle A} is the cross sectional area, and C D {\displaystyle C_{D}} is the drag coefficient – a dimensionless number.
The drag coefficient depends on the shape of the object and on the Reynolds number
R e = v D ν {\displaystyle R_{e}={\frac {vD}{
u }}}
where D {\displaystyle D} is some characteristic diameter or linear dimension and ν {\displaystyle {
u }} is the kinematic viscosity of the fluid (equal to the viscosity μ {\displaystyle {\mu }} divided by the density). At low R e {\displaystyle R_{e}} , C D {\displaystyle C_{D}} is asymptotically proportional to R e − 1 {\displaystyle R_{e}^{-1}} , which means that the drag is linearly proportional to the speed. At high R e {\displaystyle R_{e}} , C D {\displaystyle C_{D}} is more or less constant and drag will vary as the square of the speed. The graph to the right shows how C D {\displaystyle C_{D}} varies with R e {\displaystyle R_{e}} for the case of a sphere. Since the power needed to overcome the drag force is the product of the force times speed, the power needed to overcome drag will vary as the square of the speed at low Reynolds numbers and as the cube of the speed at high numbers.
It can be demonstrated that Drag force can be expressed as a function of a dimensionless number, which is dimensionally identical to the Bejan number.[12] Consequently, Drag force and Drag coefficient van be a function of Bejan number. In fact, from the expression of drag force it has been obtained:
D = Δ p A w = 1 2 C D A f ν μ l 2 R e L 2 {\displaystyle D=\Delta _{p}A_{w}={\frac {1}{2}}C_{D}A_{f}{\frac {
u \mu }{l^{2}}}Re_{L}^{2}}
and consequently allows expressing the drag coefficient C D {\displaystyle C_{D}} as a function of Bejan number and the ratio between wet area A w {\displaystyle A_{w}} and front area A f {\displaystyle A_{f}} :
C D = A w A f B e R e L 2 {\displaystyle C_{D}={\frac {A_{w}}{A_{f}}}{\frac {Be}{Re_{L}^{2}}}}
where R e L {\displaystyle Re_{L}} is the Reynold Number related to fluid path length L.
Drag at high velocity [ edit ]
Explanation of drag by NASA
As mentioned, the drag equation with a constant drag coefficient gives the force experienced by an object moving through a fluid at relatively large velocity (i.e. high Reynolds number, Re > ~1000). This is also called quadratic drag. The equation is attributed to Lord Rayleigh, who originally used L2 in place of A (L being some length).
F D = 1 2 ρ v 2 C d A , {\displaystyle F_{D}\,=\,{\tfrac {1}{2}}\,\rho \,v^{2}\,C_{d}\,A,}
see derivation
The reference area A is often orthographic projection of the object (frontal area)—on a plane perpendicular to the direction of motion—e.g. for objects with a simple shape, such as a sphere, this is the cross sectional area. Sometimes a body is a composite of different parts, each with a different reference areas, in which case a drag coefficient corresponding to each of those different areas must be determined.
In the case of a wing the reference areas are the same and the drag force is in the same ratio to the lift force as the ratio of drag coefficient to lift coefficient.[13] Therefore, the reference for a wing is often the lifting area ("wing area") rather than the frontal area.[14]
For an object with a smooth surface, and non-fixed separation points—like a sphere or circular cylinder—the drag coefficient may vary with Reynolds number R e , even up to very high values (R e of the order 107). [15] [16] For an object with well-defined fixed separation points, like a circular disk with its plane normal to the flow direction, the drag coefficient is constant for R e > 3,500.[16] Further the drag coefficient C d is, in general, a function of the orientation of the flow with respect to the object (apart from symmetrical objects like a sphere).
Power [ edit ]
Under the assumption that the fluid is not moving relative to the currently used reference system, the power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by:
P d = F d ⋅ v = 1 2 ρ v 3 A C d {\displaystyle P_{d}=\mathbf {F} _{d}\cdot \mathbf {v} ={\tfrac {1}{2}}\rho v^{3}AC_{d}}
Note that the power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of the velocity. A car cruising on a highway at 50 mph (80 km/h) may require only 10 horsepower (7.5 kW) to overcome aerodynamic drag, but that same car at 100 mph (160 km/h) requires 80 hp (60 kW).[17] With a doubling of speed the drag (force) quadruples per the formula. Exerting 4 times the force over a fixed distance produces 4 times as much work. At twice the speed the work (resulting in displacement over a fixed distance) is done twice as fast. Since power is the rate of doing work, 4 times the work done in half the time requires 8 times the power.
When the fluid is moving relative to the reference system (e.g. a car driving into headwind) the power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by:
P d = F d ⋅ v o = 1 2 C d A ρ ( v w + v o ) 2 v o {\displaystyle P_{d}=\mathbf {F} _{d}\cdot \mathbf {v_{o}} ={\tfrac {1}{2}}C_{d}A\rho (v_{w}+v_{o})^{2}v_{o}}
Where v w {\displaystyle v_{w}} is the wind speed and v o {\displaystyle v_{o}} it the object speed (both relative to ground).
Velocity of a falling object [ edit ]
An object falling through viscous medium accelerates quickly towards its terminal speed, approaching gradually as the speed gets nearer to the terminal speed. Whether the object experiences turbulent or laminar drag changes the characteristic shape of the graph with turbulent flow resulting in a constant acceleration for a larger fraction of its accelerating time.
The velocity as a function of time for an object falling through a non-dense medium, and released at zero relative-velocity v = 0 at time t = 0, is roughly given by a function involving a hyperbolic tangent (tanh):
v ( t ) = 2 m g ρ A C d tanh ( t g ρ C d A 2 m ) . {\displaystyle v(t)={\sqrt {\frac {2mg}{\rho AC_{d}}}}\tanh \left(t{\sqrt {\frac {g\rho C_{d}A}{2m}}}\right).\,}
The hyperbolic tangent has a limit value of one, for large time t. In other words, velocity asymptotically approaches a maximum value called the terminal velocity v t :
v t = 2 m g ρ A C d . {\displaystyle v_{t}={\sqrt {\frac {2mg}{\rho AC_{d}}}}.\,}
For an object falling and released at relative-velocity v = v i at time t = 0, with v i ≤ v t , is also defined in terms of the hyperbolic tangent function:
v ( t ) = v t tanh ( t g v t + arctanh ( v i v t ) ) . {\displaystyle v(t)=v_{t}\tanh \left(t{\frac {g}{v_{t}}}+\operatorname {arctanh} \left({\frac {v_{i}}{v_{t}}}\right)\right).\,}
Actually, this function is defined by the solution of the following differential equation:
g − ρ A C d 2 m v 2 = d v d t . {\displaystyle g-{\frac {\rho AC_{d}}{2m}}v^{2}={\frac {dv}{dt}}.\,}
Or, more generically (where F(v) are the forces acting on the object beyond drag):
1 m ∑ F ( v ) − ρ A C d 2 m v 2 = d v d t . {\displaystyle {\frac {1}{m}}\sum F(v)-{\frac {\rho AC_{d}}{2m}}v^{2}={\frac {dv}{dt}}.\,}
For a potato-shaped object of average diameter d and of density ρ obj , terminal velocity is about
v t = g d ρ o b j ρ . {\displaystyle v_{t}={\sqrt {gd{\frac {\rho _{obj}}{\rho }}}}.\,}
For objects of water-like density (raindrops, hail, live objects—mammals, birds, insects, etc.) falling in air near Earth's surface at sea level, the terminal velocity is roughly equal to
v t = 90 d , {\displaystyle v_{t}=90{\sqrt {d}},\,}
with d in metre and v t in m/s. For example, for a human body ( d {\displaystyle \mathbf {} d} ~ 0.6 m) v t {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v_{t}} ~ 70 m/s, for a small animal like a cat ( d {\displaystyle \mathbf {} d} ~ 0.2 m) v t {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v_{t}} ~ 40 m/s, for a small bird ( d {\displaystyle \mathbf {} d} ~ 0.05 m) v t {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v_{t}} ~ 20 m/s, for an insect ( d {\displaystyle \mathbf {} d} ~ 0.01 m) v t {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v_{t}} ~ 9 m/s, and so on. Terminal velocity for very small objects (pollen, etc.) at low Reynolds numbers is determined by Stokes law.
Terminal velocity is higher for larger creatures, and thus potentially more deadly. A creature such as a mouse falling at its terminal velocity is much more likely to survive impact with the ground than a human falling at its terminal velocity. A small animal such as a cricket impacting at its terminal velocity will probably be unharmed. This, combined with the relative ratio of limb cross-sectional area vs. body mass (commonly referred to as the Square-cube law), explains why very small animals can fall from a large height and not be harmed.[18]
Very low Reynolds numbers: Stokes' drag [ edit ]
Trajectories of three objects thrown at the same angle (70°). The black object does not experience any form of drag and moves along a parabola. The blue object experiences Stokes' drag , and the green object Newton drag
The equation for viscous resistance or linear drag is appropriate for objects or particles moving through a fluid at relatively slow speeds where there is no turbulence (i.e. low Reynolds number, R e < 1 {\displaystyle R_{e}<1} ).[19] Note that purely laminar flow only exists up to Re = 0.1 under this definition. In this case, the force of drag is approximately proportional to velocity. The equation for viscous resistance is:[20]
F d = − b v {\displaystyle \mathbf {F} _{d}=-b\mathbf {v} \,}
where:
b {\displaystyle \mathbf {} b} v {\displaystyle \mathbf {v} }
When an object falls from rest, its velocity will be
v ( t ) = ( ρ − ρ 0 ) V g b ( 1 − e − b t / m ) {\displaystyle v(t)={\frac {(\rho -\rho _{0})Vg}{b}}\left(1-e^{-bt/m}\right)}
which asymptotically approaches the terminal velocity v t = ( ρ − ρ 0 ) V g b {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v_{t}={\frac {(\rho -\rho _{0})Vg}{b}}} . For a given b {\displaystyle \mathbf {} b} , heavier objects fall more quickly.
For the special case of small spherical objects moving slowly through a viscous fluid (and thus at small Reynolds number), George Gabriel Stokes derived an expression for the drag constant:
b = 6 π η r {\displaystyle b=6\pi \eta r\,}
where:
r {\displaystyle \mathbf {} r} Stokes radius of the particle, and η {\displaystyle \mathbf {} \eta }
The resulting expression for the drag is known as Stokes' drag:[21]
F d = − 6 π η r v . {\displaystyle \mathbf {F} _{d}=-6\pi \eta r\,\mathbf {v} .}
For example, consider a small sphere with radius r {\displaystyle \mathbf {} r} = 0.5 micrometre (diameter = 1.0 µm) moving through water at a velocity v {\displaystyle \mathbf {} v} of 10 µm/s. Using 10−3 Pa·s as the dynamic viscosity of water in SI units, we find a drag force of 0.09 pN. This is about the drag force that a bacterium experiences as it swims through water.
Aerodynamics [ edit ]
In aerodynamics, aerodynamic drag is the fluid drag force that acts on any moving solid body in the direction of the fluid freestream flow.[22] From the body's perspective (near-field approach), the drag results from forces due to pressure distributions over the body surface, symbolized D p r {\displaystyle D_{pr}} , and forces due to skin friction, which is a result of viscosity, denoted D f {\displaystyle D_{f}} . Alternatively, calculated from the flowfield perspective (far-field approach), the drag force results from three natural phenomena: shock waves, vortex sheet, and viscosity.
Overview [ edit ]
The pressure distribution acting on a body's surface exerts normal forces on the body. Those forces can be summed and the component of that force that acts downstream represents the drag force, D p r {\displaystyle D_{pr}} , due to pressure distribution acting on the body. The nature of these normal forces combines shock wave effects, vortex system generation effects, and wake viscous mechanisms.
The viscosity of the fluid has a major effect on drag. In the absence of viscosity, the pressure forces acting to retard the vehicle are canceled by a pressure force further aft that acts to push the vehicle forward; this is called pressure recovery and the result is that the drag is zero. That is to say, the work the body does on the airflow, is reversible and is recovered as there are no frictional effects to convert the flow energy into heat. Pressure recovery acts even in the case of viscous flow. Viscosity, however results in pressure drag and it is the dominant component of drag in the case of vehicles with regions of separated flow, in which the pressure recovery is fairly ineffective.
The friction drag force, which is a tangential force on the aircraft surface, depends substantially on boundary layer configuration and viscosity. The net friction drag, D f {\displaystyle D_{f}} , is calculated as the downstream projection of the viscous forces evaluated over the body's surface.
The sum of friction drag and pressure (form) drag is called viscous drag. This drag component is due to viscosity. In a thermodynamic perspective, viscous effects represent irreversible phenomena and, therefore, they create entropy. The calculated viscous drag D v {\displaystyle D_{v}} use entropy changes to accurately predict the drag force.
When the airplane produces lift, another drag component results. Induced drag, symbolized D i {\displaystyle D_{i}} , is due to a modification of the pressure distribution due to the trailing vortex system that accompanies the lift production. An alternative perspective on lift and drag is gained from considering the change of momentum of the airflow. The wing intercepts the airflow and forces the flow to move downward. This results in an equal and opposite force acting upward on the wing which is the lift force. The change of momentum of the airflow downward results in a reduction of the rearward momentum of the flow which is the result of a force acting forward on the airflow and applied by the wing to the air flow; an equal but opposite force acts on the wing rearward which is the induced drag. Induced drag tends to be the most important component for airplanes during take-off or landing flight. Another drag component, namely wave drag, D w {\displaystyle D_{w}} , results from shock waves in transonic and supersonic flight speeds. The shock waves induce changes in the boundary layer and pressure distribution over the body surface.
History [ edit ]
The idea that a moving body passing through air or another fluid encounters resistance had been known since the time of Aristotle. Louis Charles Breguet's paper of 1922 began efforts to reduce drag by streamlining.[23] Breguet went on to put his ideas into practice by designing several record-breaking aircraft in the 1920s and 1930s. Ludwig Prandtl's boundary layer theory in the 1920s provided the impetus to minimise skin friction. A further major call for streamlining was made by Sir Melvill Jones who provided the theoretical concepts to demonstrate emphatically the importance of streamlining in aircraft design.[24][25][26] In 1929 his paper ‘The Streamline Airplane’ presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society was seminal. He proposed an ideal aircraft that would have minimal drag which led to the concepts of a 'clean' monoplane and retractable undercarriage. The aspect of Jones's paper that most shocked the designers of the time was his plot of the horse power required versus velocity, for an actual and an ideal plane. By looking at a data point for a given aircraft and extrapolating it horizontally to the ideal curve, the velocity gain for the same power can be seen. When Jones finished his presentation, a member of the audience described the results as being of the same level of importance as the Carnot cycle in thermodynamics.[23][24]
Lift-induced drag [ edit ]
Lift-induced drag (also called induced drag) is drag which occurs as the result of the creation of lift on a three-dimensional lifting body, such as the wing or fuselage of an airplane. Induced drag consists primarily of two components: drag due to the creation of trailing vortices (vortex drag); and the presence of additional viscous drag (lift-induced viscous drag) that is not present when lift is zero. The trailing vortices in the flow-field, present in the wake of a lifting body, derive from the turbulent mixing of air from above and below the body which flows in slightly different directions as a consequence of creation of lift.
With other parameters remaining the same, as the lift generated by a body increases, so does the lift-induced drag. This means that as the wing's angle of attack increases (up to a maximum called the stalling angle), the lift coefficient also increases, and so too does the lift-induced drag. At the onset of stall, lift is abruptly decreased, as is lift-induced drag, but viscous pressure drag, a component of parasite drag, increases due to the formation of turbulent unattached flow in the wake behind the body.
Parasitic drag [ edit ]
Parasitic drag is drag caused by moving a solid object through a fluid. Parasitic drag is made up of multiple components including viscous pressure drag (form drag), and drag due to surface roughness (skin friction drag). Additionally, the presence of multiple bodies in relative proximity may incur so called interference drag, which is sometimes described as a component of parasitic drag.
In aviation, induced drag tends to be greater at lower speeds because a high angle of attack is required to maintain lift, creating more drag. However, as speed increases the angle of attack can be reduced and the induced drag decreases. Parasitic drag, however, increases because the fluid is flowing more quickly around protruding objects increasing friction or drag. At even higher speeds (transonic), wave drag enters the picture. Each of these forms of drag changes in proportion to the others based on speed. The combined overall drag curve therefore shows a minimum at some airspeed - an aircraft flying at this speed will be at or close to its optimal efficiency. Pilots will use this speed to maximize endurance (minimum fuel consumption), or maximize gliding range in the event of an engine failure.
Power curve in aviation [ edit ]
power curve: form and induced drag vs. airspeed The: form and induced dragairspeed
The interaction of parasitic and induced drag vs. airspeed can be plotted as a characteristic curve, illustrated here. In aviation, this is often referred to as the power curve, and is important to pilots because it shows that, below a certain airspeed, maintaining airspeed counterintuitively requires more thrust as speed decreases, rather than less. The consequences of being "behind the curve" in flight are important and are taught as part of pilot training. At the subsonic airspeeds where the "U" shape of this curve is significant, wave drag has not yet become a factor, and so it is not shown in the curve.
Wave drag in transonic and supersonic flow [ edit ]
Qualitative variation in Cd factor with Mach number for aircraft
Wave drag (also called compressibility drag) is drag that is created when a body moves in a compressible fluid and at speeds that are close to the speed of sound in that fluid. In aerodynamics, wave drag consists of multiple components depending on the speed regime of the flight.
In transonic flight (Mach numbers greater than about 0.8 and less than about 1.4), wave drag is the result of the formation of shockwaves in the fluid, formed when local areas of supersonic (Mach number greater than 1.0) flow are created. In practice, supersonic flow occurs on bodies traveling well below the speed of sound, as the local speed of air increases as it accelerates over the body to speeds above Mach 1.0. However, full supersonic flow over the vehicle will not develop until well past Mach 1.0. Aircraft flying at transonic speed often incur wave drag through the normal course of operation. In transonic flight, wave drag is commonly referred to as transonic compressibility drag. Transonic compressibility drag increases significantly as the speed of flight increases towards Mach 1.0, dominating other forms of drag at those speeds.
In supersonic flight (Mach numbers greater than 1.0), wave drag is the result of shockwaves present in the fluid and attached to the body, typically oblique shockwaves formed at the leading and trailing edges of the body. In highly supersonic flows, or in bodies with turning angles sufficiently large, unattached shockwaves, or bow waves will instead form. Additionally, local areas of transonic flow behind the initial shockwave may occur at lower supersonic speeds, and can lead to the development of additional, smaller shockwaves present on the surfaces of other lifting bodies, similar to those found in transonic flows. In supersonic flow regimes, wave drag is commonly separated into two components, supersonic lift-dependent wave drag and supersonic volume-dependent wave drag.
The closed form solution for the minimum wave drag of a body of revolution with a fixed length was found by Sears and Haack, and is known as the Sears-Haack Distribution. Similarly, for a fixed volume, the shape for minimum wave drag is the Von Karman Ogive.
Busemann's Biplane is not, in principle, subject to wave drag at all when operated at its design speed, but is incapable of generating lift.
d'Alembert's paradox [ edit ]
In 1752 d'Alembert proved that potential flow, the 18th century state-of-the-art inviscid flow theory amenable to mathematical solutions, resulted in the prediction of zero drag. This was in contradiction with experimental evidence, and became known as d'Alembert's paradox. In the 19th century the Navier–Stokes equations for the description of viscous flow were developed by Saint-Venant, Navier and Stokes. Stokes derived the drag around a sphere at very low Reynolds numbers, the result of which is called Stokes' law.[29]
In the limit of high Reynolds numbers, the Navier–Stokes equations approach the inviscid Euler equations, of which the potential-flow solutions considered by d'Alembert are solutions. However, all experiments at high Reynolds numbers showed there is drag. Attempts to construct inviscid steady flow solutions to the Euler equations, other than the potential flow solutions, did not result in realistic results.[29]
The notion of boundary layers—introduced by Prandtl in 1904, founded on both theory and experiments—explained the causes of drag at high Reynolds numbers. The boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid close to the object's boundary, where viscous effects remain important even when the viscosity is very small (or equivalently the Reynolds number is very large).[29]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday dismissed a plea to halt the release of "Udta Punjab" hours after the Supreme Court declined a similar plea. The two decisions have cleared the path for the film to hit the screens on Friday, June 17, although it suffered another setback with a copy being leaked online.
The counsel for the film-makers, Sanjay Kaushal, told International Business Times, India, that the court had appointed an amicus curiae — an impartial advisor — to watch the film.
"The amicus found that the film has nothing that glorifies drug abuse or tarnishes the image of Punjab. Based on that, the court dismissed the plea," Kaushal told IBTimes India.
Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court declined a plea by Punjab-based non-government organisation (NGO) Human Rights Awareness Association (HRAA) to halt the screening of the film "Udta Punjab."
Advocate Ankur Saigal, who appeared in court on behalf of Phantom Films, which has produced "Udta Punjab," told IBTimes India the bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and L Nageswara Rao refused to put a stay on the release of the film.
The petitioners were also allowed to withdraw the plea, which they did, Saigal told IBTimes India. The apex court allowed the HRAA to approach it to challenge the decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, when it came, Saigal added.
"Udta Punjab" has been at the centre of several controversies, with the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) proposing numerous cuts in it. The matter ended up before the Bombay high Court, which chastised the CBFC, saying its mandate was to certify films, not censor them. The court also allowed "Udta Punjab" to be screened with an "A" certificate and a single cut. |
LABOUM’s ZN was able to catch up with her old middle school friend Seolhyun, thanks to the hard work of Super Junior member Leeteuk!
The girl group guested on the January 16 episode of the TV Chosun show “Idol Festival” and talked about their days in middle school. ZN shared that during middle school, there were three girls known to match with the Chinese characters of “truth,” “goodness,” and “beauty.” She said that she was known as the “goodness” and Seolhyun was known as the “truth.”
She continued, “I first saw Seolhyun at school and thought that she was a pretty girl. I danced with her and we went around to auditions together.”
Not one to let an opportunity pass by, MC Leeteuk suggested that she give Seolhyun a call but unfortunately, ZN said that she does not have a cell phone yet. Leeteuk took matters into his own hands and got Seolhyun’s number from his fellow Super Junior member Kim Heechul.
Thanks to his hard efforts, ZN and Seolhyun were able to have a warm conversation on the phone, as Leeteuk and Kim Joonho barely held their excitement at hearing Seolhyun’s voice.
Source (1) |
ISTANBUL — If any meeting was meant to be private, it was this one: the top spy chief, the foreign minister and his deputy, and a top military official discussing secret plans for possible military action in Syria.
But in Turkey little, it seems, is beyond the skills of those who have been wiretapping and bugging the conversations of high-level officials and releasing the recordings on social media.
On Thursday morning, a recording was posted on YouTube in which the officials were heard discussing a plot to establish a justification for military strikes in Syria. One option that is said to have been discussed was orchestrating an attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is in northern Syria and is considered by the government here to be Turkish territory.
By Thursday afternoon, the Foreign Ministry building in Ankara, Turkey’s capital — where the secret meeting was held — was being swept for surreptitious listening devices, and the government had moved to block access to YouTube, just a week after a similar ban on Twitter, which has also been a conduit for the leaking of documents and telephone conversations. |
Up-and-coming label Push & Run have offered a free EP of bootlegs, featuring Ifan Dafydd [above] and others from their roster.
If you’re already familiar with Push & Run, it’s likely through Dafydd: the label released the Welsh producer’s full debut, ‘Treehouse’, and helped out with the white label release of ‘No Good’, his instantly recognisable edit of Amy Winehouse (recorded pre-death, before any of you start calling him a vulture). There’s more to the label than just Dafydd, however, and this bootlegs EP – cannily titled Tings in Boots, after Ruff Sqwad’s white label classic of the same name – features material from the hotly-tipped Maribou State, plus Pedestrian, Bodhi, Parisian and more.
P&R are making the EP, which features the first official download of ‘No Good’, available exclusively through FACT. Grab it below, and run. |
The Beginning Basics
Okay, the first step in your quest to grow marijuana is to find a proper grow space. The author currently grows plants in an area 5’ by 10’. It is a closeted area located right next to the crawl space of the house which allows for proper ventilation. What you are looking for in a grow space is an area that is locked away from children, pets, and other unwanted intruders. It’s actually the law in Colorado to grow in a secured environment, so make sure to put a lock on the door into your grow room should that be your route. The next best solution for complete security and to prevent unwanted smells from nosy neighbors is to purchase a grow tent. You can get big or small tents depending on your grow needs and they can be placed near windows or other areas with good ventilation. They are usually a couple hundred dollars but can be used over and over for subsequent grows. The best part is that locking them isn’t a problem, you just lock the zipper so nobody can gain access. They really keep everything contained in one location as well. Grow tents can also be placed out in the open in your home without being an eye sore. The larger dispensaries have grow warehouses filled with hundreds of plants but you don’t need to start there!
Should you not go the grow tent route and you already have a suitable growing area, then this space should be as big as you can possibly make it. In the state of Colorado, 6 plants can be grown at once for most people unless you have extenuating medical circumstances. This means that 3 can be flowering at one time. An area 3’ by 3’ is just about the smallest area you could have and still flower 3 plants. If you have a medical license then you could be growing up to about 100 plants for edibles, hashes, and other concentrates. This type of a grow operation usually requires more than one person to manage and can be very costly. Hopefully you as the reader can adapt the techniques in this guide to maintain the number of plants you plan on growing for your needs.
When evaluating a grow area, it is also important to make sure you can properly clean and ventilate the area. For the cleaning part, it’s always good to use a pressure washer on the floors and walls if possible. Also, If you follow the recommendations of this guide, you will be using lights that emit a lot of heat. A properly ventilated grow room will help you avoid cooking your crop. It will also make sure that the plants are receiving fresh air at all times. What they are going to do is take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. If there isn’t a lot of air exchange, then the plants essentially can’t breathe properly. The room becomes way more saturated with oxygen and not enough carbon dioxide and things get out of whack. This can lead to lower yields and unhealthy plants. Proper ventilation is also important to get the marijuana smell out of the house. It is pungent and it will permeate the whole home unless you take the necessary steps to prevent this from occurring. They sell charcoal filters of varying sizes that essentially eliminate any smell whatsoever. They are a life saver if you desire to keep your grow on the down low. They are also needed to prevent greedy people from figuring out that you have thousands of dollars of high grade marijuana growing in your house. People will recognize your grow as a source of income and it’s very necessary to protect it from these types. With that being said, if you can find a grow space that is near a window, crawl space, or some other area where you can use a fan or fans to route old air out and bring fresh air in then that would be perfect.
It is also important that the floor of your grow room be some sort of material that you won’t mind getting wet. No matter how hard you try, you are going to be constantly spilling water and dirt on the floor and this can become a problem if it’s a carpeted area. While this type of grow room is not ideal, you can still grow effectively, but be as careful as you can with spills. One of the solutions to this water and dirt all over your floor problem is to purchase plastic tarps. These are a life saver to grow weed easy by keeping things contained. You can cut them to virtually any length or size of your grow room. It is ideal to cut the tarp into a piece a little bigger than the actual size of your grow room so that you can create somewhat of a basin to keep things contained. If you have a little extra money though, go ahead and purchase a grow tent because these keep everything contained naturally in one secure area. If for some reason the tarp or grow tent idea won’t work then they sell these grow trays as well that keep things cleaner.
Another factor is finding an area with a lot of height in the room. If you follow the recommendations of this guide, then you can expect your plants to grow anywhere from 4-6 feet tall when they are just about ready to harvest. Make sure you are going to have room. If you don’t have a tall area, then this is okay as well. More information on how to stunt your plants growth will be explained later on in the guide.
Time is also a factor for the grow room. Based on your growing technique, to take plants to maturity could take anywhere from 2.5 months to 5 months. Make sure you aren’t going to be needing the space you are using to grow for any other application.
Alright, so you’ve read the preceding paragraphs and maybe you live in an apartment or just don’t have any suitable place to grow marijuana. Don’t worry, not all is lost. There are various techniques for growing that will work with just a closet, a garage, or an attic even in the winter months. If you wanted to grow just one plant, then an area 1.5’ by 1.5’ would work just fine. As stated earlier, the plants can sometimes get pretty tall but if you don’t have an area that allows you to keep a 6’ plant, there are other ways to grow indoors. Keep reading because it will be explained later on how to deal with the “Not So Ideal” grow spaces. Whatever you do, don’t give up hope. The author has found that almost any environment can be used to grow high quality marijuana.
Pots
The bigger the better if you can. In the authors’ opinion, nothing less than 5 gallon pots should be used long term. The roots of a marijuana plant expand very rapidly and you want them to have as much room to grow as possible. The author has found that in every case, a smaller pot leads to smaller yields. They sell rubbermaid tubs on Amazon.com that make great growing pots because the roots can expand to their true potential. Another solution is to buy buckets that you can get in bulk here. Just drill a few holes in the bottom and they work just as good as pots. Aside from this, one of the easiest ways to get great results for your marijuana grow is to purchase grow bags. These are super easy to maintain and they allow the roots to really breathe resulting in stunning grows and even better yields. These bags can also be bought in bulk and are worth every penny.
Get yourself a tray to collect water runoff or a tarp, and you should be all set. The also sell very cheap plastic trays that slide underneath the 2 gallon to 5 gallon pots and can be found online for around a dollar each. Just about any plate, or Tupperware can be used to collect the water run off as well. So if you have read this entire paragraph and for some reason you just can’t find a 5 gallon bucket then again, not all is lost. Techniques will be explained further along in this guide to show you how to grow marijuana with a smaller pot.
The Grow Medium
This is a section that could be very long in a different growing manual. The author believes that every newbie should start out growing in soil. You could gradually gain more experience growing hydroponically but this is more complex and prone to human error. Hydroponic growing requires no soil, only nutrients and water. These are mixed together in the right amounts at the right time to feed the plant. The author has seen no evidence that either growing method produces any more yield than the other. Stick with soil for now and you will easily grow great yields with less effort and less cost than it would take hydroponically.
Soil
Soil is key, absolutely key. If there is one aspect of growing marijuana that you shouldn’t screw up, then it’s the soil. Don’t just use dirt from the backyard or any old soil from the hardware store either unless you have to. Marijuana soil should contain all the essential nutrients that this specific plant needs to grow. Picking good soil can also save you money because you’re picking dirt that has already been infused with desirable vitamins and minerals. This means you don’t have to buy expensive nutrients until later on. With that being said, the author uses Happy Frog soil almost exclusively to grow weed easy. It contains the right amount of ingredients to get the plants a solid start. He feels that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Happy Frog soil is by no means the end all be all of soils but happens to be what the author started out on and hasn’t changed since day one of growing. There are many soils which would be perfect but don’t pay too much for them. Also stay away from used dirt because the nutrients have been depleted already. Again, soil is key. Make sure to start your plants out right.
Temperature
The author has found that the temperature isn’t super important to the growth or yield of marijuana plants as long as it is kept between 60 and 80 degrees. He accomplishes this with the means of a portable heater in the winter time and strategic fans in the summer. If your grow area is very small and you are using high powered lights then an air conditioning unit is recommended. These can be a life saver if your grow room gets too hot and you’ve tried everything else. As long as you have a proper ventilation plan, you can purchase these portable AC units and keep the temperature in line. Growing indoors makes it a lot easier to keep the temperatures steady. Marijuana grows at around the same temperature that most people maintain their houses at. Also, don’t worry if you are growing indoors in the winter time and your grow room gets cold. You can easily go pick up that little electric heater from Amazon with an adjustable thermostat so that you don’t have to mess with it. Just set it to 65 degrees for instance and leave it be. Also, be aware that when you are flowering your plants, your lights will be on for 12 hours and off for 12 hours. When the lights are on, the grow room will heat up, and when the lights are off, it will get much colder. Be aware of this and make sure you adjust for these changes in temperature. Usually, experienced growers leave the lights off for 12 hours during the day and turn them on during the night. This really helps to reduce the heat buildup in your grow space. Timers will be needed for keeping a consistent lights on/lights off cycle. These aren’t too expensive and should be purchased unless you decide to turn the lights on and off at the same time every day. You need to make it consistent though because the marijuana plants are very sensitive to light and adjust better to a set schedule opposed to a random light cycle. Serious problems occur when you mess with light schedules or turn the lights on during the 12 hour off cycle. More about this later but let’s continue.
Lights
Wow, lights are a definite essential for growing just about any living plant. Marijuana is no different. Plants need the sun to grow and since you will be growing indoors, you will need to recreate the sun inside your grow room. Lights with the most wattage are best. There are a wide variety of different options but the author recommends using High Pressure Sodium lights, or HPS. This has been the cheapest and best light to use depending on where you will be growing. They work best if you have a well ventilated room though. A lot of people will tell you to go with LED lights but these types of lights are generally more expensive. However, they are another option to get the job done and reduce your electricity bill by a lot. They also do not emit half the amount of heat that the HPS lights do. If you don’t have a ton of ventilation options, then you should at least check out the LEDs and see if they are for you. The reason the author uses HPS lights is because we’re trying to cut down on growing costs in this guide. There are other options for lighting as well as those mentioned here but for the most part, they are more expensive and the author just sticks with what he knows.
Not a lot of detail will be given in this guide about lumens, or other technical knowledge about these grow light options. All you need to know is that the more wattage the light has, the better. The author is a big fan of 1000W HPS lighting fixtures. Under one of these lights you could grow between 4-6 plants and get somewhere in the range of 12-15 oz yield after 3 months of growing. A 1000W HPS complete setup can be found on Amazon for roughly 200 dollars. Very inexpensive and this includes the ballast as well as the hood. Some packages even contain the necessary bulbs. If you are serious about ventilation then you can get something like a cool tube. You will need an inline fan as well if you go this route but it’s recommended by the author. The cool tubes pull stale air and heat from the bulb out of the grow room very efficiently. Be aware that your electrical bill will go up once you start keeping your lights on for 24 hours a day but the benefits of having your own crop outweigh this expense. If you’ve been doing any research into growing marijuana besides this guide then no doubt you have found information about metal halide lights as well. It’s strongly recommended to uses metal halide lighting while keeping the lights on for 24 hours a day. This is only done while your clones or seedlings are in the veg cycle. There is a different spectrum that growing, but not budding, plants enjoy. This isn’t to say that you can’t use your normal HPS bulbs but it is indeed recommended to use metal halide during this first stage of growth. If you are lucky, you can find a lighting setup that can be used with a metal halide bulb as well as an HPS bulb. With the flip of a switch and a change in the bulb, you can use both. These types of setups are getting popular and can be attained rather cheaply. More about the vegging cycle later on in this guide.
Don’t worry too much about the type of bulb you buy either. The author has found that any horticulture bulb works. If your lighting setup doesn’t come with a bulb then a 1000W HPS bulb, brand new, can be found on Amazon for roughly $35 including shipping. Be careful of buying so called “New Bulbs” on Craigslist.org as you can’t tell if they are really new. It’s not much more expensive to just order a new one online and you will be assured that your bulb has a lot of life left in it. In general, one bulb will last you two grow cycles or about 6 months of use. It’s a good deal for the money. As far as how far away from your plants you want the lights to be, you should keep them as close to the tops of your plants as you can without burning them. The farther away your lights are, the more lumens you are losing. This lost light could be used to help the plants grow. The way to tell if you are close enough is to place your hand about the same distance from the light as your plants are. If it’s too hot to keep your hand there for 30 seconds, then raise the lights. You want to maximize the light energy but not burn the plant. In the common problems section, you will be instructed on how to recognize light burn on your plants. If you can’t get your hands on a 1000W HPS, then you can also get a 400 or 600 watt light fixture and these will also be sufficient. Don’t expect the same yield as you would get with a bigger wattage light though. Two to three plants would grow fine under smaller HPS light fixtures. There are also other very expensive light fixtures and bulbs that can get the job done. Not necessarily better than any ordinary HPS fixture but will reduce electricity costs and are more efficient. People have been growing marijuana with HPS for decades now though and have consistently seen large yields. Don’t get sold something that you really don’t need. Aside from HPS, Metal Halide, and LED’s, the author doesn’t have any further recommendations. Again, he has found a very effective lighting system and if it isn’t broken, then don’t fix it.
Water
The author uses regular Colorado tap water and has never had any ill effects. He makes sure that the water has a PH of between 6.0 and 6.5 but hasn’t spent the money on a filtration system. If you really want to use filtered water, then that would be ideal but be prepared to purchase some sort of RO/DI system or pre-filtered water which can get expensive. The most important aspect of the water you use is that it be within the optimum PH range for your plants. If it is not within the 6-7 range then your plants will suffer. They won’t be able to uptake any of the special nutrients you are going to be giving them. There are many affordable PH kits that you can use to both test and modify your water so that it is within the appropriate range. Any grow shop will be able to point you in the right direction but don’t pay more than $10-$15. Another useful device to make sure your water or tap water is okay for growing is a dissolved solvent meter. This great product will tell you how many dissolved solids there are in the water you are using to feed your plants. You will be adding nutrients to the water as well and you don’t want to over feed your plants. This leads to leaf burn and other problems such as lower yields and toxic soil. A tip of advice is to test the water after you have added the nutrients. This ensures that you get an accurate reading of what you will actually be feeding your plants.
Ventilation and Air Flow
Ventilation is important. You should have at least one fan in your grow room to provide circulation to your plants. You want them to sway gently in the wind. This makes sure that the oxygen they are releasing is blown away with fresh air and there is enough CO2 to absorb. The author uses a fan that rotates so that it blows evenly over the crop. The second reason to have good ventilation is because of heat. If you are using the author’s recommended 1000W HPS light, then you will have heat that probably will need to be removed from the grow room to avoid overheating. Different kinds of fans are used for this purpose. They are called inline fans and once again, can be found rather inexpensively on Amazon.com. Ideally, you will need 2 inline fans in your grow room. One to bring fresh air into the room and one to route the old, hot air out. This can be achieved with ducting you can find online for cheap. Just be sure to match up the inline fan sizes with the ducting. Popular fan and ducting combinations are 4”, 6” and 8”. The 8” combo is obviously better because it allows more airflow but if you don’t have a huge grow then it shouldn’t be a problem to use smaller sizes.
Watering
Watering is important. Assuming you start with some sort of marijuana clone or seedling, once it is transplanted into a mother pot, watering should be done with care. At first, make sure you don’t overwater. Get yourself a watering can here and carefully get the surface of the dirt completely wet. At this point you actually don’t even need a watering can, you could use a cup if you wanted. Later on though you will want to have a watering can that will be easy to reach plants in the far corners of your grow space. It’s worth it to spend a little more on a can with a long spout. One thing to realize is that when you are using nutrients in your water, you never want to expose fan leaves or buds to these chemicals. You want to only apply them directly to the dirt and roots. If you splash nutrients on these fan leaves then you will destroy them. They will burn within a few hours and will need to be removed. You want a watering can that will allow you to easily reach the root area without splashing or hitting these important leaves. You should be putting enough water in the soil so that you can see just a little exit as water runoff as well. As your plants grow, be aware that you will be using more and more water. Eventually you are going to be dumping water into your potted plants because the root structure has gotten so large. The more water you can use without over watering them the better. It’s definitely a delicate balance but you will get the hang of this. The author has never had a plant die because of overwatering but has seen some plants’ leaves droop as a result of too much. Scroll down to the common problems section for more info on what it looks like if you are over watering your plants. You don’t want them sitting in water all the time either. This leads to root rot and bug problems, maybe even mold at times. It is recommended to not leave standing water in the water runoff trays for very long.
Ideally, you will be watering your plants about every few days depending on how they look. It’s always better to under water your plants versus over watering them. If the first two inches of soil are dry, then you probably are ready to water them again. When you start to flower your crop, and the root system is very elaborate, they are going to soak up water like you won’t believe. This is perfect! Give it to them. Water is one of the most essential elements of growing marijuana. Under watering leads to smaller yields and less healthy plants that don’t grow as fast. You want to be as efficient as possible, so don’t be stingy on the watering. If you have any further questions about how much or how little to water, you can always get a water meter that takes the guesswork out of this process. Just place it in the dirt and see how dry it is!
Nutrients
A plant that is properly dosed with nutrients will be a healthy plant. Different nutrients will need to be used during the different stages of marijuana plants growing. During the vegging stage, you do not need to use anything special for the first few weeks, especially if you have bought some soil like Happy Frog or the equivalent competitor’s soil. These mediums are already infused with all the nutrients you need for the vegging plant. After the first few weeks, go to your local grow store or shop online and get yourself a “Vegging” nutrient supplement. Don’t go out and buy 10 different types of nutrients though. All you need is one supplement for vegging and a different one for flowering plants. Make sure you are purchasing from a reputable brand though as this will prevent you from getting unnecessary nutrient burn on your plants. After you purchase your preferred nutrient supplements, make sure to use about half of what is recommended on the bottle. These plants need nutrients but not too much. Almost every nutrient company out there over states the amount of nutrients that the plant actually needs. Use half the recommended dosage for optimum results for your marijuana grow.
Marijuana is a weed and will grow in virtually any type of medium with just about any dirt and nutrient combination. Be cautious and don’t fall into the expensive and unnecessary practice of inundating your plants with nutrients they don’t need. A great strategy is to use just one particular nutrient line such as Fox Farm. Again, they can be found in virtually any grow store as well but Amazon typically has them for cheaper.
The Smell
The smell of your grow could be of either great concern to you or not a concern at all depending on your living situation. Marijuana plants do smell though and even one or two plants can potentially stink up your house. The marijuana clones smell, the vegging plants smell, and the plants with huge buds on them smell. There is no way that you can avoid an odor when you are growing cannabis. The only thing you can do is either mask the smell or use proper ventilation and ducting which will take the air from your grow room directly outside. Certain strains smell stronger than others but as a general rule, expect the growing marijuana to smell and either prepare for it or maybe it just isn’t a big deal to you. If you do have a problem with the smell though, then purchase a carbon filter. There are many different types of carbon filters on the market today. You are going to have to evaluate your growing area and the fans you are using and purchase one or two based on your needs. You can purchase carbon filters, or sacks of carbon from any grow store, Walmart, or online. If you don’t have enough money for a carbon filter, place a bag of carbon behind an exit fan so that it pulls the smelly air through the filter and then outside. This will completely kill the smell or at least make it manageable.
Chapter 2 Overview: Find a location to grow your marijuana, the right size pot, good soil with nutrients, the right lighting, ventilation and WATER WATER WATER. |
The U.S. House of Representatives just voted 410-4 to authorize delivering an extra $205 million of our taxpayer dollars to Israel – on top of the $3 billion in military assistance already in the pipeline for FY2011. H.R.5327, the United States-Israel Missile Defense Cooperation and Support Act, was introduced just two days ago, after the Obama Administration notified Israel that it would support the authorization and appropriation of funds for Israel to purchase ten batteries of the "Iron Dome" missile defense system.
Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, and nearly all the other "progressives" voted for the bill. (The complete roll call results are here.) The only "No" votes came from John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Pete Stark. Kucinich and Paul have pretty consistently opposed aid to Israel, but Conyers’ vote is a pleasant surprise, as he has only rarely dared to stand up to the Israel lobby. Stark, the least prominent of the four, is a moderately liberal Democrat who represents the southeastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. According to Wikipedia, he is the first, and so far only, openly atheist member of Congress. Though he hasn’t often spoken out about the Middle East, he was among the 54 reps who signed the letter to Obama in January calling for an end to the siege of Gaza. And he, like Lee, was feted at the Democratic Party function last week in Castro Valley where some of us demonstrated to demand an end to aid for Israel – we were focused on Lee, but perhaps we had some effect on Stark?
The bill specifically authorizes funding for "Iron Dome," a high-tech system that’s supposed to defend against Katyusha rockets (fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel in 2006) and the Qassam projectiles Palestinian resistance forces in Gaza lob over the wall toward Sderot and adjacent areas. Israel has been working on the system for years, but Haaretz reported last week that "The Israel Defense Forces ducked away from funding the project with its budget, explaining that offensive readiness was a higher priority, and the Defense Ministry has been looking for other budgetary avenues." With Obama and Congress stepping into the breach, the IDF will now be free to devote all its resources to "offensive readiness."
The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has an action alert with useful talking points about the new bill here. |
The tell-all 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days special promises “shocking admissions” and can’t-miss updates on all the couples.
In an exclusive preview for the upcoming reunion hosted by Shaun Robinson, “nothing is off limits” as viewers learn which relationships have moved to the next level —and which crumbled under the pressure.
Get push notifications with news, features and more.
The 90 Day Fiancé-spin-off follows couples who have formed a relationship online but have yet to meet in person or make the decision to start the K-1 visa process required by law to get married in America.
In addition to a rehash of some of the couple’s toughest moments, viewers will also watch never-before-seen clips from their journeys. Abby and Sean will reveal whether he’s popped the question, while Larry and Jenny open up about maintaining their long-distance romance. Things get intense between Darcey and Jesse, as well as Patrick and Myriam.
RELATED VIDEO: 90 Day Fiancé Season 5 Sneak Peek
The two-hour 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days special airs Monday at 8 p.m. ET on TLC. |
At least nine different schools in northern New Jersey were placed on lockdown Tuesday morning after receiving threats from someone claiming to have planted bombs and threatening mass shootings.
Officials say the threats mostly came in via voicemail.
All of the school's involved are located in Bergen County.
Schools in Tenafly, Leonia, Bergenfield, and Teaneck were evacuated about 11:00 a.m., NBC reported, with the other five expected to soon also be cleared.
Evacuations: Nine schools in New Jersey received bomb and shooting threats on Tuesday, leading to mass evacuations. Police are investigating the veracity of the threats
Nine schools in New Jersey were evacuated or placed on lockdown on Tuesday after each received threats of bombs or mass shootings, police said
The students were transported to other schools and other facilities, however the threats have stretched local law enforcement
The other schools are in Garfield, Clifton, Lawn, Englewood and Hackensack.
Four of the schools have been cleared of any danger.
Police are now trying to determine what the connection is between the schools, if there is any.
Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino told NJ.com that there is a chance the voicemails were automated.
It appears police were first called to Clifton High School around 9 a.m., with the others quickly also reporting the threats.
Fair Lawn High School and Leonia High School have also been evacuated.
Schools in Tenafly, Leonia, Bergenfield, and Teaneck were evacuated about 11:00 a.m. and other schools are in Garfield, Clifton, Lawn, Englewood and Hackensack were poised to follow
'At this time, there is no indication of any validity to the threat,' Clifton police said in a statement to NBC.
'However, all precautions are being taken in order to ensure safety of the entire school district.
'Additional information will be made available as the investigation progresses.'
Last month, 900 schools in Los Angeles were closed following an email threat. |
Merry Christmas Everyone!!
Christmas Artwork by Genya
Wallpaper from Photonmelodies side story collection.
Let's also greet Yuuhi, Meiya, and Takeru belated Happy Birthday! It was on the 16th, and Muv-Luv's enthusiastic devs commissioned artists to draw awesome artwork to celebrate!
Celebration Artwork by https://twitter.com/kota_murasaki
Takeru (based on TDA design) by https://twitter.com/shionohiro
Here's a status report on some of our pending items:
Muv-Luv PS Vita port has been ongoing since our previous update, and we may have some big news in a month or so from now. Please stay tuned PS Vita fans!
Muv-Luv Alternative's retranslation might take the entire winter because of its enormous script length.
Good news: Connor Krammer (aka Ambigravity) is now also part of the translation team as QA and Editor! He helped out with Muv-Luv Extra/Unlimited's QA process, and now we've recruited him to make sure the scripts are totally refined before we produce the physical versions. He also volunteered as a moderator for both the Muv-Luv Community forums and Steam forums, so he'll be a familiar face to many of you :)
Physical rewards will be shipped as soon as possible once Muv-Luv Alternative is released on Steam. If you have pledged for PS Vita physical, your rewards will be reserved for a second batch of shipping which which will be a few months later—depending on how much time the following will take:
1. Muv-Luv Alternative porting
2. Cartridge production
3. Sony approval .
To elaborate further, let's say the PC backer's physicals ship in June. Pledges containing a copy of the physical PS Vita version will likely be sent by September.
This is still a rough (worst case) estimate, and rewards may ship early if everything goes well.. We'll keep everyone posted!
Muv-Luv Alternative CODEX screenshots will be shown on the next update, as the artists involved are on vacation and won't be back for another week. We apologize to everyone who've been looking forward to it!
screenshots will be shown on the next update, as the artists involved are on vacation and won't be back for another week. We apologize to everyone who've been looking forward to it! Photonflowers will be on hold until we finish PS Vita versions of both games. PS Vita for Muv-Luv Alternative will be our top priority after the PC release.
*Christmas Shoutouts*
1. "Sharin" the Luv - Final hours and PS Vita stretch goal reached!
Congratulations to our shipping partner, Tokyo Otaku Mode, not only for successfully funding Sharin no Kuni Kickstarter, but also for reaching their PS Vita stretch goal! Limited Run Games will be handling the physicals and it will be available in a KS-exclusive variant case. This is your last chance to back their campaign and nab a copy!
2. Dies irae Kickstarter launched!
A Kickstarter campaign for Dies irae ～Amantes amentes～ was launched recently. It's one of the most popular Visual Novels in Japan!
Quite a few renowned translators in the Visual Novel community are helping out with the project. If you want to know more about Dies irae, one of their translators have written a comprehensive post explaining what the story's all about: https://gareblogs.wordpress.com/2014/07/30/vn-review-dies-irae-amantes-amentes/
The creators intended to end Dies irae Kickstarter on Friday the 13th (January).
P.S. We are not involved with the PR for Sharin no Kuni and Dies irae. If you have any inquiries about their Kickstarter campaigns, kindly send them a message to their respective Kickstarter and social media accounts.
Have a great Christmas and see you again next year! :)
Cheers,
The Muv-Luv Team |
WALLACE: You have taken a lot of heat about tax returns. And I want to ask you one specific question about that. You've been running for president for almost eight years. And the question is, why didn't you, years ago, somewhere over the last eight years, go to the people running your blind trust and say to them, let's get out of the Swiss bank accounts, let's get out of the investments in the Cayman Islands, even if it means we have to maybe pay more taxes, so we can clear the decks politically? ROMNEY: Well, first of all, there was no reduction, not one dollar of reduction in taxes, by virtue of having an account in Switzerland or a Cayman Islands investment. Those -- the dollars of taxes remained exactly the same. There was no tax savings at all. And the conduct of the -- of the -- of the trustee in making investments was entirely consist with U.S. law and all the taxes paid were those legally owed and there was no tax savings by virtue of those entities.
"Big business is doing fine in many places," Romney said during a campaign fundraiser Thursday. "They get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses."
Mitt Romney on Fox News Sunday, denying that his offshore bank accounts and financial investments saved him one single dime on his taxes:And then Mitt Romney last Thursday, pointing out that offshore investments serve as tax havens for big business:So according to Mitt Romney, when businesses park their money overseas, it's often part of a strategy to save money by reducing their overall tax bill. But when he does it, he's just doing what every patriotic American would do: put their hard-earned cash into financial instruments domiciled in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The fact that when businesses do it they are seeking to lower their tax bill is just a coincidence.
And if you believe that, then you believe the only reason Mitt Romney won't release his tax returns is that he doesn't want to reveal how much money he gave to his church. |
4. Focus
In a world filled with social media, coworkers, emails and phone calls, finding the focus needed to get things done can be difficult. In our discussing of time management, we mentioned allowing time for distractions over the course of your work day, but sometimes, that’s just not enough. A quick glance at Facebook while your screen is loading can easily become five, ten minutes wasted, especially if someone’s been posting adorable cat videos (don’t worry, we won’t link to any here).
Like with all the other skills listed here, having good focusing skills comes with time and practice, and sometimes with the help of apps. Social media especially is addicting, which is why a number of distraction reducing apps exist to help break the habit. Keeping your cell phone turned off and out of sight will minimize its siren call, and if you still feel like you can’t resist making a grab for it, you can always pick up a timed cell phone locker, and Android has a Priority mode that will only allow certain functions to be used.
For office workers who use browser based applications for work, making sure work related tabs are the ONLY tabs up will help keep you on task. Anti-Social will help by blocking out tempting sites, or you can use Concentrate, which will bring up everything you need to complete one specific task and block out everything else. Finally, if you just can’t get your brain in gear, taking one of those very important breaks and going for a walk outside can help clear out the clutter. |
Drama at the Supreme Court yesterday, as the justices heard oral arguments in an affirmative action case:
The University of Texas has determined that if it excluded race as a factor, that remaining 25 percent would be almost entirely white. During the oral arguments, former US Solicitor General Greg Garre, who is representing the university, was explaining this to the justices. At that point, Scalia jumped in, questioning whether increasing the number of African Americans at the flagship university in Austin was in the black students’ best interests. He said: There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them. He went on to say, “I’m just not impressed by the fact the University of Texas may have fewer [blacks]. Maybe it ought to have fewer. I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”
Well, that caused a freakout on the left, where a number of folks overinterpreted this to mean that Scalia was saying that all blacks belong at “slower” schools (as distinct from those blacks who get into UT-Austin despite disqualifyingly low grades, because of affirmative action). The freakout seemed also based on the presumption that there is no basis for what Scalia said.
In fact, there is. In the Washington Post today, Yanan Wang explains that there is research indicating that admitting black students to academic programs for which they lack adequate preparation hurts them. There is research data to dispute this, but the point is, Scalia didn’t make this up.
Back in 2003, the black linguist John McWhorter wrote a piece meditating on his own “diversity” experience at his undergraduate school, but saying that what his college meant by diversity, and what diversity has generally come to mean at universities (more minority faces, regardless of qualification), are not the same thing. McWhorter wrote:
The dismal failure of the “diversity” experiment of the last two decades offers an important lesson for a post-affirmative-action admissions policy. Even as we seek diversity in the worthy, Simon’s Rock sense, we must recognize that students need to be able to excel at college-level studies. Nobody wins, after all, when a young man or woman of whatever color, unprepared for the academic rigors of a top university, flunks out, or a school dumbs down its curriculum to improve graduation rates. The problem, then, is to find some way to measure a student’s potential that still leaves administrators enough leeway to ensure that campus life benefits from a rich variety of excellences and life experiences. As it turns out, we have—and use—the measure: the Scholastic Aptitude Test. James Conant invented the SAT as a meritocratic tool to smoke out talented individuals from the wide range of life circumstances in American society, not just the WASP elite who made up the vast majority of Ivy League student bodies in the pre-SAT era. Nowadays, a creeping fashion dismisses the SAT as culturally biased, claiming that it assesses only a narrow range of ability and is irrelevant to predicting students’ future performance. But while it is true that the SAT is far from perfect—if it were, students wouldn’t be able to boost their scores by taking SAT preparatory classes—the exam really does tend to forecast students’ future success, as even William Bowen and Derek Bok admit in their valentine to racial preferences, The Shape of the River. In their sample of three classes from 1951 to 1989 at 28 selective universities, Bowen and Bok show that SAT scores correlated neatly with students’ eventual class ranks. For gauging student potential in the humanities, the verbal SAT, or SATV, seems particularly useful. Rutgers University English professor William Dowling compared the grades of kids in one of his classes over the years with how they did on the verbal test. “What I found,” Dowling notes, “was that the SATV scores had an extraordinarily high correlation with final grades, and that neither, in the many cases where I had come to know my students’ personal backgrounds, seemed to correlate very well with socio-economic status.” The reason, Dowling thinks, is painfully obvious: having a strong command of English vocabulary, usually gained through a lifelong habit of reading, is hardly irrelevant to how one engages advanced reading material. As Dowling argues, a student of any socioeconomic background who can’t answer correctly a relatively hard SAT question like this one—“The traditional process of producing an oil painting requires so many steps that it seems______to artists who prefer to work quickly: (A) provocative (B) consummate (C)interminable (D) facile (E) prolific”—will be fated to frustration at a selective university, at least in the humanities. My own experience reinforces Dowling’s. I’ve taught students who, though intelligent, possessed limited reading vocabularies and struggled with the verbal portion of the SAT. I have never known a single one of these students to reach the top ranks in one of my classes. “I think I understand what Locke is saying,” one student told me in frustration while preparing for a big exam. But Locke isn’t Heidegger—his prose, while sophisticated, is clear as crystal. This student confessed that he was “no reader” and possessed only a “tiny vocabulary.” Without the vocabulary, he was at sea. Conversely, my textaholic students are usually the stars, gifted at internalizing material and interpreting it in fresh ways—and this is especially true of students immersed in high literature. A post-preferences admissions policy, then, must accept that below a certain cut-off point in SAT scores, a student runs a serious risk of failing to graduate. As Thomas Sowell, among others, has shown, placing minorities in schools that expect a performance level beyond what they have been prepared to meet leads to disproportionate dropout rates—41 percent of the black students in Berkeley’s class of 1988, to take one typical example, did not complete their education, compared with 16 percent of whites. Many of these students may have flourished at slightly less competitive schools. Moreover, when minority students attend schools beyond their level, note Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber inIncreasing Faculty Diversity, poor grades often deter them from pursuing graduate degrees, contributing to the dearth of black Ph.D.s. Black and minority students overwhelmed on a too-demanding campus can succumb, too, to the bluster of seeing themselves as “survivors” in a racist country—becoming part of an embittered minority rather than proud members of a national elite. To prevent this kind of damage, the SAT can supply us with the rough parameters within which our admissions search for different kinds of merit—diversity, rightly understood—will proceed. All this makes the recent efforts by the affirmative-action claque to get rid of the SAT misguided in the extreme.
It makes sense to ask, as Scalia did, whether or not it serves the interests of minority students to admit them to a university for which they are not academically prepared. The answer might be “yes,” but that would require a good explanation. One doesn’t need to embrace a “Bell Curve” explanation for the poor preparation of black students for top-level college work. It could well be that a disproportionate number of black students come from bad public schools, or from impoverished families and cultural backgrounds where reading and academics were not given priority. These things are not the fault of the students, necessarily, but you cannot make up for them by affirmative-action fiat.
When I read the Scalia remarks and the controversy, I thought about my own humiliating experience with math. In junior high and high school, I was a straight-A student. I had to work harder in math, and didn’t really like it, but my grades were almost always As, or high Bs. In the fall of 1983, I entered the junior class at a public boarding school for gifted kids from all over Louisiana. Trigonometry hit me like a 2×4 upside the head. I couldn’t keep up. I looked around me and saw that other students from bigger schools had no problem following the accelerated pace at which our teacher went. I had been one of the top students in my old high school in rural Louisiana, but here, competing against some of the best students in the state, I was nothing.
I handled it badly. I shut down emotionally, and pretended that what was happening to me wasn’t really happening. In truth, I was not a bad math student, just one on the high side of average, which made me top of the class in my rural high school, where our math teacher, Mr. McKey, was terrific. Put in a classroom under conditions for which I was not qualified, I choked — and quit going to class, because facing my own severe limitations made me despise myself. I failed that class. I had never failed anything before, nor come close to it. I blame myself for not responding to that adversity by working harder, but boy, was it ever a psychological blow.
I never did quite recover from that. Math had been interesting to me before, but far from a passion. After that, math terrified me. It was the thing that made me feel like a failure, because I had failed at it. True, I demonstrated weakness of character by coming up against great adversity and collapsing, but the fact is, I was not remotely prepared to work at that school’s level in math, and there was no way to hide my weakness. Reading about the Scalia controversy made me reflect on all this, and on how damaging my experience in that math class was. Again, this is not the fault of the teacher or the school, and maybe not even entirely my fault either; after all, I was at the top of my class in math at my ordinary high school, and had no way of knowing my limitations, and my inability to exceed them. I’m almost 49 years old, and I still have anxiety dreams about that class, because the experience of failure was so traumatic that it made me radically doubt my own worth.
My own reasoning, and my own personal experience of academic failure, tells me that it is not good to put students in a position where they are set up to fail, and not just students. I’ve seen this happen with diversity hires in the workplace, in which everyone else in the office had to pretend that what was happening was not, in fact, happening — until the truth could no longer be denied, because work was not getting done. The point is not “no minorities should be hired or admitted because minorities can’t do the work,” but rather “people who aren’t qualified by training and background to do the work should not be hired or admitted because they are minorities.”
Maybe I’m wrong — but why can’t we at least talk about it? The fact that the audience in the Supreme Court chamber audibly gasped when Scalia made his comment indicates how taboo this commonsense point is for discussion among American elites. Steve Sailer is correct here:
I’m not sure if Scalia’s question is totally true, but, obviously, it’s essential to discuss it to have an intelligent debate on affirmative action. And that’s precisely why it was so shocking that Scalia dared bring it up. Respectability in modern America is proportional to the number of plausible and important ideas you would never dream of mentioning, even if you are a Supreme Court justice or a Presidential candidate.
This kind of thing, says Victor Davis Hanson, partly explains the enduring popularity of Donald Trump:
The public no longer respects U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, the VA, or the GSA. Even the once-hallowed Secret Service has become a near laughingstock of incompetency, corruption, and politicization. Is the purpose of NASA really Muslim outreach, as NASA chief Charles Bolden suggested in 2010? The world that we are told about by our government bears no resemblance to what we see and hear every day.
More:
In short, millions of citizens think the nation is headed for a financial reckoning. They feel threatened by radical Islamic terrorism. They sense that cultural and social stability has disappeared. And they know that expression of these worries can be a thought crime — hounded down by politicians, media, universities, and cultural institutions that do not enjoy broad public support and are not subject to the direct consequences of their own ideologies. Amid these crises and the present absence of responsible leadership, if there were not a demagogic Donald Trump ranting and raving on the scene, the country would probably have to invent something like him.
Whole thing here. Hanson is right.
I do not like Donald Trump. I think that he is an empty-suited demagogue. The one thing I will say for him, though, is that I admire his willingness to say what he thinks, and I enjoy the fact that the GOP establishment is powerless before him. As Ross Douthat writes today, after the failures of the Bush presidency, the Republicans have little authority. They have created the situation that now vexes them. And so have liberal elites, in part by making legitimate questions about public controversies taboo to discuss. People don’t stop talking about those things privately, or thinking those things, just because the managerial class has made it impossible to speak those concerns in the public square. Trump says them crudely, because he does not give a rat’s rear end for respectability, and nobody can fire him for political incorrectness.
David French writes about the role Trump plays in shaking up the boundaries of national discourse:
While many of Trump’s actual proposals are misguided, nonsensical, or untenable, by smashing the [Overton] window [Note: the range of ideas it is permissible to talk about in public — RD], he’s begun the process of freeing the American people from the artificial and destructive constraints of Left-defined discourse. Serious and substantive politicians like Ted Cruz will get a more respectful hearing, and PC shibboleths about allegedly boundless virtues of Islam and immigration will be treated with the skepticism they deserve. To be clear, this change is occurring both for good and for ill. The shattering of the window reflects the shattering of the American consensus, and the result will likely be deeper polarization, and even less civility, with further strains on the ties that bind our nation together. At the same time, however, the Left’s very success at defining the terms of discourse meant that the price of civility and unity was all too often an acceptance of liberal norms and manners. It meant swallowing liberal pieties and confining your discourse to Left-approved terms. In other words, it often meant surrender.
French says that this does not justify saying anything you want to just because it makes lefties mad, which seems to be the Trump strategy most of the time. Still, the “OMG Scalia is a racist!” freakout today serves as a great example of why Trump thrives, and why it’s mostly, but not entirely, a bad thing that he does. |
About
Pinball Labs is an amazing new pinball simulator, editor and API with highly realistic physics and visuals. Pinball Labs is being built with Unreal Engine 4 for PC, virtual reality headsets and virtual pinball cabinets.
We love gaming. And the gaming industry began with pinball. Like any great game, it's fun to play, easy to learn but hard to master. That's why pinball continues to evolve and thrill new audiences, from the 1930s to today!
In recent years, the marriage of traditional pinball and modern technology has inspired two great pinball communities: "virtual" and "homebrew".
Virtual pinball enthusiasts are gamers who design, share and play pinball games, simulated on the computer.
Homebrew pinball enthusiasts are builders who use modern advancements in 3D printing, laser cutting and electronics to build their own real, fully-functioning, pinball machines.
We aim to cater to both gamers and builders with Pinball Labs.
Highly accurate pinball simulation and gameplay
Built-in editor: Design and share your own tables!
Plugable API for connectivity and expansion
Designed for PC, VR headsets and Virtual Cabinets
Unparalleled physics and visuals
Built using Unreal Engine 4
Tons of user settings, saved per table
Pinball Labs includes a host of virtual assets like pop-bumpers, slings, lights, spinners, drop-targets, plungers, etc., Pinball Labs' editor will allow anyone to easily design and play their own virtual pinball machines with drag and drop simplicity.
Stationary elements such ramps, rubbers, habitrails, plastics and mini-playfields will be laid out using splines in the editor. Users will be able to not only adjust the visual appearance of each element but their physical properties as well, such as how "bouncy" or "slick" a surface is.
Pinball Labs supports three display modes:
"Desktop" for normal PC monitors and TVs.
for normal PC monitors and TVs. "VR" for virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive .
for virtual reality headsets like the and . "Cab" for multi-monitor virtual pinball cabinets.
Last but not least, our API supports connectivity of virtual pinball to real world hardware or emulators. Enthusiasts with virtual pinball cabinets will have the power to to hook up real world buttons, lights, solenoids and other physical feedback devices directly to Pinball Labs' simulation. Real world pin-builders can use Pinball Labs as a testing environment for research and development: Game play and controller logic can be troubleshot inexpensively in the virtual realm, before committing resources to expensive parts, labor and materials.
The plugable API library provides complete scriptable access to:
All virtual pinball devices and displays - every lamp, switch, coil, flasher, LED and DMD
and displays - every lamp, switch, coil, flasher, LED and DMD Real-time physics simulation - for plunger and cabinet nudging controls
A wide assortment of real world hardware devices - such as buttons, solenoids, flashers, LEDs and DMDs
- such as buttons, solenoids, flashers, LEDs and DMDs Cameras and the projection matrix - for headtracking plugins using IR or Kinect
plugins using or A Pinball Controller abstraction - for connecting emulators or pinball development frameworks
abstraction - for connecting or pinball development frameworks Environmental lighting controls
Alpha Demo
Give our "proof of concept" demo a try! It's especially fun with the Oculus Rift DK2 virtual reality headset!
Download Pinball Labs "Proof of Concept" Alpha Demo
Funding Distribution
* Unreal Engine 4 royalties are 5% after the initial $3,000 earned each quarter.
** With hopefully a little left over for caffeine and pizza.
What's Left to Do
Editor UI
Finalizing API and scripting
More playfield parts and components
More physics refinements
UE4 engine modifications: multiple-monitor, view matrix
Online leaderboards
Performace tuning
Polish, polish and more polish!
Stretch Goals!
These features we would love to include in Pinball Labs but require additional funding.
Device Workshop*
Mac and Linux support
Multiplayer support with voice chat
Stereoscopic support for 3D TVs and monitors
Additional scripting language support
Eye tracking support for virtual pinball cabs
*Design your own virtual pinball devices built from 3D models, virtual solenoids, motors, springs, switches and lights!
Join Us!
Most of all, we want Pinball Labs to be a lot of fun! Join us on our adventure to write the next chapter of Pinball's time-honored, storied gaming tradition, by making our Kickstarter a reality. Make a pledge today and spread the word about Pinball Labs! |
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Getty Images German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück says he's as baffled as anyone.
The German Finance Ministry declared itself shocked -- shocked! -- on Wednesday at the news that a state lending bank, KfW, had transferred 300 million ($426 million) to Lehman Brothers in New York on Monday, just after the investment bank collapsed.
"What we have had to read today is astonishing and exasperating," Finance Ministry spokesman Torsten Albig told reporters. "We expect a swift explanation of such a technical failure, which is inexplicable to us."
The trouble is, KfW is overseen by the Finance Ministry, among other elements of the German government, and the country's finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, holds ultimate responsibility for the bank's health. Ratings agency S&P said KfW's sudden exposure to such a loss would not hurt the bank's credit; but KfW was already burdened by the collapse of another German bank, IKB, in the wake of the subprime crisis last winter. KfW was IKB's largest shareholder, and it oversaw a deal -- on behalf of the public -- to sell the bank to American investors at the firesale price of 100 million. The bargain basement sale, however, came only after taxpayers were required to pay billions to bail IKB out.
The money transfer between KfW and Lehman was called an erroneous swap -- a swap being a derivative agreement between two parties to exchange one stream of cash flow for another. German papers on Thursday morning are no less shocked by the deal than the Finance Ministry, and they want an explanation for what seems like terrific mismanagement of publicly insured money.
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:
"Who is responsible when something goes wrong in a state-run bank? A range of politicians sit at the head of KfW's supervisory board -- from Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück (a Social Democrat) and Michael Glos (a Christian Democrat) to the head of the Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine. Of course these bank managers can't personally follow every securities transaction. But it must have been clear to these political leaders that something had gone wrong with the bank's risk-management capability -- at the very latest in February, when IKB, the medium-sized bank which the KfB controlled with a majority of shares, collapsed."
"The IKB debacle cost the KfW -- and, in the end, German taxpayers -- billions. Handlers around Steinbrück and Glos should have done everything in their power to prevent another collapse. Instead, Steinbrück has used every opportunity to wag his finger (at private banks) and talk down the damage this financial crisis will cause the German economy. Anyone who calls for better risk management in private banking has to first make sure that his own house is in order."
The business daily Handelsblatt writes:
"There are certain mistakes that just can't be allowed to happen at a bank. Transferring 300 million to Lehman Brothers -- an institution that had already shown itself to be a candidate for bankruptcy the night before -- is one of those mistakes. The state-owned lending bank KfW will now have to provide a detailed account of how it could have made such a misstep. What's more important, though, is that it needs to take a really close look at its in-house risk-management department and make the changes needed to make sure something like this can never happen again."
"KfW has undergone immense growth over the past few years. It has grown more entwined in the capital market and thereby diversified its own refinancing. But now is the time for Germany's ninth-largest bank (in total assets) to ask itself whether the growth of its internal structures has kept sufficient pace with the bank's other growth and whether it still has all of its other functions under complete control."
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"When the supervisory board of Germany's state-owned lender bank KfW meets on Thursday, there's likely to be an animated debate. The overseers on the hopelessly bloated 37-member board won't manage to dodge the question of how the bank ran billions and billions of taxpayer euros into the ground. So far, the government bailout of IKB Bank, partially owned by KfW and deeply exposed in the subprime crisis, has cost 11 billion, with 9 billion of that coming from the federal budget, from KfW and from the taxpayers. Freed of those liabilities, with 2 billion in fresh capital and a debtor warrant to the tune of over 1 billion, IKB is now being sold for just over 100 million. That isn't what good business deals look like. To top things off, the bank on Monday transferred 300 million to Lehman Brothers as it declared bankruptcy. It just doesn't get any more dilettantish than that. The board shouldn't let this pass with a nod -- instead they should be asking what right a KfW bank run like this has to exist."
The leftist daily Die Tageszeitung writes:
"Anyone who watched TV, listened to the radio or read the newspaper over the weekend saw or heard images showing Lehman Brothers employees rushing to clean out their offices. But the two KfW employees must have slept through all that on their well-earned weekend. Now they'll likely lose their jobs. Business-friendly opposition politicians like the Free Democratic Party aren't the only ones criticizing the bank and asking how state bank employees could deal so incompetently with money that is backed with almost limitless taxpayer guarantees?"
"The Lehman collapse could cost the German banking system a total of 6 billion. It's not even certain whether the Association of German Banks' Deposit Guarantee Fund will be sufficient to cover the sum. The banks may have to pump more money in to cover the losses, which could affect the overall economy. The same banks that for far too long earned easy money through mortgages for American junk real estate have now become overly cautious, and are demanding massive liability premiums. The economy is cooling off markedly -- and jobs will soon be lost. It's high time that politicians, not just in Germany, put regulation of the financial markets at the top of their agendas."
-- Michael Scott Moore, 11a.m. CET |
Pentagon officials have confirmed that US ground troops were involved in a raid against an al-Shabaab-held town in Somalia, arriving by helicopter in a raid which also involved Somali forces, and which they say killed “more than 10″ fighters.
The US rarely discusses its troops in Somalia, which are nominally “advisers,” Officials suggested today that the troops were again in an “advisory” role and that they didn’t go “all the way” in the raid. They were involved enough that al-Shabaab confirmed their presence.
Shabaab reported that the attack only killed one of their fighters, and only attacked a single checkpoint, as opposed to an entire town. Somali officials suggested the attack was aimed at an “illegal taxation checkpoint.”
This disputed death toll comes after a massive US drone strike against Somalia, which US officials claim killed over 150, Somali officials claim killed over 200, and which al-Shabaab insisted killed far less, maintaining they never have that many of their fighters together in a single place.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz |
TAMPA -- The New York Rangers used to call Anton Stralman "Mr. Casual" because nothing seemed to excite him, not even the biggest games, including five Game 7s he played with them from 2012-14.
The Rangers won all those Game 7s. Now they're hoping Stralman's unwavering poise and uncanny ability to play a fast game in slow motion doesn't catch on with the rest of his Tampa Bay Lightning teammates in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final on Friday at Madison Square Garden (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, CBC, TVA Sports).
Stralman has been a leader by example for the Lightning this season, and they'll need to take their cues from him in a hostile road environment if they want to reach the 2015 Stanley Cup Final.
"When the pressure is at its highest and somebody walks out of there as calm as can be, that's Anton Stralman," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "Our team, you just hear the guys on the bench praise him, the things he's done for us. Having that confidence that we get to throw him over the boards every second shift, it's just a luxury for us."
Stralman has never lost a Game 7 in his career. He ran his record in them to 6-0 in the first round against the Detroit Red Wings, when he scored an empty-net goal and played 22:38 in Tampa Bay's 2-0 victory.
He says it's his calm demeanor that enables him to have success when the stakes are at their highest.
"I'm a pretty calm guy. Not just on the ice, but overall I usually don't get too excited," Stralman said. "That's why I have that little lid on out there. In big games it's always fun, and I don't think you have to do anything special to amp yourself up. The game itself when you go on the ice is quite exciting, and you don't have to add anything extra into the mix.
"It doesn't matter what game I play, I always go in with the same mentality. Hockey itself doesn't change no matter how big the stakes are. It's another game and it's about playing well, doing everything you can to pull your load for the team. It's just hockey."
Just hockey. That's the attitude players who have been there and done that typically have. Nothing phases them. Stralman is that player for the Lightning. He is all the time.
Players and coaches who have been around him long enough are amazed at his ability to stay within the eye of the storm regardless of how the winds shift.
If the game is moving fast, his mind isn't. The right play is the one Stralman seems to make all the time. He's been compared by one media outlet in this series to Nicklas Lidstrom, a seven-time Norris Trophy winner and future Hockey Hall of Fame member.
That's kind of funny considering Cooper's line since getting to know the defenseman in training camp is, "Stralman may never win the Norris Trophy but his partner will."
He might not be wrong. Stralman's defense partner is the uber-talented Victor Hedman, who said he's never had the type of chemistry he has with Stralman with any other defense partner he's ever had.
"I think last year with Sami Salo was also very good, but with [Stralman] it's another level," Hedman said. "I wish I could tell you the reason why."
Lightning associate coach Rick Bowness has his theory.
Hint: It's because of Stralman.
"Anton can play with anybody; he really can," Bowness said. "When you have that much hockey sense and that much vision, you can play with anybody. Victor has got incredible abilities himself, but Anton is always just where he is supposed to be."
Bowness said Stralman reminds him of Teppo Numminen with more offense. Bowness coached Numminen with the Arizona Coyotes.
"Teppo was so consistent, but his positional play, his calmness, his read of the play was always in slow motion," Bowness said. "Anton is the same way. Some guys have the ability to see the game in slow motion, and others don't. You're always telling players to work, work, work and keep going, but you don't want the mind to work as fast as the body. The mind has to slow down, and Anton has that ability. That's why there is never a panic."
Part of Stralman's almost Zen-like style comes from perspective he's gained as a 28-year-old father of two boys and two girls, all between the ages of 8 and 3.
"You kind of automatically get disconnected from hockey as soon as you get home," he said. "You see the kids, and they don't care at all about how your game went. They're happy if you win, but if not it's the same to them. It keeps me humble."
Cooper said he knew from watching Stralman in the Stanley Cup Final last year how valuable he was to the Rangers. He called Stralman their "hidden MVP" because he did everything well and got none of the credit.
"Stralman always seemed to be the other guy, yet when we go through the tapes, he was always the guy on the ice when the other teams were putting out the best players," Cooper said. "He is definitely one of those guys you do not appreciate until you have him on your team."
The Rangers passed on the opportunity to re-sign Stralman, choosing instead to sign 38-year-old Dan Boyle for the same reported money per season ($4.5 million) but for three fewer years than Stralman got from the Lightning on July 1, 2014.
It hurt Stralman that he was never offered a contract by the Rangers.
"All I wanted was really to stay," he said. "It didn't work out that way. I was very disappointed that they didn't show more interest than they did. I really gave my heart and soul to that team for three years and I thought they could have handled it with a little more respect."
Stralman said the Rangers never communicated with him or his agent before July 1. It left him having to make a quick life decision, which never is easy with four kids.
"If they knew from the beginning that I wasn't coming back, I would have appreciated them telling me that so I could have moved along and prepared for what was coming," Stralman said.
Cooper said Stralman was at the top of Tampa Bay's list going into free agency, and the Lightning moved quickly to sign him. The official announcement was made about three hours after the market opened.
"It was July, and we were looking at who are we going to bring in. Who are the winners? Who are the guys that have been there before and have found a way?" Cooper said. "At the top of that list was Anton Stralman. When we were fortunate enough to ink him, I knew that was a turn for our team."
Now Stralman is one win from knocking out his old team. "Mr. Casual" gets the opportunity to do it in Game 7.
The moment will not be too big for him. It never has been. No moment ever is.
"It seems like he's never under pressure," said Lightning right wing Ryan Callahan, who played for the Rangers with Stralman.
--- |
PSG turned into a European giant after being taken over by QIA in May 2011, but how has their spending compared to the first 14 months of City and Chelsea's opulent ownerships?
PSG'S TOTAL SPENDING UNDER QIA
DATE PLAYER (POSITION)
TRANSFER FEE
12 Jun 2011 Kevin Gameiro (Forward)
€11m 25 Jul 2011 Milan Bisevac (Defender)
€3.2m 25 Jul 2011 Blaise Matuidi (Midfielder)
€7.5m 25 Jul 2011 Jeremy Menez (Winger)
€8m 28 Jul 2011 Salvatore Sirigu (Goalkeeper)
€3.9m 28 Jul 2011 Mohamed Sissoko (Midfielder)
€7m 6 Aug 2011 Javier Pastore (Midfielder)
€42m 27 Aug 2011 Diego Lugano (Defender) €3m 12 Jan 2012 Maxwell (Defender) €7m 27 Jan 2012 Alex(Defender) €5m 31 Jan 2012 Thiago Motta (Defender) €10m 2 Jul 2012 Ezequiel Lavezzi (Winger)
€30m 14 Jul 2012 Thiago Silva (Defender)
€42m 18 Jul 2012 Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Forward)
€23m 18 Jul 2012 Marco Verratti (Midfielder) €10m TOTAL €212.6m
HOW PSG'S 14-MONTH SPENDING COMPARES TO CITY AND CHELSEA
€283.6m
CHELSEA €234.3m
MANCHESTER CITY
€212.6 m
PSG
Pastore
PSG'S PROBABLE XI
GOALKEEPER
Salvatore Sirigu
Salvatore Sirigu
RIGHT-BACK
CENTRE BACK
CENTRE BACK
LEFT-BACK
Christophe Jallet
Thiago Silva
Alex
Maxwell
DEFENSIVE MIDFIELD
DEFENSIVE MIDFIELD
Momo Sissoko
Thiago Motta
RIGHT WING
ATTACKING MIDFIELD
LEFT WING
Jeremy Menez
Javier Pastore
Ezequiel Lavezzi
CENTRE FORWARD
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Zlatan Ibrahimovic
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By Robin Bairner | French Football EditorOn May 31, 2011, a new dawn was signalled for Paris Saint-Germain when they were taken over by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). Previously a big club floundering in the middle of the Ligue 1 table due to a recent history of mismanagement and a lack of direction, the first step to becoming a European superpower had been taken.It was a dramatic shift in the power of the Parisian club, the type of which is increasingly being lamented by purists in the modern game. Roman Abramovich’s takeover of Chelsea set the trend towards the start of the millennium, while the purchasing of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour represents the other successful acquisition of a high-profile club.Over the course of the two years, QIA have lavished over €200m on signings for the Parc des Princes outfit, breaking the French transfer record in the process as they acquired Javier Pastore for a reported €42m last season.Not to be outdone this summer, PSG have already bolstered their squad by adding Ezequiel Lavezzi before a sensational double swoop for AC Milan duo Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic – two players of undisputed world-class ability, the type of which haven’t been acquired by a Ligue 1 club in many years.Ibra arrives for a relatively modest fee of €23m, but he comfortably sits in French football's top 10 most expensive acquisitions, while Lavezzi's €30m and Thiago Silva's €40m are both in the top four, which is monopolised by PSG signings (the other being their addition of Nicolas Anelka from Real Madrid back in 2000).Even youngster Marco Verratti arrives with a big reputation for a teenager, and he has a price tag to match, with the capital side paying Pescara €10m for his acquisition.The manner in which PSG’s squad has evolved may have been dramatic, but it has not been the swift transformation that Chelsea experienced in the weeks following Roman Abramovich’s purchase in July 2003. Funded by the Russian billionaire, the Blues would sign over €150m worth of talent in their first summer, capturing Damien Duff, Hernan Crespo, Claude Makelele, Adrian Mutu and Juan Sebastian Veron for fees greater than €19m.In total, the net spending of Chelsea in Abramovich’s first year came to a deficit of over €170m.A year later, Claudio Ranieri, who now coaches super-rich Monaco in France’s Ligue 2, was jettisoned and Jose Mourinho given the Stamford Bridge reigns. Although the squad was trimmed, spending was not cut back, with Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho and Arjen Robben the marquee additions. The Blues' total spend would come up just short of €150m, nearly matching the previous summer's effort.Manchester City’s alterations were rather less dramatic, although this was partially caused by their takeover in 2008 occurring in late August, with the transfer window rapidly shutting. Although they dramatically captured Robinho from Real Madrid with the seconds ticking away for a mammoth fee of €43m, stating their ambition to the world in the process, there was little initial change to the squad, with Vincent Kompany, Pablo Zabaleta and Shaun-Wright Philips the only players they were able to scramble into the squad.Time might have been short, but over €70m was spent.It was in January that City did much of their work, plundering the domestic market to sign Wayne Bridge, Shay Given and Craig Bellamy, while Nigel De Jong arrived from abroad, with close to the same sum paid once more.A year later, they really began to flex their muscles. Carlos Tevez arriving from under the noses of crosstown rivals Manchester United was their greatest statement of intent, with the unlikely nature of this addition mirroring that of PSG’s capture of Ibrahimovic. Meanwhile, the signing of Joleon Lescott for a princely sum could be seen as their equivalent of Les Parisiens’ Thiago Silva capture.City were serious; and they showed that by spending nearly €139m that second summer.PSG’s shopping spree doesn’t quite match that of their English predecessors in terms of scale yet, but with rumours that they could yet move for Real Madrid’s Kaka – the question of how he fits into the team clearly less considered than the size of his fee – they could yet draw level with their Premier League counterparts.Spending money is easy, if you have it, that is. But getting value for that money is more difficult and it is what PSG will ultimately be judged on in years to come.Comparisons with Mourinho’s Chelsea are tricky, as that was a team built from the back, with defensive solidarity paramount, whereas PSG have focused much of their spending on the other end of the field.In terms of an attacking trio, there is little doubt that the French club’s options are now far superior to the Joe Cole, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Damien Duff triumvirate most frequently used by the Portuguese. This was, remember, a time when Drogba was not fully established and Robben was persistently plagued by injury.With the summer additions of Lavezzi and Ibrahimovic, PSG are oozing offensive talent. This pair are augmented by Jeremy Menez, Nene and, not to mention France internationals Kevin Gameiro and Guillaume Hoarau, who have rarely had a look in under Ancelotti.Equally, though, Chelsea’s defence was far better than an area that has been a real Achilles heel for PSG, whose massive purchase of Thiago Silva is a symptom of their particular weakness.Manchester City were constructed along the same route as the Paris giants, seemingly stockpiling attacking players with little consideration as to the system they could be deployed in. Mercurial talents Carlos Tevez, Emmanuel Adebayor and Craig Bellamy offered fine offensive options, and would score the goals to back this up, but at the back City struggled.In their first two seasons, the Citizens failed to capture a defensive player of Thiago Silva’s stature, and as a result they failed to make truly significant headway in the Premier League - finishing 10th and then fifth.Chelsea’s ascent was quicker due to the tactical acumen of Mourinho, but the relative strength of the league meant that the manager was more important. They won the title under the Portuguese at the first attempt, and Ancelotti will be aiming to match this feat in Ligue 1 this term.PSG’s level of spending means that anything other than first place will be cast as a disappointment for the Parc des Princes club, whose real test of strength will come in the Champions League. But just as the Blues discovered, this is a very different challenge to the domestic game, taking Abramovich & Co. nine seasons before scaling that particular summit back in May this year.For long-term success, even two summers of spending is unlikely to be enough for PSG. |
Earlier this week, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists who invented blue light-emitting diodes. The work was crucial for producing bright white LED lighting, which is more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs. But there's a possible downside to widespread use of LEDs: They could make light pollution worse.
Related Content Your Cheat Sheet to the 2014 Nobel Prizes
The ease with which we can light up our world at night has transformed human civilization, but all that excess light can cause problems for wildlife—especially nocturnal creatures. The amount and direction of light aren’t the only problems. The various wavelengths of light emitted by lamps can affect animals differently.
For decades streetlights have generally used yellow, high-pressure sodium vapor lamps, which light up by sending an arc of electricity through vaporized sodium metal. The lamps are pretty efficient and powerful. The intense yellow color they emit isn’t all that attractive, though, which is why these lights have been restricted to use outdoors. Now, white LEDs are quickly replacing the sodium lamps, but a study published in the October issue of Ecological Applications shows why that might be an environmental problem.
“The main driver of the ecological impacts that result from a shift to white LED lighting will be the increase in emissions of short wavelength ‘blue’ light,” Stephen Pawson, an entomologist at the New Zealand research institute Scion, said in an email. “The behavior of many animals is influenced by light in the blue portion of the spectrum. For example, insects have specific photoreceptors for blue light. Thus large-scale adoption of ‘white’ lighting is likely to increase the impacts of nighttime lighting on all species sensitive to ‘blue’ light.”
Industrial white LEDs actually start with a blue LED that is covered with a phosphor coating, which absorbs some of the short-wavelength blue light and reemits it in longer wavelengths. This combination of short and long wavelengths makes the light appear white to human eyes. In the study, Pawson and his Scion colleague Martin Bader looked at the effects of industrial white LEDs versus sodium lamps on insects. They set out the lamps in a field at night, placing sheets of a sticky material next to the lights to catch any insects that came near.
On average, the white LEDs attracted 48 percent more flying invertebrates than the sodium lamps. Pawson and Bader tested six white LEDs that differed in the amount of blue light emitted. The researchers hypothesized that certain white LEDs might be less attractive to invertebrates than others. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“We could not reduce the ecological affects by modifying the [LEDs] because each of them still emitted enough ‘blue’ light to have an effect,” Pawson said in an email. He is now looking at filters to see if removing more of the blue wavelengths will make the lights less attractive to insects.
If installed as currently designed, white LEDs could exacerbate pest problems, Pawson and Bader note in their study. Midge swarms, for instance, are already known to be more attracted to white lighting. The study also highlights the importance of location when deciding on lighting. The researchers point out that gypsy moths, an invasive pest species, are also attracted to white light, so installing white LEDs near an active port, for instance, could increase the risk that the moths would lay eggs on a boat and end up invading a new region of the world. |
The Chinese economy expanded 7.8 percent in 2012, the government has said, the worst performance in 13 years, in the face of weakness at home and in key overseas markets.
But gross domestic product (GDP) grew 7.9 percent in the final three months of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, as it snapped seven straight quarters of slowing growth in a positive sign for the spluttering global recovery.
China's GDP reached $8.28 trillion in 2012, cementing its position as the world's second-largest economy after the US.
Annual growth slowed for a second straight year but the figures were just ahead of expectations, with economists surveyed by the AFP news agency having projected GDP growth of 7.7 percent in 2012, and 7.8 percent in the fourth quarter.
The official statistics come as optimism grows among analysts that China will pick up steam in 2013 after two years of relative weakness.
"The international economic environment remains complicated this year and... there are still unbalanced conflicts in the Chinese economy," NBS spokesman Ma Jiantang told reporters.
However, Ma added: "We expect China's economy to continue to grow in a stable manner in 2013."
'Shaky'
China's growth has slowed amid weakness in the global economy, particularly the key export markets of the US and Europe, and as the government took steps to cool a once red hot property market.
The annual growth figure was the lowest since 1999, when it stood at 7.6 percent, according to official statistics.
But IHS Global Insight senior economist Ren Xianfang said the worst was probably over for China's economy and that it had avoided a "hard landing", although challenges remained as it entered a "new normal" of slower growth.
"The rebound by itself looks quite shaky," she wrote in a report after the data. "The trajectory of recovery is flat, mirroring the shallow downturn it's rebounding from."
Growth had slowed for seven straight quarters through September, when the economy expanded 7.4 percent, the worst since early 2009. Annual GDP grew 9.3 percent in 2011 and 10.4 percent in 2010.
Qian Liu, from the Economist Intelligence Unit, told Al Jazeera that the figures were no real surprise. "It is very much in line with the market expectations," she said.
"The third quarter of 2012 was the slowest, and the last quarter was better. Looking ahead into 2013, we are confident that it will be even better. We at EUI are looking at an 8.5 percent growth."
Power handover
Successfully managing the economy is a key concern for China's leaders who derive much of their claims to legitimacy from the country's reform-led economic rise, which has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past three decades.
The government is due to formally conclude a once-in-a-decade power handover in March with Xi Jinping, already named Communist Party chief, becoming president, and Li Keqiang taking over as premier in charge of day-to-day administration.
The World Bank said last month that China's economy is expected to expand 8.4 percent this year, but added that longer-term GDP growth is expected to moderate as China's leaders move away from a growth model based on investment and exports. |
WikiLeaks founder uses Australian radio interview to highlight US attempts to draw up charges against him
Julian Assange has admitted that he has no idea whether his bid for political asylum in Ecuador to avoid extradition to Sweden will be successful.
The WikiLeaks founder, who has sought refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he did not know when a decision on his asylum request would be made.
His comments came as one of his most prominent supporters, Jemima Khan, said she would like to see him confront the rape allegations made against him by two Swedish women.
Khan, who faces losing the £20,000 she put towards his bail, said on Twitter that the two women "have a right to a response".
But Assange said his asylum bid had highlighted what he insists are attempts by the US government to draw up charges against him for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret military and diplomatic documents via WikiLeaks.
"The department of justice in the United States has been playing a little game, and that little game is that they refuse to confirm or deny the existence of a grand jury," Assange said in a phone interview with ABC radio. "We are hoping what I am doing now will draw attention to the underlying issues."
A Virginia grand jury is studying evidence that might link Assange to US soldier Bradley Manning, who has been charged with aiding the enemy by passing the secret files to WikiLeaks and is awaiting trial.
No action has yet been taken against Assange and the Australian government has said there is no indication an indictment is pending.
Assange agreed but said a case was being built against him, claiming there was now a 48,135 page FBI file on him and WikiLeaks.
"Of course not, at the moment the matter is before the grand jury," he said. "Until it comes out of the grand jury there will not be such evidence afforded."
Explaining the reasoning behind his asylum bid, Assange said: "We had heard that the Ecuadoreans were sympathetic in relation to my struggles and the struggles of [WikiLeaks] with the United States.
Ecuador's embassy has said a decision on the case was expected soon.WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said "it could take hours, it could take days" before a decision was made. Assange would stay at the embassy until the matter was settled, she added. "I assume that if asylum is not granted, he will leave."
Per Samuelson, one of the WikiLeaks founder's two Swedish lawyers, said Assange was camping out "in an office that has been prepared with overnight sleeping facilities."
"I don't get the feeling that they [embassy staff] are in a hurry to get rid of him. He's welcome there," he added.
Britain's supreme court last month upheld a high court ruling from last year that Assange could be extradited to Sweden, where he faces accusations of raping a woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm while on a visit to give a lecture in August 2010.
Assange says the sex was consensual and the allegations against him are politically motivated. |
"When will be a good time for deciding our own fate?"
"Tomorrow, two years from now, after 10 years, when those who are opposed to it now will never change their minds? So why shouldn't we exercise our right to self-determination?"
These are the questions you get from Kurds of all ages if you ask them why are they holding a vote for independence now.
There are two sides to life in Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. One part is in buzzing high-end cafes with affluent Kurds whose shiny SUVs line the streets. And then there is the majority of the people, sipping tea and going about their lives in the regular bazaars and neighbourhoods.
Almost all are convinced they need their own state.
Biza Barzo – Kurdish youth activist I believe that the clear majority favour a "Yes" vote for independence and, even if one believes that denominational differences are constructed and that the formation of new nation-states ultimately does not solve the "national question", it is hard not to accept that there is a powerful moral case for Kurdish self-rule in Iraq, given our grievances throughout history.
The Kurds are a diverse group of people, not just based on their socioeconomic but also on religious, sectarian, political and tribal influences. But there is one thing that unites them all - a deep-rooted Kurdish nationalism, an identity they are proud of and say they have fought hard to maintain.
The nearly 41,000-square kilometres of Kurdish and contested areas are holding a referendum that will pave the way to the larger issue of whether they want to secede from Iraq. There has been some opposition from within but on the mechanism of the vote, its timings - but no side has come out against the prospect of an independent Kurdish state.
That opposition has come from outside of the Kurdish region. United States, Iran, Turkey and the Iraqi government have all called for the vote to be postponed. President Masoud Barzani's government has been treading a tight rope with regional powers such as Iran and Turkey, but its relationship with the central government in Baghdad has been on a downward spiral.
Iraq's Supreme Court ordered the regional government not to hold the referendum, but in the absence of guarantees and a lucrative alternative, Barzani is adamant he will hold the referendum on September 25.
Dispute on Kirkuk
Besides economic fears in the land-locked region that heavily relies on Turkey for its imports, there is the issue of security and a possible confrontation with Iraqi forces. Baghdad accuses the Kurds of expanding their original boundaries to contested areas during the fight against ISIL.
Barzani has offered a "special status" for Kirkuk if its people vote to remain under Kurdish leadership. You can't miss the love affair between Kirkuk and its oil as soon as you enter the city, there are tankers and visible oil field flares in almost all parts of the city.
Gulabagh Sabah – Kurdish volunteer aid worker This referendum is the last chance Kurds will get. I think that we should take it and establish the long-waited-for Kurdish state. After all, staying one with Iraq is impossible. Iraq is being ruled by Iran, Saudi and Turkey. And the US is staying away from the mess they created in 2003 here.
Analysts point out the oil-town is at the heart of the dispute because all sides want its oil and gas to be directed to their coffers. The Kurdish Regional Government insists it has tried for years to solve the issue, but Baghdad is not serious in implementing article 140 of the constitution to allow disputed areas to decide their own fate.
Baghdad sees this as an opportunistic move after the coming defeat of ISIL, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has warned the option of using military force is not off the table.
Everyone seems to have dug their heels in and taken a position, but calling off the referendum seems increasingly unlikely.
One Kurdish official summarised the situation to me with these words: "The world wasn't ready for the separation in the Balkans, and it will never be ready for a change in the status quo. But guess what, when it happens they have to accept it and deal with it." |
In response to Mitch McConnell Decries Obama Regime’s Culture Of Intimidation and Stifling Of Speech (Video):
Labeling James Rosen a co-conspirator in espionage (working with a foreign power) wasn’t some lapse by the Obama Administration.
It’s actually White House policy.
Incredible story from McClatchy.
Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct. Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage. …
The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”
Sounds like another BOLO for “Tea Party.”
A very serious attitude on leaks makes perfect sense within certain parts of the government — the military, the CIA, the NSA, the nuclear weapons parts of the Department of Energy.
But at the Department of Agriculture, Education, or the FDA? What is this except a thuggish attempt to make sure that no damaging information about government operations ever makes it into citizens’ hands?
It is right that the military should be militarized. But the entire federal bureaucracy? Loose Lips Sink Ships at the Navy; do they sink ships at the Department of Agriculture as well?
Ah well, perhaps I’m just exaggerating and getting all panicky over nothing. I mean, it’s not as if non-national-security agencies like Department of Agriculture — you know, the Corn Police — have tutorials instructing its workers how to look for traitors and spies or anything creepy like that.
An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.
Ah. I… see. |
I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted. At the speed VR is moving, there’s no such thing as a quiet month, but October in particular has been malicious. We’ve had big events from practically every major headset maker with announcements that mean big things for both the short and long-term futures.
So what was the biggest announcement of the last 30 days? Let’s take a look.
Google Daydream Is Weeks Away
Until now, Gear VR has been the only word in high-end mobile VR, but that will be changing in a matter of days. Daydream, Google’s mobile VR ecosystem for Android, is almost here. The first headset, Daydream View, hits in November, with the first compatible handset, the Pixel and Pixel XL already available. Heading into 2017 you can be sure that Daydream is going to play a huge role in the mobile VR ecosystem as more phones and headsets are added to the list. In the long run, this could be one of the most significant launches for VR so far.
Oculus Touch Is Here In December, Standalone Inside-Out Headset Coming
Oculus’ Connect conference was packed with news, but the two biggest headlines were the date and price for its Touch controllers (launching in December for $199), and the reveal of its standalone headset prototype, Santa Cruz, with inside-out tracking. Touch is going to be big for the Rift in both the short and long term, but the prototype for untethered VR is going to be even bigger in the years to come.
Valve Has Some Exciting New Controllers In The Works
Just a week after Google and Oculus shared their news, Valve was ready to show something new for SteamVR. Its Steam Dev Days event played host to the reveal of prototype Vive controllers, that allow you to simulate actually picking up an object with your fingers, rather than simply pulling a trigger to grab something.
Gear VR’s Latest Compatible Phone Is No More
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for VR this month. Samsung’s anticipated new smartphone, the Galaxy Note 7, ended up being a disaster for the company. Reports of exploding phones lead to an unfortunate worldwide recall but when those problems persisted Samsung called it quits entirely. That means what was meant to be the latest and greatest handset for Gear VR actually ended up not really existing at all. Oh well, there’s always the S8.
PlayStation VR Is Finally Here
It’s hard to believe but all three major VR headsets are now available for you to buy. It’s a moment we’ve only dreamed of for many years but it became a reality in mid-October when PlayStation VR finally launched. As far as headset releases go, it was reassuringly non-disastrous with solid reviews, plenty of units, and early hints at strong sales. With these three out, 2017 is going to be the first major year of consumer VR.
Microsoft Is Bringing Inside-Out Tracking To PCs Soon
Microsoft couldn’t let October go without one more major announcement. Surprising everyone, the company announced partnerships with the likes of Lenovo, Dell, and Acer to bring new headsets to PC, starting at $299 and boasting inside-out tracking. Obviously wires will limit the impact of those tracking solutions, but it could be a big step forward for PC-based VR. Of course, we haven’t actually used these headsets yet, so they could also be underwhelming.
–
It’s tough to pick which of these will prove to be the most significant piece of news in the long-run, though it’s probably safe to say the Note 7 mishap will go down as a footnote in the history of the Gear VR. Personally, I’m probably most excited about the prospect of the new SteamVR controllers, though these too might just be another step on the road to something much bigger. PlayStation VR has had a great start and might be the most popular headset for the foreseeable future, but the answer might lie further beyond.
In all likelihood, the answer is probably a three-way tie under one subject; inside-out tracking. Microsoft sounds like it will be first to market with this essential new means of user-tracking, giving us a first taste of simpler, more liberating VR. Oculus won’t make any compromises in its eventual release of a standalone headset, making it one of the more promising solutions on the horizon. Daydream, meanwhile, might not feature a solution right now, but with Google Tango 3D scanning also seeing its first consumer release in a phone soon, that is likely in the works as well.
Tagged with: Daydream, inside-out tracking, SteamVR |
Flyback Converters for Dummies
A simple flyback converter high voltage power supply for NIXIE tubes.
Ronald Dekker
In words: the inductor does not allow for any abrupt changes in the current. When a change in applied voltage occurs, the inductor will always generate an e.m.f. that counteracts this change. When the circuit is interrupted for instance, the inductor will still try to maintain the current flowing by generating a very high voltage over its terminals. Usually this will result in a spark in which the magnetic energy stored in the inductor is released. This particular behavior of inductors is used in boost converters to boost the voltage to levels above the battery voltage.
Materials like ferrites can be used to increase the magnetic flux in an inductor. When a magnetic field is applied to a ferrite the small magnetic domains in the ferrite will align with this field and increase its magnitude. In this way inductors can be made smaller and with lesser turns and thus with smaller series resistances (smaller losses). Note that the flipping of these domains costs some energy, but in good ferrites this can be very small.
With increasing magnetic flux more and more magnetic domains point into the direction of the field. At a certain point all the magnetic domains point into the direction of the field and at that point we say that the ferrite saturates. Any further increase in current will only result in a small increase of flux, basically as if the ferrite was not present. Since most ferrites have a very high permeability, already small currents can result in a high magnetic flux. As a result the ferrite will saturate at a current which is not practical for power conversion applications
Ferrite cores for inductors and transformers for power applications therefore have an air gap. An air gap reduces the effective permeability and thus the magnetic flux. The larger the air gap, the stronger the reduction in flux an the higher the maximum current the inductor can handle. We say that the magnetic energy is stored in the air gap. The photograph shows several inductors for DC/DC converters salvaged from old PCBs from PCs, Laptops etc. If you consider playing with DC/DC converters it is best to buy at least one decent inductor with a known inductance, series resistance and maximum current. The inductor in front of the picture is the 100uH "reference" inductor I use.
The boost converter
The boost converter is perhaps the simplest of all switched mode converters. It uses a single inductor without the need for "difficult" transformers. It's working can best be explained with the simplified circuit diagram given in Fig. 2. Here the transistor is represented by an ideal switch and the control circuitry has been omitted. The dissipation by the NIXIE tubes is represented by the load resistor Rload. A high voltage capacitor C is used to buffer the output voltage. In a typical configuration the input voltage would be something like Vbat=12V and the output voltage Vout=180V.
Figure 2 Simplified circuit diagram of a boost converter.
At t=0 the switch closes (Fig. 2A). As a result the current through the inductor will start to increase linearly according to I=(Vbat/L)*t. At a certain moment the switch is opened by the control circuit (Fig. 2B). The current at that monent has reached a certain value Ipeak. We have seen in the previous section that the inductor wants to keep the current flowing through it's windings constant, whatever it takes. The switch is open, so the only way the inductor can achieve this is to forward bias diode D so that the current (and thus the energy) can be dumped in the buffer capacitor C. Now remember that the capacitor was charged to 180V! So in order to forward bias the diode, the inductor has to generate an e.m.f. (or induction voltage) of something like 180-12=168V., something like a "controlled spark. The current now quickly drops according to I=Ipeak-(Vout/L)*t. For Vbat=12V and Vout=180V this means that it will take only a fifteenth (180/12) of the time it took to reach Ipeak when the switch was closed, to drop again from Ipeak to 0 now the switch is open. After a certain time the whole process repeats at a rate of f times per second.
So far so good. However, the boost converter has a serious disadvantage. To understand this we first have to consider the switch that we have been using. In a real circuit most likely a power MOS transistor will be used as the switching element. In the boost converter this transistor will have to handle both a high current when the switch is closed and a high blocking voltage when the switch is open! For the transistor this is a difficult combination. In order to make the transistor withstand high blocking voltages, the manufacturer of the transistor has to include regions in the transistor that will accommodate these voltages so that the intrinsic transistor will not breakdown. However, when the switch is closed (transistor conducting), these regions will result in additional parasitic series resistances and thus in an increased Ron. This is the reason why transistors with a high breakdown voltage always have a higher Ron than transistors with a lower breakdown voltage. Since the currents can be quite high, this inevitably means losses in the form of dissipation in the transistor. As we will see in one of the next sections this problem is solved in the fly-back converter by the use of a transformer.
By balancing the amount of power stored in the inductor to the amount of power dissipated in the load it is possible the calculate the output voltage of the boost converter.
Every second the amount of power dissipated by the load is:
A simple boost converter high voltage supply for NIXIEs
If you want to build a simple DC/DC converter to lighten up your NIXIEs and you don't care to much about the conversion efficiency, even if it means a (small) heatsink for the power transistor, then the boost converter is the best choice. But even if you think of building a real fly-back converter than it is a good idea to start with a simple boost converter. The boost converter only requires an "of the shelf" inductor and when you have it working it is easily converted into a fly-back converter by a few small modifications.
Figure 3 Simple 12-180V boost converter using the 555 as controller.
The circuit is very simple and closely follows the circuit topology of Fig. 2. For the transistor I have used a BUZ41A. This transistor is rated at a maximum Vds=500V and an on resistance of 1.5ohm at 4.5A. Equivalent or better types like the IRF730 will also perform well. The diode should be a fast switching type like the BYW95C or better. An old (computer) power supply will yield you most of these components. The inductor I picked from a catalogue and is 100µH with a few tenths of an ohm series resistance capable of handling several Amps of current.
The most interesting aspect of the circuit is how an ordinary 555 is used to regulate the output voltage. Now, there are hundreds of switched mode controllers ICs on the market which are all better suited for this job than the 555. The problem with all these ICs is that if you build a nice NIXIE clock using them, and at one moment in the future the IC breaks down, it is more than likely that it is already obsolete and out of production. The 555 is (very) cheap, performs well enough and most likely will remain in production forever.
To understand how the controller works it is best to first understand how the 555 functions. On the internet you may find a number of excellent 555 tutorials [1,2]. Without R3 and T1 the 555 is configured as a normal astable multivibrator running at a frequency of:
Figure 4 Testing the boost converter using a dummy load (and one NIXIE).
If you are in the testing phase, and do not want to connect the power supply to the NIXIEs yet, it is best to connect a dummy load to the output since the circuit is not designed to work without a load. I always first find out what the current is that I want to operate my NIXIEs on. I usually choose a value well below the operating condition specified in the datasheet. This will greatly extend the lifetime of the tubes. Using a high voltage supply I select the supply voltage and the load resistor in such a way that with a minimum of current the brightness of the tube is still good enough. Once the total current and the voltage are known an equivalent load resistor can be calculated from Rload=Vout/Itotal. During the testing phase this resistor connected to the output replaces the NIXIE tubes.
A few words about safety. Although the 180 Volts are generated starting with an innocent 12 Volt an accidental contact with the charged buffer capacitor will be a painful, possibly a lethal experience. Always be very careful ! I always place a small neon indicator lamp at the output of the converter (even in the final clock) to clearly indicate that a dangerous voltage is present at the output. Additionally during testing I permanently have a 20kohm/V multi-meter connected to the output so that I always know the output voltage. Finally, the advice of my father who was from the radio tube area: always keep one hand in your pocket when touching the circuit when it is switched on. In that way the current can never pass your heart.
An inductor test bench
When you want to start experimenting with boost or fly-back converters it is good idea to buy at least one inductor with known parameters that may act as a kind of reference device for the inductors or transformers that you make yourself. I use a 100µH inductor with about 0.2ohm series resistance capable of handling several Amps of current. It is especially designed for SMP applications. The circuit depicted in Fig. 5 allows you to compare "an unknown" inductor (or transformer) with the reference inductor.
Figure 5 Circuit diagram of the inductor test bench.
The circuit is designed to test the inductor as closely as possible under conditions that occur in the boost converter presented in the last section or in the fly-back converter to be presented in one of the next sections. Basically, the circuit is little more than the inductor which is connected to the 12V power supply by transistor T1. The current through the inductor is measured by the small series resistor R4. A voltage drop of 100mV over R4 corresponds to a current of approximately 1A. When the transistor is opened, the inductor can dump its energy in diode D3. Since the voltage drop over the diode is only 0.6V, it will take about 12/0.6=20 times as long for the current to drop to zero (remember I=(V.t)/L). This is the reason why the gate of the transistor is driven with a highly asymmetric signal generated by the oscillator around N1-N6. The transistor on-time is determined by C1 and R1+R2. R2 is set so that the transistor on-time is equal to the transistor on-time in the converter under normal load. The transistor off-time is determined by C1 and R3 and about a factor 20 longer than the on-time.
Figure 6 The inductor test bench circuit (left) and a measurement off the reference inductor (right).
In Fig. 6 (right) you find a measurement of the reference inductor. We find that with a supply voltage of 12V the current through the inductor reaches a value of I=V/R=0.361/0.11=3.28A in 27.1µs. Since I=(V/L)t we find for the inductance L=(V/I)t=(12/3.28)27.1=97.6µH. Not bad! At a little bit higher current we observe a sharp increase in the current through the inductor. This is the point where the ferrite saturates. The inductor should not be used beyond this point.
You may now want to try different inductors e.g. inductors salvaged from old (computer) power supplies. Switch S1 make it easy to compare these inductors with the reference inductor. Another important parameter to watch is the current consumption of the test-bench. An increase in switching losses in the inductor core is reflected by an increase in power consumption.
An alternative simple and quick way to measure the inductance
of an unknown inductor can be found here.
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What you need to know about transformers This section deals with a few basic things you need to know about transformers in order to understand fly-back converters. In Fig. 7 I have tried to sketch an elementary inductor and its schematic equivalent. Note that both windings have a certain direction and that equal directions are indicated by a dot.
Figure 7 Basic transformer with open secondary windings
Figure 8 Basic transformer with closed secondary windings
Figure 9 The transformer in flyback
The flyback converter
Figure 10 depicts the basic elements from the flyback converter. Again all control circuitry is omitted, and the switching MOSFET is represented by an ideal switch.
Figure 10 Phase one, storing energy in the transformer.
Figure 11 Phase two, dumping the energy from the transformer into the buffer capacitor.
At a certain moment the switch will open (Fig. 11). Lets call the current that was flowing through the primary winding at the moment just before the switch was opened Ipeak. The energy then stored at the moment of opening is 0.5*L1*(Ipeak*Ipeak). The transformer wants to sustain the magnetic flux. Since the circuit at primary side is open the only way the inductor can do this is by inducing a voltage at the secondary side high enough (>Vout) to forward bias the diode. The initial value of the current will be I2=Ipeak/n. During the time that the diode is forward biased, the voltage over the secondary winding will equal Vout+0.8V. The 0.8V is the voltage drop over the diode and can for a high output voltage like in a NIXIE converter be neglected. The transformer will transform this voltage down to Vout/n. So the total voltage that the switch has to block in open position is 12+(Vout/n).
Actually this is the big advantage of a flyback converter over a boost converter. In a boost converter the switch (MOSFET) has to carry a large current during the on phase and a high voltage during the off phase. In the flyback converter the voltage during the off phase is transformed down to a value determined by the ratio in turns. This means that a MOSFET with a much lower Ron can be used (see section on the boostconverter). Similarly, in the boost converter the diode has to carry both the high on current and a high reverse voltage. In the flyback converter the diode at the secondary side only has to block a high voltage while the current is low (Ipeak/n). This makes it possible to select a diode with smaller capacitances and hence higher switching speed. All this results in reduced losses and an increased efficiency.
Figure 12 Phase three, energy dump completed discharge of drain-source capacitor
This continues until all energy stored in the transformer is dumped in the buffer capacitor. At that moment I2 becomes zero (Fig. 12). At that moment the e.m.f induced at the primary side (Vout/n) will vanish. However, the parasitic capacitance of the switch (source-drain capacitance of the MOSFET) will be charged to (Vout/n)+12 V. At the primary side now a series resonant tank is formed with a charged capacitor (Fig. 12 right). This will cause a dampened oscillation.
Figure 13 Voltage over the switch during all three phases
Figure 13 schematically shows the drain-source voltage (the voltage over the switch) during all the phases of the converter just described. During phase the switch is closed. What we see is the voltage drop over the switch caused by the non-zero on resistance. During this phase the current will increase linearly, so also the voltage drop over Ron will increase linearly. At point b the switch opens. The secondary current will start to flow and the output voltage wil appear down transformed over the primary winding. The total blocking voltage over the switch will be 12+(Vout/n) (Fig 13c). At point d all the energy is dumped in the capacitor and the secondary current drops to zero causing the induced e.m.f. at primary side to vanish. The charged drain-source capacitor, now suddenly connected in series with the inductance of the primary winding will result in a dampened oscillation (Fig. 12e). At point f the switch closes again, and any remaining energy in the LC tank will be dissipated in the transistor.
Figure 14 Stray inductance.
Figure 15 High frequency oscillations due to energy stored in the stray inductance.
Finally you can check for yourself the equation derived for the output voltage of the boost converter also holds for the flyback converter. This is not really surprising, like in the boost converter the flyback converter is based on the dumping of the energy from an inductor or the primary winding of a tranformer in the load. The transformer just serves to lower the voltage over the switch.
A flyback converter high voltage supply for NIXIEs.
After all what has been said so far, the circuit diagram of the flyback converter will hold no surprises (Fig.16). Literally the only difference with the boost converter is that the inductor is replaced by a transformer, and that the transistor has been replaced for a BUZ21. The BUZ21 has a much lower on resistance (Ron=0.085 ohm) as compared to the BUZ41A (Ron=1.5 ohm) but also a lower drain-source breakdown voltage (100V versus 500V).
Figure 16 Circuit diagram of the Flyback converter.
Figure 17 The ferrite core that I use (20x20x5 mm).
So what is the strategy for finding the number of turns you need on the ferrite core that you have? Well first of all I always start with my inductor test-bench so that I can compare what I have made with the reference 100 µH inductor. If this is your first fly-back converter it might be illustrative to first try the ferrite core without an airgap. Mind everybody always says airgap, but what they actually mean is a spacer, often made from plastic (cellotape). So start with say 10 or 20 windings without an airgap. What you probably will see in the test-bench is a too high inductance (slower increase of current as compared to the 100 µH inductor). At the same time you will find the ferrite saturating at a low current. It is now time to include the spacer. Attach a peace of cello tape and cut the excess amount of tape with a razor blade so that only the touching surfaces of the ferrite are covered with tape. If you try the inductor now you will find a much lower inductance and a higher saturation current. Probably you will need to add or remove some turns to get an inductance of 100 µH (same slope). For the primary winding I use 0.4 (or 0.5) mm diameter insulated copper wire. When you have determined the proper number of primary turns, the secondary winding consists of ten times that number of turns. For the secondary windings I use something like 0.1-0.15 mm diameter wire. I always include a layer of tape in between two layers of secondary windings to prevent arcing. The transformers that I use have 22 primary turns and 220 secondary turns.
Figure 18 Two examples of the Flyback converter built on a peace of breadboard.
Figure 19 shows the drain-source voltage of power MOSFET measured with a 1:10 reduction probe. The 1- on the left axis marks the 0 V input level. The image is not very sharp due to some trigger jitter caused by a 50Hz ripple on the power supply. Nevertheless, several features from Fig. 15 can be recognized. The repetition frequency is 32 kHz and the maximum blocking voltage of the transistor is about 31 V according to theory. The voltage over the transistor almost swings for two full periods until the transistor switches on again. The high frequency oscillations due to the stray inductance are there, but difficult to see on the photograph. The increasing voltage drop over Ron during the on phase is clearly visible.
Figure 19 Drain-source voltage of power MOSFET measured with a 1:10 reduction probe.
The total converter can easily be built in an area of less than 4x4 cm. To increase the lifetime of my tubes I usually run them on as low as current as possible. Typically 1-1.5 mA. This means that the converter has to generate for 6 digits about 6 to 7 watts. The efficiency is ca. 80%. This is not spectacular but good enough for such a simple circuit. If you decide to built one: have fun, be careful and good luck!
Web links |
At the center of the complaints is the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to temporarily hire foreign workers who have higher skill levels to fulfill a specialized position. Critics maintain that employers abuse the system to bring in cheaper labor, displacing American workers.
Leo Perrero and Dena Moore filed their claims in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Florida, which also lists HCL Inc. and Cognizant Technologies — the two firms that brought in the foreign workers who replaced them — as co-defendants.
Two former Disney employees filed separate lawsuits Monday, accusing the entertainment giant of conspiring to replace their jobs with cheaper immigrant talent brought to the U.S. on temporary work visas.
The H-2B visa program, which is set up for temporary or seasonal agricultural workers, was the subject of two BuzzFeed News investigations. The series revealed the many ways in which the program can leave guest workers exposed to a nightmare of abuse while also deprive American workers of jobs that by law are supposed to go to them first.
Perrero and Moore accuse Disney of conspiring with HCL and Cognizant to bring in foreign workers, even forcing them to train their replacements before being let go — an experience Perrero later described anonymously in a New York Times article.
Perrero contends in his complaint that HCL knew of the discharges occurring at Disney, but "consciously avoided" addressing the practice since "its business model would only be viable if it could contract with willing recipient companies, such as Disney, to hire large number of visa holders with the resulting displacement of U.S. workers."
Perrero and Moore were part of a larger layoff last year that Disney described to the New York Times as a small fraction of the company's roughly 74,000 theme park workers in the Orlando area. Ultimately, 90 employees either did not retire or leave voluntarily, or find new jobs at Disney and were laid off, executives said.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Disney called the claims in the lawsuits baseless:
"This lawsuit is completely and utterly baseless. The fact is that, since our reorganization, Disney Parks has hired more than 140 US IT workers, and is currently recruiting candidates to fill over 100 more IT positions. Additionally, we also rehired more than 100 workers affected by the reorganization into other roles in the company. The complaints by one of the plaintiffs, Ms. Moore, that she was not offered a position are completely false -- she was offered a position at comparable pay and turned it down. Those are the facts."
Disney also criticized the New York Times, saying it has "deliberately and continuously misrepresented the facts" in its reporting on the issue "to further its own agenda."
Both HCL Inc. and Cognizant — which did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' requests for comment — have previously said they carefully follow U.S. laws.
In hiring workers on H-1B visas, companies must assure the Department of Labor that the action "will not adversely affect the working conditions of U.S. workers similarly employed." |
North Korea denies drone flights over South Korean military installations, calls president a 'prostitute'
Updated
North Korea has accused US and South Korean authorities of fabricating the results of a probe that concluded Pyongyang sent small surveillance drones to spy on key South Korean installations.
A spokesman for the North's military attacked the US for what it said was a blindly-backed confrontational conspiracy devised by the government of South Korean president Park Geun-hye, whom it called a "political prostitute".
"If Washington pays heed only to what its stooges trumpet, it is bound to be accused of being a senile grandfather trying to stop a child from crying," the unnamed spokesman said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
South Korean ministry of defence spokesman Kim Min-seok said the North's statement was "deeply regrettable".
"North Korea isn't a real country is it? It doesn't have human rights or freedom. It exists solely to prop up a single person," Mr Kim said at a briefing in Seoul.
South Korean and US officials jointly examined three drones that were recovered in three different locations near the Korean border over a two-week period starting in late March.
The second was discovered soon after a three-hour artillery barrage between North and South Korea in waters near a disputed maritime border.
Seoul said recovered data showed they had been pre-programmed to fly over South Korean military installations and then return to the North.
In April, North Korea proposed a joint probe into the crashed drones with the South, but Seoul rejected the proposal.
North Korea said in the statement the joint investigation into the origin of the drones was a "charade", designed to divert public criticism of the South Korean government's handling of the Sewol ferry tragedy.
Ms Park's government has faced continued criticism for its handling of the disaster from the families of the ferry victims, many of whom believe a swifter initial response could have saved many more lives.
The two Koreas have stepped up their rhetoric in recent weeks, amid signs that North Korea is preparing to conduct a fourth nuclear test.
North and South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
The North Korean statement was the latest in a recent series of written attacks by the North against the South Korean president, whom it has previously likened to a "comfort woman".
In April, North Korea described Barack Obama as Ms Park's "pimp", and in an article this month called the US president a "wicked black monkey".
AFP/Reuters
Topics: air-force, defence-and-national-security, unrest-conflict-and-war, korea-republic-of, korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of, united-states, asia
First posted |
Take a close look at the photo above — you just might be witnessing the birth of star. It’s a rare image that depicts the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and it was captured by the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile. This photo, along with a swath of others released today, complete a special survey of Earth’s southern skies by providing the broadest map to date of the coldest parts of our galaxy, where stars are born.
“The important part of the survey is that you get a new roadmap. With it, we can find all of the raw material for star formation in our Milky Way that was previously hidden from view,” said Friedrich Wyrowski, an astronomer and APEX scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. “All of these measurements have been done in many external galaxies where we have a global view, but it’s much more difficult in our own galaxy.”
To chart this roadmap, APEX sits among the skies — 16,700 feet above sea level on Chile’s Chajnantor Plateau. There, its 39-foot dish peers into the universe and measures light radiation. Visible light has short wavelengths (400–700 nanometers). Radio waves are the opposite, with wavelengths stretching as far as millions of meters. For this survey, the APEX telescope wanted to capture light wavelengths somewhere in the middle — in the submillimeter range.
That’s because light radiation in this submillimeter range comes from the most frigid objects in universe, namely cold dust. Warm cosmic dust would be much like the dust in your room in terms of temperature. Cold dust, by contrast, is much much colder at -454 to -436 degrees Fahrenheit, which is barely warmer than absolute zero.
Cold dust often resides in the densest parts of the universe, Wyrowski said, where gas and dust molecules are packed into tight spaces because of gravity. As the pressure builds, this dense cloud of molecules becomes hotter until — BOOM! — a fusion reaction ignites and a star is born.
To spot cold dust, the APEX telescope comes equipped with a sensor called LABOCA that is itself ultracold. By cooling this sensor to less than 0.3 degrees above absolute zero, it has a high sensitivity for submillimeter radiation coming from cold dust. LABOCA also has a wide field of view that is equal to one third of the diameter of the full moon, so it can capture huge chunks of the sky.
APEX’s high altitude helps too.
“Water vapor in our atmosphere absorbs much of the radiation from the cold dust that we want to detect. Building a telescope at a high altitude and in one of the driest places on Earth in Chile gets rid of most of this interfering water vapor,” Wyrowski said.
The result is the ATLASGAL survey, a collaborative mission between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, European Southern Observatory, and the University of Chile. Over the last nine years, this project has aimed to complete our picture of the Milky Way, which could only be done from the Southern hemisphere.
Here, you see a combination of recordings of different wavelength. The red comprises measurement of cold dust from ATLASGAL and European Space Agency’s PLANCK satellite. In blue, you see infrared wavelengths or rather warm dust. In some places, you’ll see in the blue, darker filaments that look like they’re being filled with red, but what’s really happening is that cold material hides the view of the warmer dust. You may notice long filaments in red. A lot of star formation occurs in those filaments, which are very cold and dense, Wyrowski said. Those dense clumps continue to collapse, out of which stars form. You may also see bubbles. Some of the bubbles are due to stars that have already formed.
“As soon as you go to the Southern hemisphere to a location like Chile with APEX, you get access to the whole Milky Way,” Wyrowski said. “For example, the center of our Milky Way is on the southern part of the Earth’s sky. Here in the North, it isn’t very visible above the horizon.”
ATLASGAL’s map of cold dust can now be combined with infrared readings, such as as those from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, to fill in the early picture of star formation. As cold dust packs tighter and warms up, it begins emitting infrared rays, before ultimately exploding into a visible star.
This video basically shows the milky way at different wavelengths. It starts with visible light — how you might see it with the naked eye or a very good camera. Then it goes to the near-infrared, where you see more features that represent parts of the universe that aren’t quite hot enough to be stars. “Here, you still see a lot of these very dark lanes, similar to the visible part. It’s not that stars are missing but it’s cold dust obscuring our view onto the star formation,” Wyrowski said. ATLASGAL has now revealed these cold obstructions.
“Only at submillimeter wavelengths are we able to penetrate through all the dust to see these coldest parts of the star-forming regions. That allows us to find the most massive clumps, which will lead to the formation of very luminous stars,” Wyrowski said.
The most luminous stars form rapidly in the coldest parts of the Milky Way, and they dictate the appearance and shape of our galaxy, because they have very strong outflows and winds that push around interstellar material. Ultimately, these stars will die as a supernova, again injecting lots of energy into the interstellar medium, forcing another batch of cold dust into a corner and sparking a star.
“To find all of these birthplaces for massive stars will help us understand how our Milky Way will evolve,” Wyrowski said. |
Flexible, thin-film solar cells are widely considered the future of power generation. Large, rigid panels will likely continue to be the source of large-scale power generation, but bendable solar panels could be placed on any surface from pillars to clothing, which opens up the possibility of gadgets, sensors and more being self-powered.
Scientists in South Korea have pushed the technology forward by creating an ultra-thin solar cell that is so flexible it can bend around a standard pencil without causing damage or stress on the solar cell.
The solar photovoltaic cell is only one micrometer thick, which is far thinner than a human hair, while most thin-film solar cells are between two and four micrometers thick. That extreme thinness is what lets it wrap around something so small.
The solar cell is made from the semiconductor gallium arsenide and then stamped directly on a flexible metal substrate without using an adhesive, which would have added thickness. The cell was fused with the electrode on the substrate by using a cold welding process where pressure was applied at 170 degrees Celsius. The metal bottom layer also acted as a reflector to direct light back towards the solar cell.
In testing they found that the cell was flexible enough to bend around a radius as small as 1.4 millimeters and the solar cells themselves had an energy conversion efficiency similar to thicker thin-film ones. The solar cells also experienced one quarter of the strain from the bending that a cell 3.5 micrometers thick would experience.
“The thinner cells are less fragile under bending, but perform similarly or even slightly better,” said Jongho Lee, an engineer at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea.
The solar cells could be used in wearable electronics, smart glasses, fabric or integrated into any lower power device that needs to be self-powered like environmental sensors placed in remote areas where it would be difficult to replace batteries or sensors that monitor the health of bridges or buildings. |
– Veterans for Common Sense thanks VA Secretary Shinseki for moving forward with presumptives for Vietnam War veterans –
Via Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans for Common Sense strongly supports laws and regulations that establish what are called “presumptives,” as this means long-awaited benefits for our Vietnam War veterans sick due to Agent Orange poisoning.
Presumptives will be the subject of a major Senate hearing this Thursday. The facts show DoD failed to monitor who was exposed to how much Agent Orange and for how long during the Vietnam War. DoD blocked medical research to avoid providing healthcare or disability benefits in what can only be called shocking and callous behavior.
After 40 years, the scientific evidence now clearly associates serious and fatal conditions (such a prostate cancer) with Agent Orange exposure. The failure of the military to keep track of what happened to our troops in Vietnam is not an excuse to deny payments to our veterans today, even when a few veterans may have contracted the condition due to age.
VCS thanks VA Secretary Shinseki for moving forward with presumptives for Vietnam War veterans. We hope he further clarifies the rules for Blue Water Navy veterans, too.
Presumptives should also be used for the 250,000 sick Gulf War veterans remaining ill from exposure to dozens of toxins as well as for our new Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans sick after exposure to poisons at toxic burn pits. |
Timing is crucial in the movie industry. The casting of lead actors really can hang on scheduling, as much as that’s often used as a “creative differences” style excuse for people pulling out of things.
And when movies are based upon other things – books, TV series, plays – there’s often a ticking clock in play as well, a countdown to the rights or option reverting and the filmmakers losing their license to even make the film.
Famously, there’s an entire Fantastic Four movie that seems to exist only to extend a producer’s rights to the characters. Marvel’s upcoming Netflix series centred on Daredevil only exists because Fox defaulted on their option. And then there’s Sony’s quick-fire turnaround of a Spider-Man reboot, marching Tobey Maguire out of the door and pretty much right away putting a “Situations Vacant” ad in the window.
And right now, the countdown hangs over Y: The Last Man, a movie version Bryan K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra‘s comic series.
Last summer, Dan Trachtenberg was attached to direct the film, on the basis of his work in shorts and promos and, presumably, a strong Y pitch. In the meantime, we’ve heard no more. No casting. No production start date. Not even a release date – all too often the first thing we hear about it.
And maybe we won’t hear a single peep more. Vaughan has given an interview to CBR (with thanks to Coming Soon for the pointer) in which he discusses a broad spread of his work. Asked about the Y movie, Vaughan makes it simple:
It’s my understanding that the rights to Y: The Last Man will revert back to co-creator Pia Guerra and me for the first time in a decade if the planned New Line adaptation doesn’t start shooting in the next few months, so I expect there will be some Y news in 2014 either way.
I wish Trachtenberg the best of luck, but I’ve got a hunch that we’ll be seeing Y wander over and end up on to TV, if it’s ever adapted anywhere.
Incidentally, Vaughan also offered quick updates on other movie projects he’s associated with:
And I presume a Runaways movie is dead at this point, but I haven’t talked to anyone from Marvel in a long time, so I’m not sure. I thought Roundtable and The Vault were both dead, too, but I just heard rumblings about each recently. I guess you never know.
Both Roundtable and The Vault were original screenplays by Vaughan and, by reputation at least, both are a lot of fun. It’s encouraging that there have been rumblings…
…but then, there were rumblings about Y too, last summer. It’s a long, hard slog to the silver screen and it’s all too easy to miss a bit and fall out of step along the way, it seems.
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Seven months after raising the specter of Republicans trying to hurt the economy on purpose, I can’t help but notice the “sabotage” question appears to be picking up some steam.
Just this month, some high-profile, mainstream pundits have begun exploring the issue, and just this week, two of Congress’ most powerful Democrats broached the same subject.
Yesterday, Michael Tomasky went even further, arguing that Democrats should start “saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now — that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy.” Tomasky added this is “obvious.”
The point isn’t to question Republicans’ bizarre priorities or values; the point is to make economic argument clear to the public. Too many bemoan a vague “lack of political will” or “absence of leadership” as the reason so little gets done. Those people are wrong.
Washington is a city of conspiracies, but far and away the most pernicious one is the fiction, in which one must participate if one wants to be regarded as a “serious” person, that both parties are more or less equally to blame for the present malfunctioning of our democracy. […] Nonsense. There’s nothing vague about it. It’s crystal clear. We can’t do these things because of the extreme nature of the Republican Party and the right-wing noise machine that enforces such rigid ideological purity. Period and end of story.
Tomasky added that he suspects many people know this “deep down,” but bite their tongue because “it’s thought impolite to say it.” As a result, the political culture “refuses to acknowledge one of its fundamental truths.”
Indeed, it’s generally forgotten, but one of the first debates of the Obama era began immediately after the president’s inauguration, when many prominent Republican voices agreed that they “hope Obama fails.” The main difference between then and now is that these same voices are in a position to ensure the president fails by blocking measures that would benefit the country — in many cases, measures Republicans supported until Obama said he agreed with them.
Which is why I support at least asking the question and having the debate.
Republicans said a payroll tax cut would help create jobs, and now they’re opposed to their own idea. Republicans said the Economic Development Administration is great for the economy, and now they’re opposed to that, too. Republicans have traditionally supported infrastructure investment, but the “infrastructure bank” idea appears likely to be killed by the GOP. Many Republicans endorsed the TANF Emergency Fund last year as an incredibly effective method of lowering unemployment, and the congressional GOP killed that, too.
Republicans are blocking qualified Treasury Department nominees who could also be working on economic policy. Republicans are blocking qualified Federal Reserve nominees who could also help improve the economy, while demanding that the Fed do nothing to promote economic activity. The GOP is demanding that Congress and the White House agree to immediately take money out of the economy and eliminate public-sector jobs, even when conservative economists say that’s crazy. What’s more, these same Republican officials have made it abundantly clear that failure to give them the cuts they want would force them to crash the economy on purpose.
And it’s against this backdrop that one of the most powerful Republican officials on Capitol Hill has argued, more than once, that his “top priority” isn’t job creation, but rather, “denying President Obama a second term in office.”
Tomasky thinks it’s “obvious” Republicans support “sabotaging the economy.” It is, to be sure, an uncomfortable subject, but maybe it’s time for the political world to have the awkward conversation anyway. |
OTTAWA — The federal government says it will consider introducing legislation to force members of the public to unveil themselves in order to obtain federal services.
“Canadians would agree that, when you’re either receiving or giving public services, you would have your face uncovered,” Multiculturalism Minister Tim Uppal told reporters.
Uppal was reacting to a new bill introduced by the Liberal government in Quebec that seeks to make public institutions neutral by forcing individuals who deliver or receive provincial services to do so with their face uncovered.
“We broadly in principle agree with the legislation that was presented by the Quebec government today, and we will consider any other measures that may be necessary at a national level,” he said.
Uppal, a practicing Sikh who wears a full beard and a turban, said the federal government would soon introduce a bill to forbid face coverings at citizenship ceremonies despite a Federal Court ruling last February that struck down similar rules.
The Quebec legislation, Bill 62, which was introduced in the National Assembly Wednesday, is a diluted version of the Parti Québécois’s controversial Charter of Values, which barred public servants from wearing religious symbols, such as large crosses or religious headgear. The new bill applies only to face coverings.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau told reporters that he had not seen the Quebec bill, but “as always, my deepest concern is around the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and making sure that all Canadians’ rights are respected.”
When the Federal Court struck down the government’s ban on face coverings while taking oaths at citizenship ceremonies, it did not say whether Charter rights had been violated. The court struck down the law on the basis that it violated a regulation that judges allow the greatest possible freedom in administering the oath of citizenship.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his government would appeal the decision.
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Born to Austrian and Ugandan parents in Seattle, Isolde Brielmaier always had a strong understanding of various cultures. First falling in love with dance and attending a public school where the arts were heavily integrated into the everyday curriculum, she got the artistic bug early. “I danced very seriously through my early 20s,†Brielmaier says, “and always tried to balance that with being a good student.†But while attending high school in Germany, the long-term performer decided she no longer had an interest in pursuing dance full-time. Instead, she chose to become a full-time student of history and sociology at New York’s Columbia University and spent her spare time at the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey’s dance studio. However, it was her courses in art history that would become a major component in her life and career.
Curating small exhibitions in the SoHo section of New York, Brielmaier was eventually asked to teach at Vassar University. What was supposed to be a one-time thing turned into a five-year career as a visiting professor. In the past, Brielmaier advised athletes and entertainers in purchasing contemporary art, but she now operates as the as the chief curator of SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design). Today she also curates international art exhibitions in the SCAD community and beyond. BlackEnterprise.com sat down with the art guru who broke down the top five things to consider when looking to break into the world of art.
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It’s time again for the Peanut Butter Bash! This time our ingredients were peanut butter and ice cream! You won’t believe what I made. It’s kind of a mouthful in more ways than one! HA! It’s a brownie ice cream poke cake with peanut butter whipped cream frosting.
Awhile ago I was on Pinterest, and I came across these sweet rolls that were covered in melted ice cream. I thought that sounded really interesting. I love to let my ice cream melt and eat it that way. When I found out our ingredient to pair with peanut butter was going to be ice cream, I just knew I wanted to figure out a recipe I could make with melted ice cream.
I got the idea to make a poke cake and pour melted ice cream over it. I had already decided peanut butter whipped cream would be perfect for the frosting. My original plan was to use a chocolate cake because peanut butter and chocolate are made for each other. However, I had a few packages of brownie mix, so I decided to see how a brownie poke cake would turn out. People always love to put a big ol’ scoop of ice cream on a fresh from the oven brownie, and it melts into a puddle of deliciousness.
For this recipe, I used a brownie mix and just followed the basic directions to make the brownie. Then, I let it cool completely before poking holes in it with the end of a wooden spoon.
While the brownies are baking, put the ice cream on the stove so it will melt. You want it to be completely liquid.
When the brownie was ready, so was the ice cream. I used a basic vanilla ice cream, and I poured about 2/3rds of a pint all over an 8 x 8 brownie pan.
Once you’ve covered the brownie in melted ice cream, put it in the fridge for a couple of hours so it can really soak into the brownie.
About an hour before you’d like to serve your poke cake, whip up the peanut butter whipped cream. I used about 1/3 cup of creamy peanut butter to 2 cups of whipping cream. I also added about a tablespoon of vanilla pudding mix to stabilize the whipped cream. I wanted to stabilize it to stay light and fluffy as a frosting, so it wouldn’t just melt into the brownie.
Then, I frosted the top of the brownie with about an inch thickness of the peanut butter whipped cream.
Next, I popped it back in the fridge for about an hour before serving.
Brownie Ice Cream Poke Cake with Peanut Butter Whipped Cream ★★★★★ 5 from 3 reviews Author: Stephanie Pass
Prep Time: Prep Time: 4 hours
Cook Time: Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: Total Time: 4 hours 30 minutes
Yield: Yield: 9
Category: Category: Dessert
Cuisine: Cuisine: American Print Recipe Pin Recipe Description Love brownies and ice cream? Try this brownie poke cake made with melted ice cream poured over the top. It’s topped with Peanut Butter Whipped Cream frosting. Ingredients 1 package of brownie mix – made according to the direction.
1 pint of any flavor of ice cream, melted
2 cups of whipping cream
1 tablespoon of instant pudding mix, vanilla flavor
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter Instructions Make the brownie according to directions (an 8 x 8 size). While the brownie pan is baking, put your pint of ice cream on the stove to melt. When the brownie has cooled, poke holes all over it (about 1 inch apart) with the end of a wooden spoon. Next, pour about 2/3rds of the pint of melted ice cream all over the brownie. Place the pan in the fridge for at least 2 hours. When the ice cream has mostly soaked into the brownie, whip up the peanut butter whipped cream frosting. Add 2 cups of whipping cream to the mixing bowl. Add peanut butter and instant pudding mix. Then beat the mixture on high until stiff peaks form. Pour the frosting on the brownie and frost about 1-inch thick across the entire brownie. Place in the fridge for at least an hour before serving so that it can set.
Have you ever made anything with melted ice cream? I’d love to know if you have!
Come see what everyone else in the Peanut Butter Bash made this month down below in the linky. If you’re a blogger and would like to participate, click HERE to join our Facebook group. If you’re not a blogger and want to get some awesome peanut butter recipes, click HERE to join The Peanut Butter Recipe Box.
Looking for more peanut butter recipes? Try these:
Cinnamon Banana Doodle Muffins
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pie
Peanut Butter & Jelly Donuts
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WASHINGTON — Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spelled out their economic visions in high-profile speeches in Michigan this week. They delved into taxes and regulations, trade deals and job growth.
Yet perhaps most notable about their speeches is what they left out.
Mostly unmentioned were major challenges that have slowed the U.S. economy and made good-paying jobs harder to find, particularly in struggling pockets of the country. They are challenges that tend to preoccupy economists and defy simple fixes:
A less efficient workforce. A dwindling proportion of adults either working or looking for work. Automation and increasingly high-skilled jobs that require technological know-how that many people lack.
They are problems that analysts say require a transformative vision. Yet neither candidate voiced anything like the high-reaching themes that were hallmarks of previous campaigns — from Bill Clinton’s “Bridge to the 21st century,” which urged Americans to face a more globalized economy, or George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” which sought to overhaul public education to better serve more children.
Each promised a bright future but also spotlighted the country’s challenges.
“It’s much easier to be either optimistic about the future or harp on problems that voters already recognize,” said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied the impact of automation on the workforce.
When Trump spoke Monday and Clinton followed on Thursday, each pledged more spending for rebuilding roads, bridges, tunnels and other infrastructure, which many economists say is long overdue. Such work, beyond creating more construction jobs, could ultimately lower transportation costs, raise workers’ productivity and accelerate economic growth.
But economists worry that the United States faces long-run challenges beyond dilapidated airports and tunnels. An economy’s ability to expand is shaped largely by two trends: The size of its workforce and how much its workers produce for each hour on the job.
In both areas, the United States is weakening. In the past decade, the workforce has grown an average of just 0.5 percent a year — barely half its post-World War II pace. Much of that slowdown is due to the continuing retirements of the vast baby boom generation, 10,000 of whom turn 65 every day. Similar demographic trends are also bedeviling Europe and Japan.
And productivity — output per hour worked — has increased an average of just 0.6 percent a year in the past five years, the slowest pace since the recession of the early 1980s. Rising productivity is vital to raising living standards because it allows businesses to pay employees more without having to raise prices.
All of which means the United States may be stuck in a low-growth rut for years to come. Federal Reserve officials now estimate that the economy’s growth potential is only 1.8 percent to 2 percent a year, down from 2.5 percent to 2.8 percent five years ago.
That broader slowdown went unmentioned by either candidate. Potential solutions are complicated and in many cases wouldn’t be popular with voters.
For example, most economists consider increased immigration not a problem but a solution — to the challenge of an aging U.S. workforce. More legal immigrants would accelerate workforce growth. Yet few issues are as contentious in this election.
William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said immigration reform, if it provided a path to citizenship for people who entered the country illegally, would be economically beneficial — in part because it would bar employers from underpaying those workers and thereby give them more spending power.
Galston argued that Japan’s economy, which is aging faster than the United States and has barely grown for two decades, has suffered from an “absolute refusal to countenance immigration.”
In her speech, Clinton briefly mentioned “comprehensive immigration reform” and said it would “unleash a lot of new income and growth.” Trump, who launched his campaign with promises to build a wall to keep out Mexicans, barely mentioned the issue.
Clinton also proposed helping more students attend college, increasing training for those who don’t and spending more on “scientific research that can create entire new industries.”
Those steps might help boost productivity over time if they improved workers’ skills. But Clinton didn’t cast them as potential remedies for weak productivity. Rather, she hailed the U.S. workforce as the “most productive” in the world.
Openings for such high-skilled jobs as data scientist, software engineer, physician’s assistant and nurse practitioner have grown fast since the Great Recession. Yet they require more skills than many workers have, particularly older people with less education. That trend has contributed to a sharp drop in the proportion of Americans in their prime working years — ages 25 through 54 — who either have a job or are looking for one.
And automation is threatening lower-paying jobs. Self-driving cars, check-in kiosks at airports and hotel and potentially touch-screen ordering at restaurants could put more lower-skilled Americans out of work.
“We’re really just seeing the very beginning of robots competing with workers,” Acemoglu said. The consequences “could be potentially very disruptive if we pursue business as usual. Or they could amazingly fruitful if we adapt to them.”
Acemoglu says this would require overhauling high school education to provide more skills-related training, rather than waiting for community college, in addition to providing training for current workers.
Yet instead, both candidates spent considerable time discussing ways to revitalize American manufacturing. Trump focused more on old-line sectors, like autos, planes and steel, which have mostly shrunk in recent years. Clinton cited “advanced manufacturing” that requires greater skills. Yet modern factories that use more technology typically don’t employ as many people as those that are retrenching.
“I would like to see the workforce prepared for the jobs of tomorrow, rather than bringing back the jobs of the past,” said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at Indeed, a jobs listing website. |
Family sues ABQ trampoline park Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Video
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Two families are suing for what happened at a popular place for kids.
They say their kids were hurt at an Albuquerque trampoline park. They want the park to pay up, claiming the waiver they signed won't hold up in court.
Kids rushed into Gravity Park near San Mateo and Alameda and parents like it because, "After they're done, they go home and sleep," Linda Solis says.
However, some say they won't be taking their kids back. Christopher Saucedo is the attorney for a Rio Rancho family who is suing, saying their 15-year-old son broke his ankle on a trampoline.
"A trampoline gym or park like that should have more supervision. It should have more direction," Saucedo says.
The Gravity Park owner says a safety video plays in the park, rules are posted and everyone signs a waiver explaining the risks.
"We explain in the waiver that same exact thing. There are certain rules to be followed. If they're not followed, there's certainly potential for injury," says Zane Hansen, co-owner of Gravity Park.
Attorneys tell KRQE News 13 that New Mexico law isn't clear when it comes to waivers and even if you sign, it doesn't always mean a business is off the hook.
"These waivers, I do not believe are enforceable," Saucedo says. "It's not a true warning of the danger."
If you ask Paul Archuleta who is to blame he'll say, "I think that it does fall on the business itself to a degree. Yeah, they should be able to help out with expenses if something happens and that's just common."
Solis disagrees.
"I don't think it was their fault," says Solis. "You're a kid. You're going to jump. You're going to hurt yourself, and you're going to jump a certain way but I wouldn't blame the Gravity Park."
Saucedo says the teen who broke his ankle had to have surgery. The family wants those medical bills paid for and stricter rules at the park. Another family is suing Gravity Park for similar reasons. The attorney says a 12-year-old broke her ankle when she slipped through the padding that covers the springs on the trampolines. |
SYDNEY: A cold attitude of senior players forced fielding coach of national cricket team Grant Luden to resign from his post, ARY News reported.
Grant Luden has reportedly submitted his resignation to Chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Shehryar Khan after three senior players – Shahid Afridi, Umar Akmal and Ahmed Shahzad – misbehaved with him.
According to sources, the coach had grilled the trio over poor fielding.
Akmal had missed a crucial chance to dismiss Indian ace batsman Virat Kohli after dropping him behind the stumps, in a match against India on February 15 at Adelaide.
The Pakistan Cricket Board, however, has not given any word on the issue so far.
Following the team’s failure to make the World T20 semi-finals, Grant Luden, the former fitness coach of Bangladesh, was appointed as the Pakistan fielding coach on March 30, 2014.
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NASHVILLE — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean said Thursday he's raised $1.2 million so far in his 2018 campaign.
Calling the figure a "good sign that the campaign is showing momentum," Dean, a former Nashville mayor, said it also demonstrates Tennesseans want progress — not partisan politics — in their next governor.
After expenditures, the 61-year-old attorney expects to report just short of $1 million in the bank on his Jan. 16-June 30 disclosure, due to the state on July 17.
Dean said he aims to raise around $10 million as he seeks to become Democrats' nominee in next year's primary, then take on the winner of the GOP primary in an effort to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.
Three Republicans have already declared they're running.
Haslam's former state economic commissioner, Randy Boyd of Knoxville and owner of Radio Systems Corp., announced his candidacy, and in April, he reported raising $1.2 million at his first fundraiser.
Another candidate is Bill Lee of Franklin, chairman of family-owned Lee Co., the state's largest mechanical contractor in Middle Tennessee, providing heating, air conditioning and other building services to residential and commercial customers. Lee held his first fundraiser in June and said he raised $1.3 million.
State Sen. Mae Beavers, R-Mt. Juliet, last month announced her candidacy. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., is taking a hard look at running, as is Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville.
State House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, is widely expected to run. Fitzhugh said Thursday he expects to make a final decision in coming weeks about entering the Democratic primary.
"A million dollars, that's pretty substantial," Fitzhugh said of Dean's haul in the first four months of his campaign. "But, you know, I'm used to working with a caucus that's only a quarter of the House chamber. So we're used to being a little bit behind and in the hole and fighting our way out.
"That type of thing wouldn't bother me if I were to be so inclined" to run, Fitzhugh added.
In a state where Democrats have won no statewide contested race since 2006, Dean earlier said he's "convinced the people of Tennessee are interested in a governor who's middle of the road, someone who's pragmatic."
Dean cited his experience running Tennessee's second-largest city from 2007-2015, calling it "one of the things that distinguishes me from other candidates."
Unlike other announced or expected candidates, Dean said, he "actually ran a government and I've had to get things done."
Dean said his donors and contributions show he's getting strong grassroots support.
Since starting his campaign in mid-March, the candidate said he's gotten more than 2,400 online contributions and more than 3,000 in all. Fifty-seven percent of the online contributions are $25 or less.
The GOP primary, meanwhile, is shaping up in some respects as a millionaires' affair.
Boyd, whose companies produce pet products, raised political eyebrows earlier this year when he cut a $5 million check to the Knoxville Zoo. Lee is wealthy. So is Black, who along with husband David founded Aegis Sciences Corp., which does drug testing for businesses and athletes.
The Blacks' 2014 net worth was estimated by Roll Call at a minimum of $45.95 million, based on her disclosures.
Democrat Dean, meanwhile, came under criticism by an opponent in his first 2007 mayoral campaign as a result of personal spending by he and his wife, Anne Davis Dean, an heiress to millions made by a late uncle who had been in the coal mining industry.
The ability to self-fund campaigns to some degree has been a difference maker for any number of statewide Tennessee officeholders in recent years.
Haslam, a former Knoxville mayor and, according to Forbes Magazine, a billionaire whose family owns the Pilot Flying J truck stop chain, cut checks totalling $3.5 million for his 2010 governor's race, in addition to raising some $13.8 million.
He dispatched his GOP rivals in the Republican primary as well as Democrat Mike McWherter, the son of former Democratic Gov. Ned McWherter and a millionaire himself.
And in his first U.S. Senate race in 2006, Republican and former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker spent some $4.1 million of his own money in a hotly contested GOP primary and a fierce general election battle that drew national attention.
In 2002, Democrat and former Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen injected some $2.9 million in personal funds into his general election contest.
Contact staff writer Andy Sher at [email protected] or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1. |
(The following is FOX Business’ Charlie Gasparino’s originally published story, reported ahead of the deal, now updated with latest details.)
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German chemical giant Bayer has signed an agreement to acquire U.S. seed behemoth Monsanto (NYSE:MON) in an all cash deal worth $66 billion.
The deal comes after months of wrangling between the two companies. Bayer has agreed to pay $128 per share.
The deal terms includes a significant breakup fee of $2 billion that Bayer would pay to Monsanto if the transaction falls through due to U.S. and/or European anti-trust concerns that analysts say will be raised as regulators take a closer look at the combined companies.
The deal combines St. Louis-based Monsanto, known for its genetically modified crop seeds, and Bayer, the German manufacturer of a wide range of pesticides as well as aspirin. When putting the two together, it creates an agricultural giant with a specialty in seeds and pesticides and annual sales estimated at $67 billion.
The announced merger would be the biggest deal of 2016 and after Monsanto rejected two previous lower offers by Bayer. But even as Monsanto held out for a higher or other bid the reality of its business began to hit home; commodity prices have been hammered in recent years, thus taking a chunk out of Monsanto’s stock price that traded as high as $125 a share in February of last year. Today it is hovering around the $107 level.
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The deal is also a gamble for Bayer’s chief executive Werner Baumann, who despite some resistance from investors continued to push for the Monsanto transaction. Baumann has made the case to investors and analysts that acquiring Monsanto is key to Bayer’s growth strategy, though many worried that the company would add too much debt if it paid close to $130 a share.
At a recent Deutsche Bank (NYSE:DB) conference in Berlin Baumann said he was “very comfortable” with financing of the Monsanto acquisition as FOX Business reported.
Even with both parties agreeing on a final price, the deal would still run into regulatory scrutiny, analysts and investors predict. The share price of Monsanto remained stuck well below Bayer’s offer even as the German chemical giant upped its bid from its initial price of $122 per share in May, indicating that investors believed even a transaction approved by both company’s boards would run into regulatory hurdles.
The European Commission and U.S. Department of Justice have been keeping a close eye on the negotiations and now that they’ve come to an agreement, the federal regulators will certainly take a close look at any possible anti-trust issues that might arise from combining two of the largest companies in this agriculture business.
Those same regulators are currently investigating other potential mergers. DuPont (NYSE:DD) and Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW) agreed to a deal in December but the closing has been delayed until early 2017 after the European Commission opened an investigation. The same can be said for a possible merger of Syngenta (NYSE:SYT) and ChemChina which are also struggling with global regulators. |
The Sun has reported on new guidelines issued from local authorities in Cornwall, Lancashire and Scotland to “properly accommodate transitioning pupils in school” by allowing transgender pupils extra breaks during physical education lessons.
And why would transgender pupils need breaks during P.E? Because:
“some youngsters who choose to bind their chests may suffer from “breathing difficulties and fainting” during sports sessions.”
“Youngsters” here means “girls,” but transgender rules don’t allow us to name them as girls. This conveniently prevents us from assessing the differences in the experience and typical treatment pathways between girls and boys, or study any differences in reasons for transitioning. If we can’t view these girls within the wider context of teenage girls as a group we can’t make the connections to the underlying causes of such behaviour in girls, nor position breast binding within a continuum of self-harming practices.
Even the term ‘chest binders’ hides the fact that these particular instruments of torture are used exclusively by girls. Our “support” for these girls by our acceptance of the use of breast binders prevents us from viewing their use as a harmful cultural practice (albeit one “chosen” by children) while at the same time we condemn similarly harmful practices of other cultures such as “breast ironing.”
The harms of breast binding are serious. Cornwall County Council alludes to the physical harms but minimises them in relation to the psychological “benefits,” stating that wearing a binder:
“can be hot, uncomfortable and restrictive – but very important to their psychological well-being. It might make certain PE lessons difficult for them and could lead to breathing difficulties, skeletal problems and fainting.”
The harms of binders are documented in a 2015 study which indicates 28 potential negative outcomes. Effects of wearing a breast binder include: compressed or broken ribs, punctured or collapsed lungs, back pain, compression of the spine, damaged breast tissue, damaged blood vessels, blood clots, inflamed ribs, and even heart attacks.
Anecdotal evidence paints a picture of the necessity for shallow breathing which in itself restricts the flow of oxygen to vital organs and results in a restriction in physical activity harmful to overall health. A mother speaking on Radio 4’s Bringing Up Britain recently explained her response to her daughter’s double mastectomy as relief that she had “got her lungs back” after a year of wearing a binder (another example of how one stage of ‘transitioning’ inevitably leads to a need for the next step).
Any other practice of self-harm is recognised as such but in this case we have adults in a position of responsibility declaring that this particular form of self-harming, unlike any other, promotes psychological well-being. A trick of language absolves us of any duty of care: placing all youngsters in the gender-neutral ‘trans’ category means that these girls are lost to any studies in the psychology of adolescent girls as well as denied the treatment and support which recognises their unique problems and needs. And it also means, of course, that we don’t have to look at the culture which produces so many adolescent girls who don’t want to become women in the first place, or make any effort to understand why.
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The Galveston Intermodal Transportation Committee, in a workshop held today, voted unanimously to place the proposed City of Galveston Thoroughfare Plan as an action item on the agenda for the committee's May 3 regular meeting.
The committee reviewed the minor changes to the plan, expressing satisfaction with what Public Works Director Kyle Hockersmith presented each member.
“My wish today would be after we’re all said and done, I have a complete list of final revisions that I can go back to the drawing board and implement into a document which then we would bring to a vote to the ITC at the next scheduled meeting,” said Hockersmith.
Tim Tietjens, the city’s Development Services Department Director, said Galveston has an advantage over many cities in that its streets are laid out like a grid.
“A grid pattern allows for various trip assignments as they call it, a trip assignment is how you get from point A to point B,” said Tietjens. “You have many means. You can zig zag around Galveston in 10,000 different directions. That’s a distinct advantage that many cities have to come to recognize as a problem that they have.”
Notable changes to the plan include making Avenue O from Seawall Boulevard to 53rd Street into an arterial street and removing Postoffice Street and Strand Streets as collector streets. Proposed Thoroughfare Plan
The committee also discussed safety issues in connection with the Seawall Boulevard Streetscape Improvement Project with David Smith from the Special Events Department.
All members were present. Workshop Agenda
To listen to the entire meeting, Click Here (1:17:41) |
Here Is What Donald Trump Wants To Do In His First 100 Days
Enlarge this image toggle caption Natalie Keyssar for NPR Natalie Keyssar for NPR
At the end of October, Donald Trump spoke in Gettysburg, Pa., and released a plan for his first 100 days in office.
The plan (below) outlines three main areas of focus: cleaning up Washington, including by imposing term limits on Congress; protecting American workers; and restoring rule of law. He also laid out his plan for working with Congress to introduce 10 pieces of legislation that would repeal Obamacare, fund the construction of a wall at the Southern border (with a provision that Mexico would reimburse the U.S.), encourage infrastructure investment, rebuild military bases, promote school choice and more.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell mostly made nice with Trump but also shot down or expressed little enthusiasm in some of his plans. On Trump's proposal to impose term limits on Congress, McConnell said, "It will not be on the agenda in the Senate." McConnell has been a long-standing opponent of term limits, as NPR's Susan Davis reports. "I would say we have term limits now — they're called elections."
McConnell also threw some cold water on Trump's infrastructure plans, calling it not a top priority.
McConnell did say repealing Obamacare is a "pretty high item on our agenda" along with comprehensive tax reform and achieving border security "in whatever way is the most effective." But he also declined to discuss the Senate's immigration agenda further.
"We look forward to working with him," McConnell said. "I think most of the things that he's likely to advocate we're going to be enthusiastically for."
Below is the 100-day plan Trump's campaign released in October, called "Donald Trump's Contract With The American Voter."
What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again. It is a contract between myself and the American voter — and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington
Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:
* FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;
* SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);
* THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;
* FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;
* FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;
* SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.
On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:
* FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205
* SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
* THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator
* FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately
* FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars' worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.
* SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward
* SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure
Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:
* FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama
* SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States
* THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities
* FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back
* FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.
Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:
Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate. End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families. End Illegal Immigration Act Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.
On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.
This is my pledge to you.
And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people.
To comment, go to this story on NPR's Facebook page. |
Fallstreak hole over Austria, August 2008
Fallstreak hole over Ann Arbor, Michigan, November 14, 2016.
Satellite image of canals and fallstreak holes over east Texas in January 2007
Fallstreak Hole over Naples, Italy, December 26, 2018
Fallstreak Hole over Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, January 2010
A fallstreak hole (also known as a cavum,[1] hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, cloud canal or cloud hole) is a large gap, usually circular or elliptical, that can appear in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds. Such holes are formed when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing, but the water, in a supercooled state, has not frozen yet due to the lack of ice nucleation. When ice crystals do form, a domino effect is set off due to the Bergeron process, causing the water droplets around the crystals to evaporate: this leaves a large, often circular, hole in the cloud.[2]
It is thought that the introduction of large numbers of tiny ice crystals into the cloud layer sets off this domino effect of fusion which creates the hole. The ice crystals can be formed by passing aircraft, which often have a large reduction in pressure behind the wing- or propeller-tips. This cools the air very quickly, and can produce a ribbon of ice crystals trailing in the aircraft's wake. These ice crystals find themselves surrounded by droplets, and grow quickly by the Bergeron process, causing the droplets to evaporate and creating a hole with brush-like streaks of ice crystals below it. An early satellite documentation of elongated fallstreak holes over the Florida Panhandle that likely were induced by passing aircraft appeared in Corfidi and Brandli (1986).[3] Fallstreak holes are more routinely seen by the higher resolution satellites of today (e.g., see third illustration accompanying this article).
The articles by Westbrook and Davies (2010)[4] and Heymsfield et al. (2010)[5] explain the processes behind the formation of fallstreak holes in greater detail, and show some observations of their microphysics and dynamics. Such clouds are not unique to any one geographic area and have been photographed from many places.
Because of their rarity and unusual appearance, fallstreak holes have been mistaken for or attributed to unidentified flying objects.[6]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
Getty Images
At this time last year, we didn’t know who the Bills would be starting at quarterback during Rex Ryan’s first year as the team’s head coach.
There’s no uncertainty on that front this season. Tyrod Taylor won the job last year and played well enough that discussions about a possible contract extension have been going on for some time. No deal has been reached and it seems likely that both sides will use the 2016 season as a guide for a potential agreement down the road.
If that’s the case, anything Taylor does to show that he’s the right man for the long haul is going to benefit his bottom line. Performance is one significant part of that and so is being the leader of the offense, something that Taylor feels he’s become since getting the No. 1 job.
“I would say that definitely comes with being in this system and being the starter for a year, learning all your teammates, learning the offense and being comfortable in the offense,” Taylor said, via the Buffalo News. “I definitely feel more in charge, more of a command, being able to speak up. And guys listen because they know the preparation that I put in, the preparation we put in as a unit, and they see the vision of what we want to be.”
Taylor has made 14 NFL starts, so there’s still plenty of ways that things could unfold but the results of his first year-plus in Buffalo have created optimism that he can settle the position in the coming years. That optimism will morph into something closer to certainty if Taylor turns in another good year in 2016. |
A WOMAN reported that her ex-boyfriend attacked her at about 12:10 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, at her home in the 4000 block of North Elston Avenue, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 20-year-old woman reported that she invited her 21-year-old former boyfriend to her home and that when the man saw a text message on her phone, he became angry and choked her and pushed her head into a wall, according to police. The woman said that her aunt and cousin pulled the man off her and trapped him in the bathroom while she ran away out the apartment, police said.
The woman reported that she ran to the CTA Irving Park Blue Line station, 4131 W. Irving Park Road, and that the man followed her, hit her on the head and the shoulder, and dragged her into a train, according to police. The woman and a witness reported that the man continued to hit her and that he dragged her out of the train at the following stop and slammed her head repeatedly into a snow shelter, police said.
The woman reported that the man threw her purse onto the Kennedy Expressway and fled east on Addison Street, according to police. Police were searching for him. The woman was treated at Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center, according to police.
THE OWNER of the J.C. Food Mart, 3404 W. Irving Park Road, reported that two teenagers stole a bottle of liquor and attacked him at about 9:10 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 43-year-old man reported that the teens took two bottles of liquor from behind the counter and attempted to leave the store, and that when he confronted the two, one of them struck him on the head with a bottle, according to police. The man reported on Feb. 11 that he saw one of the teens in the area, and the suspect was arrested after he was identified, police said.
A MAN REPORTED that two men robbed him at about 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, in the 4600 block of North Central Park Avenue, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 38-year-old man reported that as he was walking, a gray Honda stopped next to him and a passenger got out of the car, displayed a handgun at him and took $400 in cash and his cell phone, according to police.
A MAN REPORTED that a man attempted to rob him at about 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the 5200 block of North Bernard Street, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 33-year-old man reported that a man threatened him with a piece of wood at him and demanded money, according to police. The man reported that he threw a water bottle at the assailant and he fled, police said.
TWO TEENAGERS were arrested on robbery charges at about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the 5700 block of North Bernard Street, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
A 27-year-old man reported that two men wearing ski masks approached him and that one of them indicated that he had a handgun and the two took his wallet and his cell phone, according to police.
A Northeastern Illinois University security guard heard the description that was sent and saw the suspects in an alley, and responding officers arrested them, police said.
The suspects were identified by police as Miguel D. Arevalo, age 18, of the 4800 block of North Sawyer Avenue, and a 17-year-old male.
AN EMPLOYEE reported that the Joony Food Mart, 4947 N. Kedzie Ave., was robbed at about 11:55 a.m. Monday, Feb. 10, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 58-year-old woman reported that a masked man and a masked woman entered the business and that the man displayed a handgun and took $200 from the cash register, according to police.
A TEENAGER was arrested on robbery charges following an incident at about 12:45 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, in the 3700 block of North Keeler Avenue, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
A woman reported that a teen pushed her to the ground, took her purse containing credit cards, $7 in cash and a rosary and ran through back yards, according to police. A witness reported that he saw the suspect take off his jacket and throw it to the ground as he was fleeing, and a second witness reported that the suspect knocked on her door and asked to use the phone, police said.
Officers saw the 17-year-old suspect running in the 3500 block of North Milwaukee Avenue and arrested him, police said.
A TEENAGER reported that he was robbed at about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the 5600 block of North Saint Louis Avenue, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The 17-year-old teen reported that two teenagers attacked him and one of them took his cell phone valued at $299 and his wallet, according to police.
A WOMAN reported that her home in the 6300 block of North Knox Avenue was burglarized between 4 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The woman reported that when she returned home she discovered that the front door had been forced open and that a jewelry box was damaged and a backpack containing credit cards and tax documents was missing, according to police.
A COUPLE reported that they home in the 5200 block of North Bernard Street was burglarized between 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The couple reported that when they returned home they discovered that the back door had been forced open and that jewelry, an iPad valued at $600 and a laptop computer valued at $800 were missing, according to police.
A MAN REPORTED that his home in the 3500 block of West Hollywood Avenue was burglarized between 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, and 12:45 a.m. the following day, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The man reported that when he returned home he discovered that the front door was open and that jewelry and $2,000 in cash were missing, according to police.
A WOMAN reported that her home in the 4800 block of North Avers Avenue was burglarized between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 6, according to 17th (Albany Park) District police.
The woman reported that when she returned home she discovered that the rear door was open and that a bracelet valued at $500, two wedding bands valued at $1,000, a watch valued at $300, two necklaces valued at $300, 10 rings valued at $4,000, five necklaces valued at $2,000, a ring valued at $4,000, an engagement ring valued at $800, a Michael Jordan basketball card valued at $900, and a safe containing three handguns and ammunition were missing, according to police.
Lincolnwood
A WOMAN WAS charged with driving under the influence of alcohol following her arrest at about midnight Saturday, Feb. 9, at Malnati’s Pizzeria, 6649 N. Lincoln Ave., according to Lincolnwood police.
A 911 caller reported that he saw a vehicle weaving on the road and that the driver parked at the restaurant, according to police. An officer saw the driver sleeping in the vehicle with the engine on, and the woman was arrested after she failed sobriety tests, police said.
The suspect was identified by police as Maria Lailani Siscar, age 41, of the 6100 block of North Meade Avenue.
A WOMAN WAS arrested on retail theft charges at about 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at the Carson Pirie Scott store in the Lincolnwood Town Center, 3333 W. Touhy Ave., according to Lincolnwood police.
An employee reported that he saw the woman place $204 worth of necklaces and earrings in her purse and exited the store without paying for the items, according to police.
The suspect was identified by police as Claudine Lach, age 43, of the 700 block of West Western Avenue, Park Ridge.
A WOMAN WAS arrested retail theft charges at about 11:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at the Kohl’s store in the Lincolnwood Town Center, 3333 W. Touhy Ave., according to Lincolnwood police.
An employee reported that he saw the woman place rings and earrings in her jacket and leave the store without paying for the items, according to police.
The suspect was identified by police as Kishwar Jahan Afroze, age 40, of the 7300 block of North Tripp Avenue.
TWO WOMEN were arrested on retail theft charges at about 2:20 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at the Kohl’s store in the Lincolnwood Town Center, 3333 W. Touhy Ave., according to Lincolnwood police.
Employees reported that they saw the women conceal $939 worth of merchandise in a baby stroller and leave the store without paying for the items, according to police.
The suspects were identified by police as Karen Andrade, age 36, and Martha Valverde-Castro, age 63, both of the 3900 block of North Troy Street.
A MAN WAS arrested on retail theft charges at about 12:50 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the Kohl’s store in the Lincolnwood Town Center, 3333 W. Touhy Ave., according to Lincolnwood police.
An employee reported that he saw the man place clothing and a flashlight in a shopping cart and leave the store without paying for the items, according to police. Officers discovered that the man has an outstanding warrant for theft in Niles, police said.
The suspect was identified by police as Moshe Carcamo, age 50, of the 7600 block of North Greenview Avenue. |
The more I meditate, the more I feel like a beginner without a clue. In fact, most of the time, I feel like I must be doing this meditation stuff all wrong. Turns out, these feelings are normal … even for advanced practitioners.
Is this self-doubt what Zen Buddhist teachings mean by the beginner’s mind? No, not really. But this quote is a good one nonetheless!
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.
-Shunryu Suzuki
It does help to keep an open mind and stay flexible while meditating. Keeping a beginners mind when you’re getting started is key. This applies to everything we want to get good at, not just meditation. So maintain a beginner’s mind – all the time – to avoid becoming too rigid and inflexible.
I don’t meditate because of religious, karmic or other non-secular reasons. I meditate because it helps me focus, improves my productivity and patience, and reduces my anxiety. I have experienced these benefits firsthand and prefer to get more of them! ;)
These are things I’ve learned about meditating this past year – all from a beginner’s perspective:
#1 Allocate Shorter Periods To Meditation
It’s tempting to try and meditate for 60 minutes or more when you’re first getting started. Unfortunately, this can be an uphill battle – this is especially true for me even now. I’ve also found that if your meditation experience isn’t positive, I’m less likely to find time for it. In the beginning, quieting your mind is tough and extremely frustrating. Doing 30 second to 5 minute meditations when you’re just getting going will help keep you motivated.
#2 Use Guided Meditations
I’ve mentioned guided audio meditations before because they work. Guided meditations, like the ones available at Dharma Seed, are powerful (not just for beginners). I’m a fan of guided meditations by Tara Brach. One of the best things about guided meditations are that they’re timed just right… if you want a 5 minute meditation, you can find a 5 minute guided meditation. In the beginning, it’s a much better experience when someone is guiding you through the process.
#3 Make Meditation Social
Don’t forget – meditation and mindfulness benefits everyone. I sometimes – wrongfully – associate meditation with being alone but meditation can be a group activity. Why not ask a friend or partner to join you for a brief meditation? I find many people – although sometimes skeptical of the benefits initially – really want to give meditation a try. As they say, your friends and family will probably thank you later!
#4 Associate Meditation With A Favorite Place
Finding a comfortable, quiet place to meditate can make a difference. A place at home, at work or anywhere else will work well. This was a powerful way for me to associate the benefits of meditation with a relaxing place I already enjoyed. You are far more likely to find the time to meditate when your favorite place is where you practice as well.
#5 Go On A Retreat – Preferably Silent
Similar to tip #3 above, sometimes a little “social pressure” can help kickstart your meditation practice. Retreats are typically structured for both beginners and advanced practitioners alike – you don’t have to worry if it’s your first retreat. My first weeklong silent meditation retreat helped me structure my meditations better and make the extra effort required to continue to practice after the retreat. The advantage of a silent retreat is that you have more time alone with your mind as opposed to the company of others. Sure, your surrounded by others but your not engaged in active conversations and have limited standard social interactions. |
By Troy Kuersten
TheThresh.com
At a rally in Nashville on March 15, 2017, in response to multiple federal courts placing holds on the enforcement of his executive order barring immigration and refugees from six majority Muslim countries, President Donald Trump said, “This ruling makes us look weak, which, by the way, we no longer are. Believe me.” The key word is “us.” This is not the first time the President has conflated his own personal issues with the strength of the country. If you follow his twitter account and TV interviews, President Trump has consistently said similar things for years. Nevertheless, the March 15 comment is particularly novel in that it came from a sitting President. It brings to mind another leader known for his theatricality: King Louis XIV of France, also known as the “Sun King,” who once declared, “Je suis l’etat” (“I am the state”).
It’s important to remember that the United States does not look weak, nor has it looked weak in any period of its history since at least the Civil War, when two halves of the country crashed against one another in a conflict that caused phenomenal national destruction. And one could argue that the military force and manufacturing productivity the country brought to bear in that conflict shows that even then it was not weak, thus pushing back the last clear instance of American weakness to the War of 1812.
The U.S. Military today is far and away the most powerful in the world, capable of completely destroying any other military head-to-head. A single U.S. Missile Cruiser has the capacity to wipe out most countries’ entire navies from beyond the horizon where it cannot even be seen, and the U.S. Navy has 22 of the Ticonderoga Class alone. In Libya in 2011, the last place and time the U.S. Military actively engaged another country’s armed forces, it destroyed Libya’s entire national air defense network in a matter of hours for the cost of, essentially, a rounding error on the national defense budget.
And that’s just hard power. American soft power can be felt the world over; evinced by the fact that it’s almost impossible to go to an inhabited part of the globe short of North Korea where you cannot get a Coca-Cola or a Snickers bar, and I’m not entirely sure about North Korea. American culture can be found in the farthest corners of the world, with pirated American television shows, music, and movies available in any street bazaar you care to shop at. In addition, American brands such as Apple and Facebook are international status symbols and control the majority of the world’s information flow.
There is also the power and reach of the American diplomatic corps and spy agencies. The fact is that very little of note in the world happens that the U.S. is not aware of within hours, and capable of reacting to on a similar timescale.
Based on all of this, it is quite apparent that the U.S. is not weak, has not been weak for a very long time, and has not appeared weak over the same period to any intelligent observer. And that’s where King Louis XIV comes in.
How can one reconcile a President who says, “We look weak,” with a factual reality in which the U.S. is and appears strong? It is important to notice that whenever President Trump says that the country is or looks weak, he’s in a predicament—he’s not president yet and doesn’t control things; his signature executive order has just been struck down by the courts; his main legislative priority is on the rocks. How is the President’s weakness the nation’s? Je suis l’etat.
–
Picture: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Donald Trump with supporters) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
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Representatives of the Syrian government and opposition groups have gathered in the Kazakh capital Astana to hold peace talks aimed at ending the six-year conflict in the Arab state, with senior diplomats from Iran, Russia and Turkey mediating the process.
The two-day talks opened at Astana’s Rixos President Hotel on Monday with Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov delivering the keynote speech.
The negotiations, which are backed by the United Nations, will be held behind closed doors.
At the event, Iran and Russia will be mediating on behalf of the Syrian administration, while Turkey will be siding with the opposition.
Syria’s UN ambassador and head of the Damascus delegation Bashar al-Ja’afari (R) speaks with Syrian ambassador to Russia Riad Haddad prior to the first session of Syria peace talks at Astana’s Rixos President Hotel on January 23, 2017. (Photo by AFP)
On the eve of the negotiations, delegates from the three countries held long-hours talks in Astana. They discussed the direction of the negotiations, including the order in which the oppositionists will be attending.
The United Nations Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura is also in the Kazakh capital for the negotiations.
Late on Sunday, the UN official met with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari, who is heading the Iranian team of mediators.
During the talks, Jaberi Ansari emphasized the need for the world body to play a role in efforts to speed up the peace process in Syria.
Mediators reportedly want direct discussions between the Syrian government and political opposition.
However, Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko said Monday that the parties to the negotiations have yet to agree on direct negotiations, and the issue is still under discussion.
Opposition groups also said they would not negotiate face-to-face with the government in the first session of the discussions.
UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura(R), and head of the opposition delegation Mohammed Alloush (L), enter a hall for talks on Syrian peace at a hotel in Astana, Kazakhstan, January 23, 2017. (Photo by AP)
The US ambassador to Astana will also be joining the discussions as an observer at the host country’s invitation.
The talks will be followed with further UN-monitored negotiations in the Swiss city of Geneva on February 8.
Meanwhile, an opposition spokesman has said that the participating groups will only discuss consolidating the ceasefire as well as humanitarian issues, and will not enter a political dialogue.
Last week, President Bashar al-Assad also said the Astana talks would focus on enforcing a cessation of hostilities across Syria.
‘Up to Syrians to decide own fate’
Addressing the opening of the meeting, Jaber Ansari thanked Kazakhstan for hosting the talks, which he said, should ultimately seek to irreversibly end the confrontations in Syria.
He highlighted the sufferings of war-stricken Syrians, many of whom have been displaced internally and externally, adding that people in some parts the capital, Damascus, have no access to drinking water.
The senior Iranian diplomat slammed warfare as “the most reprehensible representation of conflict of ideas and interests,” stressing the Syrian nation’s right to self-determination and sovereignty.
Syrians are entitled to decide their own fate free from foreign meddling, said Jaberi Ansari, adding that the parties which seek to prolong the crisis in line with their personal interests are preventing the Arab nation from exercising their rights.
The deputy foreign minister urged that the international community to help stop the “illegal” flow of arms, funds and militants into Syria.
He also called for efforts to confront the Takfiri Daesh and al-Nusra Front terror groups, which have been excluded from the ceasefire currently holding across Syria. |
The chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini’s volcano expanded 10-20 million cubic metres – up to 15 times the size of London’s Olympic Stadium – between January 2011 and April 2012, according to a new survey carried out by an international team led by Oxford University and including a scientist from the University of Bristol. The research is reported in this week’s Nature Geoscience.
The growth of this ‘balloon’ of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, the researchers found. The results come from an expedition, funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council, which used satellite radar images and Global Positioning System receivers (GPS) that can detect movements of the Earth’s surface of just a few millimetres.
The findings are helping scientists to understand more about the inner workings of the volcano which had its last major explosive eruption 3,600 years ago, burying the islands of Santorini under metres of pumice. However, it still does not provide an answer to the biggest question of all: ‘When will the volcano next erupt?’
In January 2011, a series of small earthquakes began beneath the islands of Santorini. Most were so small they could only be detected with sensitive seismometers but it was the first sign of activity beneath the volcano to be detected for 25 years.
Following the earthquakes Michelle Parks, an Oxford University DPhil student, spotted signs of movement of the Earth’s surface on Santorini in satellite radar images. Oxford University undergraduate students then helped researchers complete a new survey of the island.
Michelle Parks of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, an author of the paper, said: "During my field visits to Santorini in 2011, it became apparent that many of the locals were aware of a change in the behaviour of their volcano. The tour guides, who visit the volcano several times a day, would update me on changes in the amount of strong smelling gas being released from the summit, or changes in the colour of the water in some of the bays around the islands.
"On one particular day in April 2011, two guides told me they had felt an earthquake while they were on the volcano and that the motion of the ground had actually made them jump. Locals working in restaurants on the main island of Thera became aware of the increase in earthquake activity due to the vibration and clinking of glasses in their bars…."
Co-author, Dr Juliet Biggs of the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences said: "People were obviously aware that something was happening to the volcano, but it wasn’t until we saw the changes in the GPS, and the uplift on the radar images that we really knew that molten rock was being injected at such a shallow level beneath the volcano. Many volcanologists study the rocks produced by old eruptions to understand what happened in the past, so it’s exciting to use cutting-edge satellite technology to link that to what’s going on in the volcanic plumbing system right now."
Co-author Professor David Pyle of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, said: "For me, the challenge of this project is to understand how the information on how the volcano is behaving right now can be squared with what we thought we knew about the volcano, based on the studies of both recent and ancient eruptions. There are very few volcanoes where we have such detailed information about their past history."
The team calculate that the amount of molten rock that has arrived beneath Santorini in the past year is the equivalent of about 10-20 years growth of the volcano. But this does not mean that an eruption is about to happen: in fact the rate of earthquake activity has dropped off in the past few months.
Paper
'Evolution of Santorini Volcano dominated by episodic and rapid fluxes of melt from depth’ by Michelle M. Parks, Juliet Biggs, Philip England, Tamsin A. Mather, Paraskevi Nomikou, Kirill Palamartchouk, Xanthos Papanikolaou, Demitris Paradissis, Barry Parsons, David M. Pyle, Costas Raptakis and Vangelis Zacharis in Nature Geoscience
Cabot Institute
The Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol carries out fundamental and responsive research on risks and uncertainties in a changing environment. Our interests include natural hazards, food and energy security, resilience and governance, and human impacts on the environment. Our research fuses rigorous statistical and numerical modelling with a deep understanding of interconnected social, environmental and engineered systems – past, present and future. We seek to engage wider society – listening to, exploring with, and challenging our stakeholders to develop a shared response to twenty-first century challenges. |
The Texas Rangers acquired catcher Geovany Soto from the Chicago Cubs on Monday night, according to a high-ranking Cubs' official unauthorized to speak publicly until the deal is announced. The Cubs will receive Class AA Jacob Brigham, who's 5-5 with a 4.28 ERA.
The Rangers were looking for an insurance policy for catcher Mike Napoli, who is a free agent at the season's conclusion.
CHICAGO - The Texas Rangers acquired catcher Geovany Soto from the Chicago Cubs on Monday night, according to a high-ranking Cubs' official who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because the deal has yet to be announced.
The Cubs will receive Class AA Jacob Brigham, who's 5-5 with a 4.28 ERA.
The Rangers were looking for an insurance policy for catcher Mike Napoli, who is a free agent at the season's conclusion.
Soto was batting .195 over 51 games before the Cubs dealt him.
The Rangers apparently weren't to happy with catcher Yorvit Torrealba, who was designated for assignment, according to Troy Renck of the Denver Post. |
Dr Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre sez,
A few days ago I suggested that the UK's protesting students could do with some kind of "anti-kettling app", to outwit the efforts of the police to stop them protesting, and keep them detained out in the freezing cold subzero temperatures well after bedtime. It turns out I was over engineering things in my head, the students on the anti-fees protests in London are now using this simple Google map (I got sent it by this guy). If you watch it, you can follow what's happening in London right now. With audio/video/image updates and stuff, it could also become a chaotic unflitered news repository. There may be others from around the country.
Don't let me get carried away, but what i find interesting with this, with Wikileaks, and going right back to older underground video news outlets like Undercurrents, is that it does feel a bit as if the tools traditionally only available to the state for things like surveillance, evidence gathering, coordination and dissemination are being democratised. I also very much enjoy the appearance of Godzilla in the Thames. |
Los Angeles' bi-weekly art walk recently got a taste of the confrontations between Occupy protesters and the LAPD.
The video above begins in the middle of a chaotic scene, making it difficult to verify what prompted the scuffle, but LAist reports that Sergio Ballesteros was indeed arrested and is currently in custody with bail set at $50,000.
According to LAist and Sue Basko, a lawyer who has been advising Occupy L.A., police were monitoring a crowded sidewalk when a drummer thus far only identified as Adam stepped off the curb. Police then immediately swarmed and arrested Adam, according to Basko.
In the ensuing frenzy, police appear to have knocked Ballesteros and a woman Basko identifies as Ballestero's girlfriend to the ground. Ballesteros is then arrested and charged with "lynching," which the California penal code defines as "the taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer."
Basko notes that the charge appears to be a flimsy one, at best. Here's what she wrote on the movement's website:
The police would have to be saying there was a riot, which does not seem to be the case, unless you count police behavior. Two or more people would have to be engaging in this riot and using it to take someone from police custody. Who are the two people? Where is the riot? Who was in police custody and was taken from it? Sergio alone cannot be engaging in a lynching, because it takes two or more people. None of these things appear to have happened.
Basko and LAist also note that Ballesteros had recently appeared on an MSNBC program, where he argued in the movement's favor, leading the attorney to speculate that he had been "cherrypicked" by police for his mainstream visibility. MSNBC's bio for Ballesteros describes him as a former high school teacher and current UCLA graduate student studying urban teaching.
After their encampment was cleared in a November 30 raid that led to over 200 arrests, Occupy Los Angeles has mostly made news for its participation in the Rose Parade and a city report which claimed that the movement has cost the city $2.3 million.
The greater Occupy California movement is comprised of as many as 150 groups, according to a report by the University of California at Riverside. The study found the groups nearly equally divided across the northern and southern parts of the state. |
I always like a conversation that includes a "yeah, but" in it, and few are guaranteed to have one like burger discussions:
"I think Gabby's is the best burger in town."
"Yeah, but have you been to Pharmacy?"
Everybody has preferences. Do you prefer it grilled or on a flat top? Is the basic burger your thing, or do you need a special condiment? Does it need to come from a great little throwback spot on the side of the road, like Bobbie's Dairy Dip, or can it come from a place known for carefully selected ingredients and white tablecloths, like Husk?
I've been trying to break out of my familiar burger rotation — the Seamus at Gabby's (straight-up cheeseburger), the Woodstock at Burger Up (Benton's bacon, white cheddar and Jack Daniel's maple ketchup) and the West Coast at Burger Republic (an homage to In-N-Out's famous sandwich). After eating my way through the Nashville burger scene for the past couple of months, I landed on these additions to my repertoire. The only criterion I had was that they be delicious.
With that in mind, here are five burgers you should be eating right now (but, please, not all at once).
The burger at Twin Kegs ($4)
As we walked into the dive bar on Thompson Lane at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, my dining companion lamented that he never knew about Twin Kegs in his single days: "I could have done some serious day drinking here." Indeed, some people already were as we sat down at one of the green-top tables. The burger is Zen simple, and the 6-ounce patty is well-seasoned, likely thanks to years of whatever has been used on that flat top. Your beer choices are cheap and corporate, as the Budweiser mirrors and Coors Light Silver Bullet Titans schedule would indicate. If you need something more substantial, there's the Big Bad Burger ($6.50), a three-quarter-pound monster that comes with a knife through it, like some kind of threat. Miles away from flashy food porn, this is an awesome burger in a throwback location.
The Deluxe at Fat Mo's ($6.79)
Here's to the two-handed burger, the thing that demands your attention as you eat it, lest the piled-high onions and tomatoes slide out the back. There's a reason there's a wrapper around it, friend. Fat Mo's serves up just that at its dozen or so area locations in the form of the Deluxe, a pound of burger with grilled mushrooms and onions, barbecue sauce, bacon and jalapeños that will dare you to finish it. (For the truly insane, you can get the Super Deluxe, which weighs in at just over a pound-and-a-half.) Adding to the degree of difficulty, you should probably expect to eat it in your car unless you're able to snag one of the outdoor tables at this drive-in-only place. My companion and I ripped through a couple of fire-kissed Deluxes on a picnic bench in Berry Hill with a side of spicy fries and a shake. The poor bastards in the McDonald's drive-thru two doors down didn't know what they were missing. I almost felt sorry for them. Almost.
The Angry Dragon at M.L. Rose ($11.95)
There's a lot to like about M.L. Rose, from the comfortable vibe to the abundant taps devoted to local beer to the late-night menu that's available until 1 a.m. But near the top of the list is a really excellent burger selection, including the Angry Dragon, a grilled patty topped with avocado, spicy Sriracha sauce and a runny Willow Farms egg. It's just a perfect combination of textures and temperatures, with the coolness of the avocado playing off the kick from the garlic and chili sauce. Then, on your second or third bite, you hit the center of the egg and get a whole new sauce for the burger. It's a mess but totally worth it. Skip the chips and do waffle fries instead (sweet potato version for $1 extra) so you'll have something to sop up whatever hits your plate.
The Local Burger at Fido ($12)
For me, the menu at Fido has always been the specials board. Sure, there's a really solid standard menu, but that specials list always seems to have one or two gems in it. Then I tried the Local Burger and have had a hard time ordering anything else since. John Stephenson is gone as chef from this Hillsboro Village spot, but the burger he left behind has few equals. Start with the patty itself, which has ground lamb added to the beef. Then add white cheddar, some crispy onions and spread on a ridiculous caramelized fennel and fig aioli that adds just a touch of sweetness. The shoestring fries — always a little more golden than others — come with the aioli and are some of the best in town.
The Grillshack Burger at Riverside Grillshack ($8.95)
Remember the Looney Tunes cartoon where Daffy Duck, complaining about his tiny dressing room, describes it as "so small I have to go outside just to change my mind"? That's the Grillshack, a place that I fear a car or truck might just sideswipe right off the corner of Riverside Drive and Rosebank Avenue in East Nashville. The flavors are big, though, and the ingredients are right: local, grass-fed beef from over at Porter Road Butcher and buns from Provence (and don't ever underestimate the value of great bread to a burger). They use Muenster cheese on top of a one-third-pound grilled patty, and it makes a difference, adding a little bit of mellow gooey-ness to the whole thing. Make sure and get some Uber Tuber fries to go with it.
Email [email protected] |
Working with cron jobs are very important for most applications if it’s sending weekly reports or compiling daily analytics. If you are unfamiliar with autoscaling application and have a background with applications on a dedicated instance, your first thought is to add a cron to the server. Sadly, when you have autoscaling instances that does not work, any more than one instance will cause crons to run multiple times and cause havoc on your system.
Lambda Saves the Day
This is where AWS Lambda comes in. Rather than spinning up a dedicated server for only running crons, you can use a serverless product like Lambda, which will save you time and money. Lambda is an AWS product which lets you run code without provisioning or managing any servers. All that’s required is deploying a blob of code to Lambda and let AWS handle the rest! That’s great but how do you schedule the code to be run? Luckily AWS has Amazon CloudWatch Events which lets you create recurring events that will trigger your Lambda function.
How do I Actually Do This?
You can implement this by going to the Lambda dashboard and click the “Create function” button.
Once you’ve done that you will see two options to continue with, either create a function from scratch or use one of the blueprints AWS provides. For this example, let’s use a blueprint. Click the blueprint button.
You are now on the final page in the process. You will see a section with the heading “cloudwatch-events.” This is where we give the lambda function a schedule to run on! Click on the dropdown and select “Create a new rule.”
This will open up a form to create a schedule for your lambda function. Change the rule type to schedule expression then enter a schedule expression. Some documentation on schedule expressions is here.
Going to the Next Level
Creating the lambda and setting up the schedule from the AWS console this is great, but to take this to the next level, you can automate this whole process, and do this via various tools such as the AWS command line. The documentation related to lambda is here and for Amazon CloudWatch Events here. I hope this was informative for you and if you have any related questions feel free to leave a comment! |
Jiaozhou Bay Bridge (or Qingdao Haiwan Bridge) is a 26.7 km (16.6 mi) long roadway bridge in eastern China's Shandong province, which is part of the 41.58 km (25.84 mi) Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project.[1] The longest continuous segment of the bridge is 25.9 km (16.1 mi).[3], making it one of the longest bridges in the world.
Description [ edit ]
The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge transects Jiaozhou Bay, which reduces the road distance between Qingdao and Huangdao by 30 km (19 mi), compared with the expressway along the coast of the bay, reducing travel time by 20 to 30 minutes.[4] The design of the bridge is T-shaped with the main entry and exit points in Huangdao and the Licang District of Qingdao. A branch to Hongdao Island is connected by a semi-directional T interchange to the main span.[5] The construction used 450,000 tons of steel and 2.3 million cubic metres (81×10 ^ 6 cu ft) of concrete.[4] The bridge is designed to be able to withstand severe earthquakes, typhoons, and collisions from ships.[4] It is supported by 5,238 concrete piles.[6] The cross section consists of two beams in total 35 m (115 ft) wide carrying six lanes with two shoulders.
The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge has three navigable sections: the Cangkou Channel Bridge to the west, the Dagu Channel Bridge to the east, and the Hongdao Channel Bridge to the north. The 600 metres (2,000 ft) long Cangkou Channel Bridge has the largest span of the entire Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, 260 m (850 ft). The Hongdao Channel Bridge has a span of 120 m (390 ft). The non-navigable sections of the bridge have a span of 60 m (200 ft).[1]
Length [ edit ]
The length of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is 26.7 km (16.6 mi), of which 25.9 km (16.1 mi) are over water, representing the aggregate length of three legs of the bridge.[1][7]
The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is part of the Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project, which includes overland expressways and the Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay tunnel. The aggregated length of the project is 41.58 km (25.84 mi), which is by many sources listed as length of the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge.[4][8][9][10]
The Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project consists of two non-connected sections: a 35.4 km (22.0 mi)-long expressway that includes the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge and a 6.17 km (3.83 mi)-long expressway that includes the Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay Tunnel.[3]
The 35.4 km (22.0 mi) section is further broken into multiple parts:[3]
26.7 km (16.6 mi) - Jiaozhou Bay Bridge of which 25.9 km (16.1 mi) is over water in the aggregate of three legs.
5.85 km (3.64 mi) - Qingdao side land bridge
0.9 km (0.56 mi) - Huangdao side land bridge
1.9 km (1.2 mi) - Hongdao Island connection
Records [ edit ]
After the bridge opened, Guinness World Records listed it at 41.58 km (25.84 mi), which made it the longest bridge over water (aggregate length). The Guinness title was taken by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge in October 2018.[11]
The bridge builder Shandong Gaosu Group claimed that Jiaozhou Bay Bridge had the first oversea interchange in the world and that it has the world's largest number of oversea bored concrete piles.[6][12]
History [ edit ]
The bridge was the idea of a local official in the Chinese Communist Party who was subsequently dismissed for corruption.[13] It was designed by the Shandong Gaosu Group. It took four years to build, and employed at least 10,000 people.[4] It opened on 30 June 2011 for traffic.[8]
The Qingdao Jiaozhou Bay tunnel opened on the same day as the bridge.[5][3] It transects Jiaozhou Bay, also connecting Huangdao District and the city of Qingdao, between the narrow mouth of the bay, which is 6.17 km (3.83 mi) wide. The tunnel travels underground for 5.55 km (3.45 mi).[14]
Concerns regarding the bridge's safety were raised when Chinese media reported that the bridge was opened with faulty elements, such as incomplete crash-barriers, missing lighting, and loose nuts on guard-rails, with workers stating that it would take two months before finishing all of the projects related to the bridge.[15] Shao Xinpeng, the bridge's chief engineer, claimed that in spite of the safety report, the bridge was safe and ready for traffic, adding that the problems highlighted in the reports were not major.
The bridge was reported by the official state-run television company CCTV to cost CN¥10 billion (US$1.5 billion, GB£900 million). Other sources reported costs as high as CN¥55 billion (US$8.8 billion, GB£5.5 billion).[2]
See also [ edit ] |
A view of traffic on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Friday. The night before, one officer was killed and two were injured in a shooting attack. Photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
A French security officer patrols at the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris on Friday, where a gunman shot three police officers and was killed by return fire. Photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
Bullet marks are seen on a window at 102 Champs-Elysee Avenue in Paris on Friday. The night before, one police officer was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting attack. Photo by Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
April 21 (UPI) -- The man who shot a police officer dead and injured two others in Paris was not previously named in any French security watch list as a potential risk, officials said Friday.
Police identified the accused gunman, who was shot dead on Paris' famed Avenue des Champs-Élysées Thursday, as Karim Cheurfi -- a 39-year-old French citizen who lived on the outskirts of the city.
Though he had a long criminal history, police said, he was never deemed risky enough to be placed on France's official Fiche S watch, which alerts authorities to potential militants. He had, however, served more than a decade in prison for unsuccessfully trying to kill another police officer in the mid-2000s.
Authorities said Cheurfi was released from prison in 2015 -- and re-arrested again in February for threatening to kill police. However, he was released from custody due to lack of proper evidence.
Paris Prosecutor François Molins on Friday said Cheurfi had shown no signs of "radicalization."
"Investigations will now focus on determining [whether he had] the benefit of possible accomplices," he said at a news conference.
RELATED Islamic State Top associate, Turkey plotter killed in U.S. raid in Syria
According to investigators, Cheurfi -- armed with an automatic AK-47-type weapon -- started shooting at a group of officers in a police van Thursday night. One was killed and two were wounded before the gunman was shot dead by return fire as he attempted to flee on foot.
A handwritten note found near the gunman's body indicated allegiance to the Islamic State. The busy street was evacuated, with at least one restaurant shielding customers in its basement.
"On the face of it, the officers were deliberately targeted," Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.
The terror group took credit for the attack, though that claim is viewed skeptically by some authorities. French President Francois Hollande classified the incident as a terrorist attack.
RELATED Explosion at Turkish police compound deemed terror attack
After the shooting, French presidential candidates announced they would temporarily suspend their campaigns. With the first round of voting scheduled for Sunday, center-right candidate Francois Fillon, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and leftist candidate Emmanuel Macron announced they halted their campaigns in light of the attack.
In opinion polls, the three lead the list of presidential candidates in popularity. They were participating in a televised political debate on Thursday night when the shooting started.
More than 50,000 police officers were on hand for security in Paris this week, as the vote nears. Hollande, who's not seeking re-election, convened a meeting of the national defense council on Friday.
At the debate, the three leading candidates expressed support of the police, with Fillon saying there is "no room for pursuing an election campaign today or tomorrow because, first of all, we have to demonstrate our solidarity with police."
Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melanchon said that panic should not "interrupt democracy," and later, Le Pen called on Hollande to restore border controls and immediately expel or detain anyone in France suspected of radical Islamist sentiments.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that he believes the shooting will sway France's presidential vote in conservatives' favor.
"Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this," he wrote. "Will have a big effect on presidential election!" |
“This place gives me the creeps. Still… there’s something familiar about this place. I don’t know…”
–Luke Skywalker
A tangle of tree roots in the swamps of Dagobah. Labyrinthine crystal caves beneath the surface of Ilum. Ancient ruins in the north of Lothal. The towering pillars of the Jedi Temple on Corsuscant. These scattered sites have in common a prodigiously strong connection with the Force, which has made them hallowed to the Jedi and now largely forbidden under the Empire. But to those who dare to visit them, they offer shocking epiphanies, difficult trials, mystical knowledge, and valuable artifacts.
Nexus of Power, a forthcoming sourcebook for Star Wars®: Force and Destiny™, enables players to visit these iconic places and many more. Its 144 stunningly illustrated pages provide lavish details on places strong with the Force, such as Dagobah’s tree cave and worlds with rich Force traditions, such as Bardotta. Eight modular encounters provide Game Masters ready-made gateways into these locations that can be used as single-session adventures or launching points for entire campaigns. Players will find new playable species, vehicles, and gear, as well as plentiful resources for crafting Force sensitive characters with rich backgrounds and distinctive personalities.
Worlds Strong with the Force
Among the galaxy’s millions of planets only a scant few resonate with the Force. Twelve of these rare worlds are opened up in Nexus of Power. Some you can travel to freely, others have been quarantined by the Empire. Some are home to billions of sentient beings, others struggle to support a few forms of life. Some, like Naboo, have played an important role in the politics of the Old Republic and the Galactic Empire. Others, like Lothal, are sparsely populated worlds in the Outer Rim, unremarkable—unless you know what to look for.
Still others are ancient and mysterious worlds hidden in the vastness of space, impossible for all but a select few Force users to find. The planet Ossus, for example, seems to be located within the Cron Drift asteroid field. At the end of the drift you can find scoundrels vending false astrogation charts to thrill-seekers attempting to find Ossus. Other criminals claim to have found it and retrieved artifacts with incredible powers—which they will sell you for just the right price. The Empire even refuses to comment on the planet’s existence. But Ossus does exist, and with Nexus of Power you can explore its ancient bronzium buildings, deep canyons, and dessicated ruins of gardens.
Temples and Wellsprings
A vergence is a place where the Force concentrates like a whirlpool in a flowing river. That place may be a small cave or an entire planet where light and dark constantly vie for surpremacy. Many Jedi temples, including the one on Coruscant, are built atop vergences that lie deep in the earth. Other vergences, like the tree cave on Dagobah, are unmarked by architecture and almost imperceptible to all but the Force sensitive. To those who feel the Force deeply, however, simply approaching a vergence can be overwhelming.
One lesser known vergence that Nexus of Power introduces to Force and Destiny is the Wellspring of Life, a type of legendary, light side vergence that can only be found with the Force as your guide. Qui-Gon Jinn began investigating the Wellspring of Life shortly before his death; Yoda took up where Qui-Gon Jinn left off and found it deep in the galaxy’s heart. The space within the Wellspring defies all known scientific laws. Lush, bizarre jungles grow in its heart, filled with mysterious beings. Every living creature in those jungles is an expression of the Force itself, so a Force user might find a long-lost pet among the foliage or flocks of birds that were thought to be extinct.
Departing from Tradition
The Force manifests itself among different cultures and species in different ways. The four playable species found in Nexus of Power exemplify that. The diminutive, enthusiastic, reptilian Aleena lack a native Force tradition, but quite a few have been inducted into the Jedi Order in the past. The scholarly, spiritual, lizard-like Bardottans, on the other hand, have a strong Force tradition. Known as the Dagoyan Masters, trained Force sensitives on Bardotta use the Force for education and practice nonviolence.
Devaronian culture is ancient and advanced. They independently developed travel through hyperspace and made contact with the greater galaxy long before nearby systems were inhabited. Force sensitivity appears rather frequently among these tall, horned, bipedal mammals, especially among the females, yet they have no prominent native Force traditions. Neither do the Gungans of Naboo, yet their cultural emphasis on living in harmony with the natural world suggests that there are more Force sensitive Gungans than the Jedi Order might ever have thought.
Encounter the Unknown
No matter what, there is one major Force tradition that you will have to find your way without: the Jedi Order. Its absence may compel you to go to Bardotta in search of a teacher or to explore the depths of a vergence, seeking an answer from the Force itself. You may travel to Ilum to search for a lightsaber crystal or brave the Imperial troops guarding the Jedi Temple on Corscuant in order to discover the truth about the Jedi and the Sith. There are inifinite paths towards destiny. Nexus of Power opens up numerous directions for your path to take.
Nexus of Power will be available in the first quarter of 2016. |
Potentially, Africa’s huge unbanked population combined with the burdensome process of opening and operating a bank account should make Bitcoin an instant hit.
However, its adoption has been irritatingly slow even though the basic infrastructure is not missing. It is estimated that by the end of this decade that 80 percent of the continent’s more than 1.2 bln population would be using Smartphones.
Then what hinders Bitcoin penetration in Africa? Cointelegraph spoke about it with experts in the cryptocurrency community on the so-called dark continent.
Fear of change
Scrutinizing the bottlenecks to penetration, Andrew Tudhope, Bitnation Ambassador of South Africa noted that access to, and interest in, complicated technologies, especially software is the bane. “Who really cares what form one's money takes when one has none?” He asked emphatically.
However, Alakanani ‘Motherpky’ Itireleng who is the Director of the Satoshi Centre in Gaborone, Botswana, thinks it is associated with unconsciousness. She thinks the fear of change and being comfortable with the status coalesce with Africans unwillingness to educate themselves accounts for the current state of the digital currency in Africa.
John Karanga of BitHub.Africa seems to agree with both Andrew and Alakanani on their various Views. The Kenyan Crypto enthusiast noted:
“The main hindrance to adoption of Bitcoin technology, which we do not often talk about, is the lack of awareness and skills to adopt the technology. Bitcoin currently is a sophisticated technology compared to the simplicity of existing platforms like M-Pesa, which my grandmother who does not even speak English can use. The Bitcoin technology needs to get simpler or integrate into other simpler platforms. We also need to get better at educating Africans about this technology.”
Exploring smartphones
Interestingly, there are differing opinions from the three African Cryptocurrency advocates on how pervasiveness of smartphones in Africa can speed adoption. Alakanani believes many Africans are not in the known on the power their smartphones wield.
“What I have realised is most people buy smartphones for prestige and hardly explore the ability these phones have. People often use their phones for calls, SMS and downloading games and music. If people receive the education and are shown how to use these gadgets, maybe we might see adoption,” Alakanani pointed out.
Political change
From the standpoint of view of Andrew it’s partially not the case. According to the Senior Citizen two factors among a few accounts for his observation. He sums it up here:
“Not necessarily, as the situation in Kenya and the recent fuss around BitPesa proves. Obviously, the more people online with smartphones, the better it is for internet-based things (and this goes doubly for money native to the net), but there are a number of factors at work. First, data costs on the African continent remain some of the highest in the world. Second, it remains essentially impossible to run a full node from your phone, and certainly not over mobile networks. While adoption need not require people running full nodes, it means once again being forced into the position of consumers rather than co-creators. Again, I think it is more likely that Bitcoin, and the technological innovations it represents, will form the foundations on which significant social and political changes will take place, and it is not just the smartphones, but the Africans who are using them are the most interesting part of the peer-to-peer equation.”
The CEO of BitHub.Africa slighly agrees with Andrew particularly with internet connectivity and how it is expensive. John’s position was that “Yes, the fast adoption of smartphones across some African countries e.g. Kenya is very encouraging. It means people are connecting to the Internet at an unprecedented rate, allowing them to access more opportunities previously inaccessible to them. Bitcoin just adds fuel to the fire and allows them to transact freely across the globe. Think about Africans living in the diaspora for example, they can now send money directly to their relatives, invest, and therefore contribute to the economies of their respective countries. This is possible through mobile connectivity.”
However, the Eastern African also thinks all is not rosy. “There are a few challenges remaining like the cost of Internet data and the quality of the smartphones but more importantly, we can also see the shift to a mobile digital economy happening.”
Terrorism accusations
In recent times the Kenyan government has been clamping down Bitcoin citing the use of Bitcoin by terrorist as the rationale behind the onslaught. These African experts agree that it is the usual fabrication from the incompetent state.
Alakanani calls it an unsubstantiated accusation which African leaders bereft with ideas, want to stand on & bury Bitcoin in Africa but it will never hold water. In the same vein Andrews rejected the claim outright.
“Not really, I think most are easily and empirically falsifiable, so, don't tend to lose sleep over it. If you ever get the chance, read Judith Butler - she has piles of interesting stuff to say about the (deliberately) never-ending war on terrorism and the way the American state constructs it,” He asserted.
How Africa benefits from Bitcoin
Some pessimist and shortsighted people think Bitcoin is irrelevant to Africans and for that matter adoption won’t take deep roots. John maintained that Africa will gain immensely from the Blockchain/Bitcoin Technology and it is even already reaping the fruits in some parts. This was his stance:
“Bitcoin represents the world's truly trustless system, where it is possible for two parties previously unknown to each other to exchange value (money) over large distances almost instantly without need of a third party mediating the transaction. This fact alone has huge implications on how business, commerce, and essentially trade can happen globally. A digitally connected African today can now access funding, credit, and even trade with counterparts across the globe in real-time because of Bitcoin technology. This presents new challenges on how we as Africans can take advantage of this opportunity.”
How Bitcoin benefits from Africa
On the contrary, Andrew suspects it is the other way round. “I think, rather, that Bitcoin stands a lot to gain from Africans. It is what Africans can bring to Bitcoin a more human face. A deep, traditional, and ingrained notion of community - what we call in South Africa ubuntu - that could interface in ways too many to detail here with technological peer-to-peer networks which aim primarily to establish consensus about a given state of things. The most interesting parts of Bitcoin, for me, having almost nothing to do with money, but rather focus on the political and social consequences of installing a new operating system that runs both how we agree on what has value, as well as how we move that value and put it to us.”
Refreshingly, the experts rejected government involvement and called for civil society involvement in educating Africans about Blockchain/Bitcoin. “We rather need to improve more on educating Africans about what Bitcoin is offering us as a continent,” Alakanani suggested. |
I had the idea for this blog post while I was watching some interviews on YouTube. The videos of the Conan show stood out to me because many of them seem to be focused on sexual topics. To me, it looks like they were following the simple “sex sells” approach. Not that there’s something inherently wrong with this, it just appears that Conan uses it much more than other late-night show channels.
This brought me to my main question. Are Conan videos more focused on sexual content than the ones of other late-night shows? I decided to compare its YouTube channel to the official channels of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and The Late Late Show with James Corden.
The public YouTube API allowed me to download the information for all available 12,237 videos. To find out whether a video contains sexual content or not, I compared the video’s title and description against a word list (see below). If the title or description contains at least one of the words, the video will be rated as “contains sexual content”. On top of that, I also checked if the video titles contain names of persons to group the videos into three categories: female, male, and neutral. For example, interviews with actresses fall into the female category, whereas, monologs fall into the neutral category.
The graph above shows that 17% of Conan videos in the female category contain sexual content which is 11% more than the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the second place. We also can see that the share of Conan videos containing sexual content is twice as large in the female category than in the male category. These numbers confirm the hypothesis that the Conan YouTube channel focuses much more on sexual content than other late-night shows. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon appears to be the YouTube channel with the cleanest video titles and descriptions.
Bonus: The results left me wondering if suggestive titles help the channels to gain views. I created the following plot with the beanplot R package which shows us that only Conan seems to benefit from sexual video titles or descriptions. If you’re interested in the beanplot, you can find a detailed explanation here. |
Congress passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday, averting a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday but pushing into January showdowns on spending, immigration, health care and national security.
Among the issues still to be resolved is federal aid for victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The House on Thursday passed a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill, but the Senate did not immediately take it up amid Democratic objections.
The stopgap extends federal funding through Jan. 19 and provides temporary extensions of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which has languished politically since it expired in October, a veterans health-care program and a warrantless surveillance program set to expire Jan. 1.
"It is essential that Congress maintain government programs and services for our nation's stability, the stability of our economy, and for the security and well-being of the American people," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said Friday on the House floor, urging lawmakers to support the stopgap.
It passed the House 231 to 188 and cleared the Senate 66 to 32. Thursday's congressional votes are expected to be the last of 2017.
The votes came after House GOP leaders scrambled Wednesday and Thursday to gather votes to keep the government open, seeking to defuse intraparty squabbling that erupted just hours after Republicans passed a landmark tax overhaul Wednesday.
President Trump with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Vice President Pence, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Wednesday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Between assurances from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), pressure from President Trump to avoid a shutdown and the impending holidays, most GOP lawmakers agreed to set aside their misgivings.
"The fact of the matter is, it's Christmas, and we don't need to be shutting the government down. I mean, that's a horrible optic," said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.), who said he was dismayed by the lack of long-term military funding but supported the stopgap.
But some frustrations lingered. While many House Republicans burst into applause after passing the short-term spending measure, not everyone saw cause for celebration.
"That we're clapping for a three-week CR just basically shows we can't do appropriations, we can't take care of our constituents back home, we just have to punt for three more weeks so we can leave for Christmas," said Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee who has pushed for federal aid for citrus growers devastated by hurricanes. "For some reason, that justifies applause. I don't get it. I don't get this place."
Advocates of increased military spending fumed after House GOP leaders abandoned a plan to attach a defense bill directing more than $600 billion to warfighters through September. Instead, the stopgap spending plan is offering only temporary funding at current levels, save for a $5 billion emergency increase to repair damaged warships and beef up ballistic missile defense systems.
[The tax bill is likely to become more popular after passage]
Leaving a House Republican conference meeting Wednesday evening, Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) said he was "bitterly disappointed" by the move and would not support any stopgap that did not make the Pentagon whole. But on Thursday, he and other defense hawks said they had been persuaded to support the stopgap after receiving assurances from Ryan.
"He's going to take a strong position for defense" in upcoming spending negotiations with Democrats, said Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Another tricky issue for House Republicans involved the extension of a program used by U.S. intelligence agencies to collect electronic communications of foreign spy targets on U.S. soil. National security officials warn that the loss of the program Jan. 1 could harm their ability to protect the country; civil liberties advocates, including members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, want the program to be overhauled and resisted a long-term extension.
But the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), said Thursday that its members would stand down after GOP leaders promised a full debate next month on a stand-alone bill to reauthorize the program, known as Section 702.
Trump urged lawmakers to pass the stopgap in a tweet Thursday morning that accused Democrats of forcing a showdown to distract from the tax bill.
"Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!" he wrote, referring to a "continuing resolution," the technical term for the stopgap.
[10 reasons Democrats think the tax bill will be a political loser for Trump’s GOP in the midterms]
Senate Democrats, who have the ability to block any spending bill if they stick together, waited Thursday to see whether House Republicans could manage to send a bill to the other chamber. Aides of both parties had warned that if the House did not act, the Senate could send the chamber a spending bill of its own that could include measures that House conservatives would find distasteful.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that Democrats would agree only to a short-term measure as long as broader disputes about spending, immigration and more remain unresolved.
"We're not going to allow things like disaster relief to go forward without discussing some of these other issues we care about," he said. "We have to solve these issues together."
But Democrats have split over how far to push for legislation that includes their key priorities — most of all, legislation granting legal status and a path to citizenship for immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, known as "dreamers." Activists and many lawmakers have said they are willing to force a shutdown unless the issue is addressed.
In a stark display of the divide among Democrats about how to proceed, more than a dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus marched from the House floor to Schumer's office across the U.S. Capitol on Thursday afternoon, demanding to see the Democratic leader.
Members of the caucus said they wanted to pressure Schumer and Democratic senators to withhold support for the spending bill unless Republicans commit to holding votes on legislation providing permanent legal protections to dreamers.
Emerging from the meeting, caucus members said Schumer assured them that more Democratic senators would vote against the spending bill than the 14 who did so two weeks ago, the last time Congress temporarily extended government funding.
Several people who attended the meeting, granted anonymity to describe what was expected to be a private exchange, said Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) — arguably the most outspoken Democrat on immigration matters — unloaded on Schumer, accusing him and Democratic senators of not caring about the fate of dreamers and "throwing them under the bus" in the ongoing spending debate with Republicans, participants said.
In response, Schumer raised his voice, telling Gutiérrez not to insult fellow Democrats.
Gutiérrez shot back, telling Schumer: "Don't raise your voice."
In a signal of growing frustrations, 29 Senate Democrats voted to oppose the stopgap. Only seven opposed the previous stopgap passed Dec. 7.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) testified at a House Rules Committee hearing Thursday morning, advocating for the inclusion of language that would grant legal status to dreamers, as well as a comprehensive spending agreement that would raise spending on both defense and nondefense programs.
Without those, they said, Democrats would not be able to support the stopgap.
"Unless we see a respect for our values and priorities, we continue to urge a strong NO on the Continuing Resolution," Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats on Wednesday.
As a result, House Republican leaders were under major pressure to assemble enough GOP votes to pass the measure.
[What the Republican tax bill actually does]
The disaster bill, meanwhile, hung by a thread Thursday. Republican leaders sought Democratic votes, inserting provisions late Wednesday directing additional funding to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in response to Democratic leaders' demands.
Democrats indicated that it would not be enough, pointing to various tax and spending provisions.
Disaster funding "may have to slip to next year," Schumer said. "I think we can work it out in a bipartisan way, I certainly do, but just jamming it through without consulting us and not being fair to so many other parts of the country doesn't make sense."
[One potential loser in the new GOP tax bill: Puerto Rico]
Another controversial provision was also added to the House stopgap Wednesday: a measure waiving mandatory cuts to entitlement programs forced by the passage of the tax bill.
The tax bill slashed revenue by nearly $1.5 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, adding to the federal deficit. That impact triggers a 2010 law that makes automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs if lawmakers increase the deficit.
Democrats opposed the GOP tax bill in part because they said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some said they would not help Republicans by passing the waiver — particularly as many Republicans have vowed to target deep spending cuts to social welfare programs next year. But Democrats — who are typically fiercely opposed to any reductions in Medicare, which would see roughly $25 billion in cuts per year — did not object Thursday.
In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a fierce advocate for lower federal spending, accused his fellow Republicans of reneging on calls to cut spending and forced a separate vote on the waiver.
"We have a spending problem," Paul said on the Senate floor, urging colleagues to vote it down. "We have rules to keep spending in check, and we disobey our own rules."
The waiver passed 91 to 8, averting the mandatory cuts.
Ed O'Keefe and Damian Paletta contributed to this report.
Read more at PowerPost |
Born in America, violinist Gil Shaham moved to Israel at the age of 7; three years later, he made his concerto debut. In 1988, at age 17, he garnered wide acclaim when he stepped in at the last minute for Itzhak Perlman in a London Symphony Orchestra concert. Since then, Shaham has maintained a top international career; the violinist, who lives in New York City with his wife, violinist Adele Anthony, and their three children, comes to Davies Symphony Hall Feb. 8 as part of the San Francisco Symphony’s Great Performers Series. Accompanied by pianist Akira Euguchi, he’ll play the Suite No. 2 by William Bolcom, Nigunim by Avner Dorman, Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E, and Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. He spoke to SFCV by phone from his home in New York.
You’ve always had a great rapport with Michael Tilson Thomas and the orchestra in San Francisco. Last time you were here, you played the Brahms Concerto. This time, you’re appearing in recital. Tell us about the program.
Yes, I’m very excited about this program. I just feel so lucky with what I do. Over the last seven seasons, I’ve been working on these solo Bach sonatas and partitas. These are pieces I learned as a student, and somehow never dared to perform until about seven years ago; I just thought, If I don’t start playing it now, it’s never going to get better. I just have to start doing it! Like so many others have said, besides the pleasure of hearing these pieces, there’s no greater joy than playing Bach. That’s how that came about.
With Akira, besides being a good friend, he’s also one of my great heroes. We’ve been playing together more than 20 years. When we rehearse, it’s very easy — a lot of the communication is almost nonverbal. We’ll play something and just sort of look at each other, and somehow we fix everything that’s on our minds. So he was very keen to do Avner’s piece, and so was I. Bill’s [Bolcom’s] piece was a commission, and it seemed appropriate to end the program with Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, one of the great masterpieces of the literature.
Dorman’s Nigunim and Bolcom’s Suite No. 2 were both composed for you, weren’t they?
Yes, and I was lucky enough to collaborate with both of these composers. Avner’s piece was a co-commission between my sister, Orli, myself, and the 92nd Street Y in New York. It was maybe two seasons ago that Orli and I played a program of music based on Jewish folk heritage; we’ll be releasing that recording in the spring. We wanted a traditional-based piece, and Avner’s first reaction was that he wanted to write music of the lost tribes of Israel. His music is decidedly more Sephardic and less Ashkenazi than the others, and the sonata he wrote for us — well, I couldn’t be more thrilled!
I love the piece. It seems to go over really well with audiences. We premiered it in 2011, and I’ve played it with Akira and Orli. Akira loves the piece — after the first time we read it together, he said, “Gil, we have to play this in Japan.” So after we play it in San Francisco, we will go to Japan in March and play it there. The way Avner describes it is that the first movement is based on a Libyan incantation. The second movement is based on a Georgian wedding dance, and the final movement is based on Macedonian dance rhythms. A nigun is an instrumental work; it has the unusual property that the melody starts on a note and wanders off, often in an improvisatory manner, and ends up back at the same note. Nigunim is the plural. It’s an instrumental piece that’s meant to transcend words. Avner said that if I played this for someone who only spoke Arabic, he would understand it, the same way that if I played it for someone who only spoke Hebrew, he would understand it. That’s the idea behind it.
Tell us a little about the Bolcom suite. It’s very new, isn’t it?
Yes, and it also has a nigun in it. The third movement is called “Northern Nigun.” It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but also very much following the tradition. This was a commission by Music Accord. I had played some recitals for them a few years back, and they asked if I could give them a name of an American composer from whom they could commission a piece. I was thrilled when Bill Bolcom accepted. He’s a living legend. I got to know him a little when I was playing his Violin Concerto in Toronto, and he came to some rehearsals there. I’ve always loved his writing, and I’m so digging this piece. Some parts are very tongue-in-cheek, some are light-hearted, some are very sunny, and others are very poignant and beautiful. It’s all for solo violin.
I do think music has a way of capturing its time. … In the Barber Concerto you can hear urban America. You can hear skyscrapers and sirens, the traffic down Broadway.
Maybe the starting point for this was the solo sonatas and partitas by Bach. You know, when Beethoven wrote about Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas, he said those pieces are proof that a composer can write great music even with shackles on. I think that’s exactly what Bill has done with this suite. It’s nine short movements, each with a different character, exploring all sorts of different ranges of the violin. And I haven’t performed it yet; the first performances will be in Aspen, Colorado [on Feb. 5].
So, your San Francisco appearance will mark one of the work’s very first performances after that?
Yes, and I can’t wait to see how the piece feels, and how it goes over.
You spent much of the last year playing the great violin concertos of the 1930s. Are these works that are still somewhat unappreciated, do you think? Why did you start this project?
To be honest, I really started the project as an excuse for me to play some of my favorite music. But it is kind of an interesting coincidence that within eight years, 1931 to 1939, there is this long list of composers who wrote concertos for the violin. When I read the list to a friend, he said, “Gil, you’ve just named all the great composers of the 20th century.” Suddenly, you have concertos by Stravinsky and Prokofiev and Bartók, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Samuel Barber, Roger Sessions, Benjamin Britten, William Walton, Darius Milhaud, Karl Szymanowski, Ernst Bloch. I’m leaving some out, but they all wrote violin concertos in those years. It’s curious, because composers before that didn’t have the need to write violin concertos. Ravel famously said, “Why should I write a violin concerto? Mendelssohn already wrote one.” Gershwin didn’t write one. I don’t think it was a particularly lucrative proposition for composers.
I guess these days I’m kind of going through my midlife crisis, just sort of reconsidering all my follies of youth!
So, how to explain this flowering of violin concertos in that decade?
I don’t have any answers. But I do think it’s interesting. It’s been a few years now that I’ve been playing these pieces. A few years ago I was playing in Washington, and a man came backstage. He said the 1930s was a very special time; people lived with tumult and trepidation and this feeling that they were on the edge of a volcano, waiting for the eruption. There was the Depression and the Dust Bowl. I’m not sure how that relates. But I do think music has a way of capturing its time. I remember Hugh Wolff talking about the Barber Concerto. He said that in the third movement you can hear urban America. You can hear skyscrapers and sirens, the traffic down Broadway. It’s true! By the same token, with Berg, you have passages where he switches between Bach’s original harmonies and this sort of weeping, lamenting violin harmonized with these very poignant 12-tone chords. Maybe that does capture the sense that Old Europe is gone, and what will happen now?
By my calculations, you’ve been concertizing now for the better part of 30 years. Are there works you have not played that you still want to play?
Yes, definitely. For one, Bill’s piece, which is very much on my mind. But there are some other things I’ve never done. I’ve never played the Shostakovich concerto, and one day I really have to get around to it. In the next few years, I hope to play Roger Sessions’ concerto, which I’ve never done before. I like the piece; it’s not as thorny as other pieces by Sessions, and I think people are always surprised by it. I haven’t played all the Mozart violin sonatas, or all the Beethoven, and I’ve only done a handful of the Bach accompanied works. There are also some pieces I’ve played many times, but never played well. I guess these days I’m kind of going through my midlife crisis, just sort of reconsidering all my follies of youth!
Speaking of youth, I’ve noticed you’re a Facebook and twitter participant. Is this something that’s required of artists now, or do you actually enjoy it?
I have to confess that I do have Facebook and twitter accounts, but the person who runs them is not me. It’s sort of run by the recording company, and my publicist. They forward things to me. Basically, it’s been explained to me that it is required — now you can really reach people this way. But at home, Adele and I are basically chasing after the kids most of the day. And I have a hard enough time answering phone messages, emails, regular mail, and everything else. I guess I’m really not very well-organized. |
I know it’s been quite some time since my last posting, but work’s been kicking my ass for a bit. Moving on to the goods. This is another amazing build by Moto Wheels which has done the rounds through the internet quite a bit; however Matt from Moto Wheels was kind enough to send some unreleased photos of this build, which will show the detail and the amount of work and time they put into this build. These guys are located in sunny California, Rancho Cordova and have been around for quite some time. They are one of the best stocked motorcycle stores from the U.S. and they also have an affinity for Ducati’s. Most of their project bikes are built on a Ducati platform and this Sport 1000 is one of the most beautiful build they conceived. What they did here is a work of art. Basically this is what you get when you have immediate access to the best parts available for the Ducati Sport 1000.
The 2006 Ducati Sport 1000 is a pretty sexy bike to begin with. It was introduced by Ducati at the 2003 Tokyo Motor Show, and put on sale in 2005 for the 2006 model year. They were the product of Ducati’s design chief Pierre Terblanche, who said the series started with the Evoluzione MH900e replica of Mike Hailwood’s victorious 1978 Isle of Man TT bike. The Sport 1000 is powered by the Desmodue 992 cc air-cooled L-twin Ducati 1000 Dual Spark engine, also called the DS9 engine. The 2006 model, known as the monoposto had a well gusseted 60 mm section asymmetric swingarm and a single shock, with stacked mufflers on the right side, low clip-on handlebars, and a dry-clutch.
The guys at Moto Wheels, started this build with the plan to transform this bike into a light weight, performance enhanced, aggressively sounding and looking, daily driver. Although this looks like a museum piece of art, something that you would spend hours looking at, this bike begs to be ridden on a daily basis. According to Matt this Sport 1000 is a fierce piece of machinery. The engine received a Corse Dynamics Performance intake kit and a Zard full exhaust system. A Ducati Performance ECU was the next logical step as the air to fuel ratio increased due to the engine breathing better. A Moto Wheels slipper clutch was opted for to replace the factory unit. The sprocket, belt, and open clutch covers are Speedymoto items that bring that subtle yet aggressive nakedness to this build.
The suspension was upgraded to the “Oh so nice!” Ohlins forks up front and Ohlins rear shock. A set of Speedymoto frame sliders as well as Rhino Moto axle sliders give that slight peace of mind that the bike is protected in case of an unfortunate event. The tank, tail, headlight bucket and fenders were painted a deep gloss black, and the color is brought out even more by the gold decals on the tank and tail. A set of subtle CRG bar-end mirrors are a perfect fit on this build, giving even the most broad shoulder rider a perfect view of whats behind. The rear-sets are billet aluminum from Style and Performance; they supplied Ducati Performance with parts in the past which were hugely successful (early monster in particular). Another cool upgrade is the reverse shifter which reverses the order of the gears to 1st up and 5 down as the GP bikes.
The wheels are BST Carbon Fiber which significantly reduce the weight and handling capabilities of this build. Brembo 4 pot radial calipers, Brembo Radial GP brake and master cylinders and Brake Teck floating rotors ensure this bike will stop as you want it, when you want it. Overall this definitely in my Top 5 bikes list. The amount of money, parts and time that went into this build makes you wonder what it’s like to give this bad boy a run for its money and drive it like it’s stolen down some canyon roads or track. Check out the gallery for the rest of the pictures and the parts list that went into this build.
List of Modifications:
Based on 2006 Ducati Sport 1000
Engine:
· Corse Dynamics performance intake kit
· Zard Full exhaust
· Motowheels Slipper clutch
· Speedymoto Sprocket cover
· Speedymoto belt covers
· Speedymoto clutch cover
· COX oil cooler cover
· Ducati Performance ECU
Chassis and suspension:
· Ohlins forks
· Ohlins rear shock
· Speedymoto frame sliders
· Rhino moto axle sliders
· Custom painted tank, tail, and fender
· CRG bar-end mirrors
· Style and Performance Rearsets
· Reverse shifter
Electrical and lighting:
· Corse Dynamics Headlight kit, w/ HID headlight upgrade
· Mad Doctor taillight kit
· Oberon Bar-end Turnsignals
Brakes, Wheels, and Drive:
· Brembo Radial GP Brake master cylinder
· Brembo Radial GP Clutch master cylinder
· Brake Tech Floating Rotors
· Brembo 4 pot radial calipers
· Brembo rear caliper upgrade kit
· BST Carbon Fiber wheels
· Supersprox rear sprocket
· DID ERV3 520 chain
· Driven front sprocket
· STM slave cylinder
· Rizoma Reservoirs
Via: Moto Wheels
Photos: Matt Walker of Moto Wheels and Flaunt Images Photography |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When the chips are down in Europe, everyone turns to Angela Merkel for a solution. But the German chancellor often sits on her hands until the last minute, then does the minimum necessary to keep the show on the road.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a meeting on EU summit results at the Bundestag in Berlin, Germany July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke
Since last month’s shock British referendum vote to leave the European Union, all eyes have been on Berlin to indicate a way out of danger for the 27 members who will remain.
As usual, Merkel, the continent’s most powerful and experienced leader, is biding her time and letting underlings air their differences without tipping her hand before she departs for her three-week summer break this week.
Votes had barely been tallied in Britain when her vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the center-left Social Democrats, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz rushed out a 10-point plan for a “refoundation” of Europe.
Lamenting that ever more citizens doubted Europe’s ability to deliver a better future, they called for a more federal Europe with the European Commission as its government, and a more flexible, growth-friendly economic policy turning away from austerity to investment in an “industrial renaissance”.
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble rapidly shot down those ideas, rejecting any need for economic stimulus spending and reaffirming his balanced budget target up to 2020 at a time when many in Europe are pleading with Berlin to borrow money free of interest and invest massively in infrastructure.
He refuses to accept that surplus countries like Germany, which has a giant current account surplus of eight percentage points of GDP, should help poorer deficit countries adjust by spending more on public investment and boosting consumption.
Furthermore, Schaeuble said those calling for a bold federal leap forward in integration had failed to understand the public disenchantment with the EU that fueled the British vote and is driving nationalistic euroskepticism elsewhere in Europe.
Rather than give more power to Brussels, the veteran conservative, who once advocated a federal “core Europe”, said it was time for national governments to take matters more into their own hands if the Commission was unable to do the job.
Schaeuble is blocking the next steps forward in euro zone risk-sharing - the creation of a European bank deposit insurance system and of a fiscal backstop for the currency area’s single resolution fund to help wind down failed banks.
The 71-year-old finance minister has also managed to delay any debt relief for Greece until after next year’s German election in September and maneuvered to delay public support for Italy’s ailing banks, saying there was no acute crisis.
LESS VULNERABLE
Even the German head of the euro zone’s rescue fund, Klaus Regling, argued last week that Berlin and its partners needed to go further to make the currency area less vulnerable to shocks.
Restructuring Italian banks’ bad loans and forcing investors including retail savers to take losses before any public money can be injected under the EU’s new bank recovery and resolution rules could trigger precisely that kind of post-Brexit shock.
Regling called for completing European banking union by phasing in a deposit insurance scheme after a transition period. He also advocated a limited budgetary capacity for the euro area to cushion economic shocks hitting only some countries.
Both proposals have so far been anathema to Schaeuble, who speaks for a school of German fiscal hawks in warning that such steps would lead to unacceptable permanent north-south transfers inside the monetary union.
At least there is debate in Germany about what the EU should do to regain momentum and overcome the trauma of losing Britain, its second largest economy, even if much of it resembles shadow boxing before next year’s German elections.
In many EU countries, politicians have simply fallen back on blaming Brussels, with some demanding the scalp of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker as a scapegoat.
To be sure, Juncker has contributed to the sense of disarray by first trying to rush an EU trade deal with Canada through the European Parliament without letting national lawmakers have a say, then reversing himself under pressure from governments.
The result is that the Canada deal could be bogged down for many months, perhaps indefinitely, and the chances of getting a bigger and more sensitive trade and investment partnership with the United States wrapped up and ratified seem even more remote.
No progress on monetary or banking union, deadlock on trade - that doesn’t leave much scope for restoring public and financial market confidence in Europe.
The German and French foreign ministers, both social democrats, have issued more modest joint proposals for the EU to focus on internal and external security, managing migration and refugee flows, and boosting the economy and job creation.
Their nine-page paper, which would not require changing the EU’s founding treaty with the risk of more referendum defeats, called for a European Security Compact with a more integrated foreign and security policy and a permanent civil-military chain of command for crisis management operations.
But when it came to the euro - the economic heart of the European project - their suggestions of investment-boosting measures by surplus countries and a common fiscal capacity(budget) for the euro zone, ran into the same stonewall in the German Finance Ministry.
Merkel has broadly welcomed the Franco-German paper and broadly adopted its focus on three main themes - migration, security and growth/jobs. Whether she is willing to overrule Schaeuble and take political risks before next year’s federal elections is highly doubtful.
Yet without some initiative to provide fresh wind after the Brexit blow, the EU looks highly vulnerable to the next external shock, whether from Islamist militants, Italian banks or another surge in migration. |
High taxes, heavy regulations and other policies that depress economic growth have made Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont a difficult place to create jobs, earn a living and raise a family. Underscoring this is the fact that Vermont saw a net outmigration of more than 5,000 residents over the last decade. Now Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) and state lawmakers are looking to double down on their anti-growth policies with the state house’s approval last week of another round of tax hikes of individuals, families and employers in the Green Mountain State.
The Vermont House of Representatives recently approved $48 million in higher taxes and fees. Levies were raised on home heating oil, mutual funds, banks, drivers, and the Employer Health Assessment Tax on businesses who don't provide health insurance for employees was hiked.
The $48 million tax hike package, if approved by the Democrat-controlled state senate and signed into law by Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), would come on top of the $30 million in higher state taxes signed into law by Gov. Shumlin last year, and the more than 20 federal tax increases signed into law by President Obama over the last seven years. Forty-five states have a better business tax climate than Vermont, and the $48 million tax increase passed by the Vermont House last week will only make the state business tax climate less hospitable and put Vermont at a greater competitive disadvantage.
Raising taxes in order to avoid necessary government reforms and spending restraint is nothing new to Vermont. Bruce Lisman, Republican candidate for Vermont governor, recently penned a column highlighting how during the last five years “Governor Shumlin has overseen an increase in taxes, fees, and surcharges of more than $640 million, a staggering 23 percent increase for a state of Vermont’s size and declining population.”
The Employer Assessment (a tax on employers who do not provide health care insurance for employees) increase, which accounts for just under $6 million of the $48 million hike package, was one of the more contentious provisions approved by the Vermont House, and understandably so, as a recent Supreme Court ruling calls into question the constitutionality this tax. Some argue the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) pre-empts Vermont's employer assessment tax and similar levies in others states.
“Due to United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Gobeille vs. Liberty Mutual, Vermont’s Employer Health Care Assessment tax – which was first enacted in 2006 to help pay for Catamount Health Care and is now used to help pay for Vermont’s failed Health Care Exchange and additional Obamacare subsidies – may be unconstitutional,” says Darcie Johnston, president of Vermonters for Health Care Freedom.
Johnston points out that in Gobeille vs Liberty Mutual, the Supreme Court affirmed its position that states could not preempt ERISA companies for the purpose of burdensome compliance and taxation, which Vermont does with its Employer Assessment tax.
“Vermont ERISA employers will be thrilled to have relief from Vermont’s Employer Assessment tax, which should have been repealed long ago and upon which the state is heavily relying on to help support a failed and non-functioning website,” said Johnston.
The tax debate now moves to the Democrat-controlled Vermont senate, where Republicans are arguing to spending restraint instead of higher taxes.
“By increasing the general fund spending by four percent, even though revenue is to grow at a mere two percent, this budget will perpetuate the state’s budget problems,” said House Minority Leader Don Turner (R). “When a state’s spending outpaces the economy by 2-3 percent every year with no end in sight, it’s a prescription for fiscal disaster," said Randy Brock, a former Franklin County senator and state auditor who is running for Lt. Governor.
Brock, Turner and Lisman’s assertion that Vermont has an overspending problem and not a revenue problem is backed up by the numbers. In fact, had Vermont kept state spending in line with the rate of population growth and inflation during the last decade, the state would’ve spent $6 billion less than it did. That’s $6 billion that could have been put in a rainy day fund, returned to taxpayers through tax relief, or both.
The $48 million in higher taxes approved by the state house last week aren’t the only rate increases still pending in the Green Mountain State. Vermont lawmakers are also considering standalone legislation that would impose a massive tax increase on electronic cigarettes and vaping devices. Taking products that are saving lives by helping people quit smoking and making them more expensive with discriminatory excise taxes is both terrible tax and health policy.
“The bill, which was introduced by Representative George Till (D), would lump e-cigarettes, as well as vape pens, mods, e-liquids, and even nicotine-free e-juice, under the state’s tobacco tax laws,” reports Motherboard’s Kayleigh Rogers. "Vermont’s 92 percent tobacco tax rate puts it at one of the highest in the US. Minnesota currently has the highest e-cigarette tax rate at 95 percent, but that does not apply to nicotine-free juice or empty vape pens and mods; if Vermont passes this bill, the state would arguably be home to the most severe vape tax in the country.”
While Vermont lawmakers are getting ready to increase their state’s tax burden, many other states are moving in the opposite direction. In North Carolina, for example, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and Republicans who control the state legislature have put the Tar Heel State in a much better position than Vermont (and other high tax states like Illinois, California and Connecticut) to compete for new business, investment and residents by significantly reducing and flattening personal and corporate income tax rates. North Carolina lawmakers have been able to accomplish this by doing something that Vermont lawmakers refuse to do: exercise spending restraint. Ensuring the size of government grows at a sustainable clip has allowed North Carolina lawmakers to provide tax relief while also increasing teacher pay and achieving budget surpluses.
Other states like North Carolina that have experienced some of the strongest economic growth in the country are also moving in the opposite direction from Vermont when it comes to fiscal policy. Take Texas, a state that already has a much more attractive business-tax climate than Vermont. Lone Star State lawmakers increased Texas' advantage over Vermont and other high tax states by enacting $4 billion in further tax relief for employers and property owners last year. Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott, who has provided his constituents with more than $2.6 billion in tax relief since taking office, is poised to enact an additional $1 billion in tax relief this year. Tennessee, which does not tax wage income, is already a much more attractive place than Vermont to do business. Yet Volunteer State lawmakers are getting ready to increase their advantage over Vermont and other high tax states in the coming weeks by passing legislation to repeal the state’s 6.0% tax on investment income, making Tennessee a true no income tax state.
Some states that are progressive strongholds like Vermont are being forced to admit Vermont’s high tax, high spending model is a loser. In 2014, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, signed into law tax reform that, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, “reduced unnecessary complexity in the corporate tax base and lowered the corporate income tax rate to the lowest level since 1968.” Gov. Cuomo has admitted the Empire has “no long-term future if you are the tax capital of the nation.” Vermont lawmakers would be wise to heed Cuomo’s advice, which is just as applicable to Vermont as it is to New York.
Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee and other economically successful states are passing regulatory reforms, reducing tax rates, giving workers the freedom to decide whether to join a union, and offering parents more options for providing a better education for their children. Compared with where Shumlin and Democrat legislators are taking Vermont, these successful states are moving in the opposite direction.
Vermont has already demonstrated that single-payer would require economy-crippling tax increases. Now Gov. Shumlin and Democrats who control the state legislature seem dead set on showing the country why raising taxes to avoid necessary reforms is not a recipe for economic success. As American for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist has famously said about the likes of Vermont, California, Connecticut, and Illinois -- no state is a total failure, some just serve as bad examples.
Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform, a policy research and taxpayer advocacy organization founded in 1985 at the request of President Ronald Reagan. Follow Patrick on Twitter @PatrickMGleason |
Apollo - Oneshot Attack On Titan Bakuman Behind Birdmen Black Clover Blue Phobia Boku no Hero Academia Illegals Boruto: Naruto Next Generations Burn the Witch Cardcaptor Sakura - Clear Card Arc Chi no Wadachi Count Over Downfall Dr. Stone Drea•Mer Eden's Zero Fantasies Galaxy Gang Gamblers Parade Golem Hearts Handa-kun Hero Mask hot Hozuki-san Chi no Aneki + Imouto Hungry Marie Hunter x Hunter Ichigo 100% East Side Story Itoshi no Muco Jujutsu Kaisen Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to Official Doujin Kochikame Koe koi Kuroshitsuji Magic scroll merchant Zio Majo no Kaigashuu Memesis Metsuko ni Yoroshiku Monku no Tsukeyou ga Nai Rabukome Mononofu Mononogatari My Hero Academia Nanatsu no Taizai Nani mo nai( Sora wa Aoi ) Nanoha Yougashiten no Ii Shigoto Nisekoi No Longer Human Noah's Notes One Piece One Punch-Man One Shot - Braids: "Case of the Braid Killer" Oneshot - Frog and Haru's super beast comic Orient Origin Peerless Dad Platinum End Raid re: monster Red Sprite Red Storm Robot x Laserbeam Sakamoto desu ga? Seraph of the End Shinobi no BAN Silver Spoon Smokin' Parade Solo Leveling Sora no Kian Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken The Promised Neverland Tokyo Ghoul: re Tokyo Metropolitan Magic Technical School Twin Peach Twin Star Exorcists Twin Star Exorcists: Omake U19 UQ Holder Uratarou Wangtangchang the Yurutto Hunter War of Mountains and Seas We Can't Study We Don't Know a Thing About Love We Want to Talk About Kaguya Wonted Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san Zanki x 99 Zui Wu Dao
Chapter 64: Absolute Parallel Lines of Existence Chapter 63: Reason to Fight, Reason to Die Chapter 62: An Unstoppable Force, The Head Exorcist! Chapter 61: The Enmadou House VS. Shi-Shi-Shi-Shi-Shiromi Chapter 60: Good Night, Mom Chapter 59: One More Promise Chapter 58: An Evanescent Doll's Dream Chapter 57: Fall of the Iorois Chapter 56: Despair Comes with a Smile Chapter 55: The Lid to Hell Chapter 54: Arc of Adashino Benio 4: Something I Want to Tell You Chapter 53: Arc of Adashino Benio 3: Kamui and Benio 02 Chapter 52: Arc of Adashino Benio 2: The Young Girl's Hell Chapter 51: Arc of Adashino Benio 1: Benio and Kamui 01 Chapter 50: Hack and Slash Chapter 49.1: Mattress Extra Chapter 49: The End of the Party Chapter 48: King of Solitude Chapter 47: My Name is not Birdmaru Chapter 46: The Strength to Move Forward Chapter 45: Welcome Back, Dr. Kan-chan Chapter 44: Raging Inferno at Hadarae Castle!! Chapter 43: Ideals, Dreams, and Aspirations Chapter 42: A Woman's Battle, Part 2 Chapter 41: A Woman’s Battle, Part 1 Chapter 40: Three Months Pass Chapter 39.1: Special Chapter: Awaken Mayura's Dormant Fangs!! Chapter 39: Heir of Tsuchimikado Chapter 38: An Unsightly Desire Chapter 37: The Little Adashino Giant Chapter 36: Place of Beginning. A Distant Past. Chapter 35: Frontline Chapter 34: The Island Where Stars Gather Chapter 33: Twin Star Divergence Chapter 32: The Tomorrow the Two Walk Towards... Chapter 31: What I Fear Chapter 30: Magano’s Encroachment Chapter 29.1: Special Arc 「Twin Star Regression」 Chapter 29: The Sewer Rat's Dream Chapter 28: A black birth cry Chapter 27: Mayura’s Fight Chapter 26: Those who do not seek it Chapter 25: Turn Over Chapter 24: A History of defeat Chapter 23: A world without Exorcism Chapter 22: Spell Chapter 21: Perfect Linker Chapter 20: Supreme ruler of the empty sky + specials Chapter 17: Two Paths, Each Their Own Chapter 16: The day Rokuro came Chapter 15: Stellar Instrumentalist Chapter 14: My Fangs Chapter 13: Twin Star Sublimation |
This is the first time in 4 years that I won't be able to attend E3. The times I have attended certainly proved to be memorable; I wasn't there to work, so my exploration of its technical playground abounded. If an E3 noob were to ask me something about the event they wouldn't have guessed, chances are, my answer would entail a personal experience. I've never left an E3 without a story to tell.After all, it's where I had the pleasure of sharing drinks withhost and former G4 personality Chris Gore. In 2012, I was able to meet writers for the gaming site I then wrote for, just long enough to become friendly yet briefly enough to avoid the inevitable awkwardness of meeting Internet strangers. At E3 2013, I met Jeromy "Doc" Adams, the founder of Extra Life (an annual gaming charity event I've participated in since 2010). Being recognized by Razer's CEO, Min Liang Tan, as someone he followed on Twitter was also pretty cool.Yet there are other things about E3 to which I'm sure most of its attendees don't pay any mind—more unusual facts that could only be brought to us via this month's issue of the Entertainment Software Association's newsletter. Unlike the sights and sounds available to everyone on the exhibit floor, the ESA has provided us the following 10 behind-the-scenes, IMDb trivia-esque facts about just how much goes into the production of this annual southern California convention:1. The Ethernet cables used at E3 could stretch from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, from New York City to Chicago, from Denver to Dallas, or from Madrid to Paris. In total, these cables weigh more than two tons.2. E3 features more than 35,000 video monitors and more than 6,000 pieces of furniture.3. The meeting rooms and exhibit spaces at E3 could fill nearly 8 U.S. football fields, approximately 34 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or more than 7 White Houses.4. Truss and hoists at E3—used to suspend lighting and hanging decorations—weigh the equivalent of 26 African elephants, 54 mid-sized SUVs, or more than 7 F-18 fighter jets.5. The amount of bandwidth required for 3 days at E3 is more than most U.S. cities require in a year.6. E3 employs more than 3,000 people during the course of producing the show, including an army of 45 network engineers who work to complete the on-site Internet/Ethernet installation in the 3 weeks leading up to the big event.7. If the total quantity of data moved over the Internet at E3 was printed on size 8.5 x 11 paper and stacked vertically, it would be taller than the Empire State Building.8. More than 55 miles of fiber optic cable is used at E3, enough to reach the mesopause—the coldest part of Earth's upper atmosphere.9. The LACC's electricians use nearly 10 miles of extension cords at E3 and nearly 5 miles of duct tape to secure cords to the floor. The show also installs approximately 5 miles of carpet throughout the LACC.10. For the first time, millions of gamers from around the world will be able to experience E3 by tuning in to Twitch.TV's live stream of the expo floor. Viewers can also watch press conferences, original interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage of the event.Will you be heading to Los Angeles this week to go to the electronic software industry's global premiere trade show? Tell us in the comments what you're looking forward to, and even if you can't be there, head over to http://www.e3insider.com starting Monday at 9:30 AM PST to catch live coverage of this year's press conferences.Source: ESAPhoto credits: Michelle Quillen |
What to Know Jonathan Wienke was found with weapons by security officers at Homeland Security headquarters in June.
A search of his West Virginia home found multiple illegal weapons, according to court documents.
Authorities arrested Wienke in Pennsylvania Friday in relation to the search warrant on his house.
A Department of Homeland Security employee accused of taking weapons to work had 19 firearms and 10,000 to 50,000 rounds of ammunition at his home, according to new court filings.
Federal government analyst Jonathan Leigh Wienke, 45, is charged with illegally building a silencer on an unregistered pistol and having materials to build more silencers, according to the seven-count grand jury indictment. The charges carry up to a 10-year prison term.
Wienke has pleaded not guilty. He had no comment for News4 at his hearing last week.
Investigators seized the guns and ammo from Wienke's Martinsburg, West Virginia, home when executing a search warrant there in June, according to the affidavit. Agents also found items in the kitchen “consistent with those sometimes used to make improvised explosives,” but the items were not considered contraband and not seized.
Wienke was found with a gun by security officers while he was on the job at agency headquarters on Nebraska Avenue in northwest D.C., according to court filings obtained by the News4 I-Team. A federal agent and security officers also found Wienke had a knife, pepper spray, thermal imaging equipment and radio devices, according to the request for court permission to raid his home about 75 miles from Washington.
The federal charges do not reference Wienke’s arrest at DHS headquarters. D.C. prosecutors said they are awaiting the decision of a grand jury before further action is taken in that case. Wienke previously pleaded not guilty in the D.C. case.
The feds said in the court filing that Wienke was found in his workspace, which is in close proximity to a meeting of senior agency officials the day of his arrest, and that Wienke was aware of the meeting.
In the same court filing, the agent said there was “probable cause to believe Jonathan Wienke was conspiring with another to commit workplace violence, and more particularly may have been conspiring or planning to commit violence against the senior DHS officials in the building.”
But last month, the department's chief security officer, Richard McComb, told a House homeland security subcommittee that there is "no indication" Wienke was "planning or conspiring to commit workplace violence."
According to the court filing, Wienke was chosen for a random security screening when he arrived at agency headquarters about 7:30 a.m. June 9. The feds, in their filing, said security officers found the knife, pepper spray, thermal imaging equipment and radio devices during the screening and seized them.
But he was allowed to proceed to his office by agency security, according to their court filing.
About 90 minutes later, before the meeting of the senior DHS officials near Wienke’s work area, security went to Wienke and asked him to undergo another screening, according to the court filing. During that screening, the feds found the loaded gun and the five hollow-point bullets, the filing said.
According to the court record, Wienke had a top-secret clearance inside DHS headquarters, a building which has 3,000 employees.
Initially he was charged with carrying a pistol without a license. He was placed on administrative leave from his job after his initial arrest, and a judge barred him from entering DHS headquarters while the investigation continues.
On July 11, another DHS employee was caught with a gun at headquarters. Thomas Pressley, a contractor who works in IT for the agency, pleaded not guilty. |
Fracking wells in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region are disproportionately located in poor rural communities, which bear the brunt of associated pollution, according to a new study.
The study bolsters concerns that poor people are more likely to deal with hydraulic fracturing in their community and raises concerns that such vulnerable populations will suffer the potential health impacts of air and water pollution associated with pulling gas from the ground.
“This trend is not one we’re surprised by, we see this in a lot of industries,” said Mike Ewall, founder and director of Energy Justice Network, a nonprofit organization that works with U.S. communities dealing with pollution from energy.
However industry groups say hydraulic fracturing is in rural farming regions of Pennsylvania out of necessity and is providing some much needed economic stimulus.
Researchers from Clark University mapped areas in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to identify areas with a lot of Marcellus Shale hydraulic fracturing wells and then examined some local demographics: age, poverty and education levels, and race.
The Marcellus Shale is a large rock formation—almost 95,000 square miles—that stretches across parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia and holds trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. It’s experienced a surge of drilling as techniques have advanced. The most common method, hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, works by drilling and injecting fluid at high pressure, which fractures rocks and releases the natural gas.
One thing was clear from the Clark University study: poverty levels are strongly associated with active fracking wells in Pennsylvania.
“Our analysis shows that environmental injustice was observed only in Pennsylvania, particularly with respect to poverty: in seven out of nine analyses, potentially exposed [census] tracts had significantly higher percent of people below poverty level than non-exposed tracts,” the authors wrote.
The researchers used different tests to estimate exposure to potential gas well pollution—varying the distance from the wells since there is no definitive distance that makes someone safe or exposed. “No matter how you estimate proximity, it always came up as exposure was significantly, much higher” in poor Pennsylvania communities, said lead author of the study Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, a Clark University assistant professor of Geographic Information Sciences for Development and Environment.
She said the study raises environmental justice concerns as people under the poverty line often “have less mobility and access to information” about the potential ills of fracking, especially since the communities she looked at were rural areas without the amenities of larger cities and towns.
She also found local clusters of gas wells disproportionately impacting the poor, elderly and those with lower education in West Virginia, and children in Ohio.
Most concern about proximity to gas wells stems from the potential for air pollution from drilling and leaks, and water pollution from the mix of chemicals pumped into the ground, radiation from the fractured rocks, or methane.
And recent headlines have only stoked alarm in Pennsylvania fracking communities.
This week the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences released a study that found traces of a common fracking chemical in water from three homes in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, where the median household income is 10 percent lower than the rest of the state’s.
In addition, last month researchers reported that radon—the world’s second leading cause of lung cancer—is much more prevalent in Pennsylvania buildings near natural gas development than in other parts of the state.
And a week after the radon study, the state released data that showed sulfur dioxide emissions soared 57 percent from 2012 to 2013 at Pennsylvania natural gas sites. Sulfur dioxide harms the respiratory system and can cause or worsen illnesses such as asthma.
Industry has long maintained that fracking is environmentally safe and cleaner than other fossil fuels. In response to the new study, Joe Massaro, a spokesman for the Independent Petroleum Association of America's outreach program called Energy in Depth, said in an email that industry presence is helping poor Pennsylvania communities.
"A majority of people living in these rural areas are hardworking, generational farmers. According to the Pennsylvania farm Bureau the average net cash income per farm is $18,567, just below the poverty line," Massaro said. "By signing leases with oil and natural gas operators here in the Commonwealth, these farmers have been able to buy new state of the art equipment and pay off debt which has made their lives that much easier."
Massaro added that the oil and gas industry also provides local tax revenue and jobs.
But Energy Justice’s shale gas program coordinator, Alex Lotorto, disagrees and said that small farmers may have seen a short-term boost from oil and gas leases but the negative impacts of the industry far outweigh any perceived benefits.
He said that the new study just reinforces what his group has been seeing on the ground for years.
“Residents in these poor counties have been under assault for generations,” he said.
“Rural poverty is real in the shale fields.”
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company. |
A Maryland GOP official is asking for a refund on his donation to the campaign of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R).
Anne Arundel County, Maryland, executive Steve Schuh is requesting a refund of his $1,000 donation after a local progressive blog made the donation public, according to the Capital Gazette.
“My contribution was in connection to the Severna Park fundraiser a few months ago, before I found out he was a creeper,” Schuh told the newspaper. “Since the time that became clear, I have asked for my money back.”
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Schuh said he asked for his money back earlier this week because he expected Moore to drop out of the race amid mounting sexual misconduct allegations. When he didn’t, Schuh said he emailed Moore’s chief of staff Rich Hobson to request his refund.
“Rich, as you know, I contributed to Mr. Moore’s campaign some time ago before these extremely concerning allegations about misconduct arose,” Schuh wrote according to the Gazette. “The allegations are both numerous and credible. Accordingly, I would ask that my contribution to Mr. Moore be returned. Thank you for your consideration.”
Schuh told the paper he had yet to receive his money back.
The Alabama race has been thrust into the national spotlight after Moore was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including a woman who says Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 and he was 32.
Top Republicans in Congress have called on Moore to drop out of the race following the allegations.
Moore has refused those demands and steadfastly denied the allegations, calling them a political ploy to sabotage his campaign.
President Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE has offered a full-throated endorsement of Moore in recent days, saying his vote is needed in the Senate to pass Republican bills. |
FLINT, MI -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a deal with the city of Flint on the former "Chevy in the Hole" manufacturing complex, clearing the city of any long-term liability for pollution at the site.
A
for the proposed environmental agreement passed without any changes issued to the
, which transfers ownership of the 130-acre property to the city of Flint, officials said Monday.
Flint Mayor Dayne Walling said the deal is a "major step forward" because now the property is eligible for about $1.5 million in remediation grant funds that city officials couldn't access before the site's long-term environmental liability was addressed.
The Chevy in the Hole complex holds a prominent place in the center of the city along the Flint River, near Kettering University, and was a backdrop of the historic Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37.
"It's in proximity to tens of millions of dollars in investments," Walling said Monday. "Improving the health and appearance of the Flint River corridor will be a benefit to the surrounding institutions and neighborhoods."
Under the
, the city has to conduct an environmental assessment, cap the property, plant trees and other native vegetation and install walkways and groundwater monitoring wells. In exchange, Flint gets a covenant that it can't be sued for issues stemming from any existing contamination at the site, according to EPA documents.
The first steps include a complete study of the underground infrastructure at the site to identify any groundwater, storm water or structural issues, Walling said.
Future plans call for the creation of wetland and other natural features, he said. Work at the site will be completed as grant funds are secured, Walling said, so the property isn't expected to be a drain on the city's already strained resources.
The site is already undergoing a multi-phase remediation project with grant funds from the U.S. Forest Service. Thousands of trees are being planted to help remove contaminants from the soil and beautify the area.
"We can enhance the ecological features based on the underground infrastructure," Walling said. "We need to prevent contamination from getting into storm water drains."
The city of Flint obtained the property from the Flint Economic Development Corp., which obtained it for $1 with a quit claim deed from Delphi Corp. in 2008.
The finalized agreement was announced Monday at a Land Bank conference in Kalamazoo by Mathy Stanislaus, the Obama administration's assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, said EPA Spokesman Rafael Gonzales.
More details about the settlement are expected to be released this week, Gonzales said. |
Story highlights New tools make it possible to schedule social media posts to go up after death
Twitter tool could eventually mimic person's syntax and tastes to tweet after death
Using these online services can help people think about and plan for death, companies say
Death already has a surprisingly vivid presence online. Social media sites are full of improvised memorials and outpourings of grief for loved ones, along with the unintentional mementos the departed leave behind in comments, photo streams and blog posts.
Now technology is changing death again, with tools that let you get in one last goodbye after your demise, or even more extensive communications from beyond the grave.
People have long left letters for loved ones (and the rare nemesis) with estate lawyers to be delivered after death. But a new crop of startups will handle sending prewritten e-mails and posting to Facebook or Twitter once a person passes. One company is even toying with a service that tweets just like a specific person after they are gone. The field got a boost last week when the plot of a British show "Black Mirror" featured similar tools, inspiring an article by The Guardian
Schedule social media posts long into the future
"It really allows you to be creative and literally extend the personality you had while alive in death," said James Norris, founder of DeadSocial. "It allows you to be able to say those final goodbyes."
DeadSocial covers all the post-death social media options, scheduling public Facebook posts, tweets and even LinkedIn posts to go out after someone has died. The free service will publish the text, video or audio messages directly from that person's social media accounts, or it can send a series of scheduled messages in the future, say on an anniversary or a loved one's birthday. For now, all DeadSocial messages will be public, but the company plans to add support for private missives in the future.
DeadSocial's founders consulted with end of life specialists while developing their service. They compare the final result to the physical memory boxes sometimes created by terminally ill parents for their children. The boxes are filled with sentimental objects and memorabilia they want to share.
"It's not physical, but there are unseen treasures that can be released over time," Norris said of the posthumous digital messages.
Among the early beta users, Norris observed that younger participants were more likely to make jokes around their own deaths, while people who were slightly older created messages more sincere and emotional. He's considered the potential for abuse but thinks the public nature of messages will be a deterrent. The site also requires members to pick a trusted executor, and there is a limit of six messages per week.
"I don't think that somebody would continually be negative and troll from the afterlife," Norris said optimistically. "Nobody really wants to be remembered as a horrible person."
The UK-based startup will only guarantee messages scheduled for the next 100 years, but in theory you can schedule them for 400 years, should your descendants be able receive Facebook messages on their Google corneas. The company has only tested DeadSocial with a group of beta members, but it will finally launch the service for the public at the South by Southwest festival in March. Fittingly, the event will take place at the Museum of the Weird
The last, private word
For those interested in sending more personal messages -- confessions of love, apologies, "I told you so," a map to buried treasure -- there's If I Die . This company will also post a public Facebook message when you die (the message goes up when at least three of your appointed trustees tell the service you've died), but it can also send out private messages to specific people over Facebook or via e-mail.
Though If I Die has attracted a number of terminally ill members, the company's founders think it could be appeal to a much wider audience.
"Somebody that knows he's about to die gets time to prepare himself; the big challenge is when it happens unexpectedly," said Erez Rubinstein, a partner at If I Die.
The Israeli site launched in 2011 and already has 200,000 users. Most have opted to leave sentimental goodbyes, and written messages are more common than videos, according the company. So far, the service is entirely free, but it plans to launch premium paid options in the future.
"It's an era where most of your life and most of your presence is digital, and you want to have some control over it. You want to be in charge of how you are perceived afterward," Rubinstein said.
A tweet-bot to remember you by
A more extreme version of this type of control lies at the heart of _LivesOn , a new project with the catchy tag line "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting."
Still in the early stages, _LivesOn is a Twitter tool in development at Lean Mean Fighting Machine, an advertising agency in the United Kingdom. The agency is partnering with the Queen Mary University to create Twitter accounts that post in the voice of a specific person, even after he or she has died.
When people sign up, the service will monitor their Twitter habits and patterns to learn what types of content they like and, in the future, possibly even learn to mimic their syntax. The tool will collect data and start populating a shadow Twitter account with a daily tweet that the algorithm determines match the person's habits and interests. They can help train it with feedback and by favoriting tweets.
"It's meant to be like a twin," said Dave Bedwood, a partner at Lean Mean Fighting Machine.
In the short term, Bedwood and his team said it will serve as a nice content-recommendation engine. But eventually, in the more distant future, the goal is to have Twitter accounts that can carry on tweeting in the style and voice of the original account.
The people behind the project warn against expecting Twitter feeds fully powered by artificial intelligence, or worrying about Skynet , any time soon.
"People seem to think there's a button you can press, and we're going to raise all these people from the dead," joked Bedwood, who has seen a huge spike in interest in the project over the past week. "People have a real faith in what technology can do."
Artificial Intelligence is still a long way from being able to simulate a specific individual, but recreating the limited slice of personality reflected in a Twitter feed is an interesting place to start.
The _LivesOn service is hoping to roll out to a limited number of test users at the end of March.
As with the other services, _LivesOn will require that members choose an executor. At this point, it's as much a thought experiment as an attempt to create a usable tool.
A little bit of immortality
All these companies see the potential for technology to change how people think about death. Goodbye messages can help people left behind through the grieving process, but composing them can also be comforting to people who are uncomfortable with or afraid of death.
"We shy away from death. It reaches us before we approach it," DeadSocial's Norris said. "We're using tech to soften the impact that death has and dehumanize it. It allows us to think about death in a more logical way and detach ourselves from it."
The prospect of artificial intelligence, even in 140-character bursts, can also be comforting to people who see it as a way to live on.
"The afterlife is not a new idea, it's been around for quite a long time with all the different versions of heaven and hell," Lean Mean Fighting Machine's Bedwood said. "To me this isn't any stranger than any one of those. In fact, it might be less strange." |
Liberal leader promises to remove visa requirement for Mexican citizens
BRAMPTON, Ont. — In an effort to smooth relations with Mexico, a Liberal government would remove visa requirements for Mexican citizens entering Canada, leader Justin Trudeau promised Friday.
The subject has been a sore point between the two countries since the Conservative government imposed the visa in 2009 to stem the flow of people fleeing drug-crime violence and economic difficulties in order to seek asylum in Canada.
At the time, the Conservatives argued that many of the applications were bogus. In 2013, the Mexican ambassador said Mexico was “really mad” Canada was making it difficult for tourists and business people to travel north.
Trudeau, speaking at a metal-working company in Brampton, Ont., said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has “soured” Canada’s relationship with Mexico over the last 10 years.
The Liberal leader promised to “do right by our continental neighbour.”
Since Canada and Mexico are both members of North American Free Trade Agreement, there shouldn’t be barriers between the travel of their citizens, he said.
He dismissed the Conservative government’s claim that Mexico couldn’t be a source of refugees.
“We need to ensure that Canada is a country that is accepting refugees who are fleeing persecution from all sorts of places around the world for all sorts of different reasons,” Trudeau said.
He said asylum applications should be processed in a “reasonable and speedy fashion” but “there are other ways of doing that than slapping a Mexican visa that is hurting tourism and relations with our continental partner and quite frankly has hurt our growth within NAFTA.”
Before 2009, Mexico was on its way to becoming one of Canada’s largest sources of refugees.
Roughly 8,000 people were referred to the Immigration and Refugee board in 2008 and the there were over 13,000 other backlogged cases at the time.
In the first four months of 2009, almost 5,000 people entered Canada from Mexico and claimed refugee status, prompting the decision to impose the visa.
The Mexican embassy in Ottawa in 2009 said barely 11 per cent of refugee applications from Mexico were approved, leading Canadian authorities to believe those fleeing Mexico were doing so for economic reasons rather than for security.
In February 2013 Canada imposed an additional barrier to Mexicans seeking asylum in Canada by designating the country on a list of “safe” places of origin, making it far more difficult for people from these areas to obtain asylum.
Safe countries of origin are described on the Citizenship and Immigration website as “countries that do not normally produce refugees, but do respect human rights and offer state protection.”
Drug-related violence in Mexico, however, is a serious problem and Human Rights Watch reported that the Mexican government admitted in 2014 that over 22,000 people have been reported missing since 2006 due to the so-called war on drugs.
The human rights organization says that both drug cartels and government soldiers have committed torture and widespread killings in the country.
In their 2015 budget, the Conservatives promised to help speed up entry papers for “legitimate travel to Canada” from “low-risk travellers” but did not make mention of removing the requirement.
Trudeau said the Conservatives’ claims of bogus refugees from Mexico is an example of the Tories “continually stoking fear and anger among Canadians. It’s what they do. We are a generous and compassionate people.”
The Liberal leader also reiterated his party’s pledge to repeal the elements of Bill C-24 that gives the government the right to strip citizenship from dual nationals accused of serious crimes such as terrorism.
“The bill creates second-class citizens,” Trudeau said.
“No elected official should ever have the exclusive power to revoke Canadian citizenship. Under a Liberal government there will be no two-tiered citizenship. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.”
Giuseppe Valiante , The Canadian Press |
Asura Cryin' (アスラクライン, Asura Kurain) is a Japanese light novel series by Gakuto Mikumo, with illustrations by Nao Watanuki. The novel series began on July 10, 2005, with fourteen volumes currently published by ASCII Media Works under their Dengeki Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation by Ryō Akizuki premiered in ASCII Media Works' shōnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh on September 27, 2008, and an anime adaptation began airing in Japan in April 2009.[1][2]
Plot [ edit ]
The story is a semi-serious school action story revolving around Tomoharu Natsume. He is haunted by the ghost of his childhood friend, Misao Minakami, who died in an airplane accident three years earlier, which Tomoharu barely survived. On entering high school, Tomoharu takes the opportunity to live on his own and moves into Meiou-tei, a dormitory, where he starts enjoying a carefree high school life (also, his mother has recently remarried and doesn't want him interfering in her newlywed life). His life changes when a beautiful girl named Shuri Kurosaki appears with a mysterious trunk which she claims Tomoharu's brother, Naotaka Natsume, asked her to deliver to him. Things become complicated when Kanade Takatsuki, a girl dressed like a shrine maiden, appears seeking the trunk in Tomoharu's possession. It is revealed that the trunk hides secrets about the world they live in.
Characters [ edit ]
Science Club / Third Student Council President / Royal Dark Society [ edit ]
Tomoharu Natsume ( 夏目 智春 , Natsume Tomoharu ) , voiced by Miyu Irino, is the main protagonist of the series, often called "Tomo" by his closest friends. He controls Kurogane and became an Asura Cryin after he made a contract with Kanade Takatsuki which gave birth to Persephone. He confesses that he is in love with Kanade, but after the restriction of Misao he is unable to choose between her or Kanade because he loves both equally, but so the three agree that he doesn't have to.
, voiced by Miyu Irino, is the main protagonist of the series, often called "Tomo" by his closest friends. He controls Kurogane and became an Asura Cryin after he made a contract with Kanade Takatsuki which gave birth to Persephone. He confesses that he is in love with Kanade, but after the restriction of Misao he is unable to choose between her or Kanade because he loves both equally, but so the three agree that he doesn't have to. Misao Minakami ( 水無神 操緒 , Minakami Misao ) , voiced by Haruka Tomatsu, is Tomoharu's childhood friend, and the primary female heroine of the series. She appears with Tomoharu as a projection/ghost-like image, and is later discovered to be the "Burial Doll" of Tomoharu's Asura Machina: Kurogane. She loves Tomo more than anything and would do anything for him.
, voiced by Haruka Tomatsu, is Tomoharu's childhood friend, and the primary female heroine of the series. She appears with Tomoharu as a projection/ghost-like image, and is later discovered to be the "Burial Doll" of Tomoharu's Asura Machina: Kurogane. She loves Tomo more than anything and would do anything for him. Kanade Takatsuki ( 嵩月 奏 , Takatsuki Kanade ) , voiced by Ai Nonaka, is the second female heroine of the series. She is a demon which becomes a friend of Tomoharu Natsume. She seems to have feelings for Tomoharu. Later on in the series she and Tomoharu make a contract making Tomoharu an Asura Cryin and giving birth to Persephone, their child, owl.
, voiced by Ai Nonaka, is the second female heroine of the series. She is a demon which becomes a friend of Tomoharu Natsume. She seems to have feelings for Tomoharu. Later on in the series she and Tomoharu make a contract making Tomoharu an Asura Cryin and giving birth to Persephone, their child, owl. Ania Fortuna ( アニア·フォルチュナ·ソメシェル·ミク·クラウゼンブルヒ , Ania Foruchuna Somesheru Miku Kurauzenburuhi ) , voiced by Sayuri Yahagi, is a young, genius blonde-haired demon who recently transferred to Tomoharu's school and was placed into his care to protect her from a demon hunter. She is also known as a Luck Demon, due to her ability to give or take other people's luck.
, voiced by Sayuri Yahagi, is a young, genius blonde-haired demon who recently transferred to Tomoharu's school and was placed into his care to protect her from a demon hunter. She is also known as a Luck Demon, due to her ability to give or take other people's luck. Shuri Kurosaki ( 黒崎 朱浬 , Kurosaki Shuri ) , voiced by Rie Tanaka, is Tomo, Misao, and Kanade's senpai. She was also involved in the plane crash, and nearly died.
, voiced by Rie Tanaka, is Tomo, Misao, and Kanade's senpai. She was also involved in the plane crash, and nearly died. Takuma Higuchi ( 樋口 琢磨 , Higuchi Takuma ) , voiced by Hiro Shimono, is a good friend of Tomoharu's.
, voiced by Hiro Shimono, is a good friend of Tomoharu's. Tokiya Kagayaki ( 炫 塔貴也 , Kagayaki Tokiya ) , voiced by Shinji Kawada, is Aki and Toru's childhood friend and the main antagonist of season 2.
, voiced by Shinji Kawada, is Aki and Toru's childhood friend and the main antagonist of season 2. Tohru Kitsutaka ( 橘高 冬琉 , Kitsutaka Tōru) , voiced by Yuko Kaida, is the president of the Third Student Council, which was founded by members of the "Royal Dark Society".
First Student Council / Holy Guards [ edit ]
Reishiro Saeki ( 佐伯 玲士郎 , Saeki Reishirō ) , voiced by Shotaro Morikubo, is the head of the First Student Council on campus.
, voiced by Shotaro Morikubo, is the head of the First Student Council on campus. Aine Shizuma ( 志津間 哀音 , Shizuma Aine ) , voiced by Satomi Satō, is Reiko and Reishirou's cousin. Like Misao, she is a spirit/projection and the burial doll of Reishiro's Asura Machina.
, voiced by Satomi Satō, is Reiko and Reishirou's cousin. Like Misao, she is a spirit/projection and the burial doll of Reishiro's Asura Machina. Reiko Saeki ( 佐伯 玲子 , Saeki Reiko) , voiced by Kimiko Koyama, is Reishirou's younger sister and class president of Tomoharu's class.
Second Student Council / Pilgrim Union [ edit ]
Rikka Kurasawa ( 倉澤 六夏 , Kurasawa Rikka ) , voiced by Eri Kitamura, is the president of the Second Student Council, which supervises committees in the school.
, voiced by Eri Kitamura, is the president of the Second Student Council, which supervises committees in the school. Shuu Mahiwa ( 真日和 秀 , Mahiwa Shū) , voiced by Junji Majima, is the treasurer of the Second Student Council, and also Rikka's manservant.
Kantou Student Union [ edit ]
You Susugihara ( 雪原 瑶 , Susugihara Yō ) , voiced by Sayori Ishizuka, is Shirogane's former handler. You is called "GD's Destra".
, voiced by Sayori Ishizuka, is Shirogane's former handler. You is called "GD's Destra". Aki Kitsutaka ( 橘高 秋希 , Kitsutaka Aki ) , voiced by Hiromi Hirata, is Toru's sister and the former burial doll of Kurogane.
, voiced by Hiromi Hirata, is Toru's sister and the former burial doll of Kurogane. Haruna Chiyohara ( 千代原 はる奈 , Chiyohara Haruna ) , voiced by Reiko Takagi, is the handler of Aenka and the members of GD. She uses the old style of the Japanese language.
, voiced by Reiko Takagi, is the handler of Aenka and the members of GD. She uses the old style of the Japanese language. Kyoumu Satomi ( 里見 恭武 , Satomi Kyōmu) , voiced by Yoshinori Fujita, is the handler of Bismuth.
Tomoharu's relatives [ edit ]
Naotaka Natsume ( 夏目 直貴 , Natsume Naotaka ) , voiced by Miyu Irino, is Tomoharu's older brother.
, voiced by Miyu Irino, is Tomoharu's older brother. Kazuha Sonomiya ( 苑宮 和葉 , Sonomiya Kazuha) is Tomoharu's stepsister. Kazuha is haunted by a ghost whose name is Saika ( 咲華 ) . Although Tomoharu thinks she does not like him, which contributed to his decision to move into Meiou-tei and live on his own, she does in fact like him, but is too shy to speak easily to him.
Kanade's relatives [ edit ]
President of Takatsuki-gumi ( 嵩月組社長 , Takatsuki-gumi Shachō ) , voiced by Eizou Tsuda, is Kanade's father, and the president of a large organization known as the Demon Association.
, voiced by Eizou Tsuda, is Kanade's father, and the president of a large organization known as the Demon Association. Uzumasa Shioizumi ( 潮泉 太秦 , Shioizumi Uzumasa ) , voiced by Akihiko Ishizumi, is Kanade's grandfather and a lover of scrollwork. He is also the owner of the Meiou-tei.
, voiced by Akihiko Ishizumi, is Kanade's grandfather and a lover of scrollwork. He is also the owner of the Meiou-tei. Ritsu Shioizumi ( 潮泉 律都 , Shioizumi Ritsu) , voiced by Yōko Hikasa, is Kanade's cousin and a college student.
Others [ edit ]
An Oohara ( 大原 杏 , Ōhara An ) , voiced by Aki Toyosaki, is one of Tomoharu's few close friends, who calls Tomoharu by the nickname Tomo.
, voiced by Aki Toyosaki, is one of Tomoharu's few close friends, who calls Tomoharu by the nickname Tomo. Yukari Kurosaki ( 黒崎 紫浬 , Kurosaki Yukari ) , voiced by Rie Tanaka, is Shuri's younger twin sister.
, voiced by Rie Tanaka, is Shuri's younger twin sister. Hiwako Torishima ( 鳳島 氷羽子 , Torishima Hiwako ) , voiced by Ao Takahashi, is Tokiya's contracting demon, nicknamed "Kori Hime (Ice Princess)" from her looks and character. Hiwako uses an ice naginata named "Hyou-ou" when she fights.
, voiced by Ao Takahashi, is Tokiya's contracting demon, nicknamed "Kori Hime (Ice Princess)" from her looks and character. Hiwako uses an ice naginata named "Hyou-ou" when she fights. Takaya Kagakagari ( 加賀篝 隆也 , Kagakagari Takaya) , voiced by Kazuya Nakai, is the main antagonist of season 1. He is a famous guitarist, demon hunter, and lingerie thief, and is known as the "Lingerier of Hamelin ( ハーメルンの下着男 , Hāmerun no Shitagi Otoko) ".
Media [ edit ]
Light novels [ edit ]
No. Title Release date ISBN 1 アスラクライン July 10, 2005[3] ISBN 978-4-8402-3090-2 2 アスラクライン(2) 夜とUMAとDカップ October 10, 2005[4] ISBN 978-4-8402-3179-4 3 アスラクライン(3) やまいはきから February 10, 2006[5] ISBN 978-4-8402-3308-8 4 アスラクライン(4) 秘密の転校生のヒミツ June 10, 2006[6] ISBN 978-4-8402-3449-8 5 アスラクライン(5) 洛高アンダーワールド September 10, 2006[7] ISBN 978-4-8402-3550-1 6 アスラクライン(6) おしえて生徒会長! January 10, 2007[8] ISBN 978-4-8402-3685-0 7 アスラクライン(7) 凍えて眠れ May 10, 2007[9] ISBN 978-4-8402-3842-7 8 アスラクライン(8) 真夏の夜のナイトメア August 10, 2007[10] ISBN 978-4-8402-3934-9 9 アスラクライン(9) KLEIN Re-MIX December 10, 2007[11] ISBN 978-4-8402-4118-2 10 アスラクライン(10) 科學部カイメツ June 10, 2008[12] ISBN 978-4-04-867088-3 11 アスラクライン(11) めぐりあい異世界 October 10, 2008[13] ISBN 978-4-04-867267-2 12 アスラクライン(12) 世界崩壊カウントダウン April 10, 2009[14] ISBN 978-4-04-867763-9 13 アスラクライン(13) さくらさくら November 10, 2009[15] ISBN 978-4-04-868141-4 14 アスラクライン(14) The Lost Files February 10, 2010[16] ISBN 978-4-04-868334-0
Manga [ edit ]
Anime [ edit ]
The anime first premiered on April 2, 2009. The opening theme used for the first season is "Spiral" by Angela, and the ending theme is "Link", also by Angela. The single for the two songs was released on May 13, 2009. A second season aired on October 1, 2009, again using opening and ending themes by Angela. The opening theme of the second season is "Alternative", and the ending theme is "Kanata no delight". |
Things got a little heated between Nate Diaz and Clay Guida's team backstage at UFC 199.
Justin Buchholz, coach of Team Alpha Male, said on the Stud Show Radio podcast that it all started after Guida's TKO loss to Brian Ortega. Guida was walking toward the locker rooms, Diaz popped out of a bathroom and the two crossed paths.
"Clay said something to him, but Clay was discombobulated at that time," Buchholz said. "He just said something to Nate. He was all like, 'Man, I'm gonna f*ck you up again' or something like that."
Guida defeated Diaz in 2009. But Diaz just smiled and laughed it up, mostly surprised, according to Buchholz. However, the coach said Jason Guida, Clay's brother, provoked the situation by grabbing Diaz and pushing him up against a wall. Buchholz said Jason Guida was already emotional and smashed a stool backstage after his brother's loss.
"Then f*cking Jason and Nate got into it," Buchholz said. "I don't know what happened, but Jason bull rushes Nate and tries to put him up against the wall. Nate has got him in a clinch. Like 50 people from the UFC come rushing into this thing. I'm standing in the middle like, 'No!'"
Buchholz apologized to Diaz after and handed him his shirt that he apparently lost in the scuffle. Diaz went back to his seat cageside at The Forum like nothing happened. Soon after, he was shown on the screen when news of his rematch with Conor McGregor at UFC 202 was announced.
Cody Garbrandt added on Stud Radio that he ran into Diaz after the fights were over and Diaz just said he was surprised by the whole situation. Buchholz said there is absolutely no beef between Team Alpha Male and Team Diaz.
"Team Alpha Male versus everybody, except the Diaz brothers," Garbrandt said. |
Katherine Archuleta, the chief human resources officer who oversaw arguably the worst data breach in federal history, was ousted Friday, just a day after she insisted she was staying in for the long haul.
She caved to bipartisan pressure from members of Congress who said they’d lost all confidence in her ability to clean up after hackers stole what amount to complete biographies of more than 21 million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management computer systems last year.
“Today’s move by the administration to change leadership at OPM is the right decision, and one that will help to restore confidence in an agency that not only poorly defended sensitive data of millions of Americans but struggled to respond to repeated intrusions,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
Ms. Archuleta had suffered through several embarrassing hearings before Congress where she read non-responsive answers from cards prepared by her staff, and where she hinted that the data breach would affect fewer than 18 million people. On Thursday, however, she admitted that more than 21 million complete biographies of applicants for security clearance — including financial and health histories, family trees and other deeply personal data — had been stolen.
Another hack at the same time compromised more than 4 million Social Security numbers.
Ms. Archuleta, in announcing the extent of the hacking, told reporters she felt up to the task of cleaning up the agency, and said the hacks were only discovered because of changes made during her tenure. She was confirmed as director of the OPM in October 2013.
In a statement Friday, she said she had come to believe she was a distraction.
“I conveyed to the president that I believe it is best for me to step aside and allow new leadership that will enable the agency to move beyond the current challenges and allow the employees at OPM to continue their important work,” she said.
Her ouster, however, did not end the questions swirling about the troubled agency, nor did it satisfy congressional critics.
“Not enough,” said Sen. Ben Sasse, Nebraska Republican, who has questioned the OPM’s assurances that it now knows the extent of the hack.
President Obama, who accepted the resignation Friday morning, thanked Ms. Archuleta for her years of “dedicated service.”
Beth Cobert, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, will take over the role of acting OPM director on Saturday.
The White House said Ms. Cobert has led the efforts at OMB “to drive the president’s management agenda to improve how the government operates and ultimately deliver better, faster, and smarter services to citizens and businesses.”
She oversaw the government’s performance, procurement, and financial management offices, as well as the Office of the Chief Information Officer.
“Under Cobert’s leadership, the administration has led successful efforts to improve the management of federal information technology spending, reduce the federal real property footprint, and modernize and improve citizen-facing services through teams like the U.S. Digital Service,” the official said.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president did not ask for Ms. Archuleta’s resignation.
“She did so of her own volition,” Mr. Earnest said, adding that Ms. Archuleta recognized that the challenges of fixing the problems at OPM “require a manager with a specialized set of skills.”
Mr. Earnest couldn’t say whether the president’s own personal data was hacked during the year-long cyberattack.
“I don’t have information about the president’s personal data,” Mr. Earnest said. “Even if I did, I’m not sure I’d share it.”
Ms. Archuleta had been a teacher and then a top aide to various politicians, serving as chief of staff or senior advisor in several federal Cabinet agencies. But she had little technological experience — a fact that drew harsh criticism from Capitol Hill, which has a renewed focus on cybersecurity after repeated high-profile breaches.
Hispanic-rights groups had fought hard for Ms. Archuleta’s nomination, and celebrated her as the first Hispanic to head the OPM.
But her nomination drew opposition from Senate Republicans who questioned the OPM’s decision-making with regard to Obamacare.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. |
Miraflores Press Office / AP President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez
Who needs diplomacy and all its excruciating politeness? Not even the traditional "Yankee Go Home" was enough to convey the pique of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Thursday as he announced that he had given U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy 72 hours to leave Venezuela. "Shithead Yankees, go to hell!" Chávez thundered at a campaign rally in Carabobo state Thursday, announcing that he had also asked Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, to return home until a new government is elected in the U.S. that will "respect the peoples and governments of Latin America."
Chávez said he was taking the action in solidarity with Bolivia's President Evo Morales, who had expelled his own country's U.S. ambassador a day earlier. But he also accused the U.S. of being part of a plot to assassinate him, a scheme allegedly involving retired Venezuelan generals and opposition politicians.
Earlier on Thursday, Chávez had welcomed two long-range Russian bombers to Venezuela for training exercises, which will be followed in November by joint naval maneuvers with Russian warships in Venezuelan waters. Clearly Chávez is rattling a saber at Washington, but the more urgent question is whether U.S.-Venezuelan relations are at a breaking point. Chávez had been railing at Duddy in the media because of the ambassador's recent remarks suggesting that drug traffickers were finding it easier to use Venezuela as a transshipment point. But high-level sources inside Miraflores, the Caracas presidential palace, say Duddy is being expelled not for that controversy but because the Venezuelan government insists it has proof which the sources say could be released on Friday of Bush Administration involvement in an alleged coup plot.
Four retired generals, whose phone conversations have allegedly been captured on tape, were arrested Thursday on allegations of directing the conspiracy, and the Miraflores sources said more arrests inside the armed forces are expected.
The Miraflores sources added that Duddy was also being expelled "as a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia," whose leftist President, Chávez ally Evo Morales, expelled the U.S. ambassador there on Wednesday, accusing him of inciting anti-government violence. In a televised tirade on Thursday, Chávez said the U.S. is "trying to do [in Venezuela] what they were doing in Bolivia." Bush Administration officials' only response late Thursday night was that they were "investigating" Chávez's comments.
Chávez rarely misses an opportunity to sound the Yanqui alarm when doing so has domestic political benefit. Critics, who are questioning whether the alleged coup plot was actually real, were quick to suggest that this latest anti-gringo outburst would conveniently deflect attention away from allegedly incriminating evidence against Chávez and his government emerging in an international corruption trial that began this month in Miami. The case involves a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash that was seized at the Buenos Aires airport in the summer of 2007, allegedly being delivered on behalf of Chávez as a presidential campaign contribution to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, now Argentina's President. Chávez vehemently denies involvement in the money's shipment or in the alleged attempts by Venezuelan agents to cover it up and intimidate the U.S.-Venezuelan businessman caught transporting the suitcase.
Others suggest that Chávez may be trying to whip up his base in advance of local and state elections in November. He and his party desperately need a strong showing in order to reverse the unusual downward political slide he's experienced since losing a national referendum last year in which he sought to expand his socialist projects and eliminate presidential term limits.
Chávez's loud confrontations with Washington haven't been playing so well at home this year. Still, he has plenty of leverage: Venezuela is the U.S.'s fourth largest foreign supplier of oil, and Chávez has long threatened to cut off the flow if he were to find evidence Washington was moving to oust him as he insists it did during a failed coup attempt in 2002. Regarding Duddy's expulsion, one Miraflores source points to the upcoming U.S presidential election and says, "We're taking these actions in large part because U.S.-Venezuela relations can't support the election of another adversarial government in Washington in November." But most analysts agree that Chávez needs the U.S. market just as much as the U.S. needs his oil a codependency that will deter either side from allowing the latest diplomatic drama, or Venezuela's joint military exercises with Russia, to sever bilateral relations. |
FOX Host Calls Out Al Gore on Failed ‘Global Warming’ Junk Science Predictions and Fear-Mongering (VIDEO)
THE BIGGEST HOAX IN HISTORY—
Nearly 10 years ago — Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. Gore made the prediction to a German audience in 2008. He told them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”
“Five Years”
This wasn’t the only time Gore made his ice-free prediction. Gore’s been predicting this since 2007. That means that this year the North Pole should be completely melted by now.
Junk scientist Al Gore also made the same prediction in 2009.
From the video:
Former Vice President Al Gore references computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose virtually all of its ice within the next seven years. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” says Gore.
In January 2006, Al Gore posited “within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return” and “a true planetary emergency” due to global warming.
Of course, this turned out to be nothing more than a lunatic conspiracy.
At least 8 Dire Predictions from Gore’s junk science movie never happened – not even close.
On Sunday FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace called out Al Gore over one of his failed global warming predictions.
#FOXNews' Chris Wallace calls out former VP Al Gore on global warming claims | @FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/PLHlZc8CBo — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) June 5, 2017 |
“I knew you were telling the truth,” wrote a Canadian.
The exchanges are available at ahmadinejad.ir in Persian, Arabic, English and French. The president has been keeping the blog for more than a year and promises to spend 15 minutes a week updating it.
“He has a very keen understanding of publicity,” said Karim Arghandehpour, a political scientist and journalist in Tehran. “His Web log shows how he believes in modern publicity instruments and wants to use them.”
In his most recent piece, Mr. Ahmadinejad has provided a “Guideline for Islamic Governance” and writes about how an official should consider his duties as his “responsibilities before God” to help the people. “It is in this view that the smile of an orphan is more important than the contentment of greedy rulers,” he writes.
There is a political irony to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s blogging, since other Iranian bloggers, including reporters who worked for news Web sites, came under more pressure after his election. Hundreds of Web sites and blogs that were critical of the government have been blocked. Censorship has been so wide that the president’s blog was once blocked mistakenly along with Google for a day.
In fact, blogging has become common among former officials, especially reformist politicians who do not have a platform to express their ideas.
Photo
The first official who became a blogger was Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a vice president to former President Mohammad Khatami. Mr. Abtahi has remained an active blogger, updating his Web site every day for the past four years.
“I thought it was exciting when the president first launched his blog,” Mr. Abtahi said. “But it looks like it is just a formality. The computer is one of the many items on his desk which he does not use very often.”
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However, the president’s Web log highlights the unusual techniques he uses, like the trucks that follow him on provincial trips for collecting people’s letters to him appealing for help, to promote his populist agenda.
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Mr. Ahmadinejad has tried to touch on most issues that concern him. He has written about freedom in Iran, referring to the protest of students against him a year ago at Amir Kabir University in Tehran as an example of its existence in Iran. “It was a joyous feeling to see a small group insult the elected president of people fearlessly amid a majority,” he wrote, without referring to the fate of the students, many of whom are in prison now.
In a letter to an American mother whose son was killed in Iraq, he calls the United States a “warmonger” but he says he respects all people of the world, including American people. In another article, he condemns the fingerprinting of passengers, like Iranians, by American customs officials and says it has caused hatred toward the American government.
Although comments posted on the Web log are screened, the ones on the English version are more hostile than the ones in Persian.
The ones in Persian express more sympathy and admiration for the president, but a little sarcasm has been allowed. Ibrahim Sadegh-al “thanked” the president for creating more jobs with economic policies that have led to a black market for goods. He said there were only two gas stations in his town before gasoline was rationed in late June.
“One of the two was always closed back then, but now we have 3,000 people selling petrol,” he wrote, referring to people selling their rations in the black market.
In his autobiography, Mr. Ahmadinejad writes about his childhood in a small town; the poverty of his family; excessive spending of the previous government, which put further pressure on the poor; his love for the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the revolution; and his memories of the Iran-Iraq war. He portrays himself as a pious, studious young man who also had to work as a teenager because of the poverty of his family.
The blog has been hacked several times. In August, a group called Yahoo Underground hacked his site and posted a sarcastic message saying, “We thank you on behalf of all Iranian hackers for defending the right of Iranian people against all the countries in the world.”
“We hope that you defend the irrefutable right of Iranian people to nuclear energy until your last breath,” it added. |
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut judge has ordered two Hartford polling places to stay open a half hour late until 8:30 p.m. because of Election Day problems, which Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s campaign says deprived people of their right to vote.
Malloy’s campaign says several polling stations in Hartford failed to open on time at 6 a.m. Tuesday because voter registration lists weren’t ready as required, prompting many people to leave without voting and causing delays of up to 90 minutes for those who stayed.
A lawyer for Malloy’s Republican opponent, Tom Foley, argued there was no evidence anyone was prevented from voting and the polls should close at 8 p.m. as required.
Polling showed Malloy and Foley in a tight race and both campaigns focused much attention on urban voters. |
by BRIAN NADIG
Concerns that a proposed 16-unit apartment building on a vacant lot at 4812-16 W. Montrose Ave. would increase parking congestion on area side streets and alley traffic were expressed at May 9 community meeting held by Alderman John Arena (45th).
Several of the 40 residents who attended the meeting also objected to plans for rental units on the site, telling project officials that condominiums would be preferred because home owners are more invested in the neighborhood.
The meeting became contentious at times, as several residents said that they opposed the proposal. Several development proposals, including for condominiums and townhouses, have been made over the years for the site, but none has ever been built.
Arena said that the 14,200-square-foot property is an eyesore that generates little tax revenue for the city and that his office has received phone calls from residents asking for something to be built there. Plans call for the apartments to measure between 1,100 and 1,400 square feet, with monthly rents ranging from $1,300 to $2,000.
In the late 2000s residents agreed to have the property rezoned to allow a one-story commercial center as long as a fence would be erected in the rear of the site, blocking access to the alley. The site was rezoned, but the center was never built.
Arena said that he would ask the developer for the project, KMDM Properties, to consider revising the apartment proposal, which calls for a 3 1/2-story building with two eight-car garages in the rear. “We’ll talk to them about density and layout of the site,” he said.
Arena said that some of the residents’ concerns about existing problems could be addressed regardless of the outcome of the proposal by implementing permit parking on side streets and installing speed bumps in the alley to reduce cut-through traffic. Motorists use the alleys in the area to avoid traffic congestion at the Montrose-Cicero intersection.
“We are right down the alley from this development,” a resident who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years said. “It’s always a race in the morning to Montrose. In the years I have been able to park in front of my house two, three times.”
Several residents said that one parking space per unit is not sufficient and that area side streets cannot handle additional parking. They said that spaces in front of their homes routinely are taken by commuters using the nearby Metra and CTA Blue Line stations and by workers at the city Department of Water Management facility, 4900 W. Sunnyside Ave.
Arena said that the area should get some parking relief after the water facility is moved to the former Mayfair Lumber site, 4825 W. Lawrence Ave. The city is condemning the lumber yard property and is planning to move several city services there, but the owners of the property are challenging the city’s purchase offer, Arena’s chief of staff Owen Brugh said.
Arena said that prospective tenants would seek to take advantage of public transportation in the area and the Six Corners shopping district and that people who have more than one car would be less attracted to the building. “You have what you need to survive without a car,” he said. “Buyers make a decision based on the amenities of the building.”
Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association Zoning Committee chairman Ron Ernst said that the proposed zoning is inappropriate for the site. “We oppose this kind of exploitation,” Ernst said. “They should build under the zoning they bought the property.”
The B3-1 zoning of the site permits five residential units above ground-floor commercial space. Plans call for the property to be rezoned to B2-3, which does not require commercial space on the first floor and which allows up to 35 living units on the site.
Some residents recommended that the parking for the building be accessible from a driveway on Montrose which would run along the side of the building, but others expressed concern that a driveway on Montrose would not be safe because of the volume of traffic on that street.
Project attorney John Pikarski Jr. said that the project may qualify for a reduction in parking requirements due to the proximity of the Mayfair Metra station, 4357 N. Cicero Ave., but that there are no plans to seek a reduction. The B2-3 zoning requires at least one parking space for each residential unit, unless the site is within a 1/4 mile of a transit center.
At a meeting on a different proposal for the site in 2014, residents initially voiced strong objections to the project. However, they approved the proposal after the developer agreed to build condominiums instead of apartments and to design the garage so that cars would not have to back out into the alley. |
As scientists debate the benefits of acupuncture, a new research suggests that the ancient Chinese therapy may help fight memory loss in people dealing with incipient dementia. The study, which came out Thursday, said the therapy would work better if combined with drug treatment.
Dementia is a broad term that comprises various symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other cognitive skills that severely affect a person’s ability to perform daily activities. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, which currently affects over five million Americans.
Although health experts are of the opinion that acupuncture is not a reliable option to slow down dementia, others maintain that it 3,000-year-old needle therapy can be used as much as possible when there are no effective treatment available.
In the latest study published in BMJ journal Acupuncture in Medicine, researchers from the Wuhan University in China examined five previous studies that involved 568 people with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia. The number of participants in each trial differed from 26 to 94. While, four trials received acupuncture treatment for three to five times a week in a span of two months, one trial received the therapy for three months.
Meta-analysis showed that those who received acupuncture therapy had better results compared to those who received nimodopine, a common dementia medication. The acupuncture patients scored better on two tests related to memory and dementia — Folstein test, a 30-point questionnaire used to measure mental impairment, and picture recognition.
Furthermore, researchers also found that combination of acupuncture and nimodopine improved scores on the tests.
Even though, the study found acupuncture beneficial for incipient dementia, the study authors cautioned that additional and better quality research is required to determine whether it can work to fight memory loss.
“The researchers point to several caveats, including the high or unclear risk of bias in the trials, the randomization process, and the trial design which didn't take account of potential placebo effects. Most of the trials were also carried out in China where patients may prefer acupuncture to medical treatment,” the researchers noted.
“Despite the promising findings, further large rigorous clinical trials in Western settings are needed before any firm conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for treating MCI,” according to the researchers. |
The federal government is gearing up for a four-year renovation of the aging L’Esplanade Laurier, one of Ottawa’s signature downtown buildings.
This week, Public Works and Government Services Canada invited parties interested in renovating, owning, leasing and operating the 40-year-old marble-clad office complex at Bank Street and Laurier Avenue to submit a response by Sept. 28.
That will kick off a three-stage competitive process leading to a contract to rehabilitate 66,000 square metres of office space, 2,000 square metres of storage space, parking space and common areas starting in September 2017.
The target date for completing the work in one of the complex’s two 23-storey towers is July 31, 2020, with work in the second tower finished a year later.
The building is already nearly 75 per cent empty. About 1,200 employees of the Department of Finance moved into new quarters last year in the James Michael Flaherty Building at 90 Elgin St.
In addition, employees of the Treasury Board Secretariat began moving into the Flaherty building in April. By the end of this month, about 1,500 Treasury Board staff – about 65 per cent of the total – will have moved out of L’Esplanade Laurier.
The remaining public servants in the complex’s east tower will be relocated to a newly leased facility, Public Works said in an email.
Building vacancy is required, Public Works said, because the towers require “mid-life rehabilitation, including upgrading of mechanical and electrical systems, safety systems, sustainability as well as fit-up of floors.”
Once the project is complete, between 4,000 and 5,000 employees will work in the building.
“Many departments have shown interest, given the prime location of the building,” Public Works said. “However, we cannot confirm which departments will occupy the new towers at this stage.”
The government has not revealed the cost of the renovation, but firms responding to the invitation to submit must have worked on two construction projects costing at least $75 million.
L’Esplanade Laurier was purpose-built for the federal government by Olympia and York between 1973 and 1975.
The developer leased space to the federal government before selling the building to the Rosdev Group in 1995. The federal government purchased it for $20 million in 2010.
[email protected]
twitter.com/ButlerDon |
A House Republican is proposing legislation that would remove suppressors and silencers from National Firearms Act regs and treat them as regular firearms.
Since 1934, the federal government has treated devices designed to muffle or suppress the report of firearms as Title II devices that required registration under the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record and mandated transfers that included a $200 tax stamp. Now, a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., aims to change that.
Under the terms of the Hearing Protection Act, introduced Thursday with 10 co-sponsors, gone would be the NFA requirements for the devices. Instead, federal law would treat them as firearms which would allow suppressors to transfer through any regular federal firearms license holders to anyone not prohibited from possessing them after the buyer passes an FBI instant background check.
Rather than the lengthy Form 4 process, which can take months, buyers would only have to complete the standard 4473 Form before taking possession.
While the bill is short in text, an important provision would allow for federal preemption of suppressor regulation over state laws, which would have the effect of keeping suppressors legal in states whose laws specifically mention that only those registered under the NFA are allowed.
Finally, the NFA tax paid on suppressor transfers after Oct. 22 would be refunded.
In the past several years, legal suppressor production has exploded. In 2014 the NFRTR listed 571,150 registered silencers while information released earlier this year showed 792,282– a growth of some 39 percent. The numbers of NFA-compliant suppressors currently listed nearly eclipse the total number of select-fire weapons, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns, combined.
The Hearing Protection Act has the early support of the American Suppressor Association and National Rifle Association, who have helped craft the legislation.
“Since day one, the goal of our association has been to remove suppressors from the NFA,” ASA President Knox Williams told Guns.com. “The Hearing Protection Act is the culmination of our efforts to enact pro-suppressor reform on both the state and federal levels.
Williams conceded the push to get the measure through Congress may be uphill, but is worth the fight.
“While we don’t expect the HPA to pass overnight, we are confident that our continued educational and outreach initiatives will ultimately lead to the passage of this critical legislation,” he said. “Its enactment will result in safer and more enjoyable shooting and hunting experiences for generations of sportsmen and women to come.”
Michael Williams, General Counsel of the ASA told Guns.com the road to this week’s debut has been a long one.
“We spent months working with attorneys from the NRA and Rep. Salmon’s office to make sure our language achieved these goals, and the result is a concise, common-sense bill that we’re all very proud to support,” he said. |
Oscar Wilde
Born
October 16, 1854
Died
November 30, 1900
Website
Genre
Influences
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories, and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest.
As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returned to Ireland or Britain, and died in poverty. |
As Facebook gives the Israeli government more access to posts deemed as “incitement,” occupation forces have been raiding the homes of Palestinians children and detaining them for months over posts on the social media site, a report by the Defense for Children International-Palestine said Monday.
The group spoke with several Palestinian minors who were arrested for their Facebook posts, interrogated for hours and then kept in prison for months without charges under the Israeli policy of “administrative detention.”
“Israeli authorities must immediately stop using administrative detention against Palestinian minors,” attorney and international advocacy officer at DCIP Brad Parker, said in the organization’s report.
“Inability to file charges against children due to lack of evidence should never be grounds for holding them indefinitely without charge or trial.”
The group said this the first time that Israel has used administrative detention against Palestinian children since 2011, a policy that allows Israeli authorities to keep Palestinians in jail for an indefinitely without charges.
Ahmed, a 17-year-old Palestinian who was only identified by his first name in the report, said he was arrested in August and interrogated for hours over pictures of he had posted on Facebook. “He asked for my Facebook password,” Ahmed told DCIP recalling his first interrogation in an Israeli prison. “I gave it to him. He logged in and said it had inciting photos.”
Ahmed had also been arrested in April over posts on Facebook. “I told (the interrogator) of my arrest earlier in April 2016 for 10 days, when I was interrogated (at Shikma prison) in Ashkelon about my Facebook account. I told him I deleted everything upon my release and the account is clean. I told him to check it.”
Three days later, Israeli authorities placed Ahmad under administrative detention for six months. The report warned that more than 19 Palestinian children, arrested since October 2015, did not have any legal representation or a parent’s presence during the interrogations, which is internationally illegal.
Last month, Facebook and the Israeli government agreed to set up joint teams in order to fight what they call “incitement” posts on the social media website, which critics slammed as policies to target Palestinians and Arab-Israelis.
The report highlighted that “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes between 500 and 700 children in military courts each year that lack fundamental fair trial rights.”
Despite these policies being part of the legal code of the country that should presumably apply to all of Israel and the occupied territories, Israelis seem to be spared from such laws by the police and army.
Israeli Jews and settlers, as well as government officials and politicians, have repeatedly and publicly incited violence against Arab and Palestinian men, women and children. Very few extremist members within the illegal Jewish settler community have been penalized over their calls for violence, or indeed the carrying out of such violence.
© teleSUR |
The following post is a collaboration between DCBeer.com Staff Writers Jake Berg and Nick Rakowski:
Since 2008, the Brewer’s Association has hosted one its signature events in the District - SAVOR. It was never billed as a festival – it was a craft beer and food experience. It was premier. It was different. It was a no-holds barred bacchanalian celebration of the righteous impact craft beer, when sipped alone or paired with food, has on both the senses and the community. It was an all-out assault on the palate and, at $135 a ticket before add-on “salons,” the wallet to boot. Simply put, it was one of the highest points for craft beer revelry in this town, or any town for that matter.
And then they moved it to New York City.
“But, but…they had reasons,” you defiantly say, having read the title of this article and likely knowing where this is going. Yes, we know they made the move for just this one year, clearly stipulating that SAVOR will return to the District in 2014. Yes, they also based their decision on the fact that the Craft Brewers Conference, another one of ‘Murica’s signature beer events, was occurring in DC in March.
These reasons are completely valid and, in fact, the general feeling among the #DCBrews community, as least as far as we could tell, was, “Ok… we get CBC and as long as SAVOR comes back later, that’s cool, bro” [maybe sans the bro, but being too literal is clown blogging, bro]. In fact, a fair number of DC beer enthusiasts vowed to make the trek up to our northerly neighboring city to continue to enjoy the good times SAVOR brings to bear.
Of course, that was before they released the price. Coming in around $135, SAVOR ticket prices in DC were always high, but when the event was moved to New York City, the price climbed $35 to a sky-high $170 per ticket, before salons. Still, one would think that, for an event that sold out in fewer than 15 minutes last year, the increased price would not be so insurmountable as to deny the Brewer’s Association the full house they expected.
Much to the BA’s surprise and likely chagrin, we imagine, the sell out did not happen. In fact, as we write this, general admission tickets to the event (and many salons) are still available. This begs the rather simple question: what happened?
Surely the price plays into the entire situation; however, New York City is a more expensive town, particularly for a venue that can support the size of an event like SAVOR. You’d be silly not to expect a bump in price to support what must be a greater cost for the organizers. But to move from a 15 minute sell out to widespread ticket availability with less than a week to go? That's a bit of a stretch. In fact, a quick search on StubHub shows that tickets to SAVOR-NYC are cheaper for DC residents (including bus fare), than SAVOR-DC tickets were for DC residents last year - some as low as $44. Meanwhile, last month’s Manhattan Cocktail Classic, with room for 2,900 attendees and ticket prices between $195 and $395, sold out quickly. There must be something deeper in play here.
The Brewer’s Association is filled with thoughtful, passionate people – of course they wouldn’t make the move without thinking through the many consequences of their decision. One thing they didn’t seem to notice, however, despite all of their best intentions is this:
New York City is not a beer town.
Now don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying that New York doesn’t have great beer, and isn’t a good place to drink that beer. We’re just saying that New York is a wine and cocktail town, not a beer town. Philly? Beer town. Boston? Beer town. Baltimore? Beer town. DC? Yep, even us. Portland, Maine and Richmond, Virginia? Also beer towns. The evidence against New York, including being unable to sell out SAVOR, is damning.
The events: SAVOR week in DC has become as important and as varied as the event itself, with breweries bringing in their best from all over the country, taking advantage of DC’s “grey laws” that allow stores, bars, and restaurants to self-import. Meanwhile, SAVOR week in New York consists of this. No doubt there are some great beers, from great breweries, being poured at those events, but there’s also nothing out of the ordinary about the far majority of these events. Round here, and even in New York, we call this “Tuesday.”
The beer: The dirty little secret about New York City is that it’s expensive. How expensive? This expensive.
Upper East Side, Manhattan - $1,600 per month
Via The Worst Room
This results in many breweries who claim to be in New York City, but brew elsewhere. Brooklyn Lager and other flagships? Utica, New York, home of the steamed ham. Sixpoint’s cans? Scranton, Pennsylvania (see below). Bronx Brewery’s many pale ales? Pawcatuk, Connecticut. The only major New York City brewery that doesn’t do some contracting is Kelso, which has enough capacity that it has contract brewed for Sixpoint. Take a bow. (For the record, we at DCBeer.com understand that New York City breweries produce much of their beer elsewhere to keep costs down).
Meanwhile, every brewery in DC makes all their beer in DC. Novel concept, fellas.
The media: The New York Times calls its food section “Dining and Wine.” That’s telling. Just as telling, they (still!) don’t have a dedicated beer writer on staff. Occasionally someone writes about beer for the Times, and the effect is... well, “bless their hearts.”
And it’s not as if New York doesn’t have good beer writers. DC lost an asset when Daniel Fromson took his talents to the New Yorker and promptly came up with this, and Josh Bernstein can be counted on to produce excellent work. But instead you get this, which reads like something one might find in a college paper, right down to the incorrect price for Saison Dupont.
And look, there’s a writer for The New York Times trolling in the comments of a beer blog. C’mon, New York. You’re better than this. Or, at least, you should be.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post has had two writers dedicated to just beer in the past, and now has one. The Village Voice, New York’s premier alt-weekly? No beer writers. Washington City Paper has had two, now has one.
Earlier this year The New York Post did an “expose” on the volume of beer poured at bars and restaurants. The result either exposed their ignorance, or caught bars that should know better in a sting. Either way, that’s not a good look for New York’s beer scene.
The Yankees: The new Yankee Stadium is unable to differentiate between what is beer and what is not, what is imported beer and what is not, and what is craft beer and what is not. It’s an impressive fail.
But just as one day New York will have a good enough socialist bike-sharing program to compete with DC, we’re confident that the New York beer scene will get better, too. Until then, maybe let’s hold off on having any major events in New York, and save them for cities that properly appreciate beer. |
Sleeping in the beech may be invigorating, but it is also illegal. Visitors are not allowed in Central Park between 1 and 6 a.m.; violators can be fined $50. While park rules do not explicitly forbid climbing any of its 24,000 trees, they do prohibit any behavior that damages a tree.
Police and parks officers go through Central Park each night and rouse anyone found sleeping. But those people are usually on a bench or under a tree. A spokeswoman said the Department of Parks and Recreation knew of no one who had recently been discovered slumbering in a hammock after curfew.
“Twenty-five years ago, there was a guy who built treehouses in the park,” the spokeswoman, Vickie Karp, wrote in an e-mail. “He promised never to do it again.”
The Fohts made no such promises.
The notion to camp above the ground came to the brothers this spring while they were climbing a banyan tree in Florida. They put the idea into practice a few months later when they embarked on a city-to-city bicycle trip and began exploring creative and cheap ways of finding food and lodging.
“Really, the inspiration behind it was getting above the sidewalk level,” Cory said. “You’re getting into your own little world and rising above the stress of the street life.”
Their first try came a few months later, in August, while visiting Williamsburg, Va., but they encountered hammock-hanging problems.
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Soon, they learned the importance of selecting the right tree. It must have branches low enough to be ascended without a rope, but also have boughs high and sturdy enough that the hammocks can safely be suspended. The tree’s canopy must be dense enough for the Fohts to recline amid the leaves without being easily seen.
They have since slept in trees on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (“We thought Jefferson would approve,” said Cory, referring to Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the school), and near Arlington National Cemetery. In Richmond, where they spent about a week’s worth of nights in two different trees, their favorite perch was a towering oak next to a church parking lot, until one Sunday morning when they awoke to find a police officer guarding cars parked by worshipers. (They stayed in their hammocks until the congregation had dispersed.)
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While in trees, the brothers said, they sometimes catch glimpses of people who do not know they are being observed, or overhear snippets of conversation from those who imagine that they are alone. They have experienced a few close encounters with birds, they said, but have been lucky to avoid raccoons. The soft sway of the branches usually lulls them to sleep, though one recent night in Central Park, Dana had a disturbing dream in which a cord used to secure one end of his hammock came loose, leaving him to swing among the leaves like a pendulum.
The brothers, who graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2007 and want to make documentaries, said that they were editing footage to create a 10-minute film about life in the beech, which they plan to post on YouTube. The two came to New York in September to participate in a rally for the preservation of community gardens, then decided to stay. They have spent some rainy nights in friends’ apartments, and occasionally hang their hammocks in the back room of a bicycle-repair workshop in Brooklyn where they volunteer as mechanics.
But they find themselves drawn back to their beech in Central Park. Spending a night there is spiritually restorative, they said, if a bit chilly of late. As the leaves and temperatures fall, the brothers said, their time in the tree is drawing to a close.
“I love this tree,” Cory said, adding that they always climb carefully, to avoid harming it. “Some of the most inspiring nights I’ve had in New York were spent here.”
One night this week, they entered the park about 9 p.m., wearing knit hats and backpacks, and keeping an eye out for others. They followed the shadowed turns of a path, then scrambled up the side of their beloved beech, grabbing thick branches and feeling for toeholds. A wintry wind whipped through the park, but by 10 p.m., aloft in the tree, it was as quiet as Manhattan gets. An occasional siren wailed, and a faint whistle could occasionally be heard from a Metro-North train emerging from the Park Avenue tunnel. The rumble of cars and trucks, though, washed into a high distant sound that blended with the rustle of the wind through the leaves.
About seven hours later, the brothers woke up as the sky began to brighten and reported that gusts of wind had rocked their hammocks for much of the night. In daylight, they showed off some of the tree’s features that they had come to appreciate most: the thick, leathery bark of its trunk, which provided climbing traction; the low, sweeping boughs that offered an easy path back to the ground; the dense foliage that gave cover from inquisitive eyes.
“It’s made an interesting little home,” Cory said.
Then the Fohts packed up their gear and headed for the Upper West Side, where they had stored their bicycles overnight with a friend. Joggers and dog walkers filled the park, but nobody appeared to give the itinerant tree-dwellers a second glance. |
After just two seasons, Colorado is parting ways with head coach Jon Embree.
Embree, who signed a five-year contract in Dec. 2010, went just 4-21 in two seasons -- including a 1-11 campaign this year with the Buffaloes. The lone win came Sept. 22 against Washington State.
Embree met with his players Sunday night and said he would talk at a news conference Monday.
"I'm disappointed. I'd like to get more of an opportunity but life ain't fair," Embree told the Denver Post.
Embree told the newspaper that athletic director Mike Bohn "said he didn't feel the trajectory was going in the right direction. I said what direction was it going when I got hired?"
In the Denver Post article, Embree said he told Bohn that opportunities for African-American coaches are often taken away too quickly.
"I mentioned that to Mike," Embree said. "I said, 'You know we don't get opportunities. At the end of the day, you're fired and that's it. Right, wrong or indifferent. Tyrone Willingham was the only one who got fired and got hired again. We get bad jobs and no time to fix them.' "
Bohn declined comment, but in a joint statement from school president Bruce Benson, chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, and him, Bohn said: "We firmly believe a change in the leadership in our football program is in the best interests of the University of Colorado, particularly given our goal to compete at the highest levels of the Pac-12 Conference."
Colorado closed out the season with eight straight losses. Included in that skid was a 70-14 drubbing by Oregon, a 48-0 loss to Stanford and a 38-3 setback to Washington.
Colorado allowed, on average, 46 points per game in 2012, worst among all FBS schools. Yet as recently as Saturday there were reports that Embree would return for a third year.
Embree, a standout tight end for Colorado in the mid-80s, was working with one of the youngest teams in college football as the Buffaloes graduate only eight seniors. Heading into Saturday's game against Utah (a 42-35 loss), Colorado was playing 13 true freshmen. They started with 16 on the season-opening depth chart -- most in Colorado history.
Much of Colorado's offensive inefficiency revolved around instability at the quarterback position. Three different quarterbacks played this year -- Connor Wood, Jordan Webb and Nick Hirschman. They also lost star receiver Paul Richardson in the preseason to a knee injury.
Even coming off the worst season in the program's 123-year history, Embree's quick hook took his players by surprise.
"It (stinks)," Webb said. "We all really liked Coach Embree a lot. And he loved us, also. Sad to see him go. We all respect him the utmost. He's a great man."
This was Embree's first head coaching position, though he did spend 10 seasons at Colorado as an assistant under three different head coaches.
Embree becomes the second Pac-12 coach fired recently. Last week California parted ways with Jeff Tedford after 11 seasons.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. |
THE Vikings are on their way back to Stamford Bridge to re-enact the famous battle of 1066.
History will come alive next week when a longboat full of warriors will row up the River Derwent to the East Yorkshire village and set up camp before facing up to their Saxon foe.
Several days of activity will start when the boatload of Norwegian invaders arrives on Wednesday September 21, at Barmby, downstream of Stamford Bridge, where there will be displays of combat.
There will be another overnight camp and displays at the award-winning Ferryboat Inn on the riverside at Thorganby on Thursday evening.
The boat will then head for Stamford Bridge, arriving on Friday at about 5pm.
The Vikings will be met there by other warriors, and then head for the battle site.
On Saturday, September 24, at the cricket ground, starting at 11am, there will be a Living History encampment where people can watch or take part in how life was lived.
Organisers said warriors would display the weapons they used and show how they fought, while children would be able to join in warrior training and take on the Vikings.
A spokesman said: “People can also make their own Viking coins or try some of the crafts and games.”
The re-enactment follows a similar event last year, which was seen as a great success.
The spokesman said: “This is another chance for people to see history come alive and experience what happened at this Momentous event of 1066.”
The Press reported last year how more than 100 members of the Volsung Vikings recreated the battle, aiming to make the event as true to life as possible.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge preceded the Battle Of Hastings, at which William The Conqueror was victorious, marking the last time a foreign invasion of Britain was successful and changing the course of history. |
Tuning Up the Interstellar Ramjet
Catching my eye in the latest Carnival of Space, hosted by Brian Wang at Next Big Future, is Adam Crowl’s write-up of a rethinking of an exotic ramjet technology. Robert Bussard put the interstellar ramjet into the public eye back in 1960 in a paper proposing that a starship moving fast enough would be able to use the hydrogen between the stars as a source of fuel, enabling a constant acceleration at one g. You’ll recognize the Bussard ramjet in Poul Anderson’s classic novel Tau Zero (originally published in Galaxy in 1967 as To Outlive Eternity).
The Problem with Slow Fusion
Anderson’s ‘Leonora Christine’ was a runaway starship, accelerating ever closer to lightspeed until she was punching through entire galaxies in times experienced by the crew as mere minutes. But we don’t have to get quite that extreme with the Bussard idea. It’s built around the premise of gathering fuel along the way so as to avoid the vast mass ratio problems of conventional rocketry. We can imagine an enormous magnetic scoop that might gather up this interstellar hydrogen, but the problem is how to burn it.
Image: The Bussard ramjet concept, as envisioned by the space artist Adrian Mann.
Adam’s discussion nails the problem: Bussard relied on proton to proton fusion, but the problem is that it’s too slow. Assuming we could gather the hydrogen in the first place, we face the fact that proton burning is a kind of reaction that works in stars (like our Sun) because of the sheer size of the stars themselves. Adam describes this well:
The reaction rate of proton-proton fusion at “low” (i.e. an achievable 100 million degrees) temperatures is essentially negligible and only powers the stars because they’re so gigantic. The Sun’s energy production rate is a bit more than 10 Watts per cubic metre of the fusion part of its core, which is far less than the power packed into a battery, for example. Unlike a battery, of course, that energy can trickle out for billions of years – but that’s no good for propelling a starship.
Lighting the Fire: The CNO Alternative
Physicist Daniel Whitmire tackled this problem in a 1975 paper that proposed using hydrogen for fuel but exploiting a catalytic nuclear reaction chain instead of straight proton burning. The so-called CNO Bi-Cycle becomes dominant in sufficiently hot main sequence stars (usually those about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun), while the proton-proton chain is more significant in smaller stars. Here’s Adam’s description:
Basically a hydrogen fuses to a carbon-12, then another is fused to it to make nitrogen-14, then two more to make oxygen-16, which is then highly ‘excited’ and it spits out a helium nucleus (He-4) to return the nitrogen-14 back to carbon-12. Since the carbon-12 isn’t consumed it’s called a “catalytic” cycle, but it’s not chemical catalysis as we know it. Call it “nuclear chemistry.”
Getting the Vessel Up to Speed
Whitmire points out in his paper that using this method, the catalyst fuel, carried along with the spacecraft, is not depleted. Interstellar hydrogen, however, remains the ultimate source of the energy. We still run into the issue of the density of the interstellar medium, which is tricky business. Whitmire comments on the problem of gathering enough fuel:
…independent of other restrictions, nuclear powered ramjets may require nebular regions of space for take off if accelerations greater than 1g are desired. However, once the desired velocity is obtained in a nebula runway, it will be maintained and even increased as the ship moves into less dense regions of space… Nebulae are also required for stopping interstellar ramjets since deceleration requires as much energy as acceleration.
Image: Science fiction has worked often with the ramjet concept, as seen here in this Analog cover from 1978. Artwork by Rick Sternbach.
What do we do about getting up to speed? There being no nearby sufficiently dense nebula, we on planet Earth might find ourselves unable to light the fire. But Whitmire goes on to speculate that technological civilizations living within or near a dense nebula would have no such constraints, and even goes to far as to outline the possibility of searching for the signature of extraterrestrial ramjets that might be tracked while using a nebula ‘runway.’
The Ramjet as Brake
Bussard’s ramjet ideas, followed by Whitmire’s modifications, really did open up the idea of practical interstellar flight some fifty years ago, but recent studies have shown that the ramjet idea has a key obstacle. The ramscoop needed to collect all that hydrogen acts more effectively as a brake. Indeed, we’re now considering similar magnetic scoop ideas as possible braking systems for decelerating a probe into a destination solar system. Is the ramjet through, or are there ways around the braking problem, including other ways of hydrogen collection?
The paper is Whitmire, “Relativistic Spaceflight and the Catalytic Nuclear Ramjet,” Acta Astronautica Vol. 2 (1975), pp. 497-509 (available online, and well worth reading). The original Bussard ramjet paper is “Galactic Matter and Interstellar Flight,” Acta Astronautica Vol. 6 (1960), pp. 179-194. Adam Crowl also points out that Gregory Benford’s starship ‘Lancer’ in Across the Sea of Suns used the CNO cycle, an apparent nod to Whitmire. |
In spite of all the threats from the current administration to gut what little federal funding the arts receive, people are seeking out art more than ever. The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced in a press release Tuesday that they had set a new record for annual attendance with 7 million visitors to its three New York locations: The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Cloisters, and The Met Breuer. This year's numbers surpass last year's record-breaking 6.7 million guests, and show no signs of slowing down. Attendance has risen consistently since 2012, when the museum first exceeded 6 million annual guests.
The numbers reflect the institution's fiscal year, which ended on June 30. Out of those visiting the Met, 37% were international guests, while 30% were native New Yorkers. In a statement, the museum attributes much of the attendance spike to the newish Met Breuer, which opened in the former Whitney Museum building last spring. The Breuer hosted 505,590 visitors this year, half of whom attended the location's inaugural show of unfinished artworks.
Via Hyperallergic
Related:
The Met Just Released 375,000 Priceless Artworks into the Public Domain
The Met Museum May Start Charging Tourists
You Can Now Tour the Met and Work Out at the Same Damn Time |
I submit it not as an exercise in music journalism or to illustrate a broader cultural point, and certainly not because of any direct relevance to the local music scene or the geographic area City Pages serves; I say these things only because I was sort of mad no one ever told me that Shaq-as-rapper is actually really, notably excellent. I don’t want others to suffer needlessly as I did.
Plenty of people won't find this surprising. This isn't addressed to you!
I'm talking to the people who, extrapolating from my own psyche and those of the people I know well, reflexively dismiss the idea of Shaq’s rapping as some corny cousin to his 1996 movie Kazaam or, at best, something they might like ironically. But there’s nothing nothing ironic about this. His rap output is not "pretty good for a basketball player" or "better than you'd think" or even "lovably goofy." It truly bangs.
Here’s what I knew about Shaq’s music before I caught the bug this fall: That he rapped in the aforementioned Kazaam, that sometimes he rapped at post-championship parties, and that he stirred a brief controversy in 2008 when footage surfaced of him clowning on Kobe Bryant during a freestyle, saying, “That’s the difference between first and last place / Kobe ... tell me how my ass tastes.”
(Couple notes on that: First, it’s a pretty good freestyle and sloppy enough that it’s clearly off the top; second, it led to a memorable public statement, as far as public statements from athletes go: “I was freestyling. That's all. It was all done in fun. Nothing serious whatsoever. That is what MC's do. They freestyle when called upon. I'm totally cool with Kobe. No issue at all. And by the way, don't forget, six albums, two platinum, two gold. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a funny freestyler. Check the NBA DVD when I was rapping about Vlade Divac during my first championship run.”)
Here are some more pertinent things I’ve discovered through a deep dive into Shaq’s canon -- especially the 1995 compilation The Best of Shaquille O’Neal, which is exactly what it purports to be -- and would like to spread the gospel about:
-- Unlike on the court, Shaq is impressively versatile as an MC. His signature is a mid-tempo flow in an egregiously low register but he really goes all over the map and rises to the occasion on beats that are alternately smooth, hype, jazzy, hard, and downright scary. You might say he can do the rapping equivalent of playing the post and shooting free throws.
-- He’s a legitimately good lyricist and manages to be authentic and un-corny while avoiding the offensive or ethically questionable. Personal favorite: “AE-IOU’s an ass whoopin!”
-- His NBA references are numerous and, while not exactly amazing, still refreshing subject matter. A couple illustrative examples: “I flow like a stream, better yet a river / You need to call me Mailman since Karl can't deliver”; “Please don't play me like a shrimp / Dunk it on your head then I’ll point like Shawn Kemp.”
-- Best of Shaquille O’Neal is lined with production that encompasses all that’s great about '90s East Coast rap: bouncy drum breaks, simple crunchy bass lines, and that all-important irritating noise going non-stop in the background, a la the Bomb Squad’s production behind Public Enemy. It would be worthwhile to listen to for just the instrumentals, which is as good a litmus test as any for a monumentally good hip-hop album.
If you’ve only heard one song it’s probably “What’s Up Doc?” with the Brooklyn group Fu-Schnickens. It came out in 1993, Shaq’s rookie year, and goddamn it’s solid, to the point that prose fails. Shaq plays his role, but the other emcees really steal the show, especially Chip, who's virtuosic second verse sounds like Imani from the Pharcyde on rhythmic steroids.
Which is another point about this album. As good as Shaq is, a lot of what makes it great listening is the slate of features from some heavyweights of the era (Phife Dawg, the RZA, Redman) and some no-name East Coast guys that are just as nice.
"No Hooks," featuring the RZA and Method Man, could be the grimiest track on Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the 36 Chambers. The Phife Dawg-featuring "Where Ya At?" would be in at least the top 50th percentile of A Tribe Called Quest’s early albums, which is to say it's in the top 99 percentile of all human music in aggregate.
And then there are the people and groups that never really broke out from the underground. Along with Fu-Schnickens, there are fantastically ambitious and unique verses from guys like Ill Al Skratch, Ken Dawg, and Def Jef, plus yet another tier of contributions that aren't credited in the liner notes or anywhere on the internet. It's kind of like getting a sampler CD from a label you've never heard of before you knew how to use Google.
I owe a great debt to my friend Kevin for turning me onto this album. Kevin himself learned about it from an interview with Jonah Hill, someone just as dubiously qualified for having a strong opinion on this as either of us.
Which I suppose is my justification for a 1,000-word screed on the merits of a guy who is already famous and has two platinum albums: No one discovers ultra-fresh albums they've overlooked in a vacuum, and we're all standing on the shoulders of giants or Jonah Hill or both. I'm just trying to pay it forward.
Go forth and sleep on Shaq no more. |
The following is based on a short talk on Chinese science fiction which I had the honor of presenting to the CHIN 40: Popular Culture in Modern Chinese Societies course at UCLA on February 16, 2017, at the invitation of Micheal Berry. I had originally planned on posting this a couple of weeks after giving the talk–it seems a little superfluous to be talking about obscure Chinese authors and artists with everything that is going on in the news at the moment. At the same time, I’m starting to wonder if the situation we find ourselves in has something to do with our inability not only to come to terms with history (particularly as a mirror for the present), but whether it stems from a more fundamental failure to think about what words really mean. Politics is about discourse, about framing ideas and making calls for action. But if we fail to interrogate that discourse, to pick apart those ideas, and question those calls for action, then we give authoritarians an open door to exploit the weak for the sake of the powerful.
Okay, so I’m going to start off on a bit of an odd note for a talk on Chinese science fiction, but I’m going to start with a nod to the Tongva people, on whose ancestral and unceded lands we find ourselves today. This is something they do up in Canada, thanking the First Nations peoples and acknowledging the enormous debt of gratitude (and almost impossible degree of contrition) that we owe to them. If you’re planning on giving a talk any time in the future, I encourage you to do the same.
I would also like to thank Professor Berry for inviting me, and thank all of you for signing up for this course! I guess we should also thank UCLA for making it possible for you guys to learn about Chinese pop culture, something that’s hardly a given these days with budget cuts and all.
Now, on the Chinese science fiction!
So, we’re going to be talking (a little) about Ye Yonglie 葉永烈, a science fiction author I’m interested in who was born in 1940. I think he’s important, because he was born at more or the less the midpoint of the history of contemporary sci-fi in China, which has just over a century and a half of history, depending on how you define what sci-fi is. For that reason, his career makes a useful frame for talking about Chinese science fiction, and what that means. In fact, I’m not going to be talking very much at all about Ye, so I encourage you to read The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry if you’d like to know more about Ye and the stories he wrote.
A lot has been written about Chinese science fiction in English, but one essay I recommend for covering the key points is Regina Kanyu Wang’s “A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction.” Jeffery Wasserstrom’s recent article for the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative on the same topic is also worth checking out for a shorter, and more academic take. Finally, Ou Ning has compiled a list of classic Chinese and English sci-fi novels, which echoes some of what we see in these two pieces, but with some interesting additions as well, as we will see.
But before we can start unpacking all of this, I’m afraid we’re going to have to talk about some pretty abstract concepts, and I’m not a very abstract kind of guy. So I thought we might use an old parable to help frame our discussion:
Does anybody recognize this image? If you do, don’t shout it out just yet okay?
I went ahead and edited the illustration (and the Chinese, for those of you who read Chinese), but if you look you’ll see there are five men—five blind men, to be specific. And the five blind men are touching something:
One of them says, “The thing that we are touching is rope, it’s long and thin.”
And the one over here says, “No, no, no, it’s a pillar, it’s thick and strong.”
And this guy right here says, “You’re both wrong, it’s a wall, it’s long and flat.”
And the guy in yellow says, “You guys really are blind! It’s a definitely a metal pipe, can’t you tell?”
Finally, the guy at the end says, “Pipe? What pipe? This obviously a rubber hose!”
Now of course, it’s none of these things at all, it’s a…drum roll, please…
Elephant! Okay, I’m guessing you all knew what it was ahead of time, but that’s kind its own problem that we’re going to talk about in a minute.
See, the thing I want to talk about today isn’t really Chinese science fiction or Ye Yonglie—although we’ll do plenty of that, don’t worry—but more about how do we ask meaningful questions?
Because if we want meaningful answers, or if we want to draw meaningful conclusions then it really all begins with the questions we are asking. This is what some scholars call ‘first principles.’
So in the case of the elephant, you know, obviously there are the problems of communication and perspective. But there is a subtler question, which is, how do we even know there even is an elephant to begin with? Because for those of you who already knew the parable, then you were fitting all the clues into a pre-established framework that would equal ‘elephant.’ You weren’t able to imagine something else, because you thought (in this case, correctly) that you already knew what was there.
Now it’s easier to talk about elephants than literature, because elephants are these big physical things that occupy real space.
Khizanat [or ‘library’] of the University of Al Qarawiyyin (founded 859 CE)
Books of course occupy physical space, too, as anyone who’s helped an academic move already knows all too well. Above we have an example of the sort of physical space we usually associate with books—a library, believed to be one of the oldest surviving libraries in the world. It was founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, who was the daughter of a merchant, in Fes, Morocco, as part of a religious school and mosque in 859 CE.
But science fiction is a genre of books, and genres are a lot more nebulous than the heavy, hide-bound things they describe.
To return to elephants for a second, obviously there isn’t just one elephant in the world, there are lots and lot of elephants, some big, some small, some fat, some skinny. Just like people, right? And each elephant comes from a distinct lineage of elephants, going all the way back to things that don’t really look like elephants any more.
Moeritherium (37-35 million years ago)
So here’s an example of an early ancestor of elephants.
But even modern elephants can be divided up into subspecies and regional variants, and even (I think) cultures and language groups, all the way on down to families. And you can work backwards all the way back to the concept of an elephant by averaging all of these variations and unique behaviors to give yourself a pretty accurate picture of an elephant—you know, two tusks, big ears, a trunk, what have you. The idea of ‘containing multitudes’ right?
But at the same time, you have to recognize that all of this cataloging is just a conceptual framework that we are working with, imposed on a spontaneous emerging natural order. Elephants were around for a long time before we started calling them elephants.
So it’s just a tool and think the same can be said of genres, like science fiction. We use genres to catalog literary production, and for authors (and just as much for readers) they form an important part of our self-identity. Like, for example, I can say that I’m a science fiction fan. I can check that box on my Facebook profile and then publishers like Tor can pay money to advertise directly to me, the self-proclaimed science fiction fan.
That’s why they are such a useful tool for marketing, maybe even more useful for marketers than scholars, really. If you love x then you’ll love y.
So rather than thinking of literature like elephants, it might be more useful to think of it being more like a garden. This is a story from 1941 by a Argentinian author who some of you might already be familiar with, Jorge Borges. This is old trope by new media scholars, and something I was introduced to in an essay by Tom Gunning on the development of comic films, but if you’re not familiar with it already, it’s a really powerful idea.
In the story, appropriately enough, a Chinese spy needs to convey information to his German handlers during World War I. He tracks down a renowned sinologist, Professor Stephen Albert, who it turns out is studying an unfinished novel by the spy’s ancestor ‘Ts’ui Pên,’ who once served as governor of Yunnan before abandoning his post to build a massive labyrinth and pen the novel which remained unfinished when he was murdered. The Chinese spy, Doctor Yu Tsun, learns that Professor Albert believes that has cracked the riddle of Ts’ui Pên’s novel, and the labyrinth, which was apparently never built. In fact, they are one in the same, the novel being a ‘garden of forking paths’ which attempts to record all of the possible outcomes of a given action:
Rather than being thanked, however, the hapless sinologist (and we’re all a little hapless, if we’re being honest) is murdered in cold blood by Doctor Tsun, who it turns out had been betting on the murder being written up in the paper, which would reveal the location of an English artillery installation—in Albert, a commune in the Somme part of France.
So this gets back to the idea of recursion, which if you’ll forgive me, but my background is in computer programming, so I like to draw on examples from programming.
In programming, if…then loops are one of the main ways that your computer knows what to do when (essentially, which fork to take in a path of branching decisions). Basically, the software waits for a specific condition to be met, and then it runs a specific set of actions. Most programs have loops within loops within loops. It can really be a headache to figure how they all fit together, which is why programmers make flow charts (or ‘decision trees’) like this one:
Or this one, if you’d like to know something more practical:
So to get back to Chinese science fiction (and we are going the very long way around here) we can look at Chinese decision charts for literature, on websites like this one:
Qidian.com
This is Qidian.com, which is one of the most popular portals for online fiction in China today. And here, if you read Chinese you can see your choices (and please, correct my translations here, if I misspeak, I won’t pretend to be an expert in or even remotely familiar with all of these):
玄幻 Chinese fantasy
奇幻 Western fantasy
武侠 martial heroes
仙侠 mythic heroes
都市 urban
职场 workplace
军事 military
历史 history
游戏 games
体育 sports
And way down near the bottom we have:
科幻 science fiction
The others are:
灵异 occult (I think!)
女生网 just for girls
二次元 otaku corner
And we can also look at older genres of Chinese literature which some scholars see as being examples kind of ur-sci-fi / fantasy. A lot of these, you’ve already read about the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature, but a lot of these are basically the antecedents of Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literature.
Wuxia, as evolved from youxia, is one particularly prominent example which translated especially well to comics and film. But science fiction, in the sense of stories about technological inventions, doesn’t seem to have really gotten adopted by the Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies crowd, as far as I can tell.
Here is one exception, Lu Shaofei and Xu Zhuodai’s Dr. Fix-it, a comic strip which was published in Free Talk, a supplement to the Shenbao which was edited by Zhou Shoujuan, a prominent member of the Mandarin Duck and Butterflies clique. (I’ve written about this comic before, if you’d like to know more about it.)
Dr. Fix-it 改造博士, January 1st, 1928, Shenbao 申報.
Now, although Regina Kanyu Wang’s essay “A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction” has a nod to a pre-history of sci-fi in China, when she mentions the story of Master Yan building an automaton in the warring states text, the Liezi, right afterwards she jumps ahead to the late-Qing to talk about “science fiction as we know it today.” She doesn’t really try to connect 19th and 20th century science fiction with the earlier forms of fantastic tales, placing the origin of Chinese science fiction in translations of foreign works.
In his essay on Chinese fantasy writing, Jeffery Wasserstrom takes a similar approach, mentioning Tao Yuanming’s fable of the Peach Blossom Spring, written during the Six dynasties period, before jumping ahead to the turn of the 20th century.
Specifically, both Wang and Wasserstom (along with Ou Ning) mention Lu Xun’s 1903 and 1906 abridged translations (via Japanese) of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon 月界旅行 and A Journey to the Centre of the Earth 地底旅行. Here we can see examples of what they looked like, with some nice imagery on the cover of the latter:
Notice that From the Earth to the Moon is described as a ‘科学小说’ not 科幻小说 as it would be known today.
As Regina Wang points out, “science fiction in China played the role of teaching advanced science as well as democracy from the west.” She doesn’t get into this, but in Chinese there is a specific term that was developed to talk about this concept, the idea of spreading scientific knowledge, known as 科普.
科学幻想 -> 科幻
= science fantasy
科学普及 -> 科普
= science popularization/education
Now, if we do an n-gram of these two terms, you can see a strong correlation between the two:
Since I don’t know much about the corpus these are drawing from, it’s hard to draw more conclusions than that, but check out the sharp declines where you would expect them:
right around the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, and
also following the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign in the mid-1980s.
As both Regina Wang and Ou Ning point out, the roots of this can be seen not only in translations of Jules Verne, but also in early science fiction by Chinese authors, like Lunar Colony 月球殖民地 by Old Fisherman of the Secluded River 荒江釣叟, which is often described as the first Chinese sci-fi novel, from 1904. It was also illustrated, which is pretty awesome to see:
I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe that the illustrations were by Wu Youru 吴友如, who was one of the primary artists at the Shenbao’s Touch-stone Studio Pictorial. This is a picture of the Touch-stone Pictorial, which shows you what it looked like:
Touch-stone Studio Pictorial 點石齋畫報
And here are some examples of the kind images they like to run, many which had to do with new inventions, like trains…
“Lose-lose” 兩敗俱傷. Wu Youru, Pavilion of Flying Shadows Pictorial 飛影閣樓畫報 September, 1890.
Submarines…
“Underwater Ship” 水底行船. Touch-stone Studio Pictorial, 1884.
X-rays…
“The Novelty of the Precious Lens” 寶鏡新奇 Touch-stone Studio Pictorial. September 1887
And hot air balloons. Actually, assault air balloons, which seem like a pretty bad idea, but hey, why not?
“Air Balloon Destroys an Enemy” 氣球破敌 Touch-stone Studio Pictorial, 1897.
These images (which were lithographs) started to influence wood block prints, and by the turn of the 19th century we see images of war—which like the earlier images, feature new technology pretty prominently.
“Battle of Sa Zhenbing’s army against the Revolutionary Army” 薩軍門水陸大戰革命軍圖, ca. 1911.
I mean, it isn’t exactly sci-fi, in the sense of an adventure story to a strange new land or a miraculous new invention, but they do fit pretty squarely into the rubric of science popularization, which would inform later Chinese sci-fi authors like Ye Yonglie.
“Naval battle of the Revolutionary Army” 革命軍水戰圖 , ca. 1911.
This distinction, between science popularization and science fiction, isn’t really the focus of Jeffery Wasserstrom’s piece, which argues for a broader definition of science fiction, which he calls ‘speculative fiction.’
Here’s Dr. Wasserstom’s heuristic to define the boundaries of what he is talking about.
“…speculative fiction authors tend to be interested in “what if” questions. We can also, at least for heuristic purposes [ie ‘for the sake of discussion’], see two strands to this thread:
1)books that posit worlds that are totally different from ours (at least on the surface), and
2)books that take a familiar world and focus on a destabilizing detail (that may well set in motion a chain reaction that alters everything).”
– Jeffery Wasserstrom in “What If…”
What catches my eye here is the way in which Regina Wang, as an insider to Chinese science fiction, is focused on defining what isn’t sci-fi, while Wasserstrom, as an outsider (more or less, he studies contemporary / modern China, but doesn’t specialize in sci fi) wants to expand the definition to include fantasy and other genres.
The above image is mostly just for fun, but it’s from a 1980 Japanese translation of Lao She’s sci-fi novel Cat Country, which was serialized between 1931 and 1932. It would be an example of the first type of sci-fi, working within this particular framework.
Cat Country describes a Taikongnaut whose spaceship crash lands on Mars, which turns out to have been colonized by cat people. It’s basically a not-so thinly veiled satire of 1930s China, with the cat people obsessed with narcotics, fighting each other, and making money for themselves.
It was originally serialized in Modern 现代 from August, 1932 to April, 1933. In August, 1933, an unauthorized paperback version was released. I don’t have a picture of that cover, but here’s the cover to the first authorized edition, published by Daybreak Literature Series 晨光文学丛书 in 1947, after Lao She returned to China:
Clearly not done by some someone who had read the book!
Like Dr. Fix-it, though, Cat Country gives lie to the idea to idea that sci-fi wasn’t being published in China in the 1920s to 1940s.
Here is another example imagery from this time period with shades of sci-fi, a cartoon by Wang Dunqing, published in Modern Sketch. Notice, too, the military imagery:
“Western Civilization” 西洋文明 Wang Dunqing 王敦慶 , Modern Sketch 時代漫畫 15, March 1935, 20.
And another one, this time a photo collage:
“Standard Chinese” 标准中国人, Modern Sketch, Issue #25, January 1936, 22.
Another author worth looking into from this time period (also suggested by Ou Ning), would be Gu Junzheng 顾均正 (1902-1980). Like Ye Yonglie, he started out writing popular science articles, and later moved on to novels.
Now, here is Regina Wang’s discussion of the way that popular literature gets divided up by contemporary Chinese authors:
“In China, the boundary between science fiction (Ke Huan, 科幻) and fantasy (Qi Huan, 奇幻) is not that blurred. However, due to our historical tradition in myths and Kong Fu stories, it is hard to define Chinese fantasy as a whole. You will find it hard to tell Qi Huan (奇幻, fantasy) from Xuan Huan (玄幻, mostly refers to online fiction with Chinese style super natural elements) and Mo Huan (魔幻, mostly refers to fiction with western style magic elements).
“Narrowly speaking, current Chinese fantasy literature excludes themes such as grave robbery (盗墓 Dao Mu, a group of people break into ancient graves, where they come across with ghosts and all kinds of evils, in search of treasures), time-travel (穿越 Chuan Yue, a girl traveled back to ancient dynasties for whatever reasons and falls in complicated relationships with kings, prices, and officers) and Taoism immortality-chasing (修真 Xiu Zhen, a boy experiences various challenges to pursue immortality by Taoism method), which stand as popular genres by themselves.”
– Regina Kanyu Wang (“A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction”)
I should mention here that Regina Wang has been very active in establishing lines of communication between Anglophone science fiction fandoms, like WorldCon, and their counterparts in China, namely AppleCore and World Chinese Science Fiction Association. She’s also recently launched the Shimmer Project with Singapore-based English to Chinese sci-fi translator Hu Shaoyan, with the goal of promoting Chinese science fiction in translation.
As this opening paragraph of her essay demonstrates, many Chinese sci-fi authors who write 科幻 really resist the idea of lumping their work in with other types of fantasy. This is one objection to ‘speculative fiction’ that Jeffery Wasserstrom seems to have anticipated, with his use of the word ‘heuristic.’
A ‘heuristic’ which is basically a fancy word for ‘working theory.’ It comes from an ancient Greek word meaning to ‘find’ or ‘discover’ and what’s really powerful about a heuristic is that we can use to build our own genres, or bodies of literature, rather than being limited to how authors classify their own work, or how critics and scholars have traditionally separated things out.
The reason why I think Dr. Wasserstrom points this out, is because he wants to remind us that there is a difference between intrinsic categories of self-definition and extrinsic categories of…well, categorization.
So we’ve already had Wasserstrom and Wang’s heuristics, which more or less line up with the typical contemporary Chinese and American attitudes toward sci fi—where China goes narrow, America goes broad. We’ve actually seen a backlash against this Western trend towards a broader definition of sci-fi, with groups like the Sick Puppies and Gamergate who have hijacked award ceremonies and made a lot of noise about what is and isn’t sci-fi.
But again, what is and isn’t sci-fi is both about identity (does the author identify as a sci-fi author?) and also about heuristics, about finding ways to sort and recommend (ie market) books.
To give another (much older) example of this, here is Issac Asimov’s heuristic:
Gadget sci-fi: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works. -> 科普
Adventure sci-fi: Man invents car, gets into a car chase with a villain. -> 科幻
Social sci-fi: Man invents car, gets stuck in traffic in the suburbs. -> 社论
– Isaac Asimov “Social Science Fiction” in Modern Science Fiction (1953), as paraphrased by TV Tropes.
Now, I happen to think this lines up pretty well with Chinese sci-fi, with gadget sci-fi and adventure sci-fi correlating pretty closely with 科普 and 科幻, respectively. I’ve marked social sci-fi with 社论, which means ‘op-ed,’ with Cat Country being the most obvious example:
Incidentally, Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem, which some of you may have already heard of or read, would be another example of the third category, I think, especially if we consider its treatment of the Cultural Revolution.
So in a very round-about kind of way, this brings us back to Ye Yonglie, that sci-fi author I said I would be talking about at the beginning of my talk:
Ye Yonglie 叶永烈 (b. 1940) in the late 1970s.
Ye got his start writing popular science articles for Ten-Thousand Whys in 1960, when he was only 20:
This was during the cultural thaw which took place between 1959 and 1963, with the failure of Great Leap Forward, and prior to the Socialist Education Movement (also known as the Four Cleanups), a precursor to the Cultural Revolution of 1966.
So to understand Ye, I’ve been looking at the comics he might have been reading when he was a kid, stuff from the 1940s up through the 1950s. A lot of it is wuxia, which I can share with you if you’re interested, but here are couple of sci-fi ones that seem pretty relevant to what we’ve been talking about.
Military themes…
“Scientific Army” 科学陆军 Xu Hongda 徐宏达, Zhou Family Press 周家书局, 275 pages, late 1940s.
Flying cars…
“Scientific Flying Car” 科学飞行车 Wang Yushan 汪玉山, Good Omen Press 福记书局, late 1940s.
Robots…
“Scientific Eight-Gun Cannon” 科学八门炮, Awakening 醒吾, late 1940s.
Jet packs…
“Scientific Flying Cannon” 科学飞行炮 Awakening 醒吾, late 1940s.
And clocks. Not sure what to make of this one：
“Scientific Flying Clock” 科学飞行鈡 (Part 1 of 4), Xue Feng 雪封, late 1940s.
And here is some of the stuff Ye would have seen in the mid to late 1950s, with the onset of the Great Leap Forward. Giant turnips…
And giant pigs…
Inspiring shades of the elephant parable we began with, the above appears to have been inspired by a famous short story by Chi Shuchang 迟书昌, “Elephants with Their Noses Cut Off,” of which several versions were published in 1956, both lianhuanhua:
And also children’s books:
Ye Yonglie may have also been able to read some pretty classic sci-fi, too, in the form of Zheng Wenguang’s 鄭文光 (1929-2003) novels:
Leaving the Earth 飛出地球去 (1957)
Exploration of the Sun 太陽探險記 (1955)
Flight to Sagittarius 飛向人馬座 (1978)
Above we have Leaving the Earth from 1957 (notice that the coastline is of East Asia, rather than North America), but he had two earlier books, From Earth to Mars 從地球到火星 from 1954, and Exploration of the Sun 太陽探險記 from 1955. Leaving the Earth was followed by Builders of Mars 火星建設者 in late 1957, but his next book, Flight to Sagittarius 飛向人馬座, didn’t appear until 1978, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. (As a research fellow of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Zhang was targeted during the Cultural Revolution, a fate narrowly avoided by the fictional protagonist of the first volume of The Three-Body Problem, Ye Wenjie.)
And here is Ye Yonglie’s magnum opus, Smarty Pants Visits the Future 小靈通漫游未來, which coincidentally enough appeared in the same year. This is actually a 1980 adaptation of that original story, which was first published in 1978：
Ye Yonglie survived the Cultural Revolution publishing autobiographies of CCP leaders, and later became famous for his travel books. In many ways he came to exemplify the polemical sci-fi author: using science at times to bolster the power of the party, while at other times using the same tools to criticize. In particular, he got into trouble with some his later work, which dealt with the politics of scientific research in the CCP, and AIDs in Xinjiang.
My hope is to get permission to translate Smarty Pants Visits the Future from Ye himself, and also to ask some of the questions I’ve been talking about today. If you were in my shoes, what questions would you ask Ye Yonglie, regarding the past and future development of sci-fi in China? And what else do you want to know about Chinese science fiction? What heuristics do you apply to your reading of this literature?
Thank you! |
A French fighter jet intercepted a Brussels Airlines flight after contact with the cockpit was suddenly broken. The incident was in June, but has only now become known.
The Airbus A319 Brussels Airlines flight was bringing holiday-goers from Lanzarote to Brussels Airport in late June. While the plane was flying over France, air traffic control lost contact with the pilots. The French Air Force was mobilised, and took the flight under its wing to a safe landing.
The pilot of the Brussels Airlines flight was apparently sleeping, and the co-pilot reported that he did not respond to the calls from air traffic control because he believed they were trying to reach another flight.
According to Brussels Airlines, the unit landed safely and the incident was evaluated shortly thereafter. |
Government is a big insurance company. Except you can’t shop elsewhere for insurance. And their price is super high. And they threaten you if you don’t want to pay them. And the services they deliver are sub-par for the price. And you can’t itemize your “insurance” to only include the products you need. And often just when you need them most, you find out how incompetent, corrupt, and overall ineffective they are at ensuring you against anything.
Just look at Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Governments play politics with awarding repair projects, while the majority of the island is still left without power. Daddy Yankee was a bigger help than FEMA.
And because the government really doesn’t deliver on their promise of keeping people safe and coming to their aid, people still turn to private companies. People still find it in their best interest to use some of the 50% of their income left after the government plunders the rest to purchase insurance.
You pay property taxes, and these go to support indoctrination centers also known as public schools. They pay for local roads, local traffic enforcers, and firefighters. But these services are collectivized. The firefighters aren’t really there to save your home, they are there to keep the whole town from burning down.
Firefighters are likely some of the most dedicated public employees. The ones I have met often go into the profession for the right reasons, and take seriously their commitment to saving lives. Many are even volunteers. But still, they can only show up after they have been called. Many bravely rescue people from serious situations. But rarely is a structure saved.
That is where private insurance comes in. You purchase private home insurance so that in the event that your home burns down, you don’t lose all the money that has gone into it. But some companies go above and beyond when you purchase insurance from them.
Increasingly, insurance carriers are finding wildfires, such as those in California, are an opportunity to provide protection beyond what most people get through publicly funded fire fighting. Some insurers say they typically get new customers when homeowners see the special treatment received by neighbors during big fires. “The enrollment has taken off dramatically over the years as people have seen us save homes,” Paul Krump, a senior executive at Chubb, said of the insurer’s Wildfire Defense Services. “It’s absolutely growing leaps and bounds.”
Chubb provides extra protection to the homes they insure in certain zip codes that are prone to wildfires. They get private firefighters on the scene before the building catches. This means instead of being left with a pile of ashes and a check to go about the arduous process of rebuilding your life, you are simply left with your home intact.
Obviously, this makes sense from the insurance company’s perspective as well. They are spending a little money on firefighters so they don’t have to spend a lot of money replacing homes.
So if we have insurance programs like this, why do we need government programs? All the incentives are there for the private insurers. And the outcome is better for the homeowners. But how many homeowners are lulled into a false sense of security by the “free” government services? Since they already paid for the public services, it doesn’t seem to make sense to buy extra protection.
If there wasn’t already a publicly funded organization to fight a fire, people would specifically shop for insurance that included it. Or they would install sprinkler systems, and their insurance company would give them a huge discount on emergency fire services. If they installed an emergency cistern to pump from, even cheaper.
This system also protects neighbors as fires generally spread house to house. Any protected property is a valuable buffer to stop the spread of a forest fire.
And again, we are talking about firefighters, probably the least corrupt and most dedicated government agency in existence. Still, the private sector has a system that makes more sense.
What About the Poor?
A disproportionate amount of poor people live in rented homes and apartments. The owners of these buildings have the same incentive to ensure their buildings are safe. Factor in liability for injuries and that adds more incentives to prevent destruction in the first place. That means more insurance discounts for safe practices.
The poor also benefit from their neighbor’s insurance. As in the case with wildfires, the property being protected is a buffer to other property which may also be saved as a byproduct.
Poor people are still hit with plenty of local taxes like sales tax, excise tax, and food service tax. Some localities even tax income and fuel. So the government already significantly burdens the poor with taxes. If the tax burden didn’t exist to pay for sub-par public “insurance” then it would be easy to afford a little extra private insurance.
The median home price in America is under $200,000 which means you could likely find solid insurance for under $100 per month. Contrast that to the median property tax in America which is $2,149 a year. Suddenly the cost of tacking on extras for your home insurance doesn’t seem so expensive in comparison.
Would This Work for Other Government Services?
So why can’t this be applied to other government services? It can, and is.
If you are insured against property crimes, it means that insurance company has an incentive to reduce the risk that anything is stolen that they will have to replace. Of course, this means the insurance will be cheaper in safer places. But it also means discounts for things like proper locks, security cameras, and maybe even alert dogs.
Home owner’s insurance also insures property against theft. This makes sense because the overall rate of clearing property crimes is 19.4%. That means over 80% of theft, burglary, arson, vandalism, and larceny go unsolved.
And when insurance doesn’t cover it, wealthy people hire private investigators to solve the crimes the police have no interest, or incentive, to solve. About 46% of violent crimes go unsolved. Over a third of murders will not see the perpetrator brought to justice. If your car gets stolen, you have a 13% chance that the police catch the thief.
Despite these stats, America spends $100 Billion a year on policing, and that does not include incarceration.
The insurance provider encourages behavior that should be standard from the start. But because of the false belief that the government provides overall everything insurance, people don’t protect themselves how they should.
Government Replaced By Insurance Companies
The more people that buy into a platinum insurance plan the more the risk is spread. That means cheaper plans. But the government makes people believe they are already covered by public services.
This is the idea behind government “insurance.” The risk is spread so far and wide that in theory, it should cost very little to be protected. But the government doesn’t run like an insurance company. Their incentive is not to reduce costs to themselves nor the people they protect. Because they don’t have to entice customers, they can charge more than a fair market price for their protection. Because customers cannot opt out, there is no incentive to provide good service. And since they are only tasked with protecting the property, and not replacing it, they have no actual incentive to prevent loss.
Companies like Chubb are setting a great precedent for the future of insurance. If the government didn’t take so much of our money, there would be an endless array of insurances to choose from to replace everything the government does now. And it would be better service, for cheaper. |
NASA / Kathryn Hansen
This week, scientists made a disturbing discovery in the Arctic Ocean: They saw "vast methane plumes escaping from the seafloor," as the Stockholm University put it in a release disclosing the observations. The plume of methane—a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat more powerfully than carbon dioxide, the chief driver of climate change—was unsettling to the scientists.
But it was even more unnerving to Dr. Jason Box, a widely published climatologist who had been following the expedition. As I was digging into the new development, I stumbled upon his tweet, which, coming from a scientist, was downright chilling:
If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f'd. — Jason Box (@climate_ice) July 29, 2014
Box, who is currently a professor of glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, has been studying the Arctic for decades. His accolade-packed Wikipedia page notes that he's made some 20 expeditions to the Arctic since 1994, and served as the lead author on the Greenland section of NOAA's State of the Climate report from 2008-2012. He also runs the Dark Snow project and writes about the latest findings in the field at his blog, Meltfactor.
In other words, Box knows the Arctic, and he knows climate change—and the methane plumes had him blitzed enough to bring out the F bombs.
Now, the scientists in the Arctic didn't fully understand why the plumes were occurring. But they speculated that a warmer "tongue" of ocean current was destabilizing methane hydrates on the Arctic slope.
I called the scientist at his office in Copenhagen, and he talked frankly and emphatically about the new threat, and about the specter of climate change in general. He also swore like a sailor, which I've often wondered how climatologists refrain from doing, given the urgency of the problem—it's certainly an entirely accurate way to communicate the climate plight.
First of all, I asked Box if he stood by that tweet. He did. He'd revise it a bit, to include surface carbon—methane locked in the permafrost that's also beginning to leak out—because if we loose enough of either, we're in trouble.
"Even if a small fraction of the Arctic carbon were released to the atmosphere, we're fucked," he told me. What alarmed him was that "the methane bubbles were reaching the surface. That was something new in my survey of methane bubbles," he said.
The scientists' video of methane bubbles in the Arctic Ocean.
"The conventional thought is that the bubbles would be dissolved before they reached the surface and that microorganisms would consume that methane, and that's normal," Box went on. But if the plumes are making it to the surface, that's a brand new source of heat-trapping gases that we need to worry about.
The scientists on the expedition confirm that's what we're seeing, too:
"We are 'sniffing' methane," Ulf Hedman, the science coordinator of the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, wrote in a post highlighted by Climate Change SOS. "We see the bubbles on video from the camera mounted on the CTD or the Multicorer. All analysis tells the signs. We are in a Mega flare. We see it in the water column, we read it above the surface, and we follow it up high into the sky with radars and lasers. We see it mixed in the air and carried away with the winds. Methane in the air."
"Methane is more than 20 times more potent than CO2 in trapping infrared as part of the natural greenhouse effect," Box said. "Methane getting to the surface—that's potent stuff."
It's especially worrying because the Arctic is warming faster than nearly anywhere else on Earth. Now, along with melting sea ice and thawing permafrost, we have to add to our list of 'feedback loop' concerns that warming Arctic oceans may be releasing fonts of methane. That is, the warmer the ocean gets, the more methane gets spewed out of those stores on the continental shelf, and the warmer the ocean gets, ad infinitum.
I may escape a lot of this, but my daughter might not. She's 3 years old.
Methane emissions from the ocean floor seen on the screen as large clouds. Photo: Ulf Hedman
"The Arctic is our most immediate carbon concern," Box continued. There is an immense amount of carbon stored there. "It's a giant number. But we should think in terms of, even if a small amount of that carbon comes out, that's a problem."
Box, who hails from Colorado, relocated to Denmark in part to escape the impending impacts of climate change. "Droughts are going to be a problem for the interior states," he said. "I'm a bit of climate refugee." Because the Arctic methane plumes, of course, are just another worrying source of a global phenomenon that is rapidly approaching the brink of irreversibility.
"We're on a trajectory to an unmanageable heating scenario, and we need to get off it," he said. "We're fucked at a certain point, right? It just becomes unmanageable. The climate dragon is being poked, and eventually the dragon becomes pissed off enough to trash the place."
It was refreshing to hear a climatologist pull no punches, while still eloquently and accurately summarizing the science—even though an increasing number are becoming proactive, like the paleoclimatologist Dr. Michael Mann, and top climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, climate scientists are still learning how to engage the public in a manner that's forceful and compelling. Like Dr. Hansen, Box has a deeply personal reason to sound the alarm.
"I may escape a lot of this," he said, "but my daughter might not. She's 3 years old." Climate change may not destabilize the globe in our lifetime, or even his daughter's—but the fact that feedback loops like methane release could rapidly accelerate the warming means that there's a chance rapid climate transformation—and the social and economic catastrophes that would likely accompany it—could strike sooner.
"If you stand to lose everything, then even a low probability event is high-risk. That's why people fund armies—just in case they get invaded. We need to invest in decarbonizing our energy system." He paused, then added:
"We've got to keep this fucking carbon in the ground." |
Regarding the letter to the editor written by Dave Ratner in the Oct. 18 edition of the Republican, "I was duped by the White House."
My heart goes out to Mr. Ratner. He has expressed his regret and dismay and he has apologized numerous times in several articles in the new media. Mr. Ratner, we have all been duped by the "moron" in the White House.
One question puzzles me. Is there any law, any accord, any agreement, any executive order, any policy, any legislation or any other deal that the former President Obama enacted that Trump has not obliterated, gutted and tried to kill or reverse?
Mr. Ratner, you are not alone in your dismay, disgust and utter disappointment of the current president. We have all been duped. Sad.
Jeanne Lalancette, Springfield |
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